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Pokemon Go players are inadvertently stopping people committing suicide in Japan | Pokemon Go players are inadvertently stopping people committing suicide in Japan
@Tkbeynon over on Twitter writes, “Pokemon Go players inadvertently stopping people committing suicide is definitely my favourite story of the day” | 1real |
OOPS! CRYBABY HAMILTON STARS Who Lectured Pence Haven’t Voted In Years [VIDEO] | There are no records available for this year, so it s unclear if the cast members voted in 2016, but years prior show many were absent on Election Day.The Broadway smash hit players caused a controversy after Brandon Dixon, who plays Aaron Burr, read the message to Pence, who arrived on Friday to taken in the show with his family.Here is Dixon s disrespectful rant at Vice-President elect Mike Pence:Audience members booed Pence as he entered the theater and after the cast s curtain call, the statement was read.Dixon s message was written by show creator Lin-Manuel Miranda, director, Thomas Kail and lead producer, Jeffrey Seller, according to the New York Times. We, sir, we are the diverse America who are alarmed and anxious that your new administration will not protect us, our planet, our children, our parents, or defend us and uphold our inalienable rights. We truly hope that this show has inspired you to uphold our American values and to work on behalf of all of us, Dixon said, reading the message aloud.But cast members were able to give input. RadarOnline investigated whether or not the actors had voted and revealed many leads hadn t in years.Dixon s records show he didn t vote during president Obama s reelection bid in 2012.Javier Munoz, playing the titular role of Hamilton, registered to vote in 2006 and voted in the mid-term elections, but hasn t been on record as voting since.Seth Stewart, who plays Thomas Jefferson, voted in 2008 when Obama ran for the first time. He did not vote in 2012.Okieriete Oak Onaodowan, who players James Madison and Hercules Mulligan, registered to vote in 2005 but hasn t been on record voting since.Since the clash with the Hamilton cast, Pence told Fox News he wasn t offended by the message and said the booing is what freedom sounds like . Daily Mail | 1real |
Even Fox News Is Turning Against Trump; Calls President Elect WORSE Than Clinton (VIDEO) | You know things are going badly for the GOP President-Elect when even Fox News begins to turn on him. In an interview with Fox s Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday, Trump was grilled about his conflicts of interest and about his similar accusations toward Hillary Clinton.Wallace asked Trump about his campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, telling CNN that Trump would continue his role as executive producer for Celebrity Apprentice in his spare time. as well as the fact Trump plans on keeping a stake in his real estate business while in the White House. Isn t that a huge conflict of interest, sir? Wallace asked.Trump s response was that it was okay because everyone in the world knows he s a big real estate tycoon and he denied that he will be involved in the management of the company.To Wallace s credit (and I don t say that often), the Fox anchor countered that Trump hammered Hillary Clinton over the Clinton Foundation and pay to play. Trump responded that that was different because she takes massive amounts of money from foreign countries. That s not true, but Fox didn t point that out.Wallace continued, noting that Trump will also be making massive amounts of money because foreign countries are already booking events at the Trump hotel in D.C., and that Trump has business operations, deals with foreign countries isn t this on steroids. Trump was seemingly appalled, but Wallace went on, saying that foreign governments were trying to curry favor with the United States through Trump s hotels.Trump, though, made the claim that he is turning down billions of dollars in deals because of potential conflicts of interest, but he did claim that he didn t know if he d be doing deals, and said that under the law (he has) the right to do it, but he doesn t want to.Here s the video:It s becoming increasingly clear that Trump is a danger, not just for domestic policy, but that he and his conflicts of interest present a real threat to the world. This issue is resonating with the American people, nearly 2/3rds of whom have expressed concern with Trump s conflicts of interest. As for why Fox is waking up to that reality now, and not before the election, well, perhaps they see it as their ticket out of a wildcard Trump presidency. They would much rather deal with a President Mike Pence.Featured image via screenshot | 1real |
Hillary: Leaked Audio of Her Discussing Rigging an Election in Palestine | On September 5, 2006, Eli Chomsky was an editor and staff writer for the Jewish Press, and Hillary Clinton was running for a shoo-in re-election as a U.S. senator. Her trip making the rounds of editorial boards brought her to Brooklyn to meet the editorial board of the Jewish Press. | 1real |
$70 Million Awarded to Woman with Ovarian Cancer Due to Baby Powder Usage | Associated Press
Excerpts:
A St. Louis jury on Thursday awarded a California woman more than $70 million in her lawsuit alleging that years of using Johnson & Johnson’s baby powder caused her cancer, the latest case raising concerns about the health ramifications of extended talcum powder use.
The jury ruling ended the trial that began Sept. 26 in the case brought by Deborah Giannecchini of Modesto. She was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2012. The suit accused Johnson & Johnson of “negligent conduct” in making and marketing its baby powder.
“We are pleased the jury did the right thing. They once again reaffirmed the need for Johnson & Johnson to warn the public of the ovarian cancer risk associated with its product,” Jim Onder, an attorney for the plaintiff, told The Associated Press. | 1real |
Idaho Republican OUTRAGEOUSLY Says Female Lawmakers Only Rise In Rank By Giving Sexual Favors | A member of the Idaho House of Representatives has been punished for making absolutely offensive accusations against every female lawmaker.After Rep. Judy Boyle was named the chair of the House Agriculture Committee, Rep. Heather Scott remarked that Boyle got the position because female lawmakers spread their legs to rise in rank, suggesting that women perform sexual favors to get leadership positions.The incident occurred on December 1st in the House lounge and the remark was said loudly enough that several witnesses heard it.Scott then repeated the remark in the House chamber, not only upsetting female lawmakers, but male lawmakers as well. That s not true, Rep. Stephen Hartgen, told the Spokesman-Review in response to Scott s claim. I ve been here almost 10 years. People get ahead here on the basis of merit, in my humble opinion. I ve never seen anything that would cause me to question that premise. Rep. Christy Perry also blasted Scott s behavior. It s important to me that the public understands that it s absolutely a false allegation that it s not what happens in this building. It s extremely disrespectful. A number of the lady legislators are very upset about this. It s just entirely inappropriate. And the Idaho legislature responded as a whole by stripping Scott of all her committee assignments.According to the Statesman Review,As the House convened today, it moved to the 13th order, and the clerk read the list of committee assignments, listing all members of three committees Commerce, Environment and State Affairs. Missing from all three was the name of Rep. Heather Scott, R-Blanchard.So maybe Scott will think twice about what she wants to say next time she wants to react to her colleagues getting leadership roles. Because spreading lies about how those positions were attained won t earn her any respect.Let s hope the voters in Scott s district follow up by kicking her out of office in the next election.Featured image via Electablog | 1real |
Indian tycoon's extradition hearing told of abuse of UK "Chennai Six" | LONDON (Reuters) - One of the Chennai Six group of ex-British soldiers jailed in India was dragged to a psychiatric hospital and force-fed anti-psychotic tablets during his time in jail, a London court considering whether to extradite Indian tycoon Vijay Mallya was told on Thursday. Mallya, 61, is wanted in India on fraud and money-laundering charges relating to his defunct Kingfisher Airlines and Indian authorities want to recover about $1.4 billion they say Kingfisher owes. The businessman, co-owner of the Force India Formula One team, who moved to Britain in March last year, says the case him is politically motivated and is fighting extradition on several grounds including a claim that jail conditions in India are incompatible with British human rights laws. As part of this, his lawyer quizzed prison conditions expert Dr Alan Mitchell about a conversation he had had two days ago with one of the former British soldiers who had been held for four years in India on weapons-smuggling charges after the vessel they were working on strayed into Indian waters in 2013. The soldiers were released from jail in Chennai, eastern India, after a successful appeal and began arriving back in Britain last week. The ex-soldier, named only as A , said he had been grabbed by 15 prison guards and prisoners and taken to a psychiatric hospital because he had been excessively walking around the prison, Mitchell told London s Westminster Magistrate Court. While in the psychiatric hospital, he stated he was tied up, gagged, he was beaten and he was forcibly injected. In addition he described being force-fed anti-psychotic tablets that he managed to spit out, Mitchell said. Asked by Mallya s lawyer Clare Montgomery about assurances given over the treatment of Mallya, who she said had diabetes, coronary artery disease and sleep apnoea, Mitchell said the British government had likewise told parliament that the Chennai Six were being well looked after. Despite assurances having been given in parliament, A was extremely disappointed by what effect the involvement of the High Commission and the UK government had on conditions in which he and his fellow prisoners were held, he said. Mark Summers, the lawyer representing the Indian government, said Mitchell s evidence involved an uncorroborated account which could be used as a platform for a compensation claim against the UK government . He said conditions in Chennai would bear no relation to the jail in Mumbai where Mallya would be held. Another hearing in the London extradition case against Mallya will be held on Jan. 10 with a decision expected at a later date. | 0fake |
Syrian opposition says U.N. talks are in 'great danger' | GENEVA (Reuters) - The international community must do more to persuade the Syrian government to negotiate in U.N.-led talks, which were in great danger , the head of the opposition delegation said after an eighth round ended in failure in Geneva on Thursday. Opposition negotiator Nasr Hariri told a news conference that the government of President Bashar al-Assad hated the talks process and rejected all negotiations, and although there was pressure from its ally Russia, another state was putting obstacles in the path of the Geneva talks. | 0fake |
TREASON: This Election Fraud Goes All the Way TO THE TOP! — Bill Holter | JS Mineset’s Bill Holter is back to help document the collapse. Bill says that the United States is becoming a banana republic right before our eyes. As Donald Trump recently stated,
“The Clinton machine is at the center of this power structure. We’ve seen this firsthand with the Wikileaks documents in which Hillary Clinton meets in secret, with international banks to plot the destruction of U.S. sovereignty. The Clintons are criminals.”
And still, the CIA mockingbird media targets Trump while giving Clinton a free pass.
The fix is in.
Source: Silver Doctors
| 1real |
After London setback, May wins Brexit cheer in Brussels | BRUSSELS (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Theresa May made clear her desire on Thursday to move Brexit talks forward to a discussion of a future trade relationship at a dinner with EU leaders who applauded her for progress made so far. A day after she suffered a defeat in parliament over her blueprint for quitting the EU, May told her peers at a summit in Brussels that she was on course to deliver Brexit and urged them to speed up the talks to unravel more than 40 years of union. Offering her reassurance that they will endorse on Friday the launch of a second phase of negotiations on a free trade pact and an initial transition period, leaders responded to May s remarks by a brief round of applause before she was to leave the summit to allow them to discuss Brexit without her. A British government official said the prime minister made no secret of wanting to move on to the next phase and to approaching it with ambition and creativity . I believe this is in the best interests of the UK and the European Union, she told the leaders over a dinner of roasted langoustine and capon chicken. A particular priority should be agreement on the implementation period so we can bring greater certainty to businesses in the UK and across the 27, she added. Officials said German Chancellor Angela Merkel congratulated May on bringing the negotiations last week to the stage of sufficient progress that will enable leaders to accept opening the next phase of talks. Summit chair Donald Tusk will call May on Friday to update her after leaders have discussed their next moves on Brexit. May, weakened after losing her Conservative Party s majority in a June election, has so far carried her divided government and party with her as she negotiated the first phase of talks on how much Britain should pay to leave the EU, the border with Ireland and the status of EU citizens in Britain. But the second, more decisive phase, of the negotiations will further test her authority by exposing the deep rifts among her top team of ministers, or cabinet, over what Britain should become after Brexit. Acknowledging tough talks ahead, Tusk warned them that only the unity they had displayed so far would deliver a good deal on trade an issue on which the member states have different interests: I have no doubt that the real test of our unity will be the second phase of Brexit talks, he told reporters. May s team was upbeat. Look at what s been achieved so far. The deal on phase one which many commentators said couldn t be done, has been done, the British government official said. Look at the language from the other European leaders today ... All the signals from them are that they are looking forward to continue to negotiate with the prime minister. The EU is willing to start talks next month on a roughly two-year transition period to ease Britain out after March 2019 but wants more detail from London on what it wants before it will open trade negotiations from March. The deal almost fell apart last week, when May s Northern Irish allies rejected an initial agreement for fear that a promise to protect a free border with EU member Ireland could separate the region from the rest of the UK. After days of often fraught diplomacy, May rescued the deal to meet the EU s requirements for sufficient progress but the last-minute wobble by the Democratic Unionist Party, which she depends on in parliament to get laws passed, and the defeat in parliament on Wednesday, underline the struggles she faces. I m disappointed with the amendment, she told reporters as she arrived at the summit. But the EU withdrawal bill is making good progress through the House of Commons and we re on course to deliver on Brexit. May s success so far has won her some respite at home from political in-fighting between enthusiasts and sceptics of Brexit in her ruling party, and has reduced the prospect of a disorderly departure from the bloc. At the summit, she was again keen to show that Britain was an active member of the bloc, committing to staying in the Erasmus university programme until the end of 2020 and taking part in discussions on the bloc s plan for closer defence cooperation. Over dinner, leaders also discussed responses to the migration crisis from Africa and the Middle East, and lingering deep divisions over how to share the load. They confirmed a rollover of sanctions on Russia over the Ukraine crisis and reaffirmed their opposition to U.S. President Donald Trump s move to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. | 0fake |
U.S. Could Exceed Goal of Accepting 10,000 Syrian Refugees - The New York Times | BALTIMORE — When Madiha Algothany and her family, Syrian refugees who had fled to Jordan, arrived in the United States in June, they braced for rejection from a new culture and country they feared did not want them. They knew that, like Donald J. Trump, many Americans wanted to stop Muslims from coming into the country. But Ms. Algothany and her husband and their four sons found a furnished town home in Baltimore waiting for them, along with a case worker to help them navigate their new life — part of an effort President Obama announced last fall to resettle 10, 000 people displaced by the war in Syria by the end of September. After a slow start and amid fierce political controversy, the Obama administration is on track to meet that target and probably exceed it, according to figures it released on Friday. “We were told it will be very difficult for us in the U. S. because the people don’t like us and they don’t want to deal with us, but what I found is that people received us very well,” Ms. Algothany, 32, said in an interview this week, speaking through an interpreter at a resettlement center run by the International Rescue Committee. “They are really spending a lot of time and effort helping us, to answer our questions and help us in our life. ” Ms. Algothany’s family is one in a rapidly growing influx of Syrian refugees — 99 percent of them Muslim — arriving in communities around the United States. Administration officials said on Friday that 8, 000 Syrian refugees had been allowed into the United States since October, putting them on pace to surpass the goal of 10, 000. Through partnerships with the State Department and the Department of Health and Human Services, all of them receive assistance from nonprofit organizations that connect them to a local support network to help them find housing, register for health care and food assistance and enroll their children in school. The International Rescue Committee is one of nine nonprofit organizations helping refugees relocate and integrate into their new communities. The increase reflects a quiet but intense push by the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security, with substantial prodding from the White House, to radically speed up the pace at which Syrian refugees are placed in the United States. It appears likely to further inflame the political debate about refugees that has become a central theme of the presidential campaign. Mr. Trump has claimed that “thousands upon thousands” of Muslim refugees with a terrorist have been “pouring into our country” without proper security screening. The administration was spurred to action by a refugee crisis whose dimensions were driven home to the public in September, when newspapers published a photograph of the drowned corpse of Alan Kurdi, a Syrian toddler whose body washed ashore in Turkey after he and his family were tossed from a raft while attempting to flee to Greece. “We had so much pressure to bring Syrians, that we hadn’t done enough for that crisis,” said Anne C. Richard, the assistant secretary of state for population, migration and refugees, who said she had initially questioned whether the target of accepting 10, 000 Syrians — part of an overall goal of resettling 85, 000 refugees in the United States this year — was feasible. The task involves a rigorous set of security screenings and other checks, and an increased effort by the nonprofit groups involved to find new homes for those who are accepted in the United States. “We have people and groups in the United States who want us to bring many, many more refugees from around the world, and then we have people who say, ‘Don’t you dare bring a terrorist in,’” Ms. Richard said in an interview. She added: “It takes people and resources. The biggest challenge is to move faster without cutting corners on security. ” The Paris attacks in November intensified the scrutiny one of the bombers was found to have had a Syrian passport. Governors in 31 states said they would not accept Syrian refugees, although in many cases they have not been able to bar them, and legislation was introduced in 19 states this year, according to the International Rescue Committee. “I’m dismayed that refugees have become a political issue this campaign season — I’m really shocked by it,” Ms. Richard said. “It is a departure from the past, and could potentially harm the program. ” For now, it has not hindered the administration’s efforts quickly integrate a large new stream of Syrians into American communities. In February, around the time that Ms. Algothany’s family got word they could apply to resettle in the United States, the administration began a push to interview and process Syrian refugees in Jordan. Employees of the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security interviewed 12, 000 applicants, flooding the pipeline with refugee applications. Operations also expanded in Istanbul, Beirut, Lebanon, and Erbil, Iraq to handle many more Syrian cases. “We’ve actually added security checks to the process,” Jeh Johnson, the homeland security secretary, said this week. “What we have also added are a lot of resources to the process to meet the commitments that we have given the world refugee crisis. ” Leon Rodriguez, the director of the United States Customs and Immigration Service, said the vetting included what officials call a “Syrian enhanced review” involving fraud detection and national security units, as well as intelligence checks that include examination of social media. Seven percent of Syrian refugee applicants have failed the screenings and been denied entry, Mr. Rodriguez said on Friday, and an additional 13 percent were paused because of concerns about their credibility. The nonprofit groups that help resettle refugees began to feel the impact. At their weekly Wednesday “allocation” meeting, where a representative from each group spends hours in a nondescript office conference room in Arlington, Va. across the Potomac River from the State Department, there was a spike in the number of Syrian cases they were being asked to accept. The bulk of the Syrian refugees have resettled in Michigan, California, Arizona and Texas, according to figures released by the State Department, but some have ended up in all but a dozen states, from the Pacific Northwest to New England. “We have seen a surge,” said Mamadou Sy, refugee program director at Lutheran Social Services of the National Capital Area, which has offices in Falls Church, Va. and Hyattsville, Md. “But what we have also noticed is a surge of phone calls from volunteers who want to help that is really very overwhelming because the discourse out there has been very negative. ” At the International Rescue Committee’s resettlement office in Baltimore this week, the small waiting room was filled with Syrian families preparing to register for health care with the Maryland Department of Social Services and English classes at Baltimore City Community College. They also attended cultural or training in small classrooms equipped with white boards, fliers and task lists. “This is where the realities begin to set in for the clients: that while they have certain rights and benefits, they also have a lot of responsibilities,” said Ruben Chandrasekar, the executive director of the rescue committee’s Maryland programs, gesturing to an orientation classroom. While Syrians had arrived in “a trickle” for most of the year, Mr. Chandrasekar said, that has changed dramatically in the last couple of months. “Now, they’re essentially taking over our caseload,” he said. Mohammad 34, who arrived in Baltimore in June with his wife and four young children, is part of the trend. It has been four years since he hid the children in a livestock van and fled with his wife from Dara’a, Syria, to Jordan. “It was my dream always to come to the United States,” Mr. Smadi said through an interpreter. So he did not hesitate when he learned in February that his family could apply. American officials grilled him extensively during several interviews about “the tiniest details,” Mr. Al Smadi said, once calling him back for a second hourslong round of questioning because of a discrepancy in the dates he had provided for his service in Syria’s military. “We are hardworking people — we like to work and make our own living, and we don’t like to ask for aid,” Mr. Smadi said as his daughter squirmed on her belly on a table in front of him and his two other daughters and son played quietly nearby. “But there was no future for my children. ” | 0fake |
REINCE PRIEBUS INTERVIEW: Is Speaker Ryan to Blame for Health Care Bill’s Deafeat? [Video] | 1real | |
Gay Blog Threatens To Sue And Defame Milo After He Objects To ’White Nationalist’ Lie (Issues Correction Anyway) - Breitbart | The LGBTQ Blog “Peacock Panache” threatened to sue MILO after he objected to their decision to falsely brand him as a “white nationalist. ”[After issuing a correction on a claim that MILO is a “white nationalist,” Tim Peacock, the managing editor of the Peacock Panache, claimed that he would and publish a negative story about MILO’s attempt to silence LGBTQ media. We have corrected our article. Please be aware that any further threats of initiating a strategic lawsuit against public participation (SLAPP) will be met not only with (for that SLAPP) but negative media exposure for your firm and client for attempting to silence LGBTQ media. This is aside from the fact that SLAPP suits are illegal in many jurisdictions including New York. On Monday, The Peacock Panache published a story regarding MILO’s request that the publication remove the false references to him as a “white nationalist. ” In the story, Tim Peacock explained that their decision to issue the correction was based on the Gawker incident. Earlier this afternoon Jenny Kefauver at Capital HQ contacted us threatening to sue over language we used in this article about Breitbart News editor Milo Yiannopoulos published last year. With the costs of litigation being as prohibitive as they are (and seeing what Peter Thiel did to Gawker last year) we acquiesced with a caveat (in an editor’s note at the bottom of the article). We responded to the email noting the correction but also standing up for media reminding her SLAPP lawsuits can be (and that SLAPP suits are actually illegal in many jurisdictions). | 0fake |
NOT KIDDING! High School Assignment: “Prudence is thirty-four. She has had sex with 21 men and 3 women” | Prudence is thirty-four. She has had sex with twenty-one men and three women, according an assignment for high schoolers in Scotland County, Missouri. After being celibate for three years, she meets Larry and a romance begins to develop. Larry is thirty-seven. One night he proposes that, things going the way he thinks they re going between them, they talk about their sexual histories. A concerned mother recently contacted Fox News columnist Todd Starnes about the assignment after her child received it in an English class at Scotland County R-1 Junior-Senior High School. Larry confesses to having slept with three women, one of whom he married. She tells him that she has slept with three men. Larry is uncomfortable with this number, especially since Prudence is younger than he is, the assignment continued. She amends it, saying that one was just heavy petting. Given Prudence s reflexive need for approval and Larry s clear ideas of how things should be, what percentage of the time will Prudence be inhibited in bed with Larry, and consequently fake orgasm to ease his pride? Here is a photo of the assignment: This is something I imagine you would see on a coffee table in every brothel, the irate mother told Starnes.The unidentified woman said she contacted the school s principal, who provided a lame excuse for the assignment. He told me that the teacher was originally a college teacher and he sometimes has trouble differentiating between what is appropriate for a 15- or 16-year-old and a 19 or 20-year-old, she said.For entire story: EAG News | 1real |
BREAKING: Wikileaks Releases ‘Vault 7’ Part 1 – ‘Year Zero’ | 21st Century Wire says WikiLeaks has released its largest ever publication of confidential documents on the Central Intelligence Agency. Entitled Vault 7 and containing a password that echoed the alleged JFK quote splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it into the winds, this leak comprises 8,761 documents and files from an isolated, high-security network situated inside the CIA s Center for Cyber Intelligence in Langley, Virginia. Year Zero , which is part one of the leak and conveniently named after a zero day exploit used by intelligence agencies, was gathered throughout 2016 and is said to be the largest intelligence publication in history .Whilst a lot of the information and methodology outlined in Year Zero is of no surprise to security analysts and researchers since the Edward Snowden (image, left) revelations, once again the public has explicit confirmation of how one of the most powerful intelligence agencies in the world, aided by their international counterparts like GCHQ, have been infiltrating and scooping vast quantities of private information from Apple and Android devices right up to Samsung Smart TV technology where false stand-by modes and live microphones can be executed to record information and send it back to the appropriate servers.This document dump is a game changer, because not only does the world know what they ve done, we now know how they ve done it.Based on the CIA s own documents, how do we know it wasn t the CIA themselves behind various Russian hacking conspiracies circling around Trump? The questions are proliferating as we speak.More on this report from Wikileaks Wikileaks Today, Tuesday 7 March 2017, WikiLeaks begins its new series of leaks on the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. Code-named Vault 7 by WikiLeaks, it is the largest ever publication of confidential documents on the agency.The first full part of the series, Year Zero , comprises 8,761 documents and files from an isolated, high-security network situated inside the CIA s Center for Cyber Intelligence in Langley, Virgina. It follows an introductory disclosure last month of CIA targeting French political parties and candidates in the lead up to the 2012 presidential election.Recently, the CIA lost control of the majority of its hacking arsenal including malware, viruses, trojans, weaponized zero day exploits, malware remote control systems and associated documentation. This extraordinary collection, which amounts to more than several hundred million lines of code, gives its possessor the entire hacking capacity of the CIA. The archive appears to have been circulated among former U.S. government hackers and contractors in an unauthorized manner, one of whom has provided WikiLeaks with portions of the archive. Year Zero introduces the scope and direction of the CIA s global covert hacking program, its malware arsenal and dozens of zero day weaponized exploits against a wide range of U.S. and European company products, include Apple s iPhone, Google s Android and Microsoft s Windows and even Samsung TVs, which are turned into covert microphones.Since 2001 the CIA has gained political and budgetary preeminence over the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA). The CIA found itself building not just its now infamous drone fleet, but a very different type of covert, globe-spanning force its own substantial fleet of hackers. The agency s hacking division freed it from having to disclose its often controversial operations to the NSA (its primary bureaucratic rival) in order to draw on the NSA s hacking capacities.By the end of 2016, the CIA s hacking division, which formally falls under the agency s Center for Cyber Intelligence (CCI), had over 5000 registered users and had produced more than a thousand hacking systems, trojans, viruses, and other weaponized malware. Such is the scale of the CIA s undertaking that by 2016, its hackers had utilized more code than that used to run Facebook. The CIA had created, in effect, its own NSA with even less accountability and without publicly answering the question as to whether such a massive budgetary spend on duplicating the capacities of a rival agency could be justified.In a statement to WikiLeaks the source details policy questions that they say urgently need to be debated in public, including whether the CIA s hacking capabilities exceed its mandated powers and the problem of public oversight of the agency. The source wishes to initiate a public debate about the security, creation, use, proliferation and democratic control of cyberweapons.Once a single cyber weapon is loose it can spread around the world in seconds, to be used by rival states, cyber mafia and teenage hackers alike.Julian Assange, WikiLeaks editor stated that There is an extreme proliferation risk in the development of cyber weapons . Comparisons can be drawn between the uncontrolled proliferation of such weapons , which results from the inability to contain them combined with their high market value, and the global arms trade. But the significance of Year Zero goes well beyond the choice between cyberwar and cyberpeace. The disclosure is also exceptional from a political, legal and forensic perspective. Wikileaks has carefully reviewed the Year Zero disclosure and published substantive CIA documentation while avoiding the distribution of armed cyberweapons until a consensus emerges on the technical and political nature of the CIA s program and how such weapons should analyzed, disarmed and published.Wikileaks has also decided to redact and anonymise some identifying information in Year Zero for in depth analysis. These redactions include ten of thousands of CIA targets and attack machines throughout Latin America, Europe and the United States. While we are aware of the imperfect results of any approach chosen, we remain committed to our publishing model and note that the quantity of published pages in Vault 7 part one ( Year Zero ) already eclipses the total number of pages published over the first three years of the Edward Snowden NSA leaks.CIA malware and hacking tools are built by EDG (Engineering Development Group), a software development group within CCI (Center for Cyber Intelligence), a department belonging to the CIA s DDI (Directorate for Digital Innovation). The DDI is one of the five major directorates of the CIA (see this organizational chart of the CIA for more details).The EDG is responsible for the development, testing and operational support of all backdoors, exploits, malicious payloads, trojans, viruses and any other kind of malware used by the CIA in its covert operations world-wide.The increasing sophistication of surveillance techniques has drawn comparisons with George Orwell s 1984, but Weeping Angel , developed by the CIA s Embedded Devices Branch (EDB), which infests smart TVs, transforming them into covert microphones, is surely its most emblematic realization.The attack against Samsung smart TVs was developed in cooperation with the United Kingdom s MI5/BTSS. After infestation, Weeping Angel places the target TV in a Fake-Off mode, so that the owner falsely believes the TV is off when it is on. In Fake-Off mode the TV operates as a bug, recording conversations in the room and sending them over the Internet to a covert CIA server.As of October 2014 the CIA was also looking at infecting the vehicle control systems used by modern cars and trucks. The purpose of such control is not specified, but it would permit the CIA to engage in nearly undetectable assassinations.The CIA s Mobile Devices Branch (MDB) developed numerous attacks to remotely hack and control popular smart phones. Infected phones can be instructed to send the CIA the user s geolocation, audio and text communications as well as covertly activate the phone s camera and microphone.Despite iPhone s minority share (14.5%) of the global smart phone market in 2016, a specialized unit in the CIA s Mobile Development Branch produces malware to infest, control and exfiltrate data from iPhones and other Apple products running iOS, such as iPads. CIA s arsenal includes numerous local and remote zero days developed by CIA or obtained from GCHQ, NSA, FBI or purchased from cyber arms contractors such as Baitshop. The disproportionate focus on iOS may be explained by the popularity of the iPhone among social, political, diplomatic and business elites.A similar unit targets Google s Android which is used to run the majority of the world s smart phones (~85%) including Samsung, HTC and Sony. 1.15 billion Android powered phones were sold last year. Year Zero shows that as of 2016 the CIA had 24 weaponized Android zero days which it has developed itself and obtained from GCHQ, NSA and cyber arms contractors.These techniques permit the CIA to bypass the encryption of WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram, Wiebo, Confide and Cloackman by hacking the smart phones that they run on and collecting audio and message traffic before encryption is applied.The CIA also runs a very substantial effort to infect and control Microsoft Windows users with its malware. This includes multiple local and remote weaponized zero days , air gap jumping viruses such as Hammer Drill which infects software distributed on CD/DVDs, infectors for removable media such as USBs, systems to hide data in images or in covert disk areas ( Brutal Kangaroo ) and to keep its malware infestations going.Many of these infection efforts are pulled together by the CIA s Automated Implant Branch (AIB), which has developed several attack systems for automated infestation and control of CIA malware, such as Assassin and Medusa .Attacks against Internet infrastructure and webservers are developed by the CIA s Network Devices Branch (NDB).The CIA has developed automated multi-platform malware attack and control systems covering Windows, Mac OS X, Solaris, Linux and more, such as EDB s HIVE and the related Cutthroat and Swindle tools, which are described in the examples section below.In the wake of Edward Snowden s leaks about the NSA, the U.S. technology industry secured a commitment from the Obama administration that the executive would disclose on an ongoing basis rather than hoard serious vulnerabilities, exploits, bugs or zero days to Apple, Google, Microsoft, and other US-based manufacturers.Serious vulnerabilities not disclosed to the manufacturers places huge swathes of the population and critical infrastructure at risk to foreign intelligence or cyber criminals who independently discover or hear rumors of the vulnerability. If the CIA can discover such vulnerabilities so can others.The U.S. government s commitment to the Vulnerabilities Equities Process came after significant lobbying by US technology companies, who risk losing their share of the global market over real and perceived hidden vulnerabilities. The government stated that it would disclose all pervasive vulnerabilities discovered after 2010 on an ongoing basis. Year Zero documents show that the CIA breached the Obama administration s commitments. Many of the vulnerabilities used in the CIA s cyber arsenal are pervasive and some may already have been found by rival intelligence agencies or cyber criminals.As an example, specific CIA malware revealed in Year Zero is able to penetrate, infest and control both the Android phone and iPhone software that runs or has run presidential Twitter accounts. The CIA attacks this software by using undisclosed security vulnerabilities ( zero days ) possessed by the CIA but if the CIA can hack these phones then so can everyone else who has obtained or discovered the vulnerability. As long as the CIA keeps these vulnerabilities concealed from Apple and Google (who make the phones) they will not be fixed, and the phones will remain hackable.The same vulnerabilities exist for the population at large, including the U.S. Cabinet, Congress, top CEOs, system administrators, security officers and engineers. By hiding these security flaws from manufacturers like Apple and Google the CIA ensures that it can hack everyone &mdsh; at the expense of leaving everyone hackable.Cyber weapons are not possible to keep under effective control.While nuclear proliferation has been restrained by the enormous costs and visible infrastructure involved in assembling enough fissile material to produce a critical nuclear mass, cyber weapons , once developed, are very hard to retain.Cyber weapons are in fact just computer programs which can be pirated like any other. Since they are entirely comprised of information they can be copied quickly with no marginal cost.Securing such weapons is particularly difficult since the same people who develop and use them have the skills to exfiltrate copies without leaving traces sometimes by using the very same weapons against the organizations that contain them. There are substantial price incentives for government hackers and consultants to obtain copies since there is a global vulnerability market that will pay hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars for copies of such weapons . Similarly, contractors and companies who obtain such weapons sometimes use them for their own purposes, obtaining advantage over their competitors in selling hacking services.Over the last three years the United States intelligence sector, which consists of government agencies such as the CIA and NSA and their contractors, such as Booze Allan Hamilton, has been subject to unprecedented series of data exfiltrations by its own workers.A number of intelligence community members not yet publicly named have been arrested or subject to federal criminal investigations in separate incidents.Most visibly, on February 8, 2017 a U.S. federal grand jury indicted Harold T. Martin III with 20 counts of mishandling classified information. The Department of Justice alleged that it seized some 50,000 gigabytes of information from Harold T. Martin III that he had obtained from classified programs at NSA and CIA, including the source code for numerous hacking tools.Once a single cyber weapon is loose it can spread around the world in seconds, to be used by peer states, cyber mafia and teenage hackers alike.In addition to its operations in Langley, Virginia the CIA also uses the U.S. consulate in Frankfurt as a covert base for its hackers covering Europe, the Middle East and Africa.CIA hackers operating out of the Frankfurt consulate ( Center for Cyber Intelligence Europe or CCIE) are given diplomatic ( black ) passports and State Department cover. The instructions for incoming CIA hackers make Germany s counter-intelligence efforts appear inconsequential: Breeze through German Customs because you have your cover-for-action story down pat, and all they did was stamp your passport Your Cover Story (for this trip) Q: Why are you here? A: Supporting technical consultations at the Consulate.Two earlier WikiLeaks publications give further detail on CIA approaches to customs and secondary screening procedures.Once in Frankfurt CIA hackers can travel without further border checks to the 25 European countries that are part of the Shengen open border area including France, Italy and Switzerland.A number of the CIA s electronic attack methods are designed for physical proximity. These attack methods are able to penetrate high security networks that are disconnected from the internet, such as police record database. In these cases, a CIA officer, agent or allied intelligence officer acting under instructions, physically infiltrates the targeted workplace. The attacker is provided with a USB containing malware developed for the CIA for this purpose, which is inserted into the targeted computer. The attacker then infects and exfiltrates data to removable media. For example, the CIA attack system Fine Dining, provides 24 decoy applications for CIA spies to use. To witnesses, the spy appears to be running a program showing videos (e.g VLC), presenting slides (Prezi), playing a computer game (Breakout2, 2048) or even running a fake virus scanner (Kaspersky, McAfee, Sophos). But while the decoy application is on the screen, the underlaying system is automatically infected and ransacked.In what is surely one of the most astounding intelligence own goals in living memory, the CIA structured its classification regime such that for the most market valuable part of Vault 7 the CIA s weaponized malware (implants + zero days), Listening Posts (LP), and Command and Control (C2) systems the agency has little legal recourse.The CIA made these systems unclassified.Why the CIA chose to make its cyberarsenal unclassified reveals how concepts developed for military use do not easily crossover to the battlefield of cyber war .To attack its targets, the CIA usually requires that its implants communicate with their control programs over the internet. If CIA implants, Command & Control and Listening Post software were classified, then CIA officers could be prosecuted or dismissed for violating rules that prohibit placing classified information onto the Internet. Consequently the CIA has secretly made most of its cyber spying/war code unclassified. The U.S. government is not able to assert copyright either, due to restrictions in the U.S. Constitution. This means that cyber arms manufactures and computer hackers can freely pirate these weapons if they are obtained. The CIA has primarily had to rely on obfuscation to protect its malware secrets.Conventional weapons such as missiles may be fired at the enemy (i.e into an unsecured area). Proximity to or impact with the target detonates the ordnance including its classified parts. Hence military personnel do not violate classification rules by firing ordnance with classified parts. Ordnance will likely explode. If it does not, that is not the operator s intent.Over the last decade U.S. hacking operations have been increasingly dressed up in military jargon to tap into Department of Defense funding streams. For instance, attempted malware injections (commercial jargon) or implant drops (NSA jargon) are being called fires as if a weapon was being fired. However the analogy is questionable.Unlike bullets, bombs or missiles, most CIA malware is designed to live for days or even years after it has reached its target . CIA malware does not explode on impact but rather permanently infests its target. In order to infect target s device, copies of the malware must be placed on the target s devices, giving physical possession of the malware to the target. To exfiltrate data back to the CIA or to await further instructions the malware must communicate with CIA Command & Control (C2) systems placed on internet connected servers. But such servers are typically not approved to hold classified information, so CIA command and control systems are also made unclassified.A successful attack on a target s computer system is more like a series of complex stock maneuvers in a hostile take-over bid or the careful planting of rumors in order to gain control over an organization s leadership rather than the firing of a weapons system. If there is a military analogy to be made, the infestation of a target is perhaps akin to the execution of a whole series of military maneuvers against the target s territory including observation, infiltration, occupation and exploitation.A series of standards lay out CIA malware infestation patterns which are likely to assist forensic crime scene investigators as well as Apple, Microsoft, Google, Samsung, Nokia, Blackberry, Siemens and anti-virus companies attribute and defend against attacks. Tradecraft DO s and DON Ts contains CIA rules on how its malware should be written to avoid fingerprints implicating the CIA, US government, or its witting partner companies in forensic review . Similar secret standards cover the use of encryption to hide CIA hacker and malware communication (pdf), describing targets & exfiltrated data (pdf) as well as executing payloads (pdf) and persisting (pdf) in the target s machines over time.CIA hackers developed successful attacks against most well known anti-virus programs. These are documented in AV defeats, Personal Security Products, Detecting and defeating PSPs and PSP/Debugger/RE Avoidance. For example, Comodo was defeated by CIA malware placing itself in the Window s Recycle Bin . While Comodo 6.x has a Gaping Hole of DOOM .CIA hackers discussed what the NSA s Equation Group hackers did wrong and how the CIA s malware makers could avoid similar exposure.The CIA s Engineering Development Group (EDG) management system contains around 500 different projects (only some of which are documented by Year Zero ) each with their own sub-projects, malware and hacker tools.The majority of these projects relate to tools that are used for penetration, infestation ( implanting ), control, and exfiltration.Another branch of development focuses on the development and operation of Listening Posts (LP) and Command and Control (C2) systems used to communicate with and control CIA implants; special projects are used to target specific hardware from routers to smart TVs.Some example projects are described below, but see the table of contents for the full list of projects described by WikiLeaks Year Zero .The CIA s hand crafted hacking techniques pose a problem for the agency. Each technique it has created forms a fingerprint that can be used by forensic investigators to attribute multiple different attacks to the same entity.This is analogous to finding the same distinctive knife wound on multiple separate murder victims. The unique wounding style creates suspicion that a single murderer is responsible. As soon one murder in the set is solved then the other murders also find likely attribution.The CIA s Remote Devices Branch s UMBRAGE group collects and maintains a substantial library of attack techniques stolen from malware produced in other states including the Russian Federation.With UMBRAGE and related projects the CIA cannot only increase its total number of attack types but also misdirect attribution by leaving behind the fingerprints of the groups that the attack techniques were stolen from.UMBRAGE components cover keyloggers, password collection, webcam capture, data destruction, persistence, privilege escalation, stealth, anti-virus (PSP) avoidance and survey techniques.Fine Dining comes with a standardized questionnaire i.e menu that CIA case officers fill out. The questionnaire is used by the agency s OSB (Operational Support Branch) to transform the requests of case officers into technical requirements for hacking attacks (typically exfiltrating information from computer systems) for specific operations. The questionnaire allows the OSB to identify how to adapt existing tools for the operation, and communicate this to CIA malware configuration staff. The OSB functions as the interface between CIA operational staff and the relevant technical support staff.Among the list of possible targets of the collection are Asset , Liaison Asset , System Administrator , Foreign Information Operations , Foreign Intelligence Agencies and Foreign Government Entities . Notably absent is any reference to extremists or transnational criminals. The Case Officer is also asked to specify the environment of the target like the type of computer, operating system used, Internet connectivity and installed anti-virus utilities (PSPs) as well as a list of file types to be exfiltrated like Office documents, audio, video, images or custom file types. The menu also asks for information if recurring access to the target is possible and how long unobserved access to the computer can be maintained. This information is used by the CIA s JQJIMPROVISE software (see below) to configure a set of CIA malware suited to the specific needs of an operation. Improvise is a toolset for configuration, post-processing, payload setup and execution vector selection for survey/exfiltration tools supporting all major operating systems like Windows (Bartender), MacOS (JukeBox) and Linux (DanceFloor). Its configuration utilities like Margarita allows the NOC (Network Operation Center) to customize tools based on requirements from Fine Dining questionnaires.HIVE is a multi-platform CIA malware suite and its associated control software. The project provides customizable implants for Windows, Solaris, MikroTik (used in internet routers) and Linux platforms and a Listening Post (LP)/Command and Control (C2) infrastructure to communicate with these implants.The implants are configured to communicate via HTTPS with the webserver of a cover domain; each operation utilizing these implants has a separate cover domain and the infrastructure can handle any number of cover domains.Each cover domain resolves to an IP address that is located at a commercial VPS (Virtual Private Server) provider. The public-facing server forwards all incoming traffic via a VPN to a Blot server that handles actual connection requests from clients. It is setup for optional SSL client authentication: if a client sends a valid client certificate (only implants can do that), the connection is forwarded to the Honeycomb toolserver that communicates with the implant; if a valid certificate is missing (which is the case if someone tries to open the cover domain website by accident), the traffic is forwarded to a cover server that delivers an unsuspicious looking website.The Honeycomb toolserver receives exfiltrated information from the implant; an operator can also task the implant to execute jobs on the target computer, so the toolserver acts as a C2 (command and control) server for the implant.Similar functionality (though limited to Windows) is provided by the RickBobby project.See the classified user and developer guides for HIVE.WikiLeaks published as soon as its verification and analysis were ready.In February the Trump administration has issued an Executive Order calling for a Cyberwar review to be prepared within 30 days.While the review increases the timeliness and relevance of the publication it did not play a role in setting the publication date Continue this story at WikileaksREAD MORE WIKILEAKS AT: 21st Century Wire WIKILEAKS FilesSUPPORT OUR WORK BY SUBSCRIBING & BECOMING A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV | 1real |
Scott Walker Confronts Doubts About His Grasp of Foreign Policy | Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker confronted doubts about his foreign-policy acumen during remarks Saturday to a largely sympathetic audience.
At the end of a 45-minute discussion with wealthy conservatives, the moderator referred to complaints that Mr. Walker was “not prepared to speak about foreign policy” at a recent donor meeting in New York, and asked him what he was doing to bone up on the topic. | 0fake |
How a $2 Roadside Drug Test Sends Innocent People to Jail - The New York Times | Amy Albritton can’t remember if her boyfriend signaled when he changed lanes late that August afternoon in 2010. But suddenly the lights on the Houston Police patrol car were flashing behind them, and Anthony Wilson was navigating Albritton’s white Chrysler Concorde to a stop in a parking lot. It was an especially unwelcome hassle. Wilson was in Houston to see about an job Albritton, volunteering her car, had come along for what she imagined would be a vacation of sorts. She managed an apartment complex back in Monroe, La. and the younger of her two sons — Landon, 16, who had been disabled from birth by cerebral palsy — was with his father for the week. After five hours of driving through the monotony of flat woodland, the couple had checked into a motel, carted their luggage to the room and returned to the car, too hungry to rest but too drained to seek out anything more than fast food. Now two officers stepped out of their patrol car and approached. Albritton, 43, had dressed up for the trip — black blouse, turquoise necklace, small silver hoop earrings glinting through her blond hair. Wilson, 28, was more casually dressed, in a white and jeans, and wore a strained expression that worried Albritton. One officer asked him for his license and registration. Wilson said he didn’t have a license. The car’s registration showed that it belonged to Albritton. The officer asked Wilson to step out of the car. Wilson complied. The officer leaned in over the driver’s seat, looked around, then called to his partner in the report Officer Duc Nguyen later filed, he wrote that he saw a needle in the car’s ceiling lining. Albritton didn’t know what he was talking about. Before she could protest, Officer David Helms had come around to her window and was asking for consent to search the car. If Albritton refused, Helms said, he would call for a dog. Albritton agreed to the full search and waited nervously outside the car. Helms spotted a white crumb on the floor. In the report, Nguyen wrote that the officers believed the crumb was crack cocaine. They handcuffed Wilson and Albritton and stood them in front of the patrol car, its lights still flashing. They were on display for traffic, criminal suspects sweating through their clothes in the heat. As Nguyen and Helms continued the search, tensions grew. Albritton, shouting over the sound of traffic, tried to explain that they had the wrong idea — at least about her. She had been dating Wilson for only a month she implored him to admit that if there were drugs, they were his alone. Wilson just shook his head, Albritton now recalls. Fear surging, she shouted that there weren’t any drugs in her car even as she insisted that she didn’t know that Wilson had brought drugs. The search turned up only one other item of interest — a box of BC Powder, an pain reliever. Albritton never saw the needle. The crumb from the floor was all that mattered now. At the police academy four years earlier, Helms was taught that to make a drug arrest on the street, an officer needed to conduct an elementary chemical test, right then and there. It’s what cops routinely do across the country every day while making thousands upon thousands of drug arrests. Helms popped the trunk of his patrol car, pulled out a small plastic pouch that contained a vial of pink liquid and returned to Albritton. He opened the lid on the vial and dropped a tiny piece of the crumb into the liquid. If the liquid remained pink, that would rule out the presence of cocaine. If it turned blue, then Albritton, as the owner of the car, could become a felony defendant. Helms waved the vial in front of her face and said, “You’re busted. ” Albritton was booked into the Harris County jail at 3:37 a. m. nine hours after she was arrested. Wilson had been detained for driving without a license but would soon be released. Albritton was charged with felony drug possession and faced a much longer ordeal. Already, she was terrified as she thought about her family. Albritton was raised in a speck of a town called Marion at the northern edge of Louisiana. Her father still drove lumber trucks there her mother had worked as a pharmacy technician until she died of colon cancer. Albritton was 15 then. She went through two unexpected pregnancies, the first at age 16, and two marriages. But she had also pieced together a steady livelihood managing apartment complexes, and when her younger son was born disabled, she worked relentlessly to care for him. Now their future was almost certainly shattered. The officers allowed her to make a collect call on the coinless cellblock pay phone. She had a strained relationship with her father and with her son’s father as well instead she dialed Doug Franklin, an old friend who once dated her sister. No one answered. Near dawn the next morning, guards walked Albritton through a tunnel to the Harris County tower’s basement, where they deposited her in a holding room with another woman, who told Albritton that she had murdered someone. Albritton prayed someone would explain what would happen next, tell her son she was alive and help her sort out the mess. She had barely slept and still hadn’t eaten anything. She heard her name called and stepped forward to the reinforced window. A tall man with thinning hair and glasses approached and introduced himself as Dan Richardson, her defense attorney. Richardson told Albritton that she was going to be charged with possession of a controlled substance, crack cocaine, at an arraignment that morning. Albritton recalls him explaining that this was a felony, and the maximum penalty was two years in state prison. She doesn’t remember him asking her what actually happened, or if she believed she was innocent. Instead, she recalls, he said that the prosecutor had already offered a deal for much less than two years. If she pleaded guilty, she would receive a sentence in the county jail, and most likely serve only half that. Albritton told Richardson that the police were mistaken she was innocent. But Richardson, she says, was unswayed. The police had found crack in her car. The test proved it. She could spend a few weeks in jail or two years in prison. In despair, Albritton agreed to the deal. Albritton was escorted to a dark courtroom. A guilty plea requires the defendant to make a series of statements that serve as a confession and to waive multiple constitutional rights. The judge, Vanessa Velasquez, walked her through the recitation, Albritton recalls, but never asked why she couldn’t stop crying long enough to speak in sentences. She had managed to say the one word that mattered: “guilty. ” Police officers arrest more than 1. 2 million people a year in the United States on charges of illegal drug possession. Field tests like the one Officer Helms used in front of Amy Albritton help them move quickly from suspicion to conviction. But the kits — which cost about $2 each and have changed little since 1973 — are far from reliable. The field tests seem simple, but a lot can go wrong. Some tests, including the one the Houston police officers used to analyze the crumb on the floor of Albritton’s car, use a single tube of a chemical called cobalt thiocyanate, which turns blue when it is exposed to cocaine. But cobalt thiocyanate also turns blue when it is exposed to more than 80 other compounds, including methadone, certain acne medications and several common household cleaners. Other tests use three tubes, which the officer can break in a specific order to rule out everything but the drug in question — but if the officer breaks the tubes in the wrong order, that, too, can invalidate the results. The environment can also present problems. Cold weather slows the color development heat speeds it up, or sometimes prevents a color reaction from taking place at all. Poor lighting on the street — flashing police lights, sun glare, street lamps — often prevents officers from making the fine distinctions that could make the difference between an arrest and a release. There are no established error rates for the field tests, in part because their accuracy varies so widely depending on who is using them and how. Data from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement lab system show that 21 percent of evidence that the police listed as methamphetamine after identifying it was not methamphetamine, and half of those false positives were not any kind of illegal drug at all. In one notable Florida episode, Hillsborough County sheriff’s deputies produced 15 false positives for methamphetamine in the first seven months of 2014. When we examined the department’s records, they showed that officers, faced with somewhat ambiguous directions on the pouches, had simply misunderstood which colors indicated a positive result. No central agency regulates the manufacture or sale of the tests, and no comprehensive records are kept about their use. In the late 1960s, crime labs outfitted investigators with mobile chemistry sets, including small plastic test tubes and bottles of chemical reagents that reacted with certain drugs by changing colors, more or less on the same principle as a home pregnancy test. But the reagents contained strong acids that leaked and burned the investigators. In 1973, the same year that Richard Nixon formally established the Drug Enforcement Administration, declaring “an global war on the drug menace,” a pair of California inventors patented a “disposable comparison detector kit. ” It was far simpler, just a glass vial or vials inside a plastic pouch. Open the pouch, add the compound to be tested, seal the pouch, break open the vials and watch the colors change. The field tests, convenient and imbued with an aura of scientific infallibility, were ordered by police departments across the country. In a 1974 study, however, the National Bureau of Standards warned that the kits “should not be used as sole evidence for the identification of a narcotic or drug of abuse. ” Police officers were not chemists, and chemists themselves had long ago stopped relying on color tests, preferring more reliable mass spectrographs. By 1978, the Department of Justice had determined that field tests “should not be used for evidential purposes,” and the field tests in use today remain inadmissible at trial in nearly every jurisdiction instead, prosecutors must present a secondary lab test using more reliable methods. But this has proved to be a meaningless prohibition. Most drug cases in the United States are decided well before they reach trial, by the far more informal process of plea bargaining. In 2011, RTI International, a nonprofit research group based in North Carolina, found that prosecutors in nine of 10 jurisdictions it surveyed nationwide accepted guilty pleas based solely on the results of field tests, and in our own reporting, we confirmed that prosecutors or judges accept plea deals on that same basis in Atlanta, Boston, Dallas, Jacksonville, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Newark, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Salt Lake City, San Diego, Seattle and Tampa. This puts field tests at the center of any discussion about the justice of plea bargains in general. The federal government does not keep a comprehensive database of prosecutions in county and state criminal courts, but the National Archive of Criminal Justice Data at the University of Michigan maintains an extensive sampling of court records from the 40 largest jurisdictions. Based on this data, we found that more than 10 percent of all county and state felony convictions are for drug charges, and at least 90 percent of those convictions come by way of plea deals. In Tennessee, guilty pleas produce 94 percent of all convictions. In Kansas, they make up more than 97 percent. In Harris County, Tex. where the judiciary makes detailed criminal caseload information public, 99. 5 percent of convictions are the result of a guilty plea. A majority of those are felony convictions, which restrict employment, housing and — in many states — the right to vote. Demand for the field tests is strong enough to sustain the business of at least nine different companies that sell tests to identify cocaine, heroin, marijuana, methamphetamine, LSD, MDMA and more than two dozen other drugs. The Justice Department issued guidelines in 2000 calling for packaging to carry warning labels, including “a statement that users of the kit should receive appropriate training in its use and should be taught that the reagents can give as well as results,” but when we checked, three of the largest manufacturers — Lynn Peavey Company, the Safariland Group and Sirchie — had not printed such a warning on their tests. (Lynn Peavey Company did not respond to our request for comment. A spokesman for the Safariland Group said the company provides agencies with extensive training materials that are separate from the tests and their packaging. We asked John Roby, Sirchie’s chief executive, about the missing warnings and requested an interview in May. He responded in writing a month later saying that the boxes carrying Sirchie’s cocaine tests had been updated and now display a warning that reactions may occur with both “legal and illegal substances. ” After our inquiry, Sirchie added another warning to its packaging, listing at the bottom of its printed instructions: “ALL TEST RESULTS MUST BE CONFIRMED BY AN APPROVED ANALYTICAL LABORATORY! ”) Even trained lab scientists struggle with confirmation bias — the tendency to take any new evidence as confirmation of expectations — and police officers can see the tests as affirming their decisions to stop and search a person. Labs rarely notify officers when a false positive is found, so they have little experience to prompt skepticism. As far as they know, the system works. By our estimate, though, every year at least 100, 000 people nationwide plead guilty to charges that rely on results as evidence. At that volume, even the most modest of error rates could produce thousands of wrongful convictions. After he arrested Amy Albritton, Officer Helms sent what remained of the crumb he found on the floor of her car to the Houston Police Department crime laboratory. He listed it as “. 02 grms crack cocaine” and noted on the submission form that he was also sending a “syringe unknown substance . 01 gr” — presumably the needle Officer Nguyen reported pulling from the ceiling lining and that Albritton had not seen and still could not explain. (Helms’s submission form, which was separate from the arrest report, said it came not from the ceiling but from the “suspect visor. ”) The last item Helms turned in was a ziploc bag of the “unknown wht powder” that had been removed from the BC Powder package. “HOLD + ANALYZE FOR COURT,” Helms wrote by hand. And then, with no court case pending, the evidence sat on hold, one of several thousand samples in the laboratory’s backlog of untested pills, plants, powders and assorted crumbs and pebbles. Albritton served 21 days of her sentence. When she was released, she took a taxi to the motel where she had planned to stay with Wilson, whom she never saw again after the arrest. (Helms and Nguyen would not comment for this article Wilson did not respond to requests.) The manager had kept her clothes, so she took a room again and waited for her friend Doug Franklin to fly in from Louisiana. The plan was that he would lend her the money to get her impounded car and keep her company on the drive home. When they retrieved the car, it had been sitting in the summer heat for more than three weeks. Albritton was overwhelmed by the smell of rotting hamburgers. When Albritton pleaded guilty, she asked Franklin to explain the situation to her bosses at the firm, but Franklin decided it was safer to say nothing. She was going to be fired in any case, he reasoned, and alerting an employer about the drug felony would only hurt her future prospects. Albritton had managed the Frances Place Apartments, a brick complex, for two years, and a free apartment was part of her compensation. But as far as the company knew, Albritton had abandoned her job and her home. She was fired, and her furniture and other belongings were put out on the side of the road. “So I lost all that,” she says. Albritton’s older son, Adam, then 24, had been living on his own for years and learned of his mother’s arrest only after she had begun her sentence. While Albritton was incarcerated, her younger son, Landon, remained with his father, who had threatened in the past to seek custody but never followed through. Albritton’s father, Tommy Franklin (no relation to Doug) was openly skeptical about her claim of innocence. “If the law said you had crack, you had crack,” she recalls him telling her. Albritton gave up trying to convince people otherwise. She focused instead on Landon. Using a wheelchair, he needed regular sessions of physical and occupational therapy, and Albritton’s career managing the rental complex had been an ideal fit, providing a free home that kept her close to her son while she was at work, and allowing her the flexibility to ferry him to his appointments. But now, because of her new felony criminal record, which showed up immediately in background checks, she couldn’t even land an interview at another apartment complex. With a felony conviction, she couldn’t be approved as a renter either. Doug Franklin allowed Albritton and Landon to move in with him temporarily, and Albritton took a job at a convenience store. Through all of this, the crumb of evidence remained in storage in the Houston crime lab. It was a closed case, and the prosecutor, as was standard practice, had filed a motion to destroy the evidence. Only some final paperwork — a request from the lab and a judge’s signature — was needed. But this was an extremely low priority in a complex bureaucracy. By 2010, the lab had been discredited by a decade of botched science and scandal. Thousands of untested rape kits were shelved from unsolved assaults. Errors in fingerprint matches were discovered in more than 200 cases. The lab had lost key blood samples employees had tampered with or falsified other evidence. And it was continuing to struggle with a significant backlog of evidence — one that stemmed from what amounted to an epic experiment in field testing. When Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast in August 2005, more than 250, 000 mostly black refugees streamed into Houston, and local authorities openly anticipated a crime surge in which the refugees were portrayed as perpetrators. Charles McClelland, who retired in February as Houston’s police chief and was then an assistant chief, says the department decided that pursuing charges would also help suppress the number of predicted robberies and burglaries. “Anecdotally, it makes sense: Where does a person who has a problem get the money to buy drugs?” McClelland argues. “One could easily make the connection that they’re committing crimes. ” The city distributed thousands more of the color field tests than usual to patrol officers, and drug evidence swamped the section of the lab. Even as the Katrina refugees gradually left Houston, the emphasis on drug enforcement remained. By 2007, annual submissions to the lab had climbed to 22, 000, even as budget cuts had reduced the staff, leaving the scientists with far more samples than they could competently analyze. In 1972, the Department of Justice published a training guide for forensic chemists in the nation’s crime labs, emphasizing that they were “the last line of defense against a false accusation,” but 40 years later, that line had largely vanished. A federal survey in 2013 found that about 62 percent of crime labs do not test drug evidence when the defendant pleads guilty. But the Houston crime lab, for all its problems, would not be among them. James Miller, the lab’s manager, had long practiced a kind of evidentiary triage. Evidence tied to pending drug manufacturing, sale or possession cases — 50 a year on average — would receive immediate attention, because only laboratory analysis would be admissible in court. But evidence from cases in which the defendants pleaded guilty before going to trial — the overwhelming majority of the remaining thousands of submitted drugs samples — would also be tested. The city had no legal requirement to confirm that the substances were the illegal drugs the police claimed they were. But in Miller’s lab, everything would be checked, even if it took years. “All along, we’ve said we’re about the science,” he says — not securing convictions. So the evidence sat, waiting. The forensic scientists in Miller’s lab keep untested samples in Manila envelopes locked in cabinets below their work benches. Some sat there for as long as four years, lab records show. Albritton’s evidence stayed locked up for six months. On Feb. 23, 2011 — five months after Albritton completed her sentence and returned home as a felon — one of Houston’s forensic scientists, Ahtavea Barker, pulled the envelope up to her bench. It contained the crumb, the powder and the syringe. First she weighed everything. The syringe had too little residue on it even to test. It was just a syringe. The remainder of the “white chunk substance” that Officer Helms had tested positive with his field kit as crack cocaine totaled 0. 0134 grams, Barker wrote on the examination sheet, about the same as a tiny pinch of salt. Barker turned to gas spectrometry analysis, or the gold standard in chemical identification, to figure out what was in Albritton’s car that evening. She began with the powder. First the gas chromatograph vaporized a speck of the powder inside a tube. Then the gas was heated, causing its core chemical compounds to separate. When the individual compounds reached the end of the tube, the mass spectrometer blasted them with electrons, causing them to fragment. The resulting display, called a fragmentation pattern, is essentially a chemical fingerprint. The powder was a combination of aspirin and caffeine — the ingredients in BC Powder, the painkiller, as Albritton had insisted. Then Barker ran the same tests on the supposed crack cocaine. The crumb’s fragmentation pattern did not match that of cocaine, or any other compound in the lab’s extensive database. It was not a drug. It did not contain anything mixed with drugs. It was a crumb — food debris, perhaps. Barker wrote “N. A. M. ” on the spectrum printout, “no acceptable match,” and then added another set of letters: “N. C. S. ” No controlled substance identified. Albritton was innocent. Inger Chandler oversees the small unit of the Harris County district attorney’s office, where she has been a prosecutor for 12 years. units are a fairly new concept in law enforcement: Prosecutors convictions in light of new evidence, often in the form of previously unavailable DNA tests. units originally focused on murder and rape cases, but they also increasingly investigate drug convictions. In early 2014, Chandler took a call while sitting at her desk, encircled by stacks of case files and pictures of her toddler twins. Eric Dexheimer, a reporter at The Austin told her he had noticed a series of unusual exonerations coming out of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. He’d tracked 21 drug convictions across Texas that had been reversed because labs had found that the drugs in question weren’t really drugs. The laboratory results came after defendants had already pleaded guilty. Did Harris County have any other bad drug convictions beyond what the courts had overturned? Chandler didn’t know, but she said she would try to find out. Chandler called Miller, the manager at the lab, and asked him if there was something wrong with any of their drug convictions. Miller was not surprised to hear from Chandler. He explained that the lab had indeed found problems with their drug convictions when his forensic scientists found discrepancies in the evidence — officially labeled “variants” — they sent the details by email to the district attorney’s office, and they had been doing so for years. Chandler hadn’t known any of this. She found the email inbox for lab notices, and it did indeed contain hundreds of messages that were sent from the lab. One after another, the lab notices said, “No Controlled Substance. ” In cases involving drug possession, that meant the defendants were not guilty. (Drug manufacturing and selling charges can hold even if the underlying substance is not illegal.) It was unclear if anyone had ever followed up on the notices. When Chandler entered several of the court case numbers into the district attorney’s system, however, she found that a majority of the convictions remained in place. She started a list. Over the course of the following year, she found that the district attorney’s office had failed to correct 416 “variants” between January 2004 and June 2015, all of them in cases that ended in guilty pleas. Some variants were legally ambiguous — the field test was positive, but for the wrong drug the drug weights were incorrect or there was too little of the evidence to analyze — but in 251 cases, the results were simple: “No Controlled Substance. ” Under the 1963 Supreme Court opinion in Brady v. Maryland, prosecutors must provide defendants with exculpatory evidence, even after a conviction. Chandler could have met that mandate simply by alerting the convicting court and the defense attorneys to the lab reports — “Every other Brady situation, as long as I give notice, I’m done,” she says — but in these cases, Chandler says, she knew very few of the wrongful drug convictions would be reversed if she let the system handle each of them individually. The exoneration effort needed to be centralized, so that someone would become responsible for finding the defendants themselves. Chandler took the list to Devon Anderson, Harris County’s district attorney. Anderson, a former judge, had been the top prosecutor for only seven months. Her husband, Mike Anderson, who took office as district attorney in January 2013, died of cancer eight months into his term, and Gov. Rick Perry appointed her to replace him. Now, as Chandler described the problem, Anderson felt sickened. The litany of wrongful convictions was not just enormous — it was still growing. Her office, she says, was to blame for “a breakdown at every point in the system. ” She hired a former prosecutor to research the cases and find the defendants. “It may sound corny, but it’s true: Our duty under Texas law is to seek justice,” she says. “A lot of people think it’s convictions, but it’s justice. ” In April 2014, The published Dexheimer’s story, which focused on 21 wrongful drug convictions across Texas caused by lab delays. But prosecutors in Harris County were still uncovering the scale of their own problem. Based in part on the information gathered by Marie Munier, the former prosecutor Anderson hired to examine the drug convictions, we determined that 301 of the 416 variants began as arrests by the Houston Police Department, with the rest coming from surrounding municipalities, and that 212 of those 301 arrests were based on evidence that lab analysis determined was not a controlled substance, or N. C. S. In our own examination of those 212 cases — thousands of pages of arrest reports, court filings and records, along with interviews of prosecutors, police executives, officers, defense attorneys and innocent defendants who pleaded guilty — we saw a clear story about both who is being arrested and what is happening to them. The racial disparity is stark. Blacks made up 59 percent of those wrongfully convicted in a city where they are 24 percent of the population, reflecting a similar racial disparity in drug enforcement nationally. Patrol units, not trained narcotics detectives, appeared to be the most prolific users. The kits, or the officers interpreting them, got it wrong most often when dealing with small amounts of suspected drugs. percent of the N. C. S. cases involved less than a gram of evidence. The smallest possession cases are the ones in which a field test can be of greatest consequence if officers find larger quantities of white powder in dozens of baggies or packaged in bricks, they have sufficient probable cause to make an arrest regardless of what a color test shows. (Though in those cases, too, they are generally required to test the drugs.) It’s widely assumed in legal circles that these wrongfully convicted people are in fact drug users who intended to possess drugs. Barry Scheck, a founder of the Innocence Project, a nonprofit group that seeks to overturn wrongful convictions, says some who work toward exoneration have complained to him that those exonerated of drug charges often are just accidentally not guilty, and shouldn’t be added to the National Registry of Exonerations. The assumption is not entirely without basis — 162 of the 212 N. C. S. defendants had criminal histories involving illegal drugs. However, 50 had no criminal history involving drugs at all. All of the 212 N. C. S. defendants struck plea bargains, and nearly all of them, 93 percent, received a jail or prison sentence. Defendants with no previous convictions have a legal right in Texas to probation on charges, even if they’re convicted at trial. But remarkably, 78 percent of defendants entitled to probation agreed to deals that included incarceration. Perhaps most striking: A majority of those defendants, 58 percent, pleaded guilty at the first opportunity, during their arraignment the median time between arrest and plea was four days. In contrast, the median for defendants in which the field test indicated the wrong drug or that the weight was inaccurate — that is, the defendants who actually did possess drugs — was 22 days. Not only do the innocent tend to plead guilty in these cases, but they often do so more quickly. On July 29, 2014, Munier sent a letter to Amy Albritton. It was a form letter, one of hundreds Munier was sending to exonerated defendants, opening with the salutation “Dear Sir or Madam,” but the contents were highly personal. It stated that the Harris County district attorney’s office had learned that the drug evidence in Albritton’s case was not a controlled substance: “Accordingly, you were prosecuted for a criminal drug offense and convicted in error. ” Munier mailed the letter to the address on Albritton’s driver’s license, but Albritton did not receive it. She had long since moved on. She had struggled to rebuild her life as a felon. The hours at the convenience store were erratic, so she started waiting tables and tending bar as she tried to find work in property management again. In 2013, she heard about a small set of rentals in Baton Rouge that needed someone to run them day to day. The pay was low compared with what she had made at Frances Place, and there was no free apartment. But the owner agreed to interview Albritton, even with her drug felony, and quickly hired her. She had almost nothing to pack besides her clothes and Landon’s before relocating to the state capital. The reason this property owner was willing to hire a drug felon became apparent soon enough. The apartments were in disrepair, with broken heaters and plumbing, and the owner forced his property manager to deal with angry tenants. She had gone to work for a slumlord. Albritton quit and took a bartending position at the restaurant attached to a Holiday Inn near Louisiana State University. Tips included, she was earning about $15, 000 a year, but she liked her and impressed her bosses. One of them tried to promote her to shift supervisor, Albritton recalls, but the promotion was denied when a check by the hotel chain’s corporate office flagged the Houston conviction. She could pour drinks and do nothing more. She remembers how desperate she had been to leave her jail cell, naïvely believing that the punishment for pleading guilty would end with her sentence. “No,” she says. “You’re not ever free and clear of it. It follows you everywhere you go. ” In the two years since the efforts to overturn wrongful convictions began at the Harris County district attorney’s office, Inger Chandler and her colleagues at the integrity unit have struck 119 N. C. S. convictions from the record. At least 172 remain. They haven’t been able to locate all of the wrongly convicted, at times even after hiring private investigators, and some defendants they have reached have declined to interact with the courts, even to clear their record. Last year, as we examined records in Harris County, we came upon Albritton’s file and decided to search for her ourselves to find out what had happened to one representative figure out of hundreds. Her case fit the larger pattern of convictions for no controlled substance: It moved rapidly, with Albritton pleading guilty within 48 hours of her arrest, and it involved an exceedingly small amount of supposed drugs. We searched for Albritton in public databases, finding likely relatives but no phone numbers or a current address. We called her sister, who said that Albritton was in Baton Rouge and provided a cellphone number. It was disconnected. But knowing where Albritton lived now, we found a Facebook profile she had been updating regularly with details of her life, including her work. Interestingly, we also found that Albritton had pleaded guilty to a 2008 misdemeanor, a D. U. I. conviction in Louisiana, despite breathalyzer results showing her level at 0. 0. When we asked her about this, she said that she had caused a collision by pulling onto the wrong side of a highway, and because she was guilty of that, she did not protest the other charges she’s still unable to explain why she confessed to a crime there was no evidence she committed. In August, we called and left a brief message for Albritton at the Sporting News Grill. She returned the call a couple of hours later, her voice small, wondering what this was about. When we described the details from the lab report and the letter from the district attorney that she never received, Albritton gasped. She didn’t make a sound for several seconds before shouting into the phone: “I knew it! I told them!” If Albritton’s case is one of hundreds in Houston, there is every reason to suspect that it is just one among thousands of wrongful drug convictions that were based on field tests across the United States. The Harris County district attorney’s office is responsible for half of all exonerations by units nationwide in the past three years — not because law enforcement is different there but because the Houston lab committed to testing evidence after defendants had already pleaded guilty, a position that is increasingly unpopular in forensic science. Crime labs have been moving away from drug cases to focus on DNA and evidence from violent crimes. In some instances, the shift has been extreme. The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department’s forensic laboratory analyzes the evidence in, on average, 1, 757 drug cases a year. Many of its 8, 000 annual possession arrests depend on results. The United States Department of Justice was once among the leading voices of caution regarding field tests, and encouraged all drug evidence go to lab chemists. But in 2008, the Justice Department funded a program developed by the National Forensic Science Technology Center, a nonprofit that provides training, to reduce backlogs. Titled Field Investigation Drug Officer, the program consisted of a series of seminars that taught local police officers how to administer color field tests on a large scale. In its curriculum, the technology center states that field tests help authorities by “removing the need for extensive laboratory analysis,” because “the field test may factor into obtaining an immediate plea agreement. ” The Justice Department declined repeated interview requests. Field tests provide quick answers. But if those answers and confessions cannot be trusted, Charles McClelland, the former Houston police chief, says, officers should not be using them. During an interview in March, McClelland said that if he had known of the false positives Houston’s officers were generating, he would have ordered a halt to all field testing departmentwide. Police officers are not chemists, McClelland said. “Officers shouldn’t collect and test their own evidence, period. I don’t care whether that’s cocaine, blood, hair. ” Judges, too, have the power, and a responsibility, some argue, to slow down the gears of the system. Patricia Lykos, the Harris County district attorney from 2009 to 2013, says that when she served as a judge in the 1980s and 1990s, she would ask the defendants questions about their lives and the crimes they were accused of committing. If she wasn’t satisfied that the defendant was guilty of the charge, Lykos says, she wouldn’t accept the plea. At times the situation is even easier to decipher, says David LaBahn, president of the Association of Prosecuting Attorneys. The defendant can be heard arguing his or her innocence to the appointed attorney. In such cases, when the prosecutor doesn’t have a lab report, “if I’m that judicial officer, this case is continued” — adjourned — “until everybody can do their job,” LaBahn says. But that means the defendant, depending on his or her custody status, could go back to jail until the case proceeds, presenting a significant dilemma. Last year, Devon Anderson, the current Harris County district attorney, prohibited plea deals in cases before the lab has issued a report. The labs issue reports in about two weeks, but defendants typically wait three weeks before they can see a judge — enough time to lose a job, lose an apartment, lose everything. And yet since Anderson implemented the rule, case dismissals have soared 31 percent, primarily because the lab has proved defendants not guilty. People plead guilty when they’re innocent because they see no alternative. People who have just been arrested usually don’t know their options, or even that they have an option. “There’s a in there, and it’s called the defense lawyer,” says Rick Werstein, the attorney now representing Albritton as she seeks to finalize her exoneration. Defense lawyers can demand a lab analysis, and they exist to help defendants navigate the consequences of the jail time while they wait, even as they explain the even higher costs of a felony conviction. They are fully authorized to pursue alternative deals.’ ”In fact, Richardson, Albritton’s original lawyer, says the prosecutor offered her a deferred adjudication, in which she may have been able to wait for the results of a lab test outside the walls of a jail cell. Richardson, who first said he had no memory of their conversations, says he told her about the offer but she refused it. Albritton says she has never heard of anything called deferred adjudication. Neither could explain what actually happened. Perhaps they simply accepted that the field test, with its promise of scientific inevitability, would eventually convict her. “The entire country works on these kits, right?” Richardson asks.” ’In the past three years, people arrested based on field tests have filed civil lawsuits in Sullivan County, Tenn. Lehigh County, Pa. Atlanta, Ga. and San Diego, Calif. Three of the four cases also named the manufacturers Safari land Group or Sirchie as defendants. Three of the cases have already been settled. In one of them, the Sullivan County case, Safariland secured a gag order on the plaintiff, explicitly to prevent media coverage, before entering settlement negotiations. The plaintiffs in each of the suits were people who were arrested, refused to plead guilty and were detained for a month or longer. So far, we have been unable find anyone who pleaded guilty based on results and later filed suit, though Werstein said he and Albritton are considering their additional legal options. The Texas Criminal Court of Appeals overturned Albritton’s conviction in late June, but before her record can be cleared, that reversal must be finalized by the trial court in Houston. Felony records are digitally disseminated far and wide, and can haunt the wrongly convicted for years after they are exonerated. Until the court makes its final move, Amy Albritton — for the purposes of employment, for the purposes of housing, for the purposes of her own peace of mind — remains a felon, one among unknown tens of thousands of Americans whose lives have been torn apart by a very flawed test. | 0fake |
Misophonia Sufferers: Scientists May Have Found the Root of Your Pain - The New York Times | Popcorn munching. Soup slurping. Nose sniffling. Or, simply, breathing. Ever wonder why some ordinary sounds drive you crazy? It’s called misophonia, a mysterious affliction in which seemingly harmless sounds unleash anger, anxiety and, in some cases, panic attacks in some people. If you’re one of them, neuroscientists at Newcastle University in Britain say they may have found an explanation for what ails you. In a report on the latest study published Thursday in the journal Current Biology, the neuroscientists say that brain scans of misophonia sufferers show that particular sounds, like eating and drinking, cause the part of their brain that processes emotions, the anterior insular cortex, to go into overdrive. That region in sufferers was also connected differently, compared to normal brains, to the amygdala and the hippocampus, areas that are involved in recalling past experiences, said Dr. Sukhbinder Kumar, the lead researcher from the Institute of Neuroscience at Newcastle University. “We think that misophonia may be heavily connected to recalling past memories, because people with misophonia have had very bad experiences,” he said in a phone interview Friday. The research opens up the possibilities of future therapy for those afflicted with misophonia, a term coined by the American scientists Pawel and Margaret Jastreboff in 2001. A survey of nearly 200 misophonia sufferers showed that the average age at which they first became aware of the condition was 12, Dr. Kumar said. “When they hear these sounds, it’s like their attention is completely absorbed by the sounds, and they can’t do anything else,” he said. “They’re triggering a recall. ” For the study, the team used an M. R. I. to measure the brain activities of 42 people with and without misophonia while they were listening to a range of noises. The sounds were categorized into neutral ones like rain unpleasant sounds like a crying baby and trigger sounds that were mostly linked to eating, chewing, drinking and breathing. When exposed to the noises, those with misophonia showed brain activities different from those without the condition. “The most dominant reaction is anger and anxiety, not disgust,” Dr. Kumar said. But why those sounds, and not others, trigger such averse reactions remains a mystery, he said. The exact number of misophonia sufferers in the world is unknown, he said, because it was only recently diagnosed as a condition. The affliction can be so acute in some people that they can’t stand living with their own families. Olana 29, of Kent, England, was just 8 when family meals became a real chore. “The noise of my family eating forced me to retreat to my own bedroom for meals,” she told the team at Newcastle University. “I can only describe it as a feeling of wanting to punch people in the face when I heard the noise of them eating. ” Dr. Kumar said in a news release,“My hope is to identify the brain signature of the trigger sounds — those signatures can be used for treatment such as for for example, where people can their reactions by looking at what kind of brain activity is being produced. ” But the study’s findings will come as some relief to misophonia sufferers and reassure some who question the condition’s validity, he added. “This study demonstrates the critical brain changes as further evidence to convince a skeptical medical community that this is a genuine disorder. ” | 0fake |
Trump supporters praise softer tone in address to Congress | CLEARWATER, Fla. (Reuters) - While U.S. President Donald Trump tried to win over skeptics in Congress on Tuesday, he never had to worry about losing the faithful at the Quaker Steak and Lube. About two dozen fans of the 45th president gathered at the bar and restaurant in Clearwater, Florida, still committed to Trump despite the tumult of his first 40 days in office. They praised the Republican president’s first address to a joint session of Congress, both for its familiar content and his newly deferential tone. “He nailed it. He knocked it out of the park,” said Dean Mears, 58, of Clearwater, who watched with about two dozen others under large-screen TVs that were tuned to Fox News, the president’s favored cable news channel. Like Trump supporters in other parts of the country, they praised the president’s more inclusive and less bombastic language as he also promised that “America must put its own citizens first,” crack down on illegal immigration and build up the military. The milder Trump contrasted markedly with the candidate who insulted his rivals during the 2016 campaign, recently branded the news media the “enemy of the people” and was caught making vulgar remarks about grabbing women on a decade-old video. In Boone County, Kentucky, the vice chairwoman of the local Republican Party, Phyllis Sparks, said she liked that Trump “spoke not only to his base but to all Americans.” Kirt Jacobs, a Louisville entrepreneur, said Trump “was all about we and very little, if any, about me.” In the Denver suburbs, a voter who supported Marco Rubio in last year’s Republican nominating contest, said Trump validated her vote for him in November. “He had a much softer tone - more presidential - but stayed true to his principles,” said Kathleen Johnson. “He wasn’t blaming people and sounded more comforting.” A CNN/ORC national poll found that 78 percent of respondents who watched the speech had a positive reaction. With 3 million tweets, Trump’s speech was the most tweeted- about presidential address to Congress, surpassing the previous record of 2.6 million for Obama’s 2015 State of the Union speech, a Twitter spokesman said. At the Quaker Steak and Lube, the praise began beforehand, with a rally on the sidewalk outside where supporters waved signs reading: “America First” and “Florida for Trump.” They were mostly greeted by honking horns of approval, but also a few passing drivers who shouted expletives. Trump won 46 percent of the national popular vote in last year’s election, 2 percentage points behind Democrat Hillary Clinton, but prevailed in the Electoral College state-by-state tally needed to win the White House. Nationally, his approval rating has sagged to a low level for a new president, around 44 percent, according to an average of recent polls by Real Clear Politics. Trump has been shaken by investigations into his campaign’s possible ties to Russia, his misstatements about his levels of support, and a federal court’s halt to his executive order temporarily banning entry into the country for people from seven Muslim-majority nations. Clearwater, on the Gulf Coast, sits in Pinellas County in the heart of Florida, where the past four statewide elections have been decided by about 1 percentage point. Trump, a part-time Floridian, flipped the results from the last two presidential elections in Pinellas County in his favor after former President Barack Obama, a Democrat, carried the county in 2008 and 2012. The county has long been a retirement destination, especially among those leaving the Midwest. It is about 75 percent white, 11 percent black and 9 percent Latino, according to 2015 census data. Speaking just before the address, Ron Sanders, 65, a Baptist pastor living in nearby Seminole, Florida, wanted to hear Trump tackle illegal immigration, which the president did. He also hoped Trump’s speech would help to bring in line moderate Republican senators who have been critical of some of his early efforts, which is not yet certain. “He’s sticking to what he said. It’s not discouraging Trump at all,” said Sanders, wearing a cowboy hat colored like an American flag. “He’s going full guns ahead.” | 0fake |
Biden sees growing progress in battle against Islamic State | BALTIMORE (Reuters) - The U.S.-led battle against Islamic State militants controlling parts of Iraq and Syria is gaining steam and will show more progress by year’s end, Vice President Joe Biden said on Thursday. Biden touted the recent success of U.S. efforts backing Iraqi troops against the Islamic State in Iraq as part of a broad defense of Obama administration foreign policy. “I promise you, after Ramadi, watch what happens now in Raqqa in Syria and what happens in Mosul (Iraq), by end of this year,” he told U.S. House of Representatives Democrats, in Baltimore for a three-day retreat. Iraqi forces, boosted by U.S. training, have evicted insurgents from large parts of Ramadi, leading to speculation that they could have success elsewhere against the Islamic State. “We’ve taken back collectively 40 percent of the territory they occupy,” Biden said. White House spokesman Josh Earnest, asked about Biden’s remarks, said he had not yet heard them. But he added, “Obviously, we’re going to need to get ISIL leaders out of Mosul and out of Raqqa and that’s a significant task. We know that they’ve been dug into those cities for a while now, and that means it’s going to be hard to dig them out.” ISIL is one of the acronyms referring to Islamic State. The Democratic vice president attributed recent successes to more engagement by European countries and Turkey. “The president has finally got the attention of Europeans to pony up because they haven’t been doing much of anything,” Biden said, adding, “I spend too much time probably with President Erdogan, but Erdogan has seen the Lord. Things are changing because of self-interest.” Biden and Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan discussed ways to deepen cooperation in the fight against Islamic State in a meeting in Istanbul on Saturday, according to a White House statement on Sunday. | 0fake |
HERE’S WHAT Feminists Left Behind After Their Day-Long Hissy Fit…Clearly They’re Not Too Worried About The Environment | 1real | |
Ending Iran nuclear deal would worsen North Korea situation: Kerry | GENEVA (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump risks driving Iran towards nuclear proliferation and worsening a standoff with North Korea if Washington ends a nuclear deal with Tehran, former U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said late on Thursday. Kerry, who negotiated the 2015 deal between Iran and world powers, was speaking a week after Trump refused to certify that Tehran was in compliance with it, amid growing tensions with Pyongyang over its nuclear and ballistic missile programs. If you want to negotiate with (North Korean leader) Kim Jong Un, and your goal is to avoid war and try to be able to have a diplomatic resolution, the worst thing you can do is first threaten to destroy his country in the United Nations, Kerry said. He was speaking in a private lecture delivered at Geneva s Graduate Institute. And secondly, screw around with the deal that has already been made because the message is, don t make a deal with the United States, they won t keep their word, he said. The nuclear deal places Iran under tough restraints, including inspections, round-the-clock surveillance and tracking every ounce of uranium produced, Kerry said. We would notice an uptick in their enrichment, like that, he said, snapping his fingers. And nobody that I know of with common sense can understand what the virtue is in accelerating a confrontation with the possibility that they might decide they want to break out and make it (a nuclear bomb) now instead of 10 or 15 or 25 years from now. Kerry, a former Senator who headed the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told Swiss media that Trump s leaving the Iranian deal s fate to Congress was very dangerous and opened the door to party politics . Congress cannot unilaterally renegotiate a multilateral accord, the Geneva daily Le Temps quoted him as saying. It is possible that Congress would make an unreasonable decision that would put Iran s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in a very complicated political situation that could force him to retaliate. It s a slippery slope. Khamenei said on Wednesday that Tehran would stick to its accord as long as the other signatories respected it, but would shred the deal if Washington pulled out, state TV reported. If Iran violated the accord, U.N. sanctions would snap back into place, Kerry told the audience. Moreover, at that point in time folks, we have a year of break-up. We have all the time that we need in the world to be able to bomb their facilities into submission. Ending the deal could lead to Iran hiding fissile production facilities deep in a mountain where we have no insight . So the scenario that Trump opens up by saying let s get rid of the deal is actually proliferation, far more damaging and dangerous, Kerry said. | 0fake |
PC TYRANNY: University of Oregon Rules That Professors Have NO Free Speech | 21st Century Wire says By cow-towing to students over-sensitivity to free speech and seemingly a prenatal requirement for safe spaces on campus academics and university administrators are unknowingly (or knowingly) constructing communitarian unintellectual institutions of tyranny on campuses across America. The end result of this progress should be obvious to anyone who has studied 20th century history it is anarchy. If students are allowed to get professors suspended or fired over spurious allegations of offense caused, or rather, causing students to feel uncomfortable then the entire concept of the university as we once knew it is finished. By dismissing talent in favor of adherence to an ever new and constantly updated orthdoxy, the only professors left to teach in this burgeoning environment of weaponized political correctness will most certainly be under-qualified, mediocre, young, and possibly radical or overly militant instructors.That will be the end of higher education and as we can now see, it s heading in that direction (Image Source: Niskan Center)Mark Tapson Truth RevoltWriting for the Washington Post, Eugene Volokh of The Volokh Conspiracy addresses a disturbing development at the University of Oregon, whose administration made clear to its faculty last week that if you say things about race, sexual orientation, sex, religion and so on that enough people find offensive, you could get suspended and possibly even fired. This can happen even to tenured faculty members or to anyone else. Orthodoxy, Volokh writes, enforced on threat of institutional punishment, is what the University of Oregon is now about. This all began with a Halloween party hosted by tenured University of Oregon law school professor Nancy Shurtz attended by about a dozen students and about a dozen nonstudents:Shurtz had told the students that she would be going as a popular book title ; she didn t tell the students up front what it was, but the book was the recent (and acclaimed) Black Man in a White Coat, a black doctor s reflections on race and medicine (according to the subtitle). Shurtz s costume incorporated a white doctor s lab coat, a stethoscope, black makeup on her face and hands, and a black curly wig resembling an afro. The university report states that Shurtz was inspired by this book and by the author, that she greatly admires [the author] and wanted to honor him, and that she dressed as the book because she finds it reprehensible that there is a shortage of racial diversity, and particularly of black men, in higher education. [ ] And this perceived offensiveness yielded a huge uproar at the law school. According to the report, the uproar was partly students immediate reaction and partly a result of the administration s and other faculty members discussing the matter extensively at school, including in classes.[ ] So we have speech, at a professor s home, but at a party to which she had invited her students, which in turn leads to speech by various people at the law school. (There s no doubt that wearing an expressive costume is treated as equivalent to speech under First Amendment symbolic expression purposes.) Some of both kinds of speech are interpreted as expressing offensive messages related to race. What does the university do about this?The university suspended Shurtz.It then released a report concluding that Shurtz s speech constituted harassment, which violates university policy. The harassment policy, the university report notes, bans conduct that creates a hostile environment based on age, race, color, ancestry, national or ethnic origin, religion, service in the uniformed services (as defined in state and federal law), veteran status, sex, sexual orientation, marital or family status, pregnancy, pregnancy-related conditions, physical or mental disability, gender, perceived gender, gender identity, genetic information or the use of leave protected by state or federal law. Under the logic of the Oregon report, Volokh notes, a faculty member could be disciplined for displaying the Mohammed cartoons, if it caused enough of a furor. Or a faculty member could be disciplined for suggesting that homosexuality may be immoral or dangerous. Or for stating that biological males who view themselves as female should be viewed as men, not as women. Or for suggesting that there are, on average, biological differences in temperament or talents between men and women. Check out the whole article here.READ MORE PC NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire PC Files | 1real |
WASHED UP HOLLYWOOD LOSER Makes Embarrassing Video Bashing Trump Over Paris Climate Agreement | Remember when people paid attention to Arnold Scwarzenegger s political opinions? Me neither The irrelevant former California Governor, washed up Hollywood actor and failed Apprentice host Arnold Schwarzenegger, made a video that took on President Trump, as he called for a grassroots revolution in the fight against phony global warming. Of course, Schwarzenegger was just doing his part, as he joins forces with Hollywood hacks to trash President Trump after he announced his plans to withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement.In the video below, the former governor and washed up Hollywood actor urged American citizens to rise up and save Planet Earth.BREAKING: Arnold Schwarzenegger has a blunt message for Donald Trump. #ParisAgreement pic.twitter.com/YI8fcxEeox ATTN: (@attn) June 2, 2017Why would anyone expect a Hollywood liberal (who calls himself a Republican) to understand that the climate change agreement is nothing more than a boondoggle for taxpayers? | 1real |
MOST DIVISIVE POTUS EVER Takes Swipe At Trump Using Despicable Alinsky Tactic [Video] | Barack Obama stutters through yet another jerky moment where he just can t zip his lips: He s the president who just won t go away: Some, some of the politics we see, now we, we thought we put that to bed. Uh-I-uh-mean that-uh-that folks looking fifty years back. It s the 21st century. Obama really was the most divisive POTUS in history. It s pretty unbelievable that he s now claiming Trump is divisive. This made us think of slinky and the tactics used by Obama in the past to divide Americans: Saul Alinsky 101: Accuse your opponent of what only you are doing, as you are doing it, to create confusion, cloud the issue, and inoculate voters against any evidence of your guilt. That about nails what Obama did in the video above. He and Hillary are fans and supporters of Saul Alinsky. Check out the video below:Let s see if you notice any other tactics used by the left in trying to bring down President Trump:Alinsky s 12 Rules: 1. Power is not only what you have, but what the enemy thinks you have. Power is derived from 2 main sources money and people. Have-Nots must build power from flesh and blood. 2. Never go outside the expertise of your people. It results in confusion, fear and retreat. Feeling secure adds to the backbone of anyone. 3. Whenever possible, go outside the expertise of the enemy. Look for ways to increase insecurity, anxiety and uncertainty. 4. Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules. If the rule is that every letter gets a reply, send 30,000 letters. You can kill them with this because no one can possibly obey all of their own rules. 5. Ridicule is man s most potent weapon. There is no defense. It s irrational. It s infuriating. It also works as a key pressure point to force the enemy into concessions. 6. A good tactic is one your people enjoy. They ll keep doing it without urging and come back to do more. They re doing their thing, and will even suggest better ones. 7. A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag. Don t become old news. 8. Keep the pressure on. Never let up. Keep trying new things to keep the opposition off balance. As the opposition masters one approach, hit them from the flank with something new. 9. The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself. Imagination and ego can dream up many more consequences than any activist. 10. If you push a negative hard enough, it will push through and become a positive. Violence from the other side can win the public to your side because the public sympathizes with the underdog. 11. The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative. Never let the enemy score points because you re caught without a solution to the problem. 12. Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it. Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions.TUCKER AND MARK STEYN DISCUSS THIS TACTIC: Why is it the left always accuses its opponents of the exact same thing they re guilty of? @TuckerCarlson RT #MAGA #TRUMP #Weinstein pic.twitter.com/g5oI4TqVHR DONNA WARREN (@DonnaWR8) October 12, 2017 | 1real |
NYT: Clinton Foundation in Disarray After Hillary’s Election Loss - Breitbart | Three months after Hillary Clinton’s stunning election loss to Donald Trump, her family foundation is facing vexing questions about its ability to exist. [“The foundation is still grappling with its place in the era of President Trump,” the New York Times reports. “It faces some daunting challenges: a drop in during the campaign uncertainty about the scale of the former president’s ambitions and questions about leadership, including how long its president, Donna E. Shalala, will stay, and whether Mrs. Clinton might rejoin the charity. ” Shalala didn’t shy away from the foundation’s fledgling philanthropic status. “Last year was a tough year,” she told the Times, “because people were beating on us with nonsense,” referencing the media reports of corruption between Clinton Foundation donors, the speeches given by Bill Clinton, and the corresponding actions approved by the U. S. State Department while Hillary Clinton was secretary of state. Indeed, mere weeks after Hillary Clinton lost the election, financial disclosure forms revealed that the Clinton Foundation’s donations had plummeted by 37 percent. Reports earlier this month about the foundation laying off staffers has ballooned to “about 100,” the Times reports. Much of the Clinton Foundation’s shady dealings around the world while Hillary Clinton was head of the State Department was brought to light through the investigative work of Breitbart News and its Peter Schweizer’s bestselling book Clinton Cash. What’s more, the Times reports, “Foundation officials confirmed on Thursday that two major programs, including one in Haiti, would transfer out of the foundation. ” And according to Congressman Jason Chaffetz, chairman of the House Oversight Committee, the investigation into the Clinton Foundation “continues. ” Nevertheless, Shalala, who served as secretary of health and human services under President Clinton, says the Clinton global charity’s best days are ahead. “At the end of the day, I think this is going to be as it always was: a creative, dynamic foundation that helps to improve the lives of millions,” she said. Still, experts don’t share the same optimistic view about the Clinton Foundation’s future as its leadership. “The big issue they are going to face is to what degree can they raise money now that the Clintons seem to be out of national leadership positions,” said Leslie Lenkowsky, a philanthropy expert at Indiana University. “They have lost a little bit of their luster. ” The organization’s namesake, Bill Clinton, is now and has been out of government for over 15 years. The foundation’s fundraising, which Mr. Clinton spearheaded since 2001, has nosedived in recent years. And, according to Ms. Shalala, the 2016 fundraising numbers are lower than the year before, which were lower than the year before that. Ms. Shalala, however, expresses faith in the former president’s ability to still raise large donations. “He’s got a lot of friends,” Ms. Shalala said. Asked if Hillary Clinton is ready take on a more concerted leadership role in her family’s foundation, Nick Merrill, a spokesman for Mrs. Clinton, told the Times “We are not there yet even remotely now. ” Daniel F. Runde, a former director of the Office of Global Development Alliances at the United States Agency for International Development described the Clinton Foundation’s viability bluntly: “It’s a damaged brand, but there remains an international demand for them. ” Follow Jerome Hudson on Twitter: @JeromeEHudson | 0fake |
JUDGE JEANINE Tells Us What The Smoking Gun Is In The Clinton Foundation [Video] | Judge Jeanine gives us facts on the relationship between our State Department and The Clinton Foundation 12,000 e-mails between the two! The smoking gun for anyone who cares about corruption and lawlessness in politics is the outright MONEY LAUNDERING via 12,000 e-mails that went on! | 1real |
Bank records show $28,500 deposit to Syed Farook's account two weeks before the shooting, source says | EXCLUSIVE - A $28,500 deposit was made to Syed Farook’s bank account from WebBank.com on or about Nov.18, some two weeks before he and his wife Tashfeen Malik carried out the San Bernardino massacre, a source close to the investigation told Fox News Monday.
Investigators are exploring whether the transaction was a loan taken out by Farook, who with his wife killed 14 and wounded 21 when they opened fire at a holiday lunch. He earned $53,000 a year with the county as an environmental health inspector. Investigators are also exploring the possibility that a subsequent cash withdrawal was used to reimburse Enrique Marquez, the man who bought the two AR-15 semiautomatic rifles used in the San Bernardino shootings. Marquez, who could be charged, especially if it is determined that he illegally modified the weapons, is now reportedly answering investigators’ questions.
“Right now our major concern at the FBI, the ATF, and the JTTF (Joint Terrorism Task Force) is determining how those firearms, the rifles in particular, got from Marquez to Farook and to Malik,” assistant special agent in charge with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, John D’Angelo, told reporters in California Monday.
The deposit came via Utah-based WebBank.com, which describes itself as “a leading provider of national consumer and commercial private-label and bank card financing programs” on a nationwide basis. On or about Nov.20, Fox News is told Farook converted $10,000 to cash, and withdrew the money at a Union Bank branch in San Bernardino. Afterwards, in the days before the shooting, there were at least three transfers of $5,000 that appear to be to Farook’s mother.
The loan and large cash withdrawal were described to Fox News by the source as “significant evidence of pre-meditation,” and further undercut the premise that an argument at the Christmas party on Dec. 2 led to the shooting.
Fox News is also told that investigators are exploring whether the $10,000 cash withdrawal was used to reimburse Enrique Marquez, the man who bought the two semiautomatic rifles used in the San Bernardino shootings. Marquez is now reportedly answering investigators’ questions.
At Monday's news conference, authorities said the weapons were all legally purchased in California between 2007 and 2012.
The source, who was not authorized to speak on the record about the federal investigation, said there is further evidence of pre-meditation with a charge for the SUV rental processing on Farook’s account Nov. 30, two days before the shooting.
Contacted by Fox News, a woman who was identified by another employee as Lorie Gilbert and a member of WebBank.com’s strategic partnership, said they were “not going to respond to that (questions about the Farook transaction)” before hanging up. Another WebBank.com employee said they were “not talking to the press.”
A spokesman for Union Bank, David Weidman, declined to comment on specific questions, including whether the Nov. 20 $10,000 cash withdrawal triggered reporting requirements. Weidman confirmed they are working with the FBI and others, adding, "We are cooperating to the full extent of the law with the agencies conducting investigations into this tragedy.”
There was no immediate response from lawyer David Chesley, who has been representing the family.
Catherine Herridge is an award-winning Chief Intelligence correspondent for FOX News Channel (FNC) based in Washington, D.C. She covers intelligence, the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security. Herridge joined FNC in 1996 as a London-based correspondent. | 0fake |
TEXAS CHURCH SHOOTER: Years Before ‘Soft Target’ Attack, Gunman Tried to Carry Out Death Threats on CIA Linked Air Force Base | Shawn Helton 21st Century Wire The gunman named in a mass shooting that was said to have killed 26 people at a small church outside of San Antonio was convicted by the military several years before the tragic attack in 2012. This past week new information concerning the apparent First Baptist Church gunman 26-year-old Devin Patrick Kelley, revealed that the previously convicted Air Force airman was already well-known to authorities via his bad conduct discharge from the military in 2012. The recent acknowledgement in Kelley s case history, coupled with his unusually relaxed plea bargain deal, has only prompted more questions from those concerned about the most recent high-profile mass shooting in America.According to officials, the Sutherland Springs shooting at the First Baptist Church may have been caused by a domestic dispute involving Kelley and his ex-mother-in-law Michelle Shields. However, it turns out that Shields was not present at church services on the morning of the mass shooting, although her mother was named as one of the victims.A more precise motive in the deadly Sutherland Springs massacre has yet to be uncovered by authorities TEXAS CHURCH SHOOTING 8 years after the Fort Hood mass shooting, the First Baptist Church attack raises big questions. Its also worth noting, the recent church shooting echoes a scene in the 2015 Hollywood film Kingsman: The Secret Service. (Photo Illustration 21WIRE s Shawn Helton)The Texas Church ShooterWhile many in media have focused on the military s inability to log Devin Patrick Kelley s domestic violence court-martial case into a federal database, a police report from 2012 revealed that the gunman named in the First Baptist Church shooting had been previously caught attempting to sneak firearms onto a CIA linked military base in New Mexico where he was stationed. The El Paso police report concluded that after Kelley escaped the mental health facility believed to be Peak Behavioral Health Services Center in Santa Teresa, he sought to carry out death threats against his superiors at New Mexico s Holloman Air Force base.A CBS Affiliate from Dallas further explained the church shooter s lengthy criminal background: The information was contained in a police incident report after Devin Patrick Kelley briefly escaped in June, 2012 from a mental health facility in New Mexico where he had been committed. KPRC television in Houston first reported about the escape. Police in El Paso, Texas, where Kelley was caught after the escape, said in the report that an official of the mental health facility told them that Kelley was a danger to himself and others. The report says that Kelley had already been caught sneaking firearms onto Holloman Air Force base. It also says that he was attempting to carry out death threats that (Kelley) had made on his military chain of command. Moreover, a FOX News report just days ago revealed additional information concerning Kelley s violent threats at Holloman Air Force base: Former Air Force Staff Sgt. Jessika Edwards told The New York Times that Kelley would shake with rage and vow to kill his superiors when he was assigned menial tasks as punishment for poor performance. At one point, Edwards told the Times, she warned others in the squadron to go easy on Kelley, believing he was likely to come back and shoot up the place. Rather strangely, former Air Force Staff Sgt. Edwards still kept in close contact with the criminally convicted and discharged logistical readiness airman, stating that he asked her to be a job reference in 2015. Shortly there after, Kelley allegedly became obsessed with the polarizing case involving Charleston church shooter Dylann Roof. CHURCH SHOOTER What is the real motive in the First Baptist Church shooting? (Image Source: nbcwashington)The shocking claims of death threats prior to the Sutherland Springs church shooting taking place raises questions not only about the criminally convicted shooter Kelley, who was accused of a slew of abusive behavior but also the military s handling of the gunman s well-known history of violence from a prosecutorial standpoint.QUESTION: How did Kelley manage to get such a relaxed sentence considering he had several other major charges dropped including an additional incident where he allegedly pointed a loaded firearm at his wife?Furthermore, as the public and media are still bewildered over Kelley s ability to legally purchase guns following his 2012 military conviction due to his prior violent abuse, information concerning his alleged plot to kill military superiors has been completely underreported and by the looks of it, may have even gone unpunished.According to official reports, Kelley was sentenced to a year s confinement, reducing rank from an airman first-class (A1C) to airman basic. Additionally, after being convicted of crimes by a military court in 2012, he received a bad conduct discharge following an apparent plea deal.The NY Times added the following details regarding the military court case: Prosecutors withdrew several other charges as part of their plea agreement with Mr. Kelley, including allegations that he repeatedly pointed a loaded gun at his wife.He was ultimately sentenced in November that year to 12 months confinement and reduction to the lowest possible rank. His final duty title was prisoner. QUESTION: Did Kelley s plea agreement also include the exclusion of charges concerning his alleged death threat plot against military superiors at the CIA linked Holloman Air Force base?Moreover, if that wasn t a part of the plea, how was Kelley not dishonorably discharged due to the severity of charges he faced from military superiors?Although we ve been told this latest soft target shooting spree on American soil was carried out by yet another lone gunman, there have also been questions raised concerning a shooter allegedly firing from the roof top down on to church parishioners below.Watch and listen to shooting survivor Rosanne Solis, as she recounts what she witnessed during the First Baptist Church shooting . QUESTION: Is it also possible that Solis saw multiple shooters at the First Baptist Church? If not, how did Kelley swiftly move from the roof top location to ground level in a matter of a few minutes, assuming the account told by Solis is true?The Sutherland Springs mass shooting, along with other high-profile active shooter incidents this year and year s past have once again predictably sparked socio-political hot button issues concerning gun reform, background checks, mental illness and SSRI prescription drugs. This is something that has prompted critics to consider that there might be even more to the story.Below is a CNN video report discussing the lengthy criminal background of the First Baptist Church gunman. Note the strong emphasis in this report regarding Kelley s access to weaponry rather than a deeper analysis over how he received such a relaxed military conviction Drills, Dupes & Informants?A day after the suspicious San Bernardino shooting in 2015, San Antonio s nonprofit Alamo Community Group began practicing active shooter scenarios with employees. San Antonio is only 35 miles from where the Sutherland Springs mass shooting took place and a city that has been rigorously training for mass casualty scenarios for the last five years, holding active shooter drills with approximately one hundred officers a week over at least the last couple of years. Here s a passage from an ABC affiliate in San Antonio on the matter: Though it [the training] is simulated for active shooting scenarios, the training could easily be applied to many other mass casualty situations as well. In past two years, about 4,000 people have been involved in San Antonio s new rescue task force training program. As 21 WIRE has documented over the years, many so-called shooting/terror/attacks involve individuals being monitored by security services prior to an alleged act taking place. A place where a lone wolf graduates into the ranks of a known wolf. Although the military wasn t officially keeping Kelley under watch, his case profile does exhibit potential signs of a possible informant status due to the litany of charges he managed to avoid through a cushy plea deal with the military. Historically, government operators have often made use of low-life criminals, and mentally disturbed individuals to fulfill various roles in entrapment stings or sometimes as bona fide solo actors in an actual attacks. Links between security agencies, military facilities and alleged attackers with a criminal history should arouse suspicion if they become connected to any future crimes.In January of 2015, a strategic security service think-tank known as The Soufan Group, reported that a larger national security threat resides with those who ve had a lengthy criminal background with known ties to security agencies: The Soufan Group, a New York think tank, said a better term for lone wolves would be known wolves , given how many are already known to Western intelligence agencies before they strike. These individuals, acting alone or in small groups have been on the radar of various agencies and organisations, highlighting the difficulty of effectively monitoring and managing people at the nexus of criminality and terrorism, it said in a report this week Domestically in America, it has been well documented that the FBI created a counter-intelligence program known as COINTELPRO (similar in scope to the CIA s Operation CHAOS), not only as a way to influence, but also a way to disrupt and coerce both left and right-wing political factions from the inside out. The FBI program infiltrated countless groups and movements across the political spectrum.Over the past several years, the FBI has been routinely caught foiling their very own terror plots. Following one of America s most deadly mass shootings at the Orlando Pulse nightclub, reports revealed that the FBI had a close relationship with the suspected attacker through the use of a well-known confidential informant. Similarly, recent reports state that FBI, court filings have revealed how the agency allowed an alleged home grown ISIS attack to take place in Garland, Texas. 21WIRE had previously uncovered the suspicious nature of the cartoon/shooting event in Garland when it occurred.In 2015, another strange informant case/FBI sting attempted to persuade a group into attacking the Humphrey Scottish Rite Masonic Center in Milwaukee.QUESTION: Is it possible the FBI or any or intelligence agency played some part in the Sutherland Springs church shooting whether inadvertently or otherwise?FBI informants have reportedly played a central role in over 50% of all domestic terror cases in the United States since 2009. According to reports, informants might earn up to $100,000 per case, as they are meant to build relationships with persons of interest. While the Sutherland Springs shooting is not considered a terror case, it does fit the profile of possible soft target scenarios outlined by the FBI.Here at 21WIRE, we ve kept a running report on many known wolf actors and other suspicious intelligence informant cases:Tamerlan Tsarnaev (see his story here) Buford Rogers (see his story here) Jerad Miller (see his story here) Naji Mansour (see his story here) Quazi Mohammad Nafis (see his story here) Mohamed Osman Mohamud (see his story here) Timothy McVeigh (see his story here) Salim Benghalem (see his story here) Michael Adebolajo (see his story here) Daba Deng (see his story here) Elton Simpson (see his story here) Man Haron Monis (see his story here) Abu Hamza (see his story here) Haroon Rashid Aswat (see his story here) Mark Vicars (see his story here) Glen Rodgers (see his story here) Omar Mateen (see his story here) Samy Mohamed Hamzeh (see his story here) Tashfeen Malik (see her story here) Djamel Beghal (see his story here) Anjem Choudary (see his story here) Cherif Kouachi (see his story here) Said Kouachi (see his story here) Amedy Coulibaly (see his story here) Hayat Boumeddiene (see her story here) Salah Abdeslam (see his story here) Michael Zehaf-Bibeau (see his story here) Nidal Malik Hassan (see his story here) Abdelhakim Dekhar (see his story here) Abdelhamid Abaaoud (see his story here) Samy Amimour (see his story here) Isma l Omar Mostefa (see his story here) Mohamed Lahouij Bouhlel (see his story here) Anis Amri (see his story here) Esteban Santiago-Ruiz (see his story here) Abdulkadir Masharipov (see his story here) Khalid Masood (see his story here) Khuram Butt (see his story here) Youssef Zaghba (see his story here) Sayfullo Saipov (see his story here)According to pastor Frank Pomeroy, who was out-of-town at the time of the shooting with his wife Sherri, the hundred member First Baptist Church, is slated to be demolished sometime soon. However, prior to the demolition, the site will become a temporary memorial and the building will be scrubbed down and whitewashed, as white chairs will be placed inside to remember those who died.There are still a number of questions following the Sutherland Springs mass shooting tragedy *** 21WIRE associate editor Shawn Helton is a researcher and writer, specializing in forensic analysis of high-profile crime scene and counter terrorism investigations, and the deconstruction and analysis of the mass-media coverage surrounding those cases. He has compiled an extensive body of work covering a number of high-profile events since 2012.READ MORE DAILY SHOOTER NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Daily Shooter FilesSupport our work by Subscribing and become a Member @21WIRE.TV | 1real |
Irving Fields, Composer Who Infused Songs With Latin Rhythms, Dies at 101 - The New York Times | There was a time in the middle of the last century when children in certain quarters of the Bronx and Brooklyn were often asked to entertain guests with a song called “Miami Beach Rhumba,” an improbable combination of zesty Latin dance rhythms and musical inflections born of the shtetls and ghettos of Eastern Europe. The composer of that song was Irving Fields, who died on Saturday at 101 at his home in Manhattan, and his career was as improbable as his songs. In his younger days, Mr. Fields specialized in Latinizing standards. He and a trio started with an album for Decca Records called “Bagels and Bongos,” which whimsically transformed melancholy Yiddish chestnuts like “Raisins and Almonds” and “My Yiddishe Momme” into or mambos. When the album sold tens of thousands of copies, he recorded a sequel and then moved on to Latinizing Italian standards (“Pizza and Bongos”) Hawaiian melodies (“Bikinis and Bongos”) and French songs (“Champagne and Bongos”). He also composed songs, the most famous of which was “Miami Beach Rhumba,” a 1946 number about a traveler who starts out for Havana and ends up in the Jewish Riviera of the song’s title. With lyrics by Albert Gamse — “I’ll save Havana for mañana” was one line — it became a staple of 1950s and ’60s bar mitzvahs. The Latin bandleader Xavier Cugat turned it into a hit in 1947, and Tito Puente recorded it as well. Fifty years later, Woody Allen used it in his film “Deconstructing Harry. ” (John Camacho is also credited with a hand in the composing.) Other Fields collaborations included “Managua, Nicaragua,” a hit for Guy Lombardo, and “Chantez, Chantez,” a sprightly melody that Dinah Shore recorded in 1957. Yet in the last decades of his life he was better known as a New York City lounge pianist, still performing as recently as March at spots near his Central Park South home, like the dining room of the Park Lane Hotel, the Oak Room at the Plaza Hotel and Nino’s Tuscany Steakhouse. Though he sometimes played to rooms or ones with distracted customers, he was a restless man who could not stop working. “I love what I do, and the piano is my best friend,” he told an interviewer. Though depending on a walker to get around, his fingers hobbled by arthritis, he continued to find his way to the keyboard, stylish in a blue blazer and pocket square, his customary vodka martini perched on top of the piano. (He also liked to keep a pile of fliers there, with titles like “Secrets for Longevity” and tips like “Eat four hours before bedtime (you’ll digest better). ”) Mr. Fields could play almost any request, especially if it was for a Gershwin, Kern, Rodgers or Porter tune. If a woman said she was from Texas, he would run off a medley that might start with “The Yellow Rose of Texas. ” “People ask me, ‘How do you remember so many notes? ’” he once said. “It just comes to me. It’s like God is in my mind. ” He even became something of a phenomenon among the internet generation, when, by his account, at a fan’s request, he took 15 minutes to compose “YouTube Dot Com Theme Song. ” It has had close to 900, 000 views. Mr. Fields was born Yitzhak Schwartz on Aug. 4, 1915, on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, the youngest of six children (all of whom lived into their 90s). He grew up there and in Coney Island and Bensonhurst in Brooklyn. His father, Max, a carpenter who sang in local choirs, was from Pinsk in Belarus, and his mother, Eva, was from Minsk, also in Belarus he once wrote a song playing with the cities’ rhyming names. Pressured to start taking piano lessons at 8 years old, he found repeating scales monotonous but later credited the exercises with sharpening his playing and making it seem more casual. He also sang in a choir behind the famous cantor Yossele Rosenblatt, and began pecking out popular songs and Yiddish vaudeville tunes. While still a teenager, he put together a band that was hired to play parties. He also took piano jobs on cruise ships headed for Havana and San Juan, engendering a passion for Latin music. Mr. Fields and groups of various sizes played the Manhattan clubs that were a hallmark of swank 1940s and ‘50s night life, places like the Copacabana, the Latin Quarter, El Morocco and the Mermaid Room. He remembered Ava Gardner dancing barefoot to his Latin songs and Edward G. Robinson asking him to play Viennese waltzes. As television infiltrated more American households, he appeared on shows hosted by Milton Berle, Jackie Gleason and Kate Smith. In his telling, his lounge career had many origins. In one story, the hotelier Leona Helmsley, who had heard him play “I’m Just Wild About Harry” — she had been married to the real estate magnate Harry Helmsley — told him, “I’ll break your fingers if you don’t become my house pianist. ” He soon began playing the Park Lane. Mr. Fields is survived by his wife, Ruth, who confirmed his death, along with a son, Mark a daughter, Diane Shaffran a stepdaughter, Penny Dechowitz a stepson, Peter Dechowitz seven grandchildren and two . He and Ruth, 14 years his junior, lived for the last half century in a tidy apartment that did not have a piano. On those occasions when he needed to play for a visitor, as he did when a New York Times reporter showed up in May 2015, he would take an elevator upstairs to a neighbor’s apartment. “You think I need to practice — at my age?” he said. | 0fake |
Republicans Panic Over Trump, Write Letter To RNC In Fear Of ‘Extinction Event’ | Republicans are in full-blown panic mode as over 70 GOPers signed a letter to the RNC begging them to abandon Trump to focus on funding down-ticket races in order to prevent the party s extinction.As Donald Trump continues to sink in the polls while refusing to curb his extreme rhetoric, many Republicans have jumped ship from the party, choosing to vote for Hillary Clinton instead or not vote at all.The Republican nominee is even dragging other Republicans down with him as Democrats have a real good chance of taking back the Senate and the House because Trump s stink is causing trouble for GOP candidates in races across the nation.And that s why a multitude of high profile Republicans from both past and present have written a letter to RNC Chair Reince Priebus asking him to shift money and resources from the presidential election to down-ticket races in an effort to keep Republicans in control of Congress. We believe that Donald Trump s divisiveness, recklessness, incompetence, and record-breaking unpopularity risk turning this election into a Democratic landslide, and only the immediate shift of all available RNC resources to vulnerable Senate and House races will prevent the GOP from drowning with a Trump-emblazoned anchor around its neck, the letter states. This should not be a difficult decision, as Donald Trump s chances of being elected president are evaporating by the day. Politico reports that it lists several of Trumps major stumbles since he threw his hat in the ring in June of last year including his offensive racist remarks about Mexicans and Muslims, his ties to Russia, and his attacks against a Gold Star family. And that doesn t include his most recent outrageous statements, which include calling President Obama the founder of ISIS and calling for gun nuts to assassinate Hillary Clinton. Those recent outrages have built on his campaign of anger and exclusion, during which he has mocked and offended millions of voters, including the disabled, women, Muslims, immigrants, and minorities, the letter continues. He also has shown dangerous authoritarian tendencies, including threats to ban an entire religion from entering the country, order the military to break the law by torturing prisoners, kill the families of suspected terrorists, track law-abiding Muslim citizens in databases, and use executive orders to implement other illegal and unconstitutional measures. And they go on to argue in favor of halting funds earmarked for Trump s campaign and re-routing the money to other campaigns. Trump s divisive and dangerous actions are not only a threat to our other candidates, but to our Party and the nation Every dollar spent by the RNC on Donald Trump s campaign is a dollar of donor money wasted on the losing effort of a candidate who has actively undermined the GOP at every turn. Rather than throwing good money after bad, the RNC should shift its strategy and its resources to convince voters not to give Hillary Clinton the blank check of a Democrat-controlled Congress to advance her big government agenda. Again, over 70 Republicans, including many heavy hitters, signed this letter to the RNC just like 50 Republican national security experts signed a letter denouncing the billionaire mogul earlier this week.And on the same day as details of this current letter are released, Republican strategist Matt Mackowiak summed up the GOP disgust with Trump and their worry over how he is affecting the party. OK, this shit s not funny anymore, he wrote on Twitter. Trump is threatening elected GOPers at all levels in places that haven t been competitive in decades We are looking at an extinction-level event. This is the ultimate proof that Republicans know that Hillary is going to destroy them in November even though they really only have themselves to blame for creating the political climate that gave rise to an extremist opportunist like Trump in the first place. So it s just a matter of waiting and seeing if we should get the tombstone ready for the Republican Party as a whole.Featured Image: baystateconservativenews.com | 1real |
Supreme Court Strikes Down Texas Abortion Law, And Anti-Choicers Are Positively FUMING (TWEETS) | The Supreme Court sided with women on freedom and the right to choose today with their ruling on Texas restrictive abortion law. In a 5-3 ruling, they said that the arguments that the law merely protects women s health are actually just a substantial burden on women seeking abortions. Since abortion is a constitutional right, no matter what the right-wing thinks, Texas law was deemed unconstitutional.Justice Stephen Breyer wrote the majority opinion, and said: There was no significant health-related problem that the new law helped to cure. We agree with the District Court that the surgical-center requirement, like the admitting-privileges requirement, provides few, if any, health benefits for women, poses a substantial obstacle to women seeking abortions, and constitutes an undue burden on their constitutional right to do so. He was joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Anthony Kennedy, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan. Ginsburg wrote her own concurring opinion, where she said: When a State severely limits access to safe and legal procedures, women in desperate circumstances may resort to unlicensed rogue practitioners, faute de mieux, at great risk to their health and safety. The 5-3 decision isn t just a victory for women and women s rights, but it also shows that the Supreme Court would have struck the law down even with a full bench, and a staunch conservative in Scalia s place. Anybody who thinks that a full bench would have stopped this is living in Fantasyland.Even so, anti-choice conservatives are still busy trying to convince people that the law actually protected women. Nothing could be further from the truth, which is why this case went all the way to the Supreme Court. Yet, here they are, in all their righteous anger about it, claiming that today is a sad day for women all across the country.Texas Governor Greg Abbott said (all emphasis from The New York Times): The decision erodes states lawmaking authority to safeguard the health and safety of women, and subjects more innocent life to being lost. Texas goal is to protect innocent life while ensuring the highest health and safety standards for women. Senator John Cornyn seems to agree with that. He said: Today s ruling sets a dangerous precedent for states like Texas, which the Constitution makes clear should be free to pass laws that are in the best interests of our citizens. Common-sense requirements that abortion clinics be held to the same standards as other medical facilities put the health of the patient first, and today s decision is a step back in protecting the well-being of mothers across our state. You two just keep telling yourselves that.Of course, National Right To Life can always be counted on to provide total ignorance masquerading as sane, logical reasoning on the issue of abortion: How shabby are these abortion clinics that they cannot meet the minimum standards other outpatient surgical centers are required to meet, and just how bad are these abortionists that they can t get admitting privileges at a local hospital? As we saw with Kermit Gosnell in Philadelphia, it s clear that the lucrative abortion industry is not able or willing to police itself and allows filthy, deplorable conditions to go unchecked. Ah, yes, invoking Kermit Gosnell, as if he s the norm and abortion doctors who are actually ethical and competent are the exception. Don t they have more evidence than that? Oh, wait, no they don t. One case is more than enough for them to think they can justify destroying a woman s right to choose what she does with her own body.Over on Twitter, many are celebrating this as the victory for women it is, but there are still anti-choicers rearing their ugly heads with the same twisted logic, spinning this as a grave mistake endangering thousands of women. Or they re making the argument that this violates states rights (or doing both). Oh please:Hillary should pick Kermit Gosnell as her running mate > #SCOTUS #Texas #Abortion #Trump pic.twitter.com/2KRpiFIMHx EagleGraphs (@EagleGraphs) June 27, 2016 This means more women will die as the clinics which are not to code, will continue to send women to the emergency https://t.co/sFC0tMHD6X ConservTexas (@ConservTexas) June 27, 2016Thanks to today s Supreme Court ruling, women in Texas can say goodbye to health inspections and safety standards at their abortion clinics. Petre Pan (@petr3pan) June 27, 2016 I don t understand why anyone would support the overturn of the Texas abortion laws. Even pro choice activists. K (@Kristenn_2) June 27, 2016The next woman in Texas that dies due to complications of an abortion will probably die without proper medical care, or care in time. Jacob Botzman (@JacobBotzman) June 27, 2016 Supreme Court Strikes Down Texas Abortion Law, Dooms Women to Substandard Care https://t.co/OIQJvJXOQK Sue Merriner (@treetopangel) June 27, 2016#SCOTUS strikes down Texas law designed to provide essential protections for health & safety of women inside the state s abortion facilities Steve Daines (@SteveDaines) June 27, 2016 How can #aca be constitutional but the #texas law on #abortion clinicals not be? #SCOTUS @Scotus Andrew Holter MPA (@AndrewHolter) June 27, 2016Score one for women, and zero for misogynistic dung weasels who want to tell women what they can and cannot do with their bodies. It was never about protecting women, or even about protecting unborn babies. The anti-choice, anti-woman argument has always, and will always be, about controlling women and their sexuality. The Supreme Court saw right through it.Featured image by Pete Marovich/Getty Images | 1real |
As America Sleeps, Donald Trump Seethes on Twitter - The New York Times | The tweets started around 3:20 a. m. on Friday. Inside Trump Tower, a restless figure stirred in the predawn darkness, nursing his grievances and grabbing a device that often lands him in hot water. On his Android phone, Donald J. Trump began to tap out bursts of digital fury: He mocked Alicia Machado, a former Miss Universe and a popular Latin American actress, as a “con,” the “worst” and “disgusting. ” In a final flourish, before the sun came up, the Republican presidential nominee claimed — without offering any evidence — that she had appeared in a “sex tape. ” The tirade fit a pattern. It is when Mr. Trump is alone with his thoughts, and untethered from his campaign staff, that he has seemed to commit his most acts. “There has always been this dangerous part of him that will go too far and do something that backfires,” said Michael D’Antonio, the author of “The Truth About Trump,” a new biography of the real estate mogul. “His worst impulses,” he added, “are . ” Over the past few days, those instincts have been on vivid display. In quick succession, Mr. Trump has repeated his critique that Ms. Machado gained a “massive amount of weight” after she won the Miss Universe crown in 1996 suggested that former President Bill Clinton’s infidelities are fair game for campaign attacks and urged his followers to “check out” a sex tape that may not exist. (Ms. Machado appeared in a risqué scene on a reality television show, but have discovered no sex tape.) The eruptions could further damage Mr. Trump’s reputation with women and Latino voters at a time when he can scarcely afford to alienate either group, five and a half weeks before Election Day. Yet for close students of Mr. Trump’s career and campaign, it all has a familiar ring. Over the years, he has issued a stream of needlessly cruel and seemingly insults — both on and off social media — that have inflamed the public. He declared on Twitter that Kim Novak, a reclusive actress at the time, “should sue her plastic surgeon,” sending her into hiding. He derided the appearance of a rival, Carly Fiorina, angering female voters by asking: “Can you imagine that, the face of our next president?” And he criticized the mother of a slain American soldier, musing that as a Muslim woman, she was not “allowed” to speak. Such fulminations have almost always arisen from Mr. Trump’s wounded pride, after he has been attacked or has suffered a setback. And they have frequently played out on Twitter, at hours of the day when much of America is asleep. The tweets about Ms. Machado were a reminder, said the Republican strategist Charles Black, that Mr. Trump “cannot let something drop until he proves he’s right, and it’s beside the point who’s right. ” Around midnight one night during the primary campaign, he posted an unflattering photo of Heidi Cruz, the wife of a Republican rival, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas. Early one morning, he alleged a sexual affair between two television anchors who had criticized him. Early one Saturday, he distributed an image of Mrs. Clinton, surrounded by falling cash and a star that many said was a Star of David and was . And at 11 one evening, he shared a digitally altered image of Jeb Bush appearing to pick his nose. “Late night Donald is back at it!” an aide to Mr. Bush replied at the time. On Friday, Mr. Trump was at it again between 3:20 and 5:30 a. m. issuing a series of indignant messages that mocked Ms. Machado and Mrs. Clinton, who raised the experience of the former beauty queen to hurt Mr. Trump during the debate. Mrs. Clinton, he wrote, “was duped and used by my worst Miss U. Hillary floated her as an ‘angel’ without checking her past, which is terrible!” A few minutes later, Mr. Trump theorized — again, without offering any evidence — that Mrs. Clinton had helped Ms. Machado become a United States citizen so that the Democratic nominee could mention the beauty queen in the debate to hurt Mr. Trump. Mr. Trump, in an interview on Friday afternoon, said he remained proud of his tweets. “Why would I have regrets? I’m a very truthful person, and I’m telling the truth. Now people understand it. And before the tweets, people didn’t understand it. ” It is unusual for a major party presidential nominee to directly control any online communications, let alone issue provocative, unsubstantiated claims without the filter of a campaign aide. But Mr. Trump is fixated on Twitter. He has nearly 12 million followers and has reveled in watching his stray thoughts become viral sensations on the social media platform. He has been fond of quoting a fan on Twitter, who described him as “the Ernest Hemingway of a hundred and forty characters. ” So like a car careening down a highway with no guardrails, Mr. Trump on Friday sent out one message after another. His suggestion of a sex tape featuring Ms. Machado sent his most zealous followers hunting for images. A few of them posted pornographic images of women who they believe resembled Ms. Machado. Ms. Machado on Friday called Mr. Trump’s online assault “cheap lies with bad intentions” and said that she would not be intimidated. Aides to Mrs. Clinton, who have long warned of his reckless ways on Twitter, said Mr. Trump’s behavior had once again bolstered their argument that he is mentally unfit for the presidency. “I mean, his latest Twitter meltdown is unhinged, even for him,” Mrs. Clinton said on Friday. “Really, who gets up at 3 o’clock in the morning to engage in a Twitter attack against a former Miss Universe?” she asked. Many wondered aloud on Friday whether Mr. Trump’s erratic behavior is the result of disorienting insomnia, since he regularly boasts of needing only a few hours of sleep. But Mr. Trump quickly rejected that theory. “For those few people knocking me for tweeting at three o’clock in the morning, at least you know I will be there, awake, to answer the call!” Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter. Not everyone in his life seems so sure. Asked this year which habit she wished her husband would quit, Melania Trump gave a answer: tweeting. | 0fake |
Anatomy of a Media Conspiracy - The New York Times | Look, Mom, there I am in WikiLeaks. Right there among the rest of the media sellouts, Clinton shills and biased tools of the MSM who are apparently bent on destroying Donald J. Trump. Sarah Palin tweeted about me, Trump himself derided my actions in a stump speech and I’m pretty sure Bill O’Reilly just called on me to resign, if I’m reading the barrage of Twitter mentions correctly — and it is a barrage (or was before I stopped reading Twitter). This is all because of those “damn emails,” as Bernie Sanders would say, although he was referring to a different bunch of damn emails. These belonged to John Podesta, the Clinton campaign chairman whose hacked emails WikiLeaks has been releasing in daily batches over the last few days. In all, the emails offer a glimpse into the Clinton campaign as the crucible of you would expect. Pretty much any reporter who has covered this enterprise can attest to its stinginess with information and access to the candidate. Official interviews between reporters and campaign aides tend to be aggressively monitored and . Clinton recently broke an ignominious streak of 275 consecutive days without holding a formal news conference. As I detail in an article in this Sunday’s magazine, an argument actually broke out aboard the Clinton plane between campaign aides and the traveling press corps over whether it was O. K. for reporters to tweet the candidate’s apparent preference for Vladimir Putin as a dinner companion over Donald Trump (as revealed in a note scrawled on a clementine — it’s complicated, just read the article). But the leaked emails make for instructive reading nonetheless, though they can be somewhat uncomfortable, if you happen to be the author and recipient of a few of them. By way of background: In July of last year, I embarked on a profile of the former secretary of state a few months after she began seeking the Democratic nomination. True to form, her campaign was nervous and hypercontrolling from the outset, a point that I fleshed out in the story. I described, among other things, the experience of visiting Clinton’s Brooklyn headquarters and receiving, before I arrived, an email request from a press aide requesting that I keep “the office itself” off the record. In other words, they wanted me not to relay anything that I saw inside the entire space, as if I were being granted access to a Pentagon bunker or something. It was a ridiculous request that I refused. I also said no initially when the campaign said I could interview Secretary Clinton but only on the condition that we do it off the record. Reporters speak off the record to politicians all the time, but this was an unusual provision and felt slightly weird: a major candidate for president’s agreeing to speak to a reporter on the condition that readers not be privy? It would be one thing if the campaign had also agreed to an discussion, but it had not. I pleaded my case over a few weeks, but Clinton’s staff was not budging. I discussed the dilemma with my bosses — the principle at stake versus the payoff of what I could learn in an setting. Finally, I agreed to an interview. At the very least, I figured I could pitch Clinton directly on doing an actual interview without any mediation from her army of agonizers. Clinton and I spoke for about 45 minutes in a conference room of the Omni Mount Washington resort in Bretton Woods, N. H. She is, as advertised, “funny and thoughtful in and settings” (even the Clinton clichés are clichés at this point). Donors pay top dollar for the opportunity to experience this “funny and thoughtful Hillary in and settings. ” I paid only with annoyance and a few pounds of dignity. Nonetheless, it was a good discussion, and I learned some things. Clinton touched on a number of topics, from the psychological effects of the internet on young people, to the challenges of running for president as a woman, to how her experience seeking the presidency this time differed from 2008. After our conversation, I asked her aides if they would allow me to put any of our discussion on the record. It was their prerogative to decide, given the provision to which I had agreed. I sent large portions of the Clinton transcript in an email to Jennifer Palmieri, the campaign communications director. “These exchanges were pretty interesting,” I wrote. “Would love the option to use. ” Ideally Palmieri would have reviewed portions of the interview — about 2, 000 words — and come back with a simple “Fine, use what you want. ” There was nothing damning or embarrassing in there, at least that I could tell. I heard nothing for a few days. Palmieri shared my email with others in the campaign, including Podesta, apparently. Finally, after consulting with Clinton herself, Palmieri said they would agree to put two sections of the interview on the record. One of them was an icebreaker exchange between Clinton and me in which I mentioned that I had just seen a moose on the side of the New Hampshire road. This elicited an animated response from Clinton about how she herself had encountered lots of moose when she worked in Alaska one summer during college. Simple enough, right? Well, not quite. Palmieri demanded that I not include an aside that Clinton made in the midst of her moose monologue — about Sarah Palin. Now it can be told. “I always got a big kick out of Sarah Palin with all of her ‘We’re cooking up some moose stew here,’ ” Clinton told me. She did not seem to be belittling the former Alaska governor in any way, though I should also point out — and this does not come through in the transcript — that Clinton uttered her “we’re cooking up some moose stew here” line with a passable Palin impersonation. I have no idea why Clinton would not want this Palin aside in the article, though I’m guessing she did not want to invite a public with Palin, as can happen. As it turns out, one of the “newsier” takeaways from this week’s WikiLeaks trove involved the Palin remark. “NY Times’ Mark Leibovich Obeyed Request to Cut Palin Joke From Hillary Interview,” said a headline Tuesday in Breitbart, the adamantly news site. Putting aside that it wasn’t really a joke, the word “obeyed” here goes to the essence of the criticism, mockery and vitriol I’ve been receiving from the right in recent days. “Hillary, let’s make a deal!” Palin tweeted on Wednesday. “I’ll swap ya — my special moose chili recipe for your trick that lets you edit media coverage of yourself. ” Or as Trump put it Wednesday night at a rally in Florida, The Times granted Clinton “veto power over her quotes in a story,” he said. “Nobody ever called and said, ‘Mr. Trump, we’ve written this story, would you give us a little feedback?’ ” This is obviously not what happened in my case, but given the revealed in the leaked I can see how the uninitiated might get that impression. Politicians in fact go “off the record” with reporters with some frequency. As soon as the reporter grants the provision, he is effectively allowing “veto power” over that material. That part of the conversation remains private unless he or she says otherwise. That’s the “ trick” Palin was referring to. Trump, for his part, goes off the record with reporters all the time. Last September, I spent several hours over a period of a few weeks with the Donald himself for an article in this magazine. On several occasions, in the midst of our conversations, Trump would go off the record — usually with good reason. This was fine, understandable and, yes, the price of “doing business,” to adapt an unfortunate phrase that Palmieri used to sign off on our last email (“Pleasure doing business! ”). I wish Palmieri had not used those exact words, but there are in fact collusive aspects to these relationships. Political profiles are, by definition, an awkward dance that involves competing agendas, mutual cynicism and, in many cases, negotiation. It can involve great levels of trust and distrust at the same time. I’ve written a few hundred of these profiles over the years, and each dynamic is complicated for its own particular reasons. Looking back, I realize that Trump’s campaign was a relative pleasure to deal with compared with the coiled thicket of Clintonia. His was a simple and nimble operation, consisting at the time of just himself and his communications director, Hope Hicks. Decisions came fast and without obvious usually from the candidate himself. Trump was more than generous with his time, access and willingness to say provocative things. He was the in this regard, just as Clinton is the in other regards. But Trump was hardly unplugged or unaware. A lot of the stuff he said to me that he declared to be “off the record” was potentially harmful to him. He was fully conscious of where lines were, whom he did not want to be disparaging publicly and of what could bring needless offense. He trusted me to honor this agreement, and of course I did, and will continue to. If I had asked Trump, after the fact, whether I could put some of that material “on the record,” it would have been his right to say no, to exercise his veto power. As it turned out, there might have been one or two things I asked him if I could use in our final conversations, but I don’t recall exactly. Another advantage of writing about Trump: He does give you plenty to work with. For as as he was, Trump has been equally hostile to the “unfair” and “dishonest” press — increasingly so, and to a point where it’s reaching an unnervingly fevered pitch. “Without the press, Hillary Clinton would be nothing,” Trump railed Thursday at a rally in Florida. The Times and The Washington Post are mere “cogs for a corrupt political machine,” he said. These are days of many cogs in Trump’s America — everything from the Republican officials who Trump says have abandoned him to the United States Justice Department to the women accusing him of sexual harassment. But the media is first among cogs, probably the first entity Trump will blame if he doesn’t win. “The corrupt establishment knows we are a great threat to their criminal enterprise,” Trump said Thursday. We are all part of the enterprise, “doing business” together. We know all the secret handshakes and tricks. The darkest of days could lie ahead for America, Trump warns, and only he has veto power to stop them. | 0fake |
Three dead as Storm Ophelia batters Ireland | LAHINCH, Ireland (Reuters) - Three people died as Tropical Storm Ophelia battered Ireland s southern coast on Monday, knocking down trees and power lines and whipping up 10-metre (30-foot) waves. Over 360,000 homes and businesses were without electricity with another 100,000 outages expected by nightfall, Ireland s Electricity Supply Board said, describing it as an unprecedented event that would effect every part of the country for days. Around 170 flights from Ireland s two main airports at Dublin and Shannon were canceled. Two people were killed in separate incidents when trees fell on their cars a woman in her 50s in the south east and a man on the east coast. Another man in his 30s died while trying to clear a fallen tree in an incident involving a chainsaw. The storm, downgraded from a hurricane overnight, was the worst to hit Ireland in half a century. It made landfall after 10:40 a.m. (0940 GMT), the Irish National Meteorological Service said, with winds as strong as 190 kph (110 mph) hitting the most southerly tip of the country. Coastal flooding was likely. This storm is still very active and there are still very dangerous conditions in parts of the country. Do not be lulled into thinking this has passed, the chairman of Ireland s National Emergency Coordination Group, Sean Hogan, told national broadcaster RTE. The armed forces were sent to bolster flood defenses, public transport services and hospitals were closed and schools across Ireland and Northern Ireland will remain shut for a second day on Tuesday. Hundreds of roads were blocked by fallen trees, Hogan said. Photos on social media showed roofs flying off buildings, including at Cork City soccer club s Turner s Cross stadium where the roof of one stand had collapsed. Prime Minister Leo Varadkar advised people to stay indoors. The transport minister said it was not safe to drive. The storm winds were due to peak between 1600 GMT and 1800 GMT in Dublin and Galway, two of Ireland s most populous cities, and later on Monday in northern areas. Britain s meteorological service put an Amber Weather Warning into effect for Northern Ireland from 1400-2100 GMT, saying the storm posed a danger to life and was likely to cause transport cancellations, power cuts and flying debris. It is expected to move towards western Scotland overnight and impactful weather is expected in other western and northern parts of the United Kingdom, it said. British media are comparing Ophelia to the Great Storm of 1987, which subjected parts of the United Kingdom to hurricane strength winds 30 years ago to the day. The Irish government said the storm was likely to be the worst since Hurricane Debbie, which killed 11 in Ireland in 1961. It passed close to a western Ireland golf course owned by U.S. President Donald Trump, who has been planning a wall to protect its greens from coastal erosion. Similar storms in the past have changed the shape of stretches of the Irish coastline, climatologists said. | 0fake |
Rush Limbaugh Squirms And Stammers As A Caller Debunks His LIES About Guns And Obama (VIDEO) | Just about every day, Rush Limbaugh s big fat lies are systematically exposed and debunked online by a variety of sources, and it never stops being awesome. But when it comes from one of his own dittoheads and on his own show, no less it s especially entertaining. Not only is it fun to hear callers stick it to him, it s even more fun to watch Limbaugh squirm and pluck his chest, desperately struggling to wiggle out of the call.Such was the case on Tuesday following President Obama s executive order to expand background checks and to provide additional funding for mental health treatment and new resources for the FBI and the ATF.During the January 5 edition of his radio show, Limbaugh was ranting about something he yanked out of his diseased bunghole, suggesting that Obama s executive order forces patients to tell their doctors where they re storing their firearms and ammo. Of course, this is total hooey, and Limbaugh would ve continued to elaborate on his lie if it hadn t been for an industrious and pro-gun caller who totally undermined Limbaugh s entire rant with the, you know, facts.Hashtag flop-sweat.The caller noted that there are, in fact, state-level statutes in place already that mandate doctors to ask mental health patients if they believe they re a danger to themselves, but there s nothing in either state law or Obamacare or in Obama s executive order demanding that doctors known where patients are hiding their weapons. Nothing. It doesn t exist. Limbaugh made it up.Via Media Matters:CALLER: [Y]ou re telling a half-truth, at least for my state a half-truth for my state. You need to get the information from the pamphlets that were sent out to health professionals at that time for each state. And we weren t it does not say you ask where the gun is. It asks sensible things like are you going to hurt yourself? If they are, of course, stupid enough to say yes, you re, you know do you have access to ways are you planning on hurting someone else? But nothing on that says that I have to ask him, Where is your gun? and so forth. I got that information and that was from my state, not from Obama. That was from my state, and I know federal trickles down to state, but I take a little issue with some of your blanket statements when most of it was common sense prior to that, but it is state statute in Illinois a long time ago that if, say grandma has dementia and she lives with you, that you have a certain way to store that, and that s just called gun responsibility.Limbaugh stammered and tried desperately to dodge the truth. The caller, meanwhile, kept hammering away, noting that it s perfectly acceptable to, for instance, call the police if we think someone in our household is a danger to him or herself. The caller refers to this action as a civic responsibility. Needless to say, Limbaugh s call-screener will likely be spending the New Year looking for a new job.By the way, you have to listen to the audio of the call just to hear Limbaugh completely choking on the truth.Featured image via video screen grab. | 1real |
WHOA! TRUTH BOMB On Failed Muslim Integration: We’ve got “honor killings, child marriage and genital mutilation” [Video] | 1real | |
Colombia's congress approves peace tribunals for ex FARC rebels | BOGOTA (Reuters) - Colombia s lower house of congress late on Monday backed a bill to regulate transitional justice under the nation s peace deal with Marxist FARC rebels, including special tribunals that will try guerrilla leaders for war crimes. The bill, which was approved with some modifications, is considered the cornerstone of the peace agreement signed last year between the government and the FARC, known until recently as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. The special courts will mete out alternative sentences like landmine removal for ex-guerrilla leaders who are convicted of war crimes committed during the five-decade war. Under the peace deal, those convicted will not serve time in traditional jails. The lower house made changes to the text agreed this month by the Senate, so it must now go for conciliation between the two chambers. Once there is agreement on alterations the bill will go to President Juan Manuel Santos to be signed into law. With this step, we move towards peace: transitional justice guarantees the rights of the victims and establishes the basis for the reconciliation of Colombians, Santos said on Twitter. Congress had until the end of the month to approve the law using a court-approved fast-track mechanism to reduce the number of required debates in an effort to implement the peace accord as quickly as possible. The FARC, now a political party known as the Revolutionary Alternative Common Force, has argued against any changes to the original agreement, including extradition for crimes committed after demobilization. The law, which would also apply to members of the military who have been accused of atrocities, is part of the agreement that allowed more than 11,000 members of the FARC - combatants and others - to lay down their arms and enter politics. With the modifications, the FARC will be able to participate in politics, but face the risk of losing benefits if they committed sexual abuse against minors. They can be also be extradited for crimes committed after the culmination of the peace process. We have achieved an agreement with teeth, said Rodrigo Lara, president of the lower house. Any FARC member who commits a another crime will immediately leave the special regime and go to the ordinary jurisdiction. Sexual crimes will not be protected. The leader of the FARC, Rodrigo Londono, a presidential candidate for next year s election, has said any changes put at risk the implementation of the peace agreement. Under the agreement the FARC will have 10 guaranteed seats in Congress until 2026. The group has announced a slate of candidates for elections next year. | 0fake |
Baseball Players Who Called Obama ‘F*cking Watermelon Eatin Baboon’ Won’t Be Punished (IMAGES/VIDEO) | A group of Saint Louis University baseball players won t be punished after an insanely racist conversation they had amongst themselves became public. While it might seem that a group of students in a position to represent the school might face some form of discipline if they were to, say. call the President a baboon, reference multiple awful stereotypes about black people, and complain that a colored is running the country. Unfortunately, the school is continuing a proud American tradition almost as ancient as the sentiments these students were busted expressing: protecting sports teams from facing the music for their actions.Last May, the team traveled to Washington, D.C., where the conversation in a pitchers-only GroupMe chat swiftly went from where do we eat to Donald Trump s Inner Thoughts. One player suggested the KFC in the White House you know, because all black people eat fried chicken (har har). Another helpfully added that They got rivers of the grape kind there, another reference to a popular African-American stereotype among stupid people. I heard they got a colored running the country, someone else said. This Tru? Another player replied, Unfortunately.. It is. The asker responded, F*cking watermelon eating baboon. and Luke Sommerfeld needed a MacBook charger.via DeadspinIt s unclear if Luke ever found his charger, but one thing is for certain the pitchers on the Saint Louis University baseball team are a bunch of racist f*cks.One of the players texted a screenshot of the message to his roommate, former team manager Brendan Twomey, who held on to it for almost a year until his girlfriend saw it on her phone. Together, the two filed a complaint to the university. Deadspin gives a brief rundown of the events that transpired: The report was filed on April 4On April 5, Twomey and his girlfriend spoke to a university investigator.On April 11, after not having heard anything about the status of the investigation, Twomey and his girlfriend sent the image to the Black Student Alliance, who posted it to their Facebook page. Dr. Mona Hicks, SLU s Dean of Students, said there had been a miscommunication and a meeting to discuss the case was supposed to be held the next day.But, according to SLU s bias-related incident report log, the investigation had been closed on April 7 and labeled not applicable for discipline. When I received that screenshot, obviously I knew it was wrong, but I was in a tough situation because I didn t want to necessarily hurt anybody, Twomey said as he explained his reasoning for holding onto the screenshot for so long. You become close [to the players] because you do spend so much time with them, so you overlook [that]. At the same time, I felt extremely disrespected. I knew there should be some sort of punishment, but I didn t know how to go about that, he added.Asked about her decision to fail to punish her racist baseball players, Hicks was full of excuses. If I were to directly state to you, You suck because of all of your social identities that God gave you. That would be wrong. That would require some adjudication, Hicks said in defense of giving her school s pitching rotation a pass on the horrible things they said. We also need to respect laws. This was a private conversation, or at least the perception of private between in-group parties. Hicks did not explain what privacy laws were broken, though the answer to that is none. One of the players sent the screenshot to someone who showed it to someone else. No one hacked anyone, no one took someone s phone without permission. All of the information was given willingly. But, hey she was trying to protect these students right to privacy rather than avoiding a disruption of the season that might lead to the team failing to make it to the playoffs two years in a row (ultimately, they did not), right?Instead, the players chose to participate in a facilitated dialogue about what they did and the team s four captains wrote a letter to the school newspaper apologizing for that racist thing their teammates did: The leaders and captains of the team would like to extend an apology to anyone offended by the bias messages. We, too, are frustrated and feel that the comments do not accurately reflect the values that we hold. So far, the only person to face any real punishment is Twomey, who has been harassed since he blew the whistle on the players racist conduct. The Riverfront Times reports:Two days later, Twomey says he awoke to discover his roommate had sloshed chewing tobacco spit on the floor outside his bedroom door, as well as the kitchen sink. Fingernail clippings had been prominently placed on the towel Twomey uses to clean his glasses.(In a Wednesday Facebook post from Pulphus, Twomey s roommate was identified as SLU pitcher Brett Shimanovsky in fact, Shimanovsky appears to be the very same player/roommate who earlier provided Twomey with a screenshot of the racist chat thread. Twomey himself declined to answer questions about his roommate s identity, but says the roommate has since voluntarily moved out. Shimanovsky did not respond to a message seeking comment.) I consider this retaliation for filing a bias incident report, Twomey says in a video documenting Shimanovsky s actions:Twomey says he is disappointed that the university has not in any way punished the players, whom he says should have been forced to miss a conference tournament (but that clearly was not an option in the eyes of the school, of course). He calls the captains letter an insult, though he notes that the team s coach, Darin Hendrickson, did take the time to discuss the issue with him. He said he was aware there was a culture problem on the baseball team, a culture problem of entitlement, privilege and immaturity. He also said it was one of his biggest regrets that he hadn t recruited more diverse players, Twomey recalled. He adds that there are racial issues that need to be confronted.It started a dialogue and frankly it needs to be continued, the student says. Hopefully, this issue will light a fire under the university and get them to really dedicate themselves to the SLU mission of diversity and inclusion. Featured image via screengrab | 1real |
Alyssa Milano: Up to Women to Remove Trump from Office | Actress Alyssa Milano says the task of “removing” President Donald Trump from office is up to the women of the United States. [“Trump has proven that he really can’t take the heat in the White House kitchen. But, he won’t get out of it, either. His ego won’t let him. Removing him will be up to us,” the Who’s the Boss actress wrote in an essay published in Marie Claire. Milano says the “crushing, blow” of Trump’s election spurred women to begin “organizing the resistance. ” The actress writes: “Most of us thought — no, assumed — that when we woke up on November 9, 2016, we’d be looking into the poised and confident face of the first female president. We stepped up! The powerful Hillary Clinton, a lifelong civil servant, politician, wife, mother, and former First Lady seemed to embody all the glorious elements of a modern leader. Instead, we arose to the sinister smirk of her opponent, the ‘dark horse.’ All we heard were our hearts drop over the deafening mic drop. ” The actress later describes Trump as “an egomaniac with no political experience, questionable business ethics, and a crude moral compass” who “has been charged with running our big, beautiful, diverse, country. ” Milano’s essay came on International Women’s Day, which saw #DayWithoutAWoman protests around the world and in the U. S. organized by leftist Women’s March activists. The actress says Trump’s election forced women to begin “fighting back with marches, rallies and town hall meetings. ” “So, with powerful hearts and pussies, we began the fight,” she writes. “We grabbed back. We realized the power of our collective voices and awakened a sleeping, feminist giant. She’s smart. She’s beautiful. She’s strong. She’s pissed. ” “Feminine power is boundless. Women can change the world. We already have … and we’re not giving up now. The march goes on. ” Milano was an early supporter of Senator Bernie Sanders’ presidential bid. She’s spent much of her time on social media slamming Trump’s policies. Follow Jerome Hudson on Twitter @jeromeehudson | 0fake |
To get around Congress, Obama turns to city halls | WASHINGTON — President Obama has quietly racked up a series of legislative victories during the past few months as lawmakers have enthusiastically embraced his calls for a higher minimum wage, paid sick leave and universal pre-kindergarten.
Instead of Capitol Hill, those victories happened in city halls, state houses and county buildings far from Washington.
At least six major cities — Chicago, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Seattle, Tacoma, Wash., and Washington, D.C. — have passed paid sick leave laws in the four months since Obama called for state and local action in this year's State of the Union Address. Since the 2013 address when Obama called for an increase in the minimum wage, 17 states and six major cities have taken action, including Los Angeles last week.
Obama's state-and-local strategy may be unprecedented in its scope and ambition. Though previous administrations have appointed top advisers to listen to concerns of state and local officials, the Obama White House appears to be the first to aggressively use those same channels to encourage them to adopt Obama's policies.
"It is a change in the paradigm, where we used to sit passively by waiting for elected officials to come to us. We think we can have a more substantial impact if we collaborate," said Valerie Jarrett, the assistant to the president for public engagement and intergovernmental affairs.
"I think the president has always had the perspective that change always happens from the ground up, and our state and local officials are oftentimes more influenced by the will of the American people than the politics in Washington would seem to indicate," Jarrett said in an interview.
Obama has no formal authority over state and local lawmakers, so his persuasion is a form of soft power — the "phone" part of what Obama has described as a "pen-and-phone" strategy to take action in the absence of congressional cooperation.
He's found fertile ground in Democratic-run cities such as Seattle, where Mayor Ed Murray helped push for a minimum wage and paid leave laws that have gone into effect since April.
"President Obama recognizes that good ideas are being incubated at the local level, and those are ideas that are going to go to scale nationally," Murray said. That recognition can go a long way in a city such as Seattle, which often doesn't get the national attention East Coast cities do. "The president of the United States recognizing us only helps us. We do other things beside e-commerce and coffee," Murray said.
There's also resistance. Jon Russell is a councilman in Culpeper, Va., and the director of the American City County Exchange, a year-old initiative of the small-government American Legislative Exchange Council.
Russell said states — not cities, not Congress and not the president — should be the primary regulator of labor conditions. Obama, he said, is "hop-skipping over the states."
"With the number of states that have now turned to the opposite political party, he doesn't have the allies there that he used to," Russell said. "To work with the urban areas to push his agenda is not surprising. It's the only allies he really has."
The strategy has been more effective on some policies than others. Since last September, more than 200 mayors have signed on to the My Brother's Keeper initiative, a commitment to help boys and young men of color. But since Obama called for states to offer free community college in January, only a handful have moved in that direction.
The state-and-local strategy effort has been particularly effective on paid leave policies, which Obama championed in his State of the Union Address this year. "Forty-three million workers have no paid sick leave — 43 million. Think about that," Obama said. "So I'll be taking new action to help states adopt paid leave laws of their own."
That pledge came with a $1 million budget from the Department of Labor to help fund feasibility studies for state and local governments, which will begin to be awarded this summer.
Obama dispatched Jarrett and Labor Secretary Tom Perez on a "Lead on Leave" tour of cities that have adopted paid leave policies. Jarrett went to Philadelphia and Chicago; Perez has been to Portland, Ore., Pawtucket, R.I., St. Petersburg, Fla., and Seattle.
Tuesday, Perez will be in Minneapolis, which just adopted a paid leave policy for city employees this month.
Perez said it's a mistake to view the state-and-local strategy as separate from a larger effort. "Our strategy is an all-of-the-above-and-then-some strategy," he said.
He said Obama will continue to use executive orders, as he did when he increased the minimum wage for federal contractors to $10.10 an hour.
"We want Congress to act, and I'm confident that it's a when question, not an if question. But we're also not going to wait around for Congress to act," Perez said.
Although focusing on city councils may seem small compared with the sweeping congressional legislation early in Obama's presidency, state minimum wage laws will raise the pay of more than 7 million people by 2017. (That number, which comes from the White House Council of Economic Advisers, includes people making just above minimum wage who were helped indirectly because their wages are increased accordingly.)
"That's nothing to sneeze at. That's progress," Jarrett said.
San Francisco passed the first paid sick time law in the nation in 2006, requiring all employers to grant one hour of paid sick time for every 30 hours worked. Three states and 18 cities now have paid sick leave laws on the books, according to A Better Balance, a New York-based legal advocacy group that tracks such laws.
A year ago, advocates had a hard time breaking through the public consciousness on the issue, said the group's co-president, Sherry Leiwant. After a White House Working Families Summit last year, and again after January's State of the Union Address, there's been an "explosion" of interest by state and local lawmakers, she said.
"The White House leadership on this issue has been huge. It's had a real impact," Leiwant said. "That influence on mayors or governors, who are Democrats but haven't paid a lot of attention to this issue, or they want to be pro-business Democrats, this gives them a lot of cover."
A Better Balance still favors a national law that would cover everyone, but while the government is divided at the national level, "the best strategy is to go to localities and states."
A city-by-city strategy can be painstaking and legally complicated. Every state grants different home rule powers to cities — and even different powers to different-sized cities in the same state.
Philadelphia was able to pass a paid leave bill applying to private-sector workers, but Pittsburgh's law applies only to some non-union city workers. Pittsburgh City Councilwoman Natalia Rudiak credits Obama for giving her city's effort "a lot of momentum," but she said more cities need to put pressure on the state Legislature to adopt statewide law.
There's also pushback from the opposite direction. Last month, the Pennsylvania Senate voted 37-12 to preempt the Philadelphia law, taking the power to regulate sick leave out of the hands of local governments.
That bill's sponsor, state Sen. John Eichelberger Jr., said it's untenable to have 2,562 municipalities with different labor standards, forcing businesses to comply with a patchwork of rules.
"Philosophically, I have a real problem with President Obama going to a municipality and trying to accomplish an agenda, whether it's liberal or conservative or otherwise," he said. "It's just not the place to adopt these policies."
Obama has opened an entirely new frontier of presidential power by turning to state and local governments, said Matthew Eshbaugh-Soha, who studies the effect of presidential persuasion at the University of North Texas.
"I'm really struck by, one, why hasn't anybody thought of this before? And two, this could be a very effective strategy," Eshbaugh-Soha said. "At a time when executive orders are becoming particularly controversial and you're not able to break through the gridlock of Congress, I think it's ingenious."
He's skeptical that the effort will put much pressure on members of Congress who don't support Obama's policies.
Jarrett said the effort is starting to snowball. She said some city leaders agreed with paid leave on principle but were reluctant to pass what could be seen as burdensome regulations in a difficult economy. As more cities and states have passed those policies, it's emboldened others.
"Success begets success," she said. "What the evidence has begun to show is it's not a burden but an investment that is starting to pay off."
Indeed, Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter vetoed two paid leave bills in 2011 and 2013. But three weeks after Obama's State of the Union Address this year, Nutter reversed course.
What changed? Nutter said the economy was better, and the bill contained key compromises to accommodate small businesses. Nutter spokesman Mark McDonald said he was unaware of any role Obama had in getting the bill passed.
Bill Greenlee, the councilman who sponsored the measure, said Nutter "completely turned a corner" on paid leave when the president put it on his agenda. "I gotta think that when the president mentions sick leave in his State of the Union, and if you're a Democrat and a supporter of the president's agenda in general, that's gotta have an effect," Greenlee said.
Nutter did make a symbolic nod to Obama's influence in signing the paid leave bill: He signed it with a pen Obama gave him — after the president used it to sign an unemployment compensation bill. The only other time Nutter used that pen was on an executive order raising the minimum wage for city contractors to $12 an hour. | 0fake |
Colombia Peace Deal Is Defeated, Leaving a Nation in Shock - The New York Times | BOGOTÁ, Colombia — A Colombian peace deal that the president and the country’s largest rebel group had signed just days before was defeated in a referendum on Sunday, leaving the fate of a war suddenly uncertain. A narrow margin divided the vote, with 50. 2 percent of Colombians rejecting the peace deal and 49. 8 percent voting in favor, the government said. The result was a deep embarrassment for President Juan Manuel Santos. Just last week, Mr. Santos had joined arms with leaders of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or the FARC, who apologized on national television during a signing ceremony. The surprise surge by the “no” vote — nearly all major polls had indicated resounding approval — left the country in a dazed uncertainty not seen since Britain voted in June to leave the European Union. And it left the future of rebels who had planned to rejoin Colombia as civilians — indeed, the future of the war itself, which both sides had declared over — unknown. Both sides vowed they would not go back to fighting. Mr. Santos, who appeared humbled by the vote on television on Sunday, said the that his government had signed with the FARC would remain in effect. He added that he would soon “convene all political groups,” especially those against the deal, “to open spaces for dialogue and determine how we will go ahead. ” Rodrigo Londoño, the FARC leader, who was preparing to return to Colombia after four years of negotiations in Havana, said he, too, was not interested in more war. “The FARC reiterates its disposition to use only words as a weapon to build toward the future,” he said in a statement. “With today’s result, we know that our challenge as a political party is even greater and requires more effort to build a stable and lasting peace. ” The question voters were asked was simple: “Do you support the final agreement to end the conflict and construct a stable and enduring peace?” But it was one that had divided this country for generations, as successive governments fought what seemed to be a war without an end and the Marxist FARC rebels dug into the forest for a hopeless insurgency. To many Colombians who had endured years of kidnappings and killings by the rebels, the agreement was too lenient. It would have allowed most fighters to start lives as normal citizens, and rebel leaders to receive reduced sentences for war crimes. “There’s no justice in this accord,” said Roosevelt Pulgarin, 32, a music teacher who cast his ballot against the agreement on a rainy day at an elementary school in Bogotá, the capital. “If ‘no’ wins, we won’t have peace, but at least we won’t give the country away to the guerrillas. We need better negotiations. ” María Fernanda González, 39, an administrator at a telecommunications company who voted against the deal, said she simply did not trust the FARC. “Why didn’t they turn in their arms and tell the world what happened to the people they kidnapped, as a gesture during the talks?” she asked. Her household seemed to reflect the deep divides in Colombia, with her husband, Carlos Gallon, 42, an engineer, voting for the deal. Mr. Gallon said the country had no choice but to stop fighting. But still, he admitted, “I understand why she is voting no. ” The referendum result overturned a timetable intended to end the FARC insurgency within months. The rebels had agreed to immediately abandon their battle camps for 28 “concentration zones” throughout the country, where over the next six months they would hand over their weapons to United Nations teams. Under the agreement, fighters were expected to be granted amnesty. Those suspected of being involved in war crimes would be judged in special tribunals with reduced sentences, many of which were expected to involve years of community service work, like removing land mines once planted by the FARC. On Sunday, the government said it had sent negotiators to Havana to begin discussing the next steps with the rebels. After the president’s statement that he was reaching out to opposition leaders in the Colombian Congress like former President Álvaro Uribe, experts predicted a potentially tortured process in which Mr. Uribe and others would seek harsher punishments for FARC members, especially those who had participated in the drug trade. “Everyone has said, including those who sided ‘no,’ that they could renegotiate the deal, but obviously that would have political challenges,” said César Rodríguez, the director of the Center for Law, Justice and Society, a nongovernmental organization in Colombia focusing on legal issues. “It was a small majority, but a valid majority, and that has consequences. ” On Sunday night, politicians who had strongly opposed the deal were already signaling that it was time to negotiate more stringent terms with the rebels. “We want to redo the process,” said Francisco Santos, a vice president under Mr. Uribe, who was against the deal but supports an eventual peace with the FARC. “In democracy, sometimes you win, but sometimes you lose. ” The war left brutal scars in Colombia. About 220, 000 people were killed in the fighting, and six million were displaced. An untold number of women were raped by fighters, and children were given Kalashnikov rifles and forced into battle. Unable to put down the insurgency, the government turned in the countryside to paramilitary groups run by men who became regional warlords. The state seemed swept aside in the fighting. In the end, the war lasted so long that it might have been difficult for many Colombians to forgive the FARC. “The adults that were born before the war now number very few,” said Juan Gabriel Vásquez, a novelist who voted for the deal. “As a society, we are a massive case of stress, because we have grown up in the midst of fear, of anxiety, of the noise of war. ” Many people lost because of the outcome. Among them was President Santos, who had staked his legacy on the peace deal and had been rumored as a possible contender for the Nobel Peace Prize. FARC members, who had been on the run in the jungle for decades, saw their hopes of rejoining Colombia as political leaders, including 10 seats in Congress, suddenly dashed for the time being. Perhaps the biggest winner on Sunday was Mr. Uribe, the former president, and the Colombian far right, which had vowed to defeat the deal at the ballot box. Mr. Uribe had argued that the agreement was too lenient on the rebels, who he said should be prosecuted as murderers and drug traffickers. “Peace is exciting, the Havana agreement disappointing,” Mr. Uribe wrote on Twitter on Sunday after casting his “no” vote. In the end, a small majority of Colombians agreed with him. | 0fake |
The Democratic Party Has Never Done This Before, And It’s A Big Victory For Human Rights | The draft version of the Democratic Party platform released on Friday evening contains a provision pushing for an end to the death penalty in America. It is something the party has never done before, even though it has fielded candidates opposed to the criminal punishment.Progressives are rightly pointing it out as a considerable move in the right direction.The latest draft of the party s platform, released Friday, says the death penalty has proven to be a cruel and unusual form of punishment that has no place in the United States of America. The inclusion of the provision represents a victory of sorts for Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders a longtime opponent of the punishment who has said he is remaining in the presidential race in order to fight for progressive causes.Sanders offered mild praise for the platform Friday evening, tweeting, The Democratic Platform includes some accomplishments that will begin to move this country in the right direction. The party platform is not binding, and presumptive nominee Hillary Clinton has not completely come out against the penalty. During the primary debates, Clinton said she believed it had very limited use in the case of the most extreme crimes, like terrorist attacks similar to 9/11.The inclusion of anti-death penalty language continues the forward momentum seen over the last few years in which several states have banned the practice.The United States is only one of 36 countries in the world that still has capital punishment. It is banned in 103 countries, and in another 50 countries it has not been used for 10 years while still remaining on the books.Executions have been trending downwards in America over the last few years. In 2009, 52 people were executed, dropping to 35 in 2014 and 28 in 2015. So far in 2016, 14 people have been executed in the United States with the most recent being Earl Forrest on May 11, 2016 in Missouri. Forrest killed two people in a drug dispute, then killed a sheriff s deputy in an ensuing shootout.Featured image via Flickr | 1real |
RACIST OPRAH MAKES SAME MISTAKE…TWICE | Just remember, the woman who believes Hillary is the best candidate for the job because she has a vagina, is the same person who thought America needed the first Black President to bring us together Never mind that the only thing keeping Hillary from spending the next two decades in jail is the first black President Oprah endorsed 8 years ago.Oprah Winfrey is throwing her support behind Hillary Clinton.Winfrey spoke with ET s Nancy O Dell at the premiere of her new OWN drama, Greenleaf, and the media mogul opened up about the possibility of America electing its first female president. I really believe that is going to happen, said Winfrey, 62. It s about time that we make that decision. Regardless of your politics, it s a seminal moment for women, she continued. What this says is, there is no ceiling, that ceiling just went boom! It says anything is possible when you can be leader of the free world. I m with her, Oprah added, touting Clinton s campaign slogan and effectively endorsing the former Secretary of State. Clinton, the presumptive Democratic Party nominee for president, was also recently endorsed by President Barack Obama, who declined to back any candidate until the primaries had ended. ET | 1real |
JUST IN: Obama Regime Helped Terror Group #Hezbollah Traffic Drugs In U.S “So The Iran Nuke Deal Would Go Ahead”…Proceeds Were Allegedly Used To Design New IED’s That Killed US Troops In Iraq | This could be one of the largest scandals of our time. Meanwhile, back in Washington it s all about Trump and Russia, Russia, Russia.The Obama administration has been accused of sabotaging an operation to stop Hezbollah smuggling drugs into the US so that the nuclear deal with Iran could proceed.In a stunning expos by Politico, the former US President s officials are said to have opened the door for trafficking and money laundering operations by the terror group founded by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.The nuclear deal agreed to scrap crippling economic sanctions on Iran in return for a promise from to Tehran to stop nuclear development. By putting themselves between the DEA and Hezbollah, the Obama administration helped the militant group grow into a global security threat that is suspected of designing IEDs used to kill American troops, the report said. Donald Trump s White House slapped at his predecessor Sunday night, with press secretary Sarah Sanders tweeting that the story shows a contrast of President Trump s success against ISIS vs. President Obama s appeasement of terrorists. And a Republican House leadership aide told DailyMail.com on Monday that the Obama White House was the worst of the worst when it came to fighting terrorism in the ways that mattered most. The Drug Enforcement Administration led a complex venture called Project Cassandra to tackle the criminality of the Lebanese militant group from 2008 on.But it is claimed Obama s people threw down a number of roadblocks, effectively paving the way for Hezbollah s illegal activities including cocaine smuggling into the US which agents believe raked in $1 billion for the terror group. DEA agents claim the Obama administration stopped them arresting key figures linked to Hezbollah as an agreement on the Iran nuclear deal approached and scrapped Project Cassandra entirely once the terms were agreed in 2015. Hezbollah s $1 billion-a-year international criminal operation. International drug smuggling operation founded by the mastermind of the bombing of Beirut bombing that killed 241 US Marines in 1983.The organization is now expected to be working with the Zetas cartel to smuggle tonnes of cocaine into the United States One of the world s top cocaine traffickers called The Ghost is a Hezbollah operative.Same man accused of selling chemical weapons to Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad.Hezbollah launders its drugs profits by allegedly shipping used cars from America to Africa and selling them.Money laundering also takes place through South America, the Middle East, and the US.Lebanese arms dealer Ali Fayad is a suspected top Hezbollah operative, according to Politico, and is believed to report to Vladimir Putin.Fayad is accused of plotting the murder of American government workers.Venezuela s vice president Tareck El Aissami is believed to be deeply involved in cocaine trafficking and is an ally of Hezbollah.Hezbollah is believed to be providing weapons and training to anti-American Shiite militias.An alleged Hezbollah drugs kingpin is based in Colombia and is accused of working with the Zetas cartel to smuggle cocaine into the US.Proceeds from the operations were allegedly used to design new IEDs that killed US troops in IraqThe nuclear deal agreed to scrap crippling economic sanctions on Iran in return for a promise from to Tehran to stop nuclear development.By putting themselves between the DEA and Hezbollah, the Obama administration helped the militant group grow into a global security threat that is suspected of designing IEDs used to kill American troops, the report said.David Asher, who helped establish Project Cassandra, told Politico: This was a policy decision, it was a systematic decision. They serially ripped apart this entire effort that was very well supported and resourced, and it was done from the top down. He added that the closer Obama came to finalizing the Iran nuclear deal, the more difficult the DEA s job became.The weapons agreement was announced in January 2016, which coincided with Project Cassandra officials being moved on to other assignments. Daily Mail | 1real |
WATCH: Jake Tapper BURIES Kellanne Conway For Lies And Hypocrisy About Terrorism Coverage | Jake Tapper laid into Kellyanne Conway on Tuesday over Donald Trump s claim that the media is covering up terrorist attacks.On Monday, Trump literally accused the media of ignoring terrorist attacks to keep the American people in the dark and to keep them in opposition to his Muslim ban. It s gotten to a point where it s not even being reported, Trump told U.S. Central Command. And in many cases, the very, very dishonest press doesn t want to report it. They have their reasons and you understand that. Except that the media has covered lots of terrorist attacks over the years, most of them extensively and journalists have risked their lives to report on some of them.Trump released a list of supposed undercovered terrorist attacks and the list somehow included Paris, Nice, and San Bernardino among other significant attacks even though the media exhaustively covered them.So CNN let Conway appear again on the network to answer for Trump s lies, and they apparently did that so she could get her ass handed to her by Jake Tapper.During the interview, Tapper demanded to know why Trump won t stop lying and refused to take Conway s bullshit when she attempted to spin. After he said that, the White House released a list of the attacks that he was supposedly referring to as, in his words, not even being reported, I want to put some footage of CNN reporters covering attacks that were on that list, Tapper said. Saying that we don t cover terrorism, that s just false. And, indeed, he did put the footage up and forced Conway to concede that not only did CNN cover many of the attacks on the list, they did a good job doing it.But Conway still tried to claim that Trump was somehow making a point by including those attacks and she soon began whining about how the media has covered Trump from the campaign trail to the White House.Apparently, the Wicked Witch of the West expected all the media coverage to be one big cheerleading squad for the Trump administration.That didn t fly with Tapper. That s a lovely spin, but that s not what he was saying Kellyanne, Tapper said, reminding her that Trump literally accused the media of not reporting on these attacks.And then Tapper went for the jugular and demanded to know why Trump has remained silent about a terrorist attack in Quebec, Canada that was committed against a mosque by a white right-wing Trump fan. President Trump has not said or tweeted one public word about this, Tapper said. You want to talk about ignoring terrorism, why hasn t the president offered his sympathy to our neighbors in the north? Mic. Dropped.Conway tried to claim that Trump is opposed to any loss of life, but the fact is that while he constantly whines about petty things on Twitter on a daily basis, he couldn t even be bothered to say anything about the attack in Quebec. In fact, all of the terrorist attacks Trump listed were committed by Muslim extremists, conveniently ignoring the higher number of terrorist attacks committed by white right-wingers in this country.Tapper even noted that Trump found time to tweet about the attack at the Louvre in Paris in which no lives were lost but completely ignored the Quebec attack that killed six innocent people.Here s the video via YouTube.Seriously, CNN and every other media outlets should permanently ban Kellyanne Conway from appearing on their programming. Even when confronted with the truth she continues to lie for Donald Trump and then spins by whining about media coverage. It s the only play she has in her playbook and it is embarrassing and pathetic.Featured Image: Screenshot | 1real |
U.S. firms push Washington to restart nuclear pact talks with Riyadh: sources | RIYADH/DUBAI (Reuters) - U.S. firms attracted by Saudi Arabia s plans to build nuclear reactors are pushing Washington to restart talks with Riyadh on an agreement to help the kingdom develop atomic energy, three industry sources said. Saudi Arabia has welcomed the lobbying, they said, though it is likely to worry regional rival Iran at a time when tensions are already high in the Middle East. One of the sources also said Riyadh had told Washington it does not want to forfeit the possibility of one day enriching uranium - a process that can have military uses - though this is a standard condition of U.S. civil nuclear cooperation pacts. They want to secure enrichment if down the line they want to do it, the source, who is in contact with Saudi and U.S. officials, said before U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry holds talks in Riyadh early next week. Another of the industry sources said Saudi Arabia and the United States had already held initial talks about a nuclear cooperation pact. U.S. officials and Saudi officials responsible for nuclear energy issues declined to comment for this article. The sources did not identify the U.S. firms involved in the lobbying. Under Article 123 of the U.S. Atomic Energy Act, a peaceful cooperation agreement is required for the transfer of nuclear materials, technology and equipment. In previous talks, Saudi Arabia has refused to sign up to any agreement with the United States that would deprive the kingdom of the possibility of one day enriching uranium. Saudi Arabia, the world s top oil producer, says it wants nuclear power solely for peaceful uses - to produce electricity at home so that it can export more crude. It has not yet acquired nuclear power or enrichment technology. Riyadh sent a request for information to nuclear reactor suppliers in October in a first step towards opening a multi-billion-dollar tender for two nuclear power reactors, and plans to award the first construction contract in 2018. Reuters has reported that Westinghouse is in talks with other U.S.-based companies to form a consortium for the bid. A downturn in the U.S. nuclear industry makes business abroad increasingly valuable for American firms. Reactors need uranium enriched to around 5 percent purity but the same technology in this process can also be used to enrich the heavy metal to a higher, weapons-grade level. This has been at the heart of Western and regional concerns over the nuclear work of Iran, which enriches uranium domestically. Riyadh s main reason to leave the door open to enrichment in the future may be political - to ensure the Sunni Muslim kingdom has the same possibility of enriching uranium as Shi ite Muslim Iran, industry sources and analysts say. Saudi Arabia s position poses a potential problem for the United States, which has strengthened ties with the kingdom under President Donald Trump. Washington usually requires a country to sign a nuclear cooperation pact - known as a 123 agreement - that forfeits steps in fuel production with potential bomb-making uses. Doing less than this would undermine U.S. credibility and risk the increased spread of nuclear weapons capabilities to Saudi Arabia and the region, said David Albright, a former U.N. weapons inspector and president of the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS). It is not clear whether Riyadh will raise the issue during Perry s visit, which one of the industry sources said could include discussion of nuclear export controls. Under a nuclear deal Iran signed in 2015 with world powers - but which Trump has said he might pull the United States out of - Tehran can enrich uranium to around the level needed for commercial power-generation. It would be a huge change of policy for Washington to allow Saudi Arabia the right to enrich uranium, said Mark Fitzpatrick, executive director of the Americas office at the International Institute for Strategic Studies think tank. Applying the golden standard of not allowing enrichment or preprocessing (of spent fuel) has held up a 123 agreement with Jordan for many years, and has been a key issue in U.S. nuclear cooperation with South Korea, said Fitzpatrick, a nuclear policy expert. The United States is likely to aim for restrictions, non-proliferation analysts say. These could be based on those included in the 123 agreement Washington signed in 2009 with the United Arab Emirates, which is set to start up its first South Korean-built reactor in 2018 and has ruled out enrichment and reprocessing. Perhaps Saudi Arabia is testing the Trump administration and seeing if the administration would be amenable to fewer restrictions in a 123 agreement, ISIS s Albright said. Saudi Arabia s nuclear plans have gained momentum as part of a reform plan led by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to reduce the economy s dependence on oil. Riyadh wants eventually to install up to 17.6 gigawatts (GW) of atomic capacity by 2032 - or up to 17 reactors. This is a promising prospect for the struggling global nuclear industry and the United States is expected to face competition from South Korea, Russia, France and China for the initial tender. Hashim bin Abdullah Yamani, head of the Saudi government agency tasked with the nuclear plans, has said the kingdom wants to tap its own uranium resources for self-sufficiency in producing nuclear fuel and that this is economically viable. As a nuclear conference in October, Saudi officials declined to comment when asked to expand on the topic. In 2015, before the Iran deal was signed, Prince Turki al-Faisal, a senior Saudi royal and former intelligence chief, said Riyadh would want the option to enrich uranium if Tehran had it. In October, Maher al-Odan, the chief atomic energy officer of KACARE, said Saudi Arabia had around 60,000 tonnes of uranium based on initial studies and that the kingdom wanted to start extracting it to boost the economy. Asked what would happen to the uranium after that, he replied: This is a government decision. | 0fake |
The Last Confirmation Bias Test of This Election | Leave a reply
Scott Adams – Last year in this blog I told you that Trump would change more than politics. I said he would forever change how you view reality. I’ll prove that to you today with a fun experiment.
At the end of this post I will give you a link to a very short video clip showing Hillary Clinton getting off her jet and into her car. Trump supporters will say she looks like she is drunk, or unsteady for some other health-related reason. And they will say it is obvious . Now try showing the clip to a Clinton supporter and watch how they see nothing wrong with the way she is walking.
Who is right?
The answer is that you have no way to know. Personally, I can see it both ways, depending on what frame of mind I’m in. When people on Twitter say she looks drunk, and I look at the clip immediately after they prime me, she indeed looks drunk. When my Clinton-supporting friend says he sees nothing unusual about her walking, suddenly it looks fine to me too.
Most of my readers today are probably Trump supporters, so you are likely to see Clinton’s walk as unsteady. Send the clip to your Clinton-supporting friend and see how much your perceptions differ on this. You’ll be amazed.
There might be an objective reality in our world. But our brains didn’t evolve to be able to see it. Our brains only evolved to do the job of keeping us alive so we could procreate. That means the reality you see – the movie in your head – can be totally different from mine, and almost certainly is. Yet we can both get by in this world.
Last year, when many observers were saying Trump was a stupid, under-informed clown, I was saying he was a Master Persuader. Pundits said he ignored facts because he didn’t know them or because he was a liar. I said he ignored facts because facts are useless for persuasion. Trump could learn lots of facts if he wanted to do so. But he knew it was a waste of time. These are two totally different views of reality. And yet they did not conflict. Clinton supporters still see the stupid, under-informed clown and I still see the Master Persuader. We live in totally different movies and yet we can still interact with each other, still eat and drink, still procreate when necessary.
Reality isn’t what you thought it was a year ago. Your movie isn’t my movie. But the good news is that you have the power to rewrite the coming scenes of your movie. And those scenes can be anything that isn’t ruled out by your own observations.
Now watch this Clinton video and notice how Clinton’s walk matches your expectations, no matter what your expectations are. That’s confirmation bias . And it is the most important thing you will ever learn. SF Source The Burning Platform Nov. 2016 Share this: | 1real |
OOPS! MIT Researchers Debunk Global Warming Data…Report Confirms President Trump Was Right To Pull Out Of Paris Climate Agreement | B b..but Al Gore and Barack Obama say Scientists were exposed for manipulating climate data during the 2011 Climategate scandal when 5,000 emails were released from scientists proving that the science behind their studies is inconclusive and mostly a result of manipulating climate data to fit the political message they were trying to convey.Three themes emerged from the emails that were released in the Climategate scandal: (1) prominent scientists central to the global warming debate are taking measures to conceal rather than disseminate underlying data and discussions; (2) these scientists view global warming as a political cause rather than a balanced scientific inquiry and (3) many of these scientists frankly admit to each other that much of the science is weak and dependent on deliberate manipulation of facts and data. ForbesA new report on global warming data has now proven President Donald Trump to be right to pull out of the Paris Agreement. The report analyzed climate data such as Global Average Surface Temperature (GAST), the NOAA, and HADLEY.SHFTPLan reports: According to the report, which has been peer reviewed by administrators, scientists and researchers from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.), and several of America s leading universities, the data is completely bunk: In this research report, the most important surface data adjustment issues are identified and past changes in the previously reported historical data are quantified. It was found that each new version of GAST has nearly always exhibited a steeper warming linear trend over its entire history. And, it was nearly always accomplished by systematically removing the previously existing cyclical temperature pattern. This was true for all three entities providing GAST data measurement, NOAA, NASA and Hadley CRU.As a result, this research sought to validate the current estimates of GAST using the best available relevant data. This included the best documented and understood data sets from the U.S. and elsewhere as well as global data from satellites that provide far more extensive global coverage and are not contaminated by bad siting and urbanization impacts. Satellite data integrity also benefits from having cross checks with Balloon data.The conclusive findings of this research are that the three GAST data sets are not a valid representation of reality. In fact, the magnitude of their historical data adjustments, that removed their cyclical temperature patterns, are totally inconsistent with published and credible U.S. and other temperature data. Thus, it is impossible to conclude from the three published GAST data sets that recent years have been the warmest ever despite current claims of record setting warming.Finally, since GAST data set validity is a necessary condition for EPA s GHG/CO2 Endangerment Finding, it too is invalidated by these research findings. (Full Abstract Report) Fox News reported on President Trump pulling out of the Paris Agreement per his campaign promise: he is leading. President Trump is withdrawing the United States from the Paris Climate Accord.It is the right decision for a number of reasons.First, the Paris Accord is being treated by many as a treaty with treaty obligations, but President Obama never submitted it to Congress for passage.Second, though President Trump could have left it in place and done nothing, his successor could have easily revived it if left in place.Third, the structure and implementation of the Paris Accord set a terrible precedent. President Obama worked for what amounts to a global agreement with voluntary measures, but those measures would impact the American economy. But, despite that impact, President Obama did not present the Paris Accord to Congress for ratification or debate. Members of the liberal establishment were outraged.Obama criticized President Trump s decision to pull out of the Paris Climate agreement with the following statement : A year and a half ago, the world came together in Paris around the first-ever global agreement to set the world on a low-carbon course and protect the world we leave to our children.It was steady, principled American leadership on the world stage that made that achievement possible. It was bold American ambition that encouraged dozens of other nations to set their sights higher as well. And what made that leadership and ambition possible was America s private innovation and public investment in growing industries like wind and solar industries that created some of the fastest new streams of good-paying jobs in recent years, and contributed to the longest streak of job creation in our history.Simply put, the private sector already chose a low-carbon future. And for the nations that committed themselves to that future, the Paris Agreement opened the floodgates for businesses, scientists, and engineers to unleash high-tech, low-carbon investment and innovation on an unprecedented scale.The nations that remain in the Paris Agreement will be the nations that reap the benefits in jobs and industries created. I believe the United States of America should be at the front of the pack. But even in the absence of American leadership; even as this Administration joins a small handful of nations that reject the future; I m confident that our states, cities, and businesses will step up and do even more to lead the way, and help protect for future generations the one planet we ve got. But of course, like all Champagne Socialists, their credo is do as I say, not as I do, with Obama jacking up his carbon footprint when abroad. Who could forget Obama s massive convoy during a recent speaking gig in Milan?The Independent Journal Review reported: Former President Barack Obama traveled to Italy this week to make a speech on climate change at the Seed & Chips: The Global Food Innovation Summit in the city of Milan.It seems like Obama has taken a page out of Leonardo DiCaprio s book of do as I say, not as I do and took a private jet to Milan. Not only that, he had a 14 car convoy to get into the city, which also included protection from above with a helicopter.It doesn t end there. According to The Daily Mail, 300 police officers were used to protect the former president.The fleet of 14 included multiple SUVs, police cars, and sedans not to mention a few motorcycles. Here s another look at the convoy:While in Milan, Obama also met with former Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, who was a close partner during their respective times in office. Gateway Pundit | 1real |
Trump son-in-law Kushner can serve as White House adviser: Justice Department | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump can hire his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, as a senior White House adviser without breaking federal anti-nepotism laws, the U.S. Department of Justice said. In a letter dated Jan. 20 posted on its website, the department’s Office of Legal Counsel said the president has special hiring authority that exempts White House positions from laws barring the president from naming a relative to lead a federal agency. The New York Times first reported the decision, saying it was posted to the department’s site on Saturday. Questions about Kushner’s role emerged as voters and lawmakers questioned potential conflicts of interest for Trump, given his wide-ranging business interests, history of employing family members, and the influence of his daughter Ivanka Trump, who is married to Kushner. The office of White House counsel had asked the Justice Department for a definitive opinion on Kushner’s role. The Justice Department said that if Trump chooses to officially hire Kushner and give him security clearance usually granted for White House staff, then conflict-of-interest laws would apply and Kushner would have to abide by their restrictions. “Congress has not blocked, and most likely could not block, the president from seeking advice from family members in their personal capacities,” the department wrote in its 14-page opinion. “Consequently, even if the anti-nepotism statute prevented the president from employing relatives in the White House as advisors, he would remain free to consult those relatives as private citizens,” it said. | 0fake |
(VIDEO) WHAT THE HECK! MICHELLE OBAMA STARS IN AWKWARD KICKBOXING VIDEO | Can she just go away? This is so bizarre no words for the pictures except UGH!Michelle Obama has posted a workout video online that shows her pumping iron, crunching her abs with a medicine ball, and smacking a punch-bag with a roundhouse kick. The two-minute clip shows Michelle in full workout gear in the gym with the family s personal trainer Cornell McClellan putting her through her paces.I THINK MOOCH HAS HIM BEAT-REMEMBER THE VIDEO OF BARACK WORKING OUT IN A WARSAW GYM? The First Lady tweeted the video to husband Barack Obama after the President posted his own film showing him going running in a suit and drinking water with Joe Biden in the Oval Office.Read more: Daily Mail | 1real |
TARGET CAVES AFTER CUSTOMERS BOYCOTT Of Transgender Bathroom Policy Takes Toll Bottom Line | Way to go! Target has suffered financially since the boycott over their transgender bathroom policy so they re making a move now so little kids don t have to be exposed to transponders using their bathroom. Target reportedly plans to spend $20 million on adding single-stall bathrooms to all of its locations by next year, in an apparent move to placate shoppers outraged over its transgender bathroom policy. It s clear that some of our guests like and some dislike our inclusive bathroom policy, Target Chief Financial Officer Cathy Smith told reporters in a media briefing, Fortune magazine reported Wednesday.Ms. Smith did not say whether the backlash had cost Target business, but added, We are not satisfied with our second quarter traffic and sales performance. The single-stall bathrooms, which are already in a vast majority of Target locations, are expected to be fully installed by March, Fortune reported.In April, the discount retailer sparked national backlash and calls for a boycott after announcing its transgender-friendly bathroom policy, which allows transgender employees and customers to use the bathroom that corresponds with their gender identity. Read more: WT | 1real |
SUSAN RICE Plays Race, Gender Bias Card On Why She’s Being ‘Picked On’ About ‘Unmasking’ Of Trump Associates | Susan Rice, the Obama national security adviser under fire over her alleged involvement in the unmasking of Trump associates during the 2016 presidential election, suggested in a fresh interview that race and gender might be playing a role in the scrutiny she s faced. PLEASE NOTE OUR PREVIOUS REPORT BELOW ON THE RADICAL PAST AND RACISM OF SUSAN RICE. The nerve of this woman who went on 5 morning shows after Benghazi and LIED to the American people! In an interview with journalist Michael Tomasky for New York Magazine, Rice reportedly questioned the criticism she s faced dating back to the Benghazi controversy. Why me? Why not Jay Carney, for example, who was then our press secretary, who stood up more? she asked.Tomasky noted in the piece that Carney isn t an African-American woman, of course and apparently asked Rice whether that is the key factor. Rice, in response, left the door open: I don t know I do not leap to the simple explanation that it s only about race and gender. I m trying to keep my theories to myself until I m ready to come out with them. It s not because I don t have any. But Rice mentioned other prominent female figures like Hillary Clinton and Condoleezza Rice who faced ad hominem attacks, suggesting a correlation.Asked about the comments, a Republican Capitol Hill source pushed back. This is screaming out for attention She s saying I don t know why they all started picking on me to begin with. As to the suggestion of race and gender being a factor, the source countered, then why would there be a subpoena for a white male? That was a reference to the fact that Rice is not the only focus of the congressional probe into unmasking. Investigators have issued subpoenas to three different agencies: NSA, CIA and FBI.Playing the victim is the usual tactic of leftists like Susan Rice she was a college radical before she cleaned up her resume and put on a business suit:RACIST VICTIM SUSAN RICE HAD A STRING OF FAILURES IN AFRICA BEFORE BENGHAZI HER RACIST CLAIM THAT NATIONAL SECURITY ISN T DIVERSE ENOUGH SO NOT AS EFFECTIVE CAUSED A FIRESTORM:From 1995 to 1997, Rice served as Special Assistant to President Bill Clinton and senior director for African Affairs at the NSC at the White House.The Daily Caller: U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice, reportedly the leading contender to be President Barack Obama s next national security adviser, failed during the 1990s to prevent unnecessary deaths in Rwanda, provide adequate security prior to the bombings of the embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, or deal effectively with Robert Mugabe s dictatorship in Zimbabwe.A former State Department military adviser to Africa thought Rice s inexperience caused President Bill Clinton s feckless response to the Rwandan genocide when she served as National Security Council director for International Organizations and Peacekeeping. And documents sent to The Daily Caller from the National Legal and Policy Center show Rice failed to take seriously repeated Islamist threats against the U.S. embassies in the prelude to deadly bomb attacks. This woman has ZERO credibility and is a true racist who would be tossed out of her job if she were white and said government was too black. Furthermore, she s giving a commencement speech and she s politicizing it!SUSAN RICE FELT STUDENTS SHOULD BE REQUIRED TO TAKE BLACK HISTORY: In a 1986 book by U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice, the future diplomat argued for the aggressive inclusion of a black history curriculum in American schools, claiming that its omission had crippling effects by providing a child with no more than a white interpretation of reality. She s yet another one of Obama s minions with a radical racist past who s pushing the Obama agenda of a fundamental transformation . Rice attended Stanford University and was a black radical back in the day is anyone surprised by this? Probably not In a White House often accused of being stacked with loyalists, President Obama s national security adviser said Wednesday there are too many white people in key government posts, endangering national security because they think alike.Speaking at Florida International University s commencement, Susan E. Rice, who is black, said a diversified government workforce is more likely to yield better outcomes than a predominantly white one.Referring to criticism that the U.S. national security workforce is white, male and Yale, Ms. Rice told the graduates, In the halls of power, in the faces of our national security leaders, America is still not fully reflected. By now, we should all know the dangers of groupthink, where folks who are alike often think alike, she said. By contrast, groups comprised of different people tend to question one another s assumptions, draw on divergent perspectives and experiences, and yield better outcomes. Her comments were reminiscent of Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who said in a speech in 2001, before Mr. Obama appointed her to the high court, I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn t lived that life. Ms. Rice elaborated in her speech on how having more minorities in the national security field would better protect the homeland.Read more: WT Read more: FOX News | 1real |
Trump discussed Mideast peace in call with Egypt's Sisi | (Reuters) - U.S. President-elect Donald Trump discussed laying the groundwork for peace in the Middle East in a phone call on Thursday with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, a Trump transition official said. The official did not know whether Trump and Sisi talked specifically about Egypt’s decision to postpone a vote set for Thursday in the U.N. Security Council on a resolution demanding that Israel end settlement building. | 0fake |
Kellyanne Conway: Obama’s Russia Sanctions Meant to ’Box In’ Donald Trump - Breitbart | In comments on CNN, Trump spokesperson Kellyanne Conway said that the Obama administration’s new moves against Russia are likely designed to “box in” Donald Trump before he even takes office. [Conway appeared on CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360 on December 30 and noted that accusations that Russia hacked the 2016 election are rising to a “fever pitch” since Donald J. Trump won the White House. She also pointed out that Obama seems to have motives other than serious foreign policy behind his moves. Kellyanne Conway wonders if Russian sanctions were intended to restrict Trump https: . https: . — Anderson Cooper 360° (@AC360) December 30, 2016, “Even those who are sympathetic to President Obama on most issues are saying that part of the reason he did this today was to quote, ‘box in’ Trump,” Conway said. Conway did not outright accuse the President of acting in bad faith. “I was quoting David Sanger’s piece in The New York Times,” Conway insisted. “I am merely saying that if The New York Times’ report is true and credible, that that would be very unfortunate if politics were the motivating factor here, but we can’t help but think that that’s often true. ” The incoming President’s adviser also pointed out that Trump is “not in favor of foreign governments interfering in our elections or interfering in our intelligence, but we’re also not in favor of our intelligence interfering with elections after the fact. ” Earlier that Friday, President Obama took the unusual action of ejecting dozens of Russian diplomats from the country as he ramped up his response to his charge that Russian hackers interfered in the November elections. Despite Obama’s constant claim, however, no actual proof has been forthcoming that Russia hacked our elections. In response to Obama’s ouster of 35 Russian officials, Russian strongman Vladimir Putin dismissed Obama’s actions and did not retaliate in kind as he has in the past. “Reserving the right to retaliate, we will not resort to the level of irresponsible ‘kitchen’ diplomacy,” Putin said in a Friday statement, calling it “regrettable” that Obama was choosing to end his administration with such a provocative action. Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail. com. | 0fake |
Spain's state prosecutor asks judge to jail Catalan parliament speaker: El Pais | MADRID (Reuters) - Spain s state prosecutor on Thursday asked the Spanish Supreme Court to jail the Catalan parliament s speaker and three lawmakers pending an investigation into their role in Catalonia s banned push for independence, El Pais reported. The Catalan parliament speaker, Carmen Forcadell, and five regional lawmakers testified on Thursday on charges of sedition, rebellion and misuse of public funds The prosecutor asked the judge to release two other regional lawmakers, according to the newspaper. It was not clear whether their release involved certain conditions. | 0fake |
Zimbabwe broadcaster on stand-by for address by military: ZBC workers | HARARE (Reuters) - Zimbabwe s state broadcaster ZBC was on Monday put on stand-by for an expected address by the military, a day after President Robert Mugabe failed to announce his resignation to an expectant nation, workers at the broadcaster said. The military seized power last week saying this was meant to arrest criminal elements around the president and on Sunday the ruling ZANU-PF party re-called Mugabe from his position as president and first secretary. | 0fake |
Comment on Wikileaks: Bill Clinton BOASTS of Hillary’s ‘Working Relationship’ with Muslim Brotherhood by toddyo1935 | Posted on October 27, 2016 by Pamela Geller
The bombshells about this criminal are now breaking daily. It’s not a question of Trump, it is an imperative that Hillary be defeated. If the people choose Hillary, then they must and will be punished. “Wikileaks: Bill Clinton Boasts of Hillary’s ‘Working Relationship’ with Muslim Brotherhood,” By John Hayward, Breitbart , October 26, 2016:
In a speech Bill Clinton gave at the home of Mehul and Hema Sanghani in October 2015, revealed to the public for the first time by WikiLeaks, former President Bill Clinton touted Hillary Clinton’s “working relationship” with the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohamed Morsi in Egypt as an example of her diplomatic skills.President Clinton also gave his wife a lot of credit for negotiating the Iran nuclear deal, in a passage that began with the standard Democrat “stuff happens” shrugging defense for foreign policy failures:
Finally, we live in a world, as I said, that’s full of good news and bad news. The United States cannot control it all, but we need a president who’s most likely to make as many good things happen as possible, and most likely to prevent big, bad things from happening. You can’t keep every bad thing from happening; who’s most likely to be able to get people involved in a positive way. Even the people who don’t like the Iran nuclear agreement concede it never would have happened if it hadn’t been for the sanctions. Hillary negotiated those sanctions and got China and Russia to sign off – something I thought she’d never be able to do. I confess. I’m never surprised by anything she does, but that surprised me. I didn’t think she could do it. The Chinese and the Russians to see past their short-term self-interest to their long-term interest and not sparking another nuclear arms race.
And when the Muslim Brotherhood took over in Egypt, in spite of the fact that we were (inaudible), she developed a working relationship with the then-president and went there and brokered a ceasefire to stop a full-scale shooting war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, which on top of what was going on in Syria and the (inaudible) Jordan would have been a calamity for the world.
And when we were trying to reset our relations with Russia under President Medvedev, she and her team negotiated a New START Treaty, which limits warheads and missiles. And she lobbied it through the Senate. She had to get 67 votes, which means a lot of these Republicans who say that they don’t like her now are just kidding for election season. They trusted her, and she got it passed. You can’t get 67 votes in the Senate without a lot of Republican support. And I don’t know about you, but with all this tension and Mr. Putin trying to affect the outcome of the conflict in Syria, I think it’s a very good thing that we’re in a lower risk of any kind of accidental nuclear conflict with the Russians. She did that.
You’ll rarely find a more tortured political framing of the Iran debacle than Bill Clinton boasting that the sanctions Barack Obama lifted were super-awesome, as even those who don’t think those sanctions should have been lifted agree.
Mr. Clinton’s version of the Iran sanctions leaves out a few details , such as Russia’s keen financial interest in keeping Iranian energy out of the European market, and China’s desire to use Iran sanctions as a geopolitical bargaining chip.
But the part about the Muslim Brotherhood is most interesting. If anything, he is selling Hillary Clinton’s “working relationship” with Egyptian Islamists short, because she used American diplomatic leverage for Morsi’s benefit even before he got elected, warning Egyptians about “backtracking” to a military regime at a key moment of the post-Mubarak campaign, when Morsi was running against a former member of Hosni Mubarak’s military. There have long been rumors that more subtle forms of U.S. “ pressure ” were used to secure Morsi’s office, as well.
Then again, in public pronouncements, Clinton called Hosni Mubarak’s tottering regime “stable” and cautioned her Obama Administration colleagues against “pushing a longtime partner out the door.”
A few days ago, declassified State Department documents revealed Clinton’s talking points for a 2012 meeting with Morsi hailed his election as a “milestone in Egypt’s transition to democracy,” and stated that she was to offer the Muslim Brotherhood leader “technical expertise and assistance from both the U.S. government and private sector to support his economic and social programs.”
Clinton was also supposed to privately offer Morsi assistance with his police and security forces, which would be conducted “quite discreetly.”
After Morsi was gone, she declared herself exasperated with Egyptian political culture and declared herself a cynical “realist.” That is pretty much the opposite of what everyone in the Obama Administration was saying while the “Arab Spring” was in the midst of springing its little surprises on autocratic but America-aligned (or at least America-fearing) regimes, which we were all supposed to feel guilty about selfishly supporting for so long.
As for Clinton’s superb working relationship with Morsi, that eventually ended with Morsi’s wife railing against Clinton for supposedly dismissing him as “a simpleton who was unfit for the presidency,” and threatening to publish letters from Clinton to Morsi that would damage the former U.S. Secretary of State. Meanwhile, Mohammed Morsi is developing a solid working relationship with the Egyptian penitentiary system .
Egypt has one of those icky military governments again, and while it won’t have fond memories of Hillary Clinton’s support for the Muslim Brotherhood regime, it will most likely work with whoever wins the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Therefore, a prospective President Hillary Clinton probably won’t suffer too much from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s appalling lapses in judgment.
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British PM May forces her deputy to resign over pornography scandal | LONDON (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Theresa May forced her most senior minister, Damian Green, to resign for lying about whether he knew pornography had been found on computers in his parliamentary office. The resignation of one of May s closest political allies, who had helped pacify her deeply divided party, is a blow as she navigates the final year of tortuous negotiations ahead of Britain s exit from the European Union in March 2019. Green, who voted to stay in the EU, was appointed as first secretary of state just six months ago in a bid to shore up May s premiership following her disastrous bet on a June snap election that lost her party its majority in parliament. But Green s future was thrust into doubt when the Sunday Times newspaper reported last month that police in 2008 had found pornography on his office computers in the Houses of Parliament. In response, Green said the story was untrue. A review, requested by May and conducted by a senior government official, concluded that Green s statements which suggested he was not aware that indecent material had been found on the computers, were inaccurate and misleading. The inquiry, a summary of which was distributed by May s Downing Street office, found he had breached rules governing the behavior of ministers because the police had told him about the indecent material. I apologize that my statements were misleading on this point, Green said in a letter to May. I regret that I ve been asked to resign from the government. Green, 61, said he did not download or view pornography on his parliamentary computers. He added that he should have been clearer about his statements after the story broke. May said she had asked him to resign and accepted his resignation with deep regret. He is the most senior British politician to fall since the Harvey Weinstein sexual harassment scandal triggered a debate about a culture of abuse by some powerful men at the heart of Westminster. May s defense minister, Michael Fallon, quit last month for unspecified conduct which he said had fallen below required standards. Her aid minister resigned a week later after holding undisclosed meetings with Israeli officials. During the turmoil that followed the botched election, May turned to Green a university friend from their days at Oxford to stabilize her premiership and appease those within the Conservative Party who wanted her to quit. One of his key roles was to act as a conduit for disgruntled party members who felt they had been ignored in May s election campaign. He sought to help her to shed the image of a distant leader who only listens to those in her inner circle. It s another blow for May but it is not deadly in any way at all, said Anand Menon, professor of European politics at King s College London. She has lost her soulmate in cabinet but this is not the end of Prime Minister May. May is surviving not because of Damian Green but because there are sufficient MPs in her party who don t want to have a leadership election while Brexit is going on and that fundamental calculation has not changed, he said. The internal investigation found that Green s conduct as a minister was generally professional and proper but found two statements he made on Nov. 4 and 11 to be inaccurate and misleading. In the statements, Green suggested he was not aware that indecent material had been found on his computers. The inquiry said Green s statements had fallen short of the honesty requirements for those in public life and thus constituted breaches of the ministerial code of conduct. The allegations about pornography were publicly aired by former Metropolitan Police assistant commissioner Bob Quick, drawing a rebuke from the head of the London police, Cressida Dick, who said officers had a duty of confidentiality. May, who served as home secretary for six years before winning the top job, said she shared concerns about the comments made by the former police officer. Sexual abuse allegations against Hollywood producer Weinstein have prompted some women and men to share stories about improper behavior at the heart of British political power in Westminster. The internal investigation also addressed allegations, made by the daughter of a family friend, that Green had made an unwanted advance towards her during a social meeting in 2015, had suggested that this might further her career, and later had sent her an inappropriate text message. The report said it was not possible to reach a definitive conclusion on the appropriateness of Green s behavior in that instance, though the investigation found allegations to be plausible. Green said in his resignation letter that he did not recognize the account of events, but apologized to the woman, academic and critic Kate Maltby, for making her feel uncomfortable. | 0fake |
Trump, South Korea's Hwang agree to strengthen defenses against North Korea: White House | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump and South Korean Acting President Hwang Kyo-ahn agreed to take steps to strengthen joint defense capabilities to defend against North Korea’s nuclear threat, the White House said on Sunday after a telephone call between the two leaders. “President Trump reiterated our ironclad commitment to defend (South Korea), including through the provision of extended deterrence, using the full range of military capabilities,” the White House said in a statement. It also said Trump and Hwang discussed the upcoming visit by the new U.S. defense secretary to Japan and South Korea, where shared concerns about North Korea will top the agenda. The United States and South Korea have agreed to deploy a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system designed to protect against North Korea’s growing nuclear and ballistic capabilities despite objections from China, which says the radar could penetrate Chinese territory. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said on Jan. 1 his country was close to test-launching an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), and state media has said a launch could come at any time. North Korea has maintained its nuclear and missile programs in violation of repeated rounds of international sanctions. | 0fake |
How Obama And Trump Responded To Fidel Castro’s Death Says So Much About Who These Men Are | President Obama couldn t be more different from his successor, Donald Trump. Obama has so much class and grace. As for Trump, well, not so much. Their responses to the death of Fidel Castro say so much about who these men, and their supporters by default, really are. And the differences between them are abundantly clear.Obama responded with respect and compassion. His carefully crafted words are just one more example of the quiet dignity we have come to expect from this man and his family. Here is what the president had to say on Castro s passing:At this time of Fidel Castro s passing, we extend a hand of friendship to the Cuban people. We know that this moment fills Cubans in Cuba and in the United States with powerful emotions, recalling the countless ways in which Fidel Castro altered the course of individual lives, families, and of the Cuban nation. History will record and judge the enormous impact of this singular figure on the people and world around him.For nearly six decades, the relationship between the United States and Cuba was marked by discord and profound political disagreements. During my presidency, we have worked hard to put the past behind us, pursuing a future in which the relationship between our two countries is defined not by our differences but by the many things that we share as neighbors and friends bonds of family, culture, commerce, and common humanity. This engagement includes the contributions of Cuban Americans, who have done so much for our country and who care deeply about their loved ones in Cuba.Today, we offer condolences to Fidel Castro s family, and our thoughts and prayers are with the Cuban people. In the days ahead, they will recall the past and also look to the future. As they do, the Cuban people must know that they have a friend and partner in the United States of America.Trump s response had none of the elegance that President Obama is so well known for. Naturally, Trump started off with a tweet.Fidel Castro is dead! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 26, 2016After Trump was slammed for his four-word response, he released a statement that was every bit as crass and hateful as you would expect from a bombastic billionaire who built his campaign on fear and bigotry.Today, the world marks the passing of a brutal dictator who oppressed his own people for nearly six decades. Fidel Castro s legacy is one of firing squads, theft, unimaginable suffering, poverty and the denial of fundamental human rights.While Cuba remains a totalitarian island, it is my hope that today marks a move away from the horrors endured for too long, and toward a future in which the wonderful Cuban people finally live in the freedom they so richly deserve.Though the tragedies, deaths and pain caused by Fidel Castro cannot be erased, our administration will do all it can to ensure the Cuban people can finally begin their journey toward prosperity and liberty. I join the many Cuban Americans who supported me so greatly in the presidential campaign, including the Brigade 2506 Veterans Association that endorsed me, with the hope of one day soon seeing a free Cuba.Trump s statement, when compared to President Obama s response really does say it all, doesn t it? We are in for a very long four years. Here s to hoping the 2020 election comes before the four horsemen.Featured image via Sean Gallup/Getty Images and Scott Olson/Getty Images | 1real |
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Joe Sobran’s ‘Hustler: the Clinton Legacy’ | By Rev. Peter M. J. Stravinskas, Ph.D., S.T.D. October 28, 2016
Twice in six months I find myself reviewing works by my dear old friend Joe Sobran. This time around, the Fitzgerald Griffin Foundation has treated us to an anthology of Joe’s essays on Bill Clinton during his two terms in the White House. What strikes the reader immediately is the incisive analysis: Joe cuts to the chase; while being spot-on, he never descends into boorishness or uncivilized prose, which he would have deemed unworthy of a Christian gentleman. Now, of course, in our present culture of hypersensitivity, some might feel “threatened” by his honesty – but that just shows how far we have fallen in so short a time. The other point to keep in mind is that while many took exception to what Joe wrote about Bill (and Hillary) – or Billary since it was Bill himself who promised (or warned) us that we were getting two for the price of one – no one has ever been able to dispute the accuracy of the commentary.
I am writing these reflections with a bit more than two weeks before what is arguably the most unpleasant presidential election in history. Sobran’s insights into the character (or lack thereof) of both Bill and Hillary are helpful as one tries to look into his crystal ball to determine what eight years of the former First Lady-turned-President might look like. We also can surmise what Joe would have thought of Donald Trump.
In that light, we can read Sobran’s final paragraph introducing the first edition of this book in 2000: “Clinton has finally defined himself. By surviving the attempt to remove him from the office he has so filthily disgraced, he also defines our age. It says more about us than about him that he stands condoned.” Sobran grimly concluded a 1997 lecture thus: “I’m beginning to think democracy is the cruelest form of government, because it gives people exactly the kind of leaders they deserve. We finally have one who is so transparent that we can hardly complain we’ve been betrayed.” Or, as European friends of mine have been saying for months: “With over three hundred million people, are Trump and Clinton the best you could do?”
Who could disagree with the assessment that “liberalism is at war with Christian culture”? Or what about “Republican stupidity” causing our political meltdown for years?
As a lifelong educator, I perked up upon reading: “[This] used to be a country where high-school students learned Latin and Greek; today college students take ‘remedial English’ and can listen to Cliffs Notes on audiotape. And we’re told our best days lie ahead of us!” Indeed, having taught in a community college for the past couple of years and encountering for the first time the products of American “public education,” I can only wince at the thought of the majority of these students voting in any election. Indeed, in a political philosophy class, no one had ever heard of either Winston Churchill or the Magna Carta. Of course, Plato asserted that a republic could not survive without an educated populace – and thus republics tend to devolve into dictatorships – another theme underscored by Sobran.
This gem tends to encapsulate the socio-political landscape perfectly: “It’s all summed up in the word ‘judgmental.’ This idiotic word says it all: the final censure of a relativist age. It’s wrong to say anything is wrong. You must be punished for advocating punishment.” Which reminded me of Pope Benedict XVI’s talk of the “dictatorship of relativism” and Philadelphia Archbishop Charles Chaput’s recent appeal for more “judgmentalism”!
Good Catholic that Joe was, his political positions don’t fit neatly into American partisan camps. While “conservative” on issues like abortion, traditional marriage and school choice, he recoiled from unrestrained American interventionism. Like St. John Paul II, he saw what U.S. involvement in the Middle East would bring and considered Bill Clinton’s eagerness for such to be a smokescreen to divert attention from his personal scandals.
On Hillary’s “enabling” behavior in regard to Bill’s dalliances, Sobran is brutally frank: “Mrs. Clinton is playing a curious role. She is the senior wife in what amounts to a walk-in harem. As long as she retains her primacy, she appears not to be jealous of the other women.” Further: “Stalin, for some reason, reminds me of Hillary Clinton. The general view is that she is ‘standing by her man.’ My view is a little different. I think she supports her husband for the same unromantic reason Stalin made his alliance with Hitler.”
Forgetfulness seems to be a Clinton family trait: “Tragically, our nation has now, for the second time in a few years, seen a president afflicted with Alzheimer’s. Bill Clinton’s fabled memory has broken down. During his August 17, 1998 grand jury testimony, it failed him dozens of times. It’s a shame, because he really needs his memory now. He’s been the victim of so many lying and designing women: Gennifer Flowers, Paula Jones, Kathleen Willey, Linda Tripp, and Monica Lewinsky. He has disputed their accounts of his behavior with as much vigor as a memory-impaired person can, but it’s tough. On the other hand, one advantage of having Alzheimer’s is that you keep meeting new women.” At last count, amnesia struck Hillary 39 times during her FBI encounter.
Returning to the state of our national soul, Sobran hits the nail on the head: “A lot of people support Clinton even though they don’t doubt that he committed sexual offenses (not all of them ‘consensual’), perjured himself, solicited perjury from others, lied to the public, and generally broke laws to cover up his offenses. Our traditional morality, public and private, has seriously eroded. The ‘idealism’ of the Sixties has rotted into the nihilism that was always latent in it.” As a priest, I was initially stunned by the willingness of people to overlook Clinton’s immorality until I realized that behind it all was the notion that “compared to him, I look pretty good.”
And how can we neglect to mention abortion – the eighth sacrament for the Clintons (or perhaps their first and only sacrament)? Eighteen years ago and sounding eerily like Trump in Debate #3, Joe wrote: “Clinton and his ilk are willing to kill children on the very verge of birth, and the phrase ‘partial birth’ abortion concedes too much: it isn’t ‘abortion’ except in a ‘legally accurate’ sense. It’s murder of an infant. The technique of extracting the brains and crushing the skull was developed precisely to stay within the law as the U.S. Supreme Court has warped it.”
With all the Clinton banter about women’s rights, Joe zeroes in on their ultimate inconsistency and hypocrisy when abortion and choice are linked to Communist China: “If ‘choice,’ rather than abortion as such, is the point, you’d think the Clintons and the feminists would be outraged by the Chinese policy of forcing women to have abortions after the first (or in some cases, the second) child. It’s hard to imagine a more barbarous tyranny. . . . In her syndicated column the week of the trip, Hillary (‘It takes a village’) Clinton wrote about the problems of Chinese women. She cited jobs, education, workplace discrimination – but not forced abortion. Apparently the government’s power to control women’s bodies with the most total and cruel rigor isn’t an important concern among them. Neither did feminists at home make any noise about forced abortion.”
Since sex comes up so often when Bill is on the horizon, Sobran’s comments on that matter are worth pondering: “[Clinton] finds it easy to trash women when he is through with them because, to him, women are trash in the first place. His preference for oral sex, the leitmotiv of his scandals, says volumes about his regard for the opposite sex. So does his inability to remember Monica Lewinsky’s name after several sessions.” Since Joe was always an equal-opportunity commentator, he might be just as put off by Trump’s “locker-room” talk, even if the alleged actions didn’t follow on the words. Joe would probably also note that the entire Clinton legacy has promoted both dirty talk and immoral action.
In a homily last Sunday, I shared with the congregation my personal voting record. To wit: I have always voted for the Republican candidate (because the alternatives were so morally bankrupt I could not countenance them); after Reagan II, I voted for the Republican “with a clothespin on my nose” and will be doing the same this time around. I suspect that if Joe were still among us, he might be looking for a clothespin, too. Tags: | 1real |
A MOM BRINGS A TRUTH BOMB To The Bathroom Controversy And It Goes Viral…Awesome! | For anyone who s sick to death of all the pc (politically correct) talk about who should be allowed in the bathroom, this one s for YOU:This mom is spot on with her common sense approach to what makes a woman a woman etc We love this! | 1real |
If Hillary And Obama Didn't Use email Server And Stop Benghazi Sending Shoulder Fired Missiles We'd Be In WWIII With Russia Right Now. | Report Copyright Violation If Hillary And Obama Didn't Use email Server And Stop Benghazi Sending Shoulder Fired Missiles We'd Be In WWIII With Russia Right Now. Somebody over there in Benghazi thought they didn't have to listen to the Black President and wound up getting their asses smoked.YES Hillary and Obama had to go offline with a private email server to avoid the traitors and racetards within the Government intent on defying Obama as a weak black BOY.It is no secret that Obama approved weapons to Syria but he said no shoulder fired missiles and no artillery. If those "Rebels" had gotten their hands on Surface to air missiles the US would be in WWIII with Russia right now because their planes would be being shot down just like that Russian jet and Helicopter on the Turkish border last Summer. That was an American made missile and probably came through Benghazi.So Obama showed some people over there in Benghazi that when he gives an order it will be followed and the message was received.Obama also did a major purge of the entrenched racists and other incompetents in the higher ranks of the military after that. Anonymous Coward ( OP ) Re: If Hillary And Obama Didn't Use email Server And Stop Benghazi Sending Shoulder Fired Missiles We'd Be In WWIII With Russia Right Now. Yeah Bitch, Benghazi was a false Flag done on the anniversary of 9/11. Anonymous Coward Re: If Hillary And Obama Didn't Use email Server And Stop Benghazi Sending Shoulder Fired Missiles We'd Be In WWIII With Russia Right Now. $3.50 Report Copyright Violation Re: If Hillary And Obama Didn't Use email Server And Stop Benghazi Sending Shoulder Fired Missiles We'd Be In WWIII With Russia Right Now. Somebody over there in Benghazi thought they didn't have to listen to the Black President and wound up getting their asses smoked.YES Hillary and Obama had to go offline with a private email server to avoid the traitors and racetards within the Government intent on defying Obama as a weak black BOY.It is no secret that Obama approved weapons to Syria but he said no shoulder fired missiles and no artillery. If those "Rebels" had gotten their hands on Surface to air missiles the US would be in WWIII with Russia right now because their planes would be being shot down just like that Russian jet and Helicopter on the Turkish border last Summer. That was an American made missile and probably came through Benghazi.So Obama showed some people over there in Benghazi that when he gives an order it will be followed and the message was received.Obama also did a major purge of the entrenched racists and other incompetents in the higher ranks of the military after that. Quoting: Be Glad U Had Obama 58059507 $3.50 Re: If Hillary And Obama Didn't Use email Server And Stop Benghazi Sending Shoulder Fired Missiles We'd Be In WWIII With Russia Right Now. mmm....noThe treacherous two were going against the will of the people AND Congress and were aiding the rebels by moving weapons into Syria through Libya. Congress and the people had said no to involvement in Syria but they did it anyway.THAT was the reason for the email server...that was the reason for the Benghazi attack. That was not a bunch of religious zealots that attacked the embassy...it was more than likely Syrian Special Forces that heard about the shipments and came to intervene.No way of knowing for sure...but THAT makes one hell of a lot more sense than any of the other stories "I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than those attending too small a degree of it." Thomas JeffersonLiberty means personal responsibility...which is why most men hate it.2112 so people will finally understand the avatar... [ link to www.youtube.com (secure) ] Push back against the establisment Report Copyright Violation Re: If Hillary And Obama Didn't Use email Server And Stop Benghazi Sending Shoulder Fired Missiles We'd Be In WWIII With Russia Right Now. Somebody over there in Benghazi thought they didn't have to listen to the Black President and wound up getting their asses smoked.YES Hillary and Obama had to go offline with a private email server to avoid the traitors and racetards within the Government intent on defying Obama as a weak black BOY.It is no secret that Obama approved weapons to Syria but he said no shoulder fired missiles and no artillery. If those "Rebels" had gotten their hands on Surface to air missiles the US would be in WWIII with Russia right now because their planes would be being shot down just like that Russian jet and Helicopter on the Turkish border last Summer. That was an American made missile and probably came through Benghazi.So Obama showed some people over there in Benghazi that when he gives an order it will be followed and the message was received.Obama also did a major purge of the entrenched racists and other incompetents in the higher ranks of the military after that. Quoting: Be Glad U Had Obama 58059507 So this justifies the death of innocents? Also links and proofs for a hypothesis are generally the norm.#STABBITYLIVESMATTER GAME KNOWS GAME. DONT TRY IT.-Self Anonymous Coward | 1real |
CNN HACK ATTEMPTS “GOTCHA” Moment With Trump…Immediately Regrets It [VIDEO] | Watch CNN, Dana Bash ask Donald a question she wishes she didn t:Trump shuts down Dana Bash after questioning him for "taking time off" to attend his hotel's grand opening. pic.twitter.com/LtLAu1jkbQ Asa J (@asamjulian) October 26, 2016 | 1real |
Russia's opposition leader Navalny declares presidential bid | Russia's opposition leader Navalny declares presidential bid Prominent opposition figure and anti-corruption campaigner Alexei Navalny has announced he plans to run for the presidency, with criminal charges against him suspended. However, Russia’s experts are divided in their assessments of his chances in the 2018 presidential elections Prominent opposition figure and anti-corruption campaigner Alexei Navalny has announced he plans to run for the presidency, with criminal charges against him suspended. However, Russia’s experts are divided in their assessments of his chances in the 2018 presidential elections.
Russian opposition activist Alexei Navalny during an interview to the Associated Press in Moscow. Photo: AP
Last week Russia’s Supreme Court suspended the criminal charges against Russia’s well-known opposition activist and anti-corruption campaigner Alexei Navalny, who was accused of embezzlement of assets belonging to ;the state-run timber company ;Kirovles.
The decision came after the European Court of Human Rights reviewed and endorsed Navalny’s complaint about the trial, which the defendant found unfair and politically motivated. The Russian authorities are to reassess their decision in light of the February ruling, which called for Navalny to be fully acquitted and for Russia to pay $8,000 each to him and his co-defendant Pyotr Ofitserov plus legal costs.
Also read: " Khodorkovsky drums up support in Europe for an alternative to Putin " All this means that the criminal charges against Navalny are at least suspended, if not canceled. The accused is rehabilitated and has chances to stand for Russia’s presidency in 2018. Navalny confirmed his presidential bid last week and has left his intention to run as an alternative candidate in no doubt. Russian oligarch and opposition activist Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who now lives in London, has approved Navalny’s candidacy . Meanwhile, the Kremlin is reticent about the anti-corruption campaigner’s intentions to run for the presidency.
“This question is not on our agenda now,” said Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov. “The presidential elections will take place in 2018.” ; ; ; ; ; ;
Too early for forecasts Meanwhile, experts argue that it is too early to talk about the 2018 presidential elections and the chances of their candidates. For example, democratic activist and politician Leonid Gozman believes that Navalny has enough political heft, but the fact that he is associated with the opposition will hinder his chances.
“Alexei Navalny is a celebrity,” he said. “He is a well-known figure with an interesting history, which has its own flaws and advantages.” ; ;
Gozman argues that t he opposition candidate’s major disadvantage is an unfavorable political environment within the country and people's distrust of opposition, with him fighting against those at the helm . However, Navalny might be able to turn this disadvantage into an advantage and earn political credentials not only inside, but also outside Russia. According to Gozman, Navalny’s anti-corruption political platform is a valuable and very meaningful asset, which he will be able to use in his favor.
Likewise, Mikhail Vinogradov, the chairman of the Petersburg Politics Foundation, argues that Navalny has enough political heft and can be compared with Russian President Vladimir Putin to a certain extent.
“Navalny is the No. 2 politician in Russia’s public politics,” he told ; Russia Direct . “That’s why he’s more effective and interesting than the leaders of the parliamentary parties, which have been competing with each other for so long. He has well-developed political instincts. In addition, he has much better chances in the elections than those retirees who head the parliamentary parties. From the point of view of populist potential, Putin and Navalny are comparably equal.”
Vinogradov is sure that Navalny is capable of recruiting a large number of supporters in a short period of time, as indicated by the results of the 2013 Moscow mayoral elections, when he won more than 27 percent of the vote. However, at that time he focused primarily on the protest electorate . Today, there are a lot of people who are not satisfied with the current situation in the country and Navalny is capable of winning their votes as well as the votes of those who support the authorities, Vinogradov speculates.
However, it remains to be seen if the opposition activist will be able to use his tactics to help win nationwide support. “This is one of the major intrigues,” said Vinogradov.
A dose of legitimacy for Russia’s elections At the same time, Gozman argues that the participation of Navalny in the presidential elections will make them more interesting and less artificial.
“His bid is useful for the elections themselves,” he said. “This means that a campaign with Navalny will look more real than one without him.”
Also read: " Hawks vs. doves: Who will dominate in the Kremlin before the 2018 elections? " Gozman gives an example of the 2013 mayoral campaign, which he sees as "more natural” because Navalny challenged Sergei Sobyanin and encouraged him to change his tactics. In contrast, Alexei Mukhin, the ;general director of the Center for Political Information, ;a Moscow-based think tank, argues that the participation of Navalny will be a bigger disadvantage for regional campaigns rather than an advantage. According to him, the opposition figure will bring instability and disorder, while pursuing a sole goal: self-promotion."
“Navalny is a professional troublemaker,” he told ; Russia Direct . “He is likely to look for a trade-off with the authorities. For example, he will withdraw his bid if the Kremlin offers him some political privileges."
“It is a matter of a pure political calculation. He is not a populist — he is a political strategist," Mukhin added. " He is a sort of dealer within politics and he can use skills to earn political points. Moreover, a refusal to register Navalny as a presidential candidate will be a big asset for him, because it will give him a reason to claim that the authorities are afraid of him. It may strengthen his political heft .”
Populist or not?
Unlike Mukhin, Gozman sees Navalny as a potential populist in the upcoming presidential campaign. However, it is too early to talk about specific positions or a platform he is going to stick since it is unclear what kind of environment the 2018 elections will be held in.
“A populist is easy to recognize only in a specific environment,” he said. “Most importantly, it is necessary to know what position his opponents will take. It is a matter of debates: You’re inclined to take a tougher position in a dispute than under other circumstances, at least because you need to prove your point of view.” ;
When discussing populism in presidential campaigns, most Russian experts give the example of Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the firebrand leader of Russia’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDPR). Throughout his political career, he has garnered about 10 percent of the vote. For instance, the results of the recent parliamentary elections showed that his party even improved its record in comparison with previous years. This indicates that Russians are easy to manipulate and they are ready to support a populist candidate. However, the populism of Zhirinovsky is not taken very seriously.
Recommended: " Inside the anti-corruption campaign against Russia's liberals " “If a new populist like [U.S.-President-elect Donald] Trump , who would avoid Zhirinovsky’s buffoonish style, emerges in Russia’s political arena, the rest of the politicians, including Navalny himself, are likely to take a more moderate position. If such a populist doesn’t appear, somebody else will fill his shoes,” ;says Gozman.
Mukhin doesn’t agree. He argues that Russia’s political system prevents such populists from coming to power. The most obvious example is Zhirinovsky himself, who is seen as something of a clown. ;
What most pundits agree on is that Navalny’s odds of winning in the 2018 elections are slim: It will be extremely challenging for him to launch a presidential bid and win enough support from voters , partly because Putin , who still enjoys high approval rankings and wields political heft, doesn’t support his candidacy, according to Vinogradov and Gozman. This is the very logic of Russia’s current political system, in which elections are not a game-changer: Their results are always predictable.
| 1real |
New Zealand's kingmaker party sets Thursday to unveil result of talks to form government | WELLINGTON (Reuters) - New Zealand s small nationalist party, which holds the balance of power after last month s inconclusive elections, will make an announcement on Thursday on the result of talks with the two major parties to form the next government. The move should put an end to weeks of political uncertainty in the small Pacific island nation, after neither major party won enough seats on Sept. 23 to form a government, leaving both courting the leader of New Zealand First, Winston Peters. New Zealand First will be in a position tomorrow afternoon to make an announcement on the result of negotiations following the 2017 general election, the party said in a statement. Thursday s event could also shed light on the economic direction for New Zealand, since both the National Party and the Labour Party differ on immigration and trade, key sources of the country s robust growth in recent years. Peters has held lengthy talks with both National, which has been in power for nearly a decade, and opposition Labour, but has kept his cards close to his chest regarding coalition prospects. Peters has notified the leaders of both parties about Thursday s announcement, the statement added. The New Zealand dollar, already under pressure earlier on Wednesday, briefly fell to the day s low of $0.7153 after the statement. If it goes down the path of a Labour-Green coalition, we can expect the kiwi will probably come under far greater pressure, purely on the basis that that is a complete unknown, said Stuart Ive, a dealer at OM Financial. If it s announced that a National coalition is being formed, we can probably see the kiwi pick back up again, in a short relief rally before markets return to focusing on economic fundamentals, he added, using the currency s nickname. NZ First has more in common with Labour on the policy front, as both want to rein in immigrants and foreign ownership, change certain trade deals and adjust the central bank s mandate. But some analysts say a two-way coalition with National would be more straightforward than a three-way coalition with Labour and the Greens. Labour needs the seats of both the Greens and New Zealand First to reach a majority in parliament. | 0fake |
Chile's Guillier concedes presidency to Pinera | SANTIAGO (Reuters) - Center-left presidential candidate Alejandro Guillier conceded the Chilean presidency to billionaire conservative Sebastian Pinera on Sunday, as Chile followed other South American nations making a political turn to the right. With 96.31 percent of votes counted in the world s top copper producer, former president and market favorite Pinera had won 54.57 percent of ballots, according to electoral agency Servel. Guillier had 45.43 percent. Guillier recognized a harsh defeat but urged Pinera to continue with outgoing center-left President Michelle Bachelet s reforms. | 0fake |
Donald Trump’s Economic Team Is Far From Typical - The New York Times | Donald Trump, laying out his economic plan on Monday in Detroit, said that the nation must “stop relying on the tired voices of the past. ” In what would seem to be yet another jab at Hillary Clinton, he added, “We can’t fix a rigged system by relying on the people who rigged it in the first place. ” Perhaps that’s the best explanation for his recently released list of economic advisers — a list that has caused a bit of in financial circles, given that it is largely devoid of names of heavyweight economists who have backed Republican party nominees in years past. (And entirely devoid of women.) Instead, his economic circle — as he promised — is a bit, shall we say, less typical. The prominent of the list of economists includes only one Ph. D. Peter Navarro, a professor at the University of California, Irvine and longtime opponent of free trade who blames China for America’s economic ills Stephen Moore, a advocate who the group Club for Growth and David Malpass, a consultant and former chief economist at Bear Stearns. The group is heavy on moguls and moguls — all, of course, Trump donors. Among them are Steven Roth, a real estate mogul who owns a building with Mr. Trump Harold Hamm, the billionaire wildcatter John A. Paulson, the billionaire hedge fund manager Steve Feinberg, the of Cerberus, the private equity firm and Dan DiMicco, former president and chief executive of the steel company Nucor Corporation, who has been vocal about bringing manufacturing jobs back to the United States. Wilbur Ross, the famed venture capitalist, was left off the original list but later added on Trump’s website Mr. Ross said that his team hadn’t gotten back to the candidate in time to be included last week. And for those keeping score, Carl Icahn, the activist investor and longtime Trump backer, said he was left off the list so he could start a “super PAC,” which he said would not be allowed if he were a formal member of the campaign. Then again, Mr. Trump has made a virtue of his lack of traditional support, depicting himself as an candidate willing to make difficult choices. He sent a tweet saying as much earlier this week, showing a picture of him and Ms. Clinton under the headline “Campaign Contributions from Hedge Funds. ” It showed Ms. Clinton received $48. 5 million from the hedge fund industry while Mr. Trump received only $19, 000. “Crooked Hillary Clinton is 100% owned by her donors,” he wrote. The tweet and his economics council are a bit of mixed message, given that he is trying to raise money from the financial industry and clearly has some support — even some from traditional Republican circles. On Monday, for instance, George P. Bush, the son of Jeb (who is ) came out in favor of the Republican candidate, urging all party members to support Mr. Trump. Mr. Trump’s challenge is he is trying to be two things at the same time: distinctly yet absolutely elite. This is particularly tough given he wants to be seen as a successful billionaire businessman while also being an outsider trying to work for the little guy. That said, while Mr. Trump may relish his unconventional group, he has been quietly trying to get some more establishment voices to join him. But many of the most prominent Republican donors have been doing their best to avoid associating with him. Stephen Schwarzman, of the Blackstone Group, met with Mr. Trump, but has so far refused to donate or publicly support him, according to people briefed on the meeting. Henry Kravis, who historically has voted for Republicans and donated money to them, has been relatively silent. (When Mr. Trump floated his name for Treasury secretary, Mr. Kravis said, “That was scary when he said that. ”) Ken Griffin, the founder of Citadel, would seem like a natural Trump supporter, given that he describes himself as a “Reagan Republican. ” He has donated to Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio and Scott Walker, but not to Mr. Trump. Cliff Asness, the billionaire founder of AQR, an investment management firm, has historically supported Republicans, but called Mr. Trump “a disaster for the G. O. P. and for the country. ” In March, he seemed to bend a little, saying, “I have to keep a more open mind,” but his spokesman said on Monday that he hadn’t changed his position. Paul Singer, one of the biggest Republican donors, has been part of the #NeverTrump campaign, saying his policies would be “a guarantee of a global depression. ” The list goes on. Seth Klarman, who runs the hedge fund Baupost, has often supported Republicans even though he is an independent. Last week he issued a blistering statement about Mr. Trump while throwing his weight behind Mrs. Clinton. “His words and actions over the last several days are so shockingly unacceptable in our diverse and democratic society that it is simply unthinkable that Donald Trump could become our president,” Mr. Klarman said. Traditional Republican economists have also kept their distance. Glenn Hubbard, the dean of Columbia Business School, who served as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President George W. Bush, wrote, “The and policies of Mr. Trump portend a future for all Americans, and and Americans in particular. ” Greg Mankiw, a Harvard economist who succeeded Mr. Hubbard as chairman of President Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers and also advised Mitt Romney, said of Mr. Trump: “He will not be getting my vote. I have Republican friends who think that things couldn’t be worse than doubling down on Obama policies under Hillary Clinton. And, like them, I am no fan of the left’s agenda of large government and high taxes. But they are wrong: Things could be worse. And I fear they would be under Mr. Trump. ” Mr. Ross, a Trump supporter, said he thought the candidate’s economic speech in Detroit on Monday might prove to be a positive turning point. “He did a very good job,” Mr. Ross said after the speech. “If he just stuck to that, he’d be in a lot better shape. ” Mr. Ross called Mr. Trump “substantive” and said he was particularly impressed by “the whole way he reacted to the staged demonstrators. ” It was “mature” of Mr. Trump to refrain from taking the bait and getting angry, Mr. Ross said. The question is, if Mr. Trump adjusts his behavior over the next several weeks, will some of those establishment names come join his band? | 0fake |
Obama says Pelosi a strong leader, showing support for re-election bid | LIMA (Reuters) - President Barack Obama on Sunday called U.S. House Democratic chief Nancy Pelosi a remarkable leader, giving strong praise to the California lawmaker as House Democrats consider whether to re-elect to the post. Democrats need to fight for their principles but must be willing to work with the incoming administration of President-elect Donald Trump, Obama told a news conference after the APEC summit in Lima. | 0fake |
Czech Republic: We’d Rather Risk EU Penalties Than Be Forced to Take Migrants | The Czech Republic is not prepared to accept any more than the 12 migrants it has already taken under the quota scheme set up by the European Union (EU) even if that means facing sanctions, the nation’s interior minister has said. [“Ongoing security checks show that the country can no longer accept anyone else” said Milan Chovanec, noting that the Czech Republic has so far received 12 of the 1, 600 migrants it has been ordered to take in under the terms of the EU quota deal. Vetting refugees is “complicated” the minister explained, adding that migrants “have not even been willing to remain in place [in Greek and Italian camps, while security checks take place”. “We check thoroughly and in detail during the process, which takes between several weeks and more than two months. “But these people [that the Czech Republic have been told to take in as refugees] were not prepared to remain in place while being vetted. Because of that, we haven’t given them security clearance. ” Confirming that the country “has no further plans to adopt more migrants” Mr Chovanec raised the issue of repeated threats from Brussels to punish states which are refusing to go along with the EU’s agenda to push migrants from the third world on unwilling countries. “The Czech Republic does not plan to adopt more migrants” he said, acknowledging that this stance is likely to result in Brussels imposing sanctions against the country, “perhaps in the range of several million Euros”. “It is then up to the government to assess if it’s worth paying the penalty or not. In my opinion — yes. You cannot let people here without running all the checks. ” The Czech minister’s position is likely to come as a blow to Brussels, as last week the EU told Hungary and Poland they face legal action if their populist governments continue to resist orders to take in migrants from the third world. Warsaw and Budapest have strongly opposed the scheme, which seeks to move 160, 000 people from Italy and Greece into other EU nations. Fewer than 20, 000 people have been resettled so far even though the programme is due to end in September this year. “If Member States do not increase their relocations soon, the Commission will not hesitate to make use of its powers … for those which have not complied,” the bloc’s executive arm said in a statement. Italy, along with Germany, Sweden, Austria, and France have been vocal in demanding the EU cut subsidies to Hungary and Poland for their refusal to welcome migrants. But Reuters reported that, worried about rising Euroskepticism, officials in Brussels are split on whether to open legal proceedings against Hungary and Poland. | 0fake |
U.S. Senate tax bill accomplishes major Obamacare repeal goal | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The sweeping tax overhaul that passed the U.S. Senate on Saturday contains the Republicans’ biggest blow yet to former President Barack Obama’s healthcare law, repealing the requirement that all Americans obtain health insurance. The individual mandate is meant to ensure a viable health insurance market by forcing younger and healthier Americans to buy coverage to help offset the cost of sicker patients. It helps uphold the most popular provision of the law, which requires insurers charge sick and healthy people the same rates. Removing it while keeping the rest of Obama’s Affordable Care Act intact is expected to cause insurance premiums to rise and lead to millions of people losing coverage, policy experts say. “It’s going to take a bunch of healthy people out of the insurance market,” said Craig Garthwaite, director of the healthcare program at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. Obamacare “is going to collapse even more now,” he said. Republican lawmakers failed several times this year to scrap the mandate as part of a broader repeal of Obamacare, blocked by opposition from a few of the party’s senators, including Susan Collins of Maine. Collins, still opposed to removing the mandate, said she voted for the tax bill on Saturday after being assured by Republican leaders that they will support legislation to prop up U.S. health insurance markets. The tax bill is not yet final. The U.S. House of Representatives and Senate must now reconcile the differences in their respective versions of the legislation. “Repealing the individual mandate simply restores to people the freedom to choose,” Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski, who has opposed previous Obamacare repeal efforts, wrote in an opinion piece in Alaska’s Fairbanks Daily News-Miner. “Instead of taxing people for not being able to afford coverage, we should be working to reduce costs and provide options.” One of the Obamacare stabilization bills, co-authored by Republican Senator Lamar Alexander and Democratic Senator Patty Murray, would restore billions of dollars in subsidies that health insurers use to reduce out-of-pocket costs for low income Americans. A second, co-authored by Collins and Democratic Senator Bill Nelson, would create an additional $4.5 billion fund to compensate insurers for covering health care for the sickest patients. Still, health policy experts said both of those measures would be needed without a mandate repeal and would not make up for expected premium increases and the rise in the numbers of uninsured Americans. “Neither of these bills would do anything to offset the increase in uninsured resulting from a mandate repeal,” said Larry Levitt, health economist at the Kaiser Family Foundation. “The marketplaces would limp along without a mandate but it’s probably not a stable place.” Without the mandate, health insurance premiums would rise 10 percent in most years over the next decade on the individual market and 13 million people would lose coverage by 2027, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said in a report last month. Levitt said that insurers would need around $10 billion per year to offset the lost revenue from the individual mandate rather than raise premiums. Republicans, who control the White House, U.S. House of Representatives and Senate, failed for months to make good on a top campaign pledge of President Donald Trump. Trump has said Congress will return to repeal-and-replace efforts next year and over the past several months has taken regulatory and executive actions to steadily undermine the Obamacare law. Insurers and leading medical groups have already urged Congress to preserve the individual mandate and warned of “serious consequences” such as rising premiums and a rise in the number of uninsured if it were repealed. | 0fake |
TOP FIVE Food Stamp Fraud Takedowns of 2017…Do You See The Common Thread? | After the Obama years of record food stamp usage, President Trump is pushing new initiatives to get people off of the government dole. The number was higher than 39.5 million (all-time high of 47.6 million in 2015) but you see the explosion with the graph below: The fraud in the food stamp program is so rampant and easy to commit, we ve become a global magnet for grifters who immigrate and set up shop to cash in on money for food stamps. This program is ripe for reform but what s most disturbing is the very lenient penalty for the crime of food stamp fraud. The fraudsters are usually given a very light jail sentence and ordered to pay back the money. The problem is that the money has probably gone overseas and will NEVER be paid back. These grifters fade into the woodwork only to resurface when they reoffend. THE TOP 5 FOOD STAMP FRAUD CASES FROM 2017: After the Obama years of record food stamp usage, President Trump is pushing new initiatives to get people off of the government dole. The number was higher than 39.5 million (all-time high of 47.6 million in 2015) but you see the explosion with the graph below:The fraud in the food stamp program is so rampant and easy to commit, we ve become a global magnet for grifters who immigrate and set up shop to cash in on money for food stamps.This program is ripe for reform but what s most disturbing is the very lenient penalty for the crime of food stamp fraud. The fraudsters are usually given a very light jail sentence and ordered to pay back the money. The problem is that the money has probably gone overseas and will NEVER be paid back. These grifters fade into the woodwork only to resurface when they reoffend.THE TOP 5 FOOD STAMP FRAUD CASES FROM 2017:The food stamp program is a federally-funded program administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), and federal investigators are most often the ones who catch those engaged in fraudulent activities..Investigators often uncover millions of dollars worth of food stamp fraud, mostly from people who run convenience stores in low-income areas where many patrons receive food stamps through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).To show how many millions of dollars these criminals have taken away from the federal government, here are the 5 biggest takedowns of food stamp fraud of 2017.IMMIGRANT FRAUD IS THE COMMON THREAD!1. Ohio Convenience Store Owner Sentenced to 33 Months in Prison for $2.8 Million in Food Stamp FraudA former Ohio convenience store owner got caught carrying out a $2.8 million food stamp fraud scheme where he allowed benefit recipients to exchange their food stamps for cash.The USDA revealed in an audit that the store, Breaden Market, cashed in on SNAP benefits more than ten times the amount of larger stores in the area, raising red flags among investigators.A judge eventually convicted and sentenced George Rafidi, 62, to 33 months in prison in February and ordered him to pay that $2.8 million back.2. Florida Investigators Discover More than $20 Million in Food Stamp FraudThe agency said it uncovered the majority of fraud when paging through SNAP benefit applications stating fraudulent household information.3. Baltimore Man Sentenced to Four Years for $3.7 Million Food Stamp FraudA Baltimore store owner got slapped with a four-year prison sentence for carrying out $3.7 million worth of food stamp fraud.Mohammad Shafiq, 51, was one of 14 other Baltimore-area retailers sentenced for $16 million worth of food stamp fraud, where they exchanged SNAP benefits for cash.The judge ordered Shafiq to pay back that $3.7 million to the federal government and serve three years of supervised release following the end of his sentence.4. Three Wisconsin Men Who Carried Out $1.2 Million Food Stamp Fraud Sentenced to Hard TimeA judge sentenced three Milwaukee, Wisconsin, convenience store owners Kanwar Gill, 67, Raviinder Gill, 27, and George Nance, 59 to prison terms ranging from 15-20 months in October after the three had been found guilty of exchanging cash for SNAP benefits.Their store, Quick N EZ, had been an authorized retailer that accepts food stamp benefits, but the $1.2 million in benefits the store redeemed was far beyond the amount the small convenience store was expected to redeem.Records show that all three men had been ordered to pay back the $1.2 million in fraudulently earned money. An Iraqi immigrant pleaded guilty to $1.4 million in food stamp fraud in November for conspiring with others to defraud the U.S. government.Ali Ratib Daham, 40, of Maine, gave customers cash in exchange for SNAP and Women, Infant, and Children (WIC) program benefits. He then redeemed the full value of the benefits to obtain more money from the government fraudulently.The naturalized U.S. citizen is expected to face a harsh prison sentence for his crime he faces up to 20 years behind bars and will most likely be expected to pay back the $1.4 million to the government.Via: Breitbart | 1real |
The Deceptive Nature of Hillary Clinton is Right in Line with Communism | Email
Much to the surprise of the American electorate, both on the right and left, the FBI is reopening it's investigation into Hillary Clinton's email scandal. Whether this will amount to anything meaningful, or it is simply a distraction is any body's guess. Many are speculating that this could be the issue which would cause President Obama to cancel the elections. In my recent article "Corrupting One's Self is the Ultimate Morality in the Pursuit of Utopia," I discussed the possibility that the blatant corruption is deliberately being thrust in our face to create the necessary attitude for social change. This idea of course, is based on the writings of Alinsky and other "social engineers" skilled in the arts of propaganda and psychological manipulation. Looking at it from this perspective, cancelled elections are a possibility. The truth is, with Hillary Clinton you never know what to expect because she is operating from an "ends justify the means mentality," and she is willing to do anything to see her dreams of a collectivized America move forward.
According to Elizabeth Harrington from the Washington Free Beacon, the Clinton campaign began conducting focus groups to determine which approach Hillary should take concerning her run for the presidency. Hillary is diehard ideologue whose beliefs are right in line with Communists dictators like Stalin and Mao. She believes that ordinary people have no idea how to best conduct their personal business and the state should be involved in every aspect of our lives. The goal of these focus groups was to determine the attitudes of the electorate in order to mold her message and her personality into something they would vote for. Many people would attempt to ridicule and discredit anyone associating Hillary Clinton with communists because she comes across as compassionate and caring, always blaming everything on a vast, right wing conspiracy.
This has always been the modus operandi of the communist movement and it explains why so many young people have no idea about the atrocities committed under the regimes of communist rulers. Today's millennials are well aware of the holocaust and the millions of Jews murdered by Adolph Hitler. They may not however, know that Hitler murdered more than Jews. He started by eliminating the sick and disabled, then he murdered Christians, homosexuals and anyone else essentially, that didn't go along with his national socialism. The belief is that fascism is an extreme right wing world view. This explains the hostility towards today's conservative movement. They have been branded as fascists, when in fact, the truth is the exact opposite. On the true political scale, national socialism or fascism is to the right of communism, which represents complete state control, but it is still way left of center. A true, extreme right wing world view would be complete absence of government control over anything. With this being said, and understanding that the horrors of communism have all been forgotten simply because they are no longer being taught, the communists have been very successful in deceiving people because like Hillary Clinton, they pretend to be something they are not.
Millions of young people in America, due to left wing indoctrination in our universities, are falling for the communist propaganda under the guise that communism is a more fair, compassionate system of economics. Left wing professors, refusing to acknowledge the failures of communism because they believe the right leader has not come along to implement it the right way, have failed to teach these young minds that the pursuit of total equality has led to the death of 100,000,000 people under communist controlled governments. Communists, believing not in God but in evolution and science, believe that man can be trained into submission and a refusal to accept communist ideals is in fact, a sign of mental deficiency. Therefore, it is justifiable to eliminate them. To understand this read "Brainwashing: A Synthesis of the Russian Textbook on Psychopolitics." Communists also hide this belief by claiming their pursuit of equality is motivated by a pursuit of social and economic justice when in fact, it is motivated by a pure desire to control every aspect of human being.
The Black Book of Communism references the historical debate over the evil natures of both Communism and Nazism. Adolf Hitler, despite his cruelty was open about what his intentions were. He set out to create a perfect race that understood its role was to serve the state and nothing else. This isn't any different than the goals of communism truthfully, only insofar as communists seek to accomplish this on a global scale, (using the economic class issue as opposed to race) while national socialism focuses on achieving such a goal for the country itself. The communists on the other hand, as mentioned above, pretended to be compassionate about the poor and oppressed when in reality- they use these groups to organize for power while hiding behind the guise of compassion and the struggle to achieve social justice, while in reality-they are systematically imprisoning and murdering all that don't go along with their agenda. This, according to the Black Book of Communism, makes the communist ideology, if you could really assign degrees of evil, more evil than Nazism because of its deceptive nature.
We all know Hillary Clinton is a liar, and she wrote her college thesis on Saul Alinsky but do we know anything else about her? Given the fact that she conducted focus groups to help mold her campaign message it is obvious she is hiding something. Over the past several weeks we have seen references to leaked emails which show she has an obvious disdain for the average American and the common beliefs in liberty that most of us share. She has referred to many of us as "irredeemable deplorables" in an effort to brand us as the uncompassionate ones while pretending to care about the poor and so called oppressed. In fact, this is the whole strategy of the Democrat party because as we all know, they have taken a hard turn left and do not represent the views of most Americans. They will however, pretend to in order to get in office. What are her intentions if she were to assume office? Are the massive dehumanization campaigns where conservatives are labeled as fascists and whites as automatic racists a first step to a repeat of history where millions were slaughtered because they were deemed as undesirable by their own government? Looking at the deceptive nature of Hillary Clinton and the violent nature of the left, it sure seems like a distinct possibility.
The number of deaths under communist regimes from the Black Book of Communism Soviet Union- Vladimr Lenin and Joseph Stalin-20 million deaths China-Mao- 65 million deaths Vietnam- Ho Chi Mihn- 1 million deaths North Korea- 2 million deaths Cambodia- Pol Pot- 2 million deaths Eastern Europe- 1 million deaths Latin America- 150,000 deaths Africa- 1.7 million deaths Afghanistan (under soviet control) 1.5 million deaths
These are not deaths represented by wartime or revolutions, but by outright murder committed by evil men intent on creating perfect societies based on social justice and equality. I guess the question remains. Is man capable of bringing about a perfect society?
Article posted with permission from In Defense of Our Nation | 1real |
null | non gaap has always been bullshit. | 1real |
Social Media Blackout? FBI Emails Are Not ‘Trending’ On Twitter, Facebook, Buzzfeed, Or Snapchat | Buzzfeed…“Trending Now”
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As Liberty Blitzkrieg’s Mike Krieger recently asked (and answered) , why are these things happening in the first place?
Apple claims not to endorse candidates, but their actions suggest otherwise, and some of their executives – including CEO Tim Cook – actively support Clinton’s campaign. Buzzfeed recently obtained an invitation to a private $50,000-per-plate fundraiser Cook is hosting for Clinton with his Apple colleague, Lisa Jackson, at the end of this month.
Apple isn’t the only corporation doing Clinton’s bidding. Wikileaks founder Julian Assange said Clinton made a deal with Google and that the tech giant is “directly engaged” in her campaign. It’s been widely reported Clinton hired Eric Schmidt —chairman of Alphabet, the parent company of Google—to set up a tech company called The Groundwork. Assange claims this was to ensure Clinton had the “engineering talent to win the election.” He also pointed out that many members of Clinton’s staff have worked for Google, and some of her former employees now work at Google.
Of course, I covered Groundwork earlier this year. See: Meet “Groundwork” – Google Chairman Eric Schmidt’s Stealth Startup Working to Make Hillary Clinton President
Twitter is another culprit. The company has gotten a lot of slack for banning conservatives and Trump supporters such as Breitbart’s Milo Yiannopoulos and, most recently, rapper Azealia Banks after she came out in support of Trump. Twitter has provided vague answers as to why conservative voices have been banned while they’ve allowed other users to call for the killing of cops.
Just yesterday, Buzzfeed revealed that the social media giant’s top executive personally protected the President from seeing critical messages last year. “In 2015, then-Twitter CEO Dick Costolo secretly ordered employees to filter out abusive and hateful replies to President Barack Obama.”
The founders of some of the most popular pro-Trump Twitter handles – including @USAforTrump2016 and @WeNeedTrump—insist Twitter is censoring their content. They’ve pointed out that Twitter changes trending hashtags associated with negative tweets about Clinton (which has been reported before ). On August 4, shortly after the hashtag “HillaryAccomplishment” began trending, it was taken over by anti-Clinton users, who used it to mention Benghazi or Emailgate. Eric Spracklen, @USAforTrump2016 founder, noticed the hashtag was quickly changed—pluralized to #HillarysAccomplishments.
Many people have pointed out the exact shenanigans described above for other Clinton-related hashtags. In fact, it’s been my self-described progressive friends who have been most up in arms about it.
“They take away the hashtag that has negative tweets for Clinton and replace it with something that doesn’t so the average person doesn’t see what was really trending,” Spracklen said. “This happens every day.”
This new strand, where one cannot even search for alternative viewpoints amid technology companies who stand to benefit from the free-trade policies and eased immigration regulations of a Clinton presidence, represents a dangerous sea change. There’s absolutely no question the digital forums we use every day are censoring conservatives and favoring Clinton. You can’t simply scroll through photos on Instagram, look for a video game in the App Store or do a quick Google search without being fed anti-Trump and pro-Clinton propaganda.
Personally, I’ve definitely noticed a big-time pro-Clinton bias in my Twitter stream on a daily basis, and I don’t follow people/organizations that would define themselves as overtly pro-Clinton. That’s my honest perception, and I don’t have a dog in this fight.
* * * | 1real |
London Bankers Fearful of Brexit Blowback | London Bankers Fearful of Brexit Blowback October 27, 2016 London Bankers Fearful of Brexit Blowback
London's financial district has called for a UK regulatory regime that does not harm competitiveness, responding to bankers' fears that being outside the European Union will reduce the capital's clout in global markets. The City of London's Lord Mayor, Jeffrey Mountevans , will tell regulators at a dinner on Wednesday evening that after Britain's vote in June to leave the EU, "realistic, collaborative" regulation is needed to keep the sector on an even keel. "Regulation that will continue to protect our competitiveness and provide liberal market influence across the EU, even after Brexit," Mountevans said in remarks released to the media in advance of the annual Mansion House dinner for bankers and regulators. The City is crying out for a consistent and forward-looking Brexit strategy that has a "bold, bright, buccaneering vision of the future", Mountevans will say. Some will see this as harking back to a discredited past.
(LONDON) - This week the City marks 30 years since the day of the "Big Bang" deregulation of London's financial markets that helped to propel London to the top of the league table of global financial centers.
The financial crisis of 2007-09 then forced taxpayers to bail out undercapitalized and poorly supervised lenders, tarnishing the "light touch" regulatory approach and ushering in a welter of tougher rules.
READ MORE: BRITISH PRIME MINISTER READY FOR DIFFICULT MOMENTS IN BREXIT TALKS
But since the Brexit vote, Paris, Frankfurt, Luxembourg and Dublin have vied to win a slice of the City's financial pie should banks and other companies move operations to other countries to maintain full access to EU markets.
Backers of Brexit have also voiced hopes for an end to EU rules such as caps on banker bonuses.
But Andrew Bailey, chief executive of the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), who is also due to speak at the Mansion House dinner, has scotched talk of a post-Brexit bonfire of the regulations.
At a launch of the FCA's public consultation on a new "mission" statement on Wednesday, Bailey said he would not support making competitiveness an objective.
"The thing that we can contribute to competitiveness is sound regulation," Bailey told reporters. "It's not appropriate, in my view, to have a competitiveness objective." Article by Doc Burkhart , Vice-President, General Manager and co-host of TRUNEWS with Rick Wiles Got a news tip? Email us at Help support the ministry of TRUNEWS with your one-time or monthly gift of financial support. DONATE NOW ! DOWNLOAD THE TRUNEWS MOBILE APP! CLICK HERE! Donate Today! Support TRUNEWS to help build a global news network that provides a credible source for world news
We believe Christians need and deserve their own global news network to keep the worldwide Church informed, and to offer Christians a positive alternative to the anti-Christian bigotry of the mainstream news media Top Stories | 1real |
In-AUGH!-uration: Read the Angriest Lefty Inauguration Day Tweets - Breitbart | As Donald Trump was inaugurated as the 45th President of the United States, leftists were freaking out on Twitter, causing topics such as “Donald the Unready” and “Mourning in America” to trend early in the day.[ Even conservative commentator and ardent Bill Kristol got in on the act: I’ll be unembarrassedly here: It is profoundly depressing and vulgar to hear an American president proclaim ”America First.” — Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) January 20, 2017, I’m sorry but where in this speech sounds like he wants to unify the country? #justsaying #notimpressed A divisive speech. #Inauguration pic. twitter. — gray denníse ruiz (@graydennise23) January 20, 2017, All this talk about God and the Bible is ironic considering Satan is now the president. #Inauguration #TrumpInauguration #PresidentTrump, — John Wood (@woodywoods12345) January 20, 2017, ”You will never be ignored again … unless you are black, brown, Asian, woman, Muslim, poor, immigrant, LGBT.” #Inauguration, — Wajahat Ali (@WajahatAli) January 20, 2017, `When you open your heart to patriotism, there is no room for prejudice’ OK Don. If you say so. pic. twitter. — Michael Moran (@TheMichaelMoran) January 20, 2017, Alright, this side show is over. Now to see some broken promises n Trump supporters deny it n push a race war. #DisruptJ20 #Inauguration, — jesse abundis (@jessenovels) January 20, 2017, This morning, #Climate activists in DC opposed hate, misogyny, Islamophobia, and environmental destruction. #UnitedResistance #DisruptJ20 pic. twitter. — RAN (@RAN) January 20, 2017, Rain is a perfect day for Inaguration, a day of mourning in America, now AmeriKKKa #TrumpInauguration AmeriKKKa, — Nichole Clay (@templeclay) January 20, 2017, I mourn for what our country could of been. For the country I want my daughters to live in. Mourning in America pic. twitter. — Koeper (@KarenKoeper) January 20, 2017, Good stuff trending already, ”Donald the unready” ”Mourning in America” We are definitely the majority#TheResistance #ImpeachmentSoon pic. twitter. — CaptainsLog2017 🖖🏽 (@CaptainsLog2017) January 20, 2017, if ihear the word tr*mp one more time im gonna cr y, — m💙JIMIN (@mentiramv) January 20, 2017, We say goodbye to the 44th President Of The United States Barack Obama and welcome the 1st Buffoon Of The United States Donald The Unready. — Ricky Davila (@TheRickyDavila) January 20, 2017, Now that conservative PC patrol got their ”radical islamic terrorism” out of mouth of prez, they can be snug as ISIS uses video 2 recruit. — Kurt Eichenwald (@kurteichenwald) January 20, 2017, Well, in a world with a terrifyingly uncertain future, there’s one thing that’s certain: that’s the stupidest inaugration speech ever given. — Caitlin Moran (@caitlinmoran) January 20, 2017, tr*mp is president i truly want to kill myself, — michelle (@paulsmicheIle) January 20, 2017, Jack Hadfield is a student at the University of Warwick and a regular contributor to Breitbart Tech. You can follow him on Twitter @ToryBastard_, on Gab @JH or email him at jack@yiannopoulos. net. | 0fake |
Are Native Americans Part of the Ten Lost Tribes of the Jewish People? | Are Native Americans Part of the Ten Lost Tribes of the Jewish People? Oct 28, 2016 Previous post
“Therefore was the name of it called Bavel; because Hashem did there confound the language of all the earth; and from thence did Hashem scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.” Genesis 11:9 (The Israel Bible™)
When Europeans first glimpsed Native Americans more than 400 years ago, many were convinced they had discovered the Lost Tribes of Israel. At closer look, the connections are astounding. This hidden association has taken on greater importance recently as the two nations face similar threats, and perhaps even a common Messianic vision quest.
Unmistakable traces of Jewish prayer echo in the voice of Joseph Riverwind , the Amahura (war chief) of the Northern Arawak Nation, the indigenous peoples of South America and Caribbean, as he sings, “Shema, shema, nayena, popaska hoya yah”. He translated this ancient Native American song for Breaking Israel News :
“Listen, listen, people, as you gather together, we will dance before the creator.” This is strongly reminiscent of the Jewish
FOR ENTIRE ARTICLE CLICK LINK | 1real |
Here’s How The Bundy Terrorists Left The Malheur Refuge (VIDEO) | On March 23, KOIN in Burns, Oregon, got a behind the scenes tour of the Malheur Wildlife Refuge.Parts of the once pristine wildlife sanctuary, which was occupied by a group of federal government-hating, armed militants for 41 days, now look more like a trash refuse site than a site set aside as a refuge for wildlife.Photos and video published by KOIN show the level of damage done both inside and out.Trash, clothing, food and government property litter the buildings.Image credit: US Fish and Wildlife Service via KOINThe filth stretches from one end of the building to the other.Image credit: US Fish and Wildlife Service via KOINEquipment, paid for with taxpayer dollars, was left dismantled and destroyed.Image credit: US Fish and Wildlife Service via KOINThe militiamen, who appointed themselves as appropriate caretakers of Malheur left holes in the walls of the buildings they occupied.Image credit: US Fish and Wildlife Service via KOINAnd that s just the beginning of the destruction they left behind.Outside, trash piles, mounds of broken equipment, even abandoned vehicles are thrown against the severely damaged fencing which borders the sanctuary property.Image credit: US Fish and Wildlife Service via KOINIn this area, the trash and abandoned tents aren t even the biggest problem U.S. wildlife officials have to contend with. The dozens of tanks of improperly sealed and stored contaminants, some packed inside of a garbage-strewn horse trailer, some left out in the open, present a serious hazard to both animals and people.Image credit: US Fish and Wildlife Service via KOINThey dug pits and filled them with human feces.Image credit: US Fish and Wildlife Services via KOINWorse, KOIN reports that Members of the media on tour were advised to watch their step in certain spots. After some pipes burst, officials said, militia members defecated everywhere. Image credit: US Fish and Wildlife Service via KOIN(Additional images of the destruction can be viewed here.)The damage that the Bundy terrorists did at Malheur is beyond disturbing.In just over a month, this gang of armed extremists managed to turn a well-cared for wildlife refuge into a shit-covered garbage dump.Estimated costs to clean up and restore the wildlife refuge range into the millions.Here s more on this story from KOIN.Thus far, various members of the militant group that staged the armed takeover of the refuge have been charged with conspiracy to impede officers of the United States, possession of firearms in a federal facility, use and carry of a firearm in relation to a crime of violence, theft of government property and depredation of government property.Militia member Sean Anderson and another defendant have also been charged with destruction of an archeological site.Let s hope that every single person who participated in this terrorist activity gets the maximum sentence that the law will allow. Featured image via US Fish and Wildlife Service via KOIN | 1real |
GERMAN ‘GESTAPO’ considers prosecuting parents who refused to allow their son to go on a field trip to mosque | BNI Store Oct 30 2016 GERMAN ‘GESTAPO’ considers prosecuting parents who refused to allow their son to go on a field trip to mosque Parents of a German teenager may face a trial for refusing to pay ‘truancy’ fine after refusing to allow their son to go to a local mosque on a school field trip out of fear that it would lead to his indoctrination by Muslim leaders. RT The story broke in mid-June, when parents of a 13-year-old student opposed the idea of their son visiting a mosque in the northern German town of Rendsburg, reportedly organized as part of a geography class. “What a trip to the mosque has to do with geography classes?” Arthur Dent asked. Others compared the authorities’ actions to the darkest part of German history, with one user tweeting: “Visiting mosques is a top priority under our regime, similar to having a Fuhrer’s image in everyone’s flat.” In a letter to the class teacher quoted by the NDR, the teen’s father argued that his son would be “indoctrinated” in the mosque. He went on to say that “for years we have been hearing reports about religiously-motivated violence connected with Islamic people.” The parents’ lawyer, Alexander Heumann, argues that they refused the school trip out of fear for their son’s “bodily safety.” Denying any faith-based motives, he emphasized that the couple do not belong to any religious group, and are of the opinion that “nobody shall be forced into a sacred place against his good will.” Heumann himself, however, is a former member of the Alternative for Germany party, an anti-immigrant political group, and was a participant in setting up the ‘Dugida,’ a Dusseldorf-based branch of the far-right PEGIDA movement. According to the NDR report, the parents met the lawyer through the ‘Pax Europa’ movement, a civic group which opposes the perceived “Islamization of Europe.” A local education authority subsequently fined the couple a total of €300 ($328). When the parents opposed the fine, their case was forwarded to Peter Mueller-Rakow, a local prosecutor, who will decide whether or not to proceed with a court trial. | 1real |
Left Wing Extremist Offences Up 112 Per Cent in Austria | Left wing extremist offences have risen considerably in the last year according to Austrian officials who say that Islamic terror is still the most pressing danger. [The new report, presented by the Austrian Federal Office for Constitutional Protection and Counterterrorism (BVT) shows that criminal offences involving left wing extremists rose 112 per cent in 2016. A total of 383 offences were recorded by police compared to 186 in 2015 whilst there were 463 criminal reports opposed to 312 in 2015, Kronen Zeitung reports. The BVT say 46. 5 per cent of the cases involved left wing activists damaging campaign posters and other material of former migration Freedom Party presidential candidate Norbert Hofer during last year’s election campaign. Other incidents have been much more violent such as the attack on the migration Identitarian youth movement Martin Sellner at a Vienna metro station by members of the “ action” group. Sellner was forced to use a pepper spray gun on his attackers who subsequently fled after punching and kicking him. Whilst the number of right wing offences, which included and incidents, numbered far greater at 1, 313, the increase was much smaller at only 13. 6 per cent. The increase in 2016 was lower than the increase in 2015, according to the report. BVT director Peter Gridling said Islamic extremism was still the biggest security threat to the country. “As we have seen many times in Europe, religiously motivated Islamic extremism and terrorism is still the greatest threat to the security of democratic Western states,” he said. “At the end of 2016, 296 people were known to us who were travelling from Austria to the Syrian or Iraqi regions, but we were able to prevent 51 from leaving the country. Ninety returned to Austria and 45 persons were killed in the fighting area. The rest are still abroad,” Gridling added. Left wing extremism has also been on the rise in Germany where in certain areas like Berlin, they frequently clash with police. A study showed that most of the extremists were young men who overwhelmingly still lived with their parents and most had no job and no girlfriends. Leipzig is another German city with a large left wing extremist scene. A report from migration organisation Einprozent claimed there had been 22 cases of left wing violence in the city in 2016. Several of the attacks were aimed at the migration Alternative for Germany party which included the torching of several cars including of the party Frauke Petry. | 0fake |
AUDIT: Obama’s IRS ‘Misled’ Americans to Get Them to Sign Up for Obamacare | Soooo the IRS lied to Americans to prod them to comply and sign up for Obamacare. They lied about the cost of Obamacare. Does anyone see the criminality in this? It s a classic bait and switch but by our government! The Obama administration misled Americans into thinking signing up for Obamacare would be cheaper than it really was, according to an inspector general s report Thursday that said the IRS dramatically understated the actual cost of enrolling. IRS officials sent the letters to try to prod Americans to comply with the 2010 health law s individual mandate that penalizes them for not holding coverage.But as part of the letters, the IRS said most people could find plans for $75 a month or less once government subsidies were figured in. That was untrue in fact, the average cost was more than twice that figure, at $168 a month, the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration said. Many of the nearly 7.5 million taxpayers who receive letters and seek insurance may feel misled if the actual cost of their insurance is much higher than the $75 per month detailed in their notification letter, the inspector general concluded. The IRS said it was only using numbers provided by Department of Health and Human Services and verified by the Treasury Department. They said the $75 figure was true for some taxpayers.The inspector general said it asked for that documentation but never received it.Auditors said their own analysis found the HHS studies were based on a smaller sample and was limited to those who chose lower-coverage plans with fewer benefits.According to the new audit, federal regulations require agencies to present accurate information.Investigators uncovered the misleading information as part of a broader audit about how the IRS was handling its role in alerting Americans who aren t complying with Obamacare s mandate to hold insurance.Read more: WT | 1real |
FURIOUS CUSTOMERS RESPOND To Home Depot Cashier’s “AMERICA WAS NEVER GREAT” Anti-Trump Hat [VIDEO] | The people who are angry about her wearing this hat should also be angry at the hate America indoctrination our children are getting at school, and from our Community Organizer In Chief who s made it cool to hate America and it s racist, homophobic, greedy citizens The decision by Home Depot cashier to wear a white baseball cap carrying the slogan America Was Never Great has caused a social media storm.A photo of Staten Island Home Depot employee Krystal Lake wearing the anti-Trump hat went viral Sunday. The reaction from Facebook and Twitter users skewed negative, with some promising to never shop at Home Depot again.According to this black @HomeDepot employee, "America was never great" pic.twitter.com/AO9p39TJCk Dr. White (@RealDoctorWhite) May 18, 2016Hey @HomeDepot you are OK with this? What an insult to #Vets and ALL Americans #Vets4Trump #Trump2016 pic.twitter.com/BjM835m4rH District fCriminals (@DistOfCriminals) May 18, 2016To be sure, Lake, 22, admits that wearing the America Was Never Great hat was her way of making a broader statement about U.S. history. The point of the hat was to say America needs changing and improvement, Lake told the Staten Island Advance. I don t think it s a positive message to say, Let s look to the past. The lifelong New Yorker said she was surprised when she awoke Wednesday morning to see a tsunami of calls and texts messages from friends and co-workers asking if she had noticed the firestorm her hat had created. Everyone kept asking me if I was on Facebook or Twitter, which I hadn t been, she said, and then I saw how many people were sharing [the picture] and that it was going viral. I was honestly shocked I didn t expect any of this to happen, Lake added.Interestingly, Republican presidential candidate and New York real estate mogul Donald Trump won the April 19 primary contest in a landslide, securing over 80% support in Staten Island.For its part, Home Depot didn t waste time responding to critics on Twitter and Facebook. The Atlanta Georgia-based home improvement retailer called Lake s hat inappropriate.It is against Home Depot policy for employees to wear apparel that reflects political statements, company spokesman Stephen Holmes said.Via: Breitbart News | 1real |
Fox News Host Bill O’Reilly Literally Just Endorsed White Supremacy (VIDEO) | On Tuesday night, Fox News blowhard and right-wing messiah Bill O Reilly made it very clear that Republicans primary focus comes down to one thing: the white-dominated power structure, and those dastardly liberals, he says, are out to destroy it.O Reilly says that liberals want to get rid of the Electoral College which has twice in recent memory allowed someone completely unqualified to assume office despite losing the popular vote because they want power taken away from the white establishment. The left in America is demanding that the Electoral College system put into place in 1787 be scrapped. But there is a hidden reason for this, O Reilly said, adding that voting patterns reveal that most minority votes go to the Democratic Party. This is unsurprising to anyone who pays attention to the way Republicans talk about Muslims, Hispanics, women, African-Americans, and pretty much anyone whose skin tone is darker than a piece of classroom chalk. But to O Reilly, it s a conspiracy against white people a conspiracy to silence white rural voters by counting each and every person s vote equally, no matter where they live: Very few commentators will tell you that the heart of liberalism in America today is based on race. It permeates almost every issue. That white men have set up a system of oppression. That system must be destroyed. O Reilly may scorn the idea, but white men really have set up a system of oppression. Time magazine notes that the Electoral College largely exists to benefit white slave owners in the south:At the Philadelphia convention, the visionary Pennsylvanian James Wilson proposed direct national election of the president. But the savvy Virginian James Madison responded that such a system would prove unacceptable to the South: The right of suffrage was much more diffusive [i.e., extensive] in the Northern than the Southern States; and the latter could have no influence in the election on the score of Negroes. In other words, in a direct election system, the North would outnumber the South, whose many slaves (more than half a million in all) of course could not vote. But the Electoral College a prototype of which Madison proposed in this same speech instead let each southern state count its slaves, albeit with a two-fifths discount, in computing its share of the overall count.[ ]Virginia emerged as the big winner the California of the Founding era with 12 out of a total of 91 electoral votes allocated by the Philadelphia Constitution, more than a quarter of the 46 needed to win an election in the first round. After the 1800 census, Wilson s free state of Pennsylvania had 10% more free persons than Virginia, but got 20% fewer electoral votes. Perversely, the more slaves Virginia (or any other slave state) bought or bred, the more electoral votes it would receive. Were a slave state to free any blacks who then moved North, the state could actually lose electoral votes.If the system s pro-slavery tilt was not overwhelmingly obvious when the Constitution was ratified, it quickly became so. For 32 of the Constitution s first 36 years, a white slaveholding Virginian occupied the presidency. White men have largely abandoned the Democrats, and the left believes it s because of racism that they want to punish minorities, keep them down, O Reilly told his mindless audience, apparently forgetting that conservatives regularly list the ways they want to punish minorities and keep them down (voter I.D. laws, for example). Summing up: Left wants power taken away from the white establishment. They want a profound change in the way America is run. Taking voting power away from the white precincts is the quickest way to do that. This isn t the first time O Reilly has made similar complaints. In 2007, he and John McCain joined together to prattle on about how liberals want to break down the white Christian male power structure that has been long-established in our country. In 2012, he complained to Megyn Kelly that the white establishment is now the minority. O Reilly s latest rant was so stupid that the typically nonsensical and terrible SooperMexican over at RightScoop put him on blast:Is that really what conservatism is conserving? White establishment power? Here I thought it was about free markets, free people, and getting the government out of our way. Well, I feel stupid. I wish the GOP had mentioned this earlier.Well darn. As you probably know, I m a minority conservative, and I really hate and despise how the left makes all politics about racial identity, as I wrote here. But the age of Trump makes it sound like conservatism is being redefined as pro-white identity politics. This can t be a coincidence, right?Watch O Reilly s latest racist rant below:Featured image via screengrab | 1real |
Hey Ho, It’s Old: England Embraces Punk Rock 40 Years Later - The New York Times | BLACKPOOL, England — “Ramones forever!” C. J. Ramone yelled to a tightly packed crowd at the Rebellion Festival here earlier this month, and a little roar rippled through a sea of mohawks, spikes — and more than a few balding heads. It was 40 years ago this summer that the Ramones flew to London and played a July 4 concert at the Roundhouse in Camden, an event that many cite as the moment that punk rock first took flight in Britain. A month earlier, a London group called the Sex Pistols had played a gig at Lesser Free Trade Hall in Manchester. It has been said that there were only a few dozen people in attendance, but every one went out and started a band. “I’ve said this quote before, but I’ll say it again,” Steve Diggle of the Buzzcocks said in a recent interview over a pint of Guinness in London. “If Jesus was born in Bethlehem, British punk was born in Manchester at that gig. ” The anniversary of that summer is being celebrated in Punk London, a citywide, yearlong series of exhibitions, talks and concerts supported by the mayor’s office and the National Lottery. Proving, perhaps, that punk’s rebellious spirit hasn’t yet receded into rock’s history books, this institutional endorsement of an movement has drawn skepticism, a little bit of ridicule and even some mild acts of resistance. “We heard our song on BBC News,” as part of the anniversary celebrations, Noel Martin, 61, of the band Menace, which formed in the said outside the Blackpool festival grounds. The song, “G. L. C. ,” which stood for Greater London Council, took aim at the city government, whose conservative members had called for a ban on punk concerts. “BBC banned that song 40 years ago, how come they’re playing it now?” In March, Joe Corré, the son of the fashion designer Vivienne Westwood and the Sex Pistols manager, Malcolm McLaren, vowed to burn 5 million pounds, or about $6. 46 million, worth of punk memorabilia to protest what he saw as the of the movement. (The event, which is planned for this fall, was promptly added by a City Hall staff member to the Punk London website). In July, the singer Viv Albertine of the band the Slits visited the British Library for a talk connected to Punk London. While there, she stopped by the institution’s punk history exhibition to scrawl over the names of prominent female punk artists in permanent marker onto to the show’s signage. “What about the women! !” she wrote on a sign, crossing out the names of male punk groups and replacing them with acts like Siouxsie and the Banshees and Spex. The concerts of the summer of ’76 proved a crucible: In the months that followed, punk broke into public consciousness across Britain. The Clash, the Buzzcocks and the Damned gained nationwide attention. And the Sex Pistols became tabloid sensations, both for their wild behavior and their lyrics, particularly for “God Save the Queen,” an screed that suggested the queen was the head of a “fascist regime. ” The reaction from the news media was swift: Sex Pistols tracks, including “Queen” and “Anarchy in the U. K.,” were banned from the BBC, and, after reports that band members had spit on and yelled at staff at Heathrow Airport, the Pistols were dropped from their record label, EMI. The Sex Pistols dissolved in spectacular fashion months later, but the Ramones soldiered on for another 20 years (C. J. Ramone joined the band in the late ’80s). Fans and musicians at the Rebellion Festival in Blackpool, a resort town on the Irish Sea, noted the incongruity of the establishment’s embracing of punk rock, but they said the British punk scene was vibrant and even growing. “We go to gigs every week here, Manchester, Birmingham,” Graham Norris, 51, a fan of punk, said over a hot dog on the first day of the festival. “There’s lots of good bands coming through, a lot of them,” said Mr. Norris, who carried a cane and had a single synthetic green dreadlock threaded onto his last wisp of natural hair. “Maybe their dads were punks, maybe their mothers were punks and they’ve picked up on it. ” This festival’s lineup reflected that intergenerational spirit: Early bands like Agnostic Front and the Buzzcocks split the bill with newer acts like Youth Man and Angry Itch. Outside the main venue, a group of young punk fans gathered on a stoop, smoking and swigging from liquor bottles. One young musician, Connor MacPherson, 18, whose band the Antiseptics played at Punk Weekender, a concert series held at the Roundhouse in July to commemorate the anniversary of the Ramones concert, said that the punk spirit was particularly relevant now that conservatives control Britain’s government. Describing himself as a “socialist with anarchist tendencies,” Mr. MacPherson got a rousing response from the others when he lobbed a shot at David Cameron, the former prime minister. “We have got a government that doesn’t care about the youth, that doesn’t care about the people,” he said. “We need punk more than ever — we need punk more than they needed it in 1977. ” Nella Bellinzoni, 62, was selling bags and sweaters in the halls of the festival. With blue hair sprayed vertical and reaching about a foot above her head (she said it took her around one and a half cans of hair spray and three hours to achieve the look) Ms. Bellinzoni, who described herself as an “old punk, from the beginning,” expressed a sunny vision of punk’s future. “It’s getting more and more stronger,” Ms. Bellinzoni, a native of Italy who lives near Blackpool, said. “All the kids, when their father or mother was punk, then they’re punk as well. ” One duo was Simon Reynolds, 50, who took a train from London to Blackpool and his son, Oscar. Mr. Reynolds, who started listening to punk in the early ’80s, said he thought that the movement had cleaned up its act somewhat since the early years and grown a “conscience. ” Oscar, with spiky green hair and a advertising the punk band Gnarwolves, said he became interested in punk about eight years ago, through skateboarding and through his father. He said that he appreciated the sympathy for the working classes, and also that he liked that the music was different from what his friends listened to. Asked whether he ever felt strange dabbling in the same music scene as his father, he looked briefly incredulous. “No, no,” he said with a chuckle, before his face got serious and he added, “My dad’s rad. ” | 0fake |
Maher to Hillary: You F*cked It Up’ - ’Stay in the Woods’ - Breitbart | On Friday’s broadcast of HBO’s “Real Time,” host Bill Maher said to former Democratic presidential nominee former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, “stay in the woods. Okay. You had your shot. You f*cked it up. You’re Bill Buckner. ” Maher reacted to Clinton saying she was “ready to come out of the woods” by stating that he wishes people like Green Party candidate Dr. Jill Stein who called Clinton the lesser of two evils would admit they were wrong. He added, “But the other side of it is, Hillary, stay in the woods. Okay. You had your shot. You f*cked it up. You’re Bill Buckner. We had the World Series, and you let the grounder go through your legs. Let someone else have the chance. This to me — the fact that she’s come back, it just verifies every bad thing anyone’s ever thought about the Clintons, that it’s all about them. Let some of the other shorter trees get a little sunlight. ” Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett | 0fake |
Politicians Will Feel the Heat From Rising Temperatures | Politicians Will Feel the Heat From Rising Temperatures Posted on Nov 4, 2016
By Kieran Cooke / Climate News Network New research shows that the hotter it gets, the quicker the pace of political change. (Gabor Dvornik via Flickr)
LONDON—Voters who feel good about life—whether it is to do with their job, their marriage or even the success of their sports team—are more likely to support their politicians. On the other hand, those who are disgruntled and fed up are more prone to want a change of political leadership. That, at least, is the received wisdom of political pundits. Rising temperatures New research indicates that, in future, climate change—and specifically rising temperatures—could also be a key factor in undermining and determining political longevity. The hotter it gets, the theory goes, the quicker the pace of political change.
Nick Obradovich, a researcher at Harvard University in the US, has conducted what is described as the first ever investigation into the relationship between temperature, electoral returns and future climate change.
In a study published in the journal Climatic Change , Obradovich sets out to substantiate the idea that climate change, by threatening feelings of wellbeing, will lead to a quicker turnover of politicians and political parties. There is no doubting the thoroughness of his research: altogether, Obradovich analysed more than 1.5 billion votes cast in nearly 5,000 elections in 19 countries ranging from Argentina to Zambia between 1925 and 2011. This data was then set alongside meteorological records. The analysis indicates, says Obradovich, that “warmer than normal temperatures in the year prior to an election produce lower vote shares for parties already in power, driving quicker rates of political turnover”. “ Warmer than normal temperatures in the year prior to an election produce lower vote shares for parties already in power, quicker rates of political turnover” The study also finds that voter disgruntlement is more pronounced in warmer countries where average annual temperatures are above 21°C . “In these warmer places, voter support shrinks by nine percentage points from one election to the next, relative to office bearers in cooler electoral districts,” the study finds. Countries lacking historical electoral data—including those in sub-Saharan Africa already feeling the impact of climate change—were not included in the research. Obradovich also uses climate models to predict future voter behaviour, suggesting that the pace of political change in many countries between now and the end of the century is likely to considerably speed up. “Climate change may increase the frequency of democratic turnover most in warmer, poorer nations,” says the study. Fickle electorates Global warming is a complex problem that can only be tackled through international agreement and long-term planning. Obradovich says that faced with ever more fickle electorates, politicians in future will be tempted to focus on short-term policies instead of adopting longer-term strategies. This could not only hamper the fight against climate change but also cause economic and political upheaval. “Turnover in nations with weak democratic institutions can up-end political stability—if incumbents in weak democracies foresee a greater risk of losing office, they sometimes employ electoral fraud and pre-electoral violence to maintain power,” says Obradovich. “If these methods fail, incumbents’ loss occasionally precipitates post-electoral violence that can in turn induce broader civil conflict.”
Kieran Cooke, a founding editor of Climate News Network, is a former foreign correspondent for the BBC and Financial Times. He now focuses on environmental issues
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BIGGER THAN SNOWDEN: Wikileaks ‘Vault 7’ Classified CIA leak – What Does It Mean? | He who controls the spice controls the universe. Frank Herbert, from the Dune seriesShawn Helton 21st Century WireOver the past week, much of the CIA s cyber hacking capabilities were allegedly laid bare by the Wikileaks Vault 7 publication. According to the transparency seeking website, they ve published less than 1% of the intelligence regarding their Vault 7 series under the moniker Year Zero. All in all, the Wikileaks Vault 7 release is said to be the largest publication of classified intelligence in history. While there are still many unknowns associated with this latest CIA centered leak, there are a quite a few things to consider.Let s explore some of what we know to date and how it relates to other suspicious tech related stories over the past few years YEAR ZERO ZERO DAYS Wikileaks discloses the CIA s cyber hacking capabilities still no official comment from the intelligence agency. (Photo Illustration 21WIRE s Shawn Helton)Wikileaks Vault 7 In 21WIRE s first report regarding the new revelations concerning Wikileaks Vault 7, we discussed how some of the content exposed in part one of Year Zero revealed what many in new media and other investigative fields have thought technologically possible for years.Here s a portion from the 21WIRE news alert mentioned above that describes the latest controversial publication by Wikileaks: WikiLeaks has released its largest ever publication of confidential documents on the Central Intelligence Agency. Entitled Vault 7 and containing a password that echoed the alleged JFK quote splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it into the winds, this leak comprises 8,761 documents and files from an isolated, high-security network situated inside the CIA s Center for Cyber Intelligence in Langley, Virginia. Year Zero , which is part one of the leak and conveniently named after a zero day exploit used by intelligence agencies, was gathered throughout 2016 and is said to be the largest intelligence publication in history .Whilst a lot of the information and methodology outlined in Year Zero is of no surprise to security analysts and researchers since the Edward Snowden (image, left) revelations, once again the public has explicit confirmation of how one of the most powerful intelligence agencies in the world, aided by their international counterparts like GCHQ, have been infiltrating and scooping vast quantities of private information from Apple and Android devices right up to Samsung Smart TV technology where false stand-by modes and live microphones can be executed to record information and send it back to the appropriate servers. The Year Zero leaks a simple but cleaver play on the term zero day something which is defined on Wikipedia as an undisclosed computer-software vulnerability that hackers can exploit to adversely affect computer programs, data, additional computers or a network. A zero day, zero hour exploit is said to leave a software author without the necessary time to correct coding or workaround actions of a particular hack or intrusive malware damage. (Image Source: daily express)According to Wikileaks and its editor-in-chief Julian Assange, their most recent treasure trove of confidential files were obtained by a current or former CIA contractor, a story similar in scope and impact to the collection of documents dropped by former CIA/NSA contractor Edward Snowden but are said to be much larger.This time, the public has been given a glance inside the prism of the CIA s cyber hacking potential and data mining efforts similar to the NSA.In May of 2013, Snowden revealed information displaying that American citizens as well as other foreign nations throughout the world were subject to unprecedented levels of spying at the behest of the NSA. Massive data mining via XKeyScore and other similar applications proved to be very controversial particularly in America as it seemed to be in direct contradiction to the US Constitution s 4th Amendment.Over the past decade other aspects of NSA spying activities were revealed under the George W Bush administration in 2005 and further brought to light by Mark Klein, a former AT&T technician who exposed how the multinational telecommunications company was working with the intelligence community to collect the public s data.In 2011, Gadgets and Gizmos reported the following: The recent Web 2.0 2011 conference in San Francisco saw the issue made public and now the worry is that private information could be obtained by third parties using this secretly stored data.Once the data is accessed it can even be downloaded onto an interactive map which shows where the owner of the device has been lately. So far the best way to avoid this causing a problem is to go into the settings menu and turn of the location services all together. The newly leaked Vault 7 documents identify specific cyber weapons, hacking systems, viruses and malware created by the CIA that can be used on just about anyone or any entity. This most assuredly will cause other countries to become more critical of the agency s cyber capabilities. By the looks of it, this is something that appears to be happening in Germany, as the Wikileaks docu-dump exposed an apparent CIA spy-hub in Frankfurt.Zero Hedge reports: The consulate was the focus of a German investigation into US intelligence capabilities following the 2013 revelation that NSA agents had tapped Chancellor Angela Merkel s phone.German daily S ddeutsche Zeitung reported the building was known to be home to a vast network of intelligence personnel including CIA agents, NSA spies, military secret service personnel, Department of Homeland Security employees and Secret Service employees. It reported the Americans had also established a dense network of outposts and shell companies in Frankfurt. Germany s reaction could prove to be more theatrical than that of true concern only time will tell.If Vault 7 is to be accepted wholesale, it also reveals that since the 9/11 attacks the CIA has gained political and budgetary preeminence over the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA). The CIA found itself building not just its now infamous drone fleet, but a very different type of covert, globe-spanning force its own substantial fleet of hackers. Part and parcel to this, Wikileaks contends that CIA hackers have developed cyber weaponry to spy on people through cell phones, computers and smart TVs.According to Year Zero part one of the Wikileaks Vault 7 release: The increasing sophistication of surveillance techniques has drawn comparisons with George Orwell s 1984, but Weeping Angel , developed by the CIA s Embedded Devices Branch (EDB), which infests smart TVs, transforming them into covert microphones, is surely its most emblematic realization.The attack against Samsung smart TVs was developed in cooperation with the United Kingdom s MI5/BTSS. After infestation, Weeping Angel places the target TV in a Fake-Off mode, so that the owner falsely believes the TV is off when it is on. In Fake-Off mode the TV operates as a bug, recording conversations in the room and sending them over the Internet to a covert CIA server. Interestingly, Wikileaks published a batch of classified CIA spy/hacking documents that not only include the privacy invading Weeping Angel developed by the clandestine agency to listen on microphones covertly but also ways the CIA has sought to remotely infect and control Microsoft Windows, with viruses like Hammer Drill as well as automated infestation and control of CIA malware, such as Assassin and Medusa. According to security analysts, the CIA has designed the covert methods listed above for hostile foreign actors. However, since the intelligence service has had a propensity of going rogue, these technological leaps made by the secretive agency should be a major concern to the general public.Over the past few decades there have been other spoken critics of intelligence services such as well-known journalist James Bamford and former high-ranking NSA official William Binney, both who have come forward to share the inner workings of the security world. The screenshot above from Wikileaks Vault 7 discusses CIA s techniques that can be used to frame other entities for a malware attack.Framing the Big Bear?One of the more curious details contained in Vault 7 were the revelations concerning the CIA s ability to mask any hacking fingerprints that could potentially implicate the agency. Additionally, the secretive agency could also leave behind potential evidence that a cyber attack was carried out by a foreign body or nation. Here s another passage from the Wikileaks publication on the matter: Tradecraft DO s and DON Ts contains CIA rules on how its malware should be written to avoid fingerprints implicating the CIA, US government, or its witting partner companies in forensic review . QUESTION: Is it possible that the CIA could use its highly specialized malware to frame a foreign country for violating US national security?Zero Hedge reported the following Wikileaks information concerning the CIA s ability to bypass device encryption before it can be applied as well as mask itself from forensic review via its own entity, the Center For Cyber Inteliigence (CCI):Among the more notable disclosures which, if confirmed, would rock the technology world , the CIA had managed to bypass encryption on popular phone and messaging services such as Signal, WhatsApp and Telegram. According to the statement from WikiLeaks, government hackers can penetrate Android phones and collect audio and message traffic before encryption is applied. Another profound revelation is that the CIA can engage in false flag cyberattacks which portray Russia as the assailant. Discussing the CIA s Remote Devices Branch s UMBRAGE group, Wikileaks source notes that it collects and maintains a substantial library of attack techniques stolen from malware produced in other states including the Russian Federation. Here s an image originally published by Wikileaks Vault 7 that displays the CIA s Center For Cyber Intelligence apparatus With claims of alleged Russian hacking at the forefront of Western intelligence, let s take another look at how that meme started Prior to the 2016 US presidential race taking place the mainstream media along with the White House, set the stage for a massive PR push implicating Russia as a disrupting force for democracy allegedly through Kremlin-sponsored hacking of US democratic institutions and through sophisticated Russian propaganda. In August, the western media s claims against Russia began to hit overdrive, when the New York Times s Moscow bureau was the target of an attempted cyber attack this month. But so far, there is no evidence that the hackers, believed to be Russian, were successful. Flash forward to September here and here, as well as early October in the lead up to President Obama s Russian Hack decree, the Clinton-friendly outlet, the NY Times, had all but solidified the Russian cyber-hack claims but once again, without any definitive evidence or proof.Throw in another American October surprise in the form distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, renewed calls for the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) internet, led to so-called cyber experts blaming the largest hack on America because of the inability to pass SOPA in effect, reigniting the previously stalled SOPA in Washington DC, along with all of its draconian copyright law positions all perfectly timed as mainstream reports regarding fake news suddenly became all the rage across all forms of media.Will Vault 7 prove to shed light on other CIA related activities?The screenshot above from Wikileaks Vault 7 discusses the CIA S HIVE multi-platform software control system.DDoS AttacksIn October of 2016, I noted some of the suspicious activity surrounding America s biggest distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack that was said to be caused by the malware Mirai. Given that there was a hardcoded blacklist of certain government entities and major multinational companies/defense contractors from being attacked its seems more likely that the attack was US government created: Interestingly, according to Bradley Barth, a senior reporter for the IT security online magazine SC, the Mirai (supposedly leaked on September 30th) contains a very unique subset of characteristics that will not attack certain IP addresses such as the Department of Defense (DoD), the US Postal Service and consumer giant General Electric (GE) due to its coding: An Imperva analysis of the source code revealed several unique traits, including a hardcoded blacklist of IPs that the adversary did not want to attack, perhaps in order to keep a low profile. Some of these IPs belonged to the Department of Defense, the U.S. Postal Service and General Electric (GE). Though SC claims that the makers of Mirai may have been trying to keep a low profile, the recent DDoS attack attributed to the malware was as high-profile as you can get so this begs the question, what was the real reason the malware creators put an IP blockade on the DoD, the Postal Service and GE? Is it possible that the DDoS attack originated from whitehat hackers associated with the US government, a major US defense contractor like GE or some other intelligence service, possibly the CIA? HACKED? Michael Hastings death sparked a wave of controversial theories. (Image source: pinterest)CIA Hacking Tools Upon closer inspection of the Wikileaks Vault 7 release, we see that in addition to the public s privacy apparently being invaded through the CIA s ability to bypass encryption on Android and iOS phones, computers and smart TVs there was also the Wikileaks revelations exposing the agency s development of vehicular control.Wikileaks Vault 7 stated the following stunning revelation: As of October 2014 the CIA was also looking at infecting the vehicle control systems used by modern cars and trucks. The purpose of such control is not specified, but it would permit the CIA to engage in nearly undetectable assassinations. It is this part of Year Zero that has revived the conspiracy surrounding the death of investigative reporter and war veteran Michael Hastings, who died after his Mercedes C250 coupe supposedly burst into a giant fireball in the early hours of June 18 2013. According to eyewitness accounts, Hastings was going at a high rate of speed as sparks and flames were seen before his fiery automobile crashed.The UK s Sun recently revisited the Hastings tragedy. Here s a passage of that report: Hastings a vocal critic of government mass surveillance had sent an email to colleagues and friends just 12 hours earlier, telling them he was onto a big story and was under investigation.The Buzzfeed and Rolling Stone contributor, 33, wrote: The Feds are interviewing my close friends and associates . May be wise to immediately request legal counsel before any conversations or interviews about our news-gathering practices. I m onto a big story and need to go off the radar for a bit. WikiLeaks also tweeted after the crash to say Hastings had contacted its lawyer Jennifer Robinson just before his death, claiming the FBI was investigating him.The FBI took a departure from normal policy to deny that Hastings had ever been under investigation after receiving a barrage of calls about his death. The CIA has failed to confirm or deny the authenticity of the Vault 7 release, only deepening the mystery surrounding the death of Hastings.The question of CIA control over cars and trucks naturally leads us to what was revealed regarding high-tech avionics in recent years (Photo Illustration 21WIRE s Shawn Helton)Uninterruptible Flight ControlIn my article entitled FLIGHT CONTROL: Boeing s Uninterruptible Autopilot System , Drones & Remote Hijacking, I noted the CIA s involvement in certain advancements in flight technology. Lets revisit a portion of that article describing the agency s involvement: On December 4th of 2006, it was announced that Boeing had won a patent on an uninterruptible autopilot system for use in commercial aircraft. This was the first public acknowledgment by Boeing about the existence of such an autopilot system.The new autopilot patent was reported by John Croft for Flight Global, with the news piece subsequently linked by a Homeland Security News Wire and other British publications around the same time. According to the DHS release, it was disclosed that dedicated electrical circuits within an onboard flight system could control a plane without the need of pilots, stating that the advanced avionics would fly the aircraft remotely, independently of those operating the plane: The uninterruptible autopilot would be activated either by pilots, by onboard sensors, or even remotely via radio or satellite links by government agencies like the Central Intelligence Agency, if terrorists attempt to gain control of a flight deck. Continuing, I outlined the suspicious nature of both the MH370 disaster and that of MH17. Since then there have been a number of strange airline catastrophes including Germanwings 9525 and EygptAir MS804. Following the apparent vanishing act of Malaysian Airlines flight MH370, many investigators and researchers began to question the likelihood of such an event happening in today s high-tech world.At 21WIRE, we ve also looked into the unprecedented disappearance of MH370 and the subsequent downing of MH17, as certain details came to light regarding the history of the remote autopilot function installed within Boeing commercial airliners (a subject which also opens the door to the events of 9/11).The Boeing 777 along with other Boeing models, can in fact be flown remotely through the use of independent embedded software and satellite communication. Once this advanced system is engaged, it can disallow any pilot or potential hijacker from controlling a plane, as the rooted setup uses digital signals that communicate with air traffic control, satellite links, as well as other government entities for the remainder of a flight s journey.This technology is known as the Boeing Honeywell Uninterruptible Autopilot System. Has the CIA had the ability to remotely hack vehicles for much longer than we think?The Wikileaks release once again opens questions about 9/11, the deep state and what intelligence agencies have control over in the War on Terror era. CLOAKED What other blueprints will Wikileaks provide regarding the CIA s capabilities? (Image Source: offgraun)Public Privacy Vs. the Deep State In an article detailing the encryption saga between Apple and the FBI, we stated that there are no guarantees in the security world, especially if a digital master-key were to be created, as this would potentially make it easier for invaders (either the government, or various hackers) mining for data moving forward into the future.If the CIA has been secretly data mining just like the NSA, they have unquestionably violated the public s constitutional rights and trust.Is this really what the CIA has been up too?In a 2016 the Guardian interviewed some of those involved in the technology and security sector. These individuals offered their thoughts regarding the government s continued encroachment on individual privacy. here s another look at that passage:Dan Kaminsky, the security expert who made his name with the discovery that one of the most basic parts of the internet, the domain name system, was vulnerable to fraud disagrees: Feds want final authority on engineering decisions, and their interests don t even align with fighting the vast bulk of real-world crime. Continuing, The Guardian interviewed former FBI agent Michael German, currently the Brennan Center, a judicial think-tank. The following is a part of that interview: After 9/11, you had this concept of total information awareness. The intelligence community was very enamoured of the idea that all information was available. Much like the NSA, they wanted to see it all, collect it all, and analyse it all. Western political leaders and their media arms often discuss the dangers of so-called terror sleeper cells residing in a nation near you, but none of them acknowledge or attempt to explain the historical fact that for decades, they themselves have helped to harbor, grow, foment and radicalize individuals through their own clandestine counter-terrorism operations.Many of these operations have directly implicated security agencies (and military alliances) such as the FBI, CIA, MI5, MI6 and NATO in the production of real terror.While most of these counter intelligence operations have fallen under the umbrella of the so-called War On Terror era, they have also largely served to obfuscate the nature of various government programs that some critics suggest is the work of a deep state apparatus.QUESTION: Will there be a large public outcry regarding the lack of oversight over the CIA s spying and hacking capabilities?Watch below as 21WIRE s Patrick Henningsen discusses the NSA-like body of the CIA on Peter Lavelle s Cross Talk show on RT In Summary The timely release of Vault 7 comes amid a flurry of wiretapping claims from President Donald Trump, while a review of US cyber capabilities and vulnerabilities is currently underway.Additionally, the Wikileaks Vault 7 publication revealed the following stunning information concerning the scope of the CIA s cyber capabilities previously unknown to the public: By the end of 2016, the CIA s hacking division, which formally falls under the agency s Center for Cyber Intelligence (CCI), had over 5000 registered users and had produced more than a thousand hacking systems, trojans, viruses, and other weaponized malware. Such is the scale of the CIA s undertaking that by 2016, its hackers had utilized more code than that used to run Facebook. The CIA had created, in effect, its own NSA with even less accountability and without publicly answering the question as to whether such a massive budgetary spend on duplicating the capacities of a rival agency could be justified. In 2012, then CIA Director David Petraeus, mused about the emergence of an Internet of Things that is, wired devices at a summit for In-Q-Tel, the CIA s venture capital firm. The Wired magazine article continued, disclosing that the future of spying hinged on smart devices and a smart home: All those new online devices are a treasure trove of data if you re a person of interest to the spy community. Once upon a time, spies had to place a bug in your chandelier to hear your conversation. With the rise of the smart home, you d be sending tagged, geolocated data that a spy agency can intercept in real time when you use the lighting app on your phone to adjust your living room s ambiance. The public has long been prepped for the surreal level of surveillance we are only just beginning to understand, whether through books, film or tech magazines or by the government itself the warning signs of lost privacy and protection have been hidden in plain sight for decades.Even still, Wikileaks Vault 7 shocks the avid researcher, writer and pundit as it gives further insight into the CIA s multi-pronged ability to distort the perception of the public, while vacuuming up all kinds of data.*** Author Shawn Helton is Associate Editor of 21st Century Wire, as well as an independent media forensic analyst specializing in criminal investigations and media coverage from war theaters. READ MORE WIKILEAKS NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire WikiLeaks FilesSUPPORT OUR WORK BY SUBSCRIBING & BECOMING A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV | 1real |
Polls Show The World Overwhelmingly Loves President Obama (IMAGE) | Pew Research Center, which conducts not just domestic but also international polls, released their newest findings with regards to President Obama and how the world sees him (more specifically, their confidence in him that he will do the right thing).Not surprisingly, it turns out that most of the world loves our president and has the utmost confidence in him. Take that, Republicans who call him weak in the eyes of the world.After gathering information from 40 states across six continents, a median of 65 percent say they have confidence in Obama to do the right thing and 27 percent do not.These are the top 10 countries that have the highest rating for President Obama:The president s approval rating has also skyrocketed in India, from a dismal 48 percent in 2014 to 74 percent now. The lowest approval rating Obama has in Africa is 65 percent, but it is important to remember African citizens loved President Bush as well.When President Bush left the White House in January 2009, western European confidence in America s president reached an all-time low, with some countries giving W. less than 10 percent approval. Today, western Europe remains inspired by our nation s president (unless you count Russia, where only 11 percent approve of him).Although the president has seen a slightly lower approval rating recently than when he entered the presidency in 2009, it should be noted that besides his sharp decline with Russia, he also has drastically declined in Israel. Just last year, his approval rating was a soaring 71 percent (Republicans ignored this while accusing him of hating Israel), and this year his approval rating has fallen to 49 percent.So Israel isn t too thrilled with him and Russia absolutely despises him. Other than that, the world loves him. In the U.S., the poll found that 58 percent of Americans feel he can do the right thing and have confidence in his ability to do so. Not too shabby considering (yet again), Republicans say the people hate him. The only other countries that seem to have no confidence in him are Jordan, Pakistan, Venezuela, the Palestinian Territory, and Argentina.If the world loves President Obama, I can only imagine how much they ll love Bernie or Hillary.America, let s not wreck our standing internationally for God s sake, we don t need President Trump coming in and making the world hate us (again). Featured image by Ashley Landis-Pool/Getty Images | 1real |
Close call: Russia-U.S. ‘near-miss’ problem moves to Syrian air space | Print
It looks like the vaunted air space coordination between the U.S. and Russia in Syria isn’t producing a safe flying environment.
U.S. officials said Friday that a Russian fighter “flew dangerously close” to a U.S. warplane in eastern Syria on 17 October – something that can’t possibly be unavoidable, in light of the prior agreement by Russia and the U.S., in 2015, to deconflict air operations there.
The AFP report provides this description:
The near miss occurred late on October 17, when a Russian jet that was escorting a larger spy plane manoeuvred in the vicinity of an American warplane, Air Force Lieutenant General Jeff Harrigan said.
The Russian jet came to “inside of half a mile”, he added.
Another US military official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the American pilot could feel the turbulence produced by the Russian jet’s engines.
“It was close enough you could feel the jet wash of the plane passing by,” the official said.
It appeared the Russian pilot had simply not seen the US jet, as it was dark and the planes were flying without lights.
“I would attribute it to not having the necessary situational awareness given all those platforms operating together,” Harrigan said.
One is tempted to go heavy on the sarcasm, in response to that.
But OK. AFP offers a bit of analysis:
The incident raises serious questions about the extent to which pilots are able to track the complex airspace they operate in.
Well, sort of. Basically, there are two separate networks exercising command and control over the same air space – and that’s your problem, right there. Add to it the likelihood that the Russians are not squawking IFF in a way that U.S. systems can interpret, and you have the potential for a nice fecal focaccia.
Looking at the air command/control assets that seem to be available for operations, there shouldn’t have to be a safety or awareness issue, at least not during planned air strike and air support operations. When they have aircraft operating, both coalitions, Russian and U.S., have the technical means to maintain good, fine-grain air pictures in the area in question. (The general area the encounter occurred in can be inferred from where the U.S. coalition conducted air strikes on 17 October . See map.) Locations of coalition air strikes in Syria on 17 Oct 2016. The locations at Ayn Isa, Abu Kamal, Al Shaddadi and possibly Palmyra could qualify as “eastern” Syria, the region reported for the close air encounter. If the Russian fighter was escorting the Tu-214R, the night Russian commanders expected to see ISIS fighters making their way into Syria, the easternmost area where Al-Shaddadi and Abu Kamal — or Al-Bukamal — are located would be the most likely. (Google map; author annotation)
The Russians have their S-300 and S-400 radars and command vehicles, along with the radars and command center of the Syrian national system. Russia has also operated the A-50 Mainstay AWACS over Syria since December 2015, although there’s no way to know if it was operating on 17 October. The A-50 isn’t forward-based in Syria, but rather operates out of Mozdok in southern Russia. (It may well have been operating that night, given the other things going on.)
The U.S. coalition has E-2C Hawkeyes from the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower (CVN-69) airwing, which come up from the Persian Gulf to support operations in both northern Iraq and eastern Syria. VAW-123 Screwtops tighten up an E-2C Hawkeye to support #OperationInherentResolve . #ForwardDeployed (Photo by SN Dartez C. Williams) pic.twitter.com/LX7pHI1Bs7
— U.S. 5th Fleet (@US5thFleet) October 18, 2016
The U.S. coalition can also interoperate right now with E-2Cs from FS Charles de Gaulle , which has been in the Eastern Mediterranean , and flying its airwing over Syria, since September. It’s not clear where Charles de Gaulle ’s E-2Cs are flying, but they are capable of providing interlocking air space coverage with Ike ’s E-2Cs, when both are airborne. French carrier FS Charles de Gaulle. (File image via Le Parisien)
Working with de Gaulle on 17 October were also two destroyers, USS Ross (DDG-71) and FS Chevalier Paul , one or both of which would have been able to track Russian aircraft to some distance inland over Syria. (Their more-constant but less extensive air picture(s) would complement and enhance that of the airborne Hawkeyes.)
These operational-level assets keeping up an area air picture supplement the on-scene information an individual aircraft has from its own radar system, as well as enabling the air defense command/control platform to keep each aircraft under combat direction.
At the time of the encounter, U.S. and French systems had the ability to know where Russian aircraft were, even if the Russians had to be identified by default, rather than by positive confirmation from Identification Friend or Foe (IFF). (The Russians, recall, up in the Baltic, have been going out of their way to not “squawk” IFF in good faith where NATO systems can detect it. They presumably reserve the right to behave the same way over Syria. From what U.S. officials have sometimes been careful not to say, it sounds to me like that’s what they’re doing. That said, there aren’t so darn many unidentified aircraft zorching around over Syria at 500 knots that it would have to take very long to know you’ve got either a Russian or a Syrian jet fighter.)
Russian systems also had the ability to know where U.S. coalition aircraft were on 17 October. It’s not credible to claim that they had no awareness. And they probably had the IFF codes of those aircraft, and knew whose they were, since the coalition is presumably squawking as per normal.
The “incredibility” of the claim that the Russian aircraft “couldn’t see” the U.S. warplane is compounded by the fact that the Russian fighter was said to be escorting a “large spy plane.” This was probably the Tu-214R , Russia’s newest, uniquely capable airborne ISR platform, with a sensor suite somewhat similar to the U.S. E-8 JSTARS. If the Russian fighter escort really didn’t know that a U.S. fighter was within weapons range of the “spy plane,” the fighter pilot’s head should have been delivered on a platter 15 minutes after he got back on the ground. (The search sector of his radar isn’t an issue. He’s getting paid to make it comprehensive, maneuvering as necessary, while he’s up their escorting a high-value asset. The fighter plane was probably an Su-30SM using a Bars N011M series radar system, incidentally.)
So it would take a lot of convincing for me to believe that the close encounter the night of 17 October occurred because of any inadequacy in system capability. The dangerously inadequate coordination arrangements the U.S. is tolerating are the real issue, I suspect.
A couple of points about those arrangements. One, let’s review the assessment from earlier again:
Basically, there are two separate networks exercising command and control over the same air space – and that’s your problem, right there. Add to it the likelihood that the Russians are not squawking IFF in a way that U.S. systems can interpret, and you have the potential for a nice fecal focaccia.
This is the situation when two hostile forces are operating in the same air space. Another word for that is “combat.” There’s no political will for combat between the two forces in question, of course. But the mechanical arrangements of military operations in the battle space don’t reflect that. It’s an incredibly stupid situation.
Two, the close encounter occurred at an interesting time; i.e., the second night of the ground assault on Mosul , which started on Sunday, 16 October. The U.S. had been striking targets around Mosul for about three days at that point, and had started pounding ISIS positions on the outskirts of Mosul with artillery late Saturday or early Sunday, according to local sources. Russia, at the time, was playing up a non-credible report that the U.S. planned to let thousands of ISIS fighters leave Mosul and move into Syria – implicitly to fight Syrian regime forces and thwart the intentions of the Russian coalition. (Trying to track such a stream of guerrilla evacuees, if the Russians really believed their own hype, would have been an ideal mission for the Tu-214R “spy plane.”)
One more significant thing was happening at exactly the same time. A NATO AWACS contingent was deploying to Turkey to support the U.S. coalition in Syria and Iraq. Russia opposes that move. Although the NATO AWACS hadn’t flown a mission yet, its first mission was three days later, on 20 October. The Russians knew it was there, in Turkey, setting up for operations.
In other theaters, Russia has been signaling dissatisfaction through dangerous, unsafe military encounters for many months now. We can conclude with strong confidence that that’s what has happened in Syria. We can expect it to happen again. | 1real |
TESTY SHEILA JACKSON LEE Challenges Trump’s Budget Director: “You’re not a doctor?”…Director: “Are you?” [Video] | Mick Mulvaney is one smart cookie. He s doing a fantastic job cutting where cuts need to be made. Congress will complain about ANY cut to their voter base s favorite item. Listen to the grandstanding from Jackson-Lee on cuts to medicaid: They are begging for their medicaid The Grandstanding is so sickening!It went downhill from there. Jackson-Lee wanted to try and make Mulvaney out to be an uncaring guy. She s a total bully!HE S ONE SMART COOKE! MULVANEY JUST GAVE DETAILS OF THE BUDGET CUTS IN A FANTASTIC PRESS CONFERENCE. WE HIGHLY RECOMMEND THE ENTIRE VIDEO BELOW: Office of Management and Budgets (OMB) Director Mick Mulvaney outlines the structure, intents and purposes of the Trump administration Fiscal Year 2018 Budget The Taxpayers Budget The best part of this great news conference is when a reporter asks about cuts to climate science programs : At the 17:00 mark Mick Mulvaney rips into the reporter and it s just awesome!We recommend the entire video because you ll see Trump hired one smart cookie! Mick Mulvaney knows the budget and handles the press beautifully! | 1real |
FULL VIDEO: THE BLOCKBUSTER INVESTIGATION INTO CLINTON CASH | 1real | |
White House says Trump has confidence in Secretary of State Tillerson | LAS VEGAS (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump retains confidence in Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said on Wednesday. “As we’ve said many times before, if the president doesn’t have confidence in somebody, that person will not remain in that position,” Sanders told reporters on Air Force One. She said Trump and Tillerson had not spoken on Wednesday. | 0fake |
Donald Trump’s Diet: He’ll Have Fries With That - The New York Times | President Obama is so disciplined that his wife has teased that he eats precisely seven lightly salted almonds each night. George W. Bush was an exercise buff, obsessed with staying trim by mountain biking and clearing brush at his ranch in Crawford, Tex. But Donald J. Trump is taking a different approach: A junk food aficionado, he is hoping to become the nation’s fast food president. “A ‘fish delight,’ sometimes, right?” Mr. Trump told Anderson Cooper at a CNN meeting in February, extolling the virtues of McDonald’s. “The Big Macs are great. The Quarter Pounder. It’s great stuff. ” Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign is improvised, undisciplined, rushed and . And so is his diet. In an era of gourmet dining and obsession with healthy ingredients, Mr. Trump is a throwback to an earlier, more carefree time in American eating, when nobody bothered to ask whether the tomatoes were locally grown, and the first lady certainly didn’t have a vegetable garden, complete with a bee hive, on the South Lawn of the White House. But in Facebook, Instagram and Twitter posts, Mr. Trump has broadcast his culinary preferences to the nation — devouring a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken (while reading The Wall Street Journal) feasting on a McDonald’s burger and fries (to celebrate clinching the Republican presidential nomination) and chowing down on a taco bowl (in an effort to woo Hispanic voters). He is a lover of diner fare and fast food grub, of overcooked steaks (“It would rock on the plate, it was so well done,” his longtime butler once observed) and the bland nourishment of Americana. He prefers burgers and meatloaf, Caesar salads and spaghetti, See’s Candies and Diet Coke. And he shuns tea, coffee and alcohol. But his highbrow, lowbrow image — of the mogul who takes buckets of fried chicken onto his private plane with the seatbelt buckles — is also a carefully crafted one. If President George Bush revealed his patrician upbringing by requesting “a splash” more coffee at a truck stop in New Hampshire, and John Kerry helped reinforce his image as a New England blue blood by trying to order a cheese steak with Swiss in South Philadelphia, Mr. Trump’s diet also telegraphs to his base that he is one of them. “There’s nothing more American and more than fast food,” said Russ Schriefer, a Republican strategist and ad maker. “It is the peculiarity of the brand that he’s able to be on his jet with the gold and black branding and colors, and at the same time eat KFC — and what makes it perfect is he does it all with a knife and fork, while reading The Wall Street Journal. ” Or, as Kellyanne Conway, a senior adviser and pollster on the Trump campaign, put it, “It goes with his authenticity. ” “I don’t think Hillary Clinton would be eating Popeye’s biscuits and fried chicken,” she said. Last April, Mrs. Clinton did, indeed, visit a Chipotle near Toledo, Ohio, stopping into the chain restaurant unrecognized, in black sunglasses, and ordering a chicken burrito bowl. And President Bill Clinton was perhaps the nation’s first fast food commander in chief, famous for ending his jogs at McDonald’s. (Mr. Clinton now adheres to a largely vegan diet.) Still, Mr. Trump seems to come by his appetite for fast food genuinely. While junk food has long been a staple of campaign trail life — Mitt Romney’s 2012 press corps coined the term “slunch” to refer to the unhealthy phenomenon of the “second lunch” — Mr. Trump’s reliance on fare is driven more by a combination of speed, efficiency and, above all else, cleanliness. Though he often orders from the Trump Grill when working out of Trump Tower in Manhattan, he eats fast food several times a week while on the road because “it’s quick,” as he told The Daily Mail last year while munching on Burger King on his Boeing . Mr. Trump has even suggested doing away with state dinners, in a fit of cost and time savings. “We should be eating a hamburger on a conference table, and we should make better deals with China and others and forget the state dinners,” he said. A man always prone to distraction and uninterested in small details, he has never approached food as anything other than a problem to be solved, quickly, as Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, an occasional dining partner, once told The Washington Examiner. As the two men ate at in Manhattan in 2002, Mr. Trump ordered briskly and imperiously from the head chef and owner, Mr. Christie recalled. “ remember the appetizer you made for me last week when I was here?” Mr. Trump asked the owner. “We’ll take two of those. And remember that main course you made, the special thing you made for me? We’ll take two of those, too. ” Mr. Christie watched with confusion and a bit of awe, he recalled in the interview. Mr. Trump looked at him and said, “Don’t worry, you’ll love it. ” But Mr. Trump, who frets about germs and prizes cleanliness, also loves fast food because of its consistency and the promise, at least, of a basic level of hygiene. “One bad hamburger, you can destroy McDonald’s. One bad hamburger, you take Wendy’s and all these other places and they’re out of business,” Mr. Trump told Mr. Cooper of CNN. “I’m a very clean person. I like cleanliness, and I think you’re better off going there than maybe someplace that you have no idea where the food’s coming from. It’s a certain standard. ” Still, he added, “I think the food’s good. ” Mr. Trump’s dining habits also bespeak a certain lack of creativity, and parochialism — the kid from Queens who made it across the river to Manhattan’s glistening skyline, but never cottoned to the city’s haute cuisine. He once praised the “imagination” of his wife, Melania, in the kitchen — before citing, as examples of her culinary spaghetti and meat sauce, salads and meatloaf. (He still keeps a copy of his mother’s meatloaf recipe.) Along with McDonald’s, his favorite fast food joint, a family member said, is Jackson Hole Burgers. He is also a stickler for manners, attacking his primary race rival, Gov. John Kasich of Ohio, for scarfing down meals during impromptu news conferences. “I’ve never seen a human being eat in such a disgusting fashion!” Mr. Trump told a crowd. And Mr. Trump, who sometimes sips his Diet Coke through a straw, once caused Manhattan foodies to weep into their quinoa when he took Sarah Palin to a Famous Famiglia pizza restaurant in Times Square — and then proceeded to cut his oversize slice with a plastic knife and fork. He has other pretensions, as well. Howie Carr, a Boston Herald columnist, recalled traveling on Mr. Trump’s plane and watching him rip the buns off his McDonald’s patties before plying the burgers with ketchup. (“Do you know how many calories you save that way?” Mr. Trump asked Mr. Carr.) And Mr. Trump also told US Weekly that he tries to save calories on pizza. (“I scrape the toppings off my pizza — I never eat the dough,” he said.) So pronounced are Mr. Trump’s fast food preferences that Philip E. Beshara, a lawyer, joked on Instagram that, as president, his cabinet would probably be staffed by Colonel Sanders, the Hamburglar and the Taco Bell Chihuahua. And, of course, the Republican nominee’s dining whims also keep his team on its toes, with staff members worrying not just about the backdrop for his speeches — but also where to find the nearest . “There’s never any real planning for food,” said one, between events on Friday. “It’s always just whatever he is craving, which is more often than not McDonald’s. ” | 0fake |
Furious Eric Holder Just Issued A Dire Warning About Comey’s Partisan Smears | Comments
Former US Attorney General Eric Holder just wrote an op-ed warning the American people to disregard the FBI Director James Comey’s unprecedented decision to release information about an ongoing investigation during the heat of an election. Comey released a vague memo when he had little more to go on other than a mere suspicion and is now facing bipartisan calls for removal from office. Democratic congressional staffers now claim that their first warning of the Comey memo was when a House Republican tweeted it out with the usual anti-Hillary spin. That alone demonstrates exactly what Holder wrote about preventing “investigations from unfairly or unintentionally casting public suspicion,” which happened nearly instantly on Friday afternoon.
Former Attorney General Holder also pointed out that Comey’s “newly discovered” emails have no known significance and that the FBI Director violated long standing policies in the Department of Justice – which are non-partisan – aimed at upholding the integrity of America’s form of electoral democracy, free from government intervention:
I understand the gravity of the work our Justice Department performs every day to defend the security of our nation, protect the American people, uphold the rule of law and be fair. That is why I am deeply concerned about FBI Director James B. Comey’s decision to write a vague letter to Congress about emails potentially connected to a matter of public, and political, interest. That decision was incorrect.
The department also has a policy of not taking unnecessary action close in time to Election Day that might influence an election’s outcome. These rules have been followed during Republican and Democratic administrations. They aren’t designed to help any particular individual or to serve any political interest. Instead, they are intended to ensure that every investigation proceeds fairly and judiciously; to maintain the public trust in the department’s ability to do its job free of political influence; and to prevent investigations from unfairly or unintentionally casting public suspicion on public officials who have done nothing wrong.
Director Comey broke with these fundamental principles. I fear he has unintentionally and negatively affected public trust in both the Justice Department and the FBI. And he has allowed — again without improper motive — misinformation to be spread by partisans with less pure intentions. Already, we have learned that the importance of the discovery itself may have been overblown. According to the director himself, there is no indication yet that the “newly discovered” emails bear any significance at all. And yet, because of his decision to comment on this development before sufficient facts were known, the public has faced a torrent of conspiracy theories and misrepresentations.
High ranking former Justice Department officials like Eric Holder do not make a career out of slamming their former colleagues, so it’s a very rare break in the ranks to see a former Attorney General publicly slam his former subordinate. The Hatch Act prevents federal officials from interfering in partisan elections and strictly demands that public officials refrain from doing anything that could impact an election. Holder wrote :
I served with Jim Comey and I know him well. This is a very difficult piece for me to write. He is a man of integrity and honor. I respect him. But good men make mistakes. In this instance, he has committed a serious error with potentially severe implications. It is incumbent upon him — or the leadership of the department — to dispel the uncertainty he has created before Election Day. It is up to the director to correct his mistake — not for the sake of a political candidate or campaign but in order to protect our system of justice and best serve the American people.
FBI Director James Comey knew better than to release a vague memo about an ongoing investigation, which, even under normal circumstances, should never be done. That is why former Attorney General Holder felt compelled to rebuke him in this scathing op-ed.
Hopefully, the current members of the Justice Department tasked with reviewing the bipartisan complaints read the memo and expedite their decision concerning the future of the FBI Director.
It should not take long for any rational investigator to determine that James Comey’s “cry wolf” memo was little more than a partisan prop handed to a failing campaign — and to remove the FBI Director from his office. | 1real |
В День народного единства в Москве пройдет массове шествие | АР
Как сообщается на сайте Общественной палаты(ОП), шествие начнется в 10:30 от Пушкинской площади, колонна пройдет по Тверской улице и завершит свое движение на Манежной площади. В 11:00 на пересечении ул. Тверской с улицами Охотный ряд и Моховая начнется митинг-концерт. Предполагается, что участие в мероприятиях примут около десяти тысяч человек.
Ранее Pravda. Ru писала, что инициативная группа Общественной палаты РФ намерена обратиться к столичным властям с заявкой на проведение шествия и митинга-концерта "Мы едины" 4 ноября, в День народного единства.
В состав инициативной группы вошли, в частности, секретарь ОП РФ Александр Бречалов, первый заместитель секретаря палаты Вячеслав Бочаров, член комиссии ОП РФ по развитию общественной дипломатии и поддержке соотечественников за рубежом, поэт Андрей Дементьев.
ОП призывает присоединиться к акции гражданских активистов, некоммерческие организации, общественные объединения, национально-культурные автономии, каждого, для кого День народного единства — важный и радостный праздник.
Напомним, в акции "Мы едины" в прошлом году в российской столице приняли участие около 85 тысяч человек.
Актер Евгений Стеблов ранее рассказал Pravda. Ru об отношении к празднованию Дня народного единства: "Я родился в советское время и народ привык к так называемым ноябрьским праздникам. Есть это внутреннее какое-то ожидание ноябрьских праздников. Не идеологических, не коммунистических, а просто — в ноябре будет праздник. И когда сделали День народного единства 4-го числа — я считаю, это разумное решение. Оно, с одной стороны, удовлетворяет эту потребность ноябрьских праздников, с другой — ставит все по своим местам, потому что повод гораздо более достойный, чем переворот октябрьский".
Согласно опросу Фонда "Общественное мнение", День народного единства, который отмечается в России 4 ноября, для большинства россиян уже стал "родным" праздником.
По данным социологов, большинство респондентом были в курсе, какой именно праздник отмечается в России 4 ноября. Так 42% участников опроса верно назвали его "День единения наций и народностей России", "День народного единства". Некоторые, впрочем, называли его правильно, но приблизительно "День какого-то единства". При этом 8% опрошенных уверены, что Россия в эту дату празднует День независимости, а еще 5% — что День России.
Специалисты Фонда сделали вывод: "Так или иначе, праздник этот считается нужным, и доля придерживающихся такого мнения год от года растет".
При этом многие россияне считают 4 ноября важным для себя праздником. Как заявили социологи, на вопрос "Если говорить в целом, по вашему мнению, нужен или не нужен России такой праздник, как День народного единства?" большинство (69%) ответило — нужен.
В целом россияне отмечают рост чувства единства нации на фоне роста международной напряженности и внешнего давления на Россию. Об этом свидетельствует недавний опрос Всероссийского центра изучения общественного мнения (ВЦИОМ). Как отмечают жители нашей страны, главный объединяющий фактор — это умение объединиться в тяжелые для страны времена.
"Россию объединяют любовь друг к другу и Родине!" Поделиться: | 1real |
Britain's Prince Harry says thrilled at engagement to U.S. actress Markle | LONDON (Reuters) - Britain s Prince Harry, who announced earlier on Monday he was engaged to his American girlfriend Meghan Markle, said they were both thrilled as they posed for their first picture together after the announcement. Thrilled. Over the moon, Harry said when asked how he felt. When asked by reporters when he knew she was the one, he said: The very first time we met. Asked if his proposal was romantic, Harry replied: Of course it was, before leaving with an arm around his fiancee who showed off her diamond engagement ring to photographers. | 0fake |
LEBRON JAMES Brags About Being “Well-Spoken”…Proceeds To Use Vocabulary Of A 4-Yr-Old To Trash President Trump | Is anyone else sick and tired of overpaid athletes who can t even formulate a proper sentence, criticizing President Donald J. Trump, one of the most successful businessmen of our time?After taking a stand for harmony and togetherness by wearing black sneaker and white sneakers with the word Equality written on them, to a game in Washington, DC, on Sunday night, NBA star LeBron James took a decidedly less conciliatory tone, in his post-game comments about President Trump.James said, Obviously I ve been very outspoken and well-spoken about the situation that s going on at the helm here, and we re not going to let one person dictate us, us as Americans, how beautiful and how powerful we are as a people. It certainly was nice of James to add that he s been well-spoken, in addition to being outspoken.The three-time NBA champ and future Hall of Famer continued, No matter the skin color, no matter the race, no matter who you are, I think we all have to understand that having equal rights and being able to stand for something and speak for something and keeping the conversation going. James did not elaborate on what rights he felt were in danger, nor did he explain exactly what the conversation was, or where it was going.However, James did speak from a place of unrivaled authority on the subject of being outspoken. In many ways, James has been the anti-Jordan, whereas MJ avoided political entanglements whenever possible, at least since 2012, James has embraced them whenever and wherever possible.James appeared in a photo with his teammates wearing hoodies in honor of Trayvon Martin, a black teenager shot to death by George Zimmerman in 2012. James wore an I Can t Breathe t-shirt to warm-ups at Madison Square Garden to show support for Eric Garner, a New York man who died after an altercation with police in 2014.The 13-time All-Star has also held nothing back when it comes to President Trump. In September, James called President Trump a bum, after the president rescinded a White House invite to Golden State guard Steph Curry. | 1real |
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