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WAR ON WORDS: Facebook Censorship Widens, Website to Curate ‘Favored’ News | 21st Century Wire says The US media s neoMcCarthy-like witch hunt continues as social media giant Facebook creates a newly designed feature that allows the website to curate favored news in its News Feed section.A new feature called Collections created by Facebook appears to be yet another exercise in formalizing group think specifically designed to highlight approved mainstream news , while serving to push down or quell any political piece or issue which falls outside prescribed mainstream Western media talking points. The feature is called Collections and functions similarly to Snapchat s Discover section, which showcases news stories, listicles, videos, and other content submitted by handpicked media partners. (see report below)It s unclear just how far Facebook is prepared to go in filtering user content, but it appears that the social media platform is introducing a brand new level of algorithmic automated censorship that could potentially create a virtual blacklist of online media websites and articles something which could have a lasting impact on freedom of the press and free speech well into the future.In essence, Facebook s new restrictions smack of Orwellian thought control Over the past month, The Washington Post published an irresponsible propaganda piece that blamed the 2016 US election results on fake news dispensed via sophisticated Russian propaganda. These accusations of course were completely unfounded, deliberately feeding into a paranoid trial by media format that is no doubt echoed by US government sock puppet accounts that act as a digital firing squad by redirecting public perception.SEE ALSO: Washington Post Sloppy Journalism Blames Russia for Fake News Crisis and Trump s Win, While Pushing Neo-McCarthyismWhile the US mainstream media contends that fake news somehow altered the 2016 presidential election cycle, it s important to remember that the US government has some pedigree here, having been behind the creation of bogus social media accounts and personalities for years now.Back in 2011, The UK s Guardian reported that the US government via CENTCOM, was looking to gain a foothold over information shared on the internet through fake online personal accounts: The discovery that the US military is developing false online personalities known to users of social media as sock puppets could also encourage other governments, private companies and non-government organisations to do the same.The Centcom contract stipulates that each fake online persona must have a convincing background, history and supporting details, and that up to 50 US-based controllers should be able to operate false identities from their workstations without fear of being discovered by sophisticated adversaries . This is just one example. Who really knows how widespread this practice is.You can expect a litany of allegations to continue from the mainstream, along with their faux war on fake news sites which has been used deliberately to discredit and frame genuine investigative analysis in alternative media, its intended target. Western media s anti-Russian hyperbole has morphed and broadened somewhat, thanks to Facebook, Google and Twitter and the alphabet establishment news agencies, Washington has a new go-to scapegoat joining the tired old Russian hack meme independent media.Facebook s new tool to restrict certain posts has already created a backlash as several employees have recently quit the social media site Business Insider reports: Facebook has created a censorship tool to automatically suppress certain posts in specific geographic areas and several employees who worked on the project quit in dismay, reports the New York Times.This software would give third parties, like internet service providers, the ability to monitor Facebook for popular stories, and suppress them at will. Additional censorship will be administered via a web browser plug-in called the BS Detector promoted on the Google Chrome App Store which labels web articles along political lines.As readers can see, 21st Century Wire is at the top of the list of websites that will be defamed and censored here:https://github.com/selfagency/bs-detector/blob/master/chrome/data/data.json With the blessing of Washington, social engineers in the Silicon Valley will now begin parsing internet content into categories like Conspiracy Theory (anything which challenges any official version of events), Biased (alternative media opinion critical of the Establishment or government), Hate (any article which violates politically correct language), State Run (targeting Russia s RT and Iran s Press TV, but not the BBC, NPR, Voice of America, or Pentagon & CIA-affiliated CNN), and Junk Science (any content which challenges the UN party line on climate change . This level of social control is almost exactly a depicted in Huxley s dystopian classic, Brave New World.More from Business Insider below . Alex Heath Business InsiderFacebook is working on a new feature that will showcase lists of curated content from publishers directly in the News Feed, according to two people familiar with the project and internal documentation seen by Business Insider.The feature is called Collections and functions similarly to Snapchat s Discover section, which showcases news stories, listicles, videos, and other content submitted by handpicked media partners.Facebook has approached media and entertainment companies in recent weeks to create content for Collections, but has not given a time frame for when the feature will be made available.A Facebook spokesman declined to comment for this story.More from Business Insider here READ MORE MSM LIES AT: 21st Century Wire MSM FilesSUPPORT 21WIRE SUBSCRIBE NOW & BECOME A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV | 1real |
Boiler Room EP #120 – Scorched Earth Media: From RussiaGate to HillaryGate | Tune in to the Alternate Current Radio Network (ACR) for another LIVE broadcast of The Boiler Room tonight 6:00 PM PST | 8:00 PM CST | 9:00 PM EST for this special broadcast. Join us for uncensored, uninterruptible talk radio, custom-made for bar fly philosophers, misguided moralists, masochists, street corner evangelists, media-maniacs, savants, political animals and otherwise lovable rascals.Join ACR hosts Hesher and Spore along side Andy Nowicki (the Alt Right Novelist) and FunkSoul & Randy J (21WIRE & ACR contributors), for the hundred and twentieth episode of BOILER ROOM. Turn it up, tune in and hang with the ACR Brain-Trust for this weeks boil downs and analysis and the usual gnashing of the teeth of the political animals in the social reject club.This week on the show the ACR Brain-Trust is back with another meeting of the Social Reject Club in the No Friends Left Zone and the gang is discussing the Seymour Hersh audio tapes with all signs pointing to Seth Rich as the leak from inside the DNC to Wikileaks. The implications of this, obviously, being that so called Russia-gate should be renamed to Hillary-gate and traced the mainstream media s obsession with Russian Collusion back to the Presidential Debate back in October of 2016. A quick update on John McAfee s recovery from some form of attack and his new privacy phone s release. Not to mention the usual side tracks and strange rabbit holes we find ourselves in as we navigate the weeks media cycle, including sex robots, further degeneracy from the neo-left youth in Sweden and more.Direct Download Episode #120Please like and share the program and visit our donate page to get involved! Reference Links, for your consideration and research: | 1real |
Pope Francis ‘Deeply Saddened’ over ‘Barbaric Attack’ in Manchester | Pope Francis has sent a telegram condemning Monday night’s terror attack in Manchester, England, while expressing his condolences and prayers for victims and their families. [“His Holiness Pope Francis was deeply saddened to learn of the injury and tragic loss of life caused by the barbaric attack in Manchester, and he expresses his heartfelt solidarity with all those affected by this senseless act of violence,” the telegram reads. The terror attack, which has been claimed by the Islamic State terror group, took the lives of at least 22 people Monday night and left at least another 60 wounded when a suicide bomber blew himself up after a concert by pop star Ariana Grande. The Pope “commends the generous efforts of the emergency and security personnel, and offers the assurance of his prayers for the injured, and for all who have died,” the papal text states. “Mindful in a particular way of those children and young people who have lost their lives, and of their grieving families, Pope Francis invokes God’s blessings of peace, healing and strength upon the nation,” it concludes. The Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the attack, calling the Ariana Grande concert a “gathering of the Crusaders in the British city of Manchester. ” The ISIS press release referred to the children attending the show as “worshippers of the cross” while calling the attacker “a soldier of the Khalifa. ” According to British Prime Minister Theresa May, police have determined the identity of the suspected suicide bomber but cannot yet announce the attacker’s name. May condemned the suicide bombing as a “callous terrorist attack,” and said that it was “among the worst terrorism we have experienced in the United Kingdom. ” Follow Thomas D. Williams on Twitter Follow @tdwilliamsrome | 0fake |
OBAMA’S RACE WAR Spreads Like Cancer To London: Famous Blind Musician Weighs In [VIDEO] | Because blind people are probably experts on judging people based on skin color. No mention of the police officers killed over the two bloody days bloody of Black Lives Matter terrorism, starting with the Dallas massacre by racist former Houston Black Panther and ending up with concrete, Molotov cocktails and bricks being thrown at police officers heads during 5-hour shut down of major highway in MN Motown singer Stevie Wonder has told a huge crowd in London, that black lives matter because we are the original people of this world as the city descended into three days of chaos caused by Black Lives Matter demonstrations.The superstar did not, however, address the deaths of five white police officers who were slaughtered in Texas on Friday by a black activist who wanted to kill white people . All life does matter, but the reason that I say black lives matter is because we are the original people of this world, Mr. Wonder told the British Summer Time Festival in Hyde Park. So in essence, everyone here has some black in you. You ve all got some soul in you so stop denying your culture, he added.The singer warned the 65,000-strong crowd of this horrible time we re living in as he opened his set. Adding: I encourage you to choose love over hate. It s just that simple. Choose love over hate, right over wrong, kind over meanness. Hope over no hope at all .On the same weekend as Mr. Wonder s statements, London descended into chaos as Black Lives Matter shut down Parliament Square on Friday, Brixton on Saturday, and Oxford Street and the U.S. embassy on Sunday.Watch the stupidity as Londoners at BLM protest compare apartheid in S. Africa to discrimination against blacks in America:Roads were blocked for up to six hours as activists climbed roofs and demonstrated about racist police and police violence in solidarity with our American brothers and sisters .Via: Breitbart | 1real |
Hillary Clinton’s Voodoo Doll Obsession Revealed: ‘Stick them full of pins’ | Hillary Clinton has a thing for voodoo her new book describes a voodoo moment but she s gone down this path before. Who does this? Hillary Clinton reveals she was tempted to make voodoo dolls of certain members of the news media and Congress, and then stick them full of pins. So Clinton wrote in her 494-page new memoir, What Happened, which was released today.In the book, Clinton complained that the attacks against her use of the private email server were untrue or wildly overstated, and motivated by partisan politics. CLINTON SPOKE ABOUT HER VOODOO DOLL OBSESSION:It was a dumb mistake. But an even dumber scandal. It was like quicksand: the more you struggle, the deeper you sink. At times, I thought I must be going crazy. Other times, I was sure it was the world that had gone nuts. Sometimes I snapped at my staff. I was tempted to make voodoo dolls of certain members of the press and Congress and stick them full of pins. Mostly, I was furious at myself.VOODOO MOMENT #2!In her previous memoir, Hard Choices, Clinton described attending a voodoo spirit ceremony with a voodoo priest during her honeymoon with Bill Clinton in Haiti in 1975.SHE SPOKE ABOUT VOODOO IN HER MEMOIR HARD CHOICES : One of the most memorable experiences of our trip was meeting a local voodoo priest named Max BeauvoirHe invited us to attend one of his ceremonies. We saw Haitians seized with spirits walk on hot coals, bite the heads off live chickens, and chew glass, spit out the shards, and not bleed. At the end of the ceremony, the people claimed the dark spirits had departed.BILL SPOKE ABOUT THE VISIT TOO:In his memoir My Life, the former president wrote a vivid account of a trip the couple s first trip to Haiti in 1975:A voodoo priest gave what Clinton described as a brief course in voodoo theology. And then the late-afternoon ceremony began. Clinton wrote: After several minutes of rhythmic dancing to pounding drums, the spirits arrived, seizing a woman and a man. The man proceeded to rub a burning torch all over his body and walk on hot coals without being burned. The woman, in a frenzy, screamed repeatedly, then grabbed a live chicken and bit its head off. Then the spirits left and those who had been possessed fell to the ground. Is this supposed to make the Clintons more relatable to the voodoo community? Haitians are probably sticking pins in Bill and Hillary voodoo dolls after the Clintons robbed them of funds raised after the earthquake in Haiti.Read more: Breitbart News | 1real |
Trump or Clinton? | Recipient Email =>
Enemies of the United States are joyously watching its upcoming elections that are exposing this once great nation as deeply corrupt. It’s as if a huge rock has been turned over, exposing the swarming, slithering underside of America’s political system.
For those who admire America, like this writer, this week is a time to weep for the republic.
We see two candidates who are utterly unfit for the highest office: Hilary Clinton, engulfed by scandals, and blustering TV mogul Donald Trump, a man of profound shallowness who advocates Islamophobia, torture and environmental ignorance.
Hillary Clinton’s core supporters are black food stamp and welfare recipients, and legions of women who are voting simply by gender. Trump’s core supporters are tax-paying workers who have watched Wall Street loot America’s economy and send their jobs abroad.
Like many people, I’ve been tearing my hair trying to decide for whom to vote. I now favor Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson who gained worldwide fame as a dolt when asked about the destruction of Aleppo, Syria. ‘What’s Aleppo?’ asked this New Mexico Bismarck.
Now that’s the kind of president I’d like to see. No more regime-changers and empire-builders. No more Imperial America. No more crusaders or world super power bullying. No more mucking around the world and acting as the globe’s enforcer. Let’s forget Aleppo, Beirut, Gaza, Tehran, Islamabad, the South China Sea and North Korea.
We can no longer afford to play ‘Game of Thrones.’ We’ve got to rebuild bridges and airports, and clean the Augean Stables of Congress, America’s most corrupt institution. We just spent $2.8 billion on roads in remote Afghanistan while our own highways are crumbling.
Such is the folly of imperialism. The old Soviet Union did something similar, allowing its domestic infrastructure and industry to fall apart while adventuring in Afghanistan, and deploying 55,000 tanks in the Red Army. These tanks were useful in putting down the heroic Hungarian Revolution of 1956 – 60 years ago this week – but for nothing else.
But I fear that whoever wins the US election will very quickly face major problems for which they are woefully unprepared. Most obvious is the bloody mess the US has created across the Mideast.
I just learned that Trump recently named, as Mideast advisor, a notorious Muslim-hating fanatic, who is a Lebanese Maronite Christian fascist. His advice will likely be to invade Lebanon and Syria and kill more Muslims.
For her part, Hilary Clinton has long been a wholly-financed subsidiary of Wall Street and the mighty Israel lobby. Just have a look at the list of her largest donors. Her pro-Israel supporters are urging her to create a so-called ‘no-fly’ zone over Syria, which is code for full-scale war against Syrian government and Russian forces. Guess who will benefit from Syria’s destruction and disintegration?
This supreme idiocy could lead directly to nuclear war with Russia, something I’ve been warning against for years.
There has been no mention in the campaign of rebuilding the Arab world, ravaged by western imperial interventions. Little mention of some 12 million Syrian refugees created by the Saudis and US. Nor of five million Palestinian refugees, and who knows how many in Iraq, Libya, Somalia and now war-ravaged Yemen. And not a word about America’s stalemated war in Afghanistan. Nothing about a shaky Europe. Nor how to accommodate China’s rise.
Instead, we’ve heard tirades against the phony ISIS, which is funded by the Saudis, and Hilary Clinton’s absurd claims that wicked Vlad Putin is somehow behind America’s foreign disasters. It’s stupid and shameful demagoguery.
At least Trump has the good sense to urge that we end our pointless confrontation with Russia and scale back the unaffordable American Empire. Few Americans know that almost half their government’s budget is spent on the military.
Besides disgusting many Americans, the presidential campaign has made the US an object of derision and embarrassment around the globe. Many analysts claim that this grand fiasco marks the beginning of the end of US global hegemony. It’s certainly the beginning of the beginning.
This week alone, the Philippines and Malaysia, two staunch American allies, edged closer to China’s camp. Neither Trump no Clinton had a care for America’s reputation during their ugly debates.
My fear is that the election vitriol will not end America’ shame and misery but continue on, like an acid eating into the national fabric. (Reprinted from EricMargolis.com by permission of author or representative) | 1real |
North Miami Police Officers Shoot Man Aiding Patient With Autism - The New York Times | A black man said the police in North Miami, Fla. shot him on Monday as he tried to help a patient with autism who had run away from the group home where he works. The man, Charles Kinsey, 47, who identified himself as a caretaker of the patient, was on a city street with the patient when officers arrived, a lawyer for Mr. Kinsey said. When the officers drew their weapons, Mr. Kinsey told them there was no need for firearms, lay down in the middle of the street and tried to explain what had happened, the lawyer said. The video shows him trying to calm the patient, urging him to sit and to lie down. “All he has is a toy truck — a toy truck,” Mr. Kinsey said, according to video obtained by the Miami television station WSVN. “I am a behavior therapist at a group home,” he added. But then an officer opened fire, striking Mr. Kinsey in the leg. The North Miami police did not immediately respond to phone and email messages seeking comment on Thursday. The North Miami police chief, Gary Eugene, who held a news conference on Thursday, said an investigation would be led by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. Chief Eugene said, “The law requires us to gather every fact and resolve every question. ” No gun was recovered at the scene, he added. On Friday, North Miami leaders identified the officer as Jonathan Aledda, a member of the SWAT team, and said he had been placed on administrative leave without pay, according to The Miami Herald. Another officer was also placed on leave for allegedly giving misleading statements during the inquiry. In a preliminary statement Tuesday, the North Miami Police Department said officers had responded to a call about “an armed male suspect threatening suicide. ” “Arriving officers attempted to negotiate with the two men on the scene, one of whom was later identified as suffering from autism,” the statement said. “At some point during the negotiation, one of the responding officers discharged his weapon. The video shows Mr. Kinsey in a and shorts with his back on the ground and his hands in the air. Seated next to him on a street is another man, who Mr. Kinsey says is the patient he was trying to help. Mr. Kinsey tried to defuse the situation, his lawyer, Hilton Napoleon, said. “He asked the police officer, ‘Why did you shoot me?’ He told my client, ‘I don’t know,’” Mr. Napoleon said. Clint Bower, the president and chief executive of MACtown Inc. where Mr. Kinsey works, expressed frustration at how the police responded, but praised Mr. Kinsey for his actions. “Needless to say, after viewing the video, my employee Charles Kinsey, behavioral support professional, is a hero. He saved the young man with autism from being shot,” Mr. Bower said in an email on Wednesday. “He put his own life at risk, which is evident in the video. ” Mr. Napoleon said he met with city officials on Wednesday and had discussed the possibility of a settlement. Whatever the resolution, he said, the city should start by censuring the officer. “The best thing that the City of North Miami can do is come out and condemn the officer,” he said. . In a statement on Thursday, the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida said: “We have to stem the tide of violence, both nationwide and here in Florida. It starts with holding people accountable for their actions. There must be a thorough and independent investigation into this shooting that covers both whether officers violated internal use of deadly force policies and whether criminal charges should be brought. ” | 0fake |
Stanford University Confirms Democratic Election Fraud
| A bombshell study released by Stanford University confirms evidence of election fraud during the 2016 Democratic Party primaries.
According to a paper released this week entitled, Are we witnessing a dishonest election?, a state comparison based on the voting procedures used during the election reveals endemic election fraud within the system.
Given the stakes in the outcome of the American presidential elections, ensuring the integrity of the electoral process is of the utmost importance.
Are the results we are witnessing in the 2016 primary elections trustworthy? While Donald Trump enjoyed a clear and early edge over his Republican rivals, the Democratic contest between former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Senator Bernard Sanders has been far more competitive.
At present, Secretary Clinton enjoys an apparent advantage over Sanders. Is this claimed advantage legitimate?
We contend that it is not, and suggest an explanation for the advantage: States that are at risk for election fraud in 2016 systematically and overwhelmingly favor Secretary Clinton. We provide converging evidence for this claim.
First, we show that it is possible to detect irregularities in the 2016 Democratic Primaries by comparing the states that have hard paper evidence of all the placed votes to states that do not have this hard paper evidence. Second, we compare the final results in 2016 to the discrepant exit polls.
Furthermore, we show that no such irregularities occurred in the 2008 competitive election cycle involving Secretary Clinton against President Obama.
As such, we find that in states wherein voting fraud has the highest potential to occur, systematic efforts may have taken place to provide Secretary Clinton with an exaggerated margin of support. | 1real |
Samsung scion fights back as legal appeal begins | SEOUL (Reuters) - The heir to South Korea s Samsung Group, convicted of bribing the country s former president, appeared in a packed court on Thursday for the first day of arguments in the appeal of his five-year jail term for corruption. The 49-year-old Jay Y. Lee was convicted by a lower court in August of bribing Park Geun-hye, who was dismissed as president in March. The court decided the bribe helped Lee strengthen his control of the crown jewel in the conglomerate, Samsung Electronics (005930.KS), one of the world s biggest technology companies. The appellate court hearing the appeal is likely to try to rule on the case by next February, legal experts said. Whichever side loses could take the case to the Supreme Court, the final court of appeal in South Korea. Lee s presence marked his first public appearance since the August ruling. He did not speak during the proceedings other than giving his birth date and address. The lower court in August had ruled that while Lee never asked for Park s help directly, the fact that a 2015 merger of two Samsung affiliates did help cement Lee s control over Samsung Electronics implied he was asking for the president s help to strengthen his control of the firm. Lee, sitting mostly expressionless in a dark suit without tie, listened to hours-long PowerPoint presentations by both sides arguing over the lower court s logic that Lee s actions implied solicitation for help from Park by providing financial support for Park s close friend and confidante Choi Soon-sil. On Thursday, the defense strongly challenged that logic. In order for implied solicitation to exist, there needed to have been a level of wordless understanding between Lee and the former president that transcended speaking, said Lee In-jae, Jay Y. Lee s lead counsel. The prosecution, which has lodged a cross-appeal against the lower court ruling that found Lee innocent on some charges, said the court s decision to not acknowledge explicit solicitation for Park s help from Samsung despite the evidence found did not make sense . The defense, which spent much of its time during the initial trial refuting the prosecution s individual charges, said it will focus on a few key arguments in the appeal - including whether there was in fact an ordinary type of bribery as defined under South Korean law, which says only civil servants come under the statute. Park s friend Choi was not a civil servant. The lower court found that Samsung s financial support of 7.2 billion won ($6.27 million) to sponsor the equestrian career of Choi s daughter constituted an ordinary type of bribery, as it can be considered the same as she (Park) herself receiving it. The defense is expected to strongly challenge this by saying that the prosecution, on whom the burden of proof lies, has not proved collusion between Park and Choi. The appeal hearing continues on Oct 19. | 0fake |
WATCH: S.E. Cupp Destroys Trump Adviser’s ‘Fantasy’ That Women Support Donald Trump | A pawn working for Donald Trump claimed that women respect and are voting for the Republican nominee in November, and S.E. Cupp took her to the woodshed for it.During a panel discussion on CNN with Carol Costello, Cupp began by explaining the stark reality that the only voters Trump can count on right now are old white men, which is not nearly enough to catapult him to victory over Hillary Clinton. There s no outreach anymore, Cupp said. It s as if he s given up on them. And I just wonder if there are enough old male guy old white guys in the country to elect him. I don t think so. But Trump supporter Tana Goertz, who appeared on the Donald s reality show The Apprentice, made the absurd claim that not only is Trump s campaign reaching out to women but that the effort is succeeding. How? Cupp asked. No you re not, actually you re not, she continued. There s math. There s polls. Indeed, polls show Trump is getting destroyed by Hillary Clinton right now and women are leading the way. Over 70 percent of women view Trump unfavorably and if the election were held today Hillary would win a higher percentage of women than President Obama did in 2012.But Goertz continued to pretend that their effort is working, citing her role in the campaign as proof. Oh, really? Oh, I m sorry, I m on the campaign and I m actually part of the women s initiative, so that s weird, Goretz said, which drew a truthful jab from Cupp: There s polls that show you re not reaching women. That s just math. I m sorry to break it to you. Costello jumped in and asked Goertz for specifics on how Trump is reaching out to women, and her answer left a lot to be desired. The answer to that is he is having people like myself, his lovely daughter Ivanka, other strong Republican leaders, hold leadership conferences where we are getting out in front of large audiences of women who would like to hear why women like myself, why women like Ivanka, why other wonderful strong independent women who are making their own living, who are successful, who are highly educated, are voting and respect and are working for Donald Trump. In short, Goertz could only name herself and Trump s daughter as examples of women who support Donald Trump. And Cupp was quick to jump all over her for it. That s what we call anecdotal evidence. That s anecdotal and of course, there s some women supporting Donald Trump, that s a fact. But to ignore the fact that 70 percent of women do not like Donald Trump and that he has a huge gap between him and Hillary Clinton among women voters is a fantasy land. Here s the video via YouTube.Trump s campaign is still in denial that they are getting their asses handed to them in the polls. And the fact that Trump and his supporters are so delusional that they really believe women are coming around to supporting him is further proof that Trump s campaign lives in the fantasy land Cupp mentioned.Featured image via screen capture | 1real |
Patrick Henningsen LIVE with guest Sean Stone – ‘Project for a New Global Government?’ | Join Patrick every week here at 21WIRE.TV for news, views and analysis on all top stories domestically and abroad THIS WEEK: Episode 4 The New World Order Did Great Britain regain control of its former American colonies by stealth? From Cecil Rhodes and his Round Table, to H.G. Wells, to Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski many have worked to steer the world beyond the modern nation state and into Technetronic Era of global government. But to what end?Host Patrick Henningsen talks to Sean Stone, author of the new book, New World Order: A Strategy for Imperialism. Listen: END 927 Download Link START 999 Download Link Download this podcast END 999 Download Link This program broadcasts LIVE every Wednesday night from 8pm to 9pm MST, right after the Savage Nation, on Independent Talk 1100 KFNX over the terrestrial AM band across the greater Phoenix and central Arizona region, and live over global satellite and online via www.1100kfnx.com.READ MORE NWO NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire NWO Files | 1real |
More Footage Of Operation High Jump With Hitler! | More Footage Of Operation High Jump With Hitler! page: 1 link Hi everyone. This was on my youtube feed today and thought I would share it and maybe get some feedback. Thru all my years of paranormal and alien spaceship research and experiences, I came to the conclusion that it was all man made. After watching this video, I am even more convinced of them being man made. There is so much technology they aren't telling us.Well, I hope you get a chance to view this and let me know what you think. Are they man made? a reply to: childoffather They knew about the technology were using right now in the 50's and 60's. I have heard the public are ten years behind what they know technologically. 40 to 60 years ago...we have come a long way baby. Not sure about the moon landing though. lol. link originally posted by: carewemust I guess there was no reason to HOAX a fake Moon landing, since the technology was available, even before the 1960's. Was probably even more refined by 1967. That's not true. We don't understand the dynamics of space so what we can do outside of the atmosphere and inside of the atmosphere we have no idea. How the moonlanding was a hoax we also do not understand. It could be a coverup of some sort or another. link a reply to: childoffather factor the exponential growth of tech into the equation and start from the early 1930's instead of the 90's. originally posted by: Darkmadness originally posted by: carewemust I guess there was no reason to HOAX a fake Moon landing, since the technology was available, even before the 1960's. Was probably even more refined by 1967. That's not true. We don't understand the dynamics of space so what we can do outside of the atmosphere and inside of the atmosphere we have no idea. How the moonlanding was a hoax we also do not understand. It could be a coverup of some sort or another. Or a distraction...h . | 1real |
Lifting weights could ward off dementia and make you smarter | Lifting weights could ward off dementia and make you smarter
by: Vicki Batts Tags: weight lifting , dementia , brain health (NaturalNews) There are many reasons to partake in strength training; weight-baring exercises are known for their health benefits. But, could lifting weights also boost your brain? Recent research indicates that may just be the case.To begin the study, researchers asked a group of people aged 55 to 86 to engage in a mix of weight lifting and brain training exercises. All of the people who partook in the study had been diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment, which is a precursor to Alzheimer's disease , and is an early sign of dementia.While this particular study did not examine whether the benefits of exercise could be extended to the general population, the results were quite impressive. Published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society , the study found that weight-baring exercises could indeed provide some brain benefits. The researchers found a casual relationship between an increase in muscle strength and an increase in brain function. On that basis, the team recommended that more people begin a strength training regime so that the world's aging population can hopefully be a little healthier. It is currently projected that about 135 million people will have dementia by the year 2050.The same team behind this most recent research also published a paper in 2014 that revealed that weight training provided cognitive benefits to just about every area of the brain – something cognitive training failed to do.While discussing their most recent data, one of the study's researchers, Dr. Yorgi Mavros of Sydney University, commented, "What we found in this follow-up study is that the improvement in cognition function was related to their muscle strength gains. The stronger people became, the greater the benefit for their brain."For the strength training, study participants were asked to lift weights that were equivalent to about 80 percent of their maximum capacity, twice a week for six months – similar to the way in which many athletes train. And, as the participants got stronger, the amount of weight they lifted went up as well, in order to maintain the desired 80 percent of their maximum effort.Brain scans revealed that certain regions of the brain actually increased in size for those who took part in the exercise regime. Dr. Mavros says that the benefits were profound enough to warrant recommending weight training for everyone."The more we can get people doing resistance training like weight lifting , the more likely we are to have a healthier ageing population," he told the Independent . Dr. Mavros also added that the best way to ensure that you get the most benefit from exercise is by maintaining a regular routine. Exercising frequently, and with some intensity, is key to getting the most out of what you're doing.This new research is not the first to suggest that exercise can provide benefits to brain health . The body of research linking physical exercise to better cognitive function has only continued to grow over the last several years. Science has indicated that in addition to better mental health, exercise can also promote both better memory and concentration.Dr. James Pickett, head of research at the Alzheimer's Society, also had a few things to say about this new study. He noted, "New research is beginning to unravel how physical exercise may have benefits for the brain as people get older. This study suggests that people with minor memory and thinking problems, known as mild cognitive impairment, may benefit from weight training to improve their brain health."Pickett also noted that while it is not yet clear if exercise can reverse dementia, they do know that it is one of the most important factors in its prevention. Along with being active, he says that not smoking and eating a healthy, balanced diet are all essential to reducing the risk. Sources: | 1real |
F.B.I. Investigating if Fatal Plane Crash in East Hartford Was Intentional - The New York Times | The F. B. I. is investigating whether the crash of a small plane in East Hartford, Conn. that killed a passenger on Tuesday was intentional, according to four federal law enforcement officials. The pilot, who survived the crash, told investigators that it was not an accident. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because the investigation was continuing. Officials identified the passenger as Feras M. Freitekh, 28. Public records show he had lived in Orland Hills, Ill. about 35 miles southwest of Chicago. Federal Aviation Administration records show he was issued a private pilot certificate on May 29, 2015, and was certified to fly a plane. The F. A. A. said the Piper PA 34 crashed around 3:40 p. m. on Main Street as it was on a final approach to Airport in Hartford. Mayor Marcia Leclerc of East Hartford said the plane took off from a flight school at the airport. The police chief of East Hartford, Scott M. Sansom, said during a news conference that the police sought the help of the Federal Bureau of Investigation because the plane went down near a Pratt Whitney factory on Main Street, which he described as being “critical infrastructure. ” The company, which has its headquarters in East Hartford, is a global manufacturer of jet engines for commercial, military and general aviation aircraft. Ray Hernandez, a spokesman for the company, said in an email on Tuesday that the company was aware of the crash and that it did “not appear at this time that any Pratt Whitney employees or contractors were involved. ” The mayor said the pilot, who was interviewed by detectives, was taken to Bridgeport Hospital with serious burns. Two people who were in a minivan near the crash had minor injuries and were taken to a hospital, the police chief said. Officials from the Federal Aviation Administration were at the site on Tuesday, and members of the National Transportation Safety Board were expected to arrive on Wednesday morning, he added. | 0fake |
Netanyahu’s contempt for President Obama | It would not surprise me if, at the next Republican National Convention, Benjamin Netanyahu took a seat in the delegates-from-abroad section. The Israeli leader has both allied and associated himself with congressional Republicans who differ with President Obama over whether to impose additional sanctions on Iran and who also — let’s not beat around the bush — hate his guts. Their foreign policy is actually a domestic one: to destroy the president.
Whether this is political or personal — or a combination of the two — is beside the point. Whatever the case, when Netanyahu accepted John Boehner’s invitation to address a joint session of Congress in March, he did so without informing the White House. Boehner, too, bypassed the White House. As a result, Netanyahu will come and go and not meet with the president.
Boehner insists that, as speaker of the House, he has the standing to issue an invitation to a foreign leader on his own. That’s debatable. He is, after all, elected by the Republican caucus, not by the full House and not, significantly, by the American people. He knew what this invitation would look like. This is high school stuff, a stunt unworthy of even Newt Gingrich.
I stand with the president on this sanctions matter. Additional sanctions may drive the Iranians from the table. The Europeans may go with them. Let’s give the talks some more time.
I stand with Netanyahu in worrying about a president who has been awfully twitchy in his foreign policy. His faux threat to take Syria to task if it used chemical weapons in its civil war — the famous “red line” — turned out to be a red-faced embarrassment. It has cost Obama much more than it cost Bashar al-Assad.
But what concerns me most is how Netanyahu threatens to harm the bipartisan understanding and support of Israel. The prime minister has never been able to hide his disdain for Obama. In May 2011, he made Obama squirm before the TV cameras as he lectured him about Middle East matters in the Oval Office. It was, simply, no way to treat the president of the United States.
Accepting Boehner’s invitation sent the same message of contempt. I know Netanyahu sees the Iranian nuclear program as an existential threat to Israel, but that does not excuse his boorish manners. I am an ardent supporter of Israel, but I am also an American: Do not insult my president!
My feelings, however, are immaterial. What matters above all is the possibility that support of Israel will become a partisan political issue in the United States. It may come as a surprise, but Zionism was once beloved by the American and European left. (The British Labour Party even supported transferring Palestinians out of what is now Israel — a policy that changed once Labour got to govern.) Now, though, the European left has abandoned Israel, adoring the Palestinian cause with a striking naivete.
The American left is not quite as robustly anti-Israel, but the trend is unmistakable. Even some American Jews — especially the younger generation — are either cooler toward Israel or indifferent. The Holocaust has faded as an emotional rallying point, and with both an intermarriage rate well over 50 percent and a declining population, the American Jewish community is both contracting and, inevitably, losing clout. For many young Jews as well as non-Jews, Israel’s right-wing government is hardly attractive. It’s been many years since Harry Belafonte sang “Hava Nagila.”
A generation of Americans who support gay rights, same-sex marriage and reproductive freedom and who fear global warming are going to wonder about an Israeli prime minister who embraces a speaker of the House who personifies all they loathe. Israel should not become yet another right-wing issue, joining such bizarre causes as the right to pollute the atmosphere or to turn millions of immigrants into fugitives.
Going back to the very formation of the state, Israel has enjoyed deep bipartisan support in America — neither a Republican nor Democratic issue. There’s no mystery here. Israel is a democracy, a beleaguered one at that, whose creation is yet another desert miracle. Its cinematic virtues are manifest. It’s a great story.
Now, though, some damage has been done. Netanyahu will come and speak to Congress and make his case — the one he has made time and time again — for additional sanctions on Iran. But if, in the end, action needs to be taken against Iran, Israel will need the support of all Americans. He has, with his impetuousness and contempt, made that harder to get. | 0fake |
Czech vote winner Babis wants active EU role, not favoring government with extremists | PRAGUE (Reuters) - The Czech Republic must seek partners beyond the central European Visegrad Group to find common ground on issues including migration and food quality, Czech parliamentary election winner Andrej Babis told Reuters. He said the country needs to seek an active role in the European Union and look for allies for a common goal of halting illegal migration. The billionaire businessman, who won 29.6 percent of the vote in this weekend s election, is against deeper EU integration and adoption of the euro, and has raised concerns he may join Poland or Hungary on a collision course with the EU. But he insisted on Saturday that the ANO party which he leads was pro-European and ready to take on an active role in the EU. We have to prepare topics, propose to the European Council (of EU leaders) what we want to change. Double food quality, solution to migration, the fight against migration and other issues, Babis told Reuters in a brief interview at ANO headquarters after the election results were counted. We certainly have an ally in Austria, Mr Kurz, who has the same view as we do on migration, he said, referring to Austrian conservative election victor Sebastian Kurz. The Visegrad group must find other allies, we need Austria and other countries, in the Balkans, or Slovenia, Croatia and perhaps others, Babis added. ANO won 78 seats in the 200-seat lower house and will need partners to form a majority. Several parties have however rejected joining an ANO-led government because they say Babis poses a threat to democracy due to his accumulation of business and political power. Some said they could not join a cabinet led by Babis personally because he faces fraud charges over a 2-million-euro subsidy a decade ago. He denies wrongdoing. This has led to the possibility that, failing other options, Babis may form a government which would depend on parliamentary support from the Communist Party or the far-right, anti-EU Freedom and Direct Democracy party. Babis said this was something he did not want to do. I do not want to cooperate with them, he told Reuters. We have invited everyone for talks. We want to hear all arguments at a table; the arguments they have (mainstream parties against joining a coalition) ... they don t need to worry when they come with us. | 0fake |
Cuba calls Trump's U.N. address 'unacceptable and meddling' | HAVANA (Reuters) - Cuba on Tuesday slammed U.S. President Donald Trump s latest comments about the island as disrespectful, unacceptable and meddling, while reiterating it was not involved in the alleged incidents that had harmed U.S. diplomats in Havana. The sharply worded Foreign Ministry statement came after U.S. and Cuban delegations met in Washington to discuss bilateral relations, the first such high-level meeting between the Cold War foes since Trump took office in January. Their meeting took place on the same day Trump addressed the United Nations General Assembly in New York, calling Cuba corrupt and destabilizing. He also said he would not lift the U.S. trade embargo on Cuba until it made fundamental reforms. Cuba said it had voiced strong protest against his comments, as well against his new policy toward the Communist-run nation. The Republican president announced in June a partial rollback of the U.S.-Cuban detente forged by his Democratic predecessor, Barack Obama. In the wake of the disrespectful, unacceptable and meddling statements made by President Donald Trump in his address to the U.N. General Assembly at a time when the U.S.-Cuba Bilateral Commission was sitting in session, the Cuban delegation voiced a strong protest, the Foreign Ministry statement said. U.S.-Cuban relations have become especially strained since the State Department said last month its personnel in Havana had experienced physical symptoms from what it could only describe as incidents. The symptoms ranged from hearing loss to mild brain injury, a State Department official said last week, adding that the toll of victims had risen to 21 people linked to the U.S. Embassy. Several Canadians were also affected. Cuba has denied any involvement and the United States has not blamed it, although Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said on Sunday it could close its embassy in response. Cuba has never perpetrated or will ever perpetrate actions of this nature, and has never permitted or will ever permit any third-party use of its territory for this purpose, Cuba s Foreign Ministry said. The Cuban authorities have shown keen interest in both clarifying this matter. | 0fake |
Cruz eyes insurance via Obamacare, a law he vows to scrap (+video) | With the wife of the GOP presidential candidate having taken an unpaid leave of absence from her job, the family will soon lose access to health insurance.
Will Trump's plan to register Muslims make it to The White House?
Tesla under Trump: How will electric cars fare under the next president?
Sen. Ted Cruz, his wife Heidi, and their two daughters Catherine, left, and Caroline, right, wave on stage after he announced his campaign for president on Monday at Liberty University.
Sen. Ted Cruz could soon be buying his family's health care coverage through the Affordable Care Act, a law the Republican presidential candidate has vowed to repeal should he win the White House.
Sen. Cruz formally launched his presidential campaign on Monday, and his wife, Heidi Cruz, began an unpaid leave of absence from her job as a managing director in the Houston office of Goldman Sachs. That meant the family would soon lose access to health insurance through Mrs. Cruz's job, triggering a need for the Cruz family to find a new policy.
The first-term senator from Texas said he is looking at options available on a health insurance exchange, or a clearinghouse of policies available to Americans who don't receive coverage through their employers. The Democrats' health care law, also known as Obamacare, created the exchange system.
Under an amendment to the law crafted by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), the government can only offer members of Congress and their staff health care insurance that's sold through an exchange.
"We will presumably go on the exchange and sign up for health care, and we're in the process of transitioning over to do that," Cruz said in an interview with The Des Moines Register.
Cruz could go without insurance, or his family could get its coverage directly from an insurance company at what would likely be a far higher rate than is available via an exchange. Doing so would mean Cruz would not get the contribution from his employer to help offset the full cost of his coverage.
Asked about his plans for health care insurance on Tuesday, Cruz's staff initially pointed reporters to his interview with the Register. Several hours later, Rick Tyler, a Cruz spokesman, said Cruz and his family had not yet settled on an option or the financial implications of such a choice.
"Let's let them make a decision on what coverage they'll get before we start speculating on every variable," Mr. Tyler said.
Cruz has been a vocal critic of the health care law and, in 2013, set in motion a partial government shutdown as part of an unsuccessful effort to choke off funding for the law.
In his campaign kick-off speech, Cruz pledged to dismantle the law. His advisers said that remains his plan and pointed to his comments to the newspaper from Iowa, which hosts the lead-off caucuses in early 2016.
"I believe in 2017, a new president, a Republican president, will sign legislation repealing every word of it," Cruz told the Register.
Democrats highlighted that Cruz is now enrolling in a program he frequently criticizes.
"The Affordable Care Act, by design, helps Americans who have gaps in employment get coverage, and it's working," Democratic National Committee spokeswoman Holly Shulman said. "We encourage others to follow presidential candidate Ted Cruz to www.healthcare.gov and get covered." | 0fake |
Clinton Foundation Didn’t Report $20 Million In Foreign Donations | Gosh, I wonder why The Clinton Foundation has come under fire in the past for foreign donations:A previous donor, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, has given between $10 million and $25 million since the foundation was created in 1999.This is all a question of ethics both for the donations to possibly curry favor with Clinton and the omission of lots and lots of money .The Clinton Foundation failed to report $20 million in donations from governments to the Internal Revenue Service, newly refiled tax returns show.Reuters reported that the foundation disclosed the $20 million it received from governments, most of them foreign, between 2010 and 2013 when it and a spin-off organization refiled tax returns from six years to fix errors.The Bill, Hillary, & Chelsea Clinton Foundation did not previously separate out its donations from governments on old tax returns as is mandated by the IRS.The foundation refiled tax returns from 2010, 2011, 2012, and 2013 and a charity spun off from the foundation, the Clinton Health Access Initiative, refiled its own returns from 2012 and 2013 after both were found to have made errors reporting funds from foreign governments. The revelations about inaccuracies came just as Hillary Clinton, a Democratic candidate for president, endured scrutiny for the millions of dollars that her family foundation has received from foreign governments.Via: WFB | 1real |
CNN Liberal Anchor Freaks Out At Navy SEAL When He Asks For TRUTH….You Won’t Believe The Reaction! [Video] | A Navy SEAL Carl Higbie was blasted and screeched at by a CNN anchor who was shocked that Higbie asked for more evidence and truth in the Trump controversy. Yikes! She s got snowflake written all over her. It s just how the left rolls you have to march in lock-step with what they believe to be true even if it s not true. Just go with it, right? We say NOT RIGHT!Shouldn t we ask that sources be exposed? Anyone can say they know the truth but when they hide behind anonymity, they ruin their credibility. The left just expects everyone to believe the many lies they ve been telling about President Trump. We re with Carl! We re not accepting any stories against Trump until we have proof and know the source.This woman needs to seek help! | 1real |
Elaine Chao Gets Cozy Reception at Confirmation Hearing - The New York Times | WASHINGTON — Elaine L. Chao, a veteran cabinet secretary who has served under two Republican presidents, offered remarkably few specifics but many promises of cooperation on Wednesday as she cruised through her confirmation hearing to become transportation secretary. Democrats on the Senate committee charged with reviewing Ms. Chao’s nomination by Donald J. Trump made it clear that they have no objections to her, suggesting that she will be easily confirmed in a full Senate vote. Senator Bill Nelson of Florida, the top Democrat on the Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, praised Ms. Chao for acting with “grace and excellence” in her previous government service. “I certainly look forward to you, in this new administration, doing the same,” he said. Senator John Thune, Republican of South Dakota and the committee’s chairman, called her “an ideal candidate. ” Ms. Chao spent most of the hearing promising to examine and learn more about drones, fuel efficiency standards, air traffic control services and many other subjects that may soon be part of her portfolio. With most of the spotlight falling on Mr. Trump’s desire for a major infrastructure overhaul — in his own words, a priority for his first 100 days in office that could cost $1 trillion — Ms. Chao vowed to keep senators informed of emerging plans. She called the overhaul “a heavy lift” that would require cooperation both between the parties and between Congress and the administration. “As the infrastructure proposal is being put together, we will certainly be in great discussion with the Congress, because, once again, we can’t do it on our own,” she said. The selection of Ms. Chao to lead the Transportation Department and its $75 billion budget stands out in the lineup of largely billionaire business executives Mr. Trump has nominated to populate his cabinet. She served as labor secretary for the duration of George W. Bush’s administration and as a deputy transportation secretary under the elder George Bush. Ms. Chao vowed on Wednesday to work with lawmakers on a host of transportation issues — including maritime infrastructure and positive train control, a safety system intended to prevent collisions. Emphasizing the need to revitalize the nation’s transportation infrastructure, Ms. Chao called for creativity to fund improvements. Asked whether Mr. Trump would support including federal spending in his infrastructure package, she said, “I believe the answer is yes. ” Support for federal infrastructure funding could put the Trump administration on a collision course with congressional Republicans, who have been reluctant or even openly hostile to increasing domestic spending in recent years. Ms. Chao offered few other funding solutions, though she did propose turning to more partnerships, referencing the potential capital available from “equity firms, pension funds and endowments. ” That seemed to raise concern from Mr. Nelson, who cautioned against the privatization of government services, alluding to a possible point of friction between Democrats and the incoming Trump administration. Since leaving public service, Ms. Chao has joined the boards of Wells Fargo, News Corporation and Vulcan Materials, among others — positions she said she would resign from if confirmed. However, according to documents she filed with the Office of Government Ethics, Ms. Chao will continue for a time to receive payments under financial agreements with Vulcan, which makes construction supplies, and Wells Fargo as she severs her ties with them the payments from Wells Fargo stocks will continue through March 2021. She has agreed to recuse herself from matters involving those companies. Though Wells Fargo came under fire late last year for its business practices, senators did not ask her to elaborate on her continued ties with the embattled company. There was a notably cozy, familiar tone to much of the hearing, as senators questioned a nominee with close ties to one of their own: Ms. Chao is the wife of the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky. Praising Ms. Chao as “incredibly capable” in his introduction, Mr. McConnell cheekily endorsed Mr. Trump’s pick. “She’s got really great judgment, on a whole variety of things,” he said. To capture his feelings, Mr. McConnell turned to the words of a previous Republican senator whose spouse was a transportation and labor secretary, paraphrasing what Bob Dole once said about his wife, Elizabeth. “I feel a little bit like Nathan Hale,” Mr. McConnell said. “‘I regret that I have but one wife to give for my country. ’” Ms. Chao said, “I will be working to lock in the majority leader’s support tonight over dinner. ” | 0fake |
POLICE OFFICER Asks Daughter’s School To Remove Hateful Drawing From Display…School Has SHOCKING Response | What do you think about the school s response to this police officer s request?The painting Officer Dave Hamblin found offensive (Facebook)A police officer father in the United States has taken to social media to complain about a piece of artwork displayed at his daughter s school.Kentucky cop Dave Hamblin is outraged by the painting which depicts two black people with a gun pointed at their head.On one half of the painting, under the title 1930 , a Ku Klux Klan member is pointing the gun.On the other half, titled 2015 , a white police officer is shown pointing the gun at what looks like a African American child.The painting was from a school project inspired by racial violence depicted in Harper Lee s book, To Kill A Mockingbird.Police officer Dave Hamblin, who goes by the name Dave Kingmen on Facebook, says the picture is upsetting and creates future cop haters . We speak of tolerance, we speak of changing hostile environments, we speak of prejudice, and we speak of racial relations, yet, when it comes to hostility toward police, their families, and profiling them through bigotry we are expected to tolerate it, Kingmen wrote.. I will not, nor will my child. The cop has asked for the picture to be removed but the school has seemingly turned down his request. When discussing social injustice, people will likely be offended by some topic, said Tracy Green, a school spokesperson. The drawing is a student s artistic representation based on the lens through which the student viewed that issue and the student has a First Amendment right to share that opinion. Via: Yahoo | 1real |
With Larry Wilmore Before the White House Correspondents’ Dinner - The New York Times | WASHINGTON — It was midafternoon on Saturday, and Larry Wilmore was doing a sound check in the empty International Ballroom of the Washington Hilton, where he was to be the featured comedian of that night’s annual White House Correspondents’ Association dinner. The ballroom, a forbiddingly cavernous space, can be a comedy slaughterhouse. Bombing there means hearing a sad symphony of the HVAC system and clinking silverware, or maybe seeing Henry Kissinger nodding off at Table 27. (I saw it happen during Rich Little’s set in 2007, in the middle of Mr. Little’s Nixon impersonation no less.) But the gig can also give a topical comedian like Mr. Wilmore a chance to stitch his name into the fabric of America, before an audience that includes the president and some 2, 700 powerful people in government, media, politics and show business. “Stephen’s was the bravest,” Mr. Wilmore told me as he looked out from the stage at the ballroom. He was referring to the seminal performance that Stephen Colbert gave in 2006. Playing his Comedy Central character, an egotistic conservative talk show host, Mr. Colbert mockingly defended the Iraq war and the Washington press corps’ coverage of it. The act, typical of his show, wilted inside the hall. But it was a hit out in the world because it tapped the growing perception that a relationship between journalists and government officials produced credulous reporting that helped start a war under false pretenses. It was the perfect pairing of a comedian and the moment. Mr. Wilmore, whose “Nightly Show” occupies Mr. Colbert’s old 11:30 time slot on Comedy Central, knew he was part of a similar pairing, “one of those accidents of timing,” he said. Yes, he was a leading black comedian performing at the last correspondents’ dinner for the nation’s first black president. But his appearance was also coming during a national conversation about race and law enforcement race and the news media — including at The New York Times — and race and economic injustice. Mr. Wilmore has branded this year’s political campaign “The ” of the White House. And now here he was, getting ready to address an overwhelmingly white crowd of reporters — a sign of how far journalism has to go in achieving meaningful diversity — in the middle of a party weekend that can give official Washington the same sense of remove that the decadent capital city has in the “Hunger Games” movies. I asked him if there would be any “White House Correspondents’ Dinner So White” jokes. No, he said. He hinted at an inner tension between going for a big political statement and going for laughs. “That’s why I say Stephen did the bravest thing I’ve ever seen, you know?” he told me. “Because you want to go and have a good time, get laughs and have everybody say, ‘Yeah, you killed. ’” Before the dinner, Mr. Wilmore’s hotel suite was a show business version of a groom’s room before a wedding. Pacing around the living area were his manager his agent his publicist one of his writers, Robin Thede friends like Kenya Barris, who created the TV sitcom “ ” and his parents, Betty and Larry Wilmore. The whole group was to meet the president and first lady before heading into the hall. Mr. Wilmore was in his tuxedo — he is a necktie man, not a bow tie man — and staying quiet, getting into the zone. “I’ve always been proud of him,” Betty Wilmore told me as we all headed to the elevator. Mr. Wilmore seemed to cringe a little — as a son would — when she remembered showing up as the sole cheering section for his high school basketball team in California. “Why do I have to remember this?” Mr. Wilmore said. Mr. Wilmore said he was ready, but he and his producer had one fear: that President Obama, who would go first, would step on Mr. Wilmore’s act. That’s what he did to Seth Meyers at the 2011 dinner, by releasing his birth certificate that afternoon (“Thanks for the timing on that,” Mr. Meyers had said then, holding up pages of birth certificate jokes.) But Mr. Obama’s typically commanding performance on Saturday left Mr. Wilmore’s jokes more or less unscathed. And Mr. Wilmore came forward with a routine that gave his audience some uncomfortable moments that clearly came through on (which is how I watched it because The New York Times stopped going to the dinner starting in 2008). Calling the dinner “Negro night,” Mr. Wilmore said Fox News would cover the speech from him and Mr. Obama as “Two thugs disrupt elegant dinner in D. C. ” He joked that MSNBC now stood for “Missing a Significant Number of Black Correspondents,” a reference to its cancellation of a show hosted by Melissa . “Some of our finest black journalists are here tonight,” he said, and then added, “Don Lemon is here too,” a reference to the black journalist on CNN. (Mr. Lemon responded with a salute.) His high notes included telling the president to butt out of comedy, seeing as how Mr. Wilmore doesn’t go around “signing executive orders, pardoning turkeys, not closing Guantánamo. ” But sometimes the crowd groaned or fell silent, prompting him at one point to say, “You guys are tough, man. ” But at the end he got serious, speaking about how proud he was that Mr. Obama had proved “a black man can lead the entire free world,” and ended by saying “Yo, Barry, you did it,” and referring to Mr. Obama with an affectionate twist on the . They embraced. As Mr. Wilmore made his way through a light rain to the Vanity Fair and Bloomberg News at the French ambassador’s residence — where Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. mingled with stars like the actresses Helen Mirren and Rachel McAdams — the reviews started trickling in. Brian Lowry’s synopsis on CNN Money carried the headline “Larry Wilmore gets groans and grimaces. ” “Wilmore Underwhelms,” The Hollywood Reporter reported. But then the counternarrative emerged, suggesting that his routine played better outside the bubble. A Daily Beast review likened his act to Mr. Colbert’s, and The Drudge Report gave him a screaming headline: “Comedian Eats the Press!” Leaning against a doorjamb at the party, Mr. Wilmore told me the whole experience was “surreal. ” The motto of his show is “Keep it 100,” as in keep it real, and, he said, “If I’m going to keep it 100, I gotta do the jokes. ” Reality can be in short supply every year during this weekend. The Correspondents’ Association deserves credit for having a comic like Mr. Wilmore at its dinner. And regardless of whether you liked Mr. Wilmore’s act, you can’t say he didn’t keep it 100. Bad things happen in Washington when people don’t. | 0fake |
Trump picks Giuliani to assemble cyber security meetings with executives | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President-elect Donald Trump plans to meet with corporate executives who have faced cyber security challenges in a series of meetings arranged by former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, his transition team said in a statement. Giuliani, a former Trump campaign adviser who runs a cyber security consulting business, will facilitate the meetings but “no consensus advice or recommendations resulting from group deliberations or interaction is expected or will be solicited.” Instead, the statement said, Trump aims “to obtain experiential and anecdotal information from each executive.” | 0fake |
Irony Redefined: “Human Rights Champion” Suu Kyi Jails Dissidents | By Tony Cartalucci
Myanmar’s defacto leader, Aung San Suu Kyi of the National League for Democracy (NDL) political party, has paved her time since coming to power earlier this year with both irony and hypocrisy. She has not only illegally declared herself “leader” of the Southeast Asian state in contravention of its constitution, she has also embarked on an iron-fisted purge of her political opponents identical to the one she fought against as she struggled to seize power to begin with.
During elections earlier this year, Myanmar’s constitution prevented Suu Kyi from holding the nation’s highest office due to her inordinate amount of time overseas, her status of having been married to a foreign, and her children’s dual citizenship. Instead of adhering to the law, her party once in power, simply contrived an entirely new post for her, State Counsellor of Myanmar, which makes her the “defacto leader” of Myanmar.
Canada’s The Globe and Mail in an article titled, “Stéphane Dion says Aung San Suu Kyi is the ‘de facto’ leader of Myanmar,” would note that Canada’s government recognized this legal side-stepping, stating:
Dion called Suu Kyi, now Myanmar’s foreign minister, “the de facto national leader” of her country “because they have a strange rule that if you have married somebody who’s not of the country, you cannot be the leader of the government and of the state.”
Suu Kyi, the internationally recognized democracy advocate, is barred from becoming president because her late husband was British, as are her two sons. The rule was crafted during Myanmar’s decades of military rule, which Suu Kyi fought against during years of house arrest before finally prevailing last fall.
In essence, she is unelected, and illegally holding power. For a woman who’s Western backers – particularly in the United States and United Kingdom – have held her up as a champion for democracy and the rule of law, she and her party’s first act upon taking power was trampling both. The Inhumane Humanitarian
Another myth built up around Nobel Peace Prize laureate Suu Kyi by the West has been her advocacy for “human rights.” Her advocacy for human rights, however, appears only to extend out to protect only as far as her immediate political allies are concerned. For groups beyond this self-serving political protection, and particularly regarding her political opponents, she and her NDL are just as eager to jail, crush, or kill political opponents as they claimed the ruling military government had been.
In addition to escalating violence targeting the nation’s Rohingya’s population, several activists online have been sent to jail for “insulting” the ruling government and Western-backed media fronts and organizations.
Myanmar’s Eleven Media Group (EMG) in its article, “Facebook offender brought to court for insulting Suu Kyi,” attempted to distance what Suu Kyi and her political supporters had once called draconian censorship as now, a simple matter of enforcing the law. It would state:
A Facebook user named Zaw Zaw (aka Nga Pha) was brought to the North Dagon Township court on October 24 to face prosecution for his defamatory posts about State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi.
He has been charged under Section 66(d) of the Telecommunications Law.
“He’s being sued for defamatory writing and photos about the State Counsellor [posted on Facebook],” said plaintiff Nay Myo Kyaw, a 34-year-old resident of North Okkalapa Township.
Around 50 people showed up at the hearing wearing shirts affiliated with a group called the Network of Supporters of the Rule of Law. They shouted: “You deserved it for insulting a good person.”
The article also admits:
The Myawady Township Court sentenced Aung Win Hlaing (aka A Nyar Thar), the first man to be prosecuted under the current government, for defamatory posts on Facebook about President Htin Kyaw, to nine months in jail after he was convicted under Section 66(d) of the Telecommunications Law.
Aung Myint Tun (aka Ko Pho Htaung), a member of the National League for Democracy, is still facing legal action under the same law for the wording of a resignation letter.
Another man named Yar Pyay was arrested and is being prosecuted for creating a fake Facebook account under the name of Nay Myo Wai, the chairman of Peace and Diversity Party.
Hla Phone was also arrested and is being prosecuted for defamatory posts on Facebook about the Commander-in-Chief.
EMG – ironically awarded for its work in opposing the previous military-led government by Reporters without Borders – would also admit that it itself had taken advantage of Myanmar’s laws to silence its own critics, claiming:
Eleven Media Group (EMG) also filed complaints about repeated defamatory posts on Facebook against the group. Though EMG lodged complaints against film director Mike Tee, who is the owner of a Facebook account named Than Tun Zaw, and another Facebook user named Myat Maw for offensive posts about the group and its staff, the legal process has yet to begin. EMG lodged the complaints on January 27 and March 31 this year.
One would expect such a tidal wave of abuse – as defined by the West in regards to media, governance, and censorship around the world – to be met with sweeping condemnation from the West’s various human rights advocacy organizations including Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and a no doubt embarrassed Reporters Without Borders – yet the silence is as deafening as it is telling. Taking Over Where Accused Dictators Left Off
The West’s champions of democracy, rule of law, and human rights in Myanmar appears to have simply taken over right where Suu Kyi and her NDL party had claimed the military-led government left off. And despite the overt nature of Suu Kyi’s breaches of Western standards of “democracy” and “human rights,” the US is on track to lift all sanctions from Myanmar as Suu Kyi and her government open the nation, its people, and its resources to exploitation by Western corporations.
The overt nature of both the West’s and Suu Kyi’s hypocrisy illustrates that “democracy,” “rule of law,” and “human rights” are merely facades behind which the West and its proxies wield their power – hiding behind such principles rather than truly upholding them. And in reality, such behavior undermines these principles more than any overt abuse by an openly tyrannical regime ever could – because genuine advocates thus become associated with hypocrites like the Western governments supporting the current regime in Myanmar, their faux-nongovernmental organizations aiding and abetting the regime, and proxies like Suu Kyi and her NDL themselves.
International audiences must keep this example of hypocrisy in mind as the West attempts to overturn other governments in Southeast Asia and beyond under similar pretexts and using similar rhetoric – supporting supposed “pro-democracy” and “pro-human rights” advocates who have every intention of trampling both upon seizing power.
Tony Cartalucci, Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook” . | 1real |
Mugabe: Zimbabwe's liberator and, for many, its oppressor | HARARE (Reuters) - When he came to power, Zimbabwe s Robert Mugabe was feted as an African liberation hero in a nation that had endured nearly a century of white colonial rule. Nearly four decades after the country s independence from Britain in 1980, he was regarded by many as an autocrat, willing to unleash death squads, rig elections and trash the economy in the relentless pursuit of power. The 93-year-old resigned as president on Tuesday, ending 37 years of rule. He had clung on for a week after an army takeover and expulsion from his ZANU-PF party, but quit after parliament began an impeachment process against him. Educated and urbane, Mugabe took power after seven years of a liberation bush war and is the only leader Zimbabwe, formerly Rhodesia, has known since independence from Britain in 1980. The army seized power last week after Mugabe sacked ZANU-PF s favorite to succeed him, Vice-president Emmerson Mnangagwa, to smooth a path to the presidency for his wife Grace, 52, known to her critics as Gucci Grace for her reputed fondness for luxury shopping. It s the end of a very painful and sad chapter in the history of a young nation, in which a dictator, as he became old, surrendered his court to a gang of thieves around his wife, Chris Mutsvangwa, leader of Zimbabwe s influential liberation war veterans, told Reuters after the army takeover. Born on a Catholic mission near Harare, Mugabe was educated by Jesuit priests and worked as a primary school teacher before going to South Africa s University of Fort Hare, then a breeding ground for African nationalism. Returning to Rhodesia in 1960, he entered politics but was jailed for a decade four years later for opposing white rule. After his release, he rose to the top of the powerful Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army, known as the thinking man s guerrilla on account of his seven degrees, three of them earned behind bars. Later, as he crushed his political enemies, he boasted of another qualification - a degree in violence . After the long bush war ended, Mugabe was elected as the nation s first black prime minister. Initially, he offered reconciliation to old adversaries as he presided over a booming economy. But it was not long before Mugabe began to suppress challengers such as liberation war rival Joshua Nkomo. Faced with a revolt in the mid-1980s in the western province of Matabeleland which he blamed on Nkomo, Mugabe sent in North Korean-trained army units, provoking an international outcry over alleged atrocities against civilians. Human rights groups say 20,000 people died, most from Nkomo s Ndebele tribe. The discovery of mass graves prompted accusations of genocide against Mugabe. After two terms as prime minister, Mugabe changed the constitution and was elected president in 1990, shortly before the death of his first wife, Sally, seen by many as the only person capable of restraining him. When, at the end of the century, he lost a constitutional referendum followed by a groundswell of black anger at the slow pace of land reform, his response was uncompromising. As gangs of black people calling themselves war veterans invaded white-owned farms, Mugabe said it was a correction of colonial injustices. Perhaps we made a mistake by not finishing the war in the trenches, he said in 2000. If the settlers had been defeated through the barrel of a gun, perhaps we would not be having the same problems. The farm seizures helped ruin one of Africa s most dynamic economies, with a collapse in agricultural foreign exchange earnings unleashing hyperinflation. The economy shrank by more than a third from 2000 to 2008, sending unemployment above 80 percent. Several million Zimbabweans fled, mostly to South Africa. An unapologetic Mugabe portrayed himself as a radical African nationalist competing against racist and imperialist forces in Washington and London. Britain once likened him to Adolf Hitler but Mugabe did not mind, saying the Nazi leader had wanted justice, sovereignty and independence for his people: If that is Hitler, then let me be a Hitler ten-fold. The country hit rock bottom in 2008, when 500 billion percent inflation drove people to support the challenge of Western-backed former union leader Morgan Tsvangirai. Facing defeat in a presidential run-off, Mugabe resorted to violence, forcing Tsvangirai to withdraw after scores of his supporters were killed by ZANU-PF thugs. An increasingly worried South Africa squeezed the pair into a fractious unity coalition but the compromise belied Mugabe s de facto grip on power through his continued control of the army, police and secret service. As old age crept in and rumors of cancer intensified, his animosity towards Tsvangirai eased, with the two men enjoying weekly meetings over tea and scones, a quirky nod to Mugabe s affection for British tradition if not authority. On the eve of the 2013 election, Mugabe dismissed cries of autocracy and likened dealing with Tsvangirai to sparring in the ring. Although we boxed each other, it s not as hostile as before, he said. It s all over now. We can shake hands. At the same time, Mugabe s agents were finalizing plans to engineer an election victory through manipulation of the voters roll, the Tsvangirai camp said. The subsequent landslide was typical of a man who could always out-fight and out-think opponents. To give the devil his due, he is a brilliant tactician, former U.S. ambassador Christopher Dell wrote in a cable released by WikiLeaks. | 0fake |
Senator Feinstein Attacks Fed Judge Nominee’s Faith: ‘The Dogma Lives Deep Within You’ [Video] | Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein told a federal judicial nominee on Wednesday that reading her past speeches revealed how the Catholic dogma lives loudly within her. We kid you not! She was downright nasty to Notre Dame Law School Professor Amy Coney Barrett:WATCH: Sen. Feinstein to appeals court nominee Amy Barrett, @NotreDame law prof/#Catholic mother of 7: The dogma lives loudly within you. pic.twitter.com/mpDgNZGRsa Jason Calvi (@JasonCalvi) September 6, 2017Senator Feinstein is a ranking member on the Judiciary Committee. She got really nasty during a confirmation hearing for Barrett: When you read your speeches, the conclusion one draws is that the dogma lives loudly within you, and that s of concern when you come to big issues that large numbers of people have fought for, for years in this country. Barrett had already stated at the beginning of the hearing that it is never appropriate for a judge to apply their personal convictions, whether it derives from faith or personal conviction. IS THERE A TREND TO BLOCK TRUMP NOMINEES BY TARGETING THEIR RELIGION?This line of questioning is disturbing and isn t the first time recently that a Senator has berated a nominee for his religion:In June, Bernie Sanders got really nasty and snarky with nominee Russell Vought. Voight was President Trump s nominee for deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget. Just like Barrett, Voight had written about his Christian faith and was drilled by a relentless Sanders:BERNIE SANDERS decided to go after the religion of a nominee for Deputy Director of the Office of Management and Budget This was a vicious attack on RUSSELL VOUGHT who has strong Christian beliefs that have absolutely nothing to do with what he was being questioned about. Religious beliefs aren t budgetary concerns. This was a personal attack on a DEVOUTLY RELIGIOUS man who had written an article years past defending his Christian College.PART OF THE EXCHANGE BETWEEN SANDERS AND VOUGHT:Sanders is quoting from an article that Vought wrote: Muslims do not simply have a deficient theology. They do not know God because they have rejected Jesus Christ, His Son, and they stand condemned. Do you believe that that statement is Islamophobic?Vought: Absolutely not, Senator. I m a Christian, and I believe in a Christian set of principles based on my faith.Sanders: Forgive me, we just don t have a lot of time. Do you believe people in the Muslim religion stand condemned? Is that your view?Vought: Again, Senator, I m a Christian, and I wrote that piece in accordance with the statement of faith at Wheaton College.Sanders: I understand that. I don t know how many Muslims there are in America. Maybe a couple million. Are you suggesting that these people stand condemned? What about Jews? Do they stand condemned too?Vought: Senator, I m a Christian.Sanders: I understand you are a Christian, but this country [is] made of people who are not just I understand that Christianity is the majority religion, but there are other people of different religions in this country and around the world. In your judgment, do you think that people who are not Christians are going to be condemned?Vought: Thank you for probing on that question. As a Christian, I believe that all individuals are made in the image of God and are worthy of dignity and respect regardless of their religious beliefs. I believe that as a Christian that s how I should treat all individuals.Sanders: Do you think that s respectful of other religions?I would simply say, Mr. Chairman, that this nominee is really not someone who this country is supposed to be about. I will vote no. CAN THE US GOVERNMENT IMPOSE RELIGIOUS TESTS FOR PUBLIC OFFICE:The Constitution says the U.S. government can t impose religious tests for public office. But scholars say Sen. Bernie Sanders can without consequence apply his own religious rubric in opposing a presidential nominee who believes non-Christians risk going to hell.The Vermont independent, who is Jewish but not particularly religious, grilled Russell Vought, nominee to be deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget, on Wednesday, focusing on an article he wrote that said Muslims do not know God because they have rejected Jesus Christ his Son, and they stand condemned. Sanders asked if that view was Islamophobic, and if Jews also stand condemned.Vought responded that he is a Christian. In your judgment, do you think that people who are not Christians are going to be condemned? Sanders asked. Vought began to answer before Sanders interrupted, asking if that viewpoint was respectful of other religions. National Review columnist David French writes that Sanders was imposing a religious test for public office in direct violation of Article VI of the United States Constitution and that he was objecting to entirely orthodox Christian beliefs about access to heaven.Constitutional scholars say Sanders, who said he will vote against Vought, may violate the spirit of the Constitution, but arguably not Article VI, which states: no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States. No senator should vote against a nominee based on his or her religion. It would violate the spirit if not the letter of the Constitution. But senators can vote against nominees for any reason or no reason at all. There would be no legal consequence, and the nominee would have no forum for complaint. Allan Vestal of Drake University Law School says the Constitution s religious-test ban does not provide a mechanism for inquiring into the motivations of individual senators and representatives in the votes they cast. There is no constitutional constraint on yea or nay votes, so yes he can do it, agrees Richard Epstein, a New York University law professor.So now Trump nominees will all be attacked for their religion? This is really dangerous territory.Read more: US News | 1real |
Concerned about refugees, U.N. experts add to censure of Trump move | (Reuters) - U.N. human rights experts warned that asylum seekers could face torture if not given safe harbor and the Vatican called for openness to other cultures on Wednesday, adding to a drumbeat of international criticism of U.S. President Donald Trump’s travel curbs. Trump’s executive order last Friday put a 120-day halt on the U.S. refugee program, barred Syrian refugees indefinitely and imposed a 90-day suspension on people from seven predominantly Muslim countries - Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. The move, which his administration says is aimed at protecting the United States from terrorist attacks, has been condemned by many countries and has sparked protests and court challenges in the United States. A panel of U.N. human rights experts urged the Trump administration on Wednesday to protect people fleeing war and persecution, and said the measure contravened international humanitarian and human rights laws. It “risks people being returned, without proper individual assessments and asylum procedures, to places in which they risk being subjected to torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment,” the experts said in a statement. The experts, including the U.N. special rapporteurs on migrants, racism, human rights and counter-terrorism, torture, and freedom of religion, also said the measure could lead to “increased stigmatization of Muslim communities.” The Vatican, in its first comment on the order, said it was concerned. “Certainly there is worry because we are messengers of another culture, that of openness,” the Vatican’s deputy secretary of state, Archbishop Angelo Becciu, told an Italian Catholic television station. “Pope Francis, in fact, insists on the ability to integrate those who arrive in our societies and cultures,” he said, also commenting on Trump’s plan to build a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico. In Iran, President Hassan Rouhani stepped up his criticism of Trump’s immigration policies, including the travel ban, dismissing the U.S. businessman-turned-president as a political novice. Tehran has already vowed to respond with legal, political and reciprocal measures. “It will take him a long time and will cost the United States a lot, until he learns what is happening in the world,” Rouhani said in an address on state television. Libya’s U.N.-backed government also criticized Trump’s ban on its nationals. The order has put in question participation of Libyans invited to a conference on Libya planned in Washington this month. The measure was one of a flurry of executive orders signed by Trump, a Republican, since he took office on Jan. 20. “Everybody is arguing whether or not it is a BAN. Call it what you want, it is about keeping bad people (with bad intentions) out of country!” Trump said on Twitter early Wednesday. Reaction to the travel curbs from some Muslim majority countries not on the list of seven designated countries has been more muted. The United Arab Emirates’ foreign minister, Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed, said on Wednesday the ban was an internal affair not directed at any faith, and noted that most Muslims and Muslim countries were not included. The UAE, a major oil exporter, is a close ally of the United States and a member of the U.S.-led coalition fighting Islamist militants in Syria. In the United States, four U.S. states - Massachusetts, New York, Virginia and Washington - have sued to overturn the order on the grounds it flouts constitutional guarantees of religious freedom. | 0fake |
Britain's Labour says cannot vote for EU withdrawal bill unless amended | LONDON (Reuters) - Britain s main opposition Labour Party said on Tuesday it could not vote for the government s legislation to sever ties with the European Union unless it was amended to prevent ministers from grabbing powers from parliament. Parliament will begin debating the EU withdrawal bill on Thursday and there will be a vote on Monday, testing Prime Minister Theresa May s deal to shore up her majority with the support of a small Northern Irish party. Labour fully respects the democratic decision to leave the European Union ... and backs a jobs-first Brexit with full tariff-free access to the European single market, Labour said in a statement. But as democrats we cannot vote for a bill that unamended would let government ministers grab powers from parliament to slash people s rights at work and reduce protection for consumers and the environment. | 0fake |
Senate passes Puerto Rico debt bill, sends to Obama | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Senate gave solid approval on Wednesday to a relief plan to help Puerto Rico address its $70 billion debt, sending the measure to President Obama for his signing into law just ahead of a possible default by the U.S. territory on its next debt payment. The measure passed the Senate on a vote of 68-30, and President Obama said in a statement he looked forward to signing the bill into law. The House of Representatives has already approved the bill. “This bill is not perfect, but it is a critical first step toward economic recovery and restored hope for millions of Americans who call Puerto Rico home,” Obama said. The legislation would create a federal oversight board, appointed by Washington, with power to restructure Puerto Rico’s unmanageable debt load. The bill provides for a stay, or halt, to any litigation brought against the Puerto Rican government and its debt issuing agencies that is retroactive to December. This provides breathing room for the board to start the process of restructuring and oversee a sustainable budget process. On Friday, Puerto Rico faces a potential default on a chunk of its debt if it cannot make $1.9 billion worth of payments. Puerto Rico’s Governor, Alejandro Garcia Padilla, has said the island will default some of the debt. Supporters said intervention by Washington lawmakers was necessary to help the island’s 3.5 million U.S. citizens avert a “descent into chaos,” as U.S. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew on Tuesday. Puerto Rico has been waiting for months for Congress to act as its economic crisis worsened. It has already defaulted on some of its debt. The Caribbean island territory is reeling from a 45 percent poverty rate, as well as a steady flow of migration to the U.S. mainland that shrinks its tax base and shuttering of essential services. In addition, it is suffering from a Zika virus outbreak that is hurting its critical tourism industry. But many Puerto Ricans are leery of the proposed oversight board, fearing it could usurp the island’s government and place investors’ concerns over local priorities. Puerto Rico’s benchmark 2035 General Obligation bond rose 1 full point in price ahead of the final vote, to trade at 66.75 points, pushing the yield down to 12.663 percent. Passage of the Puerto Rico Oversight, Management, and Economic Stability Act (PROMESA) came after leaders of both political parties warned that failure to approve the legislation could lead to a U.S. taxpayer-funded bailout. “This is the best and possibly the only action we can take to help Puerto Rico,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican, said. “Doing nothing now ... (is) the surest route to both a taxpayer funded bailout of Puerto Rico and a humanitarian crisis for its people,” McConnell said. Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid said he shared the concerns of many Democrats with the “excessive powers and appointment structure” of the oversight board, and he was unhappy with some labor provisions. But Reid said he was voting for passage because Puerto Rico needed the help by Friday. “Otherwise we ... turn them over to the hedge funds and they will sue them to death,” he said. The seven member board, appointed by President Obama from recommendations given by party leaders in both the House and Senate, is supposed to be in place by Sept. 1, 2016. Neither political party was entirely happy with the fix. Democrats bridled at a Republican provision that might lower the minimum wage for some young workers and weaken overtime pay rules while some Republicans were concerned the bill could amount to a bailout of the island, or set a precedent for states in fiscal trouble to seek a similar arrangement. “They’ll say if a territory can receive unprecedented authority from Congress, then why shouldn’t a state?” asked Republican Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa. The legislation is geared toward U.S. territories. Puerto Rico is not covered by current U.S. bankruptcy law under Chapter 9. Democratic Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey, opposing the measure, argued that Friday was an arbitrary deadline for action that did not excuse a “flawed” bill. A vote for the bill was “a vote to authorize an unelected, unchecked and all powerful control board to determine Puerto Rico’s destiny for a generation or more,” Menendez declared. Some senators, including Vermont independent Bernie Sanders, criticized the estimated $370 million cost of the legislation over five years, complaining that Puerto Rico will get stuck with the tab while it is struggling to reduce its debt. Sanders blasted this as “colonialism at its worst.” The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, which issued that estimate, said that about $350 million of the total “would primarily cover fees of legal and financial consultants hired to restructure Puerto Rico’s debt.” | 0fake |
PressTV-Putin: Why would we attack anybody? | Russia Russian President Vladimir Putin delivers a speech during an international conference dedicated to the 175th anniversary of Sberbank in Moscow on November 10, 2016. (Photos by AFP)
Russian President Vladimir Putin has stressed that his country’s military is not a threat and would not be attacking anybody.
“Our Armed Forces are not threatening anybody…I would like to stress once again, to make sure everyone hears – not only people in this hall,” said Putin while giving a speech in Russia’s Yaroslavl on Saturday.
Referring to claims that Russia might attack other countries, especially its neighbors in the Baltics, Putin asked, “Why would we do this?”
“We have the biggest territory in the world, like I said, everyone knows it, and we need to provide effectively security for our own country, for our own people,” he added.
He noted that Russia’s armed forces are perfectly capable of providing security, and that developing the forces will continue. He also hailed efforts made so far to make the military “efficient… modern and highly effective.”
“The number of military drills has increased multiple times, including snap checks, which for some reasons from time to time worry our counterparts, let’s call them as such for now," he added.
He added that other countries' drills do not worry Russia. The Russian army must be “compact, but highly effective. Thus we shall continue the structural reform, and we shall keep optimizing the personnel, but without any mass cuts." Russian female cadets take part in the military parade at Red Square in Moscow on November 7, 2016.
Putin’s remarks come at a time that NATO aims to send “battle groups” to the Baltic states and Poland early next year. The groups will consist of 40,000 forces. It will be the biggest military buildup near Russia since the Second World War. More forces would also be deployed if necessary.
NATO suspended all ties with Moscow in April 2014, after the then-Ukrainian Crimea Peninsula voted in a referendum to join Russian territory. Loading ... | 1real |
WHAT DONALD TRUMP WILL DO For Christmas Now That He’s President-elect [Video] | 1real | |
For Trump, a new ‘rigged’ system: The election itself | Donald Trump, trailing narrowly in presidential polls, has issued a warning to worried Republican voters: The election will be “rigged” against him — and he could lose as a result.
Trump pointed to several court cases nationwide in which restrictive laws requiring voters to show identification have been thrown out. He said those decisions open the door to fraud in November.
“If the election is rigged, I would not be surprised,” he told The Washington Post in an interview Tuesday afternoon. “The voter ID situation has turned out to be a very unfair development. We may have people vote 10 times.”
Those comments followed a claim Trump made Monday, to an audience in Ohio, that “the election is going to be rigged.” That same day, in an interview with Fox News Channel’s Sean Hannity, he beseeched Republicans to start “watching closely” or the election will be “taken away from us” through fraud.
Like much of what Trump says, the “rigged” riff defies the recent norms of politics. And it taps into fears that long predate his campaign. One is a growing and unsubstantiated worry that elections are being stolen. The other is a broader unease that regular Americans are being cheated by Wall Street, by Washington and by a duplicitous media.
Those worries have found voice in both parties this year, with Trump and Sen. Bernie Sanders (Vt.) both rallying their supporters during the Republican and Democratic primaries with the assessment that the system is rigged. Now, Trump is reviving the theme to highlight the possibility of voter fraud in November.
Since the 2000 election, which ended in a legal battle that stopped recounts of ballots in Florida, paranoia about the nation’s election system has mushroomed. According to a Pew Research Center survey, just 48 percent of Americans were confident that “the votes across the country were accurately counted” in the 2004 election. After 2012, an election with a wider popular vote margin, that percentage fell to 31 percent. Among Republicans, it was 21 percent.
“The idea that the person who won the presidency did so illegitimately is not new,” said Jesse Walker, the author of “The United States of Paranoia,” a history of conspiracy theories. “What’s new is the possibility of a possible loser in the presidential contest making an issue out of it. I can’t think of another example in the last century.”
Jokes about Democrats counting votes from dead people or bused-in fraudsters are part of the Republican lingua franca. During his unsuccessful presidential bid, Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.) often encouraged his audiences to bring friends and family to the polls with a joke about Democratic election theft.
“I want you to vote 10 times,” he would say. “Don’t worry — we’re not Democrats.”
In his interview with The Post, Trump offered that his chief concern about fraud was that states without strict identification requirements would see rampant repeat voters. “If you don’t have voter ID, you can just keep voting and voting and voting,” he said. On Fox News, Trump’s only evidence for fraud consisted of “precincts where there were practically nobody voting for the Republican” in the 2012 election.
In reality, voter fraud is rare. A 2014 study by Justin Levitt, a professor at Loyola Law School, found just 31 possible instances of fraud over 14 years of elections with a total of 1 billion votes cast. The low Republican vote in some urban centers squares with the low support black voters gave GOP nominee Mitt Romney’s campaign in 2012.
Still, the battle against “voter fraud” has made gains with Republican lawmakers and conservative journalists. Since the 2013 decision in Shelby County v. Holder undid some requirements of the Voting Rights Act, restrictive new voter ID and registration laws have passed through Republican-run states.
[Obama: Trump is ‘unfit to serve as president’]
Those laws have been challenged successfully in court, with North Carolina, North Dakota and Wisconsin losing cases in the days before Trump made his “rigged” comments. North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory accused judges of “undermining the integrity of our elections.”
In an interview Tuesday with CBS12 in Florida, Trump seemed to condemn the rulings against the states. “Some bad court cases have come down,” he said. Some of his more freewheeling supporters went even further, with the radio host Alex Jones warning listeners that the Obama administration might cancel the election, and off-again, on-again adviser Roger Stone telling Breitbart News that Trump needed to be ready for a violent post-election contest.
“I think he’s gotta put them on notice that their inauguration will be rhetorical,” Stone said. “I mean civil disobedience, not violence, but it will be a bloodbath. The government will be shut down if they attempt to steal this and swear Hillary in.”
To Ari Berman, a reporter for the Nation and the author of the voting rights history “Give Us the Ballot,” Trump’s worry about “rigging” sounded like an adaptation of something already mainstream among Republicans.
“There’s been a two-decade campaign on the right to drum up fears of ‘voter fraud’ stealing elections,” Berman said. “They’re trying to say that these voting rights victories will lead to more fraud. They want to spin these court victories not as something that’s good for democracy, but something that will hurt democracy. That’s what Trump is buying into.”
At the same time, many supporters of Sanders’s presidential run have argued that the Democratic nomination was effectively stolen from him — another sentiment Trump has tried to exploit. Long before the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, Sanders supporters asked whether a purge of New York voters, California’s slow ballot count or the closure of polling places in Arizona’s largest county had suppressed their votes.
“The Bernie Sanders folks don’t believe all the ballots were counted,” Chuck Pennachio, an academic and a Sanders delegate from Pennsylvania, said at a news conference last week. “They don’t believe that the process was clean. If you look at the exit polls, they don’t match up with the results in 11 of the 12 closest states.”
Every theory about how the primaries were stolen has been debunked. The famous New York purge, for example, disproportionately affected nonwhite voters, who had been breaking for Clinton. The same was true of the long lines in Arizona’s Maricopa County, which resulted from a decision by the county’s Republican-run elections team.
But in trying to explain how some early exit poll results diverged from vote totals, debunkers found themselves struggling to convince their listeners. Joe Lenski, the lead pollster for exit poll provider Edison Research, explained to the skeptical left-wing site Counterpunch that Sanders voters and young voters had been more likely to fill out the surveys. That did not stop the spread of theories that millions of Sanders votes might have been switched or suppressed. Last week, when more than 200 Sanders supporters invaded a media tent at the DNC, some left behind charts attempting to prove that vote-counters skewed the election.
Clinton’s 2.9 million-vote margin in the primaries may have set the upper bounds for speculation that an American election had been stolen. Sanders supporters also latched onto internal emails between staff members at the Democratic National Committee, in which they speculated about a Clinton nomination even before the primaries were over.
Trump, who previously accused Republicans of rigging primaries through the delegate selection process, found solace in the email scandal. Like Sanders, whose voters he wants to convert, he had found the idea of a rigged process syncing perfectly with his outsider brand. On Fox News, Trump tried to tell Sanders’s supporters that they already had seen an election wrested away by the political elite.
“It was rigged a little bit [against] me, and we won,” he said. “It was rigged a little bit against Bernie Sanders.”
“We know it was rigged,” Hannity said. “We’ve seen the emails.” | 0fake |
Maybelline Introduces First Male Makeup Ambassador | Maybelline has made makeup model Manny Gutierrez the American brand’s first male makeup ambassador. [Gutierrez announced the news to his three million Instagram followers earlier this week: “Honestly I couldn’t be more honored [or] thrilled! ,” Gutierrez said. “Thank you to Maybelline for taking a chance on me!” 2017 you are off to an AMAZING START OMG! So excited to finally announce that I am part of the @maybelline #bigshotmascara campaign! Honestly I couldn’t be more honored thrilled! Thank you to Maybelline for taking a chance on me! I look forward to working together so much more 😍😍😍 #Maybellinepartner #IworkedwithMaybellineOMG #pinchme #notthathardthough, A video posted by 🌙Manny Gutierrez (@mannymua733) on Jan 3, 2017 at 6:01pm PST, Gutierrez, a social media star on YouTube as “MannyMua,” will be starring in Maybelline’s “That Boss Life” campaign promoting Big Shot Mascara alongside fellow beauty blogger Shayla Mitchell and contest winner Jackie Flowers. The says “I believe makeup is GenderLESS and has no rules” and “boys deserve just as much cosmetic recognition. ” Mua was raised by “liberal Mormons,” according to Marie Claire, and came out publicly in a YouTube video in August that’s since drawn more than a million views. Wearing the new @kyliecosmetics @kyliejenner Burgundy Palette … filmed a review and demo too 😏 Who wants to see it?! 😍 Ps lashes — @lillylashes Miami use code Mannymua to save some coin! #kyliecosmetics #kyliejenner #lillylashes, A photo posted by 🌙Manny Gutierrez (@mannymua733) on Oct 21, 2016 at 5:59pm PDT, Today’s been a longggg and hectic shoot day! Can’t wait for you guys to see the action next year! 😍 Thank you @ijosephzee for killing it and helping me vamp up my style 😏 Which outfit do you guys like better? Left or right? Soft glam or sporty spice lmfao 🌙Left🌙 Top, jacket, pants all from @hm Shoes — @nike 🌙Right🌙 Pants — #hm Top — @kenzo Shoes #Nike, A photo posted by 🌙Manny Gutierrez (@mannymua733) on Dec 16, 2016 at 7:16pm PST, Maybelline’s hiring of Gutierrez comes on the heels of fellow cosmetic giant CoverGirl’s decision to name James Charles its first CoverBoy. Follow Jerome Hudson on Twitter: @JeromeEHudson | 0fake |
Russians discussed how to influence Trump via his aides: NYT | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Senior Russian intelligence and political officials discussed how to influence Donald Trump through his advisers according to information gathered by American spies last summer, the New York Times reported on Wednesday, Citing three current and former U.S. officials familiar with the intelligence, the newspaper said the conversations focused on Paul Manafort, then the Trump presidential campaign chairman, and Michael Flynn, a retired general who was then advising Trump. U.S. congressional committees and a special counsel named by the Justice Department this month are investigating whether there was Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election and the possibility of collusion between Trump’s campaign and Russia. The controversy has engulfed Trump’s young administration since he fired FBI Director James Comey two weeks ago amid the agency’s investigation of possible Russia ties. Moscow has repeatedly denied the allegations and Trump denies any collusion. The New York Times report was the latest indication of the depth of concerns within the U.S. intelligence community about Russian efforts to tip November’s election toward Trump as he battled Democrat Hillary Clinton. On May 18, Reuters reported that Flynn and other advisers to Trump’s campaign were in contact with Russian officials and others with Kremlin ties in at least 18 calls and emails during the last seven months of the 2016 presidential race, citing current and former U.S. officials. On Tuesday, former CIA Director John Brennan told lawmakers he had noticed contacts between associates of Trump’s campaign and Russia during the campaign and grew concerned Moscow had sought to lure Americans down “a treasonous path.” In its report, the New York Times said some Russians boasted about how well they knew Flynn, who was subsequently named Trump’s national security adviser before being dismissed less than a month after the Republican took office. Others discussed leveraging their ties to Viktor Yanukovych, the deposed president of Ukraine living in exile in Russia, who at one time had worked closely with Manafort, who was dismissed from Trump’s campaign, the newspaper reported. Separately, Carter Page, a former foreign policy adviser to Trump’s presidential campaign, told Reuters via text message that he would testify before the House Intelligence Committee but was “still working out details.” “Nothing (is) fully confirmed at this stage,” Page wrote, adding that if invited, he would also testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee, but had yet to receive such a request. ABC News, which first reported on Page’s planned testimony, said he would testify before the House panel on June 6. A spokesman for the committee declined comment on whether Page would testify. In a letter to the panel seen by Reuters, Page accused Brennan of offering a “biased viewpoint” in Tuesday’s testimony. On Wednesday morning, the top Democrat on the committee said it would subpoena Flynn in its probe into alleged Russian meddling in the presidential election after he declined to appear before the panel. “We will be following up with subpoenas, and those subpoenas will be designed to maximize our chance of getting the information that we need,” Representative Adam Schiff told journalists at a breakfast sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor. The leaders of the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee said on Tuesday they would subpoena two of Flynn’s businesses after he declined to hand over documents in its separate Russia probe. Flynn, a retired general, is a key witness in the Russia investigations because of his ties to Moscow. He was fired from his position at the White House in February, after less than a month on the job, for failing to disclose the content of talks with Sergei Kislyak, Russia’s ambassador to the United States, and misleading Vice President Mike Pence about the conversations. | 0fake |
Liberal Nobel Prize Winning Economist: Hillary Clinton Is MORE Liberal Than Obama | Over the last decade or so, a handful of people have become what you might call economic rock stars, at least for liberals. Robert Reich, Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz grab the attention of liberals when they talk about income inequality, taking corporate influence out of politics and a more equitable tax structure.Bernie Sanders had talked about bringing on Stiglitz and Reich, if he were to win the presidency. In other words, these are men who have all the credibility in the world when it comes to evaluating political candidates and Nobel Prize winning economist Stiglitz believes that if Clinton wins, we are in for an even more liberal agenda than Obama has had.To be fair, Stiglitz is an advisor to Clinton s campaign, but he rarely tones down his progressive rhetoric, no matter who he s talking to or about. With Clinton, though, he gets quite specific in an interview with Slate Magazine. Stiglitz believes that in the years since Bill Clinton left office, the country has changed and that we are far more focused on income inequality, something he believes Hillary Clinton will do something about:Where do you situate Hillary Clinton ideologically in terms of economics?I think that s a good question. I think the world today is different from where it was 20 years ago, and the issues are being framed considerably differently. For instance, I think there s a recognition that inequality is a much bigger problem. I think she is much more concerned about more progressive taxes and dealing with tax avoidance of multinational corporations. I think she is very committed to that. I think progressives are not against trade, but they are concerned with trade agreements that are pushed by corporations, for their interests, by and for corporations. That is what we have in the form of TPP. I think it is a good thing that she has come out against that.Stiglitz also believes that the very fact that Clinton is pragmatic something she s often criticized for on the left will keep he on the right track:One of the progressive concerns about Clinton has been that the Clintons are enmeshed with this sort of global, financial elite through their foundation, and just through the circles they travel in.I understand those concerns, and I guess part of the answer to that is the reality of 2016 is that the Senate Banking Committee has people like Sherrod Brown, Elizabeth Warren, and Jeff Merkel, and you are not going to get through legislation that is a sell out to Wall Street. Knowing that, and knowing that she does not want to fight within her party, I think she is pragmatic enough. The criticism occurs because she s been, you might say, too pragmatic. The fact is she is pragmatic enough to know that these people will not tolerate the kind of sell-out that I think many people have seen in previous administrations. I think it is unlikely that we will get policies that stray too far from the progressive agenda.Stiglitz credits Bernie Sanders with Hillary Clinton s more progressive policies. As for Clinton compared to Obama:More conservative than Hillary, yes. I think his temperament is basically more conservative and he did not go as far on Dodd-Frank as many people wanted. He opposed some of the key provisions that eventually got in the bill.For those who are still worried that Hillary Clinton will take on the more neoliberal policies of her husband, remember that times have changed and that we are no longer a center right nation. If anything, we are center left, and Clinton knows that if she disappoints the growing progressive wing of the Democratic party, she is doomed to just one term.Featured image via JP Yim/Getty Images. | 1real |
Kerry says all should celebrate Clinton win, regardless of party | ABU DHABI (Reuters) - - Hillary Clinton’s victory in the Democratic presidential primary race is a “historic moment” for the United States and should be celebrated by Republicans and Democrats alike, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said on Wednesday. Clinton declared herself the Democratic Party nominee on Tuesday evening after winning the New Jersey primary, setting up a general election campaign against Republican candidate Donald Trump in the Nov. 8 election. She is the first woman in American history to attain the presidential nomination of a major political party. “As a father of two daughters, I’m proud,” Kerry told reporters while traveling from China to the United Arab Emirates, adding that he had sent a message to Clinton congratulating her on the outcome. “She’ll make a terrific president.” Kerry, who was the Democratic nominee for president in 2004 but lost to Republican incumbent President George W. Bush, said Clinton’s achievement was a “truly historic moment for the nation.” “Everybody ought to celebrate it, Republican or Democrat alike,” he said. “It’s a breakthrough, and I think that whether you’re voting for Trump or you’re voting for her or whoever, you ought to take pride.” | 0fake |
Forget Beanbag Chairs. Amazon Is Giving Its Workers Treehouses. - The New York Times | REDMOND, Wash. — Just off a remote stretch of road here, near wineries, horse stables and farms, Amazon is secretly growing something, but it’s not what Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s chief executive, calls the “tiny seeds” that could become the company’s next big businesses. No, Amazon is growing actual plants, more than 3, 000 species of them spread around a greenhouse a ’s drive from Amazon’s headquarters in Seattle. There are carnivorous pitcher plants, exotic philodendrons and orchids from Ecuador that resemble the menacing flora from “Little Shop of Horrors. ” “Cinnamon, wax candy and baby powder,” said Ron Gagliardo, the Amazon horticulturist who oversees the greenhouse, when asked to describe the mysterious scent of the orchid, called Anguloa virginalis. Amazon pioneered internet shopping, electronic book reading and cloud computing. Now, as it enters adulthood, it is applying some of that inventiveness to its new home. The company is constructing a collection of and buildings in downtown Seattle that will be arrayed around three striking transparent, conjoined structures that Amazon calls spheres. They will act as greenhouses, the kind of flashy architecture that Amazon shunned for the first 22 years of its life. “We wanted it to be iconic, a structure that would be similar to another icon in the city, like the Space Needle, for newcomers to Seattle,” said John Schoettler, director of Amazon’s global real estate and facilities. “It would be a found treasure in the downtown neighborhood. ” The real point of the spheres is how Amazon wants to use the nature on the inside to inspire employees. When they open in early 2018, the spheres will be packed with a plant collection worthy of conservatories, allowing Amazon employees to amble through tree canopies three stories off the ground, meet with colleagues in rooms with walls made from vines and eat kale Caesar salads next to an indoor creek. Since Amazon decided about a decade ago to stay in downtown Seattle, the company said, it has invested over $4 billion in the construction and development of offices in the city, though it won’t disclose the budget for the spheres. The spheres will be accessible to Amazon employees only, but the company may eventually allow public tours. “The whole idea was to get people to think more creatively, maybe come up with a new idea they wouldn’t have if they were just in their office,” said Dale Alberda, the lead architect on the project at NBBJ, a firm that has also worked on building projects for Samsung, Google and the Chinese internet company Tencent. Tech companies have been eager to test ways to make workplaces more conducive to creativity. Some turn their offices into playgrounds, with beanbag chairs, ball pits and tables. The more refined alternative now catching on is to make nature the star of the show. Apple, for example, has hired an arborist, Dave Muffly, to oversee the planting of about 8, 000 trees on its new campus in Cupertino, Calif. which will surround a new building where Apple employees will work. The mostly native trees are intended to restore the natural landscape that once blanketed Silicon Valley. What makes Amazon’s project unusual is its location — in the heart of a city, rather than on a sprawling suburban campus of the sort favored by most other big tech companies. Amazon, the largest private employer in Seattle, has more than 20, 000 employees spread out in more than 30 buildings in the city. Its current construction plans will give it the space to more than double its local head count. Mr. Bezos has said that Amazon is staying put in a city because the kinds of employees it wants are attracted to an urban environment. But the concrete and steel canyons around Amazon’s new downtown properties do not have a lot of greenery. That is where the spheres and Mr. Gagliardo, whom Amazon hired to fill them with plants, enter the picture. Margaret O’Mara, an associate professor of history at the University of Washington, sees the spheres as a kind of Walden Pond under glass. “It’s a retreat, a cathedral away from the hubbub of the city,” she said. There was plenty of noise inside the spheres on a recent tour, as workers welded steel, pounded bolts into place and sawed concrete inside the structure. The glass panels that make up the carapace of the spheres were being lowered onto steel supports in shapes. Wearing a hard hat, Mr. Gagliardo dodged power cords and scaffolding, surveying an enormous mass of concrete where a living wall — fabric pockets filled with plants — will eventually be installed. He pointed to where a glass roof panel will be removed and a fig tree will be lifted by crane into one of the spheres, one of 40 to 50 trees that will be installed. “Being able to walk through here, I’m starting to see where things are going to go,” he said. The spheres will have meeting areas called treehouses, and suspension bridges high off the ground that will be just wobbly enough to quicken the pulses of employees who walk over them. “Amazon said, ‘Make this fun,’” said Mr. Alberda, the architect. Amazon’s architects had to make the spheres welcoming for both plants and people, a space with the abundance of a conservatory but without the stickiness that will fog MacBook screens and make people sweat. During the day, Amazon will keep the spheres at 72 degrees and 60 percent humidity, while at night the temperature will average 55 degrees and the humidity 85 percent, which Mr. Gagliardo said would be optimal for the cloud forest plant specimens it has collected. A growing body of academic research points to the benefits of giving employees access to nature. About a decade ago, Ihab Elzeyadi, an associate professor of architecture at the University of Oregon, conducted a study in which workers who were provided with a view of nature experienced a 20 percent reduction in sick leave from their employer, though it was not clear why that happened. Dr. Elzeyadi said he was intrigued by Amazon’s sphere project, but not convinced it would be as effective as letting workers gaze at plants from their desks. ”You’re making a big investment and betting on two big hypotheses,” he said. “Will they leave work and go there and, having that kind of maybe once a week, will it really impact their stress levels?” Any respite from stress could be particularly helpful for a company that has a reputation for a sometimes punishing work environment. Until plants start moving into the spheres next spring, Mr. Gagliardo, 50, dotes on them in their temporary home in the huge greenhouse Amazon has been leasing for the last couple of years. He will continue to tend to the plants for Amazon after they are planted in the spheres. He stops by a welwitschia, a Namibian plant with two leaves, proclaiming it the “ugliest plant in the world” and delivering the line with such enthusiasm that it sounds like a compliment. With misters pumping water into the air, he swells with excitement discussing his current love affair with a group of begonias from Southeast Asia. “Next week I’ll be more excited about a different group,” he said. Many of the species Amazon is growing here are endangered or extinct in the wild, acquired from botanical gardens, universities and private growers around the world. Mr. Gagliardo, who previously worked at the Atlanta Botanical Garden and in amphibian conservation, said opportunities to build a plant collection like Amazon’s did not come along often. “I’m a plant curator by heart,” he said. “So different plant families, amassing a collection of plants, is totally what I geek out on and go crazy about. ” | 0fake |
Hispanic backers sour on Trump after immigration speech | WILMINGTON, Ohio/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Some of Donald Trump’s Hispanic backers distanced themselves from the Republican nominee on Thursday for standing by a hardline approach to illegal immigration in a key speech after indicating for weeks that he may soften his approach. Trump tried to clarify confusion about immigration, his signature policy issue, in a speech on Wednesday. He said the only way undocumented foreigners could live in the United States legally if he is elected on Nov. 8 would be to leave the country and apply for re-entry. But the businessman, trailing Democratic rival Hillary Clinton in opinion polls, did back away from earlier promises to deport immediately the 11 million immigrants in the United States illegally and said he would prioritize those with criminal records. While polls show a large majority of Hispanic voters oppose Trump, the withdrawal of support from among his small group of Latino backers underscores how difficult it is for Trump to broaden his support with minorities and moderate voters. Alfonso Aguilar, who recently organized a support letter on behalf of Trump, said he felt “disappointed and misled” by the fiery speech and withdrew his backing. “For the last two months he said he was not going to deport people without criminal records. He actually said that he was going to treat undocumented immigrants without criminal records in a humane and compassionate way,” Aguilar told CNN. He is the president of the Latino Partnership for Conservative Principles group. Trump used his Wednesday appearance in Phoenix to clarify his stance on illegal immigration. But instead of moderating his message as many expected, Trump returned to the hardline rhetoric that powered him to victory in the Republican presidential nomination race over 16 rivals, heartening conservatives drawn to Trump by the issue. Some members of a council Trump formed last month to advise him on Hispanic issues expressed reservations about or cut ties to the New York real estate developer’s candidacy after the Phoenix speech. Jacob Monty, a Texas attorney and member of the group, said he was withdrawing his support and would not vote in the election. “There was nothing pro-business in that speech,” Monty told MSNBC. “We were hoping for some glimmer of the Donald Trump that we met with a week and half ago, but it never came.” Panel member Ramiro Pena, a Baptist pastor in Texas who spoke at the Republican National Convention in July, wrote in an email to party leaders that he believed Trump would lose the election and that the advisory panel was a “scam.” But other Latino advisers, including Florida pastor Mario Bramnick and Kentucky State Senator Ralph Alvardo, said they would continue working with the Trump campaign. Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus downplayed the fallout from Trump’s speech, telling CNN that the nominee made clear he first wants to build the border wall and deal with criminal elements, then have a “humane conversation” about other illegal immigrants. “Somehow or another no one is talking about that piece,” Priebus said. At a campaign rally on Thursday in Wilmington, Ohio, Trump said his immigration plan would treat everyone with “dignity, respect and compassion” but prioritize compassion for American citizens and include some kind of ideological screening. “We only want to admit those into our country who share our values and love our people,” Trump said. Trump gave his Phoenix address, which was flagged as a major policy speech, just hours after he met with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto in Mexico City. At a joint press conference after the meeting, Trump said the pair discussed his campaign promise to build a border wall but not which country would pay for it. Pena Nieto said on Twitter on Wednesday night he had “made it clear” Mexico would not be paying for the wall. Trump supporters at the Wilmington rally said they approved of the candidate’s immigration policies but moderate Republicans in Arizona, where Latinos make up more than 30 percent of the population, told Reuters they were less swayed by his message. Clinton’s campaign called Trump’s immigration speech a “disaster” and said it would begin running advertisements in Arizona, a sign it sees a chance of winning a state that has long backed Republican presidential candidates. Clinton raised about $143 million in August for her presidential bid and the Democratic Party, her campaign announced. Trump has not yet released his fundraising totals for the month of August. | 0fake |
Polls open as Slovenian president runs for his second mandate | LJUBLJANA (Reuters) - Polls opened in the Slovenian presidential election on Sunday with incumbent President Borut Pahor running for his second five-year mandate against eight other candidates. Opinion polls had shown that Pahor, who is running as an independent and says his main task is bringing people together, will win most votes but the question remains whether there will be a need for a second election round. If no candidate wins at least 50 percent of votes in the first round, the two candidates with the most votes will compete in a second round on Nov. 12. Apart from Pahor, the most likely candidate to get into the second round is the mayor of Kamnik Marjan Sarec, who is backed by his own non-parliamentary center-left party Lista Marjana Sarca, opinion polls showed. A lot will depend upon turnout, upon whether young people will come to vote. In this case Pahor would benefit as he is the king of the Instagram and is therefore more likely to get votes of the young, Tanja Staric, an analyst at Radio Slovenia, told Reuters. Pahor, 53, who is a former fashion model, is famous for posting his photos on Instagram showing him in his official duties but also in various sports activities. His campaign included 25 days of walking totaling some 700 kilometers (435 miles) between Slovenian cities and villages to meet local people. He is a former long-time leader of the center-left Social Democrats and had been Slovenian prime minister from 2008 to 2012, in the years which led to the worst financial crisis in Slovenia s history. The country managed to only narrowly avoid an international bailout for its banks in 2013. Although the role is mostly ceremonial, the president leads the army and also nominates several top officials, including the central bank governor. Most of his nominations have to be confirmed by parliament. The election is seen as a possible indication of parties support before general elections due in June or July next year. Polls are due to close at 1700 GMT with preliminary results expected around 1900 GMT. | 0fake |
Watch: Pro-Turkey Protesters Riot in Rotterdam | Hundreds of Turkish migrants and dual nationals turned out onto the streets of Rotterdam to riot in support of their home country’s Islamist president last night, forcing Dutch police to take robust action to disperse them.[ People wave Turkish national flags during a demonstration near the Turkish consulate in Rotterdam on March 11, 2017. Photo: MARTEN VAN Images, Turkish residents of the Netherlands gather for a protest in Rotterdam on March 11, 2017. Photo: EMMANUEL Images, Geert Wilders, leader of the Party for Freedom (PVV) released a message in response to the unrest, telling rioters, “You are no Europeans, and you will never be. ” 🇳🇱🇹🇷 Geert Wilders’s message to Turks: ”You are not welcome here!” #Turkey #Rotterdam pic. twitter. — Keith Walker (@KeithWalkerNews) March 12, 2017, “An Islamic state like Turkey does not belong to Europe. All the values Europe stands for — freedom, democracy, human rights — are incompatible with Islam,” he said. “Turkey voted for Erdoğan, a dangerous Islamist who raises the flag of Islam. We do not want more, but less Islam. So Turkey, stay away from us. You are not welcome here. ” Aggressive crowds have gathered outside the Dutch embassy in Ankara and the consulate in Istanbul in response, calling for retaliation and chanting “Allahu Akbar!” Nu voor Nederlands consulaat in Istanbul pic. twitter. — Lucas Waagmeester (@NOSWaagmeester) March 11, 2017, The riots are in response to the Dutch government’s refusal to allow the Turkish foreign minister to land in the Netherlands to attend a rally supporting the expansion of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s powers. According to Prime Minister Mark Rutte, the refusal was made in response to being threatened with sanctions. “We can never do business under this kind of blackmail,” said Rutte, expressing amazement that family affairs minster Fatma Betul Sayan Kaya attempted to circumvent the Dutch ban on Turkish politicians campaigning in the Netherlands by bringing a fleet of ministerial cars across the German border, which the European Union’s borderless Schengen Area leaves unprotected. “We drew a red line,” he said, explaining why Kaya was escorted back to the German border — a move which prompted Erdoğan to denounce the Dutch as “fascists” and “Nazi remnants”. Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim vowed there would be “a stronger reprisal against the unacceptable treatment toward Turkey and ministers who have diplomatic immunity” on Sunday afternoon. “Our European friends who speak of democracy, freedom of expression and human rights have failed their class,” he declared. It is not yet clear what form Turkish reprisals will take, but foreign minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu has hinted the country may open its borders and allow illegal migrants to flood into Europe. [Video] Dutch police with dogs harshly disperse Turkish protesters in Rotterdam pic. twitter. — ANADOLU AGENCY (ENG) (@anadoluagency) March 12, 2017, Erdoğan’s party, Justice and Development (AKP) has, like the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, been described as “Moderately Islamist” — but it has grown increasingly authoritarian as it unpicks the secular settlement laid down by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of modern Turkey. “We are a Muslim country [and] we must have a religious constitution,” demanded parliamentary speaker Ismail Kahraman in 2016. “Secularism cannot feature in the new constitution. ” Atatürk introduced sweeping reforms which sought to confine Islam to the private sphere when Turkey was first esablished, abolishing the Ottoman Caliphate, severely curtailing Islam’s role in politics and discouraging religious dress. “My people are going to learn the principles of democracy, the dictates of truth and the teachings of science,” he said, according to a biography by Andrew Mango. “Superstition must go. ” | 0fake |
LAME DUCK: New Obama Executive Action Opens Door to Unlimited Arms for Salafist Terrorists in Syria | Patrick Henningsen 21st Century Wire As 21WIRE reported earlier this week, in a historic turning point in a five-year bloody conflict, the Syrian Arab Army liberated the Old City of Aleppo from the hands of occupying terrorists and armed militants. This joint victory by Syria and Russia has caused a panic in Washington, however, as well as in London, Paris, Saudi Arabia and Qatar all of whom hoped they would eventually destroy the entire city of Aleppo, and win their proxy war in the process. Prior to this week, the US-led Coalition still believed that they could somehow force a Syria-Russia military pause, and UN-enforced No Fly Zone or Safe Zone by continuing to back a militant opposition that has been occupying East Aleppo since 2012. Their epic failure has prompted yet another highly dangerous and desperate move by a lame duck US President signing a new order which could deliver unlimited arms and support to moderate terrorists in Syria. On Tuesday, President Barack Obama issued a White House memorandum (see full text below) to both the US State and Defense departments which waives any arms export control restrictions on providing military assistance to any and all foreign forces in Syria, according to a White House press release issued today. Presumably, this includes not only guns and ammunition, but also lethal TOW Missiles and RPGs (and anti-aircraft units?) for tens of thousands of extremist foreign fighters and Salafi terrorists currently operating inside Syria, as well as thousands of US-trained and equipped fighters waiting in camp in both Turkey and Jordan.Not coincidentally, this comes on the same day the US Senate passed a defense bill by a majority vote of 92-7, which authorizes $611 billion in military spending through 2017.Although in 2016 the US allocated some $500 million in US taxpayer funds in order to train and equip (arm) the so-called moderate rebels in Syria via the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), it s still difficult to determine what is the total cost to date of Washington s support, both overt and covert, for rebel factions in Syria.This seemingly desperate move by Obama can only mean two things. Firstly, it demonstrates that the US and its allies are doggedly determined to prolong one of the bloodiest and dirtiest wars in recent history. Secondly, it signals a last-ditch act of desperation on the part of a President who will be viewed as a perennial loser in a failed proxy war that lasted over 5 years, costing tens of billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of lives.The executive action also gives additional weight to this week s statement by US State Dept spokesperson Elizabeth Trudeau who stated: Even if Aleppo falls, certainly the war is not over. But our position has not changed on that. Is the outgoing White House trying to plunge the next Administration into a deeper commitment to an unwinnable proxy war in the Middle East?As far as diplomacy is concerned, the agenda couldn t be clearer. This is an all-too-familiar pattern that we ve become used to throughout Washington s endless Syria debacle. While Kerry pretends to negotiate a diplomatic ceasefire or peace deal over the table somewhere in Europe, operatives in Washington execute some irrational moves under the table specifically designed to sabotage any real bilateral agreement. Whether it s an US air strike against Syrian Army, a fabricated chemical weapons claim against the Syrian armed forces, or a false flag attack on a UN Aid Convoy the US seems to always pull a trick card when the promise of an agreement is near.According to RT reports from today s OECD talks in Hamburg, Germany, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov (image, right) hit back at a recent allegation made by US State Department spokesman Mark Toner who had accused Russia of not actually fighting Jabhat al-Nusra (Al Nusra) terrorists in Syria, but rather that Russia was instead attacking the US-backed moderate opposition. Lavrov replied simply by stating, As for Jabhat al-Nusra, the US is not only not touching it, but also tried to negotiate our agreements in a way which let al-Nusra remain unpunished. He then explained that this group is listed by the UN as a designated terrorist organization, adding that, surely, we cannot accept it. Washington s name game of refusing to call a terrorist a terrorist should be old hat by now. Back in September, Lavrov had managed to get US Secretary of State John Kerry to agree to target leading terrorist opposition force Al Nusra Front (al Qaeda in Syria, supported covertly by both the Saudi Arabia and the US/CIA), but this and other provisional ceasefire arrangements quickly collapsed after the US targeted and killed at least 70 Syrian Army soldiers a brutal operation which allowed ISIS forces to advance towards the key city of Deir el-Zour. This prompted a rather embarrassing public tantrum by Washington s UN Ambassador Samantha Power.Meanwhile, there was a near complete media blackout and no real national discussion over the Stop Arming Terrorists Act introduced by Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI), which would prohibit the U.S. government from using American taxpayer dollars to provide funding, weapons, training, and intelligence support to groups like Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, al Nusra, al-Qaeda and ISIS, or to countries who are providing direct or indirect support to those same groups, including Saudi Arabia, Qatar and also Israel (see Israeli support for al Qaeda). Not surprisingly, most US Congressmen and Senators oppose such a move which speaks volumes as to the level of corruption present in Washington today.Once again, Washington drives another impossible wedge into delicate diplomatic negotiations Obama s latest decree stipulates that new arms shipments and military provisions will fall under the banner of fighting terrorism, (see the official document below) when in reality, the stated US intention and policies regarding supplying weapons to moderate opposition Syria who have never actually fought ISIS. Instead, weapons are transferred to armed opposition paramilitaries (including listed Terrorist groups like Al Nusra Front and its numerous affiliates, and even into the hands of ISIS themselves). In reality, these US Coalition-supplied militants are really fighting against the Syrian Army and not ISIS, and they do so with the expressed intention of overthrowing the Syrian Government led by President Bashar al-Assad. This same regime change is also the stated policy of the US and its allies, and yet Washington is still carrying on with its political charade regardless.Here is the Presidential Memorandum posted on the White House website this afternoon:Presidential Determination and Waiver Pursuant to Section 2249a of Title 10, United States Code, and Sections 40 and 40A of the Arms Export Control Act to Support U.S. Special Operations to Combat Terrorism in SyriaDecember 8, 2016Presidential Determination No. 2017-05MEMORANDUM FOR THE SECRETARY OF STATE THE SECRETARY OF DEFENSESUBJECT: Presidential Determination and Waiver Pursuant to Section 2249a of Title 10, United States Code, and Sections 40 and 40A of the Arms Export Control Act to Support U.S. Special Operations to Combat Terrorism in SyriaBy the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, including section 2249a of title 10, United States Code, sections 40 and 40A of the Arms Export Control Act (AECA) (22 U.S.C. 2780 and 2781), and section 301 of title 3, United States Code, I hereby:The Secretary of Defense is authorized and directed to publish this determination in the Federal Register.BARACK OBAMA [signed]***During recent peace negotiations in Rome and Hamburg, Sergey Lavrov made it clear that past Washington attempts to deliberately obfuscate and confuse the issue would not work this time which has no doubt infuriated Washington who has always reserved the right to pull a bait-and-switch, or simply lie its way through negotiations either to buy time for terrorist ground forces, or simply to railroad any actual agreement before the signing stage. This was certainly the case over the weekend in Rome when, according to RT, Lavrov emphasised that, John Kerry passed on to us proposals from Washington that are in line with the suggestions [on Syria] from Russia s experts. Then, like clockwork, Washington withdrew the proposal two days later.Accustomed to US double-dealing over Syria, Lavrov seemed to take it stride, saying on Tuesday, They have withdrawn their document and have a new one. Our initial impression is that this new document backtracks, and is an attempt to buy time for the militants, allow them to catch their breath and resupply. Lavrov also chided the UN special envoy to Syria, Staffan de Mistura, to stop sabotaging the Geneva Syria peace talks.Meanwhile, terrorist-occupied East Aleppo was liberated by Government forces. That was Washington s last card in Aleppo, and now it s gone. WESTERN DOUBLESPEAK: Moderate Rebels in Syria. Despite now Washington s farcical legal evasion claiming how it is shipping arms into Syria in order to help the long-defunct, albeit aspirational construct, the Free Syrian Army, in the supposed fight against ISIS, bureaucrats can no longer hide their true intentions. It should also be noted that by arming internationally recognized terrorists fighters Washington and any other allies involved in these illicit operations are in direct violation of United States Anti-Terrorism laws, as well as similar European and international laws. However, because this has been a bipartisan effort from the beginning, co-steered by key Republicans including John McCain, Ed Royce, and Mike Rogers no such indictments may ever be brought against Washington s criminal weapons traffickers. If such a case were ever prosecuted, then every US politician involved in this operation, both Democrat and Republican as well as agency officials, could, in theory, be charged with providing material support and lethal aid to known terrorist entities. Perhaps for this reason, the US and its allies have avoided specifically naming Al Nusra Front and its terror affiliates in most of the language in their official pronouncements of rebel support.RT dispatches added the following statement on Wednesday from retired US Army Colonel Larry Wilkerson, who is urging Washington DC to end the spilling of blood in Syria, citing that all western attempts to oust Assad have failed: There is an old theory in international relations that some wars have to be won. Well, this is one that has been won and it has been won by Assad and his allies, Wilkerson said. The official elaborated that the West should recognize that to stop the killing, to stop the slaughter, to stop the bloodshed. Stability in this case is better than what we have right now. It would be the same in Libya. We opened Pandora s box in Libya too and look what we have now. Since attempts to drive out the legitimate Syrian President have failed, the international community needs to make accommodation with him [Assad] We need to bring some stability back to Syria, Wilkerson concluded.Only two days ago, on the anniversary of Pearl Harbor, President Obama could be seen grandstanding, and boasting about all of his supposed security achievements at a speech he gave at CENTCOM HQ at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida. On January 20th, I will become the first president of the United States to serve two full terms during a time of war. he said.What Obama seems to forget is that all of his wars were done in absence of any real Article One Section 8 declaration of war by US Congress, only a vague Authorization of Force rubber-stamp was applied. This is nothing more than an expedient lawyer s end-run around the US Constitution. From Iraq, to Afghanistan, to Libya, to Syria, and Yemen (not to mention covert actions in the Ukraine) all of these are undeclared wars of aggression, for which Germany was also implicated over its actions from 1939, which was also the basis for the draft text in the Nuremberg Principles.The NYT adds: He [Obama] defended an approach to fighting wars that did not bankrupt the Treasury or cause thousands of deaths. He noted, for instance, that he has spent $10 billion over the last two years fighting the Islamic State the same amount of money President George W. Bush spent in just one month fighting the Iraq War. So right after he brags to a crowd of hapless US servicemen about how he defeated ISIS on the cheap, Obama signs a blank check to arm legions of murdering terrorists already running amok in Syria.Is this the final act of a President who fears that his all-important legacy is slipping away in the waning weeks of his own eight year regime?Obama s legacy is written already, however. It s one of overall nonexistent leadership, punctuated by a shifty foreign policy that s been littered with failure, enabled through executive criminality and repeated lies and underlined by a total disregard for international law.This, from a man who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize even before he served a day in office.That is Obama s legacy.*** EDITOR S NOTE: See Patrick Henningsen discuss Obama s latest move with RT International news on Thursday: . READ MORE SYRIA NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Syria FilesSUPPORT 21WIRE SUBSCRIBE & BECOME A MEMBER@21WIRE.TV | 1real |
Anything Can Provoke Trump To Block You On Twitter – Even Ice Cream! | I guess Trump missed the sticks and stones lesson in life as more and more of his critics are getting blocked on Twitter over the tiniest things.Take, for example, Rob Szczerba s covfefe ice cream joke. According to CNN, Szczerba tweeted Trump: @realDonaldTrump I heard #covfefe is a new flavor from Ben & Jerry s. But it s mostly just nuts! I heard #covfefe is a new flavor from Ben & Jerry's. But it's mostly just nuts! #ParisAgreement #ParisAccord Rob Szczerba (@RJSzczerba) June 2, 2017When Szczerba went to tweet Trump again not long after, he found himself blocked by Trump.How sad is that? Blocked because of a joke. Rather than laugh off his own typo, Trump would rather pout and block people.Lauren Wolfe believes that blocking critics poses dangerous implications. When Trump shuts out his critics, he withdraws further into the bubble of sycophancy he already enjoys, Wolfe wrote in an opinion piece for CNN.Wolfe raises a valid point. As the old saying goes: if you can t handle the heat, get out of the kitchen. So, what is Trump doing in the kitchen?Since Trump shows no signs of stopping as the number of people he blocks on Twitter grows, questions and concerns are on the rise. While some wear their blocked status proudly and couldn t care less, it raises first amendment concerns.If tweets by Trump, no matter how ridiculous they are, should they be inaccessible to certain people? After all, his tweets are meant to be treated as official White House statements.The Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University says a lawsuit is not out of the question if Trump doesn t unblock Twitter users. Your Twitter account is a designated public forum for essentially the same reasons that open city council meetings and school board meetings are, the lawyers wrote in the letter.A fair point. Nobody deserves or should be exempt from what the president has to say on social media. Trump is no longer a private citizen and his Twitter account is also no longer personal to hide from others.While hilariously sad that Trump s blocking people, it just reinforces that everything is Trump s way or the highway.Featured image via Pete Marovich/Bloomberg via Getty Images | 1real |
Donald Trump Meets With WWE Owner Vince McMahon About Serving As Running Mate
| Donald Trump is looking to assemble a strong team of experienced business leaders as he enters into the intense general election phase. While many expected Trump to consider government leaders, he is leaning on long time WWE boss Vincent K. McMahon to serve as his running mate.
Trump and McMahon met for more than two hours earlier today at Trumps New York headquarters.
This is not the first time Mr. McMahon has been involved in politics. His wife Linda has run for political office on multiple occasions. His experience and notoriety would offer a boost to Donalds campaign as it enters the toughest battle he has faced thus far.
Look, Vince McMahon is someone I deeply admire. We had a discussion today and I think hes the guy. Listen, this is our countrys future. Vince gave us Stone Cold. Vince gave us The Rock. Vince gave us DX. How can you argue with his record? We need this guy. He gave us the Texas Rattlesnake for god sakes. Trump told reporters after a media event.
For his part, Vince McMahon said he and Trump had a lot in common.
We both say youre fired, were both businessmen, we both love wrestling. You know who else loves wrestling? America. You know who hates wrestling? Hilary. McMahon said, appearing ready for his possible role as VP.
It remains to be seen if or when Trump would confirm the WWE boss as his potential running mate. Experts say it wont be long if theyve already met.
| 1real |
Right-Wing Militiamen Aquitted In Armed Takeover Of Malheur Refuge | Videos Right-Wing Militiamen Aquitted In Armed Takeover Of Malheur Refuge The standoff at a wildlife refuge in Oregon was never branded "domestic terrorism" by authorities or the media. | October 28, 2016 Be Sociable, Share! Ammon Bundy, center, one of the sons of Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, walks off after speaking with reporters during a news conference at Malheur National Wildlife Refuge headquarters Monday, Jan. 4, 2016, near Burns, Ore. Bundy, who was involved in a 2014 standoff with the government over grazing rights told reporters on Monday that two local ranchers who face long prison sentences for setting fire to land have been treated unfairly. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer) All seven far-right militiamen who led an armed takeover of a federal wildlife refuge in Oregon in January that led to a standoff with police were found not guilty of all charges stemming from the action.
The seven anti-government men, including brothers Ammon and Ryan Bundy, began their 41-day occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge on Jan. 2 with at least a dozen armed men, in the latest flare-up in a nearly century-old conflict over federal control of millions of acres of public land in the West.
They surrendered when a spokesman for the group, Robert “La Voy” Finnicum was shot and killed by state police.
Charges included conspiracy to threaten, force and intimidate park officials trying to end the standoff, theft of public property and the use and carrying of a firearm.
teleSUR journalist Arun Gupta, who reported from the scene during the occupation, said that charging the militia group with conspiracy instead of what by definition is “domestic terrorism,” is an example of the “hypocrisy and double standards of the U.S. government.”
Deliberations continued until Thursday morning after a juror was dismissed over accusations of bias — the juror, a former employee of the Bureau of Land Management, had allegedly told others he is “very biased.” The federal judge told the 12-person jury to “disregard entirely” previous discussions and start anew.
Accusing the federal government of stealing land in Oregon, the group has refused to pay for cattle-grazing permits. They were demanding that the federal government hand over the rights to the refuge to individual states and residents for their own use.
Both Bundy brothers had been in jail since being arrested after the standoff ended. A separate trial will take place in February 2017 for a second group of defendants charged in relation to the standoff. | 1real |
Exclusive: Dem Senator’s Private Email Hacked | Exclusive: Dem Senator’s Private Email Hacked DCLeaks obtains emails of Colorado Democratic Senator Andy Kerr Mikael Thalen - October 27, 2016 Comments
Infowars has exclusively learned that the email account of Colorado Democratic Senator Andy Kerr has been hacked.
The emails, shown to Infowars by the website DCLeaks, include hundreds of discussions from March 2015 to July 2016 – with one email concerning 2015 marijuana legislation oddly claiming to be from December of 2000.
Taken from Kerr’s Gmail account, the emails, which are currently password protected, mostly surround requests and comments by Kerr’s constituents on a wide range of political topics.
Speaking with Infowars, David Pourshoushtari, communications director for the Colorado State Senate Democrats, said Kerr was unaware of the hack but that the senator declined to provide an official statement until the situation could be assessed.
While the exact reasoning behind the hack is currently unknown, Kerr may have been targeted as part of the same hacking campaign that compromised the emails of other political figures including Clinton campaign Chairman John Podesta.
It is also unclear whether Kerr, like Podesta, fell victim to a phishing attack that would have resulted in the senator putting his email password into a fake Google login page.
Earlier this month the former Chief of Protocol of the United States, Capricia Marshall, who was one of Clinton’s insiders at the State Department, similarly had her emails appear on DCLeaks.
The website also made headlines in August after publishing hundreds of documents connected to billionaire donor George Soros.
According to the U.S. government and many in the cybersecurity community , Russian state hackers are responsible for the recent spate of election season hacks. DCLeaks has similarly been accused of being a publishing front for the Russian government. NEWSLETTER SIGN UP Get the latest breaking news & specials from Alex Jones and the Infowars Crew. Related Articles | 1real |
Glenn Beck’s Bullsh*t Defense Of Bigoted Bathroom Bills Is Pure Stupidity (AUDIO) | Glenn Beck has shared his opinion on the bigoted Bathroom Bill in North Carolina which forces transgender people to use toilets contrary to their gender identity. Beck s bullsh*t defense of the plans is just about the stupidest thing you ll hear all day and we re in an election cycle.Beck argues that his support of the bathroom bills popping up across the nation s red states is absolutely nothing to do with bigotry and transphobia. According to Beck: It has nothing to do with hate. It has everything to do with common sense. But we have detached from common sense. He then, of course, launches into the same entirely hateful, ignorant, fear-mongering which Ted Cruz and Curt Schilling have engaged in during the course of the debate. He creates the specter of his young daughter being confronted by a man pretending to be a woman in the bathroom invoking primal fear. Beck and others state is as a fact that this will happen all the time without a bathroom bill, despite the sum total of zero cases to date.But Beck is far from alone in his stupidity.Curt Schilling was recently fired by ESPN after sharing a Facebook post in support of the anti-transgender bill passed in North Carolina. The post consisted of an image, featuring a man in a wig, his T-shirt cut to expose breasts, and a bizarre black outfit of women s clothing. The image was accompanied by text which read: LET HIM IN! to the restroom with your daughter or else you re a narrow-minded, judgmental, unloving racist bigot who needs to die. Former player Schilling then added: A man is a man no matter what they call themselves. I don t care what they are, who they sleep with, men s room was designed for the penis, women s not so much. Now you need laws telling us differently? Pathetic. ESPN later issued a statement claiming Schilling s unacceptable conduct violated their policy of inclusiveness: ESPN is an inclusive company. Curt Schilling has been advised that his conduct was unacceptable and his employment with ESPN has been terminated. GOP presidential hopeful Ted Cruz has also come out in support for the bills on the same bigoted basis. Cruz told ABC News Saturday: There is no greater evil than predators and if the law says that any man, if he chooses can enter a women s restroom, a little girl s restroom and stay there and he cannot be removed because he simply says at that moment he feels like a woman, you re opening the door for predators. However, using a caricature of a cross-dressing predator to invoke fear about transgender people using the gender identity appropriate bathroom is plain bigotry. One could just as readily argue the opposite, as transgender men did en masse with the hashtag Using the hashtag #WeJustNeedToPee. Bearded transgender men posted pictures of themselves in the women s bathroom, next to women entering cubicles and doing their makeup.Michael Hughes, from Minnesota, posted the picture below, asking: Do I look like I belong in a women s bathroom?Under the North Carolina law, Michael would be legally compelled to use the women s bathrooms despite the fact that he would clearly cause some degree of confusion and worry by doing so.Surely the long-term answer is to remove the gender apartheid from toilets altogether? Plenty of countries around the world do just fine using mixed bathrooms. Why not us?Featured Image via Flickr Creative Commons | 1real |
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Yes he can: 'Clever boy' Obama returns to Indonesia for family vacation | (This story corrects typo in 10th paragraph.) By Jessica Damiana JAKARTA (Reuters) - From white water rafting in Bali to visiting temples on Java, former U.S. President Barack Obama’s private family holiday is being closely tracked in Indonesia where he spent four years as a child. Obama was six when he moved to Jakarta after his American mother, Ann Dunham, married an Indonesian man following the end of her marriage to Obama’s Kenyan father. “I feel proud that my friend became a president,” said Sonni Gondokusumo, 56, a former classmate of Obama at the Menteng 01 state elementary school in Jakarta. Gondokusumo showed a class photograph of himself standing behind a young Obama, who was wearing a school beret. “He was a clever boy. Whenever a teacher asked him to solve a problem in front of the class, he could do it,” Gondokusomo told Reuters, adding he hoped to meet the former president again. Obama remains popular in the world’s most populous Muslim nation and his trip has been splashed across the media during an extended public holiday to mark the end of the fasting month of Ramadan. The Rakyat Merdeka newspaper carried a headline “Obama loves Indonesia”. Obama returned for an official visit as president in 2010 with his wife, Michelle, but this time has brought daughters Malia and Sasha as well. Indonesians are avid social media users and snaps of the former U.S. president walking with his family in rice fields and rafting on Bali’s Ayung River have gone viral. Obama kicked off the holiday on the island of Bali, where he stayed at the luxurious Four Seasons Resort Bali near the cultural center of Ubud. On Wednesday, Obama and his family arrived in the city of Yogyakarta on Java island, and visited the ancient temple of Borobudur. According to CNN Indonesia, Central Java police deployed 700 officers to secure his visit to Borobudur, a Buddhist temple dating from the 8th and 9th centuries. Obama is due to meet President Joko Widodo on Friday at the palace in Bogor, south of Jakarta, and visit the capital on Saturday. | 0fake |
Commentary: Party leaders often disliked their nominee. It’s the public vitriol that’s new. | GOP leaders have unleashed a stunning level of vitriol against their party’s most successful presidential candidate. House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), emphatically declared last week that he was not ready to endorse Donald Trump, his party’s presumptive presidential nominee. This move was unprecedented in modern American history. Trump’s response was that Ryan may need to be replaced as head of the Republican National Convention. Ryan’s rebuke reminds Americans that Trump is deeply unpopular, particularly among a significant number of powerful Republicans. Former GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney belittled the GOP’s new leader as a moral cretin unfit to be the standard bearer. Former President George W. Bush and his father, President George H.W. Bush, both say they are not attending the GOP convention in Cleveland. Such attacks, however, are nothing new. Political elders have lambasted their party’s leading presidential contenders throughout U.S. history. The big difference now is that this battle is playing out in public. In the past, attacks were largely in party backrooms, behind closed doors. To be sure, some serious breaks have been acted out in public. With dire results. President Theodore Roosevelt, for example, realized in 1912 that his progressive agenda was being abandoned by his chosen successor, William Howard Taft. TR challenged Taft in the Republican primaries. “We stand at Armageddon,” Roosevelt thundered at the convention, “and we battle for the Lord!” When Taft prevailed, Roosevelt bolted the party. He ran as a third-party candidate in 1912 on a Progressive Party ticket. Ultimately, the Democratic nominee, Woodrow Wilson, won. In most other cases, however, the internecine bloodletting took place in private, preserving the appearance of party unity and making it easier to heal any rifts. The 1944 Republican nominee Thomas Dewey ignored former President Herbert Hoover at an important state funeral that October and drew the national leader’s ire. “Dewey has no inner reservoir of knowledge on which to draw for his thinking.” Hoover sneered to a friend. “A man couldn’t wear a mustache like that without having it affect his mind.” Hoover, though, sought to keep his beliefs private Former presidents have kept mum even when they see a nominee as a threat to their legacy. In 1964, for example, former President Dwight D. Eisenhower didn’t have much regard for Senator Barry Goldwater. The conservative firebrand had repudiated Eisenhower’s presidency as a “dime-store New Deal.” Nonetheless, Eisenhower gave only halting support to the party’s anti-Goldwater forces. Despite Eisenhower’s contempt, the Arizonan became the Republican nominee, only to lose in a landslide to President Lyndon B. Johnson. Four years earlier, the Democratic power brokers were not as reticent. They viewed Senator John F. Kennedy, their party’s leading candidate in 1960, as too conservative and inexperienced. They disliked the campaign role of Joseph Kennedy, JFK’s father, and his controversial past. In addition, party leaders worried that JFK could not win national office because he was a Catholic. During the primaries, Truman, the titular head of the party, told a TV news conference that a nominee should have “the greatest possible maturity and experience” -- a clear dig at JFK’s relative youth. The former president beseeched his party to hold a brokered convention and find a way to avoid nominating Kennedy. Eventually, however, Truman endorsed Kennedy in the general election, reasoning that GOP nominee Richard M. Nixon was worse Adlai Stevenson, the Democratic nominee in 1952 and 1956, also refused to back Kennedy during the primary. Even Kennedy’s promise to name Stevenson as secretary of state could not persuade him. Still, most of the party elders’ scathing criticism against JFK was confined to backroom conversations. Senate Majority Leader Lyndon B. Johnson, who also wanted the nomination, privately mocked Kennedy as “a scrawny little fellow with rickets.” Johnson urged Eisenhower to oppose Kennedy during the primary contest, calling him “a [Senate] nobody” and “a dangerous man.” But Johnson’s efforts to stop Kennedy were not aired before the country in real time. In fact, 1960 demonstrated how the Democratic elders were able to prevent serious rifts from destroying their party’s chances. After securing the nomination, JFK offered — and LBJ accepted — the second slot on the ticket. The resentment of party elders toward party nominees was often rooted in a sense that the candidate was repudiating a mentor’s record. In the 1960 GOP presidential race, for example, Eisenhower resented Vice President Nixon’s implication that he would offer more robust leadership. Close to Election Day, Ike was asked to name an instance when Nixon’s advice influenced a presidential decision. “If you give me a week,” Eisenhower replied, “I might think of one.” In the reverse situation, Vice President Al Gore sought to distance himself from President Bill Clinton during the 2000 presidential campaign. Gore declared in his announcement that he would provide “moral leadership” and defend the American family — not-so-subtle knocks against Clinton’s sexual relationship with a White House intern, Monica Lewinsky. The bitterness between the two men festered and Gore never asked Clinton to campaign with him. After Gore lost to George W. Bush, Clinton upbraided his former vice president for running a lame, visionless campaign. The current spectacle — in which former Senator Bob Dole will likely be the only past Republican presidential nominee to come to the convention and endorse the party’s standard bearer — is partly a function of Trump’s scorched-earth multi-media campaign. His attacks have been leveled personally, in real-time, via Twitter and cable news. Wounds are deeper, and could be harder to heal. Trump’s presidential primary campaign is the apotheosis of the anti-Washington mood that has gripped presidential politics since Jimmy Carter’s 1976 White House run. One reason Trump vanquished his foes was because he ran against the GOP’s leadership as out-of-touch and inept. This played out even as party elders have less power to shape national tickets — and outsiders more ability to tear down anything that smacks of Washington politics-as-usual. Republican-on-Republican hits on Trump and his main rival, Ted Cruz, have contributed to the fraying of the GOP. The anti-Trump former presidents, as well as current and former party chairmen and congressional leaders, have much at stake. They are fighting for, as they see it, their legacies, their party’s future, their professional identities — and their own power. In recent decades, party elders have been clinging to an increasingly tenuous position. Think former Majority Leader Eric Cantor, who lost a primary election, as Sarah Palin recently noted. Or former House Speaker John Boehner, who was unable to control his party’s Tea Party wing. Boehner is still so incensed that he called Senator Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) “Lucifer in the flesh.” As we are seeing now with Ryan, Trump’s ferocious public attacks could yet come back to haunt him. Unlike so many past presidential primaries, this rift might prove irreparable. | 0fake |
Zimbabwe renames main airport after Mugabe, plans $153 million upgrade | HARARE (Reuters) - Zimbabwe will upgrade its main airport at a cost of $153 million in an effort to attract more visitors, state media reported on Thursday, as authorities renamed the airport in honor of 93-year-old President Robert Mugabe. Harare International Airport will from Thursday be known as Robert Mugabe International Airport and is expected to undergo an upgrade so that it can handle 6.5 million passengers a year, more than double its current capacity. State-owned Herald newspaper reported that China Export and Import Bank will provide a $153 million loan that will, among other things, be used to expand the runway to allow multiple planes to land at the same time. Accepting the honor, Mugabe said renaming the airport was a great gesture to him and his family. In the last few months, Mugabe s vocal ruling ZANU-PF youth wing has been pushing the government to honor Mugabe by giving public institutions his name. The government has said from next year the veteran ruler s Feb. 21 birthday will be known as Robert Mugabe National Youth Day, a public holiday. On Aug 9. the cash-strapped government announced plans to build a $1 billion university named after Mugabe, a move that was criticized by the opposition as a waste of resources. Mugabe is the only leader that Zimbabwe has known since independence from Britain in 1980 and despite his advanced age, he remains the most influential political figure in the country. | 0fake |
U.S., Israel quit U.N. heritage agency citing bias | PARIS (Reuters) - The United States and Israel announced on Thursday they were quitting the U.N. s cultural agency UNESCO, after Washington accused it of anti-Israeli bias. The withdrawal of the United States, which is meant to provide a fifth of UNESCO s funding, is a major blow for the Paris-based organization, founded after World War Two to help protect cultural and natural heritage around the world. UNESCO is best known for designating World Heritage Sites such as the ancient city of Palmyra in Syria and the Grand Canyon National Park. This decision was not taken lightly, and reflects U.S. concerns with mounting arrears at UNESCO, the need for fundamental reform in the organization, and continuing anti-Israel bias, State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said in a statement. Hours later, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel would quit too, calling the U.S. decision brave and moral . UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova expressed her disappointment: At the time when conflicts continue to tear apart societies across the world, it is deeply regrettable for the United States to withdraw from the United Nations agency promoting education for peace and protecting culture under attack, she said. This is a loss to the United Nations family. This is a loss for multilateralism. Washington has already withheld its funding for UNESCO since 2011, when the body admitted Palestine as a full member. The United States and Israel were among just 14 of 194 members that voted against admitting the Palestinians. Washington s arrears on its $80 million annual dues since then are now over $500 million. Although Washington supports a future independent Palestinian state, it says this should emerge out of peace talks and it considers it unhelpful for international organizations to admit Palestine until negotiations are complete. In recent years, Israel has repeatedly complained about what it says is the body taking sides in disputes over cultural heritage sites in Jerusalem and the Palestinian territories. Today is a new day at the U.N., where there is price to pay for discrimination against Israel, Israel s Ambassador to the United Nations Danny Danon said. Netanyahu told world leaders at the U.N. General Assembly last month that UNESCO was promoting fake history after it designated Hebron and the two adjoined shrines at its heart - the Jewish Tomb of the Patriarchs and the Muslim Ibrahimi Mosque - as a Palestinian World Heritage Site in Danger. An Arab-backed UNESCO resolution last year condemned Israeli s policies at religious sites in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. Under UNESCO rules, the U.S. withdrawal will become effective as of the end of December 2018. Three diplomats had told Reuters earlier on Thursday of the impending decision. The organization, which employs around 2,000 people worldwide, most of them based in Paris, has struggled for relevance as it becomes increasingly hobbled by regional rivalries and a lack of money. UNESCO, whose full name is the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, is in the process of selecting a new chief, whose priority will be to revive its fortunes. The U.S. move underscores the scepticism expressed by President Donald Trump about the need for the U.S. to remain engaged in multi-lateral bodies. The president has touted an America First policy, which puts U.S. economic and national interests ahead of international commitments. Since Trump took office, the United States has abandoned the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade talks and withdrawn from the Paris climate deal. Washington is also reviewing its membership of the Geneva-based U.N. Human Rights Council, which it also accuses of being anti-Israel. The absence of the United States or any large country with a lot of power is a loss. It s not just about money, it s promoting ideals that are vital to countries like the United States, such as education and culture, a UNESCO-based diplomat said, warning that others could follow. For differing reasons, Britain, Japan and Brazil are among states that have yet to pay their dues for 2017. Russia s former envoy to UNESCO told RIA news agency the agency was better off without the Americans. In recent years, they ve been of no use for this organization, Eleanora Mitrofanova said. Since 2011 they have practically not been paying to the budget of this organization... They decided to exit - this is absolutely in line with Trump s general logic today. After four days of secret balloting to pick a new UNESCO chief, Qatar s Hamad bin Abdulaziz al-Kawari qualified for the Friday runoff. France s Audrey Azoulay and Egypt s Moushira Khattab were tied in second. One will be eliminated after another vote by 58-member Executive Council on Friday. If the two finalists end level, they draw lots. The election has exposed deep rivalries between Qatar and Egypt that has its roots in the crisis engulfing Qatar and its Gulf Arab neighbors which have severed diplomatic, trade and travel ties with Doha after accusing it of sponsoring hardline Islamist groups, a charge Qatar denies. | 0fake |
Massachusetts ballot initiative on president tax return passes hurdle | BOSTON (Reuters) - A proposed Massachusetts ballot initiative that would allow voters to require U.S. presidential candidates to release their tax returns cleared a key hurdle on Wednesday, as state lawmakers mulled a similar bill after President Donald Trump declined to release his returns. The state’s attorney general, Maura Healey, a Democrat, certified the initiative petition along with 20 others covering a variety of topics as having met constitutional requirements for ballot questions. The proposed Massachusetts law would require candidates for U.S. president and vice president to submit to the state’s secretary copies of their federal income tax returns for the last six years that could then be made public. Certification of the petitions means backers can begin collecting the tens of thousands of signatures needed to get their questions onto the November 2018 ballot. Healey’s office said her decision did not mean she supported the petitions. The election-related initiative came after Trump, a Republican, last year became the first major presidential candidate since the 1970s to not voluntarily release at least some of his tax returns. Healey’s certification of the petition came as state lawmakers held a committee hearing and took testimony on a bill that would require U.S. presidential candidates to also disclose their tax returns in order to get onto the ballot. Senator Michael Barrett, the bill’s Democratic sponsor, in an interview said the bill had “a lot of grassroots interest,” and was receiving support from March Forward Mass, which formed after the Women’s March protest held in January a day after Trump was inaugurated. William Galvin, the Democratic secretary of state, testified in support of the bill, saying the public disclosure of tax returns is needed in order for voters to know about a candidate’s potential conflicts of interest. “This bill is not about Donald Trump,” he said. “It’s because of Donald Trump.” Barrett acknowledged such a law could be subject to lawsuits. The U.S. Constitution sets out qualifications to become president, and critics could argue the state’s law would unconstitutionally do the same. But Galvin testified that he believed that a law requiring tax returns’ disclosures could survive a legal challenge as states have a right to set conditions to get on their ballots. Similar proposals are being considered in other states. Republican New Jersey Governor Chris Christie in May vetoed a bill that would have required the disclosure by presidential candidates of tax returns, calling it “politics at its worst.” | 0fake |
STUNNING DISREGARD FOR LAW: 11 CA Counties Have More Registered Voters Than Voting Age Citizens…Look Who They Voted For In Last Election | But..b but it isn t fair to ask for voter ID says the party that dominates the states that refuse to cooperate with Trump s election commission. The more corruption that s exposed through post-election voting investigations, the more we begin to understand why so many Democrat pundits and liberal media outlets were so sure Hillary had the election in the bag..Eleven counties in California have more registered voters than voting age adults in the county.Judicial Watch announced it sent a notice-of-violation letter to the state of California and 11 of its counties threatening to sue in federal court if it does not clean its voter registration lists as mandated by the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA). Both the NVRA and the federal Help America Vote Act require states to take reasonable steps to maintain accurate voting rolls. The August 1 letter was sent on behalf of several Judicial Watch California supporters and the Election Integrity Project California, Inc.In the letter, Judicial Watch noted that public records obtained on the Election Assistance Commission s 2016 Election Administration Voting Survey and through verbal accounts from various county agencies show 11 California counties have more registered voters than voting-age citizens: Imperial (102%), Lassen (102%), Los Angeles (112%), Monterey (104%), San Diego (138%), San Francisco (114%), San Mateo (111%), Santa Cruz (109%), Solano (111%), Stanislaus (102%), and Yolo (110%).In the letter, Judicial Watch noted that Los Angeles County officials informed us that the total number of registered voters now stands at a number that is a whopping 144% of the total number of resident citizens of voting age. Remember when the Huffington Post denied voter fraud was an actual thing in America, while calling Hillary Clinton, (the candidate who clearly benefitted from illegal voting practices) the legitimate President-Elect? Under Section 8 of the NVRA, states are required to make a reasonable effort to remove the names of ineligible voters from official lists due to the death of the registrant or a change in the residence of the registrant, and requires states to ensure noncitizens are not registered to vote.There is strong circumstantial evidence that California municipalities are not conducting reasonable voter registration list maintenance as mandated under the NVRA, Judicial Watch wrote in the notice letter sent to California Secretary of State Alex Padilla. Via: Judicial Watch | 1real |
Trump’s Justice Dept. Realizes Prosecuting Woman For Laughing Is Stupid – Drops Case Entirely | Trump s Department of Justice has finally figured out they re stupid in one instance, at least. Back in January, a member of Code Pink named Desiree Fairooz laughed during Jeff Sessions confirmation hearing, was charged with disorderly conduct, found guilty, and faced up to a full year in prison for it. A D.C. court tossed out her conviction and set a new trial, but now the DOJ has dropped the case entirely:Here s the Justice Department s notice it s dropping charges against woman who laughed at Jeff Sessions during his confirmation hearing. pic.twitter.com/Dv5vqzxdPA Dominic Holden (@dominicholden) November 7, 2017Fairooz own reaction to the news says it all about the stupidity of this endeavor:Just received this, Governments Notice of Nolle Prosequi What a relief! Guess they ve got enough laughing matters to deal with! Desiree Fairooz (@desireefairooz) November 6, 2017She laughed because she felt Senator Shelby s overly-syrupy remarks about Sessions alleged record of treating everyone equally were as ridiculous as they sound. Sessions treats people anything but equally and he has a long track record of that. Code Pink s campaign director said Fairooz laughter was a reflex action more than anything, which actually does make a lot of sense. Fairooz herself didn t mean to actually laugh, but she did say: I felt it was my responsibility as a citizen to dissent at the confirmation hearing of Senator Jeff Sessions, a man who professes anti-immigrant, anti-LGBT policies, who has voted against several civil rights measures and who jokes about the white supremacist terrorist group the Ku Klux Klan. That s the whole problem, though: The Trump administration doesn t want dissent. And while it s true that Fairooz had several prior arrests for protesting, the number of cases publicly brought against dissenters of this administration is absolutely astonishing. This is a victory for all who stand for what s right which is the opposite of what Trump s administration stands for.Featured image via Alex Wong/Getty Images | 1real |
[VIDEO] HUNDREDS OF MORMON FUNDAMENTALISTS SURROUND Mother Who Escaped Cult Community To Prevent Her From Extracting Her Children | Evil hiding under the banner of religion in our own backyard A 32-year-old woman was harassed and intimidated last week when she tried to pick up her four children from the fundamentalist Mormon sect she bravely left to escape an abusive husband.Sabrina Broadbent Tetzner, 32, fled the sect headed by convicted rapist Warren Jeffs eight years ago and finally gained full custody of her children (ages 8 to 13) last week.But when she tried to pick up her children from the Colorado City, Utah community where they have been living, she was physically stopped by hundreds of cult members hell bent on keeping the kids. Lots of members from the community started showing up. They surrounded her vehicle, the home, fences and the yard. They were kicking the van. They even tried to put a cow and chickens into her vehicle, ex-cult member Flora Jessop, who helped Tetzner through her legal battle, told KSL.Cell phone footage shows swarms of polygamists surrounding Tetzner s van, the women dressed in conservative floor-length dresses in varying pastel colors. A Mohave County judge ordered the sect to turn over the children at 5pm Thursday, but Tetzner says that when she got to the compound at the arranged time her kids were nowhere to be seen. FOX 10 News | fox10phoenix.comIt was only at midnight that they returned, and were quickly shepherded into their aunt Samantha Holm s house where several dozen fundamentalists kept them from seeing her mother.Tetzner spent the night in her van, fearing the vehicle would be torn apart if she left it unattended. When even about 600 cult members surrounded her vehicle in the morning, and kept her from reaching the home where her children were staying, Tetzner called police to intervene on her children s behalf. Sheriff s deputies had to take out a search warrant to pry the children from the house and into their mother s waiting arms.Allegedly, the children were not so happy to leave, since cult members had scared them into believing their mother was taking them to hell. Deputies escorted Tetzner and her children all the way back to their home in northern Utah, and reportedly FLDS members tailed them the whole way there.Since leaving the sect, she has remarried a man named Chase Tetzner and the two appear to have a toddler son together. A photo posted to her Facebook in August 2012, shows her in a half-white, half-camouflage wedding dress.Defenders of Children, a non-profit group that has been aiding Tetzner through her custody battle, said they fear for her safety and are raising money to pay for a security system and new clothes for the woman s children. Tetzner left the FLDS church eight years ago, about a year after the cult s leader Warren Jeffs was arrested for organizing marriages between men in his cult and underage girls. He is currently serving a life sentence in prison, but continues to head the church from behind bars.Custodial interference charges are pending against Samantha Holm, the aunt who initially wouldn t hand over Tetzner s children.Via: UK Daily Mail | 1real |
Trump says he recalls little about meeting where aide spoke of Russia | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump said on Friday he did not remember much about a meeting last year with a former campaign aide who pleaded guilty last month as part of a federal probe into alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. election. Asked about a meeting in which aide George Papadopoulos suggested arranging a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Trump told reporters: “I don’t remember much about that meeting. It was a very unimportant meeting.” According to court documents filed by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, Papadopoulos said at the meeting of foreign policy advisers in March 2016 “that he had connections that could help arrange a meeting between then-candidate Trump and President Putin.” A photograph posted on Trump’s Instagram account shows Papadopoulos sitting at the same table with Trump as well as Jeff Sessions, now Trump’s attorney general, and several others. Papadopoulos has pleaded guilty to lying to Federal Bureau of Investigation agents about contacts with people who claimed to have ties to top Russian officials, in the first criminal charges alleging links between the Trump campaign and Moscow. His plea was made public this week. Sessions is under pressure from Senate Democrats to testify again about the Trump campaign’s Russia contacts. In testimony to the Senate Judiciary committee, Sessions has denied knowing anything about contacts between the campaign and Russians or Russian government intermediaries. The president spoke before leaving for a trip to Asia, where his domestic woes are expected to dog him. Trump denies any collusion with Russia and Moscow denies interfering in the 2016 election. Sessions is also under pressure from his boss, who has made clear he thinks the Department of Justice should look into his former presidential rival, Hillary Clinton, and her campaign’s behavior with the Democratic National Committee during the presidential primary race. Trump told reporters on Friday that many people were unhappy with the Department of Justice, including him. Those comments followed remarks he made during “The Larry O’Connor Show” on WMAL radio in which he lamented not having more say in the department’s work. “The saddest thing is, because I am the president of the United States, I am not supposed to be involved with the Justice Department. I’m not supposed to be involved with the FBI. I’m not supposed to be doing the kind of things I would love to be doing. And I am very frustrated by that,” he said. Trump on Friday repeated his urgings that the Justice Department and FBI investigate Clinton. “Everybody is asking why the Justice Department (and FBI) isn’t looking into all of the dishonesty going on with Crooked Hillary & the Dems,” he said on Twitter. His comments elicited criticism from several U.S. senators. “President Trump’s pressuring of the Justice Department and FBI to pursue cases against his adversaries and calling for punishment before trials take place are totally inappropriate and not only undermine our justice system but erode the American people’s confidence in our institutions,” Republican Senator Bob Corker, who has frequently sparred with Trump, said in a statement. Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein said: “We can’t allow ourselves to become numb to the president of the United States calling on independent law enforcement organizations to investigate his political opponents. That’s characteristic of authoritarian regimes, not democracies, and it needs to stop.” Trump has expressed frustration repeatedly over the Russia investigation, which has overshadowed his administration, at times referring to it as a “hoax” and a “witch hunt.” Federal investigators this week charged Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort and another ex-aide, Rick Gates, with money laundering and other crimes. In a court filing on Friday, Mueller estimated he would need three weeks to present his case against Manafort and Gates if it went to trial. Both men pleaded not guilty. Manafort’s attorney Kevin Downing said in a filing on Friday that he would challenge what he called “evidence improperly obtained by search warrant, subpoena or otherwise.” FBI agents seized documents and other material from Manafort’s Virginia home in a July raid. (This version of the story was corrected to say that Papadopoulos pleaded guilty in October, not November in paragraph one) | 0fake |
Si no se prohíbe la tauromaquia, en 2020 dos de cada tres españoles serán toros | Si no se prohíbe la tauromaquia, en 2020 dos de cada tres españoles serán toros EL MUNDO TODAY RADIO El Mundo Today en tu buzón Tu Email © El Mundo Today Más historias El Gobierno anima a los españoles a matar más toros para proyectar una imagen sólida al extranjero LA UE MEJORA MÁS DE MEDIO PUNTO SU PREVISIÓN DE "SALERO" PARA ESPAÑA Este sitio web utiliza cookies para analizar cómo es utilizado el sitio. Las cookies no te pueden identificar. Si continuas navegando supone la aceptación de la Política de Cookies. Estoy de acuerdo. Más info. | 1real |
Teacher’s Letter To Students Holds The Formula To World Change | Teacher's Letter To Students Holds The Formula To World Change Nov 15, 2016 0 0 And we don’t have to be president to help make the world a better place either. For a very long time now, we have wanted change to be served to us on a silver platter. And I’m not just talking about “the sheeple” here; who still believe in the current political system. I’m mostly talking to us, “conscious”, “awakened” and informed “truthers” as we sometimes call ourselves. See, we might complain about others sitting on their couches, being brainwashed by the news and cheering for a next savior. Now let’s make sure we aren’t just sitting behind comput ers, waiting for “the people to wake up” before we can ourselves embody the love, compassion, kindness and healing we wish to see reflected in the world. We are “the people”, aren’t we? So why should we expect so much of “them” (whether we are talking about the government or “the people”) as if they are this separate “thing” that, once changed, will allow US to change? As Mrs. Nagy said in this beautiful letter, decision-making is far from being a job exclusive to a president. Actually, the biggest decision-making job has always been ours. All of our small choices and actions combined are what make society. Nobody is forcing us not to show compassion, help the needy or cooperate with our fellow brothers and sisters for a better community and world. Nobody is forcing us not to raise our children with wisdom, love and compassion so that they become better stewards of the Earth. Our egos may readily want to dismiss this (and I know because mine did for the longest time)… but the truth is, we change the world by HOW we live our lives , not what we intellectually understand or spend time arguing about. Our Main Project Should Be… When we understand that the world is like one big body, and each and everyone of us are a cell within it, we understand that our primary “project” isn’t so much about external doings. Our primary project is ourselves. It’s about being that one healthy cell. And as we evolve into our most authentic, kindest, wisest and most compassionate self; our actions and the way we use our gifts will not only uplift the world around us, but will have that much more power. Coming from this space, we allow life’s higher intelligence to flow through us. We let go of the countless self-limiting and fearful stories we have told ourselves. In other words, we “get out of our own way”. This is when floods of synchronicities, soul mates and opportunities to do what we came here to do (and most importantly be who we came here to be) enter our lives. And this is when we get to be the change we wish to see in the world. “These little decisions you make that you think aren’t a big deal, are the biggest deal. These things that feel lighter but we ignore, are all part of the big picture. Are all part of a sign towards what you’re really here to do. The more you listen to your calling rather than your old story, the more it’s going to guide you to an incredible amount of you impacting the world.”– Kyle Cease
Trying to “change the world” without seeing ourselves as part of that equation is as if we are one unhealthy cell trying to “fix” all surrounding cells. Biology shows us that it takes one healthy cell to trigger all nearby cells to start healing. What if our actions came from a place of inner-transformation, as opposed to us trying to transform the world while we remain unchanged? Imagine if more of us chose to be that one healthy cell… Easier Said Than Done Yes, Of course. I know, because I have preached about “world change” for years before I very recently realized that the quality of my state of being, actions and relationships did not reflect the degree of love, harmony and compassion I wished to see in the world. It is hard, because it requires a personal revolution. A personal “detox” of everything that has been holding us back from being our greatest expression here on Earth. And as we all know, detox symptoms aren’t always easy. As we open our hearts, our egos might tell us it is unsafe. As we think about being generous and giving, our egos might scream “what’s in it for me?”. As we seek to collaborate with and help one another, our egos might sense a threat to its own “success”. As we choose to be fully authentic and true to our calling, our egos might fear there won’t be anybody to catch us “on the other side”. That is because a sense of scarcity, lack and “not enoughness” has been drilled into our skulls by a culture that runs on the glamorization of superficiality and lies. A culture that pits us against ourselves and each other. But haven’t we noticed how even some of the most successful, popular, respected and validated individuals on earth end up ridden with anxiety, depression and a deep loneliness of the spirit ? Perhaps this is a cue that self-maximization — at the expense of a sense of community with our larger human family — isn’t what we truly desire. Maybe we are wired for connection. Maybe we are wired “for each other”. “We’ve adopted a toxic philosophy that shapes our society: To the winner belongs the spoils”. The idea that if you don’t win, you’re going to lose. You’re going to starve. Your kids aren’t going to eat. It’s not going to be your world, it’s going to be the winner’s world. And that’s exactly why we have the world that we have. But as parents, would we tell our children that if one of them succeeds, the other would starve? Would any parent do that to their children? No, because they are a family. At what point does the human family stop being a family?”– Tom Shadyac This all may sound fluffy, cliché or naive, but I am pretty sure that as young children— before we got indoctrinated into “toughening up” and trampling over others to get ahead and find security — we just wanted love. We just wanted to share and rejoice in the community of our own family. We just wanted to play, express ourselves, love and care for one another. We felt a deep resonance with our interconnection that got twisted and severed along the way. Obviously, the world isn’t short of dysfunctional families, challenges and influences that kick the softies, givers and lovers out of us all. But really, these influences just added layers of pretence, beliefs and defence mechanisms over what we have always been and yearned for. So who is going to be the brave one and put their mask down first? It doesn’t really matter who. It really only matters if you will. Because… well… not to add any pressure or anything, but the entire world would rejoice in your light. “Whether you accept it or not, each life is linked to all life. Your thoughts, words and actions create a ripple effect; much like a stone thrown into a pond. The quality of that ripple effect… is your legacy” – Kosta Stoyanoff If you resonate with this message, stay tuned for the beautiful work that is to come over at Uplifted Life . We are making it our mission to help bring this consciousness into the lives of many — not only through words, but through practical tools and support. | 1real |
Expelled refugee student kills seven in Kenyan school | ISIOLO, Kenya (Reuters) - An expelled student shot dead six of his former schoolmates and a security guard at his school in northern Kenya on Saturday, and was then himself lynched by a furious mob, officials said. The attack took place at a school in the remote town of Lokichogio in Kenya s Turkana region, close to the border with war-torn South Sudan. At least six other students were flown to hospital with bullet wounds. The assailant was a 17-year-old from South Sudan - one of thousands of refugee children who have been living in Kenya and going to school there since civil war broke out in their country in 2013. He was detained in possession of an AK-47, the basic assault rifle of choice in conflicts across Africa and the Middle East. The school was not attacked by bandits but an errant student on expulsion for disciplinary cases, regional government official Wanyama Musyambohe told reporters. Security officials said the assailant, whose name has not been disclosed, had been arrested, but then killed by a mob while in police custody. The attack ... is a painful reminder of the state of insecurity along the border, tweeted Turkana county governor Josphat Nanok. Close to 2 million people have fled South Sudan since fighting broke out in December 2013, sparking what has become Africa s largest cross-border exodus since the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Some 75,000 of them are now in Kenya. Perennial conflicts have left the region awash with arms, which are smuggled across borders with relative ease. | 0fake |
JUST IN: SUPREME COURT Rules On Trump Travel Ban | Another winner for America and for President Trump! The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the travel ban! Guess who voted against it Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor said they would have left the lower court orders in place. Is anyone surprised by the two lefty judges? Not us!Fox News reports:Handing the White House a huge judicial victory, the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday ruled in favor of President Trump s travel ban affecting residents of six majority-Muslim countries.The justices said the policy can take full effect despite multiple legal challenges against it that haven t yet made their way through the court system.The ban applies to people from Syria, Chad, Iran, Libya, Somalia and Yemen.Lower courts had said people from those countries with a bona fide relationship with someone in the United States could not be prevented from entry.Grandparents and cousins were among the relatives courts said could not be excluded.The nine-member high court said in two one-page orders late Monday afternoon that lower court rulings that partly blocked the ban should be put on hold while appeals courts in Richmond, Va., and San Francisco take up the case.Liberal-leaning Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor said they would have left the lower court orders in place.Both courts are scheduled to hear arguments in those cases this week.Both courts are also dealing with the issue on an accelerated basis, and the Supreme Court noted it expects those courts to reach decisions with appropriate dispatch. Quick resolution by appellate courts would allow the Supreme Court to hear and decide the issue this term, by the end of June.Trump s travel ban has been challenged in separate lawsuits by Hawaii and the American Civil Liberties Union. Both have argued the ban discriminates against Muslims and should not go into effect under immigration laws. | 1real |
California AG pledges to defend birth control insurance coverage | SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - California Attorney General Xavier Becerra said on Friday he was “prepared to take whatever action it takes” to defend the Obamacare mandate that health insurers provide birth control, now that the Trump administration has moved to circumvent it. The administration’s new contraception exemptions “are another example of the Trump administration trampling on people’s rights, but in this case only women,” Becerra told Reuters. Becerra and other Democratic attorneys general have filed courtroom challenges to other Trump administration policies involving healthcare, immigration and the environment. | 0fake |
In Pakistan's coal rush, some women drivers break cultural barriers | ISLAMKOT, Pakistan (Reuters) - As Pakistan bets on cheap coal in the Thar desert to resolve its energy crisis, a select group of women is eyeing a road out of poverty by snapping up truck-driving jobs that once only went to men. Such work is seen as life-changing in this dusty southern region bordering India, where sand dunes cover estimated coal reserves of 175 billion tonnes and yellow dumper trucks swarm like bees around Pakistan s largest open-pit mine. The imposing 60-tonne trucks initially daunted Gulaban, 25, a housewife and mother of three from Thar s Hindu community inside the staunchly conservative and mainly-Muslim nation of 208 million people. At the beginning I was a bit nervous but now it s normal to drive this dumper, said Gulaban, clad in a pink saree, a traditional cloth worn by Hindu women across South Asia. Gulaban - who hopes such jobs can help empower other women facing grim employment prospects - is among 30 women being trained to be truck drivers by Sindh Engro Coal Mining Company (SECMC), a Pakistani firm digging up low-grade coal under the rolling Thar sand dunes. Gulaban has stolen the march on her fellow trainees because she was the only woman who knew how to drive a car before training to be a truck driver. She is an inspiration to her fellow students. If Gulaban can drive a dump truck then why not we? All we need to do is learn and drive quickly like her, said Ramu, 29, a mother of six, standing beside the 40-tonne truck. Until recently, energy experts were uncertain that Pakistan s abundant but poor-quality coal could be used to fire up power plants. That view began to change with new technology and Chinese investment as part of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a key branch of Beijing s Belt and Road initiative to connect Asia with Europe and Africa. Now coal, along with hydro and liquefied natural gas, is at the heart of Pakistan s energy plans. SECMC, which has about 125 dump trucks ferrying earth out of the pit mine, estimates it will need 300-400 trucks once they burrow deep enough to reach the coal. Drivers can earn up to 40,000 rupees ($380) a month. Women aspiring to these jobs are overcoming cultural barriers in a society where women are restricted to mainly working the fields and cooking and cleaning for the family. Only this week in Saudi Arabia, a close ally of Pakistan, women were granted permission to drive for the first time ever, ending a ban that was supported by conservative clerics but seen by rights activists as an emblem of suppression. Gulaban s husband, Harjilal, recalled how people in Thar would taunt him when his illiterate wife drove their small car. When I sit in the passenger seat with my wife driving, people used to laugh at me, said Harjilal, who like most of the people in the community only has one name. But Gulaban, seeking to throw stereotypes out of the window, is only focused on the opportunities ahead. As I can see our other female trainees getting paid and their life is changing, Gulaban added. I hope...for a better future. | 0fake |
Embattled Pennsylvania attorney general survives Senate removal vote | HARRISBURG, Pa. (Reuters) - Republican state senators in Pennsylvania failed to muster enough votes on Wednesday to oust Attorney General Kathleen Kane, who is facing criminal charges for allegedly leaking secret grand jury material. All but one of the Senate’s 30 Republicans voted to remove Kane, a Democrat, from office because her law license has been suspended, falling four votes short of the two-thirds majority required. The chamber’s 18 Democrats, as well as one Republican, opposed the move. “It is simply not appropriate to take this action,” said Senator Judy Schwank, a Democrat who served on the committee that examined Kane’s removal. “It is an outrage against voters’ right to choose their elected officials.” Kane has been in legal hot water ever since her indictment last summer for allegedly passing grand jury information to a reporter as part of a personal feud. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court suspended her law license last fall. Wednesday’s debate in the Senate focused on whether Kane could continue to function as attorney general without a license to practice law. Unlike impeachment, which targets officeholders who have committed crimes and requires action by both legislative chambers, removal is aimed at incompetent but law-abiding officials and requires only Senate action. The process had not been used since 1891. “When you have a suspended law license, you cannot do anything!” said Senator John Gordner, the Republican who chaired the removal committee, during Wednesday’s three-hour debate. But others, notably Democratic former Governor Edward Rendell, who served eight years as district attorney of Philadelphia, previously testified at hearings that a license was not essential. Rendell said that in a large district attorney office, the job is mainly about making managerial decisions, not practicing law. Kane has claimed her indictment was brought in response to her efforts to release thousands of explicit or offensive e-mails circulated by former prosecutors in her office, including those who prosecuted Penn State sexual predator Jerry Sandusky, and two members of the state Supreme Court, among others. “Today is a good day for all those who share my desire to restore confidence in our judges and prosecutors and integrity to our system of justice,” Kane said in a statement after the vote. She could still face removal efforts. The state House of Representatives voted separately on Wednesday to begin an impeachment inquiry, while Senate Republicans used a procedural maneuver that allows them to call for another removal vote if circumstances change. | 0fake |
4 students arrested for Calif. school shooting plot | Four students were arrested Saturday after police discovered a shooting plot involving Summerville High School in Tuolumne, Calif.
Among the evidence, deputies said they found a list of the names of the targeted victims. Tuolumne County Sheriff Jim Mele said the students confessed.
When asked what they said, Mele responded: "that they were going to come on campus and shoot and kill as many people as possible."
The sheriff's department said they were contacted on Wednesday by school administrators regarding students who were making threats against faculty and staff.
"As each one of them was identified they were removed from campus," Robert Griffith, Summerville Union High School District Superintendent, said. "Their parents were called."
Deputies said the four students were in the beginning stages of the plot, and no one was hurt.
"I can't imagine getting a phone call that something like that had happened at that school," Kristin said.
Deputies said the suspects were in the process of obtaining the weapons they were going to use in the attack.
All four students were arrested for conspiracy to commit an assault with deadly weapons. Their names will not be released because they're juveniles. | 0fake |
Trump Lies To His Supporters, Claims CBS Edited His Words To Make Him Look Bad | Donald Trump has once again decided to lie to his supporters and accuse a major news network of editing his words to explain away his abortion views.Last week, Trump took five different stances on abortion. First, he said women who have them should be punished. Then he said it should be left up to the states. After that, he changed his mind again and clarified his original statement by saying doctors who perform abortions should be punished. His fourth position came when he gave an interview for CBS s Face The Nation and claimed that he wouldn t do anything to change abortion laws because the Supreme Court has already decided on their legality with Roe v Wade.When the media said, Wait a second Trump just took a pro-choice stance on abortion by declaring it should remain legal, his campaign put out a statement saying he would, in fact, try to outlaw it with judicial appointments taking his fifth abortion position of the week.Well, on Saturday while speaking at a rally in Racine, Wisconsin, the Republican frontrunner implied that CBS edited words out of his statement in an attempt to smear him. According to CNN: They can take something you say and turn it around. Like I will be on CBS s Face the Nation. What I said was perfect, Trump explained, adding, What I said was so good. It was so perfect. And they looked and said, Oh, maybe he should have added a word.' Well, actually the way it came out, they took words out that I said, he added. The only reason I tell you this is because I want you to watch it. If I did something wrong, I wouldn t want you to watch it. Clearly, his words were not as perfect as he thought since he now feels the need to explain them away by lying to his supporters. He went on to say that the media often edits his words: The problem is they don t do it with everybody. They do it with me. But I don t see them doing it with other people. Wow! It s pretty convenient that the media only edits him, don t you think?CNN apparently reached out to CBS for comment and a spokeswoman said, nothing in that section he reference was edited. That s exactly the same response that MSNBC had last week when Trump accused them of the very same thing.It is amazing that this guy can literally lie all the time and his supporters don t care at all. It s even funnier when these same supporters turn around and call President Obama a liar. It s almost as if they live in an alternate reality, isn t it?Featured image via Ian MacNicol/Getty Images | 1real |
Egyptian president to meet Trump at White House on April 3 | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump will meet with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi at the White House on April 3, the White House said on Tuesday. They will discuss how to defeat Islamic State militants and efforts to pursue peace and stability in the region, the White House said in a statement. | 0fake |
DEMOCRAT SENATOR AL FRANKEN Thought It Would Be Hilarious To Do An SNL Skit About Drugging and Raping 60 Minutes Reporter: “when Lesley’s passed out, I take her to the closet and rape her” | Democratic Senator Al Franken who has been accused of kissing a woman without her consent and pretending to grope her in a photo once pitched an SNL sketch about raping a journalist, it has emerged.The remarks were made in 1995, when Franken and other writers on the show were working up a sketch about then-60 Minutes host Andy Rooney finding a bottle of pills in his desk, New York Magazine reported at the time.As the team batted ideas around, Franken suggested that the pills might be used by Rooney to drug Lesley Stahl at which point he would take her to the closet and rape her .The sketch was part of an ongoing series in which Norm Macdonald portrayed Rooney as an out-of-touch misanthrope with a tenuous grasp on reality.Macdonald had suggested that Rooney could say I don t know what the pills are for what I do know is, the bottle is mostly filled with cotton. Franken then chipped in with: And, I give the pills to Lesley Stahl. Then, when Lesley s passed out, I take her to the closet and rape her. Or, That s why you never see Lesley until February. Or, When she passes out, I put her in various positions and take pictures of her. Stahl was a contributor to 60 Minutes at the time. Macdonald then asked, What if Rooney rapes Mike Wallace? And then says, I guess that makes me bad. Is it funnier with a black guy? Or two old white guys? Franken responded: What about, I drag Mike into my office and rape him. Right here! I guess that makes me bad. The sketch never made it to air, and it s questionable whether it was ever intended to do so.But the 1995 report has now resurfaced as it did in 2008, when Franken made his successful run for Minnesota Senator.At the time, his campaign said: Al understands, and the people of Minnesota understand, the difference between what a satirist does and what a senator does. But newly emerged claims that Franken kissed a woman without her consent in 2006, and pretended to grope her in a photo while she was sleeping have been tougher for the comedian to address. Daily MailWatch Leeann Tweeden talk about Senator Franken s repulsive sexual assault against her: | 1real |
BREAKING: FBI Just Got EXACTLY What They Needed to Take Down Hillary for Good! * LIBERTY WRITERS NEWS | 0
This is great news, everyone. It may have taken awhile, but it looks like the FBI is finally ready to take Hillary down for good! Donald Trump is soooo happy!!!
Just moments ago, the FBI received the warrants that they had been waiting for so that they can search Anthony Weiner’s laptop for the Clinton emails he had stored.
To make it worse, the file that he had stored the emails in on his laptop was supposedly called “Life Insurance.”
You see, the FBI had already searched the laptop once for emails relating to Anthony Weiner and his 15-year-old sexting partner, but technically they couldn’t look through the Clinton emails they discovered.
Well, this warrant will let them do exactly that. We already know that these new emails are both classified and maybe even CRIMINAL. Now we can finally make her taste justice for good.
So I just wanna take a moment to say “THANK YOU” to the FBI. Thank you for finally growing a pair and taking on Hillary Clinton the way she needed to be.
Now we need to share this out and let the world know the good news! Goooo Donald Trump! | 1real |
Saudi says 208 questioned in graft probe, at least $100 billion stolen | DUBAI (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia s attorney-general said on Thursday that 208 people have been called in for questioning in a sweeping anti-corruption investigation, and seven of them had been released without charge. Based on our investigations over the past three years, we estimate that at least $100 billion has been misused through systematic corruption and embezzlement over several decades, Sheikh Saud al-Mojeb said in a statement. He repeated statements by other top officials that normal commercial activity had not been affected by the crackdown, and that only personal bank accounts had been frozen, not corporate accounts. Companies and banks are free to continue with transactions as usual. | 0fake |
Wielding Claims of ‘Fake News,’ Conservatives Take Aim at Mainstream Media - The New York Times | WASHINGTON — The C. I. A. the F. B. I. and the White House may all agree that Russia was behind the hacking that interfered with the election. But that was of no import to the website Breitbart News, which dismissed reports on the intelligence assessment as “ fake news. ” Rush Limbaugh has diagnosed a more fundamental problem. “The fake news is the everyday news” in the mainstream media, he said on his radio show recently. “They just make it up. ” Some supporters of Donald J. Trump have also taken up the call. As reporters were walking out of a Trump rally this month in Orlando, Fla. a man heckled them with shouts of “Fake news!” Until now, that term had been widely understood to refer to fabricated news accounts that are meant to spread virally online. But conservative cable and radio personalities, top Republicans and even Mr. Trump himself, incredulous about suggestions that fake stories may have helped swing the election, have appropriated the term and turned it against any news they see as hostile to their agenda. In defining “fake news” so broadly and seeking to dilute its meaning, they are capitalizing on the declining credibility of all purveyors of information, one product of the country’s increasing political polarization. And conservatives, seeing an opening to undermine the mainstream media, a longtime foe, are more than happy to dig the hole deeper. “Over the years, we’ve effectively brainwashed the core of our audience to distrust anything that they disagree with. And now it’s gone too far,” said John Ziegler, a conservative radio host, who has been critical of what he sees as excessive partisanship by pundits. “Because the gatekeepers have lost all credibility in the minds of consumers, I don’t see how you reverse it. ” Journalists who work to separate fact from fiction see a dangerous conflation of stories that turn out to be wrong because of a legitimate misunderstanding with those whose clear intention is to deceive. A report, shared more than a million times on social media, that the pope had endorsed Mr. Trump was undeniably false. But was it “fake news” to report on data models that showed Hillary Clinton with overwhelming odds of winning the presidency? Are opinion articles fake if they facts to draw disputable conclusions? “Fake news was a term specifically about people who purposely fabricated stories for clicks and revenue,” said David Mikkelson, the founder of Snopes, the website. “Now it includes bad reporting, slanted journalism and outright propaganda. And I think we’re doing a disservice to lump all those things together. ” The right’s labeling of “fake news” evokes one of the most successful efforts by conservatives to reorient how Americans think about news media objectivity: the move by Fox News to brand its coverage as “fair and balanced. ” Traditionally, mainstream media outlets had thought of their own approach in those terms, viewing their coverage as strictly down the middle. Republicans often found that laughable. As with Fox’s ubiquitous promotion of its slogan, conservatives’ appropriation of the “fake news” label is an effort to further erode the mainstream media’s claim to be a reliable and accurate source. “What I think is so unsettling about the fake news cries now is that their audience has already sort of bought into this idea that journalism has no credibility or legitimacy,” said Angelo Carusone, the president of Media Matters, a liberal group that polices the news media for bias. “Therefore, by applying that term to credible outlets, it becomes much more believable. ” Conservative news media are now awash in the “fake news” condemnations. When coverage of Mr. Trump’s choice for labor secretary, Andrew F. Puzder, highlighted his opposition to minimum wage increases, the writer and radio host Erick Erickson wrote that Mr. Puzder should have been getting more credit for pointing out that such increases lead to higher unemployment. “To say otherwise is to push fake news,” he wrote. (The effects actually have been found to vary from city to city.) Infowars, the website run by the conservative provocateur and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, labeled as “fake news” a CNN report that Ivanka Trump would move into the office in the White House normally reserved for the first lady. Mr. Trump has used the term to deny news reports, as he did on Twitter recently after various outlets said he would stay on as the executive producer of “The New Celebrity Apprentice” after taking office in January. “Ridiculous untrue — FAKE NEWS!” he wrote. (He will be credited as executive producer, a spokesman for the show’s creator, Mark Burnett, has said. But it is unclear what work, if any, he will do on the show.) Many conservatives are pushing back at the outrage over fake news because they believe that liberals, unwilling to accept Mr. Trump’s victory, are attributing his triumph to nefarious external factors. “The left refuses to admit that the fundamental problem isn’t the Russians or Jim Comey or ‘fake news’ or the Electoral College,” said Laura Ingraham, the author and radio host. “‘Fake news’ is just another fake excuse for their failed agenda. ” Others see a larger effort to slander the basic journalistic function of . Nonpartisan websites like Snopes and Factcheck. org have found themselves maligned when they have disproved stories that had been flattering to conservatives. When Snopes wrote about a State Farm insurance agent in Louisiana who had posted a sign outside his office that likened taxpayers who voted for President Obama to chickens supporting Colonel Sanders, Mr. Mikkelson, the site’s founder, was smeared as a partisan Democrat who had never bothered to reach out to the agent for comment. Neither is true. “They’re trying to float anything they can find out there to discredit ” he said. There are already efforts by highly partisan conservatives to claim that their efforts are the same as those of independent outlets like Snopes, which employ research teams to dig into seemingly dubious claims. Sean Hannity, the Fox News host, has aired “ ” segments on his program. Michelle Malkin, the conservative columnist, has a web program, “Michelle Malkin Investigates,” in which she conducts her own investigative reporting. The market in these divided times is undeniably ripe. “We now live in this fragmented media world where you can block people you disagree with. You can only be exposed to stories that make you feel good about what you want to believe,” Mr. Ziegler, the radio host, said. “Unfortunately, the truth is unpopular a lot. And a good fairy tale beats a harsh truth every time. ” | 0fake |
What Donald Trump and Anthony Weiner Have in Common - The New York Times | A trip to a country you mock. Or a screaming tirade from the floor of Congress. An angry tweet to a foreign leader. Or a selfie sent to a stranger. It is the kind of behavior we see in a particular variety of politician — most often, I’ll just say it, men. From New York. Who love social media. Any guesses? In the latest episode of The Run Up, we explore two forces that have endeared and alarmed us in political life this year: impulsiveness and narcissism. And we examine two men, Donald J. Trump and Anthony D. Weiner, who have at times embodied both qualities. Both have ridden those attributes to dizzying political highs but also found they take a toll, raising doubts about their judgment and fitness for public office. I spoke with two people who have studied both men for years: Frank Bruni, a columnist and former political reporter at The Times, and Maggie Haberman, a national campaign reporter whom I first met covering Mr. Weiner back in 2009. “To get to a certain level of success as a politician in the current context — with the cameras on you all the time, with social media, with all of this attention — you have to be able to be a bit of a performer,” Mr. Bruni says. “That requires a certain amount of loving the crowd, a certain amount of narcissism. That’s the price of entry. ” Part of Mr. Trump’s strength as a performer is his mastery of reading the room. We saw that on display with the stark contrast between his performance in Mexico City on Wednesday afternoon and in Phoenix that night, Ms. Haberman says. “Trump’s impulses are to please whatever crowd he is in front of and to meld to whatever audience he’s speaking to,” she says. She reminds us of what Mr. Trump told The Times’s editorial board: that when he feels the energy in the crowd flagging, he goes to his line about building a wall. “He’s coming up with what he says, and what then becomes his policy position, based on how to get the crowd to make him feel good. ” Mr. Bruni says. “This is narcissism as a governing philosophy. ” With both Mr. Trump and Mr. Weiner, Ms. Haberman says, “there’s a certain A. D. D. quality to how they go about their performance or performance art, depending on how you want to describe it. ” When there’s no crowd on hand to provide the dopamine hit, Twitter does the trick. “This need for that dopamine, that need for instant gratification, I think it raises enormous questions — disqualifying questions — about both of them as potential leaders or actual leaders,” Mr. Bruni says. “There’s a big difference between what is interesting to behold and what we want to be governed by. ” Please let us know what you think of The . You can reach us at therunup@nytimes. com, or find me on Twitter. You can also rate and review us on iTunes. From a desktop or laptop, you can listen by pressing play on the button above. Or if you’re on a mobile device, the instructions below will help you find and subscribe to the series. On your iPhone or iPad: 1. Open your podcast app. It’s a app called “Podcasts” with a purple icon. (This link might help.) 2. Search for the series. Tap on the “search” magnifying glass icon at the bottom of the screen, type in “The ” and select it from the list of results. 3. Subscribe. Once on the series page, tap on the “subscribe” button to have new episodes sent to your phone for free. You may want to adjust your notifications to be alerted when a new episode arrives. 4. Or just sample. If you would rather listen to an episode or two before deciding to subscribe, tap on the episode title from the list on the series page. If you have an internet connection, you’ll be able to stream the episode. On your Android phone or tablet: 1. Open your podcast app. It’s a app called “Play Music” with an icon. (This link might help.) 2. Search for the series. Click on the magnifying glass icon at the top of the screen, search for the name of the series and select it from the list of results. You may have to scroll down to find the “Podcasts” search results. 3. Subscribe. Once on the series page, click on the word “subscribe” to have new episodes sent to your phone for free. 4. Or just sample. If you would rather listen to an episode or two before deciding to subscribe, click on the episode title from the list on the series page. If you have an internet connection, you’ll be able to stream the episode. | 0fake |
Top 5 Versatile Foods To Survive Nowadays | Gabrielle Ray October 28, 2016 Top 5 Versatile Foods To Survive Nowadays
When you’re living small and running out of space in your home, anything you buy raises the same big question: where am I going to store it?
A lot of people live in small spaces, and still buy a lot of everything, even if most of it finally goes to waste. Let’s be smart and buy what you really need and use, in or outside the kitchen. Think about how to use in multiple ways everything you buy, including food.
In other words, choose versatile food as much as you opt for multipurpose items when building your reserves. In the end, its about money, but also about space and resources.
Here’s what I chose!
Flour
First, there are a lot of grains that you can use to make flour at home: wheat, barley, rye, spelt, corn, oats, buckwheat, millet, quinoa, nuts (such as almonds, hazelnuts, cashews, pecans, macadamias, and walnuts), seeds (such as sunflowers, hemp, pumpkin, amaranth and flax), potatoes, arrowroot, tapioca, coconut, soybean and others.
You have undoubtedly heard of cornmeal and possibly even almond meal, but what’s the difference between a meal and flour? Meals are ground more coarsely. To make meal, just don’t grind your product as long. When it starts to get a crumbly texture, you’re done. Compare it mentally to cornmeal.
Meals are great for several different uses because they add a heartier flavor and more texture to your goods. They’re bad, though, if you’re shooting for something nice and light to make a cake with.
Then you have pasta, and all those tasty dishes based on them: lasagna, spaghetti, macaroni and cheese or simple yet delicious rustic dishes made only from the ingredients in your garden. You won’t need many ingredients: flour, eggs (optionally) and salt. Some people like to add oil, but it’s not essential to making basic pasta.
All-purpose flour is just fine for a basic pasta mix. If you want to add texture and a bit of hardiness to your pasta, you can add some semolina flour to the mix. If you want silkier pasta for a more refined noodle, add some cake flour, or 00 flour.
Milk
Milk is packed with calcium and protein and is also a necessary ingredient in many recipes.
It’s something that you’ll want to have on hand in a survival situation.
Milk doesn’t keep long, but there are different ways to preserve it for later use. Read this Survivopedia article to find out more about how to preserve milk.
Also, there are about a million different cheese recipes out there that you can make depending upon your personal preferences and the type of milk (goat or cow) that you’re using.
Cheese is a lot easier to make than you’d think and you can keep it forever without refrigeration.
Coat the cheese in wax to preserve it. You’ll need a special cheese wax because paraffin wax will crack as it dries. Waxed cheese will last up to 25 years but remember that it will age and become sharper so if you plan to store it for an extended period of time, start with a mild cheese.
Another idea is to make butter or buttermilk. Or if you’d like, you can also make yogurt ( here are a few recipes you might use for making yogurt ), sour cream or cottage cheese but storage methods for those are just simple refrigeration. It will extend the life of the milk for a couple of weeks, though. And I’ve also heard rumors of canning buttermilk.
Salt
Let’s talk multipurpose! The main purpose of salt for most people is to add a bit more taste to their food. However, salt can be so much more useful in the kitchen and around the house, thanks to the many applications it has. Prevents the browning of fruits and vegetables. This is something that can be done with lemon juice or vinegar, but a bucket of salty water will also do the trick. Preserves food naturally for long term survival. Salt works by dehydrating the food as well as the microbes present in the food. Most especially, mold and yeast cannot grow in food pretreated with salt. Food preserved this way could last for years. Fresh egg test. You need a cup of water with two teaspoons of salt in them. Drop an egg in the cup. A fresh one should sink straight to the bottom while an older one would float. An older egg has more buoyancy because the air cell inside of it increases. Makes cheese last longer. Even when it is preserved properly in a refrigerated environment, cheese will inevitable spoil due to mold. This cannot be prevented with salting the cheese, but it can be delayed. Wrap the cheese before storing it in a damp cloth moistened using saltwater. Puts out grease fires. One thing to never do is to throw water on top of a grease fire. The water evaporates instantly and spreads the fire all over the room. Instead, throwing salt on top of the grease fire will create a crusty layer without oxygen, thus smothering the flames. Moreover, the salt also acts as a heat sink, dissipating the heat.
Salt keeps well in cool, dry places and you can prevent it from clumping by dropping a few grains of rice at the bottom of the shaker.
Honey
In addition to tasting delicious in tea and in baklava, honey has some pretty nifty health benefits. When you eat local honey, it’s said to help with allergies, which is great. The real use in an emergency though lies in the antibacterial, antimicrobial and emollient properties. It also has a ton of practical uses: Has vitamins and minerals so if you’re using a sweetener, honey is better than sugar Can be used as an antibacterial on wounds Is a great healing agent for wounds and helps keep the bandage from sticking Barter – sweeteners are going to be way up there on the list Excellent skin moisturizer (if your skin is so dry that it cracks, you’re going to have problems) Makes a great burn treatment because of the antibacterial properties and the moisturizing power Soothes sore throats When mixed with vinegar and water is an effective parasite remover Make fly/bug strips
Did you know that honey was found in Egyptian pharaohs’ tombs and it was still as good as new?
It only needs to be kept in a sealed container in a cool, dry place and it will last a lifetime. And don’t fret if your honey has crystalized; just place the jar in some warm water (without letting water enter the jar) and it will be smooth and good as new in no time.
Kitchen Scraps
Some of us throw away a ton of food scraps on a regular basis, but did you know that you can repurpose much of it? You can, of course, start a compost pile , but there are also many uses of kitchen scraps, and they would make your life easier if you are prepping or just homesteading.
First, use them to grow more food . In most of the cases, the roots will regrow if you plant them in the soil, just like bulbs of flowers do.
You can also use some of the scraps for filtering water. For example, grind the corn husk into dust and mix it with coffee grounds and clay. Add enough water to make it “clay-like” and shape it into a bowl. Allow to dry in the sun, then put your water in it and place it over another vessel. The water will soak through the bowl and into the other vessel, leaving contaminants behind. Rinse the corn husk bowl and reuse.
Onion peels, apple peels and banana peels also help removing pollutants from water. They attract and capture ions and pollutants because they’re adsorbent. This won’t purify the water or remove biohazards but it will help remove some of the dangerous pollutants.
And here are a few more examples on what kitchen scraps can help:
Onion Peels Sooth stings – the end of the onion can be used to sooth stings. Just hold it on your skin. Use them to dye your hair a beautiful golden brown, or to color fabrics or Easter eggs a bright purple! Cook it up along with your garlic peels to make an organic pesticide. It stinks, but it works!
Corn Husks Make baskets – braid or weave the husks into a basket. Protect delicate foods when grilling – if you want to grill your fish or other delicate food but are afraid it will fall apart and be wasted, wrap it in a wet corn husk while cooking. Treat bladder infections – boil the husks into a tea for relief. It also works as a pain reliever for some types of joint or muscle pain. Start fires – dried husks are extremely flammable so if you don’t have any good kindling, don’t pitch those husks!
Egg Shells Fertilizer – your plants need the calcium and other minerals in the shells so you can crush them up and mix them into the dirt or you can soak the eggshells in the water that you use for your plants. You can even use the entire shell as a “cup” to start your seeds in if you crack them carefully. Pest deterrent – having problems with deer or cats in your garden? Crush the eggshells and scatter them around your garden. Calcium supplements – we all need plenty of calcium but in a survival situation, we may not be able to get enough. Thank goodness you thought to raise chickens! Just grind the eggs into a fine powder and mix it into your smoothie or other food once per day. Feed them to your chickens – that’s right – they need calcium to make more eggs so instead of using oyster shells, crush up the egg shells and give them back. Candles – if you crack the tops off carefully, you can fill the shells with beeswax, add a wick, and you’ve got a candle that you didn’t need to use another container on. Seed starter pots – again, crack them carefully and put your soil and seeds in them. You’ve got organic seed pots that are already rich in calcium and minerals that your plants need.
Add few more items to this list, and you’ll have a practical “To Buy” list for your kitchen, and your stockpile too. Less means more, and people living small can confirm that. Not to mention how easy and convenient is to carry a smaller bag when you are on the run for survival.
Gabrielle Ray for Survivopedia. 2 total views, 2 views today | 1real |
White Ethnomasochism: The Movie | 1real | |
House Speaker Ryan says DACA fix, border security need to be linked | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan said on Wednesday that any legislation to address the roughly 800,000 undocumented people in the United States covered by the so-called Dreamers program would also need to also address border security. “It’s only reasonable and fitting that we also address the root cause of the problem, which is borders that are not sufficiently controlled, while we address this very real and very human problem that’s right in front of us,” Ryan told reporters of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. | 0fake |
Megyn Kelly Leaving Fox News for NBC | Megyn Kelly will leave her position as one of Fox News’ top anchors to take on a role at NBC News. [Kelly will headline her own afternoon news program at NBC News as well as a primetime “ ” Sunday night news show, according to the New York Times. The anchor will also appear on NBC News panels during coverage of marquee political events. “While I will greatly miss my colleagues at Fox, I am delighted to be joining the NBC News family and taking on a new challenge,” Kelly wrote Tuesday in a post on her Facebook page. “I remain deeply grateful to Fox News, to Rupert, Lachlan and James Murdoch, and especially to all of the FNC viewers, who have taught me so much about what really matters. More to come soon. ” In leaving Fox, Kelly will turn down Lachlan and James Murdoch’s reported $20 million per year contract offer, a figure that other networks have said they are unable to match. Kelly’s new salary at NBC News was not disclosed, but she is likely to remain one of the journalists in television news. In a recent interview with the Washington Post, Kelly hinted at dissatisfaction with her current role at Fox, where she has consistently ranked among TV news’ highest ratings drivers, along with fellow anchor Bill O’Reilly. Kelly told the Post that she wanted a job with more amenable hours to ensure she could spend more time with her children: “My next deal is all about greater balance,” she told the paper’s Erik Wemple. A source close to the negotiations told the New York Times that NBC News chairman Andrew Lack won what was reportedly a network bidding war for Kelly’s services by asking her what she wanted from a new job instead of simply explaining what his network could offer her. The move to NBC caps a tumultuous year for Kelly at Fox News, the network she joined in 2005. During the first GOP presidential debate, the anchor “became the story,” as she put it to the Post, when she challenged Donald Trump with a question about his past treatment of women, which led to months of headlines and an eventual reconciliation. In her first memoir, Settle for More, Kelly accused former Fox News chief Roger Ailes of sexually harassing her shortly after she arrived at the network in 2005. In the book, Kelly accused Ailes — who resigned from the network over the summer after multiple women, including former anchor Gretchen Carlson, made similar accusations — of engaging in a “cat and mouse” game with her and making “sexually charged comments” toward her. She also accused Ailes of at least one incident in which he allegedly grabbed her and tried to kiss her on the lips. Ailes has vehemently denied all of the allegations. The anchor has also increasingly butted heads with O’Reilly, the other star at Fox News and host of the O’Reilly Factor. In November, O’Reilly criticized the anchor for publicizing the sexual harassment allegations against Ailes. “If somebody is paying you a wage, you owe that person or company allegiance. You don’t like what’s happening in the workplace, go to human resources or leave,” he told CBS This Morning, without mentioning Kelly by name. O’Reilly later backtracked, calling Kelly a “very smart, talented woman. ” Kelly, for her part, said her relationship with O’Reilly had grown more “competitive” over the years: “We are both Irish, we’re both Catholic, and we’re both very competitive. So the dynamic has changed. But I really will always be grateful to Bill,” she told the Hollywood Reporter in November. In December, a source at Fox News told Breitbart News exclusively that staffers inside the network’s headquarters were growing increasingly irate with the media focus on Kelly and her possible career moves. “Everybody in the building is sick of it. We absolutely can’t stand it anymore,” the source said. It was not immediately clear when Kelly’s new position at NBC News would commence. The anchor’s contract with Fox News is set to expire this summer. A representative for Kelly did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Follow Daniel Nussbaum on Twitter: @dznussbaum | 0fake |
Cleveland newspaper endorses Republican Kasich for president | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican presidential candidate John Kasich, the governor of Ohio who is pinning his White House hopes on winning his home state, gained the endorsement of the Cleveland Plain Dealer on Thursday. The newspaper praised Kasich’s stance as a fiscal conservative and said he must win Ohio in order to present himself as the “logical go-to compromise” for the Republican Party to select at its nominating convention in Cleveland in July. (Reporting by Megan Cassella) This article was funded in part by SAP. It was independently created by the Reuters editorial staff. SAP had no editorial involvement in its creation or production. | 0fake |
Televisión: lo más visto ayer | TVE
La 1 de Televisión Española repitió ayer como cadena más vista. Sin duda, el traslado de Los desayunos de La 1 a las 22:00 fue todo un éxito. El interés periodístico de ver a su primer invitado, Albert Rivera, bebiendo café y no un whisky cola a esas horas de la noche proporcionó al programa un excelente 24% de share.
El segundo puesto del podio de los dioses del olimpo televisivo lo consiguió La Sexta con la emisión del vídeo de las vacaciones en Lanzarote de Antonio García Ferreras y Ana Pastor. El minuto de oro fue la emotiva sorpresa que Pastor le dio a su marido: en el hotel había buffet libre. Sin embargo, el momento que pasará a la Historia de la televisión fue la visita al Loro Park de Lanzarote, donde la periodista interrumpía constantemente a los loros.
Telecinco obtuvo unos datos algo más discretos con una edición especial de Pasapalabra con Javier Cárdenas y Rosa de España como invitados. Ninguno de ellos consiguió el bote. O sí. La dirección del concurso aún sigue intentando descifrar las respuestas de ambas celebridades.
Peor audiencia consiguió Antena 3 con Tu Cara Me Suena . El de ayer fue un programa dedicado a las imitaciones políticas. A pesar de que Juan Muñoz ganó la gala imitando a Pedro Sánchez, la concursante Yolanda Ramos (caracterizada de Susana Díaz) impugnó las votaciones y creó una gestora con uno que cantaba en Auryn y Esther Arroyo. Mientras no se solucione el embrollo, el líder del programa será un foco del plató.
Entre las opciones menos atractivas para el público encontramos la propuesta de Cuatro, que ayer emitió la película Ñ-Men , la versión española de una conocida película de súper héroes. El protagonista de uñas afiladas, Torrezno, al que de joven picó una tapa de bar radioactiva, no consiguió la atención del espectador.
Sorprendentemente, La 2 fue la última opción para los españoles. La nueva versión de La Misa de La 2 no convenció. El formato ha sido modernizado, pero quizá el espectador habitual no está acostumbrado al formato “late”. La entrevista con El Cigala hablando de las escrituras apócrifas fue interesante. El momento más divertido fue la aparición del personaje creado por Silvia Abril, La Niña de Yahvé.
Las autonómicas no vivieron su mejor noche. TV3 emitió el documental Independence Day , en el que Will Smith recuerda los hechos de 1714, cuando las tropas españolas enviaron naves espaciales para conquistar Barcelona.
El reality de TVG Percebe busca percebeira y el informativo económico de Canal Sur Chirigota News marcaron su mínimo histórico de esta temporada. | 1real |
Trump to host Norway's Solberg on Jan. 10, White House says | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump will host Norway s Prime Minister Erna Solberg in Washington next month to discuss various security and economic issues, the White House said on Wednesday. The two leaders will meet on Jan. 10 at the White House to talk about a range of topics including NATO and the fight against Islamic State as well as bilateral trade and investment, the White House said in a statement. | 0fake |
Forget Trump White House, Belgium shows Melania the surreal | BRUSSELS (Reuters) - As her reality TV star husband met many of his Western allies for the first time as U.S. president on Thursday, Melania Trump was offered a different take on the surreal by her hosts in Brussels. The first lady, a Slovenian-born former model, toured a museum dedicated to Belgian surrealist painter Rene Magritte in the company of wives of other national leaders who were attending a summit of the NATO military alliance across town. Famed for works like the 1964 “self-portrait” of a bowler-hatted man whose face is hidden by an apple or the image of a pipe subtitled “Ceci n’est pas une pipe” (This is not a pipe), Magritte has much to teach the world about questioning outward appearances, and about self-effacement, Belgian organisers said. “You never know,” museum director Michel Draguet said ahead of the first lady’s visit. “Maybe Donald Trump will move from one kind of surrealism to another, thanks to Magritte’s ideas.” The outspoken 70-year-old wealthy businessman and TV celebrity stunned many U.S. allies by entering the White House in January. He has broken a mould among world leaders with a style that offers little evidence of self-doubt and ideas that run counter to received wisdom among Western diplomats. His 47-year-old third wife was joined by other NATO spouses including the devoutly Muslim wife of Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan; Brigitte Trogneux, who met Emmanuel Macron when she taught the new French president in school; and Gauthier Destenay, who is married to Luxembourg’s gay prime minister. Speaking later, curator Draguet said Melania Trump “showed great interest in surrealism’s free spirit and invention”. Trump’s first foreign tour, which has so far taken him to Riyadh, Jerusalem and Rome and will end this weekend at a G7 summit in Sicily, has been presented by aides as reassuring allies that Washington remains a reliable partner under a head of state who faces a series of ethics questions back home. For Charles Michel, the 41-year-old premier whose partner showed the group around Brussels, an itinerary that also took in tea with Belgium’s queen was also a chance to show those close to power a host country keen to punch above its weight. | 0fake |
Nikki Haley Says U.S. May ‘Take Our Own Action’ on Syrian Chemical Attack - The New York Times | UNITED NATIONS — Holding photographs of dead Syrian children after a chemical bomb attack, the United States ambassador to the United Nations warned on Wednesday that her country might take unilateral action if the Security Council failed to respond to the latest atrocity in the Syria war. Facing her first serious Syria showdown at the Security Council, the ambassador, Nikki R. Haley, also used her remarks at an emergency session to blame Russia for blocking a robust response to the attack on Tuesday on a northern Syrian town, which has incited widespread condemnation. The death toll was reported to exceed 100. The United States, France and Britain have accused the Syrian government of responsibility and bitterly criticized Russia — Syria’s main ally in the war — for objecting to a resolution they drafted condemning the attack. Russia has said that insurgents may have been responsible, or that the attack may have been fabricated to embarrass President Bashar of Syria. “Time and time again, Russia uses the same false narrative to deflect attention from their allies in Damascus,” Ms. Haley said. “How many more children have to die before Russia cares?” She closed her remarks with an ominous warning. “When the United Nations consistently fails in its duty to act collectively, there are times in the life of states that we are compelled to take our own action,” she said. She did not provide further details. But the hint of acting alone was striking, suggesting that she was willing to articulate a position even before her boss. Shortly after her remarks, President Trump expressed his own tougher tone toward Mr. Assad. At a White House news conference on Wednesday, Mr. Trump said that the attack had “crossed a lot of lines for me” and that his attitude toward “Syria and Assad has changed very much. ” The French ambassador to the United Nations, François Delattre, called on Russia to stand up to the use of chemical weapons and on the United States to show leadership on Syria. Asked about his American counterpart’s suggestion of unilateral action in the absence of a consensus, Mr. Delattre demurred. “Action by the Security Council would be by far the best option,” he said. “I’m concerned by inaction at this stage, the risk of inaction. ” The draft resolution “expresses its determination that those responsible must be held accountable” but provided no concrete measure to do so. It reminded the Syrian government that it was obliged to cooperate with international investigators looking into the use of chemical weapons, including by turning over all flight logs, flight plans and the names of commanders in charge of air operations on the day of the strike. It also asked the secretary general, António Guterres, to provide monthly reports on whether the Syrian government was cooperating. The British envoy, Matthew Rycroft, pushed his fellow diplomats to act or lose all credibility in the eyes of the public. “They view us as a table of diplomats doing nothing, our hands tied behind our backs, beholden to Russian intransigence,” he said. Russia dismissed the comments, saying, “At this stage, we don’t see a particular need. ” Its deputy ambassador, Vladimir Safronkov, went on to scold its drafters for expressing “horror” at the attack: “Have you even checked what you wrote? This draft was prepared in a hasty way. ” After the Council meeting ended, diplomats said that they were continuing to negotiate and that no vote had been scheduled. In Brussels, at a meeting of donor countries for Syrian humanitarian relief convened by the European Union, Mr. Guterres declared that “war crimes are going on in Syria. ” Asked whether Mr. Assad’s government was responsible, Mr. Guterres called for “a very clear investigation to remove all doubts. ” Condemnation also came from Pope Francis, who called the attack “an unacceptable massacre” the NATO secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, who deplored “the use of these barbaric weapons” and Donald Tusk, president of the European Council, who said that Syria’s government bore primary responsibility. The Brussels conference produced pledges of $6 billion for 2017, Christos Stylianides, the European commissioner for humanitarian aid, announced Wednesday evening when the meeting concluded. The war in Syria has taken nearly 400, 000 lives, monitoring groups have said, and it has displaced roughly half of all Syrians from their homes. | 0fake |
Fox News Fires One Of Its Longest Running Hosts After He’s Caught Making Racist Remark To Employee | The latest in a seemingly unending torrent of scandals and toxicity coming from Fox News, the network says it was forced to abruptly fire Bob Beckel after the longtime host of The Five made a racially insensitive remark to an African-American Fox News employee. The firing comes just weeks after the conservative channel faced a class-action lawsuit that alleged executives would entertain themselves by forcing black female employees to arm wrestle white employees.Beckel himself had a history with inflammatory, offensive comments. Ostensibly the channel s token liberal, Beckel proved himself to be anything but with repeated misogynistic and racist comments. In 2014, Beckel was briefly suspended after using the derogatory term Chinamen while bashing the Chinese government.His remarks towards an African-American employee were apparently the final straw: Bob Beckel was terminated today for making an insensitive remark to an African-American employee, the network said in a statement. Fox News human-resources department was made aware of a complaint about what one person familiar with the situation characterized as a racially insensitive remark on Tuesday evening. Executives conducted an internal investigation, this person said, and decided to part ways with Beckel Friday morning.It may be small consolation to the countless people its hurt over the years, but Fox News is having an exceptionally bad year. Despite their guy winning the election, the network has been plagued by scandals big and small.Worse still, by refusing to cover Trump honestly, the network has seen its ratings plummet. It now consistently loses to rivals CNN and MSNBC in primetime viewers, who tune into the other networks to learn about the Trump scandals Fox refuses to cover.And at this point, it s not entirely clear whether Fox News can ever fully recover from the culture of misogyny and racism that Ailes built. The fact that Beckel is still using racial slurs seems to suggest the problems go much deeper than any one host.UPDATE: The attorneys representing the man verbally harassed by Beckel have come forward with the victim s account of Beckel s behavior. It s bad. Mr. Beckel stormed out of his office when our client, a Black [sic] IT employee came to service his computer, telling our client that he was leaving his office because he is Black, the attorneys said in a statement. They also allege that when their client went to lodge a complaint against Beckel, Fox News Chief Human Resource Officer Kevin Lord tried to intimidate him and convince him to withdraw the complaint.It appears that even when ultimately deciding to fire Beckel, Fox still behaved with characteristic awfulness.Featured image via Fox News | 1real |
WATCH: DIVISIVE FORMER First Lady MICHELLE OBAMA Can’t Let Go Of Race-Obsession: People “Don’t Trust Politics” Because Republicans Are All “White Men” | Michelle Obama is hands-down, the most divisive first lady to ever occupy our nation s White House. The woman who was never proud of her country until her husband was elected President, lived a very comfortable life as the First Lady in the nation s White House. She took regular 5-star vacations, that included her tax-supported live-in mother, friends, relatives, and of course, her daughters, who attended the best schools in Washington DC. After 8 long years of acting as the First Lady of the United States of America, it s actually quite sad to see Michelle travel around from venue to venue, explaining to her audiences how she s still a victim of racism or sexism Tuesday at the Pennsylvania Conference for Women, former first lady Michelle Obama said when she attended the State of the Union address she would notice the Republican side was all men, all white, and that was why she argued many people of color don t trust politics. Speaking about diversity, Obama said, We should be working actively to mix it up, so we re getting a real broad range of perspectives on every issue. Shoot, I would see that in Congress. She explained, At the State of the Union address when you are in the room what you can see is this real dichotomy. It s a feeling of color almost. On one side of the room is literally gray and white. Literally, that is the color palette on one side of the room. On the other side of the room, there are yellows and blues and whites and greens. Physically, there s a difference in color, in the tone, because on one side all men, all white, on the other side some woman, some people of color. She continued, I look at that, and I go, no wonder. No wonder we struggle, no wonder people don t trust politics. We re not even noticing what these rooms look like. Breitbart | 1real |
DEMOCRATS FUMING Over Vote To Keep “Hurtful” Word In Library Of Congress | The left wants to change hurtful words to whatever they deem to be ok but they got some push back with the order to keep the word illegal alien in the Library of Congress In a victory against political correctness, the House voted to order the Library of Congress to continue referring to illegal aliens rather than change the designation to noncitizen. The party line vote had Democrats fuming, claiming the term was pejorative and that liberal doublespeak can never be repealed once it s in use.Well that s not exactly what one Democrat said. Texas Democrat Rep. Joaquin Castro told the House, The words illegal alien will be retired. This will change, whether it s now or six months from now or 10 years from now. For the first time in history, conservatives hijacked a legislative appropriations bill to stop the Library of Congress from abandoning the term illegal alien from how it catalogs the 162 million-item collection it manages. Texas Congressman Joaquin Castro attempted to make an amendment to the legislation allowing the Library of Congress to make the change, but it failed to gain traction in the Republican-dominated House. Each year, the Library of Congress makes thousands of changes to its subject headings; in 2015 alone, it added 4,934 new subject headings. Never before has Congress weighed in on the Library of Congress subject headings in any way, let alone legislated on the issue, Castro said in a statement.Via: PJ Media | 1real |
Syria toxic gas inquiry to end after Russia again blocks U.N. renewal | UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - An international investigation into who is to blame for chemical weapons attacks in Syria will end on Friday after Russia blocked for the third time in a month attempts at the United Nations to renew the inquiry, which Moscow has slammed as flawed. In the past two years, the joint U.N. and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) inquiry has found the Syrian government used the nerve agent sarin in an April 4 attack and has also several times used chlorine as a weapon. It blamed Islamic State militants for using mustard gas. Russia vetoed on Friday a Japanese-drafted U.N. Security Council resolution to extend the inquiry for one month. It was an eleventh-hour bid to buy more time for negotiations after Russia blocked U.S.-drafted resolutions on Thursday and Oct. 24 to renew the investigation, which the council created in 2015. Syrian ally Russia has cast 11 vetoes on possible Security Council action on Syria since the country s civil war began in 2011. The Japanese draft received 12 votes in favor on Friday, while China abstained and Bolivia joined Russia to vote no. After Friday s vote, the council moved to closed-door discussions at the request of Sweden s U.N. Ambassador Olof Skoog to ensure we are absolutely convinced we have exhausted every avenue, every effort to try and renew the investigation. After a brief discussion, Italian U.N. Ambassador Sebastiano Cardi, council president for November, told reporters: The council will continue to work in the coming hours and days, constructively, to find a common position. Russian U.N. Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia told the council earlier on Friday that the inquiry could only be extended if fundamental flaws in its work were fixed. He said that for the past two year the investigators had rubber-stamped baseless accusations against Syria. The council voted on a rival Russian-drafted resolution on Thursday to renew the inquiry, but it failed after only garnering four votes in favor. A resolution needs nine votes in favor and no vetoes by the United States, France, Russia, Britain or China to be adopted. Russia is wasting our time, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley told the council on Friday. Russia s actions today and in recent weeks have been designed to delay, to distract and ultimately to defeat the effort to secure accountability for chemical weapons attacks in Syria, Haley said. While Russia agreed to the creation of the inquiry two years ago, it has consistently questioned its work and conclusions. The April 4 sarin attack on Khan Sheikhoun that killed dozens of people prompted the United States to launch missiles on a Syrian air base. Haley warned on Thursday: We will do it again if we must. Despite the public deadlock and war of words between the United States and Russia at the United Nations, White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said on Thursday that President Donald Trump believed he could work with Russian President Vladimir Putin on issues like Syria. Syria agreed to destroy its chemical weapons in 2013 under a deal brokered by Russia and the United States. | 0fake |
CEI v. The Attorney General of New York | Libertarian | (Before It's News)
New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman's office denied CEI’s May 5, 2016 request for any Common Interest Agreements, which was made under New York’s Freedom of Information Law (FOIL). His office claimed the records are exempt from disclosure.
CEI is seeking all Common Interest Agreements entered into by the Office of the Attorney General and which are signed by, mention or otherwise include the AGs for other states or territories, as well as certain environmental activists. CEI suspects that these agreements may be a pretext for simply shielding documents from public disclosure.
After supplying a Common Interest Agreement to CEI, AG Schneiderman moved to dismiss our FOIL case against his office. Our October 26, 2016 filing opposes that motion to dismiss on the grounds that there could be more relevant documents yet to be produced, and we also want the common interest agreement ruled invalid, so that it stops functioning as a shield against disclosure of information by AGs.
Case Status: Open Court Level: High Proceedings, Orders, and Opinions Timeline: Date: Wednesday, August 31, 2016 PDF: Notice of Petition – Albany.PDF Title: Notice of Petition Date: Thursday, May 5, 2016 PDF: CEI NY AG FOIL Common Interest Agreements typo corrected.pdf Title: Request Under New York FOIL Date: Tuesday, June 21, 2016 PDF: FOIL appeal by CEI of NY AG's denial of CEI's FOIL request about common ….pdf Title: CEI Appeal of NY FOIL Denial Date: Wednesday, June 15, 2016 PDF: FOIL rejection of our FOIL request 6.15.2016.pdf Title: NY FOIL Request Rejection Date: Thursday, July 7, 2016 PDF: Rejection by NY of our FOIL administrative appeal.pdf Title: Administrative Appeal of NY FOIL Request Rejection Date: Wednesday, August 31, 2016 PDF: Request for Judicial Intervention.PDF Title: Request for Judicial Intervention Date: Wednesday, August 31, 2016 PDF: Verified Petition – Final Version.PDF Title: Verified Petition Date: Friday, August 26, 2016 PDF: Affidavit of Hans Bader & Exhibits.PDF Title: Affidavit of Hans Bader and Exhibits Date: Wednesday, October 26, 2016 PDF: NY FOIL.St_. John affirmation signed.pdf Title: Oposition To Motion to Dismiss Date: Friday, September 30, 2016 PDF: NY Motion to Dismiss.pdf Title: New York Motion to Dismiss News Releases : CEI Sues NY AG Schneiderman for Common Interest Agreement on Climate Change Subpoena Campaign Date: Wednesday, August 31, 2016 | 1real |
America's Secret Government: Unaffected by Elections, Beyond the Reach of the Law | Print Email http://humansarefree.com/2016/11/americas-secret-government-unaffected.html “Today the path to total dictatorship in the U.S. can be laid by strictly legal means, unseen and unheard by Congress, the President, or the people. Outwardly we have a Constitutional government. “We have operating within our government and political system … a well-organized political-action group in this country, determined to destroy our Constitution and establish a one-party state.... “The important point to remember about this group is not its ideology but its organization… It operates secretly, silently, continuously to transform our Government.... “This group ... is answerable neither to the President, the Congress, nor the courts. It is practically irremovable.”— Senator William Jenner, 1954 speech Unaffected by elections. Unaltered by populist movements. Beyond the reach of the law. Say hello to America’s shadow government. A corporatized, militarized, entrenched bureaucracy that is fully operational and staffed by unelected officials who are, in essence, running the country, this shadow government represents the hidden face of a government that has no respect for the freedom of its citizenry.No matter which candidate wins the presidential election, this shadow government is here to stay. Indeed, as recent documents by the FBI reveal, this shadow government — also referred to as “The 7th Floor Group” — may well have played a part in who will win the White House this year.To be precise, however, the future president will actually inherit not one but two shadow governments.The first shadow government, referred to as COG or Continuity of Government, is made up of unelected individuals who have been appointed to run the government in the event of a “catastrophe.”COG is a phantom menace waiting for the right circumstances — a terrorist attack, a natural disaster, an economic meltdown — to bring it out of the shadows, where it operates even now. When and if COG takes over, the police state will transition to martial law.Yet it is the second shadow government — also referred to as the Deep State — that poses the greater threat to freedom right now. Comprised of unelected government bureaucrats, corporations, contractors, paper-pushers, and button-pushers who are actually calling the shots behind the scenes, this government within a government is the real reason “we the people” have no real control over our government.The Deep State, which “ operates according to its own compass heading regardless of who is formally in power ,” makes a mockery of elections and the entire concept of a representative government. So who or what is the Deep State? It’s the militarized police, which have joined forces with state and federal law enforcement agencies themselves as a standing army. It’s the fusion centers and spy agencies that have created a surveillance state and turned all of us into suspects. It’s the courthouses and prisons that have allowed corporate profits to take precedence over due process and justice. It’s the military empire with its private contractors and defense industry that is bankrupting the nation. It’s the private sector with its 854,000 contract personnel with top-secret clearances , “a number greater than that of top-secret-cleared civilian employees of the government.”It’s what former congressional staffer Mike Lofgren refers to as “ a hybrid of national security and law enforcement agencies ”: the Department of Defense, the State Department, Homeland Security, the CIA, the Justice Department, the Treasury, the Executive Office of the President via the National Security Council, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, a handful of vital federal trial courts, and members of the defense and intelligence committees.It’s every facet of a government that is no longer friendly to freedom and is working overtime to trample the Constitution underfoot and render the citizenry powerless in the face of the government’s power grabs, corruption and abusive tactics.These are the key players that drive the shadow government . This is the hidden face of the American police state that will continue long past Election Day.Just consider some of the key programs and policies advanced by the shadow government that will continue no matter who occupies the Oval Office. Domestic surveillance No matter who wins the presidential popularity contest, the National Security Agency (NSA), with its $10.8 billion black ops annual budget, will continue to spy on every person in the United States who uses a computer or phone. Thus, on any given day, whether you’re walking through a store, driving your car, checking email, or talking to friends and family on the phone, you can be sure that some government agency, whether the NSA or some other entity, is listening in and tracking your behavior. Local police have been outfitted with a litany of surveillance gear, from license plate readers and cell phone tracking devices to biometric data recorders. Technology now makes it possible for the police to scan passersby in order to detect the contents of their pockets, purses, briefcases, etc. Full-body scanners, which perform virtual strip-searches of Americans traveling by plane, have gone mobile, with roving police vans that peer into vehicles and buildings alike — including homes. Coupled with the nation’s growing network of real-time surveillance cameras and facial recognition software, soon there really will be nowhere to run and nowhere to hide. Global spying The NSA’s massive surveillance network, what the Washington Post refers to as a $500 billion “ espionage empire ,” will continue to span the globe and target every single person on the planet who uses a phone or a computer. The NSA’s Echelon program intercepts and analyzes virtually every phone call, fax and email message sent anywhere in the world. In addition to carrying out domestic surveillance on peaceful political groups such as Amnesty International, Greenpeace and several religious groups, Echelon has also been a keystone in the government’s attempts at political and corporate espionage . Roving TSA searches The American taxpayer will continue to get ripped off by government agencies in the dubious name of national security. One of the greatest culprits when it comes to swindling taxpayers has been the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), with its questionable deployment of and complete mismanagement of millions of dollars’ worth of airport full-body X-ray scanners, punitive patdowns by TSA agents and thefts of travelers’ valuables. Considered essential to national security, TSA programs will continue in airports and at transportation hubs around the country. USA Patriot Act, NDAA America’s so-called war on terror, which it has relentlessly pursued since 9/11, will continue to chip away at our freedoms, unravel our Constitution and transform our nation into a battlefield, thanks in large part to such subversive legislation as the USA Patriot Act and National Defense Authorization Act. These laws completely circumvent the rule of law and the rights of American citizens. In so doing, they re-orient our legal landscape in such a way as to ensure that martial law, rather than the U.S. Constitution, is the map by which we navigate life in the United States. These laws will continue to be enforced no matter who gets elected. Militarized police state Thanks to federal grant programs allowing the Pentagon to transfer surplus military supplies and weapons to local law enforcement agencies without charge, police forces will continue to be transformed from peace officers into heavily armed extensions of the military, complete with jackboots, helmets, shields, batons, pepper-spray, stun guns, assault rifles, body armor, miniature tanks and weaponized drones. Having been given the green light to probe, poke, pinch, taser, search, seize, strip and generally manhandle anyone they see fit in almost any circumstance, all with the general blessing of the courts, America’s law enforcement officials, no longer mere servants of the people entrusted with keeping the peace, will continue to keep the masses corralled, controlled, and treated like suspects and enemies rather than citizens. SWAT team raids With more than 80,000 SWAT team raids carried out every year on unsuspecting Americans by local police for relatively routine police matters and federal agencies laying claim to their own law enforcement divisions, the incidence of botched raids and related casualties will continue to rise. Nationwide, SWAT teams will continue to be employed to address an astonishingly trivial array of criminal activity or mere community nuisances including angry dogs, domestic disputes, improper paperwork filed by an orchid farmer, and misdemeanor marijuana possession. Domestic drones The domestic use of drones will continue unabated. As mandated by Congress, there will be 30,000 drones crisscrossing the skies of America by 2020, all part of an industry that could be worth as much as $30 billion per year. These machines, which will be equipped with weapons, will be able to record all activities, using video feeds, heat sensors and radar. An Inspector General report revealed that the Dept. of Justice has already spent nearly $4 million on drones domestically, largely for use by the FBI , with grants for another $1.26 million so police departments and nonprofits can acquire their own drones. School-to-prison pipeline The paradigm of abject compliance to the state will continue to be taught by example in the schools, through school lockdowns where police and drug-sniffing dogs enter the classroom, and zero tolerance policies that punish all offenses equally and result in young people being expelled for childish behavior. School districts will continue to team up with law enforcement to create a “schoolhouse to jailhouse track” by imposing a “double dose” of punishment: suspension or expulsion from school, accompanied by an arrest by the police and a trip to juvenile court. Overcriminalization The government bureaucracy will continue to churn out laws, statutes, codes and regulations that reinforce its powers and value systems and those of the police state and its corporate allies, rendering the rest of us petty criminals. The average American now unknowingly commits three felonies a day, thanks to this overabundance of vague laws that render otherwise innocent activity illegal. Consequently, small farmers who dare to make unpasteurized goat cheese and share it with members of their community will continue to have their farms raided. Privatized Prisons States will continue to outsource prisons to private corporations , resulting in a cash cow whereby mega-corporations imprison Americans in private prisons in order to make a profit.In exchange for corporations buying and managing public prisons across the country at a supposed savings to the states, the states have to agree to maintain a 90% occupancy rate in the privately run prisons for at least 20 years. The Private Prisons Conspiracy: A Secret Meeting That Changed Rap Music Forever Endless wars America’s expanding military empire will continue to bleed the country dry at a rate of more than $15 billion a month (or $20 million an hour).The Pentagon spends more on war than all 50 states combined spend on health, education, welfare, and safety.Yet what most Americans fail to recognize is that these ongoing wars have little to do with keeping the country safe and everything to do with enriching the military industrial complex at taxpayer expense. Read: USA Has Killed More Than 20 Million People in 37 'Victim Nations' Since World War II Are you getting the message yet? The next president, much like the current president and his predecessors, will be little more than a figurehead, a puppet to entertain and distract the populace from what’s really going on.As Lofgren reveals, this state within a state, “ concealed behind the one that is visible at either end of Pennsylvania Avenue ,” is a “hybrid entity of public and private institutions ruling the country according to consistent patterns in season and out, connected to, but only intermittently controlled by, the visible state whose leaders we choose.”The Deep State not only holds the nation’s capital in thrall, but it also controls Wall Street (“which supplies the cash that keeps the political machine quiescent and operating as a diversionary marionette theater”) and Silicon Valley.This is fascism in its most covert form, hiding behind public agencies and private companies to carry out its dirty deeds.It is a marriage between government bureaucrats and corporate fat cats.As Lofgren concludes: "[T]he Deep State is so heavily entrenched, so well protected by surveillance, firepower, money and its ability to co-opt resistance that it is almost impervious to change… "If there is anything the Deep State requires it is silent, uninterrupted cash flow and the confidence that things will go on as they have in the past. It is even willing to tolerate a degree of gridlock: Partisan mud wrestling over cultural issues may be a useful distraction from its agenda." In other words, as I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People , as long as government officials — elected and unelected alike — are allowed to operate beyond the reach of the Constitution, the courts and the citizenry, the threat to our freedoms remains undiminished.So the next time you find yourselves despondent over the 2016 presidential candidates, remember that it’s just a puppet show intended to distract you from the silent coup being carried out by America's shadow government. By John W. Whitehead — Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His new book Battlefield America: The War on the American People . Whitehead can be contacted at . Dear | 1real |
Catalan independence group calls for 'peaceful resistance' to Madrid | MADRID (Reuters) - The main secessionist group in Catalonia, the Catalan National Assembly (ANC), on Friday called on civil servants not to follow orders from the Spanish government after Madrid authorized direct rule over the region. Following a declaration of independence in Catalonia the upper house of Spain s parliament authorized the government of Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy to rule Catalonia directly from Madrid. The ANC called on Catalan civil servants to respond with peaceful resistance . | 0fake |
Bahrain calls pipeline blast 'terrorism' linked to Iran | KHOBAR, Saudi Arabia (Reuters) - Bahrain said an explosion which caused a fire at its main oil pipeline on Friday was caused by terrorist sabotage, linking the unprecedented attack to its arch-foe Iran, which denies any role in the Gulf island kingdom s unrest. A key Western ally and host to the U.S. Fifth Fleet, Sunni Muslim-ruled Bahrain has for years grappled with protests and sporadic violence coming from its Shi ite majority. The incident was an act of sabotage and a dangerous act of terrorism aimed at harming the higher interests of the nation and the safety of the people, the interior ministry said on its website. Terrorist acts witnessed by the country in the recent period are carried out through direct contacts and instructions from Iran, the statement quoted Interior Minister Sheikh Rashid bin Abdullah al-Khalifa as saying. In Tehran, Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Qassemi rejected the allegations as false talk and childish accusations , the ministry said on its website. Bahraini authorities said they had brought under control the fire at the oil pipeline. State-run Bahrain Petroleum Company (Bapco) closed the flow of oil to the stricken pipeline, the civil defence said in a statement earlier on Saturday. Residents close to the incident near Buri village, some 15 kilometres (10 miles) from the capital Manama, were being evacuated to a safe shelter, the statement added. Saudi Arabia s energy ministry said pumping to Bahrain had been suspended and the kingdom was stepping up security precautions at its own facilities. The attack on the pipeline ... was followed by the suspension of the pumping of oil to the State of Bahrain, the Saudi Ministry of Energy, Industry and Mineral Resources said. The Ministry of Energy also confirmed that it has increased its security precautions at all its facilities, and that all these facilities enjoy the highest levels of protection and safety, it added in a statement. After authorities quashed Shi ite-led Arab Spring protests in 2011, militants have launched deadly bombing and shooting attacks against security forces that Manama blames on Tehran. Iran denies any role in Bahrain s unrest. Bahrain relies on the Abu Safa oilfield for the majority of its oil. It shares the field with Saudi Arabia. Oil to Bahrain is transported via the 55 km A-B pipeline which has a capacity of 230,000 barrels per day (bpd). A new 350,000-bpd oil pipeline between the two countries will be completed next year and will serve the planned expansion of Bahrain s refinery capacity. Arabian Light crude oil will flow from Saudi Aramco s Abqaiq plant via the 115-km new pipeline, 73 km of which will run overland and the rest under the Gulf. | 0fake |
US Police Dept Uses ‘Pokémon Go’ to Lure Fugitives to Police Station | 21st Century Wire says Another harbinger of the end of civilization as we once knew it. If you are considering downloading this app and getting into this new apocalyptic pastime, we urge you to stop and check yourself. Mindless lemmings chasing after digital illusions. This is the true dystopia The Guardian/ AP Police in New Hampshire s largest city are using Pok mon Go in an attempt to lure fugitives into their clutches. A post on the Manchester police department Facebook page announced that officers recently detected one of the more rare Pokemon characters a Charizard in the booking area of police headquarters.The post invited those whose names appeared on a list linked to the post to be one of the lucky ones to come and capture the creature. The list included the names of the more than 500 fugitives on the department s wanted persons roundup.Appearances of rare Pok mon characters have drawn huge crowds in cities around the globe. This week, the appearance of a super-rare Vaporeon in New York City caused players to swarm to Central Park.The crazed scene was captured on video and posted to Twitter on Friday, causing one appalled used to write: I honestly am wondering if we re on the verge of a global breakdown. Read more at The GuardianREAD MORE POKEMON GO NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Pokemon Files | 1real |
Fall of the House of Bush: How last name and Donald Trump doomed Jeb | For Jeb Bush’s campaign, August was a cruel month. Donald Trump’s attacks on the former Florida governor as a “low-energy” politician were beginning to stick, and the two were bickering over immigration. The issue before the Bush team was what to do about it.
Some advisers argued for an aggressive response, even to the point of challenging Trump to some kind of one-on-one confrontation. Others resisted, believing Trump’s candidacy was unsustainable, while some cautioned against getting “into a pigpen with a pig,” as one adviser recalled. Others described it as “trying to wrestle with a stump.”
Those summer days crystallized the plight of a campaign that had begun with enormous expectations and extraordinary resources, as the scion of one of America’s dynastic political families sought to follow his father and brother to the presidency.
At what would become a crucial moment, Bush’s team had no clear strategy for a rival who was beginning to hijack the Republican Party that the Bush family had helped to build, other than to stay the course set months earlier of telling Bush’s story to voters.
“There was no consensus,” senior strategist David Kochel said of the discussions about how to combat the threat of Trump’s candidacy. Other campaigns were wrestling with the same problems, but as the front-runner in the polls at the time, Bush would suffer more than the others.
On Saturday night, the candidacy that had begun with such promise ended quietly after a disappointingly weak fourth-place finish in South Carolina.
Ever the gracious realist, Bush announced in his concession speech that he would end his campaign as Trump continued to soar as the GOP front-runner. “I have stood my ground, refusing to bend to the political winds,” he said.
Whether Jeb Bush ever had a chance to win the Republican nomination in a campaign year that proved so ill fitting for a rusty politician who preferred policy papers to political combat is a question that will be debated long after the 2016 race has ended.
“Donald Trump channeled the worst fears, frustrations and anxiety of voters, but he also magnified those same feelings,” Sally Bradshaw, Bush’s chief strategist and confidant, said Sunday in an email. “It would be difficult for any solutions-oriented conservative to tackle Trump in this environment, much less one who was seen as having been so much a part of the establishment. He was never going to be an angry guy — and voters wanted angry.”
Mike Murphy, the chief strategist for Bush’s super PAC, Right to Rise, explained what had happened this way on Sunday. “Our theory was to dominate the establishment lane into the actual voting primaries,” he said. “That was the strategy, and it did not work. I think it was the right strategy for Jeb. The problem was there was a huge anti-establishment wave. The establishment lane was smaller than we thought it would be. The marketplace was looking for something different, and we’ll find out how that ends when we have a nominee.”
The result is one of the most startling failures in the modern history of American politics: the fall of the House of Bush. It is a human story about the struggles of one of the most successful former governors in America in his bid to become president, like his father and brother, set against the backdrop of one of the strangest political cycles the country has seen in years.
Beyond underestimating the anger in the electorate, three other problems led to Bush’s downfall. First, the candidate and his team misjudged the degree of Bush fatigue among Republicans.
Aides said an internal poll conducted last fall showed discouraging news: Roughly two-thirds of voters had issues with Bush’s family ties. “Bush stuff was holding him back,” said one aide who saw the polling data. “We obviously knew it was an issue, but even still, the gap between it and other issues — I don’t think we thought it would be that big.”
[For Jeb Bush, the challenge remains making it about ‘Jeb,’ not ‘Bush’]
Second, Bush and his team miscalculated the role and power of money and traditional television commercials in the 2016 race. During the first six months of 2015, Bush raised more than $100 million, most of it stockpiled in Right to Rise, a strategy that seemed right at the time but came at the cost of not dealing with other pressing needs.
“We didn’t use that time to introduce him as a unique brand,” said Vin Weber, an outside adviser. “We used it to raise money. I don’t want to say they made an obvious and clear mistake, but in retrospect, it was a mistake.”
The aggressive fundraising came to be known as “shock and awe,” an echo of the initial bombing of Iraq by U.S.-led forces before the 2003 invasion. In the campaign context, it could be read as code to other potential candidates to get out of the way. But the prodigious fundraising of Bush’s broad network scared off no one. As the Bush campaign would learn, every credible candidate today has a few billionaire friends who can enrich a super PAC. In the end, all that money came to symbolize frustration rather than power.
Third, Bush ran a campaign that, whether deliberate or not, was rooted in the past, managed by loyalists who admired Bush and enjoyed his confidence but who, like the candidate, found themselves in unfamiliar political terrain.
His advisers were convinced from the start that the more voters learned about what Bush had done as governor of Florida from 1999 to 2007, they would flock to him as their presidential candidate. Bush stubbornly held to that approach — even as evidence mounted that it was out of step with voters.
Doug Gross, a prominent Iowa Republican, recalled meeting with Bush in July 2014 in Kennebunkport, Maine, to talk about the impending campaign. “He definitely wanted to run. He’s always had it in him and knew this was his last chance,” Gross said. “He was trying to figure out how to do it his own way. I was struck by his obstinate avoidance of any political discussion. . . . He wanted to do it his way or no way.”
In contrast to the doldrums of August 2015, July seemed a glorious time for the Bush team. Early that month, Team Jeb gathered in Kennebunkport to celebrate that the campaign and two allied political committees had together raised nearly an unprecedented $120 million. The numbers were made public as nearly 300 major Bush fundraisers assembled to mingle with the Bush family and campaign advisers.
Guests were transported in black-and-red trolleys to Walker’s Point, the Bush family compound. The group gathered for a photo with former president George H.W. Bush and Barbara Bush.
That evening, Bush touted the team’s record fundraising as guests dined on lobster rolls and hamburgers at a luxury resort tucked among a forest of birch groves and balsam fir. “It was incredibly memorable to be there with several generations,” said Jay Zeidman, a Houston-based investor who helped raise money from young professionals.
The next day, the donors got briefings from senior Bush aides including Bradshaw, campaign manager Danny Diaz and finance director Heather Larrison. They laid out how the campaign planned to take on contenders such as Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. Throughout, there was little mention of Donald Trump.
[That time Jeb Bush invited 300 top donors to his parents’ house]
“None of us thought he would last the summer,” said one person who was in attendance.
At that moment, however, Trump was already in the process of undermining Bush’s candidacy. If Bush had ever gone up against someone like Trump, it didn’t show. Trump was a new and different kind of rival, one given to personal insults rather than policy debates, who monopolized media coverage and got away with provocative statements that would have sunk normal politicians.
After marching in two July 4 parades on a rainy Saturday in New Hampshire, reporters asked Bush about Trump’s claim that Mexico was allowing immigrants to illegally cross into the United States. It was one of the hundreds of times he would face such questions.
Bush said “absolutely” he was offended by Trump’s rhetoric. “We’re going to win when we’re hopeful and optimistic and big and broad rather than ‘grrrrrr’ ” he said — literally, growling – “just angry all the time.”
That very night, Trump attacked Bush as soft on immigration and took aim as well at Bush’s wife, Columba, who was born in Mexico and entered the country legally — retweeting and then deleting a disparaging comment about her.
Nothing, however, cut as close to the bone as Trump’s claim that Bush was too “low-energy” to serve as president.
The accusation was laughable — until it began to stick. Trump’s charge was in fact a proxy for a different and more difficult argument to combat: that Bush was neither strong nor edgy enough for a party seething with anger at the grass roots.
[Inside the Bush-Trump melodrama: Decades of tension and discomfort]
“Nobody tapped into it, for all the polling, all the focus groups,” said Theresa Kostrzewa, a North Carolina lobbyist who raised money for the campaign. “The biggest thing they did was miss was just how angry the American electorate was and that Trump would be their Captain Ahab.”
Bush’s advisers would contest that claim. They could see the anger, they said. The issue was what to do about it. “Donors, political operatives and big thinkers from around the country urged us to ignore Trump for months,” Bradshaw said. “There was no one in the news media or the operative class at the time who felt Trump would ultimately be a serious contender for the nomination.”
At the same time, others feared that engaging Trump was almost beneath Bush and would thrust the candidate into a never-ending game of charge-countercharge. “Jeb should be bigger than this,” another aide recalled thinking.
Over at Right to Rise, Murphy sent a clear signal: Trump is not our fight right now.
“If other campaigns wish that we’re going to uncork money on Donald Trump, they’ll be disappointed,” Murphy told The Washington Post in late August. “Trump is, frankly, other people’s problem.”
At that moment, the Bush team’s analysis showed that no Trump voters were likely to shift their support to Bush. On Sunday, Murphy said that attacking Trump would only have benefited other candidates. Bush’s campaign needed to consolidate the establishment lane while hoping that Trump and Cruz would sort out the competition among the anti-establishment candidates.
Bradshaw also dismissed complaints from some donors that she cut the candidate off from advice. Noting that Bush long has been active on email, Bradshaw responded in a message by saying: “Donors constantly gave conflicting advice — attack Trump, don’t attack Trump; smile more; smile less — you look like you are smirking. I didn’t tell people they were wrong — not my style — I did a lot of listening, and I’m sure there were things we could have done better — but withholding info from the Governor simply did not happen in our campaign.”
For much of the autumn, Bush’s engagement with Trump was on-again, off-again — skirmish, then turning away. Not until late last year did he truly start a concerted and sustained series of attacks. Aides said Bush was particularly affected by the terrorist attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, Calif., and felt, as one adviser put it, that it was “time to stand up to the bully.”
“Jeb was the only candidate with the political courage at the time and frankly throughout the last six months to take on Trump directly for doing something that the governor felt was very harmful to the Party and to the country,” Bradshaw wrote. “There was no hesitation at that point given his comments about women, about Hispanics, his lack of knowledge on issues of national security and on and on.”
Bush’s failure to come to terms with one of the downsides of his family name came to a head over a four-day period in May, when he stumbled over the decision by his brother, former president George W. Bush, to go to war in Iraq.
Changing his answer on a daily basis, Bush came across as a flat-footed campaigner clearly uncomfortable articulating his views on the most critical moment of his brother’s presidency. But it also highlighted the double-edged nature of being a candidate named Bush.
In a January Washington Post-ABC News poll, nearly 6 in 10 Americans held an unfavorable view of Bush. He was the only Republican with a negative favorability rating: 44 percent said they had a favorable impression of the former governor while 50 percent rated him negatively. His rankings grew worse as the campaign progressed.
A fundamental weakness, supporters said, was the lack of a coherent rationale for Bush’s candidacy and the failure to make inroads with activists on the right. “At the end of the day, it wasn’t clear the name was ever surmountable,” said a Bush donor. “If the name was going to be surmounted, it would have to be because there was a fresh set of ideas.”
Bush offered ideas, but in a campaign dominated by Trump, they were ignored or lost to most voters.
One of the biggest tactical advantages Bush appeared to have early on — a richly endowed super PAC — was not the invincible weapon his team thought it would be. It cut off his access to a key adviser, Murphy, whom he installed at the group’s helm.
It also meant that during the first six months of last year, nearly all of the coverage about Bush focused on how he was socking away millions into the super PAC, all while maintaining that he had not decided whether to run. In an election brimming with anger toward the wealthy elite, Bush seemed almost flippant about his pursuit of big dollars.
Murphy was convinced that much of what was taking place was noise and that when the voters began to check in, the super PAC’s financial might would be overpowering.
First, the committee would use it to lay out Bush’s biography. Then, as necessary, the group would turn its arsenal on his rivals. “Our job is just to amplify his story and what he’s saying and we banked enough cash that nobody’s turning our speaker off,” Murphy told Bloomberg Politics in October.
Back at campaign headquarters, the team hewed to that timetable and sensibility. Once the Bush record was burned into voters’ minds, attitudes would shift, Bradshaw said at the time. A Bush donor complained, “Murphy had a timetable, and nothing mattered until December and January.”
By the end of January, Right to Rise had raced through at least $95.7 million out of the $118.6 million it had collected, according to Federal Election Commission filings. Almost $87 million went into a barrage of television ads, online videos, slick mailers and voter phone calls—to no avail.
Mel Sembler, a former Bush ambassador who helped raise money for the super PAC and served on its governance board, said he believes the group’s strategy was sound.
“We had confidence in Mike, and I think we did the best we could in deploying of resources,” Sembler said. “That’s not where the problem is. . . . The timing was not right for Jeb. Our candidate was just not connecting with the electorate.”
The final months were difficult for Bush. After a particularly weak performance during a debate in Boulder, Colo., in October in which Rubio appeared to get the better of him, there were suggestions that he might quit the campaign right then.
Reporters who made inquiries about the possibility were brushed off. In the middle of it all, Bush spotted a reporter who was a regular on the trail with him. “Hey — I didn’t drop out, did I?” he shouted. “You know, that kind of stuff really gets my juices going. I’m going to win this thing, and when I do — you’re going to give me a big hug.”
Through it all, Bush attempted to keep both good humor and determination in the face of the inevitable.
“I was stunned by how well he handled the last month of this campaign when the writing was on the wall,” said Tim Miller, Bush’s communications director. “It is hard to go out there every day and put on a fake smiley face. He was in really high spirits and didn’t lash out at people in private throughout the last two months.”
The final indignity in a campaign that had suffered through many came three days before Saturday’s primary, when South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley endorsed Rubio rather than a man she described as a friend and mentor.
When it ended Saturday night, Bush told saddened supporters: “We put forward details, innovative, conservative plans to address the mounting challenges that we face. Because despite what you might have heard, ideas matter, policy matters.”
His final remarks as a presidential candidate were a reflection of the campaign he had constructed from the start, one he had built to his unique specifications, which nonetheless proved to be a mismatch for a political environment that caught him by surprise — and for which he paid a hefty price. | 0fake |
Two Kosovo men plea guilty of plotting to attack Israeli soccer team | PRISTINA (Reuters) - Two Kosovo men pleaded guilty on Wednesday to planning attacks at a World Cup soccer match in Albania against the visiting Israel team last year. Kosovo police arrested 19 people in November 2016 on suspicion that they had links with the Islamic State militant group and were planning attacks in Kosovo and neighboring Albania. Nine of them were charged. The state prosecutor said some of them were in contact with Lavdrim Muhaxheri, Islamic State s self-declared commander of Albanians in Syria and Iraq , who ordered them to attack. Police said Muhaxheri was killed in June this year. ... I accept guilty plea, defendant Kenan Plakaj said in court. He is accused of making explosives, after police found half a kilo of explosives at his house, the indictment said. The other defendant, Besart Peci, also pleaded guilty. Sentences were not announced. Another defendant facing trial had kept in his basement 283 grams of self-made explosives. The same triacetone triperoxide explosive was used in attacks in Paris and Brussels and has been found in various foiled bombings in Europe since 2007. No militant attacks have been staged in Kosovo, whose population is largely ethnic Albanian Muslim. But at least 200 people have been detained or investigated over offences related to Islamic State, and a total of 300 Kosovars have gone to Syria to fight for Islamic State. More than 70 have been killed. International and local security agencies in Kosovo are worried that many of those returning from combat zones will pose a security threat. In 2015, Kosovo adopted a law introducing jail sentences of up to 15 years for anyone found guilty of fighting in wars abroad. | 0fake |
@Ammon_Bundy’s Ridiculous Late Night Twitter Rant Has Everyone Talking (TWEETS) | Either Ammon Bundy himself or a clever imposter has taken Twitter and the media by storm. The head of the Oregon Moron Militia, Bundy is the textbook case of the modern Murican patriot. He is either just being himself and having a Twitter-fest of spewing out right-wing talking points or someone has decided to channel him, guessing the Bundy-esque things he might say.The rant was late-night, when the cold of the Oregon forest may have demanded a little something to make a person forget what aches. More than a dozen tweets went out from the account, including a retweet of an interview Bundy did with a local blog. Here are a few examples:As Thomas Paine said, It is the duty of the patriot to protect its country from its government. #CitizensForConstitutionalFreedom Ammon Bundy (@Ammon_Bundy) January 5, 2016We are not about fear, we are not about force, we are not about intimidation. #CitizensForConstitutionalFreedom Ammon Bundy (@Ammon_Bundy) January 6, 2016We came here in protest because of the force and the intimidation that we have seen in this county. #CitizensForConstitutionalFreedom Ammon Bundy (@Ammon_Bundy) January 6, 2016With that being said, we will not be intimidated by the federal government for taking stand for something we strongly believe in. Ammon Bundy (@Ammon_Bundy) January 6, 2016It even went so far as to compare the Moron Militia to Rosa Parks:We are doing the same thing as Rosa Parks did. We are standing up against bad laws which dehumanize us and destroy our freedom. Ammon Bundy (@Ammon_Bundy) January 6, 2016However, reporters now say the account is believed to be a fake. Tony Dokoupil of MSNBC tweeted this:People, Ammon Bundy is not operating a twitter account. I stood with him last night as tweets supposedly from him went out. tonydokoupil (@tonydokoupil) January 6, 2016That seems to be compelling enough. A reporter who was there at the time says Bundy isn t on Twitter at all. That seemed like the case for sure when the account was suspended by Twitter, which has a process of verifying identities of celebrities and others in the news. Then USA Today reported that the account was suspended and that it was re-instated.Another theory may be that much like many people on Twitter who have become public figures, Ammon Bundy has someone smarter than he is running his account. With all the freedoming and interviews he s doing, Bundy probably doesn t have time for the social media onslaught for the movement, which has obviously been even less successful than the movement itself.Alas, the account is still alive and well and as of Wednesday at just after 11 AM EST tweeted this:The last thing we want is an armed confrontation. We want this to end peacefully without anyone being harmed. Ammon Bundy (@Ammon_Bundy) January 6, 2016That s the first real evidence that the account may not be real unless Ammon Bundy s goal of remaining for years to give a bird preserve to loggers, miners and ranchers has changed. Or maybe he s just cold.Featured image via Twitter | 1real |
Trump Is LITERALLY Kicking Off His 2020 Re-Election Campaign In Florida This Weekend | For the third time in a row, Trump will head down to Florida for the weekend because he can t stand the White House. However, it seems that this particular weekend vacay is different: It s a rally at Orlando International Airport, similar to the ones he held during his campaign. He s even got a neat little graphic on his Twitter announcement, which also reads the way the ads for his campaign stops read:Join me in Florida this Saturday at 5pm for a rally at the Orlando-Melbourne International Airport! Tickets: https://t.co/9jDy1tYkgE pic.twitter.com/GDhO6GGxwt Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 15, 2017Now, we already knew that Trump s advisers were trying to figure out a way to allow him to keep holding rallies so he could stroke his ego while in office. That s what his so-called Thank-You tour was all about. However, it seems that this one is a little different. White House press who ve spoken to Spicer about it are saying the following:Spicer says Trump rally in FL Saturday is a campaign event. So the 2020 campaign has begun. Jim Acosta (@Acosta) February 15, 2017Spicer on POTUS event on Saturday in FL: It s being run by the campaign Zeke Miller (@ZekeJMiller) February 15, 2017It s a campaign event, and it s being paid for by the campaign, although speculation says otherwise:This means that Trump s campaign must pay some of the costs for Air Force One, travel and lodging for aides. Wanna bet they don t do that? https://t.co/jQx0Gz0gXt Dan Pfeiffer (@danpfeiffer) February 15, 2017Here s more:White House referring Qs about @realDonaldTrump FL rally to the president s campaign.Trump is having a campaign rally 1 month into term Mike Memoli (@mikememoli) February 15, 2017What?President Trump will make it all the way to his 30th day in office before having a campaign event pic.twitter.com/KrnRuOUwvr Mark Berman (@markberman) February 15, 2017Yeah. He filed a letter with the Federal Election Commission saying he meets the candidacy threshold for 2020 on the day he was inaugurated, and now he s holding campaign events. And Spicer is saying the campaign will pay for them. The campaign will pay for use of Air Force One and lodging for the Secret Service and all his aides? Sure.But more than that, this is another way for him to avoid real work, and possibly to distract from the scandals mounting in the White House. He hates the business of being the president because he can t do what he wants, when he wants and how he wants. He can t be a dictator, and he can t tolerate people actually telling him he s wrong. But he can hold these rallies full of cheering people who admire him and hold him up as a god who s right about everything.This isn t normal. This is terrifying.Featured image by Mark Wallheiser via Getty Images | 1real |
France's Macron tells Iran, Israel leaders of need to preserve Lebanon's stability | PARIS (Reuters) - French President Emmanuel Macron told the leaders of Iran and Israel in separate telephone calls that it was vital to keep Lebanon disassociated from regional crisis and urged all countries in the region to work collectively to reduce tensions. Macron s office also said in a statement that he had told Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that France was attached to the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, but that regional subjects and ballistic missile programmers should be discussed separately. | 0fake |
Lebanon's Hariri to visit Egypt on Tuesday: Hariri's office | BEIRUT (Reuters) - Saad al-Hariri, who announced his resignation as Lebanese prime minister in a televised broadcast from Saudi Arabia on Nov. 4, will visit Egypt on Tuesday to meet Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, Hariri s office said on Sunday. Hariri has since Saturday been in Paris, where he met French President Emmanuel Macron, and has said he will return to Lebanon by Wednesday for its Independence Day celebrations. Lebanese President Michel Aoun has said he will not accept Hariri s resignation until it is delivered in person and all sides in Beirut have called for his speedy return. A leader in Hariri s Future Movement had earlier told Reuters Hariri would visit Egypt on Monday. The resignation sparked a political crisis in Lebanon and put it on the front line of a regional power struggle between Saudi Arabia and Iran. Hariri criticized Iran and its ally Hezbollah, which is in Lebanon s coalition government, in his resignation statement, and said he feared assassination. Apart from a brief trip to Abu Dhabi, he remained in Saudi Arabia until he flew to France. His stay in the kingdom led to accusations from Lebanese officials and politicians that Saudi Arabia had coerced him to resign, which he and Riyadh denied. On Friday, Hariri tweeted that his presence there was for consultations on the future of the situation in Lebanon and its relations with the surrounding Arab region . On Sunday, Arab League foreign ministers held an emergency meeting in Cairo, requested by Saudi Arabia, to discuss ways to confront Iran and Hezbollah over their role in the region. In a statement afterwards, the ministers accused Hezbollah of supporting terrorism in Arab countries. Lebanese Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil did not attend. | 0fake |
MUST SEE! “Welcome to the family.” Why so many Hispanic-Americans are voting for Donald Trump | Notify me of follow-up comments by email. Notify me of new posts by email. PLEASE DONATE TO KEEP BARE NAKED ISLAM UP AND RUNNING. Choose DONATE for one-time donation or SUBSCRIBE for monthly donations Payment Options GET ALL NEW BNI POSTS/LINKS ON TWITTER Subscribe to Blog via Email
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Re: Iran Backed Muslim Rebels Just Launched A Major Ballistic Missile Attack Directed At Mecca | Email
emen’s Houthi militia launched a ballistic missile toward Mecca on Thursday, the Saudi-led coalition intervening in Yemen’s civil war said on Saudi state news agency SPA.
Unfortunately, the U.S. provided Saudi Arabia with patriot missiles and “the coalition forces destroyed the missile 65 km (40 miles) from the Mecca without damage and retaliated against the launch site inside Yemen,” the statement said. Mecca is home to the most sacred sites in Islam, including the Grand Mosque. Targeting #Mecca , Saudis intercept the 37th ballistic missile launched by Houthis backed by #Iran #HouthisStrikeMecca pic.twitter.com/nQZhL7HcYh
— إنفوجرافيك السعودية (@Infographic_ksa) October 27, 2016 Yemen's Houthis launch missile toward Saudi holy city https://t.co/C8mcOmUyKL
— Reuters Top News (@Reuters) October 28, 2016
Here is a video of the interception:
The Houthis confirmed the launch of a Burkan-1 ballistic missile into Saudi Arabia in a statement to their official news agency on Friday but said it targeted King Abdulaziz International Airport in Jeddah, the kingdom’s busiest airport. However, the coalition forces reveal it was heading towards Mecca.
The Yemeni Shiite Houthis have always wanted to send a long suppository to Saudi Arabia and so they developed scuds, Burkan 1 ( Volcano 1), range 800 kilometers. Not only did they develop it, but they fired a couple of these babies just a few weeks ago towards Saudi Arabia’s Fahd Air Base, near Mecca.
Here the previous launch from Yemen:
But this time the target was Mecca, Allah’s House (Bait Allah). Iran says that Karbala is Allah’s favorite vacation house, not Mecca, which Iran promised that Allah will penetrate with a scud as a last one night-stand with the veiled Burqa dressed Kaaba.
But the developments of scuds by Yemeni Shiites is not that simple to ignore by Saudi Arabia, which plays a game of cat and mouse with these rebels playing with some serious fire. On August 28th, Saudi Arabia had to send a jet just before this other scud was about to take off destroying it on the ground and at times have the patriots intercept.
This time the coalition forces destroyed the base of the Mecc-scud:
Allah in the Quran promised he protects the Kaaba from destruction while the Hadith says in the end it will be destroyed. As it seems, this time the whore of Babylon escaped, but her destruction is well etched in scripture so for now enjoy the weddings.
Article posted with permission from Shoebat.com | 1real |
STUDENTS USE “Free Speech” Wall To Paint “offensive, hurtful” Message Supporting Trump… Hispanic Students Call Emergency Meeting [VIDEO] | Remember when colleges and university were one of the best places in America to have discussions about politics? To be clear, the university does in fact support free speech unless of course, you re a Trump supporter Several events for Ohio University s Greek Week, an annual, weeklong event focused on philanthropy, have been canceled after some Sorority and Fraternity Life members painted Build the Wall on an area typically designated for graffiti last week.The Greek Week events, set to take place between April 11 and 18, were amended after unnamed members of Sorority and Fraternity Life painted the graffiti wall by Bentley Hall, including the phrase Build the Wall, according to a letter sent Sunday to sororities and fraternities.The phrase has been a part of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump s campaign to construct a wall between the United States and Mexico to discourage immigration from South and Central American countries.The letter was addressed to the OU Sorority and Fraternity Life community and supporters, and was signed by the Interfraternity Council, Multicultural Greek Council, National Pan-Hellenic Council and the Women s Panhellenic Association. This phrase is offensive and hurtful to many individuals as it is directly tied to the Hispanic/Latino/a community, makes them feel marginalized, and the message was interpreted that they do not belong at Ohio University, the letter stated. Via: The Post AthensNo regard was given to the potentially offensive message Hispanic students painted over Trump message: | 1real |
VP CANDIDATE KAINE’S Past Criticism Of Bill Clinton Surfaces…Made BOLD Statement On Philandering President | Vice Presidential candidate Tim Kaine has some explaining to do! It sure looks like he sold his soul to the Clintons to run as Vice President. He had a totally different view of Bill Clinton in 2002 and stated he thought Bill should have stepped down during the Monica Lewinsky sex scandal. The lack of integrity and lack of respect for the office that Bill Clinton held should be enough for any Democrat to not want him anywhere near the White House again. Clinton shook his finger as he looked in the camera and LIED to the American people about his disgusting affair with a White House intern. Does anyone care to recall that this was a HUGE DEAL AND NOW HIS ENABLING WIFE IS RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT! This all seems so impossible but the press, globalists and Republican elitists are making it possible Do what you can to keep the Clinton Grifters out of the White House. America deserves better! TRUMP 2016! How quickly Democrats forget! Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Kaine is pretty much part of the Clinton family at this point. But in 2002, he said Bill Clinton should have stepped down in the wake of his affair with a White House intern.Bill Clinton should have resigned over the Monica Lewinsky scandal at least, that s a view Tim Kaine once held.Kaine s remark reported 14 years ago in the Richmond Times-Dispatch in the aftermath of a state-level sex scandal hasn t drawn any attention thus far in the 2016 presidential cycle. But it suggests Hillary Clinton s running mate at one point harbored reservations about the integrity of the man poised to become the country s first first gentleman.Kaine commented on the Lewinsky scandal in 2002, when allegations of sexual harassment had rocked the Virginia House of Delegates. The speaker of the house, Vance Wilkins, was a Republican power broker who had just helped his party flip the House and build its majority after Democrats had historically controlled the chamber.Just one problem: Earlier in 2001, Wilkins agreed to pay $100,000 in hush money to a former female employee at his construction company who said he sexually harassed her.The woman, Jennifer Thompson, alleged privately that Wilkins groped her and pinned her against office furniture. She considered pressing charges, according to a Washington Post report that broke the news on June 7, 2002. But she ultimately decided not to, accepting the $100,000 from Wilkins and signing a confidentiality agreement. The Post cited sources familiar with the settlement in their report on it. Wilkins held and still holds, as he stated in an interview with The Daily Beast that he didn t sexually harass Thompson, and that he only paid her to keep her allegations from becoming a scandal that would have undermined Republicans efforts to control the House.The Post s report caused an immediate firestorm, and top Republicans called for Wilkins to resign. Jerry Kilgore, then the state s attorney general and top-ranking elected Republican, joined the chorus.So did Tim Kaine, who was the state s lieutenant governor at the time. And according to the Richmond Times-Dispatch, he said he also believed Bill Clinton should have resigned from the presidency over his own sex scandals.Here s what the paper wrote, in a story published June 8, 2002: If the allegations are true, he should definitely resign, Kaine said, adding he held the same view about President Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky sex scandal. That is an intolerable way to treat women and it s not something that the state should be dragged through. The Times-Dispatch story is behind a paywall in its archive.A report in The Washington Post, also published on June 8, 2002, characterized his views the same way:Lt. Gov. Timothy M. Kaine (D), who may face [state Attorney General Jerry] Kilgore in the 2005 governor s race, likened the matter to the sexual scandal of President Bill Clinton and White House intern Monica S. Lewinsky, saying, If the allegations are true, he ought to resign. Somebody in public life shouldn t behave that way toward women, Kaine said. It s tawdry. It s not the leadership that Virginia should have. An AP story that ran on the same day also highlighted Kaine s criticism of Bill Clinton. When I read it this morning, my reaction was the same I had when I read about the Clinton-Lewinsky affair: this is not appropriate conduct. It s beneath the dignity of the office, he said.Amy Dudley, a spokesperson for Kaine, said the Virginia senator is focused on the future. As the Associated Press reported at the time, Kaine characterized President Clinton s actions as not appropriate conduct, but he had previously been on record criticizing the impeachment effort, she said. He believes this election is about Hillary Clinton s vision to make historic investments to create good paying jobs, make college debt free and build an economy that works for everyone, not re-litigating personal issues from the distant past. Wilkins told The Daily Beast that he didn t recall Kaine making the comment, but that he didn t pay much attention to him anyway. He saw a political opportunity to make a political hit and he took it, Wilkins added. It doesn t surprise me at all. Kaine wasn t the only Democrat disturbed by Bill Clinton s affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. Clinton s world-famous lie I did not have sexual relations with that woman became one of the definitive lines of the 90s. And their dalliances ultimately led to the House voting to impeach Clinton. Five House Democrats including Virginian Virgil Goode, who later became a Republican voted for some of the articles of impeachment. No Senate Democrats voted that Clinton was guilty. Read more: Live Leak | 1real |
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