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Adele Just Made A Beyonce Comparison That Has Conservative Christians Going Crazy (VIDEO/TWEETS) | Mega music star Adele took some time during a concert in Denmark to offer some words about American music queen Beyonce and her album Lemonade. Adele had nothing but good things to say about Beyonce , calling her the sickest artist around. But, she went a step further in a statement that has earned the ire of conservative Christians. Here s what Adele said: She is Jesus f***ing Christ. It s unbelievable. I ve been listening to her for 17 years, and she s still making music that blows my mind. Watch video here: Adele calls Beyonce 'Jesus Christ' during a live show ? pic.twitter.com/DaJv8kuJoQ WORLDSTARHIPHOP (@WORLDSTAR) May 4, 2016 Later in an Instagram post, Adele said that she enjoyed worshiping the American music icon. Here s what she said: I m not late on this I ve just been speechless. Beyonce is the most inspiring person I ve ever had the pleasure of worshipping. Her talent, beauty, grace and work ethic are all in a league of their own. I appreciate you so much! Thank god for Beyonc . Although the comparison was harmless, many people felt a personal affront and made their feelings known on Twitter. One person went so far as to pray for Adele s soul when she meets Jesus. Others accused the star of losing her mind (see below).In the end, it s simply one musician expressing admiration for another. @shaykimberlyy ikr Satan (@allhailsatan_) May 8, 2016Adele calling Beyonc Jesus Christ makes me kinda not like her anymore Alexvnder (@alexanderdaname) May 7, 2016@Adele Comparing @Beyonce to Jesus Christ is very offensive on every level. It is just plain evil. You need to apologize quickly. Joshua Adams (@AllJesusChrist) May 8, 2016Of course the right wing went crazy over this. No one is surprised, but their freakouts are downright pathetic these days. Way to go Adele anything to anger these loons is definitely a good thing.Featured image via video screenshot. | 1real |
Rand Paul Forgot To Delete Tweet Calling For People To Use 2nd Amendment To ‘Shoot At The Government’ | In the wake of a mass shooting that left a Republican member of congress and several others injured, many on both sides of the aisle are asking that the partisan rhetoric on both sides cool down a bit. It s an admirable goal and one worth reaching for. However, it s also worth noting that the very same Republicans now suggesting liberals are inciting violence don t seem to have the same concerns about their own side.The calls to cool down partisan rhetoric, ironic as it may be, seem to be entirely partisan. One side and it rhymes with treepublicans aren t pulling their weight. The story unfolds each time this happens like clockwork: Liberals join with conservatives in condemning hate on both sides. Conservatives fall silent when right-wing extremists go on violent rampages, repeatedly failing to police their own.A prime example of this disconnect is Sen. Rand Paul. He was at the baseball practice when shots began to ring out. He was unharmed, but experienced the horror. However, his understandable desire to condemn political violence is not reflected in his Twitter history. Just last year, while a Democrat was still president and during the deeply-heated election, he passed along a message of encouraging political violence. Quoting a Fox News guest, Paul wrote:.@Judgenap: Why do we have a Second Amendment? It's not to shoot deer. It's to shoot at the government when it becomes tyrannical! Senator Rand Paul (@RandPaul) June 23, 2016Amazingly, he never bothered to delete the tweet. (We took screenshots in case he decides to now.)The political climate of June 2016 was, in some ways, even more heated than it is now. By that point in Obama s presidency, it had become clear that the right s boogieman was not going to be impeached and that his two terms in office had been overwhelming successful. Confronted with that reality, conservatives grew hysterical. Even in the months before he left office, Obama was being labeled by right-wing media as tyrannical. Here s how The Federalist, a so-called intellectual right-wing outlet, was describing Obama just months before Rand s tweet:The year before, Sen. Ted Cruz and Texas Governor Greg Abbott were seriously suggesting that Obama might invade Texas and enact a martial law program named Jade Helm to confiscate Texans guns. The allegations were patently absurd, but they riled up many conservatives who suddenly became terrified that the government was about to round them up and put them in detention camps. (Trump s friend Alex Jones helped promote the idea, going so far as claim to have identified several locations where the military was setting up internment areas.)Rand Paul isn t the only one to blame here. Fox News, which today is making blanket, factless statements about the violence of liberals, was responsible for the original comment by Judge Napolitano, a longtime contributor to the network and full-time nutjob. Nobody batted an eye when he encouraged people to lash out at the tyrannical government with guns. Fox was being viewed by millions of people a day, all being told relentlessly that Obama was acting like a dictator. They could connect the dots.In conclusion: Spare the indignation, conservatives. While we can all agree that violence has no place in the political discourse, that only works if both sides are operating in good faith. So far, Republicans have not shown an ability to condemn their own violent extremists the way they have asked liberals to do. Without that equal shouldering of the responsibility there can be no true change in the political climate.Featured image via Alex Wong/Getty Images | 1real |
At least three dead as Indian passenger train derails in northern India | MUMBAI (Reuters) - A passenger train slipped off the rails in northern India early on Friday, killing at least three people and injuring about 10, the railways ministry said. The train was on its way from Goa in western India to Patna in the east when 13 coaches derailed, the ministry said. It did not provide any reason for the accident, which occurred in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh. Television news agency ANI however quoted the Uttar Pradesh Additional Director General of police as saying that the cause of accident is most probably a fractured railway track as per local assessment. A medical train and a relief train had reached the accident spot, the railways said. India has seen a spate of rail accidents over the last 12 months. Earlier in August, there were three separate incidents on the world s fourth-biggest rail network injuring over 165 people and killing several others. The biggest accident so far this year was on Aug. 19 in Uttar Pradesh, which resulted in the death of 23 people and led to the suspension of three senior railways officials. A crash in Uttar Pradesh last November killed 150 people. India s ailing rail network is in the midst of a $130 billion, five-year modernization process. In addition, the government launched a $15 billion safety overhaul in February after the surge in accidents blamed on defective tracks. But in June, Reuters reported that the overhaul was facing delays as the state steel company could not meet demand for new rails. [nL3N1JO1TU] | 0fake |
THE GUY WHO Punched “Moldylocks” Speaks Out About Violent Antifa Female With A Bottle [VIDEO] | Nathan Domingo is the founder of Identity Europa and is the guy who was seen by millions of viewers punching a female Antifa thug the media tried to portray as a helpless woman that just happened to be in the area when fighting broke out at a free speech rally in Berkeley, CA on April 16th.The last time these two group clashed, the Trump supporters were seriously outnumbered. This time was a different story. Trump supporters came prepared for the unprovoked attacks of these hate groups and took them to task. With all the violence that happened yesterday, leftist media outlets seemed to be obsessed with reporting on the video that was taken of an alleged Trump supporter who punched an antifa female who was part of the violent group Oak Roots Collective that traveled to Berkeley to confront Trump supporters and shut down their right to free speech.Here s the video. At the 18 second mark you can see the woman cock her arm back as though she is about to swing her arm at someone. When she brings her arm forward, that is where she gets hit. We are NOT condoning the hitting of a woman by a man, but if she had a bottle in her hand and was about to hit someone that changes everything:CBS San Fransisco Bay Area news interviewed anarchist Louise Rosealma, who along with her boyfriend is a member of the Oak Roots Collective. Here s a sample of the violence they promote on their Facebook page. This is how these people (that should be labeled as domestic terrorists) see themselves. These anarchists live in a world where it s okay to act with violence against law enforcement and innocent people who don t agree with their political views:Here s citizen journalist Tim Pool talking to the Antifa female who was hit. When he asks her if she thinks it s okay that Antifa rioters threw M-80 s at people on the Trump side, her response was, Well, the revolution isn t f*cking easy! (This video was taken after she was hit) Apparently she was correct about one thing For anyone wondering what an identiatrian is, here is a screen shot from the Identity Evropa website: | 1real |
House panel chairman says FBI declines for now to meet request for Comey-linked documents | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Federal Bureau of Investigation has declined for now to give the House Oversight Committee documents it had requested regarding communications between former FBI chief James Comey and President Donald Trump, the head of the panel said on Thursday. The FBI said it was still evaluating the request, which had a committee-set deadline of Wednesday, in light of the appointment of a special prosecutor to look into the possibility of collusion between Trump’s presidential campaign and Russian officials seeking to influence the 2016 election, according to a letter released by committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz. In a responding letter, Chaffetz said he still wanted any related documents that would be outside the scope of the special counsel’s investigation, and a list of documents found to be within the scope of the probe, by June 8. “I am seeking to better understand Comey’s communications with the White House and Attorney General in such a way that does not implicate the Special Counsel’s work,” Chaffetz said in the letter. Chaffetz made his initial request for documents after a New York Times report that Comey had written in a memo that Trump asked him to halt an FBI investigation into ties between former White House national security adviser Michael Flynn and Russian officials. Chaffetz’s panel is one of several in Congress investigating alleged efforts by Russia to tip the election to Trump, and the possibility that Trump associates had coordinated with Moscow. Members of the Senate Intelligence Committee made it easier on Wednesday for that panel to obtain documents for its investigation. Its chairman, Republican Richard Burr, told reporters that members had agreed unanimously to allow him and Mark Warner, its top Democrat, to issue subpoenas as they see fit, without a vote by the committee. The controversy has engulfed Trump’s administration since he fired Comey on May 10. Moscow has repeatedly denied the allegations and Trump denies any collusion. The FBI letter’s to Chaffetz on Thursday noted the appointment of former FBI Director Robert Mueller last week as special counsel to investigate the issue. “In light of this development and other considerations, we are undertaking appropriate consultation to ensure all relevant interests implicated by your request are properly evaluated,” the letter said. | 0fake |
Clinton Isn’t Letting Up As She Hammers Trump For Pimping His Hotel Instead Of Campaigning | Hillary Clinton is keeping her foot on the gas pedal by hammering Donald Trump for taking the day off to promote his hotel built with undocumented workers instead of campaigning.
Video:
Clinton said:
Hillary Clinton could probably spend 24 hours a day for the rest of the campaign doing nothing but targeting Trump’s hypocrisies.
While Trump was trying to drum up business for his struggling new DC hotel, Hillary Clinton was winning more early votes in the state of Florida. There are two competing messages in the media currently about the election. The first message is that Democrats are blowing out Republicans in early voting. The second message is that a few state polls have shown Trump leading by a little in Florida and gaining ground in New Hampshire.
It is possible that both of these stories are correct. Democrats are blowing out Republicans in early voting, and with no new sex assault stories dominating the news, some Republicans may be coming back to Trump.
The important thing for Hillary Clinton and Democrats is not to let up. Democrats are very close to generation defining win, but victory is not sealed yet. More polling will need to be done to see if the two state polls were outliers or if this is a trend, but the polls may not matter.
If most of the ballots in states like North Carolina and Florida are cast before election day, the polls may end up meaning very little.
Hillary Clinton is in a great position, but judging from her own remarks, she is still working hard to close the deal on November 8.
As Trump pimps his new hotel, Hillary Clinton is pushing even harder to win the White House. | 1real |
WATCH: BlackLivesMatter Cop Hater Slaps Police Horse Then GETS MAJOR PAYBACK From Horse…. | WATCH: BlackLivesMatter Cop Hater Slaps Police Horse Then GETS MAJOR PAYBACK From Horse…. Oct 28, 2016 Previous post
Scroll down for video
For most critical thinking individuals, common sense usually dictates staying clear of bigger objects that could pose a threat, especially within the animal kingdom. However for the “blissfully young and ignorant”, that innate and inborn instinct at times needs a little reinforcement, and no doubt getting kicked by a police horse hopefully did the trick.
The incident took place during the Queen’s University homecoming in Kingston, Ontario, when a young blond woman ran up behind a police horse mounted by police officer and smacked the horse on its rear, and of course the horse immediately responded as it was trained to do, and kicked the woman to the ground, face first.
The 40-second video captures the woman wearing a dark shirt with a red stripe appearing in front of the brief video clip running towards the horse, and the whispered commentary coming from the operator seems to indicate that this was all a part of a silly prank, and the young blond was actually the dupe or more likely the dope, take your pick.
According to authorities 3-people were arrested and charged with assaulting a police horse during the homecoming celebrations, however the condition of the woman wasn’t immediately known, other
FOR ENTIRE ARTICLE CLICK LINK | 1real |
Venezuela: Will the army save the nation from chaos? | Venezuela: Will the army save the nation from chaos? 27.10.2016 Vladimir Padrino The Venezuelan Parliament stopping the procedure of the referendum about the resignation of President Nicolas Maduro and urged the people for "rebellion." The Brazilian precedent has thus become a practice, which can be referred to as a "legitimate illegal coup". Why is so hard for Washington to topple Venezuelan President Maduro? Legitimate illegal coup Print version Font Size Not that long ago, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff was removed from power in compliance with all constitutional procedures. Dilma was a leftist progressive president, who was accused of using loans of private banks to consolidate the budget, which played a crucial role in the formation of her positive image in the presidential race. This practice is frequently used in Brazil, but the opposition could not forgive Rousseff for winning the presidential campaign by a very small margin.The economic situation in Venezuela is even harder than that in Brazil. The country suffers from low profitability of the budget due to the fall in oil prices and wild inflation of 400 percent for the current year. The authorities of the country had to introduce cards to distribute foodstuffs. The current situation in Venezuela looks very much like the one that Russia experienced in 1992: empty stores, hospitals where you have to pay for everything and depression. In the parliamentary elections last year, Socialists suffered a defeat, and the opposition bloc won the absolute majority of 74 to 26 votes.The government of Hugo Chavez should have created reserve funds not to let all this happen. In addition, Chavez used to give oil, the nation's treasure, away to assist "fraternal peoples." The previous administration of Venezuela made a mistake when it decided to develop economic ties with China. Today, China decreases both investment and oil procurement. As a result, the parliament's initiative to convene a referendum about Maduro's resignation has collected a lot more signatures than was necessary. A survey conducted by Venebarómetro shows that 88 percent of Venezuelans want to vote, and 10.8 million of them want Maduro to step down, whereas 1.4 million are against such a move. However, the courts of five provinces of Venezuela canceled the results of the first phase of the referendum signature collection, making the second phase of the process, which was scheduled for 26-28 October, impossible. It was important for the opposition to hold the referendum in 2016. If the referendum is held after January 10, 2017, and even the majority of Venezuelans vote to remove Maduro from power, the powers of the head of state for the remaining two years will be handed over to the sitting vice-president. If the referendum is held earlier, new elections would have taken place - this was the prime goal of the Venezuelan opposition. Maduro wins in the legal field of Venezuela, but not the opposition. One can talk a lot about the corruption of Brazilian senators, who voted for the impeachment of Dilma, and the corruption of Venezuelan judges, who did not approve the collected signatures, but it is very difficult and nearly impossible to prove it. Therefore, the dispute between the executive and the legislative powers of Venezuela may take an illegitimate turn to repeat the events that took place in Russia in 1993 or in Ukraine in 2014. In both of these scenarios, the army will play the decisive role. MP Freddy Guevara has already urged the Bolivarian National Armed Forces (BNVS) not to obey the dictatorship and not to shoot at their own people." However, the army is loyal to Maduro. Vladimir Padrino is the future President of Venezuela? Venezuela's Defense Minister and the commander of the Strategic Operational Command, Vladimir Padrino López, remains personally loyal to President Maduro. Padrino has recently been appointed the chief of the Sovereign Supply Mission (misión Abastecimiento Soberano) and the Second Vice-President, which will allow him to perform the duties of the president in the event Maduro is impeached after January 10, 2017. Secondly, Padrino successfully neutralizes certain divisions within the army, to ensure the continuity of "Chavismo." There is a group of those, who do not want to see Maduro in power, but demand the "return to the roots" of the Bolivarian revolution. There are also those who consider themselves "apostates from Chavismo", whereas the third group is controlled by Chavistas, Member of Parliament, Chairman of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela Diosdado Cabello. His people believe that "some things need to change, but not through the toppling of Maduro, because Cabello is his political ally."Vice-Admiral Rafael Huizi Clavier believes that Padrino holds absolute power in the army. He has his people both in the National Guards (internal troops) and in military districts (Regiones de Defensa Integral (REDI)), which is a crucial aspect. Thus, it is clear that Maduro will be able to retain power in the midst of a crisis with Padrino's help. Lyuba Lulko | 1real |
“Not A ‘Real’ Union”: Emails Show Clinton Campaign Attacks On Nurses | Robby Mook, the manager for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, urged staff to attack National Nurses United (NNU) as “fringe” and suggested they were “not a ‘real’ union,” according to emails published by WikiLeaks.
NNU gave Bernie Sanders one of his biggest union endorsements. The nurses union also invested a lot of time and resources into get out the vote efforts and hosted a major People’s Summit in June that brought all the forces, which were supportive of the Sanders campaign, together in Chicago to explore how to carry on a people’s agenda after the election.
RoseAnn DeMoro, executive director of NNU, responded, “The Clinton team’s attack on nurses as ‘fringe’ and not a ‘real union’ is deplorable, but hardly a shock. It’s a window in how they seek to vilify any critics, as evidenced in other emails showing Clinton’s mocking disdain for environmental activists.”
DeMoro continued, “Apparently, a ‘real union’ is only one that falls lock step within the Democratic Party establishment and ‘fringe’ when it fails to embrace partnerships with Wall Street and other corporate interests.”
“Sadly, it’s also a preview of what we can expect in the next four years and a reminder that—from day one of the Clinton administration—NNU and our allies will need to make our voices loudly heard to advocate for social, economic, and political justice for patients and all people.”
On August 9, 2015, the labor outreach director, Nikki Budzinski, indicated NNU would endorse Sanders. It was the first national labor endorsement the campaign failed to win.
Mook replied, “On the nurses—can we be ready [with] background for the press team on how fringe they are? Also have they praised HRC before?”
“I would be wary of trying to attack them as fringe,” Budzinski advised. However, she said the press would “love this story” and “finding a creative way to shake it I think is worth the effort.”
Mook agreed and added, “I’m just worried less experienced reporters won’t understand that they’re not a ‘real’ union.”
NNU is, in fact, a “real” union. It is an AFL-CIO member union. It is also the largest union of registered nurses in the United States.
In July 2015, Mook favored lobbying NNU leadership to prevent them from endorsing Bernie. That pressure clearly failed.
The campaign pit the nurses of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) against the nurses of NNU, trotting them out to deaden the impact of NNU’s support for Sanders. Campaign chairman John Podesta even seemed to welcome AFT president Randi Weingarten’s pledge to “go after NNU and there [sic] high and mighty sanctimonious conduct.”
Individuals connected to the campaign continued to keep track of NNU and their efforts to support Sanders. Tina Flournoy of AFT notified the campaign when NNU sent out a press release condemning the Democratic National Committee for its attempt to rig the primary process by denying Sanders access to a master list of voters.
Clinton campaign staff likely considered NNU “fringe” because the nurses union took a principled stand on the Affordable Care Act (ACA). They pushed for single-payer healthcare and still refuse to settle for anything less than Medicare for All.
At a Democratic Platform Committee meeting in June, DeMoro criticized the ACA, as well as the Clinton campaign’s proposals for incremental market-based reform that would barely address human needs.
Clinton and DNC appointees to the Platform Committee blocked the Democratic Party from including language that would have suggested the party supports expanding Medicare to cover all Americans.
“The Affordable Care Act, while an improvement, is not good enough. It is structurally deficient [and] leaves healthcare as a system based on profit and ability to pay rather than patient need,” NNU declared in a statement after the platform committee voted down the single-payer language.
It still means tens of millions of American have no “health coverage or ‘insurance’” because they cannot afford “high out of pocket costs.” Plus, the law has systemic problems which undermine quality of care, and it is easy for the health care industry to game the system, NNU added.
President Barack Obama’s administration confirmed premiums under the ACA will go up about 25 percent. Many Americans will only have one insurance provider to choose from when buying insurance through exchanges.
The spike further undermines the arguments of progressive establishment figures, who insist the ACA must be defended at all costs, including against calls to establish a universal health care system that would truly put people before profits.
Finally, some of the worst attacks from Democrats and the Obama administration came in 2009 and 2010 against groups and organizations, which did not immediately fall in line and support the ACA. They lashed out those committed to single-payer healthcare or a much weaker reform, the public option.
The conduct of the Clinton campaign suggests this type of disdain for principled challenges from progressives will continue under a Clinton administration, and in fact, a Clinton administration may be more crude and vicious in their efforts to stamp out dissent.
The post “Not A ‘Real’ Union”: Emails Show Clinton Campaign Attacks On Nurses appeared first on Shadowproof .
| 1real |
DAPL Protesters Proven Right as Largest Gas Pipeline in U.S. Experiences Massive and Deadly Explosion | By Claire Bernish A massive explosion of a gas pipeline in Shelby County, Alabama — near the site where the same pipeline leaked some 336,000... | 1real |
Vanity Fair: National Politics Are all About Donald Trump’s Wall - Breitbart | The fate of Donald Trump’s presidency depends on whether Sen. Chuck Schumer can block construction of the border wall, says Vanity Fair. [The magazine’s writer, T. A. Frank, is a liberal with some understanding of the Trump coalition and he argues that the Democrats hope to break Trump’s presidency by blocking funds for the wall: Thwart Trump and he looks weak. You force him to break his signature promise. His agenda stalls. The Hispanic vote moves even more solidly to the left. The Democratic base gets energized, and Trump’s base gets demoralized and stays home in the next couple of elections. It’s . That’s why Chuck Schumer has spoken of “shutting down the government” if Trump tries to get the wall going … People are now suggesting Trump has given up on the wall in all but rhetoric. And this would be momentous. If Trump’s wall is dead, then Trump’s presidency is dead, But Trump is still trying to get funds for the wall, in the face of uniform and public Democratic opposition plus widespread opposition from GOP leaders. In a Friday, April 28 speech to the National Rifle Association, for example, he declared that: “We’ll build a wall. Don’t even think about [not getting a wall]. Don’t even think about it. Don’t even think about it. That’s an easy one. ” Amid unified Democratic opposition, Trump only has two choices, argues Vanity Fair: Trump’s options are limited. He could in theory play — or have played — a ruthless game to get his way, since Trump has the power to revoke the “deferred action for childhood arrivals” or DACA order that Barack Obama signed in order to shield those who have arrived here illegally as children. An icier type wouldn’t have hesitated to hold the fate of these people hostage for wall funding, employing rhetoric about the importance of tying today’s forgiveness to tomorrow’s prevention, and so on. But Trump shows few signs of being that callous, and he has conveyed only reassurances to the Dreamers. So threats of this sort will not be his approach. The second option would be to try to sell the wall — and do a better job of it than he did with Ryancare … Trump could try to sell people on a vision of America with tighter labor markets [that push up higher wages] more equitable distribution of wealth, and less [civic] balkanization … He could pair this with a pitch for the wall, arguing that walls are peaceful and usually effective, and they reduce the need for more intrusive forms of enforcement such as workplace raids and deportation. But Trump has only figured out how to use the wall to sell himself. He never figured out how to use himself to sell the wall. Democrats oppose the wall, in large part, because it is an effective barrier that future politicians can’t remove, and is also a concrete symbol of Americans’ determination to block the flow of cheap labor, customers, renters and future voters from Mexico to cities along the coasts. But Trump also faces a huge problem in getting top GOP leaders to fund his plans for a wall, because the wall would shrink the flow of illegal immigrants sought by many business groups in Texas, Georgia and other red states. Throughout April, that GOP opposition meant that GOP leaders failed to push Democrats to approve Trump’s request to build an additional 48 miles of border barrier in 2017. The requested $1 billion was blocked by Democrats, although congressional leaders say Trump will get the extra funds for other homeland security tasks in the 2017 supplemental budget, now slated for approval in early May. The GOP opposition is cloaking itself as a supporter of alternatives to Trump’s permanent barrier, such as an invisible fence of expensive sensors and border patrol agents which later can be switched off as soon as Trump leaves the White House. A wall “really means ‘security’ … It could be open surveillance to prevent people from crossing,” Florida GOP Rep. Dennis Ross told Bloomberg in December. “It does not mean an actual wall. ” “I’ve always thought the wall was a metaphor for securing the border,” not an actual wall, claimed Wisconsin GOP Sen. Ron Johnson during an April CNN interview. “There will never be a wall built, period,” claimed South Carolina GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham, a Republican. “I think it’s become symbolic of better border security. It’s a code word for better border security. If you make it about actually building a wall, that’s a bridge too far. ” “I think a wall is anything that will stop people from coming into the country illegally,” claimed Pennsylvania GOP Rep. Lou Barletta. “It could be a variety of what can be used to be successful. ” House Speaker Paul Ryan is also downplaying the wall part of the wall. “Conditions on the ground determine what you need in a particular area,” he told CBS’s “60 Minutes. ” Immigration reformers are pushing Trump to fight for wall funding in the 2018 budget, due in October. “Construction of a border wall was one of the president’s signature promises during his campaign,” said a statement from the Federation for American Immigration Reform. As he has made clear, an effective border security plan would include a wall in areas of the border where it is a viable and effective deterrent and that other sections of the border would be enhanced by technology and additional manpower. We expect that the president will deliver on these commitments. Unfortunately, past versions of a ‘comprehensive border security plan’ have been ineffective because they did not require the laying of a single brick of border wall. Such a cosmetic approach was a precursor to amnesty and both have been consistently rejected by the American people. We look forward to seeing details of the president’s plan that will actually get the job done of securing our southern border. ” However, border security is only one component of a needed overhaul of immigration. Much more is expected by the American people and the White House must demand Congress pass meaningful reforms to eliminate the incentives for illegal immigration and create a legal immigration system that truly serves identifiable national interests. ” Read more about the wall here. | 0fake |
Turkey Prepares to Intervene in Mosul | Written by Melkulangara Bhadrakumar The battle of Mosul has been joined, finally, as Iraqi Special Forces entered the city limits earlier today from the east. ( BBC ) The early reports suggest that the Islamic State fighters responded with guided anti-tank missiles and small arms to block the Iraqi advance. Al Jazeera reported that the battle is “intense” and IS fighters are putting up “stiff resistance” against the approaching forces.The IS has set the oil wells on fire to obscure their positions from possible air attacks. Nonetheless, US air strikes are continuing. Another Iraqi column from the south is still 35 kms away from Mosul city. To the north, Kurdish forces and Iraqi army units are approaching the city, while the Shi’ite militias are covering the western flank to cut off any escape route for the IS fighters in the direction of Syria. There is a tacit understanding that the Iran-backed Shi’ite militia known as the Popular Mobilisation Force will not enter the Sunni-dominated Mosul city.The US military estimates that there could be up to 7500 IS fighters in Mosul, including 1000 foreigners. The Iraqi forces and their Kurdish allies, Sunni tribesmen and Shia militias converging on Mosul are 40000-strong. The top US commander in Iraq Lt. Gen. Stephen Townsend in a video conference last week from Baghdad had exuded optimism that “the Iraqis will be successful”. The general said: The Mosul offensive is a large and extraordinarily complex operation that the Iraqis have been planning for a very long time. They’re the ones making the decisions and their forces are the ones who will enter Mosul and raise the Iraqi flag in the center of the city. We assisted them with the planning and preparation of forces and have provided advice and assistance such as air and artillery strikes and intelligence to support the Iraqi operations.A few days before Mosul operations began, I attended the Iraqis’ final operational briefing where each commander responsible for a different axis of advance provided their plan to the prime minister. I can tell you that it was clear to me that night that the sovereign nation of Iraq owns this fight. There’s a lot of hard fighting ahead, but we’re confident the Iraqis will be successful. ( Transcript ) However, coming days may well throw up nasty surprises, when house-to-house fighting begins. In a graphic field report from Baghdad two days ago, the Xinhua correspondent had noted: IS militants appeared well-trained for urban combat, and they showed stubborn fighting when they continued sporadic clashes for two days after Friday, as the troops searched for unknown number of militants holed-up in some buildings and houses and possibly would attack again or flee the city.Heavier resistance is anticipated by some 3,000 to 5,000 IS militants once the anti-IS forces enter populated neighborhoods located on the eastern side of the Tigris River that bisects the city… IS group has evacuated most of its fighters from its headquarters in the eastern side to the western side where the old city located… The battles in the eastern side of Mosul would mainly depend on suicide car bombs, roadside bombs and snipers attacks, which aimed at hindering the progress of the troops, while the fierce battles are expected to be on the western side.Mosul is the IS last major stronghold in Iraq, the group more likely is unwilling to surrender without a fight. Over the past two and a half years, they have dug an extensive network of tunnels to transport equipment and fighters, and rigged roads and bridges with bombs and digging trenches to be filled with burning oil to impede the Iraqi forces’ movements. Then there is the human toll of an estimated over one million civilians who are still living in the city, and IS apparently to use them as human shield.” ( Xinhua ) The ‘known unknown’ will be as regards Turkey’s role. Baghdad has resisted any Turkish involvement in the fighting, whereas, Ankara is raring to go. It is reasonably certain that at some point, Turkey will find an alibi to intervene. There are reports that tanks and armoured vehicles from the 28th Mechanized Brigade of Turkish armed forces are being deployed in the border town of Silopi on the border with Iraq. A Turkish incursion into Iraq seems to be in the making. ( Hurriyet )If Turkey enters the Battle of Mosul, all bets are off, as things can take an unexpected turn. Both Iraq and Iran (and the US and Russia) would know that Turkey has geopolitical objectives. Indeed, Turkish media is for the first time opening challenging the Lausanne Treaty of 1923 under which Britain had handed over Mosul to Iraq. President Recep Erdogan himself staked claim recently to the former Ottoman territories: “We are not happy with these borders. Our territory which was 2.5 million square kilometers in 1914 shrank to 780 thousand square kilometers nine years later, when Lausanne was signed… Those who are trying to imprison Turkey in a vicious circle since 1923 want to erase our thousand-year history in this region.”Clearly, so much remains in the womb of time. The Arab world will feel uneasy if and when Turkey begins to reclaim former Ottoman territories. An incredibly complex situation is unfolding as the contestation over Mosul’s post-IS future begins. Read an excellent analysis by the European Council on Foreign Relations titled Mosul operation sees Turkey flex its muscles . Indian Punchline . Related | 1real |
U.S. State Department questions Gulf motives on Qatar boycott | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. State Department bluntly questioned on Tuesday the motives of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates for their boycott of Doha, saying it was “mystified” the Gulf states had not released their grievances over Qatar. In Washington’s strongest language yet on the Gulf dispute, the State Department said the more time goes by, “the more doubt is raised about the actions taken by Saudi Arabia and the UAE.” “At this point, we are left with one simple question: Were the actions really about their concerns regarding Qatar’s alleged support for terrorism or were they about the long-simmering grievances between and among the GCC countries,” State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said, referring to the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council. The State Department’s comments came in contrast to the language taken by U.S. President Donald Trump who has accused Qatar of being a “high level” sponsor of terrorism. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar are key American allies. The fact the State Department bluntly questioned Riyadh and Abu Dhabi’s actions in public suggests Washington was keen for the parties to end the dispute. “We’ve just said to the parties involved: Let’s finish this. Let’s get this going,” Nauert said. Qatar hosts a vital U.S. military base, Al Udeid, to which more than 11,000 U.S. and coalition forces are deployed or assigned and from which more than 100 aircraft operate. The United Arab Emirates, which along with Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Bahrain imposed the measures to isolate Qatar, has said the sanctions could last for years unless Doha accepted demands that the Arab powers plan to reveal in coming days. The State Department, headed by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, was encouraging “all sides to de-escalate tensions and engage in constructive dialogue,” Nauert said. A U.S. official said Washington is urging Qatar to take steps to defuse the crisis, including signing on to proposals being drawn up the Treasury Department to strengthen controls against financing of militant groups. But this official and a second U.S. official said it was inaccurate to single Qatar out, and that the Saudis, Emiratis and other Gulf states face similar challenges in countering terrorist financing. Qatar’s foreign minister, who is expected to travel to Washington next week, said Doha would not negotiate with its neighbors to resolve the Gulf dispute unless they first lift the trade and travel boycott they imposed two weeks ago. He added that Doha still believed a solution was possible. “Now that it has been more than two weeks since the embargo started, we are mystified that the Gulf states have not released to the public nor to the Qataris the details about the claims that they are making toward Qatar,” Nauert added. There was no immediate comment from Riyadh or Abu Dhabi. Qatar’s ambassador to the United States, Meshal Hamad al-Thani, welcomed the State Department’s statement, tweeting: “We are confident in the ability of the U.S. to resolve this crisis”. Qatar has denied accusations by its neighbors that it funds terrorism, foments regional instability or has cosied up to their enemy Iran. The first U.S. official said the dispute is driven more by economic rivalries, historical tensions and the personal dynamics of Gulf leaders than by the specific demands the Saudis and Emiratis are making on Qatar. The dispute has opened a rift among some of the main U.S. allies in the Middle East. Since the dispute erupted, Trump has taken a tougher stance against Qatar, while the State Department had sought to remain neutral. Nauert said Tillerson had three phone calls and two in-person meetings with the Saudi foreign minister. Tillerson also spoke by phone three times with Qatar’s foreign minister and with the Qatari emir. The UAE’s ambassador to the United States said last week a list of demands for Qatar was being compiled and would soon be handed to the United States. He said they would broadly address support for terrorism, meddling in the internal affairs of these countries and attacks through Qatari-owned media platforms. The Pentagon has said the boycott was hindering U.S. ability to plan for long-term operations in the region. Al Udeid is where command for the anti-Islamic State air campaign takes place. Meanwhile, Qatar’s attorney general said on Tuesday his country has evidence that the hacking of Qatar’s state news agency was linked to countries that have severed ties with Doha. | 0fake |
Donald Trump Openly ADMITS To America He Has No Principles; Raging Liar (TWEETS) | Admitting to the United States something most of the population already knew considering the popular vote went to Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump just proved to the nation that he has no principles.He told all of us back in February that he would never settle the Trump University lawsuits. He would never do so out of principle! Trump University has a 98% approval rating. I could have settled but won't out of principle! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 29, 2016But, uh oh! Look what just happened!JUST IN: Trump has agreed to settle all 3 Trump University cases for $25 million, source says. https://t.co/KcO1gb9Ef3 @AaronKatersky pic.twitter.com/ZnWLFbMcDn ABC News (@ABC) November 18, 2016According to ABC News: Attorneys for President-elect Donald Trump have settled all three fraud civil lawsuits against the now-defunct Trump University for $25 million and no admission of wrongdoing, according to attorneys on both sides. But you know, you always fork out $25 million when you re completely innocent, right? C mon now. He probably settled so there wouldn t be the optics of a president-elect likely being found guilty just before his inauguration. Settling it makes it go away. It also proves Trump to, yet again, be a raging liar, because he did end up settling after all.In fact, Trump s lead attorney Daniel Petrocelli said: We can all put the history behind us and move forward. That is certainly the view of President-elect Trump who looks forward to tackling the problems of our country. With the Trump organization saying they know he would have won but now Trump can focus on the nation.Oh, what a stand-up guy. Just throwing away $25 million for the good of the nation. Yeah. That s it. Sure.Needless to say, a fraud case going into the presidency would not have looked good and now the president-elect can put it behind him, albeit now with no principles. At least that s what Trump said of himself if he settled, which he did, so there you have it.Featured Photo by Zach Gibson/Getty Images | 1real |
Trump considers retired General Petraeus as top diplomat: Bloomberg | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Donald Trump will meet with retired U.S. General David Petraeus on Monday as the president-elect considers him to serve as U.S. secretary of state, Bloomberg reported, citing a senior official with Trump’s transition team. Petraeus, a former CIA director who resigned in 2012 after it emerged he had an extra-marital affair, has indicated that he would serve in Trump’s administration if asked. | 0fake |
Mike Pence to National Catholic Prayer Breakfast: ’This Administration Stands with You’ - Breitbart | Vice President Mike Pence spoke at the 13th National Catholic Prayer Breakfast in Washington, DC, Tuesday about President Trump’s commitment to the faith community. Pence reiterated the administration’s goal to advance Catholic causes, such as religious freedom and protecting the unborn. [“I had the honor to stand by President Trump as he signed an executive order to restore religious liberty in the public square,” Vice President Pence said to a standing ovation. “This administration hears you. This administration stands with you,” he continued. “Remember to bow the head and bend the knee to pray in these challenging times. Not so much pray for a cause but as for our country. ” Pence’s remarks were well received by those attending and speaking. “I was very encouraged to hear the vice president, to express his faith overtly and to exhort us here to pray for our country,” former Ambassador to the Vatican R. James Nicholson told Breitbart News. “Nobody knows President Trump better than Vice President Pence, and when he affirms the president’s commitment to the sanctity of life, it’s very encouraging. ” “The vice president is sending the right message in the right moment. Unity is important, and it is promoted by faith. Embracing God, we will be one nation,” said Mario E. Dorsonville, the auxiliary bishop of Washington and the event’s invocation speaker. One attendee, Kevin Francis, voiced the overall attitude of the gathering, emphasizing that “it’s very encouraging that [Pence is] supportive of the sanctity of life and religious freedom, which is fundamental to not just being an American but being a person as well. In fact, I think that religious freedom is one’s most fundamental right. With that in mind, it’s also important that [Pence] expressed solidarity with all persecuted religious minorities everywhere, including imperiled Christians in Iraq and Syria. ” | 0fake |
Here’s How To Predict What the Dems’ Next Move Will Be [Meme] | Pinterest
C.E. Dyer reports that the disaster that is Obamacare is about to get worse for many people enrolled in the health insurance marketplace. On Monday, the Obama administration confirmed that premiums will skyrocket for many people next year, according to the Associated Press .
The AP reported:
Before taxpayer-provided subsidies, premiums for a midlevel benchmark plan will increase an average of 25 percent across the 39 states served by the federally run online market, according to a report from the Department of Health and Human Services. Some states will see much bigger jumps, others less.
Moreover, about 1 in 5 consumers will only have plans from a single insurer to pick from, after major national carriers such as UnitedHealth Group, Humana and Aetna scaled back their roles.
In some states, the premium increases are striking. In Arizona, unsubsidized premiums for a hypothetical 27-year-old buying a benchmark “second-lowest cost silver plan” will jump by 116 percent, from $196 to $422, according to the administration report.
But HHS said if that hypothetical consumer has a fairly modest income, making $25,000 a year, the subsidies would cover $280 of the new premium, and the consumer would pay $142. Caveat: if the consumer is making $30,000 or $40,000 his or her subsidy would be significantly lower.
Larry Levitt, who follows the health care law for the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation, said of the increases: “Consumers will be faced this year with not only big premium increases but also with a declining number of insurers participating, and that will lead to a tumultuous open enrollment period.”
Donald Trump’s campaign spokesman, Jason Miller, said in a statement on Monday: “This shows why the entire program must be repealed and replaced.” Miller added, “While (Hillary) Clinton wants to expand the failed program known as Obamacare, Mr. Trump knows the only way to fix our nation’s failing health care system is complete and total reform.”
Reports have warned that this was coming down the pike for some time; however, HHS’s confirmation ahead of open enrollment beginning Nov. 1 — one week before the election — is likely to cause major headaches for many people.
This debacle is not unexpected either — it’s exactly what President Obama and Democrat nominee Hillary Clinton wanted to happen.
Obamacare was never the end goal. Rather, it was a stepping stone toward single-payer, government-run healthcare. That is a big reason why Obama wants Clinton to become president — his legacy is at stake.
Obama’s legacy is largely wrapped up in Obamacare and what it leads to. Clinton tried to push this first step during her time as first lady and failed, but the conditions will be ripe for her to go even further should she be elected.
If Clinton becomes president, there’s no doubt that her next step will be to move to single-payer healthcare. Obamacare is bad, there’s no doubt about it, but single-payer government healthcare would be even worse. | 1real |
SHOW THIS TO YOUR FRIENDS Who Don’t Fully Grasp The Severity Of Hillary Clinton’s Email Breach | 1real | |
HUGE SECURITY LAPSE: International Flight Passengers Skip Customs | Skipping customs at JFK might seem like a great thing for passengers arriving on an international flight BUT those passengers might be putting all Americans in danger by doing so. For the second time in a few months, a flight into JFK let passengers bypass customs. JFK is known to have a brutal customs time that can be up to two hours but the choice should be obvious just do it: New York remains the number one target for terrorists and it just made me think of Paris and how easy it would be for them to get in, he said. It s incompetence like this that could lead to another attack. Passengers arriving at Kennedy Airport on an international flight were allowed to exit the busy hub without going through Customs for at least the second time in recent months.Bumbling airline and security officials let travelers on American Airlines Flight 1223 from Cancun, Mexico, out of the airport on Monday morning without having their passports or bags checked, sources told The News.The security lapse mirrored a similar incident involving another American Airlines flight in November.A 34-year-old man who had been in Cancun to attend three Phish concerts told The News he was able to glide from the plane to the baggage claim area without having to endure the usual maze of Customs and Border Protection security checks. It s absolutely absurd, the business adviser said. To think that anyone could be walking off of that plane and just get right into the city. It could be terrorists, El Chapo s henchmen, anyone. The jam band fan said he even approached a Transportation Security Administration agent near the exit, but was told he was free to go.A man who had been in Cancun to attend three Phish concerts told The News he was able to glide from the plane to the baggage claim area without having to endure Customs and Border Protection security checks. I told them what happened and asked them what should I do, the passenger said. They said to me That s fine, you re OK. Go ahead. Several other concertgoers who were on the flight were already outside at the curbside cab line when he exited the airport.Neither the TSA, which screens passengers before they fly, nor the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, part of the Department of Homeland Security, responded to a request for comment.It was unclear how many of the passengers from the flight were able to skip the security checkpointsHours after the plane landed, American Airline officials pleaded with the Manhattan man and presumably other passengers to return to Kennedy and complete the customs process. I apologize for any inconvenience this may be for you; however it is a Customs requirement that every passenger entering the United States must clear Customs, the airline wrote in an email sent to passengers. You could tell that they knew they screwed up and were desperate to get me to come, the passenger added.The oversight sparked fears that terrorists could easily slip into the country without having to pass through any checkpoints. New York remains the number one target for terrorists and it just made me think of Paris and how easy it would be for them to get in, he said. It s incompetence like this that could lead to another attack. A nearly identical incident involving another American Airlines flight from Cancun unfolded in November, just two days after ISIS released a video threatening New York City with a terrorist attack, The News reported. ISIS THREAT TO NYC: Via: NYDN | 1real |
JILL STEIN Claims Recount Is About Possible Foreign Interference…UPDATE: Citizens Petition To Halt Recount Over Evidence Of Foreigners Donations To Stein’s Recount [VIDEO] | Watch Stein tell CNN host she is concerned about foreign intervention in our elections:https://youtu.be/E2KFe_htBSA | 1real |
Trump Might Be About To Viciously Sabotage Healthcare, All To Try And Blame Obama (DETAILS) | We all know that President Donald Trump has wanted to blow up the disaster that is Obamacare for months now, however, his latest vision of bringing better healthcare to the people of America will actually stop billions of dollars in payments to health insurance companies that serve the poorest enrollees in the Affordable Care Act.If the President stops these payments, the entire health insurance system will be thrown into complete chaos, resulting in higher prices and fewer choices, if any, for consumers. Insurance companies would most likely increase the premiums of people using exchanges such as HealthCare.gov and Covered California, or stop selling to them altogether. Without Trump s payments, this aspect of healthcare will simply fall apart under his watch.The main issue behind all of this are cost-sharing reduction (CSR) payments, reimbursements to health insurance companies made in order to reduce out-of-pocket costs such as deductibles and copayments for low-income customers. The House of Republicans filed a lawsuit in 2014, which is still pending, against the Obama administration questioning the legality of these payments. According to one White House official, the Trump administration has agreed to make the CSR payment for the month of May, but has made no commitment after that. As Donald Trump himself said about the healthcare system in January during a pre-inauguration speech, The easiest thing would be to let it implode in 17 and believe me, we d get pretty much whatever we wanted. In Trump s unhinged mind, ending what he has referred to as these bailout payments would force democrats to negotiate repealing the Affordable Care Act, however, they don t seem too keen on doing so, nor do the majority of the American people, with 60 percent stating that they don t approve of negotiations that disrupt insurance markets according to a survey conducted last month by the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Three-quarters of those surveyed also believe the ACA should be kept running and two-thirds, including a majority of Republicans, believe that the repercussions of any further problems stemming from changes to healthcare in the USA sit squarely on President Trump s shoulders.Still, the President continues to ignore any advice given to him and remains in favor of cutting the payments. To be eligible for the cost reduction, enrollees in exchanges can earn up to 250 percent of the federal poverty level, which equals $30,015 per person. With the CSR payments being made by the government, deductibles of thousands of dollars are reduced to just hundreds for the consumer, a subsidy that has been received by seven million people between November 1, 2017, and January 31 this year, equating to 58 percent of exchange enrollees.Without the Trump administration making these CSR payments, insurers would need to raise premiums by an average of 19 percent on top of any other price increases next year.Featured image via Mark Wilson/Getty Images | 1real |
Must Read of the Day – Dennis Kucinich’s Extraordinary Warning on D.C.’s Think Tank Warmongers | at 1:10 pm 3 Comments
WAR is a racket. It always has been.
It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.
A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small “inside” group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.
– From Major General Smedley Butler’s War is a Rackett
Former Congressman Dennis Kucinich has just penned an extremely powerful warning about the warmongers in Washington D.C. Who funds them, what their motives are, and why it is imperative for the American people to stop them.
The piece was published at The Nation and is titled: Why Is the Foreign Policy Establishment Spoiling for More War? Look at Their Donors .
Read it and share it with everyone you know.
W ashington, DC, may be the only place in the world where people openly flaunt their pseudo-intellectuality by banding together, declaring themselves “think tanks,” and raising money from external interests, including foreign governments, to compile reports that advance policies inimical to the real-life concerns of the American people.
As a former member of the House of Representatives, I remember 16 years of congressional hearings where pedigreed experts came to advocate wars in testimony based on circular, rococo thinking devoid of depth, reality, and truth. I remember other hearings where the Pentagon was unable to reconcile over $1 trillion in accounts, lost track of $12 billion in cash sent to Iraq, and rigged a missile-defense test so that an interceptor could easily home in on a target. War is first and foremost a profitable racket.
How else to explain that in the past 15 years this city’s so called bipartisan foreign policy elite has promoted wars in Iraq and Libya, and interventions in Syria and Yemen, which have opened Pandora’s box to a trusting world, to the tune of trillions of dollars, a windfall for military contractors. DC’s think “tanks” should rightly be included in the taxonomy of armored war vehicles and not as gathering places for refugees from academia.
According to the front page of this past Friday’s Washington Post, the bipartisan foreign-policy elite recommends the next president show less restraint than President Obama. Acting at the urging of “liberal” hawks brandishing humanitarian intervention, read war, the Obama administration attacked Libya along with allied powers working through NATO.
Indeed, I warned about this in last week’s piece: U.S. Foreign Policy ‘Elite’ Eagerly Await an Expansion of Overseas Wars Under Hillary Clinton .
The think tankers fell in line with the Iraq invasion. Not being in the tank, I did my own analysis of the call for war in October of 2002, based on readily accessible information, and easily concluded that there was no justification for war. I distributed it widely in Congress and led 125 Democrats in voting against the Iraq war resolution. There was no money to be made from a conclusion that war was uncalled for, so, against millions protesting in the United States and worldwide, our government launched into an abyss, with a lot of armchair generals waving combat pennants. The marching band and chowder society of DC think tanks learned nothing from the Iraq and Libya experience.
The only winners were arms dealers, oil companies, and jihadists. Immediately after the fall of Libya, the black flag of Al Qaeda was raised over a municipal building in Benghazi, Gadhafi’s murder was soon to follow, with Secretary Clinton quipping with a laugh, “We came, we saw, he died.” President Obama apparently learned from this misadventure, but not the Washington policy establishment, which is spoiling for more war.
The self-identified liberal Center for American Progress (CAP) is now calling for Syria to be bombed, and estimates America’s current military adventures will be tidied up by 2025, a tardy twist on “mission accomplished.” CAP, according to a report in The Nation, has received funding from war contractors Lockheed Martin and Boeing, who make the bombers that CAP wants to rain hellfire on Syria.
The Brookings Institute has taken tens of millions from foreign governments , notably Qatar, a key player in the military campaign to oust Assad. Retired four-star Marine general John Allen is now a Brookings senior fellow . Charles Lister is a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute , which has received funding from Saudi Arabia , the major financial force providing billions in arms to upend Assad and install a Sunni caliphate stretching across Iraq and Syria. Foreign-government money is driving our foreign policy.
As the drumbeat for an expanded war gets louder, Allen and Lister jointly signed an op-ed in the Sunday Washington Post, calling for an attack on Syria. The Brookings Institute, in a report to Congress , admitted it received $250,000 from the US Central Command, Centcom, where General Allen shared leadership duties with General David Petraeus. Pentagon money to think tanks that endorse war? This is academic integrity, DC-style.
And why is Central Command, as well as the Food and Drug Administration, the US Department of transportation, and the US Department of Health and Human Services giving money to Brookings?
Former secretary of state Madeleine Albright, who famously told Colin Powell , “What’s the point of having this superb military you’re always talking about if we can’t use it,” predictably says of this current moment , “We do think there needs to be more American action.” A former Bush administration top adviser is also calling for the United States to launch a cruise missile attack on Syria.
The American people are fed up with war, but a concerted effort is being made through fearmongering, propaganda, and lies to prepare our country for a dangerous confrontation, with Russia in Syria.
The demonization of Russia is a calculated plan to resurrect a raison d’être for stone-cold warriors trying to escape from the dustbin of history by evoking the specter of Russian world domination.
It’s infectious. Earlier this year the BBC broadcast a fictional show that contemplated WWIII, beginning with a Russian invasion of Latvia (where 26 percent of the population is ethnic Russian and 34 percent of Latvians speak Russian at home).
The imaginary WWIII scenario conjures Russia’s targeting London for a nuclear strike. No wonder that by the summer of 2016 a poll showed two-thirds of UK citizens approved the new British PM’s launching a nuclear strike in retaliation. So much for learning the lessons detailed in the Chilcot report.
As this year’s presidential election comes to a conclusion, the Washington ideologues are regurgitating the same bipartisan consensus that has kept America at war since 9/11 and made the world a decidedly more dangerous place.
The DC think tanks provide cover for the political establishment, a political safety net, with a fictive analytical framework providing a moral rationale for intervention, capitol casuistry. I’m fed up with the DC policy elite who cash in on war while presenting themselves as experts, at the cost of other people’s lives, our national fortune, and the sacred honor of our country.
Any report advocating war that comes from any alleged think tank ought to be accompanied by a list of the think tank’s sponsors and donors and a statement of the lobbying connections of the report’s authors.
It is our patriotic duty to expose why the DC foreign-policy establishment and its sponsors have not learned from their failures and instead are repeating them, with the acquiescence of the political class and sleepwalkers with press passes.
It is also time for a new peace movement in America, one that includes progressives and libertarians alike, both in and out of Congress, to organize on campuses, in cities, and towns across America, to serve as an effective counterbalance to the Demuplican war party, its think tanks, and its media cheerleaders. The work begins now, not after the Inauguration. We must not accept war as inevitable, and those leaders who would lead us in that direction, whether in Congress or the White House, must face visible opposition.
Thank you Mr. Kucinich, I couldn’t agree more.
For related articles, see: | 1real |
IT’S WORSE THAN THEY THOUGHT: Doctors Discover US Embassy Victims In Cuba Have BRAIN ABNORMALITIES…”Never Before Seen Illness” | In a last-minute attempt to create a legacy for himself, Obama traveled to Cuba to hang out with Raul Castro and prove to Americans how easy it is to form relations with brutal dictators of oppressive regimes. Unfortunately for Barack Obama, it was not his finest moment, and his attempt to normalize relations with Cuba didn t work out so well for members of our US Embassy, who have now been diagnosed with brain abnormalities , after experiencing some sort of attack that many experts suspect was inflicted with a sonic weapon. The left rejoiced when President Barack Obama decided to normalize relations with the Cuban regime, reopened our embassy, and allowed travel to the island.But most of that has come to a screeching halt after mysterious attacks on our diplomats, which have caused serious health problems. The State Department has decided to recall all non-essential personnel from the embassy and urged Americans not to travel to Cuba. Legal InsurrectionThe leftist Boston Globe publication gushed over Barack Obama s historic visit to Cuba.When President Obama travels to Cuba on Sunday with his family, he is making a vital foreign policy statement, and not just about the small island off the tip of Florida. The bigger principle at play is the value of diplomatic engagement over isolation, cooperation versus Cold War thinking. The visit the first time a sitting American president has been to Cuba in almost 90 years is a manifestation of the hope that democratic ideals can spread over time once normalized relations are established.Obama will not only be meeting with President Raul Castro, but also with middle-class Cubans, entrepreneurs, and political dissidents, a symbolic yet reassuring move on behalf of democracy and fairness. Already the opening of relations is bearing fruit, with new businesses sprouting and a flourishing tourism industry taking root.Legal Insurrection The attacks on American officials at the U.S. Embassy in Havana, Cuba, keeps getting stranger and stranger. The latest information revealed that doctors have found brain abnormalities in the victims. From The Associated Press:It s the most specific finding to date about physical damage, showing that whatever it was that harmed the Americans, it led to perceptible changes in their brains. The finding is also one of several factors fueling growing skepticism that some kind of sonic weapon was involved.Medical testing has revealed the embassy workers developed changes to the white matter tracts that let different parts of the brain communicate, several U.S. officials said, describing a growing consensus held by university and government physicians researching the attacks. White matter acts like information highways between brain cells.Some of the victims woke up in the middle of the night and heard disembodied chirping in the room, or a strange, low hum, or the sound of scraping metal. Others described how they felt a phantom flutter of air pass by as they listened. There are some victims that did not notice anything.But the victims felt the effects of these noises or non-noises 24 hours later. These symptoms included nausea, loss of hearing or sight, headaches, vertigo, and dizziness. Symptoms appeared to have gone away once the victims came back to America. At first officials and doctors believed a sonic weapon caused the issues. Now they don t know.The officials did not say if the doctors found these changes in all of the victims. Elisa Konofagou, a Columbia University biomedical engineering professor, told the AP that acoustic waves have never been shown to alter the brain s white matter tracts and she would be very surprised if that is the cause of the abnormalities.From The Washington Post: Physicians are treating the symptoms like a new, never-seen-before illness, the AP wrote, and expect to monitor the victims for the rest of their lives, although most have fully recovered from their symptoms by now.The physicians are working with FBI agents and intelligence agencies as they look for a source, and U.S. officials have not backed down from their accusations against the Cuban government, which denies any involvement despite a history of animosity between the two countries.In October, experts provided the mysterious noise to the Ap. It s high pitched, almost like nails on a chalkboard. They do not know what kind of mechanism produced this sound or who developed it. Those who heard a sound heard the same thing:Yet the AP has reviewed several recordings from Havana taken under different circumstances, and all have variations of the same high-pitched sound. Individuals who have heard the noise in Havana confirm the recordings are generally consistent with what they heard. That s the sound, one of them said.As the number of affected have risen, the State Department had no choice but to take action to protect our people. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson decided in late September to bring home all non-essential personnel from the U.S. Embassy in Havana, thus cutting the staff by 60% and halt citizen travel to the island.A few days later, Tillerson decided to expel 15 diplomats from the Cuban Embassy in Washington, D.C.Instead of a legacy of a great man who built much-needed bridges with legitimate foreign nations, Barack Hussein Obama, the community organizer turned President, is left with the legacy of creating the most divided United States of America since the Civil War. | 1real |
"Top Five Clinton Donors Are Jewish" - How Anti-Semitic Is This Fact? | "Top Five Clinton Donors Are Jewish" - How Anti-Semitic Is This Fact? Top five Clinton donors Are Jewish, campaign tally shows.
Something is wrong with the above statement. Isn't it anti-semitic? Did Trump say that? Readers of that statement may assume, somewhat reasonably, that there is a club of rich Jewish people controlling the Clinton campaign and, maybe, Clinton herself. That sounds like it was taken from the fake Protocols of the Elders of Zion. It clearly must be anti-semitic.
It is also true .
Facts have no bias. They can't be anti-semitic (or can they?). But while facts as such can not have a racial-religious bias, openly stating them surely can. Thus the above statement is anti-semitic. The fact itself isn't bad, reporting it publicly is bad, bad, bad.
Who but an alt-right rag would report such at all? And for what purpose if not for spreading anti-semitism?
Well - quot licet jovi, ...
Jewish papers are of course allowed to report such a fact. That isn't anti-semitic. It is solely to brag about Jewish powers. Within the club that is not only allowed, but welcome. Thus Haaretz writes (sourced to the the Jewish Telegraph Agency) under the identity defining headline at the top of this post: Haim Saban, George Soros and others stand at the head of a list of wealthy donors who contributed mainly via super PACs.
The Washington Post analysis, posted October 24, named the top donors, who are contributing $1 of every $17 of the over $1 billion amassed for the Democratic nominee’s presidential run.
They are Donald Sussman, a hedge fund manager; J.B. Pritzker, a venture capitalist, and his wife, M.K.; Haim Saban, the Israeli-American entertainment mogul, and his wife, Cheryl; George Soros, another hedge funder and a major backer of liberal causes, and Daniel Abraham, a backer of liberal pro-Israel causes and the founder of SlimFast.
Many of the big Clinton campaign donors also give to the Clinton Foundation which at times is a washing machine to put money into the Clinton's private accounts. It is kind of difficult to understand where Clinton Inc begins and where it ends. Campaign funds, Clinton foundation, speech fees, private accounts - does it even matter? Surely those who pay, to whatever Clinton entity, expect a service in return. Given the Clinton's occupations as Senator, Secretary of State and President the ask in return is unlikely to be commercial. It will be political.
And here is why it matters that the five top donors to Clinton's campaign are Jewish, and all big supporters of Israel. (Haim Saban: "I'm a one-issue guy, and my issue is Israel.") They surely will ask for political favors in the interest of the Zionist entity. This is also the reason why Haaretz, an Israeli paper, finds the strong racial-religious bias at the top Clinton campaign tally newsworthy. Big money paid to a Clinton entity can directly effect U.S. policies towards Israel. It buys its acquiescence to Israeli escapades even when those are not consistent U.S. interests.
Clinton's positions towards Syria, Iran and Russia (which limits Israel's freedom of action) are surely not independent of Israeli interests.
But that is of course, anti-semitic speculation ... Posted by b on October 28, 2016 at 11:16 AM | Permalink | 1real |
Email leak may hurt Democratic party chair's re-election bid | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - An email leak that led to the resignation of Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz could plague her bid for re-election to Congress, after a challenger said on Monday he would file a complaint alleging she had broken election rules. Political newcomer Tim Canova, who is challenging Wasserman Schultz in the Aug. 30 Democratic primary for her House of Representatives seat representing Florida’s 23rd Congressional District, said he would file the complaint against her with the U.S. Federal Election Commission. Wasserman Schultz said on Sunday she would be stepping down as chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee after Wikileaks released more than 19,000 emails showing Democratic officials had worked to undermine U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders in his presidential primary battle with Hillary Clinton. Canova suggested that the leaked emails also showed Wasserman Schultz had used the party’s resources in her congressional campaign against Canova in south Florida. Sanders has endorsed Canova in that race. “The Wikileaks emails indicate that Debbie Wasserman Schultz used DNC resources to assist her reelection campaign in violation of federal law. According to the emails, top DNC officials used party resources to monitor, respond to, and impede my campaign on numerous occasions,” Canova said in a statement emailed to Reuters by his campaign. “My campaign election lawyers are investigating these circumstances and preparing a complaint against Wasserman Schultz with the Federal Election Commission,” Canova said. He also repeated his call for a series of campaign debates with Wasserman Schultz. Searching for Canova’s name in the cache of emails released by WikiLeaks turned up dozens of emails. One indicated Wasserman Schultz had asked staffers to take Canova’s name out of a headline on a statement that was being sent out in response to Sanders’s endorsement of Canova. Sanders told CNN in May that he favored Canova, saying “His views are much closer to mine than as to Wasserman Schultz’s.” Canova’s south Florida campaign for Congress has reflected some of the themes that Sanders used nationwide to appeal to progressives, including a push for campaign finance reform. Canova has also been a critic of financial deregulation and the Federal Reserve Board under former Chairman Alan Greenspan, according to his biography on the website at Nova Southeastern University, where he is a professor of law and public finance. Sanders made attacks on Wall Street a central theme of his presidential campaign, and called for structural reforms in the Fed. Since Sanders’ endorsement, Canova has almost caught up with Wasserman Schultz in fundraising. Canova has raised $2.27 million so far; Wasserman Schultz has raised $2.81 million, according to the most recent Federal Election Commission filings. There are also two Republicans seeking Wasserman Schultz’s seat in Congress, Martin Feigenbaum and Joe Kaufman. | 0fake |
Trevor Noah Tears Ben Carson Apart For Attacking President Obama (VIDEO) | It s hard to believe that Ben Carson is a brain surgeon after the words that have come out of his mouth during his run for the Republican nomination for the presidency. Yet again, it s hard to believe the guy s running for the presidency at all. In a continuous series of stupid comments, Ben Carson has once again outdone himself. During an interview, Ben Carson claimed that President Obama was raised white and thus can t identify with the experience of black America. But, Trevor Noah of The Daily Show isn t letting him off so easily. During a segment of his show, Noah said: Like a glitched character on a video game, Ben Carson is just off facing the wrong direction. Yeah, he is not attacking Trump or the other Republicans, but rather he s chosen to attack President Obama. And it s not for his policies and it s not for his record. It s for not being black enough. So Ben Carson is saying that because Obama didn t grow up poor, he didn t grow up black. That is such a bullshit argument. Being poor isn t what makes you black. Because if it is, then there are a lot of people living in trailers in the middle of America who will be very upset to hear the news. I m what?? But they re not black. And we know this. Because if they were, their trailers would have nicer rims. Although the segment is hilarious, Noah makes a brilliant point: Why not attack the president for his policies instead of some nonsensical measure of how black the president is or isn t? Focusing on the issues will go a long way in lending some credibility to Ben Carson s campaign. Thus, it s no wonder that his campaign is foundering.The type of cheap talk Carson has brought to the table is similar to that of the rest of the Republican clowns running for the nomination. We shouldn t expect better.Watch the video below:Featured image via video screen capture. | 1real |
The most durably Democratic county in the country could go for Trump | Print
In 2012, voters in Elliott County, Kentucky, came close to breaking a streak that, at the time, had lasted 136 years. Elliott County was formed in 1869, and since its first presidential election, in 1872, it had voted for the Democratic nominee every time — the longest span of any U.S. county.
President Obama — like the previous Democratic candidates for president — won Elliott County in 2012 , extending its streak. But the margin by which he won — 2.5 percentage points — made it, by far, the closest presidential election the county had ever seen, and the first time the Democratic share of the vote fell below 50 percent.
Will 2016 be the end of the streak? Demographically, Elliott County looks like the kind of place where Donald Trump could do well. | 1real |
Latest gun control bid falters in Congress, Democrat sit-in ends | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Another attempt at gun control faltered in the U.S. Congress on Thursday despite outrage at the Orlando massacre, as a proposed ban on firearms sales to people being monitored for links to terrorism barely avoided being killed in the Senate. In a procedural vote, the Senate narrowly rejected an attempt to scrap the plan by Republican Senator Susan Collins to prevent guns getting into the hands of people on two U.S. government terrorism watch lists. But the proposal looked short of the support it would need to advance through the chamber, and Republican leaders said the Senate would switch from debating gun control to other matters until at least after the July 4 holiday. It was the latest setback for proponents of gun restrictions who have been thwarted for years on Capitol Hill by gun rights defenders and the National Rifle Association. Frequent efforts at gun control have failed despite anger at mass shootings like the killings at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, in 2012 and in San Bernardino, California, last year. “Eventually this problem will get addressed again one of two ways: We find a breakthrough, which I will seek, or there will be another terrorist attack which will bring us right back to this issue. I hope we can do it without another terrorist attack,” said Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican who supported Collins. A few hours earlier, Democratic lawmakers ended a sit-in protest in the House of Representatives over guns. Fueled by Chinese food and pizzas, dozens of them stayed on the House floor all night, at times bursting into the civil rights anthem “We Shall Overcome” before giving up their protest after 25 hours. “It’s not a struggle that lasts for one day, or one week, or one month, or one year,” said Representative John Lewis, a Democrat from Georgia and a key figure in the civil rights protests of the 1960s. “We’re going to win the struggle,” said Lewis, who led the House sit-in. Dramatic protests by legislators are rare in the U.S. Capitol and the sit-in underscored how sensitive the gun control issue became after this month’s Florida attack, the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history. Opinion polls show Americans are increasingly in favor of more restrictions on guns in a country with more than 310 million weapons, about one for every citizen. After a gunman pledging allegiance to Islamic State fatally shot 49 people at a gay nightclub in Orlando, some senators had seen resistance to gun restrictions softening because the issue had partly become one of national security. But Collins’ measure received only 52 votes in the 100-seat Senate test vote, short of the 60 votes that would be needed for approval in future Senate procedural votes. While her plan could be revived next month, it is unclear if she has the momentum to overcome pro-gun rights forces in Congress who argue that gun control measures in Congress have been too restrictive and trample on the constitutional right to bear arms. Four other gun control measures failed earlier this week. Collins, a Maine lawmaker, wants to forbid gun sales to anyone on the U.S. government’s “No Fly List” for terrorism suspects or the “Selectee List” of people who receive extra security screening at airports. Despite the lack of legislation, the gun debate has stirred passions. The House Democrats’ sit-in brought an outpouring of grass-roots activity. Jennifer Hoppe, deputy director of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, said that in less than 24 hours from Wednesday, about 130,000 calls were made from supporters of gun control to members of Congress. First lady Michelle Obama backed the House Democrats’ protest. “We have grieved for too many children and wept for too many families after shootings. Chicago. Tucson. Newtown. Charleston. Orlando. #Enough,” she wrote on Twitter on Thursday. The Democrats were seeking votes on legislation to expand background checks for gun purchases, as well as measures to curb the sale of weapons to people on government watch lists Republicans allied with the NRA gun rights group say that while they want to combat terrorism, they represent constituents who believe firmly in the constitutional right to bear arms. “It’s a tough issue. For people like myself, who come from a hunting and fishing state, it’s pretty hard,” said Senator Orrin Hatch, a conservative Utah Republican who voted against Collins. | 0fake |
‘Shadow Brokers’ Threaten to Release More Stolen NSA Cyber Weapons - Breitbart | The “Shadow Brokers,” the group that pilfered and published the stolen National Security Agency hacking tools that turned the WannaCry ransomware virus into a global crisis, are threatening to sell more stolen cyber weapons in June. [AFP describes the latest communique from the Shadow Brokers as a “taunting online message in broken English,” which announced the group would “take payments beginning in June for monthly releases of computer hacks and vulnerability exploits. ” The Shadow Brokers always take pains to sound like cartoon versions of Russian spies in their messages. This particular missive includes Moose and Squirrel verbiage such as, “Is being like wine of month club. Each month peoples can be paying membership fee, then getting members only data dump each month. What members doing with data after is up to members. ” The Shadow Brokers spend much of their latest message taunting a particular adversary, another hacking team linked to the NSA called The Equation Group. The Shadow Brokers insist their goal in stealing and selling these NSA hacking tools was to embarrass The Equation Group. As the hackers put it, quoting an infamous Internet meme based on an old videogame, “All your bases are belong to us. ” “TheShadowBrokers is not being interested in bug bounties, selling to cyber thugs, or giving to greedy corporate empires. TheShadowBrokers is taking pride in picking adversary equal to or better than selves, a worthy opponent. Is always being about theshadowbrokers vs theequationgroup,” the message declares. The Shadow Brokers jeer at various governments and “bullshit security companies” that did not bother to place bids when they attempted to sell the stolen hacking tools in an online auction. The auction was canceled when no one submitted a bid equal to the high price the thieves demanded. The Shadow Brokers portray themselves as insulted by the lack of bids, releasing the EternalBlue worm tools that were later incorporated into the WannaCry ransomware virus to prove their claims of holding “75% of U. S. cyber arsenal” are serious. Speaking of WannaCry, the Shadow Brokers say they were “eating popcorn” and watching the spread of the virus with great amusement. They also enjoyed the firing of FBI Director James Comey, toward whom they seem to harbor great animosity. The title of their message, in fact, is “OH LORDY! Comey Wanna Cry Edition. ” The hackers imply WannaCry might have been a operation designed to provoke hostilities between the United States and North Korea, which has been linked to an early version of the ransomware code. “Is being very strange behavior for crimeware? Killswitch? Crimeware is caring about target country?” they write, referring to the code discovered by a cybersecurity researcher that greatly impeded the spread of WannaCry over the weekend. The communique is seasoned with contempt for Microsoft, for allowing the vulnerabilities exploited by viruses like WannaCry to exist unpatched for so long, and for users who waited too long to install the patches that would have inoculated them against WannaCry. Conversely, the Shadow Brokers fault the NSA and its Equation Group for waiting so long to tell Microsoft the vulnerabilities existed. Among the new wares (or “warez” to use the preferred hacker spelling) the Shadow Brokers claim they might soon put on sale are exploits that target vulnerabilities in Windows 10 and tools to hack web browsers, routers, and mobile devices. Also, they imply they are in possession of “compromised network data” from the Russian, Chinese, Iranian, and North Korean nuclear and missile programs. Since the Shadow Brokers are widely suspected of connections to the Russian government (that is why they mockingly use the broken Russian accent when they write) the threats to sell that nuclear and missile data might be disingenuous. A final extortion threat is leveled at the end of the message: if the rightful owners of the data and software stolen by the Shadow Brokers pay them an appropriate sum in Bitcoin, the group will “go dark permanently” because it will have “no more financial incentives” to continue its risky operations. notes that they probably have a very large sum in mind, as the price they demanded at auction for the NSA software was about $580 million in Bitcoin. It is increasingly clear that the NSA informed Microsoft of the Windows software vulnerabilities it had long kept secret when it realized its powerful hacking tools had been stolen and exposed to the world. This will naturally lead to mounting criticism that neither Microsoft nor the NSA informed the general public about the danger that a virus like WannaCry could unleash. Microsoft has been castigated for making a patch to the vulnerability in later versions of Windows available a month ago, without impressing upon users the urgency of downloading and installing that patch immediately. The older, officially obsolete Windows XP, which is still running on a large number of older computers around the world, was not patched until after the scale of the WannaCry infection became clear. The new threat from the Shadow Brokers could provoke a new crisis at the offices of Microsoft and the National Security Agency: should they credit the Shadow Brokers’ claims and come clean about vulnerabilities that might be exposed by the “dump of the month” program when it begins in June? If they don’t, and another global online pandemic is unleashed, the outrage directed their way will be deafening. Likewise, Microsoft and other tech firms will be furious at the governments of the United States and other countries if intelligence agencies are still hoarding exploits for their own purposes and putting computer users at risk. The Shadow Brokers could be bluffing, but after the astounding damage inflicted by WannaCry last weekend, tech executives and government officials may be reluctant to call their bluff. | 0fake |
FBI INFORMANT Blows The Whistle on Obama DOJ’s Intimidation Tactics [VIDEO] | A former FBI informant who blew the whistle on a high-profile bribery case involving a Russian energy company was intimidated by Obama administration lawyers into dropping a civil suit against the government last year, his attorney says.WATCH: @BillHemmer's full interview w/ Victoria Toensing, the attorney for @FBI informant allegedly threatened by the Obama Administration. pic.twitter.com/MkBlH7Ilq0 Fox News (@FoxNews) October 27, 2017Victoria Toensing spoke to Bill Hemmer This Morning regarding threats to the FBI informant from Obama s DOJ: President Obama thought it was just okay to threaten a witness who wanted to give information about corruption. Fox News Updated: LIBERTY AND REPUTATION IN JEOPARDY Victoria Toensing, the lawyer for the informant, told The Daily Caller s Vince Coglianese that Obama Justice Department lawyers told her client that his reputation and liberty [was] in jeopardy if he did not drop a lawsuit against the government.On Wednesday, the Trump Justice Department released the informant from a confidentiality agreement, clearing the way for him to testify before several congressional committees about his undercover work at Uranium One, a Canada-based energy company that has ties to Bill and Hillary Clinton and their family foundation.In 2010, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), an inter-agency governmental committee that reviews applications for foreign purchases of companies, granted the Russia-owned energy company Rosatom the right to purchase Uranium One. Via: Daily Caller | 1real |
Some Conservatives Hate Trump So Much They Are Praising President Obama’s DNC Convention Speech | The same conservatives who have attacked President Obama over the last eight years really liked his speech on Wednesday night.When President Obama spoke in support of Hillary Clinton during the DNC Convention, he extended an olive branch to conservatives who are dissatisfied with Donald Trump as the Republican nominee. Look, we Democrats have always had plenty of differences with the Republican Party, and there s nothing wrong with that, Obama said before reaching out to those who are #NeverTrump. It s precisely this contest of ideas that pushes our country forward. But what we heard in Cleveland last week wasn t particularly Republican and it sure wasn t conservative. What we heard was a deeply pessimistic vision of a country where we turn against each other, and turn away from the rest of the world. There were no serious solutions to pressing problems just the fanning of resentment, and blame, and anger, and hate. President Obama then stressed unity along with the themes of patriotism and our Founding Fathers. And he even mentioned Ronald Reagan. And that is not the America I know. The America I know is full of courage, and optimism, and ingenuity. The America I know is decent and generous I see Americans of every party, every background, every faith who believe that we are stronger together black, white, Latino, Asian, Native American; young, old; gay, straight; men, women, folks with disabilities, all pledging allegiance, under the same proud flag, to this big, bold country that we love. Ronald Reagan called America a shining city on a hill. Donald Trump calls it a divided crime scene that only he can fix.The reason he ll lose it is because he s selling the American people short. We re not a fragile people. We re not a frightful people. Our power doesn t come from some self-declared savior promising that he alone can restore order as long as we do things his way. We don t look to be ruled. Our power comes from those immortal declarations first put to paper right here in Philadelphia all those years ago: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that We the People, can form a more perfect union. And because many Republicans are starting to wake up and realize what their own party has become, they praised President Obama s speech.National Review columnist Rich Lowery was stunned because he seems to think patriotism and the founding documents are trademarked Republican beliefs.American exceptionalism and greatness, shining city on hill, founding documents, etc they re trying to take all our stuff Rich Lowry (@RichLowry) July 28, 2016Erick Erickson of Redstate couldn t believe how much he enjoyed it. I disagree with the President on so much policy and his agenda, but appreciate the hope and optimism in this speech. Erick Erickson (@EWErickson) July 28, 2016The GOP offered a vision of doom, despair, and division. Tonight the President I think divides us offered optimism. I hate this year. Erick Erickson (@EWErickson) July 28, 2016Republican strategist Rory Cooper thought the speech was great and slammed his own party for making it easy for Obama by nominating Trump. Great speech. And we made it easy for him. Rory Cooper (@rorycooper) July 28, 2016This conservative was shocked to hear President Obama defend conservatives from Trump.Still stunned. Feel like I m in the twilight zone. Obama just defended America & conservative values from attacks by the Republican nominee. (((AG))) (@AG_Conservative) July 28, 2016Jeb Bush campaign staffer Tim Miller said that Republicans just lost an entire generation of voters. Will a Trump apologist explain to me why an 18 yo watching the conventions would want to be a Republican? We re giving away a generation Tim Miller (@Timodc) July 28, 2016Former Reagan speechwriter John Podhoretz appreciated the nod to his former boss.Take about five paragraphs out of that Obama speech and it could have been a Reagan speech. Trust me. I know. John Podhoretz (@jpodhoretz) July 28, 2016While they praised President Obama s speech, they all still hate him and the progressive policies he supports. Of course, these Republicans conveniently ignore that many of the policies President Obama has pursued throughout his two terms were ideas that their party once supported, especially Obamacare. But the consensus is clear. Donald Trump preaches hate and division while President Obama delivered the speech Republicans only wish their nominee would have done. Thank God the President had the grace on that stage last night to point out that Donald Trump is neither a Republican nor a conservative, Erick Erickson wrote on Thursday. I am glad that even the President is not willing to tar and feather my party with Trump, despite my party s willingness to commit political suicide. Featured Image: Pete Sousa | 1real |
U.S. added 257K jobs in January; unemployment ticks up to 5.7 percent | The United States kept up its breakneck pace of hiring in January, adding 257,000 jobs as workers received wage increases unseen since the financial crisis, according to government data released Friday morning.
The unemployment rate ticked up by one-tenth of a point, to 5.7 percent, largely because so many people — nearly 1.1 million — entered the workforce, some coming off the sidelines after years of discouragement.
The latest data indicates a fully firing labor market that has become the engine for the American recovery. The United States has added jobs over the last year at its steadiest pace in two decades, and January offered fresh evidence that employers are now willing to raise wages and compete for workers.
“We’re finally getting to that point where a self-sustaining recovery is going on,” said Jeremy Lawson, chief economist at Standard Life Investments, an asset management firm.
The U.S. labor market has expanded quickly enough in the last year that President Obama recently called 2014 a “breakthrough year in America.” And as it turns out, 2014 just got even better. As part of the latest data from the Department of Labor, net jobs growth figures from November and December were significantly revised upward. November’s net jobs gain now stands at a whopping 423,000, up from the previous 353,000, the biggest one-month gain since 2010. The November through January stretch qualifies as the nation’s best three-month stretch of jobs growth in 17 years.
The monthly jobs data can be volatile, particularly in January, when government economists try to calculate seasonally adjusted hiring growth amid the layoffs of holiday workers. U.S. stocks were up and the dollar strengthened Friday morning on the jobs news, which slightly exceeded market expectations.
Perhaps the best sign in the jobs report wasn't the net payroll gain — the figure has topped 200,000 for 11 months in a row — but rather the nascent sign of rising salaries. The average hourly worker saw a 12-cent-per-hour raise in January, the best one-month increase since 2007. Since the Great Recession, real wages have remained stagnant, but this is slowly beginning to change. Over the last year, wages have risen 2.2 percent. Meantime, consumer prices are seeing inflation below 1 percent, largely because cheaper oil has caused gasoline prices to plummet.
"When I look at this report, I see a confident economy," Department of Labor Secretary Thomas E. Perez said Friday in an interview. "Companies that are bullish. New job-seekers who are more optimistic. And when you factor low gas prices and wage growth, that adds up to money in people’s pockets, a greater hop in their step."
The January wage numbers were being closely watched, because wages had taken a slight step backward in December. Real wages are an important indicator for labor market health, as they rise when more workers leave the sideline and companies feel pressure to compete for employees.
Some economists caution about reading too much into one month’s salary data and say only sustained wage growth will help the country fill one of the missing pieces of the recovery.
“Earnings are increasing, but the rates of real wage growth suggest that more must be done to ensure that all families can feel the strengthening recovery in their own lives,” Jason Furman, chairman of the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers, said in a statement.
For the Federal Reserve, this report offered perhaps the strongest evidence yet encouraging a short-term rate hike in the middle of this year — even as inflation falls below the central bank’s target.
“The pick-up in average hourly earnings gains was a belated Christmas present,” Scott Anderson, chief economist at Bank of the West, said in an e-mail. “It should help the Fed look past a temporary drop in inflation this year and keep their eye on gradually normalizing interest rates.”
In January, jobs growth was broad-based. The health-care and retail sectors were again strong, as they’ve been throughout the recovery. But so, too, were construction (with 39,000 jobs added) and professional and technical services (33,000 jobs added).
For months now, the U.S. economy has looked like the strongest in the developed world. But the recovery here came with a mystery: Some prime-aged workers were sitting on the sideline, unmoved to again begin actively seeking work. That meant they weren’t counted as unemployed. It also left the U.S. economy below its full potential.
January’s data showed at least some evidence that these workers are again looking for work. The labor force participation rate — which tracks the proportion of Americans holding or seeking a job — nudged up from 62.7 to 62.9 percent. That number looks small, but it was caused by a wave of new entrants — some 1.05 million, roughly the population of Rhode Island.
The labor force participation rate is still at its lowest point since the 1970s, but some of that decline is demographic, the result of a retiring wave of baby boomers. The key for the labor force, economists say, is encouraging frustrated middle-aged potential employees to resume their job searches, even if it requires new training or skills.
“There is this drumbeat — we’re seeing more and more jobs in a wide range of different occupations and industries,” said Tara Sinclair, chief economist at Indeed.com, a job search Web site. “Hopefully that will attract these people to get the necessary skills and jobs.” | 0fake |
[VIDEO] SHOULD RINOS AND DEMOCRATS FEAR TRUMP’S PRESIDENTIAL BID? “I would build a great, great wall on our southern border and make Mexico pay for it” | Donald Trump announced he will be running for President as a Republican in 2016. Here s what he had to say about our military and Iran: Nobody would be tougher on ISIS than Donald Trump nobody. Within our military, I will find the General Patton or I will find General MacArthur. I will find the right guy. I will find the guy who will take that military and make it really work. Nobody nobody will be pushing us around. I will stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons. And we won t be using a man like Secretary Kerry that has no concept of negotiation. Video h/t: Gateway PunditHis announcement can be seen here:Donald on TPA and why Obama is a bad negotiator:Donald on his net worth: | 1real |
Top U.S. general, without citing Trump, warns on troops' morale | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The top U.S. military officer told the Senate on Thursday that it would harm the morale of U.S. forces to order them to carry out activities such as waterboarding or targeting civilians, options previously cited by leading Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. Marine General Joseph Dunford, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, did not comment on U.S. politics, and Trump’s name did not come up in a question put to him by Senator Lindsey Graham or in Dunford’s response. However, when asked by Graham, a former 2016 White House contender and frequent Trump critic, what the impact such tactics would have on the morale of the force, Dunford said: “Those kinds of activities that you described are inconsistent with the values of our nation. And quite frankly I think it would have an adverse effect,” citing fallout on the morale of the force. “And frankly what you are suggesting are things that actually aren’t legal for them to do anyway,” Dunford added. During the campaign, Trump indicated that, if elected president, he might order the U.S. military to break the law on interrogation tactics, including waterboarding. Trump also suggested his willingness to target the families of terrorist suspects. Trump, the Republican front-runner, softened his stance on torture earlier in March, saying he would not order the U.S. military to break international laws on how to treat terrorism suspects. Waterboarding is the practice of pouring water over someone’s face to mimic drowning as an interrogation tactic. Critics say it is torture. Democratic President Barack Obama banned use of the method days after taking office in 2009. | 0fake |
Republicans Sue Federal Government For ‘Right To Discriminate’ | The North Carolina bathroom law is heading to federal court because the state s governor is suing the government for the right to discriminate against the transgender community.On Monday, Governor Pat Bigot McCrory filed a lawsuit against the Department of Justice (DOJ) and has asked the court to rule that HB2 is not discriminatory. The governors complaint cites letters sent from the Department of Justice last week threatening to sue the state for violating the Civil Rights Act. McCrory s complaint is seeking declaratory and injunctive relief against the United States of America the DOJ and Attorney General Loretta Lynch because of: their radical reinterpretation of Title VII of the Civil Rights of 1964 which would prevent plaintiffs from protecting the bodily privacy rights of state employees while accommodating the needs of transgendered state employees. Apparently, protecting the bodily privacy rights of their employees can only be done if they deny those same rights from the transgender community. I m not sure if McCrory has any idea what a woman s restroom looks like, but it s not a bunch of open stalls where we are all holding hands and peeing. Each person has an individual and private stall to do their business our bodily privacy is already protected.The complaint goes on to claim that the by protecting all of its citizens from discriminatory laws like the one in North Carolina is baseless and blatant overreach : This is an attempt to unilaterally rewrite long-established federal civil rights laws in a manner that is wholly inconsistent with the intent of Congress and disregards of statutory interpretation by the Courts. McCrory is claiming that the Civil Rights Act doesn t protect the transgender community, but it absolutely does. It says that he is not allowed to discriminate against employees on the basis of sex, race, color, national origin, and religion. Sexual identity falls into the category of sex, therefore, McCory is not legally allowed to pass a law that discriminates against his employees based on their sex. It s not a radical interpretation unless he considers using common sense radical, but then again we are talking about a Republican so .What this all boils down to is bigotry and hate. Republicans fight tooth and nail against protecting any class of people who are not white, straight, Christian males. The transgender community is just their latest target. Unfortunately for them, it is 2016 and President Obama s DOJ doesn t not put up with that kind of bullshit.Featured image via Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images | 1real |
Russia and Turkey Now Sharing Intelligence Data | Wed, 26 Oct 2016 19:54 UTC © AFP 2016/ BULENT KILIC Commenting on the recent reports that Russia has started exchanging intelligence data with the Turkish Army to ensure the effectiveness of Ankara's Euphrates Shield operation in Syria , retired Turkish Air Force Lt. Gen. Erdogan Karakus told Sputnik that the move signals major changes in Turkish foreign policy. Russia has already started sharing its intelligence data with the Turkish army, which will ensure the effectiveness of Ankara's Euphrates Shield operation in Syria, Russia's Izvestia newspaper reported on Monday. According to the newspaper, the agreement was reached during recent negotiations between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan. First Deputy Chairman of the Committee on Defense and Security at the Federation Council (upper house of parliament) Franz Klintsevich told the newspaper that Turkey quietly joined the intelligence sharing pool created by Russia, Syria, Iraq and Iran . "We pass Turkey data on our radio intercepts, electronic intelligence and imagery intelligence that may be of interest to it," the senator said. "In response, they also share information. Turkey has very effective intelligence agencies and very good agents in Syria ," he added. Commenting on the move, Retired Air Lieutenant General Erdogan Karakus, General President of TESUD (Turkey Retired Officers Association) told Sputnik Turkiye that the pace of development of Russian-Turkish relations amid the mounting tension in Turkish-American relations signifies major changes to Turkish foreign policy. Ankara is demonstrating its readiness to upgrade its cooperation with Moscow to an unprecedented level , creating prerequisites for further strategic partnerships, including in the military-political sphere. "Turkey pays high importance to the Open Skies Treaty. Signed in 1992, it is aimed mainly at strengthening trust between the signatories," Erdogan Karakus told Sputnik. "Unfortunately this February Turkey denied Russia an observation flight over its territory. However the situation has drastically changed since then and Russian inspectors now perform observation flights over Turkey . This is one of the major indications of a new stage in development of Russian-Turkish relations," he added. "The exchange of intelligence data, negotiations on the creation of a Turkish anti-missile defense system with the deployment of Russia's S-300 and S-400 systems, the opening of its territory for observation flights signifies the growing trust in relations between the two countries," Karakus said. Retired Air Lieutenant General noted that such a development is only more natural as the American 'Greater Middle East' project equally worries both Russia and Turkey. To be able to prevent all the threats arising from this project the cooperation between the two countries should be ultimately upgraded to a strategic level. There are no hurdles for the further strategic partnership between the two, Karakus finally stated. Comment: This should pretty much put to rest any speculation that Ankara at risk of coming to the aid of the terrorists in eastern Aleppo. Russia would not develop such close ties with them if there was a risk Turkey would basically go to war against the Syrian army, and thus the Russians as well. In all likelihood, Erdogan is acting within certain clearly defined limits in northern Syria. | 1real |
Exclusive: U.S. memo weakens guidelines for protecting immigrant children in court | NEW YORK (Reuters) - The U.S. Justice Department has issued new guidelines for immigration judges that remove some instructions for how to protect unaccompanied juveniles appearing in their courtrooms. A Dec. 20 memo, issued by the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) replaces 2007 guidelines, spelling out policies and procedures judges should follow in dealing with children who crossed the border illegally alone and face possible deportation. The new memo removes suggestions contained in the 2007 memo for how to conduct “child-sensitive questioning” and adds reminders to judges to maintain “impartiality” even though “juvenile cases may present sympathetic allegations.” The new document also changes the word “child” to “unmarried individual under the age of 18” in many instances. (Link to comparison: tmsnrt.rs/2BlT0VK May 2007 document: tmsnrt.rs/2BBR8wj December 2017 document: tmsnrt.rs/2C2sWCs) An EOIR official said the new memo contained “clarifications and updates” to 10-year-old guidance “in order to be consistent with the laws as they’ve been passed by Congress.” The new memo was posted on the Justice Department website but has not been previously reported. Immigration advocates said they worry the new guidelines could make court appearances for children more difficult, and a spokeswoman for the union representing immigration judges said judges are concerned about the tone of the memo. President Donald Trump has made tougher immigration enforcement a key policy goal of his administration, and has focused particularly on trying to curb the illegal entry of children. The administration says it wants to prevent vulnerable juveniles from making perilous journeys to the United States and eliminate fraud from programs for young immigrants. One changed section of the memo focuses on how to make children comfortable in the court in advance of hearings. The old guidance says they “should be permitted to explore” courtrooms and allowed to “sit in all locations, (including, especially, the judge’s bench and the witness stand).” The new guidance says such explorations should take place only “to the extent that resources and time permit” and specifically puts the judge’s bench off limits. The new memo also warns judges to be skeptical, since an unaccompanied minor “generally receives more favorable treatment under the law than other categories of illegal aliens,” which creates “an incentive to misrepresent accompaniment status or age in order to attempt to qualify for the benefits.” It also says to be on the lookout for “fraud and abuse,” language that was not in the previous memo. Immigration judges are appointed by the U.S. Attorney General and courts are part of the Department of Justice, not an independent branch. The only sitting immigration judges routinely allowed to speak to the media are representatives of their union, the National Association of Immigration Judges. Dana Marks, a sitting judge and spokeswoman for the union, said the “overall tone” of the memo “is very distressing and concerning to immigration judges.” “There is a feeling that the immigration courts are just being demoted into immigration enforcement offices, rather than neutral arbiters,” Marks said. “There has been a relentless beating of the drum toward enforcement rather than due process.” Former immigration judge Andrew Arthur, who now works at the Center for Immigration Studies, which promotes lower levels of immigration overall, said the new guidelines were needed. In their previous form, he said, “so much emphasis was placed on the potential inability of the alien to understand the proceedings ... that it almost put the judge into the position of being an advocate.” The courts have had to handle a surge in cases for unaccompanied minors, mostly from Central America, after their numbers sky-rocketed in 2014 as violence in the region caused residents to flee north. While illegal crossings initially fell after Trump took office, U.S. Customs and Border Protection said that since May, each month has seen an increase in children being apprehended either alone or with family members. Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in a speech in Boston in September that the special accommodations for unaccompanied minors had been exploited by “gang members who come to this country as wolves in sheep clothing.” Echoing some of these concerns, the new memo notes in a preamble that not all child cases involve innocents, and that the courts might see “an adolescent gang member” or “a teenager convicted as an adult for serious criminal activity.” Jennifer Podkul, policy director of Kids in Need of Defense (KIND) said Congress included special procedural protections for immigrant children in a 2008 anti-trafficking bill to “make sure that a kid gets a fair shot in the courtroom.” “These kids are by themselves telling a very complicated and oftentimes very traumatic story,” said Podkul. “The approach of this memo, which is much more suspicious, is not going to help get to the truth of a child’s story.” In cases where children are called to testify, the old guidance instructed judges to “seek to limit the amount of time the child is on the stand.” The new guidance says that judges should “consider” limiting the child’s time on the stand “without compromising due process for the opposing party,” which is generally a government prosecutor. The memo leaves in a range of special accommodations made for children, including allowing them to bring a pillow or booster seat or a “toy, book, or other personal item.” It also maintains that cases involving unaccompanied minors should be heard on a separate docket when possible and that children should not be detained or transported with adults. | 0fake |
‘Trumping’ America’s Liberal Elite: The Failure of Political Correctness | Kirsten Powers USA TodayOver the past 18 months, whether in Midwestern airports or New Hampshire and Iowa hotels, I learned the best way to spot a Donald Trump supporter was to note who was remaining silent.As Marco Rubio or Ted Cruz or John Kasich voters enthusiastically shared their reasons for supporting their candidate, a family member or friend would often stand by quietly.When pressed, if they came clean, it was often with downcast eyes or an apologetic smile: I m voting for Trump, they d almost whisper.A few months ago, an Uber driver told me he was voting third party, then tepidly announced he was voting Trump as I exited the car. Why didn t he just tell me this in the first place, I asked. Because I thought you would judge me, he said.Here we can see why Donald Trump s constant inveighing against political correctness was so ingenious. It forged an unlikely but unshakable bond between a Manhattan billionaire who had manifestly lived a life of New York values with conservative white Americans who feel under constant assault by a cultural elite that treats them with contempt. Perhaps more importantly, it ultimately inoculated Trump against allegations that many believed would be his undoing: that he was a racist and misogynist who bragged of sexually assaulting women. Trump s success among women was in part a reaction against enforced political correctness (Image Source: Pulse.ng)After all, these same voters have watched as every Republican candidate in recent memory has been accused of waging a War on Women. If Democrats are going to claim that Mitt Romney and John McCain hate women (and they did), then they shouldn t be surprised when voters ignore them when they say Donald Trump hates women. If every Republican is a misogynist, then no Republican is.While many liberals have dismissed the idea of political correctness as a right-wing manufactured hysteria, it is in fact a real thing. That Trump has stretched its meaning to encompass pretty much any horrible thing he wants to say makes its existence no less real.Conservative white Americans have watched (often fearfully) as liberal cultural elites demand that everyone fall in line with their agenda or risk being called a homophobe, racist or misogynist. The concept of persuasion and debate has been overridden by a quest for immediate and forced cultural conformity. My friend Sally Kohn, the liberal commentator, summed up the left wing view fairly honestly when she told me in a recent debate over free speech that, If [conservatives on campus] feel like they can no longer speak against positive social change, good. This is a paradigm where honest disagreement about abortion makes one a woman-hater, holding orthodox religious views on marriage equates to gay-bashing, and refusing to cop to white privilege even if you are a working class white person struggling economically defines you as a racist.A recent Slate article explaining why a slight majority of white women voted for Trump asserted that these female Trump supporters were self-loathing racists who were doing the bidding of their husbands and fathers. This is the omnipresent lefty trope Republican women have lived with for a long time, yet people are actually shocked that they wouldn t throw their support behind a party that too often casts them as gender-traitors.It s not hard to see how accusations against Trump as a racist and misogynist would be met with eye rolls and knowing murmurs of political correctness by people who have had their worldview constantly caricatured and demonized by the cultural elites in academia, media and politics Continue this story at USA TodayREAD MORE ELECTION NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire 2016 Files | 1real |
MUST WATCH VIDEO! MEGYN KELLY SPELLS IT OUT FOR THE CLUELESS AGAINST FIRST AMENDMENT RIGHTS | 1real | |
Saudi Arabia recalls ambassador to Germany over Gabriel comments | CAIRO (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia has summoned its ambassador in Germany home for consultations over comments by German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel about the political crisis in Lebanon. The Saudi foreign ministry said the government also handed Germany s representative in Riyadh a protest note over what it said were shameful comments Gabriel made after a meeting with his Lebanese counterpart. After a meeting in Berlin with Lebanese Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil, Gabriel told reporters that Europe could not tolerate the adventurism that has spread there . It was not clear from a Reuters television recording that the remark was targeted at Saudi Arabia. Lebanese Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri resigned while in Saudi Arabia on Nov. 4. Such remarks provoke the surprise and disapproval of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia which considers them as aimless and based on false information that would not help bring about stability in the region, the Saudi ministry said. The ministry later said on its Twitter account it had summoned the German ambassador in Riyadh and handed him a protest memorandum over the shameful and unjustified remarks made by the German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel. Hariri s abrupt resignation has raised concern over Lebanon s stability. He met French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris on Saturday, several hours after he left Saudi Arabia. Lebanon s President Michel Aoun said on Twitter Hariri had told him in a phone call from Paris he would be in Lebanon on Wednesday for Independence Day celebrations. The German foreign ministry welcomed Hariri s departure from Saudi Arabia for Paris and impending return to Lebanon. We are very concerned about regional stability and call on sides to reduce tensions, the statement read. We aim this message at all actors in the region. | 0fake |
Cook these six vegetables for even greater health benefits | Cook these six vegetables for even greater health benefits
raw food , cooking , vegetables (NaturalNews) "To cook or not to cook?" has been a topic of heated debate among some health food advocates. Raw food junkies claim that eating foods in their most natural state is the answer to all our issues and diseases, cancer included. They believe that cooking destroys essential vitamins, live enzymes and antioxidants vital to our health.While nobody will dispute the fact that adding more raw, organic fruits and vegetables to our diet is essential for overall health and well-being, going raw all the way isn't always the best option either. A study published in the British Journal of Nutrition found that people who followed a strictly raw food diet had normal levels of vitamin A and beta-carotene, but low levels of the antioxidant lycopene. As reported by Scientific American , high lycopene levels have been associated with a lower risk of cancer and heart attacks. According to Rui Hai Liu, an associate professor of food science at Cornell University, lycopene may be an even more potent antioxidant than vitamin C .It seems that some vegetables need a little heat to release their plant goodness. Most plants have a tough cellular structure. Lightly cooking these food makes it easier for the body to break down the plant's thick cell walls, making nutrients more available for absorption .Read on to discover six foods that are healthier cooked. 1. Asparagus Lightly cooking asparagus spears makes it easier for the body to absorb cancer-fighting vitamins such as vitamin A, C and E, as well as folate. Furthermore, higher levels of antioxidants, ferulic acid in particular, have been reported when this vegetable is cooked. 2. Carrots Beta-carotene is the compound that gives carrots their vibrant orange color. The body converts beta-carotene to vitamin A, which is vital for vision, reproduction, bone growth and immune health.Carrots, however, are sturdy vegetables and don't give up their nutrients that quickly. To get the most out of your carrots, Researchers at the University of Arkansas advise that higher levels of beta-carotene are obtained when carrots are cooked. 3. Mushrooms According to Andrew Weil, M.D., mushrooms are indigestible when they are uncooked. He said that thoroughly heating them releases the nutrients they contain, including B vitamins, proteins and minerals, as well as compounds not found in other foods. 4. Pumpkin and other winter squash Not many people will eat raw pumpkin, unless it is put through a juicer , and that is just fine, since cooked pumpkin has been shown to be more nutritious. Just like carrots, pumpkins need a little heat to break down tougher cell walls and release their plant goodness. 5. Spinach Folate, vitamin C, niacin, riboflavin and potassium are more available in raw spinach. However, slightly cooking spinach increases the levels of vitamin A and E, fiber, zinc, thiamin, calcium, iron and protein – as well as essential carotenoids, such as beta-carotene, lutein and zeaxanthin. 6. Tomatoes While cooking tomatoes reduces vitamin C levels, it also makes lycopene more available to the body. As mentioned earlier, lycopene has been linked to a lower risk of cancer and heart attacks. Vitamin C is an abundant vitamin, so it is well worth the loss.As you can see, raw isn't necessarily always best. However, if you love tomato or spinach salads and can't stand them cooked, that doesn't mean you should stop eating them raw. Whether you enjoy your veggies raw or cooked, the most important thing is that you are eating them in the first place. | 1real |
Oregon Ranchers Who Started Bundy Occupation Threatened To Kill Refuge Employees And Their Kids | By now, everybody knows that the two ranchers who inspired the Bundy militia standoff fiasco in Oregon are no innocent victims of the big bad federal government. However, new details were given by current and former Malheur Wildlife Refuge employees about the family which reveal a long and very serious criminal history.Dwight and Steve Hammond have had friction between the federal government and themselves for decades. Forrest Cameron, who served as Fish and Wildlife Service manager from 1989 to 1999 described how the conflict with the Hammonds goes all the way back to the 1980s when they made death threats against refuge employees. Cameron explained that one way or another the Hammonds were violating their permit for grazing on refuge lands, to where there was never a time when there was not some problem occurring. Cameron went on to say, They ve done so many illegal activities that never got to a courtroom. Some violations were not significant, and we figured we could correct it by talking to them. A biologist employed at the refuge reported that the Hammonds engaged in aerial hunting of coyotes on the refuge, which is illegal. Cameron said that the Hammonds had an airplane at the time. They were flying to shoot coyotes on their land, and we didn t have a problem with that. However, the biologist allegedly saw the Hammond s plane flying over refuge property, which the Hammonds denied.In August 1994, the Fish and Wildlife Service was trying to fence a waterhole used by waterfowl, because the Hammonds were also using it for their cattle. Fish and Wildlife wanted to protect it solely for waterfowl use. As the fence was being constructed, the Hammonds disabled a Caterpillar vehicle, sabotaging the construction of the fence. Dwight and Steve Hammond were arrested and charged with felonies for impeding, intimidating, and interfering with federal officers.Before the 1994 fiasco with the waterhole, Cameron said that there were death threats being made against his family, as well as other staff members and their families as well: My wife would take these phone calls, it was terribly vulgar language. They said they were going to wrap my son in barbed wire and throw him down a well. They said they knew exactly which rooms my kids slept in, in Burns. There were death threats to my wife and two other staff members and their wives. My family went to Bend rather than be in the community because it was so volatile at the time. The families of my biologist and my deputy manager family had to relocate as well for a short time. At the refuge headquarters, one of the Hammonds said they would tear my head off and shit down the hole. One of the Hammonds told my Deputy Manager, Dan Walsworth, they were going to put a chain around his neck and drag him behind a pickup. Source: RawstoryThese are the people that right-wing America are holding up as both heroes and victims. They are neither. Personally, I will admit that at first the idea of five years for burning grassland sounded like an excessive sentence. Perhaps all alone it would arguably still be one (although the details of the case appear much worse.) However, these people have been engaging in bad behavior to put it extremely mildly for decades now. They earned what they got, and to defend them is to defend nothing short of good old home-grown domestic terrorism. Period. | 1real |
HYPOCRITE BILLY CRYSTAL INJECTS JAB At Trump In Eulogy To Ali That’s Curiously Similar To A Clinton Speech | The bashing of Donald Trump is getting so old and tiresome. People with common sense know the truth and know what the left is trying to do. It s the same old playbook of demonizing what you don t like repeatedly. The problem is that Americans are finally wising up to this Alinsky strategy. You d think the liberals are all coordinating their talking points .hummm Billy Crystal bashed Trump during his eulogy of Ali in a line similar to Clinton s speech on Tuesday: life is best when you build bridges between people, not walls. Do you think for one minute that Trump would have gotten where he is if he d not reached out to people and built bridges literally and figuratively? The reason Trump wants to build a literal wall with Mexico is that, without borders, we don t have a country . We can certainly reach out to others but Trump knows open borders DO NOT WORK! Just take a look at Europe and the EU! What a mess! Trump has said he wants LEGAL IMMIGRATION and doesn t want ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION! He s protecting the people of America and that s putting America first!The problem with Billy Crystal s swipe at Trump is that he isn t practicing what he preaches. Anyone who knows Los Angeles knows that the homes have gates and walls. Well, Billy Crystal has walls and a fence surrounding his home people in glass houses!It was easy to get photos above of the fence and wall around Billy Crystal s home but we can t just walk onto his property uninvited. Isn t that the same as people walking over our border illegally?Comedian Billy Crystal gave an emotional tribute during Muhammad Ali s funeral on Friday, but may have sneaked in a low-key dig at Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump. Crystal, a friend of The Champ s for more than 40 years, said at the end of his eulogy for the boxer in the KFC Yum! Center in Louisville, Kentucky that Ali taught us that life is best when you build bridges between people, not walls. That line Crystal said sounds similar to what Hillary Clinton said during her victory speech on Tuesday. We believe that cooperation is better than conflict, unity is better than division, empowerment is better than resentment, and bridges are better than walls, the Democratic presidential candidate front-runner said. Read more: Daily Mail | 1real |
Trump rejects criticism, vents at news media in campaign speech | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump on Wednesday rejected criticism of his campaign tactics, in a wide-ranging speech defending his team’s use of a Jewish star and his own praise of the late Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. At a campaign rally in Cincinnati, Ohio, Trump vented his frustration at a news media he feels is out to derail his candidacy and help Democratic rival Hillary Clinton, deriding CNN, in particular, as the “Clinton News Network.” Trump’s hour-long performance was unlikely to reassure those Republicans who would like to see the New York businessman focus his message on attacking Clinton to rally the party behind him at the Cleveland convention from July 18 to 21 where he is to be formally nominated. He was particularly animated in defending his campaign’s use of what was seen to be a Jewish star in a tweet last week that described Clinton as corrupt. The star was replaced with a round emblem after the criticism, but the incident has generated days of controversy. Trump said he thought the star was more the shape of a sheriff’s badge. He described as “sick people” those in the news media who called it a Jewish Star of David. Later, Trump tweeted an image of character from a book linked to Disney’s movie, “Frozen”, that used a similarly shaped star on its cover. “Where is the outrage for this Disney book? Is this the ‘Star of David’ also? Dishonest media! #Frozen,” he tweeted. In his Ohio speech, Trump also returned to the subject of Saddam after generating controversy on Tuesday by complimenting him for his handling of militants. Irritated by the criticism, Trump brought up Saddam again. “So I said bad guy, really bad guy, but he was good at one thing: Killing terrorists… I don’t love Saddam Hussein. I hate Saddam Hussein. But he was damned good at killing terrorists,” Trump said. Trump also reacted to a mosquito that buzzed near his hand at the podium. “I don’t like mosquitoes, I never did. Speaking of mosquitoes, hello Hillary, how are you doing?” he said. | 0fake |
Donald Trump’s Potential Running Mates: Pros and Cons - The New York Times | Donald J. Trump plans to announce his running mate before the Republican National Convention in Cleveland this month, and has started an “Apprentice” search — meeting with possible candidates one by one and then posting on Twitter about it. (On Monday, he even praised on Twitter Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas, a running mate whom some Republicans nonetheless like because of his military service.) Below is a look at the four potential candidates for vice president whom the Trump campaign has already begun vetting: Why Mr. Trump would choose him: After dropping out of the Republican primary contest, Mr. Christie was one of Mr. Trump’s earliest endorsers — the sort of loyalty that goes far in his world. Mr. Christie has since emerged as a key figure behind the scenes, including running Mr. Trump’s transition team. Mr. Trump has said he would like to choose someone with government experience, and Mr. Christie’s leadership of a traditionally Democratic state, where he has pushed legislation through the New Jersey State House, could help in working with a deeply divided Congress. Mr. Christie himself is also brash enough to handle the outsize personality at the top of the ticket. Possible downside: Mr. Christie is still dealing with fallout from the George Washington Bridge scandal. Mr. Trump has also seemed dismissive of Mr. Christie at times on the campaign trail, once ordering him back to the plane after the governor had finished introducing the Manhattan businessman. And Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump’s who wields an increasingly influential role behind the scenes on the campaign team, has a fraught relationship with Mr. Christie, who as a prosecutor helped send his father to jail. _____ Why Mr. Trump would choose her: A mom from a socially conservative state, Ms. Ernst electrified the Republican establishment with her election to the Senate in 2014, and quickly emerged as one of the party’s rising stars and fresh faces. During her Senate bid, she garnered attention with an ad about pig castration and her promise to make the politicians in Washington “squeal” — an outsider ethos that matches that of Mr. Trump. She is an Iraq war veteran and retired National Guard lieutenant colonel, which could bring military and foreign policy experience — two areas in which Mr. Trump is lacking. And as a woman, she could help him shore up his standing with female voters among whom Mr. Trump trails far behind Hillary Clinton in polls. Possible downside: Elected to the Senate just two years ago, Ms. Ernst lacks a deep breadth of national governing experience. She was a disciplined if carefully managed candidate during her Senate bid, and it is unclear if she can withstand not just the media scrutiny of being the vice presidential pick, but also the general chaos of the Trump operation. _____ Why Mr. Trump would choose him: A former speaker of the House and Republican congressman from Georgia for two decades, Mr. Gingrich brings the governing experience and Washington that Mr. Trump says he wants in a running mate. Mr. Gingrich also seems eager for the job, and has the intellectual bona fides and dynamic personality to handle someone like Mr. Trump as his running mate. Possible downside: Mr. Gingrich was perhaps the most public face of partisan warfare with the Clintons during the 1990s, and was ultimately forced to resign his speakership after an ethics violation and poor showing from Republicans in the 1998 midterm elections. He is also a convert to Catholicism. _____ Why Trump would choose him: Mr. Pence, the popular governor of a Rust Belt swing state — President Obama narrowly won Indiana in 2008 Mitt Romney, the Republican candidate, won it 2012 — is a favorite among social conservatives, and could help reassure a Republican base still skeptical about Mr. Trump’s credentials. Mr. Pence has twice toyed with a presidential run, and is locked in a close fight with John Gregg, a Democrat and former speaker of Indiana’s House of Representatives, making a place on Mr. Trump’s ticket potentially more appealing. Possible downside: Mr. Trump talks of expanding the electoral map and attracting a broad coalition to beat Mrs. Clinton, including some disaffected Democrats, link those who originally supported Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont. But Mr. Pence’s socially conservative stances, especially on gay rights, could turn off some of those voters. He also endorsed Senator Ted Cruz of Texas in the Republican primary, but failed to deliver his home state. | 0fake |
Saudi Prince Lectures America On Democracy, Calling For ‘NEVER TRUMP’ | 21st Century Wire says Well, isn t this interesting. Saudi Arabian princes are giving lessons in democracy?Incredible. The headline reads: Saudi Prince Begs America to Reject Trump. In summary: here we have a hereditary monarch, from a Wahabi theocratic dictatorship now lecturing Americans on who they should vote for in their elections. During his recent dinner speech at the Washington Institute For Near East Policy at the Mandarin Oriental hotel, Prince Turki- al-Faisal (photo, below), a graduate of Georgetown University, made his passionate plea to the American electorate not to elect Donald J. Trump as president.NOTE: The word election is a treasonous concept in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and if you are ever caught asking for it you will not only be jailed, but will likely face capital punishment. The Mail Online reported:A Saudi prince has urged Americans not to vote for Donald Trump in the upcoming general election. Turki al-Faisal, who served as Saudia Arabia s ambassador to the US from 2005 to 2007, spoke against the presumptive Republican nominee during a foreign policy dinner in Washington, DC on Thursday.He blasted Trump s proposal to ban Muslims from entering the US, which the billionaire first formulated in December last year before renewing his vow on Wednesday. For the life of me, I cannot believe that a country like the United States can afford to have someone as president who simply says, These people are not going to be allowed to come to the United States, Turki said according to the Huffington Post.Prince Turki currently serves as the chairman of the Saudi Arabian-funded Washington DC-based think tank, King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies. Interestingly, the Saudi Prince was sharing his Washington DC event stage with none other than Israeli general Yaakov Amidror, the former national security advisor to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Amidror presided over a number of violent operations against the native Palestinian population, including the slaughter of over 500 civilians in Gaza in 2012Whether or not one likes (or loathes) the presumptive Republican Party presidential nominee, it s important to consider the Prince s comments in perspective So who is a greater threat to peace and stability in the Middle East and Central Asia, and elsewhere Donald Trump or the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia? Let s quickly examine some of Saudi Arabia s progressive and democratic credentials.Oil-based MonarchyThe current ruling family in Saudi Arabia, the House of Saud, was installed into power by the British in the early 20th century. Since the development of Saudi Arabia s oil fields, mainly by US and UK firms, tribal elites have had the luxury of having money on tap , amounting to many trillions of dollars in continuous energy revenue, with almost all of the wealth channeled into the hands of hereditary and royal elites. Saudi s repression of democracy is not limited to its own borders, however. When a true Arab Spring event broke out in neighboring Bahrain in 2011, Saudi Arabia deployed its army to put down any popular uprising, and still patrols those streets today.More recently, their vast oil fortunes have been channeled into building-up a militarized state, and recently, with the backing of the US and PR cover by the UN, have openly waged war on its neighbor, Yemen.Regressive SocietyEven in the 21st century, Saudi Arabia still manages to win the near submissive support of the US and the UK, despite the fact that it is running an openly regressive, medieval theocratic autocracy, where hundreds of its citizens are executed in the street, many via beheading. Last year, in 2015, was a record year for beheadings under the newly crowned King Salman. PATRONAGE: President Obama paying tribute to the new King Salman of Saudi Arabia.No Religious FreedomThe Kingdom is also actively repressing its own native Shi ite population, as well as others who are not born into the right royaly-favored religion or tribe. Practicing Christianity is also forbidden in the Kingdom and any attempted conversion from Islam is punishable by death.Genocidal Military StateFor the last 14 months, and with the assistance of the US, Saudi Arabia and its GCC allies have been waging an illegal and highly brutal military war of aggression against its neighbor Yemen killing tens of thousands of Yemeni civilians and displacing millions more.World s Premier Supporter of Islamic Extremism and TerrorismHistorically, it is now accepted as fact that Saudi Arabia the world s leading financial supporter of Islamic extremist terrorism in the Middle East and beyond. This has been the case for many decades starting from the Kingdom s central role, together with the CIA and others, in supporting Mujadhedin militants and al Qaeda in Afghanistan from the late 1970 s and all the way through to their involvement in 9/11. This trend continues today, with Saudi, along with its tribal monarch cousin, Qatar, as the primary source of funding and support for terrorist fighting groups like Jabhat Al Nusra (al Qaeda in Syria) and also Islamic State (ISIS), as well as a direct financier of radical Mosques all over the world.Saudi Nuclear Weapon PlansIn the same interview this week, Prince Turki also dropped another bomb , so to speak, by announcing Saudi Arabia s somewhat disturbing ambitions to acquire nuclear weapons:Saudi Arabia has accepted the Iran nuclear deal, which lasts 10-15 years, Prince Turki said. But what happens after that is open to question. That s why I ve always maintained that we must consider all options, including the acquisition of nuclear weapons, the prince added though he emphasized his preference for a nuclear weapons-free zone in the region.So who is the real threat in the region and beyond? One thing should be certain by now it s not Iran, or Donald Trump.READ MORE SAUDI NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Saudi Arabia Files | 1real |
DELINGPOLE: Paris - Trump Just Dodged A $2.5 Trillion Bullet | Here’s more evidence that Trump did the right thing by pulling out of the UN’s Paris climate agreement. [Had the U. S. stayed in it would have been on the hook for a fair chunk of this pay demand from India. Yes, you read that right. Not billion but trillion. That’s $2, 500, 000, 000, 000 which India was expecting to be paid over the next 15 years by the Western nations — ie mainly the U. S. — as a bribe for pretending to decarbonize its economy in line with the U. N. Paris agreement. And, inevitably, it wasn’t just India that wanted its climate Danegeld. So did every other country which could qualify for developing world status. Here, courtesy of Chris Horner, is a document from U. S. climate negotiator Todd Stern. He clearly thinks it’s funny, though I’m not sure I would if I were a taxpayer having to fund it … In other words, Paris was never really about climate. It was a scheme in which rich nations were expected to shower poor nations with free money. Totally about UN socialist wealth redistribution. #IPCC pic. twitter. — Brad Rush (@OtagoGrad) June 7, 2017, This, of course, is the real reason for the widespread global outrage at Trump’s climate decision. The pigs have had their enormous trough — stamped “$$$$ courtesy of Uncle Sam” — pulled from beneath their snouts and their instinctive response is to go “Sooooooeeeeee! Soooooeeeeee!” My two favorite deranged responses so far. This one from The Nation explaining that Trump is Hitler because he sorta, kinda used a phrase vaguely like Hitler once did in one of his speeches. On September 30, 1942, shortly after the death camps began gassing Jews, Hitler declared, “In Germany too the Jews once laughed at my prophecies. I don’t know whether they are still laughing, or whether they have already lost the inclination to laugh, but I can assure you that everywhere they will stop laughing. With these prophecies I shall prove to be right. ” On June 1, 2017, Donald Trump announced that he was pulling America out of the Paris climate accord. “At what point does America get demeaned? At what point do they start laughing at us as a country? We want fair treatment for its citizens and we want fair treatment for our taxpayers. We don’t want other leaders and other countries laughing at us anymore, and they won’t be. They won’t be. ” See the similarity? Me neither. Presumably that’s why author Sasha Abramsky has to editorialize desperately: “It’s not a direct quote from Hitler, but it’s perilously close. ” But I forget. When you’re a liberal, everyone who disagrees with you is Hitler. So I suppose to this article is only stating the obvious. Even better though, I think, is the announcement by the United Nations that it intends to reject Trump’s offer to renegotiate Paris. Here is the Executive Secretary of the UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) spelling it out: #ParisAgreement, a historic treaty signed by 194 ratified by 147 countries, cannot be renegotiated based on the request of a single Party. https: . — Patricia Espinosa C. (@PEspinosaC) June 2, 2017, Why is this so funny? Well it’s a bit like the Camp Commandant at Colditz Castle announcing sternly to the prisoners who have daringly escaped that under no circumstances will they ever be allowed inside the wire and back to their lumpy beds and freezing cells. President Trump has just made what successful escaping prisoners in World War II used to call a Home Run. I doubt he has many regrets about the camp guards he has left behind. | 0fake |
BOILER ROOM – EP #50 – 1 Year Anniversary Extravaganza!!! | Tune in to the Alternate Current Radio Network (ACR) for another LIVE broadcast of The Boiler Room starting at 6 PM PST | 9 PM EST every Wednesday. Join us for uncensored, uninterruptible talk radio, custom-made for barfly philosophers, misguided moralists, masochists, street corner evangelists, media-maniacs, savants, political animals and otherwise lovable rascals.Join ACR hosts Hesher, & Spore along with Randy J of 21Wire, Jay Dyer from Jays Analysis, Branko Malic of Kali Tribune fame and Daniel Spaulding of Soul of the East. Tonight the Boiler Gang is in celebration mode as we ve hit our one year broadcast anniversary, accolades will be given, classic clips will be played and new analysis will be found on Brussels, Syria, Palmyra We re going over media fakery with Jay Dyer an the crew, be it in Brussels, Paris, Boston or San Bernardino. If you want to participate, bring something interesting to throw into the boiler Join us in the ALTERNATE CURRENT RADIO chat room.BOILER ROOM IS NOT A POLICTALLY CORRECT ZONE! LISTEN TO THE SHOW IN THE PLAYER BELOW ENJOY! REFERENCE LINKS: | 1real |
Iraqi militia indicates will hand heavy guns to army after Islamic State quashed | BAGHDAD (Reuters) - A prominent Iraqi militia indicated on Thursday it would give any heavy weapons it had to the military once Islamic State was defeated and rejected a proposed U.S. congressional bill designating it a terrorist group. Harakat Hezbollah al Nujaba, which has about 10,000 fighters, is one of the most important militias in Iraq. Though made up of Iraqis, it is loyal to Iran and is helping Tehran create a supply route through Iraq to Damascus. The Nujaba fights under the umbrella of the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), a mostly Iranian-backed coalition of Shi ite militias that played a role in combating Islamic State. Disarming the PMF is seen as Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi s most difficult test as Iraqi forces edge closer to declaring victory over the Sunni militants. The heavy weapons belong to the Iraqi government, not us. We are not rebels or agents of chaos and we do not want to be a state within a state, Hashim al-Mouasawi, the group s spokesman, said at a news conference on Thursday. He was responding to a Reuters question on whether his group would obey orders by Abadi, who as prime minister commands the military, to return heavy weaponry, reduce the number of fighters, or withdraw from Syria. He would not be drawn on the reduction of fighters or Syria. The PMF is under the command of the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces and naturally when the war is over and victory is declared, the final decision will be his, Mouasawi said. His comments broadly echoed those of Iraqi military spokesman Brigadier General Yahya Rasool. The tanks, armored vehicles, and machine guns belong to the army and it is natural that after the battles are over they return to the army, Rasool told Reuters in an interview. Nujaba strongly objected to moves by Washington towards designating it a terrorist group. Nujaba blames the United States, without providing evidence, for the creation of IS. Republican U.S. Representative Ted Poe introduced a bill this month to the House of Representatives that would place Nujaba and another militia loyal to Iran on a list of terrorist groups and give President Donald Trump 90 days to impose sanctions on it once it passed. The bill was referred to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, sparking condemnation in Baghdad from Iraqi lawmakers and Abadi himself, who said he would not allow anyone who fought Islamic State to be treated as criminals. Accusing us of terrorism is not new or surprising. It is not a coincidence, and does not shock us, because we have never been part of the American bloc or project, said Mouasawi. Iraq is backed by adversaries the United States and Iran in its fight against Islamic State. The United States is concerned that Iran, a Shi ite Muslim regional power, will take advantage of gains against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria to expand the influence it amassed after the U.S. invasion in 2003, something Sunni Arab rivals such as Saudi Arabia also oppose. Tens of thousands of Iraqis heeded a call to arms in 2014 after Islamic State seized a third of the country s territory, forming the PMF, which receive funding and training from Tehran and have been declared part of the Iraqi security apparatus. They are paid by the Iraqi government and officially report to the prime minister, but some Arab Sunni and Kurdish politicians describe these militias as a de facto branch of the Iran s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corp (IRGC). Mouasawi openly said on Thursday his group receives support in the form of advice from the Guards and the commander of its foreign operations, Major-General Qassem Soleimani, and Lebanese Shi ite political and military group Hezbollah. | 0fake |
Trump doubles down on 'law-and-order' appeal in White House bid | PITTSBURGH (Reuters) - Donald Trump on Thursday praised aggressive police tactics and condemned attacks on officers amid criticism of his plan to use “stop-and-frisk” tactics to reduce crime, in a speech following a second night of unrest that shook Charlotte, North Carolina. The Republican presidential nominee said drugs were “a very, very big factor” in urban unrest and that those suffering the most from the violence were “law-abiding African-American residents who live in these communities.” “Crime and violence is an attack on the poor and will never be accepted in a Trump administration,” Trump told an energy conference in Pittsburgh, as a room full of natural gas and coal industry executives listened in silence. “The violence against our citizens, and our law enforcement, must be brought to an end,” he added. Trump has portrayed himself as the “law-and-order” candidate. Stop-and-frisk, in which police stop, question and search pedestrians for weapons or contraband, has drawn protests and successful legal challenges because it is seen as unfairly targeting minorities. At the same time, Trump has recently reached out to African-American voters as the gap in many opinion polls has narrowed between him and his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, ahead of the Nov. 8 presidential election. Clinton, who did not immediately respond to Trump’s remarks on Thursday, has pushed for stricter gun controls to help rein in gun violence and called for the development of national guidelines on the use of force by police officers. In Pittsburgh, Trump, a New York businessman, called for better training of police and more community engagement. “If you’re not aware, drugs are a very, very big factor in what you’re watching on television at night,” Trump said. “My administration will work with local communities and local officials to make the reduction of crime a top priority.” Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway said later in a statement that Trump’s comments were not referring “specifically” to the violence in Charlotte, but “addressing a major concern that authorities and moms across the country are raising with him, which is indiscriminate drug use and opiate addiction.” The fatal police shooting of a black man sparked the protests in Charlotte, and a state of emergency was declared on Wednesday. There have also been protests in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in recent days after a fatal police shooting of an unarmed black man who a video showed had his hands in clear view at the time. A white Tulsa officer was charged with first-degree manslaughter on Thursday in the shooting. Police tactics and deadly encounters with African-Americans, many of them unarmed, have sparked protests and unrest across the country in recent years. Clinton said on Wednesday that the deaths in Charlotte and Tulsa added two more names to the list of African-American victims of police killings. “It’s unbearable, and it needs to become intolerable,” she said. Trump was at an African-American church in Cleveland on Wednesday when he praised stop-and-frisk, which had triggered protests and court rulings that it was unconstitutional or required outside monitoring in cities like New York, Chicago and Newark, New Jersey. Before going to Pittsburgh, Trump was asked on Fox News’ “Fox and Friends” program to define the tactic. He said: “If they see a person possibly with a gun or they think may have a gun, they will see the person and they’ll look and they’ll take the gun away.” “They’ll stop, they’ll frisk, and they’ll take the gun away. And they won’t have anything to shoot with,” he said. In Washington, White House spokesman John Earnest pointed to what he said was a contradiction in Trump’s remarks. “It does raise questions that a politician would be so dogmatic about protecting Second Amendment rights (to bear arms) yet rather cavalier about protecting the constitutional prohibition against illegal search and seizure,” he told a news briefing. While Trump did not mention stop-and-frisk by name in Pittsburgh, he used the speech to repeat his praise for the policing tactics fostered by former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, now a major Trump supporter, who promoted the practice. Trump again credited policing under the Republican mayor with reducing crime in the candidate’s hometown. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio rejected that argument on Thursday, warning Trump against embracing a tactic that would worsen relations between police and the minority community. De Blasio attributed the sharp drop in crime to another strategy adopted by Bill Bratton, the city’s longtime police commissioner, who retired less than a week ago. Bratton championed the “broken windows” policing strategy that emphasizes pursuit of crimes no matter how minor. In his resignation letter, he attributed the decline in crime in New York, the nation’s most populous city with 8.5 million people, to additional officers and an emphasis on building bonds within neighborhoods. De Blasio, who supports Clinton, said in an interview with CNN that Trump “should really be careful because if we reinstitute stop-and-frisk all over this country, you would see a lot more tension between police and community.” | 0fake |
Facing Tough Re-Election, Sheriff Joe Says He’s Still Investigating Obama’s Birth Certificate | Even though Donald Trump (sort of) dropped the birther issue, there s one pro-Trump surrogate who in the tightest re-election fight of his life is still pledging to continue his investigation into President Obama s birth certificate.Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who was recently recommended for criminal court due to the continuation of racial profiling and perjury, told a group of Tea Party activists that he is certain Barack Obama s birth certificate is forged and will do everything he can to prove it: I m not going to give up, and we re looking into it. I don t know how it s going to turn out. I don t care where he s from. We are looking at a forged document. Period. I had nothing to do with Trump on the birth certificate. We did it on our own, because of you guys. The room of 200 or so activists were of course energized by Arpaio s pledge to unleash the truth. Before speaking to the crowd, Arpaio told reporters that it was the Tea Party activists in Maricopa County that got him stuck with the birther issue after World Net Daily, a right-wing publication known for conspiracy theories, had a reporter speak to another group, and subsequently gathered almost 250 signatures demanding Arpaio investigate. He complied, launching his investigation last week.According to Arizona Central:Mike Zullo, the lead investigator on the case and commander of Arpaio s Cold Case Posse, told the crowd that he knew Trump s statement was a punch in the gut, because it was unexpected. Zullo said he thought Trump s statement was strategic. It s not going to deter us, Zullo said. It s not going to stop us. I am closer than ever. Zullo also claims that a nurse who worked at the hospital where President Obama was born, the Kapiolani Medical Center for Women and Children in Honolulu, denies that such a birth ever happened.Well there you have it. Not only are Maricopa County residents footing the bill for Arpaio s legal woes (yet again), they are now paying for another investigation into President Obama s birth certificate. Is this what Republicans mean by fiscal responsibility? In Maricopa County, there are almost 4.2 million taxpaying citizens. And now they are paying their Sheriff s office their tax dollars to investigate some fringe conspiracy supported by 250 activists. Think about that.Maybe that s why Arpaio is losing his re-election bid to a Democrat, Paul Penzone, and it might also explain why his poll numbers are plummeting.Good thing he s focusing on the issues that matter.Featured image via Ralph Froso/Getty Images | 1real |
China Airport Security Robot Gives Electroshocks | China Airport Security Robot Gives Electroshocks 11/02/2016
ACTIVIST POST
While debate surrounds the threat of autonomous “killer robots,” the mechanized replacement of humans continues across the workforce.
The industrial robotics industry is logging record sales worldwide, and there appears to be no sign of a slowdown. As you can see in the graphic below, 2015 sales surged 12% over a previous record year to reach almost 1/4 million units.
There are many factors driving this growth, which you can read about here; but one point worth noting is that the two leading countries are the US and China, with China leading the way.
The nature of robotics is also changing, as new developments in artificial intelligence are giving robots an increasing range of potential uses. One key area, of course, is security. Robot security guards have already begun appearing at prisons , care facilities , and schools, in various locations around the world.
One U.S. robot company, Gamma 2 Robotics, has designed several models for mass production. Their latest – RAMSEE – can be seen in the video below. A true mass roll-out of this fully autonomous security guard could significantly impact the 1.5 million humans that are currently employed in some form of security patrol.
RAMSEE advertises the following capabilities: Is a physical presence that autonomously patrols without supervision Provides real-time data: intruders, motion, heat, fire, smoke, gases & more Is a human-machine interface that creates a powerful force multiplier
Significantly, Gamma 2 Robotics has partnered with Hexagon Safety & Infrastructure: “the global leader in public safety and security solutions.”
However, RAMSEE is missing one thing: weapons. For that, we have to travel to China, where they seem to have embraced police robots full throttle.
In late 2015, I covered an announcement from China’s Xinhua news agency where they announced the development and deployment of 3 weaponized “anti-terrorism” robots that would be far more active than a mere patrol:
“The toy-sized robots can coordinate with each other on the battlefield,” said the report, following their unveiling at the 2015 World Robot Conference in Beijing.
The first model is known as a “reconnaissance” robot, which scouts for poisonous gases, dangerous chemicals and explosives before transmitting its findings back to base.If this initial investigation detects a simple bomb is the source of danger, the second robot model – a small explosive ordnance disposal (EOD) machine – would be sent in to diffuse it.
But with other, more complicated threats, an attacker robot would start its mission, armed with “minor-caliber weapons, recoilless rifles and grenade launchers”.
“With a sighting telescope, a trigger and a safe installed, the attacker can hit its target from a long distance,” Xinhua said.
The local police force in Beijing was reported to be among the buyers for the three robots , which are priced at 1.5 million yuan (£156,000) for the set by manufacturers HIT Robot Group, who are based in the northern city of Harbin.
“Apart from anti-terror operations, they can also be applied in fire fighting, public security, forestry and agriculture,” the company’s sales manager Chen Deqiang said, according to Xinhua.
If we have learned anything about anti-terrorism efforts, authorities consider front-line deployment to be areas of public travel. We were given the TSA based on such notions, and have since witnessed its intrusive role in airports, and soon-to-be at other public transportation if authorities have their way.
China has gone to the next level with a robot TSA of sorts called AnBot that is equipped with what is essentially a taser-like device that is being fittingly compared to a cattle-prod.
Image Credit
It was first introduced at a tech show earlier in the year, and was speculated to have been designed for protest suppression. For now, its first job is to patrol China’s Shenzhen airport.
Most alarming, however, is that it is tied to one of the most powerful supercomputers on the planet.
The back end of this “intelligent security robot” is l inked to China’s Tianhe-2 supercomputer , where it has access to cloud services . AnBot conducts patrols, recognizes threats and has multiple cameras that use facial recognition.
These cloud services give the robots petascale processing power , well beyond onboard processing capabilities in the robot. The supercomputer connection is there “to enhance the intelligent learning capabilities and human-machine interface of these devices,” said the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review, in a report released Tuesday that examines China’s autonomous systems development efforts . [emphasis added]
( Source )
This link to “cloud services” is a new trend in robot artificial intelligence that also has been referred to as the Wikipedia for Robots – essentially an Internet Cloud Brain. Through robot-to-robot information sharing they can speed up their learning process … autonomously. Examples have included robots that can learn to cook, and robots that can learn the tasks involved in care-giving. However, when applied to policing, things become much more ethically troubling.
People were outraged in the U.S., for example, when a robot in Dallas was used to deliver a pound of C-4 explosive to a U.S. citizen whom the police deemed a sufficient threat worthy of immediate execution. At least, in that case, a human made the decision. But it is being viewed as a tip-toe along the path to the widespread use of “killer robots” much as we have seen with the use of drones. Discussion was once limited to overseas – egregious enough – but there has been a growing voice of those who are urging weaponized domestic police drones.
As John Vibes wrote , it might be inevitable:
The Taser corporation is planning on building a drone that is equipped with a stun gun, according to a recent report by the Wall Street Journal.
Not only will the drones be equipped with tasers, but there is also talk of them being autonomous, meaning that an actual human won’t necessarily be needed to fly the drone.
This is actually already being done in India , the first country to have approved the use of drones attached with “non-lethal” weapons. And, just this week, British tabloid, The Sun , had a feature entitled “Vladimir Putin’s Russia is preparing an army of robots and drones to take on its enemies, Deputy PM Dmitry Rogozin admits.” Given the available facts, this title no longer seems so deliberately sensational.
Clearly we are entering a potentially dangerous convergence of expanding robotic artificial intelligence along with the political will to continue allowing robots more and more autonomy as they carry out the traditional duties of the military and police. Some experts argue that the precision of robotics will curb many of the abuses we have seen from our military and police. But is that the trend we are actually seeing? Or will automated systems of violent control inevitably lead to even greater industrial-level suppression and killing?
Nicholas West writes for ActivistPost.com . This article may be republished in part or in full with author attribution and source link . | 1real |
LOL! HILLARY ACCIDENTALLY Calls Trump Her “Husband” [VIDEO] | Below the belt h/t Weasel Zippers | 1real |
Nigeria flies migrants home from Libya after slavery scare | LAGOS (Reuters) - Nigeria s president said on Wednesday the government had started bringing stranded citizens home from Libya after a global outcry over reports that migrants there were being sold into slavery. Muhammadu Buhari s comments came days after CNN aired footage that appeared to show men being auctioned as farm hands in Libya after being smuggled across the Sahara. Libya s U.N.-backed government has said it is investigating. The situation in Libya, of people being sold into slavery, is appalling and unacceptable. We will do everything to protect our citizens wherever they might be, Buhari wrote on his Twitter account. Nigeria had started bringing back home all Nigerians stranded in Libya and elsewhere, he added. The U.N. s International Organization for Migration said 239 Nigerians flew home from Tripoli on Tuesday. It has said Nigerian migrants risk exploitation, detention and abuse as they head north to Libya, hoping to cross the Mediterranean to Europe. | 0fake |
Texas governor calls legislative session; could include bathroom bill | AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) - The Republican governor of Texas on Tuesday called for a special state legislative session that could allow lawmakers to adopt a bill to restrict access to bathrooms for transgender people, viewed by critics as discriminatory and economically damaging. Governor Greg Abbott, who sets the agenda for special sessions, told a news conference the session would begin in July and the first item of business would be approving a bill that keeps some state agencies open. If approved by the Senate, he then would allow for consideration of nearly 20 other items, including a bathroom bill. “At a minimum we need a law that protects the privacy of our children in our public schools,” Abbott said. Political and business analysts said passage of such a bill would put Texas, the most powerful Republican-controlled state, in the spotlight on an issue that has been a flashpoint in U.S. culture wars. The issue has opened divisions in the Republican party, which dominates Texas politics, pitting the pro-business establishment wing against the powerful socially conservative wing, which says a bathroom law is a common-sense measure needed to protect privacy. A similar law in North Carolina, partially repealed in March, prompted the relocation of sporting events and economic boycotts that were estimated to have cost the state hundreds of millions of dollars. The stakes are far higher in Texas, which has an economy larger than Russia’s. The Texas Legislature meets every other year. In March, the Senate passed a bill backed by social conservative Republican Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick that would require people to use restrooms in public schools and buildings that correspond with the gender on their birth certificate, not the gender with which they identify. The Texas Association of Business, the state’s largest employer group, called the legislation, known as Senate Bill 6, discriminatory, and said it would hurt businesses trying to attract talent. It said the state could lose about $5.6 billion through 2026 if enacted. SB 6 died in the House when the regular session ended in late May. Republican Speaker Joe Straus, seen as representing the party’s business wing, has said the legislation was unnecessary and could cause economic damage. If a tough bathroom bill is enacted, Straus’ San Antonio constituency could lose its rights to host the men’s NCAA Final Four basketball championship next year, an event expected to bring in more than $200 million in revenue. | 0fake |
Chicago Community Organizers Mobilize Flash Mobs to Shut Down Trump Campaign Rally | 21st Century Wire says The 2016 Election has been one of many firsts. Last night saw an unprecedented incident where flash mobs from an opposing political party were successful in shutting down a presidential political rally.Up to this point, GOP front-runner Donald Trump was getting hit from every conceivable angle, but mostly from his own party. Last night things took a disturbing partisan turn Early Friday evening, thousands of Trump attendees were already people packed into an indoor arena at the University of Illinois in Chicago, when the event was suddenly canceled after hundreds of young Democrat student protesters took the venue floor, before clashing with Trump s Republican supporters only minutes before the candidate was due was to speak. WATCH: Protesters chant "We stopped Trump!" after #TrumpRally canceled https://t.co/oAt9cO5yZI (Credit: Dan Gilroy) pic.twitter.com/GPsz1NkQTG CBS News (@CBSNews) March 12, 2016Scenes of tense confrontations, including fist fights, dominated media coverage with many broadcasters, including Don Lemon from CNN, blaming Donald Trump himself for the mobilization of the protesters and even called for Trump to take responsibility for the violence.Trump s election opponents took advantage of the media may-lay, with Senator Marco Rubio, Senator Ted Cruz and Gov. John Kasich, all condemning the disruptions at first, before laying blame on Trump, saying he alone was responsible for the tone and tenor at his rallies. Cruz took the media opportunity to say that Trump affirmatively encourages violence. Expect More Social Justice MobsDemocrat Party website MoveOn.org posted that hateful Trump and his supporters have been put on notice and to expect flash mobs at all Trump political events in the future.Democrat Party activists initially tried to pressure civic authorities to prevent the event from happening with student activists claiming fears for their safety referring to African-American and Hispanic students fears of Trump supporters coming to the area. A petition was started on MoveOn.org and managed to get roughly 5,000 signatures. When authorities refused to cancel the event beforehand, Democrat Party activists then began organizing a large street agitation. Following a week-long social media and political community organizing campaign, young student Democrats and social justice activists converged on the venue last night, with signs and banners with anti-Trump slogans, including signs depicting the GOP candidate as Adolph Hitler, as well as other creative protest displays.Welp. This happened. #TrumpRally pic.twitter.com/b1ROhhLKzH Ryan Smith (@RyanSmithWriter) March 12, 2016Chaos breaks out at canceled @realDonaldTrump rally in Chicago -OTR #greta #TrumpRally @FoxNewshttps://t.co/b0CgIVyQz3 Greta Van Susteren (@greta) March 12, 2016Outside of the arena, approximately 2,000 more protesters were positioned along the road hoping to confront Trump supporters as they exited the arena. Hundreds of police, including officers on horseback acted as a barrier between the flash mobs and the venue. Law enforcement managed to re-route Trump supporters via other egress points which avoided a street confrontation.The Chicago Police Department arrested and detained four men and a woman at the event.READ MORE ELECTION NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire 2016 Files | 1real |
DISASTER CAPITALISTS: How Bill And Hillary’s “Clinton Foundation” Used Relief Donations Like An ATM | Hillary was Secretary of State an unimaginable earthquake hit Haiti in January 2010. 250,000 people were estimated to have died in the earthquake. Hillary promised Haitians on behalf of the United States that we would offer disaster relief and humanitarian assistance. Meanwhile, as billions of dollars flowed into the coffers of the Clinton Foundation, former President Bill Clinton was appointed Special Envoy to Haiti for the United Nations was also named co-chair of the Interim Haiti Recovery Commission.Here is the horrific story of how the Clinton s helped some of the poorest people in the world: | 1real |
Trump Nominates Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court - The New York Times | WASHINGTON — President Trump on Tuesday nominated Judge Neil M. Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, elevating a conservative in the mold of Justice Antonin Scalia to succeed the late jurist and touching off a brutal, partisan showdown at the start of his presidency over the ideological bent of the nation’s highest court. Mr. Trump announced his selection during a evening ceremony that unfolded in prime time at the White House. He described Judge Gorsuch, a federal appeals court judge based in Denver, as “a man who our country really needs, and needs badly, to ensure the rule of law and the rule of justice. ” “Judge Gorsuch has outstanding legal skills, a brilliant mind, tremendous discipline and has earned bipartisan support,” Mr. Trump said, standing beside the judge and his wife, Louise, as White House officials and Republican lawmakers looked on. “It is an extraordinary résumé — as good as it gets. ” But Democrats — embittered by Republican refusals for nearly a year to consider President Barack Obama’s choice to succeed Justice Scalia, and inflamed by Mr. Trump’s aggressive moves at the start of his tenure — promised a showdown over Judge Gorsuch’s confirmation. Joined by liberal groups that plotted for weeks to fight Mr. Trump’s eventual nominee, leading Democrats signaled they would work to turn the Supreme Court dispute into a referendum on the president, and what they contend is his disregard for legal norms and the Constitution. Conservatives and business groups cheered Judge Gorsuch, calling his record distinguished and his qualifications unparalleled. The announcement came at a particularly tumultuous moment in an extraordinarily chaotic beginning to Mr. Trump’s presidency. Just a day earlier, he dismissed the acting attorney general for refusing to defend his immigration order that started a furor across the United States over what critics condemned as a visa ban against Muslims. “Now, more than ever, we need a Supreme Court justice who is independent, eschews ideology, who will preserve our democracy, protect fundamental rights and will stand up to a president who has already shown a willingness to bend the Constitution,” Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, said in a statement. “The burden is on Judge Neil Gorsuch to prove himself to be within the legal mainstream and, in this new era, willing to vigorously defend the Constitution from abuses of the executive branch and protect the constitutionally enshrined rights of all Americans,” Mr. Schumer said. He said he would insist that Judge Gorsuch meet the threshold needed in the Senate to overcome a filibuster for his confirmation to move forward. That would either require eight Democrats to join the Senate’s 52 Republicans to advance the nomination, or force Republicans to escalate a parliamentary showdown — as Mr. Trump has already urged them to do — to change longstanding rules and push through his nominee on a simple majority vote. Republicans and conservative groups signaled they relished a war over Judge Gorsuch’s confirmation. “I hope members of the Senate will again show him fair consideration and respect the result of the recent election with an vote on his nomination, just like the Senate treated the four nominees of Presidents Clinton and Obama,” said Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the majority leader. He noted that the Senate confirmed Judge Gorsuch without opposition in 2006 to his current seat on the United States Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit. Carrie Severino, the chief counsel for the Judicial Crisis Network, a conservative group that immediately started a $10 million campaign to defend Mr. Trump’s nominee, said the coalition would mount intensive campaigns in crucial states to “force vulnerable senators to choose between obstructing and keeping their Senate seats. ” If confirmed, Judge Gorsuch would become the 113th justice and take a seat held not only by Justice Scalia, but also by Justice Robert H. Jackson, perhaps the finest writer to have served on the court. As an Episcopalian, Judge Gorsuch would be the only Protestant seated among five Catholics and three Jewish jurists. He would restore the split between conservatives and liberals on the court, returning the swing vote to Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, whose rulings have fallen on both sides of the political spectrum. At 49, Judge Gorsuch (pronounced ) is the youngest nominee to the Supreme Court in 25 years, underscoring his potential to shape major decisions for decades to come. In choosing him, Mr. Trump reached for a reliably conservative figure in Justice Scalia’s mold, but not someone known to be divisive. Mr. Trump, who recognized Justice Scalia’s wife, Maureen, in the audience as he announced his choice, heaped praise on the “late, great” jurist, saying his “image and genius was in my mind throughout the process. ” Judge Gorsuch said he was humbled by his “most solemn assignment. ” “I will do all my powers permit to be a faithful servant of the Constitution and laws of this great country,” he said. He also praised Justice Scalia as “a lion of the law. ” The announcement reopened the bitter wounds that dominated the political battle last year over Mr. Obama’s nominee for the seat, Judge Merrick B. Garland. Republicans refused to even consider — much less support — his nomination in the thick of a presidential campaign. A Colorado native who was in the same class at Harvard Law School as Mr. Obama, Judge Gorsuch is known for his measured opinions that are normally, though not exclusively, conservative. He holds a doctorate from Oxford University, where he was a Marshall Scholar, and was a Supreme Court law clerk to Justices Byron R. White and Kennedy. That Judge Gorsuch has a personal connection to Justice Kennedy is no accident. By choosing a familiar figure, several officials said, the White House is sending a reassuring signal to Justice Kennedy, 80, who has been mulling retirement. Choosing a more ideologically extreme candidate, the officials said, could have tempted Justice Kennedy to hang on to his seat for several more years, depriving Mr. Trump of another seat to fill. Still, Judge Gorsuch’s conservative credentials are not in doubt. He has voted in favor of employers, including Hobby Lobby, who invoked religious objections for refusing to provide some forms of contraception coverage to their female workers. And he has criticized liberals for turning to the courts rather than the legislature to achieve policy goals. “It is the role of judges to apply, not alter, the work of the people’s representatives,” he said on Tuesday. “A judge who likes every outcome he reaches is very likely a bad judge, stretching for results he prefers rather than those the law demands. ” Judge Gorsuch is the son of Anne Gorsuch Burford, who became the first female head of the Environmental Protection Agency under President Ronald Reagan. He attended Georgetown Preparatory School, outside Washington, before going to Columbia University. There had been some speculation that Mr. Trump would choose someone with a less elite background for the court. The other finalist for the post, Judge Thomas M. Hardiman, was the first person in his family to graduate from college, and helped pay for his education by driving a taxi. The White House stoked suspense over Mr. Trump’s court choice in the hours before announcing it. A senior Trump administration official said both Judge Gorsuch and Judge Hardiman were summoned to Washington for the nomination ceremony. But only Judge Gorsuch appeared at the White House gathering shortly after 8 p. m. In an allusion to the intense foreshadowing he and his team did to encourage interest and speculation over the pick, Mr. Trump interrupted his own announcement to marvel at his showmanship: “So was that a surprise?” the president said after announcing Judge Gorsuch’s name. “Was it?” As he looked out into an audience that Democrats had refused to join — several senior lawmakers declined his invitation to attend the East Room ceremony — the president expressed hope that he could avoid a partisan battle. “I only hope that both Democrats and Republicans can come together for once, for the good of the country,” Mr. Trump said. But progressive groups had already gathered at the steps of the Supreme Court to protest a nominee they predicted would be extreme. Nan Aron of the Alliance for Justice called Judge Gorsuch “a disastrous choice,” adding that his record showed “no sign that he would offer an independent check on the dangerous impulses of this administration. ” Conservatives were as ardent in their support. Tom Fitton, the president of the group Judicial Watch, called Mr. Trump’s nomination “a major step in the right direction in defining his presidency and moving the Supreme Court away from dangerous and destructive judicial activism. ” | 0fake |
Bette Midler’s Response To Trump Not Accepting Election Results Absolutely MAGICAL (TWEET) | With Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump claiming he may not accept the election results on November 8th if he loses to Hillary Clinton, it s left many people criticizing his crybaby behavior.Not only is not accepting the results of our democratic process unpatriotic and dangerous, but it shows what an absolute toddler Trump actually is. He basically believes that if he doesn t win, then Hillary must have cheated. It wouldn t have anything at all to do with the fact that he s a horrible candidate and an even worse human being.Well, not letting this ridiculosity slip by and go unnoticed was the legendary entertainer extraordinaire, Bette Midler. She took to Twitter and gave the Republican candidate a piece of her hilarious mind.Midler tweeted out: Trump sez he may not accept election results if he loses. I don t accept my ass, but guess what s stuffed in the back of my pants right now. Trump sez he may not accept election results if he loses. I don't accept my ass, but guess what's stuffed in the back of my pants right now Bette Midler (@BetteMidler) October 20, 2016Basically saying, there are a lot of things in life that are hard to accept, but they are in fact true and what is actually going on.Trump needs to realize that the election results are the will of the people and he needs to accept that because that s what s best for the nation as a whole.What is most obvious is the fact that he clearly knows he is going to lose, or he wouldn t be pushing the narrative that the election is rigged as hard as he is. Hopefully, come the evening of November 8th, he does what s right and not what s best for his ego.Featured Photo by Theo Wargo/Getty Images Twitter | 1real |
Factbox: Trump to meet heads of Carlyle Group, Marvel, World Jewish Congress | (Reuters) - Republican U.S. President-elect Donald Trump resumed meetings at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, following the Christmas holiday as he prepares to take over the White House from Democrat Barack Obama on Jan. 20. Below is a list of meetings for Wednesday, according to Trump’s transition team. * Co-CEO, founder and director of Carlyle Group (CG.O) * CEO of Marvel Entertainment, a unit of Walt Disney Co (DIS.N) * Co-owner of Runway Vineyards * Under consideration for agriculture secretary * Former U.S. undersecretary of agriculture for food safety under President George W. Bush * Under consideration for agriculture secretary * Former U.S. secretary of health and human services under President George W. Bush, former governor of Wisconsin * Will discuss healthcare reform * President of the World Jewish Congress * John Noseworthy, president and CEO of the Mayo Clinic * Paul Rothman, CEO of Johns Hopkins Medicine * David Torchiana, president and CEO of Partners HealthCare * Delos Cosgrove, president and CEO of the Cleveland Clinic * Bruce Moskowitz, physician | 0fake |
HA-HA! RETIRED MARINE TROLLS LIBERAL NEW YORKERS…Says POTUS Is ‘Tough Love’ We Need [Video] | It s always a win-win when you can find a hobby you enjoy, especially when it allows you to get some exercise and enjoy the nice summer weather. This retired Marine hit the jackpot by finding a way to keep himself entertained and fit during retirement: trolling New York liberals by boat.Nearly every day, Dion Cini will row down the Hudson River while flying a Trump 2020 flag to incite the frustration of New Yorkers, a group who overwhelmingly voted for Hillary Clinton this past election.This retired Marine can t get enough of the responses he gets from people who spot him rowing around Manhattan. Sometimes you hear I hope you get hit by a boat! I hope you drown! he said. From the top of their lungs as loud as they can. It can be from the edge of the river. It can be from cars driving by on the river. It can be from windows. I get it all the time and then I get it even on rooftop bars. Cini calls himself an ultra-conservative and thinks that Americans need a wake-up call. He said, I call it tough love. (President) Trump is tough love. Cini recalled being told to leave Washington Square Park with his flag because it was not conservative land but he vowed that no one would stop him.Luckily, these angry New Yorkers haven t swayed Cini one bit. He s considering getting a bigger flag spanning twenty feet. And a bigger boat. Despite his retirement, it s inspiring to see that this Marine s devotion to patriotism hasn t wavered.Read more: BizPac Review | 1real |
THE VIEW WOMEN Go Off The Rails: Trump ‘has to step down before the inauguration’ [Video] | 1real | |
Trump to fundraise for campaign if he wins Republican nomination: CNN | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump, who has self-funded his primary campaign, would turn to donors in the general election if he wins the party’s nomination, CNN reported on Thursday. Citing a unnamed source familiar with the plan, CNN said Trump and his staff have told some individuals, including potential donors, that he would begin to raise funds as soon as he secures the nomination. (Reporting by Timothy Ahmann) This article was funded in part by SAP. It was independently created by the Reuters editorial staff. SAP had no editorial involvement in its creation or production. | 0fake |
Mexico foreign minister heads to U.S. to meet with Dreamers | MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexico’s Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray will travel to the United States this week to meet with local leaders and beneficiaries of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, the ministry said on Monday. Videgaray will travel to Sacramento and Los Angeles on Sept. 11-12 and then to Washington D.C. on Sept. 13, the ministry said in a statement. Videgaray will meet with California Gov. Jerry Brown as well as other officials, the statement said. | 0fake |
Judge Napolitano Slams SCOTUS Ruling on Obamacare | 1real | |
Trump’s Senior Advisor Slams Unpopular Mitt: Number Of Anti-Romney Messages From Trump Supporters Is Breathtaking [VIDEO] | I just want to start with what you just heard from Newt Gingrich and Mike Huckabee, both going public against Mitt Romney for secretary of state. You seemed to join in as well. You tweeted: Receiving deluge of social media and private coms re: Romney. Some Trump loyalists warn against Romney as secretary of state. Do you think Mitt Romney could be a loyal secretary of state for Donald Trump?KELLYANNE CONWAY, TRUMP SENIOR ADVISER: I would hope so, because that s the first job of any secretary of state, Dana, is to support and work directly for and advise the president for whom you work.I felt compelled to mention it because I it s just breathtaking in scope and intensity the type of messages I have received from all over the country. And I m just me. I m not Donald Trump.And so, just as his former campaign manager, the number of people who feel betrayed to think that a Governor Romney would get the most prominent Cabinet post, after he went so far out of his way to hurt Donald Trump there was the never-Trump movement and then there was Mitt Romney.He gave speeches against Donald Trump. He attacked his character. I never heard Governor Romney come out and say, hey, you know, I have a problem with X, Y and Z, but that 25 million job creation plan over the next 10 years is really something to look at. The fact that you will reduce the capital gains tax and the tax on employers and businesses, or you will unleash energy investment, or you have 10-point plan to reform the Veterans Administration, none of that was ever said.And his the Romney consultants transparent were the worst to all of us, including Mr. Trump. Their Twitter feeds were complete 100 percent anti-Trump screed.And, look, if president-elect Trump chooses Mitt Romney as his secretary of state, or whomever he chooses, that will have the full support and backing of all of us. I respect the brilliance and judgment and sheer instincts of president-elect Trump to form his Cabinet as he wishes.But I felt compelled to come forward on behalf of the people who were weighing in.Watch:https://youtu.be/CiokZm91hCA | 1real |
Here Are The Heartbreaking Reasons #WhyWomenDontReport Sexual Assault | As the allegations of sexual assault against Donald Trump rack up, the question of how often women face this horrible tragedy is being raised to a national level. One of the biggest questions these... | 1real |
Cast Your Vote: Whose Foreign Policy Position Do You Prefer? | Cast Your Vote: Whose Foreign Policy Position Do You Prefer? Posted on Oct 28, 2016 Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton argued over foreign policy during the third presidential debate. (Screen shot via YouTube )
We are only 10 days away from Election Day, and the two mainstream candidates are steamrolling through the swing states in an effort to court votes. Over the past week, WikiLeaks provided some revelations on how Clinton and her husband used the Clinton Foundation to their advantage. Donald Trump, meanwhile, continued to close in on Clinton in the polls.
The week began on a somber note, when news broke that longtime peace activist and California legislator Tom Hayden died at age 76. His original Truthdig reports , which have been reposted throughout the week, reinforce the importance of an anti-war foreign policy. “Our systems—politics, media, culture—are totally out of balance today because of our collective refusal to admit that the Vietnam War was wrong and that the peace movement was right,” he said in 2016 .
Many of his reports written back in 2006 focus on American foreign policy in the Middle East. Although written over a decade ago, Hayden’s words of caution still ring true, as in this piece on a potential U.S. withdrawal from Iraq :
Many activists are learning for the first time, or perhaps all over again, what it means to be winter soldiers in a long war. All the wasted lives can never be brought back, all those squandered tax dollars will never be redistributed, true enough. But if the war itself was never going to be a cakewalk, why should ending it be any different? It may still be far from over, with the simmering question of Iran on the immediate horizon.
As Hayden warned, U.S. involvement in the Middle East is far from over, and throughout this election season a new player has entered the arena: Russia.
Earlier this week, Trump stated that Clinton, if elected, would cause World War III with Russia. Truthdig contributor Juan Cole argued that “[s]uperpowers don’t fight one another in the nuclear age…[they] fight proxy wars like Vietnam and Afghanistan.” Cole asserts that Clinton’s experience as secretary of state will make it easy for her to communicate with the Russian government and the Pentagon alike.
Others, however, don’t feel too positive about a potential Clinton administration’s foreign policy. Clinton has proposed a “no-fly” zone over Syria as part of her foreign policy plan, alarming security experts .
As Lauren McCauley writes, reports also surfaced this week showing how a Clinton administration “will likely usher in a more aggressive, bipartisan foreign policy in the Middle East and beyond.” She quotes Greg Jaffe:
The Republicans and Democrats who make up the foreign policy elite are laying the groundwork for a more assertive American foreign policy via a flurry of reports shaped by officials who are likely to play senior roles in a potential Clinton White House,” the Washington Post’s White House correspondent Greg Jaffe reports.
One such study, published Wednesday by the Center for American Progress (CAP)—which is run by president Neera Tanden, policy director for Clinton’s presidential campaign—recommends the next administration step up its “military engagement” amid a more “proactive and long-term approach to the Middle East.”
But what of Trump’s foreign policy? Juan Cole also argued earlier this week that when it comes to Trump’s assertions on the U.S. presence in the Middle East, “he doesn’t have the slightest idea of what he is talking about.”
Truthdig’s own Bill Boyarsky expressed a similar concern in his column this week, labeling Trump “a threat to democracy.”
“Trump’s scorn for the electoral system and democratic institutions is reason enough to fear a Trump presidency,” Boyarsky writes. “Added to that is his racist rabble-rousing against Muslims, those of Mexican descent and other immigrants.”
And of course, the discussion on foreign policy doesn’t solely revolve around just two presidential nominees. This week, NATO urged “all allies to deploy more troops and military equipment to Russia’s borders” in a move that Common Dreams staff writer Nika Knight called “shortsighted.”
There is also an inherent problem with the American military spending, says William D. Hartung, director of the Arms and Security Project at the Center for International Policy. “Through good times and bad, regardless of what’s actually happening in the world, one thing is certain: in the long run, the Pentagon budget won’t go down,” he writes. “As long as fear, greed, and hubris are the dominant factors driving Pentagon spending, no matter who is in the White House, substantial and enduring budget reductions are essentially inconceivable.”
So although there are broader, deeply embedded institutional factors responsible for American foreign policy, whoever wins on November 8 will certainly make an impact. Given the events of the past week—the focus on increased tensions with Russia, and the tightening race between Clinton and Trump—we turn to you, our readers. Which candidate has a foreign policy position worth pursuing? Will Clinton’s experience, although “war hawkish,” serve in her favor, or will Trump’s business acumen serve him better as Commander in Chief?
Let us know in the poll below. One vote per person, please. (Make your selection and then click on “Vote.” To see results of the polling, click on “Results.”) Which presidential nominee’s foreign policy position do you prefer? Hillary Clinton | 1real |
Jim Rogers: It’s Time To Prepare; Economic And Financial Collapse Imminent (VIDEO) | By: The Voice of Reason | Regardless of how much information gets released through Wikileaks or Project Veritas revealing grossly immoral, or even criminal conduct between members of the Clinton campaign, neither the mainstream media nor our woefully corrupt Department of Injustice have done anything to even slow the Clinton Crime Syndicate’s march toward the oval office. With each passing day that brings us closer to the election, lies continue to be pumped out with impunity to the voting public at large by the very institutions the public should be able to trust to give them fair and honest reporting or education on important matters. In the following interview, legendary investor Jim Rogers, explains in detail why nothing being reported about the economy is true, and why financial and economic collapse is imminent. Who is Jim Rogers? Why should you care what he says? First of all, listen to him because he’s right. Start learning facts, and stop listening to mainstream media propaganda. They are lying. Your life may depend on being prepared. Second, Jim is hardly alone in his line of thinking. Many of the world’s best economists are saying a global reset is coming that will have an effect on the world like nothing mankind has ever seen before. One famous investor even goes as far as to say the collapse of the U.S. Dollar, and the global reset that follows it, will be the single biggest event in all of human history. Let that sink in… Third, and lastly, you should care what Jim Rogers says because Jim is a legendary investor, one who co-founded the Quantum Fund, and retired at age thirty-seven. Do you know who his partner used to be? George Soros. Do you recall who is involved in virtually every major geopolitical firestorm anywhere on the planet, including the U.S. presidential election right here domestically? Many Trump enthusiasts incorrectly believe Donald Trump can save the U.S. from financial implosion, but in his interview, Jim Rogers explains why it doesn’t matter who wins the election, the problems that plague the U.S. economy are as systemic as the corruption is in Washington. There is no question Donald Trump has created a massive wave of anti-establishment fervor across the country, and there’s equally no question a Trump presidency would soften the blow of a financial collapse, but as Michael Synder explains in the article that follows the Rogers interview, the electoral college math just doesn’t add up to a Trump Win. At this point if Donald Trump is able to overcome the amount of fraud baked into the system by the Clinton campaign, and an electoral map that doesn’t give him a millimeter of wiggle room, it will truly be a miracle of Biblical proportions. In the meantime, Americans had better begin to prepare for the future that awaits them, with or without a President Trump ! Michael Snyder writes: Are we about to see the largest election day miracle of all time? Because as I will show in this article, that is precisely what it is going to take in order for Donald Trump to win. Before I go any further, I want to make it exceedingly clear that I am not saying what the outcome will be on November 8th. As I recently told a national television audience, I do not know who is going to win. In this article I am simply going to examine the poll numbers and the electoral map as they currently stand. But in this bizarre election things can literally change overnight, and it is entirely possible that we could still have another “October surprise” or two before it is all said and done. And without a doubt Donald Trump desperately needs something “to move the needle”, because if the election was held today Hillary Clinton would almost certainly win. What we have witnessed so far during the 2016 election season has been absolutely unprecedented. Just consider some of the things that we have seen up to this point in time. We have never had a bigger “October surprise” than the release of the lewd audio tape from 11 years ago in which Donald Trump claimed to grope women without their consent. We have never seen the mainstream media openly attack a presidential candidate as much as they have attacked Donald Trump . In the past, the big mainstream news outlets at least pretended to be fair and balanced, but this year they have completely discarded all notions of objectivity. They should be completely and utterly ashamed of themselves, and no matter who wins the election they will never be able to get their integrity back. We have also never seen a major party at war with itself this close to a presidential election. It has been said that a house divided against itself will surely fall, and a whole host of prominent Republican leaders have been openly attempting to sabotage the Trump campaign. If Donald Trump is able to overcome all of these factors, it truly will be a miracle of Biblical proportions. As it stands at the moment, however, the numbers are looking quite ominous for Trump . Right now, the Real Clear Politics average of national polls has Hillary Clinton ahead by 6.2 percent. Most political experts consider that to be an insurmountable lead at this stage in the game. But even if Trump can close that gap and pull ahead, that does not mean that he will win the election. In fact, Trump could beat Clinton by millions of votes nationally and still lose. In order to win the election, one candidate has got to get to 270 electoral votes. And on the latest Real Clear Politics electoral map , 262 electoral votes are being projected to go to Hillary Clinton, 164 electoral votes are being projected to go to Donald Trump , and 112 electoral votes are in the “toss up” category. So unless something dramatically changes, Donald Trump is essentially going to have to run the table in all of the closely contested states in order to win, and the mathematical odds of that happening are extremely slim. Let’s take a closer look at this. The first thing that Donald Trump is going to have to do in order to get to 270 electoral votes is to win all of the states that Mitt Romney won in 2012. That would get him up to 206 electoral votes. Unfortunately, it looks like that may be very difficult to do. Romney won North Carolina, but the six most recent polls all have Clinton ahead in that state. Romney also won Arizona, but the most recent poll to be taken there has Clinton ahead by five points. But for a moment, let’s assume that Trump can win all of the states that Romney won. On top of that, there are four other states that Trump must win… #1 Trump must win Florida’s 29 electoral votes. Without Florida, Trump has no realistic path to 270 electoral votes. So on election night if it is announced that Trump has lost Florida, you might as well turn off your television and go to bed because Trump is going to lose the election. Unfortunately for Trump , four recent major surveys all show Trump down by four points in the Sunshine state. #2 Trump must win Ohio’s 18 electoral votes. No Republican has ever won the presidency without winning Ohio, and the two most recent major surveys show that Trump and Clinton are tied in the state. #3 Trump must win Iowa’s 6 electoral votes. Fortunately for Trump , most recent surveys show him actually leading in Iowa. #4 Trump must win Nevada’s 6 electoral votes. At this point that is looking like it will be very tough to do, because all of the recent polls have Clinton leading in Nevada, including the most recent one that has her up by 7 points. If Donald Trump can win those four states, that still does not get him to 270 electoral votes. Instead, it gets him to 265 electoral votes, and so he would still need one more medium-sized state to win. The most likely candidates for that last state are Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin or Minnesota. Unfortunately for Trump , Clinton appears to have big leads in all four of those states right at this moment. But even if Trump can somehow pull off a miracle and squeak past the 270 electoral vote mark, the truth is that Utah could still mess everything up. Do you remember Evan McMullin? He was the third party “conservative alternative” candidate that was hyped for a couple of days but that seemingly fell off the map afterwards. He is only on the ballot in 12 states, but one of those states is Utah, and it turns out that Evan McMullin is a Mormon. Many Mormons believe that a Mormon will be elected president someday when the U.S. Constitution hangs “ like a thread “. According to this belief, this Mormon president will turn the country around and all sorts of wonderful things will start to happen. Many Mormons thought that Mitt Romney was going to be this president, but now Evan McMullin has become the target of these expectations. So how in the world could Evan McMullin become president? Well, their plan is to have Evan McMullin win Utah, and that could potentially keep both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton from both getting to 270 electoral votes if the election is super close. If that happens, the election would be thrown into the House of Representatives. It is being projected that the House will still be controlled by the Republicans after this election, and so the choice would come down to either Trump or McMullin, and those backing McMullin believe that he would have a realistic shot in that scenario. I know all of this sounds very strange, but this is actually being discussed around family dinner tables all over Utah tonight. And in recent days Evan McMullin has been soaring in Utah. One recent survey shows Trump with a one point lead over McMullin, and another recent survey actually show McMullin leading Trump by four points in the state. So Trump could pull off a miracle and do everything else that he needs to do to get to 270 electoral votes, and Utah could end up messing up everything for him. In addition, it is also very important to keep in mind that Trump could actually get all of the legitimate votes that he needs to win and still have it stolen from him by election fraud . There was widespread evidence of “funny business” in 2012, and this is something that I detailed for a live studio audience down at Morningside earlier this month … Are you starting to see why I would consider this to be the biggest miracle in American political history if Donald Trump actually overcomes all of these factors and wins the election? And we don’t have to wait until November 8th to get some indications about how the vote is going to go. Early voting is already taking place is some states, and so far the signs are not encouraging for the Trump campaign. The following comes from CNN … Democratic early turnout has stayed steady in North Carolina compared to 2012, while Republicans have dropped by about 14,500. In Nevada, Democrats have a smaller early voting deficit today than they did at this point in 2012. And Democrats are slightly ahead in Arizona in the early vote so far, though they are lagging Republicans in the tally of how many Arizonans have requested ballots. Perhaps most surprisingly, Democrats improved their position in conservative and Mormon-heavy Utah, where recent polls have shown a tight race. At this point in 2012, Republicans led Democrats in early voting by more than 22,000 voters. But so far this year, the GOP advantage is only 3,509. But if you do want Trump to win, the good news is that we still have more than two weeks before November 8th. We have seen some extremely bizarre things happen already in this election, and a miracle is definitely not out of the question. In fact, I am of the opinion that it is quite likely that some very strange events could take place between now and early November. So hold on to your hats, because the most interesting portion of the 2016 election may still be ahead of us. THE VOICE OF REASON is the pen name of Michael DePinto, a graduate of Capital University Law School, and an attorney in Florida. Having worked in the World Trade Center, along with other family and friends, Michael was baptized by fire into the world of politics on September 11, 2001. Michael’s political journey began with tuning in religiously to whatever the talking heads on television had to say, then Michael became a “Tea-Bagging” activist as his liberal friends on the Left would say, volunteering within the Jacksonville local Tea Party, and most recently Michael was sworn in as an attorney. Today, Michael is a major contributor to www.BeforeItsNews.com , he owns and operates www.thelastgreatstand.com , where Michael provides what is often very ‘colorful’ political commentary, ripe with sarcasm, no doubt the result of Michael’s frustration as he feels we are witnessing the end of the American Empire. The topics Michael most often weighs in on are: Martial Law, FEMA Camps, Jade Helm, Economic Issues, Government Corruption, and Government Conspiracy. Submit your review | 1real |
WATCH Protesters At DNC: “I’ll Take Trump Over Hillary Any Day…She Won’t Win If It Comes To Black Votes” CROWD SHOUTS: “Don’t Vote For Hillary, She’s Killing Black People” | Inside, on the DNC stage, Hillary is pandering to moms of dead thugs and family members who lost someone they loved because they either tried to take a weapon from an officer or attempted to use their own weapon against an officer. But outside the DNC walls, Black protesters are hammering Hillary. Blacks have a message for Hillary, and it appears they re telling her she s wasting her time that she ll never get their votes.In the end, all of Hillary s pandering to Blacks and special interest hate groups may have been a colossal waste of Hillary s time.Black protesters at the DNC are making their voices heard, and the one thing that is clear, is that Crooked Hillary is NOT getting their vote. Funny thing is, their saying they ll vote for Donald Trump. He didn t have to make a spectacle of Black Lives Matter members, he simply had to promise that he d make it a priority to find jobs for Americans and to Make America Great Again Watch: | 1real |
’Apocalypse Now’ Game Director: We’re Making a Game for ’The 45 Other States’ Hollywood Doesn’t Care About - Breitbart | Montgomery Markland wants to adapt one of the most storied American movies of all time, Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now, into a video game that the team describes as “like Fallout: New Vegas on acid in Vietnam. ”[Markland has been in the trenches of the gaming industry for a decade, starting with level design for developer Obsidian Entertainment. He’s run his own game studio and recently acted as a producer on both Wasteland 2 and Torment: Tides of Numenera — two widely acclaimed games. I recently had the opportunity to speak with Markland about the project, his passion for the source material, and the ways he wants to make Apocalypse Now different from anything the gaming landscape has ever seen. Would you like to introduce yourself to our readers? My name is Montgomery Markland, and we’re making an Apocalypse Now video game, and it’s going to be for the Xbox and the PlayStation and the PC — and Mac and Linux if you play on that. One of the reasons we’re doing it is to disrupt the lethargic and stolid game and movie industries that have calcified over the past ten or fifteen years. It used to be that great movies were made in this town, and Apocalypse Now was one of them. Apocalypse Now is still the number 49th movie on IMDB out of hundreds of thousands of movies. And it was made 40 years ago. And there’s a reason for that. And, like I was chatting with you just a second ago, I’m just a guy from Dallas, Texas, born in Ft. Worth, went to the University of Texas, and one day I got it into my head that I would go make video games and movies out here in Hollywood. And so, my path out here has been very different than the normal path — though I don’t think there is a traditional or normal path for anybody that ends up getting to do creative things in the game and film industry — but I came out here with the intention to disrupt things from the very beginning. And, making an Apocalypse Now game is part of that. When American Zoetrope decided to make a game out of Apocalypse Now, they asked people for pitches, and every single big game company came in and pitched the same thing: They pitched it as a shooter in Vietnam. “It’ll be great, it’ll be easy, it’ll be profitable. We’ll reskin our existing shooter for Vietnam and ship out an Apocalypse Now version. ” And American Zoetrope wasn’t interested in that. When myself and Lawrence Liberty, the executive producer, who is also the executive producer on Fallout: New Vegas, got the opportunity to pitch, the first thing I did was I went back and — I had already seen the movie probably a dozen times — but I went back and watched it a dozen more times, because in any great endeavor, you have to respect and learn from the traditions of your culture. Apocalypse Now is based on an 80 or — depending on where you count from — novella called Heart of Darkness, written by Joseph Conrad and published in 1899. And John Milius wrote the screenplay in 1969, and the movie came out in 1979. Joseph Conrad wrote Heart of Darkness and it’s about a lot of things. It’s about a personal journey, more than anything, and that’s why I think Apocalypse Now resonates to this day, because everybody has their own “journey upriver. ” Absolutely. And obstacles along the way that are unanticipated, and it’s more about the choices you make as you go up river, than it is about some theoretical end goal, or final chapter. So, both of these great works of art — Heart of Darkness and Apocalypse Now — two of the greatest works of art from Western civilization — are both inspired by something that’s 3000 years old: Homer’s The Odyssey, which tells the story of Odysseus. That story started by people sitting around campfires and telling the story orally, probably originally a lot of them who had actually been in the Trojan War, and they told a story about a guy they had heard about, who was stuck on a ship getting back home for a decade. And the story grew and grew and grew, and millions of people probably, or at least hundreds of thousands, retold it over thousands of years. And then finally it got written down over and over again and changed and rewritten I’m sure a thousand times, so it’s completely different now than whatever it was 3000 years ago. But it has the same core fundamental elements. And, so what started out as thousand of people telling a story around a campfire, and eventually became Apocalypse Now, we view our job as to just reverse that 3000 year process and give millions of people a chance to tell their own version of Apocalypse Now around a modern version of a campfire, which is your computer screen. That has got to be one of the best pitches for a game I’ve heard — I’m not surprised that American Zoetrope wanted it. Thank you. Part of what has interested me so much about this project is that Apocalypse Now is both a great war movie and a great movie about humanity. An internal war, if you will. It’s a haunting portrayal of a man’s journey through a horrifying world. But let’s get back to your personal journey, specifically. How did you end up here, making this game? Yeah. I was in law school in Dallas, at Southern Methodist University, and one day I decided I didn’t want to be a lawyer. I played poker pretty regularly and pretty well, and something that I believe Doyle Brunson said in one of the great books on poker was, “Money on the table is no longer yours. ” So, when I decided I didn’t want to be a lawyer, I went and made an independent video game — or a “mod” — for Neverwinter Nights. We had great success in making it, so much so that Lawrence Liberty at Atari, the head of product development there in NY, wanted to turn our little independent project in Dallas into an expansion pack for Neverwinter Nights, the game that we were making it for. Which was extraordinarily lucky and rare. And what kicked all of this whole process off, that didn’t quite happen. Hasbro decided — and this is in 2006 I think, or 2007 — so a decade ago, Hasbro decided that Planescape Torment was not a great world for Dungeons Dragons anymore, which ended up being an ironic decision because in 2014 inXile Entertainment, another company I worked with, raised five million dollars for exactly that. So, Larry went to be the executive producer on a video game based on the Alien and Aliens movies, I and II, with Obsidian Entertainment in Orange County. So, instead of getting the expansion pack going with Atari, he ended up getting me on board as a designer and producer on the Aliens game with Josh Sawyer and about half the team that’s working on Apocalypse Now, including Rob Auten, our head writer, who at the time was in charge of video games for 20th Century Fox. So, Rob, Larry and I worked together on Aliens nearly a decade ago. And, the Aliens game was loosely inspired — it’s narrative — by Heart of Darkness. And so, we went from that point in time to, over the years doing many different things. Larry produced Fallout: New Vegas, which is a game in a postapocalyptic world, there’s been a nuclear war and you’re exploring this huge 20 square mile open world, it’s got an 86 Metacritic. One of the best RPGs ever. Yeah, and if people knew how efficiently Larry made that game, they would be shocked. You know, you hear about Call of Duty or Grand Theft Auto having a 200 million dollar budget or a 150 million dollar budget. Larry made Fallout: New Vegas, which is a 200 hour game in 20 square miles, for $9 million in 20 months. And he did it with a game engine. So, we’re pretty confident that Mr. Liberty’s production plan for Apocalypse Now is a stout one. Our game is a little smaller, a little deeper, and we use much more advanced technology than they were using ten years ago on Fallout: New Vegas. Larry and I started a game studio called Killspace and we made some games with Atari and Ubisoft — Yars’ Revenge and Rocksmith. Rocksmith was cool we got to plug a real guitar into an Xbox or PlayStation and it was like Rock Band or Guitar Hero with a real guitar. We worked on a lot of stuff from 2008 and 2009 and 2010 that unfortunately never saw the light of day because of the securities crisis at the time, and the economic issues that everybody had, you know, especially out in California. So, you know, all of the game publishers — well, not all of them — most of the game publishers we worked with went bankrupt. Atari went bankrupt, we had a horror game at THQ that didn’t ever go past the prototype stage because they went bankrupt, so a lot of our partners in developing video games, the people that were providing the financing for video games went bankrupt while we were making these games. And, from my point of view, they went bankrupt because they made terrible decisions. So, then this new method of funding video games arose. Crowdfunding. Through my company Malibu Road Pictures, I was fortunate enough to be producer on Wasteland 2 and Torment: Tides of Numenera, which are two of the most successful video game crowdfunding projects in history, and I worked with Brian Fargo, from inXile, on those. Larry, meanwhile, shipped DC Universe Online, which is one of the largest, most successful licensed MMOs ever — and it was free to play, I think it had 20 million users. Larry’s career is very storied and goes back a quarter century, all the way to the Nintendo 64 and maybe the PlayStation 1. He shipped a game for just about every console for the past 25 years, since before I could drive. And so, he’s got a really interesting set of games that he’s worked on over the years, including one of the best Tony Hawk’s — Tony Hawk 4 — The Witcher, the Sacred Series, DC Universe Online, Fallout: New Vegas, Aliens, Neverwinter Nights, et cetera. So, I work with inXile for several years on Wasteland 2 and Torment — primarily on Wasteland 2 — and then started this process approximately 18 months ago of really kicking Apocalypse Now off as a project. We had been discussing it for years with America Zoetrope, because when everybody else pitched a shooter, we said, “No, it’s not a shooter, it’s a horror game. ” Because if you look at the movie, the protagonist only fires his weapons twice. He only kills a few people in the movie. It’s clearly not a movie about smashing a button faster than the AI and running 50 miles an hour with an M16. Makes sense. To me, you got to respect the traditions of the art form that you’re working in. And I think that what needs to be disrupted most about the game industry is that it is becoming technologically mature, but not fully creatively mature yet. And I think you can see that with — and I’m not interested in, we’re not competing with anybody — we’re making a game that nobody else would make, for an audience that’s . Hollywood makes stuff for five of the fifty states. Movies made by marketing departments. Absolutely. It’s formulaic, it’s driven by a PL, a spreadsheet. I think that people make a better decisions than former toothpaste executives working off of a spreadsheet, right? You get a graduate from Brown, who has spent some time in the William Morris mailroom and did a week of cocaine, and they decide which combination of intellectual properties and people would make a good video game, and then that’s the thing that goes. It’s a terrible, inefficient way to greenlight stuff. That’s why Marvel has been able to make essentially the same movie with different costumes for years. Right. But at least Iron Man is fun when Robert Downey Jr. starts talking. I think that our job in making the Apocalypse Now video game is to do two things at once. We have to make a great game, that’s our number one job. But in order to do that, we have to disrupt the system of game finance and greenlighting by giving control to the people that are in the 45 other states that do not get consulted on which video games to make and how to make them, even though that’s the audience, and then we also have to respect what came before us and the aesthetic requirements of art and story and interaction that I think people are quick to discard because it is ideologically or professionally satisfying in the short run, rather than being the correct decision in the long run. I think a lot of the reason that you don’t see movies like Apocalypse Now — and video games like your description of the Apocalypse Now game — is that it’s uncomfortable. Vietnam was not a pleasant experience, and the themes in the movie are very unpleasant. Virtually every scene in that movie is, in some way, discomforting. Purposefully so. In an industry where the general philosophy seems to be “louder is better” — “Call of Duty in space,” right? — Right. How do you address the darkly complex world of the Vietnam War and the psychological horror of Apocalypse Now? Pablo Picasso said, “Good artists borrow and great artists steal,” and so, to me, as the director, my number one job is to not make the decisions that have already been made for me. And, so, if we look at Apocalypse Now, and watch it over and over and over again — and I’ve probably watched it up to 70 times at this point — it tells us how to make the game. It tells us that it’s got to be first person, because like you say, it’s about psychological horror. And so, if we’re going to achieve psychological engagement with the protagonist of the story, it needs to be in first person. It needs to be a survival and horror experience, which is like the war in Vietnam and like the movie. These are experiences where, for example, estimates vary, but you’re throwing fifty thousand to two hundred thousand rounds of lead down range per KIA. That doesn’t sound a lot like your typical arcade shooter. That sounds a lot more like a survival and horror game in . It does. You’re creeping around the jungle. And then there’s Captain Willard, who’s obviously incredibly important, who has a personal journey that he goes on up the river as he takes on this mission. And that tells me that it’s a game, that you create your own version of Captain Willard. You design him how you see the world, and how you see yourself moving through that world, and then you interact with the characters in the world in the way you choose to do so. If you intend to move through the world in a more violent fashion than Captain Willard did in the move, that’s your choice. If you want to do recon on the huey during the air cavalry’s raid on Charlie’s Point, you’ll have that choice. If you want to be stealthy and sneak around and recon the jungle more, and make it about avoiding conflict rather than seeking it out, that’s your choice. If you want to develop good relations with the crew of the Erebus, which is the name of the boat, the PBR, “the Patrol Boat River,” named Streetgang, then you can have different relationships with them than Captain Willard had with them in the movie. And, spoiler alert — some of those crew members die and some of them live in the movie, but in the game which ones die and which ones live and whether they all survive or not is going to be up to you. And, again, this is a spoiler for the movie, Captain Willard is sent on a mission to terminate Colonel Kurtz’s command with extreme prejudice. And you are given that same mission. And there’s literally dozens of ways that you can complete that mission, but you also can reject the mission. The game wouldn’t be the game that we intend to make if you had to complete your mission, because at the end of the day, all the greatest games put the steering wheel in the hands of the players. Right. I think that a crucial point of the movie is his personal decision about completing the mission. Yeah, and how to go about it. So, we’ve talked about why the game needed to be survival horror, and why it needed to be a game. How far does that go? Can you complete the entirety of the game without killing anyone at all? Yes. A lot of people will appreciate that. There are a lot of people, myself included, that enjoy finding ways to subvert a given scenario. It’s about control of the experience and the story, right? Many, I think, creatively immature game designers and directors impose their will on the story of a game because everybody has something that they want to say. And that’s okay … if you’re making a movie, or writing a novel. Because those are both passive, observational experiences. Right. Yeah, in a video game it’s about what the player does, not about what you do. So anytime we can make our data structures or our gameplay or anything in a more open fashion that allows the player to have more control over it, we will do so. And we won’t care that you can do things that are outside the perimeters of what we expected. We want that to happen. That’s called emergent gameplay, and it’s the best kind of gameplay. It’s no secret that I am a total sucker for emergent gameplay design philosophy. There is nothing else like the sheer sense of agency that it offers players. There’s this great from DayZ, which is a zombie open world survival horror experience in early access — Hell, I don’t know if they’ve ever finished the game. But it’s a game where you can, your character can die and you can lose all of your stuff. And it’s a game where you’re supposed to collaborate and cooperate with your fellow players to defeat the zombies, you know? I’m sure it was inspired a little bit by The Walking Dead, would be my guess. And this one guy goes and gets 25 or 30 players to pile into this bus that he’s driving, and he’s like, “We’re gonna go get ’em, we’re gonna go get ’em, we’re gonna go get ’em,” and he gets everybody into the bus and he drives up this mountainside road, and drives the bus off a cliff and kills them all. [laughing] Everybody loses their stuff, they’re all screaming as they go down in the bus, right? This is totally not intended to be a part of the game, but it’s one of the most famous videos from the game. You know, similar experiences that players have with games are doing speed runs of games — Fallout 1 you can complete without exploits in about 16 minutes, even though the game is nominally hours long, depending on how much stuff you do. And the same’s going to be true of Apocalypse Now. If you want to just jam upriver in the PBR Streetgang and skip all of the content and scenarios and stories and events along the way, call in an airstrike on Colonel Kurtz’s compound and call it a day, you can absolutely do that. Because Captain Willard had that choice in the movie to do it. Anything that Captain Willard had the choice to do, you will have the choice to do. And then, additional things. Because the movie — the theatrical release — is two hours and minutes long, Redux is three hours and forty or something. But the video game is 20 hours long. So, we’ll go to the theatrical cut, the Redux cut, the work print, the original screenplay, deleted scenes, Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and The Odyssey, to find that new content. We also set up a military advisor group composed of veterans that will help us create both authentic scenarios for the game but also maintain a sense of historical accuracy. Because in the war in Vietnam versus the Apocalypse Now movie, there are some errata because the movie was made years after the war in Vietnam ended and was released in theaters a decade after the year of the events in the movie. So, for a great simple example of that — I got two. One good simple example of that is that an M16A1 was issued to soldiers in the war in Vietnam up through 1969 with a 20 round magazine. And then, from late 1969 forward it was issued with a 30 round magazine. So, in the context of the time of the events of the movie, everybody should be using 20 round magazines. But in the movie, everybody’s using 30 round magazines, because it was shot in or or whatever. So, little details like that, we’ll ask ourselves and our veteran survivors, “Is it narratively significant?” If it is narratively significant, we’ll keep it. If it’s not narratively significant we’ll be historically accurate. Two other examples of that — a Huey airlifts the PBR Streetgang and drops it into the river, the mouth of the Nung River. A Huey can’t carry a PBR Streetgang, it’s above its airlift capacity. But we’ll keep that scene because that scene is narratively significant and I don’t think anybody really cares exactly how many thousands of pounds a Huey can lift, at least not for the purposes of this game. This isn’t a simulation. Then, here’s another example. Colonel Bill Kilgore calls for some “20 Vulcan” on that tree line. Well, he’s calling for a 20 mm Vulcan minigun, but those weren’t on Hueys in 1969. They were only on, I think Falcons, which were airplanes. Then, later, by 1977, they were on Cobras and Warthogs, but they just weren’t on Hueys. They were on gunships when the movie was being made, but they weren’t on gunships when the events of the movie are taking place. But what was on a huey gunship in 1969 was a 7. 62mm minigun, so we’ll have that instead of the 20. And again, it’s not narratively significant, so we’ll be historically accurate where we can be. That’s, you know, a lot of the stuff, but I think there’s a process to all of this. And instead of the process, to me product always follows process, and we have to have fun while we’re making the game, otherwise the game won’t be fun. I think you can tell with many of the shooter releases, that the development teams are bored. Yeah, they’re just like, “Oh, man, I’ve made this game seven times, do we have to really make it again?” Right. But people want to keep jamming things out while they’re making money. But if it was just about making money, I’d go to Wall Street, or I would have gone and been a lawyer in Texas, you know? Those are more directly connected to money. I make studio games and movies because it’s fun, and this is a good example of the kind of choice responsibility that I think we have to the players in terms of giving them choices and, in doing so, being true to the original motion picture. Apocalypse Now is loosely inspired by Heart of Darkness. In Heart of Darkness when Marlow goes upriver and meets Kurtz, he actually convinces him to come back down the river with him. He doesn’t kill him, he doesn’t airstrike him — well they wouldn’t have airstrike in the 1890s anyway — but he convinces him to come back with him. And so, to us, when confronting the Colonel, the player should have at their fingertips all of the potential options that Captain Willard and his direct inspiration from Heart of Darkness would have. Apocalypse Now straddles a unique line in regard to its violence. The movie doesn’t have a whole lot of truly graphic depictions of violence despite the setting. Yet what depictions there are — the joyous whooping of the soldiers as they raze a village comes immediately to mind — are jarring. Which is probably why it didn’t win the Oscar in 1980, and Kramer and Kramer [sic] beat it, and I don’t think anybody watches Kramer and Kramer anymore. Mediocre Meryl Streep movie beats Apocalypse Now for Oscar in 1980. I think because it has scenes like that. Because it is not politically correct, and fortunately I am not politically correct. So, the direction of this game will remain not politically correct. And it will be a better game for that. That’s one of the reasons we have to step outside of the traditional Hollywood publishing system and do something a little disruptive in the initial announcement and creation of this game. To keep it from becoming sanitized. Right, it’ll be sanitized if it just goes through the corporate system. And it won’t be an Apocalypse Now game anymore, it’ll just be some silly shooter. And so, to keep it from being sanitized, to keep it true to its original mission, is, I think … Well, first off, I’m glad to be the guy who gets to do it. And I’m excited that we are doing it. I think it’s important for art, it’s important for games as they move toward virtual reality, and it’s important for Hollywood — it’s even important for movies that we get back to a place where we create interactive and linear stories that are not afraid of telling the truth. Because the truth is always the best story. Even if sometimes it’s a scary one. It is a scary one, right? You know, Colonel Bill Kilgore in Apocalypse Now, is based on real soldiers. Colonel Stockton, and I believe Hagworth. But also at the same time, the Hollywood version, the Rambo version of getting shot and flying back on wires and stuff, you know, that’s not the way people die when they get shot. And so, you know, I think we’ll strive for authenticity and specificity in that regard, and we’ll certainly rely on our military advisor group for guidance there. One of our senior writers, Ryan Plachetti, served in the US Army and served in Iraq. And I’d like to see most, if not all, of our writing team, other than Rob Auten, our head writer, be veterans because they will have a touch to the experiences that we’re talking about. There’s two, I think, points that are worth making that spin off of this. Number one, for every bit of horror that is present in Apocalypse Now, there’s also humor, especially in Redux. You know, they steal Colonel Kilgore’s surfboard, he comes in in hollering over the PA from the Huey to get it back. That’s the next thing I was going to ask about. Apocalypse Now’s humor is sparse, and what’s there is pitch black. Right. A lot of “gallows humor. ” And that, I think, is one of the reasons why service members and veterans enjoy the movie. Because it doesn’t shy away from that part. There’s the part where the guy flies by on the other patrol boat from the Erebus and moons everybody on the boat. And that kind of, you know, vulgarity and humor in a war zone is nothing because you’re sitting there in life or death situations. Then there’s a lot of nothing in between, and a lot of waiting. So, naturally a bunch of guys in that environment are just going to cut up, you know? It expresses itself some in Colonel Kilgore’s character. I think that’s a really interesting — to me, Colonel Kilgore is as interesting as Willard and Kurtz. Colonel Kilgore is, when he says, “Someday this war is going to end,” you hear the guy from Indiana. Instead of the war leader that he normally is while we watch him. I think that gets at the duality of human nature, which is also a quote from General Corman — named for the director Roger Corman — super low budget movie producer and director from the sixties who got Mr. Coppola his start and got Jack Nicholson his start and got Robert Downey Jr. ’s dad his start. A lot of the famous directors you know and have heard about got their start from Roger Corman’s tiny production budget zany movies. Gonzo movies, maybe before the term “gonzo” was coined. So, General Corman says, “There’s a conflict in every human heart between the rational and the irrational, between good and evil, and good does not always triumph over evil. ” I think that each significant character in Apocalypse Now responds to that reality by making different choices. Kilgore chooses to adopt a persona to literally have a glow around him and to have fun leading his men into battle because he both honestly believes that that is the best way to keep the most number of his men alive and to win the battle each time as decisively as possible, and he has fun doing it. That duality is inherent in, I think, every character in the movie. Willard says it in the hotel room. He says, “When I was in the jungle, I wanted to be back here, and when I was back here, I wanted to be back out there. ” And he is an assassin. What we know about Captain Willard is sketchy, his backstory is limited, so the players will have a lot of latitude in creating the backstory of the character. Captain Willard enlisted at 19, which means he was a mustang promotion because he’s a captain by the events of the movie. He’s a assassin, because he admits that he undertook six assassination missions prior to the events of the movie. He’s also been trained by General Corman, Colonel Lucas, and the mysterious CIA officer played by the assistant director, Jerry Ziesmer. He is given what is probably, almost certainly — he is given what is certainly the most controversial, the most secret, the most dangerous mission of the entire war of Vietnam in the world of AN. He’s being sent upriver to “terminate,” euphemistically, an American colonel in his own army, who is, in fact, a member of the 82nd Airborne, just like he is. And so, if Captain Willard is entrusted with this mission, we have to assume that only one of the best and most serious and most dangerous assassins available to the special operations group would be entrusted with that mission. And so, that’s the point from which you’ll be able to create your character, is that this guy is the very serious individual in terms of capabilities. And we don’t necessarily know the full extent of those capabilities. Willard says, six people I’m sure of because I killed them when they were close enough to breathe their last breath in my face, and we see him do that, spoilers, with Chief. Chief is clearly going to die when Willard kills him, but he’s not dead yet, and Chief turns on Willard and Willard eventually puts Chief down, and does it face to face. And that’s, again, one of his own soldiers. So, I think because Martin Sheen has such a natural likability to him — I mean, he was the president in The West Wing, right? — and everybody loves Martin Sheen because he’s got that natural likability, he pushes against the written reality of Captain Willard in a positive way. It makes it and more interesting and more dynamic. That kind of push and pull, we want to give now to the players, because what you choose to do in a video game says absolutely nothing and everything at the same time about your real life. It’s escapist entertainment, but what you choose to do — what entertains you — has something to say about what kinds of stories entertain you, and about what kinds of stories you want to tell, because we’re getting to the point where just as many people watch people play video games, as play them, And I think by 2019 and 2020 that’ll be even more true, especially with VR and better streaming technologies and video capture becoming more and more advanced, and hard drives getting larger, hard drives become solid state drives so video capture and high resolution becomes easier for every single player. I think, in the full realization of this game, millions of people will play it, but millions of people will watch it be played by those millions of people. Like I said, returning to the oral storytelling tradition of The Iliad and The Odyssey, 3000 years ago, but in reverse. That’s the most exciting part to me. And a lot of this is kind of ’ and as a guy from Texas sometimes I like to boil it down to just brass tacks: It’s a game like STALKER, like Fallout: New Vegas, like Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, like Hitman: Blood Money, and you’re going to create a character that travels through a world, you’re going to navigate that world in an exploratory way, and make choices about how you deal with the obstacles and the conflicts and the secondary objectives that are the choices you want to make, rather than the choices the game designers want you to make. I want you to play the game however you want to play it, and I want people to break the game. Not even kidding. Right? A lot of game designers would be horrified at that, but I want you to go out there and find the edges of the game, and break it, push it to the boundaries, push it to the limits, and see where you can take it. Because where hundreds of thousands or millions of people can take it is going to be a lot farther and a lot wilder and a lot more interesting of a ride than where just we can take it. This is really a very exciting project, and your approach to it is definitely something much different than we’ve typically seen from the games industry. I think that this project — I’m a director on Apocalypse Now the video game — so my number one job is to make the game great. Historically, I’ve been a producer and an executive, and I think that this project is part of a larger opportunity for the people of the United States of America and the other countries around the world to take back the creation of their culture in a disruptive fashion. And that is equally important as one individual game. As a director, it’s not going to distract me from my job of making the game great. But it is part and parcel with how we’re announcing and delivering the game to the public. The people are going to drive the decisions. We’re engaging in a crowdfunding process so there are thousands and thousands of people who are the boss. That’s a much better situation to be in, because fans of either the movie or the game, or both, thousands of them that get involved with the community at an early process, an early stage in the process, will never ask us to do something dumb. They want us to make it as great as it can possibly be, and everything that they want it to be, and so they won’t ask for the silly things. They don’t need us to make quarterly numbers, and that part of this dynamic in this process is secondary to making the game great, but it’s almost as important. And it’s going to be a process that we’ll have a lot of fun with. I mean, I already have a ton of fun in the portion of being the director of this game, when I go on a thousand different Facebook posts and riff with tens of thousands of people and hear what they say about what they’d like to see. At the end of the day, I can do my job as a director, and do it well, but nothing will substitute for an entire grassroots army of people saying what it is they want to see in the game. Collectively, they will be much more accurate at decision making than an executive board or a production team or anything else. And obviously, there’ll be more ideas that people and individuals in the community and in the crowd and on the team come up with than we can ever implement. But sifting through that is fun finding the parts that “Oh yeah, that’s actually a really really cool idea, we should do that. ” And yeah, this other thing that we were planning is dumb. “We shouldn’t do that, because everybody hates it. ” So, that’s freeing in a lot of ways. It allows us to focus on the primary objectives and not worry about guessing a bunch. There’s very little guesswork involved in this project, and I’m fortunate enough to be at a point in my life and professional existence and creative career where I feel no compulsion to prove my worth to the world. Makes sense. So, if the greatest idea in the video game comes from team member number 10, 000 of the backer community, great. That’s fantastic. I’m not the guy here to come up with all the cool ideas. I’m here to direct a great video game. Do you think that the games industry as a whole is shifting in the direction of the indie scene? Yes. 100%. I think what we’ve seen so far with some websites is simply version 1. 0 we’re just through the phase of crowdfunding, and we haven’t hit the next phase of it. But I think it’s fundamentally the way that most entertainment decisions will be made in the future. I think video games will be dictated by the people, I think movies will be dictated by the people, and I think we will get much better entertainment because of that. A major publisher would never allow you the freedom to make the game you’re making. Right. If you drop $100 million on a project but you’ve still got to make the board of directors and the CMO and everybody happy and feel safe and not worried about the press and all this other stuff, you’re not going to get very far with $100 million. But, with a team that’s fearless and a crowd of people that back the message of the game with a very reasonable budget, we can go anywhere in the world. So when can people get their hands on this game? So, if you’re a backer, $1250 or above, we will give you the prototype no later than Q1 of 2018. So, by like February or March of 2018, maybe as early as December 2017 it’s a little hard to predict the earlier dates and dates. But that’s the first milestone. If you back the game at $155, you get the early access in around August thru October we’re comfortable promising October 2019, but it could be a little earlier than that. If you back the game at $95, you get the Alpha of the game in February 2020. If you back the game at $65, you get the game beta in the summer of 2020, and if you just want to pledge $25, which is 60% off the retail price which would be about $60, you get the game in October of 2020. And so, there’s a series of releases depending on your level of financial engagement with the budget. The nice thing about the way we’ve got our website set up is that it’s free to pledge. We don’t charge you anything when you pledge. We do not run your credit card, and you will only be charged your pledge if we raise the entire budget. That neutralizes a lot of the nonsense and risks of crowdfunding 1. 0, which is guys in my shoes going out and overpromising on deadlines and budgets in order to get people excited enough to fund things in 30 days. We don’t have to do that. Like I said, at the top, the truth is always the best story, and it’s always also the best marketing. And, so, we’re just being totally transparent. The budget is exactly what we say it is, the timeline is exactly what we say it is, we are certain of every element of it. You know, the mysteries are more in how we get there each step of the way, what our particular journey up the river is, and what the peoples’ journey up the river is as they make the game with us, and what all happens next. And that’s going to be a fun experience in and of itself. Speaking of pledges, you guys have pledge levels from $25 all the way to $1 million. Well, I figure there are some fans of Apocalypse Now in this world who might be interested in backing Apocalypse Now for a million dollars, instead of buying a Ferrari. If I had a spare million lying around, it sounds like a fun package. There’s a lot of stuff in that reward tier. We give you like 110 or 120 copies of the game, first off, but one of the more interesting things we do is — if you want, and I presume you would want it if you were a million dollar backer — we will come to your house and we will build a virtual reality video game equivalent of a home theater in your house that is Apocalypse that uses real props from the movie, with a specially designed rig to run the game, and it will truly be a shrine to the Apocalypse Now experience, which like I said, is an experience not just about today or 2020, but tracks back 40 years, tracks back to Heart of Darkness in 1899, and tracks back 3000 years to Homer’s The Odyssey. So, that, I think, is a one of a kind — and I believe in the million dollar tier, there’s at least seven or eight can’t get anywhere else, rewards. Whether it be Colonel Kilgore — there’s two extant copies of the actual death cards that Colonel Kilgore uses in the movie. The million dollar tier backer would get one of those. And that’s a movie prop that is, I have no idea what it would be worth if you were to auction it off as a thing. So, there’s real value in there, and I think it’s a unique opportunity. And so are all the — we call them the “advisor tier” pledges in honor of the military advisors that were in Vietnam, prior to the major hostilities, so the “advisor tiers” range up from a reasonable expenditure of money that’s equivalent to someone who’s a dedicated MMO player or does a significant amount of microtransactions in a game, you know? We have like a $500 one, a $1250 tier, those are a lot of money to just pay for a single video game, but if you think about this process as being something where you’ll be entertained over the course of four years in a variety of ways, both on the website and through the game, and by getting versions of the game over the years, I think it starts to make a lot of sense in terms of structuring the price for those kinds of things at those levels. If you were a World of Warcraft subscriber, you were paying that subscription every month for years. And we intend to provide the same level of entertainment to our team, which is the way we refer to our community, because I think Apocalypse Now, the community is a team. When you back the game, you’re not joining the “community” we’re not going to have a drum circle. You’re joining a team. And if you join the discord chat for Apocalypse Now, it’s called Red Team, and you’re a member of it. And your voice is just as important as anyone else’s in the making of this game. That is a pretty novel approach to addressing a game’s community. Yep. This is a team that is driven by the people. We’ve got an event with the military advisors and the game team coming up in the not too distant future. And then, at E3 and ComiCon we’ll obviously be doing stuff. I don’t know if we’re going to do this, or even if the city of Los Angeles or the Department of Homeland Security would let us, but I want to fly a Huey over E3 blasting “Ride of the Valkyries” and land it in the convention center parking lot, and have Playboy USO dancers hop out of it rather than buying a booth on the E3 floor. Wow. That would definitely make an impression. If we didn’t want to do things like that, we’d be the wrong people to make an Apocalypse Now game. Thank you for your time. It’s been great to talk to you, and I’m definitely looking forward to seeing how the game turns out. Follow Nate Church @Get2Church on Twitter for the latest news in gaming and technology, and snarky opinions on both. | 0fake |
WATCH: GOP Governor Gets Mic Shut Off, Kicked Off of Interview By Morning Joe Co-Host | Republican governor Rick Scott of Florida had a big smirk on his face and was talking with confidence during an interview with Morning Joe co-host Joe Scarborough. The fun Scott seemed to be having abruptly ended when Scarborough asked him one simple question: Would you tell your friend Donald Trump that he should walk back his statements that Muslims, that Islam, hates America? Do you think Muslims in the state of Florida hate America? Scarborough was referencing Trump s recent statement that Muslims hate America. Not only did Rick Scott refuse to refute Trump s statement, but he dodged the question multiple times, talking about how great his state is in terms of being a melting pot and other stupid statements. Scarborough pressed Scott again: I want you to answer the question! Do you personally think that Islam is a religion that hates America? Scott again refused to answer the question with more red herrings and continued to talk more about his state. No, no. That s not answering any questions, jumped in co-host Mika Brzezinski. She then cut him down, had his mic shut off and when Rick Scott attempted to speak again, it became clear his mic had been shut off. Back from commercial, Brzezinski stated to the viewers, That s just not what we do on our show. It was an amazing display of a journalist taking control of an interview. More importantly, Brzezinski sent a message that refusing to condemn hate speech is no different than actually spewing it when she kicked this idiot off the show.Watch Here: [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZI-gLvJePlQ] Featured image via video screenshot. | 1real |
Australia Legalizes The Cultivation Of Medical Marijuana | Carol Adl in News , World // 0 Comments
Australia is to allow individuals and business’s to cultivate medicinal cannabis crops under strict government license and guidelines in an effort to substitute imports with a domestic supply.
The recreational use of marijuana will however remains a criminal activity.
RT reports:
The commencement of the Narcotic Drugs Amendment Act 2016 on October 30, 2016, marks a milestone for Australia’s medicinal cannabis prospects. The new regulations allow for the licensing of cannabis cultivation and the production of cannabis and cannabis resins for medicinal and scientific purposes. RELATED CONTENT British Government Admits Marijuana Has ‘Medicinal Value’
Until now, it has been difficult for patients to access medicinal cannabis products from overseas sources,” Federal Health Minister Sussan Ley said in a statement released on Sunday.
“These new laws change that situation by providing for a domestic supply of medicinal cannabis products that are not readily available for import.”
However, while pharmaceuticals will gain an advantage from the new law, recreational pot smokers are left disappointed, as consuming marijuana still remains a criminal activity.
“I want to emphasize that the changes to the Narcotic Drugs Act do not decriminalize cannabis for recreational use,” Ley said.
Under the act, those companies ready to grow their weed plants must comply with state and territory drug legislations which would allow companies to classify their harvest in accordance with the Therapeutic Goods Administration.
To hold a license for cannabis production, business will need to pass “strict fit and proper persons requirements and other legislative tests relating to security.” It is left up to individual states and territories to award licenses and outline the types of cannabis plants that can be cultivated and the quantities that can be produced. | 1real |
What Are Saponins? Discovering Their Health Benefits | in: Natural Medicine Saponins are naturally occurring plant glycosides; which is to say they are phytochemicals — chemicals found in plants. They possess soap-like qualities and produce a lather when mixed with water. [ 1 ] Over one hundred families of plants contain saponins and there are more than eleven classes of them including dammaranes, tirucallanes, lupanes, hopanes, oleananes, taraxasteranes, ursanes, cycloartanes, lanostanes, cucurbitanes, and steroids. [ 2 ] It’s believed many other varieties remain undiscovered. The word saponin is derived from sapo , Latin for “soap.” True to its name, the root of the Saponaria, or soapwort plant, has been traditionally used as soap. [ 1 ] Saponins offer tremendous health benefits. Studies have shown they may support the immune system , promote normal cholesterol levels, and support overall wellness. [ 3 ] Why Are Saponins Beneficial? Saponins have a unique chemical structure that produces foam when mixed with water, just like a detergent. And, also like detergent, can bind with water as well as fats and oils. This means that, in the digestive tract, saponins produce an emulsification of fat-soluble molecules. Specifically, they bind to bile acids and help eliminate them from the body, preventing cholesterol from being reabsorbed. You might even say saponins “wash away” various toxins. What Are the Health Benefits of Saponins? The unique chemical structure allows them to offer a number of prospective health benefits. It’s believed they have a favorable effect on cholesterol, can help boost the immune system, have an antioxidant effect, and may even support bone strength. Saponins and Cholesterol Saponins seem to help promote normal cholesterol levels. The body uses cholesterol to produce the bile necessary for digestion. They bind with bile and prevent cholesterol from being reabsorbed back into the bloodstream; rather, it’s simply excreted. Many cholesterol medications operate in the same way. The cholesterol-lowering effect of saponins has been known for decades. A 1977 animal study found that saponins may reduce cholesterol absorption. [ 4 ] A separate study found that giving a certain saponin extract to rats with high cholesterol reduced “bad” (LDL) cholesterol without affecting “good” (HDL) cholesterol. [ 5 ] Saponins Boost the Immune System In nature, plants rely on saponins as a mechanism to fight parasites. Similarly, when consumed by humans, they provide a similar defense against harmful organisms . One study demonstrated this action against Candida cells, specifically. [ 6 ] In another study, a specific type of saponin was observed to have antimicrobial activity that favorably influenced oral health. [ 7 ] Their ability to act as a broad, frontline shield reduces the burden on the immune system. Saponins and Cancer Saponins have several qualities that act against cancer cells. In particular, some have an antioxidant effect [ 8 ] and may be directly toxic to cancer cells. [ 9 ] Cancer cell membranes have cholesterol-type compounds. Like cholesterol, saponins are able to bind with these compounds and disrupt the proliferation of cancer cells. According to an article published in the Journal of Nutrition , saponins from soybeans may slow the growth of cancer cells. [ 10 ] Other studies have reported having induced the death of cancer cells and slowed tumor growth. [ 11 ] It’s important to realize that most of the research into the effects of saponins on cancer cells has been preliminary and involved specific enzymes, proteins, or other components of saponins extracted in specific ways and matched against specific cancer cells under specific situations. In other words, it’s not quite as simple as eating a handful of soapberries and thinking it will cure cancer. Other Health Benefits of Saponins Investigations into saponins have yielded a number of other, interesting revelations about their qualities. Preliminary research from a 2010 study concluded that saponins from Terminalia arjuna (arjun tree) may offer a therapeutic benefit for kidney or urinary stones. [ 12 ] In a 2015 issue of Natural Products Research , it was noted that, in the past ten years, several preclinical reports have suggested that they may offer hope as a natural solution for depression . [ 13 ] Other positive qualities include supporting Kupffer cells in the liver and encouraging normal detoxification. Saponins found in oats and spinach support digestion by accelerating the body’s ability to absorb calcium and silicon. In animal studies, saponins have been found to promote balanced blood sugar and support normal bone density. [ 14 , 15 ] Where to Find Saponins Saponins are a component in over a hundred different types of plants and foods including beans, chickpeas, peanuts, quinoa, and soy. They exist in nightshade vegetables like tomatoes. Herbs like ginseng, Tribulus terrestris , jiaogulan , bupleurum root , osha , and collinsonia also contain saponins. Saponins are common in food products, often added as an emulsifier. Some carbonated beverages like root beer rely on saponins extracted from yucca and quillaja to produce a foamy head. The berry shell from the soapberry plant can be used as a natural laundry detergent . The hard shell, which resembles a nut, releases saponins when it absorbs water, acting as a detergent to release grime, dirt, and oil from clothing. Have you used saponins in any way? Do you have an experience or thought to share? Leave a comment below and add to the conversation. References | 1real |
BREAKING: TRUMP Just Made A HUGE Announcement…Proving He’s The Only Candidate Who Truly Believes #BlackLivesMatter | Hillary pretends to care about the Black community. If she cared so much, why is she so willing to carry out the legacy of black genocide by Planned Parenthood founder and white supremacist Margaret Sanger? If she really cared about the Black community, why is she not fighting taxpayer funded Planned Parenthood abortion clinics on every inner-city corner in America? Planned Parenthood is the largest abortion provider in America. 78% of their clinics are in minority communities. Blacks make up 12% of the population, but 35% of the abortions in America. Colored people are like human weeds and are to be exterminated. Margaret Sanger, Planned Parenthood founderDonald Trump made a bold move today that proves his commitment to the Black community. Trump issued a call to make permanent the Hyde Amendment that bans almost all federal taxpayer funding of abortions and is credited with saving the lives of over 1 million Americans from abortion. Trump- s call comes as Hillary Clinton is campaigning in reversing Hyde and forcing Americans to fund free abortions for women with their tax dollars.Every year, Congress is forced to fight the battle to protect Americans from being forced to pay for abortions with their tax dollars. Democrats annually fight the pro-life budget provision and hope they can eventually reverse it should they take control of both the White House and Congress.That has led to pro-life groups calling to the adoption of a permanent law putting Hyde in place long-term and making it more difficult for pro-abortion forces to reverse. Today, Trump announced his support for such a law.The call for banning taxpayer funding of abortions comes in a new letter from Trump. Trump commits to a new policy: Making the Hyde Amendment permanent law to protect taxpayers from having to pay for abortions. Hillary Clinton s unwavering commitment to advancing taxpayer-funded abortion on-demand stands in stark contrast to the commitments I ve made, Trump writes, to advance the rights of unborn children and their mothers when elected president. Via: Life News | 1real |
New Trump Comments Confirm That Bannon Could Be On His Way OUT (DETAILS) | There have been weeks of reports that White House Chief Strategist Stephen K. Bannon and Senior Adviser and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner have been at each other s throats. Reportedly, the infighting is so bad that White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus had to moderate a meeting between the two so that they could call a truce. Now, new comments from Donald Trump suggest that he s not so hot on Bannon these days, and if it comes down to it in a knock down, drag out, Bannon v. Kushner fight, Kushner will definitely emerge the victor.Michael Goodwin of the New York Post asked Donald Trump if he was still confident in Bannon s abilities, and for the first time, Trump didn t give a full-throated defense of his white supremacist Chief Strategist. In fact, he seemed to want to downplay the level of Bannon s influence in both the campaign and the White House. Trump told Goodwin: I like Steve, but you have to remember he was not involved in my campaign until very late. I had already beaten all the senators and all the governors, and I didn t know Steve. I m my own strategist and it wasn t like I was going to change strategies because I was facing crooked Hillary. When White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer was asked about the Bannon v. Kushner feud, he tried to say that the media was making too much of it: There s a lot of stuff that was overblown about this that makes it out into the media sometimes and gets a little more sensational than it really is. Of course, this directly contradicts Trump s comments to the New York Post. In addition to the aforementioned statements, Trump also said: Steve is a good guy, but I told them to straighten it out or I will. So, in other words, it looks like Bannon is on the chopping block. Perhaps the rest of the white nationalist Pepe brigade will be ousted with him if and when he goes. It s a shame that we have sunk to the level in 2017 of hoping to get avowed white supremacists out of the White House, but here we are. Murica.Featured image via Mario Tama/Getty Images | 1real |
What Happened to the FBI? | What Happened to the FBI? What Happened to the FBI? By 0 11
When FBI Director James Comey announced on July 5 that the Department of Justice would not seek the indictment of Hillary Clinton for failure to safeguard state secrets related to her email use while she was secretary of state, he both jumped the gun and set in motion a series of events that surely he […] | 1real |
VIOLENT DEMOCRATS Punch And Harass TRUMP Supporters…Burn Flags At Fundraiser [Video] | The left showed its true colors last night with serious violence and anti-American flag burning. Donald Trump held a fundraiser at the Minneapolis Convention Center that began and ended with violence and destruction. These people must not understand that punching people and burning American flags wins you ZERO support.It s one thing to be on opposite sides of an issue and opposite parties but THIS is shameful and hateful behavior by Hillary s henchmen.Protesters blocked the entrance hoping Trump couldn t get in: Then DURING THE TRUMP FUNDRAISER in Minneapolis, the crowd of Hillary supporters were banging on doors and windows as the crowd inside the convention center held their event but then the Trump supporters had to walk through a gauntlet to leave. You will be shocked to see the terrified Trump supporters being hit and yelled at:Some protesters got aggressive at the end of the night as Trump supporters left Minneapolis fundraiser. @StarTribune pic.twitter.com/gNcZGYhqBm Renee JonesSchneider (@reneejon) August 20, 2016TRUMP SUPPORTERS WERE PUNCHED, VERBALLY ABUSED AND HAD GARBAGE THROWN AT THEM:Trump supporters run gauntlet to get into Minneapolis Convention Center pic.twitter.com/Ax8lfdqIUR Jaime DeLage (@JaimeDeLage) August 20, 2016HILLARY SUPPORTERS BURNING THE AMERICAN FLAG:Flag burning outside the Minneapolis Convention Center as #DonaldTrump supporters leave event. pic.twitter.com/ZU7XSuTALL Jaime DeLage (@JaimeDeLage) August 20, 2016PROTESTERS JUMPED ON THE HOOD OF A CAR IN TRUMP S MOTORCADE:Protesters, earlier tonight, trying to stop #Trump s motorcade after his fundraiser in the convention center pic.twitter.com/UUguW2viZ1 Emma Sapong (@EmmaSapong) August 20, 2016 | 1real |
WATCH: NY FIREFIGHTERS HOLD Touching Flag Removal Ceremony After Commissioner Orders ALL U.S. Flags To Be REMOVED From Fire Trucks For INSANE Reason [VIDEO] | As progressivism gets more of a stronghold in America, patriotism is being strangled by the anti-American Left Fire commissioners in Upstate New York ordered a fire department to remove the U.S. flags that were mounted on its firetrucks because they said the display was a liability to the firefighters and other motorists.Fire Chief Tory Gallante with the Arlington Fire District in Poughkeepsie said the Board of Fire Commissioners told him Monday to remove the two flags, which were fastened to the engine and the ladder truck. Obviously, I was disappointed with their directive, he told The Washington Post.Gallante said that about 50 firefighters, veterans and members of the community came out Tuesday afternoon for a small, impromptu ceremony to properly take them down. The guys were upset about the decision and wanted to remove them with dignity and respect, he said.Firefighters flag removal ceremony can be seen here:Video from the ceremony shows the emergency response vehicles lined up outside the Arlington Fire District headquarters, where firefighters stood at attention.Both of the flags were taken down, properly folded and then handed to Gallante.Gallante added that he was not told to remove patriotic decals on the firetrucks.Joseph Tarquinio, president of the Arlington Professional Firefighters Association, said the union approached the fire chief months ago, proposing to pay for the flags and requesting permission to mount them.Gallante agreed, but he had conditions including that the flags must be safely and securely fixed to the firetrucks and kept clean and well-maintained.Tarquinio said the union purchased two 3-by-5-foot flags made to withstand high winds and had them properly installed by the fire station s own mechanic.Tarquinio said, in the past, the department had U.S. flags on the firetrucks and would take them down during the harsh New York winters. When the department got new equipment a few years ago, he said, the flags were not put back. So with everything going on in the country, we thought it was time, he told The Washington Post. It was our way to show support not for one particular sect but for the nation as a whole. The new flags had been flying with no known issues, Tarquinio said, when three of the five fire commissioners expressed concerns about liability, which Tarquinio called a gross overstatement. Officials said since the board s decision Monday night, the fire department has been flooded with phone calls and emails from veterans and others in the community who oppose the order. A rally for the flag has been organized for the weekend, according to the Poughkeepsie Journal. Washington Post | 1real |
Woman Facing Jail For Giving Water To Thirsty Pigs | Contact Us Woman Facing Jail For Giving Water To Thirsty Pigs Pigs have been known to courageously jump into water to rescue drowning children., but this woman is facing jail for giving water to pigs that were in "sever distress" , World // 0 Comments
Giving water to thirsty pigs on a hot day can now lead to jail time, as has been proven by a Toronto woman who is on trial and facing sentencing for doing just that.
Anita Kranjc tells her story :
On a scorching hot day in June 2015, I gave water to thirsty pigs on board a transport truck headed for the slaughterhouse. As the (now famous) video of the incident shows, the driver jumped out of the cab, telling me to stop. I replied with a reference to the Bible: “Jesus said, ‘If [they] are thirsty, give them water.’”
The driver shouted back, “These are not humans, you dumb frickin’ broad!”
He called the police, and now I’m on trial in a Canadian court for criminal mischief.
When someone is suffering, I believe it is wrong to look the other away. It doesn’t matter if the sufferer has two legs or four or asks for help in words we can understand or with body language that is just as easy to comprehend. Leo Tolstoy, an ethical vegetarian and one of my inspirations, wrote, “[W]e should take pity on animals in the same way as we do on each other. And we all know this, if we do not deaden the voice of our conscience inside us.”
The pigs I was trying to help on that fateful day were undoubtedly suffering. Crammed into a transport truck on a sweltering day, these helpless animals – covered with their own excrement, being crushed together and slowly suffocating from heat – stared at me through the trailer’s metal slats with their pleading eyes. As Dr Armaiti May, a veterinary expert, testified during my trial, some of the pigs were foaming at the mouth and in “severe distress”, appearing to breathe as quickly as 180 breaths per minute.
I think we have not only a right but also a duty to help suffering animals. Toronto Pig Save , the group that I helped start with my dog Mr Bean in 2010, has continued to give water to thirsty pigs to this day. Our approach is to collectively bear witness to ill-fated animals at the end of their miserable lives and hold weekly vigils outside slaughterhouses.
A slaughterhouse might seem like the last place that animal lovers would want to be, but for us – as for the Quakers, Greenpeace and similar groups – bearing witness is about being present at sites of great injustice. Our personal contact puts a face on the nameless numbers, to borrow from Charles Dickens, and helps people see animal victims as unique individuals who want to live.
There’s little doubt in my mind that if those were dogs in distress in that truck instead of pigs, my actions would be applauded and it would be the driver facing charges instead. This double standard should have everyone questioning the ethics of the meat, dairy and egg industry, our legal system and our food choices. Like dogs, pigs are friendly, loyal and sensitive animals who have a strong sense of self and intelligence. They are playful and affectionate: they love to snuggle. They feel love and joy, but also pain and fear. They possess protective feelings for their families and friends. Pigs have been known to courageously jump into water to rescue drowning children.
In Esther the Wonder Pig, a New York Times bestseller , Esther’s human dads attest to the porcine internet star’s big personality, her keen intelligence and her sense of humor. Our laws need to be changed to reflect this: all animals should be treated as thinking, feeling individuals under the law, because that is what they are. They are not property, nor cogs in the machine, with numbered tags slapped on their ears.
Humans need to recognize that we are also animals and that we are all interconnected. We are like animals in all the ways that matter – we feel pain, we suffer, we grieve, we are afraid of being killed and we get thirsty on a hot day. By showing people this, we hope we will reach their hearts so they will feel what animals feel. Then finally we will be able to end the horrific suffering at farms and slaughterhouses and shift towards a nonviolent plant-based economy.
We are all in this together, humans and pigs. I am, quite literally, because I am facing jail time for giving pigs some small comfort in their final moments. My trial resumes 1 November. The cruelty inflicted on pigs at animal farms and slaughterhouses touches all of us, by harming animals, by polluting the environment, by harming our health and our conscience when we consume the products of this suffering. By bearing witness to animals in distress, we discover the unity of life. | 1real |
U.S. House Speaker Ryan urges Republican unity on health bill | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan on Thursday urged fellow Republicans to back the party’s healthcare bill, promising additional actions to address conservatives’ concerns while allowing “tweaks” to the current measure. “This is the closest we’ve been to repealing and replacing Obamacare and ... it’s the closest we will ever get to repealing and replacing Obamacare,” Ryan told a news conference, adding that additional health-related legislation will move separately. | 0fake |
The GOP Is Sharing Conference Space With PERFECT Metaphor For Republican Party (VIDEO) | There are seldom those moments in life that seem so poetic, but the people sharing the space where the Republican congressional retreat is being held is pretty much the perfect metaphor for the embodiment of the GOP party platform.It s all happening at the Marriott Hotel at the Baltimore Harbor, and right down the hall from where Republicans are trying to put together strategies for the coming year that is where the Mid-Atlantic Monument Builders Association is holding their annual summit. And within the room where the Monument Builders are meeting, there is a huge sampling of headstones.How is this the perfect metaphor for the Republican party? So glad you asked.The GOP has spent nearly the past thirty years trying to make sure people have a rougher go at life than they could if they had a government that actually worked in their best interest. Instead of fighting for people to have greater access to health care, they ve been mercilessly fighting against broadened access and affordable coverage. They ve also been trying for decades to privatize social security instead of strengthen our existing government pension program that guarantees income for senior citizens who worked hard all their lives. They d prefer a system that relied on an unsteady market where people could, quite literally, lose everything. The GOP has also consistently tried to make it harder for low-income citizens to have access to Medicaid and food assistance programs. Not to mention the GOP s love for war and lust for sending American lives to die for causes still unknown.So, to see gravestones just steps away from where congressional Republicans are talking about ideas is absolutely perfect. Their ideas and plans for the people of this nation would lead to the early demise of several citizens. Kudos to whoever chose that space to hold the event, it s very telling of GOP policy. Video/Featured image: ABC | 1real |
FLASHBACK VIDEO Shows Leftist Media Members Praising Use Of “Nuclear Option” To Confirm (LIBERAL) Supreme Court Justices | With Senate Republicans poised to use the nuclear option to confirm Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch, will the liberal media hypocritically accuse them of a power grab? In 2013, when then-Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid did basically the same thing, he was cheered on in the studios of MSNBC and CNN.Back then MSNBC s Chris Hayes hailed it as an affirmative win for democracy, while his colleague Rachel Maddow blurted This is a huge freaking deal. This is like 3-inch headlines. This is like people who don t even care about politics really ought to care about this. Over on CNN, political analyst Paul Begala hailed the nakedly partisan maneuver by Reid as necessary, whining that Republicans had so abused the filibuster that Democrats can t take it anymore. And Begala s colleague Ron Brownstein approved of Reid s decision as a forward-thinking move: The idea of requiring a super majority for the president to appoint his nominees just is anachronistic. But the cable network news hosts and analysts weren t the only ones championing the nuclear option. On the pages of the Los Angeles Times, Reid s move was celebrated in a November 22 editorial Democrats bust the filibuster, and good for them. The Times editorial board crowed: We welcome this action not because it represents a comeuppance for arrogant Republicans but because filibustering presidential nominees is undemocratic and violates the spirit if not the letter of the Constitution, which says that the president shall appoint judges and other officials by and with the advice and consent of the Senate not by and with a supermajority of the Senate. The Times went on to call it a victory not just for the Democrats but for good government. Newsbusters | 1real |
FIREWORKS: TREY GOWDY Confronts Jeff Sessions at Congressional Hearing: ‘How do you restore people’s trust?’ [Video] | Trey Gowdy railed against the erosion of trust between the American people and the DOJ during a hearing before Congress today: I want to start with something that s very important to me, Gowdy began, and I think it s important to all people in this country of good conscience, irrespective of their political ideation, and that s the independence of the Department of Justice. In my judgment, 2016 and 2017 have been challenging years for the Department of Justice. Gowdy then went into the various legal procedures for charging citizens, including political players like Hillary Clinton and former FBI director James Comey. Mr. Conyers asked you whether or not it was appropriate for the president to weigh in on an ongoing investigation, Gowdy said. And of course, the answer to that is no. It is not appropriate. It s not appropriate in 2017. It wasn t appropriate when President Obama did it in the IRS targeting scandal. It wasn t appropriate when President Obama did it in the ongoing investigation into Hillary Clinton s server. It is never appropriate for a president to tell a Department of Justice what outcome it would reach. I just wish my friends on the other side of the aisle would have the same kind of outrage when President Obama did it as they do now. Then Gowdy asked a last question. How do you restore people s trust Republicans and Democrats confidence in a Department of Justice when it seems like different rules apply depending on who s in power? he asked.Attorney General Sessions gave a direct answer. Well, it s a good question and important question, Sessions responded. We intend to do our work, according to the established principles of the Department of Justice. We will not be infected by politics or bias. We will only make decisions we believe are right and just. We re not going to unlawfully use the department to advance a political agenda I am determined that when the years go by, that people will say this Department of Justice did not crumble. Read more: bpr | 1real |
Lift up your hearts, not your cell phones, pope tells priests, bishops | VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Francis on Wednesday chastised priests and bishops who take pictures with their cell phones during Masses, saying they should focus on God instead. The priest says lift up your hearts . He does not say, lift up your cell phones to take pictures, Francis told tens of thousands of people at his weekly audience in St. Peter s Square, referring to a communion prayer in the Roman Catholic Mass. In his improvised remarks, he called using cell phones during Mass a very ugly thing, adding: It makes me very sad when I celebrate (Mass) here in the piazza or in the basilica and I see so many cell phones held up. Not only by the faithful, but also by some priests and even bishops! The Mass is not a show ... so remember, no cell phones! he said, prompting laughter and applause from the crowd. Francis, the leader of the world s 1.2 billion Roman Catholics, has regularly urged the faithful to be more spiritual and his priests and bishops to be more humble. Shortly after his election in 2013, he said it pained him to see priests driving flashy cars and eager to use the latest smartphone. The pope is driven around in a simple blue Ford Focus and is not known to have ever used a cell phone in public since his election. | 0fake |
U.N. freedom of speech expert concerned about net neutrality | GENEVA (Reuters) - The U.N. s freedom of speech expert said on Wednesday he was concerned about the ramifications of a decision in the United States to roll back net neutrality, since it could lead to small and independent voices being drowned out on the web. Last week the U.S. Federal Communications Commission voted to repeal rules intended to ensure a free and open internet, setting up a court fight over a move that could recast the digital landscape. David Kaye, an American law professor and the U.N. Human Rights Council s independent expert on freedom of expression, said net neutrality, the idea that all internet traffic should be treated the same regardless of content, was essential. Net neutrality is a really, really important principle from the perspective of ensuring broad access to information by all individuals, Kaye told reporters in Geneva on the sidelines of the Internet Governance Forum. I don t want to say that tomorrow there will be a huge amount of censorship, but over the long term, combine this with the concentration of media in the United States and in most places around the world, I think we should be worried about the ability of smaller voices that often (find it) harder to get traction in the market. He said it would take years to know exactly what impact the U.S. move would have. My concern in the U.S. space is that over time the companies will make decisions based more on their business model than on the content of information and the breadth of information that people should have access to, he said. That s a long-term problem and that s why I m very, very concerned about the rollback of net neutrality. As companies blur the lines between providing the infrastructure and the content that makes up the internet, there is increasing risk of political pressure creeping in, Kaye said. We used to think of telcos being very separate from content providers. But there s a lot of convergence now. So one of the risks is as content and infrastructure are merged more, the pressures on both, which might be of a political nature ... might restrict certain kinds of coverage. | 0fake |
Taking A Stand: Disney Will Add Donald Trump To I... | ClickHole | Email
With protests erupting across the country this week and emotions running high, American companies are trying to make sense of how to react to a Trump presidential election win. But one major company has clearly made up its mind and just came down squarely in the anti-Trump camp in a big way: Donald Trump will be added to Disney’s Hall Of Presidents, but his animatronic figure will be able to feel pain.
Wow. Disney just showed that it does not pull punches when it comes to what the company believes in. Check out the press release they put out this morning:
“Disney prides itself on promoting inclusivity, empathy, and non-violence, which are values that Mr. Trump’s presidency threatens. That’s why when we eventually add him to our Hall Of Presidents exhibit in Disney World’s Magic Kingdom, his mechanical replica will bear the capacity to suffer horribly, and without limit. Being a company that caters to diverse families, we felt it was a moral responsibility to have Mr. Trump’s robotic counterpart be receptive to extreme thirst and burning sensations, while also being wired with the knowledge that it can never receive the sweet mercy of death. This is the best way for us to uphold the Hall Of Presidents tradition while also voicing our vigorous objection to the Trump administration.”
Given that Disney’s software makes the animatronic believe its bones are shattering each time it moves or speaks, this company clearly wants people to know it’s not onboard the Trump train.
Park visitors who feel similarly opposed to Trump’s presidency can rest assured that his Hall Of Presidents double will be designed to experience anxiety, so it’s always aware that more pain is coming. Although the machine will understand what joy is, its programming will never allow it to feel that.
And Disney’s not letting Trump off the hook there. The replicas for Abraham Lincoln and George Washington will even be reprogrammed to slap, scratch, and pry the fingernails off the animatronic Trump, which will respond to such painful stimuli by gasping, crying, screaming, vomiting, or a mix of all of these.
If that doesn’t send a powerful statement about where Disney stands politically, we don’t know what does.
It’s safe to say we won’t see the Trumps vacationing there anytime soon. Don’t share Disney’s disdain for a Trump presidency? You may be better off heading to Space Mountain instead of the Hall Of Presidents, because Disney has officially drawn the battle line right there. | 1real |
Montreal’s Pit Bull Ban Is Suspended Until Wednesday - The New York Times | A Canadian judge on Monday temporarily suspended a new Montreal law that would have prevented residents from adopting or buying pit bulls and would have required anyone who already owns one of the dogs to register the animal, the Associated Press reported. The regulations, approved last Tuesday, were drawn up after a woman was fatally mauled by a dog in June, and they were set to go into effect on Monday across all 19 boroughs in the Canadian city. The bylaw requires owners to pay higher fees for the animals than for bull types to go through a check and to keep a muzzle on the dogs outside, even in fenced backyards. “The safety and sense of security of Montrealers are a priority,” Mayor Denis Coderre said in a statement after the vote, which he said provided for more stringent control measures. “I was deeply shocked at the recent events involving dog attacks,” he added. “As a responsible administration, it was our duty to examine this issue closely and make the appropriate decisions. ” But opponents denounce the regulations, saying that they unfairly paint all pit bulls, and those dogs similar in appearance, as dangerous. Opposition council members, animal advocates and social media campaigns have protested, saying that the bylaw does not define “pit bull” and that it uses a approach that has not worked in Canadian cities before. “We call it panic ” said Sterling Downey, an opposition councilman with the Project Montreal party. The regulations are suspended until Wednesday as Judge Louis Gouin considers a request from the Montreal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals to throw them out, the Associated Press reported. The group filed a lawsuit on Wednesday against the city, saying it would seek to prevent the regulations from being enforced. It said that the bylaw would discourage adoptions and lead to more dogs being euthanized. The decision to enact the measure came after a Montreal woman was bitten and killed by a dog in June. A Montreal police spokesman, Benoit Boisselle, said a neighbor found the woman dead in her backyard. The police shot and killed the dog when they arrived because it was too aggressive for the officers to approach, he said in a telephone interview on Friday. He said he did not know the breed of the dog. With their blocky heads and square jaws, pit bulls have a fearsome reputation in popular culture. They have often been portrayed as overly aggressive toward humans, or fighters and guard dogs. The dogs known by the catchall phrase as pit bulls fall into four breeds: the American pit bull terrier, the American Staffordshire terrier, the Staffordshire bull terrier and the American bully. But pit bulls are also known as any dog with a blocky head and muscular build. Online, they are either vilified or defended. There are videos of pit bull fights, gruesome bite photographs and archives of attacks. Animal experts say that the dogs’ reputation is unfounded and that blame for aggressive behavior should fall on their handlers. “There is this idea that somehow they are unstable, relentlessly aggressive and treacherous,” said Bronwen Dickey, whose book “Pit Bull: The Battle Over an American Icon” also questioned the basis for the fearful reputation of the animals, such as that they have extraordinarily strong biting jaws and are prone to using them. “There is always this narrative that they turn on you, that they are unpredictable,” she said. The dogs are generally about 65 to 80 pounds. Centuries ago, they were bred to be used in slaughterhouses to prevent bulls from escaping, said Dr. Bonnie Beaver, a professor at Texas AM University’s veterinary medicine college. As terriers, they tend to be territorial and individualistic. “They are not more aggressive than any other dog,” she said in an interview. “But the terriers tend to have, I would call them, a shorter temper,” she said, meaning they switch “from their thinking brain to their emotional brain faster. ” “If the human owner doesn’t have the ability to prevent that switch into the emotional brain, then that dog is off on its own,” she said. “Most of the times when these bans come into effect, it is one or two very tragic events that involved big dogs. ” Harout Chitilian, a council member and the chairman of Montreal’s executive committee, said that since January 2015, there were 426 situations involving dog bites. Of the 362 cases in which the dogs could be identified, about half were pit bulls. “It was a very, very difficult debate, but we looked at the figures,” he said. “We had a choice to be even more harsh, to eliminate ownership, but we recognized that they are part of the family. ” But Mr. Downey noted that the dog in the June attack was registered as a “bulldog” and that there were no DNA tests to prove it was a breed of pit bull or a mixed breed. Certain breeds of dogs have also been banned in the United Kingdom, and in the United States the effectiveness of such laws is controversial because it is not clear whether they work, and they single out one type of animal. Other Canadian boroughs and cities, like Calgary, have tightened measures on animal ownership instead of instituting an outright ban. In Ontario, Ottawa has said it does not enforce the province’s ban, and Toronto is revising its ban to include dangerous dogs, but not those specific to a breed, Mr. Downey noted. | 0fake |
Julian Assange ’Enjoying’ Being One of Twitters’ ’Deplorables’ After Site Refuses to Verify Account - Breitbart | Twitter refuses to verify the official account of WikiLeaks’ founder and editor Julian Assange, despite his accumulation of over 100, 000 followers. [“This is absurd,” Assange tweeted on Wednesday, along with a screenshot of Twitter’s verification rejection. “We’ve been trying to verify this account since early October. ” @jack This is absurd. pic. twitter. — Julian Assange (@JulianAssange) March 14, 2017, @CoCoCousine @AssangeFreedom @jack We’ve been trying to verify this account since early October. — Julian Assange (@JulianAssange) March 14, 2017, Assange criticized Twitter’s verification standards, adding, “Twitter has binary class system with proximity to power represented by ‘blue tick’ insignia. I am enjoying being one of its deplorables. ” Twitter has binary class system with proximity to power represented by ’blue tick’ insignia. I am enjoying being one of its deplorables. — Julian Assange (@JulianAssange) March 15, 2017, As explained by Mashable, “Twitter typically verifies celebrities and accounts ‘determined to be of public interest’ with a tick,” letting users know that it is the real account of the individual or company. Though WikiLeaks’ account is verified, Assange has been repeatedly denied a verification badge on his own account of over 113, 000 followers. Breitbart Tech has reached out to Twitter for comment. Charlie Nash is a reporter for Breitbart Tech. You can follow him on Twitter @MrNashington or like his page at Facebook. | 0fake |
PUTIN Steals Famous President Bush Quote In Forceful Denial Of Russian Interference In U.S. Elections…Makes Surprising Announcement About Relations With U.S. | The funny thing is, we all know the media s obsession with Russia would never be happening if Hillary won the election. Where were all the rabid Russian conspiracy journalists when Hillary was selling them our uranium for favors? We re not fans of Putin, but any dummy can see that the left is clearly using Putin s alleged involvement in our elections as a means to destroy the legitimacy of President Trump s election Russian President Vladimir Putin has denied interfering in the U.S. elections, and he did it by using a famous quote from a U.S. president. Watch my lips, no, Putin said.The Russian strongman made the claim when asked point-blank whether Russia had interfered and whether any evidence to the contrary would get found.He invoked former President Reagan, although the Read my lips quote was actually used by his successor, George H.W. Bush, speaking at a CNBC event on Arctic issues.Putin said claims of Russian interference were lies used for domestic American politics.All those things are fictional, illusory and provocations, lies, Putin continued. All these are used for domestic American political agendas. The anti-Russian card is played by different political forces inside the United States to trade on that and consolidate their positions inside. Then he delivered a friendly message to U.S. audiences. We said on numerous occasions and I reiterate that we are confident And know for sure that opinion polls in the Unites States show that very many people are friendly towards the Russian Federation and I d like to tell these people that we perceive and regard the United States as a great power with which we want to establish good partnership relations. House Speaker Paul Ryan said Thursday in an interview with CBS News, We all knew Russia was trying to meddle with our election. And we already know right now they re trying to do it with other countries. Ryan continued: The world s super power, the American government needs to do everything we possibly can, not only to undercut what they re trying to do but to uncover what they re trying to do and help our allies prevent it from happening. Putin also said Thursday he is ready to meet with Trump if Finland hosts an Arctic summit. Finland is set to take over the rotating leadership of the Arctic Council.For entire story: Daily Mail | 1real |
Obamacare Enrollees Anxiously Await Supreme Court Decision That Threatens Their Coverage | “I’ve got my six-month, regular cancer checkup in June, and so I’m saying I hope they don’t come out with any kind of decision, just in case it’s bad news, until after,” Hines said. “You always get nervous, usually a day before or day of, going for a checkup. But I think I started a little more on the worrying ahead of time.”
Hines, 59, has been relying on health insurance purchased through the Affordable Care Act marketplaces to help cover the costs of those checkups. But she has the misfortune of residing in a state, Virginia, where the federal government is operating that marketplace. Because of that, she could end up losing her tax subsidy to help purchase coverage right at the time her health takes a dive for the worse.
The Supreme Court will issue a ruling this month on a lawsuit engineered by conservative activists alleging that a brief phrase in the law -- “exchange established by the state” -- means subsidies can only be provided to individuals residing in states that set up their own health insurance exchanges. Should the justices side with Obamacare's critics, Hines would be one of an estimated 6.4 million people in 34 states whose subsidies will disappear. Many will be forced to drop their health insurance because of heightened cost.
For someone like Hines, who has had breast cancer three times, most recently in 2009, this presents a Hobson's choice. She considers health care coverage essential and must get screenings twice a year to ensure her cancer doesn't come back. But she has little money to afford insurance on her own. A former public relations professional, she’s devoted her life to caring for her ailing, octogenarian mother, and currently works part-time as an educator at the aquarium near her home in Virginia Beach. Her low income qualifies Hines for a subsidy that cuts the price she pays by about half, to $200 a month.
“I could probably manage another year,” Hines said when asked if she could afford the coverage without the subsidy. She would have to draw down more of her retirement savings to pay for health care. But doesn’t have enough money to hold on to health insurance until she turns 65 and becomes eligible for Medicare, she said.
Hines was one of six people the Huffington Post featured in a report this March on the case surrounding Obamacare's subsidies. At the time, the Supreme Court was hearing oral arguments on the case and the prospect of those subsidies potentially disappearing was becoming less abstract for those in states with federally run exchanges. The clock is ticking even louder now. And so, we decided to catch up with those we interviewed to see how their circumstances, health and mental well-being has changed.
Lucas had an aortic aneurysm in 2010, so he has to keep monitoring his heart condition. Even though his most recent tests came up clean in May, Lucas knows the computed tomography (CT) scan he needs as part of his checkup every two years would cost him $11,000 without insurance, instead of $50 now. He also knows his prescriptions would run to $2,600 every three months rather than $65 with insurance. Lucas, who is self-employed, earns $25,000 to $30,000 a year, he said.
Lucas might be shielded from the ramifications of a ruling against the subsidy if Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf (D) persuades the GOP-majority state legislature to go along with his proposal to set up a state-run exchange. But as Lucas takes stock of the court decision to come, he's struck by what he sees as dramatically misplaced priorities among lawmakers in Washington.
“Billions of dollars in corporate welfare to oil companies and whatnot, you know, and that’s not a problem for them, but I’m a person who gets $2,400 a year in subsidies to help pay for my insurance -- and I pay almost three times that much in taxes, so it’s not like I’m taking them on the negative side,” Lucas said.
Blitz turns 33 on Monday. Since birth, he has dealt with aortic valve stenosis, meaning he has a heart valve that is too narrow. He recently received good news from his cardiologist that he can delay an expensive major operation he thought he’d need this year. But he will have to undergo a less serious procedure at a later date.
All this would be difficult to handle on its own. But it's compounded by the problems Blitz has had in navigating the health care law. He ended up with a plan he doesn't recall picking. He lost his subsidy of $30 a month even though his income level should qualify him for some tax credit. And he assumed that his home state would get rid of all Obamacare exchanges entirely if the court ruled against the subsidies (in fact, state Republicans have passed a bill saying that Arizona won't set up a state exchange. The federal one will remain regardless).
Were he to ultimately lose the subsidy, Blitz would figure out a way to pay for his insurance. He calls himself "fortunate" in that regard, compared to those who don't have savings to dip into or expenses to cut or friends to rely on. But Blitz's fortune -- if you want to call it that -- comes at a cost, and it underscores how the damage from a Supreme Court ruling for the plaintiffs extends beyond those who currently receive tax credits.
Without the subsidies, most of the low- and moderate-income people using the health insurance exchanges will exit the exchanges, leaving those with the greatest health care needs -- people like Blitz with medical conditions -- as an increasing share of the market. Because people with greater medical needs generate more medical bills, that would increase expenses for insurance companies, forcing them to increase premiums. Those higher premiums, in turn, would lead more people to drop coverage. In the industry, they call this a “death spiral.” | 0fake |
Exclusive: Returning Rohingya may lose land, crops under Myanmar plans | SITTWE, Myanmar (Reuters) - Rohingya Muslims who return to Myanmar after fleeing to Bangladesh are unlikely to be able to reclaim their land, and may find their crops have been harvested and sold by the government, according to officials and plans seen by Reuters. Nearly 600,000 Rohingya have crossed the border since Aug. 25, when coordinated Rohingya insurgent attacks on security posts sparked a ferocious counteroffensive by the Myanmar army. The United Nations says killings, arson and rape carried out by troops and ethnic Rakhine Buddhist mobs since late August amount to a campaign of ethnic cleansing against the Rohingya. Civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who has no control over the military, has pledged that anyone sheltering in Bangladesh who can prove they were Myanmar residents can return. Reuters has interviewed six Myanmar officials involved with repatriation and resettlement plans. While the plans are not yet finalised, their comments reflect the government s thinking on how Suu Kyi s repatriation pledge will be implemented. Jamil Ahmed, who spoke to Reuters at a refugee camp in Bangladesh, is one of many Rohingya who hope to go back. Describing how he fled his home in northern Rakhine state in late August, Ahmed said one of the few things he grabbed was a stack of papers - land contracts and receipts - that might prove ownership of the fields and crops he was leaving behind. I didn t carry any ornaments or jewels, said the 35-year-old. I ve only got these documents. In Myanmar, you need to present documents to prove everything. The stack of papers, browning and torn at the edges, may not be enough, however, to regain the land in Kyauk Pan Du village, where he grew potatoes, chilli plants, almonds and rice. It depends on them. There is no land ownership for those who don t have citizenship, said Kyaw Lwin, agriculture minister in Rakhine state, when asked in an interview whether refugees who returned to Myanmar could reclaim land and crops. Despite his land holdings, Myanmar does not recognize Ahmed as a citizen. Nearly all the more than 1 million Rohingya who lived in Myanmar before the recent exodus are stateless, despite many tracing their families in the country for generations. Officials have made plans to harvest, and possibly sell, thousands of acres of crops left behind by the fleeing Rohingya, according to state government documents reviewed by Reuters. Myanmar also intends to settle most refugees who return to Rakhine state in new model villages , rather than on the land they previously occupied, an approach criticized in the past by the United Nations as effectively creating permanent camps. The government has not asked for help from any international agencies, who are calling for any repatriation to be voluntary and to the refugees place of origin. The exodus of 589,000 Rohingya - and about 30,000 non-Muslims - from the conflict zone in northern Rakhine has left some 71,500 acres of planted rice paddy abandoned and in need of harvesting by January, according to plans drawn up by state officials. Tables in the documents, reviewed by Reuters, divide the land into paddy sown by national races - meaning Myanmar citizens - or Bengalis, a term widely used in Myanmar to refer to the Rohingya, but which they reject as implying they are illegal migrants from Bangladesh. Kyaw Lwin, the state minister, confirmed the plans, and said there was a total of 45,000 acres of ownerless Bengali land . Two dozen combine harvesters operated by officials from the agriculture ministry will begin cutting stalks this month in areas under military control. The machines will be able to harvest about 14,400 acres according to official calculations contained in the plans. It is unclear what will become of the remaining crop, but officials told Reuters they would try to harvest all the paddy, recruiting additional labor to harvest manually if necessary. An acre of paddy in Myanmar typically makes more than $300 at market, meaning the state will gain millions of dollars worth of rice. The harvested rice will be transported to government stores, where it would either be donated to those displaced by the conflict or sold, Rakhine state secretary Tin Maung Swe told Reuters by phone. The land was abandoned. There is no one to reap that, so the government ordered to harvest it, he said. Human Rights Watch (HRW) deputy Asia director Phil Robertson, said the government should at least guarantee that the rice would be used for humanitarian support and not for profit. You can t call a rice crop ownerless just because you used violence and arson to drive the owners out of the country, he said. Many refugees are fearful to return and are skeptical of Myanmar s guarantees. Those who do decide to cross back into Myanmar will first be received at one of two centers, according to government plans reviewed by Reuters, before mostly being relocated to model villages. International donors, who have fed and cared for more than 120,000 mostly Rohingya internally displaced persons (IDPs) in supposedly temporary camps in Rakhine since violence in 2012, have told Myanmar that they will not support more camps, according to aid workers and diplomats. The establishment of new temporary camps or camp-like settlements carries many risks, including that the returnees and IDPs could end up being confined to these camps for a long time, said U.N. spokesman Stanislav Saling in an emailed response. Satellite imagery shows 288 villages, mostly Rohingya settlements, have been fully or partially razed by fires since Aug. 25, according to HRW. Refugees say the army and Buddhist mobs were responsible for most of the arson. The government says Rohingya militants and even residents themselves burned the homes for propaganda. The hamlets where Rohingya farmers lived were not systematic , and so should be rebuilt in smaller settlements of 1,000 households set out in straight rows to enable development, said Soe Aung, permanent secretary at the Ministry of Social Welfare, Relief and Resettlement. In some villages there are three houses here, four houses over there. For example, there s no road for fire engines when fire burns the villages, Soe Aung said. Those who decide to cross back into Myanmar will first be received at one of two centers, according to government plans reviewed by Reuters. At the centers, officials said, the returnees will fill out a 16-point form that will be cross-checked with local authorities records. Immigration officials have for years visited Rohingya households at least annually for checks, photographing family members. For refugees who lost all their documents, the government would compare their photos to those that immigration authorities have on file, said Myint Kyaing, the permanent secretary at the Ministry of Labour, Immigration and Population. Officials will accept as evidence national verification cards handed out in an ongoing government effort to register Rohingya that falls short of offering them citizenship. The card has been widely rejected by Rohingya community leaders, who say they treat life-long residents like new immigrants. We are not going to go back like this, said Mushtaq Ahmed, 57, a farmer from Myin Hlut village now living in the Tenkhali refugee camp in Bangladesh, where Jamil Ahmed is also staying. If I can go back to my house, and get my land back, only then I will go. We invested all our money into those paddy fields. They are killing so many of us with swords and bullets, and killing the rest of us like this. | 0fake |
Video: Horsemen Ride into Texas Walmart | HOUSTON, Texas — A video shot by a Houston man while riding his blonde horse in a Walmart store is going viral. The video, posted to Facebook on Sunday, received nearly 2 million views. At least two mounted horses are shown coming from inside the store. [Woody Fields posted his video stating he was in “Walmart on a horse grocery shopping. ” The video shows him riding his horse up and down the aisles of the store while people looked at him with shocked expressions. (function( d, s, id) (document, ’script ’)) Walmart on a horse grocery shopping, Posted by Woody Fields on Sunday, March 19, 2017, Since posting the video Sunday, Facebook users viewed the trail ride 1, 735, 903 times as of this publication. Users shared the post nearly 32, 000 times, and 8, 400 people commented on the horse adventure. Following the short tour through the store, Fields exits the store through the front door and joins a fellow rider waiting outside. A short time later, a second mounted Walmart shopper can be seen exiting the same door. It is not known if the rider waiting outside had also ventured through the store with his horse. Several small children could be seen in proximity to Fields and his horse as they rode through the store. No groceries or other items were purchased, despite his claim of “grocery shopping. ” Fields made a second post that appeared to mock the store’s greeter as he entered the building. “We were just riding, and a buddy of mines was, like, ‘Let’s go to Walmart,’ and I was, like, ‘Man, I’m not going to Walmart,’ Fields told Click2Houston. “He was, like, ‘Come on, let’s go! ’” “I wasn’t trying to hurt nobody, or do anything destructive. It was just, like, you only live once, you know? That’s all,” Fields said. KTRK ABC13 reported one of the horses relieve itself inside the store. They did not say if Fields and his companion offered to clean up the mess. Walmart officials did not appear pleased as they responded, “We in no way condone yesterday’s reckless stunt inside our store and are thankful no one was hurt by these actions. ” The Houston Humane Society also appeared to not approve of the behavior. The group posted this statement: At minimum, riding a horse inside a store is incredibly irresponsible. This would be extremely stressful on any horse. Horses can easily become spooked, endangering not only themselves, but also any shoppers they might encounter. The Houston Humane Society urges all pet owners to think and act responsibly when it comes to the lives of animals in their care. Houston is currently in the middle of the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo. It is not known if Fields and his companion were riding in connection to this or if they were simply out having fun during the conditions on the last official day of winter. He posted a group of photos showing his horse buddies riding in other areas of Houston, including the Galleria area. It appears everyone was having a good time and many children were able to experience the horses first hand. Bob Price serves as associate editor and senior political news contributor for Breitbart Texas. He is a founding member of the Breitbart Texas team. Follow him on Twitter @BobPriceBBTX and Facebook. | 0fake |
TRUMP WARNED AMERICANS We’d Be “Sick Of Winning”…CNN Cries Trump Is Making Stock Market Rise Too Much…Could Hurt His Chances For Re-election [VIDEO] | Trump warned us we d be sick of winning Who knew CNN would be sick of winning before Trump even officially assumes his role of President? The big surge on November 7 snapped a nine-day losing streak for stocks that many attributed to Donald Trump s newfound momentum. Wall Street had decided Clinton was going to be the next president and they wholeheartedly approved.So the fact that the market continued to rally last week after Trump won is, in some respects, even more surprising than the fact that he won in the first place.A Republican in the White House and Republicans keeping control of Congress increases the chances of a bill being passed that would lead to more infrastructure spending. There may also be less regulations on health care stocks and financials.Trump s anti-immigration stance could also be a big problem for U.S. tech companies, which have attracted a lot of talented foreign workers due to the H1-B visa program. Will Trump seek to end that?That may be one of the reasons why big tech giants Apple (AAPL, Tech30), Amazon (AMZN, Tech30), Facebook and Google owner Alphabet all fell last week. Silicon Valley is very wary of Trump and probably with good reason.After all, Trump waged a Twitter war with Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos because he wasn t happy with the coverage he was getting from the Bezos-owned Washington Post.A Trump war on tech could be bad news for the market and economy. The tech sector is now one of the most important industries in the United States. Apple, Google, Facebook and Amazon are among the most valuable companies on the planet.So even though tech stocks zigged while the rest of the market zagged last week, that probably can t go on indefinitely. Prolonged weakness for big tech companies would have a negative impact on the whole market over the long haul. There s also the issue of how much Trump will actually be able to accomplish.Yes, Republicans control Congress. But House Speaker Paul Ryan wasn t exactly the biggest Trump supporter during the campaign. There could be more roadblocks to Trump s plans than expected on Capitol Hill. It is also hard to believe that Trump won t experience opposition in implementing policy. Trump and opposition are words that go hand in hand, said Mike O Rourke, chief market strategist of JonesTrading, in a report Monday.The title of O Rourke s report also summed up the rapid shift in sentiment. Trumpageddon to Trumptopia. Now this isn t to say that the market definitely is due for a crash during the Trump administration. But experts think investors may now need to take a step back and remember that there still isn t a lot that the market knows about possible Trump policies. There remains a great deal of uncertainty over what type of president Trump will actually be. In an election that was dominated by coverage of tweets, videos and emails, policy questions received surprisingly little airtime, said Andrew Sheets, a strategist with Morgan Stanley, in a report Sunday. Those questions are now crucial for markets. To a remarkable extent, investors we ve spoken to both before and after November 8 disagree on what President-elect Trump will actually do, Sheets added.That is scary. CNN Money | 1real |
YOUTUBE Gives Disgusting Reason For Pulling 95% Of Ad Revenue From Outspoken President Trump Fans Diamond and Silk: Videos “Not suitable for all advertisers” | Lynnette Hardway and Rochelle Richardson of North Carolina, whose support of Mr. Trump and no-nonsense delivery during the 2016 U.S. presidential season turned them into online sensations, said Thursday their YouTube videos have become casualties of the company s attempt to silence extremism. .@YouTube @TeamYouTube stopped over 95% percent of our videos from being monetized, stating: "It's Not Suitable For All Advertisers" .. pic.twitter.com/qDpaL8A4ec Diamond and Silk (@DiamondandSilk) August 10, 2017 @YouTube @TeamYouTube stopped over 95% percent of our videos from being monetized, stating: It s Not Suitable For All Advertisers, the two said in a series of tweets. Wonder if @YouTube @TeamYouTube stopped the monetization of our videos because we are loyal supporters of the @POTUS. Hummmm.Sounds like Censorship to us, which is a Violation of our First Amendment. A Bias Method used to Silence our Conservative Voices. @YouTube, how was it OK to monetize our videos for the past two years and now those same videos are no longer eligible for monetization? Here s an example of the hilarious commentary by Diamond and Silk who are voracious defenders of Donald Trump. Watch as they hammer Megyn Kelly for her demonization of then candidate Trump:News of the largely demonetized channel comes less than two weeks since the company announced plans to fight inappropriate content. Washington Times | 1real |
TAKE IT DOWN! BLM Supporter, Dem Congressman Hangs COP-HATING, Race-Baiting Art-Work In U.S. Capitol Building | A piece of art depicting cops as animals that are killing minorities that has no business hanging in our US Capitol building Artistic expression, or one congressman s political statement masquerading as student art? A very offensive depiction of police hands in the U.S. Capitol complex, and Missouri Rep. William Lacy Clay is drawing heat for placing it there.For several months the painting, called Untitled #1, has hung in the House building connecting hall, depicting police as animals seemingly engaged in the act of brutalizing minorities. BPRIn February 2015, Democratic Congressman Clay suggested that prosecutors are responsible for fixing outcome of racially charged cases that involve cops when he claimed that in Ferguson and in Garner s death we saw an all-too-familiar pattern of local prosecutors who work hand-in-hand with police every day, essentially prewiring the grand jury process to produce a known outcome. In a released statement, Clay said, Members of Congress support student art competitions in our districts but we do not select the young artists and we do not judge the artwork. I had no role in selecting the winner of this student art competition and I would never attempt to approve or disapprove artistic expression. The U.S. Capitol is a symbol of freedom, not censorship. The young artist chose his own subject and the painting will not be removed. He also told the St. Louis Post Dispatch that the painting was the most creative expression that I ve witnessed in the last 16 years. Take it down, Bolling said, telling viewers to call your congressman or call Lacy Clay s office. TAKE IT DOWN! Anti-cop crap must stop. This "art" hangs in US Capitol-Contact Rep Lacy Clay (D-MO) demand it removed https://t.co/bXmi3zeI6n Eric Bolling (@ericbolling) December 31, 2016Joe Patterson, president of the St. Louis County Police Association, said that we are not about censorship, but good art and good taste are sometimes not the same thing. This is an extraordinarily disrespectful piece at a minimum, he said. We in the law enforcement community have been continuing to work to build bridges and come to a better understanding with our minority community and then we have irresponsible leadership from elected officials pouring gasoline on bridges haven t even finished being built yet, Patterson said of Clay. He s picking at these wounds that we re trying to heal. When the winning piece was chosen last spring, Clay told the St. Louis American that he considered it the most creative expression that I ve witnessed in the last 16 years of the competition. SLPD | 1real |
Trump budget plan to propose major cuts for State Dept., EPA: NY Times | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A budget proposal to be released by President Donald Trump on Thursday will call for spending cuts of 28 percent for the State Department and 31 percent for the Environmental Protection Agency, The New York Times reported on Wednesday, citing congressional staff members familiar with the plan. The budget plan for fiscal 2018 will also propose a big reduction in the State Department’s Food for Peace program and elimination of a Transportation Department program that subsidizes flights to rural U.S. airports, the Times reported. | 0fake |
Saudi Arabia agrees to buy Russian S-400 air defense system: Arabiya TV | RIYADH (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia has agreed to buy Russian S-400 surface-to-air missile systems, Saudi-owned al-Arabiya television reported on Thursday. The report came during a visit by Saudi King Salman to Moscow. The countries also signed a memorandum of understanding to help the kingdom in its efforts to develop its own military industries, a statement from state-owned Saudi Arabian Military Industries said. SAMI said the MoU with Russian state-owned arms exporter Rosoboronexport came in the context of contracts signed to procure the S-400, the Kornet-EM system, the TOS-1A, the AGS-30 and the Kalashnikov AK-103. It not specify the number of each system or the value of the procurement deal. It said the procurement was based on the assurance of the Russian party to transfer the technology and localize the manufacturing and sustainment of these armament systems in the Kingdom , but provided no timeframe. A number of deals have been signed during this week s trip by King Salman to Russia, the first by a Saudi monarch. | 0fake |
Nigeria's Buhari sacks top civil servant after corruption probe | ABUJA (Reuters) - President Muhammadu Buhari on Monday sacked Nigeria s most senior civil servant after an investigation into graft allegations, the highest profile casualty of the anti-corruption pledge that helped bring him to power. He ordered an investigation into Babachir Lawal, an ally and one of his first appointments, after lawmakers in a separate probe alleged that he inflated the value of contracts for humanitarian aid projects in parts of the northeast ravaged by Boko Haram as part of a suspected kickback scheme. The president accepted the recommendation of the panel to terminate the appointment of Mr Lawal, presidential spokesman Femi Adesina said in a statement. Secretary to the government of the federation Lawal, who has denied wrongdoing, did not immediately respond to phone calls and a text message requesting a comment. Buhari s two presidential spokesmen declined to comment on whether there were plans to prosecute Lawal. The director general of the National Intelligence Agency (CIA), Ambassador Ayo Oke, was also sacked on Monday in connection with the discovery of large amounts of cash in foreign and local currencies by the financial crimes agency in a residential apartment in Lagos this year, Adesina said. The discovery of more than $43 million in cash was investigated by the same panel, led by the vice president, as had looked into Lawal, but any connection between the two cases has not been made clear. Both men were suspended in April. The NIA had insisted it was the owner of the money. The agency, Nigeria s equivalent of the CIA, could not be immediately reached for comment on Monday. Buhari took office in May 2015 after winning an election largely on his promise to end the endemic corruption that has stunted development in Africa s biggest economy, but there have been no major convictions. A number of former government officials have faced criminal charges related to alleged corruption since Buhari came to power. The opposition People s Democratic Party, in power for 16 years prior to Buhari taking office, has accused the president of focusing on its members. | 0fake |
RACHEL MADDOW Announces Plan To Reveal Trump’s Tax Returns…Hey Maddow, you might want to rethink that felony. | Maddow has a freak out at the 48 second mark: | 1real |
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