title stringlengths 1 456 ⌀ | text stringlengths 1 143k ⌀ | label class label 2
classes |
|---|---|---|
Suspected al Shabaab militants behead four in Kenya's Lamu County: official | MOMBASA, Kenya (Reuters) - Suspected militants from the Somali group al Shabaab beheaded four men in two different attacks in Lamu County on Kenya s north coast on Wednesday, authorities said, a month after 12 people were killed in similar incidents in the region. Lamu County Commissioner Gilbert Kitiyo said the attacks took place in Silini-Mashambani early on Wednesday where three were killed, while in a separate incident in Bobo village one person was killed. Kitiyo said about 30 heavily-armed assailants went from house-to-house calling out victims by name before pulling some out and slitting their throats. They were dressed in military gear and had AK-47 rifles. They beheaded four men before fleeing into the forest. All the victims are men. Police have already arrived at the scene and taken the bodies to the mortuary, Kitiyo told Reuters by telephone. He said the attackers surrounded all the victims houses making it difficult for them to escape. Abdiasis Abu Musab, al Shabaab s spokesman for military operations, said the group was behind the attack, and put the number of those killed at five, saying it had targeted non-Muslims. In August, al Shabaab attackers killed four men in a similar manner while earlier in July, nine men were slaughtered the same way in nearby villages. After the latest attacks, protesters burned tyres on the roads on Wednesday morning in complaint over insecurity. Riot police to fire teargas and rubber bullets to disperse them. A government-imposed dusk-to-dawn curfew is in force in the area following past attacks. The al Qaeda-linked al Shabaab aims to topple Somalia s United Nations-backed government and impose its own strict interpretation of Islam. They have intensified attacks in Kenya since it sent troops into Somalia in 2011. They have also claimed responsibility for a series of cross-border attacks in recent months, including a spate of roadside bombings targeting security forces. | 0fake |
Trump Supporters Attacked By Liberal Protesters: Taking Political Violence to New Level | 21st Century Wire says Trump protests are getting out of hand, yet again. This time in Portland Oregon. Liberal progressive protesters have taken to the streets in opposition to the President s latest controversial executive order instituting a 7 nation travel ban. Lets see how it turned out:Protesters surrounded Trump supporters outside the Portland airport and bullhorned in their faces bumper sticker slogans like, No Fear, No Hate! and then Peaceful Protest! Anyone who s not seen the full video at this point might still think this was a protest and not a violent mob bordering on a riot.The extreme left protestors chased the Trump supporters into the Portland airport and things got ugly. One of the Trump supporters was sucker punched, which seems to be an escalation of violence among protesters, similar to the recent sucker punch of Alt-Right leader, Richard Spenser in Washington DC last week.As the man who was assaulted hit the ground the protestors gathered around him and proceeded to continue to taunt, chant and ridicule the injured Trump supporter. Phrases like, That s how you talk to a Nazi! That s right! were said by anti-Trump activists, Your boy got knocked out! and Wooo! Hunt the Nazis! The victim of the assault, Grant Chisholm, 39 year old from Portland says that he was hit three times in the head with something metallic in the assault. They almost killed me tonight, said Chisholm.Chisholm claims he dropped in and out of consciousness while other protesters attempted to kick him, according to a report at Oregonlive.com, although this is not verifiable in the video footage.The extreme left has always claimed to be the tolerant and accepting of political identities, but look how they behave when they lose the election. Is this tolerance, acceptance of different views when their protests consist of violence, cowardly sucker punch assaults and hateful chants accusing anyone with a remotely conservative world view of being a Nazi?Watch the assault happen in the video below:. READ MORE TRUMP NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Trump FilesSUPPORT OUR WORK BY SUBSCRIBING & BECOMING A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV | 1real |
Comey’s Blindside: You’re Just a Cop | Email
Every day, it seems, we talk about Prison America; the profitable high growth industry that entombs millions of our people… stealing years, often decades, of their lives while destroying families and communities along the way… as we continue to subsidize a vicious, sagging economy built upon death… not life. Though the debate centers largely on the question of why we continue to prosecute and bury mostly young people of color and poverty for drug crimes and other non-violent offenses, the equation often misses a core component of the challenge concerning how to control willful cops… those in uniform and out… who cross the line with mostly unbridled power to dictate who goes to prison and who does not, whose reputation remains solid and whose becomes soiled, and then set about to do whatever it takes to see their view of justice be had.
In the US, result oriented justice is not new or even creative; it’s as old as the frontier sheriff with boundless power to rule with a firm hand to control who got to walk down the streets of Dodge and who did not. Of course, cops plant evidence, coerce statements and entrap folks… that’s a given. Torture, rendition and agent stings are very much now the norm. No breaking news here. Ultimately, when all else fails, it’s the modern day version of the old school way to ensure “case closed”… another “victory” for those who not only relish their power but see its arbitrary application as just fine as long as they get their man… or woman.
It seems most cops, from those directing traffic on the boulevard to the guy in the designer suit before Congress, lose sight along the way that their power is but power on loan… not owned by them to use and do with as they please when their own social, political or “security ends” justifies their means… or where they seek to lay the groundwork for future employment.
Once again, this past week, FBI Director James Comey proved that point.
Although finely polished and experienced, this lifelong Republican cop seems to feel that there’s one set of rules for all those he’s helped to send to prison and a completely different one for him… one blue book of conduct for all others in the Department of Justice but, apparently, not a volume to be found among the personal library of he who now occupies the Director’s desk of the FBI.
Time and time again, throughout the Clinton email scandal, Comey has proven himself to be not much more than an old fashioned ward healer… but with a badge… desperate for the feel of flesh or to see the flash of bulbs or, perhaps, a novice candidate for political office looking for a hook to, some day, launch his own career.
FBI Directors do not hold press conferences to discuss or explain why charges have not been pursued against a potential subject of interest or a target of an investigation. They just don’t. Inexplicably, he did.
As a matter of long settled policy, these matters are simply not offered up to the public for Monday morning debate or talking head analysis which can not only tarnish the reputation of persons cleared of criminal wrongdoing but expose investigative sources or techniques that can endanger the reliability of future investigations or the safety of agents. Indeed, legend is the cases where the door to on-going or post hoc litigation leads has been slammed shut, without hesitation, by federal judges for this very reason.
As well, the all too convenient mass publication by the FBI in this matter of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of its sensitive 302 reports (official FBI case progress memoranda) are simply unprecedented. Indeed, prisoners (and journalists) often spend years litigating access to this material which is challenged by the FBI, every step along the way, with endless technical statutory excuses for keeping it secret; even in cases, long closed, where its release might offer a ray of hope to those perhaps wrongfully convicted or overcharged.
Most stunning of all however was the cheap political ploy by Comey where but 11 days prior to the election he suggested, in a public writing to Congress, that he had uncovered newly discovered, potentially damning evidence with regard to the Clinton email scandal. The tenor and tone of the Director’s insinuation is remarkable, indeed astonishing, given the fact that apparently neither he nor any of his agents had, as of the time of the written press conference, reviewed the material itself. Can anyone say deceitful?
Even more disingenuous was the timing of this claim which not only rubbed up against firmly rooted and sound DOJ policy but, in fact, swallowed it whole as the Director slobbered away from the political dining table with a scheming smile on his face.
Although periodically ruptured, by design the mandate of federal law enforcement necessarily excludes witting participation in the political process, let alone becoming ensnarled in it, as an ostensible partisan or one consciously seeking to impact upon it one way or another. That’s the job of politicians not cops.
Indeed, the Department of Justice has, for decades, avoided taking actions that might be viewed as an attempt to influence an election. As noted in a 2012 Justice Department memo “… all employees have the responsibility to enforce the law in a neutral and impartial manner…which is ‘particularly important’ in an election year.” According to Matthew Miller, former Director of the Justice Department’s Public Affairs Office, this becomes all the more sensitive, nay, critical as Election Day draws near:
“Justice traditionally bends over backward to avoid taking any action that might be seen by the public as influencing an election, often declining to even take private steps that might become public in the 60 days leading up to an election.”
This rule finds firm footing in the position of a host of former and current Attorneys General and senior prosecutors. For example, it has been reported that former AG Janet Reno was “adamant… anything that could influence the election had to go dark,” as she suspended a politically sensitive investigation… one much further removed in time from Election Day than the most recent blindside, by the FBI Director, just 11 days before the vote to see who will lead this country for the next four years.
Remarkably, it appears Comey completely ignored the “preference” of current Attorney General Lynch… his boss… as well as her deputies that he adhere to a well established DOJ policy of remaining silent about on-going investigations and refrain from taking any steps that could influence the outcome of an election . This view has been shared by Republican prosecutors as well. As noted by George J. Terwilliger III, a deputy attorney general under President George Bush, “There’s a longstanding policy of not doing anything that could influence an election.” He added “Those guidelines exist for a reason. Sometimes, that makes for hard decisions. But bypassing them has consequences.”
Sadly, Comey’s palpable decision to charge full steam ahead and place his own view and reputation before that of the electoral process as so much the ultimate arbiter of what he believes the public should know and not… real or otherwise… on the eve of this election is not sui generis . Although different in approach, and context, he now follows a long and time tested tradition of corrupt and venal FBI directors who have not hesitated to implement personal political agendas ranging from the Palmer raids upon anarchists of the early 20 th century, to the blacklisting and perjury traps of McCarthy , to the murder of black activists under COINTELPRO .
Comey is many things. He is not however stupid or brash. He had to know that what essentially constituted a vaguely worded personal press release, in the final desperate days of a very ugly campaign, would be seized upon, by an opposing candidate, media pundits and the public, as newly discovered evidence of criminality, even without verification, that might very well alter the course of US history.
To him, it mattered not that the “new” emails were as yet unparsed. Nor did he care that their timed release would almost certainly have the consequence, if not the intended effect, to mislead the American people already battered and tired by unprecedented levels of empty rhetoric and unfounded accusations by both sides.
One can only wonder whether Comey’s blindside was simply breathtaking in its carelessness or… like the beat cop who has decided who goes to jail and who goes home… a calculated decision to place his own personal stamp of approval on who he wants to see as his next uber boss.
The path from street corners or, at times, even Board Rooms to prison cells is not a complicated walk at all. It seems these days the road to the White House is pretty much the same march… just a bit longer and nastier. | 1real |
Comment on This is the Man Militarized Police at Standing Rock are Working For by hawkmo99 | Isaac Davis
The months long Dakota Access Keystone XL pipleine protest at the Standing Rock Indian Reservation by Native Americans and those sympathetic to protection of our water supply have been met with a heavy-handed and brutal clamp down by police and national guard. Militarized goons in battle dress have stormed protector camps with LRAD sonic weapons, attack dogs , tear gas, tazers , and even live ammunition ( killing horses ), while politicians and mainstream media do their best to ignore this growing atrocity, hoping to wait it out until the protestors give up.
But, as the saying goes, Water Is Life , and the issue of life and death is at the root of this protection movement, therefore, for people concerned with life, giving up on this is simply unthinkable. The root issue justifying state oppression of the protest is capitalism, and the perception that money is more important than life itself. When the police and national guard attack U.S. citizens on private property to protect corporate interests, who are they really working for?
The corporate dream of the Keystone XL pipeline is to create a profit stream for a small number of people at the expense of the natural world and anyone in the way. At the top of this pyramid of profit is Texas billionaire Kelcy Warren, CEO of Energy Transfer Partners, the company responsible for the project.
So who is Kelcy Warren?
A native of East Texas and graduate of the University of Texas at Arlington with a degree in civil engineering, Warren worked in the natural gas industry and became co-chair of Energy Transfer Equity in 2007. With business partner Ray Davis, co-owner of the Texas Rangers baseball team, Warren built Energy Transfer Equity into one of the nation’s largest pipeline companies, which now owns about 71,000 miles of pipelines carrying natural gas, natural gas liquids, refined products and crude oil. The company’s holdings include Sunoco, Southern Union and Regency Energy Partners.
Forbes estimates the 60-year-old Warren’s personal wealth at $4 billion. Bloomberg described him as “among America’s new shale tycoons” — but rather than building a fortune by drilling he “takes the stuff others pull from underground and moves it from one place to another, chilling, boiling, pressurizing, and processing it until it’s worth more than when it burst from the wellhead.” [ Source ]
Shockingly, in 2015 the governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, appointed Warren to the Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission which is an insult to environmentalists working to protect Big Bend National Park and surrounding sacred tribal lands from another $770 million pipeline project .
“According to the governor’s office, the state parks and wildlife commission “manages and conserves the natural and cultural resources of Texas,” along with ensuring the future of hunting, fishing and outdoor recreation opportunities for Texans.” [ Source ]
This glaring conflict of interest has inspired Environmental Science major at UTSA and former Texas State Park Ambassador Andrew Lucas to begin a drive to have Warren removed from this environmental post. His petition is described here :
Most people may know Kelcy Warren as the man behind the controversial Dakota Access Pipeline. The Dallas-based billionaire and CEO of Energy Transfer Partners has been making headlines for fast-tracking a 1100 mile crude oil pipeline across the Midwest and under the Missouri River, just north of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation. No environmental impact assessment, no respect for cultural sites, and no regard for the local and widespread communities living along the river. A similar story is unfolding out in West Texas, where Warren’s company has split through the pristine Big Bend region with the 200 mile Comanche Trail Pipeline and nearly-complete 143 mile Trans Pecos Pipeline. These Pipelines mark the way for massive natural gas and oil developments in the Trans Pecos region.
With untold damages unfolding for cultural and environmental resources at the hands of Energy Transfer Partners, it would surprise most to know that nearly a year ago, Texas Governor Greg Abbott appointed Kelcy Warren for a 6 year term as 1 of the 10 commissioners who preside over Texas Parks And Wildlife… Why? Probably the $550,000 in campaign contributions Abbott received from Warren.
Footage of militarized police using the Long Range Acoustic Device ( LRAD ) crowd control weapon against protectors at standing rock on October 27th, 2016: Final Thoughts
Warren is listed as number 150 on Forbes list of wealthiest Americans with an estimated net worth of $4.2 billion in September of 2016. He is the head of the Dakota Access Pipeline snake.
If you are scratching your head wondering why militarized police and private security contractors are beating, gassing and attacking peaceful resistors , including women, children and the elderly, the answer is, they are doing it to protect the interests of Kelcy Warren and others invested in this pipeline project. Read more articles by Isaac Davis .
Isaac Davis is a staff writer for WakingTimes.com and OffgridOutpost.com Survival Tips blog. He is an outspoken advocate of liberty and of a voluntary society. He is an avid reader of history and passionate about becoming self-sufficient to break free of the control matrix. Follow him on Facebook, here . This article ( This is the Man Militarized Police at Standing Rock are Working For ) was originally created and published by Waking Times and is published here under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Isaac Davis and WakingTimes.com . It may be re-posted freely with proper attribution, author bio, and this copyright statement. Don't | 1real |
Latest Poll: Bernie Sanders is The ONLY Candidate Who Beats Trump | 21st Century Wire says It is not looking good for Clinton.Watch a video of this report here: Trump now sits at 45%, with Clinton at 42%.This shows Trump is only widening his lead over Clinton, as held just a 2% lead a few weeks ago.However, the more interesting statistic that the poll reveals is that Bernie Sanders is the only candidate in the entire presidential race that actually can beat Trump.Sanders leads Trump by 4%, meaning for a slightly more convincing victory than Donald could pull over on Hillary.Bernie would come in at 46%, and Trump would trail at 42%.With the anti-Trump campaign proving to be an absolutely futile effort, it appears that those with a deep-seated hatred for Donald could have had a far greater chance of beating him by putting their efforts into supporting Sanders earlier on, instead of just trashing Trump.Will those who have completely wasted their time in the anti-Trump campaign finally recognise where their efforts should be placed if they are actually serious about stopping Trump?GET THE FULL STORY ON THE 2016 ELECTION: 21st Century Wire Election Files | 1real |
Trump to order 180-day delay of Labor Dept 'fiduciary' rule | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump on Friday will call on the U.S. Labor Department to delay for 180 days the implementation of its fiduciary duty rule requiring brokers offering retirement investment advice to put their clients’ interest first, according to a draft memo seen by Reuters. The draft memo also calls for the Labor Department to conduct a legal and economic review of the rule. If the department then concludes the rule is out of step with the administration’s policies, the draft memo says the department should take steps to rescind it. | 0fake |
Conservative ‘Christian’ Preacher Wants Government To Execute Adulterers | This guy just wants everyone dead.Pastor Steven Anderson of Faithful Word Baptist Church in Arizona just does not know how to shut his mouth.The day after the Orlando mass shooting, Anderson praised the 49 murders and called upon the government to execute all gay people across the nation.Just this past Sunday, Anderson repeated his call to execute gay people but added a call to purge any Christians who supports the LGBT community.And now Anderson is calling for reinstating the death penalty against anyone who is tried and convicted of committing adultery. Adultery is not a crime in the United States, but Anderson called for punishing those who commit it with death in a written manifesto on his blog last week. When someone says that homosexuality is worthy of death according to the Bible, people inevitably will bring up other sins that were also punishable by death in the Old Testament, he wrote. They think they are somehow catching us in hypocrisy, but the truth is, Bible believing Christians DO agree with those other Old Testament penalties as well we just need to realize that God s laws were the law of the land in those days. Today, adultery is not punishable by law in the United States, but it should be. Just as he did when he called for executing gay people, Anderson laid out his vision of a righteous government, presumably made up of conservative Christians who will shred the Constitution and replace it with the Bible, and said such a government would make adultery a capital crime worthy of arrest and death if convicted by what one can only imagine would be a kangaroo court. This, Anderson says, is the way he would prevent adultery and divorce.Yes, a righteous government would implement the death penalty for those tried and convicted of adultery. We all know normal people who have unfortunately committed this grievous sin, and of course we wouldn t want them to die for it. If we were to somehow vote in a law making adultery illegal, it would not be retroactive it would be the law going forward, and adultery rates would plummet and so would divorce rates. Think about it, though. Do you really think as many people commit adultery in societies where it is punishable by death? Of course not so you can relax about your Aunt Trudy who cheated on her husband thirty years ago. If Aunt Trudy had lived in a society that enforced the death penalty for adultery, chances are she would never have committed that sin in the first place.Indeed, other nations in the world do, in fact, punish adulterers with death. There s only one problem.As it turns out, punishing adultery by execution is something that occurs today mostly under Islamic law. Conservatives like Anderson would refer to this as Sharia law. And usually it overwhelmingly punishes women, especially women who have been raped.According to The Week,The UN has issued numerous calls to governments to repeal laws that criminalise adultery, arguing that they are predominantly used to discriminate against women. Provisions in penal codes often do not treat women and men equally and establish harsher rules and sanctions for women, writes human rights expert Frances Raday.Countries governed by Islamic law, including Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Somalia, all strictly prohibit zina , or fornication outside marriage . Prosecutions are common and punishment can include fines, arbitrary detention, imprisonment, flogging and in extreme cases, the death penalty. Women are overwhelmingly targeted.Human rights organisations argue that in several Muslim nations, adultery laws are often used against women who have been raped. Under such legislation, the burden of proof is on the woman to provide evidence that she was raped, or be prosecuted for adultery.In short, what Anderson is proposing is a barbaric practice that is mostly practiced in countries that are governed by some form of Sharia law and is used primarily to punish women.Basically, he is calling for the United States to be governed by Christian Sharia law. You know, the same Sharia law that conservatives freak out about and pass laws against.Anderson concluded his sermon by claiming that the death penalty deters crime and shrugged at the notion that people don t want their loved ones executed just because they had an extramarital affair.In countries where adultery is still a capital crime, it s not an everyday occurrence and usually ends up in the news. Just as capital punishment is a strong deterrent against murder, it has the same effect on other crimes.Telling us that we would not want people we know and care about to be put to death is a straw man argument. We don t want our friends and family to be convicted of murder either, but they probably won t kill anyone, so we don t worry about it. When the children of Israel committed adultery, they knew the risk going in.However, it s worth noting that multiple studies by researchers have been UNABLE to prove that the death penalty is a deterrent to crimeThe bottom line is that is that Anderson is a maniac who wants to bathe America in blood in order to create what he considers the perfect Christian utopia. Millions upon millions of Americans would be murdered in this endeavor if Anderson had his way, and that is precisely why conservative Christians can never be allowed to have power in our government.Featured Image: Screenshot | 1real |
CLINTON’S BEG For Cash As Foundation’s Ability To Peddle Influence Has Been Undermined By Trump And Russian Hackers…LOL! | It s too bad the darn Russians and President-elect Trump, who the media insisted would never win the election, are having such a negative impact on such an upstanding charity The foundation has already started reaching out to donors to ask for money, the New York Post reports. Clinton Foundation chairman Bruce Lindsey announced in an email to supporters Wednesday that former President Bill Clinton would personally match donations up to $200,000 before the end of the year. As we prepare for a new year, President Clinton and Chelsea remain dedicated to our work providing everyone a chance to succeed, Lindsey wrote in the email. Your contribution before the end of the year is so important that President Clinton is personally TRIPLING every gift to the Foundation, up to $200,000. Interestingly, Hillary s name is nowhere to be found.The FBI is still investigating the Clinton Foundation for corruption and money laundering. It was a hot topic during the presidential race; Donald Trump repeatedly described the foundation as a criminal enterprise. Emails published by WikiLeaks exposed questionable behavior at the foundation, such as the Qatari government presenting Bill Clinton with a $1 million check for his birthday.In the email to foundation supporters, Lindsey dismissed allegations of wrongdoing, describing the foundation as a force for good in this world. We ll see in the coming months and years if the foundation s sketchy donors were truly committing to saving the world, or if they just saw the foundation as an easy way to purchase influence and access to power. Heat Street | 1real |
SPD leader promises to push Germany to embrace Macron | BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany s Social Democrats (SPD) will do everything in their power to ensure that Berlin embraces the European ideas of French President Emmanuel Macron, SPD leader Martin Schulz said on Wednesday. Chancellor Angela Merkel s conservatives are hoping to form a coalition with the SPD after failing to get a three-way coalition with the liberal Free Democrats and Greens off the ground. The SPD will debate the idea of once again joining such a coalition at a congress on Dec. 7-9. Schulz criticized Merkel indirectly for not embracing Macron s ideas, which include closer cooperation in defense, migration and a deeper integration of the euro zone. Our congress will be about this tomorrow. What are our possibilities, our options, our instruments for ensuring that Germany embraces these French ideas, Schulz said at an SPD conference in the party s Berlin headquarters. France is making proposals and Germany is not engaging. This is not acceptable, he added. | 0fake |
Año 1883: Gaudí se compromete a terminar la Sagrada Familia “en dos semanas, tres a lo sumo” | Año 1922: El arqueólogo Howard Carter descubre la tumba de Obi-Wan Kenobi EFEMÉRIDES DE LA SEMANA Este sitio web utiliza cookies para analizar cómo es utilizado el sitio. Las cookies no te pueden identificar. Si continuas navegando supone la aceptación de la Política de Cookies. Estoy de acuerdo. Más info. | 1real |
Nancy Pelosi: ’We Have a Right to Know What’s in Health Care Bill Before It Passes’ - Breitbart | House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D. ) sent a letter Tuesday to Speaker Paul Ryan (R. .) demanding to know the contents of his American Health Care Act, or RyanCare, before it passes the House — a rich hark back to what she said when Congress was considering Obamacare seven years ago. [“We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it,” is what Pelosi said March 9, 2010 to the National Association of Counties. Tuesday, Pelosi wrote: “Members must not be asked to vote on this legislation before the CBO and the Joint Committee on Taxation have answered the following questions about your legislation in 2018 and 2019, over the budget window, and in the decade after: How will this bill measure up to the Affordable Care Act and current Medicaid law on coverage, quality, and cost? And how will it impact Medicare solvency?” Pelosi said Ryan should appreciate her concerns. “Mr. Speaker, as a former Chair of both the Committee on Ways and Means and the Budget, you understand the importance of having the numbers as well as anyone,” she wrote. “The American people and Members have a right to know the full impact of this legislation before any vote in Committee or by the whole House,” she wrote. “These are critical questions and I hope that Republicans will honor their responsibility to the American people both before the Committees vote and before the final bill goes to the House floor. ” What a difference seven years makes. | 0fake |
Key Senate committee chairman wants briefing on Flynn | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Republican and Democratic leaders of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee asked Attorney General Jeff Sessions and FBI Director James Comey on Wednesday to send the committee documents and provide a briefing on the resignation of President Donald Trump’s national security adviser. Citing reports that both the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Justice Department were involved in events leading to Michael Flynn’s departure, Senators Chuck Grassley and Dianne Feinstein said they raised “substantial questions” about Flynn’s discussion with Russian officials. | 0fake |
Support For Brexit at Five-Month High After Article 50 Triggered | Support for the UK leaving the European Union (EU) has hit a high, with more that 55 per cent of voters getting behind Brexit, the latest poll has revealed. [For the third successive month, more than half of the voting public approves of the way that Brexit talks are being conducted. Meanwhile, disapproval is at its lowest level yet, sitting at just 45 per cent, a new survey from Orb International shows. The poll apparently debunks the notion of Brexit regret, and the idea that the British public would vote differently if there was a second referendum. Three per cent more of the voting population now support Brexit than on the day of the referendum. Johnny Heald, managing director of Orb International, told The Telegraph: “Since November, the British public are slowly becoming more comfortable with idea of Brexit and, each month, more are approving of the way in which the government is dealing with negotiations. ” As the dire predictions of “project fear” have failed to materialise, and the UK’s economy has continued to succeed, it is possible that support for Brexit will continue to grow. However, the public appears to be becoming more interested in trade deals as the divorce process begins, with immigration slipping down the nation’s list of concerns. “However, as these talks develop, it’s interesting that the public is increasingly concerned more about free trade agreements than immigration marking a reversal of the preference aired during the campaign” added Mr. Heald. Immigration was seen as the most important issue in the June referendum. However, the recent survey found that 47 per cent of voters now disagreed that “controlling immigration [was] more important than access to free trade”. Analysis of the figures showed that the swing in opinion has been driven by pensioners, with the proportion of those prioritising immigration over trade falling from 61 per cent in March to 47 per cent in April. Confidence that immigration can be controlled is also down, with only 58 per cent believing that the UK will have greater control over immigration once withdrawal from the EU is complete. The Prime Minister has promised to bring immigration to below 100, o00, but has also said she is happy for free movement to continue for years after Britain leaves the EU during a “implementation” period. Last week, a report for campaign group Leave Means Leave, said that Britain can slash net migration to 50, 000 a year by barring unskilled labour and imposing a strict visa regime without damaging the economy. | 0fake |
Pay Off: The Establishment Rewards Comey with $2 million Book Deal | 21st Century Wire says For his role in helping to sow chaos in the US political system and for promulgating the official conspiracy theory that Russia somehow hacked the US electoral process helping Donald Trump to win last November, and also ensuring that no charges were brought anywhere near the Clintons former FBI Director James Comey has just received the first of many gifts from the Establishment.James Comey is no stranger to elite circles, and is clearly regarded by those at the top as a safe pair of hands. As 21WIRE reported last year, James Comey served on the board of banking giant HSBC the same bank that was convicted of international drugs and terrorism money laundering, as well as a bank which was closely linked to the corrupt Clinton Foundation. After working fellow lawyers Eric Holder and Lorretta Lynch to stage manage the public fall out from revelations about HSBC s epic criminal enterprise, and their subsequent slap on the wrist, Comey was then rewarded by President Obama when he was appointed head of the FBI in 2013.By anyone s measure, Comey was central to the mess which has resulted from the political circus surrounding the establishment s efforts to derail the Trump campaign, and now through the Trump presidency.Congratulations. You got your book deal. You ve made it James AP/The GuardianThe former FBI director James Comey has signed a $2m ( 1.5m) deal for a book about leadership and decision-making that will draw on his career in government, which included the high-profile drama leading up to his sacking from Donald Trump s administration.According to the publisher, Comey will tell how he handled the bureau s probe into Hillary Clinton s private email server and the allegations of ties between Russia and Trump s presidential campaign.Trump sacked Comey as FBI chief in May, later telling NBC News that he was angered by the FBI s investigation into this Russia thing , which he insists is a fake story. Comey has since testified before Congress that Trump asked him to end an investigation into former National Security Adviser Michael T Flynn and kept memos about his meetings with the president.The book was acquired by Flatiron, an Macmillan imprint, which promises that Comey will cite examples from some of the highest-stakes situations in the past two decades of US government . It will also share yet unheard anecdotes from his long and distinguished career .The book is currently untitled and scheduled for publication next spring. Throughout his career, James Comey has had to face one difficult decision after another, as he has served the leaders of our country, Flatiron said in a statement. His book promises to take us inside those extraordinary moments in our history, showing us how these leaders have behaved under pressure. By doing so, Director Comey will give us unprecedented entry into the corridors of power, and a remarkable lesson in leadership itself. Continue this story at The GuardianREAD MORE COMEY NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Comey FilesSUPPORT OUR WORK BY SUBSCRIBING & BECOMING A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV | 1real |
Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton’s Speeches: What You Missed - The New York Times | Donald J. Trump addressed the massacre in Orlando, Fla. on Monday, one day after the deadliest mass shooting in American history, as part of a broader national security speech in Manchester, N. H. where he also contrasted himself with Hillary Clinton. Here are the highlights from Mr. Trump’s speech: • Mr. Trump began his remarks saying he initially planned to focus on Hillary Clinton, “and all of the bad things and we all know what’s going on,” adding “especially how poor she’d do as president in these very, very troubled times of radical Islamic terrorism. ” He promised that speech would come “very, very soon. ” • Mr. Trump called for a moment of silence for the dead in Orlando, saying it was an attack against people and “an attack on the right of every single American to live in peace and safety. ” He continued, “We need to respond to this attack in America as one united people. ” • As his first policy proposal if elected president, Mr. Trump reiterated his plan to temporarily ban Muslim immigration. He said in particular that he would ban immigration from countries where terrorism was a threat. He said, referring to the assailant in Orlando, that “thousands and thousands of people, many of whom have the same thought process as this savage killer” are pouring into the country, and that the ban “will be lifted when and as a nation we are in a position to properly and perfectly screen these people coming into our country. ” • Even though he said at the top of his speech that it would not be about Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Trump criticized his likely opponent for her foreign policy, again sowing some conspiratorial bent on Mrs. Clinton’s grasp of the terror threat: “She has no clue in my opinion what radical Islam is, and she won’t speak honestly about it if she does, in fact, know. ” He quickly pivoted his criticism of Mrs. Clinton to the debate over gun laws, falsely saying she wants to abolish the Second Amendment, “leaving only the bad guys, terrorists with guns. ” He added: “Not gonna happen. ” • Mr. Trump repeatedly framed the threat of terrorism in the realm of immigration, claiming that there were “hundreds of thousands” of Muslim immigrants who are coming into the United States unscreened. (The United States does indeed have a screening process.) • Mr. Trump referred to himself as a better friend of women and the L. G. B. T. community than Hillary Clinton, referring to his immigration ban against Muslim immigrants as one against people “who reject our values. ” While it was notable how far Mr. Trump went in his efforts to embrace the L. G. B. T. community, often using inclusive pronouns like “our” and “we,” he remains opposed to marriage. • Making blanket statements against an entire religion, Mr. Trump said that the Muslim community “know what’s going on” regarding terrorism, despite no evidence of that in the Orlando killings. He said the Muslim community had “to work with us. ” He added: “They knew the person in San Bernardino was bad. They have to turn them in. ” He was referring to the shooting in San Bernardino, Calif. last December when a Muslim couple shot and killed 14 people and wounded 22. • Mr. Trump concluded his remarks with a promise, if he were to be elected president, for a “safe society,” and he riffed on his campaign slogan: “We will make America rich again. We will make America safe again. We will make America great again. ” _____ Hillary Clinton addressed the massacre in Orlando on Monday, during a speech in Cleveland where she outlined her broader plans to combat terrorism. Here are the highlights from Mrs. Clinton’s speech: • Mrs. Clinton, invoking a “nightmare that’s become familiar,” said it was “not a day for politics. ” The shooter may be dead, she said, “but the virus that poisoned his mind remains very much alive. ” • Mrs. Clinton said that despite some progress in combating Islamic State forces on the ground in Iraq and Syria, the group would “seek to stage more attacks” wherever it could. She pledged to make the targeting of “lone wolves” a top priority as president. • Noting that the shooter in Orlando, Fla. had been on the F. B. I. ’s radar, Mrs. Clinton said the country required “more resources for this fight” and called for the removal of “weapons of war” from the streets. • Mrs. Clinton, noting the acrimonious national debate over guns, said everyone should be able to agree that “If the F. B. I. is watching you for suspected terrorist links, you shouldn’t be able to just go buy a gun. ” • Mrs. Clinton said it was “long past time” for the governments of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Kuwait to stop allowing their citizens to finance extremists. • Mrs. Clinton, observing that the shooting targeted a gay nightclub, said that “an attack on any American is an attack on all Americans. ” Addressing gay Americans, she said, “You have millions of allies who will always have your back. And I am one of them. ” • Seeking to contrast her approach with the impulses of Donald J. Trump, Mrs. Clinton said America was “not a land of winners and losers,” calling it “a country of ‘we,’ not ‘me. ’” • Mrs. Clinton called to mind the sense of national unity after the Sept. 11 attacks, reminding voters that President George W. Bush quickly “sent a message of unity and solidarity” to Muslims. “It is time to get back to the spirit of those days,” she said, “the spirit of . ” | 0fake |
White, moldy and French: Russia's response to sanctions goes gourmet | VERKHNAYA PYSHMA/YEKATERINBURG, Russia (Reuters) - One thousand French goats have found a new home in Russia s Ural mountains as a local company bets on producing European-style cheeses no longer available for import. Russia banned the wholesale import of fresh food from the European Union, including dairy products, in response to sanctions imposed on Moscow after its 2014 annexation of Crimea. But as images of steamrollers flattening illegally imported European cheeses were beamed across the country, Russian businesses were gearing up to fill the gap. Investment in the production of sanctioned foodstuffs has grown, and in the Ural mountains the owners of mining company UMMC have added goats to their copper and coal assets. Iskandar Makhmudov and Andrey Kozytsin, both on the Forbes list of Russia s 100 richest people, are among UMMC s main shareholders. Their company, UGMK-Agro, spent one million euros on trucking the Alpine goats 5,000 km from the Vendee region in France. Working out of a converted cowshed north of Yekaterinburg, it is aiming to be Russia s largest producer of white mold goat s cheese, a French delicacy. The company has invested 200 million rubles ($3.4 million)in cheese production and expects to turn a profit in six years. For us, sanctions have of course played a positive role. We saw a gap in the market - not quite a deficit, but some room for maneuver, Ilya Bondarev, CEO of UGMK-Agro, told Reuters. With most Russians accustomed to semi-hard cheeses, part of the challenge will be encouraging buyers to try something new. I m sorry but goat s cheese smells, and I don t like the taste of moldy cheeses, said 30-year-old Alexander, a Yekaterinburg resident. I prefer mozzarella and normal Russian cheeses, which remind me of my childhood, he said. There is also the price. A kg of UGMK-Agro s B che-de-Ch vre cheese, sold under the Coeur du Nord brand, costs 2,200-2,500 rubles ($37-$43) versus 300-800 rubles per kg for standard Russian cheeses. UGMK-Agro plans to produce 500-700 kg of cheese a day by the spring of 2018. We are launching in Moscow ... and are talking to distributors in St Petersburg, Bondarev said. But our main challenge is the creation of a local market. | 0fake |
Foreign Diplomats Scared Sh*tless Over The Idea Of A President Trump | As we know, the final United Nations General Assembly of President Obama s presidency is occurring in New York City this week. That gave diplomats from around the world to weigh in on this year s very strange presidential election. Many seem rather rattled about the idea of a Donald Trump presidency, while others merely poked fun at Trump s buffoonery.One diplomat mocked Trump, saying, he s a clown. Another said, He s nuts. Yet another said that Trump is an untrustworthy egomaniacal equivocator. Well, it s too bad so many American citizens can t see these traits in Trump. An Ipsos poll that polled foreign ambassadors who are currently working in America has 60 percent of these people saying they would vote for Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton if they were citizens, while only 7 percent would hop on the Trump Train. That in and of itself is very telling.Dennis Jett, who spent much of his career being a diplomat himself and now works for Pennsylvania State University School of International Affairs, says that Trump s behavior has made many diplomats nervous and worried about American leadership, America s role in the world. Also curious is the fact that the American people have succumbed to the belief that Hillary is untrustworthy, while 93 percent of those surveyed in the Ipsos poll say that they find Hillary to be somewhat or very much in the realm of someone who they feel they can trust. On the other hand, just two in five of those surveyed say that they trust Trump a little while the rest said they don t trust him as far as they can throw him.German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier says that Trump is a hate preacher and alluded to the idea that the billionaire tycoon reminds him of demagogues from past times in his own homeland. French President Fran ois Hollande says that the GOP nominee s excesses make you want to retch. One lobbyist familiar with the diplomatic community says that there are deepening fears around the world regarding the idea of Trump making it to the White House. Speaking anonymously, the lobbyist said: Foreign clients are very concerned about what they perceive as a tipping point in this election. This is less about Democrat versus Republican, and more about open versus closed economy, vis- -vis the rest of the world. With a wave of nationalism and protectionism sweeping the West, there is a real concern it will take hold in the United States and in what form it might show itself post-election.Whether it s immigration reform or trade policy, it feels as if much of the world is opening while the U.S. is teetering on closing. Even more alarming, the diplomats say, is Trump s America First and isolationist demagoguery. Stephen Walt, who works as a professor at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, says of the situation among diplomats: First and most obviously, most foreign governments would like a relatively predictable post-November situation, and I think they regard Trump correctly as a giant leap in the dark.Whatever Hillary Clinton s strengths or weaknesses might be, she has been a very conventional politician, at least when it comes to foreign policy. Therefore, people don t anticipate any kind of radical turn if she s elected. Of course, another source of more than a little concern is Trump s penchant for starting public feuds with longtime allies of the United States, as well as his public musings that he might not honor alliances such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) which is the single most important military alliance that we have developed since the horrors of World War II.In other words, the entire world is afraid of Donald Trump. Why aren t the American people able to see how dangerous this demagogue is? Donald Trump could single-handedly destroy the world with the power of the presidency.Featured image via Joe Raedle/Getty Images | 1real |
THIS WOMAN IS A HERO: Trump Surrogate Leads Families Forgotten By Obama [Video] | Get to know this woman! Maria Espinoza founded The Remembrance Project. It s an organization of families of people who ve been killed by illegal aliens. They want to call attention to the open borders and what happens when you allow anyone and everyone to cross our border. Can you imagine one of you family members being killed by someone who isn t even a legal citizen? Maria and other members of The Remembrance Project have connected with Donald Trump who s very sympathetic to their mission. Is Hillary even aware of this? I think not. Trump wants to ENFORCE OUR LAWS to close the border!Trump surrogate Maria Espinoza said that Donald J. Trump will uphold current laws and place Americans first, in regard to border security. She continued by arguing that we must place America first. | 1real |
Zimbabwe's state mouthpiece captures fall of First Lady Grace | JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - Zimbabwe s longstanding government and ruling party mouthpiece, The Herald newspaper, has abruptly changed its tune on President Robert Mugabe s wife Grace, confirmation of her political downfall. The Herald often takes its marching orders from the information ministry. And it has always reported from the point of view of the winning faction in the ruling ZANU-PF, making it a reliable barometer of someone s political standing. In August, the paper ran a typically fawning portrait of Grace under the headline A Loving Mother of the Nation. Loving mother, compassionate philanthropist, astute businesswoman, perceptive politician, remarkable patriot, these are all adjectives that can be used to describe the First Lady Dr Grace Mugabe, The Herald gushed. Less than three months later and in the wake of a coup that threatens Mugabe s presidency and has seen both he and Grace expelled from ZANU-PF, her Herald portrayal was starkly different. Grace Mugabe lacked grooming and true motherhood as shown by her foul language, the paper quoted the ZANU-PF s youth wing as saying. We take exception to the vulgar language which had become part of Mrs Mugabe s vocabulary, it quoted a Youth League cadre as saying. Zimbabweans, many of whom are devoutly religious and culturally conservative, often take offense at profanities. The piece featured an unflattering picture of an unsmiling Grace - a sharp departure from the loving mother portrayal that included photos of her smiling and holding infants. Until the events of the past week, the political fortunes of Grace dubbed Gucci Grace for her reputed fondness shopping sprees were on the rise, if The Herald s coverage was anything to go on. In September 2014, the University of Zimbabwe awarded her a PHD raising eyebrows as her academic prowess had previously been unknown. But in Zimbabwe, the path to power is paved with academic letters. Weeks later, one Herald headline blared: Dr Grace Mugabe honored in song. At the time, she was being shoe-horned into the top position in ZANU-PF s Women s League, and the song was entitled: Dr G Mugabe For Women s League Secretary. Just 12 days ago, paper was reporting that the Women s League was backing Grace in her bid to become vice president. This was days after Mugabe sacked his deputy Emmerson Mnangagwa, clearing the path for Grace to assume the role and succeed her 93-year-old husband. It was this tilt at power that triggered the army backlash. | 0fake |
A MUST READ: Homeland Security Director Reveals Why He Sides With Muslims In The Terror War | Have you ever noticed how DHS Director Jeh Johnson repeatedly lies or answers questions with very vague answers? I can name numerous times he s given smug and incomplete answers when testifying about immigration and terrorism. Of course, the press has done nothing to expose this incompetence and the background of our Homeland Security Director nothing. He was basically gifted the job at the DHS after his job as a bundler for Obama. Anyone who has been paying attention knows there s something strange going on here. Well, here s your lightbulb moment: The ineffectiveness and incompetence of the Department of Homeland Security under the clueless moonbat Jeh Johnson may have you wondering what possible qualifications he might have, other than being black and a bundler of campaign donations for Obama. He has exactly one. Like Obama himself, he is a red diaper baby:While speaking to Muslims [since the San Bernardino attack], Homeland Security chief Jeh Johnson revealed why he s so protective of them. He compared growing suspicions cast on them to the plight of his communist kin.Johnson dropped the bombshell that his grandfather had been investigated for communism and un-American activities. We can t say we re surprised. Add him to the parade of Red diaper babies in the Cabinet, including top White House advisor Valerie Jarrett, former political advisor David Axelrod and President Obama himself.No wonder this administration isn t interested in monitoring radical Muslims for terrorist connections. In 1949, during the McCarthy era, my own grandfather was called upon to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee, to deny he was a member of the Communist Party and defend the patriotism of African-Americans, Johnson said in a speech to the ADAMS Center in Sterling, Va., a mosque founded by alleged radical Muslim Brotherhood leaders. Today his grandson is responsible for the homeland security of this entire nation, he boasted.He likened the current climate of fear, suspicions and prejudice against Muslim immigrants to the Red scare and McCarthyism his grandfather, Charles S. Johnson, lived under in the 1940s and 1950s. In 1949, Johnson, a sociologist and president of predominantly black Fisk University, was dragged before the House Un-American Activities Committee and asked to deny if he is or ever has been a member of the Communist Party. The panel had good cause to investigate. Communists hadn t just infiltrated Fisk as professors, but Johnson had readily hired them, including Giovanni Ross Lomanitz, a known communist operative. Even after Lomanitz s communist loyalties were exposed, Johnson spoke out on his behalf. Johnson then hired and defended yet another communist, math professor Lee Lorch. Johnson initially refused to fire him, but relented under withering criticism. There was also the issue of Johnson s own membership in communist fronts such as the National Sharecroppers Fund. Johnson denied the charges and called the hearings a witch hunt. But the charges stuck. After he died of a massive heart attack, grandson Jeh Charles Johnson took his name. Of course, none of this came out in the younger Johnson s confirmation hearings. We only this summer learned that old FBI papers reveal hard-core communism in Jarrett s family. Her Chicago kin, who were known as concealed communists, included her late father, James E. Bowman. He was involved with communist front groups and was in contact with a paid Soviet agent in the 1950s who was wanted for espionage. Via: Investor s Business DailyThat means the danger Joe McCarthy is maligned to this day for heroically attempting to protect us against has come to pass. It means that we are in deep trouble.Via: moonbattery After you watch the two videos note that there s a lack of will to do anything at all: Senator Sessions Hammers Jeh Johnson On Immigration: | 1real |
Robin Roberts Says While She Was Dying from Cancer a ‘Familiar Voice’ Came From Her Nurse and Brought Her Back | Share on Twitter
For Robin Roberts, losing her mother while she was in the midst of her own fight for her life was an especially hard blow. Roberts's mother had always been there for her through every illness and injury.
When she needed her mom the most, however, Roberts swears that she could hear her voice, encouraging her not to give up on life. Image Credit: Mireya Acierto/Getty Images
As PopSugar reports, on a recent episode of “ Harry ,” the “Good Morning America” co-host tearfully recounted the days she spent in the hospital after a bone marrow transplant. Famously open about her battles with breast cancer and a rare bone marrow disease, Roberts tells host Harry Connick Jr. that she had reached the point where the fight was too much for her:
“There was a time when I sent everybody away, and I was in my room, and I just felt like I'm slipping away. I just couldn't.”
One of the things that had made Roberts feel like giving up was the fact that her mother was no longer there by her side. However, she was soon to find that her mom was closer than she realized. She tells Harry:
“I kept hearing this voice, 'Robin! Robin! Robin!' And suddenly, I open my eyes, and it's ... my nurse Jenny. She's looking at me. That was my mother's voice. I am convinced, when I was hearing that, even though it was Jenny, it was my mother's voice I was hearing.”
Roberts believes that at her point of “ greatest isolation ,” her mother used Jenny to call her back, to remind her to keep fighting.
Jenny, Roberts says, was “invaluable” during this time. Acknowledging the bond between Roberts and her nurse, Harry surprised Roberts by reuniting her with nurse Jenny and another nurse who had cared for her. An emotional Roberts was able to thank them for not only everything they had done for her, but for what they have done for countless others:
“Thank you for being our lifeline. Thank you for being there— not only for us, but for our caregivers ... for our loved ones.” | 1real |
Co-Chair Of Trump’s Voter Fraud Commission Says Trump May Not Have Been Legitimately Elected (VIDEO) | The co-chair of Trump s voter fraud commission, set up to prove that Hillary Clinton didn t win the popular vote because of the millions of illegal votes he says were cast for his opponent, just inserted both feet in his mouth, grew a new foot, then shoved that one in the other available orifice on Wednesday when he admitted that Trump may not be our legitimate president. You know, we may never know the answer to that, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach told MSNBC s Katy Tur when asked whether he thought Clinton won the popular vote by 3 to 5 million votes. We will probably never know the answer to that question, he said. In reality, Clinton only won by 2.87 million votes but Kobach is a moron. How do you say we may never know the answer to that question? Tur asked. Then things got really stupid: What I m saying is, let s suppose that the commission determined that there were a certain number of votes cast by ineligible voters. You still won t know whether those people who were ineligible voted for Trump or for Clinton or for somebody else.And so, it s impossible to ever know exactly, if you took out all the ineligible votes, what the final tally would be in that election. You can obviously, based on the data, you can make some very educated guesses. So are the votes for Donald Trump that led him to win the election in doubt as well? Tur pressed. Absolutely, replied Kobach.Voter fraud especially in-person is extremely rare, though a couple of Trump supporters have been caught illegally voting multiple times after he told them people would illegally vote for Hillary Clinton.In other words, the system works and people who try to vote illegally do get caught. The integrity of the voting systems themselves, however, could be questioned as Russian agents provably hacked our electoral system in 39 states.Is Donald Trump the legitimate President? The answer is that he s an idiot until we know the full extent of Russian attacks on our election.Watch the interview below: | 1real |
HERE ARE THE FIVE State Department Rules That Hillary Violated [Video] | While Hillary doubles down on her false claim that the rules were clarified AFTER she left the State Department, we ve got the 5 top rules she broke. But first we need to listen to the masterful liar herself:Hillary Clinton doubles down on defending her email practices: Rules were not clarified until after I had left. https://t.co/ggH7XtU5Qo ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) May 26, 2016 That investigation is ongoing, but the report identifies five other laws or regulations that Clinton circumvented or failed to follow. They contradict the Clinton campaign s repeated claims that Clinton s email practices at the State Department complied with all relevant rules regarding federal records and information security.Retaining agency records after leaving Departing officials and employees [may] not remove Federal records from agency custody 36 C.F.R. 1222.24Clinton s personal email address, which she used exclusively as secretary of state, was housed on a private email server in her Chappaqua, N.Y. home. That meant her emails, which are considered federal records, were never in federal custody while she served as secretary. She didn t just retain records after leaving the State Department; those records were never in the department s possession in the first place.Properly archiving agency records Agencies that allow employees to send and receive official electronic mail messages using a system not operated by the agency must ensure that Federal records sent or received on such systems are preserved in the appropriate agency recordkeeping system. 36 C.F.R. 1236.22(b)Clinton claims that the fact she was sending emails to federal employees using official email accounts meant that those emails were being archived properly. The IG rejected that explanation and concluded that Clinton had violated rules on the preservation of federal records. Secretary Clinton should have preserved any Federal records she created and received on her personal account by printing and filing those records with the related files in the Office of the Secretary, the IG wrote.Preserving federal records from loss or destruction All Department employees are required by law to preserve documentary materials meeting the definition of a record under the Federal Records Act [and are] responsible for creating, using, maintaining, preserving, and disposing of the Department s information and records. State Department Foreign Affairs ManualClinton has said that she deleted roughly 30,000 emails stored on her server that she deemed of a personal and non-official nature. Neither the State Department nor the records agency has ever seen those emails. We now know that they included messages that were official in nature.The IG report identified a number of such emails to Gen. David Petraeus. The Department of Defense provided to OIG in September 2015 copies of 19 emails between Secretary Clinton and General David Petraeus on his official Department of Defense email account. None of those 19 emails were turned over to the State Department.Other deleted Clinton emails included dispatches about the Libyan civil war and the Sept. 11, 2012, terrorist attacks on U.S. diplomatic facilities in the country.Use of department-approved computing devices It is the Department s general policy that normal day-to-day operations be conducted on an authorized AIS, which has the proper level of security control to provide nonrepudiation, authentication and encryption, to ensure confidentiality, integrity, and availability of the resident information. State Department Foreign Affairs ManualAccording to the inspector general, Clinton never received department approval to conduct official agency business on her private email server. She never consulted with the proper authorities before doing so. If she had, her email arrangement would have been rejected. According to the current CIO and Assistant Secretary for Diplomatic Security, Secretary Clinton had an obligation to discuss using her personal email account to conduct official business with their offices, who in turn would have attempted to provide her with approved and secured means that met her business needs, stated the IG report. However, according to these officials, DS and IRM did not and would not approve her exclusive reliance on a personal email account to conduct Department business, because of the restrictions in the FAM and the security risks in doing so. Handling of sensitive-but-unclassified (SBU) information Where warranted by the nature of the information, employees who will be transmitting SBU information outside of the Department network on a regular basis to the same official and/or most personal addresses, must contact the [information security officials] for guidance in implementing a secure technical solution for those transmissions. State Department Foreign Affairs Manual Emails exchanged on [Clinton s] personal account regularly contained information marked as SBU, but she never obtained the required approval for the handling of such information on a personal computing device. Because a security review never occurred, Secretary Clinton never demonstrated that her private server or mobile device met minimum information security requirements. Information security officials from Clinton s time at the agency told the IG that they were not asked to approve or otherwise review the use of Secretary Clinton s server and that they had no knowledge of approval or review by other Department staff. These officials also stated that they were unaware of the scope or extent of Secretary Clinton s use of a personal email account, though many of them sent emails to the Secretary on this account. Read more: WFB | 1real |
Минобороны России: Эвакуация жителей Алеппо была сорвана боевиками |
Конашенков пояснил, что представителями сирийских властей и российским Центром примирения планировалось вывезти около 40 мирных жителей из восточных районов Алеппо в безопасные места, однако из-за снайперского огня со стороны боевиков сделать это не получилось.
По его словам, "террористы продолжают вести из самодельных реактивных установок беспорядочные обстрелы жилых кварталов города, пресекая выход мирных жителей по действующим гуманитарным коридорам".
Добавим, что ранее постоянный представитель России при ООН Виталий Чуркин возложил ответственность на всемирную организацию за не до конца проработанную операцию по эвакуации населения из Алеппо.
Как сообщили в Детском фонде ООН (ЮНИСЕФ), "двадцать два ребенка и шесть учителей, согласно полученным сведениям, были убиты сегодня, когда здание их школы было неоднократно атаковано в Идлибе, Сирия", «Это трагедия. Если это было сделано намеренно, то это - военное преступление»,- приводит AFP слова директора ЮНИСЕФ Энтони Лейка.
До этого правозащитники сообщали, что «военные самолеты или российские, или сирийские нанесли шесть ударов» по деревне Хасс Лэйк отметил, что произошедшее является трагедией или военным преступлением.
По его словам, речь идет о возможно самом смертоносном нападении на школу в Сирии с момента начала конфликта в стране в 2011 году.
Как пишет РИА Новости, постоянный представитель РФ при ООН Виталий Чуркин назвал ужасным сообщение об ударе по школе в сирийском Идлибе. "Мне проще всего сказать, что это не мы, но я ответственный человек, так что мне нужно подождать и посмотреть, что скажет наше министерство обороны", - цитирует дипломата ТАСС.
Вооруженное противостояние продолжается в Сирии с марта 2011 года. По данным ООН, погибли более 220 тысяч человек.
США и их союзники с 2014 года проводят в Ираке и Сирии операцию против ИГ. В ночь на 17 октября премьер-министр Ирака Хайдер аль-Абади заявил о начале военной операции по освобождению Мосула от боевиков ИГ. Иракские военные и силы полиции, а также курдские формирования при поддержке авиации коалиции во главе с США начали массированное наступление на город.
| 1real |
Paul Ryan, Reluctant Supporter, Weighs Response to Donald Trump’s Remarks - The New York Times | For months, Speaker Paul D. Ryan had chosen to remain largely silent, hoping that his party’s nominee for president would simply get across the finish line, dragging congressional Republicans across with him. But a 2005 recording made public on Friday of Donald J. Trump speaking in extraordinarily vulgar terms about women became a new bridge too far across a seemingly endless landmass separating civil behavior and Mr. Trump’s campaign for the presidency. Mr. Ryan responded by uninviting Mr. Trump from a rally in his home state, Wisconsin, on Saturday, and said he was “sickened” by Mr. Trump’s remarks. But even as many congressional Republicans, including some very conservative House members, pulled away from Mr. Trump on Saturday, Mr. Ryan did not go so far as to withdraw his support for the businessman and former reality TV star. Mr. Ryan’s decision keeps him in the political purgatory of endorsing the Republican nominee for president while continually having to say why he finds his remarks and policy positions despicable. Looking tired and touting the virtues of congressional legislative processes, Mr. Ryan addressed a crowd of supporters on Saturday in Elkhorn, Wis. Some Trump supporters could be heard screaming the candidate’s name in the background. “It is a troubling situation,” Mr. Ryan said, alluding to the situation with Mr. Trump. “That is not what we are here to talk about today. Do you know what we do here at Fall Fest? We talk about ideas. ” The developments come as Republicans are trying desperately in the final weeks of a campaign season to maintain their control of the Senate and a firm majority in the House. Many are weighing, based on the particulars of their own states and districts and race dynamics, whether now is the moment to move away from Mr. Trump. In many cases, they are looking to Mr. Ryan to be their seer. Mr. Ryan’s tepid backing of Mr. Trump has been less about fear of alienating Mr. Trump’s supporters — many Republicans in Congress need his base of white, high men to win — than about worry of signaling to the thousands of Republicans who are ambivalent about Mr. Trump that they need not vote this year. Should those Republicans stay home, they could potentially set off a chain reaction down the ballot. A huge turnout collapse would deeply threaten Senate Republican incumbents and plenty of House members, too. “Donald Trump’s lewd comments are the latest in a series of remarks he has made ranging from inappropriate to reprehensible that demonstrate why he is unsuitable for the presidency,” said Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine. “It was comments like these — including the statements he made about John McCain, a disabled reporter, the family of a fallen soldier and more — that caused me to decide this summer that I could not support his candidacy,” said Ms. Collins, who is not up for . If Mr. Ryan were thinking of withdrawing his support from Mr. Trump, as of Saturday, he still had only sent the nominee back to his room to think about his remarks. “I hope Mr. Trump treats this situation with the seriousness it deserves and works to demonstrate to the country that he has greater respect for women than this clip suggests,” Mr. Ryan said. As the most senior elected Republican — and the party leader who most publicly agonized over his endorsement of Mr. Trump — Mr. Ryan has for much of this year held outsize importance as the role model for how Republicans should deal with Mr. Trump. His reluctant endorsement was pushed by his but it also beckoned to others to join the “Trump Train. ” Now, once again, the speaker’s actions are under intense scrutiny. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee released a statement even before Mr. Ryan uttered a (prepared) word: “There have been more than enough ‘final straw’ moments during this campaign, and Speaker Ryan has continued to unabashedly put party first in supporting the most repulsive candidate for president that our country has ever seen,” Kelly Ward, the group’s executive director, said. “If Speaker Ryan steps away from Trump, it will be an act of political expedience and desperate which won’t redeem him or House Republicans in the eyes of voters. ” For scores of elected Republicans, Mr. Trump’s clash with parents who lost a son in combat in Iraq, his call to ban all Muslims from entering the country, his disparagement of a federal judge, his of nearly $1 billion from his taxes and his derision of a former Miss Universe for gaining weight were not enough to force their hands. But for a growing handful of members of Congress, “hot mike” remarks aimed broadly at more than half the electorate were the final blow. “I’m out,” Representative Jason Chaffetz, Republican of Utah, told a local television station Friday night. “I can no longer in good conscience endorse this person for president. It is some of the most abhorrent and offensive comments that you can possibly imagine. ” But many more continued to ride the line between appalled and resigned. “As the father of three daughters,” said Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, “I strongly believe that Trump needs to apologize directly to women and girls everywhere, and take full responsibility for the utter lack of respect for women shown in his comments on that tape. ” Democrats mocked the “template” of that “father of daughters” construction, pointing to nearly a dozen elected Republicans who used it. For candidates in swing states, the pressure points have become more intense. This is particularly true in the case of Senator Kelly Ayotte, Republican of New Hampshire, who is in what many believe to be the tightest race in the country. Ms. Ayotte, who has awkwardly bounced between distance from and acceptance of Mr. Trump, found herself in scalding hot water last week by suggesting during a debate with her opponent that Mr. Trump was a role model. “It is beyond comprehension how Senator Ayotte could continue to support this man for the highest office in the land, let alone call him a role model,” said Gov. Maggie Hassan, who is challenging Ms. Ayotte for her seat. On Saturday morning, Ms. Ayotte completed her move away from Mr. Trump by saying she would not vote for him. She was followed by Representative Joe Heck, who is running for an open Senate seat in Nevada. Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, last seen in photos looking mildly humiliated as he did phone bank work on behalf of Mr. Trump — a former rival who once put Mr. Cruz’s wife in his Twitter cross hairs — said on Twitter: “These comments are disturbing and inappropriate, there is simply no excuse for them. ” Mr. Ryan, who many believe wants to run for president himself, has not been actively urging his colleagues to vote for Mr. Trump, and has instead repeatedly talked about the House Republican policy agenda, clinging to a small pamphlet of policy ideas like a talisman in the storm, hoping his image survives. | 0fake |
Trump Was Asked Point-Blank About Internment Camps For Muslims – Here’s His Chilling Response | Appearing on ABC s This Week with host Jonathan Karl, Donald Trump was asked about if he would categorically rule out the idea of internment camps for American Muslims. Let s just start out by saying that the fact that the front-runner for the Republican nomination for President of the United States is actually being asked this question is beyond terrifying. The reality of a Trump presidency is very real, and we need to make sure we are listening to him very carefully. This includes, but is not limited to, reading between the lines of his very calculated language to dodge questions and pivot to more optically friendly topics that will put him in a more positive light amongst his rabid followers.Karl asked: So let me ask you, you said that Islam is at war with us. A lot of people wonder, given some of your proposals, whether or not you would go the next step towards internment camps. And I know you ve never proposed that. But let me just ask you here now, would you categorically rule out the idea of internment camps for American Muslims? This is when Trump pulled the classic non-answer of no, but which insinuates full-well, he s not ruling anything out, and he still puts the sole blame on all Muslims for not reporting things they don t see, assuming all Muslims are in the know of terrorist plots being made. Trump told Karl: rule it out but we would have to be very vigilant. We re going to have to be very smart. We re going to have to be very rigid and very vigilant. And if we re not very, very strong and very, very smart, we have a big, big problem coming up. We ve already had the problem. Check out the World Trade Center, OK, check out the Pentagon. We ve already had the problem. But I would I would say you have to be extremely strong. You have to keep your eyes open.And by the way, Muslims in our country have to report bad acts, OK? When you look at what happened in Europe, in Brussels, where many, many people knew this thug from last week, was living right in the midst of them, right only a few doors down from where he was living previously, they knew he was there. Nobody reported him. When you hear someone say, no, but that s like hearing someone say, I m not racist, but and they go on to say something ridiculously racist. Trump is saying he d rule out internment camps in a very quick response to then fully pivot away to blaming all Muslims. Keep in mind, he s already insinuated in the past that he would have had to be there to decide if Japanese internment camps were a good idea or not during World War II. He keeps saying no, but then always leaves open the possibility. It doesn t take much to read between the lines. Unless, of course, you refuse to even look.You can t blame the entirety of everyone who follows a religion for the outrageous and horrific acts of a radical few who pervert the religion to suit their own morbid desires of sadistic control over a populace. You just can t. 1.6 billion people worldwide follow the religion of Islam. That s 23 percent of the global population Trump is blaming for the acts of the radical few. His simplistic and naive world view is not only extraordinarily narrow-minded and stupid, but extremely dangerous.We simply cannot allow Trump to become president. If you re still treating his candidacy like a joke stop. This is very scary, and will have very real consequences.Featured Photo by John Sommers II/Getty Images | 1real |
GOP Megadonor Sheldon Adelson Refused Ted Cruz Visit ‘Because He’s A Piece Of Sh*t’ | Ted Cruz is a piece of sh*t. Most of the country has known this a long time after observing his rampant homophobia, his willingness to shut down the government every time something happens that he doesn t like, and his general douchebaggery. Crus s former roommate pointed out earlier in the election season that it has always been this way. After all, he used to make female college students uncomfortable by hanging out near their dorms in a bathrobe and his classmates even had a name for the greasy film he leaves behind on everything he touches. Cruz, who ate a throat booger on national television and ended his campaign by elbowing his wife in the face, is so awful even his own daughter has trouble stomaching a forced touching family moment for the cameras.But Republicans couldn t seem to see how terrible he really is until his speech at the 2016 Republican National Convention, that is. On Wednesday, the defeated 2016 Stupid Party contender stood on stage and proudly endorsed Donald Trump s wall, but while many were expecting him to endorse the billionaire himself, they were disappointed. And to those listening, please, don t stay home in November, Cruz said, falling short of endorsing The Donald. Stand, and speak, and vote your conscience, vote for candidates up and down the ticket who you trust to defend our freedom and to be faithful to the Constitution. Naturally, this angered many Republicans including, apparently, GOP megadonor Sheldon Adelson. When Cruz tried to approach Adelson s suite, he was turned away at the door. Cruz was initially invited to join the Adelsons, but a senior aide to the Las Vegas casino magnate says that invite was rescinded when Cruz failed to endorse Trump. When he didn t endorse, they were stunned and disappointed, Adelson aide Andy Abboud told CNN. We could not allow Ted Cruz to use the Adelsons as a prop against Donald Trump. The Adelsons support Donald Trump and made that clear. They like Ted Cruz, but there was no way the Adelsons were going to be the first stop after not endorsing, he continued. That would be disrespectful to our nominee. Abboud then tweeted a photo of the Adelsons with Trump just to rub a little salt in the wound:The Adelson s with their choice for President! pic.twitter.com/gYsHBeT9AS Andy Abboud (@AndyAbboud) July 21, 2016After the speech, Trump went on the attack, as well:Wow, Ted Cruz got booed off the stage, didn't honor the pledge! I saw his speech two hours early but let him speak anyway. No big deal! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 21, 2016Hillary Clinton seized on the turmoil to encourage people to vote for her:Vote your conscience. https://t.co/xahMq2sU1q Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) July 21, 2016An unnamed former Senator gave a more direct reason for why Cruz was turned away, one with which we can all agree:For his part, the Texas Senator says he is not surprised with the reaction after committing what Trump Lawyer Michael Cohen called political suicide. He expected people to not approve, a source close to Cruz told CNN. Not surprised at the reaction. Watch Cruz s speech below, if you can stomach looking at his face for more than a few seconds:Featured image via screengrab | 1real |
Julian Assange Isn’t Done With Hillary, Reveals Hidden Human Trafficking Network | EndingFed News Network |
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.
This is an ongoing investigation so stay tuned for more.
Share this article to inform and encourage your friends and family!
If you haven’t checked out and liked our Facebook page, please go here and do so. Leave a comment... | 1real |
DEVELOPING: FBI Reopens Investigation into Clinton Emails After New ‘Pertinent’ Evidence Discovered | The Clinton email scandal has taken an unexpected twist Friday as Federal Bureau of Investigation Director James Comey notified key members of Congress that the agency will be reopening their investigation against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
In a letter to Congress, Comey wrote that the FBI has recently “ learned of the existence of emails that appear to be pertinent to the investigation” regarding Clinton’s use of a private server during her tenure at the State Department.
While Comey did not elaborate on what those emails contain, the director that the emails were discovered “in connection with an unrelated case.”
Via FoxNews
He told lawmakers the investigative team briefed him on the information a day earlier, “and I agreed that the FBI should take appropriate investigative steps designed to allow investigators to review these emails to determine whether they contain classified information, as well as to assess their importance to our investigation.”
He said the FBI could not yet assess whether the new material is significant and he could not predict how long it will take to complete “this additional work.”
Trump, speaking to cheering supporters Friday afternoon in Manchester, N.H., praised the FBI for having the “courage” to “right the horrible mistake that they made” – saying he hopes that is “corrected.”
“Hillary Clinton’s corruption is on a scale we have never seen before,” Trump said. “We must not let her take her criminal scheme into the Oval Office.”
In a nod to the significance of the FBI’s announcement, Trump quipped: “The rest of my speech is going to be so boring.”
We will continue to update as new details surface.
| 1real |
Revisiting 1917, a Year That Reverberates for Jews Around the World - The New York Times | PHILADELPHIA — Sometimes an exhibition, planned years in advance, arrives at a moment that makes it seem remarkably prescient. That is true of a show opening on March 17 at the National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia and later this year at the American Jewish Historical Society in New York. Organized by the two institutions, which are collaborating on an exhibition for the first time, “1917: How One Year Changed the World” focuses on three historic events and their major impact on Jews around the world: America’s entry into World War I, the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia and the Balfour Declaration. The war and the revolution resulted in strict limits on immigration to the United States, reflecting a fear among Americans that unrest in Europe would spread to their country. The restrictions were not overtly aimed at Jews, but because the quotas from countries with high Jewish populations were tightened, fewer Jews were able to settle in the United States. The Balfour Declaration, meanwhile, expressed Britain’s support for a Jewish home in Palestine. The exhibition will include 130 objects, including documents, photographs and war artifacts, that are likely to resonate with visitors as President Trump aggressively seeks to tighten borders and restrict immigration. Among the items is an undated cartoon from the era that portrays a man standing in front of a wall that bears the words “Immigration Restriction. ” He is wearing a coat emblazoned with the word “Congress,” while a banner behind him says “Alien Undesirables. ” It was in 1917 that Congress began taking steps to impose new immigration quotas, an effort that led to the restrictive 1924 Act. Josh Perelman, chief curator and director of exhibitions and collections at the Philadelphia museum, described the chilling effect that World War I had on immigration. “The war was most significant because it created an environment in which a powerful group — government, culture and academia — were wary of the tribulations of Europe and scared that the immigrants would bring these people to our shores,” Dr. Perelman said in an interview, surrounded by some of the objects in the show. “After the revolution, when the Bolsheviks came to power, and the xenophobia coalesced together and had the power to influence, that fear accelerated. ” The exhibition is also a strong reminder of the number of Jews who fought for the United States during World War I. An estimated 3. 4 million were living in the country during the war years, and 250, 000 joined the military, according to the American Jewish Committee’s Office of Jewish War Records. One, Sgt. William Shemin, was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor by President Barack Obama in 2015 — 97 years after his heroism during the war. He had repeatedly left the safety of his platoon’s trench to recover wounded soldiers. Jewish organizations had long lobbied for the medal on his behalf, contending that his feats had been wrongly overlooked. Visitors will be able to see Sergeant Shemin’s medal, as well as his helmet and other war gear. As the United States was entering the war, there were concerns among Jews over the persecution of those still in Russia and Eastern Europe. One piece of evidence on display is a letter from the philanthropist Julius Rosenwald to Louis Marshall, chairman of the American Jewish Relief Committee, offering to give $1 million if the committee could raise $10 million to help Jews in “belligerent lands. ” A telegram from President Woodrow Wilson said the gift “serves democracy. ” “It is to America that these starving millions look for aid,” he wrote. ”Out of our prosperity” and “free institutions should spring a vast and ennobling generosity,” he added. Not all Jewish immigrants viewed the United States as a safe haven. A handful of documents highlight the story of Boris Reinstein, who came from Russia and made a career as a druggist in Buffalo. His 1917 application for a passport is on display, as is his 1923 renunciation of his United States citizenship. Mr. Reinstein was a true believer in the Bolshevik Revolution and the Soviet ideology and left his wife, Anna, to return to Russia, where he worked in the Library of the Marx, Lenin and Engels Institute. For Dr. Perelman and Rachel Lithgow, executive director of the American Jewish Historical Society, one gratifying coup was the loan of two draft versions of the Balfour Declaration from the financier Martin Franklin, who acquired them from Sotheby’s in 2005 as part of the archive of Leon Simon. Mr. Simon, later Sir Simon, a Jew who become director of Britain’s General Post Office, shared the views of Chaim Weizmann, who was part of the Zionist Commission that worked on the draft of the declaration. Mr. Simon’s handwriting is on the original draft, which has never before been exhibited in the United States. It was written on the stationery of the Imperial Hotel in Russell Square in London. “This was the text that was forwarded to Lord Balfour and was used as the basis of the Balfour Declaration,” Dr. Perelman said. Arthur James Balfour, for whom the declaration is named, was Britain’s foreign secretary. The final declaration, in the form of a letter dated Nov. 2, 1917, was sent to one of Britain’s most distinguished Jewish citizens, Baron Lionel Walter Rothschild. Ultimately, it said, in part: “His Majesty’s government view with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object. ” The document also added that “nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing communities in Palestine. ” Explaining his purchase of the document, Mr. Franklin said: “I bought it for two reasons: one, it is probably the most important document in the creation of the state of Israel. And second, my great was the first high commissioner”: Lord Herbert Samuel, who arrived in Palestine in 1920. ”So I thought maybe we should keep it in the family. ” | 0fake |
Mosul, ‘Brexit,’ U.S. Presidential Race: Your Monday Briefing - The New York Times | Good morning. We’re trying something new for our readers in Europe: a morning briefing to your day. What do you like? What do you want to see here? Email us with your feedback at europebriefing@nytimes. com. Here’s what you need to know: • The Iraqi government has begun its battle to reclaim Mosul from the Islamic State. The militants’ hold on the sprawling city lent the most credence to their claim to rule a fledgling nation. European Union foreign ministers are meeting today to discuss recent developments in Syria. Rebels claim to have captured the village of Dabiq, forcing the Islamic State from a stronghold. • Russia’s furious response to American, British and French accusations of war crimes in Syria sent diplomatic relations into the kind of tailspin not seen for decades. Some analysts believe that President Vladimir V. Putin is raising the stakes for coming negotiations over Syria. Talks are expected to resume in Lausanne, Switzerland, on Saturday. • France is confronting entrenched bias, brought to a head after a Chinese migrant living in a Paris suburb was beaten to death. The death exposed the complexities of the country’s volatile racial tensions, which have often been portrayed too simplistically as defined by frictions involving the large Muslim minority. Economic weakness and a rise in inequality appear to be causing a disturbing growth in ethnic nationalism in countries around the world. • A court in London is considering whether a set of archaic rules known as the royal prerogative would allow Prime Minister Theresa May to start the clock on leaving the E. U. without the kind of involvement Parliament is demanding. And The Sunday Times of London published an “Brexit” column that Boris Johnson, now the foreign secretary, wrote before deciding to embrace the movement. “Hold your breath,” he wrote. “Think of Britain. Think of the rest of the EU. ” • Silicon Valley is taking sides in the U. S. presidential race as the election on Nov. 8 approaches. Much of the sentiment being openly expressed is in opposition to Donald J. Trump, but Peter Thiel, a tech billionaire, is giving $1. 25 million to support his candidacy. Meanwhile, Republican leaders and election officials from both parties are countering claims by Mr. Trump that a conspiracy is underway between the news media and the Democratic Party to commit vast election fraud. The candidates’ third and final debate is on Wednesday, with most polls heavily favoring Mrs. Clinton. • Montenegro’s governing party won parliamentary elections on Sunday, according to unofficial results, but failed to secure an absolute majority. The outcome of coalition negotiations will determine whether the country continues on its Western course under the longtime prime minister, Milo Djukanovic, or turns back to Russia, its traditional ally. • A sweeping accord on banning hydrofluorocarbons reached in Kigali, Rwanda, could be even more than the Paris climate accord. And it might not have happened without the active backing of the world’s chemical companies, which are disrupting their own businesses to fight climate change. • Russia and India are moving forward with a revitalized relationship after signing billions of dollars’ worth of military and energy deals at a summit meeting over the weekend. • China is in the midst of a dizzying housing bubble, but the growing use of mortgages could make this property boom particularly unstable. • E. U. trade ministers will meet on Tuesday to decide on a free trade deal with Canada, known as CETA. • Here’s a snapshot of global markets. • The Economist: “Europe Is Trying to Teach Its Gender Norms to Refugees. ” Teaching sexual conventions is tricky, especially when there is no agreement on what those norms should be. • NPR: “In Fight Against Food Waste, Brits Find A Worthy Battlefield. ” A campaign encouraged food manufacturers to reduce the portion sizes of prepackaged meals. • Deep Dives: “The (Mobile) Games Women Play. ” A reminder that many of the people downloading games to their smartphones are women. • In Aleppo, Syria, a drone video reveals destruction so complete that our architecture critic says it obliterates even a sense of time. “At a glance,” he writes, “the video could show Berlin in 1945 or Grozny, 2000. Mass death erases all distinctions. ” • The death of Thailand’s revered king has brought both the country and the crown prince, above, to the brink of an ascension neither appears to be ready for. His lavish lifestyle in Germany has caused great anxiety in the kingdom. • China sent two astronauts to an orbiting space lab for a stay earlier today. Beijing’s space program calls for a permanent space station by 2018, an unmanned rover to Mars in 2020 and an astronaut to the moon in 2025. • The United States has been so successful protecting wild horses in the West that herds are overgrazing public lands. About 46, 000 horses are now held on ranches at a cost of $49 million a year. Weather and wars are responsible for many disasters these days. But two centuries ago, one was caused by an unusual culprit: beer. On Oct. 17, 1814, the London Beer Flood took the lives of eight people in a densely populated slum known as St. Giles Rookery. A series of vats exploded at a brewery, breaking through a wall. Witnesses described a wave of porter ale and debris up to 15 feet high. An “immense mass of ruins” is how one newspaper described the scene. Among the victims were said to be a mother and daughter having tea. Others killed included mourners attending a wake. Decades earlier, the poverty of St. Giles inspired “Gin Lane” by the artist William Hogarth. Perhaps because of the neighborhood’s reputation, accounts of onlookers trying to scoop up the free booze became part of the tragedy’s lore. A local pub pays tribute to the anniversary with special beers on tap. One that was once served was called the Beer Flood Porter. Sean Alfano contributed reporting. Your Morning Briefing is published weekday mornings. What would you like to see here? Contact us at europebriefing@nytimes. com. | 0fake |
Oops! Senator's article tells of phantom meeting with Obama nominee | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican U.S. Senator Orrin Hatch wrote in an opinion piece published on Thursday that his meeting with Merrick Garland failed to change his view that the Senate should not act on President Barack Obama’s U.S. Supreme Court nominee. The problem is that no such meeting had yet taken place. Later in the day, the Utah senator issued a statement announcing that he would meet with Garland on Thursday, calling the appeals court judge “an honorable public servant who deserves our respect” but reiterating that the Senate should not act now. Paul Edwards, executive editor of the Deseret News in Hatch’s home state of Utah, said by email the article was a draft that was mistakenly published on newspaper’s website, and apologized to Hatch and the newspaper’s readers for “this unfortunate error.” “Like many of my Senate colleagues, I recently met with Chief Judge Merrick Garland,” Hatch wrote in the piece. “Our meeting, however, does not change my conviction that the Senate should consider a Supreme Court nominee after this presidential election cycle,” Hatch added. The 82-year-old Hatch, first elected to the Senate in 1976, is the longest-serving Senate Republican and is a long-time and influential member of the Judiciary Committee that considers Supreme Court nominees. Hatch has joined with the Senate’s Republican leaders in asserting that Obama’s successor, to be determined in the Nov. 8 presidential election, should fill the vacancy left by the death of conservative Justice Antonin Scalia in February. Democrats have accused Senate Republicans of ignoring their constitutional duties by refusing to consider Garland’s nomination. A copy of the article was archived by Google after the Deseret News removed it. “The electronic publication of this version, awaiting edits from the Senator following his meeting with Judge Garland, was inadvertent,” Edwards added. The article illustrated how unshakeable Republican opposition has been to Obama, a Democrat, appointing a replacement for Scalia. If a Democratic president appoints Scalia’s replacement, that would likely end decades of a conservative majority on the court. Obama nominated Garland on March 16. Hatch helped break a partisan log jam in the Senate against Garland two decades ago when President Bill Clinton nominated him to an appeals court. Garland won Senate confirmation in 1997. | 0fake |
Trump escalates attacks on judge in Trump University suit: WSJ | (Reuters) - Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump on Thursday escalated his attacks on the federal judge presiding over lawsuits against Trump University, saying the judge had “an absolute conflict” because of his Mexican heritage, the Wall Street Journal reported. Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for the Nov. 8 presidential election, is fighting lawsuits that accuse his school venture of misleading thousands of people who paid up to $35,000 for seminars to learn about the billionaire’s real estate investment strategies. In an interview with the newspaper, Trump said U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel had “an absolute conflict” in presiding over the litigation given that he was “of Mexican heritage” and a member of a Latino lawyers’ association. Trump said the background of the judge, who was born in Indiana to Mexican immigrants, was relevant because of his campaign stance against illegal immigration and his pledge to seal the southern U.S. border, the Journal said. “I’m building a wall. It’s an inherent conflict of interest,” Trump said, according to the newspaper. The New York businessman also alleged the judge was a former colleague and friend of one of the Trump University plaintiffs’ lawyers, the newspaper said. The judge and the lawyer once worked together as federal prosecutors, but the lawyer, Jason Forge, in an interview with the Journal, said he had never seen the judge socially. “Neither Judge Curiel’s ethnicity nor the fact that we crossed paths as prosecutors in the U.S. Attorney’s Office well over a decade ago is to blame” for Trump’s actions, Forge told the Journal. An assistant in Curiel’s chambers said he was not commenting on the matter, the newspaper said. At a rally in San Diego last week, Trump lashed out at Curiel. “I have a judge who is a hater of Donald Trump. A hater. He’s a hater,” Trump said. “We’re in front of a very hostile judge. The judge was appointed by Barack Obama,” Trump said, adding he believed Curiel was Mexican. Legal scholars said Trump could face consequences for slamming the judge, although many have speculated that Curiel was unlikely to sanction him formally. Trump has drawn criticism for his comments about immigrants from Mexico, some of whom he has said were criminals and rapists. He has proposed building a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico to prevent illegal immigration and requiring Mexico to pay for it. | 0fake |
Must Read of the Day – The Clinton Presidency Is Going to Be a Miserable Slog | at 2:52 pm 2 Comments
For a long time now, I’ve felt that no matter who wins this election, the U.S. is in for extremely difficult times over at least the next 4 years. The reason is twofold. First, when you combine Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders supporters (the latter didn’t just disappear), a majority of the population is in full on revolt against the status quo. This mood isn’t going anywhere. Combine this backdrop with the very high likelihood of an economic downturn, and you have a recipe for mayhem. This isn’t even taking into account the possible end to a multi-decade secular bull market in sovereign bonds, the ramifications of which represent a financial extinction-level event for much of the Western world.
When I look at the financial markets and note that they appear totally unwilling to even flirt with the very real possibility of a Trump victory, I conclude that the current status quo assumption is not only that Hillary will win, but that after she wins, the social mood will get better. I, on the other hand, think it will get far, far worse, as disgusted Trump and Sanders supporters push back relentlessly from day one. As I noted earlier today on Twitter: Sorry but if Clinton wins country becomes completely ungovernable. I don’t mean gridlock. I mean total madness.
— Michael Krieger (@LibertyBlitz) November 1, 2016
Of course, I’m not the only one. Michael Brendan Dougherty wrote an excellent piece earlier today published at The Week titled, The Clinton Presidency is Going to be a Miserable Slog , which is my must read of the day.
Here it is: Being on the cusp of electing the first woman president, and defeating a snarling, newly crass, and nationalist Republican Party should feel energizing for the American left. But it’s been tiring. The Democrats aren’t just electing a woman. They’re stuck electing this woman, Hillary Clinton. It’s been a slog . Clinton could not easily put away her socialist challenger Bernie Sanders. She would not release the transcripts of the paid speeches she gave to Wall Street banks. She could not name her accomplishments as secretary of state. She could not quite escape her own role in managing the political fallout from her husband’s affairs, or the appearance of corruption in the Clinton Foundation’s pioneering work in the field of do-gooder graft. When FBI Director James Comey gave us a healthy reminder of Clinton’s email scandal last week, liberals must have realized: It’s not just the campaign. The Clinton presidency is going to be a slog , too. The Clinton standard of political behavior has always had a lawyerly slipperiness to it. When the scandals come, it depends on your definition of “is.” When the headlines erupt, suddenly we discover that all of Clinton’s friends signed an affidavit contradicting the latest accuser or whistleblower. And, really, what difference, at this point, does it make? Partisans will note that Clinton’s ethical lapses and faults are minor compared to Donald Trump’s. Those comparisons are not going to matter in a few days. Some may object. They’ll reply that the only problem is the aggressive prosecutorial zeal of the Republicans. And it is true that Republicans have an ongoing grudge against Clinton. But let’s posit the existence of a vast right wing conspiracy that hates President Obama just as much as it hates the Clintons. Why is it only able to turn up news-driving scandals on the latter? Could it be that Obama, however detested by conservatives, conducts himself with higher ethical standards than Bill and Hillary? Clinton’s scandals and misdeeds often have little to do with the Democrats’ battle with Republicans. Clinton played fast and loose even with the Obama administration’s own rules. Obama had forbidden Clinton from giving a government job to the Clinton’s on-demand schemer Sidney Blumenthal — yet Clinton kept him on the payroll of her “charity” and kept up correspondence with him about Libya, even as he had business interests in a post-Gadhafi state. Despite explicit rules set by the Obama administration, the Clinton Foundation continued to operate as a bank in which foreign leaders and governments could deposit their quids, while Clinton was at the head of the State Department, able to distribute pro quos in return. Beyond the propensity to generate scandal, there is a larger reason that Clinton’s administration will be a slog. The 2016 election has been characterized by a demand for great change. And Hillary Clinton has run as the defender of the way things are, the way they’re going, and who they’re going for. Hillary Clinton received a vigorous challenge from a left wing that isn’t afraid to label themselves socialists. America’s center-right party ditched its commitments to establishment doctrine on free trade and liberalized immigration, and challenged the wisdom and justice of America’s post-Cold War political order. But Hillary Clinton will enter the White House as the caretaker for the status quo in American political life. Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders were not the men to carry forward this message of discontent to real political triumph. Both candidates represented their cause poorly. Trump was at once too crude and unethical himself. And Sanders had none of the political instincts and savvy to really go after Clinton in the primaries. Clinton is the face of a prosperous, grasping establishment that won’t bear challenge from the left or right. Her ability to survive scandal after scandal will not be received as some testament to her political canniness or some deep integrity. It will be received as just the system defending its own from attack. Her survival and her ability to win is a a tribute to the power and self-regard of our political class. And this class has no plausible solution for the nation’s foreign policy, for its immigration system, or for an economic system that abets the elite’s secession from their own nation. Clinton’s presidency will be a slog because she is exactly like the system she defends. She can point to the great wealth this system produces for its top clients. But neither she nor her cheerleaders can really claim that it looks like wisdom or justice to anyone else. Well done, Mr. Dougherty. | 1real |
Berlin police say bags of bullets found near Christmas market not linked to terrorism | BERLIN (Reuters) - There is no reason to suspect that two bags of bullets found near a Christmas market and mosque in western Berlin have anything to do with terrorism and the find was related neither to the market nor to the mosque, police said on Sunday. Asked about a possible link with terrorism, a police spokesman said: Not at all. Ammunition is always being found in Berlin, he added. Somebody was probably clearing their cellar out and found something from their grandfather. Germany is on high alert for militant attacks, nearly a year after a Tunisian Islamist rammed a hijacked truck into a Christmas market in central Berlin, killing 11 people as well as the driver. Earlier this month, experts made safe a device filled with nails that was delivered to a pharmacy near a Christmas market in the German city of Potsdam near Berlin. | 0fake |
Lebanese patriarch makes historic Saudi visit amid Hariri crisis | RIYADH (Reuters) - Lebanon s Christian Maronite Patriarch began a historic visit to Saudi Arabia on Monday under heightened scrutiny amid political tensions that have thrust his country back to the forefront of the conflict between the Sunni kingdom and Shi ite rival Iran. Patriarch Beshara al-Rai heads the Maronite church, which has a presence in Lebanon, Syria and Cyprus and follows an Eastern rite of the Roman Catholic church. Maronites number about 900,000 in Lebanon, around a quarter of the population. An official visit to Saudi Arabia by such a senior non-Muslim cleric is a rare act of religious openness for the kingdom, which hosts the holiest sites in Islam and bans the practice of other religions but says it wants to open up more to the world. It is also the first trip to Riyadh by a senior Lebanese official since the start of a crisis sparked by Saad al-Hariri s resignation as Lebanese prime minister on Nov. 4 from the Saudi capital. Top Lebanese government officials and senior sources close to Hariri say Saudi Arabia coerced him into resigning and has put him under effective house arrest since he flew there more than a week ago. During his visit, Rai plans to meet Hariri as well as King Salman and his son and heir-apparent, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, both of whom he praised in an address to Lebanese living in Riyadh. Certainly his resignation surprised the Lebanese and saddened them and created a type of deadlock, he later told reporters between selfies with followers. We hope that with this visit we can speak about this topic. TOLERANCE AND CO-EXISTENCE But Rai said his visit, which was planned before the latest crisis, was not political but aimed at boosting religious tolerance and co-existence in a region torn by sectarian conflict. Hariri said in a television interview on Sunday that he was a free man and would return to Lebanon within days to affirm that he had resigned. He said Lebanon was at risk of Gulf Arab sanctions because of the Shi ite group Hezbollah s regional meddling. Asked when he expected Hariri to return to Lebanon, Rai said: I wish tonight ... we hope as soon as possible. Hariri s resignation and its aftermath have destabilized his country, where Sunni, Shi ite, Christian and Druze factions fought a civil war from 1975-1990, often backed by rival powers around the region. The only other visit to Saudi Arabia by a Christian patriarch took place in 1975, according to the Saudi information ministry. Rai thanked King Salman for the invitation and said he had never dreamed of visiting the kingdom, which bans all non-Muslim houses of prayer, forcing Christians there to risk arrest by praying in private homes. | 0fake |
How to form healthy habits in your 20s - The New York Times | This article is part of a series aimed at helping you navigate life’s opportunities and challenges. What else should we write about? Contact us: smarterliving@nytimes. com. When you woke up this morning, what did you do first? Did you hop in the shower, check your email or grab a doughnut? What did you say to your roommates on the way out the door? Salad or hamburger for lunch? When you got home, did you put on your sneakers and go for a run, or eat dinner in front of the television? Most of the choices we make each day may feel like the products of decision making, but they’re not. They’re habits. And though each habit means relatively little on its own, over time, the meals we eat, how we spend our evenings, and how often we exercise have enormous impacts. This is particularly true in our 20s, when so many of our habits are still up for grabs. The patterns you establish right now will impact your health, productivity, financial security and happiness for decades. How much money you make, how much time you spend with your friends and family, how well your body functions years from now — all of these, in many ways, are products of the habits you are building today. (Related: The 8 health habits experts say you need in your 20s) And in the last decade, our understanding of the neurology of habit formation has been transformed. We’ve learned how habits form — and why they are so hard to break. We now know how to create good habits and change bad ones like never before. At the core of every habit is a neurological loop with three parts: A cue, a routine and a reward. To understand how to create habits — such as exercise habits — you must learn to establish the right cues and rewards. In 2002, researchers at New Mexico State University studied 266 individuals, most of whom worked out at least three times a week. They found that many of them had started running or lifting weights almost on a whim, or because they suddenly had free time or wanted to deal with unexpected stresses in their lives. However, the reason they continued exercising — why it became a habit — was because of a specific cue and a specific reward. If you want to start running each morning, it’s essential that you choose a simple cue (like always lacing up your sneakers before breakfast or always going for a run at the same time of day) and a clear reward (like a sense of accomplishment from recording your miles, or the endorphin rush you get from a jog). But countless studies have shown that, at first, the rewards inherent in exercise aren’t enough. So to teach your brain to associate exercise with a reward, you need to give yourself something you really enjoy — like a small piece of chocolate — after your workout. This is counterintuitive, because most people start exercising to lose weight. But the goal here is to train your brain to associate a certain cue (“It’s 5 o’clock”) with a routine (“Three miles down! ”) and a reward (“Chocolate! ”). Eventually, your brain will start expecting the reward inherent in exercise (“It’s 5 o’clock. Three miles down! Endorphin rush! ”) and you won’t need the chocolate anymore. In fact, you won’t even want it. But until your neurology learns to enjoy those endorphins and the other rewards inherent in exercise, you need to the process. And then, over time, it will become automatic to lace up your jogging shoes each morning. You won’t want the chocolate anymore. You’ll just crave the endorphins. The cue, in addition to triggering a routine, will start triggering a craving for the inherent rewards to come. Want more? You might also like: • The scientific workout • No time to workout? Try exercising on the job • How to pick a health insurance plan | 0fake |
Conservative Republicans unlikely to reject Upton's healthcare change: aide | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - An expected proposal from moderate Republican Fred Upton to amend the party’s healthcare overhaul plan is not likely a deal-breaker for conservative Freedom Caucus members in the U.S. House of Representatives, an aide to a caucus member said on Wednesday. The comment from the aide, who asked not to be identified as negotiations are continuing, comes as House Republican leaders continued to seek enough support to vote and approve legislation to unwind the 2010 Affordable Care Act. | 0fake |
Clinton campaign: WikiLeaks hack gets ‘closer and closer to the Trump campaign’ | SAN FRANCISCO — Hillary Clinton's campaign accused Republican Donald Trump's campaign Thursday of increasingly close involvement with the release of stolen emails that detail the internal and sometimes unflattering workings of the Democrat's inner circle.
The anti-secrecy site WikiLeaks has a huge trove of emails hacked from the personal account of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta, and is releasing batches of the communications in the final four weeks of the presidential campaign. The Clinton campaign had refused to authenticate communications released so far and accuses Russia of being behind the hack and WikiLeaks of doing Moscow's bidding.
“We're not going to let it throw us off,” Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook told reporters on a conference call. “I think it's important for Americans again to reflect on why this is happening, who perpetrated it and for what purpose,” he said.
“This is getting closer and closer to the Trump campaign itself,” Mook said, citing the admission from Trump supporter and former adviser Roger Stone that he had “back channel” discussions with WikiLeaks.
Mook said he expects to see more evidence of coordination or collaboration intended to benefit Trump's candidacy. He spoke from the campaign's Brooklyn headquarters. Clinton is in California for two days of fundraising.
“I think its important to always recognize the context of this situation, and that is that the Department of Homeland Security took the unprecedented step of saying ... beyond any doubt that this hack and then the leaking of the emails was perpetrated by the Russian government for the purpose of intervening in the election and trying to affect the outcome in favor of Donald Trump,” Mook said.
[Clinton campaign chairman ties email hack to Russians, suggests Trump had early warning]
The correspondence reveals a campaign that has struggled all year to improve a flawed candidate. As far back as March, aides were keenly aware that she was resistant to the media, perhaps out of touch with regular Americans and unable to convey a clear message to voters.
Republicans have said some of the emails show corrupt dealings among the campaign, the Clinton family charity and outside advisers and donors.
The email dumps have provided plenty of fodder for Clinton critics to seize upon, and the sixth batch, released Thursday morning, was no different.
In one March 2015 email chain, for example, Clinton aides were discussing how well Clinton knew Loretta Lynch, who the following month would become the U.S. attorney general.
“She knows Loretta,” wrote close Clinton aide Huma Abedin. “Not an extremely close relationship and don’t remember the last time they connected. … Regardless, definitely a cordial relationship.”
That could reignite criticism of a private airport meeting that Lynch held with former President Bill Clinton held in Phoenix shortly before the Justice Department decided not to prosecute Hillary Clinton in relation to her use of a private email server as secretary of state.
Across Podesta’s inbox there was concern about how Clinton was handling revelations about her server. In early September 2015, he exchanged messages with Neera Tanden, head of the liberal Center for American Progress, who weighed in on a Clinton interview with ABC News anchor David Muir in which Clinton expressed remorse for her decision.
“This apology thing has become like a pathology. I can only imagine what’s happening in the campaign,” Tanden wrote to Podesta. “Is there some way I can be helpful here? I know if I just email her she will dismiss it out of hand. Are there people she can hear from that will have some impact?”
Podesta responded: “You should email her. She can say she’s sorry without apologizing to the American people. Tell her to say it and move on, why get hung on this.”
The latest release also included another email exchange between advisers to Clinton discussing how to deal with pressure to release transcripts of her paid speeches. In the exchange, Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon and speechwriter Dan Schwerin propose leaking the transcript of one paid speech she delivered in October 2014.
Schwerin explained to colleagues that he had written a "long riff about economic fairness and how the financial industry has lost its way, precisely for the purpose of having something we could show people if ever asked what she was saying behind closed doors for two years to all those fat cats."
Schwerin continued that the section was "not as tough or pointed as we would write it now, but it's much more than most people would assume she was saying in paid speeches."
Mandy Grunwald, a senior strategist, however, responded that she worried "about going down this road." She referred to a story by Maggie Haberman, then a reporter for Politico, in 2013, in which Haberman wrote that Clinton had praised the financial industry in paid speeches to Goldman Sachs.
"Maybe you think the Deutsche Bank speech takes the sting out of the Goldman report -- but I am concerned that the passage below will exacerbate not improve the situation,” Grunwald wrote.
The emails also allude to staff tensions, including a March 2015 missive from former State Department aide Tom Nides to Podesta, in which Nides talks about tension between Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook and longtime Clinton aide Cheryl Mills.
“Sorry to bug you but on Friday I got a bit wigged out,” Nides wrote. “It's clear (which I assume you know) tThere [sic] is already a bunch of noise about Robby and Cheryl not getting along. Robby getting very frustrated I have zero idea what the deal is but you and I both know this is a disaster for her if it doesn't stop. This is the kind of stuff that could open the door to someone. I am sorry to dump this on you and maybe I am full of [s---] so take it for what it's worth.”
There is no response from Mook in the emails.
Matea Gold, Rosalind Helderman, Ed O'Keefe and Anu Narayanswamy contributed to this story. | 0fake |
Franklin Graham: The media didn’t understand the ‘God-factor’ in Trump’s win | X close We have experienced tremendous growth in our web presence over the last five years. In fact, in 2010 we averaged 228,000 pageviews per month. Last year we averaged just over 2,000,000 pageviews per month. That’s an increase of 777% in five years! However, our servers and software are outdated, which causes downtime on occasion for many of you and additional work hours and finances to maintain for us at Endtime. Updating our servers and software as well as maintaining service for a year will cost us $42,000. If each person reading this gave at least $10, our bill to provide FREE broadcasting and resources to the world via our website would be covered for over a year! Learn more - Click Here ► Dear Readers, | 1real |
WATCH: Jailed Palestinian Terrorist And Hunger Strike Leader Caught On Tape Eating | TEL AVIV — The Israeli Prison Service released a video on Sunday that appears to show Palestinian terrorist and wannabe politician Marwan Barghouti secretly eating a candy bar and other food in the bathroom of his cell while purportedly leading a hunger strike. [Barghouti, who is serving five life sentences, was filmed eating on two separate occasions. The first time on April 27 shows him unwrapping cookies from a hiding place in the bathroom and then eating it while sitting on the toilet. He then tries to conceal the fact by washing his hands and face and hiding the wrapper. On the second occasion on May 5, Barghouti is filmed eating a candy bar and salt. Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan slammed Barghouti as a “murderer and a hypocrite” for eating while leading a hunger strike. “As I said from the very beginning, this hunger strike was never about the conditions of the convicted terrorists, which meet international standards. It is about advancing Marwan Barghouti’s political ambitions to replace Abu Mazen,” Erdan said, referring to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas by his nickname. Barghouti is seen as a major contender to succeed Abbas. “Barghouti is a murderer and hypocrite who urged his fellow prisoners to strike and suffer while he ate behind their back. Just like he lied to the world when he wrote in the New York Times that he decided to strike in order to protest he lied to the Palestinian public when he claimed to be striking. Israel will not give in to extortion and pressure from terrorists,” Erdan said. Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations Danny Danon said Barghouti’s eating proved that the hunger strike is nothing more than “a media stunt, which seeks to glorify terrorists with blood on their hands. ” According to Palestinian sources, there are 1, 500 hunger strikers in Israeli prisons. The goal of the hunger strike is supposedly to improve prison conditions. Demands include resuming a second monthly visit by family members (originally cancelled by the International Committee of the Red Cross over budgetary concerns) restoring academic studies for prisoners, and allowing additional TV channels and cell phones in security wings. Barghouti served as chief of the Tanzim armed wing of Fatah and is the founder of the terror group the Martyrs Brigade. In 2004, he was found guilty of ordering terror attacks in three different locations and was implicated in another four. | 0fake |
Vladimir Putin at the Valdai International Discussion Club : «Shaping the World of Tomorrow», by Vladimir Putin | Vladimir Putin at the Valdai International Discussion Club : «Shaping the World of Tomorrow» by Vladimir Putin Voltaire Network | Sochi (Russia) | 27 October 2016 français русский Tarja, Heinz, Thabo, colleagues, ladies and gentlemen,
It is a great pleasure to see you again. I want to start by thanking all of the participants in the Valdai International Discussion Club, from Russia and abroad, for your constructive part in this work, and I want to thank our distinguished guests for their readiness to take part in this open discussion.
Our esteemed moderator just wished me a good departure into retirement, and I wish myself the same when the time comes. This is the right approach and the thing to do. But I am not retired yet and am for now the leader of this big country. As such, it is fitting to show restraint and avoid displays of excessive aggressiveness. I do not think that this is my style in any case.
But I do think that we should be frank with each other, particularly here in this gathering. I think we should hold candid, open discussions, otherwise our dialogue makes no sense and would be insipid and without the slightest interest.
I think that this style of discussion is extremely needed today given the great changes taking place in the world. The theme for our meeting this year, The Future in Progress: Shaping the World of Tomorrow, is very topical.
Last year, the Valdai forum participants discussed the problems with the current world order. Unfortunately, little has changed for the better over these last months. Indeed, it would be more honest to say that nothing has changed.
The tensions engendered by shifts in distribution of economic and political influence continue to grow. Mutual distrust creates a burden that narrows our possibilities for finding effective responses to the real threats and challenges facing the world today. Essentially, the entire globalisation project is in crisis today and in Europe, as we know well, we hear voices now saying that multiculturalism has failed.
I think this situation is in many respects the result of mistaken, hasty and to some extent over-confident choices made by some countries’ elites a quarter-of-a-century ago. Back then, in the late 1980s-early 1990s, there was a chance not just to accelerate the globalisation process but also to give it a different quality and make it more harmonious and sustainable in nature.
But some countries that saw themselves as victors in the Cold War, not just saw themselves this way but said it openly, took the course of simply reshaping the global political and economic order to fit their own interests.
In their euphoria, they essentially abandoned substantive and equal dialogue with other actors in international life, chose not to improve or create universal institutions, and attempted instead to bring the entire world under the spread of their own organisations, norms and rules. They chose the road of globalisation and security for their own beloved selves, for the select few, and not for all. But far from everyone was ready to agree with this.
We may as well be frank here, as we know full well that many did not agree with what was happening, but some were unable by then to respond, and others were not yet ready to respond. The result though is that the system of international relations is in a feverish state and the global economy cannot extricate itself from systemic crisis. At the same time, rules and principles, in the economy and in politics, are constantly being distorted and we often see what only yesterday was taken as a truth and raised to dogma status reversed completely.
If the powers that be today find some standard or norm to their advantage, they force everyone else to comply. But if tomorrow these same standards get in their way, they are swift to throw them in the bin, declare them obsolete, and set or try to set new rules.
Thus, we saw the decisions to launch airstrikes in the centre of Europe, against Belgrade, and then came Iraq, and then Libya. The operations in Afghanistan also started without the corresponding decision from the United Nations Security Council. In their desire to shift the strategic balance in their favour these countries broke apart the international legal framework that prohibited deployment of new missile defence systems. They created and armed terrorist groups, whose cruel actions have sent millions of civilians into flight, made millions of displaced persons and immigrants, and plunged entire regions into chaos.
We see how free trade is being sacrificed and countries use sanctions as a means of political pressure, bypass the World Trade Organisation and attempt to establish closed economic alliances with strict rules and barriers, in which the main beneficiaries are their own transnational corporations. And we know this is happening. They see that they cannot resolve all of the problems within the WTO framework and so think, why not throw the rules and the organisation itself aside and build a new one instead. This illustrates what I just said.
At the same time, some of our partners demonstrate no desire to resolve the real international problems in the world today. In organisations such as NATO, for example, established during the Cold War and clearly out of date today, despite all the talk about the need to adapt to the new reality, no real adaptation takes place. We see constant attempts to turn the OSCE, a crucial mechanism for ensuring common European and also trans-Atlantic security, into an instrument in the service of someone’s foreign policy interests. The result is that this very important organisation has been hollowed out.
But they continue to churn out threats, imaginary and mythical threats such as the ‘Russian military threat’. This is a profitable business that can be used to pump new money into defence budgets at home, get allies to bend to a single superpower’s interests, expand NATO and bring its infrastructure, military units and arms closer to our borders.
Of course, it can be a pleasing and even profitable task to portray oneself as the defender of civilisation against the new barbarians. The only thing is that Russia has no intention of attacking anyone. This is all quite absurd. I also read analytical materials, those written by you here today, and by your colleagues in the USA and Europe.
It is unthinkable, foolish and completely unrealistic. Europe alone has 300 million people. All of the NATO members together with the USA have a total population of 600 million, probably. But Russia has only 146 million. It is simply absurd to even conceive such thoughts. And yet they use these ideas in pursuit of their political aims.
Another mythical and imaginary problem is what I can only call the hysteria the USA has whipped up over supposed Russian meddling in the American presidential election. The United States has plenty of genuinely urgent problems, it would seem, from the colossal public debt to the increase in firearms violence and cases of arbitrary action by the police.
You would think that the election debates would concentrate on these and other unresolved problems, but the elite has nothing with which to reassure society, it seems, and therefore attempt to distract public attention by pointing instead to supposed Russian hackers, spies, agents of influence and so forth.
I have to ask myself and ask you too: Does anyone seriously imagine that Russia can somehow influence the American people’s choice? America is not some kind of ‘banana republic’, after all, but is a great power. Do correct me if I am wrong.
The question is, if things continue in this vein, what awaits the world? What kind of world will we have tomorrow? Do we have answers to the questions of how to ensure stability, security and sustainable economic growth? Do we know how we will make a more prosperous world?
Sad as it is to say, there is no consensus on these issues in the world today. Maybe you have come to some common conclusions through your discussions, and I would, of course, be interested to hear them. But it is very clear that there is a lack of strategy and ideas for the future. This creates a climate of uncertainty that has a direct impact on the public mood.
Sociological studies conducted around the world show that people in different countries and on different continents tend to see the future as murky and bleak. This is sad. The future does not entice them, but frightens them. At the same time, people see no real opportunities or means for changing anything, influencing events and shaping policy.
Yes, formally speaking, modern countries have all the attributes of democracy: Elections, freedom of speech, access to information, freedom of expression. But even in the most advanced democracies the majority of citizens have no real influence on the political process and no direct and real influence on power.
People sense an ever-growing gap between their interests and the elite’s vision of the only correct course, a course the elite itself chooses. The result is that referendums and elections increasingly often create surprises for the authorities. People do not at all vote as the official and respectable media outlets advised them to, nor as the mainstream parties advised them to. Public movements that only recently were too far left or too far right are taking centre stage and pushing the political heavyweights aside.
At first, these inconvenient results were hastily declared anomaly or chance. But when they became more frequent, people started saying that society does not understand those at the summit of power and has not yet matured sufficiently to be able to assess the authorities’ labour for the public good. Or they sink into hysteria and declare it the result of foreign, usually Russian, propaganda.
Friends and colleagues, I would like to have such a propaganda machine here in Russia, but regrettably, this is not the case. We have not even global mass media outlets of the likes of CNN, BBC and others. We simply do not have this kind of capability yet.
As for the claim that the fringe and populists have defeated the sensible, sober and responsible minority – we are not talking about populists or anything like that but about ordinary people, ordinary citizens who are losing trust in the ruling class. That is the problem.
By the way, with the political agenda already eviscerated as it is, and with elections ceasing to be an instrument for change but consisting instead of nothing but scandals and digging up dirt – who gave someone a pinch, who sleeps with whom, if you’ll excuse me. This just goes beyond all boundaries. And honestly, a look at various candidates’ platforms gives the impression that they were made from the same mould – the difference is slight, if there is any.
It seems as if the elites do not see the deepening stratification in society and the erosion of the middle class, while at the same time, they implant ideological ideas that, in my opinion, are destructive to cultural and national identity. And in certain cases, in some countries they subvert national interests and renounce sovereignty in exchange for the favour of the suzerain.
This begs the question: who is actually the fringe? The expanding class of the supranational oligarchy and bureaucracy, which is in fact often not elected and not controlled by society, or the majority of citizens, who want simple and plain things – stability, free development of their countries, prospects for their lives and the lives of their children, preserving their cultural identity, and, finally, basic security for themselves and their loved ones.
People are clearly scared to see how terrorism is evolving from a distant threat to an everyday one, how a terrorist attack could occur right near them, on the next street, if not on their own street, while any makeshift item – from a home-made explosive to an ordinary truck – can be used to carry out a mass killing.
Moreover, the terrorist attacks that have taken place in the past few years in Boston and other US cities, Paris, Brussels, Nice and German cities, as well as, sadly, in our own country, show that terrorists do not need units or organised structures – they can act independently, on their own, they just need the ideological motivation against their enemies, that is, against you and us.
The terrorist threat is a clear example of how people fail to adequately evaluate the nature and causes of the growing threats. We see this in the way events in Syria are developing. No one has succeeded in stopping the bloodshed and launching a political settlement process. One would think that we would have begun to put together a common front against terrorism now, after such lengthy negotiations, enormous effort and difficult compromises.
But this has not happened and this common front has not emerged. My personal agreements with the President of the United States have not produced results either. There were people in Washington ready to do everything possible to prevent these agreements from being implemented in practice. This all demonstrates an unexplainable and I would say irrational desire on the part of the Western countries to keep making the same mistakes or, as we say here in Russia, keep stepping on the same rake.
We all see what is happening in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and a number of other countries. I have to ask, where are the results of the fight against terrorism and extremism? Overall, looking at the world as a whole, there are some results in particular regions and locations, but there is no global result and the terrorist threat continues to grow.
We all remember the euphoria in some capitals over the Arab Spring. Where are these fanfares today? Russia’s calls for a joint fight against terrorism go ignored. What’s more, they continue to arm, supply and train terrorist groups in the hope of using them to achieve their own political aims. This is a very dangerous game and I address the players once again: The extremists in this case are more cunning, clever and stronger than you, and if you play these games with them, you will always lose.
Colleagues, it is clear that the international community should concentrate on the real problems facing humanity today, the resolution of which will make our world a safer and more stable place and make the system of international relations fairer and more equal. As I said, it is essential to transform globalisation from something for a select few into something for all. It is my firm belief that we can overcome these threats and challenges only by working together on the solid foundation of international law and the United Nations Charter.
Today it is the United Nations that continues to remain an agency that is unparalleled in representativeness and universality, a unique venue for equitable dialogue. Its universal rules are necessary for including as many countries as possible in economic and humanitarian integration, guaranteeing their political responsibility and working to coordinate their actions while also preserving their sovereignty and development models.
We have no doubt that sovereignty is the central notion of the entire system of international relations. Respect for it and its consolidation will help underwrite peace and stability both at the national and international levels. There are many countries that can rely on a history stretching back a thousand years, like Russia, and we have come to appreciate our identity, freedom and independence. But we do not seek global domination, expansion or confrontation with anyone.
In our mind, real leadership lies in seeing real problems rather than attempting to invent mythical threats and use them to steamroll others. This is exactly how Russia understands its role in global affairs today.
There are priorities without which a prosperous future for our shared planet is unthinkable and they are absolutely obvious. I won’t be saying anything new here. First of all, there is equal and indivisible security for all states. Only after ending armed conflicts and ensuring the peaceful development of all countries will we be able to talk about economic progress and the resolution of social, humanitarian and other key problems. It is important to fight terrorism and extremism in actuality. It has been said more than once that this evil can only be overcome by a concerted effort of all states of the world. Russia continues to offer this to all interested partners.
It is necessary to add to the international agenda the issue of restoring the Middle Eastern countries’ lasting statehood, economy and social sphere. The mammoth scale of destruction demands drawing up a long-term comprehensive programme, a kind of Marshall Plan, to revive the war- and conflict-ridden area. Russia is certainly willing to join actively in these team efforts.
We cannot achieve global stability unless we guarantee global economic progress. It is essential to provide conditions for creative labour and economic growth at a pace that would put an end to the division of the world into permanent winners and permanent losers. The rules of the game should give the developing economies at least a chance to catch up with those we know as developed economies. We should work to level out the pace of economic development, and brace up backward countries and regions so as to make the fruit of economic growth and technological progress accessible to all. Particularly, this would help to put an end to poverty, one of the worst contemporary problems.
It is also absolutely evident that economic cooperation should be mutually lucrative and rest on universal principles to enable every country to become an equal partner in global economic activities. True, the regionalising trend in the world economy is likely to persist in the medium term. However, regional trade agreements should complement and expand not replace the universal norms and regulations.
Russia advocates the harmonisation of regional economic formats based on the principles of transparency and respect for each other’s interests. That is how we arrange the work of the Eurasian Economic Union and conduct negotiations with our partners, particularly on coordination with the Silk Road Economic Belt project, which China is implementing. We expect it to promote an extensive Eurasian partnership, which promises to evolve into one of the formative centres of a vast Eurasian integration area. To implement this idea, 5+1 talks have begun already for an agreement on trade and economic cooperation between all participants in the process.
An important task of ours is to develop human potential. Only a world with ample opportunities for all, with highly skilled workers, access to knowledge and a great variety of ways to realise their potential can be considered truly free. Only a world where people from different countries do not struggle to survive but lead full lives can be stable.
A decent future is impossible without environment protection and addressing climate problems. That is why the conservation of the natural world and its diversity and reducing the human impact on the environment will be a priority for the coming decades.
Another priority is global healthcare. Of course, there are many problems, such as large-scale epidemics, decreasing the mortality rate in some regions and the like. So there is enormous room for advancement. All people in the world, not only the elite, should have the right to healthy, long and full lives. This is a noble goal. In short, we should build the foundation for the future world today by investing in all priority areas of human development. And of course, it is necessary to continue a broad-based discussion of our common future so that all sensible and promising initiatives are heard.
Colleagues, ladies and gentlemen, I am confident that you, as members of the Valdai Club, will actively take part in this work. Your expertise enables you to understand all angles of the processes underway both in Russia and in the world, forecast and evaluate long-term trends, and put forward new initiatives and recommendations that will help us find the way to the more prosperous and sustainable future that we all badly need.
Thank you very much for your attention.
Vladimir Putin | 1real |
EUROPE CRASHES AND BURNS, As EU Officials FINALLY Admit Secret About “Refugees” They’ve Known For A While | The Genie is out of the bottle. Europe will never be the same. It s rich history and the uniqueness of each country is gone.Even EU officials are now finally admitting that a lot or, rather, most of the people we have been calling refugees are not refugees. They are economic migrants with no more right to be called European citizens than anybody else in the world. Even Frans Timmermans, Vice President of the European Commission, made this point this week. In his accounting, at least 60pc of the people who are here are economic migrants who should not be here are from North African states such as Morocco and Tunisia. As he told Dutch television:- These are people that you can assume have no reason to apply for refugee status. Swedish officials are coming to a similar conclusion, saying that as many as 80,000 of the mainly young men who have gone to Sweden as refugees in the past year alone are no such thing.Now there are the usual attempts to crowd-please from certain politicians and officials who are talking about how they might have to deport these people. But they won t, will they? Does anybody honestly believe that the Swedish authorities are currently preparing to deport 80,000 fake asylum seekers from their country?Or let us assume that the 60pc figure is correct for Germany and that 60pc of the people who have arrived in Germany in the past year alone should not be there. Given that it has taken in more than a million people in the last twelve months, is Germany now going to deport as many as three quarters of a million fake asylum seekers from its territory? Of course not. They will not even attempt it. Everybody in Europe knows that. And everybody following events and weighing up their chances from outside Europe knows that.Everybody on earth now knows that Europe s present leaders lack either the will or the means to enforce their own laws. So more people will come next year, and the year after that and the year after that. All in the knowledge that once you re in, you re in. If the facts were otherwise then Sweden, Germany and other countries across the continent would currently be preparing to ship hundreds of thousands of people out of Europe and back to their countries of origin. But they re not.And so the numbers coming in will increase, and the politicians will keep posing, and the European peoples will rightly get more and more enraged at the fact that their continent is being taken away from them. Eventually perhaps even the constant bogeyman warnings about the far-right will lose their capacity to scare. Not good times ahead, I d say. Via: UKSpectator Is there is enough courage in America to fight the mass invasion of Muslims into our nation? We have generations of men and women who have given their lives to make America the greatest nation on earth. Are we willing to sit back and let progressive politicians and radical leftist organizations like MoveOn.org turn our country into another Syria, with warring Muslim factions hell-bent on the destruction of Christianity and Judaism? | 1real |
Harley-Davidson to Pay $12 Million Fine in Pollution Settlement - The New York Times | WASHINGTON — has agreed to pay a $12 million civil fine and stop selling illegal aftermarket devices that cause its motorcycles to emit too much pollution, the Justice Department said on Thursday. The settlement resolves government accusations that Harley sold roughly 340, 000 “super tuners,” enabling motorcycles since 2008 to pollute the air at levels greater than what the company certified to the Environmental Protection Agency. Harley did not admit liability, and said in a statement that it disagreed with the government’s position, arguing that the devices were designed and sold to be used in “competition only. ” The company said the settlement represented “a compromise with the E. P. A. on areas of law we interpret differently, particularly E. P. A. ’s assertion that it is illegal for anyone to modify a certified vehicle even if it will be used solely for competition. ” According to the government, the sale of such defeat devices violated the federal Clean Air Act. Harley was also accused of selling more than 12, 600 motorcycles that were not covered by an E. P. A. certification governing clean air compliance. The announcement comes at a time of greater scrutiny on emissions and defeat devices by regulators in Washington after Volkswagen admitted using illegal software to evade emissions standards in nearly 600, 000 vehicles in the United States. The settlement calls for to stop selling the super tuners by Tuesday, and to buy back and destroy all such tuners in stock at its dealerships. The E. P. A. said the modified settings increased power and performance, but also increased the motorcycles’ emissions of hydrocarbons and nitrogen oxides. Harley, based in Milwaukee, will also spend $3 million on an unrelated project to reduce air pollution, the Justice Department said. | 0fake |
Flu Shot Hoax Admitted: 'No Controlled Trials Demonstrating a Decrease in Influenza' | Print Email http://humansarefree.com/2016/11/flu-shot-hoax-admitted-no-controlled.html The flu shot is a fraud. But it’s a fraud that’s so deeply embedded in the delusional pro-vaccine culture of the pharma-controlled medical industry that even well-meaning doctors and pharmacists (who are otherwise very intelligent) fail to realize flu shots don’t work. In fact, flu shot vaccine inserts openly admit there is no scientific evidence demonstrating flu shots work . See the vaccine insert photos below for proof.This is probably why people who receive the flu shot almost never receive the insert sheet. It’s not handed out by doctors and pharmacists because they don’t want people to realize the extent of the pseudoscience behind the flu shot scam.It’s so much easier to demand blind obedience while screaming “SCIENCE!” than to actually allow people to read the science and realize the science conclusively states there is “… no decrease in influenza disease after vaccination.”In fact, most people who have taken flu shots aren’t even aware that an insert sheet exists at all.Ever wonder what it says?NOTE: Every photo in this article is 100% factual and true. Ask your pharmacist for a vaccine insert sheet to see one of these for yourself. Insert sheet acquired for GlaxoSmithKline’s FLULAVAL flu shot In the interests of public safety and journalistic inquiry — I’m a multiple award-winning journalist, after all — I acquired a FLULAVAL flu shot vial and insert sheet for the 2014 flu shot, and I read through the microscopic insert text using a magnifier.Here’s a photo of the FLULAVAL vial and box in which the insert was found. Note that this photo clearly shows the flu shot label admitting the shot contains “thimerosal as a preservative.” Thimerosal is made from toxic mercury. But there’s much more in this insert… “No decrease in influenza disease” after vaccination Read the language in the following photo of the FLULAVAL vaccine insert very carefully.It says:FLULAVAL is a vaccine indicated for active immunization against influenza disease… but doesn’t ever claim the vaccine actually works.In the very next bullet point, the vaccine insert admits: …there have been no controlled trials adequately demonstrating a decrease in influenza disease after vaccination with FLULAVAL. In other words, GlaxoSmithKline confirms there is no evidence to back this flu shot .Got that? Amazing, isn’t it? Especially given how many people scream about flu shots being “SCIENTIFIC!” and backed by “EVIDENCE!”It turns out that if you want protection from the flu, you might get the very same results by rubbing a lucky rabbit’s foot or hopping around your living room in some sort of “anti-flu dance.”All of these — the flu shot, the rabbit’s foot and the anti-flu dance — are backed by the same amount of scientific evidence. “Safety and effectiveness not established” There’s even more. If you keep reading the FLULAVAL insert, it says in black and white text, “Safety and effectiveness of FLULAVAL in pediatric patients have not been established.”The same insert also says, “FLULAVAL has not been evaluated for carcinogenic or mutagenic potential, or for impairment of fertility.”As you can also see, this same insert also explains that when you’re being injected with a flu shot, you’re also being injected with mercury, formaldehyde and other toxic ingredients: “Thimerosal, a mercury derivative, is added as a preservative. Each … dose contains 50 mcg thimerosal. Each dose may also contain residual amounts of ovalbumin, formaldehyde, and sodium deoxycholate from the manufacturing process.” Toxic side effects include facial paralysis and more If you keep reading the FLULAVAL vaccine insert, you’ll eventually get to a section called “Postmarketing Experience.”This subhead means here are all the side effects reported by actual users after being vaccinated . In other words, these are the results of turning the human population into vaccine guinea pigs.Just some of the adverse effects experienced after flu shot vaccines include:• Eye pain and chest pain• Arthritis• Dizziness, tremors and losing consciousness (syncope)• Convulsions and seizures• Cranial nerve paralysis or limb paralysis• Swelling of the brain• Partial facial paralysis… and much more. See the text yourself:Here’s a more complete list of some of the adverse effects typically listed on flu shot vaccine insert sheets:Blood and Lymphatic System Disorders: Lymphadenopathy.Eye Disorders: Eye pain, photophobia.Gastrointestinal Disorders: Dysphagia.General Disorders and Administration Site Conditions: Chest pain, injection site inflammation, asthenia, injection site rash, abnormal gait, injection site bruising, injection site sterile abscess.Immune System Disorders: Allergic reactions including anaphylaxis, angioedema.Infections and Infestations: Rhinitis, laryngitis, cellulitis.Musculoskeletal and Connective Tissue Disorders: Muscle weakness, arthritis.Nervous System Disorders: Dizziness, paresthesia, hypoesthesia, hypokinesia, tremor, somnolence, syncope, Guillain-Barre syndrome, convulsions/seizures, facial or cranial nerve paralysis, encephalopathy, limb paralysis.Psychiatric Disorders: Insomnia.Respiratory, Thoracic, and Mediastinal Disorders: Dyspnea, dysphonia, bronchospasm, throat tightness.Skin and Subcutaneous Tissue Disorders: Urticaria, pruritus, sweating.Vascular Disorders: Flushing, pallor.“Do not administer FLULAVAL to anyone…”If you go on to read this entire insert, which is quite lengthy and very difficult for any normal person to read, here’s what else it says:“Safety and effectiveness of Flulaval have not been established in pregnant women, nursing mothers or children.”“Do not administer Flulaval to anyone… following previous administration of any influenza vaccine.”You can confirm all this for yourself by going to any pharmacy and asking for a flu shot insert sheet . While the language printed on the sheet will vary from one manufacturer to another, they all reveal fascinating things like: Flu shot ingredients Documented flu shot side effects (which always include neurological problems such as seizures) Warnings not to give them to children or pregnant women (in most cases) “No adequate and well controlled studies in pregnant women” One of the FLULAVAL vaccine insert sheets I looked at said the following: “There are, however, no adequate and well controlled studies in pregnant women. Because animal reproduction studies are not always predictive of human response, FLULAVAL should be given to a pregnant woman only if clearly needed.” What this paragraph says is, essentially, “We have no evidence this is safe in pregnant women, but it’s okay to inject pregnant women with this anyway, as long as they need it.”And of course the pseudoscience mainstream media is happy to loudly and repeatedly proclaim that all pregnant women “need” the flu shot, a claim founded in nothing but wishy washy junk science and corporate profit motives. So doctors, who obediently inject almost anything into pregnant women as long as Big Pharma tells them it’s okay, are happy to keep poisoning women’s bodies with mercury and formaldehyde even though, as the insert openly admits: “There are, however, no adequate and well controlled studies in pregnant women.” How to transform a quack vaccine into “evidence-based medicine” Keep in mind these vaccine inserts are directly telling you the vaccine isn’t backed by clinical evidence of safety or efficacy . It’s practically claiming, “This vaccine is based on voodoo. Take it at your own risk…”You may be wondering, then, if a vaccine openly admits it doesn’t work and hasn’t been adequantely tested and contains toxic chemicals, how exactly does this vaccine get sold to the public as “evidence-based medicine” that’s loudly proclaimed to be good for children, infants, pregnant women, senior citizens and everyone else?It’s simple: THEY LIE.A medical lie repeated often enough by people in high enough positions of apparent authority will be obediently accepted by the gullible masses. This devious art of lying to the public about vaccines is deeply embedded in the culture thanks to the incessant pro-vaccine propaganda of the mainstream media which asks no question at all about vaccine safety and refuses to discuss vaccine ingredients or neurological side effects, even when they’re printed directly on the vaccine insert.Most people assume something like:“Well, if it wasn’t proven safe and effective, it wouldn’t be allowed on the market, because the FDA protects us all, right?”And so they line up their kids to be injected with mercury and formaldehyde and sometimes even stealth cancer viruses which have contaminated vaccines throughout history .Some of those kids have seizures, go into comas or suffer severe neurological damage that turns them into autistic children. CDC scientist openly admits to vaccine-autism cover-up This was openly admitted by the CDC’s own top scientist in one of the most aggressively censored medical stories of 2014, where Dr. William Thompson publicly wrote the following admission:“My name is William Thompson. I am a Senior Scientist with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, where I have worked since 1998. I regret that my coauthors and I omitted statistically significant information in our 2004 article published in the journal Pediatrics. “The omitted data suggested that African American males who received the MMR vaccine before age 36 months were at increased risk for autism. Decisions were made regarding which findings to report after the data were collected, and I believe that the final study protocol was not followed.”This story was wholly and dutifully blacked out by the entire national press, by the way. The fact that the CDC committed scientific fraud related to links between vaccines and autism is something they never want you to learn.And yet it’s all right in front of you if you’re willing to read the vaccine insert, read the CDC scientist’s own confession and learn a little about the toxicity of mercury. Chemical-laced vaccine advocates clearly desire to bring harm to children It’s clear from all this that the vaccine industry really does want to harm and destroy children. If vaccine advocates didn’t want to harm children, they would call for the immediate removal of mercury, formaldehyde and other toxic chemicals from all vaccines.If they wanted, they could advocate “clean vaccines” which contain no toxic chemicals. But they consciously choose not to do this. They really do want the toxic chemicals to be injected into pregnant women and children , and that’s exactly why they demand blind vaccine obedience from the masses. No questions allowed. No rational thinking tolerated. No skepticism of vaccines is “politically correct.”In fact, the CDC openly admits that mercury, formaldehyde, MSG, aluminum, antibiotics and other chemicals are still used in vaccines . Here’s a screen shot from the CDC website’s vaccine additives page which openly states this:The same CDC that committed scientific fraud and covered up links between vaccines and autism predictably claims all these toxic chemicals are perfectly safe to be injected into children.That’s how you know they’re truly evil: When they knowingly commit fraud in order to continue the practice of poisoning human bodies with toxic chemicals, that’s an admission that they actively desire to harm health and destroy lives.When I once confronted a vaccine pusher with the fact that flu shots contain mercury and that if the same concentration of mercury was found in a vitamin it would be banned by the FDA , that person told me, “Mercury in vitamins makes them dangerous. But mercury in vaccines makes them work better.”That’s the kind of insane logic you’ll frequently encounter among vaccine pushers / poisoners. For those who reject pseudoscience vaccines, the state points a gun in your face When people come to their senses and realize they probably shouldn’t inject themselves and their children with mercury, formaldehyde, aluminum and other toxic vaccine ingredients, they are quickly met with a belligerent medical police state that shoves guns in their faces and demands they comply.As reported by Police State USA [4]:“A state bureaucracy is threatening a mother with removal of an infant unless her entire family subjects themselves to flu shots. “The Washington Department of Social and Health Services (DSHS) is giving the Tacoma family until February to comply with the mandated regimen of influenza vaccines — imposed on every member of the family — or else they will lose their youngest child, a 2-week-old foster infant that was born on Christmas.”The medical police state, you see, is threatening to carry out yet another medical kidnapping of a foster infant if the entire family doesn’t agree to be obediently injected with toxic chemicals. Click here to read a recent list of medical kidnappings happening in America, many over vaccine issues.Yes, this is all happening in America… even though it sounds like a story out of a North Korea gulag. Make sure you understand this has nothing whatsoever to do with protecting the foster child. This is about a militant health agency “teaching that woman a lesson” and demanding she sacrifice the health of her entire family as a sign of loyalty.The Aztecs used to demand families give up their firstborn sons to have their hearts cut out in ritualistic sacrifices to appease their gods. Today, modern medicine follows the same pattern, demanding families sacrifice their health in order to appease the pharma-corrupted bureaucrats, many of whom are pedophiles and child rapists to begin with. Just recently, a top U.S. Health and Human Services executive was sentenced to 25 years in prison after he “accessed child pornography, solicited child pornography from other members, and exchanged private messages with other members in which he expressed an interest in the violent rape and murder of children,” reports Mediaite.com .As Mac Slavo explains on SHTFplan.com : “Whether you agree with yearly flu vaccines or not, the following report from Tacoma, Washington should scare the hell out of you because if the government moves forward with their threats then every child in America will effectively become a ward of the state. ” A quick summary of the flu shot fraud • Flu shot vaccine inserts openly admit there is no evidence that flu shots work.• Flu shots still contain toxic mercury, a potent neurotoxin.• Flu shot vaccine inserts openly admit flu shots caused seizures, paralysis and other neurological disorders, which is not surprising given that they still contain mercury, a potent neurotoxin.• Vaccine propaganda is so mindless and aggressive that anyone who merely cites the printed vaccine insert is immediately condemned as “anti-science,” even though the science is perfectly clear that many vaccines are backed by no scientific evidence at all.• The CDC has altered vaccine safety data in a conspiracy to hide truthful facts about vaccine risks from the public.• Informed parents who consciously choose to avoid having their children injected with medically useless (but dangerous) vaccines are increasingly criminalized while their children are subjected to medical kidnapping .• For publishing truthful photos of printed vaccine inserts, Natural News is subjected to heavy censorship in an attempt to make sure the public never learns this information. By Mike Adams Dear Friends, HumansAreFree is and will always be free to access and use. If you appreciate my work, please help me continue.
Stay updated via Email Newsletter: Related | 1real |
White House postpones meeting to decide on participation in Paris climate pact | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A meeting of Trump administration advisers that had been scheduled for Tuesday to decide whether to pull the United States out of the Paris Climate Agreement has been postponed due to scheduling conflicts, a White House official said. Key advisers to President Donald Trump and cabinet officials were due to convene at the White House to resolve an internal debate over whether Trump should keep his campaign promise to pull the United States out of the Paris agreement, according to senior administration officials and several people briefed on the meeting. The White House official did not say when the meeting would be rescheduled. The meeting was meant to lay the groundwork for a formal proposal to Trump, who has promised to announce a decision before a Group of Seven summit at the end of May. Ahead of Tuesday’s originally planned meeting, business groups and some lawmakers called on the White House to remain in the Paris agreement, while some conservative policy groups urged the advisers to recommend a withdrawal. Meanwhile, representatives of nearly 200 countries that are party to the Paris agreement are meeting in Bonn this week to discuss technical aspects of implementing the accord. U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson will host the biennial Arctic Council meeting in Fairbanks, Alaska, later this week. | 0fake |
KELLYANNE CONWAY Slaps Down Rabid CNN Host Chris Cuomo: “Aren’t you the least bit embarrassed that you now talk about Russia more than you talk about America?” [VIDEO] | Chris Cuomo of fake news network CNN interviewed Kellyanne Conway on Sunday. You would have thought by now, these hacks at CNN would have figured out they are no match for the brilliant Kellyanne Conway. At the opening of his interview with Conway, Cuomo attempted to convince the few viewers who still watch CNN that President Trump was very squishy on his meeting with Vladimir Putin. Kellyanne Conway snapped back in her usual calm but witty way, Chris, let s back up. So you re saying you used the word squishy which, itself, is unusual to describe the president s state of mind. So somehow that makes people on CNN insist that the president is never going to raise this with Putin? Why are they still in there? Cuomo responded, It s not about CNN. It s about what the president said, Kellyanne. Kellyanne immediately landed a right hook to fake news host Chris Cuomo when she asked him, Aren t you the least bit reluctant, if not embarrassed that you now talk about Russia more than you talk about America? Cuomo went on to discuss the nothing-burger story about a meeting Donald Trump Jr. had with a Russian lawyer prior to the election. The lawyer allegedly claimed he had information about individuals connected to Russian that were funding the DNC and Hillary. It turns out she was a human rights lawyer who wanted to talk about adoption. But CNN, who suffers from Trump-Russia collusion obsession, is clinging to this story like a squirrel protects its only nut in the dead of winter. Again, Conway delivered another knock out blow saying, you keep on saying opposition research the way you guys constantly vomit words like collusion and Russian interference and affecting the election, all of which you have no evidence. We cannot convert wishful thinking into hard evidence. Watch: | 1real |
Expect more ‘terror busts’ as FBI steps up its use of “ISIS stings” | 21st Century Wire says If there is no real terrorist threat, then the thing to do is to create one. Such is the received wisdom of today s Federal Bureau of Investigation.According to its latest public relations release by the FBI s counter terrorism department, the agency plans to significantly increased its use of stings in order to catch would-be terrorists. In other words, it s planning to ramp-up its policy of using entrapment in order to organize, recruit, train and even supply materials to budding neophyte terrorists in the US.This should come as no surprise to anyone who has been following these incidents. In spite the grand announcement, in reality all the FBI has been doing for the last 25 years are just that: stings, stings and more stings FBI Direct: James Comey has spend a lot of time in front of Congress this year. The logic is astounding, if not insane, but for some reason, this type of antiquated thinking still dominated US federal law enforcement institutions: We re not going to wait for the person to mobilize on his own time line, said Michael B. Steinbach, who leads the F.B.I. s national security branch. He added that the F.B.I. could not afford to just sit and wait knowing the individual is actively plotting. Since before 9/11, FBI agents have relied on the practice of using informants to pose as jihadi radicals or small arms dealers, in order to excite and recruit fringe members of society into constructive pursuits such as bomb-making, and will often bring them to the scene of a mock terrorists crime before agents leap out from behind the shadows to make a high-profile arrest of the unwitting dupe/suspect.In 2016, most of the recruitment required to assemble these theatrical, state-managed scenarios is done online via friends on social media, as FBI cyber agents look for individuals who appear to be supporting ISIS or Al-Qaeda. If successful, online grooming transitions to real world meeting, and with any luck blossoms into a contrived terror plot courtesy of the FBI confidential informant. 1993 WTC BOMBER: Ramzi Yousef.Perhaps the best-ever example of a FBI sting resulting in a real terrorist attack is an event which the mindless US mainstream media still wrongly attribute to real terrorists the 1993 World Trade Center Bombing.In this all-FBI-hatched plot, the agency used at least one known informant, a man named Emad Salem, a former Egyptian army officer. Salem later demonstrated on secret recording he made how the FBI originally asked him to supply the conspirators with harmless powder instead of actual explosive to construct their bomb, but for reasons still (officially) unknown, the FBI chose to allow a real bomb to be deployed at the WTC on the day of the supposed sting .Author Tom Secker at Global Research explains it in the simplest terms: this relatively ragtag group who were inspired by CIA asset the Blind Sheikh and trained by triple agent Ali Mohamed managed to pull off the bombing. The result was a bomb detonating underneath the WTC and putting thousands of innocent Americans at risk.Still, ever single major US television and newspaper outlet still moronically refers to the 1993 WTC event as a terrorist attack on American soil. Team America: Fabricated TerrorAccording to the FBI s own records, nearly 70% of (reported) ISIS-linked terrorist prosecutions (not convictions) are being cooked-up via the use of informants and stings/entrapment: Undercover operations, once seen as a last resort, are now used in about two of every three prosecutions involving people suspected of supporting the Islamic State, a sharp rise in the span of just two years, according to a New York Times analysis. Charges have been brought against nearly 90 Americans believed to be linked to the group. Back in May, the FBI arrested a man, James Medina, for allegedly for planning an attack on a Miami-area Aventura Turnberry Jewish Center synagogue with an explosive device. As it turns out, the synagogue was never actually in any real danger as the bomb was a fake sold to him by an FBI undercover agent, before the man was stopped before the man was stopped by FBI agents posing as fellow terrorists who set up a sting operation. FBI chat-up lines: Are you a Muslim? Which Mosque do you go to? Do you know al-Qaeda? In 2015, one classic exhibit was the frame-up of 20 year old Christopher Lee Cornell, snared in one of the most bogus fake terror plot ever, and yet the US mainstream media couldn t stop gushing over the event as if it were an ISIS-inspired attack , only no attack actually took place.According to David Steele, a 20-year Marine Corps intelligence officer and former-CIA case officer, most US terror plots are cooked by by US authorities: Most terrorists are false flag terrorists, or are created by our own security services. In the United States, every single terrorist incident we have had has been a false flag, or has been an informant pushed on by the FBI. In fact, we now have citizens taking out restraining orders against FBI informants that are trying to incite terrorism. We ve become a lunatic asylum. Some other similar would-be high-profile terror icons and patsies include: Paris Shooter Amedi Coulibaby (see his incredible informant case here), Ottawa Shooter Zehaf-Bibeau (see his patsy story here), Boston Bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev (see his informant story here), The Underwear Bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab (see his patsy story here), Buford Rogers (read his informant story here), Jerad Miller (read his informant story here), Naji Mansour (read his entrapment story here), Quazi Mohammad Nafis (read his patsy story here), Mohamed Osman Mohamud (read his entrapment story here), and even the infamous OKC Bomber Timothy McVeigh (read his sheep-dipped, patsy story here).In reality, it is the covert culture of Washington DC which does more to promote genuine terrorism, at home and internationally much more than any other single nation state outside of Saudi Arabia and Israel. Until the major of people realize thisREAD MORE ZANY FBI PLOTS AT: 21st Century Wire Daily Shooter FilesSUPPORT OUR WORK & BECOME A 21WIRE.TV MEMBER HERE | 1real |
Cliven Bundy Was Just ARRESTED As He Tried To Join Terrorists In Oregon | If you ve been wondering how long it would be before Cliven Bundy was finally arrested, you ll be happy to know that just happened. No, you re not dreaming. Yes, the tea you drank was just tea (as far as you know), and you are not hallucinating. Cliven Bundy has been arrested. While he was given a free pass after he organized an armed standoff with the federal government at his ranch because he didn t feel he should pay heavily-subsidized and discounted grazing fees, the FBI finally cracked down on the Welfare Cowboy we love to mock as he attempted to join the remnants of his sons army in Oregon.Earlier this week, Bundy announced his intention to go to Oregon, but when he attempted to act out his fantasy of rekindling the revolution with an ISIS supporter who joined the occupation of a federal bird sanctuary and his buddies, law enforcement moved in. Oregon Live reports:Cliven Bundy, the Nevada rancher who touched off one showdown with federal authorities and applauded another started in Oregon by his sons, was arrested late Wednesday at Portland International Airport.Bundy, 74, was booked into the downtown Multnomah County jail at 10:54 p.m.The Bundy Ranch Facebook page reported Bundy was surrounded by SWAT officers and detained after his arrival.For those who still feel this is too good to be true, here is his booking information:Shortly after Bundy s arrest, the Bundy Ranch Facebook page posted the terrible, terrible, not very good news:The militants Bundy attempted to join did not have a good night either. Surrounded by FBI, ISIS supporter David Fry yelled at an FBI negotiator: You re going to hell. Kill me. Get it over with. We re innocent people camping at a public facility, and you re going to murder us. The only way we re leaving here is dead or without charges, Fry said during the night s ravings. Ultimately, however, the four remaining militants agreed to surrender in the morning after they have had some snacks.The terrorists will turn themselves in, flanked by Evangelical icon Franklin Graham and Nevada Assemblywoman Michele Fiore, who believes that cancer is a fungus that can be washed out with baking soda a fitting escort for people who think they can give people more freedumbs by taking over a bird sanctuary.While it may seem an unfortunate night for the Revolution, at least Cliven can have a family reunion with his sons, who are also in jail along with more than a dozen of their compatriots.Featured image via screengrab | 1real |
Washington Accuses Russians of Bombing Five Hospitals in Syria – State Department Refuses To Provide Evidence | Source: Global Research
US State Dept. Dismisses Question from RT, Says Won’t Treat it Like Other Media
RT has asked the US State Department for specific information concerning allegations that Russia is targeting hospitals in Syria. The response was a reiteration of those allegations and a refusal to treat RT in the same way as other media outlets.
During Wednesday’s State Department briefing, spokesman John Kirby accused Russia and the Syrian regime of the bombing of ”five hospitals and at least one mobile clinic in Syria.” RT’s reporter Gayane Chichakyan asked Kirby to specify the details of the alleged incidents, including their location .
Kirby said that he doesn’t know the exact locations.
“I’m not making those accusations, I’m telling you that we’ve seen reports from credible aid organizations,” Kirby said, refusing to clarify any details on the alleged attacks or even give the list of the ”many Syrian relief agencies” on which the State Department relied.
He went on with his criticism of the reporter.
“Here’s a good question: Why don’t you ask your Defense Ministry what they are doing? You work for Russia Today [RT], and so why shouldn’t you ask your government the same kind of questions that you are asking me?” Kirby told RT on Wednesday. While Chichakyan pointed out she needed specific details so that RT could inquire about the allegations, Kirby refused to elaborate.
The US official’s response prompted Matt Lee, a correspondent from the AP news agency, to intervene.
“Please be careful about saying ‘your Defense Ministry’ and things like that – she’s a journalist, she’s just like the rest of us are,” he pointed out.
“From a state-owned outlet!” Kirby interrupted, adding, ”I’m not going to put Russia Today on the same level with the rest of you who are representing independent media outlets.”
A State Department official later apologized to Chichakyan and emailed the reporter a detailed statement with the locations of the allegedly bombed hospitals originally sent by “HEALTH CLUSTER TURKEY HUB / Health Cluster partners & NPM.”
The statement said three hospitals were hit by airstrikes in Atarib, outside Aleppo, while two hospitals and a mobile clinic were hit in the Idlib province, resulting in several reported deaths and injuries and rendering the medical facilities out of service.
It did not, however, lay blame on any party for the alleged strikes.
Earlier on Tuesday, State Department spokesperson Elizabeth Trudeau accused Russia of striking “five hospitals and one mobile clinic in Syria,” without specifying the source of information. Russia’s Defense Ministry has strongly denied these allegations.
“We do not know where Elizabeth Trudeau gets information about what is happening in Syria. Her repeating rumors about some ‘five hospitals’ and ‘one mobile clinic’ which were ‘bombed’ only confirms the fact that all the State Department’s public rhetoric on the situation in Syria is based on blatant lies,” Defense Ministry spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov said at a Tuesday briefing.
As of Wednesday, Russia has not launched any airstrikes in Aleppo for 29 days, according to the Defense Ministry. Russian jets are currently flying sorties in Idlib and Homs provinces, striking only verified terrorist infrastructure , namely factories and arms depots. ‘Unprofessional, borders on incompetence’
Larry Johnson, a retired CIA and State Department official, criticized Kirby’s behavior during the briefing, saying that his treatment of RT’s correspondent was “so unprofessional” that it “borders on incompetence.”
Johnson says that the proper way for Kirby, who “relays the assentation of an unnamed group” to handle the situation, would be to calmly explain that he was not able to name the locations at the moment.
While the accusations thrown at Russia stem from “highly suspect” sources of information, they fit the narrative of Russia’s demonization in the US media, Johnson said.
“I have never seen this kind of hysteria against Russia in the United States, ever… the extreme statements, the insults directed at President Putin and at Russia in general, the notion that the United States can conduct military operation at the Russian border at will,” Johnson said, adding that it should not come as a surprise that such rhetoric causes serious concerns in Russia.
“It’s emotional, it’s not rational, it’s nothing that can be explained by reason,” he added, voicing hopes that President-elect Donald Trump will review this approach and opt for cooperation with Russia instead.
In contrast, constant rebel shelling in Syria causing mass civilians casualties continues to go largely unnoticed in Washington, Johnson argues, saying that it appears that for the US government “the other side doesn’t matter.”
Speaking about Kirby’s attempt to justify his conduct toward RT’s correspondent by pointing out that RT is funded by the Russian state, Johnson regarded it as an odd argument, as the same is true for many major media outlets, for instance, BBC. At the same time, Johnson believes that US mainstream media is failing to do its job properly and seems to be “in the pocket of this [Obama] administration.”
“They are not even asking basic critical fundamental questions, they accepting assertions by the administration at face value, not challenging, not questioning,” he said. The original source of this article is RT News Leave a Reply Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked * Name * Website Comment You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""><abbr title=""><acronym title=""><b><blockquote cite=""><cite><code><del datetime=""><em><i><q cite=""><strike><strong> VISITORS | 1real |
Trump backs away from bipartisan Senate healthcare bill | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday backed away from a bipartisan deal on healthcare reached by two senators a day earlier, saying he could never support legislation “bailing out” insurance companies. On Tuesday, Trump appeared to embrace the deal struck by Republican Senator Lamar Alexander and Democratic Senator Patty Murray as “a short-term solution so that we don’t have this very dangerous little period,” apparently referring to possible premium spikes in the wake of his recent decision to cut off subsidy payments to insurance companies. But in a tweet on Wednesday he took a different tack on the bill, which would continue the cost-sharing subsidies that lower premiums for lower-income Americans, writing: “I am supportive of Lamar as a person & also of the process, but I can never support bailing out ins co’s who have made a fortune w/ O’Care.” | 0fake |
LOL! SHAKEDOWN ARTIST JESSE JACKSON TELLS CROWD: “President Trump Would Not Qualify To Get Into Jesus’ Kingdom” [VIDEO] | Here s a 1999 video of Jesse Jackson praising Donald Trump for his contribution to the black community, awarding him with a lifetime achievement award for African Americans:What a difference a few years (and an [R] behind your name can make:WFB While speaking to a crowd at the Ministers March for Justice Rev. Jesse Jackson suggested that President Trump should be worried about gaining citizenship in heaven. Trump says you must be able to speak the language of English, [be] qualified, and have a job skill, Jackson said Monday. Jesus would not qualify to come in Trump s country he would not qualify to get into Jesus kingdom. It s difficult to understand Jackson in the video below, as he mumbles through much of his commentary. (For translation, see quotes above):The Ministers March for Justice, was spearheaded by Rev. Al Sharpton and featured ministers from various traditions united in opposing the Trump administration. The event took place on the 54th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr. s March on Washington, and Jackson did not shy away from using religious language to judge the president.After judging Trump s ability to enter heaven, he quoted part of a passage from the Gospel of Matthew, in which Jesus says what he will tell his followers at the Final Judgment.Is the notorious shake down artist Jesse Jackson really one to be deciding who will and who will not be given admittance to heaven? In 2006, government watchdog Judicial Watch released a report that revealed new details about the intimidation and shakedown tactics of Jesse Jackson s Rainbow Push Coalition.WND The report, Jesse Jackson Exposed, claims Jackson is an extortionist who uses his influence as a civil rights leader to essentially blackmail wealthy corporations with absurd discrimination threats. Included, the group says, are incriminating admissions from Jackson made under oath at trial. Among the tactics highlighted in the report are:Jackson lobbied the Federal Communications Commission to block companies seeking government approval to merge until they donate money to Rainbow Push.Jackson publicly chastised Toyota for running an ad Jackson deemed racist. After Toyota pulled the ad, Jackson threatened a boycott the automaker to force it to launch a $7.8 million diversity program. Jackson installed one of his friends, J.L. Armstrong, in a management position at Toyota to determine which organizations would receive $700 million in contracts awarded by Toyota.Minority businesses pay Jackson s Trade Bureau a fee to help extort lucrative contracts from corporations. During the trial, Jackson compared the Trade Bureau to Noah s Ark, claiming minority businesses and organizations had to be inside the ark to survive. Judicial Watch brought the lawsuit against Jackson, his son Jonathan Jackson and Rainbow Push Coalition on behalf of Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson, a black minister and founder of the Los Angeles-based Brotherhood Organization for a New Destiny.Peterson wrote a book titled, Scam, that takes Jackson to task as one of America s self-appointed black leaders. I don t recall the entire black race in this country taking a national vote to elect Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Louis Farrakhan, the NAACP, California Congresswoman Maxine Waters, the Congressional Black Caucus or liberal black preachers as our leaders, Peterson writes, yet they ve seized the mantle of leadership and claim to speak for all blacks in this nation. Another expose of Jackson, Kenneth Timmerman s book Shakedown: Exposing the real Jesse Jackson, goes back several decades, including his ordination as a reverend. I describe a two to three year process for earning that title, Timmerman said. Jesse Jackson got himself ordained two months after Martin Luther King was shot. It was essentially a political ordination, a shotgun ordination. He did not go through the long procedure. He was not licensed to preach, as far as I could determine. I went to the church where he was ordained. He did not go through this two-year process. He never submitted himself to the authority of the church. He has never had a church himself, and he has been accountable to no one. Timmerman asserts Jackson is not doing things to help the black community. Jesse Jackson is to help himself first. | 1real |
Zimbabwe's Mugabe, coup chief meet with smiles and handshakes | HARARE (Reuters) - A smiling President Robert Mugabe was pictured shaking hands with Zimbabwe s military chief a day after the army seized power, throwing confusion over predictions that the 93-year-old s nearly four-decade rule had come to an end. Mugabe unexpectedly drove from his lavish Blue Roof Harare compound in Harare, where he had been confined since troops took to the streets, to State House, where official media pictured him meeting military chief Constantino Chiwenga and South African ministers sent to mediate the crisis. The official Herald newspaper carried no reports of the outcome of the meeting, leaving Zimbabwe s 13 million people in the dark as to what was happening as night fell on Thursday. Mugabe is insisting he remains Zimbabwe s only legitimate ruler and is refusing to quit, but pressure was mounting on the former guerrilla to accept offers of a graceful exit, sources said on Thursday. Earlier, a political source who spoke to senior allies holed up in the compound with Mugabe and his wife Grace said he had no plans to resign voluntarily ahead of elections due next year. It s a sort of stand-off, a stalemate, the source said. They are insisting the president must finish his term. The army s takeover signaled the collapse in less than 36 hours of the security, intelligence and patronage networks that sustained Mugabe through 37 years in power and built him into the Grand Old Man of African politics. A priest mediating between Mugabe and the generals, who seized power on Wednesday in what they called a targeted operation against criminals in Mugabe s entourage, has made little headway, a senior political source told Reuters. Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai called for Mugabe s departure in the interest of the people . In a statement read to reporters, Tsvangirai pointedly referred to him as Mr Robert Mugabe , not president. The army may want Mugabe, who has ruled Zimbabwe since independence in 1980, to go quietly and allow a smooth and bloodless transition to Emmerson Mnangagwa, the vice president Mugabe sacked last week triggering the political crisis. The main goal of the generals is to prevent Mugabe from handing power to his wife Grace, 41 years his junior, who has built a following among the ruling party s youth wing and appeared on the cusp of power after Mnangagwa was pushed out. The last of Africa s state founders still in power from the era of the struggle against European colonization, Mugabe is still seen by many Africans as a liberation hero. But he is reviled in the West as a despot whose disastrous handling of the economy and willingness to resort to violence to maintain power pauperized one of Africa s most promising states. Once a regional bread-basket, Zimbabwe saw its economy collapse in the wake of the seizure of white-owned farms in the early 2000s, followed by runaway money-printing that catapulted inflation to 500 billion percent in 2008. Millions of Zimbabweans, from highly skilled bankers to semi-literate farmers, emigrated, mostly to neighboring South Africa, where an estimated 3 million still live. After briefly stabilizing under a 2009-2013 power-sharing government, when Mugabe was forced to work with the opposition, the economy has once again cratered, with dollars scarce, inflation surging, imports running out and queues outside banks. A fighter, both literally and figuratively during a political career that included several assassination attempts, Mugabe may now have reached the end of the road. With the army camped on his front door and the police - once seen as a bastion of support - showing no signs of resistance, force is not an option. Similarly, he has little popular backing in Harare, where he is widely loathed, and his influence in the ruling ZANU-PF party is evaporating. ZANU-PF youth leader Kudzai Chipanga, a vocal Mugabe supporter, publicly apologized for opposing the army after being marched by soldiers into the state television headquarters to read out a statement, sources at the broadcaster said. He was then taken back to the army s main KGVI (pronounced KG Six) barracks in Harare, where Finance Minister Ignatius Chombo is also being held, an army source said. Video footage obtained by Reuters from the houses of two key allies of Grace Mugabe - cabinet ministers Jonathan Moyo and Saviour Kasukuwere - indicated that the army was also prepared to use force if necessary. Moyo s front door was blown open with explosives, scattering glass across the entrance hall, while the inside walls of Kasukuwere s house were pocked with bullet holes. The pair managed to escape on the evening of the coup and make it to Mugabe s compound, where they remain under effective house arrest, one political source said. Zimbabwean intelligence reports seen by Reuters suggest Mugabe s exit was in the planning for more than a year. Mnangagwa, a former security chief and life-long Mugabe confidant known as The Crocodile , is the key player. According to the files and political sources in Zimbabwe and South Africa, once Mugabe s resignation is secured Mnangagwa would take over as president of an interim unity government that will seek to stabilize the imploding economy. Fuelling speculation that this plan might be rolling into action, 65-year-old Tsvangirai, who has been receiving cancer treatment in Britain and South Africa, returned to Harare late on Wednesday. Ex-finance minister Tendai Biti added to that speculation, telling Reuters he would be happy to work in a post-coup administration as long as Tsvangirai was also on board. If Morgan says he s in, I m in, said Biti, who earned international respect during his time as finance minister in the 2009-13 government. The country needs a solid pair of hands so one might not have a choice. South Africa said Mugabe had told President Jacob Zuma by telephone on Wednesday that he was confined to his home but was otherwise fine. The military said it was keeping him and his family, including Grace, safe. Despite admiration for Mugabe among older African leaders, there is little public affection for 52-year-old Grace, an ex-government typist who began an affair with Mugabe in the early 1990s while his first wife Sally was dying of kidney failure. Dubbed DisGrace or Gucci Grace on account of her reputed love of shopping, she enjoyed a meteoric rise through the ranks of ZANU-PF in the last two years, culminating in Mnangagwa s removal. Zimbabweans, including the Mnangagwa camp and the military, interpreted the vice president s ouster as a move to clear the way for her to succeed her husband. In contrast to the high political drama unfolding behind closed doors, the streets of the capital remained calm, with people going about their daily business, albeit under the watch of soldiers on armored vehicles at strategic locations. | 0fake |
John Podesta’s Sister-in-Law Lobbied For Raytheon While Hillary Was Secretary of State | John Podesta’s Sister-in-Law Lobbied For Raytheon While Hillary Was Secretary of State Michael Krieger, Liberty Blitzkrieg
The Podesta family seems particularly adept at earning extraordinary sums of money via selling out the American public. Earlier this year, I highlighted how John Podesta’s brother Tony was paid $140,000 per month by the medieval monarchy of Saudi Arabia. After all, who cares about women’s rights when the pay is good?
Here’s a excerpt from the post, “Getting Things Done”– The Brother of Hillary Clinton’s Campaign Chair is a Major Lobbyist for Saudi Arabia :
The kingdom employs a total of eight American firms that perform lobbying, consulting, public relations and legal work.
Five of the firms work for the Saudi Arabia Embassy, while another two — Podesta Group and BGR Group — have registered to represent the Center for Studies and Media Affairs at the Saudi Royal Court, an arm of the government. PR giant Edelman, meanwhile, is working for the Saudi Arabian General Investment Authority to encourage international investment.
The Podesta Group is billing Saudi Arabia $140,000 a month for its public relations services. During the last few months of 2015, it sent 27 emails, had two phone calls and one meeting with lawmakers and staffers, journalists, and organizations including Human Rights Watch and the Center for American Progress, disclosure forms show.
DLA Piper receives $50,000 a month from the kingdom and sent hundreds of emails to top congressional staffers between September and the end of February regarding meeting requests and, more generally, “issues affecting U.S.-Saudi Arabia national security interests.”
Notice the firm DLA Piper mentioned above. You’ll want to remember that for later.
Moving along, the Podestas are diligent about making sure everyone gets to feed at the trough, including extended family.
As James Rosen of Fox News uncovers:
Amid the tumult of the 2016 presidential campaign, John Podesta is best known as Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman and the individual from whose private account WikiLeaks is presently publishing some 50,000 hacked emails.
For several months in 2012, Clinton’s final year as secretary of state, Raytheon, the leading defense contractor, hired Podesta’s sister-in-law, Heather Podesta, as a lobbyist, federal records show.
Raytheon was looking to enlarge its share of foreign military sales – transfers of advanced weapons systems to other countries that are reviewed and approved by the Department of State, then implemented by the Department of Defense – and was beefing up its lobbying operation to accomplish that goal before Secretary Clinton left office.
At the same time, Raytheon retained two other lobbyists, John Merrigan and Matt Bernstein, both associated with the powerhouse D.C. law firm DLA Piper. All three of these lobbyists, including Ms. Podesta, were major donors or bundlers to Hillary Clinton’s 2008 and 2016 campaigns. Federal records show they have raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for Clinton’s campaigns and earned hundreds of thousands of dollars lobbying her State Department.
There’s DLA Piper again. They appears to have their fingers in all realms of the military-industrial complex cookie jar.
In the final three quarters of 2012, DLA Piper earned some $360,000 in lobbying fees from Raytheon, courting the State Department and other agencies, while Ms. Podesta, within that same time frame, received $100,000 from Raytheon for the same purpose.
The gambit appears to have worked: Records maintained by the Defense Security Cooperation Agency, the arm of the Defense Department that coordinates the transfers of weapons systems once they have received State’s approval, show Raytheon as a prime contractor in at least seventeen foreign military sales in 2012, worth an estimated total of $26 billion. Of those contracts, three with the Gulf nation of Qatar – for missile defense, Apache attack helicopters and other materiel – accounted for $19 billion.
The individual at the State Department who was statutorily entrusted to approve foreign military sales was Andrew Shapiro, the assistant secretary of state for political and military affairs. Prior to his nomination to that job, Shapiro had served as Clinton’s national security adviser in her Senate office. Today, Shapiro is a partner in a Washington consulting firm whose other co-founders include Philippe Reines, Clinton’s longtime press aide.
You starting to see how all this works?
The firm mentioned above is Beacon Global Strategies, and I covered them in this summer’s post: New York Times Fails to Disclose Op-Ed Writer’s Ties to Hillary Clinton’s ‘Principal Gatekeeper’ .
After Clinton stepped down as secretary of state in February 2013, Raytheon discontinued the services of Heather Podesta + Partners, and ceased its use of DLA Piper at State.
While experts do not believe any laws were broken, the affair illustrates how Washington worked in the first Obama term, and particularly at the Clinton State Department. The Raytheon operation bears some similarity to a pop-up store that materializes to serve a seasonal need, such as Halloween candy or July Fourth fireworks, then vanishes once that need has been met.
Simply incredible.
“I think this is as close an example of pay-to-play as we’ve seen,” said Raj Shah, deputy communications director at the Republican National Committee. “And that’s why [Raytheon] made these hires [of Heather Podesta, Merrigan and Bernstein]. … Their experience was getting access to Hillary Clinton and raising money for her.”
But hey… | 1real |
House backs massive increase in defense spending | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. House of Representatives passed its version of a massive annual defense bill on Friday, leaving out controversial amendments on transgender troops and climate policy but backing President Donald Trump’s desire for a bigger, stronger military. The vote was 344-81 to pass the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which sets military policy and authorizes up to $696 billion in spending for the Department of Defense. Underscoring bipartisan support for higher defense spending in Congress, 117 Democrats joined 227 Republicans in backing the measure. Only eight Republicans and 73 Democrats voted no. But the measure faces more hurdles before it can become law, notably because it would increase military spending beyond last year’s $619 billion bill, defying “sequestration” caps on government spending set in the 2011 Budget Control Act. Trump wants to pay for a military spending increase by slashing nondefense spending. His fellow Republicans control majorities in both the House and Senate, but they will need support from Senate Democrats, who want to increase military spending, for Trump’s plans to go into effect. The House NDAA also increases spending on missile defense by 25 percent, adds thousands more active-duty troops to the Army, provides five new ships for the Navy and provides a 2.4 percent salary increase for U.S. troops, their largest pay raise in eight years. And it creates a new Space Corps military service, pushed by lawmakers worried about China and Russia’s activities in space, but opposed by Defense Secretary Jim Mattis. The Senate will vote on its version of the NDAA later this year, and the two versions must be reconciled before the measure can be sent to the White House for Trump to sign into law or veto. Trump has not threatened to veto the bill, but his administration listed several problems with it, including opposition to the proposed Space Corps and its failure to authorize new base realignments and closures. During debate on amendments to the NDAA this week, the House rejected a Republican-sponsored amendment that would have ended the Pentagon’s policy of providing gender-reassignment surgery and other therapy for active-duty transgender service members. Lawmakers also defeated a proposed Republican amendment that would have prevented the Pentagon from implementing climate-change and green energy policies. | 0fake |
Not Funny: ’Saturday Night Live’ Viewers Are Over the Trump Jokes | A large chunk of Saturday Night Live’s audience says they are tired of the punchlines aimed at President Donald Trump and his administration. [A poll conducted by Morning Consult reveals that more SNL viewers want the NBC show to move on from lampooning Trump than want the sketch comedy show to keep “ribbing” the president. While 33 percent of respondents say they “would like to see more” Trump skits on SNL, 19 percent say they “enjoyed” the jokes but “would like SNL to focus on something else. ” Another 16 percent say they have “not enjoyed the impersonations of the members of President Trump’s administration. ” Perhaps oddly, 31 percent of respondents did not have an opinion. In total, 35 percent of SNL viewers want to see new skits compared to the 33 percent who want more. The disparity is within the survey’s two percentage point margin of error. Ironically, Donald Trump’s political rise coincided with a surge in SNL’s ratings. After slumping in late November, the sketch comedy show’s ratings spiked in February to its highest level in six years. The rise in ratings came thanks to Melissa McCarthy’s impersonation as White House press secretary Sean Spicer, and Alec Baldwin’s record 17th outing as host. Baldwin first debuted his Trump impression during the 42nd season premiere of SNL and has continued to appear on the show to skewer the president. Follow Jerome Hudson on Twitter: @JeromeEHudson | 0fake |
Brother of Clinton’s Campaign Chair is an Active Foreign Agent on the Saudi Arabian Payroll | Home / Be The Change / Flex Your rights / Brother of Clinton’s Campaign Chair is an Active Foreign Agent on the Saudi Arabian Payroll Brother of Clinton’s Campaign Chair is an Active Foreign Agent on the Saudi Arabian Payroll Claire Bernish October 26, 2016 Leave a comment
Tony Podesta — brother of the now-disgraced Hillary Clinton campaign chair John Podesta, whose files Wikileaks has been publishing — is not only a powerful Democratic Party lobbyist, but a registered foreign agent receiving a hefty monthly paycheck from the nefarious government of Saudi Arabia.
No — as tinfoil-hat conspiracy theorist as it might sound — that scenario is the absolute truth.
In 1988, John and Tony Podesta formed the Podesta Group and have used their bigwig party-insider status to lobby and influence government policies — while, at various times, simultaneously holding positions of power — which has created a number of glaring conflicts of interest.
According to the March 2016 filing made in accordance with the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938, Tony Podesta is an active foreign agent of the Saudi government with the “ Center for Studies and Media Affairs at the Saudi Royal Court ,” and acts as an officer of the Saudi Arabia account.
At this point, the web of pay-for-play between the Washington, political heavyweights, and foreign governments comes lurching into the spotlight.
For starters, the Podesta brothers’ lobbying firm receives $140,000 every month from the Saudi government, which, in no uncertain terms — and despite a status as privileged U.S. ally — wages a bloody campaign of censorship, murder, suppression, human rights abuse, and worse against its civilian population, while bombing hospitals, schools, and aid convoys in neighboring nations.
John Podesta previously served as President Bill Clinton’s chief of staff, founded the think tank Center for American Progress (which oh-so-coincidentally touts the need to reframe Saudi Arabia’s hopelessly tarnished image), counseled President Obama, and now chairs Hillary Clinton’s campaign.
Tony Podesta acts as a foreign agent for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia — lobbying to influence government policy in favor of the Kingdom — while also contributing to and bundling for Hillary Clinton’s campaign.
Think about that for a moment.
One brother uses the influence of money to both affect United States foreign policy and infuse the Clinton campaign with cash — while the other wields the influence of power as a political insider for the same entities.
As the Washington Post reported months ago in July, Tony Podesta’s lobbying efforts “raised $268,000 for the campaign and $31,000 for the victory fund.”
“The Saudis hired the Podesta Group in 2015 because it was getting hammered in the press over civilian casualties from its airstrikes in Yemen and its crackdown on political dissidents at home, including sentencing blogger Raif Badawi to ten years in prison and 1,000 lashes for ‘insulting Islam,’” Alternet reported . “Since then, Tony Podesta’s fingerprints have been all over Saudi Arabia’s advocacy efforts in Washington DC. When Saudi Arabia executed the prominent nonviolent Shia dissident Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, causing protests throughout the Shia world and inflaming sectarian divisions, The New York Times noted that the Podesta Group provided the newspaper with a Saudi commentator who defended the execution.”
Notably, the Saudis’ reputation has only worsened as further atrocities pile up — concerning not only a record number of barbaric beheadings this year, but suspiciously reckless and errant U.S.-backed coalition bombings of civilian sites in several regions of active conflict.
Additionally, Tony Podesta’s status as a registered foreign agent for Saudi Arabia is at least obliquely discussed in an email from April 15, 2015 — ironically revealed by Wikileaks’ publishing of his brothers personal communiques — in which former Clinton Foundation chief development officer and now campaign national finance director Dennis Cheng wrote to a small group of insiders:
“Hi all – we do need to make a decision on this ASAP as our friends who happen to be registered with FARA [Foreign Agents Registration Act] are already donating and raising.
“I do want to push back a bit (it’s my job!): I feel like we are leaving a good amount of money on the table (both for primary and general, and then DNC and state parties)… and how do we explain to people that we’ll take money from a corporate lobbyist but not them; that the Foundation takes $ from foreign govts but we now won’t. Either way, we need to make a decision soon.”
To which general counsel to the Clinton campaign, attorney Marc Elias, replied [all errors original and emphasis added],
“Responding to all on this. I was not on the call this morning, but I lean away from a bright line rule here. It seems odd to say that someone who represents Alberta, Canada can’t give, but a lobbyist for Phillip Morris can. Just as we vet lobbyists case by case, I would do the same with FARA. While this may lead to a large number of FARA registrants being denied, it would not be a flat our ban. A total ban feels arbitrary and will engender the same eye-rolling and ill will that it did for Obama.”
As the exchange continues, how to precisely handle the campaign’s image with potentially controversial donors — while, at all costs, maintaining the flow of cash — becomes even more apparent. As strategist and campaign manager Robby Mook responds,
“Where do we draw the line though?”
Elias suggests a particularly intricate solution:
“If we do it case by case, then it will be subjective. We would look at who the donor is and what foreign entity they are registered for. In judging whether to take the money, we would consider the relationship between that country and the United States, its relationship to the State Department during Hillary’s time as Secretary, and its relationship, if any, to the Foundation. In judging the individual, we would look at their history of support for political candidates generally and Hillary’s past campaigns specifically.
“Put simply, we would use the same criteria we use for lobbyists, except with a somewhat more stringent screen.
“As a legal matter, I am not saying we have to do this – we can decide to simply ban foreign registrants entirely. I’m just offering this up as a middle ground.”
Mook eventually decides plainly,
“Marc made a convincing case to me this am that these sorts of restrictions don’t really get you anything…that Obama actually got judged MORE harshly as a result. He convinced me. So…in a complete U-turn, I’m ok just taking the money and dealing with any attacks. Are you guys ok with that?”
All of this political wrangling appears to have had the desired effect — despite increasing calls for the United States to either rein in or sever completely its support for the bloody Saudi regime — the U.S. approved a stunning $1.29 billion sale of smart bombs to the Kingdom in November 2015.
Tony Podesta’s specific contract with the government-run Center for Studies and Media Affairs at the Saudi Royal Court, which will earn $1.68 million by year’s end, does, indeed, suggest the infusion of a pro-Saudi message into the U.S. media propaganda machine.
“Saudi Arabia is consistently one of the bigger players when it comes to foreign influence in Washington,” Sunlight Foundation spokesman Josh Stewart told the Washington Post . “That spans both what you’d call the inside game, which is lobbying and government relations, and the outside game, which is PR and other things that tend to reach a broader audience than just lobbying.”
That broader audience — the American public — has indeed been manipulated courtesy of at least the thoroughly-corrupt Clinton campaign if not surreptitiously by the Saudis, as well.
As The Free Thought Project has repeatedly reported , the evidence of collusion among the Democratic National Committee, Hillary Clinton’s campaign, and the mainstream presstitutes is indisputable — including no less than 65 so-called journalists listed by name in various leaks as darlings of the campaign.
Although this level of corruption and collusion would be considered intolerable in nearly any other nation on the planet. And yet, at the center of this shit storm of contention is an official nominee for the White House — who will not be held responsible for any number of questionable and criminal acts.
The system isn’t rigged — it’s performing exactly as intended — and always will as long as the vote validates its existence. Share Social Trending | 1real |
Nestle to launch new non-GMO products ... How shocked will Monsanto be? | Nestle to launch new non-GMO products ... How shocked will Monsanto be?
Thursday, October 27, 2016 by: Vicki Batts Tags: GMOs , Nestle , Monsanto (NaturalNews) One of the food industry's most prominent players recently announced that they will be expanding their line of non-GMO products, due to the ever-increasing customer demand for clean food. Nestle may have wowed consumers with their choice, but it may make some waves with their good friend, Monsanto ."The company is broadening its product offerings to give consumers more options with no GMO ingredients and identifying these products with the SGS-verified 'no GMO ingredients' claim," the food giant stated on Tuesday."Nestle USA understands that consumers are seeking choice and many prefer to select products with no GMO ingredients," they declared.Of course, this is not Nestle's first move towards GMO-free products. In April, Nestle announced that they would be removing GMO ingredients from six of their top-selling ice cream products, as well. The company states it is trying to evolve along with consumer demands. It is great to see that companies are beginning to realize that consumers want options; no one wants to be forced to buy GMO products.It is easy to want to applaud Nestle for their decision to continue to expand their line of non-GMO products. However, it is also clear that this company is doing so out of their own financial interests – not because they care about what people are eating. Organic, GMO-free foods are the newest trend, and smart manufacturers are beginning to see that they will not win anyone over by insisting that GM, pesticide-laden food products are safe. "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em," is a philosophy Nestle has clearly taken to heart.Nestle is not an angelic company, even if they have decided to start serving up "GMO-free" options. Just three years ago, they donated millions of dollars to prevent and oppose GMO labeling in Washington state, along with Monsanto and other biotech firms. Truth Out reports that on October 18, 2013, the Grocery Manufacturers of America disclosed that several of their largest, most powerful players silently donated large sums of money to oppose Initiative 522. This bill would have required grocery items containing GMO ingredients to be labeled as such. The group chose to voluntarily release the names of the silent donors, after Washington state Attorney General Bob Ferguson filed a lawsuit against their concealment of corporate donors.Nestle was among the top three highest contributors, and donated a cool $1.5 million to keep GMO ingredients under wraps and off product labels. Nestle also made a large donation to oppose similar legislation in California the year before, in 2012. The bill ultimately failed, after Big Food and Big Biotech joined forces and together raised a staggering $46 million to prevent its passing. And we're supposed to believe they care?The controversial history of Nestle doesn't end with their consistent financial support of GMO labeling opposition efforts. It is a corporation that is wrought with wrongdoings and corrupt practices. Look no further than their outright theft of water in California.Given that the coastal state is currently being plagued by a devastating drought, you might be shocked to learn that just last year Nestle pumped a disturbing 36 million gallons of water out of one of the state's water sources, known as Strawberry Creek. Peter Gleick, president of the Pacific Institute and author of Bottled and Sold: The Story Behind Our Obsession with Bottled Water , estimates that Nestle is making millions of dollars in this way."They're converting a public resource into private profit," he told Los Angeles Magazine .The most shocking thing is that their permit to pump water from the creek expired in 1988. The forest service has allowed Nestle to gouge the creek for water at will, so long as they continue to pay a minuscule access fee. While bottled water accounts for only a small fraction of California's water use, the overall environmental impact of what their practices are doing to a drought-stricken state have yet to be examined.Nestle has been subject to countless other controversies, including human rights violations, and has been host to many environmental and product safety issues.To put it simply: Nestle may be trying to win over customers with their non-GMO products, but they don't deserve to. Monsanto may be shocked, but only because Nestle is still one of their own. Sources: | 1real |
Joy mixed with caution in Gaza after Palestinian unity deal | GAZA (Reuters) - It didn t take long after the firework smoke cleared in Gaza for some Palestinians to start questioning whether a unity deal between their two most powerful factions would hold. Thousands took to the streets overnight celebrating the pact between Fatah and Hamas sealed in Cairo. Loudspeakers blasted national songs as youngsters waving Palestinian and Egyptian flags danced and hugged one another. I am happy, no I am the happiest, Ali Metwaly, a 30-year-old computer engineer, said the morning after. But I am still afraid it will end in disappointment. My leaders have taught me they can easily disappoint us. I hope they don t, this time. Under the reconciliation pact, Hamas is handing over administrative control of Gaza, including the Rafah border crossing - once the main gateway to the world for the two million Palestinians in the territory - to a government backed by the mainstream Fatah party. A decade ago, Hamas forces seized the Gaza Strip from Fatah forces in a brief civil war. Past Egyptian mediation attempts to reconcile the two rivals failed to achieve lasting results. The latest clinched its elusive agreement after an economic squeeze on Hamas. Analysts said the deal is more likely to stick than earlier ones, given Hamas s growing isolation and realization of how hard Gaza - its economy hobbled by border blockades and infrastructure shattered by wars with Israel - was to govern and rebuild. For Huwaida al-Hadidi, a 34-year-old mother-of-seven, economic relief cannot come soon enough. Like about 250,000 other people in the territory, her husband is unemployed. Unable to pay their rent, the family has been living in a tent since their landlord evicted them three days ago. Now that they signed a reconciliation deal, God-willing the blockade will be lifted and people will find work and be able to earn a living for their children, she said. Control of the Gaza border crossings with Israel and Egypt by the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority, which exercises limited self-rule in the occupied West Bank, could allow freer movement of people and goods across the frontier. And under the agreement, about 3,000 Fatah security officers are to join the Gaza police force, although Hamas would remain the most powerful armed Palestinian faction, with around 25,000 well-equipped militants. Hamas and Fatah are also debating a potential date for presidential and legislative elections and reforms of the Palestine Liberation Organization, which is in charge of long-stalled peace efforts with Israel. The last Palestinian legislative election was in 2006, when Hamas scored a surprise victory. That triggered the political rupture between Hamas and Fatah, which eventually led to their short civil war in Gaza. Palestinian political commentator Mustafa Ibraham said with major issues, such as an election date and agreement on a common political agenda, still outstanding, Palestinians should be cautious. Important details were postponed and open for interpretation and disagreement, he said in a Facebook post. Hamas, which has fought three wars with Israel since 2008 and is considered a terrorist group by the West, has said it will not abandon the arms of resistance . Israel has said Hamas must disarm, or the reconciliation will be meaningless. | 0fake |
Enough About Texas, Let’s Talk Taxes: Trump’s Priorities Shift To Breaks For The Rich | After a brief and almost meaningless visit to Texas, during which Donald Trump didn t meet with a single victim of Hurricane Harvey, the president s cavalcade moved on to Missouri, where he returned to what he really cares about: More money for wealthy people.He s first, of course. His tweets from Wednesday morning prove unequivocally that the only victim he cares about is himself. He sent out a placating message about horror and devastation (which he didn t ask even one Harvey refugee about) just 25 minutes after a tweet about North Korea, and only 15 minutes before he went back into Martyr Mode :After reading the false reporting and even ferocious anger in some dying magazines, it makes me wonder, WHY? All I want to do is #MAGA! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 30, 2017With that much obsession on his own well-being, why wouldn t the next logical step be another campaign-style stop to try and convince people to support his awful tax plan? Did I say campaign-style? What I mean is, this was not a White House event. This was straight-up partisan. If Donald Trump operated under the rule of law, the RNC would have to reimburse taxpayers for his Missouri speech, in which he explicitly called for the ouster of a Democratic senator, Claire McCaskill. Speaking to a crowd in Springfield, Trump said,We must lower our taxes and your senator, Claire McCaskill, she must do this for you, and if she doesn t, you have to vote her out of office.That s campaigning, not laying out policy. But he doesn t have much policy yet to reveal: The GOP has yet to agree on much of what will go into their tax reform package. Trump himself would like to see the business tax rate lowered to 15%, a number so low that it would cripple the government without slashing spending on the poor. But even most Republicans oppose so low a rate, and his plans for tax relief for the middle class and repatriating offshore profits are, so far, still out in the ether somewhere.The bottom line is, now that he s got that awful trip to Texas out of the way, Trump is on the warpath, and his only focus is now on winning. He even warned the members of his party not to disappoint him on taxes, the way they did on Trumpcare:I am fully committed to working with Congress to get this job done, and I don t want to be disappointed by Congress. Do you understand me?Oh, we understand, Donnie. You were embarrassed by Mitch McConnell and humiliated by John McCain, so now you want a McVictory to soothe your fiery case of butthurt. Americans see through your tax reforms, though. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. It s the Republican Way!Featured image via Michael B. Thomas/Getty Images | 1real |
Comment on Does Golf Lead To Uncontrollable Rage? by information security architect | Does Golf Lead To Uncontrollable Rage? By Tanner Bisbee on March 14, 2015 Subscribe
We all have a friend who’seems to be constantly frustrated or instigated easily and we assume they have some type of anger issue.?But finding out if they really have an anger problem may be as simple taking them out on the Golf Course. Public Domain Image
Golf, a widely played sport seems to be worst?fuel for those who get ticked off easily.?Golf forces us to rely on our own skill, proper technique and the idealistic expectation of always sending the small white ball 300 yards down the fairway, however for most of us?it doesn’t work out this way. For the vast majority of us the result is a ball that slices 50 yards in the woods or only makes 100 yards down the fair.
And for many of us this result isn’t a problem, but for those that have godly expectations or temper issues, it’s catastrophic. The very first tell tale sign is the immediate reaction after the mishit ball. Just watch your friend as soon the ball leaves the tee. Their is a very good chance that if the ball starts to shift or bend one way in the air, his face will go still and his arm will go the top of his head.
But what next? For many of us, we walk to our bag in disbelief wondering why we botched that hit, but we ultimately let it go. However, for the temperamental person they will walk off in a huff and throw their club in the bag and keep going. And after awhile the rage begins to build up until they snap. It happens to many of us, especially on days where the ball just won’t roll our way,
This moment can also be one of the funniest moments for the other player or spectator.?Watch as your friend unhappily steps up to the ball. Watch as he hits the ball, if the shot is bad look directly back at your friend. See as his discouragement only turns into anger. It’s almost like something in his mind just got tangled. Now the truly temperamental person will take one of three?actions: starts screaming and swearing throw his club in the woods snap the club in half, my personal favorite
Like this guy did:
So what should you do when your friend freaks out? Film it. At least my first reaction is too film it, because everybody on YouTube loves a freak out. So step aside cute kittens, there is a new viral video coming to town.
About Tanner Bisbee
Tanner Bisbee hails from the great State of Maine. He's a full time college student and serves on the football staff at school. His most notable work to date is his book Modern Day Sports Blog. To read more check out my blog http://moderndaysportsandpolitics.blogspot.com/ Connect | 1real |
UK investigates Brexit campaign funding amid speculation of Russian meddling | LONDON (Reuters) - Britain s Electoral Commission is investigating whether a leading anti-EU campaigner breached referendum finance rules, after speculation mounted that Russia may have meddled in the Brexit vote. Arron Banks, a major donor to the anti-EU campaign who was pictured with Donald Trump and leading Brexiteer Nigel Farage outside a gilded elevator soon after Trump s 2016 U.S. presidential election victory, denied the allegations. The Electoral Commission, which is already looking at whether Banks pro-Brexit Leave.EU group received any impermissible donations, said its new investigation would examine whether he was the true source of loans to a campaigner. The investigation cannot overturn the referendum, though Banks, a 51-year-old insurance tycoon, said it was an attempt by the Remain establishment to discredit the Brexit result. Allegations of Brexit being funded by the Russians ... are complete bollocks [rubbish] from beginning to end, Banks said in an emailed statement, signing off nostrovia , a version of na zdorovye , Russian for cheers! . When asked about the investigation, Prime Minister Theresa May told parliament: We take very seriously issues of Russian intervention, or Russian attempts to intervene, in electoral processes or in the democratic processes of any country. The announcement of the investigation comes after Ben Bradshaw, a lawmaker from the opposition Labour Party, asked the government to look into reports by advocacy group Open Democracy that the origin of some campaign funds was unclear. Bradshaw said he was also concerned about what he said were significant British connections in the U.S. investigation into whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russian efforts to meddle in the presidential election. Russia denies meddling in Brexit or the U.S. election and Trump denies any collusion with Russia. In the June 23, 2016 referendum, 17.4 million votes, or 51.9 percent of votes cast, backed leaving the EU while 16.1 million votes, or 48.1 percent of votes cast, backed staying, a result that defied opinion polls. The Electoral Commission, which did not mention Russia, said it was looking at whether a company called Better for the Country Limited (BFTCL) - of which Banks was a director - was the true source of donations made to campaigners. BFTCL was not registered as a permitted participant in the referendum but five registered campaigning groups reported receiving donations from it totalling 2.4 million pounds, the Commission said. Banks, who was a registered permitted participant, gave three non-commercial loans to Leave.EU, totalling 6 million pounds. Participants in the referendum were only allowed to accept donations from donors that conformed to a strict set of rules, for example they could not be based outside the UK. The Commission said in April it was investigating Leave.EU s funding as well as looking at whether its spending return was complete. Questions over the legitimacy of funding provided to campaigners at the referendum risks causing harm to voters confidence, said Bob Posner, director of political finance and regulation at the Commission. It is therefore in the public interest that the Electoral Commission seeks to ascertain whether or not impermissible donations were given to referendum campaigners and if any other related offences have taken place, he said. The Commission has the power to impose fines and other sanctions if it finds rules were broken. | 0fake |
Corey Lewandowski Is Apparently Using Trump’s Twitter Account To Get Jobs (DETAILS) | Corey Lewandowski was Donald Trump s right hand man up until the undeserving POTUS decided to fire him from his position as campaign manager. Even after being rejected by Trump, Lewandowski continued to humiliate himself on CNN by posing as Trump s spokesperson while he happily accepted money from Trump. Things came to a head when Lewandowski realized he couldn t get into the inauguration but still hadn t embarrassed himself enough. Apparently with all things Trump-related, it could always get worse!According to a new report by Buzzfeed News, Lewandowski is using access to Trump s Twitter account as an incentive for potential clients. Apparently, Lewandowski has already told potential clients like Facebook and financial group Blackstone Group that he can access the account, and four sources say that it s become normal for Lewandowski to use Trump s account as a selling point.As usual, Lewandowski is choosing to deny the reports. When confronted by a Buzzfeed reporter who had spoken to these four sources, Lewandowski fired back: I know facts don t matter to Buzzfeed but it s not true. Lewandowski elaborated that he d never even met with Facebook or Blackstone Group. Taking a page right out of Trump s book, he said: I never met Blackstone. Please make sure you accurately report that! I doubt you will. Trump and the rest of his incompetent team have also stated that Lewandowski cannot access Trump s beloved Twitter account.There s good reason to believe that Lewandowski would stoop low enough to use Trump s social media accounts as selling points for clients. He was a major part of Trump s team on the campaign trail, and we all know that anyone working this closely to Trump can t possibly be an honest person. Lewandowski, much like his former boss, was a lying snake who would use anything to leverage his own success. It doesn t seem out of character at all for Lewandowski to do this and he likely learned that mentality from Trump himself.Featured image via Joe Raedle / Getty Images | 1real |
AT&T Secret Spy Program Unveiled: Project Hemisphere | Posted on October 27, 2016 by Ryan Banister
Project Hemisphere, a secretive program developed by AT&T, searches trillions of call records in order to analyze cell phone data, spying on the activity of private individuals in order to identify who they are speaking with and why, as well as GPS tracking on the location of each individual connected to the call, and it transmits this information to the Department of Justice (DOJ).
In 2013, Project Hemisphere was shown in a Powerpoint presentation produced by the Drug Enforcement Administration. The New York Times reported this as a partnership between AT&T and the DOJ, primarily deployed for drug-enforcement task-forces. All information collected in this program is accessible to the federal agencies authorized by the DOJ.
AT&T specifically developed and marketed this product for use by the DOJ, who would promise hundreds of millions in funds on behalf of taxpayers, using the taxpayers’ own money to spy on their every move. This is an invasion of privacy without a warrant. This is a federal spy program by proxy, working through corporations.
AT&T promises law enforcement that it will not disclose Project Hemisphere’s involvement in active investigations that are made public. AT&T is is attempting to lower liability for their customer and limit scrutiny to information transmitted to federal agencies through their network.
While it should not be surprising that your cell phone company is working with bureaucrats to collect incriminating evidence on you, there is a staggering number of people who still carelessly use their cell phone as if the information being transmitted through the device will be kept private.
News flash! It’s never been private. They have always wanted to use your information as a product to sell to the highest bidder. Your data is their product, and you are paying them to take it from you.
Video Report:
Contributed by Ryan Banister of The Daily Sheeple . Don't forget to follow the D.C. Clothesline on Facebook and Twitter. PLEASE help spread the word by sharing our articles on your favorite social networks. Share this: | 1real |
Islamic State calls slain Muslim American soldier an 'apostate' | DUBAI (Reuters) - Islamic State on Sunday condemned as an “apostate” a U.S. Muslim soldier killed in Iraq whose story has re-ignited debate in the 2016 presidential election on the role of Muslims in American life. Dabiq, the militant group’s online magazine, showed a picture of U.S. Army Captain Humayun Khan’s tombstone in Arlington National Cemetery with a caption, “Beware of Dying as an apostate.” An accompanying article, penned by an unnamed “American convert in the Islamic State,” urged Muslims to resist Western influences and to either migrate to Islamic State-controlled lands or carry out lone attacks. “Reject these calls to disunity and come together. Live the life of Islam, for which you have already left the path of falsehood,” the militant wrote. “You are behind enemy lines, able to strike them where it hurts them most,” the article added. Khan’s death in a bomb attack in Iraq in 2004 re-emerged as an election issue when his father gave a speech at the Democratic National Convention on Thursday in which he paid homage to his son. Khizr Khan, a U.S. citizen of Pakistani origin and a Muslim, also criticized Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump for proposing a temporary ban on Muslims entering the United States and asked if the candidate had read the U.S. Constitution. Trump rejected the criticism and questioned whether the soldier’s mother was allowed to speak during the couple’s appearance at the podium. Ghazala Khan later said the outspoken billionaire was ignorant of Islam and of sacrifice. Trump has stoked outrage during his unorthodox campaign by supporting racial profiling for Muslim Americans in the wake of a deadly shooting by a U.S.-born Muslim man killed 49 people at a gay nightclub in Orlando in June. Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee, has said the comments and other pointed remarks about American minorities show Trump is unfit to be president. | 0fake |
The City Where People Live Without Politics, No Religion And No Money | Share on Facebook Upon learning this, you will think that happened long ago, but no. There is still a place to live, and not say for its scenery, but for their ideals as a society who do not follow the standards to which we are accustomed. In this town there is no money, no religion, no politics. This is truly a paradise to live. Think only in a place where there are none of these factors, where you can finally live in peace. This place exists and is called “Auroville”! It was founded in 1968 and was hailed as an international city by UNESCO, as its inhabitants are over 50 nationalities and different cultures. They coexist without any problem, since they have a political system, have no religion, and on top, do not use money and getting all living through the system of exchanges. Auroville is located in South India, 150 kilometers from Chennai in Madras. In this epic city, the buildings are made based on an experimental architecture, as they are constantly changing. This is because these structures seek to optimize the use of renewable energies and their main objective: reuse and recycling. The person who designed and managed to found this wonderful city was: Mirra Alfassa, better known as “Mother”. "There should be a place on Earth that no nation could claim as their own; where all human beings of good will who have a sincere aspiration could live freely as citizens of the world, obeying one single authority, that of the supreme truth. A place of peace, concord and harmony where all the fighting instinct in man were used exclusively to overcome the cause of their sufferings and miseries, to overcome their weaknesses and ignorance, and to triumph over their limitations and disabilities. A place where the needs of the spirit and interest of progress precedence over the satisfaction of desires and passions or the pursuit of pleasure and material enjoyment," was the idea of Alfassa. From this hypothesis, we now have this amazing international city. This city is positioning itself as a model of sustainable eco-city. It is a method developed by the multi-cropping, combining fruit trees, cornfields and orchards, organized into 15 farms, reaching an area of 160 hectares. In this way, they ensure much food, so supply the population. In these farms work 50 villagers and 300 neighbors, producing 2% of rice and cereals consumed and 50% of vegetables. Also, the village is also self-sufficient in milk and dairy products, and fruits in season. Despite not being the only city that takes this model itself is special for receiving protection by UNESCO, and is a clear example of how it will be our way of life in a few more years, when Earth begins to manifest the consequences our mistreatment of her. Definitely this city is an example, where one of its principles is healthy, both mentally and physical life. We have nothing more to congratulate and wish all follow that model of life. Would you be in agreement with this new style of society? Related: | 1real |
Sad Sack Santorum Visited Over 70 Pizza Ranches In Iowa – And The CEO Endorsed Trump | Nobody seemed more desperate to win Iowa by sheer force of will than Rick Santorum. The perennial Republican also-ran staked his entire campaign on convincing enough ultra-conservative Iowans that he was their guy, and didn t just come up short he hardly came up at all.But if Iowan voters didn t know Santorum was running, the hapless employees at the state s ubiquitous Pizza Ranch restaurants sure did. For some reason some very, very insane reason Santorum decided to almost exclusively stump in the pizza chain s locales. By the close of the primary, Santorum had racked up an impressive (or sad, depending on how you look at it) 120 visits, that s nearly two visits per location.CNN s Chris Moody covered the Santorum s Iowa bid, and while he clearly tried to remain objective and we give them an A for effort, really his recollection of Santorum s sad campaign radiates a sense of bafflement and failure.About forty die-hard Santorumites joined together in a private room at a Pizza Ranch restaurant. The evening was full of nostalgia, sadness and hope, and a pinch of denial, to celebrate a man who hosted more than 700 events in the Hawkeye State. It has been an honor. It really has, Santorum said. I hope we have another opportunity, but my guess is that when we come in on Air Force One, we re not going to have these types of deals because we re going to have a country to run. The crowd laughed, lovingly, knowing that what he said wasn t true and probably would never be.There may be nothing more fatalistic than holding what is probably your last campaign rally in the back room of a greasy pizza shop and joking about how someday you may be unable to come in because you re too busy on Air Force One. It s never going to happen that s the punchline.To twist the knife of failure just a little bit harder, Santorum s Pizza Ranch base of operation is actually already spoken for. The company s CEO, Adrie Groeneweg, announced just weeks ago that he would be endorsing Trump.Groeneweg has never endorsed a candidate before and he has also never caucused. It was just something my dad has always done, he explained. This year, Groeneweg said he d go to caucus for Trump in February.Hilariously, Trump didn t even have to show up beforehand. In trademark fashion, Trump only decided he liked Pizza Ranch after he learned the CEO endorsed him.Meanwhile, all the pizza slices in the state couldn t buy Santorum some love.But there is one silverlining to this story. Taking pity on poor Santorum, Pizza Ranch did throw him a bone. They gave him a t-shirt and made him an honorary employee. Rick Santorum is made an honorary Pizza Ranch employee pic.twitter.com/TeP9tg4xJ9 Ben Jacobs (@Bencjacobs) February 1, 2016Not that he ll have time to do as much pizza cooking and toilet scrubbing as he may want to, what with flying on Air Force One and all.Featured image from Twitter | 1real |
Trump will win November 8 election: American professor | Trump will win November 8 election: American professor Trump will win November 8 election: American professor By 0 55
US Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump will win the November 8 election, says an American professor who correctly predicted almost every presidential election in the United States.
Professor Helmut Norpoth, of New York’s SUNY Stony Brook University, said his model shows Trump performed comparatively better in the primaries so he will triumph next month, The Independent reported on Thursday.
Norpoth developed a model which, when applied retroactively, successfully predicted every presidential election in the United States since 1912 all but one, which was the 2000 election, when it said Democratic nominee Al Gore would beat Republican candidate George W. Bush. But instead Bush won the election.
Al Gore won the popular vote, but Bush was awarded more votes in the Electoral College following a disputed result in Florida. So Bush was declared winner.
The political scientist’s model suggests that the person who emerges as the … | 1real |
Budgeting the Good War, for 75 Years | Share This
Today we call it the status quo, or endless war, or we just don’t bother to notice it. Indeed, now more than ever we don’t notice it. It’s barely part of the 2016 election, even though we’re engaged in active conflict in half a dozen countries, toying with a relaunch of the Cold War with Russia and, of course, hemorrhaging, as always, more than half our annual discretionary budget on “defense.”
World War II has been going on for seven decades now and has no intention of ever stopping . . . of its own volition. But this year’s rocking electoral craziness – not just Hurricane Donald, but the unexpected staying power of the Bernie Sanders campaign – may well be the harbinger of transcendence. Apparently there’s another force in the universe capable of standing up to the American, indeed, the global, military-industrial status quo.
Slowly, slowly this force is organizing itself and taking human shape. This isn’t a simple process. After all, the game of empire – the game called war, the game of domination – has been coalescing political power for several thousand years now.
But our current military budget was birthed by the wars of the 20th century. William Hartung , writing recently at TomDispatch, shows the fascinating connectedness of the wars that followed VE and VJ Days, as the corporate beneficiaries of the Big War aligned with mainstream politicians of both major parties and coalesced into the Washington consensus. Over the decades they have engaged in an ongoing struggle to maintain military spending at breathtakingly high levels and avoid any sort of transition to something called peace.
The two pillars of this consensus, as Hartung points out, are the ideology of “armed exceptionalism,” that a shifting array of enemies are out there itching to destroy us, but we will persist in our mission to maintain order in every corner of the planet; and the “strategic placement of arms production facilities and military bases in key states and Congressional districts,” ensuring entrenched political power for the arms lobby.
So World War II initially, as we know, morphed into the Cold War, America’s crusade against communism, which was set into motion in 1950 by a long-classified report (NSC-68) prepared by the State and Defense departments and the CIA, urging the vigorous containment of Soviet expansion and the development of the hydrogen bomb.
President Truman “was somewhat taken aback at the costs associated with the report’s recommendations,” according to history.com , and “he hesitated to publicly support a program that would result in heavy tax increases for the American public, particularly since the increase would be spent on defending the United States during a time of peace.”
Peace! What a nuisance! But: “Thank God Korea came along,” as an aide to Secretary of State Dean Acheson put it at the time. The Korean War gave the militarists the enemy they needed and the nuclear arms race, and so much else, was born. The military budget was set for decades.
As Hartung points out, the next terrible hurdle the budget boys faced was in the wake of the Vietnam War, which ended in 1975. That war, and the universal draft that essentially pulled the whole country into a front-row seat for it, spawned a passionate antiwar movement and, ultimately, a moldering national disgust for war, known as Vietnam Syndrome. The Cold War continued, but the U.S. military was confined to proxy wars for a while and had to rethink its strategy.
Two things happened. The universal draft was ended, removing most of the American middle class from a life-and-death stake in our military operations; and Saddam Hussein, our ally, was recast as Adolf Hitler. And in 1991, President George H.W. Bush embarked on a month of war with Iraq known as Operation Desert Storm. Not only did the US“win” this war and kill over 100,000 Iraqis (and ultimately cause hideous health problems for American soldiers), but, perhaps most importantly: “By God, we’ve kicked the Vietnam Syndrome once and for all.” So the president proclaimed.
Unfortunately for the war consensus, the Soviet Union dissolved a short time later and the Cold War ended . . . and a “peace dividend” loomed. Hartung notes that Gen. Colin Powell, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, expressed the situation thus: “I’m running out of demons. I’m running out of villains. I’m down to Castro and Kim Il-sung.”
Would military spending be diverted to infrastructure repair, free education, universal health care?
Well, no. The Bill Clinton presidency found a few new demons. It fought a war in Kosovo and, on the domestic front, vastly expanded the prison-industrial complex. Meanwhile, the neocon think tanks cogitated and one of them, the Project for a New American Century, reflecting the fact that geopolitical thinking had stopped with World War II, decided that what America needed was a new Pearl Harbor . And then came the presidency of George W. Bush, 9/11, and the Global War on Terror. And the US military budget was carved, seemingly, in stone.
Barack Obama was elected president in 2008 on the promise of serious change, but any hope that he intended to upend W’s wars was soon dispelled. He dumped the name but kept the wars, essentially settling “for a no-name global war,” Hartung writes. “He would shift gears from a strategy focused on large numbers of ‘boots on the ground’ to an emphasis on drone strikes, the use of Special Operations forces, and massive transfers of arms to US allies like Saudi Arabia. . . . (O)ne might call Obama’s approach ‘politically sustainable warfare.’”
And here we are, immersed in a no-name global war that has no logical end and few serious critics in the world of mainstream media and politics. But maybe the American democracy is not the closed system it’s supposed to be.
For instance, John Feffer , director of Foreign Policy in Focus, points out that Donald Trump, in all his fun-house recklessness, is shaking up the consensus: “Democrats and Republicans disagree about many things. But with a few exceptions they all support an enormous military budget, an expensive overseas expeditionary force, and unilateral acts of force when necessary to protect US national interests (understood broadly).
“It’s an odd paradox that Trump, who blathers on about making America great again, departs from this consensus.”
He won’t win, and he shouldn’t win for a million reasons, but in his recklessness he has touched the raw anger of a sizable chunk of the American electorate. Sanders, speaking with compassion and integrity and delivering a far different message, managed to tap the same well of public outrage. And, as Feffer noted, “the mainstream is worried that the political parties will realize that the ‘bring the war dollars home’ message can win a national election and disrupt the comfortable revolving-door consensus.”
And World War II will finally end? Not this year, but maybe four years from now, if we refuse to let the war consensus have any peace in the interim.
Robert Koehler is an award-winning, Chicago-based journalist and nationally syndicated writer. His new book, Courage Grows Strong at the Wound is now available. Contact him at or visit his website at commonwonders.com . Reprinted with permission from PeaceVoice . Read more by Robert Koehler | 1real |
White House Rejects Comey’s Assertion That Wiretapping Claim Is False - The New York Times | WASHINGTON — The White House on Monday refused to acknowledge reports that James B. Comey, the F. B. I. director, had asked the Justice Department to refute President Trump’s claim that President Barack Obama wiretapped him during the 2016 presidential campaign, and said Mr. Trump still believes he was spied on. Mr. Comey urged the Justice Department this weekend to push back against Mr. Trump’s claims, but the department has not said anything publicly. The New York Times first reported about Mr. Comey’s request to the Justice Department on Sunday, and other news media organizations followed suit. Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, dismissed the stories on Monday. “I have not seen anything, aside from another report based on anonymous sources, that that actually happened,” Mr. Spicer said. “I’m not aware that that occurred. I don’t think that we’re aware that that occurred. ” Mr. Spicer did not say why Mr. Trump or other administration officials had not reached out directly to the Justice Department or Mr. Comey to find out whether Mr. Trump’s accusations are true. And Mr. Spicer provided little evidence to back up Mr. Trump’s claim about Mr. Obama. At one point, Mr. Spicer pointed to comments by Michael Mukasey, who served as attorney general in the administration of George W. Bush, as evidence of the eavesdropping. Mr. Mukasey said on television Sunday that based on reports he had read in the press, he believed Mr. Trump was probably right about the surveillance. “There’s no question that something happened,” Mr. Spicer said. “The question is: Is it surveillance, or wiretapping or whatever?” Mr. Spicer said that Mr. Trump still had confidence in the F. B. I. director. “There’s nothing that I have been told by him that would leave me to believe that anything is different than it was prior,” Mr. Spicer said. But the president could be headed for a confrontation with Mr. Comey that would pit the administration against the head of the nation’s leading law enforcement agency, which is conducting an inquiry into links between Mr. Trump’s associates and Russia. Mr. Trump, who has already fired his national security adviser and acting attorney general, could dismiss Mr. Comey, but that would probably lead to significant backlash from lawmakers and federal authorities who would see such a move as an attempt to influence the Russia investigation. Mr. Trump started the controversy early Saturday morning with a series of Twitter posts. “Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my ‘wires tapped’ in Trump Tower just before the victory,” Mr. Trump said. “Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!” Mr. Trump added: “This is . Bad (or sick) guy!” The White House has not officially said what led Mr. Trump to make the claims. But administration officials have acknowledged that they were primarily prompted by unverified claims by Breitbart News and conservative talk radio hosts that secret warrants were issued authorizing tapping the phones of Mr. Trump and his aides. Mr. Comey was said to be disturbed by Mr. Trump’s claims about Mr. Obama, which insinuated that the F. B. I. had broken the law and raised the public’s expectations about how much evidence federal authorities might have had on Mr. Trump. For the Justice Department to have obtained a warrant to eavesdrop on him, federal authorities would have had to prove to a judge that there was significant evidence that he was breaking the law or was the agent of a foreign power. Along with asking the House and Senate Intelligence Committees to investigate whether Mr. Obama eavesdropped on Mr. Trump, Mr. Spicer called on the committees to investigate what he called a steady stream of national security leaks since Mr. Trump took office. Mr. Spicer said the White House would not commit to accepting the findings of those investigations. “I don’t think you would ever just blanketly say, ‘I’m going to accept any outcome,’” Mr. Spicer said. Some Republicans said on Monday that spying was a hallmark of Mr. Obama’s administration, claiming that during his time in office the Internal Revenue Service targeted conservative groups. Other Republicans defended the impartiality of the Justice Department and F. B. I. “I don’t think the F. B. I. is the Obama team, and I don’t think the men and women who are career prosecutors at D. O. J. belong to any team other than a blindfolded woman holding a set of scales,” Representative Trey Gowdy, Republican of South Carolina, said in an interview on Fox News. “We have certain tools this country needs to keep us safe — and it is great and wise and prudent and legal for those tools to be used lawfully and appropriately,” Mr. Gowdy said, referring to wiretapping. “If they are not used lawfully and appropriately, there is a paper trail, and we will be able to find it out. ” Mr. Gowdy, who headed the committee that investigated the 2012 attacks on American outposts in Benghazi, Libya, said that with the Obama administration out of office, “any information that the current Department of Justice has that suggests the previous Department of Justice acted inappropriately — they are welcome to release it. ” Senator Patrick Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, said he had “never seen anything so outlandish, outrageous or incomprehensible” as Mr. Trump’s claims. “I’ve never seen anything like this — ever — since I’ve been here,” Mr. Leahy said. “It is completely unprecedented, and it is destructive of our democracy. ” | 0fake |
Mayweather ’Out of Retirement for McGregor’: MMA - Breitbart | Los Angeles (AFP) — Retired unbeaten boxing champion Floyd Mayweather says that when it comes to a possible fight with Irish mixed martial arts star Conor McGregor, he is “out of retirement. ”[In a posting on the MMA website, the American said he wants to face McGregor, 28, in June. “For Conor McGregor, I’m coming out of retirement, just to fight Conor McGregor,” Mayweather told FightHype, according to the posting. “Today, I’m officially out of retirement for Conor McGregor. We don’t need to waste no time. We need to make this … happen quickly. Let’s get it on in June. ” Mayweather had matched Rocky Marciano’s iconic unbeaten career record when he walked away from boxing as the welterweight champion in 2015. Speculation of a fight has intensified in recent months, with the US star saying he is willing to meet McGregor in a boxing ring. McGregor, however, is under contract to the Ultimate Fighting Championship series, which would have to approve any deal for the bout to happen. “I don’t want to hear no more excuses about the money, about the UFC,” Mayweather said. “Sign the paper with the UFC so you can fight me in June. Simple and plain. Let’s fight in June. If you want to fight, sign the paperwork, let’s do it. ” McGregor is on a break for the impending birth of his first child, a son with his girlfriend Dee Devlin, who is due to give birth in May. | 0fake |
WATCH: NY School Board Chair Just Delivered A BRUTAL F*ck You To Racist Trump Campaign Chair | Recently, Donald Trump s New York campaign co-chair, Carl Paladino, did what Trump fans do best and made some incredibly racist remarks about the President and First Lady. Asked about his wish for Barack Obama by a weekly Buffalo, New York, paper, Paladino explained that he hoped Barack Obama would be caught having sex with a cow and die from Mad Cow Disease. As for Michelle, he explained that he wanted her to return to being a male and released in Africa to live among the apes.Naturally, Paladino s racist and hateful rhetoric the exact sort that is, unfortunately, popular among the Stupid Part of America didn t exactly make him friends outside of his racist little bubble. In fact, some (almost everyone) had a bit of an issue with the fact that he serves on the Buffalo school board. Words matter, Mr. Paladino, School Board President Barbara Seals Nevergold said during a meeting intended to oust the Trump-loving bigot. Our president, the Commander in Chief of this nation for the last eight years, Mrs. Obama, our First Lady, and Mrs. Valerie Jarrett, special presidential council [SIC] are all African-Americans. Among other things, they are accomplished, intelligent, beautiful people and that s not just my opinion. The impact on children of color, especially African-American children is incalculable, she continued. How do we encourage them to use their God-given talents to soar, to reach for the stars, when a sitting board member responsible for their education demonstrates such contempt of their role models? Nevergold added that Paladino s unmitigated and hateful, racist and misogynist, rhetoric has reached a level that is almost guaranteed to adversely impact students of color. Noting that his disgusting behavior demonstrate such a lack of responsible leadership, the school board president explained that people from all over the state had shared their views on Paladino s actions. They would like me to tell you, You re fired, she said, demanding Paladino s resignation as the room exploded in applause.While Trump fans vigorously defend him, it is impossible for a rational person to believe that Paladino could possibly serve on the school board while simultaneously believing that black people are apes, gorillas, or any other primate conservatives seem to use interchangeably.Paladino, as is expected from any racist coward, skipped the meeting entirely rather than answer for what he has done. Watch her rip him apart below:Featured image via screengrab | 1real |
Angola's ruling MPLA wins election with 61 percent of vote: electoral commission | LUANDA (Reuters) - Angola s ruling MPLA party has won a general election by taking 61.07 percent of the vote, the electoral commission said on Wednesday, making Jo o Louren o the next president of sub-Saharan Africa s third-largest economy. He will replace Jose Eduardo dos Santos, who steps down after 38 years at the helm but will continue as head of the People s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA). The main opposition National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) took 26.67 percent, with the smaller opposition party CASA-CE winning 9.44 percent. Mission accomplished, Louren o told supporters at his party s headquarters in Luanda. We ll produce a better future for the country and the people of Angola, he said in his first comments as president-elect. He is expected to take office on Sept. 21. UNITA, which has repeatedly complained that the electoral process has been non-transparent and illegal, declined to comment after the results on Wednesday. A spokesman told Reuters a statement will be made on Thursday. UNITA has previously said it will appeal the results. Speaking earlier on Wednesday, the spokeswoman for the National Electoral Commission Julia Ferreira rejected the opposition s complaints as having a lack of clarity and objectivity , adding sufficient proof had not been presented. Electoral observers have said the vote on Aug 23 was reasonably free and fair. The head of the African Union s observation mission, Jose Maria Neves, congratulated Angola on a poll he said served as a reference for the continent . Speaking before announcing definitive election results, President of the National Electoral Commission Andr da Silva Neto asked the parties to accept the election results. On the streets of Luanda, cheering and the honking of horns was heard as residents celebrated another electoral win for the MPLA, which has maintained an unbroken hold on power since Africa s second-largest crude producer gained independence from Portugal in 1975. Louren o will be only the country s third president in that time. A quiet 63-year-old more used to army barracks and the closed doors of party politics than the public spotlight, he has denied he will remain in the shadow of his predecessor dos Santos. Louren o has promised to kick-start the economy and has not ruled out deals with the World Bank and International Monetary Fund to help restructure it. Angola imports everything from washing powder to long-life milk at huge cost. MPLA will have 150 lawmakers, giving them the two-thirds parliamentary majority needed to pass any form of legislation. | 0fake |
In A Heartless Rebuke To Victims, Trump Invites NRA To Xmas Party On Sandy Hook Anniversary | It almost seems like Donald Trump is trolling America at this point. In the beginning, when he tried to gaslight the country by insisting that the crowd at his inauguration was the biggest ever or that it was even close to the last couple of inaugurations we all kind of scratched our heads and wondered what kind of bullshit he was playing at. Then when he started appointing people to positions they had no business being in, we started to worry that this was going to go much worse than we had expected.After 11 months of Donald Trump pulling the rhetorical equivalent of whipping his dick out and slapping it on every table he gets near, I think it s time we address what s happening: Dude is a straight-up troll. He gets pleasure out of making other people uncomfortable or even seeing them in distress. He actively thinks up ways to piss off people he doesn t like.Let s set aside just for a moment the fact that that s the least presidential behavior anyone s ever heard of it s dangerous.His latest stunt is one of the grossest yet.Everyone is, by now, used to Trump not talking about things he doesn t want to talk about, and making a huge deal out of things that not many people care about. So it wasn t a huge surprise when the president didn t discuss the Sandy Hook shooting of 2012 on the fifth anniversary of that tragic event. What was a huge surprise was that he not only consciously decided not to invite the victims families to the White House Christmas party this year as they have been invited every year since the massacre took place, along with others who share those concerns.In each of the past 4 years, President Obama invited gun violence prevention activists, gun violence survivors (including the Sandy Hook families) and supportive lawmakers to his Christmas party. Zero gun lobbyists were in attendance. pic.twitter.com/QePW9FtbSh Shannon Watts (@shannonrwatts) December 15, 2017The last sentence of that tweet is important, because that s exactly who Donald Trump did invite to the White House Christmas party. Instead of victims. On the anniversary day.Yesterday was the 5 year mark of the mass shooting at Sandy Hook School, which went unacknowledged by the President. On the same day, he hosted a White House Christmas party to which he invited @NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre. Here he is at the party with @DanPatrick. pic.twitter.com/mUbKCIWGxB Shannon Watts (@shannonrwatts) December 15, 2017Wayne LaPierre is the man who, in response to the Sandy Hook massacre, finally issued a statement that blamed gun violence on music, movies, and video games, and culminated with perhaps the greatest bit of irony any man has ever unintentionally conceived of: Isn t fantasizing about killing people as a way to get your kicks really the filthiest form of pornography? Yes. Yes, it is, Wayne.Anyway, Happy Holidays Merry Christmas from Donald Trump, everyone!Featured image via Alex Wong/Getty Images | 1real |
Cuba to make it easier for Cuban Americans to visit | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Cuba will make it easier for its U.S.-based citizens to travel to the island, Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez said on Saturday, in a gesture to win support from Cuban Americans during a diplomatic crisis over allegations of mysterious health attacks. The U.S. government closes, and Cuba opens, Rodriguez told a meeting of pro-Havana Cuban Americans in Washington. He said Cuban citizens in the United States would no longer need to have a special review of their Cuban passports to rehabilitate them before traveling to the island. Rodriguez said that procedure had become more difficult due to staff shortages at the Cuban embassy after the U.S. government expelled 15 Cuban diplomats this month due to the dispute over the mystery attacks on U.S. personnel in Cuba. It s unacceptable and immoral, from the point of view of the Cuban government, for people to be harmed by a difference between governments, he said. Some Cuban Americans said Havana was simply acceding to demands that it should have acceded to long ago, like allowing them home without a special procedure. While the United States has not formally accused Cuba of carrying out what it says are attacks that have caused hearing loss and cognitive issues in its diplomats, President Donald Trump said last week Havana was responsible. Cuban government officials accused Trump this week of slandering their country. Tension over the alleged attacks, some of which involved high-pitched sounds, came after Trump said in June he wanted to partially roll back the historic detente between the United States and Cuba, ordering tighter restrictions on travel and trade. These have yet to be unveiled. Rodriguez said Cuba was making it easier for the children of Cubans in the United States to attain Cuban nationality and allowing Cuban Americans to travel to the country on cruise ships that embark at two ports on Cuba. Havana will also allow some Cubans who left the country illegally to return, he said. There are roughly 2 million Cubans or Americans of Cuban origin in the United States. One attendee at the event, Andres Pertierra, a U.S.-born citizen with a Cuban father, said he was excited he now qualified for a Cuban passport. These changes inspire gratitude and bring Cubans abroad closer to Cuban government, said the legal assistant. The Cuban government is making sure that it is clear that the weight of responsibility for failure to normalize falls squarely on the shoulders of the Trump administration. | 0fake |
WIKILEAKS REMINDS THE WORLD: “Obama has a history of tapping & hacking his friends and rivals” | Wikileaks founder Julian Assange reminded us in a tweet that former President Obama had a real penchant for wire tapping and/or hacking conversations of world leaders, both rivals and friends : Here s the list of times Obama tapped or hacked conversations of world leaders via Wikileaks:Here is the original tweet where the list of verifiable times Obama did exactly what Trump is accusing him of doing to the Trump Towers while he was campaigning against Hillary. Here s a the link to the actual document:Obama has a history of tapping & hacking his friends and rivals https://t.co/XbwyNSwTXg #NSA #PRISM #Merkel #Sarkozy #BanKiMoon #WTO #Trump pic.twitter.com/5CebcnkFgn WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) March 5, 2017WATCH RT news host discuss Obama s hacking of Merkel s phones:Obama was wiretapping Merkel's phone 4 years, even before she was elected Chancellor! No Surprise he would also #wiretap Trump Tower. #AMJoy pic.twitter.com/Yf8cgI5ZQp Amy Mek (@AmyMek) March 4, 2017 | 1real |
Trump’s Doctor Makes Bizarre Confession (VIDEO) | Donald Trump s doctor didn t follow standard medical procedure when he proclaimed the Republican nominee to be in good health, according to a newly released video. Dr. Harold Bornstein, who has reportedly been Trump s physician for 35 years, confessed that he took only five minutes to write up the assessment of Trump, who he described in the letter as in excellent health.The four-paragraph letter the only medical information released by Trump was written and released in December but has drawn fresh scrutiny in recent days as Trump s allies have questioned Hillary Clinton s health, despite a more detailed two-page letter from her doctor that said she has no serious issues.In his letter, Bornstein said there were no significant medical problems in Trump s history and that a recent examination showed only positive results. If elected, Mr. Trump, I can state unequivocally, will be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency, Bornstein wrote.The letter and Trump s doctor have received renewed scrutiny after the desperate Trump campaign began trafficking in rumor and innuendo about Hillary Clinton s health. Campaign surrogate and former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani raised eyebrows when he urged voters to Google search Clinton illness to pull up conspiracy theories about the former Secretary of State, and Trump himself has been making remarks about Clinton s stamina. Despite the Trump campaigns allegations, Clinton s health has been assessed to be good by a real physician citing an actual examination, compared to Trump s doctor.Trump s doctor claims to be board-certified in internal medicine and gastroenterology, but also made comments in his letter attesting to Trump s mental health how would he have any insight into that?The episode, as with issues of race and religion so far in the election, have shown once again that so many of Trump s attempts to attack Clinton backfire on him due to his odd behavior and the oddity of those he has surrounded himself by.Featured image via YouTube | 1real |
N.F.L.: Here’s What We Learned in Week 1 - The New York Times | ■ The Oakland Raiders defense may need some tightening up, but their offense can keep up with Drew Brees in the Superdome and their coach’s Twitter game is decidedly elite. ■ Jameis Winston of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers completed touchdowns to four different receivers in a win on the road, and no one is asking if Marcus Mariota should have been drafted ahead of him anymore. ■ Life without Marshawn Lynch may be an odd experience for the Seattle Seahawks, who asked Russell Wilson to throw a 43 times, struggled to run the ball, and barely beat the uninspiring Miami Dolphins at home. ■ Ezekiel Elliott should likely have exercised a bit more caution before discussing breaking Eric Dickerson’s rookie rushing record, as the Dallas Cowboys running back had just 51 yards in his debut, averaging 2. 5 yards a carry. ■ The New England Patriots, playing on the road, beat one of the best teams in the N. F. L. without Tom Brady or Rob Gronkowski, and Jimmy Garoppolo completed a pass to himself, so the other teams in the N. F. L. may want to consider giving up. Go here for the complete Week 1 schedule and scores The New England Patriots and Arizona Cardinals are two of the top teams in the N. F. L. so a tight matchup between them on Sunday night made sense until you realized the Patriots were playing without the team’s two best players, Tom Brady and Rob Gronkowski, and their most dominant defender from last season, Chandler Jones, was suited up for the other team. Proving that no individuals are too important when it comes to one of Coach Bill Belichick’s teams, the Patriots outlasted the Cardinals with Jimmy Garoppolo not missing a beat in Brady’s place and the team’s defense working together to limit one of the N. F. L. ’s most potent offensive units. Garoppolo, who threw just four passes last season, completed 24 of 33 against the Cardinals for 264 yards and 1 touchdown, showing a great deal of mobility in the pocket and getting some style points for pulling a trick out of Steve Young’s old play book, catching his own deflected pass and running it for a gain. Down by one point with just under 10 minutes remaining in the game, he led a drive that resulted in Stephen Gostkowski’s field goal that put New England on top for good. Garoppolo was positively Belichickian in his assessment of the win. “There’s plenty of room for improvement,” Garoppolo said. “We’ll look at the film and get it corrected for next week. ” The Cardinals, who never seemed to get into an offensive rhythm despite Larry Fitzgerald scoring the 99th and 100th receiving touchdowns of his career, had a chance to take the lead when Chandler Catanzaro came out for a field goal attempt with 41 seconds remaining, but after a low snap, Catanzaro’s kick sailed wide left, ensuring New England’s victory. Russell Wilson hobbled through much of the second half, but when the Seattle Seahawks needed him most he stepped back into the pocket and found Doug Baldwin in the corner of the end zone to put his team ahead to stay in a win over the Miami Dolphins. It was the first game of the Lynch era, and the Seahawks leaned heavily on Wilson, who threw a 43 passes, many of which came after he had his ankle crushed under the weight of Ndamukong Suh following a sack in the third quarter. Playing with a taped ankle that severely limited his mobility, Wilson did not miss a snap and was able to float the ball over a defensive back into Baldwin’s arms from 2 yards away. He finished the day with 258 yards passing, 1 touchdown and 1 interception. It was a quiet game in favor of the Seahawks after three quarters, but the teams made it interesting from that point forward, with Cassius Marsh, a standout special teams player for Seattle, blocking a field goal, and Ryan Tannehill of the Dolphins engineering an efficient drive that appeared to secure a huge upset win for Miami prior to Wilson finding Baldwin for the . Marcus Peters, a cornerback for the Kansas City Chiefs, held his right fist in the air throughout the playing of the national anthem before his team’s game against the San Diego Chargers on Sunday. Peters, who stood with his arms linked with his teammates, was channeling the Black Power salutes of Tommie Smith and John Carlos at the 1968 Olympics while simultaneously supporting the protest that Colin Kaepernick of the San Francisco 49ers started during the preseason to raise issues of the treatment of minorities. “I salute Colin for what he’s doing for a great cause,” Peters told reporters on Friday. “I’m 100 percent behind him. What’s going on in law enforcement, it does need to change and it does need to change for everybody, not just us as black Americans. ” The Chiefs as a team issued a statement, saying in part “after having a number of thoughtful discussions as a group regarding our representation during the National Anthem, we decided collectively to lock arms as a sign of solidarity. It was our goal to be unified as a team and to be respectful of everyone’s opinions, and the remembrance of . ” The protest of the national anthem has been a hot topic, with many players in Week 1 choosing to help hold the oversize flags to show their patriotism, while several others have voiced support of the issue. In the game on Thursday between the Carolina Panthers and Denver Broncos, Brandon Marshall, a linebacker for the Broncos, kneeled during the anthem in solidarity with Kaepernick, his teammate in college at Nevada. In the Sunday afternoon game between the Seattle Seahawks and Miami Dolphins, the Seahawks linked arms together in a sign of unity while as he had promised, Arian Foster, a Dolphins running back, kneeled. He was joined by his teammates Kenny Stills, Michael Thomas and Jelani Jenkins. The Houston Texans had to temper some of the enthusiasm for the team’s win over the Chicago Bears because of what appeared to be a significant knee injury to Brian Cushing, a linebacker who is among the team’s leaders on defense. Cushing, who has dealt with several knee injuries in the past, went down in the first quarter and did not return. — Keenan Allen, a wide receiver for the San Diego Chargers, suffered a injury to his right knee early in the second quarter. The Sporting News is reporting that Allen tore his ACL, which would be a big blow to the Chargers, who had started the game well but ended up losing to the Kansas City Chiefs in overtime. Allen, who is the team’s best receiver when healthy, already had 6 catches for 63 yards at the time of his injury. Following a touchdown late in the fourth quarter, Coach Jack Del Rio of the Oakland Raiders decided he had no interest in going to overtime against the New Orleans Saints, and instead went for a conversion with just 47 seconds remaining. The upstart Raiders made Del Rio look like a genius, with Derek Carr finding Michael Crabtree for the conversion, and then the Oakland defense held on to secure a victory in New Orleans. “I was thinking ‘we’re here to win, let’s win it right now,’” Del Rio said at a news conference following the game. “That’s why we took some clock there at the end, so they wouldn’t have as much, that’s why we went for two after the score. Everything about our strategy at the end was to win. ” The Raiders, trying to make the playoffs for the first time since the 2002 season, survived a passing game by Drew Brees and a touchdown by Brandin Cooks that was the longest reception in the N. F. L. since 2011. Victor Cruz is back! Facing a crucial situation yards from the Dallas end zone, the Giants turned to a star who was injured and out of the lineup last season. Giants wide receiver Victor Cruz, playing his first game in nearly two years, craftily around and between two Dallas defenders to get open for a touchdown pass that gave the Giants a spirited victory. Here’s how they won. Carson Wentz Makes Browns Pay: The Cleveland Browns felt strongly enough that Carson Wentz was not the answer for the team at quarterback that they traded away the No. 2 pick in this year’s draft rather that select him. After getting a good look at the quarterback in his role as the starter for the Philadelphia Eagles, they may be regretting that decision. Wentz hit the ground running in his N. F. L. career, throwing a touchdown on his first drive and eventually beating the Browns . “This is who he is,” Eagles coach Doug Pederson said after the game. “This is his DNA. He prepared like a veteran and he played that way. His maturity level was outstanding. ” The Browns, who have seemed cursed at the quarterback position since Bernie Kosar was released in 1991, knew that keeping the No. 2 pick in the draft would guarantee them either Jared Goff (who ended up going No. 1 to the Los Angeles Rams) or Wentz, but according to Paul DePodesta, the team’s chief strategy officer, neither player was enticing enough, so the team instead traded the pick to the Eagles for five draft picks. Time will tell if Wentz is an elite quarterback, but in the first game of his career he completed 22 of 37 passes for 278 yards and threw two touchdowns and no interceptions. Late field goal dooms Jets: The scheduling doyens at N. F. L. headquarters did not do the Jets any favors. Five of their first six opponents this season advanced to the playoffs last season, a hazy maze of danger that began Sunday afternoon when the Cincinnati Bengals visited MetLife Stadium. Sure enough, the first game of the season ended in disappointment for the Jets, whose defensive backfield had more seams than a business suit. The Bengals held on for a win as Mike Nugent kicked a field goal with 54 seconds left. Here’s our Jets game story. Packers survive in Jacksonville: The Jaguars and their young quarterback, Blake Bortles, made it difficult, but Aaron Rodgers was too much for them, leading the Packers to a victory. Rodgers threw two touchdown passes and ran for another score. He looked every bit like, well, a league MVP. He extended plays with his feet, escaped sacks and had precision accuracy all over the field. Bortles gave Rodgers a challenge, completing 24 of 39 passes for 320 yards and a touchdown, but he came up short on the Jaguars’ final drive. Osweiler Solid in Texans Debut: Brock Osweiler threw for 231 yards and two touchdowns in his debut with Houston to lead the Texans and their revamped offense to a win over the Chicago Bears on Sunday. Osweiler, who signed to a $72 million contract from Denver in the offseason, was helped by an offense filled with playmakers. He completed passes to eight different receivers, led by rookie pick Will Fuller, who became the first player in franchise history to have 100 yards receiving in a debut with 107 and a touchdown. DeAndre Hopkins added 54 yards and a score and running back Lamar Miller had 106 yards rushing in his first game with the Texans. — Associated Press All times Eastern Tampa Bay 31, Atlanta 24 Baltimore 13, Buffalo 7 Houston 23, Chicago 14 Green Bay 27, Jacksonville 23 Kansas City 33, San Diego 27, OT Oakland 35, New Orleans 34 Cincinnati 23, Jets 22 Philadelphia 29, Cleveland 10 Minnesota 25, Tennessee 16 Seattle 12, Miami 10 N. Y. Giants 20, Dallas 19 Detroit 39, Indianapolis 35 New England 23, Arizona 21 | 0fake |
Corn Pone, Rebooted: Country’s New Humor - The New York Times | NASHVILLE — “The Bobby Bones Show” is the biggest thing in country radio, on nearly 100 stations five mornings a week, and its ringleader, Mr. Bones, 36, likes to take credit for hastening the breakthroughs of a number of acts. Lately, he’s been shining a light on a trend that he helped cultivate — a resurgence of humor in country music, which has made modest hits of albums that let mainstream and alternative country fans feel as if they’re in on the joke. For one week in February, “Redneck ____” by Wheeler Walker Jr. a provocative creation of the comedian Ben Hoffman, was both the No. 1 comedy album and the No. 9 country album. Granger Smith’s “Remington” arrived a month later, featuring jokey numbers by his outsized alter ego, Earl Dibbles Jr. And Mr. Bones’s own band, the Raging Idiots, a jocular duo that also features his show producer Eddie Garcia, recently released its first album, “The Critics Give It Five Stars,” which not only made its debut atop Billboard’s comedy albums chart but landed at No. 4 on the country chart. Country music has never been devoid of comedy: The Grand Ole Opry once featured the winking, rustic humor of Minnie Pearl, Grandpa Jones and Stringbean the Statler Brothers cultivated the rube alter egos Lester Roadhog Moran the Cadillac Cowboys and Alan Jackson cast the comic Jeff Foxworthy in a music video. But at least from an outside perspective, the flirtatious party jams dominating the format in recent years seemed to repel humor. Now country is generating new, knowing ways of poking fun at itself in song. Mike Dungan, the chairman and chief executive of Universal Music Group Nashville, noted that every country songwriting era has had wits like Roger Miller and Tom T. Hall. Brad Paisley has parlayed his drollness into a gig as a host of the Country Music Association Awards and a new one as M. C. for the Wild West Comedy Festival in Nashville. “I think it’s always been there,” Mr. Dungan said. “However, I do believe that in tough times, people want to feel better. I think these types of songs are a really great to what’s going on in your life. ” Mr. Smith, 36, enlarged his audience by capitalizing on the contrast between Granger Smith, a country centrist with a temperate, conversational vocal style, and Earl Dibbles Jr. who packs his bottom lip with tobacco and spins vigorous, nonsensical yarns. The Dibbles persona struck viral gold with a string of YouTube videos. In gentle selections like “Tractor” and “Tailgate Town,” Mr. Smith sentimentalizes sturdy agrarian values. “That’s probably the real Granger, if you will,” he said. The deliberate exaggeration of the Dibbles material is best exemplified by “’Merica,” with its combination of Mötley riffs, banjo rolls and absurd patriotic bluster: “We’re undefeated world war take a cup, raise it up for my Uncle Sam. ” Mr. Bones’s fans have come to expect a similarly affectionate strain of irreverence. Growing up in rural Arkansas, he enjoyed the downhome clowning of Jerry Clower and Ray Stevens, but also liked Adam Sandler’s sophomoric ditties. On the Raging Idiots album, he accentuated his own vocal limitations with guest performances from Carrie Underwood and Mr. Paisley. “I don’t want people to think I’m trying to win best male vocalist at the C. M. A. s,” Mr. Bones said, referring to the Country Music Association Awards. “I can sing just good enough to be funny. ” After spending the first decade of his career in other radio formats and doing comedy on the side, Mr. Bones’s shift to anchoring a Nashville country station generated some skepticism. He and his crew broke with the customary respectful strolls through talking points. “People didn’t want to do the show, because they didn’t know what I would ask,” he said. Occasionally, Mr. Bones would encourage musicians to participate in daft parodies of their hits Florida Georgia Line and Dierks Bentley were among the many acts that obliged. As the show’s ratings surged, Mr. Garcia and Mr. Bones brought their musical act to charity events. “We said if we hit a million bucks, we’d try to do a comedy record,” Mr. Bones said. They raised well past that. Wheeler Walker Jr. who draws an entirely different audience, has an origin story that positions him as a outsider. To hear him tell it, he’s been chewed up and spat out by every label in Nashville, ultimately recording a batch of obscene and Southern rock numbers, the lyrics of each and every one unprintable. “Some of them, this is just me spouting off bad words,” he said, “but sometimes I use my brain a little bit more. ” (The character borrows choice autobiographical details — like hailing from Kentucky — from his creator, Mr. Hoffman, 41, who had a Comedy Central sketch show.) Having Dave Cobb, the Academy of Country Music’s 2016 Producer of the Year, produce “Redneck ____” lent the project weight. Still, it required an unorthodox marketing plan, including partnering with a pornography site to preview the music. Wheeler Walker Jr. who gives interview in character, credited the album’s theatrical bravado to his “ aggression. ” When he recorded it, he said, he was fed up with “my love life, my work life, my family life, and I just let it all out. “A lot of people are having those problems too,” he continued, “and they can listen to my album and it kind of gets it all out of their system. If you’ve got those problems, Florida Georgia Line ain’t gonna help,” he added, referring to the duo who epitomize the “bro country” trend. By far the wittiest critique of bro country came from female voices striving for a mainstream hearing in 2014, when the duo Maddie Tae teasingly inverted bro country tropes with their debut single, “Girl in a Country Song. ” “I think that’s what made the whole song, was the humor,” Maddie Marlow said. “We didn’t want people to think, ‘Oh, they’re just whining.’ We want our point to get across, but also we want people to have fun and relate to it and laugh too. ” These days, cheekiness like Maddie Tae’s — which resurfaced in their singles “Shut Up and Fish” and “Sierra” — is much more common in country than outright comedy is. Luke Bryan is not only country’s most popular entertainer but its biggest target for impersonations by other artists, thanks to his grin and dance moves that play up the silly side of his sex appeal. “He recognizes that as part of what he does, he’s going to draw a little bit of jabbing here and there,” Mr. Dungan said. “Yes, there is a smile to almost everything he does, and I think that’s why he resonates so well. ” The Raging Idiots have a bit called “Fake Luke Bryan,” in which Mr. Garcia apes Mr. Bryan’s unflagging enthusiasm and glottal delivery. But Mr. Bones brushed off the notion that they would have sought the star’s blessing before recording the shtick: “I’ve worked in alternative and pop and sports and . This is by far the nicest, format I’ve been in. ” | 0fake |
Ariana Grande returns to U.S. following Manchester bombing | (Reuters) - Ariana Grande returned to the United States on Tuesday, one day after a suicide bomber killed 22 people at the singer’s concert in Manchester, England, as questions lingered over whether she would continue her European tour. Grande, 23, was seen in photographs posted on the Daily Mail website walking down the steps of a private plane at an airport in her hometown of Boca Raton, Florida, and being met by family members. The Daily Mail images showed the diminutive pop star dressed casually in sweats and appearing downcast as she greeted her boyfriend, the rapper Mac Miller, on the tarmac and getting into a waiting car. Grande had not been seen publicly since an explosion ripped through the packed Manchester Arena at the end of her performance there. Some of the 22 people who died in the attack were teens or young girls. Grande was apparently unharmed. British police have identified the man suspected of carrying out the massacre as 22-year-old Salman Abedi, who was born in Manchester to parents of Libyan origin. Islamic State claimed responsibility for what it called revenge against “Crusaders,” but there appeared to be contradictions in its account of the operation. In her only statement so far, Grande took to Twitter some five hours after the bombing to describe herself as “broken” in the aftermath of the attack. “from the bottom of my heart, i am so so sorry. i don’t have words,” she said in the tweet. Grande was performing in Manchester during the European leg of a tour to promote her third album, “Dangerous Woman,” which also has her scheduled to visit London, Belgium, Poland, Germany, Switzerland and France in the coming weeks. Despite speculation that she would cancel the rest of the tour, no formal announcement had been made as of Tuesday. Grande’s manager, Scooter Braun, did not respond to requests for comment by Reuters. “We mourn the lives of children and loved ones taken by this cowardly act,” Braun said in a statement posted on Twitter on Monday evening. “We ask all of you to hold the victims, their families and all those affected in your hearts and prayers.” Grande, a native of Boca Raton, starred in the Broadway musical “13” and on the Nickelodeon TV series “Victorious” before releasing her solo debut album, “Yours Truly.” Best known for her singles “Problem” and “Break Free,” Grande is credited with having an exceptionally broad vocal range for a pop star. | 0fake |
Trump to choose businessman Hagerty as next U.S. envoy to Japan: source | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President-elect Donald Trump plans to pick businessman William Hagerty as the next U.S. ambassador to Japan, an adviser to Trump’s transition team told Reuters on Wednesday. Japan’s Nikkei news service reported that Trump would soon announce the choice of Hagerty, the director of presidential appointments in his transition team. The adviser who spoke to Reuters confirmed the Nikkei report on condition of anonymity. Hagerty is a Tennessee native who founded a private equity firm, Hagerty Peterson. He spent several years in Japan with the Boston Consulting Group management consultancy and later served in the White House of former President George H.W. Bush. He will replace Caroline Kennedy, who has held the position since 2013. Japan’s chief cabinet secretary, Yoshihide Suga, declined to comment on the report since the choice has yet to be formally announced, saying only that he hoped the new ambassador would be able to develop a friendly U.S.-Japan relationship. Others said that while the extent of Hagerty’s knowledge of diplomacy and regional politics remained unknown and could be a concern, the choice suggests Trump is prioritizing economics in bilateral ties, which may relieve officials concerned by his protectionist stance on trade during the presidential campaign. Japanese companies play a key role in the U.S. economy, employing more than 800,000 American workers. They contributed $78 billion to U.S. exports in 2014, according to the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo. Koichi Hori, the chairman of consulting firm Dream Incubator Inc and a former president of Boston Consulting in Japan, who worked with Hagerty in the early 1990s, termed him a pragmatist who might not always toe Trump’s conservative line on trade. “Rather than doing that, he might advise Trump that if he doesn’t think of other countries more, it ultimately may not benefit the United States,” Hori added. A long-time U.S. resident of Tokyo with knowledge of business and politics who knows Hagerty by reputation, but not personally, said he had a reputation as a “typical management consultant - logical, thoughtful, and has no patience for trade rhetoric.” The news was likely to reassure officials at the Ministry of Economics, Trade and Industry (METI) as well as the Ministry of Finance (MOF), he added. “The boys at the U.S. Defense Department and the Defense Agency may be disappointed because of his lack of experience in the geopolitical aspects of the U.S.-Japan relationship, but METI, MOF and everyone else here in Tokyo should be breathing a sign of relief,” he added. Japan’s Defense Ministry was formerly called the Defense Agency. | 0fake |
DEMOCRAT SENATOR Claims Repeal Of Obamacare Based Only on ‘Hatred of Barack Obama’ [Video] | Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy (Conn.) said Wednesday on MSNBC s Morning Joe that Republican efforts to repeal Obamacare are based on the GOP s hatred of Barack Obama. MSNBC contributor Eddie Glaude asked Murphy what he believes the animating commitment behind the GOP health care bill is and what it would take for him to work in a bipartisan way with Republicans to fix the country s health care system. At this point, I think it s clear the animating commitment is a hatred of Barack Obama, Murphy said. The policy has been pushed to the wayside here. They don t seem tremendously interested in actually crafting something that insures more people or reduces rates. They just want to fulfill this commitment that they made to repeal Obamacare. Murphy went on to say that he has made it very clear he wants to compromise with Republicans on health care. They want, as far as I can tell, flexibility of benefit design. They want something that has some cheaper premiums, less regulations in these exchanges. I m willing to talk to them about that, Murphy said. I m willing to give them some flexibility of benefit design if they re willing to give us some security on these exchanges that Donald Trump won t unwind them. | 1real |
That Time Donald Trump Said Bill Clinton Was The ‘Victim’ Of ‘Unattractive Women’ | Donald Trump is pledging to bring up Bill Clinton s sexual prowess at the second presidential debate. Now that Trump is in the hot seat over a hot mic leak that shows him gleefully admitting to sexual assault, he does what he knows best deflect.In his half assed apology, Trump took responsibility for his comments, saying that a video from 10 years ago does not reflect the man he is now, but said Bill Clinton has done much worse and that Hillary Clinton was complacent in bullying and intimidating his victims.So that the Trump strategy deflect from his admissions of sexual assault by drumming up sins of Bill Clinton from the 1990s to smear Hillary (because women just love it when the wife is blamed for the husband s misgivings). There s only one teeny tiny problem with that, though.I don t necessarily agree with his victims. His victims are terrible. He is really a victim himself. But he put himself in that position.That s Donald Trump, in August 1998, calling Bill Clinton the real victim. In an interview with Fox News Neil Cavuto, the billionaire mogul also trashed Monica Lewinsky, Linda Tripp and Lucianne Goldberg as a really unattractive group and an unattractive cast of characters. The transcripts are as followed:The whole thing, it s just so unattractive. Linda Tripp may be one of the most unattractive human beings I ve ever seen not women, human beings. She s just an unattractive person. This [Lucianne] Goldberg person, her agent or whatever she is, is just a terrible woman. You look at Paula Jones, I mean the whole cast of characters. It s like it s from Hell. It s a terrible group of peopleBut Trump wasn t finished insulting their personal appearances:The whole group, it s truly an unattractive cast of characters Linda Tripp, Lucianne Goldberg I mean, this woman I watch her on television, just vomiting. She is so bad. The whole group Paula Jones, Lewinsky it s just a really unattractive group. And I m not just talking about physical, but I am also talking about physical.Trump then went on to say that had Lewinsky and Jones been supermodels, they would be more pleasant to watch. Once again, Trump proves that he does not care about women unless they are visually appealing (which is completely subjective).But now, all of a sudden, he s their unsung hero against abuser Bill Clinton and his enabling wife, Hillary?Gee, what changed?If one thinks Trump truly cares about Jones, Lewinsky, Brodderick, Flowers or any of Clinton s alleged victims, they should keep in mind that Trump only cares about their appearances and their appearances discount them and he thinks Bill is the real victim.Do not be deceived America. This man will say anything and do anything to get elected.Featured image via Ethan Miller/Getty Images | 1real |
Thanksgiving at Standing Rock | ( Flickr / CC 2.0 )
I’m currently reading a book entitled “ Learning to Die in the Anthropocene ,” written by Iraq veteran Roy Scranton, who basically tells us that human beings have pretty much screwed themselves due to the vast and rapidly-approaching nightmare of climate change. If this book was designed to scare the holy shite out of people, it certainly has succeeded.
According to Scranton, “Human civilization has thrived in what has been the most stable climate interval in 650,00 years. Thanks to carbon-fueled industrial civilization, that interval is over.” Boom.
But is anybody doing anything to stop this nightmare from happening? Only a few people are—mainly a small-but-courageous Indian tribe at Standing Rock, North Dakota. And what is America’s reaction to this heroic stand against death by carbon? We have just spent hundreds of thousands of tax-payer dollars trying to tear-gas them, harass them, arrest them, pepper-spray them and shoot rubber bullets at them. Way to go America! Or not.
Advertisement Square, Site wide
Thank goodness for the Standing Rock Sioux. Like it or not, they are protecting us. They are standing in place instead of us. They are bravely standing in front of a hurricane of climate-death and are doing it in our name. And all we do to thank them is to pay for the militarized police’s tear gas, dogs and bullets that attack them.
I propose another way to thank the Standing Rock Sioux. Let’s all go to Standing Rock this Thanksgiving—and show them that we really do have something to be truly thankful for.
PS: If you can’t figure out how to get all the way to the Standing Rock Reservation, then consider having your Thanksgiving dinner in front of the Capitol building in Bismarck instead. Can’t make it there either? How about Thanksgiving dinner in front of the US Congress or the White House.
PPS: Standing Rock protestors, Black Lives Matter, various Chicano movements and Occupy are practically the only true Americans these days—Americans who are courageous enough to actually stand up to the US military-industrial complex that is gobbling up the rest of us alive. We should honor these protestors instead of bombing them with tear gas and attacking them with dogs.
The rest of us whine and grieve that we are losing everything—but do nothing to stop it and just go along.
PPPS: Aside from being victims of the climate-change hurricane that is now bearing down upon us post-haste, Standing Rock is also just more collateral damage right now (along with Syria, Palestine, Ukraine, Yemen, Libya, Iraq, Nigeria, etc.) in the neo-con “wars” for oil. But who knows who the next “collateral damage” will be? Probably us.
Jane Stillwater is a freelance journalist, war correspondent, blogger, political Cassandra and author of “ Bring Your Own Flak Jacket: Helpful Tips for Touring Today’s Middle East ,” now available on Amazon.com. Her latest motto is “Stop Wall Street and War Street from destroying our world.” TAGS: | 1real |
Anderson Cooper On Melania’s Cyber-Bullying Speech: Isn’t The Problem With HER Family? (VIDEO) | Google Pinterest Digg Linkedin Reddit Stumbleupon Print Delicious Pocket Tumblr
Melania Trump gave her first campaign speech on Thursday and in it, she said that if she became first lady, she would work to improve social media which she says has become “too tough and too mean.”
Naturally, the internet had a field day with this news, considering her husband is best known for his hate speech and 3 am Twitter-tantrums, where he regularly demeans and insults the president and first lady, the Clintons, and countless others.
In an interview with Trump’s campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, Thursday night, Anderson Cooper questioned her about Melania’s speech:
“Does this start at home? Isn’t the problem at her own dinner table?”
Kellyanne did what Kellyanne always does and brushed it off, saying that “No, it’s not at the dinner table. The fact that her husband is running for president and defends himself sometimes or tweets things out…”
But Anderson didn’t let her finish that statement and gave her a dose of truth that she won’t soon forget.
Watch:
Featured Image via video screenshot Share this Article! | 1real |
Obama’s Secret to Surviving the White House Years: Books - The New York Times | Not since Lincoln has there been a president as fundamentally shaped — in his life, convictions and outlook on the world — by reading and writing as Barack Obama. Last Friday, seven days before his departure from the White House, Mr. Obama sat down in the Oval Office and talked about the indispensable role that books have played during his presidency and throughout his life — from his peripatetic and sometimes lonely boyhood, when “these worlds that were portable” provided companionship, to his youth when they helped him to figure out who he was, what he thought and what was important. During his eight years in the White House — in a noisy era of information overload, extreme partisanship and reactions — books were a sustaining source of ideas and inspiration, and gave him a renewed appreciation for the complexities and ambiguities of the human condition. “At a time when events move so quickly and so much information is transmitted,” he said, reading gave him the ability to occasionally “slow down and get perspective” and “the ability to get in somebody else’s shoes. ” These two things, he added, “have been invaluable to me. Whether they’ve made me a better president I can’t say. But what I can say is that they have allowed me to sort of maintain my balance during the course of eight years, because this is a place that comes at you hard and fast and doesn’t let up. ” [ Read a transcript of the interview with Barack Obama ] The writings of Lincoln, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Gandhi and Nelson Mandela, Mr. Obama found, were “particularly helpful” when “what you wanted was a sense of solidarity,” adding “during very difficult moments, this job can be very isolating. ” “So sometimes you have to sort of hop across history to find folks who have been similarly feeling isolated, and that’s been useful. ” There is a handwritten copy of the Gettysburg Address in the Lincoln Bedroom, and sometimes, in the evening, Mr. Obama says, he would wander over from his home office to read it. Like Lincoln, Mr. Obama taught himself how to write, and for him, too, words became a way to define himself, and to communicate his ideas and ideals to the world. In fact, there is a clear, shining line connecting Lincoln and King, and President Obama. In speeches like the ones delivered in Charleston and Selma, he has followed in their footsteps, putting his mastery of language in the service of a sweeping historical vision, which, like theirs, situates our current struggles with race and injustice in a historical continuum that traces how far we’ve come and how far we have yet to go. It’s a vision of America as an unfinished project — a continuing, journey to make the promises of the Declaration of Independence real for everyone — rooted both in Scripture and the possibility of redemption, and a more existential belief that we can continually remake ourselves. And it’s a vision shared by the civil rights movement, which overcame obstacle after obstacle, and persevered in the face of daunting odds. Mr. Obama’s long view of history and the optimism (combined with a stirring reminder of the hard work required by democracy) that he articulated in his farewell speech last week are part of a faith, grounded in his reading, in his knowledge of history (and its unexpected zigs and zags) and his embrace of artists like Shakespeare who saw the human situation entire: its follies, cruelties and mad blunders, but also its resilience, decencies and acts of grace. The playwright’s tragedies, he says, have been “foundational for me in understanding how certain patterns repeat themselves and play themselves out between human beings. ” Presidential biographies also provided context, countering the tendency to think “that whatever’s going on right now is uniquely disastrous or amazing or difficult,” he said. “It just serves you well to think about Roosevelt trying to navigate through World War II. ” Even books initially picked up as escape reading like the Hugo apocalyptic epic “The Problem” by the Chinese writer Liu Cixin, he said, could unexpectedly put things in perspective: “The scope of it was immense. So that was fun to read, partly because my problems with Congress seem fairly petty — not something to worry about. Aliens are about to invade!” In his searching 1995 book “Dreams From My Father,” Mr. Obama recalls how reading was a crucial tool in sorting out what he believed, dating back to his teenage years, when he immersed himself in works by Baldwin, Ellison, Hughes, Wright, DuBois and Malcolm X in an effort “to raise myself to be a black man in America. ” Later, during his last two years in college, he spent a focused period of deep and study, methodically reading philosophers from St. Augustine to Nietzsche, Emerson to Sartre to Niebuhr, to strip down and test his own beliefs. To this day, reading has remained an essential part of his daily life. He recently gave his daughter Malia a Kindle filled with books he wanted to share with her (including “One Hundred Years of Solitude,” “The Golden Notebook” and “The Woman Warrior”). And most every night in the White House, he would read for an hour or so late at night — reading that was deep and ecumenical, ranging from contemporary literary fiction (the last novel he read was Colson Whitehead’s “The Underground Railroad”) to classic novels to groundbreaking works of nonfiction like Daniel Kahneman’s “Thinking, Fast and Slow” and Elizabeth Kolbert’s “The Sixth Extinction. ” Such books were a way for the president to shift mental gears from the briefs and policy papers he studied during the day, a way “to get out of my own head,” a way to escape the White House bubble. Some novels helped him to better “imagine what’s going on in the lives of people” across the country — for instance, he found that Marilynne Robinson’s novels connected him emotionally to the people he was meeting in Iowa during the 2008 campaign, and to his own grandparents, who were from the Midwest, and the small town values of hard work and honesty and humility. Other novels served as a kind of foil — something to argue with. V. S. Naipaul’s novel “A Bend in the River,” Mr. Obama recalls, “starts with the line ‘The world is what it is men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it.’ And I always think about that line and I think about his novels when I’m thinking about the hardness of the world sometimes, particularly in foreign policy, and I resist and fight against sometimes that very cynical, more realistic view of the world. And yet, there are times where it feels as if that may be true. ” Writing was key to his thinking process, too: a tool for sorting through “a lot of crosscurrents in my own life — race, class, family. And I genuinely believe that it was part of the way in which I was able to integrate all these pieces of myself into something relatively whole. ” Mr. Obama taught himself to write as a young man by keeping a journal and writing short stories when he was a community organizer in Chicago — working on them after he came home from work and drawing upon the stories of the people he met. Many of the tales were about older people, and were informed by a sense of disappointment and loss: “There is not a lot of Jack Kerouac young kid on the make discovering stuff,” he says. “It’s more melancholy and reflective. ” That experience underscored the power of empathy. An outsider himself — with a father from Kenya, who left when he was 2, and a mother from Kansas, who took him to live for a time in Indonesia — he could relate to many of the people he met in the churches and streets of Chicago, who felt dislocated by change and isolation, and he took to heart his boss’s observation that “the thing that brings people together to share the courage to take action on behalf of their lives is not just that they care about the same issues, it’s that they have shared stories. ” This lesson would become a cornerstone of the president’s vision of an America where shared concerns — simple dreams of a decent job, a secure future for one’s children — might bridge differences and divisions. After all, many people saw their own stories in his — an American story, as he said in his keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention possible “in no other country on Earth. ” In today’s polarized environment, where the internet has let people increasingly retreat to their own silos (talking only to folks, who amplify their certainties and biases) the president sees novels and other art (like the musical “Hamilton”) as providing a kind of bridge that might span usual divides and “a reminder of the truths under the surface of what we argue about every day. ” He points out, for instance, that the fiction of Junot Díaz and Jhumpa Lahiri speaks “to a very particular contemporary immigration experience,” but at the same time tell stories about “longing for this better place but also feeling displaced” — a theme central to much of American literature, and not unlike books by Philip Roth and Saul Bellow that are “steeped with this sense of being an outsider, longing to get in, not sure what you’re giving up. ” Mr. Obama entered office as a writer, and he will soon return to a private life as a writer, planning to work on his memoirs, which will draw on journals he’s kept in the White House (“but not with the sort of discipline that I would have hoped for”). He has a writer’s sensibility — an ability to be in the moment while standing apart as an observer, a novelist’s eye and ear for detail, and a precise but elastic voice capable of moving easily between the lyrical and the vernacular and the profound. He had lunch last week with five novelists he admires — Dave Eggers, Mr. Whitehead, Zadie Smith, Mr. Díaz and Barbara Kingsolver. He not only talked with them about the political and media landscape, but also talked shop, asking how their book tours were going and remarking that he likes to write first drafts, long hand, on yellow legal pads. Mr. Obama says he is hoping to eventually use his presidential center website “to widen the audience for good books” — something he’s already done with regular lists of book recommendations — and then encourage a public “conversation about books. ” “At a time,” he says, “when so much of our politics is trying to manage this clash of cultures brought about by globalization and technology and migration, the role of stories to unify — as opposed to divide, to engage rather than to marginalize — is more important than ever. ” | 0fake |
U.S. Commerce Secretary wants NAFTA autos content above 70 percent: union chief | MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross wants more than 70 percent of North American content in vehicles built in the United States, Canada and Mexico under a renegotiated NAFTA trade deal, the head of Canada s largest private sector union said on Friday. Jerry Dias, national president of Unifor, told reporters he suggested in a recent meeting with Ross that the level be raised to 70 percent from the current 62.5 percent, and that the U.S. commerce secretary suggested a more aggressive level. Ross has long advocated strengthening the rules of origin for the auto industry as a way to bring back automotive production from Asia and other non-NAFTA countries. Negotiations to revamp the North American Free Trade Agreement are in their second round this weekend in Mexico City, where rules of origin are expected to be discussed. U.S. negotiators, however, may not reveal specific rules of origin targets until later rounds, according to auto industry lobbyists. In fairness to Wilbur, he was more aggressive than I was, Dias said of Ross desired North American content level. Dias said he thought that a 70 percent rule would be a step in the right direction for an industry whose jobs have migrated from the United States and Canada to Mexico, and would help shift production of some automotive electronics and other parts from Asia and Europe back to North America. A spokesman for Ross in Washington could not immediately be reached for comment. Dias said tougher NAFTA rules of origin would only be a small part of restoring manufacturing jobs, and that far stronger labor standards were needed to boost wages in Mexico that are far below those in the United States and Canada. He said he agreed with U.S. President Donald Trump s threat to terminate NAFTA if it cannot be improved enough. NAFTA has been a disaster for workers in Canada, Mexico and the United States. So when he threatens to walk away from it, that s OK. So now we need to reconfigure how we fix things, he said. At the same time, Dias said that Trump was not an ally of unions, describing him as batshit crazy. | 0fake |
Fed Holds on Raising Rates, Fears Rising Dollar | By Tom Luongo The Federal Reserve’s Open Market Committee chose not to raise interest rates six days out from an election. The statement was also... | 1real |
Venezuela's Maduro says 'terrorists' stole weapons from military unit | CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuelan leftist President Nicolas Maduro said on Tuesday that terrorists had broken into a National Guard unit over the weekend and stolen weapons, the latest sign of volatility in the oil-rich country convulsed by a profound economic crisis. Oscar Perez, a rogue Venezuelan police pilot wanted for lobbing grenades and shooting at government buildings in June, claimed responsibility for the attack, which he called Operation Genesis. A video posted on Perez s YouTube account shows armed, masked men taking control of military barracks under cover of night. They smash photos of Maduro and his predecessor, the late Hugo Chavez, handcuff around a dozen soldiers and berate them for supporting dictatorship in Venezuela. You yourselves are dying of hunger. Why have you not done anything, given you have weapons? Why do you keep protecting these drug-trafficking dictators? the assailants shout at gagged soldiers crouching on the floor of what appears to be a bathroom. Soon we ll win the war ... so that Venezuela can be free, says Perez, under the cover of a black balaclava. His Twitter account later posted a purported summary by authorities of the attack. The summary says some 49 armed men stole around 26 Kalashnikov AK-103 s and over 3,000 munitions for the rifles, as well as pistols, in Miranda state near Caracas during the early hours of Monday. Reuters was not able to independently confirm details of the attack. The Information Ministry did not respond to a request for comment. An action film star who portrays himself as a James Bond cum-Rambo figure on social media, Perez has added surreal twists to Venezuela s long-running political drama. He rose to fame in June after hijacking a police helicopter flying over Caracas center. He fired shots at and lobbed grenades on the Interior Ministry and the Supreme Court to fight what he said was a tyrannical government. He went into hiding after the attack, only to pop up two weeks later at an opposition vigil for anti-government protesters killed during demonstrations that rocked the country earlier this year. Perez s latest offensive highlights instability in Venezuela, an OPEC member state heaving under malnutrition, disease and the world s steepest inflation rate. The opposition has long appealed to the military, historically a powerbroker in Venezuela, for help. Maduro on Tuesday denounced the attackers, whom he did not name, as terrorists sent by his ideological enemy the United States. Wherever they appear, I ve told the armed forces: Fire at the terrorist groups! he said during a speech on state television, as he blamed opposition groups in Miami for orchestrating the raid. Do these people think they can attack a unit of the armed forces to steal some guns and threaten democracy and that that s going to be tolerated? Zero tolerance! Maduro said. The military has played a key role in government since Chavez - himself a former military officer - took office in 1999 promising to bring greater equality to Venezuela, home to the world s largest oil reserves. The top brass continues to publicly profess loyalty to Maduro s government. Critics say juicy government contracts, corruption and contraband mean that many military officials want Maduro to stay in office and fear persecution should the opposition take power. Discontent is higher among lower-tier officials, who are often sent to control rowdy protests and are paid the equivalent of just a handful of U.S. dollars a month. | 0fake |
Pence says decision to fire Comey not connected to Russia probe | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Vice President Mike Pence said on Wednesday FBI Director James Comey was fired to restore confidence in the law enforcement agency and not because of any connection to its probe of possible Russian meddling in the U.S. presidential election. “That was not what this was about,” Pence told reporters at the U.S. Capitol when asked whether President Donald Trump’s decision to fire Comey was related to the Russia investigation. “The president took strong and decisive leadership here to put the safety and security of the American people first.” | 0fake |
WOW! STATE DEPARTMENT Lies Again About The Big Lie That The Benghazi Attack Was Caused By A Video | Watch this State Department spokesperson tap dance around the big lie that the Benghazi attack was caused by a video. These people are evil! | 1real |
Here’s Your Handy List Of Lies Lying Liar Mike Pence Told During The VP Debate | It is widely believed that GOP vice presidential nominee Governor Mike Pence of Indiana won the one and only vice presidential debate of the season Tuesday night. After all, he was calm and smooth in the face of attack after attack from his opponent, Democratic presidential nominee Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia. However, there s just one VERY BIG problem there: Pence flat-out lied throughout the debate. Well, this is likely something that people are just casual, general election political observers don t know. But, certainly pundits and political nerds knew this right away, and the non-partisan fact-checking operation Politifact was ready to call Pence out on his many, many lies. Here are just a few highlights:Pence: Hillary Clinton failed to renegotiate a status of forces agreement. We rated this claim Mostly False. In 2011, the Obama administration was negotiating with the Iraqi government to give American troops immunity prosecution by Iraqis a touchy political issue.There s debate on whether the Americans could have worked out a deal, but Pence is wrong to suggest Clinton is to blame. The key decisions and discussions took place between the White House itself and Iraqi leaders.Pence: They want to expand (Obamacare) into a single-payer program. Clinton and Kaine have proposed a public option a government-sponsored insurance plan but they have not proposed single-payer. Clinton has consistently resisted going in that direction and instead proposes to work to prevent the repeal of Obamacare and try to improve on it.Pence s claim is Mostly False.Pence: Donald Trump never said that more nations should get nuclear weapons.Mostly False. Trump has said some countries, namely Japan and South Korea, might be better off if they were to develop nuclear weapons, given their proximity to North Korea. However, he has also said often in the same interview that he opposes nuclear proliferation in general.Pence: We delivered $400 million in cash as a ransom payment for Americans held by the radical mullahs in Tehran.This ransom line, which we ve previously heard from Trump, is Mostly False. Iran received the payment on the same day that American prisoners were released, but experts said this was not ransom. The United States owed Iran the money as part of a decades-long financial dispute.Pence: Less than 10 cents on the dollar in the Clinton Foundation has gone to charitable causes. This is a repeated Republican talking point and it s inaccurate. While it s true that the foundation gives away in grants a small fraction of its resources, about 87 percent of its expenses go toward services it provides directly.And that s just a few. The entire analysis of the truthfulness of the vice presidential candidates claims can be found here at Politifact.Overall, Mike Pence had to walk a very difficult tight rope Tuesday night. While he might have won when it comes to a calm, cool style, he failed miserably on substance. Perhaps that is because when it comes down to it, his running mate is a racist, misogynist, pathological liar and a dangerous demagogue who should never be anywhere near the Oval Office. To that end, Pence s strategy seemed to be to insist that the more outrageous things that Donald Trump has said throughout this horrific travesty of a presidential campaign aren t true, and to run away from clearly indefensible positions. Or maybe he s just drank the Kool-Aid they regularly serve up at Trump Tower, and actually thinks he is telling the truth and being reasonable.Either way, it s insanity. Thank goodness for fact-checkers to help set the American people straight in this nightmare of a presidential election season.Featured image via Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images | 1real |
New Trump travel order expected in coming days, Pence says | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump plans to finalize a new order limiting travel to the United States in the coming days, his vice president said on Wednesday, after federal courts blocked the administration’s earlier travel ban. A White House source had previously said the new order was likely to be announced on Wednesday. More than two dozen lawsuits were filed in U.S. courts against the Jan. 27 travel ban, which temporarily barred entry to the United States for people from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen, as well as halting the U.S. refugee program. The ban was suspended by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, ruling in a case brought by Washington state. The Trump administration then said it would produce a new order. “They’re putting out the finishing touches on that executive order. It should be out in the next few days,” Vice President Mike Pence told CBS program “This Morning.” The original order triggered chaos at airports as people, including legal residents known as green card holders, were temporarily blocked from entering the country and federal agencies tried to interpret the new guidelines. The administration has said it is likely the new directive will exclude legal permanent residents, making it harder for opponents to challenge the ban. Pence did not elaborate on the revised directive. The Associated Press, citing unidentified U.S. officials, reported late on Tuesday that the new order will remove Iraq from the list of countries whose citizens face a temporary travel ban. | 0fake |
South Korea to announce approval of environment report for THAAD deployment on Monday: official | SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea s environment ministry will announce on Monday its approval of an environmental assessment report for the deployment of a U.S. anti-missile defense system in the country, a ministry official told Reuters. South Korea said in June that it will hold off installing remaining components of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) until it completes an assessment of the system s impact on the environment. The ministry will hold a briefing on the decision at 3:30 p.m. (0630 GMT) on Monday, the official said. | 0fake |
GENERAL BOYKIN On Gender Neutral Bathrooms: “…the first man that walks in my daughter’s bathroom, he ain’t going to have to worry about surgery.” | General Boykin spoke at The Awakening 2016 conference and had this to say about the hot topic of gender neutral bathrooms: | 1real |
Chris Matthews Tells the Truth About Hillary Clinton | You know what Hillary Clinton absolutely despises? Can’t stand? Gives her migraines?
Free speech and freedom of the press.
And here’s why: people might just say what they think about her. And….it’s not good!
*gasp!*
Despite the team effort of the Clintons and CNN to censor any story line that cast Hillary in a negative light, well-known and informed individuals are standing up and speaking out.
MSNBC’s Chris Matthews is the latest to do so.
According to Breitbart :
Thursday on MSNBC’s “Hardball,” host Chris Matthews said, it’s the Clintons’ “pattern” to raise money “hand over fist” using the White House like a “Motel 6” and that will not change if Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton wins in November…
…“You know what I think? I’m going to be more judgmental than Beth who’s a straight reporter. I’ll make a judgment. Every time I watch a politician engage in a certain pattern of behavior before they go to the White House, they continue to engage in that pattern afterwards. People don’t change because we swear them into the White House. They become that person big-time. And the Clintons were raising money like this hand over hand, hand over fist, back in 1996, using—we called it Motel 6. They were hoarding them in, pulling them in by train loads of contributors and then letting them sit in the Lincoln bedroom for a while and charging them by the hour. You can still vote for Hillary Clinton, but remember, you’re getting this as part of the package, because that’s been their pattern.”
“People don’t change because we swear them into the White House.”
Let that sink in for just a moment.
The Clintons will not shut down the Clinton Foundation; they will not stop using White House bedrooms as a Motel 6; they will not stop the horrific behavior they are best known for.
C, after all, stands for corruption, conspiracy, and Clinton.
The Clintons have never been serving for the public good but for the Clinton good.
If the Clintons have their way, C will stand for censorship soon. | 1real |
(VIDEO) RAND PAUL AND CHRIS CHRISTIE GO AT IT OVER PRIVACY RIGHTS AND THE NSA | THIS WAS A VERY AWKWARD MOMENT BUT THE BEST PART IS WHEN RAND PAUL CALLS OUT CHRISTIE FOR HUGGING OBAMA: | 1real |
Shadow of Plea Deal for David Petraeus Loomed Over Hillary Clinton Email Case - The New York Times | WASHINGTON — As F. B. I. lawyers weighed whether to recommend criminal charges over Hillary Clinton’s private email server, one recent controversy loomed large over their decision: the plea deal reached last year by David H. Petraeus, the retired general and C. I. A. director, for giving highly classified information to a woman with whom he had an affair. James B. Comey, the F. B. I. director, said Tuesday that in assessing the Clinton case and looking at past cases on the handling of classified information, “we cannot find a case that would support bringing criminal charges on these facts. ” He did not mention Mr. Petraeus by name, but Mr. Comey and other F. B. I. officials were known to be deeply upset by the Justice Department’s willingness to let Mr. Petraeus plead to a misdemeanor charge in the case. That decision complicated the Clinton investigation enormously for the F. B. I. because the case against Mrs. Clinton appeared much weaker to them than the case against Mr. Petraeus. In the Petraeus case, the retired general acknowledged in a taped interview that he knew that some of the “black book” journals he gave to his mistress, Paula Broadwell, for a book she was writing were “highly classified,” according to court documents. He then lied to F. B. I. investigators, denying that he gave her any classified information. In contrast, Mr. Comey said in the Clinton case that “we did not find clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information. ” Mr. Comey and the F. B. I. had pushed for felony charges against Mr. Petraeus for mishandling classified information and then lying about it. But Eric H. Holder Jr. then the attorney general, overruled Mr. Comey and reduced the charge to a misdemeanor, sparing Mr. Petraeus any jail time. While one case does not serve as binding precedent for the next, prosecutors and F. B. I. agents said that Mr. Petraeus’s sentence made it harder to argue that Ms. Clinton should face charges, barring some new revelation. | 0fake |
Rallying in North Carolina, Donald Trump Formally Introduces James Mattis - The New York Times | FAYETTEVILLE, N. C. — Donald J. Trump formally introduced Gen. James N. Mattis as his choice for defense secretary Tuesday night, appearing side by side with him during a “thank you” rally in this heavily military community, home to the Army Special Operations Command and the 82nd Airborne Division. To a roar in the Crown Coliseum, Mr. Trump called General Mattis “one of the most effective generals that we’ve had in many, many decades” and the living embodiment of the Marine Corps motto, “semper fidelis. ” He vowed that with General Mattis, nicknamed Mad Dog, leading the Pentagon, America would rebuild its military. “Mad Dog plays no games, right?” Mr. Trump asked the cheering crowd. The rally was the second of several large events that Mr. Trump is holding before his inauguration next month. In Cincinnati last week, he reprised the brash and biting tone of his presidential campaign and boasted about his victory over Hillary Clinton. But for North Carolinians hoping to see that performance again, Mr. Trump was more restrained. He followed the teleprompter, recapping the agenda he intends to pursue in office, including repealing the Affordable Care Act, stopping illegal immigration, renegotiating trade deals and bringing jobs back to the country from overseas. He barely lashed out at the news media, as he usually does, but he did brag about winning North Carolina, a state that political pundits had repeatedly predicted would support Mrs. Clinton. The location of the rally — a stadium not far from Fort Bragg, a vast military base housing more than 50, 000 personnel — gave Mr. Trump an opportunity to emphasize his support for the armed forces and to lavish praise upon General Mattis, whom he has compared favorably to Gen. George S. Patton, the famed World War II officer. For the first 15 minutes of his address, Mr. Trump outlined his approach to foreign policy, saying he would “engage the use of military forces when it’s in the vital national security interests of the United States. ” He promised to make the military stronger than it has ever been, but said that under his leadership, the country would “stop racing to topple foreign regimes that we know nothing about. ” “This destructive cycle of intervention and chaos must finally come to an end,” he said. The offered few details about how his approach would play out, though he said he would quickly move to eliminate the automatic military spending cuts that Congress and President Obama reluctantly embraced several years ago to control spending and reduce the deficit. He also suggested that the United States would seek to strengthen alliances around the world that help prevent conflicts. “Any nation that shares these goals will be our partner in this mission,” he said. The crowd cheered Mr. Trump when he vowed to improve health care for the nation’s veterans. “It will be the duty of my administration to make sure we protect those who protect us,” he said. Even before he takes office, Mr. Trump, who said once during the campaign that he knew more than the nation’s generals, is seizing the opportunity to assume the mantle of commander in chief. On Saturday, he is planning to attend the annual football game, a tradition often observed by the sitting occupant of the White House. A spokesman said Mr. Trump, like the presidents before him, would sit in the stands on both sides during the game, which is the annual pinnacle of a fierce rivalry. Mr. Trump began the rally by inviting General Mattis onto the stage, where the general expressed gratitude for the chance to serve again and said he hoped Congress would give him the waiver he needs to be the Pentagon’s civilian leader. He retired from the Marines in 2013, and federal law requires a waiting period between active duty and serving as defense secretary. “You’ll get that waiver, right?” Mr. Trump said when he came back to the microphone. “If you didn’t get that waiver, there will be such a lot of angry people. ” Republicans in Congress moved on Tuesday to use a stopgap spending bill to pave the way for General Mattis to receive the waiver. The spending measure, which was unveiled Tuesday night and must be approved by Friday to avoid a government shutdown, contains language that would speed up the consideration of legislation granting the waiver early next year. On the same day that Mr. Trump focused on the military in North Carolina, Mr. Obama traveled to Tampa, Fla. where he thanked service members at MacDill Air Force Base and delivered a speech on his administration’s approach to counterterrorism. For Mr. Trump, the visit to Fayetteville was a triumphant return to a state that was critical to his election victory and that the Clinton campaign had thought it could win. While he did not spend much time Tuesday night reliving his win, Mr. Trump could hardly resist going off script to get a few cheers. “We won Ohio. We won Iowa by a massive number, 10 points,” he said. “Then we went down and we won Florida. ‘We have breaking news: Donald Trump wins Florida. Donald Trump wins North Carolina. ’” That brought a roar from the crowd, and Mr. Trump added: “We won so many states. We won 30 states, 32 states. We won so much, and we just kept winning. ” The is scheduled to keep traveling in the days ahead. He will hold a rally in Des Moines on Thursday and will go to Grand Rapids, Mich. on Friday. More rallies are possible in the coming weeks, officials said. Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign is paying for the rallies, according to a spokesman for the transition. Campaign experts said that was allowed, and that candidates often used campaign funds to pay for events that took place between the election and inauguration. | 0fake |
Trump expected to name former Goldman banker Mnuchin for Treasury: source | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President-elect Donald Trump is expected to name former Goldman Sachs partner and Hollywood financier Steven Mnuchin as his nominee for Treasury secretary, a source said on Tuesday, putting a Wall Street veteran in the top U.S. economic Cabinet post. Mnuchin, who was Trump’s presidential campaign finance chairman, could be named as early as Wednesday, said a Republican source close to the decision. Mnuchin was chosen over several high-profile candidates, including JPMorgan Chase Chairman Jamie Dimon and Republican U.S. Representative Jeb Hensarling, chairman of the powerful House Financial Services Committee. Mnuchin is the first person with extensive Wall Street experience to head the Treasury since his former boss, Henry Paulson, the former Goldman Sachs chief executive who served under President George W. Bush and steered Treasury through the chaotic initial stages of the 2008-2009 financial crisis. The current Treasury secretary, Jack Lew, worked for two years at Citigroup but has spent most of his career in government or academia. The selection of Mnuchin was first reported by The New York Times. A relatively little-known but successful private equity investor and hedge fund manager, Mnuchin spent 17 years at Goldman Sachs before leaving in 2002, when he launched Dune Capital Management. With Dune, Mnuchin has invested in movies produced by Rupert Murdoch’s 20th Century Fox and Time Warner Inc’s Warner Bros, including blockbusters “Avatar,” “Mad Max: Fury Road” and “Suicide Squad.” The son of a Goldman Sachs partner who became an art dealer, Mnuchin worked hard to step outside his father’s shadow and make a name for himself, former colleagues said, rising to become the firm’s chief information officer in 1999. “He wanted to prove that he was there on the merits,” said a former Goldman colleague, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Mnuchin’s experience running Goldman’s mortgage-backed bond trading desk would later prove valuable when an opportunity arose in 2009 to buy the deeply discounted assets of failed California mortgage lender IndyMac Bank from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation during the financial crisis. He assembled an investor group that included hedge fund manager John Paulson to buy the assets for $1.55 billion, and moved to Los Angeles. After rebranding the operation OneWest Bank, Mnuchin built it with other assets and professional sports team sponsorships into Southern California’s largest bank, with 73 branches and $23 billion in assets. His group sold OneWest to CIT Group Inc last year for $3.4 billion. The bank came under fire for its foreclosure practices as housing advocacy groups accused it of being too quick to foreclose on struggling homeowners. In 2011, dozens of demonstrators descended on Mnuchin’s $26.5 million home in the wealthy Bel Air neighborhood to protest OneWest’s eviction tactics, according to the Los Angeles Times. This month, two housing groups filed a complaint asking the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to investigate complaints that OneWest engaged in discriminatory “redlining” practices against black and Latino communities. Mnuchin must be confirmed by the Senate and the top Democrat on the chamber’s Finance Committee signaled he may be in for tough questioning. “Given Mr. Mnuchin’s history of profiting off the victims of predatory lending, I look forward to asking him how his Treasury Department would work for Americans who are still waiting for the economic recovery to show up in their communities,” Democratic Senator Ron Wyden said in a statement. Although Mnuchin has a reputation for being a behind-the-scenes player in Hollywood, he appears on screen in the 2016 film “Rules Don’t Apply,” according to the IMDB movie database. The drama, which opened in theaters on Nov. 23, stars Warren Beatty, who also wrote and directed the film. | 0fake |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.