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Iraqi forces capture Akkas gas field from Islamic State: minister | BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraqi forces captured the Akkas gas field from Islamic State on Thursday, Oil Minister Jabar al-Luaibi told reporters in Baghdad. Iraqi forces launched an offensive last month to oust the militant group from the last area still under its control in Iraq, on the border with Syria, where the field is located. The field hasn t entered production yet. Akkas, which has reserves of 5.6 trillion cubic feet, is operated by Korea Gas Company (KOGAS) and located in western Anbar province near the Syrian border. Development of Iraq s Akkas gas field had been delayed after Islamic State seized large territories in Anbar in May 2014. KOGAS halted operations after multiple attacks by militants against the company s sites in the field. Iraqi oil ministry officials said they plan to send a crew to Akkas to assess damages to the field s energy facilities. We will make a field visit to write a report about the damages and what we need to bring back the field online as soon as possible, said engineer Mohammed Ibrahim who is a member of an oil ministry team supervising Akkas. Iraq is planning to contact KOGAS soon to start preparations to resume development works at the field, said Ibrahim. Security forces are working to clean Akkas from landmines and booby-traps that might be left by Daesh, said Colonel Saad Hardan from Anbar police. | 0fake |
CO JUDGE REMOVES DAUGHTER From Mother’s Care For Making Comments To Other Adults About Chemtrails: ‘She is a danger to her daughter’ | This story is for anyone who believes liberal judges don t have the ability to make life altering decisions that affect Americans who don t conform to an acceptable thought process A Boulder, Colorado judge has removed a child from her mother s care because the mother believes chemtrails are being sprayed into the atmosphere, court documents reveal.Boulder Judge D.D. Mallard told Becca Vandb that 99% of people would know those are just contrails, and said that she is so immersed in a fringe subculture that she is a danger to her daughter. I can now only see my daughter with a social security worker standing over me taking notes, and the judge said this was so that if I mention chemtrails they would put a stop to that. Becca pointed out that there have been no neglect or child abuse allegations from the court or her daughter s school. There have been no criminal charges and no protective services visits. I am being railroaded for expressing my views about chemtrails. Becca Vandb s daughter wants to be with her mother, but is being kept away from her, with only supervised visits allowed, because Judge Mallard believes Becca is immersed in a dangerous fringe subculture. I bought up chemtrails at my daughter s school and was immediately banned from the premises. Schools and courts in Boulder, Colorado have flat out denied there is any such thing as geoengineering or chemtrails, so has my kid s dad who works in atmospheric research at the University of Colorado seriously. [quote_box_center] I can now only see my daughter with a social security worker standing over me taking notes, and the judge said this was so that if I mention chemtrails they would put a stop to that.'[/quote_box_center]DANGEROUS PRECEDENT The school helped him take away custody because I had the gall to argue with them when they severely embellished my comments (made to adults only) about chemtrails. Meanwhile An historic lawsuit has been filed in Canada in an effort to expose and halt the practice of chemtrails being sprayed into the atmosphere. The suit claims that the Canadian and US governments are conducting a geoengineering program that aims to spray toxic substances and particles into the atmosphere endangering the lives of millions of citizens. Via: Trendolizer | 1real |
ANGRY CONGRESS SET To Cut Off Funding To U.N…Threatens To Expel Palestinian Diplomats From U.S. Soil After Obama’s Final Assault On Israel | Congress is already setting the stage to cut off U.S. funding to the United Nations in the wake of a contested vote last week in which the Obama administration permitted an anti-Israel resolution to win overwhelming approval, according to congressional leaders, who told the Washington Free Beacon that the current administration is already plotting to take further action against the Jewish state before vacating office.Other punitive actions by Congress could include expelling Palestinian diplomats from U.S. soil and scaling back ties with foreign nations that voted in favor of the controversial measure, according to multiple sources who spoke to the Free Beacon about the situation both on and off the record.The Obama administration is still under bipartisan attack for its decision to help craft and facilitate the passage of a U.N. resolution condemning the construction of Jewish homes in Jerusalem, a move that reversed years of U.S. policy on the matter.The Free Beacon was the first to disclose on Monday that senior Obama administration officials played a key role in ensuring the measure was passed unanimously by the U.N. Security Council. This included a phone call by Vice President Joe Biden to Ukraine s president to ensure that country voted in favor of the measure.While Biden s office continues to dispute the claim, reporters in Israel and Europe confirmed in the intervening days that the call between Biden and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko did in fact take place.With anger over the issue still roiling, leading members of Congress told the Free Beacon on Wednesday that they will not delay in seeking retribution against the U.N. for the vote. This could include cutting off U.S. funding for the U.N. and stripping the Palestinian mission s diplomatic privileges.Lawmakers also will work to rebuff further attempts by the Obama administration to chastise Israel on the international stage. This would include freezing funds that could be spent by the administration on further U.N. action. The disgraceful anti-Israel resolution passed by the UNSC was apparently only the opening salvo in the Obama administration s final assault on Israel, Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) told the Free Beacon. President Obama, Secretary Kerry, Ambassador Power, and their colleagues should remember that the United States Congress reconvenes on January 3rd, and under the Constitution we control the taxpayer funds they would use for their anti-Israel initiatives. The 115th Congress must stop the current administration s vicious attack on our great ally Israel, and address the major priorities of the incoming administration, Cruz said, expressing his desire to work with the incoming Trump administration to reset the U.S. relationship with Israel.< Senior congressional sources currently working on the issue further disclosed to the Free Beacon that lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are in an uproar over the Obama administration, which they accuse of plotting behind closed doors to smear Israel. Not content with spending the last eight years using the United Nations to undermine American sovereignty, the Obama administration has finally trained their sights on Israel and is trying to exploit this unelected and unaccountable international body to impose their resolution of the Palestinian issue on Israel, one senior congressional aide told the Free Beacon. Enough is enough. While the Trump administration will not take office until the end of January, Congress will be working overtime before then to stop the Obama administration from further damaging the U.S.-Israel relationship, according to the source, who hinted that a full cut-off of U.S. funding to the U.N. currently is on the table. A new administration will arrive on January 20th, but in the intervening weeks Congress has an important role mitigating the damage President Obama can do in his final hours, the source said. Why on earth would we throw good taxpayer dollars after bad in support of the UN, which has proven itself again and again utterly unable to encourage any positive progress? Just take Syria if they were doing anything over the last five years, it should have been working out a fair and equitable adjudication of the Syrian war. Instead, they ve proven themselves utterly useless in fact they ve probably made a gut-wrenching catastrophe worse, the source explained. There s no reason to think this action will turn out any more favorably. For entire story WFB | 1real |
Pennsylvania governor nominates replacement for convicted attorney general | NEW YORK (Reuters) - Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf on Thursday nominated the state’s inspector general to serve as interim attorney general until November’s election, temporarily replacing Kathleen Kane, who resigned the post earlier this week after her conviction for perjury. Bruce Beemer, who previously served under Kane as first deputy in the attorney general’s office, will have to be confirmed by the state Senate. Wolf said in a statement that he had already conferred with both Republican and Democratic leaders in the Senate and expected a quick confirmation. Beemer would hold the job until a successor is elected in November for a four-year term, and then return to his role as inspector general. Kane announced her resignation on Tuesday, a day after a jury convicted her of leaking sealed grand jury material to a news reporter in an effort to embarrass a political rival. The move will likely end a brief stint as acting attorney general for Bruce Castor, whom Kane had hired as her second-in-command earlier this year. In a statement, Castor said the governor was fulfilling his duties under the law. “I will do all within my power to see that the office of attorney general is in the best possible shape for whenever the next attorney general arrives,” Castor said. Castor, the former Montgomery County district attorney, made headlines earlier this year when he testified at a hearing for comedian Bill Cosby in his sexual assault case. Castor said he had agreed not to prosecute Cosby if the entertainer testified in a civil case brought by his accuser. But a court ruled Castor’s claims were not enough to prevent the current district attorney from bringing charges. Kane’s conviction, meanwhile, ended what had once been seen as a promising political career. Prosecutors said Kane believed former state prosecutor Frank Fina was behind a 2014 newspaper article that said she had abandoned a corruption investigation into Philadelphia officials. In an effort to take revenge, prosecutors said, Kane leaked sealed details about a separate investigation that Fina declined to pursue and then lied about having done so to a grand jury investigating the matter. Kane had portrayed the charges as politically motivated, after she revealed lewd emails exchanged among judges, state officials and prosecutors that she discovered while re-examining the Jerry Sandusky molestation investigation. Several officials, including two state Supreme Court justices, lost their jobs in the wake of the email scandal, dubbed “Porngate.” | 0fake |
Trump to announce broad Iran strategy this week: White House | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump will make an announcement this week on an overall Iran strategy, including whether to decertify the international deal curbing Tehran s nuclear program, the White House said on Tuesday. He ll make that later this week, White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders told reporters when asked about the certification decision and the administration s broader strategy on Iran. Trump, who has called the 2015 pact agreed between Iran and six world powers an embarrassment, is expected to announce that he will decertify the deal ahead of an Oct. 15 deadline, a senior administration official said last week. Trump is also expected to designate Iran s most powerful security force, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corp, as a terrorist organization as part of a new Iran strategy. The president has reached a decision on an overall Iran strategy and wants to make sure that we have a broad policy to deal with ... all of the problems of Iran being a bad actor, Sanders said. Trump accuses Iran of supporting terrorism and says the 2015 deal does not do enough to block its path to acquire nuclear weapons. Iran says it does not seek nuclear weapons and in turn blames the growth of militant groups such as Islamic State on the policies of the United States and its regional allies. The hawkish turn in U.S. policy toward Iran has alarmed many of its European allies. British Prime Minister Theresa May told Trump by phone on Tuesday that the deal was vitally important for regional security. German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel on Monday urged the United States not to call into question such an important achievement that has improved our security. France voiced concern on Tuesday that designating the Revolutionary Guards a terrorist group could exacerbate tensions in the region. If Trump declines to certify the Iran deal, U.S. congressional leaders would have 60 days to decide whether to reimpose sanctions on Tehran suspended under the agreement. Iranian authorities, who have said Tehran would not be the first to violate the accord, have stepped up their rhetoric against the Trump administration over the possible terrorist designation of the Revolutionary Guards. The Americans have driven the world crazy by their behavior. It is time to teach them a new lesson, Iranian armed forces spokesman Masoud Jazayeri said on Tuesday. | 0fake |
McConnell: Whether I Have to Use Nuclear Option on Gorsuch ’Will Depend on the Democrats’ - Breitbart | .@SenateMajLdr on Gorsuch’s concerns over Trump’s attacks on the judiciary: I happen to agree with what Gorsuch said https: . During an interview aired on Wednesday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Senate Majority Leader Senator Mitch McConnell ( ) said that whether or not he needs to use the nuclear option to confirm Judge Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court “will depend on the Democrats. ” When asked if he would have to use the nuclear option to get Gorsuch confirmed, McConnell answered, “That will depend on the Democrats. ” He’ll be confirmed. the issue for your audience, the issue you’re raising is, will we have to get cloture, in other words, 60 votes to advance the nomination? Senator [Jeff] Merkley ( ) announced we were going have to do that before he even knew who the nominee was. So, my assumption is, we’ll have to get 60 votes. ” McConnell further vowed that Gorsuch will get 60 votes, and that “In any event, Gorsuch is going to be confirmed. ” McConnell also praised Gorsuch, and stated that he agrees with Gorsuch’s concerns over President Trump’s “ judge” denunciation of a ruling against his immigration executive order. Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett | 0fake |
Two Dozen Cops Across Five California Precincts Had Sex With Teenager (VIDEO) | A disturbing sex scandal that rocked the Oakland, California police department has now expanded to several other East Bay Area districts.The allegations now involve nearly two dozen CA police officers, all accused of having sex with a teenager they nicknamed Juve, short for Juvenile.The scandal broke after text messages between the girl and Oakland county police officers were discovered by a federal monitor who was assigned to oversee the police department.During an interview with KPIX, the teen, who is now an adult, told reporters that at least two dozen officers slept with her.In return for sex with the police she says she was given confidential police information, including tips on scheduled anti-prostitution stings. She also says she received extra police protection when she was working the streets as a prostitute.An unidentified officer in his 80s is reported to have paid $250 to have sex with the girl.On June 9, Oakland Police Chief Sean Whent was relieved of his position, due to his own involvement in the scandal. While it was Whent s job to investigate the allegations, according to the young woman at the center of the investigation, he was one of the officers involved in it.San Francisco CBS affiliate reports that:Whent s removal from the top brass position comes amid an internal affairs investigation and a criminal investigation focused on several Oakland police officers who allegedly had sex with an underage girl.This story is disturbing on so many levels. As law enforcement officers these cops were responsible to protect this teen from sex traffickers. Instead they participated in the crime.The one positive note about this story is that the young woman at the center of the investigation seems to have no desire to protect the officers that didn t protect her.Watch the KPIX interview with the young woman below.Featured image via video screen capture KPIX | 1real |
EU readies 'David Davis-proof' Brexit summit | BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Union plays down talk by Britain s Brexit minister that last week s interim accord is not binding and will launch new talks on Friday that are David Davis-proof , a senior EU official said. The comment on Tuesday followed Brexit Secretary Davis s weekend remark that outline divorce terms were more a statement of intent than legally binding. The EU official told reporters that EU leaders meeting on Friday will ram home in guidelines to their negotiator that Britain must honor its agreements so far if it wants to discuss the future free trade treaty it wants. Davis himself pledged to convert last Friday s deal into legal text as soon as possible after he spoke to the European Parliament s Brexit point man. Guy Verhofstadt branded Davis s earlier comment unhelpful and said that what the EU executive calls a gentleman s agreement must be made legal. British and EU officials said that would mean agreeing the formal withdrawal treaty within the coming year so that it can be ratified by their parliaments before Brexit in March 2019. Davis s EU counterpart, Michel Barnier, said he aimed in the new year to present a draft of a withdrawal treaty that would reflect the accords struck with Prime Minister Theresa May last week on settling financial obligations, the rights of expatriate citizens and ensuring no hard EU border with Northern Ireland. Adding to the debate over how far London is bound by May s deal, Barnier insisted there should be no backtracking if London is to have the trade negotiations it so much wants. That is spelled out in legal language in the negotiating guidelines which leaders are expected to approve on Friday after May has left the summit: Negotiations in the second phase can only progress as long as all commitments undertaken during the first phase are respected in full and translated faithfully into legal terms as quickly as possible, the draft guidelines read. That, the senior EU official said, made clear there could be no going back, as Davis had implied might be possible: The guidelines are David Davis-proof, the official said. Guidelines were sent by summit chair Donald Tusk to the 27 other national leaders on Friday. They were little changed when their aides met on Monday to prepare the meeting, principally to spell out more clearly the timing of the next steps in the process and to emphasize continuing obligations on London. An intention to start negotiating a transition period from Brexit to a future trade pact early in 2018 now includes a plan to be able to launch talks in January. The new draft makes clearer that talks on what happens after transition will start only after further guidelines are agreed in March. Tusk, in his formal letter on Tuesday inviting leaders to the summit, warned there was no time to lose and highlighted a gnawing concern in Brussels that keeping divergent interests among the 27 in check may be much harder when it comes to a free trade treaty than it has been in settling Britain s divorce. This will be a furious race against time, where again our unity will be key, Tusk wrote. And the experience so far has shown that unity is a sine qua non of an orderly Brexit. EU officials expect relatively straightforward talks on the transition period, given British desire for a quick deal and EU insistence that it be as simple as possible; essentially Britain will retain all its obligations as an EU member, as well as many of its rights except, crucially, any say over EU decisions. Starting trade talks will require, first, more information from May on what future deal she wants. Davis spoke at the weekend of a free trade pact similar to but better than one the EU concluded last year with Canada Canada Plus Plus Plus . But it will also require hard bargaining among the 27, who have very different relationships and interests with Britain. | 0fake |
Site of Ft. Lauderdale Airport Shooting a Gun-Free Zone - Breitbart | On January 6 a passenger from an Air Canada flight allegedly pulled a gun from a checked bag in baggage claim and opened fire, shooting numerous innocents inside the passenger terminal. [Florida law designates an airport “passenger terminal” as one of the many places that citizens are not allowed to carry a gun for . The Florida Senate’s list of Florida Statutes states that a “[concealed carry] license issued under this section does not authorize any person to openly carry a handgun or carry a concealed weapon or firearm into … the inside of the passenger terminal and sterile area of any airport, provided that no person shall be prohibited from carrying any legal firearm into the terminal, which firearm is encased for shipment for purposes of checking such firearm as baggage to be lawfully transported on any aircraft. ” In other words, it is legal to have a gun with you if it is “encased” for travel — say, for the purposes of a hunting or shooting trip — but it is not legal to have one otherwise. This mean Floridians with concealed carry licenses were barred from having their guns on their persons for while at the baggage claim where the January 6 attack occurred. The Crime Prevention Research Center notes that “Florida is one of only six states that completely ban concealed carry at airports. ” Breitbart News spoke to Florida Carry Inc. ’s Sean Caranna after news of the Ft. Lauderdale attack broke, he said: Once again a murderer has chosen a “gun free zone” to indiscriminately kill innocent people. Thankfully law enforcement was able to respond quickly, but tragically not before multiple victims were murdered. Florida Rep. Raburn ( ) and Sen. Greg Steube ( ) have each filed separate legislation this year to allow for lawful defensive carry in the areas of airport terminals. This cowardly and tragic act is further proof that people need the ability to defend themselves wherever they peacefully go. AWR Hawkins is the Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and host of “Bullets with AWR Hawkins,” a Breitbart News podcast. He is also the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart. com. | 0fake |
THE 2016 Calendar That Won’t Be Hanging In ISIS Caves Or Obama’s Oval Office | Vladimir Putin the anti-Obama Fans of the maverick Russian president can now gaze upon him every day for the bargain price of just 78 Roubles (72p) by buying his bizarre and wonderful 2016 calendar.The momentous tribute to the iron-fisted leader features him in a typically outlandish range of poses, from fishing topless to cuddling a fluffy puppy.Each page portrays the legendary president s tough and sensitive sides, with him boasting about the prowess of the Russian military one month and professing his love of dogs the next.And it seems that Russians simply cannot get enough of their leader with the glossy calendar selling out in Moscow.But it is unlikely to adorn the walls of many Islamic State (ISIS) hideouts, with the hard man supremo s bombing blitz in Syria contributing to the terrorist group s accelerating collapse.Mr Putin seemingly alludes to the current military operations against ISIS, with some critics saying he has outflanked and out-thought Western leaders.The October entry features the stern Russian president wearing a military cap and striped shirt alongside a slogan proclaiming his country s military might.It states: No one will succeed in gaining military superiority over Russia. Our army is contemporary, capable, and as they now say, polite, but formidable. Via: Express UK | 1real |
Trump to give speech on U.S. tax overhaul on Wednesday: White House | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump will deliver a speech on the plan to overhaul the nation’s tax code on Wednesday, the White House said on Monday. “As we work with Congress to achieve historic tax cuts, the president plans to speak Wednesday to the American people on how tax reform will lead to a brighter future for them and their families,” said Lindsay Walters, the deputy press secretary. | 0fake |
Radical and Defiant | Thank you for supporting LRC with your Amazon purchases. Tags: | 1real |
As fixes for Obamacare begin, meet the hopelessly confusing ‘all-payer model’ | Print
While Donald Trump talks of repealing and replacing Obamacare and Hillary Clinton talks of reopening the conversation about the public option , the state of Vermont has begun dealing its own personal health care crisis by invoking something called the “all-payer model.”
The Green Mountain Care Board on Wednesday voted to approve this methodology for paying for health care, but understanding what that means requires reading the fine print of the agreement.
By approving the all-payer model agreement, Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin seeks to align incentives across Medicare, Medicaid and private insurance so health care providers are paid for keeping patients healthy, not for providing individual services and procedures.
The board’s approval makes Vermont the first state to pursue an all-payer model statewide.
In a statement sent from the governor’s office, Shumlin thanked President Barack Obama and U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell for negotiating the agreement with the state, and he said the model would control health care costs and reward doctors for a more preventive approach to care.
“Vermont will now become the first state in America to ensure that your doctor can focus on keeping you healthy, rather than running tests or procedures,” Shumlin said, adding:
By shifting the focus away from the current fee-for-service system to one that rewards primary care and prevention, we will help Vermonters lead healthier lives and more effectively manage chronic diseases, allow doctors to better treat their patients and identify health issues before they become severe, and reduce costs in a health care system that, if left unchecked, will bankrupt our state and Vermont families.
Green Mountain Care Board Chair Al Gobeille called the event “an important next step in provider-led health care reform,” adding that the program will save Vermont $10 billion over the next decade.
However, the board’s action did little to address concerns raised by the Joint Fiscal Office. In a report released Friday , the JFO weighed the supposed benefits of the new system against a list of critiques and uncertainties. Among the uncertainties are the administrative costs of the program, as well as where funding will come from.
The JFO report also notes that the next governor could refuse to go forward with the program. Republican gubernatorial candidate Phil Scott has said he does not support the program.
In a statement sent to local media, State House Minority Leader Rep. Don Turner, criticized the plan.
“The proposal raises many important, but unanswered, questions regarding the ability to cap healthcare cost growth, the use of the ACO model … and the competency of the Shumlin Administration to successfully run another complex regulatory system given its dismal record with Vermont Health Connect,” he said.
Darcie Johnston, director of Vermonters for Health Care Freedom, said she was shocked at the speed with which the board approved the draft. “Our legislators made a huge mistake in giving the GMCB so much power — the power to enter into contracts to further destroy our health care system.”
Amy Cooper, executive director of HealthFirst, an independent practice association representing over 250 medical professionals, told Vermont Watchdog she believes “the concept could be a good one” but nevertheless is “nervous about the State’s ability to implement it, especially with such a short timeline of reviewing the details that were only released a month ago.”
Shumlin will sign the revised draft document at 2 p.m. Thursday in his ceremonial office in Montpelier.
Over the past month, health care officials held public forums to explain Vermont’s 44-page draft agreement with Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Still, many doctors and patients feel unsure of what the “all-payer model” will mean for them, in part because of the program’s many complexities.
For starters, despite the administration’s talk of an “all-payer waiver,” the draft document contains a waiver only for Medicare, not Medicaid or commercial insurance — the other two “payers” in Vermont’s health care system. Instead, the document gives state health care officials permission to operate accountable care organizations, or ACOs, under a restructured payment system.
For health care providers, the new payment system will start to replace current fee-for-service payments with a state-run global budget, the goal of which is to reward positive outcomes and overall population health.
Once the agreement is finalized, Vermont will start using its state-approved ACO, called the Vermont Care Organization. That network of health care providers is comprised of representatives from existing ACOs, including OneCare, HealthFirst and Community Health Accountable Care.
The smaller ACOs have not yet committed to being managed by the Vermont Care Organization. They have until 2018 to decide whether to remain as fee-for-service operators or transition to global budgeting within the Vermont Care Organization, as overseen by the Green Mountain Care Board.
Dr. Paul Reiss, chief medical officer at HealthFirst, told Watchdog his ACO is not recommending that physicians sign on with the Vermont Care Organization until details of the offer are known.
“There’s no proposal to change the way physicians are paid under Medicare in 2017,” Reiss said. “We’ll recommend signing on when there are actually offers on the table.”
At recent public forums, both Gov. Peter Shumlin and Al Gobeille, chair of the Green Mountain Care Board, said the Vermont Care Organization would be “risk bearing.” That means the umbrella ACO network, not individual providers, will absorb losses if providers exceed their budget for the year.
While the risk-bearing stipulation may allay providers’ worries about going over budget, page 8 of the agreement states that the ACO is responsible for “at minimum 30 percent” of shared losses. Put another way, providers in some cases will be responsible for paying up to 70 percent of the cost of exceeding the state-determined budget.
Delivering care under a global budget worries some doctors, who may not be able to survive under a budget cap and offer effective care at the same time.
When an audience member at the Norwich public forum asked what impact failing practices might have on the system, Shumlin replied, “You cannot be refused care. … It’s the ACO’s problem to deal with the bankruptcy. … It would not affect care in any way. It might not be the same provider, because they would be out of business theoretically, but someone would have an interest in caring for you.”
Gobeille agreed that private practices might face bankruptcy “because they couldn’t make it work in the independent practice world.” He added that such practices could be absorbed into the hospital system.
Since the draft agreement was announced , some physicians have criticized the plan on the grounds that hospitals may continue getting reimbursed for services at a higher rate, because of their bargaining advantage with insurance companies and the Green Mountain Care Board.
While it’s generally expected that the all-payer model will fix the payment reimbursement differential between Medicare, Medicaid and commercial insurers, Reiss said he’s skeptical.
“There are no [plans] currently diagrammed on any drawing board to make that happen,” Reiss told Watchdog.
In fact, the draft agreement doesn’t fix the reimbursement differential. Instead, it says by 2020 the state must deliver “a report on options to narrow the Payer Differential between payers.”
The long delay could disappoint independent physicians, who have been told they don’t have to join the state-run ACO if they don’t want. That freedom of choice may be illusory at best, since financial pressure cited in the agreement could coerce doctors to join the network or face financial consequences.
Specifically, the draft agreement says the state will “encourage” providers and beneficiaries to participate. One “encouragement” includes a potential Medicare payment reduction for practices that remain outside of the ACO.
However, in an Oct.19 email exchange obtained by Vermont Watchdog, state Sen. Tim Ashe, told Burlington psychiatrist Robert Emmons that he contacted Ena Backus, health policy chief at the Green Mountain Care Board, and the financial penalty is now removed from the updated agreement.
Funding to help Vermont abandon a fee-for-service model includes a one-time payment of $9.5 million dollars from Medicare. The state also has a verbal agreement with Medicaid for $200 million — likely $110 million in federal money and $90 million in state funds.
It’s unclear where this money, and the administrative expense of Vermont Care Organization, will come from.
On Tuesday, Johnston unsuccessfully called for the board to delay its vote until outstanding questions are answered.
“We believe that doctors and patients have significant concerns, and that the delivery of health care to Vermonters could be significantly impacted. We are concerned about the rationing of care,” the Vermonters for Healthcare Freedom director said in a statement. “…There are too many questions that deserve answers before the Green Mountain Care Board should agree to support such a risky venture.”
Other concerns of Johnston’s include a lack of transparency and the model’s impact on Vermont’s doctor shortage.
A timeline of key events reveals the long road ahead for the all-payer health care model. | 1real |
12 MUSLIM MIGRANTS GANG RAPE 13 YR OLD GIRL…Muslim Lawyer Blames Girl | Tell us again Barack, about the poor widows and orphans who are being strategically placed in our small towns and communities across America. With all the rape and violence being committed by these refugees, why in the world would we welcome these savage animals into our country? Oh that s right to vote for Democrats A Muslim councilor has admitted that some feel as though it takes two to tango as 12 men were jailed for gang-raping a 13-year-old white girl in West Yorkshire.The gang of men from Pakistani origin were jailed for a total of 143 years at Bradford Crown Court today, for 13 months of horrendous abuse of the British white girl in 2011 and 2012. However, the Councillor for Keighley Central, where the abuse took place, has admitted that some members of the community felt it takes two to tango and that the girl may have played her part .Zafar Ali, who has been a member of the Keighley Mosque for decades believes that some of the men may have attended in the past, but said the Muslim community totally condemn their actions.He told MailOnline: Everyone now believes that justice has been done, we need to move forward and it is a lesson for the whole Muslim community. There are a few bad apples but this does not represent the Muslim community as a whole and any sensible Muslim totally condemns these actions. Eleven of the men were today jailed for rape and a twelfth man was jailed for sexual activity with a child under 16 today at Bradford Crown Court, but the ringleader has fled to Bangladesh.West Yorkshire Police confirmed that the men jailed were of Pakistani origin.The sentences come as it emerged that:Ringleader Ahmed Al-Choudhury who facilitated most of the offences is believed to now be living in Bangladesh after fleeing at the beginning of the investigation in 2012 After the sentencing, Kris Hopkins, Conservative MP for Keighley spoke out against the sick model of organized groups of Asian men grooming young white girls , but said there are more women out there who need justice.He said the sentenced were vindication for controversial comments he made during a parliamentary debate in 2012, claiming that organised groups of Asian men were going around raping white girls .However, he claims that even today he has been lambasted for even mentioning that the men are Asian when talking about the sentences.He told MailOnline: There are sexual offenders who are white, but the fact is this particular model is all Asian men and all the victims were white. I was attacked in 2012 and today, when these men were convicted, the community was silent. You have to ask yourself why these men get away with this behavior. There is broader issues around the way women are treated in that community, there are hundreds if not thousands of women who live behind that door and have no voice. In a Commons speech three years ago, Mr Hopkins caused controversy three years ago when he suggested Muslim men were fundamentally sexist towards women.Judge Roger Thomas QC condemned the insolent and disrespectful behaviour the accused showed in court which he said reflected their treatment of their victim.They showed her no shred of decency or humanity when as a vulnerable child she so needed care and understandingJudge Roger Thomas QC told them: The attitudes of the majority of you have so clearly demonstrated to these proceedings has been contemptuous, disrespectful and arrogant on a scale that I have hardly seen before in many years of practice in criminal law. Exactly the same attitude to the 13/14 year old girl who you all sexually abused and exploited for your own selfish gratification. He added: None of these defendants had any concern for the victim. They were totally uninterested in her welfare and what damage they were causing her. The victim clearly demanded pity and understanding but their view of her was heartless and demeaning. They saw her as a pathetic figure who had no worth and who served no purpose than to be an object that they could sexually misuse and cast aside. Via: Daily Mail | 1real |
BILL CLINTON GETS HAMMERED By Protesters In Philly But His Angry Response Won’t Win Them Over [Video] | Bill Clinton was in Philly today and got swamped by protesters holding signs about Black Lives Matter or Benghazi. It was ugly but what was even worse is Bill decided to give the BLM protesters a dose of truth. That didn t go over too well and probably didn t win Hillary any votes. It was a squirm-worthy moment in politics One sign read: HILLARY IS A MURDERER Clinton got in a heated argument with Black Lives Matter protesters as he was campaigning for his wife Hillary Clinton in Philadelphia, battling the protesters over his passage of criminal justice reform.Clinton tried to address the protesters, but they continued to yell over his answer. Here s the thing, I like protesters. But the ones who won t let you answer are afraid of the truth, he told the crowd to applause.The former president noted that Hillary had nothing to do with his reforms, but defended them anyways. Because of that bill, we had a 25-year low in crime, a 33-year low in the murder rate, and listen to this, because of that and the background check law, a 46-year low in the deaths of people of gun violence. And how do you think those lives were, that mattered? Whose lives were saved, that mattered? One of the protesters yelled that Bill should be charged with crimes against humanity. Ohohohoho! Clinton responded. I don t know how you would characterize the gang leaders who got 13-year-old kids hopped up on crack and sent them out on the street to murder other African-American children, a now visibly angry Clinton shot back. Maybe you thought they were good citizens You are defending the people who kill the people whose lives you say matter! Clinton continued to call out the protesters for talking over his answers. They re afraid of the truth, he told the crowd. They re afraid of the truth. Bill Clinton getting protested hard in Philly over the crime & welfare bills.This is going to get its own headlines pic.twitter.com/JMyiTWuJm3 Andrew Jerell Jones (@sluggahjells) April 7, 2016VIA: MEDIATE | 1real |
OBAMA’S NEW POSTERBOY FOR MUSLIM PERSECUTION Is Son Of Prominent Muslim Activist, Now Admits He Knew Briefcase Would Be Viewed As “Suspicious” [VIDEO] | For anyone who cares to do the research, there is always more to Obama s unyielding public support of a person who is held up as a victim. Every move is carefully calculated, orchestrated and implemented by the master Community Organizer In Chief As many people thoroughly anticipated the back-story to the 14-year-old briefcase clockmaker reflects his father is actually a rather controversial Muslim activist. This lends further credence toward a reasonable belief that his taking a briefcase clock to school was not as innocent as the media would lead everyone to believe.update-1UPDATE: In his own words Ahmed Mohamed, 14, an Irving MacArthur High student essentially states he knew taking the device to school was controversial. Listen at 1:26 video: I closed it with a cable, so because, I didn t want to lock it to make it seem like a threat so I just used simple cable . so it won t look that much suspicious .That s what you call an admission of premeditation and intent. In his own words, with forethought, he knew the briefcase with wires and a countdown clock would be suspicious ; especially around 9/11.TEXAS [ ] The ninth grader is the son of Mohamed Elhassan Mohamed, a Sudanese immigrant who has made headlines of his own over the years. A February 2015 profile in the North Dallas Gazette details the elder Mohamed s activities.Born in Sudan in 1961, Mohamed, a former customs worker at Khartoum International Airport, earned a degree in philosophy from Cairo University in Khartoum before emigrating to the U.S. Once I realized my dream was bigger than what Sudan had to offer I immigrated to America in the mid-1980 s, he told the North Dallas Gazette. In that same interview, Mohamed shared that upon arrival in the U.S. where he says his degree was not accepted he initially sold hot dogs, candy, and newspapers in Manhattan. I realized this wasn t enough for me, and I packed my bag and moved to Dallas, Texas y all, he told the paper.In Texas, he started out as a pizza delivery man before becoming a taxi driver and ultimately launching his own business ventures he owns a computer repair shop in Irving, Texas (perhaps where his son gets his tech acuity from), a cab company called Jet Taxi, a medical emergency transport company called Paradise Prime Investments, and the solar energy business AlSufi International in Sudan. He also served as self-elected president of the small Sufi Muslim AlSufi center in Irving.Via: Conservative TreehouseAhmed s father, Mohamed Elhassan Mohamed is also well known for his defense of the Quran against Florida pastor Terry Jones. | 1real |
CREEPY: Trump Promised Teenage Ivanka He’d Never Date Anyone Younger Than She Is (AUDIO) | Donald Trump s relationship with his daughter Ivanka has definitely raised a few eyebrows. It s bad enough that all of his wives including his current wife, Melania have been a couple of decades younger than he is. What is more disturbing is the fact that he seems to have the hots for his daughter. Well, this troubling notion is even more eyebrow-raising when you consider an interview Trump did with radio host Howard Stern in 1999.Apparently, Trump and Stern were discussing the women they like to date, and Trump mentioned that he had promised his daughter Ivanka, who was seventeen at the time, that he would not date anyone younger than she was. Even crazier is the fact that the age of consent in the state of New York is seventeen years of age, so, essentially, all Trump, who was 53 at the time, was promising to do is not to commit rape. One could argue all day long regarding statutory rape laws and their fairness, but no 17-year-old girl is going to want to do anything like that with a 53-year-old man unless she was shamed, guilted, bullied, or forced into it. End of story.Trump said to Stern: I have a deal with her. She s 17 and doing great Ivanka. She made me promise, swear to her that I would never date a girl younger than her. So as she grows older, the field is getting very limited. Stern, who sounded taken aback, made an awkward joke in response: The nerve of her. Now you can t go out with 16-year-olds. Indeed. Needless to say, these comments simply continue the narrative that Trump has an unhealthy affinity for girls that are far too young for him, and this conversation seems to suggest that if he could get away with it, he d date and have sex with underage girls. Is this the sort of man we really want in the White House?Listen to the audio below, via the New York Daily News:[ad3media campaign= 977 ]Featured image via screen capture from Twitter | 1real |
(VIDEO) COVERUP? THE TOXIC WATER FLOWS FASTER THAN FACTS AT THE EPA | Beware: I m from the government and I m here to help. This is a very revealing interview about the EPA toxic water spill out West. The EPA is doing its best to cover their bases and cover up any wrongdoing except to throw the locals under the bus. More info from Washington Times:DENVER The environmental left can be counted on to whip up an outcry whenever a private company despoils a gulf, stream or river unless the polluter in question is the Environmental Protection Agency.After days with little or no reaction to the Gold King Mine spill, some Democrats and green activists are scrambling to provide cover for the EPA by pointing fingers elsewhere and downplaying the magnitude of the blowout, which flooded the Animas River with 3 million gallons of toxic orange wastewater. Blaming the EPA for #AnimasRiver spill is like blaming a doctor for the disease, Conservation Colorado said in a Wednesday tweet.Said Colorado state Rep. Joe Salazar, a Democrat, on Twitter: Focus of #AnimasRiver contamination should be on mining companies and their mining practices, not EPA, yes? The Sierra Club Rocky Mountain chapter posted a link to an article titled 9 things you need to know about the Animas River spill. The list includes The EPA messed up, but they re not the root cause and This isn t the first time this has happened, nor is it the worst. Colorado state Sen. Ellen Roberts, a Republican who represents Durango, said she didn t appreciate the campaign. She said it muddies the waters amid the effort to determine what toxins are in the river and a plan to clean up of the spill. | 1real |
Black Trump Adviser: Staff Doesn’t Care About Reaching Out To Black Voters | It s no secret that Team Trump has a problem with minorities and that is putting it kindly. Despite Trump s recent attempts to fake caring about black people by speaking to black voters in a mostly white Wisconsin suburb, it couldn t be more clear that it s all just an attempt to save face. Well, now, one black Trump adviser has actually admitted what we already knew: the Trump camp couldn t give two shits about minority outreach.Sean Jackson leads the Black Republican Caucus of Florida, and somehow he thinks that Trump actually likes black people. Jackson actually blames Trump s campaign staff rather than the Great Orange Racist himself for the abysmal polling results when it comes to African American voters. Jackson says: Mr. Trump really does have a sincere, passionate interest in black outreach, but his campaign staff has dropped the ball. I have been saying repeatedly that you cannot go into a black community in the ninth hour of a campaign and ask them to vote for a GOP candidate. The party has done a piss-poor job of courting the black vote over 50 years. So you have to have more vested interest in time and in your financial effort for the whole campaign, not just in the last 100 days. Well, Mr. Jackson, you got one thing right here: The GOP HAS done a piss poor job of reaching out to black voters for decades. There s a reason for that, though: the party is full of racists. That s just the truth, but being a black Republican yourself, I suppose that you either refuse to see or choose to overlook that fact. Just a couple of examples, to remind you. House Majority Whip Steve Scalise is the number three ranking Republican in the House of Representatives. He also once bragged to a reporter that he is, quote, David Duke without the baggage. Then you have Rep. Steve King, who literally floated white supremacist theories on live television during convention coverage. And that s just TWO examples. We won t even get started on just how racist The Donald himself is.Wake up, man Donald Trump and the GOP don t give a damn about black people. They just want our votes, and you ve fallen for their line of bullshit hook, line, and sinker.Featured image via Ralph Freso/Getty Images | 1real |
WOW! DEM STRATEGIST Bob Beckel Says Wikileaks Founder Should Be Assassinated:”I’m not for the death penalty, so illegally shoot the son-of-a-b*tch!” | Is CNN contributor and Democratic Strategist Bob Beckel speaking on behalf of a frustrated Hillary Clinton who was just exposed by Wikileaks in a document suggesting Wikileaks founder Julian Assange should be taken out with a drone? Is this how the Democrat party handles anyone who stands up to Hillary and exposes the Clinton s criminal behavior? Threaten them to shut them up, and if they don t shut up assassinate them? Way to show the Democrat Party s true colors Bob.Here s what Bob Beckel has to say about how to handle Wikileaks founder Julian Assange and his leaks to the public exposing the crooked Democrat Party and their crooked Queen Hillary Look the way to deal with this it s pretty simple. We ve got special ops forces. A dead guy can t leak stuff. The guys a traitor, he s treasonous, and he s broken every law in the United States (Is he talking about Obama?) And I m not for the death penalty, and if I m not for the death-penalty, there s only one way to do it illegally shoot the son-of-a-bitch! Bob Beckel, Democrat StrategistDemocrat strategist Bob Beckel, now at CNN, called for Julian Assange to be assassinated after Clinton cable leak pic.twitter.com/9L2ixl24Er WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) October 3, 2016 | 1real |
The state Duma has postponed the adoption of the bill on “winter tires” | The Newspapers | The state Duma has postponed the adoption of the bill on “winter tires” The state Duma has postponed the adoption of the bill on “winter tires” 02.11.2016
The state Duma will not pass a bill on fines for “superiority” machines — that is summer tires in the winter and Vice versa: according to our information, on 1 November, the Duma Council decided to establish an ad hoc working group on the revision of the initiative.
photo: Gennady Cherkasov
Originally planned to be introduced in 2014 by a group of senators and MPs at the meeting of 21 October, but the agenda was very intense, and until this subject is not reached.
Then attracted great attention of the public document it was proposed to include in the agenda of the meeting on 2 November. But now his fate will be decided by the ad hoc working group.
As reported by “MK” sources familiar with the situation, even at the last Duma Council the question arose about why the bill on amendments to the Code of administrative offences went through the Committee on transportation and construction and not through the profile for all of the bills offering to rule of the administrative code, the Committee on state construction and legislation.
And here, according to another source, “MK”, November 1, the Council of the Duma the head of the Committee on transport and construction Yevgeny moskvichyov ( United Russia ) has proposed to establish a joint working group of representatives of the two committees, and to discuss again all disputed issues.
We recall that the bill was discussed on amendment of the administrative code, which promised to be fine in 2 thousand rubles for violation of requirements of operation of tires and wheels.
The Committee on transport and construction, proposing to support the project in the first reading, said that from 1 January 2015 entered into force the technical regulations of the Customs Union “On safety of wheeled vehicles”, one of which forbids to operate vehicles without winter tires in winter. But the timing of the entry into force of this regulation “was determined based on the training of owners of vehicles (especially large trucking companies) to the introduction of these rules, and also taking into account the possibility of domestic industrial enterprises to ensure that all vehicles operated on the roads of our country, winter tires”.
The disadvantage of the bill, noted in the Committee ’s opinion, is the absence in it of provisions concerning the right of subjects of Federation to change the terms of the prohibition of winter tyres and tyres with spikes of snow. | 1real |
France's Le Pen says victim of 'banking fatwa' over account closures | PARIS/NANTERRE (Reuters) - French far-right leader Marine Le Pen accused two banks on Wednesday of launching a banking fatwa to silence her National Front party by closing bank accounts of hers and her party s. The banks said they had acted within regulatory requirements but declined to offer fuller explanations. Le Pen is smarting from defeat in this year s presidential and parliamentary elections, during which she accused French banks of being politically biased for not lending to her campaigns. This is an attempt to suffocate an opposition party, and no democrat should accept that, Le Pen told a news conference, calling on President Emmanuel Macron and other political parties to back her National Front (FN). Le Pen said the FN would file a complaint against Societe Generale and its subsidiary, Credit du Nord. She also plans a complaint against HSBC for closing a personal account of hers. The FN says Societe Generale closed its accounts earlier this month, and when the central bank ordered a subsidiary, Credit du Nord, to manage an account for the party, the bank refused to process cheque and credit card payments. Societe Generale rejected the accusations. Decisions to open or close a bank account depend purely on banking reasons ... without taking into account any political consideration, it said in a statement. It added that Credit du Nord offered an FN representative banking services required by law but gave no more details. HSBC said it complied with all necessary regulations and could not publicly discuss client relationships. In France, banks are allowed to close accounts with advance notice and do not have to say why. Holding an account is a right, however, and a customer can ask the Bank of France to designate a bank that would be forced to open one. But the designated bank can choose to limit the use of the account to basic banking services. The Bank of France would not comment. The FN has long said it struggled with financing. It came under scrutiny for a 9 million-euro loan it got in 2014 from a now-defunct Russian bank. It spent 12.5 million euros ($14.70 million) on the presidential election alone this year. Party supporters have since been asked to lend it money directly. At her news conference, Le Pen asked party supporters to react to the account closures. Hours later, the hashtag JeQuitteLaSG , or I Leave Societe Generale , was the top trending topic on Twitter in France. Government spokesman Christophe Castaner said the FN should be allowed to have a bank account and use it normally. But I do not know why the bank told its client, the National Front, Thank you and goodbye , so I cannot comment on the substance of the case, he told a weekly news conference. | 0fake |
#NeverTrump Conservative Has The PERFECT Description Of Pundits’ Reaction To Trump’s Speech (VIDEO) | Donald Trump is being graded on a curve. He always has been, as he has broken every rule in the political handbook and still managed to lie, cheat, and insult his way to the presidency. However, on Tuesday night, he delivered a speech to a joint session of Congress his first. For the most part, he stuck to his prepared remarks, and he seemed to keep his attention span and his temperament in check. There were no nasty insults to the press, to Democrats, or to Republicans who have been critical of him. Compared to the wild, unhinged antics we ve been treated to from Trump since the day he launched his disgusting presidential campaign, this speech was surprisingly normal by Trumpian standards. This seems to be good enough for cable news personalities at this point.But, one #NeverTrump conservative, Charlie Sykes, has news for said pundits: They are looking too hard for Trump to act like a normal president or even a normal human being and in turn they are behaving like abused spouses. Appearing on MSNBC, Sykes said of the punditry surrounding Trump s speech: There s almost a battered pundit syndrome going on out there. He comes home and he s not abusive, and he s not drunk, and so we re just so incredibly grateful, it s just so incredibly good. Sykes went on to remind people that Trump s new tone is unlikely to go beyond that speech. He ll be back to his old, unruly self again in no time just like a drunken, abusive spouse. To that end, we, the American people, need to treat him like an abuser, because that is just what he is, only on a grand scale.Thank you, Mr. Sykes, for reminding everyone just who and what Trump is. Splashes of seeming normalcy from him should not be treated as if the storm has passed. It will never pass with this man.Watch the exchange below:Featured image via video screen capture | 1real |
Historic nuclear deal reached in Vienna: What does it mean for Iran? | Negotiators hail nuclear deal, reached after more than three years of talks, as a 'win-win.' For Iran, the deal to curb its nuclear program and greatly open it up to international scrutiny should pave a path to economic revival, analysts say.
From left to right, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, German Foreign Minister Frank Walter Steinmeier, European Union High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Federica Mogherini, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, Head of the Iranian Atomic Energy Organization Ali Akbar Salehi, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammon, US Secretary of State John Kerry and US Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz pose for a group picture at the United Nations building in Vienna, Austria, Tuesday. After 18 days of intense and often fractious negotiation, world powers and Iran struck a landmark deal Tuesday to curb Iran's nuclear program in exchange for billions of dollars in relief from international sanctions on an agreement designed to avert the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran and another US military intervention in the Muslim world.
Iran's president Hassan Rouhani addresses the nation in a televised speech minutes after a landmark nuclear agreement was announced in Vienna, in Tehran, Iran, Tuesday, July 14, 2015. After long, fractious negotiations, world powers and Iran struck a historic deal Tuesday to curb Iran's nuclear program in exchange for billions of dollars in relief from international sanctions – an agreement aimed at averting the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran and another US military intervention in the Middle East.
Iran and six world powers led by the United States have reached a historic agreement, a victory of diplomacy over war that verifiably limits Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for the lifting of sanctions.
Hailed by negotiators as striking a “win-win” balance, amid significant compromises by both sides, the complex and detailed agreement – running to 159 pages, with annexes – caps a 13-year dispute over Iran’s nuclear program that resulted in more than three years of talks, including the last 20 months of intensive negotiations in Switzerland and Austria.
The final – sometimes angry and emotional – 18-day push in the Austrian capital, Vienna, blew through four self-imposed deadlines before a deal was reached early Tuesday.
American officials say the agreement effectively cuts off four possible pathways to a nuclear weapon for more than a decade by strictly limiting Iran’s uranium enrichment capacity, stockpiles of nuclear material, and use of facilities, and by adding far more intrusive inspections.
Iranian officials say the deal will prove that Iran has no desire for nuclear weapons, and that it can pave the way for cooperation on other issues afflicting the Middle East.
“Today could have been the end of hope on this issue, but now we are starting a new chapter of hope, and let’s build on that,” said Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif. He said the deal was “not perfect for anybody,” but could “open new horizons for dealing with [other] serious problems.”
The deal is a “new chapter” and shows that diplomacy can “overcome decades of tensions and confrontations,” said Federica Mogherini, the European foreign policy chief who has led the talks on behalf of the so-called P5+1 group – the five permanent members of the UN Security Council (the US, Russia, China, Britain, and France) and Germany.
"With courage, political will and mutual respect, we delivered what the world was hoping for," said Ms. Mogherini. "A shared commitment to peace, and to join hands in order to make our world safer."
The deal, which follows a diplomatic process often overshadowed by the risk of war, is bound to have a profound effect on Iran, and raises the question of how the Islamic Republic’s regional role might change, if at all.
Will the Islamic Republic be empowered by a $100 billion post-sanctions windfall, as some of its rivals have warned, to exert more influence in the region via proxy armed forces that threaten Israel, Saudi Arabia, or other US allies?
Or will Iran – which faces regional challenges such as the Islamic State (IS) jihadists, sectarian strife, and the conflicts engulfing Syria, Iraq, and Yemen – look for areas of overlapping interests with the US and focus instead on its crippled economy?
The short answer, say analysts who know Iran, is the pocketbook: Tehran’s top priority will be resuscitating the economy as sanctions ease to improve the daily lives of 80 million Iranians and ensure stability at home. That issue helped elect President Hassan Rouhani in 2013.
“The mood is really for renewal rather than expansion, and to revive the economy and to keep the country going,” says Shahram Chubin, an Iran analyst with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Geneva.
“I don’t think [the nuclear deal] will empower them to think that now they can run riot in the region at all,” he says. “After all the neglect that happened these last few years, they really have a lot of catching up to do, for the quality of life for their own people.”
For decades, Iran has opposed the US-dominated regional order and challenged Israel and US allies in the Gulf like Saudi Arabia, notes Mr. Chubin.
“Now … the ‘regional order’ has collapsed; nobody’s in charge of it,” and in some places like Iraq and Afghanistan, the interests of Iran and America overlap for the first time, he says. The result is the nuclear deal isn’t the end, rather “it’s the beginning of a process.”
Indeed, both President Barack Obama and Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, have hinted that a successful nuclear deal could be the basis of future negotiations.
Moreover, resolving the once-intractable nuclear issue is an example of what may be possible, say Iran analysts, with other hard-to-crack problems like Syria, where Iran’s policies and interventions are diametrically opposed to Western ones.
So what are the key factors likely to shape Iran’s post-deal actions, at home and abroad?
Despite warnings from some US and Israeli politicians that Iran would use the freed-up revenues from the deal to spread “regional mischief,” the talk inside Iran focuses on easing economic pain.
“Those who say sanctions are not important don’t know what is happening in people’s pockets,” Mr. Rouhani said at a provincial rally in late June. He promised that with the deal “we will enrich both uranium and the economy.”
Since Iran’s oil industry – the country’s main source of foreign currency – is still state-owned and revenue flows through the central bank, the Rouhani administration “will get first dibs, and they have [domestic] priorities right now,” says Kevan Harris, of the Center for Iran and Persian Gulf Studies at Princeton University.
Iranians have been stung by soaring inflation in recent years, raising the cost of everything from tomatoes to medicine. So Iranian politicians have been talking up the economic benefit of sanctions removal, from foreign investments to more employment.
In April, lawmaker Ahmad Tavakkoli said Iran’s human resources, diverse climate, and geopolitical situation “have not been effectively used,” and that “concentrating on foreign issues would waste such opportunities and keep us away from reality.”
Estimates of Iran’s spending needs are vast, according to data compiled by Bijan Khajehpour, head of the Vienna-based arm of the Iran analytical firm, Atieh International. Rouhani’s top priority is the “empowerment of domestic industry,” including for export, and creating more value in the energy sector – all of which make jobs, he said in a presentation June 29.
But the initial pricetag will be $122 billion, with the banking sector alone requiring $25 billion to partly settle the previous government’s debts, estimates Mr. Khajehpour. Construction contracts, with their multiplier effects on jobs and the economy, will require a minimum of $30 billion, and the petroleum industry will need an interim $40 billion – just over half of the $70 billion necessary to bring oil production levels back to 2012 levels. Another $7 billion will be required for infrastructure projects from the Internet to telecoms.
Lifting sanctions will “be surely felt in people’s lives long-term,” said MP Abouzar Nadimi, deputy chair of parliament’s Economic Commission, in April. The nuclear deal will lead industry “to fulfill its full capacity."
The nuclear deal was achieved even as the Middle East lurches into its most volatile period in decades.
While some Iranian officials hold fast to the rhetoric of “resistance” against US and Israeli influence – claiming that the ideals of Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution are spreading – others recognize that Iran and the US are on the same side when it comes to fighting Sunni militants.
But will this deal enable a more antagonistic Iranian posture? Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – who tried to block it – said in March that Iran was “gobbling up four countries right now,” and would control more if sanctions were lifted.
And Martin Indyk, a former senior US official now at the Brookings Institution, testified to the Senate in early June that a new regional security network must “contain and roll-back Iran’s nefarious hegemonic ambitions.”
But as painful as they have been for Iran’s economy, the sanctions have hardly been a deterrent to its military endeavors: Iran has still rearmed Lebanese Hezbollah with tens of thousands of rockets for any future battle with Israel; spent billions of dollars a year backing Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad in a war that has taken more than 220,000 lives; and resurrected Shiite militias in Iraq to fight IS – ironically in concert with US airstrikes.
“I don’t think the release of funds, which after all is going to be very gradual, is going to change the pace or intensity of any of [Iran’s] significant involvements,” says Richard Dalton, a former British ambassador to Iran now at the Chatham House think tank in London.
“It’s all very opaque, so we don’t know whether there’s updating of a Hezbollah capability, or they have a wish list from Assad that they’ve been gagging to respond to and haven’t been able to,” he says. “There could be. But ... these will be incremental.”
From Beirut to Kabul, Iran’s model now is defensive, says Carnegie’s Chubin. Syria, especially, has been costly in cash and dead Iranian generals, and also has tarnished Hezbollah. “Iran is not madcap about doing more,” he says.
The narrative that Iran will “plow its hard-won sanctions relief into regional adventurism … is powerful, compelling, and frightening. It is also not true,” wrote Richard Nephew, a former director for Iran at the US National Security Council and former member of the US nuclear negotiating team, in a mid-June column for Reuters.
Such analysis defies history, he argued, because when Iran had $100 billion in restricted oil funds just over two years ago, it “was not plowing it all into Assad, the Houthis [in Yemen] or troublemaking along the Gulf.” When Iran was making $88 billion a year from high oil prices in 2012, he wrote, “no one alleges that all of that money was going to terrorists.”
With the nuclear deal done, the European Council on Foreign Relations is proposing engagement with Iran. In a report this week, the London-based think tank calls for “high-level and high-intensity” talks similar to the nuclear negotiations, to focus on “de-escalation and conflict resolution.”
Princeton’s Mr. Harris argues for just such an approach.
“The places where Iran has influence tend to be the places where the region has collapsed,” he says. “If one truly believes that Iran is on the march, then the best way to block it is to come up with a regionally-agreed-upon pathway to a more stable Middle East.”
Despite the nuclear deal triumph and unprecedented face time between top diplomats, US-Iran détente is not around the corner.
The US last month declared that “Iran’s state sponsorship of terrorism worldwide remained undiminished” in 2014. And in Iran, hardliners still chant “Death to America,” even in parliament.
Throughout the nuclear talks, Khamenei often described his mistrust of the US, and listed the reasons why. If before the deal that level of suspicion scored 100, now Khamenei’s “inherent distrust of the US is going to stay at 85 or 90,” says Dalton of Chatham House.
He expects ad hoc US-Iran consultations on overlapping interests “to move things forward incrementally,” but no pro-Iran tilt in Washington that disadvantages either Israel or America’s Gulf allies. At least both the US and Iran now can “pick up the phone and know who to talk to.”
“Diplomatic communication is going to be more effective,” says Dalton. “But whether [it] will be more influential? That is a completely different question.” | 0fake |
Michele Bachmann Comes Out Of Hiding To Mourn Scalia On Twitter — Gets His Name Wrong (TWEETS) | Michele Bachmann is easily one of the craziest people to ever grace the halls of Congress. She spent her entire tenure being a complete embarrassment and disgrace to the institution which she served, spending more time ranting about abortion, religion, and gay people than actually, you know, trying to govern. All sane people were giddy with glee when she decided not to run for re-election. Shortly thereafter, she faded into the bowels of the more humiliating and shameful parts of America s history, right where she belongs.Well, with the death of extreme right-wing Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, former Congresswoman Bachmann has emerged from her vampire crypt to tell the world just how much she admired the man. She sent out a tweet just hours after his death that read: God Bless Anthony Scalia, finest Sup Ct Justice RIP God bless Anthony Scalia, finest Sup Ct Justice RIP Michele Bachmann (@MicheleBachmann) February 13, 2016There s just one problem with that: his name is Antonin Scalia, not Anthony. This nitwit can t even get that much right, yet, after that major f*ck up, Bachmann went on to go on a tirade about who should replace the deceased Justice, and, of course, only other extreme right-wingers are even a little bit acceptable to her. Here is that series of insane tweets:Obama must appoint a constitutional originalist to replace Justice Scalia, nothing else will do. Michele Bachmann (@MicheleBachmann) February 13, 2016She even had the gall to compare Scalia s insane ramblings to William Shakespeare s masterpieces.Reading a Scalia dissent was akin to reading a Shakespearean sonnet. RIP Michele Bachmann (@MicheleBachmann) February 13, 2016Now Scalia belongs to the ages. Let's add his profile to historical lawgivers which surround the US House chamber. Michele Bachmann (@MicheleBachmann) February 13, 2016Scalia will be read and quoted 200 years hence, if America survives. RIP Michele Bachmann (@MicheleBachmann) February 13, 2016He ll be quoted alright, just not in the way that you think. Thank goodness you re no longer in the business of making our laws.Featured image from AI Archives | 1real |
Watergate 'pales' compared with Trump-Russia: former U.S. intelligence head | SYDNEY (Reuters) - The Watergate scandal pales in comparison to events in Washington surrounding U.S. President Donald Trump and alleged links between his campaign and Russia, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said on Wednesday. Clapper questioned Trump’s continued pro-Russian stance, saying his sharing of intelligence with Russia “reflect either ignorance or disrespect, and either is very problematic”. “I think if you compare the two that Watergate pales, really, in my view, compared to what we’re confronting now,” Clapper told reporters in Canberra, Australia’s capital. The break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate Hotel in Washington in 1972, and subsequent cover-up, brought down former Republican U.S. President Richard Nixon in 1974. Clapper’s appearance in Canberra comes before highly anticipated testimony by sacked FBI director James Comey before the Senate intelligence committee on Thursday. The committee is examining whether Trump’s campaign colluded with Russian officials to interfere in the U.S. presidential election. [nL1N1J320B] [nL1N1J31ZP] Trump in May removed Comey as director of FBI, despite a U.S. Justice Department probe into contacts between presidential aides and Russia, raising the specter of political interference in the investigation. Trump has called the probe a “witch hunt” and said there was no collusion between his campaign and Russia. Clapper said it was “inexplicable” that Trump continued his pro-Russia stance despite evidence Moscow sought to interfere in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. “His subsequent actions, sharing sensitive intelligence with the Russians and compromising its source, reflect either ignorance or disrespect and either is very problematic,” said Clapper. Trump disclosed highly classified information about a planned Islamic State operation to Russia’s foreign minister in an Oval Office meeting in May, two U.S. officials have said.[nL2N1IH1O9] | 0fake |
U.S. spy agencies fight Congress over plan for probe of covert Russian influence campaign | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The top U.S. intelligence officer has asked Congress to drop a provision in a pending bill that would create a special committee to combat Russian efforts to exert covert influence abroad, saying such a panel would duplicate current work and hinder cooperation with foreign allies. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper laid out the objections of the U.S. intelligence community in a Sept. 9 letter to the chairmen and top Democrats on the House of Representatives and Senate intelligence committees. He charged that parts of the bill amounted to “micromanagement” of the intelligence community. The intelligence bill, an annual measure that provides broad Congressional authorization for a wide range of U.S. intelligence activities and agencies, has already been approved by both intelligence committees and the House of Representatives. Backers in the Senate are marshalling support for the bill in the hope it will be approved next week, an official familiar with the matter said. The legislation would require the creation of an interagency committee to combat Russian propaganda and covert efforts to influence people, economic and political decisions in the United States and elsewhere. Clapper’s letter, seen by Reuters, said the panel would duplicate work already being done by intelligence agencies, and could also damage U.S. agencies’ relationships with their foreign counterparts. As a general matter, many provisions in the legislation “go well beyond oversight and into micromanagement” of the intelligence community, wrote Clapper, who was appointed by outgoing Democratic President Barack Obama. The bill would require multiple Cabinet officers, including the National Intelligence and FBI directors and the secretaries of State, Defense, the Treasury and Energy, as well as the heads of the other intelligence community agencies to appoint officials to serve on the panel examining Russian political interference in Western politics. Its main mission would be to “counter active measures by Russia to exert covert influence over peoples and government by exposing falsehoods, agents of influence, corruption, human rights abuses, terrorism, and assassinations carried out by the security services or political elites of the Russian Federation or their proxies,” the pending legislation says. The term “active measures” describes actions by the KGB, the Soviet intelligence agency whose officers included now-Russian President Vladimir Putin. The United States and other countries have conducted similar campaigns. American and some allied intelligence agencies detected an increase in such activities in Europe several years ago, and began making cooperative efforts to track and combat them, a senior U.S. intelligence official said on Thursday. The escalating Russian campaign started well before the hacking of U.S. political institutions, in particular of Democratic Party, during the 2016 presidential election campaign said the official, who declined to be named due to the sensitivity of the subject matter. American officials have traced that hacking to Russia, but the Kremlin has denied any involvement. Moscow’s campaign has included other hacking, overt and covert financing of far-right and nationalist political groups, efforts to influence powerful political and economic figures, and propaganda spread by government-controlled media outlets and on the Internet, said U.S. and European security officials. U.S. and other intelligence analysts have concluded that the campaign is a “well-funded and coordinated effort to degrade and discredit Western-style democracy and sow divisions internally and within the NATO alliance, directed from the highest levels of the Russian government,” the senior American intelligence official said. The objections by Clapper were unrelated to the incoming administration of Republican President-elect Donald Trump. Clapper’s letter preceded the election on Nov. 8 of Trump, who has said he will seek to improve ties with Moscow. | 0fake |
HEY #NFL…CAN YOU HEAR US NOW? Monday Night Football’s Ratings Plummet | The #NFL has become a showcase for an anti-law enforcement movement inspired by Barack Obama, Eric Holder, Al Sharpton and now, Black Lives Matter activist Colin Kaepernick and fellow NFL players First it was Beyonce s Black Panther, anti-cop performance during the 2016 Super Bowl. The NFL was silent.Next, Cleveland Browns player Isaiah Crowell took to Instagram to post an ISIS like photo of a man wearing a black ski mask while slitting the neck of a cop. The NFL was silent.The Dallas Cowboys wanted to wear a decal to show their support for the 5 cops slain by a Black Lives Matter supporter in their home town during a pre-game. The NFL said, no. Colin Kaepernick, Quarterback for the San Francisco 49er s thought it would be a great way to show his disdain for our law enforcement if he sat during our national anthem. The NFL was silent.Apparently disrespecting our flag was totally okay with the NFL.Months later, more and more NFL players joined Kaepernick and his anti-American antics. It wasn t long before high school and college players, who were inspired by the attention Colin Kaepernick received for his anti-American act, decided to follow suit. Some knelt during the national anthem and performed a die in for a more dramatic effect. All were disrespecting our flag.The NFL was SILENT.The time has come for America to show the NFL how we feel about their silence. America s biggest football fans are turning off the TV in a silent protest that is sure to get the attention of an organization that cannot survive without fan support.So far, America s protest against the NFL seems to be working:It seems likely that the numerous #BoycottNFL online campaigns and fan outrage aimed at the National Anthem protests in the NFL have taken a toll in terms of viewership this season. Additionally, cord-cutting continues to eat into traditional TV s ratings at an alarming rate. But could there be something else at play?We re barely a year removed from the NFL setting all-time records in viewership, yet now the league is on pace for its lowest ratings in years. That s a sharp and unexpectedly sudden turn.Given the politicized controversies and the variety of streaming options this year, have we reached a cumulative point of football fatigue? The numbers suggest so.Last night s Monday Night Football matchup between the Minnesota Vikings and New York Giants drew a 9.1 overnight rating, an 8% drop from last year s comparable Week 4 game between the Detroit Lions and Seattle Seahawks. The New England Patriots and Kansas City Chiefs game in 2014 earned a 9.6 rating. Via: Forbes | 1real |
Comey to testify to U.S. Senate intelligence panel on June 8 | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Former FBI Director James Comey will testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee on June 8 as part of its probe into alleged Russian meddling in the U.S. presidential election and possible collusion with President Donald Trump’s campaign, the committee said on Thursday. It said Comey would testify in an open session at 10 a.m., followed by a closed session. The former FBI chief, who was fired by Trump on May 9, is expected to testify on conversations he had with Trump in which the president reportedly asked him to drop an investigation into former White House national security adviser Michael Flynn. | 0fake |
Mission Accomplished: Consumer Sentiment Plummets After Comey Hearing - Breitbart | Consumer sentiment unexpectedly dropped in June to the lowest level since the presidential election in November, according to the University of Michigan’s monthly survey. [The widely watched consumer sentiment metric fell to 94. 5 in June from 97. 1 in May. Economists had expected a slight increase. Prior to the testimony of former Federal Bureau of Investigation chief James Comey, sentiment had been headed in the expected direction. It was averaging a score of 97. 7, the University of Michigan researchers said. Then Comey testified and consumer sentiment plunged. Since June 8, the index registered a score of 86. 7, a huge 11 point decline. The decline was observed across the political spectrum but was more pronounced among Republicans and independents. “While this break corresponds with James Comey’s testimony, only a few consumers spontaneously referred to him or his testimony when asked to explain their views. Importantly, the decline was observed across all political parties, but the loss in confidence among Republicans since June 8th was larger than among Democrats (9. 2 vs. 6. 8 ) with Independents showing the greatest falloff (11. 5 ),” the University of Michigan researchers said. In short, following the Comey testimony, consumers are far less optimistic about the economy. | 0fake |
House Republicans Shocked to Learn 18th Time's Isn't A Charm | Topics: Hillary Clinton , Donald Trump , email
"I could've sworn this influx of duplicate emails we've already seen before would present us with some new information."
After completing his review of the recently discovered email collection, FBI Director James Comey has stated that no additional evidence to further prosecute Secretary Hillary Clinton has been found. This has come as a shock to many who don't understand history and believed that this time would end differently then every single case before it.
"I can't believe the FBI would allow such a travesty," Trump said in a speech Sunday afternoon, "I mean we went through all the necessary legal procedures. We grossly over-exaggerated everything and promised indictment without any real evidence or basis for evaluation but didn't get the results we were hoping for. The FBI is rigged, gotta be."
The Republican Presidential Candidate didn't stay negative for long though as he then went on to describe his next wildly absurd plan that would no doubt backfire on him.
"I'm proud to announce that I've been endorsed by the famous ACME Corporation! Anything you need to destroy your opponents, they've got it. Border walls, pneumonia, emails, "Nasty women", you name it, ACME is there to provide you with a service that in no way could ever end up hurting me in the end. Speaking of which, I've also come up with a new plan to paint tunnels leading to Welfare and free tacos on the border wall so when the Mexicans run into it we can quickly ship them back before they even regain consciousness. Tune in next Tuesday to see how this works out!!" Make Andrewnino12's | 1real |
Man Is Shot in Charlotte as Unrest Stretches to Second Night - The New York Times | CHARLOTTE, N. C. — A second night of protests set off by the police killing of a black man spiraled into chaos and violence after nightfall here Wednesday when a demonstration was interrupted by gunfire that gravely wounded a man in the crowd. Law enforcement authorities fired tear gas in a desperate bid to restore order. The city said on its Twitter account that the unidentified man was on life support after what officials said was a “civilian on civilian” confrontation. The authorities provided no further details. Charlotte officials had said earlier that the man had been killed in the unrest. The Police Department reported that four officers had injuries that were not . Gov. Pat McCrory’s office said late Wednesday that he had declared an emergency and had “initiated efforts” to deploy the National Guard and the state Highway Patrol. The shooting heightened the tension among the demonstrators and the police alike. City officials were quick to say the police had not fired any live rounds, but riot police personnel did fire repeated rounds of tear gas. The scene of the shooting and the largest demonstration of the evening happened along a crowded street in Charlotte’s city center, where the sound of gunfire mixed with the noise of people banging objects into vehicles. The gunshot victim lay motionless on the ground, his eyes open, as people surrounded him and blood pooled among their feet. He was taken into the nearby Omni Hotel, and a series of confrontations played out afterward as the police kept people from entering. There was sporadic looting. Twitter messages showed that the team store of the Charlotte Hornets of the N. B. A. had been broken into and gutted of merchandise. “We are working very hard to bring peace and calm back to our city,” Mayor Jennifer Roberts said on CNN. A spokesman for Ms. Roberts said she had requested and planned to review on Thursday a police dashboard video of the encounter with Keith L. Scott, the black man who was shot and killed here on Tuesday. But she said she would not make the video public. Around 10 p. m. the police ordered all civilians, including members of the news media, to leave parts of the Uptown neighborhood and threatened to arrest those who did not comply. When the crowd did not respond immediately, the authorities fired more tear gas within minutes. After that, it appeared that the crowd started to disperse, although some stragglers remained in the area. The unrest in Charlotte came after two other deadly shootings in the last week. First came the shooting of a teenager in Columbus, Ohio, who had been brandishing a BB gun. Two days later, on Friday, was the shooting death in Tulsa, Okla. of a man who had his hands above his head before an officer opened fire. And then it was Charlotte, where Mr. Scott, 43, black like the other two, was shot by a police officer in a parking space marked “Visitor” outside an unremarkable apartment complex. On Wednesday that parking space was both a shooting site and a shrine, and Charlotte was a city on edge, the latest to play a role in what feels like a recurring, seemingly inescapable tape loop of American tragedy. “To see this happen multiple times — just time after time — it’s depressing, man,” said Tom Jackson, 25, who works with mentally disabled people. He didn’t know Mr. Scott but was drawn here nonetheless, one of many strangers and friends who came to pay their respects and make sense of their sorrow. In addition to the fatal attacks on police officers in Baton Rouge and Dallas, it was another grim snapshot of America’s continuing crisis in black and blue, this moment amplified by presidential politics. And as usual, there was very little consensus on what went wrong and how to fix it. At a news conference on Wednesday, Kerr Putney, chief of the police, said officers had found the gun that the police said Mr. Scott had brandished before an officer, who is also black, fatally shot him and were examining police video of the encounter that unfolded as Mr. Scott stepped out of a car. Family members of Mr. Scott have said that he was unarmed and was holding only a book. Chief Putney said Wednesday morning, “We did not find a book. ” The response of B. J. Murphy, an activist here, could not have been more different: “Everybody in Charlotte should be on notice that black people, today, we’re tired of this,” he said, adding an epithet. “We’re tired of being killed and nobody saying nothing. We’re tired of our political leaders going along to get along they’re so weak, they don’t have no sympathy for our grief. And we want justice. ” All three shootings are under investigation, and are rife with questions. The police in Columbus said that the BB gun wielded by Tyre King was built to look nearly identical to a Smith Wesson Military Police semiautomatic pistol. Mayor Andrew J. Ginther blamed the shooting, in part, on Americans’ “easy access to guns, whether they are firearms or replicas. ” In Tulsa, the police said investigators found the drug PCP in the shooting victim’s S. U. V. The drug is known to induce erratic behavior in some users. But Mr. Crump, who is representing the family of the victim, Terence Crutcher, said the discovery of the drug, if true, would not justify the deadly shooting. In an interview on Wednesday, Mr. Crutcher’s father, the Rev. Joey Crutcher, said his son had marched in protest of earlier police killings and had thought about how to protect himself during interactions with police officers. They had planned to go to a church event aimed at teaching people how behave around the police and avoid becoming another hashtag shared on social media by Black Lives Matter protesters. “I never thought this would happen to my family,” Mr. Crutcher said, adding that he had counseled his son all his life about how to behave around the police. “I said, ‘Whenever you’re stopped by a police and you’re in that situation, raise your hands up, always let them see your hands, let them see that you are not going for a gun.’ And that is what Terence was doing. I said, ‘Always put your hands on your car.’ I made that specific, ‘your car.’ And that’s what Terence was walking to do on his car so that they could see his hands. ” John Barnett, a civil rights activist in Charlotte, said during a raucous news conference near the site of the shooting that Mr. Scott had been waiting for his son to arrive home from school. “The truth of the matter is, he didn’t point that gun,” Mr. Barnett said. “Did he intend to really sit in a vehicle, waiting on his son to get home from school and then plot to shoot a cop if they pulled up on him?” Adding to an atmosphere loaded with suspicion and mistrust, residents of the apartment complex gave varying accounts of Mr. Scott’s death. Some differed from the police on which officer fired the shots, and others said that no one had tried to administer CPR for Mr. Scott as officials had said. Brentley Vinson, the officer who the police say shot Mr. Scott, is black, as is the police chief. “Since black lives do not matter for this city, then our black dollars should not matter,” said Mr. Murphy, the activist. “We’re watching a lynching on social media, on television and it is affecting the psyche of black people. ” Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch said Wednesday that the Justice Department “is aware of, and we are assessing, the incident that led to the death of Keith Lamont Scott in Charlotte. ” Responding to another police shooting, the state’s attorney in Baltimore County, Md. Scott D. Shellenberger, announced Wednesday that no charges would be filed against any of the officers involved in the Aug. 1 shooting death of Korryn Gaines or the shooting of her son. In Charlotte, Rakeyia Scott, Mr. Scott’s wife, said on Wednesday the family was “devastated” by the shooting. She described her husband as “a loving husband, father, brother and friend” and called on protesters to remain peaceful. At a campaign rally in Orlando, Fla. Hillary Clinton spoke about the shootings here and in Tulsa. “There is still much we don’t know about what happened in both incidents, but we do know that we have two more names to add to a list of killed by police officers in these encounters,’’ she said. “It’s unbearable, and it needs to become intolerable. We also saw the targeting of police officers in Philadelphia last week. And last night in Charlotte, 12 officers were injured in demonstrations following Keith Scott’s death. Every day police officers are serving with courage, honor and skill. ” Her Republican rival, Donald J. Trump, reacted on Twitter. “Hopefully the violence unrest in Charlotte will come to an immediate end,” he wrote. “To those injured, get well soon. We need unity leadership. ” Unity, thus far, has been in short supply. On Friday, Mr. Trump earned the endorsement of the Fraternal Order of Police. But polls show that his support among is negligible, even though he has singled them out in promising to solve the ills of poverty and violence that he has characterized as plaguing black neighborhoods. On Wednesday, Mr. Jackson, the man who came here to mourn, was not thinking about the current presidential candidates. The police, he said, “are out here killing people, and they don’t even know their backgrounds,” he said. “They could be killing the next president. ” | 0fake |
UNESCO passes anti-Israel resolution despite Tel Aviv brickbats | Press TV
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has approved a motion that endorses the right of the Palestinians to the al-Aqsa Mosque compound and slams Israeli provocations around the holy site.
UNESCO’s 21-member World Heritage Committee adopted the resolution in Wednesday’s secret ballot at the agency’s headquarters in Paris.
Ten countries voted for, two against, eight abstained and one was absent in the voting.
The resolution expresses UNESCO’s deep concerns over Israeli construction works and archaeological excavations in the Old City of Jerusalem al-Quds.
Saeb Erekat, the secretary general of the Palestine Liberation Organization, welcomed the passage of the motion and accused the Tel Aviv regime of resorting to a campaign of distorting facts in a bid to legitimize its occupation of East Jerusalem al-Quds.
“Through an orchestrated campaign, Israel has been using archaeological claims and distortion of facts as a way to legitimize the annexation of occupied East Jerusalem,” Erekat said.
He further noted that the UNESCO resolution urges “respecting the status quo of its religious sites, including the al-Aqsa Mosque compound that continues to be threatened by the systematic incitement and provocative actions of the Israeli government and extremist Jewish groups.”
Earlier this month, UNESCO’s 58-member Executive Board approved a similar resolution, prompting a furious reaction from Israel as the regime suspended its ties with the agency.
Wednesday’s vote further infuriated Israel, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announcing that the regime’s ambassador to UNESCO, Carmel Shama-Hacohen, had been recalled for consultations.
“We will decide what the next steps will be,” Netanyahu said in a statement.
Elias Sanbar, Palestine’s UNESCO envoy, fired back at those upset with the resolution and warned that Israelis were “politicizing religion and this is very dangerous.”
Makram Mustafa Queisi, Jordan’s ambassador to UNESCO, also stressed that UNESCO tried to tackle the issue from a “technical point of view” while many parties were politicizing it. Palestinian Ambassador to UNESCO Elias Sanbar (L) and Jordanian envoy Makram Mustafa Queisi address the media after an anti-Israel resolution was passed by secret ballot at the agency’s headquarters in Paris, France, October 26, 2016. (Photo by AP)
Palestine became the 195th full member of UNESCO in October 2011, triggering a cut in Tel Aviv’s funding to the agency.
The occupied territories have already been the scene of increased tensions ever since the Israeli regime imposed restrictions on the entry of Palestinian worshipers into the al-Aqsa Mosque compound in August 2015.
More than 250 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces since the beginning of last October. | 1real |
Supreme Court’s political stench: Why John Roberts will obviously base his Obamacare decision on politics | “To reject the government’s defense of the law,” Greenhouse writes, “the justices would have to suspend their own settled approach to statutory interpretation as well as their often-stated view of how Congress should act toward the states.” She then addresses the conservative justices who would take Obamacare’s soul: “If you do, and you proceed to destroy the Affordable Care Act nonetheless, you will have a great deal of explaining to do — not to me, but to history.”
Well, the conservative justices who comprise a 5-4 majority on the Supreme Court probably do not care that much for the warnings of Linda Greenhouse of the New York Times. As she well knows. They have their own history to make, after all, and that is a political one: gutting the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act while they have the chance. I would like to believe that they’re thinking about this in anything but political terms, but it’s doubtful, because they’re well-established political hacks. The Democratic and Republican parties understand that they’re political hacks, too, and it makes sense to play to that side of them.
The decision likely comes down to John Roberts, again. Roberts, much to the enmity of his fellow conservative justices, upheld the individual mandate in 2012. Even if he didn’t go full-hack, this was not a neutral, balls-and-strikes reading of the law from our self-styled umpire. It was a careful weighing of political considerations. He decided then that he wouldn’t join Scalia, Alito, Thomas and Kennedy in going out of his way to wipe the entire law from the books. That would be too abrupt. So he upheld the individual mandate, but only on the grounds of taxation and not the Commerce Clause, as a way to needle the administration. And he also gutted Medicaid as a sop to conservatives.
He may regret letting the Affordable Care Act live, and now he gets a second lick at the apple. That gutting Obamacare over this would “damage the court’s honor” is not very persuasive. It implies that there’s extant honor for it to lose. That train left the station when the court picked up this stupid case to begin with, if not much earlier.
A top concern for Roberts, then, might be the extent to which a ruling against the government in King v. Burwell would send the country’s healthcare system into chaos. This shouldn’t be a concern for a justice who’s deciding on the merits of a case, but it is. And it’s a political consideration: his court would more easily get away with an inept ruling if he knew there was a safety net. Convincing Roberts that there is no safety net, then, is a priority for the White House, and convincing him that there is — that everything will be hunky-dory if he just goes ahead and ruins Obamacare — is a top goal for the Republicans.
HHS Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell appeared before the Senate Finance Committee in what turned out to be a testy hearing yesterday. Republican senators repeatedly pressed her for details on what the administration’s backup plan is should the court eliminate subsidies for insurance plans bought on federally facilitated exchanges. Burwell repeatedly dodged, saying that her focus now is meeting targets for the open enrollment period. Sen. John Cornyn went so far as to suggest she was acting in contempt of Congress. Does the administration have a contingency plan? Have they thought about what they’d do? Well, yeah! And two former Bush HHS officials who spoke with the Hill seem to nail why Burwell and the administration are keeping their plans close to the chest now: because they don’t want to signal “weakness” to John Roberts. “Of course, they have one, they should all resign if they don’t,” said Tom Scully, an HHS official under former President George W. Bush. “And they certainly should not discuss it either.” Former HHS Secretary Michael Leavitt, who left office in 2009, agreed. He added that he isn’t surprised that senior officials would rather face a day of bad headlines than signal weakness to the Supreme Court. “If the court thought they had a plan, they might think, they felt like their case was weak,” Leavitt, who also served as governor of Utah, said in an interview. The GOP, of course, would love for the administration to signal weakness — all while they, the party that controls both chambers of Congress now, signal strength, comfort and reassurance. That’s why they’re putting effort into developing an “alternative” to Obamacare after all these years. It’s all to show John Roberts: go ahead, guy, we’ll take care of everything else. There’s no way that any of this should have any bearing on what John Roberts will decide, but it’s a reasonable bet that it will, and it makes perfect, cynical sense to appeal to John Roberts this way. | 0fake |
ISN’T THIS CHEATING? FIRST PICTURES Of Hillary’s “Custom” Podium For The Debate With TRUMP | Hillary Clinton says that we re stronger together, but even she can t deny Donald Trump is taller.The Democratic nominee, who is 5-foot-4, has apparently enlisted the help of a raised podium for the first presidential debate against Donald Trump, who is 6-foot-3, Monday night, photos of the two podiums show.According to WABC s Rita Cosby, one of the two podiums inside the debate hall at Hofstra University, in Hempstead, N.Y., is larger than the other.It is believed that the larger one was built at Clinton s request to make her appear taller than she is.Two students standing in to practice for tonight s debate.Trump, Clinton tied nationally and in swing-states: polls Clinton is 5 4 and Trump 6 2 and her team wanted the podium modified or a box added so she won t look short next to Trump, Cosby said in an email.A photograph taken by WABC s Rita Cosby shows the two podiums Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump will use at Monday night s debate at Hofstra University. A photograph taken by WABC s Rita Cosby shows the two podiums Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump will use at Monday night s debate at Hofstra University. (WABC RADIO HOST RITA COSBY) One is clearly larger than the other, Cosby said.Photos taken by Cosby appear to show two podiums of two different sizes.The Clinton campaign did not immediately respond to questions about whether the Democratic nominee would be using a raised podium at Monday night s debate. The Commission on Presidential Debates, which organizes the debates, did not respond to questions either.Trump campaign manager: GOP nominee is Babe Ruth of debating However, multiple outlets had reported last week that the Clinton campaign had asked the CPD if the Democratic nominee could use a raised podium to avoid appearing 10 inches shorter than Trump.Via: NYDN | 1real |
SYRIAN WAR REPORT – NOVEMBER 9, 2016: RUSSIAN NAVY IS READY TO STRIKE TERRORISTS IN ALEPPO | #FROMTHEFRONT #RUSSIA 09.11.2016 - 5,734 views 4.9 ( 8 votes) Syrian War Report – November 9, 2016: Russian Navy Is Ready to Strike Terrorists in Aleppo 4.875 out of 5 based on 8 ratings. 8 user reviews. Syrian War Report – November 9, 2016: Russian Navy Is Ready to Strike Terrorists in Aleppo Donate Loading the player...
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The Russian Navy’s aircraft carrier group is ready to launch military strikes targeting terrorists in the province of Aleppo in the next 24 hours, Gazeta.ru reported Tuesday, citing a source in the Russian Ministry of Defense. The attack will likely target militants outsde the city of Aleppo, with Kalibr cruise missiles. According to the report, the Admiral Kuznetsov battlegroup has completed its deployment to the Mediterranean Sea and is getting ready to strike.
After the success in the 1070 Apartment Project and nearby areas, the Syrian army and its allies attacked Jaish al-Fatah militants in the area of Minyan in the western part of Aleppo city. Following a series of firefights, the government forces seized a large part of Minyan and pushed Jaish al-Fatah militants to retreat from the area. According to pro-government sources, Jaish al-Fatah is on the verge of losing of Minyan to the army.
The Russian Aerospace Forces delivered a series of air strikes on the Al-Nusra(Al-Qaeda)-led militant coalition, Jaish al-Fatah, in the province of Idlib. Since November 8, Russian warplanes made up to 55 air strikes on militant weapon depots and supply lines. 3 weapon depots and a convoy, consisting of 4 vehicles, and 5 militant tactical units were reported destroyed. The Russian Aerospace Forces’ activity in the province is linked with reports that Jaish al-Fatah is deploying reinforcements to western Aleppo where the militant coalition has recently lost the area of 1070 Apartment Project and the strategic Motah Hill to the Syrian government forces.
The recently released video depicts a militant vehicle that has been targeted by an Iranian Toophan anti-tank on the road between Daer Mkaren – Efreh in the western countryside of Damascus. Iran provides to the Syrian army’s troops and other pro-government groups a wide range of supplies, including anti-tank guided missiles. Toophan is a series of Iranian-made anti-tank guided missiles. Toophan 1 was a reverse-engineered copy of the US-made BGM-71 TOW missile.
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Senate panel overwhelmingly approves Trump Pentagon pick | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee voted overwhelmingly on Wednesday to recommend President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for Secretary of Defense, retired Marine General James Mattis. The committee voted 26-1 to back Mattis’ nomination when it is received by the full Senate from Trump after he is sworn in as president. As a result, Mattis’ nomination will be sent directly to the Senate for a vote without referral to the committee. The identity of the senator who voted against Mattis was not immediately available. Congress cleared the way for Mattis’ quick confirmation last week by backing a waiver that would allow him to lead the Pentagon despite retiring from active duty as a Marine general only in 2013. The 66-year-old Mattis, who is highly respected by many fellow Marines, retired 3-1/2 years ago after more than four decades of military service. The 1947 National Security Act requires a seven-year gap between active duty military service and the Cabinet position. Trump’s fellow Republicans in Congress and Democrats have both heaped praise on Mattis since his nomination was announced. | 0fake |
U.S. appeals court declines to block Obama carbon emissions plan | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - In a big victory for the Obama administration, a U.S. federal court on Thursday rejected a bid by 27 states to block its Clean Power Plan, the centerpiece of its strategy to combat climate change by reducing carbon emissions from power plants. A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit issued a brief order denying an application seeking to stay the rule while litigation continues. The states, led by West Virginia, and several major business groups in October launched the legal challenges seeking to block the Obama administration’s proposal to curb carbon dioxide emissions from power plants. More than a dozen other states and the National League of Cities, which represents more than 19,000 U.S. cities, filed court papers backing the Environmental Protection Agency’s rule. The rule aims to lower carbon emissions from the country’s power plants by 2030 to 32 percent below 2005 levels. It is the main tool for the United States to meet the emissions reduction target it pledged at U.N. climate talks in Paris last month. For President Barack Obama, executing his climate change strategy would be a legacy-defining accomplishment. “We are confident that the plan will reduce carbon pollution and deliver better air quality, improved public health, and jobs across the country,” the White House said in a statement on Thursday. The court action means the regulation remains in place but it is not the final word in the legal fight. The appeals court still has to hear oral arguments on June 2 and decide whether the regulation is lawful. The decision by the court to deny the stay is a “good sign” for the EPA when it argues the merits of its case this summer, said David Doniger of the climate and clean air program at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “Most of the time it’s a pretty good hand, but I wouldn’t overplay it yet,” he told Reuters. “We will have to duke it out on the merits of the case now.” West Virginia’s Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, who led the multi-state challenge, said he is confident their challenge will succeed when the court decides the case on its merits. He said West Virginia and other states will consider asking the Supreme Court to take a “second look” at whether to freeze the regulation. Many states, even those that have sued the EPA over the Clean Power Plan, have started to work on plans to comply with the regulation. Their plans are due for EPA approval in September. Jonathan Adler, a professor at Case Western Reserve University School of Law, said states are “more likely to fall into line” and try to comply with the rule now that the stay has been denied. It would have been a “significant setback” for the government if the challengers’ request had been granted, he added. | 0fake |
Who Is Mike Cernovich? A Guide - The New York Times | President Trump has frequently derided the news media as “fake news,” and on Tuesday his son, Donald Trump Jr. told the world there was one person he wants to see win the Pulitzer Prize, the highest honor in American journalism: Mike Cernovich. Those who do not closely follow the world of conservative social media might be moved to ask, who? Fair question. Mr. Cernovich is a blogger, author of books, YouTube personality and filmmaker with a social media following. Much of his online persona is driven by two mottos: “conflict is attention” and “attention is influence. ” He told The New Yorker, “I use trolling tactics to build my brand. ” Before this week, he was perhaps best known for promoting false claims that Hillary Clinton was part of a pedophile ring located in the basement of a pizzeria. He describes himself as an “American nationalist” and has been involved in shaping messages on social media, according to The New Yorker. But he has denied being part of the movement, calling it “too obsessed with gossip and drama for my tastes” in a blog post. “Until the right wins for once, I have no interest in arguing with the or disavowing anyone,” he wrote. “Once the right has some actual power, then it will be time to have an ideological civil war. ” This has been a busy few days for Mr. Cernovich, who lately has been promoted by people close to the president more than once. A day before the younger Mr. Trump’s tweet, for example, Kellyanne Conway, an adviser to the president, shared a link to an interview Mr. Cernovich recently gave to CBS’s “60 Minutes. ” Mr. Cernovich started out several years ago as a men’s writer whose work disdained feminism and promoted a message of men’s empowerment that often dwelled on the question of how to meet women (He is now married with an infant daughter). His advice to straight men, the subject of a book and video talks: Men should be dominant alpha males and embrace a “gorilla mindset” when dealing with the opposite sex. He has long been criticized for his argument that date rape is a liberal fiction. In a blog post published last October, he called it a “harmful concept for men and women” that leads to false rape accusations. “Lying about being in love to sleep with someone isn’t rape,” he wrote. “Getting played isn’t rape. Regret isn’t rape. Thinking, ‘I might have been date raped,’ means you weren’t raped. ” Mr. Cernovich now focuses mainly on politics. From his base in Southern California, he has become influential in parts of social media, helping to shape the narrative. He uses a steady stream of tweets and videos to promote conspiracy theories and factually incorrect claims that he bills as journalism. During the presidential campaign, for example, he doggedly promoted false stories that claimed Mrs. Clinton had serious ailments like Parkinson’s disease. He also argued that she was linked to a nonexistent pedophile sex cult located in the basement of a pizzeria in Washington, D. C. That conspiracy theory, known as #PizzaGate, spread widely online and inspired a man to show up at the restaurant to investigate the claims (he was arrested). Mr. Cernovich insisted the conspiracy was true in an hourlong YouTube video that also claimed most people employed by the news media and “every actor” in Hollywood were also pedophiles. During his recent “60 Minutes” appearance, Mr. Cernovich said that he never named the pizzeria at the center of the #Pizzagate conspiracy theory and called the shooting a “very unfortunate thing. ” He also said his claims about Mrs. Clinton’s health were based on an anonymous tip sent to him by a doctor who had never examined Mrs. Clinton before and had no access to her medical records. Nevertheless, he stood behind his claims. “They’re definitely not fake,” he said. “They are not lies at all. 100 percent true. ” In a blog post published on Sunday, Mr. Cernovich wrote “the White House Counsel’s office identified” Susan E. Rice, President Barack Obama’s national security adviser, “as the person responsible for the unmasking” Trump associates who were caught up in the electronic surveillance of foreigners. Similar reports were published by other news organizations. “Unmasking” is the process by which a official, such as a national security adviser, requests the identity of a person whose name has been blacked out in an intelligence report. It does not mean leaking that information to a third party. Donald Trump Jr. praised Mr. Cernovich’s post on Twitter and said he was the first person to publish this information. In an email on Tuesday, the president’s son declined to answer questions on the record about Mr. Cernovich or his blog post. Ms. Rice denied any wrongdoing in an interview with MSNBC on Tuesday. She said she sometimes asked the identities of American citizens whose names had been redacted from intelligence reports because she needed that information to properly understand the context of the reports. She said it was part of doing her job and was “absolutely not for any political purpose, to spy, expose, anything. ” “I leaked nothing to nobody and never have and never would,” Ms. Rice said in the interview. After the president’s son tweeted about him, Mr. Cernovich said he was inundated with media requests, which he gleefully rejected one by one in a rambling live YouTube monologue. Holding his infant daughter in his arms, Mr. Cernovich derided the media as a cabal of “trust fund kids” and “trash. ” “They have no idea what it’s like to struggle the way I struggle and the way the working class struggles, and that’s why I am a hero of the working class,” he said. He added that he would not respond to media requests. “I don’t want to be your friends. I don’t respond to your emails. ” But Mr. Cernovich did respond to a direct message from me on Twitter asking about the Susan Rice blog post on Tuesday evening. In the reply, he denied that the White House Counsel’s Office had been the source for his blog post about Ms. Rice, even though it said as much in the second paragraph. “I never mentioned sources in my original report and disavow any reports that I have sources within the White House,” he said. He also twice suggested that I buy his book “Gorilla Mindset. ” In that exchange and subsequent public tweets that included screen shots of his replies, he also criticized The Times and some of its reporters by name, implied that the Mexican billionaire and Times shareholder Carlos Slim has a role in news coverage (he does not) and generally attacked the integrity of its journalists, living and dead, and its journalism, past, present and future. During his YouTube broadcast on Tuesday, Mr. Cernovich denied accusations from critics that he is a misogynist, a rape apologist or a white nationalist. He said his past statements had been taken out of context and called some of them “obvious satire” that had been misinterpreted in bad faith. “Nobody tells you how to be famous,” he said. Later, shortly before appearing on a talk show hosted by Alex Jones, another conspiracy theorist, Mr. Cernovich said he did not care if the media portrayed him positively or not. “Look at me,” he said, speaking into the camera. “I did this to Susan Rice. I did this to Hillary Clinton. I’m doing real journalism. I’m destroying your fake news outlets. Look at me. Look at my face. I’m the media now. ” | 0fake |
Feudalism – Medieval and Modern | Leave a Reply Click here to get more info on formatting (1) Leave the name field empty if you want to post as Anonymous. It's preferable that you choose a name so it becomes clear who said what. E-mail address is not mandatory either. The website automatically checks for spam. Please refer to our moderation policies for more details. We check to make sure that no comment is mistakenly marked as spam. This takes time and effort, so please be patient until your comment appears. Thanks. (2) 10 replies to a comment are the maximum. (3) Here are formating examples which you can use in your writing:<b>bold text</b> results in bold text <i>italic text</i> results in italic text (You can also combine two formating tags with each other, for example to get bold-italic text.)<em>emphasized text</em> results in emphasized text <strong>strong text</strong> results in strong text <q>a quote text</q> results in a quote text (quotation marks are added automatically) <cite>a phrase or a block of text that needs to be cited</cite> results in: a phrase or a block of text that needs to be cited <blockquote>a heavier version of quoting a block of text...</blockquote> results in: a heavier version of quoting a block of text that can span several lines. Use these possibilities appropriately. They are meant to help you create and follow the discussions in a better way. They can assist in grasping the content value of a comment more quickly. and last but not least:<a href=''http://link-address.com''>Name of your link</a> results in Name of your link (4) No need to use this special character in between paragraphs: ; You do not need it anymore. Just write as you like and your paragraphs will be separated. The "Live Preview" appears automatically when you start typing below the text area and it will show you how your comment will look like before you send it. (5) If you now think that this is too confusing then just ignore the code above and write as you like. Name: | 1real |
TREASON: This Election Fraud Goes All the Way TO THE TOP! | Bill Holter | Tweet Home » Headlines » World News » TREASON: This Election Fraud Goes All the Way TO THE TOP! | Bill Holter
JS Mineset’s Bill Holter is back to help document the collapse. Bill says that the United States is becoming a banana republic right before our eyes. As Donald Trump recently stated, “The Clinton machine is at the center of this power structure. We’ve seen this firsthand with the Wikileaks documents in which Hillary Clinton meets in secret, with international banks to plot the destruction of U.S. sovereignty. The Clintons are criminals.” And still, the CIA mockingbird media targets Trump while giving Clinton a free pass. The fix is in. | 1real |
Bolivian president welcomes, opposition slams re-election ruling | LA PAZ (Reuters) - Bolivia s socialist President Evo Morales on Wednesday hailed a decision by the country s highest court to allow him to run for another re-election as a great surprise for the people, for the revolutionaries, for the anti-imperialists. The opposition said it would march against the ruling announced on Tuesday by the Constitutional Court, which paved the way for Morales to run for a fourth term in 2019. The court decision was final and cannot be appealed. The ruling guarantees a democratic continuity, but also guarantees stability, dignity and work for the Bolivian people, Morales said during a news conference. Opposition leaders called for several marches to be held on Wednesday, protesting what they say is the end of democracy in the land-locked, natural gas-producing country. It means a coup d etat, it means trampling the constitution and the most worrying is that Bolivia is approaching the road that Venezuela is on, Samuel Doria Medina, leader of the National Unity party, told Reuters. Bolivia is allied with Venezuela, where leftist President Nicolas Maduro is struggling with a severe economic crisis. Morales, in power since 2006, had previously accepted the results of a 2016 referendum, when 51 percent of voters rejected his proposal to end existing term limits. He later reversed course, saying that while he was willing to leave office, his supporters were pushing for him to stay. In September, Morales Movement to Socialism (MAS) party asked the court to rescind legal limits barring elected authorities from seeking re-election indefinitely. | 0fake |
DISGRACEFUL: US Air Force Can No Longer Afford 21-Gun Salute At Vet Funerals…Plenty Of Funds For Muslim Immigrants | We can t afford to give our US Veterans a proper funeral, but we ve got money to burn when it comes to bringing Muslim refugees to the US from countries who hate us. On average, each Middle Eastern refugee resettled in the United States costs an estimated $64,370 in the first five years, or $257,481 per household. When a veteran or member of the armed forces dies, he or she is entitled to a ceremony that includes the presentation of a U.S. flag to a family member and a bugler blowing Taps. Most of the time, there is a three-volley rifle salute if requested by family members. But now, if the deceased served in the Air Force, the three-volley salute is not an option because the Air Force can no longer support riflemen for funeral services for veteran retirees.Seven member services for retirees included six members to serve as pall-bearers, a six member flag-folding detail, and a three riflemen to fire the salute. Veteran s funerals now only receive the services of two-member teams, who provide a flag-folding ceremony, the playing of taps, and the presentation of the flag to the next of kin. To me, without the 21-gun salute, it just does not make it complete a proper military burial, veteran Wayne Wakeman told Honolulu s KHON 2 News. I think because of sequestration or the lack of funds or whatever excuse they re giving, that they had to hit the veterans. Wakeman is correct in supposing the cut is due to sequestration, the 2013 automatic federal spending cuts required by the Budget Control Act of 2011.Rose Richeson, from the Secretary of the Air Force s Public Affairs Press Desk, told We Are The Mighty the policy of restricting the funeral honor is an Air Force-wide requirement. The requirement is consistent with DoD policy which require a minimum of two personnel, Richeson said. Any number of personnel above two that is provided in support of military funeral honors is based on local resources available. Via: FOX News | 1real |
Trump lawyer Dowd says he drafted tweet on Flynn firing: Axios | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer took responsibility on Sunday for a tweet about the firing of former national security adviser Michael Flynn, a central figure in the probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. In an interview with Axios, John Dowd said the tweet was “my mistake” and that he drafted the tweet that raised more questions about whether there had been attempts to obstruct the Russia investigation. “I’m out of the tweeting business,” Dowd told Axios. “I did not mean to break news.” | 0fake |
COVER-UP? New Details from Orlando Shooter’s Crisis Call Casts Light on FBI | Shawn Helton 21st Century WireEarlier this week, the FBI released new details regarding an apparent crisis negotiation call made between Orlando Pulse nightclub shooter Omar Mateen and authorities.Will this new release reveal anything new about the Orlando shooting case, or will it continue a trend of unanswered questions regarding the incident? SCRIPT CHANGE OR TRUE MOTIVE? The FBI has released more details regarding a crisis call said to have been placed by Omar Mateen (Photo illustration: 21WIRE s Shawn Helton)Crisis Call Motive According to the Washington Free Beacon [unredacted] transcripts were released by Orlando police Friday after a Florida court hearing held in response to a lawsuit filed by several news organizations. The new details supposedly reveal a motive in the Orlando Pulse nightclub shooting.Here s an excerpt from the alleged shooter Mateen s negotiation call featured in the Beacon: Yo, the air strike that killed Abu Wahid a few weeks ago that s what triggered it, okay? said Mateen, who earlier in the conversation identified himself as a follower the Islamic State terror group. They should have not bombed and killed Abu Wahid, the former security guard declared. Do your fucking homework and figure out who Abu Wahid is, okay? The shooting suspect allegedly discussed concern over US airstrikes in Syria, supposedly stating the following: They need to stop the U.S. air strikes. You have to tell the U.S. government to stop bombing. They are killing too many children, they are killing too many women, okay? Given Mateen s profile as stated by media and officials since June, the idea that he would be concerned with the lives of innocent civilians is patently absurd making this latest, rather timely release, extremely suspect.Mateen s alleged crime confession via a crisis negotiation call, also smacks of another rewrite in the Pulse shooting saga, an event that displayed elements of foreknowledge and planning beyond that of a lonewolf. In addition, it was an incident littered with a number of anomalies and numerous intelligence connections. Although one cannot absolutely prove the scripted nature of this latest FBI release regarding the Pulse shooting, several quotes in the conversation stand out, falling in line with an all to familiar Western policy perspective regarding Syria and Iraq.Interestingly, after a number of strange motives were initially attached to the Orlando shooting, we re conveniently told it was triggered by an airstrike apparently killing Abu Wahib in May of this year. Wahib was an al-Qaeda/ISIS leader well-known to authorities and according to the controversial intelligence linked media blog Long War Journal. He had been detained by US officials in 2006 and sentenced to death in 2012, only to mysteriously escape from Tikrit Central Prison after a large jailbreak: Abu Wahib, whose full name is Shakir Wahib al Fahdawi al Dulaimi, has been waging jihad in Iraq for more than a decade. He was detained by US forces in Ramadi in 2006 during the height of al Qaeda in Iraq s insurgency.The LWJ article continued by stating the following: Wahib was sentenced to death and transferred to Tikrit Central Prison. In November 2012, he escaped along with 110 inmates after the Islamic State of Iraq assaulted the prison. That jailbreak and others like it infused the Islamic State of Iraq with leaders and fighters who were captured during US and Iraqi military operations. Given Wahib s lengthy criminal background and unexplained escape from prison, is it possible he may have been a Western intelligence asset released back into the public?The theory may not be as far-fetched as it seems when considering there is a historical precedence for such activity In the aftermath of 9/11 up until 2006, the CIA operated a facility that was used to train terrorists to be double agents to supposedly infiltrate Al Qaeda terror cells. This program was called called Penny Lane.Penny Lane was named after the Beatles tune and was connected to another secret facility called Strawberry Fields, a name also taken from the British rock group.We were told that operation had been successful in its scope but by 2013, the CIA had lost touch with many of its newly trained double agents.The Penny Lane facility was unlike any other building in the Guantanamo Bay prison area, as it was said to have beds, kitchens and a patio for its prisoners. The money to pay informants and double agents was also provided for by the CIA under the codename Pledge. But how does this relate to the Orlando club shooting?Drills & Informants Shortly after the Pulse shooting attack it was revealed that Mateen had been attending services at a Mosque, meeting with a known FBI informant named Marcus Dwayne Robertson (see left also played role in 1993 WTC bombing), a former US Marine turned bank robber turned radical imam. Here s this passage from Fox News describing Robertson s role: It is no coincidence that this happened in Orlando, said a law enforcement source familiar with Robertson s history of recruiting terrorists and inciting violence. Mateen was enrolled in [Robertson s online] Fundamental Islamic Knowledge Seminary.Robertson and several associates were rounded up for questioning early Sunday, according to law enforcement sources, a development his attorney refused to confirm or deny. DISNEY MONEY BOMB? Heavily orchestrated fundraising campaigns follow almost every dramatized mass shooting in America. (Image Source: fox13news)Fast-tracked Fundraisers Interestingly, on September 27th, the Orlando Weekly revealed that Each of the families of the 49 victims killed in the massacre at the gay nightclub Pulse will get $350,000 from the OneOrlando Fund this week, though privately, they still have to iron out who will get what funds. The Weekly also disclosed the total charitable amount received: The OneOrlando Fund received $29.5 million from various sources, which will now be divided between families and survivors of the mass shooting. The funds will be distributed through the end of this week, Martins says. Additionally, the article continues, stating that even uninjured patrons the night of the shooting will receive quite a large sum from the fund: The families of the deceased victims received a larger share of the funds, totaling about $17.2 million. The 37 survivors who were hospitalized after the shooting will receive anywhere from $65,000 to $300,000 depending on how many nights they spent at the hospital, while 31 people who required outpatient treatment for their injuries will get $35,000 each. An additional 182 patrons of Pulse who were there when the shooting began but not injured will received $25,000 each. The amount granted to Orlando victims is strangely, nearly the same amount given to all of the Charleston church families affected by the suspicious shooting involving Dylann Roof. It turned out, that the Department of Justice fast-tracked $29 million dollars from the Crime Victim Assistance Formula Grant program, shortly after the tragedy.According to OneOrlando s own website, The OneOrlando Board, chaired by Orlando Magic President Alex Martins, was developed to provide oversight and guidance to ensure that funds are dispersed in a timely, accountable and transparent manner. Other members of the board include the following as stated on OneOrlando s website:Rena Langley, Senior Vice President, Public Affairs & Worldwide Government and Industry Relations, Walt Disney World Diane O Dell, Vice President of Community Relations, Universal Orlando Resort Stephanie Ghertner, Director, Darden Foundation & Community Affairs Mark Meyer, Industry Manager, JPMorgan ChaseOn another note, a woman claiming to have been injured at Pulse the night of the shooting, was denied funds, leading her to sue OneOrlando. Here s the Orlando Sentinel on the matter: Jillian Amador, who filed the suit asking for an audit, was at Pulse with friends on June 12. She initially filed the complaint on Friday in Orange County Circuit Court, but a judge tossed it because the respondents were not served. She refiled the petition Tuesday, seeking an emergency order to stop the payout, but Circuit Judge John E. Jordan again denied the request. VICTIM OR ACTOR? The purported Pulse nightclub victim shown above was carried to the corner where he was seen walking off without assistance while still on camera. (Image Source: www.wftv.com)Revisiting The Orlando ShootingBack in June, here at 21WIRE, we discussed how the most important aspect of the FBI supplied 911 transcript had gone virtually unnoticed as there was nothing in the contents of the transcript that discussed an actual shooting occurring inside of the Pulse nightclub.While the report was a basic outline of America s largest mass shooting it failed to account for any of the shootings said to have occurred within the interior of Pulse. There was no mention of bar patrons being shot or reportedly shot at in the FBI s official narrative. It s as if the mainstream media and authorities left out the biggest piece of the investigation, as the implications of who shot who and when are extremely significant forensically speaking.While the description of the Orlando shooting included mention of the Orlando Police Department (OPD) pulling an air conditioning unit out of a Pulse dressing room to evacuate victims, a multi-call crisis negotiation, the alleged shooter s outrageous claims of a bomb-laced vest and authorities breaching the back wall of the nightclub with an explosive charge there was no mention of additional shots fired at club goers inside Pulse? CRIME SCENE PROTOCOL? Multiple officials seen coming in and out of Pulse nightclub with and without CSI attire. (Image Source: boingboing)In recent years, media press conference rituals backed by law enforcement officials have shaped a narrative within the first hours of a mass casualty event and even if that story turns out to be mostly false, the media runs with it anyway, whether or not new information and crime scene analysis belies the original story pushed by media. The most clear example of this happened during the aftermath of the WTC 1993 bombing, where major media outlets exposed it as an FBI run sting with their operators in control yet still, media anchors still called it an al-Qaeda led attack.Aspects of the orchestrated bombing in 1993 played out in another high profile case dubbed the Newburgh Sting In May of 2009, the investigative tactics of the FBI came into question, none perhaps more suspect than the Newburgh sting an incident that involved the entrapment of four men in a fabricated terror event created by the bureau.Here s another look at a 2011 passage from The Guardian describing how an FBI informant named Shahed Hussain coerced four others to be involved in a fake terror plot: The Newburgh Four now languish in jail. Hussain does not. For Hussain was a fake. In fact, Hussain worked for the FBI as an informant trawling mosques in hope of picking up radicals.Yet far from being active militants, the four men he attracted were impoverished individuals struggling with Newburgh s grim epidemic of crack, drug crime and poverty. One had mental issues so severe his apartment contained bottles of his own urine. He also believed Florida was a foreign country.Hussain offered the men huge financial inducements to carry out the plot including $250,000 to one man and free holidays and expensive cars.As defence lawyers poured through the evidence, the Newburgh Four came to represent the most extreme form of a controversial FBI policy to use invented terrorist plots to lure targets. There has been no case as egregious as this. It is unique in the incentive the government provided. A quarter million dollars? said Professor Karen Greenberg, a terrorism expert at Fordham University. So when you consider what happened in Orlando, one should question the lack of shooting details, in addition to conflicting eyewitness testimony- why have portions of this story still been left open for interpretation when every other part of the official timeline of events appears to be accounted for?Here s a portion reviewing the FBI s summary of events that excludes any mention of shots fired within Pulse: Based on OPD radio communications, there were no reports of shots being fired inside Pulse between the initial exchange of gunfire between responding officers and shooter, and the time of the final breach. During this time, the shooter communicated with an OPD 911 operator and an OPD crisis negotiator, and OPD radio communications reported that victims were being rescued. Here s a more basic chronology of the Orlando shooting, as told by the FBI: 2:02 a.m.: OPD call transmitted multiple shots fired at Pulse nightclub.2:04 a.m.: Additional OPD officers arrived on scene.2:08 a.m.: Officers from various law enforcement agencies made entrance to Pulse and engaged the shooter.2:18 a.m.: OPD SWAT (Special Weapons and Tactics) initiated a full call-out.2:35 a.m.: Shooter contacted a 911 operator from inside Pulse.3:03 a.m.: Second crisis negotiation call occurred lasting approximately 16 minutes.3:24 a.m.: Third crisis negotiation call occurred lasting approximately three minutes.4:21 a.m.: OPD pulled an air conditioning unit out of a Pulse dressing room window for victims to evacuate.4:29 a.m.: As victims were being rescued, they told OPD the shooter said he was going to put four vests with bombs on victims within 15 minutes.5:02 a.m.: OPD SWAT and OCSO Hazardous Device Team began to breach wall with explosive charge and armored vehicle to make entry.5:14 a.m.: OPD radio communication stated that shots were fired.5:15 a.m.: OPD radio communication stated that OPD engaged the suspect and the suspect was reported down. The Orlando shooting details state multiple shots [were] fired at Pulse nightclub at 2:02 am, as Additional OPD officers arrived on scene, at 2:04 am, with law enforcement engaging the shooter at 2:08 am again, there is no other mention of shots fired until police exchange fire with the alleged suspect after breaching the wall at 5:15 am.Matten s weapons of choice during the apparent attack were a Sig Sauer MCX .223 caliber rifle and a Glock 17 9mm semi-auto pistol and according to the official story, and he was far more accurate than most well-trained law enforcement agents, defying statistical averages as examined by the Rand Corporation below.Question: Would it have really been possible for the alleged gunman Omar Mateen to have accurately shot over 100 people, take hostages and then engage in a fire fight with officers in just a 6 minute time frame?This scenario is hardly likely, if not impossible.Here s another look at an extensive study conducted by Rand Corporation that involved the NYPD: According to a 2008 Rand Corporation study evaluating the New York Police Department s firearm training, between 1998 and 2006, the average hit rate during gunfights was just 18 percent. When suspects did not return fire, police officers hit their targets 30 percent of the time.Many other such studies and risk assessments exist throughout law enforcement organizations nationwide, and most come to very similar conclusions as the RAND study. The odds are almost zero that the Pulse event was so drastically different unless there was an intentional, or staged element at play here.Did the Police Kill Most of the Club Goers?Another aspect of the Orlando shooting attack was the possibility that many patrons could have been injured by authorities, something that also seemed to be absent from the official story. Here s a passage from WFAA8, an ABC affiliate discussing that point: Orlando Police Chief John Mina and other law enforcement officers offered new details about the shooting, including the possibility that some victims may have been killed by officers trying to save them. I will say this, that s all part of the investigation, Mina said. But I will say when our SWAT officers, about eight or nine officers, opened fire, the backdrop was a concrete wall, and they were being fired upon. Police also used an explosive charge and a Bearcat armored vehicle to breach the wall as civilians were allegedly holed up in a bathroom. This has led some critics to consider the possibility that non-combatants could have become collateral damage during the SWAT siege at Pulse.Below is YouTube clip from TRUNEWS displaying FOX News analyst Judge Andrew Napolitano discussing how no one had died in the Pulse club prior to the SWAT building breach READ MORE ORLANDO SHOOTING NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Orlando FilesREAD MORE WAR ON TERROR NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire W.O.T FilesHelp support us by becoming a 21WIRE Member at: 21WIRE.TV | 1real |
Former homeland secretary says FBI delayed notification of cyber hack | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Former Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson told a congressional panel on Wednesday that there was a delay between the time the FBI first made contact with the Democratic National Committee about Russia hacking its servers and the time he was notified at the Department of Homeland Security. Johnson, who served under President Barack Obama, was testifying about alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. The Department of Homeland Security issued warnings about hacking into voter registration databases, but Johnson said the notices did not get the attention he would have liked. Johnson blamed the emergence of a 2005 tape, in which Donald Trump brags about sexually assaulting women, for distracting the American public at the time of the warnings. Asked why the Obama administration did not do more to warn the public about the hacking, Johnson said, “We were very concerned that we would not be perceived as taking sides in the election, injecting ourselves into a very heated campaign.” | 0fake |
RNC Shoots Out Weak, Loser-y Response To Seeing $1.3 Million Ad Buy Dumped By Buzzfeed | How damaging is Donald Trump? Just ask the Republican National Committee. They ve lost out on a lucrative advertising deal with Buzzfeed because Trump is offensive. Media outlets need advertising dollars to function, so the fact that Buzzfeed would give up any ad money at all, just to stand on principle, says a lot about how awful Trump really is. The RNC has to be smarting from that.Their response to this is as weak and watery as their reluctant decision to accept Trump as their nominee and standard-bearer. According to CNN, the RNC s chief strategist and spokesman, Sean Spicer, said: Space was reserved on many platforms, but we never intended to use BuzzFeed. It is ironic that they have not ruled out taking money from a candidate currently under investigation by the FBI. Excuses, excuses. It s like they re back in kindergarten and saying, I didn t want to be your friend anyway! in order to save face. And by all means, invoke the investigation into Hillary s email server to smear Buzzfeed and deflect attention from the real problem, which is Trump. That just compounds the flimsiness of their response.Earlier on Monday, Buzzfeed CEO Jonah Peretti explained in a letter that they won t accept Trump ads because Trump is dangerous. He compared Trump ads to cigarette ads, saying that they don t run cigarette ads for that same reason. They don t want to be seen as endorsing something that s fundamentally bad for them and for us.Peretti is especially concerned about Trump wanting to limit freedom of the press, ban Muslims and get rid of immigrants: The Trump campaign is directly opposed to the freedoms of our employees in the United States and around the world and in some cases, such as his proposed ban on international travel for Muslims, would make it impossible for our employees to do their jobs. They do intend to continue covering Trump, though, and their coverage is brutal enough for him to specifically target them at rallies and elsewhere. The RNC, though, doesn t want to look like they re sucking on sour grapes over this, but they can t avoid it now. Such a shame our hearts bleed pink carbonated peanut butter for them.Featured image by Alex Wong/Getty Images | 1real |
Man Who Said There Was No Recession DURING The Great Recession Is Rumored For Top Economic Post | Reports are surfacing that CNBC s Larry Kudlow is on the short list of candidates for chairman the Council of Economic Advisers, which is the government s top economic policy group. Kudlow isn t just an advocate of the failed trickle-down theory of economics, he also claimed, back in 2007, that no recession was coming. As we all know, 2008 proved him dead wrong, and now Trump wants him in a top economic position.According to Craig Harrington, Director of the Economic Policy Program at Media Matters for America, this is how bad Kudlow is: According to the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), an award-winning nonprofit research organization that is perhaps best-known for determining a chronology of American business cycles and recessions, the Great Recession began in December 2007. Yet Kudlow published blogs on December 5, 6, and 7 of that year titled The Recession Debate Is Over, There Ain t No Recession, and Bush Boom Continues, in the conservative National Review. By July 2008, as the unemployment rate continued to balloon in the seventh month of recession, Kudlow was still arguing in National Review that there was no recession or housing crisis. In The Recession Debate Is Over, Kudlow claimed that the jobs numbers and business profits added up to no recession at all. In There Ain t No Recession, he doubled down on all of that, and in Bush Boom Continues, he actually said:That last one was published on Dec. 7, 2007. Eight months earlier, we began to see serious signs of an economic crahs with New Century Financial Corp., a major subprime lender, filing for bankruptcy. Unemployment began rising in Dec. 2007, and the Fed lowered short-term interest rates for the fifth time in four months.Kudlow didn t see any of that. He was focused entirely on the November jobs reports and business profits. He totally ignored other economic indicators. He s almost as bad as those who look only at the stock market for an idea of how our economy is doing.Moving on from Kudlow s absurdly incorrect predictions, in Feb. 2008, President Bush signed the first economic stimulus package into law, and then in March, the financial industry began crashing with the collapse of Bear Stearns. In April 2008, the Fed reduced interest rates yet again, and then in September, Lehmann Brothers collapsed.We all remember the chaos of the rest of 2008.This is more than simply putting someone who will work hard to make the rich richer and the poor poorer into an economic advisory position. This is someone whose economic experience and ideas are so far off that he couldn t, or wouldn t, see a recession coming despite the housing bubble collapse beginning in late 2006.Most economists worth their salt could see that foreshadowed the Great Recession, and knew that the Great Recession began at the end of 2007 (although Trump was excited for the housing crash because it meant more money for him).However, what can we expect from a president-elect who seems to see the presidency as just another reality show? Kudlow has published no scholarly papers on economics, and has no degree in economics at all, so he s not exactly qualified for the top economic position in our government.He plays an economist on television, though, and that s enough for Trump. Many of his cabinet picks seem to say that he has to know people from television in order to consider them for his cabinet. Kudlow is just another possibility that shows Trump has no idea what he s doing and thinks this is just another reality show.Featured image by Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 2.0 via Flickr | 1real |
Finland Will Become the First Country in the World to Get Rid of All School Subjects | LIFESTYLE
Finland’s education system is considered one of the best in the world. In international ratings, it’s always in the top ten. However, the authorities there aren’t ready to rest on their laurels, and they’ve decided to carry through a real revolution in their school system.
Finnish officials want to remove school subjects from the curriculum. There will no longer be any classes in physics, math, literature, history, or geography.
The head of the Department of Education in Helsinki, Marjo Kyllonen, explained the changes:
“There are schools that are teaching in the old-fashioned way which was of benefit in the beginning of the 1900s — but the needs are not the same, and we need something fit for the 21st century.“
Instead of individual subjects, students will study events and phenomena in an interdisciplinary format. For example, the Second World War will be examined from the perspective of history, geography, and math. And by taking the course ”Working in a Cafe,” students will absorb a whole body of knowledge about the English language, economics, and communication skills.
This system will be introduced for senior students, beginning at the age of 16. The general idea is that the students ought to choose for themselves which topic or phenomenon they want to study, bearing in mind their ambitions for the future and their capabilities. In this way, no student will have to pass through an entire course on physics or chemistry while all the time thinking to themselves “What do I need to know this for?”
The traditional format of teacher-pupil communication is also going to change. Students will no longer sit behind school desks and wait anxiously to be called upon to answer a question. Instead, they will work together in small groups to discuss problems.
The Finnish education system encourages collective work, which is why the changes will also affect teachers. The school reform will require a great deal of cooperation between teachers of different subjects. Around 70% of teachers in Helsinki have already undertaken preparatory work in line with the new system for presenting information, and, as a result, they’ll get a pay increase.
The changes are expected to be complete by 2020.
What do you think about all these ideas? We’d love to hear your opinion, so let us know in the comments.
Preview photo credit ZouZou | 1real |
Macron's sharp tongue throws French Twitter into a frenzy | PARIS (Reuters) - Emmanuel Macron, who at the age of 39 has brought youth and vigor to the French presidency, is also developing a reputation for stinging and sometimes off-message language. During a visit to a struggling company in the south-west of France on Wednesday, Macron was caught on video discussing clashes outside between the police and workers protesting his economic policies. Instead of kicking up a bloody mess, some of them would be better off going to see if they can get a job over there, he said, referring to a nearby aluminum factory battling to find workers. Some of them have got the qualifications to do it, he said, adding: It s not that far for them to go. The comments lit up TV channels and Twitter, where they were relished by the far-left and far-right, who are keen to cast Macron, a former investment banker, as out of touch with the common man and a president for the rich. Florian Philippot, until recently the number two in the far-right National Front party, described Macron as having contempt for France s lower-income workers. A similar accusation was leveled by Clementine Autain, a lawmaker from the far-left France Unbowed party. It shows a great class contempt, she said. He can t stop coming out with unfair comments targeting the masses. Macron s new spokesman, former journalist Bruno Roger-Petit, was quick to post the full video of Macron s exchange on Twitter, saying some outlets and opponents were circulating extracts that made the president sound worse than was the case. Truncated and taken out of context, he said of snippets on social media. Emmanuel Macron was underlining that the search for solutions on jobs is everyone s responsibility. It is not the first time Macron has sparked controversy with his language and then shown little sign of contrition. While his often erudite speeches are laced with literary references that show off his elite education, he has a tendency to use dismissive words in off-the-cuff comments that critics say make him sound arrogant. Last month, as he was finalizing changes to France s labor rules to make hiring and firing easier, he said he would not bow to slackers who resist reform. In July, visiting a high-tech start-up center in Paris, he talked about those who succeed and those who are nothing . And in 2016, when confronted by angry unionists while he was economy minister, Macron was recorded saying: You don t scare me with your t-shirt. The best way of paying for a suit is to work. Spikey language has dogged French presidents in the past. Nicolas Sarkozy caused uproar while interior minister in 2005 when he branded youths behind the worst urban violence in France in decades as scum , a comment that haunted him as president. And Francois Hollande was accused by his former partner of referring to the poor as toothless , undermining his efforts to portray himself as a friend of the needy. | 0fake |
[VIDEO] BAD A*S HUNGARIAN MAYOR Tells You Everything You Need To Know About European “Refugee” Crisis : “Police always find knives on the migrants” | WHY FED UP HUNGARIAN MAYOR Would Send All Illegal Immigrants To US We are now prisoners on our farms. People s calm lives are destroyed, and the people want them back. We bet that if you mentioned Asotthalom before September 16, 2015, people would make big eyes wondering what you just said. But a day later you started googling this Hungarian village and its Mayor Laszlo Toroczkai, whose video message swept the board in the Web.It is 10.00 a. m. Saturday in the village of Asotthalom nearly touching the Hungarian-Serbian border. A smiling sprightly man in jeans and a jacket steps out from his sedan near the municipality. No military clothing, no big hulky bodyguards on jeeps. A vigorous handshake. It is the mayor. I have to work every day, and fortunately the situation with the illegal immigration is better, Laszlo Toroczkai says instantaneously coming to the point of our talk.This is what made him the most googled Hungarian figure as of right now a blockbuster trailer-style video stating that If you are an illegal immigrant, Hungary is a bad choice and Asotthalom is the worst. Once, smugglers had a violent clash with Asotthalom police and two of them were hospitalized as well as the policemen. Later, a group of smugglers were arrested in the village.The Best Employees of Asotthalom Toroczkai criticized the Croatian government, scolding it for fueling this impropriety. Currently Croatia is the main migrant route to Hungary. The Croatian government carries migrants from the Croatian-Serbian border to the Croatian-Hungarian border acting just like human traffickers. And no one talks about it. As for the Hungarian-Serbian border, where Asotthalom is located, the situation relatively scaled down when the government sent the Army to protect the border wall. However, the mayor wants the government to build a better fence there.Now migrants are moving across the village in few groups at night, trying to cross as fast as they can, as it is unsafe for them here. What the visitors first notice entering Asotthalom is a traffic sign depicting a crossed-out man with a bag behind his back. The mayor explained that the broad meaning of the sign is that we do not welcome criminals here, however, it originally targeted a specific crime where swindlers distracted residents by offering things for sale, while their accomplices robbed the house.Migrants intercepted while trying to cross the fence, the post reads.The mayor lives in farm right at the border and he became one of the first witnesses of the expanding influx of migrants. His neighbor s wife was alone in her house with three little kids when a group of exclusively young male migrants broke into her garden at night and wanted to enter her house.Sometimes they do it just to charge their cell phones, sometimes the wait for human traffickers in abandoned houses. But imagine when you are alone and you are a woman with children and a group of men from Islamic or other countries want to enter your house at night on your farm! The mayor s family was trapped in a very similar situation. My wife woke me up, she was afraid, there were some 40 people, and I ran out of the house with a non-lethal pistol not to shoot but to scare them off. You would do anything in this situation. I Have Nothing Against Refugees During our conversation Laszlo Torockai several times emphasized and reiterated that he has nothing against refugees. He draws a line between those who are saving their lives (asylum-seekers) and those who are looking for easy money and benefits (economic migrants).Toroczkai argues that Hungary is full of purely economic migrants who are not real refugees, including those from Pakistan, Bangladesh and African countries which are free of wars. When he meets migrants, he always asks them two questions: where are your family, kids and wife, and what are you going to do in Europe?One of the typical answers Toroczkai gets is like this: I want a Mercedes Cabrio in Monaco , an African man told him. Citing statistics, the mayor emphasized that of all the illegal immigrants in Hungary, 83 percent are young males and only 17 percent are children and women those whom he considers true refugees. In his book, a man must defend his homeland instead of leaving it in danger. You know, if there is a war in my village, in my country, then my wife and my children will be refugees and I will stay at home to fight for my village and for my country. He stated that if a person agrees to abide by the law in Asotthalom, he or she would not have any problem.READ MORE: Sputnik News | 1real |
AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY: Who Really Killed JonBenét Ramsey? | Do roses know their thorns can hurt? a quote attributed to JonBen t Ramsey from Lawrence Schiller s Perfect Murder, Perfect Town Shawn Helton 21st Century WireIt s been nearly 20 years since the cold-blooded murder of JonBen t Ramsey shocked America. On December 26, 1996, the lifeless body of a 6-year-old girl, JonBen t Ramsey, was found brutally murdered in the basement of her family home. The grisly discovery stunned a quiet and affluent community in Boulder, Colorado and quickly became one of the most disturbing unsolved crimes in the United States over the past two decades. Photo Illustration Shawn Helton of 21WIREThe killing of JonBen t was an American tragedy and still to this day, it remains a haunting case and enigma.Below we ll examine some of the key elements surrounding the Ramsey investigation, along with some of the prevailing theories concerning JonBen t s homicide Throughout the course of this crime analysis, there will be references to a compilation of media reports, independent investigative reports, as well as the court case, Wolf v. Ramsey in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia which convened in 2003.The 2003 case stated that a Boulder journalist named Robert Christian Wolf filed a $50 million defamation suit against John Ramsey and wife Patsy Ramsey after being referred to by the family as a possible suspect in the death of JonBen t in the couple s controversial book, Death of Innocence.During the Wolf v. Ramsey court case, some shocking details surrounding JonBen t s murder were reviewed once again. Subsequently, John and Patsy Ramsey were sued in two separate defamation lawsuits (including Linda Hoffman-Pugh) after the publication of their controversial book about the murder of their daughter. DARK HOLIDAY The crime taped scene at the Ramsey residence in University Hill on December 26, 1996. (Image Source: eonline)Christmas in Boulder 1996JonBen t Ramsey was discovered dead in what has been referred to as the wine cellar of her parent s Boulder mansion just one day after Christmas.According to investigators, the official cause of the young child s death was asphyxia by strangulation associated with craniocerebral trauma. The savage scene indicated a possible sexual assault based on DNA evidence collected.Court transcripts confirmed that around the time of JonBen t s death, an unknown object (possibly a flashlight) was used to cause blunt force trauma to her head. However, the strangulation came 45 minutes to two hours after the blow to the head (with the killer behind the victim).The initial inspection of JonBen t s body revealed that the child beauty pageant contestant was bound to a broken paintbrush, an improvised garrote with a slip knot that included some of her own hair. A closer forensic investigation would later uncover that the duck tape placed over JonBen t s mouth, allegedly contained hair from a beaver. Similarly, it was discovered that unidentified dark animal hairs were found on her hands. Nothing in the home matched the animal hair samples found on the duct tape.According to the The Colorado Bureau of Investigations, there were fibers found on the duct tape that were also similar to a jacket worn by JonBen t s mother on Christmas day.Those close to the case would later remark how many elements of the crime scene appeared to be staged as the cord, body positioning, additional bodily trauma, as well as the white blanket covering JonBen t and the Barbie nightgown found near her, indicated manipulation after the crime occurred.In a report by the now retired forensic pathologist and medical examiner, Dr. Michael Doberson, The right side of [JonBen t s] face as well as on the lower left back are patterned injuries most consistent with the application of a stun gun. According to additional court documents, Male DNA was found under JonBenet s right hand fingernail that does not match that of any Ramsey. The same court documents also stated, Defendants also assert that male DNA was found under Jon-Benet s left hand fingernail, which also does not match that of any Ramsey, and that male DNA was found on the deceased s underwear but did not match any other Ramsey family member.The Ramseys assert that JonBen t was last seen alive around 10pm on Christmas day after attending a Christmas party at the White family residence. Along with her brother Burke, the young girl was put to bed shortly after coming home from that party.JonBen t s time of death has remained undetermined, though autopsy results suggest that sometime between 10pm on Christmas night and the early hours of December 26th. Reports confirm that rigor mortis had set in on the body and an odor of decomposition had also been present. It would later be revealed that JonBen t had undigested pieces of pineapple still in her stomach and small intestine.According to other investigative reports, it s inconclusive whether the 6 year-old had the pineapple an hour or two prior to her death or earlier in the day.However, JonBen t was able digest cracked crab she ate at the Christmas party hosted by the White family, suggesting the pineapple was served later that night at home. Interestingly, JonBen t s mother Patsy, claimed to not remember giving her daughter fruit that day or night, even though the bowl containing the pineapple had her and her son s fingerprints on it. Burke Ramsey s fingerprints were also found on a nearby glass. RANSOM PLOT? Above is the apparent ransom note found by Patsy Ramsey. Oddly, John Ramsey had recently received a holiday bonus nearly the exact amount demanded in the note. (Image Source: pintrest)The Ransom Note & 911Early on December 26th, Patsy Ramsey (possibly in the same clothes), awoke at 5:33am and was said to have made her way down a staircase known to those familiar with the large house. Sitting on the stairs, the former Miss West Virginia found an apparent ransom note which stated that her abducted daughter was safe and unharmed but demanded $118,000 for her return.Strangely, this was the exact amount that Patsy s husband John received for a Christmas bonus in 1996, while working as the President and Chief Executive Officer of Access Graphics, a computer services company and a subsidiary of Lockheed Martin. After discovering that JonBen t was missing from her room, Patsy made a distressing 911 call to police at 5:52am, where Burke was said to have been heard talking in the background. However, John and Patsy maintained that their son was not yet awake at this time.Patsy then called her neighbor and close friends, Priscilla White, as well as John and Barbara Fernie, between 5:55am and 6am. Boulder police arrived at the scene some seven minutes later to find a frantic Patsy and an oddly clam John. There were no signs of forcible entry at the residence, which complicated the purported kidnapping plot.Below is an enhanced version of the Ramsey 911 call seen in a recent CBS series examining the case. The Ramsey 911 call on December 26th, has caused a tremendous amount of speculation about a possible family cover-up in the murder of JonBen t An in-depth investigative site revealed that Boulder Police Detective Melissa Hickman reviewed the 911 call and transcribed it after having it enhanced at the Aerospace Corporation. Similarly, Lawrence Schiller s book Perfect Murder, Perfect Town: The Uncensored Story of the JonBenet Murder and the Grand Jury s Search for the Final Truth, suggested that the voice of Burke Ramsey is supposedly heard in the back ground of the 911 call stating, Please, what do I do?, in addition to CBS s findings above.The December 26th phone call to police would be the second 911 call from the Ramsey home over a three-day period. The first was on December 23rd, during a party at the Ramseys house, which included guests said to be from the upper echelon of Boulder society. However, a complete list of attendees was not made public and the reason for the first 911 call was never fully explained as the unknown caller hung up without saying a word.Schiller s book Perfect Murder, Perfect Town, stated that Linda Hoffman-Pugh, the Ramseys longtime housekeeper named some of the families who attended the December 23rd Christmas party: At 5:30 P.M. Santa showed up. By then the Barnhills, the Fernies, the Stines, Pinky Barber, and the Whites, who came with Priscilla s parents, had all arrived. Maybe eight couples and their children. Most of the men gathered by the spiral staircase. John made drinks for everybody from the butler s kitchen. The kids played in the living room by the big Christmas tree. That s where Santa read his little verses about everyone. This year, Mrs. Claus was there too, Santa looked kind of sick. Flashing back to the alleged ransom note, FOX 13 reported that former Boulder police chief Mark Beckner, stated the following during a Ask Me Anything segment on Reddit. Here s a revealing passage from that discussion: The FBI told us they d never seen a 2.5 page ransom note, [and that] No note has ever been written at the scene, and then left at the scene with the dead victim at the scene, other than this case. In addition to Beckner s Reddit commentary, the online magazine The Federalist stated that, The FBI s Child Abduction and Serial Killer Unit had noted that JonBen t s murderer almost certainly hadn t committed a murder before. They also concluded separately that the ransom note was written by someone intelligent but criminally unsophisticated. Continuing, the same article summarized another important aspect in the Ramsey case, lab tests also showed it was Patsy s Sharpie pen used to write the note. The pen used to write the note an FBI profiler estimates it took 21 minutes for the author to practice on the pad and then compose it was found in a cup with other Sharpies right next to the phone in the kitchen where Patsy kept them. It was very conscientious of the murderer to put everything back where he found it. Though Patsy was never conclusively proven to have had a hand in writing the purported ransom note, of those asked to give written samples, she was the only person police could not completely eliminate.According to a longtime FBI agent, the note contained deliberate mistakes and strange manipulative elements in an attempt to confuse authorities.The FBI was said to have arrived at the Ramsey house some fifteen minutes after the body was discovered. Schiller s Perfect Murder, Perfect Town, also noted the protocol of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the following manner: FBI s standard procedure is to investigate the parents and the immediate family first and then move outward in circles. Then would come people who had frequent access to the child babysitters and domestic help. The next circle would contain friends and business associates. The outermost circle would be strangers. The technique was to avoid leaping over these concentric circles too quickly. According to the Bureau of Justice statistics from 1980 2008, 78.1 percent of the time, offenders were not strangers to the victim, and in more than 56 percent of cases, the victim was at least acquainted with an offender. HOUSE OF HORROR The police taped scene outside the Ramsey residence following the discovery of their murdered daughter. (Image Source: ajc)Spoiling the Scene Upon arriving at the Ramsey residence on December 26th, Boulder policeman Rick French, conducted a quick search of the house, looking for possible intruder exit points. French failed to search the wine cellar room where JonBen t would later be discovered, because he noticed that the wooden latch on the door was on the opposite side for a door exiting the house. Around this time, French was also given the apparent ransom note by the Ramseys. The two and a half page note, was later described as one of the longest ransom notes in the history of kidnapping cases in America.At least two searches were conducted by JonBen t s father John and family friend Fleet White, Priscilla s husband, in the Ramseys basement sometime between 6:06 8:00am. Shortly after arriving at the Ramsey residence, Fleet searched the basement alone including the wine cellar where JonBen t s body was located within fifteen minutes of arriving. Documents would confirm the search effort in the following description, Mr. White also opened the door to the wine cellar room, but he could not see anything inside because it was dark and he could not find the light switch. Fleet then testified that a window in the basement playroom had been broken and that underneath that window, there was a suitcase and piece of broken glass.Early on investigators were concerned about the lack of debris and other forensic evidence in and around the window thought to have been used in the alleged abduction/murder plot.December 26th, at 6:45am, John calls and leaves a message for Michael Archuleta his pilot. At 7:00am, his 9 year-old son Burke was dressed and taken to the White residence. Also at this time, Rev. Rolland Hoverstock from St. John s Episcopalian Church arrived at the Ramsey residence.The UK s Guardian described other compelling forensic details noted at the house that day: Eventually, other details emerged which competed with the original picture. Though there was no sign of forced entry, there was that small broken window into the basement that had been left open. Though there were no footprints in the snow, there was no snow on the part of the lawn that would need to be crossed to get in through the window. There was a footprint near the body left by a Hi-Tec boot. There was a latent handprint on the doorframe that didn t match any of the Ramseys . MAP OF MURDER Here s a bird s eye graphic detailing the Ramsey s basement area and the hidden wine cellar room where JonBen t s body was found. (Image Source: denverpost.com)In the striking book Programmed to Kill by writer and researcher David McGowan, we see an examination of the Ramsey case in a chapter entitled Boulder. In the following passage, McGowan underscored that the crime scene had been mishandled from the beginning: For reasons that have never been adequately explained, the investigation was compromised from the very beginning. Officers inexplicably failed to secure the crime scene, allowing the family s pastor to come and go from the home. No effort was made to prevent contamination of any potential evidence. Detectives did not arrive on the scene until 8:10am, over two hours after the first patrol officers arrived. It took another twelve hours for the coroner to arrive (and once there, he reportedly spent just ten minutes examining the body and the crime scene). Detectives Linda Arndt and Fred Patterson arrived at the Ramsey s residence at 8:10am and are given a rundown of the scene by Officer French from the Boulder police department.Detective Arndt then prepped the Ramseys for the potential ransom phone call, tapping the house phone. Around this time, the police s team of victims advocates who are skilled in dealing with trauma, arrive with breakfast food. Unfortunately, as was the case with many elements of the Ramsey crime scene, crucial evidence was potentially erased, as the team of advocates inadvertently wiped down parts of the kitchen.Arndt would later remark that there was no acknowledgement from anyone inside the house that the ransom phone call deadline came and went. John would later be seen examining the contents of his mail during the developing tragedy at his home.Detectives Arndt and Patterson sealed off JonBen t s bedroom some time around 10:30am but did not block off the entire house as a potential crime scene. In fact, friends and family moved freely throughout the house most of the day.At 10:30, Arndt calls for backup at least twice while left in the house alone with the Ramsey family and friends (seven in total), she is told that all officers are in a Boulder Police Department meeting and they received her message. Later a qualifier for the lapse was given by the BPD stating that they were short-staffed.At 1pm, Arndt decided that John should do a top to bottom search of the house with specific instructions not to touch anything. John, Fleet and supposedly another family friend, John Fernie, trekked downstairs into the basement, during the tense wait for the alleged kidnappers to call a call that never happened.John located JonBen t almost immediately at 1:05pm in the wine cellar hidden in the basement of the Ramsey house. Upon discovering JonBen t, John reportedly ripped the duct tape from her mouth and untied her hands bringing her lifeless body upstairs. Arndt then grabbed the young girl placing her near the family Christmas tree after a strange nonverbal exchange with John. Patsy was also said to have grieved over the body at this time.While it was a undeniably an emotional situation, Arndt made a mental note of the disturbance to the crime scene as this was not officially a homicide.Twenty minutes later, after additional officers secure the house and the forensic team returns, John places a phone call to his personal pilot but is instructed by police to stay in Boulder.Sometime later, testimony revealed a time discrepancy over the timeline of John s basement search, as it appeared to contradict other time frames of the initial crime scene investigation. Some researchers contend that John perhaps searched the basement before 6am based on statements given to authorities.Detective Arndt attempted to question Patsy further but the family s lawyer Mike Bynum stepped in blocking the inquiry into his client. The Ramseys did not give formal police interviews until four months after JonBen t s murder.According to The Daily Mail s report, They also assembled a team of private investigators, a public relations guru, an ex-FBI criminal profiler and two handwriting experts to look at the ransom note, arguing that the local police had botched the initial investigation. In a 1999, during a Good Morning America interview with Detective Arndt, described John s discovery of JonBen t, I decided that everything made sense in that instance. And, um, I knew what happened. I mean that s, I knew what happened to her. Below is Arndt s interview on ABC News, discussing the behavioral anomalies she witnessed at the Ramsey residence on December 26th During the course of that interview Arndt remarked how long it seemed before officers returned to the house following her radio to police, prompting the detective to become fearful of her own life waiting for backup, after witnessing the severe bodily trauma to JonBen t.In May of 1997, Detective Arndt and Detective Melissa Hickman were dropped from the case. MEDIA SPOTLIGHT The body language displayed John and Patsy Ramsey appeared to belie the murder of their child. Furthermore, they were never seen consoling one another by police the day their daughter was discovered murdered. (Image Source: crime.about)Casting SuspicionOn December 27th, it was reported that Patsy s friend Pam Griffin, the seamstress that designed JonBenet s pageant costumes went to comfort Patsy, who was grieving at the Fernie residence. Here s a passage describing that encounter in a Newsweek report three years after the murder of JonBen t: At the Boulder home of John and Barbara Fernie, friends of the Ramseys , Pam, a former registered nurse, touched Patsy s skin and realized she was dehydrated. She brought Patsy some water and made her drink it. You need to brush your hair, Pam told her. You need to lie down a little bit. But Patsy stood up to greet each new person who arrived to offer condolences, and as she did, tears streamed down her face. Hours later, Patsy finally took Pam s advice and lay down in the bedroom. Patsy reached up and touched Pam s face. Couldn t you fix this for me? she asked. Pam thought she was delirious. It was as if Patsy were asking her to fix a ripped seam. Patsy said something like, We didn t mean for that to happen , Pam would say later. Pam couldn t say why, but she remembered feeling as if Patsy knew who killed JonBenet but was afraid to say. Back in the spring of 1996, Griffin put local dance instructor, Kit Andre in touch with Patsy to help teach JonBen t a routine for the pageant circuit. Andre would later be quoted by media, stating the following: She was a fabulous child, I told Patsy at JonBenet s memorial service in Boulder. She was a star. I never saw JonBenet in a pageant. Never saw her do the routine I taught her until I saw that pageant video on TV. I ve looked at that video several times. They made JonBenet look like a clown. Someone else taught her those pseudo-adult movements, the provocative walk, the poses, all of it. The Daily Mail described the family preoccupation with the child beauty pageant circuit. Adding to that, family visitors noted that JonBenet s room was filled with pageant trophies rather than toys: Patsy later insisted that while JonBenet loved taking part in pageants, it was just a little hobby. Experts immediately pointed to the coaching, dancing, singing, music and beauty sessions along with the outrageous cost of outfits that made it an almost full-time occupation. FAMILY TIES The Ramsey s and White family on a ski trip. (Image Source: westword)The case most certainly took a different turn once the police had indicated that the Ramseys themselves would also be investigated as possible suspects. Right away, the Ramseys lawyered-up and hired an formidable legal defense team. Some twenty months after the brutal murder of JonBenet, John Ramsey s friend Fleet White, wrote an open letter to the people of Colorado that questioned the investigation by Boulder police and Boulder District Attorney Alex Hunter: After JonBen t Ramsey was killed in Boulder nearly twenty months ago, her parents, John and Patsy Ramsey, immediately hired prominent Democrat criminal defense attorneys with the law firm of Haddon, Morgan and Foreman. This firm and its partners have close professional, political and personal ties to prosecutors, the Denver and Boulder legal and judicial communities, state legislators, and high-ranking members of Colorado government, including Gov. Roy Romer. The investigation of her death has since been characterized by confusion and delays. Continuing, White outlined a larger conspiracy concerning the Ramsey case: During the course of the investigation, the district attorney has used inexplicable methods including the recruitment of magazine writers and tabloids to leak information concerning the case and to needle witnesses, suspects , and police detectives. White also mentioned the resignation of Boulder police detective Steve Thomas on August 6, 1998, after publicly accusing the District Attorney of obstructing the investigation into the Ramsey murder case. Torn Between Two Theories Something that continued to plague the Ramsey investigation, was that authorities were not able to reconcile the two different types of crime theories, one of the brutal killer and one of the ransom seeking kidnapper, based on the evidence presented.In 2000, Boulder s Daily Camera news, reported that the White family would be drawn even further into the Ramsey case, due to a California woman s descriptive allegations of an expansive child abuse ring. Her claims initially garnered attention because she allegedly knew John and Patsy Ramsey through Fleet: The White family did come in for more public scrutiny than some Ramsey associates during the star-crossed investigation.In his statement, Becker noted that, in 2000, The police department did investigate allegations made by a California woman to District Attorney Alex Hunter, as reported in the press, that were intended to cast suspicion on the White family. The department found no evidence to support the unfounded allegations. There has never been any evidence to link the White family to the JonBenet Ramsey homicide. The Camera in February 2000 reported that a 38-year-old woman had told Hunter that, when she was young, she had been ritually and sexually abused in a manner similar to the way JonBenet Ramsey died. Prior to the article mentioned above Barrie Hartman, editor for the Daily Camera for 18 years, added the following details concerning the woman interviewed by Boulder law enforcement which describe a deeper level abuse: The woman has described to police years of sexual and physical abuse in California homes at the hands of adults who stayed at holiday and other parties after other guests had left for the evening. Then, she said, another party, one of sexual abuse for the gratification of a select group of adults, would begin. Though Fleet White was cleared as a suspect in 1997 and officially exonerated in 2008 along with John Ramsey, publicly scrutiny has remained to this day.In 2014, even though Boulder District Attorney Stan Garnett declined to write yet another letter of exoneration for the Whites, which would have been the fourth such public decree regarding the family.According to reports, in 2002, former Detective Lou Smit who believed in John and Patsy s innocence, named a convicted Oregon sex offender Gary Oliva as his prime suspect after discovering the drifter had been in Boulder in December 1996. But Oliva s DNA did not match samples taken from the body. Throughout the last 20 years, at least 140 different men have been considered by investigative authorities, including convicted sex offender John Mark Karr, who gave a false confession that was later cleared through a DNA analysis.Additional investigative details state that, DNA samples from 1.6 million offenders 86,000 in Colorado alone have been checked over the past five years and forensics experts update those files once a week. It was recently revealed in April of 2016, that Ollie Gray, a private investigator hired by John and Patsy Ramsey claimed to have named the killer as one Michael Helgoth. The story implicated Helgoth, a 26-year-old whose family owned a junkyard on the edge of the city. According to an interview with The Daily Mail, Gray stated the following, Based on what we know now, I believe Helgoth and his accomplices committed the crime. There s no doubt about it. The Helgoth story gained traction because John Kenady, a former employee of Helgoth s, said his employer allegedly taped a video of JonBen t s death. Kenady supposedly tried to reach police some twenty times according to the Ramseys private investigator.The Daily Mail continued: Then, on February 13, 1997, Alex Hunter, who was then the district attorney, held a press conference where he spoke to JonBenet s unknown killer, saying; The list of suspect narrows. Soon there will be no one on the list but you. Helgoth died of an apparent suicide two days later at his home. Kenady believes he was murdered by an accomplice or accomplices who were with him when he killed JonBenet. The gun was found on Helgoth s right side, but the bullet hole goes from left to right. It doesn t make sense why someone would commit suicide in that manner, said Kenady. Below is a documentary featuring former Boulder Detective Steve Thomas regarding a bed-wetting rage theory revolving around JonBen t s murder (Thomas testimony is at 24:20) Ramsey Case Oddities In 1998, the NY Times reported that a private detective named Brett Sawyer had been convicted of paying a photo lab tech for 20 autopsy photographs and reselling to The Globe newspaper for $5,500. Naturally, this caused quite a public outcry, stirring questions about morality, societal behavior and the media s role in sensationalizing violence in America.On an intriguing note, in 2001, the Daily Camera reported that the Ramsey house s address would be changed: [The] Tudor where JonBen t Ramsey was found dead nearly five years ago have discarded the 755 15th St. address plate. Small adhesive-backed, black numbers 749 now adorn the mail slot to the right of the front door, and that Before the address change was granted, city officials contacted 18 different agencies including emergency responders, utility companies and the post office, to determine if such a change would be practical. In 2007, it was reported that a year after Patsy Ramsey died of ovarian cancer, husband John was for a short time reported by some publications to be romantic with Beth Holloway, the mother of Natalee Holloway who disappeared in 2005 after allegedly being abducted. Other case oddities have included the apparent meaning of the acronym signature at the bottom of the alleged ransom note that read S.B.T.C, something of which that caused quite a stir. Here s a 2011 FOX News report that has only added to the confusion, Some journalists erroneously believed that phrase was a war reference to John Ramsey s training in the Philippines at Subic Bay Naval Base (they believed it could mean Subic Bay Training Center). However, according to the Chicago Tribune in January of 1997, John Ramsey, 53, spent March 1968 through November 1969 assigned to the Navy Public Works Center at Subic Bay Training Center, according to the Bureau of Navy Personnel in Washington. In another bizarre and uncanny twist to the Ramsey murder case, Bill McReynolds the man who dressed up as Santa Claus on the night of December 23rd at the Ramsey house, had is own daughter abducted exactly twenty-two years (December 26th, 1974) to the date of JonBen t s murder. Strangely, he and his wife purportedly wrote a screenplay called Hey Rube (possibly named after the circus cry for help) that dealt with the brutal murder of a child in a similar manner to JonBen t.In the early days of the Ramsey case there was also concern about Randy Simmons, a child photographer well-known on the pageant circuit.In 1999, well-known Denver-based journalist Stephen Singular wrote a book about the murder of JonBen t, which investigated the exploitation of children and the dark and seedy elements potentially connected to the brutal crime in Boulder.In terms of historical context concerning Singular s theories, the book by former Nebraska state Senator John De Camp entitled, The Franklin Cover-up, comes to mind. The Cover-up was a scathing expose that implicated politicians, judges, those in the military, police, as well as members of the intelligence community for the subsequent abduction of numerous children over the course of many years, including connections to the wider Boys Town scandal. Former CIA director William Colby wrote the preface to De Camp s courageous book, lending even more credibility to its claims. Decamp had previously been an aide for Colby, who became disillusioned by his time in the CIA.You have to wonder, was JonBen t also a victim of a larger criminal conspiracy? LAST PICTURE The last photo of JonBen t alive. Here she is with her mother Patsy on Christmas morning 1996. (Image Source: dailymail.co.uk)Only Theories, No ConclusionTheories about JonBen t s killer or killers, have ranged from an unknown intruder, members of her family, family friends, a larger network of abuse, a wandering criminal who may have acted alone, or someone who played a role in a potential murder-for-hire scenario. But after all these years, every one of these so-called theories has one thing in common: the investigation seems to lead straight back to questions regarding John and Patsy s official story despite the couple s exoneration.Adding fuel to the fire, for the first time in public,JonBen t s brother, Burke Ramsey, recently discussed the murder of his sister during an exclusive three-part interview with Dr. Phil McGraw, something which has caused more speculation about the tragic and troubling case.Interestingly, since airing a six-hour docu-series called The Case of: JonBen t Ramsey , CBS is now being sued by Burke Ramsey, for the shows suggested conclusion that he may have been responsible for his sister s homicide.In 2013, the Daily Camera revealed that an unprosecuted grand jury indictment revealed the grand jury prepared charges of child abuse resulting in death and accessory to a crime for both John and Patsy Ramsey in the death of their daughter, and that Alex Hunter, the Boulder County district attorney at the time, never signed the true bill, apparently believing he could not successfully prosecute due to a lack of evidence. The tragic story of JonBen t continues, a portrait of innocence shattered a truly unbelievable crime still unsolved 20 years later.READ MORE TRUE CRIME NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire True Crime FilesSUPPORT 21WIRE and its work by Subscribing and becoming a Member @ 21WIRE.TV | 1real |
Austria's likely next chancellor hopes to form govt. in 60 days: paper | ZURICH (Reuters) - Austria s likely next chancellor, Sebastian Kurz, wants talks over a new government to last no more than two months, he said in a newspaper interview published in Sunday. Austria s president on Friday gave the green light to conservative leader Kurz, whose People s Party (OVP) secured 31.5 percent of the vote in last week s parliamentary election, to form a government. The Austrians expect that there is quickly a strong and stable government which takes up work, Kurz was quoted as saying by Austria s Kronen Zeitung. That means that negotiations should be concluded in less than 60 days. Kurz campaigned on a platform that combined a hard line on immigration similar to that of the far-right Freedom Party (FPO) with traditional conservative principles like slimming down the state and cutting taxes. To form his coalition, only two of Austria s parliamentary parties, the Social Democrats (SPO) and FPO, have enough seats to give Kurz a majority if they go into coalition with the OVP. Kurz is currently holding an initial round of discussions with the leaders of all parties in parliament, the last of which is his meeting with outgoing Chancellor Christian Kern, the head of the Social Democrats, later on Sunday. In a separate interview with tabloid Oesterreich, Kurz said his party has common ground with the FPO and that he had already held constructive talks with FPO leader Heinz-Christian Strache. In the conversation with Heinz-Christian Strache, I also had the impression that he has a strong willingness to effect change and creative drive, Kurz was quoted as saying by OE24. But now I will conclude these talks on Sunday, and then take up coalition negotiations with a partner. | 0fake |
Fractivists Claim Victory Against This Fracking Danger You’ve Probably Never Heard Of | The Center for Biological Diversity just announced that they have won a major lawsuit against the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management. The lawsuit was settled in the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles. The lawsuit will put a moratorium on fracking that is occurring off the coast of California. It may have future importance in determining the fate of off shore fracking in the Gulf Coast. This halt to offshore fracking is a huge victory for California s coastal environment, said Kristen Monsell, a Center attorney. Offshore fracking is a dirty and dangerous practice that has absolutely no place in our ocean. The federal government certainly has no right to give the oil industry free rein to frack offshore at will. A lot of attention has been paid to the fracking that is going on in people s backyards. That s under stable. Anyone who has seen the infamous fire faucet from Gasland, or heard about the increased number of earthquakes fracking related activity is causing, should be concerned about their back yard. Be that as it may, there has been a huge boom in offshore fracking that is putting North America s coasts in danger. Until now, America s coast has been a virtual free-for-all for the fracking industry.The fracking industry has permission from the federal government to dump 9 billion gallons of waste water from fracking operations into the ocean. That wastewater comes from their 200 oil platforms that are found off the coast of California. That waste water contains chemicals from the fracking process. Unfortunately, most of the chemicals commonly used in fracking process are considered trade secrets making it so that the public is not able to find out what chemicals are being used. Every offshore frack puts coastal communities and marine wildlife at risk from dangerous chemicals or another devastating oil spill, Monsell said. Once federal officials take a hard look at the dangers, they ll have to conclude that offshore fracking is far too big of a gamble with our oceans life-support systems. They ll have to stop authorizing it for good. It might be a bit optimistic to say that settlement will lead to a complete end to federal authorization of offshore fracking. However, the new requirements that the fracking industry will have to go through in order to get authorization are substantial. This is a major paperwrench to the fracking industry, that will in the very least delay new offshore fracking operations.Featured Image Credit: By Ken Lund [CC BY-SA 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons | 1real |
The Powerful Act Immoral as they Also Suffer from Herd Mentality | The Powerful Act Immoral as they Also Suffer from Herd Mentality Nov 7, 2016 2 0
The people at or near the top of the power pyramid are just as vulnerable to being sheep as we all are. In fact, they’re even more likely to fall to pressure from their peers because they have so much more at stake if they make the wrong choice.
That stake is money, power and other forms of capital. It’s their entire lifestyle at risk. If they rock the boat, there goes their business deals, their favors, their prioritization.
And these aspects of their life most likely define their identity, as sad as that might be.
That’s because all these consequences are of a nature which do not account for honor, integrity and morality. Connecting with the self to become an authentic man or woman is one of the real successes in life, so if they disregard this basic tenet to being human, then they’ve sold their soul for nothing less than a false path.
These sorts of people have a lot of influence that they’re failing to utilize for the benefit of humanity, as well as the environment. The core effect they could achieve is based in helping people to expand their understanding, and therefore their consciousness, to facilitate bringing about an era of truth, justice, peace and abundance for humankind.
Who exactly is being referenced here? They include celebrities, politicians, bureaucrats, military and police personnel, journalists, business moguls, so-called self-help gurus and pretty much anyone who is connected to the oligarchical families that are orchestrating the grand plan of global governance.
Now of course not all of them are alike. But let’s face it; how many of those with a massive social influence are speaking out against not just the peripheral problems, but the core ones such as the scams embedded into our system itself?
Fuck all; that how’s many.
Entering into their minds, it’s easy for them to be persuaded by the fear if they talk about some of the seriously uncomfortable truths of the world they’d be labeled as a conspiracy theorist. Yet the reality is that many conspiracy ‘facts’ are backed up with so much evidence they are simply ‘matter as fact’.
Like so many of us do, the truth needs to be shared. We all need to hear, understand and embody it into our thoughts and actions.
Simply, it stands to reason that we all need to play our part, especially those who have taken on a role with societal responsibility.
In any case, there are obviously many other reasons why these people don’t speak up. Examples include that they’re: subtly pretending to themselves that nothing is happening, ensuring they are a very unconscious person; turning a blind eye, even though they know and feel it; just simply ignorant of how the world works, like most people; psychopaths and/or sociopaths, where they’re involved in deeply disgraceful ideologies and practices; programmed and conditioned to support the status quo; dazed and confused in an overwhelming game of so-called power; a fake and weak human being; and/or in the drift of an existential crisis, which means their tide might actually turn. Final Thoughts
In the awakening community, we talk a lot about the people having the ultimate power, because we’ve got the numbers. So, if we want the sham of our system to cease, then all we have to do is organize to at least some degree to bring about the next steps of our societal evolution.
Well, what about all these people embedded in the parasitic culture that has hijacked humanity’s future? Can’t they be a beacon of light too?
Of course they can. To do so, they, like all of us, need to do their proper research and open their minds and hearts to both the madness and magic that permeates our existence of duality. If they do, they’ll deeply connect with their true role as a light shining into the darkness.
After all, no shadows exist when the light is shone from all angles.
A B OUT THE AUTHOR
Phillip J. Watt lives on the Mid North Coast of NSW Australia. His written and film work deals with topics from ideology to society, as well as self-development. Follow him on Facebook , watch his interviews with an array of inspiring guests at his YouTube Channel or visit his website . | 1real |
Mexico military helicopter crashes in northern state, seven presumed dead | MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - A Mexican military helicopter crashed on Friday in the northern state of Durango, seriously injuring one military member aboard and likely killing seven others, the defense ministry said in a statement. The helicopter, a Bell 412 model, crashed 4 kilometers (2.5 miles) northeast of the town of El Salto in the mountainous state of Durango during a training flight. The one survivor was in grave condition in hospital, while authorities are searching for the bodies of seven other military members which were presumed to be among the remains of the aircraft. The northern state of Durango borders Sinaloa state, home of the Sinaloa drug cartel. Military authorities are investigating what happened to the helicopter, the ministry said. | 0fake |
BUSTED! WATCH MEDIA’S FAKE VIDEO Trying To Make Trump Look Bad…Media Outlets Spread #FakeNews [Video] | CNN and many other news outlets think they re smarter than all of us who are on social media. A fake news story has been going around the web that makes President Trump look like he committed a faux pas while participating in a traditional Japanese ceremony. In a video posted early Monday morning, CNN noted that Trump fed fish with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe by emptying the whole box of food into a koi pond during his tour of Asia THAT S NOT WHAT REALLY HAPPENED!Trump joined his Japanese counterpart Shinzo Abe in feeding fish, emptying the whole box of food into a koi pond https://t.co/Aho7J2YUru pic.twitter.com/dPB9xwKNOB CNN (@CNN) November 6, 2017What they didn t show is that the Japanese Prime Minister poured out his food BEFORE President Trump did the same:Yes, the news media has been keeping this fake news story going. WGN Chicago had a misleading photo and title today that even anti-Trump readers called them out on it. Well, well, well We looked and the post has been removed from Facebook. We re glad we got a screenshot of this!Yes, it looks like Trump was the jerk who spoiled the moment by dumping the food BUT it s NOT true!SCREENSHOT OF POST REMOVED FROM FACEBOOK AFTER THE OUTCRY: Even though most people know the story is fake, there are those anti-Trump dumbos who bought it hook, line and sinker:CNN started this fake news ball rolling and news outlets like Chicago s WGN kept it going How many other local news outlets did the same? And we wonder how Trump s supposed poll numbers could be so low? How does President Trump fight a media that constantly does this?Please spread the truth on this!Here s the CNN video:Trump joined his Japanese counterpart Shinzo Abe in feeding fish, emptying the whole box of food into a koi pond https://t.co/Aho7J2YUru pic.twitter.com/dPB9xwKNOB CNN (@CNN) November 6, 2017HERE THE TRUTH: | 1real |
Why the Iraq offensive will fail | American officials said this week they plan to train up to 25,000 Iraqi troops in a major mission to retake Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, from Islamic State militants sometime this spring.
The mission is welcome, but frankly it is unlikely to succeed unless there is, at the same time, a deeper understanding on the part of our government of the real threat that the Islamic State and its adherents pose to us as a nation—and what our role in this broader fight must be. Unless the United States takes dramatically more action than we have done so far in Iraq, the fractious, largely Shiite-composed units that make up the Iraqi army are not likely to be able, by themselves, to overwhelm a Sunni stronghold like Mosul, even though they outnumber the enemy by ten to one. The United States must be prepared to provide far more combat capabilities and enablers such as command and control, intelligence, logistics, and fire support, to name just a few things.
Yet to defeat an enemy, you first must admit they exist, and this we have not done. I believe there continues to be confusion at the highest level of our government about what it is we’re facing, and the American public want clarity as well as moral and intellectual courage, which they are not now getting.
There are some who argue that violent Islamists are not an existential threat and therefore can simply be managed as criminals, or as a local issue in Iraq and Syria. I respectfully and strongly disagree.
We, as a nation, must accept and face the reality that we and other contributing nations of the world are at war, and not just in Iraq. We are in a global war with a radical and violent form of the Islamic religion, and it is irresponsible and dangerous to deny it. This enemy is far broader than the 40,000 or so fighters in the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. There also exists a large segment of this radical version of Islam in over 90 nations abroad as well as here at home. Just ask those countries from which foreign fighters are flowing into the Levant to support this “jihad.”
Nor is this enemy going away any time soon. As abhorrent as this form of radical Islam is, we must recognize and understand that it is a political ideology with the foundation of its laws emanating from the Qur’an and the Prophet’s life as its guide—and nothing else is needed. This form of radical Islam is in direct conflict with a large segment of the Islamic community; a community that must stand taller and be counted right now or they will be counted among the dead—killed at the hands of these radical militants (this includes both Sunni and Shia).
Having served in the theaters of war of Iraq and Afghanistan for many years, and faced this enemy up close and personal, I have seen first hand the unrestrained cruelty of our enemy. While they may be animated by a medieval ideology, they are thoroughly modern in their capacity to kill and maim as well as precisely and very intelligently transmit their ideas, intentions and actions via the Internet.
In fact, they are increasingly capable of threatening our nation’s interests and those of our allies, and it would be foolish for us to wait until they pose an existential threat before taking decisive action. Doing so would only increase the cost in blood and treasure later for what we know must be done now.
Not surprisingly, the recent draft authorization for the use of military force, or AUMF (a minor component of a still required comprehensive strategy), signals that we are willing to wait for them to become existential. Again, this is irresponsible and dangerous thinking. This authorization requires far more and far stronger objectives and authorities for our military commanders and not be simply another limiting timetable that sets unreal expectations.
Instead, this authorization should be broad and agile, and unconstrained by unnecessary restrictions. These restrictions cause not only frustration in our military and intelligence communities but they also significantly slow down the decision-making process for numerous fleeting opportunities. If this is due to a lack of confidence in our military and intelligence leadership, get rid of them and find new ones.
And if there is not a clear, coherent, and comprehensive strategy inclusive of all elements of national power forthcoming from the administration, there should be no authorization at all, simply leave the existing one in place.
There are solutions to this problem. However, solving tough, complex problems such as eliminating this radical form of Islam from the face of the planet will require extraordinary intellect, courage, and leadership. Leadership that isn’t consensus building, but thoughtful, insightful, yet, when it matters, decisive.
We have seen this type of leadership throughout world history and we have examples in our own history—Washington, Lincoln, FDR to Ronald Reagan. When faced with threats to our way of life and the lives of our friends and allies around the world—they stepped up to lead. Whether that leadership meant forcing our will on the enemy or outmatching them with our wits and imagination, they faced the difficult reality head on.
To that end, I offer the following three strategic objectives:
• First, we have to energize every element of national power in a cohesive synchronized manner—similar to the effort during World War II or the Cold War—to effectively resource what will likely be a multi-generational struggle. There is no cheap way to win this fight.
• Second, we must engage the violent Islamists wherever they are, drive them from their safe havens and kill them. There can be no quarter and no accommodation. Any nation-state that offers safe haven to our enemies must be given one choice—to eliminate them or be prepared for those contributing nations involved in this endeavor to do so. We do need to recognize there are nations who lack the capability to defeat this threat and will likely require help to do so inside of their own internationally recognized boundaries. We must be prepared to assist those nations.
• Third, we must decisively confront the state and non-state supporters and enablers of the violent Islamist ideology and compel them to end their support to our enemies or be prepared to remove their capacity to do so. Many of these are currently considered “partners” of the United States. This must change. If our so-called partners do not act in accordance with internationally accepted norms and behaviors or international law, the United States must be prepared to cut off or severely curtail economic, military and diplomatic ties.
Winning doesn’t come without cost and solving difficult messy problems is never easy, but that’s what leaders do. Let’s lead! | 0fake |
“Florida Man” In The Headline Doesn’t Mean “Redneck”–Could Be A BLM Inspired Crime | 1real | |
Since Donald Trump Won The Presidency… Ford Shifts Truck Production From Mexico To Ohio | EndingFed News Network | Email Print Ford’s heavy duty pickup trucks which used to be built in Mexico started rolling off an assembly line in Ohio this week. That’s good news for the 1,000 Ford workers in Ohio, who might have otherwise been out of work. It’s also good publicity for Ford ( F ), which has been under fire for investing so much in Mexico. In April, the automaker said it would invest $2.5 billion in transmission plants in the Mexican states of Chihuahua and Guanajuato, creating about 3,800 jobs there. Ford’s south-of-the-border strategy has drawn heavy criticism from groups such as the United Auto Workers union and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. The Avon Lake, Ohio, plant produced its first batch of Ford’s full-size F-650 and F-750 pick up trucks on Wednesday. “Our investment…reinforces our commitment to building vehicles in America,” said Joe Hinrichs, Ford president, The Americas. “Working with our partners in the UAW, we found a way to make the costs competitive enough to bring production of a whole new generation of work trucks to Ohio.” The move comes at a delicate time for Ford. The United Auto Workers union is in negotiations with the automaker as well as General Motors ( GM ) and Fiat Chrysler ( FCAM ) on new labor deals to replace those that expire next month. And promises by the automakers to keep production and jobs at U.S. plants is a major focus of the union. The union is particularly worried about the plan Ford announced in July to shift production of the C-Max and Focus out of a Wayne, Mich., plant in 2018. The automaker hasn’t said where that work will go, but employees fear those cars will be built in Mexico. It’s also not clear whether any other cars will be made at the Wayne plant instead, in order to protect about 4,000 jobs. “We’re actively pursuing other alternatives for the Wayne plant that will be discussed with our UAW friends. We haven’t decided what will go there,” said Ford spokeswoman Kristina Adamski. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump recently said that if he’s elected he would take steps to make it more expensive for manufacturers to shift work to Mexico and then export the items back to the United States. “How does that help us?” Trump said about the Ford investment in Mexico while campaigning in Michigan this week. “Mexico is becoming the new China.”
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CHRIS MATTHEWS CONFUSED About Georgia Election Loss: “I don’t know what the h*ll he was selling” [Video] | MSNBC s Chris Matthews definitely didn t get a tingle up his leg when it came to Democrat Jon Ossoff. Turns out he s confused over what Ossoff was selling Matthews said about Ossoff: I don t know what the hell he was selling. He wasn t selling much. Ossoff lost a race that was the most expensive House election ever to Republican Karen Handel on Tuesday night in a race Democrats hoped to turn blue as a sign of national discontent with President Donald Trump. Outside donors from liberal states like California, spent big bucks to win this seat. Donations totaled a whopping $50 million1Ossoff s loss has prompted much soul searching from Democrats, including the left-leaning Matthews.Introducing his panel, Matthews discussed the race, saying that he wasn t even really sure what Ossoff was running on. It seems to me that there was a lot of progressive hype about a guy who wasn t running as a progressive, which is another interesting twist to this, Matthews said. He was running on basically, let s get together and be normal or something. I don t know what the hell he was selling. He wasn t selling much, he said.Further on in the discussion, Matthews made fun of his panelists for the rapidly changing narrative pushed by Democrats in the wake of yet another Democratic defeat. If it went for Ossoff, you would be jumping up and down, saying how great a victory it was, right? Come on, you re smiling. I know you re smiling. I know how people play politics. If you lose, oh, no, big thing. if you win, yay! I mean, which is it? Matthews asked.Wow! What an ASS! He s treating his guests with such a condescending tone. | 1real |
Swedish Finance Minister Admits ’Big Problems’ with Economy After Migrant Influx | Finance Minister Magdalena Andersson has admitted Sweden has “major problems” as a result of the population growth brought on by mass immigration. [Earlier this week, the Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions (SKL) admitted, by 2020, municipalities face a funding deficit of 40 billion Swedish Krona (£3. 5 billion) to finance services like hospitals and nursing homes. “Demographic trends show that, with more children and more elderly people, the need for local government services is expected to grow significantly faster than the tax base,” says Annika Wallenskog, chief economist at SKL. Andersson told Swedish Television News (SVT) that “it is quite obvious that we have big problems” as a result of the demographic changes aggravated by mass migration. The Socialist minister stressed the country must hire more staff and build more facilities, and said politicians cannot afford to promise any tax cuts. Sweden’s National Audit Office announced in November that it believes the government “underestimates public spending”. In a piece published by Dagens Nyheter, the office remarked: “”If the government’s forecasts are realised, Sweden will be required to make significant reductions to welfare, and municipalities significant cuts by 2020. “If local government wants to be able to meet the needs of the increased population that is projected, it will have to increase expenditure by 50 billion Swedish Krona beyond what is in the government’s forecast for 2020. ” Granting citizenship to 60, 343 people last year, Sweden saw a record number of new nationals in 2016. The largest share of ‘new Swedes’ hail from Somalia. As a result of its high rate of immigration, Sweden recorded more than 2. 3 million people with a foreign background at the end of the year. The nation’s open borders policy has not been without controversy, however. In February, Breitbart London reported that many libraries in Sweden were refusing to stock Kurdish economist Tino Sanandaji’s “sincere and analysis” of the country’s immigration policy, alleging the contents were “contrary to human rights”. | 0fake |
The Trump Organization Is Busy Putting Pressure On Foreign Diplomats To Stay At His Hotel | The Kuwaiti Embassy in Washington, D.C., tends to book their annual National Day celebration at the Four Seasons, and this year was supposed to be no exception. However, now this year is an exception because they ve moved it from the Four Seasons to Trump s hotel in the Old Post Office building. And they didn t do that on a lark.A diplomatic source, who wasn t authorized to speak publicly and therefore wasn t named, told ThinkProgress that the decision was political. The Trump Organization reportedly contacted the Ambassador of Kuwait and put pressure on him to move the event. They may have done the same to Bahrain earlier this month.Apparently, there are a lot of foreign governments who are thinking of taking their business to Trump s hotel as a way to curry favor with him. And Trump himself seems to be refusing to completely divest himself of his businesses. Could this be why? Surely an upstanding citizen such as Trump would never use his position as president to continue enriching himself. Right? Right.Har de har har.Trump s greed, along with the hotel s slow start, give him an incentive to continue being totally unethical. About a month after the hotel opened, there were many travel agents and event planners who felt the place wasn t worth the trouble it takes to plan events at fancy hotels. At the time, Trump s name and brand were badly tarnished, and that was reflected in the business at the hotel (and elsewhere, too).This might be a different story if Trump was sincere in his promise to divest, and focus on the issues facing America. Sure, he s open to limits on his involvement, but he doesn t want anyone outside his family to have rights to his name, and he wants to be able to return to his company once his term as president is over.There s no way for this to look good as long as Trump even appears to still be involved with his businesses. There s no way for it not to look like he s trading favors for money. It won t stop with Kuwait and Bahrain.Featured image by Chip Somodevilla via Getty Images | 1real |
Spain on the backfoot in bid to tackle youth unemployment | MADRID (Reuters) - Finding a fix for Spain s youth unemployment crisis was never going to happen overnight. But Spain took so long to jump on some of the help sent its way - namely a jobs scheme bankrolled by Europe - it risks not fully using a golden opportunity to help youngsters scarred by a deep recession, politicians, unions and jobseekers say. With nearly 40 percent of under-25s still out of work, youth unemployment remains the biggest blot on four years of economic recovery that have earned Spain a spot as one of the euro zone s star performers. Yet a slow start to a European Union youth jobs and training program has left Spain racing to spend 1.9 billion euros ($2.24 billion) of EU funds as deadlines to use them up near, three years after the financing was first allocated. The sudden splurge has sparked accusations that the money is being wasted on ill-considered training courses and on job-seeker grants that may not induce firms to hire extra staff. Madrid even wants to use the funds as a form of salary top-up for poorly paid youths, though Brussels has questioned whether it complied with program guidelines and requested tweaks. Spain now appears on track to spend its allocation, but there remains a risk that Brussels will not reimburse all of it. To claim back funds from the EU, it is not enough for Madrid to just disburse cash; it must also show that courses and job placements have been completed by year-end deadlines. Madrid is confident that risk can be avoided, but some job-seekers and opposition politicians say the pace of spending in the meantime is becoming reckless and wasteful. Spain s Labour Ministry declined to comment for this story. This has turned into something where the (EU) funds have to be spent come what may, without really looking at whether ... the measures are effective, said Rocio de Frutos, a former labor inspector and lawmaker for the Socialists, the main opposition to Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy s People s Party. Environmental studies graduate Ricardo, 25, said the only courses available under the EU-backed program in his town of Segovia, in central Spain, were those he didn t need, like learning English, or were too basic, he said. But he did several anyway to keep himself occupied. It was completely useless. After going through this I just think this whole thing is a band-aid for a system that is completely sick, said Ricardo, who declined to give his full name. Spain s approach to the EU scheme has also exposed broader structural flaws, critics say: a labor framework that is complicated to navigate, hampered by red tape and which offers little by way of tailored training or advice for job-seekers. The stakes for Spain are high. Amid fears that a lost generation will remain locked out of the labor market even as a financial and property crisis fade, anger has turned against politicians, in an echo of other countries stricken by high employment such as Greece. Spain was the biggest beneficiary of the EU s Youth Guarantee scheme, which EU leaders agreed on in 2013 and which was initially backed by 6.4 billion euros in funds to get young people into work. A Reuters review of spending data found Spain only distributed a tenth of its 1.9 billion euros allocation for the first 18 months, partly because it struggled to attract suitable recipients and to publicize the scheme through layers of national and regional government. The big spending push began in mid-2016, putting Spain on course to meet terms set by the EU to use up just over 1 billion euros of that allocation by end-2017. But it must spend and account for the remaining 900 million euros by end-2018. Stumbling blocks at a European level are partly to blame for delays to the scheme. States were supposed to give out their money first and then bill the EU - a tall order when Spain was under huge European pressure to slash its public deficit. Spain did not present a single Youth Guarantee bill to the EU between 2014 and 2015, while France, Portugal and Italy had already begun doing so. A source at the ministry said that almost a year of political paralysis in 2016, following two inconclusive elections, had hindered any attempt to amend the Youth Guarantee scheme earlier because the government did not have full powers. A European Commission official said Spain had made a slow start but the program was now going well there. We see that joint efforts delivering the Youth Guarantee are now bearing fruit, the official said. Some of the scheme s users also praise its benefits. But early hiccups mean some potential jobs never materialized at a critical time, just as Spain was emerging from recession. For a graphic on Spanish youth unemployment, click: here | 0fake |
Trump to meet with long list of leaders in New York next week -White House | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump will hold a series of meetings with world leaders on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly meeting next week in New York, the White House said on Friday. Trump will meet with the leaders of France and Israel on Monday before holding a dinner with Latin American leaders that evening, Trump’s national security adviser H.R. McMaster told reporters. On Tuesday, he will meet Qatar’s emir, and on Wednesday, he will meet with leaders from Jordan, the Palestinian Authority, the United Kingdom and Egypt, McMaster said. Trump will meet on Thursday with leaders from Turkey, Afghanistan and Ukraine before holding a lunch with the leaders of South Korea and Japan, he said. | 0fake |
MSNBC host leaving the Republican party, becoming an independent | (Reuters) - Co-host of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” and former Republican U.S. congressman Joe Scarborough said on Tuesday that he is leaving the Republican party and becoming an independent during an appearance on a late-night talk show. Scarborough and his co-host, Mika Brzezinski, appeared on “Late Show with Stephen Colbert” where he explained that his decision stemmed from his opposition to Republican President Donald Trump and his party’s unwillingness to speak out against the president and his policies. “My party has betrayed their core values,” he told Colbert. “Time and time and time again they turned the other way. They are doing the same thing now. It’s actually disgusting.” Scarborough and Brzezinski, who are engaged, were embroiled in public argument with the Republican president two weeks ago. After Trump levied personal attacks against Brzezinski in a series of messages on social network Twitter, the pair responded with a searing opinion piece in the Washington Post that questioned his mental health. Trump beat Democrat Hillary Clinton last November in the most divisive presidential election in modern U.S. politics, in which a gulf between Republicans and Democrats has widened and hardened over ideological positions on social and economic issues. | 0fake |
Movie Theaters Hosting Screenings of ’1984’ to Protest Trump | Dozens of cinemas across the United States are planning to screen the film adaption of George Orwell’s 1984 in protest of reports that President Donald Trump is allegedly considering cuts to arts funding. [The film, starring the late John Hurt, will be screened on April 4, the date in the book in which Smith begins his rebellion against Big Brother, the eye of the fascist regime. The 1949 novel follows the struggles of Winston Smith, a man living in a totalitarian police state, and has become culturally iconic as a symbol of fascist regimes. Leading independent cinemas including the Alamo Drafthouse, IFC Center, and Film Society of Lincoln Center have all signed up to host screenings, according to the Independent. Although the theater protests form part of a wider opposition to Donald Trump’s agenda, the group behind the effort says its goal is to push back against the Trump administration’s reported plans to eliminate the National Endowment for the Arts. “The endeavor encourages theaters to take a stand for our most basic values: freedom of speech, respect for our fellow human beings, and the simple truth that there are no such things as ‘alternative facts’. By doing what they do best — showing a movie — the goal is that cinemas can initiate a community conversation at a time when the existence of facts and basic human rights are under attack,” reads a statement from the project’s website. “Through nationwide participation and strength in numbers, these screenings are intended to galvanize people at the crossroads of cinema and community, and bring us together to foster communication and resistance against current efforts to undermine the most basic tenets of our society,” it continues. Since Trump’s inauguration, Amazon revealed that sales of the book 1984 have risen significantly. You can follow Ben Kew on Facebook, on Twitter at @ben_kew, or email him at bkew@breitbart. com | 0fake |
Gawker Fools Trump Into Quoting Genocidal Maniac, Chuck Todd DESTROYS Him (IMAGES/VIDEO) | Most sensible people have by now called Donald Trump out for being the fascist that he is. However, there are some who still doubt that fact. Well, thanks to Gawker, we can wonder no more. Gawker senior writer Ashley Feinberg set up the ultimate test for Trump on his favorite social media platform: Twitter. We ve all watched Trump lash out and anyone and everyone who dares to challenge him in any number of crazy, narcissistic, and downright scary rants, so using Twitter to trick Trump into showing his true colors was absolutely brilliant.Feinberg created a Twitter account, @ilduce2016, which used bots to tweet out quotes from none other than famed fascist dictator Benito Mussolini. This was created last year, and the tweets would @reply Donald Trump, and credit him with Mussolini s dangerous words and ideas. Well, on Sunday, the chickens came home to roost on this one, because Trump finally bit the bait and retweeted the account. Here is Trump s tweet:"@ilduce2016: It is better to live one day as a lion than 100 years as a sheep. @realDonaldTrump #MakeAmericaGreatAgain" Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 28, 2016And here is proof of the project, courtesy of Gawker:Even Meet The Press host Chuck Todd had to zero in on Trump s retweeting this dangerous dictator, as well as other blatantly racist positions he is taking:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhxNSodUb1oThis is nothing short of absolute gold. Gawker s original article on the subject notes that there was some reservation about doing this at all after all, if you know anything about history, you know that such an account would be a painfully obvious troll account to the average person. However, Trump is a moron in so many ways, and this is no exception. He is too busy being wrapped up in his own greatness to realized when he is being so epically trolled. Then again, it really is no surprised, considering the absurdities that Trump tweets, and, even worse, the types of accounts he often retweets most notably, those run by white supremacists.As funny as this troll job by Gawker is, though, we should also be very afraid. This man is leading by a wide margin to take the presidential nomination of a major American political party. If that doesn t scare you, nothing will.Well done, Gawker. You really outdid yourselves with this one.Featured image via video screen capture | 1real |
Louisiana Floods Lead to 8 Deaths - The New York Times | Rescuers navigated submerged streets and neighborhoods in parts of southern Louisiana on Monday, plucking people to safer ground and trying to stay ahead of the waterways spilling over into new areas. At least eight people died in the flooding, Gov. John Bel Edwards said in a news conference on Tuesday. Tangipahoa and St. Helena Parishes had reported two deaths each by Monday. East Baton Rouge Parish reported three. More than 11, 000 people were in 70 shelters as of Monday, and many more are expected, said Mike Steele, a spokesman for the Governor’s Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness. “The floodwaters are drifting downstream below Baton Rouge,” Mr. Steele said. “That’s the biggest concern now. ” “We have additional rain in the forecast all week, and it is still a threat each day,” he added. The National Weather Service said Monday that significant flooding would continue along bayous and streams that feed into the Amite River through three parishes south of Baton Rouge — Iberville, Ascension and St. James. Residents of the Iberville Parish were urged to evacuate on Monday. More than 20, 000 people have so far been evacuated in flooded areas, and that number is expected to continue to rise as rain this week falls on saturated ground, he said. The floods have turned roads into surreal lakes in which the tops of cars and other structures are barely visible, breaking the surface of brown, muddy waters. The rescue of one woman was captured on video and broadcast by a local TV station, WAFB. Rescuers drew up near her submerged convertible car in floodwaters in Baton Rouge over the weekend, but they were unable to extract her from the vehicle until one of them got access through its fabric rooftop. “Oh, my God, I’m drowning,” the woman can be heard saying from inside the car, the station reported. Citizens are helping out, volunteering their time and boats to go house to house to pick up residents in trouble. Firefighters, the National Guard and the Coast Guard, using helicopters and small boats, were among those who have also joined the effort. President Obama has declared four parishes north and east of Baton Rouge — Tangipahoa, St. Helena, East Baton Rouge and Livingston — as disaster areas, making them eligible for federal assistance. Mr. Steele said additional parishes were likely to be added to the federal emergency funds list and he urged residents to take advantage of the assistance. State government offices were closed in at least 27 parishes, nearly half of the state’s 64 parishes, officials said. The floods submerged neighborhoods and highways after days of heavy storms in southern Louisiana, stretching from the parishes to the north and east of Baton Rouge west past the city of Lafayette over the weekend. Those stranded by the waters found themselves further marooned by a huge cellular network failure. Two of the victims of the flooding were in vehicles that were swept off the road one was a man who drowned after he slipped and fell in the waters during a rescue and the fourth was a man who had been swept away on Friday and whose body had been found on Sunday morning, a reporter for a local news station, said on Facebook. The Town Talk of Alexandria, La. reported that a fifth person died on Sunday when her car was swept into a ditch. Ms. Faulkner had no further details about the sixth death. Law enforcement officers in the areas have told state officials they expect the death toll to climb. Many houses have lost power and cellphone service, complicating the rescue process as emergency workers rely on . Jim Hawthorne, a retired radio broadcaster, stood on his front porch in floodwaters nearly up to his hips on Sunday, saying “hey, hey” to capture the attention of a passing boat motoring down the street in the Park Forest neighborhood of Baton Rouge where he lived with his wife, Carol. “I heard the boat. We were laying there reading. I had the windows open. I said, ‘Carol, that boat is real close,’” Mr. Hawthorne told The Advocate. “I waded through the water and went out the front door. I could still see the waves rippling from the boat. “I yelled as loud as I could, and they heard me,” the said. “I was in water up to my . I was yelling, ‘HEY! HEY!’ The motor stopped and they came around and came back. ” They were rescued. | 0fake |
Comment on Hillary Clinton’s Gun Control Agenda Exposed in WikiLeaks Emails by braindiseasecalledliberalism | Posted on October 27, 2016 by The Daily Sheeple
There is no doubt about it. Hillary Clinton is after your guns.
Brian Fallon, national press secretary for the Clinton campaign, wrote in an email dated October 4, 2015 that Clinton intends to stop the “gun show loophole”, meaning all private gun sales, by executive order :
Circling back around on guns as a follow up to the Friday morning discussion: the Today show has indicated they definitely plan to ask bout guns, and so to have the discussion be more of a news event than her previous times discussing guns, we are going to background reporters tonight on a few of the specific proposals she would support as President – universal background checks of course, but also closing the gun show loophole by executive order and imposing manufacturer liability .
Imposing manufacturer liability means that after Sandy Hook, Bushmaster and Remington Arms would have been prosecuted for having a hand in the murder of children and school staff members for firearms that were legally sold. When a lawsuit brought against these manufacturers was found to be frivolous, Clinton made a big fuss about it on Twitter: It's incomprehensible that our laws would protect gun makers over Sandy Hook families. We need to fix this. https://t.co/96uBe92wPi
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) October 15, 2016
In September 1993 during a Senate Finance Committee hearing, Hillary Clinton was asked by Senator Bill Bradley if she supported a 25% sales tax on handguns and automatic weapons. She was very clear in her support of taxing guns:
“I’m all for that. I just don’t know what else we’re going to do to try to figure out how to get some handle on this violence,” said Clinton. “I’m speaking personally, but I feel very strongly about that.”
In another email exchange dated January 14, 2016, Clinton wrote about using racial division to further her gun control agenda by selectively ignoring occurrences of gun violence that were not racially motivated. For this reason, according to the email, the Clinton campaign did not include the story of Jordan Davis in an essay on gun violence:
This is great. My edits are attached. The only flag here is that Jordan Davis was killed by a white man, so arguably – this crime was racially motivated, which takes this outside the discussion of gun violence. Was there another mother in the Chicago meeting where the shooting was NOT racially motivated? If yes, we should use that story instead of Jordan Davis.
In another email from March 17, we see an exchange about how to attack Donald Trump and a press call with Arizona locals about gun control. When asked about an anti-gun op-ed article by the Clinton Campaign, Chairman John Podesta wrote that he fears blowback from Clinton’s supporters:
Interestingly, I am worried about blowback from our supporters. Contributed by The Daily Sheeple of www.TheDailySheeple.com . Don't forget to follow the D.C. Clothesline on Facebook and Twitter. PLEASE help spread the word by sharing our articles on your favorite social networks. Share this: | 1real |
MEET THE TRUMPS: In Case You Missed It….Here’s Barbara Walters Exclusive Interview With The Trumps [VIDEO] | Even Barbara Walters, a master manipulator of popular opinion, is unable to find a weakness in Donald s seemingly impenetrable armor. To date, there hasn t been a single leftist hack who s been able to achieve the liberal dream of being the one who took him down. But then again, you can t blame a Democrat operative for trying .Here is the one-on-one interview with Donald and Barbara where Donald explains why he chose to finally run for President in 2016:Part two gives America a glimpse into Donald s personal life, including candid interviews with his wife and children: | 1real |
BREAKING: OBAMA’S “Director Of Diversity” Donates Hundreds Of Thousands Of Tax Payer Dollars To Open Borders, Other Radical Groups | Of course anyone on Obama s Team Fundamental Transformation of America is exempt from any of the consequences the rest of America would have to face for the same unlawful actions To meet the Obama administration s goal of implementing a robust diversity strategy at the Department of Defense (DOD), the agency s director of diversity violated government rules by distributing hundreds of thousands of dollars to controversial leftist groups. Adding insult to injury, a consulting firm gets nearly half a million dollars from the DOD to help distribute the money to groups even those that don t qualify that support the Pentagon s diversity strategy and program objectives. Among the recipients is the notorious open borders group League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), Minority Access Inc., a Maryland-based nonprofit committed to decreasing disparities and reducing incidences of environmental injustices, and the renowned National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Others include the Society of American Indian Government Employees and the Asian American Government Executive Network. In all, the Pentagon s Office of Diversity Management and Equal Opportunity (ODME) gave these and other groups north of $300,000, according to a DOD Inspector General report released this month. These are considered affinity groups involved with networking or professional associations that are often race, ethnic background or gender based, according to the report.The high-ranking official who violated DOD and government rules by doling out the cash to unqualified non-federal entities (NFE) is Clarence Johnson, the DOD s Director of Office of Diversity Management and Equal Opportunity. In 2010 Johnson, a veteran Pentagon official, was assigned to assist the Army in implementing a robust diversity strategy. The position came with a hefty budget to support diversity outreach functions and Johnson launched a cash giveaway, filling the coffers of groups that should not have received public funds. In its report the DOD watchdog concludes that Johnson improperly co-sponsored NFEs that he had selected. Auditors found that Johnson spent $301,000 on NFE sponsorships and recommend corrective action. The money flowed through a company called New Concepts Management Solutions (NCMS) that was evidently handpicked by Johnson. In 2012, the Office of Diversity Management hired a consulting firm called Deloitte for $480,554 to handle the diversity outreach allocations.Here s a brief breakdown of how some of the money was divided. The Thurgood Marshall College Fund Leadership Institute Conference got $25,000, the Society of American Indian Government Employees got $12,000 for a training conference and a conglomerate called Latina Style Outreach received $20,000. LULAC and the Hispanic Engineer National Achievement Awards Corporation (HENAAC) received $25,000 each. It appears that Johnson knew well that he was violating agency rules when he headed the diversity crusade because the report reveals that the DOD Office of Special Counsel has consistently said that the agency should not sponsor non-federal entities like the ones Johnson gave money to. In addition to money, Johnson provided these various groups with logistical manpower compliments of Uncle Sam.It s unlikely that Johnson will face any repercussions for his transgressions or, at most, a weak slap on the hand. He certainly appears confident in testimony to investigators probing his violations. My job is to grow, or focus on growing, the presence of minorities and women in government jobs with higher pay scales, Johnson told investigators. He added that the mission of his office is diversity outreach, which involves informing the diverse audience. This is why he seeks affinity groups that have a national reach and influence.President Obama has made it his mission to culturally transform government by teaching federal workers about diversity, race and gender, healthcare disparities and cultural competencies. The effort has affected practically every major agency, including the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and Health and Human Services (HHS), among others. It s been a costly initiative for taxpayers. A few months ago a Judicial Watch investigation found that the Obama administration has paid a Chicago-based firm millions of dollars to strengthen the federal workplace with its brand of diversity consulting. This includes two recent DHS contracts for $24,000 and $10,000 and one for $8,500 from the Department of Energy (DOE). Via: Judicial Watch | 1real |
U.S. Navy secretary says 'any patriot' should be able to serve | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Navy Secretary Richard V. Spencer said he would follow directions from the president on transgender people in the military but believes “any patriot” should be allowed to serve. Spencer, speaking to reporters on Thursday on a visit to Naval Station Norfolk in Virginia, said he would abide by any policy the Pentagon provides to the armed forces on the transgender issue. However, Spencer said he believes that, on a fundamental basis, “any patriot that wants to serve and meets all the requirements should be able to serve in our military,” according to news reports. President Donald Trump announced on Twitter last month that he would ban transgender people from serving in the military “in any capacity,” reviving a ban that had ended in 2016. Trump’s announcement created vast uncertainty for active-duty and reserve transgender service members, who say they number in the thousands. Joseph Dunford, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in a memo a day after Trump’s tweet that there would be no change in policy until Defense Secretary James Mattis received an official order from the president. That order has not been issued. A week after the announcement, the U.S. Coast Guard commandant, Admiral Paul Zukunft, offered support for transgender members of his service. On Wednesday, five transgender members of the U.S. military, including Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans, sued Trump over the transgender ban, saying he made the announcement without consulting senior military commanders. | 0fake |
U.S. Near Bottom in Public ‘Confidence in Elections’ Only Mexico Scores Lower Among OECD Countries | Poverty Rose in 96% of U.S. House Districts, During Obama’s Presidency & U.S. Near Bottom in Public ‘Confidence in Elections’ Only Mexico Scores Lower Among OECD Countries Poverty Rose in 96% of U.S. House Districts, During Obama’s Presidency O n November 3rd, Morning Consult’s Jon Reid bannered, “Poverty on the Rise in Nearly All House Districts” and he reported that, “A Brookings Institution study , released less than a week before the election, shows that the number of people living in poverty has increased in 96 percent of congressional districts between 2000 and 2010-2014.”
COVER IMAGE: The Great American Dream. A Vision common in the 1950s propaganda. That finding fits along with others, such as that the economic ‘recovery’ after Barack Obama came into the White House in 2009, went virtually entirely to the very rich. .. According to the top experts on wealth-inequality in the United States, Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, American wealth-inequality soared faster during 2003-2013 than ever since the period 1923-1928, right before the Great Crash of 1929. Their study “Wealth Inequality in the United States Since 1913” , published in the May 2016 Quarterly Journal of Economics , reported that ever since the remilitarization of the U.S. from the 2003 invasion of Iraq onward (and continuing under Obama, with boosts to NATO, and invasions such as of Libya in 2011), the percentage of total wealth owned by the richest .1% of American families (those families whose net worth was $111 million or higher) rose from 15% of the total in 2003, to 22% of the total in 2013, and this means that the percentage going to the lower 99.9% declined from 85% down to 78% during that time. .. America’s soaring inequality during the George W. Bush Presidency continued unaffected by the 2009 change of Presidential Administrations.
.. The dream is now a cruel joke for most Americans, all due to their political ignorance, a treacherous media, and the runaway criminality they have allowed in their political and corporate classes. In fact: whereas Bush’s stock-market plunge in 2006-2008 hit the richest the hardest, Obama’s coming into office restored their lost wealth rapidly, while the wealth of the bottom 90% of the U.S. population flatlined throughout his Presidency. The Obama economic recovery was no recovery at all for the bottom 90% of Americans. Not just wealth but personal income also soared for the super-rich under Obama. The “Share of income earned by top 0.1% wealth holders” soared throughout Obama’s Presidency, at least up through 2012, which is the latest figure shown there for that. So: at least the bottom 90% of U.S. families have experienced none of the Obama economic recovery; what ‘recovery’ from the ‘recession’ there is, went only to the very rich. .. Findings such as those are consistent with, and might help to explain, the finding in the new Brookings study, that 96% of House districts have experienced increased poverty under Obama. The nation’s poor have gotten political rhetoric, but not much else, and the middle class also have received no net benefit, under Obama. U.S. Near Bottom in Public ‘Confidence in Elections’ Only Mexico Scores Lower Among OECD Countries Here are the figures, as emailed by Gallup on November 2nd, and soon to be published as part of the “Gallup World Poll 2016”: Confidence in Elections Among OECD Countries Finland 89% | 1real |
As deadlines pass, Biden remains opaque about a 2016 candidacy | Another deadline has come and gone with no decision from Vice President Biden about his possible late-breaking entry into the presidential campaign.
Biden seems poised to continue his deliberations for several more weeks — and possibly into early November — leaving precious little time to launch a bid and get on the ballot in key early primary states. Prominent donors are being courted, and senior strategists with ties to President Obama’s past campaigns are in conversation with Biden’s team.
The continued indecision has made it all but certain that the vice president will not take part in the first Democratic debate Oct. 13 in Las Vegas, leaving the stage to the top two competitors, Hillary Rodham Clinton and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), and several others.
At times, Biden sounds far from ready. But then there are moments like Thursday night, when Biden sprinkled his remarks to a Manhattan crowd with comments that sounded like someone with a keen interest in running.
He made a reference to the many miles he has traveled as vice president — now clocking in at more than Clinton did as secretary of state. He also drew an ideological contrast with Sanders, who has generated enthusiasm on the left with his populist economic agenda.
“I’m not Bernie Sanders,” Biden said at the Concordia Summit. “He’s a great guy, he really is. But I’m not a populist; I’m a realist.”
When Biden talks like that, it feeds speculation that he is getting ready to join the race, and there is plenty of activity around him to suggest that he is overseeing a campaign in the making.
And yet, there is a parallel universe of greater significance, the single factor that no one can overcome, which is that Biden’s family is still grieving the loss of Biden’s son Beau, who died of brain cancer four months ago at age 46. The vice president has repeatedly said that no decision about running for president can be made until his family is ready to commit, even if it means that the moment passes.
“It’s just not quite there yet, and it might not get there in time to make it feasible to run and succeed because there are certain windows that will close. If that’s it, that’s it. It’s not like I can rush it,” Biden said in an interview with America, a leading Jesuit news site, just before Pope Francis arrived in Washington last week.
Some Biden loyalists have been counseling against the delayed approach because it could give Clinton time to recover from self-inflicted wounds her campaign has suffered over the continued fallout of investigations into her use of a private e-mail server while serving as secretary of state.
Nine days after the debate, Clinton is scheduled to appear before a House committee established to investigate what happened in Benghazi, Libya, in September 2012, when four Americans were killed. Democrats began to rally around Clinton this week after remarks by House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) touted that the investigation had hurt her politically, prompting leading Democrats to call the investigation a political exercise.
Even though he is not expected at the Las Vegas debate, Biden will share a forum with Clinton this weekend. He will deliver the keynote address Saturday at the Human Rights Campaign’s annual dinner in Washington. Clinton will speak to the gay rights group earlier in the day.
Biden’s decision-making process continues along two separate tracks, as it has over the past several months. The first is a methodical effort by a small team of advisers to survey the political landscape, and the second is Biden’s internal family deliberations.
With every week that passes, Biden and his political team believe they are more ready than ever to launch a campaign. But with every week that passes, Biden is that much closer to the point of no return — when it would be too late to mount a credible campaign.
Critical states such as New Hampshire, Texas and Florida have filing deadlines that start in November and December, requiring campaign staff on the ground to assemble voter signatures.
That sets up a particularly tense October. The vice president has already blown through previous decision-making timelines, beginning with the end-of-August or early-September dates that advisers suggested in the spring, before the public knew that Beau Biden’s brain cancer had a recurrence.
By late summer, Biden’s camp clarified that the end of summer — officially Sept. 23 — was a more likely deadline, only to float Oct. 1 in recent weeks because that would still allow him to be on stage at the Oct. 13 debate. On Thursday, officials at CNN, the host of the Las Vegas event, reported that Biden is not expected to participate.
Those close to Biden suggest the debate would be high-risk for him. Despite his shoot-from-the-hip image, Biden is meticulous with debate preparations. For his 2012 vice presidential debate against Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), Biden logged 100 hours of preparation, including 60 hours that had been completed a full month before the encounter.
Instead of debate prep, Biden has devoted recent weeks to his vice-presidential duties. Last week, his schedule was consumed with the papal visit and the state visit by Chinese President Xi Jinping. Earlier this week, he spent a day in New York in a round of meetings with foreign leaders attending the U.N. General Assembly, and he returned there Thursday for a pair of events devoted to diplomacy.
Next Thursday, he will deliver remarks at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace on infrastructure funding to boost the economy, which some loyalists believe could be the hallmark of a campaign theme.
The now-lengthy deliberation has given Biden’s advisers plenty of time to make a thorough assessment of the political landscape, identify available talent and scope out prospects for raising enough money. Biden’s team is confident that he could raise $30 million or so to get through the first round of primaries and caucuses.
They have identified people willing to help staff a campaign, both those with past associations with Biden and many who were involved in President Obama’s 2008 or 2012 campaigns.
No firm offers have been made to prospective staffers, but Biden loyalists have a good sense of who they would try to slot into the key jobs. And as one person with ties to the Obama political network, though not in direct conversation with Biden’s team, put it: “There’s a lot of talent available.’
The Associated Press reported Thursday that two Obama campaign veterans — Paul Tewes, who ran the successful Iowa caucus campaign in 2008 that was a key to winning the nomination, a field expert, and Marie Harf, now the State Department spokeswoman — were in talks to work on the potential Biden campaign.
Those close to Biden make no bold predictions of victory in what would be a potentially fierce contest against Clinton and Sanders. Nor are they making their calculations based on the belief that Clinton has been so weakened during the first months of her candidacy that she would be easy to defeat. Their calculations are based, instead, on the assumption that she would be a formidable opponent.
As much as he says he is not ready to make the decision, Biden has dangled hope to his supporters who view his son’s loss as a rallying cry, frequently recalling his own father’s admonition to “just get up” when life knocked him down.
“That’s what Beau wants us to do. That’s what Beau expects his father to do,” Biden told the Jesuit news site. “So we’re just getting up and moving on.” | 0fake |
A Materialist Analysis of Why I am Voting Green, and Why the Left Should Do the Same | shorty By Danny Haiphong E ven as the Democrats and Republicans put forward the two least popular politicians in the country, the U.S. Left “is mired in confusion as to what political direction should be taken.” Many of those who claim to be leftists supported the wars against Libya and Syria. But the Green Party has “consistently stood up against endless war, austerity, and racist state repression and for universal healthcare, education, and peace.” “The Green Party is the only choice that possesses a truly social democratic agenda.” I consider myself a Marxist. However, the term “Marxist” is merely a label. Those who ascribe to the tenets of Marxist thought must place their political affiliations within the context of the current historical moment. Anti-communism and imperialist hegemony have set back the struggle for a classless society to the point where much of the US left is mired in confusion as to what political direction should be taken to confront the challenges before us. One of these challenges is the 2016 elections. The radical left should plan on voting Green this November and building a mass movement around the demands put forward by the Jill Stein and Ajamu Baraka campaign. But the corporate assault on the left’s collective consciousness has indeed made it difficult for the Green Party to grab the attention of the masses in the midst of the two-party capitalist circus. I myself argued two summers ago that the left in the United States should not bother with engaging the charade and instead take up a boycott of the Presidential elections [3] . At that point, no movement had emerged to challenge the hegemony of the Democratic Party. The 2016 elections changed this dynamic. Suddenly, the forces in front of the Occupy Wall Street movement and the Black Lives Matter movement agreed that both corporate candidates were unworthy of support. “Hillary Clinton has drawn the entire ruling class into the Democratic Party tent.” The energy of these movements was channeled into the Bernie Sanders campaign. Sanders ran as a Democrat. His domestic positions on education, healthcare, and income inequality were supported by masses of young voters. Sanders eventually betrayed his base in typical Democratic Party fashion, but not before it was revealed that the Democratic National Committee had worked diligently to undermine Sanders’ ability to win the nomination [4] . The majority of Sanders supporters and sympathizers have since indicated that they will not vote for Clinton when election day arrives [5] . So why vote for the Green Party in particular? The Green Party is the only choice that possesses a truly social democratic agenda. The Green Party is no Marxist vehicle and it doesn’t attempt to be. What the Green Party does possess are dedicated, principled forces whose positions on war and peace, healthcare, and predatory capitalism threaten the US imperialist apparatus. That is why the two-party corporate duopoly finances its own corporation [6] to bar the Green Party from entrance into the Presidential debates every four years. In the 2016 elections in particular, a real chance was present to organize the 15 percent of pollsters necessary for the Green Party to participate in the corporately controlled debates. The opportunity was squandered by a left that remains weak and fractured. In the past, attempts to organize an election boycott campaign or support a communist party’s Presidential nomination would have sufficed as election strategies to steer the disillusioned populace toward movement politics. However, the 2016 Presidential election is a watershed moment in US imperial history. Hillary Clinton has drawn the entire ruling class into the Democratic Party tent. This has occurred in the midst of the greatest crisis of legitimacy the US imperial state has ever faced. “Both corporate media and capitalist enterprise supported Clinton’s bid to steer the election in her favor.” Sanders and Trump shook the foundation of the two-party corporate duopoly. The rise of Sanders and Trump made the Clinton option desirable only to the ruling class and its minions. Both corporate media and capitalist enterprise supported Clinton’s bid to steer the election in her favor. Not only did the ruling class help her take out Sanders, but it also assisted Clinton in a cover up of the recent WikiLeaks email dump. In emails written by her campaign chair John Podesta, it was revealed that the Clinton campaign planned to use the Trump campaign as right-wing cannon fodder to present Clinton as more electable [7] . Furthermore, the emails also uncovered how Clinton holds a “ public” and “private” position [8] on matters of Social Security and free trade. If left up to Clinton, Social Security retirement benefits and federal regulations of corporate activity would be swept into the dustbin of history. Additionally, the corporate media and the Democratic Party have attempted to frame Donald Trump as a racist, misogynistic pig. According to the Democratic Party, Trump represents the “Worst of America [9] .” The slander of Trump has been an easy job. Trump himself provides all of the ammo. However, the condemnation of Trump is little more than a convenient distraction when it comes from the corporate Democrats. From Bill Clinton to Barack Obama, the Democratic Party has waged endless war, austerity, and racist state repression on behalf of its corporate masters. Hillary Clinton must resort to fear-mongering around Trump because neither her party nor her class has anything to offer the majority of the US electorate. Conditions are thus ripe for an alternative political party to make a strong showing in this and future Presidential elections. The Green Party’s success could inspire the millions of people disillusioned with both choices and show that a mass sentiment against the two-party corporate duopoly does indeed exist. It is the task of communists, radicals, and revolutionaries to organize the disaffected into a class conscious organization capable of stripping power from the ruling class. No such organization exists at the moment. The Green Party doesn’t profess to be this organization, but its demands and platform are surely helpful if utilized to create the conditions required for such an organization to emerge. “If left up to Clinton, Social Security retirement benefits and federal regulations of corporate activity would be swept into the dustbin of history.” So when self-identified leftists make the claim that the left deserves better than Jill Stein [10] , the urgent need for self-criticism becomes clear. One only needs to examine conditions in the US briefly to see that oppressed and working class people deserve better than the left. Of course, the left’s current state is a reflection of the conditions from which it exists and the deep imperialist assault on the consciousness of the oppressed. However, the left has made critical errors in recent years. Many so-called revolutionary organizations have, for example, supported imperialist war in Libya and promoted the notion of lesser evil voting as cover for the Democratic Party. Green Party candidates Jill Stein and Ajamu Baraka have consistently stood up against endless war, austerity, and racist state repression and for universal healthcare, education, and peace. Yet there are some who want to claim that such a platform is not adequate or “revolutionary” enough. It is time to shed this sectarian way of thinking. Hillary Clinton will become the next President of the US. She will inherit the eight years of Obama rule which have further weakened the left. But the 2016 elections have revealed that the deep crisis of the imperialist system is beginning to intersect with popular opposition to its policy manifestations. So don’t fear Trump or organize resistance in a manner that gives the people a choice of either revolution or nothing at all. There is nothing counterrevolutionary about voting Green this November and organizing the movement on the streets around its core demands. As BAR’s Bruce Dixon noted last week, a five percent showing by the Green Party will put much needed federal funds into the control of movement organizers. A revolution is not a moment, it is a process. The crisis of imperialism will present many more moments to develop the revolutionary potential of the masses. The current opportunity to do so should not be allowed to dissipate, as the next moment could occur alongside a Hillary Clinton-led world war. Source URL: http://blackagendareport.com/why_i_will_vote_green | 1real |
Comment on Are We About To See One Of The Greatest Evolutions In Human History? by 10 Shocking Facts About Society That We Absurdly Accept As Normal – Digital Flow | Share on Facebook Share on Twitter I believe we are in the midst of one of the biggest evolutions in our consciousness we have ever seen. I say this because everywhere you look, things seem to be changing in a very big way. But some back story first. About 7 years ago, something happened in my life that changed the way I saw myself, my life and the world. I left college for good. I had been through 3 different programs in 3 years trying to figure out what worked for me. I was depressed on and off. I couldn’t believe that life was simply wake up and go to school until you get a degree. Then, wake up and go to a job you don’t truly like to make money to support your life until you’re 60 and then hopefully you can retire. Then, you die. I had to make a change and all along something told me that if I did, everything would be okay. Regardless of what everyone told me my whole life, I knew deeply that I didn’t (just as you don’t) have to live life in the way everyone tells you. 5 years ago Collective Evolution was born. A platform that has touched millions of people in a positive way over its 5 years and has changed my life in a positive way. CE likely wouldn’t be around if I didn’t choose to leave school for good. I was invited by Columbia University’s Teacher’s College to give a TEDx talk as they felt I was an agent of change. Below is that talk and it tells my story as well as what I feel is one of the most important things we need to know and internalize: change starts within. This is what I feel is changing our entire world. Follow Your Passion, It’s Important The bottom line is, I believe we need to begin following our passions as a first choice when we are young. If we don’t yet know what our passions are, take the time to enjoy life and figure them out. There is no need to rush into post secondary school so we can get in debt and be stuck in a job for the rest of our lives. This, unfortunately, is a western mentality where we operate under the idea that this is the only way and since people who follow this path are praised and celebrated, many follow the same path. Even for people who are older and well out of school, it’s never too late to start doing something new and following your passion. Although there may be financial responsibilities at times, make arrangements and plans to transition into doing something you love. It’s always possible and there is a way, we just need to begin trying and putting the steps into place. I believe that the moment we truly choose to begin doing something from our hearts, the world around us begins to conspire to make it happen as a result of our conscious desire to make it happen. Since the thoughts might be building, I want to be clear, I am not saying there is no value in education or post secondary school. I am simply stating my belief that it should only be attended when you TRULY know what you want to do, need the education for it and are passion about it. I believe that the education system is designed the way it is for ulterior purposes more so than simply educating with pure intention. More on that below. Does Education Kill Creativity?
The Sacred Science follows eight people from around the world, with varying physical and psychological illnesses, as they embark on a one-month healing journey into the heart of the Amazon jungle.
You can watch this documentary film FREE for 10 days by clicking here.
"If “Survivor” was actually real and had stakes worth caring about, it would be what happens here, and “The Sacred Science” hopefully is merely one in a long line of exciting endeavors from this group." - Billy Okeefe, McClatchy Tribune | 1real |
U.S. House passes ballistic missile sanctions on Iran | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. House of Representatives voted nearly unanimously on Thursday for new sanctions on Iran s ballistic missile program, part of an effort to clamp down on Tehran without immediately moving to undermine an international nuclear agreement. The vote was 423 to two for the Iran Ballistic Missiles and International Sanctions Enforcement Act. Among other things, it calls on the U.S. president to report to Congress on the Iranian and international supply chain for Iran s ballistic missile program and to impose sanctions on Iranian government or foreign entities that support it. President Donald Trump said on Oct. 13 he would not certify Iran is complying with an international agreement on its nuclear program, and threatened that he might ultimately terminate the accord. Trump s action opened a 60-day window for Congress to act to reimpose sanctions on Iran s nuclear program that were lifted under the agreement, but there has been no move to do so in the House or Senate. Aides said that, for now, House lawmakers are focusing on clamping down on Iran in other ways such as the Hezbollah and missile-related sanctions. U.S. Representative Ed Royce, the Republican chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, who sponsored the ballistic missile bill, has said the international nuclear deal should be strictly enforced by Washington working with its allies. The United States must respond to the full range of threats and, with this bill.... that is what we are doing today, he said. The House passed three other Iran-related measures on Wednesday, including new sanctions on Lebanon s Iran-backed Hezbollah militia and a resolution urging the European Union to designate Hezbollah as a terrorist organization. [L2N1N02UY] To become law, the measure would have to pass the U.S. Senate and be signed into law by Trump. | 0fake |
The Dropa Stones - 12,000-Year-Old Ancient Artifacts | The Dropa Stones - 12,000-Year-Old Ancient Artifacts # Grey 0
According to the legend, Professor Chi Pu Tei led an expedition into the vast Baian-Kara-Ula Mountains in 1938. The Baian-Kara-Ula Mountains – situated in the wilderness of China – has terrain that is treacherous at best. They discovered a vast cave system during their journey. In them Chi Pu Tei discovered strange circular stone discs that appeared to have a mysterious spiralling message in unknown hieroglyphics. Seven hundred and sixteen were discovered in total, all containing similar symbols and patterns. Tags | 1real |
Retirement plan offered by Trump pick Puzder sheds light on Labor rule | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Fast food executive Andy Puzder, President-elect Donald Trump’s choice to head the Labor Department, could be in a position to undermine the agency’s new rule on retirement advice which has long been opposed by the financial industry. Puzder has not publicly commented on the fiduciary rule, which is due to go into effect in April, but a glimpse into the 401(k) plans he offers his own employees at CKE Restaurants may provide a few clues about his philosophy. The plan is less generous than some of its fast food competitors, according to data and analysis from Brightscope Inc, a research company that rates 401k plans. In 2015, CKE opted not to match the retirement contributions of the plan’s participants, according to Labor Department data. The plan also carries high-fee investments, has low participation and generally scores worse than many of its rivals even in the notoriously high-turnover, low-benefit fast-food industry, according to Brightscope. The CKE plan suggests that Puzder will bring “more of an industry-friendly perspective to the office,” said Mike Alfred, managing director at Brightscope, which ranks it below those at Jack in the Box, McDonalds and Yum! Brands Inc. A spokeswoman for CKE, a privately held company that owns and operates fast food chains including Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s, referred all questions to a member of Trump’s transition team. A spokeswoman for the transition team did not have an immediate comment. The plan could be a sign that CKE chief executive officer Puzder will seek to delay - or even potentially support reversing the fiduciary rule if he is confirmed in his new position by the Senate. The rule requires retirement advisers to put their clients’ interests ahead of their own by eliminating conflicts of interest that can lead some brokers to recommend investments that will get them a higher commission or fee. It applies to 401(k) type plans as well as privately-held Individual Retirement Accounts. The financial sector has opposed the rule, saying it may drive up the cost of getting good retirement advice and leave consumers with access to fewer products. But companies have already put money into getting ready for it, with some changing their broker compensation plans. With so much money already invested, financial firms may not wish to see it reversed now, said Barbara Roper, director of investor protection for the Consumer Federation of America. “It’s not just a slam dunk to reverse course,” she said. Should Puzder want to take action against the rule, his quickest move could be to delay its implementation while the Labor Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission, which has considered a comparable rule for all investment advisers, take another look. One way to delay it could entail declining to enforce the rule. The rule likely will get delayed, Cowen and Company research analyst Jaret Seiberg wrote in a note to clients on Thursday. Puzder “does not sound like the type of individual who would be supportive of a fiduciary duty regime.” Trump’s adviser Anthony Scaramucci of Skybridge Capital has pledged to repeal it The rule is already in jeopardy. Several financial trade groups, including the Chamber of Commerce, have filed lawsuits to kill it. Republican members of Congress are gunning to have it repealed and may be able to muster enough votes without the fear of a veto after Trump becomes president. Missouri Republican Rep. Ann Wagner, a chief architect of a bill that would largely derail the fiduciary rule, on Friday praised Trump’s plan to nominate Puzder. “I look forward to working with Andy next year to repeal the fiduciary rule,” she said in a statement. Progressive groups who support the rule are vowing to fight for its survival and plan to try and highlight its populist appeal for everyday Americans. “The thing that we will try to do... is make incredibly clear that anyone who votes on the wrong side of this is putting themselves with corporate America up against the American public,” said Lisa Gilbert, a director of Public Citizen’s Congress Watch division who closely follows the issue. | 0fake |
Club Soda for Stomach Pain and Constipation | Club Soda for Stomach Pain and Constipation VN:F [1.9.22_1171] Close Transcript Transcript: Club Soda for Stomach Pain and Constipation
Below is an approximation of this video’s audio content. To see any graphs, charts, graphics, images, and quotes to which Dr. Greger may be referring, watch the above video.
“Natural bubbling or sparkling mineral waters have been popular for thousands of years.” Manufactured sparkling water has been around ever since a clergyman “suspended water over a vat of fermenting beer.”“For centuries, carbonated water has been considered capable of relieving gastrointestinal symptoms,” including tummy aches, but we didn’t have good data until this study was published.
“Twenty-one folks with dyspepsia [an upset stomach] and constipation were randomized into two groups in a double-blind fashion” to drink one-and-a-half quarts of carbonated water versus tap water, every day for two weeks. Dyspepsia was defined as “pain or discomfort located in the upper abdomen,” including “bloating and nausea.”
And, carbonated water improved dyspepsia, compared to still water (tap water), and improved constipation. “Drink more water” is a common recommendation for constipation, but they didn’t observe a clear benefit of the added tap water. Seems you need to increase fiber and water, rather than just water alone. But, sparkling water seemed to help. Now they were using sparkling mineral water. And so, whether these effects are due to the bubbles or minerals, we can’t tell from this study.
There’s been a concern that carbonated beverages may increase heartburn, GERD (acid reflux disease). But that was based on studies like this, that compared water to Pepsi. Soda can put the Pepsi in dyspepsia, and contribute to heartburn. But, so may tea and coffee, in people that suffer from heartburn. That may be partly from the cream and sugar, though, since milk is a common contributor to heartburn, as well. Carbonated water alone, though, shouldn’t be a problem.
Similarly, while flavored sparkling drinks can erode our enamel, it’s not the carbonation, but the added juices and acids. Sparkling water alone appears a hundred times less erosive than citrus or soda. So, a sparkling mineral water may successfully treat stomachache and constipation without adverse effects—unless you’re a teenage boy opening a bottle of sparkling wine with your teeth, especially on a hot day after you shake it up, placing one at risk for a “pneumatic rupture of the esophagus.” Please consider volunteering to help out on the site. Close Sources Video Sources water Doctor's Note
Whoa, what was that?! My little cameo was me playing around with a green screen. I’m trying to find ways for the videos to be more engaging than just showing study after study, but there may be a fine line between engaging and dorky :-). The goal is to widen the appeal to reach more people, without distracting from the scientific rigor. What do you think? Should I do more little bits like this with me on screen, or do you think that detracts from the professionalism? Please let me know in the comments section below.
For more on combating acid reflux, see Diet and GERD Acid Reflux Heartburn and Diet and Hiatal Hernia .
Other videos on healthy beverages include: How Many Glasses of Water Should We Drink a Day?
If you haven’t yet, you can subscribe to my videos for free by clicking here . To post comments or questions into our discussion board, first log into Disqus with your NutritionFacts.org account or with one of the accepted social media logins. Click on Login to choose a login method. Click here for help. Comment Etiquette stephaniehope
Are the “rock” minerals in these mineral waters absorbable by humans? It is my understanding that the minerals in water are, basically, little pieces of rock, and our body can not utilize them. Maybe they even cause harm? A lot of debate on this one, but proponents of water low in TDS (total dissolved solids) often claim that the minerals in food are of absorbable nature, yet with the mineral it water it is just picking up pieces of rock and residue from the streams, lakes, etc. Makes me wonder about possible bogus benefits of consuming minerals through pure sea salts. Wegan
Apparently they are absorbed.“On its website, the National Osteoporosis Foundation (NOF) states that there is no connection between the carbonation in soft drinks and bone loss and that certain carbonated mineral waters (the ones rich in calcium and those that are more alkaline) have actually been shown to improve bone health.”Feb 18, 2013 stephaniehope
It would be weird because we are an heterotroph specy like animals… Lisa
I like to see your face, and I think it personalises the whole thing. I like any info – articles are good, too, and they give you time to digest the content. (No pun intended.) Yes, changing things up from time to time is good, as long as the content is easy to understand and the links are visible – or placed under the video. And thank you a thousand times for your service to people. Julie
I’d like to see him at the end–maybe sending us off with a witty joke. Ellie Lee-wasson
I have been consuming at least a tablespoon of flax a day and following Dr. Gregor’s daily dozen recommendations, yet am still constipated and am having difficulty losing weight, which is a secondary goal of mine. Can anyone offer additional suggestions? EquaYona
So you are on a plant based diet and constipated? How long have you been plant based? Do you still consume dairy? Ellie Lee-wasson
I have been vegan for 4 years, have been eating whole food plant based for about 3 months, previously consuming larger amounts of processed vegan foods. I only “go” at most every couple days. EquaYona
Can you increase your water consumption? Exercise is also an important factor for regularity. Are you following the exercise recommendations in the daily dozen? If you are getting plenty of fluids and exercise, you might try adding a little more fat(nuts, avocado) and try a bran cereal for breakfast or snack. It is startling that you have such a problem on a vegan, whole food diet. I generally have two BMs a day. Ellie Lee-wasson
I try to drink about 64 ounces of water or tea a day, but, I also work in aviation. I walk about 10000 steps a day, and try to get additional cardiovascular as my job allows. But, yes, I agree it is startling, unfortunately, my current situation is a vast improvement from when I was not eating vegan. susan
hi Ellie, I can’t add much to the excellent suggestions of EquaYona, other than to mention two things that helped me. I use 1 tbsp ground flax in my oatmeal in the mornings, but, if having issues, 1 tbsp in 1/4 cup water last thing at night before bed works wonders. The other thing is to avoid gluten free bread products if you use them at all.. I find one slice of this ‘bread’ at lunch with salad very effective. Best of luck
http://www.mannaorganicbakery.com/item/organic-sprouted-bread-banana-walnut-hemp.html maggie
Hi Ellie, I can suggest brown rice, beans and steamed broccoli or kale. These are hi fiber foods, sweet potatoes especially the Japanese purple potato are great has well. Bean soups are great as well. I suspect you are not getting hi fiber foods during the day. I’m pretty regular with 2 BM a day Cheryl esben andersen
I would disagree with you . I do not think it is a lack of fiber since the person is already on a whole foods diet . It is a lack of peristalsis of the digestive tract , the contraction and relaxation of the digestive tract which moves the food or more correctly the waste products along . 2 or 3 glasses of water at body temperature first thing in the morning has helped a lot of people according to our naturepathic doctor we go too. For still sluggish movement sauerkraut juice or sauerkraut has helped the most stubborn cases . Darla Eaves
Black coffee esben andersen
Took me a while to go from creamer in my coffee to black , oh yeah a lot of people I know swear by their coffee. Ellie Lee-wasson
I only drink black coffee :) susan
yes esben I agree with the peristalsis idea.. I was given buscopan for gall bladder pain, nausea etc, but then later with continuing issues I was given Domperidone to speed up the digestive process. I then felt a lot better. The coffee is definitly necessary though. I will give the sauerkraut a try too. thank you! Jean
I have a sluggish digestive tract caused in part by injuries to nerves and muscles; also migraine can slow down and sometimes even stop gut activity. When it doesn’t want to work properly nothing makes a difference. WFPB has made it less of a problem but there still are spells. Rebecca Cody
Your problem is much more extreme than mine, but this works for me: I put 1 tablespoon of chia seeds in about a cup of water every morning, stir and then leave it sitting on the counter for about 10 minutes. Then, not before, add a rounded teaspoon of magnesium citrate powder. I use one called Natural Calm, which is available in health food stores. Stir it up well, add a bit of stevia if you wish, and drink it down. I used to do the same thing an hour or so after dinner at night, but it was definitely overkill, so I dropped the evening dose. Andrea Reiman
Consider having your thyroid tested. Also, try Whole Husk Psyllium: http://www.healthline.com/health/psyllium-health-benefits#Overview1 Foroogh – NF Moderator
Hi, Ellie Lee-Wesson, I noticed there are lots of helpful advice regarding your issue with constipation even though you are on PBWF. You mentioned you are in aviation, does your job entails traveling on plane and being on high altitude? Because that could be the issue since going on high altitute causes dehydration a lot. Hydrating 20 minutes before meal and one hour after meal.The suggestions of chia seeds, flax seed, psyllum and magnisum and dissolving in warm water are very good. Also pineapple juice, prune juice also 1 table spoon good extra virgin olive oil and coffee tend to help with the bowel movement. Also having fruit one hour before meal or two hours after meal can be helpful. Ellie Lee-wasson
Yes, I am on planes 12-14 hours a day most days. I do drink a lot of water, both still and sparkling (as mentioned in the video). I do also drink a lot of black coffee. Do you have any suggestions for fruit that packs well for travel that I could bring with me on the plane? Or other good fibre rich foods that I could pack and can be eaten raw or in a microwave? Foroogh – NF Moderator
I would suggest dried organic figs and prunes and raisins in a little bag. Also what I usually do when I travel make my own bag of raw whole nut mixtures. I would also try organic herbal tea cleanse before flights and after your flights to cleanse your colon. I hope these suggestion are useful and wish you safe flights. esben andersen
Why would you think its startling. Everybody I know who has tried whole foods diet has had problems with constipation . I now have known 4 people who went whole foods. 2 tablespoons whole flax in a cup of water in the morning, plus 2 cups warm water , will normally get some movement .Also half a cup sauerkraut twice a day has solved the problem for people even ones that have had a life long problem with constipation. EquaYona
It is startling because whole PLANT foods(I assume that is what you meant) usually means a great increase in both fiber and fluids. Although I have rarely ever had constipation in my life, my vegan diet has increased my bowel movements to 2-3 times a day. I have never heard of anyone on a plant based diet having persistent problems with constipation. Until now. ;) Blair Rollin
I agree. I can hardly believe it would be possible. Jack Hall
Insufficient fat on my very low-fat whole foods plant based diet nearly killed my guts. Also, I did not adjust my fluid intake to accomodate for all of the additional fibre I began consuming, which added to the problem. I was hurting so bad that I couldn’t sit without severe pain and I looked as if I had swallowed a beach-ball for days at a time regardless of how many veggies or fibrous foods I ate.
Anyway, I hope it was the fat. My only overt fat was coming from oats and two tablespoons of flax a day. I was coming in at under 30grams fat per day. Now I have added about 1 ounce of nuts which seems to have helped. EquaYona
Glad to hear you are feeling better. I have always consumed a lot of fluids and peanut butter and whole peanuts have been important in my diet since I was in my teens. Lucky preferences, I reckon. Darla Eaves
Ah yes. Sauerkraut! lisa c
Magnesium is magic. And calming. I’ve taken it in tablet and powder form, adjusting dose as needed. Rex Ashbaugh
Ellie, I would suggest getting more ‘resistant starch’ foods in your diet. To feed the microbiome. The bulk of the stool is mostly composed of bacteria. That bacteria needs to be fed.
http://nutritionfacts.org/video/gut-dysbiosis-starving-microbial-self/ v
Are you being consistent in your efforts to follow Dr. Gregor’s Daily Dozen? I ask because he recommends 1.5 cups of beans per day, plus a serving of cruciferous vegetables (kale or broccoli or cabbage), plus a cup of cooked greens (more kale, or collards, romaine, etc.). Add to that some fruit and a serving of berries, plus more vegetables. When I manage to eat that way (I try to do it every day, but fall short of complying 100% most days) it makes a big difference. It’s a ton of fresh food, water, and fiber. Ellie Lee-wasson
I try, but, as I previously mentioned, I work in aviation so hitting all of the checkmarks in the app is difficult, but I consistently hit 20 of the 24 v
I find whole wheat pasta + cannellini beans + greens (broccoli raab or swiss chard or kale) in a garlicky vegetable broth to work very well in this department.
I think it’s because it has the fiber + liquid all together. Maybe give it a try? It’s delicious. Hope this helps! Ellie Lee-wasson
How do you prepare the broth? bradf
I work in aviation as well, I travel with a thermal bag and several days of vegan food, rice/quinoa based grain salads travel well, you can call hotels ahead and check for a fridge, use happy cow to find vegan food on layovers. I use freezer packs, but this bag lets you throw in loose ice and doesn’t leak Ellie Lee-wasson
Do you work for a mainline or a regional? I also bring my food, but, don’t often have time to eat until the evening. During the day, I try to eat fruit, beans and greens etc. At night. bradf
mainline, typical flight is 2 hours or more so there is time to eat enroute. If you’re at a regional I could see that eating during your workday could be a problem. Ellie Lee-wasson
Yeah, I work for a regional Gatherer
This comment has little scientific evidence behind it. It is just a suggestion.
With your current diet you probably eat at least the minimum recommended amount of fiber, but even that is about a third of our ancestral fiber consumption. Thus additional fiber in your diet isn’t going to hurt you. Further, if you drink some fiber before eating food you should feel full earlier during your meal.
Accordingly, I suggest that before lunch and dinner you disperse a tablespoon (15 ml) of psyllium husks into 10 oz (300 ml) of water and drink it. The fiber should help with the constipation by providing bulk, and may slightly reduce the amount of food you eat which will, over time, help with weight loss.
For weight loss without counting calories or feeling hungry, try the Dr McDougall maximum weight loss advice. https://www.drmcdougall.com/misc/2005nl/050100pupushing.htm Panchito
Not everybody has the same body. There could be non dietary factors to constipation like genetic (asymmetry and development) or nervous (enteric nervous system) Jenny Barnes
Hi Ellie, have you looked at your stress levels? A few years back I was only ‘going’ once a week, despite plenty of veggies, water and exercise. My doctor recommended looking at the stress in my life, and making sure I took time out to relax made a huge difference. Jenny Barnes
Also, if you’re struggling to lose weight that can be due to stress – high cortisol levels make your body hold onto fat. I believe the idea is that historically if we were in a high stress situation this would make sense because this would often be accompanied by famine. EquaYona
I like the little Dr Greger, it was a cute way to interject your joke. Foroogh – NF Moderator
Yes, I like the section that he appeared in the video! I like his sense of humor. OrToltecTal
The little mini me popping up was hilarious and refreshing. I loved it! Robin Lewis Kane
definitely detracts and distracted me from what you were saying Rachel
Yes, it distracted me, too. I prefer the straightforward, scientific Dr. Greger, with the occasional dry joke. Ishay
I’m afraid I’ll have to agree. If I were a new visitor on this website, I’d probably think the information presented can’t be very serious.
Luckily I know otherwise! Susan Guthrie
These videos have changed my life! You do a great job keeping the data moving around so that it is easy to engage and stay focused. And your voice is unique with nice modulation and expression. Kourtnie
I enjoyed seeing your smiling face, the only thing I didn’t like was it looked like you were walking. You looked to be bouncing around a lot vs standing still and speaking. Not bad for a first attempt. Plantstrongdoc M.D. | 1real |
German court rules in favor of third gender category | BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany s highest court ruled on Wednesday in favor of the introduction of a third gender category for people who do not identify as either male or female or are born with an ambiguous sexual anatomy. The Federal Constitutional Court called on lawmakers to enact legislation by the end of 2018 to either allow the introduction of a third category or dispense with gender altogether in civil status documents. In 2013, Germany became the first European country to recognize indeterminate sex by allowing babies born with no clear gender-determining anatomy to be put on the birth register without a male or female classification. Wednesday s decision overturned a ruling by a lower court last year in a case brought by a German citizen born in 1989, identified as Vanja by the Third Option campaign group that supported the plaintiff in the case. The lower court said it was not possible to be registered as third gender because Vanja could leave the gender identity blank. However, the Federal Constitutional Court said Germany s Basic Law, or constitution, protected the personality rights of individuals who do not define themselves as male or female, adding that the current law on civil status interfered with that right. The Basic Law does not require that civil status be exclusively binary in terms of gender, the court said in a statement. The Third Option group described the ruling as historic , but said it is only the first step on improving the situation of inter and transgender people . Finally it s recognized by the Federal Constitutional Court that there are more genders than man or woman, said Mortiz Schmidt, the spokesman of the group. Antke Engel, the director of The Institute of Queer Theory in Berlin, said she was impressed that ruling gave lawmakers the possibility of dropping the gender category altogether. Of course that would be the more radical version, Engel said. Jamie Zulauf, a 30-year-old medical student who identifies as transgender, welcomed the move but said it could mean new problems when traveling to countries where a third gender is not accepted. It s going to be visible and it s not always safe to be visible, Jamie said. The government in Berlin estimated in 2013 there were 8,000 to 10,000 intersex people in Germany but interest groups say the number could be closer to 80,000. | 0fake |
Five Cops Handcuff Dr. Dre At His Home Because A Racist White Guy Claimed He Had A Gun (VIDEO) | If Dr. Dre were a white guy the police would have treated him totally differently.But because the legendary rapper is black and some white asshole looking for revenge claimed Dre brandished a gun during a confrontation, police officers swarmed the outside of his own home, slapped handcuffs on him and detained him in a police car.A white motorist was parked in front of Dr. Dre s home in Malibu on Monday when the musician returned. The driver was blocking Dr. Dre s driveway so he asked him to move his vehicle so he could pull in. Rolling Stone reports that the driver complied but yelled at Dr. Dre and hurled curse words at him as he drove off. Rather than move on, the angry white driver returned to the same spot to block the driveway again. Dr. Dre took out his cell phone and began recording the incident. The motorist reportedly said Here we go again. Another black guy with a gun and called police claiming that a black man pulled a gun on him.In response, several police officers showed up to harass the unarmed rapper. Due to the nature of the call, the person was searched, handcuffed, and briefly detained in a patrol car while deputies investigated the incident, Sheriff s Captain Chris Reed said.Here s video of Dr. Dre being handcuffed via YouTube.Despite not finding a gun, the accuser insisted on making a citizen s arrest and filled out a report.Again, look at all the white cops surrounding Dr. Dre, a man who simply wanted to pull his vehicle into his driveway and not be harassed by an angry white guy.Dr. Dre should not only sue the guy for everything he owns, he should sue the police for not arresting the racist who lied to police about him supposedly having a gun.If Dr. Dre were a white guy, the white driver never would have accused him of having a gun and the police certainly would have treated the situation differently. There was absolutely no reason to handcuff Dr. Dre. He was complying. He did nothing wrong. But they chose to humiliate him anyway by treating him like the bad guy instead of questioning whether the white accuser was full of shit. Last time I checked, using a cell phone is NOT a crime. Filing a false report, however, definitely is.Featured image via screen capture | 1real |
UK electoral body fines Liberal Democrats over Brexit vote expenses | LONDON (Reuters) - Britain s Electoral Commission said on Tuesday it has fined the Liberal Democrats party 18,000 pounds ($24,069) for breaching campaign finance rules in the 2016 European Union referendum. The party was fined 17,000 pounds for failing to provide acceptable invoices or receipts and 1,000 pounds because some payments were reported in aggregate rather than as individual payments, the commission said in a statement. The reporting requirements for parties and campaigners at referendums and elections are clear, that s why it is disappointing that the Liberal Democrats didn t follow them correctly, said Bob Posner, the Electoral Commission s director of political finance. ($1 = 0.7478 pounds) | 0fake |
More Bark than Bite in Trump’s Canadian Lumber Tariff - Breitbart | When the Trump administration announced Monday that it would impose new tariffs on Canadian softwood lumber imports, it elicited protests from Canadian officials, American and . [“We will be putting a very big tariff on the lumber coming into the country,” President Donald Trump said. Canadian foreign minister Chrystia Freeland warned that the move would hurt U. S. families by raising the price of materials needed to build new homes. “You need our lumber. You need our lumber to build your homes,” Freeland said in an interview on CNBC. Beyond the headlines, however, there are signs that there may be less to the new tariffs than meets the eye. For one thing, lumber prices actually declined after the tariffs were announced. Lumber futures fell on Tuesday by the $10 exchange limit in Chicago, a 2. 5 percent drop. The prices of Canadian lumber companies rose, some sharply. Shares of Canfor Corp were up by 8. 09 percent on Tuesday and West Fraser Timber Co. Ltd. rose by 2. 37 percent. As it turns out, the 20 percent tariff was smaller than what the market expected. The Trump administration has actually adopted a gentler policy on Canadian lumber than analysts and investors had forecast. It’s unlikely that the 20 percent tariff will have much of an effect on home prices, despite the protests of home buyers. Lumber prices make up a small fraction of the prices of new homes. And with the tariff coming in lower than expected and lumber prices falling, it’s just as likely that the announcement could slow rising home prices. The lumber tariff is best understood as a symbolic gesture by the Trump Administration aimed at underlining its America First stance. The intended audience are trading partners in Europe, Japan, and Mexico. Taking a stand on Canadian lumber is a way of sending the message without seriously impeding larger trade flows. Canada is the model target for such symbolism because it’s unlikely to retaliate against the U. S. for the sanctions, and penalizing Canada doesn’t risk mixing in messier concerns over race, national security or immigration. During a briefing on Tuesday, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross praised Canada as “a good neighbor” and played down the possibility that this was the beginning of a larger trade war. The Trump administration also hoped the move would be welcomed by economic nationalists, first announcing the tariffs at a meeting with conservative journalists on Monday night. Many of Trump’s economic nationalist supporters have become increasingly concerned that the administration may be backing away from America First trade stance that was central to its electoral victory in November. The decision not to designate China as a currency manipulator, for example, has raised fears that trade reforms could take a back seat to other administration priorities. | 0fake |
President-Elect Donald Trump must ensure continued efforts toward a Palestinian state | President-Elect Donald Trump must ensure continued efforts toward a Palestinian state
WASHINGTON DC – The American Muslims for Palestine , a national education organization advocating for Palestinian human rights, expresses deep concern over President-Elect Trump’s potential plans for U.S. policy in the Middle East. Though it is still unclear what Mr. Trump will do as president, AMP’s concerns stem from comments and promises he made during his campaign.
Specifically, AMP asserts the status of Jerusalem has not been resolved and supports Palestinians’ rights to Jerusalem as the capital of a future state. AMP rejects the promises Mr. Trump made to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in September to declare Jerusalem as the “undivided capital of Israel.” AMP strongly opposes moving the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and also is deeply troubled by comments suggesting a Trump administration would forgo the idea of a Palestinian state.
If Mr. Trump follows up on his campaign promises, it would be a departure from the position of previous administrations, Republican and Democrat alike, which always understood such actions would undermine U.S credibility and influence throughout the world in general, and in the Middle East in particular.
Israeli Education Minister Naftali Bennett said yesterday the notion of a Palestinian state would not have to be considered under Trump’s administration. “Trump’s victory is an opportunity for Israel to immediately retract the notion of a Palestinian state in the center of the country, which would hurt our security and just cause. … This is the position of the president-elect… The era of a Palestinian state is over,” Bennett was quoted as saying.
“At the beginning of his candidacy, Mr. Trump insisted he would be even-handed in his dealings with the Palestinians and Israelis,” said Dr. Osama Abuirshaid, expert analyst and national director of policy for AMP. “We already are in a weakened position in the Middle East because of some current U.S. policies. Mr. Trump’s promises are not in the best interest of the United States.”
He added, “If Mr. Trump’s promises were to be implemented, it could hurt our stance throughout the world. They certainly would not have the backing of our global partners and could hurt our national security.”
AMP continues to call for an end to Israel’s military occupation of Palestine, including its 10-year siege on the Gaza Strip.
“We hope the Trump administration will be open to working to ensure justice for everyone in the Middle East,” Abuirshaid said. “Barring that, we will continue during the next four years to build our base among progressive elements in society, as well with those who work on social justice issues in the interfaith community and communities of color. AMP will continue to advocate for Palestinian human rights by providing accurate information and through contextualizing the Palestinian struggle as one that is just and in accordance with international humanitarian law and international law.” Related Posts: | 1real |
Companies Ignoring Trump, Moving Jobs to Mexico - Breitbart | Despite President Donald Trump’s promise to stop companies from outsourcing production to Mexico by imposing a significant border tax on goods sold in America, some businesses ignore this threat. [Following his election in November, the Trump administration assembled a group of 28 business and labor leaders to advise on “on how best to promote job growth and get Americans back to work again,” as well as launching a Manufacturing Jobs Initiative. The Wall Street Journal published a report on Wednesday on some of the companies planning to outsource production. Here is what they found: Rexnord of Indiana is moving to Mexico and rather viciously firing all of its 300 workers. This is happening all over our country. No more! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 3, 2016, Despite these apparent failures to persuade companies to remain in America, Trump has had some significant successes in ensuring the continuation, or even creation, of jobs in America. As well as assurances from Ford and General Motors to expand production, companies such as Apple, Intel and Amazon have all told the administration they will continue to invest in America. Since Donald Trump’s election in November, Department of Labor figures show the economy has gained 227, 00 jobs, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average has eclipsed 20, 000. You can follow Ben Kew on Facebook, on Twitter at @ben_kew, or email him at bkew@breitbart. com | 0fake |
FLASHBACK: Bill Clinton Had 93 Of 94 U.S. Attorneys FIRED IN ONE DAY…No Media Outrage [VIDEO] | WATCH:FLASHBACK: When Bill Clinton had 93 out of 94 U.S. Attorneys FIRED IN ONE DAY. CNN didn t say a word..#peoplepower Preet Bharara pic.twitter.com/eLUpjY42mk Tennessee (@TEN_GOP) March 12, 2017Even today, after the media was called out on ignoring Clinton s firings, the New York Times tried to prove that Trump s firings were somehow more mean-spirited:They even went as far as to suggest President Trump was simply taking marching orders from TV and radio talk show host Sean Hannity when he had them fired: | 1real |
Seven Highlights From the Gorsuch Confirmation Hearings - The New York Times | WASHINGTON — Here are some highlights from Day 2 of the Supreme Court confirmation hearing for Judge Neil M. Gorsuch: ■ Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, pressed Judge Gorsuch on a central question: Can he hold President Trump accountable? “No man is above the law,” he said. ■ Judge Gorsuch said no one from the White House had asked him to make any commitments on legal issues. “I have offered no promises on how I’d rule to anyone on any case,” he said. ■ The nominee refused to say how he would rule on many issues, including abortion, gun rights and Mr. Trump’s travel ban. ■ Judge Gorsuch praised Judge Merrick B. Garland, but declined to wade into the partisan fight. “I can’t get involved in politics,” he said. ■ He sidestepped many efforts by Democrats to offer his views on previous Supreme Court rulings. Democrats could cite his answers later as evasive responses that persuaded them to vote against him. ■ Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, asked Judge Gorsuch about his participation in defending the George W. Bush administration’s policies in the war on terror, like torture, when the judge was a Justice Department official in . Judge Gorsuch said he was a lawyer and not a policy maker then. ■ Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, said he was comforted that President Trump had chosen Judge Gorsuch. “Quite frankly, I was quite worried about who he’d pick. Maybe somebody on TV. ” Senator Al Franken, Democrat of Minnesota, was perhaps the most aggressive questioner so far. He turned first to the case of a truck driver who abandoned his broken rig in frigid conditions and was fired. He asked Judge Gorsuch, who in a dissent said the dismissal should be upheld, what he would have done if he were faced with the same situation as the driver. “I’m asking you a question, please answer the question,” Mr. Franken said, as the nominee demurred. When Judge Gorsuch began to defend his vote again, the senator cut in. “That’s absurd,” said Mr. Franken, a veteran of “Saturday Night Live” in a previous life. “Now, I had a career in identifying absurdity. And I know it when I see it. ” Judge Gorsuch said earlier that the case of the truck driver was “one of those that you take home at night. ” But the law, he argued on Tuesday, was clear: “The law said the man is protected and can’t be fired if he refuses to operate an unsafe vehicle. ” In fact, Judge Gorsuch said, the driver had unhitched his vehicle from the trailing cargo to get to safety in frigid weather. “He chose to operate,” Judge Gorsuch said, adding, “I think by any plain understanding, he operated the vehicle. ” The nominee expressed no fondness for this particular law — “I’ve been stuck on a highway in Wyoming in a snowstorm,” he noted — but said it was his duty to observe it. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat of Rhode Island, said shadowy groups had spent millions of dollars in “dark money” to support Judge Gorsuch’s nomination. The senator asked the judge to urge his supporters to disclose what they had spent. Judge Gorsuch declined, saying that would be a political move. He noted that the Supreme Court had allowed Congress to require disclosure of political spending. “With all respect, the ball’s in your court,” Judge Gorsuch said. Judge Gorsuch has called himself an originalist, meaning that he tries to interpret the Constitution as it was understood by the people who drafted and ratified it. On Tuesday, he said his approach could keep pace with contemporary realities. “The Constitution doesn’t change,” he said. “The world around us changes. ” Judge Gorsuch said that the principles in the Constitution can adapt to the modern world, citing a Supreme Court ruling on GPS tracking devices. “I’m not looking to take us back to quill pens and the horse and buggy,” he said. Outside the hearing room, Democrats are trying to weigh down the Gorsuch nomination with the baggage of investigations into the president’s orbit and Russia. Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the minority leader, said it was “the height of irony” for Republicans to press for Judge Gorsuch’s elevation to the court after holding the seat open last year. “Republicans held this Supreme Court seat open for nearly a calendar year while President Obama was in office,” he said from the Senate floor, “but are now rushing to fill the seat for a president whose campaign is under investigation by the F. B. I. ” Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, brought up letters submitted to the committee by two former students in a legal ethics class Judge Gorsuch taught in the spring of 2016 at the University of Colorado Law School. The two students — one of whom signed her name — complained about comments they recalled Judge Gorsuch made in a class session about ethical issues that arose in the practice of the law profession. In the comments, the students claimed that Judge Gorsuch told them that employers needed to ask female job applicants about their intentions regarding pregnancy to protect their firms from women who were simply seeking maternity benefits. Judge Gorsuch said that misrepresented the discussion, citing instructions in a teaching manual to explore the subject. Judge Gorsuch also said he believed that it would be “inappropriate” for a prospective employer to ask such a question, and that he was “shocked” that every year when he asked his students whether they had been asked such a thing, many female students raised their hands. Judge Gorsuch was asked to address the nominee who never had his hearing, Judge Garland. “Whenever I see his name attached to an opinion, it’s one I read with special care,” Judge Gorsuch said, praising his peer as “an outstanding judge. ” But when Senator Leahy asked whether Judge Garland had been treated fairly, Judge Gorsuch demurred. “I can’t get involved in politics,” he said. “There’s judicial canons that prevent me from doing that. And I think it would be very imprudent of judges to start commenting on political disputes. ” Mr. Leahy had no such qualms. “I can express an opinion,” he said. “I think it was shameful. ” During the campaign, Mr. Trump said he would seek to appoint justices ready to vote to overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision establishing a constitutional right to abortion. But Judge Gorsuch said that no one from the White House asked him to make any commitments on legal issues that could come before him on the Supreme Court. “I have offered no promises on how I’d rule to anyone on any case,” he said. “I don’t believe in litmus tests for judges,” he said. Asked about Roe v. Wade, Judge Gorsuch said, “I would tell you that Roe vs. Wade, decided in 1973, is the precedent of the United States Supreme Court,” saying that “all of the other factors that go into analyzing precedent have to be considered. ” Senator Charles E. Grassley, the Iowa Republican who is chairman of the committee, also pressed Judge Gorsuch for his views on precedent generally, naming a few cases, including a Second Amendment case and the matter of Bush v. Gore. “I know some people in this room have some opinions on that,” Judge Gorsuch joked, declining to outline firm positions. The nominee likened precedents to “our shared family history as judges. ” “As a good judge, you don’t approach that question anew as if it has never been decided,” he added. Mr. Leahy brought up Judge Gorsuch’s connections with the Colorado billionaire Phil Anschutz, whom Judge Gorsuch formerly represented in private practice. The senator noted that on Jan. 10, 2006, The Denver Post reported that there were three finalists for an appeals court vacancy — and none were Judge Gorsuch. Two days later, a lawyer for Mr. Anschutz wrote on the billionaire’s behalf to the White House counsel at the time, Harriet Miers, to suggest that President George W. Bush consider nominating Judge Gorsuch. She gave him an interview in early February and he ended up getting the nomination. Mr. Leahy also noted that Mr. Anschutz finances conservative groups including the Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation, which put Judge Gorsuch on the list of candidates President Trump promised to use in selecting a Supreme Court nominee. “Are these areas of concern?” Mr. Leahy asked. Judge Gorsuch replied that he thought his service at the Justice Department, where he had worked about seven months, was the most important issue, noting many of his former clients had said “nice things” about him when he was up for an appeals court judgeship, including the owner of a gravel pit. Mr. Leahy scoffed, “Which one do you think the White House listened to the most, Mr. Anschutz or a gravel pit owner? I mean, let’s be realistic. ” Mr. Leahy did not ask whether Judge Gorsuch would recuse himself from cases involving Mr. Anschutz’s interests. The judge did recuse himself from such cases on the appeals court, but so far has left the door open to participating in them on the Supreme Court. Judge Gorsuch, who had criticized liberals for preferring litigation to the political process in an article written before he became a judge, distanced himself from his earlier statements on Tuesday. “American liberals,” he wrote in a 2005 essay in National Review, “have become addicted to the courtroom, relying on judges and lawyers rather than elected leaders and the ballot box, as the primary means of effecting their social agenda on everything from gay marriage to assisted suicide to the use of vouchers for education. This overweening addiction to the courtroom as the place to debate social policy is bad for the country and bad for the judiciary. ” On Tuesday, he said he had been wrong to single out liberals. “The problem lies on both sides of the aisle,” he said. He added that “the courts are a very important place for the vindication of civil rights. ” The top Democrat on the committee, Senator Feinstein pressed Judge Gorsuch on his involvement in several disputes in which he was involved as a Justice Department official: torture, the habeas corpus rights of Guantánamo detainees, warrantless surveillance, and the scope of the president’s power as to defy statutes. In December 2005, she noted, when Congress passed the Detainee Treatment Act, which barred cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of detainees, Judge Gorsuch advocated a signing statement that would say the new statute only codified existing Bush administration interrogation practices. The context, she noted, was that the Justice Department had issued a secret memo earlier that year saying techniques like waterboarding and prolonged sleep deprivation were not cruel, inhuman or degrading. She asked whether Judge Gorsuch believed such torture techniques were lawful. Judge Gorsuch declined to answer that question. Ms. Feinstein indicated she would return to the torture issue in a second round of questioning. She also pointed out that after it emerged that Mr. Bush had authorized the National Security Agency to wiretap without warrants, despite a 1978 law requiring warrants, Judge Gorsuch had drafted a statement for Alberto Gonzales, the attorney general at the time, to deliver at a congressional hearing. His initial draft suggested that Congress lacked the authority to enact a law limiting a president’s power to conduct surveillance without warrants for national security purposes. “Goodness no, Senator, and I didn’t believe it at the time,” Judge Gorsuch replied. He said he had been only “acting in the capacity as a speechwriter” in bringing together materials submitted by colleagues in the administration. “I was the scribe. ” Under questioning from Senator Orrin Hatch, Republican of Utah, about how to apply new technologies to constitutional principles written two centuries ago, Judge Gorsuch brought up the issue of whether police officers needed a warrant to attach a GPS tracker to a suspect’s car in order to monitor his movements. He spoke admiringly of a 2012 Supreme Court decision that applied the original Constitution in concluding that warrants were required. “Technology changes, but the principles don’t,” he said, adding that “it can’t be the case the U. S. Constitution is any less protective” of people’s privacy than it was at the time it was written. On the appeals court, Judge Gorsuch sometimes sided with plaintiffs in Fourth Amendment search issues even when colleagues voted for the police. Notably, though, after the Supreme Court issued its landmark GPS tracker ruling, Judge Gorsuch voted to let prosecutors in other cases use evidence that police had gathered with such a tracker in 2011, before the Supreme Court handed down that ruling, because the rule had not been clear at the time. Mr. Grassley opened his questioning by asking if Judge Gorsuch would have “any trouble ruling against the president who appointed you. ” “That’s a softball, Mr. Chairman,” Judge Gorsuch replied, in what seemed to be a scripted response. He said he would have “no difficulty” ruling for or against any party. He spoke of his legal hero and former boss, Justice Byron R. White, saying he embraced his “fierce, rugged independence. ” “I have offered no promises on how I would rule on any case to anyone,” Judge Gorsuch said. Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, likes doing bits. His presidential run last year was full of them — from a recurring set of impressions from “The Princess Bride” to an elaborate of a scene from “Hoosiers” before the Indiana primary. (His plans were felled by an reference to a “basketball ring” instead of a rim.) His questioning of Judge Gorsuch was no exception. Mr. Cruz began by asking the nominee, “What is the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything?” “” Judge Gorsuch replied instantly. (The two explained that that was a reference to “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. ”) Mr. Cruz went on to ask Judge Gorsuch about the basketball skills of the nominee’s former boss, Justice Byron R. White, and to defend the Federalist Society, the conservative group that pushed for Judge Gorsuch’s nomination. Ms. Feinstein got to the heart of Democrats’ early criticisms of Judge Gorsuch: his record on workers’ rights. “How do we have confidence in you that you won’t just be for the big corporations?” she asked. “Those of us, I think on both sides, care very much about workers’ rights. But the record is such that one questions whether the court is capable in its current composition to give a worker a fair shot. ” She was, she added, “just looking for something” in his record to give her confidence. Judge Gorsuch ticked off past cases in which he ruled for the little guy, calling himself “a fair judge” and noting that members of both parties have said as much. | 0fake |
Will Clinton’s experience be a liability? | Hillary Rodham Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state was supposed to be a central argument for her forthcoming run for president. Her globe-trotting record as the nation’s chief diplomat, her role championing women’s empowerment and gay rights, and her experience on tough national security issues were all supposed to confer credentials that none of her possible GOP opponents would possess.
But over the past two weeks, with back-to-back revelations that she was working with foreign countries that gave millions of dollars to her family’s charitable foundation and that she set up and exclusively used a private e-mail system, that argument has been put in peril.
Instead of a fresh chapter in which Clinton came into her own, her time as the country’s top diplomat now threatens to remind voters of what some people dislike about her — a tendency toward secrecy and defensiveness, along with the whiff of scandal that clouded the presidency of her husband, Bill Clinton.
That side of Hillary Clinton also plays directly into the main Republican argument against her, that she is a candidate of “yesterday” — as Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida recently put it — who comes with decades of baggage the country no longer need carry.
“Part of the reason the story is gaining traction is that it reminds people of what the Clinton White House was like,” said American University political science professor Jennifer Lawless. “It reminds people of the scandals, the secrecy and the lack of transparency that were often associated with Bill Clinton’s eight years in Washington.”
Clinton was already certain to face sharp questions during a presidential campaign about her handling of the deadly attacks on U.S. facilities in Benghazi, Libya, in 2012. She has never been shown to have any direct role in events leading up to the deaths of the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans, but an inquiry that Democrats call a fishing expedition has been given new life by the revelation that her e-mails were not immediately given to Congress.
Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), who chairs a special congressional committee on Benghazi, has subpoenaed Clinton’s e-mails and plans to call her as a witness once his investigation is further along. That will mean a showdown in the middle of a presidential campaign in which she will be trying to reintroduce herself to voters.
“You do not need a law degree to have an understanding of how troubling this is,” Gowdy said in a news conference last week.
Clinton has said nothing about the e-mail controversy beyond a tweet promising to seek to make the messages public. On Sunday, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said Clinton needs to talk in more detail about the issue. “From this point on, the silence is going to hurt her,” Feinstein said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
Clinton’s problems at the State Department also make it easier for Republicans to connect her to what they see as President Obama’s shaky foreign policy and his broken promise to operate the most transparent administration in history.
Even the smallest things are being looked at anew. The iconic image of her at the State Department, which she chose as her Twitter avatar, shows her seated aboard a military transport plane, reading something — perhaps e-mail — on her BlackBerry.
Former Florida governor Jeb Bush, who is weighing a 2016 bid, cast her reliance on private e-mail as a serious security risk. “It’s a little baffling, to be honest with you, that didn’t come up in Secretary Clinton’s thought process,” the Republican said in a Friday radio interview.
And while Clinton remains the overwhelming favorite for her party’s nomination, some Democrats last week were more open about their misgivings about her candidacy. On Friday night in New Hampshire, former Maryland governor Martin O’Malley, who might run against her, for the first time broke his silence on her use of the private e-mail account, saying that “openness and transparency are required of governing in the modern age.”
For Clinton, the State Department years were a kind of protective cocoon from partisan politics, even though she was a visible member of a Democratic administration that was doing regular battle with congressional Republicans.
She was rarely called upon to take public positions on partisan issues. Her history as a politically active first lady, senator and failed Democratic candidate for president were rarely mentioned in day-to-day news coverage of her trips and priorities as secretary.
Clinton’s busy pace — she visited a record 112 countries — made it easy to deflect questions about the common assumption that she would make another run for the White House when her time at the State Department was over.
After leaving office, she wrote a memoir of her time at the State Department that was published last year. The book, “Hard Choices,” marked her unmistakable entry into the 2016 presidential race and amounted to a virtual campaign manifesto.
“We have to use all of America’s strengths to build a world with more partners and fewer adversaries, more shared responsibility and fewer conflicts, more good jobs and less poverty, more broadly based prosperity with less damage to our environment,” Clinton wrote.
Clinton posted a Twitter message Wednesday night — two days into the e-mail controversy — saying she wants the public “to see my e-mails.” She said she has asked the State Department to review them for release.
That review could also establish whether she broke any rules about the handling of sensitive information.
The e-mail arrangement meant that Clinton’s work e-mails were being routed through a private server in her Chappaqua, N.Y., home and were not being archived by the government as now required. She handed over 55,000 pages of e-mails upon the State Department’s request last year, more than a year after she left her post.
She has not explained the reason for the unorthodox arrangement, and her husband declined to weigh in on Sunday. “I’m not the one to judge that. I have an opinion, but I have a bias,” Bill Clinton said in response to a reporter’s question during a Florida appearance, according to Bloomberg Politics. He added: “I shouldn’t be making news on this.”
The White House has distanced itself from the growing controversy. Obama said in an interview with CBS on Saturday that he did not know about Hillary Clinton’s use of private e-mail until reading news reports last week.
“The president does have the expectation that everybody in his administration takes the steps that are necessary to be in compliance with the Federal Records Act and with the Presidential Records Act,” White House press secretary Josh Earnest said Friday. “And again, that means using, as often as possible, using your official government e-mail when you’re conducting official government business.”
White House officials communicated with Clinton on her private account, and it is not clear that any White House official flagged the practice as a potential problem.
The e-mail revelation came after the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation acknowledged in February that it had accepted a foreign-government donation in 2010 without submitting it for an ethics review, as required in a 2008 agreement with the Obama administration.
The 2008 agreement had been reached to avoid the appearance of conflicts of interest while Hillary Clinton served as secretary of state. Under the agreement, the foundation was to submit any donation from a foreign government that had not previously given money to the foundation.
The goal was to allow ethics officers to analyze whether it might appear that the government was trying to influence U.S. policy with a donation to a charity so closely linked to the nation’s top diplomat.
The foundation told The Washington Post that it had failed to follow that process in the case of an unsolicited $500,000 donation from the government of Algeria to assist in earthquake relief in Haiti. The donation coincided with a spike in lobbying by Algeria, which was defending its human rights record to U.S. officials.
State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said the donation did not pose a problem because U.S. support for rebuilding efforts in Haiti was well known before the Algerian donation came in.
Prominent Clinton backers have dismissed the recent controversies as minor distractions unimportant to voters and blamed the e-mail flap on a Republican attack machine.
But other Democrats expressed exasperation at what they called a slow and ham-handed response to the e-mail controversy by her small group of advisers. There is no in-house, campaign-grade rapid-response operation, and outside defenders had little notice that a problem was brewing.
“I’d be surprised to find a lot of Democrats who think this is going to have a lot of legs,” said one senior Democratic strategist who spoke on the condition of anonymity because Clinton is not yet a candidate. “But there is a level of angst and annoyance about how badly the thing has been mishandled.”
Several Democrats said the controversy is being blown out of proportion and questioned whether Republicans are being subjected to the same level of scrutiny.
Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-Calif.) said that Clinton has been aboveboard and that the controversy will quickly fade.
“She’s not trying to hide anything,” Sanchez said. | 0fake |
Singapore charges activist for organizing assemblies without permit | SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Singapore authorities charged human rights activist Jolovan Wham on Wednesday for organizing public assemblies without a police permit, prompting rights groups to call on the government to guarantee the right to peaceful assembly. The 37-year-old Wham, the former executive director of a group advocating the rights of foreign workers in Singapore, could be fined up to $10,000 or imprisoned for up to 6 months, or both, if found guilty of repeat offences. Wham was involved in a protest in June by several blindfolded activists who held up books on a subway train in a call for justice for 22 people detained in 1987 under a tough internal security law. Wham is recalcitrant and has repeatedly shown blatant disregard for the law, especially with regard to organizing or participating in illegal public assemblies , Singapore Police Force said in a statement. He was also charged for vandalism and refusing to sign statements made during investigations, the police said. He faces a total of seven charges stemming from public assemblies he organized dating back to November 2016, the police said. Under strict public assembly laws, protests are allowed only at a designated downtown square called the Speakers Corner. Human Rights Watch on Wednesday called on Singapore to drop the case against peaceful protestor Wham and to amend what it called a draconian law on public order to guarantee Singaporeans the right to peaceful assembly. Prosecuting Jolovan Wham for holding peaceful gatherings demonstrates the absurdity of Singapore s laws on public assemblies and the government s willingness to penalize those who speak out, its deputy Asia director Phil Robertson said. The Singapore government should start listening to criticism, stop treating peaceful assemblies as crimes, and cease prosecuting their organizers, he said. A pre-trial conference for the case will take place on Dec. 13. | 0fake |
null | Trump should take the lead aand prempt the attack that is sure to come on guns , 17 SHOT IN CHACAGO THE TIGHTEST GUN LAWS IN THE COUNTRY . HOW COULDTHIS HAPPEN ?? ASK CROOKED HILLARY AND THE GUN RUNNING CAMP , CAUGHT RED HANDED SUPPLYING GUNS TO GANGS IN MEXICO . 20 YRS NOTHING HAS CHANGED IN FACT ITS WORSE THANKS TO CROOKED HILLARY . THINK OF THE IRONY HERE ISTHE OPEATION GUN RUNNER CREW TELLING YOU YOU CAN HAVE GUNS . I MEAN TO SAY HYPOCRISY OF THE HIGHEST ORDER. | 1real |
Georgia Candidate Jon Ossoff’s Film Firm Financed by Facebook Fact Check Funder | Democrat Jon Ossoff, the candidate who fell short of the mark needed to capture a House seat in an Atlanta district that has long been a Republican stronghold, serves as the CEO of an investigative film company that has received backing from the Omidyar Network. [The Omidyar Network, which is the nonprofit for liberal billionaire eBay founder Pierre Omidyar, has partnered with George Soros’s Open Society on numerous projects and has given grants to third parties using the Tides Foundation. Tides is one of the largest donors to causes in the U. S. The Omidyar Network is also a prominent donor to the International Network, the project of the Poynter Institute for Media Studies that is helping Facebook to determine whether a certain story is “disputed. ” Poynter’s IFCN is also funded by Soros’ Open Society Foundations, as well as by the Bill Melinda Gates Foundation, Google, and the National Endowment for Democracy. In March, the Omidyar Network also provided the League (ADL) whose chief has baselessly smeared Breitbart News with claims of associations, with a seed donation to build a Silicon Valley command center purportedly aimed at combating online hate. Ossoff serves as managing director and CEO of the Insight TWI (The World Investigates) which describes itself as producing “ documentary films and television programmes, specializing in fresh, daring factual content and journalism. ” Continues a company description: “Insight’s Peabody, and BAFTA team has decades of experience working safely in environments and a focus on immersive storytelling that makes the important interesting. ” The company’s leaders produced “Blood on the Stone,” a documentary that accompanied the DVD for the “Blood Diamond” movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio. Insight TWI collaborated with with Al Jazeera English to produce an “Africa Investigates” series. In 2014, the Omidyar Network provided Ossoff’s Insight TWI with a $350, 000 investment, listing Ossoff specifically on the award announcement posted on Omidyar’s website. Regarding the Facebook project, the International Network recently drafted a code of five principles for news websites to accept, and Facebook announced it will work with “ fact checking organizations” that are signatories to the code of principles. Facebook says that if the “fact checking organizations” determine that a certain story is fake, it will get flagged as disputed and, according to the Facebook announcement, “there will be a link to the corresponding article explaining why. Stories that have been disputed may also appear lower in News Feed. ” Omidyar also provided the seed capital for the ADL’s new Silicon Valley command center reportedly aimed at combatting online hate. According to the ADL’s press release announcing the Omidyar grant, the ADL will work with tech sector leaders to look into options for reducing “online harassment,” including “artificial intelligence, big data, reality, and other technologies. ” Ossoff, a former aide to Rep. Hank Johnson ( ) was widely touted by major progressive groups for his attempt to win a House race in Atlanta’s conservative suburbs. The Democratic Party excitement surrounding Ossoff’s bid led the Drudge Report to label him the “Dem Trump slayer” in a banner headline. Drudge later mockingly crossed out the words “Dem Trump slayer” as Ossoff’s chances for victory seemed to have faded. The Washington Post reported on the latest results of Ossoff’s bid: Unofficial returns showed that Ossoff had earned less than 50 percent of the vote, the threshold needed to declare an outright victory. Instead, with 48. 3 percent, Ossoff was headed to a runoff against Republican Karen Handel, a former Georgia secretary of state and the top GOP in a special election to replace Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price in Georgia’s 6th Congressional District. In a statement early Wednesday, Ossoff acknowledged that he had fallen short: “This is already a remarkable victory,” he said. “We defied the odds, shattered expectations, and now are ready to fight on and win in June. ” Aaron Klein is Breitbart’s Jerusalem bureau chief and senior investigative reporter. He is a New York Times bestselling author and hosts the popular weekend talk radio program, “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio. ” Follow him on Twitter @AaronKleinShow. Follow him on Facebook. With research by Joshua Klein. | 0fake |
NORDSTROM CANCELS IVANKA TRUMP BRAND After Liberal Complaints #BoycottNordstrom | Nordstrom cancelled the Ivanka Trump line after a liberal organization called Grab Your Wallet flooded them with complaints. Shame on Nordstrom!The Trump family has had to sacrifice so much to do what they re doing for America. It s a shame that even though Nordstrom had said they wouldn t cancel Ivanka s product line LEFTISTS CALL FOR Ivanka Trump Brand Boycott This Huge Retailer Is Sticking With Her they caved to the pressure from the left!PLEASE CONTACT NORDSTROM AND COMPLAIN : NORDSTROM FEEDBACKDaily Mail reported:Nordstrom denied partisanship in the decision to drop Trump s brand, insisting the move was made as a result of poor sales months after it was hit by a grassroots boycott started by a marketing specialist and a grandmother.The move from Nordstrom comes after several other retailers have already stopped selling her merchandise due to the Grab Your Wallet campaign, which calls for shoppers to boycott retailers that carry her brand or her father s goods.The Grab Your Wallet campaign was launched on October 11 by Shannon Coulter and Sue Atencio after they simultaneously realized they could no longer in good conscience shop at retailers that do business with the Trump family .The campaign compiled a list of businesses that sell Trump family goods. The extensive list also includes companies that advertise on Celebrity Apprentice or executives that have raised money for President Donald Trump. | 1real |
One Person MURDERED Every 14 Hours In Obama’s GUN-FREE Hometown…Black Chicago Residents Speak Out: “My Life Has Been Hurt By Democrats” [VIDEO] | 69 people were shot in gun-free Chicago over this past Memorial Day weekend. Meanwhile Barack Obama is busy working with Black Lives Matter terror groups to point fingers at law enforcement and white people for the crisis majority black neighborhoods are facing in their communities. When will the media start exposing the truth about gun-free zones in America? It should be clear to every American that violent gun related crimes don t stop because you put up a gun-free zone sign in a neighborhood filled with bad guys.Instead of focusing on broken families, elected Democrats have been ignoring these communities for decades in favor of kickbacks and favors from vendors and contractors and in many cases, outright theft from money that was designated for local schools or community improvement projects. Unless and until someone gets serious about finding jobs for blacks and cutting off welfare funding as a reward for teenage and single moms to have multiple children, this problem will only get worse. Children need a father in the home period.Here are a few crime statistics that prove most of the crime victims in the gun-free city of Chicago are black males. Black on black crimes are the biggest issue these communities face, yet Obama and race baiters for hire across America have magically turned the argument around and are blaming Whites and cops for the huge uptick in violence in these mostly black neighborhoods.Sadly, a large number of the crimes have gone unsolved, as people who live in these neighborhoods don t want to rat out the killers. (Note the number of shootings where police were involved vs. the number of shootings between citizens HELLO Black Lives Matter!)Here s what black Chicago residents really think of their Democrat leaders, including the former Chicago community organizer/hustler, Barack Hussein Obama. They explain how Democrats are really the people responsible for perpetuating black on black crime:BLOODY MEMORIAL DAY WEEKEND:Just after midnight, in one of the last shootings of the Memorial Day weekend, two people pulled out guns and started firing in East Garfield Park.The first call to police early Tuesday was for one person shot on Homan Avenue. Then a second victim. Then a third. Then someone walked into a hospital a few minutes later.In all, 27 of the 69 people hit by gunfire over the weekend were shot in or near the Harrison District, one of the city s most violent and one of the most heavily patrolled by police.So many people were shot there that Deputy Superintendent John Escalante promised Sunday to beef up patrols. Nine more people were shot there by early Tuesday.The breakdown from the weekend is: Three people killed and 12 people wounded Friday afternoon through early Saturday; one person killed and 24 people wounded Saturday evening through early Sunday; 13 people wounded Sunday afternoon through early Monday; and 16 people shot Monday into early Tuesday, two of them fatally.Here s a SHOCKING 30 DAY Stupidity Trend from HeyJackass.comThe holiday weekend was police Superintendent Eddie Johnson s first since Mayor Rahm Emanuel picked the veteran cop to lead the embattled department in late March. The department sought volunteers to work overtime over the weekend, although police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi did not release figures on how many officers worked. Instead of hiring more cops during a city budget crunch, Emanuel instead has relied heavily on overtime to try to tamp down violence. Via: Chicago TribuneWith the constant bashing of law enforcement by Black Lives Matter terrorists, coupled with the desire by Barack Obama and AG Loretta Lynch to tie the hands of cops across America, it should come as no surprise that cops are no longer willing to go the extra mile to protect those who would like to see them harmed.Question: How much on average does it cost for each gunshot victim in Chicago in 2016?Answer: An ASTOUNDING $68,683* per person*Costs assume the following:$55,000: Average gunshot victim ER and hospital expenses. $1000: Average CFD ambulance ride, only applicable to 80% of victims, rest self-transport. $800: Homicide-related autopsies. Doesn t include hospice care or ongoing rehabilitation. Cost estimates provided by Chicago Killings Cost $2.5 Billion. | 1real |
Russia or the Neocons: Who endangers American democracy? | OffGuardian | by Vladimir Golstein, via The Duran
Political discourse of American mass media is inundated with another wave of Russophobia and fear mongering. Besides the obvious military threat (Russia’s nuclear arsenal), or the challenges to the US foreign policy (the conflicts in Ukraine or Syria), a new fear has been introduced into the news: the US political system is endangered by Russia’s computer hacking, informational warfare, and its support of Donald Trump.
The newspaper titles sound like a commercial for the upcoming Invasion of the Body Snatchers sequel. The Washingon Post announces: “Russia Is Now a Threat. The US Should Treat It Like One.” Time magazine raises the stakes: “Russia Wants to Undermine Faith in the U.S. Election.”
The Atlantic warns of the “The Dangers of the Putin-Trump relationship,” articulating the already familiar litany of complaints: “Russia is directly interfering in the US elections … it is a dangerous escalation that threatens the integrity of the US electoral process.” While US Today allows notorious neocon named Max Boot to discover not just the threat, but an actual war. His “Time to Get Real About Russia Cyber War,” is rather blunt: “Our democracy is under attack by Russia, but almost no one is treating the situation with the gravity it deserves.”
Well, nobody treats the situation with the gravity it deserves because they are treating it with much greater gravity. In fact, some of the commentators are so grave, that they are ready to give in already. Zack Beauchamp concludes his tirades against Russian hacking in the following manner: “Russia’s strategy is even more dangerous that it appears. Not only does it undermine democracy using the press but it actually gets the press to undermine itself. And there’s not much we can reasonably do about it, either.”
Reading all this, one might think that the former Secretary of Defense, James Forrestal , has been resurrected along with his 1949 battle-cry: “The Russians are coming. The Russians are coming. They’re right around. I’ve seen Russian soldiers.”
What is behind this Russophobia? A real Russian threat? A smokescreen intended to cover failed policies of recent administration? The meeting between the Russophobic minds of a particular candidate (Hillary Clinton) and a particular group of voters (neocons)?
I believe that these Joe McCarthy type accusations against both Russia and Trump seem to pursue only one goal: to give the veneer of respectability to the neocons’ and other Republican luminaries’ desertion of their own party. Thus, endless “confessions” of reformed Republicans and hardcore neocons , expressing their born-again zeal for the Democratic Candidate, Hillary Clinton.
The neocons are not switching parties because they’ve seen the light. They are enamored with Hillary Clinton’s record of foreign policy and her willingness to embrace the US globalist claims. As reported by Rania Khalek in Intercept , Robert Kagan, one of the leading neocons, the co-founder of the notorious PNAC (Project for the New American Century, the blueprint of the recent policies of aggression and regime change intended to cement US hegemony in world affairs), has been on the record for quite some time: “I would say all Republican foreign policy professionals are anti-Trump,” Kagan told …at a “ foreign policy professionals for Hillary ” fundraiser… –I would say that a majority of people in my circle will vote for Hillary.”
The neocons are very public about their desertion, and bear it as a badge of honor. Dubious honor, since in their pursuit of an ideal candidate for their agenda, neocons do not just betray their former party, but the very foundations of American democracy: the two party system.
Their desertion reveals that American political system has finally internalized Francis Fukuyama proud words about the end of history. We’ve reached the consensus; there is no need to argue or challenge, history has ended, the truths are revealed and they are now the property of the elites united into one globalist Imperial party bent on equating American prosperity with the American hegemony over world affairs.
To any objective observer it is clear that is not Russia that endangers US democracy but the political corruption, the rule of 1% oligarchy, and mad pursuit of PNAC policies. Even greater danger to democracy lies in the neocons’ desertion to the Hillary camp.
Unsavory as the corporate rule and globalism might be, one can argue for and pursue these goals, provided they leave the room for the alternative vision. It is this neocons’ dismissal of the alternatives that betrays the very foundations of democracy, at least, in the way, a political philosopher Karl Popper formulated them in his celebrated 1945 treatise, Open Society and Its Enemies .
The list of neocons and other prominent Republicans rushing toward one party system has been compiled by Eleanor Clift in Daily Beast at the end of June, and had obviously grown since then. Some of them, Max Boot in particular, are pretty explicit about the reasons for his desertion: in his May 8, 2016, article in LA Times , Boot announces simply that, “The Republican Party is Dead.”
Why? Because it is no longer led by the likes of McCain, Rubio and Romney, for whom Boot served as foreign policy advisor, but by Donald Trump, “the ignorant demagogue” intending to break up “the most successful alliance in history — NATO.” Furthermore, Trump has “kind words for tyrants such as Vladimir Putin.” Indeed, how can anyone in the US political establishment have kind words for Putin? We keep our kind words only for “our SOBs.”
The simplicity if not poverty of this argumentation makes it difficult to distinguish it from exaggerations, simplification, or ignorance, for which neocons consistently fault Trump. But neocons were never friends of irony; otherwise, they would not make statements about NATO’s spectacular success with a straight face.
The alliance that followed every whim of its paranoid members, such as Baltic Republics or Poland, and which intended to drag Ukraine into NATO pushing the world to the brink of nuclear annihilation? If this is success, how does one define failure? And talking about exaggerations: “The risk of Trump winning, however remote, represents the biggest national security threat that the United States faces today.”
As if being “dead” is not bad enough, Boot feels the need to drive a stake into the heart of the Republican Party: the party is stupid . Writing for NYT , the publication that never misses a chance to print something nasty about Republicans, Boot bemoans Republican complicity with Donald Trump phenomenon: “How the Stupid Party’ Created Donald Trump.”
Why can’t there be an alternative to the neocons’ doctrines of world domination in the form of a populist, nationalist movement that wants Americans to take care of Americans first, before overextending the country’s economic and military reach? And should this alternative be immediately called stupid?
Yet, for many neocons, it is Hillary or bust. James Kirchik goes out of his way trying to convince his fellow conservatives that it is Clinton who is a true conservative, and therefore, the last American hope: “It’s come to this: Hillary Clinton is the one person standing between America and the abyss.”
Referring to a profound conservative thinker, Michael Oakeshott, Kirchik observed that Oakeshott “defines the conservative disposition as one that ‘prefers small and limited innovations to large and indefinite’ ones and ‘favors a slow rather than a rapid pace, and pauses to observe current consequences and make appropriate adjustments.’ … Clinton is the candidate of the status quo, something that conservatives, by definition, are supposed to uphold.”
Kirchick fails to mention, however, that it is Clintons’ and Obama’s implementation of neocons’ policies which is nothing short of revolutionary. Military adventures, drastic regime changes, alliance redrawing, the willingness to sacrifice American lives and money in their pursuit, all these misguided policies that meet no political resistance –that’s what revolutionary.
Trump’s realism and pragmatic approach to politics appears as revolutionary only to the ideologues who refuse to pause in their drive to reshape the modern world according to their childish dreams.
This radical reworking of democratic and conservative process of slow incremental improvements into the hegemony of corporate sponsored elites is indeed revolutionary: a modern day version of Lenin’s hegemony of proletariat and its avant-garde, the elite party, all over again.
Hillary Clinton is as conservative as Brezhnev, who, in his failure to modify or change the radical agenda set up by the party of Lenin and Stalin, was indeed, a conservative. Only an intellectual of Kirchick’s magnitude can see something Oakeshottian in this embrace of one party system.
As someone who lived under one party rule in the former Soviet Union, I fully appreciate Popper’s rather minimalistic, but fundamental view of democracy, as the society that boasts a two party system and which guarantees the ease of deposing a ruling party in case of its failures.
Karl Popper insisted on the necessity and practical usefulness of the two-party system, so that the loss of power would lead to self-scrutiny and therefore improvement. While the two parties and their loyal press try to police each other, they keep each other busy, allowing the rest of the citizens to live in peace and pursue their goals without too much interference or control.
Obviously, all this goes down the drain with the one party system of globalists and the elites, the party that mocks and dismisses as ridiculous or deplorable anyone who happens to challenge it.
In his The Open Society and its Enemies Popper proposes a rather paradoxical, yet extremely sensible theory of a democratic society. What is important for Popper, is not the discovery of a perfect government, but a much more mundane and pragmatic question: how to avoid the blatantly bad ones. And democracy does it better than any other system. Insisting on this pragmatism, Popper highlights the following syllogism:
And we do not base our choice on the goodness of democracy, which may be doubtful, but solely on the evilness of a dictatorship, which is certain. Not only because the dictator is bound to make bad use of his power, but because a dictator, even if he were benevolent, would rob all others of their responsibility, and thus of their human rights and duties. This is a sufficient basis for deciding in favor of democracy—that is, a rule of law that enables us to get rid of the government. No majority, however large, ought to be qualified to abandon this rule of law.”
Popper wrote this elucidation for The Economist ; where he explains his paradoxical thought in the following manner:
In ‘The Open Society and its Enemies’ I suggested that an entirely new problem should be recognized as the fundamental problem of a rational political theory… how can we best avoid situations in which a bad ruler causes too much harm?
When we say that the best solution known to us is a constitution that allows a majority vote to dismiss the government, then we do not say the majority vote will always be right. We do not even say that it will usually be right.”
For Popper, the two-party system is a requirement not because any of these parties possesses the truth, but because they can lose, be removed from power, and thus given a chance to think things through and improve. Consequently, it is the very possibility of losing, and therefore improving, that makes democracies dynamic and progressive:
From the point of view of the new theory, Election day ought to be a Day of Judgment. As Pericles of Athens said in about 430 BC, ‘although only a few may originate a policy, we are all able to judge it.’ Of course, we may misjudge it; in fact, we often do. But if we have lived through a party’s period of power and have felt its repercussions, we have at least some qualifications for judgment…In order to make a majority government probable, we need something approaching a two-party system…. for such a system encourages a continual process of self-criticism by the two parties.”
For Popper, the two –party system is preferable since “an inclination to self-criticism after an electoral defeat is far more pronounced in countries with a two-party system than in those where there are several parties.” It is this self-criticism of a losing party; this desire to reform and modernize that provides healthy development for democracies.
The rule of the last two decades did not improve the economic life of the majority of Americans; in fact, it resulted in the drastic redistribution of wealth. It didn’t bring peace to the world stage. In fact, we are standing on the threshold of nuclear confrontation.
Yet, in the manner of the Germany in 1930s, we are rapidly overstepping democratic principles for the sake of one party and its global ambitions, of the consensus formulated by the PNAC, Council of Foreign Affairs, Atlantic Council, and other think tanks, along with the State Department, and the press, all of whom argue for the same policies all over again. Even now, weeks before the elections, we are reading about the same bureaucrats in Pentagon, CIA, or State Department, haggling for the place in the future Hillary cabinet.
It is those rascals that can be sent home, who are worthy of being voted in. And conversely, it is those rascals, who want to stay in power no matter how wrongheaded, dangerous, or unpopular their policies are that should be thrown out.
There is no absolute truth in politics, there is no end of history, and there is no one size fits all. Popper understood it much better than Fukuyama. History never ends: parties should continue to lose, and thus given a chance to come up with better policies for the next election. Only when Democratic Party is forced to take a back seat, it will contemplate on how it can improve, and offer new policies for the country.
Propping up Hillary as the best embodiment of the failed policies, allowing the same bankers, diplomats, and generals to metastasize into next election and hold the same key positions in the Pentagon, the State Department, CIA or Treasury, is ultimately, the embrace of one party system; it provides a profound disservice to the United States and its democratic tradition.
At the last presidential debate this electoral season, Hillary Clinton pretended to be appalled by Trump’s hypothetical refusal to accept the results of the November elections. Mass media echo chambers went into the override mode bemoaning Trump’s disrespect for the venerable political tradition of peaceful transition of power. Trump was never in power, however.
What is truly appalling is the real, not the hypothetical threat of turning US into a one party system, the system which is so entrenched that it can only mock, dismiss, and conspire to denigrate its opponents. Maybe Mr. Forrestal was right after all. Russians, or rather Soviets, are here, but they do not hack the emails, they write them. Rate this: | 1real |
TEXAS GOVERNOR Warns Feds To Stop Illegal Land Grab In Texas [Video] | We wrote about this particular and ongoing situation in Texas but it s getting more and more pressing. The feds are coming in and telling legal land owners who ve owned their ranches for decades that they ll be taking their land:LAND GRAB ALERT: Texas Rancher Could Lose 600 Acres To Feds [Video] KAUZ-TV: Newschannel 6 Now | Wichita Falls, TX Unlawful and wrong!In a letter to Bureau of Land Management (BLM) Director Neil Kornz, Texas Governor Greg Abbott wrote, The BLM should demonstrate that the federal government still respects private property rights and end this unconscionable land grab. The letter was sent regarding the ongoing battle between Texas landowners and the federal government.Abbott s letter references the battle between Texas landowners and the BLM first reported nationally by Breitbart Texas in April, 2014. At that time, then Texas Attorney General Abbott told Breitbart Texas in an exclusive interview, I am about ready to go to the Red River and raise a Come and Take It flag to tell the feds to stay out of Texas. Abbott sent a letter to Kornz on April 22 detailing the concerns over actions taken by the BLM to swoop in and take land that has been owned and cultivated by Texas landowners for generations. In the Texas Governor s newest letter to the federal agency, Abbott expressed the frustrations felt by many of the landowners who have been involved in this ongoing battle. Abbott wrote, Texas will not wait any longer. The governor reminded Kornz of his previous letters on this issue. My fellow Texans and I are still waiting for an answer, Abbott wrote. The BLM has yet to identify what land the federal government newly claims as its own. The BLM has yet to identify the legal basis for that claim. And the BLM has yet to identify the process by which Texans can protect their land and private property rights. Read more: Breitbart | 1real |
BREAKING: Melania Trump’s Immigration Records Made Public, Show Trump’s ULTIMATE Hypocrisy | Addicting Info | The Knowledge You Crave | on November 4, 2016 10:58 pm ·
GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump has taken a ridiculously hardline – and even bigoted – stance on immigration. He has promised to build a wall and force Mexico to pay for it, and he has said that he will erect “deportation forces” to root out and get rid of all people in the United States without proper documentation. Well, as we already knew, it turns out that The Donald is the ultimate hypocrite on this one.
According to the Associated Press , it turns out that Donald Trump’s wife Melania violated immigration laws by working illegally in the United States when she first arrived from her native Slovenia. Melania often modeled using just her first name, and was first granted entry into the country on a visitor’s visa, known as a B1/B2 visa. This occurred on August 27, 1996. Melania did not get a legal work visa until October 18, 1996. During the time when she was prohibited from working in the country, Melania made money on ten different modeling assignments, totaling upwards of $20,000. She got a green card in 2000, and became a naturalized citizen in 2006.
So, in other words, Melania Trump lied about her immigration story, as recently as Thursday, when she once again touted how a million percent legal immigration is the only way to go, and that this is how she did it. Melania said, in part, in her stump speech:
“As a young entrepreneur, I wanted to follow my dream to a place where freedom and opportunity were in abundance. So of course, I came here. Living and working in America was a true blessing, but I wanted something more. I wanted to be an American.”
Well, it appears that, as has long been suspected, that Melania Trump wasn’t as kosher in her immigration and work practices as she claims. The information obtained by the AP include, but are not limited to, her contract from Metropolitan International Management – a modeling agency. Also, there’s the ledgers from the agency, which is no longer in business, that shows Melania working during the time when she had the visitor’s visa, but no work visa. It seems to be a complicated story full of many attempts to cover up Melania’s wrongdoing, but it is certainly quite interesting. This would be why Melania Trump never released actual records regarding her initial immigration to the United States and her eventual path to citizenship. While it is unlikely that her citizenship is at risk, it certainly means that she committed immigration fraud. You can read more here at the Associated Press .
The long and short of it is this: Donald Trump launched his crazy bid for the presidency preying on the fears of the “other.” Namely, immigrants. That is the height of hypocrisy, seeing as how his own wife didn’t completely comply with immigration law. Hopefully this story, and the many other lies and cover-ups and shady dealings surrounding the Trump campaign break through the hypnotism that the demagogue has spun onto so many desperate citizens of this great country, and they figure out that they are falling for the biggest con of all time.
Featured image via Alex Wong/Getty Images Share this Article! Share on Facebook Author: Shannon Barber Shannon Barber is a self- described queer feminist and activist for racial equality, LGBT rights, women’s rights, and secular rights in America. She is a lifelong lover of words, though her educational background is in computer science. She currently writes for 2 liberal websites, and keeps her own humor blog for lesbians. She hopes to change the world, one mind at a time. Search | 1real |
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#BoycottGrammys… #TurnOffTheGrammys…Grammys Producer Encourages Stars To Get Political…TRASH TRUMP…Just Don’t Use “F-Bomb” Before 10 PM | In a fraught moment of political protest across the country, the live mic at televised award shows has become a potent weapon.As such, Grammy Awards producer Ken Ehrlich has a message for those who will take the stage on Sunday s ceremony: Bring it on.Ehrlich has no reservations about political messages or anti-President Trump statements flying during CBS three and a half hour Grammycast. Artists expressing passionate opinions about real-life issues are the stuff of memorable moments, he said. One of the tenets of our show is artistic freedom, and over the years we ve shown we do believe in it, Ehrlich told Variety. How many more times do we need to hear I d like to thank my publicist, my agent, my wife and kids. The great acceptance speeches are ones that have a point of view and are more personal. The only guidelines on speech that Ehrlich has to keep an eye (and ear) on is profanity, given the potential for CBS to be hit with FCC fines if F-bombs fly before 10 p.m. But almost everything else is fair game. One of the things I ve learned from working with artists for 40 years is that they are deep-thinking, vital individuals who have interests that cover a broad cover a broad spectrum of subjects and passions, he said. We should certainly allow for it on the broadcast. Ehrlich notes that the Grammy Awards as an institution has addressed issues of social justice and equality on the telecast in recent years. NYP | 1real |
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