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Did Trump Just Accidentally Admit He Deleted Recordings Of Comey Conversations? | Conservatives love to tell us that Donald Trump speaks his mind and always tells the truth despite a mountain of evidence against the latter point, so when he told us he recorded his conversations with former FBI Director James Comey it s perfectly reasonable for us to take him at his word.Shortly after he fired Comey for requesting additional resources for the investigation into the Trump administration s collusion with Russia, Trump threatened to release the recordings in an effort to intimidate a witness recordings whose existence would be just the latest in a long history of Trump secretly recording conversations.James Comey better hope that there are no "tapes" of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 12, 2017Apparently, The Donald has done some reading on Richard Nixon, because he seems to have destroyed the tapes he made. After Comey said Lordy, I hope there are tapes (the one time in history Lordy has sounded so badass), Trump realized that his plan wasn t quite working out so well so he now claims that they never existed. With all of the recently reported electronic surveillance, intercepts, unmasking and illegal leaking of information, I have no idea whether there are tapes or recordings of my conversations with James Comey, but I did not make, and do not have, any such recordings, Trump tweeted on Thursday.With all of the recently reported electronic surveillance, intercepts, unmasking and illegal leaking of information, I have no idea Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 22, 2017 whether there are "tapes" or recordings of my conversations with James Comey, but I did not make, and do not have, any such recordings. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 22, 2017Either Trump is lying about making the recordings or he is lying about them not existing .or he destroyed them. That final option, given Trump s history, is the one that likely occurred.Naturally, the American people once again proved that they are not as stupid as Trump thinks they are:WHAT THE FUCK, TRUMP? ????????? You lying sack of shit. Holly O Reilly (@AynRandPaulRyan) June 22, 2017Why should we believe anything you say when you just banned the press from covering the daily briefing? Alex Mayberry (@Alex_Mayberry) June 22, 2017you re such a gross failure and a slob. you can t even lie right. and look at this shit pic.twitter.com/TjKhwT0cEC Livia Scott ? (@LiviaLove) June 22, 2017You realize this makes your better hope there are no tapes statement evidence of attempted witness intimidation Ray Yelle (@ryelle62) June 22, 2017You lie about everything. James Comey was right, he was afraid of you lying about convos. James Comey 100 Trump 0! Jennie (@Jennie2004) June 22, 2017Keep tweeting. Robert Mueller will gladly use your tweets as evidence. Mario Velarde (@MarioV7) June 22, 2017HahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaYOU REFUCKEDhahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha Blankety Blank (@agentZillah) June 22, 2017Trying to distract the country from your sad healthcare bill. You are becoming quite predictable Mr. President. #TrumpFearsPressY MJ (@TheMagsterBarks) June 22, 2017Notice he didn t say he that he didn t know about them or listen to them Bens The Best (@bens_the_best) June 22, 2017Translation I reviewed tapes with my lawyer and they don t support my point so all tapes and equipment have been destroyed. Brief Truth (@TheBriefTruth) June 22, 2017HE made/had no tapes. This, once again is was advised by his lawyers to shield him if and when they ever do surface proving Comey right TheUnsilentMAJORITY (@The_UnSilent_) June 22, 2017Does this mean that there really aren t tapes, or that there ARE tapes and you don t want to release them because the confirm Comey s story? Dave Branson (@popsiclemud) June 22, 2017Here s a disturbing, but likely scenario: There were tapes. And their existence just created problems Trump can t handle.Featured image via screengrab/Getty Images | 1real |
Trump Made The Most DELUSIONAL Statement About Obamacare, America’s Response Is PERFECT (TWEETS) | Apparently, Donald Trump has yet to learn his lesson about attacking former President Barack Obama.Last weekend, the disgraceful Tweeter in Chief decided to accuse his beloved predecessor of wiretapping his phones in the Trump Tower before the U.S. election. He immediately regretted this, because his reckless lies ignited not only tons of backlash against him, but also prompted further investigations into the Russia scandal.America has not even recovered from the shock that a current POTUS would accuse a former leader of the free world of doing such a thing. Regardless, Trump took to Twitter Saturday morning to attack Obama again. At around 9:30 am, Trump exercised at least some self-control and only tweeted one anti-Obama message, this time insulting Obamacare while hyping up the GOP s replacement bill (which by the way, is an absolute disaster and pretty much hated by everyone). Trump tweeted:Trump s claim that Obamacare is imploding is just as hilarious as it is ridiculous. Of course, there are some things about Obamacare that could use amending. But Americans, for the most part, are very happy with Obamacare and are pissed off that the Republican Party is going to repeal it, stripping millions of people of their health care. Not to mention, the sloppy replacement plan that the GOP is putting in place has already been highly criticized by Democrats and Republicans alike and is sure to be a death sentence for many Americans.Fortunately, America isn t about to let Trump forget that his ideas suck. Once Trump tweeted his attack on Obamacare, Twitter users rushed in to take Trump right off his high horse and bring him back to reality. Here are some of the best responses: Trump is absolutely delusional if he thinks the GOP s plan is going to put Obamacare to shame and Americans will make sure he realizes it.Featured image via Scott Olson/Getty Images | 1real |
Tillerson 'offended' by claims of State Department's hollowing out | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said on Tuesday he was offended by claims that the State Department is being hollowed out, saying his agency is functioning well, contrary to scathing criticism from former diplomats. In the latest salvo, two retired senior U.S. diplomats said the agency is being undermined by proposed budget cuts of about 30 percent and is being deliberately taken apart. “President Trump’s draconian budget cuts for the State Department and his dismissive attitude toward our diplomats and diplomacy itself threaten to dismantle a great Foreign Service,” Nicholas Burns and Ryan Crocker wrote in the New York Times on Monday. “This is not about belt tightening. It is a deliberate effort to deconstruct the State Department and the Foreign Service,” Burns, a former No. 3 official at the agency, and Crocker, a six-time U.S. ambassador, added. The forcing out of many senior diplomats, the failure to nominate or to win Senate confirmation for officials to fill many major agency roles, and a perception that Tillerson is inaccessible have eroded morale, according to current officials. Tillerson said, however, the department is running well and that the department budget had grown dramatically. The planned cuts would restore it to historical norms, he said. He also praised officials serving as acting assistant secretaries of state, typically among the agency’s key jobs, saying they have helped to devise approaches on issues from North Korea and Syria to Iran and Ukraine. “There is no hollowing out,” Tillerson said after a speech at a think tank. “I am offended on their behalf when people say, somehow, we don’t have a State Department that functions ... I can tell you, it’s functioning very well from my perspective.” Tillerson said the process of winning Senate confirmation of appointments has been “excruciatingly slow.” However, the Trump administration has failed to nominate people to serve in many key agency slots, leaving the Senate unable to consider them. According to a database compiled by the Washington Post newspaper and the nonprofit, nonpartisan Partnership for Public Service, there are no nominees for the assistant secretaries of state for African, East Asian, South and Central Asian, Near Eastern or Western Hemisphere affairs. This means that the top diplomats for major regions do not enjoy status that comes from being chosen by the president and confirmed by the Senate. | 0fake |
White Man Murders Cop And Racist Media Stays Silent | Jason Brown, despite the colorful appellation, is about the whitest name I ve heard all day. Except I didn t hear it today. Not in the news anyway. Not on that little trending bar on the side of my Facebook feed, or with a hashtag in front of it on Twitter. Which is weird, because a dude named Jason Brown murdered a police officer in Indianapolis on Thursday.I can t help but think if his skin matched his name, you d already know who I was talking about. In fact, if Jason Brown looked a little more like Michael Brown, you might already know he had previous drug charges. You might even have seen this picture of him by now:Image via TwitterI know you haven t seen that picture until now, though. In fact, I know unless you clicked the link above, you still think I m just making some point about how white people can get away with all kinds of stuff people of color in America can t. I m not, of course. I m just here to provide some contrast for the very limited, very, very sanitized coverage available so far about Jason Brown, from the south side of Indianapolis, Indiana.All that is according to literally everyone the news has bothered to contact so far about this guy who murdered a cop. Perhaps if there was some footage of him selling loose cigarettes.You see, when Jason Brown got in a terrible car accident and officers responded to the scene, they expected to find someone in need of assistance. The slain policeman, Lieutenant Aaron Allan, certainly didn t expect to be met by a driver hanging upside-down in the demolished car, ready to fire multiple shots into his torso.Lt. Allan died later Thursday.So where is the wall-to-wall coverage of this cop murderer? It must be hiding behind this family-provided picture that the news is running with:All I can say is, I ve been working on this article for a while now, and I just came across the very first link that provided any insight as to why he might have completely broken character and started shooting at the officer. An Indy NBC affiliate says the police recovered 13 small bags of weed which of course is possession with intent to deliver. Prison time.I wonder if, when they finally do charge Brown with the officer s murder (since they still haven t), they ll tack on those drug charges too, like they would if he was actually, um Brown?Featured image via Joe Raedle/Getty Images | 1real |
Men, Is Exercise Putting a Damper on Your Sex Life? - The New York Times | Men who exercise strenuously may have a lower libido than those whose workouts are lighter, according to one of the first studies to scientifically delve into the relationship between men’s workouts and their sex lives. For years, scientists and active people have debated whether and how exercise affects sexual desire and human reproduction. But most past studies have centered on women. Typically, this research has found that when some female athletes, such as marathon runners, train intensely for many hours a week, they can develop menstrual dysfunctions. These problems seem caused by hormonal imbalances related to physical stress and frequently affect a woman’s interest in sex and her ability to conceive. But such dysfunctions are rare and usually resolve after the athlete lightens her training load. Less is known about the effects of exercise, especially heavy exercise, on men’s libidos and fertility. There have been hints that, in moderate amounts, physical activity increases the male body’s production of the hormone testosterone, which theoretically should ramp up sex drive. Other small studies, on the other hand, have suggested that lengthy and grueling training may blunt the levels of testosterone in a man’s bloodstream both immediately and over the long term. But those studies examined only hormone changes related to exercise, which can be measured easily, and not differences in sexual emotions and behavior, which are tougher to quantify. So for the new study, which was published this month in Medicine Science in Sports Exercise, researchers at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill decided to ask active men about their sex lives. They began by developing a questionnaire based on earlier psychological research into men’s sexual behavior that asked, for instance, how often they thought about and engaged in sex. The scientists also created a separate questionnaire with detailed queries about exercise habits, including how often and intensely the men worked out each week. A final set of questions asked about general health and medical histories. Then the researchers contacted running, cycling and triathlon training groups, university athletic departments, and publications targeted at endurance athletes and asked them to alert members and readers to the questionnaires, which were available online. Almost 1, 100 physically active adult men completed all of the questions. Most were experienced athletes who had participated for years in training and competitions. The scientists used their responses to stratify the men based on both the extent and intensity of their workouts. They wound up with groups whose weekly exercise was short, moderately lengthy or quite prolonged, and separately whose weekly exercise was light, moderate or extremely intense. It was possible, of course, for someone to be in the top or bottom of both of these categories, meaning that their workouts were both long and intense or light and short. But the scientists wanted to examine each of those aspects of a workout separately, so did not track such overlaps. They also categorized the men according to their answers about their sex lives, creating groups with relatively high, moderate or low libidos. Finally, they compared the men’s exercise habits to their reported interest and engagement in sex. And there were clear patterns. The men whose exercise routines were moderate or light in intensity or duration were far more likely to report moderate or high libidos than were the men whose workouts were especially prolonged or intense, even after the researchers controlled for age. (Older men tend to report less interest in sex, although not by much.) In effect, strenuous exercise “was associated with lower libido,” says Anthony Hackney, a professor of exercise physiology and nutrition at the University of North Carolina who led the study. Of course, this was a small sample of men who voluntarily chose to complete a personally intrusive survey. It is impossible to know whether they were truthful or representative of the rest of their gender. This type of study also cannot tell us whether too much exercise actually causes low libido, only that the two are linked. And it did not examine why strenuous exercise might dampen libidos. But Dr. Hackney speculates that both physical fatigue and lower testosterone levels after exhausting exercise likely play a role. He and his colleagues hope to soon mount experiments that directly track exercise, hormone levels and libidos to learn more about their interactions. They also aim to learn more about whether the intensity of the workouts or duration has the greater impact on male sex drive. Perhaps most important, he hopes eventually to pin down at what point exercise might start to lower some men’s libidos. Both moderate and light physical activity were associated in this study with relatively high libidos, he points out. “But there does seem be a potential tipping point,” after which more exercise may blunt desire. The necessary studies likely will require years and many cooperative men to complete. In the meantime, he suggests that if someone is worried about whether his training is affecting his sex life, he might try exercising a little less, to see if his libido changes. This advice could be especially important for couples trying to conceive, he says. “Fertility specialists will often ask a woman about whether and how much she exercises,” he says. “Based on our data, we think they should also be asking the man. ” | 0fake |
Australia's High Court to rule in new citizenship test case | SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australia faces a series of by-elections that could topple the government, which trails in opinion polls and has lost its slender majority, in a bizarre citizenship crisis that has engulfed both sides of parliament. Senator Katy Gallagher and lower-house member David Feeney, both from the opposition Labor party, were referred to the High Court on Wednesday to determine whether they hold British, as well as Australian, citizenship. Neither is a member of the government, but the outcome of Gallagher s case in particular, which rests on whether she made reasonable steps to renounce her British citizenship, will set a precedent that could later unseat government members. Dual citizens are ineligible for elected office under Australia s 116-year-old constitution. In a nation in which half the population were either born overseas or have parents who were, the rule has disqualified nine lawmakers, and left Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull s Liberal-National coalition clinging to a minority government. Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce briefly lost his seat when it was found he also held New Zealand citizenship. But he won it back in a by-election last weekend. A by-election in former tennis star John Alexander s theoretically safe Sydney seat on Dec. 19 will determine whether the government regains its one-seat majority. However, a victory may not be lasting, since the citizenship status of another four lower-house government lawmakers was called into question after a deadline for politicians to disclose the birthplace of their parents and grandparents passed on Tuesday. There are many inadequate disclosures that ask more questions than provide answers, Labor leader Bill Shorten told reporters in Canberra. The government, behind in opinion polls and keen to avoid any more by-elections, voted down a Labor proposal to refer those lawmakers cases to the High Court and said it would not revisit the matter until after the Gallagher case was heard. Gallagher filed paperwork, and paid processing fees, to renounce her British citizenship more than two months before being elected in July 2016. But she did not get confirmation from the British Home Office that her renunciation had been processed until after she was voted in, her disclosure documents show. Several other lawmakers are in a similar bind. It will be a test case, constitutional law expert George Williams, dean of law at the University of New South Wales, told Reuters by telephone. But it leaves open the possibility that now this will go on for quite some time. There s large question marks over quite a number of people. Turnbull s government would have to rely on the support of a handful of independent MPs to retain power if Alexander loses his Dec. 19 by-election, or if the High Court ousts another coalition lawmaker from the lower house. It s uncertain territory, we still don t know for sure who is eligible and who s not, University of Queensland politics lecturer Chris Salisbury told Reuters. (Refiles to add dropped word loses in paragraph 17) | 0fake |
VIDEO: The Dallas Shooting Agenda | Daily Shooter 21st Century WireThe Dallas Sniper Production. What was it really about?Dallas, like so many other mass shooting events, coincidentally triggers a familiar pattern of convenient political and social conditioning effects.Brasscheck TV says: It is odd, isn t it?High profile school shooting, followed by high profile church shooting, followed high profile gay nightclub shooting now this. It s as if they re checking off all the demographic boxes and the conclusion is always the same:1. Guns are the problem 2. Domestic terrorism is out of control 3. We need to assemble a list of risky people and take away their guns 4. Who do they want to put on these lists? Veterans, blacks, anyone with political opinions, anyone deemed mentally unstableWe need to do all this to protect school children, church goers, gays, and cops. What reasonable person can say no to this, right ? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuBgcYWL6sQ . https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctDIWrFN3q8 . READ MORE DALLAS SHOOTING NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Dallas Files | 1real |
With 95% of Votes In, All Signs Point to a Trump Victory in Florida | With 95% of the vote in, all signs point to a Trump Victory in Florida.
Trump leads Clinton 48.8% to 48.0%
The New York Times Prediction caster at the time of this writing gives Trump a 91% of winning Florida with only 5% of the votes remaining.
Securing Florida is a needed step for Trump is what will still be a difficult but possible bid to achieve 270 delegates and win the Presidency. Ohio, North Carolina, Michigan and Virginia are all looking very close as well. Comment on this Article Via Your Facebook Account Comment on this Article Via Your Disqus Account Follow Us on Facebook! | 1real |
GREAT! DONALD TRUMP’S CINCINNATI “THANK YOU” SPEECH: ‘We Are Going to Bring Our Country Together’ [Video] | VP-ELECT APPEARS FIRST AND THEN AT THE 6 MINUTE MARK DONALD TRUMP S SPEECH BEGINS: | 1real |
Mexico's strongest quake in 85 years kills dozens in the poor south | JUCHITAN, Mexico (Reuters) - At least 61 people died when the most powerful earthquake to hit Mexico in over eight decades tore through buildings and forced mass evacuations in the poor southern states of Oaxaca and Chiapas, triggering alerts as far away as Southeast Asia. The 8.1 magnitude quake off the southern coast late Thursday was stronger than a devastating 1985 temblor that flattened swathes of Mexico City and killed thousands. The tremor rattled Mexico City and shook Guatemala and El Salvador, but the Oaxacan town of Juchitan bore the brunt of the disaster, with sections of the town hall, a hotel, a church, a bar and other buildings reduced to rubble. Dalia Vasquez, a 55-year old cook, said she watched emergency workers haul the bodies of her elderly neighbor and her middle-aged son from their collapsed home. Her own house was badly damaged. Frightened by the possibility of aftershocks, she planned to sleep with dozens more in the streets and parks. We have nothing now. We don t have any savings, she said. President Enrique Pena Nieto flew to the battered town to oversee rescue efforts. The town s mayor, Gloria Sanchez, called it the most terrible moment in Juchitan s history. Facades of shattered buildings, fallen tiles and broken glass from shop fronts and banks littered the pavements of Juchitan while heavily armed soldiers patrolled and stood guard at areas cordoned off due to the extent of the damage. Startled residents stepped through the rubble of about 100 wrecked buildings, including houses, a flattened Volkswagen dealership and Juchitan s shattered town hall. Scores paced the terrain or sat outside warily, mindful of the frequent aftershocks and reliving the night s terror. It was brutal, brutal. It was like a monster, like a train was passing over our roofs, said Jesus Mendoza, 53, as he milled about in a park across from the damaged town hall. Alma Rosa, sitting in vigil with a relative by the body of a loved one draped in a red shroud, said: We went to buy a coffin, but there aren t any because there are so many bodies. All the deaths were in three neighboring states clustered near the epicenter that lay about 70 km (40 miles) off the coast. At least 45 people died in Oaxaca, many of them in Juchitan, while in Chiapas the count reached 12 and in Tabasco four people lost their lives, according to federal and state officials. In Chiapas, home to many of Mexico s indigenous ethnic groups, thousands of people in coastal areas were evacuated as a precaution when the quake sparked tsunami warnings, but only two-foot waves were produced by the quake. State oil company Pemex said there was no structural damage to it s 330,000 barrel-per-day Salina Cruz refinery, which it had shut down as a precaution, but it said it was checking problems in the electrical system before restarting the plant. At least 250 people in Oaxaca were also injured, according to agriculture minister Jose Calzada. Classes were suspended in much of central and southern Mexico on Friday to allow authorities to assess the impact. Dozens of schools were damaged, officials said. People ran into the streets in Mexico City, one of the world s largest metropolises and home to more than 20 million, and alarms sounded after the quake struck just before midnight. The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) said the quake s epicenter was 54 miles (87 km) southwest of the town of Pijijiapan at a depth of 43 miles (69 km). John Bellini, a geophysicist at the USGS National Earthquake Information Center in Golden, Colorado, said it was the strongest quake since an 8.1 temblor struck the western state of Jalisco in 1932. Across the Pacific, both the Philippines and New Zealand were on alert for possible tsunamis. Windows were shattered at Mexico City airport and power went out in several neighborhoods of the capital, affecting more than 1 million people. The cornice of a hotel came down in the southern tourist city of Oaxaca, a witness said. Mexico City is built on a spongy, drained lake bed that amplifies earthquakes along the volcanic country s multiple seismic fault lines. The 1985 earthquake was just inland, about 230 miles from Mexico City, while Thursday s was 470 miles away. Authorities reported dozens of aftershocks, and President Pena Nieto said the quake was felt by around 50 million of Mexico s roughly 120 million population. Mexico is evaluating whether the quake will trigger a payout from a World Bank-backed catastrophe bond, Finance Minister Jose Antonio Meade said on Friday. Meade said the bond s coverage could reach $150 million, depending on magnitude and location. But he said Mexico has sufficient funds to pay for a cleanup whether the bond was triggered or not. | 0fake |
WOW! HOUSE INTELLIGENCE Chair CONFIRMS Trump Was Correct…Trump Transition Team WAS Surveilled By Obama [VIDEO] | House Intelligence Committee chairman Rep. Devin Nunes (R., Calif.) confirmed Wednesday that members of President Donald Trump s transition team were surveilled by the Obama administration.Nunes told reporters that the surveillance appeared to be incidental and legal. I recently confirmed that on numerous occasions the intelligence community incidentally collected information about U.S. citizens involved in the Trump transition, Nunes said. Details about U.S. persons associated with the incoming administration, details with little or not apparent foreign intelligence value, were widely disseminated in intelligence community reporting. Nunes also said none of the surveillance was related to Russia or the investigation of Russian activities. Nunes added that the committee would continue to investigate the matter.Nunes told House Speaker Paul Ryan (R., Wis.) what he had learned, and said he would be briefing Trump on Wednesday as well.It was not confirmed whether Trump s personal communications were surveilled. WFB | 1real |
Re: WOW! What Josh Earnest admitted about Obamacare is stunning (because it’s true) | WOW! What Josh Earnest admitted about Obamacare is stunning (because it’s true) Posted at 1:53 pm on October 27, 2016 by Doug P.
As we’ve reported and too many Americans have noticed, the ironically named “Affordable” Care Act has caused premiums and deductibles to go through the roof . White House Spokesman Josh Earnest actually conformed to reality: . @PressSec concedes middle-class families not eligible for tax credits are being hit by higher premiums on ObamaCare. .
— Mark Knoller (@markknoller) October 27, 2016
He actually told the truth about something? Baby steps. For this narrative-obsessed admin, acknowledging the reality of math is a "concession" https://t.co/shd5NzdUQO
— Noah Pollak (@NoahPollak) October 27, 2016 Also concedes water is wet https://t.co/1HuZIqIM53 | 1real |
2:00PM Water Cooler 11/4/2016 | By Lambert Strether of Corrente .
TPP/TTIP/TISA
TPP: A Podesta mail where Nikki Budzinski, Labor Outreach Director, discusses Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson: “I have received four calls from labor about a district meeting that Congresswoman Johnson (a HRC public supporter) held in Dallas, Texas where she discussed TPP. She claimed in the meeting that she speaks with HRC 2-3 times a week and that she was told by the Secretary that the only reason she opposes TPP is to get ‘labor off her back’ and that once she is elected President she will reverse position. I have worked with our Western Political Director Jessica Meija, and she has connected with the Congresswoman’s COS to clarify the inaccuracy of what she said and push back on her comments. This was not helpful with labor. [ Wikileaks (attachment)]. “Inaccuracy.” Of course, of course.
TPP: “[Our Revolution,] the progressive group founded by Sen. Bernie Sanders has begun a targeted campaign to sway at least five House Democrats to oppose the TPP in hopes it could change the outcome of a ratification vote — and it’s getting some results” [ Politico ]. “Our Revolution, which Sanders formed in late August to support liberal candidates, has set its sights on at least five other fence-sitting lawmakers. In a vote that’s expected to have razor-thin margins, plundering just a few Democratic votes the White House hoped to gain could make all the difference. The target list includes Reps. Seth Moulton (Mass.), Ed Perlmutter (Colo.), Beto O’Rourke (Texas), Derek Kilmer (Wash.), and Pennsylvania state Rep. Dwight Evans.”
TPP: “In Thursday, Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers published a report warning that if the TPP isn’t passed, a China-backed trade agreement will takes its place. That could put U.S. manufacturers at a disadvantage when they try to sell to customers in Japan and other Asian nations. The report argues that if China’s Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership goes into effect, at least 35 U.S. industries as diverse as plastics, fishing and footwear will be at risk of increased competition from China in the Japanese market” [ FiveThirtyEight ]. So they’ve settled on this messaging, now? And: “[I]f Clinton wins, Obama might be able to put together a coalition of Republicans and trade-friendly Democrats* to support the treaty. In other words, TPP isn’t dead yet.” * Especially those looking for jobs on K Street.
TPP: “”If TPP is not passed and RCEP is enacted, which is what all these countries say they are planning to do, then U.S. businesses would face a direct loss of competitive position,” said Jason Furman, the chair of the Council of Economic Advisers” [ Reuters ]. “This would displace U.S. goods and be worse than simply maintaining the trade status quo, Furman said. The study identifies 35 industrial sectors employing 4.7 million people with $5.3 billion in sales to Japan that would face such a disadvantage.”
TPP: “Japan’s ruling parties push TPP through committee after opposition walkout” [ Nikkei Asian Review ]. “The next hurdle for the trade deal is a vote during a plenary session of the House of Representatives, expected early next week. It will then be sent to the Diet’s upper house, the House of Councillors.”
TPP: “Working-class U.S. residents already lose about $1,800 annually because wages have been depressed by global competition on labor rates, according to the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute. TPP would deepen this problem” [ Detroit Free Press ]. I know the cheap goods are supposed to make up for this, but when your jobs and and what you can afford to buy are both crapified….
2016
Days until: 3!
Corruption
“Two former Christie administration insiders charged in a bizarre scheme of political retaliation against a mayor who refused to endorse the governor for re-election were found guilty Friday on all counts in the long-running Bridgegate saga” [ Newark Star-Ledger ]. “‘In keeping with the disgrace that was this trial, one of the things the U.S. Attorney’s Office should be ashamed of is where it decided to draw the line on who to charge and who not to charge,’ Baroni’s attorney Michael] Baldassare said. ‘… They should have had belief in their own case to charge powerful people, and they did not.” Hmm. I wonder which “powerful people” Baldassare has in mind?
Our Famously Free Press
“Behind all the Times’ fawning profiles of Clinton — and the denigrating pieces not only on Trump but also Democratic challenger Bernie Sanders — was a cozy understanding between Times reporters and the Clinton campaign, WikiLeaks has shown us, that getting Clinton elected is something of a collaborative effort” [ MarketWatch ]. “Editors at the Times, the Washington Post and elsewhere justify this hostility because they have determined that Trump is an existential threat to democracy and the worst presidential nominee in history and can’t be treated as an ordinary candidate. So why do the polls show the worst nominee ever running neck-and-neck with the candidate President Barack Obama has praised as the most qualified person ever to run for president? Do these editors know something that tens of millions of American voters are missing? Whose job is it really to decide what poses a threat to our democracy — a handful of editors in the corporate media or the voters?”
The Voters
New Hampshire : Clinton 44%, Trump 44%, Johnson 5% ( UMass Lowell )
Iowa : Trump 44%, Clinton 41%, Johnson 5% ( RABA Research )
Virginia : Clinton 45%, Trump 38%, Johnson 5% ( Roanoke College )
Georgia : Trump 48%, Clinton 46%, Johnson 4% ( Landmark )
Missouri : Trump 52%, Clinton 41% ( PPP )
New Hampshire : Clinton 48%, Trump 43% ( PPP )
Nevada : Clinton 48%, Trump 45% ( PPP )
Wisconsin : Clinton 48%, Trump 41% ( PPP )
Pennsylvania : Clinton 48%, Trump 44% ( PPP )
North Carolina : Clinton 49%, Trump 47% ( PPP )
Wisconsin : Clinton 44%, Trump 38%, Johnson 7% ( Loras College )
If I plug all the states where Clinton is ahead into the New York Times “paths to victory” calculator , Clinton wins — even if Trump wins Florida. Of course, last I checked, NH was dead even, not Clinton up 4, and I don’t have the chops to assess how good any of these polls are.
“Trump is finishing the race the way many Republicans wished he could have run it from the start: fiercely on message and on offense” [ RealClearPolitics ]. “Trump has largely adhered to his teleprompters and resisted controversial tweets this week. As Clinton campaigned a few days ago with Alicia Machado, the former Miss Universe winner with whom Trump has infamously feuded, the GOP nominee focused primarily on higher costs for Obamacare and the revived FBI investigation into emails pertinent to Clinton’s private server. The campaign believes those issues bolster his closing argument that Clinton is corrupt and a vestige of old politics, while he says he’s an agent of change.”
“Our polling data suggests that the missing whites aren’t exactly conservative populists who support Mr. Trump. They’re just dissatisfied: They don’t like their candidate, and they don’t like the other party’s candidate much either” [ New York Times ]. “The registered white missing Democrats, for instance, support Mrs. Clinton by only 61 percent to 19 percent. The missing registered white Republicans support Mr. Trump by only 69 to 13.”
“Election Update: Why Clinton’s Position Is Worse Than Obama’s” [Nate Silver, FiveThirtyEight ]. “In the table below, I’ve run a head-to-head comparison showing how many electoral votes each candidate was projected to have at various margins of victory or defeat. For instance, Obama had a lead in states (and congressional districts) totaling 332 electoral votes in our final 2012 forecast. Clinton leads in states totaling only 272 electoral votes, just two more than the minimum she needs to win the Electoral College.” In brief, Clinton is stronger than Obama among highly educated voters in states that she would win anyhow , and weaker among white voters without college degrees in states that are close.
War Drums
“The U.S. government believes hackers from Russia or elsewhere may try to undermine next week’s presidential election and is mounting an unprecedented effort to counter their cyber meddling, American officials told NBC News. The effort is being coordinated by the White House and the Department of Homeland Security, but reaches across the government to include the CIA, the National Security Agency and other elements of the Defense Department, current and former officials say” [ NBC ]. ” Officials are alert for any attempts to create Election Day chaos, and say steps are being taken to prepare for worst-case scenarios, including a cyber-attack that shuts down part of the power grid or the internet. But what is more likely, multiple U.S. officials say, is a lower-level effort by hackers from Russia or elsewhere to peddle misinformation by manipulating Twitter, Facebook and other social media platforms. For example, officials fear an 11th hour release of fake documents implicating one of the candidates in an explosive scandal without time for the news media to fact check it.
The Trail
“With Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump breathtakingly close in polls of key states, analysts are beginning to factor in the possibility of recounts that would delay the outcome” [ MarketWatch ]. “Bear in mind that a candidate would have limited time to contest the vote. This year, the Electoral College is due to meet on Dec. 19. By law, electors meet on the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December.” A recount would make Florida 2000 look like a walk in the park, especially because Clinton, bless her heart, is unlikely to let herself be rolled, unlike Gore.
Michigan: “Hillary Clinton is hanging onto a narrow 4-point lead over Donald Trump in Michigan heading into the last weekend before Tuesday’s election, with a new Free Press poll showing clear momentum for the Republican nominee in a state that several weeks ago was believed all but decided for the Democrat” [ Detroit Free Press ]. ” [T]he number of undecided voters — 13% — remains extraordinarily high for this late in an election cycle, speaking to the high unfavorable marks voters give both major party candidates.” Normally, I’d say a 4% lead is a lot, but those undecideds. Wowsers.
Realignment
“Who Broke Politics?” [Paul Krugman, New York Times ]. “So how did all our political norms get destroyed? Hint: It started long before Donald Trump. On one side….” Hint: You will read to the end of the column without finding the “On the other side” that “on one side” sets up. I mean, it wasn’t mean Republicans who prevented Obama from throwing the banksters in jail, was it?
“America and the Abyss” [Andrew Sullivan, New York Magazine ]. Of course, if Trump really were a fascist, the Democratic Establishment would fight him tooth and nail. Right?
“Donald Trump didn’t break one of our two great and ancestral political parties. He won the nomination because the Republican Party was already broken, and those responsible for the party, the elected officials and thinkers, didn’t know. Now they do” [Peggy Noonan, Wall Street Journal , “Democracy’s Majesty and 2016’s Indignity”]. “Soon they will begin that stage of political mourning known as the symposia process. They’ll discuss how to repair, renew, keep the party together. Or the party will, over the next few cycles, split apart… The Democratic Party and its lobbyist/think-tank/journalistic establishment in Washington have long looked to me to be dominated by people devoted mostly to getting themselves in the best professional position and their kids into Sidwell Friends School. They want to be part of the web, the arrangement. They want to have connections, associates, a tong. They want to be wired in. They don’t want to be I.F. Stone, alone, reading the fine print of obscure government documents. And Clintonism—for years the biggest web, the securest source of money, a real tong with enforcers and reward-dispensers—has long been a sound route to all of this. You may have to bend rules to be part of it, accept unsavory deals and characters, but it is warm and cozy in there.” And:
One thing I saw this year was that sincere conservatives wholly opposed to socialism had real respect for Bernie Sanders because they saw his sincerity. He wasn’t part of the web and they honored him for it.
I never thought I’d find myself writing this, but for punditry I’ll take Nooners over Krugman’s hackery or Sullivan’s hysterical ranting. It’s been quite a year.
Democrat Email Hairball
“The Podesta Emails Part 29” [ Wikileaks ].
“[A] meeting between POTUS and HRC at a critical time” [ Reddit (aliteralmind)]. From Podesta email drop #28. One of those timeline things that does make you go, hmm. Particularly the genesis of the meeting in previous meeting between Podesta and White House chief of staff Denis McDonough in an “offsite” Starbucks near the White House. If I were Putin, I’d have that Starbucks wired to the gills.
“What the WikiLeaks emails tell us about Hillary Clinton’s campaign (and what they don’t)” [ Los Angeles Times ]. Death of a thousand cuts.
“The real Clinton email scandal is that a bullshit story has dominated the campaign” [Matt Yglesias, Vox ]. Oh, Matty.
Stats Watch
Employment Situation, October 2016: Unemployment Rate – Level (4.9 %); Participation Rate – level (62.8%) [ Econoday ]. “Solid payroll growth is not the whole story of the October employment report. Average hourly earnings are rising, up an outsized 0.4 percent in the month with the year-on-year rate, at 2.8 percent, suddenly near 3.0 percent and at its recovery peak… The unemployment rate is down 1 tenth to 4.9 percent and, for some, is already signaling full employment for the labor market.But negatives are scarce in this report, where strength is emphatically underscored by the unexpected acceleration in average hourly earnings which further includes an upward revision to September. Today’s report marks a solid opening to fourth-quarter data and will raise talk of a wage-inflation flashpoint…” Gotta take the punchbowl away from lower orders! But: ” The number of persons working part time for economic reasons was essentially unchanged in October. This level suggests slack still in the labor market” [ Calculated Risk ]. Moreover: “t’s also worth noting that the standard measure of unemployment — now at 5 percent — doesn’t capture the lingering weakness in the market seen in the broader U6 measure, which includes discouraged workers, other workers marginally attached to the labor force and those in temporary jobs because they can’t get full-time work. The conventional unemployment measure is a hair below its mean from 2003-7, which is 5.2 percent. The broader U6, however, at 9.7 percent is higher than its 2003-7 mean of 9.1 percent. This is just another sign that there’s still slack in the labor market.” [ Bloomberg ]. And: “Should we believe the employment numbers in this report? There is little evidence of political bias in past election cycles” [ Econintersect ]. “To sum this report up – employment is continuing to tread water – growing little better than the theoretical working population growth. However, note that the household survey removed 43,000 to the workforce (which is the reason the unemployment rate declined). There was really nothing good or nothing really terrible – although manufacturing declined. The year-over-year rate of growth significantly declined this month.” Again, the Econoday summary is just a little too breathless for this Maine bear.
International Trade, September 2016: “A decline in imports helped pull down the nation’s trade gap sharply in September, to $36.4 billion from a revised $40.5 billion in August. Imports, reflecting declines for capital goods and also consumer goods, fell 1.1 percent while exports, showing an especially strong gain for capital goods, rose 0.6 percent” [ Econoday ]. “Declining imports are a plus for the GDP calculation but are not signals of strength for domestic demand, whether business demand for capital goods or business expectations for consumer imports ahead of the holidays.” And: “Declining imports are a plus for the GDP calculation but are not signals of strength for domestic demand, whether business demand for capital goods or business expectations for consumer imports ahead of the holidays” [ Econintersect ].
Jobless Claims: “However, comparing initial claims today with the past is the proverbial apples to oranges. An important fact in looking at claims data is that vastly fewer people today are eligible for unemployment benefits. In other words, the number of unemployed people who can’t receive jobless benefits — and thus are not in the initial claims data — has risen relative to those who have unemployment insurance” [ Bloomberg ]. As Mosler has been saying.
Housing: “Residential remodeling has recovered to 38% of the peak it attained prior to the Great Recession. New residential construction, on the other hand, is only at 17% of the peak” [ Econintersect ].
Retail: “The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) has just announced that Samsung is having to recall its top-load washing machines due to a risk of impact injuries. The exact hazard listed was that the washing machine top can unexpectedly detach from the washing machine chassis during use, posing a risk of injury from impact” [ 247 Wall Street ]. “What matters here is that this will not be a cheap recall. You can drive a smartphone back to the store or mail it in cheaply. Have you ever tried moving a washing machine, or just dealing with getting a technician out to deliver or fix one? And the size of this recall is huge — about 2.8 million total units!” Korea is really having its troubles, isn’t it? Samsung is a failing national champion, Hanjin went bankrupt, and there’s a ginormous scandal with their President.
Shipping: “In August, the Intermodal Association of North America (IANA) reported its first quarterly volume decline for the first time after 25 straight quarters of growth. Earlier this week, marked its second straight quarterly volume decline, officially extending more of an unwelcome streak” [ Logistics Management ]. “Total third quarter intermodal volume movements—at 4,348,634—were off 4.6 percent annually, following a 6.1 percent second quarter decline at 4,271,162. The first quarter of 2016 saw volumes rise 2.0 percent annually. … Like recent quarters, domestic containers were the lone metric to see an increase.”
Shipping: “Orders for heavy-duty commercial trucks in North America plummeted 46% in October from the same month last year, providing a grim outlook for truck manufacturers in the coming year” [ Wall Street Journal , “Truck Orders Tumbled 46% in October “]. “In an analyst note Thursday, Stifel said the October order total was the weakest since 2009, falling well below expectations. “October orders are critical as they represent the traditional start to the order season for trucks to be produced the next year,” the report said.”
Shipping: “After four days [!!!] firefighters have finally managed to douse the terrible tanker blaze that killed many workers at a shipbreaking site in Gadani, Pakistan. Rescue work inside the hull of the Indonesian ship cannot start however as the steel plates are still too hot” [ Splash 247 ]. “While there are now 21 confirmed dead, the eventual death toll could hit triple figures with many unaccounted for inside the hull of the ship and a number of the 60 workers sent to hospital deemed to have such severe burns that they are unlikely to survive.” The human cost of excess capacity.
The Bezzle: “GoPro’s forward statements are not believable, in light of its recent performance, and management’s ability to forecast. It is also essentially a one-product company, and that product does not sell very well” [ 247 Wall Street ].
The Bezzle: “the app economy may have passed its peak. CB Insights analyzed the company descriptions of thousands of startup companies receiving VC funding for the first time between 2010 and today, scanning for buzzwords that describe the companies’ field of focus. While ‘app] is still the keyword that shows up in the most company descriptions, the share of startups working with apps in some way has declined for three straight years” [ Econintersect ]. “Looking at the terms with the largest increase in mentions in startup company descriptions between 2010 and 2016 possibly allows us to glimpse into the future and gives us an idea of what the next big thing might be. According to CB Insights’ analysis, these terms are ‘virtual reality’, ‘machine learning’ and ‘natural language.'” I think reality is quite virtual enough already, thank you.
The Fed: “Central bank independence ‘comes from an understanding of the macroeconomic policy problem that is not relevant to current times,’ Summers said in a speech at the International Monetary Fund” [ MarketWatch ]. “During the question-and-answer session, Summers said he did not think that entitlement reform should be on the immediate agenda for the next administration. He said that policy makers should focus solely on accelerating growth. If they are successful in sparking demand, the long-run debt-to-GDP ratio will be sustainable, he said. If policy makers fail, it will not be.”
Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 17 Fear (previous close: 18, Fear) [ CNN ]. One week ago: 46 (Neutral). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Nov 3 at 11:31am. Still waiting for single digits.
Corruption
“Prosecutors in the Singapore trial of a former BSI banker said this week the defendant and other former employees of the Swiss bank helped launder up to $2.3 billion looted from the Malaysia sovereign wealth fund 1MDB” [ FCPA Blog ] and “Two former executives of a Singapore-based defense contractor have been extradited to the United States in the massive bribes-for-secrets scandal that has rocked the U.S. Navy’s Pacific Command” [ FCPA Blog ]. Wait, what? I thought Singapore was supposed to be squeaky clean?
Standing Rock and #NoDAPL
“SEE IT: Journalist shot with rubber bullet while conducting interview at Standing Rock protests” [ New York Daily News ]. The journalist says “officer,” but it’s not clear to me whether “officer” means “cop” or “mercenary.”
Gaia
“The average U.S. family destroys a football field’s worth of Arctic sea ice every 30 years” [ Science ]. “If both the linear relationship and current emission trends hold into the future, the study suggests the Arctic will be ice free by 2045—far sooner than some climate models predict. The study suggests that those models are underestimating how warm the Arctic has already become and how fast that melting will proceed.”
Guillotine Watch
“In the seven years since, terror threats in Europe and political uncertainty from Britain to the U.S. have helped make [New Zealand] — a day by air away from New York or London — a popular bolthole for the mega wealthy” [ Bloomberg ]. Great. Cut the undersea cables, and they might as well be on Mars.
Class Warfare
“Instacart workers are earning a lot less money after changes to the company’s pay structure — changes CEO Apoorva Mehta told BuzzFeed News are necessary for the company’s continued growth, but that hundreds of vocal Instacart shoppers say are threatening their livelihoods. According to a Buzzfeed News analysis of 15 workers’ pay stubs, shifts that once earned shoppers $100 or more in 4–8 hours have dropped closer to $60 to $80 for similar shifts. These shoppers estimate their earnings have fallen by around 30% so far” [ Buzzfeed ]. Should have filed this under The Bezzle, maybe. Yet another Silicon Valley darling whose valuation depends on screwing over working people. Oh, and this is good:
The vast majority of shoppers who spoke with BuzzFeed News for this article asked to remain anonymous out of concern that their accounts would be deactivated for speaking with the press; Instacart said it has never deactivated workers for speaking publicly about their experience with the company.
Yikes!
“The case for social insurance begins with the recognition that capitalist economies are subject to boom-and-bust cycles. With a managed, socialist economy, business cycles are much less severe (though they can’t be eliminated entirely, for example, in years when agricultural production is unexpectedly low due to the weather) because the government manages production and employment. But these economies tend to grow slower than capitalist economies, and they often have substantial inefficiencies in the way resources and labor are used” [Mark Thoma, CBS ].
“”What Makes Scandinavia Different?” [ Jacobin ]. “The only way to get “Scandinavian levels” of redistribution and social protection is to start building powerful popular movements capable of advancing this agenda.”
News of the Wired
“Before Irv Teibel, listening to nature meant leaving the house. Here’s the story of the man who brought the rain, thunder, and crickets to your stereo, one satisfied, relaxed customer at a time” [ Pitchfork ].
“The People’s Code” [ code.gov ]. We’ve got the U.S. Digital Service, but not a National Health Service. Seems odd.
* * *
Readers, feel free to contact me with (a) links, and even better (b) sources I should curate regularly, and (c) to find out how to send me images of plants. Vegetables are fine! Fungi are deemed to be honorary plants! See the previous Water Cooler (with plant) here . And here’s today’s plant (b1whois):
That tree is a little ecosystem in itself…
Readers, Water Cooler is a standalone entity, not supported by the very successful Naked Capitalism fundraiser just past. Now, I understand you may feel tapped out, but when and if you are able, please use the dropdown to choose your contribution, and then click the hat! Your tip will be welcome today, and indeed any day. Water Cooler will not exist without your continued help. Donate | 1real |
Hypocrisy In Georgia: Teen Charged In Accidental Shooting Death, While Parents Largely Go Unprosecuted | A 17-year-old teenager is dead today after his 16-year-old friend accidentally shot him in the face with an unsecured gun. Now the teen who shot him is facing dire consequences.According to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution a group of boys were playing with a loaded gun inside an apartment complex when the shooting occurred. Relatives of the boys, who ranged from ages 13 to 17, told reporters that they were all friends or cousins.The 16-year-old was apparently holding the gun just after midnight when it discharged and struck the older boy in the face. After the shooting the suspect ran home and told his family that he shot someone. The family members drove him back to the scene where he was arrested and charged with involuntary manslaughter.In 2014, News 21 found that 28,000 children and teens are killed each year in the United States by firearms. To put this into perspective, that means that for every soldier who was killed in Afghanistan (over eleven years) at least thirteen kids were killed in America.Teenagers between the ages of 15 and 19 made up over two-thirds of all youth gun deaths in America.The News21 findings are compiled in the most complete database to date from records obtained from 49 state health departments and FBI Supplementary Homicide Reports.Many of the children who are killed each year die in an unintentional shooting. Often times these accidents happen because they or another child get their hands on an unsecured weapon and it discharges. As a matter of fact, American children are SIXTEEN times more likely to be killed in an accidental shooting than their counterparts in other industrialized nations.Although the kid in this case was charged with a crime, negligent parents rarely are. Twenty-seven states (Georgia included) and the District of Columbia have child access prevention (CAP) laws; these laws hold parents responsible when their children access a gun and someone is hurt but enforcement is almost nonexistent. According to the Shreveport Times police often feel guilty charging parents who are grieving the loss of a child.Slate reported:Even in states where these laws exist, they re both inconsistent standards and penalties for culpability vary widely from state to state and inconsistently applied, with prosecutors often choosing not to pursue cases against negligent parents out of sympathy, perhaps, or a sense that these cases are hard to win. And that s understandable: These shootings are tragedies, after all, and why compound a family s misery by sending a grieving parent to jail? But CAP laws are only effective as a deterrent if they re vigorously enforced.So parents get away with their negligence, but a scared 16-year-old kid is charged with a crime. As a mother, this appalls me. I would fully expect to be charged with a crime if my son picked up my gun and hurt himself or someone else. As adults we are responsible for keeping our little humans as safe as we can and if we do something that was so neglectful that someone dies as a result, we should be charged.To give us a pass, but prosecute a child is mind-boggling. Meanwhile, this shooting and this shooting and this shooting all go unprosecuted in the same state.Featured image via Freakout Nation | 1real |
US Election Race : The Huma Abedin Connection (8-minute video) | November 5, 2016 at 1:20 am
You know….
What amazes me, is that some Australian, can put a video up on YouTube, letting the world know that a woman, the next president’s right hand, is a Jihadi Muslim, hellbent on installing Sharia and wanting to see the end of western civilization, describing her life, her connections and very dangerous people and yet, the CIA & FBI, who are paid billions each year, can’t seem to find out the same? What does this tell me? Well, for starters, it doesn’t tell me that the FBI, CIA, NSA and goodness knows how many other Acronyms, supposedly defending America, are stupid and incompetent, on the contrary, quite the opposite. It tells me that the security services, are working in tandem with those who wish to destroy western civilization and have been lying to you from day one on everything. It’s somewhat amazing, when one thinks that your average American, who steals a bar of chocolate, out of a store, can be banged up for life in prison, if it’s their third offence and yet people like Clinton and Abedin, responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands and the barbaric murder of a foreign leader, not forgetting working with people who are no doubt planning the subjugation of the west, under Wahabism, are simply ignored by those, who are paid by taxpayers to not allow this to happen.
When are people going to wake up? Government IS and ALWAYS has been corrupt and nothing but a den of psychopathic prostitutes, who do the work of the highest bidder. The only way that the western people will ever rid themselves of these demons and of course their Jewish masters, it to smash the system completely and live under an anarchy, where the Jew, WILL NOT be able to build a complex security establishment to protect them. Off with their heads, the whole, damn, lot of them quite frankly. There no use to anyone and waste the oxygen they breathe. | 1real |
PHOTOS: Chaos in Venezuela as Police Repress Resistance to Supreme Court ’Self-Coup’ - Breitbart | Members of Venezuela’s opposition took the streets of the nation this weekend to protest a move by the Supreme Court to usurp federal legislative power, nullifying the National Assembly. [While the court ultimately backtracked on Wednesday’s ruling calling for legislators to be stripped of immunity and fully granting itself lawmaking authority, the judiciary has not restored the National Assembly’s powers, nor has it rescinded its demand that three opposition legislators be stripped of their powers due to socialist accusations of “fraud. ” Venezuelans protested Wednesday’s ruling every day for the past week, with the most violent protests occurring in Caracas, many before the judiciary themselves. reports that, on Friday, the Bolivarian National Guard (GNB) “fired buckshot and swung batons” at unarmed protesters in front of the Supreme Court. The GNB fighters remained in riot gear during the protests and shoved protesters. Tensión violenta en las calles de #Venezuela pic. twitter. — Yusnaby Pérez (@Yusnaby) April 2, 2017, La lucha es todos los días y en todos los espacios, nuestros jóvenes diputados recorren centros comerciales activando a venezolanos #2Abril pic. twitter. — VenezuelaSomosTodos (@ComandoSB) April 2, 2017, Nuestros dip @JuanRequesens, @joseolivaresm, @Miguel_Pizarro y @MarialbertBs, junto a @jovenespj protestan en Centros Comerciales de Caracas pic. twitter. — Juan Miguel Matheus (@JuanMMatheus) April 2, 2017, In one incident, they attacked a credentialed journalist. GNB officers corralled Elyangelica González, a reporter for Univisión and Caracol News, dragging her by the feet and hair away from the Supreme Court. Video circulated on social media of the attack, and González shared it on her own Instagram account. Hoy quiero darle gracias infinitas a ese angel que capturó el momento preciso en que ésto estaba pasando. Tuviste la valentía de grabar después de ver cómo me dieron patadas y me tumbaron, por eso tu video comienza conmigo en el piso, ya golpeada y sin teléfonos. Gracias en nombre de todos los periodistas, a ti y a todos quienes me han escrito, me han llamado, y me dan su solidaridad. Sí, ésta soy yo. Confieso que al ver ese video lloré mucho, aún me siento triste después de varias horas. Me duele todo el cuerpo y más el alma, jamás pensé que esto me podría pasar. Ésta soy yo, pero eso no es mi país, eso no somos nosotros, ese odio, esa violencia, esa saña no dice quienes somos. Ésta soy yo, pero soy también todos los periodistas de mi país que salimos a diario a buscar las historias impostergables, las urgentes, las que todos deben conocer. Ésta soy yo, una mujer, madre, esposa, hija, hermana y afortunadamente periodista enamorada de lo que hace porque creo firmemente en nuestro poder de construir y ayudar. Ésta soy yo, luchando por mi derecho a informar, con las únicas armas que tengo, mi teléfono, mi micrófono, mi libreta, mi grabador y mi voz. La única manera de que evitar que hable es que me arranquen las cuerdas vocales. #SOYPERIODISTANODELINCUENTE, A post shared by Elyangelica Gonzalez (@elyangelicanews) on Apr 1, 2017 at 2:32pm PDT, González wrote to the unidentified person who recorded the incident: “thank you to the angel who captured this moment … on behalf of all journalists. ” She later accused the GNB before reporters of attacking her for being present as they used rubber bullets to shoot at unarmed protesters and keep them away from the building. members of the opposition also accused the socialist government of dictator Nicolás Maduro of intimidating them into silence. Henry Ramos Allup, the former head of the opposition in the National Assembly, accused unidentified Secret Police (Sebin) officers of following him on a highway on Saturday, apparently waiting to arrest him. Ramos Allup wrote on Twitter, “[The officers] attempted to apprehend me in an abusive manner and told me I did not have parliamentary immunity. ” As in González’s case, Ramos Allup thanked citizens who recorded the incident on their phones, using the publicity to prevent his arrest. @verdadesofenden @hramosallup Venezuela’s President of Congress @hramosallup followed by a Police Car without a registration plate. Intimidation? pic. twitter. — Sir Arnold Robinson (@uk_expat) April 2, 2017, Ya estamos circulando. Cobardes GNB y SEBIN no pudieron consumar atropello. Gracias a ciudadanos que con su actitud lo evitaron. pic. twitter. — Henry Ramos Allup (@hramosallup) April 1, 2017, AHORA:Así transcurre la movilización a la Defensoría del Pueblo, exigiendo respeto a la Constitución #1abril pic. twitter. — VenezuelaSomosTodos (@ComandoSB) April 1, 2017, Contrary to what officials reportedly told Ramos Allup, the Supreme Court has not stripped the nation’s legislators of immunity. On Saturday, the Supreme Court clarified this in a statement that some are reporting as the undoing of the usurpation of legislative power. The court, the statement read, “has not stripped the Parliament of its functions, just as it has not dissolved or annulled it, and recognizes legislative immunity as a guarantee of the legislative functions with the limits prescribed by the Constitution. ” This statement differed from its original ruling: “While the contempt scenario persists and the National Assembly remains invalid, this institution will guarantee that the parliamentary duties be executed directly by this institution or whatever institution it wishes. ” It, nonetheless, insisted that these guarantees would not be in place until the National Assembly “reassumed the legal, valid, and legitimate exercise of its constitutional powers by abiding by the judiciary’s decisions. ” The Supreme Court had already rendered the National Assembly void in January 2016, following the opposition’s electoral victory a month earlier, claiming that three opposition legislators had acquired their positions through fraud, according to Maduro. Until those three legislators were removed, the National Assembly’s laws would all die at the feet of the Supreme Court. The National Assembly, which argues there is no evidence for the claims of fraud, has considered the reworked Supreme Court ruling an insufficient correction of its original claims, noting that their refusal to accept the fraud claims still denies them their authority. On Sunday, the legislature’s Vice President Freddy Guevara issued a statement calling for more protests against the socialist government. “The destruction of separation of powers concluded when the Supreme Court attempted to strip the Assembly of its powers,” he said. “The government’s intention now is to demobilize the people in their just demands and stop the pressure from the international community. ” “This is just beginning,” he promised. “The struggle for freedom will not cease until the constitutional order is restored. ” Julio Borges, the president of the National Assembly, gave a statement Sunday insisting that the modified ruling changed little. “Nothing has changed, the coup continues,” he said. “In Venezuela, there is no separation of powers, no democracy, no justice. ” On the Thursday following the passage of the ruling, Borges stood on the steps of the Supreme Court and tore up a copy of the ruling. “This is garbage,” he told reporters. Another opposition legislator, Richard Blanco, demanded on Monday the arrest of the Supreme Court’s justices. “These gentlemen should be behind bars to fulfill their duty to the people, who are currently wounded by this constitutional violation. ” The official position of the legislative opposition is that the justices should step down, not be arrested. On Monday, 51 Venezuelan NGOs issued a joint letter supporting that demand and calling for the “immediate resignation” of the justices. | 0fake |
FBI got court order to monitor ex-Trump adviser in Russia probe: Washington Post | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The FBI secured a court order in 2016 to secretly surveil the communications of Carter Page, a foreign policy adviser to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, as the agency investigates possible ties between the campaign and Russia, the Washington Post reported on Tuesday. Citing law enforcement and other U.S. officials the Post reported that the warrant for Page was obtained last summer by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Justice Department from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. (wapo.st/2p3L6xi) The judge was convinced there was probable cause to believe Page was acting as an agent of Russia, the Post said. Page has denied in media interviews that he worked with the Russians to influence the election. In a statement to Reuters on Tuesday, Page said the court order was evidence that the administration of former President Barack Obama wanted to “suppress dissidents” who opposed its foreign policy. “It will be interesting to see what comes out when the unjustified basis for those FISA requests are more fully disclosed over time ...,” he said. The Justice Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Reuters, which could not independently confirm the Post story. The White House and FBI declined to comment. The FBI and congressional committees are investigating whether Russia tried to influence the election in Trump’s favor, mostly by hacking Democratic operatives’ emails and releasing embarrassing information, or possibly by colluding with Trump associates. Russia denies the allegations, which Trump also dismisses. | 0fake |
Experts Think Gas Prices About To Go Lower Than EVER – You Won’t Believe How Low (IMAGES) | For some time now, the United States has been experiencing a rapid decline in gas prices. It s almost hard to forget when the last time filling up at the tank was a burdensome thing that s because nearly two years has gone by since gas was over $3.00 a gallon (on average across the United States). Over the last year or so, gas prices have dropped even further, due to Saudia Arabia continuing to keep up output, and the Iran deal that is expected to glut the global market even more so. All of this is great news but it looks like the good news will keep on flowing (pun intended) according to experts in the industry.The AAA and GasBuddy, two top organizations that follow gasoline prices, say that if refinery capacity stays strong the price of a gallon of gasoline could reach historic lows of $1.00 a gallon in some areas a level that hasn t been reached since 1999. That would be quite a remarkable event.Prices are already low by historical standards and depending on which part of the country you live in, already under $2.00 a gallon. If you look at the map below, you will easily be able to see which parts of the United States already receive the cheapest gas. There are very few areas colored in dark green (lower than $1.38 a gallon). Most of the middle part of the country is either light green ($1.68-$1.83), or yellow ($1.83-$1.98). If gas is pushed downward to $1.00 a gallon, that s still a huge percentage drop no matter where you live.Pic via Gas BuddyGas prices are mostly driven by four things: oil prices, proximity to refineries, refinery capacity and state taxes and levies.We already know that crude oil prices are going to continue to fall. Although, there are a few detractors, there always are. Nevermind that here s what the money managers that run the economy are doing: while 6,346 of them bet on higher prices (okay fair enough) 17,517 of them bet on lower prices. It s not even close. This is the least bullish investors have been on oil in more than five years, according to the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission.All in all, gasoline futures fell 1.83 cents or 1.6%, to $1.12 a gallon the lowest it s been since February 2009. And gasoline also fell 14.33 cents a gallon (11% for the week) which also happens to be the largest weekly loss since September 2009.If the experts are right, $1.00 a gallon gasoline may not be that far off. Thanks, Obama!Pic via Gas BuddyFeatured image via White House. | 1real |
DNC Chair Speaks Out On Revolting Trump Tape: ‘This Is Who Donald Trump Truly Is’ (VIDEO) | Interim Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Donna Brazile was crystal clear in what she thinks of Donald Trump and the bombshell tape that showed him boasting about sexual assault: This is who Donald Trump truly is. During an interview on ABC s This Week, Brazile told George Stephanopoulos that Trump is the same person today as he was in 2005 when the appalling tape was recorded. You can draw a straight line between what Donald Trump said in 2005 and what he s been saying every day on the campaign trail over the last year and a half, she said on Sunday. This is not a changed man. This is who Donald Trump truly is. The DNC chair listed a few of the previous offensive remarks Trump has made on the campaign trail and pointed to these as more examples that confirmed Trump has not changed. He was and is a revolting human being. When you criticize a judge simply because of his Mexican heritage. When you call women some of the most disgusting things. When you criticize John McCain. When you criticize people who are disabled. This is who Donald Trump truly is. Brazile doesn t seem surprised by this newest tape from the past. After all, this is someone who is accused of raping a 13-year-old child. With everything Trump has done, bragging about grabbing women by the p*ssy is exactly the kind of thing you would expect to come out of his mouth. But what is surprising is that after everything Republicans have turned a blind eye to over the past few years, it is now that they are finally disgusted by Trump. I m surprised that the Republicans are disgusted by Trump after all the things he has said and all of the comments that he s made over the last couple of years. You can watch the segment here:Featured image via video screen capture | 1real |
Trump administration crafting big new arms sales to Taiwan: sources | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Trump administration is crafting a big new arms package for Taiwan that could include advanced rocket systems and anti-ship missiles to defend against China, U.S. officials said, a deal sure to anger Beijing. The package is expected to be significantly larger than one that was shelved at the end of the Obama administration, the officials told Reuters on the eve of a visit to Beijing by U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. “The political desire is there to do a substantial sale,” one administration official said, adding that internal deliberations had begun on a deal “that’s much stronger, much more significant than the one that was not accepted by the Obama people.” President Donald Trump’s administration is eager to proceed with the sales, but it is expected to take months and possibly into next year for the White House to overcome obstacles, including concern that Beijing’s sensitivities over Taiwan could make it harder to secure cooperation on priorities such as reining in North Korea, the official said. Completion of a package also could be held up by the slow pace at which the Trump administration is filling national security jobs, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because initial work toward new arms sales has not been made public. Discussions between Taiwan and the new administration already have begun, according to a person in Taipei familiar with the matter. The White House declined comment. Details of the administration’s approach to Taiwan emerged as Tillerson was due to visit China this weekend, where he will seek more Chinese support on North Korea and firm up a first meeting between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping expected next month. In December, President Barack Obama’s administration put the brakes on a Taiwan deal under discussion. That package was worth $1 billion, Washington’s Free Beacon newspaper reported this week, citing unnamed officials, who also were quoted as saying the Trump administration was now preparing new sales. Ned Price, a National Security Council spokesman under Obama, said the previous administration put a “relatively modest” arms package for Taiwan on hold, in part to let the new administration make the decision. The Trump administration source told Reuters that the new deals under consideration would likely top the $1 billion mark. The new administration plans to focus more than the previous one on enhancing Taiwan’s “asymmetric” capabilities, possibly with advanced multiple launch rocket systems, anti-ship missiles and other technologies that would enable Taiwan’s military to defend against a much larger Chinese force in the event of an attack, the U.S. official said. Lockheed Martin Corp (LMT.N) is the top U.S. manufacturer of multiple launch rocket systems. Other foreign companies involved in the sector include Germany’s Diehl and Britain’s BAE Systems (BAES.L). A $1.83 billion arms sale to Taiwan that Obama announced in December 2015, to China’s dismay, included two Navy frigates in addition to anti-tank missiles and amphibious attack vehicles. The United States switched diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to China in 1979, acknowledging Taiwan as part of “one China.” But successive administrations have continued providing billions of dollars in arms as part of a congressionally mandated requirement to ensure the island can defend itself. Taiwan has already been a major point of contention between Trump and China, which considers the island a renegade province. As president-elect, Trump broke with protocol and accepted a congratulatory phone call from the Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen in December, angering China. He then suggested he might abandon Washington’s “one China” policy, which accepts the self-ruled island as part of China. Once in office, Trump reaffirmed the U.S. commitment to the decades-old policy. The White House is mindful that tensions could flare again over new arms sales. But some Trump aides insist they are needed to make clear that the United States, Taiwan’s sole arms supplier, is committed to upgrading the island’s defenses. | 0fake |
‘STRANGER THINGS’ – Hollywood MK Ultra Goes Full Occult | Jay Dyer 21st Century WireThe popular 80s pastiche series Stranger Things begins with a familiar scene of E.T. nostalgia, centering around Dungeons & Dragons. The scene is particularly familiar to me, since I played D&D back in the day, but learned very quickly this nefarious practice was like kryptonite to all things female. Oddly enough, the series appears to reflect a new trend amongst Hollywood A-listers, where nerd culture has revived the ancient 80s practice of playing D&D. The Hollywood Reporter explains the trend and its connection to acting and role-playing: Vin Diesel plays it. So do Dwayne Johnson, Drew Barrymore, Stephen Colbert, Mike Myers and Jon Favreau, among other bold-face names. Some even built their careers by playing it The decades-old role-playing game in which participants roll multisided dice while pretending to be mystical creatures such as elves and dwarves finally is coming out of the closet (or, in this case, Mom s basement). There s a huge resurgence of nerd culture, especially with the tech boom, says Silicon Valley s Martin Starr, a longtime D&D enthusiast. If nerds were still poor and living at their mothers , nobody would be paying any attention to Dungeons & Dragons. But nerds rule the world, and D&D is making a big comeback and I m excited about it. While this certainly relates to a furtherance of one s improv skills, it also relates to the occult side of Hollywood, though I don t take the ridiculous evangelical view that D&D is inherently evil. Rather, the notion of role-playing is synonymous with the ancient view of acting as dramaturgy, or ritual invocation of the gods. Comparative religion scholar Dudley Young writes: The earliest gods were invoked by ritual act (dromenon = the thing done) such as a sacrificial dance, commemorating the fact that our life begins and ends when they call upon us. Subsequently the thing was said (legomenon) as well as done, and the dromenon was on its way to becoming the drama. Once speech within the temple precincts has been endowed with the power of word-magic, we have the invocation properly so called. (Dudley Young, Origins of the Sacred: The Ecstasies of Love and War, pg. 413)Set in the fictional small town of Hawkins, Indiana in 1983, we will see the accidental dramaturgical invocation where the D&D simulacrum appears to actually be related on a deeper level to the occult phenomena that begin to occur. The disappearance of young Will Byers sparks a series of events that take Hawkins down a black rabbit hole of every conspiracy theory ever, melded with the opening of the inter-dimensional gates from every John Carpenter film. Originally slated to be titled Montauk, the series echoes the dubious accounts of Project Montauk, where purportedly time and space were altered in government-sponsored PsyOps and time travel experiments with famed UFO researcher Jacques Vallee commenting the experiments were related to the Philadelphia Experiment. For more information and speculation on this topic, I interviewed Dr. Farrell on his views here.D & D invokes the entities in E.T.. The stories of Montauk appear to originate in a book series by Preston Nichols, who claims to have discovered repressed memories of the event. This laughable scenario immediately smacks of PsyOps, making the original connection to large-scale deception all the more appropriate. Even Vallee alleges the experiment is a hoax, suggesting an experiment in seeing what you can get people to believe, as opposed to some real space-time warping experiment. Vallee writes: I hypothesized that the experiments had to do with a radar countermeasures test. Indeed a Raytheon advertisement published thirteen years ago suggested that the corresponding technology was now out in the open (Raytheon, 1980). This hypothesis, however, failed to explain a few of the facts that highlighted the story. In particular it did not account for the observed disappearance of the destroyer from the harbor, for the mysterious devices brought on board under extreme security precautions, or for the alleged disappearance of two sailors from a nearby tavern. While it may be the case that the Navy altered space-time, does Vallee not consider the possibility this is all bullshit, as so many military whistleblowers and generals so often leak ? Rather, as is so often the case, all the evidence for these events relies on some retired Navy man with all the credentials of the Navy man from the Village People. This is also why the Montauk tale mixes aliens and other nonsense in with the notion of the Apollo Mission being staged disinformation. Vallee himself was a high up government operator with an interest in occultism and Rosicrucianism, and is represented in Spielberg s Close Encounters by the character of Claude Lacombe (played by Francois Truffaut).Through the dimensional gate: the Demogorgon saps energy and hatches incubus style demon-babies in Ridley Scott form. .Thus, all of this functions as the spirit behind Stranger Things, as well as myriad other influences, such as Star Wars, Alien, Goonies, H.P. Lovecraft, Evil Dead, X-Men, Stephen King, and John Carpenter. That said, I consider the series as accurately showing some aspects of the spiritual realm, couched in scientistic mysticism, where our initial suspicion of extra-terrestrial alien manipulation is revealed to be both terrestrial and demonic. The Demogorgon inhabits a realm that is the upside down, the negative or demonic dark side of our world, which matches up to the Kabbalistic notion of the Qilphoth or the Abyss of Da at at times, as Crowley claims: This doctrine is extremely difficult to explain; but it corresponds more or less to the gap in thought between the Real, which is ideal, and the Unreal, which is actual. In the Abyss all things exist, indeed, at least in posse, but are without any possible meaning; for they lack the substratum of spiritual Reality. They are appearances without Law. They are thus Insane Delusions Now the Abyss being thus the great storehouse of Phenomena, it is the source of all impressions. Spoiler alert, but the missing children are not only part of MK Ultra, but are being used in top-secret testing that includes LSD, sensory deprivation and the development of Men Who Stare at Goats (or Kids Who Stare at Kittens)-type mental powers. Interestingly, the abducted super-soldier kid named 11 and El is specifically told to kill a kitten which is rumored to be an aspect of trauma-based mind control. Basically, all the rumors of hardcore child abuse and mind control are rolled into the series with the character El, who is able to remote view the spiritual realm and spy on Soviets (as well as Demogorgons).Like the simulacrum in Spielberg films, the spirits communicate across the void through the Kabbalistic principle of esoteric symbology and linguistics, as I showed in my Close Encounters analysis.. Oblivious to the dangers of such programs, Mr. Man in Black Shadow Government from the Dept. of Energy persists in hunting down his escaped daughter El (hinting at sexual abuse), who finds her way into the Goonies gang of Mike, Will and Lucas (I m assuming you ve seen it). Most interesting is the biblical and occult notion of the opening of gates through such scientific experiments, which are in fact occult rituals involving child adduction and sacrifice under the guise of cancer research (MK Ultra). Could this be a hint at what the cancer complex is really involved in? Genetic and psychological experimentation with children for the greater good ? Certainly there have been numerous cases of missing children in the US, as well as small towns experimented on by the shadow government. It would seem that Stanger Things is obliquely referencing these themes, as well as the possibility of actual murders and abductions, as author William Ramsey argues here.Given blood and sacrifice bring the demon and open the gate, we can assume the references are to the goetia, where demons are invoked through sigils. . Two notions that occurred to me I have not seen tacked yet in the series is the strange reference to the loss of father and God, as we see no strong male figures. Hop the cop, like a horny rabbit, hops from girl to girl having lost his daughter, while Will s father is a deadbeat. In Mike and Nancy s household, the ineffectual, sterile father character of Mr. Wheeler remains ever clueless while arguing to Mrs. Wheeler the government is on our side, and would never lie.Set in the Cold War, the fear and panic of the ridiculous Russian Threat in the background of the series allows the shadow state to develop the explicitly-named Star Wars Defense Program, where lasers and space weapons are being made to destroy the Russkies. Amazingly accurate in this insight, this is a point JaysAnalysis has been highlighting the last few years with the hype of the Cold War deception allowing for the rise of the dark military industrial complex which seems to have a penchant for human sacrifice. Note that I have argued many times that Mk Ultra was not merely a mind control experiment, but was about the entire biosphere, under the Department of Energy.Cop Hop discovers the advanced weapons lab facility is involved in MK Ultra something I have discussed many times. . The sacrifice of the youth for the dark designs of the shadow government is the ultimate conspiracy in the series, but what is more remarkable than this is the explanation by the Man in Black Dr. Brenner (Matthew Modine) that the sacrifice of sons and daughters for the gorgodemon is for the good of America. In other words, we are given the impression our villain knows the real source of the dark power in Hawkins, the demonic, and that the sacrifice of humans and blood draws it nearer and nearer. Foolishly assuming this dark energy can be harnessed for U.S. supremacy, Dr. Brenner is behind both MK Ultra and the SDI program that requires the sacrifice of America s sons and daughters ! This spiritual dimension is the accurate and insightful aspect of the series, but the message is not all good.Dr. Brenner demands more demonic channeling from El. Note her similarity of appearance to the Princess in The Never Ending Story.. The flip side, as mentioned, is that El as an androgynous, yet dominantly feminine archetype, is a form of the incarnation of the goddess. We have seen this of late in pop fiction more times than I can count, in examples like Hanna, Hunger Games, Lucy, Ex Machina and Jupiter Ascending, where the gnostic perspective of exalting the opposing force to the male is assumed to bring a cosmically needed balance to the war hawk patriarchy. A perennial myth of liberal fantasies, the feminist archetype will in no way bring peace and balance, only more destruction as gender roles continue to be confused. Feminism is part of that very destruction, and the fact that El shouts out in the aether God, Dad and Gone, suggests her association with Dr. Brenner as her dad and Father God s lack of answer to her call, means the solution to the spiritual problems of man can be found in a Luciferian evolution of humans beyond the traps of gender and evil patriarchal deities. In occultist Edmund Spenser s Faerie Queen, we read:Downe in the bottome of the deepe Abysse Where Demogorgon in dull darknesse pent, Farre from the view of Gods and heauens blis, The hideous Chaos keepes, their dreadfull dwelling is. (Book IV, Canto ii, stanza 47)In the process of becoming cruciform, the sacred feminine pistis Sophia incarnate destroys the patriarchal non-God. . Indeed, El annihilates the cruciform Demogorgon as if it were a demiurge that has imprisoned the town spiritually. This is precisely the Luciferian view Jesus and/or God the Father are demiurges who have imprisoned humans in this dimension and sap their energy as vampires, requiring blood sacrifice. Of course, none of that is true, as the Logos is the salvation of the human race, reconciling them to God by becoming Incarnate and destroying Death. In the gnostic scheme the roles are reversed, where El becomes the Luciferian dark hero rescuing the town through her sacrifice to destroy the cruciform demon-god. And, as you probably guessed, that is why her name is El, recalling the old Canaanite term for the gods who warred against Jehovah in the Bible. In fact, the Demogorgon is generally traced back to the demiurge.The series also uses numerology frequently, such as 11 and 77 suggesting the demonology of Crowley and references to 9/11 as a ritual initiation. Interestingly, light is mentioned several times in the series as both a means of communication and symbol of enlightenment. As you can see in the above image, photosynthesis is placed behind El as she dissolves the Demogorgon, suggesting the dissolution of Traditional Religion by enlightenment, perfectly consonant with the message of Gnosticism and Luciferianism.The gateways have been opened through mass human sacrifice of America s sons and daughters the new man is a dark, half-androgynous goddess who will destroy the genocidal patriarchal religions and bring a new Amerikan aeon of the crowned and conquering girl-child, a Luciferian world order.READ MORE HOLLYWOOD NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Hollywood FilesTo hear Jay s full podcasts, see more information and learn how you can become a subscriber to JaysAnalysis.Jay Dyer is the author of the forthcoming title, Esoteric Hollywood: Sex, Cults and Symbols in Film from Trine Day. Focusing on film, philosophy, geopolitics and all things esoteric,JaysAnalysis and his podcast, Esoteric Hollywood, investigates the deeper meanings between the headlines, exploring the hidden aspects of our sinister synthetic mass media matrix. | 1real |
SABO…The Most BADASS CONSERVATIVE ARTIST In America Will Be On Tucker Carlson Tonight…Why You Don’t Want To Miss It! [VIDEO] | Hardcore, unconventional, conservative and badass artist Sabo has been taking his message to the streets for several years. I had a lengthy phone conversation with him last year and after I hung up the phone, I had the same kind of feeling I had after meeting Andrew Breitbart. Like Andrew Breitbart, Sabo s not fighting a conventional war against the left, he s studied them, he knows the dirty tactics they use to win and he s determined to beat them at their own game, even if it means shocking a few Americans along the way. Sabo never got to meet Andrew Breitbart, but always wanted to, as he recalls here:Now a thing about me was I d spent a good three years trying to get sober. In that time I did everything I could to stay the hell away from politics. It was the most peaceful three years of my life. Unfortunately during those three years guys like Glenn Beck and Andrew Breitbart were really picking up steam. So, because of my absence from the political scene I didn t really know much about them. And what little I did know about Glenn Beck I didn t really like. I remember friends would try turning me on to him but I wasn t into his delivery, too loud, too passionate. Not my deal. Sadly Andrew passed away about the time I decided to get back into the political fray. I never had the privilege to meet him. Everyone says we d of really gotten along. I did however get to meet his crew and they were all stand up people.Glenn Beck interviewed Sabo in 2015 when he was still keeping his face hidden from the public: One of Sabo s most popular pieces of work was his badass representation of Ted Cruz who he wholeheartedly supported for President.During the campaign, Sabo came after Hillary and Bernie Sanders pretty hard. He focused on plastering his hard-hitting posters in areas where fundraisers or events for Bernie or Hillary were taking place. Sabo wanted to make sure the American public saw Hillary as he saw Hillary:It took him a while to come around to Donald Trump, but eventually he did.Sabo s controversial artwork can be found on posters, t-shirts and bumper stickers at his online store: unsavoryagents.com Here s a video of Sabo replacing a sign in a park bench in LA with his own unique printed message. Notice the guy smoking a crack pipe on the bench the entire time.In 2014, Sabo got a little visit from the Secret Service over his controversial posts on Twitter. He certainly didn t handle the interview in the way most Americans would have.:Sabo will be on FOX News Tucker Carlson show tonight at 9 pm EST. He ll likely discuss the artwork that he plastered all over LA in advance of the Oscars last night.Here are a few of the posters liberal actors found when they arrived on the red carpet. We can promise you one thing it won t be an interview you ll want to miss | 1real |
Trump’s News Conference, Russia, Facebook: Your Evening Briefing - The New York Times | (Want to get this briefing by email? Here’s the .) Good evening. Here’s the latest. 1. President Trump, in his fourth tumultuous week in office, boasted that his new administration was a “ machine. ” A news conference to announce his new nominee for labor secretary, R. Alexander Acosta, a former assistant attorney general for civil rights, turned into an extraordinarily raw and angry . “The tone is such hatred,” he said of cable TV commentary. “I’m really not a bad person. ” _____ 2. Representative Mick Mulvaney of South Carolina was confirmed as budget director. He is a fiscal hawk who will play a central role in the administration’s plans to reshape the federal government. But Mr. Trump’s nominee to lead the Environmental Protection Agency, Scott Pruitt, heads to a confirmation vote Friday amid an extraordinary wave of protest from former E. P. A. staff members. Such confirmation battles have helped make Republican lawmakers unable to deliver on their promises of sweeping legislation on health care, overhauling the tax code or upgrading the nation’s infrastructure. They are particularly fractured on how to repeal and replace Obamacare. _____ 3. An uncounted number of immigrants across the country — carpenters and cooks, students, cleaners and grocery store owners — stayed home in protest of the Trump administration’s immigration policies. “We’re at a stage where we’re like, what else is there to do except organize and boycott?” said an activist in New York. The Justice Department said it would not seek a rehearing on the president’s targeted travel ban in a federal appeals court, saying a new order was in the works. _____ 4. Intelligence officials, on edge over Mr. Trump’s criticism of leaks related to his associates’ contacts with Russian intelligence agents, are resisting his plans to assign Stephen A. Feinberg, a New York billionaire, to review intelligence agencies. That Russian naval intelligence ship hanging off the East Coast? For some, it’s a symbol of current tensions, but the Coast Guard says there’s nothing all that unusual about it. Today’s episode of the podcast The Daily asks, did the Trump campaign collude with Russia? Listen from a computer, on an iOS device or on an Android device. _____ 5. In environmental news, a Greenpeace report tied the toxic waves of air pollution sweeping northern China to an increase in already excessive steel production last year, made counter to promised cuts. Scientists are also coming to understand the crucial importance of the vast, and endangered, seagrass meadows that surround every continent except Antarctica. _____ 6. The Islamic State has destroyed many of the prized antiquities and ruins in the Syrian city of Palmyra. But a new digital exhibition is helping preserve its legacy. The Getty has gathered etchings of Palmyra and the oldest known photographs of the city. Most have not been seen widely before. “More than just testaments to a threatened archaeological inheritance,” our critic writes, they are “traces of explorations and crosscultural exchange too many now seek to shut down. ” _____ 7. Mark Zuckerberg updated Facebook’s mission statement in a letter that was close to a political statement from the executive. He expressed alarm over growing rejections of globalism and argued that “progress now requires humanity coming together not just as cities or nations, but also as a global community. ” And Snap Inc. Snapchat’s parent company, is aiming for a valuation of more than $20 billion as it nears what’s expected to be the biggest initial public offering in the tech world since Alibaba and Facebook. _____ 8. You don’t need us to tell you the world is full of paradoxes. But one of our sports reporters found a special case: Hunts for bighorn sheep — prized as challenging, and prohibitively expensive — are helping revive wild sheep populations and expand their territory. A permit sold for a record $480, 000 in 2013. _____ 9. TV continues to showcase jokes about the White House and Russia. Stephen Colbert took particular aim at Mr. Trump’s efforts to blame the leakers who revealed Trump associates’ contacts with Russian intelligence over the last year. “Here’s the thing,” Mr. Colbert said. “It can’t be both fake news and an illegal leak of classified information. ‘Your honor, I did not murder that man. The real criminal is whoever filmed me strangling him. ’” _____ 10. Finally, the announcement of a double jailhouse wedding more than a century ago got Lena Dunham thinking about what it means to love and to be a “good woman. ” The notice is part of our review of 165 years of Times wedding announcements. In a turnabout, it was the women who were incarcerated. They were serving short sentences, but the 1912 article made no mention of their infractions. The grooms, the creator of HBO’s “Girls” writes, were able to get beyond societal expectations of the brides’ behavior: “They didn’t need them to be good girls. They were their girls. ” Photographs may appear out of order for some readers. Viewing this version of the briefing should help. Your Evening Briefing is posted at 6 p. m. Eastern. And don’t miss Your Morning Briefing, posted weekdays at 6 a. m. Eastern, and Your Weekend Briefing, posted at 6 a. m. Sundays. Want to look back? Here’s last night’s briefing. What did you like? What do you want to see here? Let us know at briefing@nytimes. com. | 0fake |
General DESTROYS Trump For Insulting The Military (VIDEO) | A retired general has had enough of Donald Trump denigrating the men and women of the U.S. military currently engaged in the fight against ISIS and other terrorist elements. In an appearance on CNN, retired Army Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling blasted Trump for his recent claim that simply asking generals to come up with a plan to defeat ISIS would lead to the terrorist group s end in a neat and tidy thirty-day period.The former commanding general decried Trump, calling his orders simplistic and insulting to individuals working to defeat ISIS. It shows a complete lack of understanding of the threat and the ways to fight it, Hertling said. It s a sophomoric approach to elements of national security policy because if he s just calling in the military, he s missing the point that there are several other elements of national security that will help defeat ISIS. Trump has been all over the map on ISIS, as he has been on hundreds of other issues. The former reality TV star has claimed that ISIS is on the march (it is in retreat) and that he has a plan to defeat ISIS (which he is keeping secret). Trump has also claimed that he knows more than all the generals on how to win the war on terrorism.In reality, Trump s reckless comments have proven to be the right kind of material for ISIS leaders attempting to recruit new members. Compared to the measured tones offered by President Obama and Secretary Hillary Clinton, Trump s rhetoric attacking Islam often sounds like the clash of civilizations the radical Muslim world wants so badly.Daily, American military assets are fighting against ISIS elements, most notably American fighter jets that have been bombing ISIS targets in multiple countries for years now, in addition to work via intelligence agencies with governments fighting the ISIS threat. To minimize their work as Trump does is a clear insult.Featured image via screen capture | 1real |
U.S. Vice President Biden to visit Serbia, Kosovo next week | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Vice President Joe Biden will visit Serbia and Kosovo next week, the White House said on Tuesday. A White House statement announcing the Aug. 15-17 Balkan tour said Biden would hold meetings with each country’s president and prime minister, but did not say what subjects would be discussed. The United States last month transferred two inmates from the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to Serbia. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry thanked Serbia for what he called a “significant humanitarian gesture.” Kerry visited Serbia and Kosovo in December. His stop in Kosovo underscored Western concern over the slow pace of progress 16 years after a U.S.-led NATO air war set the former Serbian province on the road to independence. Kosovo, a mainly Muslim but secular and staunchly pro-American country, declared independence in 2008. | 0fake |
Obama spars with Cuba's Castro over human rights in historic visit | HAVANA (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama pushed Cuba to improve human rights during his historic visit to the Communist-led island on Monday, publicly sparring with President Raul Castro who showed flashes of anger and hit back at U.S. “double standards”. Obama praised Castro for openly discussing their differences but he said a “full flowering” of the relationship would happen only with progress on the issue of rights. “In the absence of that, I think it will continue to be a very powerful irritant,” Obama said in a joint news conference with Castro that began with jokes but was tense at times. “America believes in democracy. We believe that freedom of speech and freedom of assembly and freedom of religion are not just American values but are universal values,” he said. Both men’s remarks were broadcast live on Cuban state television from Cuba’s Palace of the Revolution in a room draped with the Stars and Stripes and the Cuban flag. Castro countered that no country meets all international rights but appeared uncomfortable as he made the rare step of taking questions from journalists in a country where the media is state controlled. Obama, the first U.S. president to visit Cuba in 88 years, agreed in 2014 to improve relations with the former Cold War foe but he is under pressure at home to push Castro’s government to allow political dissent and to further open its Soviet-style economy. He said the two sides would hold talks on human rights in Havana later this year. Opponents say Obama has given away too much as he improves ties, with too little from Castro in return, although the leading Republican candidate for the Nov. 8 presidential election, Donald Trump, said on Monday he would likely continue to normalize ties with Cuba if elected. Castro, an army general who became president when his ailing older brother Fidel retired in 2008, had never before taken questions from foreign reporters on live Cuban television and was clearly irritated when asked about political prisoners in Cuba, demanding the reporter produce a list of those in jail. “Tell me now. What political prisoners? Give me a name, or the names,” Castro said. “And if there are these political prisoners they will be free before nightfall.” Cuba says it has no political prisoners and that the dozens listed by dissident groups are instead common criminals. Castro said Cuba has a strong record on rights such as health, access to education and women’s equality. His government criticizes the United States on racism, police violence and the use of torture at the Guantanamo Bay naval base in Cuba. Ben Rhodes, a senior Obama aide, later insisted that Cuba has political prisoners and said the U.S. government had shared lists of them with Cuba. He said Cuba has shifted from long prisons terms to short-term detentions of political opponents. Later in the evening, Castro sat between Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama for a dinner of rum flavored soup and pork, at a table that also included the leaders’ top advisers. Obama’s ease with reporters’ questions contrasted with Castro’s manner. The tension was palpable as Castro declined to call on a slew of Cuban journalists who yearned for the rare chance to ask him questions. Fumbling with a headset providing translation, the 84-year-old leader scolded reporters when he was asked again about rights, saying he agreed to only take one question. Obama playfully encouraged him to address a second but Castro seemed reluctant as he obliged. “How many countries comply with all 61 human rights? Do you know? I do. None. None,” Castro said. In another awkward moment, as the news conference ended, Castro lifted Obama’s arm in the air as if to form a victory salute. Obama resisted, letting his hand hang limp rather than form a fist. As part of the diplomatic breakthrough in 2014, Cuba released 53 prisoners that the U.S. government considered political prisoners. But the dissident Cuban Commission of Human Rights and National Reconciliation says 79 are still behind bars, among about 40 held for peaceful political protest. “This list is here if they want to see it,” commission leader Elizardo Sanchez said on Monday. His list also includes armed anti-government militants, convicted hijackers, army deserters and spies, but Sanchez said they are political because they were denied due process. Castro offered Cuba’s recipe for better relations, saying the United States needs to lift its 54-year-old trade embargo on the island and hand back the Guantanamo Bay base to Cuba. Obama did not respond to the demand on Guantanamo Bay but said he was optimistic about the elimination of sanctions against Cuba. “The embargo’s going to end. When, I can’t be entirely sure,” Obama said. Obama efforts to encourage Congress to rescind the embargo has been rejected by the Republican leadership. Thwarted, Obama has instead used executive authority to loosen restrictions on trade and travel. Obama said direct flights from the United States would start this year. He said regular tourism to Cuba could happen “very soon,” in comments to U.S. network ABC. A clutch of deals timed to coincide with the visit appeared to show the strategy was bearing commercial fruit, notably U.S. cruise company Carnival’s announcement on Monday that it would sail the first ship from the United States to Cuba in more than 50 years, in a deal that will bring in thousands of U.S. tourists at a time. About a dozen major U.S. brands have stuck deals or are in talks with Cuba. Ahead of the meeting with Castro, Obama said Google would provide more Wi-Fi and broadband access on the island. Google said later its efforts were in the “early stages.” | 0fake |
Pence: I Don't Understand 'The Basis' of Michelle Obama's Claims | GOP vice presidential candidate Mike Pence said Friday he has a "lot of respect" for First Lady Michelle Obama, but he doesn't understand "the basis of her claim" in a her speech Thursday condemning Donald Trump for using what she called sexually predatory language in a conversation caught on a hot-mic in 2005.
"I have a lot of respect for the first lady and the job she has done for the American people over the last seven-and-a-half years," the Indiana governor told the "CBS This Morning" host Charlie Rose, continuing that he does not believe the language described sexually predatory actions.
"I already spoke about my concerns about the language he used in that 11-year-old video," said Pence. "But what he has made clear is that was talk, regrettable talk on his part. But that there were no actions."
Further, Trump has "categorically denied these last unsubstantiated allegations" that were made this week from at least five women who claimed Trump groped and kissed them against their will in years past.
"Frankly, I think before the day is out the allegations will be questioned," said Pence. "The same reporters who wrote a similar story six months ago for The New York Times have written this story and that story was completely discredited."
Pence told Fox News' "Fox & Friends" the Trump campaign is working to bring out evidence that will disprove the allegations being made about him, and said during an interview with NBC's "Today" show that evidence "is coming in, frankly, a matter of hours."
He told "Today" show hosts Matt Lauer and Savannah Guthrie that Melania Trump has already contacted People Magazine for a retraction of its story about Trump, but Lauer commented that was different than showing evidence.
"Just say tuned," Pence told the "Today" show. "There is more information coming forward. But Donald Trump has made very clear that he's categorically denied these allegations. Yet, he can't be more definitive than that.
"And the difficulty is that at this point in a campaign, it is astonishing to see, with all due respect, the enormous coverage of these really unfounded allegations, unestablished allegations, compared to an avalanche of emails coming out of Hillary Clinton's years as secretary of state."
Pence said he agrees that allegations such as those being made against Trump "should always" be taken "seriously and respectfully, but in the case of Bill Clinton, he actually admitted to being involved with a 23-year-old intern at the White House named Monica Lewinsky when he was president. Bill Clinton actually paid a settlement of over $800,000 to one of those women [Paula Jones]."
"The remarkable thing, as the media goes chasing after unsubstantiated allegations, coming from a newspaper that six months ago, did a massive similar story that was utterly discredited by the same reporters," Pence told Fox News.
"It's remarkable to me they continue to literally ignore the hard evidence that's flowing out of Hillary Clinton's years as secretary of state and the Clinton Foundation, whether it's a speech supporting socialized medicine in Canada, a paid speech supporting open borders in Brazil."
He said the "most concerning" to him was the news that Clinton's aides, while she was secretary of state, were "directing contracts for the rebuilding of Haiti, after the earthquake, to friends of the Clintons. I mean, this is exactly the kind of pay-to-play politics the American people are tired of. It's going to end when Donald Trump becomes president of the United States."
Pence told CBS that as the father of two daughters and as a public person, he does take allegations like those facing Trump seriously, but also noted the GOP presidential nominee "categorically denied" the claims against him.
Further, the Indiana governor said he urged Trump to apologize, which he has.
He also questioned the timing of the news against Trump, as "we have hard evidence flowing out of the Clinton Foundation [and] the Clinton years, but the "unsubstantiated claims are dominating the news."
Pence said he's spoken with Trump over the allegations being made about him, and he believes the presidential candidate.
"Donald Trump has asserted that all of these recent unsubstantiated allegations are categorically false and I believe him," said Pence. "The Donald Trump as I come to know, and my family has come to know and spent considerable amount of time, is someone who has a long record of not only loving his family and lifting his family up, but employing and promoting women in positions of authority in this company."
And, Pence told Rose, he gave up a job he loves as governor of Indiana, a state he loves, to join the Trump race "because I think this country is in a lot of trouble," and he thinks it's time to return the issues and move away from the scandals.
The Trump scandals have caused many to question his character, but Pence said he has found Trump's response to be "extraordinary."
"He apologized for what he said 11 years ago," said Pence. "He showed humility, he showed heart. He focused that national presidential debate back on the issues that really affect the American people at home and abroad."
Meanwhile, he pointed out that the "avalanche" of emails from Clinton's accounts continue to emerge.
"Clinton was advocating open borders when she was giving a speech in Brazil, advocating socialized medicine when she gave a speech in Canada," said Pence. "The Haitian issue to me is the biggest one . . . The friends of the Clinton's were given preference shall treatment for contracts for the reconstruction of Haiti after an earthquake."
Also on Friday, Pence commented on Trump's claims that the upcoming election may be rigged, and he agrees that voter fraud has been an issue.
"We are currently involved in a pretty vigorous investigation in the state of Indiana over voter fraud," said Pence. "It is in the interest of everybody on every side of the spectrum to defend the one vote, one principle.
"The way elections are managed at the state level is to become involved as a poll-watcher and poll volunteer and we consistently encourage people to do that." | 0fake |
SOCIALIST BERNIE SANDERS Praises Castro [Video] | A video from 1985 was shown last night during the Dem debate that has people bussing this morning. Yes we all know Sanders is a socialist but it s interesting to hear him speak about Cuba and Castro .Hey, youth of America who think Sanders is the best thing since sliced bread, do you REALLY want this guy? | 1real |
Obama to press Trump to preserve Cuba detente: White House | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama will make his case directly to President-elect Donald Trump not to derail the recent U.S.-Cuba detente, the White House said on Tuesday, insisting that “turning back the clock” would be damaging to American interests and the Cuban people. Ben Rhodes, Obama’s deputy national security adviser, said the outgoing administration hopes to persuade the incoming Trump administration to preserve Obama’s policy of engagement despite the president-elect’s threat to roll back the opening with the communist-ruled island. Just weeks before Trump takes office, Obama and his aides are seeking to further cement one of his top foreign policy legacy initiatives, a breakthrough between former Cold War foes announced two years ago. But since Obama eased travel and trade restrictions through executive actions, Trump would be able to reverse them on his own if he chooses to do so. “Cuba has been and will be on the list of issues where President Obama will make his case that this is the right approach for American interests,” Rhodes told reporters on a teleconference, referring to transition talks between the two. Trump, who takes office on Jan. 20, has vowed to “terminate” Obama’s engagement with Cuba unless Havana gives the United States what he calls a “better deal,” including allowing broader political freedoms on the island. The Cuban government so far has refrained from commenting on Trump’s statements. “What we believe would be very damaging is any effort to turn off the opening,” Rhodes said, asserting it would hurt the Cuban people, U.S. business interests and Washington’s standing in Latin America. He said the administration has sought to make the policy “irreversible,” and suggested that Trump, a businessman-turned-politician, should consider whether it makes sense to roll it back. Rhodes, who played a key role in negotiating the opening, said a reversal would boost Cuban “hardliners” opposed to engagement as Havana heads into its own political transition. Cuban President Raul Castro has said he will step down in 2018. “Do you really want to cancel travel plans for hundreds of thousands of Americans?” Rhodes asked. “Do you want to tell businesses as diverse as our major airlines or Google or General Electric ... that have been pursuing opportunities in Cuba that they have to terminate those activities?” Rhodes, who was also in Cuba for memorial services for late Cuban revolutionary Fidel Castro this month, said Cuban officials were uncertain about Trump and would wait to see how he proceeded. The White House is planning a meeting with “stakeholders” on Cuba policy this week, he said. The administration is pressing Cuba for further economic reforms, Rhodes said, and encouraging new deals with U.S. companies before Obama leaves office. Rhodes also said there was currently an “incentive structure” for economic change following the death of Fidel Castro, a vocal critic of detente, but that no progress has been made on political reforms. U.S. critics of Cuba engagement have accused Obama of making too many concessions. But despite restoration of relations, the Republican-controlled Congress has resisted lifting the broader U.S. economic embargo. | 0fake |
Trump to host Italian prime minister on April 20 | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump will host Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni for an official working visit on April 20, the White House said on Thursday. “The leaders will discuss the upcoming G7 ... and a range of issues of mutual concern,” White House spokesman Sean Spicer told reporters. Italy is hosting a summit of leaders from the Group of Seven biggest industrial economies in Sicily on May 26-27. | 0fake |
Bathroom Law Repeal Leaves Few Pleased in North Carolina - The New York Times | ATLANTA — For a year, it prompted boycotts, demonstrations and economic fallout that helped dethrone a sitting governor. In the end, in a strange and profoundly American collision of polarized politics, sports, commerce and the culture wars, North Carolina’s notorious House Bill 2 was finally laid to rest on Thursday — though many were left wondering if some of its negative effects might linger. Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, signed legislation repealing the law after it was approved by the legislature. House Bill 2 had restricted the ability of municipalities to enact policies and required transgender people in government and public buildings to use the bathroom that corresponds with the gender on their birth certificate. In addition to repealing House Bill 2, the new law gives the General Assembly the sole power to regulate access to “multiple occupancy restrooms, showers or changing facilities. ” It also creates a moratorium on local nondiscrimination ordinances through 2020. The compromise agreement came amid a looming threat that the N. C. A. A. which had already relocated a year’s worth of championship tournament games from the state, was planning to eliminate more, including future men’s Division I basketball tournaments. It was met with bitter criticism from gay rights groups, which said it was barely a repeal at all, and from conservatives, who said it backtracked on protecting public safety and traditional values. In a news conference on Thursday, Mr. Cooper said that the agreement would begin undoing the economic damage and that both sports events and economic development would begin coming back to the state. This week, The Associated Press calculated that North Carolina stood to lose more than $3. 7 billion over the next dozen years if House Bill 2 were not repealed. “This is not a perfect deal and it is not my preferred solution it stops short of many things we need to do as a state,” Mr. Cooper said. “In a perfect world, with a good General Assembly, we would have repealed HB2 fully today, and added full statewide protections for L. G. B. T. North Carolinians. ” Still, it remained to be seen if the deal would now lift what Mr. Cooper has called “the dark cloud hanging over our state. ” The N. C. A. A. president, Mark Emmert, said on Thursday that the league’s governing board would soon determine whether the changed law was “sufficient” for “the board to feel comfortable going back to North Carolina. ” The National Basketball Association, which relocated its most recent Game to New Orleans to protest House Bill 2, did not reply to a request seeking comment. The Atlantic Coast Conference, which pulled recent league championships out of the state, indicated that it would take a fresh look at North Carolina. “The recently passed legislation allows the opportunity to reopen the discussion with the A. C. C. Council of Presidents regarding neutral site conference championships being held in the State of North Carolina,” John Swofford, the commissioner, said. PayPal, which in April had canceled an expansion in Charlotte over its concerns about the law, did not respond to a request for comment. A number of celebrities and organizations that had announced they were boycotting the state since the law’s passage one year ago had not commented on the repeal on social media. Pope McCorkle III, a public policy professor at Duke, called the deal an “awkward compromise. ” He said it would ultimately be judged by how many of the sports events, entertainers and businesses who had turned on the state would eventually change their minds. “There could be a split among the outside arbiters about whether this is good enough,” he said. “The deal is only as good as what it achieves in terms of the change in economic development perceptions nationally. ” It appeared that the threat of losing even more basketball games had much to do with the breakthrough. The agreement comes on the eve of basketball’s Final Four weekend, with the University of North Carolina men’s team facing off against Oregon on Saturday night in Glendale, Ariz. Looming even larger, perhaps, was the broader threat of sustained business boycotts. Yet despite these stakes, and in a sign of the deep fissures that continue to run through both the state and the nation, there was little celebration when the law finally died. On Thursday, the American Civil Liberties Union and Lambda Legal, a gay rights group, called the compromise a “fake” repeal bill that “keeps in place the most harmful parts of the law. ” The Human Rights Campaign and other gay rights groups called the deal “shameful” and accused the governor and the legislature of engaging in a “sell out” of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. Some religious and cultural conservatives denounced the removal of transgender bathroom provisions. Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, based in Washington, said the compromise showed that “elected officials are ultimately willing to surrender to the courts and the N. C. A. A. on matters of safety and public policy. ” Others argued that girls and women would be robbed of privacy and dignity if forced to confront biological men in restrooms. Gay rights advocates said that the moratorium on local ordinances, combined with the absence of a statewide law addressing sexual orientation and gender identity, would leave lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people at risk of continued discrimination. “That, to me, is astonishing, that we’re going to make L. G. B. T. people wait another four years to be protected from being fired because they’re gay,” said Chris Fitzsimon, director of NC Policy Watch, a liberal group. There appeared to be some disagreement about the freedom that local governments would have to pass protections for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people under the new law. Mr. Cooper said that local governments were now free to “pass protections for their L. G. B. T. employees. ” Cathryn Oakley, senior legislative counsel for the Human Rights Campaign, said she did not believe that was the case. “I don’t think the language supports that,” she said. Under the new law, transgender people in state government buildings will not be prohibited from using a bathroom that does not match the gender on their birth certificate. Mr. Cooper emphasized the impact on school children. “Now transgender kids aren’t subject to the horrible requirement and embarrassment that could put them in more danger of being bullied or preyed on,” he said. The Justice Department had issued guidelines to public schools stating that denying students the ability to use the restrooms of their choice violated Title IX, the 1972 federal law that prohibits sex discrimination in education. A Virginia case that might have settled the matter was scheduled to be heard by the United States Supreme Court, but when President Trump’s Justice Department rescinded the guidelines, the justices in March sent it back to a lower court to decide. Jane Wettach, a law professor at Duke, said that beyond schools, few institutions had ever policed people’s bathroom choices. “Which is what made the law sort of symbolic,” she said, referring to House Bill 2. House Bill 2 has already dealt a major political blow to the Republican Party in North Carolina, with the backlash helping Mr. Cooper defeat former Gov. Pat McCrory, a Republican, by a margin in November. Time will tell if Mr. Cooper retains the support of disappointed gay rights advocates on the left wing of his coalition. National gay rights groups could also see a perceived loss of clout if the N. C. A. A. and other sports organizations ignore their continued protests and decide to play ball in the state. If the costly drama in North Carolina serves as a cautionary tale to other states looking to take up such volatile social issues, only some appear to have heeded it. On Thursday in Texas, some conservatives reiterated their support for a bill that would revise the laws regulating bathroom use in government buildings. The bill has been approved by the State Senate. But according to The Texas Tribune, it may not survive in the House. The Tribune reported that Texas businesses were worried the proposal could cost them “hundreds of millions of dollars” in revenue. | 0fake |
HOLLYWOOD PORN DIRECTOR Makes Chappaquiddick Movie: Shows What Ted Kennedy “had to go through” | Is there ever a time the Left isn t portrayed as the victim in Hollywood? The tragic 1969 car accident that left a young woman dead at the hands of late Sen. Ted Kennedy will make it to the big screen for a film that the project s producer says will show audiences what Kennedy had to go through. According to The Hollywood Reporter, 50 Shades of Grey director Sam Taylor-Johnson has signed on to direct Chappaquiddick, which was recently named to the 2015 Blacklist.Project producer Mark Ciardi told THR Monday, I ve done a lot of true life stories, many sports stories, but this one had a deep impact on this country. Everyone has an idea of what happened on Chappaquiddick and this strings together the events in a compelling and emotional way.Ciardi adds: You ll see what he had to go through. While it is unclear who is the actual victim of the event in the film, Kennedy or 28-year-old Mary Jo Kopechne, who died, Chappaquiddick is described by THR as a political thriller that unveils the true story of what is described as the seven most dramatic days of Senator Ted Kennedy s life. On the eve of the moon landing, Senator Kennedy becomes entangled in a tragic car accident that results in the death of former Robert Kennedy campaign worker Mary Jo Kopechne. The Senator struggles to follow his own moral compass and simultaneously protect his family s legacy, all while simply trying to keep his own political ambitions alive.The film is currently casting and is set to begin principal photography within a few months.For some context surrounding the events of the Chappaquiddick incident, on the evening of July 18, 1969, Democrat Sen. Edward Ted Kennedy had just left a party on the Massachusetts Island, when he drove his Oldsmobile off a bridge and into a pond after making a wrong turn. Via: Breitbart News | 1real |
Rally Of Deplorables Call For Clinton Assassination – Paul Ryan’s Reaction Is Infuriating (VIDEO) | Google Pinterest Digg Linkedin Reddit Stumbleupon Print Delicious Pocket Tumblr
“Where’s Lee Harvey Oswald when we need him?”
These were the disgusting words caught on video at a Republican rally in southern Wisconsin Saturday. The not-so-subtle assassination suggestion was bellowed off camera near the front, while Paul Ryan was up on stage. The GOP congressman was well within earshot of the utterance, yet he continued babbling about Clinton scandals without standing up to the despicable crowd. That’s right, the Speaker of the U.S. House, ‘Mr. Speaker’ to you and me, said nothing.
This isn’t the first time someone at a Trump rally blatantly suggested Hillary be assassinated, of course.The Donald himself suggested “ Second Amendment people ” might be able to do something about her if she were elected at a rally in August. After the shocking statement, Paul Ryan remarked to reporters the comment sounded, “like a joke gone bad.” Perhaps, Ryan thought this Trumpkin was joking, too.
There are other possible explanations for his lack of reaction. Perhaps he didn’t hear the scream. He is the Republican House speaker after all, he’s used to ignoring people. Less likely, perhaps he doesn’t know who Lee Harvey Oswald is and therefor didn’t understand the reference. Or maybe he’s a fan of Oliver Stone’s film JFK and agrees that Oswald was just a “patsy.” Being a Trump patsy himself, he might of merely assumed the deplorable was shouting support for him.
Or maybe, and most probably, he heard it, he got it and just didn’t care. Afraid to stand up to Trump’s mob.
Watch the video and decide for yourself:
No matter what the reason for such an offensive lack of response, we can all agree it is time for Paul Ryan to step down, and not just from the stage.
Featured image via ABC News Share this Article! | 1real |
Obama's DOJ Also Obstructed Clinton Foundation Investigation | Obama's DOJ Also Obstructed Clinton Foundation Investigation October
We now know that Lynch and Obama's DOJ are obstructing the investigation of Hillary Clinton's emails. The biased media is predictably spinning this as the FBI being in the wrong and Hillary's backers at the DOJ being in the right.
But it also appears that the DOJ was obstructing any investigations of Hillary. Including that of the Clinton Foundation.
The FBI field office in New York had done the most work on the Clinton Foundation case and received help from the FBI field office in Little Rock, the people familiar with the matter said.
In February, FBI officials made a presentation to the Justice Department, according to these people. By all accounts, the meeting didn’t go well.
Some said that is because the FBI didn’t present compelling evidence to justify more aggressive pursuit of the Clinton Foundation, and that the career public integrity prosecutors in the room simply believed it wasn’t a very strong case. Others said that from the start, the Justice Department officials were stern, icy and dismissive of the case.
“That was one of the weirdest meetings I’ve ever been to,” one participant told others afterward, according to people familiar with the matter.
Justice Department officials told the FBI at the meeting they wouldn’t authorize more aggressive investigative techniques, such as subpoenas, formal witness interviews, or grand-jury activity. But the FBI officials believed they were well within their authority to pursue the leads and methods already under way, these people said.
Of course the DOJ wouldn't authorize investigations of the Democratic Party's chosen. That's the type of elemental corruption at work in the system. | 1real |
Swaminomics writes for URT on Demonetization, US elections and other things | Swaminomics writes for URT on Demonetization, US elections and other things Posted on
In this guest post for The UnReal Times, Swaminathan S. Anklesaria Aiyar gives his views about the US elections and demonetization: (Image via youtube.com)
Many people are asking me about my past predictions. Let me clarify that first. I agree that I had predicted that Modi will never become PM because he will find it difficult to get allies. The entire country reads my articles and when they read this article of mine, all of them became convinced that Modi cannot lead a coalition. So they voted massively in his favor to give him a majority on his own.
I had also predicted that “Trump will not just lose, he’ll be thrashed” and also that “Women are saving US from Prez Trump”. However shockingly, he won. I am still looking for the reasons but in the meantime just read my article “Donald Trump no solution to civilization crisis facing the West” where I sum up the crudity, misogyny and contempt for civic values and political correctness that has propelled Donald Trump into the White House. And just look at the first line in this article to see how lost I still am.
Now, let’s come back to Narendra Modi and his demonetization. Modi is known to hold grudges and can go to any length for them. We all know how he holds grudges against India’s first family and dropped their name from many schemes.
Poor Raghuram Rajan met the same fate. First Modi denied Raghuram Rajan another term. Secondly, as soon as Rajan left, Modi demonetized the currency notes which had Rajan’s signature thereby trying to obliterate his legacy.
I know for a fact that Raghuram Rajan keeps several 1000 rupee notes with him. This is not to hoard money but because his signature on the bank notes brings him fond memories and he wants to charm his grandchildren and great grandchildren by showing him notes with his signature. Imagine how grandkids would feel if grandpa gave them a note signed by him and said “Take this, go buy anything you want. I have authorized it.” But Modi does not want Rajan to even enjoy the small joys of life. The entire country has to pay the price for Modi’s vendetta.
But all is not lost. Here is my advice to Raghuram Rajan and Narendra Modi. Guys, bury the past, come together and work for the future of India. After the US elections, America is without doubt more intolerant than India and Rajan will be delighted to work with Modi for the betterment of India.
I remember that I had predicted that “If Rajan is asked to leave, India will suffer a mass exodus of foreign portfolio investment. Tens of billions of dollars will flow out, maybe as much as 100 billion (if this coincides with some other bad news like a further Chinese slowdown or British exit from the European Union).”
But both Rajan and Britain left and the market kept going up. This shows the resilience of the Indian economy. Imagine what Modi and Rajan can together do.
Of course the global markets have crashed after Trump became president and so I was not completely wrong. Actually I knew that global markets would crash if Trump became president but I never predicted it because the possibility of Trump becoming President never occurred to me.
Finally, I would also like to give the Tatas some advice. Close down Tata Steel UK. The British are brave people. Anyone who tries to colonize them bleeds financially. | 1real |
Caitlyn Jenner’s Friends Call Out Her Hypocrisy To Her Face For Supporting Ted Cruz (VIDEO) | When choosing a candidate for president it s probably a smart idea to choose someone who will best have your back on any number of issues. What s not smart is supporting a candidate who calls you names, tells you how disgusting you are, and publicly humiliates you. Yet, Caitlyn Jenner still seems to want to support Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz despite the fact that he is so utterly outspoken against the Transgender community.Jenner has been a Republican for a very long time and still hasn t been able to wrap her head around the fact that she is supporting not only the worst party for her own cause, but also the absolute worst candidate within that party in regards to Transgender rights and protections.In the latest episode of her reality show I Am Cait, Jenner s friends called out this blinding hypocrisy to her face. During the show, they showed the women sitting around listening to the fact that Ted Cruz is asking for the Houston, Texas HERO Act (which guarantees rights to the LGBT community) to be repealed. And while Jenner brushed it off as Cruz just being totally misinformed, her friends told her, in so many words, that you can t be a supporter of LGBT rights and a supporter of Ted Cruz at the same time.A Cruz presidency would be devastating to the LGBT community on so many levels, and could turn back the clock on all the progress that has been made over the past decade. We cannot allow that to happen. We ve come so far, and we have so much further to go. No matter who, vote blue.Watch the clip here:Featured image via video screen capture | 1real |
Scotland's SNP must come up with 'doable' independence plan after Brexit: Salmond | GLASGOW, Scotland (Reuters) - Scotland s former first minister believes the independence movement has a three-year window after Britain quits the European Union to push again for seccession, despite the Scottish National Party s losses in an election in June. Salmond, who is still very influential in the movement, said the independence drive could be refreshed by proposing to join the European Free Trade Association, which would give Scotland European single market membership. The SNP lost a third of its seats in the national election, including Salmond s own seat, in a sign of waning enthusiasm for another Scottish independence referendum after the uncertainties thrown up by Brexit. Despite that, support for independence itself has remained at the 45 percent level it was when it was voted down in 2014 and the SNP still holds 35 of Scotland s 59 seats in the Westminster parliament. Salmond said Brexit was proving to be disastrous for Britain and would only end in humiliation . Scotland and Northern Ireland voted to keep EU membership while Wales and most-populous England voted to leave at last year s referendum, straining the ties of the four-nation United Kingdom. So the SNP were and are right about Brexit, but as we found out to our cost in the election just being right does not necessarily make for popularity. Nor does it absolve us of a responsibility to attempt to create order out of chaos, he told a Business for Scotland annual dinner. We have 18 months of Brexit negotiations and after that perhaps a three-year period of transition to get our ducks in a row. Salmond said, in a speech peppered with jibes at the government s Brexit talks, which have faltered in recent weeks. He said that EFTA membership could be a prelude to full EU membership if necessary. We have to offer something which is doable, feasible and speedily deliverable for the European connections of an independent Scotland, he said, | 0fake |
White House starts probe of private email use by senior aides: Politico | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House has launched an internal investigation into the use of private email by senior aides, pulling batches of emails on the White House server to and from their private accounts, Politico reported on Thursday. Citing four unnamed officials, Politico said the effort began this week after it reported that President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and adviser, Jared Kushner, and other senior White House officials had used private email accounts to exchange messages for government business. A U.S. House of Representatives committee asked the White House on Monday for information about the Politico report. White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders, asked if Trump was concerned about the reported use of private emails, told reporters earlier on Thursday, “The White House has been clear and instructs all staff to fully comply with the Presidential Records Act. All staff has been briefed on the need to preserve those records, and will continue to do so.” During Trump’s 2016 election campaign, the Republican real estate developer attacked Democratic rival Hillary Clinton for her use of a private email server for official correspondence when she was secretary of state under President Barack Obama. Some of Clinton’s messages were later determined to contain classified information. The White House probe could take several weeks or even months to complete as officials are searching for all emails sent or received about government business, Politico reported. “The White House counsel’s office is reviewing the accounts to determine if the messages are germane to any investigations such as the ongoing Russia probes by Congress and special counsel Robert Mueller,” Politico reported. Mueller is investigating alleged Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election and possible collusion with Trump associates. Russia has denied any such efforts, and Trump has dismissed any talk of collusion. Politico earlier reported that other senior Trump aides had also used private email accounts, including former Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, former chief strategist Steve Bannon and economic adviser Gary Cohn. The New York Times reported on Monday that private accounts were also used by the president’s daughter Ivanka Trump after she became a White House adviser and by Stephen Miller, a senior Trump adviser. | 0fake |
Anti-Heroin Video From a Florida Sheriff Appalls Critics but Impresses Constituents - The New York Times | Maybe it was the ski masks that did it. Or it could have been the steely look in the eyes of Lake County, Fla. Sheriff Peyton Grinnell as he deadpanned: “We are coming for you. Run. ” Perhaps it was the muted background music: an eerie melody that wouldn’t have been out of place in a Batman movie. In the end, what could have been an unremarkable public service announcement about opioid abuse in Lake County spread widely on the internet, garnering about a million views on the Facebook page of the sheriff’s office, where it was first posted Friday. It sparked concerns about police militarization and drew more than a few comparisons to Islamic State recruitment videos. But many residents of Lake County seemed to respond positively, thanking the sheriff for drawing attention to a deadly scourge that has altered communities beyond recognition. In the clip, Sheriff Grinnell, who was elected in November, stood at a podium flanked by four deputies wearing black face coverings. The sheriff addressed his Lake County constituents, saying he was aware of the “serious issue” of heroin abuse in the area. He encouraged people to call the office with tips. He added: “To the dealers that are pushing this poison, I have a message for you. ” And the camera began to zoom in. The sheriff warned drug dealers that the police were waiting for some arrest warrants to be finalized. “Enjoy trying to sleep tonight, wondering if tonight’s the night our SWAT team blows your front door off the hinges,” he said. “We are coming for you. If our agents can show the nexus between you, the pusher of poison, and the person that overdoses and dies, we will charge you with murder. We are coming for you. Run. ” At the end of the video, Sheriff Grinnell and the four others walked offscreen in a silent, single file. “It makes the Lake County Sheriff’s Department look like they’re about to go to battle in Falluja,” said Ezekiel Edwards, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Criminal Law Reform Project. SWAT teams, he added, should be used only when there is an imminent threat to human life. “That video suggested that they are using SWAT inappropriately, and in a way that is going to escalate violence and danger to all involved. ” But Lt. John Herrell, a spokesman for the sheriff’s office, said responses from residents had been positive. “I would say that the critics are off the mark and have missed the whole point of the message,” he said. “The sheriff wanted to let the community know that he’s aware of this problem. ” Lt. Herrell added that the video’s tough tone was aimed at dealers, not addicts. And as for the men in black masks, he explained: “They are undercover deputies, and state statutes require that their identities be protected. ” Kim Mousette, 52, said it was time for the police to take a tougher approach to heroin abuse in the county. She said her neighborhood in Pine Lakes, once a quiet refuge, had lately become a haven for drug users where people no longer felt safe leaving their doors unlocked. “We were in one of the most pristine, protected areas of Florida, and now this is going on,” she said in a phone interview. “You could be walking along and have a syringe go through your foot. ” Ms. Mousette, who said the police had largely been unresponsive to complaints, voted for Sheriff Grinnell last year. Now, she feels she made the right choice. “I was very happy to see that video,” she said. Heroin abuse surged in Lake County after Florida’s state legislature cracked down on loosely regulated pain clinics — known as “pill mills” — in 2011, said Lt. Herrell. As a result, people lost easy access to prescription drugs like OxyContin and turned to heroin. The opioid scourge is national in scope the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that nearly 13, 000 people died of heroin overdoses across the country in 2015, up 20. 6 percent from 2014. Audrianna Nicole Boone, 27, watched family members suffer from addiction in her hometown, Lady Lake. She moved to North Carolina in 2012, and has long felt that the Lake County police never did enough to fight opioid abuse. “When I see this video, it’s kind of like the sheriff’s office declaring war on the drug addiction and the criminals,” she said. “I love it, and I hope it continues to go viral. ” Still, she added, the video was only a starting point. “Instead of arresting these people for the drug use, how about enacting some type of system that helps these people get clean and reintroduces these people to society?” she said. As the clip began to find audiences across the country, it encountered sharper criticism. Some compared it to Islamic State recruitment videos, which often feature militants wearing black ski masks. Others poked fun at the melodramatic production. Still others said it was a clear case of an of police forces across the United States. Mr. Edwards of the A. C. L. U. acknowledged that opioid addiction was a serious issue in need of redress — but not like this. “Even though it’s just one local video, it does, in a very short amount of time, encapsulate much of what is wrong with policing today: militarization, using force inappropriately, and continuing to fight a drug war that has proved to be a failure,” he said. Some in Lake County agreed. “It’s a good example of how overly militarized police in the U. S. are,” said Robert Vibert, 35, who lives in the town of Tavares, where the county sheriff’s office is. He said he found the video overly dramatic, as if Sheriff Grinnell were trying to make a name for himself. “I’m sure he means well, but his approach is lackluster and a waste if he doesn’t tackle the totality of the problem,” Mr. Vibert said. “Without attacking supply lines, and helping addicts and users get clean, it won’t ever really solve the problem. ” | 0fake |
Comment on WATCH: Human Rights Activists Are Targeting The China Dog Meat Festival by information security architect | WATCH: Human Rights Activists Are Targeting The China Dog Meat Festival By Travis Bille on April 24, 2016 Subscribe
If you are easily sickened by dog cruelty, prepare yourself for this story. And if you have a dog or a cat that you love, I strongly encourage you to hold them and hug them right now as you read this. I assure you my three dogs are cuddled up with me as I write it.
In Yulin, China, the government has gotten very good at looking the other way as the annual Yulin Festival brutally slaughters and consumes up to 10,000 dogs and 4,000 cats. Of course, the local government does not endorse the killing of dogs for meat. In fact, they’ve specifically said that they would ban the practice after the international outrage and online petitions sparked unwanted interest in the locals.
But though it is no longer an officially-sanctioned festival, the yearly summer solstice celebration continues, the trading continues, the dog cruelty continues, and the outrage and protests grow larger every year.
Those taking part in the festival insist that the animals come from mass breeding facilities, where they are specifically raised in humane conditions for this purpose. But a disturbing report from a Hong Kong-based group called Animals Asia says they found no evidence of any dog mass breeding facilities that could produce the animals at this level.
The implication of this is what protesters have been saying for years: the dogs are either picked up as strays or, far too often, are family dogs stolen from their homes by city dog traders. Adam Parascandola of Humane Society International (HSI) confirms that many dogs rescued by protesters and brought to them are most definitely family pets: “We’ve seen all manner of dog breeds coming in to the rescue shelters, some of them obviously someone’s pet because they still have their collars on with their names.”
Another excuse lobbed by festival-goers is that it’s no different than other people who eat beef, pork, chicken, turkey, etc. However, one of the most prominent grievances against the festival has little to do with consuming the animals and everything to do with how they are slaughtered.
In the U.S., the farming industry has been under the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act since 1958. That specific act had little oversight from the start, until Temple Grandin came in and revolutionized the industry . While the process is still not perfect, and perhaps the process of humane death can never be perfect, it nonetheless requires regularly-audited measures to ensure the least amount of suffering possible.
The Yulin Festival, however, has no such standards. Dog cruelty on display shows dogs and cats regularly shoved a dozen at a time into small cages where they await their fate. That fate is to be traded or sold, followed by a torturous death reported to include being beaten, skinned alive, electrocuted, boiled, burned, and finally eaten.
Under the guise of tradition, dog traders justify it as no different than eating turkey at Christmas. However, the summer solstice “tradition” in Yulin only really goes back to the 1990s , and the actual festival wasn’t officially started by city dog meat traders until 2009 . Most of China no longer uses dogs for meat, and younger generations are now standing with protesters to end the practice and drop the “old ways.”
As Yulin prepares for another year, the backlash prepares as well. There are many petitions on Change.org that have been going for years, some of which have millions of signatures, and many which are still active or new. Efforts are underway from WildlifePlanet.net to raise awareness, employing #Yulin2016 to bring together those opposed to the practices.
The video below is from ACTAsia for Animals , and at times is extremely graphic.
Featured image via Youtube screengrab About Travis Bille
Husband, son, dog dad, pit bull advocate, trombone player, religious studies scholar, grammar guru, amateur astrophysicist, Christian, cable TV-denier, Oxford comma apologist, Mountain Dew depository, football fan, baseball fan, climate change advocate, grill master, campaigner, writer, beer connoisseur, video game player, door knocker, book lover, music snob, hard worker, jazzer, gardener, lover, friend. Follow my dogs at MillicentBloggings.com and my other political writings at GreaterFoolSociety.com. Connect | 1real |
WHY TRUMP’S OWN CHILDREN WON’T Be Voting For Him In NY Primary | I m pretty sure Trump will win with a YUGE majority in New York without his kids votes. Eric Trump and Ivanka Trump won t be voting for their father, Donald, in the New York primary next week.The deadline to register to vote in the Republican primary in New York was October 9, 2015. Both Eric and Ivanka missed the deadline to register. They had a long time [to] register and they were, you know, unaware of the rules, and they didn t, they didn t register in time, Trump stated during an interview on Fox News. So they feel very, very guilty. But it s fine, I mean, I understand that. I think they have to register a year in advance and they didn t. So Eric and Ivanka I guess won t be voting, Trump added. Via: Breitbart News | 1real |
Putin dials up anti-U.S. rhetoric, keeps mum on re-election | SOCHI/MOSCOW (Reuters) - President Vladimir Putin launched one of his most stinging critiques of U.S. foreign policy on Thursday, listing what he called some of the biggest betrayals in U.S.-Russia relations. He declined to say if he would run for a fourth presidential term in an election set for March, though he is expected to stand after dominating Russian politics for 18 years. Instead, he used a high-profile televised discussion with foreign academics in southern Russia to reach back to what he regards as the darkest days of U.S.-Russia relations. Opinion polls suggest that harsh rhetoric towards the West plays well with many Russian voters, who credit Putin for restoring national pride and standing up to what they see as Western encroachment. Asked by a Germany-based academic to identify what mistakes Moscow had made in its relations with the West, Putin told the Valdai discussion forum in the Black Sea resort of Sochi: Our biggest mistake was that we trusted you too much. You interpreted our trust as weakness and you exploited that. Visibly angry at times, Putin cast Russia as the wronged party and its post-Soviet leadership as too naive and trusting. Unfortunately, our Western partners, having divided the USSR s geopolitical legacy, were certain of their own incontestable righteousness having declared themselves the victors of the Cold War, said Putin. They started to openly interfere in the sovereign affairs of countries and to export democracy in the same way as in their time the Soviet leadership tried to export the Socialist revolution to the whole world. Putin said U.S.-Russia relations were in a lamentable state, referencing an unprecedented anti-Russian campaign in the United States, the closure of Russian diplomatic facilities there and pressure on Russian media by U.S. authorities. He did not single out U.S. President Donald Trump for personal criticism, but said Trump s behavior was unpredictable as a result of political foes who were preventing him from fulfilling almost all of his policy pledges. Putin said the United States was trying to squeeze Russia out of European energy markets with its latest batch of sanctions, which Trump grudgingly signed into law in August after Congress approved them. The recent sanctions package adopted by the U.S. Congress was openly designed to push Russia out of European energy markets and to force Europe to switch to more expensive liquefied natural gas from the United States, even though the volumes there are not yet sufficient, he said. He criticized Trump s predecessors, describing how he believed the United States had betrayed Russia in the 1990s by not reciprocating what he called the unprecedented access Moscow gave Washington to Russia s secret nuclear facilities. He said the United States had flouted nuclear and chemical weapons treaties, saying Moscow had diligently complied with the same pacts only to be repeatedly let down by the United States. His speech and ripostes in a punchy question and answer session that followed often sounded like a history lesson. The United States had tried to stir up separatism in southern Russia in the 1990s, said Putin, something he said he knew for a fact from his stint leading the FSB spy agency. The 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq and NATO s 1999 bombing of Yugoslavia were bad, he said. And in comments that could have been drawn straight from the pages of the Cold War, Putin accused the United States of upsetting the strategic nuclear balance by modernizing its arsenal of weapons. Russia would develop new weapons systems, he pledged, if it was forced to, and if the United States withdrew from a landmark arms control treaty the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty Russia would hit back fast. From our side, the response will be instant, and I want to warn, symmetrical, said Putin. (This version of the story was refiled to fix a typo in the headline) | 0fake |
EU affirms support for Lebanon stability | BEIRUT (Reuters) - The European Union on Wednesday said it reaffirmed support for Lebanon s stability and unity after Saad al-Hariri s resignation as prime minister on Saturday plunged the country into crisis. In a statement, EU ambassadors called on all sides to pursue constructive dialogue and to continue work to strengthen Lebanon s institutions and to prepare for parliamentary elections in early 2018 in adherence with the constitution. | 0fake |
Rice chides Trump for criticism of judges, media | NEW YORK (Reuters) - Former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on Monday she would prefer that President Donald Trump not criticize judges and the media but that U.S. democratic institutions can withstand such comments. Speaking in an interview, Rice also described Trump as having a somewhat “transactional” view of foreign relations but she broadly endorsed his approach of seeking to enlist China’s help to get North Korea to rein in its nuclear program. Asked about Trump lashing out at judges when rulings go against him and describing the media as “the enemy of the people,” Rice replied: “It’s language that I would prefer not to hear. “But I don’t think that you can erode the scaffolding of democracy in the United States,” she added during a tour to promote her book “Democracy: Stories from the Long Road to Freedom.” Rice, national security adviser and secretary of state under Republican former President George W. Bush, is now a professor at Stanford University. She described U.S. institutions as “very strong” and said Trump “may have even found himself a bit surprised by how constraining that scaffolding really is.” Courts have blocked parts of two Trump executive orders that sought to temporarily ban entry to the United States for people from six Muslim-majority countries. In a 30-minute interview, Rice said the United States needed to find a way to punish Russia for its alleged interference in the 2016 U.S. election but without engaging in ‘tit-for-tat’ retaliation by meddling in Russian elections. She suggested prosecuting anyone in the United States who took part in what intelligence agencies believe was a deliberate effort to sway the presidential election in Trump’s favor, and to consider putting sanctions, such as visa bans, on people who did so from abroad. Rice, who has interspersed periods in public service with academic posts, suggested Trump, a New York real estate magnate, may see foreign policy more in terms of striking deals than finding common interests. Before meeting Chinese President Xi Jinping last month, Trump suggested China might get better trade deals with the United States if it put more pressure on North Korea to restrain its nuclear and missile programs. “The president still has a kind of transactional view of international politics but, in fact, interests are more enduring than transactions,” Rice said. However, Rice endorsed Trump’s policy of trying to enlist Chinese help against North Korea, which is believed to have conducted five nuclear tests since 2006 and to be developing intercontinental ballistic missiles that could strike the U.S. mainland. China, the North’s main trading partner and the closest thing it has to an ally, has historically been unwilling to tighten the economic screws on Pyongyang for fear of triggering a collapse and sending millions of refugees across the border. Rice said the U.S. task was to convince the Chinese that they had to choose between doing “really hard things to bring this regime into line or we will have to do harsh things.” The former secretary of state also said North Korea’s current leader, Kim Jong Un, is far less predictable than his father, Kim Jong Il, and may not be fully rational. “Kim Jong Un is far more reckless than his father ... I wonder if he is not a little unhinged,” she said. “I wonder if the Chinese aren’t beginning to reconsider their view that ... a stable North Korean regime, even if it is nuclear-armed, is better than an unstable one.” | 0fake |
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 |
Obama gets away with some whoppers on guns at town hall event | President Obama’s appearance at a town hall meeting Thursday night on “Guns in America” was an orchestrated performance by invitation only. But event, hosted by CNN at George Mason University, saw anchor Anderson Cooper continually surprise the president.
Cooper demonstrated a deft command of the facts related to the gun issue and that came through with his guests and in his questions—though, as the evening unfolded, he continually let the president get away with untruths about his past positions.
Surprisingly, both sides of the issue were present in the small room—though, judging by audience applause, most were anti-gun-freedom.
Some of the moments were unintentionally revealing.
Cooper began by asking President Obama if he’d ever owned a gun. Mr. Obama sat up in surprise and said “no.” But, after a search for words, the president said he shoots skeet sometimes at Camp David before adding that he’s not much “of a marksman.” When he said that anyone who enjoys the shotgun sports knew he must not have shot skeet much, as “marksmanship” is a term used for target shooting, not by those who shoot skeet, trap or sporting clays.
When Cooper shifted the discussion to why the president chose to use executive actions on the gun issue, instead of working with Congress, Cooper asked the president if he would meet with the NRA. The president said, “I’m happy to meet with the NRA,” but as he said it he had this snarky smile on his face that would have been more fitting on one of his late show appearances.
Now, CNN says they invited President Obama to this live “town hall” on guns at George Mason University and that they later invited the NRA. The NRA, however, said they’d rather not play along with a “public relations spectacle orchestrated by the White House.”
The National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), the trade association for firearms manufacturers, also declined an invitation. Larry Keane, senior vice president and general counsel to the NSSF, told me, “We declined the invitation because it is a White House-orchestrated made-for-TV event and not an opportunity for a genuine dialogue or an effort to find common ground. We remain disappointed that the president has chosen to demagogue the issue for political purposes instead of providing real leadership like working to advance Rep. Tim Murphy’s bipartisan legislation to address the issue of mental health, which is the common denominator in mass shootings.”
Given Obama’s—and CNN’s—attacks on the NRA and gun manufacturers in general, it is hard to blame them for passing on the invitation, but in retrospect Cooper might have made them wish they were there to help keep President Obama squirming.
As squirm he did—with the facts and in his seat.
Taya Kyle, the wife of the late “American Sniper” Chris Kyle, was the first person Cooper called on. Kyle recently won a gun competition using the latest in sniper technology. She is a confident straight shooter. She pointed out that while the murder rate is at an all-time low, gun ownership is at an all time high. And then she asked, “Why not celebrate who we are?”
President Obama began shifting on his stool and searching for words to lawyer his way out of these basic facts. He finally pointed out that national trends don’t necessarily hold true in all locales, but he never had to answer why the areas with the strictest gun controls tend to have the highest murder rates.
There was also a rape survivor, Kimberly Corban, who, when called on said, “I have been unspeakably vandalized once already” before asking why she shouldn’t be able to carry a gun to protect herself.
President Obama was really uncomfortable then. He began back peddling and said his current executive actions won’t interfere with her right to carry a gun. But he never had to explain that he has supported bans on concealed-carry permits.
President Obama also repeatedly said that people can “just go on the Internet and buy whatever weapon they want.” But he was never forced to explain that any gun bought from a dealer over the Internet has to be sent to a local dealer that by law has to perform a background check before they can transfer the gun.
Later, Cooper actually did challenge President Obama by breaking in and asking “is it fair to call it a conspiracy” that people think he wants to take their guns away. “Yes, it is fair to call it a conspiracy,” said President Obama, who then claimed that he isn’t plotting take peoples’ guns away.
But Cooper didn’t force the president to address his advocacy for a renewed “assault weapons” ban, or for his administration’s public desire to use black lists, such as the no-fly list, to take away citizens’ Second Amendment rights without giving them even the basics of due process.
There were other questions that took President Obama aback, such as when Sheriff Paul Babue pushed Obama on how his proposals wouldn’t solve recent mass shootings. Cooper even broke in to say that “none of the guns used in recent mass shootings, I should point out, were purchased from legal dealers.”
President Obama didn’t have a clear answer to say why he isn’t swayed by these facts. He meandered before saying, “The young man who killed those children in Newtown didn’t have a criminal record but he had access to an arsenal.” He referred to an attack in China where a person attacked people with a knife and said “the vast majority survived because he wasn’t wielding a semiautomatic.”
Again, Cooper allowed President Obama to escape an obvious allusion to the fact that he would like to ban semiautomatic firearms.
The president was also allowed to get away with a big lie on “smart-guns.”
President Obama said, “[Smart Gun technology] has not been developed primarily because it has been blocked by the NRA” and firearms manufacturers.
Cooper didn’t challenge this point and instead called on a person in the audience, which changed the topic.
Nevertheless, this is a clear and provable fabrication by President Obama. As I detail, with interviews with many gun makers, law makers and gun experts in my book “The Future of the Gun,” the NRA and the NSSF, to name two pro-Second Amendment groups, have statements on their websites saying they are not opposed to “smart-gun” technology. All the manufacturers, the NRA leadership and more, point to laws that seek to mandate smart-gun technology—regulations previously backed by the Obama administration—that are what is impeding smart-gun development. Even “60 Minutes” noted this, and pointed out a New Jersey law on the books that would do this, in a recent report.
President Obama said early on in the town hall event that “people occupy different realities.”
Anyone who watched CNN’s “Guns in America” was certainly left with the conclusion that in Obama’s chosen reality he wishes he could, with a stroke of his pen, pass European-style gun controls in America.
Frank Miniter is the author of The Future of the Gun" (Regnery 2014) a book that gets to the basis of the gun issue. He is also the author of the New York Times Bestseller "The Ultimate Man’s Survival Guide" (Regnery April 14, 2009). | 0fake |
Cypriot leaders to continue talks in November: UN | EU UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon (C) meets with Greek Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades (L) and Mustafa Akinci (R), the Turkish Cypriot leader, at the UN headquarters in New York, September 25, 2016. (Photo by AFP)
Cypriot political leaders have agreed to continue talks in Switzerland next month in an attempt to reach an agreement on the reunification of the Mediterranean island country, the United Nations (UN) has announced.
A UN spokesman, Aleem Siddique, made the announcement on Wednesday, saying Greek Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades and Turkish Cypriot leader Mustafa Akinci will meet at Mont Pelerin, near Lake Geneva, from November 7 to 11.
Siddique said the two leaders, in the presence of the UN envoy for Cyprus, will concentrate their talks on how much territory each side will administer under an envisioned federation and will discuss all other outstanding issues, too.
The leaders have expressed hope that the Switzerland meeting “will pave the way for the last phase of talks in line with their shared commitment to do their utmost in order to reach a settlement within 2016,” the UN spokesman said.
Negotiations on reuniting the Mediterranean island under a single federal roof have made significant headway since Anastasiades and Akinci resumed talks led by the UN nearly 18 months ago.
However, important differences still remain on the question of territorial arrangements, security and property rights.
Previous UN-mediated talks to reunify the Mediterranean island faced a deadlock in October 2014 when Turkey announced plans to search for oil and gas in waters off Cyprus.
Cyprus has been divided since 1974, after an intervention by Turkey, which came when a military coup was carried out by individuals who sought to unify the island with Greece.
Nearly one decade later in 1983, Turkish Cypriots declared an independent state, which has only been recognized by Ankara. Turkey has some 35,000 soldiers stationed in the north of that part of Cyprus.
Cyprus has been a European Union (EU) member since 2004, but only the south enjoys full membership benefits. Loading ... | 1real |
Kashmiris observes Black Day decades after India occupied Kashmir | Kashmiris observes Black Day decades after India occupied Kashmir Thu Oct 27, 2016 10:22PM Pakistanis shout slogans in the support of the Kashmiri people during a protest in Lahore on October 27, 2016. © AFP
Javed RanaPress TV, Islamabad
Kashmiri people observe the Black Day all over the world particularly in their disputed region which is divided between Pakistan and India. The date marks almost 7 decades of violence in Kashmir. On the eve of the event Pakistani, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif warned India that it will face serious consequences if its soldiers do not stop killing civilians in border regions along the so-called Line of Control (LoC) which divides Indian-controlled Kashmir from the Pakistani side. Loading ... | 1real |
Social Media Blackout? FBI Emails Are Not ‘Trending’ On Twitter, Facebook, Buzzfeed, Or Snapchat | Buzzfeed…“Trending Now”
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As Liberty Blitzkrieg’s Mike Krieger recently asked (and answered) , why are these things happening in the first place?
Apple claims not to endorse candidates, but their actions suggest otherwise, and some of their executives – including CEO Tim Cook – actively support Clinton’s campaign. Buzzfeed recently obtained an invitation to a private $50,000-per-plate fundraiser Cook is hosting for Clinton with his Apple colleague, Lisa Jackson, at the end of this month.
Apple isn’t the only corporation doing Clinton’s bidding. Wikileaks founder Julian Assange said Clinton made a deal with Google and that the tech giant is “directly engaged” in her campaign. It’s been widely reported Clinton hired Eric Schmidt —chairman of Alphabet, the parent company of Google—to set up a tech company called The Groundwork. Assange claims this was to ensure Clinton had the “engineering talent to win the election.” He also pointed out that many members of Clinton’s staff have worked for Google, and some of her former employees now work at Google.
Of course, I covered Groundwork earlier this year. See: Meet “Groundwork” – Google Chairman Eric Schmidt’s Stealth Startup Working to Make Hillary Clinton President
Twitter is another culprit. The company has gotten a lot of slack for banning conservatives and Trump supporters such as Breitbart’s Milo Yiannopoulos and, most recently, rapper Azealia Banks after she came out in support of Trump. Twitter has provided vague answers as to why conservative voices have been banned while they’ve allowed other users to call for the killing of cops.
Just yesterday, Buzzfeed revealed that the social media giant’s top executive personally protected the President from seeing critical messages last year. “In 2015, then-Twitter CEO Dick Costolo secretly ordered employees to filter out abusive and hateful replies to President Barack Obama.”
The founders of some of the most popular pro-Trump Twitter handles – including @USAforTrump2016 and @WeNeedTrump—insist Twitter is censoring their content. They’ve pointed out that Twitter changes trending hashtags associated with negative tweets about Clinton (which has been reported before ). On August 4, shortly after the hashtag “HillaryAccomplishment” began trending, it was taken over by anti-Clinton users, who used it to mention Benghazi or Emailgate. Eric Spracklen, @USAforTrump2016 founder, noticed the hashtag was quickly changed—pluralized to #HillarysAccomplishments.
Many people have pointed out the exact shenanigans described above for other Clinton-related hashtags. In fact, it’s been my self-described progressive friends who have been most up in arms about it.
“They take away the hashtag that has negative tweets for Clinton and replace it with something that doesn’t so the average person doesn’t see what was really trending,” Spracklen said. “This happens every day.”
This new strand, where one cannot even search for alternative viewpoints amid technology companies who stand to benefit from the free-trade policies and eased immigration regulations of a Clinton presidence, represents a dangerous sea change. There’s absolutely no question the digital forums we use every day are censoring conservatives and favoring Clinton. You can’t simply scroll through photos on Instagram, look for a video game in the App Store or do a quick Google search without being fed anti-Trump and pro-Clinton propaganda.
Personally, I’ve definitely noticed a big-time pro-Clinton bias in my Twitter stream on a daily basis, and I don’t follow people/organizations that would define themselves as overtly pro-Clinton. That’s my honest perception, and I don’t have a dog in this fight.
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Trumps Hollywood Walk of Fame star Destroyed with a Sledgehammer and Pick | Trump's Hollywood Walk of Fame star Destroyed with a Sledgehammer and Pick page: 1 link I guess you could say it a sign of the strength of feeling this election has generated but in the real world it's just a mindless piece of vandalism that achieves nothing. A man wearing high visibility jacket and helmet was filmed taking out his frustration in front of a group of onlookers. News report on the incident. I suppose it made him feel better but it will return before he goes to prison. edit on 26-10-2016 by gortex because: (no reason given) I suppose it made him feel better but it will return before he goes to prison. So he was charged then? You didn't provide a link. edit on 10/26/2016 by ColdWisdom because: (no reason given) You don't think he will be arrested and charged ? He may not be in custody yet but he will be , he will be caught. link pure filth that guy is. I get it...Donald sucks, whatever..cast your vote against him on the 8th. Consider if Obama gets a star, will some dumbass redneck be smashing that up also because he didn't like the politics? morons. followers of the DNC in action. Such peaceful folks. link a reply to: gortex Poor sumbeyotch. The low IQs are always on display on both sides. I hope he just gets probation. This is how sore losers everywhere will react when Trump wins by a landslide. I like how safety-conscious he was by wearing a high visibility jacket, though. This is how sore losers everywhere will react when Trump wins by a landslide. I like how safety-conscious he was by wearing a high visibility jacket, though. If a mouth breather like this is so upset before the election, damn, if Trump does win, how many of these ass clowns will go full retard after the 8th? Thought these stars were for artists like actors. What did Trump get the star for? For this "not-scripted" TV show? Is it like with the Nobel Peace Prize, everybody nowadays gets one(thinkig of Obama and the EU...) originally posted by: network dude followers of the DNC in action. Such peaceful folks. No one said he was a DNC supporter He may just be a bloke who hates racist, homophobic, misogynistic narcissists. Thought these stars were for artists like actors. What did Trump get the star for? For this "not-scripted" TV show? Is it like with the Nobel Peace Prize, everybody nowadays gets one(thinkig of Obama and the EU...) He got it for his role as producer on The Apprentice. originally posted by: roadgravel It could be a psyop by a Trump supporter. Make people feel for Trump's lost star and therefore vote for him. That's one of the dumbest things I've ever heard. Nobody is going to vote for him just because somebody vandalized his star in Hollywood. edit on 10/26/2016 by AdmireTheDistance because: (no reason given) | 1real |
China says will protect sovereignty from any conflict on Korean peninsula | BEIJING (Reuters) - China s Defense Ministry said on Thursday that the Chinese military will make all necessary preparations to protect national sovereignty and regional peace and stability, when asked about the risk of conflict on the Korean peninsula. Defense Ministry spokesman Wu Qian made the comments at a monthly briefing in Beijing when asked what preparations China was making in case a war breaks out. Wu also reiterated China s view that the issue should be resolved via talks, not military means, which he said were not an option to resolve tensions. | 0fake |
Trump Campaign Aides Had Repeated Contacts With Russian Intelligence - The New York Times | WASHINGTON — Phone records and intercepted calls show that members of Donald J. Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and other Trump associates had repeated contacts with senior Russian intelligence officials in the year before the election, according to four current and former American officials. American law enforcement and intelligence agencies intercepted the communications around the same time they were discovering evidence that Russia was trying to disrupt the presidential election by hacking into the Democratic National Committee, three of the officials said. The intelligence agencies then sought to learn whether the Trump campaign was colluding with the Russians on the hacking or other efforts to influence the election. The officials interviewed in recent weeks said that, so far, they had seen no evidence of such cooperation. But the intercepts alarmed American intelligence and law enforcement agencies, in part because of the amount of contact that was occurring while Mr. Trump was speaking glowingly about the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin. At one point last summer, Mr. Trump said at a campaign event that he hoped Russian intelligence services had stolen Hillary Clinton’s emails and would make them public. The officials said the intercepted communications were not limited to Trump campaign officials, and included other associates of Mr. Trump. On the Russian side, the contacts also included members of the government outside of the intelligence services, they said. All of the current and former officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because the continuing investigation is classified. The officials said that one of the advisers picked up on the calls was Paul Manafort, who was Mr. Trump’s campaign chairman for several months last year and had worked as a political consultant in Ukraine. The officials declined to identify the other Trump associates on the calls. The call logs and intercepted communications are part of a larger trove of information that the F. B. I. is sifting through as it investigates the links between Mr. Trump’s associates and the Russian government, as well as the hacking of the D. N. C. according to federal law enforcement officials. As part of its inquiry, the F. B. I. has obtained banking and travel records and conducted interviews, the officials said. Mr. Manafort, who has not been charged with any crimes, dismissed the officials’ accounts in a telephone interview on Tuesday. “This is absurd,” he said. “I have no idea what this is referring to. I have never knowingly spoken to Russian intelligence officers, and I have never been involved with anything to do with the Russian government or the Putin administration or any other issues under investigation today. ” He added, “It’s not like these people wear badges that say, ‘I’m a Russian intelligence officer. ’” Several of Mr. Trump’s associates, like Mr. Manafort, have done business in Russia. And it is not unusual for American businessmen to come in contact with foreign intelligence officials, sometimes unwittingly, in countries like Russia and Ukraine, where the spy services are deeply embedded in society. Law enforcement officials did not say to what extent the contacts might have been about business. The officials would not disclose many details, including what was discussed on the calls, the identity of the Russian intelligence officials who participated, and how many of Mr. Trump’s advisers were talking to the Russians. It is also unclear whether the conversations had anything to do with Mr. Trump himself. A report from American intelligence agencies that was made public in January concluded that the Russian government had intervened in the election in part to help Mr. Trump, but did not address whether any members of the Trump campaign had participated in the effort. The intercepted calls are different from the wiretapped conversations last year between Michael T. Flynn, Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser, and Sergey I. Kislyak, Russia’s ambassador to the United States. In those calls, which led to Mr. Flynn’s resignation on Monday night, the two men discussed sanctions that the Obama administration imposed on Russia in December. But the cases are part of American intelligence and law enforcement agencies’ routine electronic surveillance of the communications of foreign officials. The F. B. I. declined to comment. The White House also declined to comment Tuesday night, but earlier in the day, the press secretary, Sean Spicer, stood by Mr. Trump’s previous comments that nobody from his campaign had contact with Russian officials before the election. “There’s nothing that would conclude me that anything different has changed with respect to that time period,” Mr. Spicer said in response to a question. Two days after the election in November, Sergei A. Ryabkov, the deputy Russian foreign minister, said “there were contacts” during the campaign between Russian officials and Mr. Trump’s team. “Obviously, we know most of the people from his entourage,” Mr. Ryabkov told Russia’s Interfax news agency. The Trump transition team denied Mr. Ryabkov’s statement. “This is not accurate,” Hope Hicks, a spokeswoman for Mr. Trump, said at the time. The National Security Agency, which monitors the communications of foreign intelligence services, initially captured the calls between Mr. Trump’s associates and the Russians as part of routine foreign surveillance. After that, the F. B. I. asked the N. S. A. to collect as much information as possible about the Russian operatives on the phone calls, and to search through troves of previous intercepted communications that had not been analyzed. The F. B. I. has closely examined at least three other people close to Mr. Trump, although it is unclear if their calls were intercepted. They are Carter Page, a businessman and former foreign policy adviser to the campaign Roger Stone, a longtime Republican operative and Mr. Flynn. All of the men have strongly denied that they had any improper contacts with Russian officials. As part of the inquiry, the F. B. I. is also trying to assess the credibility of the information contained in a dossier that was given to the bureau last year by a former British intelligence operative. The dossier contained a raft of allegations of a broad conspiracy between Mr. Trump, his associates and the Russian government. It also included unsubstantiated claims that the Russians had embarrassing videos that could be used to blackmail Mr. Trump. The F. B. I. has spent several months investigating the leads in the dossier, but has yet to confirm any of its most explosive claims. Senior F. B. I. officials believe that the former British intelligence officer who compiled the dossier, Christopher Steele, has a credible track record, and he briefed investigators last year about how he obtained the information. One American law enforcement official said that F. B. I. agents had made contact with some of Mr. Steele’s sources. The agency’s investigation of Mr. Manafort began last spring as an outgrowth of a criminal investigation into his work for a political party in Ukraine and for the country’s former president, Viktor F. Yanukovych. It has focused on why he was in such close contact with Russian and Ukrainian intelligence officials. The bureau did not have enough evidence to obtain a warrant for a wiretap of Mr. Manafort’s communications, but it had the N. S. A. scrutinize the communications of Ukrainian officials he had met. The F. B. I. investigation is proceeding at the same time that separate investigations into Russian interference in the election are gaining momentum on Capitol Hill. Those investigations, by the House and Senate Intelligence Committees, are examining not only the Russian hacking but also any contacts that Mr. Trump’s team had with Russian officials during the campaign. On Tuesday, top Republican lawmakers said that Mr. Flynn should be one focus of the investigation, and that he should be called to testify before Congress. Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, said the news about Mr. Flynn underscored “how many questions still remain unanswered to the American people more than three months after Election Day, including who was aware of what, and when. ” Mr. Warner said Mr. Flynn’s resignation would not stop the committee “from continuing to investigate General Flynn, or any other campaign official who may have had inappropriate and improper contacts with Russian officials prior to the election. ” | 0fake |
SPEECHLESS! KANYE WEST Meets With President-Elect Donald Trump…Trump Train? [Video] | DONALD TRUMP and KANYE WEST Greet Reporters After Meeting in Trump Tower ! KANYE WEST Jumped on the Trump Train ! pic.twitter.com/YfxLPM0ktH TRUMP ANOMALY (@ANOMALY1) December 13, 2016 | 1real |
FOX: Latinos Are Already CRUSHING Trump At The Polls | Comments
Republicans are fond of blaming the media for their troubles, but never blaming voters for utterly rejecting their party’s platform of racism, hatred and economic inequality. To some Republican voters, it will even come as a surprise that Donald Trump loses next week’s election, but the signs were all there and here’s an excerpt from just one of the rare Fox News stories that admits it: “ ‘Sleeping Giant’ awake and roaring – early voting shows high Latino turnout “:
The tens of millions of early votes cast point to strength from Democratic-leaning Latino voters, potentially giving Clinton a significant advantage in Nevada and Colorado. With more than half the votes already cast in those states, Democrats are matching if not exceeding their successful 2012 pace, according to data compiled by The Associated Press.
Latinos, another group that Democrats have been banking on, are turning out in larger numbers than anticipated, and they very well may be the ones who give the party’s presidential nominee the margin of victory. “We are seeing the trajectory of the election change in some states, but Democrats are also making up ground,” said Michael McDonald, a University of Florida professor and expert in voter turnout.
They don’t let Sean Hannity or Lou Dobbs on to Fox News Latino, which is probably why it actually publishes some factual stories, unlike Fox News or Fox Business, who just today had to retract an entirely false story about Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.
Meanwhile, Univision exit polling is showing that Latinos have the same high level of regard for Hillary Clinton in Florida that they have for President Barack Obama. This level of support is considered key to the Democratic nominee’s strategy to win the Sunshine State, which would act as a firewall, closing almost all of the Republican nominee’s paths to the presidency. The Miami Herald reports :
Hillary Clinton has hit a key marker among Florida Hispanics, according to a new poll: She’s reached the level of popularity that helped President Barack Obama win the nation’s largest battleground state in 2012.
Sixty percent of Florida Latinos favor Clinton, the Univision News poll shows. That’s the same number that voted for Obama four years ago, according to exit polls from that election.
The polls further indicate that Hillary Clinton will probably get at least 60% of the latino vote in Florida, but there’s 9% of the sample that is still not decided, so it could be much higher by the time election day finishes.
Politico is reporting that the Democratic nominee’s 30-point lead amongst Latino voters in Florida isn’t just a problem for Trump, but that for the entire GOP it’s a “terrifying” prospect. For the wing of the Republican party that likes to win elections, this poll is probably invoking the moment where they see their party’s entire electoral history as the party of Lincoln flash before its eyes, which can only mean that the end of the decadently twisted Grand Old Party is near.
Republicans wrote an autopsy of their party after their politics of division, hatred and the 47% blew the 2012 election, which declared the GOP dead in the water. Particularly, the report cited the Tea Party’s radical anti-immigration policies, racist dog whistles and the war on women.
Luckily, that spurred the rank and file GOP voters in 2016 to pick an orange zombie Presidential candidate, a man who has turned off women and latinos like a switch, and added muslims, finished off black people and finally convinced college educated voters to trust that the Democratic party is the only rational political actor that can be trusted.
Donald Trump’s “safe zone”– THE Fox News Network – is reporting a massive turnout in the latino communities the Republican candidate so despises.
Now, there is absolutely no way he can claim that the election is rigged next Tuesday night when all of the major news networks pronounce his campaign dead, and the Republican Party along with it. | 1real |
Trump’s Klan Endorsement Generates Epic Newspaper Front Page (IMAGE) | The NY Daily News, one of the tabloid newspapers that also happens to be a hometown publication for Donald Trump, has produced another cover mocking the fascist billionaire.Appearing on the front of Friday s newspaper is a Ku Klux Klansman in full dress, announcing an endorsement of Trump s presidential career.An early look at tomorrow's front page:TRUMP FOR PREZ Ex-KKK leader: Donald just like us! https://t.co/kVep9MWIZz pic.twitter.com/ls4iIFxlsn New York Daily News (@NYDailyNews) February 26, 2016The cover is a reference to the announcement from infamous former KKK leader David Duke that he is fully backing Trump s campaign. Duke told listeners to his underground radio show that it is the duty of white supremacists to vote for the current Republican presidential front runner. Voting for these people, voting against Donald Trump at this point, is really treason to your heritage, Duke said on the David Duke Radio Program. BuzzFeed News first reported the comments. I m not saying I endorse everything about Trump. In fact, I haven t formally endorsed him. But I do support his candidacy, and I support voting for him as a strategic action. I hope he does everything we hope he will do. Duke also told his fellow white supremacists that they need to go out and volunteer for Trump, noting: And I am telling you that it is your job now to get active. Get off your duff. Get off your rear end that s getting fatter and fatter for many of you everyday on your chairs. When this show s over, go out, call the Republican Party, but call Donald Trump s headquarters, volunteer. Trump has consistently appealed to bigotry in his campaign. He first launched his effort by calling Mexicans rapists, then proceeded to advocate for registering Muslims and barring them from entering the United States. Trump himself has also been caught several times using his Twitter account to amplify the messages of white supremacists and other racists, who are loudly backing his campaign online and attacking his critics.Featured image via Flickr | 1real |
COLLEGE STUDENT SUSPENDED For Saying He Thinks Black Women Are: “not hot” | Would this student have been suspended for saying he doesn t think blondes are hot? Did Colorado College violate a student s First Amendment right to free speech when it suspended him for six months for stating online that he doesn t find black women attractive?We may never know, unless the student who was suspended takes legal action, and there has been no report of any such filing.But some free speech advocates would probably urge him to do so.On Nov. 9, an untold number of Colorado College students engaged in a Yik Yaks social media conversation regarding the topic black lives matter, according to a report from TheCollegeFix.com.What was supposed to be a serious discussion reportedly turned raunchy and over-the-top, with a number of participants posting distasteful comments.For instance, student Thaddeus Pryor said the conversation included a post describing white males as dirty hippies with undersized sexual organs who have sexual relations with relatives.At one point the topic changed to black women matter, to which Pryor anonymously replied, They matter, they re just not hot. The next day several quotes from the online conversation including Pryor s remark about black women were reproduced on full-sized banners and hung in the Student Center near a dean s office, TheCollegeFix.com reported.The next thing he knew, Pryor was brought before a disciplinary panel, and learned he had been accused by rumor of being the author of most of the controversial posts in the conversation, the news site reported.Pryor admitted to writing the statement about black women, but denied writing anything else. And there is no way for the college to determine who wrote the other statements that Pryor did not accept responsibility for. Yik Yak is an anonymous social media application on smartphones that restricts posts to those within a geolocated boundary, like a college campus, according to the Huffington Post. While student have frequently protested in recent years over racist and offensive posts on the app, colleges have no way to identify who says anything on Yik Yak. College officials quickly moved to suspend Pryor. Senior Associate Dean of Students Rochelle Mason, Dean of Students Mike Edmonds and Assistant Dean of Students Cesar Cervantes decided in less than 24 hours that Pryor should be suspended for 21 months the exact time it would take him to finish his degree and prohibited from being on campus. Pryor appealed and his suspension was reduced to six months, but he still claims that college officials neglected his due process rights as defined by college policy, and essentially pronounced him guilty of authoring far more than the one post he accepted responsibility for. Pryor said someone misled officials about the number of comments he posted, according to the news site. In a lengthy appeal letter to Edmonds, Pryor said he voluntarily admitted to posting the not hot comment despite Mason and Cervantes having no evidence other than hearsay that he was involved with the Nov. 9 posts, TheCollegeFix.com wrote. He said the college violated its own rules not only by failing to inform him of his alleged violations until he was sentenced, but by incorrectly recording in sanction papers that Mason and Cervantes had even informed him of alleged violations of the Student Code of Conduct. During my hearing, rather than presenting me with my possible violations then investigating my actions and how they may have constituted those violations, I was simply treated as broadly guilty, Pryor was quoted as saying.Apparently private schools like Colorado College have more legal authority to censor speech than public schools, there remains a question about whether Pryor s rights were violated.A nonprofit called the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) contend that the college violated a statement published in a student guide that says, all members of the college community have such basic rights as freedom of speech, the Huffington Post reported. Because Colorado College is a private institution, it generally does not have to grant the same First Amendment free speech rights that a public school would. However, FIRE insists the school s statement about free speech in its college guide creates a contractual obligation, according to the Huffington Post. Via: EAG | 1real |
What is the goal of the Progressive Movement: to gain power or to give it away? | pirate clip art free printable | Illustration of Pirate Skull ...(image by ) The Pirate Party of Iceland, the one nation that jailed its crooked bankers, is poised to win the election, less than 4 years after forming.
Their motto is: " "We are not here to gain power. We are here to distribute power."
I think this formulation can serve the Progressive Movement in the US, as it approaches mainstream status and is the most popular political movement in the nation, with 67% approving of the term progressive, over 55% supporting Sanders, and a robust majority supporting progressive programs like gun and immigration reform, raising the minimum wage, etc.
And this formulation also deals with the issue of Bigness, which many think incompatible with democracy and human rights. What if the purpose of bigness (ie winning elections) is NOT to consolidate power in new hands but to change the system by using this status to distribute power. - Advertisement -
Progressives are commonly accused by the right of being for Big Government, for thinking that government power is the solution to all problems. This Pirate formulation disrupts that claim, by showing a way to use the consolidation of power in order not to create a stronger state but to redistribute power and thus lessen the power of the state and powerful corporations and other institutions, public and private.
This formulation comes out of the anarchist tradition of decentralized power. The Pirate party has allied libertarians of both the right and left to take power, in order to distribute it from the banks and their servants back to the people themselves. Anarchism, we understand, is self-government, which means decentralized power. - Advertisement -
The success of the Pirate party shows how anarchists and libertarians of all kinds can come together to form a coalition Big enough to win but committed to breaking up the concentration of power, mostly in the hands of the financial institutions and their corrupt public servants.
The way to get beyond the "Iron Law of Oligarchy," which over 100 years ago German sociologist Robet Michels, which states " states that all forms of organization, regardless of how democratic they may be at the start, will eventually and inevitably develop oligarchic tendencies, thus making true democracy practically and theoretically impossible, especially in large groups and complex organizations." is to use consolidation of power (bigness) in the service of decentralizing power, pushing it back to the people and smaller communities.
Therefore, the goal of Progressives is NOT to gain power that is the means: the goal is to replace the old hierarchical system with a system of decentralized power, a model of self-government. | 1real |
California lawmaker resigns after media report of sexual harassment | SACRAMENTO, Calif. (Reuters) - California lawmaker Raul Bocanegra resigned from the state assembly on Monday, a week after local media reported that six women had accused him of sexual harassment, while denying any criminal wrongdoing. On Nov. 20 the Los Angeles Times published a report in which the women accused Bocanegra of groping or harassing them. Previously, the newspaper reported that Bocanegra had been disciplined by the state for inappropriate behavior in 2009. Reuters has not independently confirmed the allegations. Bocanegra’s staff did not immediately reply to Reuters requests for comment. Bocanegra, a Democrat, wrote on Facebook on Nov. 20, “News stories were reported a few weeks ago about a regrettable encounter when I was a legislative staffer in 2009. It was a moment that I truly regret, that I am very sorry for, and for which I have accepted responsibility for my actions.” Bocanegra said in the post that he planned to resign from the legislature at the end of the session in September 2018. In a statement posted on Monday on that Facebook page, Bocanegra wrote that he was resigning from the State Assembly effective immediately. “While I am not guilty of any such crimes, I am admittedly not perfect,” he wrote. Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon confirmed in an emailed statement that Bocanegra had resigned. Legislatures in several states are grappling with claims of sexual harassment and abuse. Bocanegra’s resignation came a day before the California statehouse is scheduled to begin hearings on sexual harassment. | 0fake |
Trump adviser from Wall Street backs U.S. bank breakup law | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - White House economic adviser Gary Cohn said he backed bringing back the Glass-Steagall Act, a Depression-era law that would revamp Wall Street banks by splitting their consumer-lending businesses from their investment arms. The National Economic Council director, also a former Goldman Sachs (GS.N) president, expressed support to lawmakers for a banking system where firms would focus primarily on trading and underwriting securities or issuing loans. Big banks have strongly opposed such a move that would fundamentally overhaul their business. Reinstating the law, which was repealed in 1999, has not attracted significant attention in Congress, but advocates in the White House and both parties now argue it would provide critical safeguards to prevent another financial crisis. Critics of that approach say it lacks nuance and would not have prevented the last financial meltdown. The fact Cohn, widely viewed as one of Wall Street’s own, was willing to push that position spooked big banks’ representatives in Washington. The White House confirmed Cohn’s remarks in a private meeting with lawmakers on Wednesday. A spokesperson said he was “simply discussing the President’s previously stated position” in favor of a “21st century Glass-Steagall.” Cohn's remarks were first reported by Bloomberg. bloom.bg/2nZK5n1 The Trump administration has indicated support for a return to Glass-Steagall. The White House has stuck by the idea since it was included in the Republican Party platform during the presidential campaign, and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin expressed interest in a modernized version of the law. When asked on Thursday when large financial institutions should begin to worry about Glass-Steagall becoming a reality, one industry representative said, “Right now.” However, any legislation establishing such a firewall faces long odds in the current Congress. The heads of the House and Senate banking committees have indicated support for alternative approaches, and efforts to move Glass-Steagall legislation in prior years have garnered little support. “A new Glass-Steagall would require legislation, and it simply isn’t a priority issue in Congress,” wrote Ian Katz, a financial policy analyst for the research firm Capital Alpha Partners, in a note to clients. In the meeting which was arranged by Senate Banking Committee Chairman Mike Crapo, Cohn was asked by Senator Elizabeth Warren about Glass-Steagall. Cohn responded favorably, noting that the Republican Party platform supports the idea, according to sources familiar with the meeting. The meeting included lawmakers from both parties and their staff. Bringing back Glass Steagall would likely have a significant impact on banks like JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM.N), Bank of America Corp (BAC.N) and Citigroup (C.N) that have large highly intertwined commercial lending and investment banking operations, say analysts. It would impact Goldman Sachs Group Inc (GS.N) and Morgan Stanley (MS.N) to a lesser degree although, they would likely have to revert to being standalone investment banks and shed their deposit funding. | 0fake |
Russia calls emergency U.N. task force meeting on Syria strikes | MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia has demanded an emergency meeting of the United Nations ceasefire task force in Geneva to discuss U.S. missile strikes on Syria, the RIA news agency quoted a diplomatic source as saying on Friday. Such meetings are chaired by U.N. Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura and were set up in early 2016 with joint U.S.-Russian backing. They are a forum for diplomats to talk about breaches of Syria’s shaky ceasefire. Moscow wants the meeting to be held in Geneva today at 1500 GMT, the source told RIA, adding that the task force would discuss “the situation on the ground with connection to the U.S. missile strike on Syria’s Shayrat airbase.” The United States fired cruise missiles earlier on Friday at the base from which President Donald Trump said a deadly chemical weapons attack had been launched. Russia has sharply condemned the strikes. | 0fake |
John Kasich: He’s Conservative, but at Least He’s Sane | I worked for Kasich on Capitol Hill. Yes, he’s very conservative. But there are a few surprises in there, and he’s in Bizarro World.
With his surprising second-place finish in the New Hampshire primary, Ohio Gov. John Kasich has vaulted out of the pack of also-rans to become the latest hope of two distinct groups of people: Republican operatives fearing what Donald Trump’s berserker candidacy might do to their party, and ordinary citizens simply hoping to have a sane presidential candidate to vote for.
Until this past week, Kasich has not attracted much attention, mainly because the current dynamic of media coverage encourages histrionics and preening. But by appearing halfway normal, as he did at last Saturday’s debate in South Carolina, and not engaging in theatrics about carpetbombing, waterboarding, or ripping up treaties, he has become the default choice of those who would worry if Kasich’s opponents ever got their hands on the nuclear switch.
He has the advantage (and disadvantage) of a long record. I had a chance to see him in action as I worked for him for 17 years on budget and armed services issues—although I’ve had no connection to him in over a decade, or to his campaign, and am now a political independent.
In the 1980s, at the dawn of his congressional career, many members of his own party considered Kasich a conservative bomb thrower—he would offer his own budget, something back-benchers weren’t supposed to do in those days. He has not changed ideologically or temperamentally—his 2011 effort to roll back labor protection for state employees was too extreme and Ohio voters overwhelmingly defeated it—but while Kasich has remained a staunch conservative, much of his party has lurched so far right it has entered Bizarro World.
This fact accounts for Kasich’s reputation as a RINO (Republican in name only) and why it may be more difficult for him to win his own party’s nomination than the general election. His apostasy in having Ohio accept Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act is unforgivable to Republicans who consider health insurance for the poor to be an instrument of Satan. Likewise, in 1994 he voted for an assault weapons ban, pure heresy for the burgeoning Ted Nugent wing of his party. Kasich’s practice of occasionally dissing wealthy GOP donors who are accustomed to blind deference is considered a minus among the party’s bigwigs.
Those deeds might help, though, in a general election. So might his national security experience: 18 years on the House Armed Services Committee counts for far more involvement in that field than all his opponents combined. Refreshingly, as a congressman he avoided the kneejerk military interventionism that is now mandatory for GOP candidates. He opposed authorizing the Marines’ mission in Lebanon in 1983; the bombing of the Marine barracks in October of that year and President Reagan’s decision to quickly withdraw vindicated Kasich’s stand.
Similarly, he opposed President Clinton’s bombing of Serbia, which in his view amounted to a drive-by shooting with cruise missiles in a conflict in which no discernible U.S. interests were involved. He was also able to work across the aisle with Democrats to put a stake through the heart of the B-2 bomber, a Cold War anachronism, which at $2.2 billion a copy had become an unaffordable luxury.
As Budget Committee chairman, Kasich was also present at the creation of the first balanced budget since the Eisenhower era. While other factors, such as an avalanche of revenues from the dot.com bubble, set the stage for the achievement, he had a formidable job just to keep his own colleagues on task. The defense hawks were always itching to bust the budget caps with more Pentagon spending. And then-Speaker Newt Gingrich, who appeared to suffer from ADD, occasionally threatened to derail the difficult march to a balanced budget with novel and unvetted policy visions.
The general election downside? Just as there are legitimate questions about Hillary Clinton’s receiving $675,000 from Goldman Sachs for three speeches, Kasich as a nominee would surely face scrutiny over his eight years as a managing director at Lehman Brothers. The investment bank’s collapse in September 2008, the biggest bankruptcy in U.S. history, nearly pitched the global economy into the abyss. Lawsuits to settle the dismantling of Lehman are still reverberating through the financial world. Ohio voters gave him a pass, but national inspection of his record would be more thorough—certainly if Clinton’s campaign had anything to do with it.
Stories occasionally surface about Kasich’s anger management problem. As a former employee, I can corroborate those allegations, as well as his tendency to preachy self-righteousness that is a constant temptation of professional politicians. These are, perhaps, pardonable sins both in view of the tasteless vaudeville act being played out by several of his GOP competitors, and his own positive accomplishments. | 0fake |
250,000-year-old artifact: The ultimate evidence of ‘Ancient Astronaut’ technology? | The discovery of an ancient artifact, mainly composed out of aluminum is considered as compelling evidence of ‘ancient astronaut’ visitations to Earth over 250,000 years ago. Lab tests have confirmed the age of the artifact and its mysterious composition. The idea that humanity has been visited by beings not from Earth in the distant past has captured the interest of millions worldwide.
Every once in a while, a strange discovery makes us reconsider whether or not history, as we have been told, is accurate.
What if we are missing something, and what if, in the distant past, extremely advanced technology was present on Earth?
READ: Everything We Have Been Taught About Our Origins Is A Lie
The mysterious artifact, composed mainly out of aluminum was found in Romania during the 1970’s when the nation was under communist rule, and information about it was released to the public at the time.
Now, lab tests conducted in Lausanne, Switzerland, have revealed that the metal fragment is composed of 90 percent aluminum and the remaining 10 percent of 11 different metals.
The artifact has an approximate age of 250,000 years, reports British newspaper the Sun .
But is this artifact really compelling proof ancient astronauts visited Earth hundreds of thousands of years ago?
As it turns out, Aluminum was not created by ‘modern civilization’ until 200 years ago. Aluminium was first isolated in 1825 by Danish physicist HC Oersted, so the discovery of the piece of metal with an age such as this has been considered extraordinary by researchers.
The item was discovered in 1973 when constructors were working on the shorelines of the Mures River, in the vicinity of the town of Auid. At around 10 meters below the surface, workers were left surprised when they recovered three mysterious objects.
All of them appeared, unlike anything they had seen, and seemed to be very old.
Archaeologists were brought to the site and identified two of the objects as being fossil remains.
However, the third piece left researchers surprised. IT appeared to be a man-made artifact, composed of an extremely lightweight metal. Researchers suspected at the time that it was the end of an axe.
To confirm the theories, the objects were sent to analysis to Cluj, Romania.
Experts determined that the fossils belonged to a large –extinct— mammal that died between 10,000 and 80,000 years ago.
READ: We Are Being Lied To About Our History
However, the third object caused confusion among experts. Scientists determined that the object was composed of a lightweight metal and was most likely manufactured due to the concavities of the object.
The Auid artifact is 20 meters long, 12.5 centimeters wide and has a thickness of 7 centimeters.
The object resembled some kind of part belonging to a complex mechanical system. However, researchers were unable to determine to what it belonged.
Deputy Director of the Romanian Ufologists Association, Gheorghe Cohal said: ‘Lab tests concluded it is an old UFO fragment given that the substances it comprises cannot be combined with technology available on Earth.’
However, not everyone seems convinced. Local historian Mihai Wittenberger doesn’t believe the object belongs to a complex mechanical device left behind by ancient astronauts. In fact, Wittenberger
believes the mysterious object may actually be a metal piece from a World War II German aircraft.
More precisely, Wittenberger claims the alleged ‘alien artifact’ was actually part of the landing gear of a Messerschnmitt ME 262.
But there’s one problem with that explanation. The mystery object is 250,000 years old.
The mysteries surrounding the artifact have not been solved, and currently, the ‘out-of-place- artifact resides in the History Museum of Cluj-Napoca, next to a sign that reads: ‘origin still unknown’.
Source: EWAO
Related: Everything We Have Been Taught About Our Origins Is A Lie We Are Being Lied To About Our History Ancient Egyptians had electricty and batteries thousands of years ago Forbidden History & OOPARTS: Out of Place Artifacts Ooparts: Alien electronic chip with age 450 million years found in stone near Labinsk city in Russia 17 Out-of-Place Artifacts Said to Suggest High-Tech Prehistoric Civilizations Existed The 500-Million-Year-Old Dorchester Pot Should Not Exist Have Humans devolved through history? Ancient Technology, the ultimate piece of evidence The mystery of the Swiss watch from the Ming Dynasty 30 million year old giant rings in the Bosnian mountains? 2-Billion-Year-Old Nuclear Mega-Reactor Discovered in Africa 500,000 Year-Old Spark Plug Found in Rock: The Coso Artifact Researchers in China discover a 300 million year old screw embedded into rock Forbidden History: Extraterrestrial Base Inside Bucegi Mountains | 1real |
Daniel Prophecy Discovered | Tuesday, 1 November 2016 He cometh...Bit by Bit.
Archaeologists worldwide are excited at the recent find in Jerusalem of what is believed to be the last prophecy of the prophet Daniel. It reads as follows: Last Prophecy of Daniel
And behold in the last days men shall gaze onto glowing boxes and be befuddled. They shall sit in crowded places and stare onto tablets and talk onto themselves and laugh even as harlots after a busy weekend. They shall be confused as to their nature and their private parts and doubt the innocence of their attractions to one another.
Men shall seek to beget children by men and women seek likewise to beget their own flesh from their own flesh. They shall believe all that they read and are told without question and be unable to discern between dream and reality.
They shall be as one, sleep-walking, knowing not whence they come or where they goest and yet all shall be of one mind. And that one mind shall worship and obey the Evil One that will be the mind's embodiment.... the Lord of Power and celebrity ... Lucifer .
So let it be said. So shall it be and when ye see these things happen know that the end is nigh. Make Auntie Matter's | 1real |
WATCH: Joy Reid Shuts Down Right-Wing Pastor For Lying In Defense Of Racist Trump | A pastor shamefully lied in defense of Donald Trump on Saturday and Joy Reid shut him down HARD.During an interview on MSNBC, conservative Christian pastor Darrell Scott, who is one of the few black people in America who support the Republican nominee, pretended that Trump is not a racist and denied that Trump had anything to do with the birther movement against President Obama.Trump tried to sell himself to black voters on Friday in front of an audience of white people by telling them they have nothing to lose by voting for him. That led Reid to ask, If Donald Trump makes a speech to black people when there are none around to hear it, did he make a sound? Reid turned to Scott and noted that Trump has made two appeals to black voters in recent days in places where the black population only makes up about 1 percent of the total. Why is he making those appeals in front of almost exclusively white audiences? she asked.Scott made excuses for Trump, claiming that it doesn t matter where he speaks because all African-Americans hear him. When pressed on why Trump has not accepted invitations from the NAACP, the Urban League, and the National Association of Black Journalists because he supposedly had better things to do already on his schedule.Reid smiled as Scott called Trump a cultural phenomenon who draws rock star crowds. Reid then zinged back that those crowds are devoid of black people.Reid slammed Trump for pushing the false notion that every black person in America is living in poverty and going to failing schools and then asked Scott about Trump s history of housing discrimination, which has been cited by the Justice Department because the Republican nominee refused to rent to black people.Scott claimed that it was just an accusation and denied that Trump discriminated against black people, but the record shows that Trump settled the case with the government because there was a strong case against him, hardly the action of a man who didn t commit such an offense.Reid then asked Scott about Trump s prominent role in the birther movement. Despite multiple video tapes of Trump pushing the birther conspiracy and demanding President Obama s birth certificate, Scott also denied that Trump had anything to do with the movement. Don t tell me you agree with the bitherism, sir, Reid pleaded. Don t tell me you agree with that. Scott replied by claiming that Hillary Clinton started the birther movement, a notion that is totally false. And Reid shut Scott down for blatantly lying on her show. That s wrong. Even a pastor cannot make things up on this show, she cautioned. I respect you as a pastor, but you re not going to come on and make things up. Here s the video via MSNBC.Donald Trump is desperately trying to save his flailing campaign and that s the only reason why he is making feeble attempts to court black voters now. If he really cared about black people he would have been courting them from the beginning. Instead, he has been palling around with white supremacists and encouraging violence against black protesters at his rallies. Scott can t sit there and call himself a man of God while lying through his teeth to defend a bloated racist. It s just not going to fly.Featured image via screenshot | 1real |
The path to total Dictatorship: America’s Shadow Government and its silent coup | The path to total Dictatorship: America’s Shadow Government and its silent coup Unaffected by elections. Unaltered by populist movements. Beyond the reach of the law By John W. Whitehead - October 27, 2016 “Today the path to total dictatorship in the U.S. can be laid by strictly legal means, unseen and unheard by Congress, the President, or the people . Outwardly we have a Constitutional government. We have operating within our government and political system … a well-organized political-action group in this country, determined to destroy our Constitution and establish a one-party state…. The important point to remember about this group is not its ideology but its organization… It operates secretly, silently, continuously to transform our Government…. This group … is answerable neither to the President, the Congress, nor the courts. It is practically irremovable.”— Senator William Jenner, 1954 speech
Unaffected by elections. Unaltered by populist movements. Beyond the reach of the law.
Say hello to America’s shadow government.
A corporatized, militarized, entrenched bureaucracy that is fully operational and staffed by unelected officials who are, in essence, running the country, this shadow government represents the hidden face of a government that has no respect for the freedom of its citizenry.
No matter which candidate wins the presidential election, this shadow government is here to stay. Indeed, as recent documents by the FBI reveal, this shadow government— also referred to as “The 7th Floor Group” —may well have played a part in who will win the White House this year.
To be precise, however, the future president will actually inherit not one but two shadow governments.
The first shadow government, referred to as COG or Continuity of Government, is made up of unelected individuals who have been appointed to run the government in the event of a “catastrophe.” COG is a phantom menace waiting for the right circumstances—a terrorist attack, a natural disaster, an economic meltdown—to bring it out of the shadows, where it operates even now. When and if COG takes over, the police state will transition to martial law.
Yet it is the second shadow government —also referred to as the Deep State—that poses the greater threat to freedom right now. Comprised of unelected government bureaucrats, corporations, contractors, paper-pushers, and button-pushers who are actually calling the shots behind the scenes, this government within a government is the real reason “we the people” have no real control over our government.
The Deep State, which “ operates according to its own compass heading regardless of who is formally in power ,” makes a mockery of elections and the entire concept of a representative government.
So who or what is the Deep State?
It’s the militarized police, which have joined forces with state and federal in order to establish themselves as a standing army. It’s the fusion centers and spy agencies that have created a surveillance state and turned all of us into suspects. It’s the courthouses and prisons that have allowed corporate profits to take precedence over due process and justice. It’s the military empire with its private contractors and defense industry that is bankrupting the nation. It’s the private sector with its 854,000 contract personnel with top-secret clearances, “a number greater than that of top-secret-cleared civilian employees of the government.” It’s what former congressional staffer Mike Lofgren refers to as “ a hybrid of national security and ”: the Department of Defense, the State Department, Homeland Security, the CIA, the Justice Department, the Treasury, the Executive Office of the President via the National Security Council, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, a handful of vital federal trial courts, and members of the defense and intelligence committees.
It’s every facet of a government that is no longer friendly to freedom and is working overtime to trample the Constitution underfoot and render the citizenry powerless in the face of the government’s power grabs, corruption and abusive tactics.
These are the key players that drive the shadow government.
This is the hidden face of the American police state that will continue long past Election Day.
Just consider some of the key programs and policies advanced by the shadow government that will continue no matter who occupies the Oval Office.
Domestic surveillance. No matter who wins the presidential popularity contest, the National Security Agency (NSA), with its $10.8 billion black ops annual budget, will continue to spy on every person in the United States who uses a computer or phone. Thus, on any given day, whether you’re walking through a store, driving your car, checking email, or talking to friends and family on the phone, you can be sure that some government agency, whether the NSA or some other entity, is listening in and tracking your behavior. Local police have been outfitted with a litany of surveillance gear, from license plate readers and cell phone tracking devices to biometric data recorders. Technology now makes it possible for the police to scan passersby in order to detect the contents of their pockets, purses, briefcases, etc. Full-body scanners, which perform virtual strip-searches of Americans traveling by plane, have gone mobile, with roving police vans that peer into vehicles and buildings alike—including homes. Coupled with the nation’s growing network of real-time surveillance cameras and facial recognition software, soon there really will be nowhere to run and nowhere to hide.
Global spying. The NSA’s massive surveillance network, what the Washington Post refers to as a $500 billion “ espionage empire ,” will continue to span the globe and target every single person on the planet who uses a phone or a computer. The NSA’s Echelon program intercepts and analyzes virtually every phone call, fax and email message sent anywhere in the world. In addition to carrying out domestic surveillance on peaceful political groups such as Amnesty International, Greenpeace and several religious groups, Echelon has also been a keystone in the government’s attempts at political and corporate espionage .
Roving TSA searches. The American taxpayer will continue to get ripped off by government agencies in the dubious name of national security. One of the greatest culprits when it comes to swindling taxpayers has been the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), with its questionable deployment of and complete mismanagement of millions of dollars’ worth of airport full-body X-ray scanners, punitive patdowns by TSA agents and thefts of travelers’ valuables. Considered essential to national security, TSA programs will continue in airports and at transportation hubs around the country.
USA Patriot Act, NDAA. America’s so-called war on terror, which it has relentlessly pursued since 9/11, will continue to chip away at our freedoms, unravel our Constitution and transform our nation into a battlefield, thanks in large part to such subversive legislation as the USA Patriot Act and National Defense Authorization Act. These laws completely circumvent the rule of law and the rights of American citizens. In so doing, they re-orient our legal landscape in such a way as to ensure that martial law, rather than the U.S. Constitution, is the map by which we navigate life in the United States. These laws will continue to be enforced no matter who gets elected.
Militarized police state. Thanks to federal grant programs allowing the Pentagon to transfer surplus military supplies and weapons to local without charge, police forces will continue to be transformed from peace officers into heavily armed extensions of the military, complete with jackboots, helmets, shields, batons, pepper-spray, stun guns, assault rifles, body armor, miniature tanks and weaponized drones. Having been given the green light to probe, poke, pinch, taser, search, seize, strip and generally manhandle anyone they see fit in almost any circumstance, all with the general blessing of the courts, America’s law enforcement officials, no longer mere servants of the people entrusted with keeping the peace, will continue to keep the masses corralled, controlled, and treated like suspects and enemies rather than citizens.
SWAT team raids. With more than 80,000 SWAT team raids carried out every year on unsuspecting Americans by local police for relatively routine police matters and federal agencies laying claim to their own law enforcement divisions, the incidence of botched raids and related casualties will continue to rise. Nationwide, SWAT teams will continue to be employed to address an astonishingly trivial array of criminal activity or mere community nuisances including angry dogs, domestic disputes, improper paperwork filed by an orchid farmer, and misdemeanor marijuana possession.
Domestic drones. The domestic use of drones will continue unabated. As mandated by Congress, there will be 30,000 drones crisscrossing the skies of America by 2020, all part of an industry that could be worth as much as $30 billion per year. These machines, which will be equipped with weapons, will be able to record all activities, using video feeds, heat sensors and radar. An Inspector General report revealed that the Dept. of Justice has already spent nearly $4 million on drones domestically, largely for use by the FBI , with grants for another $1.26 million so police departments and nonprofits can acquire their own drones.
School-to-prison pipeline. The paradigm of abject compliance to the state will continue to be taught by example in the schools, through school lockdowns where police and drug-sniffing dogs enter the classroom, and zero tolerance policies that punish all offenses equally and result in young people being expelled for childish behavior. School districts will continue to team up with law enforcement to create a “schoolhouse to jailhouse track” by imposing a “double dose” of punishment: suspension or expulsion from school, accompanied by an arrest by the police and a trip to juvenile court.
Overcriminalization. The government bureaucracy will continue to churn out laws, statutes, codes and regulations that reinforce its powers and value systems and those of the police state and its corporate allies, rendering the rest of us petty criminals. The average American now unknowingly commits three felonies a day, thanks to this overabundance of vague laws that render otherwise innocent activity illegal. Consequently, small farmers who dare to make unpasteurized goat cheese and share it with members of their community will continue to have their farms raided.
Privatized Prisons. States will continue to outsource prisons to private corporations, resulting in a cash cow whereby mega-corporations imprison Americans in private prisons in order to make a profit. In exchange for corporations buying and managing public prisons across the country at a supposed savings to the states, the states have to agree to maintain a 90% occupancy rate in the privately run prisons for at least 20 years.
Endless wars. America’s expanding military empire will continue to bleed the country dry at a rate of more than $15 billion a month (or $20 million an hour). The Pentagon spends more on war than all 50 states combined spend on health, education, welfare, and safety. Yet what most Americans fail to recognize is that these ongoing wars have little to do with keeping the country safe and everything to do with enriching the military industrial complex at taxpayer expense.
Are you getting the message yet?
The next president, much like the current president and his predecessors, will be little more than a figurehead, a puppet to entertain and distract the populace from what’s really going on.
As Lofgren reveals, this state within a state, “concealed behind the one that is visible at either end of Pennsylvania Avenue ,” is a “hybrid entity of public and private institutions ruling the country according to consistent patterns in season and out, connected to, but only intermittently controlled by, the visible state whose leaders we choose.”
The Deep State not only holds the nation’s capital in thrall, but it also controls Wall Street (“which supplies the cash that keeps the political machine quiescent and operating as a diversionary marionette theater”) and Silicon Valley.
This is fascism in its most covert form, hiding behind public agencies and private companies to carry out its dirty deeds.
It is a marriage between government bureaucrats and corporate fat cats.
As Lofgren concludes:
[T]he Deep State is so heavily entrenched, so well protected by surveillance, firepower, money and its ability to co-opt resistance that it is almost impervious to change … If there is anything the Deep State requires it is silent, uninterrupted cash flow and the confidence that things will go on as they have in the past. It is even willing to tolerate a degree of gridlock: Partisan mud wrestling over cultural issues may be a useful distraction from its agenda.
In other words, as I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People , as long as government officials—elected and unelected alike—are allowed to operate beyond the reach of the Constitution, the courts and the citizenry, the threat to our freedoms remains undiminished.
So the next time you find yourselves despondent over the 2016 presidential candidates, remember that it’s just a puppet show intended to distract you from the silent coup being carried out by America’s shadow government. | 1real |
Great Answer! Sean Spicer Asked To Name CNN Reporter Who ‘Did Good Work’ During His Time In The Trump Administration | Sean Spicer was asked during a Washington Post interview, which White House reporters did good work . He was able to rattle off eight names and then said, I m missing a bunch, for sure. Spicer was then asked if he forgot to include anyone from CNN who did good work during his time in the White House YOU KNEW THIS WAS COMING:Spicer gave the best answer ever Oh, no We have to agree that the CNN correspondents have had it out for President Trump from day one. This is also a dig at combative WH correspondent Jim Acosta. How could we forget the exchanges with Acosta! A bulldog!CNN s Jim Acosta keeps trolling President Trump and keeps making a total fool of himself! The latest moment was after signing a trade bill when Acosta asked why the president didn t hold a press conference Trump s response is priceless!President Trump to @Acosta: I like real news. Not fake news. You re fake news. https://t.co/TssGvNyUct pic.twitter.com/sQ3IR8IRdX CSPAN (@cspan) August 14, 2017REMEMBER THIS JIM ACOSTA MOMENT?We wish President Trump could clone SENIOR ADVISOR Stephen Miller! He s so brilliant and knows immigration like no other! We can t say the same for the White House Press Corp! The Trump administration made some positive announcements on immigration and the left went nuts! Miller got the best of them!ANOTHER GREAT TAKEDOWN!Fox News reported:Trump and Acosta have famously traded jabs since the president called Acosta fake news during a press conference earlier this year. If Spicer was going to compliment anyone from CNN, it would presumably have been the reporter he dealt with on a regular basis but the former press secretary failed to mention Acosta when he had the chance.Acosta comes off as combative toward the White House on a regular basis and some insiders feel his grandstanding was one reason press briefings weren t televised over an extended period this summer. In addition to Trump and Spicer, Acosta sparred with White House adviser Stephen Miller last month over the administration s immigration policy. Miller famously accused the CNN reporter of having a cosmopolitan bias. | 1real |
Russia hands note of protest to U.S. over plans to search trade mission | MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia s foreign ministry has summoned a U.S. diplomat in Moscow to hand him a note of protest over plans to conduct searches in Russia s trade mission complex in Washington, which should soon be closed, the ministry said in a statement on Saturday. It said it has summoned Anthony F. Godfrey, a deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow. The ministry called the planned illegal inspection of Russian diplomatic housing an unprecedented aggressive action , which could be used by the U.S. special services for anti-Russian provocations by the way of planting compromised items . The closure by Sept. 2 of the consulate and buildings in Washington and New York that house Russian trade missions is the latest in tit-for-tat actions by the two countries that have helped push relations to a new post-Cold War low. The Kremlin has said the moves to close the Russian facilities pushed bilateral ties further into a dead end. On Friday, the Russian foreign ministry also said the U.S. special services were prepared for searches in its consulate in San Francisco. Some media reported that a smoke was billowing from a chimney of the building. Maria Zakharova, the spokeswoman for the ministry, said it was part of a mothballing . In relation to this, the windows could be closed, the light could be turned off, the water could be drained out, the heating appliances could be turned off, the garbage could be thrown away, essential services could be turned off and many other things, she wrote on social media. Moscow last month ordered the United States to cut its diplomatic and technical staff in Russia by more than half, to 455 people to match the number of Russian diplomats in the United States, after Congress overwhelmingly approved new sanctions against Russia. | 0fake |
REPORT: The Vast Majority Of Trump’s Employees Hope He Loses In November | To hear Donald Trump tell it, he s the best, hugest, biggest boss there has ever been and the way he runs his businesses (if you ignore the multiple bankruptcies and closures) means the people who work for him should be overwhelmingly proud to be under his leadership.But Reuters has done some number-crunching on what kind of financial support the people who work in his businesses have shown to his presidential campaign, and as he would say, it s very sad! Only a dozen of an estimated 22,450 people employed at Trump s companies have donated more than $200 to the celebrity businessman s bid for the U.S. presidency, a Reuters review of federal campaign finance records through August shows. Those who gave less to either Trump s campaign or his joint fundraising committees would not have shown up in the review.The contributors, including an office cleaner, a golf course groundskeeper, a bartender and an attorney, have given $5,298 to Trump s campaign, a fraction of the $112 million Trump s political operation has received from donors and joint fundraisers.The news service also points out that an employee at the Trump companies even has donated to Secretary Hillary Clinton, his electoral rival and the current front-runner in the presidential contest.By comparison, in 2012 people who had worked alongside Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney had donated $1.4 million both directly to his campaign and to the super PAC supporting his campaign.Secretary Clinton has also received donations from employees at the U.S. State Department, which she headed from 2009 to 2013.Trump has continually lagged behind Clinton in fundraising during the election, a disparity which has shown up in underfunded campaign operations in many of the key swing states and a severe lack of television advertising. Trump claimed he would self-fund his campaign, but while he has donated to the enterprise, it hasn t been a significant fraction of the billions Trump claims to possess, a figure which cannot be independently verified because Trump won t release his tax returns.Featured image via Flickr | 1real |
WikiLeaks Emails Show Mayor de Blasio Venting at and Appealing to Clinton Campaign - The New York Times | The emails came morning and night, apparently unsolicited, often from the mayoral BlackBerry: messages from Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York, who styled himself as an emissary from the liberal left, to a presidential campaign trying to elect Hillary Clinton in what felt like a Bernie Sanders world. Mr. de Blasio wanted to vent that Mrs. Clinton “totally blew” a question about mass incarceration at a Democratic primary debate with Mr. Sanders, a senator from Vermont (but praised her answer on gun control as “fantastic”). He wanted Mrs. Clinton to sign on to a forum on income inequality he planned to host for the presidential candidates in Iowa (none agreed to attend). And he wanted Mrs. Clinton’s aides to know that, even if he was playing hard to get on his endorsement of her, he was already planning to tell Mr. Sanders that he would not be supporting him in the race. In laying bare John D. Podesta’s inbox, the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has made no secret of his desire to reveal the deliberations of Mrs. Clinton’s campaign for the world to see. But the leak, dumped online in two waves this week, has also found at least one collateral target: Mr. de Blasio, whose cameo appearances in Mr. Podesta’s inbox offer a look at the mayor’s attempts to make his presence felt in the presidential campaign. Mostly, as the earlier batch of emails made clear, he got a shrug. “Should we care about this?” Mr. Podesta, the chairman of Mrs. Clinton’s campaign, wrote to other Clinton aides after Mr. de Blasio sent him an update on an event intended to highlight income inequality issues. But if the first leak showed that Mrs. Clinton’s aides were cool to Mr. de Blasio’s pitches, the second showed that he was determined to offer himself as an adviser — less a Clinton skeptic waiting for her to prove her liberal bona fides, as he said publicly at the time, than a Clinton cheerleader pushing the campaign to engage the Democratic Party’s left wing. In September 2015, the mayor typed out a lengthy message on his BlackBerry informing the aides that he planned to meet with Mr. Sanders. “My message to him (saying this in confidence to you) is that I will always want to work with him in the future and will never have a bad word about him, but won’t be supporting him in this campaign,” he wrote. He urged the campaign to participate in the income inequality forum, saying that he would also invite Mr. Sanders, but that he “quietly first want to see what date works for you guys. ” And he outlined what he planned to say in a television interview with the ABC News journalist George Stephanopoulos, promising to cast Mrs. Clinton in a positive light. If asked why he had not yet endorsed her, he said, he would “allude to The Progressive Agenda. ” (He ultimately gave her his blessing the next month.) On Wednesday, Eric Phillips, the mayor’s press secretary, argued on Twitter that Mr. de Blasio’s messages were, as private email leaks go, not all that humiliating — and, more to the point, on brand. “What’s a @BilldeBlasio hot mic catch? Him pushing on mass incarceration,” he wrote on Twitter. Mr. Podesta’s inbox was comparatively short on mentions of Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, who endorsed Mrs. Clinton early and served as a surrogate for her at in the to the New York primary. The campaign briefly discussed asking the governor and the mayor, who both worked at the Department of Housing and Urban Development during the Clinton administration — Mr. Cuomo as the secretary, Mr. de Blasio as one of his aides — to defend Mrs. Clinton against potential charges from the Sanders campaign that black and Hispanic people had lost their homes to foreclosure during Bill Clinton’s presidency. But Mr. Cuomo was not left entirely unscathed. His personal contact information landed in one email, unredacted. And in November, when he was to present Mrs. Clinton with an award from the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, a national gun control group, her aides agreed that Mrs. Clinton’s speech should treat the SAFE Act, the governor’s signature gun control legislation, with caution. “Don’t see a need to fully embrace the SAFE Act,” an aide wrote. “There are some controversial items in there. ” (They settled on praising Mr. Cuomo’s push to expand background checks for gun buyers.) Even without full context, the emails make clear that Mr. de Blasio could be the target of some gentle mockery in the Clinton orbit. When Mr. Clinton’s chief of staff, Tina Flournoy, sent Mr. Podesta an important labor union’s questionnaire for presidential candidates in March 2015, Mr. Podesta’s mind apparently went straight to Mr. de Blasio, a reliable labor ally. “Bill de Blasio for President! !” Mr. Podesta wrote from his iPad. Ms. Flournoy’s response, “Ha!” | 0fake |
‘Russia Did It’ – The New Age of McCarthyism | Robert Parry Consortium NewsMake no mistake about it: the United States has entered an era of a New McCarthyism that blames nearly every political problem on Russia and has begun targeting American citizens who don t go along with this New Cold War propaganda.A difference, however, from the McCarthyism of the 1950s is that this New McCarthyism has enlisted Democrats, liberals and even progressives in the cause because of their disgust with President Trump; the 1950s version was driven by Republicans and the Right with much of the Left on the receiving end, maligned by the likes of Sen. Joe McCarthy as un-American and as Communism s fellow travelers. The real winners in this New McCarthyism appear to be the neoconservatives who have leveraged the Democratic/liberal hatred of Trump to draw much of the Left into the political hysteria that sees the controversy over alleged Russian political meddling as an opportunity to get Trump. Already, the neocons and their allies have exploited the anti-Russian frenzy to extract tens of millions of dollars more from the taxpayers for programs to combat Russian propaganda, i.e., funding of non-governmental organizations and scholars who target dissident Americans for challenging the justifications for this New Cold War.The Washington Post, which for years has served as the flagship for neocon propaganda, is again charting the new course for America, much as it did in rallying U.S. public backing for the 2003 invasion of Iraq and in building sympathy for abortive regime change projects aimed at Syria and Iran. The Post has begun blaming almost every unpleasant development in the world on Russia! Russia! Russia!For instance, a Post editorial on Tuesday shifted the blame for the anemic victory of German Chancellor Angela Merkel and the surprising strength of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) from Merkel s austerity policies, which have caused hardship for much of the working class, or from her open door for Mideast refugees, which has destabilized some working-class neighborhoods, to you guessed it Russia!The evidence, as usual, is vague and self-interested, but sure to be swallowed by many Democrats and liberals, who hate Russia because they blame it for Trump, and by lots of Republicans and conservatives, who have a residual hatred for Russia left over from the Old Cold War.The Post cited the Atlantic Council s Digital Forensic Research Lab, which has been pushing much of the hysteria about alleged Russian activities on the Internet. The Atlantic Council essentially is NATO s think tank and is financed with money from the U.S. government, Gulf oil states, military contractors, global financial institutions and many other sources which stand to gain directly or indirectly from the expanding U.S. military budget and NATO interventions.Blaming RussiaIn this New Cold War, the Russians get blamed for not only disrupting some neocon regime change projects, such as the proxy war in Syria, but also political developments in the West, such as Donald Trump s election and AfD s rise in Germany.The Atlantic Council s digital lab claimed, according to the Post editorial, that In the final hours of the [German] campaign, online supporters of the AfD began warning their base of possible election fraud, and the online alarms were driven by anonymous troll accounts and boosted by a Russian-language bot-net. Of course, the Post evinces no evidence tying any of this to the Russian government or to President Vladimir Putin. It is the nature of McCarthyism that actual evidence is not required, just heavy breathing and dark suspicions. For those of us who operate Web sites, trolls some volunteers and some professionals have become a common annoyance and they represent many political outlooks, not just Russian.Plus, it is standard procedure these days for campaigns to issue last-minute alarms to their supporters about possible election fraud to raise doubts about the results should the outcome be disappointing.The U.S. government has engaged in precisely this strategy around the world, having pro-U.S. parties not only complain about election fraud but to take to the streets in violent protests to impugn the legitimacy of election outcomes. That U.S. strategy has been applied to places such as Ukraine (the Orange Revolution in 2004); Iran (the Green Revolution in 2009); Russia (the Snow Revolution in 2011); and many other locations.Pre-election alerts also have become a feature in U.S. elections, even in 2016 when both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton raised questions about the legitimacy of the balloting, albeit for different reasons.Yet, instead of seeing the AfD maneuver as a typical ploy by a relatively minor party and the German election outcome as an understandable reflection of voter discontent and weariness over Merkel s three terms as Chancellor the Atlantic Council and the Post see Russians under every bed and particularly Putin.Loving to Hate PutinIn the world of neocon propaganda, Putin has become the great b te noire, since he has frustrated a variety of neocon schemes. He helped head off a major U.S. military strike against Syria in 2013; he aided President Obama in achieving the Iran nuclear agreement in 2014-15; Putin opposed and to a degree frustrated the neocon-supported coup in Ukraine in 2014; and he ultimately supplied the air power that defeated neocon-backed rebel forces in Syria in 2015-17.So, the Post and the neocons want Putin gone and they have used gauzy allegations about Russian meddling in the U.S. and other elections as the new propaganda theme to justify destabilizing Russia with economic sanctions and, if possible, engineering another regime change project in Moscow.None of this is even secret. Carl Gershman, the neocon president of the U.S.-government-funded National Endowment for Democracy, publicly proclaimed the goal of ousting Putin in an op-ed in The Washington Post, writing: The United States has the power to contain and defeat this danger. The issue is whether we can summon the will to do so. But the way neocon propaganda works is that the U.S. and its allies are always the victims of some nefarious enemy who must be thwarted to protect all that is good in the world. In other words, even as NED and other U.S.-funded operations take aim at Putin and Russia, Russia and Putin must be transformed into the aggressors. Mr. Putin would like nothing better than to generate doubts, fog, cracks and uncertainty around the German pillar of Europe, the Post editorial said. He relishes infiltrating chaos and mischief into open societies. In this case, supporting the far-right AfD is extraordinarily cynical, given how many millions of Russians died to defeat the fascists seven decades ago. Not to belabor the point but there is no credible evidence that Putin did any of this. There is a claim by the virulently anti-Russian Atlantic Council that some anonymous troll accounts promoted some AfD complaint about possible voter fraud and that it was picked up by a Russian-language bot-net. Even if that is true and the Atlantic Council is far from an objective source where is the link to Putin?Not everything that happens in Russia, a nation of 144 million people, is ordered by Putin. But the Post would have you believe that it is. It is the centerpiece of this neocon conspiracy theory.Silencing DissentSimilarly, any American who questions this propaganda immediately is dismissed as a Kremlin stooge or a Russian propagandist, another ugly campaign spearheaded by the Post and the neocons. Again, no evidence is required, just some analysis that what you re saying somehow parallels something Putin has said.On Tuesday, in what amounted to a companion piece for the editorial, a Post article again pushed the unproven suspicions about Russian operatives buying $100,000 in Facebook ads from 2015 into 2017 to supposedly influence U.S. politics. Once again, no evidence required.In the article, the Post also reminds its readers that Moscow has a history of focusing on social inequities in the U.S., which gets us back to the comparisons between the Old McCarthyism and the new.Yes, it s true that the Soviet Union denounced America s racial segregation and cited that ugly feature of U.S. society in expressing solidarity with the American civil rights movement and national liberation struggles in Africa. It s also true that American Communists collaborated with the domestic civil rights movement to promote racial integration.That was a key reason why J. Edgar Hoover s FBI targeted Martin Luther King Jr. and other African-American leaders because of their association with known or suspected Communists. (Similarly, the Reagan administration resisted support for Nelson Mandela because his African National Congress accepted Communist support in its battle against South Africa s Apartheid white-supremacist regime.)Interestingly, one of the arguments from liberal national Democrats in opposing segregation in the 1960s was that the repression of American blacks undercut U.S. diplomatic efforts to develop allies in Africa. In other words, Soviet and Communist criticism of America s segregation actually helped bring about the demise of that offensive system.Yet, King s association with alleged Communists remained a talking point of die-hard segregationists even after his assassination when they opposed creating a national holiday in his honor in the 1980s.These parallels between the Old McCarthyism and the New McCarthyism are implicitly acknowledged in the Post s news article on Tuesday, which cites Putin s criticism of police killings of unarmed American blacks as evidence that he is meddling in U.S. politics. Since taking office, Putin has on occasion sought to spotlight racial tensions in the United States as a means of shaping perceptions of American society, the article states. Putin injected himself in 2014 into the race debate after protests broke out in Ferguson, Mo., over the fatal shooting of Michael Brown, an African American, by a white police officer. Do you believe that everything is perfect now from the point of view of democracy in the United States? Putin told CBS s 60 Minutes program. If everything was perfect, there wouldn t be the problem of Ferguson. There would be no abuse by the police. But our task is to see all these problems and respond properly. The Post s speculative point seems to be that Putin s response included having Russian operatives buy some ads on Facebook to exploit these racial tensions, but there is no evidence to support that conspiracy theory.However, as this anti-Russia hysteria spreads, we may soon see Americans who also protest the police killing of unarmed black men denounced as Putin s fellow-travelers, much as King and other civil rights leaders were smeared as Communist dupes. Ignoring RealitySo, instead of Democrats and Chancellor Merkel looking in the mirror and seeing the real reasons why many white working-class voters are turning toward populist and extremist alternatives, they can simply blame Putin and continue a crackdown on Internet-based dissent as the work of Russian operatives. Already, under the guise of combating Russian propaganda and fake news, Google, Facebook and other tech giants have begun introducing algorithms to hunt down and marginalize news that challenges official U.S. government narratives on hot-button issues such as Ukraine and Syria. Again, no evidence is required, just the fact that Putin may have said something similar.As Democrats, liberals and even some progressives join in this Russia-gate hysteria driven by their hatred of Donald Trump and his supposedly fascistic tendencies they might want to consider whom they ve climbed into bed with and what these neocons have in mind for the future.Arguably, if fascism or totalitarianism comes to the United States, it is more likely to arrive in the guise of protecting democracy from Russia or another foreign adversary than from a reality-TV clown like Donald Trump.The New McCarthyism with its Orwellian-style algorithms might seem like a clever way to neutralize (or maybe even help oust) Trump, but long after Trump is gone a structure for letting the neocons and the mainstream media monopolize American political debate might be a far greater threat to both democracy and peace.***TO READ MORE ON THE NEW COLD WAR: THE 21WIRE COLD WAR FILESSUPPORT 21WIRE SUBSCRIBE & BECOME A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV | 1real |
WATCH INSANE VIDEOS…CHICAGO COP Spills The Beans About What REALLY Happened In Chicago | The leftist media was quick to blame Donald Trump for the organized chaos and riots that were fueled by paid protesters who, when pressed by FOX News reporters, clearly had no idea why they were there. Jim Acosta, of CNN News, admitted the number of anti-Trump protesters and amount of violence was underreported, but laid the blame squarely on Trump: Donald Trump, for whatever reason decided to hold a rally, almost in the Lion s Den. the media didn t report that protesters were running through parking lots and breaking windows of cars with Trump stickers on them The protests launched by militant leftists who shut down Donald Trump s Chicago rally were far more aggressive and destructive than reported, says a Chicago Police officer. It seems the [media] aren t broadcasting footage of the debris being thrown across Harrison by Sanders/Hillary supporters at Trump fans, the officer wrote shortly after the canceled Trump event.The officer, who posed anonymously on the Second City Cop blog, also noted the media didn t report that protesters were running through parking lots and breaking windows of cars with Trump stickers on them, or that the department called out emergency Incident Teams to cope with the anti-Trump riot at the University of Illinois in Chicago.Later that same day the officer posted a second, much longer post, to detail the failures of the police leaders to plan for and respond to the protests.The officer insisted there was pretty much zero in terms of a unified Command Post for the event, and that officers had no central command to report to or coordinate response from.This video shows woefully unprepared the Chicago police force was to deal with these well-trained, paid, organized agitators. Note the Palestine flag at the 2:06 mark and person on loudspeaker chant Allah at the 2:26 mark: Who wrote this plan? the officer wrote. We ve seen and heard reports that UIC was woefully unprepared for this. They had their own people and Monterey Security inside. The Secret Service had a presence, but they re restricted to dignitary protection. The ISP had a squad there. And CPD. So where were the people geared up for a riot? For NATO we had an entire strike force geared up and ready to go. We had the Mounted Unit up and running. Tens of dozens of bikes. Did no one see this coming? [quote_box_center]Radio Host, John Cardillo told his audience today that a trusted police officer friend in Chicago told him this weekend that before the UIC rally 70% of police officers supported Donald Trump. After the rally was called off and GOP candidates sided with the violent mob 90% of police officers support Donald Trump.[/quote_box_center]The officer went on to insist that suddenly emptying the pavilion of Trump fans and putting a few thousand people out on the street as targets was a terrible decision. This decision led to many unnecessary confrontations between Trump fans and the anarchist protesters, the officer said. It also led to unnecessary property damage, the officer said.Next came a long list of questions:Who gave up the expressway? Who let them block ambulances? Why did they not assemble citywide Incident Teams as soon as they knew the rally was canceled? Tact Teams? We even heard Mass Arrest kits weren t available and only one transport wagon on scene in case arrests were made.The criticism went farther.Who ever drew up this order failed miserably. Whatever the Intelligence Section was doing wasn t nearly enough. The On Scene Incident Commander failed to anticipate even the best case scenario and every other appointee showed how incompetent they really were by not ordering up more reinforcements and more units on stand-by.Video that hasn t gotten much play since that night also showed that the protests were far more raucous than previously reported.In all, it seems that at least this one Chicago Police Officer felt that the CPD fell down on the job during this incident. | 1real |
9 Amazingly Racist And Bigoted Things Trump Supporters Actually Believe (VIDEO) | Many Americans have suspected that the rise of Donald Trump, who launched his campaign attacking Latinos and has gone on to demonize blacks, Muslims, women and even Catholics, is tied to bigoted beliefs among a segment of Republican voters.Despite the protests from some on the right and even the mainstream media claiming that Trump supporters are backing their man solely due to economic insecurity, some new polling data has begun to confirm that the movement behind Trump is simply a white supremacist movement.Mr. Trump s popularity with white, working-class voters who are more likely than other Republicans to believe that whites are a supreme race and who long for the Confederacy may make him unpopular among leaders in his party. But it s worth noting that he isn t persuading voters to hold these beliefs. The beliefs were there and have been for some time.Mr. Trump has reinvigorated explicit appeals to ethnocentrism, and some voters are responding.Based on the results of those polls, here are nine of the amazingly racist things Trump supporters seriously believe:When Trump says Make America Great Again, it seems like many of his followers really mean Make America White Again. Featured image via Flickr | 1real |
Turkey Threatens to Open Migrant ’Land Passage’ to Europe After Row With Dutch | (AP) — Turkey’s minister in charge of European Union affairs says his country should consider reviewing its migration deal with the EU and relax controls on people reaching Europe over land. [advertisement | 0fake |
HA! YOU WON’T BELIEVE HILLARY’S LUXURY “SCOOBY” VAN! | Everyone s been asking where the Hillary van is So Hillary pulls up in a gas guzzling van with tinted windows-I thought she wanted to mingle with the regular folk? This monster gets 16-18 miles per gallon! Ouch!The van, however, isn t an everyday minivan or even a full-sized van. It s a luxury vehicle outiftted with top amenities.Specifically: It s a limited edition Chevrolet Express van upfitted with a Limited SE packed by Explorer Vans company It s very luxurious, a salesman who helped deliver this vehicle tells me on the phone. I d rank it up there with the best. The model being used to chauffeur Hillary Clinton around has a gray leather interior, heated seat, a 29 inch Samsung television, and a Blu-ray DVD player.There is no refrigerator in the van. However, Hillary s model does feature an ice chest between the two front seats. (Which might have been used to keep her cottage cheese cold.) The middle chairs are swivel and quick release. Indirect lighting (like mood lighting) throughout the vans.Oh, and there s a bed. The power sofa in the rear of the vehicle converts into a bed. But given the fact it s only a 6 foot wide vehicle, it might have been a little hard to get a proper night s sleep in it.But it s not exactly great for the environment. It s a 2014 model all-wheel-drive that gets only 16-18 miles per gallon.READ MORE: WEEKLY STANDARD | 1real |
Sonny Perdue Is Trump’s Choice for Agriculture Secretary - The New York Times | WASHINGTON — Donald J. Trump on Wednesday selected Sonny Perdue, the former governor of Georgia, to be his secretary of agriculture, two senior transition officials said, making his final cabinet selection two days before he is to be sworn in as president. Mr. Perdue, a onetime veterinarian who was elected in 2003 as Georgia’s first Republican governor since Reconstruction, campaigned heavily for Mr. Trump in the final months of the presidential race, although he had initially backed a rival, former Gov. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas. His selection ensures that Mr. Trump will enter office with a full complement of chosen cabinet officials, although none have been confirmed. Senators are wrangling over how many nominees can be confirmed by the time Mr. Trump is sworn in on Friday, with Republicans insisting on a series of quick votes and Democrats objecting that they have not had adequate time to vet the candidates, many of whom submitted ethics disclosures late. The two officials confirmed the decision on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment on it before the formal announcement. Mr. Perdue has spoken with Mr. Trump in detail about his views on agriculture and trade, including ways to ensure American producers are not placed at a disadvantage in international agreements. In an interview in December, Mr. Perdue said Mr. Trump had quizzed him on what he would do about unfair trade deals. He said the “believes that we in the U. S. have been sort of patsies over the years in the way we’ve dealt with our foreign competitors and international trade. ” Mr. Perdue, who once ran a grain and fertilizer business, was among the first candidates Mr. Trump interviewed for the post. But the process dragged on for weeks as the ’s team debated whether it would be better off choosing someone from a different part of the country or selecting an ethnic minority to balance out an overwhelmingly white, male and wealthy cabinet. Mr. Perdue, though, pitched himself as an asset with the business and governmental experience to be successful in the post. He spent much of his career in the agriculture business before being elected governor, he told Mr. Trump, and returned to the field in 2011 after leaving office. “Most people focus on the governor term of eight years, but for me, that was an interruption,” Mr. Perdue said in December. Mr. Trump, he said, “wants people who are experts in the field. ” As governor, amid a drought in Georgia in 2007, Mr. Perdue led several hundred people at the State Capitol in a prayer for rain, asking God to forgive Georgia for being wasteful with its water. He also called for strict water usage restrictions. Eric Tanenblatt, Mr. Perdue’s former chief of staff, called him highly qualified for the post in a statement on Wednesday night. “As a successful governor, Perdue has the requisite experience to direct a massive bureaucracy of the sort necessary to conduct the department’s many programs,” Mr. Tanenblatt said. He praised Mr. Perdue’s ability to shape agricultural policy and business. Mr. Perdue, he said, “knows the challenges facing today’s farmers. ” Environmental activists condemned Mr. Trump’s choice, saying that Mr. Perdue had received hundreds of thousands of dollars in federal farm subsidies that help chemical companies and large agriculture conglomerates at the expense of small farmers and the environment. “It’s certainly hard to imagine that a former fertilizer salesman will tackle the unregulated farm pollution that poisons our drinking water, turns Lake Erie green, and fouls the Chesapeake Bay and the Gulf of Mexico,” said Scott Faber, senior vice president of government affairs at EWG, an environmental research group. If confirmed, Mr. Perdue would oversee an agency with a $150 billion budget. The Agriculture Department is in charge of farm policy and food safety, and it funds food stamps, other nutrition programs and the Forest Service. A conservative Republican, Mr. Perdue has ties to at least one senator who will vote on his confirmation. Senator David Perdue, Republican of Georgia, is his cousin. | 0fake |
Trump expects to raise $1 billion with Republican Party: NBC | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump said on Wednesday he will probably work with the Republican National Committee to raise $1 billion to beat likely Democratic rival Hillary Clinton in the Nov. 8 U.S. presidential election. “We’re going to try and raise over a billion dollars which is what’s going to be necessary. The Democrats maybe will get as high as two billion dollars,” Trump said in an interview with NBC Nightly News. | 0fake |
Syrian Army Enters Metro Damascus Town, Driving Rebels Further Back | Rebels Blame Internal Fights for Growing Losses by Jason Ditz, October 31, 2016 Share This
The Syrian Army has entered the town of Tel Kurdi , on the outskirts of Damascus, entering the area over the weekend and pushing into yet another rebel-held area, bringing their forces yet closer to the rebel city of Douma, the last major rebel holding around the capital.
Tel Kurdi, like all the remaining rebel areas in Ghouta, was under siege for some time, and the rebel forces within fell back almost immediately, with no reports of major fighting, and the rebels bragging of a “scorched earth” policy destroying everything of value on their way out.
One of the members of the rebel council blamed the mounting losses on internal fights among the fashions. Indeed, over the past several months a lot of towns and villages in the area have fallen, either in military offensives or in negotiated pullouts.
The negotiated pullouts have been the most effective way to displace large amounts of rebels lately, with the rebels getting sent north into Nusra Front territory around Idlib. This is increasingly boiling down to government control of the area around Damascus, and increased rebel influence in the north. Last 5 posts by Jason Ditz | 1real |
Under the Surface - Naomi Klein and the Great Barrier Reef | Under the Surface - Naomi Klein and the Great Barrier Reef Share on Facebook Tweet In Under the Surface, a special Guardian film, the award-winning writer and environmental campaigner Naomi Klein travels to the Great Barrier Reef with her son, Toma, to see the impact of coral bleaching caused by climate change. In a personal but also universal story, Klein tells how she wants him to bear witness. ‘Just in case, amid the coral that is still alive, he can find something... read more
In Under the Surface, a special Guardian film, the award-winning writer and environmental campaigner Naomi Klein travels to the Great Barrier Reef with her son, Toma, to see the impact of coral bleaching caused by climate change. In a personal but also universal story, Klein tells how she wants him to bear witness. ‘Just in case, amid the coral that is still alive, he can find something beautiful to connect with, something he can carry with him as he navigates life on a warmer, harsher planet than the one I grew up on. Because climate change is already here – and kids are on the frontlines’ [watch video below] | 1real |
ARIZONA STATE UNIV DOUBLES TUITION… CLAIMS IT NEEDS MORE STATE FUNDS…Finds $500K To Donate To Clinton “Slush Fund” | But what about that whole unfair student debt thing that Hillary and Bill are so concerned about?While Arizona State University has almost doubled its tuition over the past 10 years amid claims that it needs more state money, the school somehow had the funds to give half a million dollars to the Clinton Foundation.According to The Arizona Republic, the public university paid $500,000 to the Clinton Foundation to host the former president-Bill Clinton; former-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton; and their daughter, Chelsea, during a Clinton Global Initiative University (CGI U) event in 2014. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Bill s wife, is the current front-runner for the Democratic nomination for the 2016 presidential race.Mark Johnson, an ASU spokesman, told The Republic that the university was a payment for the event not a contribution to the Clintons. ASU played host to the CGI University in March 2014, which featured former President Bill Clinton and former secretary of State Hillary Clinton in a program aimed at bringing together college students to find practical, innovative solutions to global challenges, Johnson told the newspaper. The report you cited reflects the fact that the university co-invested in this educational and promotional opportunity, which was co-produced for our students, and for students from around the world. No state funds were used for this purpose. The Republic also reported that while the university has lobbied the State Department, university officials claim the lobbying occurred after Hillary stepped down from the position.The CGI U website also boasts that more than 1,100 students attended the event to raise $60,000 and participate in a Day of Action in the community. Student attendees had the opportunity to attend plenary sessions, working sessions, and other special events covering topics across CGI U s five focus areas and allowing them to network with their peers, build skills, and identify potential partnerships, the website for the event states. Youth organizations, topic experts, and celebrities joined students at the CGI U meeting to help them gain the skills and knowledge needed to take action on their commitments. Earlier this month Arizona s Board of Regents voted to approve tuition increases for both undergraduate and graduate students at ASU, the University of Arizona, and Northern Arizona University. Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey (R) also recently approved a budget that cut more than $100 million from public universities, The Arizona State Press reported. In this regard ASU seems to hold themselves accountable to their own pet projects, as opposed to ASU students, Richard Moorehead, a senior history major at ASU, told Campus Reform. The money they wasted on the Clinton Foundation event could have been used for scholarships and genuine education. I realize bringing high-profile speakers can raise the profile of the university, but no speaker s time is worth $500,000, especially if that money is funneled into a presidential campaign, Moorhead said. He did not attend the CGI U event.Ryan Hartwig, a recent ASU graduate, told Campus Reform that the $500,000 was way too much for any celebrity or politician. It really makes me question what ASU does with their money, while they continue to complain about state budget cuts, Hartwig said.The Washington Free Beacon reported that ASU has said it did not use state funds to pay the Clintons, but the university has not disclosed where the money actually came from.Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) participated in the event last year but told The Republic that had he known the price tag, it wouldn t have been worth it. Frankly, if I had known that that was the situation, that they were being paid $500,000, I would have spoken up at the time that I thought it was outrageous, McCain said.Via: Campus Reform | 1real |
VFW fires back at Obama: Politics not 'confused' | The nation’s largest veterans group hit back at President Obama on Thursday and urged him not to “denigrate” their intelligence after the president suggested their members were easily swayed by cable news and “right-wing radio.”
The Veterans of Foreign Wars called out the president after Obama referenced the political opinions at “VFW halls” in an Indiana speech Wednesday that toggled between campaign politics and the economy.
“I don’t know how many VFW Posts the president has ever visited, but our near 1.7 million members are a direct reflection of America,” VFW National Commander John A. Biedrzycki Jr. said in a statement. “We don’t have confused politics, we don’t need left or rightwing media filters telling us how to think or vote, and we don’t need any President of the United States lecturing us about how we are individually [affected] by the economy.”
Obama, speaking in Elkhart, Ind., had lamented the “primary story” he claimed Republicans are telling about the economy – one that focuses on how “moochers at the bottom of the income ladder” are squeezing middle-class families.
“We have been hearing this story for decades,” Obama said. “Tales about welfare queens, talking about takers, talking about the ‘47percent.’ It's the story that is broadcast every day on some cable news stations, on right-wing radio, it's pumped into cars, and bars, and VFW halls all across America, and right here in Elkhart.”
Obama continued: “And if you're hearing that story all the time, you start believing it. It's no wonder people think big government is the problem.”
Biedrzycki suggested veterans are not so easily swayed.
“Our nation was created and continues to exist solely because of the men and women who wear the uniform,” he said. “Let’s not denigrate their service, their sacrifice or their intelligence.”
Obama is no stranger to the VFW, having addressed the group’s national convention several times dating back to his first presidential campaign.
He last spoke to the VFW convention last July in Pittsburgh, calling the occasion a “great honor.” He used the speech to address ongoing efforts to help America’s veterans, especially in the area of health care, in the wake of the Veterans Affairs wait-times scandal.
“As president, I consider it my obligation to help make sure that, even though less than 1 percent of Americans wear the uniform, that 100 percent of Americans honor your sacrifices and your service,” he said. | 0fake |
Dennis Kucinich’s Extraordinary Warning on D.C.’s Think Tank Warmongers | By wmw_admin on October 29, 2016 Michael Krieger — Liberty BlitzKrieg Oct 27, 2016
WAR is a racket. It always has been.
It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.
A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small “inside” group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.
– From Major General Smedley Butler’s War is a Rackett
Former Congressman Dennis Kucinich has just penned an extremely powerful warning about the warmongers in Washington D.C. Who funds them, what their motives are, and why it is imperative for the American people to stop them.
The piece was published at The Nation and is titled: Why Is the Foreign Policy Establishment Spoiling for More War? Look at Their Donors.
Read it and share it with everyone you know. W ashington, DC, may be the only place in the world where people openly flaunt their pseudo-intellectuality by banding together, declaring themselves “think tanks,” and raising money from external interests, including foreign governments, to compile reports that advance policies inimical to the real-life concerns of the American people. As a former member of the House of Representatives, I remember 16 years of congressional hearings where pedigreed experts came to advocate wars in testimony based on circular, rococo thinking devoid of depth, reality, and truth. I remember other hearings where the Pentagon was unable to reconcile over $1 trillion in accounts, lost track of $12 billion in cash sent to Iraq, and rigged a missile-defense test so that an interceptor could easily home in on a target. War is first and foremost a profitable racket. How else to explain that in the past 15 years this city’s so called bipartisan foreign policy elite has promoted wars in Iraq and Libya, and interventions in Syria and Yemen, which have opened Pandora’s box to a trusting world, to the tune of trillions of dollars, a windfall for military contractors. DC’s think “tanks” should rightly be included in the taxonomy of armored war vehicles and not as gathering places for refugees from academia. According to the front page of this past Friday’s Washington Post, the bipartisan foreign-policy elite recommends the next president show less restraint than President Obama. Acting at the urging of “liberal” hawks brandishing humanitarian intervention, read war, the Obama administration attacked Libya along with allied powers working through NATO.
Indeed, I warned about this in last week’s piece: U.S. Foreign Policy ‘Elite’ Eagerly Await an Expansion of Overseas Wars Under Hillary Clinton . The think tankers fell in line with the Iraq invasion. Not being in the tank, I did my own analysis of the call for war in October of 2002, based on readily accessible information, and easily concluded that there was no justification for war. I distributed it widely in Congress and led 125 Democrats in voting against the Iraq war resolution. There was no money to be made from a conclusion that war was uncalled for, so, against millions protesting in the United States and worldwide, our government launched into an abyss, with a lot of armchair generals waving combat pennants. The marching band and chowder society of DC think tanks learned nothing from the Iraq and Libya experience. The only winners were arms dealers, oil companies, and jihadists. Immediately after the fall of Libya, the black flag of Al Qaeda was raised over a municipal building in Benghazi, Gadhafi’s murder was soon to follow, with Secretary Clinton quipping with a laugh, “We came, we saw, he died.” President Obama apparently learned from this misadventure, but not the Washington policy establishment, which is spoiling for more war. The self-identified liberal Center for American Progress (CAP) is now calling for Syria to be bombed, and estimates America’s current military adventures will be tidied up by 2025, a tardy twist on “mission accomplished.” CAP, according to a report in The Nation, has received funding from war contractors Lockheed Martin and Boeing, who make the bombers that CAP wants to rain hellfire on Syria. The Brookings Institute has taken tens of millions from foreign governments , notably Qatar, a key player in the military campaign to oust Assad. Retired four-star Marine general John Allen is now a Brookings senior fellow . Charles Lister is a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute , which has received funding from Saudi Arabia , the major financial force providing billions in arms to upend Assad and install a Sunni caliphate stretching across Iraq and Syria. Foreign-government money is driving our foreign policy. As the drumbeat for an expanded war gets louder, Allen and Lister jointly signed an op-ed in the Sunday Washington Post, calling for an attack on Syria. The Brookings Institute, in a report to Congress , admitted it received $250,000 from the US Central Command, Centcom, where General Allen shared leadership duties with General David Petraeus. Pentagon money to think tanks that endorse war? This is academic integrity, DC-style. And why is Central Command, as well as the Food and Drug Administration, the US Department of transportation, and the US Department of Health and Human Services giving money to Brookings? Former secretary of state Madeleine Albright, who famously told Colin Powell , “What’s the point of having this superb military you’re always talking about if we can’t use it,” predictably says of this current moment , “We do think there needs to be more American action.” A former Bush administration top adviser is also calling for the United States to launch a cruise missile attack on Syria. The American people are fed up with war, but a concerted effort is being made through fearmongering, propaganda, and lies to prepare our country for a dangerous confrontation, with Russia in Syria. The demonization of Russia is a calculated plan to resurrect a raison d’être for stone-cold warriors trying to escape from the dustbin of history by evoking the specter of Russian world domination. It’s infectious. Earlier this year the BBC broadcast a fictional show that contemplated WWIII, beginning with a Russian invasion of Latvia (where 26 percent of the population is ethnic Russian and 34 percent of Latvians speak Russian at home). The imaginary WWIII scenario conjures Russia’s targeting London for a nuclear strike. No wonder that by the summer of 2016 a poll showed two-thirds of UK citizens approved the new British PM’s launching a nuclear strike in retaliation. So much for learning the lessons detailed in the Chilcot report. As this year’s presidential election comes to a conclusion, the Washington ideologues are regurgitating the same bipartisan consensus that has kept America at war since 9/11 and made the world a decidedly more dangerous place. The DC think tanks provide cover for the political establishment, a political safety net, with a fictive analytical framework providing a moral rationale for intervention, capitol casuistry. I’m fed up with the DC policy elite who cash in on war while presenting themselves as experts, at the cost of other people’s lives, our national fortune, and the sacred honor of our country. Any report advocating war that comes from any alleged think tank ought to be accompanied by a list of the think tank’s sponsors and donors and a statement of the lobbying connections of the report’s authors. It is our patriotic duty to expose why the DC foreign-policy establishment and its sponsors have not learned from their failures and instead are repeating them, with the acquiescence of the political class and sleepwalkers with press passes. It is also time for a new peace movement in America, one that includes progressives and libertarians alike, both in and out of Congress, to organize on campuses, in cities, and towns across America, to serve as an effective counterbalance to the Demuplican war party, its think tanks, and its media cheerleaders. The work begins now, not after the Inauguration. We must not accept war as inevitable, and those leaders who would lead us in that direction, whether in Congress or the White House, must face visible opposition.
Thank you Mr. Kucinich, I couldn’t agree more. | 1real |
Turkish military kills three PKK militants in north Iraq near border: sources | DIYARBAKIR, Turkey (Reuters) - The Turkish military killed three Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militants in a clash in northern Iraq near the border with Turkey on Thursday evening and one Turkish soldier was also killed, security sources said. The sources said four Turkish soldiers were wounded in the firefight in the Kanimasi area of Iraq s Dohuk region, across the border from Turkey s Cukurca district. The clash occurred as Turkish and Iraqi troops hold military exercises some 100 km (60 miles) to the west at the Habur border gate, part of coordinated steps by the two countries in response to the Iraqi Kurdish independence referendum. Turkish soldiers have for years been deployed in various parts of northern Iraq, including at Kanimasi, to prevent PKK militants crossing the border into Turkey, security sources say. Commanders of the PKK, which is designated a terrorist group by Turkey, the United States and European Union, are based in the mountains of northern Iraq. Turkish warplanes frequently carry out cross-border air strikes against PKK targets there but reports of clashes on land there are rare. More than 40,000 people have been killed in the conflict since the PKK launched its separatist insurgency in 1984. | 0fake |
REVEALED: OOPS! Russian Ads Facebook’s Zuckerberg Turned Over To Congress Was Supporting HILLARY and Another Radical Leftist Group | On September 6, 2017, liberal media elites believed they found the missing link between Donald Trump and the Putin regime.A Russian firm linked to pro-Kremlin propaganda had advertised on Facebook during the election. The company spent only $100,000 on the Facebook ads but liberals believed this was enough to flip the election to Trump.President Trump mocked the media s hysteria over the release of the Russian ads that were certain to FINALLY connect Donald Trump and his campaign once and for all to the Kremlin.The Russia hoax continues, now it's ads on Facebook. What about the totally biased and dishonest Media coverage in favor of Crooked Hillary? Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 22, 2017Washington Post was so certain the Donald Trump was behind the Facebook ads that they ran a series of stories that would lead there readers to believe there was no chance the ads purchased by the Russians could be for any other reason than the promotion of Donald J. Trump. Here is just an example of what you ll find if you go the Washington Post news site and search Russian Facebook ads:What you won t find included in that list is the ACTUAL story that provides EVIDENCE that the Russians were buying ads in an effort to DEFEAT Donald J. Trump.But alas, thanks to Gateway Pundit, a post buried in a Reddit from the Washington Post that clarified who the Russians were supporting with their ad dollars.Hint: It wasn t Donald Trump and it wasn t a unity group either. Why wouldn t the Russians want to see the next leader of the greatest nation on earth who is a known entity, someone who is quick to sell America s uranium to Russian, and someone who will sell a favor at the drop of a hat in return for a contribution to their slush fund, aka The Clinton Foundation?Here s the Reddit post: | 1real |
Previously Deported Sex Offender Arrested Again | A previously deported illegal immigrant, who is also a convicted sex offender, was arrested in New Jersey by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents. [Illegal immigrant Javier 37, of Mexico, was arrested after leaving his residence, just weeks after being placed on ICE’s ‘Most Wanted Fugitives’ list, according to an ICE news release. “Protecting national security, public safety and our borders by identifying and removing dangerous criminal fugitives from our communities is the top priority of our fugitive operations teams,” Field Office Director for the Newark Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) John Tsoukaris said in a statement. “A convicted felon and one of our most wanted fugitives,” Tsoukaris continued. “Mr. is a threat no more and is in custody awaiting removal from the United States. I commend the hard work and dedication of our officers. ” was convicted of multiple felonies, including sexually assaulting a minor, selling narcotics and failing to appear in a U. S. court. After being convicted in 2004, was ordered to be deported by an immigration and swiftly removed from the country and placed back in Mexico days later. ICE officials say sometime after 2004, the U. S. John Binder is a contributor for Breitbart Texas. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder. | 0fake |
Veterans SHRED Trump For Exploiting Navy SEAL’s Death While Press FAWNS All Over Him For It | Trump s address to a joint session of Congress last night was long on old and tired talking points, and short on substance and concrete plans. Many lawmakers present had invited guests, and, of course, Trump invited his own guests, too, which presidents do. One of his guests was Carryn Owens, wife of slain Navy SEAL Ryan Owens, who was lost during the botched raid in Yemen.The press fawned all over Trump for that, talking about the emotional, touching moment in which Trump actually became presidential. Then there were veterans on social media who felt differently. Many feel that Trump did nothing but exploit Ms. Owens, her grief, and the death of her husband. They were quite clear in how they saw it: Then there s U.S. Army veteran Charles Clymer, who was so livid he went on a mini-tweetstorm about it: But here s the press reaction. The fawning is gag-inducing, especially from those who routinely speak out against Trump. That s a stark difference. Trump used Ms. Owens like he always uses people. He was trying to puff himself up, score points, and distract attention from the poorly-planned and executed Yemen raid, which even DHS says yielded no useful intelligence.Our fighting men and women put their lives on the line for us. It would be one thing if the intelligence for the Yemen raid was confirmed to be good, and the raid itself was as carefully planned and executed as it could possibly be. Things go wrong with even the best-planned missions that s a fact. But that s not what happened in Yemen, and our military members shouldn t have to die for an administration that hastily throws an operation together, and then lies about the result. Owens deserves so much more than this, and his blood is on Trump s hands.Featured image by Jim Lo Scalzo via Getty Images | 1real |
Nearly half of Americans still oppose Republican tax bill: Reuters/Ipsos poll | WASHINGTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) - As Republicans in the U.S. Congress rush to finish their tax plan, the legislation is not getting more popular with the public, with nearly half of Americans still opposed to it, according to a Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll released on Monday. Of adults who were aware of the plan being considered by Congress, 49 percent said they were opposed to it, a sentiment that has not changed much in the past few weeks, the poll showed. In addition to the 49 percent who said they opposed the Republican tax bill, 31 percent said they supported it and 20 percent said they “don’t know,” according to the online opinion poll of 1,499 adults conducted Dec. 3 to 7, with 1,138 adults saying they were aware of the tax legislation. A poll taken at the end of November also showed 49 percent opposed to the plan. Tax negotiators are trying to reconcile the differences between separate bills passed by the House of Representatives and the Senate, then to send a final bill to President Donald Trump, who want to sign it into law before year’s end. Accomplishing this feat would represent the Republicans’ first major legislative victory since they took control of both chamber of Congress and the White House in January. Republican tax legislation would slash the corporate tax rate, eliminate some taxes paid only by rich Americans and offer a mixed bag of temporary cuts to other individuals and families. Trump, who is expected to give a speech on the tax overhaul on Wednesday, praised it in a tweet on Sunday by saying the “end result will be not only important, but SPECIAL!” When asked about Trump’s handling of tax policy, 53 percent of those polled said they disapproved, 38 percent approved and 9 percent said they “don’t know,” the Reuters/Ipsos poll showed. When asked who stands to benefit most from the Republican plan, more than half of American adults surveyed selected either the wealthy or large U.S. corporations. Twelve percent chose “all Americans,” 8 percent picked the middle class and 2 percent chose lower-income Americans. The Reuters/Ipsos poll has a credibility interval, a measure of accuracy, of 3 about percentage points. A USA TODAY/Suffolk University Poll released on Sunday showed that 32 percent of Americans support the Republican tax plan, with more than half predicting it would not lower tax bills for their families or help the economy in a major way. | 0fake |
CNN FIRES BLACK DEM Party Chair: New Wikileaks Email Exposes SECOND Question Donna Brazile Gave To Crooked Hillary In Advance Of Debate | You just can t make this up! CNN fires black Democrat operative/Chairman for getting caught giving debate question she got from CNN to Hillary prior to the debate. We re just wondering out loud, (since we know its the first logical conclusion the Left would come to) if CNN s management are just a bunch of ugly racists ?Hillary supporters should be asking themselves why their candidate didn t out Brazile when she cheated the system? Update: Politico reports that in yet another statement, CNN spokeswoman Lauren Pratapas said that on Oct. 14, the network accepted Brazile s resignation.Here is the Wikileaks email:In a tweet, Brazile thanked CNN and her former colleagues there. On October 14th, CNN accepted Donna Brazile s resignation as a CNN contributor. (Her deal had previously been suspended in July when she became the interim head of the DNC. In a tweet, Brazile thanked CNN and her former colleagues there. Thank you @CNN. Honored to be a Democratic Strategist and commentator on the network. Godspeed to all my former colleagues, she wrote.Thank you @CNN. Honored to be a Democratic Strategist and commentator on the network. Godspeed to all my former colleagues. Donna Brazile (@donnabrazile) October 31, 2016As we detailed earlier, it seems DNC Chair Donna Brazile is hoping for rescue by a higher power as the net narrows around her lies and obfuscation. Following more examples of Brazile passing debate questions to the Clinton Campaign, CNN spokesperson Lauren Pratapas said in a statement that:CNN never gave Brazile access to any questions, prep material, attendee list, background information or meetings in advance of a town hall or debate. We are completely uncomfortable with what we have learned about her interactions with the Clinton campaign while she was a CNN contributor. While there has been no official statement from the DNC, here is Donna Brazile s latest tweet Please God, let this end soon Donna Brazile (@donnabrazile) October 30, 2016 Zero Hedge | 1real |
Russian couple’s firm making the world a little cleaner and greener - Russia News Now | This post was originally published on this site
Evgeny Demin and Elena Demina moved from the Krasnodar Territory in southern Russia to Moscow with a small idea and big ambitions. In 2000, when they were not yet 25 years old, they founded SPLAT, a company that today supplies personal care and household chemical products to 45 countries around the world.
“In the beginning, the company specialized in the production of biologically active additives and cosmetics based on Spirulina platensis seaweed — thus the company name,” explains Evgeny Demin.
They quickly decided to target their efforts in another direction: on the production of next-generation toothpaste.
“From the very start, we agreed to create the best toothpaste in the world, so that it would surpass all expectations,” he said.
Evgeny Demin and Elena Demina / Source: Press photo
The couple first rented a factory for their operations near Moscow and in 2009 they opened their own plant 300 miles northwest of the Russian capital in the Novgorod Region. Today it employs more than 350 people. A total of 700 people work for the company, including in sales and marketing offices abroad.
The company has opened a subsidiary and hired a local team in China and is now looking forward to working with its Chinese partners, according to SPLAT’s press service. The company’s premium products are particularly popular in Germany and SPLAT has also started to sell its products in France. The company currently owns more than 10 Russian and foreign patents. The right segment
From the very beginning SPLAT toothpaste was priced about twice that of its supermarket rivals. Entering the premium segment, where there were practically no competitors, was one of the factors of the brand’s success, says Alexander Yeremenko, managing director of the BrandLab marketing agency.
According to Yeremenko when SPLAT debuted, two major international players, Procter&Gamble and Colgate, had claimed the middle segment of the Russian market, while the lower end was dominated by Russian producers selling very cheap toothpaste.
“In the high-price segment, besides LACALUT, there were no important players,” Yeremenko said.
Source: Press photo
Some of SPLAT’s exclusive offerings include black toothpaste made from Karelian coal and golden toothpaste featuring extracts of diamond and colloidal gold. SPLAT’s scientific laboratory and R&D center in Moscow are in charge of developing the toothpaste’s unique components.
In 2008 the company began exporting its products and by 2015 foreign sales made up 17 percent of its revenue. One of its most successful foreign markets is Turkey, where SPLAT was able to sign an exclusive contract with one of the country’s leading perfume and cosmetics chains.
The company has opened a subsidiary and hired a local team in China and is now looking forward to working with its Chinese partners, according to SPLAT’s press service. The company’s premium products are particularly popular in Germany and SPLAT has also started to sell its products in France. The company currently owns more than 10 Russian and foreign patents. A personal approach to customer loyalty
The company has not divulged any financial indicators, but in value terms SPLAT holds 9.7 percent of the Russian market and in terms of sales it has a 14.7-percent market share, says Timur Nigmatullin, an analyst at Finam Holding.
Nigmatullin attributes SPLAT’s success in part to its unusual marketing strategy. The company does not employ TV advertising on principle and focuses its energies on repeat sales to loyal customers.
Yeremenko believes that SPLAT’s marketing efforts were appropriate for a product in the high-end segment of the market where consumers value innovation and are ready to pay for it.
“SPLAT did not have money for promotion, which is why all efforts were directed at achieving a high-quality and innovative product,” Yeremenko said, adding that the firm’s unique offerings, such as being the first black toothpaste or having unusual taste and components are all elements of marketing, which requires constant research and experimentation.
The company also takes a personal approach to encouraging brand loyalty. Each SPLAT toothpaste package contains a letter from Evgeny Demin himself, the firm’s general director. At the end of each letter, he provides his personal email address noting that he responds to all messages himself.
“The director’s letters in the packages create the impression of the producer’s responsibility to the customer; [they] guarantee a quality approach and the company’s excellent result on the market,” Yeremenko said. Not just toothpaste
Today SPLAT has diversified and it produces more than 200 different products from its 50,000 sq. ft. plant in the Novgorod Region. The company’s offerings include toothpastes, brushes, foams and mouthwashes, the BioMio ecological line of housekeeping products, the organic LALLUM Baby line of natural cosmetics for children and mothers and the HEYA series of natural shampoos and conditioners.
Source: Press photo
HEYA is one of SPLAT’s latest developments and is one of co-founder Elena Demina’s proudest accomplishments.
“The idea of creating products for health and hair beauty that would be just as unique and effective as all the other SPLAT products, came to us a long time ago,” she said. “Our team spent more than five years working on it.”
The market for hair care products is highly competitive, but SPLAT’s offerings, made exclusively from natural ingredients without silicon or parabens, are unique. The company took its time developing the HEYA series components, but Demina says she is very happy with the result.
“We do not compete with other hair care producers because, all modesty aside, we believe that our products are unique and unrepeatable,” she said.
Source: Press photo
Nigmatullin considers the Russian market robust and large enough to accommodate new products, despite the unfavorable economic situation and the difficult investment climate.
“The SPLAT phenomenon is not the only one,” Nigmatullin said. “There are many other examples: UAZ, Ural motorcycles, a long list of medicine produced in local plants, confectionery and so on.”
According to Yeremenko SPLAT’s success can be attributed to hard work and planning.
“Actually, SPLAT’s story is not as magical as it seems,” Yeremenko said. “It is proof of a solid marketing approach, which basically any producer can adopt.”
In his view, SPLAT’s founders demonstrated sound judgment and perseverance in developing their idea.
“The problem with most Russian companies is not the lack of ideas, but that they don’t know where they’re going,” he said. “But SPLAT had a strategy and most importantly, it patiently implemented it.” Subscribe to get the hand picked best stories every week Related | 1real |
Peaceful Hillary Supporter Destroys Hollywood Trump Star |
A Hillary Clinton goon destroyed Donald Trump’s star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
The “peaceful man” said that he had 4-5 family members assaulted and that hes terrible upset that he has a presidential nominee who is a “poster child for sexual violence”. People were standing around and filming his “brave act”, we imagine it took several minutes to accomplish this, yet no one intervened, no one called the cops.
Most of the fake accusers have already been debunked but batshit crazed liberals still push on the narrative that Trump is a rapist.
This is a classic tactic from Saul Alinsky of whom Hillary Clinton idolized and based her college thesis on. Divert attention away from your issues with the same issue but falsely accusing it on your opponent. Nice!
So Hillary wants to divert attention away from her open marriage and from her husband’s rapes of multiple women with false accusations of Trump. Make no mistake about it, this is not a Trump issue. She would have done the same thing with any other opponent. If it were Ted Cruz, same story, if he would have exposed Bill Clinton’s rapes, the next week you would have had multiple women falsely accusing Ted Cruz of raping and groping them. Unbelievable!
The vandal identified himself as James Otis and he removed the emblem from the middle of the star to sell it and donate the money to all the women who were raped by Trump.
You would think that in the light of Project Veritas videos and how they exposed the DNC evil who paid agitators, violence, voter fraud and more they would chill out for a while but nope, the viciousness is going on. These people are pushing the limits of law in this country and as of now its a banana republic led by banana-boy Obama but if Trump gets in, a lot of people are RIGHTFULLY going to be locked up and have the key thrown away for all this chaos, anarchy and lawlessness.
LAPD is currently searching for the vandalism suspect.
Trump received his star in 2007. In July 2016 a protester built a 6-inch wall around the star which is a legitimate form of protest, but destroying the star is just anarchy and that man needs to be locked up for a while along with the Democrats who paid him to do that.
The Hollywood Chamber of Commerce said they are planning to repair the star. Well at least they have some honor in them.
“People can make a difference by voting and not destroying public property” the chamber’s president said.
These sort of things are normally expected to happen in poor countries with little to no freedoms where the opposition party is systematically oppressed but in a country like America which brags to the world how it is “the greatest democracy in the world” it is surely setting a bad example which no one in its right mind would like to follow.
If it has come to the point that even the communist state press in China is saying that what the media in America is doing to Trump is pure bias, then we know how bad it is in America.
The media people in America are rubbing their hands at this one. They are truly happy and excited this happened.
| 1real |
Trump's pick for Navy secretary withdraws | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump’s pick for secretary of the Navy withdrew from consideration on Sunday, the second time a Trump nominee to lead one of the armed services bowed out because of government conflict-of-interest rules. Trump last month nominated Philip Bilden, a private equity executive and former military intelligence officer, to lead the Navy, which the president has pledged he will expand. In a statement on Sunday, Bilden said that “after an extensive review process, I have determined that I will not be able to satisfy the Office of Government Ethics requirements without undue disruption and materially adverse divestment of my family’s private financial interests.” The development leaves Trump and Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis without nominees to head both the Navy and Army. Vincent Viola, whom the president had picked to be secretary of the Army, withdrew earlier this month. In a statement, Mattis said he was disappointed but understood Bilden’s decision. “In the coming days I will make a recommendation to President Trump for a leader who can guide our Navy and Marine Corps team as we execute the president’s vision to rebuild our military,” he said. | 0fake |
Factbox: Trump on Twitter (April 19) - Georgia elections, Karen Handel | The following statements were posted to the verified Twitter accounts of U.S. President Donald Trump, @realDonaldTrump and @POTUS. The opinions expressed are his own. Reuters has not edited the statements or confirmed their accuracy. @realDonaldTrump : - Dems failed in Kansas and are now failing in Georgia. Great job Karen Handel! It is now Hollywood vs. Georgia on June 20th. [0843 EST] - Despite major outside money, FAKE media support and eleven Republican candidates, BIG “R” win with runoff in Georgia. Glad to be of help! [0009 EST] -#MAGA #VPinASIA bit.ly/2oMuzv1 [0129 EST] - #BuyAmericanHireAmerican #MAGA [0736 EST] -- Source link: (bit.ly/2jBh4LU) (bit.ly/2jpEXYR) | 0fake |
(VIDEO) DONALD TRUMP BLOWS THE LID OFF OF THE GOP DEBATE WITH HIS ROSIE O’DONNELL COMMENT | Megyn Kelly asked a very odd question tonight during the GOP debate. I don t think she was expecting this answer. LOL! Trump is certainly making this debate VERY interesting. | 1real |
Gary Johnson: No To Carbon Taxes and Mandatory Vaccines, Yes To Black Lives Matter and Transformative Politics | Earlier today, I talked with Libertarian Party presidential candidate Gary Johnson for about half an hour. Here's an edited version of my conversation with the former two-term Republican governor of New Mexico. The topics we covered include whether he supports carbon taxes and mandatory vaccines (no to both), agrees with Hillary Clinton's characterization of Donald Trump as racist (yes), and if he thinks there is any chance he will crack 15 percent in the national polls that will earn him a ticket to the presidential debates ("We're very optimistic").
Johnson, who ran for president on the LP ticket in 2012 and pulled more than 1 million votes, says that the response his campaign is getting this time around is a "transformation." He attributes this to an "appetite" voters have for a different approach to politics, one that combines liberal social views and conservative fiscal views. He is certainly the only presidential candidate who believes "taxes to me are like a death plague," blacks are systematically denied equal opportunities in America, minimum-wage laws punish low-skilled workers, and marijuana should be legalized.
"We are two former Republican governors who served in heavily Democratic states," Johnson told me while discussing the reaction to the way he and his running mate, former Massachusetts Gov. Bill Weld, mash-up positions normally associated with either the right or the left. "What that meant is that we pissed everybody off, and because we pissed everybody off, we both got re-elected by bigger margins. We pissed off the left, we pissed off the right, but really where we came down was right in the middle. Where we came down on was right where everybody is, right where the majority of people are at."—Nick Gillespie
NICK GILLESPIE: Earlier this week, you suggested you were in favor of a carbon tax or fee. Yesterday, at a rally in New Hampshire (video here), you said you were against it. What is your position on carbon taxes?
GARY JOHNSON: [A carbon tax] sounds good in theory, but it wouldn't work in practice. I never called it a tax. I called it a fee. As it was presented to me, this was the way to reduce carbon and actually reduce costs to reduce carbon. Under that premise—lower costs, better outcomes—you can always count on me to support that [sort of] notion. In theory it sounds good, but the reality is that it's really complex and it won't really accomplish that. So, no support for a carbon fee. I never raised one penny of tax as governor of New Mexico, not one cent in any area. Taxes to me are like a death plague.
GILLESPIE: You do believe that climate change is happening and that human activity adds to it. Does that mean it is an issue that should be addressed by government policy?
JOHNSON: Well, I'll agree with the first two, but I'm a skeptic that government policy can address this. The United States contributes 16 percent of the contribution of carbon in the world…
GILLESPIE: So you would be against the United States unilaterally making any kind of move that puts a huge economic disadvantage that also wouldn't really mitigate carbon?
JOHNSON: If there is any way we can address this issue without the loss of U.S. jobs, my ears are open.
GILLESPIE: Let's talk about vaccines. There are no federal laws mandating vaccines, and that's how it should be, as far as you're concerned.
GILLESPIE: Various states treat vaccines differently, and you're not wild about the range of individual choice and opt-out provisions, but you do believe it's a state-level decision—or certainly that it's not a federal-level decision.
GILLESPIE: There are people who say vaccines cause autism [and other problems] or that vaccines don't work. Are you in that camp?
JOHNSON: No, I chose to have my children vaccinated. I understand all the concerns that some people have, but for me personally, I made a decision to have my children vaccinated. I want people to make decisions and I believe in [opt-outs]. With the exception of a few states, everyone has an opt-out. But I also want to say that, as president of the United States, if I am confronted with a zombie apocalypse that will happen unless the total herd is totally immunized, I will support [mandatory vaccinations].
GILLESPIE: Yesterday, Hillary Clinton gave a speech in which she explicitly said that Donald Trump was racist and that he has brought a racist presence into the Republican Party. A year ago, you told Reason something very similar. You said Trump's comments about Mexicans and his views on immigration were racist. Do you agree with Hillary Clinton that Donald Trump is a racist?
JOHNSON: Well, if it walks like a duck, if it talks like a duck, it's a duck.
GILLESPIE: As a former Republican governor, how does that make you feel about the current state of the GOP?
JOHNSON: It makes me feel like I think more than half of Republicans feel: This is not representative of Republicans.
GILLESPIE: Do you think the Republican Party is going to be permanently damaged by Donald Trump's candidacy?
GILLESPIE: What do you think of his recent appeals to black voters? He's been saying to African Americans that the Democratic Party hasn't really helped them much. That everything in their lives has gotten worse under Barack Obama and that Hillary Clinton is not their champion. Do you agree with Trump that Democratic Party policies haven't really benefited the black community?
JOHNSON: I do. Both parties are engaged in pandering. The libertarian approach—equal opportunity—isn't that what you really want? But I'd argue that equal opportunity currently does not exist.
GILLESPIE: How does it not exist, and what policies would you enact to make it a reality? Is it a question of ending a drug war that disproportionately impacts blacks, promoting school choice so they can escape chronically bad schools, and ending minimum-wage laws that price low-skilled workers out of getting their first jobs?
JOHNSON: All of what you just mentioned. Let me offer up a story. I was on Fox News' The Five a couple of days ago with Eric Bolling. I made the statement that "black lives matter" and Eric chimed in to say, "All lives matter." It's not a criticism of him, it's just indicative of the conversation [about race and politics]. I said, "Yes, all lives do matter, but blacks are getting shot at the rate of six times that whites are. If you're of color and you're arrested, there's a four times greater likelihood that you'll go to jail than if you're white. Eric said, "Blacks commit eight times the crime." My answer was little muddied, but I think I got to my point. Yes, blacks are being arrested, they are being charged, and they are being convicted at eight times the rate of whites. If that same scrutiny were applied to you and I as whites, we would have those same results. That's the awareness [of unequal treatment] that doesn't currently exist.
GILLESPIE: The set of ideas, mind-sets, and positions that your campaign is putting out there doesn't have a home in contemporary Republican and Democratic politics. The way things are is that if you're against the minimum wage because you think it hurts unskilled workers, you've got to be a conservative. But then you're saying, "I care about blacks and they are having a tougher time in America than whites." So then you must be on the left. Do you feel the framework you and Bill Weld are presenting is getting through? Is it changing the way people think about politics?
JOHNSON: I think we're getting through in a huge way. Between Facebook, Twitter, and other social media, we've got a reach of 300 million. We had a rally the other night in Vermont, and there was a crowd of 300 or 400 people, very enthusiastic people. Our Facebook Live stream of the rally got 300,000 views on Facebook Live in two hours. 300,000! Clearly there's an appetite for what we're talking about. Bill Weld says this all the time: We are two former Republican governors who served in heavily Democratic states. What that meant is that we pissed everybody off, and because we pissed everybody off, we both got re-elected by bigger margins. We pissed off the left, we pissed off the right, but really where we came down was right in the middle. Where we came down on was right where everybody is, right where the majority of people are at.
GILLESPIE: A writer at the conservative website The Federalist recently said that your embrace of a carbon tax clearly meant you are "a left-wing candidate." Do you consider yourself a left-winger?
JOHNSON: Well, no. But you know, tomorrow you will see an article that says this guy is a right-wing radical. Bravo.
GILLESPIE: Let's talk about your stance on religious-liberty issues, which has angered a lot people on the right and many libertarians. Your position is that you essentially want to extend anti-discrimination protections for race and gender to cover sexual orientation when it comes to businesses that are open to the public. Yet you support an opt-out for vaccinations. Why not support an opt-out for the religious owner of a business who doesn't want to bake a gay Nazi wedding cake?
JOHNSON: Because it would create a new exemption for discrimination. At the end of the day we're just going to agree to disagree. But you bring me specific legislation dealing with a cake baker not having to decorate a cake for a Nazi and I'll sign it.
GILLESPIE: Let's talk about Hillary Clinton. In response to being called a bigot and a racist by her, Donald Trump said that she was fundamentally not trustworthy. Do you agree with him on that?
JOHNSON: Yes, I agree with him.
GILLESPIE: So you're in a weird position, aren't you? You actually agree with both Hillary and Donald, but you don't think either should be president.
JOHNSON: I agree. I had always surmised that Bill Clinton's speaking fees—which hadn't been highly publicized over the years—were tied to payoffs for what he had done as president. I've always felt that, OK, this is the way of paying him back. What I've come to discover is that it was also access to Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State that was being sold. It's pay-to-play, textbook pay-to-play. That's not right. Having never held political office before [becoming governor], I had no idea of what was possible [in terms of selling access and favors]. For me, it had everything to do with doing the right thing. For me, it had everything to do with analyzing legislation—would this actually improve lives or would it not? If it didn't, I was going to veto it. If it was going to make things better, even incrementally, I signed on to it.
GILLESPIE: Do you have a particular instance that you can point to with Hillary Clinton where she accepted a donation to the Clinton Foundation in regard to this action or this access?
JOHNSON: View the documentary that's online right now: Clinton Cash. The preponderance of what they break down [in the film] clearly shows to me that this was an ongoing activity.
GILLESPIE: You still have a lot of ground to cover to reach 15 percent in the national polls that will get you into the presidential debates. What do you think your odds are at this point?
JOHNSON: We're very optimistic. Our reach on social media is doubling every three weeks right now. That simply means that for the first time people are hearing the name Gary Johnson. In the five polls [being used by the Commission on Presidential Debates], we're smack dab at 10 percent. Not 10.1 percent, not 9 percent, but smack dab at 10 percent. And if you look at those polls six weeks ago, the average would have probably been between 6 percent and 7 percent. Currently, we're on the ballot in 45 states and we have 100 percent belief that we'll be on the ballot in all the states and [the District in Columbia]. This campaign is really a transformation. We showed up in New Hampshire the other day to a big crowd. I ran in the 2012 cycle, and I think I got more media at that event than I got in the entire 2012 cycle. Everything is changed right now from an attention standpoint. Whether or not that means we end up in the debates and getting to make a difference on the stage is still a question. But right now? I'm as optimistic as ever.
GILLESPIE: Thank your for time. | 0fake |
Why The Secret Service Is Investigating Glenn Beck (VIDEO) | The United States Secret Service is investigating conspiracy theorist and right wing radio host Glenn Beck. The probe is in relation to a statement Beck made on his nationally syndicated radio show while broadcasting from the CPAC conference.The agency is required to investigate any and all threats related to the people it is protecting, in this case it happens to be comments Beck made about Donald Trump, who Beck is opposed to. From CBS Dallas:During his radio show Friday morning, Beck and his producers were talking about the other candidates saying they would support Donald Trump if he becomes the Republican nominee.His producer mocked Beck after Beck mentioned being in the shoes of Trump s rivals: Was it gigantic shoes? asked the producer Stu Burguiere. If I was close enough and I had a knife. Really. I mean the stabbing just wouldn t stop, Beck responded, appearing to direct his comments at Burguiere.Beck s comments were blasted out by the conservative Daily Caller, which is run by Fox News host Tucker Carlson.But unlike so many other inflammatory statements from Beck, this may actually be a mistake. Beck was apparently talking about his producer, Stu Burguiere. Burguiere posted on his Facebook page after the incident noting, If you were listening, you know that Glenn actually threatened me, not Donald Trump, so I am in the odd situation of defending my boss for threatening my life. The comments may have been seen as more credible because Beck has been a critic of Trump, claiming that his preferred candidate, Ted Cruz, is more qualified and destined for the presidency than Trump. Beck has accused Trump of being a huckster and a phony.It seems fitting that a conservative media outlet s sloppy reporting led to federal law enforcement being called in on another conservative media icon.Beck has for years promoted conspiracy theories about President Obama, Democrats, and other progressives. He also claimed that Obama hates white people and that he has been using the power of the government to give black people reparations. Beck s theories were so out there that advertisers began abandoning his afternoon show on Fox News, and the network soon dropped him. Now he broadcasts online and on a few niche cable networks, while still retaining his radio show but even that is dwarfed by more successful hosts like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity.Featured image via Flickr | 1real |
Factbox: Trump budget boosts military, slashes domestic programs | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump will propose beefing up military spending and slashing domestic programs and foreign aid in his fiscal year 2018 budget to be released on Thursday. Here are the highlights: The budget calls for an increase of $52 billion for the Defense Department above the 2017 base budget of about $522 billion, enacted under the Obama administration. There is an additional $2 billion increase in defense spending in other departments, including Energy and State. That is still less than some of Trump’s fellow Republicans in Congress have called for, including the heads of the committees in the Senate and House of Representatives that oversee the U.S. military. But at a time of broad cuts elsewhere in the budget, the Pentagon is unlikely to complain. The plan earmarks the new funds to accelerate the fight against Islamic State militants, reverse Army troop reductions, build more ships for the Navy and ramp up the Air Force – including by purchasing additional F-35 fighter jets, built by Lockheed Martin (LMT.N). The Department of Homeland Security would get a 6.8 percent increase, with more money for extra staff needed to catch, detain and deport illegal immigrants. Trump wants Congress to shell out $1.5 billion for his promised border wall with Mexico in the current fiscal year - enough for pilot projects to determine the best way to build it - and a further $2.6 billion in fiscal 2018. The combined budget for the State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, would fall by 28 percent, with funding cuts for the United Nations, climate change and cultural exchange programs. The plan preserves $3.1 billion in security aid to Israel. The budget also requests $12 billion in so-called Overseas Contingency Operations, or OCO, funding for extraordinary costs, chiefly in war zones such as Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. No comparison was provided for the current year’s OCO spending. Current commitments on HIV/AIDS treatment under PEPFAR, the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, will be maintained. PEPFAR is the world’s largest provider of AIDS-fighting medicine and enjoys bipartisan support. The Environmental Protection Agency’s budget would be cut by 31 percent, eliminating its climate change programs and trimming back core initiatives aimed at protecting air and water quality. The proposal would eliminate 3,200 EPA employees, or 19 percent of the current workforce, and effectively erase former Democratic President Barack Obama’s initiatives to combat climate change by cutting funding for the agency’s signature Clean Power Plan aimed at reducing carbon dioxide emissions. Healthcare companies such as drug makers and device makers will pay more than twice as much in 2018 to have their medical products reviewed for approval by the Food and Drug Administration under the proposed budget. The proposal budgets over $2 billion in fees to be collected from industry, twice as much in 2017. Oversight of air traffic control would move from the federal government to an independent group under the proposals, which include a 13 percent cut for the Department of Transportation’s discretionary budget. The plan also calls for cutting the U.S. space agency NASA budget by 0.8 percent to $19.1 billion. The budget for the Department of Energy would include $120 million to restart licensing for the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump in Nevada, a project that has been stalled for years because of lawsuits and local opposition. The Agriculture Department’s discretionary spending would be cut to $17.9 billion, a 21 percent drop from the temporary 2017 funding levels approved by Congress late last year. [L2N1GS2K1] | 0fake |
Japan minister says agrees with South Korea that China's role vital on North Korea | TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan and South Korea agreed on Tuesday on the importance of China s role in dealing with the threat from North Korea s nuclear and missile programs, Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kono told reporters after meeting his South Korean counterpart. The two U.S. allies are seeking to boost cooperation over North Korea s nuclear and missile programs, despite lingering tension between them over the issue of comfort women , a Japanese euphemism for women - many of them Korean - forced to work in Japanese military brothels before and during World War Two. Ties have been frozen over the issue, with South Korean President Moon Jae-in promising to renegotiate a 2015 pact signed with Japan that is unpopular in South Korea. | 0fake |
WATCH: HILARIOUS Video Proves CNN Doesn’t Even Bother To Verify Identity Of “Expert” Guests…Interviews FAKE Police Chief | Watch these hilarious examples of CNN having reckless disregard for facts when they interview a fake police chief, a fake mayor of a major city, and a fake eye witness to a breaking story! Media analyst Mark Dice has the story.Captain Janks, a 50 year old truck driver from Philadelphia has been able to get live on the air countless times on CNN posing as different people. Through his prank calls, he s attempting to demonstrate how most major news outlets are not really news but instead, they are simply entertainment. Jank s is a big fan of the Howard Stern show, so we will warn you now, that there will be some rough language in these clipsWatch: | 1real |
REVEALED: Trump Was A Creepy Pervert With Pregnant Women (VIDEO) | Shark Tank star and insanely successful real estate mogul Barbara Corcoran has known Republican nominee Donald Trump for over three decades and she recently showed that there s no one better to drop a truth bomb on America about who The Donald really is.In an epic interview with Erin Burnett, Corcoran added more weight to the allegations of the twelve women who have come forward against Trump, claiming that the business mogul sexually assaulted them. Corcoran admitted that she saw inappropriate behavior from Trump quite often, and she was even the victim of his misogynistic, degrading behavior at one point in time.Corcoran admitted that when she was pregnant, Trump began talking excessively about her breasts while they were in a business meeting. Corcoran recalled the time Trump sexualized and objectified her: I was pregnant with my first child at the time. So was his second wife [Marla Maples]. And he compared my breast size to his wife by putting his hands in the air, telling me how large they are. If a man is that way so inappropriate I just assume it s that way all the time. Corcoran showed solidarity with Trump s victims and not only said that she believed them, but said she thought it was preposterous that he s claiming he s done nothing like that. The popular investor also said she hoped she was wrong about her earlier prediction that Trump might win the election, noting that she thinks he will self-destruct before he gets any closer to the White House.You can watch Corcoran blow the lid off Trump s lies below:Corcoran is now the second Shark Tank investor to rail against Trump, following billionaire Mark Cuban, who has been destroying Trump every chance he gets for the last several weeks.Featured image via Frederick M. Brown and Brian Blanco / Getty Images | 1real |
HUMILIATING: Democrats Use RUSSIAN WARSHIPS As Backdrop For Tribute To U.S. VETERANS At DNC | Maybe Hillary s Russian uranium deal included a cameo of Russian warships on the DNC stage? It certainly wouldn t surprise anyone . On the last night of the Democratic National Convention, a retired Navy four-star took the stage to pay tribute to veterans. Behind him, on a giant screen, the image of four hulking warships reinforced his patriotic message.But there was a big mistake in the stirring backdrop: those are Russian warships.While retired Adm. John Nathman, a former commander of Fleet Forces Command, honored vets as America s best, the ships from the Russian Federation Navy were arrayed like sentinels on the big screen above.These were the very Soviet-era combatants that Nathman and Cold Warriors like him had once squared off against. The ships are definitely Russian, said noted naval author Norman Polmar after reviewing hi-resolution photos from the event. There s no question of that in my mind. Naval experts concluded the background was a photo composite of Russian ships that were overflown by what appear to be U.S. trainer jets. It remains unclear how or why the Democratic Party used what s believed to be images of the Russian Black Sea Fleet at their convention.In a new survey of American military personnel, Donald Trump emerged as active-duty service members preference to become the next U.S. president, topping Hillary Clinton by more than a 2-to-1 margin. MTA spokesman for the Democratic National Convention Committee was not able to immediately comment Tuesday, saying he had to track down personnel to find out what had happened.The veteran who spotted the error and notified Navy Times said he was immediately taken aback. I was kind of in shock, said Rob Barker, 38, a former electronics warfare technician who left the Navy in 2006. Having learned to visually identify foreign ships by their radars, Barker recognized the closest ship as the Kara-class cruiser Kerch. An immediate apology [from the committee] would be very nice, Barker said. Maybe acknowledge the fact that yes, they screwed up. Via: Military Times | 1real |
The Real Reason the Antidepressant Industry Does Not Want Psychedelics Legalized | By Vandita For decades, the pharmaceutical industry poured millions into the pockets of crony lawmakers as they lobbied to keep marijuana illegal. We understand if marijuana — a plant that can... | 1real |
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