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Obama Says African-American Museum Will Tell of ‘Suffering and Delight’ - The New York Times | WASHINGTON — President Obama, dedicating the National Museum of African American History and Culture on Saturday, said it would tell an American story, one of “suffering and delight, one of fear, but also of hope, of wandering in the wilderness, and then seeing, out on the horizon, a glimmer of the Promised Land. ” Speaking to dignitaries and thousands of people watching from the National Mall, Mr. Obama said the museum would document the stories of Americans who are often overlooked in history books — “the president but also the slave, the industrialist but also the porter, the keeper of the status quo, but also the activist seeking to overthrow that status quo. ” On a day rich in symbolism, under a gray sky that seemed to capture the ambiguity of the black American experience, Mr. Obama warned that the museum would not be a panacea for the nation’s racial struggles, which, even today, inflame the streets of cities like Charlotte, N. C. “A museum alone will not alleviate poverty in every inner city,” he said. “It won’t eliminate gun violence from all our neighborhoods, or immediately ensure that justice is always colorblind. ” But Mr. Obama said the museum’s exhibits would put those problems into a larger context, allowing people to see the progress as well as the shortcomings in American society. He said he hoped it would encourage a dialogue among Americans on difficult issues like the systemic racism in law enforcement or the violence toward police officers. “Hopefully,” the president said, “this museum can help us talk to each other, and more importantly listen to each other, and most importantly see each other. ” “Perhaps they can help a white visitor understand the pain and anger of a demonstrator in Ferguson and Charlotte,” Mr. Obama said. And perhaps, he said, it could help a black visitor see the efforts of police officers who, “in fits and starts, are struggling to understand and trying to do the right thing. ” Acts of protest, Mr. Obama said, are acts of patriotism, whether it was sitting at a lunch counter in the South in the 1960s or wearing a emblazoned with the words “I can’t breathe,” as Eric Garner, gasping facedown on a sidewalk in Staten Island, said before he died. Mr. Obama has articulated these themes before, most notably in his speech on the 50th anniversary of the protest march in Selma, Ala. But on Saturday, his tone was less anguished or exhortatory than it has been in the past. He was clearly rejoicing in the glorious history contained in this newest outpost of the Smithsonian Institution. “We’ve shown the world we can float like butterflies and sting like bees,” Mr. Obama said, not even needing to mention the author of that boast, Muhammad Ali, who died three months ago. he said, can “rock like Jimi” and “stir the pot like Richard Pryor. ” “We’re not a burden on America or a stain on America, or an object of pity or charity for America,” the president added. “We’re America. ” Mr. Obama officially opened the museum by ringing a large bell from an black church in Virginia, in an echo of bells rung to mark the emancipation of the slaves. He spoke against the majestic bronze backdrop of the museum, a kind of inverted ziggurat not far from the Washington Monument. In its shadow, viewers were spread across the lawn and pressed against a fence, listening intently to the president. His speech was the centerpiece of a solemn, yet quietly jubilant, ceremony featuring the civil rights leader John Lewis, a Democratic congressman from Georgia, as well as celebrities like Oprah Winfrey, Will Smith, Robert DeNiro, Patti LaBelle and Stevie Wonder, who joked of the museum, “I haven’t seen it yet, but I’m going to. ” Ms. LaBelle got a huge roar from the crowd when, at the end of her emotional rendition of the civil rights anthem “A Change Is Gonna Come,” she added the words, “Hillary Clinton. ” There was a panoply of dignitaries, including George W. Bush, who signed the legislation authorizing the building of the museum, and his wife, Laura, who spoke of her early brainstorming discussions with the museum’s director, Lonnie Bunch. Bill Clinton watched from the front row, sitting alongside Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Colin Powell, the former secretary of state, and the Rev. Jesse Jackson sat nearby. “This museum tells the truth that a country founded on the principles of liberty held thousands in chains,” Mr. Bush declared. “Even today, the journey towards justice is not compete. But this museum will inspire us to go farther and get there faster. ” The museum, Mr. Bush said, celebrated several of his heroes, including the musician Chuck Berry, the baseball player Willie Mays and the Supreme Court justice Thurgood Marshall. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. spoke of the legacy of racism, enshrined in Jim Crow laws, and how the fight for justice flowed through — and was sometimes set back by — landmark court rulings, from the Dred Scott case to Plessy v. Ferguson and Brown v. Board of Education. To understand the real Dred Scott, Chief Justice Roberts said, one should visit this museum. Donna Sampson Rawlings, 59, of Ashton, Md. who watched the ceremony on a screen on the Mall, said the event brought back memories of her father, and of “all the people who weren’t here who did things to get us here. ” She said she had toured the museum last week during a special program. Many of the visitors were older, she said, and “I had to step back and think, ‘This is their lives. ’” “If you’re 80 years old, you went through so much of this,” she added. “Seeing it is, for them, emotional. It’s something they never thought they’d see. ” “These are the stories that we talk about that nobody knows,” she said. Johnnie Wilson, of Springfield, Va. said he had fought in Vietnam “for the nation’s rights, knowing that back home we didn’t have the rights. ” He said the museum compensated for what he believed was a sanitized version of history taught in schools. “Throughout the time we’ve been on these shores, we’ve made major contributions to America,” he said. “We’re really part of an American history that isn’t told like it should be in classrooms. ” Mr. Obama, who was given a sneak peek of the museum recently with his family, spoke during his speech of a stone slaver’s block on exhibit, marked only as the site of a speech by Andrew Jackson in 1830. It was, the president said, “a stone where day after day for years, men and women were torn from their spouse or their child, shackled and bound, and bought and sold, and bid like cattle, on a stone worn down by the tragedy of over a thousand bare feet. ” The museum, Mr. Obama said, would make visitors face uncomfortable truths. But it would also capture the essential greatness of the United States — the perpetual struggle to live up to its highest ideals. Mr. Obama spoke emotionally of his many flights on Marine One across the Mall, past the alabaster spire of the Washington Monument and the lighted figure of Abraham Lincoln, sheltered in his memorial. He said he had watched the museum rise from the ground and thought of the days when he and his family would return to visit it as private citizens. “We’ll walk away that much more in love with this country,” he said, “the only place on earth where this story could have unfolded. ” | 0fake |
Bernie Sanders' ghost tweeter keeps his Brooklyn accent | NEW YORK (Reuters) - Last August, Bernie Sanders sat on a Craigslist-bought beige couch in his Washington office plotting to steal the social media spotlight from 10 Republicans taking the stage for the first televised debate of the 2016 presidential campaign. Next to the Democratic presidential candidate, 74, sat 27-year-old Hector Sigala, his digital media director. For the next two hours, Sigala turned Sanders’ sometimes acerbic, sometimes funny running commentary into a stream of 140-character tweets using the hashtag #DebateWithBernie that stole the show - at least on Twitter. Some 17 million people were reached during the debate, according to the campaign’s Twitter data reviewed by Reuters. It was the first in a string of Twitter wins by Sanders during a presidential contest widely viewed as a coming-of-age moment for social media in national politics. Sanders didn’t even stop when the debate was interrupted by commercials. When an ad for a new Tom Hanks film appeared, he tweeted: “Tom Hanks. Finally. Somebody who makes some sense.” Eight months later, Sigala is a key lieutenant in the Sanders campaign for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, one of a new breed of digital media specialists who have become indispensable in an election where platforms like Twitter allow candidates to communicate with supporters easily, bash opponents or swiftly counter-attack. Sigala goes everywhere – on dates, to parties and to restaurants – with his black backpack and MacBook laptop just in case something tweet-worthy breaks. He was driving his cousin to the airport last Wednesday when Donald Trump, the frontrunner for the Republican nomination, said women who end pregnancies should be punished if the United States bans abortion, comments that were widely condemned. Sigala pulled the car over and tweeted: “Your Republican frontrunner, ladies and gentlemen. Shameful.” Sanders has close to 2 million followers on his Twitter campaign account and has tweeted nearly 8,000 times. His opponent, Hillary Clinton, has tweeted less, 5,000 times, but she has nearly 6 million followers. Sanders, however, has an edge because his tweets are much more personalized than Clinton’s, say some social media strategy experts. “He’s been able to really resonate with (different groups) and connect with them on a level that many other candidates have not been able to do,” said marketing consultant and social media strategy specialist Dr. Kay Green. While Twitter could not provide data directly comparing the 2016 and 2012 presidential races, a spokesman said tweets about the Democrat and Republican primary debates held so far have been viewed 9 billion times. On Facebook, the number of interactions (likes, posts, comments and shares) related to the 2016 election is up exponentially. Facebook users engaged in 411.5 million interactions on average in January and February, up nearly threefold from the nearly 142 million per month average for all of 2015. “The most obvious difference in the social conversations around the 2012 and 2016 presidential elections is, simply put, size,” said Kellan Terry, an analyst with Brandwatch, a company that tracks and analyzes data from social media sites. “The volume of social mentions around this year’s presidential election is massive.” Sigala and Sanders met in 2012 when he interned in Sanders’ Senate office in Vermont. Sanders, he says, bonded with him during a stroll down Church Street in Burlington, discussing a topic only Internet nerds could love: net neutrality. Now, he manages both Sanders’ and his wife Jane’s social media accounts. In practice that means he is the person tweeting comments attributed to Sanders. On Twitter, “I am Bernie Sanders,” Sigala joked. Twitter tends to attract more millennials, who have largely backed the Brooklyn-born Vermont senator. The tweets and posts that get the best reaction are those that appear to be directly from Sanders’ mouth. “He used to come up with a lot of quips himself,” Sigala said of Sanders, but the rigors of the 2016 campaign schedule mean Sigala is now often the one doing the tweeting. Tweets about Sanders’ bread-and-butter issues like climate change, healthcare, race and gender typically roll off Sigala’s fingertips in a tone and style that would be hard to distinguish from the senator’s. Take, for example, a tweet from Sanders’ Twitter handle on March 18 in response to a debate over student tuition that was posted by Sigala in the first person: “Every public college and university in this country should be tuition-free. I know my opponent thinks it’s a radical idea, I don’t,” it said, taking a dig at Clinton. But some news events require Sanders’ sign-off. On the day of the Brussels bomb attacks, in which 32 people were killed, Sigala had to wait hours before getting the go-ahead from a busy Sanders to post a condolence message. On a recent afternoon, Sigala was sitting in a Washington office posting messages to various social media sites while a college basketball game played on a nearby TV. When he isn’t live-tweeting or reacting to breaking news, he’s referring to a Microsoft Word document that contains 54 pages of prepared tweets on a list of issues. When he took over the @BernieSanders Twitter account last May it had 50,000 followers. He would check it obsessively each day to see how many new followers it had attracted. Now, with nearly 2 million followers, Sigala is less focused on the numbers and more interested in figuring out which tweets perform best. For example, he has discovered through trial and error that a tweet reading “We have got to” do something will do significantly worse than a tweet reading “We gotta.” “That’s because it sounds like Brooklyn Bernie,” Sigala said with a laugh. | 0fake |
EXCLUSIVE: Ex-Bernie Delegate Reveals Why He Fled Democratic Party for the Greens | Roving political analyst Stuart J Hooper drops in the see what was happening as Bernie Sanders hit the western college campuses on to campaign for Hillary Clinton.The following is an interview with an ex-Bernie delegate who, following the DNC collusion with the Clinton camp to kill the Sanders campaign, has since left the Democratic Party to support Dr Jill Stein and the Green Party. He explains how Sanders was coerced into backing the corrupt Clinton campaign.Listen to his emotional statement here: SUPPORT OUR WORK SUBSCRIBE & BECOME A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV | 1real |
Brazil's Congress blocks corruption charges against President Temer | BRASILIA (Reuters) - The lower house of Brazil s Congress voted on Wednesday to reject charges filed by prosecutors against President Michel Temer in a case involving bribes allegedly paid by meatpacker JBS SA, sparing him trial by the Supreme Court. With 136 lawmakers voting to throw out the charges, and given a quorum of 477 of them present, Temer s opponents could no longer reach the 342 votes required to authorize the top court to put him on trial. | 0fake |
Carson, GOP White House candidates critical of Obama’s Syria plan for 50 Special Ops troops | Republican White House candidates on Sunday criticized President Obama’s plan to deploy 50 Special Operations troops in Syria to fight the Islamic State terror group.
“Sending 50 American Special Forces into Syria in the eyes of ISIL shows that Obama is not all in,” candidate and South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham said on “Fox News Sunday.” “It is a sign of weakness to ISIL. They have sized Obama up and they think he's weak.”
Graham, a defense hawk and Armed Services Committee member, argued that such a small group will have “no chance of winning” the fight to destroy the Islamic State, whose recent and unexpected rise has resulted in the militant group occupying large swatches of Iraq and Syria.
He downplayed the possibility of a clash between U.S. forces and Russian forces in Syria, sent to protect the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad.
“There may be some potential,” said Graham, who has advocated for sending more troops to the region to battle the Islamic State. “But I see Russia and Iran mopping the floor with Obama ... . Russia is all in with Iran to support Assad.”
The White House’s announcement Friday to deploy the non-combat troops comes roughly two years after Obama vowed that he would not put “American boots on the ground in Syria."
White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest argued the move is not a change in strategy, only an “intensification” of the president’s plan to help local forces fight the terror group.
Ben Carson, another GOP presidential candidate, said Sunday that he supports Obama's plan in part but that it fails to go far enough.
“I think that’s a move in the right direction ... certainly in terms of helping to guide what the Air Force is doing,” he told ABC’s “This Week.” “But I think that that's only a small part of it. We need to have a much bigger plan when it comes to battling the global jihadist because they have big ideals.”
Carson, a first-time candidate, said that if elected he would address Russian President Vladimir Putin’s efforts in Syria and that the United States should establish a “no-fly” zone in the region.
This is not the first criticism of Obama’s most recent decision.
On Saturday, GOP contender Donald Trump also suggested the move was a half-measure.
"I think we have a president who just doesn't know what he's doing," Trump told CNN before a campaign stop in Norfolk, Va. “You either do it or you don't do it.”
However, Trump, also a first-time candidate, declined to say whether he would deploy more troops to Syria. | 0fake |
Millions of Romanians, Bulgarians preparing to ‘avoid UK like the plague’ | November 2, 2016
Fears of a huge influx of immigrants from Romania and Bulgaria have given way to indignation after a poll showed workers from the two countries are preparing to ‘avoid Britain like the plague’, when movement restrictions are eased later this year.
A new survey of over 2,000 people in both countries revealed that, rather than preparing to flood into the UK and take all the jobs recently vacated by returning Poles, Romanians and Bulgarians are actually surprisingly well acquainted with how crap everything is and will most probably steer clear.
‘There was a time last summer when it looked quite fun in Britain,’ said Liana Domescu, a 25-year-old unemployed graduate from Timisoara. ‘You know, with the Jubilee and the Olympics and Kate Middleton and stuff. But since then it’s all been back to the Britain we know and hate – sex abuse, measles outbreaks, HMV going under, your failing post-war-era Health Service, David Cameron, how do you people cope?’
The news came as a surprise to analysts, who had predicted that up to 25,000 Romanian and Bulgarian jobseekers would arrive at Heathrow each day. BAA Ltd, the owners of Heathrow, had already warned that this would be ‘roughly 24,990 more than we can cope with per day’ and even hinted that queues could develop in the arrivals lounge.
UKIP leader Nigel Farage was ‘incensed’ by the news. ‘It’s a shocking insult to the people of Britain,’ said Farage. ‘We’ve been preparing a well-honed tirade of crackpot dogma, frosty glares and grumbling about the strain on public services to welcome these people to this country, only to find they’re only interested in coming if there are jobs! That’s the problem with foreign freeloaders, they just aren’t willing to put the work in. What am I going to do with this ‘Boris Out’ placard now? I can’t possibly use it for any other political purpose.’
For Domescu, the final straw came during the funeral of Margaret Thatcher last week. ‘I was still thinking of coming to Britain, but then they broadcast those pictures of your Chancellor Osborne openly weeping on national television and it finally hit home how bad things must be for that to happen,’ she said. ‘So I’ll just stay here after all – the weather’s far nicer and I hear there’s a job going at the local horse abattoir.’ Share this story... | 1real |
DHS Secretary Kelly: ‘You’d Never Leave the House’ If You Knew What I Know About Terrorism - Breitbart | Friday on Fox New Channel’s “Fox Friends,” Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly said if Americans knew what he knew about terrorism threats they would “never leave the house. ” Kelly said, “It’s nonstop. The good news is, for us in America, we have amazing people protecting us every day, DHS, obviously, FBI, fighting the away game is DOD Department of Defense, CIA, NSA, working with these incredible allies we have in Europe and around the world. But it can happen almost here anytime. I was telling Steve on the way in here if he knew what I knew about terrorism, he’d never leave the house in the morning. But the good news is again we have the finest men and woman in uniform, out of uniform, police officers, local law enforcement New York City cops protecting us. ” Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN | 0fake |
Law & Order: SVU To Air Episode Based On Donald Trump Child Sex Abuse Case | We were all waiting for this. Law & Order: SVU has announced that they will be doing an episode based on Donald Trump s child rape case and it will air before the election.The NBC show has often made episodes that are ripped from the headlines, and now they will take on Trump s alleged rape of 13-year-old girl. The episode, titled Unstoppable, will feature a Trump-like character who will be played by Gary Cole ( Veep ). Variety described this character as a wealthy and boorish man who makes a run for the White House. The storyline of the episode was inspired by the lawsuit filed by a woman, known only as Jane Doe, who has accused Donald Trump of raping her at the home of known child abuser Jeffery Epstein in the mid-1990s when she was only 13. A hearing on the case, which names both Trump and Epstein as defendants in the suit, is scheduled for December 16 in a New York court.According to Variety, the episode, which was penned by SVU veteran Julie Martin and showrunner Rick Eid, has been highly scrutinized internally at Wolf Entertainment, home of SVU, and by NBC brass. Originally, the episode was set to be aired Oct. 12 and was then pushed back to Nov. 9, the day after election day. But NBC has now confirmed that the show will now air on Oct. 26, before the Nov. 8 election.NBC has been dead smack in the middle of Trump s Pussygate controversy. Audio tapes were released from a 2005 Access Hollywood segment that featured the billionaire bragging about his ability to sexually assault women thanks to his celebrity status. The GOP nominee s poll numbers have plummeted since the release of the tape, in which he said being a star made it permissible for him to grab em [women] by the pussy. Dozens of Republican leaders and members of congress have dropped him like a hot potato as well.Trump and NBC have quite a history. His shows, The Apprentice and Celebrity Apprentice, ran on the network for more than a decade. NBCUniversal also co-owned the Miss Universe beauty pageant franchise with Trump up until just last year.With evidence that Trump is a sexual predator continuing to pile up, it was only a matter of time before SVU picked up the story. I guess Donald Trump really is the Law & Order candidate after all.Featured image via Ty Wright/Getty Images | 1real |
WATCH: IRAN Made VIDEOTAPE Of Secret $400 Million Ransom Cash-Drop From U.S. To Mock Obama’s Embarrassing Incompetence [VIDEO] | It s starting to get old but Trump was right again Iranian state-run media in Tehran did indeed videotape the arrival of a January 17 flight carrying $400 million in cash from the United States and the money itself judging from a documentary that aired the following month in the Islamic republic. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has been in a firestorm of controversy since first claiming on Wednesday to have seen secret footage of money being offloaded from an aircraft.He admitted Friday morning on Twitter what his campaign had said more than a day earlier, that he had seen ordinary archival footage of a different plane, carrying American hostages freed from Iran arriving in Geneva Switzerland after the money changed hands. But it turns out he may have been right without knowing it.The Iranian video was aired February 15 on the state-run Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting television network, as part of a documentary called Rules of the Game. A narrator, speaking in Persian, describes a money-for-hostages transaction over video clips of a plane on an airport tarmac in the dead of night and a photo of a giant shipping pallet stacked with what appear to be banknotes.The federal government shipped what many are calling a ransom payment in Euros and other non-U.S. currencies.The copy of the documentary footage DailyMail.com obtained is not of high enough quality to determine which nation s banknotes are depicted.None of the footage is stamped with a date or time, making it impossible to know when it was shot.And the broadcaster blurred out one portion of the screen, covering up something resting on top of the mountain of money.But the documentary begins with a narration saying: In the early morning hours of January 17, 2016 at Mehrabad Airport, $400 million in cash was transported to Iran on an airplane. The film describes the Obama administration s prisoner swap and Iran s cash windfall from Tehran s point of view as a win-lose deal that benefits the Islamic Republic of Iran and hurts the United States, according to two English-language translations DailyMail.com obtained. Via: Daily Mail | 1real |
President Trump Honors Little Sisters of the Poor on First White House Nat’l Day of Prayer in Years - Breitbart | WASHINGTON, D. C. — President Donald Trump held the first National Day of Prayer event at the White House in many years on Thursday in the Rose Garden with approximately 150 guests in attendance. [The President announced his first trip overseas, which will take him to Saudi Arabia, Israel, and the Vatican. The trip will come ahead of the NATO G7. The President thanked all those gathered, spoke of the commemoration of the National Day of Prayer occurring the the White House for the first time in years, and took a moment during the course of his speech to bring the Little Sisters of the poor on stage as he spoke of his new religious freedom Executive Order. Steven Curtis Chapman opened the ceremonies with a version of the song Great is Thy Faithfulness. He then sang the words of The Lord’s Prayer, inviting those gathered to join in singing along — which some did. Steven Curtis Chapman singing Great is Thy Faithfulness at White House National Day of Prayer event @StevenCurtis pic. twitter. — Michelle Moons (@MichelleDiana) May 4, 2017, Pastor Paula White then took to the podium thanking those cabinet members present for attending. She noted that this year the National Day of Prayer event is taking place in the Rose Garden at the White House. She spoke of the rarity of holding these prayers this day on the lawn of the White House. VP Pence introduces President Trump for National Day of Prayer @VP @POTUS @WhiteHouse pic. twitter. — Michelle Moons (@MichelleDiana) May 4, 2017, Prayers were given by evangelical pastor Jack Graham to comfort those who are persecuted, that God’s love would be expressed to people. Catholic Cardinal Donald Wuerl offered prayers of God’s promises and leading, that people would walk in the full freedom of God, in the fullness of peace, in the fullness of freedom, mindful of those who do not experience the same freedom. Prayers were offered for President Donald Trump’s leadership. Jewish Rabbi Marvin Hier followed with prayers for President Trump and Vice President Mike Pence, others in the Administration, and others around the country. Vice President Mike Pence recounted the long American history of the National Day of Prayer. Every President has issued a proclamation for the day since it began, Pence noted, but not every President has held a commemoration in the Rose Garden of the White House. President Trump brings Little Sisters of the Poor on stage at National Day of Prayer event at White House #NationalDayofPrayer pic. twitter. — Michelle Moons (@MichelleDiana) May 4, 2017, In his remarks Trump said: We are a nation of believers. Faith is deeply embedded into the history of our country, the spirit of our founding and the soul of our nation,” he added as he thanked the faith leaders. “As we look at the violence around the world, and believe me it’s violent … we realize how truly blessed we are to live in a nation that honors the freedom of worship. Today my administration is leading by example as we take historic steps to protect religious liberty in the United States of America. “We will not allow people of faith to be targeted, bullied, or silenced anymore,” said Trump. “We will never ever stand for religious discrimination. Tolerance is the cornerstone of peace. ” The President then announced his overseas trip and that he will meet with leaders from across the Muslim world in Saudi Arabia. Trump mentioned President Abraham Lincoln’s announcement of a National Day of Prayer. “It’s so great to be doing it in the Rose Garden,” Trump said as he announced the proclamation of this year’s National Day of Prayer. The crowd gave a standing ovation upon this announcement. “Freedom is not a gift from government, freedom is a gift from God,” proclaimed Trump. He referred to the founders of the country who enshrined the freedom of religion in the First Amendment. He spoke of his new executive order on religious freedom. “No American should be forced to choose between the dictates of the federal government and tenets of their faith. ” He spoke of the Johnson Amendment and the impediment it imposes on religious leaders. The President declared, “This financial threat against the faith community is over. ” He said he would sign the EO, adding, “You’re now in a position that you can say what you want to say. ” “No one should be censoring sermons or targeting pastors,” said Trump. The President called the Little Sisters of the Poor to the podium and even recognized the lawyers that have been fighting a court case for the group that has faced prosecution for noncompliance with a portion of the Obamacare mandate. The president said to them, “I want you to know that your long ordeal will soon be over. ” “God bless you and God bless America,” concluded President Trump. President Ronald Reagan held observances of the National Day of Prayer in the Rose Garden, as did President George H. Bush and George W. Bush, according to the National Day of Prayer Task Force. President Bill Clinton invited guests for prayer events at the White House on the National Day of Prayer. While President Barack Obama did sign National Day of Prayer proclamations in the standing presidential tradition, he chose “not to personally participate nor host events for the National Day of Prayer at the White House,” according to the NDOP Task Force. Follow Michelle Moons on Twitter @MichelleDiana | 0fake |
Trump '100 percent' committed to take on tax reform in 2017: Cohn | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump is committed to overhauling the U.S. tax code before the end of 2017, a top White House economic advisor said on Monday. “The president is 100 percent committed to getting tax reform done this year,” said Gary Cohn, director of the National Economic Council, at the start of a listening session with real estate industry groups on taxes. “We just had a cabinet meeting ... the No. 1 topic at the cabinet meeting was talking about taxes and tax reform and what it would take to get tax reform done this year,” Cohn said. | 0fake |
Assange tells the sordid truth about the US elections | VIDEOS Assange tells the sordid truth about the US elections There’s so much information that it’s difficult to see the large mosaic created by the tiny parts By Daisy Luther - November 8, 2016
When you put together everything we’ve learned about the corruption in our government and electoral system, it paints an ugly picture. There’s so much information that it’s difficult to see the large mosaic created by the tiny parts.
UPDATED: Today, Julian Assange made a statement about the election . In recent months, WikiLeaks and I personally have come under enormous pressure to stop publishing what the Clinton campaign says about itself to itself. That pressure has come from the campaign’s allies, including the Obama administration, and from liberals who are anxious about who will be elected US President. On the eve of the election, it is important to restate why we have published what we have. The right to receive and impart true information is the guiding principle of WikiLeaks – an organization that has a staff and organizational mission far beyond myself. Our organization defends the public’s right to be informed. This is why, irrespective of the outcome of the 2016 US Presidential election, the real victor is the US public which is better informed as a result of our work. The US public has thoroughly engaged with WikiLeaks’ election related publications which number more than one hundred thousand documents. Millions of Americans have poured over the leaks and passed on their citations to each other and to us. It is an open model of journalism that gatekeepers are uncomfortable with, but which is perfectly harmonious with the First Amendment. We publish material given to us if it is of political, diplomatic, historical or ethical importance and which has not been published elsewhere. When we have material that fulfills this criteria , we publish. We had information that fit our editorial criteria which related to the Sanders and Clinton campaign (DNC Leaks) and the Clinton political campaign and Foundation (Podesta Emails). No-one disputes the public importance of these publications. It would be unconscionable for WikiLeaks to withhold such an archive from the public during an election. At the same time, we cannot publish what we do not have. To date, we have not received information on Donald Trump’s campaign, or Jill Stein’s campaign, or Gary Johnson’s campaign or any of the other candidates that fufills our stated editorial criteria. As a result of publishing Clinton’s cables and indexing her emails we are seen as domain experts on Clinton archives. So it is natural that Clinton sources come to us. We publish as fast as our resources will allow and as fast as the public can absorb it. That is our commitment to ourselves, to our sources, and to the public. This is not due to a personal desire to influence the outcome of the election. The Democratic and Republican candidates have both expressed hostility towards whistleblowers. I spoke at the launch of the campaign for Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate, because her platform addresses the need to protect them. This is an issue that is close to my heart because of the Obama administration’s inhuman and degrading treatment of one of our alleged sources, Chelsea Manning. But WikiLeaks publications are not an attempt to get Jill Stein elected or to take revenge over Ms Manning’s treatment either. Publishing is what we do. To withhold the publication of such information until after the election would have been to favour one of the candidates above the public’s right to know. This is after all what happened when the New York Times withheld evidence of illegal mass surveillance of the US population for a year until after the 2004 election, denying the public a critical understanding of the incumbent president George W Bush, which probably secured his reelection. The current editor of the New York Times has distanced himself from that decision and rightly so. The US public defends free speech more passionately, but the First Amendment only truly lives through its repeated exercise. The First Amendment explicitly prevents the executive from attempting to restrict anyone’s ability to speak and publish freely. The First Amendment does not privilege old media, with its corporate advertisers and dependencies on incumbent power factions, over WikiLeaks’ model of scientific journalism or an individual’s decision to inform their friends on social media. The First Amendment unapologetically nurtures the democratization of knowledge. With the Internet, it has reached its full potential. Yet, some weeks ago, in a tactic reminiscent of Senator McCarthy and the red scare, Wikileaks, Green Party candidate Stein, Glenn Greenwald and Clinton’s main opponent were painted with a broad, red brush. The Clinton campaign, when they were not spreading obvious untruths, pointed to unnamed sources or to speculative and vague statements from the intelligence community to suggest a nefarious allegiance with Russia. The campaign was unable to invoke evidence about our publications—because none exists. In the end, those who have attempted to malign our groundbreaking work over the past four months seek to inhibit public understanding perhaps because it is embarrassing to them – a reason for censorship the First Amendment cannot tolerate. Only unsuccessfully do they try to claim that our publications are inaccurate. WikiLeaks’ decade-long pristine record for authentication remains. Our key publications this round have even been proven through the cryptographic signatures of the companies they passed through, such as Google. It is not every day you can mathematically prove that your publications are perfect but this day is one of them. We have endured intense criticism, primarily from Clinton supporters, for our publications. Many long-term supporters have been frustrated because we have not addressed this criticism in a systematic way or responded to a number of false narratives about Wikileaks’ motivation or sources. Ultimately, however, if WL reacted to every false claim, we would have to divert resources from our primary work. WikiLeaks, like all publishers, is ultimately accountable to its funders. Those funders are you. Our resources are entirely made up of contributions from the public and our book sales. This allows us to be principled, independent and free in a way no other influential media organization is. But it also means that we do not have the resources of CNN, MSNBC or the Clinton campaign to constantly rebuff criticism. Yet if the press obeys considerations above informing the public, we are no longer talking about a free press, and we are no longer talking about an informed public. Wikileaks remains committed to publishing information that informs the public, even if many, especially those in power, would prefer not to see it. WikiLeaks must publish. It must publish and be damned.
In this enlightening interview, Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks , puts it all together in an easy-to-understand synopsis. Via Daisy Luther Featured Image: Joe Mesa/Flickr Daisy Luther is a single mom who lives in a small village in the mountains of Northern California, where she homeschools her youngest daughter and raises veggies, chickens, and a motley assortment of dogs and cats. She is a best-selling author who has written several books, including The Organic Canner , The Pantry Primer: A Prepper’s Guide to Whole Food on a Half-Price Budget , and The Prepper’s Water Survival Guide: Harvest, Treat, and Store Your Most Vital Resource . Daisy is a prolific blogger who has been widely republished throughout alternative media. On her website, The Organic Prepper , Daisy uses her background in alternative journalism to provide a unique perspective on health, self-reliance, personal liberty, and preparedness. You can follow her on Facebook , Pinterest , and Twitter . | 1real |
SERIOUSLY? Male News Anchor Forces Female Meteorologist To Cover Up Her Dress On Air (VIDEO) | A meteorologist wearing a rather classy dress was shocked when a male anchor humiliated her on air because he felt her clothing was inappropriate. In a scene straight out of the 1920 s, KTLA5 anchor Chris Burrous decided that Libert Chan s dress was a huge problem large enough to interrupt her reporting of the weather with the BREAKING NEWS that he felt she was dressed like a dirty, dirty harlot.As she was delivering the wind report, Chan noticed a hand entering the frame. That hand was clutching a drab, gray sweater. What s going on? Chan asked. You want me to put this on? Why? Because it s cold? We re getting a lot of emails, Burrous explained as he thrust the sweater forward. What! a shocked Chan replied. echoing the sentiments of any reasonable person watching the broadcast. Really? Chan smiled uncomfortably as Burrous put the sweater on her in the middle of her report. There you go, he said condescendingly. I look like a librarian now, she said as she attempted to process what had just happened. That works, the anchor responded. It s a librarian who s gone to a cocktail party. Everyone s got an opinion about your dress this morning. Interestingly, Chan had just spent a considerable amount of time off camera where she could have been approached about her dress if there was a problem (but, of course, there wasn t a single issue with her clothing). The anchor, however, chose to shame her on camera simply because she looked good in what she was wearing. I m sorry but the other dress didn t work, Chan told her asshole of a coworker. I had to wear something. The rest of Chan s report was uncomfortable, with the meteorologist doing a spectacular job of masking the rage that was building inside her after she was shamed for simply wearing a piece of clothing. At one point, she broke into nervous laughter. I m trying to hold it together in my little sweater, she explained.Unlike Burrous, she managed to keep things professional the rest of her time on-air. The male anchor was correct, though. Everyone does have an opinion on Chan s dress more specifically, his reaction to it. Unfortunately, he s not going to like those opinions: Just to add some perspective, these are the hugely professional shorts Burrous was wearing as he shamed his coworker:The station has not yet released a statement, but anything less than Chris Burrous has been fired, and we apologize for shaming our incredibly talented meteorologist who deserves a raise is inadequate.Watch it below, via Raw Story:Featured image via screengrab | 1real |
Brazil's top court approves new graft probe of President Temer | BRASILIA (Reuters) - A Brazilian Supreme Court judge on Tuesday authorized an investigation of President Michel Temer for suspected corruption involving a decree regulating ports, adding to graft allegations the president has so far parried with backing from Congress. The new investigation is based on a wiretapped conversation of a former Temer aide, Rodrigo Rocha Loures, who, according to court documents, discussed shaping the decree in return for bribes channeled from a port operator to the president. In his ruling, Justice Luis Roberto Barroso said the new probe was warranted because Brazil s top prosecutor, Rodrigo Janot, had found strong indications of crimes, given that the decree signed by Temer answered part of the demands made by logistics firm Rodrimar SA. Temer s lawyer said in a statement sent to the Supreme Court that the allegations against the president are contaminated by untruths and malicious distortions. The decree was publicly debated and benefited all port operators and not just Rodrimar, it said. Rodrimar also denied that it had received any special treatment from the government. The company said the decree in question partially addressed widespread demands from Brazil s port operators. Temer has denied any role in the corruption scandals that have come to light during a sprawling three-year investigation of political bribery in Brazil. His lawyers have also challenge the plea bargain deal that yielded the wiretap of Rocha Loures, arguing that the billionaire beef tycoon who arranged the recordings was unfairly favored by a close aide to Janot. Last month, Temer s allies in Congress easily blocked a corruption charge leveled by Janot. He is also expected to beat additional charges that Janot could level this week before leaving office. The latest investigation approved by the court adds more allegations to the mix. Brazil s currency, the real, posted its biggest daily drop in nearly a month, slipping 0.8 percent against the U.S. dollar as the investigation and a separate police probe into Temer s allies kept pressure on the president. Temer s success in beating back accusations had bolstered bets that he would be able to return focus to his market-friendly proposals to overhaul Brazil s tax and social security policies, tackling a record deficit. | 0fake |
Trump's pick to lead health agency calls EpiPen issue 'disturbing' | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump’s choice to lead an important health agency said on Thursday that the way pharmaceutical companies classify products as generic or branded needs to be reviewed in order to help hold down government spending, as she cited Mylan NV’s EpiPen emergency allergy treatment. Seema Verma, Trump’s nominee to lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), did not answer questions about whether the U.S. government should negotiate with pharmaceutical companies over drug prices. “I think what happened with ... the EpiPen issue is very disturbing,” Verma said at her confirmation hearing before the Senate Finance Committee. “The idea that perhaps Medicaid programs, which are struggling to pay for those programs, that they could have potentially received rebates is disturbing to me.” Mylan has been criticized for listing EpiPen with Medicaid as a generic product even though it listed it with the Food and Drug Administration as a branded product. The classification led to Mylan’s paying significantly smaller rebates to the Medicaid healthcare program for the poor than if EpiPen were classified as branded. “I would like to review the processes in place there, in terms of the classifications, in terms of brand and generic, to ensure that type of thing doesn’t happen again,” Verma said. CMS said last year that it had “expressly advised” Mylan that the drugmaker had improperly classified EpiPen. Mylan said last month that U.S. antitrust authorities had launched an investigation into EpiPen. The company said suggestions it took any inappropriate or unlawful actions to prevent generic competition was “without merit.” Mylan has also come under fire for raising the price of a two-pack of EpiPens to $600 last summer from $100 in 2008. Mylan began selling a generic version of EpiPen for $300 per two-pack in December. Verma also said she would produce records of communication between the agency and Mylan, when questioned by Republican Senator Chuck Grassley. A statement from Grassley’s office said Mylan had overcharged states and taxpayers by “potentially hundreds of millions of dollars.” Democrats were not pleased with Verma’s sidestepping a question from Senator Debbie Stabenow about whether she agreed with Trump that the government should negotiate with drug companies over prices of drugs covered by the Medicare healthcare program for the elderly and disabled. “I don’t think that’s a simple yes or no answer,” Verma said. “The goal is to make sure that we’re getting affordable prices for our seniors.” | 0fake |
Trump Gives PATHETIC Reason For Why He Sucked At Debate (TWEET) | If you tuned into the first presidential debate last night, you already know that Hillary Clinton pretty much wiped the floor with Donald Trump. Trump was so nervous and unprepared that he was reduced to constant sniffling, excessive thirstiness and his usual outlandish rants and interruptions. Let s just say that everyone noticed.Trump couldn t take the heat, and he definitely cannot handle the humiliation that is following the debate. While several major media outlets are calling the debate a clear win for Clinton, Trump is trying to come up with reasons why he bombed so horribly (even though it was perfectly obvious that he would).The best excuse Trump has been able to come up with is beyond pathetic and nothing but a move of desperation. The Associated Press has reported that after the debate, the GOP nominee immediately told reporters that he was unable to perform to the best of his ability because there was something wrong with his microphone. And yet despite something being wrong with it, that mic seemed to work fine as he shouted over Hillary every few seconds. AP reported: Trump visited the media spin room after the Monday night debate and said, They gave me a defective mic! He said he wonder(s), was that on purpose? CBS s Sopan Deb also happened to be there and gave a little more detail into Trump s microphone conspiracy theory:TwitterTrump is seriously trying to claim that someone tried to sabotage the debate on purpose! What a moron. The truth is that Trump didn t prepare for the debate like Clinton did and even if he had spent a little more time preparing than tweeting, it wouldn t have mattered much he s completely unqualified for the White House. Last night, Hillary showed America that these two shouldn t even be up against each other. There is no comparison. Hillary looked like our next President, and Trump looked like a fraud and an imposter who should have never made it up on that stage.I wouldn t be surprised if Trump comes up with more lame stories about why his performance was compromised last night.Featured image via Win McNamee / Getty Images | 1real |
SOMALI PIRATE POSING AS A “REFUGEE” Found Covered In Blood After Stabbing Roommate 19 Times In German Government Funded Housing | Apparently free housing, food and spending money wasn t enough for this murderous thug posing as a helpless refugee A Somali pirate who was in jail in France for seven years has been jailed for another eleven years in Germany after murdering a fellow African while pretending to be an asylum seeker in a Berlin invader camp.The astonishing story of the 35-year-old African invader has been revealed in the Potsdam, Berlin-based M rkische Allgemeine newspaper.The Somali who has still not been named, apparently by court order provided an astonishing story which dramatically illustrated how hordes of fraudsters have taken advantage of deluded European liberals to invade and parasite off Europe.He entered Germany in May this year and joined in the general rush to claim asylum, the M rkische Allgemeine reported.The German liberals immediately gave him housing, food, and welfare money. He received an apartment which he shared with another African asylum seeker from Somalia in a building on the Potsdamer Strasse in Teltow (Potsdam-Mittelmark).He fell out with his flatmate, a 21-year-old, and in a murderous frenzy, stabbed him nineteen times, cutting his carotid artery. The 35-year-old fled the scene, but was easily spotted on the streets a few blocks away not only because of his skin color, but also because he was drenched in his murder victim s blood.The Potsdam regional court found him guilty of the latest murder and rejected his plea of manslaughter, saying that the nature of the victim s wounds showed clear premeditation. He was sentenced to eleven-and-half-years in jail.During the court proceedings, his pretrial statements to the police were read out, and his incredible story emerged. In these statements, the Somali admitted to the police that he had previously been jailed in France for seven years after being convicted of piracy off the horn of Africa.In addition, he said, he had killed another inmate while in prison in France, and upon his release, he had simply crossed the border into Germany, thrown away his identification papers, and joined the asylum queue in Berlin.The lack of identification papers is also the reason why the court has not ordered his name to be released because they do not know his real name or even his actual age.The court found that he had documents which gave two different birth dates, and he himself had claimed a third, while he had been registered in the German asylum system under three different names.The latter maneuver is an old trick used by Third World swindlers in Europe to triple their welfare benefits, and is a growing problem with the latest wave of incomers.Nonetheless, the Somali s successful exploitation of the asylum system wrecked only by his murderous behavior serves as a perfect case study in the criminal nature of the Third World invasion and of the stupidity of leftist Europeans in allowing the asylum racket to continue. Via: Maz-online and New Observer | 1real |
American Journalist Told to Leave Swedish No Go Zone by Police | American video journalist Tim Pool claims he was told to leave the Stockholm no go suburb of Rinkeby by police after masked men started following him. [American journalist Tim Pool has been in Sweden the past week investigating No Go Zones like Malmö’s infamous Rosengård suburb and various no go areas in the capital, Stockholm. As he was exploring the Stockholm suburb of Rinkeby, he claimed masked men approached him and police told him to leave. However, police deny he was escorted out of the area, Swedish broadcaster SVT reports. According to Pool, he wasn’t even filming when several men started following him and his group. He said police also started following him, and when the men put on masks Swedish officers told him to leave the area so as not to cause an incident. Pool released a video on his YouTube channel that shows him speaking with a Swedish photographer in the centre of Rinkeby. The area was recently plagued by looting and violence, including cars being set on fire, after a local man was arrested by police. The video then cuts to Pool saying police had told him the group needed to leave or up to fifty men could come and drastically escalate the tense situation. The video continues showing a Swedish police van following Pool and his associates away from the shopping centre for several minutes escorting them out of the No Go Zone. The police have fired back against Pool’s claims, saying the increased police presence was due to a “poetry event”. A spokesman said: “We had extra police on the ground today and tonight because of the poetry evening in Rinkeby because there will be so many visitors. ” The police alleged the reason they told Pool to leave was because he was filming locals and it might cause trouble because people in the area don’t like to be filmed. The shopping area in Rinkeby is where an Australian television crew was attacked last year. The Channel Nine crew had come to the area to investigate the effects of mass migration when they were approached by several men and were punched, kicked, and rammed with a car. Only months later in Husby, another no go suburb of Stockholm, a Norwegian TV crew was attacked in a cafe while they were interviewing economist Tino Sandandaji. Mr. Sandandaji recently released a book called Mass Challenge, a “sincere and analysis” of the country’s immigration policy, that was banned by a library in Stockholm for allegedly promoting racism. Follow Chris Tomlinson on Twitter at @TomlinsonCJ or email at ctomlinson@breitbart. com | 0fake |
An Open Letter to the Woman Who Told My Family to Go Back to China - The New York Times | Dear Madam: Maybe I should have let it go. Turned the other cheek. We had just gotten out of church, and I was with my family and some friends on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. We were going to lunch, trying to see if there was room in the Korean restaurant down the street. You were in a rush. It was raining. Our stroller and a gaggle of Asians were in your way. But I was, honestly, stunned when you yelled at us from down the block, “Go back to China!” I hesitated for a second and then sprinted to confront you. That must have startled you. You pulled out your iPhone in front of the Equinox and threatened to call the cops. It was comical, in retrospect. You might have been charged instead, especially after I walked away and you screamed, “Go back to your fucking country. ” “I was born in this country!” I yelled back. It felt silly. But how else to prove I belonged? This was not my first encounter, of course, with racist insults. Ask any and they’ll readily summon memories of schoolyard taunts, or disturbing encounters on the street or at the grocery store. When I posted on Twitter about what happened, an avalanche of people replied back to me with their own experiences. But for some reason — and, yes, it probably has to do with the political climate right now — this time felt different. Walking home later, a pang of sadness welled up inside me. You had on a nice rain coat. Your iPhone was a 6 Plus. You could have been a fellow parent in one of my daughters’ schools. You seemed, well, normal. But you had these feelings in you, and, the reality is, so do a lot of people in this country right now. Maybe you don’t know this, but the insults you hurled at my family get to the heart of the experience. It’s this persistent sense of otherness that a lot of us struggle with every day. That no matter what we do, how successful we are, what friends we make, we don’t belong. We’re foreign. We’re not American. It’s one of the reasons that Fox News segment the other day on Chinatown by Jesse Watters, with the karate and nunchucks and broken English, generated so much outrage. My parents fled mainland China for Taiwan ahead of the Communist takeover. They came to the United States for graduate school. They raised two children, both of whom went to Harvard. I work at The New York Times. Model minority, indeed. Yet somehow I still often feel like an outsider. And I wonder if that feeling will ever go away. Perhaps, more important, I wonder whether my two daughters who were with me today will always feel that way too. Yes, the outpouring of support online was gratifying. But, afterward, my who witnessed the whole thing, kept asking my wife, “Why did she say, ‘Go back to China?’ We’re not from China. ” No, we’re not, my wife said, and she tried to explain why you might have said that and why people shouldn’t judge others. We’re from America, she told my daughter. But sometimes people don’t understand that. I hope you do now. Sincerely, Michael Luo | 0fake |
World’s Hottest Hole: Iceland to Harness Molten Magma for Electricity, Could Power 50,000 Homes | By Lorraine Chow
Earth’s abundant inner heat, or geothermal energy, has incredible potential as a renewable energy source. For traditional geothermal projects, hot rocks produce steam for turbines. Over in Iceland, however, a consortium of researchers and companies want to dig much, much deeper into Earth’s crust in order to explore the renewable energy potential of molten magma.
The Iceland Deep Drilling Project (IDDP) is drilling a 5-kilometer (3.1-mile) hole into old lava flows in the Reykjanes, a region in southwest Iceland filled with geothermal sites. Once drilling is complete by the end of 2016, the Nordic nation will be home to the hottest hole in the world with temperatures between 400 and 1,000 degrees Celsius (or 752-1,832 degrees Fahrenheit), according to New Scientist .
This effort is being led by Icelandic energy companies such as Hitaveita Sudurnesja, Landsvirkjun and Orkuveita Reykjavíkur, as well as the National Energy Authority of Iceland.
Since Aug. 12, the IDDP’s rig—actually named “Thor” —has been drilling deep into a landward extension of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, an underwater mountain range that extends above sea level through the center of Iceland.
“People have drilled into hard rock at this depth, but never before into a fluid system like this,” Albert Albertsson, assistant director of a geothermal energy company involved in the project, explained to New Scientist.
At this depth, seawater that has penetrated the ocean bed has not only been superheated by magma, it’s also highly pressurized (more than 200 times atmospheric air pressure). The team expects to find water in the form of “ supercritical steam ,” aka “ dragon water ,” which is neither liquid nor steam but holds more heat energy than both.
Can ‘Dragon Water’ Power the Planet With Renewable Energy? https://t.co/P4wmMRVk61 @RenewablesNews @Good_Energy
— EcoWatch (@EcoWatch) November 6, 2015
Albertsson said that a well capable of harnessing this steam has an energy capacity of 50 megawatts, about 10 times more than a conventional geothermal well. Theoretically, IDDP’s new well could power 50,000 homes compared to the 5,000 homes powered by a single geothermal well.
“If they can get supercritical steam in deep boreholes, that will make an order of magnitude difference to the amount of geothermal energy the wells can produce,” Arnar Guðmundsson from Invest in Iceland, a government agency that promotes energy development, told New Scientist.
If this project this sounds a little dicey, as Motherboard explained, this isn’t the first time IDDP has tapped into Icelandic lava power:
“In 2009, an IDDP rig located in Krafla, northeast Iceland, accidentally struck a magma reservoir just over a mile underground. Excited about the prospects of new geothermal energy, the project partnered with Iceland’s National Power Company, and installed a perforated steel casing at the bottom of the well. This successfully allowed the flow of magma to create superheated, extremely pressurized steam at temperatures exceeding 800°F—at the time, a world record for geothermal heat.
“Power created by the Krafla borehole was never fed back into the grid, and the project was shuttered in 2012 after a critical valve needed repairing.”
“In the future, the success of this drilling and research project could lead to a revolution in the energy efficiency of high-temperature geothermal areas worldwide,” said Wilfred Elders, a professor emeritus of geology at the University of California, Riverside who was involved in an earlier IDDP project.
According to DeSmogBlog , New Zealand, Indonesia, the Philippines, the U.S. and Mexico already have commercial geothermal plants.
Iceland, known for its numerous bubbling hot springs and geysers, already heats up to 90 percent of its homes and supplies about a third of its electricity with geothermal.
Lorraine Chow is a reporter for EcoWatch. She tweets @lorrainelchow
Source: EcoWatch
| 1real |
Hamilton Cast Added ‘Sisterhood’ To ‘America The Beautiful’ And Conservatives Are Losing Their MINDS (TWEETS) | The Super Bowl had not yet begun and Trump fans were already throwing a tantrum not over something Lady Gaga did, but because of what is normally one of their favorite songs: America the Beautiful.The song was performed by three members of the cast of Hamilton, Phillipa Soo, Ren e Elise Goldsberry and Jasmine Cephas Jones, and it was just as excellent as one would expect. But there was a problem at least, there was a problem according to the Stupid Part of America. When the trip reached the line And crown thy good with brotherhood, two of the women added and sisterhood. Now to most people, recognizing that women are people and Americans is not a huge deal. The move was largely celebrated on social media as an attempt to stand up to Republicans bullying of women and repeated attempts to deprive them of healthcare and control their bodies. But it was for that very reason that Trump fans went nuts on Twitter following the song. WHAT THE FUCK INSTEAD OF AND SOUND THY GOOD WITH BROTHERHOOD THE LIBERAL SUPER BOWL SINGERS SAID BROTHERHOOD AND SISTERHOOD IM SO DONE, one enraged conservative who apparently doesn t even know the original lyrics writes. Another complains that the women changed the words for their polical correctness agenda. No, it s just brotherhood. Not sisterhood. Stupid cunts. You don t remix the shit. Just sing like you re told, one man added, apparently unaware that the did sing just as they were hired to do.#AmericatheBeautiful does not contain the word sisterhood. Don't change the words for your polical correctness agenda. #SuperBowl Larry Barringer (@LarryStLCards) February 5, 2017So much agenda already in this superbowl. Really feminist, crown thy good with brotherhood .and sisterhood. Michael Coulter (@Mike_Coulter93) February 5, 2017No, it's just brotherhood. Not sisterhood. Stupid cunts. You don't remix the shit. Just sing like you're told. D'Lone Woof (@underscore_tim) February 5, 2017And #sisterhood? Smh. when will liberals stop pushing their agenda down ceveryone's throat Kevin J. Cooper (@REALKevinCooper) February 6, 2017WHAT THE FUCK INSTEAD OF "AND SOUND THY GOOD WITH BROTHERHOOD" THE LIBERAL SUPER BOWL SINGERS SAID "BROTHERHOOD AND SISTERHOOD" IM SO DONE Resolve (@ResolveDZN) February 5, 2017"For brotherhood and sisterhood". How about you just sing the song you smug Hamilton cunts. Terrible over singing trash with a "message". Jack Miller (@Tarrnack) February 5, 2017"and sisterhood"Cant we do anything without bringing your social agenda into it? ndrew ? (@drewluminati_) February 5, 2017"And sisterhood.." Fuck that. Changing the lyrics of America the Beautiful to fit the modernization of the country is fucked up. Tyler Marks (@TylerCMarks) February 5, 2017Oh, okay. America the Beautiful is no longer acceptable, needed to add sisterhood too. Got it. Come the fuck on. #ItAintBrokeDontFixIt #SB51 Marie (@RIEW417) February 5, 2017Did they really just say sisterhood, fuck you that's not the lyrics cobi (@c0bi1) February 5, 2017"sisterhood"? just sing the damn song. lance (@aguyfromtx) February 5, 2017did that CUNT just add "and sisterhood" to america the beautiful brendan feeney (@ChuckieFeenster) February 5, 2017And sisterhood???? Fuck you, just sing the song!!!!! El Guapo (@johnnymclean13) February 5, 2017Did they really just say "brotherhood (and sisterhood)" in America the Beautiful during the Super Bowl Smh, fuck feminists. Ethan (@Iplayball_UHC) February 5, 2017Conservatives are terrible, and we will continue to see many, many examples of this as Donald Trump s presidency rolls on. Watch the Super Bowl moment that sent the Right into fits of rage below:Featured image via screengrab | 1real |
HILLARY CLINTON CRASHING IN POLLS: Moves To Obama Strategy…Using Taxpayer Money To Give Away Free Sh*T | So, the working people of America are basically supposed to sit back and watch Bernie Sanders and Hillary compete to see who can pander to get more votes by promising Americans and illegal aliens more free sh*t with our hard earned money? Like healthcare, education is a sclerotic, overexpensive, underperforming industry. Both have strong parallels: they re dominated by government subsidies and controls, though not entirely socialized; they re perhaps the only growth industries in our moribund economy; and they dominate the thought life of the nation. As Arnold Kling and Nick Schulz pointed out in 2011:These are our foremost growth sectors the ones most central to employment and consumption; the ones that, increasingly, drive our economy. And it is in precisely these two sectors that the case for extensive government intervention and planning, if not outright control, is dominant and becoming ever more so.If there is to be any hope of reversing this trend, champions of market economics must come to see these two sectors as the front lines in the battle for capitalism. At stake is not only an ideological or theoretical point, but also American prosperity. The historical record makes this clear: In the nations where it was practiced, government control of the old commanding heights of the economy made those industries less efficient and less innovative bringing overall economic performance down with them.Today, Hillary Clinton is touting her plan for Obamacare-izing higher education. Competing Democratic presidential candidates Martin O Malley and Bernie Sanders have already proposed essentially socializing college straight up. Clinton s proposal, like Obamacare, is also collectivist and unjustified wealth redistribution, but with a more complicated, less direct, crony capitalist flavor. In other words, it s not direct socialism, but it might as well be.By mucking around this way, Clinton gains the benefit of deception: She can argue that both the left and the right (by right, she of course means the craziest of Republicans, not actual conservatives) have proposed elements of her plan. So she gets to smear her Frankenstein with pretty bipartisan makeup. And the average voter won t care, because the average voter doesn t give jack about enslaving his children (or other people s children) to the unseen but growing monstrosity of federal debt, as long as he gets feel-goodies now, regardless of whether they actually benefit anyone. But it s still a Frankenstein.What Does Hillary Clinton Propose, Exactly? Before we get into the mud-slinging, let s do what most journalists do not and give some actual hard facts about Clinton s proposal. (Do any of you also scan news articles looking for actual facts instead of paid spokespeople s lying spin? It s hard to find those, isn t it?) The full proposal doesn t seem available (probably so they can tweak its details in response to initial criticism); reporters have gotten three fact sheets, MSNBC says. Inside Higher Ed kindly posted them. A news summary of the major points: Under the plan, which was outlined by Clinton advisers on Sunday, about $175 billion in grants would go to states that guarantee students would not have to take out loans to cover tuition at four-year public colleges and universities. In return for the money, states would have to end budget cuts to increase spending over time on higher education, while also working to slow the growth of tuition, thought the plan does not require states to cap it. (NYT) military veterans, lower-income students and those who complete a national service program, like AmeriCorps, would go to school for free in the Clinton plan (AP). She would also expand income-based repayment programs, allowing every student borrower to enroll in a plan that would cap their payments at 10 percent of their income with remaining debt forgiven after 20 years. (AP) Student borrowers would be expected to work at least 10 hours a week to contribute, while their families would continue contributing under the current income-based model. Clinton s plan would also expand a tax credit from $1,000 to $2,500 for families paying for college. (MSNBC) Her campaign says she will create a dedicated fund for Historically Black Colleges and Universities, and will expand AmeriCorps from 75,000 to 250,000 members. (MSNBC) Mrs. Clinton would pay for the [supposedly $350 billion] plan by capping the value of itemized deductions that wealthy families can take on their tax returns. (NYT)So more income redistribution and more federal micromanagement because, clearly, central planners know better how to manage college costs than colleges and families. Topped off, of course, by (what else?) playing self-appointed Robin Hood against people who earn lots less money than she does. Envy and greed are our society s favorite sins, after all.Federal Meddling Is the Problem, Not the AnswerThe most expensive portion of Clinton s proposal involves bullying states into following federal marching orders in order for them to receive cash the feds scooped from taxpayers.For entire story: The Federalist | 1real |
Merkel wants initial coalition deal with SPD by mid-January | BERLIN (Reuters) - German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Monday she hoped to conclude exploratory talks with the Social Democrats (SPD) on forming a government by mid-January so that both parties can launch official negotiations on renewing their alliance. Merkel made the comments after she was asked if comments by French President Emmanuel Macron that he hoped to make progress with Germany on ideas to reform the euro zone by March were realistic. We want to build a stable government, Merkel said. This means that the success of the exploratory talks means, in the view of the CDU, as well as the CSU, that we need to reach agreement on specific issues during the exploratory talks. From our perspective, anything short of that would mean the exploratory talks were not successful, Merkel added. | 0fake |
White Supremacist PAC Launches Radio Ad Touting Trump As Champion Of Christians | Remember the pro-Trump white supremacist PAC that was placing robocalls on The Donald s behalf during the primaries? Yeah, well, they re back. And this time, they have unleashed a xenophobic radio ad touting Donald Trump as the champion of Christians.William Daniel Johnson, a Los Angeles attorney, was happy to foot the bill for the new ad via the super-PAC American National. The white nationalist PAC is not actually affiliated with the Trump campaign, but man, they just love the GOP nominee and his bigoted messages. Our country is at a crossroads and time is running out, the ad begins. It then throws in some good old-fashioned anti-brown people fearmongering and asks, Do you want a strong leader who will secure our borders and stop the flow of illegal aliens and radical Islamic terrorists? And follows up with a reminder that a vote for Trump is clearly a vote for Jesus, asking, Do you want a president who will safeguard the interests of Christians? So just who is William Johnson? Well, for starters, he a well-known white supremacist who says he wants to create a white ethno-state because that s the only way western civilization and the white race will survive. Johnson is also serving as the president of the American Freedom Party (AFP). According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the AFP was initially established by racist Southern California skinheads, and aims to deport immigrants and return the United States to white rule. There was an uproar when it was discovered that the Trump campaign had chosen Johnson to serve as a delegate. Following the backlash, the campaign claimed it was all a mistake due to a database error and Johnson stepped down. The AFP said it was no big deal because plenty of other of white supremacists were serving as Trump delegates.The robocalls Johnson sponsored during the primaries featured such phrases as, We don t need Muslims. We need smart, well-educated white people. In another call, an older woman identified herself as a proud member of the AFP and said, I am voting for Donald Trump because he will not only be presidential, he will put America first. Furthermore, he will respect all women and will help preserve Western civilization. Trump was pressured into giving one of his half-ass condemnations of the robocalls, but he followed it up by excusing the calls as simply the result of people being angry. So no harm, no foul.Johnson also set up a 24/7 hotline offering legal advice and emotional support to Trump fans who felt they had been bullied by one of Hillary s evil liberal minions.The radio ad is scheduled to air in Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Missouri, Nevada, Oregon, and Tennessee.Featured image via Christopher Gregory/Getty Images | 1real |
Senate committee questions Trump's nuclear authority | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. Senate committee on Tuesday held the first congressional hearing in more than four decades on the president’s authority to launch a nuclear strike, amid concern that tensions over North Korea’s weapons program could lead to war. Senator Bob Corker, Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, held the hearing as President Donald Trump wrapped up a 12-day trip to Asia largely dominated by concerns about Pyongyang’s nuclear ambitions. Corker acknowledged that senators, including Democrats and Trump’s fellow Republicans, have raised questions about Trump’s authority to wage war, use nuclear weapons and enter into or end international agreements. Trump has traded insults and threats with North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un and used expressions like “fire and fury” to hint that any use of lethal force against North Korea would be overwhelming. On Sunday, he again insulted Kim by calling him “short and fat.” Corker himself warned last month that Trump might be putting the United States “on the path to World War Three.” But on Tuesday Corker said the hearing was not intended to target Trump. “This is not specific to anybody,” he said. Democrats made clear they were concerned about Trump. “We are concerned that the president of the United States is so unstable, is so volatile, has a decision-making process that is so quixotic, that he might order a nuclear weapons strike that is wildly out of step with U.S. national security interests,” Senator Chris Murphy said. During the hearing, retired General Robert Kehler, former commander of U.S. Strategic Command, said the military can refuse to follow what it considers an illegal order, even a nuclear one. But it was not clear after questions from committee members how that process would work. Some senators want legislation to alter the president’s nuclear authority. Corker said he did not now support that idea. “I do not see a legislative solution today, but that doesn’t mean that over the course of the next several months one might develop,” he told reporters after the hearing. Some senators seemed to bristle about the hearing’s tone, warning against comments depicting Trump as unable to strongly retaliate for any attack. “Every single word that has been uttered this morning at this hearing is going to be analyzed in Pyongyang,” said Republican Senator Jim Risch, who is in line to become chairman after Corker retires next year. | 0fake |
5 Fort Hood Soldiers Dead and 4 Missing in Texas Floods - The New York Times | Five soldiers were killed and four were missing after a truck overturned Thursday during a routine training mission at the Fort Hood military post in Texas, the Army said. Three other soldiers were rescued from water near the vehicle and were listed in stable condition. They were taken to a medical center on the post, according to a statement. Chris Haug, a spokesman for Fort Hood, said that floodwaters from recent rains were believed to have overturned the truck, a Light Medium Tactical Vehicle, while the soldiers were using a low water crossing, but that the episode would be investigated. Mr. Haug said the soldiers were on a mission that “they do every day,” and driving on “a normal dirt road” that was not known to be a problem. The area has been inundated with heavy rain over the past week. Around the time of the accident, concerns about flooding had caused emergency personnel to close a paved road that runs parallel to the dirt road the soldiers were traveling on. “All the low water crossings are potentially dangerous when we’ve had this much rain,” said Tyler Broadway, another Fort Hood spokesman. The accident, which took place about 12 miles north of the base’s main area, was reported shortly after 11 a. m. on Thursday. Search parties were sent immediately. Rescue teams were searching for the missing soldiers by air, land and water, the statement said. The bodies of the dead soldiers were recovered downstream from where the truck overturned. Their names will not be released until their families are notified. The National Weather Service issued a flash flood watch for all of northern and central Texas on Thursday afternoon, with rainstorms expected to continue through Friday afternoon. May brought a amount of rain to the state, resulting in the deaths of at least six other people. Gov. Greg Abbott issued a statement, saying, “Texas stands ready to provide any assistance to Fort Hood as they deal with this tragedy. ” This is not the first fatal episode in recent months during a training exercise at Fort Hood. In November, a Black Hawk helicopter crashed during an exercise at the post, killing four crew members. | 0fake |
The Ruthlessly Effective Rebranding of Europe’s New Far Right | The Ruthlessly Effective Rebranding of Europe’s New Far Right Sasha Polakow-Suransky, Guardian, November 1, 2016
In April 2002, Jean-Marie Le Pen stunned all of Europe by defeating the socialist candidate, Lionel Jospin, in the first round of the French presidential election, and advancing to the final round between the top two candidates. Terrified by the prospect of a far-right victory, the French left–including communists, Greens and the Socialist party–threw their support behind the incumbent president, Jacques Chirac , a pillar of the centre-right establishment who had served as mayor of Paris for 18 years before becoming president in 1995. This electoral strategy effectively isolated Le Pen’s Front National (FN), depicting it as a cancerous force in the French body politic.
Two weeks later, on 5 May, Chirac won the election with an astronomical 82% of the vote, trouncing Le Pen by the biggest margin in a French presidential election since 1848. Raucous celebrations spilled into the streets of Paris. “We have gone through a time of serious anxiety for the country–but tonight France has reaffirmed its attachment to the values of the republic,” Chirac declared in his victory speech . Then, speaking to the joyous crowds in the Place de la République, he lauded them for rejecting “intolerance and demagoguery”.
But May 2002 was not, in fact, a moment of triumph. Rather it was the dying gasp of an old order, in which the fate of European nations was controlled by large establishment parties.
Jean-Marie Le Pen was an easy target for the left, and for establishment figures such as Chirac. He was a political provocateur who appealed as much to antisemites and homophobes as to voters upset about immigration, drawing his support largely from the most reactionary elements of the old Catholic right. In other words, he was a familiar villain–and his ideology represented an archaic France, a defeated past. Moreover, he did not seriously aim for power, and never really came close to acquiring it; his role was to be a rabble-rouser and to inject his ideas into the national debate.
Europe’s new far right is different. From Denmark to the Netherlands to Germany, a new wave of rightwing parties has emerged over the past decade-and-a-half, and they are casting a much wider net than Jean-Marie Le Pen ever attempted to. And by deftly appealing to fear, nostalgia and resentment of elites, they are rapidly broadening their base.
Le Pen’s own daughter is a prime example of the new ambitions of the right: unlike her incendiary father, Marine Le Pen is running a disciplined political operation and has already proven that her party can win upwards of 40% of the vote in regions from Calais in the north to the Côte d’Azur in the south. She and her Danish and Dutch counterparts are not–as some on the left would like to believe–neo-Nazis or inconsequential extremists with fringe ideas lacking popular appeal.
These parties have built a coherent ideology and steadily chipped away at the establishment parties’ hold on power by pursuing a new and devastatingly effective electoral strategy. They have made a very public break with the symbols of the old right’s past, distancing themselves from skinheads, neo-Nazis and homophobes. They have also deftly co-opted the causes, policies and rhetoric of their opponents. They have sought to outflank the left when it comes to defending a strong welfare state and protecting social benefits that they claim are threatened by an influx of freeloading migrants.
They have effectively claimed the progressive causes of the left–from gay rights to women’s equality and protecting Jews from antisemitism–as their own, by depicting Muslim immigrants as the primary threat to all three groups. As fear of Islam has spread, with their encouragement, they have presented themselves as the only true defenders of western identity and western liberties–the last bulwark protecting a besieged Judeo-Christian civilisation from the barbarians at the gates.
These parties have steadily filled an electoral vacuum left open by social democratic and centre-right parties, who ignored voters’ growing anger over immigration–some of it legitimate, some of it bigoted–or simply waited too long to address it.
They have shed some of the right’s most unsavoury baggage while responding to both economic anxiety and fear of terrorism by blending a nativist economic policy–more welfare, but only for us –and tough anti-immigration and border security measures. Their message is beginning to resonate widely with a fearful population that believes the liberal governing elite no longer listens to them.
Brexit was just the start. Europe’s new far right is poised to transform the continent’s political landscape–either by winning elections or simply by pulling a besieged political centre so far in its direction that its ideas become the new normal. And when that happens, groups that would never have contemplated voting for a far-right party 10 years ago–the young, gay people, Jews, feminists–may join the working-class voters who have already abandoned parties of the left to become the new backbone of the populist right.
On 6 May 2002, one day after revellers filled the streets of Paris to celebrate Chirac’s historic victory, the flamboyant and iconoclastic leader of the Dutch far right, Pim Fortuyn, was gunned down by a radical animal rights activist as he emerged from a radio interview. His assassin later claimed that he had killed Fortuyn to stop him from using Muslims as “scapegoats”. In national elections nine days later, Fortuyn’s eponymous party–the Pim Fortuyn List– became the second largest in the Netherlands with 17% of the vote.
Fortuyn, a former communist and openly gay man who boasted of sleeping with Muslim immigrants while calling for a ban on Muslim immigration, was an electrifying figure in a country known for its staid politics. His time in the limelight was short but transformative.
It was Fortuyn who blazed the trail for the new generation of far-right leaders across Europe. He may not have intended to be a pioneer, but his brand of plain-spoken political incorrectness and his depiction of Islamic culture as a “backwards” and reactionary threat to the hard-won progressive values of western Europe would provide a potent template for a modernised far right. His ideological inheritors in Dutch politics, as well as the revamped Front National in France, the Danish People’s Party and Germany’s Alternative für Deutschland have all emulated Fortuyn in their own ways.
Fortuyn proved that the winning argument for the European far right was not a US-style appeal to conservative religious values, but rather to claim it was “defending secular, progressive culture from the threat of immigration,” argues Merijn Oudenampsen of Tilburg University. The Netherlands was a perfect laboratory for this new strategy because, unlike France, it did not have a strong contingent of religious traditionalists opposed to women’s liberation and gay rights.
Before founding his own party in 2002, Fortuyn had tried to join an establishment centre-right party, the People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD), in the late 1990s. The party’s then-leader, Frits Bolkestein, who had been one of the first figures to speak critically about immigration in the early 1990s, remembers Fortuyn as a talented but inflammatory politician. “He had a thoroughly theatrical personality, and that played in his favour,” said Bolkestein, now in his 80s, from his office overlooking the canals of Amsterdam. “I didn’t want him to be in my parliamentary group, so I cold-shouldered him . . . He would have acted as a fragmentation bomb.”
Fortuyn took his explosive rhetoric elsewhere and, by creating a new type of far-right politics in progressive garb–“a form of xenophobia ideally suited to a nation that prides itself on its tolerance,” as a New Yorker profile once described it–he redirected the entire national debate in a way that has endured long after his death.
Two years after Fortuyn was killed, the Netherlands was traumatised by another political assassination. Early one morning in November 2004, the filmmaker Theo van Gogh was murdered by a young Dutch-Moroccan, Mohammed Bouyeri, who shot van Gogh eight times, slashed his throat and then pinned a letter to his chest with a knife. The letter was a death threat aimed at the Somali-born Dutch parliamentarian Ayaan Hirsi Ali –a vocal critic of Islam who was soon placed under the protection of the Dutch security services.
The two assassinations shook the Netherlands to its core and catapulted a little-known and theatrically coiffed politician, Geert Wilders , to popularity as an ideological successor to Fortuyn. Wilders had also flirted with Bolkestein’s VVD, beginning his political career as a staffer in the party office. In late 2004, he split off and formed his own. With Hirsi Ali in hiding, he quickly became the most prominent anti-immigration voice in the country–and has remained so ever since.
For those who cared to look, the political ground had already begun to shift. Six months before Chirac’s trouncing of Le Pen and Fortuyn’s assassination, Denmark had an election. On its surface the result was not a historical watershed; the centre-right Venstre party ousted the Social Democrats, handing power from one establishment party to the other. What had changed was that the Danish People’s Party, which had campaigned on an overtly anti-immigrant platform, took 12% of the vote–transforming it into a kingmaker in parliament.
Unlike France, which revelled in its triumph over the FN, or the Netherlands, where the remains of Fortuyn’s party failed to become a real parliamentary force, the DPP immediately became a serious player with real influence over policy. And it was not only taking votes from the right; it was also attracting disgruntled social democratic voters who felt that their leaders had abandoned them.
The DPP had crafted a social and economic policy that was in many ways more socialist than that of the Social Democrats–promising better health care, better care for the elderly, and more subsidised housing. As the outgoing Social Democratic prime minister Poul Nyrup Rasmussen told me in 2002, a few months after his defeat: “They took a part of our rhetoric and tried to sell it as a new package to the people, and with some success, one may say.” Back then, Naser Khader, a Danish member of parliament who immigrated from Syria as a child, argued that “the best way to weaken the DPP is to give them influence”. He was wrong.
The headquarters of the Front National sits on a quiet street in the unassuming Paris suburb of Nanterre, near a car repair shop and a Portuguese restaurant. Only when you approach the grey building with its mostly closed blue shutters do the armed guards come into view. In her modest second-floor office, surrounded by books and a cloud of vape smoke, Marine Le Pen explained earlier this year how she transformed a party previously known for calling the Holocaust a “ detail of history ” into a genuine contender for the presidency.
“Voluntarily or not, he gave ammunition to our adversaries,” Le Pen said of her father. But she insisted that she has now cleaned house. “I fired them all . . . all those people who expressed an ideology or held views that I found unacceptable.”
Julien Rochedy, a 28-year-old who headed the FN’s youth wing but has since left the party, told me that he believes the changes are real. Whereas the party’s former leader used to pepper his speeches with lines that made Jews’ hair stand on end, today, if someone tells a racist joke within the party, “you will be attacked straight away,” Rochedy said. “There is such self-discipline these days. They are so afraid they’ll be accused once again of being antisemitic or racist.”
Still, the party’s detractors continue to level the same charges at the FN, which outrages Marine Le Pen . “Today our adversaries no longer have that ammunition, and they repeat on loop” old tropes about fascists and racists. “At a certain point this argument loses its force,” she continued, “because voters see clearly that there’s absolutely nothing in our platform that remotely resembles fascism or racism.”
Le Pen has done more than kick out the most blatant racists and antisemites. She has consciously crafted a campaign designed to appeal to voters of the centre and left–and other constituencies–who could never have imagined voting for her father’s Front National.
As Le Monde’s Olivier Faye has written , she is “trying to erase another image that has stuck to the skin of the FN–that of homophobia”. And it is working: a survey showed that her share of the vote among married gay couples in the 2015 regional elections was over 32%–up from just 19% in a similar poll from 2012.
As Le Pen has filled her inner circle with more and more openly gay advisers and party leaders, she has also made her pitch to Jewish voters more explicit: “For a lot of French Jews, the FN appears to be the only movement that can defend them from this new antisemitism nourished in the banlieues ,” Le Pen told me. “In a very natural way they have turned toward the FN, because the FN is capable, I think, of protecting them from that.”
Among French voters threatened by the country’s new diversity, rejection of a multicultural society increasingly takes the form of longing for a bygone era. And peddling nostalgia is the centrepiece of many new far-right parties across Europe . In France, Marine Le Pen has promised a return to a time when the French had their own currency and monetary policy, when there were fewer mosques and less halal meat, when no one complained about nativity scenes in public buildings, and when French schools promoted a republican ethos of assimilation.
“A growing number of French people feel uncomfortable in their own country,” the prominent philosopher, Alain Finkielkraut , declared in January during a debate with the centre-right presidential candidate Alain Juppé–who has taken a less strident line on Islam and migration than his rival Nicolas Sarkozy. Finkielkraut depicted contemporary France as a country of halal butchers and tea shops filled only with men, pleading that “the public good isn’t in the clouds, it’s made from tangible things–the French of Proust and Montaigne . . . the Jardin du Luxembourg and the cows of Normandy”.
Finkielkraut, a 67-year-old Jewish liberal, is not an admirer of the Front National, but Marine Le Pen’s deliberate appeals to Jews and gay people have given political expression to an argument that he first made more than a decade ago–that the left, with its indulgence of Islam, poses a greater threat to France than the far right. After Chirac “saved” the republic from Jean-Marie Le Pen in 2002, Finkielkraut watched the celebrations in the streets and warned that the victors were the real danger: “The future of hate is in their camp and not in the camp of those nostalgic for Vichy,” he wrote, “ . . . in the camp of the multicultural society and not that of the ethnic nation–in the camp of respect, not that of rejection.”
Fourteen years later, after the terrorist attacks on Charlie Hebdo, the Bataclan and Nice, Finkielkraut is even more certain he was correct. “Anti-racism today frequently serves as a pretext for not seeing the true danger that threatens us,” he told me when we met in his Paris apartment this summer. While he is still no fan of the FN, he believes it has changed and argues that it “should be resisted, but for what it is today and not what it was in the past, and not in the name of anti-fascism”. The French must, he insisted, “avoid simplistic analogies with the 1930s. We must not mistake what era we live in. Europe doesn’t only have demons; it also has enemies, and it needs to know how to fight those enemies.”
He worries that integration has been such a failure that France will have to “reconquer” its “lost territories”–by which he means the suburbs surrounding Paris. “Integrating people is not telling them ‘You are how you are and we are how we are’ . . . Integration means making them an integral part of our civilisation.” And if that doesn’t happen, he warned darkly, “at best we’ll have secession and at worst civil war”. Continued immigration from Muslim countries, he argues, is nothing less than the “planned demise of Europe”.
Across the country, nostalgia for an older, whiter France has become a potent political force. In the southern city of Béziers, Mayor Robert Ménard, a former Trotskyist who cofounded the press freedom group Reporters Without Borders , is seeking to place a moratorium on the opening of kebab shops and has renamed a street after one of the French officers who joined a failed coup against De Gaulle in 1961 to prevent Algerian independence . Ménard comes from a family of pieds-noirs , French settlers in Algeria. He regards the Evian accords that ended the Algerian war as a “capitulation”, and those who tried to preserve French Algeria as heroes.
This nostalgia has an unmistakable appeal, but not necessarily for the sort of voters one might expect. Whereas young Britons overwhelmingly voted to remain in the EU and the elderly voted to leave, in France it is the opposite. According to Julian Rochedy, the former FN youth leader, appeals to nostalgia work better with the young in France–who dream of an era they never witnessed–than with the old, who lived through the era Marine Le Pen promises to restore. It is older voters, Rochedy argues, who are the greatest obstacle to Le Pen’s victory. “They are afraid of leaving the euro,” he says. “They are afraid of huge changes.” Rochedy is convinced that the FN will never win simply by fetishising the past. “They just want to go back 30 years,” he said of his erstwhile colleagues. “It’s a discourse that doesn’t at all take into account the world as it is and what France has become.”
Even if Le Pen cannot win over enough older voters for her to become president, there is one ageing constituency that has already moved significantly to the right–the former members of what used to be the largest communist party in western Europe.
As the French Communist party collapsed, its supporters were left rudderless. According to Andrew Hussey, a Liverpool-born academic who teaches in Paris, the technocratic leaders of the Socialist party– many of them graduates of the ultra-elite Ecole Nationale d’Administration–“are so disconnected from ordinary people” that even former Marxists won’t consider voting for them. Distrustful of the establishment and searching for a state that protects them, many have turned to the FN. “I think you’ve got a big political question here about who looks after you,” Hussey said. “This is a very communist way of thinking.”
Le Pen knows that she is attracting these people. Many of her supporters “used to be socialists, but they aren’t any more”, she told me. Although she prefers to avoid the phrase welfare state–“That’s a socialist concept,” she insisted–Le Pen has appealed directly to this yearning for a large and nurturing state that fights for the common man and not the rich.
“I defend fraternity–the idea that a developed country should be able to be able to provide the poorest with the minimum needed to live with dignity as a human being. The French state no longer does that,” she told me. “We’re in a world today in which you either defend the interests of the people or the interests of the banks.” And she has seen results. She points to the northern Pas-de-Calais region. “It was socialist-communist for 80 years,” she says. “I won 45%.”
At the same time as Marine Le Pen was working to “de-demonise” the FN, the leaders of the Dutch far right successfully seized the mantle of radicalism by positioning itself as the only force that dares to challenge an out-of-touch political establishment, and the only party willing to speak out about what many voters fear: extremist Islam.
Geert Wilders and his Party for Freedom (PVV) have surpassed the Dutch Labour party to take up a close second place in polls ahead of the March 2017 election. Last September, Wilders declared that Europe was facing an “ Islamic invasion ”–the sort of comments that landed him in court this week on charges of inciting racial hatred , which he dismisses as an attack on freedom of expression.
The presence of “masses of young men in their 20s with beards singing ‘Allahu Akbar’ across Europe”, Wilders warned at the peak of last year’s refugee crisis, posed a dire threat to “our prosperity, our security, our culture and identity”. Across the country, grassroots groups responded to Wilders’s warning, attempting to block the resettlement of asylum seekers in their towns. Last October, Klaas Dijkhoff, the deputy minister responsible for refugee resettlement, arrived for a visit to the tiny north-eastern village of Oranje, where the Dutch government had decided to place 700 refugees. Outraged locals blocked the road leading to town, kicked Dijkhoff’s car and tore off its rearview mirrors. A few days later, near Utrecht, an asylum centre was attacked by masked men with smoke bombs and fireworks.
In the decade following the assassinations of Fortuyn and Van Gogh, the integration of Muslim immigrants became the most divisive issue in Dutch politics. Suddenly, Turkish and Moroccan-born Dutch citizens became “Muslims”. And as the public debate over Islam and migration grew even more hostile, even the most basic forms of visible religious observance–wearing the hijab, buying halal meat, fasting during Ramadan–became politically loaded.
The Dutch Labour MP Ahmed Marcouch, who came to the Netherlands from rural Morocco when he was 10, recounted how controversies have erupted everywhere from supermarkets to classrooms. It is a jolt to the traditionally liberal Netherlands when teenage girls tell their male teachers they can’t shake hands, or that they fast and pray while many other Dutch kids are out drinking and having sex. As Marcouch remarked, it runs against everything that Dutch youth culture promotes.
Wilders’s PVV has capitalised on this cultural angst by using simple and deliberately brash slogans about immigration, crime, and refugees–one of his latest memes is simply “De-Islamise”–to win over voters who feel that everything familiar to them is slipping away.
By framing its anti-migrant politics as a battle against imperious elites and political correctness, the PVV has been able to capitalise on a panoply of grievances, from anger over asylum seekers to Euroscepticism. Meanwhile, many causes of the radical left–including anti-racism and anti-colonialism–have now become establishment thinking in the Netherlands. “Idealism has been bureaucratised,” argues the journalist Bas Heijne, who writes a column in the liberal daily newspaper NRC Handelsblad. “And when the establishment enforces universalism, you react against it.” That’s why there is such a strong anti-PC tone to the Dutch right: do not tell us what to say, what to celebrate and who we must live next to.
Just as Marine Le Pen’s FN has become a huge presence on social media in France, the right is in the midst of colonising the Dutch media. Geen Stijl (“No Style”), a popular Breitbart-style news site featuring abrasive articles and videos, encourages its best and angriest commenters to visit mainstream news sites and go on the attack. “It is massively important,” says Tilburg University’s Merijn Oudenampsen, “like a social movement”. The site began as a blog dedicated to those who felt politically homeless after Fortuyn’s murder, and has since become a ubiquitous presence in Dutch public debate, with an army of “reactors” on Twitter. According to Oudenampsen, some politicians have told him that Geen Stijl is the first site they check in the morning.
The right’s newfound media clout has also helped shape what the journalist Kustaw Bessems, from the leftwing Volkskrant newspaper, sees as a new, inverted, form of political correctness. In the old days, he says, there were taboos enforced by the left: badmouth immigrants and “you were immediately called a racist and extreme right and basically pressured to shut up”. Now, it’s the other way around. “As soon as you say anything other than ‘immigration is a problem’ or ‘Islam is the cause of terrorism’ . . . the thought police immediately jump on your neck to correct you.”
A Dutch government official who focuses on security issues complained that even as the integration of Muslim immigrants and the threat of radical Islam had become the most heated and polarising issues in the Netherlands, almost none of the feverish public debate was informed by knowledge of Islamism or terrorism. While politicians fan the flames of fear, the official said, “the economists look for the economic roots of the problem, sociologists look for social causes and the anthropologists try to explain jihadi culture–but none of them have any idea about theology”. Even scholars of radicalisation tend to study today’s extremists through the historical lens of the European radical left–which does little to explain what leads a small number of young Muslim men such as Van Gogh’s killer, Mohamed Bouyeri, to devote themselves to the cause of jihad. “It’s easy to be a Marxist,” the security official quipped. “It’s fucking hard to be a salafi.”
As the perception that the state is helpless to prevent the radicalisation of Muslim teenagers deepens and the fear of terrorism increases, so does the share of voters who are newly receptive to the far right’s tirades about “Islamisation”. These days it is not only anti-migration activists pushing back against the bureaucratised consensus. There are also many disappointed progressives–the people who saw the cultural victories of the 1960s and 1970s as major battles that had long since been won, making sexual freedom, feminism and gay rights an unquestioned part of Dutch society. Suddenly those old victories seem tenuous. “There is a sense that, ‘We are welcoming and then they do this,’ says Bas Heijne. “They have been terribly let down in their good intentions.” And in such an environment, traditionally leftist constituencies such as gay people and Jews feel threatened–and some have become reflexively suspicious of Muslims.
The stereotype that observant Muslims hate gay men and lesbians has become so entrenched in the Netherlands that neither side can fathom evidence to the contrary. When the Moroccan-born Labour MP Ahmed Marcouch first joined in Amsterdam’s legendary gay pride parade , he was, as he puts it, the “first hetero-active Muslim” to participate. The gay community feared violence from extremists; conservative Muslims were baffled and angry. Both groups concluded, “Oh, maybe Marcouch is homosexual too,” he says with a laugh. Neither group could imagine a straight Muslim doing what he did.
But public displays of solidarity such as Marcouch’s are rare. Among openly gay couples and religious Jews alike, there is a palpable fear of being targeted by homophobic or antisemitic young Muslim men. Much as in France, this fraught atmosphere has made far-right parties seem a palatable option for groups who would never previously have considered voting for them.
In Amsterdam earlier this year, I had several meetings with a staunch Jewish supporter of Wilders’s PVV, who insisted on remaining anonymous. He described his own backing for the far right in terms that echoed Alain Finkielkraut. “It’s an outdated reflex for Jews to always say the problem is the extreme right,” he told me. “We have new enemies and we need new ideas.”
The experience of his own family during the second world war has convinced him that Europe’s capacity for murderous violence is always lurking beneath the surface. “Anne Frank wasn’t betrayed by the Germans,” he argued. “But by Dutch people. Regular Dutch.” Jews need to find new allies in a new war, he argues, because they will never be safe. “The trains for the Jews will always come,” he added, ominously. “I’d rather be wrong than be too calm and end up on the trains.”
He is not unsympathetic to the plight of European Muslims, and told me that he even sees parallels with the persecution his own family faced. “If I were a Muslim in Europe at this moment I’d be very uneasy,” he admitted. “If Europeans regain their manhood, it could be bad. It’s the history of Europe to treat foreigners terribly. We Jews know that.”
For that reason, he argues, Muslims should regard Wilders as a lesser evil. “Every Muslim should be happy Geert Wilders exists. If someone else channelled these hateful feelings it would be much worse,” he told me menacingly. “Wilders is civil. He is a democrat. He is not the new Hitler.”
To Frits Bolkestein, who led the Netherlands’ centre-right VVD in the 1990s–and was briefly Wilders’ boss when he was a young aide in the party office–the rise of the far right is as much about class as it is about Islam. The Dutch Labour party, he argues, gave up on its working-class base: “They made a major mistake,” he says of his old rivals, with a tinge of satisfaction. Faced with “the choice between the foreign-born and the labour classes, they chose the foreign-born … and they’ve paid for it dearly”. Current polls project that the party will drop from the 36 seats it now holds (out of 150) to just 10.
Marcouch concedes that, like the old leftists in France, many former Labour voters now back Wilders. Moreover, he says, they still live in the very neighbourhoods that families such as his own moved into in the 1980s, as many white Dutch families were moving out. “Their message to the Labour party,” he said, “is: ‘You ignored us. You let it happen.’”
The Danish People’s Party has been seeking out such voters for years, and they have masterfully leveraged anti-immigrant sentiment to siphon away the Social Democrats’ traditional base–people who fear that the “bread will be buttered more thinly”, as the Danish journalist Lars Trier Mogensen puts it.
The DPP has effectively combined anti-immigrant rhetoric with a strong pro-welfare message that stresses quality health benefits and good care for the elderly. Søren Espersen, the DPP’s deputy leader, doesn’t think that former Social Democrats will ever go back. “When one of those takes the step to vote for us, it is a very, very huge step he is taking,” he says of voters who supported the Social Democrats all their lives. “And why should he go back? I mean, to come over this first hurdle of voting for us, then he’s done it.”
The Social Democrats first began to lose their dominance in and around the major cities in the 1990s, with many of their votes going to the DPP. One of those places is the small satellite town of Herlev, about 10 miles west of Copenhagen. The 41-year-old Social Democratic mayor, Thomas Gyldal Petersen, has lived there all his life, and he is adamant that controlling immigration numbers is the only way to reverse his party’s political misfortunes.
For Gyldal Petersen, the key to successful integration is a demographic balance. As soon as a school or housing estate becomes majority immigrant–or majority unemployed–he says, problems start to arise. He blames his own party’s leaders: “Mayors in the 80s, they were warning, something is going wrong, you have to change.” But the party leadership “shut their eyes”, he says.
Then came the Muhammad cartoons . In 2005, the editors at Jyllands-Posten, Denmark’s largest newspaper, invited a group of well-known cartoonists to draw the prophet. The initial response was underwhelming, but within a few months–through a combination of diplomatic pressure, a dismissive response from the Danish government, and a concerted campaign by local imams–the cartoons became a full-blown crisis, with boycotts of Danish products and violent protests occurring throughout the Middle East. Danes who had never contemplated voting for the DPP now saw their embassies on fire and death threats against some of their best-known journalists. Suddenly, the DPP’s platform was making sense. They had warned that Muslims were extremists in waiting, and now those warnings seemed to come true. Politicians such as Naser Khader, who once warned that giving the DPP influence would weaken them, found themselves moving steadily to the right of the political spectrum. When Khader founded a new organisation called “Democratic Muslims” in the wake of the cartoon controversy, he received death threats.
Those at the top of the Social Democrats are now taking a tough stance, too. Earlier this year the party leader, Mette Frederiksen, went to Stockholm to meet with fellow Scandinavian social democrats. There she gave a speech that rattled her colleagues. “We social democrats must accept that there is a clash,” she declared. “It is a very strong part of our identity that we help when people need help . . . but just as strong is our value that we must have a well-functioning welfare state.” Frederiksen continued: “My position is that a universally funded Scandinavian welfare state with free and equal access to healthcare, education and social subsidies is not compatible with an open immigration policy.”
But in its zeal to get tough on migration, Denmark has damaged its international reputation as a bastion of progressivism–the sort of place that Bernie Sanders liked to mention at campaign rallies. In January, just three months after the refugee crisis peaked, Denmark passed what became known as the “ jewellery law ”, which stipulated that any refugees carrying valuables worth more than 10,000 kroner (£1,200) would have them confiscated to fund the cost of accommodating asylum-seekers. Editorial pages and columnists across the world lined up to condemn the law. According to Kenneth Kristensen Berth, a babyfaced MP for the DPP, it was about deterrence. “The goal was, of course, that we should try to tell people that they should not seek asylum in Denmark,” he said. The jewellery provision was a minor part. “More important is the fact that many people will be waiting longer for family reunification, like waiting three years,” he added. And it wasn’t just the DPP and government who supported it–the Social Democrats voted for it, too.
Bent Melchior, Denmark’s 87-year-old former chief rabbi, was outraged. He bristled at the suggestion that refugees are rich because they flee with some money in their pockets. He would know: although Denmark is always hailed for saving its Jews during the second world war, it is often forgotten that Danish Jews paid fishermen huge sums to ferry them across to Sweden. Melchior’s family paid the equivalent of “almost a year’s rent of a six-room flat” just for his own passage. “Denmark is not a poor country, for God’s sake,” Melchior says. “There’s food for everybody here, and even if we get a few tens of thousands more people, there will still be food for everybody.”
The road that led a centre-left party to support such a law has been long and tortuous, but the trajectory has been clear. The Scandinavian welfare system has always been premised on solidarity, with everyone paying their fair share and receiving what they deserve. As the country has become more diverse, some of the trust sustaining it has broken down. There has been abuse of the system by immigrants, and there has been even more tabloid fearmongering depicting immigrants as cheats and leeches sucking the system dry. But the larger issue, as the Oxford economist Paul Collier has argued, is the growing unwillingness of natives to subsidise those seen as the foreign poor.
Herlev’s mayor does not oppose asylum, but he insists that the numbers have to be capped. “We have to help refugees, and we have to take refugees to Denmark in a number that we can help. If the balance tips, the welfare society cannot hold together,” Petersen warns.
But such balance may only help so much. Aydin Soei, a Danish sociologist and the son of immigrants from Iran, believes there is a larger blind spot in the thinking of the Danish government–one that native Danes who have never been on the receiving end of the state’s integration policy have failed to see. “A lot of refugees were just parked on social welfare instead of [the state] recognising their education and their skills,” Soei told me, citing the case of his own mother, who arrived in Denmark with a physics degree that was regarded as worthless. “If your motivation is to create a liberal society where the individual can create a good life for him or herself, then you would have solved this problem years ago,” he argues.
Instead the state has effectively provided newcomers with an allowance and keys to an apartment, and ignored them–assuming that its work was done. The problem, Soei claims, is that there is no political incentive to integrate asylum seekers into the job market. “It doesn’t have consequences for the politicians . . . because they don’t have the right to vote.” Either way, it plays into the DPP’s argument. “Immigrants can’t do right,” said Gyldal Petersen. “When they’re unemployed they’re a burden to society. When they’re in a job, they just stole the job from a Dane.”
Whether or not Marine Le Pen wins next year’s French election or Wilders’ PVV becomes the largest party in the Netherlands, the new far right is not going away. The reflex among many establishment parties–and media institutions–has been to dismiss them, sideline them or mock them. Others, however, have begun to mimic them in an effort to win their old voters back.
Rhetoric might, in the long run, matter more than election results. When I spoke again recently with the Jewish Wilders supporter from Amsterdam, he was convinced that the battle has in some ways already been won–regardless of the outcome of next year’s elections. “The PVV has shifted the whole political discussion to the right. The Labour party is saying almost exactly the same thing Wilders said five years ago,” he told me. “You can have a lot of influence in politics by steering the debate.”
If traditional political parties want to win, they must first abandon the old strategy of marginalising populist movements and instead engage them on the merits–and flaws–of their policies and counter their messages of fear.
Not least among the lessons of Brexit was that, for millions of disaffected voters, immigration is just one more thing nobody asked them about . This is what makes the issue an especially potent weapon: it combines the resentful energies of nativism, economic instability, and hatred of a remote and unaccountable political elite. And the leaders of the new far right have learned to wield it effectively. They know better than to let themselves be dismissed, as Jean-Marie Le Pen was, as antisemites or racists.
In France, the new majority Marine Le Pen hopes to build is strikingly similar to the coalition that brought the Brexit campaign victory. In a park near Calais’ castle-like town hall in May, Samuel and Pascal, activists from a group named Retake Calais, railed against the town’s centre-right mayor. They blamed her for the growth of the sprawling, trash-strewn tent city known as the Jungle, which sat three miles east of the town until it was dismantled this month . “Those who govern us are completely against us. The illegals, who aren’t French, can do whatever they want,” they told me. For them, even Marine Le Pen is “too soft”.
If resettlement programmes take refugees away from Calais to other parts of France, as dozens of buses have in the past week since the destruction of the camp, they would not be any happier. “They’re sending them to all the little villages in France,” says Samuel. After they start to open businesses and bring family members, “in two years the village will be dead”.
About a mile down the road, the Calais ferry terminal lies behind layers of tall steel fences and coiled barbed wire. I met Rudy Vercucque and Yohann Faviere, the local FN leaders, on a blustery morning in June outside the terminal, where they were anxiously awaiting a visiting EU dignitary. Giant seagulls circled and squawked above as they denounced the mayor, Natacha Bouchart, a member of Sarkozy’s Republicans party.
“It’s she who has permitted this,” Vercucque, a portly 35-year-old, fumed. And it was Sarkozy, he reminded me, who negotiated the notorious Le Touquet accords , effectively moving the British border to where we were standing. Calais depends on British tourism and revenues are down sharply. The result is crippling economic and social malaise: “Find a doctor who wants to move to Calais. Find a surgeon who wants to move to Calais,” Vercucque exclaimed. “You work your whole life, you pay off your house and you lose money. It’s intolerable.” Their support locally may have once been a protest vote, said Faviere, but no longer. “Today we really have people who adhere to our ideas.”
Vercucque was more blunt: “We say out loud what people think deep down.” | 1real |
Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont to deliver speech at 1500 GMT | MADRID (Reuters) - The president of Catalonia s regional government, Carles Puigdemont, will deliver a speech at 5 p.m. (1500 GMT), his office said on Thursday. Puigdemont is set to call a snap regional election, according to his political allies, a move that could help break a one-month deadlock between the Madrid government and separatists seeking a split from Spain. | 0fake |
UNBELIEVABLE! VINTAGE VIDEO EXPOSES Racist First Family: Michelle Obama’s mom says Barack’s mixed race “didn’t concern me as much as if he was completely white” | This is an old video that exposes so much about the phony race issues that Obama and the Robinson s (Michelle s maiden name) seem to be so obsessed with. Please watch this very informative video to the end. You will see pictures of Obama s white uncle and aunt that, for some reason, have been hidden from plain site. There is also an interesting picture of Barack s extended White and Asian family. Why did the press work so hard to keep these photos, and this video hidden during his campaign and presidency? It s pretty clear that Barack learned how to work the system from his father/sperm donor, Barack Hussein Obama Sr. But life changed dramatically when he was only two, and his father abandoned his wife and son to accept a scholarship at Harvard. After completing his PHD, Obama Sr. returned to Kenya. Barry saw his father only one more time when he was 10 and his father returned to Hawaii for a visit.At age 6, young Barry did gain a stepfather. His mother met and married a Muslim graduate student at the University of Hawaii who was from Indonesia. Barry and his mother moved to Indonesia and soon, a half-sister was born. Indonesia s poverty and its politics, which had victimized (Is it possible to be a part of Barack s life if you re not a victim?) his step-father, left a lasting impression on the young bi-racial child trying to fit into yet another culture.It was in Indonesia where Barry first saw magazine stories and ads about blacks bleaching their skin. That was (apparently) when he realized, (at the age of 10 yrs) there were power relationships in race. So when most boys Barry s age are worrying about building tree forts, catching frogs, riding their bikes or securing the neighborhood paper delivery job, Barack was concerned with power relationships in race? Really?Punahou occupies a privileged position, not just on the hillside, but in Hawaii society. In his memoir, Dreams From My Father, Barack Obama recalled how his grandfather pulled strings to get him in. [F]or my grandparents, my admission into Punahou Academy heralded the start of something grand, an elevation in the family status that they took great pains to let everyone know, Obama wrote.For generations, Punahou educated the children of plantation owners, businessmen and politicians. Pal Eldredge graduated from Punahou in the 1960s. In the beginning, we were known as the haole school, says Eldredge.Haole is Hawaiian for foreigner or white person. Eldredge says that when young Obama arrived as a fifth-grader in 1971, the school s complexion was just beginning to change. We didn t have a lot of African-Americans. So your first thing is, Oh, we ve got an African-American. Terrific! says Eldredge.He was teaching at Punahou at the time, and he remembers the future president as a pudgy, cheerful kid. He used to wear these shorts and striped T-shirts a lot, and sandals. But after you got to know him, not only was he a bright student, but he was just a funny, all-around kid, and everybody liked him, says Eldredge.As usual, Barry can turn a story of privilege into a story of victimhood like nobody s business: In his memoir, Obama dwells on moments at Punahou when his race made him feel conspicuous, such as the time he was teased for playing with the only other black child in his grade. When I looked up, I saw a group of children, faceless before the glare of the sun, pointing down at us. Coretta has a boyfriend! Coretta has a boyfriend! Obama writes.In the book, Obama s struggles with racial identity grow as he reaches high school, and he recalls intense discussions with another black student, an embittered boy he calls Ray. Ray is really Keith Kakugawa. He s part black, part Japanese.Kakugawa says he and young Obama did have some heart-to-hearts about race but, in general, it wasn t a big issue at the school because Punahou kids had to stick together. Because we knew once we left that school, there was a target on our backs. No matter what race you are, you re Punahou. You re the rich, white kids. Period, Kakugawa says. He wasn t raised black, because he was raised in a white family, and raised as if he were a white boy.' -Barack Obama s uncleReporter asks Obama: Were you essentially raised as a white child? Obama: No. I don t think so. I mean I was raised as an Indonesian child, and as a Hawaiian child and as a black and white child. Sorry Barry wrong again! As much as you try to deny it, you were not only raised as a white child, but a white child with more privilege than 90% of the rest of the White population. You were in the 1% of the White population, but you quickly learned to take advantage of all the benefits that come with being black when it was time to apply for college scholarships. Like his dad, young Barry accepted a scholarship (FREE education) to the mostly White Occidental College in Los Angeles. But he was dissatisfied and transferred to Columbia University in New York City in his Junior year. Hoping to find more black students or at least a broader black community. That is where Barry changed his name to Barack.Michelle Obama met Barack when she was tasked by her law firm to recruit him. Michelle was surprised when she saw he was from Hawaii and asked her (racist) self: What normal black people grow up in Hawaii? WATCH at the 13 minute mark:Michelle s racist mom was a little worried about the mixed heritage of her future son-in-law. When asked about her concern about his race, she had this to say about Barack: That [his mixed race] didn t concern me as much as if he was completely white. When Barack Obama lost his first election, many questioned if, given his heritage and Harvard Law degree, if he was black enough? Michelle Obama was furious over the charge of her husband not being black enough. She had this to say about Barack being black enough: I m as black as it gets. I was born on the south side. I come from an obviously black family you know, we weren t rich. I ll put my blackness up against anyone s blackness in the the state. | 1real |
Moore: Why Millions of Americans Are Voting Trump | Brasscheck TVA lot of people are going to vote for Donald Trump in November. Tens of millions of them. Maybe enough to elect him president.If you don t understand why, this will clear it up for you It may be self-defeating to put a man like this in office, but this is what happens when you put millions of people in a situation where they have nothing to lose. The establishment has f***ed over tens of millions of Americans and now it s payback time. Just be glad they re not showing up with weapons.As for Hillary she should have been indicted and taken off the ticket months ago.The Republican and Democratic parties have been revealed to be the cesspools that they are. The mainstream news media has been shown to be a paid shilling operation.EDITORS NOTE: The following is an audio clip is taken from Michael Moore s recent film, TrumpLand. Ironically, Moore s film was meant to be a last-ditch pro-Clinton project, but as it turns out, this ultra-liberal enemy of Donald Trump delivered to best explanation for the Trump political phenomenon. Moore set out to make an anti-Trump film, but this clip accidentally went viral and has become a key rallying cry for the Trump Movement. Perhaps Moore is now regretting his inadvertent outburst of honesty. Listen: SUPPORT 21WIRE SUBSCRIBE & BECOME A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV | 1real |
Senior Chinese military officer questioned over suspected graft: sources | BEIJING (Reuters) - A senior military officer who sits on China s powerful Central Military Commission, which is headed by President Xi Jinping, is being questioned on suspicion of corruption, three sources familiar with the situation said. Fang Fenghui had been chief of the Joint Staff Department of the People s Liberation Army until he was replaced late last month, with no official word on what had happened to him, whether he had taken up another post, or had retired. Fang Fenghui was questioned regarding economic problems, a source with ties to the leadership told Reuters. Economic problems is often used as a euphemism for corruption in China. Another source familiar with the situation said: They ve detained him. It s on suspicion of corruption, said the second source, who also spoke on condition of anonymity. The third source also confirmed Fang was being questioned. It was not clear if the questioning would lead to a formal indictment. Chinese officials are sometimes questioned informally and then released. China s Defence Ministry did not respond to a request for comment on whether Fang had been detained or was being questioned. It was also not possible to reach Fang or a representative for comment and it was unclear if he had been allowed to retain a lawyer. Fighting corruption in the military has been a focus of Xi s broader crackdown on deep-seated graft, a problem he has warned is so serious that it could affect the ruling Communist Party s grip on power. Dozens of officers have been investigated and jailed, including Xu Caihou and Guo Boxiong, both former vice chairmen of the Central Military Commission. Guo was jailed for life last year. Xu died of cancer in 2015 before he could face trial. The 11-man Central Military Commission is in overall charge of China s military, headed by Xi and made up of the most senior military officers. At a monthly news conference last week, defense ministry spokesman Ren Guoqiang declined to comment on where Fang was or if he had been given another position. Wen asked about Fang, Ren said: we are not aware of it. Fang turns 67 next year, an age at which many Chinese officials retire. His last public appearance was on Aug. 21, when he met a senior Thai military officer in Beijing. He also met Joseph Dunford, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, on Aug. 15. Fang was also part of Xi s delegation that met U.S. President Donald Trump at Trump s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida in April. The questioning of Fang comes ahead of next month s once-every-five-years Communist Party Congress, at which Xi will look to further cement his tight grip on power. The party has already begun a military reshuffle connected with the Congress, announcing last week new chiefs for the army and the air force. The official People s Liberation Army Daily said last month the military needed to be on its guard against corruption rearing its head again, warning that the arrow cannot be put back in the quiver . Serving and retired officers have said graft in the armed forces is so pervasive it could undermine China s ability to wage war. The anti-graft drive comes as Xi steps up efforts to modernize forces that are projecting power across the disputed waters of the East and South China Seas, although China has not fought a war in decades. | 0fake |
LOL! WHOOPI GOLDBERG Caught Telling HUGE LIE During Interview With Newt Gingrich, As The View Hacks Tried To Prove President Trump’s a “Liar” [VIDEO] | Newt Gingrich was promoting his new book Understanding Trump on The View today. The leftist hacks of the The View took advantage of his appearance to play gotcha, as they attempted to find ways to coerce a confession out of Newt that President Trump is a liar. Newt wasn t falling for it however. While many of us would have preferred to see Gingrich take off the gloves with the hosts of The View, he chose instead to sit back and sling a few arrows on an as needed basis.The not-funny comedian Joy Behar attempted to paint Trump as a serial liar and was surprised when Gingrich shot back with, You mean like you can keep your doctor, you can keep your insurance ? You want to talk about lies by a president? Behar responded by attempting to convince Gingrich that Barack Obama didn t lie when he told one of his most famous lies to the American people, and that it was simply a misjudgment on his part.Near the end of the interview, Whoopi Goldberg went through a list of questions she used to vet Gingrich and prove how credible he was based on his answers. When the subject of the popularity of President Trump came up in the discussion, Gingrich confessed that he was shocked at how well Trump was doing considering a recent Harvard study that showed 93% of the post-election coverage of President Trump was negative coverage. Whoopi appeared to be close to needing medical attention after Gingrich rightfully pointed out the disgusting lopsided negative coverage that President Trump s received since he was elected. Since Goldberg had no honest rebuttal to offer, she made up a whopper of a lie, telling Gingrich and her viewers that prior to the election, 98% of candidate Trump s media coverage was positive and went on to suggest that was the reason he won.Sorry Whoopi but here are the actual facts about the percentage of negative coverage Trump received from the mainstream media prior to the election:From the liberal Politico: A whopping 91 percent of news coverage about Donald Trump on the three broadcast nightly newscasts over the past 12 weeks has been hostile , a new study finds.The study, conducted by the conservative Media Research Center, found that not only has Trump received significantly more broadcast network news coverage than his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, but nearly all of that coverage (91%) has been hostile, according to the study.Watch the interview here:In addition, the networks spent far more airtime focusing on the personal controversies involving Trump, such as his treatment of women, than controversies surrounding Clinton, such as her email practices or the Clinton Foundation.For the study, MRC analyzed all 588 evening news stories that either discussed or mentioned the presidential campaign on the ABC, CBS and NBC evening newscasts from July 29 through October 20 (including weekends). Of the total newscasts, the networks devoted 29 percent of their time to the campaign. The study did not include comments from the campaigns or candidates themselves, instead focusing on what the correspondents, anchors, expert commentators, and voters on the street said in order to try and hone in on any sort of slant from the networks.Though neither candidate was necessarily celebrated, Clinton largely just stayed out of the line of fire. Even when they were critical of Hillary Clinton for concealing her pneumonia, for example, or mischaracterizing the FBI investigation of her e-mail server network reporters always maintained a respectful tone in their coverage, the study found. This was not the case with Trump, who was slammed as embodying the politics of fear, or a dangerous and vulgar misogynistic bully who had insulted vast swaths of the American electorate. 98% Of Pre-Election Trump Coverage Was Positive Actual Percentage Of Positive Trump Coverage Is SHOCKING! | 1real |
Cambodia goes all-in on China in casino port city | SIHANOUKVILLE, Cambodia (Reuters) - Between Sihanoukville s beaches and its multiplying casinos, Lao Qi and Bun Saroeun run restaurants barely a hundred dusty meters apart. But their fortunes could not be more different. For while Lao Qi is riding the Chinese boom that brought him and thousands of others from China to the Cambodian resort, Bun Saroeun s business was built on low-budget Western visitors. It is far less profitable and now he faces eviction. Sihanoukville starkly illustrates how Cambodia s ever tightening relationship with China is transforming the country. Just as China s aid and investment have helped Prime Minister Hun Sen defy Western criticism of a crackdown on his opponents, they are also binding Cambodia s economy ever more closely to China s. Sihanoukville, which has Cambodia s only deep-water port, was carved out of the jungle in the 1960s and named after former King Norodom Sihanouk. Once a playground for Cambodia s elite, it fell on hard times during the Khmer Rouge genocide and conflicts of the 1970s and 1980s before becoming a stop for backpackers and other Westerners looking for sun, sea, sand and - for some - sex. But a steady trickle of Chinese money into its casinos has now swelled to a tide that promises to remodel a city touted by developers as the first port of call on China s Belt and Road . This is like China 20 years ago. The opportunity is huge, said Lao Qi, 33, who goes by his nickname and first moved here from China s Zhejiang province to work in a casino. His noodles and fried rice can now make him hundreds of dollars a day. Down the road at the Ecstatic Pizza restaurant, 59-year-old Bun Saroeun counts himself lucky to make over $100 a day. Rising hotel prices and the noise of construction are discouraging Western visitors and Cambodian tourists from the city, he says. A few Chinese came here but now they have their own restaurants, said Bun Saroeun, whose landlord is now evicting him to redevelop the prime property near the Occhuteal Beach. The Chinese influx is very much by design. In charge of the city is governor Yun Min, the former regional military commander and a close ally of Hun Sen. He made trips to China himself to encourage investors and offer them protection. We want more of them to come, he told Reuters, estimating that Chinese already rent half the property in the city. We benefit from them. Cambodia's "Chinese" resort city IMG - tmsnrt.rs/2AtY4cS Estimates for the numbers of Chinese now resident in the city of 250,000 run from the thousands to the tens of thousands, but no figures are made public. Across Sihanoukville, Mandarin signs are proliferating. Supermarkets packed with Chinese goods are commonplace - the only Cambodian items tend to be beer and bottled water. Yet the current Chinese influx into Sihanoukville is nothing compared to what is forecast. Near the once tranquil Independence Beach, concrete towers have sprouted in months, promising casinos, hotels and thousands of apartments. This is Macau Two, boasts Chen Hu, the 48-year-old general manager at the $200 million 38-storey Blue Bay Resort development, comparing the city to the world s biggest gambling center. At his showroom, groups of prospective condominium buyers from China admire the model. About 20 percent of at least 700 apartments have already been sold, he says. Prices range from around $125,000 to $500,000. A lot of people complain, but a lot of people also benefit from the injection of money from China, said William Van, 60, who owns an apartment block now filled largely with Chinese workers and has seen the value of his investment soar. A clear attraction for all Chinese investors, developers say, has been the close Cambodia-China relationship - strengthened by Hun Sen s repeated trips to Beijing and Chinese President Xi Jinping s visit to Phnom Penh late last year. On his latest trip to Beijing last week, Hun Sen won offers of investment of $7 billion from Chinese companies in a highway, a satellite city near Phnom Penh, and projects in education, entertainment and banking. It was unclear how new or firm the promises were, but they highlight the accelerating investment trend. Business is following the flag China has planted in Cambodia. It s continuing and may even be exploding, said U.S. based academic Sophal Ear, co-author of a book on China s quest for resources abroad. We are talking orders of magnitude now beyond what anyone else is doing...They re crowding out other investors with the sheer volume and scale of their activities. Pictures of Xi and Hun Sen feature prominently in one of the glossy handouts from the Prince Real Estate Group as it markets apartments in Phnom Penh and now starts work on two projects costing $1 billion in Sihanoukville. It is a core location of the Belt and Road initiative, said marketing director Hu Tian Lu, referring to China s infrastructure-led development and diplomatic initiative. A short drive from the port is an expanding Special Economic Zone, where 90 percent of the 110 companies now operating there are Chinese, enjoying tax-free imports and exports and corporate tax holidays. China is due to build a four-lane highway to Phnom Penh, the international airport in Sihanoukville is being expanded - some 70 percent of international flights are already to Chinese destinations - and improved rail links are eventually planned under the Belt and Road program. Although Sihanoukville is a focal point for Chinese investment, the phenomenon is far from localized. More tourists to Cambodia come from China than any other nation - 635,000 in the first seven months of the year, or a fifth of the total. Cambodia hopes to draw two million Chinese tourists a year by 2020. Chinese investment over the 2012-16 period was over $4 billion - more than 30 times that from the United States, even including a $100 million Coca-Cola plant which opened last year. China s $265 million in aid last year was well over twice that of Japan s and nearly four times that from the United States. Chinese dams provide most of Cambodia s electricity; a third of the garment factories that produce Cambodia s main export are Chinese. Nearly half of Cambodia s $5.8 billion foreign debt is also owed to China - many multiples what it owes any other country. The government s political debt to Beijing has also grown. As Western countries have condemned the arrest of Hun Sen s main rival and the dissolution of his party ahead of next year s election, China has voiced support for Cambodia s efforts to keep order. From Cambodia, China can count on its loyal support on regional issues, while it also gains a strategic foothold deep in Southeast Asia. Sandwiching Sihanoukville are concessions owned by Chinese companies that give them control of well over one-third of Cambodia s coastline. The gush of money into Sihanoukville has meant a bonanza for land owners: one hotelier told how the Chinese turned up with an offer of twice what he was making to take his hotel over for casino staff. He no longer needs to work. For anyone renting, it is a nightmare. Long term Western expatriates talk of being Chinesed - being turfed out because a Chinese customer has turned up willing to pay much more. Real estate agent Thim Sothea got a harsh lesson in the way the market was trending when his landlord evicted his business, Sihanoukville Property, from a spot near the beach so a Chinese company could move in at double the rent. It s becoming Chinatown here, he said at a meeting at a cafe because he is still looking for a new space. That s fine for the rich who own hotels and property, not for everyone else. It also suits Lao Qi just fine. He already has plans to open a new restaurant, which he expects will be closer to the beach. | 0fake |
Obama to Supreme Court: You wouldn’t dare kill Obamacare | President Obama uttered more than 3,600 words on the stage of Washington’s Marriott Wardman Park ballroom on Tuesday, but his message could be summed up in three: You wouldn’t dare.
He was speaking not to the hundreds of hospital administrators assembled for the Catholic Health Association’s conference but to five men not in the room: the conservative justices of the Supreme Court, who in the next 21 days will declare whether they are invalidating the most far-reaching legislation in at least a generation because of one vague clause tucked in its 2,000 pages.
Obama’s appeal to the justices, devotees of judicial modesty all: Do they really wish to cause the massive societal upheaval that would come from killing a law that is now a routine part of American life?
“Five years in, what we are talking about is no longer just a law. It’s no longer just a theory. It isn’t even just about the Affordable Care Act or Obamacare,” he said. “This is now part of the fabric of how we care for one another. This is health care in America.”
Without mentioning the looming decision, Obama warned of its devastating potential. “Once you see millions of people having health care, once you see that all the bad things that were predicted didn’t happen, you’d think that it’d be time to move on,” he said. “It seems so cynical to want to take coverage away from millions of people, to take care away from the people who need it the most, to punish millions with higher costs of care and unravel what’s now been woven into the fabric of America.”
The appearance had been scheduled long ago, but White House officials elevated the importance of the speech to keep pressure on the Supreme Court, which Obama said at a news conference in Germany on Monday shouldn’t have even taken up the case. Obama said trashing the federal health-care exchanges, as a hostile Supreme Court ruling would do, is “not something that should be done based on a twisted interpretation of four words.”
The conservative justices, like conservative critics of the law generally, are unlikely to be persuaded by Obama’s recitation of the merits of the law, which he repeated at length Tuesday. But they may well be reluctant to upend a law that now has broad acceptance in American society.
The Kaiser Family Foundation, which tracks public opinion on the matter, found in April that more Americans had a favorable view of the law than an unfavorable view (43 percent to 42 percent) for the first time since 2012. That difference is not statistically significant, but the favorable view is up 10 points since the botched HealthCare.gov rollout in 2013 and the unfavorable view is down seven points. Forty-six percent favor keeping the law as is or expanding it, compared with 41 percent who favor scaling it back or repealing it.
More evidence of the acceptance of Obamacare: Health care is fading as an issue. Gallup found last month that only 5 percent called it the country’s most important problem. That compares with 26 percent in September 2009.
Certainly, those numbers could change if premiums jump as expected. But the recent improvement in the law’s standing comes even though most Americans aren’t aware that the law has cost the government less than forecast.
With such broad acceptance of (if not fondness for) the new health-care status quo, it’s difficult to imagine the Supreme Court justices taking away health coverage for 6 million or 7 million Americans, causing costs to skyrocket for millions of others, and likely plunging the entire American health-care system into chaos. That’s not just judicial activism — it would be a judicially induced cataclysm.
Such a cataclysm has no place in the catechism of Sister Carol Keehan, head of the Catholic Health Association and a key early supporter of Obamacare who broke with the Catholic bishops to support the law.
“It would be unspeakably cruel,” she said when I asked her after the conference Tuesday what an adverse Supreme Court ruling would produce. Millions of people — pregnant women, cancer victims, heart patients — would lose coverage, she said. “The panic is going to spread, the confusion. It’s going to be incredibly chaotic.” And, with Congress unable to agree even on little things, the chaos would persist.
“It makes me crazy just to think of it,” Keehan said, urging me to “light a candle” as the justices prepare their opinion.
I’ll leave the votive offering to Sister Carol. I have faith that the conservative justices, even if they detest Obamacare, have no wish to throw the country into chaos.
Read more from Dana Milbank’s archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook. | 0fake |
Gabby Giffords Shames GOP Rep. For Using Her Shooting As An Excuse To Hide From Town Halls | Republicans across the country have been doing all they can to avoid town hall meetings where angry constituents are waiting. But Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) should win some type of award for his despicable excuse.Earlier this week, Gohmert claimed that he hadn t scheduled a town hall meeting to discuss important issues with the people he represents because with all the angry protesters around he s afraid of a shooting like the one that involved Congresswoman Gabby Giffords. But don t worry. This isn t because he s a coward. It s just that he wants to keep his constituents safe. Unfortunately, at this time there are groups from the more violent strains of the leftist ideology, some even being paid, who are preying on public town halls to wreak havoc and threaten public safety. Threats are nothing new to me and I have gotten my share as a felony judge. However, the House Sergeant at Arms advised us after former Congresswoman Gabby Giffords was shot at a public appearance, that civilian attendees at Congressional public events stand the most chance of being harmed or killed just as happened there. In a scathing statement, Giffords slammed Gohmert for his cowardly comments and basically told him to grow a pair. She pointed out that her offices were open after her shooting. Giffords added that the representative who took her place during that difficult time also continued to hold town halls rather than hide from the people. Her statement ended by shaming Gohmert and telling him, point blank, to have some courage. I was shot on a Saturday morning. By Monday morning my offices were open to the public. Ron Barber at my side that Saturday, who was shot multiple times, then elected to Congress in my stead held town halls. It s what the people deserve in a representative. In the past year, campaigning for gun safety, I have held over 50 public events. To the politicians who have abandoned their civic obligations, I say this: Have some courage. Face your constituents. Hold town halls. Giffords followed her statement up with a tweet that shared the same message.To the politicians who have abandoned their civic obligations, I say this: Have some courage. Face your constituents. Hold town halls. Gabrielle Giffords (@GabbyGiffords) February 23, 2017It is also worth noting that Republicans aren t willing to pass legislation that might help control the massive gun problem clutching the United States. They d prefer to continue playing the puppet for the NRA and then hide from the people they re supposed to represent because they re scared that they might get shot. Unbelievable.Featured image via Spencer Platt/Getty Images | 1real |
Justice Department to monitor Tuesday's election in 28 states | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Personnel from the U.S. Justice Department’s civil rights division will be deployed to polling sites in 28 states to monitor Tuesday’s election, five more than it monitored in the 2012 election, the department said on Monday. Most of those states will receive Justice Department staff who have no statutory authority to access polling sites as a result of a 2013 Supreme Court decision that struck down parts of the Voting Rights Act, curtailing the department’s ability to deploy election observers with unfettered access to the polls. More than 500 Justice Department personnel will be deployed on Tuesday, compared to more than 780 personnel the department dispatched during the 2012 general election. A Justice Department spokesman declined to say how many of Tuesday’s personnel will be full-access observers. Tuesday’s hotly contested election, including the presidential race pitting Republican Donald Trump against Democrat Hillary Clinton, will be the first in decades in which the Justice Department can only send full-access observers to states where a federal court ruling has authorized it. On the campaign trail, Trump has warned the election may be rigged and has called on supporters to keep an eye on voting activity for possible signs of fraud in large cities. Numerous studies have found that U.S. voter fraud is exceedingly rare. “As always, our personnel will perform these duties impartially, with one goal in mind: to see to it that every eligible voter can participate in our elections to the full extent that federal law provides,” said Attorney General Loretta Lynch in a statement. Courts have granted the Justice Department permission to deploy full-access observers in five states: Alaska, California, Louisiana, New York, and Alabama. But the court order for Alabama only pertains to municipal elections and it is not on the list of states where the Justice Department is deploying poll watchers this year. The Justice Department staff who are deployed to the other 24 states on Tuesday will be election “monitors”, who must rely on local and state authorities to grant them access to polling locations. “In most cases, voters on the ground will see very little practical difference between monitors and observers,” said Vanita Gupta, the head of the department’s civil rights division, in a statement. | 0fake |
Egypt declares three days of mourning after attack on north Sinai mosque: state television | CAIRO (Reuters) - Egypt s government has declared three days of mourning after attack on north Sinai mosque killed at least 85 people on Friday, state television said. | 0fake |
[Video] POLICE HAVE VERY GOOD REASON FOR BLOCKING NEWLY “ELECTED”MAYOR From Entering City Hall Office | This mayor s involvement in potential illegal activity will get little attention this story will be a full blown case of racial injustice in 5 4 3 2 1 Betty McCray, newly-elected mayor of Kinloch, Missouri, showed up at City Hall this week to get to work. But when she arrived, the police wouldn t let her in the door.The reason why? Those non-existent illegal voters who cast ballots for the candidate.The election, which was held April 7, was hotly contested and the results have been questioned by McCray s opponents. However, the St. Louis County Board of Elections certified the results and swore McCray in after city officials refused to.The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports that deputies met her in the parking lot, and she was served with articles of impeachment by City Attorney James Robinson. Robinson also told her that she was suspended.After being blocked from entering the building, McCray held a press conference in the parking lot: I won. The people spoke, McCray told the press after she had been served papers and told she could not enter the building. I was sworn in by the St. Louis County. Today I take office. I want them out, I want the keys. It was rumored that McCray was going to fire multiple city employees, once in office.Kinloch, which is located near Lambert-St. Louis International Airport, once thrived with more than 10,000 residents. But airport development has led to homes being purchased by the airport authority and demolished.Today, Kinloch, which has fewer than 300 residents, is marked by pilfered coffers, shady land deals and increasingly bitter fights over the last remnants of political power.During the past five years, the city has seen the imprisonment of a former mayor on federal fraud and theft charges, the hiring of a convicted felon as city manager, the selling of a previous city hall building to an alleged drug dealer and the unseating of at least two aldermen. McCray won the mayoral contest by garnering 38 votes compared to her opponent, the incumbent mayor s, 18.Prior to the election, the city alerted the County Board of Elections said that they believed there were 27 voters registered illegally. McCray s camp alleges that these voters were living in city-owned housing and evicted because they supported her.The bad blood goes back further. McCray is a former Alderman, who served under a mayor who has since been convicted of federal fraud charges. Members of the current administration accuse her of benefiting financially from land deals under that mayor, Keith Conway.McCray told Fox2 she was going to file an injunction in the St. Louis County courts, and then attempt to enter City Hall again.Via: IJReview | 1real |
Dan Rather BURIES Trump In Epic Post-Debate Analysis That Everyone Should See | This is why we miss Dan Rather at the CBS News desk.At a time when the media often fails to dig deep and ask the hard hitting questions all for the sake of ratings, at least we still can rely on Dan Rather to deliver an analysis that makes people think.After the debate on Sunday night, the legendary newsman delivered a damning criticism of the Republican nominee and warned Americans of the dire consequences of this election. I am not sure it is possible to truly put into words what we witnessed tonight, Rather wrote. This election has long since passed the stage of rationality and reason, the realm of the written page, and into the territory of the heart and spirit, where emotions swirl that we cannot fully distill into coherent sentences and paragraphs. But I will humbly try Rather launched into talking about the Roman Empire and the barbarism that eventually led to its downfall. The debate last night was like watching a fight to the death between gladiators at the Colosseum. I had a sense we could, if we are not vigilant, fall into a similar downward spiral, Rather noted.But Rather was pleased with how the moderators did their job, praising Anderson Cooper and Martha Raddatz for demanding specifics from both candidates.Trump, of course, whined about the tough questions and that resulted in a meltdown that lasted throughout the evening as Trump preferred personal smears instead of actually giving the American people an idea of what his policies are and how he will enact them. Dan Rather definitely noticed the differences between the two presidential contenders.Trump went on the offensive, as advertised, drilling down to an attack on Bill Clinton. It was a strategy that was all Trump. And HIllary Clinton responded with a volley of all the other insulting statements and lies by Trump over the course of the election season. As Trump preened, paced and swayed, Clinton s steely face spoke volumes. As Trump stood, looming over Clinton, threatening her with a special prosecutor and even imprisonment, the optics of the GOP nominee could be seen as either that of a schoolyard bully or a determined pugilist depending on your point of view. Clinton was better answering questions directly and better at laying out what she would like to do as President. Trump was more determined to levy personal attacks to put Clinton on defensive, especially in the early going.Clinton engaged mostly with the audience and moderators. Donald Trump addressed her directly with hand gestures and eye contact. When she spoke, he sometimes stood pacing, or passively, gripping his chair. When he spoke, he often tried to tar his opponent with guilt by association calling into question Clinton s friends on taxes in particular and referring to Clinton s husband to avoid the glare of his own misconduct. It seems that Trump does everything he can to avoid personal culpability or responsibility. He argues that his faults are not so great because Clinton and her associates have done much worse his words are not so dangerous because locker room talk has long been excused for men. Clinton called for an apology to the many Trump has spoken ill of. None was forthcoming. I can t see any of that moving the needle compared to the tsunami that has engulfed the race in the past few days.In conclusion, Rather talked about the need for all of us to be engaged if we want to end this national nightmare and get back to the business of dealing with our problems with reasonable solutions. We have serious problems facing our nation, and our world, Rather wrote.Our ship of state must be prepared to navigate the perilous shoals of our complicated world and yet I feel tonight as if we have been hijacked into an alternate universe. This national nightmare will end one way or another and we will awaken to the same world from which we have been so disengaged. That is our challenge and it is a challenge from which none of us can opt out.Here s the full post via Facebook.Donald Trump must be stopped before our country turns into a barbaric nation that is primed to fall like Rome did. Hate, ignorance, violence, and fear will not make America great again. It will be our end. And that can only be prevented by the American people on November 8th by making sure Trump nevers sees the inside of the White House.Featured Image: Larry Busacca/Getty Images | 1real |
No, it's not 'World War 3' | Timothy Stanley is a historian and columnist for Britain's Daily Telegraph. He is the author of the new book "Citizen Hollywood: How the Collaboration Between L.A. and D.C. Revolutionized American Politics." The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author.
(CNN) Obama has called the Islamic State the "face of evil" but he's now under pressure from those who say he's not doing enough to beat it. Some insist that an attack on France was an attack on NATO and that it's time to go to war.
But only a fool would confuse caution for weakness. On the contrary, to defeat the enemy we have to fully understand who the enemy is, what they want and what kind of conflict we're involved in here. There are good reasons to proceed cautiously.
To clear something up: We are effectively at war with ISIS right now. A U.S.-led coalition has been bombing targets in Syria and Iraq for over a year, and in recent months Russia has been doing the same. How well it's worked is disputed: Obama has rhetorically shifted his objectives from crushing Isis to containing it.
Nevertheless, late last week there were signs of success. The Kurds took Sinjar , a strategically significant area in northern Iraq. Mohammed Emwazi, a vicious killer and propagandist, was likely killed in a drone strike.
Paris has obviously eclipsed the news of these breakthroughs.
Who or what are we fighting? ISIS is different from al Qaeda, the group behind 9/11. The latter operated as an alliance of cells spread across the world; ISIS, by contrast, seeks to create a geographic space within which to build a caliphate. This shift in strategy perhaps explains why ISIS has been even more successful than al Qaeda at hitting so many different foreign targets with so many different methods -- from Sinai to Beirut to Paris.
ISIS' caliphate offers a haven for tens of thousands of foreign jihadists: They come, they train and then many return home to create havoc. The caliphate also provides money and the moral encouragement of having an earthly "paradise" to fight for. In his groundbreaking essay on the motivations behind ISIS, Graeme Wood describes an ISIS recruiter calling it "a vehicle for salvation."
Its fighters are obsessed with recreating Islam in its earliest form ( or as they interpret it to have been, because the early caliphate was far kinder ) and believe that most other Muslims have fallen from the standard -- one that includes the uses of crucifixion and slavery. Whereas al Qaeda limited itself to comparatively rational political objectives, like expelling Westerners from the Arab peninsula, ISIS wants to bring on the apocalypse. It is not nihilist. It is deeply — if distortedly -- religious and we need to learn to take its brand of religion seriously.
The good news is that ISIS is isolated. Applying the phrase "world war" here is unhelpful because it conjures images of rival, equally sized nation states engaged in total war. But while ISIS' reach is global, it does not command sizable support beyond its shifting boundaries. Meanwhile, the alliance against it is one of the largest and most diverse in history, including America, Britain, France, Russia and Iran.
Saudi money may well have once supported it but the Saudi state is now opposed. Indeed the exceptional evil of ISIS leads us to view many of the regional political agendas in a different light. Iran, for instance, certainly is exporting its theocratic government to other countries. But it doesn't desire the end of the world. The regime is murderous and must be contained. But it can be engaged.
The complexity of Islamic world politics highlights another aspect of this conflict: It cannot be resolved entirely by force of arms. ISIS has exploited Sunni dissatisfaction with the Shia-dominated government in Baghdad. This may mean Iraq as a whole has to be split up to work. Turkey probably has to accommodate Kurdish desires for a homeland . And, most importantly of all, Bashar al-Assad, the dictator of Syria, will have to depart the stage.
There can be no constructive government of Syria until there is law, order and democratic elections that legitimize proper opposition parties. If we give rebels the impression that the West wants to force Assad on them again, they will resist us, too.
Finally, there is the question of how we handle the Islamic presence within Europe itself. This is partly a matter of improving security measures and making sure returnees from Syria don't just disappear into the crowd. There's also a refugee crisis to confront. But while the demographic pressures and security problems of allowing hundreds of thousands of people to cross Europe have to be addressed in a firm way, there's no escaping the fact that a large, settled part of the EU's population is now Islamic.
And how we respond to ISIS has consequences for interfaith relations.
Some American politicians have suggested a religious test for refugees seeking access to the United States. This kind of prejudiced rhetoric adds to that false sense that this is a world war-style clash between conservative Muslims on one side and Christian democracies on the other. It is also unChristian and cruel. Moreover, while Americans might fear Islamification as an existential concept, we here in Europe have actual experience of living with Muslims -- and I can report that the living is easy.
Muslims are our friends, family and co-workers. They fear and despise ISIS as much as anyone else. And those of us in the center-ground of European politics are determined not to alienate, or discriminate against, citizens who are 100% British, French or German.
Of course, it is equally irritating to see politicians who seem to counsel doing nothing and Westerners lacerating themselves because they believe their countries are to blame for all the evil in the world. ISIS is evil -- real, concrete evil. It must be stopped. But we must proceed carefully, with a grand game plan and with the desire to build just and representative Arab regimes that last. The legacy of poorly chosen words or unilateral action is there for all to see. | 0fake |
Trump aide Kushner scraps plan for Canada visit: Canada official | CALGARY, Alberta (Reuters) - A senior aide to U.S. President Donald Trump has scrapped plans to visit Canada for talks with officials in Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s team, a Canadian government source said on Monday. The source said the planned visit by Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner had hit logistical problems. A separate source had earlier said Kushner intended to meet Trudeau aides on the margins of a cabinet retreat in Calgary. | 0fake |
null | "Virginia Roberts Affidavit" a teen diary of Randy Prince Andy and Alan Dirtbag0witz at Orgy Island. This AD report is consistent with Veterans Today on the ruling Demonic Warlords kiddy diddling ring. BTW....lawyer for Jeffrey Epstein is Ken Starr.... | 1real |
New Cars Are Too Expensive for the Typical Family, Study Finds - The New York Times | AS prices for new vehicles continue to rise, the cost of an average new car may be a stretch for typical households. A new analysis from Bankrate. com found that a household could not afford the average price of a new vehicle in any of the 50 largest cities in the country, though cars are more affordable in some cities than others. “The new reality is that cars are becoming more expensive,” said Steve Pounds, a personal finance analyst for Bankrate. “People are having to make tough decisions about financing. ” The average price of a new car or light truck in 2016 is about $34, 000, according to Kelley Blue Book. That’s in part because new cars are loaded with helpful but expensive safety features like systems. Bankrate calculated an “affordable” purchase price for major cities, using median incomes from United States census data, and factoring in costs for sales taxes and insurance. In San Jose, Calif. — the heart of Silicon Valley — the median income is about $84, 000, and an “affordable” new car purchase price is about $33, 000 — close to, but still below, the average new car price. In cities, however, affordable purchase prices for a typical family are far below the average cost of a new car. In Hartford, Conn. where the median income is about $29, 000, an affordable purchase price is about $8, 000 — about a quarter of the average price. That sort of squeeze helps explain why many people are borrowing more, for longer periods of time, to finance a car purchase. Experian Automotive said that in the first quarter of this year, the proportion of new cars bought with the help of financing rose to more than 86 percent, and the average loan amount topped $30, 000, which is the highest since Experian began tracking the data. The average term for a loan is now 68 months — about five and a half years — and some loans stretch as long as seven years. (Auto leases are also becoming more popular because they often offer lower payments than a traditional car loan. Leases accounted for more than 30 percent of transactions in the first quarter, Experian reported. With a lease, the customer makes payments for a set period of time, then typically can choose either to return the car to the dealer or to buy it.) loans carry risks. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau warns that borrowers who take out loans end up paying more for the car over all, and also run a greater risk of being “upside down” on the loans, meaning owing more than the car is worth. Bankrate noted that a traditional rule of thumb is the “ ” rule: Car buyers should aim to put down at least 20 percent in cash, take out a loan for no more than four years and keep the cost of principal, interest and insurance to no more than 10 percent of household income. If you have to abandon those guidelines, the car you want may simply be too expensive. “To me, if you need to finance to five, six or seven years, you can’t afford it,” said Jeff Bartlett, deputy cars editor at Consumer Reports. Ron Montoya, senior consumer advice editor with Edmunds. com, noted that interest rates were still low for loans, but advised shoppers to keep the loan term at no more than five years. (Edmunds has an online calculator that you can use to estimate how much you can afford to pay. He also recommends checking the cost of insuring a specific model before buying it, so you won’t be shocked when you get your insurance bill after you’ve made the purchase. Here are some questions and answers about buying a new car: When is the best time to shop for a new car? While car sales may abound on holiday weekends like the Fourth of July, shopping on a weekday may actually be preferable. There is less traffic to deal with when taking test drives, and sales representatives have more time to answer your questions. “Buy when it’s right for you,” Mr. Bartlett said, not just because dealers are promoting incentives. Mr. Pounds suggests shopping when car manufacturers are beginning to introduce new model years — typically in late summer or early fall. Prices may be more reasonable for the outgoing model year at that time. But be aware that you may have fewer vehicles to choose from. How can I make sure I’m choosing the right financing option? People are often diligent about researching the type of car they want to buy, but they’re much less likely to do their homework when it comes to financing the purchase, according to a report this month from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. To help consumers the bureau has created an auto loan “shopping sheet” that can help you calculate the total cost of a car loan and compare offers. Should I buy a used car instead? Used cars, particularly those that are just two or three years old, often offer the best value, Mr. Bartlett said. Not only is the initial price lower, but costs like collision insurance and taxes are also lower. If getting the latest safety features, like automatic braking, is a priority, however, make sure to look only at very recent model years. And be sure, he said, to have a used car inspected by a reputable mechanic before you buy it. | 0fake |
Senate Republican whip says expects tax reform budget to pass | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Senate Republican whip John Cornyn said on Wednesday that Republicans appear to have enough votes to pass a budget measure that is vital to President Donald Trump’s aim of enacting tax reform legislation before January. “I believe we do,” Cornyn told Reuters when asked if Republicans had mustered enough support to move the fiscal year 2018 budget resolution in a floor vote expected on Thursday. | 0fake |
Warning Issued: Iran Ready to Give U.S. ’Slap in the Face’ | (REUTERS) — The United States should expect a “strong slap in the face” if it underestimates Iran’s defensive capabilities, a commander of the elite Revolutionary Guards said on Wednesday, as Tehran concluded war games. [Since taking office last month, U. S. President Donald Trump has pledged to get tough with Iran, warning the Islamic Republic after its ballistic missile test on Jan. 29 that it was playing with fire and all U. S. options were on the table. “The enemy should not be mistaken in its assessments, and it will receive a strong slap in the face if it does make such a mistake,” said General Mohammad Pakpour, head of the Guards’ ground forces, quoted by the Guards’ website Sepahnews. Read more here. | 0fake |
Hillary Clinton, the Most Corrupt Politician in History [Audio] | Post was not sent - check your email addresses! Email check failed, please try again Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email. %d bloggers like this: | 1real |
Catholic School Vouchers Lead to Decline in Church Donations | A new study that explores the effects of vouchers on Catholic parishes and their schools finds that while vouchers may help keep a church financially afloat, the expansion of government funding leads to a decline in private donations from parishioners. [The study, a working paper by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) is titled “Beyond the Classroom: The Implications of School Vouchers for Church Finances. ” Notre Dame University economics associate professor Daniel Hungerman and colleagues Kevin Rinz, and Jay Frymark analyzed financial data from Catholic parishes in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, using information from both the parishes and their schools. “We show that vouchers are now a dominant source of funding for many churches,” the researchers write. “Parishes in our sample running schools get more revenue from vouchers than from worshipers. We also find that voucher expansion prevents church closures and mergers. ” The authors continue: Despite these results, we fail to find evidence that vouchers promote religious behavior: voucher expansion causes significant declines in church donations and church spending on religious purposes. The meteoric growth of vouchers appears to offer financial stability for congregations while at the same time diminishing their religious activities. While voucher programs for Catholic schools have already been on the rise in nearly half of all states in America, the study is released as the topic of school choice and school vouchers has risen to national prominence with the election of President Donald Trump. On Friday, Trump and U. S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos visited St. Andrew Catholic School in Pine Hills, Florida, to highlight the administration’s plan to offer children from poorly performing public schools other education opportunities. In his address to a joint session of Congress Tuesday, Trump said, “Education is the civil rights issue of our time. ” “I am calling upon Members of both parties to pass an education bill that funds school choice for disadvantaged youth, including millions of and Latino children,” he added. Catholic schools are the most common type of religious private school in the United States. Nevertheless, these schools and the parishes that support them have faced a significant economic downturn. In 2011, the National Catholic Educational Association (NCEA) reported that, between 2000 and 2010, the number of Catholic schools dropped from 8, 146 to 6, 980 — a loss of 117 schools per year. Additionally, Catholic elementary and secondary school enrollment fell 22 percent during that same period, from 2, 647, 301 to 2, 065, 872. The NBER researchers observe: Brinig and Garnett (2014) note several reasons for dwindling enrollment, including competition from charter schools, struggles to appeal to populations (e. g. Hispanics) and increasing tuition costs. They summarize the situation of Catholic schools thusly: “The Catholic school financial model — which depended upon the generosity of parishioners in pews that are now empty and the free labor of nuns who are now retired — cannot be sustained. ” Catholic schools, the authors continue, have turned to diverse populations, including students from families, to remain open. The government funding from vouchers has had an impact on both the schools and their parishes, they add. The researchers assert: We find that expansion in voucher policy is, unsurprisingly, associated with increases in voucher revenues for parishes with schools. We also find that voucher expansion prevents parish closures and mergers. … We further see how voucher expansion impacts parishes’ finances. Interestingly, and the above results notwithstanding, we find no evidence that vouchers subsidize parish religious activity beyond the operation of religious schools. In fact, our estimates repeatedly suggest the opposite. Vouchers cause a significant decrease in spending on religious purposes such as religious staff salaries, mission support, and church maintenance. We also find that voucher programs lead to a significant decrease in church donations. “Vouchers thus may help ensure the survival of churches, but may do so while diminishing churches’ religious activities,” the authors conclude. Writing at National Catholic Register, Charlotte Hays observes that NCEA senior consultant Heather Gossart has “grave issues” with the NBER study. “The study drew conclusions that I don’t think are valid,” she said, disturbed by the finding that taxpayer vouchers for Catholic schools is associated with parish dependence on them. “Vouchers don’t fund parishes and churches,” she said. “That would be a violation of separation. ” As a supporter of the Common Core standards, NCEA has welcomed the partnership with government in Catholic education. In 2013, the organization was awarded $76, 593 by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation — the primary source of private funding for the promotion of the nationalized Common Core standards — to help implement the standards in Catholic schools. In 2015, many Catholic school parents and educators were outraged when NCEA invited Common Core “architect” David Coleman to serve as the keynote for its annual convention the following spring. Regarding the voucher effect of a drop in parish contributions, Gossart added that contributions are “a reflection of the community in which a parish finds itself. ” On the issue of vouchers diminishing churches’ other religious activities, Dan Guernsey, director of programs at the Cardinal Newman Society, observes that a parish supporting a parish school itself is its most essential religious activity. “There is no better way to evangelize the youth of the parish (whom it must be remembered are the parish — they are just the parish at grade 3!) than an authentic Catholic education,” Guernsey said. What the NBER study does not specifically address is perhaps the primary concern of vouchers for schools: the amount of regulation the acceptance of government funds brings along with it. In a 2010 study at Cato Institute, Andrew Coulson studied the question of school vouchers and increased regulation of private schools. He concluded that “vouchers … impose a substantial and statistically significant additional regulatory burden on participating private schools. ” Voucher programs, Coulson concluded, are more likely to “suffocate the very markets to which they aim to expand access,” because state funds — which invariably come with state regulation — are directly transferred, in the form of vouchers, to parents to spend in an alternate education setting. In January of 2015, 40 conservative groups in Indiana submitted an agenda to their state lawmakers that urged cutting regulations for private schools that agreed to accept school vouchers. “State lawmakers should cut all but the most basic of transparency requirements on private voucher schools, given that parents and private accreditation agencies already place higher demands on private schools than any bureaucrat can generate,” the coalition asserted. “Particularly egregious is the requirement that schools administer the new assessment aligned to Indiana’s standards. ” Dan Thiele, a conservative activist from northern Indiana, said about the coalition’s agenda, “We won’t produce better, brighter students by creating more government programs and expanding the role of government. ” | 0fake |
Obama eases restrictions on Cuba, lifts limits on rum and cigars | WASHINGTON/HAVANA (Reuters) - Americans traveling to Cuba will be allowed to bring home more of the communist-ruled island’s coveted cigars and rum under new measures announced by the U.S. government on Friday to further ease trade, travel and financial restrictions that have been in place for decades. Cuba welcomed the steps, part of President Barack Obama’s effort to make his historic opening to Cuba “irreversible” by the time he leaves office in January, but said they did not go far enough. The latest in a series of new rules since the former Cold War foes began normalizing relations in 2014 will allow Cubans to buy certain U.S. consumer goods online, open the door for Cuban pharmaceutical companies to do business in the United States and let Cubans and Americans do joint medical research. For American travelers, the biggest change is the removal of limits on the amount of rum and cigars they can pack in their luggage, strictly for personal use. “You can now celebrate with Cuban rum and Cuban cigars,” U.S. National Security Adviser Susan Rice quipped as she laid out the policy changes in a speech to a Washington think tank. U.S. law still bans general tourism to Cuba, but the administration has used previous regulatory packages to make it easier for Americans to visit the island under 12 officially authorized categories. The latest measures are part of an executive order on Cuba through which Obama seeks to sidestep the Republican-controlled Congress, which has resisted his call to lift Washington’s economic embargo after more than 50 years. Republican critics say Obama is making too many concessions to Cuba for too little in return, especially on human rights issues. “After two years of President Obama’s Cuba policy, the Castro regime has made out like bandits,” said U.S. Senator Marco Rubio, a Cuban-American lawmaker from Florida. The steps allow Cuban pharmaceutical companies to apply for U.S. regulatory approval, let U.S. firms improve Cuban infrastructure for humanitarian purposes and authorize them to provide safety-related aircraft services in Cuba, where U.S. airlines are beginning regularly scheduled flights. Also under the new rules, after docking in Cuba, some foreign ships carrying certain cargo will be permitted to travel directly to U.S. ports to load or unload freight. Until now, such vessels have been required to wait 180 days, a restriction that Cuban officials say hinders their import export trade. Josefina Vidal, the Cuban Foreign Ministry’s chief of U.S. affairs, told a news conference in Havana the measures were “positive but of a very limited nature”. “Today, I approved a Presidential Policy Directive that takes another major step forward in our efforts to normalize relations with Cuba,” Obama said in a statement. Less than a month before the Nov. 8 presidential election, Obama said his goal was to “make our opening to Cuba irreversible.” The latest package, the administration’s sixth, is likely to be the “last significant tranche of changes” during Obama’s tenure, said a senior official, who asked not to be named. Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton backs the policy of rapprochement with Havana. Republican Donald Trump has vowed to roll back Obama’s executive actions. Vidal criticized Obama’s directive for making it clear the U.S. aimed to “promote change in Cuba’s economic, political and social system”, failing to respect its sovereignty. In March, Obama made the first visit to Havana by a U.S. president in 88 years. His trip was made possible by his breakthrough agreement with Cuban President Raul Castro in December 2014 to cast aside decades of hostility that began soon after Cuba’s 1959 revolution. Since the opening, Obama has repeatedly used his executive powers to relax trade and travel restrictions, while pushing Cuba to accelerate market-style reforms and boost political and economic freedom. “The changes announced to Cuba regulations are, by definition, significant because they are new,” said John Kavulich, president of the U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council. “Whether they will be relevant depends upon the government of Cuba’s willingness to permit United States companies and institutions to engage.” “This new directive consolidates and builds upon the changes we’ve already made,” Obama said. He added, however, that “challenges remain – and very real differences between our governments persist on issues of democracy and human rights.” At the same time, the U.S. embargo against Cuba has remained in place, a major irritant in relations. Only Congress can lift the embargo, and the Republican leadership is not expected to allow such a move anytime soon. | 0fake |
French truckers jam border crossings over cut-price competition | PARIS (Reuters) - French truck drivers blocked traffic at border crossings with Spain, Italy and Belgium on Tuesday in protest over cut-price competition in the road-freight industry. French truckers are angry that an agreement reached by EU member states on Oct. 23 to limit the amount of time workers can be posted from one EU country to another does not cover the road transport sector. [L8N1MY3RF] As a result, French truckers face being priced out by drivers from other EU member states, especially east Europe, Spain and Portugal, who are willing to do fixed-term work for lower pay than French drivers might normally receive. Widening gaps in pay and conditions endanger French firms and workers, said Pascal Favre, a member of the Force Ouvriere labor union who was among truckers protesting in southwest France, near the border with Spain. (There are) those who work for lower pay because they spend more time behind the wheel on jobs the French do not do because of unfair competition. The posted workers issue effectively pits wealthier EU countries against poorer peers like Poland and Bulgaria, whose skilled workers are keen to move around the EU on fixed-term contracts, earning more than they would do at home but often undercutting workers in the host country. The number of workers posted to France from other EU countries rose 23.8 percent to 354,151 in 2016, after a similar jump the preceding year, according to a government count cited by the business newspaper Les Echos on Tuesday. Emmanuel Macron made the issue part of his presidential campaign, saying he would fight to protect workers from unfair competition. While he managed to forge agreement among the EU s 28 states for some adjustments to the rules, transportation workers were not included. About 200 French truckers took part in the protest at the northern border crossing into Rekkem in Belgium, waving cars through but halting trucks, a local police official said. Traffic on the main motorway from the French city of Lille to the Belgian city of Ghent was disrupted by another trucker protest in the region for a few hours early in the day. Traffic through the Frejus tunnel to Italy in the southeast was similarly disrupted, as were some crossings with Spain. It wasn t immediately clear how great the economic impact of the protests would be, although they were not expected to continue beyond Tuesday. | 0fake |
Wounded by ‘Fearless Girl,’ Creator of ‘Charging Bull’ Wants Her to Move - The New York Times | “Charging Bull” had a message for “Fearless Girl” on Wednesday, and it was more “Get out of my space” than “Here’s looking at you, kid. ” The message actually came from Arturo Di Modica, the sculptor who created “Charging Bull” nearly 30 years ago. He also copyrighted and trademarked the sculpture that stands near Wall Street. Since March 7, “Charging Bull” has faced off against “Fearless Girl,” a statue of a girl posed with her fists on her hips that was commissioned by State Street Global Advisors, a financial firm based in Boston. Mr. Di Modica said that “Fearless Girl” was an insult to his work, which he created after the stock market crashes in the late 1980s. “She’s there attacking the bull,” he said. Even as Mr. Di Modica was denouncing “Fearless Girl” at a news conference in Midtown Manhattan, State Street Global’s home page highlighted the statue for its message about “the power of women in leadership” and urged “greater gender diversity on corporate boards. ” Mr. Di Modica and his lawyers did not disagree with that idea at a news conference — “None of us here are in any way not proponents of gender equality,” said one of Mr. Di Modica’s lawyers, Norman Siegel, a former executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union. They demanded that “Fearless Girl” be moved somewhere else. Mayor Bill de Blasio, who spoke out in support of “Fearless Girl” last month, reiterated its importance on Twitter on Wednesday: “Men who don’t like women taking up space are exactly why we need the Fearless Girl. ” “Fearless Girl” was seen by many as a unifying symbol during International Women’s Day last month. Chelsea Clinton and the actress Jessica Chastain posted on Twitter expressing support for the statue. But on Wednesday, Mr. Siegel said, “Principle trumps popularity, and there are principles here. ” For his part, Mr. Di Modica became emotional, explaining later that when he had heard about “Fearless Girl,” his reaction was to go to the site in Lower Manhattan and try to do something to end the between the two statues. “I said, ‘Now I’m going to turn around the bull myself,’” he recalled. The lawyers said that “Fearless Girl” had subverted the bull’s meaning, which Mr. Di Modica defined as “freedom in the world, peace, strength, power and love. ” Because of “Fearless Girl,” Mr. Siegel said, “‘Charging Bull’ no longer carries a positive, optimistic message,” adding that Mr. Di Modica’s work “has been transformed into a negative force and a threat. ” The lawyers accused State Street Global of commissioning “Fearless Girl” as a work that was conceived with “Charging Bull” in mind. They said that that had improperly commercialized Mr. Di Modica’s statue in violation of its copyright. They asserted that the city had violated his legal rights by issuing permits allowing the “Fearless Girl” to stand across from the bronze bull without Mr. Di Modica’s permission. Mr. Siegel and other lawyers for Mr. Di Modica released letters they had sent to the mayor Ronald P. O’Hanley, the president and chief executive of State Street Global and Harris Diamond, the chairman and chief executive of McCann Worldgroup, State Street Global’s marketing agency. Among other things, the letters demanded the removal of “Fearless Girl. ” Anne McNally, a spokeswoman for State Street Global, said the firm was reviewing the letter. She added, “We continue to be grateful to the City of New York and people around the world who have responded so enthusiastically to what the ‘Fearless Girl’ represents — the power and potential of having more women in leadership. ” Mr. Siegel said he had filed Freedom of Information requests for city records about the permits for “Fearless Girl. ” It was initially issued a permit, but after it became a social media sensation, Mr. de Blasio announced that the permit was being extended. The mayor said that the sculpture could remain until next year’s International Women’s Day. In March, the mayor called the statue a symbol of “standing up to fear, standing up to power, being able to find in yourself the strength to do what’s right. ” He also said the timing of the placement of “Fearless Girl” mattered, coming early in Donald J. Trump’s presidency and not long after the women’s rights marches that followed his inauguration. “She is inspiring everyone at a moment when we need inspiration,” the mayor said. Mr. Siegel said he hoped that the dispute over the two statues could be resolved amicably. But he added, “We never dismiss the possibility of litigation. ” | 0fake |
Democratic lawmakers press Flynn on Middle East trips | (Reuters) - Democratic lawmakers investigating fired national security adviser Michael Flynn’s security clearance said Monday they could not find the hotel Flynn said he stayed at during a 2015 trip to Saudi Arabia or any record of a conference he reported attending. In a letter to companies for which Flynn worked, U.S. Representatives Elijah Cummings and Eliot Engel requested documents related to Flynn’s work in Saudi Arabia, Russia and other countries. They said Flynn had not accurately reported his foreign travels and contacts in a 2016 application to renew his security clearance. Cummings is the ranking Democrat on the House of Representatives’ Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. Engel is the ranking Democrat on the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. Flynn’s work for foreign interests has taken center stage in a broad federal investigation into the ties between President Donald Trump’s associates and Russia and other countries during and after the 2016 election. While Flynn disclosed an October 2015 trip to Saudi Arabia, Cummings and Engel said Flynn omitted key details and said they could not identify any conference he may have attended or find the hotel he reported staying at during the trip. The two lawmakers said they were most troubled by the lack of any Flynn record identifying “even a single foreign government official he had contact with in the seven years prior to submitting his security clearance application.” Cummings and Engel also cited a recent Newsweek report which said Flynn took a trip to the Middle East in the summer of 2015 in pursuit of a joint U.S.-Russian venture to develop nuclear facilities, in a deal to be financed by Saudi Arabia. “If this press report is accurate, General Flynn’s failure to report this trip and any contacts with foreign government officials about this Saudi-Russian nuclear proposal appears to be a potential violation” of a law against making false statements to federal officials, the letter said. | 0fake |
Malawi vigilante arrests rise to 200 in vampire scare | LILONGWE (Reuters) - Police in Malawi have arrested 200 suspected members of vigilante mobs that have been killing people they believe are vampires, a spokesman said on Tuesday. Nine people have been killed since mid-September in southern Malawi where there is a widespread belief in witchcraft. The violence has prompted the United Nations and the U.S. embassy to declare some parts of the country no-go zones. The attacks spread last week to Blantyre, Malawi s second largest city where a 22-year-old man was stoned then burned to death and another was stoned to death. Both were accused of bloodsucking, although medical experts deny the existence of vampirism in Malawi. Amos Daka, head of the Medical Society of Malawi, said his group was not aware that any one has adequate clinical evidence to support any of the many claims to date. President Peter Mutharika has visited parts of the country affected by the violence. This month, the United Nations pulled staff out of two areas in southern Malawi. | 0fake |
null | Well we know that they think we are a basket full of uneducated deplorable rednecks,and they can spoon feed us this garbage and we are going to believe them. WRONG | 1real |
Slave labor: Prison food contractors funded efforts to combat marijuana legalization | Mint Press News Tue, 25 Oct 2016 13:50 UTC An inmate makes a sandwich while working in the employees’ cafeteria at Coxsackie Correctional Facility in Coxsackie, N.Y. Food Services of America, a subsidiary of Services Group of America is funding efforts to keep marijuana illegal. It makes sense, considering that a vast majority of America's prisoners are locked in prison on marijuana charges, and the company stands to gain a lot of business from the laws staying the same. Marijuana.com report ed that the company donated $80,000 to a campaign committee opposing the legal cannabis measure on Arizona's November ballot. Services Group of America has been criticized in the past for providing food to prisons that failed to meet basic nutritional requirements. The report also indicated that the Arizona state Chamber of Commerce contributed $498,000 to the same campaign week. The effort also received a half million dollar donation from opioid maker Insys Therapeutics as well as sizeable contributions from various players in the alcohol industry. The influence that the alcohol and pharmaceutical industries have on keeping marijuana illegal has been well documented, but the influence of prison contractors is rarely discussed. The prison industry is one of the fastest growing and top-earning businesses in the United States. In the past three decades, this enterprise has grown into a monstrous system of oppression that now houses over 2 and a half million people in the US. This number is, by far, the largest prison population in the world. No country on earth has as many inmates as the "land of the free." Ironic isn't it? Since 1991 the violent crime rate in America has dropped at least 20%, while the amount of people in prison has increased by 50% in that time. These numbers show that the rapid growth in the prison population is primarily due to over prosecution of nonviolent crimes. This has nothing to do with "cleaning up the streets" or making our society safer — it is all about money and control. The prison system as it stands now does not make our society any safer but instead turns average nonviolent offenders into hardened criminals by exposing them to such a harsh environment. The sad truth is that the way our prison system has been structured has actually outlawed more than half of the US population. Nonviolent offenders have no place behind bars. The savage conditions of prison will turn most people into violent offenders once they get out. Which is exactly what the prison establishment wants - return customers. This establishment is the collection of state and quasi-state/private industries that make up the "prison industrial complex." Billions of dollars are made every year in this industry. One company, Wackenhut Corrections, makes over a billion dollars a year and they aren't even the biggest prison service in the country. Comment: It's a no brainer why the US has more prison inmates than any other country in the world, private prisons get slave labor and are making billions of dollars in profits! These numbers also don't take into consideration the many satellite businesses that surround this industry. There are over 1,000 vendors that specifically sell correctional paraphernalia. Even local phone companies cash in on the operation. The companies install payphones for free because those phones can generate $15,000 per year from each inmate making a phone call every day. Those companies are just the tip of the iceberg. That isn't even counting the police, lawyers, wardens, politicians and food distributors that line their pockets through the incarceration of peaceful Americans. All of these organizations have a distinct interest in keeping nonviolent people in jail. So, it should come as no surprise a prison contractor is working to keep marijuana illegal. | 1real |
U.S. farm heartland lobbies to steer Trump away from Mexico trade war | GARNER, Iowa/MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Farmers in the U.S. agricultural heartland that helped elect Donald Trump are now pushing his administration to avoid a trade dispute with Mexico, fearing retaliatory tariffs that could hit over $3 billion in U.S. exports. The value of exports at risk is based on a Reuters analysis of a tariff list which Mexico used in a trucking dispute six years ago and which Mexican officials have said could serve as a model if President Trump sets new barriers to Mexican goods. Pork producers contacted Trump’s transition team soon after the Nov. 8 election to stress that tariff-free access to Mexico has made it their top export market by volume, said John Weber, president of the National Pork Producers Council. The council has sent the administration multiple letters, including one signed in January by 133 agricultural organizations, and is arranging for several hog farmers to fly to Washington next month to talk to officials. “We just keep pounding them on how critical trade is to us,” said Weber, who fears Mexico could revive the list of mostly agricultural products it successfully used to push Washington into letting Mexican truckers on U.S. highways in 2011. Pork products topped that list and, if revived, the tariffs would apply to over $800 million of annual pork exports, according to data compiled by IHS Markit’s Global Trade Atlas. “We’ll be the first to take the hit,” Weber said. The lobbying effort by U.S. businesses which rely on the Mexican market shows how Mexico can press its case in Washington despite having an economy 1/17 the size of America’s and relying on the U.S. market for nearly 80 percent if its exports. In Iowa, where pigs outnumber people seven to one, hog and grain farmer Jamie Schmidt voted for Trump in part on his promise to cut regulatory burdens for businesses. Now he and others who farm the flat, rich land around Garner, Iowa, worry about trade. Schmidt gets about half of his income from hogs, earning $4-5 for each of the 425 pigs he sells per week, usually to a Tyson Foods (TSN.N) packing plant in nearby Perry, Iowa. Tariffs from Mexico could depress U.S. wholesale prices and wipe out his profits, Schmidt said. “It would be devastating.” In December, after fears of a trade dispute fueled a deep peso MXN= slump, Mexico started mapping out U.S. states that are most reliant on its market, replicating the strategy it used in the trucking dispute, said two senior Mexican officials. Mexican officials also prepared briefs, seen by Reuters, on Mexico’s own risks in a dispute, including losing much of its cost advantage in building cars, such as the Ford Fusion (F.N) made in Hermosillo, Mexico. Reuters could not verify a complete list of products and states Mexico considered targeting this time around. But the country’s foreign minister said last month tariffs could target Iowa, which raises a third of U.S. hogs and exports about a quarter of its pork production, $100 million of which went to Mexico last year. The minister also said tariffs could aim at Wisconsin, the center of U.S. cheese production, and has singled out Texas for its “notable” trade surplus with Mexico. All three states voted for Trump in the 2016 election, with the president taking Iowa and Wisconsin by slim margins. Trump has accused Mexico of destroying U.S. jobs and has vowed to leave the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico if he cannot renegotiate better terms with Mexico. United States went from running a small trade surplus with Mexico in the early 1990s to a $63 billion deficit in 2016. Besides pork, cheese was also a top target in the trucking dispute in which Mexico retaliated with tariffs against rules that banned its trucks from U.S. roads. Some $200 million in current annual exports of cheese would be targeted if the tariff list were revived, according to the IHS database, which the U.S. government uses to measure the impact of trade disputes. The full tariff list would apply to $3.25 billion in current U.S. exports. John Holevoet, the director of government affairs at Wisconsin’s Dairy Business Association, said he has attended multiple meetings with Wisconsin federal lawmakers this year where risks of Mexican trade were discussed. Weber of the pork producers group said he believed the Trump administration “gets it” when it comes to the vulnerability of U.S. farm exports. Republican Congressman Steve King, who represents Iowa’s agriculture-focused fourth district, also pointed out that Iowa’s role as the first state to hold presidential primaries helps keep farm interests in Washington’s view. But King told Reuters he was worried the White House is still not taking trade risks seriously enough. A possible 20 percent tax on Mexican imports, which White House spokesman Sean Spicer has said could also pay for Trump’s proposed border wall, would cause a trade war, he said. King said he has been in contact with the White House on the matter but has yet to secure a one-on-one meeting with the president. “I’m making sure that here in Washington they know what this means.” | 0fake |
Sex Offender Cuffed Again Six Days after Deportation | An illegal immigrant sex offender was arrested again in Texas after being deported from the U. S. six days prior. [Gabriel of Mexico, was arrested by the U. S. Border Patrol after he was deported out of Hidalgo County, Texas earlier this month, according to Valley Central News. “Record checks revealed the Defendant was formally from the United States on April 7, 2017, through Hidalgo, Texas,” the criminal complaint against states. Back in October 2015, was arrested and convicted for sexual battery and was sentenced to more than 900 days in a U. S. prison, before being deported back to his native Mexico by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency. faces federal immigration charges for illegally the U. S. The criminal illegal immigrant is in ICE custody and is awaiting an immigration hearing. John Binder is a contributor for Breitbart Texas. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder. | 0fake |
Turkey seeks life sentences for 60 ex-military over 1997 'post-modern coup' | ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Sixty people including a former military chief faced demands for life jail terms over a 1997 campaign of army pressure, known in Turkey as the post-modern coup, that toppled the country s first Islamist-led government, state media said on Thursday. Coups in 1960 and 1980 and a failed 2016 putsch involved overt army use of force, but the resignation of prime minister Necmettin Erbakan followed warnings and only a brief appearance of tanks in a provincial town. It is an action that has long rankled with current Islamist-rooted President Tayyip Erdogan. In his final opinion on the case, the prosecutor said the army action, which did not result in any direct military rule, constituted a real coup attempt and could not be defined as post-modern , broadcaster NTV reported. Among those facing life sentences are General Ismail Hakki Karadayi, 85, who was chief of general staff between 1994 and 1998, and his deputy at the time General Cevik Bir, state-run Anadolu news agency said. The investigation into the unseating of Erbakan, who led a coalition government, is one of a series of court cases that have targeted the formerly all powerful secularist military in recent years. The army s influence has been curbed drastically under Erdogan, who first came to power in 2003 and who was a member of Erbakan s Welfare Party at the time of the government s ouster. A total of 103 people, mostly retired generals, had been named in the trial s 1,300-page indictment, accused of overthrowing by force, and participating in the overthrow of a government. While aggravated life sentences were sought for 60 defendants, the prosecutor asked for the acquittal of 39 other defendants, NTV reported. The four other defendants have died since the court case began in 2013. Last year, rogue soldiers commandeered warplanes, tanks and helicopters in a failed coup which killed 250 people and which Ankara has blamed on U.S.-based Islamic preacher Fethullah Gulen. He has denied involvement. Erbakan, who died in 2011, pioneered Islamist politics in Turkey, a Muslim country with a secular state system, paving the way for the later success of Erdogan s AK Party. | 0fake |
Abe 'optimistic' about positive outcome to trade talks with Trump | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said on Friday that he and U.S. President Donald Trump would discuss trade and economic issues at a working lunch and he was “optimistic” there would be good results from the dialogue. Abe said he was “fully aware” of Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Trans-Pacific Partnership multilateral trade accord. But he said Japan and the United States had agreed on a new framework for economic dialogue. “I am quite optimistic that ... good results will be seen from the dialogue,” he said, adding that Japan was looking for a fair, common set of rules for trade in the region. | 0fake |
Russian helicopter missing off coast of Svalbard: rescue service | OSLO (Reuters) - The Russian helicopter that went down off the coast of Svalbard on Thursday has still not been located more than 90 minutes after it went down at sea, Norway s rescue service told independent broadcaster TV2. The helicopter had a crew of five and three passengers, all with Russian-sounding names , said the leader of the rescue operation coordination, Tore Hongset. | 0fake |
Orlando Attack Just Added More Fuel to Divisive Politics | The FBI says 29-year-old Omar Mateen, an American-born Muslim, appears to be a "homegrown extremist," saying there's no evidence the attack was directed from the Middle East.
"I don't see anything in reviewing our work that our agents should have done differently," FBI Director James Comey said.
But why was the killer allowed to walk into a gun store and buy firearms despite the fact that he had once been under FBI surveillance for nearly a year?
Witnesses now say that Mateen was a regular at the Pulse nightclub and dated men. Officials say he also scouted Disney World for a possible attack.
Meanwhile, as the investigation continues, the shooting has taken over the presidential campaign.
After President Barack Obama refused to even utter the words 'Muslim' or 'Islamic terrorism' in his statement on the Orlando massacre, presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump expanded his proposed Muslim ban.
The billionaire says the doors to the United States should be closed to anyone from nations with a track record of Islamic terrorism, regardless of their religion.
"I will suspend immigration from areas of the world where there is a proven history of terrorism against the United States, Europe, or our allies until we fully understand how to end these threats," he vowed.
Trump accused Obama of being willfully ignorant about the issue of Islamic terrorism.
"There's something is going on," he said of the president and Islamic terrorism,
Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton at first followed the president's politically correct line.
"Inflammatory anti-Muslim rhetoric hurts the vast majority of Muslims who love freedom and hate terror," she said.
But her opponent pounced. Trump said Clinton isn't strong enough on America's enemies.
"Her continuing reluctance to ever name the enemy broadcasts weakness across the entire world," he said.
Clinton finally uttered the words "radical Islamism" in an phone interview with CNN, but said she would not "demonize an entire religion."
"We face a twisted ideology and poisoned psychology that inspires the so-called lone wolves," she later admitted.
The Democratic response during a raucus session of Congress Monday wasn't on tougher anti-terror laws but gun control legislation. But Republicans stopped it.
While politicians debate what should be done, investigators are still trying to learn more about the man who carried out the deadliest mass shooting in American history. | 0fake |
Senate votes to confirm slate of three CFTC commissioners | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Senate voted on Thursday to confirm two Republicans and one Democrat to serve on the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the top U.S derivatives regulator. In a voice vote, the Senate approved the nominations of Republican Chris Giancarlo to serve as CFTC chairman, as well as Republican Brian Quintenz and Democrat Rostin “Russ” Behnam to serve as commissioners. However, the Senate did not vote to confirm another Republican nominee, Dawn Stump. A Senate Democratic aide, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Stump was not on the slate of nominees because the party did not want to approve a total of three Republican commissioners and only one Democrat. That would leave the CFTC with just one Democratic commissioner because the other one, Sharon Bowen, announced recently that she planned to step down soon. The aide added that once Republican President Donald Trump selects a second Democrat to replace Bowen, then that person’s nomination will likely be approved along with Stump’s. Giancarlo has already been serving as acting CFTC chairman since Trump took office in January. In a statement, Giancarlo said he was “humbled” by the bipartisan support for him in the Senate. | 0fake |
Dilma Rousseff Targeted in Brazil by Lawmakers Facing Scandals of Their Own - The New York Times | BRASÍLIA — Paulo Maluf, a Brazilian congressman, is so badly besieged by his own graft scandals that his constituents often describe him with the slogan “Rouba mas faz. ” Translation: He steals but gets it done. But like an array of other members of Brazil’s Congress, Mr. Maluf says he is so fed up with all the corruption in the country that he supports ousting President Dilma Rousseff. “I’m against all the dubious this government does,” said Mr. Maluf, 84, a former São Paulo mayor who faces charges in the United States that he stole more than $11. 6 million in a kickback scheme. The drive to impeach Ms. Rousseff is gaining momentum. A pivotal vote to send her case to the Senate for a possible trial is expected over the weekend, and several of the political parties in her governing coalition abandoned her this week, leaving her especially vulnerable. But some of the most vocal lawmakers pushing to impeach Ms. Rousseff are facing serious charges of graft, electoral fraud and human rights abuses, uncorking a national debate about hypocrisy among Brazil’s leaders. “Dilma may have dug her own grave by not delivering on what she promised, but she is untainted in a political realm smeared with excrement from top to bottom,” said Mario Sergio Conti, a columnist for the newspaper Folha de S. Paulo. “She didn’t steal, but a gang of thieves is judging her. ” Ms. Rousseff is deeply resented in Brazil, having presided over the worst economic crisis in decades, a huge corruption scandal engulfing the national oil company and the fall of millions of Brazilians into poverty. In the impeachment case, she is not facing charges of graft. Instead, she is accused of using money from giant public banks to cover budget gaps, damaging Brazil’s economic credibility. Ms. Rousseff, then, is something of a rarity among Brazil’s major political figures: She has not been accused of stealing for herself. Eduardo Cunha, the powerful speaker of the lower house who is leading the impeachment effort, is going on trial at the country’s highest court, the Supreme Federal Tribunal, on charges that he pocketed as much as $40 million in bribes. Mr. Cunha, an evangelical Christian radio commentator and economist who regularly issues Twitter messages quoting from the Bible, is accused of laundering the gains through an evangelical megachurch. Vice President Michel Temer, who is expected to take over if Ms. Rousseff is forced to step aside, has been accused of involvement in an illegal scheme. Renan Calheiros, the Senate leader, who is also on the presidential succession chain, is under investigation over claims that he received bribes in the giant scandal surrounding the national oil company, Petrobras. He has also been accused of tax evasion and of allowing a lobbyist to pay child support for a daughter from an extramarital affair. Altogether, 60 percent of the 594 members of Brazil’s Congress face serious charges like bribery, electoral fraud, illegal deforestation, kidnapping and homicide, according to Transparency Brazil, a group. The issue has even become a part of the president’s defense strategy. In particular, Ms. Rousseff and her supporters have argued, how can the impeachment process be directed by someone who is going on trial for corruption himself? On Thursday, José Eduardo Cardozo, the solicitor general, said that his office had appealed to the Supreme Federal Tribunal in an attempt to block the impeachment proceedings. He said the effort to oust Ms. Rousseff had become so sprawling that it was “a true Kafkaesque process in which the defendant cannot figure out with any certainty what she is being accused of or why. ” In a session that went past midnight and into the early hours of Friday, a majority of justices on the high court rejected the Rousseff administration’s request to annul this weekend’s impeachment vote. No one can dispute that Ms. Rousseff is very unpopular around the country, as reflected in her nearly approval ratings, the broad ire over bribery and kickbacks within her Workers’ Party, and the regular street protests demanding her ouster. Even so, some Brazilians argue that the impeachment upheaval has less to do with stamping out corruption than with an effort to shift power by lawmakers with questionable records themselves. Ms. Rousseff’s opponents in Congress include Éder Mauro, who is facing charges of torture and extortion from his previous stint as a police officer in Belém, a city in the Amazon. Another congressman aiming to impeach Ms. Rousseff: Beto Mansur, who is charged with keeping 46 workers at his soybean farms in Goiás State in conditions so deplorable that investigators say the laborers were treated like slaves. Almost daily, prosecutors reveal accusations involving Ms. Rousseff’s allies and adversaries in Congress, saying they pocketed bribes in the colossal graft scheme surrounding energy companies. Graphic photos even circulated this month of prostitutes operating in a wing of Congress reserved for committee deliberations, reminding Brazilians of the institution’s circuslike atmosphere these days. Luis Almagro, secretary general of the Organization of American States, criticized the impeachment process, saying the accusations against Ms. Rousseff “are not crimes, but they are related to poor administration. ” He said that the president’s missteps were “actions that other presidents in the past took themselves,” but that Brazil’s politicians were “judging her differently. ” Mr. Almagro also criticized the politicians who were pushing for impeachment but facing corruption accusations themselves. “I am worried about the credibility of some of those who are going to judge or decide this impeachment process,” he said. Mr. Maluf, the former mayor who supports the president’s removal, spent weeks in jail a decade ago on charges of money laundering and tax evasion. But he was released under a law allowing people older than 70 to face such accusations at home. Then Mr. Maluf won a seat in Congress, giving him the privileged judicial standing that keeps nearly all senior Brazilian politicians with such privileges out of jail. Despite Mr. Maluf’s claims in recent days that he could travel outside Brazil without being arrested, he remains wanted by Interpol for the case against him in the United States, according to the United States Justice Department. France also has an outstanding warrant for his arrest in a separate case involving organized money laundering. “My public life was always the opposite of all that,” Mr. Maluf said last week, criticizing the bad deeds in Ms. Rousseff’s government, including her scramble to offer cabinet posts to legislators on the fence over impeachment. Scholars note the sweeping legal protections enjoyed by about 700 senior officials, including cabinet ministers and every member of Congress. Only the Supreme Federal Tribunal can try them, producing years of appeals and delays. “Winning election to Congress is a license to steal for certain figures,” said Sylvio Costa, the founder of Congresso em Foco, a watchdog group that tracks legislative corruption. “In this grotesque system, the biggest thieves are those who wield the most power. ” Claims of misdeeds among other lawmakers do not bother some of the politicians wanting Ms. Rousseff impeached. Roberto Jefferson, a former legislator who went to prison after his conviction for his role in a scheme, said that Mr. Cunha’s talent for political served as a strategic advantage. “The bandit I’m rooting for the most is Eduardo Cunha,” Mr. Jefferson said. (Several lawmakers seeking to oust Ms. Rousseff, including Mr. Cunha, either declined requests for comment or did not respond.) One prominent supporter of Ms. Rousseff is Fernando Collor de Mello, the disgraced former president who resigned in 1992 over an scandal. He resurrected his political career as a senator, only to face charges now of taking bribes in the graft scheme around the national oil company. Mr. Collor’s father, Arnon de Mello, set a precedent after fatally shooting a fellow senator on the Senate floor in 1963. Arnon de Mello managed to avoid prison after a court ruled that the episode was an accident — because he was aiming at another senator. As tempers flare over impeachment, some cite the example of Ivo Cassol, a senator from the Amazon. He was sentenced to more than four years in prison in 2013 by the Supreme Federal Tribunal on corruption charges related to contracts granted more than 15 years ago. (Mr. Cassol considers himself innocent in the case, a spokesman said.) Despite the ruling, Mr. Cassol remains in the Senate, keeping the high court’s decision at bay with appeals. He is now delivering some of the most impassioned speeches in favor of Ms. Rousseff’s impeachment, calling her government “disgraceful. ” | 0fake |
Trump protest feed: Clinton supporters take to the streets because their team didn’t win | Trump protest feed: Clinton supporters take to the streets because their team didn’t win Trump’s sweeping win of the electoral vote was a stunning blow to Hillary Clinton supporters By Daisy Luther - November 10, 2016
All across the country, the election of Donald Trump is being protested with increasing fervor. Despite all odds ( since all the public odds were rigged ) Trump’s sweeping win of the electoral vote was a stunning blow to Hillary Clinton supporters.
And they aren’t taking their loss gracefully. They’re shouting, swearing, crying, and, according to the most frequent word I’ve seen, absolutely terrified. They seem unaware of the irony that when they refer to Trump as a fascist, they’re actually the ones protesting a legitimately elected leader simply because their candidate didn’t win.
Protests began last night within hours of the announcement .
The First Amendment guarantees our right to peaceful assembly , but that isn’t what is happening. Injuries, obstruction of roadways, and destruction of property have begun to occur, and I strongly believe the violence will continue to escalate. If you can at all, stay home and away from areas with large gatherings – it doesn’t take much to turn a peaceful crowd into an angry mob. If you are unprepared for civil unrest on this scale, go here for guidance .
We’re a small operation here at DaisyLuther.com , and there are just too many people having hissies because their team didn’t win the trophy. Since we can’t write a new article for each one, I’m putting them into one feed that will be updated frequently. Check back for the latest temper tantrums updates frequently. Wednesday, 10:00 pm CST | 1real |
SAID IN SPANISH: A Mexican Governor Meddles In California; Mexican Music Stars Slam Trump (Who Asked Them?); NEW YORK TIMES Votes For Hispanics Above Anglos | 1real | |
Former Ambassador Andrew Young Calls for End to Water Fluoridation, “Civil Rights Issue” | By Brandon Turbeville Anti-fluoridation activists in Georgia received a major boost of support when former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations under Jimmy Carter, Andrew Young, sent a letter to... | 1real |
Trump Team’s Links to Russia Crisscross in Washington - The New York Times | WASHINGTON — During the 2016 campaign, Donald J. Trump’s second campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, had regular communications with his longtime associate — a former Russian military translator in Kiev who has been investigated in Ukraine on suspicion of being a Russian intelligence agent. At the Republican National Convention in July, J. D. Gordon, a former Pentagon official on Mr. Trump’s national security team, met with the Russian ambassador, Sergey Kislyak, at a time when Mr. Gordon was helping keep hawkish language on Russia’s conflict with Ukraine out of the party’s platform. And Jason Greenblatt, a former Trump Organization lawyer and now a special representative for international negotiations at the White House, met last summer with Rabbi Berel Lazar, the chief rabbi of Russia and an ally of Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin. In a Washington atmosphere supercharged by the finding of the intelligence agencies that Mr. Putin tried to steer the election to Mr. Trump, as well as continuing F. B. I. and congressional investigations, a growing list of Russian contacts with Mr. Trump’s associates is getting intense and skeptical scrutiny. Democrats see suspicious connections and inaccurate denials as part of a pattern that belies Mr. Trump’s adamant insistence that he and his associates “have nothing to do with Russia. ” The president’s supporters say innocuous encounters, routine for any incoming presidential team, are being treated for political reasons as somehow subversive. Mr. Trump denounced the furor over Russian connections on Thursday as a “total witch hunt” — but it may not have helped his case that the Russian foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, echoed his words on Friday, saying, “This all looks like a witch hunt. ” On Friday, Mr. Trump posted a picture on Twitter of a meeting between Mr. Putin and Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, and wrote that “we should start an immediate investigation into @SenSchumer and his ties to Russia and Putin. ” The issue has already had momentous consequences for the new administration. Michael T. Flynn lasted less than a month as national security adviser before being forced out for mischaracterizing his conversations with Mr. Kislyak. This week, Attorney General Jeff Sessions admitted to having meetings with Mr. Kislyak that he had not disclosed during his confirmation hearing. Mr. Sessions fended off demands that he resign but agreed to recuse himself from what may be the most important investigation his Justice Department is conducting: of Russian meddling in the election and whether any of Mr. Trump’s associates colluded in those efforts. And that did not end the issue all nine Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee called on Friday for Mr. Sessions to testify about his inaccurate denials that he had met with Russian officials during the campaign. Part of the problem underlying disputes over such contacts may be Mr. Trump’s pugnacious style, which usually leaves little room for nuance. At a news conference last month, he said that he had “nothing to do with Russia,” and that “to the best of my knowledge, no person that I deal with does. ” In fact, vigorous reporting by multiple news media organizations is turning up multiple contacts between Trump associates and Russians who serve in or are close to Mr. Putin’s government. There have been courtesy calls, policy discussions and business contacts, though nothing has emerged publicly indicating anything more sinister. A dossier of allegations on contacts, compiled by a former British intelligence agent for Mr. Trump’s political opponents, includes unproven claims that his aides collaborated in Russia’s hacking of Democratic targets. Current and former American officials have said that phone records and intercepted calls show that members of Mr. Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and other Trump associates had repeated contacts with senior Russian intelligence officials in the year before the election. Former diplomats and Russia specialists say it would have been absurd and contrary to American interests for the Trump team to avoid meetings with Russians, either during or since the campaign. John R. Beyrle, the United States ambassador to Moscow from 2008 to 2012, said he feared that “we’re beginning to the Russians” by treating all contacts as suspicious. When he returns to Russia now, he said, “this real frenzy” prompts some old acquaintances to refuse to meet him because they worry about being tagged as too friendly to the United States. “That’s the last behavior we should model — that simply meeting with a Russian official is wrong, without any knowledge of what was said,” Mr. Beyrle said. In a possible sign that Mr. Trump hopes to put behind him the impression that he is an uncritical admirer of Mr. Putin, he is expected to name Fiona Hill, a respected Brookings scholar, to the top Russia post at the National Security Council, according to administration officials. Ms. Hill, who served as national intelligence officer for Russia and Eurasia from 2006 to 2009, is viewed as a Putin skeptic, if not as outspoken in her criticism of the Russian leader as are some other academics. Angela Stent, a Russia expert at Georgetown, said Ms. Hill was “realistic about Putin” and praised the 2013 book she wrote with Clifford G. Gaddy, “Mr. Putin: Operative in the Kremlin,” as the best biography of the Russian leader. It might take a Russia scholar to unpack the significance of particular meetings that are now coming to light in the glare of investigations and politics. Rabbi Lazar, who has condemned critics of Mr. Putin’s actions in Ukraine, is the leader of the Hasidic group in Russia, where it is a powerful organization running dozens of schools and offering social services across the country, while maintaining links to a lucrative financial donor network. Mr. Greenblatt, who handled outreach to Jews for the campaign, said that Rabbi Lazar was one of several Chabad leaders he had met during the campaign. He said the two men did not discuss broader United relations and called the meeting “probably less than useful. ” Rabbi Lazar said they had spoken about in Russia, Russian Jews in Israel and Russian society in general. While he meets with Mr. Putin once or twice a year, he said, he never discussed his meeting with Mr. Greenblatt with Kremlin officials. Joshua Nass, a public relations executive in New York, confirmed arranging the meeting between Mr. Lazar and Mr. Greenblatt. Mr. Gordon, the former Pentagon official, portrayed his meeting with Mr. Kislyak at the Republican convention — first reported by USA Today — as similarly unremarkable. After a panel discussion, he said, he spoke briefly with “dozens of ambassadors and senior diplomats” including Mr. Kislyak. During a brief chat with the ambassador, Mr. Gordon said, he “repeated some of the points made by the campaign on the importance of improving relations with Russia” but did not get into substantive policy matters. At a meeting to draft the Republican platform, Mr. Gordon, representing Mr. Trump’s views, opposed a delegate who wanted to call for providing “lethal defensive weapons” to Ukraine. Mr. Gordon said that proposal “was soundly defeated by the other delegates in the national security subcommittee meeting. ” There was no connection, he insisted, between his chat with Mr. Kislyak and the platform language. “Unfortunately some in the media have repeatedly tried to connect the dots where there was nothing to connect,” he said. The case of Konstantin V. Kilimnik, who was previously the Kiev manager of Mr. Manafort’s consulting company, Davis Manafort International, is more complicated. A dual citizen of Russia and Ukraine, Mr. Kilimnik worked years ago as a translator in the Russian military. He was hired by Mr. Manafort in 2005 after he was dismissed from the Moscow office of the International Republican Institute, an American group, amid concerns that he was informing on its activities, according to a former employee, who said he could not speak publicly about personnel matters. From August until December of last year, Mr. Kilimnik was at least formally under investigation in Ukraine on suspicion of ties to Russian spy agencies, according to documents from Ukraine’s Parliament and the prosecutor general. A defense lawyer and a former Ukrainian prosecutor characterized the investigation as unserious and politically motivated, and the inquiry closed without charges against Mr. Kilimnik. Mr. Kilimnik, in an interview in Kiev, said he had never been questioned by Ukrainian law enforcement over connections to Russian spy agencies. “If there were any truth to me talking to any security service in the world, they would arrest me,” he said. In a recent interview, Mr. Manafort said he thought there was no chance Mr. Kilimnik was a Russian agent. In their phone calls last summer, he said, the two men discussed a range of matters — including news media reports that Russia was behind the hacking of Democratic targets. But at the time, he said, he and other Trump campaign officials had no idea who was responsible for the cyberattacks. | 0fake |
March in Poland mourns man who set himself on fire in anti-government protest | WARSAW (Reuters) - Several hundred people walked in silence on Monday night in Warsaw in memory of a 54-year-old man who died late last month after setting himself on fire in protest against the ruling conservatives policies. Piotr Szczesny, a married father of two from the small town of Niepolomice in Poland s south, died on Oct. 29, after setting himself on fire on Oct. 19 in front of the Palace of Culture, a Warsaw landmark. The Polish government, led by the right-wing Law and Justice party (PiS) which came to power two years ago, has been criticized by the European Commission for policies Brussels says jeopardize the freedom of the media and independence of courts. I love freedom above all, Szczesny, wrote in a leaflet, copies of which he scattered around himself. That s why I decided to commit the act of self-immolation and I hope that my death will shake the conscience of many people.... One of the protesters on Monday, Jacek Rabinski, a 38-year-old training to be a paramedic, said that he mourned Szczesny s life and was full of respect for his decision. We are here because we are worried about the situation in our country, the political situation, Rabinski said. Many people live in the conviction that politics doesn t concern them. Politics is us, we ordinary people create politics. | 0fake |
Fed Raises Interest Rates for Third Time Since Financial Crisis - The New York Times | The Federal Reserve, which raised its benchmark rate on Wednesday for the second time in three months, this time to a range between 0. 75 percent and 1 percent, is finally moving toward the end of its economic stimulus campaign, which began in the depths of the financial crisis. But Janet L. Yellen, the Fed’s chairwoman, said at a news conference after the decision was announced that the Fed did not share the optimism of stock market investors and some business executives that economic growth is gaining speed. It still plans to move slowly because the economy continues to grow slowly. She suggested that the Fed would have plenty of time to adjust its plans should President Trump and Congress cut taxes or spend massively on infrastructure. Her announcement was full of confidence. But it certainly was not ebullient. “The data have not notably strengthened,” Ms. Yellen told reporters. “We haven’t changed the outlook. We think we’re moving on the same course we’ve been on. ” The Fed said that the United States economy continued to chug along, expanding at a “moderate pace. ” Employers are hiring, consumers are spending and businesses — the laggards in recent months — are starting to plow a little more money into their operations, too. The Fed’s sobriety did not appear to make much of an impression on investors. The stock market’s heady march that began after Mr. Trump’s election continued apace. The Standard Poor’s index rose 0. 84 percent to close at 2, 385. 26 Wednesday, moving up sharply after the announcement. Some said the Fed was still a long way from doing anything that might hurt. “The first four to eight rate hikes are the fruit,” said Deron McCoy, the chief investment officer at SEIA, a Los Angeles firm. “The real test will be whether the economy can withstand positive real rates. And that still seems to be a 2019 topic. ” Some analysts said the Fed will want to see an impact from its actions. “Policy makers hike rates to tighten financial conditions,” said Ellen Zentner, the chief United States economist at Morgan Stanley. “If this easing of financial conditions on the back of today’s hike are sustained, that would tell policy makers they need to do more. ” Ms. Zentner said she expected the Fed to raise rates again at its June meeting. The Fed’s committee next meets on May 2 and 3. She noted that the Fed’s outlook is less clear. Ms. Yellen’s term as Fed chairwoman ends in February, and Mr. Trump could then replace her. The Fed, charged with maximizing employment and moderating inflation, is close to achieving both goals. The unemployment rate fell to 4. 7 percent in February, consistent with the normal churn of people moving among jobs. And after several years of concern that prices were not rising fast enough, inflation is reviving. The Fed’s preferred measure rose 1. 9 percent over the 12 months ending in January, close to its 2 percent annual target. “The basis for today’s decision is simply our assessment of the progress of the economy,” Ms. Yellen said at the postmeeting news conference. “And it’s been doing nicely. ” The Fed, which had made more inflation a central objective, said on Wednesday that it was now focused on stabilizing inflation. Ms. Yellen took the opportunity to note that inflation may now rise a bit above 2 percent, just as it has been below 2 percent the last few years. “It’s a reminder 2 percent is not a ceiling on inflation,” she said. “It’s a target. ” The Fed’s increased confidence was reflected in a new round of policy forecasts it also published Wednesday. An increased number of Fed officials are expecting to raise rates at least twice more this year. Only three of the 17 officials who submitted forecasts expect the central bank to move more slowly. There was a similar coalescing around tighter policy for the following two years, marking the first time in recent years that the Fed’s quarterly economic forecasts have shifted toward a prediction of tighter monetary policy. This is the third time the Fed has raised rates since the financial crisis. The first hike came at the end of 2015 and the second almost exactly one year later. This time the Fed waited just three months. The benchmark rate remains below 1 percent, a very low level. People with credit card debt are likely to see an immediate increase of about a quarter percentage point in their interest rates. The effect on loans is less direct, but the average rate on a mortgage rose by half a percentage point over the last year. The nation’s largest borrower, the federal government, will also feel the pinch of higher rates. The Congressional Budget Office expects federal interest payments, measured as a share of the economy, to double over the next decade. Savers are unlikely to benefit immediately. Banks tend to raise interest rates on loans more quickly than they raise rates on deposits. Last week, the average rate on a certificate of deposit was 0. 14 percent. Last year at this time: 0. 13 percent. The Fed’s move to raise rates puts it on course for a collision with President Trump, who has repeatedly promised to increase economic growth through policies including cuts in taxation and regulation and more spending on infrastructure and defense. Fed officials have emphasized that the economy is already growing at roughly its maximum sustainable pace faster growth would therefore lead to faster increases in interest rates. Some economists and liberal activists argue that the Fed is raising rates too quickly. Narayana Kocherlakota, an economist at the University of Rochester and a former member of the Fed’s committee, noted that strong economic growth continued to pull people into the job market while wage growth remained relatively weak. That suggests, he said, that the economy has not yet returned to full employment. “We should be seeing faster wage growth with this level of employment growth if we were close to full employment,” Mr. Kocherlakota said on Twitter before the Fed’s decision. Mr. Kocherlakota’s successor as president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, Neel Kashkari, cast the sole vote against raising rates on Wednesday. The Fed’s assessment of economic conditions remained quite measured. The economy expanded by just 1. 6 percent in 2016, and there is little sign of an acceleration during the first quarter. Fed officials continue to forecast a Goldilocks economy, with the unemployment rate remaining at 4. 5 percent and inflation around 2 percent for the next three years. Ms. Yellen played down surveys showing a sharp rise in the optimism of consumers and business executives since the presidential election, noting there is little evidence that such surveys predict spending decisions. She said that Fed officials spoke regularly to business leaders, and that many were undoubtedly in “a much more optimistic frame of mind. ” But she added that many of those executives have adopted a attitude — just like the Fed itself. | 0fake |
‘Intl Community Still Financing, Protecting Terrorists’ – Mother Agnes, Vanessa Beeley on Syria | Alternative | (Before It's News)
21st Century Wire says…
As western media outlets like the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN and the BBC continue to hurl viral images of ‘child victims of Aleppo,’ western and gulf-backed terrorists in East Aleppo continue to fire mortars, ‘ hell cannon ‘ and use snipers to target civilians and children in government-protected West Aleppo. The level of information fraud and propaganda being perpetrated by the western mainstream media and politicians like John Kerry and Samantha Power is unprecedented – even by traditional low US standards.
RT International interveiws Syrian peace campaigner Mother Agnes-Mariam and independent researcher and journalist Vanessa Beeley . Watch:
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RESEARCH LINKS:
Message from the REAL Syria Civil Defense to the White Helmets:
Letter from the REAL Syria Civil Defense to western governments and people
Exclusive investigative report by Vanessa Beeley:
The REAL Syria Civil Defence Exposes Fake White Helmets as Terrorist-Linked Imposters
CrossTalk Panel Discussion: White Helmets, ‘A Pseudo NGO’:
CrossTalk: ‘White Helmets, Really?’ with Vanessa Beeley, Eva Bartlett & Patrick Henningsen
A NOBEL LIE: CNN Claim Barrel Bomb Struck White Helmet Center in Damascus:
http://21stcenturywire.com/2016/10/08/more-lies-cnn-claim-white-helmets-center-hit-by-barrel-bomb-in-damascus/
NGO/Human Rights Charities investigation by Patrick Henningsen:
AN INTRODUCTION: Smart Power & The Human Rights Industrial Complex
Open Letter by Vanessa Beeley:
White Helmets Campaign for War NOT Peace – Retract RLA & Nobel Peace Prize Nominations
Jeremy Salt: How West Are Deceiving the World Over Syria
“No Longer Just a Syrian War but an Existential Contest Between the US and Russia”
Staged Rescue Videos:
(VIDEO) White Helmets: Miraculous ‘Rag Doll Rescue’
White Helmets Recycling ‘Child Victim’ Images for Western Propaganda:
RESCUE REDUX: Are Syria’s White Helmets ‘Recycling’ its Child Victims?
21WIRE compilation of key information on the White Helmets:
Who are the Syria White Helmets?
21WIRE Investigative Report on the White Helmets’ Terrorist Connections:
Syria’s White Helmets: War by Way of Deception ~ the “Moderate” Executioners
Cory Morningstar report on White Helmets, NGOs:
Investigation into the funding sources of the White Helmets, Avaaz, Purpose, The Syria Campaign
White Helmets Report by former Weapons Scott Ritter:
The ‘White Helmets’ and the Inherent Contradiction of America’s Syria Policy
Open letter to Canada’s NDP Leader on White Helmets’ Nobel Prize Nomination:
Letter to NDP from Prof. John Ryan protesting White Helmet nomination for RLA and Nobel Peace Prize
REPORT: ‘Aleppo Media Centre’ Funded By French Foreign Office, EU and US:
http://21stcenturywire.com/2016/09/20/exclusive-aleppo-media-centre-funded-by-french-foreign-office-eu-and-us/
White Helmets – Bogus Claims:
‘We Saved 60,000’ – Bogus Claim by Syria’s White Helmets Raises Even More Questions
Tony Cartalucci report on the White Helmets and Staged Rescue Scenes:
Save Aleppo” Protest Proves How Easy it is to Dress Up Actors as “War Victims”
READ MORE WHITE HELMET NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire White Helmet Files
SUPPORT OUR WORK BY SUBSCRIBING & BECOMING A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV
21st Century Wire is an alternative news agency designed to enlighten, inform and educate readers about world events which are not always covered in the mainstream media. | 1real |
Transforming hope into reality for patients of drug-resistant TB | Shobha Shukla, Citizen News Service - CNS Hope for shorter and more effective new TB drugs License DMCA Multidrug-resistant TB (MDR-TB) remains a public health crisis. As per WHO's Global TB Report 2016, 480,000 people fell ill with MDR-TB in 2015, with 3 countries - India, China, and Russia - carrying the major burden and together accounting for nearly half of all MDR-TB cases globally. Detection and treatment gaps continue to plague the MDR-TB response. In 2015, only 1 out of every 5 people needing treatment for MDR-TB were able to access it and only 52% of those who started MDR-TB treatment were cured. "These sobering statistics remind us of our urgency to continue the fight to develop better, faster and affordable treatments that will finally bring this pandemic under control," said Dr Mel Spigelman, CEO of TB Alliance, which is working to advance several promising regimens to tackle all forms of TB. The current MDR-TB regimen lasts for 2 years or more. It includes medicines and injectables that are not only toxic but also come at a cost that is higher than what many patients and healthcare systems can afford. Even the new 9 month MDR-TB regimen that has recently been endorsed by WHO, though shorter, does include 4 months of injectables. However new results from 2 clinical studies conducted by TB Alliance point to an emerging paradigm, where countries may soon have the short, all-oral, and affordable drug regimens needed to treat all people with TB. Late stage clinical results from these two studies were unveiled yesterday at the 47th Union World Conference on Lung Health in Liverpool. The NC-005 study - Advertisement - The NC-005 study investigates an oral, injection free regimen that purports to treat both drug-sensitive and MDR-TB with a short, simple, safe, and affordable treatment. A Phase 2b, 2 month study tested various combinations of BPaMZ--Bedaquiline (B), Pretomanid (Pa), Moxifloxacin (M) and Pyrazinamide (Z). It was conducted at 10 sites in 3 countries (Uganda, South Africa, and Tanzania). A total of 240 patients were enrolled in the study-- 180 patients with drug-sensitive TB received BPaZ and 60 patients with MDR-TB received BPaMZ. The study also investigated a simpler dosing scheme for bedaquiline, which could lead to fewer pills and an overall less complicated treatment for patients. NC-005 showed that the best regimen was a combination of all four drugs, BPaMZ, which was examined in an arm of the trial. Data showed that at the end of 2 months, clinical study participants receiving BPaMZ cleared TB bacteria from their sputum 3 times as quickly as those on the standard treatment regimen. Almost all participants had culture conversion after the 2 months of treatment. This is the fastest rate of culture conversion that has ever been seen and indicates the potential of BPaMZ to treat all forms of TB-drug-sensitive as well as MDR-TB with the same regimen. The regimens appeared safe. The study showed that it was possible to simplify the dosing of Bedaquiline and found that a daily dose of Bedaquiline (200 mg) is at least as active and safe as the labelled dose. This will allow for simpler daily dosing with the regimen and to be combined in a fixed dose combination. The BPaMZ regimen is being tested to see if it can cure the vast majority of TB patients in as less as 3 months. If successful, the regimen could reshape the treatment landscape of TB, especially for people with MDR-TB, who currently face an arduous 9-24 month treatment journey that is too often unsuccessful. The results of NC-005 could pave the way to a global Phase 3 trial. The Nix-TB Study ('Nix' means to put an end to) - Advertisement - It is estimated that 9% of all the MDR-TB patients suffer from extensively drug-resistant TB (XDR-TB) that is resistant to at least four commonly used anti-TB drugs. XDR-TB is often considered a death sentence. Most XDR-TB is not treated at all because of the cost and complexity of the treatment. Of those who do receive treatment, less than one third get cured. In May 2015, TB Alliance and partners launched the world's first clinical study-- the Nix-TB Study-to test a new XDR-TB drug regimen called BPaL, consisting of Bedaquiline (B), Pretomanid (Pa), and Linezolid (L) in patients who have no other treatment options. It is the first study to test an all-oral drug regimen, comprised of drugs with minimal pre-existing resistance, that has the potential to shorten, simplify, and improve treatment for XDR-TB. Nix-TB is an open-label study that is being conducted at 2 sites in South Africa--at Sizwe Hospital in Johannesburg and at Brooklyn Chest Hospital in Cape Town. Additional sites to expand the study are planned. Patients who have XDR-TB, or have failed their current MDR-TB treatment or who have side effects of their current MDR-TB treatment, are enrolled.Till to date, 50 patients have been enrolled in the study, including patients as young as 14 and those who are co-infected with HIV with a CD4 cell count of 50 or higher. | 1real |
All Governments Lie, The Movie | October Boomerang ‹ › David Swanson is an author, activist, journalist, and radio host. He is a 2015 Nobel Peace Prize Nominee. He is director of WorldBeyondWar.com and campaign coordinator for RootsAction.org . He hosts Talk Nation Radio . Talk Nation Radio is on VT Radio and is syndicated by Pacifica Network. The show also airs on WTJU, Charlottesville, VA; WCSX-Detroit, MI; KGHI, Westport, WA; WHUS, Storrs, CT; WPRR, Grand Rapids, MI; KRFP-LP, Moscow, ID; KZGM, Cabool, MO; KMUD, Garberville, CA; WAZU, Peoria, IL; WXRD, Crown Point, IN; Geneva Radio, Geneva, NY; KKRN, Round Mountain, CA; KSKQ-LP, Ashland, OR; WUOW-LP, Oneonta, NY; No Lies Radio, Pinole, CA; WYAP-LP, Clay, WV; The Detour, Johnson City, TN; WZRD, Chicago, IL; WEFT, Champaign, IL; WXPI, Pittsburgh, PA; WDRT, Viroqua, WI; Veracity Now, online; Liberty and Justice Radio, Shirley, MA; Ithaca Community Radio, Ithaca, NY; WMCB, Greenfield, MA; PRX.org; KAOS 89.3fm, Olympia, WA; WUSB 90.1 FM, Stony Brook, NY; WOOL-FM, Bellow Falls, Vermont; WSLR-LP 96.5 in Sarasota, Florida. He also blogs at DavidSwanson.org and WarIsACrime.org And is a prolific author. His latest books are; War Is A Lie , Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union , and When the World Outlawed War Swanson holds a master's degree in philosophy from the University of Virginia. He has worked as a newspaper reporter and as a communications director, with jobs including press secretary for Dennis Kucinich's 2004 presidential campaign, media coordinator for the International Labor Communications Association, and three years as communications coordinator for ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. Read his full and complete biography at DavidSwanson.org and also visit book site at War Is Crime . All Governments Lie, The Movie By David Swanson on October 31, 2016 A Film About Liars and the Journalists That Expose Them
By David Swanson
Picture, if you will, video footage of vintage (early 2016) Donald Trump buffoonery with the CEO of CBS Leslie Moonves commenting on major media’s choice to give Trump vastly more air time than other candidates: “It may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS.”
That’s the introduction to a powerful critique of the U.S. media. A new film screens in New York and Los Angeles this week called All Governments Lie: Truth, Deception, and the Spirit of I.F. Stone .
The website AllGovernmentsLie.com has screening dates , a list of lies , and a list of good journalists who expose lies . The lists on the website are not identical to the content of the film, but there’s a good deal of overlap — enough to give you a sense of what this project is about.
I’d have made various changes and additions to the film. In particular, I’m tired of all the focus on Iraq 2003. This film touches on war lies since then, but still gives that one particular set of war lies prominence.
Still, this is a film that should be shown in cities, homes, and classrooms across the United States. It includes and is driven by Noam Chomsky’s analysis of how the media system is “rigged” without those doing the rigging believing they’ve done anything at all. It’s a survey of skullduggery by corporate media. It’s an introduction to numerous journalists far superior to the norm. And it’s an introduction to I.F. Stone. It includes footage of a presentation of the annual Izzy Award which goes to journalists acting in Stone’s tradition.
One of the lies listed in the film and on the website is that of the Gulf of Tonkin (non-)Incident. Anyone paying attention knows of it now as a war lie. And it was a transparent war lie at the time in a particular sense. That is: had the North Vietnamese really shot back at a U.S. ship off their coast, that would not have been any sort of legal, much less moral, justification for escalating a war. I’d love it if people could grasp that logic and apply it to the Black Sea, the Red Sea, and every other part of the earth today.
But the Gulf of Tonkin lies about Vietnamese aggression against the U.S. ships innocently patrolling and firing off the coast of Vietnam were not transparent to people with faith in the U.S. role of Global Policeman. Someone had to make the lies transparent. Someone had to document that in fact the Secretary of So-Called Defense and the President were lying. Sadly, nobody did that in the first 24 hours after the Congressional committee hearings, and that was all it took for Congress to hand the president a war.
And it was decades before White House transcripts came out and before the National Security Agency confessed, and additional years before former Secretary Robert McNamara did. Yet, those revelations simply confirmed what people paying attention knew. And they knew it because of I.F. Stone who just weeks after the (non-)incident published a four-page edition of his weekly newsletter exclusively about Tonkin.
Stone’s analysis is useful in looking at the incident or lack thereof this past month in the Red Sea off Yemen. And in fact it is to Yemen that Stone immediately turned on page 1 in 1964. The United Nations, including its U.S. ambassador, had recently condemned British attacks on Yemen that Britain defended as retaliatory. President Dwight Eisenhower had also warned the French against retaliatory attacks on Tunisia. And President Lyndon Johnson, even at the time of Tonkin, Stone notes, was warning Greece and Turkey not to engage in retaliatory attacks on each other.
Stone, who tended to look even at written laws that nobody else paid any heed to, pointed out that three of them banned these sorts of attacks: the League of Nations Covenant, the Kellogg-Briand Pact, and the U.N. Charter. The latter two are still theoretically in place for the U.S. government.
The United States in Vietnam, Stone goes on to show, could not have been innocently attacked but itself admitted to having already sunk a number of Vietnamese boats. And indeed the U.S. ships, Stone reports, were in North Vietnamese waters and were there to assist South Vietnamese ships that were shelling two North Vietnamese islands. And in fact those ships had been supplied to South Vietnam by the U.S. military and the good old American tax payers.
Stone did not have access to closed committee hearings, but he hardly needed it. He considered the assertions made in speeches by the only two senators who voted against the war. And then he looked for any rejoinders by the chairmen of the committees. He found their denials to be non-denials and nonsensical. It made no sense that the U.S. ships simply happened to be randomly hanging around in the vicinity of the South Vietnamese ships. Stone didn’t believe it.
Stone also filled in the background information. The United States had been supporting guerrilla attacks on North Vietnam for years prior to the non-incident. And Stone raised numerous suspicions, including the question of why the U.S. ships had supposedly made sure they were out in international waters for the (non-)incident to (not) occur, and the question of why in the world Vietnam would take on the United States military (something nobody could explain, though Eugene McCarthy proposed that perhaps they had been bored).
Missing from the film and website of All Governments Lie is I.F. Stone’s work on lies about the outbreak of the Korean War. We’ve learned more since he wrote it, but seen little more insightful, relevant, or timely for our understanding of Korea and the world today.
David Swanson is an author, activist, journalist, and radio host. He is director of WorldBeyondWar.org and campaign coordinator for RootsAction.org . Swanson’s books include War Is A Lie . He blogs at DavidSwanson.org and WarIsACrime.org . He hosts Talk Nation Radio .He is a 2015 and 2016 Nobel Peace Prize Nominee.
Follow him on Twitter: @davidcnswanson and FaceBook .
Help support DavidSwanson.org, WarIsACrime.org, and TalkNationRadio.org by clicking here: http://davidswanson.org/donate . | 1real |
#CongressionalBaseballGame Shooter Identified: #JamesHodgkinson Twitter and Facebook Show Loony Leftist Hate for Trump | The shooter at the Congressional baseball practice has been identified. His name is James Hodgkinson The 66-year old white male from Illinois is a Bernie Sanders supporter. His Facebook and Twitter accounts are full of anti-Trump/pro-Bernie Sanders posts and pictures:UPDATE: PRESIDENT TRUMP just announced that Hodgkinson has died from his injuries. His Facebook page and Twitter have been inundated with angry conservatives who are so sick of the vile and hateful rhetoric from the left. He s a huge leftist who clearly hastes President Trump calling him a traitor on Facebook:This man clearly represents Trump Derangement Syndrome The left is still so angry that Trump was elected. It s sick and twisted!From the shooter s Facebook page:We just reported last weekend on protests across the country that got violent and even saw Antifa attacking a police horse with a weapon:A female Antifa member was arrested after using a flag pole w/ a silver nail at the end to stab a police horse in the neck during a riot. pic.twitter.com/yBMThRyUdn /pol/ News Forever (@polNewsForever) June 12, 2017 The violence on social media and on the streets must stop. Conservatives have been attacked starting with the Trump campaign rallies and are still being attacked. Supporters of our president are even afraid to wear hats or t-shirts with his slogans. Anyone who wears a Trump item could be a target of violence.Leaders of the Democrat party need to stop with the hateful rhetoric NOW! Tom Perez WE RE TALKING TO YOU! | 1real |
‘It Was Me’: Trump Fan In Charge Of Boycotting Apple Says He, Not Brexit, Responsible For Market Crash | Donald Trump sure knows how to pick his surrogates. They seem to be just as deluded and self-centered as he is. In the midst of the world economy facing catastrophic consequences as the United Kingdom votes to exit the European Union, one of Trump s supporters, Wayne Allyn Root, went on television and took credit for the economic crisis.Now most people would not want to take credit for such a thing, but this is a Trump supporter we are talking about here. Appearing on Fox News on Sunday, Root said to the hosts of Fox and Friends: I wouldn t be surprised if in the last week they ve lost some business. And I m sure it s going to build as the word gets out as we get to the convention and people hear about this terrible, terrible business decision biased business decision, I think a reckless business decision. And I know that after the Brexit on Friday, Apple stock is very close to their 52-week low. So whether it was me or whether it was word getting out from others or whether it was the Brexit, I know Apple stock isn t doing to good either.Have some patience, I think Apple is going to feel it in the pocketbook eventually. This all comes with Apple s decision to pull out of donating technical supplies and money to the Republican National Convention, all because of controversial presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump. Yes, you read that right. Wayne Allyn Root believes that his feeble campaign against Apple has the power to have this kind of effect on the Global economy. Good luck with that, sir.Even one of the hosts on Fox, Clayton Morris, reminded Root that the folks at Apple likely saw the disassociation from the RNC in the wake of Trump s nomination as a good business decision. Root was undeterred, though, and pressed on: As the CEO you can make a personal decision, but you have no right to make a business decision and offend half your customers. Morris also pointed to the fact that Apple has made no comments on the Democratic National Convention, either: We have no word from Apple if they are not going to donate stuff to the DNC also. So, we still don t know the other half of this story. But as you can tell, we have a lot to say about it.The only thing that I know is that this Brexit was all tied into what we re talking about. I think that people all over the world are getting sick of big companies, big corporations and big media and big government all being tied together and making decisions that hurt the people.I think Apple s tied to it. I think the United States government, Obama [is] tied to it. I think Brexit s tied to it. I think it s time for Trexit, which is Donald Trump. So, in other words, this Trump supporting loon s rants were too much even for Fox and Friends, which is definitely saying something. Time for your medication, Mr. Root. If you think you re more powerful than Brexit and that your sorry boycott of Apple along with nationally televised rants like this are actually helping your candidate, you are sorely mistaken. Sane people don t listen to crazy people and take them seriously.Watch the lunacy unfold below, via Raw Story:Featured image via video screen capture | 1real |
JUST IN: LATINO GROUP Pulls Ad…Issues Statement On Disgusting Video of Latino Children Running From White Man: ‘We held a mirror up to the Republican Party…’ [Video] | After receiving heavy backlash, the Latino Victory PAC took down the controversial ad depicting latino children running from a Confederate flag waving white male (video below) It s disgusting..The PAC issued this statement: We knew our ad would ruffle feathers, Latino Victory Fund President Crist bal J. Alex began. We held a mirror up to the Republican Party, and they don t like what they see. We have decided to pull our ad at this time. Given recent events, we will be placing other powerful ads into rotation that highlight the reasons we need to elect progressive leaders in Virginia. Latino Victory Fund Statement: pic.twitter.com/VE8T3N3zI2 Latino Victory (@latinovictoryus) October 31, 2017When supporters of the Democrat Party start using ads that appear to be inspired by Islamic acts of terror, you know they are not the party your parents and grandparents supported, and they re certainly not the party that most Americans want to be affiliated with. When the Latino Victory group released a disgusting video (see below) a couple of days ago, many thought that it was made to resemble terror attacks that have become all too common in European nations. Sadly, today, that concept of using a truck as a weapon to kill innocent people became a reality in New York City, as an Islamic terrorist driver used a rented Home Depot truck as a weapon to kill 9 innocent people and to injure dozens more.Note to Democrats: Creating a terror-inspired ad with a man chasing down innocent kids in a truck through their neighborhood is not funny, and it s definitely not a clever way to get people to vote for your candidate. According to FOX News Democratic candidate for Virginia governor Ralph Northam is not distancing himself from the controversial ad suggesting supporters of Republican candidate Ed Gillespie are seen as Confederates who attack minority children.The new opposition ad titled American Nightmare was released Monday by Democratic group Latino Victory Fund (LVF) and is scheduled to run through Election Day. The opposition ad shows minority children seemingly being chased by a driver in a pickup truck, decked out with a Confederate flag, a Gillespie for governor bumper sticker and a Don t tread on me license plate.The driver makes his way toward the scared children who shout, Run! Run! Run! when they see the truck. The ad concludes with a scene of a Charlottesville-like rally, with a narrator asking: Is this what Donald Trump and Ed Gillespie mean by the American Dream? The Latino Victory group tweeted the video that was so violent, that Twitter has now suspended their account. Here is what their tweet said:Ed Gillespie and Donald Trump promise the American dream, but can only deliver an American nightmare. No more. Vote @RalphNortham. #GameOnVA pic.twitter.com/mwpWXM47HZ Latino Victory (@latinovictoryus) October 30, 2017Northam s campaign told Fox News Tuesday that the ad was not shocking based on Gillespie s campaign. Independent groups are denouncing Ed Gillespie because he has run the most divisive, fear-mongering campaign in modern history, Northam campaign spokeswoman Ofirah Yheskel said in a statement to Fox News. It is not shocking that communities of color are scared of what his Trump-like policy positions mean for them. But Gillespie said the ad was an attack on his supporters, whom he calls good decent hardworking Virginians who love their neighbors. - FOX NewsMaking an ad that depicts a white man with a confederate flag flying from his pick-up truck, sporting an Ed Gillespie (Republican candidate for Governor) bumper sticker on the back, chasing minority kids around their neighborhood is not only sick, it is hateful and divisive. It s ironic that the end of the ad, the words REJECT HATE are flashed across the screen with a message asking, Is this what Donald Trump and Ed Gillespie mean by The American dream ? | 1real |
House Republican offers bill to keep government funded through April | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Republican head of a House of Representatives committee said on Tuesday he was offering a bill to keep the U.S. government funded through April, ahead of a Friday deadline to keep agencies running. House Appropriations Chairman Hal Rogers said in a statement the short-term Continuing Resolution would fund the federal government until April 28, and included money for emergency disaster relief. The move would give incoming Republican President-elect Donald Trump more of a say on budget and appropriations issues, allowing him to set funding priorities for the remainder of fiscal year 2017, which ends on Sept. 30. The bill also contains a provision that will make it easier for Trump’s choice as defense secretary, General James Mattis, to pass a bureaucratic hurdle to his appointment. Since he retired only in 2013, Mattis will need Congress to waive a requirement that he be a civilian for at least seven years before taking the top job at the Pentagon. Rogers expressed disappointment at having to offer the bill, which suspends months of work by lawmakers and their staffs on full-scale appropriations bills Congress had intended to enact before the end of the year. “This type of short-term spending absolutely should not be the final answer to funding the federal government for the year,” he said in the statement. “This legislation is just a band aid, but a critical one. It will give the next Congress the time to complete the annual Appropriations process, and in the meantime, take care of immediate national funding needs,” Rogers added. Democrats and some Republicans have said such a decision was a mistake that could lead to a more difficult appropriations task next year. | 0fake |
Trump’s Cabinet, Refugee Ban, Grammys: Your Weekend Briefing - The New York Times | Here are the week’s top stories, and a look ahead. 1. The whiplash legal drama over President Trump’s immigration actions highlighted swirling confusion as his White House team tried to find its footing in a chaotic first few weeks on the job. Mr. Trump said that he might sign “a order” as soon as Monday to replace the travel ban a appeals panel unanimously refused to reinstate. For now, refugees and travelers from seven predominantly Muslim countries can continue to enter the U. S. _____ 2. Undocumented immigrants are bracing for a surge in deportations as the federal government prepares to follow through on Mr. Trump’s campaign pledge to crack down on illegal immigration. A case in Phoenix illustrated their fears: Guadalupe García de Rayos, 35, a married mother of two who sneaked across the border 21 years ago, was deported to Nogales, Mexico, after a routine with the federal immigration agency. Her abrupt removal “illustrates the new reality,” the Mexican government said, warning its citizens in the U. S. to “take precautions and to keep in touch with their nearest consulate. ” _____ 3. Senate battles and unexpected revelations about nominees — undocumented household workers, questionable stock trades, undisclosed financial holdings — slowed the formation of the Trump cabinet to a crawl. Betsy DeVos became education secretary only after a historic tiebreaking vote from Vice President Mike Pence — and an acrimonious, vigil on the Senate floor by the chamber’s Democrats. Tom Price was confirmed as secretary of health and human services after another marathon. This week, the Senate holds confirmation votes on Steven Mnuchin for Treasury secretary, David Shulkin to head veterans affairs and Linda McMahon for administrator of the Small Business Administration. It will also hold a hearing on Andrew Puzder, whose nomination to be labor secretary has been opposed by labor groups concerned about his heavy opposition to workplace regulation. _____ 4. #LetLizSpeak became a rallying cry after Republican senators chided and formally silenced Senator Elizabeth Warren for impugning a peer, Senator Jeff Sessions, as she opposed his nomination for attorney general by reading a 1986 letter from Coretta Scott King. The move unleashed a powerful backlash, not least among women who know what it’s like to be told to hold their tongues. As our reporter wrote: “Republicans seized her microphone. And gave her a megaphone. ” Outside Washington, Republicans in state capitals are swiftly using their newfound power — control in 25 states — to advance a wave of legislation aiming to curtail union powers and abortion rights, loosen gun regulations, expand programs and slash taxes and spending. _____ 5. Mr. Trump made further forays into foreign relations, tempering some of his harsher statements. To secure a phone call with China’s leader, Xi Jinping, he made conciliatory comments and affirmed his commitment to America’s “One China” policy. He also pulled toward the center on Israel, saying that the nation’s move to expand its West Bank settlements is not “a good thing for peace. ” North Korea tested a ballistic missile, prompting statements of solidarity from Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan and Mr. Trump, who were at the president’s resort in Florida for a outing. Above, the Trumps with Mr. Abe and his wife, Akie Abe, and Robert Kraft of the New England Patriots. The president meets this week with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada on Monday, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel on Wednesday. _____ 6. Nordstrom became the latest business to wander into the president’s sights when it decided to drop Ivanka Trump’s retail brand from its stores, citing poor performance. The fallout: a critical presidential tweet, a “boycott Nordstrom” movement from Trump supporters, a “support Nordstrom” push from Trump opponents, and a dizzying example of the partisan tightrope companies now walk. _____ 7. The 59th Grammy Awards are tonight (CBS, 8 p. m. Eastern, red carpet a earlier) and the race to watch is Adele versus Beyoncé, facing off in each of the top three categories: album, record and song of the year. James Corden, a Grammy host, is planning to make the most of his 15 minutes (literally that’s all he gets) and our writers have tips on five artists to watch. Not interested in the music showdown? You might still be fascinated by this tale of how the 350 Grammy trophies are made by a craftsman who has been at it for nearly 30 years. _____ 8. The arc of women’s working lives is changing. Compared with past generations, women are now more likely to work at every stage of their lives, including into their 60s and even 70s. Some older workers keep their jobs out of financial necessity, but economic research indicates that a growing number of women stay employed longer because they find their careers fulfilling. “I feel 40,” said Lee Ann Monfredini, above, 68 and a broker in San Francisco. “I’m really not that good at the retirement thing. And I love the joy of getting that big commission check. ” _____ 9. On TV, “Girls” returns tonight for its final season (HBO, 10 p. m. Eastern) and John Oliver will also be back in action after a long break (HBO, 11 p. m. Eastern). If you’re on the hunt for weekend viewing suggestions, our Watching team has some ideas. You can also catch up on the week’s best quips and sketches with our curated cull of comedy shows. _____ 10. Moving on to happier thoughts, it’s nearly Valentine’s Day. Romantics can check out our latest Modern Love podcast or revisit one of the column’s perennially entries: “The 36 Questions That Lead to Love. ” Those on the verge of a permanent pairing might want to also consult “13 Questions to Ask Before Getting Married. ” Our “Committed” series explores the history of wedding announcements in The New York Times, with updates on noteworthy couples like the Gibbses, one of the first pairs featured. Sixty years later, they are still happily together. _____ 11. And finally, more optimistic news on aging well, from a new scientific study of a cyclist. You can take advantage of his workout approach — brief bursts of strenuous activity mixed with exercise — in as little as one minute. In other fun news from our friends in science: hip action is the key to being a dancing queen, geckos have a really freaky way of dodging danger, and a fiery meteor last week blazed a trail visible all the way from New York to Nebraska. Have a great week. _____ Photographs may appear out of order for some readers. Viewing this version of the briefing should help. Your Weekend Briefing is published Sundays at 6 a. m. Eastern. And don’t miss Your Morning Briefing, weekdays at 6 a. m. Eastern, and Your Evening Briefing, weeknights at 6 p. m. Eastern. Want to look back? Here’s Friday’s Evening Briefing. What did you like? What do you want to see here? Let us know at briefing@nytimes. com. | 0fake |
Not a Journalist: CNN’s Brian Stelter Manages Clinton Health Cover-up | 21st Century Wire says CNN s Brian Stelter hosts a show facetiously titled, Reliable Sources , where Stelter pretends to be a hard-hitting journalist , but the reality couldn t be further from the truth. Based on CNN and Stelter s reporting so far, their only sources appear to be those of the Clinton campaign s damage control team. IMAGE: CNN s Brian Stelter host of Reliable Sources . Normally, Stelter, who describes himself as a media analysis expert , is able to play the part of journalist partly because it s easy to blend in at CNN which probably employs more political operatives and pseudo-journalists than any other media outlet in the US, but in the high stakes game that is the 2016 election season, Stelter s cardboard facade has quickly fallen apart, in full view. Buckling under pressure while trying to manage Clinton campaign messaging on CNN, Stelter then lost it, attacking two leading nationally syndicated radio hosts, Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh, accusing them of wanting Hillary Clinton dead, (yes that s right, he said dead) during the nationally aired PBS Charlie Rose segment with fill-in host Andrew Ross Sorkin.Listen to the rebuttal by Rush Limbaugh: The HillMedia reporters are a relatively new breed. A breed that basically came along during the last decade when digital media came into existence, creating hundreds of more avenues for actual reporting to exist, and therefore keep an eye on.The job of media reporter is fairly straightforward: Observe the industry in all of its forms. And when good or bad reporting happens, simply call it out.If a police force is a parallel of the Fourth Estate, a media reporter exists in that context as Internal Affairs, as a check and balance for those who are supposed to speak truth to power.But lately it appears that even Internal Affairs/media reporters are compromised, biased and even dishonest. Exhibit A is CNN s Brian Stelter in his reporting on Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton s health issues, or per his consistent narrative for weeks, total lack of issues.Sunday was an active news day well outside of coverage of the 15th anniversary of 9/11: Clinton left a ceremony at Ground Zero early. And Fox News s Rick Leventhal as solid a news reporter as they come out there first went to air of Clinton s unexpected departure.From there, Leventhal was alone in his report citing a Clinton health episode for leaving early. The Clinton campaign wasn t talking. Other news organizations were waiting for another outlet or the campaign to come forward to verify before even cautiously broaching it.But shortly after 11:00 a.m. on CNN, Stelter broke away from his planned segment on Reliable Sources to break the news, via CNN s Jeff Zeleny, that Clinton had indeed become overheated during the 9/11 event under comfortable conditions (76 degrees at the time, mild breeze, low humidity).Here is video of Clinton attempting to enter her secure vehicle: Sunday RCP headline: CNN s Stelter to Media: Do Not Give Oxygen To Conspiracy Theories That Hillary Clinton Is Secretly Ill BRIAN STELTER, RELIABLE SOURCES: Very worrisome news to hear, obviously, Jeff. As someone who covers the Clinton campaign everyday, what can you tell us about how frequently Clinton may have any health issues. Because obviously for years, there have been conspiracy theories online promoted by conservative websites saying that she is secretly ill. The campaign denied that and her physician said she is fit to serve as president. JEFF ZELENY, CNN: Indeed, her physician said she is fit to serve as president. She s released more medical information than her rival has of course but still has not released all of her records that all candidates have had over the years.Now, this certainly is going to prompt and renew and raise more questions about her health potentially here. She is 68 years old. She will turn 69 in October, before election day. It has, you know, we have seen it a lot over recent weeks, you know, some selected images and pictures and video of her either stumbling BRIAN STELTER: Taken out of context.ZELENY: Taken out of context, yes. And I can tell you, Brian, I cover her a lot day in and day out on the campaign trail. Her schedule is very aggressive. We hear Donald Trumpoften saying, Oh, she is taking a nap in the middle of the day. That s not true. She has a very rigorous campaign schedule.( ) Stelter later connected with Zeleny for the following exchange which had nothing to do with the episode Clinton experienced on Sunday that showed her knees buckling while falling into her security van with aides catching her before potentially injuring herself around an older tabloid photo instead of discussing the situation at hand.Translation: Nothing really to see here, so let s deflect the conversation to a completely irrelevant point.STELTER: You know, they had that horrible let s be honest, Jeff, they had this horrible photo on the cover of that supermarket tabloid. Clearly, Hillary was Photoshopped in the picture. I thought it was disgusting.And yet, even though there are these conspiracy theories, which we should not give oxygen to, saying that she is secretly ill, suggesting she is on her deathbed, which we can she is not, there are legitimate questions to ask by reporters. And I think that s the distinction here to make.ZELENY: Right. It is a distinction, no doubt about it. Like I said, she has released more information than Donald Trump has, but both of them have released far less than John McCain did and Barack Obama did, than Mitt Romney and Barack Obama did, going back much beyond that.But the picture on the tabloid did looked doctored. I see her most every day. That looked nothing like her. And she has joked about it, Brian. I think we saw her on TV STELTER: Yes, good point.ZELENY: a couple weeks ago saying, you know, look, they ve predicted that I would be on my deathbed by October and I m still here. So she has made humor of this. And I think that this could go one of two ways here. If the other if her critics keep this up and criticize her, this could certainly motivate and inspire some of her supporters as well here.But we see her waving there, again. She s scheduled to go to California tomorrow. She will be on the West Coast for three days this week. As of now, her schedule is going forward here, Brian.On Thursday, for example, I flew with her all day as she left the airport in Westchester around 10:00 a.m. after a press conference and we returned at 11:00 p.m. She had a couple different campaign stops, a couple different fundraising stops and working along the way. So she is keeping up a rigorous pace here.But there are going to be questions about her health. In this incident, this episode, this situation this morning in Manhattan is just the latest example of that. The fact the Clinton campaign putting out this statement this morning saying that she felt overheated at Ground Zero and was taken to her daughter s apartment certainly is the information we have right now at this hour, Brian. The report would end there.The trip to California has since been cancelled.Takeaway: Stelter never broaches during any of these live reports big ones considering the news here that other prominent doctors, including President Obama s ex-physician of more than two decades made the recommendation recently that Clinton should take a neurological exam.Obama s physician, who gave him a clean bill of health before the 2008 election and is widely respected, was Dr. David Scheiner from 1987 until his election in 2008. Scheiner isn t a Trump fan, but instead a Clinton supporter who said the Republican nominee scares the devil out of him. There are a number of questions I have, said Dr. Scheiner to CNN s Erin Burnett in mid-August. First of all, she s also 68 years old, and while I think that letter was well-written and very professional, unlike Dr. Bornstein s [Donald Trump s doctor], it s not enough. For example, she s on Coumadin, a medication to prevent blood clots, he continued. You have to monitor that and it says she s being monitored regularly. I d like to know how well she s being controlled. That s a difficult drug to use. But here s the part Stelter a media reporter whose job it is to present the full story has curiously omitted in his numerous television appearances pontificating on the topic of Clinton s health which he has continually dismissed as conspiracy theories: Also, I think she should have had a neurological examination, a thorough neurological examination in 2016, recommended Scheiner. We know what happens to football players who have had concussions, how they begin to lose some of their cognitive ability, I think both [Trump and Clinton] should release their records. On Twitter, I asked Stelter who had repeatedly made the argument that any questions raised about Clinton s health status are strictly those of Drudge, Fox s Sean Hannity, Breitbart and the alt-right why he has ignored the prognosis of the president s own ex-physician who made said recommendation on CNN primetime to much press reaction afterward:@brianstelter The former ex-physician of the president saying Hillary Clinton should have a neurological exam on CNN air is cherry-picking? Joe Concha (@JoeConchaTV) September 11, 2016In reviewing transcripts of several Stelter appearances on the topic, the media reporter and critic not only has failed to present Dr. Scheiner s conclusion, but also none of the other top doctors who have come forward to state Clinton needs further medical analysis, scrutiny and transparency as well and there are plenty to cite.Short version: The conspiracy theories that Stelter has characterized in the form of reporting dozens of times on air and in print around Clinton s health had gone well beyond right-wing media and Trump surrogates before Sunday s episode and should have been a legitimate concern worthy of questioning, as noted several times in this space over the past few weeks Continue this story at the HillREAD MORE ABOUT PROBLEMS AT CNN NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire CNN Files | 1real |
Hitlary’s Hallowe’en Mask | Becky Akers blog/hitlarys-halloween-mask/
“ Thanks to one historically accurate , if unscientific, presidential polling metric, Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton may be in for a frightening Halloween. According to reports from national retailers, sales of Donald Trump Halloween masks lead sales of Clinton masks 55 percent to 45 percent.”
Before dismissing this just-for-fun poll, you should know that the “ best-selling presidential candidate mask has correctly forecast the outcome of every election since 1996.” 3:51 pm on October 26, 2016 | 1real |
Bloomberg’s U.S. Consumer Comfort Index Highest It Has Been in a Decade - Breitbart | Bloomberg’s U. S. Consumer Comfort Index has reached its highest point in a decade following positive assessments about the economy and the buying climate, according to Bloomberg Markets. [The consumer comfort index rose to 50. 6 as of March 5, the highest it has been since March 2007, from 49. 8. The index has surpassed 50 only six times since April 2002. A measure of the economy rose to 48. 2, the highest since August 2001, from 46. 8, while a measure of buying climate rose to 44. 5, the highest since April 2002, from 43. 7. The stock market has jumped to record highs and the job market has been particularly strong since President Trump’s inauguration, causing the consumer comfort index to rise. Respondents to the index view the buying climate as the most favorable it has been in 15 years, a sign that there might be an uptick in household spending after a slow start in 2017. Sentiment has been strong among Republicans as well as political independents, who were the most confident about the economy and the buying climate since July 2001. Republicans’ sentiment has surpassed that of the Democrats by the most since September 2013. Confidence among people in the South and Midwest, employees, and married Americans rose. For employees, they were the most confident since October 2015, while married Americans saw the highest levels of comfort in a decade. Confidence did, however, fall for people living in the West and Northeast. | 0fake |
How Siberia Became Part of Russia - Oleg Skripnik | Citizen journalism with a punch How Siberia Became Part of Russia
The conquest of Siberia by Russia took place in a relatively short period of time. How did it happen? Originally appeared at RBTH
Siberia became a part of Russia with incredible speed. In 1585, the first Russian expedition attempting to cross the Eurasian continent perished beyond the Urals; only 54 years later, however, Russians reached the Pacific Ocean.
The history of Russians in Siberia
Russia's contact with Siberia's indigenous populations began long before the ill-fated military expedition to the Urals. The 14th-century Laurentian Codex, which is the oldest record of the history of Northern Russia, mentions Gurat Rogovich from Novgorod who went on an expedition to the "Ugra lands” in the 11th century. According to Russian historian Sergei Solovyov, the "great mountains and copper gaits" mentioned in the Codex are the Urals. In a subsequent period, the Ushkuiniks — pirate warriors from Novgorod who traveled along the rivers in flat-bottomed boats — would often raid those territories.
In 1483, Muscovite warriors went on a military campaign to the Urals, and in 1555, the Khanate of Sibir, an ethnically diverse Muslim state made up of indigenous Siberian tribes, became a vassal of the Russian tsar. However, in 1563, a new leader, Kuchum, became khan and reasserted the independence of the Khanate. ostrog.jpg The first full-fledged Russian colonization expedition to Siberia was Cossack Yermak's campaign against Kuchum in 1581. By that time, the khan had begun raiding bordering Russian lands. Yermak, who began his expedition with 540 Cossacks, gathered more tro
The first full-fledged Russian colonization expedition to Siberia was Cossack Yermak's campaign against Kuchum in 1581. By that time, the khan had begun raiding bordering Russian lands. Yermak, who began his expedition with 540 Cossacks, gathered more troops as he moved further into Siberia, fighting local tribes and the khan’s forces along the way. In 1585, Kuchum’s men led a raid on Yermak’s camp and killed the Cossack leader and most of his soldiers. But it was too late to stop the colonization of Siberia.
New Russian expeditions built forts in Siberia, which later evolved into large cities. In 1586, the city of Tyumen (current population 720,000) was founded; in 1604 — Tomsk (population: 570,000) and in 1628 — Krasnoyarsk, home to more than one million people today.
Not a colony
Unlike the British territories in North America, Siberia was not a colony. Russia did not divide its territories along such lines. The region just became a part of the expanding Russian Empire. The local elites were integrated into the Russian administrative systems. For example, Kuchum's son eventually signed a peace agreement, and his grandson became head of the Qasim Khanate, a Tatar vassal state of Russia.
Experts believe that before the arrival of the Russians, 240,000-300,000 indigenous people lived in Siberia on a territory of 5 million square miles. The Siberian tribes fought fiercely against one another, and many of them accepted Russian rule as a way to avoid further bloodshed. However, the further east the Cossack explorers went, the more resistance they faced from those groups who wanted to preserve their independence.
The Russian government used forts and garrisons to spread its power, but indigenous tribes attacked and burn the forts, which led to retaliatory strikes by the Cossacks. Folklorist Georgy Ergis says that in the legends of the Yakut people, Russians are described as "people of battles and massacres."
The last holdouts
The Chukchi were one of the most defiant indigenous people of Siberia. They fiercely fought the Cossacks and often even defeated them on occasion. The scale of the battles between the Chukchi and the Cossacks were not great — in one serious defeat on the Orlova River, the Russian forces lost 51 men — but eventually the imperial government had enough. In 1742, the tsar issued a decree: "Attack the restless Chukchi with an armed hand; eradicate them completely." surikov_1300.jpg Yermak's conquest of Siberia. Vasily Surikov. / Source: Wikipedia.org
Like native groups in other parts of the world, the indigenous people of Siberia were vulnerable to diseases brought by Russian explorers. "The new illnesses weakened and demoralized the indigenous population," historian John Richards wrote. "They destroyed 80 percent of the Tungusic people and 44 percent of the Yukaghir people."
Nevertheless, the aim of Russia's expansion was not genocide or the enslavement of the Siberian peoples but to impose a tribute on them and include the new lands in the Russian Empire. Usually, Russians would resort to weapons only if their diplomatic efforts failed. Today approximately 10 percent of the population of Siberia is made up of native peoples. In the Republic of Sakha-Yakutia, for example, there are more ethnic Yakuts than Russians. | 1real |
YOU LIE! OBAMA SECRETLY PAID $400 MILLION Ransom To IRAN For Release Of Americans…BRAGGED About “Diplomatic Breakthrough” With Iran | US Congressman Joe Wilson was right! Obama is a liar His reckless and amateur decisions have made America more unsafe than we have ever been. Now he s asking Americans to vote for Hillary to ensure his lawless legacy lives on The Obama administration secretly organized an airlift of $400 million worth of cash to Iran that coincided with the January release of four Americans detained in Tehran, according to U.S. and European officials and congressional staff briefed on the operation afterward.Wooden pallets stacked with euros, Swiss francs and other currencies were flown into Iran on an unmarked cargo plane, according to these officials. The U.S. procured the money from the central banks of the Netherlands and Switzerland, they said.The money represented the first installment of a $1.7 billion settlement the Obama administration reached with Iran to resolve a decades-old dispute over a failed arms deal signed just before the 1979 fall of Iran s last monarch, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.The settlement, which resolved claims before an international tribunal in The Hague, also coincided with the formal implementation that same weekend of the landmark nuclear agreement reached between Tehran, the U.S. and other global powers the summer before. With the nuclear deal done, prisoners released, the time was right to resolve this dispute as well, President Barack Obama said at the White House on Jan. 17 without disclosing the $400 million cash payment.Senior U.S. officials denied any link between the payment and the prisoner exchange. They say the way the various strands came together simultaneously was coincidental, not the result of any quid pro quo. As we ve made clear, the negotiations over the settlement of an outstanding claim were completely separate from the discussions about returning our American citizens home, State Department spokesman John Kirby said. Not only were the two negotiations separate, they were conducted by different teams on each side, including, in the case of The Hague claims, by technical experts involved in these negotiations for many years. But U.S. officials also acknowledge that Iranian negotiators on the prisoner exchange said they wanted the cash to show they had gained something tangible.Sen. Tom Cotton, a Republican from Arkansas and a fierce foe of the Iran nuclear deal, accused President Barack Obama of paying a $1.7 billion ransom to the ayatollahs for U.S. hostages. This break with longstanding U.S. policy put a price on the head of Americans, and has led Iran to continue its illegal seizures of Americans, he said.Since the cash shipment, the intelligence arm of the Revolutionary Guard has arrested two more Iranian-Americans. Tehran has also detained dual-nationals from France, Canada and the U.K. in recent months.At the time of the prisoner release, Secretary of State John Kerry and the White House portrayed it as a diplomatic breakthrough. Mr. Kerry cited the importance of the relationships forged and the diplomatic channels unlocked over the course of the nuclear talks. For entire story: Wall Street JournalAs a bonus, here is Rep. Joe Wilson calling out Barack Obama on one of his many lies: | 1real |
Kremlin says Russia not accused in U.S. case against ex-Trump aides | MOSCOW (Reuters) - The Kremlin said on Tuesday that U.S. charges against President Donald Trump s former campaign manager Paul Manafort and another aide showed Moscow had been unfairly maligned in accusations that it meddled in last year s U.S. presidential election. Federal investigators probing alleged Russian interference in the election, something Moscow denies, charged Manafort and Rick Gates with money laundering on Monday. But despite being brought as part of a five-month-old investigation into alleged Russian efforts to tilt the election in Trump s favor and into potential collusion by Trump aides, the charges, some going back over a decade, centered on Manafort s work for Ukraine s former government, not Russia s. That was welcomed in Russia, where officials are watching the investigation closely since public evidence of Russian meddling, something that has not so far been presented, would be sure to translate into tougher U.S. sanctions against Moscow. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov highlighted the absence of allegations against Russia in the indictment against Manafort and Gates, saying on Tuesday that Moscow had always said it had never interfered in the U.S. election. That assertion is challenged by U.S. intelligence agencies who say unequivocally that Moscow did interfere in the November 2016 vote. ...Russia does not feature in the charges that were leveled in any way. Other countries and other people feature (in the charges), Peskov told a conference call with reporters. Moscow never felt itself guilty so it doesn t feel exonerated now, he said, when asked whether the Kremlin interpreted the indictment as proof that its repeated denials about meddling election were true. Peskov also brushed aside any suggestion that someone with links to the Russian Foreign Ministry might have tried to set up a meeting with the Trump campaign through a third ex-aide, George Papadopoulos, who it was announced on Monday pleaded guilty in early October to lying to the FBI. Russia s flagship TV news show took a similar line on Monday evening, saying it was now clear that there was nothing to allegations about Manafort being in touch with Russian officials to try to sway the election. The U.S. investigation was an internal matter for the United States, said Peskov, but Moscow was following it with interest. Peskov laughed off the purported role of Papadopoulos, who told investigators he had tried to set up a meeting between the Trump campaign and the Russian leadership. In his unsuccessful quest to broker such a meeting, Papadopoulos said he had met a London-based professor boasting of contacts with Russian officials and an unnamed Russian woman. He also mentioned being in touch with someone linked to the Russian Foreign Ministry. Peskov, when asked what the Kremlin made of someone linked to the Foreign Ministry allegedly trying to set up a Putin-Trump meeting, said: It s an absolutely laughable allegation. Media reports have suggested the individual linked to the ministry is Ivan Timofeev, who works for a Moscow-based think-tank called the Russian International Relations Council (RIAC). Timofeev did not respond to a request for comment, but told the gazeta.ru online news portal in August that Papadopoulos had emailed him in the spring of 2016 and spoken about the possibility of organizing a Trump trip to Russia. Timofeev said Papadopoulos had never made a formal request to either RIAC or the Russian Foreign Ministry for such a visit, however, and that he had got the impression that he had been acting on his own initiative and was an enthusiast with little experience. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told reporters on Tuesday that there was nothing illegal about Papadopoulos contacting someone at RIAC. | 0fake |
Pence says working with allies to put pressure on North Korea | TOKYO (Reuters) - U.S. Vice President Mike Pence said on Wednesday that Washington would work with its allies and China to put economic and diplomatic pressure on North Korea but added that America would defeat any attack with an “overwhelming response”. Pence arrived in Tokyo on Tuesday from South Korea and reassured Japan of U.S. commitment to reining in North Korea’s nuclear and missile ambitions in a series of meetings with Japanese leaders, including Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. Speaking aboard the USS Ronald Reagan, a Nimitz class aircraft carrier undergoing scheduled maintenance at its home port of Yokosuka, Pence said U.S. intentions remained unwavering in the face of the threat posed by the reclusive North, which has conducted a series of missile and nuclear tests in defiance of U.N. sanctions, most recently with a failed missile launch on Sunday. “Those who would challenge our resolve or readiness should know, we will defeat any attack and beat any use of conventional or nuclear weapons with an overwhelming and effective American response,” Pence said to loud applause, reiterating that all options are on the table in dealing with Pyongyang. Pence made his remarks as the White House grappled with controversy over the location of the USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier strike group that U.S. President Donald Trump said last week had been sent to near the Korean peninsula as a warning to North Korea, but which headed towards Australia instead. Pence did not mention the Carl Vinson or the controversy. Pence said he had spoken with Trump and by 2020 some 60 percent of the U.S. naval fleet would be in the region and Japan’s role would grow. “The United States will strengthen its presence in the Asia Pacific,” he said. “Japan will assume a larger role and responsibility in our alliance in the years ahead.” Defence officials from the United States, South Korea and Japan, who were in Tokyo for trilateral security talks, said in a statement North Korea should give up its weapons development irrevocably. “The officials call on North Korea to abandon its nuclear and ballistic missile programs in a complete, verifiable, and irrevocably manner, to cease its provocative actions that only increase tensions in the region,” they said. A senior North Korean official said in an interview with the BBC this week that North Korea would conduct missile tests “on a weekly, monthly and yearly basis”, and any military action against it by the United States would prompt “all-out war”. North Korea’s deputy representative to the United Nations, Kim In Ryong, accused the United States on Monday of creating “a situation where nuclear war could break out an any time” and said the North’s next nuclear test would take place “at a time and at a place where our headquarters deems necessary”. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said all parties should make efforts to resolve the situation. “China expresses serious concern with recent trends about North Korea’s nuclear and missile development,” he said. The situation was tense and China was resolutely opposed to any words or actions that could further raise tension, he added. North Korea regularly threatens to destroy Japan, South Korea and the United States and it showed no let-up in its belligerence after the failed missile test on Sunday, a day after putting on a huge display of missiles at a parade in Pyongyang. Pence also said the United States would protect freedom of navigation and overflight in the South China Sea, where Beijing is entangled in territorial rows with several Southeast Asia nations. Pence heads for Indonesia later on Wednesday. | 0fake |
Don’t Call Them ‘Mocktails’ - The New York Times | I’m always thrilled when a certain former drinking buddy comes to see me at the bar. He stopped drinking alcohol years ago, but he’s as fun to be around as he was when we sat side by side at a corner bar in TriBeCa many nights in the ’90s — probably more so. Quitting drinking, whether it’s for a month (as many are tempted to do this time of year) or forever, shouldn’t have to mean forgoing all the other, and arguably deeper, pleasures of bar culture: community and conversation. Of course it’s easier — and maybe economically sounder — to drink at home, but we go to bars because other people are there, and the fellowship we find with them is, for many of us, more important than the pints and shots. I want my friend to be as happy and relaxed at the bar as any other customer, and he deserves something better than a cranberry and seltzer. Given the limited resources at my small, neighborhood pub, a virgin bloody mary usually does the trick — and mixed with a good nonalcoholic beer, it makes an excellent base for a virgin michelada, too. Cocktail and restaurant bars are also making a greater effort to make nondrinkers feel welcome and well looked after. Some have dedicated nonalcoholic drink menus. On the list at Boston’s Bar Mezzana is a festive number called the Orchid Thief, fragrant with orange and tinged with vanilla, fizzed up with club soda and served in a flute — a celebratory glassful of bubbly. Abigail Gullo at Compère Lapin in New Orleans gladly accommodates nondrinkers with a cooler composed of fresh blackberries, citrus juices and orgeat, an almondy syrup that hints at the flavor of amaretto. Another creative bartender, the Los Gabriella Mlynarczyk, has deliberately developed recipes that are delicious and satisfying with or without alcohol. One is the Mumbai Mule, for which she concocts a spicy syrup of ginger, turmeric, coriander, cumin, paprika, cayenne and honey. She then mixes it with coconut milk, tops it off with ginger beer and garnishes it with fresh curry leaves. Part of the appeal of sitting at a bar with a cocktail is that it’s an opportunity to sip something special, unusual and lovely to behold. The three options featured here succeed in all these criteria. But let’s not call them mocktails — they’re not mocking anything. They stand on their own flavorful merits. In bartending circles, there has always been discussion about the pressure to drink and the toll it can take. It’s an important conversation, and my sense is that in recent years it has become more open and more honest. Good drink will always be part of my life, but my constitution isn’t what it was when I drank most every night at that corner bar in TriBeCa. A glass of Champagne on New Year’s Eve still suits me. A gin fizz the following afternoon, sure. But on Jan. 2, make me a Mumbai Mule — and hold the vodka, please. Recipes: Mumbai Mule | Orchid Thief | Blackberry Cooler | 0fake |
Boehner moves to push off immigration fight to 2015 | House Speaker John Boehner announced plans Tuesday to effectively push off a looming battle over President Obama's immigration policies until next year, while potentially averting a partial government shutdown later this month.
The speaker met behind closed doors Tuesday with fellow Republicans. Boehner is attempting a balancing act -- as he tries to avert a budget showdown, while also letting conservatives vent over the president's controversial executive actions on immigration.
Congress needs to approve a new spending bill by Dec. 11 to avoid a partial shutdown, and opposition to Obama's immigration approach has complicated that effort.
The plan, as of Tuesday, is a two-step approach. The House would vote later this week for a largely symbolic measure disapproving Obama's executive actions to suspend deportations for millions of immigrants here illegally. The bill would try to block those actions, but would certainly face a presidential veto, if it made it past the Senate.
The House would then vote next week on a must-pass spending bill, with a twist.
The plan would fund most elements of the government for the remainder of the current fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30, 2015. But, under one proposal, it would only fund immigration-related activities until early next year -- setting up a new fight over immigration in early 2015, when Republicans control both the House and Senate.
While Obama's Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson was being grilled over immigration at a Capitol Hill hearing, Boehner said Tuesday that Obama has ignored the American people.
"This is a serious breach of our Constitution," Boehner said.
He also said lawmakers "have limited options and abilities to deal with it directly."
It's unclear whether Boehner's plan has enough support.
Some conservatives want more; they circulated bill language Monday stipulating that no money or fees "may be used by any agency to implement, administer, enforce or carry out any of the policy changes" announced by Obama.
Meanwhile, House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi put Republicans on notice last week that her party wouldn't support a plan that didn't fund the government for the entire fiscal year and also chipped away at some immigration-related activities. In the Senate, Democrats still maintain the majority and could cause problems for any plan that does not fully fund the government through next year.
Fox News' Chad Pergram and The Associated Press contributed to this report. | 0fake |
Donald Trump Previews Budget: ‘We Must Do a Lot More with Less’ - Breitbart | President Donald Trump previewed his administration’s budget, promising to hold each branch of his cabinet accountable. [“We must do a lot more with less,” he said prior to a working lunch with economic and political advisers. Trump described the current financial situation of the country as “a mess” and vowed to fix it. “The finances of this country are a mess, but we’re going to clean that up,” Trump said, pointing out that he had only been president for four weeks. “I can’t take too much of the blame for what’s happened, but it is absolutely out of control. ” Trump met with his Budget Director Mick Mulvaney, as well as Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin. He was joined by his senior staff, including Jared Kushner, Reince Priebus, Steve Bannon, and his economic adviser Gary Cohn. He asserted that funding the military was a priority, and promised to negotiate more deals for the government. “We have already saved a lot — billions and billions of dollars,” he said, referring to his efforts at renegotiating federal contracts. | 0fake |
Trump says to visit UK to open golf resort on June 24 | LONDON (Reuters) - U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump said on Wednesday he would visit Britain for the opening of his Scottish golf resort on June 24, his first trip to the UK since a spat with Prime Minister David Cameron over comments he made about Muslims. Relations between Cameron and Trump, whose visit comes the day after Britain holds a referendum on its membership of the European Union, have been tense since the British leader called his proposed ban on Muslims entering the United States dangerous and stupid. Trump’s idea for a boycott of Muslims, mooted last December, also led to calls from some lawmakers for him to be banned from Britain, with almost 600,000 people signing an online petition to keep him out. While Cameron and his ministers rejected that call, the prime minister did suggest that Trump would unite the nation against him if he visited Britain. Trump responded by saying he was unlikely to have a good relationship with Cameron, although both men have since tempered their language after Trump effectively became the presumptive Republican Party nominee. Cameron has said he would be happy to meet him, although no date had been fixed, and Trump said they could have a good relationship after all. A spokesman for Cameron said there were no firm plans for a meeting, although it was a long-standing practice for a prime minister to meet presidential nominees if they visited Britain. Trump’s visit will coincide with the result of Britain’s EU referendum, and while Cameron is leading the campaign for Britain to stay in the bloc, Trump has said he thinks Britons would be better off outside. In a statement, Trump made no mention of any potential Cameron meeting, saying only that his visit to Britain was for the official opening of his golf resort at Turnberry following a 200 million pound ($290 million) refurbishment. A spokeswoman for the Trump Organization said the date of the opening had been planned long in advance and that it was just a coincidence it came the day after the EU vote. The date would not be changed, she added. The golf course has itself pitted Trump against British politicians after Scotland’s devolved government approved plans for an offshore wind farm nearby which led Trump to denounce Scottish ministers as “foolish, small minded and parochial”. | 0fake |
Trump loses bid to end Trump University lawsuit before trial | SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - A U.S. judge on Tuesday rejected Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s pretrial bid to throw out a lawsuit brought by Trump University students who said they were defrauded by its real-estate seminars. U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel said in a written ruling that there was a “genuine issue of material fact” as to whether Trump knowingly participated in a scheme to cheat the students, who paid up to $35,000 to learn Trump’s real estate investing “secrets” from his “hand-picked” instructors. Curiel said there was extensive evidence Trump had not personally met, interviewed or selected Trump University instructors. In a July 22 hearing, Curiel tentatively denied the bid by Trump to dismiss the lawsuit in California, one of three over the defunct Trump University venture. Trump’s lawyers had argued that the lawsuit, filed in 2013 in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California, should be dismissed because the New York real estate mogul, though personally involved in developing the concept and curriculum, relied on others to manage Trump University by the time the plaintiffs purchased seminars. Trump’s lawyers claimed that references in marketing materials to “secrets,” “hand-picked” instructors or “university” were sales “puffery” and there was no evidence Trump intended to defraud students. Separately, Curiel rejected an effort to make public video excerpts of Trump testifying under oath. Trump’s lawyers had fought against the release of the excerpts, saying they would be exploited by the media and others during the presidential campaign. Trump set off an uproar in May when he accused Curiel of being biased against him because of the candidate’s pledge to build a border wall between the United States and Mexico. Curiel was born in Indiana and is of Mexican descent. | 0fake |
Conservatives expect changes in Medicaid in healthcare bill | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A large group of conservative lawmakers are close to approving proposed healthcare legislation, their leader said on Wednesday, after they were told to be hopeful that some changes they sought in the Medicaid program for the poor and disabled would be made in the bill. The Republican Study Committee (RSC), the biggest group of conservatives in Congress, is “very close to signing off” on the Republican healthcare bill that would repeal Obamacare, Representative Mark Walker told reporters after the RSC met with Vice President Mike Pence about the legislation. Walker said conservatives were told “to be hopeful” that changes adding a work requirement for some Medicaid enrollees, and accelerating the end of an expansion of the Medicaid program, would be incorporated into the bill. | 0fake |
Environmentalists Target Bankers Behind Pipeline - The New York Times | In early August, just as protesters from across the country descended on North Dakota to rally against an oil pipeline near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, some of the world’s biggest banks signed off on a $2. 5 billion loan to help complete the sprawling project. Now, those banks — which include Citigroup and Wells Fargo of the United States, TD Bank of Canada and Mizuho of Japan — have come under fire for their role in bankrolling the pipeline. In an open letter on Monday, 26 environmental groups urged those banks to halt further loan payments to the project, which the Sioux say threatens their sacred lands and water supply. In campaigning to reduce the world’s carbon emissions, environmentalists have increasingly focused on the financiers behind the fossil fuel industry — highlighting their role in financing coal, oil and gas projects. It is an expansion of traditional protest efforts, and it has met with some early success. Environmental groups have also criticized the Dakota Access pipeline as outdated infrastructure with no place in a world racing to stave off the worst effects of climate change. The pipeline is expected to carry nearly half a million barrels of crude oil daily out of the Bakken fields of North Dakota, according to the company building the pipeline, Energy Transfer Partners. Late last month, hundreds of police in riot gear used pepper spray and rubber bullets to evict protesters from land owned by Energy Transfer. Over 100 people were arrested in the sweep. President Obama said last week that the Army Corps of Engineers was considering an alternate route for the pipeline. “Banks have a choice to either finance the transition to renewable energy, or to finance pipelines and power plants that will lock us into fossil fuels for the next 40 years,” said Johan Frijns, director of BankTrack, a advocacy organization that led the campaign. “If we’re serious about fighting climate change, we can’t continue to finance fossil fuel infrastructure of any kind. ” The letter from BankTrack and other environmental groups, including the Sierra Club, Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth, was addressed to the Equator Principles Association, a consortium of global banks committed to responsible environmental and social practices. Thirteen of the 17 banks that participated in the latest loan to the Dakota pipeline project, including all five of the lead banks, are members. The group was holding its annual meeting in London on Monday and Tuesday. The letter came as climate negotiators gathered in Marrakesh, Morocco, to work on the details of executing the Paris climate accord. On the agenda are drafting rules on how to measure and report greenhouse gas emissions, as well as securing financial aid to help poor countries deal with climate change. Hillary Clinton, the Democrat nominee in the race for the United States presidency, has said she will back the climate policies of President Obama, including continued support of the Paris agreement. Her Republican opponent, Donald J. Trump, has called global warming a hoax, and has said he would “cancel” the Paris deal if he were elected. In their battles with banks, environmentalists have scored some early victories. After a concerted effort by campaigners, several global banks, including Barclays, ING and Deutsche Bank, stepped back over the last two years from projects that involve mountaintop removal mining, a practice experts say is particularly damaging to the environment. Earlier this year, JPMorgan Chase announced that it would no longer finance new power plants in the United States or other wealthy nations, a retreat that followed similar announcements by Bank of America, Citigroup and Morgan Stanley. The banks’ move away from coal, however, appeared motivated as much by the plunging profitability of coal as by concerns over climate change. Experts also question the profitability of the Dakota pipeline, at a time of slumping oil prices. “A lot of infrastructure investment, particularly pipelines, is built around strong projections that go out decades,” said Mark Campanale, founder of the Carbon Tracker Initiative, a financial think tank that focuses on energy and climate change. “If the scenarios around demand for oil is wrong, it’s likely that people are building costly infrastructure on a false promise — that the oil is going to be needed in 30 to 40 years. ” The loan to Energy Transfer and its partners Sunoco Logistics Partners and Phillips 66 was led by Citigroup, Mizuho, Bank of Tokyo Mitsubishi UFJ and TD Bank, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Citigroup said that it had already raised concerns over the project with Energy Transfer and advocated engagement with the Sioux tribe. It was closely following the outcomes of the federal government’s efforts to engage local communities in a possible review of the project, the bank said in a statement. A Wells Fargo spokesman, Alan Elias, declined to comment. Judith Schmidt, a spokeswoman for TD bank, declined to comment on the letter specifically. Mizuho and the Bank of Tokyo could not immediately be reached for comment. | 0fake |
It Can Power a Small Nation. But This Wind Farm in China Is Mostly Idle. - The New York Times | JIUQUAN, China — On the edge of the Gobi Desert, the Jiuquan Wind Power Base stands as a symbol of China’s quest to dominate the world’s renewable energy market. With more than 7, 000 turbines arranged in rows that stretch along the sandy horizon, it is one of the world’s largest wind farms, capable of generating enough electricity to power a small country. But these days, the windmills loom like scarecrows, idle and inert. The wind howls outside, but many turbines in Jiuquan, a city of vast deserts and farms in the northwest province of Gansu, have been shut off because of weak demand. Workers while away the hours calculating how much power the turbines could have generated if there were more buyers, and wondering if and when they will ever make a profit. “There’s not much we can do right now,” said Zhou Shenggang, a manager at a energy company who oversees 134 turbines here about 60 percent of their capacity goes unused each year. “Only the state can intervene. ” China, the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases, has pointed to its embrace of wind and solar power and other alternatives to coal to position itself at the forefront of the global effort to combat climate change. More than 92, 000 wind turbines have been built across the country, capable of generating 145 gigawatts of electricity, nearly double the capacity of wind farms in the United States. One out of every three turbines in the world is now in China, and the government is adding them at a rate of more than one per hour. But some of its most ambitious wind projects are underused. Many are grappling with a nationwide economic slowdown that has dampened demand for electricity. Others are stymied by persistent favoritism toward the coal industry by local officials and a dearth of transmission lines to carry electricity from rural areas in the north and west to China’s cities. That has left China unable to generate enough renewable energy to make a serious dent in air pollution and carbon emissions, despite the building spree. Even with its unmatched arsenal of turbines, China still lags the United States. Wind power now accounts for 3. 3 percent of electricity generation in China, according to the nation’s National Energy Administration, compared with 4. 7 percent in the United States. Chinese officials have described the challenges facing the wind sector as growing pains, and they say the investments in renewable energy will pay off in the long term. The costs of wind projects are falling rapidly with advances in technology and more efficient construction, making them more competitive with plants powered by fossil fuels like coal and natural gas. And the government has vowed to continue investing heavily in renewable energy. It said this month that it intended to spend at least $360 billion through 2020 on developing renewable energy sources. Analysts said that China’s success would depend on its ability to overcome both political and practical obstacles, including resistance to renewable energy from local governments and a lack of turbines near major cities. “This is partly a political fight,” said Paolo Frankl, head of the renewable energy division at the International Energy Agency. “Still, it’s a very, very robust and solid trajectory. ” Sebastian Meyer, research and advisory director at Azure International, a consulting firm in Beijing, said China was “leapfrogging everybody” with its investments in renewable energy but needed to push through painful policy decisions, such as allowing more flexibility in setting energy prices. “For years, they’ve been talking about reform,” he said. “But really they need a different market approach that incentivizes more use of renewables going forward. ” The Jiuquan Wind Power Base, approved by the government in 2008, epitomized China’s ambition to become a global leader in clean energy. The government vowed to invest $17. 4 billion by 2020 and build a vast farm capable of generating 20 gigawatts of power, more than the combined wind capacity of several countries. But the unfinished project has been slow to take off, even as the government continues to build it out. Part of the problem is the location. Gansu is a barren, mountainous province, chosen for its strong winds and potential for growth. But it is far from the booming cities of eastern China, making transmission of electricity difficult. Gansu now has some of the highest rates of underutilization in the wind sector in China in 2015, 39 percent of wind capacity in the province was wasted, according to statistics compiled by the National Energy Administration. Mr. Frankl said inefficiency in Gansu was “astronomically high” and underscored the need for China to build more transmission lines to carry electricity long distances, and to position new turbines closer to major metropolises. In Gansu and elsewhere, the central government has also run up against local resistance. Advocates for the wind industry contend that local officials have reduced production quotas for wind farms to give an advantage to coal companies. The coal industry, a major driver of economic growth in many provinces, wields significant influence in China. While the government has pledged to curb the spread of coal plants as part of its plan to make 20 percent of China’s energy renewable by 2030, it has continued to add them in some places. “The cake is only so big,” said Yan Jing, a Greenpeace activist in Beijing who studies climate change and energy issues. “It’s hard for new energy companies to take a slice from traditional players. ” Even if more transmission lines were constructed, Ms. Yan said, the government would have trouble persuading businesses along China’s heavily developed eastern coast to buy electricity from faraway provinces. “The authorities failed to consider the demand factor, namely, ‘How can we get closer to buyers? ’” she said. “There should be more development of clean energy in eastern parts of China so electricity can be absorbed locally. ” In introducing a new energy plan last week, officials acknowledged that the focus on building turbines far from urban centers had created imbalances. He Yongjian, an official at the National Energy Administration, said the government would now build a majority of new turbines in the east, partly to reduce the need to transmit power long distances. But building wind farms in the east might be difficult, given the preponderance of coal plants, a lack of strong winds and a scarcity of undeveloped land. The tepid demand for electricity in an economic downturn has also exacerbated the troubles for renewable energy. Demand for electricity grew by only 0. 5 percent in 2015, the slowest rate of growth since 1974, and it is expected to remain weak until consumer spending picks up. At the Jiuquan Wind Power Base, Mr. Zhou oversees a small wind farm for a branch of China Resources Power Holdings, a energy company based in Shenzhen that operates two wind farms in Gansu. He said the wind industry’s problems had hurt morale and productivity. The branch in Jiuquan has made small cuts in salaries and benefits for its 32 employees because of its challenges in selling electricity. Other wind farms in the area have resorted to layoffs, according to interviews with workers. Outside the company’s offices, a walled compound along a desert highway, trucks carrying coal rumbled down dusty roads. Mr. Zhou, wearing a uniform and fiddling with a pencil, surveyed the vast stretch of immobile turbines from his desk. “The only thing I can do is encourage my employees to do a good job,” he said. “I assure them that over the long term, the new energy sector is very promising. The difficulties right now are only temporary. ” | 0fake |
WATCH: Video Shows Cops TRYING To Run Over Black Man With Cruiser | In something you might expect from a video game instead of real life, police in Sacramento, California are under fire on Monday after a dash cam video was released that showed police trying to run down a black man who reportedly had only a knife. They missed, but they did manage to shoot 50-year-old Joseph Mann 14 times. Now, the community is calling for the police involved to be charged with murder.The incident happened on July 11th. As those on the right will happily point out, the police were called to an apartment complex because Mann was reportedly acting erratically and he had a knife. When police ordered Mann to drop his weapon and get on the ground, Mann instead threw a thermos at the police car.That s when Officers Randy Lozoya and John Tennis came to the scene. They are the officers in the video.In the video, the officers are heard saying, I m gonna hit him and Okay, go for it, before gunning the engine and aiming for him. Mann was able to evade the police cruiser, but the officers stopped the car, got out and during a foot chase, shot Mann 14 times, killing him.Here it is: Mann was standing stationary on a sidewalk with no one in close proximity when the officers unloaded their guns, Burris wrote in a letter he said he sent the U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch.The family wants murder charges filed.The officers behaved like big game hunters closing in on an animal, said John Burris, a lawyer for the family of 50-year-old Joseph Mann.Source: CBS NewsThe Sacramento police are reserving judgement, of course. Spokesman Matthew McPhail didn t say whether cars are permitted as weapons, but he did say, our officers are encouraged to assess each circumstance and think critically about the tools at their disposal. The two cops have not been fired. They were placed on paid leave for a whole week after the shooting and now they are on desk duty.Again, Mann wasn t an innocent bystander. Methamphetamine was found in his system. The family s lawsuit claims that Mann was displaying obvious signs of mental distress. The police followed no protocol for dealing with a mentally distressed person and they made no attempt to deescalate the situation.The bottom line, though, is that the punishment did not fit the crime. If police can t even subdue a man who is armed with only a knife, how are they supposed to deal with a mass shooter or a terrorist? Not all crimes are equal and this certainly wasn t a crime that warranted the death penalty, not that police have that authority anyway.Featured image via video screen capture. | 1real |
CATHOLICS SHOULD BE Singing Donald Trump’s Praises After He Boldly Defended Life, While Hillary Was Forced To Admit Support For Barbaric Partial-Birth Abortion | Rush Limbaugh was cheering for Trump and how he handled the abortion question that was asked in last night s debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald J. Trump. Do Catholics and other pro-life groups truly understand the significance of this election? Do they know how many Supreme Court Justices our next President will likely replace in the next 4 years? In addition to the abortion issue, our religious freedoms are at serious risk. The Left has been attacking Christianity and Judaism for years, while protecting the Muslim faith like their lives depend on it. Rush mentioned on his radio show today how shocked he was by Trump s unabashed support for the life of the unborn. He said that there has never been a presidential candidate in history who has so bravely stood up for life during a debate with the Democrat opponent, like Donald J. Trump did last night. Here is his brilliant analysis Rush: Let me ask you a question. When Chris Wallace asked this abortion question, did you people start cringing? Oh, no, jeez, every time this comes up we get smoked, oh, my God. And he turned it to partial-birth abortion on a dime, which was either brilliant or instinctive or combination of the two, because she had no defense for what he was alleging, and she didn t even try. Her only defense, when he brought up, They want rip babies out of the womb a day before they re born, a week before they re born. And she doesn t deny it. All she can say is, I have seen these women. I have met these women, and I m telling you it is one of the hardest things, I m telling you it is one of the most difficult things. She s therefore on record as supporting partial-birth abortion last night. I will guarantee you that s the last thing anybody on the Democrat Party side ever factored would happen. That s why she wasn t prepared for it.And it was, I don t know, as I say, either brilliant or instinctive or a combination of the two, but to take that question on abortion, which has traditionally been a nail in the coffin for a Republican candidate, turn that around to a winning issue for him, a losing issue for her, and you ll note that nobody in the Drive-Bys is talking about that exchange. They don t want to go anywhere near it.And then she lied about Planned Parenthood and all these mammograms they do and all these precancer checks. They don t do a single mammogram, folks. They do not do them. They don t do checks for cancer. Their solution to everything at Planned Parenthood is an abortion. She lied through her teeth. I don t know if Trump knows that or not. Most people who, Oh, great work, mammograms, care for women. They don t do anything of the sort. They harvest baby parts and sell them! We now know that.But the partial-birth abortion thing, he turned it around on her. She didn t have a denial and the Drive-Bys aren t talking about it, and it s things like that in a debate you ll never hear any public reaction, no polling on it, but could have a huge impact. We ll never know. We won t know until the elections. Via: Rushlimbaugh.com | 1real |
Shooting Victims’ Families Watch as Gun Measures Stall Once Again - The New York Times | WASHINGTON — They are members of the Club Nobody Wants to Be a Part Of. And their numbers are growing. With every mass shooting in America, a somber scene replays itself here. Victims’ families and survivors of massacres — Columbine, Virginia Tech, Aurora, Tucson, Sandy Hook, Charleston, San Bernardino — traipse up to Capitol Hill. They knock on lawmakers’ doors, attend news conferences and bear witness to Senate votes on gun measures that almost never pass. So there was a sense of déjà vu here on Monday as the Senate rejected four gun safety measures, one week after the Pulse nightclub massacre, which killed 49 and injured 53, in Orlando, Fla. Erica Lafferty Smegielski, 30, whose mother was the principal killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Connecticut, spent the day wandering the corridors of Congress with Colin Goddard, also 30, whose body still holds three bullets fired by the gunman at Virginia Tech in 2007. They stopped for a quick bite in a cafeteria, and ran into Patricia Maisch, 67, who, in 2011, was waiting in Tucson to have a picture taken with her congresswoman, Gabrielle Giffords, and helped end the massacre by grabbing the gunman’s ammunition clip. They all hugged. “It’s like, every time we come together for something like this, there is someone new we are introduced to for the first time, and we know the road that’s ahead of them,” said Ms. Smegielski over a basket of chicken nuggets. A tattoo honoring her mother is on her right arm. She looked at Mr. Goddard, to her right both work for Everytown for Gun Safety, an advocacy organization backed by Michael R. Bloomberg, the former New York mayor. “Just like you were there for me three years ago,” she told him. “And now, I’m somebody’s Colin. ” Mrs. Maisch had cut short a family reunion in St. Louis to be here for the vote. In 2013, when the Senate voted against gun safety measures that President Obama pushed for after the Sandy Hook shooting, she stood up in the Senate gallery, looked down at the lawmakers and shouted, “Shame on you!” She was escorted out by the police and detained for two hours. On Monday, she wore an orange button that read “Survivor” and a collection of colored plastic wristbands, each one representing a shooting victim. One was for a congressional candidate from Wisconsin whose mother killed herself. One was for Jordan Davis, a student shot in Florida, by someone who complained about his loud music. One was for Dawn Hochsprung, Ms. Smegielski’s mother. “These are all people I know,” she said. Gun safety advocates said they were not aware of any survivors or relatives from Orlando here it was simply too soon, they said. Lori Haas, whose daughter was badly injured at Virginia Tech, and who is now the Virginia state director of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, was in Orlando with family members on Monday. “This is like a very, very, very bad Groundhog Day movie,” she said in a telephone interview from the offices of Equality Florida, a gay rights advocacy group. Her presence there suggests a possible change after the rampage at Pulse, a gay nightclub. Leaders of the gay rights movement, which is and are now putting their muscle behind gun safety. Dan Gross, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, said gun safety advocates hope to pattern their efforts after the campaign to legalize marriage. If they cannot win in Washington, they will try to win in the states. They cite some progress: Since the Sandy Hook shooting, 42 states have passed some sort of gun safety legislation, according to the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence. Mr. Gross’ group helped run a social media campaign using the hashtag #DisarmHate he said it resulted in 150, 000 telephone calls to lawmakers last week — 10 times the number of calls the movement generated after last year’s massacre in San Bernardino, Calif. “There’s a moment for every great issue and every great movement — usually in hindsight — that when you look back and say, ‘That’s when things started to change,’” he said. “And for the issue of gun violence, that moment is now. ” As senators voted on Monday, advocates with the Brady campaign sat in the gallery wearing orange with the slogan #Enough Gun Violence. Afterward, Ms. Smegielski dabbed tears from her eyes. Mrs. Maisch said she was not surprised. Tina Meins, whose father was killed in San Bernardino, watched the vote from afar she had been here last week to attend a news conference with Senator Christopher S. Murphy, a Connecticut Democrat who held a filibuster intended to force his colleagues to take up the issue of guns. She, like the others, expected the measures to fail. The life of a advocate, she said, can be “extremely frustrating. ” And the club is growing. “In San Bernardino, we had 14 families,” Ms. Meins said. “Now we have 49. ” | 0fake |
Japan approves record defense spending that favors U.S.-made equipment | TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan s government approved a record military budget on Friday but did not earmark enough extra money to stop a splurge on U.S.-made ballistic missile defense kit from putting a squeeze on funding for an ambitious domestic jet fighter project. Japan s defense outlays for the year starting April 1 will rise for a sixth straight year, increasing by 1.3 percent to 5.19 trillion yen ($45.76 billion), according to a budget breakdown published by the government. The biggest ticket item is 137 billion yen to reinforce defenses against a possible North Korean ballistic missile attack. That includes purchases of a new longer range interceptor, the SM-3 Block IIA, designed to strike ballistic missiles in space, upgrades for the Patriot missile batteries that are the last line of defense against incoming warheads and preparations for the construction of two ground-based Aegis radar stations. Japan will also spend 2.2 billion yen to begin acquiring medium-range air-launched cruise missiles able to strike sites in North Korea in a bid to deter any potential attack by Pyongyang, which continues to test ballistic missiles. It is essential that we have the latest, most capable equipment to bolster our defenses, Japanese Minister of Defence Intsunori Onodera said after he and other Cabinet members approved the new spending plan. The latest rocket launched by the North on Nov. 29 reached an altitude of more than 4,000 km (2,485 miles) before plunging into the Sea of Japan. A spending spree on mostly U.S.-made equipment means Japan s defense planners are being forced to curtail domestic programs that would help local defense contractors such as Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Kawasaki Heavy Industries maintain their military industrial base. That may force Japan to curtail its long-held ambition to build an advanced stealth fighter, dubbed the F-3. In November, U.S. President Donald Trump called on Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to buy more U.S.-made weapons as his administration pushes Washington s allies to contribute more to their joint defense. Japan plans to allocate 279 billion yen of its next budget to buy defense equipment through the U.S. government s Foreign Military Sales system, 15 percent more than the current budget and more than double the amount spent in year that ended March 31, 2015. People who spoke to Reuters in November said Japan will delay a decision to develop the F-3, which is meant to counter military technology advances by China, putting on hold a project estimated to be worth more than $40 billion. The latest defense spending plans provide the first concrete public indication that pause is underway. A budget request submitted in August earmarked 7.4 billion yen for a new large jet engine test facility that Japan s defense ministry will need to test a prototype F-3 engine. That item was not included in the budget approved on Friday. A proposed 2.4 billion for other F-3 research was also trimmed to 1.6 billion yen. Money is being spent in other areas and this is a sign that the government sees the F-3 as a low priority, a Japanese defense ministry official said. He asked not to be identified because he is not authorized to talk to the media. | 0fake |
null | We tested on some folks | 1real |
Hawaii lawmaker resigns from Republican Party to join Democrats | (Reuters) - Hawaii lawmaker Beth Fukumoto, ousted last month as Republican leader of the state’s House of Representatives after publicly criticizing President Donald Trump, resigned on Wednesday from her party to seek membership as a Democrat. Fukumoto, 33, the youngest Hawaii legislator to serve as House minority leader, said divisive campaign rhetoric during the 2016 elections convinced her the Republican Party no longer reflected her political values or the interests of her state’s diverse population. “This election, I saw members of my party marginalizing and condemning minorities, ethnic or otherwise, and making demeaning comments towards women,” she said in an open letter of resignation to the Republican Party. Fukumoto, who is of mixed Japanese and Irish ancestry, said she found Trump’s comments about banning Muslim immigrants and the possibility of establishing a registry of Muslim-Americans to be especially troubling. “I wanted very badly to see the Republican Party denounce his comments, and that didn’t happen,” she told Reuters, saying a Muslim registry struck her as “one step away” from internment camps. “That for me was the issue that really changed how I felt.” A self-described political moderate, Fukumoto was the first Republican in 26 years to represent the largely middle-class central Oahu district outside Honolulu, capital of the predominantly Democratic state. She said she originally joined the Republicans out of a sense that Democrats were the status quo party, but she grew gradually disillusioned with the Republicans. She recounted a fellow Republican caucus member admonishing her last year that they should be considered the “party of middle America” despite Hawaii’s diverse demographics. Before making the switch, Fukumoto sent out a questionnaire to constituents seeking their opinions. Of those who replied, 76 percent said they would support her regardless, while most of the remainder opposed her changing parties, she said. First elected to the state legislature in 2012, Fukumoto became leader of the state’s tiny House Republican caucus two years later, only to be removed by her peers in February of this year after she spoke out against Trump during the Women’s March in Hawaii the day after his inauguration. As of Wednesday, Fukumoto, became the lone independent among 45 Democrats and five remaining Republicans in the state’s lower House, as she launches a process of applying for membership in the state’s majority party. | 0fake |
Hillary: Chardonnay Helped Me Get Over the Election Loss - Breitbart | .@HillaryClinton says grandchildren, long walks in the woods helped with election loss: ”I won’t lie. Chardonnay helped a little too.” pic. twitter. Friday during her commencement speech at Wellesley College in Wellesley, MA, former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton listed some of the things, which included wine, that helped her get over her loss to President Donald Trump. Clinton said, “You may have heard that things didn’t exactly go the way I planned. But you know what? I’m doing okay. I’ve gotten to spend time with my family, especially my amazing grandchildren. I was going to give the entire commencement speech about them but was talked out of it. Long walks in the woods, organizing my closets. I won’t lie, Chardonnay helped a little, too. ” ( Grabien) Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN | 0fake |
TRUMP SPOKESPERSON Hammers it Home On Trump’s Moratorium On Refugees [Video] | Katrina Pierson does a fantastic job with this CNN anchor | 1real |
WORRIED ABOUT TRUMP LOSING HIS OWN MONEY? $6 BILLION LOST Under Hillary Clinton As Secretary Of State | The State Department misplaced and lost some $6 billion due to the improper filing of contracts during the past six years, mainly during the tenure of former Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, according to a newly released Inspector General report. The $6 billion in unaccounted funds poses a significant financial risk and demonstrates a lack of internal control over the Department s contract actions, according to the report. The alert, originally sent on March 20 and just released this week, warns that the missing contracting funds could expose the department to substantial financial losses. The report centered on State Department contracts worth more than $6 billion in which contract files were incomplete or could not be located at all, according to the alert. The failure to maintain contract files adequately creates significant financial risk and demonstrates a lack of internal control over the Department s contract actions, the alert states.Read more: WT | 1real |
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