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’Women Only’ Screenings of ’Wonder Woman’ to Benefit Planned Parenthood | Controversy has surrounded special “women only” screenings of the DC Comics blockbuster release Wonder Woman, with proceeds slated to be donated to Planned Parenthood. [“What better way to spend an evening than with Gal Gadot, a vat of rosé and a blissfully environment?” asked feminist news website Jezebel in an article last month, praising the “no guys allowed” screenings, and adding: Men, with their preternatural ability to sense that something might not revolve around them, immediately freaked out. Mind you, the screening was initially intended as a affair, with men having the option to attend literally any other screening at either the Drafthouse or infinite multiplexes around the world. Men make 20 percent more money than women they perform fewer child care duties and household chores (even when their wives are the family breadwinners). They pay less for pants and haircuts, and they are responsible for dictating our abortion laws. The Austin, Texas cinema chain Alamo Drafthouse, where the screenings are set to be held, registered some fierce complaints from men on its Facebook account over what some critics called the “sexist” showings. In its report about the special screenings, CBS noted a comment from one woman who attended the Brooklyn, New York showing and told 1010 WINS News about the male complaints: “Screw them. I really don’t have a lot to say to them, because their opinion does not matter to me. ” In another twist of the controversy, the charges of sexism led Stephen Clark, a gay Albany Law School professor, to file a complaint. “There was a vibrant argument happening on Facebook,” Clark, 48, told the Washington Post. “But when the theater responded to complaints, they were pretty snide about it and willing to mock anyone who had a complaint and that really struck me. ” “There is also the fact that what they were doing is illegal,” he added. Clark reportedly filed an administrative charge with Austin’s Equal Employment and Fair Housing Office, alleging the Drafthouse’s showing discriminated against men based solely on their gender. He also claimed that, since the theater emphasized it would be staffing the events with only females as well, it was illegally practicing employment discrimination. “It’s the principle of the thing,” he told the Post. “I’m a gay man, and I’ve studied and taught gay rights for years. Our gay bars have long said that you do not exclude people because they’re gay or straight or transgender — you just can’t do that for any reason. ” “We have to deal with the bachelorette parties that come to the gay bar,” he added. “They’re terribly disruptive, but if you forbid women from coming to a gay bar, you’re starting down a slippery slope. It’s discrimination. ” While the theater has reacted to the accusations of sexism by doubling down and promising to expand its screenings at its locations across the country, the Post says it walked back that sentiment, with this statement: “Obviously, Alamo Drafthouse recognizes ‘Wonder Woman’ is a film for all audiences, but our special screenings may have created confusion — we want everybody to see this film. ” The chain’s latest announcement, however, about its June 6 showing, is as follows: The most iconic superheroine in comic book history finally has her own movie, and what better way to celebrate than with an screening? Apologies, gentlemen, but we’re embracing our girl power and saying “No Guys Allowed” for one special night at the Alamo Ritz. And when we say “People Who Identify As Women Only,” we mean it. Everyone working at this screening — venue staff, projectionist, and culinary team — will be female. So lasso your geeky girlfriends together and grab your tickets to this celebration of one of the most enduring and inspiring characters ever created. The screenings have led the theater chain to expand its program across the country. “We are very excited to present select, WONDER WOMAN screenings at Alamo Drafthouse,” Morgan Hendrix, Alamo Drafthouse creative manager said in a statement to the Post. “That providing an experience where women truly reign supreme has incurred the wrath of trolls only serves to deepen our belief that we’re doing something right. ” Jezebel briefly mentioned that proceeds for the special screenings would benefit abortion vendor Planned Parenthood at the very end of its article: The theater did apologize, cheekily, to anyone offended, saying it was “truly, truly, truly sorry sorry. ”) But it needn’t have, especially since the screening’s proceeds are going to Planned Parenthood. The Warner Bros. blockbuster hauled in more than $100 million in its domestic opening weekend — a historic feat for a feature film. | 0fake |
North Carolina’s Partisan Rift Widens in Fight Over Governor’s Powers - The New York Times | RALEIGH, N. C. — There have been four years of civil disobedience, boycotts over bathroom access, and legal battles over voting laws and gerrymanders. The election for governor, fraught with Republican challenges, took a month to settle. But if anyone here thought that the Democrat Roy Cooper’s victory in that race would open a new era of cooperation and calm in this bitterly divided state, all they had to do was listen on Thursday to the bellowing voice of Evan Hughes, a lettuce farmer from Durham. Around noon, Mr. Hughes, 35, was in front of North Carolina’s legislative offices with a child in his arms, berating the executive director of the state Republican Party for the group’s gambit to strip Mr. Cooper of many of his powers as governor before he even takes office. “We’re talking about changing the rules at the last minute,” Mr. Hughes said. “The people of North Carolina are sick and tired of the G. O. P. ’s antics — antics. It is embarrassing to the people of North Carolina. ” Dallas Woodhouse, the Republican official, had initially tried to engage Mr. Hughes. But he eventually fled into the building, where lawmakers from his party introduced a flurry of bills during a surprise special session this week to undermine Mr. Cooper by stripping him of his ability to make key appointments to state and local boards and mandating, for the first time, legislative approval of his cabinet. The legislative session generated reminders of one in March that led to the divisive “bathroom bill” that limited gay and transgender rights. It further cemented the perception of North Carolina as a place that has gone from a symbol of pragmatic New South moderation to one in a perpetual state of political civil war. The law passed in March, known as House Bill 2, is seen as playing a role in Mr. Cooper’s defeat of Gov. Pat McCrory, a Republican. The General Assembly went into a special session to pass the bill, and Mr. McCrory signed it the same night. It resulted in boycotts by sports leagues and musicians. “We don’t want another disaster like House Bill 2,” Mr. Cooper said at a news conference on Thursday. “This is exactly why we had problems with House Bill 2 because they wanted to do it in secret. ” The new legislation moved quickly through committees and floor votes on Thursday, where Republicans hold large majorities in both chambers. In separate incidents, both the State Senate and House galleries were closed and cleared of protesters after outbursts interrupted proceedings. Senators passed one of the major bills, which removes partisan control of the state and county election boards from the governor. Currently, the boards, which set hours and polling places and adjudicate ballot disputes, have a majority from the governor’s party. Under the new law, the boards will have bipartisan memberships, but a Republican will lead the state board during election years and a Democrat in nonelection years. The House passed another key bill, enhancing the power of the state superintendent of education, who is a newly elected Republican, and mandating Senate approval of Mr. Cooper’s cabinet appointments, a significant shackling of the governor’s authority. Both the and bills were scheduled to be taken up by the other chamber on Friday. The special session stunned North Carolinians of both the right and the left who had been hoping for a cooling off from the state’s recent years of hyperpartisanship. “We didn’t think it would be from before Day 1,” said Rick Henderson, editor of Carolina Journal, a publication of the John Locke Foundation, a conservative think tank in Raleigh. Mr. Cooper, who, while a member of the legislature, once helped replace a Speaker of the House with a conservative Democrat, has been a relatively nonconfrontational attorney general of his state, Mr. Henderson said. But the angrily attacked Republicans on Thursday. “They will see me in court,” he warned. It is not clear if Democrats have any legal recourse. Few states are quite as bitterly divided as this one, but there are hints here, too, of what may be in store for a nation that is just as divided and bruised after the presidential election. On Thursday afternoon, the chants of liberal protesters filled the area outside of the Senate viewing gallery. “Shame! Shame! Shame! Shame!” they chanted. The police led a number of protesters, who had refused to leave the House gallery, away in plastic wrist ties. “Thank you we love you!” the protesters cheered as they were escorted out. The group, which numbered in the hundreds, chanted and sang. Mr. Cooper termed the moves by the General Assembly as not so much a power grab, but an attempt to reach deep into his administration to extend conservative priorities on taxes, education and the environment. The said Republicans seeking leverage over his administration were hoping to add to their policy wish list, channeling taxpayer dollars into vouchers and weakening environmental protections. Republicans, who for more than a century were held in a hammerlock by Democrats in charge of the state’s legislature, defended the moves under the principle that turnabout is fair play. They cited how Democrats stripped power from a Republican lieutenant governor in the 1980s. “They completely defenestrated the lieutenant governor’s office,” Mr. Henderson said. “So this is not an unprecedented move at all. ” Mr. Cooper rejected the comparison. “That is just not true,” he said. “What is happening now is unprecedented. ” Even as North Carolina unhitched from its conservative Southern heritage in the past decade and became a battleground state — President Obama won here in 2008 — Republicans were taking over state government. In 2010, they won a majority in the legislature for the first time in a century, carrying districts that had been drawn by Democrats to favor Democrats. When Mr. McCrory won the governor’s mansion two years later, the unified control of the party in Raleigh unleashed an avalanche of conservative legislation, from abortion restrictions to tax cuts favoring the wealthy to, most notably, a 2013 bill that made it more difficult to register and vote in the state. This year, a federal court threw out that law after finding it was passed “with almost surgical precision” to diminish the influence of voters. In August, a federal appeals court found that district maps drawn by Republicans for the 2012 General Assembly elections included more than two dozen districts that were racial gerrymanders, and the court ordered lawmakers to redraw the maps next year. Another court ruling last month required the state to use the new maps for elections to the House and Senate in the fall of 2017. If the ruling survives appeals, it would mean next year’s full session of the General Assembly would be held in an election year and be even more highly politicized than usual. The showdown between Mr. Cooper and lawmakers this week may be only an appetizer. | 0fake |
BOOM! Rep Louie Gohmert (R-TX) Rips Into Obama’s Gun Grabbing Legislative Minions: “Radical ISLAM Killed These People!” [VIDEO] | Don t think for a minute this union-style Black Lives Matter/Occupy type sit-in wasn t orchestrated in our Oval Office by our Community Organizer in Chief. Obama is desperate to pass gun control legislation before he leaves office. The Democrats who are occupying our House floor are only acting as puppets for his radical agenda. As California Democrat Rep. Brad Sherman spoke Wednesday evening during an unprecedented sit-in on Capitol Hill to demand a vote on gun control, Rep. Louis Gohmert (R-TX) interrupted him, shouting: Radical Islam killed these people! Sherman, a moderate Democrat from the San Fernando Valley, had joined several dozen of his party colleagues in a protest against House Republicans refusal to allow votes on several gun regulations all of which had already failed in the Senate.Though the bills have no chance of becoming law, Democrats hope to win at least one of the votes, which would enable them to argue that by voting Democrat this November, Americans could help them retake the Senate and pass new gun restrictions.The protest was led by Rep. John Lewis (D-GA), who has long drawn on his history in the civil rights movement for partisan purposes, and who hinted last weekend during a Southern California visit that Democrats would do something big on guns.The protest was also timed to coincide with, and drown out, a speech in New York by presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump. Trump responded to rival Hillary Clinton s attack earlier this week by criticizing Clinton for alleged corruption at the State Department and for her foreign policy record, while laying out his own alternative economic policies.Rep. Gohmert began heckling Rep. Sherman during his speech which was broadcast via Periscope by another Californian, Rep. Scott Peters of San Diego, in violation of House rules. At roughly 4:24 in the video below, Gohmert points to a poster of the victims of the June 12 terrorist attack and insists that radical Islam killed them not the lack of gun control regulations.Via: Breitbart News | 1real |
EPIC LIBERAL SMACKDOWN: “Burning Up The Streets, Blocking Roads, Making People Late For Work…I’m Glad I Don’t Live In NYC, Washington, Oregon Because I’d Run Your A*S Over!” [VIDEO] | 1real | |
Prior to his SEC nomination, Clayton communicated with SEC contractor | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Before Wall Street attorney Jay Clayton was nominated to be head of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, he communicated with more than a half dozen of President Donald Trump’s transition representatives, including one whose company has a multi-million-dollar contract with the SEC, according to documents seen by Reuters. Among those whom Clayton was in touch with was Peter Thiel, a Trump donor and Silicon Valley entrepreneur who co-founded Palantir Technologies, which has a contract with the SEC that Clayton may one day have to review, according to written answers from Clayton in response to questions from the Senate Banking Committee’s top Democrat, Sherrod Brown. Clayton’s responses followed his confirmation hearing before the committee on March 23. Clayton wrote that he communicated on a “substantive basis” with current members of the Trump administration and other former transition officials including Thiel. He did not elaborate about the nature of the communications. In 2015, Palantir, based in Palo Alto, California, won a more than $43 million contract with the SEC to provide data mining services, according to public records. The contract was for five years, with years two through five being optional, an SEC spokeswoman told Reuters at the time. If confirmed as SEC chairman, Clayton will have direct authority over contracting matters for the agency. A spokesman for Clayton declined to comment. Palantir did not respond to requests for comment. A spokeswoman for the White House referred all questions to spokesmen for Clayton. Clayton also disclosed in his written responses that he communicated with others, including Rebekah Mercer, a Trump donor whose father, Robert Mercer, founded the hedge fund Renaissance Technologies; Genie Energy Ltd President Ira Greenstein; venture capitalist Darren Blanton; Martin Silverstein, a lawyer who is senior counsel with the law firm Greenberg Taurig and who was ambassador to Uruguay for four years under President George W. Bush; Trump’s current chief strategist Steve Bannon; and White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, the documents show. “I believe it is fair to presume that one or more of these individuals may be affiliated with one or more public companies or other companies that are regulated by the SEC,” Clayton wrote. He did not address whether any of the individuals may also have a financial stake in SEC contracts. The disclosure of his communications with Thiel come just one day before the Senate Banking Committee is set to vote on whether to send Clayton’s nomination to the full Senate. He is still expected to be approved by the committee and later by the full Senate. The issue has the potential to stoke deeper concerns among some Democrats on the panel who already have misgivings about possible conflicts of interest. Senator Catherine Cortez Masto, a Democrat from Nevada, told Reuters in a statement that Clayton should disclose more details about his talks with Thiel. “We must be sure that no commitments or deals were made between Mr. Thiel and Mr. Clayton, especially pertaining to Thiel’s company’s pending business before the SEC,” she said. At his confirmation hearing last month, Clayton was grilled repeatedly about possible conflicts of interest. | 0fake |
NFL owners to mull anthem rules as Trump ups protest criticism | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - NFL team owners will consider requiring football players to stand for the U.S. national anthem after President Donald Trump on Tuesday suggested using tax laws to penalize the league for players who kneel in protest of racial injustice. Trump, a Republican, escalated his feud with the National Football League in a Twitter post asking if the league should get tax breaks while some athletes kneel in protest when the “Star-Spangled Banner” is played at the start of each game. “Why is the NFL getting massive tax breaks while at the same time disrespecting our Anthem, Flag and Country? Change tax law!” Trump wrote on Twitter. The world’s top-grossing sports league gave up its tax-free status two years ago. Its owners are preparing to address the anthem issue at their fall meeting in New York Oct. 17-18, NFL chief spokesman Joe Lockhart told reporters on a conference call on Tuesday. “Everyone at this point is frustrated by the situation,” Lockhart said. “The commissioner and the owners do want the players to stand. We think it is an important part of the game.” The protests, in a league where African-Americans make up the majority of players, have continued through the season, with some players taking a knee when the anthem is played and others standing arm-in-arm in solidarity. Current policy calls for players to stand for the anthem and face the flag, but no player has been disciplined for a protest, Lockhart said. “We need to move past this controversy, and we want to do that together with our players,” NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell wrote in a memo to team owners. The White House supported the idea of asking players to stand, said spokeswoman Sarah Sanders. “We are glad to see the NFL taking positive steps in that direction,” she said at a news briefing. Asked to explain Trump’s comment on the NFL and taxes, Sanders said, “The federal tax law doesn’t apply here, but certainly we know that they receive tax subsidies on a variety of different levels.” The NFL Players Association, when asked for a reaction to possible changes to anthem rules, said in an email “we do not have a response at this time.” Trump last month called on NFL team owners to fire players who kneel during the anthem to protest police violence against black Americans. Critics contend Trump is fanning the controversy to distract from issues including devastation in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria, tensions with North Korea and difficulties in pushing healthcare and tax overhauls through the U.S. Congress. Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, speaking on KRLD-FM in Dallas on Tuesday, reiterated his stance that if any of his players chose to demonstrate during the anthem, they would not play. “If you do not honor and stand for the flag in the way that a lot of our fans feel that you should ... if that’s not the case, then you won’t play,” said Jones. “That’s nothing new as far as that being my wish or the way I want the Cowboys. As far as whether or not I will basically institute or do what I said I would just say. ... I would ask anybody to look at my record relative to what I say I’m going to do.” Vice President Mike Pence walked out of a NFL game on Sunday after some players knelt, an action some critics called a publicity stunt. Trump won the presidency with less support from black voters than any other president in at least four decades. Trump has squared off against the NFL before, having owned a team in the upstart United States Football League in the 1980s. That league folded in 1985 after an antitrust lawsuit against the NFL failed. Trump has refused to disclose his own tax history, departing from a practice of U.S. presidents going back more than 40 years. Trump has said nobody cares about his tax returns, but critics say they could show conflicts of interest. | 0fake |
Trump pick for China ambassador sees 'win-win' boost to trade ties | BEIJING (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump’s pick for ambassador to China, Terry Branstad, said he would help increase trade in a “win-win” for both countries, Chinese state media reported, amid concerns over protectionist talk from the new U.S. administration. Trump has railed against China’s trade practices, blaming them for U.S. job losses, and has threatened to impose punitive tariffs on Chinese imports. Beijing says it will work with Washington to resolve any trade disputes, but state media has warned of retaliation if Trump takes the first steps toward a trade war. Branstad, currently the governor of Iowa, said he would help to work out differences and that there was immense potential for more Chinese investment in the United States. “We want to continue to enhance the relationship and to increase trade between our two countries,” Branstad told China’s official Xinhua news agency in an interview in the United States published late on Thursday. “I hope ... that I can play a constructive role trying to work out many of these differences in a way that makes it a win-win. It is beneficial to both of our countries, and also benefits the rest of the world,” Xinhua cited Branstad as saying. “I think we have seen just the tip of the iceberg of the potential (Chinese) investments here,” he said. Trump’s nomination of Branstad, a longtime Republican governor who has developed relationships with Chinese President Xi Jinping and other Chinese leaders, was well-received, even among some Democrats. He still faces a confirmation hearing. Trump has moved to fill his administration with critics of China’s trade policies, including Wilbur Ross for Commerce Secretary, Robert Lighthizer for U.S. Trade Representative, and Peter Navarro, an economist and China hawk who will serve as a White House adviser. Xi and Trump have yet to speak since Trump took office, though they did talk soon after Trump won the election. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang, asked whether a call was in the offing, would only say the two countries were continuing to remain in “close contact”. Free trade advocates worry that Trump’s trade team will be too quick to use tariffs to keep imports out, raising costs for manufacturers that rely on imported parts - or even sparking retaliatory trade wars. Xi made a vigorous defense of globalization at the World Economic Forum last month, and presented China’s economy as a “wide open”, despite complaints from the foreign business community that Beijing has not made good on pledges of economic liberalization. The official China Daily newspaper said on Friday that China could weather trade frictions better than the United States, as its exports accounted for a larger proportion of global trade, but that Trump’s words and actions “bode ill” for relations. “China needs to cast aside any illusions it may have had that Trump was just mouthing off to attract votes and instead be prepared for the worst,” the paper said in an editorial. Commentary from influential Chinese state-run media does not equate with policy, but can be reflective of official thinking. Trump’s daughter, Ivanka Trump, was greeted by China’s ambassador to the United States, Cui Tiankai, at a Lunar New Year reception at the embassy in Washington on Thursday. The China Daily said her father had “broken a tradition” of U.S. presidents “sending New Year’s greetings to people of Chinese origin in the United States for their most important festival”. | 0fake |
Julian Assange Isn’t Done With Hillary, Reveals Hidden Human Trafficking Network | Conservative Daily Post |
Posted by Elliot Bougis | Nov 16, 2016 | Breaking News Just when you thought it was safe to go back on the Internet…
I have been reporting for weeks now about the D.C.-based “pizza pedophilia” ring that is being exposed based on thousands of “Podesta emails” released by Wikileaks in the past month or two.
As of last week, the case became even more explosive.
— Thomas Bernpaine (@ThomasBernpaine) November 11, 2016
Now, don’t get nervous because it looks like computer mumbo-jumbo. You only need to remember two things.
1 –Every picture file is actually a code/pattern of numbers that our computers “translate” into images on the screen.
2 – Some “extra” information has been discovered in at least one picture code/pattern from a Wikileaks email.
I reported weeks ago about this “pedo ring” something called “photo steganography,” which is just the fancy term for the two points I explained just now.
The image (.jpg) of the two girls eating pizza was discovered as an attachment in the Podesta emails by Wikileaks. Data can be hidden in a .jpg file. In that image, a zipped directory (PK) was hidden inside. That doesn’t happen by accident. The directory likely contains illegal imagery and/or discussion. It is highly suggestive of illegal activity connected to child pornography, child exploitation, and child abuse.
Some have objected that the pizza.jpg file size is simply too small to contain any useful data (like an image, a link, a message, etc.), but the point is this: all the file would have to “smuggle” is a short password to open a secret website or .zip file. The hidden data could literally just be a few bits of information but it could open up thousands of gigabytes of data in the right website or compressed file. That’s how the users would access the dirty pictures, videos, messages, etc.
So, from a technical angle, this method is very possible, and it makes sense of why the Podesta emails include so many strange photo attachments. Are all those attachments little “Trojan ponies” for sharing images, videos, passwords, payment resources, etc.?
WATCH (Language/NSFW Warning): “Why do we even have an FBI? Is the FBI just covering for these people?”
Let me be honest:
I have researched corruption cases like this for many years, whether in current events or from historical records. So, I believe I have a somewhat thick skin when it comes to facing human sinfulness and evil like this.
Last Friday night, however, I won’t lie: I totally lost it.
All of a sudden, too many lightbulbs went off at once, too many connections hit me at once, too many implications dawned on me at once–and I just went into a kind of panic attack about how massive this whole cartel is, how well protected it is, and how truly destructive it is in real children’s lives.
If you want to get an idea of what set me off, let me show you three images.
BUT I WARN YOU: When you understand the context, these images are EXTREMELY DISTURBING.
First, here is a photo of Tony Podesta’s favorite work of art in his home:
Tony Podesta is a big fan of “The Arch of Hysteria”
Next, here is an ad from Ping Pong Pizza, a restaurant in D.C. that has numerous, very disturbing connections to pedophilia and D.C. elites like the Podestas. Another “arch of hysteria”?
Next we come to a police photo from the Jeffrey Dahmer case.
VIEWER DISCRETION ADVISED:
I wonder if Tony Podesta would also like this “arch of hysteria”…
Finally, here is the logo for Comet Pizza, another D.C. restaurant with deep connections to Ping Pong Pizza and the Podestas. Can you see now why I “lost my [bleep]” last Friday?
Worse, in terms of how protected this satanic ring of perverts is, I recently reported that even the DOJ is compromised .
A man named Arun Rao has shown a disturbing interest in some sexually “creepy” images and expressions that are connected to the Podestas and this pedo ring. The problem is that Rao is an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the DOJ.
Specifically, Rao is Supervisor of the Southern (“Greenbelt”) Division office for the DOJ’s District of Maryland in Chevy Chase, Maryland. This means that Rao’s district is virtually on top of the area in D.C. where Besta Pizza operates. In addition, Besta Pizza and two other associated properties are directly over abandoned underground tunnels, many of which could easily connect to Chevy Chase.
On top of his social and geographical proximity to Alefantis, Rao’s DOJ division handles cases that seem tailor-made for busting—or covering up—the dark circles that sex traffickers hide in: federal racketeering, conspiracy, national and international fraud and corruption, immigration violations, counterfeiting, and —wait for it—child pornography .
In closing I will leave you with three “infographics.”
They are very complicated and “dense” so I don’t expect everyone to examine them.
However, even if you don’t look into the details yourself, I want you to be aware of how vast this whole network of evil is, and, therefore, of how many hands and prayers we need on deck to expose it and bring it down.
(NOTE: You don’t have to download these images to view them. You can just right-click open them in a separate internet browser tab, and click “+” to zoom in.)
— Thomas Bernpaine (@ThomasBernpaine) November 11, 2016
First, a diagram of “key players” in the pizza restaurant side of the pedo ring. You can see the diagram for yourself here .
Second, a much larger diagram of how this pizza-pedo ring connects to international kidnapping (esp. the Madeleine McCann case) and other DNC allies like “spirit cooker” Marina Abramovic.
Finally, a truly massive diagram of connections that implicate nations and leaders around the world, and put the sex trafficking cartel in the context of a global network of drug dealers, slave traders, murderers, and media elites.
This is an ongoing investigation so stay tuned for more. Share this article to inform and encourage your friends and family! | 1real |
BREAKING: VP Candidate Mike Pence’s Plane Skids Off Runway, Tears Up Tarmac at NYC Airport… | Share on Twitter
A plane carrying Republican vice presidential candidate Mike Pence skidded off the runway and tore up the tarmac at LaGuardia Airport in New York City on Thursday night.
The Boeing 737 reportedly “overshot” the runway. There were no reported injuries.
Pence took to Twitter to ensure the nation that he was unharmed. So thankful everyone on our plane is safe. Grateful for our first responders & the concern & prayers of so many. Back on the trail tomorrow! — Mike Pence (@mike_pence) October 28, 2016
The videos and photos of the scene were pretty striking. Clearly, the situation could have turned out much worse. This was the Tarmac when we landed on the @mike_pence plane- torn up concrete pic.twitter.com/hEYodMkord — Elizabeth Landers (@ElizLanders) October 28, 2016 Photo shows Mike Pence's plane after it skidded off the runway at NYC's LaGuardia Airport; no injuries reported. https://t.co/1o6QoRkewr pic.twitter.com/xx02LAm9sg — ABC News (@ABC) October 28, 2016 #BREAKING : VP candidate @mike_pence 's campaign plane slides off rainy runway at LGA in NYC; no one injured https://t.co/ApiI0IFS5x pic.twitter.com/LjlgASGNWA | 1real |
1real | ||
Putin: Russia-U.S. ties may improve through joint fight against terror | MOSCOW (Reuters) - President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday that ties with U.S. President Donald Trump s administration were not without problems, but he hoped that mutual interests of Russia and the United States in fighting terrorism would help improve Moscow s relations with Washington. Some forces are making use of Russian-American relations to resolve internal political problems in the United States, Putin told an energy forum in Moscow. I believe that such a person like Trump, with his character, will never be hostage to someone s interests. Moscow has lots of friends in the United States who genuinely want to improve relations with Russia, Putin added. | 0fake |
Russia: U.S. military drills likely aimed at provoking N.Korea | VIENNA (Reuters) - Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Friday that military drills held by the United States and South Korea seemed to have aimed at provoking North Korea to hold more missile tests. He also said Moscow condemns North Korea s missile tests. | 0fake |
ESPN Reporter Says Trump’s Supporters Are White Supremacists, They Use Her Facebook Page To Prove She’s Right (IMAGES) | Just a few days ago, SportsCenter anchor Jemele Hill made headlines due to her harsh but truthful comments about Donald Trump and his bigot followers.In several tweets posted on Monday, Hill trashed Trump s leadership, calling him unqualified and unfit for the White House. She tweeted: Donald Trump is a white supremacist who has largely surrounded himself w/ other white supremacists. Trump is the most ignorant, offensive president of my lifetime. His rise is a direct result of white supremacy. Period. He is unqualified and unfit to be president. He is not a leader. And if he were not white, he never would have been elected. Anyone who actually pays attention to Trump, his policies, and his values knows that this is 100% true. Unfortunately, ESPN has refused to stand beside her, stating that Hill s views are not shared by the network.On top of that, recent comments by Trump s White House Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders pretty much stated that Trump and his corrupt administration believe that stating the truth about a president should be a considered an offense that could get someone fired.It s clear that Trump and his minions hate being called out, especially when it s true. Proving that his supporters are just as horrible and racist as he is, Trump voters came out in droves to react to Hill s tweets and actually ended up proving her right. On her Facebook page, Trump supporters couldn t help but leave numerous disgusting, racist comments on the African American anchor s page, which makes what Hill said about Trump even more prevalent.You can see some of the most hideous remarks below: It is impossible to read through these awful messages and still argue that Trump and his fanbase are not white supremacists.Featured image via D Dipasupil and Alex Wong / Getty Images | 1real |
SHOUT POLL: Will Donald Trump hold his lead, or will he tank? | 21st Century Wire asks HAVE YOUR SHOUT: With a string of decisive victories in the New Hampshire and South Carolina GOP primaries, we ask our readers: can the mercurial Donald Trump sustain his lead?Vote, comment and share below READ MORE ELECTION NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire 2016 Files | 1real |
MELANIA Thanks Troops For Sacrifices At Easter Egg Roll…FLASHBACK To 2016: “Peanut Crew” Had To Remind Michelle Obama To Mention Troops, After Using Easter Speech To Brag About All Of Their Accomplishments [VIDEO] | During the annual White House Easter Egg Hunt, President Trump and First Lady Melania Trump stood with their son Baron on the White House balcony and addressed the crowd. President Trump spoke briefly and then announced that as soon as they were finished with the activities, he and Melania, and their son Baron would be heading downstairs to sign cards they planned to send to our troops. It was very touching to see Melania go out of her way to thank the military band and all of the staff and volunteers who worked tirelessly to make sure everyone had memorable experience. Melania then delivered a sincere and heartfelt message of gratitude to our troops, I want to thank all of the military with us today, and all of the great military in this nation and service men and service women all around the world who is keeping us safe. Compare Melania s speech to this video of Michelle and Barack s final speech at the Easter Egg Roll in 2016: Today is a little bit bittersweet for us, because this is the Obama administration s last Easter Egg Roll (pauses for reaction from crowd) yeah. Michelle continued, And if we think about what we ve accomplished over the past 7 years, it s pretty incredible. Because when Barack and I first got here, one of the goals that we had was to open up the White House to as many people from as many backgrounds as possible. To open it up to our kids to our musicians, to explore our culture, to expose families to healthy living and to just to have fun. Because what s more fun than being a kid and going to the White House for an Easter Egg roll and hearing the First Lady drone on about healthy living? After several minutes of listening to Michelle drone on about all of her and Barack s achievements in diversity and bringing their culture to the White House, Barack had to interrupt her to remind her to mention the troops. He can be seen at least 2 times saying, military families behind her before Michelle finally responded, And also to our military families I ve got the peanut gallery back here remaining me of stuff. Laughs Our theme this year, in our final year is pretty simple, it s Let s celebrate. Let s celebrate all the good work that we ve done, all the great messaging that we ve had, all the amazing change that we ve seen in this country. | 1real |
SHERIFFS SAY They Won’t Allow Officers To Help Feds Enforce Immigration Laws…Judge Jeanine OBLITERATES Them: “You’re too damn dumb to be in law enforcement” [VIDEO] | Two law enforcement officials from the Utah resort area of Park City drew cheers from a large crowd with their promises not to let officers help federal immigration officials apprehend people living in the U.S. without proper documents.Summit County Sheriff Justin Martinez and Park City Police Chief Wade Carpenter told about 300 people Thursday in Summitville that they won t agree to deputize officers to carry out federal operations, the Deseret News reported.Carpenter said he was assured the arrests were not part of a sweep of undocumented immigrants, but an effort by federal agents to arrest specified individuals with felony criminal histories or who have re-entered the United States illegally after being deported.Martinez and Carpenter referred to a federal immigration law that provides for state employees or agencies to help in the investigation, apprehension, or detention of aliens in the United States. I will not be doing that as a sheriff, Martinez said to loud applause. This is a federal immigration issue, and therefore I will not be participating in that (and be) deputized. Idaho State Journal If you re a cop working in a sanctuary jurisdiction, then you re being directed by left-wing liberal progressive mayors and governors to protect illegal criminals, who not only violated our laws in coming here, but in addition, committed crimes while here. Your e being told not to share information about illegal criminals and not honor federal ICE detainers. So, you ve got a decision to make and if this is a tough one for you, and if you can t figure out what your sworn obligation is then get the HELL out of law enforcement! Why would you treat an illegal criminal different than an American criminal? Hell..maybe law abiding states should clear out their prisons and send their own criminals to sanctuary states, since their open to taking other countries criminals. The least they can do is take ours. Can t you see you re being used in a political tug-of-war? If this is a tough one for you, and you re going to start listening to the ACLU or some liberal mayor who doesn t give a damn about you, your contract, or your oath; directing that you release the wanted criminal out the side door, then maybe you should re-think this whole thing and go into social work You re too damn dumb to be in law enforcement! Every one of you in law enforcement who bought into this liberal nonsense has blood on their hands. If you release the criminal, you guarantee a fellow officer or agent will be in harms way when they go out to find that criminal! WATCH: | 1real |
[VIDEO] #BlackLivesMatter ACTIVIST POSTS STAGED VIDEO OF POLICE BRUTALITY AGAINST A PROTESTOR ON TWITTER | Meet Keegan Stephan. He could be Barack Obama s son. He s a community agitator with a sizable following on Twitter, who appears to get a thrill out of organizing Occupy re-treads and Ferguson holdovers to create hate and division in NYC. His primary focus for now, appears to be creating hate and mistrust for the entire New York Police Department through a campaign of propaganda.Occupy re-tread, Hillary supporter and #BlackLivesMatter activist Keegan Stephan s Twitter feed is filled with misleading propaganda which includes video footage that appears to be staged to make it look like a protestor was assaulted by a New York Police Officer. Notice the title of the vine video posted by Keenan: This is what happened to my friend Elsa. Watch the cop shove her. #ShutDownA14 Listen to the narrator of the video refer to the person being assaulted by the police officer (or more likely, a fellow protestor) as he. The narrator states: This protestor was shoved to the ground by an officer. He appeared to be injured. And here is the vine he used to show here being assaulted:Just before posting the vine (above), Keegan tweeted about this picture, saying: NYPD broke my friend Elsa s ribs by slamming her on the sidewalk. Didn t arrest her, just left her. #ShutDownA14So which one is it Keegan? Was the person who was assaulted by an evil NY Police Officer a he or a she? A proud Hillary supporter (that should come as no surprise given his penchant for lying), Keegan posts pictures of the vandalized signs that were posted all over NYC mocking Hillary Clinton:Keegan posted some additional footage from the Occupy the Brooklyn Bridge/#BlackLivesMatter event that appears to by more false propaganda. Keegan has this to say about the vine video below: Members of the press running scared from the NYPD. #ShutDownA14 First of all where the heck are the press? Secondly, pay close attention to the man with the large camera who doesn t seem to be in on the staged hoax, as he keeps looking behind to see what these people are running from but can t seem to find anyone chasing them.Meanwhile, according the New York Daily News, cops are hunting for two demonstrators who pummeled an off-duty NYPD sergeant during the #ShutDownA14 protest against police brutality. The 4:45 p.m. attack on Sgt. David Cuce, who was on the Brooklyn Bridge heading into Manhattan, occurred as hundreds of demonstrators spread from Union Square Park to lower Manhattan and across the East River to protest police violence in the wake of a fatal April 4 shooting in South Carolina involving an unarmed black man.Cuce, who was not in uniform, was punched in the head and shoulder by one of the two protestors after he exited his car to investigate the demonstration, which had brought traffic on the historic bridge to a standstill. After a brief fight, Cuce drew his service weapon and identified himself as a police officer, officials said. His attackers fled into the crowd and remain at large. In addition to the attack, police arrested 42 demonstrators for a smattering of misdemeanors following the protest, officials said.Here s what Keenan had to say about the 42 demonstrators who were arrested:How about They punched an off duty NY Police Officer in the head who was simply driving across the bridge and got out of his vehicle to see why the traffic was stopped? And last, but certainly not least, Keegan makes a brilliant <sarcasm> analogy on Easter weekend comparing Jesus with the angry Ferguson/Garner protestors: And no Easter weekend would be complete without a cop hater comparing Eric Garner to the crucifixion of Jesus Christ:This is what we re up against America. These protests are not spontaneous, they re orchestrated and they re funded by wealthy radicals and unions whose primary objective is to divide Americans by class and race. No justice no peace I don t know how old Keegan is, but I m guessing he s old enough to remember this scene from 9-11, where there was no shortage of good cops who risked their lives for total strangers:This photo is just a subtle reminder Keegan, that not all cops are bad cops | 1real |
SUBWAY RIDER ATTACKED With Hammer For Asking Passenger To Stop ‘MAN-SPREADING’ | Hammer attacks have been happening way too often lately. Honestly, if you Google NYC hammer attacks you come up with way too many cases. Is this the new trend in street crime? Last year, it was slashing with a razor or knife. Horrible!We just reported on a hammer attack last week:While the left wants to take guns away, the hammer is the culprit in this subway brawl This is a terrible attack that was provoked by nothing! Two men asked if the person on the subway could move over. The passenger was man-spreading aka using up two seats by spreading his legs apart.New York launched a campaign last year with posters on the subway telling passengers not to man-spread . As you can see, it was a total waste of taxpayer dollars.It all went downhill from there An argument over man-spreading on a Lower East Side subway train ended in an all-out brawl with one man attacking another with a hammer, officials said Saturday.The 30-year-old hammer victim was on a Queens-bound J train pulling into the Bowery station when his 53-year-old pal asked a stranger taking up two seats to make room.The seat hog complied but that didn t stop the 30-year-old man from getting into an argument with him and six friends he was riding the train with, sparking a fight.One of the six friends repeatedly kicked the 30-year-old man in the head and chest, officials said.J train nightmare ensues after off-duty cop shoves conductor When the victim tried to defend himself, his attacker s friends jumped in and one of them pulled a hammer out of his backpack and bashed the victim repeatedly with it.The victim and his friend, 53, were on a Queens-bound J train coming into the Bowery/Delancey St. station when the older man asked a stranger taking up two seats to move.The victim s friend tried to shield the victim but was also beaten, witnesses told police.The suspects fled the train at the Bowery station and have not been caught, police said.First responders took both victims to Beth Israel Hospital with non-life-threatening wounds.Via: NYDN | 1real |
Meals on Wheels America sees surge in donations after U.S. budget | NEW YORK (Reuters) - Meals on Wheels America, the umbrella organization for 5,000 providers of home-delivered meals for seniors, said on Saturday that online donations have surged since the White House released a proposed budget that could lead to a big drop in its funding. The organization, which provides advocacy services for the national network, received about $50,000 on Thursday after the budget blueprint was announced, compared with $1,000 on a typical day. President Donald Trump’s first budget proposal includes a 17.9 percent cut for fiscal 2018 in funds for the Department of Health and Human Services, which provides most of the government support for Meals on Wheels, the organization said. The budget proposal did not say how the cut would affect the Administration for Community Living, the HHS agency that funds nutrition programs for the elderly, Meals on Wheels spokeswoman Jenny Bertolette said. Meals on Wheels said on its website that it is difficult to imagine a scenario under which the next federal budget would not have an impact on its services. “While Meals on Wheels America and local Meals on Wheels programs are seeing an uptick in giving, it does not replace federal funding,” Bertolette told Reuters in an email. The White House referred questions about the HHS budget to the department. An HHS representative referred to a statement from Secretary Tom Price released earlier this week. “HHS is dedicated to fulfilling our department’s mission to improve the health and well-being of the American people. This budget supports that mission and will help ensure we are delivering critical services to our fellow citizens,” the statement said. Trump’s budget proposal calls for a sharp increase in military spending and a like reduction in most discretionary non-defense programs, prompting a wave of concern from Democrats and some of the president’s fellow Republicans. Bertolette said the national Meals on Wheels association did not know whether its local members have seen a similar jump in donations. One in six seniors “struggles with hunger,” according to the organization, which provides its services free of charge for those who cannot afford to pay. Seniors who have fresh meals delivered daily show greater improvement in health and well-being than those who get frozen meals delivered once a week or no meals at all, the organization said, citing research from Brown University and funded by AARP Inc. According to the website, Meals on Wheels America hosts a resource center on nutrition with the help of federal funding. | 0fake |
More than a thousand turn Philippine funeral to protest against war on drugs | MANILA (Reuters) - More than a thousand people attended a funeral procession on Saturday for a Philippine teenager slain by police last week, turning the march into one of the biggest protests yet against President Rodrigo Duterte s deadly war on drugs. The death of Kian Loyd delos Santos has drawn widespread attention to allegations that police have been systematically executing suspected users and dealers - a charge the authorities deny. Nuns, priests and hundreds of children, chanting justice for Kian, justice for all joined the funeral cortege as it made its way from a church to the cemetery where the 17-year-old was buried. Delos Santos father, Saldy, spoke briefly during a mass to defend his son s innocence and express anger over the police. Don t they have a heart? I m not sure they do. There s a lot of churches, they should go there, he said, his voice cracking with emotion. Delos Santos was dragged by plain-clothes policemen to a dark, trash-filled alley in northern Manila, before he was shot in the head and left next to a pigsty, according to witnesses whose accounts appeared to be backed up by CCTV footage. Police say they acted in self defense after delos Santos opened fire on them. The parents and lawyers of delos Santos filed a murder complaint against the three anti-narcotics policemen on Friday. If accepted, the complaint would follow at least two cases filed last year against police over Duterte s war on drugs, which has killed thousands of Filipinos, outraged human rights groups and alarmed Western governments. Delos Santos flower-draped coffin passed through a major highway on a small truck decorated with tarpaulins reading Run, Kian, Run and Stop the killings displayed on each side. Passing motorists honked in support. This is a sign that the people have had enough and are indignant over the impunity that prevails today, Renato Reyes, secretary general of left-wing activist group Bayan (Nation), said in a statement. The people protest the utter lack of accountability in the police force. Mourners, some of them wearing white shirts, held flowers and small flags, and placards denouncing the killing. A member of Rise Up, a Manila-based coalition of church-related groups opposing the drug war, told Reuters that families of about 20 victims joined the procession. I came to support the family. I want justice for Kian and all victims - including my son, said Katherine David, 35, whose 21-year-old son was shot dead by police with two other men in January. Department of Justice personnel armed with assault rifles were on guard during the procession and outside the church. Most people in the Philippines support the anti-drug campaign, and Duterte remains a popular leader but questions have begun to be asked since the death of delos Santos, which came during a spike in killings across the Philippines main island, Luzon, last week. (Graphic: tmsnrt.rs/2ixnYFu) The president s communication office reiterated on Saturday he will not tolerate wrongdoing by law enforcers and called on the public to trust the justice system under the Duterte presidency. But bereaved mother David believes the response to Kian s killing marks a turning point in opposition to the drug war. There s been a big change. Before, police could kill and nobody paid attention. Now people are starting to show support and sympathy, she said. | 0fake |
DHS Shuts Down Anti-Deportation Office - Breitbart | President Donald Trump’s Department of Homeland Security has an program to have 21 agency officials cooperate with groups. [“The [21 officials’] job was to go meet politicians, Congress people, advocate groups, and local law enforcement,” complained Sarah Saldaña, a top DHS official from 2014 to early 2017. “Let them see you as a person, as opposed to big, bad ICE,” said Saldana, who created the cooperation program when she ran DHS’s U. S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement division from 2014 to 2017. Trump’s DHS executives “really are taking away the [21 officials’] ability to go out in the community and do what it is that we were hoping they would get done,” Saldaña told Foreign Policy magazine. The “we” in her comment refers to the Democratic Party, which replaced by the Trump administration on January 20. The 21 employees assigned to the program have now been assigned to Trump’s new Victims of Immigration Crime Engagement (VOICE) Office, which helps Americans recover from the huge number of crimes inflicted by the illegal aliens who were allowed into the country during President Barack Obama’s tenure. VOICE is just a “report your local illegal” program, Saldana responded. “From what I understand is being reported, it’s: ‘Oh, I see my neighbor’s landscaper. He looks Mexican. I want to report him. Maybe someone ought to pick him up,’” said Saldana, who told a Capitol Hill panel in 2015 that ICE’s job was “public safety,” not actual enforcement of the nation’s popular immigration laws. According to Foreign Policy: Saldaña maintains that before Trump’s election ICE was poised to greatly expand the outreach program and “remove the curtain” from immigration enforcement activities. Community relations officers were being trained to assuage fear in immigrant communities with facts about the agency’s priorities and activities. Since 2014, ICE’s focus has changed [from deporting illegals] to deporting violent criminals, gang members, and recent arrivals. Saldaña said this policy opened the door to building trust with a variety of community groups, encouraging them to report serious criminal activity … “I was trying to go out to the communities and explain: ‘We are interested in criminals, not in the family of four who has been here 40 years and has not broken any other laws,’” Saldaña said. Under Obama, federal officials slashed efforts to repatriate illegals and even foreign criminals. DHS Secretary John Kelly directed the new policy change in a February 25, 2017 memo, where he said: I direct the Director of ICE to immediately reallocate any and all resources that are currently used to advocate on behalf of illegal aliens (except as necessary to comply with a judicial order) to the new VOICE Office, and to immediately terminate the provision of such outreach or advocacy services to illegal aliens. Analysts estimate that roughly 11 million illegal aliens are living in the United States. Roughly 8 million of the illegals hold jobs, which adds up to one job for each of the four million young Americans who turn 18 each year. The illegals’ inclusion in the nation’s labor pool makes it harder for young Americans to get jobs, and annually transfers roughly $500 billion from employees to employers, according to George Borjas, a Harvard professor. In addition, illegal immigrants inflict a huge number of crimes on Americans. For example, almost of a million aliens were registered at Texas jails from June 2011 to May 2017. Their convictions included 496 murders, 26, 000 assaults, 8, 400 burglaries, 246 kidnappings and 2, 900 sexual assaults. | 0fake |
Donald Trump says he doesn’t need a unified GOP. Logic and math suggest otherwise. | When Donald Trump told ABC's George Stephanopoulos in an interview on Sunday that he didn't think the Republican Party needed to be unified behind his candidacy, it wasn't really clear what he meant.
"Does [the party] have to be unified? I'm very different than everybody else, perhaps, that's ever run for office. I actually don't think so," Trump said. "I think it would be better if it were unified, I think it would be -- there would be something good about it. But I don't think it actually has to be unified in the traditional sense."
So how will he win? "I think I'm going to go out and I'm going to get millions of people from the Democrats," Trump said. "I'm going to get Bernie [Sanders] people to vote, because they like me on trade."
A charitable interpretation is that Trump doesn't think members of the Republican establishment need to align behind him in order for him to be successful. That was certainly true in the primaries, but it's less clear that it's true in the general. Why? For the same reason that the uncharitable interpretation of Trump's comments is so baffling: Trump very much needs Republicans to vote for him in November.
That sounds obvious, of course, but it's worth delving into. Consider, for example the relative unfavorability of Trump and Hillary Clinton within their own parties. Clinton's got the Democratic nomination essentially locked up, but is still battling Bernie Sanders and still maintaining only a small lead over him in national polling. But she is much more positively viewed by members of her own party than is Trump -- and consistently so. Trump's numbers have improved, but they're still pretty abysmal.
This is a large part of the reason that Trump's overall favorability ratings are lower than Clinton's: Republicans look at him a lot more skeptically than Democrats do Clinton. For him to be successful in November, he needs those skeptical Republicans to come out and vote for him anyway.
After all, this happens at a time when partisans have been more willing than ever to vote for the candidate their own party nominated. Even independents -- a group that largely still tends to vote on a partisan basis -- were largely loyal to the party with which they identified in 2008.
If Republicans waver on their choice but Democrats stay true to their party, Trump's in a lot of trouble. (Yes, a chunk of Bernie Sanders supporters say that they won't back Clinton in November, but when Clinton lost the nomination in 2008, the number of defections was much smaller than polling at the end of the primary suggested.)
Donald Trump will end the primary season with more votes from Republicans than any Republican in history. But he's also had the most people vote against him, as the splintered party struggled to reach consensus. The fact that prominent Republicans are reluctant to back Trump is a both a cause and side effect of that split. House Speaker Paul Ryan declining to endorse Trump won't hurt Trump among Trump's existing base of support; they don't like Ryan anyway. But if Ryan argued for Trump's candidacy -- if more moderate/establishment Republicans were to embrace and make the case for his nomination -- it's likely that wavering Republicans might be influenced. Trump needs them to be.
He waves this away by suggesting he'll find some space in the political middle. He returns to this baffling idea that he can lure Bernie Sanders's supporters to his cause -- an effort that will almost certainly fail based on the politics at play and an effort about which Sanders himself has been increasingly vocal.
There has been a repeated suggestion that Trump can lure Democrats to his cause in the way that Ronald Reagan did in 1980. (You can see the dip Reagan caused in Democratic Party loyalty on the first graph above.) But that idea is flawed for several reasons.
First of all, those Reagan Democrats -- mostly working-class white males -- have already migrated to the Republican Party. You can see the trend in data from the General Social Survey; the Reagan Democrats of 1980 are the regular-old Republicans of today. In that sense, Trump is right: His campaign hinges on those voters supporting him.
On top of that, though, white voters are a much smaller part of the electorate than they were in 1980. That year, 88 percent of the electorate was white. In 2012, the figure was 72 percent. In 1988, working-class whites made up half of the electorate, as the Atlantic's Peter Beinart noted in March. This year, they'll be only one-third. Yes, it's possible that Trump will inspire more whites to come to the polls, but there's also some evidence that he's inspiring nonwhites to turn out, too -- to vote against him.
Trump can't count on wooing a large group of Democrats to vote for him in part because most of the Democratic Party is made up of groups that view him very negatively: women, blacks, Hispanics. If he can't convince Democrats, and if Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents maintain their party loyalty, he needs every Republican vote he can get. To do that, he needs help -- the sort of help he didn't get in the primaries, leading to his earning less than 50 percent of the total votes.
It sounds macho to say he doesn't need loyalty, that he'll go it alone, with the party or without it. But a non-unified Republican Party is a Republican Party that endures four more years of a Democratic White House. | 0fake |
The New Cold War: A Chilling Prospect for the World | 21st Century Wire says There is one curious thing the Presidents of your country [US] change but the policy doesnt change, on matters of principle. ~ President PutinNATO s justification lies in its ability to find or create an enemy, Putin told legendary film maker, Oliver Stone. No other enemy has served NATO and the military industrial complex as well as Russia and the Cold War . The re-emergence of the cold war construct has reached almost unprecedented levels with western media & governments bearing down on historic prejudices with renewed vigour. The new cold war is a chilling prospect for the world if it is allowed to mushroom into something more deadly.Finian Cunningham discusses this prospect in his article for Strategic Culture:On the passing of German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, Russia s President Vladimir Putin spoke fondly of the great statesman and his herculean efforts to reconcile Europe and Russia. Putin said he agreed with the late German leader s view that the Cold War between West and East had been largely brought to an end. The Russian president added, however, that international relations are bound to swing like a pendulum, oscillating between bad and good. Now the pendulum has swung a bit back towards frost, but I am convinced that it will inevitably find the right balance and we will be joining efforts to face today s challenges , Putin told reporters.This is commentary not meant to be pedantic nitpicking, but there are important reasons to point out why the pendulum analogy is mistaken. That model for relations is based on the false assumption that the dynamic can go from bad to good, and vice versa.If we take the peak of the Cold War running from the 1950s to the end of the 1980s, during which there was the constant specter of nuclear war, then if the pendulum analogy holds, one would expect that there should be at some stage of history an opposite state of relations in which mutual, peaceful coexistence eventually prevails.Unfortunately, history has shown us that more than 25 years after the presumed end of the Cold War, relations between the West and Russia have not proceeded towards any substantial improvement. Indeed, it seems clear that over the past five years or so, relations between the West and Russia have deteriorated to a level of hostility comparable to the peak of the Cold War.This grim condition of relations is illustrated by the constant imposition of new economic sanctions on Russia by the US and its European allies ever since the Ukraine conflict erupted in early 2014. Also, the relentless build-up of military forces by the US-led NATO alliance on Russia s border. In the past week, a NATO F-16 warplane made the highly provocative move of buzzing the aircraft carrying the Russian defense minister Sergei Shoigu while in international airspace over the Baltic Sea.President Putin last week in an interview aired with American film-maker Oliver Stone deplored the possibility of a nuclear war, saying that nobody would survive such a catastrophic event. It is a measure of how foreboding relations between the West and Russia have become when Putin is obliged to make such a dire warning.The Russian leader went on to point out, rightly, that NATO always needs to find an enemy in order to justify its existence. The military organization despite claims of protecting Atlantic security is wired for war ever since its inception in 1949.So, let s not delude ourselves. The question of whether the Cold War ended around 1990 or not seems incontestable. It didn t. That war continues albeit expressed in different ideological language and propaganda terms.Instead of alleged Soviet Marxist-Leninist expansionism, we hear of accusations that Moscow is undermining the liberal world order and interfering in Western democratic elections . Or, allegedly, that Russia is threatening the security of the Baltic states.This is not to dispute the genuine convictions and sentiments of many Western and Russian politicians for global cooperation. There seems little doubt that the late, great German Chancellor Helmut Kohl wholly believed in a vision of West-East reconciliation and unity. During his 16-year leadership (1982-1998), Kohl oversaw the reunification of West and East Germany and he spoke of a future where Europe and Russia would work together.Putin reflected on personal conversations he shared with the German statesman. Unfortunately, not everything from the dreams, we used to dream and talk about, is being implemented. However, I am convinced that his [Kohl s] analysis is correct and those positive processes, without which neither Europe nor Russia has any future, will be developing in the European and, I can say, Eurasian continent , remarked the Russian president.The question is: why have these reasonable, laudable aspirations not been implemented?And this leads us to the nature of US leadership among the Western states. American dominance is about hegemony and maintaining control over its perceived unipolar position of global power. This worldview in turn stems from the condition of American-led Western capitalism. It is a zero-sum worldview in which a multi-polar world is simply not tolerable. American domination necessarily dictates to subordinates, not allies .The emergence of other world powers no matter how legitimate that emergence is is seen as a threat to American hegemony and the hierarchical structure of the capitalist world economy in which US interests are the apex of importance.American-led antagonism towards Russia did not originate after the Second World War as conventionally thought. It began with the Russian revolution in 1917 and the fear of international communism spreading to threaten the capitalist order. While modern-day Russia does not profess to be socialist , and China s polity is debatable, both are nevertheless still perceived as a threat to the American unipolar worldview because they represent a multipolar rivalry.The only period during which Washington appeared to extend a non-hostile hand towards Russia was during the Boris Yeltsin leadership years of the 1990s when Russia was in effect a vassal state for US-led Western capitalism. Under the later more independent political leadership of Vladimir Putin, in which Russia has repudiated vassal status, the US has reverted to its standard position of overt hostility.Thus, the Cold War was definitely not ended. It was merely suspended for those years when Russia was subservient. Now that Russia is no longer subservient, the US-led Cold War is resumed.Western politicians like Helmut Kohl and some present-day European leaders may sincerely aspire to a normalization of relations between the West and Russia. Of course, it is a reasonable aspiration given the common history, culture and mutual economic interests. However, the relations between the West and Russia, and for that matter other global powers such as China, will always be subject to hostility. That is because of the intrinsic hegemonic condition of US-led Western capitalism demanding total dominance.The analogy of relations modulating like a pendulum between negative and positive, or good and bad, or war and peace, is flawed. Because relations under a sought-after unipolar world of American domination will inevitably be subject to antagonism and, if needs be, all-out conflict and war.Rather than a pendulum, perhaps a more fitting analogy is a giant wrecking ball. The would-be American hegemonic power says: Do as I demand and the wrecking ball is held back. If not, then here comes the force of destruction .How to transcend this appalling situation is the challenge of our times. But one surmises that the emancipation depends on ending American-led capitalism and its hegemonic dictate to the rest of the world.***TO READ MORE ON THE NEW COLD WAR: THE 21WIRE COLD WAR FILESSUPPORT 21WIRE SUBSCRIBE & BECOME A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV | 1real |
Trump: Being friends with North Korea's Kim is possible | HANOI (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump said on Sunday that it was possible he could be friends with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un one day and that it would be “very, very nice” but he was not sure that it would happen. Asked at a news conference in Vietnam if he could see himself being friends with Kim, Trump said: “That might be a strange thing to happen but it’s a possibility. “If it did happen it could be a good thing I can tell you for North Korea, but it could also be good for a lot of other places and be good for the rest the world,” Trump said. “It could be something that could happen. I don’t know if it will but it would be very, very nice.” | 0fake |
Biden says 'no desire' to be on Supreme Court: MSNBC | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Vice President Joe Biden said on Thursday that he will be “deeply involved” in advising President Barack Obama on picking a candidate for the Supreme Court but said he had “no desire” himself to be named to the nation’s highest court. Obama is preparing to name a successor to conservative Justice Antonin Scalia, who died on Saturday. The appointment could change the court’s balance of power, and many Republican senators want to wait until after the Nov. 8 presidential election to give their consent to a new justice. Biden, who was a long-time chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said in an interview that Obama has asked for his advice on who to choose, and believes the president will choose a “consensus candidate.” “I haven’t even had a chance to sit down with him yet to talk about the potential candidates,” Biden told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow. “When we do, as in the past, lay out all the people, go out and survey a little bit, and see who we think meets those criteria and we think could have a chance of being confirmed,” he said. Asked directly whether he would do the job, Biden said he was not interested. “You never say to a president for certain you wouldn’t do anything, but I have no - look at me now - I have no desire to sit on the Supreme Court, none,” Biden said. Biden is known for having a good working relationship with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who has said the seat should remain vacant until after the election. Biden said he would be an “interlocutor” with his friends on Capitol Hill on the issue, but said he did not know whether he could persuade enough senators to support Obama’s choice. “I will be deeply involved,” he said. | 0fake |
Trump touts support for NATO, but expansion languishes in Senate | WASHINGTON(Reuters) - In his first major speech to Congress on Tuesday, President Donald Trump assured U.S. allies that he is committed to NATO, but some of his fellow Republicans have been blocking a Senate vote to expand the alliance for months. The delay of the Senate’s consideration of Montenegro’s accession to the alliance has fueled questions about whether Trump’s administration and his party will stand up to Russia despite the president’s desire for better relations. Moscow opposes any further expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Montenegro, a former Yugoslav republic with a population of 650,000, hopes to win the approval of all 28 NATO allies in time to become a full member at a summit in May. By late February, it had been approved by 24. Members see Montenegro’s accession as a way to counter Russia’s efforts to expand its influence in the Balkans. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee has twice voted in favor of Montenegro, first in December and again in January. But objections by Republican Senators Rand Paul and Mike Lee have blocked a vote in the full Senate. At a September hearing, Paul questioned the wisdom of angering Russia by allowing a tiny country that could not play a significant role in defending the United States to join the trans-Atlantic alliance. “I think we need to think this through, and we need to have a little bit more of a debate,” he said then. On Wednesday, Paul said he still objected. “I’m not so sure what they add to our defense. So I’m not so sure it’s a great idea that somehow Montenegro’s going to defend the United States,” Paul told Reuters. A spokesman for Lee said the senator objected only to the Senate considering the matter with a quick voice vote, saying he wanted a roll call so every member’s position would be recorded. Lee has not made his opinion on Montenegro’s accession public, the spokesman said. Asked if a roll call vote would be scheduled, a spokesman for Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said he had no updates to provide. If there is a Senate vote, Montenegro’s accession is expected to receive the two-thirds majority needed to pass. Montenegrin Foreign Minister Srdjan Darmanovic told Reuters last month that he had been assured that the Senate would ratify his country’s accession by May. Trump has called for closer ties to Moscow and criticized NATO as obsolete. In his speech to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday night, he reaffirmed support for the alliance, but said he expects U.S. allies to pay more of the cost of their own security needs. Montenegrin officials blame Moscow for an extended campaign intended to prevent the country from joining NATO. Last month, they said they had evidence Russia was involved in a plot to overthrow its government during an election last October, an accusation Moscow dismissed. The charges echoed assertions by U.S. intelligence that Russia sought to interfere in the 2016 U.S. election. Trump could still keep Montenegro from joining by refusing to formally deposit the country’s Protocol of Accession. Doing so would signal a significant rift with his own party in Congress. | 0fake |
Trump Adviser Has Pushed Clinton Conspiracy Theories - The New York Times | WASHINGTON — For Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, who is Donald J. Trump’s choice for national security adviser, pushing conspiracy theories about Hillary Clinton is a family affair: Both he and his son, Michael G. Flynn, have used social media to spread fake news stories linking Mrs. Clinton to underage sex rings and other serious crimes, backed by no evidence. The Twitter habits of both men are attracting renewed attention after a man fired a rifle on Sunday inside Comet Ping Pong, a Washington pizza restaurant that was the subject of false stories during the campaign tying it and the Clinton campaign to a child sex trafficking ring. Well before he joined the Trump campaign, the elder Mr. Flynn, 57, a former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, pushed unsubstantiated claims about Islamic law’s spreading in the United States and about the attack on the American diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya. But in his emergence this year as the angry former general out to help Mr. Trump clean up Washington, Mr. Flynn added wild stories about Hillary Clinton to his stock of unproven tales. Six days before the election, for instance, Mr. Flynn posted on Twitter a fake news story that claimed the police and prosecutors in New York had found evidence linking Mrs. Clinton and much of her senior campaign staff to pedophilia, money laundering, perjury and other felonies. “U decide,” Mr. Flynn wrote in the Twitter message on Nov. 2, though it appeared there was little doubt what he thought. The views Mr. Flynn has aired on social media, including messages that many viewed as crossing the line into Islamophobia, and his willingness to spread fake news stories had already prompted questions about his fitness to be Mr. Trump’s national security adviser. But the gunfire on Sunday was a violent turn in the debate about how fake news is reshaping the United States, and it cast a spotlight on those like Mr. Flynn who actively spread false stories about Mrs. Clinton. The hoax about the child sex trafficking ring began spreading shortly before the election, and the restaurant, its employees and nearby businesses soon found themselves subjected to threats and harassment because of it, despite a complete absence of evidence. Then on Sunday, Edgar M. Welch, 28, of Salisbury, N. C. went to Comet Ping Pong in northwestern Washington armed with a rifle. The police said he told them later that he had gone to the restaurant to “ ” the sex trafficking hoax. Mr. Welch’s violent reaction to the hoax did not appear to faze the younger Mr. Flynn: On Sunday, hours after the gunfire, he went on Twitter to say that until “Pizzagate” was proved false, it remained a story. Michael G. Flynn, 33, is more than just a relative of an incoming senior administration official. In recent years, he has served as the chief of staff to his father, who started a private intelligence and consulting business, the Flynn Intel Group, after being forced to retire from the military in 2014. Throughout the campaign, Michael G. Flynn served as a gatekeeper for his father, and he now appears to have a job with the Trump transition team. Email sent to an address at the Flynn Intel Group returned with an automated response that provided a new email contact for both Flynns, and each had a Trump transition email address that ended with . gov. The main difference in the son’s Twitter feed is that he appears to have shown even less restraint than his father when it comes to spreading conspiracy theories about Mrs. Clinton and her campaign. He used Twitter to spread others’ suggestions that Mrs. Clinton and President Obama were “at the center” of the conflict in Syria and profiting from it and that both would be tried for treason if Mr. Trump was elected. He shared a fake news story that claimed hackers had found video evidence that President Bill Clinton had raped a teenage girl. And in a Twitter message that he deleted after CNN found it in November, he questioned what was wrong with dating websites that were only for white people, saying black Americans have BET, a television network that caters largely to black viewers. Since Sunday’s gunfire at Comet Ping Pong, Michael G. Flynn has also continued to retweet messages that say the news media has sought to normalize pedophilia. His father, in contrast, has kept a lower profile since the election. He has not given interviews — he did not respond to requests for comment on Monday — and he has kept his Twitter postings relatively tame, publishing patriotic messages on Veterans Day and more recently praising Mr. Trump’s selection of Gen. James N. Mattis, a retired Marine, as defense secretary. His role as national security adviser calls for mediating the conflicting views of cabinet secretaries and agencies, and sifting fact from speculation and rumor to help the new president decide how the United States should react to international crises. It is a role that is likely to take on outsize importance for Mr. Trump, who has no experience in defense or foreign policy issues and has a habit of making broad assertions that are not based in fact. Mr. Flynn, though, has shown similar inclinations both on Twitter and in regular life. His sometimes dubious assertions became so familiar to subordinates at the Defense Intelligence Agency that they came up with a name for the phenomenon: They called them “Flynn facts. ” | 0fake |
China combat veteran, close ally of Xi, to get promotion: sources | BEIJING (Reuters) - A close ally of President Xi Jinping is expected to be promoted to vice chairman of China s Central Military Commission, four sources said, as Xi cements his control over the armed forces. Zhang Youxia, 67, one of just a few senior military officers with combat experience, is tipped to become one of at least two vice chairmen of the commission, the sources, including three with direct ties to the leadership, told Reuters. Xi is chairman of the commission, which has overall control of the People s Liberation Army, as well as the nation s president and general secretary of the Communist Party of China. Zhang would replace Fan Changlong, who is expected to retire during the 19th Communist Party Congress which begins on Wednesday. The other vice chairman, Xu Qiliang, is expected to stay on, the sources said. Both Xi and Zhang are from the northwestern province of Shaanxi and both are children of former senior officials who fought together in the civil war in the 1940s. China s Defence Ministry did not respond to a faxed request for comment. The party has been studying a proposal to increase the number of vice chairmen on the military commission from two to four and reduce the number of other committee members, currently eight, some of the sources said. Xi has shaken up the commission and military since assuming power late in 2012 as he roots out corruption and streamlines the 2 million-strong armed forces, the world s largest. Some 300,000 troops have been laid off and advanced new equipment such as stealth fighters has been developed. While China has not fought a war in decades, it is taking an increasingly assertive line in the disputed East China Sea and South China Sea, as well as over self-ruled Taiwan, which is claimed by China. Two outgoing members of the commission are currently under investigation for suspected graft, sources have told Reuters, though the government has yet to confirm this. It isn t the first time the military has faced corruption issues. A previous vice chairman, Guo Boxiong, was jailed for life for graft last year, while another former vice chairman, Xu Caihou, died of cancer in 2015 before he could face trial over alleged corruption. Zhang is currently the eighth-ranked member of the 11-man military commission. Zhang is also expected to be promoted to the Communist Party s 25-member Politburo, one of its elite ruling bodies, three of the sources said. One source with ties to the leadership said that the fathers of Xi and Zhang - Xi Zhongxun and Zhang Zongxun - had been close. The two fathers fought together in the civil war that ended in 1949 with the Communist victory and proclamation of the People s Republic of China. Both men rose to senior positions in the government and military. The second generation of the two families are also close, the source added, referring to Xi and Zhang. Born in Beijing, Zhang Youxia joined the army in 1968, rising through the ranks and joining the military commission in late 2012. He fought against Vietnam in a brief border war in 1979 that China launched in punishment for Vietnam invading Cambodia the previous year and ousting the Beijing-backed Khmer Rouge. Zhang was 26 when he was sent to the frontlines to fight the Vietnamese, where he performed well and was quickly promoted, according to state media. He also fought in another border clash with Vietnam in 1984. During the battle, whether attacking or defending, Zhang Youxia performed excellently, the official China Youth Daily wrote in August in a piece entitled, These Chinese generals have killed the enemy on the battlefield . Another officer recently promoted, Li Zuocheng, who was named chief of the Joint Staff Department of the People s Liberation Army in August, also fought in the 1979 war. Li is also likely to become one of the commission s vice chairmen, but it was unclear if he will also join the Politburo, the sources said. One of the sources, who has ties to the military, said Zhang had a reputation when he was based in northeastern China of walking around his base dressed in civilian clothes, prompting challenges from junior soldiers who didn t recognize him. He doesn t put on airs and likes getting down in the dirt with ordinary soldiers, to know what their lives are like, how they are living and what they are eating, said the source, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter. | 0fake |
German SPD leaders vote to start exploratory talks with conservatives | BERLIN (Reuters) - Leaders of Germany s Social Democrats have voted unanimously to begin exploratory talks with Chancellor Angela Merkel s conservatives about forming a coalition government, Andreas Nahles, head of the SPD s parliamentary group, said on Friday. Nahles said party leaders would work on substantive issues in the talks, with a party conference in January to determine the way forward. She said the SPD, which suffered its worst post-war election losses in September, planned to enter the talks with an open and constructive attitude with an eye to improving the lives of ordinary Germans. | 0fake |
HILLARY CLINTON’S Super Detailed Counterterrorism Strategy…LOL | And the left says Trump hasn t given details about what he ll do when president? Hillary couldn t be more clueless and vague in her Twitter statement. If she had a clue about terrorism she d know that there s no such thing as a lone wolf . All jihadists are interconnected and fighting together for the caliphate. She s a joke! | 1real |
Doctors With Enemies: Did Afghan Forces Target the M.S.F. Hospital? - The New York Times | For the last hour, the American gunship had been circling high above the city, carefully observing its target with vision sensors and waiting for clearance to strike. It was 2 in the morning on Oct. 3, 2015, and Kunduz City was enveloped in total darkness. The city’s power had gone out five days before — soon after the Taliban took over the provincial capital, in a humiliating blow to the American and Afghan governments — and it stayed off through the bitter fighting that followed, as commandos from both nations counterattacked. The aircraft’s target, a distinctively shaped building set on an expansive lawn, was lit by generators, a beacon in the out city. As they prepared to fire, the gunship’s crew members radioed to the ground force commander, a United States Army Special Forces major, for more information. “Looking for confirmation on which building to strike — Confirm it is the large, shaped building . .. in the center of the compound. Affirm. ” An circles its target like a ball swung from a string, raining down gunfire along the radius. At 2:08 a. m. the gunship began its assault, starting on the eastern end of the shaped building and working methodically west. For half an hour, the fired its millimeter howitzer, the largest airborne gun in existence, and its millimeter Bofors cannon, which shoots exploding incendiary rounds and is ideal for hunting people who flee targeted buildings by foot, often referred to by pilots as “squirters. ” There were about 50 squirters at the site, the crew noted, a surprisingly high number. Through the infrared scope, the building glowed as it burned, while ghostly shapes that flitted from inside were gunned down. “We started a fire, good effects. ” At roughly the same time, 150 miles south in Kabul, Guilhem Molinie, the head of the Afghan mission for Doctors Without Borders, known by its French initials, M. S. F. was woken by a phone call: His hospital in Kunduz was burning. A few minutes later, he received a chilling update: It was being bombed from the air. That could mean only an American or Afghan attack. He began frantically calling the United States military, the United Nations, anyone who might be able to make it stop. At 2:19 a. m. he spoke to an officer at the Army Special Forces headquarters at Bagram Air Base, who said he would investigate. The airstrike would continue for an additional 18 minutes. The officer later texted Molinie: “I’ll do my best, praying for you all. ” By the time the sun rose, the hospital’s main building was a smoldering ruin. It had been leveled with devastating precision the other buildings on the compound, some no more than a few dozen feet away, were left unharmed. According to M. S. F. at least 42 people were killed in the attack and dozens injured. It was among the most shocking massacres in the led war in Afghanistan, and certainly the most baffling. Why would an American warplane destroy a working hospital full of doctors and patients? On April 29, seven months after the bombing, the United States military released a heavily redacted version of its investigation into the airstrike. The report asserts that it was an accident, a result of equipment failures and bad decisions on the part of the gunship crew and the Special Forces. “The investigation concluded that the personnel involved did not know they were striking a medical facility,” Gen. Joseph Votel, the head of the military’s Central Command, said at a news conference. “They were absolutely trying to do the right thing. ” Even taken at face value, the report reveals more than a simple error. The circumstances that led to the destruction of the hospital are a direct result of how the Special Forces were made to bear the weight of the United States’ contradictory strategy in Afghanistan, which seeks to both end its involvement in the war and prop up the struggling Afghan government. Restricted to a supposedly noncombat role as advisers, the Special Forces in Kunduz ended up calling in the airstrike, which was in support of Afghan troops against a target a away, as which meant that it bypassed many safeguards intended to prevent civilian casualties. Moreover, there is evidence — both buried in the report and from interviews conducted on the front lines in Kunduz — that suggests that Afghan troops may have deliberately provided the hospital as a target. Though the Special Forces later said they were unaware that it was the hospital, the redacted investigation documents show that they passed a description that matched the M. S. F. compound to the as a target — a fact that the military elides in its summary of the bombing. This description originated from their Afghan partners. In my conversations with them in November in the aftermath of the bombing, some of the Afghan forces in Kunduz, citing false intelligence that the hospital had been taken over by insurgents, said that it had been justifiably targeted. Both the American military and the Afghan government declined to comment on whether Afghan forces had intended to target the hospital. But a question hangs over the Kunduz bombing, even as the military has moved to declare the matter settled: Did Afghan forces, out of longstanding mistrust of M. S. F. draw the United States into a terrible tragedy? When Maj. Michael Hutchinson, known to his friends as Hutch, redeployed last year to Afghanistan, he was sure — as he later told military investigators — that getting outside the wire to engage in combat was mostly a thing of the past. The Americans were there to train, advise and assist the Afghans. It was their war now. The American combat mission in Afghanistan had ended in 2014, as announced by President Obama in a Rose Garden speech that year. The remaining American forces were supposed to be restricted to two narrow roles: A noncombat NATO training mission, called Resolute Support, was there to advise Afghan forces, while the American counterterrorism force under Freedom’s Sentinel was charged with targeting Al Qaeda and the Islamic State. “The U. S. military will not be engaged in specific operations targeting members of the Taliban just because they’re members of the Taliban,” Josh Earnest, the White House spokesman, told reporters in 2014. But as the Afghan government has begun to lose ground against the Taliban, United States forces have found themselves pulled back into combat. Since the new missions began in 2015, at least 87 American military personnel have been killed or wounded in action. Much of that fighting has fallen to Special Operations units like Hutchinson’s company, which was assigned responsibility for northern Afghanistan under a task force led by the First Battalion, Third Special Forces Group. (Hutchinson’s name is redacted in the military’s report, but he is referred to throughout as “the G. F. C. ,” for ground force commander. His identity was confirmed by Joe Kasper, Representative Duncan Hunter’s chief of staff, who has been in contact with Special Forces who were in Kunduz. The military declined to comment on Hutchinson’s role or make him available for an interview.) From the start, Hutchinson had been wary of Kunduz and its messy politics. “Ironically, I probably jinxed myself on this,” he later told military investigators. “I said I did not believe that we should get involved in Kunduz any further than [training and advising] unless the provincial capital falls, because structurally it is such a political and ethnic problem. It’s not something that we can effectively weigh in on. ” Kunduz, a fertile wedge of rice and wheat fields tucked between the foothills of the Hindu Kush mountains and the Amu Darya river basin, is one of the provinces where the Taliban have made their biggest inroads in recent years. Yet in the months leading up to the fall of the city, neither the Americans nor the Afghans seemed particularly worried about its stability. On Aug. 13, Brig. Gen. Wilson Shoffner, the United States military’s spokesman in Afghanistan, was asked about the situation there during a news conference. “I think there’s been a lot of generalization when it comes to reports on the north,” he said. “Kunduz is — is not now and has not been in danger of being overrun by the Taliban. ” Roughly six weeks later, around 3 in the morning on Sept. 28, Taliban fighters attacked the city’s outskirts on three fronts. “The mujahedeen were united under one command,” said a Taliban commander who took part in the offensive and goes by the name Shahid. He spoke by phone from outside the city in the weeks after the attack. “We broke our enemy. ” Though Kunduz City was home to thousands of Afghan army, police and intelligence personnel, its defenses quickly collapsed, the officers fleeing in disarray to the airport on a plateau overlooking the city. Within hours of their initial assault, the Taliban were freely roaming the streets, looting the abandoned bases of weapons, secret documents, Ford pickup trucks, Humvees and even two old made tanks. Thousands of residents jammed the highways as they fled to neighboring cities meanwhile, hordes of Taliban fighters, some from surrounding provinces, streamed into the city, attracted by the prospect of a major victory. It was the first time since 2001 that the Taliban had captured a provincial capital. As panic spread across northern Afghanistan, the Special Forces were tapped to help save Afghanistan’s largest city. There was already one group called an Operational Detachment Alpha — an “A team” of 12 Green Berets, plus some support troops, including joint terminal attack controllers, who direct airstrikes — based at the Kunduz airport. An additional Operational Detachment Alpha, plus four operators from a third one, were sent up from Bagram, the main American military base north of Kabul. They arrived around 6 in the morning on Sept. 29, a little more than 12 hours after the city fell. Hutchinson was put in command of the entire force. Afghan reinforcements were also flown in, including a contingent of police special forces and about 200 soldiers from the Afghan Army’s most elite unit, the Special Operations Force, which was also known by its Pashto initials, K. K. A. and was formerly attached to the United States military’s secretive Joint Special Operations Command. These coalition troops confronted a scene of total chaos: thousands of security forces and civilian officials clamoring for space on the few evacuation flights available, some casting aside their uniforms and weapons on the road. When the Taliban attacked the airport plateau that evening, the defenders began fleeing the perimeter, but the Special Forces called in airstrikes, which hammered the insurgent forces, breaking their offensive and leaving dozens of dead fighters scattered through the arid hills. “If the Americans hadn’t intervened,” said Col. Abdullah Gard, then the head of the Kunduz police’s reaction force, “the airport would have fallen. ” Earlier that same day, a Toyota Corolla pulled up to the main entrance of the Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz. “There was a big fat guy driving,” said an M. S. F. employee who was on duty at the time. “Someone told me he’s the big boss of the Taliban. ” It was Janat Gul, one of the most powerful Taliban leaders in northern Afghanistan. With him was Abdul Salam, the “shadow governor” responsible for Kunduz. Salam and Gul got out and went inside, the employee recalled — unarmed as per the hospital’s strict weapons policy — to meet with expatriate staff members. (Doctors Without Borders confirmed Salam’s visit that day but said he didn’t enter the hospital.) According to Molinie, who was monitoring events from Kabul, the Taliban leadership pledged full cooperation and protection and asked that the hospital stay operational during whatever fighting was to come. “The message was that we could continue our activities, that we would be safe and protected and that the patients of the hospital would be safe and protected,” said Molinie, “as well as the patients from government forces. ” The hospital staff activated the casualty plan and readied for the flood of patients that would soon arrive. For M. S. F. dealing with the Taliban was a routine part of the neutral role it seeks to maintain in Afghanistan. One of the world’s largest medical charities, M. S. F. sees itself as an impartial humanitarian organization in the mold of the International Committee of the Red Cross, one that could cross front lines to provide treatment to anyone who needed it, including wounded combatants. That role has been getting harder to play. M. S. F. has been active in Afghanistan since 1980 and had worked with both the mujahedeen and Taliban governments. But after the terror attacks of Sept. 11, its ethos of political neutrality contrasted sharply with that of the Global War on Terror, where you were either with the United States and its allies or with the terrorists. Afghan forces have been especially resentful of the fact that as patients, insurgents in M. S. F. facilities are entitled to the protection of international law. In 2004, five M. S. F. staff members were shot in an unsolved murder. A Taliban spokesman claimed responsibility, accusing the organization of serving American interests. But according to M. S. F. Afghan officials presented them with credible evidence that local forces were actually responsible. No action was taken against them by the government, and the organization pulled out of the country. When M. S. F. returned to Afghanistan in 2009, it followed the example of the Red Cross and negotiated its access in the field with the Taliban leadership. Eager for the help of humanitarian groups in responding to the worsening conflict, the United States and Afghan governments acquiesced. “The initial deal with the Afghan government, with NATO and the U. S.,” Molinie said, “was that we would reopen a mission on the condition that all parties would accept that we talk to everybody. ” But balancing the demands of belligerents in a ruthless war was fraught with risk. In its zeal to help Afghans trapped behind the Taliban’s lines, M. S. F. risked souring its relationship with the Afghan government. One of its more ambitious plans called for opening a hospital in the held northern part of Helmand Province, along with an airstrip to fly in international staff members and medical supplies behind insurgent lines. “Personally, I thought the idea was completely insane,” said a Western official who was briefed on the proposal last year. “The Afghan government would have reacted strongly against M. S. F. ” In 2011, M. S. F. opened the hospital in Kunduz, a location it chose because it believed, presciently, that the province’s bloody past presaged a violent future. But some members of the Afghan government and security forces there had little respect for M. S. F. ’s neutrality and resented its treatment of wounded Taliban. When I visited Kunduz in November, their anger was still surprisingly raw, despite the recent destruction of the hospital. “They give them medicine they transport and treat their injured,” Gard, the commander of the reaction force, told me. “Their existence is a big problem for us. ” And though the hospital treated many more wounded for the government, there were rumors that M. S. F. had carried out unnecessary amputations on them, according to Fawzia Yaftali, a member of the provincial council. “The general perception was that M. S. F. supported the Taliban,” she said. On July 1, an episode occurred that should have been, in retrospect, a warning sign for all involved. A team of Afghan police commandos from elite units mentored by United States and NATO special forces — the 222 and 333 Battalions, which were later part of the Afghan forces sent to Kunduz with the Green Berets — had arrived in Kunduz Province to track a value target, a militant commander named Abu Huzaifa. After targeting Huzaifa in an airstrike, the commandos believed that he had been wounded and taken to the M. S. F. hospital in Kunduz City. They drove there and forced their way inside, where they physically assaulted the staff members and fired their weapons into the air, according to M. S. F. Huzaifa was nowhere to be found. “It was a kind of wild intrusion,” Molinie said. After M. S. F. phoned the governor and the police chief, the commandos were called off. Furious that the sanctity of the hospital had been violated, M. S. F. closed it to new admissions for five days, until officials received guarantees from Kabul that it would be respected. Huzaifa would be killed seven weeks later — by an American drone, according to a senior Afghan special forces commander — but bitterness about the hospital raid lingered among the Kunduz security forces. “They hid him,” Gard told me, without offering any evidence. His men had accompanied the police commandos to the hospital. “The people who work there are traitors, all of them. ” On Wednesday, Sept. 30, the day after the Taliban’s assault on the airport was beaten back, Hutchinson started planning an operation to retake the city. The political pressure to do so was made apparent when, before his departure, Hutchinson, along with an Afghan general, spoke by videoconference with Gen. John Campbell, then the commander of American forces in Afghanistan. Campbell, who was in Kabul, was not happy with the Afghans. “General Campbell was understandably upset,” Hutchinson told investigators. “Not only was it a shock and travesty that they had” — what follows is redacted in the military’s report but seems to refer to how Afghan forces abandoned Kunduz City without a fight. The fall of Kunduz had called into question the viability of Obama’s strategy in Afghanistan, and storm clouds were gathering in Washington, where Campbell had previously been scheduled to testify before Congress. “He was very much in a hurry to get back to D. C.,” Hutchinson says in the report. “He had a lot on his plate. ” (Campbell, who is now retired, declined to comment for this article.) After the video conference, Hutchinson briefed his men on what the general told him. This was a strategically vital mission, and the whole world was watching. “It had to happen as soon as possible. Failure was not an option on this operation. ” The operation fit awkwardly under Resolute Support, the noncombat training mission, and Freedom’s Sentinel, which was supposed to engage only ISIS and Al Qaeda, not the Taliban. Indeed, while Hutchinson had submitted his operation plan to his headquarters at Bagram under Resolute Support, it came back approved under Freedom’s Sentinel. Later, Hutchinson told investigators that he thought he was operating under Resolute Support’s rules of engagement. The distinction between the two — which were both led by Campbell — would become almost meaningless in Kunduz. The same unit could be carrying out a training mission one minute and a counterterrorism one the next. According to the military, in the first four days of fighting in Kunduz, 13 airstrikes were conducted under Resolute Support and nine under Freedom’s Sentinel. Before conducting strikes, aircrews would sometimes radio to ask under which mission they were about to shoot. The plan Hutchinson submitted, called Kunduz Clearing Patrol, was a risky mission to strike deep into the city, where his men and the Afghan commandos would take over the police and governor’s compound and set up a forward stronghold. Hutchinson later admitted that he had underestimated the number of Taliban in the city as “a small group of dedicated individuals. ” The Green Berets planned to stay for only 24 hours, long enough for the local Afghan forces at the airport to rally and return to the city. “I really thought that the Afghans would see that it wasn’t that big of a deal and they would all come back in,” he said in the report. “We all agreed it had to happen fast, and the only people who were willing to go in, unfortunately, were people who did not know the city of Kunduz. ” That same Wednesday night, around 10:30, according to the report, the Green Berets, accompanied by the Afghan police and army commandos, as well as Gard’s reaction force, rolled out of the airfield in a convoy of armored vehicles and fought their way into the city. First they cleared Gard’s compound, which the insurgents had captured the day before. They were hit by repeated Taliban ambushes and called in airstrikes from a circling gunship, killing dozens of insurgents. While entering the police compound, they set off a tripwire bomb, but no one was hurt. The Afghan and American commandos posted guards on the walls and set up a base inside. A Humvee with a single scale map of Kunduz spread over its hood served as the Special Forces’ command post. The city around them was still swarming with insurgents. When the sun rose, the attacks began. Hoping to overrun the police compound’s defenders, the Taliban launched relentless assaults from the surrounding buildings, sometimes getting close enough for the Green Berets to use grenades. As the insurgents rained rockets and gun fire on the compound’s barriers, the Special Forces called in six “danger close” gun runs from the strikes near enough to risk friendly fire. Still, the insurgents kept coming. “I was in a lot of effective firefights,” one of the Green Berets later wrote, “but this was on a completely different level than even any of the experienced special operators on any of the detachments had seen — particularly over such a sustained period of time. How no one was killed, or even wounded, is an absolute miracle. ” An Afghan force of 500 was supposed to show up the next day from the airport to relieve them it never did. When a few Afghan police and army personnel did arrive, they said they would abandon their positions if the Americans left. It soon became apparent to Hutchinson and his men that their mission was going to last longer. By sending the Special Forces to hold an isolated position deep inside a city held by the Taliban, the American military allowed the Afghan government to claim a badly needed propaganda victory. On Oct. 1, as the Green Berets and the Afghan commandos fought for their lives at the police compound, President Ashraf Ghani held a news conference in Kabul to declare that all of Kunduz City had been retaken. “Thank God we had no fatalities,” he said. (In fact, the battle to recapture the city would rage for two more weeks, and at least 38 Afghan police officers and soldiers would be killed.) The fact that the Special Forces were surrounded by Taliban also meant that the liberal use of American air power in Kunduz could be justified as defense. The military went further by applying what it called Persons With Designated Special Status to the Afghan commandos in Kunduz, a designation that allows American forces to consider temporarily defending certain partnered Afghan troops as part of their own defense — essentially, defense of someone else. Later, investigators would conclude that Hutchinson had improperly used these defense rules in order to launch offensive “ assault fires. ” It was his response, perhaps, to the conundrum he faced by engaging in combat during a supposedly noncombat mission: Was he supposed to wait for the commandos to get pinned down or take casualties before striking the insurgents they had been sent into the city to fight? “I can’t expect them to assault that,” he told investigators, referring to the K. K. A. ’s subsequent attack on the held intelligence headquarters. “They can’t sit out there and die on the road. ” Armed with this authorization and ordered to take back the city of Kunduz, the Special Forces called in air support for the Afghan commandos, who, taking advantage of their superior vision capabilities, would set out from the police compound to raid Taliban positions around the city at night. “Where there was heavy pressure on us,” said Yaftali, the K. K. A. commander, “wherever there was heavy fighting, we told the Americans to strike there. ” In a city where all other institutions had been abandoned by their staff, the M. S. F. hospital was a lifeline for the people of Kunduz. Dr. Esmatullah Esmat had been a surgeon for eight years in Afghanistan, but he had never witnessed anything like this. “When I saw my patients after surgery and they would say, ‘Dr. Esmat, you saved me,’ I felt energy,” he said. “We never felt tired. ” A shouldered, stocky man with a shy smile, Esmat and his fellow surgeons worked in alternating shifts. Over five days, the hospital would receive 376 patients in its emergency room, more than a quarter of them women and children. Esmat had to amputate the leg of a girl. “I have a daughter the same age,” he said. It was a bloody and chaotic scene. In the red room, the most critical cases were prepped — head and torso wounds, or traumatic amputations, typically — and then sent immediately into one of the hospital’s three operating theaters. There, stripped naked under the surgeon’s lamp, Taliban fighters, civilians and government soldiers alike became patients whose lives needed to be saved. Esmat and his colleagues performed 138 operations during those days, almost a third of them emergency laparotomies — the abdomen was cut open and internal organs were piled on the chest, so that the surgical team could go through them, painstaking inch by inch, looking for lacerations to suture. As the wards overflowed, the staff laid down mattresses between the beds and in the hallways and stretched the hospital to fit 130. There were gruesome and strange sights, like the Taliban fighter from a commando unit, in a distinctive pattern robe, weeping uncontrollably while stroking the head of his bagged friend. “It was a bit hopeless,” said Faizullah Alokozai, the hospital’s archivist. “I saw a lot of dead children. ” Though the M. S. F. hospital was crowded with fighters, whether patients or caretakers (each patient was allowed one) staff members and civilians who were present said the insurgents respected the rules. They left their weapons outside or handed them over at the gun lockers at the entrance. One employee recalled seeing a fighter give up his weapon but forget his ammunition vest when the employee nervously approached the fighter about it, the man apologized profusely and handed it over. “We had respect for the hospital, as they were serving the people,” said Shahid, the Taliban commander. “I myself went there once when one of our men was wounded, and before entering we submitted our weapons outside. ” M. S. F. did allow caretakers and patients to keep their cellphones, however, and I was told by several staff members and civilians present that some Taliban caretakers also brought in radios. (Molinie said that while there was no specific rule against radios, he didn’t believe that they were allowed in.) According to M. S. F. some of the Taliban patients were ranking leaders. Taliban vehicles were also allowed inside the hospital grounds to drop off critically injured patients. Unknown to M. S. F. Afghan forces in Kunduz were coming to the false conclusion that the hospital was being used as a Taliban stronghold and headquarters, which would have meant the loss of its protected status. “All their most important leaders were inside the hospital, especially Tajiks, Uzbeks and ranking Pakistanis,” Gard said. He claimed his information came from local informants who had been inside the hospital and witnessed the Taliban operating there. “They had raised their flag and established their headquarters there. ” These unconfirmed reports were lent additional weight by signals intelligence. Yaftali, the K. K. A. commander, told me that his unit’s Wolfhound radio direction finders, which allowed them to determine the range and bearing of enemy radios, picked up Taliban transmissions from inside the hospital. “We located about 10 to 15 radios from there,” he said. “The Taliban were inside and outside the hospital. ” The Afghan forces I spoke to said they relayed these reports to the American military, and it’s clear that, before the strike, some Americans were aware of the concerns that the M. S. F. hospital had been taken over by the Taliban. On Oct. 1, Carter Malkasian, a civilian adviser to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon, emailed M. S. F. in New York to ask about the safety of its staff and whether Taliban fighters were “holed up” inside the hospital. Maj. Gen. Mark Quantock, Campbell’s intelli gence deputy, told investigators: “Although we assessed that there were Taliban using the hospital, you cannot shoot up a building under the current authorities. Period. ” Molinie, M. S. F. ’s head of mission in Kabul, said he was then unaware of the American military’s suspicions, which he criticized as baseless. On Sept. 29, he provided Resolute Support with GPS coordinates for four of M. S. F. ’s facilities in Kunduz, including the hospital, as a precaution. And the day before the bombing, he coordinated the delivery of three truckloads of medical supplies to Kunduz with an officer at the Special Forces’ headquarters at Bagram. “He informed me of the number of beds, number of international aid workers in the hospital, and that the Taliban were ‘protecting’ the hospital and were treating the government casualties well,” the officer later wrote. It’s unclear from the report what, if anything, the Special Forces on the ground in Kunduz knew about the M. S. F. hospital. Several staff members at their headquarters at Bagram told investigators that they had passed M. S. F. ’s grid coordinates on two separate occasions to the Green Berets at the police compound. “I know I read the four grids and got a for accuracy,” one person wrote. “I think I used the term ‘Doctors Without Borders,’ not ‘M. S. F. ’’u2009” Hutchinson and other members of his team, however, said they never received the coordinates from Bagram and were unaware of the hospital’s location before the strike, a contention the investigators accepted in their final report. But whether they heard the Afghans’ false reports before or after the strike, some of the Green Berets in Kunduz appeared to believe them. “There were enemy in there,” one later wrote, according to an email excerpt provided by Representative Hunter’s office. “They were using it as a [command and control] node. They had already removed and ransomed the foreign doctors, and they had fired on partnered personnel from there. ” For the civilians who remained in Kunduz during the fighting — the United Nations estimates that 13, 000 families were displaced by the fighting and that 848 civilians were killed or injured — life was a daily struggle to survive. There was no electricity, and the price of basics like bread and cooking oil had shot up, for those who could find them at all. Heading out in search of supplies meant risking your life in the crossfire on the streets. But for people like Ismail Zahir, a haired, spoken who worked in construction, there was no other choice. With his father deaf and disabled, his family relied on their eldest son as their breadwinner. When there were lulls in the fighting, Ismail would head out into the street, dodging sniper fire. “I was afraid,” he said, “but not as afraid as I was for my family. ” Once Afghan and American forces counterattacked and airstrikes began hitting the city, he grew especially worried for his sisters Morsal and Madina. Morsal, 15, was quiet and fastidious like him, while Madina, at 5 the youngest in the family, was impish and cheeked. At night, they screamed in fear when bombs struck nearby. They begged the family to leave Kunduz. Finally, on Oct. 2, the fourth day after the fall of Kunduz, Ismail and a friend set off across the city to find a car to hire, riding tandem on a borrowed bicycle through the deserted streets. Taliban fighters stopped them at a checkpoint but let them pass — civilians were free to flee if they wished. On the outskirts of the city, they found a taxi driver. He wanted the equivalent of $200 to take them to Kabul, five times as much as the normal rate, and they had no choice but to accept. Returning home with the driver, he and his friend packed their families into the Toyota station wagon, 14 people in total, most of them women and children. The driver set off south, toward Kabul. As they came around a corner, they spotted an Afghan Army armored vehicle. Perhaps thinking they were insurgents, it opened fire. As the driver wheeled around, bullets tore through the back of the car. Four of the boys were shot in the arms and legs, but the two girls, Morsal and Madina, were the most grievously wounded. Somehow, the car made it to the M. S. F. hospital. When Esmat arrived in the red room, he found Morsal laid out, pale and beautiful. She was dead from a head wound. Madina’s abdomen was torn open, and her intestines protruded, but she was still conscious and cried out, “Mother, mother. ” As Esmat looked around and saw Amin Bajawri, the room doctor, and the rest of the staff members weeping, he felt his own eyes sting and well. All the suffering he had witnessed over the previous days was overflowing inside of him. “My God, what is the sin of these people?” he cried. Madina’s liver and kidney had been badly lacerated. To survive, she needed an immediate laparotomy. Esmat composed himself and began preparing for the operation. That night, according to the report, the K. K. A. commandos at the police compound planned a raid on the abandoned headquarters of the National Directorate of Security, the Afghan intelligence service, which had been occupied by the Taliban. After dark, the insurgents’ daily assault on the police compound had petered out, and the commandos planned to take three of their wounded comrades back to the airport, resupply and then drive back into the city toward the N. D. S. compound, on a northbound path that would take them past the M. S. F. hospital. The commandos asked Hutchinson to provide them with air support, and he replied that he would take care of them. The had already been on station above Kunduz for three hours when, around 1 in the morning, Hutchinson informed the gunship that the Afghan commandos were planning to raid the N. D. S. headquarters and requested that the gunship perform a “defensive scan” of the area. Hutchinson passed on the correct grid coordinates for the N. D. S. compound, which had been given to him by the Afghans but because the gunship was flying higher than normal to avoid air missiles, its navigation system pointed the sensor — a powerful vision telescope, essentially — at an empty field, located between the N. D. S. headquarters and the M. S. F. hospital. Confused, the sensor operator scanned around and noticed a large facility nearby with people walking around at night. He started observing it to determine if this was the target. In fact, it was the hospital. The gunship hadn’t been given the building’s coordinates before the mission, and although the hospital had a flag with the M. S. F. logo on its roof, it wasn’t marked with a red cross or a crescent. The next step was crucial. Hutchinson, who had been conferring via an interpreter with the K. K. A. ground force and couldn’t see the target himself, then gave the an “updated description of the compound of interest. ” He later told investigators that the Afghans described “a long shaped building with a small offshoot. ” He continued: “I can’t remember the word I would have used for it. It’s a in compound with multiple outbuildings, and there was a gate facing to the north with an arch. ” That description didn’t resemble the N. D. S. headquarters. It matched the hospital. At 2 in the morning, the hospital was quiet. Most of the roughly 300 staff members, patients and caretakers were asleep. In the operating theater, the night shift of surgeons was taking advantage of a quiet day to carry out up operations. Esmat, who spent two hours operating on Madina, had finished his shift at midnight and collapsed, exhausted, on a cot in the outpatient department. He had been worried that she might die on the operating table, but she pulled through. Down the hall, Faizullah Alokozai, the archivist, was sound asleep next to the hospital’s deputy medical director, Dr. Abdul Satar Zaheer. Shortly after 2 in the morning, both men were woken by loud blasts and flashes of light. Realizing they were under attack, the two jumped up and ran east toward the entrance to the basement, into the ceilinged hallway outside the operating theater. They didn’t know it, but they were running toward danger. The gunship had started by hitting the care unit on the east end of the hospital and was working its barrage west. Esmat, who stepped into the hallway behind them, saw the passage suddenly fill with smoke, and he jumped out a window onto the lawn, where he crawled and hid safely in a deep window well for the duration of the attack. As Faizullah and Satar reached the far side of the hallway, a shell punched through the roof and exploded on the floor in front of them. They fell to the ground. Satar’s right arm had been blown off at the shoulder. Faizullah could feel his own hot blood gushing down his back. The power went out, and the darkness was rent with flashes of lights. Faizullah crawled up to Satar and held him. “I lost my right arm, please help me,” his colleague cried. “I know,” Faizullah replied. “I’ll get you out, if we’re alive. I’m not going to leave you. ” As they cowered, reciting the Islamic profession of faith, more shrapnel struck them. Three times, Faizullah tried to stand them up, struggling with the bulky Satar, whose legs seemed to be paralyzed, before another explosion would send them sprawling. The sound of the blasts was the hardest thing to bear. By the time the gunship’s fire moved on to another part of the hospital, the air had filled with acrid smoke, and Faizullah could hear the sound of flames licking the building. He got to his feet and pulled at Satar’s arm. He was limp and silent. He’s dead, Faizullah thought, and I’ll die if I stay here. In the darkness, he heard a voice. “Please forgive me for whatever happened, because I’m going to die. Take care of my children. ” Making his way forward, Faizullah saw that it was the young room doctor, Amin, sitting in a doorway, talking on his cellphone. His right leg was missing at the knee, and blood was spurting and pooling underneath him. “It’s going to catch fire!” Amin shouted, seeing Faizullah. “We have to get out. ” Amin heaved himself onto his remaining leg and hopped through the filled emergency room, and Faizullah followed him out, through the entrance into the covered driveway, where Amin clutched the row of pillars that lined it. “I can’t move,” he gasped, and so Faizullah slung him over his back and staggered out onto the front lawn of the hospital, where they collapsed in the grass. As they looked back at the hospital, another round of shells struck the driveway where they had just been standing, partly collapsing its roof. The hospital was on fire now, its flames leaping up and setting tall pine trees alight. The lawn was lit with its dancing orange flame. From inside, Faizullah could hear the screams of people burning alive. Sixteen service members have been disciplined for their role in the airstrike, but the military has declined to pursue criminal charges. The military has argued that while both the Special Forces and the crew made serious errors, and in doing so violated the Geneva Conventions, they were not guilty of crimes because they had not known they were targeting a hospital. “The label ‘war crimes’ is typically reserved for intentional acts — intentional targeting of civilians or intentionally targeting protected objects or locations,” Gen. Joseph Votel said. Hutchinson was relieved of command and reprimanded, but he was recently assigned as his battalion’s executive officer, according to Representative Hunter’s office. It is true, as the report states, that there was a pileup of mistakes and technical problems, without any one of which the strike might have been averted. An antenna that would have allowed the gunship to send video of its target to the Special Forces, and to receive an email sent by its headquarters with the M. S. F. hospital’s coordinates, stopped working shortly after takeoff. Later, the Special Forces headquarters at Bagram sent a Predator drone to observe the wrong N. D. S. location on the other side of the city, and as a result wasn’t watching the strike when it started. Most important, because the strike was carried out under the special others designation given to the Afghan commandos, it didn’t have to be approved by anyone besides Hutchinson and the aircraft commander. Hutchinson, who was inside the police compound, claimed that he thought he saw the K. K. A. convoy nearby and then heard them come under gun fire. In fact, the report states, the convoy was still five and a half miles away from the target and had not yet been attacked. The investigators concluded that Hutchinson violated the rules of engagement and stated that his “version of events surrounding his decision to authorize the strike is internally inconsistent, implausible and contradicted by other available sources of credible information. ” But Hutchinson was arguably only doing what he was asked to do by his ups: fight with Afghan forces to retake the city of Kunduz as quickly as possible. “If someone must be held accountable, let it not be the man who was ordered to without being given a parachute,” a Green Beret officer in Kunduz — his name is redacted — said, complaining of “moral cowardice” and an “abject failure of leadership. ” As a result of the defense justification, an airstrike against a building — which would normally have gone all the way to General Campbell for approval — could be approved on the spot. These safeguards around airstrikes (which succeeded in reducing civilian casualties from airstrikes, to 204 in 2012 from 353 in 2011, according to United Nations figures) were intended not only to prevent simple errors or collateral damage but also to avoid acting on bad intelligence provided by Afghan sources, who had in the past been careless in passing on unverified rumor as fact, or even seeking to maliciously use American air power to target their rivals. This, in turn, raises the question of what targeting information was provided by the Afghan forces. The military has focused on the N. D. S. headquarters’ coordinates, which the gunship’s targeting system mistakenly indicated as an open field. But those grids were passed to the Special Forces at 6 p. m. when the Afghans informed them of their plan of attack for that night. When Hutchinson asked them, seven hours later, after the confusion with the gunship’s targeting system, about the compound to strike, they gave a description of a “long shaped building” with a facing gate, which he in turn passed to the gunship. Maj. Gen. William Hickman, who led the military’s investigation, described this as “an ambiguous physical description” that “appeared to match the M. S. F. trauma center. ” But it’s actually a rather specific description that corresponds to M. S. F. ’s distinctive layout. It does not at all resemble the N. D. S. headquarters, which is a trapezoidal compound with a facing gate and two main rectangular buildings facing each other across a cramped courtyard. Indeed, according to the report, when the returned to a normal altitude, the sensor operator, worried that the navigation system had failed earlier, tried punching in the original grid coordinates, and this time it aimed his sensor at the N. D. S. headquarters. The crew members then did a “ comparison” of the N. D. S. and M. S. F. sites using both of their sensors, but based on Hutchinson’s description, they decided that they were 100 percent confident that the shaped building was their target. Hutchinson and the other Special Forces on the ground later told investigators that the Afghans had a second target that night, in addition to the N. D. S. headquarters. They all claimed not to know or recall what exactly it was. “There was actually two targets they said they were going to hit, but they didn’t even have a location for the other one, so we didn’t concern ourselves much with it,” Hutchinson said. Another Green Beret said the Afghans had provided two sets of coordinates, one for the N. D. S. headquarters and the second for what was described as an insurgent control location, but he didn’t know precisely what the other grid referred to. “I don’t recall and don’t want to speculate,” said a third, who claimed to have passed both grids to the aircraft. A member of the gunship crew also said they received “multiple grids” that night. Could the second target have been the hospital? Did Afghan forces, influenced by their longstanding animosity for M. S. F. believe that it had become a Taliban headquarters and needed to be taken out? Unless their findings have been redacted, the military’s investigators seemed not to have probed these questions. When I interviewed them in November, none of the Afghan forces would claim responsibility for passing on the description to the Special Forces. Yaftali, the K. K. A. commander, said that the decision to strike the hospital was made by the United States and that it was unfortunate but justified. “They were firing R. P. G.s at us from the direction of the hospital,” he said. “The Americans were aware that they were firing from there,” said Captain Munib, an Afghan commando who was partnered with American forces in Kunduz. The K. K. A. “had reported to them that the Taliban were there, and then they hit it. ” (Independent investigations have revealed no evidence to suggest that armed Taliban fighters were inside the hospital or firing from nearby.) In fairness, much like their American partners, the Afghan special forces sent up from Kabul were reliant on information from local sources, who had longstanding views about M. S. F. ’s role in Kunduz. “That hospital is in the service of the Taliban,” Gard said when I visited him in Kunduz. “I swear to God, if they make it a hundred times, we’ll destroy it a hundred times. ” Is there still a place in today’s wars for a hospital to treat all sides? On May 3, denouncing a pattern of attacks against medical facilities in conflict zones, the United Nations Security Council adopted Resolution 2286, which called for an end to impunity for those responsible. Oddly, some of the individuals seated around the Security Council’s shaped table represented countries involved in these strikes. In Yemen, for example, the military coalition led by Saudi Arabia and supported with American and British intelligence and weaponry has repeatedly struck medical facilities it bombed an M. S. F. clinic on Oct. 26, despite having been provided with its coordinates. In Syria, M. S. F. does not provide coordinates of the medical facilities it supports to the Assad regime or the Russian forces backing it, out of fear that the information will be used to target them. Aid and human rights groups have accused both governments of deliberately attacking medical facilities, including an M. S. F. supported hospital in northern Syria on Feb. 15, an accusation they have denied. “Can we provide treatment to whoever you consider to be your enemy?” said Jonathan Whittall, M. S. F. ’s head of humanitarian analysis. “When you look at the track record of the last few months, when four out of the five permanent members of the Security Council have been involved in bombing M. S. F. facilities, it’s a question that we urgently need to have answered. ” In Afghanistan, health facilities remain under threat, both by the Taliban — who frequently commit war crimes like indiscriminately attacking civilians — and by the Afghan government. According to the United Nations, on Feb. 18, Afghan police commandos stormed into a clinic run by the Swedish Committee for Afghanistan and executed two patients and a teenage caretaker who were suspected of being insurgents. Jorgen Holmstrom, the S. C. A. ’s country director, told me that the commandos belonged to the 333 Battalion — the same unit that raided the M. S. F. hospital last July and participated in the battle for Kunduz — and were accompanied by British troops. (A spokesman for Resolute Support stated that its investigation found “absolutely no evidence to support that allegation” of executions and declined to comment on which units were present.) In Kunduz, the hospital remains in ruins, and its staff has struggled to make sense of what happened. Faizullah, the archivist, survived, but his young friend Amin did not. “Whenever I went to sleep for two minutes, I was just seeing the bombing and the killing and the dead bodies,” Faizullah said. Once the airstrike ended, Esmat tried to suture Amin’s severed femoral artery on a makeshift operating table, but to no avail. Madina, the little girl, lived through Esmat’s operation but not the bombing. Her family found her two days afterward and buried her with her big sister. “We tried to save her, but she died,” Esmat said, picking his way through the rubble. “She died, and she burned. ” The walls around us still stood, but the roof was open to the gray winter sky. Editor’s note: The United States military initially declined to comment and referred questions to the Afghan government, which also declined to comment. After this article went to press, Peter Cook, the Pentagon’s spokesman, said in a statement: “The comprehensive investigation that followed the Kunduz tragedy determined that all members of both the ground force and the aircrew were unaware that the aircraft was firing on a medical facility throughout the engagement. The investigation ultimately concluded that this tragic incident was caused by a combination of human errors, compounded by process and equipment failures. ” | 0fake |
Paul Ryan Makes PERFECT Argument For Medicare For All; Dumbass Didn’t Even Realize (TWEETS) | Sometimes you just need to let people talk and they ll eventually say what you have been saying the whole time. Albeit, it may be accidental. And in this case, liberals should take what they can get when it comes to Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) giving a the perfect argument for Medicare for all. They should also not let him forget it.While trying to make the Affordable Care Act look bad, Ryan accidentally made the perfect argument for Medicare for all.Ryan tweeted out: With another insurer leaving the Iowa insurance market, more Americans will be left without a choice when it comes to their health care. With another insurer leaving the Iowa insurance market, more Americans will be left without a choice when it comes to their health care. https://t.co/4agdcFoqLz Paul Ryan (@SpeakerRyan) April 8, 2017Then follows it up with this: Five Iowa counties will now be left with just two health insurers, while the rest will only have one option. This is unacceptable. Five Iowa counties will now be left with just two health insurers, while the rest will only have one option. This is unacceptable. Paul Ryan (@SpeakerRyan) April 8, 2017Now, first of all, if Iowa had set up Obamacare properly, they d have their own health exchange and not put you to the national website. This would have also subsequently given Iowa insurers the ability to work directly with the state. Secondly, when for-profit companies are given the ability to mess with people s care for the sake of profit and to try to prove a point that something isn t working they will do so.Thus, when all is said and done, this is the perfect argument for Medicare for all, OR at least a public option. A public option would provide a guaranteed option for citizens of any state, as well as provide competition in the for-profit world of health insurance, which would then drive down costs across the board (yay, true capitalism and not a manipulative market!). Medicare for all would be ideal, yet not as realistic at the moment, and would provide care to every single American. Imagine that! Taxes being used for tax payers!When all is said and done, we can thank Paul Ryan for this perfect meme to use against him time and time again. Well done, Speaker!Featured Photo by Olivier Douliery/Getty Images | 1real |
Huma Abedin In BIG TROUBLE As FBI Learns Dirty Thing She Did Back In June | Share This
Although the majority of attention seems to be on Hillary Clinton these days, it seems that her entire staff is currently under speculation. In fact, Huma Abedin is in a bit more trouble than she bargained for after the dirty thing she did to the FBI back in June – and it could be coming back to bite her.
As much of the nation is aware, the FBI recently thrust Hillary’s campaign into chaos by announcing that they reopened the presidential hopeful’s criminal email case. However, she’s not the only one under a microscope. Huma, who is Hillary’s closest aide, just got some seriously bad news . Hillary Clinton (left) and her closest aide, Huma Abedin (right)
For those unaware, the FBI recently announced that they came into some new emails that may be pertinent to Hillary’s case. Come to find out, Huma had actually left them on a computer that she shared with her husband, disgraced congressman and alleged pedophile Anthony Weiner.
However, the bad news doesn’t end there as Huma actually said under oath in a sworn deposition that she looked for all devices that she thought contained government work and handed them over to the State Department. With this taking place on June 28, 2016, it looks like Hillary’s little helper actually perjured herself in order to defend her boss.
Unfortunately for her, she seems to be having a rough time. In fact, a picture was released on the day that the FBI made the announcement, and it seems to show a crying Huma abord Hillary’s plane: Image surfaces of Huma Abedin crying on plane as Clinton Campaign finds out the FBI has re-opened the email investigation. #HillarysEmails pic.twitter.com/2yIUgiYOsV
— REGATED (@regated) October 29, 2016
Making matters worse for her, reports further indicate that Huma wasn’t on Hillary’s plane on Saturday with no signs of her return in site. According to speculation, many believe that she may actually be sitting down with lawyers in an attempt to get ahead of the backlash coming her way: #Hillarysemail Huma Abedin is not on the plane with #HillaryClinton today. She must be freaking out especially since she signed this doc. pic.twitter.com/KOwI5rN1pW
— Trump Street Team FL (@ChatRevolve) October 29, 2016
When it comes down to it, Americans are sick and tired of being lied to by crooked Hillary and her campaign. We’re done with watching the political elite get away with things that others would be in prison for. However, it seems as though the tides are changing and Hillary and her goons could find themselves living in a cage for the next few years just like they deserve.
However, it seems as though the tides are changing and Hillary and her goons could find themselves living in a cage for the next few years just like they deserve. Her White House dreams are turning into a jailhouse nightmare, and it’s long overdue. | 1real |
Ben & Jerry Tell Us Why Pulling Out Of Paris Climate Deal Was The Right Move | Ben and Jerry, the ber liberal Vermont ice cream guys, are no fans of Donald Trump and in a blistering and sarcastic op-ed, they sarcastically explained how pulling out of the Paris climate treaty was the right thing to do.The op-ed, on their website, is tongue-in-cheek, but also bitter (a terrible suggestion for a Ben & Jerry s flavor). They talk about the jobs that will be lost:We hear China is ramping up their renewable energy production and it sure looks like a lot of work. Beijing alone plans to invest $360 billion in renewables by 2020, creating more than 13 million jobs. But jobs are work! Work is hard! It s so much easier to luxuriate in the status quo, driving our fossil-fuel-powered cars and enjoying our coal-created electricity like we always have.It s also quite personal for them. The cost of cocoa beans and vanilla will rise dramatically over the coming years.Then, there s the fact that we are one of only three countries who have chosen not to participate. That means we will no longer have a seat at the table and it means that for all intents and purposes, we can no longer call ourselves a superpower.Ben & Jerry go on to talk about the wonderful ocean views we ll all soon have:Who doesn t love oceanfront property? With runaway climate change melting glaciers and causing sea levels to rise at unprecedented rates, a whole lot more of us could be seeing waves from our bedroom windows. Sure, some folks might lose their homes and businesses, and our coastal cities could see devastating changes, but a whole lot of people will also be able to learn how to surf right in their backyards. Sounds like a fair tradeoff to us.They also look forward to the impending world crises, which make life exciting. We can see it now: 13.1 Million US Homes Flooded Boat Sales Surge, World Refuses to Cooperate with US Foreign Policy, US Sulks Like Angsty Teenager, and Hundreds of Plants and Animals Now Extinct, US Says We Never Liked Polar Bears Anyway. Then, there s the fact that the world is ready to take the reins, with or without us. We are the second largest emitter of greenhouse gasses and we are leaving it up to everyone else to clean up our messes.Featured image via theimpulsiovebuy/Flickr | 1real |
Oregon Won’t Prosecute Baby’s Abuser Because He’s Too Young To Testify | An anguished Oregon couple took to social media this week in hopes of getting justice for their one-year-old son, Jacob, who was beaten by a babysitter two months ago.Pictures posted to Facebook show scrapes, cuts, a black eye and deep bruises which were left on the baby s face and arms during the vicious assault.Image credit: Joshua Marbury via FacebookWe can t even imagine the amount of trauma he must have experienced, all at the hands of an adult who was supposed to protect and care for him.Image credit: Joshua Marbury via FacebookJacob s parents, Alicia Quinney and Joshua Marbury spoke to Oregon Live on Friday. The first thing I saw was a black eye, Quinney said. I thought maybe marker got on his face or something. When he turned over, his whole right side of his face black and blue. Quinney told Oregon Live that she knew right away that the babysitter had hurt him.She took Jacob to the hospital. Police met her there and opened an investigation into the assault.But prosecutors informed Jacob s parents that no charges will be filed against the person who did this to their son.As Oregon Live reports:Washington County Deputy District Attorney Dustin Staten emailed Quinney a link to a story published by The Oregonian/OregonLive detailing the challenges the law poses for prosecutors. The headline: Even pets are better protected than young kids under Oregon abuse laws, prosecutors say. To convict a suspected child abuser of felony assault or criminal mistreatment, the article explained, prosecutors must prove that the victim suffered a physical injury under Oregon law. That means proving the child experienced substantial pain. The article explains that:Appellate rulings have made that hard to prove if victims can t talk about the extent of their suffering. Prosecutors say children younger than 5 often aren t able to articulate substantial pain. The same can be true for older children with developmental disabilities or those who don t want to speak out against their abusers.In essence the law leaves vulnerable young children like Jacob completely unprotected.Quinney took to Facebook to express her outrage over the state s completely irrational and irresponsible law, writing:After TWO months of waiting we only find out that charges are dropped BECAUSE my one year old cannot tell you verbally he was abused and my son did not show he was in pain OR that this person intentionally did this. I am SO furious that I m not using profanity HOPING something is done and this goes viral.Quinney goes on to say that Portland authorities have a verbal confession. As Raw Story reports here, they also have multiple statements from medical professionals who showed Quinney how the bruises on her baby were handprints. Even with all of that, the law still makes it almost impossible to prove the case.Animals can t talk, yet animal abuse is prosecuted in the state of Oregon. How is it possible that a helpless infant has fewer protections under the law than an animal?Quinney points out in her post: A dead body cant tell you who killed them. Yet a baby isn t held to the same standard because he can t talk? Well neither can a dead body. THAT S BLASPHEMY. You waited 2 months if not longer to tell us this? Something needs to be done. NOBODY can just hit a child and more to just get away with it because the child cant verbally tell you. There s no doubt that Oregonians need to change these outrageous laws. The law should protect the most vulnerable among us. Instead, in Oregon, the law excludes the most vulnerable from protection. That s not acceptable.Featured image via Joshua Marbury on Facebook | 1real |
Clinton backer George Clooney condemns 'obscene' sums in White House race | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Actor and director George Clooney, a supporter of Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid, broke ranks over campaign financing on Saturday to condemn the “obscene” sums of money in U.S. politics and praised Clinton’s chief political rival in the process. Clooney made the remarks in an interview with NBC News’ “Meet The Press” the day after he and his wife, Amal, hosted a fundraiser on Democratic Party hopeful Clinton’s behalf Friday night with a price tag of up to $353,400 per couple. “We had some protesters last night when we pulled up in San Francisco and they’re right to protest. They’re absolutely right. It is an obscene amount of money,” Clooney said in excerpts released on Saturday. The interview will air on Sunday. Bernie Sanders, a U.S. Senator from Vermont and Clinton’s rival in the race for the Democratic nomination to run for the White House in the Nov. 8 election, has pounced on former secretary of state Clinton over the big-ticket event and for accepting large sums of money for her campaign. “The Sanders campaign when they talk about it is absolutely right. It’s ridiculous that we should have this kind of money in politics. I agree completely,” Clooney said. In response to the dinner, the Sanders campaign on Friday evening sent out an email to supporters asking them to help reach their fundraising goals by chipping in $3.53 apiece, instead. | 0fake |
Boiler Room EP #124 – Weather Warfare & CNN Goblin Pits | 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 Jay Dyer of Jay s Analysis and Andy Nowicki the Nameless One, for the hundred and twenty fourth 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 ongoing aftermath of the Charlottesville protests, Hurricane Harvey, weather warfare, geoengineering, movies, CNN faking flood rescues and more.Direct Download Episode #124Please like and share the program and visit our donate page to get involved! Reference Links, for your consideration and research: | 1real |
Woman Uses Milk And Gelatin To Remove Blackheads | posted by Eddie I’m the kind of person who notices every little thing on my face. Now, I may not act on everything little thing that “pops” up, so-to-speak, but I definitely notice! A stray eyebrow hair? Yeah, I see you there. A little pimple: how could I miss it? But none of these things compare to the feeling of finding a little patch of nasty blackheads popping up. I get them around my chin and nose. And, honestly, I really don’t know how to effectively deal with them at home. So, I end up popping them. Anyone who has ever done this knows that nine times out of ten, popped blackhead will turn into something way worse! I got sick of the whole process. Get rid of a blackhead to get a pimple instead? No thanks. So that’s why I got really excited to see a natural remedy I could try at home. If you’re anything like me, you’ll definitely want to check this out, too. When you try it, make sure to snap a pic and upload it in the comments so everyone can see how awesome this blackhead mask is in action! Here is how you transform your face for the better–naturally! 1. Get the ingredients: milk and gelatin.
Since you’ll be putting these things directly on your face, I highly recommend choosing high-quality options here. Also, make sure the gelatin is unflavored. 2. Measure, then mix.
Put the gelatin (1 Tablespoon) in a container first, then add the milk (1-2 Tablespoons). Mix. 3. Rinse your face while microwaving the mix for 15 seconds.
The heat makes this mix so soft. You’ll want to put it on straight away to ensure the desired smoothness. 4. Apply the warm mixture to your face.
You can spread this mix all over or do some spot treatments — your choice. Just remember to use it quickly! 5. Let it soak in!
Grab your smartphone; you’ve got about 15 minutes to spare here. Better yet, take note and make some funny faces in the mirror. 6. Start peeling away those nasties!
Once it’s dry, grab a corner and start slowing peeling. Get ready to be amazed! 7. Pull! Make sure to get them all!
This is the most satisfying part — seeing all those disgusting blackheads meet their fate.
Source: | 1real |
WATCH: Morning Joe RIPS Trump For Leaking Classified Info To Russians, Demands Accountability | Joe Scarborough is furious about Donald Trump and he is demanding that Republicans take action before our national security is seriously compromised.Throughout the 2016 campaign, Trump repeatedly criticized Hillary Clinton for using a personal server to read emails containing sensitive information. But while Clinton s emails were never hacked or read by anyone but her, Trump is going around bragging about highly classified intelligence and sharing it with the Russians.As we learned on Monday, Trump literally leaked the intel during an Oval Office meeting with Russian officials last week, the same meeting that American journalists were barred from covering while Russia state media was given free access.In short, Trump is a hypocrite who put the security of our nation in jeopardy because he is incapable of keeping his mouth shut.So it was not a surprise that Joe Scarborough, a former Republican congressman, exploded in anger on Tuesday morning over what should be considered yet another Russia scandal.The Morning Joe host delivered a scathing statement denouncing Trump and called upon the current Republicans in Congress to hold him accountable instead of cowardly ignoring a major breach of protocol. It s not enough for Mitch McConnell and conservative talk show hosts to simply attack the lamestream media or Nancy Pelosi, Scarborough said. Americans will not buy that. That s a cowardly act, and it s intended to hold onto as much of the audience that they can hold onto without embracing Trump. At this point, if you do not call him out for risking American lives and doing things that most intel people I spoke with last night said will lead to the death of Americans in the future or lead to the death of critical allies in this counterinsurgency battle against ISIS, then you are doing a grave disservice to your voters or to your listeners or to the United States of America. There is no middle ground here anymore there just isn t. This is about national security in the United States of America. Indeed, Trump s blabbing put an asset at risk, one who is familiar with the inner workings of ISIS, a terrorist organization that wants to kill Americans.According to the Washington Post,Trump s disclosures jeopardized a critical source of intelligence on the Islamic State.The information the president relayed had been provided by a U.S. partner through an intelligence-sharing arrangement considered so sensitive that details have been withheld from allies and tightly restricted even within the U.S. government, officials said.The partner had not given the United States permission to share the material with Russia, and officials said Trump s decision to do so endangers cooperation from an ally that has access to the inner workings of the Islamic State.As a candidate, Trump claimed that he would protect this country from ISIS, but by handing out classified information like it s candy, he just put our nation at serious risk and violated the trust of an asset, who is also now in serious jeopardy, which means our ability to get good intel on ISIS is compromised.In the end, Scarborough noted that Donald Trump just keeps getting worse. Here s the problem, the arc of this narrative keeps getting worse. People on the inside say he keeps getting worse, mentally keeps getting worse. This is not, unfortunately, a learning curve this is a man in decline. Here s the video via VidMe.It s time for Republicans to admit that they screwed up by supporting Donald Trump. It s time for them to oust this administration and schedule a new election so that the American people can put someone in the White House who is competent and not Putin s puppet. This farce has gone on long enough and American lives are more in danger the longer Trump remains in office.Featured image via screenshot | 1real |
Islamic State to fight 'till the end' in Raqqa: U.S. coalition spokesman | KOBANI, Syria (Reuters) - Islamic State fighters in the Syrian city of Raqqa are expected to fight to the death, but some local militants have surrendered recently as U.S.-backed forces close in on their last strongholds, a U.S. coalition spokesman said on Wednesday. Colonel Ryan Dillon said officials in the Raqqa Civil Council, which is to govern the city after IS has been driven out, were working to negotiate the safe passage of thousands of civilians being held hostage. But the coalition would not support any negotiated withdrawal of fighters, he said. The coalition would not be party to a negotiated settlement. (But) we re jumping ahead of anything that s being discussed right now ... as (the council) try to get civilians out, he told Reuters by phone. Up to 400 militants are believed to remain in a small part of Raqqa surrounded by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) alliance of Kurdish and Arab militias, he said. The foreign fighters (in IS), we fully expect them to fight till the end - there s a hardcore of (foreign) fighters. But we have seen a rate of four to five ISIS fighters surrendering a week, including emirs - local leaders within Raqqa - over the past month, Dillon said, using another acronym for Islamic State. The SDF said on Sunday it expected Raqqa s capture to be announced within days. Islamic State took over the city in 2014 as it seized swathes of Syria and Iraq. Raqqa served as the group s de facto Syrian capital, from where Islamic State plotted deadly attacks abroad. | 0fake |
Germany could send more soldiers to Afghanistan: defense minister | MAZAR-I-SHARIF, Afghanistan (Reuters) - Germany s defense minister said on Tuesday she wanted to boost the German presence in Afghanistan, in the first public indication that Berlin could accept a U.S. call for more soldiers to help reverse territorial gains by Taliban insurgents. Germany currently has 980 soldiers stationed in the Hindu Kush mountains as part of a NATO mission to train Afghan security forces, the second biggest national contingent after the United States. The soldiers, and especially the trainers, are telling me: We have enough trainers but we could do significantly more if we had better protective components, more security personnel, Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen said during a visit to the northern Afghan city of Mazar-i-Sharif. Von der Leyen added that the German parliament would have to approve any additional deployments. The minister is a member of Chancellor Angela Merkel s conservatives and has said she hopes to retain her job in a new coalition government currently being negotiated. Merkel hopes to forge another grand coalition with the center-left Social Democrats (SPD) like the one that has led Germany for the past four years. The SPD is generally more cautious about defense spending and sending German troops abroad. U.S. President Donald Trump in August authorized an increase in U.S. troops to train Afghan security forces and carry out counter-terrorism operations, hoping to reverse gains by Taliban insurgents and compel them to agree to peace talks. On Monday von der Leyen criticized the rapid reduction in forces since the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) wound up in Afghanistan in 2014, and she called for a longer-term commitment in the Hindu Kush mountains. At the peak of the ISAF mission around 150,000 foreign soldiers were deployed in the Hindu Kush. There are now around 17,000, of whom 10,000 are Americans. Germany increased the upper limit to its Afghanistan mandate to 980 soldiers from 850 in 2016, at a time when the United States and most other countries were reducing their forces. Von der Leyen called for negotiations between the Afghan government and the Taliban, saying the Afghan security forces could apply pressure to those Taliban who were ready to negotiate. Only that will lead to success in the long-term, she added. | 0fake |
U.S. consumer financial agency's backers seek to fight for it in court | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Two lawmakers and six consumer advocacy groups on Thursday sought to join a court case involving the U.S. consumer financial watchdog as worries that President Donald Trump will dismantle the agency reached a fever pitch. Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Representative Maxine Waters of California petitioned a federal court to be allowed to intervene on behalf of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in its appeal of a decision that its structure is unconstitutional. Meanwhile, six groups including U.S. Public Interest Research Group made a similar request. The ruling, that the president should be able to remove CFPB Director Richard Cordray at will, has been stayed pending appeal. Currently the director can only be fired for cause. The filings followed a request from state attorneys general to also be able to intervene in the case. Currently the whole U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit is deciding whether to review the ruling in a case brought by mortgage servicer PHH Corp [PHH.N]. It could announce it will take the appeal, which most watchers expect, as early as next week. Republicans want Trump to remove Cordray, saying the director has gone beyond his authority and provided cause to be fired. Trump has met with former Texas Representative Randy Neugebauer, a CFPB critic, indicating Trump is already seeking Cordray’s replacement. Also, Republican Senator Deb Fischer, of Nebraska, recently introduced legislation to put a commission in charge of the CFPB, and there is a good chance it will become law. “There’s quite a lot of reasons to be concerned,” said Michael Burr, faculty director at University of Michigan’s Center on Finance. “It would be devastating to the very people who supported President Trump to attack and dismantle the CFPB.” The CFPB, created in the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform law to guard individuals from fraud in mortgages, student loans and other financial products, does not need permission from the Justice Department to file cases in courts below the Supreme Court. That means Trump may also ask the Justice Department to file a brief in opposition in the appeal, essentially setting two agencies against each other, said Mark Calabria, who studies the CFPB for the conservative Cato Institute. | 0fake |
Uganda's president boosts military unit as rural support slips away | BUSHENYI, Uganda (Reuters) - When Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni returned to his home region to throw an Independence Day party last month, the uniformed security outnumbered the small crowd of bored spectators. Museveni slowly drove past the crowd, a mix of schoolchildren and farmers, in a top-of-the-range pick-up truck, giving them a wide smile and a thumbs-up, the ruling party symbol. He was met with blank stares. The apathy - on a continent where strongman rulers are traditionally feted in their home areas - reveals the slow leaching away of political support from one of Africa s longest-serving rulers. Now, as his party plans to extend his rule, the president is increasingly reliant on a military unit from his home area, the Special Forces Command, to quell dissent over collapsing public services, corruption, growing poverty and brutality by security services. We ve had enough of him, said butcher Steven Ruturukirira bluntly. In a lengthy speech, the 73-year-old Museveni studiously ignored the day s hot topic: a legislative plan to remove the 75-year age limit for the presidency, clearing the way to extend his leadership of the oil-rich nation. The pursuit of social and economic transformation of Africa is not a simple matter. It calls for visionary leadership, Museveni told the crowd. Relieved to see Uganda freed from the yoke of brutal dictators, the West has given Museveni an easy ride over the last three decades, glad of his support against radical Islam and his role as power broker in the volatile Great Lakes Region. Uganda has also welcomed foreign investors like France s Total, China s CNOOC and Britain s Tullow, who hope to start pumping 6.5 billion barrels worth of crude reserves through a planned $3.55 billion pipeline. But as the opposition makes inroads in urban areas, Museveni relies on support in rural heartlands, as well as his special forces, exacerbating ethnic tensions and potentially sowing the seeds for conflagration when he eventually leaves power. Currently, the age cap bars Museveni from standing in Uganda s next elections, scheduled for 2021. But last month a ruling party lawmaker introduced a bill to scrap the rule. The government gave each MP $8,000 to help them consult voters on the bill, provoking fury among ordinary citizens like quarry worker Ronald Malongo, 27, who is among a growing number of Ugandans who make less than a dollar a day. Museveni works only for his stomach and those around him, Malongo panted as he lifted a load of granite. We re trash to him. An opinion survey of 1,200 Ugandans by pollster Afrobarometer a year ago found three quarters opposed the bill. Some legislators trying to promote it were met with jeers or violence in their home constituencies, media reported. Protests have been crushed by riot police, killing two. Opposition lawmakers tried to filibuster the bill in September, but said they were forcibly ejected from parliament by the Special Forces Command (SFC), a loyalist military unit heavily staffed with soldiers from Museveni s Hima ethnic group. Several MPs sustained serious injuries, like Ibrahim Ssemujju Nganda, who said SFC forces dragged him from the debating chamber and choked him in a nearby room. Uganda is gradually moving into some sort of a military regime, he said. I don t see Museveni turning back, he has a group around him that can t allow a change (because they are profiting from this). At the time, the police chief told television reporters he had invited sister security agencies into parliament, a euphemism usually used for the military. But military spokesman Richard Karemire denied soldiers had ejected legislators or strangled Nganda, telling Reuters: Uganda is not a military state ... it s a democracy. Estimated at about 10,000, SFC has evolved from a small presidential guard to a fully fledged branch of the military that enjoys better welfare and training and controls superior equipment. Soldiers in the SFC get an $80 per month food basket allowance that ordinary soldiers don t get. That s a powerful incentive when the number of Ugandans who spend less than a dollar a day has surged to 27 percent of the population, up from 20 percent five years ago, according to the statistics office. The starting wage for an ordinary soldiers is $105. The unit also gets better housing, training, and weapons than regular soldiers, two military officers told Reuters on condition of anonymity. It s an army within an army, one the officers said. It was formerly commanded by Museveni s son, Major General Muhoozi Kainerugaba, now a presidential adviser. Many believe he is being prepared to succeed his father after a military general, David Sejusa, wrote a widely published letter to the head of internal security in 2013. Sejusa, an old comrade of Museveni s, asked for an investigation into an alleged plot to assassinate top government officials opposed to the Museveni family project of holding onto power in perpetuity . Sejusa fled to the United Kingdom but returned to Uganda in 2014. He remains in the military, which bars him from politics, but has been sidelined from power. Kainerugaba s successor at the head of the SFC is also from the Hima ethnic group. Other prominent members include military chief David Muhoozi, and Museveni s wife, Janet, the education minister. SFC is ethnic, it s an army built on ethnic lines, said Nganda, a former member of a parliamentary committee that oversees the military. The danger with rewarding ethnic loyalists with favors and privileges is that beneficiaries will not sit back and watch power slide out of their hands, Uganda political analyst Nicholas Sengoba said. These people will try by hook or crook to maintain the status quo, he said. That is where you have potential for violence. | 0fake |
John Oliver MERCILESSLY Takes Apart The GOP For Making Up ‘Bullshit’ Rule (VIDEO) | John Oliver absolutely humiliated Mitch McConnell and the GOP for vowing to block any Supreme Court nominee picked by President Obama.During his show on Sunday, Oliver had wanted to recap the last three months he has missed since going on break, but due to the unexpected death of Justice Antonin Scalia he changed the plan and focused instead on how Republicans vowed to obstruct President Obama from filling Scalia s empty seat on the bench.Indeed, Scalia s body wasn t even cold yet before Republicans declared their willingness to desecrate the Constitution he loved so much, and Oliver ripped them apart for it. There is now a huge vacancy on the Supreme Court that needs to be filled, or if you listened to the Republicans in the last 24 hours not, Oliver began before showing a clip of Donald Trump telling Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to delay, delay, delay until a new president can fill the seat in 2017. And Oliver really slammed McConnell since he often obstructs anything President Obama and Democrats try to get done. Well, that does not bode well because Mitch McConnell is actually pretty good at delaying things for people whether it s legislation, court appointments, or orgasms. Believe me, if you ever need to delay, delay, delay an orgasm, just picture this face and I guarantee you nothing will happen possibly for the rest of your life. Oliver then took aim at the Strom Thurmond Rule, an unwritten rule in the Senate that supposedly dictates that presidents can t nominate Supreme Court Justices in the last six months of their final year in office. Yes, the Strom Thurmond Rule. Now, I m not surprised that there is one but I thought that it was always about hush money required to keep your secret family a secret or how racist an old person is allowed to become before their age is no longer an excuse. Oliver then revealed McConnell as a hypocrite for even bringing up this bullshit rule because he has condemned its use in the past, specifically in 2008. And yes, there s video, which Oliver happily played. Our Democratic colleagues continually talk about the so-called Thurmond Rule, under which the Senate supposedly stops confirming judges in a presidential election year, McConnell said on the Senate floor. This seeming obsession with this rule that doesn t exist is an excuse for our colleagues to run out the clock on qualified nominees who are waiting to fill badly needed vacancies. Yes, it seems the Thurmond Rule is a bit like God: when things are going your way, you don t bring it up a lot, Oliver pointed out. But as soon as you re in trouble it is all that you talk about. He also pointed out that the rule is about the last six months of a presidency, which for President Obama doesn t begin until July 20th. He also pointed out that Republicans are shitting all over Scalia s memory by disobeying Article II Section II of the Constitution which says the president shall appoint judges of the Supreme Court with the advice and consent of the Senate.In other words, Senate Republicans must do their job just as President Obama must do his.But as Oliver noted, leave it to Republicans to honor Scalia s memory by stretching the definition of late term. Here s the video via YouTube. Featured image from screen capture | 1real |
Los Angeles Charter School Advocates Win School Board Majority - Breitbart | Charter school advocates in the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) won a major victory Tuesday as two of their candidates won seats on the school board, giving them the majority. [Steve Zimmer, president of the LAUSD — the nation’s school district — lost in District 4 to teacher and attorney Nick Melvoin. Kelly Gonez also won a tight race in District 6 over Imelda Padilla, who was backed by the teachers’ unions. Gonez and Melvoin will join incumbents Monica Garcia and Ref Rodriguez, creating the majority of supporters on the board, reports the CBS local affiliate. The school board races involved millions of dollars in campaign spending, the Los Angeles Times reports, with the candidates expressing frustration at times over the amount of outside spending from charter school advocate groups and unions making an impact on the campaigns. According to the Times report: Outside groups funded by charter advocates painted Zimmer as a charter school foe. mailers characterized him as a militant, a protector of pedophiles and the mastermind of the school district’s debacle. Groups bankrolled by public employee unions tried to link Melvoin, 31, to Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos and President Trump, both of whom are extremely unpopular in Los Angeles. Neither of these portrayals were accurate. Zimmer has voted many times to approve new charter schools and Melvoin is a Democrat who has been critical of the Trump administration’s education policies. The unions reportedly spent some $2. 5 million on Zimmer’s campaign and more than $2. 34 million on that of Padilla. Charter school promoters spent upward of $5. 69 million on Melvoin’s campaign and $3. 3 million on that of Gonez. Charter school advocate Netflix chief executive Reed Hastings — a Democrat — donated $5 million to California Charter Schools Association Advocates, which managed much of the spending for the charter candidates. LAUSD has the highest number of charter schools and charter students of any other school district, though charters still only represent 16 percent of enrollment. | 0fake |
Cinema Is Dead? Telluride Says Not Yet - The New York Times | TELLURIDE, Colo. — Can we please kill the talk about the death of movies? Yes, it was a dreary summer. The box office was weak and the big Hollywood releases were weaker. Critics were grumpy. Audiences seemed indifferent. There was so much good television. And so the band struck up the funeral march, as it does every year, and the obituaries circulated on social media. Cinema is dead. (Again.) The donning of sackcloth and ashes for this art form is an annual ritual. But so is the Telluride Film Festival, which functions partly as a standing rebuke to such fatalism and gloom. The beauty of the mountain setting and this elegant former mining town’s distance from the stresses of New York, Los Angeles and Toronto have a way of dispelling pessimism. More consequentially, the festival here is a gathering of the faithful, consecrated to the cinephile religion. The local school gym and a hockey rink on the edge of town are temporarily converted into what screening M. C.’s unironically refer to as cathedrals of cinema. Everyone is a believer. Telluride began in the largely as a place to show old, rare and restored films, a commitment that survives in a robust program of classics and curiosities presented by prominent guest directors. And it seduces audiences with the promise that the future of film — the art if not the photochemical medium — will be as glorious as the past. Maybe this is mythmaking or wishful thinking, but having spent a few days here in the dark I prefer to regard it as hardheaded realism. Whatever the state of the industry or the prevailing winds in the culture and the digital economy, the integrity and specificity of cinema is a fact. And its vital signs are strong. Damien Chazelle’s “La La Land” is both an example of and an argument for the uniqueness of movies. A lavish and lovely musical romance, it is set in a Los Angeles populated by creative strivers. Two of these, a jazz pianist named Seb (Ryan Gosling) and a thesp (as the trades would say) named Mia (Emma Stone) meet cute in a gigantic traffic jam that doubles as a extravaganza. The next two hours follow the entwined, contrapuntal progress of their relationship and their careers, punctuated by more songs and ending in a swirl of piercing and complex emotion. “La La Land” is simultaneously a throwback and a gamble. Mr. Chazelle, whose previous features were “Whiplash” and “Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench,” affectionately nods at the tradition of movie musicals, invoking the MGM Technicolor gems of the ’50s and Jacques Demy’s “The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. ” But even though his Los Angeles has a decidedly retro vibe, there is something more than nostalgia at work here. At 31, Mr. Chazelle doesn’t just want to summon the old magic. He also wants to modernize it. The tantalizing question is whether, after the hosannas from critics here and at the Venice Film Festival, modern, millennial audiences will allow themselves to fall under the spell. My hunch is they will: The mixture of antiquarian precision and entrepreneurial that drives “La La Land” will be embraced by a generation for whom preservation and invention often go together. It will, in any case, reward literal moviegoers, those hardy souls willing to switch off the flat screen, silence the cellphone and sit quietly in a roomful of strangers. Cinema is an art form, but it is also a destination, a reason to get out of the house. From the viewer’s perspective, a movie is a nondomestic, nonserial experience, enclosed in time and space and, ideally, lingering in the mind after the lights go on and you stumble out into the world. Your perception is at least momentarily altered. A film festival is a collection of such experiences, an archipelago of worlds. You could drift from “La La Land” to Denis Villeneuve’s “Arrival,” an eerie and emotional movie that similarly evokes and updates the grandeur and mystery of past masterpieces. It shares some DNA with “2001” and “Solaris,” and stars Amy Adams as a linguist wrestling with grief and an imposing research assignment. Twelve black spaceships are hovering over Earth, and she must use her professional skills to figure out what their inhabitants want. “Arrival” is an elegant puzzle, an engrossing exercise in — for the protagonist, the filmmaker and the viewer alike. Mr. Villeneuve, assisted by Bradford Young’s haunting cinematography and Johann Johannsson’s menacing, melancholy score, creates a heady, sensual atmosphere in which the boundaries between thinking and feeling are artfully blurred. Which may just be another way of repeating that it’s a movie, rather than a franchise installment or a piece of digital entertainment. Maybe that sounds overly defensive. It’s hard, watching four or five films a day amid crowds of fellow pilgrims, to believe that you’re participating in something marginal, obsolescent or beleaguered. There are too many revelations, large and small. There is the exquisite lyricism and deep feeling of “Moonlight,” Barry Jenkins’s astonishing second feature, about a young black man’s coming of age in three piercing chapters. The film cracks open stereotypes and wears its empathy and its artistry on its sleeve. There is the prickly wit and delicious complication of “Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer,” Joseph Cedar’s ebullient comedy, with Richard Gere in the title role. There is the philosophical mischief of “Into the Inferno,” the latest documentary adventure from Werner Herzog, which follows him to the edges of volcanoes in search of cosmic meaning and human peculiarity. And then there are treasures in transit from Sundance, Berlin and Cannes, arriving on vapor trails of enthusiasm. Among these are Cristian Mungiu’s “Graduation,” Kenneth Lonergan’s “Manchester by the Sea,” Mia ’s “Things to Come” and, above all, Maren Ade’s “Toni Erdmann. ” Each one in its own way constitutes proof of life for movies. All of them, curiously, dwell at least partly on the complexities of parenthood. “Manchester” is a lacerating, but also frequently funny, study of the long aftermath of grief, with Casey Affleck as a man damaged by past trauma trying to help his nephew (Lucas Hedges). “Graduation” is about a Romanian doctor’s ethical struggles as he tries to help his daughter find a better future by studying abroad. “Things to Come” is a quiet midlife drama in which a philosophy professor (Isabelle Huppert) navigates disruptions in her family and her inner life. “Toni Erdmann,” though. If a single movie were enough to silence reports of the death of cinema, it would be this one, an German comedy set mostly in Bucharest. It you think that sounds preposterous, you’re not wrong. I hesitate to offer further description, since any attempt to characterize this film in conventional terms — as a story, a feminist satire of corporate behavior, a fable of global capitalism, an extended practical joke — would be woefully insufficient. It’s something new under the sun, a thrilling and discomfiting document of the present moment and also, like every movie that matters, a bulletin from the future. | 0fake |
IRONY: Trump Calls Chelsea Manning A ‘Traitor’ For Criticizing President Obama, Get HUMILIATED By Twitter | Donald Trump s hypocrisy was thrown square into his face.For eight years, Trump and conservatives repeatedly called President Obama weak, not to mention just about every other negative word in the book.But now Trump has the gall to call someone a traitor for criticizing President Obama exactly the same way Trump criticized him all these years.Just before President Obama left office, he commuted the sentence of Chelsea Manning, an army whistle-blower who was sentenced to serve 25 years in prison for leaking classified documents.Manning has been a critic of Obama, but despite that, President Obama signed off on the commutation anyway. He didn t expect thanks or loyalty in return.But Trump says it is treason to not kiss a president s ass after the president does something nice for you, which gives us a glimpse of what he will expect when it comes time for him to issue pardons and commutations.Ungrateful TRAITOR Chelsea Manning, who should never have been released from prison, is now calling President Obama a weak leader. Terrible! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 26, 2017And Trump just revealed himself as a hypocrite since he has also called Obama weak several times in the past, and the Internet response was humiliating.@realDonaldTrump shut the fuck up talia jane (@itsa_talia) January 26, 2017@realDonaldTrump Just like you always have. The people know Obama. The people love Obama. Worry about America and not your ego. Tony Posnanski (@tonyposnanski) January 26, 2017@realDonaldTrump FYI pic.twitter.com/b7CJlZVDlO Simon Cullen (@Simon_Cullen) January 26, 2017@realDonaldTrump Yes, because having her sentence commuted means Manning should be 100% LOYAL and NEVER criticize Obama! Christoph Rehage (@crehage) January 26, 2017@realDonaldTrump Ur standing up for Obama?, never thought i d see the day after how you and your band of nazi warriors degraded him 8 years Diva (@sammypolsen12) January 26, 2017.@realDonaldTrump Notice Obama isn t tweeting about it? Sometimes you do the right thing without expecting praise. It s called leadership. Nick Jack Pappas (@Pappiness) January 26, 2017@realDonaldTrump Whistleblowers protect us from those who keep harmful secrets. Our next hero will be the one who gives us your tax returns. Nick Jack Pappas (@Pappiness) January 26, 2017@realDonaldTrump #alternativefacts pic.twitter.com/jghEFlN5Lr Lil Kim Ms. G.O.A.T (@killerbee805) January 26, 2017.@realDonaldTrump Well, you also called President Obama weak, does that make you a traitor too? Al x Young (@AlexYoung) January 26, 2017.@realDonaldTrump Let s work on getting your emotions under control when someone makes you mad. You re leader of the free world now, hun! Bess Kalb (@bessbell) January 26, 2017@realDonaldTrump haven t you called Obama a weak leader repeatedly on numerous occasions? AJ Joshi (@AJ) January 26, 2017By Donald Trump s own logic, he is also a traitor for repeatedly calling President Obama weak. And the way he is dismantling this country piece by piece, Trump should be arrested and charged for treason against America. The hypocrite would not last a day in prison.Featured image via Andrew Harrer-Pool/Getty Images | 1real |
Rebel area near Damascus hit by heavy shelling despite two-day truce | BEIRUT (Reuters) - Dozens of mortar bombs landed on the last major rebel stronghold near the Syrian capital Damascus on Wednesday, a war monitor and a witness said on Wednesday, despite a 48 hour truce proposed by Russia to coincide with the start of peace talks in Geneva. After a relatively calm morning, shelling picked up later in the day, accompanied by ground attempts to storm the besieged enclave, a witness in the Eastern Ghouta area told Reuters. The Syrian army stepped up bombardment two weeks ago in an effort to recapture Eastern Ghouta, a rebel-held pocket of densely populated agricultural land on the outskirts of the capital under siege since 2012. Scores of people have been killed in air strikes during the offensive, and residents say they are on the verge of starvation after the siege was tightened. Russia had proposed a ceasefire on Monday in the besieged area for Nov. 28-29. U.N. Syria envoy Staffan De Mistura later said Russia had told him that the Syrian government had accepted the idea, but we have to see if it happens . The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least one person was killed when dozens of mortars crashed into Eastern Ghouta on Wednesday. Eastern Ghouta is one of several de-escalation zones across western Syria where Russia has brokered ceasefire deals between rebels and President Bashar al-Assad s government. But fighting has continued there. On Tuesday, shelling killed three people and injured 15, but was less intense than in previous days, the observatory said. It had reported intense bombardment that killed 41 people over two days from Sunday to Monday. A two-day truce is not nearly enough for civilians facing grave violations of international law - including bombardment and besiegement - but it is a window of opportunity to save the lives of the most desperately in need of treatment, said Thomas Garofalo, International Rescue Committee s Middle East Public Affairs Director, in a statement on Wednesday. The Syrian delegation arrived in Geneva to participate in the eighth round of United Nation-sponsored peace talks. It delayed its departure for one day after the opposition repeated its demand that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad step down. Nasr Hariri, head of the opposition delegation, told a Geneva news conference on Monday night that he is aiming for Assad s removal as a result of negotiations. The government delegation will be headed by Syria s U.N. ambassador and chief negotiator Bashar al-Ja afari, state-run news agency SANA said. A breakthrough in the talks is seen as unlikely as Assad and his allies push for total military victory in Syria s civil war, now in its seventh year, and his opponents stick by their demand he leaves power. | 0fake |
CA School Resource Officer Arrested For Having Sex With A Minor (VIDEO) | It is extremely important to vet the people we put in charge of our children especially in positions of power. Apparently, a Chowchilla, California school, along with the local police department, failed to do so when it came to school resource officer Timothy Hormel.Hormel is currently on administrative leave because of allegations that he had sex with a minor. The 35-year-old cop was arrested by the Mandera County Sheriff s office after the accusations surfaced. As per usual, the police department is conducting an internal investigations in the Hormel s allegedly criminal actions. According the Sheriff s department, the minor was not a student at any school Hormel was assigned to.What makes this all so frustrating is that a predator like that never should have been anywhere around school children, especially not in a position of power. There s a reason there are age of consent laws: children do not have the mental and psychological capacity to consent to sex with adults. Further, Hormel could have used his power as an officer of the law to coerce the sex, if it did indeed happen.Either way, this guy needs to go to jail if he did this, and that Sheriff s department and local school system need to be investigated.Watch a video news report below, via ABC 30:Featured image from video screen capture | 1real |
Trump's investment funds lose money, billionaire unfazed | NEW YORK (Reuters) - Donald Trump’s presidential campaign is built on his business acumen. But some of the Wall Street funds that he has invested in have proven less successful, underperforming industry benchmarks in the last 15 months, according to a Reuters examination. Eighteen out of 21 hedge funds and mutual funds in Trump’s portfolio lost money in 2015, and 17 of them are down so far this year, according to public disclosures and private performance data seen by Reuters. The funds managed by Paulson & Co, BlackRock Inc, Baron Capital and others lost an average of 8.5 percent last year, according to Reuters calculations, whereas stock market and hedge fund industry benchmarks broke even or came close to it. Trump’s funds are down another 2.9 percent so far this year, underperforming many benchmarks again. The performances in part reflect broader weaknesses in the investing climate. The last 15 months have been difficult for many portfolio managers amid volatile stock markets, tumbling oil and commodity prices, and an economic slowdown in China. Trump defended his holdings in an interview with Reuters, saying he invested in the funds three or four years ago and they have done well over time. “I put some money with people that are friends,” the New York businessman said by phone on Monday, without naming names. “I have no idea if they are up or down. I just know that they have been very good over a period of time,” added Trump, the front-runner for the Republican nomination for the November presidential election. Representatives for Baron, BlackRock and Paulson declined to comment. To be sure, some of Trump’s funds have performed well this year. For instance, Gabelli Funds’ GAMCO Global Gold, Natural Resources & Income fund, a closed-end vehicle, has gained 16.27 percent through March 22, beating a benchmark return of 15.89 percent for natural resource funds, according to net asset value data from Morningstar. Another fund that Trump has invested in, the Invesco European Growth Fund, gained 4.82 percent last year versus a benchmark loss of 5.66 percent, according to Morningstar. Gabelli and Invesco declined to comment. Both funds are listed as small holdings within Trump’s broader brokerage accounts. The 21 funds examined by Reuters were among 23 funds that Trump disclosed last year in a July 15 filing with the Federal Election Commission. The performance of two of the funds could not be discerned. The Reuters review included performance data publicly disclosed by 14 mutual funds, as well as performance data on seven hedge funds seen in confidential fund reports or shared by people familiar with those firms. Trump told Reuters the funds are a tiny part of his investment portfolio. “I do very little hedge funds business. I for the most part don’t believe in it,” he said. The 23 funds were worth as much as $120.75 million, according to the FEC filing, a fraction of Trump’s self-proclaimed net worth of more than $10 billion. While Trump selected the funds, their managers are responsible for choosing securities to invest in and the funds’ subsequent performance. Some investing experts who looked at Trump’s portfolio and Reuters’ compilation of their performance were not impressed, saying he could have earned better returns by investing in other hedge funds. For instance, Reuters previously reported that Millennium Management’s main Millennium International fund gained 12.65 percent in 2015, while Citadel gained 14.3 percent in its main multi-strategy hedge funds. “By the looks of it, Mr. Trump’s investing prowess is very pedestrian,” said Brian Shapiro, chief executive of Simplify LLC, which tracks and analyses alternative investments like hedge funds. “For someone who prides himself on being surrounded by the best talent,” added Brad Alford, an investment advisor and CEO of Alpha Capital Management, “I’m surprised to see so few winners.” To be sure, some of Trump’s funds that fell in 2015 have fared better in previous years. For instance, BlackRock’s Obsidian fund has averaged annual returns of 3.39 percent over the last five years, according to a person familiar with the performance. Obsidian fell 6.17 percent in 2016 through March 11, while other comparable funds rose 0.69 percent, according to a private client report by HSBC’s Alternative Investment Group seen by Reuters. BlackRock declined to comment. “You can’t measure it in a short time. I’m way up with BlackRock. I’m way up with Obsidian,” Trump told Reuters, without elaborating further. Trump disclosed a $27.6 million stake in Obsidian in May 2015, his largest fund holding. It is unclear when Trump first invested in Obsidian, which bets on corporate and government bonds, along with interest rates and other securities. Obsidian was burned by a slide in oil and other commodities, according to a February BlackRock client note seen by Reuters. Trump’s stable of funds include two Angelo, Gordon & Co hedge funds, three Paulson & Co hedge funds, and 11 Baron Capital mutual funds. The mutual funds are open to virtually anyone, but hedge funds are only accessible to those that meet minimum wealth requirements, which typically include a net worth of more than $1 million. A representative for Angelo, Gordon & Co did not respond to a request for comment. Baron’s billionaire founder, Ron Baron, is known for long-term bets on companies and an optimistic world view. Trump uses 11 Baron vehicles with different investment strategies, including small-cap stocks, real estate and emerging markets. Nine of the funds lost money in 2015, with one energy and resources vehicle falling nearly 32 percent, according to data compiled by Morningstar. Nine are down this year through March 22 with single-digit losses. Baron’s long-term track record is better. The firm’s best-known Baron Growth Fund has gained an average of about 8.6 percent annually over the last five years. Paulson’s funds have produced a mixed performance in recent years. Led by New York billionaire John Paulson, the firm became famous for its prescient bet on the collapse of the subprime mortgage market leading up to the financial crisis. But in 2015, the three Paulson funds used by Trump all fell, according to data provided by an investor to Reuters. One of the funds, the Paulson Advantage Plus fund, had declined an average of about 22 percent every year over the last five years, according to a confidential fund report seen by Reuters. Trump's filing to the FEC lists myriad business ventures, including holdings in hotels and golf properties, as well as individual stocks such as Apple Inc, Goldman Sachs and Altria Group. (Click here ) Trump told Reuters his stock picks have done well recently. “I bought them low and I sold them high,” he said, referring to a series of sales in January 2014 that netted more than $27 million. “It was very good timing,” he added. “I hit the market exactly perfectly.” | 0fake |
Six Self-Defense Handguns Under $350 | A dependable handgun can be a literal lifesaver not just for the wealthy, but for Americans of all socioeconomic classes. For that reason, Breitbart News presents a list of six guns that people may purchase for less than $350. [Some of the guns on the list are semiautomatics, which means they hold bullets in a detachable magazine and fire one round every time someone pulls the trigger. The other guns on the list are revolvers, which hold bullets in a cylinder that cycles and fires one bullet each time the user pulls the trigger. Any of the guns on the list could be used to defend a life: : The is a 9mm semiautomatic that holds ten rounds in the magazine and one in the chamber for a total of 11 rounds. The gun has no external safety and is double action only. The firing mechanism creates a longer trigger pull — which is a in and of itself — making accidental discharges more difficult. The weighs 14 ounces, which is light enough for comfortable, everyday carry. Approximate price for a is $ $320. Ruger LCP: The Ruger LCP is a semiautomatic handgun chambered in . 380 and one of the most popular handguns on the market. It weighs in at 9. 6 ounces and holds six rounds in the magazine and one in the chamber, for a total of seven rounds. Like the the Ruger has no external safety mechanism. Rather, it has the long trigger pull that helps prevent accidental discharges. The LCP is a durable gun in a slightly smaller caliber than the which may make the LCP a better choice for women or anyone looking for reduced recoil. Approximate price for a Ruger LCP is $ $270. Taurus PT 738: The Taurus PT 738 is a lightweight polymer carry gun chambered in . 380. It holds six rounds in the magazine and one in the chamber, for a total of seven rounds. The PT 738 weighs in at 10. 2 ounces, which makes it comfortable for daily carry, even in lightweight clothing. The PT 738 has no external safety. Rather, it has the longer trigger pull as found in the Ruger LCP and . Approximate price for a Taurus PT 738 is $ $270. : The is a super compact semiautomatic chambered in . 32 caliber. It holds seven rounds in the magazine and one in the chamber, for a total of eight rounds. The only weighs 6. 6 ounces, and that light weight makes it ultra comfortable for daily carry. For about $15, one can purchase a clip that affixes to the side of the and slides over the top of a boot, where it holds the gun against the calf and at the ready should trouble strike, or one can clip it on top of a pair of pants by the belt. The light weight, small size of the makes it a great gun for purse carry, too. If carried in a purse, it should still be placed in a holster so the holster can prevent the trigger from snagging on something that might lead to an accidental discharge. Approximate price for a is $250. Taurus 85 Revolver: The Taurus 85 is a classic revolver chambered in . 38 Special. At 21 ounces, it is slightly heavier than some of the guns on this list and much heavier than others, but it has two strong points in its favor: 1. Dependability. 2. Stopping power. The Taurus 85 is a great revolver for a man or a woman, as the weight of the gun makes the recoil of . 38 Special ammunition manageable. For anyone wondering how heavy 21 ounces would feel for daily carry, a Glock 19 weighs just over 23 ounces, and it is one of the most popular carry guns ever. So the Taurus 85 would be a great gun for home defense, as well as concealed carry. Approximate price for a Taurus 85 is $340. North American Arms . 22 Magnum: The North American Arms . 22 Magnum is a miniature revolver which can be hidden somewhere close at hand as a firearm. The gun weighs 6. 5 ounces and is single action only, which means the hammer has to be pulled back for every shot, just as with a from the Old West. The gun’s diminutive size makes it easy to hide in a fake book or any number of places in a home or office, and a . 22 Magnum round in ammunition could save a life. Approximate price for a North American Arms . 22 Magnum is $ $240. As with all gun purchases, a gun for is only the first step. The owner also needs to shoot it enough to become familiar with it, to know where bullets will go if he has to shoot it under duress. And he must familiarize himself with the laws of his state so he understands when it is legal to shoot and when it is not. When these steps are complete, he can own the gun with confidence, knowing he has done what is necessary to be ready if he needs to defend his life or the lives of his family members. AWR Hawkins is the Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and host of Bullets with AWR Hawkins, a Breitbart News podcast. He is also the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart. com. | 0fake |
US Secret Service Struggles To Find Recruits Who Haven’t Used Adderall | Via TrueActivist SPONSORED LINKS
The US Secret Service, under pressure due to unprecedented demand and recent controversies, has been carrying out its most ambitious recruiting campaign in over a decade, looking to find over 1,000 qualified agents and other personnel within the next year. The agency has had no problem finding interested people as around 27,000 have responded to the agency’s various calls for applications since 2015. However, the major problem the agency is facing is the high number of recruits who have abused prescription drugs, mostly Adderall and other amphetamines they took while in college. As a result, only 300 of those 27,000 have received an offer for employment from the agency, complicating the Secret Service’s recruitment goals.
All candidates looking for positions with the Secret Service are put through an extensive vetting process, including a series of personal interviews and a polygraph test. Previously, it was normally the polygraph test that doomed the largest percentage of would-be agents, but now it appears that amphetamine/Adderall use has taken its place. Any use of any drug in an illegal way is grounds for immediate expulsion from the hiring process. Susan Goggin, the Chief Recruiting Officer of the US Secret Service said: “It is definitely a struggle with this generation. Adderall is a huge, huge issue.” Indeed, Adderall’s use among college students is becoming increasingly common. The latest federal data shows that Adderall’s recreational use has increased by nearly 67% in the last ten years and is now being prescribed at a rate 30 times higher than it was two decades ago.
Another part of the problem appears to be that many candidates are unaware that their past use of Adderall and other prescription drugs is something that could have negative consequences for them, largely becase the stigma behind its use is not as clear cut as it is for other illicit substances, like marijuana and cocaine. Many college students also do not view their use of Adderall as dangerous or even wrong as they are taking it for the “right reasons” – to be more productive in class and manage a high workload. However, in the eyes of the federal government, Adderall and other amphetamines are classified as Schedule II drugs and the reasons for its use are irrelevant.
Interestingly, this is not the first time that a federal agency has run into this type of problem. In 2014, FBI Director James Comey admitted that hiring hackers was becoming more difficult as many hackers had previously used marijuana recreationally, a concern also echoed by the Justice Department. This same issue also evenutally led US Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter to announce this September that the Pentagon would be open to hiring individuals that had experimented with marijuana in the past. Will the Secret Service soon be forced to change its policy on Adderall as its use continues to skyrocket? Or is it more of a sign that the War on Drugs is laughably out-dated? | 1real |
Behind China’s Anbang: Empty Offices and Obscure Names - The New York Times | In the center of Beijing’s booming commercial district, with soaring office towers, gleaming shopping malls and luxury apartment complexes, sits a shabby, building with an office that houses stupendous wealth. To get there, visitors must first pass through an unmarked entrance next to a post office, then pass through a maze of carelessly strung phone and power lines. On the fourth floor, down a hallway where black scuff marks on the walls indicate years of neglect, is the Hujialou Concentrated Office Zone, an officially sanctioned domicile for shell companies. According to government records, that office is home to two companies with a total stake that accounts for more than $15 billion in assets of one of China’s biggest financial conglomerates: the Anbang Insurance Group. Prying visitors are not welcome. A woman at the office, who did not give her name, grew angry when a journalist told her that two companies there controlled a large share of Anbang. “We’re just a private company, helping others register with the State Administration for Industry and Commerce,” she said, referring to the keepers of China’s corporate database. “It is none of our business whether they are shell companies. ” Another Anbang shareholding firm — one that controls $5. 6 billion in assets — lists its address a few blocks away from the Hujialou building, at an office tower’s empty 27th floor. Near the Temple of Heaven, the former imperial religious complex in Beijing, the listed address of yet another shareholding company turns out to be another empty office. The directory downstairs lists the former tenant: a shoe seller. A group of 39 companies control Anbang, which was once a sleepy insurance company and now has $295 billion in assets and a reputation as an ambitious global deal maker. Many of those companies are in turn owned by a welter of shell companies, many with similar names and addresses or common owners. Ultimately, as The New York Times reports, they are controlled by about 100 people, many of whom hail from a county called Pingyang on China’s east coast. Pingyang County is the home county of Anbang’s chairman, Wu Xiaohui. In any major country, the shareholders of marquee companies are often household names themselves. General Electric counts major institutional investors such as the Vanguard Group and BlackRock as top owners. Berkshire Hathaway’s biggest shareholder is its chairman, Warren E. Buffett. China is no exception. Dalian Wanda Commercial Properties, for example, led by China’s richest man, Wang Jianlin, may match Anbang in the breadth of its political connections, but many of its biggest shareholders are easily recognizable Chinese companies like China Life Insurance. Anbang is different. The companies that own it, and the people who back them, are almost all obscure. Two companies that collectively own less than 2 percent of Anbang are the only exceptions. I first started writing about Chinese companies 16 years ago and have never seen a similar ownership structure at a major company. That is remarkable, given Anbang’s increasing size and prominence. Earlier this year, Anbang came close to executing what would have been the biggest takeover ever of an American company by a Chinese company, offering more than $14 billion for Starwood Hotels Resorts. In China, the company not only sells auto and life insurance, but also controls a major bank in southwestern China, is the largest shareholder of one of the country’s biggest financial conglomerates, China Minsheng Banking Corporation, and is the shareholder in another, China Merchants Bank. But China is not an offshore haven like the Cayman Islands or the British Virgin Islands. The country’s online corporate records system allows those with patience to find the names behind the holding companies, even if — as with Anbang — the corporate shareholders frequently change names, addresses and owners. After more than three months of combing through thousands of pages of records, The Times was able to piece together a corporate history for those 39 shareholders. One clear pattern emerged. At least 35 of the companies, collectively owning more than 92 percent of Anbang, can trace all or part of their ownership to relatives of Mr. Wu or to his wife, Zhuo Ran, who is the granddaughter of the former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping or to Chen Xiaolu, the son of one of China’s most famous marshals, who helped Mao’s Communists to victory in 1949. Those relatives are either current or former owners or directors of those companies, or current or former owners of predecessor firms. One example is Lin Cong, who owns a small share of the company. Mr. Lin is Mr. Wu’s cousin, the nephew of his mother, Lin Xiangmei, relatives say. Back at the Hujialou Concentrated Office Zone, one of the Anbang shareholders there, a company called Beijing Bibo Investment Management Company, controls $10. 9 billion in Anbang assets. Until Dec. 1, 2014, that stake was ultimately owned by a woman named Wu Xiaoxia, corporate records show. Relatives in Pingyang County say she is very close to Mr. Wu. She is his sister. | 0fake |
ISIS Leader Confident in Mosul Defense, Rules Out Retreat | Pentagon Claims Comments Prove Baghdadi Losing Control by Jason Ditz, November 03, 2016 Share This
In a newly released audio recording, ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi expressed confidence that his forces would succeed in defending Mosul from an ongoing offensive by what he referred to as “enemies of God.,” saying he is convinced this is the prelude to victory.
Mosul is ISIS’ largest city, with the metro area home to about 1.5 million people. It is their last major city within Iraqi territory, and the US has presented their imminent defeat in the city as spelling the effective end to the ISIS caliphate.
Baghdadi insisted there could be no surrender in the fight, a statement which is literally true since the US has insisted they intend to kill every ISIS fighter who attempts to flee the city with airstrikes Baghdadi suggested there would be retaliatory suicide attacks abroad that would wreak havoc on “unbelievers,” and “make their blood flow as rivers.”
The Pentagon, always upbeat about wars everywhere, said Baghdadi’s confident statement proved he is losing control of ISIS in general, and that he was desperately trying to prevent infighting, adding “we don’t believe it is going to work.” Last 5 posts by Jason Ditz | 1real |
Trump’s Pick For Treasury Tried To Take A 90-Year-Old Woman’s House Over 27 Cent Bill | Donald Trump s choice for Treasury Secretary is a real life Ebeneezer Scrooge.Trump s pick of Steven Mnuchin to run the Treasury Department is literally letting the fox guard the hen house. It s also hypocritical and dangerous.Mnuchin was a partner at Goldman Sachs, a big Wall Street bank Trump often crucified Hillary Clinton for being cozy with, for 17 years. Furthermore, Mnuchin took advantage of the financial crisis in 2008 just like Trump did and made millions of dollars foreclosing on families homes through his establishment of OneWest Bank during the collapse.And one foreclosure, in particular, makes it clear that ordinary Americans should not trust Mnuchin because he ll only serve himself instead of serving the people.According to Politico,Two years ago, OneWest filed foreclosure papers on the Lakeland, Florida, home of Ossie Lofton, who had taken a reverse mortgage, a loan that supplies cash to elderly homeowners and doesn t require monthly payments.After confusion over insurance coverage, a OneWest subsidiary sent Lofton a bill for $423.30. She sent a check for $423. The bank sent another bill, for 30 cents. Lofton, 90, sent a check for 3 cents. In November 2014, the bank foreclosed.In October, lawyers at the nonprofit Florida Rural Legal Services contested OneWest s foreclosure and asked the Polk County Circuit Court for a jury trial. I don t know that they re the worst, but I certainly think it s criminal the way these servicers are treating elderly homeowners, said Lynn Drysdale, an attorney representing Lofton.Seriously?! This vulture literally tried to take an elderly person s home away from them over 27 cents. This is a guy who literally accrued an estimated net worth of $40 million at Goldman Sachs, yet he greedily refused to forgive 27 cents. Mnuchin could have just pulled a quarter and two pennies out of his pocket to cover the extra amount himself and he wouldn t have missed it at all. Targeting an elderly woman like that is just evil.And that s not the only evil thing Mnuchin has done to other people to line his own pockets.OneWest Bank withheld $14,332,160 from Sandy Hook victims when they needed the money the most to rebuild their homes and businesses. And after his bank merged with another to become CIT Bank, it was accused of discriminating against black and Latino customers.In short, Donald Trump is letting a vulture capitalist take the reigns of the Treasury Department and is doubling down on conservative economic policies that caused the Great Recession in the first place. So get ready for another crash over the next four years and don t expect the government to help anyone but themselves this time around.Featured Image: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images | 1real |
Russia says Pyongyang wants direct talks with Washington: agencies | MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Thursday that North Korea wants direct talks with the United States to seek guarantees on its security from Washington, Russian news agencies reported. Lavrov said he had passed on Pyongyang s desire for direct talks to U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson when the two men met on the sidelines of a conference in Vienna on Thursday, the agencies reported. We know that North Korea wants above all to talk to the United States about guarantees for its security. We are ready to support that, we are ready to take part in facilitating such negotiations, Interfax news agency quoted Lavrov as saying. Our American colleagues, (including) Rex Tillerson, have heard this. | 0fake |
Trump’s Religious Liberty Order Gives Sessions Major Leeway - Breitbart | President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Thursday reiterating the administration’s commitment to religious liberty and authorizing Attorney General Jeff Sessions to issue guidance for all federal agencies. [The expected order did not go as far as some news outlets had earlier reported it might. The Nation reported a leaked February draft that would have “create[d] wholesale exemptions for people and organizations who claim religious objections to marriage, premarital sex, abortion, and trans identity. ” The text of the actual order hands authority to issue guidance on federal religious liberty law for all federal agencies to Attorney General Jeff Sessions. The protection of religious freedom has been seen as a priority for the new leadership at the Department of Justice. Due to the broad interpretive power of federal agencies, this guidance authorization could yield major changes in federal policy as it relates to the exercise of religious beliefs. For example, the Justice Department, through existing authority, has already been able to halt the implementation of the previous administration’s transgender policy for schools. The order also specifies that the Department of the Treasury and other federal agencies should not pursue adverse action, most prominently revocation of status, based on the speech of religious individuals and organizations in relation to moral and political issues not “ordinarily … treated as participation … in a political campaign. ” This language may give religious leaders more leeway in speech on articles of faith, like biblical positions on homosexuality, marriage, and transsexualism, that have entered the public discourse as political issues, without fear of losing their tax status. The order also directs the Secretaries of the Treasury, Labor, and Health and Human Services to revisit regulations issued by their agencies relating to “ ” mandates under Obamacare. The specific section referenced in the order has been used by these agencies to require religious employers to provide contraceptives and other types of services in contravention of their beliefs. | 0fake |
President Obama Hilariously Skewers Trump’s Hateful Rhetoric In Thunderous Speech (VIDEO) | President Obama took aim at Donald Trump and his violent racist rhetoric on Saturday, and it makes us wish he could run for a third term. America is pretty darn great right now, Obama thundered in Dallas in a direct rebuke of Trump s campaign claim that American has somehow gotten worse over the last eight years. America is making strides right now! America is better off than it was right now! The American people should be proud of what we have achieved together in the last eight years since the recession hit. We are great right now. Obama then went after Trump and the other GOP candidates for turning the election into a childish circus where lies reign over facts and violence against other Americans is encouraged, something that has led to multiple clashes between Trump supporters and protesters. What the folks who are running for office should be focused on is how we can make it even better not insults and schoolyard taunts and manufacturing facts, not divisiveness along the lines of race and faith. Certainly not violence against other Americans or excluding them. We re a better country than that. Here s the video via YouTube.But President Obama was not done yet. As the crowd laughed, Obama turned Trump and his multiple business scams into a punchline. Imagine what Trump would say if he actually had a record like this instead of selling steaks, Obama quipped. Has anybody bought that wine? Obama asked the audience. I want to know what that wine tastes like. I mean, come on, you know that s like some $5 wine. They slap a label on it, they charge you $50, saying this is the greatest wine ever. Come on! And then President Obama lambasted Republicans for saying how shocked they are over Trump s racist rhetoric, reminding them that their front-runner is the same guy who would not drop his obsession with Obama s birth certificate. Republicans didn t say anything then, Obama pointed out, because Trump s rhetoric was not aimed at the GOP like it is now.Here s the video via YouTube.Indeed, the Republican Party and Fox News built the monster that is now taking over the party and invited white supremacists to take a prominent seat next to him.Trump s status as front-runner should be the end of the Republican Party as a legitimate political organization, but it appears Trump is merely replacing it with a fascist organization that will be even worse. In their desperation to oppose President Obama at every turn using hate and fear to gin up opposition and extremism, Republicans created the atmosphere for someone like Trump to rise and thrive and now they are paying the price for it. And so is America. One wonders how long it will be before even Republicans wish that President Obama could stay in office for another four years.Featured image via video screen capture | 1real |
Watch Chris Hayes Destroy Scott Walker’s Biggest Lie, In 16 Brutal Seconds (VIDEO) | Scott Walker emerged from the ashes of his failed Presidential campaign this week when the primaries came to Wisonsin. But MSBNC host Chris Hayes gave him a further headache, by managing to destroy Walker s biggest lie, in just 16 brutal seconds.Walker is trying to pass tough voter ID laws which are likely to effectively disenfranchise the members of the community least likely to vote Republican, all in the name of preventing a voter fraud problem which doesn t actually exist. Walker tried the argument on MSNBC host Chris Hayes this week, and got destroyed. Alright, let s look at the facts, Hayes said. There s the fact that despite dire warnings of voter fraud, a Wisconsin federal district judge ruled that the law s defenders and I m quoting could not point to a single instance of known voter impersonation occurring in Wisconsin at any time in the recent past. The ruling took just 16 seconds to recite, but if the law passes regardless, more than 300,000 people (largely people of color, and people in poverty) will be unable to vote in the primaries. It is the continuation of the GOP s plans to effectively rig the vote, by disenfranchising people least likely to vote for them.Minority and poor communities are already hit by felony disenfranchisement as the Sentencing Project reports:Nationally, an estimated 5.85 million Americans are denied the right to vote because of laws that prohibit voting by people with felony convictions. Felony disenfranchisement is an obstacle to participation in democratic life which is exacerbated by racial disparities in the criminal justice system, resulting in 1 of every 13 African Americans unable to vote.Image via The Sentencing ProjectThe no-nonsense crushing shines a light on just how far the conservative media is failing its readers and viewers, by failing to do the most basic factcheck on these issues. Whether conservative or liberal, we deserve a media which holds politicians and lawmakers to account when they lie. Instead, we see the media playing partisan if our friends said it it s true, it our enemies said it, it s a lie. The American public deserve better.Here s the video:Featured image via Flickr Creative Commons/Screengrab | 1real |
Conservative Christians Think Girls Are A Crop, Should Be Married Off As Children (IMAGE) | Likening girls to common crops that should be rushed off to the market as soon as possible is a growing belief among conservative Christians. If you have heard of the Duggar family you ve likely heard of the Quiverfull movement they belong to, which requires Christians to have as many kids as possible, which is why the Duggars have 19 children.But there is another part of the Quiverfull movement that is even creepier.One Quiverfull ministry not only pushes couples to pop out kids like rabbits, they preach that fathers should farm the girls like crops such as apples and give them over to men as early as possible .In other words, this Christian fundamentalist movement believe in child marriage like the ones Americans often are horrified by when we hear stories of little girls being married off to middle-aged men in the Middle East.Their website is called Let Them Marry, and one of the first things you would see is a tree shaped missive comparing little girls to apples that must be picked early by the farmer/father and provided to men who are in need. Girls are like apples on trees. Their fathers are the farmers, whose job is to care for them. He must protect his apples from pests and disease. He must guard them against thieves who may pick his apples prematurely. Neither those at the top nor those at the bottom can help their location. But, when each reaches peak ripeness, it is the farmer s job to harvest that fruit and give it to whom he will, to those in need. So there is nothing wrong with the apples still on the tree and nothing wrong with the boys who seek them. But it is the farmer s duty to provide for both, in due season. Here s the image via Raw Story.A quote from the group leader, Vaughn Ohlman, makes it clear that this pedophilia comes not from the legalization of same-sex marriage like conservatives constantly claim, but directly from religious fanaticism, which former Quiverfull member Vyckie Garrison describes as a gross ideology combined with the Christian purity movement in which the value of a young woman is in her virginity a consumable commodity owned by her future husband, kept in trust by Daddy. We believe that not only should most people marry, they should marry in their youth. The Bible speaks of the wife of thy youth (Prov. 5:18; Is. 54:6; Mal. 2:14-15) and children of the youth (Ps. 127:4). Scripture also speaks of not letting children pass the flower of their age (1 Cor. 7:36) Leaving the physically mature young man struggling with fornication and leaving the physically mature young woman wallowing in fruitless, barren celibacy these are both unscriptural and ungodly actions.In short, this conservative Christian group is a haven for pedophiles who are trying to use religious liberty to justify their sickening desire to marry and rape little girls.Just another example of the Christian Sharia law conservatives are trying to force down our throats. Featured image from Pixabay | 1real |
LEAKED DOCUMENTS: GEORGE SOROS GAVE 600K To Pro-Refugee Groups To Influence “Attitudes” | Leaked documents from left-wing financier George Soros s Open Society Foundations continue to reveal the extent to which the group has influenced the political response to Europe s refugee crisis. Internal documents show OSF used $600,000 in reserve funding in March 2016 to bring pro-refugee positions into the political mainstream. Jordi Vaquer, OSF s regional director for Europe, approved a $600,000 proposal entitled, Countering the anti-migrant rhetoric and toxic narratives surrounding migration in Europe. According to OSF documents, half of the $600,000 would go towards lobbying efforts. All $600,000 came from OSF s Europe Reserve Fund. A summary of the proposal notes that the proposed reserve fund allocation will allow for additional resources to be allocated towards countering xenophobic attitudes in Europe, move parts of the political mainstream towards more pro-refugee positions, and build constituencies around a more progressive approach to migration and asylum. Read more: Daily Caller | 1real |
Chicago projects shrinking budget gaps in 2017 and 2018 | CHICAGO (Reuters) - Chicago will continue to shrink its structural budget deficit in 2017 and 2018, but faces new pension funding pressures starting in 2020, according to a financial analysis released by the city on Monday. The nation’s third-largest city projects it will end fiscal 2017 on Dec. 31 with a $137.6 million gap in its $3.73 billion operating budget, down from $232.6 million in fiscal 2016. In fiscal 2018, the deficit is expected to fall by 17 percent to $114.2 million. The city’s budget gaps have been declining since hitting a high of $654.7 million in fiscal 2011. “This decrease is a direct result of sustainable and balanced revenue growth coupled with lasting savings and reforms made in the past six budgets,” the city’s analysis said. Chicago has taken big steps in recent years to shore up its four employee retirement systems by hiking property taxes for its police and fire fighter funds, levying a new tax on water and sewer usage for its municipal workers’ fund, and increasing a telephone surcharge for its laborers’ fund. The city is gradually increasing contributions to the systems until it meets requirements for actuarially funding public safety worker pensions in 2020 and for the other two systems in 2022. As a result, Chicago’s pension payments will jump from $1.18 billion in fiscal 2018 to a projected $1.7 billion in fiscal 2020, topping $2 billion in fiscal 2022 when all four systems will be on an actuarially funded path, according to the analysis. At the same time, the city is weaning itself off of one-time revenue fixes, such as so-called scoop and toss restructurings of outstanding bonds to push off debt payments. Chicago’s base budget forecast indicates gaps of $212.7 million in fiscal 2019 and $330.3 million in 2020, although the projections do not completely account for escalating pension payments. “The city previously secured ongoing and sustainable funding sources to match these growing contributions, and the funding sources for these increased contributions will be determined through our annual budget process,” the analysis said. The city’s total unfunded pension liability, which climbed to $35.76 billion in fiscal 2016 from $33.8 billion in fiscal 2015, has been a concern of credit rating agencies that currently rate Chicago at the low investment grade to junk levels. | 0fake |
Ted Nugent Attacks Jews Who Support Gun Control By Calling Them Nazis (IMAGES) | Professional douchebag Ted Nugent took his love of guns way too far on Monday, demonstrating how conservatives really feel about Jews.Much in the way Adolf Hitler scapegoated the Jews to justify World War II and the Holocaust, Nugent scapegoated Jews to justify an extreme pro-gun agenda.On his own Facebook page, Nugent plastered several photographs of Jewish activists and politicians, and warned his followers to memorize who they are and gave them marching orders to give them hell and shut them down. Know these punks, Nugent wrote. They hate freedom, they hate good over evil, they would deny us the basic human right to self defense & to KEEP & BEAR ARMS while many of them have tax paid hired ARMED security! Know them well. Tell every1 you know how evil they are. Let us raise maximum hell to shut them down! Here s the post via Facebook.// < ![CDATA[ // < ![CDATA[ (function(d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) return; js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = "//connect.facebook.net/en_US/sdk.js#xfbml=1&version=v2.3"; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs);}(document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk')); // ]]>Know these punks. They hate freedom, they hate good over evil, they would deny us the basic human right to self defense Posted by Ted Nugent on Monday, February 8, 2016In a comment below his own post, Nugent wrote, NEVER AGAIN in reference to the Holocaust.Conservatives often use the Holocaust as a prop in their argument to oppose gun control laws. The problem with that argument is that it assumes the minority Jewish population would have been able to stand up to the powerful German military, which included the brutal SS.When Ben Carson made the same claim last year, Politifact ripped him a new one by pointing out that the Nazis actually loosened gun laws significantly for the population, but restricted Jews from owning firearms.German citizens as a whole were not disarmed by the Nazis. Jews and other supposed enemies of the state were subject to having their weapons seized. But for most German citizens, the Nazi period was one in which gun regulations were loosened, not tightened.Second, a lack of guns was not the issue. If the majority of Germans had wanted to use these guns to fight the Nazis, they could have. But they didn t.In other words, the only form of gun control the Nazis really liked was keeping Jews from owning them.But even if the Jews were well-armed and willing to fight back, the fact remains that the German population supported the Nazis and Hitler had powerful military forces under his command. It is highly unlikely that the Jews could have prevented the Holocaust by themselves.Despite the facts, Nugent wrote another rant aimed at those who criticized his first post, referring to Jews who don t agree with him as Nazis in disguise. // < ![CDATA[ // < ![CDATA[ (function(d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) return; js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = "//connect.facebook.net/en_US/sdk.js#xfbml=1&version=v2.3"; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs);}(document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk')); // ]]>Just when you hope that mankind couldnt possibly get any dumber or more dishonest, superFreaks rise to the occasion .Posted by Ted Nugent on Monday, February 8, 2016Offended by Nugent s nasty words, the Anti-Defamation League blasted him and demanded the removal of the post. This is nothing short of conspiratorial anti-Semitism. Regardless of one s views on gun control, this kind of scapegoating of an entire religious group is completely unacceptable and completely divorced from reality. It should go without saying that anti-Semitism has no place in the gun control debate. You should be ashamed for promoting anti-Semitic content, and we hope that good people on both sides of the gun control debate will reject his tactics and his message. We hope you will have the good sense to remove this share immediately so that it does not spread virally across the internet. Ted Nugent talks tough about his dad, but apparently the apple fell far from the tree. Let s not forget that Nugent dodged the Vietnam war by pooping in his pants.And this isn t the first time Nugent has attacked a people that suffered through genocide. Nugent once referred to Native Americans as unclean vermin who don t qualify as people. And let s not forget his anthem to child rape that must drive family values Republicans wild.Also, keep in mind that Ted Cruz is Nugent s favorite Republican presidential candidate in the 2016 race. Perhaps someone should ask Cruz how he feels about what Nugent thinks about Jews who support reasonable laws to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and the mentally ill. Because that s what we re really talking about here better background checks that most Americans, including NRA members, support. Nobody in our government has suggested seizing the guns of every American. And there have certainly been no suggestions of banning certain ethnic minorities from owning firearms. This is all in the imaginations of conservatives who have used such claims to push a guns everywhere agenda that has only opened our society up to more gun deaths and mass shootings than ever before.But if anyone should have their guns taken from them, it s Ted Nugent, considering the fact that he has openly called for the assassination of President Obama and other government officials on several occasions. Featured image from Flickr | 1real |
HUGE Spending Agreement Reached: GOP Caves On Sending 10,000 Syrian Refugees | Congress will vote on a new spending bill in just a few days so they d better get crackin so they can read the 2,009 page bill before they vote on it, right? You can bet that when the vote comes on this bad deal that most of those voting on it have no idea what s in it. It s a typical pork-filled spending bill that throws the American taxpayer under the bus. The Republicans caved on letting Obama send 10,000 Syrian refugees for the taxpayers to support. Republicans are spineless sellouts The new spending deal reached early Wednesday morning spans more than 2,000 pages, spends $1.149 trillion and lawmakers will have only a few days to digest it all before they re asked to vote on the legislation, which lays out Congress s priorities for the rest of fiscal year 2016.It works out to nearly $572 million per page, with lawmakers splashing money throughout the government, boosting both popular and unpopular programs alike, thanks to a spending hike agreed to in October s budget deal. That means even the IRS, which the GOP had targeted year after year for cuts, will finally see an increase in 2016. Negotiators agreed to a $290 million boost, though the extra money is required to be spent on taxpayer services and fraud detection. It s still $1.7 billion less than President Obama asked for the tax agency.The biggest fights came on policy disputes, where the GOP won a few of its priorities, but caved on far more. The bill allows Mr. Obama to follow through on his plans to resettle 10,000 Syrian refugees in the U.S. this fiscal year, but does give him new powers to require some visitors from Visa Waiver Program countries to face extra scrutiny if they ve been to Iraq or Syria recently. The goal is to try to weed out foreign fighters who may have trained with the Islamic State.Republicans maintained a ban on federal funding of gun control research, turning back an effort by Democratic leaders to force studies in the wake of this year s mass killings.In a slap at former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the bill also prohibits the State Department from spending money to maintain private email accounts. Mrs. Clinton exclusively used an email server kept at her home in New York during her time in office, thwarting open-records requests and spawning the scandal that s ensnared her presidential campaign this year.Leaders of both parties will have to round up the votes to pass the measure this week, and both sides are describing it as a compromise that they can t afford to pass up. This package reflects conservative priorities in both funding and policy including support for critical areas such as our national defense, halting many harmful regulations, and trimming wasteful spending. But it also represents a compromise that members on both sides of the aisle can and should get behind, said Rep. Hal Rogers, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee.The bill was released at 2 a.m. Wednesday morning, meaning that if GOP leaders stick to their three-day pledge it shouldn t be voted on in the House until Friday at the earliest.That would still require reading a page every two minutes, continuously over the next couple of days, in order to get through the bill before the vote.Read more: WT | 1real |
The Demise of Progressive Democrats: ‘Resist and Submit, Retreat and Surrender’ | 21st Century Wire says The US 2016 Presidential Election was a watershed point in 21st century western politics. With the defeat of Hillary Clinton and the near collapse of the Democratic Party, it seems that America s progressive left has lost the ability to relate to much of the working and the middle classes. During the Obama Administration, the party was taken over by the billionaire donor class ruled by Wall Street interests, Silicon Valley svengalis, and the unelected commissariate the Democratic National Committee (DNC). Their failed strategy of total reliance on identity politics at home, and backing Islamist extremism and a New Cold War with Russia abroad has spelled abject failure for the US electorate. Still, the vanguard of the progressive left is still in denial of these realities. However, a new shake-up on the left may already be underway.Last month, America s latest progressive icon, Bernie Sanders had this to say Sanders: "The Democratic Party is an absolute failure." (June 11, 2017)See also: https://t.co/cnrVTiKUnn pic.twitter.com/mJxrguyMyM WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) July 9, 2017While his candid depiction of a broken political party certainly rings true, it seems that Sanders is avoiding some of the more fundamental aspects of his party s rapid disintegration, namely the left s role in compromising America s reputation internationally by caving in to a largely Neoconservative and globalist foreign policy agenda, as author James Petras explains James Petras Information Clearing House Over the past quarter century progressive writers, activists and academics have followed a trajectory from left to right with each presidential campaign seeming to move them further to the right. Beginning in the 1990 s progressives mobilized millions in opposition to wars, voicing demands for the transformation of the US s corporate for-profit medical system into a national Medicare For All public program. They condemned the notorious Wall Street swindlers and denounced police state legislation and violence. But in the end, they always voted for Democratic Party Presidential candidates who pursued the exact opposite agenda.Over time this political contrast between program and practice led to the transformation of the Progressives. And what we see today are US progressives embracing and promoting the politics of the far right.To understand this transformation we will begin by identifying who and what the progressives are and describe their historical role. We will then proceed to identify their trajectory over the recent decades.We will outline the contours of recent Presidential campaigns where Progressives were deeply involved.We will focus on the dynamics of political regression: From resistance to submission, from retreat to surrender.We will conclude by discussing the end result: The Progressives large-scale, long-term embrace of far-right ideology and practice.Progressives by Name and PostureProgressives purport to embrace progress , the growth of the economy, the enrichment of society and freedom from arbitrary government. Central to the Progressive agenda was the end of elite corruption and good governance, based on democratic procedures.Progressives prided themselves as appealing to reason, diplomacy and conciliation , not brute force and wars. They upheld the sovereignty of other nations and eschewed militarism and armed intervention.Progressives proposed a vision of their fellow citizens pursuing incremental evolution toward the good society , free from the foreign entanglements, which had entrapped the people in unjust wars.Progressives in Historical PerspectiveIn the early part of the 20th century, progressives favored political equality while opposing extra-parliamentary social transformations. They supported gender equality and environmental preservation while failing to give prominence to the struggles of workers and African Americans.They denounced militarism in general but supported a series of wars to end all wars . Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson embodied the dual policies of promoting peace at home and bloody imperial wars overseas. By the middle of the 20th century, different strands emerged under the progressive umbrella. Progressives split between traditional good government advocates and modernists who backed socio-economic reforms, civil liberties and rights.Progressives supported legislation to regulate monopolies, encouraged collective bargaining and defended the Bill of Rights.Progressives opposed wars and militarism in theory until their government went to war.Lacking an effective third political party, progressives came to see themselves as the left wing of the Democratic Party, allies of labor and civil rights movements and defenders of civil liberties.Progressives joined civil rights leaders in marches, but mostly relied on legal and electoral means to advance African American rights.Progressives played a pivotal role in fighting McCarthyism, though ultimately it was the Secretary of the Army and the military high command that brought Senator McCarthy to his knees.Progressives provided legal defense when the social movements disrupted the House UnAmerican Activities Committee.They popularized the legislative arguments that eventually outlawed segregation, but it was courageous Afro-American leaders heading mass movements that won the struggle for integration and civil rights.In many ways the Progressives complemented the mass struggles, but their limits were defined by the constraints of their membership in the Democratic Party.The alliance between Progressives and social movements peaked in the late sixties to mid-1970 s when the Progressives followed the lead of dynamic and advancing social movements and community organizers especially in opposition to the wars in Indochina and the military draft.The Retreat of the ProgressivesBy the late 1970 s the Progressives had cut their anchor to the social movements, as the anti-war, civil rights and labor movements lost their impetus (and direction).The numbers of progressives within the left wing of the Democratic Party increased through recruitment from earlier social movements. Paradoxically, while their numbers were up, their caliber had declined, as they sought to fit in with the pro-business, pro-war agenda of their President s party.Without the pressure of the populist street the Progressives-turned-Democrats adapted to the corporate culture in the Party. The Progressives signed off on a fatal compromise: The corporate elite secured the electoral party while the Progressives were allowed to write enlightened manifestos about the candidates and their programs . . . which were quickly dismissed once the Democrats took office. Yet the ability to influence the electoral rhetoric was seen by the Progressives as a sufficient justification for remaining inside the Democratic Party.Moreover the Progressives argued that by strengthening their presence in the Democratic Party, (their self-proclaimed boring from within strategy), they would capture the party membership, neutralize the pro-corporation, militarist elements that nominated the president and peacefully transform the party into a vehicle for progressive changes .Upon their successful deep penetration the Progressives, now cut off from the increasingly disorganized mass social movements, coopted and bought out many prominent black, labor and civil liberty activists and leaders, while collaborating with what they dubbed the more malleable centrist Democrats. These mythical creatures were really pro-corporate Democrats who condescended to occasionally converse with the Progressives while working for the Wall Street and Pentagon elite.The Retreat of the Progressives: The Clinton DecadeProgressives adapted the crab strategy : Moving side-ways and then backwards but never forward.Progressives mounted candidates in the Presidential primaries, which were predictably defeated by the corporate Party apparatus, and then submitted immediately to the outcome. The election of President Bill Clinton launched a period of unrestrained financial plunder, major wars of aggression in Europe (Yugoslavia) and the Middle East (Iraq), a military intervention in Somalia and secured Israel s victory over any remnant of a secular Palestinian leadership as well as its destruction of Lebanon!Progressives followed Clinton s deep throated thrust toward the far right, as he outsourced manufacturing jobs to Mexico (NAFTA) and re-appointed Federal Reserve s free market, Ayn Rand-fanatic, Alan Greenspan.Like a huge collective Monica Lewinsky robot, the Progressives in the Democratic Party bent over and swallowed Clinton s vicious 1999 savaging of the venerable Glass Steagall Act, thereby opening the floodgates for massive speculation on Wall Street through the previously regulated banking sector. When President Clinton gutted welfare programs, forcing single mothers to take minimum-wage jobs without provision for safe childcare, millions of poor white and minority women were forced to abandon their children to dangerous makeshift arrangements in order to retain any residual public support and access to minimal health care. Progressives looked the other way.Progressives repeatedly kneeled before President Clinton marking their submission to the Democrats hard right policies.The election of Republican President G. W. Bush (2001-2009) permitted Progressive s to temporarily trot out and burnish their anti-war, anti-Wall Street credentials. Out in the street, they protested Bush s savage invasion of Iraq (but not the destruction of Afghanistan). They protested the media reports of torture in Abu Ghraib under Bush, but not the massive bombing and starvation of millions of Iraqis that had occurred under Clinton. Progressives protested the expulsion of immigrants from Mexico and Central America, but were silent over the brutal uprooting of refugees resulting from US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, or the systematic destruction of their nations infrastructure.Progressives embraced Israel s bombing, jailing and torture of Palestinians by voting unanimously in favor of increasing the annual $3 billion dollar military handouts to the brutal Jewish State. They supported Israel s bombing and slaughter in Lebanon.Progressives were in retreat, but retained a muffled voice and inconsequential vote in favor of peace, justice and civil liberties. They kept a certain distance from the worst of the police state decrees by the Republican Administration.Progressives and Obama: From Retreat to SurrenderWhile Progressives maintained their tepid commitment to civil liberties, and their highly leveraged hopes for peace in the Middle East, they jumped uncritically into the highly choreographed Democratic Party campaign for Barack Obama, Wall Street s First Black President .Progressives had given up their quest to realign the Democratic Party from within : they turned from serious tourism to permanent residency. Progressives provided the foot soldiers for the election and re-election of the warmongering Peace Candidate Obama. After the election, Progressives rushed to join the lower echelons of his Administration. Black and white politicos joined hands in their heroic struggle to erase the last vestiges of the Progressives historical legacy.Obama increased the number of Bush-era imperial wars to attacking seven weak nations under American s First Black President s bombardment, while the Progressives ensured that the streets were quiet and empty.When Obama provided trillions of dollars of public money to rescue Wall Street and the bankers, while sacrificing two million poor and middle class mortgage holders, the Progressives only criticized the bankers who received the bailout, but not Obama s Presidential decision to protect and reward the mega-swindlers.Under the Obama regime social inequalities within the United States grew at an unprecedented rate. The Police State Patriot Act was massively extended to give President Obama the power to order the assassination of US citizens abroad without judicial process. The Progressives did not resign when Obama s kill orders extended to the mistaken murder of his target s children and other family member, as well as unidentified bystanders. The icon carriers still paraded their banner of the first black American President when tens of thousands of black Libyans and immigrant workers were slaughtered in his regime-change war against President Gadhafi Continue this article at Information Clearing HouseREAD MORE POLICE STATE NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Police State FilesSUPPORT 21WIRE SUBSCRIBE & BECOME A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV | 1real |
Trump says North Korea's Kim 'will be tested like never before' | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - North Korea’s Kim Jong Un “will be tested like never before,” U.S. President Donald Trump said on Friday as the two leaders continued to trade insults and Pyongyang threatened to test a hydrogen bomb over the Pacific Ocean. “Kim Jong Un of North Korea, who is obviously a madman who doesn’t mind starving or killing his people, will be tested like never before,” Trump tweeted, one day after announcing additional sanctions on Pyongyang. | 0fake |
ARMY-NAVY CROWD ERUPTS During Trump Interview…”Make America Great Again” [VIDEO] | Watch: | 1real |
New sanctions aim to restrict Venezuela access to U.S. debt market | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said on Friday that new sanctions imposed against Venezuela were aimed at hobbling the regime of President Nicolas Maduro by restricting the country s access to U.S. debt and equity markets. We urge those within the regime, including those who have been sanctioned, to distance themselves from the violence and the dictatorship, Mnuchin told reporters at the White House. He said the sanctions were not aimed at changing leadership in Venezuela. White House national security adviser H.R. McMaster said at the same news conference that United States had no plans to take military action in Venezuela, but that President Donald Trump intended to take advantage of a broad range of ... integrated options in the future. | 0fake |
Putting More Women on a Path to Political Power - The New York Times | BERLIN — About five decades since the surge in modern feminism, it is unlikely that most women — in the United States, at least — would have anticipated the current political climate in which gender equality remains almost as elusive as ever and rights are under siege. What is more, a man criticized by many for his treatment of women will be sworn in as president of the United States on Friday. And in 2016, a woman still could not be elected to the job. After the gamut of emotions engendered by Hillary Clinton’s surprising loss to Donald J. Trump, women are once more confronting the big questions that have long enveloped the feminist quest. Put bluntly, is it sexism or the system that has so far prevented a woman from becoming president of the United States? And what lessons might be drawn from Europe, or places further afield, that could help an American woman get to the top one day? As members of the global elite gather this week at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, gender issues in politics and beyond will be hotly debated. If the fight for women’s rights has taught activists one thing, it is that simple questions have complex answers. Melanne Verveer, executive director of the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security and former ambassador at large for global women’s issues under President Obama, said that “to just look at this election through the gender lens is not to understand it fully. ” Though many women saw Mrs. Clinton, a former senator and secretary of state, as the most qualified candidate, other women felt no tug to help one of their own shatter a glass ceiling and instead “reached a conclusion that they might be better off with a change,” Ms. Verveer said. “I think people would like to think there has to be one good explanation,” said Shauna Lani Shames, an assistant professor of political science at Rutgers in New Jersey. “But there is not. It’s many. ” What she called the “deeply ingrained sexism” of a country fond of cowboy myths and tales of the Wild West is one. There are others. For starters, look at how the United States chooses candidates. “Selection is mostly about people ” Dr. Shames said. “You have to as a candidate, and often win a primary before the party will take note of you. ” Just the expense and time away from family involved turn many women off, leaving a smaller pipeline. Even the basic act of asking for money — essential to any political bid in the United States — hurts women more, she argued: “Women hate it more than men do. Men tend to be in social circles where they can raise more money. ” Mrs. Clinton was criticized last summer when her annual sojourn in the wealthy enclaves of the Hamptons became studded with . (Mr. Trump made his own round of there, to perhaps less attention.) In Europe, women can work their way up the ladder of their party, which tends to have a distinct ideological identity and is often subsidized by government funds from which all legal parties can benefit. In addition, Dr. Shames said, research has shown that the proportional representation that is a cornerstone of many European political systems is far more likely to get women elected to national legislatures. Europeans have also been much readier to adopt quotas to bolster women’s part in politics. Americans steeped in individualism have been reluctant to legislate in this way. “The concept of quotas in the U. S. as you know, is antithetical to the American position and possibly the myth that holds that everyone pulls themselves up by their bootstraps,” said Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers. Of course, Europeans have not always proved able to use quotas to the full advantage for women. In France, for example, where law dictates that 40 percent of candidates be female, parties, particularly conservative ones, have often preferred to pay fines rather than find the mandated number of women. Joanna Maycock is secretary general of the European Women’s Lobby, which brings together about 2, 500 women’s groups from each of the 28 European Union nations, and from neighbors like Norway and aspiring members like Turkey and Serbia. She said she detected a change in attitudes since Mrs. Clinton’s defeat that starkly highlighted the quirks of the American system, in particular the Electoral College. (The college affirmed Mr. Trump’s ascension to the presidency despite his loss of the popular vote.) Ms. Maycock cited a workshop at the end of November that brought together about 25 American and European activists examining how to get more women into politics. “When we planned it, we thought we would be celebrating Hillary’s success,” she said. Instead, the meeting reflected “the shock of Trump. ” “A lot of the American participants were so horrified and shocked, there was a big difference,” she said, a readiness to explore other methods and reinforce the need to train women in public speaking, and building networks. Ms. Walsh’s center at Rutgers runs nonpartisan campaign training in New Jersey and assists in such training in 17 other states. She reported a “dramatic increase” in women’s signing up. “Women are seeking a way to have a voice,” Ms. Walsh said. “This election has made citizens — men and women — see things through the gender blend. ” She added that women “can have an enormous impact on their lives, families, identities” and that “they can’t sit on the sidelines they have to figure out a way to get engaged. ” In modern Europe, the trail to the top was blazed by the somewhat unlikely figure of Margaret Thatcher, who was the first woman elected as prime minister in Britain in 1979. (Theresa May is now the second, with the tough task of negotiating the country’s exit from the European Union.) Mrs. Thatcher had no outright feminist agenda and stood accused of fomenting social hardship with her conservative policies and iron will, for instance, to break Britain’s trade unions. Close to 40 years later, similar policies of austerity are associated with Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, often called the world’s most powerful woman after 11 years in office. Her unwillingness to loosen Europe’s purse strings while Germany, Europe’s No. 1 economy, benefits substantially from the euro currency, makes her anything but a heroine in many feminist eyes. “The obsession with austerity across Europe has been really bad,” Ms. Maycock said. It hits women doubly, she argued, cutting public service jobs often held by women and leaving them bereft of the infrastructure — care for children and seniors, for instance — that enables them to work. Over the past decade, Ms. Maycock contended, austerity has been a big brake on women’s empowerment. “We’ve actually stopped progressing, more or less,” she said, citing a gender inequality index compiled by her group that showed 51. 5 percent progress toward full equality 10 years ago, compared with 52. 5 percent now. In general, she said, European countries with quotas tend to show an effect once the female membership of legislatures passes she said. Over all in Europe, women account for about of legislators, she said. The range is large: In Poland, for instance, a female prime minister, Beata Szydlo, is among 27 percent of female lawmakers in the lower house of Parliament after the 2015 elections introduced a quota system. But the upper house, which has no such mechanism, is only 13 percent women. Norway, one of the first European countries to adopt quotas, has had two female prime ministers and a female defense minister, mandates 40 percent female board membership in business. Ms. Maycock pointed to recently elected female mayors in Paris, Barcelona, Madrid and Rome as more examples of women’s getting power where it matters. But in the United States, Dr. Shames said, women are far more likely to be city council members than mayors and state legislators than governors. On both sides of the Atlantic, women still have important territory to take: While France has had a female defense minister, and Germany currently has one — Ursula von der Leyen, a married mother of seven — neither Britain nor the United States has entrusted defense to a woman. American finance, too, has remained firmly in the hands of men, on Wall Street as at the Treasury. And 2016 shocked many not just with Mrs. Clinton’s defeat — but with the triumph of Mr. Trump, despite accusations of misogyny, and with the murder of Jo Cox, a Labour Party legislator, who was stabbed by a man reportedly shouting “Britain First” days before the country voted to leave the European Union, which Ms. Cox opposed. In democracies from Australia through the United States and Europe, the thin pipeline of women ready to step up to the top in politics (and business) is an added cause for concern. In the United States, there are just five female governors right now, and 21 women in the Senate, Ms. Walsh said. “The bench is very small, and the potential pool of candidates is really very small,” she said, noting that most modern presidents (if not Mr. Trump) have been governors or senators first. That makes it doubly significant that more women are expressing an interest in entering politics after Mrs. Clinton’s defeat, she said. | 0fake |
Texas Coaches Oppose Homeschooler ’Tebow’ Bill | A new voice jumped into the debate over the proposed Texas “Tebow” bill which would allow homeschool students to participate in public school sports and other competitive extracurricular activities — the head of the Texas Girls Coaches Association (TGCA). He opposed the legislation over social media. [On Saturday, Sam Tipton, TGCA executive director, posted his opposition to the equal access University Interscholastic League (UIL) bills moving through the Texas Legislature — S. B. 640 and H. B. 1323. Tipton suggested students educated at home would not be on a level playing field with their public school peers. As reported by Breitbart Texas, the aforementioned bills pay homage to Heisman Trophy winner Tim Tebow, who was homeschooled but played on the local high school football team. Lawmakers seek to grant homeschoolers access to public schools for UIL sanctioned sports and other competitive teams. Bill supporters say homeschool families pay for these programs through their taxpayer dollars but their children cannot use them because they do not attend public school. Critics fear the legislation’s unintended consequences may mean regulation for homeschooler as dictated by the public education system. On Facebook, Tipton asserted, “Home school students in UIL activities will determine their rules and regulations for participation while public school students will adhere to state law and local rules and school board policies. ” The Texas Girls Coaches Association is one of the largest associations of coaches, and the largest association for coaches of girls’ athletics in the United States, according to the group’s website. Although sanctioned by the UIL, the TGCA is not part of the league. Their leadership includes coaches and administrators from all levels of public education. Breitbart Texas spoke to Tipton, who pointed to the language of the legislation. Essentially, the “Tebow” bills deny public schools, state agencies, or government authorities any supervision over homeschool students, their parent( s) and their curriculum. He noted, “Homeschooled students would not have to meet the same requirements as a public school student. ” Tipton commented that under the state’s “No Pass No Play” qualifying standard, public school students must follow state curriculum and state guidelines to be eligible to participate in UIL activities. “All public school students are required to take all state mandated tests. Public school students in UIL athletics are restricted to eight hour after school time along with their class period per day during the school week,” he said, adding, “This does not meet the academic requirements of a public school student. ” Homeschooler sports participation would be voluntary under “Tebow” and these children would not have to take the public school mandated State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness (STAAR). However, “opting in” requires testing to “demonstrate proficiency” via a nationally recognized, assessment like the Iowa Test of Basic Skills, Stanford Achievement Test, California Achievement Test, or the Comprehensive Test of Basic Skills. Although the National Home Education Research Institute (NHERI) reported homeschoolers scored percent higher than their public school peers on standardized tests, the national Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) opposed such legislation, stating: “This bill validates the erroneous idea that standardized testing is the only legitimate way — or even a good way — to assess a student’s eligibility for sports. ” They recommended alternative assessments that more accurately gauge a student’s eligibility, underscoring that public schools require good attendance and good grades to participate in sports, but students can still score poorly on a standardized test. Conversely, the Texas Home School Coalition (THSC) the state’s longtime advocacy organization, highlighted that school districts have no authority over standardized testing and homeschool parents should have the freedom to chose for their child if they want to take the tests and participate. THSC also confirmed that and the Texas Music Educators Association (TMEA) are not affected by such a bill. THSC supports UIL equal access largely because 33 percent of rural homeschoolers experience limited sports team opportunities and find alternative programs too expensive. Homeschoolers remain divided. A Ragnar Research Partners survey found 77 percent of responding 500 Texas homeschool parents enthusiastically support UIL equal access. Previously, Breitbart Texas spoke to homeschool parents and groups like No2Tebow, who expressed concerns over eroding liberties, especially if the legislation forces UIL rules to change, also affecting those homeschoolers who do not take part in public school sports. Last week, S. B. 640, authored by Senator Van Taylor ( ) passed in the state’s upper chamber. The companion House Bill 1323, from homeschool dad and Representative James Frank ( Falls) is scheduled for a public hearing Thursday. Texas introduced “Tebow” bills into the 2013 and 2015 legislatures, which fizzled. Follow Merrill Hope, a member of the original Breitbart Texas team, on Twitter. | 0fake |
Trump SEETHING After Congressman Obliterates Him For ‘Nasty Woman’ Debate Insult (TWEETS) | There were many notable moments from last night s presidential debate thanks to Republican nominee Donald Trump, who made it a debate to remember (not necessarily a good thing, in his case). Not only did Trump imply that he would not accept the election s results if he was defeated by Hillary Clinton, but he once again proved that he has ZERO respect for women when he insulted her on the debate stage.Ironically, this attack came after Trump insisted that no one has more respect for women than I do . Clinton had been talking about Social Security and Medicare, and Trump jumped in to interrupt so he could call her such a nasty woman. It was a completely random attack, and the perfect display of Trump s lack of self control and misogyny in action.As soon as it happened, social media exploded with rage as Americans rushed to criticize Trump s blatant disrespect of not only the former Secretary of State, but women everywhere. It wasn t long before the hashtag #nastywoman was being used far and wide, slamming the business mogul for his sexist outburst. One response, however, has Trump particularly p*ssed off. Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.) said it best when he tweeted: Women who disagree with you aren t nasty. In this case, they are what is known as right.' TwitterHell yes. And we all know how much fragile Donald HATES being proven wrong! More politicians jumped into the conversation on Trump s dangerous attitude toward women while watching the debate. Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) also came forward to point out how dishonest Trump s remarks about respecting women were. Her attack was flawless:TwitterIf you look at any interview, footage, etc. of Trump talking about women before or during his presidential campaign, it is extremely rare that you ll find him saying something nice about them much less respecting them. Trump has a horrifying long history of degrading, objectifying, insulting and belittling women, as well as a track record of sexually assaulting them. This man is dangerous for women and he is dangerous for America everything he says and does proves that he cannot and should not be our next President.Featured image via Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images | 1real |
'First line of defense': Democratic states vow to fight Trump in court | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democratic attorneys general in at least five U.S. states have vowed to fight President-elect Donald Trump in the courts if he rolls back Obama-era regulations or adopts policies they view as infringing upon civil liberties. With Republicans controlling the White House and both chambers of Congress, the Democratic Party looks set to rely more heavily on top law officials in states they run to help keep a check on Trump’s exercise of power. Any efforts by a Trump administration to weaken consumer protection or climate change policies, for example, could lead to conflict between the states and the federal government, attorney general offices in Maryland, Virginia, Washington, Massachusetts, and New York told Reuters. In some instances, that could see them asking a federal judge to block federal action nationwide. “I view my role as being on the first line of defense against a Trump administration if it chooses to act in an unconstitutional fashion,” said Bob Ferguson, the Democratic attorney general of Washington state. When George W. Bush was president, Democratic states forced his administration to take the first step toward regulating carbon emissions for the first time. Michael Kelly, a spokesman for Virginia’s attorney general, Mark Herring, said that if a Trump administration “crosses the line and pursues actions that are illegal or violate the Constitution, Attorney General Herring will be ready to stand up and defend the rights of Virginians.” The Trump transition team did not respond to a request seeking comment. Attorneys general are the top legal officials in the 50 states and are typically elected. After this year’s elections, 21 will be Democrats, in addition to the attorney general for the District of Columbia. Acting on behalf of their states, they generally have legal standing to bring lawsuits challenging federal regulations or executive actions, including those that may infringe upon civil rights. “The President-elect has made a number of promises that, if implemented, would violate the Constitution or Massachusetts law,” Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey said in a statement. “If the incoming administration chooses to try to act in ways that are unconstitutional, my office will take action to protect the rights and liberties of our residents and our state,” she said. A dozen attorney general offices contacted by Reuters declined to discuss potential legal strategies before Trump takes office. Democratic states that sue might initially get a sympathetic hearing, as many federal courts are staffed with judges appointed by President Barack Obama during his eight years in office. But challengers face one major obstacle, a Supreme Court likely soon to regain its conservative majority once Trump makes an appointment to fill a vacant seat. The court is currently divided 4-4 between conservatives and liberals. Republican-controlled Texas, which took a leading role in challenging Obama’s executive actions, provides a model for the Democratic attorneys general. Climate change is likely to be area of friction between Trump, who has vowed to roll back regulations aimed at cutting greenhouse gases, and Democratic states, which have supported such efforts at the federal level or enacted their own measures. The top target for Trump is Obama’s Clean Power Plan, which seeks to limit carbon emissions from power plants. Amy Spitalnick, a spokeswoman for New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said his office “will continue to fight to protect New Yorkers’ public health, property, and environment, and to lead the coalition of states defending the Clean Power Plan.” Immigration policy is another potential flashpoint. Trump has said he will rescind an Obama executive order giving deportation relief to up to 4 million people and end federal funding for cities like New York and Los Angeles that give sanctuary to undocumented immigrants. A federal court blocked the Obama executive order in February 2015 after Texas and 25 other Republican states challenged it. The Supreme Court split 4-4 on the issue in June, leaving the lower court’s ruling in place. On consumer protection, states can both challenge any Trump efforts to loosen regulations and ramp up their own enforcement efforts, said Doug Gansler, a Democrat who served as Maryland’s attorney general from 2007 to 2015. “If the federal government abdicates that responsibility, the more aggressive and progressive state attorneys general will fill that vacuum,” he said. | 0fake |
Emails Renew Questions About Clinton Foundation and State Dept. Overlap - The New York Times | WASHINGTON — A new batch of State Department emails released Tuesday showed the close and sometimes overlapping interests between the Clinton Foundation and the State Department when Hillary Clinton served as secretary of state. The documents raised new questions about whether the charitable foundation worked to reward its donors with access and influence at the State Department, a charge that Mrs. Clinton has faced in the past and has always denied. In one email exchange, for instance, an executive at the Clinton Foundation in 2009 sought to put a billionaire donor in touch with the United States ambassador to Lebanon because of the donor’s interests there. In another email, the foundation appeared to push aides to Mrs. Clinton to help find a job for a foundation associate. Her aides indicated that the department was working on the request. Mrs. Clinton’s presidential campaign, which has been shadowed for 17 months by the controversy over the private email server she used exclusively while at the State Department, said that the emails released Tuesday had no bearing on the foundation’s work. The State Department turned the new emails over to a conservative advocacy group, Judicial Watch, as part of a lawsuit that the group brought under the Freedom of Information Act. The documents included 44 emails that were not among some 55, 000 pages of emails that Mrs. Clinton had previously given to the State Department, which she said represented all her “ ” emails. The document release centers on discussions between Mrs. Clinton’s aides and Clinton Foundation executives about a number of donors and associates with interests before the State Department. Tom Fitton, the president of Judicial Watch, charged that Mrs. Clinton “hid” the documents from the public because they appeared to contradict her official pledge in 2009 to remove herself from Clinton Foundation business while leading the State Department. The documents indicate, he said in a telephone interview, that “the State Department and the Clinton Foundation worked hand in hand in terms of policy and donor effort. ” “There was no daylight between the two under Mrs. Clinton, and this was contrary to her promises,” he added. A number of the email exchanges released Tuesday included Huma Abedin, who was a top adviser to Mrs. Clinton at the State Department and later worked at the Clinton Foundation. In April 2009, Douglas J. Band, who led the foundation’s Clinton Global Initiative, emailed Ms. Abedin and Cheryl D. Mills, another top adviser to Mrs. Clinton, for help with a donor. Mr. Band wrote that he needed to connect Gilbert Chagoury, a billionaire who was one of the foundation’s top donors, with someone at the State Department to talk about his interests in Lebanon. “It’s jeff feltman,” Ms. Abedin answered, referring to Jeffrey Feltman, who was the American ambassador to Lebanon at the time. “I’m sure he knows him. I’ll talk to jeff. ” Mr. Band asked her to call Mr. Chagoury immediately if possible. “This is very important,” he wrote. In a separate email exchange, Mr. Band passed along to Ms. Abedin and Ms. Mills a request for “a favor” from an associate who had recently been on a Clinton Foundation trip to Haiti and was apparently seeking work at the State Department. The State Department deleted much of the information about the associate, including his name and the outcome of the job referral, in turning over the emails to Judicial Watch. In one undeleted section, however, Mr. Band wrote that it was “important to take care of” the associate’s request. A short time later, Ms. Abedin wrote back to say: “We all have him on our radar. Personnel has been sending him options. ” The Clinton campaign suggested that Mr. Band was acting in his capacity as former President Bill Clinton’s personal assistant, not in his role overseeing the Clinton Global Initiative. Regarding the exchanges between Mr. Band and Mrs. Clinton’s aides, the campaign said in a statement: “Neither of these emails involve the secretary or relate to the foundation’s work. They are communications between her aides and the president’s personal aide, and indeed the recommendation was for one of the secretary’s former staffers who was not employed by the foundation. ” The campaign did not elaborate. The F. B. I. spent more than a year examining Mrs. Clinton’s use of a private email account, but it is not clear how the work of the Clinton Foundation figured into that investigation. James B. Comey Jr. the F. B. I. director, was noticeably circumspect in an appearance last month before the House oversight committee when Republicans questioned whether the investigation had looked at the Clinton Foundation. Twice, he declined to say. | 0fake |
Will ‘Trumponomics’ Bankrupt America? | 21st Century Wire says F. William Engdahl is a strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics from Princeton University and is a best-selling author on oil and geopolitics. Engdahl was a guest alongside Adam Garrie of The Duran on a power packed edition of The Sunday Wire with Patrick Henningsen entitled War And Peace . If you didn t get the chance to catch it, you can find that podcast here.More on this report from GlobalResearch (Image TIME)F. William Engdahl GlobalResearch The campaign promises were grandiose just like the candidate. Donald Trump wooed millions of American voters with his pledge to make America great again. He promised a $1 trillion infrastructure plan to revitalize the de facto depressed national economy. He promised to bring jobs back from China, Mexico and elsewhere by renegotiating major trade deals or scotching them entirely as with the Trans-Pacific Partnership of the Obama era, a scheme which Trump rightly said would take even more American jobs. After 100 days in office what are the prospects that his economic program will bring positive changes to Americans?Dismal to put it mildly. Of course that should come as no shock to anyone taking a closer look at who is Trump, or more correctly his transition team brought in to run White House economic policy.That Dubious Wall Street Economics TeamThe top economic and financial position in the Trump Cabinet is held by of Steve Mnuchin, Secretary of the Treasury, a veteran Wall Street banker for 17 years at Goldman Sachs. As an undergraduate at Yale University, for those interested in occult matters, Mnuchin was inducted into the bizarre Skull & Bones secret society in 1985, the same secret society where George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush were initiates.After leaving Goldman Sachs, Mnuchin was several times a business partner with notorious convicted hedge fund insider trader, George Soros, the putative Daddy Warbucks today of CIA and USAID regime change NGOs around the world. Both Mnuchin and Soros, with other investors, made a literal killing on the ravages of the US sub-prime real estate collapse. They bought bankrupt California mortgage lender IndyMac from the US Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation during the 2008 sub-prime mortgage crisis at a bargain price. Mnuchin was severely criticized as owner and CEO of IndyMac for making money by foreclosing aggressively on homes at a rate double the norms of the banking industry. He was sued over questionable foreclosures, and settled several cases for millions of dollars. He violated the Fair Housing Act by not lending money to African Americans, Hispanics, and Asians. If we are to believe him, he told the financial TV CNBC last November it would be the Trump administration s job to make sure that the average American has wage increases and good jobs. A second key member of Donald Trump s economic team is Wilbur Ross, Secretary of Commerce. Ross, a billionaire, was for 24 years head of N.M. Rothschild & Sons New York office for bankruptcy-restructuring, a euphemism for what is called asset-stripping, where he earned the title, King of Bankruptcy. Ross ties to Trump go back to the 1980 s when Ross helped Trump avoid foreclosure on The Donald s three Atlantic City gambling casinos. Ross International Coal Group owned a West Virginia coal mine where an explosion in 2006 killed 12 miners. It was later revealed by his former associates that Ross knew well that the mine was sub-standard in safety but did nothing to correct it. In 2014 Ross was named head or Grand Swipe of a secret Wall Street fraternity, Kappa Beta Phi, founded in 1929 just before the stock market crash, whose stated purpose is to keep alive the spirit of the good old days of 1928 29. Michael Bloomberg, former Goldman Sachs CEO Jon Corzine, Laurence Fink CEO of the $4.5 trillion financial firm BlackRock, are some of the very select members of Ross Wall Street fraternity.The Trump Director of the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB), responsible for drafting the President s annual Budget, is former US Congressman Mike Mulvaney. In his first Trump Budget proposal Mulvaney cut funds for a program Meals on Wheels which brings food to disabled, claiming the program showed no results. The program delivers meals to individual homes and senior citizen centers, feeding more than 2.4 million Americans 60 and older, more than half a million of them veterans according to their website. The government says that most recipients live alone, take more than six medications, and rely on these meals for at least half the food they consume.Gary Cohn is the White House Director of the National Economic Council. He came to the job directly from Goldman Sachs where he was President and Chief Operating Officer. Cohn led a Goldman Sachs delegation to Greece in 2009 to try to convince the Greek government to use derivatives to push debt due dates into the distant future. Goldman Sachs in fact, while Cohn held a top position in 2001, devised the exotic derivatives scheme to hide billions in state debt from Brussels that enabled Greece to illegally qualify to join the Eurozone.This is the gang that we are supposed to believe will make America great again, and to make sure that the average American has wage increases and good jobs. In fact, based on what they have released to date, they will destroy much of what little remains of a functioning national economy and a stable middle-class. Continue this article at GlobalResearchThe above article was originally posted at F. William Engdahl s New Eastern OutlookREAD MORE TRUMP NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire TRUMP FilesSUPPORT OUR WORK BY SUBSCRIBING & BECOMING A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV | 1real |
Live Soirée présidentielle US 2016 >> Le Gorafi | null | 1real |
Prisoners Are Going On Strike Across The United States To End Legal Slavery | Yesterday marked the 45th anniversary of the Attica prison uprising. The uprising was the first major prison uprising in the United States. Today, there will be a nation-wide prison strike is a modern day slave rebellion.The IWW Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee put out a call to action, saying: On September 9th of 1971 prisoners took over and shut down Attica, New York State s most notorious prison. On September 9th of 2016, we will begin an action to shut down prisons all across this country. We will not only demand the end to prison slavery, we will end it ourselves by ceasing to be slaves. Work stoppages will occur in prisons across the United States. Organizers on the outside will also be conducting mass demonstrations across the nation.Slavery is legal in the United States of America. That may not be what you were told while growing up but it is completely true and is enshrined in the Constitution. Section 1 of the 13th Amendment states that: Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. When the 13th Amendment was ratified, it did not make slavery illegal. It made it illegal for private entities to own slaves. Once an individual is convicted of a crime, they are slaves until their sentence is served. Despite the illegality of private slavery, corporations are making a killing by using publicly owned slaves. Everything from Victoria s Secret lingerie to juice boxes has been manufactured in slave operated factories, that we refer to prisons.There are more people of color in prison today than there were during the days of private slavery. That is a disturbing fact that must be brought up when speaking on the topic of public slavery.People reading this (or who decided to comment on the article without reading it) might say that prisoners are being taught valuable skills that will help them once they are released from prison. That s absolutely correct. That being said, a skilled person with a criminal record is still a person with a criminal record. We brand our slaves in the United States. Those people would also be in good company of those who defended the practice of chattel slavery in the south prior to the emancipation of private slaves.Those who defended private slavery viewed slave masters as the benefactors of privately owned slaves. People of color were considered to be unskilled and unable to provide for themselves adequately on their own.It is now time that people realize that there is a modern-day abolitionist movement growing in the United States. Incarcerated workers must rise up. Those who are not incarcerated must support them. It s time to join the fight and recognize that slavery did not end when the 13th Amendment was ratified, it decided who was eligible to hold slaves in bondage and who isn t.Those who are incarcerated are risking their lives by fighting back against their owners. They may be beaten, tortured, or otherwise penalized for demanding their basic human rights be recognized.Featured image from Justin Sullivan/Getty Images | 1real |
Cop Holds Gun On Black Delivery Man During Routine Traffic Stop (VIDEO) | Twenty-five-year-old Christopher Jeffries was working as a pizza delivery driver on the night of January 16, when he was pulled over by a Bladensburg, MA, police officer.According to Jeffries, who captured the encounter with the unnamed officer on cell-phone video, the cop got out of his own vehicle with his gun drawn. After approaching Jeffries car, the officer pointed the gun in the young man s face.The cell-phone video shows the officer approaching the driver s side of his vehicle, shouting, POLICE OFFICER! PUT YOUR HANDS ON THE STEERING WHEEL! Jeffries tries to communicate with the officer, who again demands that he puts his hands on the steering wheel.Jeffries complies by placing his hands on the wheel. He then calmly asks the cop, Can you put your gun away sir? Instead, the cop demands that he produce his license and registration. As he is attempting to do that, the officer commands him to put his phone down. I m putting my phone down, Jeffries says.The cop repeats the command several more times, even though Jeffries is no longer holding his phone.He tells the officer that he did put his phone down, but the cop is too busy shouting orders in rapid-fire succession to even hear what he s saying.At this point Jeffries raises his empty hands, saying, My phone is not even in my hands. Immediately the cop starts demanding that he roll down his window.At this point the driver s window is cracked enough that he can hear the officer and the officer can hear him.Jeffries rolls the window down further, handing his driver s license through the opening, as the officer continues to demand that he roll his window down. My window is down, he says. This can go from bad to real bad, the cop says.A minute later, after Jeffries tells him he doesn t have his registration on him, the officer begins demanding that he get out of the vehicle.At this point Jeffries says, I actually am afraid right now. He asks the officer, Can you please call for backup? saying, You re pulling a gun on me. Watch the video below, via VerifiedPlus on YouTube. During an interview with Fox 5, Jeffries described the encounter, saying: I felt like I was living the last seconds of my life when the man walked out of his car. He went to say: Seeing that gun just on my side mirror was like a startling, frightening moment of like, This could be it, given the atmosphere and the time that we are in. This stop should have resulted in a minor traffic ticket, at best.Instead it was escalated to a life or death situation, by a cop who was too scared to even talk to a Black man without his gun drawn and pointed in his face.Not surprisingly, the police chief contends that his officer s behavior was appropriate.Jeffries has filed a civil rights suit against the officer. Image credit: video screen capture via VerifiedPlus on youtube | 1real |
Kremlin: U.S. to blame for no Putin-Trump bilateral meeting in Vietnam | MOSCOW (Reuters) - The Kremlin said on Sunday that inflexibility on the part of the United States was to blame for the lack of a bilateral meeting between Russia s President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump during a summit in Vietnam. Trump and Putin met briefly on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Vietnam on Saturday and agreed on a joint statement supporting a political solution for Syria, but did not hold substantive bilateral talks. Unfortunately the American side did not offer any alternatives despite all efforts of our Russian colleagues. There was only one time offered that was convenient for the American side, and only one place offered, which had already been rented by the Americans, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov was quoted as saying by the RIA news agency. The Americans showed no flexibility, and unfortunately did not offer any other alternative proposals. That is why the meeting could not happen, Peskov added. Putin himself said on Saturday the lack of a bilateral meeting with Trump in Vietnam was due to both leaders schedules and protocol obstacles that their teams had been unable to overcome. Allegations that Trump s election campaign colluded with Moscow last year to turn voters away from Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton have hampered the president s efforts to improve frosty U.S.-Russian relations. Putin renewed his denial of the allegations during his brief meeting with Trump on Saturday. Trump has previously said the accusations of collusion were a hoax. | 0fake |
U.S. sanctions an important tool, not to be used 'frivolously': Treasury's Lew | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Economic sanctions are a powerful policy weapon but should not be wielded “frivolously,” U.S. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew said in an interview to be aired on Tuesday. Sanctions - blacklisting individuals and organizations, effectively barring them from the global financial system - have become a favored tool for the United States. It has used them against challenges as varied as drug trafficking, cyber attacks and jihadist financing. But the impact has to be weighed as carefully as those of military force, Lew said in an interview with Public Television host Charlie Rose, according to a transcript of the interview released on Tuesday. “We can’t shy away from using sanctions because it will slow down growth, but we can’t do it frivolously either,” Lew said. “It’s a serious step, and it’s something that has to be guarded in order to have it in the future when you need it.” U.S. sanctions have evolved over time from broad embargoes - such as the one imposed for decades on Cuba - to more targeted actions, he said, citing measures imposed on specific Russian industries in response to Russia’s intervention in Ukraine. “They’re targeted at the centers of power, where the decisions are being made,” Lew said. The United States also should reward countries that change their behavior by removing sanctions, Lew said, pointing to measures against Iran that he credited with leading Tehran to agree to curb its nuclear program. Iran reached a deal with the United States and other world powers last July, winning relief from the harshest sanctions in return for limiting its nuclear program, which the West feared was aimed at building a weapon. “When you have an agreement that’s predicated on ‘Change your policy and get relief from the sanctions,’ there has to be relief from the sanctions,” Lew said. “Otherwise, no one will ever respond to a sanctions regime by changing their policy.” Reversing the Iran nuclear deal under a new administration - as Republican presidential candidate and U.S. Senator Ted Cruz has pledged to do - would be “destabilizing and dangerous,” Lew said. A broad economic embargo remains in place against Cuba, although President Barack Obama has used executive authority to allow commerce not specifically banned by Congress, as Washington and Havana move closer toward normal relations. Those improved ties are “going to be a force for change” in Cuba, Lew said. “We weren’t getting it done the old way.” | 0fake |
An Outrageous Merger | It's outrageous that AT&T and Time Warner may be permitted to merge. Of course, there are antitrust issues. If it's approved, some competitors will go out of business, others won't get started, and consumers will pay more and get less. Antitrust law is not designed to regulate anticompetitive behavior; it is designed to prevent anticompetitive behavior. Permitting AT&T to acquire Time Warner would be like giving a small boy a ball and then saying, "Now don't bounce it" -- or hiring someone to watch him. Regulation doesn't work. What's called "agency capture" is widespread and well documented. In the BP oil-spill case, it involved the regulators literally sleeping with the regulated. Even if an agency isn't captured it probably doesn't have enough personnel to do meaningful regulation. The FCC of my day had three employees to respond to 85,000 complaints, and they travelled in pairs. - Advertisement - The only way to prevent anticompetitive corporate behavior is to forbid the mergers that make it possible. But antitrust law and lawyers often have ways of finding adequate competition when no one else can see it. Moreover, the serious antitrust issues and economic impact of this proposed merger are the least of our concerns. Mergers of media firms, unlike those in other industries, raise issues involving our democracy, analogous to those associated with the First Amendment. Some involve politics and governing. Major media owners are more politically powerful than major donors. When a single owner has dominant control of newspapers, radio, television and cable systems within a state or region it can affect elections. When a weapons manufacturer also owns a network, it creates an appearance of possible conflict in its war coverage. Other issues involve the creative community. Suppose a single corporation owns movie studios, theaters, a TV network, book publishers, newspapers, and other forms of media. It can favor its movies in its theaters, make its authors guests on its TV shows, and advertise all its products in its newspapers. - Advertisement - Both AT&T and Time Warner are among the world's largest corporations. Time Warner's HBO and Cinemax programming is sold in 150 countries, its Turner programs in 200. AT&T is the largest telecommunications company in the world, also in 200 countries. Both are holding companies, conglomerates, that together own dozens of corporations. Many are known to you, like CNN, HBO, or DirectTV. Check their corporate Web pages for more. Worst of all, and what ought to absolutely preclude this merger, they will represent a gigantic combination of programming and delivery ("content and conduit") -- the ultimate chokehold on the distribution of a diversity of content. The AT&T of old only provided distribution, the conduit. Everyone was entitled to a phone. And once you got one, you could send any ideas you wanted into that phone and through AT&T's lines. Other institutions might come after you for disclosing national-security secrets, fraudulent marketing, or defamation, but not AT&T. There was a legal "right of entry" into the old AT&T network. No longer. There will be no legal rights for America's creators of content. Nor will there be a financial incentive for AT&T to carry their content. | 1real |
Pope candidly admits Church 'arrived late' in confronting abuse | VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Francis, in some of his most candid and personal comments on the sexual abuse of children by priests, said on Thursday that the Catholic Church had arrived late in dealing with the problem. Francis, speaking in unscripted remarks to a commission advising him on how to root out sexual abuse, also acknowledged that early in his papacy he had made one bad call in being too lenient with an Italian priest who later went on to abuse again. He also said he had decided to change current procedures for dealing with abusive priests by eliminating appeals trials in cases where there was definitive proof. Francis surprised members of the commission by putting aside his entire prepared speech and chatting to them. There is the reality that the Church arrived at the consciousness of these crimes a bit late, he said. When consciousness arrives late, the means to resolve the problems also arrive late. I am aware of this difficulty but it is reality and I say it plainly: We arrived late. Church sexual abuse broke into the open in the United States with reports of cases in Louisiana in 1984 and exploded in 2002, when journalists in Boston found that bishops had systematically moved abusers to new posts instead of defrocking them. Thousands of cases have come to light around the world as investigations have encouraged long-silent victims to go public, shattering the Church s reputation in places such as Ireland, and more than $2 billion has been paid in compensation. The old practice of moving people around and not confronting the problem made consciences fall asleep, he said. Francis acknowledged that the commission, which was founded in 2014, had to swim against the tide, a reference to high level defections from its ranks. Marie Collins of Ireland, a non-clerical member who was victim of priestly abuse when she was a child, quit in frustration in March, citing a shameful lack of cooperation within the Vatican. Another, Peter Saunders of Britain, took a leave of absence last year in protest over a lack of progress. Francis said that everyone had to realize that sexual abuse is a sickness with a high probability of relapse. That person may repent today ... but may commit it again after two years. We have to put it into our heads that this is a sickness, he said. Francis said he would change current Vatican procedures to severely limit chances of appeal for pedophile priests convicted by church tribunals, saying they often were overly legalistic, allowing for reduced sentences on procedural grounds. I have decided to balance this out and say that if an abuse of a minor is proven, it is sufficient and there should be no recourse. If the proof is there. Period. It s definitive, he said. Francis, who was elected in 2013, acknowledged he made one bad judgment early in his papacy concerning an Italian priest, Mauro Inzoli. In that case, the bishop of Crema, had ruled that Inzoli would be removed from the public ministry while remaining a priest but a Church tribunal ruled that he be defrocked. The pope sided with the bishop. I was new (in the papacy) I did not understand these things well and chose the more benevolent of the two sentences but after two years the priest had a relapse. I learned from this, Francis said. | 0fake |
Clinton doubles down on disputed claim FBI found her email remarks 'truthful' | Hillary Clinton has doubled down on her assertion that the FBI declared her public remarks on her email scandal “consistent and truthful,” despite independent fact-checkers concluding otherwise.
“And as the FBI said, everything that I’ve said publicly has been consistent and truthful with what I’ve told [the FBI],” Clinton said Wednesday in an interview with Brandon Rittiman of KUSA News.
Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler swiftly chided the Democratic presidential candidate for repeating the "roundly debunked" claim.
Clinton first cited the FBI in her defense last Sunday when “Fox News Sunday” host Chris Wallace noted Director James Comey had contradicted her claim she never sent classified material from her home server.
“That's not what I heard Director Comey say … Director Comey said that my answers were truthful and what I've said is consistent with what I have told the American people, that there were decisions discussed and made to classify retroactively certain of the emails,” she said.
Several fact-checkers, however, called her out on that claim.
The Washington Post's Kessler awarded her “four Pinnochios,” and noted, “Comey has repeatedly not taken a stand on her public statements.”
PolitiFact gave her a “Pants on Fire” rating for a lack of truthfulness and FactCheck.org declared her claims “false.”
Comey did tell Congress: “We have no basis to conclude she lied to the FBI.” But he did not say the same about her public statements.
During testimony before a House committee, Comey said it was “not true” that nothing Clinton sent or received was marked classified. To the contrary, he said, “there was classified material emailed.
Donald Trump also doubled down Thursday on his claim he saw video of Iranians taking $400 million in cash off an airplane on the same day American hostages were released. His campaign earlier said he meant that he saw television coverage of the hostages, not the cash, leaving an airplane.
Afterward, Trump once again clarified, this time via Twitter. | 0fake |
Ireland not ready to let Brexit talks move to stage 2: minister | DUBLIN (Reuters) - Ireland is not ready to allow talks on Britain s withdrawal from the European Union to move to the second phase next month, Foreign Minister Simon Coveney said on Tuesday. Yes we all want to move onto phase two of the Brexit negotiations but we are not in a place right now that allows us to do that. We have very serious issues, particularly around the (UK-Irish) border, that need more clarity, Coveney told a news conference before a meeting with his British counterpart Boris Johnson. | 0fake |
Hurdles high for Merkel in three-way 'Jamaica' tie-up talks | BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany s conservative chancellor Angela Merkel may have won her fourth consecutive national election, but she faces a huge challenge in trying to forge a three-way alliance between parties far apart on the political spectrum. Despite winning most votes, Merkel s bloc slumped to its worst result since 1949 and, just as significant in terms of government building, her current Social Democrat (SPD) coalition partners said they would go into opposition after slumping to 20.7 percent in projections, a post-war low. Merkel herself indicated that she had only one other option to govern. Jamaica is the name given to a tie-up between her conservative bloc, the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP) and environmentalist Greens, from the fact that island s flag is made up of the black, yellow and green colors of the three parties. Projections put the conservatives, comprising Merkel s Christian Democrats (CDU) and Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU) on 33.0 percent, the FDP on 10.6 and the Greens on 8.9 - enough for a workable majority. But such an alliance, untested at a federal level, collapsed in January 2012 in the western state of Saarland after little more than two years, although it has been tried again since May in the northern state of Schleswig-Holstein. On a national level, it would have to overcome deep differences on EU reform, tax, energy and immigration. Both the Greens and FDP, fearing alienating their supporters with the compromises they would have to make, played down the likelihood of such a partnership. The prospect of sharing power in Europe s biggest economy will be a powerful incentive, however. They may also feel a duty to ensure the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), whose anti-Islam and anti-immigrant rhetoric have for many raised uncomfortable echoes of Germany s Nazi past, does not become the main opposition party. Fueled by voter anger over Merkel s decision in 2015 to admit around a million migrants, mostly fleeing conflict in the Middle East, the AfD won 13 percent of the vote to become the third-biggest bloc, and the first far-right party in the national parliament for over half a century. It will be very difficult but we all have a responsibility to our country. We don t want new elections, said conservative Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere, adding that such a scenario would probably give further momentum to the AfD. An ultimate coalition deal may be more about showing Germany s commitment to democratic values than securing broad agreement on policy, where the pro-business FDP and the left-leaning Greens, in particular, are poles apart. Greens co-leader Cem Ozdemir said his party would not participate in anti-European populism in a coalition with the conservatives and FDP. Although the low-tax, red-tape-cutting FDP is traditionally a pro-European party, its young leader, Christian Lindner, has rejected ideas put by French President Emmanuel Macron for deeper euro zone integration. We want to reverse the trend for our country and, if it becomes apparent in talks that these goals can be achieved, then of course we will be available, but if not, it would be our task to go into opposition, said Lindner. He has also said Russia s annexation of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 might have to be accepted as a permanent provisional arrangement. It is hard to see how Merkel could swallow that. The Greens emphasize climate policy and want a commitment to phase out coal power by 2030, which would be difficult for the other parties to agree to. Refugee policy will also be challenging, especially with the FDP and Merkel s Bavarian partners of the CSU taking a much harder line than the Greens on limiting immigration. Berenberg economist Holger Schmieding argued that in the carve-up of ministries under a Jamaica coalition, Wolfgang Schaeuble, conservative finance minister since 2009, may have to yield his post to the FDP. (That) would tilt the domestic discussion a bit further toward serious income tax cuts, he said. | 0fake |
Bill Clinton delivers defense of his foundation's 'profound' work | NEW YORK (Reuters) - Former U.S. President Bill Clinton on Wednesday called running his family’s charitable foundation one of the great honors of his life in a passionate defense against criticism of its work as his wife, Hillary Clinton, campaigns to become president. Speaking onstage in a New York City hotel ballroom for about an hour, he told supporters of the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation that it had brought about “a profound advance in the conduct and impact of modern philanthropy.” “Don’t give up what brought you here,” he said, closing out the 12th and final annual conference organized by the foundation, called the Clinton Global Initiative. “You have done something good and noble and worthy.” The foundation, which Clinton founded as he prepared to leave the White House in 2001, has come under intense scrutiny brought about by a long presidential campaign. Journalists have scoured newly released email records from Hillary Clinton’s tenure running the State Department from 2009 to 2013, which show foundation officials seeking meetings with Clinton or other diplomats on behalf of donors. Donald Trump, Clinton’s Republican opponent for the presidency, has called for a special prosecutor to investigate allegations of breaching government ethics rules. The Clintons have said that even if some of their wealthiest donors, which include corporations and foreign governments with interests before the U.S. government, may have hoped for special favors in return, none were granted. To avert suggestions of conflicts of interest, the foundation has said it will drastically limit its operations if Hillary Clinton, the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate, wins the election to succeed Barack Obama on Nov. 8. It would stop accepting money from foreign and corporate donors, foundation officials say, and much of its work would be spun off into independent entities not controlled by the Clintons. Bill Clinton, 70, has expressed frustration that political journalists covering his wife’s campaign have written more about the foundation’s donors, which include the government of Saudi Arabia and foreign billionaires, than the charitable programs it runs. He spoke at length about how he had been moved by meeting children with HIV in Cambodia, orphans left behind by the 2004 tsunami that struck Indonesia and victims of the earthquake in Haiti in 2010. He made only oblique references to the 2016 election campaign. “Everywhere today there is a temptation to say that everything I just told you is wrong, ‘Life is a zero-sum game and I’m losing; no, you’re wrong, our differences matter more than our common humanity,’” he said. “These are not the right choices.” (Refiles to make clear in paragraph 5 that foundation officials were seeking the meetings on behalf of donors.) | 0fake |
Former U.N. Security Council Head: In Venezuela, Even Opposition Uncomfortable Defying ’Socialism’ - Breitbart | Diego Arria — a former Venezuelan diplomat and U. N. Security Council president now dedicated to the struggle against socialist Chavismo in his native country — sees removing dictator Nicolás Maduro from power as only a first step in saving Venezuela from decades of corruption and decay. [Arria emphasized in an interview with Breitbart News, conducted in both Spanish and English, that removing Maduro would do little to establish a free democratic republic in Venezuela without a clean sweep of the thousands of government employees and soldiers affiliated with terrorism, drug crime, and still loyal to a socialist model of government. “[We need] a model based on liberty, free economy — not a or socialist model or anything remotely like that,” Arria noted. “If we do not change the political and economic model, we will always be an unstable country. ” Arria deemed this establishment of a political and economic model a “refounding of the republic,” which would require a new constitution and an abandonment of both the leftist ideology of the ruling party and the approach of the official opposition. The Venezuelan opposition today largely focuses on the removal of Maduro from power, demanding free and fair elections. What the leaders of the opposition wish to see replace Maduro is not clearly defined, largely because of their own backgrounds: many also identify as socialists. While they oppose the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) many of the parties that form the Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD) the opposition coalition in the National Assembly, are member parties of the Socialist International, including Popular Will, the party led by political prisoner Leopoldo López. Henry Ramos Allup, a key member of the Venezuelan opposition, is a vice president of the Socialist International. Asked to explain this phenomenon to an American audience, who largely reject the label “socialist,” Arria laments that many Venezuelan parties feel the need to identify as socialist, even nominally. “For a long time, the official opposition was ‘Chavista light’ … there has been a sort of hijacking of the political class, as if the Socialist International were the club of dignified, enlightened, or democratic governments in the world when this is not true,” he notes. “Among the official parties there are all kinds [of ideologies] but all are social democrats or moderate socialists, there is not a single [other kind]. ” “In Venezuela, people have a complex about calling themselves conservative,” he adds. “We have to enter a period of transition,” he explained, “that will not be conventional, it will not be a ‘Jeffersonian model’ [of reform] because Venezuela has things like this:” We have 50, 000 Cubans in Venezuela. This is more than the number of forces that Spain had occupying Venezuela during our war of independence. I am not saying that these 50, 000 Cubans are all soldiers, but thousands of them are trained for these ends. We have 100, 000 militiamen, paramilitaries … and the influence of the drug cartels in the armed forces, in police forces, in the judicial system. How do you remove that simply with an election replacing one government with another? Late dictator Hugo Chávez forged a lasting bond with the communist government of Cuba that persists to this day, in which Venezuela relies heavily on Cuba for doctors, ( ) medicine, soldiers, and intelligence officials. Venezuela supplies Cuba with oil, filling a void left by the collapse of the Soviet Union. Venezuelans have long complained that among the cruelest and most violent state officers acting against peaceful protesters have been Cubans, easily identified by their accents and superior ranking. The word “colony” for what the Castros have done to Venezuela surfaces often. A 2013 estimate by General Antonio Rivero put the number of Cuban nationals that had passed through Venezuela since Chávez took power at upwards of 200, 000. Arria emphasizes that civilian Cubans seeking an escape from the island prison are not the problem. “To begin with, the ones who are doctors and sports players, I’m sure they would like to stay in Venezuela, so those are no problem because you give them nationality and they are fine,” he notes. “The problem is with the people who are today in the intelligence departments … Cubans have killed Venezuelans and tortured Venezuelans and they are doing that now. ” Rescuing Venezuela from failed state status, then, also requires the demise of the Castro regime, because any resources that fall in the hands of the Castros further their colonial ambitions in the South American country. “You cannot exclude in the U. S. agenda my own country, because we play a fundamental role in the preservation of the Cuban economy and we pay the consequences of that relationship,” he notes. Follow Frances Martel on Facebook and Twitter. | 0fake |
Bipartisan bills expected to toughen U.S. foreign investment rules | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A bipartisan group of lawmakers in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives will introduce bills as soon as Monday to toughen U.S. foreign investment rules amid growing concern about Chinese deals, according to a source familiar with the legislation. Senator John Cornyn, a member of the Republican leadership who is on the Senate Intelligence Committee, will introduce a Senate bill to broaden the government’s power to stop foreign purchases of U.S. firms by strengthening the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS). CFIUS is an interagency panel led by the Treasury Department that reviews proposed transactions to review national security concerns. Rep. Robert Pittenger, a North Carolina Republican, will introduce an identical bill in the House of Representatives. At least four Democrats will back the bills, including Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut and Rep. Dave Loebsack of Iowa, said a source who spoke on background to protect business relationships. “The likelihood of Congress acting on this is pretty significant,” said the source. Rep. Denny Heck, a Democrat from Washington, said he was concerned about China at least partly because of allegations of stolen U.S. intellectual property. “China’s actions are clear – they are cheating the system. They are evading the rules meant to prevent them from accessing technology critical to our national security and we need to do something to stop them sooner rather than later,” he said in a statement. “With these changes, we hope to modernize and update the law in order to meet today’s threats from around the globe.” CFIUS already has a reputation for being tough on high-tech deals involving China in particular, and has blocked transactions that involve sophisticated semiconductors. It has become more conservative since President Donald Trump was inaugurated amid growing political and economic tensions between the United States and China. Since the inauguration, the panel has balked at approving a broader range of deals from China, according to lawyers who specialize in representing proposed transactions to the board. The bills would expand CFIUS’ power to look at smaller investments and joint ventures, according to sources who have read drafts of the bills. There have been calls for “green field” investment to be subject to CFIUS scrutiny, but under the bills CFIUS will only review these to ensure they are not close to sensitive military installations, the first source said. A green field investment is when a parent company starts a new firm overseas from the ground up. | 0fake |
HILLARY’S HORRIFYING ANSWER To This Question Might Be The Best Reason EVER To Not Vote For Her [VIDEO] | On Jan. 26, 2016, Hillary was asked a very interesting question. After seven years with a President who has done everything in his power to circumvent the law, her answer to this very timely question should send chills down the spine of every American President Obama would make a terrific Supreme Court justice, though it could be difficult to get him confirmed by the current Senate, Hillary Clinton said here Tuesday.The Democratic presidential candidate was responding to a question from a voter, who noted that the next president probably will have several Supreme Court appointments to make. The man wondered aloud if Obama might be one of them if Clinton moves into the White House. Wow! What a great idea! Clinton exclaimed as the crowd of 450 people roared approval and applauded. I ll be sure to take that under advisement, she said. I mean, he s brilliant. He can set forth an argument, and he was a law professor, so he s got all the credentials. Now, we do have to get a Democratic Senate to get him confirmed. Via: USA Today | 1real |
Quid Pro Quo? Wikileaks Email Reveals Clinton Campaign Eyeing Paul Ryan’s Relative for Supreme Court | New Wikileaks email dumps have revealed massive corruption surrounding Hillary Clinton campaign chair John Podesta . In one email dated February 29, 2016, an article sent by Hillary advisor Sara Solow to Podesta and Hillary’s foreign policy advisor Jake Sullivan indicates that the Clinton campaign is considering House Speaker Paul Ryan’s relative for the Supreme Court .
Ketanji Brown is the subject of the article. She is related to Paul Ryan by marriage and is a judge on the US District Court for the District of Columbia.
The email reads, “She was confirmed by without any Republican opposition in the Senate not once, but *twice*. She was confirmed to her current position in 2013 by unanimous consent – that is, without any stated opposition. She was also previously confirmed unanimously to a seat on the U.S. Sentencing Commission (where she became vice chair).”
“Her family is impressive. She is married to a surgeon and has two young daughters. Her father is a retired lawyer and her mother a retired school principal. Her brother was a police officer (in the unit that was the basis for the television show * The Wire *) and is now a law student, and she is related by marriage to Congressman (and Speaker of the House) Paul Ryan.”
Earlier this month, he even said he would not campaign for nor support his party’s nominee, Donald Trump . In fact, some supporters of Trump have theorized that Ryan was somehow behind or involved in the leak of the tape in which Trump made sexually crude comments about women.
If you claim this is merely circumstantial, then I think there is no hope for you understanding just how corrupt DC has gotten, and this is the very Paul Ryan I warned you about in 2012, which everyone said was “so conservative.” Sadly, many didn’t listen and voted for liberal Mitt Romney and him. Perhaps Paul Ryan’s records and emails should be leaked and maybe we just might see that he’s willing to engage Hillary in a pay-to-play scheme .
Courtesy of Freedom Outpost
Tim Brown is an author and Editor at FreedomOutpost.com , SonsOfLibertyMedia.com , GunsInTheNews.com and TheWashingtonStandard.com . He is husband to his “more precious than rubies” wife, father of 10 “mighty arrows”, jack of all trades, Christian and lover of liberty. He resides in the U.S. occupied Great State of South Carolina. Tim is also an affiliate for the Joshua Mark 5 AR/AK hybrid semi-automatic rifle . Follow Tim on Twitter . | 1real |
Biden, Iraq's Abadi discuss military, financial support in call: White House | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Vice President Joe Biden spoke with Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi on Wednesday to discuss military assistance requested by Iraq to fight Islamic State militants, the White House said. Biden also pledged U.S. support for Iraq’s efforts to stabilize its economy, and said the United States would work with G7 nations and others to make sure Iraq has financial resources to fight Islamic State, the White House said in a statement. | 0fake |
NEVER BEFORE SEEN: FBI Trove of 9/11 Pentagon Photos Refuels Conspiracy Suspicions | 21st Century Wire says The FBI released 27 never before seen images chronicling the destructive Pentagon attack on 9/11. While the FBI move appears to be an effort to be more transparent, they ve refueled old conspiracy suspicions hidden in plain sight. COVER-UP? Photo Illustration 21WIRE s Shawn Helton To this day, the attacks on September 11th, 2001, have remained some of the most enigmatic crimes of the century.There has been an endless dispute over the how of 9/11 and the who, as well as the various methods used to carry out the atrocities of that day. There s an even heavier debate over what brought down WTC Building 7 and since then, other 9/11 rabbit holes have also challenged the nature of the planes said to be involved in both New York and Washington DC.Whatever your thoughts are concerning planes or other theories on 9/11 it s still worth noting that even the mainstream media admitted at the time that there was, no evidence of a plane at all, following the destruction of a portion of the Pentagon s western side.Watch as Jamie McIntyre, a former Senior Pentagon correspondent for CNN, suggests the lack of evidence supporting the official story surrounding American Airlines flight 77 .Here s one telling image released by the FBI that doesn t appear to support the official story of American Airlines flight 77 s fuselage crashing into the Western side of the Pentagon. Its as if logic and reason were also casualties on 9/11 where is the rest of the plane and why is the crater so small? PENTAGON TALES What really happened here? (Image Source: vault.fbi.gov)In another telling image, part of the damage seen at the Pentagon on 9/11 looks errily reminiscent to that of the Oklahoma City bombing INTERIOR EXPLOSION? Why does this look similar to the damage at OKC IN 1995? (Image Source: abcnews)The FBI releases also contained images of twisted plane parts that curiously lacked evidence of fire damage given the devastating crime scene, it s hard to see how that would be possible.See the FBI photos here for yourself and ask yourself one single question: where is the Boeing passenger airliner? . More from Free Thought Project below BREAKING: The FBI Just Released Never Before Seen Photos of 9/11 Pentagon WreckageClaire Bernish Free Thought ProjectAfter surreptitiously releasing to the public one week ago, the FBI unceremoniously announced today the unprecedented release of never-before-seen images from the attacks of September 11, 2001, and some of the pictures evoke still more questions.Others could be seen as putting to rest a popular theory American Airlines Flight 77 never actually smashed into the Pentagon. The FBI Vault release is minute in size, to say the least with a mere 27 images comprising the file and does not include video, audio, nor anything other than photos.But, given the stony silence from the U.S. government toward families of victims of the attacks, even the meager disclosure is a welcome morsel of information with the potential to provide answers.Indeed, in the very first image, labeled plainly, 9-11 Pentagon Debris 1, a single piece of wreckage sits isolated on a parcel of lawn bearing the American Airlines logo and marked with letters and numbers.More from Free Thought Project here SEE ALSO: What to Expect From BBC Panorama and Guardian s Whitewash of UK Gov t Funding Terrorists in SyriaSEE ALSO: The Guardian Exposed Conning Public into Financing Independent Journalism SEE ALSO: White Helmets & Local Councils Is the UK FCO Financing Terrorism in Syria with Taxpayer Funds?SEE ALSO: A Guide to Mainstream Media Fake News War PropagandaSUPPORT 21WIRE SUBSCRIBE & BECOME A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV | 1real |
‘Conspiracy Theorist’ Max Spiers Found Dead Days After Texting His Mother to Investigate if Anything ‘Happened to Him’ | Support Us ‘Conspiracy Theorist’ Max Spiers Found Dead Days After Texting His Mother to Investigate if Anything ‘Happened to Him’ 0
British conspiracy theorist and UFO expert Max Spiers was found dead on a sofa after vomiting ‘black liquid’. This happened only days after texting his mother about investigating if something happened to him.
Max Spiers, a 39-year-old father of two was found dead on a sofa in Poland, where he was invited to speak on conspiracy theories and UFOs. This happened in July and, since then, no post-mortem examination were carried out on his body. The death was ruled to be from ‘natural causes’.
– Advertisement –
Days before his death, Spiers texted his mom:
“Your boy’s in trouble. If something happens to me, investigate”.
Spiers, who claimed to be a survivor of a secret government ‘super soldier’ program, died suddenly after vomiting ‘black liquid’. His mother Vanessa Bates, an English teacher, told journalists:
“He was making a name for himself in the world of conspiracy theorists and had been invited to speak at a conference in Poland in July. He was staying with a woman who he had not known for long and she told me how she found him dead on the sofa. But I think Max had been digging in some dark places and I fear that somebody wanted him dead.”– The Telegraph, UFO expert Max Spiers’ death prompts conspiracy theories
Bates believes that Spiers might have been poisoned.
“Max was a very fit man who was in good health. All I have is a death certificate from the Polish authorities that it was from natural causes, but no post-mortem was done so how can they tell that?
They are also refusing to release any paperwork about it to me because, absurdly, I don’t have his written permission.
He has a brother, Josh, and sister, Becky, who are both devastated, as are his two boys. We all want answers to this and I will continue to fight to get to the truth.”– Ibid.
Spiers’ financé Sarah Adams told Yahoo! News that he was about to expose ‘black magic’ and well known politicians and celebrities. “We were used to getting death threats or stuff like that from people but I think this time it seemed rather real. He’d been sent threats saying that him and me were going to die. He was going to expose black magic. He was going to expose some of the stuff that he was working on involving political leaders and celebrities. He planned on coming back here seeing his family and I was going to have his child. He had messaged me hours before. It definitely couldn’t have been anything like suicide or something like that.”– Yahoo! News, Here’s what conspiracy theorist Max Spiers was about to reveal before his death North East Kent coroner’s office said that an investigation into Mr Spiers’ death was in its “very early” stages. Was Spiers’ poisoned because he knew too much? Was he about to say too much? One thing is for sure, this death cannot be more suspicious. | 1real |
HERE’S THE LIST OF People We Elected Who Just Made Our Nation Less Safe While Adding $1.1 Trillion To The Taxpayer’s Tab | If you re like us, you either made a donation, knocked on doors, or called voters on behalf of a Republican candidate in the 2014 election. Maybe you did all three things. Is the candidate you worked so hard to get elected or re-elected on this list? We were very disappointed to see the name of the candidate we supported for US Rep in MI on the list of Yea s. We also know we won t be working so hard to help him with his re-election bid next time around. Only ONE Representative in the entire state of MI, Justin Amash (R-MI) actually stood up against the establishment and said NO, we re not gonna take it anymore! Please take the time to look through this list and contact your US Representative or US Senator. Let them know the next time they look to you for support of their re-election, that you don t help people who sell out our nation.It s worth noting, that Marco Rubio didn t even bother to vote on one of the most critical spending and national security bills in our nation s history! If he can t be bothered to vote on such a critical bill, how can he be bothered with representing our nation in the most powerful position in our government? Conservative presidential candidate, Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) voted against this insane bill. He criticized the legislation in a statement after the vote, saying it effectively forfeits our massive Republican victories of 2014 and cements Obama s priorities for nearly the full remainder of his term. For a quick look at how the passage of this bill will harm the security of Americans, while adding a huge debt to our children and grandchildren s future, click HERE.Here is how our US Senators voted on the Omnibus spending bill: | 1real |
Pope, at service for Africa, decries murder of women and children | VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Francis on Thursday denounced the murder of innocent women and children as the horrid face of war as he presided at a special prayer service for peace in South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Francis had planned to go later this year to South Sudan, which has been hit by civil war, famine and a refugee crisis, but had to scrap the project for security reasons. During the service, which was punctuated by African singing in English, French, Italian and Swahili, Francis asked God to break down the walls of hostility that today divide brothers and sisters, especially in South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo. May he protect children who suffer from conflicts in which they have no part, but which rob them of their childhood and at times of life itself, he said in his brief homily. How hypocritical it is to deny the mass murder of women and children! Here war shows its most horrid face, he said. St. Peter s Basilica was decked out with photographs of African children. South Sudan gained independence from Sudan in 2011 after protracted bloodshed, then fell into civil war in late 2013, with troops loyal to President Salva Kiir fighting those backing Riek Machar, a former vice president Kiir had sacked. Both sides have targeted civilians, human rights groups say. Right now, we are moving into the lean season, and by July of 2018, many thousands of people across South Sudan not just isolated pockets of the country will be dying from hunger, said Jerry Farrell, country representative in South Sudan for Catholic Relief Services. What is most tragic is there absolutely shouldn t be hunger in South Sudan, he said in an email, adding that people of different tribes inter-marry and work together but that the conflict is instigated and fanned by politicians. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, dozens of people have died in protests against President Joseph Kabila s refusal to step down at the end of his constitutional mandate last December. Unrest sparked by the uncertainty surrounding the polls has raised fears Congo could witness a repeat of the kind of violence that killed millions around the turn of the last century, mostly from hunger and disease. | 0fake |
Soros Spends $2 Million to Defeat Arpaio | Soros Spends $2 Million to Defeat Arpaio Scott Bland, Politico, November 4, 2016
George Soros has contributed $2 million to a group working to defeat Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio in Arizona, the latest target of Soros’ big spending in local law enforcement campaigns over the past year.
The Soros-funded PAC, Maricopa Strong, will file campaign finance documents Friday showing Soros’ multi-million dollar investment against Arpaio, along with $500,000 from Texas energy billionaires Laura and John Arnold and $250,000 from Laurene Powell Jobs (the widow of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs). The group had previously reported a $300,000 donation from Soros, one of the Democratic Party’s biggest donors.
Soros has spent millions in 2015 and 2016 funding campaigns to defeat local prosecutors around the country and elect new ones who back criminal justice reform measures. Soros-backed groups are currently spending big in three big-city district attorney races: Houston’s Harris County, where Soros has contributed over $1 million, according to local campaign finance filings; Gilpin and Jefferson counties outside Denver, where Soros has given about $1.5 million to unseat an incumbent; and Phoenix’s Maricopa County, where a Soros-funded PAC has also spent over $1 million against the Republican district attorney, Bill Montgomery.
But Soros’ spending against Arpaio, a high-profile liberal bogeyman, is his single biggest investment in a local race this year, as well as the billionaire’s first effort against a sheriff. It folds in immigration reform, another policy passion of Soros’, alongside criminal justice reform.
{snip}
Maricopa Strong has spent $2.9 million in the sheriff’s race, with the donations from Soros and others funding a flurry of mailers and TV ads boosting Democratic candidate Paul Penzone and hammering Arpaio. Soros has typically been the sole funder of his local outside-spending campaigns around the country, though Jobs and the Arnolds joined him in funding Maricopa Strong.
{snip}
Arpaio’s campaign has attacked Soros’ efforts, calling him a “far-left globalist,” saying he is trying to buy a local race, and alleging that his group has broken disclosure rules, per the Arizona Republic.
{snip}
Arpaio has aired about $2.8 million of his own TV ads, according to a media-tracking source, and has leaned on his national name recognition to raise millions more for his campaign, while Penzone’s campaign has been less well-funded. But several polls this fall have shown Penzone leading Arpaio in his second attempt to unseat the sheriff.
{snip} | 1real |
Google And God | (16 fans) - Advertisement - Yeah. I know, I know. I'm an iconoclast. Yep and I'm proud of it. So the other day I got to thinking about religion and other things in the Homo Sapiens space called life. You know I get philosophical from time to time. And then I get inspired to tackle some very touchy and sensitive subjects that usually set off a lot of people. I get a perverse joy in rubbing people the wrong way and send them into WFT hissy fits. So you know that this article is going to have some folks seeing red and the God-police will start pulling out their truncheons to give me a whack on the ole noggin just to prove their point that I should not meddle in the affairs of the Great Father somewhere in a place called Heaven. The fact is that today, with the click of a mouse button the era of seeking answers and advice about God directly from rabbis, pastors, or imams is gradually coming to an end. And the cause of this backsliding and undermining of the hitherto unquestioned role of these "emissaries of God on earth?" Well, it's not a human person but Artificial Intelligence personified and its called "Google." Google may be the well-known supercomputer system that processes information by nano-seconds but AI has been with us for a long time. Consider the following: Self-driving cars have arrived; Siri (on your Iphones and Ipads) can listen to your voice and find the nearest movie theatre; and I.B.M. set the " Jeopardy"- conquering Watson to work on medicine, initially training medical students, perhaps eventually helping in diagnosis. Nowadays, scarcely a week goes by without the announcement of a new A.I. product or technique. And for all the constant complaining about the religious right's inappropriate influence in politics and religious conservatives' attempts to tear down the church-state wall, the secular movement in America is actually doing quite well. The most recent Pew Research Center poll says 23 percent of Americans are religiously unaffiliated (atheists, agnostics and no-religion people); that percentage increases to 35 percent for Americans under thirty-five -- young people are not doing too many religious conversions, and see God as part of a belief system of their parents. So, for Americans in the Bible Belt and elsewhere this is alarming news - if secularism hasn't yet taken over the country, its on track for that to happen. And its all the fault of artificial intelligence as epitomized in the incredible superpower of Google . Now I do NOT intend to be dismissive of religion or disrespect people's beliefs OR their right to worship and believe what they want to. Me? I believe that every Thursday night when karaoke takes place in Brooklyn my bulldog Max turns into a werewolf seeking cats to relieve them of their hemoglobin fluids. You get my drift -- you can believe what you want but that does not make what you believe true. But one thing is not in doubt -- Google and God are on our daily human agendas. Indeed, the questions that Americans type into Google searches about God appear to confirm the country's rising secularism. For example, according to an economist writing in the New York Times : "Despite the rising popularity of Pope Francis, who was elected in 2013, Google searches for churches are 15 percent lower in the first half of this decade than they were during the last half of the previous one. The top Google search including the word "God" is "God of War," a videogame, with more than 700,000 searches per year." Bummer, people searching for a videogame with the word "God" in it? WFT! Are people losing their cotton-picking minds? And to make matter worse the same economist, Stephens-Davidowitz, also discovered that "Searches questioning God's existence are up." He went further to seek what questions people Google whilst in their periods of doubt: The No. 1 question? In the United States of America? Is without a doubt: "who created God?" And the second? "why God allows suffering?" in number 3 "why does God hate me? And in fourth place: "why God needs so much praise?" - Advertisement - It now appears from this data that people in America are looking to Google for answers to some pertinent and serious questions about God and in an oblique way questioning what they were taught by their parents and learned in churches on Sundays for so many years. There is absolutely no doubt that the Internet and Google have been at odds with religion. The Google phenomenon is also explainable in the context of the adversarial relationship between science and religion -- they just don't mix. Religion -- all religions -- are based on a system of blind, unquestioning belief and a rejection of objective inquiry that is substituted with faith. Religions place and validate this faith by statements found in their Holy Books that's interpreted by preachers, pastors, priests and ministers. These writings and teachings MUST be accepted without question by the faithful. Science on the other hand believes that ALL things in nature should be questioned and examined. And that it is only by this kind of objective inquiry that humankind has progressed and will progress. The Internet and Google are not the products of a Sunday sermon or the dogmatic faith or prayers of the faithful. Advances in medicine, communications technology, transportation, and other things that define modern human existence are the results of science -- not faith or belief. In fact, the cornerstone of the scientific method is to question everything; science accepts nothing that is not provable -- again and again and again. The rise of American secularism and of individuals with no religious affiliations is directly due to the rise and use of the Internet. Hitherto the Internet, and in particular Google , people used libraries and their church leaders for research on questions of faith, belief, and the existence of God. Religion had a stranglehold on knowledge and issues of God and Sin. But with the advent of Google information and knowledge became readily available and a new generation is now growing up in a society more open to doubting old canards and traditional belief systems. Google has undermined religion's central premise for the belief in God -- his all-knowing faculty. Google now processes over 40,000 search queries every second on average which translates to over 3.5 billion searches per day and 1.2 trillion searches per year worldwide. Google can bring up literally millions of hits SIMULTANEOUSLY on every conceivable topic that the human mind can imagine -- including Biblical history, origins and that of other religious books, and their pros and cons. For iconoclasts like me declining religious affiliation is akin to social improvement. It's evidence of the clarifying influence of scientific rationality that's the end result of the global information revolution. I know that one of the questions here will undoubtedly be about personal faith in the context of our ability to pay bills, order clothes and food, communicate with friends and family and send emails across the word in seconds. And too, I'll hear the issue of the difference between Google as a profit-making, altruistic organization, and the church whose primary concern is about the condition of our souls. These are valid arguments when it comes to God and Google. I'm not suggesting that this is an either or situation. But what I am suggesting is that modern experiences in the secular world are now impacting religious belief and not in a very positive manner. - Advertisement - And yes, from a religious standpoint the question is: because of the rise of Google are religious institutions that used to answer questions about God and Sin crowdsourcing the acts of faith that the entire system is built on? Put another way, does religion risk losing its ability to provide answers to life on earth when Google's data cannot do so? And, in today's Internet and Google dominated world will faithful people when in doubt, Google "who created God?" | 1real |
German officials receive threatening letters, fake anthrax, police say | Berlin (Reuters) - Five top German politicians received envelopes on Thursday that contained threatening letters and a white powder the letters said was anthrax, which turned out to be harmless, Berlin police said. Chancellor Angela Merkel reportedly received one of the letters, the broadcaster ARD said on its website, but the police spokesman did not confirm that. Special security forces were deployed to investigate the incident, a spokesman for the Berlin State Criminal Police office said, confirming news that was first reported ARD. Horst Seehofer, who heads the Bavarian sister party of Merkel s conservatives, told journalists he had received one of the letters. ARD said the other letters went to Katrin Goering-Eckardt and Hans-Christian Stroebele, members of the pro-environment Greens party, and Gregor Gysi, former chief of the left-wing Left party. Stroebele confirmed the incident in a posting on Twitter. He told ARD that the letter was probably sent by right-wing extremists, even though it was written in Arabic. He gave no explanation. A photograph of the letter included the phrases Salafist community, Germany and Lethal, Do not touch, Dangerous, Caution - all in typewritten Arabic characters. | 0fake |
WOW! MSNBC’S MIKA Won’t Be Too Happy About This Instagram Photo…MAGA! | Emilie Hoffer is Mika Brzezinski s daughter! She s on Instagram so when you check out her photos there, you ll find Emilie sporting a Make America Great Again Trump hat! Haha! Instagram comments were supportive of the MAGA hat: Looking good in the #MAGA hat. Mom might not be too happy though.. Too bad! love that hat! ur mom not so much. at 1east she did one thing right in life and raised you Right. OUCH Hour one of the MSNBC morning show began typically enough with Mika and Joe. The assembled gang could barely contain their glee at the prospect of damning testimony from James Comey. That all set the stage for a typical Mika Brzezinski tirade that was honestly one of the most disgusting assaults on President Trump yet. It s unhinged hate!https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZoUCHs22AwIN CASE YOU DIDN T KNOW, THERE S NO LOVE LOST BETWEEN TRUMP AND MIKA CHECK OUT THE LATEST RANT FROM EMILIE S MOTHER: I think Trump is such a narcissist, it s possible he is mentally ill in a way and this is on the table, I said it months ago and now everyone is starting to say it like it s new, and it s ok to say. He s not well, she said. At the very least, he s not well. And he s so narcissistic he does not believe the rules apply to him, and that s where the ignorance label may apply because this is a man who says he can grab women anywhere because he s famous. Then something very curious happened.Scarborough looked off camera and can be heard saying, What s that? Wow, Then Willie Geist showed him something and the two started laughing. Then a clearly not listening Scarborough, banged the table. Stop right there, he laughed I need an eject button. He posted it? Scarborough appeared to ask someone else?Brzezinski finally realized that nobody was listening to her and demanded an explanation. Nothing I have said is crazy, she said. We ll talk about it in the break, said Scarborough barely able to get it out through his own laugher.The show soon went to break. When it returned Scarborough joked about keeping it in the guard rails. Brzezinski appeared to offer an explanation of her actions. I am keeping it in the guard rails. Everything I ve said you all have thought and you know and you ve said in your own way. You re going to talk to me about a filter? she snapped at Scarborough. Yes, he said. | 1real |
On the Menu When Congress Returns From Recess - The New York Times | Members of Congress returned from a recess on Tuesday in a rush to get out the door yet again to campaign for . Still, they have a few items they must address and some optional items. Think of it as a dinner menu at a party voters were not invited to attend: _____ A bitter pill. The first major issue on the congressional plate is how to deal with the increasing spread of Zika. Money allocated to fight the disease is rapidly running out. On Tuesday, Senate Democrats blocked a measure that would have allocated more than $1 billion to fight the virus, but was loaded with provisions Democrats consider unacceptable. _____ Broccoli burger. Congress has again failed to pay for government operations through the appropriations process, and is headed back toward a spending bill, known as a continuing resolution. This is going to be a fight, possibly nasty, against the backdrop of the race for the White House. Expect the Zika fight to be resolved in this course. Wine pairing: Water Resources Development Act, lots of minerals. A very bipartisan bill would authorize water infrastructure projects in 17 states. The bill would also provide money to fix the water system in Flint, Mich. Expect this to hit the Senate floor as soon as this week. _____ Hot potato. Members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus want to impeach John A. Koskinen, the Internal Revenue Service commissioner, for what they claim was unfair scrutiny of Tea Party groups seeking status, even though he wasn’t yet commissioner. (Republicans also charge that he was complicit in the destruction of I. R. S. emails pertinent to the alleged targeting, and that he lied about the emails in testimony to Congress.) But Speaker Paul D. Ryan is not keen on the idea of impeachment, so it is possible the kitchen will 86 this item. Freedom fries. A bill that would allow the Saudi Arabian government to be held responsible in American courts for any role in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks passed the Senate before the recess. Because the Obama administration and many Republicans don’t like this bill, expect this order not to be filled, even though there will be pressure from victims’ families. _____ Apple pie. House Republicans will offer legislation to address the Obama administration’s $400 million payment to Iran after a broad nuclear agreement was reached by requiring the Treasury secretary to submit a report to some congressional committees. Republicans say the payment was basically ransom. The administration differs. Petits fours. The House is likely to consider a host of bills that support its conservative agenda, including one that would modernize the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s offshore leasing process and remove some regulations and tax burdens from various businesses. _____ Whiskey and water, optional. Congress could pass a final version of the annual National Defense Authorization Act, but it is more likely to go into the lame duck session, as has been the case for a few years now. | 0fake |
Lebanon's Aoun holds talks on Hariri government | BEIRUT (Reuters) - President Michel Aoun held talks on Monday with other Lebanese political leaders over the future of Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri s government, but gave no sign whether they discussed Hariri s demand the country steer clear of regional turmoil. Aoun s office said the talks were positive and constructive but did not detail steps to address the demands Hariri made after postponing his shock resignation, notably that Lebanese stick by the state policy of staying out of regional conflicts - a reference to Iran-backed Shi ite group Hezbollah. The consultations would continue once Aoun returns on Friday from an official visit to Italy, the statement said. A senior Lebanese official said the consultations at the presidential palace in Baabda aimed to help Hariri s government get back on its feet , after weeks of political instability triggered by Hariri s Nov. 4 resignation, announced in Riyadh. Lebanese officials say Saudi Arabia forced Hariri to resign and held him against his will, triggering an intervention by France which led to his return to Beirut last week. Riyadh says Hariri, Lebanon s top Sunni Muslim politician and a long-time Saudi ally, resigned freely and denies holding him. In his resignation speech, Hariri strongly criticized Iran and its heavily armed Lebanese Shi ite Muslim ally Hezbollah for meddling in the Arab world. Since returning to Beirut, Hariri has said all Lebanese must stick by the state policy of disassociation , or keeping out of regional conflicts - a reference to Hezbollah. Leading Druze politician Walid Jumblatt, an influential figure in Lebanon, said after meeting Aoun that it was important to talk about disassociation , and how to achieve it. He said it would be wise not to bring up the question of Hezbollah s weapons in discussions, referring to previous rounds of futile talks on this point. The senior Lebanese official said the consultations might end with Lebanon reaffirming the ministerial statement that implicitly includes disassociation . The official spoke on condition of anonymity as Aoun s consultations were not over. Hariri said on Saturday he would not accept Hezbollah stances that affect our Arab brothers or target the security and stability of their countries . | 0fake |
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