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White House says existing sanctions against Russia are effective | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Existing sanctions against Russia are already effective, the White House said on Thursday, after the U.S. Senate voted nearly unanimously for legislation to impose new sanctions on Moscow. | 0fake |
Graham: I’ll Do ’Whatever It Takes’ to Get Gorsuch Confirmed, If Dems Filibuster, ’We Would Have to Change the Rules’ - Breitbart | On Thursday’s “Mike Gallagher Show,” Senator Lindsey Graham ( ) vowed that he would do “Whatever it takes” to get Judge Neil Gorsuch on the Supreme Court and that if the Democrats filibuster Gorsuch, “we would have to change the rules to have the Supreme Court like everybody else. ” Graham said [relevant remarks begin around 2:00] that if there was a filibuster on Gorsuch, it would be “because politics has taken over reason, and that would be a shame. ” When asked if he would have to use the nuclear option if there was a filibuster, Graham answered, “Whatever it takes to get him on the court, I will do. ” He further stated, “[I]f my Democratic colleagues choose to filibuster this guy, then they will be telling me that they don’t accept the election results, 306 electoral votes, that they’re trying to delegitimize President Trump, and that’s not right, and we would have to change the rules to have the Supreme Court like everybody else. ” Graham further said that he thinks there are Democrats who will vote for Gorsuch, and “I hope we can get 60 votes and not change years of history. ” He continued, “I will do whatever’s necessary, and I’ve been a pretty balanced guy, and enough is enough. ” ( and audio via CNN) Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett | 0fake |
Ryan: Trump made right decision to seek Flynn resignation | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan said on Tuesday President Donald Trump was right to seek the resignation of Michael Flynn after disclosures the national security adviser misled the vice president and others about his conversations with a Russian diplomat. Ryan said he would leave it to the administration to explain the circumstances behind Flynn’s departure. “I think they key is this: that as soon as this person lost the president’s trust, the president asked for his resignation, and that was the right thing to do,” Ryan told reporters. | 0fake |
You Can Smell Hillary’s Fear | Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is a New York writer focusing on radical Islam.
In the final stretch of the election, Hillary Rodham Clinton has gone to war with the FBI.
The word “unprecedented” has been thrown around so often this election that it ought to be retired. But it’s still unprecedented for the nominee of a major political party to go war with the FBI.
But that’s exactly what Hillary and her people have done. Coma patients just waking up now and watching an hour of CNN from their hospital beds would assume that FBI Director James Comey is Hillary’s opponent in this election.
The FBI is under attack by everyone from Obama to CNN. Hillary’s people have circulated a letter attacking Comey. There are currently more media hit pieces lambasting him than targeting Trump. It wouldn’t be too surprising if the Clintons or their allies were to start running attack ads against the FBI.
The FBI’s leadership is being warned that the entire left-wing establishment will form a lynch mob if they continue going after Hillary. And the FBI’s credibility is being attacked by the media and the Democrats to preemptively head off the results of the investigation of the Clinton Foundation and Hillary Clinton.
The covert struggle between FBI agents and Obama’s DOJ people has gone explosively public.
The New York Times has compared Comey to J. Edgar Hoover. Its bizarre headline, “James Comey Role Recalls Hoover’s FBI, Fairly or Not” practically admits up front that it’s spouting nonsense. The Boston Globe has published a column calling for Comey’s resignation. Not to be outdone, Time has an editorial claiming that the scandal is really an attack on all women.
James Carville appeared on MSNBC to remind everyone that he was still alive and insane. He accused Comey of coordinating with House Republicans and the KGB. And you thought the “vast right wing conspiracy” was a stretch.
Countless media stories charge Comey with violating procedure. Do you know what’s a procedural violation? Emailing classified information stored on your bathroom server.
Senator Harry Reid has sent Comey a letter accusing him of violating the Hatch Act. The Hatch Act is a nice idea that has as much relevance in the age of Obama as the Tenth Amendment. But the cable news spectrum quickly filled with media hacks glancing at the Wikipedia article on the Hatch Act under the table while accusing the FBI director of one of the most awkward conspiracies against Hillary ever.
If James Comey is really out to hurt Hillary, he picked one hell of a strange way to do it.
Not too long ago Democrats were breathing a sigh of relief when he gave Hillary Clinton a pass in a prominent public statement. If he really were out to elect Trump by keeping the email scandal going, why did he trash the investigation? Was he on the payroll of House Republicans and the KGB back then and playing it coy or was it a sudden development where Vladimir Putin and Paul Ryan talked him into taking a look at Anthony Weiner’s computer?
Either Comey is the most cunning FBI director that ever lived or he’s just awkwardly trying to navigate a political mess that has trapped him between a DOJ leadership whose political futures are tied to Hillary’s victory and his own bureau whose apolitical agents just want to be allowed to do their jobs.
The only truly mysterious thing is why Hillary and her associates decided to go to war with a respected Federal agency. Most Americans like the FBI while Hillary Clinton enjoys a 60% unfavorable rating.
And it’s an interesting question.
Hillary’s old strategy was to lie and deny that the FBI even had a criminal investigation underway. Instead her associates insisted that it was a security review. The FBI corrected her and she shrugged it off. But the old breezy denial approach has given way to a savage assault on the FBI.
Pretending that nothing was wrong was a bad strategy, but it was a better one that picking a fight with the FBI while lunatic Clinton associates try to claim that the FBI is really the KGB.
There are two possible explanations.
Hillary Clinton might be arrogant enough to lash out at the FBI now that she believes that victory is near. The same kind of hubris that led her to plan her victory fireworks display could lead her to declare a war on the FBI for irritating her during the final miles of her campaign.
But the other explanation is that her people panicked.
Going to war with the FBI is not the behavior of a smart and focused presidential campaign. It’s an act of desperation. When a presidential candidate decides that her only option is to try and destroy the credibility of the FBI, that’s not hubris, it’s fear of what the FBI might be about to reveal about her.
During the original FBI investigation, Hillary Clinton was confident that she could ride it out. And she had good reason for believing that. But that Hillary Clinton is gone. In her place is a paranoid wreck. Within a short space of time the “positive” Clinton campaign promising to unite the country has been replaced by a desperate and flailing operation that has focused all its energy on fighting the FBI.
There’s only one reason for such bizarre behavior.
The Clinton campaign has decided that an FBI investigation of the latest batch of emails poses a threat to its survival. And so it’s gone all in on fighting the FBI. It’s an unprecedented step born of fear. It’s hard to know whether that fear is justified. But the existence of that fear already tells us a whole lot.
Clinton loyalists rigged the old investigation. They knew the outcome ahead of time as well as they knew the debate questions. Now suddenly they are no longer in control. And they are afraid.
You can smell the fear.
The FBI has wiretaps from the investigation of the Clinton Foundation. It’s finding new emails all the time. And Clintonworld panicked. The spinmeisters of Clintonworld have claimed that the email scandal is just so much smoke without fire. All that’s here is the appearance of impropriety without any of the substance. But this isn’t how you react to smoke. It’s how you respond to a fire.
The misguided assault on the FBI tells us that Hillary Clinton and her allies are afraid of a revelation bigger than the fundamental illegality of her email setup. The email setup was a preemptive cover up. The Clinton campaign has panicked badly out of the belief, right or wrong, that whatever crime the illegal setup was meant to cover up is at risk of being exposed.
The Clintons have weathered countless scandals over the years. Whatever they are protecting this time around is bigger than the usual corruption, bribery, sexual assaults and abuses of power that have followed them around throughout the years. This is bigger and more damaging than any of the allegations that have already come out. And they don’t want FBI investigators anywhere near it.
The campaign against Comey is pure intimidation. It’s also a warning. Any senior FBI people who value their careers are being warned to stay away. The Democrats are closing ranks around their nominee against the FBI. It’s an ugly and unprecedented scene. It may also be their last stand.
Hillary Clinton has awkwardly wound her way through numerous scandals in just this election cycle. But she’s never shown fear or desperation before. Now that has changed. Whatever she is afraid of, it lies buried in her emails with Huma Abedin. And it can bring her down like nothing else has. | 1real |
Your Morning Briefing: Rafsanjani, Donald Trump, Kabul - The New York Times | Good morning. Here’s what you need to know: • President Obama began his final major address in Chicago by thanking the American people. “You made me a better president,” he said, “and you made me a better man. ” The White House is offering a live stream of the president’s farewell address. And here is the latest on the transition, including the prospect today of Donald J. Trump’s first news conference since July. _____ • American intelligence agencies presented President Obama and Trump with unsubstantiated reports that Russia had collected compromising and salacious information about Mr. Trump. The information is based on memos generated by political operatives who sought to derail Mr. Trump’s candidacy. _____ • The use of torture was a main theme on the first day of a whirlwind week of U. S. Senate hearings on Mr. Trump’s cabinet choices. In a joint letter, 176 retired officers urged Mr. Trump not to follow through on campaign vows to bring back torture. Hours later, his attorney general pick, Senator Jeff Sessions, above, distanced himself from Mr. Trump’s pledge to bar Muslims immigrants and investigate Hillary Clinton. _____ • “They started coming in like the tide. ” That was an official at a refugee camp near Bangladesh’s border with Myanmar, where displaced Rohingya Muslims have fled by the thousands to escape a military crackdown in northern Rakhine State. Those in the camp say soldiers burned their villages, shot at random and systematically raped women and girls. _____ • In Iran, the authorities ignored the opposition chants that erupted at the sprawling state funeral for Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who died on Sunday. Mr. Rafsanjani, once a staunch conservative, had in recent years become a hero to Iran’s middle class. For many of those involved in the Green Revolution, the antigovernment demonstrations in 2009, he was a lone establishment voice representing their beliefs. By official estimates, 2. 5 million people attended the funeral. _____ • Beijing has increasingly signaled that it wants to take on a leadership role in promoting the Paris agreement to curb greenhouse gas emissions. China can’t yet lead by example yet. It’s still the world’s biggest polluter. But a shift is evident: Witness the country’s plans to spend $360 billion on renewable energy sources. _____ • President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines has said he has the names of more than a million supposed drug dealers and corrupt lawmakers. He once promised to kill 100, 000 criminals in his first six months in office. Our reporter met with local officials and law enforcement officers to determine who lives and who dies in the leader’s drug war. “There is no certain or easy way to get off Duterte’s list,” he writes. _____ • President Xi Jinping will speak next week at the opening of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, as China looks to cement its role as a global economic leader. Mr. Xi will lead a group of Chinese executives that includes Jack Ma of Alibaba and Wang Jianlin, chairman of the Dalian Wanda Group. He will be the first Chinese head of state to address the annual meeting. • Alibaba is going brick and mortar. The Chinese giant, which is seeking to acquire Intime Retail, has spent billions buying pieces of the very sector it disrupted. • Yahoo plans to rename itself Altaba if the $4. 8 billion sale of its internet business goes through. The name is a play on the single biggest asset that would remain of Yahoo: a 15 percent stake in Alibaba. • Fox News secretly settled sexual harassment accusations against Bill O’Reilly, the network’s top host, last summer. • Auto sales in India plunged in December, a casualty of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ban on large bank notes. • Most U. S. stocks were higher. Here’s a snapshot of global markets. • In Afghanistan, dozens of people were killed and more than 80 wounded in an attack on Parliament claimed by the Taliban. [The New York Times] • Dylann Roof, the white supremacist who showed no remorse for killing nine people at a South Carolina church in 2015, was sentenced to death. [The New York Times] • China ordered all textbooks from elementary school to university to push back the start date of its war against the Japanese from 1937 to 1931, and to replace “ war of resistance” with “ war of resistance. ” [South China Morning Post] • Thailand’s cabinet is meeting to discuss emergency measures for the heaviest rainfall in 30 years. At least 21 people have died in severe flooding in the south. [The Nation] • The World Cup will grow to 48 teams from 32 in 2026, a welcome move for Asia and Africa inclusion. But some see a money grab by the governing body, FIFA. [The New York Times] • Clare Hollingworth, a British war correspondent who broke the news of World War II and was one of the first Western journalists to report regularly from China, died in Hong Kong. She was 105. [The New York Times] (In this new section, we’ll help you start your day right.) • We’ve all thought about it: Can we train ourselves to need less sleep? Sadly, the answer is a resounding no. • Recipe of the day: Want to go meatless tonight? Try tofu with wild mushrooms. • Concerns over crashing populations of bees, butterflies and other insects that promote plant growth are spreading around the world. United States officials made the bumblebee the first pollinator to be added to the endangered species list. • And we review writer Han Kang’s new novel “Human Acts. ” Each chapter offers a piercing psychological portrait of a character affected by the 1980 Gwangju massacre in South Korea. Norway is trying to make audio history this week. The country is beginning an experiment to switch off its FM stations and replace them with digital radio. If the plan succeeds, it could be the beginning of a change in how we listen to radio around the globe. Switzerland, Britain and Denmark are considering the same move. Norway, where terrestrial radio remains quite popular, was among the first countries to adopt digital radio in the 1990s. The government’s current effort is aimed at improving audio quality. That was also a goal in the creation of FM radio, which offers staticless, broadcasting. Edwin Armstrong, an American inventor, is credited with figuring out how to transmit sound by modulating the frequency of electromagnetic waves (FM) instead of their amplitude (AM). He later built his own FM station to prove its worth to skeptics, though his triumph was marred by legal battles over patents. The New York Times called Armstrong one of the “great inventive geniuses in electrical engineering” after his death in 1954. “He always preferred to be the master of his own laboratory. That he was. ” _____ Your Morning Briefing is published weekday mornings. What would you like to see here? Contact us at asiabriefing@nytimes. com. | 0fake |
Defiance and Disillusionment in Heartland of South Korean President’s Support - The New York Times | DAEGU, South Korea — Like many of her fellow citizens, Kum is outraged by the political crisis that is engulfing South Korea’s president. But unlike the vast majority of them, who have turned against President Park because they believe she has brought an corruption scandal on herself, Ms. Kum, 79, sees her as an innocent victim of a friend who has taken advantage of her. “Park herself is not a bad person,” said Ms. Kum, wielding a small razor blade to whittle off the scraggly roots of scallions at a vegetable stall in Seomun Market, here in the city where Ms. Park was born. “She has been swindled. ” Daegu, a center of textile and machinery industries about 150 miles southeast of Seoul, is the heartland of Ms. Park’s support — or what little remains of it, after an scandal involving a longtime friend and shadowy adviser to the president who has been compared to Rasputin. While her nationwide approval rating has dropped into the low single digits, according to Gallup Korea, she retains higher support in Daegu, especially among people 60 and older. To this stalwart cohort, Ms. Park is a proxy for her father, Park the divisive Cold War dictator who attended teachers college and taught in Daegu before embarking on a military career. He took over South Korea in a coup in 1961 and ruled until he was assassinated in 1979. Conservatives who lived through the period of rapid economic growth that he oversaw still revere him as the father of modern South Korea, crediting him not only with lifting the country out of poverty but also with guarding against Communist threats from the North. For a dozen years as a member of the National Assembly, Ms. Park represented a district in Daegu, the country’s city. When she ran for president in 2012, she received about 80 percent of the city’s vote. Many who voted for her expected her to carry on her father’s legacy. Daegu “has been the source of unconditional support for both Park and Park ” said Jeon a professor of modern Korean history at Kyungpook National University in the city. Now, Mr. Jeon said, as the Assembly prepares for an impeachment vote on Friday, President Park’s few remaining loyal followers are concentrated among older, uneducated and poor citizens. Across the country, intellectual conservatives are angered by what they see as a witch hunt driven by the news media and opposition parties, yet many of them no longer support Ms. Park personally. Yi a prominent conservative novelist, said that the news media had failed to differentiate between rumor and fact as the scandal unfolded, and he accused the opposition of instigating public protests. But he called the president “incompetent” and said she had shown poor judgment by associating with the wrong people. “To be frank, she never satisfied my expectations,” Mr. Yi said during an interview at his home in a writer’s colony in Icheon, about 35 miles southeast of Seoul. Even in Daegu, “many of the educated older people have left her,” said Yi (no relation to Yi ) director of operations for the local constituency office of Ms. Park’s governing party. “Daegu citizens supported Park more passionately than in other areas,” Mr. Yi said. “That is why it comes across as such a shock and disappointment. ” In what appeared to be a effort to court her remaining supporters, Ms. Park visited Daegu last week, making a rare public appearance after a fire destroyed parts of Seomun Market. During her brief visit, some supporters shouted her name, but protesters nearby called for her to be impeached or immediately resign. Ms. Park’s office told reporters that after she returned to her car, she wept. Earlier this week, stall owners and shoppers who voted for Ms. Park four years ago expressed a mixture of defiance and disillusionment. “Why don’t they leave her to run the country for the little time she has left?” said Suh 69, owner of a market stall selling coffee, eggs, crackers, chips and skewers. “That is the way to help the country, but they are just saying, ‘Impeach, impeach.’ ” Ms. Suh, who said that she admired Ms. Park and that her father had “brought the country to where we are today,” said the enormous public protests demanding Ms. Park’s removal showed that “democracy has become too excessive. ” “Public opinion can turn even a pretty person into an ugly person,” she said. “You can criticize a little or criticize a lot, but if you criticize a lot, the false becomes the truth. ” But Yi 58, an owner of a stationery store in the market, said that Ms. Park should be impeached because she had abused her power. “What she did was very wrong,” he said. The biggest loss, he said, was to Ms. Park’s late father. “His legacy is being buried,” Mr. Yi said. “It is being sold off wholesale. It’s guilt by association. If you start to hate one person, you will start to hate the whole team. ” Across the city at Kyungpook National University, Kim 25, a chemical engineering student, said the nostalgic older generation had made a mistake in expecting Ms. Park to carry on her father’s legacy in the first place. Mr. Kim, who stood outside in weather carrying a poster board with the slogan “Out with Park ” said his own hometown, Ulsan, had benefited greatly from Park ’s policies. “But I think it would be superficial and you would be gullible to believe that the daughter would be able to do what Park did,” he said. | 0fake |
Donald Trump Jr. Met With Russian Advocates About Syria | According to The Wall Street Journal , President-elect Donald Trump’s son, Donald, attended a meeting in Paris that was hosted by a think tank connected to Russia that convened | 1real |
Andrew Sullivan: Liberals Have to Avoid Sounding ’So F*cking Condescending and Smug’ - Breitbart | On Friday’s broadcast of HBO’s “Real Time,” New York Magazine Andrew Sullivan argued, “Liberals have to be careful not to sound so f*cking condescending and smug, as if they know it, and start actually engaging the other side and persuading people. ” Sullivan said there was a “giant cloud of smug” above MSNBC anchor Rachel Maddow during her Trump tax story. liberals have to be careful to not so fucking condescending and smudges if they know it and start engaging the other side and persuading people. He continued, “Liberals have to be careful not to sound so f*cking condescending and smug, as if they know it, and start actually engaging the other side and persuading people. ” Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett | 0fake |
Argentina says Russia wants more Argentine food products | BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) - A Russian official expressed interest in Argentina providing more food products to Russia, Argentina s foreign ministry said in a statement hours after the United States imposed steep anti-subsidy duties on Argentine biodiesel, a key export. Argentina s Secretary of International Economic Affairs Horacio Reyser met with Sergey Dankvert, head of Russian agriculture watchdog Rosselkhoznadzor, earlier on Thursday. | 0fake |
Ex president of Vatican hospital convicted of abuse of office | VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - The former president of a Vatican-owned hospital in Rome on Saturday was convicted of abuse of office for diverting nearly half a million dollars of funds to renovate a top cardinal s luxury apartment. The Vatican court, a three-judge panel, gave Giuseppe Profiti a one-year suspended sentence. The prosecution had asked for three years for the former head of the prestigious Bambino Gesu hospital. It also reduced the seriousness of the charge against Profiti to abuse of office from the initial embezzlement. Massimo Spina, the hospital s treasurer, was acquitted. Testimony at the trial, which began in July in the city-state s courtroom, again exposed lack of transparency in the financial handling of Vatican assets in Italy, where it owns numerous institutions and much real estate. Profiti and Spina were charged with spending 422,000 euros ($481,000) in 2013 and 2014 on refurbishing the large Vatican retirement home of Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Holy See s former number two. His retirement apartment, which has a huge terrace and breath-taking view of the dome of St. Peter s Basilica, has become a symbol of the difficulty of the frugal-minded pope s efforts to rein in the luxury some Church leaders still enjoy. Bertone, 82, was the Vatican secretary of state, effectively the deputy pope, for most of the pontificate of former Pope Benedict and was one of the most powerful men in the Roman Catholic Church. He was removed from office in 2013, eight months after the election of Francis. The renovation started a few weeks later on the spacious property, which is next door to the Vatican guest house where the pope lives in a modest suite. Bertone hired the construction firm of a friend to do the reconstruction work, bypassing the customary bidding process, and made a down payment with his own money. The company eventually went bankrupt but the foundation that runs the hospital sent 422,000 euros to a London-based company affiliated with the construction firm. Neither Bertone nor the owner of the construction company were called to testify at the trial. When the Vatican confirmed last year that Profiti and Spina were under investigation, a lawyer for Bertone said the cardinal had never asked for or authorized payment for the restoration work from hospital funds. Profiti said the hospital used some of its funds to renovate Bertone s apartment because the cardinal had agreed that it could be used for fundraising. After the scandal was first revealed in a book, Bertone gave 150,000 euros of his own money to the Bambino Gesu to make amends for damage done to the hospital s image. | 0fake |
YIKES! HILLARY GOES OFF THE RAILS…Pulls A Howard Dean [Video] | 1real | |
Japan Airlines plane makes emergency landing in Tokyo | TOKYO (Reuters) - A Japan Airlines (JAL) plane made an emergency landing at Tokyo s Haneda International Airport shortly after takeoff on Tuesday following an apparent bird strike, an airline spokesman said. There were no injuries among any of the 248 people on board, the spokesman said. Video footage appeared to show flames shooting from one engine of the Boeing 777 soon after takeoff. A bird strike was believed to be the cause, although it was still being investigated, the spokesman said. The plane, bound for New York, was carrying 233 passengers and 15 staff. | 0fake |
Colin Kaepernick hosts ‘Know Your Rights’ camp for Oakland-area youth | Print
[Ed. – Now teaching the gospel of racial grievance.]
San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick hosted a “Know Your Rights” camp for Oakland-area youth Saturday, an event designed to expand his focus on social and racial injustice beyond his national anthem protest.
“This is exciting for me because I see a lot of hope, what is to come,” Kaepernick said beforehand, in an interview with The Undefeated’s Marc J. Spears .
Kaepernick said the campers, who numbered around 100, would have sessions to learn about situations with police, their rights, holistic health, financial literacy, and understanding both community and self. He said the camp’s aim is to “empower youth, give them resources and tools” to deal with difficult situations.
“We want to let them know they have options and people that are behind them to help them,” he said. “And that’s a powerful thing, for someone else to have belief in you.” | 1real |
Forty human traffickers arrested, 500 people rescued in West Africa | PARIS (Reuters) - Forty people were arrested and 500 people rescued after a swoop on human trafficking across West Africa, international police organization Interpol said on Thursday. The Interpol-led action comes amid a global outcry sparked by footage of Africans being solved as slaves in Libya, often the final transit for migrants wanting to reach Europe. In a statement, Interpol said that some 500 people, including 236 minors, had been rescued in simultaneous operations across Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Niger and Senegal. Forty suspected traffickers were arrested. The results of this operation underline the challenge faced by law enforcement and all stakeholders in addressing human trafficking in the Sahel region, said the operation s coordinator Innocentia Apovo. The 40 arrested face prosecution for offences including human trafficking, forced labor and child exploitation. They are accused of forcing victims to engage in activities ranging from begging to prostitution, with little to no regard for working conditions or human life, the statement said. | 0fake |
Trump’s New ‘Christian Policy’ Advisor ACTUALLY Thinks He Can Control The Weather (VIDEO) | Move over, Storm-From-X-Men! In addition to having gigantic hands (the most giganticestest in the world, no less!), a huge dong (you can see it from space), and a daughter he totally doesn t want to sleep with (or does he?), Donald Trump has managed to pick up a new ally: an old white dude who can control the weather!In his effort to pander to evangelicals, Trump has enlisted the aid of Frank Amedia, a televangelist who blames AIDS on unnatural sex who entered into a conspiracy to fix a court case for a friend in 2001. He s also able to control the weather through the power of Jesus, or something.Amedia, who now serves as the billionaire s liaison for Christian policy, claims that he personally saved his daughter from disaster when an earthquake off the coast of Japan sent a tsunami to a Hawaiian island on which his precious little snowflake was staying. Thanks to the power of prayer and an ego large enough to think that an omnipotent being would even notice him, let alone do him a solid, Trump s God guy says he was able to talk his BFF into stopping the tsunami just off the shore of the island. I stood at the edge of my bed and I said, In the name of Jesus, I declare that tsunami to stop now, he says in a video in which he tells the tale of that time he and God went all X-Men on that storm. And I specifically said, I declare those waters to recede, and I said, Father, that is my child, I am your child, I m coming to you now and asking you to preserve her. Apostle, it was seen by 400 people on a cliff. It was on YouTube, it was actually on the news that that tsunami stopped 200 feet off of shore. Even after having sucked the waters in, it churned and it went on and did devastation in the next island. Interestingly, he seems entirely unconcerned with the people who live on the next island over. Maybe there are limits to God s power and these Christians know better than to ask him to do more than save their own skins.Last December, a Texas woman also exhibited this strange weather control power. Sabrina Lowe of Rowlett says she saved her family s lives when she asked God to redirect a tornado to a neighboring town. Apparently, God listened. Lowe s family was spared, but the tornado went on to kill an additional eight people. While little is known about these rare superhuman powers, it seems that weather control thus far has a rather limited scope. Further study is needed.Watch Amedia talk about his weather control capabilities below:Featured image via screengrab | 1real |
Tapper SLAMS Trump For BIZARRE Behavior At ‘Wild’ And ‘Unhinged’ Presidential Presser (VIDEO) | There is certainly no love lost between CNN and the Trump Administration. Indeed, Donald Trump himself has called the mainstream news outlet one of the most credible and trusted in the nation and world fake news for daring to report on the chaos coming out of the Trump White House. This hairy relationship is definitely on full display on a regular basis when it comes to the host of The Lead and and State of the Union on CNN, Jake Tapper.Joining fellow CNN host Wolf Blitzer, Tapper took to the airwaves on Thursday to blast the bizarre and chaotic mess that passed for Trump s first presidential press conference since his inauguration. Tapper said of the spectacle, in which Trump was supposed to discuss his new nominee for Secretary of Labor Alexander Acosta: It was a wild press conference. He talked about [CNN reporter] Jim Acosta more than he talked about Alexander Acosta. He talked about Hillary Clinton more than he talked about Alexander Acosta. Tapper then went on to say that the presser was really just a way for Trump to rant, lamenting that Trump stepped on his own messages and activities in his first month as president and instead of focusing on these accomplishments it was an airing of grievances. It was Festivus. It was complaints about the media. At one point he said the leaks were real but the news is fake, which doesn t make any sense what so ever. He said things that were not true. If you are a soldier in harm s way right now, if you are a hungry child in Appalachia or the inner city, if you are an unemployed worker in the hallowed shell of a steel town, that s not a president who seemed rather focused on your particular needs and wants. That s a president that s focused on his bad press. Tapper then went one to sum it up thusly: It was unhinged, it was wild. A lot of Americans are going to watch that press conference and think, that guy wasn t focused on me and I don t know what he was focused on. Tapper is exactly right. Trump is clearly losing it in a fit of rage, and there s absolutely nothing to do but to conclude that he held that press conference to attack the media and other people he perceives to be enemies. He wanted to unload in front of a national and international audience, because he cannot accept the fact that most of what is going so wrong in his fledgling administration is the fault of his own ill-tempered, impulsive actions, and of the incompetence of his White House staff.In short, this man is in way over his head. He is most definitely unhinged and he has the nuclear codes.Watch Tapper annihilate Trump below:Featured image via video screen capture | 1real |
China considers three-year jail terms for disrespecting national anthem, flag | BEIJING (Reuters) - China s largely rubber-stamp parliament is considering jail terms of up to three years for people who disrespect the national anthem or flag in public, while an existing anthem law will be applied in Hong Kong, state media said on Tuesday. Xi Jinping has ushered in new legislation aimed at securing China from threats both within and outside its borders since taking over as president in 2013, as well as presiding over a sweeping crackdown on dissent and free speech. China passed a new law in September mandating up to 15 days in police detention for those who mock the March of the Volunteers national anthem, a law that also covers the Chinese territories of Hong Kong and Macau. Parliament is now looking at whether to amend China s Criminal Law to include criminal penalties for disrespect of the national anthem, including intentionally distorting the lyrics or tune, Xinhua said. The tougher penalties also apply to desecration of the national flag, or emblem, including burning, defacing or trampling on it in public, the report said. That, too, had previously been punishable by up to 15 days detention. A draft amendment has been submitted for deliberation at a bi-monthly session of parliament s standing committee, which started on Monday. Violators in this regard may face punishments of up to three years of imprisonment, according to the draft, it said. It was not clear when the amendment might be passed but it could be at the end of the week, when parliament s standing committee closes its current session. The National Anthem Law, which went into effect on Oct. 1, will also be included in an annex of Hong Kong s Basic Law, or mini constitution, Xinhua added, though it s not clear if that will include three-year jail terms. The national anthem law has fueled concern in Hong Kong, whose residents have grown nervous over China s perceived encroachment of the city s autonomy following such events as the disappearance of booksellers who later emerged in mainland Chinese custody. In 2015, Hong Kong football fans booed the Chinese anthem during a World Cup qualifier, prompting a fine for the territory s football association from world body FIFA. In recent years, incidents of disrespecting the national anthem had occurred in Hong Kong, challenging the bottom line of the principle of one country, two systems and social morality and triggering rage among Chinese including most Hong Kong residents, said Zhang Rongshun, deputy head of parliament s Legislative Affairs Commission, according to Xinhua. It is urgent and important to apply the national anthem law in Hong Kong, in a bid to prevent and handle such offences. The Asian Football Confederation on Tuesday warned the Hong Kong Football Association about their fans behavior at a match against Malaysia on Oct 10. in Hong Kong, where some booed the national anthem. | 0fake |
EXCLUSIVE -- Mexico Backs Down in Fight With U.S. over Extradition of Cartel Governor | REYNOSA, Tamaulipas — After erroneously taking credit for the arrest of a fugitive governor, Mexican officials are backing away from their extradition claims against the United States. [A diplomatic official with direct involvement in the case confirmed to Breitbart Texas that on Monday afternoon, the Mexican Deputy Attorney General for Organized Crime called the U. S. Department of Justice attache at the embassy in Mexico City. The purpose of the call was to inform the U. S. government that Mexico’s Attorney General’s Office (PGR) agreed that former Tamaulipas Governor Tomas Yarrington would be extradited to the U. S. As Breitbart Texas reported, Italian authorities apprehended Yarrington on Sunday at a restaurant. While the arrest was based on an investigation by U. S. Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) agents in Brownsville, Texas, and Rome on Sunday night, Mexican authorities took credit and claimed the politician would be extradited home. The move by Mexican authorities set off tensions between the international agencies as they fought over Yarrington. Yarrington is wanted in Texas for multiple drug trafficking and money laundering charges. The indictment alleges that while governor of Tamaulipas, Yarrington took bribes from Mexican drug cartels in exchange for giving them protection. Yarrington is also accused of having played a role in the trafficking of drugs through the Mexican state of Veracruz. On Monday, Italy’s Polizia di Stato issued a news release revealing that they had worked with U. S. authorities in capturing Yarrington — who was previously spotted in the town of Paola. At the time of his arrest, Yarrington claimed to be a Mexican businessman by the name of Morales Perez and presented false documents. The news release makes no mention of Mexico’s Attorney General’s Office or other party taking part in the operation. Mexico’s PGR held a news conference on Monday to backtrack statements claiming they contributed information leading to the capture. The agency stated the final decision of for Yarrington’s extradition remains with Italian authorities. Ildefonso Ortiz is an journalist with Breitbart Texas. He the Cartel Chronicles project with Brandon Darby and Stephen K. Bannon. You can follow him on Twitter and on Facebook. Brandon Darby is managing director and of Breitbart Texas. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook. | 0fake |
Hannity Gets His A** Handed To Him For Falsely Claiming Terence Crutcher Has Violent Criminal Past | Fox News host Sean Hannity desperately tried to smear Terence Crutcher on Wednesday as a violent criminal who was wanted by police but was repeatedly shut down by a local Tulsa news anchor.Crutcher was shot and killed by white police police officer Betty Shelby even though he had his hands up and was surrounded by other police officers. The murder was caught on camera.Clearly, the unarmed Crutcher was not a threat to the safety of the officers, especially when you consider the fact that police officers have consistently taken in armed white suspects alive without ever firing a shot at them.But Sean Hannity repeatedly claimed during his radio show that Crutcher had a violent criminal record and had warrants out for his arrest. I understand that in this particular case Mr Crutcher has a long criminal history and appeared to be under the influence or so the police are charging, Hannity said, which prompted Tulsa news anchor Russell Mills to smack Hannity down with facts. Well I ll tell you I looked up his history and I m not seeing a lot of criminal history, Mills replied. We have something called the OSCN the Oklahoma Supreme Court Network. I was able to find a protective order from 12 years ago that was dismissed. I found a couple of financial things. There s no violent criminal history for Mr. Crutcher that I ve been able to uncover. But Hannity didn t want to hear the truth so he moved on to claiming that Crutcher had several warrants out for his arrest.Mills informed Hannity that there were no such warrants.Hannity responded that he read somewhere that there were warrants. I have not seen any reporting on any warrants for Mr. Crutcher and I certainly haven t uncovered any myself, Mills said. There has been some misinformation floated. A disappointed Hannity resorted to claiming that he has a source within the department and said that it s a matter of time of when they re gonna release this information. Here s the audio via Media Matters:Once again, Sean Hannity tries to demonize another black victim of a police shooting in order to make people believe the shooting was totally justified. The bottom line, however, is that Crutcher had his hands up and was surrounded by officers. He wasn t a threat to them or anyone else but they executed him anyway. Officer Betty Shelby should be arrested and charged with murder. Period.Featured Image: Screenshot | 1real |
‘Big Government Tyranny’ Once Again Saves Ted Cruz’s Beloved Texas, Obama Approves Disaster Aid | Texas Sen. Ted Cruz is busy criss-crossing the nation to spread his message of small government fanaticism, but his own state just got a lesson in why the federal government isn t just important, it can be lifesaving.While Cruz spent his time making offensive jokes about trans people this week, Texas has been hit with a horrific run of severe weather. Many areas of the state, particularly in Harris County, have seen their homes and jobs literally washed away in major flooding. The severe weather, which saw parts of major cities like Houston and Austin go underwater, is estimated to cost over $5 billion.Cruz, whose typical response to tragedy involves tweeting thoughts and prayers to the victims, has offered little else. Meanwhile, President Obama and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) have gotten to work. This week, Obama approved federal disaster relief funding to the parts of Texas affected by the flooding.Federal assistance can include grants for temporary housing and home repairs, low-cost loans to cover uninsured property losses, and other programs to help individuals and business owners recover from the effects of the disaster. The presidential disaster declaration, which includes all of Harris County, allows FEMA and other federal agencies to begin providing relief to individuals affected by this most recent flood. Harris County continues to work with local nonprofit and volunteer organizations to provide immediate relief, said Harris County Judge Ed Emmett.Cruz, of course, famously voted against giving similar aid to New Jersey after Hurricane Sandy (which may explain why New Jersey Governor Chris Christie wanted nothing to do with endorsing Cruz for president). His logic was that states should be left on their own, and federal aid was little more than government overreach. Citing the potential aid package s extra funding for other government projects a standard procedure Cruz said at the time: This bill is symptomatic of a larger problem in Washington an addiction to spending money we do not have. The United States Senate should not be in the business of exploiting victims of natural disasters to fund pork projects that further expand our debt. Some of the pork projects included funding scientific research into extreme weather events that scientists had hope to be able to help states avoid future disasters. Or as Cruz calls it wasteful spending. Despite Cruz s adherence to strict no hand outs when it came to other states, Texas being a massive state with tens of millions of people and lots of potential disasters has always stuck out its own hand when it came time for help.The recent onslaught of floods in Texas come at a bad time for Cruz politically. It certainly undermines his nearly pathological aversion to the federal government. It might be just the thing to remind people that Ted Cruz infamously shut down the very government that they are now counting on to help them rebuild after a horrific natural disaster. Suddenly reading Green Eggs and Ham on the Senate floor to avoid funding the government doesn t seem so noble, does it?Featured image via Adam Berry/Getty Images | 1real |
Ann Garrison: Clinton Serves the Interests of the Oligarchy that She Herself Has Joined | 68 Shares
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Mohsen Abdelmoumen : Do you think the United States can claim to be democratic simply by electing a woman president? Can we talk about democracy in the USA with a candidate of the financial lobbies and AIPAC?
Ann Garrison: No, of course not. No more than we could claim to be a democracy because we elected a Black president. These two elections signify nothing more than the inclusion of previously excluded classes of people in the super elite. The United States is an oligarchy of the .01%, 1% of the 1%. Any president who is not already among the .01%, like Bill Clinton, becomes part of the .01% by serving its interests and then peddling influence after leaving office. No one has developed an influence peddling machine as well-oiled as the Clintons, with Bill working the Clinton Foundation and the Clinton Global Initiative while Hillary was Secretary of State. Just imagine the new depths of corruption that the next eight years and beyond could bring. Obama has said he’s now considering a move from the White House to venture capitalism that has Silicon Valley slathering at the opportunity.
Every four years Americans are given the illusion of choice between oligarchs and/or aspiring oligarchs who will serve the interests of oligarchy. Candidates who aspire to actually represent the interests of the people are marginalized by the corporate media and the pay-to-play campaign contributions of the oligarchs.
In municipal and county elections and ballot measures, Americans often do have real choices, but the higher and more powerful the office, the greater the corruption and oligarchic control. Nevertheless, only a small minority of Americans actually vote n local elections; The Atlantic's CityLab reporting project recently concluded that fewer than 20% vote in mayoral elections in 15 of the 30 most populous cites. Disengagement is one of the most fundamental facts of American political life.
Regarding federal elections, this concept of democracy within the largest, most lethal military power the world has ever seen is bogus to begin with. When U.S. citizens cast ballots to elect a new commander-in-chief who will continue the project of perpetual war, military industrial profits, and global hegemony, how democratic is that? The vast majority of those who will suffer and die don’t get to vote; the only exceptions are members of the U.S. Armed Services who die in U.S. wars. If those on the other side of the Pentagon’s crosshairs were able to vote, I’m sure they would elect our Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein, who said, “We say to Trump, we don’t need no friggin’ wall! We just need to stop invading other countries.” Her running mate, vice presidential candidate Ajamu Baraka has called the humanitarian interventionist argument a new version of the white man’s burden and said, “You have to ask yourself, when was the last time the U.S. has been on the side of the people? And the answer is: NEVER.”
MORE... Top Aide to Hillary Clinton Urges the FBI to Disclose what it Knows about Trump's Russia Ties What will Hillary Clinton do for India? Not Much and Here's Why Clinton's Policies Look Like a Death Sentence for Americans 10 Things to Expect with a Hillary Clinton Presidency How do you explain the dynastic governance Clinton? Is the American dream in all its glory?
I’m not sure I can explain the Clinton dynasty except to agree that it is one. Chelsea has been very involved in the Clinton Foundation and is quite likely to enter political life and even run for president one day. We have had other political dynasties, most notably the Roosevelts, the Kennedys and the Bushes, and there are many lower level dynasties, like the Browns in California. Jerry Brown, the current governor of California, is the son of former California governor Pat Brown. New York State has the Cuomos; Governor Andrew Cuomo is the son of former Governor Mario Cuomo, and his brother Chris Cuomo is a prominent corporate television host.
Regarding the American dream, I assume you're referring to the dream that if you work hard and play by the rules, you can achieve some proportionate degree of status, security and prosperity. If so, the Clintons certainly aren't living the American dream because, although they did well in school, they've hardly played by the rules. They've enriched themselves with that well-oiled influence peddling operation I mentioned earlier, the Clinton Foundation and the Clinton Global Initiative. We're all wondering whether Hillary Clinton, and maybe even Bill Clinton, might finally be indicted now that the FBI has reopened its investigation of Clinton e-mail because more of it was discovered on the laptop that Anthony Weiner - a former Congressman under FBI investigation for sex offense - shared with his wife, Clinton aide Huma Abedin. If Hillary Clinton is elected, she'll have to be impeached, convicted and removed from office, but that's extremely unlikely - no matter what's in the newly discovered e-mail - if her party, the Democrats, win a majority in the House and more than a one- third minority in the Senate. It takes a majority in the House to impeach a president and a two-thirds majority in the Senate to then convict and remove a president. So Hillary Clinton is at a Berlusconi moment in her sordid career; her best chance of avoiding indictment is getting elected. Getting back to the American dream that you can get ahead by working hard and playing by the rules, Bill Clinton was impeached by the House of Representatives, for perjury and obstruction of justice regarding his affair with a 19-year-old White House intern and his testimony in a sexual harassment lawsuit brought by another former employee. However, his own party held a majority in the Senate and they acquitted him. This was all legal, according to the U.S. Constitution, but does it really sound like he was "playing by the rules"? During the final days of his presidency, Clinton acquitted Glencore International founder Mark Rich, an international fugitive who had fled to Switzerland. His ex-wife had donated to the Democratic National Committee, the Clinton Presidential Library and Hillary Clinton's New York Senate campaign.
According to the law, President Clinton had the authority to acquit Rich, but how would any rational person consider that anything but bribery and corruption?
In 2006, Clinton polished the reputation of President Nursultan Nazarbayev, Kazakhstan's autocratic leader and human rights offender, who then gave a uranium mining lease to Canadian businessman Frank Giustra's Shell Company, making it worth tens of millions of dollars overnight. Giustra then made a big contribution to the Clinton Foundation. No one has claimed that this was illegal, but is it "playing by the rules"?
When Guistra sold a majority stake in his company, Uranium One, to Rosatom, the Russian atomic energy agency, it was approved by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Giustra then contributed $2.35 million to the Clinton Foundation and Bill Clinton was offered a $500,000 speaking engagement with a Russian investment bank with links to the Kremlin. Does that sound like playing by the rules? And now Hillary's trying to make us believe that Russia's meddling in our elections and threatening confrontation with Russia over Syria. I don't think she's kidding about the confrontation, but the Clinton Foundation rarely passes up the chance to make another million dollars or more in any circumstances.
Meanwhile, most of the rest of us are not living the American dream. Sixty-three percent of Americans are living on the edge of financial catastrophe, unable to handle a $500 car repair or a $1000 emergency room bill . The Clintons, as I said, serve the oligarchy they have also managed to join. When Bill Clinton was on his way out, in the last months of his presidency, he worked with Republicans in the lame duck Congress to deregulate the banking industry. By 2008, its dishonest, excessive and abusive financialization scams had crashed the economy, costing millions of Americans their jobs and/or homes. Then, as a New York Senator, Hillary Clinton voted to bail out the big banks who committed the crime while many of the rest of us struggled in the crash’s wake.
How do you explain that candidate Clinton, who failed as Secretary of State with the death of the US Ambassador in Libya, her health problems, the scandal of emails, is the candidate of the Democrats?
Again, Clinton serves the interests of the oligarchy that she herself has joined. Many people believe that the nomination was stolen from Bernie Sanders, the Democratic candidate who spoke out against oligarchy, growing income inequality, and even the Israeli lobby’s dominance in American politics.
But there’s one other important element to this. Americans who identify as liberals, supporters of women's rights, and/or anti-racists have such a longstanding allegiance to the Democratic Party that supporting its nominee every four years is their knee-jerk reaction. Ever escalating foreign wars don’t seem to penetrate their consciousness or conscience, especially when those wars are waged primarily with drones and proxy armies instead of U.S. troops. And once the Republicans nominated the openly racist and misogynistic Donald Trump, defeating Trump became a liberal crusade.
There are, of course, glimmers of rationality and hope. Yesterday I was out canvassing for an Oakland, California ballot measure with a young Black man, a college sophomore. Despite Trump’s overt racism, he told me that he considers Clinton even more dangerous because he understands that she has essentially promised confrontation with Russia over Syria. He understands that such escalation increases the chance of a nuclear war, accidental or not, and that Trump, for all his faults, says that the Cold War is over, that NATO is largely obsolete, and that Clinton is recklessly risking confrontation with Russia by promising to remove Bashar Al-Assad.
Our Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein is reported to be polling at 16% among voters under 35, and much of Bernie Sanders’s support was quite visibly from the same age group. Local, grassroots organizing is also empowering people to create institutions free of oligarchic and corporate control. They include community gardens, renewable energy buyers' co-operatives, and GMO-free zones. If a ballot initiative to make California's Sonoma County GMO-free passes, the whole northwest coast of California will be a GMO-free zone, from Santa Cruz to Humboldt Counties and including one inland county, Trinity.
Don't you think that the two-headed American system with the candidates of two traditional parties, Democratic and Republican is out of breath?
I wouldn’t say it’s out of breath because it’s still very much in control. However, Trump has left the Republican Party in disarray, with many Republican luminaries and funders defecting to Clinton, who is welcoming them with open arms. As Black Agenda Report Editor Glen Ford has written , the Clintons “have succeeded in assembling under one party roof nearly the whole of the U.S. ruling class and their hordes of attendants and goons. The scam that undergirded the duopoly system that has served the Lords of Capital so well for so long, has come undone. Thanks to a white nationalist billionaire who was too spoiled to play by the corporate rules, the two parties of the ruling class have become one.”
It’s hard to say whether or not the Republican Party will survive this election or what it will be in another four years if it does.
One possibility could significantly change this. If Green Party presidential candidate Dr. Jill Stein wins 5% in this election, the Green Party will become an official national party eligible for 5% of the federal funds made available to official national parties to host their presidential nominating conventions and support their nominee. This year all federal funds went to the two official national parties, Republicans and Democrats, who also have access to huge amounts of plutocratic and corporate money. The Greens take no corporate money.
Five percent of the vote and five percent of the federal funding for elections may not sound like much, but it would be a huge watershed for the U.S. Greens. It would be a big psychological and visibility boost, and it would mean starting the next presidential campaign year with more than twice the funds that Jill Stein’s campaign has been able to raise.
Winning 5% would also ensure ballot access for the Greens in most states, not only in federal elections but also in down ballot races. As it is, Greens are required to spend much of their time and money just gathering enough signatures to satisfy all the byzantine ballot access requirements that vary in each of the 50 states.
Everyone knows that Clinton is the future president of the USA. In your opinion, why they are facilitated her task and who has interest in seeing Clinton in the Oval Office?
She is backed by the oligarchy, corporate and dynastic, particularly the investment bankers, the oil industry, and the weapons manufacturers who not only profit but also lobby for foreign wars. They are advancing their own interests by promoting a candidate who will serve them. Liberals have been conditioned to function as unpaid Clinton operatives in this election, and the corporate media, like the cops, serve as protectors of the oligarchy. And again, the majority of Americans are politically disengaged.
You are close to Jill Stein, head of the Green party, which emerged late in the campaign. Why was this alternative sabotaged?
Well, I wouldn’t say I’m close to Jill personally, but she knows who I am and I, of course, know who she is. I’ve reported on her campaign and on the U.S. Greens for the past year, on radio and in print and online outlets, and I’m always honored when she shares those reports on her social media pages. I write for the Black Agenda Report and feel politically and intellectually close to its editors, who have given their full support to the Green Party this year, even as Bernie Sanders surged in the polls and many imagined he might actually win the Democratic nomination. In these times that are so easy to see as the end times, shared rationality and humanity are the closest bonds that many of us have, regardless of the geographic distance between us.
Jill’s campaign could hardly compete with the Republicans' and Democrats' because neither she nor any other Greens solicit or accept corporate money. We stand behind the slogan, “People and Planet before Profits.” And we call for a halt to the death march led by the weapons manufacturers, fossil fuel giants, and agro-chemical companies who profit from it. Jill calls for immediately cutting the military budget by half, closing all the U.S. military bases in foreign countries and launching a “peace offensive.” She proposes free public education from kindergarten through college, the abolition of student debt, national health insurance and a “Green New Deal” that would reinvest the resources now squandered on weapons manufacture and all the illegal, immoral, lethal and environmentally catastrophic U.S. wars. The Green New Deal would create a renewable energy infrastructure and sustainable agriculture before it’s too late to stop the climate meltdown - if it isn’t too late already. And it would fully employ Americans in meaningful, dignified and cooperative work for the common good.
Of course that all makes far too much sense and threatens the highly concentrated wealth and power of the death-march industries. I would not be surprised if there were voter fraud to prevent Jill Stein and Ajamu Baraka from winning the 5% that would make us an official national party.
I have also seen enormous oligarchic determination to stop Greens at the local level. In 2003, Matt Gonzalez, the Green Party's mayoral candidate in San Francisco, seemed to have a good chance of winning. That so alarmed the Democratic Party that it sent all its best known, most powerful names and faces to San Francisco to campaign for the Democratic candidate. They sent Hillary and Bill. They sent Jesse Jackson. They sent many Democratic Party superstars more than once. They seemed to be more concerned about defeating Matt Gonzalez and the Greens in San Francisco than they were about defeating George Bush and the Republicans in the following year’s presidential election.
One of the founders of the San Francisco Green Party was elected to the City and County Board of Supervisors twice, but when he ran for Sheriff, an executive office, Democrats pulled him aside and said they could not allow his election unless he left the Greens and joined the Democratic Party, which he did. They still got rid of him after his first term, with a really ugly campaign, but that’s another complicated story in itself. The City and County of San Francisco once had more elected Greens than any city or county in the country, but many of those that Greens worked so hard to elect have since defected to the Democratic Party for the sake of their political careers.
Is not Hillary Clinton a danger for humanity?
Hell yes. I agree with Congolese author and political activist Patrick Mbeko, who said she’s more dangerous than ISIS, for all the reasons I’ve already mentioned. Her dark alliance with the death-march industries, and her seeming eagerness to confront Russia over Syria and/or on Russia’s borders in the interest of global hegemony. Russian uranium deal aside, I think that Diana Johnstone was most likely right when she wrote that “her strategic ambition in a nutshell is regime change in Russia.”
And I have to mention my friends from the African Great Lakes Region - particularly Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of the Congo - which became the killing grounds of the 1990s, as the U.S., using African proxies, established itself as the dominant power there. Most of my friends from that part of the world are horrified by the Clintons’ all but certain return to the White House. The Clintons are deeply committed to the false history of the Rwandan war and massacres that was used to justify the First and Second Congo Wars and later the “humanitarian” interventions in Libya, Syria, and Iraq. If the truth about Rwanda and DR Congo were known, Bill Clinton would be implicated in mass murder, but that's true of every U.S. president in office in my lifetime and probably long before that. No one's going to try to refer the most lethal military power in history to an international criminal court with more than symbolic authority.
You have many worked on Africa. How do you explain the French leadership in Africa?
Well, I’m no expert in this, but I can say a few things.
First, I wouldn’t call it leadership. I’d say that France sustains a neocolonial and military presence in Africa. France was a partner in the destruction of Libya. In Mali, Niger, the Central African Republic, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, France is protecting the uranium mines essential to the nuclear power that generates 75% of its electricity. There’s no doubt that France was complicit in the assassination of resource nationalist and debt resister President Thomas Sankara and the installation of President Blaise Compaoré in Burkina Faso. I don’t see any sign that French policy towards Burkina or any of its other former colonies is any more benign now, despite its resignation to Compaoré’s ouster by a popular movement.
France and the U.S. now appear to be military partners in Africa more often than not, but during the Rwandan war and massacres and the Congo Wars of the 1990s, the U.S. displaced France as the dominant power there.
However, a source of ongoing tension between France and the U.S. has been their divergent accounts of the massacres known as the Rwandan Genocide. The U.S. defends Rwandan President Paul Kagame’s account, in which he is the savior who swept in to stop the carnage. Kagame blames France, particularly for Operation Turquoise, in which French troops created a humanitarian corridor for Rwandan refugees, mostly Hutus, who were fleeing the advance of Kagame’s Rwandan Patriotic Army. This conflict has recently been renewed, first with France reopening its investigation of allegations that Kagame ordered the assassination of Rwanda and Burundi’s Hutu presidents, Juvenal Habyarimana and Cyprien Ntaryamira, in 1994. Rwanda responded by accusing 22 French officers of helping to plan and organize genocide in Rwanda.
In 2010, Nicholas Sarkozy attempted to ease the tension between France and the U.S. and Rwanda by accepting the U.S./Rwandan account of the massacres. He publicly apologized for France’s alleged guilt in Rwanda’s tragedy , and shortly thereafter, France was rewarded with greater access to DR Congo's resource riches. However, Alain Juppé, who was the French prime minister at the time of the Rwandan massacres and Operation Turquoise, was having none of that. He even left the country during Kagame’s 2011 "reconciliaton" visit to Paris . Now Juppé seems to be leading Sarkozy in the bid for his party’s nomination, and if he is elected president, the history of Rwanda and DR Congo in the 1990s will be more fiercely contested. Most of my Rwandan friends very much hope that Juppé will be elected because he defends the dissident history of what really happened. They believe, for one, that Operation Turquoise saved many Rwandan lives.
While Africa is a young continent, How do you explain that the countries are often directed by old presidents with several mandates and who don't want lose the power?
The old presidents cling to power, and the Western powers with geo-strategic interests enable them because autocrats are easier to corrupt and control than rowdy democrats and resource nationalists who try to represent their own people. Rwanda’s Kagame and Uganda’s Museveni are two prime examples of autocrats who have proven very useful to the U.S. and other Western interests.
France, the U.S., and all the rest of the NATO nations appear to be united in their determination to topple Burundi’s Nkurunziza, who has dared to raise an independent head and to favor the East, particularly Russia, in resource extraction contracts. I can't explain Mugabe's hold on power at age 92 or Omar al-Bashir's at 72, since neither are U.S. aliies. You'll have to ask Africans in those countries to explain that.
In your opinion, is not tribalism a major factor in the destabilization of Africa? Why doesn't Africa progress and does it stay in the tribal model?
I really hesitate to say anything about that because I’m not African myself and I think Western media often use the word “‘tribe” as a racial slur that disguises Western resource interests at play in African conflicts. I recently wrote a piece about the new film A Brilliant Genocide , and Milton Allimadi, the Ugandan-born editor of the Black Star News, told me he loved the piece but asked me to remove the one instance in which I’d used the word “tribe.” I told him I'd been hesitant about using that word and was glad to remove it. I’m now reading his book, “ Hearts of Darkness: How White Writers Created the Racist Image of Africa .”
Why are Congolese being massacred in Beni Territory, North Kivu Province ? The first question I've asked to try to answer that question is, “What resources are there?” In Beni, the answer is oil, timber, gold, diamonds, wolfram, coltan and cassiterite. Beni is a vivid example of the saying, “Everybody wants a piece of Congo.” No one could convince me that the industrial nations’ hunger for all these riches is not at the heart of these conflicts. Why are all the deadly “ethnic” conflicts in DR Congo’s resource-rich eastern provinces?
The competition and/or animosity between ethnicities or groups is often real, as they are in the West, but in Africa, the geostrategic and resource interests of the industrial nations are always in play behind the scenes. Western powers often exacerbate local rivalries in pursuit of their own interests.
I sometimes co-host a show called AfrobeatRadio with my friend Wuyi Jacobs on WBAI-New York City, and we both hope to someday produce a show about Rwanda and Burundi in which we won’t have to use the words “Hutu” or “Tutsi.” Dr. Léopold Munyakazi convinced me that these two groups are better understood not as tribes or ethnicities but as social classes in Rwandan history that were exaggerated by Europeans who have found it convenient to pit one group against the other.
Libya lives total chaos. How do you analyze the situation in Libya?
It’s horrible. Like so much else, it makes me deeply ashamed to be an American. If you read Hillary Clinton’s e-mail, it’s easy to see that the U.S.]/NATO war on Libya was, for one, another Western war against another defiant resource nationalist, Muammar Gaddafi. Regardless of whatever human rights offenses Gaddafi or Saddam Hussein were guilty of, both were resource nationalists, as was Mohammed Mossadegh, the secular, democratically elected prime minister of Iran who nationalized Iranian oil before our CIA and the UK's M16 ousted him in the 1953 coup. I wrote about how this played out in Libya in “ Clinton E-MaIl: We came, we saw, we got oil .”
Obama says that failing to prepare for the aftermath of the Libyan War was the greatest mistake of his presidency, but I'd say his greatest mistake was waging the Libyan War in the first place. Like the Iraq War, it has created chaos and perpetual war that continues to spread through the Middle East and North Africa.
Interview realized by Mohsen Abdelmoumen
Who is Ann Garrison?
Ann Garrison is an independent journalist who contributes to the San Francisco Bay View, Global Research, the Black Agenda Report and the Black Star News, and produces radio for KPFA-Berkeley and WBAI-New York City. In 2014, she was awarded the Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza Democracy and Peace Prize by the Womens International Network for Democracy and Peace . She can be reached at https://twitter.com/AnnGarrison?lang=en . | 1real |
New Poll Reveals The REAL REASON NFL Rating Are in The Toilet | You are here: Home / US / New Poll Reveals The REAL REASON NFL Rating Are in The Toilet New Poll Reveals The REAL REASON NFL Rating Are in The Toilet October 28, 2016 Pinterest
It probably won’t come as a surprise to anyone why NFL ratings seem to be sinking this season. It’s not because people are busy and have suddenly decided not to watch football. There are indeed several reasons, but the main reason seems to be due to the National Anthem protests by some NFL players.
No one has an issue with any of these men protesting – it’s called the 1 st Amendment – but people tune into football to forget about the daily grind and everything that’s going on in the world for a couple hours a week and don’t need to see some jackasses protesting AT WORK.
Let’s face it, you would probably get fired if you suddenly decided to protest during your work day while AT work. That’s exactly what these guys are doing. They should wait until they are out of work, like the rest of the country, to protest. No one would take issue with that.
From CBS Boston :
A fresh poll from Seton Hall surveyed 841 adults across the U.S. Each respondent was asked to identify seven separate factors as a reason for the NFL ratings drop, allowing them to answer “yes” or “no” for each of them. The leading factor, according to the poll, was the national anthem protests, which scored “yes” at a rate of 56 percent.
Other answers also scored “yes” at a high rate, including 50 percent of “yeses” for coverage of the presidential election, 47 percent for the league’s handling of domestic violence cases, 44 percent for the over-saturation of the market, 39 percent for increased interest in postseason baseball, and 33 percent for controversy over head injuries and player safety.
Again, it’s not about their right to protest. It’s that they are protesting AT WORK and protesting in front of CUSTOMERS of their EMPLOYERS. Customers who pay their multi-million dollar salaries every year through watching the NFL; buying tickets to games and buying products of said teams.
Forget the fact they are protesting for a bogus, communist-driven cause like ‘Black Lives Matter.’ The cause isn’t even relevant, it’s that they are doing it at work and interfering with their job – to entertain their customers. If you can’t do the one job you’re paid to do, you shouldn’t have that job.
And NFL ratings will continue to slide if these tools continue to fail at their job. | 1real |
Putin says hopes to discuss better Russia-U.S. ties with Trump | MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Friday he hoped to discuss the normalization of Russia-U.S. ties with President-elect Donald Trump. When asked when he would meet Trump, Putin said his U.S. counterpart would first need to appoint members of his team. | 0fake |
Caitlyn Jenner Slams Trump, Considers Running for Office | Caitlyn Jenner is not afraid to speak her mind. The Olympian turned reality TV star is making news once again. This week, while promoting her new book, The Secrets of My Life, she admitted that while she is a Republican and voted for President Donald Trump she is not happy with all of the president s policies and actions.Jenner spoke to a packed audience at the 92nd Street Y Community Center in New York this week. She says that she is looking into where her voice can be heard the loudest and how she can do the most to impact her community. She says that she does not regret voting for the president but she is not thrilled with everything has done. In the past she has said that she is a Republican because she supports the Constitution and limited government. While she says that she has no regrets about voting for the president, Jenner admits, As far as LGBT issues, yes, he s made some mistakes. I don t support him in everything that he does. But we needed to shake the system up. At the same time, Jenner said, My loyalties are not with Donald Trump. I will come after him and come after Republicans if they come after my community. I ve got a voice and they better listen, OK? I will come after them. When a member of the audience asked if she had any plans to run for elected office, Jenner replied, Would I be better working from the inside? If that is the case I would seriously look at a run. It just depends where I could be more effective. Some people know Jenner from her time as Bruce when she won multiple gold medals in the Olympics during the 1970s. Younger generations know her from the show Keeping Up with the Kardashians. Viewers watched her before her transformation, through the process and then after. The family has not responded well to her new book.Before she told the world that she was transgender, Jenner thought she had too many skeletons in her closet. Now that the world knows about that, she says, Now, I have no more secrets. I would have to look over the next year or two and see, Can I do a better job on the outside? or Am I in a position now that I can do a better job for my community on the inside? Featured image via Santiago Felipe/Getty Images | 1real |
Trial to Begin in Standoff at Oregon Wildlife Refuge - The New York Times | PORTLAND, Ore. — The trial of Ammon Bundy, his brother Ryan and five of their followers, antigovernment protesters charged in the armed takeover of a national wildlife refuge this year, will begin here on Tuesday in a federal court. The takeover, at a remote eastern Oregon reserve, began Jan. 2 and lasted nearly six weeks, starting a national debate about homegrown militias, public lands and constitutional rights. The defendants face conspiracy, weapons and theft charges. In all, 26 people have been indicted. One protester was shot and killed by the state police during the occupation. On Jan. 2, a small group of members of a militia group adopting the name Citizens for Constitutional Freedom — the number grew as the occupation wore on — seized control of administration buildings at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, about 30 miles southeast of Burns, in Harney County, a sparsely populated area in the high desert of eastern Oregon. In daily briefings with reporters, Ammon Bundy said the group had acted against what he called unconstitutional federal land management policies that infringed on the rights of citizens. His softly spoken statements echoed terms of a simpler, earlier America, where individual effort on the land counted for all, and government’s business was to stay out of the way. But guns, on hips and in the arms of lookouts, were . As they were en route to a community meeting on Jan. 26, where they hoped to persuade local ranchers to join their cause, Mr. Bundy and seven others were arrested in a traffic stop about 40 miles from the refuge. The arrests spiraled into bloodshed when a member of the group, LaVoy Finicum, 54, raced his truck toward a police roadblock. After his vehicle went off the road, Mr. Finicum got out and was shot and killed by Oregon State Police officers as he appeared to reach for a weapon. The last four holdouts at the refuge surrendered peacefully two weeks later. A grand jury indicted 26 members of the group on various charges, including conspiracy to impede federal employees from performance of their duties, which is punishable by up to six years in prison, as well as weapons charges and theft of government property. Eleven defendants have reached a plea deal with prosecutors charges were dropped against one defendant this month. The trial of seven other defendants is scheduled for February. In Oregon, as in many Western states, most of the land is owned by the federal government — a fact that has rankled conservative politicians and protesters like the Bundys for many years. Efforts to wrest land back into private ownership or state control have simmered in state capitols in the Rocky Mountain region for years, fueling resentment even as they have foundered. At the Malheur refuge, a dispute between federal officials and a local ranching family — Dwight L. Hammond and his son Steven D. Hammond — became a catalyst for the militants. But a long decline in the area’s economic health, mainly driven by a collapse of the timber industry, compounded local frustrations. Cliven Bundy, Ammon and Ryan’s father, led the family into confrontation in an armed standoff in 2014 against federal officials over illegal cattle grazing on public land in Nevada. The elder Mr. Bundy has for many years refused to obtain permits to graze his cattle on public land. When federal officials said they would confiscate the cattle, an armed standoff ensued. Cliven Bundy was arrested and indicted this year for his role in that episode, as were Ammon, Ryan and two other men who were also at the Malheur takeover. That case is proceeding separately in Nevada, with a trial scheduled for February. | 0fake |
Contrary to Trump Tweet, Senator Flake still undecided on tax bill | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump predicted on Sunday that Senator Jeff Flake will oppose the Republican tax bill, but the senator’s office says he has not yet made up his mind. “Senator Flake is still reviewing the tax reform bill on its merits. How he votes on it will have nothing to do with the president,” a spokesman for the senator said in an email. That is contrary to an assertion made by Trump on Sunday in a post on Twitter. “He’ll be a NO on tax cuts because his political career anyway is ‘toast.’,” Trump wrote of Flake on Twitter. Where individual Republican senators stand on the tax bill has become the focus of those trying to determine whether it will pass because Republicans control only 52 seats in the Senate. More than two Republican defections would likely kill the bill. Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson has already publicly stated he opposes the bill in its current form. The House voted last week to approve the tax bill with no support from Democrats and 13 Republicans defecting. Trump and Flake, both Republicans, have been critical of each other in recent months. Flake delivered a speech on the Senate floor in October during which he said Trump threatened the nation’s democracy. In the same speech, Flake announced he would not be seeking re-election to the Senate next year when his term expires. Trump has in turn been critical of Flake, saying he would not be able to win re-election. On Saturday at an event in Arizona, Flake was overheard on a nearby microphone talking with Mesa Mayor John Giles about Trump. “If we become the party of Roy Moore and Donald Trump, we are toast,” Flake said, according to television station KNXV, whose microphone recorded him. Moore, who is the Republican candidate for a Senate seat in Alabama, has faced sexual misconduct allegations, and Republican leaders in Congress have urged him to drop out of the Dec. 12 special election. In his Twitter post on Sunday, Trump also suggested that Flake intentionally made those remarks in order to be heard. “Sen. Jeff Flake(y), who is unelectable in the Great State of Arizona (quit race, anemic polls) was caught (purposely) on “mike” saying bad things about your favorite President,” Trump wrote on Twitter. | 0fake |
Republican Ryan wants trade talks with Britain | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Paul Ryan, the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, called on Tuesday for Washington, in parallel with its negotiations with Europe, to pursue a separate free trade agreement with Britain, once it has formally separated from the European Union. Ryan, the highest-ranking elected Republican in the United States, echoed a call from many members of his party, who have dismissed President Barack Obama’s contention that Britain will be at the “back of the queue” for trade talks. Obama issued that warning in April when he intervened to try to persuade Britons to vote to remain in the June 23 referendum on staying or leaving the EU. Free trade agreements require the approval of both houses of the U.S. Congress. Ryan’s Republicans currently control a majority in both the House and Senate. EU and U.S. negotiations had sought to conclude the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) talks before Obama leaves office in January. Although many of his fellow Democrats oppose trade deals as a potential threat to U.S. jobs, Obama has worked with Republicans to pass trade measures. “That is something we should begin discussions with Great Britain to ease concerns so that we do have a smooth trade relationship with Great Britain because they are our indispensable ally,” Ryan said on WISN, a radio station in his home state Wisconsin. The remarks were distributed by Ryan’s office in Washington. Some trade experts have said that a deal on TTIP is unlikely for years now without Britain at the table, which could open an opportunity for a separate deal with Britain. | 0fake |
Obama’s DOJ is Blocking the FBI from Huma Abedin’s Clinton Emails! | Email
America learned a worrisome bit of news on Sunday when mainstream media outlets began reporting that while the Department of Justice was in possession of tens of thousands (possibly hundreds of thousands ) of new (and unseen) emails pertinent to the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server, they were NOT allowing the FBI to have access to those emails !
This is extremely frustrating news, as there is less than two weeks to go before Election Day and most Americans would like to know for sure if Hillary Clinton is indeed a crook before they go and pull the voting lever. Yahoo News reported that the FBI had not yet attained a warrant to see the emails, but this should be a moot point for two reasons – first, Anthony Weiner (the subject of the investigation that dug up the new Abedin/Clinton emails) has been cooperating and gave investigators clearance to all of his devices and electronic material. Secondly, Abedin previously swore to investigators that she had turned over all of her devices and all of her recorded emails. The discovery of a new device and thousands of new emails proves she lied to investigators and could be facing prison for doing so. (UPDATE: The FBI’s warrant finally came through Sunday evening and they should begin combing through every email on the laptop soon.)
While the DOJ may be stonewalling the FBI for now, Fox News’ Bret Baier explained that the FBI doesn’t need a warrant because Weiner has already given them permission to search the computer. I emailed that 2 sources say Weiner is cooperating w/ FBI- & co-owned laptop. Also NY FBI had info 4 a few weeks- pressure was building https://t.co/AHbQVtvQzg
More from the Daily Caller :
Additionally, the U.S. Attorneys offices and local law enforcement have access to the FBI laboratory , for example, to conduct “scientific examinations of evidence for any federal, state, and/or local law enforcement organization in the United States.”
“With all of these law enforcement agencies, both local and federal, now looking into this case, it’s a sign that they’re really going after him,” a law enforcement source told The NY Post back in September. “They want to nail him.”
Less than two weeks ago, The Daily Mail reported that a federal grand jury was expected to hear the allegations against Weiner in the coming weeks. Weiner, as a result of the grand jury convening, already received a federal subpoena for his devices, as reported by CNN in September. The FBI confiscated Weiner’s electronic devices on October 3, The New York Times reported .
What does it all mean?
The FBI is going to get those emails, each and every one, the DOJ knows this, which means the only possible reason for belaboring the handoff to the FBI is to slow the course of the investigation ensuring that any new information is held until AFTER Election Day. This is corruption and election fraud of the highest order, coordinated by Obama’s DOJ and executed by Attorney General Loretta Lynch.
Article reposted with permission from Constitution.com Don't forget to Like Freedom Outpost on Facebook , Google Plus , & Twitter . You can also get Freedom Outpost delivered to your Amazon Kindle device here . | 1real |
Mainstream Media Crashed — The Scapegoat is 'Fake News' | . Mainstream Media Crashed — The Scapegoat is 'Fake News' They kept telling the American people Hillary Clinton was going to win the election; and in every wa... Print Email http://humansarefree.com/2016/11/mainstream-media-crashed-scapegoat-is.html They kept telling the American people Hillary Clinton was going to win the election; and in every way they could think of, they told the American people this was a good idea. Then, on election night, they, the media, crashed. The results came in. The media went into deep shock. As protests and riots then spread across America, the media neglected to mention: a) they’d been bashing Trump because he said he might not accept the outcome of the vote, and b) here were large numbers of people on the Democrat side who weren’t accepting the outcome of the vote.A new campaign had to be launched. Suddenly, on cue, it was: Hillary Clinton lost because “fake news” about her had been spread around during the campaign. Fake news sites. That was the reason. These “fake sites” had to be punished. Somehow. They had to be defamed. Blocked. Censored. Here is an excerpt from a list of “fake news” sites suggested by one professor. The list is circulating widely on the Web: Project Veritas; Obama put in his two cents : “Because in an age where there’s so much active misinformation and it’s packaged very well and it looks the same when you see it on a Facebook page or you turn on your television… If everything seems to be the same and no distinctions are made, then we won’t know what to protect.” Excuse me. “We won’t know what to protect?” Meaning what to favor, what to promote, what to lie about? Meaning only some speech is free? Obama is way, way behind the curve. Thousands of websites and blogs have been exposing major media as fake for years. I started nomorefakenews.com in 2001. If Google, Facebook, and Twitter keep expanding their censorship of “disfavored messages,” they’re going to pay a price. More and more users will go elsewhere. The facade of the major media is getting thinner. You can see a glow of rage and resentment behind it. They’re desperately looking for revenge on the millions and millions of people who are deserting them and laughing at them. They presumed too much. They presumed they had us in the palm of their hand. We were their property. We were transfixed by their authority. All that is going away. Bye, bye. The big shift is accelerating. Independent media are in the ascendance. Understand that. Recognize it. The impossible is happening. Fake news sites? Please. The major media are the biggest fakes the world has ever seen. Their anchors and star reporters are bloviating cranks. They’re dinner-theater actors. The Mainstream Media has been caught faking news countless times, which had serious consequences worldwide: 9. BBC Journalist Comes Clean: 'Believe Nothing You Read Or Watch' Over the years, I’ve talked to some of them. I’ve warned them of their coming troubles. They were miles away from believing me. Now, they’re starting to sweat blood. Major media news for America is still basically manufactured in New York and Washington — plus occasional outbursts from Hollywood creatures who bemoan the decline of inclusive liberalism, as they expand their gun-toting security staffs and dig deeper bunkers. The New York-Washington axis exists in a self-serving bubble, which has now taken serious punctures. The delusional attacks against “fake sites” underlines how out of touch these elites are with the rest of the country. Independent media outlets are winning. They won’t be stopped. When the people who now head the tech giants were growing up, they were heralding the Internet as a new era of free information-exchange. But now that they find themselves working with the government in the Surveillance State, they’re fronting for censorship. In fact, they’re showing they were never for freedom. That was a pose all along. They were, from the beginning, agents of repression. They can try to stop independent media now, but they will fail. Fake web sites? What about fake companies? What about Google, Facebook, Twitter? Behind their happy-happy messages, they were built to propagandize, profile, and control. Understand this: major media have a rock-bottom article of faith. It is: “We own the news.” They can’t give it up. They’ll never give it up. It fuels everything they do. It’s the substance and core of their attitude. As their ship goes down below the waves, they’ll be chanting it. “We own the news.” But they don’t. In truth, they never did. For a time, they managed to sell that delusion to the people. That time is drawing to a close. The elite political class and their media minions fear more than independent news countering their own news. For obvious reasons, every civilization down through history has had its own monopolistic media, its central “broadcasting system.” Its controlled outlet. But now, The One has become Many. That is the threat. The rapid proliferation of The Many is an unpredictable X-factor. The population is waking up to decentralized media. Instead of the hypnotic attachment to one basic information source — the habit of a lifetime — the public is learning to handle multiple sources. Therefore, the hypnotic spell is being broken and dissolved. This is the basic problem for the elites. How can they reinstate the trance? By trying to censor the Internet? By creating a sudden war or other disaster, briefly “unifying” the country? These are not permanent solutions, particularly since more and more people understand such maneuvers and their true aims. Awake is awake. Putting the genie back in the bottle — particularly when major media denizens aren’t very bright, as evidenced by their latest “fake news” scam — is on the order of trying to perform a piece of stage magic after the audience has already learned how it’s done. Of course, the media clowns will try. And in the process, they’ll further expose themselves and actually assist in the awakening. Boom. By Jon Rappoport Dear Friends, HumansAreFree is and will always be free to access and use. If you appreciate my work, please help me continue.
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VICE MAGAZINE CALLS FOR ISIS-LIKE DESTRUCTION: “Let’s Blow Up Mount Rushmore” | It is becoming increasingly difficult to separate leftists from Islamic terrorists as both destroy monuments, statues, and seek to eliminate freedoms we enjoy. On a day in which an Islamic terrorist killed over a dozen people in Barcelona, senior editor Wilber Cooper has the audacity to publish an article for VICE Magazine urging the left to destroy Mt. Rushmore just like ISIS would.In his article Let s Blow Up Mount Rushmore, Cooper attacks the Founding Fathers and calls for a demolition of the monument. His call to erase historical markers, such as statues, echoes the recent movement from left-wingers for a culture war that would decimate Americans political traditions and heroes. Those targeted heroes include Thomas Jefferson, former president and chief author of the Bill of Rights such as the First Amendment and General and President George Washington, who declined offers to become a dictator after winning the Revolutionary War.Cooper argues that these historical monuments and statues help preserve a system of racial exploitation and inequality, and should be erased to help build a new society. He says, It s going to be impossible to improve America if we can t be honest about its origins and its past. He insists that Trump and his white supremacist cohorts believe the reverence some Americans have for these statues is simply respect for history, and that tearing them down is tantamount to ripping pages out of a textbook. But monuments built by the state are not history they are manifestations of power. Upon acknowledging the insensitivity of the article s title given the tragic events which occurred earlier today in Spain, VICE Magazine deleted the original article and wrote an editor s note: The headline and URL of this story have been updated. We do not condone violence in any shape or form, and the use of blow up in the original headline as a rhetorical device was misguided and insensitive. We apologize for the error. They have since changed the title to Get Rid of Mount Rushmore. Wow. What an improvement. Leftists continue to contradict their self-proclaimed peace-seeking objectives and prove that they are actually seeking to burn down the United States by getting rid of every trace of this great country s history. And you can bet they are coming for the Constitution next.Read more: Breitbart | 1real |
Solar-powered Pipe desalinates 1.5 billion gallons of drinking water a year for California | Solar-powered Pipe desalinates 1.5 billion gallons of drinking water a year for California Nov 7, 2016 25 1
Solar power and water desalination are two of the most important things to lock down in the modern age. Produces an endless source of drinking water and electricity is what we need to guide us through the unknowns of a changing climate .
This is why an incredible project like The Pipe needs global attention.
The machine can generate 10,000 MWh each year and additionally turn 4.5 billion liters (or 1.5 billion gallons) of salt water into drinking water in that time.
It was unveiled at the Land Art Generator Initiative in Santa Monica, California.
“LAGI 2016 comes to Southern California at an important time,” write Rob Ferry and Elizabeth Monoian, co-founders of the Land Art Generator Initiative . “The sustainable infrastructure that is required to meet California’s development goals and growing population will have a profound influence on the landscape. The Paris Climate Accord from COP 21 has united the world around a goal of 1.5–2° C, which will require a massive investment in clean energy infrastructure.”
It’s an immense and beautiful structure.
“Above, solar panels provide power to pump seawater through an electromagnetic filtration process below the pool deck, quietly providing the salt bath with its healing water and the city with clean drinking water,” the design team writes in their brief. “The Pipe represents a change in the future of water.”
“What results are two products: pure drinkable water that is directed into the city’s primary water piping grid, and clear water with twelve percent salinity. The drinking water is piped to shore, while the salt water supplies the thermal baths before it is redirected back to the ocean through a smart release system, mitigating most of the usual problems associated with returning brine water to the sea.” | 1real |
Swedish PM survives vote of no-confidence | STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven easily survived a parliamentary vote of no confidence brought on Friday by the anti-immigration Sweden Democrats over a botched IT outsourcing project that may have led to the leak of sensitive information. Only 43 of the parliament s 349 members supported the motion. Had Lofven lost, the government would have resigned, just a year before a general election. Two ministers have resigned over the potential leak of sensitive data as a result of a deal under which IBM Sweden took over some IT functions of the Swedish Transport Agency. During the last 37 years, only eight votes of no-confidence have been tabled in parliament. None has been successful. | 0fake |
Jump in Florida, Nevada early voting could reap Latino gains for Clinton | MIAMI (Reuters) - The man answering a volunteer’s knock on the door in the Kendall section of Miami-Dade County on Saturday was emphatic: Not only would he vote but “esperamos que la presidenta gane” - Spanish for “we hope Madam President wins.” Volunteers across Florida made a last-minute push to get voters to the polls this weekend with early voting ending on Sunday ahead of Election Day on Tuesday, pitting Republican Donald Trump against Democrat Hillary Clinton, or “la presidenta,” as the man at the door called her. Latino voters like the man in Kendall and elsewhere could have an outsized influence in Tuesday’s election. Early voting data may portend a jump in the number of Hispanic voters this year, especially in the key swing states of Nevada and Florida, and Clinton would likely be the biggest beneficiary. Clinton has polled much stronger among Latino voters nationwide: a Washington Post/Univision poll released last week gave her 67 percent of the Hispanic vote to Trump’s 19 percent. Trump has fared poorly with America’s largest minority voting group, having repeatedly angered Hispanics with disparaging comments about their communities. A recent poll conducted by the firms The Tarrance Group and Bendixen and Amandi found that Hispanic registered voters in Florida favor Clinton 60 percent to 30 percent. In Nevada the gap was even wider - 72 percent for Clinton and 19 percent for Trump. In Florida, the Clinton campaign estimates early Latino voting is up 139 percent, or more than twice as much, compared to 2012, according to a field report dated Wednesday. Democratic strategist Steve Schale, a Florida expert, estimated that 170,000 more Hispanics had voted early or by mail as of Wednesday than had voted early or by mail in the entire 2012 election, according to a post on his blog. “And keep in mind, because Hispanic is a self-identifying marker, studies have found that the real Hispanic vote is larger than the registration. So while Hispanics might make up 14.2 percent of the voters who have voted so far, in reality, the number is larger,” he wrote. Despite the surge in early voting, there is no certainty about which candidate people chose for president. There is also no guarantee that the higher Latino turnout rate will continue on Election Day and that they and other minority voters will make enough of a difference to swing Florida and other states. Trump kicked off his maverick campaign last year by describing Mexican immigrants as rapists and criminals, and made a tough stance on immigration a signature part of his vision for America. He called for a wall to be built on the border and said an American-born federal judge could not do his job because of his Mexican heritage. That rhetoric might be hurting him in an increasingly diverse Florida, where many election watchers believe Trump must win to have a chance to secure the minimum 270 votes in the Electoral College needed to claim the White House. Daniel Smith, a political science professor at the University of Florida who also does voting research, said Democrats have a strong lead among Hispanics who have voted early in Florida. “From my perspective this is Hispanics in Florida reacting viscerally to Donald Trump,” said Smith. “His scorched earth campaign against immigrants and especially Hispanics is coming home to roost in Florida.” The state of Nevada does not note race or ethnicity on its voter registration but other data there suggest Latinos also are turning out in force. For one thing, Clark County has seen a surge in early voting. Between in-person and absentee voting, registered Democrats have now returned over 72,000 more ballots than registered Republicans there. Those figures do not indicate which candidate voters picked, only the party with which the voters are registered. Friday alone saw 57,172 votes in person in Clark County. Photos making the rounds on social media showed especially long lines at a Cardenas market voting site, which stayed open late to accommodate the surge of voters. Clark County, which includes Las Vegas, has a large Latino population – 30.6 percent, compared to 28.1 percent for Nevada as a whole, according to the U.S. Census. Even more Republican votes elsewhere in the state are so far not enough to counterbalance that Democratic lead in Clark County. Overall, the Democrats have cast around 46,000 more ballots in Nevada than Republicans. That’s not an accident, said Artie Blanco, the Nevada state coordinator for the progressive group For Our Future. Her organization and others banded together in a major get-out-the-vote push, especially among voters of color, and the coalition’s data suggest that the effort paid off. Twenty-two percent of Democrats who voted on Friday had a conversation with someone from that progressive coalition at some point after Oct. 15, Blanco said. Among Latino voters on the last three voting days, the coalition had conversations with 14 percent of them after Oct. 15, according to the group’s data. Trump on Saturday took a jab at the early voting turnout in Nevada. “They didn’t get the kind of vote that they needed to stop us on Tuesday,” Trump said in Reno. “Tuesday is our day in this state.” He said Reno and northern Nevada could “carry us all the way to Washington.” But Blanco said the votes were instead the result of major work to bring out voters, especially people of color and that progressive organizations were not done yet. “We have all these voters that we need to now go back and say, ‘You’ve got one day,’” she said of those who had not yet cast ballots. | 0fake |
Like Magic, Muggles Make New Harry Potter Play Disappear From Bookstores - The New York Times | As the rain poured down, a man with a Harry Potter phoenix feather tattoo on his forearm waited patiently on a Brooklyn sidewalk. The man, Robert Saulter, a lawyer in Boston for the United States Air Force, was in New York for the weekend and said he just had to be at Saturday’s midnight party for the latest in the Harry Potter series, “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child,” which is actually a play. “It sounds ridiculous that I’m 32 years old and I’m tearing up,” Mr. Saulter said as the BookCourt store in the Cobble Hill neighborhood opened its doors. “But I always felt misunderstood and I feel like if you’ve read the books, you understand the emotional connection you get to Harry, someone who really wanted to do good things with the world and wanted to feel loved. ” Mr. Saulter even named his son, who is 7 months old, Phoenix Harrison, for “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix,” the fifth in the series. Mr. Saulter was among nearly 200 people who waited at the store for the script that was written by Jack Thorne and based on a story by Mr. Thorne, John Tiffany and J. K. Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter book series, which led to films and a theme park. The play, which opened in London over the weekend, has already become a critical, commercial and — with the casting of the black actress Noma Dumezweni as Hermione Granger — controversial hit. It continues where the final book left off, as Harry and his crew send their children to the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Ms. Rowling has made it clear that “Cursed Child” is not an eighth Harry Potter novel, but the fans do not care. The book topped the 2016 charts for Amazon’s print and Kindle sales, while also becoming Barnes Noble’s top book since “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” in 2007. Scholastic, the publisher in the United States, will not have sales figures until later this week. It has been nearly 20 years since the first book and almost 10 years since the publication of “Deathly Hallows,” what many have considered the final chapter in Ms. Rowling’s story. And Mary Gannett, an owner of BookCourt, said she had not been sure the store should host a party this time. Interest trickled in slowly after the script’s publication was announced in February, Ms. Gannett said, but in the past week, requests for reserved copies nearly doubled. In New York and across the country, Potterheads swarmed bookstores Saturday night and into Sunday morning to celebrate the release, as if they had found the secret winged key that not only let them back into their childhoods but also opened the door to another generation. Judy Stelter, the manager of Book World in Sturgeon Bay, Wis. was expecting a smaller, older audience for the store’s midnight party. Instead, she was greeted by teenagers and young children with their parents, who filled the small store to enjoy cake and chocolate frogs (a treat among wizards). “Look at all the young kids in here,” Ms. Stelter said, standing beside boxes of “Cursed Child. ” “They’re in here for a book that’s in print and on paper, not on an electric device. Once they read like that, they’ll read for life. ” Many fans happily brought family members who were not old enough — or even born yet — for the celebrations of the original series. In Atlanta, Erin Whitlock, 24, brought her brother Liam to a Barnes Noble in the Edgewood neighborhood. “He’s as big a fan as I am, and it’s just really cool to be here tonight because he gets to experience what I grew up with,” Ms. Whitlock said, noting that her brother visits Ms. Rowling’s website Pottermore, where she regularly publishes new stories. “The wizarding world doesn’t stop with the books. It goes with your imagination. ” JillEllyn Riley, 48, a writer and editor who lives in Cobble Hill, perused the novels at BookCourt with her sons, ages 13 and 19, who did not seem to mind the spectacle of their mother dressed as Sybil Trelawney, a professor at Hogwarts. Ms. Riley said she hosted monthly Harry Potter club meetings in the neighborhood with her younger son. “We came here to BookCourt for Book 7, all of us,” she said. “My was 3, and I knew that later he would read the books and wouldn’t be able to go to the midnight releases, but I knew he’d know he had been there once. ” Aubrey Nolan, 25, who planned the evening at BookCourt, said she wanted to keep the activities family friendly. All around her, children sipped cream soda floats they passed off as butterbeer and decorated wands with paint, sequins and string. Others had mug shots taken that resembled the wizards imprisoned at Azkaban. Bookstores around the country embraced the theme, too, with Books of Wonder in Manhattan offering photos with owls (like Harry’s Hedwig) and the Charles Deering Library at Northwestern University outside Chicago refereeing a Quidditch match, a sport played in the series. At the Elliott Bay Book Company in Seattle, nearly 250 people showed up for what was billed as a Hogwarts reunion. And members of the Seattle Shakesbeerience performed the first few scenes from the play with Patrick Lennon — who said the group’s motto is “script in one hand, drink in the other” — as Harry. “I’m in the group that aged along with Harry,” Mr. Lennon, 30, said. “One of the actresses says she’ll probably be crying through it. I might too. ” For some, nothing was more important than getting their hands on the newest edition, even if it meant waiting alone or interrupting a vacation. Annie Grandidge and Travis Dicks, tourists from New Castle, Australia, spent two and a half hours in line at the Barnes Noble on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. And Ashley Johnson, 32, the actress who played Chrissy Seaver in the sitcom “Growing Pains,” recently moved to Brooklyn to work on NBC’s “Blindspot.” She showed up at BookCourt by herself, knowing she would easily make friends with other Potter fans. “I was a little angry that I didn’t read these as I was growing up,” Ms. Johnson said. “I found them in my and I never got to go wait in line for the original books, so to be a part of that I felt like I needed to go do it. We don’t get to do this with a lot of things with how fast the world moves, and to wait in line for a book at midnight feels really special. ” Margaret Piraino, 24, dressed as Nymphadora Tonks, a witch, complete with rainbow hair and jewelry, attended the BookCourt party with her girlfriend, Laurel Detkin, a fellow Potter enthusiast. But this time was different. “I grew up with Harry Potter and it’s been my entire life, and my dad would go to Barnes Noble with me every time there was a new release,” Ms. Piraino, who lives in Brooklyn Heights, said. “And this year, my dad died in January and it’s the first time I had to go on my own. ” In Seattle, Dylan Blanford, 13, donned a long black robe and a yellow tie as a member of Hufflepuff, one of the four houses at Hogwarts, and said he was jealous that he was not at parties for the previous Harry Potter books. He started reading the books at age 5. “I’m excited because there’s still this little jumping around inside of me going, ‘Harry! Harry! Harry!’ And there’s also this jumping around inside of me going, ‘Harry! Harry! Harry! ’” he said. “I’m so excited because it’s not the end, forever, you know?” | 0fake |
Pentagon weighs using force to protect US-backed Syria rebels targeted by Russia | Senior U.S. military leaders and defense officials are debating whether military force should be used to protect Washington-backed Syrian rebels who have come under attack by Russian airstrikes in recent days.
The Associated Press reported early Friday that the question was part of a broader debate within the Pentagon about the the broader dilemma of how the administration should respond to what White House press secretary Josh Earnest described as Russia's "indiscriminate military operations against the Syrian opposition."
Tensions between the U.S. and Russia are escalating over Russian airstrikes that are serving to strengthen Syrian President Bashar Assad by targeting the so-called "moderate" rebels rather than hitting Islamic State (ISIS) fighters it promised to attack.
Turkey's Foreign Ministry says Ankara and its allies in the U.S.-led coalition are calling on Russia to immediately cease attacks on the Syrian opposition and to focus on fighting Islamic State militants.
Meanwhile, a joint statement by the United States, France, Germany, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Britain expressed concern over Russia's military actions, saying they will "only fuel more extremism and radicalization." The text of the statement was released by the Turkish Foreign Ministry on Friday, and confirmed by the French Foreign Ministry.
The Pentagon on Thursday had its first conversation with Russian officials in an effort to avoid any unintended U.S.-Russian confrontations as the airstrikes continue in the skies over Syria. During the video call, Elissa Slotkin, who represented the U.S. side, expressed America's concerns that Russia is targeting areas where there are few if any ISIS forces operating. Slotkin is the acting assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs.
A key concern is the prospect of the U.S. and Russia getting drawn into a shooting war in the event that Russian warplanes hit moderate Syrian rebels who have been trained and equipped by the U.S. military.
At U.N. headquarters in New York, Secretary of State John Kerry said: "What is important is Russia has to not be engaged in any activities against anybody but ISIL. That's clear. We have made that very clear."
"We are not yet where we need to be to guarantee the safety and security" of those carrying out the airstrikes, he said.
In an interview late Thursday on CBS's "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert," Kerry described the military consultations as "a way of making sure that planes aren't going to be shooting at each other and making things worse."
"What is happening is a catastrophe, a human catastrophe really unparalleled in modern times," Kerry said of the Syrian crisis, adding that Russia should help the United States "persuade Assad to be the saver of his country, not the killer of his country."
U.S. officials made it clear earlier this year that rebels trained by the U.S. would receive air support in the event they are attacked by either IS or Syrian government troops. Currently, only about 80 U.S.-trained Syrian rebels are back in Syria fighting with their units.
The U.S. policy is very specific. It doesn't address a potential attack by Russian planes and does not include Syrian rebels who have not been through the U.S. military training, even though they may be aligned with the U.S. or fighting Islamic State militants.
So far, the Russian airstrikes have been in western Syria. The Syrians trained and equipped by the U.S. have primarily been operating in the north.
U.S. officials said the issue is one of many being hashed out by top leaders within the department and the military's Joint Staff. One official said they are weighing the potential fallout.
At worst, if Russia bombs rebels trained by the U.S. and American fighter jets intercede to protect the Syrians, the exchange could trigger an all-out confrontation with Russia -- a potential disaster the administration would like to avoid.
Fueling the concerns is the fact that Russia has aircraft in Syria with air-to-air combat capacity, even though ISIS has no air force and the only aircraft in the skies belong to U.S.-led coalition or the Syrian government.
Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook would not provide details of the talks with Russia. But much of the discussion involved proposals for avoiding conflict between U.S. and Russian aircraft flying over Syria.
Kerry said he foresees further consultations with the Russians about air operations. And Cook said the U.S. side proposed using specific international radio frequencies for distress calls by military pilots flying in Syrian airspace, but he was not more specific about that or other proposals.
Russia's defense ministry said that over the past 24 hours it had damaged or destroyed 12 targets in Syria belonging to the ISIS fighters, including a command center and ammunition depots. A U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad, Col. Steve Warren, said he had no indication that the Russians had hit Islamic State targets.
"While there is always danger of conflict, of inadvertent contact" between coalition and Russian warplanes, "we are continuing with our operations," Warren told reporters at the Pentagon. | 0fake |
Turkey's Erdogan calls on United States to step back from Jerusalem move | ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan called on Friday for the United States to step back from its decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel s capital after the United Nations voted against the move despite what he called ugly and unforgivable U.S. threats. More than 120 countries defied President Donald Trump on Thursday and voted in favor of a United Nations General Assembly resolution calling for the United States to drop its recent recognition of Jerusalem as Israel s capital. Despite threats, the U.N. took an honorable stance, Erdogan said at a meeting of his AK Party in Istanbul. The U.S. should turn back from this wrong step. Trump had threatened to cut off financial aid to countries that voted in favor. A total of 128 countries backed the resolution, which is non-binding, nine voted against and 35 abstained. Twenty-one countries did not cast a vote. The U.S. attitude ahead of the U.N. vote will be remembered in the history of democracy as an ugly and unforgivable act, Erdogan said. Trump s warning appeared to have some impact, with more countries abstaining and rejecting the resolution than usually associated with Palestinian-related resolutions. The White House picked up the phone and called these countries one by one, threatening them blatantly, Erdogan said, without elaborating. | 0fake |
Merkel's CDU agrees to pursue grand coalition in Germany | BERLIN (Reuters) - Leaders of German Chancellor Angela Merkel s conservative party agreed on Sunday to pursue a grand coalition with the Social Democrats (SPD) to break the political deadlock in Europe s biggest economy. Merkel, whose fourth term was plunged into doubt a week ago when three-way coalition talks with the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP) and Greens collapsed, was handed a political lifeline by the SPD on Friday. Under intense pressure to preserve stability and avoid new elections, the SPD reversed its position and agreed to talk to Merkel, raising the prospect of a new grand coalition, which has ruled for the past four years, or a minority government. We have the firm intention of having an effective government, Daniel Guenther, conservative premier of the state of Schleswig Holstein, told reporters after a four-hour meeting of leading members of Merkel s Christian Democrats (CDU). We firmly believe that this is not a minority government but that it is an alliance with a parliamentary majority. That is a grand coalition, he said. The meeting came after the conservative state premier of Bavaria threw his weight behind a new right-left tie-up. An alliance of the conservatives and SPD is the best option for Germany - better anyway than a coalition with the Free Democrats and Greens, new elections or a minority government, Horst Seehofer, head of the Bavarian CSU, told Bild am Sonntag. An Emnid poll also showed on Sunday that 52 percent of Germans backed a grand coalition. Several European leaders have emphasised the importance of getting a stable German government in place quickly so the bloc can discuss its future, including proposals by French President Emmanuel Macron on euro zone reforms and Brexit. Merkel, who made clear on Saturday she would pursue a grand coalition, says that an acting government under her leadership can do business until a new coalition is formed. The youth wing of Merkel s conservatives raised pressure on the parties to get a deal done by Christmas, saying if there was no deal, the conservatives should opt for a minority government. In an indication, however, that the process will take time, the CDU agreed on Sunday evening to delay a conference in mid-December that had been due to vote on the three-way coalition. The SPD premier of the state of Lower Saxony said he feared there was no way a decision would be reached this year. It is a long path for the SPD, said Stephan Weil on ARD television. Merkel is against going down the route of a minority government because of its inherent instability, but pundits have said one possibility is for the conservatives and Greens to form a minority government with informal SPD support. The Greens have said they are open to a minority government. Even before any talks get under way, the two blocs have started to spar over policy priorities. Merkel, whose conservatives won most parliamentary seats in a Sept. 24 vote but bled support to the far right, has said she wants to maintain sound finances in Germany, cut some taxes and invest in digital infrastructure. She has to keep Bavaria s CSU on board by sticking to a tougher migrant policy that may also help win back conservatives who switched to the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD). The SPD needs a platform for its policies after its poorest election showing since 1933. Leading SPD figures have outlined conditions including investment in education and homes, changes in health insurance and no cap on asylum seekers. Most experts believe the SPD has the stronger hand and several prominent economists said they expected the SPD to wield significant influence in a new grand coalition. If there is a grand coalition or even if there is toleration (of a minority government) I would expect more emphasis on the SPD s programme, Clemens Fuest, president of the Ifo institute, told business newspaper Handelsblatt. That would mean higher state spending and smaller tax cuts than would have been agreed with other potential partners. The SPD is divided, with some members arguing that a grand coalition has had its day. The SPD premier of the state of Rhineland Palatinate, Malu Dreyer, said she preferred the idea of the SPD tolerating a minority government over a grand coalition, making clear that the party would not agree to a deal at any price. | 0fake |
Possible Scenarios of the Conflict in Syria | Leave a Reply Click here to get more info on formatting (1) Leave the name field empty if you want to post as Anonymous. It's preferable that you choose a name so it becomes clear who said what. E-mail address is not mandatory either. The website automatically checks for spam. Please refer to our moderation policies for more details. We check to make sure that no comment is mistakenly marked as spam. This takes time and effort, so please be patient until your comment appears. Thanks. (2) 10 replies to a comment are the maximum. (3) Here are formating examples which you can use in your writing:<b>bold text</b> results in bold text <i>italic text</i> results in italic text (You can also combine two formating tags with each other, for example to get bold-italic text.)<em>emphasized text</em> results in emphasized text <strong>strong text</strong> results in strong text <q>a quote text</q> results in a quote text (quotation marks are added automatically) <cite>a phrase or a block of text that needs to be cited</cite> results in: a phrase or a block of text that needs to be cited <blockquote>a heavier version of quoting a block of text...</blockquote> results in: a heavier version of quoting a block of text that can span several lines. Use these possibilities appropriately. They are meant to help you create and follow the discussions in a better way. They can assist in grasping the content value of a comment more quickly. and last but not least:<a href=''http://link-address.com''>Name of your link</a> results in Name of your link (4) No need to use this special character in between paragraphs: ; You do not need it anymore. Just write as you like and your paragraphs will be separated. The "Live Preview" appears automatically when you start typing below the text area and it will show you how your comment will look like before you send it. (5) If you now think that this is too confusing then just ignore the code above and write as you like. Name: | 1real |
COMMANDER IN CHIEF APPROVED RACISM? U.S. Military Makes SHOCKING Disciplinary Decision For 16 Black West Point Cadets | Do we even need to ask how 16 white West Point cadets posing in uniform, with a white power fist before graduation would have been resolved? Never mind the media circus it would have created Sixteen black West Point cadets who posed with raised fists for a pre-graduation picture that sparked debates on race and proper behavior in uniform won t be punished for the gesture, the U.S. Military Academy said Tuesday.The decision, less than two weeks before the 16 female seniors are poised to graduate, found they didn t violate any U.S. Department of Defense rules limiting political activity.An internal inquiry found that the cadets did not pre-plan or set out to make a political statement, West Point s superintendent, Lt. Gen. Robert Caslen Jr., said in a letter to the student body.But, he said, they showed a lapse of awareness in how symbols and gestures can be misinterpreted and cause division and they will get some instruction on that.The fists-up image, which circulated online, led some observers to question whether the women were expressing support for the Black Lives Matter movement, which grew out of protests over police killings of unarmed black men.But the inquiry found the picture, one of multiple photos the women made in keeping with an informal campus tradition, captured a spur-of-the-moment gesture intended to demonstrate unity and pride in graduating, Caslen wrote. Groups of cadets often take Old Corps pictures in traditional dress uniforms to echo historical portraits.A raised fist has symbolized political resistance for generations, from Nelson Mandela upon his release from prison in 1990 to Democratic Vermont U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders on the presidential campaign trail this year. It was used by black power advocates in the 1960s, including by two American sprinters during a medal ceremony at the 1968 Mexico City Olympic Games, and more recently by activists for the Black Lives Matter movement.Some observers suggested the women were improperly identifying with the movement while in uniform.Defenders said the women were simply celebrating their forthcoming graduation, something closer in spirit to a team lifting helmets to celebrate a win or Beyonce raising her fist at this year s Super Bowl halftime show. Via: Yahoo h/t WZ | 1real |
Most Bavarians have negative attitude toward Muslims in Germany – poll | Most Bavarians have negative attitude toward Muslims in Germany – poll 18:42 Get short URL © Michaela Rehle / Reuters More than four in five people in the German state of Bavaria have a negative attitude toward Muslims, a new study has found, also reporting that refugees, the long-term unemployed and Roma community are generally perceived negatively.
More than half of the population of Bavaria demonstrated either “moderate” or “strong” antipathy towards Muslims living in Germany, a study conducted by the Social Studies Institute of the Ludwig Maximilian University (LMU) in Munich said . It also reported that another 34 percent of Bavarians said they had “slight” dislike for followers of Islam. Read more Merkel suggests Christmas carols, flute-playing in face of ‘Islam concerns’
Only 11 percent of respondents said they had no bad feelings about Muslims living in Germany, the research published on Monday added.
The study was based on a comprehensive survey that examined people’s attitudes towards eight different “distinct” groups of society – Muslims, refugees, Jews, Roma, foreigners in general, as well as people of a different race, homosexuals and the long-term unemployed.
It featured from three to 10 questions that varied depending on each group in focus and that were presented in the form of statements that the respondents had to agree or disagree with.
The study particularly featured such statements as: “There are too many Muslims in Germany,”“Foreigners/refugees endanger my financial situation/personal way of living,” and “Many long-time unemployed people systematically shy away from work.”
The research was conducted between April and June 2016 and relied on surveying people from more than 1,700 households across Bavaria.
Of all the groups in question, Muslims were the only one that stirred up “strong” negative feelings among more than 20 percent of the Bavarian population, while in all other cases it never exceeded 10 percent, and was between 3 and 6 percent on average.
However, Muslims were not the only group that was perceived mostly negatively by Bavarians. The second most negatively perceived group was actually the long-time unemployed, as more than 80 percent of Bavarians had at least “slightly” negative attitude towards them, although only 4 percent had a “strong” animosity towards this section of society. Read more Syrian refugee in Germany with 4 wives, 22 kids sparks social media fuss over welfare
Refugees and the Roma (gypsy) community were also among the groups that were viewed least favourably, as only 27 percent of Bavarians had no negative feelings towards each of these groups. Ten percent of Bavarians said they had a “strong” negative attitude towards Roma – the second highest figure among all the groups in focus.
In the case of refugees, about a third of Bavarians held either “moderate” or “strong” antipathy towards them.
At the same time, the study showed that people of Bavaria have no negative attitude towards foreigners living in Germany in general as 56 percent of respondents said they had no bad feelings towards foreigners and only 10 percent of those questioned demonstrated “moderate” or “high” level of animosity towards them.
Bavarians were also almost equally tolerant towards gay people as 54 percent of respondents showed no antipathy towards them. They were also even less prone to what the study called “classic racism” that consists in viewing white people more positively than the people of other races. About three quarters of respondents showed no signs of racism at all, while only about 10 percent of them had “moderate” or “strong” racist views.
The study also showed that men are more prone to various forms of negative attitude towards the distinct groups in focus than women as well as that people having higher level of education tend to be more tolerant and less prejudged towards all these groups. Read more Merkel ally promotes ‘German Islam’ as means to integrate refugees into liberal EU society
The research also stressed people that have a strong national identity or have low level of trust to the political institutions are also inclined to have a negative attitude towards the distinct groups mentioned in the study.
However, the results of the study provoked significant concerns among social scientists, activists and even some churchmen. “In general, there is already a clear negative attitude [towards various distinct groups],” Christian Ganser, a social scientist from the LMU, told German media, adding that “group-focused hostility is a widespread phenomenon in Bavaria.”
The present social developments that concern negative attitudes towards various groups of society do not fit into the classic conception of right wing extremism, Miriam Heigl, an expert from the Center for Democracy of Munich, told dpa news agency.
Animosity towards distinct groups is no more a phenomenon linked only to some fringe extremist groups, Ganser, who is a co-author of the study, stressed, adding that it is now “a phenomenon [related to] the average people.”
“To harbor a pejorative attitude towards others out of fear to lose own identity is no Christian way,” Martin Schneider, a member of the Catholic township council of Munich, told German KNA news agency, commenting on the results of the study. He added that “those, who ostracize outsiders, go against Jesus” Christ.
At the same time, the issue is not limited to Bavaria, as sentiments similar to those presented in the study are common across the whole of Germany, Ralf Melzer, who works for the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, told dpa. Read more Massive PEGIDA rally in Dresden marks 2 years of anti-immigrant movement (VIDEO)
On October 22, two days before the study was published, German Chancellor Angela Merkel suggested that any Germans concerned about Islam should combat the perceived Islamization of Germany with flute-playing and Christmas carols.
“I know there are concerns about Islam,” she said at a congress of her party, the Christian Democratic Union, in the state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, while calling on people to rely on their Christian values and traditions to tackle this challenge.
On October 3, the German finance minister and close Merkel ally, Wolfgang Schaeuble, called for the creation of “German Islam” that would combine traditional Islamic norms with the principles of tolerance and European liberalism to help integrate millions of refugees from the Middle East into European and particularly German society.
Meanwhile, the anti-Muslim and anti-migrant sentiments in Germany are on the rise as the populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party gains strong support at the expense of Merkel’s Christian Democrats.
German ‘anti-Islamization’ movement Pegida (which stands for ‘Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the West’) staged a massive rally in Dresden on October 16 to mark the group’s second anniversary. The event drew thousands of supporters who demonstrated against the chancellor’s refugee policy. | 1real |
Khodorkovsky: Putin is not going to cozy up to Washington | Print version Font Size The number of predictions about the state of affairs in the US-Russian relations after the presidential election in the United States continues to grow. Former oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky did not stay aside and predicted that there would be nothing good in the US-Russian relations after the election, regardless of who wins the vote. If Hillary Clinton takes office as president, the relations between Russia and the United States will deteriorate further. According to the ex-oligarch, Putin was originally prepared for Clinton's victory in the election, therefore, he has been allegedly trying to damage the relations between the two countries during the recent months. The logic is as follows: "He'd better to go down to the bottom so that she could make only one step - up." "If Mrs. Clinton wins, then the bottom that Putin sees will not be the real bottom. She knows how to hit Putin to make him fall even lower. She has an extensive experience, and she will not forgive - I'm talking about the American establishment here - she will not forgive interference in the internal electoral process in the United States," Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the head of Open Russia told Politico . When Khodorkovsky speaks about Clinton's "extensive experience" does he have Libya in mind? And of course, it is only Hillary Clinton, who knows all about the real bottom. If the Russian president was originally prepared for the victory of the former Secretary of State, then it is not clear why he would need to interfere in the "internal electoral process." Did he want to cause even greater damage to the US-Russian relations to give Clinton a chance to start it all over again? Or Putin? Or both? Why would he need to interfere, if she would not "forgive?" Noteworthy, on the eve of election day in the USA, former US ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul gave an interview to Russian media. McFaul stated in the interview that he did not think of Hillary Clinton as a supporter of a hard line course against Russia."I think the claim that the fear-mongering that Trump himself and Trump supports say to scare American voters that Secretary Clinton is going to start a war with Russia is completely absurd, completely has nothing to do with the reality. Only a total crazy person would start a war with Russia," McFaul told Interfax . Clinton understands that there will be no war between the U.S. and Russia, "she is not crazy," he added. "I think she takes a very pragmatic approach to defend America's national interests and security and economic interests of our allies," McFaul said. "She's not going to become president to say "it is my goal to improve relations with Russia". What is she's going to do instead is she is going to say that "it is my goal with Russia to accomplish policy items A, B and C." And then she is going to decide which strategy, which instrument of policy [will achieve that]. Sometimes it will be engagement and sometimes [it will] be containment," Michael McFaul said, Interfax reports. Unlike the former ambassador, Mikhail Khodorkovsky does not leave Hillary Clinton any room for maneuver. What if Donald Trump leaves? There will not be anything good for Russia anyway, Khodorkovsky believes. A conflict between the two countries will be highly likely as well, because Putin is not going to cozy up to Washington. "We all know people like Trump, and it is unlikely that Putin will play up to Trump's ambition, like, for example, Kadyrov (Chechen President - ed.) plays up to Putin's ambition," Khodorkovsky said.What does Kadyrov got to do with it? Is it just because his name rings the bell in the West? According to Khodorkovsky, it is difficult to predict what will happen after Putin refuses to subordinate Russia to Trump's will. "Putin will not be able to do this, so it means that a conflict with Trump is inevitable."Why is the ex-oligarch confident that the Republican candidate will wish to subjugate Russia? What does he know about Trump's thoughts on Russia? Does Khodorkovsky know something that everyone else does not know? The former oligarch does not expect anything positive in relations between Russia and the United States, and it seems that this is the most desirable option for him. Anton Kulikov | 1real |
Old Fuck Of A Neighbour Buys Nuts For Trick Or Treaters | 0 Add Comment
AN ELDERLY member of a local Waterford community rose bright and early this morning to ensure he was able to bulk purchase nuts ahead of this evening’s trick or treating deluge.
71-year-old Maurice O’Boyle had been concerned that his local Super Valu may run out of nuts as other people, similarly evil, would seek to buy all the supplies of the non-sweets in a bid to frustrate and annoy young children.
“That’s what the fuckers get for ringing the doorbell, I love seeing all the hope and joy draining out of their faces, you can’t beat it,” a chirpy O’Boyle explained.
The pensioner first started the practice of being an old fuck who kids learn to hate as far back as 1985, but is not alone in his desire to ruin the evening for excitable youngsters.
“In some cases nuts and apples actually outsell sweets and chocolate,” explained local Super Valu manager Dave Tierney, “we tend to up the price of nuts by 400% during this period, but the older and more curmudgeonly the person is, the less they care about how much it costs them to really piss off trick or treaters,” Tierney shared.
O’Boyle has been placed on a local ‘annoying old fucker’ watchlist by local children, but as records have yet to be digitised and circulated online many children will still call to his door expecting a chomp bar or something, only to be disappointed.
Gardaí have warned local old fucks not to ask children for a ‘trick’ instead of a treat as this resulted in children stabbing and murdering as many as 40 adults last year. | 1real |
null | Ivanka is not her father, no more than you are yours. No one is perfect and making Ivanka responsible for Don’s actions are bullshyte. I suuport her, even though I cannot afford her products!
I am a woman and Donalds remarks did not fall out of Ivanka’s mouth. | 1real |
This Powerful Corporate Lobby Is Quietly Backing Hillary — and Nobody’s Talking About It | Carey Wedler | ANTIMEDIA
Over the course of the 2016 presidential election, Americans who rail against Hillary Clinton have condemned the media’s bias in her favor — and rightfully so. Clinton has effectively infiltrated the corporate news media — whose parent companies often donate to her — with the deliberate intent of bolstering her own chances at the presidency.
But as this nefarious behavior continues to come to light through hacks and leaks, another powerful sphere of media influence has quietly placed its resources behind Hillary Clinton – and hardly anyone is talking about it.
Though outrage over Clinton’s corporate sponsors usually focuses on her support from banking giants like Goldman Sachs , Citibank, JP Morgan, and other reviled companies, corporate Hollywood has collectively supplied her campaign with far more cash than these banks.
When people think of Hollywood’s support for a political campaign, their minds tend to focus on the entertainment industry’s most visible figures — celebrities. From George Clooney , Katy Perry, and Leonardo DiCaprio to Justin Timberlake, Reese Witherspoon, Steven Spielberg, Beyonce, and Jay-Z, the celebrity consensus this year has settled on Clinton.
But underneath the stars’ ‘progressive’ choice is an intentional, systematic machine working in Hillary’s favor, and it mirrors other conglomerated industries that have aligned behind her. Moguls with Millions (and Billions) Back Hillary and the Clinton Family
The first layer of Clinton’s corporate Hollywood allegiance is rather simple to peel back, simply because Hillary’s top industry donors make no secret of their support.
Earlier this year, George Clooney held a $100,000-a-plate fundraiser for Clinton, one that earned $15 million dollars — far more than Goldman Sachs has collectively donated to her campaign. The actor’s event raised money for the Hillary Victory Fund, which was recently revealed to be an avenue for maxed out donors to contribute more than the allowable amount. The Victory Fund has also been criticized for hoarding money for Hillary that was supposed to go to state Democratic parties.
Clooney teamed up with one of corporate Hollywood’s most powerful executives, Jeffrey Katzenberg, for this fundraiser. Katzenberg rose to prominence at Walt Disney in the 1990s, where he helmed some of the millennial generation’s favorite childhood films: Beauty and the Beast , Aladdin , the Lion King , and the Little Mermaid were all products of Katzenberg’s leadership.
Several years later, he partnered with Steven Spielberg (also a longtime Clinton supporter) and David Geffen, a music mogul, to create Dreamworks Animation. Katzenberg was the top bundler for Barack Obama in 2012 and also funded him in 2008, so it’s unsurprising the president takes his phone calls. Further, Katzenberg’s right-hand man, Andy Spahn, visited the White House almost 50 times during Obama’s first term, Mother Jones reported at the time, enjoying a close relationship with the president — and some economic benefits.
Katzenberg, who recently earned $391 million on the sale of Dreamworks to Comcast, has donated at least $1 million to Clinton’s campaign this election season.
Then there’s billionaire Haim Saban, the staunchly pro-Israel entertainment mogul behind the original Power Rangers series. He is Clinton’s top individual donor, besting Katzenberg, with at least $6.4 million in donations to her campaign. He has contributed $15 million to the Clinton Foundation, and his wife, Cheryl, serves on the board.
Saban has supported the Clintons since the 1990s, and during Bill’s time in office, he enjoyed the business perks of being friends with the president of the United States, as Mother Jones has detailed . His investments are tied to Wall Street, and he has also enjoyed Clinton’s condemnation of Boycott, Sanction, Divest, a nonviolent, market-based global protest movement challenging Israel’s occupation of Palestine.
Both men, therefore, know well the perks of having friends in high places — and both are some of the top donors of any candidate in the 2016 race. But their very public— and lavish — support barely scratches the surface of the real machinations taking place between Hollywood’s corporate underbelly and its stake in American politics. The Studio Lobby
Most people, if they’ve heard of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) at all, know it as the organization that rates films. It’s the familiar, almost comforting disclaimer that appears before a trailer or film, ranking it G, PG, PG-13, R, or in some cases, NC-17.
Though the organization has its roots in the 20th century, founded as an effort to self-regulate their content, more than anything, it is corporate Hollywood’s lobby. The MPAA represents 20th Century Fox (owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.), Warner Brothers (owned by Time Warner), Disney, Universal (owned in part by Comcast), Sony Pictures, and Paramount Pictures (News Corp, Time Warner, and Comcast have all contributed to the Clinton Foundation).
For some, it’s difficult to place corporate Hollywood in the same category as more reviled industries like banking, weapons manufacturing, or pharmaceuticals . This is likely, at least in part, because they deliver one of America’s favorite pastimes — entertainment. Yet the revolving door is strong, as is the MPAA’s political foundation.
In fact, the MPAA’s longest running chairman was Jack Valenti , who served as an advisor to Lyndon B. Johnson before taking over the lobbying group. By 2011, former senator and presidential candidate, Chris Dodd, had taken the reins.
Dodd, who makes $3 million a year working as the organization’s top lobbyist, takes his job seriously. As the Los Angeles Times reported , Dodd has increased lobbying funds and efforts in Congress. “ We’ve had a hundred meetings with new members of Congress since November ,” he told the publication last year.
Dodd is a Clinton supporter. He officially endorsed her earlier this year.
Disney chairman Bob Iger is also a huge Clinton supporter and member of the MPAA. Alongside Saban, Iger hosted a Hollywood fundraiser for her in August and held a meeting with Tim Kaine, Clinton’s running mate, in September.
On that same trip, Kaine met with Warner Brothers executive Kevin Tsujihara, who donated to Hillary Clinton’s Victory Fund this year. He met with Fox Television executive Dana Walden, who also donated to Clinton. He also met with Kevin Reilly, an executive at Turner, which is owned by Time Warner, which owns Warner Brothers and CNN , an outlet condemned for heavily favoring Clinton this election cycle. Perhaps these private meetings were about gun control and equal rights. Or, perhaps, Kaine and the executives discussed business interests.
Either way, the paper trail gets more decisive — and more revealing. What is the MPAA Hoping to Achieve?
MPAA members Disney and Sony have independently advocated for the Trans-Pacific Partnership deal , the globally loathed trade agreement criticized for granting carte blanche to corporations and stripping nations of their sovereignty. Disney has even prodded its employees to contribute lobbying funds in support of the agreement. Fox, Disney, Time Warner, Comcast, and other media companies have lobbied in favor of TPP .
One of TPP’s most dangerous provisions is its intent to regulate copyright and intellectual property in favor of corporations – one of corporate Hollywood’s main objectives.
Dodd is, unsurprisingly, a proponent of internet censorship legislation, which corporate Hollywood invariably backs in its attempts to preserve its copyright profits. Hollywood studios have been some of the biggest proponents of heavy internet regulation (with regard to copyright) and have waged campaigns against online piracy. The MPAA’s website claims “the most serious threat” to the film industry is online copyright theft.
It makes sense, then, that the MPAA would be a member of the U.S. Business Coalition for TPP . This massive trade group spent $658 billion dollars on lobbying in 2014, according to Common Cause, a left-leaning nonprofit lobbying organization. The coalition includes members like Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, JP Morgan, Dow Chemical , Pfizer , GlaxoSmithKline , Boeing , and Viacom (another media behemoth). Interestingly, the coalition’s website no longer lists its members, though Anti-Media easily accessed an archived version of that information.
These corporations, or their employees, have also donated funds to Hillary Clinton in one way or another, often via the Clinton Foundation, which has been documented to issue favors to entities that contribute funds. Dozens of media corporations have donated to the foundation.
And — surprise, surprise — the only presidential candidate the MPAA has contributed to in 2016 is … Hillary Clinton.
While it’s certainly the case that Hollywood executives lean liberal and many undoubtedly support Clinton due to a misguided moral imperative to stop Donald Trump, it would be naive to presume this is the only dynamic at play.
This dynamic is evident in a letter from MPAA chief counsel Steven Fabrizio to Disney’s Alan Braverman, among others, assuring them of his efforts to pass the bill. “ Finally, in regard to trade ,” he wrote , “ the MPAA/MPA with the strong support of your studios, continue to advocate to governments around the world about the pressing need for strong pro-IP trade policies such as TPP and the proposed EU/US trade agreement (TTIP). ”
Braverman donated to Clinton this year. Infiltrating the DNC Platform Drafting Committee
Most damning is the fact that one MPAA lobbyist, former California congressman Howard Berman, ended up on the drafting committee for the Democratic platform this year (throughout the course of his political career, some of his top donors were Hollywood studios).
According to an email released by Wikileaks, Berman met with now-disgraced former DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz in May of this year — two months before he helped draft the platform. She appointed him to the platform drafting committee.
That platform was widely criticized for refusing to condemn and reject TPP outright, as Bernie Sanders and his camp attempted to do. Berman helped vote down language against TPP.
“But Hillary opposes TPP!” some might argue. Indeed, after claiming it was set to be the “gold standard” of trade agreements, she changed her mind and said she opposed it. But a leak from the recently released John Podesta batch showed there is a very strong chance she will change her mind, again, once elected. And considering Donald Trump’s anti-trade deal rhetoric against both NAFTA and TPP (not to mention his incendiary rhetoric), it makes little sense for corporate Hollywood to back Trump — even if they’re partly responsible for his meteoric rise via the Apprentice .
In a vein similar to Berman’s, a former MPAA (and Disney, and Dow, and Citigroup) lobbyist, Jose Villareal, now serves as the Clinton campaign’s treasurer.
Though there is no smoking gun proving corporate Hollywood is backing Clinton with the express intent of ensuring passage of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, it’s telling that the MPAA’s homepage is a tribute to TPP (and, naturally, themselves). It’s telling that the organization donated to only one presidential candidate. It’s telling that executives within these corporations are supporting Clinton while the companies they represent heavily back TPP — and in many cases, Clinton. It’s telling that their parent corporations, like News Corp and Time Warner , are backing her — and the TPP.
Considering six corporations control 90% of media in the United States and Clinton continually proves her loyalties to big business, it’s hardly surprising she’s the choice of corporate Hollywood. And it’s likely they’ll expect favors in return.
As Dodd said following President Obama’s rejection of SOPA and PIPA following public outcry in 2012:
“Candidly, those who count on quote ‘Hollywood’ for support need to understand that this industry is watching very carefully who’s going to stand up for them when their job is at stake…Don’t ask me to write a check for you when you think your job is at risk and then don’t pay any attention to me when my job is at stake.” | 1real |
Hillary's Watergate? | Here's something interesting from The Unz Review... Recipient Name Recipient Email =>
After posting Friday’s column, “A Presidency from Hell,” about the investigations a President Hillary Clinton would face, by afternoon it was clear I had understated the gravity of the situation.
Networks exploded with news that FBI Director James Comey had informed Congress he was reopening the investigation into Clinton’s email scandal, which he had said in July had been concluded.
“Bombshell” declared Carl Bernstein. The stock market tumbled. “October surprise!” came the cry.
The only explanation, it seemed, was that the FBI had uncovered new information that could lead to a possible indictment of the former secretary of state, who by then could be the president of the United States.
By Sunday, we knew the source of the eruption.
Huma Abedin, Clinton’s top aide, sent thousands of emails to the private laptop she shared with husband Anthony Weiner, a.k.a. Carlos Danger, who is under FBI investigation for allegedly sexting with a 15-year-old girl.
The Weiner-Abedin laptop contains 650,000 emails.
The FBI has not yet reviewed Abedin’s emails, and they could turn out to be duplicates of those the FBI has already seen, benign, or not relevant to the investigation of Clinton.
But it does appear that Abedin misled the FBI when she told them all communications devices containing State Department work product were turned over to State when she departed in 2013.
Clinton, understandably, was stunned and outraged by Comey’s letter. For it casts a cloud of suspicion over her candidacy by raising the possibility that the FBI director could reverse his decision of July, and recommend her prosecution.
By Monday, Oct. 31, new problems had arisen, some potentially crippling or possibly lethal to a Clinton presidency.
Reporters have unearthed a near-mutiny inside the FBI over the decision to shut down the investigation of the Clinton email scandal and Comey’s recommendation of no prosecution.
Andrew McCabe, No. 2 at the FBI, has come under anonymous fire from inside the bureau as one of those most reluctant to pursue aggressively any investigations of the Clintons.
McCabe’s wife, in a 2015 state senate race in Virginia, received $475,000 in PAC contributions from Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a longtime friend and major fundraiser for Bill and Hillary Clinton.
After the Senate race that McCabe’s wife lost, he was promoted from No. 3 at the FBI to No. 2, where he has far more influence over decisions to investigate and recommend prosecution.
Justice Department higher-ups under Attorney General Loretta Lynch apparently disagreed with Comey notifying Congress, and the nation, to new developments in the email scandal. Yet Comey had given his word to Congress that he would do so.
In the Southern District of New York, which has jurisdiction over the Weiner sexting investigation, FBI agents have reportedly been blocked from opening an investigation into charges of corruption in the Clinton Foundation.
This follows revelations that corporate chiefs and foreign rulers and regimes, hit up for contributions to the Clinton Foundation, were then urged by an ex-Clinton aide to provide six-figure speaking fees for Bill Clinton.
This follows reports the Clinton Foundation took contributions for victims of natural disasters, and awarded multimillion-dollar contracts to contributors to do the work.
Still unanswered is what Bill Clinton and Attorney General Lynch discussed during that 30-minute meeting on the Phoenix tarmac, prior to the FBI and Justice Department decision not to indict Hillary Clinton.
The stench of corruption is reaching Bhopal dimensions.
What appears about to happen seems inevitable and predictable.
If Hillary Clinton is elected, the email scandal, the pay-for-play scandal involving the Clinton Foundation, “Bill Clinton, Inc.,” the truthfulness of her testimony, and reports of Clinton-paid dirty tricksters engaging in brownshirt tactics at Trump rallies, are all going to be investigated more thoroughly by the FBI.
And if Clinton is president, there is no way her Justice Department can investigate the Clinton scandals, any more than this city in the early 1970s would entrust an investigation into Watergate to the Nixon Justice Department.
If Clinton wins this election, and Republicans hold onto one or both houses of Congress, investigations of the Clinton scandals will start soon after her inaugural and will go on for years. And the clamor for a special prosecutor, who will, as Archibald Cox did with Nixon, build a huge staff and spend years investigating, will become irresistible.
Realizing that this is the near-certain fate and future of any Hillary Clinton presidency, and would be disastrous for the country, Sunday night, Doug Schoen, who worked for President Clinton for six years, said he has changed his mind and will not be voting for Hillary.
Donald Trump says this is worse than Watergate. As of now, it is only potentially so.
But if Hillary Clinton, this distrusted and disbelieved woman, does take the oath of office on Jan. 20, there is a real possibility that, like Nixon, down the road a year or two, she could be forced from office.
Do we really want to go through this again?
Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of the new book “The Greatest Comeback: How Richard Nixon Rose From Defeat to Create the New Majority.”
Copyright 2016 Creators.com. | 1real |
The Latest On Paris Attack: Manhunt Continues; Brothers Were On No-Fly List | The Latest On Paris Attack: Manhunt Continues; Brothers Were On No-Fly List
French authorities are still on the hunt for two brothers suspected in an attack against the headquarters of a satirical magazine in Paris that left 12 people dead.
The two chief suspects, named as Said and Chérif Kouachi, 34 and 32, remain at large. Investigators believe Said Kouachi traveled to Yemen in 2011 to receive weapons training with Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, NPR's Dina Temple-Raston reports, citing U.S. officials who've been briefed on the case.
Both of the brothers have been on the U.S. no-fly list for years, U.S. officials tell NPR.
NPR's Eleanor Beardsley reports that the French capital is on its highest alert level, and 800 soldiers and riot police have been called on to guard the city. Schoolchildren, Eleanor said, are being kept inside for recess.
To add to the tension, there was a shooting on Paris' southern edge that killed a police officer and wounded a street sweeper. Bernard Cazeneuve, France's Interior Minister, said those shootings had not been linked to the attack on Charlie Hebdo.
Overnight, one of the three suspects, identified by French media as 18-year-old Mourad Hamyd, was reported to have turned himself in.
Cazeneuve said nine people had been detained in connection to the attack.
Local officials say mosques were targeted across the country late Wednesday and early today. There were no reports of injuries, and it's unclear if they are linked to the attack on Charlie Hebdo. But Cazeneuve said the country would not tolerate any attacks on places of worship.
This is a breaking news story. As often happens in situations like these, some information reported early may turn out to be inaccurate. We'll move quickly to correct the record and we'll only point to the best information we have at the time. Refresh this page for the latest.
Update at 5:55 p.m. ET. Suspects Were On U.S. No-Fly List
NPR has confirmed that both Cherif and Said Kouachi have been on the U.S. no-fly list for years. They're also in the central U.S. database of people who pose a known or potential terrorist threat, worldwide: the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment.
Update at 3:15 p.m. ET. Eiffel Tower Goes Dark
In honor of the victims of Wednesday's attack, the Eiffel Tower turned off its lights. The mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, tweeted a series of images showing the famous landmark going dark.
Update at 1:03 p.m. ET. No Link:
Bernard Cazeneuve, France's Interior Minister, said authorities had not found a link between today's shootings and the attack on Charlie Hebdo.
— Police found Said Kouachi's ID in a car used by the men to get away. As soon as they learned that name, police launched a manhunt and searched the home of the Kouachi brothers.
— Nine people are presently in custody in connection with the attack.
— Two people who looked like suspects were seen in Villers-Cotterêts, where police launched an intense search near a gas station.
— Police have heard from more than 90 witnesses and are reviewing Internet use and surveillance to try to find the two men.
— Cazeneuve said Said Kouachi had never been accused or convicted of a crime like his brother but had surfaced at the "periphery of some investigations."
Update at 12:36 p.m. ET. Dusk In Paris:
The sun has now set in Paris, reporter Lauren Frayer tells our Newscast unit.
She's at the Place de la République, where she says for the second night in a row people are streaming in for an impromptu vigil.
Lauren reports that the city only came to a halt at noon today for a moment of silence. But even though there is man hunt ongoing, Parisians have gone about their business: shops and restaurants are open and the metro is running.
Asteris Masouras, a freelance journalist in Paris, has been tweeting from the scene — pictures of demonstrators carrying posters that read Je Suis Charlie and others leaving candles at the foot of the statue in the center of the square.
Masouras also tweeted a video that shows the crowd whispering La Marseillaise, France's national anthem.
France's Interior Ministry says that more than 88,000 personnel have deployed across France to help with security after the attacks.
In the Paris district alone, 9,650 personnel were deployed, including more than 1,000 military personnel.
Update at 10:16 a.m. ET. The Younger Suspect's Name:
There is some variance in the way the name of the third suspect in this case is being reported. For now, based on reporting by the AFP and other French outlets who have spoken to classmates, we will call the suspect Mourad Hamyd.
Earlier, we had named him as Hamyd Mourad.
Update at 9:44 a.m. ET. 'Stupidity Will Not Win':
Update at 7:19 a.m. ET. Not Linking Suspects To Terrorist Groups:
Counterterrorism officials have been careful not to link the two main suspects to terrorist groups, NPR's Dina Temple-Raston tells our Newscast Unit.
One of the men, Chérif Kouachi, was convicted on terrorism charges in 2008. He served 18 months for helping to funnel fighters from France to Iraq.
What's unclear, said Dina, is what happened to Kouachi after that. It's unclear whether he has ever traveled to Syria and it's unclear whether he has developed links to terrorist groups — including the Islamic State — since 2008.
Judging by the shot patterns left on a police cruiser yesterday, what is clear is that the two suspects were very comfortable using high-powered weapons. It's likely, Dina said, that they received some military training. The question is where.
Update at 6:44 a.m. ET. Roads Shut Down:
NPR's Eleanor Beardsley reports that police have shut down all roads in and out of Paris. | 0fake |
Boris talks bollocks. Again. More soon. | Wrenfoe Wrenfoe .. More Stories about: Ticker | 1real |
Mitch McConnell: The Republican Platform Won’t Be Written By Trump (VIDEO) | Cracks are beginning to form in the GOP s wall of ambivalence regarding the future platform of the Republican Party. For months, top Republicans have dodged questions left and right about controversial policies proposed by the presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump. On Sunday morning, during an interview on ABC s This Week, Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) told the show s host, George Stephanopoulos, the following: If you look at the platform that will be written at our convention, we are not changing the basic principles that Republicans believe in. Our nominee may not agree with every single one of those but the Party will remain America s conservative party. Stephanopoulos then questioned McConnell for specifics, asking him if the GOP plans on including language into the platform that supports the adoption of a ban on Muslims entering the United States a policy proposal laid out by Trump that has deeply split the Republican Party and their presumptive nominee like no other. McConnell was also questioned as to whether the Party would continue to advocate for cutting Medicare and Social Security. McConnell responded by saying: It s my expectation that the platform will be a traditional Republican Platform, not all that different from the one we had four years ago. Stephenopolous asks, So it won t be Mr. trump s platform? McConnell responded by saying: It ll be the platform of the Republican Party and I don t expect it to differ that much from the platform we had four years ago. While still ambivalent, we can clearly see that Trump is not going to have much of a voice in the creation of the Republican Party platform.You can watch the interview below.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCb_GEQOQiEFeatured image from video screenshot | 1real |
‘Christians’ Create Grisly Haunted House Claiming Pulse Nightclub Victims Got What They Deserved | Chicago doesn t tend to be one of the cities one thinks of when one thinks of the religious right. Unfortunately, they do exist here, and some of them decided to do something unspeakably disgusting and cruel for Halloween. Calling themselves Christians, which they aren t, they put together a haunted house with 10 rooms one of which showed the mass shooting at the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando.Pulse was a club frequented by the LGBTQ community, and there are many on the religious right who seem to think that the victims of that horror simply got what was coming to them. The so-called Christians who put this atrocity together called it, THE ROOM: A JOURNEY TO HELL. What s the implication there? It s pretty clear. In each of the 10 rooms were scenes in which people supposedly made choices that would send them to hell. The inclusion of the Pulse shooting indicates that the group who put this together believes that the clubgoers who were brutally murdered that night went to hell due to their choice of living the homosexual lifestyle. Ergo, getting murdered was what they deserved for willfully committing that sin.The haunted house was to happen at Fernwood Elementary School, which is part of Chicago Public Schools. An elementary school is not an appropriate venue for anything like this, even though children under 13 were supposedly prohibited from going through it. CPS very wisely decided not to allow the haunted house at all, according to the Windy City Times, and a spokesperson for CPS said: The event organizers mischaracterized the true content of the event, and we did not approve any association with the activities the organizers have now advertised. The event will not be held on CPS property. Because of course they did.The event organizers posted an ad on Facebook asking for volunteers for the event, and the event has now been banned there, too, as well it should be. This is Christian extremism run amok, and there is no place for this kind of gruesome hatred in our society.Featured image by Gerardo Mora via Getty Images | 1real |
Ted Cruz's wife escorted off Republican convention floor amid booing | CLEVELAND (Reuters) - U.S. Senator Ted Cruz’s wife was escorted off the floor of the Republican convention on Wednesday night as delegates booed her husband’s refusal to endorse Donald Trump in his speech to delegates. Republican Ken Cuccinelli, the former attorney general of Virginia and a supporter of Cruz, who finished a distant second to Trump in the race for the Republican presidential nomination, told Reuters he escorted Heidi Cruz off the convention floor for her own safety. | 0fake |
NOT NEWS: [Graphic Video] Michigan Woman Runs Over Rival With Car Following Street Brawl | This is a story that will never make the news. A woman uses a car to intentionally hit another woman (this is the second time she s used her car as a weapon to hit another human being) but unfortunately, it s just another day of black on black crime, so it doesn t fit the media s narrative A wild fight between two 19-year-olds along a Michigan street Monday came to a dramatic end when one ran over her rival with a car.What began as a fight in the middle of the street with onlookers encouraging and sometimes interfering with the one-on-one showdown devolved into a hit-and-run, shocking video shows. Let them fight, at least one bystander yells repeatedly.Police have issued a warrant for Jalin Smith-Walker, accused of being behind the wheel during the graphic assault, The Grand Rapids Press reported. It was a fight between two former friends. It ultimately ended with blows being thrown, Grand Rapids Sgt. Terry Dixon told the Press.Smith-Walker has been charged with assault with intent to do great bodily harm less than murder.***Warning***This is a violent video with graphic language.Smith-Walker smiled broadly in her police mug shot after being arrested a few miles from the mall.After Monday s brawl in which the two tussled on the hood of one car, video shows a woman who police claim is Smith-Walker get into a car across the way and pull into the street.Via: NY Daily News | 1real |
Is a Teen Depressed, or Just Moody? - The New York Times | The hardest questions pediatricians must routinely ask teenagers at checkups are those about depression and suicide. But they aren’t optional we have to ask them, every time. From 2005 to 2014, the prevalence of depression — that is, the chance of having a major depressive episode over the course of a year — increased significantly among to in the United States. These data come from an annual survey, the National Surveys on Drug Use and Health, in which the same structured questions are asked every year. The trend toward more depression was steeper in girls than it was in boys. Furthermore, when to were surveyed, there was again a significant increase in the prevalence of depression, but only among those 18 to 20. So it appears to be increasing in the population from 12 to 20. Dr. Ramin Mojtabai, a psychiatrist who is a professor in the department of mental health at the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins and the first author on the study, said that there was no real increase from 2005 to 2011, but then the rise began, and got more pronounced in 2012 and 2013. Why was the prevalence of depression increasing, and why was it more intense among girls? Were adolescents actually suffering more from depression, or was it possible they were just more willing to talk about it? Dr. Mojtabai said that over the past couple of decades, teenagers have generally been more open about depression, but the researchers didn’t think that could account for the pattern they were seeing. They adjusted for the prevalence of substance abuse, and still the trend was there it wasn’t explained away by drug use or drinking. Neither could it be accounted for by looking at household composition (two parents versus one parent versus no parents). Suicide is the second leading cause of death in adolescents 15 to 19, second only to accidents, but that rate, as opposed to the incidence of depression, has actually been decreasing since the 1990s. But the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced last November that the suicide rate for younger children from 10 to 14 had increased to the point where the risk of dying by suicide was as high as the risk of dying in a traffic accident they were looking at 2014 data, the most recent available. Dr. Benjamin Shain, the head of the division of child and adolescent psychiatry at NorthShore University Health System, was the lead author on the American Academy of Pediatrics’ clinical report last summer on suicide and suicide attempts by adolescents. “When it comes to your child, in a sense statistics don’t matter, what matters is your particular child,” he said. “Pay attention to worry signs. ” Too often, he said, the parental impulse is to give advice or even step in and try to fix the problem. “What parents should do is mostly listen, that should be 90 percent of the conversation,” he said. The other 10 percent of the time, parents should not attempt to offer a solution, “but help the child problem solve. ” He raised concerns, in particular, about the impact of electronic media on adolescents. Dr. Mojtabai pointed out that the study was missing some information about factors like child abuse and neglect and about screens and digital devices, which some reports have associated with depressive symptoms. “There’s certainly evidence that cyberbullying may be connected to an increase in depression particularly among girls, maybe an increase in suicide,” Dr. Shain said. And this is an area, he said, where many parents feel at a loss about how to guide their children the parental impulse may be to take away the cellphone, which may make things worse for some adolescents. “They tend to find parent restriction of social media actually more traumatic than whatever the event was,” he said. “That’s how they connect to their peer group, that’s how they get their support, that’s how they have a conversation with their group you take this away and then you have a very isolated child. ” Over all, Dr. Mojtabai said, we need more information about whether there really is a trend here, and much more information about the teenagers’ lives. Still, it’s important for parents to be aware of the risks, both for children who are already struggling with mental health issues, and for those who may not yet have given their feelings a name. “A lot of children and adolescents have psychiatric problems that are not recognized by parents and they go untreated as a result,” he said. The signs of teenage depression include mood changes, like persistent sadness or irritability, and changes in level of functioning, such as school failure. They also include withdrawal from friends and family, a loss of interest in activities that had been important, and changes in eating and sleeping patterns, as well as some pretty nonspecific signs like lack of energy, trouble concentrating and unexplained aches and pains. Any parent of an adolescent has to wonder, of course, what’s the difference between “regular” adolescent mood swings and teenage behaviors and these warning signs. Parents need to ask themselves how severe the symptoms seem, and how persistent. When a child really seems to have changed, you can’t just write it off as adolescence. Dr. Shain pointed out that many of the warning signs are relatively nonspecific there could be many reasons adolescents might be hiding in their rooms, or bringing home significantly worse grades. “It could be depression, could be drugs, could be simply that their schoolwork is too hard,” he said. “The first step is sit and have a conversation with your child — what’s going on — the next step could be talk with teachers or bring your child to a counselor or psychiatrist. ” And though this increase in the prevalence of depression was not explained by substance abuse, it’s important to remember that substance abuse and depression have always gone together in adolescents those who report depression are more likely to have used drugs or alcohol. Identifying depression, of course, doesn’t solve the problem, and this is not an issue that lends itself to quick fixes, even with caring and supportive families. As the A. A. P. clinical report says: “Suicide risk can only be reduced, not eliminated, and risk factors provide no more than guidance. ” This can be a long and hard journey for teenagers and their families, but the message to parents, and to pediatricians, is that we have to keep asking the right questions. | 0fake |
As Canada Moves to Legalize Marijuana, Shop Owners Ask: Why Wait? - The New York Times | VANCOUVER, British Columbia — The Cannabis Culture Lounge has everything a pothead might need to feel right at home: $3 marijuana buds, bongs for rent, bags of Skittles and Doritos for sale, and black leather couches where customers can recline in contemplation in a pungent haze. Never mind that it is all technically prohibited by Canadian law. Still, some enthusiasts have higher hopes for the business, which opened more than a decade ago as a kind of speakeasy for marijuana smoking — long tolerated by the city’s authorities. The lounge began selling marijuana after Justin Trudeau was elected prime minister in November. “This is what recreational marijuana legalization in Canada looks like,” said Jodie Emery, an activist and the of the lounge and several medical marijuana dispensaries across Canada. Mr. Trudeau has promised to make recreational marijuana legal in Canada as soon as next year, bypassing the nation’s strict medical marijuana regulations. Under the latest rules for medical use, announced last week, patients must be registered, have a prescription and obtain their supplies only by mail from a producer or by growing a limited amount privately. Impatient to test the shifting political boundaries, entrepreneurs have opened hundreds of illicit dispensaries across Canada, selling products like organic marijuana buds and potent cannabis concentrates, while local governments and the police have tended to look the other way. The marijuana boom they hope for has yet to materialize, though the Canadian government is now doing preliminary work on a measure to govern recreational use. Even so, the authorities in some cities have begun to crack down, raiding scores of the illegal dispensaries and arresting dozens of owners and workers. And a lobbying battle is raging between the new entrepreneurs and the licensed medical marijuana producers, who were the only ones allowed to grow and provide the plant under the old regulations. One side complains about being shut out by a politically connected cartel, while the other complains about unfair and damaging competition from those who are breaking the law. The collision of money, politics and policing has made recreational marijuana a major test for Mr. Trudeau. How he solves it will be watched closely in Canada and the United States, where federal law bans marijuana but state laws are inconsistent. “Canada is looking to hit a home run, rather than singles and doubles,” said Allen St. Pierre, the executive director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, based in the United States. “What Mr. Trudeau is trying to do is something we can only dream about here. ” But it will not come quickly. A task force will take a few months to gather comments from local officials and the public before the Canadian Parliament starts to draft a measure. “It’s a long process, and we’re hard at it,” said Bill Blair, a Liberal Party lawmaker and former Toronto police chief whom Mr. Trudeau has put in charge of the marijuana effort. Mr. Blair said in an interview that the government’s top priorities were to keep marijuana away from minors and the profits out of the hands of organized crime. That may point to a system similar to the way liquor is sold in some Canadian provinces and American states: strictly through or licensed stores. Some cities in British Columbia are unwilling to wait for Ottawa, though, and are introducing their own marijuana policies in defiance of federal law. The province has been a center of marijuana growing and culture for decades, and it borders Washington State, where recreational marijuana is legal — and extremely profitable. In Victoria, the provincial capital, where more than 30 dispensaries have opened in recent years, city leaders proposed new regulations in late July that would allow such businesses to operate if they abide by certain restrictions. Victoria is following Vancouver, which has begun issuing licenses to some of the 120 or so marijuana shops in the city, provided they comply with rules, like being at least 1, 000 feet away from the nearest school. Two licenses were granted in the spring, and at least 11 more are in the pipeline, officials said. Dispensaries that do not obtain a license will be shut down, according to Kerry Jang, a Vancouver city councilor. Mr. Jang dismissed complaints that the regulations and fees — up to 30, 000 Canadian dollars, or about $23, 000, for a license, and fines for violations — were too onerous. “They got used to making money hand over fist with very little oversight,” he said. Krystian Wetulani, 32, who owns three shops, said he felt he was stuck in red tape. Only one of his shops has been approved, and he is appealing a denial for another. Fines are mounting while he seeks locations that will conform to regulations. “It’s impossible,” Mr. Wetulani said. “Landlords hear the word ‘weed’ and just say no. ” In the Downtown Eastside, a gritty Vancouver neighborhood, a crowd of people were smoking crack and shooting heroin on the sidewalk outside Farm, a dispensary with a mission. It employs only women, many of them immigrants, former prostitutes or victims of sexual assault, and its proceeds help finance neighborhood programs like needle collection and a community garden. The city tolerates open use of illegal drugs in the neighborhood and a local site for heroin users, but Farm still fell afoul of the distance restrictions in the new marijuana regulations, and had to win an appeal to stay open. Wang Jingzhi, 83, an immigrant who lives in the nearby Chinatown neighborhood, said she frequently bought marijuana from Farm to soothe the aches and pains of old age. “Whenever I smoke it, my whole body feels better,” she said in Chinese. Like many in the local marijuana business, Cait Hurley, 28, the dispensary’s manager, said she was worried that new government regulations would favor corporate interests and exclude women and the working class. “There’s a lot of fear this will all be taken away from us,” she said. Under Mr. Trudeau’s conservative predecessor, Stephen Harper, the government stripped patients of the right to grow their own medical marijuana in 2013, and centralized production and distribution through a few licensed companies. But in February, a federal court reinstated patients’ growing rights the new rules announced on Aug. 11 put that ruling into effect. Facing greater competition, the 34 producers are calling for everyone to be held to the same rules they must follow, said Colette Rivet, the executive director of a producers’ trade association, Cannabis Canada. “We would be shut down if we tried to sell to dispensaries,” Ms. Rivet said. Some critics of Mr. Trudeau’s legalization efforts see a conflict of interest in the close ties between political insiders shaping marijuana policy and the licensed producers. The head of the task force, A. Anne McLellan, is a former cabinet minister who advises a law firm that represents clients in the industry, and Chuck Rifici, a founder of one of the licensed producers, was the volunteer treasurer of Mr. Trudeau’s Liberal Party until June. Mr. Rifici said he had no personal or political connection to the government’s legalization process, but he acknowledged that the licensed companies “typically pull in people who know how to navigate government. ” While lawmakers design new legalization policies, entrepreneurs like Ivan Miliovski say they feel caught in the middle. Mr. Miliovski said his company, Vodis Pharmaceuticals, had spent years and millions of dollars seeking a license to produce medical marijuana under the existing regulations. His entire business plan is now in doubt. “We don’t know what’s going to happen,” Mr. Miliovski said. “The fear is that it won’t help all the people who have struggled and advocated and pushed to make this industry legitimate. ” | 0fake |
Trump slams Facebook as lawmakers await ads amid Russia probe | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday criticized Facebook Inc (FB.O) as “anti-Trump” and questioned its role during the 2016 presidential campaign, amid probes into alleged Russian interference in the election and possible collusion by Trump’s associates. His salvo came as the social media giant prepares to hand over 3,000 political ads to congressional investigators that it has said were likely purchased by Russian entities during and after last year’s presidential contest. Trump appeared to embrace the focus on the social media network in his comments on Wednesday, which also took aim at more traditional medial outlets, long targeted by the president as “fake news.” “Facebook was always anti-Trump. The networks were always anti-Trump,” Trump said on Twitter, levelling the same charge against the New York Times and the Washington Post. “Collusion?” Representatives for Facebook and the newspapers did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Trump’s tweet. U.S. Representative Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, which is among those investigating Russia’s role, said he expected to have the ads by next week and that they should be made public. “You really need to see them ... to recognise how cynical an effort this was by the Kremlin, how they sought to just accentuate those divisions ... and drive American against American,” Schiff told MSNBC, adding that Facebook and Twitter Inc (TWTR.N) executives should testify publicly about the issue. “I have concerns about how long it took Facebook to realise the Russians were advertising on their network,” Schiff told MSNBC, adding that he has spoken several times with the company’s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg. Facebook and other technology companies are coming under increased scrutiny amid the Russia investigations. The probes, being conducted by several congressional committees along with the Department of Justice, have clouded Trump’s tenure since taking office in January and threatened his agenda, which has yet to secure a major legislative victory. Moscow has denied any collusion. Trump himself has previously praised Facebook and credited it with helping him win the November election. His campaign has said it spent some $70 million on Facebook ads, and it also ran a live Facebook show. His latest comments did not appear to affect shares of the company, which were up 1.4 percent at $166.50 a share in late morning trading after analysts raised their price target for the stock. | 0fake |
Over 500 Russian and Egyptian Troops Train to Kill Terrorists (Photos) - Boris Egorov - Russia News Now | This post was originally published on this site
The first Russian-Egyptian anti-terrorist exercise, dubbed Defenders of Friendship-2016 was held on October 15-26.
It took place in the desert, between the Egyptian cities of El-Alamein and Alexandria.
The Russian Airborne Troops arrived in the African continent for the first time.
Over 500 Russian and Egyptian paratroopers took part in the drills.
More than 15 helicopters and planes, 10 items of air-droppable military hardware were involved.
Russian and Egyptian servicemen practiced localization and elimination of militant groups in desert conditions.
Foreign representatives, including ambassadors and military attaches, were present in the capacity of observers.
Egyptian military are going to use the experience of the Russian Airborne Troops in the fight against international terrorism.
In 2015, Russia and Egypt held their first joint maritime exercises in the Mediterranean near Alexandria.
Next Russia-Egypt joint drill may be held in Russia next year. Related | 1real |
Tax trigger idea for Senate tax bill swiftly draws critics | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A proposal to amend a tax bill in the U.S. Senate with a trigger to automatically reverse tax cuts if new revenues fall short of forecasts could further pressure businesses and the economy if the economy slows, critics said on Wednesday. The trigger, championed by Republican Senator Bob Corker, is meant to allay concerns about the estimated $1.4 trillion that the tax bill would add over 10 years to the $20 trillion national debt. Under the proposal, tax cuts in the bill would be scaled back to recapture lost federal revenues if the strong economic growth and fresh revenues promised by the bill’s supporters fail to materialize in coming years. The trouble is that the trigger would most likely kick in during an economic downturn, said critics and even some Republicans, who warned that would further weaken businesses and consumers just when a boost is needed. “That is exactly the wrong time to raise taxes,” said William Gale, a senior economics fellow at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank. Among Republicans who criticized the proposal, Representative Tom Cole said: “I don’t like it very much. ... You may end up having a tax increase in a down economy.” Unlike programs such as unemployment insurance that add to household incomes in bad times and support consumer spending to offset a weak economy, the trigger would squelch business and household spending, reinforcing a downturn. “These triggers are not innocuous. They are dangerous,” Gale said. Details of how the trigger would work were sketchy. It was not certain it would even make it into the legislation that senators are to begin debating on Thursday. But knowledgeable sources said the bill likely will include a trigger that would reverse a deep corporate income tax cut. President Donald Trump, his advisers and many of Trump’s fellow Republicans in Congress say the tax bill, which includes slashing the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 20 percent, would boost the economy and raise new tax revenue sufficient to offset deficit increases. Many Republicans believe tax cuts can pay for themselves because they would fuel greater economic growth. Democrats dismiss this notion and some Republicans have expressed doubts. Corker, a conservative on fiscal policy, lobbied for the trigger to try to ensure that the tax cuts do not blow out the national debt. Senator Jeff Flake, a Republican who has not committed to voting for the tax bill, said on Wednesday he was more comfortable with the legislation because of indications that trigger provisions would protect against raising the deficit. Because Republicans hold only a 52-48 majority in the Senate, they can afford to lose few votes among their own on the tax legislation. Most economists and business leaders advise against raising taxes in a recession when the economy typically needs to be stimulated. David McIntosh, president of the conservative lobbying group Club for Growth, said in a statement, “Any senator who understands basic business principles and truly cares about the deficit should understand that this trigger is an automatic tax increase and will actually harm economic growth.” | 0fake |
Comment on Gaius Publius: Syria Is Another Pipeline War by lyman alpha blob | by Yves Smith
By Gaius Publius , a professional writer living on the West Coast of the United States and frequent contributor to DownWithTyranny, digby, Truthout, and Naked Capitalism. Follow him on Twitter @Gaius_Publius , Tumblr and Facebook . Originally published at at Down With Tyranny . GP article archive here . Originally published at DownWithTyranny
Proposed pipeline routes through the Middle East to gas markets in Europe. The purple line is the Western-supported Qatar-Turkey pipeline. All of the nations it passes through — Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Turkey (all highlighted in red) — have agreed to it … except Syria. The red line is the “Islamic Pipeline” from Iran through Iraq into Syria. See text below for further explanation. (Source: MintPress News ; click to enlarge)
Summary first: We have been at war in Syria over pipelines since 1949. This is just the next mad phase.
I’m not sure most Americans have figured out what’s happening in Syria, because so much of what we hear is confusing to us, and really, we know so little of the context for it. Is it an insurgency against a brutal ruler? Is it a group of insurgencies struggling for power in a nearly failed state? Is it a proxy war expressing the territorial and ideological interests of the U.S., Russia, Turkey and Iran?
Or something else?
According to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. it is something else — a war between competing national interests to build, or not build, a pipeline to the Mediterranean so natural gas can be exported to Europe. Inconveniently for Syria, that nation lies along an obvious pipeline route.
Which makes it another war between interests for money — something not very hard to understand at all.
Here’s Kennedy’s argument via EcoWatch. This is a long piece, well worth a full read, but I’ll try to present just the relevant sections here.
The Historical Context: Decades of CIA-Sponsored Coups and Counter-Coups in Syria
Kennedy’s introductory section contains an excellent examination of the history of U.S. involvement in Syria starting in the 1950s with the Cold War machinations of the Eisenhower-appointed Dulles brothers, John Foster Dulles, the Secretary of State, and Allen Dulles, the head of the CIA. Together, they effectively ruled U.S. foreign policy.
Kennedy writes (my emphasis):
Syria: Another Pipeline War
… America’s unsavory record of violent interventions in Syria—obscure to the American people yet well known to Syrians —sowed fertile ground for the violent Islamic Jihadism that now complicates any effective response by our government to address the challenge of ISIS. So long as the American public and policymakers are unaware of this past, further interventions are likely to only compound the crisis. Moreover, our enemies delight in our ignorance.
… [W]e need to look at history from the Syrians’ perspective and particularly the seeds of the current conflict. Long before our 2003 occupation of Iraq triggered the Sunni uprising that has now morphed into the Islamic State, the CIA had nurtured violent Jihadism as a Cold War weapon and freighted U.S./Syrian relationships with toxic baggage.
During the 1950’s, President Eisenhower and the Dulles brothers rebuffed Soviet treaty proposals to leave the Middle East a cold war neutral zone and let Arabs rule Arabia. Instead, they mounted a clandestine war against Arab Nationalism—which CIA Director Allan [sic] Dulles equated with communism—particularly when Arab self-rule threatened oil concessions. They pumped secret American military aid to tyrants in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Iraq and Lebanon favoring puppets with conservative Jihadist ideologies which they regarded as a reliable antidote to Soviet Marxism. At a White House meeting between the CIA’s Director of Plans, Frank Wisner, and Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, in September of 1957, Eisenhower advised the agency, “We should do everything possible to stress the ‘holy war’ aspect.”
The CIA began its active meddling in Syria in 1949 —barely a year after the agency’s creation. Syrian patriots had declared war on the Nazis, expelled their Vichy French colonial rulers and crafted a fragile secularist democracy based on the American model. But in March of 1949, Syria’s democratically elected president, Shukri-al-Kuwaiti, hesitated to approve the Trans Arabian Pipeline, an American project intended to connect the oil fields of Saudi Arabia to the ports of Lebanon via Syria. In his book, Legacy of Ashes , CIA historian Tim Weiner recounts that in retaliation, the CIA engineered a coup , replacing al-Kuwaiti with the CIA’s handpicked dictator , a convicted swindler named Husni al-Za’im. Al-Za’im barely had time to dissolve parliament and approve the American pipeline before his countrymen deposed him , 14 weeks into his regime.
Kennedy then details the history of coups and counter-coups in and against Syria, and concludes this section with this:
Thanks in large part to Allan Dulles and the CIA, whose foreign policy intrigues were often directly at odds with the stated policies of our nation, the idealistic path outlined in the Atlantic Charter was the road not taken. In 1957, my grandfather, Ambassador Joseph P. Kennedy, sat on a secret committee charged with investigating CIA’s clandestine mischief in the Mid-East . The so called “Bruce Lovett Report,” to which he was a signatory, described CIA coup plots in Jordan, Syria, Iran, Iraq and Egypt, all common knowledge on the Arab street, but virtually unknown to the American people who believed, at face value, their government’s denials.
The report blamed the CIA for the rampant anti-Americanism that was then mysteriously taking root “in the many countries in the world today.”… A parade of Iranian and Syrian dictators, including Bashar al-Assad and his father , have invoked the history of the CIA’s bloody coups as a pretext for their authoritarian rule, repressive tactics and their need for a strong Russian alliance. These stories are therefore well known to the people of Syria and Iran who naturally interpret talk of U.S. intervention in the context of that history.
While the compliant American press parrots the narrative that our military support for the Syrian insurgency is purely humanitarian, many Syrians see the present crisis as just another proxy war over pipelines and geopolitics. Before rushing deeper into the conflagration, it would be wise for us to consider the abundant facts supporting that perspective.
So much for our supposed interest in “humanitarian” intervention in Syria. From a Syrian point of view, it has never been thus. It has been about pipelines since 1949, and they understand that, even if we don’t.
The Current Conflagration
Kennedy then turns to the present, or the near-present. Refer to the map above as you read:
A Pipeline War
In [the Syrians’] view, our war against Bashar Assad did not begin with the peaceful civil protests of the Arab Spring in 2011. Instead it began in 2000 when Qatar proposed to construct a $10 billion, 1,500km pipeline through Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria and Turkey .
Qatar shares with Iran, the South Pars/North Dome gas field, the world’s richest natural gas repository. The international trade embargo, until recently, prohibited Iran from selling gas abroad and ensured that Qatar’s gas could only reach European markets if it is liquefied and shipped by sea, a route that restricts volume and dramatically raises costs.
The EU, which gets 30 percent of its gas from Russia, was equally hungry for the pipeline which would have given its members cheap energy and relief from Vladimir Putin’s stifling economic and political leverage. Turkey, Russia’s second largest gas customer, was particularly anxious to end its reliance on its ancient rival and to position itself as the lucrative transect hub for Asian fuels to EU markets. The Qatari pipeline would have benefited Saudi Arabia’s conservative Sunni Monarchy by giving them a foothold in Shia dominated Syria.
The Saudi’s geopolitical goal is to contain the economic and political power of the Kingdom’s principal rival, Iran , a Shiite state, and close ally of Bashar Assad. The Saudi monarchy viewed the U.S. sponsored Shia takeover in Iraq as a demotion to its regional power and was already engaged in a proxy war against Tehran in Yemen, highlighted by the Saudi genocide against the Iranian backed Houthi tribe.
Which puts the Qatari pipeline squarely opposite to Russia’s national interest — natural gas (methane) sales to Europe.
Of course, the Russians, who sell 70 percent of their gas exports to Europe, viewed the Qatar/Turkey pipeline as an existential threat. In Putin’s view, the Qatar pipeline is a NATO plot to change the status quo, deprive Russia of its only foothold in the Middle East, strangle the Russian economy and end Russian leverage in the European energy market. In 2009, Assad announced that he would refuse to sign the agreement to allow the pipeline to run through Syria “to protect the interests of our Russian ally.”
That was likely the last straw vis-à-vis the U.S. Which brings us to another pipeline, the so-called “Islamic Pipeline” (see map above):
“Assad further enraged the Gulf’s Sunni monarchs by endorsing a Russian approved “Islamic pipeline” running from Iran’s side of the gas field through Syria and to the ports of Lebanon. The Islamic pipeline would make Shia Iran instead of Sunni Qatar, the principal supplier to the European energy market and dramatically increase Tehran’s influence in the Mid-East and the world. Israel also was understandably determined to derail the Islamic pipeline which would enrich Iran and Syria and presumably strengthen their proxies, Hezbollah and Hamas.
Another, competing pipeline which would run through Syrian territory, but this time carrying Iranian gas instead of Qatari gas. Thus the demonizing of Assad as evil in the mold of Saddam Hussein, instead of just a run-of-the-mill Middle East autocrat, as bad as some but better than others. Kennedy includes a good section on the history of the al-Assad family’s rule of Syria, including this information from top reporters Sy Hersh and Robert Parry:
According to Hersh, “He certainly wasn’t beheading people every Wednesday like the Saudis do in Mecca.” Another veteran journalist, Bob Parry, echoes that assessment. “No one in the region has clean hands but in the realms of torture, mass killings, civil liberties and supporting terrorism, Assad is much better than the Saudis.”
In September 2013, the Sunni states involved in the Qatar-Turkey pipeline were so determined to remove Syrian opposition to the pipeline that they offered, via John Kerry, to carry the whole cost of an U.S. invasion to topple al-Assad.
Kerry reiterated the offer to Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL27): “With respect to Arab countries offering to bear the costs of [an American invasion] to topple Assad, the answer is profoundly Yes, they have. The offer is on the table.”
Obama’s response:
Despite pressure from Republicans, Barrack Obama balked at hiring out young Americans to die as mercenaries for a pipeline conglomerate . Obama wisely ignored Republican clamoring to put ground troops in Syria or to funnel more funding to “moderate insurgents.” But by late 2011, Republican pressure and our Sunni allies had pushed the American government into the fray.
The rest is a history of provocation and over-reaction — a great deal of both — and chaos and death in Syria. Kennedy provides much detail here, at one point adding:
[Syria’s] moderates are fleeing a war that is not their war . They simply want to escape being crushed between the anvil of Assad’s Russian backed tyranny and the vicious Jihadi Sunni hammer that we had a hand in wielding in a global battle over competing pipelines . You can’t blame the Syrian people for not widely embracing a blueprint for their nation minted in either Washington or Moscow. The super powers have left no options for an idealistic future that moderate Syrians might consider fighting for. And no one wants to die for a pipeline.
I’ll leave it there, but again, do read the entire piece if you want to truly understand what’s going on in Syria, and what is about to go on.
Bottom Line
Bottom line, it’s as Kennedy said: “No one wants to die for a pipeline”… but many do and will.
I’ll offer three thoughts. One , if we weren’t so determined to be deeply dependent on fossil fuels, this would be their war, not ours. Two , we are deeply dependent on fossil fuels because of the political machinations of the oil companies, their CEOs, and the banks and hedge funds who fund them, all of whom pay our government officials — via campaign contributions and the revolving door — to prolong that dependence. We’re here because the holders of big oil money want us here.
And three , keep all this in mind during the term of the next president. It will help you make sense of the phony warrior- cum -humanitarian arguments we’re almost certain to be subjected to.
We have been at war in Syria over pipelines since 1949. This is just the next mad phase. 0 0 0 0 1 1 | 1real |
Trump picks Boeing executive Shanahan to become Pentagon's No.2 | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Senior Boeing (BA.N) executive Patrick Shanahan is U.S. President Donald Trump’s nominee to take over the No. 2 role at the Pentagon as deputy U.S. defense secretary, the White House announced on Thursday. The White House also announced plans to nominate: * David Norquist to become Under Secretary of Defense, Comptroller. Norquist is a partner with Kearney and Company, a Certified Public Accounting firm. * David Joel Trachtenberg to become Principal Deputy Under Secretary of Defense, Policy. Trachtenberg is president and CEO of Shortwaver Consulting, LLC, a national security consultancy. * Kenneth Rapuano to become Assistant Secretary of Defense, Homeland Defense and Global Security. Rapuano is senior vice president and director of the studies and analysis group at the ANSER Corporation. | 0fake |
Opposition magistrates holed up in Chile residence flee Venezuela: source | CARACAS (Reuters) - Five magistrates named by the opposition-run congress who had been holed up in the Chilean ambassador s residence to avoid arrest fled in the early hours of Monday and escaped over the border to Colombia, a source said on Tuesday. The Chilean Foreign Ministry said in a statement that Elenis Rodriguez, Luis Marcano, Jose Nunez, Beatriz Ruiz, and Zuleima Del Valle had left the premises on Monday, but did not offer further details. Relatives came to get them at 5 a.m. yesterday. They escaped via (the Colombian border city of) Cucuta, said the source close to the five, who have been granted asylum by the Chilean government. From there they will travel to Washington D.C. to meet with the Organization of American States, the source added. Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro threatened the opposition-named magistrates with jail in July after they challenged the existing Supreme Court, which has heavily favored the ruling Socialist Party. The status of the other magistrates remains unclear. Three were detained, although local media reported they were subsequently freed. Others have fled to the United States and Colombia. Venezuela s Information Ministry did not respond to a request for comment. Venezuelan opposition COPEI party member Roberto Enriquez remains in the home of the Chilean ambassador in Caracas, the Foreign Ministry added in its statement. | 0fake |
Supreme Court justice temporarily preserves Trump refugee ban | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy on Monday provided a temporary reprieve for President Trump s order blocking most refugees from entering the United States, putting on hold a lower court s ruling loosening the prohibition. Kennedy s action gave the nine justices more time to consider the Justice Department s challenge filed on Monday to the lower court s decision allowing entry to refugees from around the world if they had a formal offer from a resettlement agency. The full Supreme Court could act within days. The Justice Department opted not to appeal another part of last Thursday s ruling by the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that related to Trump s ban on travelers from six Muslim-majority nations. The 9th Circuit ruling broadened the number of people with exemptions to the ban to include grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins of legal U.S. residents. Without Kennedy s intervention, the appeals court decision would have gone into effect on Tuesday. Kennedy asked refugee ban challengers to file a response to the Trump administration s filing by noon on Tuesday. Under the 9th U.S. Circuit s ruling, up to 24,000 additional refugees would become eligible to enter the United States than otherwise would be allowed, according to the administration. Trump s March 6 order banned travelers from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen for 90 days and locked out most aspiring refugees for 120 days in a move the Republican president argued was needed to prevent terrorist attacks. The order, which replaced a broader January one that was blocked by federal courts, was one of the most contentious acts of his presidency. Critics called it an unlawful Muslim ban that made good on Trump s promise as a candidate of a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States. The broader question of whether the travel ban discriminates against Muslims in violation of the U.S. Constitution, as lower courts previously ruled, will be argued before the Supreme Court on Oct. 10. The Supreme Court in June partially revived the order after its provisions were blocked by lower courts. But the justices said a ban could be applied only to those without a bona fide relationship to people or entities in the United States. New litigation was brought by Hawaii over the meaning of that phrase, including whether written assurances by resettlement agencies obligating them to provide services for specific refugees would count. Hawaii and other Democratic-led states, the American Civil Liberties Union and refugee groups filed legal challenges after Trump signed his order in March. The Trump administration has ended its odd and ill-advised quest to ban grandmas from the country, Hawaii Attorney General Douglas Chin said on Monday. With respect to the admission to the United States of refugees with formal assurances and the Supreme Court s temporary stay order, each day matters, Chin added, promising to respond soon to the administration s filing. In court papers filed earlier on Monday, the Justice Department said the 9th Circuit refugees decision will disrupt the status quo and frustrate orderly implementation of the order s refugee provisions. Omar Jadwat, an ACLU lawyer, contrasted Trump s efforts to keep alive his travel ban with the Republican president s decision last week to rescind a program that protected from deportation people brought to the United States illegally as children, dubbed Dreamers. The extraordinary efforts the administration is taking in pursuit of the Muslim ban stand in stark contrast to its unwillingness to take a single step to protect 800,000 Dreamers, Jadwat said. | 0fake |
FITTING END FOR COMMUNIST DICTATOR: Hilarious Reason Jeep Carrying Castro’s Ashes Had To Be Pushed By Military | As FoxNews.com reported:The Russian-made jeep ferrying Castro s ashes broke down and needed to be pushed on Saturday en route to the late leader s final resting place.The breakdown of the jeep in the midst of adoring crowds chanting Long live Fidel! was symbolic of the dual nature of Castro s Cuba.While his legacy inspires fierce adulation by many of the nation s citizens, others continue to grumble about Cuba s autocratic government, inefficient bureaucracy and stagnant economy. Read more: FOX News | 1real |
Senate Democrats push for new gun control measures | (Reuters) - Leading U.S. Senate Democrats on Monday urged quick passage of legislation defeated last year to impose additional gun controls in the wake of the weekend mass shooting in Florida. Four Democratic senators, led by Chuck Schumer of New York, the No. 2 Senate Democrat, called for immediate passage of a bill preventing people on “terror watch lists” and other “suspected terrorists” from buying firearms or explosives. Last December, Democrats attempted to pass this legislation but were blocked by Republicans, who said the government could mistakenly place innocent people on watch lists. The new push for legislation came after a man with an assault rifle entered a gay nightclub in Orlando and killed 49 people and wounded 53 others. The gunman subsequently was killed by law enforcement officers. Federal agents had interviewed the gunman twice in recent years. Joining Schumer in calling for passage of the legislation are Senators Dianne Feinstein of California, Bill Nelson of Florida and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut. Meanwhile, Democratic President Barack Obama on Monday blamed weak gun laws for allowing disturbed individuals to gain access to powerful weapons. Hillary Clinton, the leading Democratic candidate to replace Obama in the White House, said people on watch lists should be barred from buying guns and said there should be a debate about possible restrictions on assault weapons. Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, took a different approach, repeating his call for temporarily banning Muslims from entering the country. The Orlando gunman was born in the United States. His parents were Afghan immigrants. | 0fake |
Wall Street banker Cohn moving Trump toward moderate policies | WASHINGTON/BOSTON (Reuters) - In a White House marked by infighting, top economic aide Gary Cohn, a Democrat and former Goldman Sachs banker, is muscling aside some of President Donald Trump’s hard-right advisers to push more moderate, business-friendly economic policies. Cohn, 56, did not work on Republican Trump’s campaign and only got to know him after the November election, but he has emerged as one of the administration’s most powerful players in an ascent that rankles conservatives. Trump refers to his director of the National Economic Council (NEC), as “one of my geniuses,” according to one source close to Cohn. More than half a dozen sources on Wall Street and in the White House said Cohn has gained the upper hand over Trump’s chief strategist, Steve Bannon, the former head of the right-wing website Breitbart News and a champion of protectionist trade opposed by moderate Republicans and many big companies. Cohn is a key administration link to business executives and White House sources say he will lead the charge for Trump on top domestic priorities such as tax reform, infrastructure and deregulation. “Gary’s singular focus is tax reform and he’s working to try and get that done in 2017,” said Orin Snyder, a partner at law firm Gibson Dunn and a long-time friend of Cohn. “He is working to implement the president’s twin goals of economic growth and job creation. The tax plan will also include a reduction in the corporate rate, but also tax relief for middle- and low-income Americans.” Some conservatives fear Cohn may push through a tax plan that is unnecessarily complicated and argue that including tax relief for middle- and low-income Americans would not spur economic growth as much as cuts focused entirely or mostly on businesses and entrepreneurs. Adam Brandon, president of the conservative group FreedomWorks, is disappointed Trump is not charging ahead with a plan unveiled last year during his campaign that would slash taxes on businesses and wealthy individuals. That plan was shaped heavily by Stephen Moore, an economic policy expert at the conservative Heritage Foundation think tank, who advised Trump’s campaign. But it has since been shelved. “I don’t like the idea of scrapping it and starting over again,” Brandon said. A senior administration official said the White House has started from scratch on the tax plan and, while setting business tax cuts as the highest priority, is consulting with lawmakers, economists and business leaders before taking it to the Republican-led Congress. Two administration officials said reports that the White House was considering a carbon tax and a value-added tax were incorrect, but that other ideas were on the table. “We are considering a multitude of options for tax reform,” a White House official said on Sunday. Associates of both Trump and Cohn say the two have developed a bond. People who have worked with Cohn say he is loyal, direct and assertive, traits that Trump likes. Crucially, Cohn also has the trust of Jared Kushner, Trump’s adviser and son-in-law, and his wife Ivanka, Trump’s daughter. Cohn hired his staff more quickly than other top officials, building a reputation for competence in an administration hurt by early missteps over healthcare reform and a travel ban, the sources said. “Gary is a huge asset to the Trump administration. He’ll be of great help in eliminating unnecessary regulation, stimulating growth and reforming the tax code,” said billionaire hedge fund manager John Paulson, an early backer of Trump who knows Cohn through Wall Street circles. The son of middle-class parents in Cleveland, Ohio, Cohn overcame dyslexia and worked in sales before elbowing his way into a position as a Wall Street trader and rising to become president and chief operating officer at Goldman Sachs Group Inc (GS.N). Kushner was a Goldman Sachs intern when he first crossed paths with Cohn. After Trump’s election victory, Kushner paved the way for Cohn to meet the president-elect, who had spent much of the campaign blasting investment banks as modern-day robber barons. Trump soon named Cohn his NEC director. Apparently paying more heed to Cohn and other moderates on his team, Trump last week said he was open to reappointing Janet Yellen as Federal Reserve chairman when her term is up and he also held back from naming China a currency manipulator. Both stances marked a reversal from his campaign when Trump criticized Yellen and vowed to label China a currency manipulator on “day one” of his administration, a move that could lead to punitive duties on Chinese goods. Sources close to Cohn and inside the White House said there are sharp policy differences between Cohn and both Bannon and Reince Priebus, White House chief of staff. A White House spokesperson denied there was a power struggle inside the West Wing. Cohn has already put his stamp on regulatory policy by working with Kushner to successfully push Wall Street lawyer Jay Clayton for head of the Securities and Exchange Commission after billionaire investor Carl Icahn, an early Trump supporter, had vetted other candidates. Clayton’s nomination has been advanced to the Senate for a vote. The vacant Federal Reserve vice chairman’s seat is a key regulatory role Cohn and his colleagues on the economic team want to fill soon. Cohn has interviewed nearly two dozen candidates and has whittled the list down. Randal Quarles, a veteran of the George W. Bush administration is one of several candidates left, a source familiar with the process said. Cohn will also take a leading role in developing Trump’s infrastructure plan to rebuild airports, roads and bridges. The biggest challenge may be figuring out how to pay for the initiative, which Trump has estimated at $1 trillion. While conservatives are concerned by Cohn, they note that Bannon is still part of Trump’s mercurial administration and that Cohn could fall out of favor as quickly as he has risen. “Whoever is up today,” Brandon said, “could be gone tomorrow.” | 0fake |
WATCH: 2 GOP Reps. Are COMPLETELY Stumped Over How Many Constituents They’ll Hurt With Trumpcare | The House s plan to repeal and replace the ACA is catching an awful lot of flak from Republicans and Democrats alike. Congressmen Steve King of Iowa, and Leonard Lance of New Jersey, appeared on MSNBC last night to discuss Trumpcare, and Chris Hayes grilled them about how it will affect their constituents. Neither was able to give him a real answer.Hayes asked King: How many people in your district are on the [ACA] exchanges, congressman? King s answer was the answer of someone who neither knows nor cares about his constituents only his power and position: I don t know that number. You may have that in front of you, Chris, but I don t know that number. Hayes pressed Lance on that, too, and Lance tried to pass it off as a small number: I would say roughly 5,000 or so, Chris. The thing is, those numbers are readily available, so there s zero excuse for them not knowing these answers.Furthermore, an interesting picture emerged last night In Lance s New Jersey district, more than 20,000 people have insurance through the ACA, but roughly 38,000 will lose their coverage under the GOP s plan. In King s district, a little over 11,000 people have insurance through the ACA, but over 40,000 stand to lose their coverage if the GOP s plan passes.So they re going to yank coverage away from more people than those who obtained it under the ACA. WOW. As U.S. Representatives, it s these guys job to know this kind of thing about their districts so that they can support or oppose bills based on who they represent. They ve failed miserably.But they d rather put party and ideology above their people. And King even believes that people have no right to health insurance, which means no right to healthcare (because without insurance, most of us can t afford medical care). He also believes that the best decisions are made by lawmakers closest to the people, so he s shucking his responsibility as a U.S. Representative.Both of them are sick for this.Watch both segments below: Featured image via screen capture from embedded videos | 1real |
Philippines' Duterte ditches peace process with Maoist rebels | MANILA (Reuters) - Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte said on Friday he has terminated intermittent peace talks with Maoist-led rebels and would consider them terrorists because hostilities had continued during negotiations. Ending the nearly half-century long conflict with the communists, in which more than 40,000 people have been killed, was among Duterte s priorities when he took office in June last year. Duterte said he would consider the political arm of the Maoists a terrorist group and was demanding that dozens of rebel leaders he freed last year in order to restart talks turn themselves in. I am ordering those I have released temporarily to surrender or face again punitive action, Duterte in a speech to soldiers. Let it not be said that I did not try to reach out to them, he said. Duterte on Thursday signed a proclamation ending the peace talks, which started in August last year and were brokered by Norway. Talks have been intermittent since 1986. We find it unfortunate that their members have failed to show their sincerity and commitment in pursuing genuine and meaningful peaceful negotiations, Duterte s spokesman, Harry Roque, said in a statement late on Thursday. In May, government negotiators canceled a round of formal talks with the Maoist-led rebels in the Netherlands as the guerrillas stepped up attacks in the countryside. The rebels had no choice but to intensify guerrilla warfare in rural areas, Jose Maria Sison, chief political consultant of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDF), said in a statement. The NDF, the political arm of the Maoist guerrillas, said it regretted the unilateral cancellation of talks on such vital social and economic reforms. Government troops were advised to stay alert on the movements of the estimated 3,800 leftist guerrillas, said military spokesman Major-General Restituto Padilla. Government forces are also battling Islamist fighters in the south of the largely Christian country, some of whom recently occupied a town for several months in the biggest battle in the Philippines since World War Two. | 0fake |
U.S. tax panel chair sees support for Obamacare mandate repeal in tax bill | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The chairman of the House of Representatives’ tax-writing committee on Wednesday predicted there will be strong support for repealing the Obamacare individual healthcare mandate when House-Senate negotiators hash out differences in their tax reform plans. “We’re very supportive of getting rid of that tax. We’re encouraged by the Senate’s action; we’re hopeful they pass it. And I think in conference committee you’ll see strong support,” Representative Kevin Brady, a Republican, said in an interview with Fox News. The House version of the tax bill, which will be voted on this week, does not repeal the mandate. | 0fake |
There is no nationwide crime wave (and police killings are not up) | Since 1991, murder and violent crime have plummeted in the U.S. But in a widely discussed op-ed in the Wall Street Journal titled "The New Nationwide Crime Wave,” Heather Mac Donald recently made a startling claim: “Gun violence in particular is spiraling upward in cities across America.” She demonstrated this by citing murder rate increases in six cities.
Murders of police were also surging out of control, she said; they had “jumped 89 percent in 2014."
Last week, Mac Donald, the Thomas W. Smith Fellow at New York’s Manhattan Institute appeared on numerous TV channels, including Fox News and CNN. As is so common, the claims have become exaggerated, giving the impression that crime is on the rise all across the U.S.
Fortunately, that’s all hype. Mac Donald simply cherry-picked those places that had experienced rising crime rates. Overall, the 15 largest cities have actually experienced a slight decrease in murders. There has been a 2 percent drop from the first five months of 2014 to the first five months of this year. Murder rates rose in eight cities and fell in seven. There is no nationwide murder wave.
Murder rates fell dramatically in some of these cities. Comparing this year’s January-to-May murder data with last year’s, we find that San Jose’s murder rate fell by a whopping 59 percent; Jacksonville’s fell by 31 percent; Indianapolis’ by 28 percent; San Antonio’s by 25 percent; and Los Angeles’ by 15 percent. Presumably, we aren’t going to focus only on these cities and start claiming a national victory over crime.
Mac Donald is undoubtedly correct that something unusual is happening in Baltimore. When comparing this May to last May, arrests have plummeted by 50 percent, murders have risen by 76 percent and overall violent crime is up by 15 percent. This surely has something to do with police officers’ hesitation to stick their necks out. Who can blame them, when they’re being labeled as criminals for doing their jobs?
But there’s no evidence that what is happening in Baltimore is happening elsewhere. Murder rates have indeed gone up in Milwaukee, St. Louis, Chicago and Atlanta, but higher murder rates alone don’t mean a lack of effective law enforcement.
Last Thursday, Mac Donald speculated in a New York Times piece that this year’s 15 percent increase in murders in New York City is due to a drop in arrests – "arrests are down 17.4 percent through May 31 compared to the same period last year.” But, just as likely, part of the drop in arrests might be related to the overall drop in crime. While murder rates rose, the 5.5 percent drop in total violent crime and 7.5 percent decline in property crime are being ignored.
These declines suggest something is occurring that is more complicated than police simply being afraid to do their jobs. After all, why would police pulling back from their jobs cause more murders but fewer robberies?
Crime goes up and down for all sorts of reasons. It is too early to figure out why some cities are seeing more crime and others are seeing less. Sheer randomness will always cause a few outliers.
Police do a dangerous job, and any dramatic increase in police killings would be horrible. But the nationwide spike in police killings is not all that Mac Donald claims it is. After averaging 55 police deaths per year for a decade, the number of deaths fell to 27 in 2013. The number went back up to 51 in 2014. Though that was a large increase, the unusual year was 2013, not 2014.
But the biggest problem with these last numbers is that, unlike the crime numbers that compare periods clearly before and after the “Ferguson effect” and the Baltimore riots, the spike in police killings occurred too early. According to the Officer Down Memorial Page, murders of police through May nationwide are down 38 percent this year compared to last year (16 versus 26).
With misleading claims by left wing groups such as ProPublica claiming that police are shooting young black males at much higher rates than young white males, it was probably only a matter of time before some conservatives like Mac Donald made their own misleading claims.
Fortunately, there has been no nationwide spike in murders or police killings so far this year. If there is a nationwide “Ferguson effect,” the data don’t show it. Cherry-picking half a dozen of the worst crime numbers from the largest cities might scare people and get massive media attention, but it doesn’t tell us anything about policy.
John R. Lott, Jr. is a columnist for FoxNews.com. He is an economist and was formerly chief economist at the United States Sentencing Commission. Lott is also a leading expert on guns and op-eds on that issue are done in conjunction with the Crime Prevention Research Center. He is the author of nine books including "More Guns, Less Crime." His latest book is "The War on Guns: Arming Yourself Against Gun Control Lies (August 1, 2016). Follow him on Twitter@johnrlottjr. | 0fake |
UK's Hammond urges party to unite on Brexit, says EU is 'the enemy' | LONDON (Reuters) - British finance minister Philip Hammond sought to quell accusations from within his Conservative Party that he is taking too soft an approach to Brexit and said the European Union represented the enemy in the negotiations. Hammond, who has come under increasingly hostile fire from supporters of a tough approach to splitting Britain from the EU, told Sky News television that it was time for the Conservatives to end their in-fighting over the Brexit talks. I understand that passions are high, I understand that people have very strong views about this, but we are all going to the same place, we all have the same agenda, he said in an interview on the sidelines of International Monetary Fund meetings in Washington. The enemy, the opponents, are out there on the other side of the table. Those are the people that we have to negotiate with. We have to negotiate hard to get the very best deal for Britain, Hammond said. Hammond infuriated pro-Brexit newspapers this week and was criticized by some Conservatives including former finance minister Nigel Lawson for not agreeing to spend money now on preparations for the possibility of Britain leaving the EU without a deal. Speaking to media in Washington on Friday, Hammond declined to say whether he would vote for Brexit if there were a second referendum. Hammond who campaigned for Britain to remain part of the EU ahead of the June 2016 vote. Echoing Prime Minister Theresa May s own reticence on the issue, Hammond declined to say how he would vote if another referendum were held now. We ve had the referendum, he told the BBC. You know how I voted in it. Earlier this week May declined to answer a similar question, stoking concerns among Brexit supporters that she is not fully committed to taking Britain out of the EU. On Thursday May s spokeswoman said the prime minister had full confidence in Hammond. | 0fake |
Texas Leads 16-State Coalition in Support of Travel Ban | Leading a coalition, the Texas attorney general filed a brief with the U. S. Supreme Court on Monday supporting President Donald Trump’s temporary travel stay. Attorneys general from 14 other states and the governor of Mississippi joined to urge the nation’s highest court to reinstate the executive order. [State officials urge that President Trump was acting within his lawful authority given to him by Congress when national security, foreign affairs, and immigration policy judgments require him to exercise it. Last month the U. S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit affirmed a lower district court’s order blocking the executive action, as reported by Breitbart News. The opinion of the court was issued on May 25. The decision upheld the halt of the executive order by the federal district court in the District of Maryland. The U. S. Department of Justice filed a petition for writ of certiorari on June 1 asking the court to decide whether the president acted within his authority in issuing the temporary travel ban from six countries. The Supreme Court took the rare step on June 3, as reported by Breitbart News, in expediting review of the case. “The executive order is a tailored response to a very real threat to our national security,” Attorney General Ken Paxton said in a statement obtained by Breitbart Texas. “A temporary pause on entry from countries with heightened security concerns is necessary to shore up our nation’s vetting procedures. The president is fulfilling his solemn duty to protect Texans and all Americans. ” The states of Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Kansas, Louisiana, Montana, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, West Virginia, and Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant, have joined the state of Texas in filing the friend of the court brief (amicus curiae) in the U. S. Supreme Court. A summary of the arguments made in the brief are as follows: The district court’s injunction of the President’s temporary suspension of entry for specified classes of nonresident aliens is remarkable. The injunction was issued despite three longstanding doctrines limiting the availability of judicial remedies for disagreement with policy decisions like the Executive Order here. First, the Constitution does not apply extraterritorially to nonresident aliens abroad seeking entry. And this Court has specifically recognized that there is no “judicial remedy” to override the Executive’s use of its delegated 8 U. S. C. § 1182( f) power to deny classes of nonresident aliens entry into this country. Second, the Order must be accorded “the strongest of presumptions and the widest latitude of judicial interpretation,” because it is in [the U. S. Supreme Court opinion of] Youngstown’s first zone of executive action pursuant to congressionally delegated power. Third, the Court has long accorded facially neutral government actions a presumption of validity and good faith, so those actions can be invalidated under a analysis only if there is the clearest proof of pretext. This longstanding, exacting standard for judicial scrutiny of government motives has been recognized by this Court in multiple types of constitutional challenges. This limit respects institutional roles by precluding courts from engaging in a tenuous “judicial psychoanalysis of a drafter’s heart of hearts. ” Moreover, they urge: Plaintiffs cannot satisfy this Court’s exacting standards for showing that the Executive Order is pretext masking a religious classification. The Order classifies aliens according to nationality based on concerns about the government’s ability to adequately vet nationals of six covered countries who seek entry. Not only that, but these six countries covered by the Order were previously identified by Congress and the Obama Administration, under the program, as national security “countries of concern. ” The Order is therefore valid, as it provides a “facially legitimate and bona fide reason” for exercising 8 U. S. C. § 1182( f) national security and powers to restrict entry. The states also argued that any “ statements regarding a potential future policy” are “far from the clearest proof” required to overcome the strong legal presumption of validity, especially as to a different policy adopted by the president after he took office after conferring with other government officials. Lana Shadwick is a writer and legal analyst for Breitbart Texas. She has served as a prosecutor and associate judge in Texas. Follow her on Twitter @LanaShadwick2. State of Texas et al. Brief at U. S. Supreme Court in Support of President’s Temporary Travel Halt, | 0fake |
MUST WATCH AND SHARE VIDEO: BRIT HUME GIVES THE BEST EVER 1.5 MINUTES ON THE PLANNED PARENTHOOD SCANDAL | Brit Hume says video exposing Planned Parenthood s trafficking of fetal body parts removes the veil of antiseptic tidiness behind which the abortion industry has for so long operated. | 1real |
Jon Stewart Makes A Room Full Of U.S. Soldiers Gasp As He Delivers A Dire Warning On Trump (VIDEO) | If you re someone who looks at the prospect of four (or eight!) years of President Trump with a mixture of depression and terror, imagine what it must be like to be a soldier who may have to serve in the military under him.Trump will have no problem, say, ordering you to commit war crimes. Or torture. Or to go to war. The possibility of Trump becoming president represents the likelihood that you will be made to do something that will not only dishonor your country, but yourself as well. Needless to say, the prospect makes for some very worried soldiers in the United States military.As part of a USO tour with President Obama, Jon Stewart stopped by to emcee the Joining Forces 5th Anniversary Event at Joint Base Andrews. Most of his jokes were good-natured, but the former Daily Show host couldn t help but addressing the very large, very orange elephant in the room.While speaking about Vice President Joe Biden, who joined Stewart on stage, the comedian noted that many people criticize Biden for [saying] whatever he thinks of, whatever comes into his mind. But it reminded him of someone else: Who would have thought that now, that gets you the Republican nomination? So, um (laughter) Don t worry, Trump s gonna keep you busy when he s the Commander-in-Chief. You re gonna have to paint all the planes with Trump in big gold letters. You re gonna be busy. During the extended punchline on Trump, the audience went from laughing, to uncomfortable gasps and groans, to dead silence. It was a good joke, but the nugget of truth at the center of it was deeply unsettling.Donald Trump has shown absolutely no ability to control himself during his campaign. His half-hearted stabs at being more presidential have ended without fail within 24 hours. Often these forays into seriousness end spectacularly. After the press had lauded Trump for being more mature, he attended a rally in which he floated the idea that Ted Cruz s father was linked to the JFK assassination. He s about to have the most powerful military in the history of mankind at his beck and call.Painting Trump in gold on airplanes isn t the only thing Trump might have these soldiers do. Given his temperament, his thin skin, and his ability to contradict himself endlessly, Trump could wake up one morning and just decide to go to war. And to defend his bruised ego, he would be willing to send the very same men and women standing in front of Jon Stewart into battle. Their silence speaks volumes.They ll be busy alright.Watch Jon Stewart give his brutal prediction about Trump below, via Mediaite s Tommy Christopher: Jon Stewart Tells Troops Trump s Gonna Keep by DailyPoliticsFeatured image via Daily Motion screengrab | 1real |
TRUNEWS 10/26/16 Jeremy Wiles | Sing A Little Louder | TRUNEWS 10/26/16 Jeremy Wiles | October 26, 2016 Will Deutsche Bank’s derivatives be the spark which ignites the Western financial system? Today on TRUNEWS, Rick Wiles raises the alarm about Germany’s biggest bank bracing for a potentially catastrophic earnings report Thursday, and NATO redeploying forces to Russia’s doorstep. Rick also speaks with Jeremy Wiles, the CEO of KingdomWorks Studios, about his harrowing new film “ ”, which details the apathy German Christians displayed toward the Holocaust during World War 2, and the warning American evangelicals MUST heed everyday while the lives of the unborn are slaughtered domestically.
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OPEN SOCIETY: Soros-backed, Anti-Trump Immigration Protests ‘Sprung from Nowhere’ at Airports Across America | 21st Century Wire says This week a US presidential executive order temporarily restricted travelers and refugees from Syria, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen from entering America. In response to the controversial order, a wave of anti-Trump flash mob protests emerged seemingly out of nowhere at New York s JFK Airport and other airports across the nation. Welcome to the brave new world of digital activism, driven by some of the world wealthiest men ENGINEERING CRISIS George Soros tied to protests over Trump s recent executive order concerning immigration. (Photo illustration 21WIRE s Shawn Helton)While the airport angst appeared to be an organic effort to reject Trump s executive order on immigration, it was revealed that the heavily organized protests were found to be tied to social movement billionaire financier George Soros. Participating groups included the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the National Immigration Law Center, the Urban Jusric Center, and Make The Road advocacy group, to name only a few are all funded by Soros front organizations led by his Open Society Foundation.The airport protests erupted just a week after a string of multi-million dollar Soros-linked/Democratic Party-affiliated NGO s organized what was dubbed a Women s March on Washington DC. The Soros-backed women s march was full of Hollywood celebrities in addition to a bevy of other speakers that included Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards, activist Gloria Steinem, filmmaker Michael Moore, as well as the convicted felon Donna Hylton, who took part in kidnapping and torturing a 62-year-old real-estate broker named Thomas Vigliarole, in a botched ransom plot from 1985.The recent airport protests and mainstream media reportage regarding the immigration based executive order prompted a response from President Donald Trump over the past 24 hours:Below will take a closer look at the main outline of the immigration based executive order, as another wave of Soros-backed political opposition has been triggered into action (Image Source: abcnews.com)Here are the key provisions of the immigration order outlined by the Trump administration:Whether or not someone supports the new US immigration order, it is strange that the list does not include other countries linked to state-sponsored terror such as Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Pakistan. From a security standpoint, by leaving out these terrorist-linked and terrorist sponsor countries Trump s executive order makes little sense.In a press release from February of 2016, The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) outlined travel orders similar to Trump s immigration EO based on the Terrorist Travel Prevention Act of 2015. Here s a passage of the DHS release discussing travel restrictions concerning the exact countries included in the Trump order: The Department of Homeland Security today announced that it is continuing its implementation of the Visa Waiver Program Improvement and Terrorist Travel Prevention Act of 2015 with the addition of Libya, Somalia, and Yemen as three countries of concern, limiting Visa Waiver Program travel for certain individuals who have traveled to these countries. Pursuant to the Act, the Secretary of Homeland Security had sixty days to determine whether additional countries or areas of concern should be subject to the travel or dual nationality restrictions under the Act. After careful consideration, and in consultation with the Director of National Intelligence and the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Homeland Security has determined that Libya, Somalia, and Yemen be included as countries of concern, specifically for individuals who have traveled to these countries since March 1, 2011. At this time, the restriction on Visa Waiver Program travel will not apply to dual nationals of these three countries. DHS continues to consult with the Department of State and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to develop further criteria to determine whether other countries would be added to this list. Last month, the United States began implementing changes under the Act. The three additional countries designated today join Iran, Iraq, Sudan and Syria as countries subject to restrictions for Visa Waiver Program travel for certain individuals. Under the new law, the Secretary of Homeland Security may waive these restrictions if he determines that such a waiver is in the law enforcement or national security interests of the United States. Such waivers will be granted only on a case-by-case basis. As a general matter, categories of travelers who may be eligible for a waiver include individuals who traveled to these countries on behalf of international organizations, regional organizations, and sub-national governments on official duty; on behalf of a humanitarian NGO on official duty; or as a journalist for reporting purposes. Additionally, under the Obama administration, during the Syrian refugee resettlement program US entrance for Iraqi refugees was halted for 6 months in 2011.Interestingly, several Soros-linked organizations led the charge following the detention of immigrant travelers at airports in America over this past weekend. The ACLU, and the immigration-advocacy group Make The Road, both Soros linked entities, were heavily involved in organizing political opposition concerning the Trump immigration order.In 2014, it was disclosed that George Soros s Open Society Foundations granted $50 million dollars to the ACLU. Additionally, a law suit filed by ACLU associated lawyers and The National Immigration Law Center led to a stay of President Trump s executive orders over the past 48 hours.Breitbart recently reported that the The National Immigration Law Center has received numerous Open Society grants earmarked for general support. RT reported the following on January 30th: Three more federal judges, along with a district judge, have issued rulings barring authorities from deporting people detained at US airports following President Donald Trump s executive order restricting entry to travelers from seven countries with Muslim-majorities. Whether in the flesh, social media or through mainstream TV, the populace is subject to various forms of hyperreal propaganda around the global in many ways this is being used to push certain political regime changes and party objectives through the use of deceptive color revolutions and their many incarnations.In a book from 2011 written by Susanne Elizabeth Shawyer entitled Radical Street Theatre and the Yippie Legacy: A Performance History of the Youth International Party, 1967 1968, we gain a clearer perspective of the term Smart Mobs and the nature of these cross-platform gatherings: The potential for ideological uses of flash mobs soon became clear by autumn 2003. Because of its original apolitical nature and network organization, the flash mob was easily appropriated for other means beyond random fun. Flash mobs were soon used for political or commercial end by those seeking to capitalize on the trendy cultural capital of flash mobs. Adding to that, Shawyer cites author social science critic Howard Rheingold, who penned a book entitled Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution in 2003 and continued to outline the nature of smart mobs: A smart mob may be composed of strangers who have no relationship to each other beyond their mutual connection to the network, yet this connection creates a virtual community and provides the opportunity for collective action. When looking at the smart mob phenomena concerning the recent anti-trump protests in America, we can see how a large block of people can become useful in spreading political or cultural memes.In addition, the blending of socially engineered political agitator mobs and color revolutions is becoming more and more imperceptible as any group-think meme can cause a sudden flash gathering for the cause of the day.Controversial filmmaker Michael Moore took to social media to rouse the masses, while acknowledging that the Soros-backed NGO MoveOn.org mobilized a protest directly outside of the White House . Debra Heine PJ MediaThe flurry of anguished news stories and protests surrounding President Trump s executive action temporarily suspending immigrants and non-immigrants from countries of particular concern appears to be part of a coordinated PR effort financed by left-wing billionaire George Soros.Rather than a complete Muslim ban as promised during the campaign, Trump s executive order contains moderate refugee restrictions, similar to those that have been implemented by President Obama. If reports are true that restrictions are being applied even to green-card holders, that is an unfortunate misapplication of the law that will likely soon be corrected.Protesters quickly materialized Saturday at JFK Airport, where some refugees were being temporarily detained.Who are these people? Make the Road is a NY-based far-left non-profit funded in part by George Soros.According to Breitbart s Aaron Klein, the signatories to the lawsuit filed Saturday to block Trump s executive order included immigration lawyers from groups financed by Soros.At least one case quickly prompted a legal challenge as lawyers representing two Iraqi refugees held at Kennedy International Airport in New York filed a motion early Saturday seeking to have their clients released. They also filed a motion for class certification, in an effort to represent all refugees and other immigrants who they said were being unlawfully detained at ports of entry.The suit was filed by lawyers from the International Refugee Assistance Project, the National Immigration Law Center, the Jerome N. Frank Legal Services Organization at Yale Law School, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), and the International Refugee Assistance Project (formerly Iraqi Refugee Assistance Project) at the Urban Justice Center.The ACLU is massively funded by Soros s Open Society Foundations, including with a $50 million grant in 2014.The National Immigration Law Center has received numerous Open Society grants earmarked for general support.The Urban Justice Center is also the recipient of an Open Society grant.Taryn Higashi, executive director of the Center s International Refugee Assistance Project, which is listed on the Trump lawsuit, currently serves on the Advisory Board of the International Migration Initiative of Soros s Open Society Foundations.Reportedly, open-borders advocate Soros has provided some $76 million for immigrant issues over the past decade, as Soros-funded immigrant rights groups helped influence President Obama s immigration policy.PJ Media continues here..READ MORE TRUMP NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Trump FilesSUPPORT 21WIRE SUBSCRIBE & BECOME A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV | 1real |
BREAKING ENERGY DEPARTMENT AUDIT REVEALS SHOCKING PRICE TAG AND LIABILITY FOR OBAMA’S GREEN ENERGY FAILURES | The American taxpayers are on the hook for less than predicted but this is still huge! It was Obama s green energy scam with companies like Solyndra that was like flushing millions and billions down the toilet Taxpayers are on the hook for more than $2.2 billion in expected costs from the federal government s energy loan guarantee programs, according to a new audit Monday that suggests the controversial projects may not pay for themselves, as officials had promised.Nearly $1 billion in loans have already defaulted under the Energy Department program, which included the infamous Solyndra stimulus project and dozens of other green technology programs the Obama administration has approved, totaling nearly about $30 billion in taxpayer backing, the Government Accountability Office reported in its audit.The hefty $2.2 billion price tag is actually an improvement over initial estimates, which found the government was poised to face $4 billion in losses from the loan guarantees. But as the projects have come to fruition, they ve performed better, leaving taxpayers with a shrinking though still sizable liability. As of November 2014, DOE estimates the credit subsidy cost of the loans and loan guarantees in its portfolio that is, the total expected net cost over the life of the loans to be $2.21 billion, including $807 million for loans that have defaulted, the GAO said in its report to Congress.The green program loan guarantees were created in a 2005 law and boosted by the 2009 stimulus. The first applications were approved in 2009, and through 2014 the Obama administration had issued some 38 loans and guarantees, covering 34 projects ranging from nuclear power plants to fuel-efficient vehicles to solar panels and wind-generation technology.Read more: Washington Times | 1real |
Trump apologizes for lewd comments but calls footage a 'distraction' | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump released a video statement on Facebook on Saturday, apologizing for lewd comments he made about women but calling footage of his comments a “distraction” from bigger political issues. | 0fake |
DELINGPOLE: Climate Change Deniers Should Be Executed ’Gently’ says Eric Idle | Climate change denial is a “crime against humanity” which should be punishable by trial in a world court says Monty Python’s Eric Idle. [I think that denying climate change is a crime against humanity. And they should be held accountable in a World Court. — Eric Idle (@EricIdle) March 15, 2017, But it’s OK. Even though he does apparently believe that the punishment for such “stupidity and ignorance” should be death, Idle generously insists that these deniers should be “put down” humanely. @PaulClaessen Yes, but humanely. Put down gently … . — Eric Idle (@EricIdle) March 16, 2017, This, I am sure we can all agree, is very big of him. What’s sadder, though, perhaps is that from now on every time we watch the final scene of Monty Python’s Life of Brian and the bit where Eric Idle says from the cross “Cheer up Brian … ” before launching into “Always Look On the Bright Side Of Life” we won’t be able to laugh any more. All we’ll be able to think of is a hero, formerly the darling of the but now just another celeb, regurgitating on his Twitter feed the green propaganda he has apparently picked up from falling under the spell of another Brian. The crap Brian. Aka the supremely overrated, celebrity pop star physicist Brian Cox. Never have heroes. They’ll always let you down in the end. | 0fake |
Trump Continues To Destroy Relations With China In INSANE Twitter Tirade | The relationship between the United States and China is an extremely delicate one. They are the world s second-largest power, right behind ourselves. Therefore, it is important not to offend them or to antagonize their leadership. However, that is just what our soon to be Tweeter-in-Chief is spending his Sunday evening doing.After the insanity of taking a phone call from the Taiwanese President something no American president or president-elect has done since 1979 Trump decided to take to Twitter to criticize China over their rebuking of the call in violation of the One China policy most developed world powers have adhered to for decades. Trump ranted:This is likely in response to the fact that China has decided to level a formal complaint regarding Trump s behavior with the United States government. Of course, unable to be challenged or criticized for any reason, Trump is lashing out via Twitter in his usual reckless and unfiltered way. Once again, Trump proves that his temperament doesn t even allow him to run a Twitter account responsibly, much less a nation, and yet here we are. God help us all.Featured image via Drew Angerer/Getty Images | 1real |
Austrian Chancellor's party sues Foreign Minister ahead of election | VIENNA (Reuters) - Austria s ruling Social Democratic Party (SPO) is suing Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz, the chairman of its junior coalition partner, after he accused Chancellor Christian Kern s party of secretly accepting a 100,000 euro ($119,120) donation. The lawsuit marks a new low in the already strained relationship between the coalition partners, who have engaged in public squabbles for years. Polls for parliamentary elections scheduled for Oct. 15 show Kurz s conservative People s Party (OVP) ahead of the SPO. The lawsuit relates to an interview shown on public broadcaster ORF on Monday in which Kurz said industrialist Hans-Peter Haselsteiner, a vocal supporter of the pro-business Neos party, donated 100,000 euros to the SPO via opaque channels. The lawsuit filed at Vienna s commercial court on Friday said the SPO s good reputation, economic progress and honor was damaged by Kurz s comments as it implied dishonesty. The SPO wants party donations to be capped at 20,000 euros. With a view to the upcoming parliamentary elections, there is a very concrete danger that the (SPO) will achieve a worse result because of this accusation, the lawsuit, seen by Reuters, said. The SPO said it has not been offered or received any donations from Haselsteiner, who is a key shareholder of construction group Strabag. Haselsteiner denied Kurz s accusations in newspaper Der Standard. The SPO wants Kurz to publicly retract his comments. In an emailed statement, the General Secretary of Kurz s OVP said Haselsteiner had donated money to an association that is critical of the OVP and hence indirectly supports the SPO. She said the SPO should make all its donations public. Kurz s spokesman was not immediately available for comment. | 0fake |
SCANDAL: EPA could have issued an emergency order 7 months before... | SCANDAL: EPA could have issued an emergency order 7 months before Flint water crisis became public knowledge
Monday, October 31, 2016 by: J. D. Heyes Tags: Flint , water crisis , EPA cover-up (NaturalNews) The federal bureaucracy and corresponding state agencies have never been much good at responding to crises in a timely fashion, and that tradition was alive and well during the recent toxic water crisis in Flint, Michigan.In fact, according to a newly released watchdog report, Americans now know that the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) could have intervened in the crisis a full seven months before it finally did, meaning thousands of residents in Flint would have had to drink far less water tainted with lead.As reported by The Associated Press , the EPA's inspector general said that the agency had the authority and enough information to issue emergency orders to protect Flint residents from the lead-contaminated water they were drinking as early as June 2015, seven months before officials finally declared an emergency.Inspector General Arthur Elkins said in an interim report that the water crisis should have created "a greater sense of urgency" for the EPA to "intervene when the safety of drinking water is compromised." Everyone is pointing fingers at everyone else The drinking water in Flint became tainted with unsafe levels of lead after city officials decided to begin drawing from the Flint River in April 2014, in a bid to save money. The broke city of about 100,000 residents north of Detroit was under state control at the time.Regulators did not make sure that the water was properly treated, so lead from aging pipes leached into the supply, the AP reported.Since the discovery of high levels of lead, federal, state and local officials have traded accusations about who is most to blame for the crisis , even as residents are still forced to drink bottled or filtered water.Doctors have detected higher than normal levels of lead in hundreds of children around the city. And many taps remain off-limits.Gov. Rick Snyder, a Republican, appointed a panel to look into the matter. It concluded that the state is "fundamentally accountable" for the lead crisis due to decisions made by state environmental regulators as well as state-appointed emergency managers who were in charge of running the city.But that said, once the EPA discovered that water being consumed by city residents was tainted with unsafe levels of lead, Snyder believes the agency should have acted – and he is right."As Gov. Snyder has stated all along, what happened in Flint was the result of failure of government at all levels," his spokeswoman, Anna Heaton, said recently.Since the crisis began, officials have tried to reshuffle the deck, so to speak, and call it "reform." They say some state agencies have undergone "culture changes" that will supposedly prevent future recurrences of epic failure, according to Heaton, who called such changes "encouraging." People should be held accountable – but won't be It's unclear how many people actually believe that, considering that state agencies had mandates already to protect the public from polluted and contaminated water (as did the EPA). By "culture changes," does Heaton mean that people were fired and actually replaced by others who will do what taxpayers are paying them to do?Flint Mayor Karen Weaver, a Democrat who took office after the crisis emerged, said agencies like the EPA and the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality are there "to help ensure the well-being and safety of men, women and children," yet they failed in their core mission to do so. She also called for those who are responsible for the crisis to be held accountable, though we advise her not to hold her breath.As for the EPA's inspector general report, it said that the agency's Midwest region did not issue an emergency order because officials concluded actions taken by the state prevented the EPA from doing so. The report says that their interpretation was not correct, and that according to federal law, when state actions are deemed to be unacceptable, "the EPA can and should proceed with an (emergency) order" designed to protect "the public in a timely manner."Without EPA intervention, "the conditions in Flint persisted, and the state continued to delay taking action to require corrosion control or provide alternative drinking water supplies," the report said. Sources: | 1real |
WATCH: Republican Kentucky Governor Calls For Bloody Rebellion If Hillary Clinton Is Elected | While Donald Trump is urging gun owners to assassinate Hillary Clinton before the election, Kentucky GOP Governor Matt Bevin is suggesting a bloody rebellion if she is elected.In a move that should make Kentucky voters hang their heads in shame, Bevin appeared before a crowd at the Values Voter Summit on Saturday and instantly made conservative Christians even more paranoid and bloodthirsty than they already were by claiming that Hillary Clinton is a tyrant who will destroy America if she is allowed to be in charge for very long. We don t have multiple options, he said. We re going one way or we re going the other way, politically, spiritually, morally, economically, from a liberty standpoint. We re going one way or we re going the other way. Bevin painted liberals as un-American for preventing conservative Christians from declaring America a Christian nation and instituting the Bible as the law of the land in place of the Constitution. They try to silence us. They try to get us to shut our mouths. They try to embarrass us. Don t be embarrassed. We were not redeemed to have a spirit of timidity. Be bold. There s enough Neville Chamberlains in the world. Be a Winston Churchill There are quite enough sheep already. Be a shepherd. After declaring that America is worth fighting for, ideologically, Bevin suggested spilling blood if that s what it takes to keep Hillary Clinton and the Democrats out of power. Somebody asked me yesterday, I did an interview and they said, Do you think it s possible, if Hillary Clinton were to win the election, do you think it s possible that we ll be able to survive? That we would ever be able to recover as a nation? And while there are people who have stood on this stage and said we would not, I would beg to differ. But I will tell you this: I do think it would be possible, but at what price? At what price? The roots of the tree of liberty are watered by what? The blood, of who? The tyrants to be sure, but who else? The patriots. Whose blood will be shed? It may be that of those in this room. It might be that of our children and grandchildren. I have nine children. It breaks my heart to think that it might be their blood that is needed to redeem something, to reclaim something, that we through our apathy and our indifference have given away. Here s the video via YouTube:Earlier this year at one of his rallies, Donald Trump suggested that Second Amendment people could do something to prevent Hillary Clinton from picking Supreme Court nominees. If she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although the Second Amendment people maybe there is, I don t know. And now a very extreme conservative Republican governor is taking that idea and running with it, proving that Hillary was right to call Trump supporters deplorable.Featured Image: Screenshot | 1real |
Jordan Spieth, His Feet Firmly Grounded, Puts a Sensible Shoe Forward - The New York Times | MALIBU, Calif. — The golf shoes on display in a back room at Nobu Malibu, a restaurant overlooking the Pacific Ocean, would have looked at home in the nearby Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. They were artwork for the sole, pairs of shoes adorned with leis, plaid, a California grizzly bear and numbers — notable scores and finishes that marked steps in the ascent of Jordan Spieth’s career. The Spieth One shoes available soon at an Under Armour retail outlet near you are not at all like the decorative footwear that caught the eye of those at the United States introduction of Spieth’s new spikes. The Spieth One is distinctive in ways that do not catch the eye: the springiness, the snug heel support and the wide placement of the spikes for better stability. Even the stylistic elements — vertical and horizontal lines that Spieth requested from the designers — emphasize utility. “That’s going to help me when I look down and I’m trying to line up,” Spieth said. “But it also looks cool. It’s a cool way to be subtle because I don’t want a giant J. S. on there. ” Be it his signature shoe or his life, Spieth prefers form over flash. Just as his golfing attire leans toward grays, blues, browns and whites, his public persona leans toward vanilla malted. Except for Spieth’s results, nothing about him screams “Look at me!” That made Nobu, where the beautiful people go to be seen while grazing on yellowtail sashimi, a novel place for Spieth, 23, to promote the shoe last Monday. The day before, Spieth had held his first lead on the PGA Tour since flubbing the 2016 Masters, and this one he converted into his ninth tour title. His victory, at the ATT Pebble Beach was just what the psychologist had ordered for Spieth, who hoped he would not have to return to Augusta National in April weighed down by the baggage of the lead squandered in last year’s final round. “It was definitely in the back of my head all day,” Spieth said. He added: “You have that voice in your head that says: ‘Who cares what anybody else says or thinks? We just do what we do.’ But, obviously, that round was going to be on my brain because it was the most recent lead that we had. If I didn’t hold this one, what kind of repercussions would that have?” Having exorcised the ghost of leads lost, Spieth could have slept in the next morning, enjoyed a day, and then luxuriated in the rave reviews of his new shoes that night. Instead, he was out at Riviera Country Club in Pacific Palisades, Calif. when the sun came up, playing in the Collegiate Showcase with amateur partners who included the heralded Texas senior Gavin Hall. Spieth was accompanied by his coach, Cameron McCormick, who took videos of his swing to review between shots. Spieth, who dropped out of Texas early in his sophomore year to turn pro, said he was striking the ball as well as he did in 2015, when he came close to winning the first three legs of golf’s Grand Slam. He posted 27 consecutive rounds under par in stroke play until his third round Sunday at the Genesis Open, where he finished tied for 22nd at six under, 11 strokes off the lead. But you would never know he was striking so well from watching him prepare. In his practice rounds, he bemoaned approach shots that found the green but were more than 10 feet from the pin and lamented drives that were not perfectly struck but nevertheless found the fairway. Last month, Spieth played a round with another Under Armour athlete, the swimmer Michael Phelps, who said he had been struck by how much Spieth expected of himself. McCormick and Spieth’s caddie, Michael Greller, consider Spieth’s perfectionism a sword: It motivates him to keep working diligently, but he can be steered off track by the internal torrent of negativity when he falls short. “I’m very reliant on Michael for positive energy, positive voice,” Spieth said of Greller. Then there are the external pressures. A story in a local newspaper two days before the start of the Genesis Open mentioned that Spieth, a winner in had “only” two victories last season, as if he had fallen on hard times. If that is struggling, most of Jordan’s contemporaries have never experienced such success: Of the 144 players in the Genesis Open field, 88 had fewer than two career victories on the PGA Tour. “If that’s those individuals’ perception, they’ve got an extremely high perception of what I’m capable of, so I guess, thank you,” Spieth said, adding, “If that’s a low point for a year, then we’re going to surpass Phil Mickelson. ” Mickelson, 46, has 42 PGA Tour victories but is winless since the 2013 British Open. That, combined with Tiger Woods’s being sidelined with a bad back and stuck indefinitely (perhaps enduringly) on 79 tour victories, has tagged Spieth, 23, America’s “it” player in a game with no discernible safe zone. Before the tournament in Pebble Beach, Spieth tried to accommodate young fans seeking his signature while ignoring the professional autograph hunters, a few of whom became profane when they realized he was not going to engage with them. Spieth later expressed frustration over the adults who obtain his autograph to sell online, saying, “Get a job instead of trying to make money off of the stuff that we have been able to do. ” Appropriately, then, Spieth’s inner circle is a few short of an entourage. Greller, his caddie, eschewed the chic boutique properties that ring the nearby beaches and spent the first two nights here with his wife at a budget hotel. Spieth’s parents missed his victory in Pebble Beach because they were watching their younger son, Steven, a senior starter on the Brown basketball team, play in home games against Harvard and Dartmouth. Spieth’s girlfriend, Annie Verret, was in Pebble Beach but did not accompany him to Malibu. Spieth has his friends on the tour, like Justin Thomas and Kelly Kraft, the in Pebble Beach, whom Spieth has included in his favorites on his PGA Tour app, which allows fans to track their favorite players’ statistics and results. One player not on Spieth’s favorite list: himself. That would be too meta, the equivalent of talking about oneself in the third person. “I normally check my app when I’m not playing that week, so there’s no use in having myself on there,” Spieth said. Grinning, he added, “Plus, I kind of know where I am at all times. ” Spieth is also close to his Under Armour family, whose members are always no more than a text away. After his victory in Pebble Beach, Spieth received messages from the Patriots quarterback and Super Bowl most valuable player Tom Brady and the reigning N. B. A. player of the year, Stephen Curry. Both of those stars have found themselves, intentionally or not, thrust into the political conversation. Brady has been questioned over his friendship with President Trump, and Curry has taken issue with the relationship of Under Armour’s founder, Kevin Plank, with the president. The understated Spieth was apologetically quiet when asked about Plank during a round on Wednesday. “I have been advised to not say anything politically by my team,” he said. He added, “I’m sorry. ” At the shoe event, Spieth sat in a director’s chair with his back to the sun as it set over the Pacific. It was a scene straight out of Hollywood, complete with a celebrity interviewer. The model and actress Kelly Rohrbach informed those in attendance of her own accomplishments — filming a new “Baywatch” movie and swimsuit modeling for Sports Illustrated — before turning her attention to Spieth, who corrected her when she described his win at Pebble Beach as his 10th tour victory. At the end of the event, as they were saying their goodbyes, Rohrbach blurted out, “You’re lovely. ” When Spieth was out of earshot, she said: “I was struck by how well spoken he is and how incredibly humble he is. He’s focused, but in the warmest way. There’s a confidence in him that seems to come from work ethic and not bravado. ” During their interview, Spieth told Rohrbach that he felt “so strongly” about his role in the design of the shoes, which was all geared toward performance. It is about science, he added, not style or even sales. “It’s like when I’m playing golf,” Spieth said. “It’s about how am I going to shoot the best score, even if it’s not the prettiest. ” | 0fake |
THIS IS GREAT! You’ll Love What Joy Villa Wants To Do With Her MAGA Grammys Dress [Video] | 1real | |
Federal Court Dismisses Claim That Disney Violated H1-B Visa Law | Federal Court Dismisses Claim That Disney Violated H1-B Visa Law [ link to www.thenewyorklawblog.com ] Employment Law, Legal News, Disney A federal judge dismissed lawsuits brought by two former Walt Disney Parks and Resorts workers claiming that it conspired with outsourcing companies to violate visa laws.According to published reports, the lawsuit claimed that two American IT workers were laid off and forced to train foreign replacements with H1-B temporary visas after Disney and two contractors, Cognizant Technology Solutions and HCL America, allegedly colluded to make false statements when they applied for the temporary visas. However, a federal judge rejected this assertion, finding that none of the statements put at issue in the complaint were adequate to sustain the former workers’ cause of action. Page 1 | 1real |
Russian aerobatics team joins Serbian display of air power | BELGRADE (Reuters) - Russia s elite aerobatic team zoomed over Serbia s military airport on Friday as Belgrade exhibited its newest fighter jets in a display demonstrating close ties between the fellow Slavic, Orthodox Christian countries. Serbia has sought to balance ambitions to join the European Union with continued warm relations to Russia, which backed Belgrade s ultimately failed effort to prevent its ex-province of Kosovo from seceding and declaring independence. Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu attended Friday s air show, staged to commemorate the liberation of Belgrade from Nazi Germany by the Soviet Red Army and Yugoslav Communist partisans in 1944. Five of six MiG-29s donated to Serbia by Russia in 2016 - Serbia now has 10 MiGs in all, dating to 1987 - were painted in new grey camouflage and parked on the runway of Batajnica military base just outside Belgrade for the occasion. Dear Mr Shoigu, thank you for these wonderful presents, thanks to the people of Russia and President (Vladimir) Putin, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic told Shoigu in Russian. I hope our cooperation will be even better. Russia s aerobatic team, the Swifts, demonstrated their flying skills while Serbian jets and air mobile infantry carried out a mock air security operation and assault on ground targets. Serbia has joined NATO s Partnership for Peace program but is not pursuing membership of the alliance, which remains deeply unpopular among Serbs because of its 1999 air war to stop then-nationalist President Slobodan Milosevic s campaign to crush Kosovo s uprising by killing and expelling ethnic Albanians. Last year, Belgrade signed a deal with Airbus to buy nine H145M light helicopters with weapon pods to be used by both military and police. But Serbia, which in 2014 opened accession talks with the EU, remains attached to friendship with Russia, an ally that, for example, blocked independent Kosovo from becoming a member of the United Nations, at Belgrade s request. | 0fake |
CLINTON MEGA-CHARITY: “Slush Fund For The Clinton’s” Took In $140 Million… Gave Pittance In Direct Aid | Try to process this: A woman running for President of The United States (whose entire career has been built on lies and deceit) has a charity that has now been placed on a watch list as a way to warn potential donors about investing in the Clinton Foundation The Clinton Foundation s finances are so messy that the nation s most influential charity watchdog put it on its watch list of problematic nonprofits last month. The Clinton family s mega-charity took in more than $140 million in grants and pledges in 2013 but spent just $9 million on direct aid. The group spent the bulk of its windfall on administration, travel, and salaries and bonuses, with the fattest payouts going to family friends. On its 2013 tax forms, the most recent available, the foundation claimed it spent $30 million on payroll and employee benefits; $8.7 million in rent and office expenses; $9.2 million on conferences, conventions and meetings ; $8 million on fund-raising; and nearly $8.5 million on travel. None of the Clintons are on the payroll, but they do enjoy first-class flights paid for by the Foundation. In all, the group reported $84.6 million in functional expenses on its 2013 tax return and had more than $64 million left over money the organization has said represents pledges rather than actual cash on hand. Some of the tens of millions in administrative costs finance more than 2,000 employees, including aid workers and health professionals around the world. But that s still far below the 75 percent rate of spending that nonprofit experts say a good charity should spend on its mission. Charity Navigator, which rates nonprofits, recently refused to rate the Clinton Foundation because its atypical business model . . . doesn t meet our criteria. Charity Navigator put the foundation on its watch list, which warns potential donors about investing in problematic charities. The 23 charities on the list include the Rev. Al Sharpton s troubled National Action Network, which is cited for failing to pay payroll taxes for several years. Other nonprofit experts are asking hard questions about the Clinton Foundation s tax filings in the wake of recent reports that the Clintons traded influence for donations. It seems like the Clinton Foundation operates as a slush fund for the Clintons, said Bill Allison, a senior fellow at the Sunlight Foundation, a government watchdog group once run by leading progressive Democrat and Fordham Law professor Zephyr Teachout. In July 2013, Eric Braverman, a friend of Chelsea Clinton from when they both worked at McKinsey & Co., took over as CEO of the Clinton Foundation. He took home nearly $275,000 in salary, benefits and a housing allowance from the nonprofit for just five months work in 2013, tax filings show. Less than a year later, his salary increased to $395,000, according to a report in Politico. Braverman abruptly left the foundation earlier this year, after a falling-out with the old Clinton guard over reforms he wanted to impose at the charity, Politico reported. Last month, Donna Shalala, a former secretary of health and human services under President Clinton, was hired to replace Braverman. Nine other executives received salaries over $100,000 in 2013, tax filings show. The group also failed to disclose millions of dollars it received in foreign donations from 2010 to 2012 and is hurriedly refiling five years worth of tax returns after reporters raised questions about the discrepancies in its filings last week.Via: NY Post | 1real |
Former Campaign Finance Co-Chair BLASTS Christie For Trump Endorsement, Pulls Support | On Friday, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie shocked everyone and became a Donald Trump fanboy. In an endorsement speech a day after the 600th Republican debate, he claimed that he believed the billionaire is the only GOP candidate who could beat the Democratic frontrunner, Hillary Clinton, in the general election. However, the former National Finance Co-Chair for Christie s campaign isn t buying it, and has now pulled her support for the governor.Hewlett-Packard CEO Meg Whitman released a statement slamming Christie for his political opportunism : Chris Christie s endorsement of Donald Trump is an astonishing display of political opportunism. Donald Trump is unfit to be President. He is a dishonest demagogue who plays to our worst fears. Trump would take America on a dangerous journey. Christie knows all that and indicated as much many times publicly. The Governor is mistaken if he believes he can now count on my support, and I call on Christie s donors and supporters to reject the Governor and Donald Trump outright. I believe they will. For some of us, principle and country still matter. The move to endorse Trump was absolutely Christie s attempt to share the candidate s limelight. And even though the real estate mogul pretended to be really honered that the NJ governor endorsed him, they way he spoke to Christie after his endorsement proves otherwise.It s also true that Christie has said that Trump is not fit to be President of the United States on more than one occasion. For instance on August 13, he told Fox News: Donald is a great guy and a good person, but I don t think he is suited to be president of the United States. I don t think his temperament is suited for that and I don t think his experience is. When Trump s celebrating 9/11 Muslim lie was all over the news, Christie called Trump a liar and said, But the facts are the facts, and that did not happen in New Jersey that day, and it hasn t happened since. Do those statements sound like things a supporter would say?Of course they don t, but then again, Chris Christie has always been a liar. Featured image via video screenshot | 1real |
Israel: Ancient Papyrus Proves Jerusalem Belongs to Israel | Fragment of Old Tax Bill Meant to Undercut Muslims' Claim to Important Mosque by Jason Ditz, October 26, 2016 Share This
While the UNESCO resolution which recognized the al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem as a “Muslim holy site of worship” was barely reported around the world, and considered fairly non-controversial, Israeli officials have been expressing fury over the matter for two solid weeks.
And the Muslims may have a huge, ancient mosque that has been a key part of Islam for 1,300 years, but Israel has a small strip of papyrus they found in a cave, which they’re pretty sure is a far more conclusive document, since it mentioned the word Jerusalem and was written in Hebrew.
Israeli officials have claimed that the UNESCO resolution, in recognizing the mosque as important to Islam, was tantamount to denying Israel’s absolute and eternal control over the entire city of Jerusalem. Israeli Culture Minister Miri Regev said the papyrus strip proved Jerusalem “was and will remain the eternal capital of the Jewish people.”
The al-Aqsa mosque was built on a site which is believed to have previously housed an important Jewish temple, and some Israelis advocate the eventual destruction of the mosque and the construction of a new temple, though the details of such a construction would be hugely religiously complicated, and since the destruction of the mosque would undoubtedly start a massive war, it is considered unlikely. Still, the far-right government wants to ensure that they have some international precedent for their claim to the territory. Last 5 posts by Jason Ditz | 1real |
BREAKING! NEW Wikileaks Email: Confidential Auditor’s Report States Clinton Foundation Is Engaging In ILLEGAL Conduct | The report exposed in an email shared by Wikileaks shows the results of a review that was completed in 2011, by Jennifer Reynoso, a New York lawyer. The report states that the Clinton Foundation is missing several policies/procedures that are required by law (e.g.,record retention policy). The report goes on to give the following recommendation:In addition to pointing out that employees of the Clinton Foundation are underpaid as compared to comparable positions in other companies, the email also states that the overall morale of the company is low and the staff would like to see more structure. STAFF MORALE IS LOW AND STAFF IS HUNGRY FOR MORE STRUCTUREIronically, the staff complained about a policy not being made available for an employee to blow the whistle on potential wrongdoings within the non-profit. Given Bill Clinton s history as a sexual predator and his role in the Clinton Foundation, it shouldn t come as a surprise that there isn t a strong Sexual Harassment policy in place. | 1real |
BYE-BYE HARVEY! WEINSTEIN’S WIFE, Mother of His Young Kids Is LEAVING…Here’s What She’s Saying To The Victims | Harvey Weinstein s wife, Georgina Chapman, has announced that she is leaving the movie mogul after a string of woman claimed that he had sexually harassed or assaulted her. My heart breaks for all the women who have suffered tremendous pain because of these unforgivable actions. I have chosen to leave my husband, she told People. Caring for my young children is my first priority and I ask the media for privacy at this time. To my wonderful husband #happyfathersday #weloveyou A post shared by Georgina Chapman (@georginachapmanmarchesa) on Jun 18, 2017 at 7:49pm PDTAt the same time as Chapman made the announcement, Weinstein made a departure of his own to Europe, by private jet. There he will undergo therapy for sex addiction and behavioral issues, TMZ reported.Weinstein also hopes that he will still be able to serve the Weinstein Company, from which he was fired by the board on Sunday, in some capacity.His legal team are in talks with the company, and according to an insider, he wants to come back with fresh, new ideas . Chapman, 41, met Weinstein, 65, in 2003 and they married four years later, going on to have two children, India Pearl, seven, and Dashiell Max Robert, four.She is also the co-founder of high-end women s fashion line Marchesa and before the announcement of her split from Weinstein, sources said that she was struggling to save the brand from being tarnished by her husband s allegations. But leaving him might present other problems for the beleaguered British designer. Another day playing dress up on @projectrunwayallstars..,Channeling a little Ginger #sharonstone #casino #projectrunwayallstars #bighairA post shared by Georgina Chapman (@georginachapmanmarchesa) on Aug 25, 2017 at 4:59pm PDTA source told People that she is terrified that the line, which is loved by many of the women who have starred in her husband s films, will founder without his help. Glam squad .action! #projectrunwayallstars #bighair #glammakeup #marchesaA post shared by Georgina Chapman (@georginachapmanmarchesa) on Aug 24, 2017 at 5:18pm PDTThat s because he as one of the heaviest hitters in Hollywood has access to the A-list stars that can keep the brand in the public eye.Chapman posted this gorgeous picture of Nicole Kidman wearing her a dress from her fashion line: Wow the gorgeous @nicolekidman in the @hollywoodreporter!!! #marchesa #hollywoodreporterA post shared by Georgina Chapman (@georginachapmanmarchesa) on Jun 7, 2017 at 3:34pm PDTHollywood icon Bette Midler is seen wearing Marchesa here: Thank you thank you @bettemidler for looking absolutely divine in custom #marchesa at the opening night of @hellodollybway!! #bettemidler #hellodollyA post shared by Georgina Chapman (@georginachapmanmarchesa) on Apr 21, 2017 at 6:34pm PDTA TV fashion source said: Harvey is the one with all the friends. It s going to be a tough time for her and Marchesa . Shades of pink Thank you darling @sophiabush and @normancook for looking stunning in #marchesa at tonight's @sagawards!!! #sags #sophiabush #kaleycuocoA post shared by Georgina Chapman (@georginachapmanmarchesa) on Jan 29, 2017 at 7:58pm PSTA New York fashion publicist who did not want to be named told the Hollywood reporter: No star is ever going to want to wear the brand again. Another gorgeous shot of The Duchess in #marchesanotte The look is available on @farfetch!!! #duchessofcambridgeA post shared by Georgina Chapman (@georginachapmanmarchesa) on Apr 4, 2017 at 3:02pm PDTWeinstein is good friends with Vogue editor Anna Wintour and the two have co-hosted fashion and Democratic political fundraising events.Chapman s departure will likely come as a shock to Weinstein, who had boasted last week that his wife was standing by me 100 percent .He has also said she will be one of the people to kick my a** and help him become a better man.The couple was yesterday said to be holed up in a Los Angeles hotel together.The Weinstein controversy showed no signs of winding down on Tuesday, as several new actresses came forward to detail how Weinstein had assaulted them.Angelina Jolie said that in 1998, when she was just 23 and promoting her film Playing By Heart , Weinstein made unwanted advances on her in a hotel room. Daily Mail | 1real |
Judith Clark’s Radical Transformation - The New York Times | On Oct. 20, 1981, a band of militant zealots armed with automatic weapons tried to rob a Brink’s truck in a shopping mall in Nanuet in Rockland County, N. Y. Before it was over, two guards were shot and two police officers — one black and one white — were gunned down at a roadblock. The crime was one of the last spasms of ’ violence. To the militants, it was an “expropriation” for something they called the Republic of New Afrika, a place that existed mainly in their fevered dreams. Judith Clark was one of four people arrested that day for armed robbery and murder. She was 31, a veteran of the white left who traveled the radical arc from student protest to the Weathermen to the fringes beyond. A new single mother, she kissed her infant daughter goodbye that morning, promising to be home soon. No one ever accused Clark of holding or firing a gun that deadly afternoon. But she was there, a willing participant, at the wheel of a tan Honda getaway car. Over the next two years while she awaited trial in jail, Clark became a fiercer warrior than she was on the day of the robbery. During court hearings, she told the judge she was a “freedom fighter” who didn’t recognize the right of imperialist courts to try her. She called court officers “fascist dogs!” when they clashed with her supporters. Her Kathy Boudin, arrested at the scene of the shootings after having been a fugitive since a 1970 bomb blast in a Greenwich Village town house killed three of her Weather Underground comrades, sat mutely beside her. At trial, Clark and two other defendants — David Gilbert, a Weather Underground member, and Kuwasi Balagoon, a former Black Panther — boycotted the courtroom, listening to the testimony from their basement cells. The defendants insisted on representing themselves no one witnesses on their behalf. When Clark appeared in court to make a closing argument, she merely confirmed her guilt. “Revolutionary violence is necessary, and it is a liberating force,” she told the jury. Judge David Ritter of the Orange County Court sentenced Clark to a minimum of 75 years in prison. He saw no chance for future rehabilitation. “They hold society in contempt and have no respect for human life,” he said. Clark wore a mocking grin that day, the same one she wore when photographers snapped her picture the night of the crime. “One thing about Judith Clark I will never forget,” says John Hanchar, whose uncle, a Nyack Police sergeant named Edward O’Grady, was killed, “was her smiling face as she was led out of the police station in Nyack into the back of that car. ” On Oct. 6, 1983, clenching a fist of solidarity, Clark was sent to the prison for women at Bedford Hills in Westchester County to begin the rest of her life. Like many who knew Judy Clark before that terrible October day, I wanted nothing to do with her after the crime. I shuddered at the same photos that chilled the victims’ families. Clark was the former sweetheart of a good friend. She went to Brooklyn’s Midwood High School my friend Allan to Erasmus Hall. They met as student civil rights activists walking picket lines outside Woolworth’s in Flatbush. But after being expelled from the University of Chicago for student protests, Clark moved steadily to the left’s outer reaches. She was part of the wild tribe of radicals who smashed windows in the streets of Chicago in a 1969 antiwar demonstration called Days of Rage. Charged with riot, she went underground only to be captured by the F. B. I. while sitting in a Manhattan movie theater. She served nine months in prison. By the time I met her in the ’70s, she was a stalwart of something called the May 19th Communist Organization. A dogmatic offshoot of the Weathermen, May 19th’s members believed that a revolution in America was in the offing. The correct role for white radicals, they held, was to follow that lead, wherever it took them. Even those of us who cared about the issues the May 19th crowd trumpeted — racism, poor housing, deaths in police custody — were often suspect for not showing proper fervor. The Judy Clark I knew had two distinct sides. She was capable of warmth and joy. But her smile could vanish in a moment, replaced by an accusing finger. “How many people did you kill in Vietnam?” was her sudden jab across a Park Slope kitchen table at a friend roiled by nightmares after his return from the war. Stunned, he shook his head. “Judy, it was a war,” he said. “Yes, and you were the invading army,” she insisted. “How many did you kill?” The bright, laughing woman was someone you wanted to like. The rigid radical made it tough. Then the Brink’s robbery occurred, and there was no point in trying anymore. In the years after she disappeared behind prison gates, occasional word came from friends who visited her that Clark was different than she was during her days of rage. I had my doubts: could anyone so stubborn and unrepentant really change? Eventually I drove up to Bedford Hills to see for myself. On my first trip, in 2006, Clark strode into the sunny visitors’ room wearing a wide grin, one quickly returned by the guard overseeing the area and by inmates seated at nearby tables. Her dark hair had gone mostly gray, but otherwise she looked much the way I remembered her: she is small with brown eyes, an olive complexion, a tiny pock mark on her forehead left over from childhood chicken pox. She had been in prison for 25 years. Her voice still carried the accent of her Brooklyn youth. It was softer now, though, without the righteousness that I remembered from even the simplest exchanges. I returned several more times over the years, sitting at the same table near a playroom where inmates spent time with their children. On a recent visit in June, Clark arrived with a black Labrador on a leash trotting beside her. The Lab was the eighth dog Clark trained under a program in which the pups stay with inmates for about a year before becoming service dogs, mostly for disabled war veterans and for agencies. The dog this former terrorist trained would soon be sniffing out bombs like those her old Weathermen pals once planted. As we spoke, a pair of young girls came over to look at the dog. Clark had him raise his paw in greeting. The girls tittered. Their mothers joined them. “I told them to introduce themselves to you,” one inmate said. Clark leaned close and grasped each girl by a shoulder. “Your mothers talk about you all the time,” she said. “They talk about how much they love you and have such great stories. ” The girls smiled. Most of the women at Bedford Hills are parents. Clark knows a lot about the heartache of leaving a child behind. Her daughter, Harriet, was 11 months old at the time of her arrest. On the day of the Brink’s heist, Clark told me, she was hesitant on several counts, starting with her baby at home. A gay, single woman, Clark had decided that she wanted to have a child, and a fellow militant served as surrogate father. When Harriet was born in November 1980, Clark was “deliriously happy. ” It was, she said, an utterly personal experience, a break from the demands of her dogmabound sect. The commune welcomed children, as long as they were brought up in proper collective fashion. But the doting motherhood Clark displayed was considered a bourgeois indulgence. “I was accused of losing sight of my responsibilities,” she said. Her parents were also eager to be involved with their new granddaughter, and Clark often brought the baby to visit them — another warning sign to her associates. Clark’s parents were once revolutionaries themselves. Joe and Ruth Clark were Communists but broke with the party in the 1950s. Much of their disenchantment stemmed from three harsh years they spent in the Soviet Union when Judy and her brother, Andy, were small children and their father was foreign editor of The Daily Worker. Ruth Clark went on to become an expert in research and is one of the people credited with inventing political . Joe Clark, to Judy’s dismay, became vehemently raging at former friends. Neither had any patience for their daughter’s rabid politics. In Judy’s view, she was the keeper of the flame that flickered out in her parents’ lives. Anything less than total commitment to the cause was betrayal. “Armed struggle was happening all over the world, and we thought we had to bring it to the motherland,” she said. But Harriet’s birth rocked her convictions. “I felt myself shifting,” Clark said. “I worried that if I was going to sustain a relationship to my child, I was going to have to change my loyalties and my lifestyle. ” She was petrified of being separated from her child but even more terrified of appearing timid before her comrades, whose approval she craved. Agreeing to participate in the Brink’s robbery, she hoped, would quiet her critics enough to let her spend more time with her daughter. She had one hesitation that she was too embarrassed to admit and about which her partners never bothered to ask: Clark, who was supposed to follow the gang members in a backup car, wasn’t much of a driver. She convinced herself that it didn’t matter, that the heist would be called off, as had several earlier attempts. But she was under no illusions about what she signed on for. “I knew what I was driving a car for,” she told me. “I knew the whole situation. ” In Clark’s version of the events of that day, she donned a wig and then followed a small caravan north from New York City to Nanuet. She parked, as ordered, in a corner of a large mall. She was too far away to see the attack on the armored car and the blasts that killed one guard and left another in a pool of blood as the shooters grabbed $1. 6 million from the back of the truck. When the gang’s van tore out of the mall, she raced after it to a nearby parking lot. Six gunmen abandoned the van and climbed into the back of a piloted by Gilbert and Boudin. Someone dumped a moneybag into the trunk of Clark’s car. As she followed the her biggest fear was getting lost. When the caravan came to a crossroad leading to an entrance ramp to the New York State Thruway, she saw the police blocking traffic. An officer carrying a shotgun waved the over. Clark drove past the ramp and stopped. “I was in this terrified, frozen state,” she said. She considered just driving away. “I can’t do that,” she told herself. “I am not supposed to leave people. ” She heard gunfire behind her. Suddenly “two people jump into my car and scream at me to drive. ” She quickly drove ahead, up a curving mountain road, no idea where she was headed. When a police car pursued them, she drove faster. “I am so out of my league,” she remembers thinking. Near Nyack, she turned down a street that plunged steeply toward the Hudson. The road ended abruptly at North Broadway, where Victorian homes overlook the river. Clark tried to make a turn but crashed into a concrete wall. “I spun out of control,” she said. Clark’s shoulder popped out of its socket — a chronic ailment since childhood. She was squirming in pain, trying to bang it back into place, when she heard a policeman barking orders to come out. The shouts came from the South Nyack police chief, Alan Colsey, who had chased Clark’s car over the mountain. After Clark and her passengers were taken into custody, a pistol was found behind the front seat and a clip of bullets in Clark’s purse. Colsey thought she was reaching for the gun as she twisted in her seat. Clark said she never knew it was there. “I sort of rolled out,” she said. “I didn’t want to be shot. I was scared but also relieved it was over. ” In jail, all she could think was that she had let down her friends and had to make up for it. “I was not a good freedom fighter,” she told herself, “but I can be a good captive freedom fighter. ” Her role models were Puerto Rican radicals, linked to a group responsible for a string of deadly bombings, who declared themselves prisoners of war after being arrested. She didn’t think about the enormous sentences they had received. She also tried not to think about having left her baby. “I would just shatter,” she said, “so I turned it off. ” Clark’s father went to the Rockland County jail, where he screamed at her: “You want to talk about a black revolutionary? I’ll tell you who a black revolutionary is. It’s A. Philip Randolph, not these thugs. Not killing a black man. ” She tried to tune him out. Two weeks later, her parents brought Harriet to visit. Physical contact was forbidden, and she wasn’t allowed to touch the baby, who was just learning to walk. “Every time she started toddling toward me, the person watching would say, ‘If she touches you, this visit is terminated.’ ” Harriet cried in confusion. To Clark, the cruelty only reinforced her ideas about the oppressive system. “I avoided thinking about how I had put my daughter in this horrible situation. ” Under tight security, Clark and Boudin, who had her own baby with Gilbert, passed the time talking about their children, making small books for them and, when allowed, crocheting clothes and dolls. Eventually, Clark said, Boudin told her that she wanted to “cut her losses,” a move supported by Boudin’s father, the civil liberties lawyer Leonard Boudin. But Clark couldn’t be swayed. Her parents dispatched the prominent radical lawyer Arthur Kinoy to urge her to participate in her defense. She refused. When her trial began in the summer of 1983, Joe and Ruth Clark couldn’t bear to attend. A family friend observed, reporting back on the hopeless fiasco playing out in court. Clark’s biggest fear was that others in the group would see how fearful she was. “I was terrified of my own terror,” she said. Sitting in her basement cell, Clark harbored secret doubts about her strategy. A childlike notion kept crossing her mind: This can’t be happening. After the judge sentenced Clark along with Gilbert and Balagoon to spend their lives in prison, Boudin pleaded guilty and received 20 years to life she was paroled in 2003 and reunited with her son, who was 14 months old at the time of the crime. Clark missed that chance. Short of the death penalty, which the district attorney lamented was not available, her sentence was the harshest one possible. After Clark arrived at Bedford Hills in a convoy, she was put in solitary confinement for a month. She emerged the same stubborn, rebel she was in court. Sister Elaine Roulet, a nun who founded the prison’s children’s center and worked there for 35 years, noted how the new prisoner walked with her hands clenched in tight fists. “When Judy came, she was a very angry person,” Roulet says. Inmate 83G0313, as Clark was known, was considered a major security risk, her every step carefully tracked. There was good cause for concern. Clark’s radical crew was known for plots like the 1979 prison breakout of Assata Shakur, a Black Liberation Army leader. At one point, the prison superintendent, Elaine Lord, was assigned a guard. Twice, Lord had to leave prison grounds as a precaution. Clark’s fury seemed to ebb when she was with her daughter. On weekends, her comrades from the West Side commune where Harriet was still living would drive her the 38 miles to Bedford. During those visits, Clark played and read to her in the children’s center. She tried to convince herself that Harriet was safe and secure being brought up by her former comrades with a mix of love and proper politics. But the communal home was under siege: one by one, members were being jailed for refusing to cooperate with grand juries. Day to day, it was unclear who was caring for Harriet. During the summer of 1985, her parents sued for custody of the nearly Harriet. At one point, they picked her up at the West Side commune and went into hiding for several days. Joe Clark called the prison superintendent to tell her what they had done. “You are going to have hell on your hands,” he warned Lord. Judy was irate. Roulet urged Clark to focus on her daughter. She also understood the grandparents’ concern. “They didn’t want Harriet to grow up to be a Judy,” Roulet said. That same year, letters from Clark describing the prison’s layout and operations were discovered when a pair of fugitives were captured. For plotting escape, Clark was placed in solitary for two years, one of the longest stretches any Bedford Hills prisoner had ever received. At first, this was just another notch in the radical belt, an endurance test for a committed militant. Judy was still allowed to see Harriet during weekly visits. Clark worried that if her parents won custody, a judge might bar her from seeing her child. “I felt bereft,” she said. But her concerns turned out to be unwarranted: after they gained custody, Clark’s retired father brought his granddaughter on weekly visits to the prison. Clark wouldn’t speak to him. While she and Harriet played, the grandfather, with other reading material banned, sat in a corner rocking chair poring over the children’s books. In the summer of 1986, while Clark was in solitary, someone said something to her that finally broke through to her. Gilda Zwerman, a sociologist who was studying activists, didn’t mince words. “I understand how you did this to yourself,” she told Clark. “What I don’t understand is how you did this to your daughter. ” Clark tried to look defiant, but her lip twitched, and she began to quietly weep. Zwerman nudged her further. “You can’t cry for yourself and Harriet,” she said, “and not see that the children of the men who were killed cried the same way for their fathers. ” It was the first time Clark had broken down in front of another person since her arrest. She returned to her cell shaken but oddly relieved. “I felt like I had taken off a layer of armor,” she said. “I no longer felt like I had all the answers. ” Clark says that solitary — known as SHU for Special Housing Unit — was filled with mentally ill women. “They were howling at the moon, eating their mattresses and setting fires. ” She found herself speaking with the guards. “I would talk about my life and my daughter and the situation. ” The exchanges with people in uniform, Clark said, “made me have to get out of the fog of the rhetoric and think about those affected by this crime. ” She began keeping a journal. She had used her radicalism, she realized, much the way prisoners around her used drugs, as a means to avoid confronting her own doubts. She walled herself off in the safety of doctrine. “I was beginning to say these politics are crazy. I’ve experienced so much loss, and created so much loss, for the sake of an illusion. ” She consumed books on psychology and wrote poetry. Solitary was grueling, she said. “But as horrible as it felt, I felt more alive than I had been. It was like coming out of this cave and being able to see again and feel. ” Helping to pull her into the world was her daughter. “Harriet was the first person I fully engaged with on her terms,” Clark said, “not on what I thought was right or my agenda. ” They communicated mostly through play, especially hide and seek. The little girl enlisted everyone in the children’s center as she hid from the mother who herself had gone missing from her daily life. “I would say: ‘Where’s Harriet? I thought Harriet was coming to see me. I’m so sad.’ It was this whole drama, and then she’d burst out laughing. ” When Harriet was 6, she made an announcement during a visit: “Mommy,” she said, “Grandpa taught me about the Ten Commandments. You committed a sin. ” Clark felt her breath catch as she waited to hear her child tell of the robbery and the deaths that went with it. Instead, the girl continued, “You stole something. ” Clark exhaled. “Yes,” she answered. “I committed a terrible, terrible sin. And I feel really bad, because I sinned and I am away from you. ” The full story emerged in bits and pieces. “Why are you in jail?” Harriet would ask. “Were you scared?” And the hardest one: “Were you thinking about me?” They devised ways to overcome their separation. Mother and daughter kept copies of the same book on birds. Clark would describe those she saw from her cell window Harriet would find them in the pages. Clark spun tales of gremlins who lived in the prison walls, able to come and go as they pleased. She had them make mischief in prison locations her daughter heard about but couldn’t visit — the mess hall and living area. The children’s center also became the neutral ground where Clark began rebuilding her relationship with her father. As they ate lunch in the playroom, Clark was polite, for her daughter’s sake. But guarded conversations gradually became warm exchanges. They talked about Harriet, their health, Judy’s prison conditions. Clark’s mother rarely visited at that time. “She couldn’t handle the jail,” Clark’s brother, Andy, says. But Andy marveled at the changes in his sister. “It was like crystal shattering,” he says. “The whole facade that had been built around her just started to come apart. ” In September 1987, Clark was released from solitary. Enjoying her relative freedom, she plunged into prison activities, attending Jewish services for the first time. Then one day, without warning or explanation, she was transferred to a federal prison in Arizona. Her parents made half a dozen visits with Harriet while also lobbying for her return. After a year, she was transferred back to Bedford Hills. On her return, Judy wrote to her parents, thanking them for their help and for taking care of Harriet. A few weeks later, on Christmas Day 1988, her father died of a heart attack. “My arrest kind of broke my father’s heart,” Clark told me. When the Jewish High Holy days arrived the following year, she lighted candles and said Kaddish for him. “I was thinking of the meaning of the Day of Atonement. I spent the whole 10 days of the holidays alone, walking and thinking about the crime and about my father, about that time when he came and he yelled. ” Alone in the prison chapel, she said aloud the names of the men who died in the robbery: Peter Paige, the Brink’s guard, and the policemen Waverly Brown and Edward O’Grady. She was 39 years old, grieving for her own father. “And yet,” she said, “there were nine children who were a lot younger than me grieving for their fathers. And I was responsible for that. There was the human toll. It was a terrible truth, but it was my truth. ” Slowly she began building a life behind bars. Through programs for inmates, she earned a bachelor’s degree in behavioral science followed by a master’s in psychology. When the government ended tuition aid for inmates, she helped persuade local colleges to offer affordable courses. As AIDS arrived in the prison, terrifying inmates and correction officers alike, she calmed things down by educating everyone. In 1994, a newsletter published one of her poems and referred to her as a political prisoner. Clark wrote to the editor disagreeing, saying that she felt no pride in what she’d done. “I feel only enormous regret, sorrow and remorse. ” Harriet Clark turned 31 in November, the same age her mother was when she was arrested. She’s a short, slim woman with dark hair, bangs and a sunny smile. Her schoolgirl’s voice belies a rush of reflections that sound wise beyond her years. For someone who has never known her parent outside of prison, she is remarkably buoyant. She grew up in New York City, attending P. S. 87 on West 78th Street and Stuyvesant High School. When she went West to Stanford University, she and her mother kept in touch via weekly phone calls and long letters. Friends marveled at the number she received. She got an M. F. A. from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and has won several writing fellowships, including a Stegner. She now teaches at Stanford. She’s working on a novel, part of which takes place in prison. But she’s tried to steer clear of caricatures about ’60s radicals. “The one character that will never appear in anything I write,” she told me, “is a stubborn, passionate, rebellious brunet woman in an army jacket and a bandanna. ” On a walk along the Brooklyn waterfront this summer when she was in town to visit her mother, she talked about her childhood and how prison was part of the natural order of things. She was 9 when a British film crew doing a documentary on Bedford Hills asked Harriet if she missed her mother. Not really, she answered. “This is how I know my mother. ” The prison’s visiting center was her second living room. “When they got a new vending machine, it felt like new furniture in my house,” Harriet said. The other children she met visiting their inmate moms fell into two groups: those who lost them to prison “within memory or before memory. ” She was puzzled when some were anguished that their mothers weren’t home for holidays and family events. Harriet had never had that experience to miss. “My mother lived in prison,” she explained. “That was always the reality going backward and going forward. ” Harriet and her mother spent hours making creations with pipe cleaners and popsicle sticks. “I have no memories of not having my mother’s undivided attention,” she said. Later they moved on to Battleship and Monopoly. Her mother was such an enthusiastic playmate that other children asked to join. “I spent half my time shooing away other kids,” Harriet said. Prison also offered unique ways for a little girl to spite her mother. “I knew if I was making more noise than I should that the officers would yell at us and I’d put my mother at risk,” she said. Sometimes Harriet would dart past the line on the floor in front of the vending machines beyond which prisoners are not allowed to step. “If you get me, you’ll be in trouble,” she’d say. Once, when Judy refused Harriet candy from the machines, the daughter fired back that when she grew up she’d let her own kids eat all they wanted. “What else will you do?” her mother asked. “I’m sure as heck not going to leave them,” Harriet answered. As she grew older, Harriet became protective of her mother. She cringed at the ways inmates were the ones treated like children, denied money, keys, silverware. When her mother phoned her at home, she would always wrap up the conversation before the automated message that the call would end in 60 seconds. “I wanted to deny their control,” she said. She also walked a delicate line with her grandmother, who reared her after her grandfather died. Fiercely proud, Ruth Clark, who died in 1997, instructed Harriet not to tell people that her mother was in prison. “I wouldn’t talk about it, even to close friends,” Harriet said. She kept her two lives strictly separate, treasuring her weekly visits to Bedford as private time. In her grandmother’s apartment on West End Avenue she surrounded herself with her mother’s homemade gifts. “I slept under a blanket my mother made me, drank orange juice out of a cup she made, decorated my walls with her clay figurines, objects that made me think of her. ” Her mother’s wrenching guilt over her crime had been such a large part of her childhood, Harriet told me, that it took her a long time to recognize that the sentence Clark is serving stems less from her actual role in the deaths than her reckless conduct in court. She has often pictured her mother sitting in the basement cell during the trial: “I wonder, Were you thinking about the fact that you would never come home to me if you did this?” Yet over the years, she has realized that her relationship to her mother is closer than that of many people she knows. “The advice my mother has given me in life is the advice I live by,” she said. “The values she has instilled in me is how I move through this world. ” It’s what got her started writing fiction. “When I had frustrations with people,” she said, “my mother would ask me to imagine my way into their lives, so I would have an openness and compassion for them. ” In July 2010, one of Clark’s lawyers, Sara Bennett, delivered hundreds of letters to Gov. David A. Paterson asking for clemency. Bennett told me Clark’s name kept coming up when she talked to other clients at Bedford Hills. “They’d say, ‘There’s this woman here, Judy Clark, and she has gotten me to see how I have to live my life and take responsibility.’ ” Bennett, a former Legal Aid lawyer, was shocked that Clark was serving 75 years. “I’ve had so many clients who committed really brutal crimes — actually killed people — and got 25 to life, or 50 to life. Hers is so out of proportion. ” Among those supporting Clark’s release was Elaine Lord, who retired as Bedford Hills superintendent after 22 years at the prison. “I watched her change into one of the most perceptive, thoughtful, helpful and profound human beings that I have ever known, either inside or outside of a prison,” Lord wrote the governor. Robert Dennison, a veteran parole officer and member of the Conservative Party who served as state parole board chairman under Gov. George E. Pataki, also wrote in support. Dennison met Clark during a tense 2005 meeting with Bedford Hills inmates angry over repeated parole denials. The meeting got loud. “Judy Clark was the one person who was sort of the voice of reason,” he recalled. In his letter to Paterson, he called her “the most worthy candidate for clemency that I’ve ever seen. ” To me, he added, “if you look at what she did and all the deals the government made with other people involved, she sort of got left holding the bag. ” The rest of the Brink’s suspects were rounded up months and years after the robbery and tried in federal court. Cecil Ferguson, known as Chui, and Edward Joseph, known as Jamal, who were accused of being among the robbers, were convicted only as accessories for hiding a Brink’s fugitive and served 7½ and 5½ years, respectively. Joseph is now a successful playwright and a professor at Columbia University. Silvia Baraldini, a fellow May 19th member who went to trial with other Brink’s defendants, got 43 years for related crimes with the gang, including the Assata Shakur jailbreak. A federal inmate, she was released in 1999 under President Clinton to her native Italy, which freed her in 2006. Another May 19th leader, Susan Rosenberg, was indicted but never tried for the Brink’s shootout. She was serving a federal sentence — after being caught with a carload of explosives and weapons — when Clinton released her in 2001 as one of his last presidential acts. David Gilbert is still in prison Kuwasi Balagoon died while serving his sentence. Mutulu Shakur was described as the Brink’s mastermind. “He picked it, he planned it, he orchestrated it and he executed it,” prosecutors told his jury. Shakur got 60 years. Under federal rules, his projected release date is February 2016. He’ll be 65. Shakur’s attorneys claim that he’s likely to remain in prison much longer. He’ll still be out well before Clark. Under her state sentence of 75 years, her earliest parole date is 2056. She would be 107. For most relatives and supporters of the victims, this is as it should be. When I spoke with John Hanchar, who was in eighth grade when his uncle, Edward O’Grady, was killed, he told me that the Web site maintained by Clark’s friends is misleading. “She goes to great lengths to minimize her role in the crime,” he said. Hanchar recalled his aunt trying to keep up a brave front that night. “I remember her going down to the laundry room, and then we just heard this wail. She’d opened the dryer and pulled out his police uniforms. ” Hanchar is now a Rockland County police officer. “Where Eddie was killed is right in my patrol sector,” he said. “I see that memorial every day. ” The spot by the Thruway entrance has plaques and flags memorializing the deaths. A ceremony is held there annually. On the 30th anniversary last October, several hundred people attended. The deaths, Edwin Day, a Rockland County legislator and an told me, were “like a permanent knife in the heart of the community this never went away. ” Waverly Brown, then the only black officer on Nyack’s force, was the other policeman killed. Frank Olivier, raised in a Nyack housing project and now a corrections officer at the Rockland County jail, recalled growing up under Brown’s watch. “We were his kids,” Olivier said. “He would make sure we were doing our homework, he would come to our track meets. With Officer Brown, you knew you had a chance. ” When he and his friends heard Brown was killed, “everybody was in a rage,” he said. But Olivier now feels differently about Judith Clark. He wrote one of the letters that Bennett delivered to the governor. “I know that people change after a while. Communities heal after a while. This lady has been in there 30 years. When has she paid her debt?” In December 2010, a few days before Governor Paterson’s term ended, he met with a small delegation of Clark’s supporters led by Bennett and Dennison. He told them that his staff advised against her release and that he was in agreement. Paterson wouldn’t talk to me about it, but he recently told Jim Dwyer, a Times columnist, that he feared being “tarred and feathered” if he released Clark. Last June, I went to meet some of the people whose wrath the governor feared at a breakfast in Nyack for a scholarship fund in memory of officers Brown and O’Grady. Most were still bitter over Boudin’s release and felt that Clark deserved to remain in prison. Did they believe such criminals could be rehabilitated? “I know, they’re all wonderful,” Bill Ryan, a former New York City Police lieutenant who lives nearby, responded sarcastically. “They’re teaching little children and working with the handicapped and unwed mothers. ” His remarks brought knowing smiles around the table. It’s a skepticism shared by many. When I first started visiting Clark, I also wondered whether her transformation was a calculated effort to get out of prison. Over time I’ve come to see her differently. A dozen former inmates told me stories of how Clark helped them sort out their own troubles while they served time with her. Sheila Ryan, a former N. Y. P. D. investigator who spent 10 years at Bedford for killing the man she claimed raped her, told me that when she first met Clark in prison in the 1980s, she wanted nothing to do with her. “I thought, My God, you’re responsible for killing cops, and here you are laughing?” But she has changed her mind. “She is truly remorseful and sorry for what happened,” she said. As Elaine Lord, the former Bedford Hills superintendent told me, prisons should rehabilitate, not just warehouse. And Clark is a model for what’s possible in prison. “She is not the person who was involved in that crime,” Lord said. “She’s a different person. We have a right to be angry at them, but it doesn’t change anything. There has to be an end. ” Not long ago, Clark spoke at a Bedford Hills event. Her theme was the Book of Jonah. Like Jonah, she told the audience, she had spent years in behavior and had been cast overboard into a sea for her actions. Like Jonah, she found rescue in the belly of the whale, in her case behind bars. “In prison,” she said, “I learned who I was. ” | 0fake |
Reliably Red Ohio County Finds Both Trump and Clinton Hard to Stomach - The New York Times | DELAWARE, Ohio — Donald J. Trump is not popular in this prospering county north of Columbus. The Republican nominee’s dystopian language does not resonate here. Signs that read “Now Hiring” outnumber “Trump” campaign placards. But many residents of this reliably Republican county, which last voted for a Democratic president in 1916, simply cannot imagine voting for Mr. Trump’s Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton. And that goes a long way toward explaining why she has struggled to separate herself from Mr. Trump in this bellwether state. “I just don’t know what I’m going to do,” said Anne Merrels, 48, who lives with her family in Powell, an old farming town that has sprouted a pair of restaurants at its crossroads. The subdivisions of southern Delaware County are a world apart from the anger and decay of Ohio’s old industrial towns. Here live the beneficiaries of globalization: Ohio State University professors, software engineers and bankers who work at the hulking JPMorgan Chase building, a structure on the southern edge of the county that is as large as the Empire State Building, though considerably shorter. Delaware County’s median household income in 2014 was $91, 936, by far the highest in the state and almost twice the statewide median income. The county’s unemployment rate was just 3. 4 percent in July, compared with 4. 9 percent nationwide. Just as Mr. Trump has made inroads among Ohio’s workers by promising to revive their fortunes, Democrats are hoping Mrs. Clinton can find new support among affluent and voters who are thriving in President Obama’s economy and may be wary of Mr. Trump’s bluster. C. J. Soliday, a mental health therapist, said she was trying to persuade friends to vote for Mrs. Clinton by posing a single question. “People should ask if we’re doing better than we were doing eight years ago,” Ms. Soliday said. “And the answer is yes. ” Yet conversations with a few dozen voters here suggest that Mrs. Clinton faces considerable challenges in converting the distaste for Mr. Trump into support for her candidacy. Many of those who do not like Mr. Trump also dislike Mrs. Clinton. They are reluctant to cross party lines. And even here, there is still anxiety and pessimism about the health of the economy. There are some like James Kehoe, a real estate agent and registered Republican, who said he did not recognize Mr. Trump’s descriptions of Ohio’s economic desolation and liked the idea of showing his two daughters that a woman could be president. More common, however, are people like Ms. Merrels. She and her husband, a software engineer, went to see Mr. Trump in person this year at the convention center in Columbus. She was impressed by the long lines, but not by the speech. Mr. Trump, she said, seemed to talk mostly about polling numbers. She said she had voted for the Republican nominee in each election since 1996. She said she would not vote for Mrs. Clinton, and was concerned that voting for a candidate would amount to the same thing. But she is not reconciled to voting for Mr. Trump. “I’d like someone to represent the United States who we are proud of, who we are not embarrassed by,” Ms. Merrels said. Democrats remain hopeful that they can improve upon the 38 percent of local votes won by Mr. Obama in 2012. The Clinton campaign has opened an office on Delaware’s main street the Trump campaign has also rented a storefront, but there is just a cardboard cutout of the candidate in the window. Jenny L. Holland, a professor of politics at Ohio Wesleyan University, said she was watching with fascination as Democrats tried to make inroads in a place so Republican that Karl Rove, the Republican strategist, famously protested on national television in 2012 that the election should not be called for Mr. Obama until Delaware County’s votes were counted. “What do you do if the Republican candidate is unpalatable to you?” asked Professor Holland, who also lives in the county. “Do you just show up and not vote for president at all? Or — gasp — could there be a possibility that a Republican woman would show up and vote for Hillary Clinton? We just don’t know. ” Delaware County was mostly farmland until a few decades ago, with a modest cluster of factories in the county seat. Roger Marksch, 67, built and fixed machines in those factories for almost 50 years before hanging up his tools last year. He watched as the factories closed or moved to Japan, China, Mexico and Finland. “I got out just in time,” he said with a laugh. But even as those jobs faded away, developers were replacing Delaware’s soybean fields with subdivisions. Columbus was growing rapidly, fueled by a modern mix of government, education and financial services. Commuters doubled the suburban county’s population from 1980 to 2000, and it is on pace to double again by 2020, easily topping 200, 000. John Kasich, Ohio’s governor, is the archetypal local Republican with misgivings about Mr. Trump. Mr. Kasich, who lives in Delaware County’s southern tier, not far from a planned Ikea, has repeatedly rebutted Mr. Trump’s bleak descriptions of Ohio’s economy. He has not offered an endorsement. Others said they were concerned Mr. Trump was insufficiently conservative. Craig Johnson, who owns a pizzeria in the county seat, said he doubted that Mr. Trump was a Republican, but he laughed when asked if he would consider Mrs. Clinton. “Listen, I’m a owner in Delaware, Ohio, and I like guns, fishing and Nascar,” he said. He is mulling a vote for Gary Johnson, the Libertarian nominee. Many local Republicans are making their peace. Ed Paxton, 51, runs a cigar shop — and business is good. For a while after the recession, regular customers who bought half a dozen cigars each week had cut back to three or four. Lately, they are buying half a dozen. He recently bought his first new vehicle since 1999, “the last time things were decent. ” He is not particularly moved by Mr. Trump’s promises of an economic revival. But Mr. Paxton said he still planned to vote for Mr. Trump for standard Republican reasons: He wants lower taxes and less regulation. He is upset about an excise tax of 40 cents per cigar imposed in 2009 to fund a children’s health insurance program, and he is upset about a ban on providing tobacco samples to his customers. Matt Lester, 37, a graphic designer, was blunt: “He wasn’t my first, second, third or fourth option, but he is better than Hillary. ” Indeed, as in other parts of Ohio, Mrs. Clinton faces some challenges in maintaining the support of her traditional base. Shalyn Shelton, 26, has completed one and a half years of courses toward a nursing degree, but she already owes $22, 000 in student debt and she cannot afford to continue. She also cannot afford to live in Delaware, where she grew up, so she recently moved with her partner to Marion, 20 miles north. And on a recent afternoon she sat outside the International Paper factory where she had worked for the last two years, because she and her have been on strike since May. The factory, which cranks out diaper boxes, egg crates and other corrugated containers, offers some of the best jobs still available in Delaware for people without college degrees. Ms. Shelton makes about $21 an hour stacking boxes. And business is booming. But International Paper wants the workers to accept more mandatory overtime rather than hire more workers. So Ms. Shelton sat among her fellow workers, holding a cardboard sign that read, “84 Hours a Week = No Family! No Church!” In her arms she cradled her daughter, nearly 3 months old. Mrs. Clinton has framed her presidential campaign as an effort to help people like Ms. Shelton. She has proposed making college free for people under a certain income, creating more affordable housing, strengthening collective bargaining, and improving benefits for working parents. She has won the endorsement of Ms. Shelton’s union, the Teamsters. But Mrs. Clinton has not won the support of Ms. Shelton, who has not registered to vote and does not plan to do so. “They don’t care about us,” Ms. Shelton said of Mr. Trump and Mrs. Clinton. A few minutes later, she opened the door at least a crack: “I’ll tell you what — if she shows up here, she would have my vote. ” | 0fake |
KKK Leader Brags That White Supremacists Have Taken Over The Republican Party (AUDIO) | White supremacists are celebrating Donald Trump s rise to the top of the Republican Party and KKK leader David Duke bragged about it on the radio.Speaking with Don Advo this week about Trump s decision to hire Breitbart boss Stephen K. Bannon to be his campaign CEO, Duke, who is a racist former KKK Grand Wizard, roared his approval of the choice as both Advo and Duke cheered that white supremacists had taken over the GOP, although he lamented that there were still boll weevils in the cotton. You know, because cotton is white and boll weevils are black or brown insects. So, something astonishing has happened. We appear to have taken over the Republican Party, Advo declared to the delight of his Stormfront fans. Well, rank and file, but a lot of those boll weevils are still in those cotton balls, and, uh, the Republican Party may be a European-American populated party, but like a ball of cotton, you can have boll weevils in there that are going to rot it out from the inside, Duke replied.Here s the audio via Daily Motion. duke alt right by DailyPoliticsDuke has been emboldened so much by Trump s successful seizure of the Republican Party crown that he is now running for the US Senate in Louisiana.Should he win, Republicans would have a unapologetic racist as part of their Senate caucus and would be a strong ally of Donald Trump should he win the presidency. A racist in the White House and a racist in the Senate is probably not exactly what Republicans were planning but that s what they got. And that s because Republicans created the atmosphere that allowed racists like Trump and Duke to rise.White supremacists love Donald Trump, and Duke has supported the Republican nominee throughout his campaign run.Not only does Trump and Duke need to be defeated, the Republican Party needs to be taken back from the racists who took it over. Because right now, Abraham Lincoln is spinning in his grave about what the GOP has become. The party that ended slavery and fought for civil rights has now become the party of white hoods.Featured image via Houston Chronicle | 1real |
ISIS, Al-Qaeda and the “moderate rebels” are fighting together in Aleppo | shorty Share This: Western claims that the “moderate rebels” fighting the Syrian government are totally separate and antagonistic to ISIS are disproved by the fighting in Aleppo. ALEXANDER MERCOURIS Nothing illustrates the mismatch between Western reporting of the war in Syria and the reality on the ground better than an incident which took place on 1st November 2016 south of Aleppo. The Syrian government’s main supply lines to Aleppo are the roads from the south. This has been especially so since the Jihadi capture of most of the province of Idlib together with its regional capital in the first half of 2015. As the noose tightens on the Jihadis in eastern Aleppo, with their latest counter-offensive repulsed and reports that the eastern districts of the city under Jihadi control are running out of essential fuel and other supplies as the cold weather closes in, the Jihadis attempted on 1st November 2016 to try to turn the tables on the Syrian army by cutting its road links to the south of the city. The Jihadi attempt to do this failed and was quickly repulsed, but in the process it exposed the truth of how the war in Syria is actually being fought. It has become an article of faith in the West that the Jihadi fighters in eastern Aleppo are “moderate rebels” and that Jabhat Al-Nusra (ie. Al-Qaeda) accounts for only a small fraction of them. It is also an article of faith in the West that the Jihadi fighters in eastern Aleppo – including those belonging to Jabhat Al-Nusra – are deadly enemies of ISIS, and have nothing in common with ISIS. It is also continuously claimed in the West that the Syrian army and Russia are only engaging in token fighting against ISIS, and that they are almost exclusively concerned with fighting the “moderate rebels” in Aleppo and elsewhere, who are trying to overthrow the Syrian government. Some Western commentators have gone even further, and have come close to saying that Russia, the Syrian government and ISIS are in de facto alliance with each other, as all three are collectively waging war on the “moderate rebels” who are trying to overthrow the Syrian government rather than fight each other. The Jihadi attempt to cut the Syrian army’s supply lines south of Aleppo which took place on 1st November 2016 shows how completely wrong these claims are. The attack was actually carried out by ISIS. Moreover the attack was clearly coordinated with Jabhat Al-Nusra (ie. with Al-Qaeda) which carried out a similar attack in the same area just days before. As recent events have shown, Jabhat Al-Nusra (ie. Al-Qaeda) is the dominant force in eastern Aleppo , though contrary to Western claims ISIS definitely has a presence there, as confirmed by this 10th October 2016 report by RT’s Murad Gazdiev, which shows Jabhat Al-Nusra and ISIS flags flying together in the city. As our contributor Afra’a Dagher – who is a Syrian writer actually writing for The Duran from Syria – has repeatedly warned, the alphabet soup of differently named Jihadi groups in Syria merely disguises a single continuum of violent Wahhabi Jihadis all committed to the same cause: the overthrow of the Syrian government and the establishment of a sectarian exclusivelyWahhabi Sunni state in its place. Here is how Afra’a Dagher explained the role of ISIS in the Syrian conflict “The “Islamic State” has been designed to attract Takfiri (NB: Wahhabi – AM) fighters from all over the world to join the war against Syria. That way the war to destroy Syria and break the Axis of Resistance is fought with no shortage of fanatical recruits. The war is sponsored and funded by Saudi Arabia, the true factory of Wahhabism, as well as by countries like Qatar and Turkey.” Whilst there undoubtedly are tensions between the senior Al-Qaeda and ISIS political leaderships, these have no practical relevance to the situation on the ground, where fighters from the different groups work continuously to defeat their common enemy, which is the Syrian government and Russia. About the author Alexander Mercouris is a writer on international affairs with a special interest in Russia and law. He has written extensively on the legal aspects of NSA spying and events in Ukraine in terms of human rights, constitutionality and international law. He worked for 12 years in the Royal Courts of Justice in London as a lawyer, specializing in human rights and constitutional law. His family has been prominent in Greek politics for several generations. He is a frequent commentator on television and speaker at conferences. He resides in London.
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Episode #172 – SUNDAY WIRE: ‘Trumpe Le Monde’ with guests Trog Lodyte, Sarah Abed | Episode #172 of SUNDAY WIRE SHOW resumes this February 5, 2017 as host Patrick Henningsen brings you this week s 3 HOUR special LIVE broadcast on the Alternate Current Radio Network LISTEN LIVE ON THIS PAGE AT THE FOLLOWING SCHEDULED SHOW TIMES:LIVE BROADCAST TIMING: 5pm-8pm UK Time | 12pm-3pm ET (US) | 9am-12am PT (US) This week s edition of THE SUNDAY WIRE is a very special LIVE broadcasting connecting North America and Europe this week, as host Patrick Henningsen covers the top stories in the US and internationally. In the first hour, we ll look at act one of Trump s foreign policy performance circus, as the NeoCons surround the new Don of Pennsylvania Ave, resuming Cheney & Bolton s Iran doctrine, as well as a continuation of Obama s dysfunctional Ukraine policy, and so much more. Later in hour one, we ll meet with our first guest, Syrian-American commentator Sarah Abed to discuss the shifting state of affairs in Syria and initial signs of Trump s masterplan to defeat ISIS. In the second hour, we try to channel Trump with special guest, Trog Lodyte, co-host of Liberty s Thunder every Sunday Evening on BlogTalk Radio, as we attempt to visualize the new American political landscape, and distill the essence of the country s political transformation, and what this new President means to modern politics in America. In the final hour of Overdrive, we ll tie up loose ends from this past week s break-neck news cycle, and announce 21WIRE s first annual Fake News Week marathon coming this week. Hold, it s going to be a wild ride SHOUT POLL: Is Obama s Legacy more, or less war in the world? SUPPORT 21WIRE SUBSCRIBE & BECOME A MEMBER @21WIRE.TVDONATE TO 21WIRE HEREStrap yourselves in and lower the blast shield this is your brave new world *NOTE: THIS EPISODE MAY CONTAIN STRONG LANGUAGE AND MATURE THEMES*Listen to Episode #172 Sunday Wire: Trumpe Le Monde with guests Trog Lodyte, Sarah Abed on Spreaker.Download Episode #172 HERE// <![CDATA[ broadstreet.zone(46707); // ]]>Sunday Wire Radio Show Archives | 1real |
USA Today’s Kelly Lawler Falsely Brands MILO as ’White Nationalist,’ ’Racist,’ and ’Alt Right’ - Breitbart | USA Today’s Kelly Lawler falsely branded Breitbart Senior Editor MILO as a “white nationalist” and “racist,” while also claiming that he is a part of the “ ” movement, a claim MILO has repeatedly rebutted over the past few months. [In her article “Leslie Jones speaks out after harasser Yiannopoulos lands book deal,” Lawler branded MILO with numerous false labels, while also claiming that MILO sent “racist” abuse to actress Leslie Jones despite a complete lack of evidence to support these claims. “After white nationalist and poster boy Milo Yiannopoulos landed a massive book deal with a reported $250, 000 advance, publisher Simon Schuster has come under harsh criticism from those concerned that a book will elevate the voice of the notorious Breitbart editor,” wrote Lawler. “Yiannopoulos made headlines earlier this year when he was permanently banned from Twitter for organizing a targeted racist and sexist harassment campaign against Ghostbusters [2016] and Saturday Night Live star Leslie Jones. ” Lawler, who previously worked for NPR and interned with Democratic congressman Patrick Murphy, is not the only journalist to have made false and unjust claims against MILO, with the New Yorker also falsely claiming that MILO led a “racist online harassment campaign against the comedian Leslie Jones. ” As previously reported by Breitbart News, Jones had already been engaging with Twitter trolls for hours before ever interacting with MILO. “If at first you don’t succeed (because you’re work is terrible) play the victim,” said MILO in reference to Jones on Twitter. “Everyone gets hate mail FFS. ” Breitbart’s Allum Bokhari also wrote on the issue, adding, “In other words, MILO has been permanently banned for little more than criticism, mild insults, and mockery. Meanwhile, [Breitbart’s] Jerome Hudson’s abuser, who repeatedly called the black reporter a ‘coon,‘ is still on the platform. ” MILO has also sparred with various white nationalist and fringe sections of the right, so much so that white supremacist site The Daily Stormer waged a “war” against him. icon Richard Spencer has also dispelled claims that MILO is a part of the stating simply that “Milo is not a part of the ” during a debate. Many white nationalists have also branded MILO a “ kike faggot,” declaring their distaste for him. Popular outlet “The Right Stuff” also bluntly declared in an article that “Milo isn’t one of us,” while “leading thought leader of ” Paul Town also rejected claims that MILO is anything close to a white nationalist or in a member of the movement, branding him a “cultural libertarian. ” During numerous interviews, MILO has declared that he is not a member of the nor a white nationalist — a label, which he adds, many white nationalists are proud to associate with, however the media has frequently attempted to pin him to the movement. Numerous celebrities and media figures have thrown public tantrums over MILO’s upcoming book release Dangerous, including Sarah Silverman, Judd Apatow, and Perez Hilton. Despite threats from the left to boycott publisher Simon and Schuster, the version of Dangerous by MILO became the number one bestselling book on Amazon just a day after being announced and over two months before being released. DANGEROUS is available to now via Amazon, in hardcover and Kindle editions. And yes, MILO is reading the audiobook version himself! Charlie Nash is a reporter for Breitbart Tech. You can follow him on Twitter @MrNashington or like his page at Facebook. | 0fake |
A Materialist Analysis of Why I am Voting Green, and Why the Left Should Do the Same | shorty By Danny Haiphong E ven as the Democrats and Republicans put forward the two least popular politicians in the country, the U.S. Left “is mired in confusion as to what political direction should be taken.” Many of those who claim to be leftists supported the wars against Libya and Syria. But the Green Party has “consistently stood up against endless war, austerity, and racist state repression and for universal healthcare, education, and peace.” “The Green Party is the only choice that possesses a truly social democratic agenda.” I consider myself a Marxist. However, the term “Marxist” is merely a label. Those who ascribe to the tenets of Marxist thought must place their political affiliations within the context of the current historical moment. Anti-communism and imperialist hegemony have set back the struggle for a classless society to the point where much of the US left is mired in confusion as to what political direction should be taken to confront the challenges before us. One of these challenges is the 2016 elections. The radical left should plan on voting Green this November and building a mass movement around the demands put forward by the Jill Stein and Ajamu Baraka campaign. But the corporate assault on the left’s collective consciousness has indeed made it difficult for the Green Party to grab the attention of the masses in the midst of the two-party capitalist circus. I myself argued two summers ago that the left in the United States should not bother with engaging the charade and instead take up a boycott of the Presidential elections [3] . At that point, no movement had emerged to challenge the hegemony of the Democratic Party. The 2016 elections changed this dynamic. Suddenly, the forces in front of the Occupy Wall Street movement and the Black Lives Matter movement agreed that both corporate candidates were unworthy of support. “Hillary Clinton has drawn the entire ruling class into the Democratic Party tent.” The energy of these movements was channeled into the Bernie Sanders campaign. Sanders ran as a Democrat. His domestic positions on education, healthcare, and income inequality were supported by masses of young voters. Sanders eventually betrayed his base in typical Democratic Party fashion, but not before it was revealed that the Democratic National Committee had worked diligently to undermine Sanders’ ability to win the nomination [4] . The majority of Sanders supporters and sympathizers have since indicated that they will not vote for Clinton when election day arrives [5] . So why vote for the Green Party in particular? The Green Party is the only choice that possesses a truly social democratic agenda. The Green Party is no Marxist vehicle and it doesn’t attempt to be. What the Green Party does possess are dedicated, principled forces whose positions on war and peace, healthcare, and predatory capitalism threaten the US imperialist apparatus. That is why the two-party corporate duopoly finances its own corporation [6] to bar the Green Party from entrance into the Presidential debates every four years. In the 2016 elections in particular, a real chance was present to organize the 15 percent of pollsters necessary for the Green Party to participate in the corporately controlled debates. The opportunity was squandered by a left that remains weak and fractured. In the past, attempts to organize an election boycott campaign or support a communist party’s Presidential nomination would have sufficed as election strategies to steer the disillusioned populace toward movement politics. However, the 2016 Presidential election is a watershed moment in US imperial history. Hillary Clinton has drawn the entire ruling class into the Democratic Party tent. This has occurred in the midst of the greatest crisis of legitimacy the US imperial state has ever faced. “Both corporate media and capitalist enterprise supported Clinton’s bid to steer the election in her favor.” Sanders and Trump shook the foundation of the two-party corporate duopoly. The rise of Sanders and Trump made the Clinton option desirable only to the ruling class and its minions. Both corporate media and capitalist enterprise supported Clinton’s bid to steer the election in her favor. Not only did the ruling class help her take out Sanders, but it also assisted Clinton in a cover up of the recent WikiLeaks email dump. In emails written by her campaign chair John Podesta, it was revealed that the Clinton campaign planned to use the Trump campaign as right-wing cannon fodder to present Clinton as more electable [7] . Furthermore, the emails also uncovered how Clinton holds a “ public” and “private” position [8] on matters of Social Security and free trade. If left up to Clinton, Social Security retirement benefits and federal regulations of corporate activity would be swept into the dustbin of history. Additionally, the corporate media and the Democratic Party have attempted to frame Donald Trump as a racist, misogynistic pig. According to the Democratic Party, Trump represents the “Worst of America [9] .” The slander of Trump has been an easy job. Trump himself provides all of the ammo. However, the condemnation of Trump is little more than a convenient distraction when it comes from the corporate Democrats. From Bill Clinton to Barack Obama, the Democratic Party has waged endless war, austerity, and racist state repression on behalf of its corporate masters. Hillary Clinton must resort to fear-mongering around Trump because neither her party nor her class has anything to offer the majority of the US electorate. Conditions are thus ripe for an alternative political party to make a strong showing in this and future Presidential elections. The Green Party’s success could inspire the millions of people disillusioned with both choices and show that a mass sentiment against the two-party corporate duopoly does indeed exist. It is the task of communists, radicals, and revolutionaries to organize the disaffected into a class conscious organization capable of stripping power from the ruling class. No such organization exists at the moment. The Green Party doesn’t profess to be this organization, but its demands and platform are surely helpful if utilized to create the conditions required for such an organization to emerge. “If left up to Clinton, Social Security retirement benefits and federal regulations of corporate activity would be swept into the dustbin of history.” So when self-identified leftists make the claim that the left deserves better than Jill Stein [10] , the urgent need for self-criticism becomes clear. One only needs to examine conditions in the US briefly to see that oppressed and working class people deserve better than the left. Of course, the left’s current state is a reflection of the conditions from which it exists and the deep imperialist assault on the consciousness of the oppressed. However, the left has made critical errors in recent years. Many so-called revolutionary organizations have, for example, supported imperialist war in Libya and promoted the notion of lesser evil voting as cover for the Democratic Party. Green Party candidates Jill Stein and Ajamu Baraka have consistently stood up against endless war, austerity, and racist state repression and for universal healthcare, education, and peace. Yet there are some who want to claim that such a platform is not adequate or “revolutionary” enough. It is time to shed this sectarian way of thinking. Hillary Clinton will become the next President of the US. She will inherit the eight years of Obama rule which have further weakened the left. But the 2016 elections have revealed that the deep crisis of the imperialist system is beginning to intersect with popular opposition to its policy manifestations. So don’t fear Trump or organize resistance in a manner that gives the people a choice of either revolution or nothing at all. There is nothing counterrevolutionary about voting Green this November and organizing the movement on the streets around its core demands. As BAR’s Bruce Dixon noted last week, a five percent showing by the Green Party will put much needed federal funds into the control of movement organizers. A revolution is not a moment, it is a process. The crisis of imperialism will present many more moments to develop the revolutionary potential of the masses. The current opportunity to do so should not be allowed to dissipate, as the next moment could occur alongside a Hillary Clinton-led world war. Source URL: http://blackagendareport.com/why_i_will_vote_green | 1real |
Newspapers aim to ride 'Trump Bump' to reach readers, advertisers | NEW YORK (Reuters) - The Trump administration’s combative view of traditional news media as the “opposition party” and “fake news” is turning out to be the best hope in 2017 for newspapers struggling to attract more digital readers and advertisers. The New York Times (NYT.N), the Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal and Gannett Co are building on the online readership they gained during the 2016 presidential election by marketing unbiased reporting as a sales strategy. The risk, however, is whether those new readers will attract advertising dollars to the newspapers, some of which have been criticized for having political leanings. An Edelman survey of more than 33,000 people in 28 countries shows trust in the media is at an all-time low at just 35 percent. So far, there is reason for optimism among newspaper executives and investors. The New York Times, which President Donald Trump has referred to as “failing” in his Twitter messages, added a record 276,000 digital news subscribers in the last quarter and sees digital ad revenue up 10 to 15 percent in the current quarter. The company said it expects to add 200,000 digital subscriptions to its news products in the first quarter. The Wall Street Journal added 113,000 digital subscriptions in its latest quarter, an almost 12 percent jump. The company said that January’s numbers were even higher, but it declined to provide figures. Financial Times digital subscriptions jumped 6 percent in the fourth quarter to 646,000, while digital subscriptions at the 109 local newspapers across the country that make up the Gannett’s USA Today Network, grew 26 percent to 182,000 in the fourth quarter. Meanwhile USA Today, which is part of the USA Today Network, and not subscription based, saw revenue grow 1.4 percent, the company said. It said 68 percent of USA Today’s advertising revenue in the fourth quarter came from digital. In addition to the proliferation of "fake news" websites that publish false stories for propaganda purposes, another challenge for traditional media is hostility from Trump who has on occasion described their reporting as "fake news." Republican Trump's close adviser, Stephen Bannon, told The New York Times in an interview in January: "The media's the opposition party" and not the Democratic Party. To win over advertisers and readers’ trust, The Wall Street Journal ran ads online and in print during the election. One featured a pin ball machine with the tagline, “No Tilt. Campaign coverage that’s on the level.” The paper has run ads after the election to highlight its content as “created, curated and checked in a real newsroom.” The New York Times, which is focused on increasing its subscriber revenue, in January launched its “Truth” campaign consisting of online ads urging readers to sign up because, “Truth. It needs your support.” The newspaper sees an opportunity in making sure readers understand that it is fair and accurate and plans to launch another marketing campaign in coming weeks, Chief Executive Officer Mark Thompson said on the company’s last earnings call. The Financial Times is running its “Facts. Truths.” campaign promoting its coverage of the election and now the Trump administration. Gannett, which rebranded its publications under the “USA Today Network,” has used the election to highlight it has journalists at local newspapers across the United States, said Andy Yost, chief marketing officer at Gannett. Divisiveness stirred by the election campaign has made brands avoid publications that appear to be politically aligned, said Natalie Prout, a strategist at Phenomenon, a Los Angeles-based branding agency. For example, there is a heightened understanding in the wake of November’s election that if a brand buys an ad in The Huffington Post, for example, it could be perceived as supporting a liberal agenda, Prout said. Brands are also worried about their ads showing up in what is perceived as “fake news,” so they are exercising more caution when using programmatic advertising, where they automatically buy digital ad spots through a third party. Instead of listing which sites they do not want their ads showing up on, more advertisers are choosing which sites they do want to see their ads, said Barry Lowenthal, president of The Media Kitchen, a New York-based media buyer. Despite the recent bump in subscribers, newspapers still are facing major headwinds, said newspaper analyst Ken Doctor. “Print advertising is in free fall,” Doctor said. “The fundamentals haven’t changed.” But growing digital subscribers can help attract advertisers to other areas, such as conferences, said Suzi Watford, chief marketing officer of Dow Jones, which includes The Wall Street Journal. “The more we are able to bring in people, the more we are able to build and maintain a healthy ad business,” Watford said. For a graphic on online newspaper subscriptions click here | 0fake |
GANGSTA GOV ATTEMPTS SHAKEDOWN OF GIANT MORTGAGE COMPANY, Quicken Loans…Owner Stands His Ground | Quicken Loans owner, Dan Gilbert is one of the most beloved business owners in the state of MI. Their headquarters are located in the city of Detroit (where people in the suburbs don t typically travel unless they have to). Owner, Dan Gilbert gives back to the city of Detroit and to its residents in a huge way, not the least of which is employing over 7,000 people in their Detroit offices. In 2014, Fortune Magazine named Quicken Loans a Top 5 Place To Work for the 11th straight year. When asked what made Quicken Loans such a great place to work, Fortune gave this answer: America s largest online-lending company offers cash incentives to its staff to move to downtown Detroit. According to Salary.com, mortgage bankers in Southeast Michigan average $50,000 a year, but those at Quicken earn $113,000. None of that matters to a corrupt government however, who has a history of shaking down banks. This time however, the goons in our Justice Department may have targeted the wrong business owner.Detroit s own Quicken Loans is the latest target of the Justice Department s shakedown of the nation s lenders.Justice s goons have been systematically extorting protection money from big banks and mortgage lenders, under the threat of federal fraud lawsuits and prison time for their executives.The department s modus operandi would be worthy of racketeering charges if carried out by civilian mobsters.First, the Obama administration whips up a blame-the-banks fervor after the financial collapse. Then, armed with federal fraud statutes adopted after the savings and loan meltdown in the 1980s, it scours the transactions of lenders to find hints of irregularities. It extrapolates from the skimpiest evidence a pattern of widespread abuse, and if needed, frightens insiders into coughing up creative accusations against their employers.With its proof in hand, Justice presents institutions with a choice pay a large and painful fine to make the investigation go away, or try their luck at a jury trial in an environment in which the words bankers and baby killers register about the same revulsion.The nation s six largest banks have all crumbled, choosing to pay $136 billion in fines and admit their wrongdoing rather than get their legs broken.Quicken, owned by Dan Gilbert, has decided not to cower, at least for the moment. Instead of paying protection money, it filed a lawsuit to stop a three-year investigation. Thursday, the government responded by filing charges against Quicken, accusing it of submitting ineligible mortgages for FHA insurance.In its complaint, Quicken says Justice demanded a multi-billion dollar settlement based on a sampling of just 55 of the 246,000 loans issued. Defects, according to the lawsuit, include miscalculating a borrower s income by $17 and lending another $26 too much. In those meager mistakes, Justice sees systemic fraud.Trace evidence is all the Obama administration requires to put banks on the rack. To cinch a settlement, Justice adds the threat of criminal charges against individual executives.Quicken s lawsuit accuses the government of investigating and pressuring large, high-profile lenders into paying nine- and 10-figure sums and publicly admitting wrongdoing, including conceding that the lenders had made false claims. That s an exellent summary of Justice s racket.Requiring a public admission of wrongdoing, instead of allowing institutions to settle without acknowledging guilt, as is common practice, leaves open the possibility of future criminal action against executives, assuring that they don t squawk publicly.Gilbert is a different cat than Justice has crossed on Wall Street. Detroit street tough, he doesn t take to being bullied. Of course, the government has a lot of pressure points it can mash. Gilbert is in the gaming business, a highly regulated industry, and the administration is not above targeting his casinos.But I hope he hangs in there. This government has gone gangster, and unless someone takes a stand, it won t be just the big bankers who get pinched.Via: Nolan Finley, Detroit News | 1real |
FORMER OBAMA SPOKESLIAR To Join NBC As Paid Fake News Host…We’ve Got A Few Clips Of His Best Lies To The Press [VIDEO] | President Obama s White House press secretary spokes liar Josh Earnest has joined NBC News as a political analyst.NBC announced the addition of Obama s spokesliar to their lineup in a memo form NBC News president Noah Oppenheim and MSNBC president Phil Griffin:We are pleased to announce that Josh Earnest will join NBC News and MSNBC as a Political Analyst. As you may have seen, he made his debut this morning on TODAY and Morning Joe.Josh recently completed a ten-year run with President Obama, most recently serving as White House Press Secretary from 2014-2017.Josh joined the Obama presidential campaign in March 2007 as the Iowa communications director, and went on to serve as deputy communications director during the 2008 general election. Josh has also worked on numerous national, statewide and local campaigns over the course of his twenty years in politics.A native of Kansas City, Josh graduated from Rice University with a degree in political science and policy studies.With his wealth of experience and insight, Josh will be a great addition to our roster of contributors and will be an asset for our two networks as we continue to cover the White House, Congress and politics beyond the Beltway.Please join us in welcoming Josh.Noah and PhilHere s Obama s spokesliar Josh Earnest lying about the time Obama clearly identified ISIS as a JV team Watch Josh Earnest refer to lies being told by the Obama regime about Iran deal, cross-talk. Cross talk? What the heck is cross-talk? Isn t that just cross-talk for LYING?Here s Josh Earnest lying to reporters, where he states clearly that Obama didn t pay ransom to Iran for the release of American hostages. Watch him as he tries to turn the conversation to right-wingers in US working with right wingers in Iran. Really? | 1real |
Trump says would be surprised if Iran compliant with nuclear deal: WSJ | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump said on Tuesday he would be surprised if Iran is in compliance with a nuclear deal when recertification comes up again in three months, according to an interview with the Wall Street Journal. “We’ll talk about the subject in 90 days but I would be surprised if they were in compliance,” he told the Journal. The president must certify to Congress every three months that Iran is complying with the 2015 nuclear deal. | 0fake |
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