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null | And cops wonder why they get no respect. Stupid fucker | 1real |
BOOM! This Is How President Reagan Handled Protesters: “Negotiate? What is there to negotiate?” [Video] | Ronald Reagan shut down the Berkeley protests many years ago THIS is how you do it! | 1real |
Groups see climate science review as chance to undercut regulation | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Trump administration will soon begin a review that will question the veracity of the climate change science used by President Barack Obama’s administration as the basis for environmental regulations. The move by the Environmental Protection Agency to launch public debates between scientists on climate research, known as red-team, blue-team exercises, would be the first major effort by the Republican administration to challenge the long-standing scientific consensus on human-caused climate change. Advocates who have petitioned the EPA to reverse the scientific finding underlying U.S. regulations governing greenhouse gas emissions see the proposal to scrutinize mainstream climate science as a first step in that direction. “It’s a way to survey the landscape before reopening the endangerment finding,” said Myron Ebell, head of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, one of the groups that filed a petition with the agency to undo the 2009 scientific determination that formed the basis for the Democratic Obama administration’s regulation of greenhouse gases. In 2007, the Supreme Court ruled that the EPA had authority under the federal Clean Air Act to regulate greenhouse gases from cars if the agency determined they endangered human health. EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt has spoken several times about the merits of opening the climate change debate up to the public. The website Climatewire on Friday cited a senior administration official, who said Pruitt plans to launch the back-and-forth scientific critiques formally. Francis Menton, a lawyer who filed an endangerment finding petition in January on behalf of the Concerned Household Electricity Consumers Council, said Pruitt told an event at the Manhattan Institute think tank in New York on Friday that he would launch the debates in the next few months. Menton said he asked Pruitt whether he had made a decision on reopening the endangerment finding. Pruitt said the agency is weighing its options. The review “can create a body of scientific work that can be trustworthy and dependable to make regulatory choices and decisions,” said Rob Henneke, of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a third group that filed an endangerment finding petition. Unlike the other two, it has challenged the legality of the endangerment finding, not the science. Environmental groups are confident that Pruitt will not be successful if he tries to undo the endangerment finding because they expect the courts will side with the scientific consensus that human beings cause climate change. Pruitt and the EPA would need to build up a new case that shows carbon dioxide is innocuous and counter the volumes of scientific research that support the finding. “If he has any grasp of scientific and legal reality, he would realize that it’s a fool’s errand to reverse the endangerment determination,” said David Doniger, climate director for the Natural Resources Defense Counsel. “This could be a way for him to keep the right-wing fringe groups occupied and also accomplish the goal of further confusing the public debate,” he said. Ebell, who was also the transition leader of the Trump EPA, had previously been critical of Pruitt’s hesitation to take on the endangerment finding because of the time and staffing it would require. The Trump administration has not yet appointed second-tier assistant administrators to run different policy divisions of the agency. “I think (the red-team, blue-team process) is a logical first step, but I don’t think it commits the administrator to anything yet,” Ebell said. | 0fake |
Dr. Duke and Pastor Dankof on Trump’s America First Foreign Policy | http://mediaarchives.gsradio.net/dduke/112316.mp3
Dr. Duke and Pastor Dankof on Trump’s America First Foreign Policy
Today Dr. Duke had Pastor Mark Dankof as his guest for the hour. They talked about Donald Trump’s appointments to his new cabinet. They gave low marks to Representative Mike Pompeo as the new CIA director for his past policy positions, although they noted his loyalty to Trump as a potential silver lining. They also panned Nikki Hailey as the UN ambassador, which however does allow Trump supporter Henry McMaster succeed her as South Carolina governor.
The most hopeful prospect is Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard from Hawaii, who is a potential secretary of state. She has supported Trump’s desire to reconcile with Russia, and has been the most vocal opponent in Congress of the Obama administration’s efforts to overthrow Syrian President Assad. Her appointment would go a long way towards wresting control of American foreign policy from Jewish neocons and putting America’s interests first again.
This is another great show that you won’t want to miss. Please share it widely.
Our show is aired live at 11 am replayed at ET 4pm Eastern and 4am Eastern. | 1real |
Anonymous Release Bone Chilling Video of Huma Abedin that Every American Needs to See | Behind the headlines - conspiracies, cover-ups, ancient mysteries and more. Real news and perspectives that you won't find in the mainstream media. Browse: Home / Anonymous Release Bone Chilling Video of Huma Abedin that Every American Needs to See Essential Reading The Crucifixion of Jews Must Stop! By wmw_admin on August 21, 2010
The sacrifice of “six million Jews” was being talked about before Hitler rose to power. A photocopy from the American Hebrew dated Oct. 1919, speaks openly about a holocaust of six million Jews before declaring “Israel is entitled to a place in the sun”!! Adam Weishaupt By wmw_admin on June 29, 2005
The founding of the Illuminati and one of the key players behind the genesis of the New World Order The Anglo-Saxon Mission Part II By wmw_admin on March 1, 2010
Former City of London insider reveals that the depopulation program would begin with a planned war between Israel and Iran. More importantly, he goes onto to describe how we can derail their plans for global dominance The 9/11 Solution: The Big Clue Everyone Missed By wmw_admin on July 21, 2008
Google removed this video but a reader sent in a copy. Watch how the media carefully manipulates coverage of the events of 9/11, as they interview ‘experts’ who provide the cover story that has gone to make up the standard govt/media version of 9/11 Before and after the “Holocaust”: Jewish population numbers in 1933 and 1948 By wmw_admin on November 30, 2013
During the time Hitler was supposed to have killed six million Jews — between 1933 and 1948 — the world’s Jewish population actually increased from 15,315,000 to 15,753,000 Who Are The Illuminati? By wmw_admin on April 24, 2004
Conspiracy theory is now an accepted turn of phrase but sometimes one hears the expression, sometimes whispered rather than spoken. “The Illuminati”. The Liberation of the Camps By wmw_admin on January 27, 2016
It is tantamount to virtual heresy to question the ‘Holocaust’ today. But did the extermination of 6 million really happen as we’ve been taught? | 1real |
BREAKING: WATCH TWO PROTESTERS Crash ‘Trump Assassination’ Play in NYC: “Liberal Hate Kills!” [Video] | Awesome! Two protesters crashed the Trump Assassination play tonight yelling Goebbels would be proud! and Liberal Hate Kills! This is the second night protesters have jumped on stage at the Shakespeare in the Park production of Julius Caesar where a modern twist shows a President Trump look-a-like assassinated. Lovely, huh?A second protester jumped on stage and yelled but a videographer capturing the moment was tackled by liberal thugs.The videographer was eventually released by the police with the assurance that the police are on their side.In case you missed the first protest on Friday night: Laura Loomer of Rebel Media rushed the stage at the controversial NYC Shakespeare in the Park performance that takes a modern twist on Julius Caesar by playing out an assassination of a President Trump look-alike. Loomer yelled stop leftist violence before she was escorted off stage.We re huge fans and hope more people will follow her lead. Can you imagine if the tables were turned and they performed the same play using Obama as the one to be assassinated? The double standard here is unbelievable! You have the blood of Steve Scalise on your hands! The interesting irony is that the liberal crowd screamed and yelled at her. The left loves civil disobedience -except when it spoils their enjoyment of highbrow assassination porn. Do they advocate for violence against our president?They literally have Antifa chants during Julius Caesar before Trump gets assassinated pic.twitter.com/6AbHOChSnC Jack Posobiec (@JackPosobiec) June 17, 2017Ms. Loomer was arrested by the the NYPD and was released within hours. Laura s press conference: Jack Posobiec also got up and bravely yelled at the crowd. He yelled You re all Goebbels In case you don t know:GOEBBELS WAS THE NAZI PROPAGANDA MINISTER:German Nazi Party member Joseph Goebbels became Adolf Hitler s propaganda minister in 1933, which gave him power over all German radio, press, cinema, and theater.In 1925 Goebbels met the party leader Adolf Hitler. In 1926 he was made Gauleiter, or party leader, for the region of Berlin, and in 1927 he founded and became editor of the official National Socialist periodical Der Angriff (The Attack). He was elected to the Reichstag, the German parliament, in 1928. By exploiting mob emotions and by employing all modern methods of propaganda Goebbels helped Hitler into power. His work as a propagandist materially aided Hitler s rise to power in 1933. When Hitler seized power in 1933, Goebbels was appointed Reichsminister for propaganda and national enlightenment. From then until his death, Goebbels used all media of education and communications to further Nazi propagandistic aims, instilling in the Germans the concept of their leader as a veritable god and of their destiny as the rulers of the world. In 1938 he became a member of the Hitler cabinet council. Late in World War II, in 1944, Hitler placed him in charge of total mobilization. As Reichsminister for Propaganda and National Enlightenment, Goebbels was given complete control over radio, press, cinema, and theater; later he also regimented all German culture. Goebbels placed his undeniable intelligence and his brilliant insight into mass psychology entirely at the service of his party. His most virulent propaganda was against the Jews. As a hypnotic orator he was second only to Hitler, and in his staging of mass meetings and parades he was unsurpassed. Utterly cynical, he seems to have believed only in the self-justification of power. He remained loyal to Hitler until the end. On May 1, 1945, as Soviet troops were storming Berlin, Goebbels committed suicide.Via: whale | 1real |
BRITISH COLUMNIST KATIE HOPKINS Has BRUTAL Reaction To “Trans” H.S. Student Beating Girls In Wrestling Matches [VIDEO] | Mack Beggs, the transgender wrestler from Euless Trinity High School, is halfway home to capturing the Class 6A state girls wrestling championship in the 110-pound weight class.Beggs dismantled two opponents on Friday s opening day, earning a major decision over League City Clear Spring s Taylor Latham 18-7 and then improving his season record to 54-0 with a major decision over Mya Engert of Amarillo Tascosa 12-4.Both of Beggs opponents managed to avoid being pinned, but neither provided enough resistance to make the match close at the UIL Wrestling State Tournament.Beggs advanced to Saturday s 10:30 a.m. semifinal against area rival Kailyn Clay of Grand Prairie. Beggs defeated Clay in the semifinals of last week s regional tournament in Allen.For the most part, Friday s action was routine despite the sudden swirling controversy around Beggs, whose gender transition from female to male became a news story after the regional tournament.At the regional tournament, two wrestlers forfeited rather than grapple with Beggs. One, Coppell s Madeline Rocha, who had already qualified for state, lost her opening-round match Friday in Cypress.After losing to Beggs, who has has been on testosterone treatments since October 2015, Engert left the mat in tears and her coach tersely declined an interview request for her wrestler. Many of the coaches have said they re not upset at Beggs, but just the predicament of their girls having to wrestle against an athlete on testosterone.Conservative British actress and talk radio host Katie Hopkins is not one to shy away from a controversy. After reading about a trans high school student who takes regular testosterone treatments, beating non-testosterone enhanced females, she tweeted this brutal response:You want to be a boy. And are still prepared to fight girls. Forgive me if I don't applaud. Nasty narcissist. https://t.co/feLK1YqPuO Katie Hopkins (@KTHopkins) February 25, 2017Watch the video of trans student Mac Beggs wrestling a non-enhanced female student:But at least one wrestling parent, Patti Overstreet, yelled cheater at Beggs. Look at how beefed up she is, Overstreet said. It s because she s taking an enhancement. Whether she s a boy, girl, wants to be purple or blue it doesn t matter. When you re using a drug and you re 10 times stronger than the person you re wrestling because of that drug, that shouldn t be allowed. One athletic director watching the action, who asked for his name not to be used because of the sensitivity of the issue, said he believes there is cause for concern because of the testosterone, adding, I think there is a benefit. Star Telegram | 1real |
NEW YORK KNOWN WOLF: Halloween Truck Attacker Known to DHS Prior to ‘Act of Terror’ | Shawn Helton 21st Century WireYears before allegedly carrying out a truck rampage on Halloween, the man named in New York s most recent act of terror was already well-known to the United States Department of Homeland Security. This latest supposedly homegrown ISIS-inspired attack produces yet another known wolf with ties to suspected terrorists as well as authorities. According to officials, 29 year-old Sayfullo Saipov, the man charged in a deadly Manhattan vehicular assault on October 31st, was previously questioned over suspected ties to terrorism in 2015 by the US Department of Homeland Security. Saipov reportedly became a permanent legal resident upon arriving in the US on a diversity lottery visa in 2010. Since that time, the suspected terrorist moved from Ohio, Florida, and most recently to New Jersey, where he was interviewed by DHS in 2015.As media attention on this case is focused on immigration laws, terror propaganda and security protocols America s latest terror tragedy reveals much more below the surface KNOWN WOLF There s a distinct pattern with acts of terror committed on Western soil. (Photo Illustration 21WIRE s Shawn Helton)Another American Known Wolf Suspected terrorist Sayfullo (Habibullaevic) Saipov, who bounced across America, committed only minor traffic violations before his alleged involvement in the New York truck attack.Over the past 24 hours, the suspected truck attacker Saipov, was said to have driven a Home Depot rental truck from New Jersey to the Manhattan area, where it is believed he deliberately targeted pedestrians and cyclists on a bike path alongside the Hudson River according to police reports. Shortly after the vehicular attack authorities state that Siapov brandished a pellet gun and paintball gun prior to being shot by NYPD and taken into custody. All told, at least eight people were said to have been killed, while nearly a dozen others were injured in the high-profile terror incident.Reports state that Saipov became radicalized in America, allegedly taking ques from ISIS terror propaganda. However, Saipov, originally from Tashkent, the capital city of Uzbekistan, was supposedly from a modest and secular family that did not go to mosques, making this yet another suspicious terror-related case that paints a murky portrait on the way towards extremism. SUSPECT The alleged New York truck attacker was apparently a registered driver for popular car services Uber and Lyft. (Image Source: twitter)Rather intriguingly, in a published report at ABC News we re told Saipov, had been the subject of a deeper counter-terror investigation back in 2015: Sayfullo Saipov, who has been charged with killing eight people in a vehicle attack on the West Side of Manhattan on Tuesday, was interviewed in 2015 by federal agents about possible ties to suspected terrorists but a case was never opened against him, law enforcement officials tell ABC News. Continuing, the article outlined the following: Saipov was listed as a point of contact for two men who were listed in a Department of Homeland Security counterterrorism database and later overstayed their tourist visas, a federal official told ABC News. One was flagged after arriving from a so-called threat country, while the other vanished and was being actively sought by federal agents as a suspected terrorist. Incredibly, in less than 24 hours after the deadly vehicular assault in New York, FBI authorities have located the suspected terrorist who supposedly vanished from the gaze of authorities said to be linked to Saipov.Today FBI investigators released an alert regarding 32 year-old Mukhammadzoir Kadirov, a person of interest, who authorities also believe is linked to the recent attack.CNN reported the following background information regarding Siapov:In a recently published report from the NY Times, elements of a recent FBI probe into a suspected terror cell charged in Brooklyn over the past two years was revealed: Over the last two years, a terrorism investigation by the F.B.I., the Department of Homeland Security, the New York Police Department and federal prosecutors in Brooklyn resulted in charges against five men from Uzbekistan and one from Kazakhstan of providing material support to ISIS. Several of the men have pleaded guilty. It is unclear whether Mr. Saipov was connected with that investigation. QUESTION: Will the FBI eventually reveal that Saipov and Kadirov were on their radar prior to the New York truck attack? Only time will tell This latest act of terror in America may well prove to be similar in scope to many other known wolf cases in recent history, as readers might recall the alleged New York bombing suspect 28 year-old Ahmad Khan Rahami, had been known to the FBI for years prior to supposedly carrying out plots in New York and New Jersey in the fall of 2016.According to The Washington Post, the FBI had already known Rahami since 2014, which only added to the strongly suspicious event: The FBI s probe into Ahmad Khan Rahami, the 28-year-old named as the only suspect in the bombings, was launched based on comments his father had made. An official said his father later recanted his comments. Agents conducted interviews, checked with other agencies and looked at internal databases, none of which revealed ties to terrorism, the bureau said in a statement. DARK DAYS The crime scene of the recent New York truck attack. (Image Source: twitter)HAND IN HAND: Terror & Security QUESTION: Is it possible the FBI or any intelligence agency played some part in the latest New York City attack plot whether inadvertently or otherwise?In the search for answers regarding the investigative tactics of various intelligence agencies that have come into question, there s none perhaps more dubious than the FBI s Newburgh sting operation that resulted in the entrapment four men who participated in a fabricated event created by the bureau.Here s a 2011 passage from The Guardian describing how a FBI informant named Shahed Hussain coerced four others into a fake terror plot: The Newburgh Four now languish in jail. Hussain does not. For Hussain was a fake. In fact, Hussain worked for the FBI as an informant trawling mosques in hope of picking up radicals.Yet far from being active militants, the four men he attracted were impoverished individuals struggling with Newburgh s grim epidemic of crack, drug crime and poverty. One had mental issues so severe his apartment contained bottles of his own urine. He also believed Florida was a foreign country.Hussain offered the men huge financial inducements to carry out the plot including $250,000 to one man and free holidays and expensive cars.As defence lawyers poured through the evidence, the Newburgh Four came to represent the most extreme form of a controversial FBI policy to use invented terrorist plots to lure targets. There has been no case as egregious as this. It is unique in the incentive the government provided. A quarter million dollars? said Professor Karen Greenberg, a terrorism expert at Fordham University. The reputation of the FBI has suffered greatly in the recent past as well as over the past couple of decades. Following the 1993 WTC bombing, the FBI was revealed to have been handling Emad A. Salem, a former Egyptian army officer who was a prized undercover operative thrust into confidential informant status and person who played a key role in the bomb plot.QUESTION: Will authorities reveal that Siapov may have also had ties to informants or other known wolves?Here at 21WIRE, we ve kept a running report on known wolf actors involved in many attacks on Western soil. Take a look below at an updated version that includes other suspicious intelligence informant and terror cases that have held that distinction over the years:Tamerlan Tsarnaev (see his story here) Buford Rogers (see his story here) Jerad Miller (see his story here) Naji Mansour (see his story here) Quazi Mohammad Nafis (see his story here) Mohamed Osman Mohamud (see his story here) Timothy McVeigh (see his story here) Salim Benghalem (see his story here) Michael Adebolajo (see his story here) Daba Deng (see his story here) Elton Simpson (see his story here) Man Haron Monis (see his story here) Abu Hamza (see his story here) Haroon Rashid Aswat (see his story here) Mark Vicars (see his story here) Glen Rodgers (see his story here) Omar Mateen (see his story here) Tashfeen Malik (see her story here) Djamel Beghal (see his story here) Anjem Choudary (see his story here) Cherif Kouachi (see his story here) Said Kouachi (see his story here) Amedy Coulibaly (see his story here) Hayat Boumeddiene (see her story here) Salah Abdeslam (see his story here) Michael Zehaf-Bibeau (see his story here) Nidal Malik Hassan (see his story here) Abdelhakim Dekhar (see his story here) Abdelhamid Abaaoud (see his story here) Samy Amimour (see his story here) Isma l Omar Mostefa (see his story here) Mohamed Lahouij Bouhlel (see his story here) Anis Amri (see his story here) Esteban Santiago-Ruiz (see his story here) Abdulkadir Masharipov (see his story here) Khalid Masood (see his story here) Khuram Butt (see his story here) Youssef Zaghba (see his story here)Since 9/11, the city of New York has dedicated a massive amount of resources to anti-terror training, with a police department larger than the standing armies of 84 countries. It is a city that has done more than any other American city as far as terror readiness yet, it continues to be plagued by a series of plots and attacks over the last 16 years.Following America s previous most deadly mass shooting in Orlando were reports revealing that the FBI had a close relationship with the suspected attacker through the use of a well-known confidential informant. Similarly, recent reports state that FBI, court filings have revealed how the agency allowed an alleged home grown ISIS attack to take place in Garland, Texas. 21WIRE previously uncovered suspicious elements regarding the cartoon event in Garland when the attack occurred.QUESTION: How is it that federal agencies continue to let known wolves slip through the cracks?As we ve stated before, mass media injects their own formula for laying out a familiar series of polarizing political points in the aftermath of any tragic event. Appearing to purposefully redirect the public to look at a ready-made laundry list of hateful rhetoric, social media declarations and random writings as an ironclad motive for a crime. The aftermath in the recent terror case of New York is no different, as it has already rapidly descended into a barrage of politically motivated theorizing.The story of a Uzbekistan truck attacker also recalls the the suspicious terror case involving the Turkish nightclub shooting at the start of the year on New Year s Eve.To unravel future cases, it s important to keep a watchful eye on any links to past plots 21WIRE associate editor Shawn Helton is a researcher and writer, specializing in forensic analysis of high-profile crime scene and counter terrorism investigations, and the deconstruction and analysis of the mass-media coverage surrounding those cases. He has compiled an extensive body of work covering a number of high-profile events since 2012.READ MORE DAILY SHOOTER NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Daily Shooter FilesSupport our work by Subscribing and become a Member @21WIRE.TV | 1real |
Breaking/Exclusive: Comey Lied: FBI “Synced” Weiner Laptop Under Misused Terror Warrant – Updated | By Gordon Duff, Senior Editor on October 30, 2016 Constitutional Crisis: FBI used prohibited FISA domestic terror warrant in Clinton-Weiner email search …by Gordon Duff, with Ian Greenhalgh , Editors – Veterans Today
In a surprise announcement, the Department of Justice just admitted that there was no legal authorization in place to access email accounts of Hillary Clinton aide, Huma Abedin, estranged wife of accused sex offender former Congressman Anthony Weiner.
The government admitted that no warrant had been requested and that discussions to seek a warrant had not yet begun, making the letter FBI Director James Comey wrote to Congress on Friday a potentially criminal act, if it can be proven that Comey was aware of this fact and of the actions of his subordinates in “planting” Clinton emails on Weiner’s laptop.[14]
(CNN)Justice Department and FBI officials are working to secure approval that would allow the FBI to conduct a full search of top Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin’s newly discovered emails, sources familiar with the discussions told CNN.
Government lawyers haven’t yet approached Abedin’s lawyers to seek an agreement to conduct the search. Sources earlier told CNN that those discussions had begun, but the law enforcement officials now say they have not.[14]
FBI Director James Comey is under assault for what is being perceived as more than simply partisan behavior. Former presidential advisor, Lanny Davis writes for The Hill:
“Comey as FBI director — an investigative agency, not a prosecution agency — (does not) have any authority to send a report to Congress in the middle of an investigation about the past or present subject of an investigation. He appears to be in violation of the limits on his authority as FBI director by disclosing investigation information — or possible investigation information — directly to Congress with obtaining permission from the attorney general or someone else delegated authority by her. His decision to reveal the results of an ongoing investigation, before a published criminal indictment, violates due process principles and pre-indictment secrecy rules and guidelines of the Justice Department.”[16]
Through court challenges to FBI search tactics under FISA and other counter-terror legislation, accessing “cloud” based emails and either representing them as “found” in a warranted search of a hard drive or in “syncing” a computer to place emails on a drive under a warranted search, clear prohibitions have been established.[Addendum I]
In this case, with no warrant in place at all, there are no possible interpretations of FBI actions that could be consistent with admissibility.
In what has been seen by most a the long expected “October Surprise,” the highly controversial letter written by FBI Director James Comer, something more far reaching has developed, a constitutional crisis that may well exceed that of Watergate or even Iran/Contra. Like the Federal Reserve, the FBI itself lacks a clear constitutional authority. There is no mention of nor authorization given, in the constitution, for a national police force. In fact, the Constitution, in the 10th Amendment ratified in 1791 states:
“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”[12] More often than not, this has been ignored, a “stepchild” of the Bill of Rights. Here, however, the FBI, created initially as the “sex police”[11], created to enforce the Mann Act[13], has assumed not only “powers not granted” under the constitution, but has exponentially expanded its reach, well beyond constitutional limitations on rights of privacy and against unreasonable search and seizure, assailed by laws like the Patriot Acts.”
Behind the current controversy, that of an FBI director being accused of interfering in an election and acting against policy, procedure and advice of the Attorney General, is something more. The FBI has crossed into the area of possible criminality, violating clear cut Federal Court restrictions, not only through an illegal search but by actually planting evidence and then channeling misleading information into the press with a clear intent to subvert constitutional authority.
Another issue is the kind of language Comey has been using to mollify critics who have kept a flurry of investigations going and who have subjected him to hostile interrogation for endless hours in front of highly partisan committees. Colonel Jim Hanke (ret), former US attache to Israel and ranking NATO military intelligence planner commented on the nature of Comey’s assertions of Hillary’s classified emails:
“Take the text of any of the emails we have seen. Anything here could have been said in a press conference or on a television interview and, in those formats, would not have been considered classified. There would have been fallout, for sure, not from disclosing policy or in endangering operations, real issues that get high level classification. Hillary’s emails, were they made public, and there was reason to expect this might well happen, are revealing and reflect on her personal judgement and, at times, demonstrate a lack of grasp, particularly when it comes to Russia or Syria. These are issues of public confidence, not criminality nor are they areas of real security classification.
Conversely, what we have seen Comey do may well rise to the level of something serious, certainly he undermines the FBI and attacks the American system of government. As to what his intent was or to what laws apply, this is not my area of expertise but I would like to think that criminal code could deal with this kind of threat.”
One additional consideration to put into the mix is Wikileaks. During recent weeks while Wikileaks has released two dozen batches of emails, the Clinton campaign has mirrored earlier charges made against Wikileaks by former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinsky, that Wikileaks “sexes up” and even fabricates documents that are, according to Brzezinsky, when speaking to Judy Woodruff of National Public Radio, “seeded” into a virtual deluge of material.
The FBI used FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) powers when it downloaded and “synced” Clinton emails into former Congressman Anthony Weiner’s computers, according to legal experts.[1,4,6,7] The FBI knowingly violated the law in applying terror statutes when they illegally expanded their search into Weiner’s computers and downloaded emails from a 3rd party account. With only days before an election, the term “October Surprise” has never been more applicable.
The question people are asking is; “Why did Director Comey choose to ignore legal advice and, more importantly, was he aware that he was upsetting an American presidential election based on a pattern of criminal-level misconduct by his own agency?”
The FBI lied when it claimed the it found Clinton emails when it searched Anthony Weiner’s computer. Sources now tell VT that the FBI in fact “synced” the email account of Weiner’s estranged wife, Huma, downloading the emails “from the cloud” and falsely claiming they were discovered as part of a legal search warrant. However, there is no case law supporting the expansion of such warrants to spouses or others whose email accounts may be accessible through devices but were not stored on hard drives and not by any stretch of the imagination, legally accessed under any possible search warrant tied to Weiner’s sexual indiscretions.
What did in fact happen here was planting of evidence, by the FBI, illegally accessing a “cloud based” email account not included in a search warrant and downloading to a hard drive that was included in a warrant. This is a common FBI/DHS practice used in terror investigations, making use of a single warrant to follow cloud accounts for multiple users.
In an article in today’s Washington Post, the issue of how the FBI found emails that should not been on Weiner’s computer were brought to light.
“Top Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin has told people she is unsure how her emails could have ended up on a device she viewed as her husband’s computer, the seizure of which has reignited the Clinton email investigation, according to a person familiar with the investigation and civil litigation over the matter.
The person, who would not discuss the case unless granted anonymity, said Abedin was not a regular user of the computer, and even when she agreed to turn over emails to the State Department for federal records purposes, her lawyers did not search it for materials, not believing any of her messages to be there.
That could be a significant oversight if Abedin’s work messages were indeed on the computer of her estranged husband, former congressman Anthony Weiner, who is under investigation for allegedly exchanging lewd messages with a 15-year-old girl. So far, it is unclear what — if any — new, work-related messages were found by authorities. The person said the FBI had not contacted Abedin about its latest discovery, and she was unsure what the bureau had discovered.”[8]
There is no evidence, of yet, that Director Comey was aware the “evidence” he took to congress was illegally planted on Weiner’s computer but Comey was aware of the practice. Typically, the FBI search warrants used can give access to cloud based emails as outlined below by FBI Special Agent James M. Cauthen:
“An alternative is for the investigator to search in the same manner as the user would—with the computer turned on and connected to the data. In this example, the investigator needs access to the subject’s computer with the relational database software and connection to the cloud. The investigator could consider combining two search warrants—one on the computer owner for the location being searched under Rule 41 and one on the cloud provider under §2703 for the content to which the computer is connected.
With this approach, the investigator will need to understand how to operate database software and make queries. These queries must comply with the search warrant. The investigator must conduct the search carefully as actions taken on a live system will change the data on the computer. Using this method, it may be possible to obtain a single search warrant combining the provisions of Rule 41 and §2703; however, it should be noted that there is no case law yet on implementing this strategy.” [7]
In light of the controversy over the handling of this issue by FBI Director Comey, an article in The New Yorker, dated October 28, 2016 cuts to the director’s state of mind. From that article: WASHINGTON ( The Borowitz Report )—James Comey, the embattled director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, presided over a special ceremony on Friday evening to commend the brave F.B.I. agents who had to touch Anthony Weiner’s computer. In awarding the commendations to the agents, whom Comey called “the bravest men and women this country has to offer,” the F.B.I. director criticized the political uproar that he said had overshadowed “their selfless acts of heroism.” “These agents have performed far and beyond the call of duty,” a visibly angry Comey said. “I know we’re eleven days away from an election and tensions are running high, but we shouldn’t let that subtract in any way from what these brave agents did with their own hands.” “Who among us could look at ourselves in the mirror and say, ‘I have what it takes to touch Anthony Weiner’s computer ’?” Comey asked. “I know I sure as hell couldn’t.”[15] A common way to hide ones train in Washington is to wrap whatever the smell is “in a bloody flag” or to hand out medals for heroism. This is “deception 101” and Comey wasn’t in the least bit coy about using his agents, who may be steeped in ethical or even criminal complicity, in that same “bloody flag” theatrics.
The Clinton/Weiner connection may well be an abuse of expanded counter-terrorism powers the FBI assumed during the Bush era. However, in 2008, these powers were curtailed by a Federal court decision. [Addendum I] From the New York Times, April 19, 2016:
“WASHINGTON — A federal judge has rejected a legal challenge to rules permitting F.B.I. agents, when working on domestic criminal cases, to search emails written by Americans that the government has intercepted without a warrant in the name of gathering foreign intelligence.
In an 80-page opinion that was issued in November and remained classified until being made public on Tuesday, Judge Thomas F. Hogan, the chief judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, ruled that what critics call “backdoor searches” of messages by the F.B.I. comply with both the Constitution and the FISA Amendments Act. That 2008 statute legalized a form of the government’s once-secret warrantless surveillance program.”[9]
There has been considerable controversy involving the FBI’s illegal expansion of search warrants in criminal cases. With the expanded powers under the Bush administration’s Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, covering the use of broad “single warrant” powers in domestic terrorism cases, the FBI has on numerous occasions misused FISA powers in criminal investigations.
This has been brought before the Federal Courts in 2008 [Addendum I] and the FBI should well consider itself forewarned not to attempt to apply questionable expanded powers under FISA legislation intended to apply to terror threats. That FISA was applied here, knowing a court challenge would take far too long to correct the damage, in this case a “rigged” presidential election, as claimed by Clinton campaign advisor, John Podesta. References:
[1] Elena Kagan: Supreme Court Hasn’t “Gotten to” Email , CBS News, August 21, 2013.
[2] Josiah Dykstra, “Seizing Electronic Evidence from Cloud Computing Environments,” in Cybercrime and Cloud Forensics: Applications for Investigation Processes , ed. K. Ruan (Hershey, PA: IGI Global, 2013).
[3] Tony Sammes and Brian Jenkinson, Forensic Computing: A Practitioner’s Guide , (London, UK: Springer-Verlag, 2000). Forensics was developed on the idea of copying data from a hard disk drive that was turned off or dead. Live recovery involves changes to the contents of a computer’s storage space, 18 U.S.C. §2510(15). Therefore, it is essential that someone competent to give testimony performs it, showing that the continuity and integrity of the evidence has been preserved.
[4] U.S. Department of Justice, Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section, Criminal Division, Searching and Seizing Computers and Obtaining Electronic Evidence in Criminal Investigations 3d ed., (Washington, D.C.: Office of Legal Education, Executive Office for United States Attorneys, 2009), 84. Although the courts have not directly addressed the matter, the language of Rule 41 combined with the Supreme Court’s interpretation of “property” may limit computer searches to data that physically resides in the district in which the warrant was issued.
[5] For legal purposes, there are two classes of cloud providers: those who provide “electronic communication services,” and those who provide “remote computing service.” See 18 U.S.C. §2510(15) and 18 U.S.C. §2711(2) respectively.
[6] United States v. Gorshkov , 2001 WL 1024026 (May 23, 2001). In this case, the defendants moved to suppress the evidence, but the motion was denied. Nonetheless, the investigator was charged with hacking by foreign authorities who requested that the investigator be extradited for trial. U.S. authorities have not complied. | 1real |
FEEL GOOD STORY OF THE DAY: Globalist Billionaire George Soros Melt Down…Calls Trump “Con Artist”…Says He Threatens “Open Society Model” | Says the guy who s been funding riots across America and dumping hundreds of millions into radical organizations meant to destroy America and our way of life.Soros, the Hungarian-born magnate who supported Hillary Clinton s candidacy as well as other liberal causes worldwide, says that the rise of Trump and his affinity for rulers like Russian President Vladimir Putin threaten the open society model championed by the European Union. Democracy is now in crisis, Soros writes in Project Syndicate. Even the US, the world s leading democracy, elected a con artist and would-be dictator as its president. Although Trump has toned down his rhetoric since he was elected, he has changed neither his behavior nor his advisers. The US will be preoccupied with internal struggles in the near future, and targeted minorities will suffer, according to Soros. The US will be unable to protect and promote democracy in the rest of the world. On the contrary, Trump will have greater affinity with dictators. That will allow some of them to reach an accommodation with the US, and others to carry on without interference. Trump will prefer making deals to defending principles. Unfortunately, that will be popular with his core constituency, he writes.Soros writes that Putin helped Trump win the election by utilizing social media to disseminate fake news stories.He said that the Russian leader is now using the same tactic to undermine democratic governments throughout the EU.Since Trump s election win, Soros has contributed money to an international fact-checking organization that will warn readers on social media of stories whose veracity is deemed questionable.Click HERE for the list of 187 radical organizations funded by George Soros.Soros organization, Open Society Foundation, is listed among organizations which are backing The International Fact Checking Network, the body tasked with flagging bogus news stories to social media users, on its website.Soros, a staunch Democrat who tried to block George W. Bush s campaign in 2004, has given $25million to Clinton and causes dear to her.Soros writes that he fears for the future of the free world, as populist movement threaten to upend the status quo. I find the current moment in history very painful, he writes.For entire story: Daily Mail | 1real |
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Inspector General To Investigate Comey Over Pre-Election Influence | In a bit of irony, the Inspector General (who investigated Clinton s use of a private email server) will now be conducting an investigation of James Comey and the FBI to determine if the damaging letter sent to the House Oversight Committee in October of last year was mishandled and unfairly influential.Some outlets, including FiveThirtyEight, Vox and Al Jazeera, contend that Comey s letter inflicted a fatal blow to the Clinton campaign in the last week of the election, allowing Donald Trump to clinch a surprise win.The Justice Department and Inspector General s office say that the move comes as pressure mounts from members of Congress and the public that the releasing of the letter was politically motivated and intended to hurt the Clinton campaign.Michael Horowitz, the Inspector General, also said the FBI would be focused on a slew of other issues pertaining to the email controversy, including if any members of the DOJ gave information to the campaign and if an agent, whose wife was running for Congress on the Democratic ticket, should have recused himself from the initial email investigation.Horowitz also told ranking members of Congressional committees that the incoming investigation will not change the outcome of the initial clearance of Hillary Clinton of any criminal wrongdoing, and that the White House had no role in pressuring for the incoming probe.The Inspector General also did not say how long said probe would take to complete.Perhaps justice will be served although the election cannot be undone Comey will resign in shame, and Hillary Clinton will once again be vindicated in the court of public opinion. That is, everyone will see that Trump was illegitimately elected and thus is an illegitimate president.James Comey single-handedly had the biggest influence on the outcome of the election. He arrogantly told members of the Senate Intelligence Committee that he cannot comment on a pending investigation, for which independent Senator Angus King rightfully called him out for it.If that s Comey s contention, then the probe will most likely prove as fatal to his career as it did to Hillary Clinton s.Featured image via Alex Wong/Getty Images | 1real |
For Trump, Mar-a-Lago is place to break the ice with China's Xi | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump has told visitors that his Mar-a-Lago retreat is set up perfectly for foreign visits, but the Chinese side was initially hesitant when word came that Trump would like to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping there, according to administration officials. Even after seeing images of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s back-slapping sessions with Trump at Mar-a-Lago in February, Chinese officials thought the oceanfront, Spanish-style club in Palm Beach, Florida, lacked the symbolic significance of the White House itself. “They thought, no, it has to be the White House, the symbolism of that,” a senior administration official told Reuters. “They were ultimately convinced that this was worth doing. It’s unusual because most foreigners realize that being invited to the president’s personal place is a big deal.” Trump and Xi are to hold their first summit encounter beginning on Thursday at Mar-a-Lago, a property that original owner Marjorie Merriweather Post’s estate willed to the U.S. government for use as a diplomatic and presidential retreat after her death in 1973. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told reporters in Beijing that the Chinese side was fine with having the meeting there. “President Trump, after taking office, announced that Mar-a-Lago would be the winter White House. The U.S. proposal to hold the U.S.-China heads of state meeting there, I think, represents the importance that the U.S. side places on this meeting. China respects the U.S. side’s arrangements,” she said. No matter where the heads of state meet, “the most important thing is to develop China-U.S. relations and make contributions to both countries and the world,” she said. Topping the agenda at Mar-a-Lago will be U.S.-China trade ties and U.S. requests for China to help rein in its nuclear-armed neighbor North Korea. Trump bought the estate in 1985 and turned it into an exclusive club, which now boasts a membership fee of $200,000 and is a haven for the tony Palm Beach set who pull up to the gate in Bentleys and Rolls-Royces. “It’s a place where he feels comfortable and at home, and where he can break the ice with Xi Jinping without the formality, really, of a Washington meet-up,” said another senior White House official. Xi and his wife, Peng Liyuan, will join Trump and his wife, Melania, for dinner on Thursday night then Trump and Xi will have a series of meetings there on Friday. The entire visit will last less than 24 hours. “What matters is that the two of them get together for a successful summit, even if it’s on the moon,” said former U.S. ambassador to China, Max Baucus. “However, I do think that Mar-a-lago will probably help enhance conversation between the two of them. President Trump can show President Xi around, show him the digs. Trump is very proud of that, and President Xi will be interested in seeing all of that.” The two leaders are not expected to make public appearances but there are likely to be occasions for a pool of the news media to see them. No joint news conference was expected. Past U.S. presidents have often turned to settings away from the trappings of Washington to conduct delicate diplomacy. George H.W. Bush had his seaside estate in Kennebunkport, Maine, and George W. Bush frequently played host to foreign leaders at his ranch in Crawford, Texas. Trump’s immediate predecessor, Barack Obama, used the Sunnylands retreat in Rancho Mirage, California, as a site for an informal summit with Xi in 2013. While Trump treated Abe to golf, no such outing is planned for the leader of China. Mar-a-Lago has already been the scene of some controversy for Trump. When a North Korean missile test disrupted Abe’s visit there, Trump and the Japanese leader were seen at a dinner table on the terrace discussing how to respond, as club members looked on from nearby tables. | 0fake |
DESPERATE DEMS? RUSSIAN BANK Reports Computer Hacks Designed To Make It Appear Trump Had Secret Relationship With Them | A Russian bank has reported to U.S. authorities that mysterious communications resumed recently between one of its computers and an email server tied to President Trump s business empire, and it has developed evidence the new activity may be the work of a hacker trying to create a political hoax, Circa has learned.Alfa Bank is asking the U.S. Justice Department for help solving the mystery and pledged its full cooperation.Alfa wants U.S. authorities to help unmask a computer inside the United States that it believes has been used to launch cyberattacks spoofing the appearance of a backdoor communication channel between Moscow and America s 45th president, according to a source directly familiar with the bank s request.The bank believes these malicious attacks are designed to create the false impression that Alfa Bank has a secretive relationship with the Trump Organization, the source said, speaking on condition of anonymity.Alfa Bank has insisted since media stories began appearing last fall about the computer communications known as Domain Name Server lookups that it has never had a relationship to Trump or any of his companies and that any computer connections between the two parties computers were innocuous. The resumption of the computer pings started last month, and Alfa s cybersecurity experts traced evidence that the activity was actually being spoofed or hacked through a third party from a masked computer address inside the United States, the source said. For entire story: Circa NewsIn November of 2016, The Intercept published a piece refuting a Slate article that attempted to convince readers there was a connection between Trump and the Alfa Bank servers: Slate s Franklin Foer published a story that s been circulating through the dark web and various newsrooms since summertime, an enormous, eyebrow-raising claim that Donald Trump uses a secret server to communicate with Russia. That claim resulted in an explosive night of Twitter confusion and misinformation.The gist of the Slate article is dramatic incredible, even: Cybersecurity researchers found that the Trump Organization used a secret box configured to communicate exclusively with Alfa Bank, Russia s largest privately-held commercial bank. This is a story that any reporter in our election cycle would drool over, and drool Foer did:The researchers quickly dismissed their initial fear that the logs represented a malware attack. The communication wasn t the work of bots. The irregular pattern of server look-ups actually resembled the pattern of human conversation conversations that began during office hours in New York and continued during office hours in Moscow. It dawned on the researchers that this wasn t an attack, but a sustained relationship between a server registered to the Trump Organization and two servers registered to an entity called Alfa Bank.These claims are based entirely on DNS logs, digital records of when one server looks up how to contact another across the internet. The logs, first gathered by an anonymous researcher going by the moniker Tea Leaves (an irony that should be lost on no one) and shared with a small group of academics, were provided to The Intercept and a handful of other news organizations. The New York Times, the Washington Post, Reuters, the Daily Beast, and Vice all examined these materials to at least some extent and did not publish the claims.You can think of DNS like a phone book that maps people s names to their phone numbers. For example, every time Alice wants to call Bob, she first looks up Bob s phone number in the phone book, and then she dials the number into her phone. However, it s possible that Alice might look up Bob s phone number and not call him on the phone. It s even possible that she might look up Bob s phone number over and over on a regular basis, over the course of months, without actually calling him. The DNS look-ups that The Intercept and others (including Slate) reviewed are similar to records of Alice looking up Bob s phone number in the phone book, but to call that evidence of sinister collusion between the two is, politely, a stretch. These DNS records alone simply cannot prove that any specific messages were sent at those times. In fact, they can t really prove anything at all, and certainly not communication between Trump and Alfa. This cannot be overstated: No one, not Tea Leaves, not his academic peers, and not Franklin Foer, can show that a single message was exchanged between Trump and Alfa.For entire story go to: The Intercept | 1real |
Jamie Oliver wearily wanks out yet another f**king cookbook | Jamie Oliver wearily wanks out yet another f**king cookbook 27-10-16
JAMIE Oliver has wearily dumped yet another book of recipes, photographs and shit onto the market for Christmas.
The celebrity chef, who has been stuck in this fucking rut longer than he can remember, tiredly admitted the new book is the same old bollocks with a sprig of holly on top.
He continued: “I was going to skip this year because I just cannot stand it anymore.
“But then the publisher says I’ve never done a Christmas one, and I say ‘surely I have,’ and he’s like ‘amazingly no’ and I’m like ‘well whatever’ so, once again, I’ve crapped something out.
“It’s all about boshing the old bird in the oven while you have a couple of ales and I dunno, bacon sandwiches with a bit of maple syrup on for breakfast on Boxing Day.
“Near 20 years these have been coming out now. Remember when I was the Naked Chef? A lifetime ago.
“Anyway, new fucking book, buy it or don’t. You’ll never make anything in it anyway.”
Jamie Oliver’s Christmas Cookbook is out now from Michael Joseph, priced at £26.
Share: | 1real |
Pleading for Paul Ryan | Top Dems want White House to call off Part B demo — The next cancer drug shortage | 0fake |
New Poll Shows Trump Beats GOP Candidate In His Home State | This is YUGE for Trump and his supporters In a must-win state for any GOP candidate, this is the best news Trump could receive leading into Ohio s primary election A three-way race for the 66 delegates up for grabs in the Ohio Republican Presidential Primary is developing, and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) is on the outside of that race looking in.An Ohio Primary poll published Tuesday by Quinnipiac shows Donald Trump leading the way with 31 percent support, followed by home state Gov. John Kasich, with 26 percent. Kasich is trailed by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), holding 21 percent of supporters.Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) is a distant fourth in Ohio. He sits at 13 percent. Dr. Ben Carson trails Rubio with only 5 percent of likely Ohio voters.Some 38 percent of respondents said they would consider changing their mind before the March 15 Primary, while 5 percent are currently undecided.Though Trump leads the way, he also leads on the negative side. A third of likely voters said they will definitely not support the businessman. The Donald Trump train begins the three-week campaign for Ohio s crucial delegates on the right track and holds a small lead over the Buckeye State s own governor, John Kasich, said Peter A. Brown, the assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Poll, in a statement released with the survey. A Kasich Ohio win is crucial to the Republicans trying to stop the New York businessman s nomination. If Trump can defeat Kasich in his home state, that would be an impressive demonstration of his strength in a state that is just now getting attention. But Trump s lead is just 5 points, certainly not large enough for him to breathe easy, he added.The Quinnipiac poll surveyed 759 Ohio likely Republican primary voters with a margin of error of +/- 3.6 percent, and 518 Ohio likely Democratic primary voters with a margin of error of +/- 4.3 percent. Via: Breitbart News | 1real |
Attention Starved Gas Bag Sheila Jackson Lee Kneels and Pulls Race Card On House Floor [Video] | I WILL STAND WITH AMERICA BECAUSE I KNEEL ATTENTION STARVED SHEILA JACKSON LEERep. Sheila Jackson Lee just couldn t stand it anymore She just had to pull out her race card and kneel on the House floor today to show solidarity with the NFL players who kneeled during the national anthem over the weekend.We noticed a coordinated move last night with the main stream media and politicians to make this into Trump is a racist for calling the players sons of bitches We heard dog whistle so many times it became funny. ALL of the cable channels had Dem talking heads claiming Trump spoke directly to ONLY the black players when he condemned the protest. THEY EVEN BROUGHT THE MOTHERS OF PLAYERS INTO THIS LOL: We simply ask for the dignity and respect to not call our mothers a son-of-a-B. Even though President Trump NEVER made this about race, you knew it would happen, didn t you? The left has nothing else nothing!!!WHAT DID SHE JUST SAY???Jackson Lee explained. The only reason he is doing is because someone had the lack of judgment to provoke the situation and call their mothers a name. I refuse to accept that as a standard of leadership for the highest office in the world. Jackson Lee continued by saying: there is no basis in the First Amendment that says you cannot kneel in the national anthem or in front of the flag. I kneel in honor of them. I kneel in front of the flag and on this floor, Jackson Lee declared while taking a knee. I kneel in honor of the First Amendment. I kneel because the flag is a symbol for freedom. I kneel because I m going to stand against racism. I kneel because I will stand with those young men and I ll stand with our soldiers. And I ll stand with America, because I kneel, Lee concluded. | 1real |
Non-EU Norway appeals for smooth Brexit terms | DUBLIN (Reuters) - Non-EU Norway called on Brussels and London on Wednesday to ensure that Brexit does not disrupt its trade relations once Britain leaves the European Union. Norway has chosen to remain out of the EU but pays hundreds of millions of euros to access the single market as a member of the European Economic Area (EEA) and is also in the European Free Trade Area (EFTA) along with Switzerland, Iceland and Liechtenstein. To preserve the integrity of the single market, the EU-27, the UK and EFTA should agree on legal arrangements to enter into at the same time that the EU-UK agreement is reached, Marit Berger Roesland, Norway s European affairs minister, said in a speech in Dublin. Norway is concerned, among other things, about the fate of Norwegians living in Britain after Brexit; fisheries policy; what kind of terms would be given to Britain after Brexit and whether Britain would get preferential treatment over Norway. Roesland told Reuters that while Oslo is not at the negotiating table, there was a good understanding of its position in London, and that it was now up to finding a technical solution. If the EU and UK agree on withdrawal terms relevant to the single market, such as the rights of citizens, we need to find ways to extend these to the members of the EEA, said Roesland, who was appointed to the role last month. Likewise any transitional agreements that extend the application of the single market should also include the EEA states. Otherwise we risk having a fragmented solution and that would be a great problem for Norway. | 0fake |
Ukrainian author of Manafort op-ed says sought input to avoid errors | KIEV (Reuters) - The author of an article that U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller believes Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort ghost-wrote in violation of a gag order said on Saturday he had sought input on the op-ed before publishing to avoid errors. On Friday, Mueller unveiled evidence against Manafort to convince a judge that he wrote the article to improve his public image. Manafort is facing charges as part of an investigation into accusations of Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. election and possible collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign. The op-ed was published on Thursday in the English-language Kyiv Post under the byline of Oleg Voloshyn, a former spokesman for Ukraine’s foreign affairs ministry. In a telephone call with Reuters, Voloshyn said he wrote the article, but before publishing had shown it to Konstantin Kilimnik, a Ukrainian whom Mueller alluded to in a filing earlier this week as having ties to Russian intelligence. Voloshyn said he had decided to write the article to correct misrepresentations of Manafort in the media without prejudicing the U.S. trial and had consulted Kilimnik, who is close to Manafort, to make sure the text was accurate. “I didn’t want to write any stupid things in it that would worsen his (Manafort’s) already difficult position,” Voloshyn said. “I sent the text to Kilimnik and it was Kilimnik’s idea to send it to Paul (Manafort) for a look.” “He (Kilimnik) sent it back to me with some comments and suggestions. Whether these were his comments and suggestions or Paul’s suggestions is not a question I can answer,” he said. Voloshyn said allegations of Kilimnik’s ties to Russia were groundless and that Kilimnik, whom Reuters has not been able to reach, did not want to talk to news media. Voloshyn said he was prepared to testify that he had no direct contact with Manafort in the run-up to the publication of the article, which praised Manafort’s work promoting European Union-Ukraine relations and said he lobbied for pro-Western values, not Russian interests. “In September or in the summer, when he started having problems, I sent him a letter of support. He did not respond,” Voloshyn said. On Monday, Mueller’s team had said in a court filing that they had been assured by Manafort’s counsel that they had taken steps to prevent the article from being published. Voloshyn told Reuters that he was not contacted by Manafort’s lawyers in an attempt to stop him from publishing it. “Who could forbid me?” he said. “What right does Mueller have to forbid me to do something?” Manafort’s attorney has acknowledged that his client helped edit Voloshyn’s article but denies he violated the gag order, saying an article published in a Ukrainian newspaper would not substantially prejudice the case in the United States. The charges against Manafort include conspiracy to launder money and failing to register as a foreign agent working on behalf of former pro-Russian Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych’s government, who was ousted in 2014. All parties were ordered by the judge on Nov. 8 not to discuss the case in public or with the media in a way that could substantially prejudice a fair trial. Earlier this week, Mueller’s team discovered the draft op-ed was in the works and ordered Manafort’s lawyers to shut it down. | 0fake |
Alabama win thrills Democrats as Republicans point fingers | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democrats said on Wednesday their U.S. Senate victory in Alabama could lead to a sweeping comeback for the party in 2018 elections, while Republicans sought to assess blame for a defeat in one of the country’s most conservative states. Doug Jones, a Democrat and former federal prosecutor, won the special election on Tuesday night after a bitter campaign that drew national attention amid sexual misconduct accusations against conservative Republican candidate Roy Moore. President Donald Trump had endorsed Moore and the loss was a stunning upset for him and fellow Republicans, narrowing their majority in the Senate to 51-49. It also boosted Democrats who hope to retake control of Congress in elections next November. Trump, speaking to reporters at the White House, said the Alabama outcome would not affect his policy agenda. Republicans are rushing to pass a tax overhaul package by the end of the year. Jones is expected to take office in early January after the election results are certified. “Wish we would have gotten the seat,” Trump said. “A lot of Republicans feel differently. They’re very happy with the way it turned out.” At a news conference in Birmingham, Alabama, on Wednesday, Jones said he received congratulatory calls from Trump, as well as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican, and Senator Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader. Some congressional Republicans were quick on Wednesday to slam former Trump strategist Steve Bannon for his steadfast support of Moore, saying it split the party and paved the way for Jones’ shocking victory. Jones, 63, was the first Democrat elected to the Senate from Alabama in a quarter-century and the party sees potential nationwide. “This campaign has given a lot of people a reason to believe,” Jones said. Schumer said the defeat of Moore reflected a distaste among voters for Trump’s policies, which he said help the wealthy and powerful to the detriment of the middle class. “Things are looking good for us,” Schumer told reporters. “If they (Republicans) continue to run the government for the benefit of the few special powerful wealthy interests, there will be many more Alabamas in 2018.” Some Senate Republicans expressed relief that Moore would not be joining their ranks, including Bob Corker, a frequent Trump critic who is retiring next year. “I know we’re supposed to cheer for our side of the aisle ... but I’m really, really happy with what happened for all of us in our nation, for people serving in the Senate, to not have to deal with what we were likely going to have to deal with should the outcome have been the other way,” Corker said. Bannon, Trump’s former chief White House strategist, worked hard for Moore as part of his broader campaign against more centrist Republican leaders, and his critics were quick to attack on Wednesday. “This guy does not belong on the national stage,” Republican Representative Peter King said on CNN. “He’s not representing what I stand for. I consider myself a conservative Republican. ... And he sort of parades himself out there with his weird, alt-right views that he has. And, to me, it’s demeaning the whole governmental and political process.” Moore, a hard-line conservative who was twice removed from his seat on the Alabama Supreme Court for refusing to abide by federal law, became the Republican candidate by beating incumbent Senator Luther Strange in a primary race earlier this year. Strange had been appointed to fill the seat vacated by Republican Jeff Sessions when he became Trump’s attorney general. McConnell and other Republican leaders in Congress backed Strange in that race and then pressured Moore to withdraw his candidacy after he faced allegations from several women that he sexually assaulted or pursued them when they were teenagers and he was in his 30s Moore, 70, denied the accusations. McConnell, who has been a frequent Bannon target, declined to address Bannon’s role in the race when speaking to reporters on Wednesday. “It was quite an impressive election,” McConnell said. “It was a big turnout and an unusual day.” Strange had harsh words for Bannon. “He has accomplished one thing that I don’t think anybody in America thought was possible, and that’s getting a Democrat elected in the state of Alabama,” Strange said on Fox News Channel. Trump backed Strange in the Republican primary but then endorsed Moore and threw his full support behind him even as other party leaders in Washington walked away. Trump tried to minimize the damage to his own credibility on Wednesday. “The reason I originally endorsed Luther Strange (and his numbers went up mightily), is that I said Roy Moore will not be able to win the General Election. I was right!” he said on Twitter. “Roy worked hard but the deck was stacked against him!” Some Republicans defended Trump. “It had zero to do with Donald Trump,” Republican Representative Bradley Byrne of Alabama told MSNBC, calling the race “a purely weird, unique election.” As of Wednesday night, Moore had not conceded the race to Jones, saying in a video statement that there are military and provisional ballots still to be counted and that the campaign was waiting for certification by the Secretary of State. “We are indeed in a struggle to preserve our republic, our civilization, and our religion and to set free a suffering humanity,” he said. “And the battle rages on.” Jones’ victory was not expected to affect pending votes in Congress on funding the government or the Republican overhaul of the tax code. Republican congressional leaders have vowed to get the tax changes approved before Christmas. The Alabama outcome could push Democrats to make sexual harassment a key election issue at a time when many powerful men in entertainment, the media and politics - including Trump - have faced accusations of misconduct. Such a move could help boost support from women. The results also highlighted Jones’ success in mobilizing African-Americans voters, who constituted about 30 percent of those voting on Tuesday and overwhelmingly voted Democratic, according to network exit polls. Jones also fared surprisingly well in suburban counties outside of cities such as Birmingham and Huntsville, a trend that has Republicans nervous ahead of next year’s elections, when dozens of congressional districts are likely to be highly competitive. Part of the reason for that in Alabama was that many upscale Republican voters did not vote as compared with last year’s presidential election. | 0fake |
U.S. senators reach deal on Russia sanctions | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. senators reached an agreement on Monday on legislation imposing new sanctions on Russia, including a provision that would prevent the White House from easing, suspending or ending sanctions without congressional approval. The agreement, to be filed as an amendment to an Iran sanctions bill, is intended to punish Russia over issues including its alleged meddling in the 2016 U.S. election, annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea region and support for the government of Syria in that country’s six-year-long civil war. [L1N1J41LS] The Iran bill is due come up for a vote as soon as this week. Besides the provision setting up a process for Congress to review changes in sanctions, the measure would put into law sanctions previously established via presidential executive order, including some on certain Russian energy projects and debt financing in some industries. It would impose new sanctions on Russians found to be guilty of human rights abuses, supplying weapons to Syria’s government and conduct cyber attacks on behalf of Russia’s government, among others. The measure also would allow new sanctions on Russian mining, metals, shipping and railways. The legislation is backed by both Republicans and Democrats, and is expected to easily pass the Senate. It was introduced amid an intense focus in the U.S. capital on relations with Russia, and investigations by the Department of Justice and congressional committees of whether Russia sought to influence the 2016 U.S. elections to help elect Republican President Donald Trump, and whether Trump associates colluded with Moscow as it sought to influence the election. To become law, the legislation would have to pass the House of Representatives and be signed into law by Trump. If Trump objected, some of its backers said they expected enough congressional support to override a veto. “These additional sanctions will ... send a powerful and bipartisan statement to Russia and any other country who might try to interfere in our elections that they will be punished,” Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said in a statement. Russia has denied attempting to interfere in the U.S election, and Trump has dismissed any talk of collusion. The measure also authorizes “robust assistance” to strengthen democratic institutions and counter disinformation in European countries that might be targeted by what the legislation’s sponsors described as Russian aggression. In December, the final full month of President Barack Obama’s administration, Washington sanctioned Russian businessmen and companies for Moscow’s role in Ukraine via executive order. | 0fake |
Britain sends hundreds of soldiers and tanks to Estonia in biggest military deployment since Cold War | Wed, 26 Oct 2016 15:47 UTC © Getty A total of 800 troops, drones and tanks are moving to Estonia as part of the biggest military build up on Russia's borders since the Cold War. Britain is sending hundreds of soldiers and hardware to Russia's borders as part of a huge military deployment. A total of 800 troops, drones and tanks are moving to Estonia next spring, Defence Secretary Michael Fallon said. The move is part of the biggest military build up of NATO troops on Russia's borders since the Cold War . © REX Mr Fallon said the deployment of the battalion, supported by French and Danish troops, will start from May 2017. "Although we are leaving the European Union, we will be doing more to help secure the eastern and southern flanks of NATO," Mr Fallon said. London is also sending Typhoon fighter aircraft to Romania to patrol around the Black Sea, partly in support of Turkey. It comes after an increase in tensions between the West and Russia in recent months. Earlier this month, 40 million Russians reportedly carried out nuclear evacuation tests after officials warned that the West wanted to launch strikes on the country. NATO is now pressing allies including the US and Britain to contribute to the military presence as the alliance prepares for a long quarrel with Moscow. Last week, a Russian aircraft carrier passed through the English Channel as it traveled to Syria in a show of force along Europe's shores. Alliance defense ministers aim to make good on a July promise by NATO leaders to send forces to the Baltic states and eastern Poland from early next year. The United States hopes for binding commitments from Europe to fill four battle groups of some 4,000 troops, part of NATO's response to Russia's 2014 annexation of Crimea and concern it could try a similar tactic in Europe's ex-Soviet states. Comment: This propaganda still lives despite Russia showing no interest invading any country. France, Denmark, Italy and other allies are expected to join the four battle groups led by the United States, Germany, Britain and Canada to go to Poland, Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia, with forces ranging from armored infantry to drones. NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said the commitments would be "a clear demonstration of our transatlantic bond." Diplomats said it would also send a message to Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, who has complained that European allies do not pay their way in the alliance. The battle groups will be backed by NATO's 40,000-strong rapid-reaction force, and if need be, further follow-on forces, for any potential conflict, which could move into Baltic states and Poland on rotation. The strategy is part of an emerging new deterrent that could eventually be combined with missile defenses, air patrols and defenses against cyber attacks. However, the alliance is still struggling for a similar strategy in the Black Sea region, which Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan has said is becoming a "Russian lake" because of Moscow's military presence there. Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey are expected to soon come forward with a plan to increase naval and air patrols in the area, as well as a multinational NATO brigade in Romania. For the Kremlin, the U.S.-led alliance's plans are already too much given Russia's grievances at NATO's expansion eastwards. Stoltenberg denied going too far. "This is a credible deterrence, not to provoke a conflict but to prevent conflict." Comment: Stoltenberg's thinking is flawed since moving troops to a country's border based on no threats is an act of aggression that promotes conflict. Next year's deployments have taken on greater symbolism since Russia pulled out of several nuclear disarmament agreements in the past two months while moving nuclear-capable missiles into its Baltic exclave in Kaliningrad. The so-called Iskander-M cruise missiles can hit targets across Poland and the Baltics, although NATO officials declined to say if Russia had moved nuclear warheads to Kaliningrad. "This deployment, if it becomes permanent, if the presence of nuclear weapons were confirmed, would be a change in (Russia's) security posture," the United States' envoy to NATO, Douglas Lute, said. Tensions have been building since Crimea and the West's decision to impose retaliatory sanctions, but the breakdown of a U.S-Russia brokered ceasefire in Syria on October 3, followed by U.S. accusations that Russia has used cyber attacks to disrupt the presidential election, have signaled a sharp worsening of East-West relations. EU leaders met last week to consider fresh sanctions over Russian bombing of civilian areas in Aleppo and NATO's Stoltenberg said he fears the Russian warships heading to the Mediterranean could launch new attacks on the Syrian city. Even before the break down of the Syrian ceasefire, Russian President Vladimir Putin suspended a treaty with Washington on cleaning up weapons-grade plutonium, signalling he was willing to use nuclear disarmament as a new bargaining chip in disputes with the United States over Ukraine and Syria. | 1real |
Trump says won't divest from his business while president | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President-elect Donald Trump said on Wednesday he would maintain ownership of his global business empire but hand off control to his two oldest sons while president, an arrangement that watchdogs said would not prevent conflicts of interest in the White House. Trump told a news conference he would resign from all positions overseeing his hotels, golf courses and hundreds of other businesses and move his assets into a trust to help ensure that he will not consciously take actions as president that would benefit him personally. Trump, a Republican, is under pressure to distance himself from his businesses before he moves into the White House on Jan. 20. Unlike other U.S. government officials, the president is not required by law to steer clear of conflicts of interest. “I could actually run my business and run government at the same time. I don’t like the way that looks, but I would be able to do that if I wanted to,” Trump said. Ethics experts said the arrangement did not go far enough. “Mr. Trump’s ill-advised course will precipitate scandal and corruption,” said Norman Eisen, a former White House ethics adviser under Democratic President Barack Obama. Walter Shaub, director of the U.S. Office of Government Ethics, said on Wednesday in a speech at a Washington think tank that his office recommends Trump “divest his conflicting assets” to avoid conflicts. Trump appears to be still involved with his business while preparing to take office, saying he had turned down a $2 billion development deal in Dubai he had been offered over the weekend. The company that made the proposal, DAMAC, confirmed the discussions had taken place. The Trump Organization will not enter into any new overseas deals while Trump is president and will only undertake domestic projects after a company ethics adviser has approved them, said Trump adviser Sheri Dillon. Details of how the ethics adviser would operate, as well as several other aspects of the arrangements, were not immediately clear. Trump will only know of those deals if he hears about them through the news media, said Dillon, a lawyer at Morgan Lewis who focuses on tax and ethics. Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, will have no further involvement in managing the organization or her own clothing brand. Ivanka Trump said on her Facebook page that she would take time off to settle her family into their new home in Washington. The president-elect has named her husband, Jared Kushner, to a senior advisory role in the White House. Since Trump sold all his stocks last year, the Trump trust will hold only business assets and liquid assets such as cash, Dillon said. A financial disclosure document he filed in May also showed loans from lenders such as Deutsche Bank (DBKGn.DE) and Ladder Capital (LADR.K). Trump will not have to file a new disclosure form until 2018. Many other ethics experts, including the U.S. Office of Government Ethics, have urged Trump to completely divest or set up a blind trust for his assets. In a blind trust, the owner does now know what the holdings are or how the assets are managed. Trump’s oldest sons, Eric and Donald Jr., will be running his business, so the arrangement does not meet that standard. Dillon said that was not a realistic possibility for a family-owned company and any sudden divestment would hurt Trump financially. Unlike liquid assets like stocks and investment funds, much of Trump’s wealth comes from office towers and other real estate that cannot be sold easily, as well as licensing deals that could be difficult to unwind. Stripped of the Trump name, many of these assets would lose much of their value, Dillon said. “President-elect Trump should not be expected to destroy the company he built,” she said. Dillon dismissed concerns that Trump could violate an anti-bribery provision in the U.S. Constitution, known as the Emoluments Clause. That applies to gifts, but not business transactions like renting a hotel room, she said. Nevertheless, profits generated at Trump’s hotels by foreign governments will be donated to the U.S. Treasury, she said. | 0fake |
SAY GOOD BYE TO LONDON: Radical Muslim WINS London’s Mayoral Election By Over 300,000 Votes | Has the entire world gone mad with political correctness? Is there any chance of saving the UK from itself? UPDATE: Labour Party politician Sadiq Khan has been elected London mayor the first Muslim to lead Europe s largest city.Election officials say Khan defeated Conservative rival Zac Goldsmith by more than 300,000 votes, after first- and second-preference votes were allocated.The result came early Saturday, more than 24 hours after polls closed.Khan was elected to replace Conservative Mayor Boris Johnson after a campaign marked by U.S.-style negative campaigning.Goldsmith, a wealthy environmentalist, called Khan divisive and accused him of sharing platforms with Islamic extremists.Khan, who calls himself the British Muslim who will take the fight to the extremists, accused Goldsmith of trying to scare and divide voters in a proudly multicultural city of 8.6 million people more than 1 million of them Muslim.Londoners go to the polls on Thursday to choose a replacement for the outgoing Mayor, Boris Johnson MP. Despite the fact the Labour Party is currently mired in an anti-Semitism scandal, if all things remain equal, expect the party s candidate Sadiq Khan MP to be confirmed in the early hours of Friday morning.Mr. Khan, 45, has had a successful career in the Labour Party, being elected to parliament in 2005, becoming a Minister of State in 2008 with a promotion in 2009. He was a Shadow Secretary of State for Justice from 2010-15, and has been running for London Mayor since then.POLLINGIn fact, as I predicted in January, the polls have changed very little since the beginning of the year. This is despite a negative-ad onslaught by the Conservative Party and its candidate Zac Goldsmith the multi-millionaire son of Eurosceptic royalty Sir James Goldsmith, and brother of socialite and Vanity Fair editor Jemima Khan.Mr. Goldsmith and his Back Zac campaign have used the last few months to highlight Sadiq Khan s proximity to Islamic extremists, extremism, and this past weekend, to anti-Semitism.But perhaps it speaks to the mindset of Londoners, and certainly the British capital s demographic shift, that such news has scarcely affected Mr. Khan.In January, a YouGov poll put Mr. Goldsmith on 35 to Mr. Khan s 45 per cent. When you take into account London s supplementary voting system, the numbers after the second preference votes are counted ended up 45-55 to Mr. Khan.Last week, that number stood at 40-6o to Mr. Khan. After second preference votes, the extremist-adjacent candidate has a 20 point poll lead.While last week s events when one of Mr. Khan s most prominent backers Ken Livingstone was implicated in a Hitler/anti-Semitism scandal may serve to keep some of Mr. Khan s voters at home, it is hard to imagine the Conservatives overturning such a drastic poll lead.A MUSLIM MAYOR?Polling suggests some people are nervous about having someone like Mr. Khan near an office that wields so much power, responsibility, and cash.Private conversations with Westminster insiders often see Lutfur Rahman the former Mayor of Tower Hamlets raised as another example of a prominent Muslim mayor.Mr. Rahman was removed from office, accused by critics of playing sectarian politics with the area s Muslim population, of backing Islamists, and of distributing tax payer cash to his favoured Muslim groups to secure their support.Mr. Rahman was found guilty of corrupt and illegal practices and has perhaps set back the plight of the few, integrated British Muslims in elected life. He alongside politicians like Humza Yousaf, Sayeeda Warsi, Rushanara Ali, Shabana Mahmood, Yasmin Qureshi, Amjad Bashir, Naz Shah, and Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh have created a deep distrust between British voters and Muslim politicians.In fact one third of Londoners remain suspicious of having a Muslim Mayor, and the likes of Sajid Javid or Syed Kamall suffer because of their co-religionists insistence on fellow-travelling with extremists, if not holding extremist views themselves.EXTREMISMAnd Mr. Khan can hardly claim a clean record. Mr. Goldsmith s attacks are not without basis, though they have been shrugged off as racism or Islamophobia with the assistance of the left s useful idiots like Owen Jones.Apart from his somewhat threatening statements about not voting for him while claiming that he is the West , Mr. Khan s own track record is perhaps one of the most sour of all Muslim politicians in the Western world.In 2001 he was the lawyer for the Nation of Islam in its successful High Court bid to overturn the 15-year-ban on its leader, Louis Farrakhan.In 2005 and 2006 he visited terror-charged Babar Ahmad in Woodhill Prison. Mr. Ahmed was extradited to the U.S. in 2012, serving time in prison before being returned to the UK in 2015. Mr. Ahmed pleaded guilty to the terrorist offences of conspiracy, and providing material support to the Taliban.And Mr. Khan also campaigned for the release and repatriation of Shaker Aamer, Britain s last Guantanamo detainee, who was returned to the UK in November.Both Messrs Aamer and Ahmed provided Mr. Khan with links to the advocacy group CAGE, which described the Islamic State executioner Mohammed Emwazi as a beautiful young man , and which has campaigned on behalf of both men. Mr. Khan is reported to have shared a stage with five Islamic extremists, including at sex-segregated events. Even so, his poll numbers remain firm.On Friday morning, Londoners will likely get the news that their mayor for the next four years is a man with the judgement, priorities, and fellow travellers as laid out above. This, combined with an annual 16bn budget, and an army of police, bureaucrats, and officials, would make Mr. Khan one of the most powerful Muslims in the Western world.For entire story: Breitbart News | 1real |
Chelsea Handler Hilariously Trashes Trump’s Sons In Comparison To President Obama’s Daughters | The prospect of President Obama and his family being replaced in the White House by Donald Trump and his family is a very depressing thought to millions of Americans, including comedian Chelsea Handler.During her show on Netflix this week, Handler lamented that we will soon have to say goodbye to the current First Family only to see a new family move in. I was midway through the debate when it hit me, we re going to have to say goodbye to the greatest family on the planet, Handler said before putting up an image of the Duggar family and continuing, And no I m not talking about these assholes. Handler then went after Donald Trump and his version of family values. While Hillary Clinton and potential First Gentleman Bill Clinton play with balloons on stage, rotten apricot Donald Trump would rather play with his daughter s balloons. Handler admitted that she isn t a fan of children but conceded that Sasha and Malia Obama are the exception. Look at them playing with their dog Bo! Isn t that cute? Handler said before comparing the Obama girls to Trump s sons Eric and Donald Jr. Now, let s take a look at how the Trump boys play with animals, Handler said as a photo of the two Trumps holding up a cheetah they killed appeared on the screen. Two assholes in their natural habitat, she quipped.Handler went on to list some of President Obama accomplishments and wished that he could run for a third term.Here s the video via YouTube:Handler isn t the only one who has slammed Trump s sons for using their daddy s wealth to kill animals instead of using it to help protect them for future generations to enjoy.Madonna slammed them earlier this month on her Instgram. How Big of [a] Pussy Do you have to BE to kill this Noble Animal for sport? Madonna wrote. Just ask Donald Trump Jr and his brother Eric. Featured Image: Screenshot | 1real |
The Moroccan Garden of One Man’s Dreams - The New York Times | In the rough countryside of northern Morocco the writer and horticulturist Umberto Pasti has created Rohuna, his garden, which is nothing less than autobiography writ from earth and flora. I FIRST CAME HERE, to this patch of dusty land 40 miles south of Tangier, 18 years ago. Tired after a long walk, I fell asleep under a fig tree and had a strange dream, full of words whose relation to one another I didn’t understand: mouth, nasturtium, exedra, unicorn. At the time, I didn’t know that the jinn, the local spirits, possess those who fall asleep under trees in the middle of nowhere. What I did know was that I was going to build a garden here. I told my Moroccan friend who was traveling with me that I wanted to buy the land. There were 20 or so owners to negotiate with, but after about 100 meetings with the adouls, Muslim notaries, the deal was done. In the meantime, I’d already set myself up in a shack made out of reeds and palm leaves, built with help from Rachid, the child who had popped out from behind a bramble one day, a huge smile on his face. Today, he is Rohuna’s head gardener. Objectively, it wasn’t an ideal place for a garden. Sure, a few trees grew in the dusty, scorching heat — three figs, a small cluster of pomegranates and a eucalyptus — and the view, of the sleepy, stony ground, of the ocean, was biblical, the solitude exciting. But, unfortunately, you could only get there either by scrambling along a difficult path or on the back of a mule. The chalky soil was in many places, in fact, sand or lifeless clay. The temperature could climb to almost 122 degrees and the rocks were home to scorpions and vipers, including the rare, magnificent Vipera latastei, whose bite is lethal. What’s more, the peasants who lived in the village nearby were stubborn and suspicious, and many had never seen a European. My father had died not too long before, leaving me some money. I used all of it making up for the roadblocks that destiny had placed in my path as a gardener. By the time my Cleopatra syndrome reached its height, I had hired 600 workers: There were three houses to build, a track to lay down miles of stone, walls to erect. And in the meantime we had to transport hundreds of tons of good topsoil so that everything would turn out as I had dreamed. My vision for the garden, I am still convinced, is for how it has always been — but always when? In what dimension did a sliver of Moroccan countryside coincide with something out of the background of a Renaissance painting, populated by centaurs, basilisks, hippogriffs? THESE WERE TIRING YEARS, but there were also many moments of joy: the morning on which the pump we’d attached to the third probe yielded a rivulet when coming back from Tangier, I saw the Iris planifolia that, months before, we’d transplanted by the thousands from the construction site of a tourist dock, all in bloom. In the beginning, I was very strict with myself. Other than fruit trees, I only planted greenery threatened by the urbanization that has disfigured northern Morocco, snatching them from the jaws of excavators and bulldozers: gigantic olive trees, holly oaks, strawberry bushes, viburnum shrubs and fig trees. Then I let myself go, but only in the ornamental terraces around the houses, where I liberally planted the species that I’d seen in the gardens in the country’s north: Damask roses, Madonna lilies, Canna indica, Iris germanica and Iris pallida (Dalmation irises) Dietes iridioides (fortnight lilies) tithonia, hollyhocks, carnations and geraniums. These terraces, of which there are roughly 20, are each themed. There’s the Englishman’s Garden, with its lilies and fuchsias the Italian’s Garden, planted with olives, myrtle and lilies of the Nile, and the Egyptian Garden, because when I sit there I feel as if I’m in Luxor. I surprised my partner and guardian angel with Stephan’s Terrace, which I named after him. We now drink gin and tonics there on summer nights. And Bando’s Gardens take their name from one of the gardeners the meandering bloodlines of his family, one of the oldest in the village, leave me as awestruck as those of the Guermantes family do the narrator of “In Search of Lost Time. ” In these gardens, it’s my men who decide what to plant among the mulberries, the apricots and the pears, delighting me with their audacity: orange Streptosolen jamesonii (marmalade bushes) next to Tecoma garrocha alongside horseshoe pelargoniums as red as the idea of red itself, purple African daisies and Tagetes lemmonii (Lemmon’s marigold) those perfumed clouds of gold. BUT THIS GARDENER’S heart truly resides beyond the path that leads to the village, on the margins of the forest of fig trees that yields, as in a fable, to the wooden bridge built for me by my friend Najim. Here wild plants grow — roughly 300 native species — from the magisterial Quercus ilex, the evergreen oak, to the minuscule Acis tingitana, and all the rock roses, euphorbia, helianthemum and thyme that made northern Morocco a paradise. Wild bulbs are our forte: There are 17 species of iris (six native) 12 narcissus varietals, five kinds of ornithogalum ( ) and tulips, romulea, merendera, dipcadi, fritillaries, gladioli, grape hyacinths, crocuses, meadow saffrons and garlics. And I’m not talking about small clusters. Such boundless Phoenician horizons demand courage. For winter picnics, straw mats and rugs are spread out among the thousands of Iris tingitana (Moroccan irises) — in their honor we drink mint tea and break bread. To live in this Arcadia is a great privilege. Here, the lives of people are intertwined with the lives of plants and of the animals, and the rhythms of nature itself. This is the Morocco that I love more than anything else in the world, the noble and rustic Morocco for which I live. I am grateful to the men who work with me — and to the jinn that possesses me still. | 0fake |
U.S. airlines scramble to evacuate residents ahead of Hurricane Irma | (Reuters) - Airlines were racing against the clock to clear as many customers as possible from the likely Florida path of Hurricane Irma, as social and political pressure mounted for carriers to play a bigger role in aiding evacuations. As the powerful storm threatened to rip through the Florida coast by Sunday, airlines ramped up the number of flights available out of south Florida airports, where operations were likely to temporarily cease through the weekend and beyond. But flights out of the area remained extremely limited. At Miami International Airport, many outbound flights were canceled, leaving residents scrambling to rebook to anywhere outside the path of the storm. American Airlines, which has one of the larger operations in south Florida, said on Thursday it had added 16 flights out of Miami, amid more than 2,400 forced cancellations through Monday. Delta Air Lines Inc said it had upsized aircraft and added flights to increase the number of available outgoing seats by 2,000. United Airlines added six flights out of Miami to its hubs, including Newark, New Jersey, and Chicago O Hare. All three carriers said they planned to mostly wind down south Florida operations by Friday evening. In areas already pummeled by the powerful storm, flight operations had been rolled back and halted altogether. A Delta-operated flight from New York to San Juan, Puerto Rico, and back, made headlines for narrowly avoiding the storm in a mission to evacuate another plane-full of passengers from the area ahead of Irma s landfall. Flight-tracking website FlightRadar24.com saw the plane land for one last departure in the U.S. territory located squarely in the path of Irma s landfall, fill with passengers, and make its successful flight back to New York on Wednesday. Other airlines had already ceased operations in the region. PRICE-GOUGING As residents sought to secure last-minute flights out of the dangerous Category 5 storm s path, airlines faced accusations of trying to capitalize on the panic and chaos by price gouging. Under pressure from some members of Congress following social media reports, airlines have taken the unusual step of publicly announcing price caps on tickets out of areas in Irma s course. Early on, carrier JetBlue capped flights out of the area at $99, and other carriers followed suit, capping fares at between $99 and $399 a ticket. But while airlines offered some cheap flights out of south Florida after complaints, passengers said that did little good if all the flights were fully booked or canceled. Medical student Eric Slabaugh said he was dismayed by ticket prices over $2,000 when he started looking for flights earlier this week. He got a ticket to Detroit for $700, he said, because nobody wants to go there. Publix can t charge $50 for a case of water without getting accused of price gouging, but airlines can charge 50 times the price of a normal ticket. I don t think that s fair, Slabaugh said. Airlines customer service practices have come under fire in recent months, and just last year, U.S. carriers were cleared in a federal investigation regarding exorbitant fare mark-ups in the wake of a deadly Amtrak derailment that drove up demand for air travel on some routes. Senator Bill Nelson, a Florida Democrat who had been pressuring airlines to aid in evacuating Florida residents, spoke with airline executives on Thursday and urged them to add more flight outs of Florida. His office said Nelson is pleased airlines were doing everything they could to help get impacted Floridians to safety. The Federal Aviation Administration is holding twice daily phone calls with airlines to talk about airport conditions, but does not plan to close the Miami airport on Friday, officials said. Airlines are still planning for airport closures, however, and said they expect their operations to be impacted in the region at least through the weekend. Also affected by the storm, Carnival Cruise Lines, which has major operations out of Florida ports, said on Thursday it had canceled four of its Caribbean cruises, though it still planned to operate several more under modified itineraries. | 0fake |
Trump said firing Comey relieved 'great pressure': New York Times | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump told Russian officials at the White House that firing FBI Director James Comey relieved “great pressure” the president was facing from an ongoing probe into Russia and the U.S. presidential election, the New York Times reported on Friday, citing a document summarizing the meeting. “I just fired the head of the FBI. He was crazy, a real nut job,” Trump said, according to the Times, which cited a document read to it by a U.S. official. “I faced great pressure because of Russia. That’s taken off.” The Times said the document was based on notes taken from inside the Oval Office. Reuters was not immediately able to verify the accuracy of the Times’ account. | 0fake |
ANDREW BREITBART: “I Don’t Care Who Our Candidate Is…I Will March Behind Whoever Our Candidate Is, Because If We Don’t…We LOSE!”[VIDEO] | There are two paths one is America and the other one is Occupy (Black Lives Matter). Black, White, gay and straight anyone that s willing to stand next to me to fight the progressive Left, I will be in that bunker. And if you re not in that bunker because you re not satisfied with this candidate more than shame on you you re on the other side! This is quite possibly the most important message you will hear from now until November 8, 2016. As we watch Americans tear each other apart on social media and argue about who has chosen the best candidate and why, the Left is busy organizing and finding ways to come together to defeat us.Anyone who is not smart enough to put aside the petty bickering and senseless arguing over whether or not Ted Cruz knew about fliers someone from his campaign sent out to Iowa voters, or if Donald Trump contributed to Hillary s Senate campaign, deserves exactly what they get.Conservatives wouldn t get behind John McCain because he wasn t conservative enough. Tea Party members wouldn t get behind Mitt Romney because he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, so he couldn t possibly understand the average American. Or maybe they couldn t get behind him because he supported universal health care in Massachusetts, making him the equivalent of Obama. So how did that work out for you? Was Barack a better choice in 2008 than McCain? Was he a better choice in 2012 than Mitt Romney?If Romney was our President, would we be watching the resurgence of the violent anarchist Occupy movement? Would Black Lives Matter terrorists and various radical Illegal Alien groups, be rioting across the nation and meeting with our President at our White House to strategize their next move?While we tear each other apart, these groups are busy organizing and plotting ways they can threaten and punish anyone who gets in the way of their radical, progressive agenda. And what are Trump and Cruz supporters doing to counter them? They re fighting amongst themselves. They re busy pounding their chests and proclaiming how much smarter they are than their friends on social media. If we are ever going to take this country back for our sake, and the sake of our children and grandchildren, we need to put aside our differences, however minor or major they may be and come together to fight as one team.Trump and Cruz are the only two candidates who have a chance of winning the Republican nomination, and they are both fighters. Neither one of them blink in the face of radicals like Bernie Sanders, Hillary or Barack Hussein Obama. They have fought back against a media who is not used to being called out for their lies or misrepresentations of the truth. The Democrat Party is shaking in their boots. For the first time in decades, the Left is finding themselves with their backs against the wall. This is no time to let up. This is exactly the time we need to come together and redouble our efforts. There has never been a more important time in our nation s history to fight back against those who choose to fundamentally transform America.Please watch one of the most powerful speeches you will ever hear from a liberal, turned conservative warrior. Andrew Breitbart was taken from this earth much too soon, but his compelling words ring more true today than ever. He gave this inspirational speech at CPAC in 2012. Here is the most important snippet of that speech: | 1real |
Ted Cruz isn't liked in Congress. What could that mean if he's president? (+video) | Some senators are more diplomatic about their criticisms than others. Where views diverge is whether a President Cruz would be as ideologically unbending as Senator Cruz.
As Donald Trump and Republican rival Ted Cruz battle it out on the way to the Iowa caucuses Feb. 1, a favorite attack by Mr. Trump is that "nobody likes" Senator Cruz, particularly in Congress. He can't deal. The Texan "stands on the middle of the Senate floor and can't make a deal with anybody," Trump said Tuesday on MSNBC's "Morning Joe."
That’s not idle chatter, even if it’s typical Trumpian broad-brushing.
From a former president, to former House and Senate leaders, to sitting members of Congress, “establishment” Republicans are sounding alarms about the likability and deal-ability of the tea party darling who led the way to a partial government shutdown over the Affordable Care Act in 2013.
Monitor interviews with more than a dozen senators bear this out, though not all jump on the dump truck and some are more diplomatic about their criticisms than others. Where views more starkly diverge is whether a President Cruz would be as ideologically unbending as a Senator Cruz, with some observers expecting no appreciable change and others suggesting that the presidency would force him in a more pragmatic direction.
Senators don’t like to criticize their fellow senators, and several pointed to Cruz’s strengths – his intellect, passion, and humor. When asked about Cruz, Sen. Susan Collins, a moderate Republican from Maine, paused. Then she pointed out that no Senate Republican has endorsed the Texan, despite the fact that they have all come to know him since he took office in 2012.
“It’s not helpful to the level of debate in this country, to have a member of this body trashing the Senate rather than working within the Senate to make it more responsive and to reform whatever he may see as its deficiencies,” Senator Collins said, as she rode the Senate subway to her office last week.
Her colleague, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R) of South Carolina, was far less tactful. “He’s not a problem solver. When you think of problem solving, the last person that comes to mind is Ted Cruz. Everybody’s a problem but him,” said Senator Graham, who, after dropping out of the presidential campaign, now supports Jeb Bush.
One senior Republican labels Cruz a “neo-nihilist” who tears down, rather than builds.
In a speech on the Senate floor last summer, Cruz called his own party leader, Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell (R) of Kentucky, a liar. This simply is not done in a place where strict decorum is still the order of the day, and it angered many Republicans. One reason Republicans are going on the record about Cruz is because they are so concerned that he will get the nomination.
Cruz, for his part, frequently refers to his colleagues as part of the “Washington cartel.”
The renegade wears his flamethrower status as a badge of honor, joking with voters about needing a “food taster” when he sits down to a meal in the Senate dining room. His supporters, meanwhile, love the fight in him. An e-mail request from the Monitor to his campaign went unanswered.
But if unbending ideology and derision characterize Cruz’s short tenure in the Senate, what might they portend for a Cruz presidency?
Some observers contend that what you see is what you’ll get, while others think that he may well bend – or at least have to mend some fences.
“I can’t necessarily say that past is prologue,” says Sen. Thom Tillis (R) of North Carolina, who sits on the Judiciary Committee with Cruz and admires the way the attorney-senator “pins down” witnesses, particularly in confirmation hearings. Senator Tillis was backed by the Tea Party Express in a tough race in 2014, and calls Cruz “an asset” on the committee.
But Tillis points out that being a senator is not the same as president, and then adds, “I would be hopeful that whoever emerges as the Republican nominee recognizes that working with us produces a far better result for the nation.”
While Tillis says he has not clashed with Cruz, he adds that rebuilding burned bridges is “one of the factors” that a President Cruz would have to deal with.
This point, that a senator and a president are two very different jobs, is key to those who think that relations between Cruz and establishment Republicans in Congress would improve if the tea party champion were to become president.
Matt Mackowiak, a GOP consultant in Houston, points out that Cruz had absolutely no incentive to play along or try to accomplish anything when he got to the Senate three years ago.
First, he ran a campaign as a principled conservative who wasn’t going to give an inch. Second, he wanted to be a national player. “I think he realized that waiting nine months to give your maiden floor speech and keeping your head down wasn’t a path he wanted to take.” Then-Sen. Barack Obama had the same realization.
But just as important, says Mr. Mackowiak, the Senate, at that time under Democratic control, was a “graveyard” for any real accomplishments by a minority party. “The incentive instead was to be a bomb thrower, to develop your outside game, not your inside game.”
Mackowiak points to Cruz’s intense admiration for President Reagan. The consultant believes that Cruz wants to emulate the “morning in America” president. To do that, he would need a legislative agenda that would require cooperation from congressional Republicans – and depending on the math, also Democrats.
“Maintaining a poisoned relationship with leaders of both houses would be insane. He would never do that,” Mackowiak says.
But others are not so sure. They point to a new era of politics in which long-term relationships are not as important as short-term coalitions on issues. They look at the angry voter – on both the left and the right – who is tired of the establishment.
And most important, they look at Cruz himself. Not only has he stood his ground, even if it’s been a losing ground, on issues such as defunding Planned Parenthood, killing the Iran nuclear deal, and defeating a Senate immigration bill. He also promises up and down to stick to those positions.
Neither will he run to the “mushy middle” in a general election campaign, he says.
“The positions he’s taking are resonating with people,” says a conservative senator-in-arms, Jeff Sessions (R) of Alabama. “They’re tired of talk.”
It may well be that establishment Republicans in Congress bend to a President Cruz. Notice how Rep. Paul Ryan (R) of Wisconsin has reached out to the rebellious hard-right Freedom Caucus that drove out “establishment” Speaker John Boehner last fall.
A President Cruz would likely put enormous pressure on a GOP-controlled Congress to govern from an ideologically rigid position, and that Congress would feel an enormous amount of pressure to cooperate with him, says James Henson, director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin.
If that’s the case, says Professor Henson, expect to see immediate pushback from Cruz on such issues as the Affordable Care Act, gay marriage, and abortion rights in ways that test the Supreme Court – where he argued eight cases as the Texas solicitor general. Cruz has been deeply critical of the high court, and may challenge it by supporting state efforts, working with Congress, or even through executive order, Henson says.
Whether Ted Cruz, the president, would be like Ted Cruz, the senator, gets down to the “mixture of true believer and strategic player” in his political profile, says Henson. So far, the two have worked hand-in-hand – his rigidity has served him politically.
“One can look at Ted Cruz and speculate that his political career up to this point has been predicated on upward mobility, and that once he got to the highest office in the land, he might exhibit a bit more pragmatism,” Henson says. “That’s not out of the question, but I wouldn’t bet on it.”
What it comes down to, he says, is what Cruz really wants and what motivates him, and who he is as a person. No one knows the answers to those questions better than Ted Cruz. | 0fake |
Trump replaces chief of staff Reince Priebus after six-month run | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump on Friday replaced his White House chief of staff, Reince Priebus, installing retired General John Kelly in his place in a major shakeup of his top team. Trump announced the move in a tweet a day after his new communications director, Anthony Scaramucci, accused Priebus of leaking information to reporters in a profanity-laced tirade. | 0fake |
Two Of Trump’s Top Picks Accused Of Violently Assaulting Women | Donald Trump s election was almost derailed in October when a video was released with Trump bragging about grabbing women by the pussy. Unfortunately for the world, that wasn t a deal breaker for the 25 percent of Americans who voted for the demagogic self-described billionaire. Since rumored sexual assault isn t a big enough deal to keep someone out of the White House, why not put more people who are accused of violence against women in, right?As Trump has named cabinet pick after cabinet pick, each worse than the one before them, the fact that each comes with a controversial past seems to bother no one on the right.Trump s pick for national security advisor is a white nationalist who tweeted this:U decide NYPD Blows Whistle on New Hillary Emails: Money Laundering, Sex Crimes w Children, etc MUST READ! https://t.co/O0bVJT3QDr General Flynn (@GenFlynn) November 3, 2016His secretary of education hates schools. His pick for the head of the Environmental Protection Agency doesn t believe the environment needs protecting and (how s this for draining the swamp?) his treasure secretary pick is a former Goldman Sachs exec you know one of the companies that crashed the economy. It gets worse, though. According to Alternet, three of Trump s key team members have been accused of sexually or otherwise violently assaulting women.The first is the charmer, Steve Bannon. In a 1996 report, the white supremacist and former head of Breitbart was accused by his then wife of grabbing her by the neck during an argument. He was charged with domestic violence, misdemeanor witness intimidation and traumatic injury and battery. The charges were dropped, though, because his wife didn t show up for court.This one will probably surprise few. Trump s pick for labor secretary is fast food CEO Andrew Puzder. His restaurants include Hardee s and Carl s Jr., both of which are known for scantily clad women in near pornographic situations in their ads. During their divorce, Puzder s ex-wife accused him of attacking her three times, including punching her when they were riding in a car.Then, in 1986, Henning said Puzder attacked me, choked me, threw me to the floor, hit me in the head, pushed his knee into my chest, twisted my ar m and dr agged me on the floor, threw me against a wall, tried to stop my call to 911 and kicked me in the back. Source: NY MagazinePuzder responded to a reporter who asked him about the incident in a way that sounds a lot like his soon to be boss. He issued a thinly veiled threat against the reporter: There was no physical abuse at any point in time. If ever something was filed to gain personal benefit, this is it. If you re trying to smear me by raising the fact that my ex-wife made some charges against me, you re making a big mistake. It would not be good journalistic practice to publish this. Puzder s ex-wife has withdrawn the charges.Trump has also had numerous charges of sexual assault levied against him, beginning with his ex-wife Ivana. All told, Trump has been accused by about a dozen women, all of which he threatened to sue. As I said before, though, Trump s supporters don t care.Featured image via Drew Angerer/Getty Images | 1real |
If Hillary wants to know what new information the FBI has, Sharyl Attkisson knows someone she could ask | If Hillary wants to know what new information the FBI has, Sharyl Attkisson knows someone she could ask Posted at 4:34 pm on October 29, 2016 by Brett T. Share on Facebook Share on Twitter
As Twitchy reported, Hillary Clinton held a brief press conference Friday to address news that the FBI had found — in the process of investigating Anthony Weiner’s alleged sexting of a 15-year-old girl — new emails that warranted further investigation into her own email scandal.
Obviously not pleased by this latest development, Clinton called on the FBI to release whatever it had. Hillary Clinton: "We don't know the facts, which is why we're calling on the FBI to release all the information it has … let’s get it out."
— New York Post (@nypost) October 28, 2016
Despite that not being how FBI investigations work, Hillary’s call for the FBI to lay its cards on the table inspired Sharyl Attkisson of Full Measure News to make a simple suggestion: There's no mystery as to what's in the Huma Abedin emails–to Huma. She can fill in the Hillary campaign.
— Sharyl Attkisson (@SharylAttkisson) October 29, 2016
What didn’t Hillary think of that? Abedin is right there with her on board her campaign plane — it’s not like she’s hard to track down. Unless, of course, neither one can recall what they wrote to each other. It happens. More than 1,000 potentially relevant emails found on Weiner computer, including some between Huma and HRC. https://t.co/hVHL61vqrk
— Rosalind Helderman (@PostRoz) October 28, 2016 @SharylAttkisson @RobbyMook can bring them when he's on @FoxNewsSunday and clear this all up. | 1real |
EU, U.S. high-level meeting on laptop ban to be held next week | BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Union and the United States will hold a high-level meeting in Brussels next week to discuss threats to aviation and no further measures concerning a ban on in-cabin electronics larger than cellphones will be announced for now, an EU official said. U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly spoke with members of the European Commission and EU national governments on Friday about a possible extension of the U.S. ban on passengers carrying laptops in aircraft cabins to some European airports. An EU official said the two sides had agreed a high-level meeting would take place in Brussels next week, but did not say what day. | 0fake |
Islamic State German Magazine Tells Fighters To Kill "Apostate" Imams | The Islamic state magazine Rumiyah has called on supporters and Islamic State fighters in Germany and Austria to murder moderate Imams who they consider “apostates. ”[The magazine was released in several languages earlier this week through the various internet channels Islamic State uses to broadcast propaganda to its sympathisers, MEMRI reports. One of the methods used was a “telegram” app, an encrypted messaging service that ISIS often uses and is generally the first place the group takes credit for terror attacks. The terror group named several prominent members of the Muslim community in both Germany and Austria as potential targets for assassination in an article entitled “Kill the infidel imams in Germany and Austria. ” Among the targets listed is Aiman Mazyek, of the Central Council of Muslims in Germany. Mazyek has made controversial statements in the past, such as calling for German leaders to limit the number of migrants flowing into the country in late 2015. The Muslim leader has also slammed the migration Alternative for Germany (AfD) likening them to Nazis after they revealed a platform of last year. Omar a Vienna city councilman for the Socialist Party (SPÖ) and a member of the Council Committee on European and International Affairs was also listed as a target. is also no stranger to controversy — in 2010 he led an official condemnation of Israel in the Vienna city hall over the Israeli raids on a flotilla heading for Gaza, which Israeli authorities claimed was not the humanitarian mission activists stated it to be. also led a protest against Israel in Vienna. Among the demonstrators were members of the Turkish nationalist group the Grey Wolves who have clashed with Kurds in Germany and have been accused of trying to infiltrate German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party through its diversity program. Killing Imams they don’t agree with is nothing new for the Islamic State. In 2014 ISIS executed 13 clerics in the city of Mosul whom they deemed to be too moderate. Imam Muhammad al Mansuri was one of the victims of the terror group and was the imam in charge of the mosque in which ISIS leader gave a rare public appearance to lead prayers. Islamic State killed a further six imams in early 2015 after they condemned the group’s actions when they burned Jordanian pilot Mu’ath Kasasbeh alive. Follow Chris Tomlinson on Twitter at @TomlinsonCJ or email at ctomlinson@breitbart. com, | 0fake |
Hillary’s Secret Weapon: Evan McMullin is CIA-Goldman Sachs candidate, backed by Mitt Romney’s Wall Street Machine | J.R. Smith 21st Century WireMuch has been made by Democrat Hillary Clinton and the White House s accusation that Russia is trying to influence US elections, although neither has presented any real evidence to back up this extraordinary claim. On the other hand, there is plenty of evidence documenting the CIA interfering and altering numerous foreign elections throughout history. This raises an interesting question: would the CIA ever try to interfere in an US election? Evan McMullin is a 40-year-old self-described conservative Mormon and former CIA operative. I enjoyed being a grey man, said McMullin of his 11 years in the CIA.On the wall in his Salt Lake City campaign offices is a poster which reads 007 for President. That s a bit worrying, if indeed McMullin fancies himself as a James Bond character, but in a way it really sums up what his presidential run is all about working in the grey areas, in back room meetings with GOP establishment luminaries, colored by private and public deception. It s what the CIA has specialized in for decades; manipulating and perverting hundreds of overseas elections all in the interest of transnational corporate elites (like Mitt Romney), and now it seems they have an inside man nested in another key position Oddly, the media often introduces him as a conservative columnist seemingly in an effort to distract from his total insider pedigree. McMullin is no newcomer or fresh face he is a career operative, inserted into special niches, including his most recent stint as Congressional director of GOP policy. Now he s come out of the shadows to play a key role in the US election on behalf of some very powerful interests.According to Real Clear Politics, McMullin describes his work as a clandestine operative for the CIA in both Iraq and Afghanistan, in all the war zones post-9/11 until 2010 and most of the other hostile environments . He admits his job was to penetrate insurgent and terrorist groups as well as foreign governments , recruiting agents to pass information to take these people off the battlefield either capture or kill them. Interesting skill set, penetrating governments. We can safely assume that also entails subverting elections overseas, or maybe using Saudi Arabian cash to buy weapons for Jihadi terrorist rebels in Syria.Not surprisingly, McMullin trumpets a loud anti-Putin and anti-Assad rhetoric which is almost perfectly in synchronization with that of Hillary Clinton s. Like Clinton, McMullin relies on a campaign of fear set against Russia and Syria in an attempt to try to bracket Trump togther with other overseas leaders currently under a demonization order by the Washington DC establishment. Donald Trump is an authoritarian just like Vladimir Putin, just like Bashar Al-Assad, just like the Communist regime in China. I have worked against and around authoritarians overseas and I know them when I see them. Donald Trump is one of them. He would bring the same kind of economic stagnation, internal turmoil and discord to our country that other dictators bring to their own. I m sure the Kremlin considers Donald Trump by far its most successful intelligence operation ever. It s very clear that Vladimir Putin and his regime have some control over Donald Trump. Trump s support for Putin is the only thing he has been consistent on. The following is straight off of McMullin s campaign website, under the heading of, America s Role in the World : Evan will impose tougher sanctions on Russia and increase America s military presence in the Baltics in order to deter and reverse Putin s aggression, rather than pretending that he is a partner for peace in Syria. Evan will stand up for the rights of American and allied ships to sail freely in international waters, rather than letting China dominate the Western Pacific. This statement could ve just as well have written by the CIA s office of forward information planning, or from the office of Hillary 2016, take your pick.The next line in his r sum should also throw up a big red flag: he s also a former operative at Goldman Sachs investment bank. So, CIA and Goldman Sachs. Aside from bank-rolling Bill and Hillary Clinton s political machine for the better part of the last 15 years, Goldman also backed Mitt Romney s failed 2012 presidential run.The connections here between all of these establishment players is undeniable with McMullin sitting comfortably in his CIA grey area.Stealing Utah for Hillary If we can send a strong message here from Utah, it will change the discussion in Washington and across this country, said McMullin.This is the problem with the contrived McMullin campaign: it will not impact the national political discussion.Since he announced his candidacy three months ago on August 8, 2016, his campaign has only really existed inside Utah, but conveniently amplified by an US corporate mainstream media and the very same media outlets that have been demonstrably pro-Clinton, anti-Sanders and anti-Trump since the very beginning of the presidential race.Evan McMullin s primary directive seems to be to steal Utah s 6 electoral votes away from Republican candidate Donald Trump who is currently enjoying a comfortable lead over Hillary Clinton in Utah. Recent polls show Trump and McMullin running neck and neck in Utah, at 30% and 29% respectively. In an already tight national race between Trump and Clinton, those 6 electoral votes could easily decide the national election in favor of Hillary Clinton.Aside from Utah, McMullin is also hoping to steal away Republic votes in key states with substantial Mormon populations like Arizona, Idaho, and Wyoming. McMullin is hoping to exploit Mormon voter blocks over the issue of Donald Trump s bolshy demeanor and alleged past sex scandals a negative which will resonate with conservative Mormon voters in places like Utah.Based on the incredible amount of national media access he s being given across all of the top establishment broadcast TV networks, it s pretty clear that the McMullin campaign is being engineered at the highest levels. For a candidate who appeared from nowhere in the last two months, he s enjoyed carte blanche airtime, including softball interviews on Meet the Press with Chuck Todd, The Week with George Stephanopoulos, as well as primetime slots on pro-Clinton media outlets CNN, CBS, NBC, and of course, on Democratic Party channel MSNBC.Here s his debutant spot on Morning Joe, where McMullin waxes on about how, George Bush kept this country safe after 9/11 , and other familiar platitudes: When McMullin speaks, you can almost hear the voice of Mitt Romney and the old GOP establishment. If the Republican Party can t make the changes, as wasn t able to do after 2012, the conservative movement will need a new political vehicle, said McMullin to Stephanopoulos.From these sort of statements, we can see that the object of McMullin s campaign is the same as Romney s to keep the Republican candidate from winning on November 8th.Establishment scion Mitt Romney (photo, left) and his Wall Street partners are desperate, and deathly frightened that if Donald Trump wins, he will build a new GOP power base one which is not based on a tight elite Wall Street investment bank circle that uses men like Romney as their intermediary to control govemnent affairs and fix markets but rather, real people power based on grassroots, working class and middle class voters.The other subtle piece of the McMullin deception is how he constantly spins in the mainstream media about how a Clinton victory is already a fait accompli. In other words: Trump has already lost, so cast your vote for me as a protest vote against the winner, Hillary Clinton. By applying that subtle spin, McMullin hopes to avoid being fingered as Mitt Romney s #NeverTrump tool.Getting on enough ballots in enough states requires money, and a political machine. Enter the Team Romney McMullin s ability to get on the ballot in 11 states, and also write-in access in 32 others, was financed and run by a 501c3 Not for Profit organization which, like McMullin, suddenly popped up this year. It s called, Better For America, said to be founded by GOP operatives John Kingston and Joel Searby.When asked whether or not he s backed by Mitt Romney, McMullin always says no , but the facts say otherwise. Here we can see clearly that McMullin is a creation of Mitt Romney s so-called #NeverTrump Movement. McMullin s primary backer in this project appears to be Kingston, who just happens to be a former GOP delegate from Massachusetts and donor to former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, as well as executive producer for the 2014 documentary, Mitt.In addition, McMullin s running mate is former Mitt Romney campaign staffer, Mindy Finn. Aside from working in the Bush Administration, Finn also worked for Twitter and Google, specifically building their tech networks with the Washington Beltway. Another total insider.McMullin has also been working with former Mitt Romney campaign strategist Stuart Stevens.Behind the patriotic rhetoric in Better For America s marketing spin is well-financed, laser focused operation to steal Utah from the Republican party. In public, the organization claims that: We deserve better than two candidates that are deeply unfavorable among a majority of the people they claim to represent. Together, we can give a voice to the millions of Americans who cannot in good conscience vote for either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton. If a third party candidate emerges, they need to know the support they have on the ground among the nearly two-thirds of Americans said they are willing to support an independent candidate. Better For America s claim is disingenuous at best, if not outright deceptive, not least because there were already third, and fourth party candidates Gary Johnson (Libertarian Party) and Jill Stein (Green Party), both of whom have been organizing in all 50 states. This casual ignorance of the other alternative candidates indicates an attempt to totally manipulate the electoral conversation.Very underhanded yes, but this is something a CIA operative would be doing overseas thrawrting elections and destablizing fledgling democracies in target nations. Romney and Goldman Sachs End GameBeyond engineering a narrow victory for Hillary Clinton, Mitt Romney and the #NeverTrump conclave s last option is to steal the election after Nov 8th. It goes like this .Their final play would be if neither Trump nor Clinton receive the 270 electoral college votes required for an outright victory which would then send the election to the House of Representatives. This hasn t happened since 1825. At this point a Republican House of Representatives (many of whom are #NeverTrump supporters) would choose any of the top three candidates who had won a state. If McMullin wins Utah, then he would theoretically be in with a chance. But not as good a chance as Hillary Clinton would.Regardless, either scenario (although the Clinton scenario is more real) is predicated on Evan McMullin s role as a spoiler. McMullin admits this openly: It depends on the race between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump being very, very close and it is not close now. For Clinton friends and campaign backers like Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein and fellow Wall Street elites, a Donald Trump victory could mean an interruption in profits slowing down the financial organized crime and fiat paper fraud which has enriched them and the Clintons (and soon the Obamas too) ever since Bill Clinton gave Goldman and Co. the ultimate blank check when the outgoing US President repealed the Glass Steagall Act in 1999. With that one stroke of the pen, the Clintons set the stage for the 2008 Financial Collapse and bailout recipient Blankfein and the Goldman syndicate (and Romney too) made vast fortunes off other people s misery. Notice that Goldman and Wall Street have been stuffing money into the Clinton s pockets ever since with speaking fees, jobs, investments, and also bank-rolling Chelsea Clinton s husband Mark Mezvinsky s hedge fund.Blankfein and his ilk brought the US economy to its knees, and were paid handsomely for their effort.It s an incestuous ring of financial skull-duggery and you will not hear the righteous, self-styled liberty advocate Evan McMullin so much as mention any of this, let alone bad mouth his former employer and criminal financial institution and yet, this is the real story that everyone should really be talking about this election the seedy relationship between the likes of Goldman Sachs and the establishment s favored political candidates.READ MORE ELECTION NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire 2016 FilesSUPPORT 21WIRE SUBSCRIBE & BECOME A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV | 1real |
France Expels Swiss Islamist Preacher | PARIS (AFP) — France on Saturday expelled controversial Swiss Islamist preacher Hani Ramadan who posed “a serious threat to public order” the interior ministry said. [Ramadan, whose brother is the intellectual Tariq Ramadan and whose grandfather founded Egypt’s radical Muslim Brotherhood, was arrested in Colmar, eastern France, while attending a conference. He was “known in the past to have adopted behaviour and made remarks which pose a serious threat on French soil,” the ministry said in a statement. “The interior ministry and the forces of law and order are fully mobilised and will continue to fight ceaselessly against extremism and radicalisation,” Interior Minister Matthias Fekl said in the statement. In 2002 Hani Ramadan was sacked from his teaching post in Switzerland after writing an article in French newspaper Le Monde in support of the stoning of adulterers and suggesting that AIDS was a divine punishment. Six years later he won 345, 000 Swiss francs (just over 200, 000 euros) compensation over the sacking. Ramadan’s brother Tariq is banned from entering the United States. | 0fake |
Former Insurance CEO Drops MASSIVE Truth Bomb About Obamacare Repeal – Republicans Will HATE This | House Republicans have taken their first step towards repealing Obamacare, and that step opens the door for them to work toward full repeal within months. They say they ve built a fail-safe in to protect those who may otherwise lose their insurance while they continue dilly-dallying on coming up with an actual replacement delaying implementation of the repeal so they have time to develop their replacement (because the last six years apparently wasn t enough time).Here s a secret: Those people will probably lose their insurance anyway.And not just for the reasons we already know. One massive problem that s not really getting discussed is that Republicans repeal and delay tactic creates too much market uncertainty for risk-based insurance. Republicans have been sowing the seeds of uncertainty for a long time, and they re one of the big reasons insurers like United Healthcare began pulling out of the exchanges despite still raking in billions in net profits.J.B. Silvers, a former health insurance CEO, first explains this while describing the risk corridor program, which was supposed to help offset the risks insurers took when enrolling high-risk people in their programs. He then says: But when the time came to pay up for risk reduction in the Obamacare exchanges, Congress reneged and paid only 12 percent of what was owed to the insurers. So, on top of the fact that the companies had to bear the risk of unknown costs and utilization in the start-up years, which turned out to be higher than they expected, insurers had to absorb legislative uncertainty of whether the rules would be rewritten. He s talking about the payments that were supposed to go out for 2014, after Republicans regained control of both houses of Congress. Insurers risk corridor claims were much higher than their contributions. For FY2015, Congress stipulated that risk corridor payments under Obamacare could not exceed the amount that insurers owed to the program. Thus, they only got 12 percent of what they believe they were promised.Or, to put it another way, they were playing by one set of rules, and then Congress abruptly changed those rules.Now, we can argue till we re blue in the face whether insurers, Congress, Obamacare, or all of them, are responsible for that problem. It won t change the cold, hard fact that Republicans have been working hard on creating uncertainty in the market, and their repeal-with-no-replacement plan just makes that uncertainty much worse.It s worth noting that that s a big reason for why premiums are going up this year, too.So, as Silvers says: And now comes the reality of the repeal and replace initiatives from the Republicans. If the uncertainty of this market was large before with the ACA, it is almost unknowable under whatever comes next. Thus the initial exit of some latecomers, including United Healthcare, and undercapitalized minor entrants, such as nonprofit co-ops, is almost certain to become a flood of firms leaving the exchanges. They have little choice since the risks are too large and the actuarially appropriate rates are still not obvious given the political turmoil and changing rules If we want them to continue to do the good things required by the ACA, we can t make it so uncertain. What this means is that the mechanisms designed to reduce risk and a stable set of operating arrangements must be reaffirmed as core principles of all reform and replace efforts. This shouldn t be hard for market-oriented Republicans, if they can leave behind their political baggage. Blind talk of repeal with no clear way to build confidence among the private insurers, which will be needed in the replace phase, leads to market failure. In short, their idea of a fool-proof repeal is going to backfire horrifically on them. While that might seem like something we can laugh at, it isn t, because millions of Americans will become collateral damage in this mess. Good job, GOP.Featured image by Win McNamee via Getty Images | 1real |
Derek Walcott, Poet and Nobel Laureate of the Caribbean, Dies at 87 - The New York Times | Derek Walcott, whose intricately metaphorical poetry captured the physical beauty of the Caribbean, the harsh legacy of colonialism and the complexities of living and writing in two cultural worlds, bringing him a Nobel Prize in Literature, died early Friday morning at his home near Gros Islet in St. Lucia. He was 87. His death was confirmed by his publisher, Farrar, Straus and Giroux. No cause was given, but he had been in poor health for some time, the publisher said. Mr. Walcott’s expansive universe revolved around a tiny sun, the island of St. Lucia. Its opulent vegetation, blinding white beaches and tangled multicultural heritage inspired, in its most famous literary son, an ambitious body of work that seemingly embraced every poetic form, from the short lyric to the epic. With the publication of the collection “In a Green Night” in 1962, critics and poets, Robert Lowell among them, leapt to recognize a powerful new voice in Caribbean literature and to praise the sheer musicality of Mr. Walcott’s verse, the immediacy of its visual images, its profound sense of place. He had first attracted attention on St. Lucia with a book of poems that he published himself as a teenager. Early on, he showed a remarkable ear for the music of English — heard in the poets whose work he absorbed in his Anglocentric education and on the lips of his fellow St. Lucians — and a painter’s eye for the particulars of the local landscape: its beaches and clouds its turtles, crabs and tropical fish the sparkling expanse of the Caribbean. In the poem “Islands,” from the collection “In a Green Night,” he wrote: He told The Economist in 1990: “The sea is always present. It’s always visible. All the roads lead to it. I consider the sound of the sea to be part of my body. And if you say in patois, ‘The boats are coming back,’ the beat of that line, its metrical space, has to do with the sound and rhythm of the sea itself. ” There was nothing shy about Mr. Walcott’s poetic voice. It demanded to be heard, in all its sensuous immediacy and historical complexity. “I come from a place that likes grandeur it likes large gestures it is not inhibited by flourish it is a rhetorical society it is a society of physical performance it is a society of style,” he told The Paris Review in 1985. “I grew up in a place in which if you learned poetry, you shouted it out. Boys would scream it out and perform it and do it and flourish it. If you wanted to approximate that thunder or that power of speech, it couldn’t be done by a little modest voice in which you muttered something to someone else. ” Mr. Walcott’s art developed and expanded in works like “The Castaway,” “The Gulf” and “Another Life,” a inquiry into his life and surroundings, published in 1973. The Caribbean poet George Lamming called it “the history of an imagination. ” Mr. Walcott quickly won recognition as one of the finest poets writing in English and as an enormously ambitious artist — ambitious for himself, his art and his people. He had a sense of the Caribbean’s grandeur that inspired him to write “Omeros,” a transposed Homeric epic of more than 300 pages, published in 1990, with humble fishermen and a taxi driver standing in for the heroes of ancient Greece. Two years later, he was awarded the Nobel Prize. The prize committee cited him for “a poetic oeuvre of great luminosity, sustained by a historical vision, the outcome of a multicultural commitment. ” It continued: “In his literary works Walcott has laid a course for his own cultural environment, but through them he speaks to each and every one of us. In him, West Indian culture has found its great poet. ” As a poet, Mr. Walcott plumbed the paradoxes of identity intrinsic to his situation. He was a poet living on a island whose people spoke Creole or English. In “A Far Cry From Africa,” included in “In a Green Night” — his first poetry collection to be published outside St. Lucia — he wrote: Derek Alton Walcott was born on Jan. 23, 1930, in Castries, a port city on the island of St. Lucia. His father, Warwick, a schoolteacher and watercolorist, died when he was an infant, and he was raised by his schoolteacher mother, the former Alix Maarlin. Both his parents, like many St. Lucians, were the products of racially mixed marriages. Derek was raised as a Methodist, which made him an exception on St. Lucia, a largely Roman Catholic island, and at his Catholic secondary school, St. Mary’s College. His education was Anglocentric and thoroughly traditional. “I was taught English literature as my natural inheritance,” he wrote in the essay “The Muse of History. ” “Forget the snow and daffodils. They were real, more real than the heat and oleander, perhaps, because they lived on the page, in imagination, and therefore in memory. ” He published his first poem at 14, in a local newspaper. With a loan from his mother, he began publishing his poetry in pamphlets while still at St. Mary’s. His early models were Marlowe and Milton. At the University of the West Indies in Mona, Jamaica, where he majored in French, Latin and Spanish, he began writing plays, entering into a lifelong but rocky love affair with the theater. His first play, about the revolutionary Haitian leader Henri Christophe, was produced in St. Lucia in 1950. After earning his bachelor’s degree in 1953, Mr. Walcott taught school in St. Lucia, Grenada and Jamaica while continuing to write and stage plays. His verse dramas “Ione” and “Sea at Dauphin” were produced in Trinidad in 1954. “ and His Brothers,” a retelling of a Trinidadian folk tale in which Lucifer tries to steal the souls of three brothers, was produced in Trinidad in 1958. Mr. Walcott studied directing with José Quintero in New York for a year and, on returning to the West Indies, founded a repertory company, the Little Carib Theater Workshop, which in the late 1960s became the Trinidad Theater Workshop. One of the group’s first productions was Mr. Walcott’s “Malcochon. ” His play was “Dream on Monkey Mountain,” which received an Off Broadway production in 1971. He later wrote the book and collaborated with the singer and songwriter Paul Simon on the lyrics for “The Capeman,” a musical about a Puerto Rican gang member who murdered three people in Manhattan in 1959. The show opened at the Marquis Theater in 1998 and closed after 68 performances, becoming one of the most expensive flops in Broadway history. With the publication of “In a Green Night” in 1962, Mr. Walcott captured the attention of British and American critics. Robert Lowell in particular was enthusiastic, and served as a point of entry to the American literary world. With each succeeding collection — “Selected Poems” (1964) “The Castaway” (1969) “The Gulf” (1970) and “Sea Grapes” (1976) — Mr. Walcott established himself as something more than an interesting local poet. “Aficionados of Caribbean writing have been aware for some time that Derek Walcott is the first considerable poet to emerge from the Arcadia of the old slaveocracies,” the poet and critic Selden Rodman wrote in a review of “The Gulf” in The New York Times Book Review. “Now, with the publication of his fourth book of verse, Walcott’s stature in the front rank of all contemporary poets using English should be apparent. ” The lyric strain in Mr. Walcott’s poetry never disappeared, but he increasingly took on complex narrative projects and expanded his vision of the Caribbean to accommodate an epic treatment of the themes that had always engaged him. The artistic of “Another Life,” with its rich, intertwining of the artist’s developing sensibility and the lush landscape of St. Lucia, set the bar for Mr. Walcott’s later, increasingly ambitious poetry. In “Omeros” — the title is the modern Greek word for Homer — Mr. Walcott cast his net wide, embracing all of Caribbean history from time immemorial, with special attention to the slave trade, and refracting its story through Homeric legend. In his hands, the Caribbean became not a backwater but a crossroads — what the scholar Jorge Hernandez Martin, writing in the magazine Americas in 1994, called “a dispersion zone, a sort of switchboard with input from and output to other parts of the world. ” Travel and exile were constants in Mr. Walcott’s poetry. “Tiepolo’s Hound” (2000) presented a dual portrait of the author and the Impressionist painter Camille Pissarro, who spent his childhood in the Caribbean before being transplanted to Paris. Like his father, Mr. Walcott was an accomplished watercolorist his landscape paintings appear on his book jackets, and in “Tiepolo’s Hound” they are interspersed through the book. The wanderings in “Omeros” were rivaled by Mr. Walcott’s own zigzag itinerary as a teacher and lecturer at universities around the world. He taught at Boston University from 1981 until retiring in 2007, dividing his time among Boston, New York and St. Lucia but constantly en route. “The Prodigal” (2004) a summation with a distinctly elegiac undercurrent, offered a glimpse of the author’s restless movements, which take him, in the course of the poem, to Italy, Colombia, France and Mexico. “Prodigal, what were your wanderings about?” he wrote. “The smoke of homecoming, the smoke of departure. ” Mr. Walcott’s three marriages ended in divorce. His survivors include his longtime companion, Sigrid Nama a son, Peter two daughters, Anna and Elizabeth and several grandchildren. His twin brother, Roderick, a playwright, died in 2000. In 2009, Mr. Walcott was proposed for the honorary post of professor of poetry at Oxford University. His candidacy was derailed when academics at Oxford received an anonymous package containing photocopied pages of a book describing allegations of sexual harassment brought by a Harvard student decades earlier. Mr. Walcott withdrew his name. “I am disappointed that such low tactics have been used in this election, and I do not want to get into a race for a post where it causes embarrassment to those who have chosen to support me for the role or to myself,” he told The Evening Standard of London. He added, “While I was happy to be put forward for the post, if it has degenerated into a low and degrading attempt at character assassination, I do not want to be part of it. ” Mr. Walcott was always conscious of writing as a man apart, from a corner of the world whose literature was in its infancy. This peculiar position, he argued, had its advantages. “There can be virtues in deprivation,” he said in his Nobel lecture, describing the “luck” of being present in the early morning of a culture. “For every poet, it is always morning in the world,” he said. “History a forgotten, insomniac night History and elemental awe are always our early beginning, because the fate of poetry is to fall in love with the world, in spite of History. ” | 0fake |
Inside ‘Bill Clinton Inc.’: Hacked Memo Shows Intersection of Clinton Profits and Charity | Inside ‘Bill Clinton Inc.’: Hacked Memo Shows Intersection of Clinton Profits and Charity Posted on Oct 28, 2016
A 2011 memo from top Bill Clinton aide Douglas Band, published by WikiLeaks, details “a circle of enrichment in which [Band] raised money for the Clinton Foundation from top-tier corporations such as Dow Chemical and Coca-Cola that were clients of his firm, Teneo, while pressing many of those same donors to provide personal income to the former president,” reports The Washington Post.
The Post continues:
The system has drawn scrutiny from Republicans [and progressives], who say it allowed corporations and other wealthy supporters to pay for entree to a popular former president and a onetime secretary of state who is now the Democratic presidential nominee. …
The memo, made public Wednesday by the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks, lays out the aggressive strategy behind lining up the consulting contracts and paid speaking engagements for Bill Clinton that added tens of millions of dollars to the family’s fortune, including during the years that Hillary Clinton led the State Department. It describes how Band helped run what he called “Bill Clinton Inc.,” obtaining “in-kind services for the President and his family — for personal travel, hospitality, vacation and the like.”
Band grew close to Clinton during the ’90s as his personal aide in the White House and became “the architect of his post-presidential activities,” the Post reports. In the memo, Band argues that his work and the work of his firm benefited the former president and his family’s foundation:
“We have dedicated ourselves to helping the President secure and engage in for-profit activities,” Band wrote. He added that he had “sought to leverage my activities, including my partner role at Teneo, to support and to raise funds for the foundation.”
The Post continues:
Band’s memo provided data showing how much money each of Teneo’s 20 clients at the time had given to the Clinton Foundation, how much they had paid Bill Clinton and, in some cases, how he or Kelly had personally forged the relationships that resulted in the payments.
Band wrote that Teneo partners had raised in excess of $8 million for the foundation and $3 million in paid speaking fees for Bill Clinton. He said he had secured contracts for the former president that would pay out $66 million over the subsequent nine years if the deals remained in place.
For instance, Band wrote that Kelly arranged for the former president to meet the chief executive of Coca-Cola in January 2009 at the Clintons’ home in Washington. In all, according to Band’s memo, Coke had contributed $4.33 million to the foundation between 2004 and 2010. …
Band also described how Kelly helped expand a fruitful relationship with UBS Global Wealth Management, introducing Bill Clinton to a top executive at a 2009 charity dinner. In the ensuing years, UBS upped its giving to the foundation, signed on as a Teneo client and agreed to pay Bill Clinton for speeches, Band wrote.
Records show UBS paid Clinton about $2 million in speaking fees between 2011 and 2015 for a series of appearances, generally alongside former president George W. Bush. The company also paid Hillary Clinton $225,000 for a 2013 speech. …
Another achievement cited by Band: Laureate International Universities, a chain of for-profit international colleges, which donated to the foundation and agreed to pay Bill Clinton $3.5 million a year to serve as honorary chancellor.
Companies aligned with the Clinton Foundation paid several million dollars to Teneo for consulting services. The Post reports that a spike in payments from Dow “raised red flags for an internal company fraud investigator, who expressed alarm that it may be linked to Bill Clinton’s work with a charity founded by Liveris—a charge the company denied.” The investigator wrote: “It appears Dow is paying Teneo for connections with Clinton.” | 1real |
JUST IN: ACLU Makes FULL PAGE Donald Trump Announcement Via New York Times (IMAGE) | 0 1949
The ACLU has got a few words for America’s newest elected “leader,” and the letter they just published through the NY Times, is probably the most amazing jab in the history of politics. It doesn’t hurt that the jab came from the American Civil Liberties Union, because the power behind the letter is what makes it so ominous to the president-elect.
The letter begins with a request for Trump to “change course” on many of the claims he has made in his extremely short political career.
“Dear President-Elect Trump,
For nearly 100 years, the ACLU has stood as this nation’s premier defender of freedom and justice for all.
As you assume the nation’s highest office, we must ask you now as president-elect to reconsider and change course on certain campaign promises you have made.
Specifically, you promised to: amass deportation force to remove 11 million undocumented immigrants ban the entry of Muslims and institute aggressive surveillance programs targeting them restrict a woman’s right to abortion services reauthorize waterboarding and other forms of torture change our nation’s libel laws and restrict freedom of expression”
As if this statement alone wasn’t enough of a threat, the ACLU continues:
“These proposals are not simply un-American and wrong-headed. They are unlawful and unconstitutional, and would violate the First, Fourth, Fifth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments of the Constitution, as well as other statutes and international treaties.”
“Many of our country’s most cherished rights are the result of ACLU litigation and advocacy. They include the Scopes trial (the right to teach evolution in public science classrooms) and the following Supreme Court cases: Korematsu (challenging Japanese American internment); Miranda (the right to remain silent); Griswold (the right to contraception); Loving (the right of interracial couples to marry); Gideon (the right to a court-appointed attorney if you can’t afford one); Windsor (striking down the federal Defense of Marriage Act); and Obergefell (the right of same-sex couples to marry) and others. We have worked with and battled American presidents of both parties to ensure that our country makes good on it’s founding premise as the land of the free.”
In the end of the open letter, the ACLU promises to make Trump’s life a nightmare if he continues to pave his road to concentration camp hell. They say Trump will have the full firepower of the ACLU to deal with if he doesn’t wise up.
They letter concludes:
“If you do not reverse course and endeavor to make these campaign promises a reality, you will have to contend with the full firepower of the ACLU at your every step. Our staff of litigators and activists in every state, thousands of volunteers, and millions of supporters stand ready to fight against any encroachment on our cherished freedoms and rights.”
“One thing is certain: We will be vigilant every day of your tenure as president. And when you ultimately vacate the Oval Office, we will do likewise with your successor.” Today we published a full-page open letter in the New York Times to President-elect Trump pic.twitter.com/FOpRqn9oNY
— ACLU National (@ACLU) November 11, 2016 Share this Article! | 1real |
With 7.4 million without power, utility workers get respect | Fort Lauderdale and New York (Reuters) - When more than 7.4 million homes and businesses are without power after a hurricane, utility workers tend to get noticed a bit more than usual. That s what Gus Beyersdorf, 40, and his colleague Nick Jensen, 32, utility workers from Wisconsin, found out while inspecting power lines in Florida on Monday. The two - among the thousands of power-line workers brought in from out-of-state by major utilities - spent about five minutes outside a house in Fort Lauderdale, when two cars with women who said they lived in the neighborhood stopped to inquire about the return of power to their homes - obviously trying to get their attention. I think you guys are sexy. Men in hard hats are attractive! said one of the women, obviously just joking with the Wisconsin men, but also making it clear that she would like it if they would get the power turned back on at her house. Major utilities in the state - including Florida Power & Light Co, Duke Energy Corp and Tampa Electric - have mobilized tens of thousands of workers to deal with the enormous power outages, which by Monday evening numbered more than 7.4 million homes and businesses after Hurricane Irma landed as a Category 4 storm early Sunday. While the numbers in Florida were declining slightly, more outages were being reported in Georgia and other states as Irma, now a tropical storm, moved north. Beyersdorf and Jensen left northern Wisconsin on Friday morning and raced to southern Florida to be in place ahead of Irma s impact. Between 2,000 and 3,000 utility workers from out-of-state are staying at BB&T Stadium in Broward County, which is home to the National Hockey League s Florida Panthers, said Beyersdorf. Power losses in Georgia, which were nearing 900,000 as of 3 p.m. EDT, were expected to increase as the storm moved north. In Florida, the state s biggest electric company said its outages dipped to 3.3 million from a peak of 3.6 million earlier on Monday. A total of almost 4.5 million Florida Power & Light customers have been affected by the storm, with about 1 million getting service restored, mostly by automated devices. We ve never had that many outages, and I don t think any utility in the country ever has, FPL Chief Executive Eric Silagy said at a news conference on Monday. It is by far and away the largest in the history of our company. FPL said it was still assessing the damage and could not yet say when it would restore service to most customers. Some homes and businesses could be without power for weeks, especially in the hardest-hit areas like southwest Florida, the NextEra Energy Inc unit said. It took a week for Matthew, Jensen said, referring to a hurricane that last year did not make landfall in Florida but caused power outages. This one is going to take a lot longer. As Irma pushed north, outage figures were increasing at other large utilities, including units of Duke Energy, Southern Co and Emera Inc. Duke s outages held around 1.2 million on Monday evening, while Emera s Tampa Electric utility said outages eased to about 320,000 from a peak earlier on Monday of over 330,000. FPL said its two nuclear plants were safe. Both units at its Turkey Point facility, about 30 miles (48 km) south of Miami, were shut by early Monday. At its St. Lucie nuclear plant about 120 miles (190 km) north of Miami, FPL reduced power at Unit 1 because of salt buildup from Irma in the switchyard, NRC spokesman Roger Hannah said. The plant s other reactor, Unit 2, continued to operate at full power. Irma is expected to sap demand for fuel for a time, Goldman Sachs analysts said in a note on Monday, but they cautioned that supply could remain strained because of refining capacity offline after Hurricane Harvey, which hit Texas two weeks ago. | 0fake |
Speaker Paul Ryan: Let's live in the Christmas spirit | On behalf of the U.S. House of Representatives, I extend my warmest wishes to everyone celebrating Christmas this year.
We spend a lot of time this season asking for what we want. But perhaps it would be better to ask for what we need. We have been given so much in this country that it almost seems ungrateful to ask for more. But all of us—at all times—need more of what is good. And this year, I hope that all of us continue to live in what I consider the spirit of Christmas: a courageous humility.
It took courage for God to humble Himself. He came down from heaven and became a man—a child in a manger. He did this while knowing that one day He would have to lay down His life for us. He would have to give up His only Son. At first, this might seem like a sad story. But we are to “rejoice in the Lord always.” Christmas is a day of celebration. And it is only through grace and prayer that we come to realize: what a gift He’s given us—what a profound act of love.
And so we rejoice. This year, may we continue the spirit of Christmas by facing our flaws fearlessly and by giving back boldly. May we recognize that our way is not the only way—it is not even the right way. It is God’s way we seek. May we cherish all the gifts we have been given—especially the men and women of our armed forces, the people who keep us safe. And may we remember that it takes courage to put others first. It is courageous to do the right thing.
May we remember, and be brave—and be glad.
Republican Paul Ryan is Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. He represents Wisconsin's 1st Congressional District. Follow him on Twitter @SpeakerRyan. | 0fake |
TRUMP SUPPORTER GOT NUTS On MSNBC Reporter Covering Anti-Trump Rioters [Video] | Go to Article A Trump supporter wearing a Trump/Pence t-shirt let it fly on a reporter from MSNBC because of his one sided reporting and the demonizing of Trump. This is one brave woman! New Yorkers have had enough of the protests and violence! … @calmsnbc is having an interesting day. pic.twitter.com/EMelMQamAU | 1real |
Comment on All Saints Day by Steven Broiles | Posted on November 1, 2016 by joandarc | 8 Comments
Yesterday, October 31, was All Hallows’ Eve or Halloween, that is, the evening before the holy ones.
As explained in “ Reclaim Halloween as the holy All Hallows’ Eve! ,” the word “hallow” is “to make holy or sacred, to sanctify or consecrate, to venerate,” while the word “e’en” means “evening.”
The word “saint” means holy. Halloween, therefore, means Holy Evening or the Evening of the Hallowed or Holy Ones, i.e., the Evening of the Saints.
In other words, Halloween is the evening before All Saints Day, which is today!
Then I saw another angel come up from the East, holding the seal of the living God. He cried out in a loud voice to the four angels who were given power to damage the land and the sea, “Do not damage the land or the sea or the trees until we put the seal on the foreheads of the servants of our God.” I heard the number of those who had been marked with the seal, one hundred and forty-four thousand marked from every tribe of the Israelites.” Rev. 7:2-4
After this I had a vision of a great multitude, which no one could count, from every nation, race, people, and tongue. They stood before the throne and before the Lamb, wearing white robes and holding palm branches in their hands. They cried out in a loud voice: “Salvation comes from our God, who is seated on the throne, and from the Lamb.” All the angels stood around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures. They prostrated themselves before the throne, worshiped God, and exclaimed:
“Amen. Blessing and glory, wisdom and thanksgiving, honor, power and might be to our God forever and ever. Amen.”
Then one of the elders spoke up and said to me, “Who are these wearing white robes, and where did they come from?” I said to him, “My Lord, you are the one who knows.” He said to me, “These are the ones who have survived the time of great distress; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.” Rev. 7:9-14.
“For this reason they stand before God’s throne and worship him day and night in his temple. The one who sits on the throne will shelter them. They will not hunger or thirst anymore, nor will the sun or any heat strike them. For the Lamb who is in the center of the throne will shepherd them and lead them to springs of life- giving water, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.” Rev. 7:15-17.
Through the “communion of saints,” a doctrine proclaimed in the Apostle’s Creed, the blessed in heaven assist those of us on earth; we pray with the saints so that they may intercede on our behalf before Our Lord. Remember, these incredible, courageous and wonderful individuals see God face to face! How cool is that?
Indeed, they are the ultimate role models, heroes and heroines-people who chose to do extraordinary things and behaved always with serving Our Lord as their first priority in their lives, no matter what the cost. They were no different as human beings than we are, with faults, talents, proclivities towards temptation and bearing all qualities incident to human beings. What made them different were their choices, to serve God first above anything and everything. To put it more eloquently were the words of St. Thomas More on the day he was beheaded, wherein he stated, “I am the King’s good servant, but God’s first.”
In the communion of saints, “a perennial link of charity exists between the faithful who have already reached their heavenly home and those of us who are still pilgrims on earth.” (CCC 1475)
St. Thomas More said this about the saints. “We venerate the saints as God’s servants, as we would on earth welcome the servants of a great man we esteemed. If the goodness we bestow upon our poor brethren is considered by Christ as bestowed upon Himself, as He tells us (Mt 25:40), and if those, as He says, who welcome His apostles and disciples welcome Him (Mt. 10:40), assuredly those who honor the saints are likewise honoring Christ. Our Lord Himself showed that He would have His saints partake in His glory when He promised the apostles that they would be seated at His side on the final Day of Judgment (Mt. 19:28). Moreover, He promised that Martha’s sister Mary (whom More identified as Mary Magdalen) would be honored throughout the world for her deed of anointing Him with ointment (Mt. 26:13).”
As to honoring the saints, and our desire to request their advocacy and intercession on our behalf, as to whether or not the saints can either hear us or help us, St. Thomas More provided, “Yet how can we doubt whether they hear us? Their souls are not dead, and therefore as living souls the love and charity toward their fellowman that characterized them to this world cannot have diminished in the next. The closer one draws to heaven, the greater is his solicitude toward his brethren here on earth, as was the case with the martyr Saint Stephen, who after seeing heaven opened, prayed for his enemies who were stoning him (Acts 7:55-60). In view of this, is it conceivable that Saint Stephen would not pray for those who honor him on earth, now that he is in heaven?” And the question is further posed, how can the saints in heaven help us? More reasoned that since “the saints were certainly able to assist others while on earth where their human nature was as weak as ours, surely they can do so in heaven.”
More further reasoned that even while Our Lord lived on this earth, He permitted people to come to His apostles rather than directly to Himself for help and allowed the Twelve to work miracles in His stead. Indeed, on some occasions the apostles assumed the role of intercessors with Christ, presenting the petitions of others to their Master. “If this was the case when the apostles were with Christ on earth, it must surely be so now that they dwell with Him in heaven. God is pleased to have us honor and call upon His saints, His especial beloved friends, for it becometh us and well behoveth us to make friends of such as he hath in favour.”
Have not you ever asked someone, “Please pray for my mother, she is very ill,” or “Please pray for me; I am about to make a very important decision that will affect my life.” Indeed and in fact, we have set forth these petitions to others on FOTM . Ergo, we pray with the Saints, inhabitants of the Church Triumphant, for their intercession, for their guidance that they receive from Our Lord Himself. If we ask those we know on earth for their advocacy and prayers, all the more reason to ask the Church Triumphant to enter our lives, to give us direction and to ask through them the Grace from God necessary to live our lives according to the Will of God, to the fullest extent, using all of our talents and gifts given to us by God. The Saints are with us; we are foolish not to have camaraderie with them and to enjoy intimate and meaningful relationships.
We end this post by honoring the particular Saints in our respective lives who have inspired and helped us: St. Michael the Archangel , St. Paul , the Virgin Mary , St. Thérèse the Little Flower, St. Joseph, St. Thomas Aquinas and my patient and wonderful guardian angel ~ from Eowyn.
We love you, we admire you, and we thank you!
May Our Lord Always Be First Served!
For the Saint posts we’ve published, go to FOTM’s “ Saints and Angels ” page!
Sources: Catechism of the Catholic Church . James Monti, The King’s Good Servant but God’s First, The Life and Writings of Saint Thomas More (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1997). Sister Mary Raphael is Gone, But Not Forgotten! Daily Catholic 2000, January 18, 2000, volume 11, no. 12.
~Joan & Eowyn | 1real |
United Arab Emirates Cheers Trump Immigration Policy - Breitbart | The Foreign Minister of the United Arab Emirates, Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed al Nahyan, came out strongly in defense of President Donald Trump’s executive order on immigration Wednesday, the first such supportive comment from a Gulf Arab state. [As the Associated Press reports, Sheikh Abdullah first emphasized that the United States has the right to make a “sovereign decision” regarding its immigration policy. Abdullah went on to defend the order itself, rather than merely acknowledging President Trump had the right to issue it. He pronounced himself satisfied with Trump’s assurances that the order was not based on religion (i. e. “ ”) and noted that only seven out of the many countries were affected by it. He also said it was important to remember the ban would only last for three months. “Some of these countries that were on this list are countries that face structural problems. These countries should try to solve these issues … and these circumstances before trying to solve this issue with the United States,” the UAE’s top diplomat added. The AP observes that the UAE is traditionally a close American ally, has been involved in the fight against ISIS, hosts a U. S. effort, “prides itself on being a tolerant, nation,” hosts an enormous population of foreign residents, and is America’s largest Arab export market. A golf course named after Donald Trump also happens to be opening in Dubai soon. The AP does not mention that the Emirates are, or were (opinions among UAE officials vary) involved in Saudi Arabia’s coalition against the insurgents in Yemen. As with the Saudis, Houthi forces have attacked Emirati vessels off the Yemen coast. The UAE has good reason to maintain friendly contacts with its allies. Reuters notes that Sheikh Abdullah also offered a “guarded welcome” to President Trump’s proposal for safe zones in Syria: “If the aim behind these areas is humanitarian and temporary and under an international umbrella, I think this is a basis we can work on. ” | 0fake |
Republican Leader Now Proposes Taking Away Seniors’ Healthcare; Blames Obama – New Century Times | Share on Facebook
President Obama is just weeks away from leaving office. Our biggest nightmare, backed by a fully Republican Congress, is about to take over. What that means, other than a far more hateful environment throughout the nation, is that a lot of people will lose a lot. Millions will lose healthcare. They don’t care. The national parks could be put on the auction block. They don’t care. Republicans have already started stripping seniors of their healthcare, and don’t let them try to sell you on the benefits of privatization. There aren’t any.
House Speaker Paul Ryan appeared on Special Report on Fox with Bret Baier. Ryan, now that he has a Republican in the White House, is set to start right away repealing the Affordable Care Act even Medicare. Well, he wants to privatize Medicare.
“Your solution has always been to put things together, including entitlement reform,” says Baier, using Republican code for privatizing Medicare. Ryan replies, “If you’re going to repeal and replace Obamacare, you have to address those issues as well. … Medicare has got some serious issues because of Obamacare. So those things are part of our plan to replace Obamacare.”
Ryan tells Baier, “Because of Obamacare, Medicare is going broke.” This is false. In fact, it’s the complete opposite of the truth. The Medicare trust fund has been extended 11 years as a result of the passage of Obamacare, whose cost reforms have helped bring health care inflation to historic lows. It is also untrue that repealing Obamacare requires changing traditional Medicare. But Ryan clearly believes he needs to make this claim in order to sell his plan, or probably even to convince fellow Republicans to support it.
Source: Reverb Press
Here’s the video:
Ryan, as usual, has it completely backwards. The Affordable Care Act is keeping Medicare afloat. Medicare is also solvent until 2028 and it’s an easy fix to keep it solvent beyond that.
Health reform, along with other factors, has significantly improved Medicare’s financial outlook, boosting revenues and making the program more efficient. The HI trust fund is now projected to remain solvent 11 years longer than before the Affordable Care Act was enacted. And the HI program’s projected 75-year shortfall of 0.73 percent of taxable payroll is much less than the 3.88 percent of payroll that the trustees estimated before health reform. (See Figure 1.) This means that Congress could close the projected funding gap by raising the Medicare payroll tax — now 1.45 percent each for employers and employees — to about 1.8 percent, or by enacting an equivalent mix of program cuts and tax increases.
Source: Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
What privatization would mean to seniors is that instead of direct coverage, they would get subsidies from which seniors would have to buy their own insurance. Now, let’s forget for a moment that the subsidies will probably not be enough to pay for private coverage, which is much, much more expensive, but if the Affordable Care Act is overturned, it will mean that preexisting conditions will be back. It’s a rare senior (or person) who doesn’t have at least one preexisting condition. In other words, privatizing Medicare will be a huge giveaway to insurance companies, but seniors will be screwed. | 1real |
Breitbart News Daily: Draining the Swamp - Breitbart | On the Friday edition of Breitbart News Daily, broadcast live on SiriusXM Patriot Channel 125 from 6AM to 9AM Eastern, Breitbart London Raheem Kassam will continue our discussion of Donald Trump’s policy agenda and the confirmation hearings for his nominees. [Retired Lt. Gen. Jerry Boykin will discuss Gen. James Mattis’ confirmation hearing and David Shulkin’s nomination for VA Secretary. Jenny Beth Martin of the Tea Party Patriots will discuss Speaker Paul Ryan’s CNN town hall. Former RNC Chair and Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael Steele will discuss President Obama’s legacy. Former lobbyist Jack Abramoff will discuss Trump’s efforts to separate himself from his business interests and his promise to “drain the swamp” in D. C. Mercedes and Matt Schlapp, the Chairman of the American Conservative Union, will preview this year’s CPAC conference. Live from London, Rome, and Jerusalem, Breitbart correspondents will provide updates on the latest international news. Breitbart News Daily is the first live, conservative radio enterprise to air seven days a week. SiriusXM Vice President for news and talk Dave Gorab called the show “the conservative news show of record. ” Follow Breitbart News on Twitter for live updates during the show. Listeners may call into the show at: . | 0fake |
Watch Karl Rove Get Proven Wrong About His Virginia Prediction In Less Than Five Seconds (VIDEO) | We ll never forget Karl Rove s meltdown at Fox News when President Obama was re-elected in November of 2012. It was a moment when he simply couldn t wrap his head around Fox declaring Obama the victor and he was in complete denial. It was as though his schemes to prevent Obama from winning didn t work, and now it seems as if his embarrassing moments didn t cease there.Now, in a new and pretty damn embarrassing video of him trying to say his clear establishment choice of Marco Rubio might still pull out a victory in Virginia, he s proven wrong in literally less than five seconds.When Chris Wallace asked Rove what he thought about the race in Virginia, Rove replied: Well, I think this race is going to continue to tighten However, it was then that Rove was abruptly cut off with Wallace saying: Wait, wait, hold on just a second Apparently we ve got a call in Virginia, so you can tell us after we get the call. And that call, as we all know by now, was for Donald Trump being declared the winner. Wallace then asks Rove while laughing: Karl, tell me, what does that mean for Marco Rubio and Donald Trump? What does it mean? It means Rubio can t win is what it means, and the GOP s only shot at an establishment candidate just went out the window. Sure, Rubio won Minnesota, but that s the only state he s won so far in the Republican primary battle. The chances of him securing the nomination are little to none.Rove, much like with what happened during his meltdown in 2012, is likely in utter disbelief. His puppet strings to control Republican elections are no longer working and he s probably in a deep panic. His party is disintegrating right before his very eyes into thousands of Trump-shaped pieces.Needless to say, this is pretty funny. Check it out for yourselves: Featured image via YouTube | 1real |
THE BIG CHILL: Kill Fat Cells Instantly Just by Freezing Them! You’ll Never Believe How it Works | November 2015 Ads THE BIG CHILL: Kill Fat Cells Instantly Just by Freezing Them! You’ll Never Believe How it Works
For most people, fat bulges are something they don’t want. It makes our thighs jiggle, our clothes fit tight and look bad, and typically lingers despite our torturous attempts to eliminate it. Too much of it increases our risk for certain illnesses like heart disease and type 2 diabetes, so for decades researchers have looked for ways to reduce it. Humans have two types of fat: white fat & brown fat, and understanding the differences between the two, can help people lose weight. “White fat” is the thin layer of blubber we see on the human belly. backs of arms and on the thighs. This particular fat acts as a thermal insulator, that keeps body temperatures stable. LEARN MORE: “Brown fat,” on the other hand, is less abundant in the body and creates heat, rather than trapping it like white fat does. Brown fat actually warms a cold body by burning energy or calories. White fat however, can take on brown fat characteristics, with the resulting product called “beige fat.” This process is called “browning.” Because beige and brown fat are able to burn calories, they are a positive force for weight loss, while an excess of white fat is associated with weight gain and obesity. According to Dr. Philip A. Kern, a researcher of the University of Kentucky School of Medicine, browning fat tissue would be an excellent defense against obesity, as it would make the body burn extra calories rather than converting them into fatty tissue. Where Do We Have Brown Fat? Brown fat can be difficult to study because it is hard to find in adults, and typically found in unpredictable locations in the body, and not always in the same place on every person. There’s a region in the neck and the shoulders, where you typically find it, but again not on everybody. In a recent study, brown fat was found in the chests and down the spines of a group of healthy young men, along with places in the abdomen….. | 1real |
DID OBAMA COMMIT A FELONY When He Sent $400 Million To Iran? [Video] | Fox News Senior Judicial Analyst Judge Andrew Napolitano discusses whether it s unlawful for the U.S. to pay Iran $400 million as ransom. | 1real |
STEVE BANNON Explains Why The Press Will Relentlessly Continue To Attack Trump [Video] | 1real | |
Rudolph Giuliani Lashes Out at Black Lives Matter - The New York Times | Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former mayor of New York, lashed out against the Black Lives Matter movement on Sunday, accusing it of ignoring crime, inspiring violence against the police and promoting racism. “When you say black lives matter, that’s inherently racist,” Mr. Giuliani said in an appearance on CBS’s “Face the Nation. ” “Black lives matter. White lives matter. Asian lives matter. Hispanic lives matter. That’s and it’s racist. ” His comments came as the country grappled with pain, confusion and anger after last week’s two fatal shootings of men by the police and the killing of five police officers in Dallas, the deadliest assault on American law enforcement since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. As members of the Black Lives Matter movement and other concerned citizens pushed forward on Sunday with protests over police shootings, politicians, law enforcement officials and leaders took to the airwaves, most of them with messages of hope, unity and understanding. Mr. Giuliani, a longtime promoter of aggressive policing, struck a different chord, saying the Black Lives Matter movement had targeted police officers. “They sing rap songs about killing police officers, and they talk about killing police officers, and they yell it out at their rallies and the police officers hear it,” he said. Mr. Giuliani said the movement unfairly focused on killings at the hands of the police when it should be focusing on murders committed by civilians in black neighborhoods. “When there are 60 shootings in Chicago over the Fourth of July and 14 murders, and Black Lives Matter is nonexistent,” he said, “and then there’s one police murder of very questionable circumstances and we hear from Black Lives Matter, we wonder: Do black lives matter, or only the very few black lives that are killed by white policemen?” Terrence Cunningham, the president of the International Association of Chiefs of Police, who appeared on the same show, was quick to dismiss Mr. Giuliani’s comments. “I wouldn’t make that connection,” he said. “I wouldn’t say that it’s Black Lives Matter that put a target on those police officers,” Mr. Cunningham continued, adding, “Unfortunately, I think, you know, people have really polarized this issue. If we really want to work towards solutions, we need to work together. ” Sherrilyn Ifill, the president of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, who also appeared on the show, suggested that Mr. Giuliani was partly to blame for the rift. “He actually presided over one of the most discredited areas and periods of policing in the City of New York,” she said, “which is, in fact, responsible for a lot of the tension that exists between police officers and people in communities. ” They were not the only ones to point fingers. In an appearance on ABC’s “This Week,” retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, who is considered a potential running mate for Donald J. Trump, criticized Hillary Clinton for saying on Friday that white people needed to start listening to “legitimate cries” from . Mr. Flynn said that Mrs. Clinton was “totally irresponsible when she talked about white people being to blame. ” William J. Bratton, the New York police commissioner, who appeared on Sunday on multiple shows, was among the many who emphasized unity. “This is a shared responsibility, trying to bridge these differences that are becoming quite evident through many of these videos,” Mr. Bratton said on ABC’s “This Week. ” “We have come a long way we have come a very long way. And I can speak for New York, but quite clearly events this past week show we have really almost just begun the journey. ” Separately on Sunday, as Mr. Trump has faced skepticism from some Republicans over his stances on abortion and other social issues, General Flynn, a Democrat, indicated a willingness to break from his party affiliation. During his appearance on “This Week,” he voiced support for abortion rights and brushed aside the issue of marriage on the grounds that it was less important than matters like education and immigration. | 0fake |
WHY HILLARY LOVES The Idea Of Barack Obama As Supreme Court Justice | Remember when this would seem like a far-fetched idea? Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton said she loves the idea of appointing Barack Obama to the Supreme Court if she s elected president.At a campaign event in Iowa Tuesday, Mrs. Clinton told the crowd the next president may have to appoint up to three Supreme Court justices. When one attendee mentioned Mr. Obama as a contender, she seemed excited by the recommendation. Wow, what a great idea. No one has ever suggested that to me, I love that, wow, Mrs. Clinton said. He may have a few other things to do, but I tell you, that s a great idea. I mean, he s brilliant, he can set forth an argument and he was a law professor, she added. So he s got all the credentials, but we would have to get a Democratic Senate to get him confirmed. Via: Washington Times | 1real |
Among Travelers and Commuters, the Homeless Stop In and Stay - The New York Times | Wilson Silva said he knew the homeless situation at Pennsylvania Station had grown “out of hand” when he found a man in raggedy clothing sleeping on a couch inside the shop he manages, Drago Shoe Repair, in the rail terminal’s upper level. “There’s more homeless in the station than ever before — every day we get new faces,” Mr. Silva, 59, said as he watched his staff polish and buff the shoes on a row of commuters. “I try to help them, but they harass the customers, and the police can’t do anything,” said Mr. Silva, whose shop looks out on dozens of homeless men and women who live in a waiting area for New Jersey Transit passengers. At New York City’s major transit hubs — its two railroad stations, the main bus terminal and its two airports — the persistence of homeless people seeking shelter among the blur of travelers has become a familiar sight. While the concentration of homeless people is uneven — relatively small numbers at La Guardia and Kennedy Airports and larger populations at Penn Station, Grand Central Terminal and the Port Authority Bus Terminal — they are a manifestation of an intractable homelessness problem in the city. “For us, the terminal is a default shelter,” said Phil Mellor, 55, who said he had largely relied on Grand Central for shelter since he lost his job as a security guard several years ago and his life began spiraling downward. Now, he said, he survives on “what the tourists throw out” and spends nights sleeping on the No. 6 train when the terminal is closed. The station’s dining concourse, on the lower level, with its popular food kiosks and ample seating, attracts diners as well as several dozen homeless people. At Penn Station, the busiest public transportation center in North America, serving more than 600, 000 passengers a day, some homeless people panhandle from Amtrak customers waiting for trains to Washington and Boston. Others sell “loosies,” individual cigarettes, to one another outside an entrance on Seventh Avenue. And others try to nap on benches alongside waiting passengers. At the Port Authority Bus Terminal, homeless people fan out, seeking corners and corridors to sleep without being rousted by police officers. This ad hoc shelter system has endured for decades with homeless people staying months or even years. Against the waves of purposeful travelers and suburban commuters, they sprawl on floors of cold tile, lit by the glare of fluorescent lights, with a constant soundtrack of departures. They tote all they own in inelegant bags and pass the hours in cavernous passages between track gates or bus bays. Many seem to be grappling with mental health issues. Their presence in some of the country’s busiest transit hubs recalls a far grittier time in the city when violent crime was rampant and transportation stations were crowded with many more homeless people. Like many who live on the streets, the people in these hubs are what advocates describe as chronically resistant to offers of services, especially beds in shelters, which many homeless people say have too many rules and are rife with danger. Indeed, the city’s shelter system has been rocked by several episodes of violence recently, including the murders of six residents this year. New York City officials say about 58, 000 people are living in shelters, and that an estimated 3, 000 sleep on the streets or in the subways every night. The city does not have jurisdiction over the transit hubs, but officials from the Department of Homeless Services participate in monthly meetings to discuss the issue with the transportation agencies that run the terminals, their law enforcement officials and homeless advocates. Mayor Bill de Blasio has made tackling homelessness a top priority, improving security at shelters, expanding outreach to those living on the street and moving to increase transitional housing. Michael Polenberg, vice president for government affairs at Safe Horizon, a group that works with homeless youths, said the city’s transit terminals have become shelters out of necessity. “There aren’t a whole lot of options available,” Mr. Polenberg said, adding that the plan to open more supportive housing could help ease the problem. “It’s all going to help, but it’s not going to help tonight or tomorrow,” he said. “These things take time to get up and running. ” Nightly counts of the homeless people at Penn Station tally about 70 people, rising to 90 on particularly cold nights, said Muzzy Rosenblatt, the executive director of the Bowery Residents’ Committee, which is contracted by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to offer shelter placements and other services to homeless people at Penn Station and Grand Central. No census is taken at Grand Central, he said. Though Mr. Rosenblatt said his group was limited by the number of available beds, the number of homeless people in transit terminals who have been placed in shelters or rehabilitation, psychiatric and other programs has increased over the last two years. Last year, 357 people were placed out of Grand Central, Mr. Rosenblatt said, compared with 292 in 2014. And 742 were placed last year from Penn Station, compared with 579 in 2014, he said. But given how widespread homelessness has become, Mr. Rosenblatt said, as soon as someone leaves the terminal, “somebody else is going to take their place. ” Port Authority officials said they do not conduct a homeless census at the bus terminal, but instead monitor the interactions of outreach teams from Urban Pathways, a group contracted to address homeless issues that offers shelter and other services. The number of daily interactions has declined by more than 20 percent over the past year, officials at the authority said. The situation at the two airports in Queens is somewhat different because they are not as easy to reach and they have tended to attract fewer homeless people. The news media, including The New York Post, described several dozen homeless people staying in La Guardia in December. But in January, the Port Authority, which runs the airports, started limiting the main terminal to passengers with tickets between midnight and 4 a. m. and now far fewer people remain. One is Christine, a woman in her 60s who said she had been waiting at the airport for several months to save enough money to buy a plane ticket so she could move to Florida. Mike, 38, a California native, said he had been living in the airport for five years, passing the days walking constantly through the main terminal. Mike and Christine refused to give their surnames. In the past, officials were often able to push homeless people out by setting strict rules and finding reasons to remove them. But over the years, advocates and civil rights groups have successfully challenged attempts to oust or block homeless people, calling those efforts discriminatory and selective law enforcement. Today, all parties accept that transit terminals are public spaces that homeless people have as much right to occupy as anyone else, provided they follow regulations. Restrictions must be enforced for all terminal users, not just for “people who some members of the public don’t want to interact with,” said Tina Luongo, a lawyer with the Legal Aid Society. As Mr. Rosenblatt put it, “We don’t segregate public space by wealth. ” Homeless people must leave Grand Central and the bus terminal around midnight when the stations close for several hours. Penn Station is open 24 hours, but many homeless people there said they were not allowed to sleep on the floor or on benches overnight. The solution for many is to hop on a subway train, said Caryll Corlear, 48, a homeless man who called Penn Station “the nicest pit stop in the city. ” He has spent most of his time at the station ever since arriving there by train from Florida four years ago. “It’s clean and safe you have bathrooms, food stores and people who give you money,” said Mr. Corlear, who tows two large wheeled suitcases and often dresses in a and shorts, since he rarely has to step outside. “I’ve never been in a shelter, but I’ve heard the horror stories,” he said. Several blocks north, at the Port Authority Bus Terminal, a homeless man who would provide only his given name, Mike, said he had learned to nap standing against the wall — part of his strategy to avoid ejection by Port Authority police officers. Mike, 51, who said he had stayed in the bus station for much of the eight years he has been homeless, wears a dark wool overcoat and carries a suitcase, which almost allows him to blend in. “If they see you laying down, they tell you to get the next bus out,” he said, referring to the police. Ramkarran Moteelall is part of a small group of scruffy men who spend days and nights lolling on the vents at the base of a huge glass facade inside Terminal 4 of Kennedy Airport. “If you don’t do nothing wrong, they don’t mess with you,” said Mr. Moteelall, 48, a Guyanese immigrant who has been living at the airport since December but who walks about two miles to his old Queens neighborhood to buy inexpensive meals. At Grand Central, in a cluster of tables in the station’s dining concourse, one of every three or four tables on a recent weekday was taken by people who appeared to be homeless, sharing the cavernous space with lunchtime office workers, passengers and tourists. The homeless people foraged through trash cans, including Mr. Mellor, who pulled discarded food from the garbage and ate it as he sat next to a table of teenage girls who were visiting New York to sing with their school choir at Carnegie Hall. His meal consisted of two slices of pizza and half of a $15 strip steak from the nearby Grill. He washed down his scavenged meal with swigs of cheap vodka. “It’s a survival skill — you take a sip of vodka to kill any bacteria,” Mr. Mellor said. Nearby, a man was panhandling while holding a sign that read, “Give me a dollar or I’ll vote for Trump!” He settled into a table and starting napping next to a man in a business suit, who surveyed the tables of tourists interspersed with shabbily dressed homeless people. “The fact that they stay all day in a dining area, I guess, is not ideal, but I don’t see them bothering anyone,” said the man, Carlo Valladares, 22, of Long Island. Another school group, on a class trip from Odenville, Ala. noticed the homeless people at the food court tables. Lisa Mayhew, a chaperone, gave leftover food to some homeless people near her table. “We were surprised to see so many homeless here, with all the tourists and nice food places,” she said. “But I told the kids, this is part of New York City. ” | 0fake |
Trump advisers to discuss whether U.S. stays in Paris climate pact: official | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - White House advisers and Trump administration officials will meet on Thursday to discuss whether the United States should remain in the Paris climate agreement, a White House official said on Wednesday. The meeting, which will include member of the National Economic Council and cabinet officials such as Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt and Energy Secretary Rick Perry, was scheduled for 1:30 P.M. EDT (1730 GMT) after being postponed earlier this month. The administration is expected to make a decision on whether to remain a party to the deal by the time leaders of the Group of Seven wealthy nations meet in late May, but members of President Donald Trump’s inner circle are divided on whether to stay or go. The accord, agreed by nearly 200 countries in Paris in 2015, would limit planetary warming in part by slashing carbon dioxide and other emissions from the burning of fossil fuels. As part of the deal, the United States under Trump’s predecessor President Barack Obama committed to reducing its emissions by between 26 and 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025. During the 2016 presidential election campaign Trump described climate change as a hoax that was stifling policies to improve economic growth and said he would consider “cancelling” the Paris agreement. He later said he was open to staying if the U.S. got better terms. Trump’s advisers have taken different positions on the decision. Pruitt joins Trump adviser Steve Bannon in opposing the Paris agreement. Trump’s other close advisers, daughter Ivanka Trump and husband Jared Kushner have sided with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who said the U.S. should remain part of the agreement. Perry has said it would be best to remain but renegotiate the terms. George David Banks, in charge of international energy issues at the White House National Economic Council, has been receiving feedback from publicly traded coal and oil companies on the Paris decision. Some major coal companies, including Cloud Peak Energy , have said it would be in their company’s global interest for the U.S. to stay in the pact. [L5N1HC5NC] Meanwhile, other global companies, ranging from BP to Microsoft to General Mills to Walmart sent a letter to Trump on Wednesday urging the president to keep the U.S. in the agreement to protect their competitiveness. | 0fake |
Vice President Mike Pence Casts Historic Tie-Breaking Vote to Confirm Betsy DeVos | Vice President Mike Pence cast an historic deciding vote Tuesday to confirm Betsy DeVos as the next secretary of the U. S. Department of Education. [Pence’s vote was in accordance with his post as president of the Senate. The Senate vote was with two Republicans, Sens. Susan Collins (ME) and Lisa Murkowski (AK) voting against DeVos. As Fox News notes, Pence’s vote “marked the first time in American history a vice president has broken a tie on a Cabinet nominee’s Senate confirmation — and the first vote by a VP since 2008. ” “The Senate being equally divided, the vice president votes in the affirmative, and the nomination is confirmed,” Pence said in the Senate. DeVos has been one of the most controversial picks for President Donald Trump’s cabinet. Objections to her nomination have come from both the left, including teachers’ unions, and the grassroots base of the GOP who want to see the federal education department dismantled and oversight of education turned back to parents and local school districts. Democrats, like ranking member of the Senate education committee Sen. Patty Murray (WA) highlighted DeVos’ vast wealth and potential financial entanglements, as well as a lack of experience with the public school system. Republicans, such as Sen. Tim Scott (SC) however, said DeVos’ work in the area of school choice, to help children in school districts escape failing public schools, makes her qualified to lead an education system that is abandoning may of its students. | 0fake |
The Battle of New York: Why This Primary Matters | It's primary day in New York and front-runners Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are leading in the polls.
Trump is now vowing to win enough delegates to clinch the Republican nomination and prevent a contested convention. But Sens.Ted Cruz, R-Texas, Bernie Sanders, D-Vt., and Ohio Gov. John Kasich and aren't giving up just yet.
A big win in New York could tip the scales for both the Republican and Democratic front-runners in this year's race for the White House. Clinton and Trump have each suffered losses in recent contests, shifting the momentum to their rivals.
"We have won eight out of the last nine caucuses and primaries! Cheer!" Sanders recently told supporters.
While wins in New York for Trump and Clinton are expected, the margins of those victories are also important.
Trump needs to capture more than 50 percent of the vote statewide if he wants to be positioned to win all of the state's 95 GOP delegates. That would put him one step closer to avoiding a contested convention.
"We've got to vote and you know Cruz is way, way down in the polls," Trump urged supporters.
Meanwhile, Sanders is hoping for a close race in the Empire State. A loss by 10 points means he'll need to win 80 percent of the remaining delegates to clinch the nomination.
Despite a predicted loss in New York, Cruz hasn't lost momentum. He's hoping to sweep up more delegates this weekend while he's talking about how he can win in November.
"Because if I'm the nominee, we win the General Election," Cruz promised his supporters. "We're beating Hillary in the key swing states, we're beating Hillary with Independents, we're beating Hillary with young people."
For now, Cruz, Kasich, and Sanders have all moved on from New York to other states. Trump and Clinton are the only two staying in their home state to watch the results come in. | 0fake |
Fun, Safe Trick-Or-Treating Alternatives - The Onion - America's Finest News Source | Report: Friend Has Been Going By Middle Name This Whole Fucking Time CALABASAS, CA—Astounded that it had never come up at any point in the six years they had known each other, local woman Lucy Reed, 25, reported Tuesday that her friend Nicole Silberthau had apparently been going by her middle name this whole fucking time. Disappointing Prince Vaults Found To Contain 37,000 Hours Of Billy Joel Covers CHANHASSEN, MN—Ending rampant speculation regarding the extent of the late musician’s catalogue of unreleased recordings, the executors of Prince’s estate announced Monday that the performer’s famed vault in his Paisley Park residence sadly contains 37,000 hours of Billy Joel covers. Conceptual Genius Goes As Self For Halloween ‘He Himself Is The Costume,’ Say Amazed Onlookers SHERMAN OAKS, CA—Brilliantly subverting the very idea of a costume, conceptual genius Mark Richards, 27, reportedly stunned his fellow partygoers Friday when he announced that he had dressed as himself for Halloween. | 1real |
Eyes on the 'Crocodile' as Zimbabwe military sweeps to power | HARARE (Reuters) - When Zimbabwean leader Robert Mugabe sacked his vice-president in front of 12,000 baying party members in 2014, Emmerson Mnangagwa sat quietly in the crowd, a green baseball cap pulled low over his eyes. The man who stood to gain most from the dismissal betrayed nothing through his expression and gentle clapping - a survival tactic honed during five decades of service to the mercurial Mugabe. His cap, however, spoke volumes. Emblazoned across its front, next to a portrait of Mugabe, were four words: Indigenise, Empower, Develop, Employ - a slogan of the ruling ZANU-PF party. Speaking at the congress, Mnangagwa reinforced the message from his headgear, announcing revisions to the party s constitution that backed total ownership and control of Zimbabwe s natural resources. It was a key insight to the party s direction as it contemplated life beyond Mugabe. We will remain forever masters of our own destiny, Mnangagwa said, to cheers from the crowd. With Mugabe, 93, held following Wednesday s military takeover in Harare, questions have arisen about what the future holds for Mnangagwa, whose sacking from the post of vice president last week brought the political crisis to a head. There are no arguments around his credentials to provide strong leadership and stability, but there are questions over whether he can also be a democrat, said Eldred Masunungure, a political science lecturer at the University of Zimbabwe. The whereabouts of Mugabe s wife Grace, 52, whose prospects of succeeding the president appeared to have been helped by Mnangagwa s dismissal, are presently unknown. With his appointment in 2014 as official deputy to Mugabe, Mnangagwa had appeared well set as the eventual successor to Africa s oldest head of state. The 75-year-old was one of Mugabe s most trusted lieutenants, having been at his side in prison, during wartime and then in government. Along the way, he earned the nickname Ngwena , Shona for crocodile, an animal famed in Zimbabwean lore for its stealth and ruthlessness. Mnangagwa backed Mugabe s economic nationalism, especially a drive to force foreign firms to hand majority stakes to local blacks, suggesting he may not be the pro-market pragmatist many investors were hoping for. He has been in every administration since independence, holding posts as varied as minister of state security, defense and finance, as well as speaker of parliament. Most controversially, he was in charge of internal security in the mid-1980s when Mugabe deployed a crack North Korean-trained brigade against rebels loyal to his rival Joshua Nkomo. Rights groups say 20,000 civilians, mostly from the Ndebele tribe, were killed. Mugabe denies genocide or crimes against humanity but has admitted it was a moment of madness . Mnangagwa s role remains shrouded in mystery, typical of a political operator trained as a communist guerrilla in China in the 1960s and who always stayed in the shadows behind Mugabe. Secretive and insular, he prefers to operate under the radar, those in his inner circle say, and when pushed into a corner, resorts to jokes and trivia to avoid serious discussion. I wouldn t say he is deceptive but it s fair to say his default position is to crack jokes and deflect uncomfortable questions by asking endless questions, one member of parliament close to him said. He is very conscious that his public image is that of a hard man but he is a much more complex personality - pleasant and an amazing story-teller, the politician, also from Mnangagwa s Midlands Province, told Reuters. Mnangagwa s appointment as vice president appointment came a day after his predecessor Joice Mujuru was fired for allegedly planning to topple Mugabe. Asked whether the purge would weaken the party, a smiling Mnangagwa said: The revolution has a way of strengthening itself. It goes through cycles, this is another cycle where it rids itself of elements that had now become inconsistent with the correct line. Mnangagwa learnt his politics in prison in the 1960s after being sentenced to death for sabotage by British authorities following his capture while in one of the earliest guerrilla units fighting white colonial rule in what was then Rhodesia. He was 19 and only spared the noose by a law prohibiting the execution of convicts under 21. After a decade in prison, often sharing a cell with Mugabe, Mnangagwa became personal assistant to the leader of the liberation struggle, and went on to head the guerrilla movement s feared internal security bureau. In January, a photograph appeared in local media showing Mnangagwa enjoying drinks with a friend. In his hand was a large novelty mug emblazoned with the words: I M THE BOSS. To supporters of Mugabe, this bordered on treason. They suspected that Mnangagwa already saw himself in the leader s shoes. When Mugabe fired Mnangagwa as vice president last week for showing traits of disloyalty , he removed a possible successor who was also one of his last remaining liberation war comrades. But relations had already cooled between the two men after suggestions by Mnangagwa s allies in August that he had been poisoned by ice cream from a dairy owned by the Mugabes. | 0fake |
U.N. aviation agency not eyeing 'no-fly' zone around North Korea: sources | MONTREAL (Reuters) - The United Nations aviation agency is not considering the creation of a no-fly zone around North Korea because the direction of Pyongyang s tests are not predictable, two sources familiar with the organization s thinking said on Thursday. Airlines are already avoiding North Korean airspace and some have re-routed flights to avoid portions of the Sea of Japan because of the missile tests. European carriers Air France KLM SA and Lufthansa did so in August, while Singapore Airlines Ltd on Friday said its flight routings did not traverse near the missile trajectories because it had been avoiding the northern part of the Sea of Japan since July. Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd on Monday said the crew of a San Francisco-Hong Kong flight reported a suspected sighting of a missile re-entry from North Korea s latest test on Nov. 29. In a statement, the airline said the aircraft was far from the location and there were no plans to change flight routes at this stage. Data from flight tracking website FlightRadar24 shows the CX893 flight path was over land in Japan, to the east of the Sea of Japan. OPSGROUP, which provides safety guidance to airlines, said in September that the western portion of Japanese airspace is a risk area due to multiple North Korean missile re-entries into the same area, according to its website. International Air Transport Association (IATA) director general Alexandre de Juniac was quoted in the South China Morning Post on Thursday saying that the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) could declare a no-fly zone in the region. Montreal-based ICAO cannot impose rules, such as ordering countries to close their domestic airspace, but regulators from its 191-member states almost always adopt and enforce the standards it sets for international aviation. ICAO has condemned North Korea for launching missiles without notice, a move that could represent a threat to commercial flights. The missile tests are worrisome for civil aviation authorities in the wake of the 2014 downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 over Ukraine. So far, North Korea has not heeded requests by ICAO to give advance notice of any launches, one of the sources said. An IATA spokeswoman said by email on Thursday that de Juniac s remarks were in reference to the airline trade group s support of a recent decision by ICAO to strongly condemn North Korea s continued launching of ballistic missiles over and near international air routes. While ICAO has urged airlines to take precautions, the agency is not advocating for a no-fly zone, because such a move would be disruptive for carriers and it s not clear where North Korea will fire missiles during tests. It is so random, it (a no fly zone) becomes ineffective, one of the sources said. Both sources spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk with media. An ICAO spokesman was not immediately available for comment. Tensions in the region have risen markedly in recent months after repeated North Korean missile tests in defiance of U.N. sanctions and the detonation of what Pyongyang said was a hydrogen bomb on Sept. 3. On Thursday, two American B-1B heavy bombers joined large-scale combat drills over South Korea. | 0fake |
Omar Abdel Rahman, Blind Cleric Found Guilty of Plot to Wage ‘War of Urban Terrorism,’ Dies at 78 - The New York Times | Omar Abdel Rahman, the blind Islamic cleric whose fulminating sermons inspired violent fundamentalist movements in Egypt and, an American court found, a 1993 plot for a bombing rampage in New York, died on Saturday at a federal prison near Raleigh, N. C. where he was serving a life sentence. He was 78. Greg Norton, a spokesman for the prison, the Butner Federal Correctional Complex, confirmed the death, saying the cause was complications of diabetes and coronary artery disease. Born to a humble merchant in a Nile Delta village and blind from infancy, Mr. Abdel Rahman became one of the most influential and fearsome theologians of the Islamist fundamentalism that swept the Middle East in recent decades. On Oct. 1, 1995, Mr. Abdel Rahman was convicted, along with nine other defendants, on sedition charges in Federal District Court in Manhattan. He was found guilty of guiding a conspiracy to wage “a war of urban terrorism,” with the ultimate aim of carrying out a day of bombings against the Holland and Lincoln Tunnels, the George Washington Bridge, the United Nations and the Manhattan headquarters of the F. B. I. Those bombings never happened, but the intent of the conspiracy, prosecutors said, was to destroy New York landmarks, kill hundreds of people and force the United States to abandon its support for Israel and Egypt. Prosecutors also asserted that Mr. Rahman was linked to the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, which killed six people. In Mr. Abdel Rahman’s trial, prosecutors described the World Trade Center attack as part of a broader conspiracy involving the blind cleric. They depicted the bombing as part of a plot that included the killing of a militant rabbi in 1990 and the conspiracy to blow up New York landmarks. Before coming to the United States, Mr. Abdel Rahman was put on trial in Egypt. In 1980, according to courtroom testimony there, he gave a blessing to a cell of militant Islamists, emboldening them to assassinate President Anwar during a military parade on Oct. 6, 1981, in Cairo. Mr. Abdel Rahman faced trial twice in Egypt for instigating Mr. Sadat’s assassination and for political disturbances that erupted at the time. Twice, in 1982 and 1984, he was acquitted. In learned but vitriolic jeremiads, Mr. Abdel Rahman denounced Egypt’s secularist leaders as corrupt pharaohs and infidels. He proclaimed that faithful Muslims had a duty to wage jihad, or holy war, to install a government in Egypt that would obey the strictest Islamic laws. He denounced what he saw as the corrosive effect on Islam of the materialistic and hypersexualized West. In 1990, as he fled from Egypt, Mr. Abdel Rahman moved to the United States, bringing his preaching and his campaign against the Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak, to mosques in Brooklyn and Jersey City. Mr. Abdel Rahman, who was known as the blind sheikh, spent years in the most severe solitary confinement, barred from communicating with his followers, praying with other prisoners or even listening to Arabic radio. Failing blood circulation had killed the sensation in his fingertips, making it impossible for him to read his Braille Islamic texts. Mr. Abdel Rahman was born on May 3, 1938, in a small village in the Nile Delta. An infection blinded him at 10 months. When he became an adult, his right eye remained open but clouded while his left eye stayed closed. Sent to a school for the blind, he excelled, learning Braille and memorizing the Quran by the time he was 11. He trained to be an Islamic scholar, completing his doctoral degree in 1973 at University in Cairo, the world’s premier center of Islamic learning. Mr. Abdel Rahman first antagonized the Egyptian authorities in 1970 when he barred the faithful in a mosque where he was presiding, in the town Fayoum, from praying after the death of President Gamal Abdel Nasser, a secularist. He was imprisoned for several months. Soon he began to espouse a doctrine, rooted in Quranic interpretation, holding that devout Muslims were obliged to kill rulers who did not follow Islamic law. Saad Hasaballah, a lawyer who represented Mr. Abdel Rahman in the Sadat assassination trials, said the sheikh told the Islamist army officers involved in the plot that a secular leader like Mr. Sadat deserved death — although he never mentioned the president by name. In 1984, Egypt’s highest court found that Mr. Abdel Rahman had been tortured while in prison during the trials. Years later, at a news conference in New Jersey, he enumerated 12 methods of torture he said jailers had used. During the 1980s, Mr. Abdel Rahman emerged as the imam of the Islamic Group, a student organization that grew to include thousands of members. Over more than a decade, the group carried out terrorist attacks, including many on tourist sites, killing foreigners and paralyzing Egypt’s tourism industry. The government responded fiercely, imprisoning thousands of the group’s followers. Mr. Abdel Rahman also traveled that decade to Afghanistan and Pakistan, giving religious teachings to the Islamist fighters battling the Soviet occupation. He brought two of his sons, Ahmed and Muhammad, still teenagers, to Afghanistan to join the jihad. His preaching there brought him in contact with Osama bin Laden. In 1989, Mr. Abdel Rahman was put on trial again in Egypt, charged with instigating an antigovernment riot in Fayoum. Placed under house arrest, he managed to escape. On July 18, 1990, he traveled to New York, carrying a visa granted by the United States consulate in Sudan. Since his name had appeared on a State Department terrorism watch list, the visa prompted outrage in Congress and an investigation of the immigration agency. Still, Mr. Abdel Rahman did little to mute his sermons when he took up preaching in Brooklyn and Jersey City. After several of the bomb plot suspects were arrested in the act of mixing a brew of explosives, Mr. Abdel Rahman surrendered to federal authorities on July 2, 1993. His trial hinged on transcripts of secretly recorded meetings with an F. B. I. informant, Emad Salem. He was represented by the civil rights lawyer Lynne Stewart, who was convicted in 2004 of smuggling messages from the imprisoned sheikh to his followers in Egypt. She was granted compassionate release from federal prison three years ago after being found to have breast cancer. In court, Mr. Abdel Rahman maintained his innocence. At his January 1996 sentencing, he called the trial “an attack on the words of God” and said the United States, “an enemy of Islam,” was seeking to give him “a slow death. ” | 0fake |
Presidential Election Live: Donald Trump’s Victory - The New York Times | Donald J. Trump’s victory in the presidential race on Tuesday night capped a remarkable election in which several Democratic Senate candidates fell short and Republicans retained their majority in the House of Representatives. Here are some key takeaways from a stunning result that upended conventional expectations and set the stage for a drastic reordering of politics in Washington: • Mr. Trump took the stage at the Hilton just before 3 a. m. and told his supporters that Hillary Clinton called him to concede the election. Striking a gracious note, he wished her well and said, “We owe her a major debt of gratitude for her debt to our country. ” • Reading from teleprompters and flanked by Gov. Mike Pence of Indiana and his son, Barron, Mr. Trump said he wanted to “reclaim our country’s destiny” and be bold and daring. He also called for unity and said that he hoped Democrats and Republicans would work together. • Democratic hopes that Hillary Clinton would easily defeat Mr. Trump crumbled as the evening wore on, as the Republican candidate’s bombastic style appeared to win significant support among white, and rural voters across the country. • Mrs. Clinton’s loss seemed to result, in part, from a showing among and young voters — two important parts of the coalition that lifted President Obama to victories in 2008 and 2012. • Black voters made up 12 percent of the national electorate this year, nearly the same as in 2012. Mrs. Clinton won a broad majority of black voters — 88 percent, compared with 8 percent for Mr. Trump. But Mr. Obama received 93 percent of the vote four years ago. • Mrs. Clinton also did slightly worse than Mr. Obama among young voters. People under 30 made up 19 percent of this year’s electorate, the same as in 2012. Mrs. Clinton got 54 percent of their support, compared with Mr. Obama’s 60 percent. Mr. Trump had the backing of 37 percent of voters under 30, the same percentage that Mitt Romney won in 2012. • Mr. Trump won in part on his strength with voters who were not strongly identified with either party. Independents made up 31 percent of 2016 voters, compared with 29 percent in 2012. Mrs. Clinton won 42 percent of independents, compared with Mr. Trump’s 47 percent, while 6 percent voted for Gary Johnson and 3 percent supported Jill Stein. • In the key battleground of Florida, Mr. Trump built his support largely on voters who expressed deep dismay with Washington. Nearly nine in 10 of his voters in Florida said they were dissatisfied or angry with the state of the federal government. Just as many disapproved of Mr. Obama’s job performance, and thought the president’s health care law went too far. • Nearly four in 10 Florida voters said they were most interested in electing a president who would bring serious change, and Mr. Trump won that group by a broad margin. Mrs. Clinton won voters looking for a compassionate, experienced or more judicious leader — but it was not enough to cancel out Mr. Trump’s support among those hungry for change. • Hispanic voters made up 11 percent of voters nationwide in 2016, just 1 point higher than in 2012. While Mrs. Clinton got 65 percent support among Hispanics, compared with 29 percent for Mr. Trump, her support from this group was 6 points lower than Mr. Obama’s in 2012. • While Mrs. Clinton did better than Mr. Trump among nonwhite voters in Florida, it was not enough to offset his success with white voters, who skew older in the state. He won those by nearly 2 to 1, including those with a college degree. of Florida’s electorate was white and over 60. Mr. Trump pulled most of his support from the Gulf Coast and the central part of the state, a hub for wealthy retirees, offsetting Mrs. Clinton’s gaping lead in the Miami and Orlando areas. •Mr. Trump also did well in Ohio, where voters ages 18 to 29 were 11 points less likely to support the Democratic candidate this year than in 2012, with Mr. Johnson and Ms. Stein capturing 7 percent of their votes. Black voters in Ohio were 6 points less likely to support Mrs. Clinton than they were to support Mr. Obama four years ago. • In North Carolina, 30 percent of voters were nonwhite, and Mrs. Clinton won this group by a margin (79 percent to 17 percent). Mr. Trump, countering with a strong showing among whites, won the state. • The suburban share of the North Carolina vote increased to 38 percent, from 28 percent in 2012, while the share of the rural vote decreased by 10 points, to 24 percent. Mr. Trump won majorities in both groups. | 0fake |
Spy chiefs pressure Congress to renew expiring surveillance law | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The leaders of the U.S. intelligence community on Thursday pressed Congress to renew the National Security Agency’s expiring surveillance law, warning in a rare public statement that national security may be endangered if lawmakers let it lapse. The message from the intelligence chiefs sought to apply pressure on lawmakers who appeared to abandon an effort this week to pass legislation that would have reauthorized for several years the NSA’s warrantless internet spying program, which is due to expire on Dec. 31. That plan cratered late on Wednesday amid objections from a sizable coalition of Republicans and Democrats who want to have more privacy safeguards in the program, which chiefly targets foreigners but also collects communications from an unknown number of Americans. Instead, House Republicans unveiled a stopgap funding measure on Thursday that includes an extension of the surveillance law until Jan. 19. The law, known as Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, is considered by U.S. intelligence agencies to be vital to national security. “There is no substitute for Section 702,” Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, and the directors the NSA, FBI and CIA wrote in the joint statement, adding that failure to renew the authority would make it easier for foreign adversaries to “plan attacks against our citizens and allies without detection.” Section 702 allows the NSA to collect vast amounts of digital communications from foreign suspects living outside the United States. But the program incidentally gathers communications of Americans for a variety of technical reasons, including if they communicate with a foreign target living overseas. Those communications can then be subject to searches without a warrant, including by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Some lawmakers in both parties want to eliminate or partially restrict the U.S. government’s ability to review data of Americans collected under Section 702 without first obtaining a warrant. The intelligence chiefs also criticized the current plan to temporarily extend the program, saying short-term extensions “fail to provide certainty and will create needless and wasteful operational complications.” U.S. officials recently acknowledged the end-year deadline may not matter much because of a belief the program can lawfully continue through April due to the way it is annually certified. In their statement, however, the intelligence chiefs warned that the surveillance program would need to begin “winding down” well in advance of the April date. | 0fake |
U.S. quits talks on global migration pact over sovereignty clash | UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The United States has quit negotiations on a voluntary pact to deal with migration because the global approach to the issue was simply not compatible with U.S. sovereignty, said U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley. In a statement released late on Saturday, the U.S. mission to the U.N. noted that President Donald Trump made the decision. No country has done more than the United States, and our generosity will continue, said Haley, whose parents are immigrants from India. But our decisions on immigration policies must always be made by Americans and Americans alone. We will decide how best to control our borders and who will be allowed to enter our country, she said. Trump campaigned last year on a promise to deport large numbers of immigrants and build a wall on the U.S. border with Mexico to help tackle illegal immigration and crime in the United States. Since he took office in January, he has also moved to ban U.S. entry by people from select Muslim countries. With a record 21.3 million refugees globally, the 193-member U.N. General Assembly adopted a political declaration in September last year in which they also agreed to spend two years negotiating the pact on safe, orderly and regular migration. Former U.S. President Barack Obama s administration backed the resolution, known as the New York Declaration, which also asked U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi to propose a global compact on refugees for adoption in 2018. The global approach in the New York Declaration is simply not compatible with U.S. sovereignty, Haley said. U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres regretted the U.S. decision, his spokesman said on Sunday, but expressed hope the United States might re-engage in the talks. The positive story of migration is clear: it needs to be better told. Equally, the challenges it throws up need to be tackled with more determination and greater international coordination, U.N. spokesman Farhan Haq said. Three days of preparatory talks begin in Mexico on Monday ahead of the start of formal negotiations in February over the non-binding pact. Haley s predecessor Samantha Power mocked the U.S. move. How to further insult your Mexican neighbor, turn your back on humanity s most desperate, and make America irrelevant on a hugely destabilizing global crisis in one easy step, she posted on Twitter. While former U.N. Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson said on Twitter: On migration, national solutions logically do not exist ... Going it alone is a lose-lose proposition. (The story was refiled to correct the name of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees to Filippo Grandi from Zeid Ra ad al-Hussein in paragraph 7) | 0fake |
How To Revive Your Old Guns And How To Use Them | Fred Tyrell November 4, 2016 How To Revive Your Old Guns And How To Use Them
If your firearms require repair after a social collapse, it will be too late to start thinking about how to work on firearms and keep them in good working order. Now is the time to start learning how to repair and maintain your firearms so that your guns are always ready to serve your needs.
You Need to Be a Gunsmith and a Blacksmith
These days, if your handguns, rifles, or shotguns need repair, you can just take them to a gunsmith, or return them to the manufacturer for factory warranty work.
In a time of crisis there may not be any gunsmiths or even any warranty service centers open to repair your weapons. With this in mind, you must know how to make and replace any parts that break or wear out.
Two good trades to learn and be proficient in are gunsmithing and blacksmithing. A good gunsmith can repair and modify most modern firearms with a good supply of spare parts. If you don’t have anymore spare parts to repair broken firearms, you will need blacksmithing skills so that you can make the needed parts for these repairs.
Aside from fixing your own weapons (and other machines), you can also barter or trade for other goods and services when needed. To do well in these two trades, you must have all of the necessary tools, repair manuals, a good memory, and a natural ability to do the work.
Count on Cannibalizing Other Broken Firearms
Battle field cannibalization should be used when you have run out of spare parts and there are none left to use. Sometimes there is not enough time for your gunsmith or blacksmith to manufacture the needed parts. Turn to cannibalizing non-serviceable firearms instead, to keep others working until they can be fixed or repaired.
A good source of firearms to cannibalize are those weapons that were discarded by their old owner because they would no longer work. Another place to search are battlefields or skirmish lines. Most of these firearms, when retrieved, may still have usable parts. If not, all of the steel and other metal parts can be melted down and reused.
The question is, do your old weapons need special care to make them work?
When repairing or working with any gun that has cannibalized gun parts, take the time to hand fit each part to ensure that it fits and works perfectly, otherwise you will waste your time. You also run the risk of damaging or destroying the firearm or the valuable repair parts.
Do safety tests before and after repairs to determine if the firearm is safe to use!
A good gunsmith will always test the firearms that are to be repaired before any work is done. The first safety check is to see if the firearm is loaded. If not, then check the function of the weapon. If the weapon doesn’t function, then you can begin to disassemble the firearm. Once inside the firearm, the gunsmith can determine the problem and go about fixing it.
After the firearm is fixed, a good gunsmith will physically test the weapon unloaded. If the firearm passes the function testing, then it is time to load the gun and do a live fire test to check the weapon. Some gunsmiths will use a firearm rest to strap down the firearm and tie a string to the trigger so that the trigger can be pulled from a safe distance.
This could save your life, especially if the firearm explodes. When the firearm passes all the function tests, then you know it is safe to use.
When buying survival handguns , rifles, or shotguns, ask questions and try to find out which firearms: Will last the longest with heavy use. Have a history of minimal repairs. Are easy to obtain repair parts for. Include easy to make parts as a gunsmith or blacksmith. Have easy to install replacement parts.
If you can find firearms that have simple trigger, gas, loading, and other systems, then you could make the necessary parts on your own. Once you decide on a weapon, get all the gunsmith exploded views and specs for each weapon, but you will need tools, gun steel, or other supplies.
Like any other skill, you need to practice repairing firearms by making your own replacement parts and test firing them to insure they work properly.
Basic Gunsmith Tools and Procedures You Need for Reviving Old Guns
Here are some videos that can help you figure out which tools to obtain as well as the kinds of things you can do once you know the basics:
Here’s a video that shows the basic tools and supplies that are necessary for gunsmithing: Video first seen on Iraqveteran8888 .
Here’s how to make primers for reloading if they were not available. Remember, these methods can be dangerous, so make sure you study this and other resources before trying this on your own. Video first seen on Jon with no h .
It is also possible to make a rifle firing pin by using a drill bit that fits the firing pin channel in the bolt. The rear portion of the drill bit will be used. It is better to make the firing pin a little too long, and then cut it back if needed. If you make the firing pin too short, it must be discarded. Video first seen on beltstowing .
Making your own firearm parts when replacements are not available. Video first seen on MidwayUSA .
The Best Guns You Can Revive for Your Survival Arsenal
The following are firearms I would recommend for your survival arsenal . Each was selected because it is either readily available, or spare parts will be easy to get for some time. In some cases, you may also be able to make important parts on your own if needed.
Glock family of semi-auto pistols
Glock pistols are offered in 7 different calibers. There are 21 different styles for the Glock pistol. For each of the calibers, there are three different models: subcompact, compact, and full size for police or military.
The Glock pistol is known as a safe action pistol. It is a polymer framed, short recoil operated, locked breech semi-automatic pistol. Even though the Glock was referred to as the plastic gun because of its polymer frame, it is extremely well-built and durable. It is carried by approximately 65% of all United States police departments and sheriff departments.
Glocks are also extremely popular among civilians for recreational and competition shooting, home and self-defense, and for concealed or open carry. Since Glocks are very popular, there is an excellent supply of spare parts to repair or upgrade the pistol. If you needed to make replacement parts, that can also be done.
S&W Revolvers
S&W is an American firearms manufacturing company that has built revolvers since 1852. With this long tradition, they have built high quality revolvers that will last the average shooter a life time. The designs of the S&W revolvers are simple, which allows the average person to work on them. If no suitable parts are available, a good gunsmith or a blacksmith should be able to make them and repair the revolver .
Another thing that makes these revolvers a good choice is that certain ones can fire more than one type of bullet in the same gun. An example of this is the .22LR revolver which can shoot the .22 long rifle round, .22Long, and the .22short. The .357 magnum can also shoot .38 Specials, 38 Special + P, and 38 Special +P+. When you can shoot different ammo types, it makes it much easier to scavenge when bullets become more scarce.
The S&W revolvers come in the following frame sizes: The smallest frame size is the “J” frame that features a 1-2 inch barrel. The “K” frame is for medium sized revolvers with a 2-6 inch barrel. The “L” frame is for medium to large frame revolvers with a 4-8 inch barrel. The “N” frame is also for large frame revolvers with a 4-8 inch barrel. The “X” frame revolvers were designed for the very heavy recoiling S&W 500 and 460 round. The “Z” frame was designed for the S&W Governor revolvers which can shoot the .410 shotgun shells ( 2 1/2 and 3inch ), the 45ACP, and the 45Long Colt.
Remington Model 700 series of bolt action rifles
The Remington Model 700 is a series of bolt action rifles manufactured by Remington Arms since 1962. These rifles are all based on the same Centerfire bolt-action design. They come with a three, four, or five round internal magazine depending on the caliber.
Some models of the Remington Model 700 have a floor plate for quick unloading of the weapon while others do not. In recent years, this rifle has also been modified so it can be used with a detachable box magazine.
The Model 700 is available in many different stock, caliber, and barrel lengths. There are three versions of the Model 700: the civilian version, the police version, and the military version. This rifle can be chambered from the .17 Remington to the .458 Winchester magnum.
I would recommend that you have your Remington Model 700 chambered in the .308 Winchester round. In a time of crisis the .308 Winchester round would be more plentiful than other calibers because the police and military use this caliber in their rifles.
AR-15 platform of semi-auto rifles
The original AR-15 Sporter models were first manufactured in 1963 by Colt firearms. Over the years, other companies have made the AR-15 style rifles that vary in ammo type and other features. Even though the original caliber for this weapon was .223, some models have been chambered in 5.56, the Russian 7.62×39, AAC Blackout, and .458 SOCOM.
Some AR-15 style rifles can also take Pistol calibers such as the .22 caliber long rifle, 9×19, and the 45 ACP.
Positive features of the basic AR-15 style rifles are excellent molecularity, the great availability of spare and replacement parts, and accessories. These rifles have a great potential for excellent accuracy and they fit the shooter quite well. The greatest feature of the AR style rifle is that anybody can swap out the upper receiver and quickly replace it with another.
The wide availability of spare and after market parts allows you to customize your rifle for almost any purpose and budget. It is possible to build the AR style rifle yourself, have a gunsmith build it, or even order one from a custom manufacturing company.
Negative features of a typical AR-15 style rifles include sensitivity to ammunition and relatively high maintenance requirements, compared to its longtime rival, the AK. Another weakness of the AR-15 style rifle is the flimsy design of the original magazines.
Another feature which can be considered as a negative is the buffer tube housing which protrudes rearward from the receiver and into the shoulder stock. This precludes any use of folding stocks.
It is important to note that the ammunition used for AR style rifles is plentiful to buy and to reload. This ammunition it’s also used by the military and the police.
AK-47 and AK-74 platform of semi-auto rifles
The AK platform is the end result of years of research and development of a Russian selective fire rifle while the rifles made for the American civilian market are semi-automatic only rifles. The most commonly found AK platform rifles are mainly stamped receiver rifles, but there are a few milled receiver rifles available in the marketplace as well.
The AK-47 platform was design to be cheaply, easily and quickly manufactured using mass production methods. It is simple to use and very reliable. It uses a lot of stamped steel parts to help keep the unit price down.
The AK uses a long stroke gas system that is generally used for great reliability in adverse conditions. The large gas piston, generous clearances between moving parts, and tapered cartridge case design allow the AK platform to endure large amounts of dirt, other foreign matter, and fouling without failing to cycle.
This rifle is cheaper to produce and repair than other semi-automatic rifles. Furthermore this rifle was designed to be used by individuals that did not have much formal education. It is an easy to use, relatively simple rifle.
The AK platform can be broken down into its basic groups quickly and easily for cleaning and repairing. No special tools are required for cleaning or simple repairs in the field. This platform is one of the easiest to work on. If there are no spare parts to repair the rifle, they can be made easily enough by a good gunsmith or a blacksmith.
Ammunition for the AK platform is cheap to buy and easy to reload.
The standard AK-47 magazines are metal and hold 30 rounds of 7.62×39 ammunition. After market magazines can hold from 5-40 rounds of ammunition, or you can use a drum that holds 75 rounds of ammunition.
The standard AK-74 magazines are made of metal or synthetic materials and hold 30 rounds of 5.45×39 ammunition. There are also after market magazines that hold between 5-40 rounds of ammunition.
Keep spare parts that are known to break easily or often.
For each of your firearms you should have a spare parts kit. If any of your firearms have known weak points in their design, it is to your advantage to get rid of these weapons before a time of crisis and replace them with a more reliable weapon.
Critical Items for Your Spare Parts Kit
Semi-auto Rifles | 1real |
LEFTISTS ATTACK Barron Trump On Social Media Over T-Shirt…Go Off Deep-End Over Strange Toy He Held In His Hand As He Arrived At New Home [Video] | Social media lit up like crazy when Melania and Barron Trump arrived on Air Force One to move into the White House. Why did the media ignore the Obama girls, but don t have any problem attacking or making up rumors about the 11-year old son of President Trump and the First Lady Melania? Barron Trump arrived in DC wearing a t-shirt that said, The Expert . He was also carrying a fidget spinner, a very popular gadget with teenagers and young adults. Social media went berserk with a snark fest of nasty comments. It s always a double standard with the left:#TheExpert Barron Trump plays with fidget spinner as he exits Air Force One in Washington with @POTUS and @FLOTUS. pic.twitter.com/rQfivXcUNH Josh Caplan (@joshdcaplan) June 12, 2017 Melania and Barron arrive:The First Lady and Barron have permanently moved into the White House! Literally #TheExpert has arrived. pic.twitter.com/QWFQ5uy6Tw Mark Schneider (@subschneider) June 12, 2017 Don t get too comfortable Holly O Reilly Barron looks how we, the majority, feel. Russ Ian Mawb This guy is a twisted jerk on social media! Melania and Barron Trump have moved into the White House, and everybody looks thrilled! smarty pants on twitterMelania and Barron Trump have moved into the White House, and everybody looks thrilled! https://t.co/6OhUb3HLWU pic.twitter.com/mKhM4ShQv6 Jezebel (@Jezebel) June 12, 2017 Barron was playing with a fidget spinner when he exited Air Force One. It s the hottest toy out there right now so it s perfectly normal for the president s son to have one. One guy on twitter was surprised to see Barron with the fidget spinner:OMG!!! Barron Trump has a Fidget Spinner just like every single boy in my daughters class! pic.twitter.com/i660NCagIw jim spellman (@jimspellmanTV) June 12, 2017 | 1real |
New York mayor criticized for proposed limits on legal aid to immigrants | NEW YORK (Reuters) - New York City public defenders on Thursday criticized a proposal by Mayor Bill de Blasio to deny free legal counsel to immigrants in deportation hearings if they had been convicted of serious crimes in the past, saying the plan would deny them due process. In his proposed annual budget, De Blasio allocated $16.4 million to legal services for immigrant New Yorkers, citing concern about U.S. President Donald Trump’s crackdown on immigrants living in the country illegally. Lawyers, local lawmakers and civil rights activists welcomed the funding proposal, which sharply increases legal aid for immigrants. But they gathered on the steps of City Hall to criticize a provision they said would unfairly deprive some people of the right to due process under the law. De Blasio’s proposal would deny city-funded lawyers to immigrants previously convicted of one of 170 crimes that the city considers serious or violent. Jennifer Friedman, who runs the immigration practice at Bronx Defenders, said the mayor’s plan would create a “two-tier system that treats people different based on their criminal history.” The funding be in addition to the New York Immigrant Family Unity Project (NYIFUP), which has been funded by the City Council since 2013 and provides free lawyers to immigrants facing deportation hearings at the federal immigration court. In the United States, the right to a lawyer does not extend to federal immigration hearings which are civil, not criminal, proceedings. The plan contradicted de Blasio’s description of New York as a “sanctuary city” for immigrants, the public defenders said. Seth Stein, a City Hall spokesman, wrote in an email that “the public should not be expected to foot the bill” for immigrants convicted of dangerous crimes. “The vast majority of immigrants have not been convicted of violent crimes,” he wrote. More than 2,000 immigrants have received free lawyers under the council-funded program, which provides free lawyers regardless of an immigrant’s criminal record, in the four years since it began, Legal Aid said. In New York City, immigrants without lawyers managed to overturn a removal order in court only 3 percent of the time, while those with lawyers were able to remain in the country 30 percent of the time, Legal Aid said. | 0fake |
House will likely need to vote again on tax bill: Republican leader | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The No. 2 Republican in the U.S. House of Representatives said on Tuesday the House would likely need to vote again on tax legislation on Wednesday morning given that Democrats in the Senate were likely to prevail on a procedural objection. House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy advised House lawmakers that Senate Democrats were likely to object that the legislation fails to comply with the so-called Byrd rule and were likely to be upheld, necessitating a second House vote. “As such, members are further advised that an additional procedural vote on the Motion to Concur is expected tomorrow morning, which will clear the bill for President Trump’s signature,” McCarthy said in a notice to House lawmakers. | 0fake |
THE TRUTH About Alicia Machado BLOWS UP…Backfires BIG-TIME On Hillary’s Dirty Campaign! [Video] | Hillary should have done her homework before she chose this former Miss Universe to disparage Trump s character | 1real |
Chaffetz may not finish U.S. House term: media reports | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Representative Jason Chaffetz, the Republican chairman of a House committee with broad investigative powers, said on Thursday that it is possible he could leave office before his term finishes next year, The Wall Street Journal reported. “My future plans are not yet finalized, but I haven’t ruled out the possibility of leaving early,” Chaffetz told the Journal a day after the Utah congressman announced he would not run for re-election in 2018. Chaffetz’s staff in Washington, D.C., and in Utah did not immediately respond to requests for comment. In Utah, officials have begun running informal scenarios on how and when to hold a special election should Chaffetz resign, but have not been formally notified of the congressman’s intentions, Mark Thomas, the state’s director of elections, told Reuters. Thomas said his department in the office of Lieutenant Governor Spencer Cox was basing the informal information-gathering on Chaffetz’s statements to local media that he might leave office early. “We don’t know what he’s planning,” Thomas said. “This is more informal, just wanting to know ourselves and be prepared.” Chaffetz, a conservative Republican who was first elected to the House of Representatives in 2008, gained prominence as head of the committee that investigated Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while she was U.S. secretary of state. Chaffetz’s remarks on a possible early departure from office were first reported by KSL Radio in Salt Lake City. Chaffetz, 50, in the past had considered running for a U.S. Senate seat. A former Chaffetz aide on Wednesday told Reuters the congressman may run for Utah governor in 2020, though no firm decision had been made yet. | 0fake |
null | Same people all the time , i dont know how you can fix this corruption http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/10_09_01_krongard.html | 1real |
America’s Likely Response to North Korean Test: Missile Defense Systems | This morning’s key headlines from GenerationalDynamics. com, South Korean TV coverage on Sunday of North Korean missile test (AFP) The United Nations Security Council met in emergency session on Monday, and issued a statement strongly condemning North Korea’s ballistic missile launches. The missile was launched on Sunday from North Korea’s Banghyon air base in the western North Pyongang Province. It reached an apogee of 344 miles and traveled out to about 313 miles before splashing into the Sea of Japan. Analysts say that the missile test is significant because the new missiles use solid fuel, and because it can be launched from vehicles traveling over rough terrain, both of which make them harder to detect than missiles. The missile test shows that it could reach targets in South Korea, China, and Japan, and that North Korea is getting close to developing a nuclear missile that could reach the United States. The UN Security Council statement said: The members of the Security Council deplore all the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea ballistic missile activities, including these launches … [We call] upon all member states to redouble their efforts to implement fully the measures imposed on the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea by the Security Council. Some Security Council members have called for imposing additional economic sanctions on North Korea, but are few choices left beyond those that have already been imposed. Furthermore, it’s pretty clear that North Korea will continue developing nuclear and missile technology irrespective of any imposed sanctions. Reuters and Defense News and Deutsche Welle, Related Articles, On Monday, China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang had to answer questions about North Korea’s ballistic missile test. The exchanges became fairly testy, illustrating how anxious China is about the situation, and about how complicated it is making China’s foreign policy. Here are some excerpts showing the testy exchanges (the DPRK is North Korea, and the ROK is South Korea): Q: The DPRK allegedly tested a new type of missile yesterday … A: We have noted relevant reports and are closely following the developments. The Security Council resolutions contain clear provisions on launches using ballistic missile technology by the DPRK. China is opposed to the DPRK’s launch which violates the Security Council resolutions. Given the current circumstances, relevant parties should not engage in mutually provocative moves which could heighten regional tensions. All parties need to exercise restraint in a joint effort to maintain regional peace and stability. … Q: There is sort of a saying that China has leverage over the DPRK. Has the US communicated with China over the missile test and asked China to do more? Analysts speculate that the missile test is an opportunity for China to tie up its greater cooperation on the Korean nuclear issue with US cooperation in keeping peace and stability of the South China Sea. Is that a valid speculation? A: The root of the DPRK nuclear and missile issue lies in the differences between the DPRK and the US and between the DPRK and the ROK. As a permanent member of the Security Council and a responsible member of the international community, China has always enforced the Council’s resolutions in their entirety, promoted peace talks, and made unremitting efforts to facilitate the settlement of the issue of Korean Peninsula. China’s efforts have been widely acknowledged and acclaimed by the international community … Q: You just mentioned that the root of the DPRK nuclear and missile issue lies in the differences between the DPRK and the US and between the DPRK and the ROK. Could you be more specific as to how the differences between the DPRK and the ROK lead to the nuclear and missile issue? A: What I said just now was that the root of the DPRK nuclear and missile issue lies in the differences between the DPRK and the US and between the DPRK and the ROK. This is not the first time for us to say so. This is a viewpoint that has been repeatedly emphasized. Q: Does China believe that Washington should take the initiative on tackling the issue of missile test by the DPRK? A: The root of the DPRK nuclear and missile issue lies in the differences between the DPRK and the US and between the DPRK and the ROK … Q: US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said that China, who has complete control of what sustains the government of the DPRK, should play a bigger role. Do you agree with him? A: I have actually given the answer when addressing other journalists’ questions. The root of the DPRK nuclear and missile issue is the differences between the DPRK and the US and between the DPRK and the ROK. Given that, we hope that relevant parties make more efforts to resolve the DPRK nuclear and missile issue. As you can see, an exasperated Geng Shuang answered several questions the same way, essentially blaming the United States and South Korea. I’ll bet he was happy when that press conference was over. AP and China Foreign Ministry, Last year, the U. S. and South Korea announced the deployment of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) in South Korea. It is considered to be the most advanced system available anywhere today because it can blast incoming missiles out of the sky with 100% success rate. The stated purpose of the deployment would be to protect South Korea from a North Korean ballistic missile attack. China has expressed enormous fury over the installation of THAAD in South Korea. When the announcement was made last year, Chinese media have attacked South Korea with inflammatory rhetoric and recommended harsh economic sanctions against South Korea. China has even been calling for demonstrations in South Korea. The reason that China has been freaking out over THAAD is that it also protects South Korea from a ballistic missile attack launched by China. Furthermore, THAAD’s advanced detection systems would provide early warning of a Chinese missile attack on the United States. Sunday’s ballistic missile test by North Korea severely complicates China’s foreign policy with regard to this issue, because it makes a THAAD system in South Korea even more necessary. According to Chinese media: Establishing THAAD on the Korean Peninsula has always been part of Washington’s plan to expand and enhance its network in the region. Aside from cooperation with allies such as Japan and Australia, the US has also deployed the THAAD system in Hawaii and Guam, destroyers with missile interceptors in the Sea of Japan, and Patriot Advanced interceptors on the Japanese soil … However, inviting the ROK to join the game being played by the US and Japan does not just respond to the DPRK’s nuclear threats but also places more countries including China under US military surveillance. Keeping Japan and the ROK committed to its Asian policy would be another boon to the US. … However, the two allies are yet to offer any solid evidence to reassure Beijing that the battery does not target any third party. Nor have they taken any action such as removing radars that might be used to spy on China to prove their point. China will not sit idle while Washington and Seoul press ahead with THAAD in the name of handling the “DPRK threat”. Another system is the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) system. It is a centralized, automated, (C2) and weapons control system that was designed as a total weapon system, from detection to kill. The radar is able to perform search, track, and missile guidance functions simultaneously, with a track capacity of more than 100 targets. There are currently 84 U. S. Navy ships in service with the AEGIS Weapons System installed: 22 Cruisers and 62 Destroyers. There are an additional three new construction Destroyers with the AEGIS Weapon System installed that will enter service in FY 2018. The North Korean missile test is going to substantially increase demand for additional THAAD and Aegis system, and pose additional problems for China’s planned missile attack on the US and its allies. China Daily and Global Times (Beijing) and US Navy, Related Articles, KEYS: Generational Dynamics, North Korea, UN Security Council, China, Geng Shuang, South Korea, Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, THAAD, Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense system, BMD Permanent web link to this article Receive daily World View columns by | 0fake |
When the River Ran Red | When the River Ran Red Arthur Kemp, American Renaissance, September 2008
The year is 1838. Dodging a flurry of spears, the Boer commander, Andries Pretorius, rides forward to seize a Zulu warrior. In the midst of an epic battle between more than 15,000 warriors and just 468 Boers, Pretorius has decided to take a Zulu alive. He wants to send the captive back to his king, Dingaan, to convey surrender terms to the Zulu nation.
The warrior has no intention of being taken alive, and jabs viciously at Pretorius with his assegai. This is a Zulu spear, normally a long-shafted throwing weapon, but the warrior broke its shank earlier for close-quarter stabbing. Pretorius gives up on capturing the Zulu, and tries to shoot him.
With a single-shot, muzzle-loading musket, he has only one chance of a hit. There is no time to reload in close combat. To his horror, Pretorius sees the smoke-trailing ball whiz past the Zulu’s ear. At the same time, the Zulu lunges forward, causing Pretorius’s horse to stumble backwards, throwing the white commander to the ground.
Leaping to his feet, he meets the attacking Zulu, who knows he is now on equal terms with the white man, who can no longer use his magic shooting stick and carries no weapon comparable to the assegai. Pretorius is now fighting for his life. He just manages to sidestep the spear point, striking it away with the butt of his gun.
Spinning round, the Zulu raises his spear high above his head and thrusts down, as he has been trained to do in the Zulus’ disciplined army. It is a blow that will be fatal if it strikes home, but Pretorius sees it coming. He grabs the spear point with his left hand to ward it away from his chest. The sharp point cuts deeply into his palm, embedding itself at an angle that makes it impossible for the Zulu to pull it out. Pretorius seizes the Zulu by the throat with his free right hand and throws him to the ground in an attempt to strangle him.
The Zulu struggles, and with the help of two good hands is about to break free, when one of Pretorius’s men comes upon the scene. He pulls the assegai out of the commander’s hand, and plunges it into the Zulu’s side, ending the struggle.
Pretorius remounts and heads back to the Boer camp for treatment. He is not worried, as he knows by now that this greatest of all battles between Boers and Zulus has already been won. The main Zulu army has been broken in two, and the river that runs along one side of the Boer camp is stained red with Zulu blood. The place and the tributary known previously as the Ncome will be renamed Blood River. Pretorius knows that the Zulu defeat, which will include some 3,000 killed on the battlefield, is a fit revenge for the deception and murder committed by the Zulus 10 months earlier.
Prelude to War
The great clash between the Boer and Zulu nations was not, as leftist historians like to claim, the result of ruthless white colonialism suppressing an indigenous people. It came about because the Zulus rejected an extremely reasonable attempt at negotiation by the Boers.
The Boers, pioneers of Dutch, French, and German descent, were the people who opened up much of what was later to become South Africa. Their first antecedents had landed on the southernmost tip of Africa in 1652, only 45 years after the Virginia Company settled on Jamestown Island.
When they arrived in the area now known as Cape Town, whites came into contact only with Hottentots and Bushmen. As the number of Europeans increased, they expanded east and north, only meeting their first black tribe, the Xhosa, some 500 miles away, on South Africa’s east coast. The Xhosas were migrating south, fleeing the warlike Zulu to the north, who were engaged in imperialist expansion of their own.
For just under a century white settlement halted at this eastern frontier border formed by the coast and firm Xhosa settlement. It was not, however, a time of peace, as Xhosa were constantly raiding the Boers who lived on the border. This caused much harm and discontent among the farmers, who blamed the Dutch-ruled colonial government back in Cape Town for the lawlessness.
It only added to the border farmers’ grievances when the British took the Cape Colony from the Dutch in 1806 to prevent the colony from falling into French hands during the Napoleonic Wars. It was vital to control the merchant and naval refitting station on the way to the Far East. The new colonial masters not only started anglicizing the colony, when they abolished slavery they offered compensation that amounted to hardly a quarter of a slave’s value.
Exasperated by incessant Xhosa attacks and British attempts to suppress their language and culture, groups of frontier farmers, filled with a sense of manifest destiny not seen again until the opening of the American West, set forth to the north and the east in a movement known as the Great Trek. The trekkers (they became known as Voortrekkers, or pioneers, only after 1880) bypassed the Xhosa in search of new, unsettled territory, in which they could establish independent Boer nations. All told, it was only a small minority of no more than 12,000 Boers who made the trek to the future Natal, Orange Free State, and Transvaal regions. They traveled in several waves of covered, ox-drawn wagons much like the Conestogas in which Americans opened the West.
The Boer leader of the time, Piet Retief, had written the trekker “manifesto,” in which he spelled out the farmers’ long-held grievances against the British. By1836, the Boer wagons had crossed the great mountain range into Natal, in an act of audacity that few thought possible. The range, the highest in southern Africa, had been named the Drakensberg—the Dragon Mountains—because they were said to be impassable.
Retief had identified a large piece of uninhabited land to the north of the Zulu kingdom, which lay open to settlement. Retief knew that if he wanted the land for his people, he could take it unopposed. However, he wanted to live in peace with his Zulu neighbors, and before taking possession, he opened negotiations with the Zulu king, Dingaan. He wanted no misunderstanding between the two peoples.
He sent a letter to the Zulu king explaining why he wanted to speak to him, and first visited Dingaan’s capital—a large circle of reed and grass huts—on November 5, 1837. Retief left the main body of trekkers and went to the Zulu king’s capital, Umgungundhlovo (“the place of the elephant”), to negotiate a treaty that would allow Boers peacefully to settle land adjoining the Zulu kingdom. Dingaan said he would let the Boers live in Natal if they recovered cattle stolen by a Tlokwa chieftain. Retief and his men did so, and Dingaan agreed to give the land to the Boers.
Retief returned to Umgungundhlovo on February 3, 1838, to finalize the agreement. He arrived with 60 volunteers, including his own son and three children of other men—it was common for children to accompany their fathers on expeditions of this kind. The next day, Retief and Dingaan formally signed a treaty—the Zulu king made his mark by scratching an “X” on the document—giving possession of the land to the Boers. Delighted, the Boers sent scouts back to the main encampments to report the successful outcome and made ready to leave. As Retief and his party were about to saddle up, a messenger arrived from Dingaan inviting the Boer party to a special celebration to mark the signing. Retief was suspicious but did not want to offend Dingaan. As they had on previous visits, the Boers stacked their firearms neatly outside the reed walls and entered the royal enclosure unarmed.
As they ate and drank, a Zulu impi, or warrior unit, put on a dance for the guests. According to the account of a white missionary who was present, the dancing warriors drew ever closer to the Boers, till they were just in front of the seated whites. When the Zulu king leaped to his feet and shouted, “Kill the white wizards!” the impi fell upon the surprised Boers. Some of them drew their hunting knives and tried to fight off the attackers, but they were quickly overwhelmed.
The Zulu warriors bound the whites with reed ropes and dragged them to Hlomo Amabutho, the Hill of Execution, near the Zulu capital. There they clubbed the Boers to death, one by one, with Retief kept until last and forced to watch his son being murdered. After Retief’s heart was extracted and presented to Dingaan as proof that the Boer leader was dead, the bodies were left for the vultures, in accordance with Zulu custom.
Dingaan then gave orders for the full might of his army to attack the Boer camps. The settlers had received the message Retief had sent earlier and believed everything had gone well. They were therefore completely unprepared and badly undermanned. The 60 men in Retief’s party were all dead. Many other men had gone hunting, leaving only a light guard for the women and children. The Boers were so confident there would be peace that they had not even posted sentries. Just before dawn, barking dogs aroused the outlying wagons. Then, thousands of Zulu warriors attacked the several hundred trekkers — women, children, and old men — as they lay sleeping.
The Boer historian, Gustav Preller, who interviewed survivors, left a harrowing account of the aftermath: “All around dozens and dozens of bodies … babies who had had their heads smashed open against the wagon wheels, women, dishonored and in some Zulu custom, their breasts cut off … [I]n a wagon, blood filled to a height of several inches, the life blood of an entire family ebbed out where they lay … Jan Bezuidenhout, one of the few young men who had not gone ahead with the Retief party, grabbed his four-month-old baby daughter out of her crib and ran off through the undergrowth … [H]aving lost his pursuers a few miles away, Bezuidenhout checked for the first time on his daughter in his arms. She was dead; a single spear stroke had killed her.”
The slaughter became known as the Weenen, the Dutch word for weeping, and a town of that name still stands near the site. Of the 600 Boers camped in the area, Zulus killed some 300, including 185 children. The rest survived because grazing requirements for their animals meant that the Boer camps had to be widely dispersed. If Dingaan’s men had scouted more thoroughly, found all the encampments, and attacked them simultaneously, the slaughter would have been far greater.
Pretorius arrives
The Boers now faced their greatest challenge. Their camps were full of wounded men, orphaned children, and widows. The Zulus had stolen an estimated 25,000 head of cattle and sheep during the Weenen slaughter, and ammunition was running low. The Zulu armies might return at any time, and they were a formidable force, as the Boers discovered when they launched a raid to avenge the massacre. On April 6, 1838, 347 trekkers under a divided command of Piet Uys and Hendrik Potgieter rode into Zulu territory only to be defeated by some 7,000 warriors not far from Umgungundhlovo in what became known as the Battle of Italeni.
This new disaster forced the Boers to face reality: They had to either abandon their quest for independence and return to the Cape Colony, or find some means to fight their way through. The widows and orphans argued strongly for pushing on. They knew that if they fell back to the Cape they would have to live on charity, whereas if Dingaan could be defeated they could at least recover their livestock. Many Boers were also convinced that God favored them, and that setbacks were only a test of faith.
It was at this moment of indecision that a popular lawyer named Andries Pretorius answered the trekker call for reinforcements, and rode into camp with 60 men and a brass cannon. The Boers appointed him commander in chief on November 25, and he immediately began preparing a strike against the Zulu.
His means were few. A force of only about 468 Boers, including three Scotsmen, set out on November 27 seeking battle. For extra protection, the Boer column of 64 wagons traveled four abreast, instead of the usual single file. Each night, they formed a circular defensive formation, known as a laager.
Pretorius realized that even with two front-loading cannon, his force was too weak to defeat the Zulu army in an open field. He therefore decided to draw the enemy into an attack on the Boer encampment. Each day patrols and scouting parties rode ahead, sometimes led by Pretorius himself, to make sure no unexpected surprises were waiting over the horizon.
On December 9, 1838, the Boer party reached the Zandspruit tributary of the Waschbank River. It was here that the Boer chaplain, Sarel Cilliers, first pledged during his nightly sermon that if God helped them defeat the Zulus, they and their descendents would celebrate that day in honor of God, and that they would build a church in commemoration. The Boers repeated this oath, known in Afrikaner folklore as “the covenant,” every night until they met the enemy.
There appeared to be no movement from the Zulu side. On December 12, Pretorius decided to move camp to the Buffalo River, hoping to provoke the Zulus by moving farther into their territory. That day, he sent out two patrols, one under the command of his deputy, Commandant Hans De Lange, and another, under the Scotsman Edward Parker. This latter group saw action when they came upon a small group of Zulus. They killed the warriors and took the women prisoner.
Pretorius drew up a message for Dingaan on a white cloth, explaining that he was leading a commando to punish the Zulus. If, however, Dingaan was willing to cooperate, Pretorius wrote, he was still willing to make peace—a generous offer in light of the earlier betrayal. He freed the prisoners and told them to give the message to Dingaan. He received no answer.
On December 13, the Boers spotted Zulus and what appeared to be a large number of cattle near their camp. Piet Uys had been tricked by such a ploy at the Battle of Italeni. Zulu warriors, crouching behind toughened animal-skin shields, looked like cattle from a distance, and Uys dropped his guard. He was killed in a surprise attack by the “cattle.”
Pretorius did not make the same mistake, and he sent a 120-strong mounted unit to investigate the “cattle.” They turned out to be Zulus, and in the short fight that followed the Boers killed eight warriors but suffered no casualties. Pretorius now suspected that the Zulus were preparing for battle.
On December 15 he moved the Boer camp to a position alongside the Ncome River, itself a tributary of the Buffalo River. A scouting expedition that day confirmed the presence of two huge Zulu armies a short distance away.
Pretorius prepared for battle. His men drew the wagons into a D-shaped formation, one side overlooking a large hippopotamus path facing the Ncome River, another side facing a soil erosion ditch, and the third side facing the open plain. Pretorius chose the site to limit the directions from which the Zulus could attack.
The laager was large enough to contain all the horses and oxen. The defenders tied the wagons together with leather ropes, and closed off all openings between and below the wagons with a Pretorius innovation, so-called fighting gates, which were slatted wood fixtures through which defenders could fire. They left two small openings, sealed with removable fighting gates, so cavalry could leave the laager. Finally, they attached lanterns to the ends of large ox-whips planted upright in the ground. These dangled in front of the laager and were to serve as forward lighting during the dark hours when Zulu usually attacked. Zulus captured after the battle said they had believed the lights waving in the breeze above the Boer camp were spirits, and that fear of the spirits kept them from attacking that night.
Battle is joined
In Pretorius’s own account of the battle, he wrote that as the mist cleared on the morning of December 16, he saw that the Boer camp was completely encircled by tens of thousands of Zulu warriors, even where the terrain would have made an attack difficult. Estimates placed the number of Zulus at between 15,000 and 25,000, although no official count was possible. Whatever the figure, Pretorius wrote that it was a “terrible sight.”
The Boers had been ready and armed since two hours before daybreak. The two cannon were in position, and the fighting gates closed. The defenders expected to run out of ammunition for the cannon, and had stacked up suitably sized stones at strategic points along the perimeter to fire as a last resort. The Boers would fire stones that day.
The front lines of the Zulu force were still, squatting, only about 40 paces from the wagons, waiting for the signal to attack. Pretorius decided to strike first. At his signal, three bursts of fire from the Boer guns and two blasts from the cannon broke the silence. The Boers’ orders were to then hold their fire. As the billows of gunpowder smoke lifted, they saw that the surviving Zulus had fled some 500 paces from their former front line, leaving behind dozens of dying and dead comrades.
The Boers then heard the noise of the Zulus breaking their spear shafts to make them into short, stabbing weapons. A frontal assault was coming. A few minutes later, the Zulu force stormed the wagons, screaming wildly, shields held high, and assegais in readiness. Withering gunfire ripped through the Zulu ranks, and while some managed to reach the wagons, they were gunned down before they could cut through the wagon canvasses.
Another group of Zulus tried to attack from inside the erosion ditch by standing on each others’ shoulders and scrambling over the edge. Pretorius ordered Cilliers, the fighting churchman, to see off the attack. He led a group of men out of the relative safety of the wagon perimeter, and they proceeded to kill some 400 Zulus. One Boer, Philip Fourie, was wounded when an assegai struck him in the side.
The Boers then wheeled one of their cannon out of the laager, pointed it into the ditch, and fired a shot that literally blew apart the assaulting party. The survivors fled the ditch in disarray. This sparked a temporary retreat by the Zulu, and marked the end of the second unsuccessful attempt to break the Boer lines. The wounded Boer, Fourie, returned to the wagon circle for treatment.
As the Zulus waited for new orders, Pretorius ordered another burst of cannon fire into their ranks, provoking a spontaneous charge against the wagons. Although it was the longest single assault of the nine-hour battle, it was utterly defeated, as the Boers cut down wave after wave of attackers. Gun barrels got so hot men had to hold them with wet cloths for reloading.
As the third attack fell back, the Boers launched their first surprise counterattack, as the mobile fighting gates swung open and a cavalry unit charged the Zulu lines. Shooting from the saddle, the Boers tried to turn the Zulu lines to their left. Desperate Zulu resistance, which saw hundreds more of their number killed, stopped the encircling action, and the Boer horsemen rode back to the wagons. They regrouped and launched a second attempt, driving the Zulus further away. A third mounted charge finally broke through the Zulu lines. The Boer cavalry then turned and attacked the Zulus from the rear. Pinned between the cavalry and cannon fire from within the wagon circle, the main Zulu force facing the open plain scattered.
A reserve Zulu force tried to cross the Ncome River to attack the laager but so many warriors were gunned down that their blood stained the water red. Pretorius himself then led another cavalry charge from within the laager. Cut to pieces, with thousands dead, the Zulu army, which had courageously charged repeatedly against a better-armed enemy, finally broke ranks and fled.
Pretorius divided his cavalry into two units and sent them in pursuit. Mounted Boers killed hundreds of warriors during a three-hour chase. It was during this pursuit that Pretorius was wounded. Two other Boers, including Fourie, suffered nonfatal assegai wounds, but these were the only Boer casualties. An estimated 3,000 Zulus died on the battlefield, and many more died later from wounds.
The Aftermath
Early the next morning, Pretorius ordered the camp broken, and marched the commando straight to the Zulu king’s capital. He was confident the Zulus no longer posed any significant threat, but he hardly expected the sight that awaited him on December 20 at Umgungundhlovo. Dingaan had fled with his wives and cattle, leaving the circular camp of reed huts burning, as a symbol of the destruction of Zulu power.
On the outskirts of the capital the Boers found the skeletons of Retief and his men. “Their hands and feet were still bound fast with thongs of ox hide,” wrote Cilliers, “and in nearly all the corpses a spike as thick as an arm had been forced into the anus so that the point of the spike was in the chest.” Retief, who was identified by the remains of a satin vest he had worn, still had a leather bag draped over his shoulder bone. In it was the treaty, signed by Dingaan, giving the Boers the unoccupied land to the north. According to one of the Boers who saw it, the treaty was astonishingly well preserved—as if it had been “left in a closed box.” Pretorius’s men buried Retief and his party on Christmas Day 1838.
Dingaan fled north but was captured by a rival tribe, the Swazis. Earlier, he had persecuted the Swazis, and they murdered him in revenge. The new Zulu king, Mpande, was officially installed in 1840, and confirmed the contents of the treaty with the Boers, who established their first republic in southern Africa. Also in 1840, in fulfillment of their covenant, the Boers built a church to mark the Blood River victory.
The Battle of Blood River entered the Afrikaner psyche as a divinely-inspired victory, and December 16 became a public holiday in South Africa, celebrated each year with festivals, church services, and reenactments. The battle represented the victory of European civilization over the darkness of Africa, of Christianity over heathens. It helped justify white supremacy and the self-appointed right of Afrikaners to rule over, not apart from, the black tribes.
Yet the Battle of Blood River, in many ways, symbolized all that was wrong with the white settlement of southern Africa, and why that experiment failed. The Boers are to be praised for wanting to settle unoccupied land peacefully, and for seeking the friendship of neighboring peoples, but neither they nor their descendents understood that demography is the arbiter of nations. Those who form the majority population of a territory will rule that territory, no matter how powerful a ruling elite may be. They will determine its culture and society. A majority-European population will create a society that reflects European values and norms. A majority-African population will create a society that reflects African norms.
The Boers never understood this. Even at the Battle of Blood River they had at least 60 black servants and an indeterminate number of mixed-race servants, who helped load weapons. Parker, one of the Scotsman, had more than 100 black servants.
To the present day, the overwhelming majority of Afrikaners have black servants who work on farms, in factories, and in homes. Afrikaners failed to understand that by giving the native population the benefits of European civilization, blacks would grow in numbers and overwhelm their society. The Cape Colony and the original Boer republics, which were largely uninhabited by natives when they were settled by Europeans, are today home to tens of millions of Africans.
The Church of the Vow, built by the Boers in 1840, still stands in the town of Pietermaritzburg, named after Piet Retief. But Pietermaritzburg, supposedly the symbol of the Boer victory over the Zulus, is today part of a municipality called Umgungundhlovo, named after Dingaan’s capital. It is also the capital of the South African province of Kwa-Zulu Natal, and its population is more than 95 percent black.
The Church of the Vow stands alone, graffiti-scarred and abandoned, in a dirty downtown slum. Its decay illustrates the fatal error made by the victors of the Battle of Blood River, that of ignoring the demographics of race. If whites had taken possession of those unoccupied lands and kept them for themselves alone the history of South Africa would have been entirely different.
If the Boers had inhabited and worked their own land rather than rely on black labor, the states they created might still be strong and independent today. Their decision to use non-white labor was a critical error that undid all of the sacrifices of the early pioneers.
The only way to maintain a civilization is for the majority to occupy its own land with its own people, and to do its own manual labor. This law governs the rise and fall of civilizations, and the victors of Blood River ignored it, to their cost. | 1real |
Ann Coulter: Every Time I Try to Be Mad at Trump, the Media Pull Me Back | Every time I try to be mad at Trump, the media reel me back in by launching some ridiculous, unprovoked attack. This time, it’s the fake news story about Trump “leaking” classified information to the Russkies. [The president can’t “leak” classified information: It’s his to declassify. The big secret Trump allegedly revealed is that Muslims might try to blow up a plane with laptops. I already knew that. I read it in The New York Times. The New York Times, March 22, 2017: Devices Banned on Some Planes Over ISIS Fears, Intelligence showing that the Islamic State is developing a bomb hidden in portable electronics spurred the United States and Britain on Tuesday to bar passengers from airports in a total of 10 countries from carrying laptop computers … two senior American counterterrorism officials said. … This totally secret, Deep information has been widely published in thousands of news outlets throughout the civilized world. There was yet another round of stories last week with the update that the U. S. is considering a laptop ban on flights from Europe as well. Hey, you know what might make more sense than banning laptops? How about banning Muslims? Bear with me here, I’m still working out the details, but I’m almost certain a federal judge in Hawaii can’t block a president’s temporary ban on Muslim immigration just because he’s testy with Trump over some campaign statements. As Northwestern law professor Eugene Kontorovich explained in The Washington Post, courts have never examined a politician’s campaign statements for improper motive, because 1) campaigns are not part of the deliberative process and 2) to start doing so would open the door to “examinations of the entire lives of political officials whose motives may be relevant to legal questions. ” Nonetheless, Kontorovich says, that is the legal argument being advanced against Trump’s travel ban: “Trump is a bigot, and thus his winning presidential campaign in fact impeaches him from exercising key constitutional and statutory powers, such as administering the immigration laws. ” To preserve their judicial coup, this Monday, the 9th Circuit sent out the geriatric ward to hear an appeal of the Hawaii judge’s absurd ruling. At their ages, there’s a good chance the judges will be dead by the time the Supreme Court overturns them. Arguing against Trump’s exercise of his constitutional and statutory powers was American, Neal Katyal. (There are plenty of . You couldn’t get one of them to argue that we should end our country through mass immigration?) At oral argument before the three wheezing gargoyles, Katyal announced that, before enforcing federal immigration laws passed by generations of Democrats and Republicans working together in Congress, the president of the United States is required to profess: “Islam is peace. ” There’s a new legal principle! Asked by one of the if Trump is the only president who would be prohibited from issuing this precise travel ban because of his statements about Muslims, the smarmy, preening, pretentious Katyal answered: “I think the most important point is, if you don’t say all these things, you never wind up with an executive order like this. ” As lawyers say: Nonresponsive! But as long as we’re operating under these new rules for determining a U. S. president’s rights and responsibilities, how about looking at everything Trump has said about Muslims? For example, may the courts consider this quote from September 2015? Trump: “I love the Muslims. I think they are great people. … Would I consider putting a in my Cabinet? Oh, absolutely. No problem with that. ” Lawyers like Katyal aren’t telling the courts what Trump said they’re telling courts their own crazy interpretations of what Trump said. No liberal is capable of accurately reporting Trump’s position because the left never understood his position in the first place. As Peter Thiel said, the media take Trump literally, but not seriously, while the people take him seriously, but not literally. After the San Bernardino terrorist attacks in December 2015, Trump made the perfectly reasonable suggestion that we curtail our breakneck importation of Muslims, some of whom periodically erupt in murderous violence. The media concluded: TRUMP HATES MUSLIMS! Nothing Trump or anyone else said could persuade them otherwise. Here’s what Trump actually said: What’s happened is, we’re out of control. We have no idea who’s coming into our country. We have no idea if they love us or if they hate us. … I have friends that are Muslims. They are great people. But they know we have a problem. They know we have a real problem. ‘Cause something is going on. And we can’t put up with it, folks. … “Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what the hell is going on. … Where the hatred comes from and why — we’ll have to determine, we’re going to have to figure it out. We have to figure it out. We can’t live like this. It’s going to get worse and worse. You’re going to have more World Trade Centers. … ” Throughout the campaign, Trump supporters tried in vain to explain the “Muslim ban” to a hostile media dead set on interpreting everything out of Trump’s mouth in the ugliest possible way. For example, our general policy on Muslim immigration would be “No, thanks!” but there would be exceptions. So Charles Krauthammer can stop worrying about King Abdullah of Jordan. In March, Trump supporter Andy Dean told a dense CNN anchor: He’s talking about the culture of Islam in the Middle East. … We love Muslims in America and they love us. Why? We have a great culture that respects women’s rights. … The thing about Muslims in the Middle East is they don’t respect women’s rights. If a woman wants to get a divorce in the Middle East, that woman could be killed. If you want to leave the religion of Islam in the Middle East, you can be killed. It’s very real. To the same blockhead anchor, Trump supporter Kayleigh McEnany had to fill in an edited quote the network had just shown of Trump: It’s important to know what happened 15 seconds later. Anderson Cooper said to him, “Are you speaking of radical Islam or are you speaking of Islam?” He said radical sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference, though. So he did say radical Islam. He said it repeatedly during his campaign. He said, “I have Muslim friends. I love the Muslim people. ” … One of Trump’s vast number of supporters told HLN’s Drew Pinksy: I love what (Trump) is doing with the Muslims getting out of the country, because if they really knew what that was about — if they knew that that was about freedom. It was about freedom versus enslavement. He’s right. It’s not about religion. It’s not about nationality. It’s about hitting the pause button on bringing in radical Islam’s dysfunctional, misogynist, violent, culture. The voters understood Trump. (At least some of us did — barely enough of us to elect him president!) Liberals didn’t. But now the courts are blocking Trump’s exercise of presidential powers based on the left’s own idiotic misinterpretations of what he said. | 0fake |
Trump again urges Senate to loosen rules, push healthcare and tax reforms | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump, in a tweet on Tuesday, reiterated his call for the U.S. Senate to loosen its rules to make it easier to pass legislation by simple majority, and urged lawmakers to pass healthcare and tax overhauls. “The U.S. Senate should switch to 51 votes, immediately, and get Healthcare and TAX CUTS approved, fast and easy. Dems (Democrats) would do it, no doubt!” Trump wrote in a post on Twitter. Earlier this month, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell rejected the idea. | 0fake |
OH BOY! TARGET CUSTOMERS RESPOND TO THE NEW GENDER NEUTRAL TOY LABELING | Oh boy! Target customers are hot under the collar on this pc move to give toys gender neutrality. Angry customers are ditching Target and have been very vocal about their displeasure on social media: @thehill so now being PC is more important than helping customers. No more Target shopping for me Target is bringing Americans one step closer to a gender-neutral society. The department store chain announced what it called something exciting Friday. After some customers complained about certain toys being designated as appropriate for girls, it is doing away with signs denoting gender classifications. Over the past year, guests have raised important questions about a handful of signs in our stores that offer product suggestions based on gender, according to Target s online publication, A Bullseye View. Toys no longer will be labeled according to sex and displayed on either pink or blue shelving. Gender-neutral signage also will appear in the children s bedding section. The only place gender labels will remain is in the children s clothing department.The gender-labeling brouhaha began last June when Target customer and Ohio mother Abi Bechtel snapped a photo of Target signage indicating Building Sets and Girls Building Sets and tweeted it to the chain along with a stern message. It stood out to me as a good example of the way our culture tends to view boys and men as the default, normal option, and girls and women as the specialized option, Bechtel told CNN.Maybe that particular sign was a bit ridiculous, but it certainly didn t require eliminating all gender classifications to correct it.Oddly, Target said that we use signs and displays specially designed to help guests get through the store efficiently, and signs that sort by brand, age or gender help them get ideas and find things faster. So, the answer is to remove signs that help customers get through the store efficiently ?Read more: BIZ PAC REVIEW | 1real |
At Chatsworth House, a Tale of Five Centuries - The New York Times | LONDON — If walls could talk, Chatsworth House, with its sublime Painted Hall, Sculpture Gallery and endless parade of gilded staterooms, would have some tales to tell. Considered one of the great treasure houses of England, set amid the rolling green hills of the Derbyshire Dales, the estate has played host over the last 500 years to some of Britain’s most captivating and infamous women, including: Bess of Hardwick Mary, Queen of Scots Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire Kathleen Kennedy, known as Kick (sister to John F. Kennedy) and Deborah Mitford, known as Debo. Their stories, and much more, will be revealed as part of an exhibition, “House Style: Five Centuries of Fashion at Chatsworth,” which opens to the public on Saturday. Curated by Hamish Bowles, international editor at large at American Vogue, and with creative direction and design by Patrick Kinmonth and Antonio Monfreda, the exhibition will delve into Chatsworth’s rich sartorial heritage, using the lives of its inhabitants and their glamorous guests as mannequins on which to hang stories of the wider history of the house. “To be let loose in the wardrobe rooms, the gold vaults, the muniment room and the closets, cupboards and attics of Chatsworth — a place I came to as a little boy with a ticket in my hand and wonder in my eyes — has been a truly joyous experience,” Mr. Bowles said recently in a telephone call from the stately home. Lady Laura Burlington, the of the current Duke and Duchess of Devonshire, conceived of the exhibition while hunting for a christening robe. She found umpteen perfectly preserved options complete with capes, underdresses and bonnets, which led her to wonder what else might lie undiscovered. Six years later, Mr. Bowles has seen his curatorial vision become a reality. The exhibition is organized by theme, including Coronation Dress Bess of Hardwick and the Tudor Influence the Georgiana Effect and Country Living and Entertaining at Chatsworth, though a standout moment for him may be a reimagining of the Devonshire House Ball, situated in the grandest staterooms in the house. Held in 1897 to celebrate Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee, the ball, with 400 guests dressed as allegorical figures (and, crucially, photographed) was the grandest fancy dress ball of the century. Assistant curators for the exhibition spent months tracking down a handful of the original costumes, bringing them together for the first time since the night of the party. Mr. Bowles gasped as he described a Zenobia, Queen of Palmyra, gown made by the couturier Worth for Louise, the formidable wife of the eighth duke, and arguably the jewel in the display’s crown. “So often,” Mr. Bowles said, “clothing is the most vivid entry point into getting a sense of how people of the past lived and existed in an environment or even a single moment in time. To create this exhibit on the landscape of Chatsworth, where so many legendary lives and moments have unfolded, has just been extraordinary. ” Lady Burlington, a former model and fashion buyer, said that her first meeting with Mr. Bowles was less than auspicious. “We met many years ago on an fashion shoot for Harper’s and Queen,” Lady Burlington said, “where Hamish was the stylist, I was the model, and thanks to an overly snug Vivienne Westwood corset, I promptly fainted. ” Mr. Bowles helped revive her, she added, by giving her a cup of tea and a biscuit. Luckily, their next meeting proved more fruitful. Beyond the historical gems they unearthed, the exhibition is notable for its wealth of contemporary contributions, with garments from modern fashion labels like Alexander McQueen, Erdem, Maison Margiela, Vetements, Vivienne Westwood and Gucci, the exhibition’s principal sponsor. Last year, Gucci shot its 2017 cruise collection at Chatsworth, and the house clearly made its mark on the creative director Alessandro Michele, who said it was “unlike anywhere else in the world, full of charm and rituals. ” “You can see history everywhere,” Mr. Michele said, “yet everything is alive. ” The most recent Gucci runway collection was packed with what Lady Burlington termed “Chatsworth detail,” including fabrics, colors and bejeweled bugs and bees crawling over suiting and shirts. Given the calligraphy offerings on the Milan runway last month, Mr. Michele may also have been taken with the 11th duke’s trove of novelty slogan pullovers, printed with phrases like “Get Up and Do Something,” “Far Better Not” “All Passion Spent” and “Never Marry a Mitford. ” The duke’s wife, Debo Mitford (one of six Mitford sisters who dominated British high society in the 1930s) died in 2014, but she is represented in the exhibition. An ice pink satin “Carmel” gown she commissioned from Dior from its spring 1953 collection is a centerpiece of the show, while other highlights include her collection of bug and butterfly brooches and a pair of her favorite slippers, emblazoned with the image of Elvis Presley. Lady Burlington added wistfully that there might have been even more from the dowager duchess in the exhibition had she not willingly given away so many treasures. “Debo kept some things for sentimental reasons but generally thought nothing of passing clothes on,” she said. “As a result, her garments could turn up in the most unlikely of places. ” Lady Burlington recounted a story told by Charlotte Mosley about a time when the author had attended the local nativity performance alongside the duchess. The two had been sitting there for some time before the dowager suddenly sat upright in her chair, her eyes lit up. “Oh my goodness, I can’t believe it,” Lady Burlington said, repeating the account of the duchess’ reaction. “The Angel Gabriel is in my Givenchy!” | 0fake |
California Today: Considering a Single-Payer Insurance System - The New York Times | Good morning. (Want to get California Today by email? Here’s the .) Today’s introduction comes to us from Jennifer Medina, a national correspondent based in Los Angeles. “We’re going to be living with Obamacare for the foreseeable future,” Paul Ryan, the Republican speaker of the House announced minutes after the legislation to repeal the law collapsed in Congress last week. Now some political leaders in California want to go even further. Last month State Senators Ricardo Lara and Toni Atkins introduced legislation to replace private health insurance with a publicly funded health care system run by the state government known as a system. The bill does not include any details of how the state would pay for the multibillion program, instead simply declaring “it is the intent of the Legislature to enact legislation that would establish a comprehensive universal health care coverage program and a health care cost control system for the benefit of all residents of the state. ” Gov. Jerry Brown, who is both a fiscal hawk and an ardent supporter of Affordable Care Act, has already spoken about his skepticism of a program, saying it would be prohibitively expensive. But at least one candidate running for governor next year plans to make universal health care a centerpiece of the campaign. Earlier this month Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom said he was working with health care experts to craft a plan for a system. While he was mayor, the city approved a plan to offer universal health care for all of its residents. Mr. Lara said the Republican defeat in Congress could pave the way for a system. “It’s easier to expand health care than make up lost ground as we would have had to do,” he said. “We really have the chance to make universal health care a reality now. ” The proposal differs from existing programs in one big way: It would include all residents, regardless of their immigration status. Obamacare explicitly excluded undocumented immigrants from benefits of the program, though children in California can receive basic coverage even if they are undocumented. Advocates of a program argue that it would bring down costs and encourage preventive care. But opponents say there would be less choice and efficiency in medical care, and that taxes would rise significantly for all residents. This is not the first time state leaders have pressed for a bill. Similar legislation was passed in 2006 and 2008, though it did not include a way to pay from the system. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed the bill. Do you think California should move to a system? Email us your thoughts at catoday@nytimes. com. (Please note: We regularly highlight articles on news sites that have limited access for nonsubscribers.) • Representatives Adam B. Schiff and Nancy Pelosi of California suggested that Representative Devin Nunes should recuse himself from an investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. [The New York Times] • Mr. Nunes and Mr. Schiff could not be more different. [Opinion|Los Angeles Times] • California’s attorney general, Xavier Becerra, has forcefully criticized Mr. Trump. But in office, he has taken a more measured approach. [The Sacramento Bee] • Leaders across Southern California said they would continue to protect people who are in the country illegally despite a warning from Attorney General Jeff Sessions. [Los Angeles Times] • New research shows that fault zones formerly thought to be separate make up one continuous system running through San Diego, Orange and Los Angeles counties, making a bigger earthquake more likely. [The New York Times] • The Raiders are leaving Oakland — again. The team’s move to Las Vegas was approved by the N. F. L. [The New York Times] • East Bay officials are exploring options to sue the Raiders and possibly the N. F. L. after the decision. [San Francisco Chronicle] • The N. F. L. makes two demands of its owners: Build stadiums with as many public dollars as you can find and never, ever feel shame. [Michael Powell | The New York Times] • A fire on the third floor of a residential building in Oakland killed at least three people and displaced more than 100. [SFGate] • Los Angeles County officials are considering imposing tolls on more car pool lanes in an effort to speed up traffic on the region’s freeways. [Los Angeles Times] • Bill Croyle, the state’s top water manager, said Monday that the Oroville Reservoir will have a new spillway in place to prevent potentially dangerous outflows of water by Nov. 1. [SFGate] • Uber resumed testing its cars in San Francisco Monday after a crash in Arizona briefly halted the program. [The Mercury News] • A Los Angeles man caught a carp in MacArthur Park Lake. [LAist] The National Park Service purchased Santa Rosa Island in 1986 from the Vail Vickers ranch. In 1998, cattle ranching on the island ended for good. But some vestiges of the island’s ranching past still remain. Alana Ayasse, a graduate student studying geography at Barbara, took the above picture on the island in September, while volunteering for a week with Channel Islands Restoration, a nonprofit that helps tend to the health of plants and animals in the park. She came across the horses while walking back to a field station one evening. “You can just see them wandering up there,” Ms. Ayasse said in a phone interview Monday. “They’re supercool. ” Ken Owen, the executive director of Channel Islands Restoration, said the horses were kept to a portion of the island where they would not harm any rare plants. “They’re literally a cultural artifact,” he said. “And there’s really no reason to remove them. ” Want to submit a photo for possible publication? You can do it here. California Today goes live at 6 a. m. Pacific time weekdays. Tell us what you want to see: CAtoday@nytimes. com. California Today is edited by Julie Bloom, who grew up in Los Angeles and graduated from U. C. Berkeley. | 0fake |
4 Examples That Show The Globalists Are Losing Ground | The media is beginning to demonize the manosphere and alt right. Twitter has suspended multiple accounts, such as Milo Yiannopoulos, Ricky Vaughn, and Matt Forney. The Guardian wrote a hit piece against the red pill . The media has called alt-right groups “xenophobic, racist, and misogynist,” despite not pointing to a single piece of evidence.
As anti-Trump rallies continue to rage across the nation, in New York City, Philadelphia, and Michigan, the media completely ignores all of the assaults occurring on Trump voters:
Despite the elites’ attempts to destroy us, we are, in fact, winning this battle. The reasons why are simple:
Truth is always more powerful than falsehood We are too numerous to be effectively silenced We don’t congregate on one single platform; we’re a collection of individuals based around an ideology We’re high energy, decisive, assertive, and confident men Below, I would like to offer the supporters of our causes some signs of hope. Victory is near, and Trump is going to lead the way.
1. George Soros Being Sued For $550 Million
According to Breitbart , along with dozens of other alternative news sites, Dallas Police Department Sergeant Demetrick Pennie, President of the Dallas Fallen Officer Foundation, is suing a multitude of individuals for inciting a race war:
George Soros Hillary Clinton Jesse Jackson Barrack Obama The New Black Panthers …and more Some individuals might claim that there’s no way someone can take on this collection of massively powerful and wealthy elites in a single lawsuit, and they may be right. However whether or not this lawsuit is successful, is completely irrelevant.
What matters far more, is that the word is starting to get out there. The President of the Dallas Fallen Officer Foundation, an extremely reputable organization, is taking steps to file a massive lawsuit against these individuals. This will, at the very least, do several things:
Potentially serve a massive blow to the globalists Show the elites that we will not back down Generate huge amounts of public awareness Show the average gun rights promoting, masculine, traditional American that they have our support. And best of all? The lawsuit was filed in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas, which means that the outcome will generally be good either way.
First of all, there’s a very high likelihood of them winning due to the case being handled in Texas, a highly conservative state. Second, in the event that the case doesn’t win, it will likely be pursued all the way to the Supreme Court. If this occurs, expect truly amazing things to happen. The reason why? The President of the United States is responsible for appointing Supreme Court judges—and guess who’s going to be President in two months?
2. The GrubHub Crash
After Matt Maloney, CEO of the online food delivery service GrubHub, proclaimed in an email that if you agree with Trump’s politics you should resign, their stock dropped by nearly 10% in just a few days.
Since this time, in addition to his company’s stock tanking, he has received ample backlash on sites of all manner: from Twitter to Facebook to Reddit to independent blogs to major alt-right news centers.
This is what my fellow ROK contributors and manosphere bloggers were talking about when they mentioned the “tangible impact” of Trump voters. Hillary’s supporters lack the characteristics necessary to make change:
A burning passion and sense of purpose Moral fortitude and a sense of justice Self-confidence, and the courage to stand up for your rights A fucking spine This is why we will win, period. The anti-Trump crowd is based around having a massive entitlement complex, a victim complex, not thinking for yourself, and being a blind social sheep. Do people like this ever have ANY political or financial power in the world?
Of course not! Who do you think all of the hard working businessmen are? All of the entrepreneurs? All of the people investing in the stock market in order to take control of their financial future? Hard working, intelligent men, who don’t make excuses, obviously. And do you know what? These are the types of men that voted for Donald Trump.
Why do you think the Dow Jones Industrial Average is at an all time high? Because Trump’s win restored faith in America.
3. Rise of the New Media
The mainstream media has repeatedly shown to be completely incompetent in regards to actually reporting on the issues; they are nothing more than a puppet show meant to distract, entertain, and brainwash the American public.
They have consistently lied about candidates, manipulated the evidence, falsified facts, skewed statistics and polls, and defamed multiple individuals for a mere political opinion; this will happen no longer.
With the rise of the new media, more and more men have begun establishing outlets across all platforms: Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Periscope, the list goes on and on.
I firmly believe that the next eight years will be looked back on by historians as one of the most important times in all of humanity’s time on this earth.
America has brought the world stability; we have stood as a symbol and an ideal for other countries to follow. We are a monolith of free speech, bravery, and economic prosperity—and the elites have tried to destroy all of this to satisfy their greedy little egos.
The men of America will not have this. Over the past 8 years (*Cough* Obama’s Presidency *Cough*) we have seen an exponential increase in not only the quantity of alternative news outlets, but also the quality.
Sites that were merely blogs a few years ago have evolved into full-blown news syndicates with live reporting, on-site video footage, and actual news anchors. This is literally the people fighting back; we want freedom of speech, and we will have it.
While the mainstream media draws its final breath, they’re proclaiming that there’s this “new, radical white-nationalist group called the alt-right,” in an attempt to make us look like evil Fascists. In fact, I just had somebody threaten to kill me on Twitter , but was he banned? Of course not.
This repeated favoring of violent, mentally ill leftists makes it very clear what the MSM’s agenda is—total control and a complete suppression of our freedoms of speech. Sorry, but the alternative media isn’t going to let this happen.
4. Massive Boycotts of Anti-Trump Companies
The left’s hypocrisy never ceases to amaze me. Somehow they can completely legally destroy an independent, family owned business for simply refusing to bake a gay couple a cake, but when Trump supporters simply boycott a multi-billion dollar conglomerate, we’re the ones that are hateful?
In response to several CEO’s statements regarding Trump’s “racism,” and “hate,” the men and women who voted for Donald Trump decided to simply boycott them. Despite this completely legal and anti-violent response, the left is up in arms.
Here is a list of companies whose CEO’s have been caught attacking Donald Trump and his pro-American policies:
PepsiCo (They own Pepsi, Lays, Mountain Dew, Starbucks, and More) Nabisco (Their brands include Oreo, Chips Ahoy!, Ritz, and More) Netflix Macy’s Ben & Jerry’s Each and every single one of these companies has either spoken out against Trump directly, has refused to do business with Trump, or has moved factory production outside of the US (such as Nabisco, which has started moving production to Mexico). Some companies, such as Ben & Jerry’s, have even openly supported the terrorist movement Black Lives Matter .
Again, what do these actions signify in Trump supporters? Power. Assertiveness. Courage. A willingness to take action. This is why Donald Trump won—his supporters are grown ups, not little babies who want more safe spaces and anti-free speech zones.
When Donald Trump’s voters get oppressed by the biased, controlled media, or by elite globalists, they don’t whine or cry about it, they just do something. They protest and stop supporting companies that are shipping our jobs away. They speak out in a logical, rational way against the anger and hatred that the left has towards white men.
They take their lives into their own hands rather than relying on a stupid system that caters to cry babies and whiners. They take their health into their own hands, they take their finances into their own hands, and they take their relationships into their own hands.
They don’t wait around for someone else to do it for them—they get it done themselves. This is why Trump got into office, and this is why we’re going to make America great again.
Read More: 5 Ways To Start Fighting Back Against The Onslaught Of Liberalism
| 1real |
Factbox: Key issues in the NAFTA renegotiations | (Reuters) - Negotiators from Canada, Mexico and the United States are meeting for a second round of talks to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement, amid threats by U.S. President Donald Trump to pull out of the deal. NAFTA, first implemented in 1994, eliminates most tariffs on trade between the United States, Canada and Mexico. Critics say it has drawn jobs from the U.S. and Canada to Mexico, where workers are badly paid. Supporters say it has created U.S. jobs, and the loss of manufacturing from the United States has more to do with China than Mexico. Key issues facing negotiators include: NAFTA says in order for a good to be traded duty-free within the three countries, it must contain a certain percentage of North American content, which differs for various products. The rule of origin is most contentious in the auto industry; cars must contain at least 62.5 percent American, Canadian or Mexican content. The United States wants to increase the content threshold for NAFTA goods in a bid to return manufacturing jobs to the United States, and the auto industry has conceded that the rules should be updated to account for auto components that did not exist when the original deal was signed. Canada has said it is prepared to discuss some strengthening of rule of origin in the auto sector, but any change must apply equally to all three countries. Mexico is willing to look at strengthening rules, but warns that going too far will make the region less competitive. The United States has sought to ditch the so-called Chapter 19 tool, under which binational panels hear complaints about illegal subsidies and dumping and then issue binding decisions. The United States has frequently lost such cases since NAFTA came into effect in 1994, and the mechanism has hindered it from pursing anti-dumping and anti-subsidy cases against Canadian and Mexican companies. Washington also argues that Chapter 19 infringes on the sovereignty of its domestic laws. Canada has said Chapter 19 can be updated, but said a dispute settlement mechanism is its red line and must be part of any updated NAFTA. Mexico also says dispute settlement mechanisms are a vital part of the deal to give investors security. U.S. negotiators are seeking to allow U.S. seasonal produce growers to file anti-dumping cases against Mexico. Seasonal fruit and vegetable growers in the southeastern United States have come under increasing pressure from year-round Mexican imports under NAFTA and are seeking the ability to pursue anti-subsidy and anti-dumping cases or seek temporary import quotas. But U.S. retailers and food industry groups argue that American producers could be left open to retaliatory measures if more complaints were to be filed, for instance, against avocados, tomatoes and other produce imported from Mexico. Quotas are a feature of NAFTA in several agricultural commodities including dairy and sugar, but Washington is seeking to eliminate non-tariff barriers to U.S. agricultural exports. Most notably, U.S. President Donald Trump has called Canada s restrictions on dairy imports a disgrace. Although dairy was excluded from the original 1994 deal, the United States is seeking to eliminate non-tariff barriers to its agricultural exports. The United States is seeking a provision to deter currency manipulation. While Washington wants a mechanism to ensure the NAFTA countries avoid tinkering with exchange rates to gain a competitive advantage, neither Canada nor Mexico is on the U.S. Treasury s currency manipulation watch list. Critics say the U.S. demand is an attempt to get currency manipulation into a global trade agreement to establish a precedent with other trading partners, including China. The United States is pushing for governments in Canada and Mexico to open up their tender processes to U.S.-made products but at the same time is defending existing Buy American procurement laws. The Buy American provisions have blocked the use of Canadian steel to build U.S. bridges, and Canada is pushing for a freer market for government procurement. Mexico says it expects government procurement, already included in NAFTA, to be part of the renegotiation. INVESTOR-STATE DISPUTE SETTLEMENT The United States has proposed minor tweaking of the NAFTA Chapter 11 provisions, designed to ensure that firms that invest abroad receive fair and equitable treatment by foreign governments. As with Chapter 19, opponents of the provisions argue they infringe on sovereignty which benefits multinational corporations. Canada wants to update the mechanism to allow governments to regulate in the interest of the environment or labor, as in the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement that Canada recently negotiated with the European Union. | 0fake |
Hillary Clinton Returns to the Campaign Trail, Vowing New Approach - The New York Times | GREENSBORO, N. C. — A rested Hillary Clinton returned to the campaign trail here on Thursday after three days of recovering at home from pneumonia, and vowed a different approach on the final stretch of the campaign, one more focused on her own positive vision for the country, rather than eviscerating her rival. “I want to close my campaign focused on opportunities for kids and fairness for families,” Mrs. Clinton said after her first rally of her renewed campaign. “I want to give Americans something to vote for, not just against. ” The shift in tone felt striking after Mrs. Clinton had spent months tearing down her Republican opponent, Donald J. Trump. But with less than eight weeks until Election Day and tightening polls showing a majority of voters dislike and distrust her, aides said it was imperative that Mrs. Clinton deliver a more uplifting message. “From now until Nov. 8, everywhere I go I’m going to talk about my ideas for our country,” Mrs. Clinton said. Next week, Mrs. Clinton plans speeches to discuss how she would help young people and improve the economy, weaving in her own background as an advocate for children and as a first lady focused on women and families. That focus was central in her address here at the University of North Carolina, where she took the stage to James Brown’s “I Got You (I Feel Good),” seeming rested and revived, eager to tell the audience that her rare couple of days of downtime allowed her to “reconnect with what this whole campaign is about. ” “I’m running for all mothers and fathers trying to stay healthy so they can be there for their kids, but perhaps most of all, I’m running for those kids,” she said. “Standing up for children has been the work of my life, as a lawyer for the Children’s Defense Fund, as first lady of Arkansas, in the White House. ” With just 54 days until the election, “sitting at home was pretty much the last place I wanted to be,” she said. But she called the time off “a gift. ” Her return to the campaign trail comes as a series of polls suggest a closer race. Mrs. Clinton has faced a more disciplined Mr. Trump and scrutiny over her failure to initially disclose her pneumonia to all but a few close aides. A New York News poll released on Thursday found her virtually tied with Mr. Trump among likely voters. Asked about the narrowing gap with Mr. Trump on Thursday, Mrs. Clinton said, “I’ve always said this is going to be a tight race. ” On her campaign plane earlier Thursday, a Mrs. Clinton said she felt fully recovered. “I am doing great,” she said before takeoff in White Plains, N. Y. as she made her way down the aisle. Mrs. Clinton flashed a wide smile at journalists studying her for signs of fatigue or illness and said she was looking forward to getting back into action. And at her rally later, she reflected on her time recuperating. “I talked with some old friends,” she said. “I spent time with our very sweet dogs. The campaign trail doesn’t really encourage reflection, and it’s important to sit with your thoughts every now and then. ” “People like me, we’re lucky,” she added. “When I’m under the weather, I can afford to take a few days off. Millions of Americans can’t. ” Mrs. Clinton offered a rare public glimpse at her humor, poking fun at herself for her plans that span “38 different policy areas. ” She said, “Like a lot of women, I have a tendency to overprepare. ” Mrs. Clinton did not entirely avoid criticizing Mr. Trump, telling reporters after the event, “We don’t need someone who rushes out a plan just weeks before an election after decades of ignoring or putting down working moms. ” It was a reference to the child care proposals that Mr. Trump and his daughter Ivanka unveiled this week. The Clinton campaign’s efforts to put forth a kinder, gentler candidate began last week with a speech that Mrs. Clinton delivered in Kansas City, Mo. on her Methodist faith. But the change in tactics hit an unexpected snag on Sunday when Mrs. Clinton abruptly left a ceremony to commemorate the 15th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Amid intense scrutiny over Mrs. Clinton’s lack of transparency over her initial diagnosis, her physician, Dr. Lisa R. Bardack, later disclosed that Mrs. Clinton had been told she had pneumonia last Friday and that she had been overheated and dehydrated on Sunday. Rather than making her case to the American people, Mrs. Clinton found herself recovering at home as her campaign confronted a series of distractions and dueling doctors’ notes from her and Mr. Trump. And she had to apologize on Saturday after a backlash over remarks she made at a Friday night in Manhattan in which she said that half of Mr. Trump’s supporters fell into a “basket of deplorables” — bigots, essentially, of one sort or the other. On Thursday, Mrs. Clinton, when pressed about her handling of her diagnosis, appeared eager to put the rough patch behind her. “I didn’t want to stop,” she told reporters. “I didn’t want to quit campaigning. I certainly didn’t want to miss the memorial. ” “It didn’t work out,” she continued. “So I got the antibiotics up and going, got the rest I needed and we’re going on from there. ” | 0fake |
null | I like Trey Gowdy's prosecution of Hillary but I don't know how egalitarian he is. He supported Marco Rubio and is a religious conservative but is he Republican-Lite on economics? | 1real |
Thirty-one bodies recovered after migrant boat sinks off Libya | TRIPOLI (Reuters) - At least 31 migrants died after their boat sank off Libya s western coast on Saturday and some 200 others were picked up by the coastguard to be brought back to port in Tripoli, officials said. The migrants were on two boats off the coast near Garabulli, east of Tripoli, one of which had already sunk when the coastguard arrived at the scene, said Abu Ajala Amer Abdelbari, a coast guard commander. The boat had sunk and they were spread out in the sea, they were trying to swim towards the coast, he said. There were about 60 people who we were able to save because they were clinging to the (remains of the) boat. Another 140 migrants were picked up from the second boat, he said. The dead, including a number of children, were brought back to Tripoli naval base where they were unloaded in white plastic body bags. Libya is the main departure point for mostly African migrants trying to cross to Europe. Smugglers usually pack them into flimsy inflatable boats that often break down or sink. Most migrants are picked up by international vessels and taken to Italy, where more than 115,000 have landed so far this year, although an increasing number are intercepted by Libya s European-backed coastguard and returned to the North African country. Since July, there has been a sharp drop in crossings, though this week has seen a renewed surge in departures. Nearly 3,000 migrants are known to have died or be missing after trying to cross to Europe by sea this year, the majority of them between Libya and Italy. The International Organization for Migration said on Friday that since 2000 the Mediterranean had been by far the world s deadliest border for migrants. | 0fake |
Funeral Held for Murdered Brooklyn Pizzeria Owner as Police Seek Suspect - The New York Times | As mourners gathered on Tuesday for the funeral of the owner of a popular Brooklyn pizzeria, shot to death in front of his home last week, the authorities released a video of a man being sought in connection with the killing. The owner, Louis Barbati, 61, had been an institution at LB Spumoni Gardens, the restaurant started by his grandfather, an Italian immigrant who started out peddling ices from a wagon, which is depicted in the company logo. On June 30, Mr. Barbati was shot five times outside his home in the Dyker Heights neighborhood, leaving behind a wife, two sons and the restaurant — a fixture on the Brooklyn street corner where it has sat since 1939, topped with fluttering Italian and American flags. St. Ephrem’s Church in Dyker Heights was thick with incense, grief and the unanswered question on every mourner’s face: Why was Mr. Barbati killed? He was best known for doling out spumoni, layered Italian ice cream in pistachio, vanilla and chocolate flavors that gave his family’s restaurant its name. “He was the best boss,” Efraim Meza, 46, a pizza maker who said he had worked for Mr. Barbati for the past 25 years, recalled outside the church. The restaurant was closed on Tuesday for the funeral, which Mr. Meza had attended with a group of six Spumoni staff members. On the restaurant floor, he said, workers were known by the nicknames bestowed by Mr. Barbati, whom Mr. Meza remembered for his playfulness. Mr. Meza’s nickname was Fraggle. Mr. Meza said the restaurant was “like an empty space” without the presence of Mr. Barbati — whose catch phrase, “Atta boy,” would fill the cafe. “He would always take care of you,” Mr. Meza added. The New York Police Department on Tuesday issued a video showing a person of interest in the case, with the hope it will generate tips and information from the public. “We’re treating it as a botched robbery,” said J. Peter Donald, a police spokesman. “There’s some other potential motives, but this is the leading theory. ” Mr. Barbati was shot as he returned for dinner with his family, carrying a loaf of Italian bread and more than $10, 000 — which was not taken. Officials have said that Mr. Barbati carried that much cash home only five or so times a year, without saying why. Detectives are investigating whether his killer knew he was traveling with so much money when he left Spumoni Gardens. Mr. Barbati was wearing jewelry at the time, but that was also left behind, officials have said. In the footage, a man wearing sunglasses, a dark sweatshirt and shorts walks on a sidewalk. The police said investigators wanted to question the man. The assailant has been described similarly to the man in the video clip. Police officials believe he had been waiting for Mr. Barbati as he returned from work. The gunman fled by car as Mr. Barbati called for help before collapsing in his yard. “We don’t know who it is, but we are looking for the public’s help in identifying the shooter,” Mr. Donald said. At Spumoni Gardens, signs in the window memorialized Mr. Barbati, a throwback to an earlier era of Italian Brooklyn, who once had skirmished over the secret recipe for his pizza sauce and who was known as Lu Lu. Arriving at the locked doors, Deanne Smith, a parole supervisor visiting from New Braunfels, Tex. was trying to make sense of the news. She had brought a group of visitors to try the sauce. “It tastes just like my grandmother’s,” Ms. Smith said. “It’s the only place in all of America that does. This is shocking. ” Shortly before she arrived, a hearse bearing Mr. Barbati’s body was driven past the restaurant, according to people who had gathered to pay their respects in its courtyard on Tuesday. One onlooker put his hand on his heart. | 0fake |
FORMER SECRET SERVICE AGENT EXPLAINS TRUMP: “He’s a Queens guy”….”It’s time for the brawler” [Video] | Former Secret Service agent Dan Bongino has an explanation of the hometown identity of politicians and how it leads to an insider swamp creature like Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.Bongino defended President Trump and dismissed criticism by former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper who questioned Trump s fitness for office following a rally in Phoenix, Arizona. They just don t understand Trump. He s a Queens guy, Bongino said on Fox & Friends Thursday.OUR PREVIOUS REPORT ON JAMES CLAPPER TRYING TO SLAM TRUMP S FITNESS FOR OFFICE : Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper was way out of line and way too political last night when he showed his cards BIGTIME on President Trump. He followed the latest leftist line that Trump isn t fit to serve Yes, the loony left has a new play book that makes the false claim that somehow Trump is unfit to be president.We ve reported on clapper before but his not wittingly comment before the Senate is legend. Remember when he was asked if the NSA spies on Americans and he replied not wittingly ? Yes, well, that was perjury.More recently Clapper bashed President Trump during a discussion on national security and the Trump/Russia fake scandal.It s clear that Clapper is a political pawn who is out to try and make our president look bad. This is serious Deep State stuff.We re sure this isn t the end of James Clapper s involvement in the opposition to President Trump. | 1real |
REPORT: PRESIDENT TRUMP Is “Odds-On Favorite To Win Re-election” In 2020 | Liberal heads explode in 5 4 3 2 1President Trump could win the White House again in 2020 which likely would send hostile political operatives and the disapproving news media into an epic meltdown. News flash: Get ready. Mr. Trump will likely win re-election, says one analyst. President Trump did not ascend to the White House in the usual way; he broke with traditional campaign orthodoxy and tactics, Ford O Connell, a political analyst and adjunct professor at the George Washington University Graduate School of Political Management, tells Inside the Beltway. While Trump s first six months in the White House have been marked by early stumbles, a healthy dose of palace intrigue and low approval numbers, history says Trump is in fact the odds-on favorite to win re-election in 2020, should he choose to run. Why? Because presidential incumbency has its privileges. Since 1900, 20 presidents have sought re-election. Of those, 15 won and five lost that is, if you include Gerald Ford, who was never elected in the first place. Adds Mr. O Connell, So how does President Trump avoid becoming the sixth president to be fired by the people in the last 120 years? Barring some unforeseen calamity or Dwayne The Rock Johnson becoming the Democratic presidential nominee, the fate of Trump s presidency will live and die with the state of the economy in the fall of 2020. To ensure that the electoral winds are favorable to Trump, his administration must deliver results by passing tax reform before the 2018 midterms, showing significant progress on other key campaign promises: securing America s borders, infrastructure, trade, conservative judicial appointees. He must also continue to instill in working-class voters in both the Rust Belt (Ohio, Pennsylvania, Iowa, Michigan, Wisconsin) and Sun Belt (Florida, North Carolina, Arizona) battleground states the belief that he is tirelessly fighting for them. If Trump does that, voters will forgive his impetuous ways and rehire him, the professor concludes.For entire story: Washington Times | 1real |
Terry McAuliffe: Alexandria Shooting Proves We Have ’Too Many Guns on the Street’ - Breitbart | Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe (D) responded to the news of the shooting in Alexandria by saying it proves we have “too many guns on the street. ”[Breitbart News reported that at least four people were injured when a gunman opened fire on House and Senate members at a baseball practice in Alexandria, Virginia, Wednesday morning. Former New York Times assistant managing editor Jim Roberts quoted McAuliffe as saying: “There are too many guns on the street … we worry about this every day for all of our citizens,” and BuzzFeed DC editor Sarah Mimms tweeted: VA Gov. McAuliffe: ”We lose 93 … people per day due to gun violence,” mentions background checks, gun show loophole. — Sarah Mimms (@SarahMMimms) June 14, 2017, The “93 people” a day claim is a talking point shared by gun control proponents throughout the U. S. Everytown for Gun Safety, Moms Demand Action, Hillary Clinton, and similar groups and individuals have been making for years. They repeatedly state more than 90 people are killed by “gun violence” in America every day. But in reality, the number of people killed annually by homicidal firearm use is about a third of that figure. Individuals like McAuliffe swell the number of deaths via “gun violence” by adding suicides to homicides, more than doubling the number of people who are actually murdered with a firearm. Interestingly enough, Mimms reported that McAuliffe first said “93 million people [are killed] per day,” but he corrected that statement. AWR Hawkins is the Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and host of “Bullets with AWR Hawkins,” a Breitbart News podcast. He is also the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart. com. | 0fake |
Democratic presidential contender O'Malley investigated over furniture purchases: Post | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democratic presidential candidate Martin O’Malley, a former Maryland governor, is under investigation for buying furniture from the state executive mansion at sharply discounted prices as he left office, The Washington Post reported on Friday. The O’Malley family paid $9,638 for beds, chairs, desk lamps, mirrors and other items from the mansion’s living quarters after the administration declared them “excess property,” the paper said. The furnishing originally cost $62,000, according to The Baltimore Sun, which first reported the furniture purchase and the investigation, the Post said. The Post cited Haley Morris, a spokeswoman for O’Malley’s presidential campaign, as saying the investigation by the Anne Arundel County state’s attorney office was “a bogus political attack that the Maryland Republicans have tried to make stick.” Morris said O’Malley bought the furniture under the same procedures used by his predecessor when he moved out of the executive mansion, the Post reported. O’Malley has said he followed the procedures outlined to him by the state and paid the depreciated rate for the furniture as laid out by the state’s Department of General Services. O’Malley is lagging far behind Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination. (Reporting by David Alexander; Editing by Bernadette Baum) SAP is the sponsor of this coverage which is independently produced by the staff of Reuters News Agency. | 0fake |
Kenya opposition calls for protests on date repeat election due | NAIROBI (Reuters) - Kenya s opposition leader Raila Odinga called on Wednesday for a mass protest on Oct. 26, the date the country is due to hold a presidential vote that he is boycotting. Demonstrations will continue. October 26 will be the biggest demonstration of them all, he told a crowd of several thousand cheering supporters in Nairobi. | 0fake |
Mosul Civilians Stormed City Main Prison and Free 45 ISIS Prisoners | 20 Shares
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Iraq's al-Sumaria satellite television Quote: d an unnamed security source that claimed Mosul residents on Friday evening killed ISIS terrorists serving as security for the city's main prison, resulting in the liberation of at least 45 prisoners.
This comes as Iraqi forces and their allies close in on the ISIS stronghold after launching full-scale operations October 17 to liberate the city.
Simultaneous operstions are to liberate the city, particular from the east, whilst securing Iraq's borders with Syria.
The offensive on Mosul is expected to become the biggest battle fought in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003 and it could require a massive humanitarian relief operation.
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By AHT Staff ISIS Executes 300 Iraqi Civilians by Firing Squad North of Mosul Member of Nineveh Provincial Council, Hossam al-Din al-Abbar, announced, that the ISIS executed 300 civilians and former security members,...
By AHT Staff ISIS Executes 22 Civilians by Electrocution in Central Mosul Iraqi media outlets reported on Thursday, that the ISIS group executed 22 civilians by electrocution in central Mosul. “ISIS milita...
By AHT Staff ISIS Executes 190 Iraqi Civilians in Hammam al-Alil, 42 in Arij Village: Official | 1real |
Trump to host Jordan's King Abdullah on April 5: White House | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump will Host Jordan’s King Abdullah at the White House next week to discuss the fight against Islamic State militants, the Syria crisis and advancing peace between Israelis and Palestinians, the White House said in a statement. The April 5 meeting between the two leaders comes after Trump’s Middle East envoy met with Abdullah earlier this month. | 0fake |
THIS PICTURE OF HARRIET TUBMAN Should Be Used On The $20 Bill…If For No Other Reason Than To Drive Anti-Gun Left Crazy | Obama has filled his cabinet with radical yes men and women who hold similar anti-American, leftist views. His radical Treasury Secretary, Jack Lew is no exception.Treasury Secretary Jack Lew announced yesterday that Alexander Hamilton s face will remain on the front of the $10 bill and Harriet Tubman will replace Andrew Jackson on the face of the $20 bill.What the Left forgot in their haste to replace a racist white (Democrat) President on the front of the $20 bill was the fact that Harriet Tubman was more than just a black abolitionist, she also serves as an excellent example of why our Second Amendment is so important.Harriet Tubman (born Araminta Harriet Ross; 1820 March 10, 1913) was an African-American abolitionist, humanitarian, and Union spy during the American Civil War. She carried a revolver, and was not afraid to use it . . .Once a slave agreed to join her expedition, there was no turning back; she threatened to shoot anyone who tried to return. Tubman told the tale of one journey with a group of fugitive slaves, when morale sank and one man insisted he was going to go back to the plantation.She pointed the gun at his head and said, You go on or die. Several days later, he was with the group as they entered Canada. It is more than likely that Tubman carried the handgun as protection from ever-present slave catchers and their dogs.Via: The Truth About GunsBreaking: Treasury throws founder of the Democratic Party off $20 bill, replaces with gun-toting Republican pic.twitter.com/G9dVXpTaXv David Burge (@iowahawkblog) April 20, 2016Tubman s reliance on her firearms to fulfill her mission of freeing slaves was essential. So it only seems fitting that the US Treasury would use this picture of Republican, Harriet Tubman to replace the first Democrat President of the United States, Andrew Jackson. | 1real |
BREAKING: Major Health Insurance Carrier May Pull Out Of Obamacare…Expects To Lose Over $200 Million in 2016 Alone | It turns out the words affordable and care were both horrendous lies pushed by the Left in order to prop up the most dangerous man to every occupy our Oval Office.If you like your insurance carrier, you can keep your insurance carrier. The nation s largest provider of health insurance announced this morning that it may choose to stop offering individual coverage after 2016, and will pull back on its marketing efforts immediately in this market. If the losses continue and United pulls out of next year s exchanges, it will set up a very bad moment for ObamaCare and for Democrats just weeks before the election:UnitedHealth Group (NYSE: UNH) today reported revised expectations for 2015, reflecting a continuing deterioration in individual exchange-compliant product performance, and provided an initial outlook for 2016. In recent weeks, growth expectations for individual exchange participation have tempered industrywide, co-operatives have failed, and market data has signaled higher risks and more difficulties while our own claims experience has deteriorated, so we are taking this proactive step, said Stephen J. Hemsley, chief executive officer of UnitedHealth Group. We continue to be pleased with the growth and overall performance of our Company outside of the individual exchange products and look forward to strong, positive and broad based earnings growth across our enterprise in 2016. UnitedHealthcare has pulled back on its marketing efforts for individual exchange products in 2016. The Company is evaluating the viability of the insurance exchange product segment and will determine during the first half of 2016 to what extent it can continue to serve the public exchange markets in 2017.Don t kid yourselves. If United is going to pull back on marketing efforts for 2016, it s because they don t see themselves being in the market in 2017. Just by announcing it, United has set up the expectation of withdrawal for investors, who do not want to have good money chasing after bad.Assuming nothing changes in the fiscal model and after three years, it s not likely to suddenly improve that would create a huge gap in choice for many Americans in the next open enrollment period. That would normally begin in October 2016, unless HHS decides to delay it, as they did ahead of the 2014 elections. Many voters will suddenly find their coverage expired, forced to choose another plan from a smaller list of options, all of which will no doubt become even more expensive for everyone thanks to the decline in competition. It s going to act like a bombshell on the election, especially for Democrats running to hold seats in Congress, and perhaps even in the presidential election.Philip Klein explains why prices will move even higher than usual:The year 2017 is significant for insurers, because that s the year when several programs designed to mitigate risk for insurers through federal backstops go away. The hope was that those programs would act as training wheels for Obamacare in its first few years of implementation, but after that, the insurers were supposed to be able to thrive on their own. UnitedHealth s statement suggests otherwise.If UnitedHealth and other insurers decide to exit, remaining insurers will be forced to take on even more high-risk enrollees, prompting them to either raise rates further or exit themselves. That in turn would deprive individuals of choices and remove competition, a key purpose of the exchanges. Klein sat in on a United conference call this morning, and got the scope of the losses:UnitedHealth expects to lose over $200 million on Obamacare in 2016 alone Philip Klein (@philipaklein) November 19, 2015So don t expect United to suddenly see a reason to get back into the 2017 market, not without hefty risk-corridor subsidies which under any other circumstances would be called corporate welfare. Given that Congress isn t likely to reverse course and underwrite ObamaCare losses, the path to the exit remains the likely course for United, and perhaps some of its competitors, too.United says it will remain committed to its Medicaid and Medicare businesses, and of course it will stick with its employer-based group coverage, where the issues of ObamaCare regulation have less impact. But this is a reversal for United on the individual markets, as Forbes Bruce Japsen points out. Just last month, United s CEO declared that they still considered this a growth market.United has discovered that the trade-offs in mandates and forced coverage don t pay off. It s a bait-and-switch for insurers by the Obama administration, but it s even worse of a bait-and-switch for consumers. In my column today for The Fiscal Times, I argue that the financial model of ObamaCare has left consumers with a fistful of broken promises, and the worst of both worlds.Via:Hot Air | 1real |
The Path To Total Dictatorship: America’s “Shadow Government” And Its Silent Coup | By John W. Whitehead
“Today the path to total dictatorship in the U.S. can be laid by strictly legal means, unseen and unheard by Congress, the President, or the people . Outwardly we have a Constitutional government. We have operating within our government and political system … a well-organized political-action group in this country, determined to destroy our Constitution and establish a one-party state….
The important point to remember about this group is not its ideology but its organization… It operates secretly, silently, continuously to transform our Government…. This group … is answerable neither to the President, the Congress, nor the courts. It is practically irremovable. ”— Senator William Jenner, 1954 speech
Unaffected by elections. Unaltered by populist movements. Beyond the reach of the law.
Say hello to America’s shadow government.
A corporatized, militarized, entrenched bureaucracy that is fully operational and staffed by unelected officials who are, in essence, running the country, this shadow government represents the hidden face of a government that has no respect for the freedom of its citizenry.
No matter which candidate wins the presidential election, this shadow government is here to stay. Indeed, as recent documents by the FBI reveal, this shadow government— also referred to as “The 7th Floor Group” —may well have played a part in who will win the White House this year.
To be precise, however, the future president will actually inherit not one but two shadow governments.
The first shadow government, referred to as COG or Continuity of Government, is made up of unelected individuals who have been appointed to run the government in the event of a “catastrophe.” COG is a phantom menace waiting for the right circumstances—a terrorist attack, a natural disaster, an economic meltdown—to bring it out of the shadows, where it operates even now. When and if COG takes over, the police state will transition to martial law.
Yet it is the second shadow government —also referred to as the Deep State—that poses the greater threat to freedom right now. Comprised of unelected government bureaucrats, corporations, contractors, paper-pushers, and button-pushers who are actually calling the shots behind the scenes, this government within a government is the real reason “we the people” have no real control over our government.
The Deep State, which “ operates according to its own compass heading regardless of who is formally in power ,” makes a mockery of elections and the entire concept of a representative government.
So who or what is the Deep State?
It’s the militarized police, which have joined forces with state and federal law enforcement agencies in order to establish themselves as a standing army. It’s the fusion centers and spy agencies that have created a surveillance state and turned all of us into suspects. It’s the courthouses and prisons that have allowed corporate profits to take precedence over due process and justice.
It’s the military empire with its private contractors and defense industry that is bankrupting the nation. It’s the private sector with its 854,000 contract personnel with top-secret clearances, “a number greater than that of top-secret-cleared civilian employees of the government.” It’s what former congressional staffer Mike Lofgren refers to as “ a hybrid of national security and law enforcement agencies ”: the Department of Defense, the State Department, Homeland Security, the CIA, the Justice Department, the Treasury, the Executive Office of the President via the National Security Council, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, a handful of vital federal trial courts, and members of the defense and intelligence committees.
It’s every facet of a government that is no longer friendly to freedom and is working overtime to trample the Constitution underfoot and render the citizenry powerless in the face of the government’s power grabs, corruption and abusive tactics.
These are the key players that drive the shadow government.
This is the hidden face of the American police state that will continue long past Election Day.
Just consider some of the key programs and policies advanced by the shadow government that will continue no matter who occupies the Oval Office.
Domestic surveillance No matter who wins the presidential popularity contest, the National Security Agency (NSA), with its $10.8 billion black ops annual budget, will continue to spy on every person in the United States who uses a computer or phone. Thus, on any given day, whether you’re walking through a store, driving your car, checking email, or talking to friends and family on the phone, you can be sure that some government agency, whether the NSA or some other entity, is listening in and tracking your behavior. Local police have been outfitted with a litany of surveillance gear, from license plate readers and cell phone tracking devices to biometric data recorders. Technology now makes it possible for the police to scan passersby in order to detect the contents of their pockets, purses, briefcases, etc. Full-body scanners, which perform virtual strip-searches of Americans traveling by plane, have gone mobile, with roving police vans that peer into vehicles and buildings alike—including homes. Coupled with the nation’s growing network of real-time surveillance cameras and facial recognition software, soon there really will be nowhere to run and nowhere to hide.
Global spying The NSA’s massive surveillance network, what the Washington Post refers to as a $500 billion “ espionage empire ,” will continue to span the globe and target every single person on the planet who uses a phone or a computer. The NSA’s Echelon program intercepts and analyzes virtually every phone call, fax and email message sent anywhere in the world. In addition to carrying out domestic surveillance on peaceful political groups such as Amnesty International, Greenpeace and several religious groups, Echelon has also been a keystone in the government’s attempts at political and corporate espionage .
Roving TSA searches The American taxpayer will continue to get ripped off by government agencies in the dubious name of national security. One of the greatest culprits when it comes to swindling taxpayers has been the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), with its questionable deployment of and complete mismanagement of millions of dollars’ worth of airport full-body X-ray scanners, punitive patdowns by TSA agents and thefts of travelers’ valuables. Considered essential to national security, TSA programs will continue in airports and at transportation hubs around the country.
USA Patriot Act, NDAA America’s so-called war on terror, which it has relentlessly pursued since 9/11, will continue to chip away at our freedoms, unravel our Constitution and transform our nation into a battlefield, thanks in large part to such subversive legislation as the USA Patriot Act and National Defense Authorization Act. These laws completely circumvent the rule of law and the rights of American citizens. In so doing, they re-orient our legal landscape in such a way as to ensure that martial law, rather than the U.S. Constitution, is the map by which we navigate life in the United States. These laws will continue to be enforced no matter who gets elected.
Militarized police state Thanks to federal grant programs allowing the Pentagon to transfer surplus military supplies and weapons to local law enforcement agencies without charge, police forces will continue to be transformed from peace officers into heavily armed extensions of the military, complete with jackboots, helmets, shields, batons, pepper-spray, stun guns, assault rifles, body armor, miniature tanks and weaponized drones.
Having been given the green light to probe, poke, pinch, taser, search, seize, strip and generally manhandle anyone they see fit in almost any circumstance, all with the general blessing of the courts, America’s law enforcement officials, no longer mere servants of the people entrusted with keeping the peace, will continue to keep the masses corralled, controlled, and treated like suspects and enemies rather than citizens.
SWAT team raids With more than 80,000 SWAT team raids carried out every year on unsuspecting Americans by local police for relatively routine police matters and federal agencies laying claim to their own law enforcement divisions, the incidence of botched raids and related casualties will continue to rise. Nationwide, SWAT teams will continue to be employed to address an astonishingly trivial array of criminal activity or mere community nuisances including angry dogs, domestic disputes, improper paperwork filed by an orchid farmer, and misdemeanor marijuana possession.
Domestic drones The domestic use of drones will continue unabated. As mandated by Congress, there will be 30,000 drones crisscrossing the skies of America by 2020, all part of an industry that could be worth as much as $30 billion per year. These machines, which will be equipped with weapons, will be able to record all activities, using video feeds, heat sensors and radar. An Inspector General report revealed that the Dept. of Justice has already spent nearly $4 million on drones domestically, largely for use by the FBI , with grants for another $1.26 million so police departments and nonprofits can acquire their own drones.
School-to-prison pipeline The paradigm of abject compliance to the state will continue to be taught by example in the schools, through school lockdowns where police and drug-sniffing dogs enter the classroom, and zero tolerance policies that punish all offenses equally and result in young people being expelled for childish behavior. School districts will continue to team up with law enforcement to create a “schoolhouse to jailhouse track” by imposing a “double dose” of punishment: suspension or expulsion from school, accompanied by an arrest by the police and a trip to juvenile court.
Overcriminalization The government bureaucracy will continue to churn out laws, statutes, codes and regulations that reinforce its powers and value systems and those of the police state and its corporate allies, rendering the rest of us petty criminals. The average American now unknowingly commits three felonies a day, thanks to this overabundance of vague laws that render otherwise innocent activity illegal. Consequently, small farmers who dare to make unpasteurized goat cheese and share it with members of their community will continue to have their farms raided.
Privatized Prisons States will continue to outsource prisons to private corporations, resulting in a cash cow whereby mega-corporations imprison Americans in private prisons in order to make a profit. In exchange for corporations buying and managing public prisons across the country at a supposed savings to the states, the states have to agree to maintain a 90% occupancy rate in the privately run prisons for at least 20 years.
Endless wars America’s expanding military empire will continue to bleed the country dry at a rate of more than $15 billion a month (or $20 million an hour). The Pentagon spends more on war than all 50 states combined spend on health, education, welfare, and safety. Yet what most Americans fail to recognize is that these ongoing wars have little to do with keeping the country safe and everything to do with enriching the military industrial complex at taxpayer expense.
Are you getting the message yet?
The next president, much like the current president and his predecessors, will be little more than a figurehead, a puppet to entertain and distract the populace from what’s really going on.
As Lofgren reveals, this state within a state, “concealed behind the one that is visible at either end of Pennsylvania Avenue ,” is a “hybrid entity of public and private institutions ruling the country according to consistent patterns in season and out, connected to, but only intermittently controlled by, the visible state whose leaders we choose.”
The Deep State not only holds the nation’s capital in thrall, but it also controls Wall Street (“which supplies the cash that keeps the political machine quiescent and operating as a diversionary marionette theater”) and Silicon Valley.
This is fascism in its most covert form, hiding behind public agencies and private companies to carry out its dirty deeds.
It is a marriage between government bureaucrats and corporate fat cats.
As Lofgren concludes:
[T]he Deep State is so heavily entrenched, so well protected by surveillance, firepower, money and its ability to co-opt resistance that it is almost impervious to change … If there is anything the Deep State requires it is silent, uninterrupted cash flow and the confidence that things will go on as they have in the past. It is even willing to tolerate a degree of gridlock: Partisan mud wrestling over cultural issues may be a useful distraction from its agenda.
In other words, as I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People , as long as government officials—elected and unelected alike—are allowed to operate beyond the reach of the Constitution, the courts and the citizenry, the threat to our freedoms remains undiminished.
So the next time you find yourselves despondent over the 2016 presidential candidates, remember that it’s just a puppet show intended to distract you from the silent coup being carried out by America’s shadow government.
Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His new book Battlefield America: The War on the American People (SelectBooks, 2015) is available online at www.amazon.com . Whitehead can be contacted at johnw@rutherford.org .
The original source of this article is The Rutherford Institute Copyright © John W. Whitehead , The Rutherford Institute , 2016 | 1real |
Is Obama Using The Refugee Resettlement Of Muslims To Give ISIS World Domination? | Since Obama was sworn in as President hundreds of thousands of refugees have come to America most of them Muslim. We re also seeing thousands of people from all over the world cross our Southern border illegally. With the virtual invasion via illegals and refugees, is Obama trying to give America to ISIS? It is a question worth asking if you look at the facts: DHS has just announced that ISIS is infiltrating the Refugee Resettlement Program. No shocker there. And yet, not only does Obama refuse to shut it down, he s bringing more and more in. Treasonous much? He s also going after our guns and constitutional rights in an attempt to strip them from us just when we need them the most. ISIS PLANS GLOBAL DOMINATION: A document has just surfaced which outlines how ISIS organizes its territory and controls it. I am not surprised. I would have expected nothing less from the Caliphate. They are a conquering force after all, so it makes sense that they would be the ultimate, brutal community organizers.Before we get into that, the latest on ISIS is that Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour is dead in Afghanistan. He was mortally wounded in a shootout last Tuesday and succumbed to his wounds sometime within the next 48 hours. If true, this is a death blow to the Taliban in Afghanistan by ISIS and is very bad news. As horrific as the Taliban is, ISIS makes them look like amateurs.Experts say they can t figure out where ISIS is getting their funding. Are you kidding me? They are big business: drugs, oil and they are backed by various countries behind the scenes and other players in geopolitical manipulations. ISIS will spread through Afghanistan like a malignant cancer. Slaughter and terror will be widespread. ISIS is very organized in their conquest for the Caliphate and they will rule the country with an iron fist and a Quran.I don t believe the Taliban when they say Mansour is still alive. If he were alive, we would have seen him by now. Already, slick propaganda is surfacing from ISIS of their executions of their enemies. It is brutal and gory. I have heard reports of them making the Taliban kneel on explosives and then blowing them up. They also put mortars as necklaces around their necks and then detonate them. The training camps they are setting up all over the place are terrifying and many are flocking to ISIS to join in the fight for the Caliphate. They are the strong horse in the race for the Middle East. ISIS is going from town to town, province to province and slaughtering people and conquering in their wake. They rape women and children, execute infidels and crucify offenders. They take slaves and wealth as they go. It is very reminiscent of Genghis Kahn. People flee in abject terror when they hear that ISIS is approaching.Neither Russia or the United States could take the Taliban out. They live like goats in the mountains of Afghanistan. But ISIS is making short order of them and fast. The trick is to be more brutal and aggressive than your enemy and ISIS has that down to an art. ISIS settled in among the population in Afghanistan and then activated. That is exactly what they are doing in Europe. Things are about to get very, very dicey out there.Now, with this unearthed document, we see how they have global plans. ISIS is already throughout the Middle East and with the Hijrah migration, they are now planted in Europe. Just as they did in Afghanistan, they initially plant themselves within a population before rising up in cells and sweeping the country. They are beginning to do this in America too, thanks to Barack Obama s open borders and Refugee Resettlement Program.Read more: Noisy Room | 1real |
Christie Goes Ballistic On Cruz For ‘Awful, Selfish Speech’ | Chris Christie went ballistic on Ted Cruz Wednesday night following the Texas senator s failure to endorse Donald Trump during his speech at the Republican National Convention. It was an awful, selfish speech by someone who tonight, through the words he said on that stage, showed everybody why he has richly earned the reputation that he has on Capitol Hill, Christie declared angrily.The New Jersey governor wasn t the only one who was less than pleased with Cruz and his refusal to endorse Trump, who has now officially secured the Republican nomination. During Cruz s speech, the crowd chanted Endorse Trump, Endorse Trump! and then erupted in a chorus of boos when that endorsement never came. If you love our country and love your children as much as I know that you do, stand and speak and vote your conscience, Cruz said during his prime-time speech at the RNC on Wednesday night. Vote for candidates up and down the ticket who you trust to defend our freedom and to be faithful to the Constitution. Christie slammed Cruz for his dramatic words: I don t understand how someone can present themselves as a person of integrity and then come into this room tonight and give that cute speech. And that was cute. Speaking with CNN, Christie said spoke of the crowds reaction to Cruz s steadfast refusal to throw his support behind Trump. The crowd was waiting for him to do the right thing, the governor said of Cruz. I think the performance you saw there is why Ted has so richly deserved the reputation he s developed. Cruz isn t the only former Republican presidential hopeful that has chosen not to endorse Trump, even though they signed the pledge saying they would support whoever ended up winning the nomination. Jeb Bush, Carly Fiorina, and John Kasich have also refused to back The Donald. But Christie pointed out that they are not in the room tonight. The fact is: He came into this room today and then did not keep his word, the New Jersey governor said.Watch Christi s interview with CNN here:[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=giZGaFjxb8g]Featured image via Alex Wong/Getty Images | 1real |
Remembering Rasul Gamzatov: The Poet of the People | Email
November 3 rd is around the corner. This day of the year may or may not mean something to you. I consider it is a sad day for poetry. On this day 13 years ago the poet of Dagestan, Rasul Gamzatov, left our world. Born on September 8, 1923, Gamzatov is not only the “People’s Poet of Dagestan”, he is the poet of the people who love poetry, nature, home, language, and beauty. In his prolific writings, Gamzatov showed that if we know the place where we come from intimately, we will have enough stories to tell for the rest of our lives. He taught us that it is only by telling stories and paying attention to others’ stories that we truly live. From the remote villages and treacherous mountains of Dagestan, Gamzatov wrote poems and stories whose words are like loaves of bread to feed the hungry. His rhythms like raindrops falling on the endless deserts of the deprived souls. His depth and clarity like clear spring waters from the melting snows of the mountaintops of Dagestan. Some of his poems turn me into a bleeding red rose, a singing wind on a long lonely night, a thunder loudly objecting every form of oppression on this planet. Others silence my vocal cords and sets free a stubborn tear hanging on the corner of my eye. With his stories, I turn into a bird, into a short-lived wild flower on the side of a mountain rock, into a shiny distant star on a silent and cold winter night. Is it a coincidence that Gamzatov died in 2003, the same year Iraq, the land of poetry and beauty, was occupied and turned into rubble and ashes?
The poet arrived to this world in the Avar village of Tsada in the north-east Caucasus. The name of the village means “fire” in the Avar language, which reflects his own poetic fire that was neither tamed nor domesticated nor put out throughout the 80 years of his life. His poems capture the human soul that is like nature: powerful yet also fragile and delicate in other ways. As children of nature, we are capable of doing so much, yet Mother Nature can crush our arrogance in a blink of an eye. Gamzatov understood our delicate existence that can easily be crushed by the cruel rocks of reality. Yet our only bet is on our souls that enable us to fly high and far away. Reminding us of our strengths and weaknesses, he wrote: “Hit a bird with a stone, the bird dies. Hit a stone with a bird, the bird dies.”
The son of the well-known bard, Gamzat Tsadasa, Gamzatov from the early years of his youth showed an extraordinary passion for Avar stories, myths, oral traditions, village songs, and everything the people of the mountains cherished and held dear and sacred. His intellectual character is best captured in a version of an old saying that many mountain peoples worldwide recite: “One should only kneel down in two cases: to drink clear water from a spring, or to smell a wild flower.” This profound expression reminds us of the role of the intellectual in a world where everyone and everything is up for sale. Intellectuals can only kneel down to drink from the spring water of knowledge; or to smell a wild flower whose scent would set their imagination free. If we kneel down for any oppressive power even once, we may forever be cursed, crippled, paralyzed, and perhaps never able to stand up on our feet again. Gamzatov tells us that he first picked the seeds of poetry from his mother’s songs in the cradle. He picked the fire of poems from his father who loved reading and writing poetry, in addition to working long and harsh hours in the fields. From an early age, he was determined to capture the stories of his people to show the world that poetry transcends languages, human differences, and all artificial borders. He once recalled his father, Tsadasa, reacting to one of his early poems: “if you rummaged in the ash, you might find at least a glowing amber.”
I am sad to report that there is an embarrassing absence of the translations of Gamzatov’s writings, particularly in the English language. This negligence is itself a form of censorship of works that may potentially humanize and change how we think about other people and cultures who inhabit our planet. Great works of literature from other places are not only censored by banning them, but even more so by silencing them, by refusing to translate them in the first place. Marginalization is the worst form of censorship and intellectual assassination. Likewise, choosing what gets translated into a certain language and what gets marginalized is a form of shaping and constructing the historical memory of a place according to whims of those who own the money and means of knowledge production. But since the “politics of translation” is not the subject of this article, I will spare you more details lest I distort this poetic atmosphere. To commemorate the 13 th anniversary of Gamzatov’s death, I would like to take you on a journey in one of his most poetic books of all time titled My Dagestan . The book, originally written in the Avar language, was first translated into Russian in 1967. Since then the book has been translated into many languages. For those interested, the only English translation I was able to find is one from 1970, published by Progress Publishers in Moscow. In this article, I will use the Arabic translation first published in Damascus, Syria, in 1984, to share with you some of the countless gems Gamzatov leaves us with in this masterpiece.
From the very opening of the book, Gamzatov treats the reader as a “guest” who, upon entering his home, shall hopefully leave as a long-lasting friend. He opens it with what he titles “Instead of an Introduction”. From the early pages, the poet creates a harmony between writing and his beloved Dagestan. He writes that ideas and emotions are like mountain guests: they come without invitations, without prior notice, and there is no way for us to hide or escape from them when they arrive. In the mountains, there are no “important” or “unimportant” guests. The youngest of guests are equally important and honored even more than the oldest person in the household, simply because they are guests . We receive guests at the doorstep without asking them “where are you from?” We take them to the center of the house and seat them on the pillows, near the fireplace. Gamzatov adds that guests in the mountains appear suddenly and unexpectedly, but they never surprise us, because we are always waiting for them. We wait for them every day, every hour, and every minute. And “like a mountain guest, the idea of this book came to me.” Elsewhere he writes: “I want to write a book in which not the language follows the grammar, but the grammar follows the language.”
Quoting from his notebook, the poet shares with us how in Kolcata (formerly Calcutta) India, while visiting the house of Rabindranath Tagore, he saw a drawing of a bird that doesn’t exist in reality. That bird was first drawn in Tagore’s imagination. Yet if Tagore hadn’t had seen and observed so many different birds that do exist, he would have never been able to draw his own bird. Gamzatov calls it “Tagore’s bird”. To him, this is how writing about the self, the place you love, and the others is also done. In fact, originality and original thinking, in a sense, are like Tagore’s bird: they are unique and never seen before. Yet they can only be created after seeing and observing so many different types of birds that do exist in reality. This is why, Gamzatov insisted that his book be titled My Dagestan , because just like the bird he saw in Tagore’s house was “Tagore’s bird”, so is the Dagestan in the book “Gamzatov’s Dagestan”. It is not, he adds, because Dagestan only belongs to him, but because the way he sees, imagines, and perceives Dagestan is different than any other person on earth, especially when seen through the eyes of transient visitors and tourists. In this sense, Gamzatov reminds us that our homes, our languages, our mountains, and everything we love dearly need a lifetime to be known and a lifetime to be forgotten.
Later he writes that everything around us is potentially a piece of gold or silver. But silver and gold don’t mean anything in themselves. What is important is that the crafter has skilled hands to turn them into something meaningful and beautiful. This is precisely how the stories we hear, see, and experience in this world can be turned into meaningful writings. Here he cites a phrase he once saw engraved on an old jar that read: “the most beautiful jars are made from clay. The most beautiful poems are written with simple words.”
On a different page, he reminds young writers that writing takes so much patience and perseverance. He then cites a phrase he once read on an old door in one of Dagestan’s villages which read: “Don’t break the door! It can be opened with its key!” This, to him, is the type of patience a young writer needs to learn how to open different doors through different words, different styles of writing, and through patience. He advices young writers that rather than asking for a specific topic to write about, they should ask for a set of eyes that can recognize and capture topics worth writing about. In this way, the poet is telling writers that instead of thinking of themselves as “magicians” who can change the world in one piece of writing, they are really more like farmers who plant the seeds of their alphabet not knowing on which hearts and minds they shall fall and grow into new wild lives. Gamzatov then goes on to remind us that just as it is hard to determine whether it is the feelings that generate music or is it the music that generates feelings; it is equally hard to determine whether it is the writer who produces the writing or the other way around.
Gamzatov’s appreciation for poetry and writing that spring out of the deepest point of knowing the self after demolishing all walls with others is deeply connected to the Avar culture and myths. He shares that the Avar people have an old myth stating that the poet was created 100 years before the world was created, as though they are saying that had the poet not participated in creation, our planet would not have been as magnificent as it is. This is why poets and writers must never compromise themselves. The only way to do so, he writes, “is to always be yourself in every single word you write.” As usual, the poet draws on a village tradition to illustrate the point. He cites the tradition of mountain villagers who, before entering a wedding, usually ask: “is this gathering complete, or do you still have a space for me?” The wedding holders usually respond: “Come on in if you are you !” And “in this book,” Gamzatov writes, “I want to prove that I am me !”
In a section titled “Genius”, the poet writes that even if humans get to know all the secrets on this earth, nobody will ever know what “genius” really is, what is its source, how is it shaped, and how does it grow over time. Genius people are also different from one another, for if they were similar, they would cease to be called so: “I have seen so many faces like my father’s face, but I have never recognized in any of them the genius like that of my father,” he writes. He then adds that, fortunately, genius is not inherited, for if it was, it would be like a royalty passed from one royal family to another, from one rich family to another. Indeed, “it is not unusual for an idiot to be born out of a wise person, nor a child of an idiot to turn out wise.”
In the second part of the book Gamzatov begins another journey to introduce us to his love and attachment to his hardly known mother tongue, the Avar language. To him, this deep love and connection with this language is precisely what makes him able to appreciate every other language, land, mountain, plain, and valley on this planet. He shares that a poet can and should in fact be able to speak to all people, regardless of their languages. For Gamzatov, the destinies, dreams, and pains of all people can be carried in a single heart—the heart of the poet. Yet poets don’t actually write poems for each single heart on the planet, nor do they write for every single love, every single smile, or every single teardrop. Poets write about themselves only. But it is only when the boundaries between the self and the other are demolished that the poet will be able to at once write for nobody and for everybody.
Perhaps not surprisingly, following a long chapter on the “mother tongue”, as My Dagestan nears its end, Gamzatov dedicates a good part of the book to mothers and how the first lullabies and songs they sing to us shape and provide us with enough love and inspiration to face the harshness of this world for the rest of our lives. He wonders whether “cowards” are those people whose mothers didn’t sing for them in their cradles. Perhaps those who betray others are people who have forgotten the songs their mothers sang for them in their cradles. The poet is deeply aware of what it means when a mother—or any loving woman in her place—sings for us our earliest songs and tunes. He writes “a mother’s song is the beginning and the source of all human songs. It is the first smile and the last tear.” Considering how the early tunes and the early songs shape our intellect, cognitive abilities, and literary and poetic selves, it is significant that Gamzatov would emphasize the role of mothers’ songs that teach us how to be in love with everything beautiful around us. He writes that there are songs mothers sing when the child is born, others they sing when they lose their child, and yet others they keep singing long after their beloved children are gone. In this way, poetry for Gamzatov is neither words nor music nor the human senses that receive them. It is the encounter between language, music, and the senses. After reciting numerous stories about the power of singing that, to him, far exceeds the power of swords and weapons, he insists that songs can change the world and save countless lives. His words in this section remind me of a very old saying from the Arabian Peninsula which asks us to beware of mingling with people who don’t love music; to beware of people who don’t like and don’t know how to sing.
Gamzatov left us in 2003 but he left behind a treasure in the form of poetry. He left us prose even more poetic than his poetry. From the magical and tough mountains of Dagestan, he wrote in the Avar language and spread so much love and poetry for so many people who aspire to be human before anything else. After all, one of his favorite inscriptions he saw on a tombstone read:
He was no sage,
But bow to him:
He was a man.
In My Dagestan , Gamzatov writes that the people of the mountains were asked why they built their villages so far away, blocked from others, and secluded by all these mountains. Villagers were told that in residing in these mountains, it is impossible to reach them given the dangers of the road. The villagers responded: “Good friends will reach us without worrying about these dangers. As for bad friends, we don’t need them anyway!” Gamzatov was keen throughout his life to record many inscriptions he came across on old doors, gates, tombstones, and mountain rocks in Dagestan’s villages. In two memorable inscriptions about “guests” he writes:
Come, hillfolk, please knock!
We’re well. If we’re not,
Your coming shall cure us!
*
Don’t knock, don’t rouse the household,
You who pass this way!
If good you bring us, enter!
If mischief, go away!
It is hard to end an article about Gamzatov as much as it was hard to start it. I first read My Dagestan when I was an undergraduate student at the University of Baghdad. This year I had to reread its 550 pages to share some of its vivid images and poetic jewels with you. As soon as I finished rereading the book, I felt sad and empty, because the poet indeed fulfilled his promise: I entered the book like a passing mountain guest and here I am leaving it as a dear friend to the poet and to all the remote villages and people he writes about. Gamzatov’s mountains and magical scenes resemble northern Iraq and remind me of everything and everyone I loved and loved me. It reminds me of all the letters I have received over the years from friends who cared about me, friends who betrayed me, and others who still renew their vows of love and friendship in my life every day.
I close the book with great sadness because, in a strange way, it makes me ask the same old questions always secretly lurking in the back of my head or circulating in my bloodstream like an incurable virus: do we only realize the meaning of all things, people, and places that we love after they are no more? Do we always put the people, things, and dreams that truly matter to us aside like storing a precious item in a closet, hoping naively to come back one day to find them as we left them? Is it the big paradox of life that we don’t master the art of living until it is nearly time to depart? After all, Gamzatov himself was quoted saying shortly before his death: “My life is a draft I wish I had the time to revise.” Oh, my friends, I know I should not end on this sad note. Perhaps to truly celebrate Gamzatov’s poetry and life, I should end exactly as he ended My Dagestan in the translation I am holding now in my hands: “We are finished. It is time to separate. And, as they say, we shall meet again. God willing.”
Louis Yako is an Iraqi-American poet, writer, and a PhD candidate of cultural anthropology researching Iraqi higher education and intellectuals at Duke University. | 1real |
Watch This Awesome Mashup of Michael Flynn Leading The ‘Lock Her Up’ Chant As He Goes Off To Court (VIDEO) | Donald Trump s disgraced National Security Adviser Michael Flynn has just plead guilty to lying to the FBI a felony. He has also agreed to testify against Trump in exchange for leniency from Special Counsel Robert Mueller s team. The irony here is beyond delicious especially since Flynn infamously led the LOCK HER UP! chants at the 2016 Republican National Convention, saying that Hillary Clinton was some kind of criminal, and that if Trump was elected they d be able to put her in jail, where many Trump supporters believe she belongs. Well, now the tables are turned, and it is Flynn who will be heading to jail, and the people who realize who the REAL criminals are have been having a field day. Perhaps one of the best pieces of Twitter schaudenfraude is this video of Flynn heading into court to plead guilty with the Lock her up! chant being played:I mashed up Michael Flynn s perp walk with audio of him leading a lock her up chant. pic.twitter.com/L1o5CjJXrQ Adam Smith (@asmith83) December 1, 2017This is BEYOND awesome. These fools thought they d get a chance to put Hillary Clinton in jail as if we live in some kind of banana republic. Instead, they are all turning on each other in order to save their own asses in the best circular firing squad any of us ever could have imagined. Michael Flynn is going to sing like a canary so that he can keep himself and his equally criminal son out of federal prison and railroad the entire Trump crime family into the slammer just where they belong.The GOP made a deal with the devil when their ignorant, bigoted voters chose this unfit orange overlord to be their presidential nominee. Now, they are very likely to rue the day they ever heard the name Donald Trump.Featured image via Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images | 1real |
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