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Asian nations pulled into China's orbit as Trump puts America first | MANILA (Reuters) - Across Asia, more and more countries are being pulled into Beijing’s orbit, with the timid stance adopted by Southeast Asian nations on the South China Sea at a weekend summit a clear sign this fundamental geostrategic shift is gathering momentum. U.S. President Donald Trump’s flurry of calls at the weekend to the leaders of the Philippines, Thailand and Singapore might cheer those who fear his predecessor Barack Obama’s “pivot” to Asia has been abandoned in favor of an “America First” agenda. But White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus said the conversations were aimed at lining up Asian partners in case tensions over North Korea lead to “nuclear and massive destruction in Asia”, and mentioned no broader strategic goal. Southeast Asian nations will need more than that to convince them the United States still has their backs. In the meantime, some are leaning closer to China, soft-pedalling quarrels over the disputed South China Sea and angling for a slice of Beijing’s “One Belt, One Road” infrastructure investment program to compensate for the U.S. abandonment of the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact. The unexpected bonhomie that has emerged between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping could give Asian countries further confidence to continue their swing toward Beijing. “Before, most Southeast Asian states wanted to benefit from Chinese regional economic initiatives and from American pushback against China,” said Malcolm Cook, a senior fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore. “The second part of this balance is now in question. Hence, the pressure to acquiesce to China diplomatically and on security issues is stronger.” Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte, piqued by the Obama administration’s criticism of his human rights record, last year announced his “separation” from longtime ally the United States while on a visit to Beijing. The White House described Trump’s conversation with the firebrand Philippines leader as “very friendly” and - prompting criticism from Human Rights Watch for “effectively endorsing Duterte’s murderous war on drugs” - invited him to Washington. But, underlining his new-found friendship with Beijing, Duterte on Monday inspected a Chinese naval ships docked at his hometown, the first visit of its kind to the Philippines in years. Duterte, who last year put aside a legal challenge to Beijing’s sweeping territorial claims in the South China Sea to start negotiating billions of dollars worth of loans and infrastructure investments, chaired the latest summit of the 10-nation Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in Manila. Several ASEAN diplomats said China sent officials to lobby the Philippines ahead of the summit, and before the leaders had even gathered Duterte said it was pointless pressuring Beijing over its maritime activities. An early draft of the summit statement seen by Reuters made references to land reclamation and militarization in the disputed waterway, but they were subsequently dropped, as were references to “tensions” and “escalation of activities”. Cook said it was clear that, with the Philippines steering the summit to this conclusion, “it is no longer just Cambodia that is acting as an agent of Chinese influence in ASEAN over the South China Sea dispute”. Thailand and Malaysia have also moved closer to China. Thailand’s relations with Washington came under strain during the Obama administration because of concerns about freedoms under its military-dominated government. Trump invited Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha to visit Washington during their call on Sunday, but the former general’s government has its eyes elsewhere: last week it approved the first of three submarine purchases from China worth more than $1 billion. Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong says Washington’s new posture has shifted Asia’s political and economic balance. Lee, whose country, like Vietnam, has shown no signs of moving closer to Beijing, stressed to his ASEAN counterparts on Saturday that, despite Trump’s “radically different approach”, they should balance their ties between the United States and China. Trump has said he will attend two summits in the region in November. But Southeast Asian nations are trying to gauge how far they can still rely on Washington as a shield against Chinese assertiveness. ASEAN foreign ministers will be seeking answers at a meeting with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in Washington this Thursday. Uncertainty over Washington’s commitment, analysts say, will only draw ASEAN countries further toward China, which can lure them with cheap loans, infrastructure investments and tariff cuts, but with a risk of diminished bargaining power. Thitinan Pongsudhirak, director of the Institute of Security and International Studies at Bangkok’s Chulalongkorn University, said it was imperative for ASEAN to regain leverage by bringing Washington back into the equation and expanding the influence of Japan. “ASEAN is in a precarious position now with the concessions, accommodation and even appeasement with China,” Thitinan said. “If China continues to be shrewd and takes ASEAN on another ride, then ASEAN will be much worse off.” | 0fake |
House Republican unveils tax bill to aid hurricane victims | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The top Republican tax law writer in the U.S. House of Representatives unveiled new tax legislation on Friday that he said would help people cope with hurricane devastation in Texas, Florida, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico and other areas. “My bill specifically helps hurricane victims keep more of their paycheck, deduct more of the cost of their...property damage and have more affordable and immediate access to money they have saved for their retirement,” House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady said in a statement accompanying the measure. “The legislation will also encourage even more Americans to donate generously to help those in need,” he added. | 0fake |
IT’S COME TO THIS: Leftist Media and Protesters Go For The Jugular In All Out Freak Out Over Possible Trump Win On Super Tuesday [Video] | Wake me when it s over! What the heck people! We have all out brawls at political rallies for Donald Trump where the leftists are trying their best to stop free speech and freedom to gather and support their candidate for president.A rally in Virginia today got overheated when a Time magazine photographer grabbed a Secret Service agent by the throat. Can you believe this? THE REPORTER SAYS, F*CK YOU , TO THE SECRET SERVICE AGENT AND THAT S WHERE IT STARTED:Here s moments prior. The reporter says f*ck you that s when it got physical pic.twitter.com/h9K2wIbEWQ Joe Perticone (@JoePerticone) February 29, 2016 This is how reporters are treated at Trump rallies pic.twitter.com/hMxuEoKVeG Gabby Morrongiello (@gabriellahope_) February 29, 2016 Of course, that made the appearance by Black Lives Matter idiots just a faded memory.The irony is that BLM protesters were chanting Stop the hate Ummm, I think the left needs to look in the mirror and thing again about who s being hateful.I ve been watching and listening to all of the news channels and to the people on social media. Folks, it s gotten really ugly out there. We even have the candidates talking about the size of one candidate s penis. Really? How low can you go?I am really looking forward to when we finally have a Republican nominee so all of this can stop. Please! | 1real |
Advisers Leak What Trump Does When He Sees Russia Scandal On TV — It’s Really, Really Weird | When getting to the truth behind Donald Trump s scandals, there s probably nothing more revealing than Trump s Twitter history and his erratic behavior. Time and time again, we ve seen that when Trump s scandals begin to close in on him, he just gets crazier and does whatever he can to distract from the situation. And if his public behavior wasn t concerning enough, what Trump does behind the closed doors of the White House is even worse.According to a new report from Politico, Trump can t even act like a mature grown up when he watches television and sees segments about his Russia scandal. Behaving more like an old bitter retiree than the sitting President of the United States, Trump apparently can t contain himself and resorts to yelling at the television.Politico states that two advisers said that Trump would sometimes scream at television clips about the probe into his Russia investigation. Because that s not incriminating or weird at all, right?Honestly, the best thing Trump could do for his scandals and public image is to just stay the hell away from social media and cable TV but we all know that Trump can t do that. And as long as Trump lacks the self control to manage his emotions or the insane amount of television and social media he consumes, these outbursts are going to get him in even more trouble.This information from Trump s advisers shows that Trump will do anything to make this scandal go away to the degree that he has to scream at televisions to vent his anger. This kind of uncontrollable rage is exactly what the majority of Americans who voted against Trump were afraid of a man this unhinged should never have access to nuclear codes. With any luck, Trump s scandals will be his downfall and we won t have to deal with him much longer.Featured image via Mark Wilson / Getty Images | 1real |
George W. Bush’s Ethics Lawyer Files Complaint Against FBI Director James Comey | Richard W. Painter wrote in a New York Times an op-ed: The F.B.I.’s job is to investigate, not to influence the outcome of an election.
Such acts could also be prohibited under the Hatch Act, which bars the use of an official position to influence an election. That is why the F.B.I. presumably would keep those aspects of an investigation confidential until after the election. The usual penalty for a violation is termination of federal employment.
And that is why, on Saturday, I filed a complaint against the F.B.I. with the Office of Special Counsel, which investigates Hatch Act violations, and with the Office of Government Ethics. I have spent much of my career working on government ethics and lawyers’ ethics, including two and a half years as the chief White House ethics lawyer for President George W. Bush, and I never thought that the F.B.I. could be dragged into a political circus surrounding one of its investigations. Until this week.
This is the second complaint to be filed against FBI Director Comey. The Democratic Coalition Against Trump has also filed a complaint against Comey for interfering in a presidential election as a federal employee.
Suspicion around Comey’s actions has grown as the FBI Director is not expected to make any additional statements on this matter before the presidential election. Director Comey appears to have set himself for problems after the election as Senate Democrats are making it known that they are open to holding hearings to investigate the FBI investigation if they win back the Senate majority.
Unless Trump wins and Republicans take control of Congress, Director Comey is going to have to answer for his decisions.
As the complaints pile up, it looks like Congressional testimony may be the least of James Comey’s future problems. | 1real |
JUDGE NAPOLITANO On Bombshell That Intel Isn’t Telling Trump Information: “There’s only one president” [Video] | The officials decision to keep information cite deep mistrust Judge Napolitano has a great solution QUIT! The people who re loyal to Barak Obama need to go! | 1real |
DEMOCRATS Get DEVASTATING News After Spending $10.1 MILLION To Defeat Roy Moore In AL Senate Race | Roll Call Democrat Doug Jones drastically outraised GOP nominee Roy Moore for the Alabama Senate race, new campaign finance documents show.Jones raised nearly six times Moore s amount ahead of the Dec. 12 special election to fill the Senate seat vacated by Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Jones headed into the final weeks of the race with roughly four times as much money in the bank than his GOP opponent. Jones raked in nearly $10.2 million compared to Jones $1.8 million. Jones also spent roughly 5 times as much as Moore during that period, nearly $8.7 million compared to Moore s $1.7 million.The Democrat Party, who up until just recently, was essentially broke, just got some very bad news today from reliable media ally, CBS News.As the majority of Alabama Republicans believe that the allegations against Judge Roy Moore are untrue, he now takes a commanding lead over radical leftist Democrat Doug Jones per a new CBS News poll.The CBS News/YouGov poll, conducted between Nov. 28 and Dec. 1, surveyed 1,037 Alabamians registered to vote in Alabama. It further segmented the poll results into some results among registered voters and others among likely voters. Among registered voters, the margin of error is 3.8 percent. Among likely voters, the margin of error is 4.8 percent. The results of the election, with Moore leading Jones, were broken down to likely voters.Another part broken down to likely voters was polling specifically about the allegations about Moore. Perhaps unsurprisingly, a significant number of Alabamians do not believe the allegations against Moore one bit. Breitbart Despite all of the money Democrats have poured into the race, Alabama voters are not buying the media reports that decades ago, several women were victims of Republican Senate candidate Judge Roy Moore, who they are now accusing of being a sexual predator. After many of the women s claims were called into question, including the claim made by Beverly Young-Nelson, whose stepson said she s lying about having a sexual encounter with the judge, and whose yearbook that was allegedly signed by Roy Moore has been called into question as a forgery. And then there s another accuser, Tina Johnson who lost her 12-year old son to her mother in a nasty custody battle, in a case where Roy Moore represented her mother. It s entirely plausible that Roy Moore s sexual assault accuser, Tina Johnson, had an ax to grind with Moore, the person who was able to successfully prove to the court that Johnson was unfit to care for him.To add insult to injury, only yesterday, President Trump appeared with RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel to announce record-breaking fundraising of over $120 million, which McDaniel attributed to President Trump.Watch: | 1real |
Senator talks all night as Democrats fight Trump court nominee | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A Democratic senator delivered a 15-1/2-hour, all-night speech denouncing President Donald Trump’s U.S. Supreme Court nominee on Wednesday, joining an effort to block Senate confirmation of Neil Gorsuch in a heated political showdown with Republicans. Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon began his speech on the Senate floor on Tuesday evening and wrapped up mid-morning on Wednesday. The Senate was expected to vote on Thursday at 11 a.m. to try to end a Democratic procedural effort called a filibuster aimed at blocking Gorsuch’s confirmation to a lifetime post on the court. Republicans were expected to fall short of being able to halt the filibuster, but said they had the votes needed to then immediately change the Senate rules to prohibit filibusters against Supreme Court nominees. Republicans said Gorsuch would be confirmed on Friday one way or the other. Senate confirmation of Gorsuch, 49, would reinstate the court’s conservative majority, allow Trump to leave an indelible mark on America’s highest judicial body and fulfill a top campaign promise by the Republican president. Toward the end of his marathon speech, Merkley looked weary, his suit jacket unbuttoned and his yellow tie billowing out. He stood beside an easel holding graphics that an aide would periodically adjust. “For the first time in U.S. history, a seat has been stolen from one president and delivered to another in a court-packing scheme. If that were to succeed, it would set a precedent that will haunt the court for decades to come,” Merkley said. He noted that the Republicans who control the Senate refused last year to consider former Democratic President Barack Obama’s nomination of appellate judge Merrick Garland to replace Justice Antonin Scalia, who died in February 2016, the same seat Gorsuch now has been named to fill. Later on the Senate floor, Republican Senator Cory Gardner countered that such an argument amounted to advocating that “two wrongs must make a right.” Merkley criticized Gorsuch’s legal opinions and said Gorsuch would become a conservative legal activist on the court. At one point, Merkley read a 1998 speech by one of the past giants of the Senate, Democrat Robert Byrd, decrying partisanship in Congress. “I believe that the American people are more than tired of partisan warfare. I believe they wish for less of it from Congress, especially in the Senate, where more statesmanship and a longer view are expected,” Merkley said, quoting Byrd. The Senate has a lengthy history of long speeches, including notable ones in recent years by Senators Ted Cruz, Chris Murphy and Rand Paul. The Senate Historical Office listed Merkley’s speech at 15 hours and 26 minutes, the eighth longest in Senate history. The longest came in 1957 when segregationist Senator Strom Thurmond spoke for 24 hours and 18 minutes against legislation, later enacted, protecting black voting rights. On the second day of formal Senate debate on Gorsuch’s nomination, various Republicans called the conservative Colorado-based federal appeals court judge “incredibly qualified,” an “intellectual heavyweight” and “always true to the law.” “Democrats are bowing to hard-left special interests that can’t get over the results of the election and thus are demanding complete Democratic opposition to everything this president touches,” Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said. Democrats accuse Gorsuch of being so conservative as to be outside the judicial mainstream, favoring corporate interests over ordinary Americans in legal opinions, and displaying insufficient independence from Trump. Republicans control the Senate 52-48. The rule change, which requires a simple majority, has been dubbed the “nuclear option,” and Trump has urged McConnell to “go nuclear.” A filibuster requires a super-majority of 60 votes in the 100-seat Senate in order to proceed to a simple majority vote on a Supreme Court nominee or legislation. The 60-vote super-majority threshold empowers the minority party to hold up the majority party and has forced the Senate over the decades to try to achieve bipartisanship on legislation and presidential appointments. Republican Senator John McCain, known as a defender of Senate traditions, offered reluctant support for the rule change, but said it likely would lead to judicial nominees “from the extremes of both left and right.” “What we are about to do at the end of this week will have tremendous consequences, and I fear that some day we will regret what we’re about to do. In fact, I’m confident we will,” McCain said on the Senate floor. The White House denied on Wednesday that Gorsuch had engaged in plagiarism after media reports accused him of copying some language and failing to cite relevant sources in his 2006 book about assisted suicide and euthanasia. “There is only one explanation for this baseless, last-second smear of Judge Gorsuch: those desperate to justify the unprecedented filibuster of a well-qualified and mainstream nominee to the Supreme Court,” White House spokesman Steven Cheung said in a statement. | 0fake |
Illinois governor vetoes $3.9 billion FY 2016 spending bill | CHICAGO (Reuters) - Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner on Friday vetoed a bill passed by the Democratic-controlled legislature in April to spend nearly $3.9 billion on state services that have not been funded due to an ongoing fiscal 2016 budget impasse. The Republican governor called the legislation “an empty promise.” “The bill purports to appropriate $3.89 billion, including more than $3 billion in general funds that the state does not have, for higher education and social service providers, but provides no source of funding,” Rauner said in his veto message. The political stalemate between Rauner and Democrats has left Illinois as the only U.S. state without a complete fiscal 2016 budget, operating instead on court-ordered spending and a muddled patchwork of ongoing and stopgap appropriations. Rauner called on lawmakers to pass complete balanced budgets for the current and next fiscal years, although the governor has proposed funding most fiscal 2017 services with a temporary spending plan and K-12 schools with a full-year budget. Illinois’ new fiscal year begins on July 1. The Democrats’ spending bill passed with enough votes in the Senate to override a veto, but fell short of that margin in the House. The measure would have sent money to cash-starved state universities and colleges, covered tuition grants for low-income college students, and funded health and human services that were not subject to court orders. The measure also appropriated about $63 million for unpaid wage increases owed to about 24,000 unionized state workers. | 0fake |
Bill O’Reilly’s Secret: He Was a Centrist, Not a Conservative - Breitbart | The mainstream media are celebrating the ouster of Bill O’Reilly from Fox News, with CNN offering virtually coverage. But they are overstating his political importance. MSNBC’s Chuck Todd called O’Reilly a “leader” in the conservative movement, which is more wishful thinking than reality. [In truth, the secret of O’Reilly’s success was that he was a centrist. He hit the elusive sweet spot that many media outlets covet, but few actually bother to pursue. Professor Tim Groseclose (formerly of UCLA, now of George Mason) who is the best authority on political leanings in the media, used data analysis in Left Turn: How Liberal Media Bias Distorts the American Mind in 2011 to show that not only were most media outlets left of center, but also that public opinion was further left than it would have been were it not for the media’s effect. On a scale of 0 to 100 — zero being most conservative, and 100 most liberal — the true center of the American public, absent media influence, was around 25, Groseclose argued. And O’Reilly, on the same objective scale, registered as exactly that: 25. As excerpted at the time by the Powerline blog, Groseclose wrote: … What if we could magically remove the metaphoric glass and see, the average American, once his political views are no longer distorted by media bias? What would we see? The answer, basically, is Ben Stein. … Yes, the actor, author, commentator, and former host of Win Ben Stein’s Money. More specific, the person whom we’d see is anyone — like Ben Stein — who has a Political Quotient near 25. The Political Quotient is a device that I construct to measure political views in a precise, objective, and quantitative way. A person’s PQ indicates the degree to which he is liberal. For instance, as I have calculated, the PQs of Barney Frank ( .) and Nancy Pelosi ( .) are approximately 100. Meanwhile the PQs of noted conservatives Michele Bachmann ( .) and Jim DeMint ( . C.) are approximately 0. Two other people whose PQs are approximately 25 are Bill O’Reilly and Dennis Miller. They are significantly more conservative than the average American voter, whose PQ is approximately 50. But they are significantly more liberal than politicians like Michele Bachmann or Jim DeMint. As my results show, if we could magically eliminate media bias, then the average American would think and vote like Stein, Miller, O’Reilly, and others who have a PQ near 25. Todd acknowledged on Wednesday that O’Reilly was not the most conservative host on Fox News, but that misses the more fundamental fact of O’Reilly’s centrism. It explains O’Reilly’s appeal — and also explains why he was often criticized by conservatives, and often scolded them in return. He was the elusive center. Of course, to acknowledge that would be to devalue the media’s scalp in this case — and to admit the media’s own bias, which they prefer to ignore. Joel B. Pollak is Senior at Breitbart News. He was named one of the “most influential” people in news media in 2016. His new book, How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak. | 0fake |
Illuminati Mind Control documentary 2016 | Support Us Illuminati Mind Control documentary 2016 | 1real |
iMAHDi – the arrivals 28 Why Satanism is Practiced by Our Leaders القادمون | Support Us iMAHDi – the arrivals 28 Why Satanism is Practiced by Our Leaders القادمون | 1real |
Surveillance Video: Armed Suspects Flee Foiled Home Invasion - Breitbart | Surveillance video from a home in Alamogordo, New Mexico, shows three armed suspects fleeing the front of a residence after a foiled home invasion. [The incident occurred Thursday night around 9 pm. According to KOB 4, Alamogordo Police says “three armed men and a woman [tried] to break into a home. ” The woman knocked on the door and the three men approached with weapons once the resident opened it. The homeowner closed the door when the men approached and the men tried to open it, only to look through the glass and see something that set them to flight. In the video, one of the suspects can be seen holding a handgun and another can be seen holding an style rifle. Alamogordo Deputy Chief Roger Schoolcraft said the suspects “headed south on foot” and are currently being sought. AWR Hawkins is the Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and host of Bullets with AWR Hawkins, a Breitbart News podcast. He is also the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart. com. | 0fake |
Doomed Jet Carrying Brazilian Team Reportedly Ran Out of Fuel - The New York Times | The pilot of a plane that crashed late Monday while flying members of a Brazilian soccer team to a competition in Colombia pleaded to make an immediate landing because the aircraft was out of fuel, according to a recording leaked to Colombian news outlets on Wednesday. The audio, first posted by W Radio of Colombia, offers a grim narration of the final moments of the doomed flight, which carried 77 people, including the members of the Chapecoense soccer team from Chapecó, Brazil. And it added a new twist to the investigation of what might have caused the crash, originally thought to be electrical failure. “We ask for permission to approach, we have a fuel problem,” cried a voice that the radio station identified as the pilot. He later says that the plane had a “fuel emergency. ” During the recording, the pilot also says that the plane had experienced “total electrical failure” and repeatedly requests flight vectors, indications from the air traffic controller, on how to land. The controller tries to help but mentions other obstacles like another plane flying close by and fuel on the runway left from yet another aircraft. “Nine thousand feet,” yells the pilot. “Vectors! Vectors!” Shortly afterward, the plane crashed. A spokesman from Colombia’s aviation agency said it could not confirm the authenticity of the recording. But he added that the agency was investigating whether the plane, which was operated by a Bolivian charter company called LaMia, did run out of fuel. According to specifications from the plane’s manufacturer, BAE Systems, the Avro RJ85 jet has a range of about 1, 600 nautical miles, close to the distance of the flight from Santa Cruz, Bolivia, to Medellín, Colombia. Jetliners, however, rarely travel in straight lines to their destination, but rather along more indirect routes determined by their flight plan. W Radio offered no details as to who provided the recording. Similar recordings, also said to be from the cockpit, were played on other Colombian radio stations on Wednesday. Aviation experts also say it was unsafe to fly a plane without at least 30 minutes of fuel reserves, among other precautions. The theory that the plane crashed without fuel was supported by rescue workers on the ground on Tuesday, who were surprised to see that there had been no explosion. The main damage to the plane appeared to be from the impact, which caused the fuselage, engines and tail to be torn apart, they said. The American National Transportation Safety Board said that it would assist in the investigation. The flight marked a tragic end to the rise of Chapecoense, which had come up the ranks from a scrappy industrial city in Brazil to become one of the country’s hottest teams. The team was on its way for what would have been its biggest test yet, the finals of the Copa Sudamericana, one of South America’s most important tournaments. At least 21 journalists were reported to be on the flight, too, including reporters from Fox Latin America and the Globo television network of Brazil. Six survivors were pulled from the wreckage, including three players, two crew members and a journalist. There was no immediate response to an email to LaMia. The company’s website had been taken down, and its telephone had been disconnected on Wednesday. Dr. Ana González, the medical director at Clínica Somer, the hospital outside Medellín where three of the survivors were being treated, said two of them, both members of the crew, were in stable condition. Alan Ruschel, a defender for Chapecoense, was in critical condition, she added. Mr. Ruschel spent time before the flight posting selfies on social media networks with his teammates. “Alan is the patient with the most serious injuries,” Dr. González said. “It is too soon to tell if he will be able to walk again, but we hope that in the future he will. ” | 0fake |
What If Consciousness Is a State of Matter, Just Like a Solid, a Liquid or a Gas? | What If Consciousness Is a State of Matter, Just Like a Solid, a Liquid or a Gas? Nov 5, 2016 0 0
As a young child, I would randomly pause in my daily activities to thumb through my perception of the world. Not only could I think about things, I could reason, decide and analyze things. Events in life left me with feelings of confusion, which caused me to dig further into the meaning of what I had witnessed.
All this sounds pretty normal and obvious, right? Well, to a child, realizing the existence of the conscious is a major thing. A child comes to the conclusion that they are an intelligent being living inside a meat shell. While thinking on this over and over, it becomes disturbing, so the child devises a way to understand what this means.
I guess this is the best way I can explain it, but basically, I want to know what the conscious is . Could our conscious be more than a set of thoughts? Could this part of our psyche be a completely separate form of existence? The conscious, a state of matter?
Another way to understand the conscious is by seeing it as the part of us that gives individuality , it separates us from other beings and gives us a sense of self.
All these explanations are interesting, but they still don’t tell us what the conscious really is. Neuroscientists like Max Tegmark of MIT believe the conscious is a state of matter. Could this be? What’s the matter?
Matter doesn’t necessarily mean liquid or sloshing substances. Matter, in this case, probably means mathematical conditions with varying degrees of consciousness.
As water, ice and vapor need conditions to exist, so does our conscious. After all, if the conscious is indeed a state of matter, it helps us understand why the world works in the way it does. It’s hard to understand the conscious, but it helps to see this being as the tool that gives us the ability to reason, process and retrieve information – this is how the brain is compared to a computer. A fact that we know about the conscious is that it cannot be broken down into smaller parts , unlike the computer. But like the computer, being pushed by artificial intelligence , the conscious can work independently from its neighboring processes. Perceptronium
Conscious as a state of matter is called perceptronium. It is seen as what gives us the ability to be self-aware . Our awareness is worked out exclusively within, offering no outside influence, at times. Perceptronium also has the ability to see parts as a whole as well as independent objects or entities. We take this ability for granted, but with a little work of our conscious, we can understand the mechanics of our own thought processes.
Tegmark said ,
“The problem is why we perceive the universe as the semi-classical three-dimensional world that is so familiar. When we look at a glass of iced water, we perceive the liquid and the solid ice cubes as independent things even though they are intimately linked as part of the same system.”
Quantum mechanics reminds us that the world we live in is just one of many possible planes of existence . Tegmark cannot explain why this is so but suggests that there is an incredibly close relationship between the conscious and other states of matter.
Could what we know, reveal the meaning of everything we already know? Could our sole purpose for living simply be the realization of self?
As a matter of fact, it really could be that simple. Vote Up Anna LeMind Anna is the owner and lead editor of the websites Learning-mind.com and Lifeadvancer.com , and staff writer for The Mind Unleashed . She is passionate about learning new things and reflecting on thought-provoking ideas. She writes about technology, science, psychology and other related topics. She is particularly interested in topics regarding introversion, consciousness and subconscious, perception, human mind's potential, as well as the nature of reality and the universe. | 1real |
MAKE IT STOP! Daughter Of Sexual Predator And Habitual Criminal Gets $65K To Speak For 10 Minutes [VIDEO] | Apparently being the daughter of the most corrupt political couple in America comes with some pretty significant financial benefits Politico reported last year:When Hillary Clinton s speaking fees proved too steep for one public university last year, school officials reached for a less expensive alternative: her daughter, Chelsea.According to a report from The Washington Post, representatives from the former secretary of state s office gave officials at the University of Missouri-Kansas City a $275,000 quote for a one-time speaking fee. Yikes! one official emailed another, according to the report. Rather than paying that much, UMKC opted to pay Chelsea $65,000 for a brief appearance in February 2014. The former first daughter spoke for 10 minutes before participating in a 20-minute Q&A session and posing for pictures. For a sample of what that $65,000 might have bought the university, check out the clip above of Chelsea recently on the campaign trail bashing Trump.At one minute, the former first brat thinks this is worth $6500 of a public s schools money.What s that about wage equality, Clinton spawn? Politicoh/t DownTrend | 1real |
Trump Spent YEARS Browbeating Scotland’s First Minister For A Really Idiotic Reason | It s no secret that Donald Trump isn t a fan of wind farms, especially when they interfere with the views off his precious golf courses. Trump has been at war with Scotland for years over their offshore windfarms, but it s worse than simple repeated requests to Scotland to not do this to him and his poor golfers. According to The Guardian, Trump spent years sending former First Minister Alex Salmond letters full of insults, cajoling, and even threats.In one letter, dated February 9, 2012, Trump wrote: With the reckless installation of these [wind turbine] monsters, you will single-handedly have done more damage to Scotland than virtually any event in Scottish history! You seem hellbent on destroying Scotland s coastline and therefore Scotland itself I have just authorized my staff to allocate a substantial amount of money to launch an international campaign to fight your plan to surround Scotland s coast with many thousands of wind turbines. That s a direct threat right there, but he put a veiled one in another letter dated Sept. 14, 2011: In short, this wind farm should not be built, or alternatively, be relocated. If not, you should ask yourself if any other international developer would ever risk investing in Scotland after my experience and all the promises that were made to me! Another letter, addressed to Phillip Hammond, who was the U.K. s defense secretary at the time, said that Salmond had a bloated ego. That s rich nobody s ego is as bloated as that of King Cheeto.On March 15, 2013, he ended yet another letter pleading with Salmond not to plunge ahead with ruining the views from his golf course with: I truly believe it is very important that you not destroy the beauty of Scotland, its land or its seas, by placing thousands of these horrendous looking industrial structures in so many places which will ruin the magnificence and beauty of Scotland. Do not be the man who destroyed Scotland do not be Mad Alex!' He would also try and cajole Salmond into caving to his demands. After saying that the world s greatest leaders have always been those who have been able to change their minds for the good, and blasting wind power yet again, Trump said: I will be your greatest cheerleader if you can change or modify your stance on at least the inappropriately placed turbines. Salmond made the mistake of letting Trump bulldoze away an environmentally protected area because he believed Trump s promise of bringing thousands of jobs to Scotland and investing hundreds of millions in their economy. The golf course only has 95 employees, most are part-time or seasonal, there s a single-story clubhouse and a small boutique hotel, and Trump spend a whopping 30 million. Trump promised a huge development with a premier hotel. Trump promised a lot more than the government previous to Salmond ever did, and he broke it all.How s Trump going to be in the White House, when other countries don t do what he wants them to do? This isn t about wind power itself it s about Trump, his ego, and his willingness to harass another country s leader in an attempt to bend them to his will.Salmond only responded to one of the letters, in April 2012. It s hard to blame him for ignoring most of these because, quite simply, Trump is ridiculous. Salmond later warned U.S. voters not to vote for Trump. He noted Trump s immaturity and bullying nature, and flat-out called him a man-child, which, let s be honest, is true. These dealings with Trump over his golf course convinced Salmond that Trump does not have what it takes to be President of the United States.To read all of the letters in their entirety, click here.Featured image by Jeff J Mitchell via Getty Images | 1real |
Bernie Sanders Gets Some Pretty Outspoken Praise From Biden (VIDEO) | Vice President Joe Biden has nothing but glowing praise for Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders. Biden, who contemplated a run for the presidency but decided to opt out, said of Sanders: Bernie is speaking to a yearning that is deep and real. And he has credibility on it. And that is the absolute enormous concentration of wealth of a small group of people, with a middle class now being left out. [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkFFh2M8rAc]Biden was referring to Sanders consistent record of speaking out on and pushing initiatives about income inequality throughout his career. Sanders has made the issue a central theme of his campaign. Biden also believes the issue of income inequality is of vital importance to the country. He said: There used to be a basic bargain. If you contributed to the profitability of an enterprise, you share in that profit, and that s been broken. Productivity is up and wages are stagnant. Sanders strength is with young voters, with polls showing that he leads in double digits in that demographic. Many millennials, for example, have enormous college debt and they continue to have a tough time in the job market. Kei Kawashima-Ginsberg, director of the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement, an organization that encourages young people to get involved in politics, said: Part of it is really sort of the age that they grew up in. If you think about the millennials, that age group, they turned 18 as President George W Bush took office. That s the world they grew up in: their country is at war, it seemed to have lost purpose. And then as they were graduating from college the recession hit. So the social contrast that people generally have that you invest in your education and you get paid off was a myth for them. One thing is his genuineness. He s been consistent warrior against economic inequality since the 60s, and he hasn t changed a bit. Although Biden has not officially made an endorsement, he did meet with Sanders last October to discuss campaign finance reform.Bernie Sanders campaign is moving in the right direction, gaining momentum at the right time more than any other candidate despite the fact that the media has not paid attention to him. If the current polls are indicative of things to come, the Republicans better look out. Polls show him trouncing all Republican candidates, including Donald Trump by a wide margin.Featured Image: Marc Nozell (flickr) | 1real |
WATCH: Trump’s Desperate Spokeswoman Pushes Hillary Brain Disease Conspiracy | Katrina Pierson, Donald Trump s official campaign spokeswoman who appears to have a permanent spot in front of a cable news camera, added to her long list of bizarre claims and blatantly false lies by alleging that Hillary Clinton has a brain disease.Pierson threw out the conspiracy theory on MSNBC on Thursday evening.Speaking on MSNBC, Katrina Pierson alleged that Clinton has a disorder called dysphasia, a condition brought on by brain trauma that erodes a person s ability to speak or comprehend language. What s new are the other reports or observations of Hillary Clinton s behavior or mannerisms as well as her dysphasia, the fact that she s fallen, she has had a concussion, there are really interesting things out there, Pierson said.The Trump campaign has been echoing conspiracy theorists like radio host Alex Jones (who believes 9/11 was an inside job by the government) and Republican dirty trickster Roger Stone (he thinks that LBJ had John F. Kennedy killed) for the last few months. And Trump of course was the lead spokesperson for the birther conspiracy theory that alleges that President Obama was not born in America.Along with these conspiracy theorists, right wing media outlets like the Drudge Report and Fox News Sean Hannity have been presenting a pile of false claims that Clinton s health is weak.Months ago, her campaign released a medical assessment from Clinton s doctor and found the former Secretary of State in good health. By comparison, the Trump campaign s health document was widely ridiculed at the time, as its hyperbolic language seemed to have come from Trump himself, and not a reputable doctor.The wild theories about Clinton s health have coincided with Trump s drop in the polls, as he has plummeted to be anywhere from 4-15 percent behind Clinton nationally. He is even tied or very close to her in multiple red states that have been easily won by previous Republican candidates like Mitt Romney and John McCain, including Georgia, Missouri, and even Texas.So more conspiracies can be expected.Featured image via YouTube | 1real |
U.S. defense secretary scraps Afghan trip due to weather | ABU DHABI (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump’s defense secretary said bad weather had forced him to scrap a visit to Afghanistan on Sunday but added that he was reviewing the next steps in the war after discussions with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and the top U.S. commander. “We’re putting our thoughts together now,” Defense Secretary Jim Mattis told reporters in Abu Dhabi during his debut trip to the Middle East. U.S. General John Nicholson, the commander of U.S. and international troops in Afghanistan, said this month the NATO-led force in Afghanistan had enough troops to carry out counterterrorism missions but had “a shortfall of a few thousand” for its major role of advising Afghan security forces. Mattis said he spoke for several hours on Sunday via video-link with Nicholson, but did not disclose whether he was in favor of sending more U.S. forces there. Mattis also said he spoke with Ghani “at length” before leaving Munich, Germany, on Saturday. So far, Trump has offered little clarity about whether he will approve more forces for Afghanistan, where some 8,400 U.S. troops remain more than 15 years after the Islamist Taliban government was toppled. “He’s waiting for my assessment and the assessment from the intelligence community and he’s open to my advice on it,” Mattis said. “But first of all I’ve got to formulate where I stand.” Afghan government forces control no more than two-thirds of national territory, and have struggled to contain the Taliban insurgency since the bulk of NATO soldiers withdrew at the end of 2014. The government is also struggling with other militants, particularly from Islamic State’s Afghanistan branch. Islamic State claimed responsibility for a suicide attack that killed at least 22 people on Feb. 7 outside Afghanistan’s Supreme Court. A number of provincial capitals have been under pressure from the Taliban and Afghan government forces have been suffering high casualty rates, with more than 5,500 killed in the first eight months of 2016. “The Afghan security forces paid a very heavy price to keep the Taliban on their back foot. But they paid it, they held,” Mattis said. “And the Taliban’s in a worse position today, even though I do not equate that to success on our side.” | 0fake |
WOW! UNHINGED CLOWN DEMOCRAT Goes Nuts On House Floor During Obamacare Debate [Video] | .@rosadelauro: What does the GOP stand for? Get Old People. That s what this bill does. pic.twitter.com/9ekkg0Nr5I Fox News (@FoxNews) March 24, 2017 | 1real |
Turkey to review 11,480 cases linked to app used by coup suspects | ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkish prosecutors said on Wednesday they will review legal cases against 11,480 people after finding they had been re-directed unwittingly to a messaging app linked to suspects in last year s failed coup. Turkey has so far identified 215,000 users of the messaging app ByLock, which was believed to be used by supporters of a U.S.-based cleric blamed for the failed July 2016 coup attempt. It launched investigations against more than 23,000 of them. But on Wednesday the Ankara prosecutor s office said many of them had been re-directed to ByLock without their knowledge or consent, after downloading a different app which had functions for prayer times and music. As a result of a detailed examination, it has been determined that 11,480 GSM number users with similar properties in terms of connection data parameters were unwittingly re-directed to ByLock IPs, it said. State-run Anadolu news agency quoted Ankara chief prosecutor Yuksel Kocaman as saying that he would ask for nearly 1,000 people to be released unless there was other evidence against them. He said an arrest warrant had been issued for the developer of the other app which had re-directed users to ByLock. Authorities say ByLock was widely used by followers of U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gulen, who the government blames for orchestrating the failed military coup in which 250 people were killed. Gulen has denied any involvement. Since the coup attempt, more than 50,000 people, including civil servants and security personnel, have been jailed pending trial and some 150,000 suspended or dismissed from their jobs. Rights groups say the crackdown has been exploited to muzzle dissent. The government says the measures have been necessary due to the security threats which Turkey has faced since the putsch. | 0fake |
Trump to meet Indiana Governor Mike Pence over the weekend | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Donald Trump will meet this weekend with Indiana Governor Mike Pence, a Pence spokesman said on Friday, after a report the governor was being vetted as a potential running mate for the Republican presidential candidate. As the Republican candidate for vice president, Pence, a social conservative from a Midwestern state, could help the real estate mogul reassure wary Republicans. The governor, who faces a tight race for re-election to a second term in Indiana, has praised Trump in the past but did not back him in the Republican Party’s nominating race. “Governor Pence has accepted an invitation to spend a little time with Mr. Trump this weekend,” said Marc Lotter, deputy campaign manager of Pence’s re-election effort. “This meeting is very consistent with meetings Mr. Trump is holding with many key party leaders.” Earlier, MSNBC, citing unnamed sources, said Trump is considering Pence, 57, as a potential running mate. The network, which first reported the upcoming meeting, said it was part of the vetting process. New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and former U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Newt Gingrich are also under consideration to be Trump’s running mate, sources told Reuters. “Trump is meeting with a number of Republican leaders in the run-up to the convention in Cleveland, and he has a good relationship with Gov. Pence,” Trump campaign spokesman Jason Miller said in an email. Republicans will hold their party convention July 18-21 in Cleveland to formally pick their nominee ahead of the Nov. 8 presidential election. Trump, 70, a real estate mogul and former television reality star, was scheduled to speak at rally in Colorado on Friday. He has said he has narrowed down his potential running mates to five or six contenders, according to media reports. On Thursday, Pence told reporters he had not spoken with Trump since before Indiana’s May 3 primary contest, MSNBC said. The governor had earlier pledged to back former Trump rival Ted Cruz, a U.S. senator from Texas and Tea Party favorite. | 0fake |
Michigan governor names panel to fix Flint's contaminated water system | (Reuters) - Michigan Governor Rick Snyder on Wednesday appointed a group of government officials, health and other experts to implement long-term fixes for Flint’s lead-contaminated water system, which has become a national scandal. The 17-member committee would recommend ways to help people exposed to lead, study Flint’s water infrastructure and determine possible upgrades. The members includes Flint Mayor Karen Weaver and county and state officials. Snyder, a Republican, also said he wanted the Medicaid social health care program to be expanded to cover all Flint children. In an interview airing on CNN Wednesday evening, Snyder said that officials expect a higher tally of children affected than blood tests have shown so far. “There could be many more,” Snyder said. “And we’re assuming that.” Democrats in the U.S. Senate were preparing to unveil legislation as early as Thursday aimed at aiding Flint, but would not provide details. It could be debated on the Senate floor next week as part of an unrelated energy bill, aides said. Activists in Flint plan to present petitions with almost 20,000 signatures to Weaver and Snyder on Thursday calling for a moratorium on water bills. Snyder’s team includes two people who helped focus attention on the water crisis - Flint pediatrician Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha and Marc Edwards, a civil engineering professor at Virginia Tech who would oversee all state and federal water testing. Snyder is asking for $3 million in state funds for water bills. “Flint residents should not have to pay for water they did not and are not using,” Weaver said. Also on Wednesday, a coalition of Flint residents and national groups filed a lawsuit asking a Detroit federal court to compel city and state officials to replace all lead water pipes promptly and at no cost to residents. The National Resources Defense Council, the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan and Flint residents asked for relief for any medical harm suffered. Lead is a neurotoxin that can damage the brain and cause other health problems. Snyder has repeatedly apologized for the delay in addressing Flint’s problems, which have led some critics to call for his censure or arrest. Residents of the city of 100,000 people had complained for months about elevated readings of lead in drinking water and the blood of some children. Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette named a special prosecutor to look into possible crimes in the crisis. | 0fake |
Tillerson to press China and ASEAN states on North Korea in Manila | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson will press China and other Asian countries to take tougher action against North Korea when he attends regional meetings in Manila starting this week, a senior U.S. official said on Wednesday. Susan Thornton, the acting assistant secretary of state for East Asia, said Tillerson would have the chance to engage with China’s foreign minister at the meetings of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in Manila, but had no plans to meet North Korea’s foreign minister there. Thornton said Tillerson, who is due in Manila on Saturday, would be seeking greater cooperation in isolating North Korea and in enforcing U.N. sanctions over its missile and nuclear weapons programs. She said Washington wanted to see countries “drastically” reduce their dealings with Pyongyang. “What we are trying to do is galvanize this pressure and isolate North Korea so it can see what the opportunity cost is over developing these weapons programs,” she told reporters in a telephone briefing to preview Tillerson’s trip. Thornton said China had taken “significant steps, ... frankly unprecedented steps” to increase pressure on its neighbor North Korea, but it could do “a lot more” to step up enforcement of existing sanctions and to impose more. “We would like to see more action faster and more obvious and quick results, but I think we’re not giving up yet.” Thornton’s remarks contrasted with those of U.S. President Donald Trump, who on Saturday accused Beijing of doing “nothing” to help on North Korea and pointed to the huge U.S. trade deficit with China. A senior Trump administration official said on Tuesday that Trump was close to a decision on how to respond to what he considers China’s unfair trade practices and was considering action that could lead to tariffs or other trade restrictions on Chinese goods. Thornton declined to comment on any possible action but stressed that despite Trump’s tweets, North Korea and the trade issue were not linked in a “transactional,” but “in a sort of philosophical way.” “Can we work together jointly on the key security challenge facing Northeast Asia, which is the North Korea challenge?” she said. “If we can work together to do that, surely we can have a productive, mutually beneficial economic relationship in which we both enjoy reciprocal and fair access to each other’s markets.” Thornton said Tillerson would continue to press China on the South China Sea issue while in Asia, where the United State has been pressing for rapid adoption of a code of conduct over competing territorial claims. She said the United States would “certainly” raise human rights with Philippine President Duterte’s government. U.S. criticism of Duterte’s bloody war on drugs under Trump’s predecessor Barack Obama damaged relations between the long-standing allies. Duterte has remained defiant, accusing critics of “trivializing” his drug campaign with human rights concerns. Tillerson will also visit Thailand next Tuesday and then Malaysia. His visit to Bangkok will be the first by a U.S. secretary of state since before the military seized power in a 2014 coup. | 0fake |
Voice Shaking, Michelle Obama Calls Trump Comments on Women ‘Intolerable’ - The New York Times | MANCHESTER, N. H. — Michelle Obama issued a deeply personal denunciation of Donald J. Trump on Thursday for his lewd comments about women, exhorting voters in scathing terms to reject his candidacy and the campaign’s increasingly vulgar tenor by backing Hillary Clinton as a matter of conscience. “This is not normal. This is not politics as usual,” Mrs. Obama said in a speech here during which her voice at times quavered with emotion. “This is disgraceful, it is intolerable, and it doesn’t matter what party you belong to,” she added. “No woman deserves to be treated this way — none of us deserves this kind of abuse. ” In remarks that were among the most outspoken by a first lady in modern history, Mrs. Obama, who has mostly avoided the political limelight, positioned herself at the center of a campaign she characterized as having devolved into “madness. ” She implored voters to “stand up and say enough is enough. ” “I can’t believe that I’m saying that a candidate for president of the United States has bragged about sexually assaulting women,” the first lady told several hundred voters at a university here. “I can’t stop thinking about this — it has shaken me to my core,” Mrs. Obama said, reacting to the emergence last week of a recording in which Mr. Trump was heard coarsely boasting about kissing and groping women without their consent. What followed from the first lady, who has styled herself America’s “mom in chief,” was a message about empowering women to rise up against sexual abuse and harassment in every context. The speech was all the more striking because it was delivered on behalf of Mrs. Clinton, whose experience with her husband’s infidelity all but disqualifies her from speaking in similarly vivid terms. Aides said Mrs. Obama had always planned to reshape her stump speech as Election Day neared to focus more on women and the significance of electing the first female president. But when Mr. Trump’s remarks surfaced on Friday, she ripped up that speech, ultimately settling on one that was all the more biting for its intimate tone. “I feel it so personally,” Mrs. Obama said on Thursday, placing her hand against her heart for emphasis as she spoke about Mr. Trump’s treatment of women. “It’s like that sick, sinking feeling you get when you’re walking down the street minding your own business and some guy yells out vulgar words about your body, or when you see that guy at work that stands just a little too close, stares a little too long so you feel uncomfortable in your own skin. ” “I can tell you that the men in my life do not talk about women this way,” Mrs. Obama added. “To dismiss this as everyday locker room talk is an insult to decent men everywhere. ” The speech was a riveting moment in an already remarkable campaign, coming just before Mr. Trump appeared in West Palm Beach, Fla. to angrily denounce as “false smears” news reports in which several women said he had made unwanted advances on them. The New Hampshire rally was Mrs. Obama’s sixth campaign appearance for Mrs. Clinton in a month, and the first lady broke from her usual approach and did not speak about Mrs. Clinton’s qualifications for the presidency until halfway through her speech. She said the former secretary of state “embodies so many of the values that we try hard to teach our young people,” and ticked off highlights from Mrs. Clinton’s résumé, saying that any parent would be proud to raise a daughter like her. But she also sought to appeal to those unenthusiastic about Mrs. Clinton or politics itself, issuing a call to voters across the political spectrum who have been alienated by a contest dominated by outrageous statements and partisan rage. “We simply cannot endure this, or expose our children to this any longer — not for another minute, and let alone for four years,” Mrs. Obama said. “This has got to stop right now. ” She argued that even voters repulsed by the tone of the campaign — “we are drowning in it,” she said at one point — must consider the norms of behavior they wanted to instill in their children. “In our hearts, we all know that if we let Hillary’s opponent win this election, then we are sending a clear message to our kids that everything they’re seeing and hearing is perfectly O. K. We are validating it. We are endorsing it,” Mrs. Obama said. “We’re telling our sons that it’s O. K. to humiliate women. We’re telling our daughters that this is how they deserve to be treated. We’re telling all our kids that bigotry and bullying are perfectly acceptable in the leader of their country. ” Instead, she framed the decision to vote for Mrs. Clinton as akin to a woman’s choice to speak out in the face of sexual mistreatment or violence. “We need to recover from our shock and depression and do what women have always done in this country,” Mrs. Obama said. “We need you to roll up your sleeves. We need to get to work. ” | 0fake |
WATCH HOW COLLEGE STUDENTS RESPOND When They’re Shown A Picture Of Muslim Boy’s “Clock” And Asked What It Is | Students at George Mason University overwhelmingly thought Ahmed Mohamed s homemade clock looked like a bomb, according to a new video published online.Dan Joseph, with the conservative Media Research Center, visited the campus just outside D.C. and showed students a photo of the controversial clock. He then asked them what they thought it looked like. I m going to show you this and you tell me what you think it is the first thing that pops in your head, Joseph told the students.No it doesn t resemble a bomb it s actually a ticket to the White House, a job offer at Twitter and Facebook, an MIT education, a reason for an online fundraiser and instant celebrity with more interview offers than this innocent Muslim boy of an activist Muslim father can schedule | 1real |
Meet Ted Cruz's top fundraiser: his wife | Olive Branch, Mississippi (CNN) Ted Cruz gushes about his wife, Heidi, on the campaign trail, telling an audience here that she is "beautiful, brilliant and my very best friend in the whole wide world."
She's also something else: The best fundraiser in the Republican presidential candidate's corner.
The senator's wife, a top executive at Goldman Sachs who is taking a leave to work at campaign headquarters, is effectively leading her husband's fundraising operation, running some weekly finance calls and pushing major donors to give the maximum they're allowed under federal law.
It's a far cry from the caricatured profile of the behind-the-scenes wife, posing for photos on stage and then receding quickly behind it. Heidi Cruz, senior campaign aides say, has been intimately involved in the process of raising the $14 million that Ted Cruz brags about on the stump, often while standing alongside the woman who made that haul possible.
Top Cruz advisers and friends describe her as a competitive fundraising dynamo, unwilling to leave each night without completing her call sheet and determined to use the Rolodex and business know-how she built as a Wall Street investor.
"She works the phones the way she worked them when she was at Goldman," said Chad Sweet, the Cruz campaign's chairman, who recruited Heidi to work at the giant investment bank. "There are very few spouses who can get on the phone on a cold call to a prospective donor and make a more compelling case in a personal and effective way than Heidi Cruz."
Nearly every candidate heralds their spouse as an asset, but few significant others in this election season -- with the exception of Hillary Clinton's -- have the same level of political experience as Heidi Cruz. A Harvard Business School graduate, she helped guide economic policy on George W. Bush's campaign -- where she met a hard-charging domestic policy aide, Ted -- and then worked in the Bush White House for four years.
That makes her husband's bid her second time on the presidential campaign trail. Campaign bundlers report up the chain to Willie Langston, Cruz's finance chair, but fundraisers and advisers say Heidi Cruz is just as much involved in counting the dollars and cents needed to build for the long haul.
It's a familiar role for Heidi Cruz, who the campaign declined to make available for an interview. In the final two weeks before her husband's primary in 2012 against David Dewhurst -- who would pour $25 million of his own money into his campaign -- she agreed to dedicate the couple's entire savings to the Senate campaign, Cruz writes in his new autobiography. And once Cruz and Dewhurst advanced to a runoff, Heidi and Sweet led a 60-person finance team that raised $60,000 each -- the "60 by 60" project -- that put the campaign back on TV, Cruz writes.
"She would sit down with a call sheet at night and call through 40, 50, 60 names, and get donor after donor to max out on the phone -- and be thrilled to do so," Cruz recalled in a recent interview with CNN as his campaign bus ambled toward Memphis, Tennessee. "She is disciplined and she engenders trust, which is a powerful thing in life."
Now, Heidi Cruz has focused her energies on drop-off donors who may have given in 2012 but haven't yet ponied up for the presidential run, or others on the fence. She isn't allowed to actively solicit money from her co-workers at Goldman, but advisers say those specific relationships matter less than do her fluency with the language of business and her work ethic that leaves even other aides in awe. During the final weeks before the second-quarter fundraising deadline, she made about 30 calls a day.
Born in California but raised around the globe by missionary doctors, Heidi Cruz also showcases an easy rapport with the less fortunate. She gamely donned a neon pink hat offered by a Cruz fan selling paraphernalia in Huntsville, Alabama, and shared her religious upbringing with fellow Adventists in Franklin, Tennessee. When throngs of Cruz fanatics mob her husband as he ends his stump speech, Heidi Cruz stands in a corner within earshot of her chief of staff, taking not just photographs but also business cards from eager backers who want to help.
At Sweet Pea's Table in this northern Mississippi suburb last week, the 42-year-old has one eye on Catherine and Caroline -- who are barnstroming the South with their parents -- and another on the platform, where her husband summons the three Cruz women to meet the tea-drinking faithful. With one hand clasped in each of her daughters', Heidi Cruz leads them off and on stage. Then as her husband rails against Obamacare and shouts about Jeb Bush, Heidi steps outside, where she works the overflow crowd with a pitchman's touch: "When were you elected?" she asks one local official. "Thank you for serving."
"The sense of genuine concern was elegant," said the official, Alderman Eddie Nabors of Batesville, Mississippi, after meeting her here. He praised how she "meets, greets and identifies" with those waiting outside. "I have one afterthought: Get her on the podium."
Courting local elected officials like Nabors also falls into her growing portfolio, which includes closing the deal on local endorsements. And the campaign is listening to Nabors' advice: She is slowly becoming an ambassador for her husband, embarking this week on her second solo trip in North and South Carolina, much like the other Cruz family salesman, his father, Rafael.
Should Donald Trump fall, as Cruz allies anticipate, Heidi Cruz is expected to be at the forefront of the Cruz campaign's effort to win over disaffected Trump loyalists, especially women.
Contributors, advisers and friends describe her as sunny and cheerful but fiercely goal-driven, using her personal nudge to make it very difficult for donors to say no to her entreaties. Those who have known her longest note how different she is from her husband, whose political persona is defined by an unyielding ideology that critics see as arrogant and inflexible.
"She's not the ideologue that Ted is on so many things. And I think she would be the first to say that," said Ed Haley, a mentor of Heidi's since he taught her in college.
Lawrence Lindsey, an economic adviser on the Bush campaign, said that appeal likely made her a better, more accessible fundraiser than the person who is the campaign's chief check collector: the candidate himself.
"Heidi could get along with almost anyone," Lindsey said. "And I don't think the same is true with Ted." | 0fake |
HILLARY’S FIRST COMMENTS On The Bill/Loretta Lynch Meeting Will Blow You Away…Does She REALLY Think We’ll Believe This? | Don t you just love all the lies coming out of Hillary s lying pie hole? She says she was really eager to meet with the FBI sure she was! I d beg to differ that she was probably so nervous trying to keep all her lies straight. The only way she would be eager to meet with the FBI is if the fix is in and she knows she ll not be charged with anything. We ll see!The lie that REALLY stood out is that she said she heard of the Bill/Loretta meeting in the news . Do you think for one minute that she didn t hear this from Bill first? She also claims it was a short chance meeting So a 30 minute meeting where no pictures or reporters were allowed is a chance meeting. This is laughable!In Hillary Clinton s first interview since meeting with FBI officials regarding the investigation into her use of a private email server, she told NBC s Chuck Todd she was eager for the meeting, and pleased to have the opportunity to assist the department in bringing its review to a conclusion. However, she declined to comment on reports that charges will not be filed against her in the case.Clinton also revealed that she first learned of her husband s tarmac meeting with Attorney General Loretta Lynch from the news. She described it as a short, chance meeting at an airport tarmac and that the two did not discuss the Department of Justice s review. Yet she acknowledged that both the former president and attorney general have admitted they wouldn t do it again. Hindsight is 20/20, Clinton said: INTERVIEW WITH POLITICAL HACK CHUCK TODD: | 1real |
Trump: Electing Clinton will cause a constitutional crisis | Trump: Electing Clinton will cause a constitutional crisis November 01, 2016 Donald Trump appears at a campaign rally in Warren, Michigan. REUTERS/Carlo Allegri
Donald Trump told a crowd in Michigan Monday that if Hillary Clinton is elected the FBI investigation overshadowing her presidency would create a constitutional crisis. Trump: "The investigation will last for years. The trial will probably start. Nothing will get done. I can tell you, your jobs will continue to leave Michigan. Nothing’s going to get done.” Clinton: Confident that the FBI will not find anything problematic in the emails and will reach the same conclusion they did earlier this year. Hillary from Ohio: "It wasn't even a close call.” Clinton on Trump being a threat: "I am running against someone who says he doesn't understand why we can't use nuclear weapons.” From Cincinnati: “I wonder if he even knows that a single nuclear warhead can kill millions of people.” Trump from Warren: "I want to tell you, she is a terrible example for my son and the children of this country.” “Hillary is the one who broke the law over and over and over again.”
(GRAND RAPIDS, MICH./KENT, OHIO) Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump called Democratic rival Hillary Clinton a threat to the country on Monday, saying that if she is elected a probe into her emails could shadow her entire term in office.
"The investigation will last for years. The trial will probably start," Trump told a rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan. "Nothing will get done. I can tell you, your jobs will continue to leave Michigan. Nothing’s going to get done.”
The Federal Bureau of Investigation on Friday said it was investigating newly discovered emails that might relate to Clinton's use of a private email server when she was secretary of state.
Clinton on Monday again said she was confident that the FBI would not find anything problematic in her emails and would reach the same conclusion they did earlier this year.
"It wasn't even a close call," she said at a rally in Cincinnati, Ohio, of the FBI investigation. | 1real |
Saudi Shura Council to vote on curbing autonomy of morality police | RIYADH (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia s Shura Council, an influential advisory body to the government, will vote on a proposal to merge the religious police into the ministry of Islamic affairs, local media reported, further curbing the force s authority. The religious police, officially known as the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, patrols public spaces to enforce bans on alcohol, music, prayer time, store closures and the mixing of unrelated men and women. It also imposes strict modesty requirements on women s dress. Last year, amid a reform drive to diversify the Saudi economy and open up its society, the government increased curbs on the religious police, barring it from pursuing suspects or making arrests. Saudi Gazette reported late on Sunday that the proposal to end the commission s autonomous status, put forward by Atta Al-Thibaiti and two other members, is expected to see a vote next week. King Salman s approval would be needed to implement such a measure. The promotion of virtue and prevention of vice is an Islamic duty for every Muslim, and the Sharia tenets had never considered practicing [that] to be under an independent organ or an autonomous entity, the report said, citing the proposal s supporters. The Shura members were quoted as saying the merger would also help ease the state s budget deficit by avoiding duplication of efforts and cutting expenditure . Hardline conservatives say the religious police are central to imposing the kingdom s austere form of Sunni Islam, while aggressive enforcement of strict morality rules has drawn criticism from more liberal Saudis. The vice squad has come under fire online and in local media over several high-profile cases of car chases resulting in fatal accidents, prompting the commission s president to ban such pursuits in 2012. The commission stirred controversy again last year after video posted on social media showed members beating a young woman outside a Riyadh mall. The patrol had tried to force the woman to cover her face, local media reported. Saudi Gazette quoted Thibaiti as saying the proposal to merge the two bodies had overcome initial opposition by the Shura s committee on Islamic and judicial affairs. Members could not immediately be reached for comment. | 0fake |
Why You Should Tell Your Children How Much You Make - The New York Times | When Scott Parker wanted his six offspring to know more about the value of money, he decided to do something that many parents would consider radical: show them exactly what he earned. One day, he stopped by his local Wells Fargo branch in Encinitas, Calif. and asked to withdraw his entire monthly salary in cash. In singles. It took 24 hours for the tellers to round up that many bills, so he returned the next day and took away the $100 stacks in a canvas bag. His oldest son, Daniel, who was 15 at the time, remembers the moment his father walked into the house and dumped the $10, 000 or so on a table. “It looked like he had robbed a bank,” he said. After a pause to let it all sink in, Mr. Parker began peeling off bills. He told them about taxes, set aside money for a tithe to their church and made a big pile for the house payment. The singles piled up for soccer and scouting and hamburger night. By the end, there wasn’t much left over. “I was trying to make as big of an impact as I could, and I definitely had their attention,” he said recently. Your children deserve to know what you make, too. It may sound improbable, but you can begin to initiate them when they’re as young as 5 or 6, building their knowledge slowly and giving them the real answer while they’re still teenagers. Handle it right, and it will be one of the most valuable lessons of their childhood. Here’s the bigger problem this helps to solve: Money is a source of mystery to children. They sense its power, so they ask questions, lots of them, over many years. Why isn’t our house as big as my cousin’s? Why can’t I have a carnivorous plant terrarium? Why should I respect my teachers if they earn only $60, 000 per year? (Real question!) Are we poor? Why didn’t you give money to the man who asked you for some? If my sister can have Beats by Dre headphones, why won’t you get me the Lego Mindstorms set? (It’s only $349, and it’s educational, Mom!) We adults, however, tend to do a miserable job of answering. We push our children’s money questions aside, sometimes telling them that their queries are impolite, or perhaps worrying that they will call out our own financial hypocrisy and errors. Sometimes we respond defensively and viscerally, barking back, “None of your business,” unintentionally teaching our children that the topic is off limits despite its obvious importance. Others want to protect their children from a topic many of us find stressful or baffling: Can’t we keep them innocent of all of this money stuff for just a little bit longer? But shielding children from the realities of everyday financial life makes little sense anymore, given the responsibilities their generation will face, starting with the outsize college tuitions they will encounter while still in high school. “It’s dangerous, like not telling them about how their bodies are going to change during puberty,” said Amanda Rose Adams, a mother of two in Fort Collins, Colo. “That’s how kids come out of college $100, 000 in debt with an English degree. ” Or not knowing how and why to start saving right away for retirement, or how to pick a health insurance plan. This does not mean that children are entitled to your tax returns the first time they ask how much you earn. Financial transparency comes only with readiness, as Joline Godfrey, a family financial education consultant, puts it, and it takes a decade or so to give them enough knowledge and context to make the information meaningful and for you to feel safe sharing it. Start by using the same, simple line every time your child asks you a money question: “Why do you ask?” Don’t say it with disapproval or defensiveness make it clear that you’re glad your child asked. This is a stalling tactic to give you time to think of an answer. (It also works well with questions about sex and drugs.) Even better, it can allow you to figure out exactly what is on your child’s mind. If two parents are fighting about money and a child overhears, it’s natural to wonder how much the family has or if it has enough. At that moment, it can be easy to reassure a child that the family is fine — if that’s true — and that the argument was merely about the best way to use what it does have. Still, when it comes to your children’s financial initiation, you don’t want to play defense, merely responding to their inquiries. Instead, you want to build their awareness slowly of how to build a household budget. Start with something that you spend money on regularly — anything, really. Children as young as 6 or 7 can begin to understand the grocery bill. They often tag along to the store or add to the wish list each week, so it’s a great opportunity to introduce the idea of wants and needs as you navigate the aisles. Some children even get in on the couponing, collecting a portion of the savings from the parents. This is all part of helping them answer basic family budget questions: What do we spend each month to cover the necessities, and what do we choose to spend on things that we merely want? Our spending isn’t a secret in the first place children see plenty. But watching us whip out plastic cards in the store or in front of the computer, completely out of context, may give them the wrong impression entirely, which is why it’s good to introduce them to all of the expenses before they are teenagers. Some parents start with even larger line items. Trisha Jones, a mother in Norfolk, Va. sends her children, who are 6 and 8, to private school. Each month, she has them sit with her while she pays the tuition online, asking them to click the button. “We jokingly say that it costs $92. 50 to send them each to school every day,” she said, adding that they know that the daily number is akin to a nice Lego set. “But it’s a privilege to go to the school that they do, and we want them to know that we are making sacrifices to send them there. ” Other families focus on expenses that derive from the children’s extracurricular interests. When the local ballet studio raised prices just as her daughter was increasing her commitment to dance, Rebecca Miller Goggins showed her the bills. A professional who lives in Northampton, Mass. Ms. Goggins is used to being direct about money and gave her daughter the option of having one fewer lesson per week or cutting back elsewhere. Rather than reducing the number of lessons, her daughter started babysitting more and contributing money toward her pointe shoes. In the Adams house in Colorado, every line item in the budget is available for inspection by the children, who are 10 and 11. Each Sunday, the family reviews it. “You feel deprived if you’re not part of the process,” said Ms. Adams, a program manager for a technology company. Her children are now involved in deciding on too. Skipping dinner at the Vietnamese restaurant means more money in the Disneyland fund. One idea one of the children had: Rather than hang out at the Barnes Noble after dinner, where spending temptations abound, they head to the public library. If your child knows how to use the Internet, you might be shocked by how much financial information about your family he or she may already possess. Search your home address: Did the approximate value of your home pop up? Mine, too, and it will happen when many children search their addresses for the first time and find the Zillow estimates. Once a child discovers this, it’s a quick step to looking up the address of every friend. Then comes research into salary information. If it can’t be found, the child may go looking through your belongings for your tax returns, as I did as a young snooper. At this point, you may be in a bit of a pickle. Information about household income and home values is data it ought to stay in the family. But if you can’t control exactly when family members acquire some of it, you need to at least try to imprint the idea of discretion. The script can go something like this: We’re trusting you with this information because we want you to know where our income goes, and we expect you to show the same maturity with other information you’ve found yourself. The same principles apply with medical information, friends’ secrets and other private things. “We’ve had other issues that we’ve talked about that are private and confidential,” said Ms. Goggins, the in Massachusetts. So she and her husband recently told their and daughters what they earn. “They’ve proven themselves. ” As will many children in middle and high school. Most of them don’t want their peers singling them out as having more or less than others, so they may try harder than you think to keep the information private. For some families, this advice will work only selectively. Ms. Adams, who wrote the book “Heart Warriors” about her son’s heart disease, shields him from knowledge of the family’s medical bills. Child patients often feel guilty for inconveniencing their families. Families who struggle generally, or are experiencing a period of unemployment, are naturally among the most reticent. Still, even the youngest generally understand when budgets have become tighter and want to know why. Pretending that there hasn’t been a reduction in income or some other difficult circumstance doesn’t help them. “If you are not talking to them, then they are drawing their own conclusions,” said Sara Solnick, an associate professor of economics at the University of Vermont who has written about social comparison. Leveling with them about the reality and how you’re managing it may help ease their fears. When Andrea Dutton and her husband separated and she moved with her daughter and son to a smaller house in Gainesville, Fla. she addressed the matter simply. “I’m not apologizing to them about it,” she said. “I want them to realize that the right decision is not always the easy one. I’d rather have them see that you can do the right thing and get out of a bad situation even if it means taking a hit financially. ” Keep in mind that if you are planning on applying for financial aid for college, you will have no choice but to disclose your financial information when your child is a senior in high school. That’s because anyone who wants financial aid must fill out a form called the Fafsa. It asks for information about income and assets. Parents sign it, and so must the students everyone attests to the accuracy of the information. Coming clean about income and assets can pose special challenges if you are truly wealthy you may worry that children will flaunt their good fortune or think they never have to work. But you don’t get a pass: If you don’t work (or don’t work much) older children will wonder how the family affords its life. At the very least, it’s worth trying some starter exercises, like showing your children the details of what a vacation or a second home actually costs. Explain, too, that it requires a great deal of money to throw off whatever dividends and interest contribute to the family budget, and that the investments that do so may not last or may not fall to the next generation if the children don’t make something of themselves in college and beyond. Given the near inevitability that parents will have to disclose their incomes or their children will find out some other way, it’s best to think of that moment of revelation and the years leading up to it as opportunities. For those of us who have at least a little bit more than what we need to scrape by, what we spend says a lot about what we stand for how we determine value is a reflection of our values. The same is true for whatever we have left over each month. How much do we save? Why does it fluctuate? Who has helped us, what do we give to people who have less, and why don’t we give more? It’s impossible to answer these questions for children with conviction and clarity if they don’t know the size of the number at the beginning of the equation. When Mr. Parker came home with his big bag of money from Wells Fargo 20 years ago, he was acting as much on reflex as anything else. “I just remember distinctly that I never knew myself growing up, and I felt it was a big disadvantage,” he said. “I had no idea what it would take to take care of a family. ” That night, the lessons couldn’t have been clearer: The family’s life was expensive. Every decision mattered. Savings and faith were high priorities. And there wasn’t much left at the end of the month. His son, Daniel, is now an adult and has two small children. He and his wife intend to share their financial information with their children as they grow. “He had little tolerance for entitlement in any of us,” Daniel said of his father. Scott Parker did have confidence that his children would know what to do with the information he had literally dumped onto the table. “I wasn’t swearing anyone to secrecy,” he said. “But I can tell you, it never became an issue. I figure that whatever the risk was, it was worth it. ” | 0fake |
Oh, What a Lovely War! | Oh, What a Lovely War! Delusional foreign policy could bring disaster Email This Page to Someone Your Name Here's
The American people don’t know very much about war even if Washington has been fighting on multiple fronts since 9/11. The continental United States has not experienced the presence a hostile military force for more than 100 years and war for the current generation of Americans consists largely of the insights provided by video games and movies. The Pentagon’s invention of embedded journalists, which limits any independent media insight into what is going on overseas, has contributed to the rendering of war as some kind of abstraction. Gone forever is anything like the press coverage of Vietnam, with nightly news and other media presentations showing prisoners being executed and young girls screaming while racing down the street in flames.
Given all of that, it is perhaps no surprise that both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, neither of whom has served in uniform, should regard violence inflicted on people overseas with a considerable level of detachment. Hillary is notorious for her assessment of the brutal killing of Libya’s Moammar Gaddafi, saying “We came, we saw, he died.” They both share to an extent the dominant New York-Washington policy consensus view that dealing with foreigners can sometimes get a bit bloody, but that is a price that someone in power has to be prepared to pay. One of Hillary’s top advisers, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, famously declared that the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children due to U.S. led sanctions were “worth it.”
In the election campaign there has, in fact, been little discussion of the issue of war and peace or even of America’s place in the world, though Trump did at one point note correctly that implementation of Hillary’s suggested foreign policy could escalate into World War III. It has been my contention that the issue of war should be more front and center in the minds of Americans when they cast their ballots as the prospect of an armed conflict in which little is actually at stake escalating and going nuclear could conceivably end life on this planet as we know it.
With that in mind, it is useful to consider what the two candidates have been promising. First, Hillary, who might reasonably be designated the Establishment’s war candidate though she carefully wraps it in humanitarian “liberal interventionism.” As Senator and Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton has always viewed a foreign crisis as an opportunity to use aggressive measures to seek a resolution. She can always be relied upon to “do something,” a reflection of the neocon driven Washington foreign policy consensus.
Hillary Clinton and her advisors, who believe strongly in Washington’s leadership role globally and embrace their own definition of American exceptionalism, have been explicit in terms of what they would do to employ our military power. She would be an extremely proactive president in foreign policy, with a particular animus directed against Russia. And, unfortunately, there would be little or no pushback against the exercise of her admittedly poor instincts regarding what to do, as was demonstrated regarding Libya and also with Benghazi. She would find little opposition in Congress and the media for an extremely risky foreign policy, and would benefit from the Washington groupthink that prevails over the alleged threats emanating from Russia, Iran, and China.
Hillary has received support from foreign policy hawks, including a large number of formerly Republican neocons, to include Robert Kagan, Michael Chertoff, Michael Hayden, Eliot Cohen and Eric Edelman. James Stavridis, a retired admiral who was once vetted by Clinton as a possible vice president, recently warned of “the need to use deadly force against the Iranians. I think it’s coming. It’s going to be maritime confrontation and if it doesn’t happen immediately, I’ll bet you a dollar it’s going to be happening after the presidential election, whoever is elected.”
Hillary believes that Syria’s president Bashar al-Assad is the root cause of the turmoil in that country and must be removed as the first priority. . It is a foolish policy as al-Assad in no way threatens the United States while his enemy ISIS does and regime change would create a power vacuum that will benefit the latter. She has also called for a no-fly zone in Syria to protect the local population as well as the insurgent groups that the U.S. supports, some of which had been labeled as terrorists before they were renamed by current Secretary of State John Kerry. Such a zone would dramatically raise the prospect of armed conflict with Russia and it puts Washington in an odd position vis-à-vis what is occurring in Syria. The U.S. is not at war with the Syrian government, which, like it or not, is under international law sovereign within its own recognized borders. Damascus has invited the Russians in to help against the rebels and objects to any other foreign presence on Syrian territory. In spite of all that, Washington is asserting some kind of authority to intervene and to confront the Russians as both a humanitarian mission and as an “inherent right of self-defense.”
Hillary has not recommended doing anything about Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey, all of which have at one time or another for various reasons supported ISIS, but she is clearly no friend of Iran, which has been fighting ISIS. As a Senator, she threatened to “totally obliterate” Iran but she has more recently reluctantly supported the recent nuclear agreement with that country negotiated by President Barack Obama. But she has nevertheless warned that she will monitor the situation closely for possible violations and will otherwise pushback against activity by the Islamic Republic. As one of her key financial supporters is Israeli Haim Saban, who has said he is a one issue guy and that issue is Israel, she is likely to pursue aggressive policies in the Persian Gulf. She has also promised to move America’s relationship with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to a “new level” and has repeatedly declared that her support for Israel is unconditional.
One of Hillary’s advisors, former CIA acting Director Michael Morell, has called for new sanctions on Tehran and has also recently recommended that the U.S. begin intercepting Iranian ships presumed to be carrying arms to the Houthis in Yemen. Washington is not at war with either Iran or Yemen and the Houthis are not on the State Department terrorist list but our good friends the Saudis have been assiduously bombing them for reasons that seem obscure. Stopping ships in international waters without any legal pretext would be considered by many an act of piracy. Morell has also called for covertly assassinating Iranians and Russians to express our displeasure with the foreign policies of their respective governments.
Hillary’s dislike for Russia’s Vladimir Putin is notorious. Syria aside, she has advocated arming Ukraine with game changing offensive weapons and also bringing Ukraine and Georgia into NATO, which would force a sharp Russian reaction. One suspects that she might be sympathetic to the views expressed recently by Carl Gershman in a Washington Post op-ed that received curiously little additional coverage in the media. Gershman is the head of the taxpayer funded National Endowment for Democracy (NED), which means that he is a powerful figure in Washington’s foreign-policy establishment. NED has plausibly been described as doing the sorts of things that the CIA used to do.
After making a number of bumper-sticker claims about Russia and Putin that are either partially true, unproven or even ridiculous, Gershman concluded that “the United States has the power to contain and defeat this danger. The issue is whether we can summon the will to do so.” It is basically a call for the next administration to remove Putin from power—as foolish a suggestion as has ever been seen in a leading newspaper, as it implies that the risk of nuclear war is completely acceptable to bring about regime change in a country whose very popular, democratically elected leadership we disapprove of. But it is nevertheless symptomatic of the kind of thinking that goes on inside the beltway and is quite possibly a position that Hillary Clinton will embrace. She also benefits from having the perfect implementer of such a policy in Robert Kagan’s wife Victoria Nuland, her extremely dangerous protégé who is currently Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs and who might wind up as Secretary of State in a Clinton Administration.
Shifting to East Asia, Hillary sees the admittedly genuine threat from North Korea but her response is focused more on China. She would increase U.S. military presence in the South China Sea to deter any further attempts by Beijing to develop disputed islands and would also “ring China with defensive missiles,” ostensibly as “protection” against Pyongyang but also to convince China to pressure North Korea over its nuclear and ballistic missile programs. One wonders what Beijing might think about being surrounded by made-in-America missiles.
Trump’s foreign policy is admittedly quite sketchy and he has not always been consistent. He has been appropriately enough slammed for being simple minded in saying that he would “bomb the crap out of ISIS,” but he has also taken on the Republican establishment by specifically condemning the George W. Bush invasion of Iraq and has more than once indicated that he is not interested in either being the world’s policeman or in new wars in the Middle East. He has repeatedly stated that he supports NATO but it should not be construed as hostile to Russia. He would work with Putin to address concerns over Syria and Eastern Europe. He would demand that NATO countries spend more for their own defense and also help pay for the maintenance of U.S. bases.
Trump’s controversial call to stop all Muslim immigration has been rightly condemned but it contains a kernel of truth in that the current process for vetting new arrivals in this country is far from transparent and apparently not very effective. The Obama Administration has not been very forthcoming on what might be done to fix the entire immigration process but Trump is promising to shake things up, which is overdue, though what exactly a Trump Administration would try to accomplish is far from clear.
Continuing on the negative side, Trump, who is largely ignorant of the world and its leaders, has relied on a mixed bag of advisors. Former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency General Michael Flynn appears to be the most prominent. Flynn is associated with arch neocon Michael Ledeen and both are rabid about Iran, with Flynn suggesting that nearly all the unrest in the Middle East should be laid at Tehran’s door. Ledeen is, of course, a prominent Israel-firster who has long had Iran in his sights. The advice of Ledeen and Flynn may have been instrumental in Trump’s vehement denunciation of the Iran nuclear agreement, which he has called a “disgrace,” which he has said he would “tear up.” It is vintage dumb-think. The agreement cannot be canceled because there are five other signatories to it and the denial of a nuclear weapons program to Tehran benefits everyone in the region, including Israel. It is far better to have the agreement than to scrap it, if that were even possible.
Trump has said that he would be an even-handed negotiator between Israel and the Palestinians but he has also declared that he is strongly pro-Israel and would move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, which is a bad idea, not in America’s interest, even if Netanyahu would like it. It would produce serious blowback from the Arab world and would inspire a new wave of terrorism directed against the U.S.
Regarding the rest of the Middle East, Trump would prefer strong leaders, i.e. autocrats, who are friendly rather than chaotic reformers. He rejects arming rebels as in Syria because we know little about whom we are dealing with and find that we cannot control what develops. He is against foreign aid in principle, particularly to countries like Pakistan where the U.S. is strongly disliked.
In East Asia, Trump would encourage Japan and South Korea to develop their own nuclear arsenals to deter North Korea. It is a very bad idea, a proliferation nightmare. Like Hillary, he would prefer that China intervene in North Korea and make Kim Jong Un “step down.” He would put pressure on China to devalue its currency because it is “bilking us of billions of dollars” and would also increase U.S. military presence in the region to limit Beijing’s expansion in the South China Sea.
So there you have it as you enter the voting booth. President Obama is going around warning that “the fate of the world is teetering” over the electoral verdict, which he intends to be a ringing endorsement of Hillary even though the choice is not nearly that clear cut. Part of the problem with Trump is that he has some very bad ideas mixed in with a few good ones and no one knows what he would actually do if he were president. Unfortunately, it is all too clear what Hillary would do. | 1real |
Obama has 'better things to do' than comment on birther issue | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama on Friday said he had better things to do than comment on Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s announcement about the so-called birther question over Obama’s citizenship. “I’m shocked that a question like that would come up at a time when we’ve got so many other things to do - well, I’m not that shocked actually,” Obama told reporters. “I was pretty confident about where I was born. I think most people were as well,” Obama told reporters in the Oval Office, where he was meeting about a trade deal with Asia. Trump plans to address Obama’s citizenship on Friday, a day after he refused in a newspaper interview to say whether he believed Obama was born in the United States. “My hope would be that the presidential election reflects more serious issues than that,” said Obama, who several years ago released a longer version of his birth certificate to answer those who suggested he was not U.S. born. | 0fake |
Ellen Pompeo Just Shut A Racist Twitter Troll Down With A Hard Dose Of The Truth (TWEET) | After Ellen Pompeo viewed yet other shooting of an unarmed black man by police, who was even on his back with his hands up as he was trying to help a patient with autism, she took to Twitter and said: To all of you obsessed with all lives matter We can do this all day long we get a new video everyday..do you? To all of you obsessed with all lives matter We can do this all day long we get a new video everyday..do you? https://t.co/aAGI7Yh2ov Ellen Pompeo (@EllenPompeo) July 21, 2016But of course, there are racist idiots out there who haven t quite caught on that the Black Lives Matter movement was created because all lives clearly don t matter. So, this racist dingbat said this to try to turn the narrative around: Black people commit more violent crimes towards other black people than cops do. Wheres ur outrage Ellen? @JCapedia @EllenPompeo @ShaunKing Black people commit more violent crimes towards other black people than cops do. Wheres ur outrage Ellen? Max Headroom (@WoobysToyBox) July 21, 2016But Pompeo was NOT about to put up with that idiotic and racist reply, and came straight back with a hard dose of the truth in a mic drop felt around the world. She said: My outrage is alive and well because black on black crime is a byproduct of centuries systemic racism you fool. My outrage is alive and well because black on black crime is a byproduct of centuries systemic racism you fool https://t.co/1eY07BkwbN Ellen Pompeo (@EllenPompeo) July 21, 2016And she s exactly right it s a fact that needs to be learned by everyone everywhere who thinks otherwise. Especially by those who continue on with their All lives matter bullsh*t, because clearly they don t think all lives matter if they re mad black people want to be treated with the same dignity and respect as everyone else.Featured Photo by Mark Davis/Getty Images for TV Land | 1real |
OOPS! VIDEO EMERGES Of Comey Testifying Under Oath That Trump Administration Did NOT Pressure FBI To Halt Any Investigations For Political Purposes [VIDEO] | Former FBI Director James Comey testified under Senate oath May 3rd that the Trump administration had not pressured his agency to halt any investigation for political purposes. Comey admitted that the FBI has always been free to operate without political interference flying in the face of Democrats paranoid delusions about Russia and President Donald J. Trump, and exposing for what it is a new political witch hunt Wednesday by enemies within the president s own Justice Department.On Wednesday, DOJ appointed a special prosecutor, former FBI Director Robert Mueller, to drum up more hype about Trump s imaginary collusion with Russia during the general election.On May 9th, President Trump fired Comey, who has spent 15 years shilling for Hillary Clinton.Videotaped testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee blows apart the phony narrative New York Times reporter Michael Schmidt wove on Tuesday, which resulted in Mueller s appointment. Schmidt s only sources were anonymous. They claimed that on Feb. 14th, the day after National Security Adviser Michael Flynn resigned, Trump had asked Comey to end an investigation into Flynn s connections to Russia. Got NewsNick Short was first to expose Comey s testimony on May 3rd, where under oath where he stated that, as it relates to Trump or his administration asking him to halt an investigation for political purposes: It s not happened in my experience .If Trump told Comey to "stop investigating" as Comey memo alleges then why did Comey state this on May 3 under oath? https://t.co/5A1Zq5rpgs pic.twitter.com/rp9V4qb1hq Nick Short (@PoliticalShort) May 17, 2017 | 1real |
Obama’s Labor Secretary Zaps Trump’s Foreign Policy With A Single, Needle-Sharp Zinger | Donald Trump doesn t have much foreign policy experience, but he loves his golf courses, especially the ones overseas. He s no longer associated with Miss Universe, but surely that prepared him for foreign policy and running a country, just as his golf courses in Scotland did. President Obama s labor secretary, Tom Perez, took Trump to the cleaners over this during an interview on Meet the Press, because Perez knows that Trump doesn t know foreign policy at all.Host Chuck Todd asked Perez how he would describe his own foreign policy, and Perez replied with a smirk and razor-sharp sarcasm: Well, I haven t run a Ms. Universe pageant, and I don t own any golf courses in Scotland, Chuck, so I don t have what Donald Trump has, and I m very sorry about that. That hits King Dunce right where it hurts, because King Dunce doesn t know how to take advice, let alone actually learn anything. Remember, King Dunce the man who gave us this little nugget of disease-ridden feces: I m speaking with myself, number one, because I have a very good brain and I ve said a lot of things I know what I m doing and I listen to a lot of people, I talk to a lot of people and at the appropriate time I ll tell you who the people are. But my primary consultant is myself and I have a good instinct for this stuff. He has a touch of instinct for business, and that s it. He thinks government, and particularly foreign affairs, are just like business and he can treat them with strong-arm tactics and threats of lawsuits oh wait, war if they don t give in.King Trump s foreign policy sounds great to ignorant voters who can t think for themselves. It s all about America first. It s a lot of the same mentality that led to Brexit, and it s true that world s uppermost caste has left working class people in the dust in the pursuit of their own black and vile greed. However, Trump wants to bully and muscle other countries into doing what he wants. He doesn t want actual negotiations.It wouldn t be surprising to discover that His Royal Narcissist thinks that his me first mentality is the same as having an America first mentality. His confidence in his own greatness is part of why he talks about all his businesses, including his golf courses, as though they ve given him all the experience he needs to run one of the most powerful countries in the world.As Perez explained, Trump the Dump is all about himself and his own profits and glory rather than America first, because otherwise, he wouldn t fight labor unions and he wouldn t have his clothing and campaign gear made in the very foreign countries he demonizes regularly on the campaign trail.Perez nailed him to the wall on this.Featured image by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images | 1real |
UK May Prosecute Top Banking Officials in Public Sham | UK May Prosecute Top Banking Officials in Public Sham 27, 2016
Imagine Jailing the Central Bankers Who Saved the world … The U.K. may be on the verge of an unprecedented experiment in public accountability. The courts may soon be invited to consider the following question: Should government officials face prosecution if the actions they took to support the financial system during the credit crisis stink in hindsight? – Bloomberg
Finally central bankers are going to be investigated. But the investigation won’t involve the system itself or why central banks are given monopoly powers to print money.
According to this Bloomberg article, banks and central bankers have been facing a potential day in court because banking officials coordinated monetary giveaways in 2007-2008.
Say what? With all the immense corruption surrounding central banks, what’s under investigation has to do with whether banks were pressured to behave in a certain way so as to avoid public panic?
More:
In late 2007 and early 2008, with markets in a meltdown and the health of British banks under relentless scrutiny, the Bank of England belatedly pumped money into the financial system.
With money markets seized up and liquidity hard to find, banks were invited to trade assets for central bank cash.
At issue is whether officials nudged, steered or ordered — take your pick — financial firms to act in unison, ensuring that no single bank looked more desperate for assistance than its peers. In other words, were these transactions rigged?
This is a truly incredible question. The world’s monetary system is rigged from top to bottom and thanks to central bank monetary manipulation is basically in an almost decade-long quasi-depression.
Worse, most of the world’s central banks are doing something that’s never been considered in the history of money: either charging negative interest rates or seriously considering it.
When central banks get through adjusting interest rates to even more thoroughly distort economies, they can move toward banning cash, worldwide, something that needs to be done in concert with negative interest rates.
A ban on cash has never been tried in the whole of history. But these central bankers and their handpicked government officials are an ambitious bunch. Uruguay, for instance, has already banned cash for gasoline purchases and several European countries are embarked on even more ambitious programs.
How about the fiddling relative to money metals? Central banks surely collude to reduce the price of gold and silver as regards other currencies. Also, many Western countries claim to have gold and silver that they evidently do not actually possess.
Interest rate malfeasance? Savers and investors have lost trillions because of determinedly low interest rates. How about suing bankers for monopoly money manipulation?
Or how about suing to bust-up the obvious monopoly regime exercised out of Switzerland where the Bank for International Settlements meets regularly with top central banks representing most of the money in the world.
Put China, the US, Britain and the European Central Bank around a conference table and you’ve maybe 70 percent of the world’s money supply represented. Decisions taken at that table can change the direction of world history – and probably do on a regular basis.
Sir Paul Tucker, the former deputy governor of the Bank of England, was interviewed this year as part of an investigation by the Serious Fraud Office, the Financial Times reported this week …
Dan Davies, a senior research adviser at Frontline Analysts, [says]: “It’s a disproportionate amount of effort to put into a ‘crime’ that was not only victimless but socially useful.”
Middle classes in the US supposedly have about $1,000 on hand in savings and well over $100,000 in debt. And surely the same sort of situation is present in Europe.
Since the beginning of the Federal Reserve in 2013, the US dollar has been virtually destroyed: It’s reportedly only worth some two cents of its original value. Other major currencies are similarly debased.
The world is facing a series of catastrophes that are much greater than a secret orchestration of banks so that one banking problem didn’t seem greater than another.
The debt levels of countries, industries and individuals is so high that the William White – a former top official for the BIS – said early this year that there was no way out of a global default. What was necessary, he said, was a debt jubilee similar to ones that have taken place in the past.
But British officials are worried about whether British banks and the Bank of England secretly colluded to avoid a public panic. This is the best they can come up with regarding central bank criminality?
It’s a kind of meme, in fact. Propaganda. With the world’s economy in shreds, British bank officials are supposedly worried that their central bankers did things that “stink” in order to stabilize – “save” – the system.
People are supposed to look at this investigation and conclude that there is no other criminality worth investigating and that in any event British officials are indeed serious about holding banks responsible for some sort of wrongdoing.
What will be broadcast, if there is a trial, is the concern of bankers and central bankers that public panic be damped at the source – for the good of the public.
In fact, one can visualize a scenario where any bankers brought up on these charges will look sympathetic to the public because their actions were supposedly taken to stabilize public perceptions and avoid a panic.
Economies around the world are melting down. They are one market-crash away from nearly universal bankruptcy. The system has bestowed literally trillions of dollars of wealth on a handful of global central bank controllers while stripping almost everyone else of solvency.
But the best British officials can do is investigate central bankers for supposedly trying to avoid making individuals banks the target of bank runs.
The reality of central banking and its ongoing horrendous destruction will likely never be subject to real criticism until it’s too late. This sort of investigation illustrates this exactly.
Ironically, when the world is decimated and millions, or even billions, starve due to a breakdown of the monetary economy, the same individuals now “investigating” the manipulation of public banking will suggest a global consolidation of the system.
Conclusion: The goal is to make central bankers look endlessly sympathetic and caring to the general public. When the catastrophe finally occurs, suggestions will be made to repose even more power in these same individuals and institutions. This investigation is nothing more than a public relations sham, It is probably designed to elicit public sympathy for those it indicts, if it comes to that. | 1real |
U.N. experts urge Aung San Suu Kyi to meet persecuted Rohingya | GENEVA (Reuters) - Myanmar s leader Aung San Suu Kyi should personally meet members of the Muslim Rohingya minority which is being subjected to ongoing persecution by the military, a group of U.N. human rights experts said on Tuesday. Myanmar has rejected U.N. accusations that its forces are engaged in ethnic cleansing against Rohingya Muslims in response to coordinated attacks by Rohingya insurgents on the security forces on Aug. 25. The military campaign has sent nearly 430,000 refugees fleeing to Bangladesh, the group of seven U.N. officials said. They include the special rapporteurs on human rights in Myanmar, on minority issues and on racism. We call on Aung San Suu Kyi to meet the Rohingya personally, the officials said in a statement. They said the implementation of promises by Suu Kyi to address the crisis, including that perpetrators would be held accountable, would amount to an empty gesture since so many Rohingya had fled. Suu Kyi is Nobel Peace prize winner whose government came to power last year in a transition from nearly 50 years of harsh military rule. She has denounced any rights violations but international pressure on her is mounting and there are calls for her Nobel prize to be withdrawn. Suu Kyi has little if any control over the security forces under a military-drafted constitution that also bars her from the presidency and gives the military veto power over political reform. The 1.1 million Rohingya in Buddhist majority Myanmar are denied citizenship and classified as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, despite claiming roots in the region that go back centuries, with communities marginalized and occasionally subjected to communal violence. | 0fake |
WOW! Watch Side By Side Comparison Of Hillary’s LIES Next To FBI Director’s Report On Email Scandal [VIDEO] | This video is truly one of the best examples of how Hillary lies and manipulates low-information voters into believing she is innocent of any wrongdoing even when it is crystal clear she is guilty | 1real |
WOW! WHITE Liberals Suggest Blacks Are Too Stupid To Get ID’s…Can’t Figure Out How To Use Internet [VIDEO] | 1real | |
NASA Actually Recorded Sound In Space. What You're About To Hear Is Absolutely Chilling! | Share on Facebook NASA Space Sounds: what happens when spacecraft are used to record radio emissions from planetary environments, which are then converted to sound waves. Some spacecraft have instruments capable of capturing radio emissions. What you're hearing is the result of scientists' conversion of these radio emissions to sound waves. Instruments on NASA's Voyager, INJUN 1, ISEE 1 and HAWKEYE space probes were used to record the vibrations of different objects in our solar system. The recorded sounds are the complex interactions of charged electromagnetic particles from the solar wind, ionisphere, and planetary magnetosphere. The space sounds are really amazing! Nothing was added or tweaked either, these are the beautiful sounds which emanate from that mysterious world above and beyond. Enjoy! Saturn's Rings | 1real |
Permit Me To Clarify My Position (An Apology for Prometheus) | Prometheus Brings Fire To Man(image by Friedrich Fuger) License DMCA I have been 'accused' by another contributor at OEN of advocating violent resistance against the US government. So I need to address this issue. In a comment on an anti-war article by David Swanson, I stated clearly that I am not a violent revolutionary because peace has to begin somewhere and the only place I have real control is with myself so I accept the principle that a peace and an anti-war position begins with me. But what does taking a serious peace-position mean? Many years ago, more than once, I protested and 'marched' with Martin Luther King Jr. for peace and justice at home and abroad (Vietnam). I paid for this with threats on my life, a broken wrist, and a fractured occipital bone. A man I knew at the time told me that if I had cut my hair and stayed at home or just gone to a baseball game or some other proper American activity instead of walking the street and asking for trouble, I would never have suffered those threats and injuries. He said that I was the one who caused the violence. And in a way, he was right. When MLK decided to organize protests and marches, he was asking for trouble. And he knew it better than anyone. When he was talking and marching about racial equality and against war he was risking the possibility of injury or death, but when he moved to Chicago to live with the poor and began openly demanding changes in the economic system that risk possibility became a certainty. From that decision on there was a bullet with his name on it. Many people suffered threats, injury, and sometimes death because of MLK. He caused a great deal of violence because he was serious about radically changing the socio-economic system he lived in and knew the change would never come if he simply wrote letters to his congressman and restricted his activity to baseball games and other proper things. When Bobby Kennedy decided to begin dismantling the CIA, he was asking for big trouble. And he got it: Murder. Poor man should have just stuck to baseball games, flag waving, and ineffective idealistic speeches. Or he and King should have just dropped out of public view and retreated into an Eastern monastery, anonymously meditated for the rest of their lives, and let karma take care of everything. Because taking a serious position in the world (outside a monastery) is just asking for trouble, as in VIOLENCE. - Advertisement - When I was a teenager there was a huge popular wave of anti-Christian and pro-Hindu sentiment among mostly white young people in the US. India was endlessly referred to as the true Holy Land in which rose the true Holy Men. All Western 'saints' were just shallow pretenders. I was always troubled and alienated by this partly because I had some knowledge of the history of India and was quite aware of its age-long atrocious poverty and class-discrimination reality. I was amazed at the fact that hip kids in the US would rant about poverty and injustice and class distinction in the US and simply ignore these realities in India because there were these bearded-beaded gurus in lotus-position Samadhi transcendence in India. Very strange reality-disconnect. I never bought it and it took me years of academic study and self-examination to see how deep this doubt on my part really went. I finally realized that I actually saw the transcendental Hindu philosophy of India as itself being ethically lacking in some essential way that I had difficulty articulating to myself. It wasn't a matter of political activity. By this time I had already realized that I was an anarchist and rejected political structures on principle because they were inevitably hierarchical and therefore gave powers and rights to a few people and denied these powers and rights to the rest of the people. My rejection of India and its spiritual philosophy wasn't political. It went deeper than that. Then it suddenly hit me that India's poverty was a blazing symbol of India's denial of the reality and value of the material world. It simply didn't matter that masses of people lived in nightmare poverty. I was a child in the Roman Catholic Church and I took it very seriously. I took Jesus Christ very seriously. I took all of Christian mythology very seriously. I thought and felt and evaluated all things in life in terms of this mythology. Then something began to happen that caused some major cracks in the walls of my cathedral world. I began to get a sense, a tormenting sense, that there was some sort of core contradiction in the whole thing. I started becoming very uneasy about this unimaginably big guy called GOD. It wasn't that I doubted that He was there (somewhere). It was more that I was profoundly troubled about what it was exactly that He was up to. I mean what was all this really about? I was a serious theology student even as a young man and this is the problem I ran into: If God was infinite, eternal, omniscient, omnipotent and perfect in every possible way, then what was the point of me? I was completely unnecessary because everything was already perfect. And me? I was unimaginably far away from perfect. So what was the point of me? I was like an infinitesimal stain on perfection. And I couldn't erase myself. I could only hope that GOD would tolerate me. Forever. And the idea that I was loved by GOD precisely because I was a miserable and hopelessly imperfect little sinner was actually more disgusting and terrifying than it was affirming. I mean what the HELL was going on? Why was I created? I was sure that I knew exactly how Frankenstein's monster felt. And I began to sense what I would later think of as the blind cruelty of the transcendent. Let me explain one more thing before I return to the original question of revolutionary violence. The story of the resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ in Christian mythology is very peculiar if one looks at it very closely. I am not referring merely to the claim that someone actually rose from the dead. It goes beyond that. Please look at this with me. The mythology claims that Jesus rose from the dead physically and showed himself to his disciples who saw and heard and touched him physically. It was a physical body addressing them. Then this physical body began to do things that physical bodies can't ordinarily do. It moved through physical walls without doing any damage to itself or the wall. Then it finally ascended. That is, it disappeared leaving absolutely nothing physical behind. The ordinary explanation for this in Christian teaching is that the body of Christ was spiritualized. But if that is the correct explanation then why was it ever physical or material to begin with? Why did Jesus bother to rise from the grave physically at all if he was only going to spiritualize in the end? For that matter, what was the point of 'imperfect' material creation at all if its destiny is only to return into pure spirit in the end? It's not only senseless, it is downright perverse. It's a grotesquerie that has no point. The material world has a point in itself or it doesn't and if it doesn't then why is it even here? And if it does then we need to become conscious of what its point is. The frequently expressed opinion that we are really spiritual beings who are just here in the material world to learn is nonsense to which I say, "Learn what? How to be spiritual? If we are meant to be learning how to be spiritual then we should have stayed spiritual. And if we are learning how to be material then material existence has a meaning in itself that is not just spiritual. And if material existence has meaning in itself then we need to learn how to guard the sanctity of material existence, which means that it is not acceptable that people force other people into poverty or into war or into any form of material deprivation or abuse . We material revolutionaries fight for the sanctity of material existence. To fight for this means to stand up physically and if standing up physically leads to violence then that is the price we pay for doing what is right. And to deny the sanctity of the material world is to render it absurd and therefore to render reality absurd." - Advertisement - I do not advocate any initiation of violence. But if violence comes to us for standing up for human material dignity then we accept it and we persist until we triumph or until death lays us down. "To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite; To forgive wrongs deeper than death or night; To defy Power, which seems omnipotent; | 1real |
Yes, There Is a Clinton Double Standard | Anyone writing sentences like ‘nevertheless fuels the perception that the Clintons may have…’ might want to stop and think about whether they are reporting news or innuendo.
It’s Labor Day weekend, and the polls have tightened in the last week. Donald Trump has done nothing to earn this, of course. His schizophrenic jaunt from Mexico to Arizona—I love the Mexican people! I love them so much I’m creating a police force to send them home to Mexico!—was a mess.
Because Hillary Clinton is more unpopular than she’s been in a long time—or ever, if you believe the spin on the the new Washington Post/ABC poll. In that one, she’s 15 points underwater. Other recent polls have been both better and worse—she’s minus-17 in YouGov/Economist but only minus-8 in Fox. But the picture is pretty consistent overall, and it’s bleak.
Her unfavorable numbers over the course of the last several months tell an interesting and mostly overlooked tale. The conventional wisdom is that her numbers went south after the Times broke the story in March 2015 of the email server, and they’ve been lower-hemispheric ever since. That’s true—but there are variations within that are worth examining.
Through the summer of 2015, she was barely underwater—three to five points. By December and January it was marginally worse, six or seven in most polls. But she didn’t hit double digits until March and April, and then she really bottomed out around minus-20 in late May and early June.
What was happening? Well, she and Bernie Sanders were going at it pretty good, which surely reduced some liberals’ opinions of her. But mostly she was getting buffeted about on the winds of scandal—the Benghazi committee was leaking a steady trail of morsels, and in late May the State Department inspector general came out with its report saying she hadn’t gotten White House approval for using the private server.
In other words, there looks to be a link between fresh Clinton scandal stories in the newspapers and her approval numbers dropping from a still-lamentable-but-manageable minus-8 or 10 to a (gulp!) minus-15 or 17. And in the last two weeks, of course, as we’ve seen a new batch of such articles, her negatives have inched back up, and the head-to-head polls have tightened.
What does this tell you to look forward to? You don’t need the political acumen of Lyndon Johnson to figure this out. It means the Republicans, and Judicial Watch, the source of most of these scandal stories, are going to do everything they can to keep them on the front pages between now and Election Day. Oh—with assists from Julian Assange and Vladimir Putin.
That’s the only environment in which Trump has a remote chance of winning—if it “seems” like the Clintons are “up to their old tricks”; if there are stories out there that, while including “no smoking gun,” nevertheless “feed” the “perception” that the Clintons are corrupt.
The media are showing every sign of falling for each and every breathless Judicial Watch press release that lands in their inboxes without the least bit of skepticism and scrutiny. I discussed the weaknesses of that big AP story in my previous column. There’ve been other lame stories recently, too. The Crown Prince of Bahrain one was another preposterous Clinton Rules piece. He made his donation to the Clinton Global Initiative—which wasn’t really a donation per se but seed money for a program for Bahraini students to study in America—long before Clinton became secretary of state—so he’d have to have been clairvoyant to know he was going to be corrupting a future secretary four and five years later.
Matthew Yglesias cited a few of the whoppers in a strong piece that noted the curious difference in coverage received by the Clinton Foundation and one run by Colin Powell. America’s Promise was headed by Alma Powell while Colin was secretary of state in the early 2000s and, according to Yglesias, got money from disgraced Enron CEO Ken Lay while the State Department was helping Enron resolve a dispute in India.
Why the difference in coverage? Yes, I know a lot of people would say because Colin Powell is clean and the Clintons are corrupt. I say the answer is more likely that Colin Powell didn’t have a Judicial Watch poking and prodding into every aspect of his life trying to make him look dirty and send him to jail. He also didn’t face an industry of “book” authors willing to print the most fantastical lies about him, lies gobbled up by hundreds of thousands of readers. Go look at the Times nonfiction best-seller list. Sit down first.
That insane scrutiny means two things. One, the media really ought to try to be careful about just swallowing whatever connections and insinuations Judicial Watch and other right-wing Clinton haters trumpet for the next nine weeks. It’s a rather high-stakes time. If there’s a legit Clinton story, obviously, run with it. But if people find themselves writing sentences with phrases like “nevertheless fuels the perception that the Clintons or their associates may have…” they might want to stop and think about whether what they have on their hands is news or innuendo.
But two—yes, the scrutiny places responsibility on the Clintons, too. It may not be fair that they and they alone have a Judicial Watch on their tail. But fair or not, it’s a fact. And they should behave accordingly. And they should know that the right is going to try to keep the words “Clinton” and “scandal” next to each other on the front pages for the next nine weeks, and they should do everything in their power to keep those words out of the papers. Announcing that they’ve rethought matters and Chelsea won’t remain on the foundation board would be a good start. | 0fake |
Marco Rubio’s Attempt To Sweet Talk A Gay Voter In A New Hampshire Bar Ends In Tears (IMAGE) | Florida Republican senator and presidential hopeful Marco Rubio has spent much of his political life and campaign making life harder for LGBT people. So what happened when he was confronted by a real life gay man in new Hampshire on Monday? Nothing good.On Monday February 8th, openly gay 50-year-old Timothy Kierstead was enjoying a drink with his mother and his husband in the wonderfully appropriately named Puritan Backroom diner, when he was approached by Marco Rubio during a campaign event. He asked the candidate a very simple question: Why do you want to put me back in the closet? The color leeched from Rubio s face as he realized he d definitely come to the wrong table.The New York Times reports that the candidate, when face-to-face with Kierstead, responded: I don t You can live any way you want. But it did not end there. As The Times continues: Mr. Rubio, who is seeking to win over conservatives, is seldom asked about gay rights at his campaign stops.During a brief conversation, Mr. Kierstead, 50, told Mr. Rubio that he was married but complained that the senator s position amounted to him declaring that we don t matter. Mr. Rubio, who was standing with his youngest son, Dominick, 8, by his side, gently disagreed. No, I just believe marriage is between one man and one woman. Well, replied Mr. Kierstead, that s your belief. Mr. Rubio continued: I think that s what the law should be. And if you don t agree you should have the law changed by a legislature. Rubio was reminded by Mr. Keirstad that this is exactly what the LGBT community had done, and that the Senator and his party were seeking to have their religious prejudices supersede the law of the land. In fact, just last December, Rubio told Chuck Todd: It is the current law. I don t believe any case law is settled law. Any future Supreme Court can change it. I don t think the current Constitution gives the federal government the power to regulate marriage, What is wrong is that the Supreme Court has found this hidden constitutional right that 200 years of jurisprudence had not discovered and basically overturned the will of the voters in Florida, where over 60 percent passed a constitutional amendment that defined marriage in the state constitution as the union of one man and one woman. In short, Rubio doesn t believe that the Constitution gives federal government the right to regulate marriage, unless it is regulating against the rights of same-sex couples. Rubio doesn t want the government regulating his access to guns, yet he is totally in favor of the government regulating the access of same-sex couples to marriage. This hypocrisy reveals that for Rubio and his fellow Republicans, the government can never be too big, so long it is enforcing their prejudices.Rubio, suddenly lost the courage of his convictions, tried to remove himself from the situation at the soonest opportunity. The campaign also did it s best to pretend the incident never even happened.Enjoyed meeting voters at the Puritan Backroom in Manchester, NH today. #fitn pic.twitter.com/S7VVTtnY40 Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) February 8, 2016With his campaign polls going into free fall, his robotic performances being heavily criticized, and his failure to win round the Puritan Backroom isn t it time Rubio slipped quietly into the night and declared what we all know to be true? It s game over for Marco Rubio. Featured image from Twitter | 1real |
Trump Has Now Banned NINE Media Outlets – A Likely Tenth Predicts Misery For Him Over It | When Donald Trump banned the Washington Post from his events, he no doubt thought it was the boldest move yet in his war against the dishonest media. The Post, however, is far from the first outlet to fall to Trump s wrath. To date, Trump has actually banned nine media outlets from covering his events. Nine. But he won t stop until he s sure the coverage he s getting fits his definition of honest and fair. The New York Times, whom Trump reviles but somehow hasn t totally banned yet, went to work compiling a list of blacklisted outlets after explaining why Trump banned the Post. They added: In reality, of course, no one would be more miserable than Mr. Trump if these bans actually resulted in less coverage of his campaign. That s a truth bomb if ever there was one. Trump s need for glowing praise, kowtowing and general ass-kissing means he absolutely must hog as much of the spotlight as possible. That includes all the favorable media coverage he can get. But if he thinks that coverage will become more favorable after he bans outlets in fits of rage appropriate to a toddler, he ll be sorely disappointed.The truly funny thing about this is that he hasn t thought it through at all. Reporters from blackballed outlets can still attend most of Trump s events as members of the general public. They can t get credentials, and they can t attend his official press conferences, but they can still go to and cover rallies and other events. That means that Trump is spiraling down into some serious delusions if he thinks these bans will solve his imagined problems with the media.So who, besides the Post, has he banned, and why?Besides banning entire outlets, he s barred reporters from Mother Jones, Fusion, and The New York Times, and claimed credit for getting The New Hampshire Union Leader dropped from a debate after they published a front-page op-ed denouncing him.In demonstration of his racism, The New Tri-State Defender, a traditionally black publication, can t even get responses to emails requesting credentials. Yet he ll issue credentials to Alex Jones InfoWars, which is quite possibly one of the most craftily dumb conspiracy sites on the internet.Trump claims he won t ban any media from the White House press room when he s elected, telling CNN, It s a different thing. He added: When I m representing the United States, I wouldn t do that. But I would let people know if somebody s untruthful. Oh, baloney. The people of the U.S. will believe that when they see it. However, that could go two ways. One is obvious he ll keep banning the outlets he hates until there are none left to cover him. The other is that he ll come to his senses, such as they are, and realize that a growing blacklist means less food for his narcissistic ego. Either way, he s out of hand with his. Featured image by Gerardo Mora/Getty Images | 1real |
3 reasons Americans die sooner than people in other developed nations: guns, drugs, cars | Why are Americans expected to die sooner than their peers in other high-income countries?
A new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association takes a look at the question. The results are, well, not too surprising — three of the big drivers for the year analyzed, 2012, were guns, drugs, and cars.
The study looked at these causes of injury deaths, which are the three biggest causes of injury death in the US and altogether account for more than 100,000 early deaths each year in America. It compared how common these deaths are in the US versus other high-income countries — the UK, Denmark, Sweden, Japan, and eight others — with 2012 data from the US National Vital Statistics System and the World Health Organization Mortality Database.
It found that, on average, men and women in the other high-income countries can expect to live about 2.2 years longer than men and women in the US — and guns, drugs, and cars played a prominent role.
Among men, gun deaths explained 21 percent of the gap, drug overdoses 14 percent, and car crashes 13 percent. And among women, gun deaths explained 4 percent, drug overdoses 9 percent, and car crashes 6 percent.
In total, the death rate for guns, drugs, and cars was much, much higher in the US than its developed peers, as this chart shows:
"Although the reasons for the gap in life expectancy at birth between the United States and comparable countries are complex," study authors Andrew Fenelon, Li-Hui Chen, and Susan Baker wrote, "a substantial portion of this gap reflects just three causes of injury."
So why do Americans die more from these causes? There are cultural factors, but bad policy plays a role too.
With guns, the research shows that America's unusually high levels of gun ownership lead to more gun violence. Other factors, such as socioeconomic issues, contribute to violence, but guns are the one issue that makes America unique relative to other developed countries in comparable socioeconomic circumstances. (To learn more about America's gun problem, read Vox's explainer.)
"A series of specific comparisons of the death rates from property crime and assault in New York City and London show how enormous differences in death risk can be explained even while general patterns are similar," UC Berkeley's Franklin Zimring and Gordon Hawkins wrote in a breakthrough analysis in 1999. "A preference for crimes of personal force and the willingness and ability to use guns in robbery make similar levels of property crime 54 times as deadly in New York City as in London."
Some research also shows tightening existing gun control measures in the US would help: Studies in both Connecticut and Missouri suggested that gun licensing laws in those states helped reduce homicides and suicides.
With drugs, America is now in the middle of a harrowing opioid and heroin epidemic that's killing tens of thousands of people each year. (For an in-depth dive on this topic, read Vox's explainer.)
Academic analyses of the crisis have concluded that the US was too slow to respond to misleading advertising campaigns from opioid producers, in which they claimed that their drugs were safe and effective. Americans have suffered the consequences, getting addicted to and dying from opioid painkillers and heroin as pharmaceutical companies have massively profited.
With cars, by the 1960s European policies began encouraging walking, cycling, and public transportation. The US, meanwhile, continued to encourage sprawl and driving. The result: Americans drive much more than their European peers, and are more likely to die in crashes as a result. (To learn more about US and European transportation policy, read Ralph Buehler's great explainer at the Atlantic's CityLab.)
Even perfect policies might not fix all of these problems — Americans, after all, love their guns, drugs, and cars, and that cultural preference will likely remain strong for some time. But better policies could push the US in the right direction — and save lives. | 0fake |
Why China Is Intervening in Hong Kong’s Legislature - The New York Times | HONG KONG — The Chinese government plans to intervene in a legal dispute in Hong Kong over two politicians who have been prevented from taking seats in the local legislature, officials said on Friday, raising fears that the territory’s independent judiciary is under threat. A decision may come on Monday. What is this case about? Two politicians who advocate independence for Hong Kong — Yau 25, and Sixtus Leung, 30 — were elected to the city’s Legislative Council in September. On Oct. 12, as they were being sworn in, they deviated from the oath of office by saying “ ” instead of China. Many consider the term a derogatory slur against Chinese people because it was used by the Japanese in World War II. Ms. Yau also added a crude epithet. The clerk ruled their oaths invalid, preventing them from taking office, and the president of the Legislative Council scheduled another session for the pair to be sworn in. But the Hong Kong government went to court, arguing that Ms. Yau and Mr. Leung should not be allowed to take their seats on the council. What does the law say? Hong Kong, a former British colony, is governed by a charter known as the Basic Law, which was negotiated before the area returned to Chinese rule in 1997. One provision says legislators must “swear allegiance to the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China. ” There is also a local statute that says any person “who declines or neglects to take an oath duly requested” is disqualified from entering office, or must vacate the post if he or she has already done so. The Hong Kong government, which is led by a chief executive who is essentially appointed by Beijing, argued in court on Thursday that the two politicians have declined to take the oath and should be disqualified. But a lawyer representing the president of the Legislative Council argued that the question should be decided by the legislature, not the courts or the executive branch. How can the Chinese government intervene? The Basic Law gives Beijing the authority to issue interpretations of the charter. Specifically, it grants the power to the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress, which is controlled by the Chinese Communist Party. It is rare, however, for the Chinese government to issue an interpretation of the Basic Law without being asked to do so by Hong Kong’s highest court or by the Hong Kong government. That has happened only once since 1997, and the committee has never issued an unsolicited opinion on a matter under active consideration by the courts in Hong Kong. On Friday, officials said the Chinese government planned to do just that, potentially issuing a ruling before the courts have finished hearing the case. What is at stake? Some say the independence of the courts in Hong Kong is at risk. The territory’s reputation for rule of law has been crucial to its success as an international financial hub, so any move that undermines its judicial system could have repercussions beyond this particular case. China promised “a high degree of autonomy” for Hong Kong in a treaty with Britain, but people have worried that it has been interfering in the territory’s affairs and undermining civil liberties. In the past year, five local booksellers who sold publications critical of Beijing disappeared and later showed up in Chinese custody. Two years ago, hundreds of thousands of protesters occupied major roads in Hong Kong demanding free elections to select the city’s top official. The Hong Kong Bar Association says intervention by the Chinese government would be “a severe blow” to the judiciary and to the principle of in the territory. Even the Hong Kong government says the case should be decided in Hong Kong’s courts. What might happen next? The Chinese government is worried that sentiment in Hong Kong is growing and wants it to stop. It has pilloried Ms. Yau and Mr. Leung in particular, and may issue a narrow ruling that bars them from taking office. But it might go further and try to block all candidates from running for office. Simon Young, a law professor at the University of Hong Kong, said a ruling by Beijing would probably be messy and incomplete because the country’s leaders do not appreciate and do not understand Hong Kong’s highly developed legal system, which draws on precedents set over hundreds of years. Many questions could be left unanswered. For example, what if a person who once supported independence for Hong Kong has a change of heart? Would he or she be eligible to serve in the legislature? Hong Kong’s courts will have to fill in the gaps, inviting further interpretations of the Basic Law by Beijing, “and that, of course, will create even more chaos,” Mr. Young said. | 0fake |
Open Borders Lobby Blasts Sheriff’s Deportation Deal | A plan by a Massachusetts county to work with federal immigration authorities in order to quickly deport illegal immigrants has open border groups enraged. [Plymouth County Sheriff Joseph McDonald signed an agreement with the federal government which will allow his officers to interview suspected illegal immigrants in police custody and better hand them over to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for deportation, as Breitbart Texas reported. The agreement gives Plymouth County law enforcement access to a federal database where they can check if a suspected illegal immigrant is wanted for another crime or has returned to the U. S. after being previously deported. Open border activists from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Brockton Interfaith Community are targeting the local agreement as an effort they claim strips illegal aliens of their rights, despite their immigration status. “Now, literally your local police officer is going to be an ICE official,” ACLU Massachusetts Attorney Laura Rotolo told the Enterprise News. “When that happens, people become afraid to call the police. ” Similarly, the lead organizer for the Brockton Interfaith Community, Isabel Lopez, said the migrants being targeted “haven’t done anything wrong. ” “That’s the biggest concern we have, because we have mothers and families who haven’t done anything wrong,” Lopez told the paper. McDonald pushed back against the accusations, saying “I think it enhances public safety. ” “It’s not like we’re out there enforcing immigration law,” McDonald said. “What we’re doing is identifying criminal offenders who may also be here illegally. ” Lopez said her community group felt betrayed by McDonald because she said he promised not to sign an immigration agreement, though he denies that claim. “I’m looking forward to talking with them and hearing what they have to say, and I’m looking forward to informing them, because I think there is a lot of misinformation floating around,” McDonald said. McDonald is not the only sheriff in town to take on new measures to fight off illegal immigration locally. Bristol County Sheriff Thomas Hodgson also signed the same agreement with the federal government, as he has adamantly supported Donald Trump’s plan to end illegal immigration. Weeks ago, the Bristol County Sheriff voiced support for Trump’s plan to build a southern border wall, as Breitbart News reported. Hodgson offered county inmates as laborers to help build the wall, saying “I can think of no other project that would have such a positive impact on our inmates and our country than building this wall. ” John Binder is a contributor for Breitbart Texas. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder. | 0fake |
Prep Blog Review: About Living Off-grid | Drew Stratton November 19, 2016 Prep Blog Review: About Living Off-grid
People today have become overly dependent on energy and this is the main reason why starting living off-grid seems difficult. But it is not. Think about the fact that people lived before the grid even existed.
As we all know, an EMP attack is a disaster most of us are preparing for. When our electricity driven society will suddenly fall, how long will you survive?
From today’s Prep Blog Review you will find out how it is like to live off-grid for 37 years, how to build a faraday cage or how to build your off-grid cooking stove. Confessions Off A Man Who Lived 37 Years Off-grid
“Imagine if you can, a homestead nestled deep in the forest, fronting a beautiful lake. Oh sure… that sounds dreamy and might be reality for a lucky few.
But now let’s take it a step further. The homestead sits on the shore of a remote, pristine lake which is located 100 miles in the wilderness.
No roads, no trails, no neighbors. Only forest, water, animals and silence. Float plane is the only way in and out. When the float plane drops you off, accelerates down the lake, lifts off the surface and becomes a speck on the horizon, you then realize your last physical connection with humanity just left.
Standing on the dock, you have the overwhelming sense you are the only person left on the planet. Exciting!”
Read more on Ask A Prepper . The Smokeless & Easy-To-Build Off-Grid Cooking Stove
“Outdoor cooking is a major part of my off-grid experience, and so a reliable outdoor stove was a must-have. And with many options of wood-burning stoves out there, fuel-efficiency and minimal smoke were at the top of my list.
After much research, the rocket stove because our outdoor stove of choice. In this article, I will share with you the concept of the rocket stove, how we built two of them, and its advantages and disadvantages.
A wood-burning smokeless stove sounds impossible, right? Let me explain it this way. Smoke is un-burned fuel. The rocket stove makes use of all the fuel. Everything gets burned in the combustion chamber before leaving the chimney. This concept is also seen in the Dakota fire pit.
The rocket stove, when fired up, sounds similar to that of a rocket taking off – hence, its name.”
Read more on Off The Grid News . How To Build A Faraday Cage To Protect Your Electronics
“One of the things that gives us the most troubled sleep of all is the risk of, and outcomes from, an EMP attack on the US. In case you’re not fully up to speed on this draconian danger, we discuss EMP attacks – what they are, how fearsome their impacts would be, and how easy they are to stage – in several articles here.
Our sense is that the danger of an EMP event is steadily increasing. To be blunt, the world is becoming an increasingly unfriendly place, and with growing sophistication of both nuclear weapons and their associated delivery systems (ie missiles) by both North Korea and Iran (as well as other countries that aren’t being quite so public about their actions) and some threats that translate quite clearly to ‘if we need to, we’ll use an EMP device to bring your country to its knees’, the thought of an EMP attack is far from impossible to countenance.
At the same time, our lives continue to become more and more dependent on electronics for everything we do.”
Read more on Backdoor Prepper . 10 Widespread Disaster That Could Happen At Any Time
“When preparing for a widespread disaster, it’s helpful to have a specific type of disaster in mind. Envisioning a particular survival scenario helps you to be more focused and think of preparations that might not have occurred to you otherwise.
How would a pandemic play out in your town? Or a terrorist attack? Or an economic collapse? What specifically would happen to your community, and how would it affect you and your family? And based on that, are there any other preparations you could make to ensure your family’s safety?
As you can see, mentally walking yourself through various types of disasters will help you to be more prepared. With that in mind, here is a list of the 10 most likely widespread disasters. You should seriously consider the possibility of experiencing these events. I’m not saying you should obsess over them–don’t spend your life in fear–but you should do your best to be ready for them.”
Read more on Urban Survival Site . Starting Your Off-grid Living With Solar Power
“Harnessing the sun’s power has become a popular trend in the last ten years and we now have a large array of options for powering our homes using solar power.
Living off the grid requires a lot of work and innovation in order to reach a certain level of self-sufficiency. Things get easier if you are able to harness the power of the sun and use it for all your needs.
From passive cooling to batch solar water heaters, everything is now available when it comes to DIY solar power projects.
People are beginning to understand that solar power is not as complicated as certain individuals would want you to believe.
This is a technology that has become extremely accessible in our modern times and you just need a few basic skills in order to make your own project.”
Read more on Prepper’s Will .
You can generate power and keep your loved ones safe with the right power generator. You can choose your right now.
This article has been written by Drew Stratton for Survivopedia. 49 total views, 49 views today | 1real |
France says progress in Brexit talks shows common sense prevailing | PARIS (Reuters) - Common sense is prevailing in Brexit negotiations between Britain and the European Union, France s foreign minister said on Friday, as he welcomed signs that talks were moving into a new phase after an initial breakthrough. The European Commission said on Friday enough progress had been made in Brexit negotiations with Britain and that a second phase of discussions should begin, ending an impasse over the status of the Irish border. The work that has been done on negotiations ... is gradually leading us to common sense, Jean-Yves Le Drian told France Inter radio. We wanted the conditions for (Britain s) withdrawal to be clearly defined to be able to move into another phase. That s what s going to happen now, I hope. | 0fake |
WHAT’S SO WRONG WITH TRANSGENDER BATHROOMS? This Guy Has The Awesome Answer! | Recently, a man in Seattle wandered into a women s locker room full of little girls:LIBERAL SEATTLE GETS WHAT IT VOTES FOR: Outrage After Transgender Man Hangs Out In Women s Locker Room [Video]You see, Seattle had just passed a gender neutral law that said if you feel like a woman then you can use the women s bathroom/locker room. Here s a great example to pass on of why this is not a good idea:Clayton Cramer asks, What s the problem with transgender restrooms? Then he answers his own question with *links to a few news stories:*PLEASE GO TO THE SOURCE FOR THE ORIGINAL STORY BY CLICKING ON THE WORD LINKS ABOVE. Cross-dressing man allegedly videotaped women in restroom Police: Sex offender posed as woman, went into women s locker room Police: Man in bra and wig found in women s bathroom admitted to other offense where he showered in the girls locker room for sexual gratification Cross-dressing peeper infiltrates Cal women s locker room Man dressed as woman tried to take pictures in dorm, police say Purdue police investigate report of man taking photographs in women s restroom Transgender student in women s locker room raises uproar exposes self to underage girls Cross-dressing man arrested for exposure at Walmart See more: moonbattery | 1real |
SICK! Left-Wing Social Media Celebrates Shooting of Congressman: “Well that KKK f*cker deserved it” [Video] | Our full report on the horrible shooting of Rep. Steve Scalise is below these hate-filled comments from the left. We wanted you to see that the left wasted no time in continuing the rhetoric:Soon after Congressman Steve Scalise was shot by a crazed shooter, the left wasted no time with their hate-filled comments:Restless News published a meme saying the shooting was karma:A twitter user named Charles Barkley (not the real Charles Barkley): Well that KKK f*cker deserved it The left took on gun control mentioning Sandy Hook:Some on the left even brought up Obamacare: Rep. Steve Scalise was shot Wednesday morning in Alexandria, Virginia, in a deliberate attack. A congressional staffer was also shot. Scalise is in surgery right now and is expected to recover.Rand Paul said Scalise being there likely saved everyone because his presence (he s leadership) meant Capitol Police were there.Scalise, a member of the House Republican leadership as the majority whip, appeared to have been shot in the hip and it appeared two Capitol Hill police agents were shot, according to Rep. Mo Brooks who was on deck when the shooting occurred. The shooting took place at a practice for the GOP congressional baseball team.NBC News Special Report: Congressman Scalise, aides shot at baseball practice in Virginia https://t.co/KD9i1iP9MZ Jason Calabretta (@JasonCalabretta) June 14, 2017In a statement, Texas Rep. Roger Williams, one of the team s coaches, said one of his staff members was shot during the incident and is receiving medical attention. There was no information on the staffer s injuries.According to both congressional and law enforcement sources, the shooting appears to be a deliberate attack. Two law enforcement sources say the suspect is in police custody, has been taken to a hospital.Lawmakers who spoke at the scene to reporters described a normal morning practice, at a field where they ve practiced for years, when all of a sudden shots rang out. Lawmakers, staff members and even the young son of one of the members ran for cover, jumping into dugouts and over fences to avoid the gunshots.Members described Scalise dragging himself roughly 15 yards away from second base, where he had been playing, and lying there until the shooter was neutralized, at which point some of them ran to assist him and apply pressure to the wound until he could be evacuated. Once they were able, Sen. Jeff Flake said he and Rep. Brad Wenstrup, who is a physician, went out to where Scalise was lying to apply pressure to the wound. Scalise was coherent the whole time, Flake said.Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul told CNN it would have been a massacre without Capitol Hill Police. | 1real |
Exclusive: Republicans mostly blame Congress for healthcare reform failure - Reuters/Ipsos poll | NEW YORK (Reuters) - Republicans mostly blame the U.S. Congress, and not President Donald Trump or party leaders, for failing to pass their party’s healthcare overhaul, according to a Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll released on Wednesday. The March 25-28 poll asked who should take responsibility for the failure of the American Health Care Act (AHCA), which Republican leaders pulled from consideration last week without a vote. Besides Trump, who backed the bill, and House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan, who was expected to shepherd it through Congress, the poll asked if people blamed House Republicans, House Democrats or the media. Republicans were most likely to blame Congress. Some 26 percent said House Democrats were most responsible and 23 percent blamed House Republicans. Another 13 percent blamed Trump and 10 percent blamed Ryan. Only 8 percent blamed the media. Their assessment appeared to align with Trump’s criticism of Democratic leaders and the conservative Freedom Caucus, whom he blamed for the bill’s failure. Overall, nearly one in four Americans, including Democrats and independents, blamed Trump. Ryan, Congress and the media received less criticism. The Republican reform was widely criticized after estimates by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office showed 24 million people could lose their health insurance over the next 10 years. Trump said on Tuesday he still thinks healthcare reform can happen “very quickly” in Washington, but he did not offer any specifics on how it could get done, or what would be changed from the previous bill. Nearly half of all Americans said they would like to see that happen, though the response was split along party lines. Some 80 percent of Republicans said they would like to see their party take another swing at a bill, compared with only 25 percent of Democrats. In a separate poll conducted between Jan.7-23, 46 percent of Americans wanted to keep Obamacare, the popular name for President Barack Obama’s healthcare reform, while fixing “problem areas,” and another 8 percent wanted to keep it exactly as it is. The Reuters/Ipsos poll was conducted online in English in all 50 states. The March 25-28 poll included 1,332 people, including 456 Republicans and 558 Democrats. It has a credibility interval, a measure of accuracy, of 3 percentage points for the entire group and 5 percentage points for Democrats and Republicans. (Reporting by Chris Kahn, editing by Ross Colvin) | 0fake |
Trump rejects new lawsuit over foreign payments to his firms | NEW YORK (Reuters) - President Donald Trump on Monday dismissed allegations in a new lawsuit by prominent constitutional and ethics lawyers that he is violating the U.S. Constitution by letting his hotels and other businesses accept payments from foreign governments. Trump told reporters at the White House that the lawsuit filed earlier in the day by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington was “without merit.” The nonprofit watchdog said Trump is “submerged in conflicts of interest” from his ties to countries such as China, India and potentially Russia, and that payments for such things as hotel rooms and office leases posed conflicts of interest for him. Its lawsuit seeks to stop Trump from accepting any improper payments, saying a constitutional provision known as the “emoluments” clause bans them. As the Constitution’s framers were aware, “private financial interests can subtly sway even the most virtuous leaders, and entanglements between American officials and foreign powers could pose a creeping, insidious threat to the Republic,” CREW said in its complaint. The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan. It is part of a wave of expected litigation from liberal advocacy groups against Trump, a Republican who took office on Friday. On Jan. 11, Trump said he would retain ownership of his global business empire while president, but hand off day-to-day control to his oldest sons, Eric and Donald Jr.. Sheri Dillon, a Trump adviser and partner at the law firm Morgan Lewis & Bockius, said at the time the emoluments clause applies to gifts, rather than ordinary business payments such as hotel bills. She also said that profit generated by Trump’s hotels from foreign governments would be donated to the U.S. Treasury. But CREW said Trump’s refusal to cede ownership or set up a blind trust, as urged by the U.S. Office of Government Ethics, leaves him “poised” to violate the Constitution repeatedly while in the White House. The emoluments clause forbids Trump and other U.S. officeholders from accepting various gifts from foreign governments without congressional approval. U.S. District Judge Ronnie Abrams, an appointee of former Democratic President Barack Obama, will preside over CREW’s lawsuit. Jay Wexler, a professor at Boston University School of Law, said “the substantive claim is certainly reasonable,” but that courts such as Abrams’ may decide not to get involved. “Either it will find that the plaintiff lacks standing, or alternatively that the claim presents a political question and that it should not weigh in on the merits,” Wexler said. Natalie Gewargis, a spokeswoman for Morgan Lewis, which represents Trump on ethics matters, said: “We do not comment on our clients or the work we do for them.” CREW’s lawsuit challenges such payments for such things as office space leased by the state-owned Industrial and Commercial Bank of China at Trump Tower in New York, rounds at Trump’s golf courses, and the rights to rebroadcast or create new versions of Trump’s reality TV show “The Apprentice.” China, India, Indonesia, Turkey and the United Kingdom are among the countries with which Trump’s companies do or plan to do business, and Trump had been trying to do business with Russia for at least three decades, the complaint said. Meanwhile, payments for a Washington hotel booking next month by the Embassy of Kuwait for its “National Day” celebration are expected to “go directly to defendant while he is president,” the complaint added. To show it has standing to sue, CREW claimed it has been “significantly injured” by having to divert resources to the lawsuit, and field hundreds of media questions about Trump’s businesses. Among the lawyers who worked on the complaint were constitutional scholars Laurence Tribe of Harvard University, and Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the University of California at Irvine’s law school. Others include two former top White House ethics lawyers: Norman Eisen, who advised Obama; and Richard Painter, who advised the Republican George W. Bush. | 0fake |
SLIPPERY SNAKE JAMES CLAPPER Resigns In Time For The Era Of Trump…Remember The “Not Wittingly” Moment? [Video] | Remember the famous moment when US NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE CHIEF James Clapper was testifying about the NSA surveillance of Americans when he let slip a sign he was not being truthful. Of course, we knew this was all a smoke and mirrors show. Clapper later said he misspoke last we checked it s pretty much the same thing as lying NOT WITTINGLY JAMES CLAPPERHere s the video below where he parses words in his testimony: Clapper took over in 2010 heading up 17 different intelligence agencies. His tenure was marked by the Edward Snowden leaks on US intelligence. He s always said he d resign at the end of Obama s presidency but we re wondering if he s jumping before Trump appointees arrive. Clapper and Gen. Mike Flynn have a history that s not so perfect:Two years ago, I was called into a meeting with the undersecretary of defense for intelligence and the director of national intelligence, and after some niceties, I was told by the USDI that I was being let go from DIA. It was definitely an uncomfortable moment (I suspect more for them than me).I asked the DNI (Gen. James Clapper) if my leadership of the agency was in question and he said it was not; had it been, he said, they would have relieved me on the spot.I knew then it had more to do with the stand I took on radical Islamism and the expansion of al Qaeda and its associated movements. I felt the intel system was way too politicized, especially in the Defense Department. After being fired, I left the meeting thinking, Here we are in the middle of a war, I had a significant amount of combat experience (nearly five years) against this determined enemy on the battlefield and served at senior levels, and here it was, the bureaucracy was letting me go. Amazing.This ll be interesting to watch. | 1real |
ANYONE WHO Still Supports Hillary After They See This Video Should Forfeit Their Right To Vote | Hillary is without a doubt, the worst and most despicable liar to ever run for the office of President Of The United States Hillary is a sociopathic liar: A sociopath is typically defined as someone who lies incessantly to get their way and does so with little concern for others. A sociopath is often goal-oriented (i.e., lying is focused it is done to get one s way). Sociopaths have little regard or respect for the rights and feelings of others.https://twitter.com/HlLLARYCLINT0N/status/777660956088406017 | 1real |
Galaxy Note 7 Is Not Samsung’s Only Problematic Product - The New York Times | Samsung killed the Galaxy Note 7 smartphones this week after the devices continued to burst into flames. But the tech behemoth has not extinguished scrutiny over its safety record. The South Korean manufacturer, which makes an array of consumer electronics, including kitchen appliances and television sets, is in the middle of juggling other safety problems. Those include a recall in Australia for more than 144, 000 Samsung washing machines that were prone to causing fires, and a potential recall of defective laundry units in the United States. Over the years, Samsung has faced other safety situations that have resulted in regulators taking action. The larger incidents include a 2003 recall of 184, 000 microwave ovens in the United States, and 210, 000 refrigerators in South Korea in 2009. There have been other smaller recalls, including one in 2009 of about 43, 000 microwave ovens in the United States because of a shock hazard and 20, 000 washing machines in 2007 because of a fire risk. Those episodes have been compounded by consumer frustration. People who have faced safety hazards with Samsung kitchen and home appliances said they frequently had to jump through hoops to get replacement products or refunds. To them, Samsung’s bungled handling of the Galaxy Note recall this week was not surprising. Ed O’Rourke, a resident of Boston, said that over the span of four years, Samsung replaced his malfunctioning induction range three times before the fourth one’s glass cooktop exploded in 2013. After that, Samsung declined to issue a refund until 2015, after his wife fought the company in court and won. The couple now uses an Electrolux range. The panoply of other Samsung product recalls shows that the Galaxy Note 7 fiasco was not an isolated case, though it was the company’s largest by far, with more than 2. 5 million devices. Combined with Samsung’s often bureaucratic process for rectifying these consumer issues, it raises questions about whether the company prioritized profit over customer safety. “I thought, why doesn’t this happen to Apple or G. E.? And is Samsung playing it a little too cute in pushing things to limits that other companies aren’t pushing in terms of ratio?” Mr. O’Rourke said. Product recalls are common among consumer electronics companies, so given the large portfolio of Samsung products and the size of the company, some problems to its lineup are to be expected. Apple, Samsung’s chief rival, has had a number of smaller recalls for products, including one for thousands of Beats speakers last year after receiving complaints of overheating, and a recall for some iPod Nanos in 2011 because of issues related to overheating. A Samsung spokeswoman pointed to an earlier statement about its washing machines in Australia, in which the company said thousands of refunds and replacements had been made and that customer safety was its top priority. Yet the scale and prominence of the Galaxy Note 7 problem renews the spotlight on Samsung’s safety record in other product areas, even as the company grapples with the smartphone recall. On Wednesday, Samsung revised its profit estimates to absorb $2 billion in losses. The company said it earned 5. 2 trillion won in the third quarter, 33. 3 percent less than the 7. 8 trillion won profit it had estimated last week. It said it had also cut its sales estimate for the quarter by 2 trillion won, to 47 trillion won. The revised profit for the third quarter showed a 29. 6 percent drop from the same quarter last year. Shares of Samsung fell 0. 65 percent on Wednesday after plunging 8 percent on Tuesday. “Samsung has not been communicative with consumers, regulators or the media as clearly as it should have during this recall, especially for a hazard as dangerous as this one where your phone can catch on fire, damage your property and harm your family,” said William Wallace, a policy analyst for Consumers Union, the advocacy arm of Consumer Reports. The smartphone recall is most likely unrelated to other Samsung product recalls that are now unfolding, like the one for the washing machines. That is because consumer electronics like TVs and kitchen appliances are made by a different Samsung division than the mobility group that is responsible for the smartphones. In Australia, Samsung is in the process of a recall it started three years ago for washing machines that were prone to catching fire as a result of an internal electrical defect. Samsung said that as of last month, it had resolved the problem in 81 percent of the affected washers. Yet many owners of the troubled Samsung washing machines contend their problems are far from resolved. For the recall in Australia, Samsung repaired the machines by fitting plastic bags over some connectors. A Facebook group with more than 4, 000 owners of the recalled machines crowdfunded money to hire forensic experts to analyze the fix. The forensic reports concluded that the plastic bag was ineffective because it did not prevent moisture penetration of the connectors. “It’s quite extraordinary that consumers who are scared for their lives had to get these scientific reports done,” said Tarn Allen, an owner of a recalled Samsung washing machine who is an administrator for the Facebook group. Ms. Allen, who lives in Sydney, Australia, said the South Korean manufacturer had refused to issue refunds to many members of the Facebook group until an Australian government agency issued a statement saying it was looking into the matter. Samsung may also be preparing to recall washing machines in the United States. Some models of the washers made between 2011 and this year are at risk of causing property damage or personal injury when the machines wash clothing and bulky items including bedding, according to the United States Consumer Product Safety Commission. “C. P. S. C. is advising consumers to only use the delicate cycle” with those items, the agency said late last month. “The lower spin speed in the delicate cycle lessens the risk of impact injuries or property damage due to the washing machine becoming dislodged. ” The affected units may experience abnormal vibrations, Samsung said in a statement. The commission and Samsung said they were working toward a fix. | 0fake |
Rick Perry Is Mocked Over Nukes By Secretary Whose Job He Thought He Was Getting | Donald Trump s Secretary of Energy Rick Perry doesn t get a lot of respect. That s a good thing he s kind of a dumbass. And by kind of, I mean of course that he s the dumbest guy to come out of Texas since his gubernatorial predecessor, George W. Bush.But there s obviously something about Perry s aw-shucks style that got him elected three times as governor of Texas. The problem is, nobody but Texans know what it is. That s why his two runs at the Republican nomination for president have been so laughably short. But those efforts did earn him something in the end: An appointment to an office he said he wanted to abolish, by the guy that beat him by publicly commenting on how dumb he is..@GovernorPerry failed on the border. He should be forced to take an IQ test before being allowed to enter the GOP debate. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 16, 2015Trump s magnanimous gesture in handing Perry the Department of Energy came with risks: What if Ricky used it all up trying to tie his cowboy boots one Sunday morning on his way to church? That fear, of course, is unfounded, because Rick Perry totally thought the DoE meant he was in charge of our oil. You can see why his brain might go there. He s from Texas, so he may have imagined himself the perfect selection as Oilman-in-Chief. Maybe he was confused by terrifying phrases like foreign energy or energy independence, which do indeed mean oil and gas.The guy in charge of those is actually Ryan Zinke, head of the Department of the Interior. Mr. Zinke was interviewed recently by the magazine GQ, and he had, um, nice things to say about ol Rick:Secretary Perry is a wonderful guy. I think he thought his department was more about energy than science. Mostly, it s science and, of course, they also have responsibility of our nuclear arsenal.Oops! Rick Perry is in charge of our nukes?!? Well, at least Zinke isn t too worried about it:Interior is the one that produces energy. We laugh a lot about it.It s a good thing somebody s laughing, right?Featured image via Alex Wong/Getty Images | 1real |
Because of Hillary Clinton, Emergency-Contraception Is Banned In Honduras | Because of Hillary Clinton, Emergency-Contraception Is Banned In Honduras Because of Hillary Clinton, Emergency-Contraception Is Banned In Honduras By Eric Zuesse Of course, one of Hillary Clinton’s proudest claims is that as the U.S. Secretary of State she championed reproductive choice throughout the world. She championed it in words, but her actions were sometimes in the opposite direction, and there is perhaps no nation where her actions as the U.S. Secretary of State had a bigger impact than Honduras, which case will therefore be examined, and her impact on this documented, here: The reason that the morning-after pill, which enables raped women to avoid becoming pregnant from a rape, was made illegal by the government that now exists in Honduras, is that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton persuaded President Barack Obama not to terminate U.S. financial aid to the coup-regime that came into power there on 28 June 2009. Without that aid, the democratically elected President would quickly have been restored. Though the U.S. Ambassador in Honduras told Secretary of State Clinton that there was no way in which that coup was legal and that consequently it undoubtedly was a “coup” and that existing U.S. law therefore required U.S. funding of the Honduran government to cease immediately, she ignored the law, and she ignored everything except her friend Lanny Davis the lobbyist whom the coup-plotters had hired to represent them to Democrats (a different lobbyist was hired to represent them to the congressional Republicans). President Obama took his Secretary of State’s advice and refused to enforce the law, and Hillary Clinton publicly praised what the regime was doing. The regime was condemned throughout Latin America, because the coup, which consisted of the local aristocracy or ‘oligarchs’, overthrew the democratically elected President of Honduras, who had wanted a land-reform law to be introduced. Immediately after the coup that overthrew him, the newly installed regime allowed the aristocrats’ paid thugs to murder anyone who tried to lead the opposition; and therefore the regime that had been imposed by Honduras’s aristocracy and kept in power by America’s aristocracy, has remained stable since. However, after the coup, Honduras has had the world’s highest murder-rate. Thus, it’s a stable but now extraordinarily violent country. (Detailed documentation of every allegation in this paragraph can be found in the “Honduras” section of this article I earlier wrote about “Hillary Clinton’s Six Foreign-Policy Catastrophes” ; and that section on Honduras, in turn, links to 68 sources, which provide the sometimes gruesome details regarding Hillary Clinton’s impact upon the lives of the Honduran people since the coup. However, that article didn’t mention this matter concerning contraception, rape, and abortion; and, so, the present article will be an extension from that earlier one, dealing specifically with Hillary Clinton’s impact upon family-planning and reproductive choice in Honduras.) One feature of the new, U.S.-backed, regime, was the imposition of draconian fundamentalist laws against contraception and intensifying the abortion-ban. On 13 February 2012, the Center for Reproductive Rights headlined “Honduras Supreme Court Upholds Absolute Ban on Emergency Contraception, Opens Door to Criminalize Women and Medical Professionals” and reported: The Honduras Supreme Court has upheld the country’s absolute ban on emergency contraception, which would criminalize the sale, distribution, and use of the “morning-after pill” — imposing punishment for offenders equal to that of obtaining or performing an abortion, which in Honduras is completely restricted. “By banning and criminalizing emergency contraception, Honduras is telling the world it would rather imprison the women of its country than provide them with safe and effective birth control,” said Luisa Cabal, director of international legal programs at the Center for Reproductive Rights. “Today’s decision from the Honduras Supreme Court blatantly disregards women’s fundamental reproductive rights and completely ignores the respected medical opinion of experts around the globe. It will cause significant harm in the lives countless women and doctors across the country. … Consequently, the hell in Honduras has been accentuated by punishment of women who have been raped, and punishment of doctors and pharmacists who try to help them. The President whom Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and the ten main aristocratic families of Honduras , overthrew and prohibited from running for President ever again, Manuel Zelaya, had, in April 2009, vetoed a law that the Honduran legislature (controlled by those ten families plus another 15 or so ) had just passed to ban the morning-after pill. So, that law didn’t enter into force until the U.S.-imposed regime restored it. However, the restoration of the ban wasn’t final until this decision was handed down by the Honduran Supreme Court. As Amnesty International said at that time : On 1 February, the Supreme Court in Honduras upheld a decree imposing an absolute ban on emergency contraception. This decree was vetoed in May 2009 by the former President on grounds that it conflicted with the Constitution. The Supreme Court has now concluded that the decree is constitutional and that Congress can begin to develop laws enforcing a ban of the emergency contraceptive pill on the basis of its alleged “abortive” nature. The World Health Organization, Pan-American Health Organization, and several other expert bodies have clearly stated that the emergency contraceptive pill is not abortive; it is a form of contraception that works by ensuring the egg is inaccessible and impeding fertilization. The criminalization of the emergency contraceptive pill will have appalling consequences. For example, rape victims will be unable to prevent pregnancy … And so it has been in Honduras. During the period since the 28 June 2009 Honduran U.S.-backed coup, the hell in Honduras has been so bad that Honduras has become one of the top sources of illegal immigration into the United States. The world-record-high murder-rates and crushing poverty, with no opportunity for the public to ‘move up in the world’ other than through becoming one of the paid enforcers for the aristocrats, which often also entails leading the now-booming drug-gangs there, has essentially forced out of Honduras millions of residents, and many of them have escaped through Mexico into the United States, in order to be able to have a decent life, rather than murder and be murdered. Hillary Clinton’s opponent in the U.S. Presidential campaign, Donald Trump, never talks about the hell that Clinton and Obama have been imposing around the world (except regarding non-Christian-majority countries such as Libya), and he seems to view illegal immigrants as if U.S. foreign policies have nothing to do with creating the problems that those people are facing, but there is no indication that he would continue those policies, which have been causing them to be illegal immigrants here. To the contrary, his anti-interventionist foreign-policy proposals would be inconsistent with coups and invasions regarding any foreign country whose government is not posing an imminent threat to U.S. national security. Trump’s foreign-policy proposals are not in any way favorable toward those of Hillary Clinton (who is simply an extreme version of Obama’s worst policy-orientations). (And America’s own Federation of American Scientists has stated that Obama is lying in order to ‘justify’ his policy now to ignore existing in-force nuclear treaties with Russia as being supposedly not violations of them. So, though he may not be as much of a neoconservative as she is, he basically is one, too. His aggression against Russia is subtle , but forceful .) Consequently, at least regarding foreign policy, a President Trump would be authentic change, irrespective of whether a particular voter would approve of that change as opposed to continuing America’s existing foreign policy but in a more extreme way. Among other things, a vote for Hillary Clinton is a vote to retain the status-quo in Honduras and around the world, but to go much farther in the same direction. A vote for Donald Trump is a vote to change that status-quo — to change (and in some important respects reverse ) that direction . The biggest impact of this election will be on foreign (including both economic and military) policy. Even domestically within the United States, the difference between the two candidates on foreign policies will have a much bigger impact, including possibly even nuclear war , than will the other policy-areas, which the general public erroneously think will have a bigger impact upon their lives and their future than will foreign policies. (And here are quoted recent reports in the Washington Post , Spiegel , Huffington Post , and other serious media, discussing her preparing her coming Administration’s plans and personnel for a war with Russia; and Obama is right now setting everything up for her to be able to start the war as soon as possible.) Regardless of whether the American public know it, the main impact of this Presidential election will be on foreign policy, including on the immense impacts that foreign policy will have domestically. So: this is not the time when the U.S. will be progressing but instead regressing, and intelligent voters will be aiming to minimize the harms, rather than to achieve progress. Progress, at this stage so late in the game, is still being hoped-for only by some fools who happen to be also progressives. Any intelligent progressive, at this late stage, is focused entirely upon minimizing the harm. And the maximum harm could happen with surprising rapidity. (Back in 1961, the estimation of experts was that — as one of the few who spoke publicly stated — “A nuclear war between the United States and Russia would be all over in 24 or 48 hours because both sides would let go with their full atomic arsenals.” The estimates today are far more precise but unpublished, and they’re all well under an hour — some as low as 20 minutes.) There wouldn’t be any surrender, nor any armistice. There would only be the end of civilization , and unspeakable misery (including details that are ignored by the major media, such as this ) until practically everyone is dead (from starvation if nothing else). Those are the stakes in this election. Even to be debating domestic issues at a time like this, simply doesn’t make any sense. But the situation in Honduras points up the ridiculousness, in a fundamentally different context, which is why I am writing about it now. | 1real |
Las cajetillas de tabaco emitirán música de Melendi cuando se abran | Las cajetillas de tabaco emitirán música de Melendi cuando se abran EL MUNDO TODAY 24 HORAS El Mundo Today en tu buzón Tu Email A un locutor de Radio 3 le diagnostican cólico nefrítico y pregunta cuándo tocan "ME GUSTABAN MÁS CUANDO SE LLAMABAN PIEDRAS", DECLARA 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 |
Trump Tower Surrounded By Dump Trucks In Anticipation Of Violence | Trump Tower Surrounded By Dump Trucks In Anticipation Of Violence 11/09/2016
DAILY CALLER
The New York City Police Department (NYPD) has surrounded the perimeter of Trump Tower with reinforced dump trucks in anticipation of Election Day violence.
The dump trucks flank the skyscraper on all sides, and are supplemented by guardrails and heavily armed police officers. This morning, the building was not open to the general public and traffic crawled through a narrow corridor of trucks and police. On the street, supporters and protesters stood for interviews with a burgeoning press corps camped across the street. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump lives in a penthouse near the top of the building, which also serves as headquarters for his presidential campaign. (RELATED: Election Day Voting Has Begun – Who Is Winning?)
Police told The Daily Caller News Foundation that the dumping beds are filled with sand, which adds weight to each truck, in effect making it impossible to run the barrier. Police decided to circle the Tower with trucks as a hedge against car bombs, or some such similar incendiary munition delivered by car. The fleet of trucks will travel with Trump this evening to surround the New York Hilton Midtown Manhattan Hotel, where Trump is hosting his victory rally. The NYPD maintained a presence around the hotel for several days, which is also closed to the public.
Guests staying in the hotel on unrelated business must present their keycards at a security check-point before entering the premises.
Similar security measures will attend Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s headquarters at the Javits Convention Center in Hell’s Kitchen this evening. | 1real |
Trump Knocks Clinton’s Mental Stamina But Can’t Even Remember What Day It Is | Donald Trump told the crowd at a Florida rally just how bad Hillary Clinton s mental stamina is, but at the same time, he couldn t even manage to figure out what day of the week it was: Now, Hillary Clinton, commonly referred to as Crooked Hillary . Hillary Clinton gave a speech today having to do with economic development, having to do with a lot of different things. Short speech, always very short. You know? She makes the speech, she turns off the teleprompter. Look, what happens, she gives a short speech then she goes home, goes to sleep, she shows up two days later. Remember, short circuit. Remember that, right? Short circuit.Last week, Clinton said that she may have short-circuited her answer to a question about the investigation into her private email server during a television interview. Trump latched onto the comment vehemently as proof that she isn t mentally fit to be president while attacking her physical health as well.Trump also told the crowd: I watched Hillary today, which was really boring. It s hard to watch. I have an obligation to watch. Fortunately, she never goes on very long because she wants to go home. Trump was insistent that Clinton isn t mentally competent, but twice during the rally he totally screwed up what day of the week it was, even after he was corrected. As reported by The Guardian: By the way, is there any place to be that s better than a Friday night in Florida at a Trump rally? No place. A few supporters shouted: It s Thursday! Later he said: We joke. It s Friday night and we re having fun. More supporters yelled: It s Thursday! but he appeared to assume it was more cheering.Although probably not an accident, Trump also had a hard time with his comprehension of just how many people had actually come out to hear him speak. This place is incredible. We ve got 2,000 people outside trying to get in, Trump said. However, according to The Guardian, there were still hundreds of empty places in the 8,000-seat arena. Featured image via Joe Raedle/Getty Images | 1real |
Pakistani top court rejects bid to bar opposition leader Imran Khan | ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Pakistan s Supreme Court cleared opposition leader Imran Khan on Friday of accusations of failing to declare assets, but barred his party s secretary general from parliament. The top court dismissed a petition to disqualify the cricket hero as an MP, months after his rival, former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, was removed from parliament by the court on similar charges. No dishonesty or omission can be attributed to (Khan). This petition has no merits and is hereby dismissed, Chief Justice Saqib Nisar told the court. The ruling on Khan was hailed as a vindication by his opposition party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), which will face off against Sharif s ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz in elections next year. Khan had led the legal drive that led to Sharif being disqualified in July over unreported income and the opening of a criminal corruption case against the former prime minister. A lawmaker from Sharif s ruling party filed a separate complaint late last year alleging Khan and PTI secretary general Jahangir Tareen owned offshore companies and had not disclosed their assets. The Supreme Court disqualified Tareen. The respondent is declared not to be an honest person. He ceased to be member of the parliament. The respondent is disqualified, Nisar said of Tareen. PTI spokesman Naeem Ul Haq said the party was disappointed with that judgment. Tareen himself was not immediately available for comment. I gave 60 documents to the Supreme Court ... Nawaz Sharif, took 300 billion rupees out of this country which he has to answer for ... and for that he produced only one document, Khan said at a press briefing after the verdict was announced. A senior PML-N leader, Miftah Ismial, told Reuters the party questioned details of the court s ruling, but accepted it as final. | 0fake |
Republicans push back against Trump plan to cut foreign aid | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump’s fellow Republicans in Congress on Tuesday assailed his proposed cuts in the diplomatic and foreign aid budget, making it unlikely the cutbacks in global health, peacekeeping and other programs will take effect. Senator Lindsey Graham, the Republican chairman of the Senate subcommittee responsible for diplomacy and foreign aid spending, said Trump’s proposal to cut the diplomacy and aid budget by one third would “gut soft power.” “If we implemented this budget, you’d have to retreat from the world or put a lot of people at risk,” Graham told reporters. “This budget is not going to go anywhere.” Congress sets the federal government budget, and Republicans who control both houses and Democrats have said they do not support such drastic cuts. The funding cuts in Trump’s plan for the fiscal year beginning in October would mark a stark decrease in non-military U.S. government engagement abroad as the administration pursues Trump’s “America First” world view. Trump administration officials defend the cuts by saying the rest of the world must do its “fair share” as the United States retreats from its traditional spending abroad. In all, the Trump proposal cuts about 32 percent from U.S. diplomacy and aid budgets, or nearly $19 billion. Trump’s budget would cut U.S. funding for global health programs including efforts focusing on HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria by about one quarter, to about $6.5 billion for 2018. The budget proposal envisions cuts to the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) program, a cornerstone of U.S. global health assistance, which supports HIV/AIDS treatment, testing and counseling for millions of people worldwide. Under Trump’s budget, PEPFAR funding would be $5 billion per year compared to about $6 billion annually now, the State Department said. No patient currently receiving antiretroviral therapy, a treatment for HIV, through PEPFAR funds will lose that treatment, officials said. The budget proposal also includes a steep cut to funding for international organizations, without specifying which groups might lose their funding. The NATO military alliance would continue to be fully funded. U.S. funding for international peacekeeping would fall to about $1.5 billion, a cut of over 50 percent from 2017 levels. The United States is the biggest contributor to the United Nations, paying 22 percent of the $5.4 billion core budget and 28.5 percent of the $7.9 billion peacekeeping budget “Given the growing threats we face, we should be supporting – not slashing – anti-terrorism, law enforcement, and humanitarian programs,” Representative Ed Royce, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said in a statement. Trump’s budget would reduce funding for educational and cultural exchanges by 52 percent, including a 47 percent cut to the Fulbright Program, which enables U.S. citizens to go abroad and brings foreign students to study in the United States. The Trump proposal assumes the State Department will maintain its current structure, though Tillerson has said he wants to restructure the agency and find efficiencies. Nonetheless, the budget makes major shifts in some funding. A core, $2.8 billion development account overseen by USAID that funds agricultural, water, sanitation and other projects would be consolidated with other funding streams to create the Economic Support and Development Fund. That new account would then be cut by about 45 percent compared to current funding levels. | 0fake |
Democrats enlist experts to scour Tillerson's business record | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Senate Democrats plan to enlist accountants and legal experts to pore through the business records of Exxon Mobil Chief Executive Rex Tillerson, President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for secretary of state, Democratic aides said. Tillerson could face a rocky confirmation process, given concerns among both Democrats and Republicans about his ties to Russia. If Tillerson can overcome the skepticism of Republicans, he could win confirmation since their party will control a slim majority in the Senate when Trump takes office on Jan. 20. Democrats’ misgivings about Tillerson go well beyond the worry that he might be too accommodating toward Moscow. They see risks of conflicts if the head of the $380 billion oil giant becomes the nation’s top diplomat and they want to ensure that his personal wealth and business interests get close scrutiny. Aides said Democrats began assembling experts to prepare for Tillerson’s confirmation even before his nomination was formally announced on Tuesday. “We will bring in people who have been through confirmation battles before,” a Democratic leadership aide said. “We want to have a very thorough review. We are very comfortable with this process taking as long as it needs.” In many ways, Exxon operates its own kind of diplomatic corps, dispatching executives to network with government officials in the more than 40 countries in which the company operates. “The scale and the reach of Exxon Mobil ... does raise some questions about those relationships and how his experience at the helm of Exxon Mobil will influence his decision-making as secretary,” said Democratic Senator Chris Coons, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which will hold Tillerson’s confirmation hearing next month. Tillerson, 64, is on the New York Times’ list of the 200 highest-paid CEOs, having earned some $24.3 million in 2016. He has a net worth of $150 million, plus a $70 million pension plan. He would likely need to divest his holdings of Exxon stock. Democrats are also consulting with foreign affairs experts as they examine his relationships with countries such as Russia. Tillerson opposed sanctions imposed on Russia after its annexation of Crimea. He has said they are often ineffective. Exxon has said the sanctions on Russia could cost it hundreds of millions of dollars or more. “We are looking at issues like, will he need to recuse himself from decisions on sanctions?” another Democratic aide said. Exxon has also come under attack for the financial arrangements of its oil production in Chad, where the company’s lawyers are negotiating over a $74 billion fine tied to accusations of royalty underpayment. Exxon also has development rights in Iraq, which is battling Islamic State, and Saudi Arabia, with its controversial record on human rights and complex relationship with U.S. ally Israel and Iran, whose international nuclear agreement signed by President Barack Obama has been harshly criticized by Trump. “Mr. Tillerson has demonstrated he knows the corporate world and can put his shareholders’ interests first, but can he be a respected secretary of state that puts the national security interests of the American people first?” asked Senator Ben Cardin, the ranking Foreign Relations committee Democrat. Tillerson enjoys strong support from Republican leaders, but some party members offered more muted reactions. Marco Rubio, a Republican member of the Foreign Relations panel, who ran against Trump for the Republican presidential nomination, said he had “serious concerns” about Tillerson’s nomination. Even critics said, however, they were open to the appointment, if Tillerson gives satisfactory answers during the confirmation process. “There are lots of ways that energy and our energy dependence has influenced our foreign policy over decades, and hopefully he will bring some insights as a result of that experience,” Coons said. “It is not all bad that he’s got 40 years of experience globally in business,” he added. | 0fake |
(VIDEO) LIBERAL PUNDIT: OBAMA WORST POTUS EVER | 1real | |
The Trump presidency on Feb. 5 at 7:10 P.M. EST | (Reuters) - Highlights of the day for U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration on Sunday: Trump ramps up his criticism of a federal judge who blocked a travel ban on seven mainly Muslim nations and says courts were making U.S. border security harder, intensifying the first major legal battle of his presidency. Many of those caught up in Trump’s travel ban last weekend took advantage of a federal judge’s order temporarily suspending the order to complete their disrupted journeys to the United States. Trump faces an uphill battle to overcome a federal judge’s temporary hold on his travel ban, but the outcome of a ruling on the executive order’s ultimate legality is less certain, experts say Several technology companies plan to send a letter Trump on Monday urging his administration to follow through on proposed changes to the travel ban, sources familiar with the letter say. Washington state’s lawsuit challenging Trump’s executive order on immigration emerged out of a chaotic, 48-hour period in which the need for immediate action held sway over the kind of carefully thought-out strategizing that usually leads up to the filing of a major legal complaint, according to state Attorney General Bob Ferguson and other attorneys involved in actions against the order. German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel says he was reassured after meetings last week with top U.S. officials that the United States is committed to a united Europe and to the NATO alliance. Despite declarations of unity at a recent European Union summit in Malta, EU countries are split on how to respond to policies from Trump, who has reversed staunch postwar U.S. support for European integration and suggested others follow Britain out of a bloc he has called “a vehicle for Germany.” Trump’s first two weeks in office have left some European politicians leaders aghast but are drawing cheers from France’s far-right National Front, as its leader, Marine Le Pen, launches her own bid for power. The governor of Colorado says he believes the Cuban government wants to further improve relations with the United States under Trump, as he wraps up a three-day visit to the Communist-run island nation. Trump says in remarks broadcast on Sunday that he would put Vice President Mike Pence in charge of a commission to probe what he believes was voter fraud in last November’s election. | 0fake |
The Hillary Era is Coming: Worry! | Photo by Veni | CC BY 2.0
I trust that I am not the only one to have noticed that in rural areas and economically distressed neighborhoods in towns and cities, lawn signs for Donald Trump are everywhere, while Hillary signs are rarer than Teslas and Maseratis.
I think I understand the Trump signs: they are cries of defiance.
Hillary’s supporters are harder to figure out. I suspect that most of them would just as soon not advertise their intentions November 8. Even if they think that there is no other way to stop Trump, they understand that, by voting for Hillary, they are embarrassing themselves.
Lawn signs apart, the evidence that Trump is kaput is, by now, overwhelming. He seems finally to have done his campaign in – to such an extent that even diehard anti-Trump fear mongers concede the inevitability of the Clintons’ return to the White House.
Trump’s campaign had been on life support for weeks when the pussy grabbing tape surfaced, followed by a seemingly endless stream of women – a dozen or so already — accusing the Donald of groping them and worse.
Then, in the third debate, Trump announced that he would “wait and see” before accepting the legitimacy of a Clinton victory. This seems to have been the final straw for all but the most bona fide “deplorables.”
And so, the writing is on the wall: Hillary will win just as surely as the sun will rise tomorrow – well, not quite, but almost.
There is no reason to rejoice in her victory, only in Trump’s defeat.
And even that isn’t as obvious as it seems . Hillary probably the lesser evil all things considered. But Trump is very likely the less dangerous of the two.
The man is an adolescent in a septuagenarian’s body, with a tendency to act out. But at least he is not a Russophobe or a neocon or a “humanitarian” intervener intent on regime change in countries that resist American domination.
This would include not only the usual victims, countries incapable of harming the United States militarily, but Russia and China as well.
It is relevant too that the supposed lesser evil is a committed neoliberal and a Wall Street toady, and that Trump’s “crooked Hillary” taunts hit the target more often than not.
These considerations, and others like them, should cause concern to those who are fine with lesser evil voting in general, but who think that there are thresholds beneath which lesser evil considerations should not apply.
There is no need to agonize over these issues, however; not in this case. When Trump became the Republican nominee, lesser evil arguments became moot.
This would still be the case even if more voters were not quite so willfully blind to the dangers inherent in Clinton’s determination to maintain American world domination by any means necessary, and to her fondness for military “solutions.”
Lesser evil considerations are irrelevant because Trump is and always has been bound to lose to any Democrat, even to her.
I have been pressing this point and its corollary — that anti-Trump hysteria is a distraction – from Day One. As recently as a month ago, hardly anyone agreed with me.
If only I had a dollar for every time I have been taken to task for not seeing the parallels between the Trump phenomenon and the rise of Nazism in the final years of the Weimar Republic! I would be a rich man today.
But because it is now recognized that Trump’s chances of becoming President are, for all practical purposes, nil, no one is pressing that line these days. I used to be out on a limb; I no longer am.
It would be only natural to take pleasure in this turn of events, and I would — but for the fact that a Trump defeat implies a Clinton victory. That prospect is, at best, only slightly less nightmarish.
Worse, it doesn’t seem to matter that all but the most flagrant worrywarts now finally concede that there will never be a President Trump. Liberals and centrists and even a few foolish leftists are still going all out for Hillary.
From the dead center to the soft left, the consensus view is still that now is a time to boost, not knock, Hillary’s campaign — especially in the dozen or so states where the Electoral College outcomes could not have been determined years ago with absolute certainty.
It is remarkable that so many people cannot let anti-Trump hysteria go; that they are so focused on Trump’s misogyny, temperamental instability, and narcissistic blather that they don’t see that the only thing we need fear, where Trump is concerned, is, so to speak, the fear itself.
However, in Hillary’s case, there really is something to fear: that she is about to become the Commander-in-Chief of the most lethal military force in the history of the world.
On that point, her supporters are in denial, and even people who know better than to support her for her own sake remain determined to waste their votes by adding to her totals. Apparently, they think that this is a way to send the message that Trumpian “fascism” shall not pass.
How much better it would be if they would use their votes to build alternatives to the neoliberal perpetual war regime that Hillary and Bill and their co-thinkers have helped fashion!
The best chance for that, at this point, is Jill Stein’s campaign on the Green Party ticket.
Stein cannot win, of course; a vote for her is only a protest vote. But there is nothing wrong with that. Hillary needs to know that she has no mandate to end the world “as we know it,” and this is one of many ways to convey that message.
Pundits who claim otherwise are dead wrong. Those who pile on for Hillary are wasting their votes; protest votes aimed at Hillary are not wasted at all.
I would imagine that at least some Trump voters are thinking along similar lines. But the racism, nativism and Islamophobia of their candidate tarnishes the messages their votes will convey. They therefore cannot register with any real clarity.
The message protest votes for Stein convey is, on the other hand, as clear and distinct as can be.
And if she garners at least five percent of the total votes cast, the Greens will have access to federal funding in future elections, and will have a much easier time gaining ballot access in all fifty states.
This would not make for much of a “political revolution,” even in Bernie Sanders’ highly attenuated sense of the term, but it would make future elections less mind-numbing and degrading, and it could ultimately lead to more far-reaching transformations of the political scene.
Now that Trump has all but killed off the GOP, the duopoly party system is in jeopardy, and all kinds of political realignments have, at last, become feasible. ***
I wasn’t just being contrarian when I went out on a limb about Trump’s chances; and my confidence was in no way based on inferences from polling data or statistical extrapolations.
Let the blogosphere’s “political junkies” and the corporate media’s talking heads knock themselves out with that. What they do is useful only for entertaining people who care about the horse race aspect of presidential elections. It is distressing how many Americans indulge in that spectator sport. Most of them are essentially apolitical.
I was confident that I was right about Trump’s chances because I knew that what people tell pollsters when an election seems far off is basically irrelevant for predicting the election’s outcome. Information about how they and people like them voted in the past is more relevant, but not by much.
This is especially true when, as in this case, disdain for one or the other candidate, or for both, is a dispositive factor in many voters’ minds.
I was also fairly sure that, rightly or wrongly, more people fear and loathe Trump than fear and loathe Hillary; and that, if they didn’t at the outset, they would before long – because Trump was all but certain to undermine himself, and because there is so much dirt out there on the Donald’s sleazy connections and moral turpitude that even God-fearing Republicans, capable of believing almost any nonsense, were bound eventually to be repulsed.
I suspected too that Trump never really wanted to be President; that he only got into the race to promote his brand, and because he is an egotist and publicity-hound.
Trump hates to lose, however — especially to the likes of Hillary — and so, at some point, he must have decided to give the campaign his all, even if it meant bringing the Trump brand down with him.
Should it come to that, I will shed crocodile tears for his brood, Ivanka especially. A worthwhile thing to do in the months ahead would be to work to make that happen; to do everything possible to assure that the damage done to all things Trump will be irreversible. What a delightful irony that would be!
There are plenty of Hillary-haters in the Donald’s base who hate Hillary because they consider her the embodiment of coercive goody-goodyism, or because they think she is disdainful of people like them (people in the “deplorables” demographic), or because they think that she is too leftwing.
The idea that she is too leftwing is nonsense, of course; she is not nearly leftwing enough. That anyone would think otherwise is a testament to the media’s ability to shape public perceptions and to the degree of political ignorance rampant in some quarters of the American electorate.
But “vast rightwing conspiracy” Hillary-haters are spot on right about the rest of it — and two out of three isn’t bad.
Even so, there are better reasons than theirs to dread the prospect of a Clinton presidency. They all have to do with the service Hillary has done, and will go on doing, for the miscreants who control the commanding heights of America’s and the world’s capitalist order, and with her untrammeled, ideologically-driven bellicosity.
Hillary knows how to game the system; and she and Bill know how to benefit from doing so. But, for all her vaunted “experience,” she is clueless about the world. And although she and her fans boast of her “pragmatism,” that woman is seriously inept.
Most of what she undertakes to do is ill conceived, and nearly all of it turns out badly.
In short, the lesser evil, if that is what she is, is a very great evil indeed.
It won’t take long, once she moves back into the White House and starts putting her stamp on the empire’s depredations, for the scales to fall from the eyes of all but her most gullible supporters.
I am even more sure of this than I was of Trump’s defeat, but I will take even less joy in being proved right again. What lies ahead, with Hillary in control, is too horrible to contemplate. Join the debate on Facebook ANDREW LEVINE is a Senior Scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies, the author most recently of THE AMERICAN IDEOLOGY (Routledge) and POLITICAL KEY WORDS (Blackwell) as well as of many other books and articles in political philosophy. His most recent book is In Bad Faith: What’s Wrong With the Opium of the People . He was a Professor (philosophy) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a Research Professor (philosophy) at the University of Maryland-College Park. He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion (AK Press). | 1real |
OUCH! The Left’s “Other Woman” Just Landed A DIRECT HIT On Hillary…And She Is SPOT ON! | Wow that s gonna leave a mark!When she s not being arrested for defacing public property, she s actually kinda funny!Jill Stein is no stranger to breaking the law. She currently has a warrant for out for arrest. A North Dakota Judge is charging her with criminal trespass and mischief during protest against a pipeline project on September 1st.The bottom line is, she may be a bit of a fruitcake and a rabble rouser, but she wasn t far off with her evaluation of Hillary s rallies LOL! | 1real |
Scott Greene Caught in Police Ambush Shooting | At 1:00 a.m. on Wednesday, Nov. 2, 2016, Scott Michael Greene, a 46-year-old father of three, would change Urbandale, Iowa, forever. Officer Justin Martin and Sargent Tony Beminio were found shot and killed 20 minutes apart, Wednesday morning. Per authorities, Greene ambushed both Martin and Beminio while in their police cruisers, at two separate locations. Ambush-style shootings on police officers have been a common story on local and national news outlets.
On July 17, Gaven Long took the lives of three Baton Rouge police officers. His motives were uncertain but his anger toward white police officials was clear. Recordings of Long ranting and raving about racial injustice surfaced on social media websites days prior to the shootings. Also, Long wore a self-made body camera and visited Dallas, where five officers were killed less than two weeks before his own rampage. There is no physical connection between Long and the Dallas shooter, their mental states were similar.
Micah Xavier Johnson, who fatally shot five Dallas officers, believed racial injustice was out of control. Despite his feelings toward police and the black community, Johnson’s stepmother was white and he was not known to “pick particular sides with race.” Johnson was killed by police officers who used a bomb-wearing robot, following the shootings. This left his motivation for the shootings a mystery. Not all police ambushes are incited by racial discrimination.
On Sept. 12, 2014, Eric Frein opened fire on the Blooming Grove state police barracks, in Pennsylvania. One officer died and another was severely wounded. U.S. Marshals would later find Frein, 50 days later, in an airport hangar. He was discovered 23 miles from the barracks. Frein had expressed anger toward law enforcement but the reason for his anger has not been understood. What drives people such as Frein, Johnson, Long, and Green to go and act out such heinous crimes? Perhaps a mental illness can be blamed for such disturbing behavior.
The mourning continues for the two officers who lost their lives early Wednesday morning. When a tragedy strikes a community, historically, the people come together. This is what is happening in Urbandale, Iowa.
By Amy Weins
Edited by Jeanette Smith
Sources:
Des Moines Register: Suspected police killer had history of run-ins with authorities
The Advocate: Before Bloodshed: Where Gavin Long stayed, what he preached, odd encounters all on video
Dallas News: Ousted from army, Dallas shooter used military skills for murder
Pocono Record: Suspected State Police killer Frein Caught near abandoned airpark
Image Courtesy of Brandon Anderson’s Eric Frein , Gavin Long , Micah Johnson , Scott Greene , shooting | 1real |
Preguntar por el sueldo será motivo de despido | Preguntar por el sueldo será motivo de despido ATOSIGAR AL JEFE PIDIÉNDOLE UN CONTRATO O DÍAS DE VACACIONES SE CONSIDERARÁ ACOSO LABORAL trabajo
Embrutecer la relación laboral mostrando interés por asuntos meramente económicos será motivo suficiente para echar a un empleado, según una nueva normativa laboral anunciada por el Gobierno esta mañana. “Insistir en temas económicos da a entender que el trabajador podría no estar interesado en el trabajo sino sólo en el dinero”, explicaba esta mañana Fátima Báñez, ministra de Empleo y Seguridad Social.
Según la normativa, la cantidad monetaria que todos los trabajadores perciben a fin de mes a cambio del trabajo realizado debería ser un tema “que al menos se finja secundario” para poder mantener “la ilusión” de que se trabaja en vistas a mejorar la productividad de la empresda y de España “y no por intereses personales y exclusivamente pecuniarios”.
“Preguntar por nóminas atrasadas deja en evidencia que existía un interés oculto cuando se aceptó el trabajo”, explica la ministra.
Los empresarios, a través de la patronal, no han tardado en aplaudir una medida que llevaban años solicitando. “Cuando estás haciendo una entrevista, preguntas por los sueños y las aspiraciones de una persona, por cosas importantes, y al final siempre rompen ese clima de confidencia preguntando cuánto van a cobrar y es una pena”, explica Carmen Sartoña, directora de Recursos Humanos de la multinacional Jenkins&Co. “El trabajo bien hecho debería ser su propia recompensa, nos gusta que el sueldo sea una sorpresa inesperada, un plus”, insiste.
“Que mis subordinados trabajen por una motivación ajena al trabajo me parece feo y en esas condiciones prefiero poder despedirlos”, ha declarado otro empresario de Madrid, aplaudiendo la medida. Confía en que la nueva normativa favorezca la dedicación apasionada y desinteresada por el trabajo.
Asimismo, los trabajadores que atosiguen al jefe pidiéndole un contrato o días de vacaciones podrán ser acusados de acoso laboral. | 1real |
Denis O’Brien Announces Bid For Irish Presidency | We Use Cookies: Our policy [X] Denis O’Brien Announces Bid For Irish Presidency November 15, 2016 - BREAKING NEWS , POLITICS Share 0 Add Comment
MEDIA mogul and multi billionaire Denis O’Brien has today announced his bid for the Irish presidency 2017.
Following in the footsteps of American businessman and peer, Donald Trump, Mr. O’Brien stated he will begin campaigning early next year in what is expected to be the hottest Irish presidential election since the foundation of the state.
“I’m really looking forward to making Ireland okay again,” he said, wearing a baseball hat with the same phrasing, “I’m going to build a wall around my financial affairs – made from solicitors. Believe me, this wall will be impervious to poorer people. It will be great. Okay?”
Taoiseach Enda Kenny was the first to offer his support to the Cork man, who currently resides in Malta because it’s nice and warm and no other reason, stating O’Brien will be a perfect contender to represent Ireland’s current climate.
“He’s a lovely man, Denis, and he will make a great president if elected,” Mr. Kenny said with his mouth, “Sure, he’s basically representing the country already with his large stake in the Irish media. It would only make sense that such an influence would put themselves forward for such a position”.
Mr. O’Brien then added that first things he will do in office is to abolish the current government. | 1real |
Trump Accidentally Applauds Obama’s Protection of Immigrants: ‘I Think It’s Great’ (VIDEO) | Republican front runner Donald Trump loves to tell Americans how great he is at just about anything but one thing he ll never brag about is how good he is at making himself look like a complete idiot.Trump displayed this not-so-hidden talent perfectly on Monday, when he likely misinterpreted a reporter s question about children born of immigrants that or the candidate has flip-flopped on one of his policies again. The question was asked during a South Carolina press conference, and the reporter opened by mentioning one of Trump s GOP rivals, fellow candidate Jeb Bush. The reporter began, You have accused Jeb Bush of being weak on immigration Trump, possessing less manners than a toddler, interrupted the reporter and called Bush Weak, period. The reporter continued, referring to Obama s 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) initiative, which protects younger illegal immigrants from deployment: There are over 100,000 young people known as DREAMers who have deferred action given to them Trump cut the reporter off once again, telling the audience that Obama s executive action on the matter was great a surprising response considering how hateful the GOP candidate has been to immigrants.When the reporter asked Trump what DREAMers could expect under his presidency, Trump s response got even more bizarre and it started to look like he didn t understand the reporter s question at all! Never one to admit a mistake, Trump boldly launched into a puzzling rant about dreamers although only he knows what he meant by that. He said: I want dreamers to come from this country. You mentioned dreamers; I want dreamers to come from the United States. I want the people in the United States that have children, I want them to have dreams also. You can watch the baffling footage below, via MSNBC.Although Trump does have quite a history of changing his views on policies, it s probably safe to say that he was just too stupid to understand what the reporter was really asking him. Considering all the racist, offensive things that Trump has said about illegal immigrants over the past several months, it s not likely that he had a change of heart he s just dumb. Featured image from video screen capture | 1real |
EU parliament questions independence of police, judiciary in Malta | BRUSSELS (Reuters) - European Union lawmakers have raised concerns over money laundering in Malta and the independence of its police and judiciary in a draft resolution, stepping up pressure on the island after the assassination of an investigative journalist. Daphne Caruana Galizia, who had denounced high-profile corruption and accused Prime Minister Joseph Muscat of wrongdoing, was killed on Oct. 16 by a bomb that tore through her car. An investigation is under way and Muscat has promised that everything will be done to find the killers. Next week the EU parliament will vote on a resolution on the rule of law in Malta. In a draft text, seen by Reuters, the parliament said it regrets that developments in Malta in recent years have led to serious concerns about the rule of law, democracy and fundamental rights including freedom of the media and the independence of the police and judiciary . It said that the independence of law enforcement and the judiciary in Malta may be compromised by the fact that the government is empowered to appoint the Police Commissioner, the head of the FIAU (anti-money laundering agency) and the attorney-general . The resolution called on the European Commission to oversee more closely respect for the rule of law in Malta and regretted the EU executive s decision not to publish its anti-corruption report this year. At a news conference on Friday, the largest group in the parliament, the conservative European People s Party (EPP), called on the EU commission to urgently step up its monitoring of Malta. We think there are serious questions regarding the freedom of media and the lack of law enforcement in Malta, said Daniel Koster, an EPP spokesman. He said the EPP had doubts about what the commission was doing to address this situation. The calls from the conservatives were echoed by the liberal, leftist and green groupings in the assembly. Reports from the Maltese anti-money laundering agency were leaked in June via Caruana Galizia s blog. They raised concerns about Pilatus Bank, a Maltese lender accused of having failed to report suspicious dealings as required by law. The EU lawmakers draft resolution calls on Malta to investigate Pilatus Bank. The bank and the Maltese police did not reply to Reuters questions on the allegations. There appear to be no grounds to suspect a systematic breach, of money laundering rules in Malta, an EU Commission official told Reuters in reply to questions over the island s application of EU rules on money laundering. The draft resolution, citing findings of the parliament s inquiry committee on money laundering, said Maltese institutions in charge of enforcing rules to prevent financial crimes were highly politicized . The number of convictions and confiscations related to money laundering in Malta seems extremely low, it said. | 0fake |
Muslims DEMAND Locals Don’t Walk Dogs In Public – Violation Of Sharia And “DISRESPECTS” Them | They are a group that calls themselves “Public Purity”. Somehow, they have found the audacity to demand the Brits stop taking their dogs out in public because, wait for it…
Dogs are considered impure under Sharia Law .
Of course, these Muslims feel entitled to make this demand because it appears that they believe the British citizens are required to do certain things in order to keep Muslims from feeling uncomfortable. Somehow, it’s become the responsibility of the Brits to ensure that Muslim residents feel more at home.
This intrusive behavior being served up by Muslim immigrants does in part explain British citizens refusal to remain in the European Union.
Does that make any sort of sense to you? It’s like you allow guests into your home, and one day you wake up and they start telling you what you can and can’t do in your own home because…you are offensive and you must change your way of life, because YOU are the one who is wrong. @JPexsquaddie Btw this was what is on the other side of the leaflet pic.twitter.com/y3Wzm6Mg0G
— Gemma Winter 🐸 (@GEMWINTER) July 12, 2016
It’s inconceivable really. The audacity! No it’s not a joke!, it’s been posted in letterboxes in Manchester! A nation of Dog lovers! WTF😡 pic.twitter.com/XC2kcSBzem
The problem is this…these immigrant Muslims are used to a way of life that is entirely different from that of
FOR ENTIRE ARTICLE CLICK LINK | 1real |
HOW BAD IS IT IN VENEZUELA? Socialism’s Endgame Sucks! | How bad is it in Venezuela? People are eating one meal a day and the government is doing its best to cover up the humanitarian crisis. We know about the toilet paper shortage but a food shortage is horrific. The lines for pretty much everything have been very long. There s a shortage of everything. The bottom line is that SOCIALISM SUCKS! | 1real |
Prof. At Trump’s Fmr. College: He’s ‘A True Threat To Our American Democracy’ | Donald Trump likes to brag about the fact that he attended the University of Pennsylvania s prestigious Wharton School. However, the folks there are scared as hell as the prospect of their former student becoming president of the United States. One of the professors at the Wharton School, Eric Schoenberg, has one project between here and November: Stop Trump.According to the Huffington Post, Schoenberg says of Trump: This man, Donald Trump, represents a true threat to our democracy and our system of government. This was a statement he made to the University s student publication, the Daily Pennsylvanian. Schoenberg continued: I think Donald Trump is a potential disaster, and I m going to do everything I can to make sure he isn t president. The Democrats are the only game in town to that regard. The professor is also talking with his wallet on this one, having given the maximum allowable amount $2700 to Hillary Clinton s bid for the presidency. Further, he gave $75,000 to help bankroll the Democratic National Convention. In addition, Schoenberg has bankrolled various unnamed efforts championed by Democrats to the tune of roughly $30,000.Schoenberg isn t the only one at Trump s old school who can t stand the thought of his being president. In fact, the students at Wharton penned a blistering missive to Trump, berating his offensive remarks, saying that discriminatory statements are incompatible with the values that we are taught and we teach at Wharton. That letter gathered more than 3700 signatures from both present students at the school and those who have already graduated.The people at Wharton are right. Trump is unfit to be president. From his obvious ignorance of the Constitution, to his love affair with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, to his flirtation with the idea of abandoning America s allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and so much more, we must understand that Trump is not just a buffoon or a clown or even a bigot or an embarrassment. He is dangerous, a literal fascist and a demagogue who has risen to a position of power through his uncanny ability to tap into and manipulate the basest, darkest instincts of America s ignorant masses. Godspeed, Professor Schoenberg. Educated, sane Americans everywhere are with you. We must stop Trump.Featured image via Joe Raedle/Getty Images | 1real |
Jimmy Fallon Roasts Donald Trump With This Genius Prank Phone Call (VIDEO) | Imagine if Donald Trump rang President Obama. How would that phone call go? Jimmy Fallon decided to act out his answer, with a phone call played out between Fallon s Drumpf and Obama.After winning Indiana and becoming the presumptive GOP nominee, Trump calls President Obama to chat. The only thing is, Drumpf can seem to string a sentence together without making some sort of bizarre Trump-world word soup. Did you see the news? I m now the Republican President and come November, I m gonna be voted Captain America. Drumpf says out his pouting mouth, set as it is upon an unnaturally orange face.Obama begrudgingly congratulates the tangerine tycoon on his victory in Indiana, and his becoming the presumptive Republican nominee for President of the United States. Of course, Drumpf is little confused about exactly what makes the Hoosier state great. I love Indiana. The birthplace of Indiana Jones. Obama lets the gaffe slide, choosing instead to keep it classy and acknowledge Trump s success. I ve gotta admit, it was a big win. he says, to which Drumpf responds. It was. And when I m in charge, America s gonna start winning, and winning bigly Yes, that last word was just spontaneously invented by Drumpf like President George Dubya Bush and Sarah Palin before him Donald Trump has seemingly made a campaign platform out of bad English.Obama calls him to task on the word, asking him if he just actually said Bigly , for real. But Drumpf is unashamed. That s right, bigly. And I m gonna be the bestest, most fantasticest President ever. It s gonna be yuuuuugical. You can see the rest of the brilliant sketch in the video below.Whatever happens now, one thing is certain, the Republican party is paying the price of inciting fear and prejudice into its supporters. The GOP has turned itself into a party of extremist bigots, led by an extremist bigot. It has become a parody of its own worst elements. | 1real |
Hannity Gets The ‘Snowflake’ Treatment After Melting Down Over Being Mocked In Satire Piece | Sean Hannity needs a safe space because he can t take a joke.For months, the deplorable Fox News host who has been attacking a dead man named Seth Rich in defense of his good buddy Donald Trump has been referring to liberals as snowflakes because they are offended by the things Trump has done.Well, after months of using the term to attack liberals, Hannity committed hypocrisy by whining about an article published by The Onion, a well-known satire publication.Hannity posted the piece on Twitter complaining about how the left think these sorts of things are funny. The article Hannity is complaining about features Roger Ailes corpse and how a bunch of mini Sean Hannitys burst out of his body. You know, because Hannity is a parasitic nightmare.What is wrong with the left that they think these sorts of things are funny? https://t.co/sAxON5xxmh Sean Hannity (@seanhannity) June 1, 2017Again, this is satire. It s what The Onion does best. And they don t just make fun of conservatives either. They make fun of everyone and everything.But Hannity couldn t handle it because unlike liberals, he is a true snowflake and a hypocrite. And Twitter users mocked him to oblivion for it.It s simple: you remind the writer of a parasitic symbiote that fed on the corpse of the rapist who ran your soon-to-be-former network home Charles Bramesco (@intothecrevasse) June 1, 2017Dude it s The Onion. Steve Schreiber (@sschreiber13) June 1, 2017This is so offensive. The only recently fresh corpse Sean Hannity would ever desecrate belongs to Seth Rich. Jon Bershad (@JonBershad) June 1, 2017Sean did you read their story about the dog speaking at a recent graduation ceremony? It s outrageous. https://t.co/U9lpvHUbKh Ben K. (@benyankee) June 1, 2017Since when is @TheOnion part of the left? They lampoon stupidity. If they are lampooning you, find a mirror. (((Ryan Wagman))) (@RAWagman) June 1, 2017What s really funny is all the traffic you re sending toward @TheOnion with this tweet. It s like you want to make them some money. Joshua Guess (@JoshuaGuess) June 1, 2017I think it s hysterical, snowflake Bradley Herring (@BEHdc) June 1, 2017Aw, snowflake Sean has been triggered by a satirical publication. Drumpf Micropenis (@Dons_Angry_Inch) June 1, 2017You need a safe space? Morty Heureuse (@BNick) June 1, 2017The fact that you don t know this is a parody website is so hilarious and shows how terrible your research skills really are. Sam Geden (@KaisaJesta) June 1, 2017Once again, Sean Hannity just got his ass handed to him. Now we just need to wait for him to whine about that like the snowflake he is.Featured Image: Paul Zimmerman/Getty Images | 1real |
FORMER U.S. ATTORNEY: FBI’s Comey Considered To Be “Dirty Cop” And Here’s Why [Video] | Former U.S. Attorney Joseph diGenova slammed FBI director James Comey s handling of the investigation into Hillary Clinton s private email server. DiGenova says people both currently in the FBI and with the FBI consider Comey to be a dirty cop. | 1real |
New Zealand jet fuel rations increased as government calls in navy to beat shortage | WELLINGTON (Reuters) - New Zealand will partially ease fuel rationing on Thursday night, a spokesman for the country s oil industry said, a sign that the five-day long fuel shortage that has caused air travel disruptions is subsiding. More than 120 flights have been cancelled this week in New Zealand s largest city, Auckland, disrupting thousands of travellers each day, after the single privately owned pipeline that carries jet fuel from a refinery to the city s airport was damaged. National carrier Air New Zealand said it expected flights to run as usual on Friday, with no cancellations for the first time since Sunday. Airline fuel allocations will rise to 50 percent, from 30 percent, at midnight on Thursday, said Andrew McNaught, manager for Mobil New Zealand Ltd and a spokesman for the customers of the country s only oil refinery operator Refining NZ. Travel restrictions for government officials have been lifted, said Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment Spokeswoman Carolyn Tremain in a statement. New Zealand s government and oil industry have taken a series of measures to try to contain the crisis, from fuel rationing to calling on the military to help truck in supplies of fuel, and have set up an industry-government group to handle the fallout. A New Zealand navy vessel will ferry diesel fuel around the country as the government rushes to alleviate the shortage in the run-up to Saturday s national election. The ship will transport up to 4.8 million litres of diesel - equivalent to 150 tankers - to enable the oil industry to focus on providing jet fuel to Auckland airport, Energy and Resources Minister Judith Collins said on Thursday. The government will continue to do everything it can to support industry efforts to address the disruption, Collins said in statement. The measures are simply a stopgap until the pipe is repaired, which will take place by Sept. 26, McNaught said. The ordeal has become a headache for the ruling National Party which is battling it out with the newly invigorated Labour Party to form the next government. The latest poll showed the National Party held a near nine-point lead over Labour, but polls have been volatile and at times have shown Labour with a comfortable winning margin. Labour Party leader Jacinda Ardern has criticized the government of Prime Minister Bill English for not having taken measures to avoid the kind of infrastructure failure that led to the disruptive fuel shortage. Overnight, Australia s Qantas Airways operated two flights from Australia, nicknamed fuel mules , carrying fuel to top up Jetstar and Qantas aircraft in Auckland, the airline said. One was a scheduled A330 passenger service that carried an extra 10,000 kilograms of fuel, while the other was a special 747 flight with 65,000 kilograms of fuel aboard, it said. | 0fake |
Madonna and Hillary: ‘Witch’ and ‘Nasty Woman’ as Sisters in Arms - The New York Times | “I was called a whore and a witch,” Madonna said on Friday in a searing speech about the sexism and bullying that women face in the music industry and the culture at large. “Such a nasty woman,” Donald J. Trump interjected in October as Hillary Clinton pointed out holes in his Social Security plan during their final presidential debate. Madonna and Mrs. Clinton: both trailblazers, both polarizing figures, and both attacked for actions, choices and behavior that are broadly accepted — even applauded — when done by their male peers. Madonna herself made a connection between the two women before her speech Friday, saying it was “really important to make a stand and speak my mind” about women’s rights after Mrs. Clinton’s loss in November. Our pop music editor, Caryn Ganz, and deputy Culture editor and former political correspondent Patrick Healy looked at how Madonna and her speech put Mrs. Clinton’s candidacy in fresh perspective. PATRICK HEALY: Caryn, I’m coming off 18 months covering the presidential campaign, and frankly I’ve been wondering if Mrs. Clinton would ever give a speech like Madonna’s on Friday — calling out sexism in America and the rules that trap women but not men. “If you’re a girl, you have to play the game,” Madonna said. “Don’t have an opinion that’s out of line with the status quo. ” Madonna and Mrs. Clinton have been controversial in part because they didn’t play “the game. ” It’s easy to forget, amid their celebrity and longevity, that Madonna and Mrs. Clinton were once renegades: speaking out and pursuing power in ways that were considered overly ambitious for women. They fought for equality and respect — and they sought the kind of influence and money and fame that men have. Mrs. Clinton’s place and legacy in our culture is just starting to be considered and debated. But only after her speech yesterday did I start to think about her and Madonna as sisters in arms. CARYN GANZ: Mrs. Clinton is so buttoned up and Madonna is so, well, unbuttoned, that I think many people have been hesitant to make this connection. And because Madonna has used sexual expressiveness as code for all kinds of liberation, she hasn’t been courted as a political ally. But now that both of them have reached a certain age, the sexism they’ve faced for decades has become something more insidious, paired with ageism. HEALY: A lot of people don’t see sexism hurting Mrs. Clinton — after all, she won the Democratic nomination — but she and her advisers did. As for the sort of “liberation” that Madonna pioneered, Mrs. Clinton has a complicated relationship with it. She came of age in the era of women’s lib, and yet — to help Bill Clinton’s career in Arkansas — she changed her last name from Rodham to Clinton and got new hairstyles and glasses. And when she was most visibly liberated, including in her performances in political debates, she got called “likable enough” by Barack Obama in 2008 and a “nasty woman” by Mr. Trump this fall. Madonna, in her speech Friday, recalled that she got so much abuse after releasing her “Erotica” album and “Sex” book in 1992 that she felt like “the most hated person on the planet. ” GANZ: In a 2008 “Weekend Update” segment about Mrs. Clinton’s initial presidential run, Tina Fey said: “Maybe what bothers me the most is that people say that Hillary is a bitch. Let me say something about that: Yeah, she is. ” (Ms. Fey later proclaimed, “Bitch is the new black. ”) I thought about this when Madonna put the song “Unapologetic Bitch” on her most recent album, “Rebel Heart,” the record where she started to speak openly about the discrimination she’s faced as a female artist over 55. Madonna has referred to herself in many ways in songs over the years, but she waited until 2015, on her 13th album, to reclaim “bitch. ” HEALY: Mrs. Clinton knew some people used that word about her. Like Madonna, she answered the haters with a strong work ethic. Mrs. Clinton put in days, thought deeply about policy, and was a tireless campaigner even if she wasn’t the world’s most natural politician. Madonna is no Adele: She wasn’t born with a talent and voice. But she succeeded through work, grit and guts. GANZ: But she was born with a ability to understand and command the power of connecting her voice to her image. Nobody did this the way Madonna did before her, though many have followed her example. Knowing that as a woman, her appearance would be a talking point, Madonna this scrutiny as a weapon from the beginning of her career, forcing everyone to talk about what she looked like by evolving — it was a conversation she essentially started herself. But as she has gotten older, the commentary about her work is almost entirely centered on how she looks rather than how she sounds, and whether what she is wearing or saying is “appropriate for a woman her age” — a question that musicians like Mick Jagger, who is 15 years older than Madonna, have never had to answer. And certainly no other candidate was the subject of stories about what he wore to the debate and what his clothes meant. (Continuing investigations into Mr. Trump’s hair aside.) HEALY: I remember Mrs. Clinton telling me during the 2008 race that she probably woke up two hours earlier than Barack Obama each day because she had to do her hair and makeup, and he could just roll out of bed and into a suit. She has had no room for error in what she says or how she looks, her advisers felt, while a candidate like Mr. Trump could sound like a crazy man on Twitter, and many voters shrugged. Then again, Mrs. Clinton is far more of a perfectionist than Mr. Trump, as is Madonna. GANZ: But Madonna and Mrs. Clinton have had their perfectionism interpreted as a pathology. As women cutting a path no woman had traveled before, they had no choice but to be as precise and as possible, knowing the slightest failure would invite a deluge of criticism. Madonna is known to control every aspect of rooms in which she will appear, down to the color of the lampshades. While Mr. Trump was making brash statements, Mrs. Clinton was tweeting policy plans and rigorously preparing for the debates. HEALY: But Mrs. Clinton could also take control too far, like keeping her State Department email on a private server. “I don’t want any risk of the personal being accessible,” she wrote in 2010. And in 2008, she rarely talked about being a woman because she wanted to control her image — she wanted voters to think she would be as tough as any male commander in chief. GANZ: Trailblazing is a solitary game. They’re both lonely warriors who reached a critical moment this year: the time when they had to speak up for their achievements and call out their haters. HEALY: As Madonna said in her speech, “I remember wishing I had a female peer I could look to for support. ” But she and Mrs. Clinton have a mixed record as allies of feminists. Mrs. Clinton put aside her career to support her husband’s, and stood by him during his extramarital affairs, and she supported some policies, like a welfare overhaul, that critics regarded as . She was also a champion of women’s rights as human rights — even as she opposed gay rights like marriage. Do Mrs. Clinton and Madonna bear any responsibility for being polarizing figures, Caryn? GANZ: Oh, certainly, although Madonna has always been a steadfast supporter of gay rights (something Mrs. Clinton can’t claim). Madonna designed herself to be a polarizing figure, and her breed of feminism has evolved over the years — at times she’s been more focused on than the advancement of womankind. She has defended Sean Penn from accusations of domestic abuse. She wrote one of the most famous songs about not having an abortion. And she’s also often been a covert feminist: On “Material Girl,” a song still cited as an ode to consumerism, Madonna is the winner because “experience has made me rich, and now they’re after me. ” It wasn’t the objects she was after, or the men — it was the power. And that was in 1984. HEALY: Mrs. Clinton has been labeled since she was a young woman. And it drove her crazy, advisers said, because Mr. Trump and other men never faced that accusation. She felt held to the double standard that Madonna spoke about on Friday. I can imagine Mrs. Clinton listening to that speech and just saying “Yaaaas” over and over. | 0fake |
Southern Cities Split With States on Social Issues - The New York Times | JACKSON, Miss. — It was not that long ago that Victoria Fortenberry figured she would mark her 18th birthday by getting on a bus and getting out of Mississippi. But here she was, tattooed and 19 years old, singing at a party for a new line of craft beer to a crowd that included her girlfriend. Ms. Fortenberry came here to attend a Christian college and found a place where she could be unashamedly Southern and openly gay in a way not possible in her conservative suburban hometown, or even in the Jackson of a decade ago. And so: “At some point,” she said, “I decided I won’t just leave. ” Jackson may not register nationally as an outpost of bohemianism or urbane liberalism. But its city government, which is majority black and Democratic, refuses to fly the state flag at municipal buildings, and this month voted unanimously to oppose a new state law that creates special legal protections for opponents of marriage. And it has a place for singers — and their girlfriends. Jackson is among a group of Southern cities from Dallas to Durham, N. C. where the digital commons, economic growth and a rising cohort of millennials have helped remake the culture. Many of these cities have found themselves increasingly at odds with their states, and here in a region that remains the most conservative in the country, the conflicts are growing more frequent and particularly pitched. Fights are raging over gay rights here and in North Carolina, where a new law limits transgender bathroom access and local governments from passing their own ordinances. The resistance has been fierce in North Carolina, where companies have called off expansion plans and Ringo Starr and Bruce Springsteen have canceled concerts. The potential consequences of these boycotts point up the complications, though: In a South dominated by the politics of rural and suburban conservatives, a canceled rock concert or technology project is likely to punish the places that oppose the legislation, and have little effect on the areas that support it. “We’ve got this divide,” said Ferrel Guillory, the director of the Program on Public Life at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “The divide between the cultural conservatism of older suburbs and older rural areas, and these new, thriving, modern economy, diverse cities. ” The skirmishes over gay rights are only part of the growing rift between Southern cities, with their mostly Democratic municipal governments, and Southern state legislatures, which have come to be dominated by Republicans. Lawmakers in Alabama recently blocked cities from setting their own minimum wages, while Charlotte and Jackson have fought with the states over control of their airports. North Carolina’s Republican legislature has redrawn city council districts and tried to stop municipalities from becoming “sanctuary cities” for immigrants. The Arkansas and Tennessee legislatures have passed laws that, like North Carolina’s, ban local ordinances that differ from state law. This version of a civil war even extends to the Civil War. Alabama is considering a law that would prevent local jurisdictions from removing Confederate symbols without state approval. Similar efforts were proposed but have so far failed in Virginia and Louisiana. But Southern cities have pushed back with vigor. Birmingham tried to go forward with a minimum wage law even after the state made it clear it would be overruled. Several cities in Arkansas passed ordinances despite the state law that was meant to ban them. Across Mississippi, cities, counties and public institutions have responded to the Legislature’s unwillingness to take the Confederate battle cross out of the state flag by refusing to fly the flag altogether. For decades, the cultural gap between Southern cities and cities on the East and West Coasts has been narrowing to the point where the cultural riches of a place like Oxford, Miss. — with its literary scene and high end regional cuisine — are almost taken for granted. But commerce and the Internet have pushed global sophistication into new frontiers. In Starkville, Miss. an unassuming college town that Oxford sophisticates deride with the ironic nickname “StarkVegas,” a coffee bar called serves an affogato prepared with espresso from Intelligentsia, the vaunted artisanal coffee brand. With these cultural markers have come expressions of unblushing liberalism that would have been unthinkable a decade ago. In January, Bernie Sanders drew thousands to a rally in Birmingham, Ala. Last June, after the Supreme Court affirmed the right to marriage, the city government in Knoxville, Tenn. lit up a bridge in rainbow colors. The result has been a kind of overlapping series of secessions, with states trying to safeguard themselves from national cultural trends and federal mandates, and cities increasingly trying to carve out their own places within the states. All of this exasperates conservative lawmakers like State Senator Bart Hester, an Arkansas Republican, who says he is constantly playing defense against a rapidly changing culture. “Ten years ago, no one would have ever imagined someone would have deserved protections under civil rights because they didn’t know what gender they were,” he said. His biggest frustrations, he continued, are dealing with municipalities, on everything from gay rights to taxes. “It just shocks me every day how different our opinions and basic core values are,” he said. Fourteen of the 20 metro areas in the nation between 2010 and 2015 were in the South, according to an analysis of census data by the Institute for Southern Studies. That boom has not been driven by heavy industry, but by banking, insurance, health care and, increasingly, technology. Mr. Guillory, at the University of North Carolina, noted that the companies fueling the booms are often national or global, and cannot afford to brook sentiments that even begin to smack of bigotry. “It isn’t that these cities are elevating New Deal liberalism,” he said. “It’s much more of a cultural political liberalism. It’s a different kind of mixture. ” At a rally on Wednesday at the Mississippi state Capitol, thousands came in on church buses from around the state to hear the Rev. Franklin Graham, the evangelist, inveigh against marriage and secularism. Greg Smith, 64, who had come to the rally from Tylertown, did not see any fundamental change in the fact that many Mississippians, even some Republican mayors, had come out against the new law. They just feared losing out on the almighty dollar, he said. “I think the state’s basically conservative, but we’ve let money become our god,” Mr. Smith said. Melvin Priester Jr. a member of the Jackson City Council, did not agree. “It’s a completely different world,” he said, recalling how he returned home several years ago to find artists and musicians not all that different from friends in his adopted San Francisco. “Technology has ended the isolation. ” Mr. Priester, who is black, also described how gay communities in Deep South cities have steadily gained allies among urban black leaders, many of whom had traditionally been skeptical of the gay rights movement. In Greensboro, N. C. Sharon Hightower, an council member, joined in an vote recently for a resolution condemning the state law limiting bathroom access. “We know what it’s like to be discriminated against,” she said. Still, many evangelical blacks remain hesitant to support the gamut of socially liberal causes. And indeed even some of the trendiest Southern cities have a strong traditionalist streak. The city of Chattanooga, a hub of tech activity, handily rejected an ordinance establishing domestic partner benefits in 2014 Houston voted three times for an openly gay mayor, and then last fall voted overwhelmingly against a broad ordinance. But with liberals still outnumbered in most parts of the South, some worry that the boycotts and concert cancellations by opponents of certain state laws will end up doing the most economic harm to those who despise those laws. “The people who would go to those shows from a few hours away now aren’t going to go to the restaurants, or go to the bar and drink craft beer,” said Grayson Haver Currin, an editor of a North Carolina alternative weekly. He and his wife, Tina, recently started a website encouraging artists to keep their commitments in the state, but to donate proceeds to gay rights groups. On Monday afternoon in Raleigh, Carla Merritt, a transgender woman who has felt happy and accepted in this city, watched as hundreds of evangelicals — whom she called “the real country folk” — staged a boisterous rally on the Capitol lawn in favor of the new law that includes the provision limiting transgender bathroom access. Two days later, Ms. Merritt, over lunch at a downtown cafe, said she regretted using the words “country folk. ” “That sounded bigoted,” she said, “and I certainly didn’t mean it that way. ” That evening, the Currins were in front of the residence of Gov. Pat McCrory, a Republican, directing protesters who were blowing air horns to object to the new law. The Currins called it their “Air Horn Orchestra” — a piercing clamor of defiance that doubled, they said, as a homage to the composers they love. | 0fake |
Stung by reputation, Taiwan looks to turn corner on money laundering | TAIPEI (Reuters) - After Taiwan s state-run Mega Financial Holding Co was fined $180 million by U.S. authorities for lax enforcement of anti-money-laundering rules at its New York branch, the bank started a rigorous training program for its staff. Now, like Mega Financial, companies across Taiwan are working to get staff and systems up to speed after the island passed laws to meet international standards on combating money laundering and was taken off a watchlist by the Asia Pacific Group on Money Laundering (APG). Unfortunately, Taiwan has earned a name for itself as a paradise for money laundering, Deputy Justice Minister Tsai Pi-chung told Reuters. Money laundering and cybercrime connections to Taiwan, which is also in the process of pushing through a cyber security bill, have grabbed global headlines. U.S. authorities fined Mega Financial $180 million last year for lax enforcement of anti-money-laundering rules at its New York branch. Some money from the $170 million cyber heist of India s Union Bank of India was transferred through Taiwan s Bank SinoPac. An international crime ring used malware to steal $2.6 million from the ATMs of Taiwan s First Bank. Taiwan was one of the six most targeted countries of the Wannacry ransomware attack earlier this year, according to security company Avast. Since 2011, 800 people from China and Taiwan have been deported from Cambodia on suspicion of telecoms fraud. Following its U.S. fine, Mega Financial said cleaning up its act is a top priority. U.S. authorities had said the Mega branch had been indifferent to the risks associated with transactions involving Panama, a high-risk area for money laundering. What happened at our New York branch was just terrible, said Robert Tsai, a senior executive vice president, referring to the fine and ensuing scandal. Half of our 6,000 clerks have been certified with anti-money laundering training. How each of our branches implements the rules and ensures proper training is the top priority for our business. To gain international confidence in its anti-money laundering measures, Taiwan will have to demonstrate it is putting the laws into practice. The APG will review Taiwan in 2018. The visit will focus on how effectively Taiwan will have actually implemented the anti-money laundering rules, said Liang Hung-lieh, partner of PricewaterhouseCoopers Taiwan. The APG s on-site review will be new to most of the assessed, including banks, non-bank financial institutions and in particular non-financial institutions such as lawyers, public certified accountants and other professional service providers. Under the anti-money laundering laws, these financial professionals will be required to report suspicious transactions, including bank transfers exceeding T$500,000 (US$16,500). They will have to determine where the money came from, provide details about the client and report that to Taiwan s newly established Anti-Money Laundering Office. These are similar to regulations that countries that have signed up to global anti-money laundering rules overseen by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) have adopted. The cost to companies of implementing the new rules may be significant as they put processes, workers and data systems in place. There s a lot of extra work for them to do now, such as determining the identities of their clients beneficiaries, said an official with the Financial Supervisory Commission, the island s financial regulator. He declined to be identified in the absence of permission to speak to the media. They don t yet know exactly what they have to do, and to what extent, to be considered compliant with the new regulations. They re going to need some time to digest all of these new rules, he said. The potential costs and increased difficulty of getting transactions done under the new rules worry those in the property market, said Wong Jui-chi, the spokesman for Taiwan s Chinese Association of Real Estate brokers, while emphasizing that his industry intends to fully comply with the regulations. The property market is already in a bad shape and these new rules will make things worse by making the process of real estate transactions more complicated. More or less everyone in our industry is complaining about it, he said. | 0fake |
SHOCKING! First 10,000 Syrian Refugees Arrive In LA: Estimated Cost To Taxpayers For Family Of Four Is $257,480 | WAKE UP AMERICA! Muslim terrorists, refugees hand-selected by UN or foreign citizens who are unwilling to assimilate with American culture, laws and values doesn t appear anywhere in the quote by Emma Lazarus that is mounted on our Statue of Liberty: Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me: I lift my lamp beside the golden door. After the Hayride broke the exclusive story on 10,000 Syrian refugees possibly resettling in Baton Rouge, Lafayette and Metairie, it has now come to light that refugees are already coming into the New Orleans area.Catholic Charities, which receive federal grants from U.S. Department of State/Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration, have apparently taken in two Syrian refugee families already and are expecting many more.There are approximately 180 cities in the country that are eligible to accept the 10,000 Syrian refugees. Here is the full list of those cities, which includes Baton Rouge, Matairie and Lafayette:US Refugee Public Affiliate DirectoryThen, once the refugees arrive in the country, they could be dispersed across the 180 cities listed above, where they are to aided within the first 30 to 90 days in settling and finding employment in the area.After approximately 90 days, refugees are no longer eligible for the State Department-funded support that they were receiving through migrant and refugee services. However, they are able to join support programs through the Department of Health and Human Services.Additionally, it is unclear how much the screening process for the 10,000 Syrian refugees will cost American taxpayers.WIDESPREAD WELFAREHowever, the narrative by the national media tends to be one where immigrants and migrants are portrayed as coming to America and not taking any sort of federal government help. In our research, we found that to be the biggest fallacy of all when it comes to the immigration and migrant issue.In a report by the Congressional Office of Refugee Resettlement, nearly 92 percent of refugees in the country were on food stamps between 2008-2013. Additionally, 73 percent of refugees were on Medicaid, 68 percent were receiving some kind of cash welfare almost 20 percent were in public housing.As Americans continue to debate what to do about the humanitarian crisis in the Middle East, this analysis attempts to estimate the costs of resettling refugees from that region in the United States. Although we do not consider all costs, our best estimate is that in their first five years in the United States each refugee from the Middle East costs taxpayers $64,370 12 times what the UN estimates it costs to care for one refugee in neighboring Middle Eastern countries.The cost of resettlement includes heavy welfare use by Middle Eastern refugees; 91 percent receive food stamps and 68 percent receive cash assistance. Costs also include processing refugees, assistance given to new refugees, and aid to refugee-receiving communities. Given the high costs of resettling refugees in the United States, providing for them in neighboring countries in the Middle East may be a more cost-effective way to help them. Via: The HayrideAmong the findings of this analysis:On average, each Middle Eastern refugee resettled in the United States costs an estimated $64,370 in the first five years, or $257,481 per household.The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has requested $1,057 to care for each Syrian refugee annually in most countries neighboring Syria.For what it costs to resettle one Middle Eastern refugee in the United States for five years, about 12 refugees can be helped in the Middle East for five years, or 61 refugees can be helped for one year.UNHCR reports a gap of $2.5 billion in funding that it needs to care for approximately four million Syrians in neighboring countries.The five-year cost of resettling about 39,000 Syrian refugees in the United States is enough to erase the current UNHCR funding gap.The five-year costs of resettlement in the United States include $9,230 spent by the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) within HHS and the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration (PRM) within the State Department in the first year, as well as $55,139 in expenditures on welfare and education.Very heavy use of welfare programs by Middle Eastern refugees, and the fact that they have only 10.5 years of education on average, makes it likely that it will be many years, if ever, before this population will cease to be a net fiscal drain on public coffers using more in public services than they pay in taxes.It is worth adding that ORR often reports that most refugees are self-sufficient within five years. However, ORR defines self-sufficiency as not receiving cash welfare. A household is still considered self-sufficient even if it is using any number of non-cash programs such as food stamps, public housing, or Medicaid.Refugees are admitted for humanitarian reasons, not because they are supposed to be self-sufficient, so the drain on public coffers that Middle Eastern refugees create is expected. However, given limited resources, the high cost of resettlement in the United States means careful consideration should be given to alternatives to resettlement if the goal is the help as many people possible. | 1real |
Pantsuit Nation Just Made It EASY To Push For A Trump Investigation; Find Out HERE | While a lot of the nation seems to not give a sh*t that a foreign power just helped decide who became President of the United States, and the mainstream media is sitting on their hands, as well as the fact that Trump has business ties around the world that are a threat to our national interests, the grassroots group Pantsuit Action Network is stepping up and doing the work.The group, also knows as Pantsuit Nation, is a group synonymous with Hillary Clinton s most tried and true supporters, but it is also far more than that. They are a group dedicated to doing what is best, fair and honest for our nation.In an effort to force our elected officials to investigate Trump s abundance of foreign business conflicts, the Pantsuit Action Network has put together a call to action that with a few key strokes will contact your representatives and ask them to push for an investigation with the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform and the Senate Ethics Committee.They write: Mr. Trump s business & financial conflicts of interest are not only unethical, but also illegal & unconstitutional.Urge both the House Committee on Oversight & Government Reform and the Senate Ethics Committee to conclude their respective investigations before Trump is inaugurated so that any prohibitive conflicts can be resolved prior to taking office.KEEP FOREIGN INFLUENCE OUT OF THE OVAL OFFICE If you wish to contact your local United States Representative and Senators visit their website.You can also urge people to text 528-86 with INVESTIGATE.It is also absolutely critical that we do not allow a foreign power get away with dictating our election. If this news from the CIA is not looked into further it will set a precedent that the United States is open to outside manipulation and that should send shivers down every spine, whether American or not.Please contact your representatives today!Featured image via Pantsuit Nation | 1real |
Thinking Beyond Money in Retirement - The New York Times | After a career of working, scrimping and saving, many retirees are well prepared financially to stop earning a living. But how do you find meaning, identity and purpose in the remaining years of your life? John and Kathryn Gee, both 57, recently engaged in this existential query. They have worked hard at jobs, invested diligently and are planning to retire soon. Having relocated to San Antonio from Phoenix in 2010, they have already reached a sweet spot where they have a bountiful nest egg. Yet they worry that something is missing. “We thought we’d be retired and would be fat, dumb and happy at 55,” Mr. Gee said. “We only talked about money. Then we started asking some simple questions. ” Embracing the guiding principles of life planning laid out by a financial planner, George Kinder, the Gees asked themselves what they would do if money wasn’t an issue and they only had one day to a few years left to live. The answers, which they are still contemplating, gave them a renewed focus on what was most important to them. “What is it that can make me a better person?” Ms. Gee asked herself after a of their core values. “How can we give back? Family became more important. ” Mr. Kinder, who has been espousing and refining programs with his clients and in seminars for several decades, calls for a process that involves self, family and community. “Who do I want to be?” is a question that Mr. Kinder says his clients should ask. “What have I missed? Who did I not get to be? What an incredible opportunity to have all of these things in front of you. ” As with financial preparation, life planning evolves in stages. Mr. Kinder says he walks clients through exploration of positive outcomes and goal setting “within a human setting of comfort and support. ” If the process unfolds in a positive way, Mr. Kinder says, the ideal state is one of the Hawaiian word “aloha. ” The term does not simply mean hello or goodbye, he says, but in the truest sense stands for “the process of passing a blessing from one person to another. ” Mitch Anthony, author of “The New Retirementality” (Wiley, 2008) says your should start with the question, “What am I wired for?” which involves taking an “inventory of who you are. ” Mr. Anthony’s principles are geared around one’s aptitudes and having active pursuits that involve the mind, body and spirit. Translating that into concrete actions can be challenging. Retired professionals may be able to continue to do what they were doing, but now as or consultants. Others may be able to apply their analytic, management or organizational skills in settings. Still others may want to strike out in entirely new directions. “It’s never an easy answer,” Mr. Anthony says of in retirement. “You need to take stock of things that resound with you — that stir you up. ” Through Mr. Anthony’s process of discovering engagement, it is possible to isolate the activities that you are already doing — or could be doing — that make you feel most alive, creative, happy and connected to others. Finding a balance between the myriad components of our lives certainly takes some adjustment. Mary Zimmerman, a financial and life planner in the Phoenix area who has worked with the Gees, said one of the most important goals she discussed with them was to “find your humanity and sanity. ” “There’s often so much anxiety in retirement,” Ms. Zimmerman says. “How do we allow ourselves to be at ease? How can we be comfortable?” These questions lead into an exploration of what makes us tick and how we can find our best selves. By no means is this a seamless transition for most. The rough patches may come early and often. It’s hard to break the routine and inertia of a career. You may have to become a “lite” version of your self to bridge the gap. Like many, Ms. Gee says that her and identification were intimately linked to her work, a common problem with retirees seeking a new role. Some professionals find it unnervingly difficult not to be a banker, doctor, lawyer or engineer anymore. “The myth of retirement is that you have to leave that all behind,” Mr. Anthony said. You don’t. Once you shatter the conventions of a retirement, Mr. Anthony says, it’s like “breaking through the gravity barrier. You’re on the path to contentment. ” Admittedly, seeking what Viktor Frankl, a Holocaust survivor who was a renowned neurologist and psychiatrist, called the “will to meaning” is one of the most challenging parts not just of retirement planning but of living your life to the fullest. You don’t have to do it alone, though. You can find a coach, mentor or life planner. Consider a certified life coach, who, like a planner, works to help you walk through a life plan Mr. Kinder’s organization, Kinder Institute, also has a search engine to find life planners throughout the world. Rates for this service vary from as little as $200 to as much as $10, 000 a month for executive coaches. Some retirees may have a clear idea of how they want to define their lives while others may take months to discern a path. Certified financial planners may also provide this assistance in the course of comprehensive hourly or financial planning. The universe of financial planners who have had specific life planning or life coaching training, though, is small. To date, about 2, 000 planners have taken the Kinder Institute’s training and 350 have qualified for the registered life planner designation. That’s out of an industry of more than 74, 000 professionals holding the certified financial planning certificate. Even if you find the process emotionally nettlesome — most do — you can figure out life goals on your own and create your route for finding purpose and meaning. One way to start is by asking if there’s a need for your service within your family or community. You may spend time with relatives who need you in a caregiving or educational role. Another approach is to some community activities that you feel most comfortable with and that provide social engagement as well. Others seek out social, environmental or political causes or a nonprofit activity that revolves around doing good, not just doing well. Sometimes the quest for inner meaning may be right in front of you. For Mr. Gee, it was family that called to him. He wanted to help a niece and spend time with his mother, who is 86, infirm and living alone in his native England. She could not relocate to the United States. Let’s be honest: Those pursuing the process tend to be financially secure already. You can’t be nimble with life decisions if you are constantly worried that market volatility will blister your investments. That’s why it’s important to thoroughly vet your portfolio, estate plan and cash needs. A certain level of comfort is almost a keystone for most people before embarking on an existential exploration. Once you cross that barrier, though, almost anything is possible. “It’s not about being busy,” Mr. Anthony said. “It’s about being engaged. ” | 0fake |
Twitter Announces Censoring Search Results, ’Low-Quality Tweets’ to Combat ’Abuse and Harassment’ - Breitbart | Twitter has officially announced three new changes to the platform in their latest effort to combat “abuse and harassment. ”[The changes include extra measures to stop suspended users from creating new accounts, “safer search results,” and the collapsing of “potentially abusive or Tweets. ” “Making Twitter a safer place is our primary focus,” claimed the company in a blog post update on Tuesday. “We stand for freedom of expression and people being able to see all sides of any topic. That’s put in jeopardy when abuse and harassment stifle and silence those voices. We won’t tolerate it and we’re launching new efforts to stop it. ” “Building on the work we began in November, we’re continuing to work on ways to give people more control over what they see on Twitter,” they continued. “Last week, we introduced an improvement to reporting abusive Tweets that gives people experiencing targeted harassment more ways to report it. Today, we’re announcing three changes: stopping the creation of new abusive accounts, bringing forward safer search results, and collapsing potentially abusive or Tweets. ” “Safer search results” will work by removing “sensitive” tweets and tweets from blocked and muted users from your searches on the platform, while their new collapsing system will hide a large quantity of replies on your tweets. Twitter does not explain what qualifies a tweet for being deemed “sensitive,” and while it says “this type of content will be discoverable if you want to find it,” it doesn’t say how since “it won’t clutter search results any longer. ” Twitter has also not yet explained how they will combat the creation of new accounts from suspended users. “In the days and weeks ahead, we will continue to roll out product changes — some changes will be visible and some less so — and will update you on progress every step of the way,” concluded Twitter in their post. “With every change, we’ll learn, iterate, and continue to move at this speed until we’ve made a significant impact that people can feel. ” The platform has introduced numerous other attempts to combat “harassment” and “hate speech” over the past few years, including a word filtering tool inspired by the Twitter alternative Gab. Twitter, who recently donated $1. 6 million to the ACLU, has repeatedly been accused of censoring conservative and libertarian accounts over the past few years, with numerous users having been permanently suspended from the platform. Breitbart Senior Editor MILO, Pharmaceutical Entrepreneur Martin Shkreli, and rapper Azealia Banks have all been permanently suspended from the platform, while others have been temporarily suspended following political remarks. Despite the sanctioning of accounts, numerous abusive users have been allowed to stay on Twitter. In July, Twitter refused to sanction an account that sexually harassed and sent violent threats to a female Breitbart News contributor, while rapper Talib Kweli was able to repeatedly call numerous black conservatives “coons,” including Breitbart’s Jerome Hudson, Sheriff David Clarke, and activist Maajid Nawaz, without suspension. Threats against the president have also been repeatedly allowed on Twitter, with over 12, 000 tweets calling for the assassination of President Trump having been made since he took office on January 20. Charlie Nash is a reporter for Breitbart Tech. You can follow him on Twitter @MrNashington or like his page at Facebook. | 0fake |
Tillerson, Canadian counterpart to discuss border security, other issues | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson will meet Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland on Tuesday to discuss border security and other issues, the U.S. Department of State said in a statement. The two will meet in Ottawa to discuss U.S.-Canadian coordination on a range of global and regional topics, the statement said. A senior State Department official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Tillerson and Freeland will confer on North Korea, Ukraine and Venezuela among other issues. Canada and the United States plan to co-host an international meeting on North Korea in Vancouver in January. Pyongyang has continued to test nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles in violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions. The meeting is designed to produce better ideas to ease tensions over North Korea s tests, Canadian officials have said. The two ministers also are likely to discuss U.S. President Donald Trump s demand for revisions to the North American Free Trade Agreement between the United States, Canada and Mexico. | 0fake |
South Korea, U.S. kick off large-scale air exercise amid North Korean warnings | SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea and the United States launched large-scale joint aerial drills on Monday, officials said, a week after North Korea said it had tested its most advanced missile as part of a weapons programme that has raised global tensions. The annual U.S.-South Korean drill, called Vigilant Ace, will run until Friday, with six F-22 Raptor stealth fighters to be deployed among the more than 230 aircraft taking part. The exercises have been condemned as a provocation by the isolated North. F-35 fighters will also join the drill, which will also include the largest number of 5th generation fighters to take part, according to a South Korea-based U.S. Air Force spokesman. Around 12,000 U.S. service members, including from the Marines and Navy, will join South Korean troops. Aircraft taking part will be flown from eight U.S. and South Korean military installations. South Korean media reports said B-1B Lancer bombers could join the exercise this week. The U.S. Air Force spokesman could not confirm the reports. The joint exercise is designed to enhance readiness and operational capability and to ensure peace and security on the Korean peninsula, the U.S. military had said before the drills began. The drills come a week after North Korea said it had tested its most advanced intercontinental ballistic missile ever in defiance of international sanctions and condemnation. Pyongyang blamed U.S. President Donald Trump for raising tensions and warned at the weekend the Vigilant Ace exercise was pushing tensions on the Korean peninsula towards a flare-up , according to North Korean state media. North Korea s Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Country called Trump insane on Sunday and said the drill would push the already acute situation on the Korean peninsula to the brink of nuclear war . The North s KCNA state news agency, citing a foreign ministry spokesman, also said on Saturday the Trump administration was begging for nuclear war by staging an extremely dangerous nuclear gamble on the Korean peninsula . North Korea regularly uses its state media to threaten the United States and its allies. | 0fake |
Scooter fire in western Paris triggers Jordan explosion scare | PARIS (Reuters) - A scooter was set on fire in front of the Jordanian military attache s office in western Paris on Wednesday, police sources said, after Jordan s foreign ministry had earlier issued a statement saying a motorbike had exploded. According to the Paris police department the fire spread to a diplomatic vehicle early in the morning, but there was nothing that corresponded to an explosion. An embassy official said the incident did not appear to intentionally target Jordan. A motorbike exploded in front of the building where the military attache s office is. The police are investigating, an embassy official said. It doesn t seem to be an intentional act that targets Jordan. Jordan s Foreign Ministry spokesman was quoted by the Jordanian state-run Petra news agency earlier saying that a motorbike exploded in front of Jordan s military mission, but that no staff were injured in the explosion. The Paris police department said an investigation had been opened, but there was nothing to suggest the incident was related to terrorism. | 0fake |
Egyptian Christians Cancel Easter Festivities in Mourning Over Palm Sunday Massacre | The main Christian diocese in Egypt has announced that it will not hold Easter celebrations this year, in mourning for the 46 Coptic Christians killed in the Palm Sunday massacre brought about by twin jihadist bombings. [The Coptic Orthodox Diocese of Minya, located in southern Egypt, said Tuesday that commemorations of the Resurrection of Jesus will be limited to the liturgical prayers “without any festive manifestations” out of respect for the faithful who were slain by suicide bombers of the Islamic State. The Minya province has the highest Coptic Christian population in the country and Christians there traditionally hold Easter Vigil services on Saturday evening and then spend Easter Sunday on large meals and family visits. Christians in Minya have lived in constant fear of attacks from the area’s large Salafi Muslim population. In certain local villages, the faithful celebrate Mass before a cross drawn on a wall, making it easy to erase quickly in order to avoid attacks. Police sources said that 28 people have been arrested for their possible ties to the planning and financing of Sunday’s attacks. Using DNA testing, authorities have also identified the two perpetrators of the slaughter as Egyptians who had traveled to Syria yet managed to return to Egypt, bypassing border controls. The two jihadis carried out separate suicide bombings in the churches of Saint George in Tanta and Saint Mark in Alexandria while Palm Sunday services were being conducted. The attacks took the lives of 46 people, and left more than a hundred wounded. One of the terrorists was identified with the nom de guerre of Abu Ishaaq al Masri, and was reportedly born in 1990 in the province of Sharqiya, located in the Nile delta north of Cairo. He is thought to have entered Syria in January of 2017 before authorities lost track of his whereabouts. The bombing in Alexandria was reportedly the work of Abu who blew himself up near the doors of the church just as he passed through the metal detector. According to the man’s relatives, he had made several trips to neighboring Libya, where he would stay for three months at a time. On Tuesday, the Egyptian Parliament unanimously ratified the state of emergency that had been declared the prior evening by the cabinet of ministers of President Abdel Fattah . The state of alert will be in force for the next three months, at which time it may be renewed if need be. The state of emergency gives the president wide and exceptional powers to establish special courts, intercept communications, impose censorship, or even decree a curfew. Human rights activists have expressed fears that the state of emergency will add even more repression to a country where public freedoms have been crushed in the last four years under the pretext of fighting increasingly widespread terrorism. The Pew Research Center reported Tuesday that Egypt is now the country with the highest level of government restrictions of religion in the entire world. Meanwhile, the Islamic State has become more and more active in Egypt, especially in the region of North Sinai, and recently vowed to step up its attacks against Egypt’s Christians. Along with the Palm Sunday attack, ISIS had claimed responsibility for the December 2016 bombing of a church next to St. Mark’s Cathedral in Cairo, an important religious site for Egyptian Copts. That explosion killed 30 Christians and injured dozens more. Follow Thomas D. Williams on Twitter Follow @tdwilliamsrome | 0fake |
Honduran opposition says will formally challenge election result | TEGUCIGALPA (Reuters) - The head of an opposition alliance in Honduras on Tuesday said the group would file a legal challenge to annul the official results of last month s disputed vote that handed victory to the sitting president. | 0fake |
Missouri Bill: Gun-Banning Businesses Liable for Injuries to Disarmed Customers - Breitbart | As Missouri lawmakers convene for the 2017 legislative session, they will consider legislation that holds businesses liable for injuries against concealed carry permit holders who are disarmed via the businesses’ policies. [The bill is sponsored by state Missouri Representative Mike Moon ( Grove) and “would cover employees as well as customers. ” In effect, it puts the onus on the business owner, so that when he decides customers and employees must be disarmed on premises, he also accepts full responsibility for their safety. The Joplin Globe reported the bill this way: Moon’s bill would hold private businesses that prohibit guns liable for the safety of anyone who is legally permitted to carry a concealed weapon but is prevented from doing so by the business and who suffers injury or other “compensable” damage in an attack in which the permit holder could theoretically have defended himself if he had been allowed to keep his weapon on him. The bill is directed toward “private, commercial businesses. ” Moon believes the legislation is necessary because an unarmed concealed carry permit holder has no “promise of success” should he or she be inside a business when an attack occurs. Moon explained: Kind of where this thing started was with business owners who were adamantly opposed to those who carry firearms. What would happen if a third party came on and committed a crime and there was bodily injuries sustained to the patrons? Who is liable? And as I’m talking to legal minds — attorneys particularly — apparently there’s still a lot of gray area there on who’s actually responsible. I believe that the third party is responsible but apparently there are some unanswered questions and so hopefully this bill will reveal some of those. AWR Hawkins is the Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and host of “Bullets with AWR Hawkins,” a Breitbart News podcast. He is also the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart. com. | 0fake |
US Thanksgiving Guide: How to Celebrate a Sordid and Genocidal History | Table set for thanksgiving in Siem Reap. (Photo: Andre Vltchek)Andre Vltchek NEOA table was set up for two, an advertisement table, a table with a photo of a giant turkey, two elegant plates, and a U.S. flag sticking out into the air. Thanksgiving at Angkor Royal Cafe , a flier read. And: 23rd November Join us for a traditional Thanksgiving Feast .This was at one of the international hotels in Siem Reap, a Cambodian city near the world architectural treasures of Angkor Wat and the ancient Khmer capital, Angkor Thom.The same day I read an email sent to me from the United States, by my Native American friends, with a link to an essay published by MPN News, called Thanksgiving Guide: How to Celebrate a Sordid History . It began with a summary: While millions of Americans prepare this week to get into the holiday spirit, beginning with Thanksgiving, how many are prepared to view the day through an accurate lens? While to many Americans the holiday serves as a reminder to give thanks, it is seen as a day of mourning by countless of others. The truth is: European migrants brutally murdered Native Americans, stole their land, and continue to do so today . The day became an official day of festivities in 1637, to celebrate the massacre of over 700 people from the Pequot Tribe.In a hotel, I approached a cheerful French food and beverage manager and asked him whether he was aware of what he was suggesting should be celebrated in one of his restaurants? Oh I know I know, he replied, laughing. It is a little bit controversial, isn t it? Bit controversial? I wondered. It appears more like you are inviting people to celebrate genocide, a holocaust, with free flowing wine and a giant turkey. I am trying to see things positively, he continued grinning at me. Then he summarized: So I guess you won t be joining us tonight? What a pity What a pity, I thought, what a pity. I won t get to eat that famous American pie tonight and turkey and who knows what else, just because I am not eager at all to celebrate the massacres and land grabs perpetrated by the Empire.The manager couldn t help asking: Where are you from? I knew he would ask. No European would say what I was saying. I m Russian, I replied. Oh I see, he gave me that I should have guessed smile . Russian-American, I added.I m convinced that the French manager has been sincerely oblivious about what I was stating. He is supposed to be oblivious. There are, after all, our genocides , and the genocides of the others . Our genocides , those that we triggered or committed, should never be discussed. Or more precisely, it is extremely impolite to discuss them. Most of the people don t even know about them, including many of the victims. On the other hand, the genocides committed by the others, particularly by adversaries of the West, are widely discussed, publicized, analyzed, inflated and very often even fabricated (All this described in detail in my 840-page book Exposing Lies Of The Empire ).Cambodia is the textbook case of the latter. Here, several decades ago, the U.S. and its allies first supported the hopelessly corrupt and brutal government in Phnom Penh, while triggering a monstrous carpet-bombing campaign of the Cambodian countryside, mainly near the border with Vietnam. This was supposed to prevent the country from going Communist , or at least Ho Chi Minh style Communist . Hundreds of thousands of villagers were murdered by the bombing. Millions were forced to hit the road, leaving their dwellings, as the countryside was converted into a giant minefield, covered by unexploded ordnance.Further hundreds of thousands died from starvation and diseases. Furious, mad from suffering, the people of Cambodia rose against the collaborators with the West in Phnom Penh. Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge took the capital virtually unopposed. Recently, deep in the jungle, I spoke to the former Pol Pot s personal guards. I asked them point-blank whether they knew anything about Communism. Nothing at all, I was told. The U.S. was murdering our families, for no reason. Corrupt elites were selling the country to the West. We were all outraged, and ready for revenge. We would follow anybody calling for revenge. However, the West is passing the events, to this day, as a Communist genocide .Rwanda is yet another case of a twisted narrative. I made an entire full-length documentary film Rwanda Gambit on the subject. There, the West turned the history upside down, reducing the entire tragedy into a primitive and easy-to-digest narrative of bad Hutus killing good Tutsis. Yet even the former U.S. ambassador Robert Flatten told me that his country groomed, armed and supported the deadly RPF, mainly Tutsi army, which had been, before 1994, raiding the Rwandan countryside from neighboring Uganda, burning villages and killing civilians.While a former Australian lawyer and U.N. investigator, Michael Hourigan, supplied me with information about the downing of the plane, which, in April 1994, killed both the Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana and Burundian President Cyprien Ntaryamira, while on the final approach to Kigali airport. The orders to shoot down the plane were given by the RPF leader Paul Kagame, who was in turn sponsored by the West. This event triggered the terrible bloodletting on 1994. The next year, in 1995, the Rwandan army entered the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and participated in the killing of at least 9 million people, mainly civilians, on behalf of Western governments and multi-national companies, making it the worst crime against humanity in recent history.In fact, almost all the major genocides committed by the West or its allies in modern history, are silent ones , including those in Iraq, Syria, Iran, West Papua, East Timor, DRC, Indonesia, Afghanistan, Angola, and dozens of other unfortunate places all over the world.The gruesome genocides committed by the West all over the world, during the last 2,000 but especially during the last 500 years, are never defined as such; never as genocides . Throughout history, European countries have been destroying, systematically, most of the cultures on all continents of the Planet, enslaving virtually all the non-white nations, plundering and looting its colonies (read: almost all the non-white nations of the world), while exterminating hundreds of millions of men, women and children. The death toll has been rising, accumulating, to near 1 billion, according to the testimony of one of my friends, a senior U.N. statistician.I will return to the Cambodian story soon, on the pages of this magazine. And I will be returning, again and again, to the genocides committed by Europe and North America, virtually everywhere. Unless the history is understood and acknowledged, the world has no future, and there can be no solutions to the terrible problems that our humanity is facing.But for now, let me conclude this brief essay by saying that I did not participate in the consumption of turkey and American pies on Thanksgiving holiday, in the Cambodian city of Seam Reap.My thoughts went to those 700 people from the Pequot Tribe who rebelled, stood firm and died for freedom, almost 400 years ago. These were some of the first fighters against Western imperialism. These were the Americans that I admire, this is America that had been terribly damaged but not yet completely destroyed. No overly sugary, sentimental and empty words could fully choke its essence, as no gluttony and food orgies could ever fully silence the screams of the pain of those who died in the hands of the European invaders, during and after the conquest of what has been so cynically christened as the New World .***Andre Vltchek is a philosopher, novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist. He has covered wars and conflicts in dozens of countries. Three of his latest books are his tribute to The Great October Socialist Revolution a revolutionary novel Aurora and a bestselling work of political non-fiction: Exposing Lies Of The Empire . View his other books here. Watch Rwanda Gambit, his groundbreaking documentary about Rwanda and DRCongo and his film/dialogue with Noam Chomsky On Western Terrorism . Vltchek presently resides in East Asia and the Middle East, and continues to work around the world. He can be reached through his website and his Twitter.SUPPORT 21WIRE SUBSCRIBE & BECOME A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV | 1real |
The Cast Of Hamilton Had An EXTRAORDINARY Message For Mike Pence After Their Audience Booed Him (VIDEO) | Donald Trump is now the president-elect, and he has shown no sign that he has any intention of doing as he says in trying to heal the nation s deep divides over issues of race, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religion, or anything else. Indeed, he has thus far picked clearly bigoted cabinet members that will do anything but heal us. Therefore, when Trump s vice president-elect Mike Pence showed up to see the popular Broadway musical Hamilton, it is no surprise that the audience booed him. Even more humiliating for Pence, though, is the fact that the extremely diverse cast had a very pointed message for him regarding his and Donald Trump s ability to represent ALL Americans, and not just the privileged few who look, worship, and think the way they do.After the performance, one of the stars of the show, Brandon Victor Dixon, who acted as a spokesman for the cast thanked Pence for coming to the show, went on to give an inspiring speech urging Pence to remember the many shades of the American rainbow. Dixon reminded Pence of his responsibility to represent every single person in the nation, and to stand up for the rights of all. The speech was not mean-spirited or vindictive, but it was absolutely what Pence needed to hear. Unfortunately, though, knowing Mike Pence, it all went in one ear and out the other, and simply served to make him even more vindictive and hateful than he already is. Dixon said to Pence: Thank you for joining us at Hamilton: An American Musical. We are the diverse America who are alarmed and anxious that your new administration will not protect us, our planet, our children, our parents, or defend us and uphold our inalienable rights. We hope this show has inspired you to uphold our American values, and work on behalf of ALL of us. Thank you. Without further ado, here is the amazing video, captured by a Twitter user who was in attendance at the show:Amazing night. #hamiltonmusical #MikePence pic.twitter.com/hFhFY1DNae John Bluemke (@JGBluemke) November 19, 2016Of course, the Trump/Pence supporters and transition team will simply brush aside any accusations of bigotry as professional protesters causing trouble, but people who value the melting pot of diversity that is America will know that what was said here is exactly what Donald Trump, Mike Pence, and the rest of the Republican Party need to hear and heed.Featured image via Drew Angerer/Getty Images | 1real |
SOUTH CAROLINA TO REMOVE CONFEDERATE FLAG AS BOEHNER CALLS FOR A REVIEW OF FLAG ISSUE | The Confederate Battle Flag will be taken down at 10:00 a.m. EST this morning as another battle over the controversial flag heats up on Capitol Hill. The furor over the flag rippled through the halls of Congress on Thursday when House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) called for a review of Confederate symbols and memorabilia, which is likely to include those on display in the Capitol.House Democrats accused Republicans of catering to the large bloc of southern conservatives in initially promoting an amendment that some viewed as pro-Confederate. Republicans accused Democrats of trying to exploit the tragedy of the mass killing inside a Charleston church last month and the subsequent decision by South Carolina leaders to remove the controversial flag from their state capitol.Boehner was forced to halt consideration of a government funding measure after it became engulfed by the Confederate flag controversy and whether it was appropriate to display the flags at national cemeteries where Confederate soldiers are buried.The dispute pitted Southern conservatives who asserted that the tradition was part of their heritage against members of the Congressional Black Caucus who view the flag as a symbol of slavery and oppression.Via: Washington Post | 1real |
Alien-Looking Skull From Peruvian Desert Awaits Further Investigation | . Alien-Looking Skull From Peruvian Desert Awaits Further Investigation We were recently shown, and examined the above artifact that supposedly was found, along with many o... Print Email http://humansarefree.com/2016/11/alien-looking-skull-from-peruvian.html We were recently shown, and examined the above artifact that supposedly was found, along with many others, in a cave in the southern desert of Peru; exact location to be given, hopefully, in the future. The underside of the skull (full set of images below) indicates that this artifact is bone, about 3 to 5 mm thick, and still has a stiff, grey, skin-like material attached to it. Note the very narrow foramen magnum aperture where presumably a very thin vertebral system once entered the skull. The adult hand indicates the size of the specimen, and note that it is relatively bilaterally symmetrical, and that the skull is greatly elongated.Though easy to state that it is a complex fake, the caretaker and those that presumably found it, along with other specimens, have no access to artisans or taxidermists that could have made them. The caretaker removed some of the bone from the underpart of the skull and exposed what is presumably marrow. This, as well as the bone and skin can be sampled for DNA and radiocarbon testing in prominent laboratories in North America that we are working with already. The television series Ancient Aliens has shown initial interest in the specimen, and more specimens like this, from the same location may soon be available for observation and study. Here's the full set of images from Brien Foerster's website : Dear Friends, HumansAreFree is and will always be free to access and use. If you appreciate my work, please help me continue.
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Thin-Skinned Trump Had A CRAZY On-Air Meltdown After Chris Cuomo Asked Him A Tough Question (VIDEO) | Trump s been known to dodge difficult questions during interviews, but what happened Monday morning on CNN was pure madness.Less than a minute after the presumptive Republican nominee started his interview with Chris Cuomo on New Day, Trump was attacking Cuomo and the network. After immediately criticizing the way Cuomo was questioning him, Trump took aim at CNN, claiming that the network favored Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton and purposefully did not air favorable coverage during his campaign.This chaos erupted right after Cuomo asked Trump why he would choose to attack Clinton for the actions of her husband. He asked Trump: You are attacking Hillary Clinton for the sexual past and indiscretions of her husband. What is your thinking on this line of attack? Well, Trump didn t even come close to answering that question. The presidential hopeful got super-fiesty with Cuomo and snapped, Well this is a nice way to start off the interview. In all seriousness, Trump threw a temper tantrum and sounded like a child as he continued his pathetic attempt to shame Cuomo and CNN: First of all, you should congratulate me for having won the race. I thought, you know, at least there would be a small congratulations but I m not surprised with CNN because that s the way they treat Trump. You know, they call it the Clinton Network, and I believe that. So, uh, let s start off right there. Cuomo fired back and reminded the dense business mogul, I said congratulations the last time we spoke! What followed next was completely unbecoming of a presidential candidate but perfectly expected from Trump. The presidential hopeful bickered with Cuomo over what was said and when, and then Trump had the nerve to say to the show host, I understand CNN perhaps a lot better than you do! Then, continuing his obvious plan to avoid answering Cuomo s question about his attacks on Clinton and her husband s marital infidelities, Trump went on a bizarre rant about pretty much everything except what Cuomo asked him. All the while, he continued to attack CNN for not giving him the kind of coverage he wanted. Trump said: Nor does CNN ever show the crowds. I could be making a speech for an hour and they ll never show the crowds! The interview was completely awkward, but shows perfectly that Trump s main strategy for getting through debates and interviews is to distract the interviewer and audience with his hissy fits and over-the-top bragging. You can watch Trump have his meltdown below:Featured image via John Sommers II / Getty Images | 1real |
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