title stringlengths 1 456 ⌀ | text stringlengths 1 143k ⌀ | label class label 2
classes |
|---|---|---|
JIMMY KIMMEL: Republicans ‘Should Be Praying for God to Forgive Them’ For Las Vegas Massacre | Late-night TV host Jimmy Kimmel opened his program Monday with a ten-minute political rant about Sunday s mass murder in Las Vegas, saying now is the time for political debate about gun control.Dismissing as inadequate calls for prayers for the victims by President Donald Trump, House Speaker Paul Ryan, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), the Jimmy Kimmel Live host said: they should be praying for God to forgive them for letting the gun lobby run this country. Kimmel railed against lawmakers who won t do anything about this because the NRA has their balls in a money clip, insisting that their thoughts and your prayers are insufficient. The comic responded to those saying there was nothing that could have been done to stop Sunday s attack. I disagree with that intensely, Kimmel said, because of course there s something we can do about it. BreitbartMeanwhile, reports are coming out that Kimmel has increased his security detail which consists of highly-trained, off-duty police officers.According to a report from The Blast on Monday, late night host Jimmy Kimmel has been bulking up on his security for his Jimmy Kimmel Live! show tapings, including the addition of highly-trained, off-duty police officers at both the front and back entrances. Per the report:Sources close to the show tell The Blast that ever since Kimmel re-ignited his campaign against the Republicans health care proposals, the comedian has had some issues with protestors at the show.We re told the show has responded by adding security to the tapings increasing personnel at both the front and back entrances. | 1real |
Hurricane Donald and the Storms of Changing Climate | Posted on November 10, 2016 by DavidSwanson
John Feffer argued on Wednesday that Demagogue Donald, whose very existence will lead me to pretend I’m not from the U.S. the next time I’m in Europe, is part of a wider trend that’s already hit Europe hard:
“The ugliness has been percolating in Europe for some time now. It wasn’t just Brexit, Britain’s unexpected rejection of the European Union. It was the election of militant populists throughout Eastern Europe — Viktor Orban in Hungary, Robert Fico in Slovakia, the party of Jaroslaw Kaczynski in Poland. It was the electoral surge of the National Front in France and the Alternative fur Deutschland in Germany. It was the backlash against immigrants, social welfare programs, and ‘lazy Mediterraneans’ — but also against bankers and Brussels bureaucrats.”
I think the trend is even wider and deeper if the trend we’re talking about is that of making everything worse, of increasing inequality, of increasing militarism, of destroying the environment, of pushing profit over people. If that’s the trend, the bankers are its vanguard, not its victims, and it has saturated the international establishment almost as thoroughly as it has the rightwing sectarians.
But the trend Feffer seems to have in mind is one of nationalism or ethnic identity or racism in opposition to global humanitarianism. Feffer’s new dystopian novel, Splinterlands , tells a future of shattered nations and international institutions, replaced with ever smaller and more disastrous warring city states. It’s a vision that should disturb us deeply, a vision of what this world could actually become if it gains nothing in wisdom, miraculously survives its nuclear weapons, and plows right ahead into climate chaos and total capitalist consumption.
Feffer’s utopia seems to be a globe unified in peace. But his dystopia is not unlike that of an author like Ian Morris whose utopia is a globe unified by imperial war. The great threat on the horizon for both is balkanization or splintering. Feffer sees this brought on by bigotry, militarism, and environmental destruction. Morris sees the threat as, basically, un-Americanism. But where does barbaric tribalism stop and the promotion of more direct local democracy begin? Is bigger always better and smaller always worse?
Feffer may not think so, because, in fact, a small utopia hidden in one corner of a sinking Titanic of an earth shows up in Splinterlands — something of a Luddite communal organic farm of a sort that essentially exists right now, a creation that cannot save us all or even itself unless expanded to a radically larger scale or duplicated innumerable times. The trick, then, may be to duplicate sustainable and just local living within a global system of nonviolent dispute resolution, cooperation, and fairness.
Feffer says he thought a Trump figure wouldn’t arrive for four more years — though it’s interesting that a big role in his fictionalized future dismantling of the world is played by a hurricane named Donald. My question is whether Trump’s disastrous arrival might not in some ways be put to good use toward human survival. I’m thinking of a particular good use to which Hillary Clinton’s disastrous arrival would not have leant itself. That is to say, can we not now appeal to other nations to recognize that the presence of U.S. military troops on their soil represents their subservience to the odious Donald Trump, a figure hardly to be imagined as the mythical Barack Obama, man of peace?
Can we encourage nonviolent resistance to U.S. militarism without encouraging a dive into a dystopian Splinterlands? Can the world refuse to participate in U.S. wars and U.S. weapons dealing while increasing its participation in cooperative non-military endeavors with the United States and the globe? Can U.S.-led war making, and the war making of other nations, come to be understood as the enemy of good globalism, not as the embodiment of UN humanitarian intervention in the affairs of those deemed less developed?
The alternative to the world figuring out how to resist U.S. wars would seem to be the people of the United States shutting down its war machine from within, without the assistance of the other 96%. But how does that seem to be working out? This entry was posted in General . Bookmark the permalink . | 1real |
Unprecedented Surge In Election Fraud Incidents From Around The Country | Unprecedented Surge In Election Fraud Incidents From Around The Country Zero Hedge
Mounting evidence would suggest it's getting more and more difficult for the left to claim that there are "no signs" of fraud in the 2016 election cycle...though we're sure they will continue to try. Just this morning the Miami Herald noted that two arrests were made in Miami-Dade county on election fraud charges including efforts by one woman to illegally register voters (some of whom were dead...a recurring theme this election cycle) while another 74-year-old election worker was charged with actually " illegally marking ballots" .
A 74-year-old woman tasked with opening envelopes sent by Miami-Dade County voters with their completed mail ballots was arrested Friday after co-workers caught her illegally marking ballots, resulting in an unknown — but small — number of fraudulent votes being cast for mayoral candidate Raquel Regalado.
Investigators linked Gladys Coego, a temporary worker for the county elections department, to two fraudulent votes, but they suspect from witness testimony that she submitted several more.
In a separate election-fraud case, authorities also arrested a second woman for unlawfully filling out voter-registration forms on behalf of United for Care, the campaign to legalize medical marijuana in Florida.
The Miami-Dade state attorney’s office plans to accuse Tomika Curgil, 33, of filling out forms for five people without their consent. She also submitted at least 17 forms for people who apparently don’t exist — and several forms for people who are dead.
Police officers arrested Curgil at her Liberty City home Friday morning and intend to charge her with five felony counts of submitting false voter-registration information.
Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernández Rundle was quick to praise the "swift arrest of the wrongdoers" and ensure voters of the " integrity of the electoral process." That said, we, like many others, wonder just how many similar cases of election fraud will go unnoticed between now and election day.
“Our law enforcement effort against these election law violators was swift and resulted in an immediate arrest of the wrongdoers,” Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernández Rundle, a Democrat, said in a statement. “The elections department was quick to detect and report these violations to our task force.
“Anyone who attempts to undermine the democratic process should recognize that there is an enforcement partnership between the elections department and our prosecution task force in place to thwart such efforts and arrest those involved. Now we need to move forward with the election.”
“I want to ensure the voters of Miami-Dade County that the integrity of the electoral process is intact because our procedures work,” White said in a statement. “While disappointed by these incidents, I am very proud of the safeguards the Elections Department has in place to prevent these fraudulent attempts, and I commend the employees who remained vigilant just as they were trained to do.”
Meanwhile, Florida isn't the only state with fraud problems as an NBC affiliate in Virginia is reporting that a former resident of Alexandia was also arrested after being caught creating fictitious voter registrations and faces up to 40 years in prison. Of course, Virginia, run by long-time Clinton confidant Terry McAuliffe, is no stranger to election fraud as one democratic organization was already caught earlier this month re-registering dead voters .
A former resident of Alexandria, Virginia, is facing up to 40 years in prison after he allegedly used fake names to fill out voter registration applications.
Vafalay Massaquoi, 30, is facing four felony charges related to allegations of voter registration fraud , the Commonwealth's Attorney's Office said. Each charge carries a maximum of 10 years in prison.
In the spring of 2016, Massaquoi was registering new voters as an employee of a local advocacy group. According to the Commonwealth's Attorney, Massaquoi fabricated applications and used fake names to fill out the registration forms.
The fake applications were filed with the Alexandria Office of the General Registrar, who reported the issue to Commonwealth's Attorney Bryan Porter.
All of these reports simply add fuel to the fire of Trump who has been relentlessly attacking the "rigged" elections for the past several weeks. The election is absolutely being rigged by the dishonest and distorted media pushing Crooked Hillary - but also at many polling places - SAD
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 16, 2016 'Obama Warned Of Rigged Elections In 2008.' Time to #DrainTheSwamp https://t.co/AkczH8l0FJ pic.twitter.com/7mIkwAHTuV
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 25, 2016
Of course, these are just a few of the people who have actually been caught for their election "rigging" efforts. Meanwhile, there have seemingly been an unlimited number of other fraud cases pop up around the country involving everything from illegal voter registrations to dead people voting. In fact, a recent report from CBS Chicago found that over 100 dead Chicagoans had voted 229 times over the past decade.
Susie Sallee was buried in 1998. Yet records show she voted in Chicago 12 years later.
Victor Crosswell died in 1994, but records show he’s voted six times since then.
And then there’s Floyd Stevens. Records show he’s voted 11 times since his death in 1993.
“It’s crazy,” Sharon Stevens Anderson, Stevens’ daughter, tells CBS 2’s Pam Zekman. “I don’t see how people can be able to do something like that and get away with it.”
Those are just a few of the cases CBS 2 Investigators found by merging Chicago Board of Election voter histories with the death master file from the Social Security Administration.
In all, the analysis showed 119 dead people have voted a total of 229 times in Chicago in the last decade.
Moreover, an ABC affiliate in Philadelphia uncovered similar instances of dead voters in the "City of Brotherly Love."
So, Action News dug through a decade's worth of election and death records to see if there was any truth to the claim.
Some of what Action News investigation found was stunning.
Pezzano passed in 2006 . But state voting records show the South Philadelphia native still listed as an "Active Voter" who cast ballots in 2008, 2012, 2014, and the 2016 primary election.
Our investigation also found Joseph B. Haggarty resting peacefully in a Bucks County cemetery. His grave marker confirmed he died in 2010, but records show he voted five years after his death.
Action News also found Paul Bunch, who died in 2006, also cast a vote in this year's primary which was nearly ten years after death records show he died.
But, while all of this may seem shocking, in due time, we're confident these arrests and all other instances dead people voting, etc. will be seen for what they really are, namely another blatant attempt to suppress low-income and minority votes. Share This Article... | 1real |
“DRIVE THEM OUT OF YOUR PLACES OF WORSHIP!” London Imams Take President Trump’s Advice, REFUSE To Perform Funeral Rights For Islamic Terrorists [VIDEO] | President Trump gave a powerful speech to Arab leaders at the opening of the new Global Centre for Combatting Extremist Ideology in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia on May 21, 2017. In his historic speech, President Trump warned Islamic extremists: If you choose terror, your life will be brief and your life will be empty. Trump went on to tell the Arab leaders and the entire world, We are not here to lecture and tell you how to live. We are here to work together to meet one goal and meet history s great test to conquer extremism. Young Muslim boys and girls should be able to grow up free from fear, safe from violence and innocent of hatred. Young Muslims should be able to build prosperity for themselves. This will be the beginning of the end for those who fight terror. This special gathering will one day be remembered as the start of peace in the Middle East and potentially all over the world. Watch the clip of President Trump telling Arab leaders in Riyadh and around the world to drive out terrorism from their nations and from their places of worship:It appears that the Imams in London were listening after East London Mosque and London Muslim Centre Chairman Muhammad Habibur-Rahman boldly announced to Muslims everywhere that if they commit acts of terror against innocent people, they will not receive funeral rights in London mosques.British police on Tuesday named the final member of the terror trio that murdered seven people on Saturday in a knife and van attack before police shot the jihadis dead and the news comes as more than 130 Muslim religious leaders were refusing to say funeral prayers for any members of the ISIS cell.The decision by the Muslim leaders was seen as an unprecedented move because the funeral ritual is typically performed on a deceased Muslim no matter the person s past actions. The group of religious leaders have urged others to join them in declining to pray for the dead killers. We, as Muslim imams and religious leaders, condemn the recent terror attacks in Manchester and London in the strongest terms possible, the Muslim leaders said in a statement. Coming from a range of backgrounds, and from across the U.K.; feeling the pain the rest of the nation feels, we have come together to express our shock and utter disgust at these cold-blooded murders. We are deeply hurt that a spate of terror attacks have been committed in our country once more by murderers who seek to gain religious legitimacy for their actions. We seek to clarify that their reprehensible actions have neither legitimacy nor our sympathy. East London Mosque and London Muslim Centre Chairman Muhammad Habibur-Rahman said the decision was made because those who perpetrate terrorism: you are against the very core teaching of Islam and of our Prophet Muhammad. Your misguidance will lead you to destruction, and God willing you will utterly fail in your evil aims, he said in a statement.The decision underscores a warning President Trump issued to the Islamic world last month. Speaking in Riyadh before the leaders of 50 Muslim majority countries, Trump told warned terrorists that taking innocent lives would not lead to eternal paradise. If you choose the path of terror, your life will be empty, your life will be brief, and your soul will be fully condemned, Trump said.U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson also applauded the move. He said he was encouraged by the imams and said that the decision means they re condemning their souls since the funeral prayer asks for forgiveness of the dead. And that is what has to be done, he said.Youssef Zaghba, a Moroccan-born Italian man, was identified Tuesday morning as the final member of the trio that descended upon the London Bridge on Saturday.Mak Chishty, the Metropolitan police commander of engagement, said, according to The Guardian, that it is time for Muslims to counter the scourge of terrorism, extremism and hatred that we have in our communities at present. Chishty, the highest-ranking officer in the department of Muslim faith, said, It is the Islamic duty of every Muslim to be loyal to the country in which they live. We are now asking questions to understand how extremism and hatred has taken hold within some elements of our own communities. FOX News | 1real |
French court demands 40 million euro bail for Russian lawmaker | MARSEILLE, France (Reuters) - A French judge has ordered a prominent Russian businessman and lawmaker Suleiman Kerimov pay a 40 million euro ($47.25 million) bail for his release pending a tax fraud and money laundering investigation, a judicial source said on Wednesday. Kerimov was arrested on Nov. 20 in Nice on the French Riviera, prompting the Kremlin to intervene and say it would do everything in our power to protect his lawful interests . Kerimov appeared before a judge for the bail hearing on Tuesday, the source said. Russia s state-run Rossiya 24 TV station reported after his arrest that Kerimov had denied any guilt. Another Russian lawmaker, Rizvan Kurbanov, last month described Kerimov s arrest as an unprecedented demarche by the French . Originally from the mainly Muslim Russian region of Dagestan, Kerimov built his lucrative natural resources business through a combination of debt, an appetite for risk, and political connections. He owned top flight soccer club Anzhi Makhachkala until he sold it in 2016. Kerimov s fortune peaked at $17.5 billion in 2008 before slumping to just $3 billion in 2009, according to Forbes magazine. The investigation centers on the purchase of several luxury residences on the French Riviera via shell companies, something that could have enabled Kerimov to reduce taxes owed to the French state, a source close to the investigation told Reuters after Kerimov s arrest. ($1 = 0.8465 euros) | 0fake |
BREAKING: Irrefutable Proof Obama Lied to Protect Hillary Clinton’s Run for the White House Read | By Claire Bernish at theantimedia.org
Thanks to Wikileaks, we now have the smoking gun email irrefutably proving not only did President Barack Obama know about Hillary Clinton’s non-government-issued email account, he used it in correspondence with her.
Even more damning to the president’s credibility, it appears the lie was a purposeful attempt to protect Clinton’s upcoming bid for the presidency.
Shortly after the New York Times broke the story on March 2, 2015, of Clinton’s use of a personal server to supplant the government system — and, as has been revealed, to thwart transparency — Obama announced publicly his lack of prior knowledge.
“The same time everybody else learned it through news reports,” the president told CBS News White House correspondent Bill Plante, as Zero Hedge reported . “The policy of my administration is to encourage transparency, which is why my emails, the BlackBerry I carry around, all those records are available and archived.
“I’m glad that Hillary’s instructed that those emails about official business need to be disclosed.”
It wouldn’t be a stretch to imagine, however, Obama’s placid public appearance guarded secret internal panic — a panic echoed behind the scenes at the burgeoning Clinton campaign.
An email penned by Clinton campaign spokesman Josh Schwerin to Director of Communications, Jennifer Palmieri, and a few others, calling immediate attention to a tweet by journalist Katherine Miller paints an entirely different picture.
Miller tweeted a snippet of the aforementioned interview in which Plante asked Obama, “Mr. President, When did you first learn that Hillary Clinton used an email system outside the U.S. Government for official business while she was Secretary of State?”
“The same time everybody else learned it,” he responded, “through news reports.”
I have some questions here pic.twitter.com/ufkeoZCx2m | 1real |
Advocate For Legal Rape Says Trump’s Victory Makes It Acceptable For Men To Rape Women | Daryush Valizadeh is a sexist and misogynist who is lobbying to make rape legal on private property, and he is a fan of Donald Trump.Trump s past statements and behavior towards women has emboldened men who think women are inferior and can do with them as they please.And Valizadeh wrote a manifesto celebrating Trump s win as the moment legal rape activists have been waiting for to make their goal a reality.I m in a state of exuberance that we now have a President who rates women on a 1-10 scale in the same way that we do and evaluates women by their appearance and feminine attitude. We may have to institute a new feature called Would Trump bang? to signify the importance of feminine beauty ideals that cultivate effort and class above sloth and vulgarity. Simply look at his wife and the beautiful women he has surrounded himself with to remind yourself of what men everywhere prefer, and not the beauty at every size sewage that has been pushed down our throats by gender studies professors and corporations trying to market their product to feminist fatsoes. The President of the United States does not see the value in fat women who don t take care of themselves, and neither should you. We now have a President who will not encourage anti-male propaganda, rape culture, and female victimhood. While I do have minor concerns on the influence of his feminist-minded daughter, Ivanka, Trump will not continue the attack on men that has been institutionalized since the sexual revolution and accelerated during the eight years of Obama. Because our current cultural dystopia is the result of intense long-term manipulation, it is more than enough for Trump to simply not touch the gender issue to allow the culture to return to a more patriarchal order. Stop feeding the rot and it will die off, allowing biology to naturally reassert itself.We ve experienced so many changes in the past decade that we haven t had a chance to understand what s going on and adapt. Instead, we ve been reacting from one blow to the next, whether it s the loss of our jobs through witch hunts or the rape culture horror that has turned a banal consensual hookup into possible incarceration. Trump s victory gives us room to begin pushing back against the fictions that have put men in harm s way.This jackass went on to brag that men like him will be able to say what they want to do what they want to women and get away it whether Trump changes the laws or not, suggesting that men can go right ahead and rape all the women they want without consequence.This is our moment. The door is opening for a renaissance of masculinity where men can take pride in being men, and the best part of it is that we don t need to wait for Trump to do anything. His victory is more than enough for us to apply our own individual strength in seizing the bull s horns where we can come out of the politically incorrect closet and assert our beliefs and behaviors. It would be icing on the cake if Trump rolled back anti-masculine laws and policies, but it s not required, because the power to change ourselves and our country is within our hands.This creepy asshole literally believes Donald Trump s election victory is one step closer toward making it legal for men to rape women.Across the country, Trump supporters have already committed over 300 hate crimes, including crimes against women such as assault.If Valizadeh has his way, we are about to see sexual assault crimes skyrocket, which means America just became an even more dangerous place for women because of Trump s victory.Featured Image: WomanSurvival.com | 1real |
BOMBSHELL AUDIO: Hillary Clinton Herself Recorded Calling for Rigging Election | Huckabee Responds To Flag-Burning Trump Hater…“What’s Happened To This Country?”
“I do not think we should have pushed for an election in the Palestinian territories. I think that was a big mistake,” Clinton told editor Eli Chomsky.
“And if we were going to push for an election,” she added, “then we should have made sure that we did something to determine who was going to win.”
The election resulted in a resounding victory for Hamas over the U.S.-preferred Fatah — something Clinton, apparently, thought could have been avoided if we had somehow influenced the outcome (aka: “rigged” the election). Advertisement - story continues below
Listen to the audio here:
Chomsky said he recalled being taken aback that “anyone could support the idea — offered by a national political leader, no less — that the U.S. should be in the business of fixing foreign elections,” according to the Observer .
But for conservatives who have been warning against Clinton for years, it comes as little surprise that she would want to use her political power to influence the outcome of an election inappropriately. Advertisement - story continues below | 1real |
Trump in unexpected meeting with Republican Party chairman | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump took a detour from the campaign trail on Thursday and held an unexpected meeting in Washington with Reince Priebus, the head of the Republican National Committee. It was not immediately clear what the two men discussed but the meeting came after months of tension between Trump and the party he seeks to represent in the Nov. 8 election. Trump this week abandoned a pledge to support the eventual Republican nominee if it is not him. He has also complained about the party’s delegate allocation process as he seeks to win the 1,237 delegates necessary for the nomination. “Just had a very nice meeting with @Reince Priebus and the @GOP. Looking forward to bringing the Party together —- and it will happen!” Trump wrote on Twitter. Barry Bennett, an adviser to the Trump campaign, said on MSNBC that the meeting was about Trump helping the RNC raise money. “The meeting is to help the RNC,” he said. Trump also met with his foreign policy team in the capital on Thursday after a series of statements by the billionaire businessman on national security issues that have drawn criticism. In recent interviews, Trump has declared the NATO alliance obsolete, described Saudi Arabia as too dependent on the United States and said Japan and South Korea may need to develop their own nuclear programs because the U.S. security umbrella is too costly to maintain. In an MSNBC town hall on Wednesday night, Trump did not rule out the potential use of nuclear weapons in Europe or the Middle East to combat Islamic State militants. “I would never take any of my cards off the table,” he said. Max Boot, a conservative national security expert and member of the Council on Foreign Relations, wrote in Commentary Magazine this week that Trump is “singularly unqualified to be commander-in-chief.” “With Trump in command, our enemies would have a field day — Moscow and Beijing must be licking their chops at his desire to abandon U.S. allies in Europe and Asia — and our friends would face mortal threats. If that isn’t the single biggest threat to U.S. security, I don’t know what is,” Boot wrote. | 0fake |
‘Who Appointed You to the Supreme Court?’: Senator DESTROYS Yates For Defying Trump Travel Ban [Video] | Former acting Attorney General Sally Yates was grilled about her refusal to defend the president s travel executive order She made huge mistake by assuming what Trump said during the campaign could be admissible in court IT CAN T!In a hearing centered on Russian interference in the election, one senator took the opportunity to question the former attorney general who was fired for refusing to defend President Trump s travel ban.Senator John Kennedy (R-Louisiana) asked former acting Attorney General Sally Yates why she refused to defend Trump s initial executive order barring travel from several Mideast nations. I believed any argument [the Justice Department] would have to make in its defense would not be grounded in the truth, Yates said. We would have to argue that it had nothing to do with religion, she said.Kennedy asked whether there was no reasonable argument that could be made to defend the order any other way.Yates said she believed the intent of the order was to discriminate against Muslims trying to come to the United States.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGqsrx0LpTcHere s what former US Attorney Joe DiGenova said about Sally Yates: This is a person of the extreme Left who should not have been anywhere near the decision-making process for this president. Yates was fired and should have been! | 1real |
WATCH: Jimmy Kimmel Roasts Jeb Bush’s Campaign Ad Starring George W. Bush | George W. Bush is back to put the nail in the coffin of his family name and his brother s presidential campaign, with a little help from Jimmy Kimmel.Earlier this month, former President George W. Bush narrated an ad on behalf of his brother Jeb Bush in an effort to put a third Bush in the White House.It certainly appears to be an act of desperation on Jeb Bush s part if he has to resort to asking his brother to campaign for him, especially since W s legacy poisoned the GOP over the last two presidential elections.And as Jeb and George campaign in South Carolina in an effort to pull off a miracle victory in a state where Jeb is currently polling at 10 percent, a full 28 points behind front-runner Donald Trump and 12 points behind Ted Cruz, this appears to be Jeb s last gasp on the campaign trail.And so, Jimmy Kimmel decided to help Jeb by releasing his own version of the ad reminding us just how dimwitted George W. Bush was during his eight years in office. America needs help, a Bush sound-alike begins. Parents can t put food on their families and our children still isn t learning. I know Jeb. I know his good heart. It s inside his body next to other things, like his stomach, which is where his snacks go. I know that and I know that experience in judgement count in the Oval Office, which is the room where the president works at his desk. That s where my little brother would work if he were president. Don t bet on it but don t underestimate Jeb either. He s got a cute little wife and he s a good little guy. And he knows how to open doors for America. Cue President Bush trying and failing to open a door after a speech as the audience laughed their asses off.Here s the video via YouTube.This was the perfect ad and it demonstrates why Jeb Bush would have been much better off leaving his brother at home. At least he could have lost with what s left of his dignity. Now he has none. Featured image from video screen capture | 1real |
Saudis and Extremism: ‘Both the Arsonists and the Firefighters’ - The New York Times | WASHINGTON — Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump do not agree on much, but Saudi Arabia may be an exception. She has deplored Saudi Arabia’s support for “radical schools and mosques around the world that have set too many young people on a path towards extremism. ” He has called the Saudis “the world’s biggest funders of terrorism. ” The first American diplomat to serve as envoy to Muslim communities around the world visited 80 countries and concluded that the Saudi influence was destroying tolerant Islamic traditions. “If the Saudis do not cease what they are doing,” the official, Farah Pandith, wrote last year, “there must be diplomatic, cultural and economic consequences. ” And hardly a week passes without a television pundit or a newspaper columnist blaming Saudi Arabia for jihadist violence. On HBO, Bill Maher calls Saudi teachings “medieval,” adding an epithet. In The Washington Post, Fareed Zakaria writes that the Saudis have “created a monster in the world of Islam. ” The idea has become a commonplace: that Saudi Arabia’s export of the rigid, bigoted, patriarchal, fundamentalist strain of Islam known as Wahhabism has fueled global extremism and contributed to terrorism. As the Islamic State projects its menacing calls for violence into the West, directing or inspiring terrorist attacks in country after country, an old debate over Saudi influence on Islam has taken on new relevance. Those questions are deeply contentious, partly because of the contradictory impulses of the Saudi state. In the realm of extremist Islam, the Saudis are “both the arsonists and the firefighters,” said William McCants, a Brookings Institution scholar. “They promote a very toxic form of Islam that draws sharp lines between a small number of true believers and everyone else, Muslim and ” he said, providing ideological fodder for violent jihadists. Yet at the same time, “they’re our partners in counterterrorism,” said Mr. McCants, one of three dozen academics, government officials and experts on Islam from multiple countries interviewed for this article. Saudi leaders seek good relations with the West and see jihadist violence as a menace that could endanger their rule, especially now that the Islamic State is staging attacks in the kingdom — 25 in the last eight months, by the government’s count. But they are also driven by their rivalry with Iran, and they depend for legitimacy on a clerical establishment dedicated to a reactionary set of beliefs. Those conflicting goals can play out in a bafflingly inconsistent manner. Thomas Hegghammer, a Norwegian terrorism expert who has advised the United States government, said the most important effect of Saudi proselytizing might have been to slow the evolution of Islam, blocking its natural accommodation to a diverse and globalized world. “If there was going to be an Islamic reformation in the 20th century, the Saudis probably prevented it by pumping out literalism,” he said. The reach of the Saudis has been stunning, touching nearly every country with a Muslim population, from the Gothenburg Mosque in Sweden to the King Faisal Mosque in Chad, from the King Fahad Mosque in Los Angeles to the Seoul Central Mosque in South Korea. Support has come from the Saudi government the royal family Saudi charities and organizations including the World Muslim League, the World Assembly of Muslim Youth and the International Islamic Relief Organization, providing the hardware of impressive edifices and the software of preaching and teaching. There is a broad consensus that the Saudi ideological juggernaut has disrupted local Islamic traditions in dozens of countries — the result of lavish spending on religious outreach for half a century, estimated in the tens of billions of dollars. The result has been amplified by guest workers, many from South Asia, who spend years in Saudi Arabia and bring Saudi ways home with them. In many countries, Wahhabist preaching has encouraged a harshly judgmental religion, contributing to majority support in some polls in Egypt, Pakistan and other countries for stoning for adultery and execution for anyone trying to leave Islam. But exactly how Saudi influence plays out seems to depend greatly on local conditions. In parts of Africa and Southeast Asia, for instance, Saudi teachings have shifted the religious culture in a markedly conservative direction, most visibly in the decision of more women to cover their hair or of men to grow beards. Among Muslim immigrant communities in Europe, the Saudi influence seems to be just one factor driving radicalization, and not the most significant. In divided countries like Pakistan and Nigeria, the flood of Saudi money, and the ideology it promotes, have exacerbated divisions over religion that regularly prove lethal. And for a small minority in many countries, the exclusionary Saudi version of Sunni Islam, with its denigration of Jews and Christians, as well as of Muslims of Shiite, Sufi and other traditions, may have made some people vulnerable to the lure of Al Qaeda, the Islamic State and other violent jihadist groups. “There’s only so much dehumanizing of the other that you can be exposed to — and exposed to as the word of God — without becoming susceptible to recruitment,” said David Andrew Weinberg, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington who tracks Saudi influence. Exhibit A may be Saudi Arabia itself, which produced not only Osama bin Laden, but also 15 of the 19 hijackers of Sept. 11, 2001 sent more suicide bombers than any other country to Iraq after the 2003 invasion and has supplied more foreign fighters to the Islamic State, 2, 500, than any country other than Tunisia. Mehmet Gormez, the senior Islamic cleric in Turkey, said that while he was meeting with Saudi clerics in Riyadh in January, the Saudi authorities had executed 47 people in a single day on terrorism charges, 45 of them Saudi citizens. “I said: ‘These people studied Islam for 10 or 15 years in your country. Is there a problem with the educational system?’ ” Mr. Gormez said in an interview. He argued that Wahhabi teaching was undermining the pluralism, tolerance and openness to science and learning that had long characterized Islam. “Sadly,” he said, the changes have taken place “in almost all of the Islamic world. ” In a huge embarrassment to the Saudi authorities, the Islamic State adopted official Saudi textbooks for its schools until the extremist group could publish its own books in 2015. Out of 12 works by Muslim scholars republished by the Islamic State, seven are by Muhammad ibn Abd the founder of the Saudi school of Islam, said Jacob Olidort, a scholar at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. A former imam of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, Sheikh Adil declared with regret in a television interview in January that the Islamic State leaders “draw their ideas from what is written in our own books, our own principles. ” Small details of Saudi practice can cause outsize trouble. For at least two decades, the kingdom has distributed an English translation of the Quran that in the first surah, or chapter, adds parenthetical references to Jews and Christians in addressing Allah: “those who earned Your Anger (such as the Jews) nor of those who went astray (such as the Christians). ” Seyyed Hossein Nasr, a professor of Islamic studies at George Washington University and the editor in chief of the new Study Quran, an annotated English version, said the additions were “a complete heresy, with no basis in Islamic tradition. ” Accordingly, many American officials who have worked to counter extremism and terrorism have formed a dark view of the Saudi effect — even if, given the sensitivity of the relationship, they are often loath to discuss it publicly. The United States’ reliance on Saudi counterterrorism cooperation in recent years — for instance, the Saudi tip that foiled a 2010 Qaeda plot to blow up two American cargo planes — has often taken precedence over concerns about radical influence. And generous Saudi funding for professorships and research centers at American universities, including the most elite institutions, has deterred criticism and discouraged research on the effects of Wahhabi proselytizing, according to Mr. McCants — who is working on a book about the Saudi impact on global Islam — and other scholars. One American former official who has begun to speak out is Ms. Pandith, the State Department’s first special representative to Muslim communities worldwide. From 2009 to 2014, she visited Muslims in 80 countries and concluded that Saudi influence was pernicious and universal. “In each place I visited, the Wahhabi influence was an insidious presence,” she wrote in The New York Times last year. She said the United States should “disrupt the training of extremist imams,” “reject free Saudi textbooks and translations that are filled with hate,” and “prevent the Saudis from demolishing local Muslim religious and cultural sites that are evidence of the diversity of Islam. ” Yet some scholars on Islam and extremism, including experts on radicalization in many countries, push back against the notion that Saudi Arabia bears predominant responsibility for the current wave of extremism and jihadist violence. They point to multiple sources for the rise and spread of Islamist terrorism, including repressive secular governments in the Middle East, local injustices and divisions, the hijacking of the internet for terrorist propaganda, and American interventions in the Muslim world from the war in Afghanistan to the invasion of Iraq. The ideologues most influential with modern jihadists, like Sayyid Qutb of Egypt and Abul Ala Maududi of Pakistan, reached their extreme, views without much Saudi input. Al Qaeda and the Islamic State despise Saudi rulers, whom they consider the worst of hypocrites. “Americans like to have someone to blame — a person, a political party or country,” said Robert S. Ford, a former United States ambassador to Syria and Algeria. “But it’s a lot more complicated than that. I’d be careful about blaming the Saudis. ” While Saudi religious influence may be disruptive, he and others say, its effect is not monolithic. A major tenet of official Saudi Islamic teaching is obedience to rulers — hardly a precept that encourages terrorism intended to break nations. Many Saudi and clerics are quietist, characterized by a devotion to scripture and prayer and a shunning of politics, let alone political violence. And especially since 2003, when Qaeda attacks in the kingdom awoke the monarchy to the danger it faced from militancy, Saudi Arabia has acted more aggressively to curtail preachers who call for violence, cut off terrorist financing and cooperate with Western intelligence to foil terrorist plots. From 2004 to 2012, 3, 500 imams were fired for refusing to renounce extremist views, and another 20, 000 went through retraining, according to the Ministry of Islamic Affairs — though the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom expressed skepticism that the training was really “instilling tolerance. ” An American scholar with long experience in Saudi Arabia — who spoke on condition of anonymity to preserve his ability to travel to the kingdom for research — said he believed that Saudi influence had often been exaggerated in American political discourse. But he compared it to climate change. Just as a increase in temperature can ultimately result in drastic effects around the globe, with glaciers melting and species dying off, so Saudi teaching is playing out in many countries in ways that are hard to predict and difficult to trace but often profound, the scholar said. Saudi proselytizing can result in a “recalibrating of the religious center of gravity” for young people, the scholar said, which makes it “easier for them to swallow or make sense of the ISIS religious narrative when it does arrive. It doesn’t seem quite as foreign as it might have, had that Saudi religious influence not been there. ” Why does Saudi Arabia find it so difficult to let go of an ideology that much of the world finds repugnant? The key to the Saudi dilemma dates back nearly three centuries to the origin of the alliance that still undergirds the Saudi state. In 1744, Muhammad ibn Abd a reformist cleric, sought the protection of Muhammad bin Saud, a powerful tribal leader in the harsh desert of the Arabian Peninsula. The alliance was mutually beneficial: Wahhab received military protection for his movement, which sought to return Muslims to what he believed were the values of the early years of Islam in the seventh century, when the Prophet Muhammad was alive. (His beliefs were a variant of Salafism, the conservative school of Islam that teaches that the salaf, or pious ancestors, had the correct ways and beliefs and should be emulated.) In return, the Saud family earned the endorsement of an Islamic cleric — a puritanical enforcer known for insisting on the death by stoning of a woman for adultery. Wahhab’s particular version of Islam was the first of two historical accidents that would define Saudi religious influence centuries later. What came to be known as Wahhabism was “a tribal, desert Islam,” said Akbar Ahmed, the chairman of Islamic studies at American University in Washington. It was shaped by the austere environment — xenophobic, fiercely opposed to shrines and tombs, disapproving of art and music, and hugely different from the cosmopolitan Islam of diverse trading cities like Baghdad and Cairo. The second historical accident came in 1938, when American prospectors discovered the largest oil reserves on earth in Saudi Arabia. Oil revenue generated by the Oil Company, or Aramco, created fabulous wealth. But it also froze in place a rigid social and economic system and gave the conservative religious establishment an extravagant budget for the export of its severe strain of Islam. “One day you find oil, and the world is coming to you,” Professor Ahmed said. “God has given you the ability to take your version of Islam to the world. ” In 1964, when King Faisal ascended the throne, he embraced the obligation of spreading Islam. A modernizer in many respects, with close ties to the West, he nonetheless could not overhaul the Wahhabi doctrine that became the face of Saudi generosity in many countries. Over the next four decades, in countries alone, Saudi Arabia would build 1, 359 mosques, 210 Islamic centers, 202 colleges and 2, 000 schools. Saudi money helped finance 16 American mosques four in Canada and others in London, Madrid, Brussels and Geneva, according to a report in an official Saudi weekly, Ain . The total spending, including supplying or training imams and teachers, was “many billions” of Saudi riyals (at a rate of about four to a dollar) the report said. Saudi religious teaching had particular force because it came from the birthplace of the Prophet Muhammad, the land of Islam’s two holiest places, Mecca and Medina. When Saudi imams arrived in Muslim countries in Asia or Africa, or in Muslim communities in Europe or the Americas, wearing traditional Arabian robes, speaking the language of the Quran — and carrying a generous checkbook — they had automatic credibility. As the 20th century progressed and people of different nationalities and faiths mixed routinely, the puritanical, exclusionary nature of Wahhab’s teachings would become more and more dysfunctional. But the Saudi government would find it extraordinarily difficult to shed or soften its ideology, especially after the landmark year of 1979. In Tehran that year, the Iranian revolution brought to power a radical Shiite government, symbolically challenging Saudi Arabia, the leader of Sunnism, for leadership of global Islam. The declaration of an Islamic Republic escalated the competition between the two major branches of Islam, spurring the Saudis to redouble their efforts to counter Iran and spread Wahhabism around the world. Then, in a stunning strike, a band of 500 Saudi extremists seized the Grand Mosque in Mecca for two weeks, publicly calling Saudi rulers puppets of the West and traitors to true Islam. The rebels were defeated, but leading clerics agreed to back the government only after assurances of support for a crackdown on immodest ways in the kingdom and a more aggressive export of Wahhabism abroad. Finally, at year’s end, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan and seized power to prop up a Communist government. It soon faced an insurgent movement of mujahedeen, or holy warriors battling for Islam, which drew fighters from around the world for a battle to expel the occupiers. Throughout the 1980s, Saudi Arabia and the United States worked together to finance the mujahedeen in this great Afghan war, which would revive the notion of noble armed jihad for Muslims worldwide. President Ronald Reagan famously welcomed to the Oval Office a delegation of bearded “Afghan freedom fighters” whose social and theological views were hardly distinguishable from those later embraced by the Taliban. In fact, the United States spent $50 million from 1986 to 1992 on what was called a “jihad literacy” project — printing books for Afghan children and adults to encourage violence against “infidels” like Soviet troops. A language textbook for Pashto speakers, for example, according to a study by Dana Burde, an associate professor at New York University, used “Mujahid,” or fighter of jihad, as the illustration: “My brother is a Mujahid. Afghan Muslims are Mujahedeen. I do jihad together with them. Doing jihad against infidels is our duty. ” One day in the months after the Sept. 11 attacks, Robert W. Jordan, the United States ambassador to Saudi Arabia, was driving in the kingdom with the longtime Saudi ambassador to the United States, Prince Bandar Bin Sultan. The prince pointed to a mosque and said, “I just fired the imam there. ” The man’s preaching had been too militant, he said. Mr. Jordan, a Texas lawyer, said that after the Qaeda attacks, he had stepped up pressure on the Saudi government over its spread of extremism. “I told them: ‘What you teach in your schools and preach in your mosques now is not an internal matter. It affects our national security,’” he said. After years of encouraging and financing a harsh Islam in support of the jihad, the United States had reversed course — gradually during the 1990s and then dramatically after the Sept. 11 attacks. But in pressuring Saudi Arabia, American officials would tread lightly, acutely aware of American dependence on Saudi oil and intelligence cooperation. Saudi reform would move at an excruciatingly slow pace. Twelve years after Sept. 11, after years of quiet American complaints about Saudi teachings, a State Department contractor, the International Center for Religion and Diplomacy, completed a study of official Saudi textbooks. It reported some progress in cutting back on bigoted and violent content but found that plenty of objectionable material remained. Officials never released the 2013 study, for fear of angering the Saudis. The New York Times obtained it under the Freedom of Information Act. Seventh graders were being taught that “fighting the infidels to elevate the words of Allah” was among the deeds Allah loved the most, the report found, among dozens of passages it found troubling. Tenth graders learned that Muslims who abandoned Islam should be jailed for three days and, if they did not change their minds, “killed for walking away from their true religion. ” Fourth graders read that had been “shown the truth but abandoned it, like the Jews,” or had replaced truth with “ignorance and delusion, like the Christians. ” Some of the books, prepared and distributed by the government, propagated views that were hostile to science, modernity and women’s rights, not to say downright quirky — advocating, for instance, execution for sorcerers and warning against the dangers of the Rotary Club and the Lions Club. (The groups’ intent, said a textbook, “is to achieve the goals of the Zionist movement. ”) The textbooks, or other Saudi teaching materials with similar content, had been distributed in scores of countries, the study found. Textbook reform has continued since the 2013 study, and Saudi officials say they are trying to replace older books distributed overseas. But as the study noted, the schoolbooks were only a modest part of the Saudis’ lavishly funded global export of Wahhabism. In many places, the study said, the largess includes “a school with a Wahhabist faculty (educated in a Wahhabist University) attached to a mosque with a Wahhabist imam, and ultimately controlled by an international Wahhabist educational body. ” This ideological steamroller has landed in diverse places where Muslims of different sects had spent centuries learning to accommodate one another. Sayyed Shah, a Pakistani journalist working on a doctorate in the United States, described the devastating effect on his town, not far from the Afghan border, of the arrival some years ago of a young Pakistani preacher trained in a seminary. Village residents had long held a mélange of Muslim beliefs, he said. “We were Sunni, but our culture, our traditions were a mixture of Shia and Barelvi and Deobandi,” Mr. Shah said, referring to Muslim sects. His family would visit the large Barelvi shrine, and watch their Shiite neighbors as they lashed themselves in a public religious ritual. “We wouldn’t do that ourselves, but we’d hand out sweets and water,” he said. The new preacher, he said, denounced the Barelvi and Shiite beliefs as false and heretical, dividing the community and setting off years of bitter argument. By 2010, Mr. Shah said, “everything had changed. ” Women who had used shawls to cover their hair and face began wearing full burqas. Militants began attacking kiosks where merchants sold secular music CDs. Twice, terrorists used explosives to try to destroy the village’s locally famous shrine. Now, Mr. Shah said, families are divided his cousin, he said, “just wants Saudi religion. ” He said an entire generation had been “indoctrinated” with a rigid, unforgiving creed. “It’s so difficult these days,” he said. “Initially we were on a single path. We just had economic problems, but we were culturally sound. ” He added, “But now it’s very difficult, because some people want Saudi culture to be our culture, and others are opposing that. ” C. Christine Fair, a specialist on Pakistan at Georgetown University, said Mr. Shah’s account was credible. But like many scholars describing the Saudi impact on religion, she said that militancy in Pakistan also had local causes. While Saudi money and teaching have unquestionably been “accelerants,” Pakistan’s sectarian troubles and jihadist violence have deep roots dating to the country’s origins in the partition of India in 1947. “The idea that without the Saudis Pakistan would be Switzerland is ridiculous,” she said. That is the disputed question, of course: how the world would be different without decades of shaping of Islam. Though there is a widespread belief that Saudi influence has contributed to the growth of terrorism, it is rare to find a direct case of cause and effect. For example, in Brussels, the Grand Mosque was built with Saudi money and staffed with Saudi imams. In 2012, according to Saudi diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks, one Saudi preacher was removed after Belgian complaints that he was a “true Salafi” who did not accept other schools of Islam. And Brussels’ immigrant neighborhoods, notably Molenbeek, have long been the home of storefront mosques teaching Salafi views. After the terrorist attacks in Paris in November and in Brussels in March were tied to an Islamic State cell in Belgium, the Saudi history was the subject of several news media reports. Yet it was difficult to find any direct link between the bombers and the Saudi legacy in the Belgian capital. Several suspects had petty criminal backgrounds their knowledge of Islam was described by friends as superficial they did not appear to be regulars at any mosque. Though the Islamic State claimed responsibility for the blasts, resentment of the treatment of North African immigrant families in Belgium and exposure to Islamic State propaganda, in person or via the internet and social media, appeared to be the major factors motivating the attacks. If there was a Saudi connection, it was highly indirect, perhaps playing out over a generation or longer. Hind Fraihi, a journalist who went underground in the Brussels immigrant neighborhood of Molenbeek in 2005 and wrote a book about it, met imams and found lots of extremist literature written in Saudi Arabia that encouraged “polarization, the sentiment of us against them, the glorification of jihad. ” The recent attackers, Ms. Fraihi said, were motivated by “lots of factors — economic frustration, racism, a generation that feels it has no future. ” But Saudi teaching, she said, “is part of the cocktail. ” Without the Saudi presence over the decades, might a more progressive and accommodating Islam, reflecting immigrants’ Moroccan roots, have taken hold in Brussels? Would young Muslims raised in Belgium have been less susceptible to the stark, violent call of the Islamic State? Conceivably, but the case is impossible to prove. Or consider an utterly different cultural milieu — the world’s most populous Muslim country, Indonesia. The Saudis have sent money for books and teachers for decades, said Sidney Jones, the director of the Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict in Jakarta. “Over time,” said Ms. Jones, who has visited or lived in Indonesia since the 1970s, the Saudi influence “has contributed to a more conservative, more intolerant atmosphere. ” (President Obama, who lived in Indonesia as a boy, has remarked on the same phenomenon.) She said she believed money from private Saudi donors and foundations was behind campaigns in Indonesia against Shiite and Ahmadi Islam, considered heretical by Wahhabi teaching. Some Indonesian religious vigilantes are she said. But when Ms. Jones studied the approximately 1, 000 people arrested in Indonesia on terrorism charges since 2002, she found only a few — “literally four or five” — with ties to Wahhabi or Salafi institutions. When it comes to violence, she concluded, the Saudi connection is “mostly a red herring. ” In fact, she said, there is a gulf between Indonesian jihadists and Indonesian Salafis who look to Saudi or Yemeni scholars for guidance. The jihadists accuse the Salafis of failing to act on their convictions the Salafis scorn the jihadists as extremists. Whatever the global effects of decades of Saudi proselytizing, it is under greater scrutiny than ever, from outside and inside the kingdom. Saudi leaders’ ideological reform efforts, encompassing textbooks and preaching, amount to a tacit recognition that its religious exports have sometimes backfired. And the kingdom has stepped up an aggressive public relations campaign in the West, hiring American publicists to counter critical news media reports and fashion a reformist image for Saudi leaders. But neither the publicists nor their clients can renounce the strain of Islam on which the Saudi state was built, and old habits sometimes prove difficult to suppress. A prominent cleric, Saad bin Nasser had been stripped of a leadership position by the previous king, Abdullah, for condemning coeducation. King Salman restored Mr. Shethri to the job last year, not long after the cleric had joined the chorus of official voices criticizing the Islamic State. But Mr. Shethri’s reasoning for denouncing the Islamic State suggested the difficulty of change. The group was, he said, “more infidel than Jews and Christians. ” | 0fake |
Ex-N.Y. legislative leader Silver sentenced to 12 years in prison | NEW YORK (Reuters) - Former New York State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, for decades one of the state’s most powerful politicians, was sentenced on Tuesday to 12 years in federal prison for collecting millions of dollars in illegal kickbacks. U.S. District Judge Valerie Caproni in Manhattan federal court said she hoped the penalty would cause “the next corrupt politician to hesitate” before accepting a bribe. The prison term could amount to a life sentence for the 72-year-old Silver, who fought prostate cancer last year. The sentencing capped a stunning fall from power for Silver, a Democrat who represented Manhattan’s Lower East Side and served as speaker of the state Assembly from 1994 to 2015. Silver’s counterpart in the state Senate, former Majority Leader Dean Skelos, was also found guilty of corruption just 10 days after a jury convicted Silver of seven counts in December. The legislative leaders were two of the “three men in a room,” along with the governor, who control virtually all legislation in the state capital of Albany. Their convictions represented the biggest wins in a broad anti-corruption campaign by Preet Bharara, the U.S. Attorney in Manhattan, who has charged numerous politicians with graft. “Today’s stiff sentence is a just and fitting end to Sheldon Silver’s long career of corruption,” Bharara said in a statement following the hearing. More than 30 legislators have been forced from office for criminal or ethical issues since 2000, according to the nonprofit watchdog Citizens Union. Prosecutors said Silver awarded $500,000 in secret state grant money to a cancer researcher who, in exchange, funneled patients to Silver’s law firm, allowing the lawmaker to collect millions of dollars in referral fees. He was also accused of steering real estate developers to another law firm in exchange for kickbacks and then throwing his support to rent-control legislation favored by the developers. Silver offered an apology during the hearing, saying: “I’ve let down my family, I’ve let down my colleagues, I’ve let down my constituents, and I am truly, truly sorry for that.” Minutes later, he appeared to have no reaction when Caproni announced the sentence. His lawyers said they plan to appeal his conviction. Steven Molo, one of Silver’s lawyers, had asked Caproni for a “sentence that tempers justice with mercy,” citing Silver’s age, health and what he described as a lifetime of good works for the people of New York. But prosecutors said Silver deserved a sentence longer than that of any other convicted New York public official, given his leadership position and the sheer scope of his misconduct. Caproni agreed, telling Silver that corruption “attacks the very heart of our system of government” before offering a blunt assessment of his behavior. “Mr. Silver, those are not the actions of a basically honest person,” she said after listing some of his crimes. “Those are the actions of a scheming, corrupt politician.” The judge also ordered Silver to pay a fine of $1.75 million and forfeit more than $5 million in ill-gotten gains. He is scheduled to report to prison on July 1. | 0fake |
Syrian War Report – October 27, 2016: Russian Strikes Destroyed Over 300 Terrorists’ Oil Facilities | Leave a Reply Click here to get more info on formatting (1) Leave the name field empty if you want to post as Anonymous. It's preferable that you choose a name so it becomes clear who said what. E-mail address is not mandatory either. The website automatically checks for spam. Please refer to our moderation policies for more details. We check to make sure that no comment is mistakenly marked as spam. This takes time and effort, so please be patient until your comment appears. Thanks. (2) 10 replies to a comment are the maximum. (3) Here are formating examples which you can use in your writing:<b>bold text</b> results in bold text <i>italic text</i> results in italic text (You can also combine two formating tags with each other, for example to get bold-italic text.)<em>emphasized text</em> results in emphasized text <strong>strong text</strong> results in strong text <q>a quote text</q> results in a quote text (quotation marks are added automatically) <cite>a phrase or a block of text that needs to be cited</cite> results in: a phrase or a block of text that needs to be cited <blockquote>a heavier version of quoting a block of text...</blockquote> results in: a heavier version of quoting a block of text that can span several lines. Use these possibilities appropriately. They are meant to help you create and follow the discussions in a better way. They can assist in grasping the content value of a comment more quickly. and last but not least:<a href=''http://link-address.com''>Name of your link</a> results in Name of your link (4) No need to use this special character in between paragraphs: ; You do not need it anymore. Just write as you like and your paragraphs will be separated. The "Live Preview" appears automatically when you start typing below the text area and it will show you how your comment will look like before you send it. (5) If you now think that this is too confusing then just ignore the code above and write as you like. Name: | 1real |
Fending off foes, Clinton blazes a trail with White House in sight | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Hillary Clinton has one of the strongest resumes of anyone ever to run for U.S. president, with stints as first lady, senator and secretary of state, but she is also a polarizing figure and a Washington insider with decades of political baggage. Should Democrat Clinton, 69, defeat Republican Donald Trump, 70, in Tuesday’s election, she would become the first woman elected U.S. president, having already been the only first lady to win elected office and the first woman nominated for president by a major U.S. party. Clinton fell short in her first presidential bid in 2008, losing her party’s nomination to Barack Obama. Her time on the American political scene has come during an era of intense partisanship and gaping divisions in U.S. society. Americans hold dramatically differing views of Clinton. Clinton’s admirers consider her a tough, capable and sometimes inspirational leader who has endured unrelenting efforts by political enemies to chop her down. Her detractors consider her an unscrupulous and power-hungry opportunist. Clinton entered the 2016 race as her party’s odds-on favorite, but was an establishment figure, the ultimate insider with decades of political baggage, at a time when voters seemed enamored with outsiders. She staved off an unexpectedly stiff challenge from U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, who describes himself as a democratic socialist, to claim the Democratic nomination in July. For decades Clinton has battled conservatives and Republican adversaries and weathered controversies including her husband Bill Clinton’s infidelity, a failed Republican effort to remove him from office, investigations into past business dealings and her use of a private email server as secretary of state. She famously complained in 1998 during her husband’s presidency about a “vast right-wing conspiracy.” Many Democrats back her for championing women's rights at home and abroad, social justice and access to healthcare, but opinion polls show a majority of U.S. voters do not trust her. [polling.reuters.com/#!poll/TM752Y15_2] Against Trump, she portrayed her candidacy as a bulwark against a unique threat that she said the real estate developer posed to American democracy. As President Obama’s secretary of state from 2009 to 2013, she grappled with civil wars in Syria and Libya, Iran’s nuclear program, China’s growing clout, Russian assertiveness, ending the Iraq war, winding down the Afghanistan war, and an unsuccessful bid to settle the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Clinton was already running for president when, during a testy 11-hour congressional hearing in October 2015, she deflected Republican criticism of her handling of a 2012 attack by militants in Benghazi, Libya in which the U.S. ambassador died. That hearing and another in January 2013 while she was still secretary of state focused on allegations of State Department security lapses related to the attack. A mistrust of rivals and the media has long prompted Clinton to keep her guard up. “The truth is, through all these years of public service, the ‘service’ part has always come easier to me than the ‘public’ part,” Clinton said in accepting the 2016 Democratic nomination. “I get it that some people just don’t know what to make of me.” At the same convention, Obama cited her years of experience and said, “There has never been a man or woman, not me, not Bill - nobody more qualified than Hillary Clinton to serve as president of the United States.” Republicans have accused Clinton of breaking the law while corresponding through a private email server as secretary of state. In July, FBI Director James Comey called Clinton “extremely careless” in her handling of classified information by email, but Obama’s Justice Department accepted his recommendation not to bring criminal charges. “If I had to do it over again, I would, obviously, do it differently,” Clinton said during a Sept. 26 debate with Trump, referring to her use of the private server as a “mistake” for which she took responsibility. The controversy flared again on Oct. 28 when Comey told U.S. lawmakers the FBI was investigating a new trove of emails as part of its probe, but said their significance was unclear. Trump seized on the probe into Clinton’s email, deriding her as “Crooked Hillary,” saying he would seek to put her behind bars if elected and encouraging his supporters to chant “lock her up.” Clinton portrayed Trump as a racist hate-monger, a sexist and a tax-dodger enamored with Russian President Vladimir Putin and unfit to serve as president and commander in chief. “Such a nasty woman,” Trump retorted during their Oct. 19 debate when she suggested he would try to get out of paying the higher taxes she advocates for the wealthy. Born in Chicago on Oct. 26, 1947, Hillary Rodham Clinton was the eldest of three children of a small-business owner father she called a “rock-ribbed, up-by-your-bootstraps, conservative Republican” and a mother who was a closet Democrat. She said she inherited her father’s distinctive laugh - she called it “a big rolling guffaw” - and Americans have heard it frequently. She attended public schools, then enrolled in 1965 at all-female Wellesley College in Massachusetts, where she headed the Young Republicans Club. In a Wellesley commencement address, she seized the spotlight by starting her speech with extemporaneous remarks challenging comments made by the preceding speaker, a U.S. senator. Her political views changed during the 1960s civil rights struggles and Vietnam War escalation. She attended the 1968 Republican convention that nominated Richard Nixon, but soon became a Democrat. At Yale Law School, she met a similarly ambitious fellow student from Arkansas, Bill Clinton, and they became a couple. She moved to Washington to work for a congressional panel in the impeachment drive against Nixon, who resigned as president in 1974 during the Watergate scandal. She moved to Arkansas to be with Bill, married him in 1975, and was hired by a top law firm. He jumped into politics, eventually being elected governor, at age 32, in 1978. She gave birth to the couple’s only child, daughter Chelsea, in 1980. As Arkansas’ first lady, she was a high-powered lawyer in the capital Little Rock and a Wal-Mart corporate board member. Most Americans were introduced to her during her husband’s bid for the 1992 Democratic presidential nomination. Bill Clinton said voters would get “two for the price of one” if they elected him. She unapologetically said she was not a woman who “stayed home and baked cookies.” After a woman named Gennifer Flowers accused Bill Clinton during the campaign of a sexual affair, Hillary Clinton appeared on TV with her husband and referred to singer Tammy Wynette’s song, “Stand by Your Man.” “You know, I’m not sitting here, some little woman standing by my man like Tammy Wynette,” she said, adding that she loved and respected her husband. “And you know, if that’s not enough for people, then heck, don’t vote for him,” she added. Conservative critics painted her as a radical feminist and a threat to traditional family values. Bill Clinton defeated incumbent Republican President George H.W. Bush in November 1992. As first lady from 1993 to 2001, she was unusually exertive, diving into policy matters unlike many of her predecessors. Critics assailed her failed effort to win congressional passage of healthcare reform, deriding it as “Hillarycare.” At a 1995 U.N. conference in China on women, she declared that “human rights are women’s rights and women’s rights are human rights.” She and her husband faced a long investigation into past business dealings but ultimately no criminal charges were brought. A real estate venture known as Whitewater faced scrutiny, spawning an independent counsel investigation that later encompassed Bill Clinton’s sexual relationship with a White House intern named Monica Lewinsky. Deputy White House Counsel Vince Foster, a figure in the Whitewater controversy and a close friend of the Clintons from Arkansas, was found dead of a gunshot in 1993. His death was ruled a suicide. In a 2003 memoir, Hillary Clinton blasted “conspiracy theorists and investigators trying to prove that Vince was murdered to cover up what he ‘knew about Whitewater.’” In 2000, the independent counsel investigation concluded there was insufficient evidence to show the Clintons had been involved in any criminal behavior related to Whitewater. In December 1998, the Republican-led House of Representatives voted to impeach a president for only the second time in U.S. history, charging Bill Clinton with “high crimes and misdemeanors” for allegedly lying under oath and obstructing justice to cover up his relationship with Lewinsky. The Republican-led Senate acquitted Clinton in February 1999. Hillary Clinton called the impeachment an abuse of power by Republicans with a “Soviet-style show trial” and condemned what she called “an attempted congressional coup d’etat.” She also said she “wanted to wring Bill’s neck” for the affair and upbraided him privately. Ultimately, she said, she decided she still loved him and remained after they went through counseling. “All I know is that no one understands me better and no one can make me laugh the way Bill does,” she wrote in her 2003 book “Living History.” Hillary Clinton soon launched her own bid for elected office. She bought a house in the town of Chappaqua to officially become a New York resident. She won election as a U.S. senator the same month her husband left office in January 2001. She served until 2009. She entered the race for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination as the front-runner, but then-senator Obama won the party’s nomination and beat Republican John McCain to become the first black president. In 2016, Obama campaigned vigorously for her against Trump. “What sets Hillary apart is that through it all, she just keeps on going, and she doesn’t stop caring, and she doesn’t stop trying. And she never stops fighting for us, even if we haven’t always appreciated it,” Obama told a September rally. | 0fake |
New Dutch government sworn in after record negotiations | AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - King Willem-Alexander on Thursday swore in a new Dutch government under conservative Prime Minister Mark Rutte, ending the longest coalition talks in Dutch history. Divisive elections on March 15 eroded the base of traditional parties, forcing the need to work out a deal between four parties. Rutte s third cabinet since coming to power in 2010 will find support from the strongest Dutch economic growth in a decade, at over 3 percent, but only has a one-seat majority in both houses of parliament. Dissent by any parliament member could therefore endanger the coalition s plans. Negotiations lasted 225 days as parties dug in over sensitive issues ranging from immigration and euthanasia to corporate tax rates. Under a detailed government accord reached earlier this month, broad tax cuts will benefit both companies and workers. This should boost the spending power of consumers, while making the euro zone s fifth largest economy more attractive for foreign investors. The coalition comprises Rutte s liberal VVD, the centrist D66 and conservative Christian parties CDA and Christian Union, marking a steer to the right compared to the outgoing government of VVD and the center-left Labour party. The installation of the new government marks the departure of Eurogroup president and finance minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem, who has said he will leave Dutch politics. Dijsselbloem will be succeeded by 42-year-old Christian Democrat Wopke Hoekstra, while the former parliamentary leader of the VVD, Halbe Zijlstra, will head the department of foreign affairs. Another notable newcomer is Sigrid Kaag, a well-known diplomat who since 2015 served as the Special Coordinator for Lebanon of the United Nations. | 0fake |
Trump Supporter Says Facts Don’t Exist And Gets Immediately SCHOOLED | A Trump supporter proclaimed that there s no such thing as facts before getting humiliated by facts.During an appearance on NPR s The Diane Rehm Show, Trump mouthpiece Scottie Nell Hughes attacked facts and characterized them as lies the media, scientists, and liberals tell. Well, I think it s also an idea of an opinion, Hughes said in response to The Atlantic s James Fallows remark that Donald trump is peddling lies to gullible people. And that s on one hand I hear half the media saying that these are lies, but on the other half there are many people that go, no, it s true. And so one thing that has been interesting this entire campaign season to watch is that people that say facts are facts, they re not really facts. Everybody has a way, it s kind of like looking at ratings or looking at a glass of half-full water. Everybody has a way of interpreting them to be the truth or not true. Hughes went on to say that there s no such thing facts and then turned around and said that only conservatives have facts to back up their claims. There s no such thing, unfortunately, anymore of facts. And so Mr. Trump s tweet amongst a certain crowd, a large a large part of the population, are truth. When he says that millions of people illegally voted, he has some in his amongst him and his supporters, and people believe they have facts to back that up. Those that do not like Mr. Trump, they say that those are lies, and there s no facts to back it up. Hughes comments did not sit well with Politico correspondant Glenn Thrush, who proceeded to school her. First I ve got to pick my jaw up off the floor here, he began. There are no objective facts? I mean, that is that is an absolutely outrageous assertion. Of course there are facts. There is no widespread proof that three million people voted illegally. It s been checked over and over again. We had a Pew study that took place over 15 years that showed people had more likelihood of being struck by lightning than voting illegally in an election. Facts are facts. I m sorry you don t like the facts. Indeed, while conservatives are using edited videos and things they heard on social media as proof of their claims, fact-checking organization Politifact did their homework and found exactly where Donald Trump got his claim that three million people voted illegally. It turns out he got it from conspiracy theorist Alex Jone s InfoWars, which got their numbers from some guy who claimed to be affiliated with VoteFraud.org. But there is no report from that organization and the guy refused to provide evidence to support his dubious claim, which was rated false by Politifact.So Hughes was talking out of her ass when she attacked facts. Thrush, on the other hand, was absolutely right. A comprehensive study of voter fraud found only 31 cases out of 1 billion votes cast from 2000 to 2014. Donald Trump is wrong. Conservatives are wrong. And Scottie Nell Hughes should be ashamed of herself.Featured Image: YouTube | 1real |
Former Trump adviser Flynn likely broke law with Russia trip: lawmakers | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Former White House national security adviser Michael Flynn likely broke the law by failing to get permission to be paid for a trip to Russia in 2015, the leaders of a House of Representatives committee said on Tuesday. During the visit, Flynn, a retired lieutenant general who advised Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, dined with Russian President Vladimir Putin. “General Flynn had a duty and an obligation to seek and obtain permission to receive money from foreign governments,” Jason Chaffetz, the Republican chairman of the House Oversight Committee, told reporters. “It does not appear to us that that was ever sought, nor did he ever get that permission.” The oversight panel is looking into whether Flynn fully disclosed payments from Russian, Turkish or other foreign sources. “As a former military officer, you simply cannot take money from Russia, Turkey or anybody else. And it appears as if he did take that money. It was inappropriate and there are repercussions for the violation of law,” Chaffetz said. Flynn was forced to resign on Feb. 13 for failing to disclose talks with Sergei Kislyak, the Russian ambassador to the United States, about U.S. sanctions on Moscow and misleading Vice President Mike Pence about the conversations, which occurred in December before Trump took office. He is a subject in investigations by intelligence committees in the House and Senate, as well as the Federal Bureau of Investigation, into allegations Russia meddled in the 2016 U.S. election. Russia has denied the allegations, which have cast a shadow over the first 100 days of Trump’s presidency. Representative Elijah Cummings, the top Democrat on the oversight panel, said it also appeared as if Flynn had not fully disclosed the payments after the fact as required, saying a failure to do so would be a felony. An attorney for Flynn did not respond to a request for comment from Reuters, but he told ABC News the retired general had briefed the Defense Intelligence Agency, which is part of the Defense Department, before and after the Russia trip. “He answered any questions that were posed by DIA concerning the trip during those briefings,” attorney Robert Kelner said, according to a statement ABC News posted on Twitter. Asked about the assertions that Flynn appeared to have violated the law, White House spokesman Sean Spicer told reporters: “That would be a question for him and law enforcement agencies.” | 0fake |
Spotted in Rio: Gisele Bündchen, Bermuda Shorts, and Michael Phelps as a Lightning Bug - The New York Times | Sulu, gho, kera, kalpak, dishdasha and dashiki sound more like crossword puzzlers than words in common parlance. Yet they are the names of elements of costumes that, for centuries, denoted national identity and are now taken out of cultural mothballs for the Olympics. The less said the better about the theatrics of an opening ceremony that combined elements of Cirque du Soleil with a visit to Epcot to produce a spectacle with all the appeal of a public service announcement, one whose oddball highlight might have been the Brazilian supermodel Gisele Bündchen’s taking a victory lap in what was billed as her strut down a catwalk. With her legs exposed in a sequined gold dress designed by her countryman Alexandre Herchcovitch and slit thigh high, the Victoria’s Secret beauty Bündchen was not operating at a particularly high degree of difficulty — particularly given that her runway strut has seldom been surpassed. To the strains of “The Girl From Ipanema,” Bündchen walked across a stage in front of nearly 80, 000 spectators and millions of viewers around the planet. That was it. This viewer gave her a 10. What eventually followed, after some dire but dull invocations of the threats of global warming, was the Parade of Nations — that wonderful and anachronistic Disneyesque march of athletes from around the world. It is their big moment. And for many Olympic qualifiers, it will be the only one. Pride of nationality is a complicated matter, and conveying national identity is a challenge that would send most sensible fashion designers running. There are two default positions, and both were on offer at this Olympics ceremony. One is to outfit teams in such traditional garb as the Bhutanese gho, Austrian lederhosen or the Fijian sulu. The other is, apparently, a piped rowing blazer paired with trousers or shorts. It worked in some cases, as in the jaunty aqua blazers worn by athletes from Aruba, and not in others. The striped blazers in which Australia’s athletes were attired had been produced by the label Sportscraft and were paired with gold accessories. Even before the team came on the field at Maracanã Stadium, Twitter lit up with commentary about how much they resembled something that might be worn by Draco Malfoy and his Slytherin housemates. Nobody made much mention of the shoes by Toms. Barbados had blazers. Bermuda went with classic navy, worn, of course, with Bermuda shorts. Spain had classic blue blazers with natty hats. Canada had oddly blocky blazers produced by Dean and Dan Caten, the designers of DSquared2. Oddly, given the identical Caten twins’ history of making clothing, the uniforms had the formless look of athleisure wear, generic but for the telltale maple leaf. Led by Michael Phelps as flag bearer, the United States delegation appeared in blazers designed by Polo Ralph Lauren and worn over whose striped bars, when the jackets were left fastened, bore an unfortunate resemblance to the Russian flag. The jackets had electroluminescent panels able to light up a pocket emblem and the initials U. S. A. on the yoke. An early call to have all the athletes illuminated was scrapped as too ostentatious. In the end, only Phelps was an Olympics lightning bug. That was too bad, as things turned out, since the gimmick barely registered amid the welter of extras and athletes from all nations who, almost as soon as they took the field, forgot all about citizenship and blended into an enormous scrum of wondrous physical specimens. There was commonality amid the blur of blended national affiliations. It took the form of an accessory that cuts across all boundaries and borders: the selfie stick. | 0fake |
Trump Spokeswoman: I Called Obama ‘Head Negro’ Because Liberals Made Me Mad (VIDEO) | Donald Trump s ridiculous stunt on Thursday has garnered him quite a bit of attention positive from the Stupid Part of America, and negative from everyone who is able to figure out how to operate a spoon without adult guidance. In an effort to hide the fact that he is scared of Fox News Megyn Kelly, Trump pretended to care about our nation s soldiers for an evening with a fundraiser campaign event he scheduled in opposition to the debate he elected to skip.Of course, veterans groups practically climbed all over each other to inform The Donald that the money would not be accepted, and donations were made to his Foundation rather than actual veterans. This is a problem, of course, because barely 1 percent of his Foundation s donations are given to Vets. On Friday, CNN s Jim Sciutto confronted Trump spokeswoman Katrina Pierson about the donations specifically, which Veterans groups would be receiving the millions of dollars in donations Trump had gathered for the Donald J. Trump Foundation. The money is going to a Trump organization now. Name one veterans organization that has agreed to accept that money, Sciutto said. Pierson explained that the money would be spread across the country to Veterans groups, aside from those who refuse to accept it. However, Sciutto didn t let her slide with that answer, asking her to name a single organization that has agreed to accept the money. I m sorry, I can t hear you, Pierson s replied as the gerbils that perform her basic brain functions struggled to spin the wheel fast enough to enable the bullshit circuits in her head to connect. Pierson said there might be a list on Trump s website, but no such list exists. There is simply a donation form.Realizing that he was not going to get a straight answer, Sciutto moved on to another issue: Pierson s downright insane Twitter account. Pierson has previously complained that there are not enough pure breeds left in politics as she took a stab at Obama, who she calls the head Negro in charge and a Jihadi remarks that many have found questionable at best. Pierson, of course, took the tried-and-true conservative path of blaming liberals: So of course you could pull any of those tweets out of one of those heated discussions because a lot of times it s in the sphere of fighting off other liberal activists. I got to tell you. It s interesting that this has made some sort of news cycle when we have all of the things that are happening in the world, including a presidential race, to go back 36,000 tweets, pull them out of context of the discussion and try to make that a news story. That s right, she got angry with liberals so she called the President a half-breed, a Negro, and other awful things.Unfortunately, this behavior is typical of conservatives, who feel that anger is justification to spew slurs and hatred.Watch Pierson s flimsy excuses below:Featured image via screengrab | 1real |
Kerry says he's confident Trump administration will stick to peaceful policies in Asia | HO CHI MINH CITY (Reuters) - Outgoing U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said on Friday he was confident the next administration would stick to the same peaceful principles on Asian security as the current one, despite hawkish comments from President-elect Donald Trump’s cabinet picks. Referring to the disputed South China Sea, Kerry told a university audience in Ho Chi Minh City that countries, big or small, should refrain from provocation and any dispute should be resolved peacefully in accordance with international law. Kerry said he was “confident the next administration will continue to adhere to the same good faith with the policies that I just articulated.” His comments came after his nominated replacement, Rex Tillerson, said the United States must send a clear signal to China that its island-building in the South China Sea must stop and that its access to those islands must not be allowed. On Thursday, Trump’s pick to lead the Pentagon, retired Marine General James Mattis, said Russia, China and Islamist militants were presenting the biggest challenge to the U.S.-led world order since World War Two, and called for Congress to lift spending caps undermining military readiness. China claims most of the energy-rich South China Sea, through which about $5 trillion in ship-borne trade passes every year. Neighbours Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam also have claims. China has reclaimed seven reefs in the area, building man-made islands with anti-aircraft and anti-missile batteries, satellite images show. The United States would have to “wage a large-scale war” in the South China sea to prevent Chinese access to the islands, the influential state-run Chinese tabloid, the Global Times, said on Friday. “Tillerson had better bone up on nuclear power strategies if he wants to force a big nuclear power to withdraw from its own territories,” the paper said. The Philippines, which is seeking to improve ties with Beijing, said any U.S. action to drive China from the artificial islands would be its own prerogative, and in its own national interest. Foreign Secretary Perfecto Yasay was replying to a question during a television interview about Tillerson’s comments. “They said that they would prevent China from doing or undertaking these kind of activity. If it wants to do that, they have the force to do so, let them do it,” Yasay said. China has built several artificial islands in the exclusive economic zone of the Philippines, which an arbitration tribunal in The Hague last year ruled unlawful. Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte reiterated last month he wanted to avoid confrontation with China and saw no need to press Beijing to abide by the ruling. Yasay earlier said the Philippines wanted to strengthen ties with the United States and that Washington should be an “influential force” in Asia and help maintain balance there. He said he hoped the new government in Washington would refrain from criticising countries, as the Obama administration had over the Philippines’ deadly drugs war, and he welcomed Tillerson’s views that decisions and comments should be based on facts. | 0fake |
Evidence Scrubbed, Accounts Suspended As Citizen Researchers Delve Into the Hell That is “Pizzagate” |
This article/video was originally published at SGTReport.com .
Editor’s Comment: The evidence is now overwhelming – whatever the full truth of the matter, something is very, very suspicious about the “pizza code” that has been discovered in the leaked Podesta emails that many believe is connected to a ring of pedophilia activity. Independent researchers have been scouring the web for supporting information, and have pieced together a disturbing pile of circumstantial evidence connecting many of DC’s most powerful to lewd comments, references to illegal sex acts and child trafficking, dark art and more. It is very likely that this could go to the very top, where powerful people are protected by people with ranking positions inside the power structure.
Perhaps that is why many channels and researchers are meeting censorship, threats and bans. Reddit’s thread on the topic, which was quickly becoming the definitive gathering place for the information, was shut down. Meanwhile, the entire The Daily Sheeple website was shutdown temporarily over a copyright claim about an image in “pizza gate” story (see video at bottom). Numerous YouTube accounts have been suspended or blocked as well. Read more: The Disturbing, Disgusting Pedophile Code Hidden in the John Podesta Emails
Will the phony clamp down over “fake news” be used to completely cover-up the evidence of what appear to be very serious crimes?
PizzaGate Is a Worldwide Citizen Investigation Now
by SGT Report
While the NY Times tries to soft peddle #PizzaGate, Reddit tries to kill the Sub-Reddit investigation and Twitter attempts to censor breaking news on the global pedophile ring – it’s too late. The genie is out of the bottle. We will not be stopped. Truth will be revealed. Because #PizzaGate is a WORLDWIDE CITIZEN INVESTIGATION NOW. And the pedos are running scared.
PIZZAGATE IS A WORLDWIDE CITIZEN INVESTIGATION NOW.
Charles Ortel: Pardons Won’t Save Clintons From Clinton Foundation Crimes? The De-
The De-Occulting of John Podesta (by martyleeds33)
Understanding #PizzaGate – Opening the Rabbit hole (by Stirling)
INFOWARS WEIGHS IN: PIZZAGATE IS REAL!!!
PizzaGate Definitive Factcheck: Oh My God.
Our Site Got SHUT DOWN for #Pizzagate Podesta Wikileaks Story
This article/video was originally published at SGTReport.com .
| 1real |
Obama Lashes Out at President Trump for Following the Constitution…Calls Him ‘Cruel’ for Ending #DACA | Obama just couldn t keep quiet. He released a statement via Facebook today lashing out at President Trump s decision to rescind his DACA executive action, labeling the move as cruel in an immediate admonition of his predecessor following the move. The DACA program is unlawful: Just listen to Obama s own words at a 2011 town hall with Univision:The DACA program is unlawful. For an explanation, look no further than President Obama s own words at a 2011 town hall with Univision. pic.twitter.com/E4MxN5JZD9 ForAmerica (@ForAmerica) September 5, 2017Obama defended DREAMers people brought here illegally as children as patriots who are American in their hearts and cast Trump s move as political decision WAS IT NOT A TOTALLY POLITICAL DECISION FOR OBAMA TO SIGN THE EXECUTIVE ORDER ON DACA? To target these young people is wrong because they have done nothing wrong, Obama wrote in a Facebook post published hours after Trump announced his decision in a written statement following a speech by Attorney General Jeff Sessions. It is self-defeating because they want to start new businesses, staff our labs, serve in our military, and otherwise contribute to the country we love. And it is cruel. No, what s cruel is having open borders to allow these people in. What s cruel is to have this unConstitutional policy that now Trump has to deal with. President Trump is the adult in the room of a bunch of lawless cowards.OBAMA S STATEMENT: Immigration can be a controversial topic. We all want safe, secure borders and a dynamic economy, and people of goodwill can have legitimate disagreements about how to fix our immigration system so that everybody plays by the rules. But that s not what the action that the White House took today is about. This is about young people who grew up in America kids who study in our schools, young adults who are starting careers, patriots who pledge allegiance to our flag. These Dreamers are Americans in their hearts, in their minds, in every single way but one: on paper. They were brought to this country by their parents, sometimes even as infants. They may not know a country besides ours. They may not even know a language besides English. They often have no idea they re undocumented until they apply for a job, or college, or a driver s license. Over the years, politicians of both parties have worked together to write legislation that would have told these young people our young people that if your parents brought you here as a child, if you ve been here a certain number of years, and if you re willing to go to college or serve in our military, then you ll get a chance to stay and earn your citizenship. And for years while I was President, I asked Congress to send me such a bill. That bill never came. And because it made no sense to expel talented, driven, patriotic young people from the only country they know solely because of the actions of their parents, my administration acted to lift the shadow of deportation from these young people, so that they could continue to contribute to our communities and our country. We did so based on the well-established legal principle of prosecutorial discretion, deployed by Democratic and Republican presidents alike, because our immigration enforcement agencies have limited resources, and it makes sense to focus those resources on those who come illegally to this country to do us harm. Deportations of criminals went up. Some 800,000 young people stepped forward, met rigorous requirements, and went through background checks. And America grew stronger as a result. But today, that shadow has been cast over some of our best and brightest young people once again. To target these young people is wrong because they have done nothing wrong. It is self-defeating because they want to start new businesses, staff our labs, serve in our military, and otherwise contribute to the country we love. And it is cruel. What if our kid s science teacher, or our friendly neighbor turns out to be a Dreamer? Where are we supposed to send her? To a country she doesn t know or remember, with a language she may not even speak? Let s be clear: the action taken today isn t required legally. It s a political decision, and a moral question. Whatever concerns or complaints Americans may have about immigration in general, we shouldn t threaten the future of this group of young people who are here through no fault of their own, who pose no threat, who are not taking away anything from the rest of us. They are that pitcher on our kid s softball team, that first responder who helps out his community after a disaster, that cadet in ROTC who wants nothing more than to wear the uniform of the country that gave him a chance. Kicking them out won t lower the unemployment rate, or lighten anyone s taxes, or raise anybody s wages. It is precisely because this action is contrary to our spirit, and to common sense, that business leaders, faith leaders, economists, and Americans of all political stripes called on the administration not to do what it did today. And now that the White House has shifted its responsibility for these young people to Congress, it s up to Members of Congress to protect these young people and our future. I m heartened by those who ve suggested that they should. And I join my voice with the majority of Americans who hope they step up and do it with a sense of moral urgency that matches the urgency these young people feel. Ultimately, this is about basic decency. This is about whether we are a people who kick hopeful young strivers out of America, or whether we treat them the way we d want our own kids to be treated. It s about who we are as a people and who we want to be. What makes us American is not a question of what we look like, or where our names come from, or the way we pray. What makes us American is our fidelity to a set of ideals that all of us are created equal; that all of us deserve the chance to make of our lives what we will; that all of us share an obligation to stand up, speak out, and secure our most cherished values for the next generation. That s how America has traveled this far. That s how, if we keep at it, we will ultimately reach that more perfect union. Read more: DM | 1real |
Michelle Obama: Research Proves We Can Lift Economy By Educating Girls | During her time in the White House, First Lady Michelle Obama has championed so many important causes many of them geared toward helping children and women around the world.One of these crucial initiatives, launched last year, was Let Girls Learn an effort to educate teenage girls. This effort was backed by studies that showed that when women and girls are educated, a nation s economy rises. In an interview with a U.S. Agency for International Development publication, Michelle said: Studies from the World Bank show that one extra year of secondary school can increase a girl s future income by 15 to 25 percent. And we know that when girls are educated, they are less likely to contract HIV, more likely to delay childbearing and vaccinate their children, and have lower maternal and infant mortality rates. Research even shows that sending more girls to school can boost an entire country s GDP. The link between the education of girls and a nation s GDP has been made before and thanks to an analysis by Politifact, we now know that there s a lot of truth to that statement.According to research, when there are more girls in school, there is a higher gross domestic product although there is some uncertainty if it s a stronger economy that results in more girls being educated, or if having more girls in school leads to the rise of a nation s economy. One policy report from the World Bank said: By effectively educating more women that is, providing more women with a high-quality education more will enter the labor market, and the economy will show the favorable results. Although educating girls has been shown to improve the economy, this doesn t account for any obstacles women might encounter even if they are educated. Sexism and gender inequality can still have an impact on the economy even as efforts are made to put more girls in school and give them more resources and opportunities. According to a 2009 article in the journal Feminist Economics, the economic benefit will be lost if companies refuse to hire educated girls.However, the gains of educating girls are far more than any roadblocks they may encounter. Education allows girls to make informed decisions about their lives and allows them to contribute to and help improve society. Michelle was dead on when she said: We need to get these girls into school, because we know that education is the single-most important stepping stone to power, to freedom, and to equality. Featured image via Jeff J Mitchell / Getty Images | 1real |
The Other 13 Women Testifying Against Cosby ... if the Court Lets Them - The New York Times | Some knew him for only a day. Others built friendships over months, even years, and introduced him to their mothers, an aunt, even a son, they say. But all 13 women say the same thing: Bill Cosby finally gave them a pill, or some other intoxicant, sometimes hidden at the bottom of a fizzing glass of champagne or a glass of wine or soda, and they awoke hours later having been sexually abused. Prosecutors in Montgomery County, Pa. announced this month that 13 women, selected from a larger pool of nearly 50 who say Mr. Cosby assaulted them, have now agreed to come forward and testify at a criminal trial next June. The prosecution has asked the court to allow the women to testify, and the judge’s ruling, expected in coming months, will be critical to Mr. Cosby’s fate. If the testimony is allowed, the prosecution’s case would be bolstered by its ability to bring forth accuser after accuser with accounts similar to that of Andrea Constand, the former Temple University basketball staff member whose accusations are at the center of the June trial. Prosecutors have charged Mr. Cosby with drugging and sexually assaulting Ms. Constand at his home near Philadelphia in 2004. “It could be the most important ruling in the case,” said Benjamin Brafman, a defense lawyer in New York who is not involved in the Cosby case. “It is no longer just one person making the allegations. ” For the women, their testimony could represent a final legal opportunity to address what they contend was Mr. Cosby’s criminal behavior. Most never came forward decades ago, when they say the episodes occurred. Even civil cases against him have largely been prevented by statutes of limitation. But this sort of evidence is not often admitted in criminal cases. Ordinarily, prosecutors in Pennsylvania and most other states cannot introduce evidence or accusations of prior bad behavior. It is viewed as too prejudicial for a jury as it sifts through the facts of the case that is actually before it. Mr. Cosby’s legal team said it would fight to block the women from testifying. There are circumstances, though, in Pennsylvania and other states where such evidence is permitted — for instance, when it shows conduct so similar it can be argued that it demonstrates a common scheme or plan, a kind of unique fingerprint of criminal behavior. In the Cosby case, prosecutors say in court papers that the women’s accounts form such a pattern — that he befriended each of them, mentoring some, drugging and assaulting them all, just as, they say, he did Ms. Constand. Twelve of the 13 women say Mr. Cosby offered them alcohol or pills or both. One woman said she drank a glass of soda, which she says she believes was laced with a drug. Ms. Constand says Mr. Cosby had evolved into her mentor, invited her to his home, gave her pills and wine, then molested her while she was incapacitated. Mr. Cosby has denied all of the women’s charges. Prosecutors did not name the women in their court papers. But 11 of them — Janice Baker Kinney, Therese Serignese, Linda Kirkpatrick, Heidi Thomas, Margie Shapiro, Lublin, Donna Motsinger, Rebecca Lynn Neal, Linda Brown, Cindra Ladd and a woman who identified herself only as Kacey — have previously come forward to publicly detail their allegations, and their identities are clear from the information made public in the court filing. One woman, Ms. Serignese, says Mr. Cosby assaulted her in 1975 or 1976 when she was 18 or 19 after they met in a hotel gift shop and he invited her to a show and gave her pills. Another, Ms. Motsinger, has accused Mr. Cosby of assaulting her in 1972, a time when she was working at a restaurant in Sausalito, Calif. He took her to one of his shows but then assaulted her after giving her wine and a pill, she said. Ms. Motsinger, now 75, said she could not discuss why she agreed to testify but said of the trial, “It’s one step closer to justice. ” While most of the women who have agreed to testify had once been public with their identities and accusations, even going so far as to participate in news conferences, they did not want to comment further at this point. Patricia Leary Steuer, 60, who has accused Mr. Cosby of drugging and assaulting her but is not among the 13 women, said, “None of us want to jeopardize the outcome of the trial by speaking in a way that would make the prosecutor’s job more difficult. ” She added, “We’re all voluntarily being very quiet. ” Two of the 13 women, a former flight attendant and a woman identified in court papers as having worked at the Playboy Club in New York, do not appear to have ever come forward publicly. The decision on whether to admit the testimony of the women will be made by Judge Steven T. O’Neill, who, legal experts said, may choose to include the testimony of all 13, or fewer, or reject altogether any of their accounts as evidence. The judge may wait until Ms. Constand gives her own testimony at trial: If her own evidence is strong enough, he may decide that there is no need to include the other women’s accounts, the experts said. Efforts by prosecutors to introduce “prior bad acts” evidence are limited, said Lynne M. Abraham, a former Philadelphia district attorney and judge, because they can backfire. Even in cases in which defendants are convicted, there is the chance the decision will be overturned on appeal when a higher court rules that including other, prior evidence was, in fact, prejudicial. That happened in a recent case involving a senior official in the Roman Catholic Church in Philadelphia who was convicted on charges related to failing to stop child sexual abuse by some priests. Prosecutors introduced historical evidence, but appellate courts later decided that the evidence had impaired the jury’s ability to deliver a fair verdict. “It is sometimes successful, and sometimes it falls flat on its face,” Ms. Abraham said. Mr. Cosby’s lawyers say they will show that the women’s testimonies fail to meet the criteria for inclusion, because, they say, for example, the accusations are decades old or uncorroborated. Isabelle A. Kirshner, a criminal defense lawyer in New York, said a judge would also have to take into account the time and resources involved in so many accusers. “He will ask, ‘Do we really want to have in effect 13 separate trials? ’” she said. Detectives who reopened the investigation into Ms. Constand’s allegations last year interviewed nearly 50 women who brought accusations against Mr. Cosby, according to court documents. Kevin R. Steele, the Montgomery County district attorney, chose to offer the testimony of just 13 in the interests of “judicial economy,” the documents say. One of the 13 is a former masseuse another was a cocktail waitress. Some were models and aspiring actresses. According to prosecutors, the women often met Mr. Cosby through their work, and he would win their trust with career advice, or invitations to dinner — as, they say, happened in Ms. Constand’s case. At least nine of the 13 women are white, and Mr. Cosby’s legal team has complained that the prosecution is tainted by racial bias. A statement from his team this month took particular issue with Gloria Allred, a feminist lawyer with a knack for drawing media attention, who presided at news conferences in which many women aired their accusations against Mr. Cosby. Ms. Allred had at one time represented at least seven of the 13 women planning to testify. “She calls herself a civil rights attorney, but her campaign against Mr. Cosby builds on racial bias and prejudice,” the statement said. Ms. Allred responded with her own statement: “This is not an issue of racial bias. Instead, it is an issue of whether or not Mr. Cosby has committed acts of gender sexual violence. ” Joseph Cammarata, a lawyer for Ms. Serignese, said any effort to undermine the prosecution’s case by focusing on race or attacking the characters of the women would be quickly overshadowed by the facts. “There is a certain pattern here: It is very compelling and powerful,” he said. “At the end of the day, did it happen, or did this not happen?” | 0fake |
Snow reports from around the Northland (Duluth) through 9 a.m. Saturday | Snow reports from around the Northland through 3 p.m. Saturday By Andrew Krueger on Nov 19, 2016 at 3:15 p.m. Brian Parendo of Esko shovels heavy, wet show from his driveway Friday morning. "I'm happy it lasted this long," he said, referring to the long spell of warm weather that preceded the storm. Bob King / rking@duluthnews.com Snow reports from around the Northland as of 3 p.m. Saturday, as relayed by the National Weather Service in Duluth. The greatest total was near Leader in Cass County; the total at the Duluth airport was corrected on Saturday from a higher total that had been reported Friday night. Recommended for you | 1real |
Report: Corrupt Wall Streeters Are Three Times More Likely To Go Unpunished Under Trump | Donald Trump s chief economic adviser and Director of the National Economic Council is Gary Cohn. Trump s Secretary of the Treasury is Steven Mnuchin. Dina Powell is his Deputy National Security Adviser, and Steve Bannon is the president s chief strategist. What do all of these people have in common, aside from terrible taste in employers?They all came from Goldman Sachs, the Wall Street powerhouse that made billions of dollars during the subprime mortgage crisis that tanked the American economy beginning in 2007.Much has been made of the hypocrisy of Donald Trump s claims of draining the swamp. He simultaneously hired and promoted many of the same (and some even worse) swamp-dwellers that made Washington, D.C. into the quagmire of grift, corruption, and greed that constituted the bog that needed its plug pulled. But all we knew until now was that those assholes were still in positions of authority. We had no idea what kind of impact they were having on Trump s presidency, outside of tax proposals that screw ordinary Americans and drastically reduce rates for people like themselves.But now an analysis from the Wall Street Journal is shedding some light on a more nefarious aspect of their influence on Trump policy:Wall Street regulators have imposed far lower penalties in the first six months of Donald Trump s presidency than they did during the first six months of 2016, a comparable period in the Obama administration.If you re like me, you know that Wall Street isn t suddenly behaving itself so why the change?It comes from another of Trump s campaign promises: To destroy Dodd-Frank, the now 7 year-old bill signed by Barack Obama that aimed to reform Wall Street after the fallout from the massive recession they were essentially solely responsible for. Life savings were lost, the housing market was upended, and ultimately the US economy tanked, resulting in bailouts for the big banks that both parties hated. Back on April 11, Trump met with a bunch of CEOs and told them they didn t have to worry much longer:For the bankers in the room, they ll be very happy because we re really doing a major streamlining and, perhaps, elimination, and replacing it with something else.But Trump s drive to dismantle the landmark legislation still hasn t taken effect, so in the meantime, what his administration can do to make life easier for Wall Street literally the only people who will benefit from the destruction of Dodd-Frank is to back off the penalty part of the horrendous regulations Dodd-Frank imposed. And boy, have they. From the WSJ:Penalties levied against firms and individuals by the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority in the first half of 2017 were down nearly two-thirds compared with the first half of 2016. [This] put regulators on track for the lowest annual level of fines since at least 2010.2010. Back when Dodd-Frank was signed.Featured image via Drew Angerer/Getty Images | 1real |
32,000 emails recovered in IRS targeting probe amid allegations agency chief may have lied | Investigators said Thursday they have recovered 32,000 emails in backup tapes related to the Internal Revenue Service targeting of conservative organizations.
Though they don't know how many of them are new, they told a congressional oversight committee that IRS employees had not asked computer technicians for the tapes, as directed by a subpoena from House oversight and other investigating committees.
That admission was in direct contradiction to earlier testimony of IRS Commissioner John Koskinen.
“It looks like we’ve been lied to, or at least misled," said Rep. John Mica, R-Fla. at a congressional hearing Thursday evening,
IRS Deputy Inspector General Timothy Camus, who testified alongside Inspector General J. Russell George, said his organization was investigating possible criminal activity. He did not elaborate, other than to suggest a key factor is whether documents were intentionally withheld.
The emails were to and from Lois Lerner, who used to head the IRS division that processes applications for tax-exempt status. Last June, the IRS told Congress it had lost an unknown number of Lerner's email when her computer hard drive crashed in 2011.
At the time, IRS officials said the emails could not be recovered. But Camus said investigators recovered thousands of emails from old computer tapes used to back up the agency's email system, though he said he believed some tapes had been erased.
"We recovered quite a number of emails, but until we compare those to what's already been produced we don't know if they're new emails," Camus told the House Oversight Committee.
Neither Camus nor George would describe the contents of any of the emails at Thursday's hearing.
The IRS says it has already produced 78,000 Lerner emails, many of which have been made public by congressional investigators.
Camus said it took investigators two weeks to locate the computer tapes that contained Lerner's emails. He said it took technicians about four months to find Lerner's emails on the tapes.
Several Oversight committee members questioned how hard the IRS tried to produce the emails, given how quickly independent investigators found them.
"We have been patient. We have asked, we have issued subpoenas, we have held hearings," said Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, chairman of the Oversight Committee. "It's just shocking me that you start, two weeks later you're able to find the emails."
Though the IG's office is looking at possible criminal activity, Washington, D.C.-based attorney Patrick O'Donnell said the Justice Department would have the final say on whether anyone at the IRS would face charges. O'Donnell, who has worked on government enforcement matters, told FoxNews.com the IG's office typically refers their recommendation to the DOJ, though in some cases the IG will work in tandem with the DOJ throughout an investigation.
At the hearing, Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., questioned the significance of the recovered emails in an exchange with Camus.
"So as I understand it from your testimony here today, you are unable to confirm whether there are any, to use your own words, new emails, right?" she asked Camus.
Maloney: "So what's before us may be material you already have, right?"
Maloney. "So may I ask, why are we here?"
The IRS issued a statement saying the agency "has been and remains committed to cooperating fully with the congressional oversight investigations. The IRS continues to work diligently with Congress as well as support the review by the Treasury inspector general for tax administration."
The IRS estimated it has spent $20 million responding to congressional inquiries, generating more than one million pages of documents and providing agency officials to testify at 27 congressional hearings.
The inspector general set off a firestorm in May 2013 with an audit that said IRS agents improperly singled out Tea Party and other conservative groups for extra scrutiny when they applied for tax-exempt status during the 2010 and 2012 elections.
Several hundred groups had their applications delayed for a year or more. Some were asked inappropriate questions about donors and group activities, the inspector general's report said.
The week before George's report, Lerner publicly apologized on behalf of the agency. After the report, much of the agency's top leadership was forced to retire or resign, including Lerner. The Justice Department and several congressional committees launched investigations.
Lerner's lost emails prompted a new round of scrutiny by Congress, and a new investigation by the inspector general's office.
Lerner emerged as a central figure in the controversy after she refused to answer questions at two House Oversight hearings, invoking her Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate herself at both hearings. At the first hearing, Lerner made a statement saying she had done nothing wrong.
Last year, the House voted mostly along party lines to hold her in contempt of Congress for refusing to answer questions at the hearings.
Fox News' Doug McKelway and The Associated Press contributed to this report. | 0fake |
BLACK TRUMP SUPPORTER Goes On Tirade Over CNN’s Support For Radical Islam At #MarchAgainstSharia [VIDEO] | On June 10, people in at least 27 cities are gathering to march for human rights and against Sharia Law. The nationwide day of protest is being organized by ACT for America, a grassroots organization that is the self-proclaimed NRA of national security. The New York City event is being organized by Pax Hart, a writer and political commentator. There were initially 18 other March Against Sharia rallies scheduled for June 10. After Manchester, people were furious and started contacted us through Twitter to find out how they could organize a rally in their own city. I think it s now up to 27 cities, Hart said. BigLeaguePoliticsJUNE 10th Nationwide U.S. rallies against Sharia and radical Islam. #MarchAgainstSharia #ManchesterArena @MarchAgstSharia pic.twitter.com/dokpNxYM9S Pax Hart (@PaxHart) May 23, 2017An unidentified interviewer caught up with a black Trump supporters at a #MarchAgainstSharia event at Foley Square in NYC. The video can be seen below. Here is a partial transcript of the conversation: CNN is a part of this. They re in bed with radical Islam. All mainstream media is in bed with Sharia Law and that s why I m here ladies and gentlemen, to wake you up to mainstream media being complicit. They re in bed with Sharia Law. It s incompatible with the United States. It s hard to distinguish what the interviewer asks, but the Trump supporter answers the interviewer by saying that he loves Infowars, and goes on to thanks Infowars founder Alex Jones by saying, Thank you brother, I love you! Black Trump supporter and infowarrior shouting @CNN is a terrorist organization. "I love you @RealAlexJones" he said. #MarchAgainstSharia pic.twitter.com/Y11IO8rfSW Laura Loomer (@LauraLoomer) June 10, 2017 | 1real |
Burr: Nunes stepped aside to protect Russia probe investigation | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee said on Thursday he felt his House of Representatives counterpart had stepped away from that panel’s investigation of possible links between President Donald Trump’s campaign and Russia because he felt it was necessary. “Chairman (Devin) Nunes has made the move he felt necessary to protect the viability of his Committee and its investigation going forward,” Republican U.S. Senator Richard Burr said in a statement. | 0fake |
Here’s The Entire Debate Wrapped Up In One PERFECT GIF | There s not much to say here. GIPHY killed it with this one: When someone goes on a rant but you have receipts. https://t.co/axe58zCeJL #debatenight #Debates2016 pic.twitter.com/KTgdWAvaAb GIPHY (@giphy) September 27, 2016Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images | 1real |
HILLARY Tries To Bash Trump For Foreign-Made Ties…BUT Let’s Check Out Those Pantsuits! [Video] | Trump has been bashed by Hillary for manufacturing items out of the country BUT it s the failed policies of past administrations that sent jobs overseas and made it very difficult for manufacturers to produce in America. The kicker to all this is that Hillary bashes Trump while wearing pantsuits produced all over the world. | 1real |
Are Hillary’s Eyes Cattywampus? | PR Newswire October 27, 2016
TUCSON, Ariz. , Oct. 25, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — Concerns about Hillary Clinton’s health have been subdued after her three debate performances. She presented her ability to survive 4-and-a-half hours on a stage with Donald Trump as proof of sufficient stamina to serve as commander-in-chief.
“She evidently intended this as a joke, although I suspect our combat veterans would not be amused,” states AAPS executive director Jane Orient, M.D.
Videos are, however, circulating on the internet, from her rather brief and rare appearances in public, which are purported to show pathological eye movements.
“These are quick, episodic, and inconsistent,” states Dr. Orient, who is an internist. “So we decided to ask doctors on our email list to have a look at one of the videos . A helpful tool is to paste the URL into http://RowVid.com and watch it at half or quarter speed.”
Nearly two-thirds of respondents said they saw abnormal movements. Only 15% did not, and 21% were unsure. There are long segments in which the eye movements appear normal.
About 60% of those who saw abnormal movements thought “the cause could be a potentially disabling neurological condition,” and none of them were willing to say that it isn’t.
Such movements signify an abnormality in portions of the brain that coordinate the eye muscles. There is a long differential diagnosis. Possibilities the respondents suggested include increased intracranial pressure (she is at risk for that because of her history of head trauma and a transverse sinus clot); a drug effect; or a chronic degenerative neurological condition. Parkinson’s disease is mentioned—with drug treatment concealing most manifestations but causing the eye signs.
Doctors were asked which tests would be helpful, and 37 responded . The most common one was a full neurological examination by unbiased specialists, including a neuro-ophthalmologist.
“A neuro-ophthalmologist could do a structured examination, but it might be normal at a moment in time. The video clips need to be explained,” stated Dr. Orient. “A cardiologist might do an electrocardiogram that is perfectly normal—but he will also look at a 24-hour monitor that may show a transient life-threatening rhythm disturbance.”
A collection of additional clips in slow motion has been posted.
“As Hillary revealed to the public, perhaps illegally, the President may have only four minutes to respond to a nuclear threat,” said Dr. Orient. “The public needs to know whether she is concealing a serious, progressive illness that may impair memory, reasoning, alertness, or ability to think quickly at a critical time.”
The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) is a national organization representing physicians in virtually all specialties and every state. Founded in 1943, AAPS has the motto “omnia pro aegroto,” which means “all for the patient.”
SOURCE Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) Tags: | 1real |
Comment on Useful Idiots for Islam by MomOfIV | | January 15, 2016 at 6:00 am | Reply
Slavery still exists in Saudi Arabia (as well as parts of Africa) today. But what is Saudi Arabia? For all practical purposes, it is Great Britain’s vassal state, run by a family of criminals whom we and Great Britain protect. Saudi Arabia is not even a nation-state in the modern sense of the term: The Royal Family there considers themselves to be owners of the land—as if it were their personal property—who allow others to live on it. (Churchill and others either set up Saudi Arabia or allowed it to become established in its current political structure. They also established the current national boundaries in the Middle East, leading, in part, to the present troubles). What kind of a religion is this that encourages all of the worst carnality of men? St. Thomas Aquinas tackled this matter head-on: He wrote that Mohammed sought out men as carnal as himself, and he encouraged his followers to do the same. (And they consider Jesus Our Lord to be a prophet, as if He would EVER condone their evil?!) Islam, like the New World Order manipulating it, is a BEAST SYSTEM. It is a criminal racket with a political ideology and structure, masquerading as a religion! WAKE UP, PEOPLE! | 1real |
GAFFE OF THE DAY: VA Gov. #TerryMcAuliffe Blames “Too Many” Guns for Shootings: “We lose 93 million Americans a day to gun violence” [Video] | VIRGINIA governor Terry McAuliffe decided to get political today when he spoke out during the presser for the Virginia shooting of Congressman Steve Scalise. Leave it to a political hack like McAuliffe to bring gun control into the discussion: There are too many guns on the street. We lose 93 million Americans a day to gun violence. CONFUSION: VA Gov. Terry McAuliffe: There are too many guns on the street. We lose 93 million Americans a day to gun violence. pic.twitter.com/36EUPl4Jsb Josh Caplan (@joshdcaplan) June 14, 2017Leave it to this uneducated political snake to make this all about politics and gun control. He eventually corrected himself to say that it s just 93 people a day who are victims of gun violence. How many are saved BECAUSE they are armed with a gun? Lives were saved today because the Capitol Police were armed. That s all thanks to Steve Scalise who is a leader in Congress and gets protection. It they hadn t been there, who know how many would have been killed!McAuliffe is a Clinton crony who has always been a snake in the grass. He will do anything to get ahead politically. He s been involved in a questionable redistricting in his state and prior to the 2016 election he made it possible for thousands of felons to vote. | 1real |
OUCH! POST DEBATE: HILLARY GIVES Tim Kaine A Painful Preview Of What It Feels Like When You Disappoint Her | Things didn t work out very well for Vince Foster when he disappointed Crooked Hillary. Does Tim Kaine know what he s getting himself into? Maybe he should have a little sit down with Bill before this thing goes too far. I mean, we re talking about a guy who refuses, when asked to identify as a male It took a while, but Democratic presidential nominee finally called running mate Tim Kaine more than 12 hours after the end of the first vice presidential debate.Clinton and Kaine spoke on the phone at 11:45 Wednesday morning, more than 12 hours and a full news cycle at the end of the contentious TV smackdown that Kaine had spent days preparing for.Clinton also emailed Kaine about the performance, but it isn t clear whether she reached out to her running mate Tuesday night, while the debate was the talk of commentators and the political class.In case you missed it, here s a little clip of Kaine s horrible performance. He certainly didn t do Queen Hillary any favors that night:https://youtu.be/obsWi2ruyL0Clinton got asked how Kaine did as she boarded a plane en route to fundraisers in D.C. Wednesday. She flashed two thumbs up but didn t say anything. Clinton spokesman Nick Merrill, asked whey the two didn t connect sooner on what was most likely Kaine s most consequential night of the campaign, responded: They emailed a bit and connected this morning. Clinton didn t speak publicly about Kaine s performance until after 6:00 pm on Wednesday, when she praised him. Did anybody see Tim Kaine in the debate last night? Clinton asked at a Women for Hillary event at a Washington hotel, prompting the crowd to cheer. I though Tim did a great job and every time he tried to push Mike Pence to defend what Donald Trump has said and done, Pence just bobbed and weaved and tried to get out of the way because after all, trying to defend Donald Trump is an impossible task, she said. Daily Mail | 1real |
Turkey's Erdogan says U.S. courts cannot put Turkey on trial | ANKARA (Reuters) - Courts in the United States cannot put Turkey on trial, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on Saturday, in reference to the case of a Turkish bank executive who has been charged with evading U.S. sanctions on Iran. Already strained ties between NATO allies Ankara and Washington have deteriorated in recent weeks as Turkish-Iranian gold trader Reza Zarrab, who is cooperating with U.S. prosecutors, detailed in court a scheme to evade U.S. sanctions. Over three days of testimony, Zarrab has implicated top Turkish politicians, including Erdogan. Zarrab said on Thursday that Erdogan personally authorized two Turkish banks to join the scheme when he was prime minister. Ankara has cast the testimony as an attempt to undermine Turkey and its economy, and has previously said it was a clear plot by the network of U.S.-based Fethullah Gulen, who it alleges engineered last year s coup attempt. Reuters was not immediately able to reach representatives for the ministers implicated by Zarrab in the trial. Turkey has repeatedly requested Gulen s extradition, but U.S. officials have said the courts require sufficient evidence before they can extradite the elderly cleric, who has denied any involvement in the coup. Erdogan, who has governed Turkey for almost 15 years, told members of his ruling AK Party in the northeastern province of Kars on Saturday that U.S. courts can never try my country . Although he has not yet responded to the courtroom claims, he has dismissed the case as a politically motivated attempt to bring down the Turkish government and on Friday the state-run Anadolu news agency said Turkish prosecutors are set to seize the assets of Zarrab and his acquaintances. Turkey has stepped up its pressure on the U.S. and on Saturday Anadolu quoted Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu as saying that Gulen s followers had infiltrated the U.S. judiciary, Congress, and other state institutions. The United States says its judiciary is independent of any political or other interference. Some 150,000 people have been sacked or suspended from their jobs over alleged links to Gulen since the attempted coup, while close to 50,000 people from the military, public and private sector have been jailed. And in a further blow to Turkish-U.S. ties, Turkish authorities on Friday issued an arrest warrant for former U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer Graham Fuller over suspected links to the abortive putsch. Rights groups and Turkey s Western allies have voiced concerns that Erdogan is using the crackdown to muzzle dissent, but the government says the purges are necessary due to the gravity of the threat it faces. | 0fake |
Boiler Room #106 – Did Israel Attack Damascus? + Bill Nye The PsyOp Guy | Tune in to the Alternate Current Radio Network (ACR) for another LIVE broadcast of The Boiler Room tonight 6:00 PM PST | 8:00 PM CST | 9:00 PM EST for this special broadcast. Join us for uncensored, uninterruptible talk radio, custom-made for bar fly philosophers, misguided moralists, masochists, street corner evangelists, media-maniacs, savants, political animals and otherwise lovable rascals.Join ACR hosts Hesher and Spore along with Jay Dyer of Jays Analysis, Patrick Henningsen of 21WIRE, Randy J (ACR contributor) and Andy Nowicki, author of Conspiracy, Compliance, Control & Defiance, for the hundred and sixth episode of BOILER ROOM. Turn it up, tune in and hang with the ACR Brain-Trust for this weeks boil downs and analysis and the usual gnashing of the teeth of the political animals in the social reject club. We re breaking down the developments of a potential Israeli Missile attack in Syria, North Korea as a joke of a Nuclear threat and the utter failure of Netflix and the Bill Nye show to influence viewers to join his cult of lab coats and bow ties with the catch phrase being I told you so because IT IS SCIENCE! Does Bill Nye promote eugenics and incarceration of anyone who doubts his version of science You bet he does, just watch his new show if you have any doubt.Listen to Boiler Room EP #106 Israel Attacks Damascus & Bill Nye The Psyop Guy on Spreaker.Direct Download Episode #106Please like and share the program and visit our donate page to get involved!Reference Links: | 1real |
Trump proposes 15 percent business tax rate: White House summary | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump on Wednesday proposed slashing the U.S. tax rate on corporate and pass-through business profits to 15 percent from 35 percent or more, while also offering tax cuts to average Americans in a rough outline of his tax policy goals. A one-page summary of his proposals, released at a White House briefing, said Trump also wants to reduce the number of tax brackets to three from seven, double the standard deduction that Americans can claim on their tax returns and repeal the estate tax and alternative minimum tax. Under U.S. law, only Congress can make major tax law changes. Lawmakers initially greeted Trump’s plan as a starting point for further discussion on overhauling the tax code. | 0fake |
Google Accused of Paying Women Less than Men - Breitbart | The U. S. Department of Labor (DOL) asked a San Francisco federal judge on April 7 to compel Google to provide detailed data regarding systemic gender pay discrimination. [With the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) making a preliminary determination that Google Inc. in its capacity as a federal contractor, has exhibited a pattern of pay discrimination against women, the DOL began a suit in front of a San Francisco Administrative Law Judge to compel Google to allow auditors to inspect and copy records and data about the company’s compliance with federal laws governing equal opportunity. Google’s labor lawyer attorney Lisa Barnett Sween from Jackson Lewis stated that Google had complied with initial requests. But she argued that the DOL’s demand for employee names, addresses, phone numbers and email addresses violated Google’s Constitutional Fourth Amendment right of protection against unreasonable searches. Silicon Valley CEOs view the DOL’s aggressive action against Google as the first salvo in President Obama’s January 29, 2016 Executive Order that expanded the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) gender compensation audits. Obama’s action came on the seventh anniversary of his signing the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009. The Order directed the EEOC, in partnership with the DOL, to start collecting summary pay data by gender, race, and ethnicity from all private sector businesses with 100 or more employees. The White House stated that the audits would cover 63 million American workers and “focus public enforcement of our equal pay laws and provide better insight into discriminatory pay practices across industries and occupations. ” President Obama protested that he was forced to issue an Executive Order because Congress had refused to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act that he claimed would “give women additional tools to fight pay discrimination. ” Obama issued a report titled “The Gender Pay Gap on the Anniversary of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act,” which claimed that the U. S. gender wage gap is now 2. 5 percentage points worse than the average for industrialized countries, after the world reduced the pay gap by 7 percentage points since 2000. DOL Regional Director Janette Wipper testified that the government had collected information to show that Google is violating federal EEOC laws on wages: “We found systemic compensation disparities against women pretty much across the entire workforce. ” Despite California being the eighth best state in the U. S. for gender equality, the DOL may have chosen to go after Google knowing the U. S. Ninth Circuit has a reputation as America’s most liberal venue. The DOL filed discrimination lawsuits against Palantir in September for alleged systematic hiring discrimination against Asian job applicants and sued Oracle in January claiming that the company paid white men more than other racial groups. Both company deny the charges as “politically motivated. ” | 0fake |
Criticized for Egypt ties, France to raise human rights with al-Sisi | PARIS (Reuters) - President Emmanuel Macron, conscious of criticism of France s policy on Egypt, will raise his concerns over human rights when he meets Egyptian leader Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in Paris next week, his office said on Thursday. The two countries have nurtured closer economic and military ties in recent years and with Sisi s rise to power that relationship has improved with both sides concerned by the political vacuum in Libya and the threat from jihadist groups in Egypt. But human rights organizations at home and overseas have accused France under Macron of remaining silent in the face of increasing violations of freedoms by Sisi s government as the 2018 presidential elections approach. This first meeting ... will enable them to discuss subjects of common interest such as regional crises and the fight against terrorism, but also the human rights situation which France is especially vigilant about, the presidency said in a statement referring to Sisi s Oct 23-25 visit. Rights groups are in particular critical of the relationship between Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian, who in his previous role as defense minister, developed a personal relationship with Sisi, and say Paris has abandoned its principles for economic and security interests. French officials dismiss this criticism and say the new administration is following a policy of not openly criticizing countries over human rights so as to be more efficient in private and work on a case by case basis. In a report in September, Human Rights Watch (HRW) denounced widespread and systematic use of torture by Egyptian security forces. The United Nations on Oct. 13 condemned an anti-gay crackdown in Egypt. HRW earlier slammed French indulgence towards repression in Egypt. According to two NGO officials aware of talks between Macron and human rights groups on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly in September, Macron had told them that while he acknowledged the worsening human rights situation in Egypt, his priority was to ensure Sisi continued to fight terrorist groups. Faced with the lack of progress in respecting human rights and on democratic standards, the United States decided in August to freeze the payment of $195 million in military aid. Under the previous government, France concluded several major military agreements with Egypt, including the sale of 24 Rafale combat aircraft, a multi-mission frigate and two Mistral warships in contracts worth some six billion euros. | 0fake |
Israel’s Hard-Liners Want to ‘Go Big’: Annex a Settlement - The New York Times | MA’ALE ADUMIM, West Bank — The first babies of Ma’ale Adumim, a hilly city on the eastern outskirts of Jerusalem, are now . A cemetery finally opened last year, and 40 residents are buried there, most dead of natural causes after long and peaceful lives. That is to say, there is nothing temporary about this place, one of the closest settlements to Jerusalem in the occupied West Bank, which Israel seized from Jordan 50 years ago. “It’s part of Jerusalem,” said Sima Weiss, 58, who has lived here 30 years, raised three children and works a cleaning job just 20 minutes away by bus in the holy city proper. “I don’t feel like a settler. ” The world has focused more critically recently on Israel’s settlements in occupied territory, after last month’s United Nations declaration — which the United States tacitly supported — that they are killing the dream of one state for Jews, one for Palestinians. Many Israelis argue that Ma’ale Adumim — a city of 41, 000 with filled schools, a largely secular civic pride and skittish stray cats — is a special case: Its closeness to Jerusalem has put it near the top of the list of settlements Israelis say they could swap for other land in a peace deal. Yet Ma’ale Adumim has become a flash point of the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis. politicians, emboldened by a more sympathetic Trump administration, want to annex it to Israel proper — the first formal annexation of a settlement. Supporters of the move argue that in the long absence of negotiations, Israel cannot stand still, and Ma’ale Adumim would likely be a part of Israel in any case. “Clearly it’s time for a quantum change,” Naftali Bennett, the education minister, who plans to introduce the annexation bill, said in an interview. “The incremental approach has not worked. We have to understand it’s a new reality. We have to go big, bold and fast. ” The Parliament seems poised to approve a law that few thought had any chance of passage just a few months ago: It would ultimately legalize settlement homes built illegally on private Palestinian land. Critics call this yet another form of creeping annexation. Many Palestinians agree this is a critical moment. They fear Ma’ale Adumim will be just the beginning of the annexation of settlements in the West Bank, now home to roughly 400, 000 Jews, and the end of the dream. “We believe in two states for two nations, but if they took that” — Ma’ale Adumim — “there will be no longer two states,” said Yousef Mostafa Mkhemer, chairman of the Organization of Jerusalem Steadfastness, which focuses on issues like Muslim holy sites, refugee camps and Israeli settlements. “There will be one state called Israel. ” Many Palestinians and peace activists argue that the line has already been crossed — that any annexation of Ma’ale Adumim, after so many years, would be a technicality. “We are living in one state now,” said Ziad Abu Zayyad, a Palestinian lawyer and writer. Mr. Zayyad, a former Palestinian minister, said that unlike most Palestinians he supported Donald J. Trump for president, in part because he felt his apparently greater sympathy for Israel would begin to provide a clarity to a conflict. “I want to see a change,” he said. “I’m fed up. ” “He could be a big devil. He could be something good. My point is he will make a change, for the good or for the bad. ” There are signs, in fact, that the conflict here is already shifting, with Ma’ale Adumim near the center, no matter how quiet and workaday its residents think themselves (70 percent of residents commute to Jerusalem proper for their jobs). After eight years of little building, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu just allotted 100 new building units to Ma’ale Adumim, part of 2, 500 new proposed housing units around the West Bank settlements, and another 560 in East Jerusalem. Mr. Netanyanu has proclaimed this as just the beginning of a new wave of building. Less than a month after the United Nations resolution, the city’s mayor, Benny Kashriel, and another settlement leader proudly attended Mr. Trump’s inauguration. That would have been unthinkable for past incoming American presidents, out of fear it could be interpreted as an endorsement of settlements, which most of the world considers illegal. “It’s a different policy,” Mr. Kashriel, mayor for 25 years, said just a day back from Washington. He believes that the new administration sees places like Ma’ale Adumim more benignly than did former President Barack Obama, whose administration blocked much building here and in the nearby E1, an especially contentious area closer to Jerusalem. “We didn’t steal the land from anybody,” he said. “It was built on empty hills. You can see there — the desert, rocks and sand. Now you have a living city. ” Much of the outside world’s attention has focused on more religious settlements deeper into the West Bank or on land with Palestinian titles in more direct conflict with Palestinians. But here, scrutiny has been intense on Ma’ale Adumim. It is partly symbolic: Israel has not annexed 1967 land beyond East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights. Opponents of the move fear it would be the start of a process that would not end until politicians like Mr. Bennett achieved their dreams of annexing large swaths of the West Bank and leaving the Palestinians with what Mr. Netanyahu recently called “a . ” It is partly strategic: The settlement is at the heart of entrenched plans to expand Jerusalem, linking it to the city proper, along with other nearby settlements that also function in practice as Jerusalem suburbs. One issue with Ma’ale Adumim, critics argue, is its place in the West Bank, between north and south, that combined with other building plans could both hamper transit of Palestinians and threaten the contiguous borders of any future Palestinian state. The area is also not as empty as Ma’ale Adumim’s supporters say. Eid Abu Khamis, the leader of some 8, 000 Bedouins in the area, says harassment by Israel has increased recently. More of their makeshift housing has been torn down and land for their goats and sheep — they sell meat, yogurt and cheese to survive — declared . Most of the Bedouins live in the E1 area, which is technically a part of Ma’ale Adumim and is slated for some 3, 700 new housing units. The Obama administration staunchly opposed any development in E1 as a possible point of no return for a viable Palestinian state. “If the Bedouin are kicked out of this land where we have lived for 30 years, it will be the end of negotiations with the State of Israel,” Mr. Khamis said. Many Palestinians argue that the annexation could ignite another round of violent revolt. A Palestinian flag was recently planted in a park in Ma’ale Adumim here, a worrying sign for residents that the less expensive, less harried life in their suburb may change. “I didn’t come because I believe we should take all the land between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River,” said a resident, a driver who would give his name only as Max S. “It was cheap. That’s why I came. If I could change my apartment to an apartment in Tel Aviv, in a minute I would do it. “ People here are proud of what they have built since it was founded in 1975, with 15 religious Jews. There is a library, a theater, 15 schools and 78 kindergartens. It is mostly secular, but gets along with its more religious residents, about a quarter of the population. An industrial park, while the occasional target of the worldwide campaign to boycott goods made in settlements, is thriving and employs some 4, 000 Palestinians — at much higher wages, the mayor notes, than they could earn in Palestinian areas. Ronit Jackov, 55, who works in the local mall (which is getting a new floor with five cinemas) said she favored annexation, largely so the city can begin to grow again after years of a building freeze. She said she would never move back to Jerusalem, in part because the city has become too religious and rigid. “I’m not comfortable in a place where people tell you how to live,” she said. “People want to live their lives. ” And she places much hope in Mr. Trump, that he will side more forcefully with Israelis. “I’m not a very political person,” she said. “But I’m waiting for him to carry out what he said, and I’ll say, ‘You are great.’ Because the whole world is against us. We need someone on our side. ” | 0fake |
Mike Huckabee on Netanyahu, wage stagnation, 2016 and more | Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee is certainly on the go. He traveled to 38 states last year to help candidates in the midterms and this week alone is in six states. Whether he runs for president or continues to work the trail for others, he certainly sees a lot of America and talks to a whole lot of people. In a real sense, he truly does reflect the views of many social conservatives and conservative populists in the heartland.
With Huckabee, however, who has been going to Israel for 42 years, one is compelled to start with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech. “It was a tremendous speech,” he told Right Turn. “It was more than how he said it but what he said. He called attention to the nature of the [Iranian] regime.” He recited two well-known points — Iran is the world’s largest state sponsor of terror and a regime committed to wiping out Israel — and reiterated that Iran has cheated on every agreement it has ever entered into. “If every time I’ve bought a car from a used-car dealer — 10 out of 10 he’s sold me a lemon, do I really want to buy the 11th?” He sounds genuinely aggrieved about the president’s behavior and the conduct of Democrats who refused to go to the speech. “What I lamented is that the once bipartisan agreement on Israel and national security has been abandoned by the Democrats,” he said. “They are more interested in protecting Obama’s petulance than in protecting Israel.” He hastened to note that he was in Israel yet again last week and met with Netanyahu. He makes the keen point that this hardly was a political winner for Netanyahu back home. “It was divisive back home in Israel. What he did was brave. This was a political risk,” he noted, pointing to the controversy and criticism the trip generated among his opponents. And running through the list of other Middle East countries he has been to (Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, etc.) he observes that this is not just about the Jewish state. “The Egyptians, the Jordanians, the Emiratis, the Saudis are absolutely with Israel on this [the Iranian threat].” He confesses that in watching the president’s conduct and the reported concessions, “I’m stunned. I can’t figure out what the president is thinking, what his advisers are telling him.”
There are few people who know the Clintons like fellow Arkansan Huckabee. He’s not surprised in the least about the recent e-mail and foundation scandals. “Again and again Democrats and especially the press are willing to let the Clintons skate by. It’s pretty bizarre.” Is he going to run for president? He sticks to his previous statements that he will decide “sometime this spring.” He cracks, “Looking at the weather it’s premature [to decide].”
Huckabee is an economic populist, to be sure, and takes pride in being attacked for it. “I talked about [this economic message] eight years ago. I was being pilloried by the Wall Street Journal and other folks in your community [the mainstream media].” He says events have proved him right, and now everyone is talking about wage stagnation. He asserted, “The bottom 90 percent in the past 40 years have had stagnant wages. In the 25 years before that, 90 percent saw an increase.”
He cites the tax code (it is “punishing people who work on their feet. If they take a second job, they are thrown into a new tax bracket); “cheap foreign labor that devalues American labor”; and “cheap products” from China. People, he said, are worried about the college grad with debt and no job and the small-business person bedeviled by taxes and regulations. Huckabee’s diagnosis of what troubles America may be sound, but many conservatives will disagree with his solutions.
Huckabee may be missing some important pieces of the picture. In the 1950s, Europe and Asia were not yet economic powerhouses, labor unions kept wages artificially high and most families had only one working adult (so labor was more scare, and hence wages were high). In a global economy, many would argue that Huckabee’s proposals don’t fit the times. In fact, we need to expand markets for our trade, enhance our technological edge and change our immigration system so that we siphon off the best and brightest to work, build businesses and invest in America. That formula — becoming a 21st-century economic giant that beats the world competition — together with tax, education and regulatory reform, is the building block of the policy agenda of two other potential 2016 contenders, former Florida governor Jeb Bush and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.). Those two make for an interesting contrast to economic populists who fear losing what they have and tend not to think about how to get more of the world economic pie.
If Huckabee would get to the White House, he lists two priorities. “At the top of the list would be reestablishing relations with our allies. I’ve challenged my Democratic friends to come up with one country, just one, that we have better relations with. They can’t because there is not one.” Second, “I’d evolve power out of Washington, D.C.,” he said. “It’s so dysfunctional, I don’t think it can be fixed.” He’d rather give the power back to the states, where “people have to balance budgets.”
It is easy to see why he was such a hit on Fox. He’s entertaining and an excellent conservative analyst. Whether he wants to and can translate that into a presidential platform and campaign remains to be seen. But the candidates who are definitely running might pick up some pointers by watching him. | 0fake |
BREAKING: House Republicans Work To Cut Off Federal Funding For Syrian Refugee Resettlement Program | Time will tell how serious the House Republicans are about keeping our nation safe. Goodness knows it s the furthest thing from our Climate Change Promoter In Chief s mind Following the deadly terrorist attacks in Paris, House Republicans are proposing to block federal funding for resettling Syrian refugees until a series of new conditions are met, Foreign Policy has learned.The growing momentum behind new legislation, still being drafted, sets up a future clash between the White House and Congress as the Obama administration seeks to offer residency to 10,000 Syrian refugees who currently live outside the conflict zone. Currently, 60 million people worldwide have been forced from their homes or are otherwise considered refugees higher than at any other time in recorded history. An estimated six million to eight million displaced people are still in Syria, and more than four million Syrian refugees are in Jordan, Turkey, and Lebanon.The draft legislation, a copy of which was obtained by FP, is backed by Reps. Brian Babin, Lou Barletta, Diane Black, Mo Brooks, Jeff Duncan, John Duncan, Blake Farenthold, Louie Gohmert, Frank Guinta, Gregg Harper, Walter Jones, Steve King, Mike Pompeo, Mark Meadows, and Bill Posey. It would prevent funding for the resettlement of refugees from the Middle East and North Africa until authorities adopt processes to ensure that refugee and related programs are not able to be co-opted by would-be terrorists. Once those processes are in place, details of the security checks must be given to Congress in both classified and public forums, and the administration must establish a longer-term monitoring process to track refugees in the U.S.The 15 Republican lawmakers pushing the legislation aren t the only politicians looking to slam the brakes on Obama s resettlement program. The governors of 15 U.S. states have already said they would not allow Syrian refugees to live in their states. Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions (R) has proposed legislation to restrict U.S. funding for refugee resettlement and Kentucky Senator Rand Paul (R) has said he will introduce legislation to prevent Syrian refugees from obtaining U.S. visas.Additionally, House Homeland Security Chairman Michael McCaul plans to raise the issue of blocking Syrian refugee resettlement at a Tuesday meeting with fellow Republicans, according to two congressional sources.In a Monday letter to President Barack Obama, McCaul called on the White House to immediately suspend the admission of all additional Syrian refugees. The high-threat environment demands that we move forward with greater caution in order to protect the American people and to prevent terrorists from reaching our shores, McCaul wrote.The rising opposition to assisting Syrian refugees is already alarming humanitarian organizations, which say that doing so defies America s long tradition of helping individuals fleeing persecution. A senior Obama administration official, speaking to FP on condition of anonymity, said security concerns about incoming refugees were unfounded in large part because they undergo the highest level of scrutiny by intelligence and security government agencies. All refugees, including Syrians, are admitted only after successful completion of this stringent security screening regime, the official said.Fears about taking in refugees spiked after a Syrian passport was found near the body of one of the assailants in the deadly Paris attacks that killed at least 129 people. Questions remain, however, over the identity of the attacker: French officials on Monday said he used a fake Syrian passport to travel to Europe through Greece and the Balkans. While his actual identity is unknown, the attacker is believed to have posed as a Syrian refugee to enter Europe through the Aegean Sea. Via:Foreign Policy | 1real |
Segregation fans fears of fresh 'cleansing' in Myanmar's Rakhine | MYEBON, Myanmar (Reuters) - Buddhist villagers in relatively peaceful parts of Myanmar s Rakhine state are enforcing a system of local apartheid that punishes people trading with minority Muslims, fuelling fears that violence in the far northwest could spread to new areas. Ethnic Rakhines, who form the majority in central parts of the state, have set up committees in several districts that have meted out sanctions ranging from fines to public beatings and expulsions. They say the measures are necessary to protect their communities from Rohingya Muslim militants. Muslim residents say they are being cut off from essential supplies and accuse authorities of turning a blind eye. Aid workers fear thousands will attempt to escape via perilous sea routes to Thailand and Malaysia when the monsoon rains abate. About 250,000 Muslims live in central Rakhine, an area not directly affected by a military offensive against Rohingya militants who attacked security forces in the northern part of the state in late August. The army operation has forced more than half a million people to flee to Bangladesh, in what the United Nations has denounced as ethnic cleansing. In the current situation, it s not possible for different communities to live together, said Ashin Saromani, a Buddhist monk in the central Rakhine town of Myebon, where one such committee was set up at a meeting in a monastery four days after the Aug. 25 militant attacks in the north. The government can t reconcile them. That s why we prohibited communication with the Muslims, to prevent conflict. Rakhine state government spokesman Min Aung said he was not aware of efforts to punish Buddhists who had contact with Muslims. He said he thought tensions could best be eased by interfaith community groups. Other states and regions have interfaith groups working for peace. In Rakhine there s no group like that, he said. Tension between ethnic Rakhines and Muslims have simmered for years. Nearly 200 people were killed and 140,000 displaced in communal violence in the state in 2012. U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has warned that the violence seen in the north of the state could easily spread. The failure to address this systematic violence could result in a spillover into central Rakhine, where an additional 250,000 Muslims could potentially face displacement, said Guterres in a recent speech. They are outnumbered by Rakhine communities, some of whom have engaged in violent acts of vigilantism against their Muslim neighbors. In Myebon, about 3,000 Muslims have been confined to a camp for displaced people since the 2012 violence, surrounded by tens of thousands of hostile Rakhine Buddhists. They have relied on aid from international agencies and fishing, supplemented by a small amount of trade in the town. Since late August, loudspeakers mounted on tricycle rickshaws have rolled around the town, blaring messages from local monks and Rakhine community leaders exhorting Buddhists to avoid contact with Muslims. One Rakhine woman who ignored the warnings, 35-year-old Soe Chay, told Reuters she was surrounded by a mob on Sept. 12 after buying goods at a market to sell to Muslims. They beat her, cut her hair and marched through the town with a sign reading national traitor hung around her neck. Kyaw Swar Tun, deputy director of the Rakhine General Administration Department (GAD) that overseas the local bureaucracy, said the case was an individual problem that was already being dealt with by the courts. Two women and a man have been charged with assault on Soe Chay. The two women were members of the Arakan Women s Network in Myebon, which denied taking part in the attack. People got angry because they don t have a nationalist spirit, even though they know that 30 police stations were attacked and locals from Maungdaw were beheaded, said Khin Thein, leader of the network in the town, describing the incident. He was referring to the Aug. 25 attacks, which concentrated in northern Rakhine s Maungdaw township. Buddhist community leaders in Myebon have also blocked international aid agencies from reaching the camp, saying only the government can deliver aid, which must be checked by Buddhists. We are concerned that if we don t check that boat of the NGOs communicating directly with the Bengalis, they might include weapons together with the aid, said Ashin Saromani. Bengali is a derogatory term for the Rohingya implying they are interlopers from Bangladesh. Similar community-enforced restrictions on aid have been in place elsewhere in Rakhine, according to aid workers. Anti-Muslim sentiment has been bubbling up elsewhere in mostly Buddhist Myanmar since the conflict erupted in Rakhine. Police had to disperse a mob that attacked Muslim homes and businesses in the central Magwe division on Sept. 10. In Kayin state in the east, Muslims were told last month they must get special permission from authorities before traveling outside of their villages, because of security concerns. Closer to the conflict zone, Muslim villagers in Rathedaung township say they have been directly pressured to leave by their Rakhine neighbors. In Ku Taung village, near the besieged Muslim villages, a group of 46 Rakhine Buddhist elders has formed a disciplinary committee . They have fined Buddhists as much as 500,000 kyat ($370) for infractions including selling betel leaves to Muslims, according to farmer Tun Thar Sein. Some Rakhine villages have set up security teams to protect against the spread of militancy. In Mrauk-U and Minbya, an area that saw several unexplained explosions last month, residents said Muslims were no longer allowed into Rakhine villages. Kyaw Swar Tun, the local administrator, said authorities would deal with any cases brought to them according to the law, but was not aware of any such problems in central Rakhine. Back in the Myebon camp for displaced people, Muslims say they will have to move away. It s not possible for us to go back and stay together in Myebon because the Rakhine who destroyed our homes will be afraid to face us. said Cho Cho, a Muslim resident. They fear that Muslims will take revenge. | 0fake |
JUST IN: FORMER NBC NEWS ANCHOR Tom Brokaw Tells Morning Joe Hacks “We’re At War” With Trump…and “Fox News Is On A Jihad” [VIDEO] | This morning, President Trump tweeted a note of congratulations to Fox and Friends, after they were named, The Most Influential Show In News . In his tweet, President Trump told Fox and Friends, You deserve it three great people! The many Fake News Hate Shows should study your formula for success! Was @foxandfriends just named the most influential show in news? You deserve it three great people! The many Fake News Hate Shows should study your formula for success! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 21, 2017Trump s tweet was enough to put the maniacal Trump hater Mika Brzezinski over the edge. She mockingly read the tweet to the MSNBC show s panel, then turned to Tom Brokaw to ask for his reaction to President Trump s tweet. Brokaw smugly told Brzezinski that President Donald Trump watches Fox News because it reinforces what he believes . Brokaw then went on to exclude leftist crybaby Shepard Smith from his disgusting and inflammatory assertion that Fox News is on a jihad. Fox News, after Shepard Smith, in the late afternoon, is on a jihad right now on the whole question about whether there is a fairness about this or not, Brokaw told Brzezinski. The whole assault is on the institutions. Brokaw then went on to criticize Newt Gingrich for daring to call out the corrupt and biased behavior of the FBI, that s recently been uncovered as a result of the Trump-Russian collusion witch hunt. Brokaw told the panel, Newt Gingrich looking in the camera and saying the FBI is a corrupt organization, right? Three months earlier he had said Bob Mueller is one of the great, distinguished public servants we have. Newt Gingrich looking into the camera and saying the FBI is a corrupt organization three months earlier he d said Bob Mueller is one of the great, distinguished public servants we have. So, we re at war here, Brokaw told the like-minded leftist hack panel at MSNBC.Watch (audio is missing for the first second of the video): | 1real |
Trump Picks Scott Pruitt, Climate Change Denialist, to Lead E.P.A. - The New York Times | WASHINGTON — Donald J. Trump has selected Scott Pruitt, the Oklahoma attorney general and a close ally of the fossil fuel industry, to run the Environmental Protection Agency, signaling Mr. Trump’s determination to dismantle President Obama’s efforts to counter climate change — and much of the E. P. A. itself. Mr. Pruitt, a Republican, has been a key architect of the legal battle against Mr. Obama’s climate change policies, actions that fit with the ’s comments during the campaign. Mr. Trump has criticized the established science of global warming as a hoax, vowed to “cancel” the Paris accord committing nearly every nation to taking action to fight climate change, and attacked Mr. Obama’s signature global warming policy, the Clean Power Plan, as a “war on coal. ” Mr. Pruitt has been in lock step with those views. “Scientists continue to disagree about the degree and extent of global warming and its connection to the actions of mankind,” he wrote in National Review earlier this year. “That debate should be encouraged — in classrooms, public forums, and the halls of Congress. It should not be silenced with threats of prosecution. Dissent is not a crime. ” A meeting on Monday between the and former Vice President Al Gore may have given environmental activists a glimmer of hope that Mr. Trump was moderating his campaign stance. Mr. Trump told New York Times editors and reporters that he does “think there is some connectivity” between human activity and a warming planet. With the choice of Mr. Pruitt, that hope will have faded. “During the campaign, Mr. Trump regularly threatened to dismantle the E. P. A. and roll back many of the gains made to reduce Americans’ exposures to industrial pollution, and with Pruitt, the would make good on those threats,” said Ken Cook, head of the Environmental Working Group, a Washington research and advocacy organization. “It’s a safe assumption that Pruitt could be the most hostile E. P. A. administrator toward clean air and safe drinking water in history,” he added. Mr. Pruitt, 48, is a hero to conservative activists, one of a group of Republican attorneys general who formed an alliance with some of the nation’s top energy producers to push back against the Obama regulatory agenda. Fossil fuel interests greeted Mr. Trump’s selection with elation. “Attorney General Scott Pruitt has long been a defender of states’ rights and a vocal opponent of the current administration’s overreaching E. P. A. ,” said Laura Sheehan, a spokeswoman for the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, which works on behalf of the coal industry. “Mr. Pruitt will be a significant voice of reason when it comes to energy and environmental regulations. ” At the heart of Mr. Obama’s efforts to tackle climate change are a collection of E. P. A. regulations aimed at forcing power plants to significantly reduce their emissions of carbon dioxide pollution. Mr. Trump cannot unilaterally cancel the rules, which were released under the 1970 Clean Air Act. But a legally experienced E. P. A. chief could substantially weaken, delay or slowly take them apart. Beyond climate change, the E. P. A. itself may be endangered. Mr. Trump campaigned on a pledge to greatly shrink — or even dismantle — it. “We are going to get rid of it in almost every form,” he once pledged. Mr. Pruitt may be the right man to do that. As attorney general, Mr. Pruitt created a “federalism unit” in his office, explicitly designed to fight President Obama’s health care law and environmental regulations. “You could see from him an increasing effort to delegate environmental regulations away from the federal government and towards the states,” said Ronald Keith Gaddie, a professor of political science at the University of Oklahoma. Although Mr. Obama’s climate rules were not completed until 2015, Mr. Pruitt and a handful of other attorneys general began planning as early as 2014 for a coordinated legal effort to fight them. That resulted in a lawsuit against the administration’s rules. A decision on the case is pending in a federal court, but it is widely expected to advance to the Supreme Court. As Mr. Pruitt has sought to use legal tools to fight environmental regulations on the oil and gas companies that are a major part of his state’s economy, he has also worked with those companies. A 2014 investigation by The Times found that energy lobbyists drafted letters for Mr. Pruitt to send, on state stationery, to the E. P. A. the Interior Department, the Office of Management and Budget and even President Obama, outlining the economic hardship of the environmental rules. The close ties have paid off for Mr. Pruitt politically: Harold G. Hamm, the chief executive of Continental Energy, an Oklahoma oil and gas company, was a of Mr. Pruitt’s 2013 campaign. Mr. Pruitt, who grew up in Kentucky, moved to Oklahoma to go to law school. An avid baseball fan, for eight years he and managed the Oklahoma City Redhawks, a minor league team. He won a seat in the Oklahoma Legislature and opened a small legal office, which he called Christian Legal Services, to challenge government actions that he saw as compromising individual rights. As he ran for attorney general of Oklahoma in 2010, he made clear that he intended to use his power as the state’s top law enforcement official to attempt to force the E. P. A. to back down, convinced that it was wrongly stepping on state government powers. “There’s a mentality emanating from Washington today that says, ‘We know best.’ It’s a strategy, a kind of approach, and we’ve got to make sure we know how to respond to that,” Mr. Pruitt was quoted as saying during his election campaign in 2010. But that campaign, once Mr. Pruitt was sworn in, quickly became an opportunity to work secretly with some of the largest oil and gas companies, and the state’s electric utility, to try to overturn a large part of the Obama administration’s regulations on air emissions, water pollution and endangered animals, documents obtained by The Times show. As attorney general, Mr. Pruitt took the unusual step of jointly filing an antiregulatory lawsuit with industry players, such as Oklahoma Gas and Electric, the electric utility, and the Domestic Energy Producers Alliance, a nonprofit group backed by major oil and gas executives, including Mr. Hamm. Behind the scenes, he was taking campaign contributions from many of the industry players on his team, or helping deliver even larger sums of money to the Republican Attorneys General Association, which he became the chairman of. Mr. Pruitt’s office also began to send letters to federal regulators — including the E. P. A. and even President Obama — that documents obtained through open records requests show were written by energy industry lobbyists from companies including Devon Energy. Mr. Pruitt’s staff put these ghostwritten letters on state government stationery and then sent them to Washington, moves that the companies often then praised in their own news releases, without noting that they had actually drafted the letters in the first place. Mr. Pruitt understood that he was being painted as a tool of industry, but in interviews and his own writing, he rejected that analysis, saying that he at times formed alliances with private sector players that shared his views — and was determined to help the energy industry and individual citizens in his home state. “It is the job of the attorney general to defend the interests and of the citizens and state of Oklahoma,” Mr. Pruitt’s office said in a statement in 2014 to The Times. “This includes protecting Oklahoma’s economy from the perilous effects of federal overreach by agencies like the E. P. A. The energy sector is a major driver of the Oklahoma economy. ” Mr. Pruitt repeatedly explained that he thought states themselves were in the best position to regulate local industries, be it oil and gas companies, or other players that might affect the local environment, such as Devon Energy, which has been a contributor to his political causes, and which he has helped push back against federal regulations. With so much at stake, Mr. Pruitt’s confirmation hearings promise to be heated. “At a time when climate change is the great environmental threat to the entire planet, it is sad and dangerous that Mr. Trump has nominated Scott Pruitt to lead the E. P. A. ,” said Senator Bernie Sanders, independent of Vermont, who sits on the committee that must confirm him. “The American people must demand leaders who are willing to transform our energy system away from fossil fuels. I will vigorously oppose this nomination. ” | 0fake |
Pope, in change from predecessors, condemns nuclear arsenals for deterrence | VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Francis appeared to harden the Catholic Church s teaching against nuclear weapons on Friday, saying countries should not stockpile them even for the purpose of deterrence. His remarks, at the start of a disarmament conference that brought 11 Nobel Peace Prize winners to the Vatican, appeared to go further than previous popes. They have said that while nuclear weapons should never be used, holding arsenals solely to deter other countries from using them could be morally acceptable as a step toward achieving a nuclear-free world. Addressing the group in the 16th century frescoed Clementine Hall of the Vatican s Apostolic Palace, Francis spoke of the catastrophic humanitarian and environmental effects of any employment of nuclear devices . He added: If we also take into account the risk of an accidental detonation as a result of error of any kind, the threat of their use, as well as their very possession, is to be firmly condemned. As tensions between the United States and North Korea have increased, the pope has often warned that a nuclear conflict would destroy a good part of humanity and called for a third country to mediate the dispute. In his address, Francis did not directly mention the North Korea tension, but spoke in general of a climate of instability and conflict and a mentality of fear in the world today. International relations cannot be held captive to military force, mutual intimidation, and the parading of stockpiles of arms, he said. He also said international laws against proliferation of nuclear weapons had not kept new states from acquiring them. Money used to develop or modernize weapons should instead be spent on helping the poor and protecting the environment. Douglas Roche, Canada s former Ambassador for Disarmament and a former senator, told the conference the pope s remarks against possession of nuclear weapons were historic and asked national conferences of Catholic bishops to work to make it known. Another participant suggested the pope should write an encyclical letter addressed to all Catholics on the moral imperative to ban nuclear weapons. Among those who met the pope were Beatrice Fihn, executive director of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) and Mohamed El Baradei, director general emeritus of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Fihn, whose group won the Nobel this year, told Reuters she asked the pope to lead all 1.2 billion Catholics around the world in prayer for an end to the threat of nuclear weapons on Sunday, December 10, when her group is due to collect the prize. Tensions are really high and the risks for nuclear weapons use is higher than at the height of the Cold War, the Cuban missile crisis. I think that s really serious and we need to urgently do something about this, she said. El Baradei, who won the peace prize in 2015, was asked how he would respond to U.S. President Donald Trump s threat to use unprecedented fire and fury against North Korea if it threatened the United States. I go to pray, he said. | 0fake |
House Republicans reject bids to obtain Trump tax returns | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A Republican-controlled congressional panel rejected a bid by Democrats on Tuesday to obtain President Donald Trump’s tax returns, despite warnings that Trump’s business holdings could pose conflicts of interest as Congress turns to tax reform. At a sometimes fiery 2-1/2-hour hearing that careened from lawmaker concerns over political corruption and national security to privacy rights and tax accounting, the House Ways and Means Committee voted 24-16 along party lines to oppose a Democratic resolution that sought the release of 10 years of Trump’s tax returns to the House of Representatives. While the hearing was under way, House Republicans separately turned back a Democratic attempt to force a floor vote on Trump’s tax returns. Committee Republicans accused Democrats of using the tax-writing committee for political grandstanding. “This resolution is a procedural tool being utilized – and I think, abused – for obvious political purposes,” panel Chairman Kevin Brady said. Democrats said they were exercising proper congressional oversight and accused Republicans of protecting Trump. Trump has defied decades of precedent by refusing to release his returns, saying his tax affairs are under federal audit. The Internal Revenue Service says audits pose no obstacle to releasing tax returns. “What is he hiding?” asked Democratic Representative Bill Pascrell, who introduced the measure. “It is our responsibility under the Constitution - very clear, very clear - to provide oversight and root out conflicts of interest.” The rejected measure was part of a Democratic campaign in Congress to force Republicans to confront the issue of Trump’s tax returns in hopes of gradually gaining Republican support for their release. Some Republicans say Trump should release his tax returns. A Ways and Means Republican joined the list on Tuesday. “I wish he would,” said Representative Pat Meehan, who otherwise argued against the Democratic resolution. Trump’s critics say the documents would help determine whether Trump’s investments and sprawling business empire pose conflicts of interest on policies involving tax, regulation, China, Russia and other issues. “The president now says he wants to lead the effort on tax reform? His tax returns are directly relevant,” said Democratic Representative Sander Levin. Republicans said the details Democrats seek could be found in the financial disclosure statement Trump has filed as president. It was the third time the tax panel rejected an effort to obtain Trump’s taxes. | 0fake |
TOP TEN THINGS Hillary Clinton Doesn’t Want You To See From Wikileaks E-mails | TOP 10 THINGS HILLARY DOESN T WANT YOU TO SEELeaked Transcripts of Hillary Clinton s Closed Door Paid Speeches Reveal What Clinton s Title Should Actually Be, (D-Wall Street) Hillary Clinton s secret Wall Street speeches prove what we have known all along that Clinton is a self-serving Washington insider who has continued to deceive the American people for 30 years. Now we finally get confirmation of Clinton s catastrophic plans for completely open borders and diminishing America s influence in the world. There is a reason Clinton gave these high-paid speeches in secret behind closed doors her real intentions will destroy American sovereignty as we know it, further illustrating why Hillary Clinton is simply unfit to be president. Jason Miller, Senior Communications AdviserTOP TAKEAWAYS Clinton said that to be successful, politically you need both a public and private position on public policy. In a speech to a Wall Street audience, Clinton went to great lengths to shift blame from the big banks, divulging that she allowed her constituents to literally yell at her to take out their anger for the financial crisis. Clinton confessed in the Big Banks that she was far removed from the struggles of the middle class because of her and Bill s fortunes. To the Big Banks, Clinton said that Wall Street insiders are needed to solve the problems on Wall Street. Clinton bragged that as a Senator she did all she could do to make sure the financial industry continued to prosper Clinton confided in the Big Banks that she feels there is a bias against people who have led successful and/or complicated lives In front of a Brazilian bank, Clinton cited that her dream is hemispheric common market with open trade and open borders. CLINTON TOLD WALL STREET SHE NEEDS THEIR MONEY FOR HER CAMPAIGNS In front of a Canadian audience, Clinton said she hopes the US can model ours after their system. In front of a Big Bank, Clinton bragged about her great relationship with the financial sector and about how much respect she has for the industry.Read more: DJT | 1real |
Donald Trump Just Told His Fans They’re Stupid TO THEIR FACES – And They Cheered (VIDEO) | Donald Trump s heavily-conservative base is filled to the brim with stupid people. It s one thing for polls and studies to prove that TrumpFans are absolute morons, but it s another for the billionaire 2016 hopeful to actually admit it.On Saturday at an Iowa campaign rally, Trump told his fanatical followers to their faces that they are so stupid they would even support him if he shot someone in broad daylight, in front of a crowd of people. I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn t lose voters, ok? It s, like, incredible. Yes, it is incredible. It s incredible in the first place that anyone regardless of political leanings could support a man who wants to ban Muslims from entering the United States (even if they are returning from vacation), waste taxpayer dollars to build a gigantic wall, make followers of Islam register in a national database and wear special badges to let everyone know their religion, and throw them in concentration camps as a temporary measure. It s almost baffling.But what is more baffling is that Trump standing before a crowd and telling them they are so stupid they would continue to support him if he murdered someone in cold blood in a scenario in which there is no question of his guilt does absolutely nothing to dissuade them from supporting him.He is right the loyalty of his fans is iron-clad, and it is clear that they love him no matter what he does or says, no matter how horrible.Trump is probably right: He could probably shoot someone in front of a crowd of people, and his followers would defend him especially if the victim was black, gay, Muslim, Jewish, or anyone who wasn t a white Christian conservative. Even then, it is unlikely their support would waver Because they re f*cking stupid.Watch Trump tell his followers how stupid they are below:Featured image via screengrab | 1real |
This Trump Supporter Is Blaming Liberals For His Disgusting Abortion Comments (VIDEO) | Republican front runner Donald Trump has ignited a media sh*tstorm with his recent comments about abortion. On Wednesday, the GOP candidate decided to announce that women seeking abortions should be punished during an interview with MSNBC host Chris Matthews. Although he later tried to furiously backpedal in a pathetic attempt to control the damage and bad press, it was too late. Trump is being blasted left and right, and now his supporters are rallying around him and going nuts trying to defend their misogynistic, sexist idol. Of course, they re more than willing to place the blame on everyone and everything but the business mogul.One of Trump s devout defenders is political commentator Scottie Nell Hughes, who went on CNN on Thursday night to blame liberal media for using abortion as a trap to trick The Donald into saying something stupid (not that he needs any help). In an interview with Wolf Blitzer, Hughes claimed that Trump had further clarified his statement about a punishment for women who got abortions, but Blitzer was ready to call her out. He reminded her that Trump had completely flip-flopped when he said, No, it was a real reversal. Hughes replied: The one thing we have learned is that the liberal mainstream media that have been anti-Republican and anti-conservatives for so long use the issue of the pro-life/pro-choice abortion issue to trap Republicans, because there s usually no way to win. Making a not-so-subtle jab at Trump s blatantly obvious inexperience as a politician, Blitzer pointed out that Trump should have been prepared to answer questions about abortion. Hughes remained in denial and completely dismissed that valid point, calling Matthews inquiries on abortion hypothetical gotcha questions. Hughes said that at the end of the day, all that matters is that Trump claims he s pro-life (which is yet another thing he s flip-flopped on over the years). She said, What more do you need to know ?You can watch the interview below: Featured image via Getty Images / Scott Olson | 1real |
Drunk Bragging Trump Staffer Started Russian Collusion Investigation | House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes is going to have a bad day. He s been under the assumption, like many of us, that the Christopher Steele-dossier was what prompted the Russia investigation so he s been lashing out at the Department of Justice and the FBI in order to protect Trump. As it happens, the dossier is not what started the investigation, according to documents obtained by the New York Times.Former Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos was drunk in a wine bar when he revealed knowledge of Russian opposition research on Hillary Clinton.On top of that, Papadopoulos wasn t just a covfefe boy for Trump, as his administration has alleged. He had a much larger role, but none so damning as being a drunken fool in a wine bar. Coffee boys don t help to arrange a New York meeting between Trump and President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt two months before the election. It was known before that the former aide set up meetings with world leaders for Trump, but team Trump ran with him being merely a coffee boy.In May 2016, Papadopoulos revealed to Australian diplomat Alexander Downer that Russian officials were shopping around possible dirt on then-Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. Exactly how much Mr. Papadopoulos said that night at the Kensington Wine Rooms with the Australian, Alexander Downer, is unclear, the report states. But two months later, when leaked Democratic emails began appearing online, Australian officials passed the information about Mr. Papadopoulos to their American counterparts, according to four current and former American and foreign officials with direct knowledge of the Australians role. Papadopoulos pleaded guilty to lying to the F.B.I. and is now a cooperating witness with Special Counsel Robert Mueller s team.This isn t a presidency. It s a badly scripted reality TV show.Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images. | 1real |
HORRIFIC Human Trafficking Case: 8 PEOPLE FOUND DEAD, 38 Locked Inside Tractor-Trailer Outside Walmart…No A/C…101 Degrees [VIDEO] | Anyone who takes part in this type of sub-human criminal activity should never see the light of day again. The lawmakers who refuse to lock down our borders and stiffen the penalties for human traffickers who bring illegal aliens into the U.S. should also be held accountable by their constituents Eight people were found dead in a tractor-trailer outside a Walmart store in the stifling summer heat in what police called a horrific human trafficking case, and the driver was arrested.Several other people, possibly dozens, were found in the truck, which didn t have a working air conditioning system despite blistering temperatures that topped 100 degrees, and they were taken to hospitals, authorities said. The driver had been held, authorities said, but they didn t release the driver s identity.A person from the truck approached a Walmart employee in a parking lot and asked for water late Saturday night or early Sunday morning, said police in San Antonio, where temperatures on Saturday reached 101 degrees. The employee gave the person the water and then called police, and when officers arrived they found the eight people dead in the back of the trailer, police Chief William McManus said.Investigators checked store surveillance video, which showed vehicles had arrived and picked up other people from the tractor-trailer, police said. We re looking at a human trafficking crime this evening, McManus said.He called the case a horrific tragedy. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security was involved in the investigation into what happened, he said.The National Weather Service s local office said the temperature in San Antonio hit 101 degrees just before 5 p.m. Saturday and didn t dip below 90 degrees until after 10 p.m.Other cases of human trafficking in the United States have led to more deaths. In May 2003, 19 immigrants being transported from South Texas to Houston died inside a sweltering tractor-trailer.Prosecutors said the driver in the 2003 case heard the immigrants begging and screaming for their lives as they were succumbing to the stifling heat inside his truck but refused to free them. The driver was resentenced in 2011 to nearly 34 years in prison after a federal appeals court overturned the multiple life sentences he had received. NYPMany of the human trafficking cases are related to human traffickers bringing illegal aliens into the United States:Jalopnik In July 2013, Authorities in Mexico charged a truck driver with human trafficking after discovering 94 people in his vehicle headed to the United States.A report from Reuters says that the 94 people packed into a truck were found near the southern city of Tuxtla Gutierrez, the capital of the state of Chiapas. Among them were 19 people from Bangladesh and Nepal, as well as Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras. They were detected in an X-ray scan Monday night outside Tuxtla Gutierrez.Officials say the migrants were kept in inhumane conditions. (Is there a way to humanely cram close to 100 people into a single truck?) Several were treated for injuries, and many experienced symptoms of suffocation. | 1real |
Obama, Biden meet Costa Rica's president, discuss steps to protect migrants: White House | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden met Costa Rica’s President Luis Guillermo Solis on Monday to discuss Central America and new steps to improve security and governance and protect vulnerable migrants, the White House said. The two U.S. leaders commended Costa Rica for its leadership in setting up a “protective transfer arrangement” in partnership with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and the International Organization for Migration to provide temporary safe haven for up to 200 migrants at a time from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, the White House said in a statement. The three leaders met in the White House. | 0fake |
Myanmar military trucks hit landmines in troubled Rakhine; one injured | YANGON (Reuters) - One person was injured when military trucks hit landmines in Myanmar s troubled Rakhine State this week, state media said on Friday, amid ethnic tension following an army crackdown that sent hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims fleeing. More than 600,000 of the refugees have entered neighboring Bangladesh since Aug. 25 attacks by Rohingya militants sparked the army operation. Killings, arson and rape carried out by troops and ethnic Rakhine Buddhist mobs since then amount to ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya, the United Nations says. Three landmine blasts caused extensive damage to three military trucks in Rakhine s central Minbya township on Wednesday morning, the state-run Global New Light of Myanmar newspaper said. The landmines were apparently targeting army convoys, it added. Later that day, another landmine exploded near the village of Vethali in central Rakhine as seven military trucks passed, injuring one pedestrian but causing no damage to the vehicles, the paper said. It was not clear who was responsible for the attacks. Several landmine explosions were reported near the area this year. United Nations staff and aid workers have said they fear violence in northern Rakhine could spread to new areas as Buddhist villagers in more peaceful areas enforce a system of local apartheid that punishes people trading with minority Muslims. Many in Buddhist-majority Myanmar see Rohingya Muslims as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, although many of the Rohingya can trace family for generations. After the August attacks on police posts by the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA), which the government has declared a terrorist organization, security forces unleashed a brutal counteroffensive in Muslim-majority northern Rakhine. Even though Myanmar says military operations ceased on Sept. 5, hundreds of refugees have continued to cross the Naf river separating Rakhine and Bangladesh in recent weeks. Separately, Myanmar security forces have arrested 19 men suspected of involvement in the August attacks and charged them under the anti-terrorism law, the newspaper said on Friday. | 0fake |
US economy adds paltry 38,000 jobs in May for weakest growth since 2010 | The US economy added just 38,000 jobs in May – 122,000 fewer than expected and the weakest growth since 2010. The unemployment rate slipped down to 4.7%, the Department of Labor announced on Friday.
The report added to concerns that the US economy is slowing, ahead of a crucial meeting of the Federal Reserve, and was immediately seized on by Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. “Terrible jobs report just reported. Only 38,000 jobs added. Bombshell!” he wrote on Twitter.
A strike by 40,000 Verizon workers impacted the numbers, the labor department said, and without the strike the number of jobs added would have been 72,000, which is still less than half the expected job growth.
The unemployment rate is now the lowest it has been since November 2007, and job gains in 2016 have slowed sharply from the 240,000 average of the last two years. On Friday, the Department of Labor also cut its assessment of the number of jobs added in March and April by 59,000.
“The weakness in May’s payrolls was widespread. Manufacturing lost 10,000 jobs, construction shed 15,000 jobs and temporary help fell by 21,000,” wrote Paul Ashworth, Capital Economics chief US economist, in a note to investors. “A June rate hike from the Fed is now very unlikely.”
May’s report is the last before the Fed’s next meeting on 14-15 June, when the US central bank may raise interest rates again. The gain was the smallest since September 2010 and is sure to add to speculation that a rate hike could be delayed until July, already uncertainty about Britain’s referendum to exit the EU. That vote will take place on 23 June.
After the economy added 160,000 jobs in April – 40,000 fewer than expected – economists expected the job growth in May to come in at 160,000. Over the past 12 months employment growth had averaged 232,000 jobs a month, but economists expected the 44-day strike of 40,000 Verizon workers to affect the May figures.
The last time Verizon workers went on strike, for two weeks in August 2011, the department of labor reported that the economy added no jobs that month. The following month, however, it reported a growth of 103,000 jobs and noted that the spike partially “reflected the return to payrolls of about 45,000” striking workers.
The recent strike ended last week after the labor department helped Verizon and the union representing the striking workers reach a tentative deal.
As job growth slows, Barack Obama has moved to defend his economic legacy. Earlier this week, while speaking in Elkhart, Indiana, he described the US economy as the “strongest, most durable economy in the world” and pointed out that over the past six years, US businesses have created more than 14m new jobs.
“Despite the drop in unemployment, wages are still growing too slowly, and that makes it harder to pay for college or save for retirement,” said Obama, before pointing out that so far this year, wages have grown at a rate of about 3%. Until recently, his administration had described wages as the unfinished business of this recovery.
Economists believe that a wage growth of 3% to 3.5% is necessary to help reach the Federal Reserve’s 2% inflation goal.
Last week, Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen said that she expects the US labor market to continue to improve and that in the coming months it might be “appropriate” for the Fed to increase interest rates. In December, the Fed increased interest rates for the first time in nearly a decade.
“I’m not sure it plays an important role in our policy making beyond us just monitoring the US data and general global financial conditions and having confidence that things are still on a good track,” Charles Evans, president of the Chicago Fed, told CNBC on Friday. Evans, who is a non-voting member of the Fed’s policy-setting committee, said that he expects two rate hikes this year.
“As the labor market tightens we should see wage growth rise, however it’s clear that we are not at a level consistent with full employment. With wage growth this low, there is simply no threat of wage-led inflation,” said Elise Gould, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute. “The Fed should bear this in mind when it meets later this month and not be too quick to raise rates and slow the economy.”
A week ago, Yellen said that the US jobs market is nearing full employment. | 0fake |
WATCH: OFFICER WHO CRASHED Motorcycle While Escorting Trump Motorcade Gets Unexpected Call From The President…Here’s What Trump Said That Made Him Smile | It doesn t matter how many times President Trump has shown himself to be a man of the people, a man of honor, or a man of principle, the media refuses to cover the truth about him. This story should be on every TV and in every news publication, but by now, we ve come to expect that stories like these are usually buried by the anti-Trump media. Help us to spread this heartwarming story about how President Trump responded to an injured police officer who was a victim of a motorcycle accident while he was tasked with protecting the President on his trip to Indianapolis.Initial reports said Trump called the officer during the flight back to Washington, but the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police tweeted Thursday that the president delayed the flight.The official Twitter of the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department shared this video of the officer s reaction to President Trump s call: #BREAKING: Thank you @Potus for delaying wheels up to speak with injured Officer Turner. #ThankYou, the tweet read.#BREAKING: Thank you to @POTUS for delaying wheels up to speak with injured Officer Turner. #ThankYou pic.twitter.com/nJ1TtkP9Bx IMPD (@IMPDnews) September 28, 2017Robert Turner, a police officer from Indianapolis, broke an ankle in the fall on Interstate 70. A photographer captured the officer on the ground with his uniform ripped.Police released a cellphone video of Turner in the hospital taking the call from the president. He was wearing a neck brace, but laughed and appeared to be in good spirits.The White House initially said Trump called during the flight back to Washington to check on the officer s condition and thank him for his service. FOX News | 1real |
Contaminated Food from China Now Entering the U.S. Under the 'Organic' Label | Contaminated Food from China Now Entering the U.S. Under the 'Organic' Label The Chinese food production industry is one of the world's least-regulated and most corrupt, as ... Print Email http://humansarefree.com/2016/11/contaminated-food-from-china-now.html The Chinese food production industry is one of the world's least-regulated and most corrupt, as has repeatedly been proven time and again. Now, it appears, there is no trusting anything that comes from China marked "organic."Natural Health 365 reports that several foods within the country are so contaminated that Chinese citizens don't trust them. What's more, the countries that import these tainted foods are putting their citizens at risk.U.S. Customs personnel often turn away food shipments from China because they contain unsavory additives and drug residues, are mislabeled, or are just generally filthy. Some Chinese food exporters have responded by labeling their products "organic," though they are far from it.There are several factors at play which make Chinese claims of organic unreliable. First, environmental pollution from unrestrained and unregulated industrial growth has so polluted soil and waterways with toxic heavy metals that nothing grown in them is safe, much less organic. Also, there is so much fraudulent labeling and rampant corruption within the government and manufacturing sectors that it's not smart to trust what is put on packaging.In fact, farmers in China use water that is replete with heavy metals, Natural Health 365 noted in a separate report . In addition, water used for irrigation also contains organic and inorganic substances and pollutants. Chinese "organic" food is so contaminated that a person could get ill just by handling some of it. 'Dirty water' is all there is The report noted further:"This is reality – all of China's grains, vegetables and fruits are irrigated with untreated industrial wastewater. The Yellow River, which is considered unusable, supports major food producing areas in the northeast provinces."Many Chinese farmers won't even eat the food they produce, if you can believe that. That's because it's clear that China's water pollution issues are so pronounced that it threatens the country's entire food supply.Chinese farmers have said there is no available water for crops except "dirty water." As part of the country's industrial prowess, it is also one of the largest producers (and consumers) of fertilizers and pesticides, Water Politics reported.The site noted further that as China's industrial might grows, so too does the level of contaminants in the country's water supply. Lakes, rivers, streams and falling water tables are becoming more polluted by the year.In addition to man-made pollutants, animals produce about 90 percent of the organic pollutants and half of the nitrogen in China's water, say experts at the Chinese Academy for Environmental Planning. There are times when water is so polluted it turns black – yet it is still used to irrigate crops, and of course, that affects so-called organic farming operations as well. These nine foods are particularly vulnerable to becoming tainted, Natural Health 365 noted: Fish: Some 80 percent of the tilapia sold in the U.S. come from fish farms in China, as well as half the cod. Water pollution in China is a horrible problem, so any fish grown there are suspect. Chicken: Poultry produced in China is very often plagued with illnesses like avian flu.Apples and apple juice: Only recently has the U.S. moved to allow the importation of Chinese apples, though American producers grow plenty for the country and the world. Rice: Though this is a staple in China and much of the rice in the U.S. comes from there, some of it has been found to be made of resin and potato. Mushrooms: Some 34 percent of processed mushrooms come from China. Salt: Some salt produced in China for industrial uses has made its way to American dinner tables. Black pepper: One Chinese vendor was trying to pass off mud flakes as pepper. Green peas: Phony peas have been found in China made of soy, green dye and other questionable substances. Garlic: About one-third of all garlic in the U.S. comes from China.Shop wisely. | 1real |
Donald Trump to trek U.S.-Mexico border Thursday | Washington (CNN) Donald Trump's colorful presidential campaign heads to the U.S.-Mexico border on Thursday, where the billionaire businessman is sure to expand on his controversial comments about immigrants.
He'll travel to Laredo, Texas, for a tour with U.S. border patrol agents.
The trip comes as Trump dominates the Republican presidential contest -- both in the polls and in the headlines. He sparked a fierce debate among Republicans last month when he referred broadly to Mexican immigrants as criminals and rapists . He angered many Republicans this weekend by questioning John McCain's status as a war hero. And on Tuesday, he escalated a verbal war with Lindsey Graham by releasing the South Carolina senator's cell phone number.
A chapter of the National Border Patrol Council, the agency's union, invited Trump earlier this month to tour one of the most active parts of the border with the agents who work there. Hector Garza, the president of the chapter, told CNN earlier this month that he wanted "to give Donald Trump a state of the border" and a "boots on the ground perspective."
Garza, a border patrol agent, said his invitation was not an endorsement of Trump's presidential run, saying that his group regularly invites politicians -- including previous tours with GOP Reps. Jason Chaffetz of Utah and Blake Farenthold of Texas.
He also invited Sen. Ted Cruz, who is also vying for the Republican presidential nomination, last month.
Garza said his organization's only goal is to encourage policies that will lead to a strong border and a safer environment for his fellow agents. The Laredo chapter is one of the largest in the country, Garza said, representing about 1,400 border patrol agents.
While he would not comment on Trump's controversial remarks about Mexican immigrants, Garza said agents posted near Laredo "do see a lot of aliens with a criminal history," and said that while not all are criminals, a "large number" have criminal backgrounds.
Trump first told CNN he had been invited to the border by a group of border patrol agents during a phone interview two weeks ago. The visit will be Trump's fourth to the border, by his count.
"I'm the only one that speaks their language," he said. | 0fake |
Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner Said to Have Helped Thwart L.G.B.T. Rights Rollback - The New York Times | WASHINGTON — The two most influential social liberals in President Trump’s inner circle — daughter Ivanka and Jared Kushner — helped kill a proposed executive order that would have scrapped L. G. B. T. protections, according to people familiar with the issue. A third, Gary D. Cohn, the chairman of the president’s National Economic Council, a Democrat who was brought to the West Wing by Mr. Kushner and reflects the socially liberal and economically conservative views of many Wall Street power brokers, privately told aides to the president that he was disturbed it was even being considered. The executive order has exposed what is likely to be a persistent schism in Mr. Trump’s paradoxical presidency: He is a cosmopolitan New Yorker who has long operated in an environment where sexual orientation is often an afterthought, but is nonetheless beholden to the social conservatives who backed him overwhelmingly in 2016, despite reports of his crudeness and sexual misdeeds. Mr. Kushner, a lifelong Democrat, and Ms. Trump, an independent, travel in liberal social circles and have long supported L. G. B. T. rights. Neither had seen the order before details were leaked. They expressed their dissatisfaction to Mr. Trump’s other advisers, and then weighed in directly with the president, who opposes marriage but has spoken out against discrimination. On Monday night, reports had swirled that Mr. Trump would sign some version of the rollback as a concession to social conservatives ahead of the president’s announcement of a United States Supreme Court nominee. As a result, White House officials pushed out a statement asserting that Mr. Trump “is determined to protect the rights of all Americans, including the L. G. B. T. Q. community,” adding that the president “continues to be respectful and supportive of L. G. B. T. Q. rights, just as he was throughout the election. ” The draft order, circulated by religious conservatives allied with Mr. Trump and Vice President Mike Pence, was one of about 250 edicts that have been sent to federal agencies for vetting. Mr. Trump never seriously considered signing the order, and did not need much convincing, people close to him said. Still, conservatives inside the Trump camp pressured the president to consider a version of a “religious freedom” measure, similar to one supported by Mr. Pence in 2015 while he was the governor of Indiana, according to two senior administration officials. Mr. Pence, however, did not personally push for the White House order, according to one of his allies. Mr. Kushner and Ms. Trump’s opposition to the draft was first reported by Politico. It came on the heels of an announcement by the Nordstrom department store chain that it will scale back on featuring Ms. Trump’s clothing line from its stores, a public blow to a brand she has spent years cultivating. A day after the White House quashed the religious freedom order, at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, Mr. Trump offered religious conservatives an olive branch by proposing to eliminate a law that bars churches with Internal Revenue Service charity designations from making political endorsements. Some conservative leaders warned Mr. Trump that his decision to retain former President Barack Obama’s order on L. G. B. T. rights could have political implications. “Our base would want to know who is responsible for what we believe is an issue of religious liberty — that would be of concern to us,” said Bob Vander Plaats, the chief executive of The Family Leader, a socially conservative organization. “We have been consistent,” Mr. Vander Plaats added. “We’ve cheered President Trump a lot. But on this one, our base is wondering why Obama’s executive order would be allowed to stand?” Tony Perkins, the president of the conservative Family Research Council, backed the draft order and said he believed Mr. Trump’s opposition was only temporary. He pointed out that evangelicals were supportive of Mr. Trump during the campaign, and that there would need to be reconciliation between his support for religious liberty and his decision to uphold the L. G. B. T. order. “He gets it,” Mr. Perkins said of the president. “They will have to fix it and they will. I’m confident they will. Am I concerned? No. Not at this point. ” The topic of the order was a sensitive one in a West Wing that prides itself on decisiveness and bombast. “There are a lot of ideas that are being floated out,” Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, told reporters on Thursday. “Part of it is, the president does all the time, he asks for input, he asks for ideas. And on a variety of subjects there are staffing procedures that go on where people have a thought or an idea and it goes through the process. ” | 0fake |
Guardian Front Page: “A 16-Year-Old Migrant Cries…” | Store Guardian Front Page: “A 16-Year-Old Migrant Cries…” This image of a "16-year-old" migrant crying – which is currently plastered on the front page of The Guardian – is nothing short of laughable Chris Menahan | Information Liberation - October 27, 2016 Comments
Won’t you take pity on this poor, innocent little child?
This image of a “16-year-old” migrant crying – which is currently plastered on the front page of The Guardian – is nothing short of laughable.
“A 16-year-old from Ethiopia cries while he awaits registration at a processing centre in the makeshift refugee camp near Calais,” the photo’s caption reads. The image is placed under a headline reading: “Councils resist pressure to take children from Calais.”
This crying “child” is supposed to make Brits feel guilty and demand their government allow “children” like him into their nation.
The image is not a fake, nor is it being used satirically. It comes from the Associated Press’ Emilio Morenatti , you can see four pictures of the man for sale on their website .
The “child migrant” is clearly in his 40’s, yet their editors evidently believe their readers are so incredibly stupid they’ll actually believe they’re looking at a 16-year-old boy.
A look at Emilio’s twitter shows one person appears to have actually bought the lie: @morenatti2004 Imposible no hacernos mirar y luego, un nudo en la garganta. pic.twitter.com/A7zvz5440q
— Luján Artola Paulos (@rowley_bel) October 25, 2016
“Impossible not make us look, then, a lump in the throat,” the tweet reads.
Incidentally, Ethiopia is not even a war zone, so I’m not sure how this 45-year-old man can even be considered a “refugee.” NEWSLETTER SIGN UP | 1real |
As Uber Woos More Drivers, Taxis Hit Back - The New York Times | The center serving drivers of New York’s yellow taxis is 3, 000 square feet. The center serving the city’s Uber drivers is 30, 000 square feet. The taxi center invites cabdrivers to rest their feet in a cluttered office with utilitarian furnishings and fliers taped to the walls. They can use the bathroom, grab a cup of coffee and take advantage of free training classes and legal assistance. Opened in 2015, it is the first such center in the history of yellow cabs in New York City, industry leaders say. Just a mile away, the Uber center deploys a dozen concierges in black to sign in drivers with iPads in a gleaming, airy sanctuary tastefully outfitted with monitors, sleek couches and a print of abstract renderings of New York landmarks. There are bathrooms upstairs and downstairs, a coffee bar and plush carpeting so new it is spotless. There is also a raft of lucrative perks that are unmatched by the taxi center: signing bonuses, paying for two weeks of a driver’s car lease and free medical checkups. The Uber center — officially called a Greenlight Hub — opened in December, part of the app’s war to recruit drivers and win riders. It is the largest and fanciest of more than 200 across the country, including in Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington, Philadelphia and Miami. The upending of the traditional taxi business across the United States and around the world by Uber, Lyft and other services has given consumers new and sometimes cheaper options and forced cities to their transportation policies. Uber, in some places, has employed aggressive techniques to evade regulatory limits, and prompted demonstrations by taxi drivers and owners in places like Paris, London and Brasília. And it has ignited an intense competition for drivers, nowhere more so than in New York. But Uber has also had a contentious relationship with its drivers over working conditions. A series of fare cuts to attract more passengers has drawn protests from drivers who say it hurts their bottom line, and led to a recent confrontation between Travis Kalanick, the chief executive of Uber, and a driver that was captured on video. Uber drivers are considered independent contractors, and some have sued the company to try to get health insurance and other employee benefits. Despite the conflicts, Uber is a relentless competitor, and the taxi and Uber centers that have opened in different sections of the same neighborhood in Queens are a visible manifestation of how the rival industries continue to take on each other out of view of their customers. Both have introduced amenities for drivers once in a industry, but Uber’s showstopping center and incentives underscore how the newcomer has become the behemoth in a crowded field. These centers embody the growing divide on New York City’s streets between old and new, tradition and innovation, that have forced the taxi industry to embrace new ways to counter the growing reach of the apps. Just as riders can now stick out a hand for a yellow cab or tap an app for a black car, drivers have a choice, too. Do they stay with a struggling taxi industry that has been a fixture of New York life for over a century? Or do they join the ranks of the apps that are reshaping the city’s transportation landscape? Shaon Chowdhury, 39, who manages a yellow taxi garage in Queens, said he was seeing more Uber drivers pick up shifts driving yellow cabs because Uber’s “rates are low” and they cannot make enough money. “My best friend drives for Uber and cries all the time,” he said. That friend, Ben Chowdhury, 42, who is not related, said he made less money, and worked longer hours, than when he started driving for Uber two years ago. He typically earns $20 to $25 an hour, down from $30 to $35, because of the company’s fare cuts. While the Uber centers are helpful for new drivers, Mr. Chowdhury said, “It doesn’t make up for not paying us more. We are busy but we’re just not making enough money. ” But for some, the centers have made it easier to drive for Uber. Hager Krahn, 28, a mother of two young children earns up to $80 for four hours of driving at night to supplement her family’s income. “They helped with everything,” she said. “They paid for everything. Who doesn’t want something for free?” drivers are also feeling more wanted as the taxi industry tries to stave off defections and lure new workers. Donald Friedman, 63, who has been driving since 1972, said he had made money ferrying around passengers including the likes of Bette Davis and Norman Mailer. But until now, he said, he never felt that anyone had his back. “In 45 years, there’s never been anything like this,” Mr. Friedman said, sitting with fellow cabbies at the taxi center. “Nobody advocated for the driver. If you dropped dead on the road, they would charge you to tow the car back to the garage. That’s the kind of help drivers would get — nothing. ” Citywide, the number of drivers licensed by the city’s Taxi and Limousine Commission has climbed to 156, 413 from 145, 674 in 2015. The drivers, who are considered independent contractors under federal labor guidelines, receive a single universal license that allows them to drive a taxi, livery or black car, making it easy to switch allegiances. The epicenter for the driver wars has become Long Island City, Queens, where both Uber and the Taxi and Limousine Commission have offices in the Falchi building, a renovated warehouse with an artisanal food court. Lyft was the first to stake a claim on the fourth floor of the building in 2014 with a center where drivers are welcomed with pretzels and soft drinks while Lyft employees spin tunes on a Sonos wireless sound system. Gett, a app popular in Europe, moved in last year to the same floor, offering a technology training bar for drivers to get help using its app along with signing bonuses, free coffee and treats. Other apps have set up driver centers elsewhere in the city: Juno has a center near La Guardia Airport that serves about 150 drivers a day Via has a center in Manhattan that, among other things, offers free parking for new drivers. But leave it to Uber to open a sprawling center in the Falchi building, replacing a smaller center in the neighborhood. Uber says the new center has already drawn more than 10, 000 drivers. It is one of four Uber centers in New York City alone, Uber’s largest United States market the others are in Manhattan, Brooklyn and the Bronx. “We believe we owe it to the drivers that partner with us to provide support face to face,” Josh Mohrer, a general manager for Uber, said. On a recent afternoon, over 100 drivers crowded into Uber’s Queens center. Think Apple store, only nicer. A chime sounded and a concierge materialized to escort someone when it was his or her turn to meet with experts in blue at long, communal tables in the back — the Uber version of the Genius bar. Assistance is offered in multiple languages, including Spanish, Chinese and Arabic. Medical checkups and training classes are available, as well as “Uber 101” orientations for new drivers. (The center is open even to drivers who choose not to sign up with Uber.) Against one wall, Uber’s corporate partners promote specials on cellphone plans, car leases and insurance. “It makes it simple and easy if you want to start driving for Uber,” said Sumeet Singh, 22, a college student who was visiting the center for the first time a couple of weeks ago. The Uber center is a bright spot for a company that was recently accused of trying to profit during airport protests against President Trump’s first immigration order and has been criticized over sexual harassment claims. The taxi center is also battling to retain and attract new drivers, albeit in a more modest setting. The Metropolitan Taxicab Board of Trade, which represents the owners of 5, 500 yellow cabs, opened the driver resource center. Many taxi drivers have abandoned yellow cabs for apps in recent years, leaving cars idle in garages — a sharp turn from the days when those garages kept waiting lists because they had more potential drivers than cars. “We had to do something,” said Jean Barrett, the taxi group’s executive director. “This driver community is our business. ” More than 4, 000 drivers have used the center, Ms. Barrett said, and drivers are walked through each step of the licensing and renewal process, including filing their applications online. It offers free classes in defensive driving and how to assist passengers in wheelchairs. The classes, required by the licensing process, would typically cost $150 or more. Three lawyers and two legal assistants help drivers contest parking tickets, summonses from the taxi commission and other violations — more than 3, 000 of them so far — and accompany them to hearings. Fritz Foreste, 66, was sent to the center by his garage after he received a parking ticket. With the center’s help, the ticket was dismissed after he explained that he had left his yellow cab at a taxi relief stand for 15 minutes to take a bathroom break. “They take care of us here,” he said. Ronald Gathers, 71, a taxi driver for four decades, went to the center for help last year after he was unable to renew his license because he was sick. After he recovered, the center contacted the taxi commission, and got his license renewed in one day. Even so, Mr. Gathers said he had heard so much about Uber that he could not resist checking out its new center recently. It was not for him, he said. He returned to his friends at the taxi center. “I’d be a traitor,” he said. “I came back to yellow. ” | 0fake |
Donald Trump doesn't challenge anti-Muslim questioner | Trump, who has shaken off several high-profile controversies that would have ended other presidential campaigns, faced an immediate backlash from advocacy groups, and members of his own party distanced themselves from the GOP front-runner. The incident recalls Trump's 2011 quest to challenge Obama on where he was born, which ended with Obama releasing his long-form birth certificate. It also follows a debate performance Wednesday that garnered mixed reviews for the billionaire businessman.
"We have a problem in this country. It's called Muslims," an unidentified man who spoke at a question-and-answer town hall event in Rochester, New Hampshire asked the mogul at a rally Thursday night. "You know our current president is one. You know he's not even an American."
A seemingly bewildered Trump interrupted the man, chuckling, "We need this question. This is the first question."
"Anyway, we have training camps growing where they want to kill us," the man, wearing a "Trump" T-shirt, continued. "That's my question: When can we get rid of them?"
"We're going to be looking at a lot of different things," Trump replied. "You know, a lot of people are saying that and a lot of people are saying that bad things are happening. We're going to be looking at that and many other things." The real estate mogul did not correct the questioner about his claims about Obama before moving on to another audience member. White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest condemned the remarks Friday, but added "Is anybody really surprised that this happened at a Donald Trump rally?" The audience members comments and Trump's response were quickly denounced by Democrats. Hillary Clinton, the party's front-runner for president, personally tweeted late Thursday that Trump's remarks were "just plain wrong," and followed up on it Friday morning at a press conference. "I was appalled," Clinton said bluntly to a question from CNN's Suzanne Malveaux. "Not only was it out of bounds, it was untrue. He should have from the beginning corrected that kind of rhetoric, that level of hatefulness." Rep. Keith Ellison, the first Muslim elected to Congress, called the incident a sign of "a lack of moral courage." "I don't know if Trump is using dog-whistle politics to win support in the polls, or if he genuinely believes the racist things he says. Either way, he showed a complete lack of moral courage in that clip, and he has shown once again that he completely unqualified to be President of the United States." "GOP front-runner Donald Trump's racism knows no bounds. This is certainly horrendous, but unfortunately unsurprising given what we have seen already. The vile rhetoric coming from the GOP candidates is appalling," Schultz said. "(Republicans) should be ashamed, and all Republican presidential candidates must denounce Trump's comments immediately or will be tacitly agreeing with him." READ: Chris Christie: I would have said Obama is Christian After the event, several reporters asked Trump why he didn't challenge the questioner's assertions. Trump did not answer. But Corey Lewandowski, Trump's campaign manager, later told CNN that the candidate did not hear the question about Obama being a Muslim. "All he heard was a question about training camps, which he said we have to look into," Lewandowski said. "The media want to make this an issue about Obama, but it's about him waging a war on Christianity." Trump announced Friday that he would cancel his trip to South Carolina, citing "a significant business transaction." New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said Friday that he would not "lecture" Trump on how to respond to comments like that, but said that leaders are responsible for correcting voters on certain issues. "I'll tell you what I would do and I wouldn't have permitted that if someone brought that up at a town hall meeting of mine. I would have said, 'No, listen. Before we answer let's clear some things up for the rest of the audience.' And I think you have an obligation as a leader to do that," Christie said on NBC's "TODAY" Friday. RELATED: Misperceptions persist about Obama's faith, but aren't so widespread Obama, who has spoken openly about his Christian faith, was born to an American mother and Kenyan father in Hawaii. But Trump has been one of the leading skeptics of Obama's birthplace, saying he did not know where Obama was born as recently as July A recent CNN/ORC poll found 29% of Americans believe Obama is a Muslim, including 43% of Republicans. Trump is not the first Republican candidate to raise eyebrows over comments involving Obama and his ethnic and religious background. In February, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker became embroiled in a brief controversy when he told The Washington Post that he didn't know if Obama was a Christian. "I've never asked him that," Walker said. A spokeswoman later clarified that he did believe Obama was Christian, but disagreed with the media's obsession with "gotcha" questions. And in 2008, Republican presidential nominee John McCain was booed after he famously told an audience member at a campaign event that Obama was a "good family man." "He's a decent family man ... (a) citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues," McCain said then. "That's what this campaign is all about." | 0fake |
Senator Warren seeks investigation of insurers over retirement rule | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat who advocates for strong financial regulation, asked U.S. securities regulators on Thursday to investigate comments made by major insurance companies about a forthcoming federal rule on retirement advice. Last month, Warren criticized Lincoln National, Jackson National Life Insurance Company, Prudential Financial and Transamerica, a unit of Aegon NV , for publicly stating that the rule requiring retirement advisers to put their clients’ interests ahead of their own would hurt business while privately telling investors it would not create a major hurdle. On Thursday, she went one step further and requested the Securities and Exchange Commission to formally look into whether the statements were contradictory and ran afoul of securities laws. “Both sets of industry claims - that the proposed rule will harm them and their business model, and that the proposed rule will not harm them and their business model - cannot possibly be true. And if one these public statements is materially false, it would appear to violate long-standing interpretations of our securities laws,” she wrote to SEC Chair Mary Jo White. The White House will soon publicly release the latest version of the rule, drafted by the Labor Department. The 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform law called for holding brokers who give retirement advice to a strong fiduciary standard, meaning they must act in their clients’ best interest, as a way to protect retirees from buying unnecessary products that line brokers’ pockets. The Labor Department had to withdraw its initial version of the rule in 2011 after complaints from members of both political parties and the financial services industry. Warren says that financial and insurance companies have warned in public that the proposed rule could drive up costs and stop them from offering retirement services such as annuities to middle- and lower-income people. But in earnings calls they have reassured investors that they will come up with new products or approaches that will minimize threats to their businesses. Responding to Warren’s critique last month, most of the insurers said their public warnings did not contradict reassurances to investors that they could withstand regulatory changes. They said their companies could navigate potential disruptions but they were still concerned about the consequences for consumers seeking retirement advice. | 0fake |
With Prosecutors at Odds, U.S. Inquiry Into Eric Garner’s Death Drags On - The New York Times | On the first anniversary of her husband’s death, Esaw Garner lit a candle and said a silent prayer. She assumed that closure would be coming — one way or another. After all, federal officials had personally assured her that they would reinvestigate the New York City police officer who had put her spouse, Eric Garner, in a chokehold in the moments before he died. But now, the second anniversary is approaching, and although Ms. Garner will light another candle and say another prayer when she observes it on July 17, the inquiry that buoyed her hopes has continued unresolved. She is sick of the waiting and tired of the worrying. What she wants most is simply to move on. “I miss my husband dearly, but I’ve basically stopped asking them what’s going on,” Ms. Garner said in an interview last week. “If they’re going to do something, then they’ll do it. But it’s in God’s hands now. I’m done. ” Killings involving police officers seemed to have occurred in recent years with a striking regularity, including two last week: one on Tuesday in Baton Rouge, La. and a second in a suburb of St. Paul, Minn. on Wednesday night. While the federal government does not investigate a majority of these episodes, when it does get involved — as it announced it would in the Louisiana case — the inquiries can often be protracted. The long delays in the Garner investigation, which has been especially closely watched, have come about for several reasons: There are inherent complexities in the federal civil rights law and a desire among officials to move with caution in a delicate matter. But there has also been, according to those involved, a heated disagreement over how — and even whether — to go forward. Prosecutors with the United States attorney’s office in Brooklyn, whose jurisdiction also extends to Staten Island, Queens and Long Island, have expressed doubts that they can prove in court that a crime had been committed their counterparts in Washington have claimed that they are confident they have sufficient evidence to proceed. The dispute came to a head at a recent meeting in Washington, where both offices offered their opinions to Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch. Ms. Lynch, formerly the top federal prosecutor in Brooklyn, must now decide between siding with her former colleagues or with the special civil rights team that investigates such cases. It is unclear both what and when she will decide. “It is taking quite a bit of time,” said William Yeomans, a fellow at the American University School of Law, who once served as the acting assistant attorney general for civil rights. “I’d almost say it’s been longer than expected, especially since a video exists. ” That video, which, by now, has been viewed around the world, showed Mr. Garner, 43, struggling in the grasp of Officer Daniel Pantaleo, who was trying to arrest him on suspicion of selling loose cigarettes on a Staten Island street in July 2014. Five months later, a state grand jury declined to bring charges against Officer Pantaleo, touching off a wave of protests in New York and a national debate about policing in minority communities. As they have in other local cases that have failed to go to trial, a team of federal prosecutors opened their own investigation, convening a grand jury that has been sitting intermittently in Brooklyn since February. Experts and officials say that the outcome of the case will hinge on whether Officer Pantaleo purposefully deprived Mr. Garner of his civil rights. “Here’s the challenge,” Alan Vinegrad, a former federal prosecutor from Brooklyn said. “You have a decision by a police officer on the street in the exercise of his official duties. It’s extremely difficult to say what is and isn’t a willful violation of someone’s civil rights. ” These challenges have, in fact, set off a vigorous debate between prosecutors in Washington and Brooklyn. Lawyers in the Justice Department’s civil rights division believe they have enough evidence to prove that Officer Pantaleo acted willfully. But some with the United States attorney’s office have been hesitant according to three current and former federal law enforcement officials, the Brooklyn prosecutors went so far as to argue against taking the case to a grand jury in the first place. While prosecutors in Washington have developed a reputation in the last several years for aggressively investigating systemic police misconduct in cities like Chicago, Baltimore and Ferguson, Mo. they and their counterparts in United States attorney’s offices across the country have been more reluctant to charge individual officers with using deadly force. The last time the federal government brought a deadly force case against an officer in New York was in 1998, when Francis X. Livoti stood trial on — and was eventually convicted of — charges of choking to death a young Bronx man named Anthony Baez. In most investigations of police abuse, Mr. Yeomans said, prosecutors try to get officers to testify against their peers by confronting them with misleading incident reports or with the officers’ own contradictory witness statements. “But in this case,” Mr. Yeomans added, “it’s all about parsing the video, probably frame by frame. It may be hard, but how long can it take?” Federal investigators have indeed broken the video down, frame by frame, for prosecutors to interpret. Ms. Lynch, who was the first United States attorney promoted directly to attorney general in nearly 200 years, has a reputation for being deferential to prosecutors in the field rather than micromanaging them from Washington. But on policing matters, she has also relied heavily on the advice of her civil rights prosecutors, who are more removed from the local police departments they investigate. In the meantime, Officer Pantaleo remains on desk duty and may face charges from within the Police Department, if the federal grand jury fails to indict him or if the prosecutors decide to drop their case. As for Ms. Garner, hope has been replaced by deep frustration. “I was a lot more optimistic last year,” she said. “This year, I don’t know. They keep telling me that no stone will be left unturned. But how much investigation do you need?” | 0fake |
Brazil's PSD party floats Meirelles' 2018 presidential bid | BRASILIA (Reuters) - Congressmen from Brazil s Social Democratic Party (PSD) on Wednesday invited Finance Minister Henrique Meirelles to run for president in 2018, growing the list of potential contenders from within President Michel Temer s fragmented coalition. Meirelles, after meeting with PSD lawmakers at his house in Brasilia, wrote on Twitter that he felt honored but was not a candidate. The PSD leader in the lower house of Congress, Marcos Montes, nevertheless said Meirelles received the invitation with enthusiasm but would not respond immediately. Reuters reported late in August, citing a source close to Meirelles, that he wanted to run for president on the PSD ticket, but knew he would have a strong chance only if the economy improved substantially. Meirelles, in his Twitter post, said that he was focusing his energies on helping Brazil obtain sustainable growth after emerging from its worst recorded recession. Under Brazilian rules, ministers who wish to run in the October 2018 election will need to leave their posts by April, although a formal register would only happen in August. Other potential contenders being floated by ruling parties include Sao Paulo state governor Geraldo Alckmin and Sao Paulo city mayor Jo o Doria Jr., both from the PSDB party. A civil engineer by training, Meirelles is the former chairman of now defunct BankBoston Corp and former president of Brazil s central bank. | 0fake |
“Peaceful” Muslims Scream: “THIS IS FOR ALLAH” After Driving Van 50 MPH Pedestrians…3 ARMED Terrorists On Run In Gun-Free London…Britain’s PM Calls It “Potential Act Of Terror” [VIDEO] | Just another day in the holy month of Ramadan London is the scene of carnage again with another terror attack. A van plowed into pedestrians on London Bridge with reports of men jumping out of the van to stab random people. We re posting details as they come in from the UK. The Muslim Mayor of London is too busy criticizing President Trump for taking measures to ensure the United States is not subjected to never-ending acts of terrorism to actually identify and work to solve the radical Muslim issue that is exploding in the UK.Meanwhile, President Trump has offered the help of the United States to the citizens of London and of the UK:Whatever the United States can do to help out in London and the U. K., we will be there WE ARE WITH YOU. GOD BLESS! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 3, 2017Popular conservative talk show host Katie Hopkins thanks President Trump for taking the issue of Islamic terrorism seriously while hammering the Muslim Mayor of London:Thank you @realDonaldTrump. Please excuse Mr Khan't. The man who calls himself Mayor. pic.twitter.com/RwvbPVY92m Katie Hopkins (@KTHopkins) June 3, 2017UPDATE: MORE: UNCONFIRMED reports say at least 5 terrorists with weapons on the run in London, several killed, several injured. BNL (@BreakingNLive) June 3, 2017UPDATE: Eyewitness on London Bridge tells the BBC: The 3 men exited the van with knives shouted "This is for Allah" before stabbing people BNL (@BreakingNLive) June 3, 2017BREAKING NEWS: Many injured as car ploughs into people at London bridge.DEVELOPING pic.twitter.com/1fuoC5y652 BNL (@BreakingNLive) June 3, 2017Traffic cameras captures huge police activity near London bridge as police say it is still not under control. pic.twitter.com/0URXD0yvR2 BNL (@BreakingNLive) June 3, 2017UPDATE: Witness say he saw a van drive into pedestrians at London Bridge and 3 men carrying knives jump out and then attack people BNL (@BreakingNLive) June 3, 2017BREAKING: Multiple people have been killed in the incidents in London, police say BBC BNL (@BreakingNLive) June 3, 20173 ARMED terrorists are reportedly on the run in gun-free London:MORE: At least three armed terrorists on the run in London. BNL (@BreakingNLive) June 3, 2017Talk show host Katie Hopkins tells British citizens stop being complacent, DEMAND ACTION! Do not let them tell you we stand united. Do not let them tell you we carry on as normal. Refuse to be lied to. DEMAND ACTION #LondonBridge Katie Hopkins (@KTHopkins) June 3, 2017Hopkins goes on to slam Muslim Mayor Sadiq Khan who has been very vocal in his criticism of President Trump for wanted to do a better job of vetting refugees coming to America from terror hotbed nations: No, @SadiqKhan. We do not want to hear a single word from you. Not one word. London Bridge has fallen down on your watch, son #LondonBridge Katie Hopkins (@KTHopkins) June 3, 2017Katie Hopkins is furious .demands Britain gets a handle their radical Muslim issue:Britain does not stand united. Close the borders. Round up the watch list. Incarcerate the lot. ENOUGH #LondonBridge https://t.co/ZlVXZmmYnm Katie Hopkins (@KTHopkins) June 3, 2017UPDATE: Police now urgently telling crowd to leave the area around Monument Station, as reports of one Suspect inside the station BNL (@BreakingNLive) June 3, 2017INFO: Train stations closed in London: London Bridge, Waterloo East, Charing Cross and Cannon Street due to ongoing incidents pic.twitter.com/LMlI9KdqGN BNL (@BreakingNLive) June 3, 2017UPDATE: One suspect has been apprehended:https://twitter.com/TEN_GOP/status/871152269202522112Meanwhile Britain s Prime Minister Theresa May calls this a potential act of terror! https://twitter.com/TEN_GOP/status/871150568907169793 | 1real |
Gold And The Dollar Moving In Tandem? | Financial Markets , Gold , Market Manipulation , Precious Metals GLD , Junior mining stocks , silver eagles , SLV admin
One interesting occurrence that has not been written about in the precious metals alternative media or blog space yet is that gold has been quietly moving in tandem with the dollar over the past several trading sessions. It has been quite pronounced during the past four trading days, today inclusive. In the previous 15 years, gold’s best periods of return have occurred when gold and the dollar move in tandem higher for a brief period of time, followed by a period of time when the dollar heads south and gold continues higher.
If you look at graphs of both gold and the dollar side by side, you’ll see that this occurred in late 2005 into early 2006, when gold moved higher until May while the dollar fell and again in late 2008. It’s too early tell if that will happen now, but suffice it to say that both are moving in tandem right now and it’s worth watching to see if it continues. My theory is that there’s flight to safety into gold and the dollar ahead of an adverse economic event. As the event unfolds, the dollar begins to sell off but capital continues to flow into gold as the ultimate wealth preservation asset.
The above analysis is an excerpt from the latest issue of IRD’s Mining Stock Journal which was released last night. Earlier today, Bill “Midas” Murphy poked his head out of the New Orleans Investment Conference and asked me why the metals were acting “so goofy” this morning, to which I replied: Interestingly, gold and the dollar have been moving in tandem the past several days. Not perfect correlation but I bet its 80-85%. I discussed this in the latest issue of my Mining Stock Journal . Over the last 15 years, gold has had some of its best performance periods when it moved in tandem with the dollar for a bit then took off higher while the dollar sold off. It’s been moving in tandem with the dollar today as well. The manipulated correction is over. India and China are buying a LOT of gold right now. Two days ago nearly 100 tonnes were delivered onto the SGE. I don’t think the cartel can take gold lower and I think right now they are merely trying to keep the “beachball” from popping above the surface of the water. Every time gold pops up, they hit it, but gold bounces back like one of those punching clowns. At some point they are going to have to go back into “managed retreat.” Maybe once the election is over.
You’ll note that there’s now been a complete reversal in the precious metals sector, with gold, silver and the HUI running higher and the SPX/Dow headed south. MSJ subscribers have been getting analysis like this since early March. In addition, my picks have been substantially outperforming the sector. MSJ is $20/month, with no minimum commitment period. You can access this content by clicking here: Mining Stock Journal . You’ve got a great journal for an amazing price – James, happy subscriber Share this: | 1real |
The boss is dead but the mafia lives, magistrate and mobster say | ROME/PALERMO (Reuters) - The death of Sicilian Mafia boss Salvatore Toto Riina on Friday does not mark the end of Cosa Nostra, but the crime group is unlikely to allow one man such power ever again, a top magistrate and former mobster said. The 87-year-old Riina died in a hospital in Parma, the northern Italian city where he had been serving 26 life sentences for murders committed between 1969 and 1992. The end of Riina isn t the end of Cosa Nostra, the chief magistrate in Sicily s capital of Palermo, Francesco Lo Voi, told Reuters. What remains to be understood is whether the men of Cosa Nostra will seek a direct successor or a new organizational structure, Lo Voi said. Gaspare Mutolo, who admits to having strangled some 20 people, agrees. Mutolo, now 77, turned state s witness in the early 1990s at the age of 51, and became a key witness in dozens of mafia cases. He shared a jail cell with Riina in the 1960s, and became his trusted bodyguard and driver afterward. Mutolo, who still wears a balaclava to hide his identity from cameras, felt pity when he heard his former friend and cell mate had died, he said. He was a friend. He helped me. He even saved my life. I saw him a little bit as a father figure, Mutolo told foreign reporters in Rome. Riina s death changes little in Sicily, he said: Palermo still has the mafia. BACK-ROOM DEALS As several recent cases show, the mob still extorts business owners on the island, and it still seeks to win lucrative public contracts through back-room deals with corrupt politicians and bureaucrats. I can t imagine politics without the mafia, Mutolo said. But the future of Cosa Nostra without Riina, whose brutality undermined the trustworthiness of the organization by driving mafiosi like Mutolo into the hands of the state, is uncertain. The Calabrian mob, known as the Ndrangheta, has had few turncoats and has taken over drug routes once dominated by Cosa Nostra. The Calabrians now are major importers of cocaine from South America to Europe and to North America. Even politicians are wary of doing deals with the Sicilian mob now, Mutolo said. Cosa Nostra is not the same as it was in the 1980s mainly because of the turncoats, Mutolo said. The Calabresi have taken over because they are more trusted. Cosa Nostra has always had a military-like structure, but before Riina there was no single boss of bosses . Power was divvied up by territory, and the local bosses met together in a so-called Commission to discuss strategy and settle disputes. But Riina made himself the dictator of Cosa Nostra. It s not a given that Cosa Nostra will see a charismatic leader as a necessity in the future, Lo Voi said, returning to a decentralization of operations and decision making as there was before Riina took over. | 0fake |
Syrian War Report – November 11, 2016: Syrian Army Entered Menagh Air Base | Leave a Reply Click here to get more info on formatting (1) Leave the name field empty if you want to post as Anonymous. It's preferable that you choose a name so it becomes clear who said what. E-mail address is not mandatory either. The website automatically checks for spam. Please refer to our moderation policies for more details. We check to make sure that no comment is mistakenly marked as spam. This takes time and effort, so please be patient until your comment appears. Thanks. (2) 10 replies to a comment are the maximum. (3) Here are formating examples which you can use in your writing:<b>bold text</b> results in bold text <i>italic text</i> results in italic text (You can also combine two formating tags with each other, for example to get bold-italic text.)<em>emphasized text</em> results in emphasized text <strong>strong text</strong> results in strong text <q>a quote text</q> results in a quote text (quotation marks are added automatically) <cite>a phrase or a block of text that needs to be cited</cite> results in: a phrase or a block of text that needs to be cited <blockquote>a heavier version of quoting a block of text...</blockquote> results in: a heavier version of quoting a block of text that can span several lines. Use these possibilities appropriately. They are meant to help you create and follow the discussions in a better way. They can assist in grasping the content value of a comment more quickly. and last but not least:<a href=''http://link-address.com''>Name of your link</a> results in Name of your link (4) No need to use this special character in between paragraphs: ; You do not need it anymore. Just write as you like and your paragraphs will be separated. The "Live Preview" appears automatically when you start typing below the text area and it will show you how your comment will look like before you send it. (5) If you now think that this is too confusing then just ignore the code above and write as you like. Name: | 1real |
“Executive Orders for Sale”: Leaked Email Shows Hillary Auctioning Off ‘Laws’ To The Highest Bidder | Tweet Home » Headlines » World News » “Executive Orders for Sale”: Leaked Email Shows Hillary Auctioning Off ‘Laws’ To The Highest Bidder
A new revelation buried in the Wikileaks trove of emails shows discussion of executive orders in relation to an “idea” a wealthy donor has. Corruption doesn’t even begin to cover it if wealthy donors – and even foreign powers – can just write checks, contribute to the Clinton Foundation, etc. – and just buy a law in return…
by Melissa Dykes, The Daily Sheeple via SHTFPlan :
Editor’s Comment: Unaccountable power multiplies, but this is astounding. This is a very good example of the reasons that the founders sought to limit and check power. But of course, over the years, those protections have been whittled down, and the loopholes are big enough drive tanks through. Corruption doesn’t even begin to cover it if wealthy donors – and even foreign powers – can just write checks, contribute to the Clinton Foundation, etc. – and just buy a law in return.
Why is no one standing up to this tyranny? Critics have taken George W. Bush and Barack Obama to task for abusing their power to write executive orders – and legislate with a pen when they have no constitutional power to make law at all. But Hillary, before she even takes power, is already leaving these two in the dust. So everyone is just going to take it, along with the ‘first female’ t-shirts they will be sending out as promos in the mail?
As MLK famously wrote from his Birmingham jail cell: “At first glance it may seem rather paradoxical for us consciously to break laws. One may well ask: “How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?” The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that “an unjust law is no law at all.”
Executive Orders for Sale? Leaked Email Shows Hillary Camp Answering Wealthy Donor’s Questions about How Executive Orders Work
by Melissa Dykes
If you already thought the Executive Order system falls somewhere between problematic and completely unconstitutional, this takes it to a whole new, never before seen level of corruption.
Thanks to all the leaks, America now knows our government is essentially one giant pay-for-play operation. That’s how it works. That’s how the DNC works. That’s how the Clinton Foundation works.
But how far does that go?
How about bypassing Congress entirely with money in the most literal sense possible.
This leaked email chain hints at something that kind of makes votes and lobbyists and, well, all of it rather pointless.
If someone’s wealthy enough, can they straight up buy an executive order?
These days, the president uses Executive Orders to bypass Congress, even though there is no constitutional provision that explicitly permits the use of executive orders. It’s a system that’s been heavily abused in the past but now, apparently, it’s for sale .
A new revelation buried in the Wikileaks trove of tens of thousands of Hillary campaign chairman John Podesta’s emails shows him discussing executive orders in relation to an “idea” a wealthy donor has.
In a leaked email thread between Podesta and Mary Pat Bonner, a “donor adviser” who gets millions for her elite connections in bringing in donors and for being what The New York Times describes as a “master of making donors happy,” it’s all but admitted that Executive Orders are another pay-for-play item on the corrupt American political menu.
Read this from the bottom up:
(click to enlarge)
In an email with the subject line, “Is there someone in your shop,” Bonner writes, “Who totally understands ‘executive orders’. It is to answer a very big donors questions.”
Podesta responds with simply, “Me.”
Bonner: “It is for Michael King.”
Podesta: “What does he need?”
Bonner: “He has an idea and just need answer [sic] to a bunch of easy questions about how this works.”
Oh goody. Mega wealthy donor Michael King has an “idea” about executive orders…
The Michael King they are likely referencing is rich TV mogul Michael King, the exec who inherited King World Productions later acquired by CBS. To give you an idea, King World Productions launched Harpo’s The Oprah Winfrey Show and Dr. Phil’s talk show.
Back in 2012, Bill Clinton teamed up with King on a pricey fundraiser for President Obama at King’s Pacific Palisades estate where tickets ranged from general seating starting at $1,000 and went all the way up to $40,000 premium seats with meet-and-greets.
While on the campaign trail over a year out from the election, Hillary Clinton has already vowed she will use Executive Orders to pass gun control regulations, for example.
Based on this email thread, you have to wonder what other EOs Hillary plans to pass as president… and whose “idea” they are.
And how much that idea cost. This entry was posted in World News . Bookmark the permalink . Post navigation | 1real |
NANCY PELOSI Screws Up the Oath of Office While Lecturing Reporters on the Seriousness of Her Job [Video] | Not a day goes by that we have another gaffe from Nancy Pelosi Term Limits Please!.@NancyPelosi screws up the oath of office while lecturing reporters about the seriousness of her job. pic.twitter.com/hLGCxsqK4m Josh Caplan (@joshdcaplan) July 30, 2017 PELOSI: As you know, today we ll be debating what s called the minibus, minibus. Not an omnibus, everything, minibus. And it, on the subject of security, as you know, all of us, anyone who serves in government or civically involved takes an oath of office to protect and defend. Support and defend the Constitution of the United States. Our first responsibility is to protect the American people and our constitution. If people are not safe, how can we proceed in any other way? | 1real |
FULL SPEECH: Trump Rocks South Carolina With A HUGE Rally! | A record crowd In Anderson, SC last night for The Donald . 7,900 strong! | 1real |
BRITAIN’S THERESA MAY Refuses To Wear Headscarf On Saudi Arabia Visit…Media Compares Her Bravery To Hillary, Michelle Obama…But We Have Pictures That Tell A Different Story | How long before the media will stop using two of the most irrelevant women in America to compare to women who actually will be remembered in history for making a positive difference in this world? British Prime Minister Theresa May, turned heads on Tuesday when she arrived in Saudi Arabia without wearing a headscarf reportedly bucking the advice of her own government.The photos showed May s ankles and wrists were covered. However, The Telegraph noted her outfit did not completely comply with Foreign Office guidelines: Women should wear conservative, loose-fitting clothes as well as a full length cloak (abaya) and a headscarf. There is no law in Saudi Arabia forcing foreign visitors to wear a headscarf, the newspaper reported. FOX NewsMSN News and other publications attempted to paint Hillary and Michelle Obama as two other prominent women who refused to don the headscarf in Saudi Arabia. They probably just forgot that First Ladies going back for several decades refused wear a headscarf while visiting Saudi Arabia.She follows in the footsteps of other political figures including Hillary Clinton and Michelle Obama, in refusing to adhere to the dress code for women.Ms May has said she hopes to be an inspiration to oppressed women in Saudi Arabia by showing people there what women can achieve .Wow here s Hillary in Muslim majority Pakistan. It sure looks like her head is covered in this picture: While the media is busy giving Hillary kudos for being so brave as to reject wearing a headscarf in Saudi Arabia, perhaps they can explain why she and her adult daughter were wearing headscarfs with the person many call the Father of terrorism Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. How is it considered brave to wear a headscarf in deference to a terrorist?Oops! It looks like Michelle was caught wearing a headscarf while visiting Muslim majority Jakarta, Indonesia. It doesn t look like she s refusing to follow the Islamic dress code in this picture. While it s true that Michelle did not wear a headscarf while visiting Saudi Arabia, she was only following a long tradition of other First Ladies who also refused to wear a headscarf. She was not expected to, nor did she shake hands with the Saudi dignitaries.Rosalyn Carter can be seen without a headscarf as she walked behind the Saudi dignitaries. | 1real |
NBC’s Megyn Kelly Asked Indian PM if He Uses Twitter, Gets Trolled by His 30 Million Twitter Followers - Breitbart | NBC’s Megyn Kelly got trolled by Twitter users after she asked Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi if he is on Twitter. [Kelly was meeting with Modi and Russian President Vladimir Putin Thursday in St. Petersburg before Russia’s International Economic Forum when she asked Modi, who has a Twitter account with 30 million followers, if he had an account on the social media platform, the Washington Post reported. “I saw your tweet with the umbrella!” Modi said, referencing Kelly’s tweet that day saying that it stopped raining in St. Petersburg. “Oh yes!” Kelly responded, apparently caught a little off guard. “Are you on Twitter?” Kelly asked the prime minister. “Yes,” Modi replied. Kelly’s question did not go unnoticed by Modi’s 30 million plus Twitter followers and others on social media, who mocked the journalist for her apparent ignorance about Modi’s social media presence. Despite the hype @megynkelly comes across as terribly unprepared asking @narendramodi if he’s on @Twitter Heard of basic research? @NBCNews https: . — Rahul Kanwal (@rahulkanwal) June 2, 2017, “Despite the hype @megynkelly comes across as terribly unprepared asking @narendramodi if he’s on @Twitter Heard of basic research?” one Indian journalist remarked. . @NBCNews @megynkelly asks @narendramodithe 3rd Most Followed World Leader on @Twitter”Are you on #Twitter ? ”. She hasn’t done homework! pic. twitter. — Swamiji (@AOLSwamiji) June 1, 2017, “She hasn’t done homework!” another user responded. Sheesh. @megynkelly asks @narendramodi WHO HAS 30 MILLION FOLLOWERS if he’s on Twitter. What does it take to get India on the radar screen? https: . — Alyssa Ayres (@AyresAlyssa) June 2, 2017, “What does it take to get India on the radar screen?” wrote Alyssa Ayres of the Council on Foreign Relations. According to Twiplomacy’s annual report on the social media usage of world leaders, Modi was the third on Twitter in 2016 and ranked seventh on the list of most influential world leaders. Kelly, on the other hand, has a modest 2. 3 million Twitter followers mostly based in the U. S. Modi had used social media to connect with his constituents long before other leaders like President Trump jumped on the bandwagon. The New York Times called him “the social media politician” and TIME Magazine mentioned that Modi used “Twitter to bypass traditional media and speak directly to masses feeling left out or pushed behind by globalization. ” | 0fake |
Ted Cruz Is Finding It Hard To Even Get Love From His Own Daughter (VIDEO) | When thinking about who would be the best fit for President of the United States, Republican Senator Ted Cruz should be nowhere near the top of that list. It s pretty much openly known that he s not well liked in Washington, and the only thing he s really ever successfully done was shut down the government (which isn t a good thing, it puts thousands out of work and can be a potential national security risk).Even former Republican presidential candidate and longtime Senator Bob Dole told the NY Times regarding Cruz: I don t know how he s going to deal with Congress. Nobody likes him. Now, at a campaign stop, as Cruz was greeting his daughters after they came off the bus, it was almost poetic how even his own daughter wanted absolutely nothing to do with him. He reached for her and she shooed him away, then as he went for a hug and a kiss, she tried as best as she could to get away from him.Keep in mind, what you re about to see in no way is meant to attack Sen. Ted Cruz s daughter. It s just a video that caught a moment that seems worthy of showing. Children, often times, won t want anything to do with their parents. With that said, here s the clip of Cruz s daughter seemingly wanting absolutely nothing to do with her father, just like the rest of the country. Ted Cruz tries to get a hug from his daughter on campaign trail. (@VaraBBC) pic.twitter.com/jEQCcgRP68 Breaking News Feed (@pzf) January 31, 2016 Video/Featured image: Twitter | 1real |
Turkey Rounds Up Erdogan’s Political Opponents as Crackdown Widens | November 4, 2016 Turkey Rounds Up Erdogan’s Political Opponents as Crackdown Widens
Salahhatin Demirtas, once hailed as the “Kurdish Obama,” among the pro-Kurdish opposition lawmakers held on Friday
A Turkish court placed the two leaders of a major pro-Kurdish opposition party under arrest on Friday in a dramatic widening of a political crackdown that followed July’s failed military coup that will raise concerns about the future of Turkey’s parliamentary democracy.
Police detained the co-chairs of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), Selahhatin Demirtas and Figen Yuksekdag, early on Friday morning along with nine other lawmakers. The measures against pro-Kurdish officials more than three months after president Recep Tayyip Erdogan narrowly survived an attempt by part of the military to seize power on July 15 could also open a new season of conflict with armed Kurdish insurgents. Hours after the arrests, a car bombing reportedly killed at least eight people in the city of Diyarbakir, the largest city in the Kurdish-majority southeast of Turkey. | 1real |
Bomb Kills an American Soldier Near Besieged Afghan City - The New York Times | KABUL, Afghanistan — A United States soldier was killed by a bomb near the southern Afghan city of Lashkar Gah, officials said on Tuesday, days after more than 100 American soldiers arrived there to help plan the strategic city’s defense against a fierce Taliban assault. The United States military has increasingly found itself drawn back to regular combat situations this year as the Afghan forces have struggled against Taliban offensives. The increased American presence around Lashkar Gah in particular, more than two years after British soldiers closed their last base in the city, highlights a scramble to prevent the fall of a major population center. For weeks before the Americans’ arrival, top Afghan generals were being sent from Kabul to hold the line as district after district came under attack, with the Taliban surrounding the city. In a statement on Tuesday, the United States military said the service member had died of “wounds sustained during operations near Lashkar Gah,” the capital of Helmand Province, when a joint patrol encountered an improvised explosive device. Six Afghan soldiers and another American soldier were wounded in the blast. It was the second death of an American soldier in hostile fire in Afghanistan this year, as the force here has mostly been reduced to a smaller advisory mission. In January, Staff Sgt. Matthew Q. McClintock was killed in Marja district, also in Helmand Province. Even as local Afghan officials were reporting the presence of American personnel near the battlefield in the area, about 10 miles from Lashkar Gah, United States military officials in Kabul insisted that the new team was there only to advise the leadership of the southern police zone based out of the city. “The troops that have gone down there are really focused on force protection of the advisers there, to make sure they are secure,” Brig. Gen. Charles E. Cleveland, a spokesman for the American military in Afghanistan, told reporters on Monday. “What you won’t see is — they are not about to go out and conduct operations. ” On Tuesday, General Cleveland said, “The service members killed and wounded today were not a part of the new advisory mission in Lashkar Gah,” suggesting that they were part of the regular advisory support the NATO mission has been providing Afghan special operation forces, often traveling with them in their raids. Still, the line between combat and advising has become remarkably thin as Afghan Special Forces, trained to conduct quick commando raids, have for weeks now been used as ground forces outside Lashkar Gah. Omar Zwak, a spokesman for the governor of Helmand, said that joint operations by NATO forces — mostly Americans — and Afghan forces were continuing in the and Babajii neighborhoods outside Lashkar Gah, with the Westerners providing air and ground support. “NATO troops are now on the ground fighting with Afghan forces against the Taliban,” he said. As the top generals were busy in Helmand, the northern city of Kunduz, which was briefly overrun by the Taliban last fall, once again faced strong offensives at its gates. The district of Khanabad briefly fell to the insurgents, and fighting raged less than a mile from the city center. Residents of Kunduz city could hear constant airstrikes into the early hours of Tuesday, with bombings focused on trying to push back the Taliban from Zar Khared, an area less than two miles from the city center. A small group of American advisers is based at the airport in Kunduz, but local officials said Tuesday that they had not left the outpost to join operations. It was a small advisory team of American Special Forces troops that led a desperate effort to retake that city from the Taliban last fall. That American force also called in the botched airstrike that destroyed a Doctors Without Borders hospital in the city, killing 42 people. Most of the roads leading to Kunduz Province remained blocked on Tuesday, and despite continuous airstrikes, ground operations for recapturing the lost territories had not yet started, Afghan officials said. American military officials say they will not allow another Afghan city to fall, not just because of its symbolic implications to the 15 years of NATO presence here, but also because of the politically destabilizing effects it could have on the struggling government in Kabul. As Taliban gains in Helmand continued, an American military battalion was sent to the province this year to bolster the Afghan Army corps that were taking heavy casualties in the fighting. That was the largest deployment of American troops outside major bases in Afghanistan since the end of the NATO combat mission in 2014. In June, President Obama loosened combat restrictions in Afghanistan for the United States military, which remains mostly focused on missions to train and advise Afghan forces and to conduct counterterrorism operations against Al Qaeda and Islamic State affiliates. He later slowed the withdrawal of American troops from the country. The overall military commander in Afghanistan, Gen. John W. Nicholson, can now call for airstrikes more freely, and his advisory teams can accompany Afghan forces in offensive missions to try to turn the tide of critical battles. Under the new rules, the number of airstrikes, which Afghan forces often credit with slowing Taliban advances, have increased significantly. And strategic bombers returned for the first time in years, with American officials saying the huge warplanes supported missions against Islamic State affiliates in eastern Afghanistan. But American ground forces have increasingly been in the line of fire this year, as reflected in the casualty reports. In addition to the casualties on Tuesday near Lashkar Gah, and the death of Sergeant McClintock in Helmand this January, five American service members were reported wounded in fighting against the Islamic State in eastern Afghanistan last month. The haphazard nature of the Afghan forces’ defense against the Taliban was again on display after the fall of Khanabad district. The district was quickly taken back by an array of Afghan forces, each led by a official. The governor of Takhar Province was in the lead, marching in with his local forces and firing from a machine gun mounted on an armored vehicle as at least five other security personnel watched — clearly a display meant for the public. He returned to Takhar to a hero’s welcome, received with gifts and flowers. United States military officials have attributed much of the Afghan forces’ struggle to leadership woes in the face of Taliban offensives that they say normally amount to no more than 20 to 30 insurgents trying to overrun a vulnerable checkpoint. “In a perfect world, would you have senior military leaders moving around like that? Perhaps not,” General Cleveland said. “But at the end of the day, we find that most of the challenges facing the Afghan national defense and security forces are tied to leadership. We think it’s a positive thing to have good, strong leaders that are willing to get out, set an example, as well as take charge of what is going on. ” | 0fake |
WATCH: Morning Joe Hosts Are DONE With Trump After His Unfounded Accusation Against President Obama | Donald Trump just ruined any remaining chance he had to get support from MSNBC hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski.On Saturday, Trump openly accused President Obama of wiretapping Trump Tower without providing a shred of evidence to support his claim.In response, Joe Scarborough ripped him a new one on Twitter.Ever since Trump made the outrageous accusation, federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies have refuted it, including former National Intelligence Director James Clapper and current FBI Director James Comey.On Monday, the Morning Joe hosts kicked off their show by thoroughly blasting Trump and aired their disappointment that he would make such a claim against a former president.Mika Brzezinski began by calling Trump s accusation unprecedented. I had hope and an open mind and I have lost hope completely and my mind is closed, she continued on Trump s presidency. There was a belief that he could turn the corner, Joe Scarborough said. What Donald Trump did on Saturday morning has shaken this government and the confidence of its people to the core. It is hard to overstate how reckless that tweet was. The 45th president of the United States accusing the 44th president of tapping his phones, personally tapping his phones, calling him sick. Mika Brzezinski called Trump s accusations uncouth as Scarborough continued to explain how seriously Trump f*cked up. For people comparing this to the birther controversy, context is necessary. It is one thing when a reality TV star accused a president of a sleazy conspiratorial theory. But when a president of the United States accuses another president, the context changes and it becomes dangerous We are in crisis. It s an administration that has lost all credibility at this point, Brzezinski added.Here s the video via VidMe:At the end of the program, Scarborough remarked that Trump reached a new low this weekend and Brzezinski called Trump s presidency fake and failed. Here s that clip via YouTube:Donald Trump just dug a deeper hole for himself by accusing a former president of wiretapping him. He is literally slandering President Obama because he has no proof to back up his accusations. It s time for Congress to impeach Trump. Trump is causing mass chaos and damaging our government institutions while blatantly ignoring the Constitution. This farce can no longer be allowed to continue. And if Republicans won t do something to save this country from Trump, it will be the duty of the American people to put an end to the Republican Party and put lawmakers in office who will.Featured image via screenshot | 1real |
FBI Tells Trump To Go F*ck Himself For Firing Their Director, Forces Him To Cancel Visit | Donald Trump was hoping to visit the FBI for a photo-op in the wake of firing FBI Director James Comey. The FBI told Trump to f*ck off.In the days since Comey s firing, it has been revealed that Trump pulled the trigger in retaliation against the FBI investigation into his Russia scandal. Trump demanded that Comey be loyal to him and Comey refused to put Trump above the security of the country. Trump has even admitted that the Russia investigation was in his mind when he fired Comey.This contradicted the official White House statement on Comey s firing, which has sparked national outrage as most Americans disapprove of Trump s action.Trump was hoping for applause. Instead, he made things worse for himself. Now it s clear that he has something to hide.But he didn t just anger the American people. He pissed off the FBI, most of whom loved their former boss.So when Donald Trump wanted to visit the FBI on Thursday, they told him not to bother. Trump then tucked his tail between his legs and had the White House cancel the visit. He likely then threw a temper tantrum like a toddler. The FBI told the White House the optics would not be good, NBC s Peter Alexander reported as the news came in. FBI officials apparently said the president was unlikely to be greeted warmly after having just unceremoniously fired a very popular director. Alexander further explained that while many FBI agents voted for Trump, they don t like that he fired Comey and are disgusted by how Trump did it.Here s the video via YouTube.Donald Trump just turned the FBI into his enemy, and that means they are going to work double-time on the investigation into his ties with Russia. And I m sure they will be all too happy to slap cuffs on Trump and haul his sorry ass to jail when the time comes.Featured image Shawn Thew Pool/Getty Images | 1real |
U.S. senators set bipartisan bill to tighten sanctions on Iran | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Iran would face tighter U.S. sanctions over ballistic missile launches and other non-nuclear activities under a bill announced on Thursday by a bipartisan group of senators, echoing a harder line on Tehran espoused by Republican President Donald Trump. The bill has seven Republican and seven Democratic sponsors, and aides said it has a good chance of eventually becoming law. It would set mandatory sanctions for anyone involved with Iran’s ballistic missile program. And it would apply sanctions to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), putting into law sanctions imposed via executive order on individuals tied to what the bill’s sponsors describe as Iranian support for terrorism. The IRGC, an elite military body, is powerful in Iranian politics and the economy. The legislation would also require the U.S. president to block the property of any person or entity involved in specific activities that violate the U.N. arms embargo on Iran. Iran has suggested about past proposed sanctions bills that they would violate the international nuclear agreement reached during the administration of former President Barack Obama. Democratic Senator Robert Menendez, a co-author of the measure, told Reuters the new bill had been written not to interfere with that accord. “We assiduously worked to make sure that no provisions actually affect the agreement as it is,” he said in an interview. Aides said the bill is expected to pass the Senate because of the breadth of its support. Its lead sponsors include Republican Senator Bob Corker, the foreign relations committee chairman, and Ben Cardin, the panel’s ranking Democrat. While the legislation would be expected to have strong Republican support, it would also need Democrats’ backing to advance in the Senate. To become law, the measure would also have to get through the House of Representatives and be signed by Trump. Trump has made clear he wants to take a tough stance against Iran. A spokeswoman for Corker said he had been consulting with the Trump administration. In February, the Trump administration imposed sanctions on 25 individuals and entities in Iran, which it said were just “initial steps” in its effort to counteract what it sees as provocations. Tehran has angered Washington by supporting Yemen’s rebel Houthi movement, and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in his country’s six-year-long civil war. It has also conducted repeated tests of ballistic missile technology in violation of a U.N. resolution. Menendez said the bill was intended to take a “regional” strategy because of the breadth of Iran’s activities. “It calls for a regional strategy because Iran is obviously involved in the region in various ways, whether it be in Yemen or Syria and beyond,” he told Reuters. The bill was announced just before Sunday’s start of the annual conference in Washington of the influential pro-Israel lobbying group AIPAC. | 0fake |
Dr. David Duke with Mark Collett of the UK. Collett explains why Duke & Trump victories would change politics forever! | Dr. David Duke with Mark Collett of the UK. Collett explains why Duke & Trump victories would change politics forever! October 28, 2016 at 10:34 am
Dr. David Duke with Mark Collett of the UK. Collett explains why Duke & Trump victories would change politics forever!
Today Dr. Duke had Mark Collett from the U.K. as his guest for the hour. They talked about developments in Dr. Duke’s race for the U.S. Senate. They also talked about the media’s attempts to avoid discussing the barrage of revelations from WikiLeaks that would sink Hillary’s campaign if the media was doing its job.
Mark Collett reported on the Muslim invasion and other developments in Europe. They also talked about the collapse of morality and culture led by this same vicious and anti-white racist Zio media.
This is a great show for weekend listening. Please share it widely.
Our show is aired live at 11 am replayed at ET 4pm Eastern and 4am Eastern.
Click on Image to Donate!
And please spread this message to others. | 1real |
Trump administration weighs tighter vetting for women, children refugees: sources | WASHINGTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) - The Trump administration is considering tightening the vetting process for women and children seeking to enter the United States as refugees, a proposal that if adopted would bring security checks closer to those for adult men, three sources with knowledge of the plan told Reuters. The plan could slow down refugee admissions even after the end of a 120-day ban on most refugees instituted by the Trump administration while it reviews vetting procedures. The vetting review is set to end on Oct. 24. President Donald Trump came into office in January with a goal of sharply cutting refugee admissions, in line with the hard-line immigration policies that were a focal point of the Republican’s 2016 election campaign. Trump quickly issued temporary bans on refugees and travelers from some Middle Eastern and African countries that were challenged in court. A U.S. official told reporters last month that the administration is “considering a wide range of potential measures and enhancements” to vetting. Refugees currently undergo differing levels of security checks when applying for admission to the United States, depending on the perceived risk they might present, including running their biographic and biometric data against law enforcement and intelligence databases. Women and young children go through a lower level of security screening than men, said the three sources with knowledge of the proposal, who spoke on condition of anonymity. The proposed changes would bring their security checks more in line with what is required for adult male refugees. Successive Republican and Democratic administrations have focused most of their attention on adult men who tend to join militant groups such as al Qaeda and Islamic State in greater numbers than women. A State Department official declined to comment on any refugee vetting processes while the review is underway. The government is taking steps to “further intensify” refugee screening “to uphold the safety of the American people,” the official said. Department of Homeland Security spokesman Dave Lapan declined to comment, and said the administration is “finalizing security enhancement recommendations as part of the 120-day review.” A White House spokeswoman said there were “no announcements at this time.” All refugees referred for resettlement in the United States are run through a database with watch-list information, called the Consular Lookout and Support System, or CLASS. Refugees can be singled out for a higher level of review based on their age, nationality, or gender. Syrian refugees, for instance, undergo extra checks. Of the nearly 85,000 refugees admitted to the United States in the 2016 fiscal year, about 72 percent were women or children, according to the State Department. Total processing time for refugees to enter the United States now averages about 18 to 24 months, according to the State Department. Trump’s order to halt refugee admissions so his administration could determine whether additional checks are necessary was suspended for months by federal judges. The U.S. Supreme Court eventually allowed it to go in effect for all refugees except those with close ties to the United States. Trump also lowered the maximum number of refugees to be allowed into the United States in 2017 to 50,000 from the 110,000 originally set by former President Barack Obama, a Democrat. The 2018 level has been set at 45,000, the lowest number in decades. | 0fake |
NYT: Jared Kushner Omitted Meeting with Foreign Officials on Security Clearance Forms | Jo Becker and Matthew Rosenberg report in the New York Times that President Trump’s and senior adviser Jared Kushner omitted mention of his meetings foreign government officials when he filed his security clearance paperwork. [From the New York Times: When Jared Kushner, President Trump’s and senior adviser, sought the security clearance that would give him access to some of the nation’s most closely guarded secrets, he was required to disclose all encounters with foreign government officials over the last seven years. But Mr. Kushner did not mention dozens of contacts with foreign leaders or officials in recent months. They include a December meeting with the Russian ambassador, Sergey I. Kislyak, and one with the head of a Russian bank, Vnesheconombank, arranged at Mr. Kislyak’s behest. … In a statement, [Kushner’s lawyer Jamie Gorelick] said that after learning of the error, Mr. Kushner told the F. B. I.: “During the presidential campaign and transition period, I served as a for foreign officials trying to reach the . I had numerous contacts with foreign officials in this capacity. … I would be happy to provide additional information about these contacts. ” No names were disclosed in that correspondence. Read the rest here. | 0fake |
Convicted Felon With A Gun Has Knee-Jerk Reaction That Kills His Own Daughter | A man who shot and killed his own daughter as she came home from her first day of middle school has told authorities that she startled him, so he shot her. He then tried to get rid of his gun after taking her to a hospital, where she later died from her wounds.Timothy Batts originally told police that his daughter, Timea, came in and woke him up, saying she d been shot after getting off the school bus. After police found evidence that he d fired his gun inside his house, he admitted his lies to the police. He told them that he was his daughter s killer after a noise she made woke him up, and her yell startled him.In other words, he thought she was an intruder, and fired his gun before making sure he knew who was in his house. While there s every possibility that he thought it was someone coming after him, this kind of thing is a growing problem as we increasingly refuse to respect the danger that guns are.Worse, he s a convicted felon. Felons aren t supposed to be able to have guns, and yet, he had one. It s not clear how he came to own a gun, despite having previous convictions of felony drug possession and attempted criminal homicide, and yet, he had one. Why?His daughter s death was a mystery in the town of Hendersonville, Tenn., where people were shocked to learn of Timea s death nobody could figure out what an 11-year old could possibly have done to get herself shot in the few feet there were between the bus stop and her house. Police were confused as to why there were so few clues other than her father s account of what happened.Later that evening, though, the case took a turn when police investigated Batts house and found that Batts had fired his gun. He s now facing charges of reckless homicide, tampering with evidence, false reporting and felon in possession of a firearm. He s currently being held on a $1 million bond, and his cousin has actually started a Gofundme account in order to raise money for his bail.He could have obtained his gun legally or illegally, but the fact remains that his daughter would still be alive if he hadn t shot first and thought later.Featured image via screen capture | 1real |
Ohio Colleges Demand Students Remain Defenseless Despite Campus Carry Law - Breitbart | A January 19 survey of Ohio colleges and universities found most boards and presidents determined to prohibit guns for despite a new law allowing concealed carry permit holders to be armed on campus. [Ohio’s campus carry law was signed by Governor John Kasich (R) on December 19 after lawmakers passed the measure following the November 28 knife and car attack against unarmed Ohio State students. The law removes the state’s ban on campus carry, allowing each college and university system to allow or prohibit campus carry as they see fit. The law takes effect on March 19, 2017. Cleveland. com surveyed “every private and college in Northeast Ohio and every public university statewide” and found the “general consensus” was that students would continue to be disarmed on campus by college and university policies. For example, Kent State University board of trustees chairman Lawrence Pollock said, “The university policy on deadly weapons as approved in September represents the Board’s position on this issue and we have no plans for further action. ” The policy Pollock references bars students from possessing a firearm for “inside any university building, facility, or vehicle, that is owned, operated or leased by the university. ” It also bars them “from possessing, storing, or using a deadly weapon while outside on university grounds, that is owned, operated or leased by the university. ” In other words, the Kent State system will continue to maintain a campus like Virginia Tech University had in place on April 16, 2007, when 32 unarmed innocents were shot to death. Cuyahoga Community College President Alex Johnson used an email to explain that his college system will retain its policy as well: I know this bill has been a topic of discussion across the College, and our faculty has brought various concerns to campus leadership and to me for clarification. I have been in close communication with Board Chair Victor Ruiz and the other trustees about this matter. ’s Board of Trustees has no intention of taking action to permit concealed carry in facilities. In other words, Cuyahoga Community College will continue to maintain a campus like Umpqua Community College had in place on October 1, 2015, when nine unarmed innocents were shot to death. The Ohio University faculty senate is urging the trustee executive committee to keep students disarmed on their campuses too. The faculty senate submitted a resolution to the committee, saying: Whereas the full and free discussion of potentially controversial ideas and knowledge is essential to the academic mission of the University and Whereas the possible presence of concealed weapons in instructional spaces and faculty offices will have a chilling effect on the free exchange of ideas BE IT RESOLVED that the Faculty Senate urges the Ohio University Board of Trustees to take no action that would allow concealed carry on any of our campuses in order to reaffirm our commitment to a weapon free campus. In other words, the Ohio University faculty senate wants to maintain the same kind of policies that were in place at Sandy Hook Elementary on December 14, 2012, when a gunman entered the school and had over nine minutes without armed resistance to carry out his wickedness. He was able to kill 26 innocents during that time period. AWR Hawkins is the Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and host of Bullets with AWR Hawkins, a Breitbart News podcast. He is also the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart. com. | 0fake |
BREAKING: PUTIN Makes Aggressive Military Move After Trump Hit Syria With Airstrikes | The Russian President has immediately sent his Admiral Grigorovich frigate armed with cruise missiles and a self-defence system from the Black Sea to dock in Syria later. It will pass through the east Mediterranean waters where the USS Ross and USS Porter fired the 59 Tomahawk missiles that pounded Assad s al-Shayrat military airfield near Homs in the early hours of Friday. Bret Baier tweeted out the news: Putin today called it an illegal act of aggression and also ripped up an agreement to avoid mid-air clashes between Russian and US fighter jets over Syria. In the continuing fight back Russian or Syrian planes also bombed the town of Khan Sheikhoun, the scene of Tuesday s horrific chemical gas attack where 80 died, witnesses in the rebel-held area claimed. The US was also branded a partner of ISIS by al-Assad s spokesman, calling the missile strikes reckless and irresponsible and accused Trump of naively falling for a false propaganda campaign about the Idlib Sarin massacre. Today world leaders praised the US strikes and urged Putin to hold urgent talks with Trump to prevent the Syria crisis escalating into a wider world conflict. Nikki Haley says U.S. took a very measured step last night. We are prepared to do more, but we hope that will not be necessary. .@Nikkihaley says U.S. took a very measured step last night. We are prepared to do more, but we hope that will not be necessary. #Syria pic.twitter.com/asNvxTZMUz CSPAN (@cspan) April 7, 2017 French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault, speaking alongside German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel, said: We do not want an escalation. We have to stop the hypocrisy. If Russia is acting in good faith it should stop and negotiate . Read more: Daily Mail | 1real |
GEORGETOWN University Will Track Down, Recruit And Admit Students Who Are Descendants Of Slaves They Sold in 1838 | Georgetown University has a 16.4% acceptance rate. That number just got smaller with their latest announcement to use the admissions office as a way to atone for their racist actions in 1838. The same Catholic university that invited Planned Parenthood s president, Cecile Richards to speak to their students in March, 2016, is now offering preferential treatment (reparations) for students related to slaves they sold almost 200 years ago. Social justice warriors have replaced religion in the majority of our Catholic universities and colleges. Our government is using political correctness to strip away the faith of the citizens and replace it with government dependency. They are determining what our values should be, as defined by government officials, like those of our radical President, Barack Obama and his radical predecessor Hillary Clinton Georgetown University will give preference in admissions to the descendants of slaves owned by the Maryland Jesuits as part of its effort to atone for profiting from the sale of enslaved people.Georgetown president John DeGioia told news outlets that the university in Washington will implement the admissions preferences. He says Georgetown will need to identify and reach out to descendants of slaves and recruit them to the university.On Thursday morning, a university committee released a report that also called on its leaders to offer a formal apology for the university s participation in the slave trade.In 1838, two priests who served as president of the university orchestrated the sale of 272 people to pay off debts at the school. The slaves were sent from Maryland to plantations in Louisiana. NYP | 1real |
Captain ‘Murica: Civil War – Theft, Fraud, Booze And Brawling Are Wrecking The Bundy Revolution | The next American Revolution ended before it ever started, by the hands of the very patriots that claimed they were ready to die for the freedom poachers and arsonists.Ammon Bundy s occupation of misfit militiamen is already starting to fracture apart because they just can t seem to get along with each other. Brawling, fraud, theft, booze and paranoia are quickly turning the situation in Oregon into the fastest failure of a publicly funded reality TV show ever.Blaine Cooper, whose real name is Stanley Blaine Hicks, was accused by another militia member of assaulting him with a sucker punch. The victim of the assault, Jeff Kagan, quickly called upon the government he hates when he dialed 911 after the assault. No reason was given for the assault, other than the fact Kagan walked from his camp across the street, towards the main militia gathering area. When he approached the area, Cooper attacked both Kagan and one other individual. Cooper also attacked one of a 3-member group of people who came to help remove a suicidal veteran who suffered from PTSD. Allegations were made that Cooper planned on using the veteran literally as a target to provoke a violent confrontation with federal authorities, by exploiting his PTSD and suicidal tendencies. While Cooper appears to still be there, he has prevented others from joining to grow their numbers. Count him as about 3 to 4 lost members.Self-titled Captain Joe O Shaughnessy stole crowdfunded money from the group s war chest to fuel a drinking binge at a local motel. This caused him to be branded a deserter and a coward by fellow militia members, such as John Ritzheimer. After all the booze money was gone, the captain left the standoff and claimed all statements made about him by the militia members are a smear campaign.Brian Booda Cavalier, who goes by the name Fluffy Unicorn (yes he really does) has also been forced out of the militia as well. This happened after he was caught lying about being a former marine when the US Marines confirmed with the press that he has never served a day in his life. Cavalier was the personal bodyguard of Ammon Bundy for a time.The infamous blue tarp man LaVoy Finicum, is also leaving the gathering, despite his allegations that the FBI will arrest him if he does. I need to get home. I got cows that are scattered and lost, Finicum was quoted as saying. Clearly he should have brought his cows with him so he could take care of them.Initial reports that indicated the militia were numbering around 150 individuals appear to have been exaggerated as well. The group was actually 15 people and now it is down to 12 without a federal officer firing a single shot due to bad behavior and directionally challenged cows.Perhaps the first Bundy standoff was more successful and avoided mockery because it was relatively new. Who really knows? With luck, these people will make being in a militia as uncool as your dad wearing socks with sandals while chaperoning the school dance.Featured image via WMUR | 1real |
‘Hungover’ now recognised as a school of philosophy | 'Hungover' now recognised as a school of philosophy 12-11-16
THE wisdom and insight that comes with a hangover is to be taught as part of philosophy courses.
‘Hangoverism’ will be approached as an over-arching discipline, taking in elements from existentialism’s view that life is meaningless, all the way back to Socrates’ allegory of not being able to face leaving a cave and going outside.
Philosophy professor Nikki Hollis said: “Many students will be able to relate to the teachings of Jeffrey Barnard and his theory that reality is just a construct that needs ignoring on a Saturday morning.
“Now leave me the fuck alone. I went mental on Chardonnay last night. My head feels like it’s in a tumble dryer.”
Meanwhile, academic journals have begun printing hangoverism essays, including The Morality of Bacon Sandwiches and Vomiting and Nothingness .
Share: | 1real |
Iraqi forces in final assault to take Hawija from Islamic State | BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraqi forces launched a final assault on Wednesday to capture the town of Hawija, one of two pockets of territory in Iraq still under Islamic State control, the country s military said in a statement. Iraqi state TV broadcast live footage showing the area covered by thick black smoke, rising from oil wells torched by the militants as a tactic to prevent air detection. Hawija is located near the oil city of Kirkuk, in northern Iraq. The offensive on Hawija is being carried out by U.S.-backed Iraqi government troops and Iranian-trained and armed Shi ite paramilitary groups known as Popular Mobilisation.They began moving on the town of Hawija two days after capturing the Rashad air base, 30 km (20 miles) to the south and used by the militants as a training and logistics site. Iraq launched an offensive on Sept. 21 to dislodge Islamic State from Hawija and surrounding areas where up to 78,000 people could be trapped, according to the United Nations. Iraqi security officials say the militants are preventing some residents from leaving, while others are afraid of escaping towards government forces because of explosives that might have been laid by Islamic State around the town. The other area of the country still under the control of the militant group is a stretch of land along the Syrian border, in western Iraq, including the border town of al-Qaim. The militants also hold the Syrian side of the border at al-Qaim, but the area under their control is shrinking as they retreat in the face of two different sets of hostile forces a U.S.-backed, Kurdish-led coalition, and Syrian government troops with foreign Shi ite militias backed by Iran and Russia. Islamic State s cross-border caliphate effectively collapsed in July, when U.S.-backed Iraqi forces captured Mosul, the group s de facto capital in Iraq, in a grueling battle which lasted nine months. The militants leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who declared the caliphate from Mosul in mid-2014, released an audio recording last week that indicated he was still alive. He called on his followers to keep up the fight despite the setbacks. | 0fake |
Why Was this Natural Medicinal Substance Just Banned by the DEA? | posted by Eddie If you’ve been keeping up with alternative media outlets the past couple weeks, you probably know that the DEA just classified kratom, a tropical deciduous tree with leaves used for various medicinal purposes (1) , a Schedule 1 substance. This puts it in the same class as heroin (2) . Vendors are already struggling to import it, and some have gone into hiding (2) . Kratom has been called a lifesaver for sufferers of mental or physical conditions made worse by pharmaceutical drugs. Despite this (and despite the harms caused by opiates), the scandal-ridden DEA has set its sights on fighting yet another helpful natural substance proven to work better for the treatment of various conditions than its pharmaceutical counterparts. An uprising began the moment the DEA announced the decision. Activists and kratom users everywhere are refusing to take it lying down and are working to correct the false image this classification paints of a misunderstood medicine. Blurring the Line By classifying it Schedule 1, the DEA is essentially telling us kratom is as bad as heroin. A little research reveals that not only is it nowhere near as bad as heroin or other opiates, but it can be used to treat opiate addiction. Anything that alters the mind is a drug, and by making classifications like this, the DEA is seriously blurring the line between beneficial and harmful drugs while confusing the public and proliferating ignorance. Nature produces countless mind-altering chemicals we’re supposed to use to heal the body and elevate the mind and soul. In this day and age, people are becoming aware of the power of nature to heal many of the problems created by man. This unjustified action against one of many beneficial natural substances serves only to expose the fact that the DEA is out of touch with the rest of the world. No Longer a Legitimate Authority Cassius Kamarampi writes that we have no reason to consider the DEA’s authority legitimate in the wake of their recent scandals (2) . One scandal, which broke wide open in the media, involved agents holding sex parties with prostitutes in Columbia supplied by local cartels (2) . This ultimately forced the head of the DEA, Michelle M. Leonhart, to step down (2) . It’s as if the agency wants to bring attention away from their misdeeds and onto the latest supposedly dangerous drug. Perhaps they intend for the backlash to make people forget their scandals and continue to bicker about which drugs the government should or shouldn’t let the masses use. If this is the case, there’s one thing they didn’t consider: activists don’t forget. You can’t expect independent thinkers to excuse the scandals of an agency that targets them with unfair laws. Ultimately, this classification will drive researchers and activists to expose more corruption within an agency that can no longer be taken seriously but is nonetheless dangerous to those who oppose it. It’s Up to Us The masses aren’t always quick to question the ulterior motives of government agencies they’ve been conditioned to believe exist for the greater good. This is one reason the backlash from the activist community is so strong: we know by this point that it’s up to us to make a change. The struggle against an unjustified classification of a natural medicinal substance has to be particularly coherent, well organized and founded upon a strong sense of cohesion to make up for the apathy in society. We won’t have much help and we may find ourselves in opposition to people who know no better than to believe what the government or DEA tells them, but it helps to know there are millions around the world who, like us, are fighting for the positive change we know we can have. We just have to strive for it together. Kratom’s Medicinal Uses Let’s take a look at some of kratom’s reported medicinal uses. The information below doesn’t paint a complete picture of what it can do, but the uses we’ll learn about are enough to convince anyone it shouldn’t be illegal or considered as dangerous as heroin. According to Natural Blaze , kratom isn’t an opiate but functions similarly by attaching to activating opioid receptors in the brain – without the harsh side effects (2) . Among other benefits, chewing on kratom leaves can alleviate chronic pain and anxiety as well as help in the struggle against addiction (2) . This is due to the leaves’ natural euphoric effects, which, again, come without the negative side effects of opiates (2) . According to OrganicFacts.net , kratom’s benefits include lowering blood pressure; boosting metabolism; relieving pain; improving the immune system; increasing sexual energy; easing anxiety; preventing diabetes; eliminating stress; and inducing a healthier state of sleep (1) . Kratom (or Mitragyna speciose) is native to Southeast Asia where it’s used for its medicinal properties (1) . It’s no stranger to being banned: it was banned in Thailand despite that it’s indigenous there and used regardless (1) . It’s described as a natural opium substitute with unique chemical compounds and nutrients found in its leaves (1) . It contains a wide range of alkaloids and other organic substances, and despite being banned it’s still widely used in Thailand; studies estimate that up to 70% of males in the country chew anywhere from 10-60 leaves daily (1) . As a less harmful substitute for opium, it exhibits no addictive qualities (1) . This in itself makes kratom a great treatment for addiction and other physical or mental health problems (1) , which is more than we can say about most of big pharma’s drugs. Organic Facts provides an in-depth description of each of kratom’s medicinal properties, paraphrased below. Pain Relief Kratom is best known for relieving pain in a way similar to opiates (1) . This is due to the analgesic properties of the alkaloids and nutrients in its leaves, which impact the hormonal system and relieve pain quickly (1) . The alkaloids and nutrients increase the amount of serotonin and dopamine released into the body; this can either mask or alleviate pain (1) . The alkaloids essentially dull the body’s pain receptors (1) , and this opium-like quality is considered kratom’s “most important application” (1) . Improving Immune System Health The alkaloids also have a “major” combinative effect on the strength and resilience of the immune system (1) , and research that’s still being checked suggests chewing on the leaves can prevent illness or reduce its severity (1) . If the DEA’s ban were lifted, research could continue unhindered and the truth could eventually reach a mainstream audience. Improving Sexual Drive Many see kratom as an aphrodisiac and fertility booster (1) . The extra energy and blood flow received from the leaves can help increase fertility, re-energize a tired libido, and improve duration as well as conception rates (1) . Treating Anxiety & Mood Swings The leaves are often chewed by sufferers of chronic stress, depression, anxiety and mood swings for their anxiolytic (anti-anxiety) properties (1) . Chewing them can also regulate hormones in the body, providing relief from symptoms of chemical imbalance without the need for dangerous pharmaceutical drugs (1) . Helping Recover from Addiction Kratom has been used to cure addiction to opiates and other harmful substances for thousands of years (1) . Opium addiction has been a major problem in countless cultures throughout history. Since chewing kratom leaves provides a similar sensation to opium without the comedown or other negative side effects, addicts trying to get clean consider it a “tolerable solution” that helps them cover and cope with symptoms of withdrawal (1) . Keeping the Heart Healthy Studies connect chewing kratom leaves with a drop in blood pressure; the leaves’ chemical components reduce inflammation throughout the body when they impact its hormones (1) . The affected areas include the arteries and blood vessels (1) . It can even prevent serious heart conditions such as stroke, heart attack or atherosclerosis by relieving tension in the cardiovascular system (1) . Treating or Preventing Diabetes Kratom’s effect on blood sugar levels isn’t as well-known as its treatment for pain or addiction (1) . Limited research suggests the leaves’ alkaloids regulate the amount of insulin and glucose in the blood, preventing the dangerous peaks and troughs often suffered by diabetics (1) . Because of this, kratom could potentially prevent diabetes or help those who already suffer with it to manage it (1) . Side Effects Any mind-altering substance comes with its share of side effects, but like cannabis, kratom’s lack of serious or dangerous side effects is one of its most remarkable qualities. The effects listed below are only common for first or second time users, and they diminish as the body acclimates to regular use (1) . They include fatigue, nausea and constipation, as well as a “kratom hangover” that can come with headaches or nausea the morning after the first or second use (1) . This pales in comparison to what opium addicts experience, and most would probably be glad to have a natural medicinal substance to help them through their recovery. Nature Can’t Be Outlawed The following is my opinion and may or may not reflect the ideals of those who are more involved in the fight against kratom’s criminalization. Kratom’s recent classification can be likened in many ways to the Marihuana Tax Act of the 1930s. The medicinal benefits of cannabis were well-known during that time, as it was used for medicine throughout the United States. The benefits of hemp were also well-known. As it became apparent to billionaires with control over the media that they couldn’t make as much money from hemp as they could lumber, cotton and other less easily replaceable resources, they deemed cannabis the evil Mexican marihuana and outlawed it with the help of heavily publicized propaganda campaigns. Kratom might not come with the array of industrial benefits provided by hemp (feel free to correct me if it does), but I’d imagine the government and DEA have a similar intention in outlawing it. The Struggle for Freedom As many have pointed out, this latest development is just another instance in the overall struggle between government agencies and the people they try to control through oppressive and intimidating laws. It represents the struggle for freedom; in this case, the freedom to use nature the way it’s intended without fear of persecution. This includes the use of substances with medicinal uses big pharma can’t market. The government’s efforts to stifle the use of these substances for the benefit of pharmaceutical companies (or other industries aligned against them) is futile. As Damian Marley put it, “people will always be who they want, and that’s what really makes the world go ‘round”. Rather than fight it, the DEA should accept that the masses are slowly embracing natural approaches to treating, curing and preventing disease. They should also accept that the effort to suppress the use of any natural substance with proven benefits for the mind or body is futile in the big picture. Conclusion The struggle between the DEA and sensible free thinkers is birthed from our resistance to their attempt to control or prevent the natural relationship between man and the psychoactive chemicals found in nature. Humans have interacted with natural mind-altering substances for centuries, and despite how hard any government agency tries to prevent this interaction, it will continue indefinitely because it exists for a reason. The truth about kratom is already spreading as a result of the backlash from the DEA’s decision. If we can make people aware of its medicinal properties and inspire them to take action, we can reverse a decision made out of negligence for the lives that will be affected by it. Criminalizing the innocent only creates crime where there was none, and at this pivotal point in mankind’s evolution, we should be past this kind of backward thinking. Sources: “Health Benefits of Kratom Leaves”, Organic Facts – https://www.organicfacts.net/health-benefits/other/kratom-leaves.html Cassius Kamarampi, “Kratom Now Schedule 1: Cartel Sex Scandal Shamed DEA Suppresses Herb Imports”, Era of Wisdom , August 31, 2016 – http://www.eraofwisdom.org/kratom-now-schedule-1-herb-imports-suppressed-cartel-sex-scandal-shamed-dea/ From Around the Web Founder of WorldTruth.Tv and WomansVibe.com Eddie ( 8932 Posts )
Eddie L. is the founder and owner of WorldTruth.TV. and Womansvibe.com. Both website are dedicated to educating and informing people with articles on powerful and concealed information from around the world. I have spent the last 36+ years researching Bible, History, Alternative Health, Secret Societies, Symbolism and many other topics that are not reported by mainstream media. | 1real |
Students At Black College Just Got Beaten And Maced For Protesting KKK’s David Duke | Comments
Last night, Louisiana Senate candidates vying for disgraced Senator David Vitter’s empty seat took the stage at the historically black Dillard University. Among them was former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke, who is making yet another run for public office. The students at Dillard rightfully came out to protest – but were met with shocking violence from the police.
Seventy or so students protested Duke’s presence at their college. “They’re allowing a terrorist, a neo-Nazi Ku Klux Klan member to be secured in a building in which we paid thousands of dollars to attend annually,” said political science major Brielle Kennedy , who was arrested moments later.
Nobody was allowed in the building during the debate, but students tried to enter anyway to express their fury – and were met with pepper-spray and beatings from police, who arrested six students. “They sprayed us directly in the face with it. I was covered on my shirt, my arms, my face. They’re bodyslamming people, they pulled girls’ hair. They’re just acting like heathens” recounted student Hannah Galloway.
The debate itself went off the rails almost immediately as David Duke began complaining about “Jews ,” saying that “there is a problem in America with a very strong, powerful tribal group that dominates our media, dominates our international banking.” He then went on to say that “[Hillary Clinton] should be getting the electric chair, being charged with treason.”
What did the police and state board of elections expect would happen when they held a debate at a historically black school in the deep South and invited a deplorable white supremacist and prominent Trump supporter to attend?
The violence with which the police reacted evokes the violence that white police visited on black protesters during Jim Crow and the battle for African-American civil rights – and is a painful symbol of how little has changed in the past sixty years. The fact that David Duke had the support to qualify for the ballot is evidence enough. | 1real |
It’s ON! Between Duterte and America | Here's something interesting from The Unz Review... Recipient Name Recipient Email =>
I’ve written a couple pieces of the smoking hot issue in Pivotland, Philippine president Duterte’s swerve toward a pro-PRC foreign policy, and what the U.S. and pro-American sector of the Manila elite are going to do about it.
The first piece, Reports of death of US-Philippine alliance may be exaggerated , addresses the fact that Duterte’s freedom of movement is constrained by the need to keep the Philippine military happy, and notes that ex-prez and retired general Fidel Ramos, who facilitated Duterte’s entrance on the national political stage, is signaling dissatisfaction with Duterte.
The second piece, Duterte Plays the ‘Mamasapano’ Card , covers a Duterte counter-attack: a threat to relitigate the death of 44 Philippine National Police commandos at Mamasapano in Mindanao, a 2014 special ops fiasco conducted under the aegis of the United States which a) exposes ex-president Aquino to serious legal jeopardy b) posits that the US alliance is doing a better job of killing Filipinos than the PRC can ever hope to do.
The US seems to be embedded in a colonial mindset when it comes to the Philippines, something along the lines of “we’ve been selflessly looking after the Philippines for a century, and that thug Duterte won’t be allowed to screw that up during his brief (maybe curtailed) presidency.”
It takes a pretty superficial view of Philippine history, one that accepts the US self-definition as the Philippines’ security savior while ignoring the distortions and shortcomings of the colonial and neo-colonial relationship.
For me this tunnel vision was typified by the US media crowing over the formal delivery of a refurbished C-130 transport to the Philippine government by outgoing ambo Philip Goldberg. Message: here’s the US making provisions for Philippine defense at the same time Duterte’s selling out the country to China.
To me, the inadvertent message was 1) here’s the US blindly stroking the pivot fetish while Duterte tries to solve the Mindanao insurgency that has cost at least 400,000 lives over the last century, win his drug war, and find a place for the Philippines in Asia that doesn’t give primacy to the US preoccupation confronting the PRC and 2) the U.S., in my opinion, pretty much has a policy of keeping the Philippines flat on its behind as an independent military force by trickling out second-hand gear to the Philippine military while the sweet stuff is dangled in front of it during US joint military maneuvers and port calls.
But the United States is trying to find political leverage wherever it can and the Western media will, I’m sure, put its shoulder to the wheel to help out.
Philip Goldberg sat down for a 45-minute exit interview with Rappler . As befitting Rappler’s origins in the Soros/Omidyar network of pro-US globalization advocacy, the interview was a stream of softballs about what to do about Duterte’s disregard of the awesomeness of the American relationship, an awesomeness that is acknowledged by virtually all Filipinos who inexplicably (and, if the US has anything to do about it, temporarily) at the same time give Duterte approval ratings of over 80% .
It’s worth watching if you have the patience. Goldberg is a smooth cat, and the Rappler tonguebath gives you no inkling of the fact that he intimately familiar with the wet work of end-arounding national governments to cultivate secessionist movements, you know, like what he did in Bolivia (declared persona non grata as a result) and Kosovo, and like that thing in Duterte’s home province of Mindanao, which in my opinion probably the main reason why Duterte wanted him out of the Philippines.
Goldberg also discretely plays the economic threat card, concern-trolling that anti-US attitudes will dismay “foreign investors”.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out in subsequent weeks. As far as I can tell, the biggest U.S. factor in the domestic Philippine economy is the call-center industry . I doubt US corporations are interested in actually pulling their operations out and subjecting them to the English-language mercies of India, but certainly a call from the State Department or White House would convince them of the wisdom of at least making the threat.
And I also wonder if expected President Hillary Clinton will find it necessary to drop the hammer on Duterte, in order to demonstrate to a rather dubious Asia that there is no alternative to loyalty to the pivot.
I expect the next few months, in other words, to be very interesting. (Reprinted from China Matters by permission of author or representative) | 1real |
California Today: In Virtual Reality, Investigating the Trayvon Martin Case - The New York Times | Good morning. (Want to get California Today by email? Here’s the .) Today’s introduction comes to us from Adam Popescu, a reporter based in Los Angeles. In turning the Trayvon Martin tragedy into a virtual reality film, the director Nonny de la Peña combed through public court records and stitched together 911 calls to structure an auditory narrative of the rainy night that ended in the shooting death of the unarmed by George Zimmerman. To get the look of the apartment complex in Sanford, Fla. where the events took place, Ms. de la Peña, a former Newsweek correspondent who runs a virtual reality company in Santa Monica, found architectural drawings of the location online, designs that were then rendered as video C. G. I. models. The final product, called “One Dark Night,” was recently shown at Los Angeles’ Hammer Museum and is now available on Google Play and Steam. “This is immersive journalism,” she said, intended to drive empathy. But it also raises issues about taste and truth. I caught up with Ms. de la Peña by phone. Here are some excerpts from the conversation: Q. How did this piece come together? A. “One Dark Night” is sourced entirely from 911 calls, trial testimony and architectural drawings of the condo complex where the shooting took place. I’m still an investigative journalist at heart, and it was very much the kind of story I used to cover as a print reporter. I really wanted to make a piece about the shooting, to be able to cast any kind of additional spotlight on the case using V. R. Q. Why Trayvon Martin? Why not Freddie Gray or another tragedy? A. Nothing other than I had the ability and I had the time and I felt I was the person to do it. Something clicked when I began investigating the Trayvon case. Q. You say it’s meant to draw empathy. Do you acknowledge that videos of shootings can be interpreted in multiple ways, and that this piece is subject to such questions? A. Definitely. I’ve had a journalist say that they better understood Zimmerman’s position. We’re always trying to figure out what we can convey to the viewer and what’s appropriate to show. For audiences not reading newspapers or watching broadcast TV, V. R. can reach them where they play. This is how you keep an informed global citizenry and keep democracy robust. What do we decide to shield them from? I think that that question is only going to be more pronounced as this media becomes more mature. (Please note: We regularly highlight articles on news sites that have limited access for nonsubscribers.) • The Trump administration said it would crack down on marijuana sales in states that have approved recreational use. [The Cannifornian] • “This has violated the trust of our community. ” The Santa Cruz police chief accused federal officials of misleading the city on immigration raids. [NBC Bay Area] • Far fewer students are applying for financial aid through the California Dream Act amid fears over deportation. [Los Angeles Times] • How an Los Angeles police officer telling teenagers to stay off his yard escalated to gunfire, protests and investigations. [Los Angeles Times] • America’s dams are showing their age — more than 70 percent are more than 50 years old. [The New York Times] • Some Silicon Valley executives think a universal income will be the answer to automation. The beta test is happening in Kenya. [The New York Times] • Since moving to Venice, Snap has alienated a community that prizes itself for a quirky sensibility. [Bloomberg] • Google’s car unit noticed a “striking resemblance” in Uber’s design and its own. [The New York Times] • Bette Kroening, whose Bette’s Oceanview Diner in Berkeley exerted influence on the Bay Area restaurant world, died at 71. [San Francisco Chronicle] • Famous during the 1980s for hosting game shows like “Love Connection,” Chuck Woolery has turned to podcasting. [The New York Times] • The Academy Awards are on Sunday. And the winners will be . .. [The New York Times] • Isabelle Huppert’s subversiveness and underplayed chic have transformed the actress, an Oscar contender, into fashion’s unlikely new muse. [The New York Times] • A new book includes about 170 images — many never before published — from the internment of during World War II. [The New York Times] • Video: Aerial views of the intense flooding in San Jose. [YouTube | Kevin Lowe] Among those most pleased by the return of rain to California have been wild mushroom enthusiasts. Years of drought put a damper on the foraging of fungus in the state’s forests, a hobby that has burgeoned with the growing popularity of fresh, local food. Amateur clubs up and down the state are organized around both the culinary and scientific celebration of California’s many mushroom species. As the rainfall began to surge last October, so did the autumn mushrooms, said Debbie Viess, a of the Bay Area Mycological Society. “We had a tremendous year for porcinis,” she said, “and it’s been a really good year for chanterelles too. ” Even with the continuing rain, several mushroom experts were wary about making predictions for the spring season, when popular morel mushrooms are normally abundant. While water is necessary, it isn’t sufficient, said Patrick Hamilton, a longtime mushroom picker in Sonoma County. “There are so many things, from soil conditions, to climatic conditions, to the age of the trees, all these things are difficult to understand,” he said. But the mystery, he added, “is part of the fun. ” California Today goes live at 6 a. m. Pacific time weekdays. Tell us what you want to see: CAtoday@nytimes. com. The California Today columnist, Mike McPhate, is a Californian — born outside Sacramento and raised in San Juan Capistrano. He lives in Davis. Follow him on Twitter. California Today is edited by Julie Bloom, who grew up in Los Angeles and attended U. C. Berkeley. | 0fake |
UK PM May's meeting with EU officials 'constructive and friendly': spokesman | LONDON (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Theresa May s meeting with European Union officials last week was constructive and friendly , her spokesman said on Monday when asked about an unflattering newspaper account of the meeting in a German newspaper. I think you re referring to a newspaper article with no quotes in it, but I have no comment whatsoever on that, the spokesman said. He referred to a joint statement issued following the meeting last week which said the talks were constructive and friendly. | 0fake |
POWERFUL! HE BECAME A POLICE OFFICER AFTER Watching The Twin Towers Fall On 9-11…Today, He “Humbly Begs” Seahawks Players To Not Sit For National Anthem | Dallas Police Officer Dan Cincinnatus wrote an amazing letter to Seattle Seahawks player, Russell Wilson imploring him to not sit while the fans honor our flag during the playing of the National Anthem. The Seattle Seahawks team has apparently organized a team sit-down during the playing of the National Anthem as a way to protest black oppression in America. Many Americans, including us, believe this is truly the most disrespectful act of anti-americanism we have ever seen in professional sports and has nothing whatsoever to do with multi-millionair black athletes being oppressed by America. Read Dan s letter and tell us what you think in the comments below or on our Facebook page.From Dan Cincinnati s Facebook page:In response to the rumors of a Seattle Seahawks team sit-down for the Star Spangled Banner on 09/11, I wrote this open letter to Russell Wilson and posted it on his Facebook page.Dear Mr. Wilson,My name is Dan Russell. I am a lifelong Seattle Seahawks fan, a native Washingtonian, and I have the humble privilege of serving as a Police Officer in my community.I am the Officer in these photos two of which went viral taken in Dallas on 07/07 at the scene where 14 police officers were shot in an ambush; five of whom perished from their injuries.I decided to dedicate myself to a life of Service on a Tuesday morning sitting in my parents living room on 09/11/2001, as I watched live footage of a plane crash into the World Trade Center. I woke up my brother, a serving United States Marine at the time, to give him the news America was under attack.On that sunny and bright Tuesday, 2,996 Americans lost their lives. 343 of those lost were firefighters, and 71 were law enforcement officers. In response to the worst terrorist attack in our Nation s history, millions answered the call to Service to Serve their Nation in the military, to Serve their communities as Police Officers, firefighters, dispatchers, paramedics, or as the family of one of these intrepid selfless individuals.Every day, more choose to answer the call to Serve inspired by those events of fifteen years ago and the selfless sacrifice of so many that came before them.I chose to Serve on 09/11/2001. After Ferguson in 2014 I found myself questioning my choice of career and vocation. A visit to Ground Zero reminded me that I was Serving something bigger than myself something beautiful and everlasting.America.I humbly ask I beg that you do not sit down for The Star Spangled Banner on this coming Sunday, the 15th anniversary of 09/11/2001.To do so would be a slap in the face to millions of fans, millions of public Servants, millions of Americans, to 09/11 first responders, to the survivors, and to the families of all that were involved and impacted by that terrible day, most of all To those 2,996 who fell in an act of hatred towards our country and all we stand for.You have so many avenues of making a stand, of letting your voice be one of compassion, reconciliation, and building rather than tearing down. You have shown that you are an inspiring leader, man of community, faith, family, and charity. You have a voice that will be heard.Please, use your voice in one of those other avenues do not allow yourself to become one that succumbs to the sensationalism and misguided choices that are currently causing so much division in our country.Stand for The Star Spangled Banner.We who Serve will stand with you.Respectfully, Dan Russell Seahawks FanRussell Wilson has announced that he will NOT take part in the planned sit-down by players on the Seattle Seahawks team. Here is his response.HERE is the link to Dan s letter on Facebook.We d like to offer Officer Cincinnatus a standing O for his well-written and powerful letter! | 1real |
Interview: Sarah Anastasia, Muslim Makeup Artist And Skin Care Consultant | In the latest installment of “Islam In America,” Roqayah Chamseddine is joined by Sarah Anastasia, a 27-year-old Muslim makeup artist and skin care consultant based in Massachusetts. Sarah discusses her service work and the exploitation and abuse that workers often face.
She also talks about her sexual assault, how sexual assault survivors, specifically women, are often castigated for being assaulted, and what the reaction has been from her friends and family, including other Muslims.
Plus, in light of the release of Donald Trump’s “Access Hollywood” conversation with Billy Bush, which was recorded in 2007, Roqayah and Sarah examine the implications of this rhetoric about using his status as a celebrity to assault women and how it impacts survivors of sexual assault.
This interview is part of Roqayah’s Islam In America series, which amplifies the stories of Muslim-Americans and what they struggle with in their day-to-day lives beyond just Islamophobia.
Listen to the interview by clicking on the below player:
SUPPORT THIS PROJECT If you enjoyed this video, please consider making a donation of $20 or more toward our $4,000 goal to fund the Islam In America project. Your contribution will help us publish more profiles of American Muslims like this one. *
Below is a partial transcript of the interview:
ROQAYAH: Before we get into the second half of the interview, I want to warn those listening that the subject matter may be difficult because we’re going to be talking about sexual assault. It’s a confronting and inarguably painful issue for all people, especially those who have been victims or those who know someone who’s been sexually assaulted.
According to the Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network or RAIN, one of out of every six American women have been the victim of an attempted or completed rape in her lifetime. About 3% of American men or one in thirty-three have experienced an attempted or completed rape in their lifetime. And from 2009-2015, Child Protective Services substantiated or found strong evidence to indicate that 63,000 children a year were victims of sexual abuse.
According to the National Crime Victims Survey, since 1998, there have been 17.7 million American women who have been raped and 2.78 million American Men, and that’s according to the survey. There may be more because as we all know a lot of people do not come forward because of the stigmatization and other issues they may face from both the police or family.
So, before we delve into anything, I wanted to say thank you for letting me talk to you about your story because I know it’s a really painful issue to talk about, especially since you’re a survivor yourself. Feel free to divulge as much or as little as you’re comfortable with.
The reaction to you talking about your sexual assault, because you have talked in brevity on Twitter and I believe on Facebook to some extent—What was it like? What was the reaction like to you talking about it?
SARAH: Part of the reason why I posted it on social media was because I don’t—and I still really don’t. I felt like I didn’t really have anyone to talk to. What kind of, in as vague terms as possible, there was someone I was seeing out-of-state, and I went to go see him. His best friend ended up assaulting me. On top of this, my boyfriend, whatever you want to call him, obviously, ex-boyfriend now, blamed me for the entire thing and said it never happened when he was there. And called me all these disgusting names and said I deserved it. Plus, I was just thinking about it the other day because I hate to call it an anniversary but it’s been a year and like a week basically.
I was just thinking about it and how weird it was that it never happened, but then it was my fault for it happening. I was just thinking about that and how ridiculous it was. But anyways, I didn’t have anyone that I felt really comfortable talking to and also when it first happened, I was out-of-state so I had absolutely nobody. So it was very scary to me and I felt like Twitter—I don’t want to call Twitter a safe space—but I feel like it’s a place that I can express myself. Obviously, I get trolled like almost everybody does. But I was able to say what was happening almost like an open journal in some kind of play-by-play of what was happening.
Thankfully, a lot of my friends that follow me were very receptive obviously and asked me if I was okay, this and that. I just felt like it was kind of important to talk about, but at the same time, I didn’t want to tell any of my family members. I had like one friend I told. I just felt very scared, and I felt like I was going to be judged or nobody was going to believe me. So, it’s like what is the point of even telling a family member if they’re just going to blame me or say it didn’t happen or say I’m making it up or being dramatic. I project a lot in my head, and so I feel like I was like I don’t even want to go there because I’m going to be more stressed out. More anxiety. Everything so Twitter was just kind of the place I went to.
ROQAYAH: On that note, what have you gone through mentally, emotionally, and maybe even physically in light of the Trump tapes, where he gleefully talks about freely assaulting women? Because I know that many women have had stay away from social media because of this issue. They go through reliving their experiences. So what have you gone through?
SARAH: I actually went on a mini-vacation that weekend when everything happened with the tapes with my family and none of them know. So it was kind of this really bizarre kind of like me listening to all their opinions about it, and thankfully, for the most part, my family members were just like this guy is trash. He assaults women. He’s disgusting. He’s a piece of shit. Blah blah blah. But you had the few comments of, well, why are they coming out now? And that obviously hurts even more knowing that I never reported my assault. If I had said to them, oh by the way, I was raped too. It would be, well, why did it take you so long to come out type of thing?
So that weekend was not really the best weekend.
Just a lot of the same things that his defenders or his supporters or fans kind of say that are enabling him are the same exact reasons why I didn’t report my assault and why I didn’t tell so many people because of that same reaction. So it just brought back a lot of really bad memories and feelings.
ROQAYAH: People don’t understand what it takes to actually report sexual abuse. It’s more than going to the police and saying, hey, this happened to me and then it’s over with. It’s extremely intense. You have to not only tell a complete stranger what happened to you. You have to undergo oftentimes medical services that require you to undress yourself, do different kind of examinations, and then at the end of the day, your rape kit may not even be tested for years on end. There’s a lot more to it.
And then, finding out recently I believe based on reports in the Washington Post and elsewhere, cops will routinely laugh and mock sexual assault victims and try to manipulate them into recanting or telling them things like the kid is really young. Why you gonna ruin his life? So this isn’t just something, oh, you didn’t tell? Why didn’t you tell? It’s a lot more than filing a report and then going home and you’re fine. But I think a lot of people assume it’s that easy.
Do you think the language that Trump uses in those tapes, and uses otherwise to describe women, do you think that’s pervasive amongst men in the U.S?
SARAH: Oh, totally. Even before these tapes happened, like if you go back, I posted about this on Facebook. What he did to Miss Universe, even back to Rosie O’Donnell. He has always been so just disgusting. You can just tell he’s somebody who thinks they’re more powerful and so much more above women and just thinks they’re there to serve him and he can do whatever he wants to them and he’s rich and this and that. Like the same thing from the tapes.
It was more the reaction to the tapes that was surprising. Clearly, this is a huge issue in the U.S. You have not just with Donald Trump but you see this a lot of time on the news anyways. I remember with Steubenville and a lot of other cases, like that swimmer, Brock Turner. Like oh you’re ruining his wife and this and that and no one ever once thinks, oh, this poor woman’s life is completely ruined. I remember in Steubenville the women had to move out of the town because she was getting harassed.
It’s just so ridiculous to me and so hurtful that this is continuously happening, and obviously, with Trump too. And I think it’s beyond people who support him. I think there are people too who were like, oh, it’s just words. My mom and I saw some type of report where they went to some random town in Pennsylvania and a lot of them were saying oh that’s Trump’s personal life. I’m still going to vote for him. And it’s like, how is that personal life? He’s assaulting women. That shows how disgusting he is and just his character is so rotten.
ROQAYAH: A lot of these people defending him either know someone who talks like that or talk like that. I was not as angry about it and thankfully I began to say this is really bad. You need to stop talking about women like animals basically. Whenever I hear any guy defending what he is saying—I mean, it’s very simple. All you got to do is say I don’t support what he says. It’s really bad. There’s really not more to it, but men specifically are going out of their way to say, eh, this is normal. And I don’t talk like that but it happens and get over it and you’re being politically correct. It’s a bunch of bullshit they use to defend in reality what they are in real life.
So being a sexual assault survivor, have you had trouble talking about this to other Muslims? Because I know that sex and the subject of sexual assault is still unfortunately really taboo in our community.
SARAH: Thankfully for most Muslim women, my friends, they’ve either — well, I shouldn’t say thankfully because unfortunately some of them are like this happened to me too. I’ve had several people, friends either from real life or social media, contact me and be like this happened to me too, which is a whole other issue. But I haven’t really—Even when I was posting about it on Twitter, not that many men really replied. I did have a friend that was not that judgmental but he did ask me was I drinking, what was I wearing, and stuff like that. It’s like that’s not really relevant to the story because you’re not asking if he was drinking or what he was wearing. Why is that even a question? So that really bothered me.
ROQAYAH: I don’t know why. I don’t know why this is still an issue with men. There’s no reason why that will matter in the story. No one has a right to put their hands on another person without consent. So if you are butt naked and you are out of your mind drunk, it shouldn’t matter. You don’t have the right to touch anyone, especially in a situation where they might not be there mentally. That kind of thing really makes me sick.
SARAH: It just makes me very angry. In my head, it’s almost like are you doubting my story or—The only answer is, what if I was wearing a revealing outfit and I was doing shots at the bar or something (which I wasn’t)? Does that mean that I deserved it? I don’t get why you’re asking the question.
ROQAYAH: It serves no purpose whatsoever, and it works as a way for them to manipulate you and sort of doubt your story without coming out and having a spine to say I don’t believe you.
SARAH: Right, and especially I feel like from Muslims it’s like that whole extra, well, were you drinking because you’re not supposed to be? Well, were you wearing a revealing outfit? You shouldn’t have been.
ROQAYAH: That’s another issue with Muslims. It’s a bit off-topic, but since we brought up the subject, a lot of Muslims look down on other Muslims who drink or who don’t wear the hijab or don’t follow the religion as they think they should. And so we see when a lot of Muslims are in the news, and they do something terrible, they go, oh, well, he wasn’t really a Muslim. He was drinking. Or he wasn’t really a Muslim. He was having premarital sex. They don’t understand that sin doesn’t remove you from the fold of your religion in the way that they think. So people will make mistakes or do whatever, and it doesn’t make them any less of a Muslim than you because you’re so uber pious.
The post Interview: Sarah Anastasia, Muslim Makeup Artist And Skin Care Consultant appeared first on Shadowproof . | 1real |
Stabbing Injures Seven People in Newark Home · Guardian Liberty Voice | According to ABC Eye Witness News, on Saturday, Nov. 5, 2016, in Newark, New Jersey, seven people were stabbed. The stabbing occurred shortly before 4:00 p.m. ET.
It has been reported some the victims have life-threatening injuries. So far the police have reported there is no clear motive for the stabbing, and there are no suspects in custody.
Updates on this story will be provided as they come available.
Another Stabbing Earlier This Year According to ABC Eye Witness News, on July 29, 2016, there was another stabbing. This victim was in critical condition was stabbed by her husband. Which lead to a standoff.
The 59-year-old victim was stabbed multiple times by the 64-year-old suspect. At the time of the stabbing, their nine-year-old grandson was in the home. He was not injured, and he was able to get help.
Neighbors came in and pulled the woman onto the grass until paramedics arrived. The suspect sat behind the front door of the home talking to police since about 11:20 a.m., and the standoff ended at about 3:40 p.m. with the man taken into custody.
During the standoff, the suspect threatened to commit suicide. Residents of the area were told to stay in their homes while officials negotiated with the suspect.
By Brady Combs
Edited by Cathy Milne
Sources:
ABC EyeWitness News: 7 People Stabbed inside Newark home; police searching for suspect
ABC EyeWitness News: Woman Stabbed by her husband in a Newark Home, police say
Image courtesy of ER24 EMS’s Flickr Page – Creative Commons License stabbing | 1real |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.