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PARIS — France, still reeling from the attack on Thursday in the southern coastal city of Nice that killed 84 people, observed its second of three days of national mourning on Sunday, as the French police held three more people in connection with the assault, according to news reports. The nation has been left wondering whether the attack, in which a Tunisian man plowed a refrigerated truck through crowds gathered for fireworks on Bastille Day, could have been avoided — or whether it must adjust to a harsh new reality. On Saturday, the Islamic State claimed responsibility for the assault, calling the driver, Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, its “soldier. ” But no evidence has emerged so far that Mr. Lahouaiej Bouhlel, 31, a delivery truck driver living in Nice, was in contact with the Islamic State, or that he was exposed to its propaganda. A man and a woman were arrested Sunday morning, French news media reported, and another man was detained later on Sunday, according to Agence . None were identified, although some reports said that the man and woman were an Albanian couple, and that the man was suspected of providing Mr. Lahouaiej Bouhlel with the automatic pistol he used on the night of the attack. Four other people had been taken in for questioning on Friday and Saturday. Mr. Lahouaiej Bouhlel’s estranged wife, who had also been taken in for questioning, was released without charges on Sunday. Her lawyer, Garino, told the BFM TV news channel that Mr. Lahouaiej Bouhlel was physically violent with her and other members of the family. She eventually threw him out and was no longer in touch with him, Mr. Garino added. Although they have not put forth specific evidence, French officials say Mr. Lahouaiej Bouhlel appeared to have taken the path to extremism very shortly before the attack. In an interview published on Sunday in the Journal du Dimanche newspaper, the French prime minister, Manuel Valls, said the kind of terrorism seen in Nice was “hard to anticipate,” noting that the killer had “radicalized very quickly. ” “Daesh provides unbalanced individuals with an ideological kit that gives their acts meaning,” Mr. Valls said, using an Arabic acronym for the Islamic State. “The investigation will have to prove it, but that was probably the case for the attack in Nice. ” There were reports on Sunday that Mr. Lahouaiej Bouhlel had spent time researching his route on the waterfront promenade where the attack unfolded, as he was caught on surveillance cameras driving the truck in the area on Tuesday and Wednesday. Agence and other French news media, quoting anonymous police officials, also reported on Sunday that Mr. Lahouaiej Bouhlel had sent a text message shortly before the attack in which he appeared to ask for more weapons, but it was unclear whom the message had been for and what exactly it had said. Mr. Lahouaiej Bouhlel used an automatic pistol to shoot at the police officers who tried to stop him on the promenade several fake weapons were also found in his truck after he was fatally shot. On Sunday, people continued to gather in Nice and in many other French cities to hold minutes of silence or to commemorate the victims. In Paris, there was a Mass at the Cathedral of on Sunday evening. The Paris prosecutor’s office said in a statement on Sunday that 49 people hurt in the attack remained in critical condition, 18 of them fighting for their lives. The total number of injured was 256, down from a figure provided on Saturday by the Health Ministry. The prosecutor’s office also said that the French authorities had sped up the process to identify the dead, but that only 35 had been formally identified so far. At least 10 children were killed and 35 hurt. Families and tourists had gathered on the waterfront on Thursday evening to watch fireworks celebrating Bastille Day. | 0 |
(Want to get this briefing by email? Here’s the .) Good evening. Here’s the latest. 1. The White House accused Russia of trying to cover up the Syrian government’s role in last week’s chemical attack. Officials released a declassified report that details the American intelligence on the attack, asserting that the Syrian government was responsible and accusing Russia of using disinformation to obscure the facts. Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson struck a harsh tone at a Group of 7 meeting in Italy, saying that President Bashar ’s reign was “coming to an end. ” Now he’s in Moscow, above, for what will be a closely watched meeting with Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov. The White House spokesman, Sean Spicer, caused outrage when he contrasted Mr. Assad with Hitler and said incorrectly that Hitler didn’t use chemical weapons. Our podcast “The Daily” explores how Mr. Assad went from ophthalmology student to brutal ruler. _____ 2. President Trump aimed his Twitter feed at Beijing, which he said would get a better trade deal if it solved “the North Korean problem. ” Mr. Trump and President Xi Jinping of China met last week at Mr. Trump’s estate in Florida, but there was no announcement about their talks on the North Korean nuclear threat. Above, directing traffic in Pyongyang. In South Korea, conjecture about a American strike on the North is spreading fast. The government tried to tamp down concern, saying there would be no such attack without its consent. In the latest “Right and Left: Partisan Writing You Shouldn’t Miss,” we look at foreign policy doctrine, whether California will secede and whether “humanitarian wars” exist. _____ 3. The White House faces another big test this weekend: pulling off the annual Easter Egg Roll. With key staff positions unfilled and no first lady, the White House is scrambling to organize the most elaborate public event of the year. Last year’s drew 37, 000 people. “This thing is all hands on deck,” said Melinda Bates, who organized eight of them under President Bill Clinton. _____ 4. United Airlines apologized for the forcible removal of a passenger from an overbooked flight after video of the episode caused widespread outrage. Oscar Munoz, the company’s chief executive, said in a statement that United would take “full responsibility” for the situation and that “no one should ever be mistreated this way. ” The company’s stock price had fallen before his statement. The video, in which the passenger is screaming and bloodied as he’s dragged off by security officers, cast a sharp focus on airline overbooking policies. And it was widely shared in China, with many people accusing United of racism (the passenger was Asian). _____ 5. Agents with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives used a secret, bank account to rent a $21, 000 suite at a Nascar race, travel to Las Vegas and donate to the school of one of the agents’ children, according to records and interviews. The Justice Department is investigating the secret account, which was also used to finance undercover operations around the country. The Times revealed the existence of the bank account, which was connected to an investigation into cigarette smuggling, in February. _____ 6. London, the metropolis that globalization created, may well be the capital of the world. But after the “Brexit” referendum, its future as an international crossroads is far from certain. In a series of stunning photographs and an accompanying essay, we see the city’s iconic locales, and scenes of daily life, through the lens of its current limbo. _____ 7. What looks like an epidemic of vitamin D deficiency may be a product of overuse of a test and misreading of its results. As a consequence, millions of healthy people think they have a deficiency, and some are taking supplemental doses so high they can cause poor appetite, nausea and vomiting. _____ 8. After a long search, a comedian has agreed to perform at this year’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner, normally the glittering jewel of Washington’s social calendar. Hasan Minhaj of “The Daily Show” will step up to the plate during a tense year marked by conflict between the new administration and the news media. Mr. Trump is skipping the festivities, the first president to do so since the 1970s, and Vanity Fair and Bloomberg canceled their famed . _____ 9. Finally, in the best of TV: On “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” John Stamos and Bob Saget, the former stars of “Full House,” remembered Don Rickles, the famed insult comedian who died last week. And we looked at how Stephen Colbert has made the “The Late Show” great again. Photographs may appear out of order for some readers. Viewing this version of the briefing should help. Your Evening Briefing is posted at 6 p. m. Eastern. And don’t miss Your Morning Briefing, posted weekdays at 6 a. m. Eastern, and Your Weekend Briefing, posted at 6 a. m. Sundays. Want to look back? Here’s last night’s briefing. What did you like? What do you want to see here? Let us know at briefing@nytimes. com. | 1 |
“We declare the right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland, and to the unfettered control of Irish destinies, to be sovereign and indefeasible.”
–Proclamation of Easter Week 1916
Controlling their own destiny has always been a bit of a preoccupation for the Irish, in large part because for 735 years someone else was in charge. From the Norman invasion in 1169 to the establishment of the Free State in 1922, Ireland’s political and economic life was not its own to determine. Its young men were shipped off to fight England’s colonial battles half a world away, at Isandlwana, Dum Dum, Omdurman and Kut. Almost 50,000 died in World War I, choking on gas at Ypres, clinging desperately to a beachhead at Gallipoli, or marching into German machine guns at the Somme.
When the Irish finally cast off their colonial yoke, they pledged never again to be cannon fodder in other nation’s wars, a pledge that has now been undermined by the U.S. Once again, a powerful nation—with the acquiescence of the Dublin government—has put the Irish in harm’s way.
The flashpoint for this is Shannon Airport, located in County Clare on Ireland’s west coast. Since the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attack on Washington and New York, some 2.5 million U.S. troops have passed through the airport on their way to Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria. The Shannon hub has become so important to the U.S. that it hosts a permanent U.S. staff officer to direct traffic. It is, in the words of the peace organization Shannonwatch , “a US forward operating base.”
The airport has also been tied to dozens of CIA “rendition” flights, where prisoners seized in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan were shipped to various “black sites” in Europe, Asia, and Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.
Irish peace activists and members of the Irish parliament, or Oireachtas Elreann, charge that an agreement between the Irish government and Washington to allow the transiting of troops and aircraft through Shannon not only violates Irish neutrality it violates international law.
“The logistical support for the U.S. military and CIA at Shannon is a contravention of Ireland’s neutrality,” says John Lannon of the peace group Shannonwatch, and has “contributed to death, torture, starvation, forced displacement and a range of other human rights abuses.”
Ireland is not a member of NATO, and it is considered officially neutral. But “neutral” in Ireland can be a slippery term. The government claims that Ireland is “militarily neutral”—it doesn’t belong to any military alliances—but not “politically neutral.”
But the term militarily neutral “does not exist in international law,” says Karen Devine, an expert on neutrality at the City of Dublin’s School of Law & Government. “The decision to aid belligerents in war is…incompatible with Article 2 of the Fifth Hague Convention on the Rights and Duties of Neutral Powers and Persons in Case of War on Land.” Devine argues that “the Irish government’s decision to permit the transit of hundreds of thousands of U.S. soldiers through Shannon Airport on their way to the Iraq War in 2003 violated international law on neutrality and set it apart from European neutrals who refused such permission.”
Article 2 of the Convention states, “Belligerents are forbidden to move troops or convoys of either munitions or war supplies across the territory of a neutral power.”
Ireland has not ratified the Hague Convention but according to British international law expert Iain Scobbie, the country is still bound by international law because Article 29 of the Irish Constitution states, “Ireland accepts the generally recognized principle of international law as its rule of conduct in relations with other states.”
The UN Security Council did not endorse the wars in Afghanistan or Iraq, making both conflicts technically illegal. Then UN General Secretary Kofi Annan said that the invasions “were not in conformity with the UN Charter. From our point of view, from the Charter’s point of view,” the invasions were “illegal.”
Shannonwatch’s Lannon says the agreement also violates the 1952 Air Navigation Foreign Military Aircraft Order that requires that “aircraft must be unarmed, carry no arms, ammunition and explosives, and must not engage in intelligence gathering and that the flights in question must not form part of a military exercises or operations.”
The Dublin government claims all US aircraft adhere to the 1952 order, although it refuses to inspect aircraft or allow any independent inspection. According to retired Irish Army Captain Tom Clonan, the Irish Times security analyst, the soldiers are armed but leave their weapons on board the transports—generally Hercules C-130s—while they stretch their legs after the long cross Atlantic flight. Airport employees have also seen soldiers with their weapons.
The Irish government also says that it has been assured that no rendition flights have flown through Shannon, but Shannonwatch activists have tracked flights in and out of the airport. As for “assurances,” Washington “assured” the British government that no rendition flights used British airports, but in 2008 then Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband told Parliament that such flights did use the United Kingdom controlled island of Diego Garcia.
Investigative journalist’s Mark Danner’s book Spiral: Trapped in the Forever War chronicles the grotesque nature of some of the “enhanced interrogation” techniques inflicted on those prisoners. The rendition program violated the 1987 UN Convention Against Torture, which Ireland is a party to.
Roslyn Fuller , Dublin-based scholar and author of Beasts and Gods: How Democracy Changed Its Meaning And Lost Its Way , says terror suspects were taken to sites where “in an appalling re-run of the Spanish Inquisition tactics, [they were] routinely tortured and mistreated in an attempt to obtain confessions and other information.”
Fuller points out that Article 11 of the Hague Convention requires that troops belonging to a “belligerent” army must be interned. “In other words, any country that would like to call itself neutral is obligated to prevent warring parties from moving troops though its territory and to gently scoop up anyone attempting to contravene this principle.”
Besides violating international law, Ireland is harvesting “the bitter fruits of the Iraq and Afghan wars” and NATO’s military intervention in Libya, charges MP Richard Boyd Barrett of the People Before Profit Party and chair of the Irish Anti-War Movement. “The grotesque images of children and families washed up on Europe’s shores, desperate refugees, risking and losing their lives,” he says, “are the direct result of disastrous wars waged by the US, the UK and other major western powers over the last 12 years.”
The Irish government, says Barrett, has “colluded with war crimes and actions for which we are now witnessing the most terrible consequences.”
The government has waived all traffic control costs on military flights, costing Dublin about $45 million from 2003 to 2015. Ireland is currently running one of the highest per capita debts in Europe and has applied austerity measures that have reduced pensions and severely cut social services, health programs and education. Other neutral European countries, like Finland, Austria and Switzerland charge the US military fees for using their airspace.
Shannon might also make Ireland collateral damage in the war on terror, according to the Irish Times’ Clonan. Irish citizens are now seen as a “hostile party,” and British Muslim cleric Anjem Choudary has named Shannon a “legitimate target,” according to Irish journalist Danielle Ryan.
The Dublin government has generally avoided open discussion of the issue, and when it comes up, ministers tend to get evasive. In response to the charge that Shannon hosted rendition flights, then Minister of Foreign Affairs Dermot Ahern said, “If anyone has evidence of any of these flights please give me a call and I will have it investigated.” But even though Amnesty International produced flights logs for 50 rendition landings at Shannon, the government did nothing. Investigations by the Council on Europe and European Parliament also confirmed rendition flights through Shannon.
Peace activists charge that attempts to raise the issue in the Irish parliament have met with a combination of stonewalling and half-truths. Apparently kissing the Blarney Stone is not just for tourists.
The government’s position finds little support among the electorate. Depending on how the questions are asked, polls indicate that between 55 and 58 percent of the Irish oppose allowing US transports to land at Shannon, and between 57 to 76 percent want to add a neutrality clause to the constitution.
The “forward base” status of Shannon puts the west of Ireland in the crosshairs in the event of a war with Russia. While that might seem far-fetched, in 2015 NATO held 14 military maneuvers directed at Russia, and relations between NATO, the US and Moscow are at their lowest point since the height of the Cold War.
Of course Ireland is not alone in putting itself in harm’s way. The US has more than 800 bases worldwide, bases that might well be targeted in a nuclear war with China or Russia. Local populations have little say over the construction of these bases, but they would be the first casualties in a conflict.
For centuries Ireland was colonialism’s laboratory. The policies used to enchain its people—religious division and ethnic hatred— were tested out and then shipped off to India, Kenya, South Africa, Nigeria and Guyana, and Irish soldiers populate colonial graveyards on all four continents, now, once again, Ireland has been drawn into a conflict that is has no stake in.
Not that the Irish have taken this lying down. Scores of activists have invaded Shannon to block military flights and, on occasion, to attack aircraft with axes and hammers. “Pit stop of death” was one slogan peace demonstrators painted on a hanger at the airport.
That resistance harkens back to the 1916 Easter Rebellion’s proclamation that ends with the words that ring as true today as they did a century ago: “In this supreme hour the Irish nation must, by its valor and discipline and by the readiness of its children to sacrifice themselves for the common good, prove itself worthy of the august destiny to which it is called.”
| 1 |
TOKYO — One of the most television commercials in Japan this year advertises an unusual product: contrition. The ad shows a group of workers and executives from an ice cream company lined up in neat rows in front of their suburban Tokyo factory. As gentle folk music plays, they bow in apology. The company’s transgression? Adding 10 yen, or about 9 cents, to the price of a hugely popular ice cream bar. About 500 million of the bright blue snacks are consumed every year, mostly by children. Increasing prices are a big deal in Japan. The country’s sluggish economy means that the cost of most things has not risen in 20 years, and almost any increase makes headlines. Consumer prices are a painful economic headache for Japan. The country’s officials have been trying to break this stubborn pattern of deflation by pumping money into the economy and bolstering public spending. Japan’s economy, which has been oscillating between growth and contraction for years, picked up speed in the first quarter, according to government data released on Wednesday. But the price increases that do go through — like the cost of the ice cream bar rising to ¥70, from ¥60 — do not reflect a more vibrant economy or a stronger consumer. They usually mean a company is facing higher costs cutting into its profit. The deflationary trends are still firmly in place. And wages are under more pressure than prices, so buying power for most Japanese has declined compared with a generation ago. “ is meant to be something kids can easily buy with their allowance,” said Fumio Hagiwara, a marketing executive at Akagi Nyugyo, the maker of the ice cream bar. “Even have less pocket money these days. ” Akagi last increased prices a quarter of a century ago, and it debated the recent rise for seven or eight years, Mr. Hagiwara said. The rising cost of raw materials finally forced Akagi’s hand, he said. Tighter logging restrictions in China, for instance, meant it had to use more expensive Russian lumber for ice cream sticks. In stronger economic circumstances, Akagi’s price increase would not stand out. Companies in other places routinely pass on higher costs to consumers. But in Japan, businesses that face rising costs feel they have less ability to do so because wages are flat. Instead, they take a hit to their profits or cut back rather than alienate consumers. “We don’t have any more income, but taxes are rising,” said Kazuko Ida, 65, who lives in Tokyo. As a result, she said, she is especially reluctant to spend more. “It’s one thing if luxury items are expensive, but if cheap things aren’t cheap anymore, it’s a real problem. ” Japanese policy makers have long identified deflation as enemy No. 1 for the economy. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe won power four years ago on a promise to stamp it out. The central bank has been flooding financial markets with cheap money, and it has gone so far as to cut its benchmark interest rate below zero, a policy that has been tried in only a few other developed countries. But the results officials have been seeking — robust increases in borrowing and spending, and a sustained rise in prices — have been elusive. The Consumer Price Index is back below zero, after an upswing during Mr. Abe’s first two years in office. Wholesale prices tumbled 4. 2 percent in April, their sharpest decline in more than six years. A recent rise in the value of the yen, after several years of weakness under Mr. Abe, has made beating deflation harder. A weak yen means costlier imports, which helps drive overall inflation. But now imports on the whole are getting cheaper again. The economic report on Wednesday showed that Japan’s economy expanded 1. 7 percent in annualized, terms in the quarter that ended in March. That was significantly faster than forecasts. Still, economists urged caution: Spending by households and businesses was down, and so were exports — all crucial pillars of growth. Rather than rely on those, the economy benefited from higher government spending and a decline in imports. The extra day in February because of the leap year also helped, specialists said. “Reasons for the upside surprise were not encouraging,” said Masamichi Adachi, chief Japan economist at JPMorgan Chase. He said the economy was likely to remain stagnant. Since Mr. Abe’s conservative coalition was elected in December 2012, the economy has expanded in eight quarters and shrunk in five. Newspaper opinion surveys suggest that about half of voters are dissatisfied with his economic program, known as Abenomics. A disorganized political opposition has offered little in the way of alternatives, but an election for the upper house of Parliament in July is adding to pressure to turn things around. Mr. Abe is looking at ways to restore momentum. The government is drafting a supplementary stimulus budget and is considering delaying an increase in the national sales tax planned for April 2017. The two percentage point tax increase, the second of two planned rises, has already been put off once. Supporters say it is needed to reduce Japan’s large budget deficit. But the first increase, in 2014, hurt consumers and was blamed for pushing the economy into recession. In the ice cream business, Mr. Hagiwara said Akagi had calculated that ’s sales volume would drop by 7 percent as a result of raising prices. The sales hit, the company believed, would be more than counterbalanced by the higher price. But it appears that for his company, at least, an apology is an effective way to deal with the pain. Mr. Hagiwara said sales jumped by about 10 percent in the first month or so after the price increase in March, though they have since begun to fall back. “We figure it will take another year before we know how consumers really take to it,” he said. | 1 |
Security lines at airports are getting longer — much longer — and wait times could reach epidemic levels when air travel peaks this summer, according to airlines, airports and federal officials. A combination of fewer Transportation Security Administration screeners, tighter budgets, new checkpoint procedures and growing numbers of passengers is already creating a mess at airports around the country. While federal security officials say they are hiring and training hundreds of additional screening officers, matters are not expected to improve anytime soon. Airline and airport officials have said they fear that the current slowdown will last through the year, and could cause a summer travel meltdown when more than 220 million passengers are expected to fly during the peak travel months of July and August. “This is going to be a rough summer there is no doubt about it,” said Gary Rasicot, who was recently appointed to a newly created position as the T. S. A. ’s chief of operations. “We are probably not at the staffing level we would like to be to address the volume. This is why we are talking about people getting to the airport a little earlier than planned. ” To deal with the expected crowds, Mr. Rasicot said the agency planned to assign 768 new officers to the busiest airports by June 15. The agency is also allocating an extra $26 million for overtime pay, and is looking for ways to move its dogs where they will have the most effect on reducing wait times. Already, passengers have reported epic lines. Travelers have seen lines stretching to the curb, snaking to other terminal levels or even extending into different concourses. Some have managed to handle the situation with humor. Others have not been quite as forgiving. At Charlotte Douglas International Airport in North Carolina, about 600 passengers missed their flights on March 25 because an inadequate number of screeners led to waits exceeding three hours, airport officials said. Brent D. Cagle, the airport’s interim director of aviation, complained to the T. S. A. calling the episode a “fiasco. ” “This situation could have been avoided, had the T. S. A. had the proper staffing (or overtime budget necessary) to meet customer demand,” Mr. Cagle wrote in a letter to the security agency. (T. S. A. officials denied that the wait had ever been that long, telling local reporters that it had been 75 minutes for a short time.) This was far from an isolated incident. Airports in Atlanta, Miami, New York, Seattle, Denver and Chicago, among others, have all experienced similar problems in recent months. Last month, Denver Airport advised travelers to get to the airport as much as three hours before their flights. Still, people waited for more than an hour and a half to clear security. Airport workers walked up and down the line with therapy dogs and handed out bottled water and candy to travelers, according to one report. The airport accused the T. S. A. of providing an inadequate number of screeners on what was an average Saturday. T. S. A. officials say the main reason for the longer lines is an increase in the number of travelers this year. “Where it starts is actually a volume issue,” said Mr. Rasicot, who was previously a senior official with the United States Coast Guard, as was the T. S. A. ’s administrator, Peter V. Neffenger. “It’s really a story. The economy is doing well, Americans are traveling more, and this equates with record numbers at our checkpoints. ” At the same time, he said, the number of T. S. A. screeners has declined by about 5, 800 because of tighter budgets. The agency currently has 42, 350 agents assigned for security checks. “We need to stop losing people and we need to add more,” he said. He said some airlines were helping by assigning their own employees to perform some tasks, like helping direct passengers to the right lanes or advising them on when to take off their shoes. Still, many passengers complained that the agency seemed ill prepared to handle the crowds. Ben Cheever, a support engineer for a cybersecurity firm, recently missed a flight in Seattle despite getting to the airport two hours ahead of his 6 p. m. departure to San Diego. Two lines spilled into the airport lobby, he said. A third was reserved for passengers who had signed up to a trusted traveler program called T. S. A. PreCheck that allowed them speedier access. After 90 minutes, the T. S. A. opened a couple of extra lanes, but he still missed his flight. “It was too little, too late,” he said. The next day, he showed up three hours ahead of time. “It was the most miserable business trip I’ve ever had. ” American Airlines said that the slower security lines had forced it to delay flights and rebook passengers who had missed connections. For instance, in a period in the airline said, about 6, 800 of its passengers missed their flights after being stuck in T. S. A. lines too long. “T. S. A. lines at checkpoints nationwide have become unacceptable,” said Ross Feinstein, a spokesman for American Airlines. “Lines grew in January, February and March, and now in April, too. We are really concerned about what happens in the summer. ” Another factor that lengthens wait times is that passengers are carrying more bags on board to avoid paying fees for checked luggage. But there’s not much airlines can do, except warn passengers to show up three hours before takeoff for international flights and as much as two hours ahead of their flights for domestic travel. There are other factors at play as well. Last year, the agency vowed to make changes to security and screening procedures to address widespread safety lapses that had been uncovered by the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general. The audit found that agents had failed to spot weapons and explosives in 95 percent of the undercover tests. The findings prompted criticism by some former and current T. S. A. employees, who claimed that the agency was keen to keep passengers moving quickly through the lines. In response, the T. S. A. stopped randomly processing some passengers who had not enrolled in a prescreening program to go through its expedited PreCheck lanes. It eliminated a program known as Managed Inclusion II, which let officers trained in behavior detection direct some passengers through the faster PreCheck lanes after checking them for explosives using trace detection samplings. Now, T. S. A. agents send unvetted passengers through the PreCheck lanes only if they have been checked by dogs while waiting in line. (That policy is called Managed Inclusion I.) Meanwhile, T. S. A. agents have been finding record numbers of guns and other weapons that passengers are barred from carrying on the plane. Both the airlines and the T. S. A. said that one way to alleviate the longer wait is to sign up for PreCheck, which allows eligible passengers to go through the speedier lanes without having to take off their shoes and belts or remove laptops and other electronic devices from their bags. So far, seven million people have enrolled in one of several trusted traveler programs, including 2. 5 million in the T. S. A. PreCheck program and 2. 5 million in Global Entry, a program run by Customs and Border Protection. There is an $85 application fee for the T. S. A. program, and a $100 fee for Global Entry. Both are valid for five years. The T. S. A. has added more PreCheck lanes, but the number of people enrolled still falls well short of the 25 million the T. S. A. would like to sign up. Even passengers with PreCheck have had close calls. Anne Marie Harrison, a wine saleswoman who has signed up for PreCheck and who flies out of Newark Liberty International Airport about twice a month, said she nearly missed her flight after waiting more than an hour recently. That day, the security line started downstairs, in the baggage area. That was odd, she said, especially for a Sunday morning when the airport was usually empty. “Something needs to be done,” she said. “It is just crazy. ” Still, not everyone is complaining. | 1 |
3 States Approve Recreational Marijuana; Nationwide Is Next Nov 9, 2016 2 0
As we reported last night , three states have approved the legalization of marijuana for recreational use, which includes California, Nevada and Massachusetts. As of the morning of November 9th, Maine is reportedly close to also approving the legalization, with 91% of the votes counted and a “yes” vote currently being the favorite.
In addition to the three and possibly four states legalizing recreational use of marijuana, three states have approved the legalization of medical marijuana, which includes Florida, Arkansas and North Dakota. Marijuana States of America
With California, Massachusetts and Nevada and possibly Maine approving recreational marijuana, they join Colorado, Washington, Oregon and Alaska as states who have already approved the same laws.
With this in mind, we now have 7 states having approved the full legalization of marijuana. What is now to stop the rest of the country? Most likely nothing. There is a saying that “as California goes, so goes the nation.”
California has led the way in marijuana laws for the past 20 years and this latest step is yet another sign that the nation is quickly heading in the same direction. Undoubtedly, this will be a big topic for many legislators in the days and weeks to come. With 7 states now approved for recreational use, the people have gained even more leverage in the push for a nationwide approval.
The arguments for those against be facing a tough situation as it will soon be very well known that a full 7 states have approved this measure, with many others with medical approval. Times are quickly changing.
Many see this as a positive sign in the awakening of humanity for a couple different reasons.
First is that marijuana has been reported by millions to have helped them to “wake up” and see through different distractions and illusions that society has put forth, through education, media, the medical system and politics itself. To some, this is direct evidence that the Elite has lost control and that the global awakening of humanity is spreading even quicker now.
The other reason is that this will now allow for an even greater push for the legalization of industrial hemp to be grown in all 50 states once again. As many know, hemp is an excellent resource which can be made into clothing, food, medicine, shelter and many other things, as well as create new jobs.
Even the Establishment sees the writing on the wall. In a recent interview with Bill Maher , President Obama said that passage of the legalization measures on Tuesday could make the current federal approach to the drug “untenable.” In other words, what has just happened has made nationwide legalization unstoppable. Spread the good news!
Lance Schuttler graduated from the University of Iowa with a degree in Health Science-Health Coaching and offers health coaching services through his website Orgonlight Health. You can follow the Orgonlight Health Facebook page or visit the website for more information on how to receive health coaching for yourself, your friend or family member as well as view other inspiring articles. | 0 |
Carnival Corporation, with the help of an outsourcing firm, is set to offshore hundreds of American jobs overseas to India and Eastern Europe, according to an alleged leaked document obtained by Breitbart Texas. [The document depicts a map showing the American positions which the company will purportedly outsource to two foreign regions, leaving hundreds of American workers jobless. Positions listed as moving from the U. S. to India, according to the alleged internal document, include a mix of high and jobs involving: Meanwhile the jobs allegedly being offshored to Poland and Romania include: The only jobs listed to be allegedly remaining in the U. S. within the company’s IT department involve account, operational, and compliance management and support, among others. A source close to Breitbart Texas said earlier this year in February, Carnival Corporation began executing the outsourcing plan led by Capgemini, telling Americans to either take jobs with the outsourcing firm and risk being fired six months later or leave the company altogether. Carnival Corporation teamed up with Capgemini, a French outsourcing firm, to allegedly mass the American IT workers remaining at the company who had yet to be replaced by cheaper, foreign workers. In a statement to Breitbart Texas regarding the allegations of offshoring, Carnival Corporation Spokesman Roger Frizzell said: This is a relatively small group of employees within the company — roughly 130 people within our IT organization — that moved over several months ago to Capgemini, which has offices in Miami and throughout the U. S. A vast majority of these individuals — 100 or so — will continue in their existing IT roles to support Carnival Corporation at their existing Carnival office locations (and existing salaries). Discussions are underway with the remaining 30 employees, who are being considered for other positions in the U. S. within Capgemini. It also important to note that every Carnival employee within this IT group was offered employment several months ago with Capgemini as they evaluated the needs of our business. As I mentioned, more than 100 of these individuals are continuing in their existing roles in support of Carnival Corporation in the same Carnival Corporation office location. … Based on the latest update from Capgemini, it looks as if they are optimistic that new positions and opportunities will be found for the other 30 employees. A source familiar with Carnival’s alleged outsourcing plan said they “doubted” the company’s claim that only 130 employees were impacted by the changes, saying at the original group of employees impacted was likely closer to about 250. “We were forced to take the Capgemini jobs,” the source told Breitbart Texas. “They forced me into Capgemini and because I didn’t take it, they said I resigned, but I didn’t. I wasn’t given a choice. ” The source also said that although many employees did take jobs at Capgemini originally, some eventually left their new positions because they understood that their job would eventually be overseas. Capgemini, like other outsourcing firms such as Infosys and Tata Consulting, is known for contracting with major U. S. corporations to replace Americans through the visa. After they are replaced with foreign workers, the jobs are eventually offshored altogether. As reported by Breitbart Texas, domestic companies have been able to get away with importing foreign workers by hiding visa applications behind the outsourcing firms they partner with. In Carnival Corporation’s case, the company has the potential to deny any such offshoring and of Americans, as Capgemini is technically handling the operation. John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart Texas. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder. | 0 |
11 very depressing economic realities that Donald Trump will inherit There will be tremendous pressure to maintain the status quo By Michael Snyder - Friday, November 18, 2016 9:16 AM EST
It would be a grave mistake to understate the amount of damage that has been done to the U.S. economy over the past eight years. In this article, I am going to share some economic numbers with you that are extremely sobering. Anyone that takes a cold, hard, honest look at the numbers should be able to see that our economy is in terrible shape. Unfortunately, the way that we see things is often clouded by our political views. Up until the election, Democrats were far more likely then Republicans to believe that the economy was improving, but now that is in the process of completely reversing. According to Gallup , only 16 percent of Republicans believed that the economy was getting better before the election, but that number has suddenly jumped to 49 percent after Trump’s election victory. And the percentage of Democrats that believe that the economy is getting better fell from 61 percent to 46 percent after the election. Here are some additional details from Gallup … After Trump won last week’s election, Republicans and Republican-leaning independents now have a much more optimistic view of the U.S. economy’s outlook than they did before the election. Just 16% of Republicans said the economy was getting better in the week before the election, while 81% said it was getting worse. Since the election, 49% say it is getting better and 44% worse. Conversely, Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents’ confidence in the economy plummeted after the election. Before the election, 61% of Democrats said the economy was getting better and 35% worse. Now, Democrats are evenly divided, with 46% saying it is getting better and 47% saying it is getting worse.
The truth, of course, is that the result of the election did not somehow magically alter the outlook for the U.S. economy.
We still have a giant mess on our hands, and the following are 11 very depressing economic realities that Donald Trump will inherit from Barack Obama…
#1 Nearly 7 out of every 10 Americans have less than $1,000 in savings . That means that about two-thirds of the country is essentially living paycheck to paycheck at this moment.
#2 Reuters is reporting that U.S. mall investors are poised to lose “billions” of dollars as the “ retail apocalypse ” in this nation deepens.
#3 Credit card delinquencies have hit the highest level that we have seen since 2012 .
#4 Approximately 35 percent of all Americans have a debt that is at least 180 days past due.
#5 The rate of homeownership has fallen for eight years in a row and is now hovering near a 50 year low .
#6 The total number of government employees now outnumbers the total number of manufacturing employees in this country by almost 10 million .
#7 The number of homeless people in New York City (where Donald Trump is from) has hit a brand new record high .
#8 About 20 percent of all young adults are currently living with their parents .
#9 Total household debt in the United States has now reached a grand total of 12.3 trillion dollars .
#10 The total amount of corporate debt in the U.S. has nearly doubled since the end of 2007.
#11 When Barack Obama entered the White House, the U.S. government was 10.6 trillion dollars in debt. Today, the U.S. national debt is currently sitting at a staggering total of $19,842,173,949,869.58 .
Despite nearly doubling the national debt during his eight years in the White House, Barack Obama is going to be the only president in United States history to never have a single year when U.S. GDP grew by at least three percent.
So will Donald Trump waltz in and suddenly turn everything around?
Just like when George W. Bush was elected, there is a lot of optimism about the future right now among Republicans.
And in 2017, Republicans are going to have control of the Senate and the House in addition to being in control of the White House.
But does that mean that they will actually get anything done?
For a moment, let’s review what didn’t happen the last time the Republicans were in this position. The following is an extended excerpt from an article by author Devvy Kidd … —– The Republicans had control of both houses of Congress part of the time during Bush, Jr.’s two terms. Did they lock down our borders? NO. Did they pass legislation to stop ALL funding for illegals which would self-deport millions of liars, cheats and thieves? NO. (READ, please: How to Self-Deport Millions of Illegals ) Did they stop trillions in unconstitutional spending? NO. Did they get rid of any of Clinton’s unconstitutional Executive Orders? One or two but otherwise let Comrade Bill Clinton crap in our faces. Did they get rid of one unconstitutional cabinet like HHS, Department of Education and EPA? NO. Did they stop the unconstitutional foreign aid? NO. Did they stop unconstitutional spending for Planned Parenthood? NO. Congress just continues to use borrowed money to spend more debt. Did they stop unconstitutional spending for the gigantic hoax called global warming or climate change? NO. Trump: The Left Just Lost The War On Climate Change Did Bush, Jr., get us out of all the destructive trade treaties killing American jobs? NO. Did they crack down on visas bringing in tens of thousands of foreign workers when American workers who want to work are left in the unemployment line? NO. Did they stop more and more federal regulations strangling America’s businesses? NO. Did they impeach one single activist judge destroying our freedom and liberty? NO. A Republican controlled Congress with a Republican in the White House and they did virtually NOTHING to restore America to a constitutional republic and constitutional spending. —–
So will things be any different under a Trump administration?
We shall see.
There will be tremendous pressure to maintain the status quo in many instances, because the process of fixing things would undoubtedly make conditions worse in the short-term.
A great example of this is the national debt. As I discussed yesterday , the only reason why we are able to enjoy such a massively inflated standard of living in this country is because we have been able to borrow trillions upon trillions of dollars from the rest of the world at ultra-low interest rates.
If the federal government started spending only the money that it brought in through taxes, our ridiculous debt-fueled standard of living would begin collapsing immediately.
We consume far more wealth than we produce, and the only way that we are able to do this is by borrowing insane amounts of money.
Either Donald Trump will continue to borrow money recklessly, or we will go into a major league economic downturn.
It really is that simple.
But when our politicians borrow money, they are literally destroying the future of this country. So the choice is pain in the short-term or greater pain in the long-term.
There is a way out, and that would involve shutting down the Federal Reserve and going to a completely debt-free form of money, but that is a topic for another article.
And unfortunately that is not something that is even on Donald Trump’s radar at this point.
No matter who won the election, the next president was going to be faced with some very harsh economic realities.
There are many out there that have faith that Donald Trump can pull off an unprecedented economic miracle, but there are others that are deeply skeptical.
Let us hope for the best, but let us also keep preparing for the worst. | 1 |
BREAKING: PUTIN JUST GAVE OBAMA 24 HOURS OR HIS SHIPS WILL OPEN FIRE Oct 26, 2016 Previous post
Russia and the United States have never been allies. One easily remembers how tense and long-lasting the Cold War was, and it left Russia very angry that they suffered such a demoralizing defeat as a world power.
While the United States should not become Vladimir Putin’s best friend, we also have to realize that Russia is a super power in this world and we must take them seriously.
Hillary and Obama dislike Putin because he only answers to strength and toughness, which is exactly why it is evident he likes Donald Trump.
As a way to project strength, Obama and Hillary continue to call Putin every name in the book while blaming him for cyber attacks and WikiLeaks.
On Friday, October 21, Putin issued a global message that if Hillary Clinton and Barrack Obama continue to slander Russia, he was going to shoot down U.S. jets in the
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Eleven “youths” have been arrested after a riot broke out at a school in Sweden that saw both police and TV journalists attacked with rocks by an angry mob. [The riot occurred at the Alléskolan school in the town of Hallsberg on Monday afternoon. According to police, glass bottles and rocks were thrown at them, as well as at journalists. Officers say they have arrested 11 young men in connection with the riots and said they have no idea what started the conflict which escalated rapidly, Swedish broadcaster SVT reports. The SVT team, headed by reporter Anders Nord, were on the scene for the riot and were also attacked by the young men. Mr. Nord said that while police had arrested some of the youths, “another group of masked youths, a little further away, shouted at police and threw stones. The scene commander then gave the order to police to put on helmets and approached the youth, who then ran from the scene. ” In total, police say around 30 individuals participated in the riot, though there were no reports of any serious injuries on the scene. The youths aren’t thought to be students at the school, but outsiders according to policeman Mats Öhman. “They came to the school from what I understand was a continuation of a fight that was from last Friday,” he said. Öhman described how the events unfolded saying: “It was pretty uncomfortable. It happened before we got on our helmets and the attack came as a bolt from the blue. Had anyone got hit in the head it would have been bad. ” The fight that took place on Friday, which authorities say led to the Monday riot, is also mentioned on the Swedish police website with the police describing it as “messy” and saying that two factions of young men fought with each other. Police did not identify the origins of the suspects involved on Friday or Monday, through video footage obtained by Swedish paper Nerikes Allehanda shows men who look to be of a foreign background. Attacks on police in Sweden have become increasingly more common and along with other issues have led to many officers quitting the force entirely. The main areas of danger for police have been the 55 or so No Go Zones across the country which are mostly populated by migrants. Even ambulance drivers have requested helmets and other equipment to protect themselves from attack. Journalists in Sweden have also been attacked by “youths” in the last year. Most recently, a photographer for Swedish Newspaper Dagens Nyheter was attacked during the recent riots in the no go area of Rinkeby and last year an Australian TV crew was attacked in the same area. Follow Chris Tomlinson on Twitter at @TomlinsonCJ or email at ctomlinson@breitbart. com | 0 |
An NSA spy blimp known as the Hover Hammer, which can eavesdrop on civilians from above, was active in Maryland, according to a report by The Intercept. [“To residents of Maryland, catching an occasional glimpse of a huge white blimp floating in the sky is not unusual,” proclaimed The Intercept’s Ryan Gallagher on Monday. “But less known is that the test flights have sometimes served a more secretive purpose involving National Security Agency surveillance. ” “Back in 2004, a division of the NSA called the National Tactical Integration Office fitted a diameter airship called the Hover Hammer with an eavesdropping device,” he continued, adding that “The agency launched the airship at an airfield near Solomons Island, Maryland. ” The blimp was reportedly referred to publicly as an “antenna mounting platform,” and comprises of a “ sphere inside another sphere, constructed of Spectra, the same material used to make vests. ” “From there, the blimp was able to vacuum up ‘international shipping data emanating from the Long Island, New York area,’” Gallagher explained, citing a classified document published on Monday. “The spy equipment on the airship was called Digital Receiver Technology — a proprietary system manufactured by a company of the same name — which can intercept wireless communications, including cellphone calls. ” In his report, Gallagher notes that, “Unsurprisingly, privacy groups have expressed concerns about the prospect of the blimps being used domestically to spy on Americans. However, military officials have often been quick to dismiss such fears. ” “In August 2015, Lt. Shane Glass told Baltimore broadcaster WBAL that the JLENS blimps being tested in Maryland were not equipped with cameras or eavesdropping devices,” he stated, before concluding that “The same cannot be said, it seems, of the NSA’s Hover Hammer. ” Charlie Nash is a reporter for Breitbart Tech. You can follow him on Twitter @MrNashington or like his page at Facebook. | 0 |
One day in June 2014, Dutee Chand was cooling down after a set of sprints when she received a call from the director of the Athletics Federation of India, asking her to meet him in Delhi. Chand, then 18 and one of India’s fastest runners, was preparing for the coming Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, her first big international event as an adult. Earlier that month, Chand won gold in both the sprint and the relay at the Asian Junior Athletics Championships in Taipei, Taiwan, so her hopes for Scotland were high. Chand was raised in Gopalpur, a rural village in eastern India with only intermittent electricity. The family home was a small mud hut, with no running water or toilet. Her parents, weavers who earned less than $8 a week laboring on a loom, were illiterate. They had not imagined a different life for their seven children, but Chand had other ideas. Now, as she took the bus ride to Delhi from a training center in Punjab, she thought about her impending move to Bangalore for a new training program. She wondered if she would make friends, and how she’d manage there without her beloved coach, who had long been by her side, strategizing about how best to run each race and joking to help her relax whenever she was nervous. She thought little of the meeting in Delhi, because she assumed it was for a doping test. But when Chand arrived in Delhi, she says, she was sent to a clinic to meet a doctor from the Athletics Federation of India — the Indian affiliate of the International Association of Athletics Federations (I. A. A. F.) which governs track and field. He told her he would forgo the usual urine and blood tests because no nurse was available, and would order an ultrasound instead. That confused Chand, but when she asked him about it, she recalls, he said it was routine. Chand had no idea that her extraordinary showing in Taipei and at a national championship earlier that month had prompted competitors and coaches to tell the federation that her physique seemed suspiciously masculine: Her muscles were too pronounced, her stride was too impressive for someone who was only five feet tall. The doctor would later deny that the ultrasound was a response to those reports, saying he ordered the scan only because Chand had previously complained of chronic abdominal pain. She contends she never had any such pain. Three days after the ultrasound, the federation sent a letter titled “Subject: Gender Verification Issue” to the Indian government’s sports author ity. “It has been brought to the notice of the undersigned that there are definite doubts regarding the gender of an Athlete Ms. Dutee Chand,” the letter read. It also noted that in the past, such cases “have brought embarrassment to the fair name of sports in India. ” The letter requested the author ities perform a “gender verification test” on Chand. Shortly after, Chand says, she was sent to a private hospital in Bangalore, where a curt woman drew her blood to measure her level of natural testosterone, though Chand had no idea that was what was being measured. Chand also underwent a chromosome analysis, an M. R. I. and a gynecological exam that she found mortifying. To evaluate the effects of high testosterone, the international athletic association’s protocol involves measuring and palpating the clitoris, vagina and labia, as well as evaluating breast size and pubic hair scored on an illustrated scale. The tests were meant to identify competitors whose chromosomes, hormones, genitalia, reproductive organs or secondary sex characteristics don’t develop or align in the typical way. The word “hermaphrodite” is considered stigmatizing, so physicians and advocates instead use the term “intersex” or refer to the condition as D. S. D. which stands for either a disorder or a difference of sex development. Estimates of the number of intersex people vary widely, ranging from one in 5, 000 to one in 60, because experts dispute which of the myriad conditions to include and how to tally them accurately. Some intersex women, for instance, have XX chromosomes and ovaries, but because of a genetic quirk are born with ambiguous genitalia, neither male nor female. Others have XY chromosomes and undescended testes, but a mutation affecting a key enzyme makes them appear female at birth they’re raised as girls, though at puberty, rising testosterone levels spur a deeper voice, an elongated clitoris and increased muscle mass. Still other intersex women have XY chromosomes and internal testes but appear female their whole lives, developing rounded hips and breasts, because their cells are insensitive to testosterone. They, like others, may never know their sex development was unusual, unless they’re tested for infertility — or to compete in sports. When Chand’s results came in a few days later, the doctor said her “male hormone” levels were too high, meaning she produced more androgens, mostly testosterone, than most women did. The typical female range is roughly 1. 0 to 3. 3 nanomoles of testosterone per liter of blood, about that of typical males. Chand’s level is not publicly known, but it was above the threshold that the I. A. A. F. set for female competitors because that level is within the “male range. ” As a result, officials said, she could no longer race. In the two years since, Chand has been at the center of a legal case that contests not only her disqualification but also the international policy her lawyers say discriminates against athletes with atypical sex development. For Chand, who had never heard the words “testosterone” or “intersex,” it has been a slow and painful education. When she was first told she was being barred because of her testosterone level, she didn’t understand anything the officials were saying. “I said, ‘What have I done that is wrong? ’’u2009” she told me by phone in May through a Hindi translator. “Then the media got my phone number and started calling me and asking about an androgen test, and I had no idea what an androgen test was. The media asked, ‘Did you have a gender test?’ And I said, ‘What is a gender test? ’’u2009” No governing body has so tenaciously tried to determine who counts as a woman for the purpose of sports as the I. A. A. F. and the International Olympic Committee (I. O. C. ). Those two influential organizations have spent a vigorously policing gender boundaries. Their rationale for decades was to catch male athletes masquerading as women, though they never once discovered an impostor. Instead, the athletes snagged in those efforts have been intersex women — scores of them. The treatment of female athletes, and intersex women in particular, has a long and sordid his tory. For centuries, sport was the exclusive province of males, the competitive arena where masculinity was cultivated and proven. Sport endowed men with the physical and psychological strength that “manhood” required. As women in the late 19th century encroached on explicitly male domains — sport, education, paid labor — many in society became increasingly anxious if a woman’s place wasn’t immutable, maybe a man’s role, and the power it entailed, were not secure either. Well into the 20th century, women were discouraged from participating in sports. Some medical experts claimed that vigorous exercise would damage women’s reproductive capacity and their fragile emotional state and would make them muscular, “mannish” and unattractive to men. Critics fretted that athletics would unbind women from femininity’s modesty and . As women athletes’ strength and confidence grew, some observers began to wonder if fast, powerful athletes could even be women. In the 1936 Berlin Olympics, the runners Stella Walsh of Poland and Helen Stephens of the United States were rumored to be male impostors because of their remarkable athleticism, “ ” muscles and angular faces. After Stephens narrowly beat Walsh in the dash and posted a world record, Stephens was publicly accused of being a man, by Walsh or Polish journalists — accounts vary. German Olympics officials had examined Stephens’s genitals before the event and declared her female. Four decades later, in an unexpected twist, an autopsy of Walsh revealed she had ambiguous genitalia. In 1938, the gender of an athlete was again in dispute. The German Dora Ratjen, a former Olympian who won a gold medal at the European Athletics Championship, was suddenly identified as male, prompting Germany to quietly return the medal. When Ratjen’s case became public years later — he claimed that the Nazis pressured him to pose as a woman for three years — it vali dated the growing anxiety about gender fraud in athletics. But in 2009, the magazine Der Spiegel investigated medical and police records and found Ratjen had been born with ambiguous genitals but, at the midwife’s suggestion, was raised as a girl, dressed in girls’ clothes and sent to girls’ schools. Dora lived as a female until two years after the 1936 Olympics, when police were alerted to a train traveler in women’s clothes who looked suspiciously masculine. With relief so apparent that the police noted it in their report, Ratjen told them that despite his parents’ claims, he had long suspected he was male. A police physician examined him and agreed, but reported that Ratjen’s genitals were atypical. Ratjen changed his first name from Dora to Heinrich. But those details were unknown until recently, so for decades, Ratjen was considered a gender cheat. By the international sports administrators began requiring female competitors to bring medical “femininity certificates” to verify their sex. In the 1950s, many Olympics officials were so uneasy about women’s participation that Prince Franz Josef of Liechtenstein, a member of the International Olympic Committee, spoke for many when he said he wanted to “be spared the unesthetic spectacle of women trying to look and act like men,” writes Susan K. Cahn, a his tory professor at the University at Buffalo, in her book “Coming On Strong: Gender and Sexuality in Women’s Sports. ” Others were particularly bothered by women in track and field because of the strained expressions on their faces during competition. Such female exertion violated the white ideal of femininity, as did the athletes’ “masculinized” physiques, prompting Olympic leaders to consider eliminating those events for women. In 1952, the Soviet Union joined the Olympics, stunning the world with the success and brawn of its female athletes. That year, women accounted for 23 of the Soviet Union’s 71 medals, compared with eight of America’s 76 medals. As the Olympics became another front in the Cold War, rumors spread in the 1960s that female athletes were men who bound their genitals to rake in more wins. Though those claims were never substantiated, in 1966 international sports officials decided they couldn’t trust individual nations to certify femininity, and instead implemented a mandatory genital check of every woman competing at international games. In some cases, this involved what came to be called the “nude parade,” as each woman appeared, underpants down, before a panel of doctors in others, it involved women’s lying on their backs and pulling their knees to their chest for closer inspection. Several Soviet women who had dominated international athletics abruptly dropped out, cementing popular conviction that the Soviets had been tricking authorities. (More recently, some researchers have speculated that those athletes may have been intersex.) Amid complaints about the genital checks, the I. A. A. F. and the I. O. C. introduced a new “gender verification” strategy in the late ’60s: a chromosome test. Officials considered that a more dignified, objective way to root out not only impostors but also intersex athletes, who, Olympic officials said, needed to be barred to ensure fair play. Ewa Klobukowska, a Polish sprinter, was among the first to be ousted because of that test she was reportedly found to have both XX and XXY chromosomes. An editorial in the I. O. C. magazine in 1968 insisted the chromosome test “indicates quite definitely the sex of a person,” but many geneticists and endocrinologists disagreed, pointing out that sex was determined by a confluence of genetic, hormonal and physiological factors, not any one alone. Relying on science to arbitrate the divide in sports is fruitless, they said, because science could not draw a line that nature itself refused to draw. They also argued that the tests discriminated against those whose anomalies provided little or no competitive edge and traumatized women who had spent their whole lives certain they were female, only to be told they were not female enough to participate. One of those competitors was Maria José Martínez Patiño, a Spanish hurdler who was to run at the 1985 World University Games in Japan. The night before the race, a team official told her that her chromosome test results were abnormal. A more detailed investigation showed that although the outside of her body was fully female, Patiño had XY chromosomes and internal testes. But because of a genetic mutation, her cells completely resisted the testosterone she produced, so her body actually had access to less testosterone than a typical woman. Just before the Spanish national championships began, Spanish athletic officials told her she should feign an injury and withdraw from athletics permanently and without fuss. She refused. Instead, she ran the hurdles and won, at which point someone leaked her test results to the press. Patiño was thrown off the national team, expelled from the athletes’ resi dence and denied her scholarship. Her boyfriend and many friends and fellow athletes abandoned her. Her medals and records were revoked. Patiño became the first athlete to formally protest the chromosome test and to argue that disqualification was unjustified. After nearly three years, the I. A. A. F. agreed that without being able to use testosterone, her body had no advantage, and it reinstated Patiño. But by then, her hopes for making the Olympics were dashed. Dutee Chand was only 4 when she started running, tagging along with her sister, Saraswati, a competitive runner who liked to practice sprints along the local Brahmani River. Saraswati found training boring, so she recruited Dutee, 10 years her junior, to keep her company. For years, Dutee ran in bare feet — even on the village’s streets — because she had to protect the only shoes she owned: flimsy rubber that she knew her parents could not afford to replace. When Dutee was about 7, her parents pressed her to stop running and learn to weave instead. But Saraswati argued that with Dutee’s speed, she could earn more as a sprinter. Saraswati, who has since become a police officer, reminded her parents of the benefits her own running had brought to the family. Once the district government realized Saraswati’s athletic potential, she, like other athletes, was given meat and chicken and eggs, food her family had not been able to afford. And she reminded them of the prize money she brought home whenever she did well in marathons. They agreed to let Dutee run. Not long after, Saraswati used a string to measure Dutee’s foot and took a bus to the nearest city, about 60 miles away, to find an affordable pair of sturdy sneakers for her sister. The ride took three hours, frequently picking up passengers carrying goats or chickens and large bundles. When Saraswati gave Dutee the sneakers the next morning, Saraswati told me over the phone through a translator, Dutee yelped. “She asked me what can happen if she runs wholeheartedly. She asked if she would go abroad like me, and said she had never sat in a bus or a train, and asked where the money will come from for her to go abroad. I said that ‘if, with these shoes, you run well, you will be sent abroad from the money that will come to you, and not just that, but you’ll also get a tracksuit. So run! ’’u2009” In 2006, Dutee was accepted into a sports program more than two hours from the family’s home. Food, lodging and training were covered. She missed home but appreciated the dorm’s electricity, running water and indoor toilets. And she was happy she could send prize money to her parents. That same year, though Dutee didn’t know it, a catastrophe was unfolding for another Indian sprinter. Santhi Soundarajan, a from southern India, finished second in the 800 meters at the 2006 Asian Games in Doha, Qatar, all the more impressive given her roots as a member of India’s impoverished “untouchable” caste. The previous decade, the I. O. C. and I. A. A. F. yielded to pressure by the medical and scientific community and stopped every female athlete. But the groups retained the right to test an athlete’s chromosomes when questions about her sex arose and to follow that with a hormone test, a gynecological exam and a psychological evaluation. In Soundarajan’s case, the media noted that she wasn’t just fast she also had a deep voice and a flat chest. The day after Soundarajan’s race, the Athletics Federation of India drew her blood and examined her body. Some of her results were leaked to the media. Shortly after, Soundarajan was watching TV when she saw a news report that she had “failed” a sex test. Rejected by the local sports federations, stripped of her silver medal, tormented by ongoing scrutiny and unbearably embarrassed, she attempted suicide, reportedly by swallowing poison. As Chand began competing in national athletics, another runner from a poor rural village, this time in South Africa, burst onto the interna tional athletic stage. When Caster Semenya blew by her opponents in the race at the 2009 African Junior Championships, her performance raised suspicions. Shortly after, sports officials tested her as she prepared for the World Athletics Championship. Unconcerned — she assumed the investigation was for doping — Semenya won gold again. Almost immediately, the fact that Semenya had been was leaked to the press. Instead of attending what is normally the celebratory news conference, Semenya went into hiding. The I. A. A. F. spokesman Nick Davies announced that if Semenya was an impostor, she could be stripped of her medal. He added: “However, if it’s a natural thing, and the athlete has always thought she’s a woman or been a woman, it’s not exactly cheating. ” Fellow athletes, the press and commenters on social media scrutinized Semenya’s body and made much of her supposed gender transgressions: her muscular physique, her deep voice, her pose, her unshaved armpits, the long shorts she ran in instead of bikini shorts, in addition to her extraordinary speed. A story on Time magazine’s website was headlined “Could This Women’s World Champ Be a Man?” One of Semenya’s competitors, Elisa Cusma of Italy, who came in sixth, said: “These kind of people should not run with us. For me, she is not a woman. She is a man. ” The Russian star runner Mariya Savinova reportedly sneered, “Just look at her. ” (The World Agency would later accuse Savinova of using drugs and recommend a lifetime ban.) The I. A. A. F. general secretary, Pierre Weiss, said of Semenya, “She is a woman, but maybe not 100 percent. ” Unlike India, South Africa filed a human rights complaint with the United Nations arguing that the I. A. A. F.’s testing of Semenya was “both sexist and racist. ” Semenya herself would later write in a statement, “I have been subjected to unwarranted and invasive scrutiny of the most intimate and private details of my being. ” After nearly a year of negotiations (the details of which are not public) the I. A. A. F. cleared Semenya to run in 2010, and she went on to win the silver medal in the 2012 Olympics. She will be running in Rio. But the federation still faced condemnation over leaks, public smears and the very idea of a sex test. The I. A. A. F. maintained it was obliged to protect female athletes from having “to compete against athletes with performance advantages commonly associated with men. ” In 2011, the association announced that it would abandon all references to “gender verification” or “gender policy. ” Instead, it would institute a test for “hyperandrogenism” (high testosterone) when there are “reasonable grounds for believing” that a woman may have the condition. Women whose testosterone level was “within the male range” would be barred. There were two exceptions: If a woman like Maria Patiño was resistant to testosterone’s effects — or if a woman reduced her testosterone. This entails having her undescended testes surgically removed or taking drugs. Not long after the policy went into effect, sports officials referred four female athletes from “rural or mountainous regions of developing countries” to a French hospital to reduce their high testosterone, according to a 2013 article in The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology Metabolism. The authors, many of whom were physicians who treated the women, describe telling them that leaving in their internal testes “carries no health risk,” but that removing them would allow the athletes to resume competition, though possibly hurt their performance. The women, who were between 18 and 21, agreed to the procedure. The physicians treating them also recommended surgically reducing their large clitorises to make them look more typical. The article doesn’t mention whether they told their patients that altering their clitorises might impair sexual sensation, but it does say the women agreed to that surgery too. Chand was unaware of any controversy surrounding Semenya or other intersex athletes. Her gender concerns were much more immediate: She saw other girls becoming curvier and heard them talk about getting their periods. She asked her mother why her body wasn’t doing the same thing, and trusted her answer: Chand’s body would change when it was good and ready. In 2012, Chand advanced to a athletic training program, which in addition to food and lodging provided a stipend. At 16, she also became a national champion in the category, winning the 100 meters in 11. 8 seconds. The next year, she won gold in the 100 meters and the 200 meters. In June 2014, she won gold yet again at the Asian championships in Taipei. Not long after that, she received the call to go to Delhi and was tested. After her results came in, officials told her she could return to the national team only if she reduced her testosterone level — and that she wouldn’t be allowed to compete for a year. The particulars of her results were not made public, but the media learned, and announced, that Chand had “failed” a “gender test” and wasn’t a “normal” woman. For days, Chand cried inconsolably and refused to eat or drink. “Some in the news were saying I was a boy, and some said that maybe I was a transsexual,” Chand told me. “I felt naked. I am a human being, but I felt I was an animal. I wondered how I would live with so much humiliation. ” As news spread that Chand had been dropped from the national team, advocates encouraged her to fight back. Payoshni Mitra, an Indian researcher with a doctorate in gender issues in sport who had advocated on behalf of other intersex athletes, suggested Chand send a letter to the Athletics Federation of India, requesting her disqualification be reversed. “I have not doped or cheated,” Chand said in Hindi, and Mitra, who would become Chand’s adviser, translated to English. “I am unable to understand why I am asked to fix my body in a certain way simply for participation as a woman. I was born a woman, reared up as a woman, I identify as a woman and I believe I should be allowed to compete with other women, many of whom are either taller than me or come from more privileged backgrounds, things that most certainly give them an edge over me. ” Mitra and others also urged Chand to take her case to the international Court of Arbitration for Sport — the Supreme Court for sports disputes — arguing that the I. A. A. F.’s testosterone policy was discriminatory and should be rescinded. She agreed. Over four days in March 2015, a panel heard Chand’s appeal, as a total of 16 witnesses, including scientists, sports officials and athletes, testified. Female athletes, intersex and not, wondered just how this case would affect their lives. At the hearing, Paula Radcliffe, the British runner who holds the women’s world record for the marathon, testified for the I. A. A. F. saying elevated testosterone levels “make the competition unequal in a way greater than simple natural talent and dedication. ” She added, “The concern remains that their bodies respond in different, stronger ways to training and racing than women with normal testosterone levels, and that this renders the competition fundamentally unfair. ” Madeleine Pape, a 2008 Olympian from Aus tra lia, testified for Chand. Pape lost to Caster Semenya in the 2009 World Championships, Semenya’s last race before her results were made public. Pape had heard runners complain that Semenya was a man or had advantages, and she was angry that Semenya seemed to win so easily. “At the time, I felt that people like Caster shouldn’t be allowed to compete,” Pape told me. But in 2012, Pape began work on a sociology Ph. D. focusing on women in sport. “With my running days behind me, I had the space to think more critically about all that,” she says. “Until that point, I had no idea that the science of sex differences is extremely contested and has shifted over time, as have the regulations in sports, which change but don’t improve as they try to get at the same questions. ” Just what role testosterone plays in improving athletic performance is still being debated. At the hearing, both sides agreed that synthetic testosterone — doping with anabolic steroids — does ramp up performance, helping male and female athletes jump higher and run faster. But they disagreed vehemently about whether the body’s own testosterone has the same effect. I. A. A. F. witnesses testified that logic suggests that natural testosterone is likely to work the way its synthetic twin does. They pointed to decades of I. A. A. F. and I. O. C. testing showing that a disproportionate number of elite female athletes, particularly in track and field, have XY chromosomes by their estimates, the presence of the Y chromosome in this group is more than 140 times higher than it is among the general female population. Surely, witnesses for the I. A. A. F. argued, that overrepresentation indicated that natural testosterone has an outsize influence on athletic prowess. Chand’s witnesses countered that even if natural testosterone turns out to play a role in improving performance, testosterone alone can’t explain the overrepresentation of intersex elite athletes after all, many of those XY female athletes had low testosterone or had cells that lacked androgen receptors. At the Atlanta Games in 1996, one of the few times the I. O. C. allowed detailed data to be released, seven of the eight women who were found to have a Y chromosome turned out to be androgen insensitive: Their bodies couldn’t use the testosterone they made. Some geneticists speculate that the overrepresentation might be because of a gene on the Y chromosome that increases stature height is clearly beneficial in several sports, though that certainly isn’t a factor for Chand. In court, the I. A. A. F. acknowledged that men’s natural testosterone levels, no matter how high, were not regulated the rationale, it said, was that there was no evidence that men with exceptionally high testosterone have a competitive advantage. Pressed by Chand’s lawyer, the I. A. A. F. also conceded that no research had actually proved that unusually high levels of natural testosterone lead to unusually impressive sports performance in women either. Nor has any study proved that natural testosterone in the “male range” provides women with a competitive advantage commensurate with the 10 to 12 percent advantage that elite male athletes typically have over elite female athletes in comparable events. In fact, the I. A. A. F.’s own witnesses estimated the performance advantage of women with high testosterone to be between 1 and 3 percent, and the court played down the 3 percent figure, because it was based on limited, unpublished data. Chand’s witnesses also pointed out that researchers had identified more than 200 biological abnormalities that offer specific competitive advantages, among them increased aerobic capacity, resistance to fatigue, exceptionally long limbs, flexible joints, large hands and feet and increased numbers of muscle fibers — all of which make the idea of a level playing field illusory, and not one of which is regulated if it is innate. Bruce Kidd, a former Olympic runner, told me in May that Olympians themselves sometimes joke that they’re all freaks of nature, with one or another genetic abnormality that makes them great at what they do. Kidd, a Canadian who has long pushed for gender equity in sports, noted that there are also many external variables that influence performance: access to excellent coaching, training facilities, healthy nutrition and so on. “If athletic officials really want to address the significant factors affecting advantage, they should require all athletes to live in the same place, in the same level of wealth, with access to the same resources,” he says. “Boy, oh, boy, there are so many unfair advantages many Olympians have, starting with who their parents are. ” But the I. A. A. F. argued that testosterone is different from other factors, because it is responsible for the performance gap between the sexes. That gap is the very reason sports is divided by sex, the I. A. A. F. says, so regulating testosterone is therefore justified. Chand’s hearing, though, was about more than just testosterone. Implicitly, it questioned the decades of relentless scrutiny of female athletes — especially the most successful ones. Veronica Brenner, a Canadian who won a silver medal in freestyle skiing in 2002, told me she first learned that female Olympians had to pass a sex test when she arrived at the ’98 Games in Nagano, Japan. “I said: ‘Are you kidding?’ I’d been competing my whole life, and my gender has never been questioned!” Brenner’s test confirmed that she had XX chromosomes, and she was given what was commonly called a “femininity card” to prove she was the gender she claimed to be. But she was irked that despite the many advances of female athletes in the last powerful male athletes are celebrated and powerful female ones are suspect. “We’d hear comments all the time: ‘She’s really strong — she must be part guy. ’’u2009” Other critics see testosterone testing as simply the old “gender verification,” the latest effort to keep out women who don’t adhere to gender norms or have a standard female body. Katrina Karkazis, a bioethicist at Stanford University who is a leader of the international campaign against banning intersex athletes and who testified in Chand’s case, says that if an athlete’s androgen test shows she has high testosterone, she must undergo the same gynecological exam that has existed for decades. “The rationale behind the I. A. A. F.’s ‘hyperandrogenism regulation’ is to make it sound more scientifically justifiable and less discriminatory, but nothing in those exams has changed from the old policy except the name,” she says. “It’s still based on very rigid binary ideas about sex and gender. ” Critics of the I. A. A. F. policy argue that if sports officials were truly concerned about fairness, they would quit policing a handful of women with naturally high testosterone and instead rigorously investigate athletes suspected of taking drugs that indisputably enhance performance. They note that in the last year, the I. A. A. F. has faced bribery and blackmail charges and widespread allegations that it intentionally ignored hundreds of suspicious blood tests. Stéphane Bermon, an I. A. A. F. witness who took part in the efforts to identify females with high testosterone, acknowledged that doping was a significant threat to fairness but said that didn’t negate the need to also regulate the participation of women with naturally high testosterone who may have an advantage. He offered an analogy: “Air pollution, like tobacco smoking, contributes to lung cancer, but one should never have to choose between these two before implementing prevention measures,” he wrote in an email. “As a governing body, I. A. A. F. has to do its best to ensure a level playing field. . .. These two topics are different but can lead to the same consequence, which is the impossibility for a dedi cated athlete to compete and succeed against an opponent who benefits from an unfair advantage. ” Last July, the Court of Arbitration for Sport issued its ruling in Dutee Chand’s case. The panel concluded that although natural testosterone may play some role in athleticism, just what that role is, and how influential it is, remains unknown. As a result, the judges said that the I. A. A. F.’s policy was not justified by current scien tific research: “While the evidence indicates that higher levels of naturally occurring testosterone may increase athletic performance, the Panel is not satisfied that the degree of that advantage is more significant than the advantage derived from the numerous other variables which the parties acknowledge also affect female athletic performance: for example, nutrition, access to specialist training facilities and coaching and other genetic and biological variations. ” The judges concluded that requiring women like Chand to change their bodies in order to compete was unjustifiably discriminatory. The panel sus pended the policy until July 2017 to give the I. A. A. F. time to prove that the degree of competitive advantage conferred by naturally high testosterone in women was comparable to men’s advantage. If the I. A. A. F. doesn’t supply that evidence, the court said, the regulation “shall be declared void. ” It was the first time the court had ever overruled a body’s entire policy. Chand was thrilled. “This wasn’t just about me,” she said, “but about all women like me, who come from difficult backgrounds. It is mostly people from poor backgrounds who come into running — people who know they will get food, housing, a job, if they run well. Richer people can pay their way to become doctors, engineers poor people don’t even know about their own medical challenges. ” Chand hoped that the ruling would prompt the I. O. C. to suspend its testosterone policy, too, so she would be eligible to try to qualify for the Rio Games. After all, the I. O. C. policy — which also called on national Olympic committees to “investigate any perceived deviation in sex characteristics” — was based on the same science that the court deemed inadequate. In November 2015, the I. O. C. established new parameters for dealing with gender. But it never actually addressed whether it would suspend its testosterone policy, as the I. A. A. F. was forced to do. That ambiguity left intersex athletes in limbo. Finally, in late February, the I. O. C. said it would not regulate women’s natural testosterone levels “until the issues of the case are resolved. ” It urged the I. A. A. F. to come up with the evidence by the court’s deadline so the suspended policy could be resurrected. It also said that to avoid discrimination, women who are ineligible to compete against women should be eligible to compete against men. Advocates for intersex women were dismayed. “It’s ridiculous,” says Payoshni Mitra, the Indian researcher. “They say the policy is not for testing gender — but saying that a hyperandrogenic woman can compete as a man, not a woman, inherently means they think she really is a man, not a woman. It brings back the debate around an athlete’s gender, publicly humiliating her in the process. ” Emmanuelle Moreau, head of media relations for the I. O. C. disagreed, writing in an email, “It is a question of eligibility, not gender or (biological) sex. ” A separate section of the I. O. C. gender guidelines addressed a different group of atypical women (and atypical men): transgender athletes. Unlike the intersex section, the transgender section stresses the importance of human rights, nondiscrimination and inclusion. It eschews most of the I. O. C. ’s former requirements, including that trans competitors have their ovaries or testicles removed and undergo surgery so their external genitalia matches their gender identity. In the new guidelines, athletes face no restrictions of any kind athletes have some restrictions, including suppressing their testosterone levels below the typi cal male range. And once they’ve declared their gender as female, they can’t change it again for four years if they want to compete in sports. Reactions among trans advocates ran the gamut. Many trans advocates viewed the liberalized regulations as a victory. But some trans women athletes who long ago had their testicles removed (and as a result, make virtually no testosterone) were unhappy with the policy they argued that lifting the surgery requirement gave transwomen who still had testicles an unfair advantage over trans women who didn’t. And still other advocates said that requiring transwomen to suppress their testosterone below 10 nanomoles is premised on the very same claim about testosterone that the court rejected — that naturally made testosterone is the primary cause of men’s competitive advantage over women. Without evidence that “male range” testosterone levels really do provide that advantage, some say it’s premature to base a policy on speculation — especially one that requires people to transform their bodies. In May, the Canadian Center for Ethics in Sports, which manages the country’s antidoping program and recommends ethics standards, issued guidelines for all Canadian sports organizations. The statement says policies that regulate eligibility, like those related to hormones, should be backed by defensible science. It adds, “There is simply not the evidence to suggest whether, or to what degree, hormone levels consistently confer competitive advantage. ” And yet it’s hard to imagine that many female athletes would easily accept the idea of competing against transwomen athletes without those regulations in place. Those debates are far from Chand’s thoughts. Her focus now is on making the most of the window the ruling provides: allowing her to try to qualify for next month’s Olympics without having to change her body. In the miserable months after her test results were revealed, Chand’s training time and concentration were interrupted, and her hope of ever competing seemed out of reach. Once the ruling was issued, though, she returned to the Indian national team, and intensified her training for the 100 meters, the 200 meters and the relay. In addition to working out six hours a day, she tries to relax with naps and Facebook. She has made frequent trips to nations holding qualifying competitions. In May, she competed in India, China and Taiwan in June, in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. She has until July 11 to meet the I. O. C. time requirement. She is painfully aware that if she doesn’t make this summer’s Olympics, she may not have an other chance. The I. A. A. F. may still come up with evidence that satisfies the court and would exclude women like her from competing without altering their bodies. Chand’s best shot to qualify for Rio is in the 100 meters, which she must complete in 11. 32 seconds or less. She remains of a second short. Note: On June 25, Dutee Chand qualified for the Rio Olympics, running the 100 meters in 11. 30 seconds in Almaty, Kazakhstan, and breaking a national record for India. Later that day, she posted an even faster time of 11. 24 seconds. She will be the first Indian woman to run the 100 meters in the Olympics since 1980. | 1 |
When Stalinist monsters bestow their blessing. November 3, 2016 Humberto Fontova
“It’s Hillary’s hour!...The only hope of defeating Donald Trump is Hillary Clinton…the difference between the two candidates is vast. Barack Obama did not exaggerate when he claimed that she was better prepared to be a U.S. President than even he was—or was her husband Bill Clinton.” (Stalinist Cuba’s KGB-founded and mentored media organ Cubadebate, Oct. 15, 2016.)
There was a day when winning a ringing endorsement from communist mass-murdering, terror -sponsors who craved (and came within a whisker) of nuking your nation would NOT be considered an asset for a U.S. Presidential candidate.
“ In any nation of the world–and even in the U.S. during normal times–Donald Trump would find himself either in prison or in a mental institution!”
There was a day when being threatened with prison and torture (even figuratively) by an enemy Stalinist regime that jailed and tortured political prisoners (many of them U.S. citizens) at a higher rate than Stalin during the Great Terror would be considered an enormous asset for a U.S. Presidential candidate.
But the ringing communist endorsement for Hillary Clinton gets even “better:”
“ Hillary Clinton is our only hope of detaining barbarism!”
So warns the eunuch scribe for a totalitarian regime that murdered more Cubans in its first three years in power than Hitler murdered Germans during his first six– and in the process converted a highly-civilized, immigrant-swamped nation into a slum/sewer with the Hemisphere’s highest suicide rate, which is ravaged by tropical diseases, where tens of thousands have died trying to escape, where alley cats constitute a delicacy and where ox-carts represent luxury transportation.
“On a few occasions Trump has even suggested the assassination of Hillary Clinton!”
So warn the notorious assassins of suddenly inconvenient colleagues ranging from Camilo Cienfuegos to Tony De la Guardia to Manuel “Barbarroja’ Pineiro. Yes, the Castro regime “devoured its own children” even more voraciously than even Lenin and Stalin’s.
“The news are dominated by revelations—some on video—showing Trump’s obscenity and male chauvinist conduct—along with his treatment of women as sex objects!”
So warns the Stalinist regime that jailed and tortured 35,150 Cuban women for political crimes, a totalitarian horror utterly unknown in the Western Hemisphere until the Castro brothers and Che Guevara took power. Some of these Cuban ladies suffered twice as long in Castro’s Gulag as Alexander Solzhenitsyn suffered in Stalin’s.
Their prison conditions were described by former political prisoner Maritza Lugo. “The punishment cells measure 3 feet wide by 6 feet long. The toilet consists of an 8 inch hole in the ground through which cockroaches and rats enter, especially in cool temperatures the rat come inside to seek the warmth of our bodies and we were often bitten. The suicide rate among women prisoners was very high.”
On Christmas Eve of 1961 a Cuban woman named Juana Diaz Figueroa spat in the face of the executioners who were binding and gagging her. Castro and Che Guevara's KGB-trained secret police had found her guilty of feeding and hiding “bandits” (Cuban rednecks who took up arms to fight the Stalinist theft of their land to build Soviet–style Kolkhozes.) When the blast from Castroite firing squad demolished her face and torso Juana was six months pregnant.
“They started by beating us with twisted coils of electric cable,” recalls former Cuba political prisoner Ezperanza Pena from exile today. “I remember Teresita on the ground with all her lower ribs broken. Gladys had both her arms broken. Doris had her face cut up so badly from the beatings that when she tried to drink, water would pour out of her lacerated cheeks.”
“On Mother’s Day they allowed family visits,” recalls Manuela Calvo from exile today.” But as our mothers and sons and daughters were watching, we were beaten with rubber hoses and high-pressure hoses were turned on us, knocking all of us the ground floor and rolling us around as the guards laughed and our loved-ones screamed helplessly.”
“When female guards couldn’t handle us male guards were called in for more brutal beatings. I saw teen-aged girls beaten savagely, their bones broken, their mouths bleeding ,” recalls Polita Grau.
Thousands upon thousands of Cuban women have also drowned, died of thirst or have been eaten alive by sharks attempting to flee the regime founded by the folks who recently endorsed Hillary Clinton. This from a nation formerly richer than half the nations of Europe and deluged by immigrants from same.
Remember how Donald Trump was taken greatly to task by the media for not quickly repudiating David Duke’s (so-called) endorsement?
Well, we certainly look for the media to take Hillary Clinton similarly to task for not instantly repudiating the endorsement of mass-jailing, mass-torturing, mass-murdering Stalinists.
After all, recalling the “sticks and stones can break my bones” riddle of our childhood, David Duke’s crimes” consist of words (“hate-speech.”) Whereas the (literal) sticks, stones--and chains, manacles, bullwhips and bullets--of the fine folks so enthusiastically endorsing Hillary Clinton have caused untold suffering to hundreds of thousands of people. | 1 |
Trending Articles: Trending Articles: Clinton emails: FBI director ignored Attorney General's advice not to 'take action that could influence election' Source: The Independent
FBI director James Comey reportedly ignored the advice of Attorney General Loretta Lynch, who urged him not to thrust the controversy over Hillary Clinton’s emails back into headlines less than a fortnight from election day.
US Department of Justice officials, Democrats and even some Republicans were said to be aghast at the timing of the FBI’s announcement, on Friday, that it was reviewing a fresh cache of emails, which Mr Comey said may be “pertinent” to the investigation into Ms Clinton’s use of a private email server during her tenure as Secretary of State.
According to a report from the New Yorker , Ms Lynch “expressed her preference” that Mr Comey uphold the Justice Department's “longstanding practice of not commenting on ongoing investigations, and not taking any action that could influence the outcome of an election.” The FBI director, however, “said that he felt compelled to do otherwise.”
Writing in the Washington Post , former Justice Department spokesman Matthew Miller said Mr Comey’s decision was a “troubling violation of long-standing Justice Department rules or precedent, conduct that raises serious questions about his judgment and ability to serve as the nation’s chief investigative official.”
The emails were discovered “in connection with an unrelated case,” the FBI director wrote in a letter to Republican congressional committee chairs on Friday. That separate case, it later emerged, concerns disgraced former Congressman Anthony Weiner , who is under investigation for allegedly sending explicit messages to a 15-year-old girl in North Carolina.
Mr Weiner is the estranged husband of Ms Clinton’s closest aide, Huma Abedin , and the emails were found on one or more electronic devices belonging to the couple, which had been seized as part of the Weiner probe. The FBI is now investigating whether those emails contained any classified information. | 0 |
Comedian Jordan Peele debuted his new horror film, Get Out, this week at the Sundance Film Festival, and the most shocking thing about the film is its bad guy: white liberal racism. [“It was very important to me for this not to be about a black guy going to the South and going to this red state where the presumption for a lot of people is everybody’s racist there,” Peele told the audience after the film’s midnight screening. “This was meant to take a stab at the liberal elite that tends to believe that ‘We’re above these things. ’” Get Out follows the events that unfold when a young black man Chris (Daniel Kaluuya) meets the wealthy liberal parents of his white girlfriend Rose (Allison Williams) who are carrying out an evil plan to imprison their suburb’s few black residents. The idea for Get Out — a film which Peele thought “was never going to get made” — came during the 2008 presidential primary battle between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. “All of a sudden the country was kind of focused on black civil rights and women’s civil rights movements and where they intersect, and there was kind of this question of, who deserves to be president more?” Peele explained. “Who’s waited long enough? Which is an absurd thing — that civil rights are even divided. ” Drawing from The Stepford Wives, Peele’s favorite film, the comic was able to develop a plot that exposed what he called the “ lie” that “we’re past” this “monster of racism” — a lie that Peele admits doesn’t flow from “red states. ” One example of this “ lie” in the film is evident when Chris’s girlfriend fails to mention to her neurosurgeon father (Bradley Whitford) that her new boyfriend is black. Rose’s father constantly calls Chris “my man,” admits that he would have voted for Obama for a third term, and said his father lost at the Olympics to Jesse Owens and has affinity for the Nazis. It all feels like soft bigotry, Peele explains to the audience. “That is how we experience racism. The monster of racism lurks underneath that conversation. ” Get Out, Peele says, is “coming out in a very different America” than the one in which he wrote the script for the film. “It’s more important and interesting now,” he says, in the era of President Trump. Peele is perhaps best known for his starring role on the hit Comedy Central series Key and Peele, where his portrayal of a President Obama became an Internet sensation. The comedian recently reprised the role on Comedy Central’s The Daily Show for one final time alongside Key, who played President Obama’s “anger translator” Luther. Get Out opens in theaters on February 24. Follow Jerome Hudson on Twitter: @jeromeehudson | 0 |
TUTZING, Germany — For more than two years, the king of Thailand lay ill in a Bangkok hospital. During much of that time, his son, the heir to Thailand’s throne, was far from the kingdom, flying around Europe in his Boeing 737 and ensconced in luxury villas and hotels amid the misty lakes and mountains of southern Germany and Austria. The lavish European lifestyle of the son, Crown Prince Vajiralongkorn, and his tastes for airplanes, fast cars, women and the high life have caused great anxiety in the kingdom for decades. Now he is on the cusp of ascending the throne. The death of the beloved King Bhumibol Adulyadej on Thursday has set in motion a succession that many Thais say they wish they could avoid. King Bhumibol had been a unifying figure in a country that is torn by deep divisions of class and politics and is currently ruled by a military junta. The issue is whether the prince, seen by many Thais as lacking the deep public devotion that his father enjoyed, can hold the country together. The prince’s ascension also raises questions about the future of the monarchy, as a king could give strength to a republican movement that has gained a foothold in recent years. Among the issues at stake is control over one of the world’s great royal fortunes, an estimated $31 billion in real estate holdings alone. Succession may force the consideration of an unresolved and rarely discussed question of whether those assets and others are the property of the royal family or of the Thai public. The crown prince, 64, has led a stormy life of byzantine quarrels and breakups with various lovers that were rarely fully elucidated in public. To his critics, his romantic liaisons have been more than just a royal soap opera they have raised questions about whether his character suits the institution he is about to lead. Having multiple lovers is a dynastic tradition — his King Rama V had more than 150 wives and consorts — but the prince’s former partners have endured spiteful separations and the purged members of his entourage have died under suspicious circumstances. His three divorces, and the brusque ways they were handled, turned many Thais against him and left a trail of broken families, including four children in the United States with whom he has cut ties. The crown prince returned to Thailand in time to be present for his father’s death on Thursday. But the timing of his accession remains in question. Gen. Prayuth the prime minister, surprised the nation on Thursday when he told reporters that the prince had decided to wait until the “appropriate time” to ascend the throne, which is still replete with the ancient pageantry and extreme formality made famous by the musical “The King and I. ” What details are known of the crown prince’s life are whispered and passed along furtively on social media in Thailand, where the military government, enforcing a strict law, has sentenced dozens of people to long prison terms for offending the monarchy. The law has been interpreted broadly, stifling most public discussion of anything related to the royal family. But the few details that have emerged in public records, leaked documents and videos, and in publications from abroad offer a glimpse into the man who stands to be Thailand’s next king. The prince was still married to his first wife, his cousin Soamsawali Kitiyakara, in the 1970s and ’80s when he fathered five children with another woman, according to Thai news accounts at the time. The other woman, an aspiring actress and a commoner, Sujarinee Vivacharawongse, would become his second wife. That second marriage ended in the late 1990s in such acrimony that a public notice was posted at the prince’s palace accusing Ms. Sujarinee of corruption and infidelity with a soldier. The prince cut off communication with four of the five children from the marriage, stripped them of their royal titles and diplomatic passports, and wrote letters, since posted online by an exiled academic, to their British boarding schools informing them that he would no longer pay their tuition. They now live in the United States, as does their mother. His third marriage, also to a commoner, Srirasmi Suwadee, in 2001, produced the boy who is considered the next heir to the throne, Prince Dipangkorn Rasmijoti, 11, who lives in Bavaria with his father. Thais got a rare insight into the third marriage when a video clip of an elaborate poolside birthday party circulated widely on computer discs and on the internet. The video, which showed the princess topless with a string bikini bottom being attended to by submissive palace staff, scandalized a public accustomed to perceiving the monarchy as a paragon of virtue. It was never clear how the video had been leaked but some suggested that the prince’s enemies had spread it to promote the possibility that his sister Princess Sirindhorn, beloved by the public for her devotion to charitable causes, could become monarch in his stead. The footage of the party was never publicly discussed in Thailand’s news media. The crown prince’s marriage to Ms. Srirasmi blew up spectacularly in 2014, when members of her family were suddenly swept up by the police, charged and brought to trial. At least three of Ms. Srirasmi’s siblings were sent to prison for crimes including illegal possession of firearms and insulting the monarchy, according to police statements. Her mother and father were sentenced to prison for insulting the monarchy. Her uncle Pongpat Chayapan, a police officer, was convicted of running illegal casinos, oil smuggling, money laundering and other crimes. Ms. Srirasmi gave up her royally bestowed name, according to an entry in The Royal Gazette, but she was given a stipend of more than $5 million of government funds from the Crown Property Bureau, a payment made public in a letter signed by the junta chief. The purge reinforced fears of an ominous, violent side in the prince’s entourage. One of a handful of police officers purged in the 2014 separation, Akkharawit Limrat, died under mysterious circumstances, his body hastily cremated, according to a funeral certificate published in the Thai news media. The police, calling the matter “sensitive,” gave only scant details. Lt. Gen. Prawut Thavornsiri, then the police spokesman, described the death this way: “He got stressed out. So he jumped out of the building and died. ” A separate purge last year of aides to the crown prince had a similar outcome. Two of the three men arrested died in custody in military barracks. The purges have somewhat overshadowed recent efforts by the government to rehabilitate the prince’s image, including broadcasts of his riding in bicycle tours to celebrate the king and queen and the release of a video showing him caring for his son Dipangkorn in Germany. Critics said that after the purge of his third wife, those images sought to present him as a healthy, responsible father. The efforts suggested that the military had cast its lot with the prince, trying to forge the same kind of mutually beneficial alliance it had with his father. The king heads the armed forces and must approve all governments, while the military draws its legitimacy from the monarch’s blessing. Then there’s the matter of who will be the new queen. Like so many other parts of the crown prince’s life, the answer is shrouded in secrecy. A former flight attendant, Suthida Vajiralongkorn na Ayudhaya, has appeared by the prince’s side on the official royal broadcasts and has been bestowed the military rank of lieutenant general. Kasit Piromya, a former foreign minister, said he met Ms. Suthida many times when he was in government. “She’s an air hostess, very lively, highly intelligent,” he said. “She can ski, she can bike. She loves music. She knows what is good wine in Italy. ” Ms. Suthida appears to live with the crown prince in Bavaria. Bild, the German tabloid, published a photograph in July of the crown prince on an airport runway in jeans, with what appeared to be tattoos covering his back and arms. The prince’s companion, possibly Ms. Suthida, is wearing stiletto heels and a tight shirt, midriff exposed, an outfit that might not raise eyebrows in Europe but would disqualify any tourist from entering the Grand Palace in Bangkok. The prince bought two villas in southern Germany last year, one on the exclusive Lake Starnberg for an estimated $13 million, and another, said to have cost some $5. 5 million, in the adjacent community of Feldafing. When Andreas Botas, a real estate agent in Tutzing, showed the prince and his entourage a property there last year, three black Mercedes vans, a white Porsche and three more vans arrived for the appointment. The driver of the Porsche turned out to be the prince, “dressed in a skimpy and jeans but very good shoes,” Mr. Botas said. The prince looked carefully at the villa’s 12 main rooms as servants lay prostrate or knelt on the ground ready to start the white Porsche and open the driver and passenger doors. Ultimately, Mr. Botas said, the prince bought the other villas. Bavaria offers the crown prince the privacy that he appears to crave. In Tutzing, the prince’s villa is defended from prying eyes by a fence and hedge more than six feet tall. In Feldafing, few locals seem to know the prince, but neighbors said they heard parties around the private pool late into the night last summer. Occasional public appearances sometimes make news in the German and Austrian news media. The crown prince’s entourage, they reported, has visited a pumpkin farm, picked strawberries and toured parts of Bavaria on mountain bikes. In the Austrian ski resort of Zell am Ziller, the prince’s entourage in 2014 rented 70 rooms in a spa hotel and demanded the installation of a kitchen where the prince’s own cook prepared his food, according to an article in the Innsbruck newspaper Tiroler Tageszeitung. But for the most part, this community shelters its wealthy residents with discreet propriety. The deputy mayor of Tutzing, Elisabeth Dörrenberg, said only that her community of some 10, 000 welcomed wealthy and prominent people, but said nothing specifically about the prince. The town does not show off its wealth there is no hotel or restaurant. The mayor of Feldafing, Bernhard Sontheim, was equally reticent. The prince’s entourage showed up at his office in July, the mayor said, and spent half an hour chatting about generalities. The prince, he said, “is now a resident of Feldafing, he lives here and that is that. ” | 1 |
Posted by Martin Walsh | Oct 28, 2016 | Breaking News Julian Assange Can No Longer Remain Quiet
Barack Hussein Obama and Hillary Clinton are the founders of ISIS. We have proven that through emails and documents leaked from WikiLeaks, but liberal media outlets still refuse to cover it.
After all, they are still more focused on what Trump said eleven years ago than what Hillary has actually done.
Because of brave patriots like Julian Assange, we have been given more evidence that Hillary Clinton is more connected to ISIS than we originally believed.
An email was leaked between Clinton and John Podesta indicating that: “Western intelligence, US intelligence and sources in the region” to accuse Qatar and Saudi Arabia of “providing clandestine financial and logistic support to ISIL [or ISIS] and other radical Sunni groups in the region.” Citing the need to “use our diplomatic and more traditional intelligence assets,” said Hillary to Podesta while arguing the current developments in the Middle East were “important to the U.S. for reasons that often differ from country to country.” Odd that Clinton argues Saudi Arabia and Qatar are helping fund ISIS when Hillary’s largest donations come from those two countries. She Is Funded By Nations That Fund ISIS. Coincidence?
In another correspondence from 2012, the Director of Foreign Policy at the Clinton Foundation, Amitabh Desai , set up a meeting with Bill Clinton for five minutes in exchange for a $1,000,000 “birthday check.”
The email adds that the small but rich nation occupying the Qatar Peninsula would “welcome [the Clinton Foundation’s] suggestions for investments in Haiti — particularly on education and health.” Desai added that while Qatar had already “allocated most of their $20 million … [they were] happy to consider projects we suggest.” Bill Clinton gets $1M from Qatar for his birthday. FYI: It's legal and common practice in Qatar for husbands to beat and rape their wives. pic.twitter.com/oGM2Z9JrVl
— Martin Walsh (@mrwalsh8) October 13, 2016
We now see two more examples of the Clinton’s acting corrupt and being intertwined with nations that fund ISIS.
For those that do not see where the dots connect, let’s simplify how this all worked for Hillary.
Hillary, as Secretary of State, would sell terrorist nations large weapons deals only after they gave her a very generous donation to her “foundation.” These weapons, provided by Hillary and her State Department, then filtered down from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Libya, and so on to create, supply, and bolster terrorist groups.
That is exactly how ISIS was created. But instead of blowing them up with an air assault, Hillary and Obama decided to leave ISIS alone. Why? Because ISIS being in the Middle East allows the Obama/Clinton machine to make millions in personal profits from these nations in a repetitive cycle of selling weapons.
They are choosing personal gain over eliminating a terrorist group. Let that sink in. Why else have they not arrested Hillary for all of these crimes? The FBI would arrest you in a heartbeat if you went to Facebook right now to praise Allah and ISIS.
It also speaks volumes as to why they are trying so hard to silence Julian Assange. If Julian Assange is lying, why are they trying so hard to silence him?
— Martin Walsh (@mrwalsh8) October 23, 2016
The media remains silent on all of this. This would be plastered all over the news for months if a President Trump was exposed for this.
Ignorant politicians are not the problem. The problem is that ignorant people keep voting for them every election. This is the exact reason we desperately need change in this country, and it starts with Donald Trump.
People like Julian Assange have given up their lives to expose corruption in government and allowing Hillary Clinton to win this election makes all of his sacrifices meaningless.
He has offered us a chance to revolt against our tyrannical government. Chances likes this do not occur often, and if we do not seize the opportunity, we will suffer another four years of suppression from our corrupt leaders.
Vote Trump, so that we can save America and he can pardon Julian Assange. | 1 |
Written by Peter Van Buren venerable New York Times ran a story saying Donald Trump lies about the height of his buildings.For no apparent reason, the Times resurrected some information from 1979 saying Trump insisted on counting the basement levels of his signature Trump Tower in the overall count of how many floors the building has. The Times compares this lie to “reports” that Trump adds an inch to his actual body height in his bio materials, and also repeated the gag line that he boasted about how long his penis is (no word on whether it is or is not actually longer than expected.)You have to wade down to paragraph 12 to learn other New York developers use the same count-the-basements levels gimmick to be able to advertise their buildings as taller. There is absolutely no news. The Russians Head over to Slate , which published an “investigative piece” alleging a Trump computer server was secretly communicating with a Russian bank. The story had previously been debunked by the New York Times and The Intercept, but Slate ran it as if they had uncovered the smoking gun proving Trump is under the control of the Russians.At Mother Jones , another article alleged that an anonymous, former intelligence officer provided the FBI with information on a Russian scheme to help Trump win the presidency.“There’s no way to tell whether the FBI has confirmed or debunked any of the allegations contained in the former spy’s memos,” the story said. “But a Russian intelligence attempt to co-opt or cultivate a presidential candidate would mark an even more serious operation than the hacking.”One more example, from Vox , which wrote without even bothering to source it at all “There is basically conclusive evidence that Russia is interfering in the US election, and that this interference has been designed to damage Hillary Clinton’s campaign. There is strong evidence linking Trump’s foreign policy advisers to Russia, and Trump’s stated policy ideas are extremely favorable to Russian interests.” Journalism Much? I’ve chosen these examples because they are from publications that have in the past enjoyed decent reputations for reporting, and because these stories were run as “news,” not opinion columns, where the standards go right through the floor. Even Mother Jones, which clearly works left-of-center, used to do so with some solid journalism.Not any more.These places (never find fringe publications) are now working with the same standards once reserved for reporting on aliens at Roswell, Elvis sightings and the Illuminati New World Order. It is apparently now within the bounds of mainstream journalism to build a story out of, well, nothing, such as a factoid from 1979, or essentially accuse a presidential candidate of treason based on a single, anonymous source, or claim the Russians have taken over our electoral process based on no sources at all. And Clinton… On the other side, reporting on Clinton by many of these same publications swerves between hagiography and poo-pooing away anything unfavorable. Emails? Who cares! Questions about what her accomplishments as Secretary of State really were? If you ask, you hate women. Pay-for-Play with the Clinton Foundation? Hah, everybody does it, it doesn’t matter. The standard seems to be absent a notarized receipt for a donation matching an arms sale, or a criminal conviction, nothing matters. Next? So be it. The media has fully sh*t the bed this election. That’s where we find ourselves.But what’s next? Will the media reset itself after November 8, or will they run President Trump is Putin’s dog stories for the full term? Will President Clinton be given a pass on, well, everything, for four years, with apologists and explainers on the front page of the Times, never mind in editorials?At what point will the media dig themselves out of this and start real reporting again? Reprinted with permission from WeMeantWell.com . Related | 0 |
Chancellor Angela Merkel is setting aside €90m (£76m) in taxpayers’ money to create a fund which will pay migrants to withdraw their asylum applications and leave Germany voluntarily. [The handouts will form part of a plan to speed up the removal of rejected asylum seekers, after Tunisian migrant Anis Amri murdered a Polish lorry driver, hijacked his vehicle and drove it into a Christmas market in Berlin while awaiting deportation. U. S. president Donald Trump told The Times that Merkel made a “catastrophic mistake” when she opened the doors to an unlimited number of migrants in 2015. Her Sigmar Gabriel, later admitted that his superior had underestimated how difficult it would be to integrate migrants on such a grand scale, and that Germany had been plunged into a kulturkampf, or “cultural war” as a result. Germany rejected 170, 000 asylum claims in 2016 but, according to the Mail, just 26, 000 were repatriated. 55, 000 more decided to leave voluntarily — apparently leaving 81, 000 bogus applicants unaccounted for. “We rely heavily on voluntary departures,” admitted Chancellor Merkel, who was announcing the package after falling behind the Social Democrats in polls for Germany’s upcoming elections. Martin Schulz, the former President of the European Parliament who has been nominated as the Social Democrat challenger to Merkel, said he backed the proposals to speed up deportations. Schulz has previously insisted that “the people who are arriving [in Europe] are refugees who have been threatened [and] we should welcome them” — a statement which is at odds with the of the European Commission’s admission that at least 60 per cent are economic migrants. As a leading figure in the European Union, Schulz was a strong supporter of the compulsory migrant quotas. These were forced through by the bloc despite strong opposition from central and eastern European which did not agree with Germany’s unilateral decision to throw open the borders. Schulz hit out strongly at these countries in 2015, accusing them of “national egotism in its purest form”. Polish interior minister Mariusz Blaszczak described at Schulz’s words as “an example of German arrogance”. | 0 |
I BRICS resistono alla guerra finanziaria degli Stati Uniti di Ariel Noyola Rodríguez
Per affrontare la guerra finanziaria degli Stati Uniti è urgente che i Paesi BRICS rafforzino la cooperazione nell’economia e nella finanza. La Nuova banca di sviluppo dei Paesi BRICS dovrebbe aumentare il volume dei prestiti, ed anche l’Accordo sul contingente di riserva. Inoltre, i Paesi BRICS dovrebbero avviare al più presto possibile la propria agenzia di rating. Per intensificare la coesione economica e realizzare un’area di libero scambio si dovranno abbattere le barriere tariffarie ed aumentare notevolmente il commercio. In breve, se non vengono prese al più presto le misure del caso, i Paesi BRICS rischiano il naufragio nel prossimo uragano finanziario. Rete Voltaire | Città del Messico (Messico) | 27 ottobre 2016 français русский Español
Il 15 e 16 ottobre si teneva nello Stato di Goa (India) l’ottavo vertice dei BRICS, sigla per Brasile, Russia, India, Cina e Sud Africa. Va riconosciuto che l’incontro avveniva in una situazione profondamente critica per l’economia mondiale. Tuttavia, i BRICS hanno mostrato, ancora una volta, la straordinaria capacità di trasformare un brutto momento in un’opportunità per approfondire i legami dal punto di vista strategico.
Dopo che le economie BRICS hanno goduto di un ‘età dell’oro’, negli ultimi anni i tassi di crescita hanno subito un drastico rallentamento. Di fronte a questa situazione difficile, ora più che mai i BRICS devono attingere alle istituzioni finanziarie presentate al mondo un paio di anni prima a Fortaleza (Brasile) al sesto vertice [ 1 ].
Lo scorso aprile, la Nuova Banca di Sviluppo effettuava il primo prestito [ 2 ] per più di 800 milioni di dollari, e dal 2017 si stima che i prestiti possano raggiungere i 2500 milioni [ 3 ]. Inoltre, l’istituto finanziario a luglio emetteva per la prima volta “obbligazioni verdi” in yuan per un importo pari a 450 milioni di dollari [ 4 ]. Questi strumenti finanziari, se aumentano l’influenza globale della moneta cinese, finanziano grandi progetti d’investimento.
Nel frattempo, l’Accordo sul contingente di riserva (CRA, nell’acronimo in inglese) dal valore di 100 miliardi di dollari, è pronto a concedere le prime linee di credito per stabilizzare la bilancia dei pagamenti dei Paesi BRICS, come annunciato dal Ministro delle Finanze indiano Arun Jaitley [ 5 ]. Ogni volta che la Federal Reserve (FED) degli Stati Uniti minaccia di aumentare il tasso d’interesse dei fondi federali, innescando una nuova crisi finanziaria mondiale, è necessario che i Paesi BRICS aumentino al più presto le risorse monetarie del fondo di stabilizzazione perché, in caso contrario, rischiano gravi danni per via delle speculazioni delle grandi banche d’investimento.
Allo stesso tempo, i Paesi BRICS devono aprire nuovi fronti sfidando apertamente l’egemonia degli Stati Uniti e del dollaro nel sistema finanziario globale [ 6 ], non solo attraverso lo scambio in valuta locale ma, per esempio, attraverso l’accumulo di riserve in yuan tra le banche centrali, soprattutto dopo che la ‘moneta del popolo’ (‘renminbi‘ in cinese) è stata ammessa ufficialmente, il 1° ottobre 2015, tra i Diritti Speciali di Prelievo, il paniere delle monete d’élite creato dal Fondo monetario internazionale (FMI) alla fine degli anni 60 [ 7 ].
Inoltre, i Paesi BRICS possono articolare un’alleanza finanziaria dai forti legami geopolitici tra America Latina, Asia, Africa e Medio Oriente. Le banche di sviluppo regionali, formate per lo più da Paesi periferici, potrebbero servire allo scopo: la Banca d’investimento infrastrutturale asiatica (AIIB, nell’acronimo in inglese), Banca dell’ALBA (Alleanza Bolivariana per i Popoli della nostra America) e anche la Banca del Sud che finalmente aprirà alla fine dell’anno.
È un requisito urgente per i BRICS realizzare una propria agenzia di rating che spezzi il dominio delle statunitensi Fitch, Moody’s e Standard & Poor’s [ 8 ]. Tali agenzie di rating piuttosto che effettuare valutazioni con criteri tecnici, agiscono su impulso di natura politica; cioè da autentiche macchine da guerra: degradano le note delle obbligazioni sovrane e di conseguenza aumentano drasticamente gli oneri finanziari di Paesi come Grecia, Russia o Venezuela.
La coesione economica è un’altra sfida importante, anche se è chiaro che si è progredito sostanzialmente molto negli ultimi anni: tra il 2001 e il 2015, il commercio tra i Paesi BRICS, nell’ambito del commercio totale, è raddoppiato dal 6 al 12% [ 9 ]. La Cina è di gran lunga l’economia più integrata nei Paesi BRICS. Al contrario, i legami tra India e Sud Africa sono marginali. Lo stesso tra Brasile e Russia. E’ quindi molto importante la prossima creazione di una zona di libero scambio tra i BRICS [ 10 ]. Tuttavia, oltre ad abbattere le barriere commerciali, i Paesi BRICS devono promuovere la costruzione congiunta dei valori; cioè, integrare i propri sistemi di produzione per incoraggiare l’industrializzazione delle economie meno avvantaggiate.
In conclusione, vi sono molte sfide all’orizzonte per le cinque potenze emergenti. Sono convinto che, perciò, il successo dei BRICS dipenda dalla capacità di reinventarsi e dalla creatività nell’articolare nuove dimensioni della cooperazione, affrontando obiettivi a lungo termine. Di fronte alla nuova guerra finanziaria che preparano gli USA, è tempo per i BRICS di procedere… | 1 |
on October 30, 2016 2:24 pm ·
One thing that has continuously dogged the Donald Trump for president campaign is the fact that racists, anti-semites, xenophobes, misogynists, and various other bigots have stuck with the bombastic real estate mogul since he first launched his travesty of a campaign. No matter how much Trump’s people try to say he doesn’t want the support of such folks, the candidate himself refuses to take the fact that there is anything about the campaign he has been running that attracts these people seriously. So, naturally, when Trump’s campaign manager Kellyanne Conway sat down with an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper on Sunday , that particular issue came up again. Of course, Conway was not happy. Tapper began:
“There are a lot of anti-Semites and racists and misogynists who support the Trump candidacy.”
Conway immediately went on defense, saying, “wow.” Tapper went on to reference a man who was shouting ‘JEW-S-A’ at the press pen at a recent Trump rally, and directly asked Conway if she would refer to such people as ‘deplorable.’ She responded:
“Yes, I would. Wow, I have to push back on some of the adjectives you just used to describe — I hope you’ve been to Trump rallies and I hope that you’ve seen the tens of thousands. I mean, he’s had over half a million people easily, I think in excess of that. These are U.S.A.-loving Americans.”
Tapper went on to say that no, he isn’t putting all Trump supporters into that camp, but went on to force Conway’s hand on this one:
“But without question, people who are experts on hate groups say that there has been a comfort level that has been offered to people who are anti-Semitic that has been offered to people who are anti-Semitic and racists and on and on. And these people are comfortable coming out in the open and supporting Mr. Trump.
Mr. Trump has refused to condemn in a very serious way his racist and anti-Semitic fans,” Tapper continued. “He just has. He says things like, “Oh, sure, I disavow, I disavow.’ But he has never serious said, ‘I don’t want the support of those people, they are reprehensible, they have nothing to do with me.’ He has never seriously done it.”
Conway used the pushing to pivot back to the idea that the Trump campaign is winning, saying:
“I think this exchange is frankly the best piece of evidence I have that we’re actually going to win in nine days because the idea that we’re going to shift away from the pattern of corruption the cloud of ethical stain that Hillary Clinton would bring to the Oval Office in such an important week.”
No, Kellyanne, it’s not a sign that Trump is winning. It’s pointing something out that has been true since this whole fiasco began: That Donald Trump is a raging bigot, and he has been so openly. Dog whistles have turned into fog horns this election cycle, and it’s all because of Donald Trump. He embraces these bigots because he’s one of them. The quicker you learn that, the better.
Watch the exchange below:
Featured image via video screen capture Share this Article! Share on Facebook Author: Shannon Barber Shannon Barber is a self- described queer feminist and activist for racial equality, LGBT rights, women’s rights, and secular rights in America. She is a lifelong lover of words, though her educational background is in computer science. She currently writes for 2 liberal websites, and keeps her own humor blog for lesbians. She hopes to change the world, one mind at a time. Search | 0 |
The Satanic Nature of Modern Cult-ure Under the guise of "secularism," society has been inducted into a satanic cult, Cabalism. ... Print Email http://humansarefree.com/2016/11/the-satanic-nature-of-modern-cult-ure.html Under the guise of "secularism," society has been inducted into a satanic cult, Cabalism. The goal is to deny man's soul connection to the Divine and reduce him to a domestic animal. "The purpose of modern art, literature and music must be to destroy the uplifting potential of art, literature and music..."There should be a POISON symbol over the doors of our universities, theatres and art galleries. A similar warning should appear on our TV programs, music and videos.In the 1920's, the Comintern decided that the West could be conquered by first subverting its cultural institutions--family, education, religion, art, mass media and government.They have largely succeeded. While maintaining their familiar format, they have subtly changed the content. It's like lacing a bottle of aspirin with arsenic. We are noticing that our political and cultural leaders are mostly cowards, dupes, traitors, crooks, opportunists and impostors.Our failure to combat Communism is due to misunderstanding its real nature. Communism is a facade for a satanic cult ( Cabalism , Freemasonry ) empowered by Masonic Jewish international bankers. It is designed to absorb the world's wealth, and eventually to reduce and enslave the human race. The 5-pointed Red Star of Communism is also the symbol of Satanism .A demonic virus, Communism has morphed into countless forms, hoodwinking more people than ever.Western Civilization is built on Christianity, the premise that God is real, indeed the Ultimate Reality, spiritual in character. Through man's Divine soul, an individual can discern the God's Will without mediation from a worldly authority. This is why the bankers hate Christianity.God is the Truth, Love, Beauty and Goodness to which we all aspire. An immanent Moral Order precludes a small clique monopolizing the world's wealth and enslaving its population. So, the bankers must destroy our belief in God by promoting Darwinism, Existentialism etc. They create war, depression and terror so we will accept their New World Order . THE FRANKFURT SCHOOL In his brilliant essay, " The Frankfurt School and Political Correctness " Michael Minnichino reveals that most of the fashionable intellectual and artistic movements in the 20th century, still in vogue today, were actually inspired by thinkers who were Comintern (Communist International) agents financed by the central bankers. Some of them actually worked for Soviet Intelligence (NKVD) right into the 1960's.He writes: "The task [of the Frankfurt School] was first to undermine the Judeo-Christian legacy through an "abolition of culture" ...and second, to determine new cultural forms which would increase the alienation of the population, thus creating a "new barbarism." "... The purpose of modern art, literature and music must be to destroy the uplifting potential of art, literature and music... "Funds came from "various German and American universities, the Rockefeller Foundation , the American Jewish Committee, several American intelligence services..."This subversive movement "represents almost the entire theoretical basis of all the politically correct aesthetic trends which now plague our universities." They are associated with Post Modernism, Feminism, Cultural Studies, Deconstructionism, Semiotics, etc.Their net effect is to divorce us from truth, social cohesion and our cultural heritage. They assert that reality is unknowable and that writers and artists are just depicting their own subjective reality. For example, postmodernist Hayden White writes, "historical narratives are verbal fictions, the contents of which are more invented than found...truth and reality are primarily authoritarian weapons of our times." In other words, we cannot know what happened in the past (which is exactly what they want.)Postmodernism is part of the authoritarian agenda. Similarly the Frankfurt School championed the notion that "authoritarianism" is caused by religion, male leadership, marriage and family, when these things actually uphold society.As far as the humanities are concerned, universities are enemy territory and professors usually are obstacles to genuine learning. THE ANCIENT CONSPIRACY Communism manifests an ancient Luciferian Jewish revolt against God and man. The Jewish Pharisees rejected Christ because he taught that God is Love and all men are equal in the sight of God."The advent of Christ was a national catastrophe for the Jewish people, especially for the leaders," Leon de Poncins writes. "Until then they alone had been the Sons of the Covenant; they had been its sole high priests and beneficiaries...."He continues: "The irreducible antagonism with which Judaism has opposed Christianity for 2000 years is the key and mainspring of modern subversion... [The Jew] championed reason against the mythical world of the spirit ...he was the doctor of unbelief; all those who were mentally in revolt came to him either secretly or in broad daylight..." (Judaism and the Vatican, pp.111-113.)In addition to Jewish Cabalism, Freemasonry has been the bankers' tool. It was instrumental in the destruction of the Christian monarchies in Germany, Austria and Russia and the decline of the Catholic Church. This is also the view revealed in The Red Symphony .In his Encyclical Humanum Genus (1884) Pope Leo XIII wrote that the ultimate aim of Freemasonry is "to uproot completely the whole religious and moral order of the world, which has been brought into existence by Christianity... This will mean that the foundation and the laws of the new structure of society will be drawn from pure naturalism."Again Pope Leo XIII said: "Freemasonry is the permanent personification of the Revolution; it constitutes a sort of society in reverse whose aim is to exercise an occult overlordship upon society as we know it, and whose sole raison d'etre consists of waging war against God and his Church." (De Poncins, Freemasonry and the Vatican , p. 45)De Poncins cites an article that appeared in 1861 in a Parisian Jewish Review La Verite Israelite: "But the spirit of Freemasonry is that of Judaism in its most fundamental beliefs; its ideas are Judaic, its language is Judaic, its very organization, almost, is Judaic... "De Poncins writes that the goal of both Freemasonry and Judaism is the unification of the world under Jewish law. ( Freemasonry and the Vatican , p. 76) CONCLUSION Just as we need healthy food and exercise, our mind and soul needs to be nourished by truth and beauty. We need to see life portrayed honestly, with the real forces identified. Instead, we are deliberately deceived and degraded by a small financial elite with a diabolical plan. White stallions (our souls) are fed a diet of sawdust.Whether it's school or mass media, we are bombarded with propaganda designed to produce alienation and dysfunction. We must protect ourselves from this poison before it is too late.The good news is that modern culture has been exposed as a long-term Illuminati psy-op designed to demoralize us. It will fail. By Henry Makow Ph.D. 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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RALEIGH, N. C. — Roy Cooper, a Democrat, held a lead on Thursday in North Carolina’s bitterly contested race for governor. If it holds, it would be a rare bright spot for his party this week, one that has much to do with Mr. Cooper’s call for repealing a state law limiting transgender bathroom access that has subjected North Carolina to a gale of international criticism, boycotts and cancellations. Yet many here are now predicting that the contentious law, which catalyzed a national debate over lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights, is unlikely to be repealed even if Mr. Cooper becomes governor. On Thursday, State Representative Rodney W. Moore was one of a number of Democratic lawmakers who predicted that Republicans here in the capitol would have little reason to dump the law, commonly known as House Bill 2, or H. B. 2, even if Mr. Cooper were elected. Gov. Pat McCrory, a Republican seeking his second term, has refused to concede until thousands of and provisional ballots are counted by elections boards in each of the state’s 100 counties. That process is set to conclude on Nov. 18. Mr. McCrory was widely criticized for having signed the law. Mr. Moore noted that Donald J. Trump, the Republican won North Carolina by nearly four percentage points in Tuesday’s election. Senator Richard M. Burr, a Republican, cruised to by an even greater margin, in a race against a Democratic challenger, Deborah Ross, that had been billed as one of the nation’s closest. And Republican legislators on Tuesday maintained their supermajorities in the State House and Senate. “They’re going to feel empowered that their agenda is working, so it’s going to be very hard to imagine them taking up H. B. 2 to overturn it or modify it,” Mr. Moore said of Republicans on Thursday. “I don’t see them chomping at the bit or singing kumbaya to change it. ” Republican leaders of the state legislature could not be reached for comment. Mr. Cooper, North Carolina’s attorney general, declared victory early Wednesday morning, when tallies from the state’s 2, 704 precincts showed him leading by just less than 5, 000 votes. For now, the only thing certain about the outcome is that lawyers from both sides will be closely monitoring the county boards as they determine which of the more than 50, 000 provisional ballots should be deemed legitimate. Mr. McCrory’s campaign announced on Wednesday that it was establishing a fund in preparation for an “ongoing legal battle” over the vote tally. “No one knows for sure the outcome of the election, and tens of thousands of ballots remain outstanding and not yet counted,” Jason Torchinsky, the fund’s chief lawyer, said in a statement. Chris LaCivita, the McCrory campaign’s strategist, said in a separate statement that the campaign also had “grave concerns over potential irregularities” regarding 90, 000 votes in Durham County. Still, a number of political observers here said that Mr. Cooper had the better chance of winning. absentee voters traditionally tend to be Republicans, while voters who file provisional ballots tend to be Democrats. And though the exact number of ballots was not yet known, they were expected to be outnumbered by provisional ballots. “I would not be surprised that Cooper keeps the lead, or has some extra cushion built into it” at the conclusion of the process, said J. Michael Bitzer, a political scientist at Catawba College in Salisbury, N. C. If either man is trailing by fewer than 10, 000 votes after Nov. 18, he may demand a recount. Whether Mr. Cooper wins or not, his showing was exceptional, given the shellacking other Democrats received on Tuesday, both in North Carolina and nationally. The outcry over H. B. 2 was widely considered to be one of the main reasons for his success. The law, signed by Mr. McCrory in March, prohibits local governments from passing protections for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, and it requires that people in government buildings use the restrooms that correspond with their gender at birth. Mr. McCrory has argued that the law was necessary to ensure privacy, and others said it would protect innocent people from sexual predators. Gay rights advocates saw the bathroom provision as an attack on transgender people. As part of the backlash against the law, planned job expansions, concerts and major sporting events have been canceled. During the campaign, Mr. Cooper argued that Mr. McCrory had harmed the state’s reputation and economy by signing the bill. It was a message that was embraced even by some Trump supporters, and it was a likely reason Mr. Cooper and Mr. Trump found success in some of the same parts of North Carolina. One was coastal New Hanover County, home to the city of Wilmington. The area has seen a dip in its film industry recently, a likely result of the legislature’s decision not to renew a state tax credit for film, television and commercial production. But there is also a suspicion in Wilmington that Hollywood has grown leery of North Carolina because of H. B. 2. Jason Rosin, a business agent with Local 491 of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, the union representing film workers in Wilmington, said that some of his members were motivated to vote for Mr. Cooper out of concerns about H. B. 2’s effect on the industry — even as they voted for Mr. Trump. “I believe that in the Cooper race, they voted for their economic ” Mr. Rosin said. | 1 |
Man in Freddy Krueger Costume Crashes Halloween Party and Shoots 5 People 10/31/2016
TIME
A man wearing a Freddy Krueger costume opened fire at a Halloween party in Texas on Sunday, injuring five people , police said.
The man, dressed as the villain from the Nightmare on Elm Street horror film series, arrived at the San Antonio house party uninvited and with several other men, KENS 5 reports. Violence erupted about 5 a.m. when partygoers tried kicking out the unwelcome guests. The unidentified man dressed as Freddy Krueger whipped out a gun from his costume and fired, striking four men and one woman, authorities said.
All of the suspects fled, and those injured were taken to the hospital, according to the San Antonio Express-News . Their conditions were unclear Monday.
The incident is under investigation. | 0 |
Western politicians rarely acknowledge the schism between Shia and Sunni Islam. There is nothing remotely comparable to this schism in any other religion in the modern world. [The conflict defines the political structure of the Middle East, from the international rivalry between Iran and Saudi Arabia to the internal politics of Muslim nations. And yet, Western politicians, eager to portray Islam as a “religion of peace,” speak of Muslims as homogenous. At the hard core of political correctness, Islam is treated more like a race than a religion, a monolithic ethnic bloc like “Hispanics” or “Asians. ” Both of those groups are, in turn, diverse populations absurdly squeezed into monoliths for the convenience of political strategists. In truth, there are Shiite Muslims who do not think Sunnis count as Muslim at all, and vice versa. Adherents of the more extreme sects within the Sunni and Shia schools view moderate followers of the same basic tradition as apostates. The Divide, Few Western politicians know the first thing about the rift, which flows from a doctrinal dispute that might seem trivial to modern outsiders. When Mohammed died in the 7th Century, there was a profound disagreement among the early followers of Islam about who should succeed him as leader. The heart of the conflict is that the Sunnis thought the new leader or “caliph” should be elected and chose Mohammed’s close friend Abu Bakr. The leader of the Islamic State, who styles himself as “caliph” or ruler of all true Muslims, calls himself “Abu Bakr ” in homage to the first caliph. His real name is Ibrahim Awwad Ibrahim . The dissident group we now know as Shiites insisted that only a blood relative of Mohammed was fit to lead, rallying behind Ali bin Abu Talib, who was both Mohammed’s cousin and . Ali actually took a turn as caliph after Abu Bakr died, so it would be more precise to say the enduring rift within Islam was caused by Ali’s assumption of leadership and the argument over his successor. A great deal of tribal politics swirled around this conflict, making it more complex than any brief summary could capture. Among other factors, there was Islam’s development into a warrior religion, leading to clan rivalries and vicious arguments over plunder. Personal loyalties to Ali or his rivals played a role as well. But this is a religious schism, not a matter of stimulating debate between historians. Shiites believe stealing leadership away from the lineal descendants of Mohammed was apostasy, a sin against the true faith. Ali was assassinated, stabbed in the forehead with a poison sword while praying. Modern Shiites still make a pilgrimage to the mosque where they believe he died and is entombed, located in what is now Iraq. The city where it is located, Najaf, has been the scene of much sectarian bloodshed. The Sunni government of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein enraged a generation of Shiites by abusing the Imam Ali mosque. Ali did not win the title of “caliph” in an election, either. Abu Bakr only reigned for a few years before he died. Ali got the job after Abu Bakr’s second successor, Caliph Uthman, was killed by his own troops in the Muslim holy city of Medina. One reason the divide is so bitter is that Sunnis of the time were furious at Ali for accepting the title of caliph instead of punishing Uthman’s killers. Followers of Uthman thought Ali committed acts of blasphemy and arrogance against true Islam, and Ali’s followers felt the same way about the Sunni elite. A major point of contention was, and remains, whether Ali swore and broke a binding oath of loyalty to the Sunni hierarchy and the caliphs that came before him. This is not a minor dispute over the life and times of a historical personage, but a profound question of religious legitimacy. Iran still believes its theocracy has rightful authority over Islam under the Shiite model of descent from Mohammed, for example. One of the candidates in the recent Iranian presidential election, cleric Ebrahim Raisi, wears a black turban to signify he is a sayed, a descendant of Mohammed. Raisi choose green as his campaign color because he wanted to take the color back from the secular “Green Movement” demonstrators and restore its “real meaning” as the color of “the revolutionary grandsons of the Prophet. ” Those grandsons attempted a revolution against the early Sunni caliphs. They did not die of old age. Sunni and Shia share many essential beliefs, but even their shared beliefs can be sources of tension. Both Sunnis and Shiites make pilgrimages to the holy cities in Saudi Arabia. Iran frequently castigates the Sunni Saudis over their management of the hajj pilgrimage, alleging discrimination against Shiites along with poor event management. The Saudis supply plenty of poor event management to complain about. The royal family of Jordan is seen by some analysts as key to bridging the divide, because the Hashemite ruling dynasty of Sunni Jordan claims direct descent from Mohammed’s family, satisfying the Shiite criteria for authentic leadership of Islam. Unfortunately, this also means the Jordanian regime gets to enjoy the violent hatred of both Sunni and Shiite extremists. The Sunni Islamic State infamously burned a captured Jordanian pilot alive in a cage and spread the image across the Internet as one of its favorite propaganda videos. Jordanian officials have nevertheless said they regard the Islamic Republic of Iran as a greater threat to their security than ISIS or other Sunni extremists. Minorities, Syria’s dictator, Bashar Assad, is a member of the small Alawite subsect of Shia Islam. Alawites only make up about ten percent of Syria’s population, but the Assad regime, under both Bashar and his father Hafez, consolidated power by appointing Alawites to high government positions. The vast majority of the Syrian population is not Alawite, or even Shiite, but Sunni. Bashar Assad frequently responds to criticism of his brutality by pointing to his history of protecting Syrian religious minorities, including Christians, and noting he belongs to a minority himself. What is the difference between an Alawite and a Shiite? There are many minor differences in custom and tradition, but the major difference concerns Imam Ali. Recall that Shiites revere Ali as the rightful leader of Islam who should have succeeded Mohammed, and was divinely martyred in death, while Sunnis regard him as a traitor. The Alawites believe he was God incarnate. Some Sunni religious leaders consider them “worse infidels than Christians and Jews,” as one prominent cleric of the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood put it in 2013 when calling for a Sunni jihad against them. Another branch of Islam that often suffers discrimination and violence from other Muslims is the Sufi sect. The Sufis are neither Sunni nor Shiite — or they might say they are both, since both Sunni and Shiite Islam have Sufi chapters. This makes them an abused minority in both Shiite nations like Iran and Sunni countries like Egypt. Sufism is more defined by its approach than specific doctrines, unlike the way Sunni and Shia or Shia and Alawite are distinguished. Modern Sufi have a reputation for gentleness and moderation, although they were a formidable military force in the past. The famed “whirling dervish” swordsmen of antiquity were a Sufi invention. Dervishes still whirl, but now the practice is seen as performance art or a form of moving meditation, like tai chi. Sufi are generally less interested in strict interpretations of the Koran and Islamic sharia law, which makes them despised by hardcore Islamist sects. They are sometimes accused of diluting pure Islam with mystical or serving as agents for Western powers, seeking to subvert and “tame” true Islam as part of a Western imperialist agenda. None of these branches of Islam are themselves homogeneous. There are dozens of different Sufi orders, for instance. Some of them are militant or political in nature, contrary to the general impression of Sufis as peaceable mystics. Sunni Minorities, A school of Sunni Islam that has become increasingly important to American and European politics is Hizmet, a highly organized group founded and led by an imam named Fethullah Gulen. The government of Turkey sees Hizmet as far too organized, prosecuting it (literally) as a vast criminal conspiracy that attempted to overthrow President Recep Tayyip Erdogan last year. The Turkish government refers to Hizmet as “FETO,” an acronym for “Fethullah Terrorist Organization. ” Turkey’s diplomatic relations with both Europe and the United States have been rocked by its pursuit of Hizmet and Gulen, who lives in Pennsylvania. Sunni Islam also includes a movement known as the Salafi, the Islamic fundamentalists. Salafists believe Mohammed, and to a lesser extent his first two generations of descendants, were perfect human beings who should be emulated in every way, including dress and personal hygiene. Salafism includes its own, even more primitive and regressive including the Wahabbi Islam promoted by Saudi Arabia and the Islamic State’s apocalyptic belief system. “Primitive” is not a pejorative term — Wahabbi Muslims literally embrace the primitive lifestyle of the 7th Century, when Mohammed lived. Their hostility to modernity is one of their defining attributes. Another is their hostility to all other variations of Islam, most definitely including Shiites. The rapid spread of Salafist beliefs through overt and covert networks — Salafist madrassas, and agents of influence sent to infiltrate more moderate Islamic schools — is one of the major security concerns of our age, for those analysts and officers who have not been intimidated out of discussing it. Islam and the West, That brings us back to the problem of sterilizing Islam by treating it as homogenous. The Sunni Muslim Brotherhood has been considered for designation as a terrorist organization by the U. S. government, but its defenders say not even the Brotherhood is a single entity. They insist it has many chapters, many of which cannot be fairly regarded as extremists or terrorists. To be sure, not all Muslims feel any of this doctrinal animosity. It would be a fool’s game to say “most do” or “most don’t,” given the size of the global Muslim population, the differences between Muslims of different nationalities and ethnic backgrounds, and the effects of emigration and assimilation. In his speech in Saudi Arabia, President Trump observed that Muslims are often the victims of Islamic terrorism: In sheer numbers, the deadliest toll has been exacted on the innocent people of Arab, Muslim and Middle Eastern nations. They have borne the brunt of the killings and the worst of the destruction in this wave of fanatical violence. Some estimates hold that more than 95 percent of the victims of terrorism are themselves Muslim. This is true, but also an incomplete picture of the problem. Muslims abuse and kill each other over doctrinal conflicts on a horrifying scale. Most of that violence and oppression is not “terrorism. ” It comes from military conflicts and government crackdowns on religious minorities. Sectarian strife is one of the reasons why so many Syrian rebel groups viewed favorably by the West are willing to ally with and other terrorist organizations. In Iraq, there are Sunnis living in territory captured by ISIS that openly welcomed their ghastly conquerors, or were at least reluctant to work with the Iraqi government, because they distrusted the Iraqi government, and were terrified of the Shiite militias operating in the region. In Bahrain, the government is under fire for suppressing the Shiite majority in its population, with five dead in a recent police raid against a Shiite community. The Bahraini monarchy, in turn, credibly accuses Iran of seeking to destabilize the country by exacerbating tensions. Bahrain’s Sunnis fear they would be brutalized on an epic scale if Shiites overthrow the government. This all becomes America’s problem because our national interests in the Middle East are tangled inexorably with the schism. Bahrain, for example, is the strategically vital home to the U. S. 5th Fleet. Shiites resent America for supporting the Sunni monarchy. American military planners are understandably nervous about the prospect of renting a base for the 5th Fleet from a Bahrain that would be a Shiite satellite of Iran, to say nothing of the cascade effect such a religious war would have on other Sunni allies in the region. | 1 |
WASHINGTON — The speech was written, the rollout strategy was set. And then President Trump began talking and the plan went out the window. Unless that was the plan all along. When Mr. Trump sat down with television anchors at the White House for an lunch on Tuesday, he was supposed to preview his first address to Congress. Instead, he suddenly opened the door to an immigration bill that would potentially let millions of undocumented immigrants stay in the country legally. Such legislation from the “build the wall” president would roil politics in the capital, and Mr. Trump told the anchors that nothing like that was actually in the speech as it was then drafted. But he turned to aides and suggested that maybe they should include it. After the lunch was over, aides rushed off to alert their colleagues, including Stephen K. Bannon and Stephen Miller, the architects of the president’s immigration crackdown. Once again, the unlikeliest of presidents had torn up the script and thrown his young administration into upheaval. Once again, Washington was left trying to fathom what his strategy was. Was it mad genius, an improvisational leader proposing a move to overhaul immigration after making a point of deporting “bad hombres”? Or was it simply madness, an undisciplined political amateur unable to resist telling guests what he thinks they want to hear even at the expense of his own political base? In the end, he did not include it in the speech. And yet, rising to the occasion, Mr. Trump on Tuesday night sounded as presidential as he ever has since taking office. He invoked Abraham Lincoln and Dwight D. Eisenhower, heralded Black History Month, condemned vandalism, celebrated American entrepreneurs like Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Edison, and promised a “renewal of the American spirit. ” He followed the written text on the teleprompters more closely than any major speech of his presidency. Still, the paradox remained. He called for working “past the differences of party,” just hours after he called Representative Nancy Pelosi, the House Democratic leader from California, “incompetent. ” He declared that “the time for trivial fights is behind us” just weeks after engaging in a public Twitter war with Arnold Schwarzenegger over the ratings for “Celebrity Apprentice. ” And then there was that immigration trial balloon. If nothing else, Donald Trump the showman kept the attention right where he wanted it — squarely on himself. By the time he took the rostrum in the House chamber on Tuesday night for the functional equivalent of a State of the Union address, he had generated considerable suspense around what he would actually say and how it would be received. He boasted of deporting “gang members, drug dealers and criminals,” saying that “bad ones are going out as I speak. ” He introduced guests in the first lady’s box whose families had suffered at the hands of criminals in the country illegally. But he talked about “reforming our system of legal immigration,” saying as he has before that the United States should base its admission of foreigners on merit. “I believe that real and positive immigration reform is possible as long as we focus on the following goals,” he added, “to improve jobs and wages for Americans, to strengthen our nation’s security and to restore respect for our laws. ” Whether this was all an intentional distraction remained unclear by the time he wrapped up and headed back down Pennsylvania Avenue. This is, after all, a White House that revels in what its current occupants refer to as the “head fake,” where the president gives the impression of moving one way when he is really moving in a completely different direction, even diverting attention from one controversy by creating another. That leaves allies and adversaries alike scratching their heads about what Mr. Trump really believes. In private discussions since the inauguration, a mystified Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican majority leader from Kentucky, has said that Mr. Trump appears uncertain of precisely where he stands on a number of critical issues. Thus, aides, activists, lobbyists and lawmakers search for ways to influence a malleable president, who sometimes plays along with his team’s desire to confuse and distract, but who is also prone to spouting out ideas depending on his audience. Mr. Trump’s advisers have said privately that they wanted this opening speech to Congress to be more optimistic than the address he delivered at his inauguration in January, an jeremiad against what he called “American carnage” and the establishment he blamed for it. Mr. Trump’s daughter Ivanka Trump has privately expressed concern about the harsh tone of some of her father’s rhetoric over many months. No president in modern times had shown up for his first speech to Congress with approval ratings so low — just 42 percent in the latest Gallup poll. His 40 days of careening from one crisis to another, many of them had sowed deep doubts about his leadership not only among Democrats and independents but even among many Republicans. His challenge for this address was to move beyond these moments and establish himself as a president. Immigration has been one area where he was evidently still trying to calibrate. After all, Mr. Trump was not always so strident on the issue. After the 2012 election, he denounced Mitt Romney for supporting what he called “” calling it “a crazy policy” that cost Mr. Romney the Hispanic vote. The Democrats, he said then, did not have a policy “but what they did have going for them is they weren’t meanspirited about it. ” The session with the television anchors started out as a nod to tradition by a president who has broken so many. Like his predecessors on the day of a State of the Union address, Mr. Trump hosted the journalists for what was supposed to be an unrecorded lunch to give them a sense of what he would tell Congress. But the conversation took a surprising turn when some of the anchors asked about his efforts to deport many of the estimated 11 million immigrants in the country illegally. Without being prompted, Mr. Trump then raised the idea of legislation, noting that there had not been any comprehensive law passed by Congress on the subject since Ronald Reagan’s amnesty program in the 1980s. He told the anchors it was time for a bill that would grant legal status to many of those in the country illegally as long as both sides compromised, similar to the legislation sought but never passed by George W. Bush and Barack Obama. Mr. Trump said he recognized that it would cause him political problems with his conservative base voters, according to people in the room, but added that he thought he could keep them happy since they had stuck with him throughout last year’s Republican primaries. When Mr. Trump offered the idea, he let the word “compromise” hang in the air, gauging the reaction. He then turned to Hope Hicks, his director of strategic communications, and suggested that the thought could be added to his speech. As Mr. Trump’s words settled over the State Dining Room, the president’s aides glanced at one another. They moved quickly to alert Mr. Bannon and Mr. Miller, two of the main keepers of Mr. Trump’s address before Congress. That the proposal did not ultimately make it into the speech may speak to the influence of Mr. Bannon’s wing. But the town was confused and off balance, just the way Mr. Trump likes it. | 1 |
Administrators at Michigan State University have introduced a policy which will prevent students from hanging white boards outside of their dorm rooms in an effort to prevent racist messages from appearing on dormitory walls. [The new policy, which will go into effect in Fall 2017, will prevent students from putting up white boards outside of their dorm rooms in an effort to curb issues with bullying on campus. “In any given month, there are several incidents like this. There was no one incident that was the straw that broke the camel’s back,” said Kat Cooper, director of University Residential Services Communications. “Sometimes these things are racial, sometimes they’re sexual in nature. There are all sorts of things that happen. ” Cooper argued that the increasing amount of inappropriate messages written on white boards was enough for the school to rethink their policy on their usage in dormitory hallways. “Their utility as a communication tool no longer outweighed the attractive nuisance that they are,” Kat Cooper said. Other students aren’t thrilled about the new policy. Michigan State sophomore Brad Kain claimed that it is unfair to the students who “use them on their doors” as a way to “brighten up people’s day. ” “We’re all adults,” Kain said. “I think they should find another way of handling the problem,” Johnson said. | 0 |
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On Saturday, during a ceremony welcoming 17 new cardinals into the Roman Catholic Church, Pope Francis warned attendees about the divisiveness that he feels is spreading throughout the church. The Associated Press reports that Pope Francis cautioned against the “virus of polarization,” telling the new group of cardinals, “we are not immune from this.”
During his speech, Pope Francis specifically issued a warning about “our pitiful hearts that tend to judge, divide, oppose, and condemn” and those who “raise walls, build barriers, and label people.” He also encouraged those in attendance to not be so quick to deem those who are different from them an enemy or a threat.
‘We see, for example, how quickly those among us with the status of the stranger, an immigrant, or a refugee, become a threat, take on the status of an enemy. An enemy because they come from a distant country, or have different customs.
‘The virus of polarization and animosity permeates our way of thinking, feeling and acting.’
Pope Francis never called out Donald Trump by name; however, it seems to be more than a mere coincidence that he delivered a speech about accepting immigrants shortly after the United States electorate chose as their leader for the next four years a man who has proposed mass deportation and the construction of a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border.
This is not the first time that the Pope has spoken out against Donald Trump and his campaign promises, either. In February of this year, when asked about Trump’s proposed border wall, he said , “a person who only thinks about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not Christian.”
At least one of the newly appointed cardinals has views similar to Pope Francis’s when it comes to immigration. Indianapolis Archbishop Joseph Tobin, who was in the news recently for helping to resettle Syrian refugees despite now vice president-elect Mike Pence’s best efforts to block aid to and limit the number of Syrian refugees in Indiana.
Tobin recently addressed Trump’s victory, saying that, under him, the priority of settling immigrants and refugees “is going to be challenging.” He added, though, that he believes “the ethical reflection of a nation isn’t reduced to the government” and said that he has “a lot of faith in the American people.”
Watch a clip from today’s ceremony, which includes Pope Francis’s remarks, below, via YouTube :
Featured image via Franco Origlia/Getty Images Share this Article! | 0 |
Pres. Trump would “100%” be willing to say under oath that he didn’t ask Comey to let Flynn investigation ”go” didn’t say “I need loyalty.” pic. twitter. During his joint press conference with Romanian President Klaus Iohannis, President Donald Trump said he would be “100 percent” be willing to testify under oath about his conversations with former FBI Director James Comey. Partial transcript as follows: ABC’s JON KARL: I want to get back to James Comey’s testimony. You suggested he didn’t tell the truth in everything he said. He did say under oath that you told him to let the Flynn — you said you hoped you could let the Flynn investigation go. TRUMP: I didn’t say that. KARL: So he lied about that? TRUMP: Well, I didn’t say that. I will tell you. I didn’t say that. KARL: And did you ask you to pledge loyalty? TRUMP: And there would be nothing wrong if I did say it read today but I did not say that. KARL: And did he ask you for a pledge of loyalty from you? TRUMP: No, he did not. KARL: So he said those things under oath. Would you be willing to speak under oath and give your version of those events? TRUMP: 100%. I hardly know the man. I’m not going to say I want you to pledge allegiance. What would do that? Who would ask a man to pledge allegiance under oath? Think of that. I hardly know the man. It doesn’t make sense. No, I didn’t say that, and I didn’t say the other. Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN | 0 |
Dear Friends, in the article below The Saker explains how Vladimir Putin wrest the sovereignty of Russia away from the Anglo-Zionist Empire. He hopes that Donald Trump can rescue America. His article is republished with his permission.
Can Trump Save America Like Putin Saved Russia?
The Saker
October 22, 2016
A crisis faces America:
Option one: Hillary wins. That’s Obama on steroids, only worse. Remember that Obama himself was Dubya, only worse. Of course, Dubya was just Clinton, only worse. Now the circle is closed. Back to Clinton. Except this time around, we have a woman who is deeply insecure, who failed at every single thing that she every tried to do, and who now has a 3 decades long record of disasters and failures. Even when she had no authority to start a war, she started one (told Bill to bomb the Serbs). Now she might have that authority. And she had to stand there, in front of millions of people, and hear Trump tell her “Putin outsmarted you at every step of the way.” Did you see her frozen face when he said that? Trump is right, Putin did outsmart her and Obama at every step. The problem is that now, after having a President with an inferiority complex towards Putin (Obama) we will have a President with the very same inferiority complex and a morbid determination to impose a no-fly zone over Russian forces in Syria. Looking at Hillary, with her ugly short hair and ridiculous pants, I thought to myself “this is a woman who is trying hard to prove that she is every bit as tough and any man” – except of course that she ain’t. Her record also shows her as being weak, cowardly and with a sense of total impunity. And now, that evil messianic lunatic (http://thesaker.is/the-messianic-lunatic-in-her-own-words/) with a deep-seated inferiority complex might become Commander in Chief?! God help us all!
Option two: Trump wins. Problem: he will be completely alone. The Neocons have a total, repeat total, control of the Congress, the media, banking and finance, and the courts. From Clinton to Clinton they have deeply infiltrated the Pentagon, Foggy Bottom, and the three letter agencies. The Fed is their stronghold. How in the world will Trump deal with these rabid “ crazies in the basement”? http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_donald_a_080423_leo_strauss_and_the_.htm
Consider the vicious hate campaign which all these “personalities” (from actors, to politicians to reporters) have unleashed against Trump – they have burned their bridges, they know that they will lose it all if Trump wins (and, if he proves to be an easy pushover his election will make no difference anyway). The Neocons have nothing to lose and they will fight to the very last one. What could Trump possibly do to get anything done if he is surrounded by Neocons and their agents of influence? Bring in an entirely different team? How is he going to vet them? His first choice was to take Pence as a VP – a disaster (he is already sabotaging Trump on Syria and the elections outcome). I *dread* to hear whom Trump will appoint as a White House Chief of Staff as I am afraid that just to appease the Neocons he will appoint some new version of the infamous Rahm Emanuel… And should Trump prove that he has both principles and courage, the Neocons can always “Dallas” him and replace him with Pence. Et voilà!
I see only one way out:
How Putin Rescued Russia When Putin came to power he inherited a Kremlin every bit as corrupt and traitor-infested as the White House nowadays. As for Russia, she was in pretty much the same sorry shape as the Independent Nazi-run Ukraine. Russia was also run by bankers and AngloZionist puppets and most Russians led miserable lives. The big difference is that, unlike what is happening with Trump, the Russian version of the US Neocons never saw the danger coming from Putin. He was selected by the ruling elites as the representative of the security services to serve along a representative of the big corporate money, Medvedev. This was a compromise solution between the only two parts of the Russian society which were still functioning, the security services and oil/gas money. Putin looked like a petty bureaucrat in an ill fitting suit, a shy and somewhat awkward little guy who would present no threat to the powerful oligarchs of the the Seven Bankers running Russia ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semibankirschina ). Except that he turned out to be one of the most formidable rulers in Russia history. Here is what Putin did as soon as he came to power:
First, he re-established the credibility of the Kremlin with the armed forces and security services by rapidly and effectively crushing the Wahabi insurgency in Chechnia. This established his personal credibility with the people he would have to rely on to deal with the oligarchs.
Second, he used the fact that everybody, every single businessman and corporation in Russia, did more or less break the law during the 1990s, if only because there really was no law. Instead of cracking down on the likes of Berezovski or Khodorkovski for their political activities, he crushed them with (absolutely true) charges of corruption. Crucially, he did that very publicly, sending a clear message to the other arch-enemy: the media.
Third, contrary to the hallucinations of the western human rights agencies and Russian liberals, Putin never directly suppressed any dissent, or cracked down on the media or, even less so, ordered the murder of anybody. He did something much smarter. Remember that modern journalists are first and foremost presstitutes, right? By mercilessly cracking down on the oligarchs Putin deprived the presstitutes of their source of income and political support. Some emigrated to the Ukraine, others simply resigned, and a few were left like on a reservation or a zoo on a few very clearly identifiable media outlets such as Dozhd TV, Ekho Moskvy Radio or the newspaper Kommersant. Those who emigrated became irrelevant, as for those who stayed in the “liberal zoo” – they were harmless as they had no credibility left. Crucially, everybody else “got the message”. After that, all it took is the appointment a few real patriots (such as Dmitri Kiselev, Margarita Simonian and others) in key positions and everybody quickly understood that the winds of fortune had now turned.
Fourth, once the main media outlets were returned back to sanity it did not take too long for the “liberal” (in the Russian sense, meaning pro-USA) parties to enter into a death-spiral from which they have never recovered. That, in turn, resulted in the ejection of all “liberals” from the Duma which now has only 4 parties, all of them more or less “patriotic”. That’s the part of Putin’s strategy that worked.
So far, Putin has failed to eject the 5th columnists, whom I call the “Atlantic Integrationists” (see http://thesaker.is/putins-biggest-failure/ ) from the government itself. What is certain is that Putin has not tackled the 5th columnists in the banking/finance sector and that the latter are being very careful not to give him a pretext to take action against them.
Russia and the USA are very different countries, and no recipe can be simply copied from one to another. Still, there are valuable lessons from the “Putin model” for Trump, not the least of which that his most formidable enemies probably are sitting in the Fed and in the banks that control the Fed. What is sure is that for the time being the image of the USA will continue to be that of homeless veterans abandoned by the US government wrapping themselves in the American flag and asking for coins in a cup.
Hillary thinks that Ameria’s wars are a stunning success. Trump thinks that they are a disgrace. I submit that the choice between these two is really very simple.
To those who are saying that there cannot be a schism in the AngloZionist elites, I reply that the example of the conspiracy to prevent Dominique Strauss-Kahn from becoming the next French president ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_v._Strauss-Kahn ) shows that, just like hyenas, AngloZionist leaders do sometimes turn on each other. That happens in all regimes, regardless of their political ideology (think SS against SA in Nazi Germany or Trotskists against Stalinists in Boshevik USSR).
An Iron Broom Leon Trotsky used to say the Soviet Russia needed to be cleansed from anarchists and noblemen with an “iron broom”. He even wrote an article in the Pravda entitled “We need an iron broom”. Another genocidal manic, Felix Derzhinskii, founder of the notorious ChK secret police, used to say that a secret police officer must have a “burning heart, a cool head and clean hands”. One would seek weakness, or even compassion, in vain from folks like these. These are ideology-driven “true believers”, sociopaths with no sense of empathy, profoundly evil people with a genocidal hatred of anybody standing in their way.
Hillary Clinton and her gang of Neocons are the spiritual (and sometimes even physical) successors of the Soviet Bolsheviks and they, just like their Bolshevik forefathers, will not hesitate for a second to crush their enemies. Donald Trump – assuming he is for real and actually means what he says – has to understand that and do what Putin did: strike first and strike hard.
Stalin, by the way, also did exactly that, and the Trotskyists were crushed.
I think that the jury is still out on whether Putin will succeed in finally removing the 5th columnists from power. What is sure is that Russia is at least semi-free from the control of the Anglo-Zionists and that the US is their last bastion right now. Their maniacal hatred of Trump can in part be explained by the sense of danger these folks feel, being threatened for the first time in what they see as their homeland (I don’t mean that in a patriotic sense – but rather like a parasite’s care for “his” host). And maybe they have some good reason to fear. I sure hope that they do.
I am rather encouraged by the way Trump handled the latest attempt to make him cower in fear. Yesterday Trump dared to declare that since the election might be rigged or stolen he does not pledge to recognize the outcome. And even though every semi-literate person knows that elections in the USA have been rigged and stolen in the past, including Presidential ones, by saying that Trump committed a major case of crimethink. The Ziomedia pounced on him with self-righteous outrage and put immense pressure on him to retract his statement. Instead of rolling over and recanting his “crime”, Trump replied that he will respect the election results if he wins.
Beautiful no? Let’s hope he continues to show the same courage.
Trump is doing now what Jean-Marie Le Pen did in France: he is showing the Neocons that be that he dares to openly defy them, that he refuses to play by their rules, that their outrage has no effect on him and that they don’t get to censor or, even less so, silence him. That is also what he did when, yet again, he refused to accuse the Russians of cyber-attacks and, instead, repeated that it would be a good thing for Russia and the USA to be friends. Again, I am not sure that how long he will be able to hold that line, but for the time being there is no denying that he is openly defying the AngloZionist deep state and Empire.
Conclusion: The United States are about to enter what might possibly be the deepest and most dangerous crisis of their history. If Trump is elected, he will have to immediately launch a well-planned attack against his opponents without giving them any pretext to accuse him of politically motivated repressions. In Russia, Putin could count on the support of the military and the security services. I don’t know whom Trump can count on, but I am fairly confident that there are still true patriots in the US armed forces. If Trump gets the right person to head the FBI, he might also use that agency to clean house and deliver a steady streams of indictments for corruption, conspiracy to (fill the blank), abuse of authority, obstruction of justice and dereliction of duty, etc. Since such crimes are widespread in the current circles of power, they are also easy to prove, and cracking down on corruption would get Trump a standing ovation from the American people. Next, just as Putin did in Russia, Trump will have to deal with the media. How exactly, I don’t know. But he will have to face this beast and defeat it. At every step in this process he will have to get the proactive support of the people, just like Putin does.
Can Trump do it? I don’t know. I would argue that to overthrow the deep state and restore the power of the people is even harder in the USA than it was in Russia. I have always believed that the AngloZionist Empire will have to be brought down from the outside, most probably by a combination of military and economic defeats. I still believe that. However, I might be wrong – in fact, I hope that I am – and maybe Trump will be the guy to bring down the Empire in order to save the United States. If there is such a possibility, however slim, I think that we have to believe in it and act on it as all the alternatives are far worse. Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. Roberts' latest books are The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West , How America Was Lost , and The Neoconservative Threat to World Order . Newsletter Notifications Signup Form | 1 |
All true, except... We see outrageous things printed and sworn to that are indeed outright lies. That's propaganda and we've had plenty. Being held accountable about allegations would certainly help eliminate a lot of it.
We need and we seek the truth. Influence peddlers pay out lots of cash to trolls from the top down. Do you give one ounce of credibility to the main stream media anymore? What if they had to research and prove all the things they allege and have to eat their headlines if untrue? See, that's what missing, an honest 4th Estate. Our news is owned by influence peddlers and they should be held liable. | 0 |
Here are highlights from Judge Neil M. Gorsuch’s third day at his Senate confirmation hearings: ■ Senator Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat, asked Judge Gorsuch why, when he was a Bush administration Justice Department official in 2005, he had scribbled “yes” on a document beside a question about whether C. I. A. torture of terrorism suspects had yielded valuable intelligence. He said was merely acting as a lawyer. ■ Senator Patrick J. Leahy, a Democrat, pushed Judge Gorsuch to say whether a president has constitutional powers to lawfully override torture and wiretap statutes. Judge Gorsuch said he would approach such a case using analysis set out when President Harry S. Truman tried to seize steel mills. ■ Mr. Leahy also pressed Judge Gorsuch to say whether he would recuse himself from Supreme Court cases involving the Colorado billionaire Philip Anschutz, who was a former client and helped get him appointed to the appeals court. Judge Gorsuch did not answer directly. ■ The nominee would not discuss whether President Trump’s business dealings with foreign governments might run afoul of the Emoluments Clause, an obscure constitutional provision that the judge said “has sat in a rather dusty corner” until recently. ■ Judge Gorsuch defended his originalist judicial philosophy, assuring skeptics that “no one is looking to return us to the days. ” ■ When asked about his views on cameras recording Supreme Court proceedings, Judge Gorsuch would say only that he would keep an open mind. ■ The energy level in the hearing room in the Hart Senate Office Building was noticeably diminished from the previous two days. There was a clear sense that the proceedings were winding down. ■ Byron White’s Supreme Court hearing took only 90 minutes. Judge Gorsuch’s is in its third day. Here are some highlights so far: Senator Feinstein of California, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, pressed Judge Gorsuch about a document from his time as a senior Justice Department official in . It was a set of questions about the C. I. A. program, including: “Have the aggressive interrogation techniques employed by the administration yielded any valuable intelligence? Have they ever stopped a terrorist incident? Examples?” In the margin next to this, Judge Gorsuch had scribbled, “Yes. ” Ms. Feinstein, who was the chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee when it conducted an investigation into the torture program that concluded otherwise — asked Judge Gorsuch what information he had received that led him to write “yes. ” He replied: “My recollection of 12 years ago is that that was the position that the clients were telling us. I was a lawyer. My job was as an advocate, and we were dealing with detainee litigation. That was my job. ” Senator Leahy, of Vermont, also returned to the question of whether Judge Gorsuch believed in the Bush administration’s theory that the president, as could override torture and surveillance laws. Asked about that on Tuesday, Judge Gorsuch had repeatedly said the president was not “above the law. ” Mr. Leahy pointed out that Mr. Bush’s legal team did not argue that he was “above the law,” but rather that “the law” meant the Constitution gave presidents inherent authority to lawfully bypass such statutes. The senator pressed Judge Gorsuch to be more specific. He replied that “presidents make all sorts of arguments about inherent authority — they do — and that is why we have courts, to decide. ” Mr. Leahy followed up, asking whether Judge Gorsuch could think of a case in which a court decided that a president could override a statute. Judge Gorsuch said he could not think of one, and Mr. Leahy agreed. This was almost certainly the first confirmation hearing to feature questions on the Constitution’s Emoluments Clause, which may bar President Trump’s businesses from doing business with companies controlled by foreign governments. The clause says that “no person holding any office of profit or trust” shall “accept of any present, emolument, office or title, of any kind whatever, from any king, prince or foreign state” unless Congress consents. The word emolument means compensation for labor or services. Asked about the clause by Senator Leahy, Judge Gorsuch said “the Emoluments Clause has sat in a rather dusty corner” and “is not a clause that has attracted a lot of attention until recently. ” But Judge Gorsuch would say no more given what he said was at least potential litigation on the subject. Lawsuits have been filed against President Trump, claiming he has violated the clause. “I have to be very careful about expressing any views,” Judge Gorsuch said. Senator Leahy also asked Judge Gorsuch to say whether he would continue on the Supreme Court to recuse himself from cases involving the Colorado billionaire Philip Anschutz, with whom he has various ties. Among those ties: Mr. Anschutz was Judge Gorsuch’s former client and in 2006, he successfully lobbied the Bush White House to appoint Mr. Gorsuch to the appeals court. Mr. Leahy noted that Judge Gorsuch had left the door open to changing his appeals court practice and participating in cases involving Mr. Anschutz’s interests on the Supreme Court. Judge Gorsuch did not answer directly, saying he would study the law and the practices of his colleagues and the facts before making a decision. But Mr. Leahy pointed out that the law was the same for both appeals court judges and Supreme Court justices, except that justices’ decisions not to recuse themselves cannot be appealed to anyone. There is scant precedent about how justices have interpreted whether cases involving former clients raise an actual or apparent conflict of interest because few modern justices had extensive backgrounds in private practice. But Justice Clarence Thomas, who worked as counsel for Monsanto from 1977 to 1979, has participated in cases involving that company. Judge Gorsuch echoed earlier Republican Supreme Court nominees when he said American courts should not look to foreign and international law in interpreting the Constitution. “As a general matter I’d say it’s improper to look abroad when interpreting our Constitution,” Judge Gorsuch said. In his 2005 confirmation hearing, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said something similar. “Foreign law, you can find anything you want,” Chief Justice Roberts said. “Looking at foreign law for support is like looking out over a crowd and picking out your friends. ” But the Supreme Court has consulted foreign sources in cases on gay rights and the death penalty, and its more liberal justices say it is proper to take account of wisdom from abroad. “Foreign opinions are not authoritative they set no binding precedent for the U. S. judge,” Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said in a 2006 address to the Constitutional Court of South Africa. “But they can add to the story of knowledge relevant to the solution of trying questions. ” Judge Gorsuch said foreign courts do consider American law. “Everybody else looks to us,” he said. Democrats have struggled to find an attack line that sticks against Judge Gorsuch. But they appeared to sense a potential opening outside the hearing room: a Supreme Court decision on Wednesday that lawmakers sought to frame as a rebuke of the nominee. Not long after he started his testimony on Wednesday, Judge Gorsuch defended an opinion he had written that ruled against an autistic student whose parents had sought reimbursement for his education under a federal law, the Individuals with Disability Education Act. Judge Gorsuch said he had merely applied a standard set out in a Supreme Court decision as interpreted by an earlier decision of his court, the United States Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit in Denver. At about the same time Wednesday, the Supreme Court handed down a unanimous decision saying the 10th Circuit had been wrong. All that was required from public school systems, the 10th Circuit had said, was a “more than de minimis” benefit. Writing for the Supreme Court, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. disagreed. “When all is said and done, a student offered an educational program providing ‘merely more than de minimis’ progress from year to year can hardly be said to have been offered an education at all. ” Asked about the Supreme Court decision later on Wednesday, Judge Gorsuch said he had been bound by precedents from the Supreme Court and from the 10th Circuit in the opinion he had written. Still, Democrats quickly pounced. “President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, Judge Neil Gorsuch, was unanimously rebuked today by the Supreme Court,” said Senator Chuck Schumer of New York and the Democrats’ leader. He also said the case reinforced “a continued, troubling pattern of Judge Gorsuch deciding against everyday Americans — even children who require special assistance at school. Fortunately, in this case, every single justice on the court agreed that Judge Gorsuch was wrong. ” Republican aides, for perhaps the first time all week, appeared on the defensive, sending out talking points that Judge Gorsuch was not on the panel in the case and did not invent the relevant legal test. He was merely adhering to binding precedent, they said. It has been the custom of Supreme Court nominees to endorse video coverage of arguments in the court during their confirmation hearings — only to retreat later on. Judge Gorsuch would not even go that far. Senator Charles E. Grassley, the Iowa Republican who heads the Senate Judiciary Committee, asked Judge Gorsuch on Wednesday morning to keep an open mind on the topic. The judge agreed to do that much. On Tuesday, Judge Gorsuch said cameras in the courtroom were “not a question that I confess I’ve given a great deal of thought to,” adding that, “I’ve experienced more cameras in the last few weeks than I have in my whole lifetime by a long, long way. ” The last two successful Supreme Court nominees, Justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor, endorsed camera coverage at their hearings. “I have had positive experiences with cameras,” Justice Sotomayor said in 2009. In 2010, Justice Kagan said video coverage “would be a great thing for the institution, and more important, I think it would be a great thing for the American people. ” After joining the court, the two justices started expressing doubts about the value of letting citizens see their government at work. | 1 |
We have compiled a huge list of voter fraud incidents which were caught in the early voting process, all of it done by Hillary Clinton’s supporters against Republican candidate Donald Trump.
So far there hasn’t been a single case where Republicans were caught doing voter fraud for Donald Trump.
Remember the following list is a compilation of CAUGHT cases. Imagine how many more there might be out there uncaught.
NEVADA
– CAUGHT ON VIDEO Hillary Supporters Commit Voter Fraud in Las Vegas — Again!
INDIANA
– More Crooked Democrats : Police Raid Offices of Indiana Voter Registration Project in Voter Fraud Case
NORTH CAROLINA
-North Carolina Hillary Supporter Brags on Facebook About Voting Multiple Times
PENNSYLVANIA
– BREAKING: PA STATE POLICE RAID Democrat Group For Evidence Of Voter Fraud
FLORIDA
– GOP Alleges VOTER FRAUD in Broward County – Democrats Opened TENS OF THOUSANDS of Ballots
TEXAS
-Texas Woman – Who Is Not a US Citizen – BUSTED for Voting 5 Times in Texas
CALIFORNIA
– Voter Fraud: 83 Ballots , With 83 Different Names, Sent to One Address in LA County
NATIONWIDE
– Election “results” have already been shown in advance, in error, on multiple major news outlets such as CBS, CNN, FOX, NBC, ABC.
– Third-party Voters Are “Trading Votes” With Clinton Voters To Defeat Trump
– Democrats are suing Roger Stone on bogus charges of “voter intimidation” for only wanting to conduct AFTER -voting exit polling! Exit polling is not only legal but its something done in all civilized countries in the world. Democrats want to steal and prevent anyone from exposing their thievery. Exit polling provides perfectly accurate results and if in some state GOP gets for example 55% in exit polls and then 40% or whatever in final results, then we know there was fraud involved in that state. The usual accepted error between actual final results and exit polling can’t be bigger than 2%.
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Home / News / WATCH – Video Leaked From Obama’s 2008 Campaign Is Every Trump Hater’s Worst Nightmare WATCH – Video Leaked From Obama’s 2008 Campaign Is Every Trump Hater’s Worst Nightmare fisher 6 mins ago News , USA , World Comments Off on WATCH – Video Leaked From Obama’s 2008 Campaign Is Every Trump Hater’s Worst Nightmare WATCH – Video Leaked From Obama ’s 2008 Campaign Is Every Trump Hater’s Worst Nightmare
These days it has most certainly become chic for the modern liberal to throw about accusations of racism. Although this type of race-baiting has been going on for a number of years now, it became more noticeable during the 2016 U.S. presidential election. When these liberals accuse Donald Trump of being racist, they had better be careful for one specific reason:
A leaked video from 2008 shows that during President Obama ’s first campaign, he was also concerned about border security, and he even suggested a wall! Now, there is just one dominant question anti- Trump individuals need to digest:
Is Obama a racist too? Because he was talking about some things you could easily accuse Trump of. Let’s play a quick game. If you didn’t know who said this, would you think it was Donald Trump in 2016 or Barack Obama in 2008?
This man’s core goal was to “preserve the integrity of our borders to reduce illegal immigration.” Does this sound like Trump or Obama ?
How about this one? This man said, “additional fencing could help get our border under control.” Definitely sounds more like a GOP candidate than a Democrat one, that’s for sure.
Finally, this man also supported “additional personnel, infrastructure, and technology on our border and at ports of entry.” Liberals would love to claim these quotes came from Donald J. Trump , especially considering he is the villain du jour in their lives at the moment.
I hate to steal their thunder, but these quotes did indeed come from a young Barack Obama in 2008. Even he understood the need for a controlled border before the special interests in this country got to him.
So, it is one thing when leaked videos show Hillary Clinton believed border security was important. It was entirely another when they showed that her husband thought it was important, but when liberal idol Barack Obama says it? Say it isn’t so! Liberals just can’t handle that.
But anyway, folks, it is all about platforms. I’m sure you have learned by now that Donald Trump doesn’t get the free pass other politicians in this country enjoy. First of all, he is a conservative, so he is already someone every liberal loves to hate.
Republicans have been so badly demonized in this country simply for desiring to get it under control. Luckily, people saw through the propaganda and decided that Obama ’s brand was simply not working any longer.
People are fed up with politicians who say one thing and do another. If you are looking for a reason why Donald Trump is the new president and not Hillary Clinton, there you go. | 0 |
A leading US senator: US Supporting War in Syria
A leading US senator said the war in Syria would have been over by now if the US had put an end to its intervention when Russia entered the war-ravaged country.
“If the United States had just stayed out of it at that point, the war would be over by now; people would be rebuilding, refugees would be returning back to Syria, but the United States rushed anti-Tank missiles, and we used these so-called moderate rebels as a conduit to supply al-Nusra Front (also known as Fatah al-Sham Front), which is al-Qaeda in Syria,” republican member of the Virginia State in US Senate, Richard Hayden Black said in an exclusive interview with Press TV.
“If we were not supporting the war in Syria, I believe that the Syrians, combined with their allied forces from Iran, Lebanon and Russia… would move very steadily and restore the borders of Syria.”
The senate member, who visited Syria in April, refused to distinguish between militants and terrorists fighting the government of President Bashar al-Assad, saying, the two are “thoroughly integrated.”
“They really are one and the same, they’re part of the same army,” he said, citing a US defense intelligence agency’s investigation in 2013, which showed Washington’s ties with the terror group.
The outspoken state senator referred to plans by the CIA to transfer arms from Libya to Turkey and from there to Syria to supply the militants, noting that the move “evolved into an indiscriminate program of supplying all militant groups, including specifically ISIL and al-Qaeda.”
“We do it indirectly because it’s unlawful to do it directly,” he said, adding that the US keeps “extremely violent organizations… off the terrorist watch list because these are the agents that take our weapons and then distribute them to ISIL and al-Qaeda.”
In response to a question on why Iran and Russia are portrayed as the “bad guys,” while they are the ones really fighting terrorism there, as put recently by GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump, Black said the Republican candidate has a “clear understanding of what’s happening over there.”
“Sometimes, his rhetoric has to match the political mood of the moment… but I know a number of his advisers and they believe that our determination to topple the government in Syria is suicidal, that it threatens not only the entire Middle East but literally the entire world.”
He further warned that the US itself could be “threatened,” arguing that, “if Syria falls, it will be dominated by some al-Qaeda-related organization; Lebanon will fall; Jordan will fall and the entire area will be destabilized.”
The Vietnam war veteran also elaborated on his personal definition of the Middle East “axis of evil,” naming Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and “particularly” Turkey over their support for terrorism.
“Probably, three quarters of the rebels are not Syrian at all, they are mercenaries recruited by Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia,” he asserted, describing the three countries as “the primary force behind the terrorist movement.”
“Turkey has invaded Iraq and Syria with heavy military forces. Turkey has really become a rogue nation,” he added, referring to a 1923 treaty that set the border between Turkey and Greece, saying that was even being questioned by President Rececp Tayyip Erdogan.
“And now you see this emerging threat against Western Europe by Turkey,” he noted, further adding that Erdogan “has made it clear that he looks to resurrection of the Ottoman Empire.”
“He has become more and more aggressive; he’s crushed the military, the free press; every powerful institution of the Turkish government has come under his iron fist and he’s now a total dictator. He’s a man who has said that he wants the constitution amended so that he will have power similar to those of Adolf Hilter… This is our great ally; we’re allied with a man who would be Hitler.”
He also blasted Washington’s alliance with Saudi Arabia, “where women are not allowed to walk out in the front yard to pick up the newspaper without a man’s permission; they can’t drive a car!”
“Somehow, this is part of the liberalization that we seek to impose on the Middle East,” he said ironically, calling it “bizarre.”
He also praised the resistance against the Saudi aggression by the people of Yemen, saying, “God bless them! The Yemenis are giving the Saudis a bloody nose,” despite being a “tiny little, poor nation.”
“I think the world recognizes that Saudi Arabia has just embarked in massive war crimes in Yemen,” he said, voicing regret over the US support for the monarchy.
“We don’t pay too much attention to them while engaged in war crimes because they’re our good allies,” he said, concluding that Washington is on a “suicidal course of action.”
“Saudi money pays the very top politicians in many Western nations. And they really have co-opted the American military into acting as mercenaries for Wahhabism.”Black referred to the Western media’s portrayal of Iran as a supporter of terrorism, saying, “The fact of the matter is that if you really look at global terrorism, it all emanates from Saudi Arabia.”
He exemplified various terrorists attack, including the 9/11, the Boston bombing, and the Brussels attacks, noting that they are all a “reflection of the Wahhabi philosophy.” | 1 |
BALTIMORE — It was the third straight acquittal, by the same judge, on the same set of facts: On Monday, Lt. Brian Rice, the Baltimore police officer charged in the death of Freddie Gray, was found not guilty of three charges, including involuntary manslaughter. And a question that has been simmering among some legal observers ever since acquittals began piling up in the prosecution immediately turned to a full boil: With no convictions to show in four trials related to the death of Mr. Gray, a black man who sustained a fatal spinal cord injury during an arrest in which he rode unsecured in a police van, should prosecutors drop a retrial and the two others that remain? “It would seem at this point the state has exhausted all of its possible theories, and should give real consideration to ending these prosecutions,” said Warren Alperstein, a defense lawyer in Baltimore who has been closely following the trials. “There are many that would argue it’s time to cut the losses. ” Another local defense lawyer, Warren A. Brown, put it differently as he reflected on the fact that Judge Barry G. Williams had again determined that prosecutors did not present enough evidence to prove that the officer on trial had committed a crime. “The facts are the same in all the cases,” Mr. Brown said. “If you keep going to the store with 89 cents, and they keep telling you you need a dollar, why are you going to keep going back?” Defense lawyers are, by definition, apt to scrutinize prosecutors, and there has been no indication that prosecutors plan to drop the cases. Other observers have praised the trials for raising important issues. But the questions underscore the challenges as they press ahead. Two of the three previous trials, of Officers Edward M. Nero and Caesar R. Goodson Jr. ended in acquittals. The trial of Officer William G. Porter was declared a mistrial. The death of Mr. Gray in April 2015 shook this city to its core, spurring violent protests, and became a grim fixture of the reckoning over how police officers use force against minorities, particularly black men. In May of last year, the city’s top prosecutor, Marilyn J. Mosby, announced charges against six police officers in Mr. Gray’s death, prompting cheers from activists and quelling the nightly unrest that had gripped parts of the city. It was not expected to be easy it is rare to charge police officers with crimes, and rarer still for them to be convicted. Since then, cases of shootings by the police in Baton Rouge, La. and Falcon Heights, Minn. have outraged activists anew, and the country has been shaken by the deaths of eight police officers in two attacks, in Dallas and Baton Rouge. And in Baltimore, prosecutors have scrutinized the same narrative in trial after trial, bringing little resolution to lingering questions about the death of Mr. Gray and failing to secure a single conviction against any of the officers. The outcomes have fueled criticism that Ms. Mosby’s charges were too ambitious or politically motivated, and have eroded the confidence, even among supporters of the trials, that a conviction can ever be secured. “She put her job on the line — she put her life on the line to do the right thing, but where it happened and where it got lost, I don’t know,” said Tawanda Jones, who stood with a small group of demonstrators outside the downtown courthouse after the verdict was announced Monday. “I’m convinced that we will absolutely get no convictions. ” Ms. Jones then headed to a news conference to mark the three years that have passed since the death of her brother, Tyrone West, after a struggle with the police. Judge Williams, a former federal prosecutor who built winning cases against officers himself, read his verdict from the bench and began with a warning: “At this time, and all times, it is critical for this court not to base any decision on public opinion or emotion,” he said before methodically dismantling the case against Lieutenant Rice, who was the officer who first called in the foot chase of Mr. Gray in downtrodden West Baltimore. And, prosecutors said, he climbed into the van with Mr. Gray but failed to secure him with a seatbelt, which they said had set in motion a chain of events that led to Mr. Gray’s death. But Judge Williams said they had not proved that Lieutenant Rice was grossly negligent in failing to use a seatbelt on Mr. Gray or, indeed, that his failure to do so had led to Mr. Gray’s death. “This court does not find that the state has proven that the defendant was aware that the failure to seatbelt created a risk of death or serious physical injury to Mr. Gray under the facts presented,” he said. As the judge concluded his ruling, supporters of Lieutenant Rice pressed in to congratulate him. They included Officers Nero and Goodson and another officer, Garrett E. Miller, who is set to be tried this month. Ms. Mosby was not in the courtroom. In addition to Officer Miller, Sgt. Alicia D. White and Officer Porter, who faces a retrial, are still set to have their day in court. Officers Miller and Porter will have to be tried by a new team of prosecutors, because they have already been questioned on the stand by the main prosecutors on the case. “An office that believes a crime occurred can see benefits in making a statement that criminal activity will not be tolerated by their office and that they value the lives of every member of the community, and that can justify pursuing cases,” said David Jaros, an assistant professor of law at the University of Baltimore. But, Professor Jaros added, “there’s no question that after today, the hurdles seem as high as they’ve ever been. ” | 1 |
Note to America: Dont Be So Sure Youve Put Trump Behind You
Take it from a Brit, right-wing populism will thrive until you deal with it genuinely.
By Gary Younge October 31, 2016 " Information Clearing House " - " The Nation " - A I ve been living in Britain for the last year and have returned to the United States to cover the election from a small town in Indianawith the experience of Brexit on my mind.
On June 24, a significant proportion of the British electorate woke up and thought they were living in a different country. Britain narrowly voted to leave the European Union. It felt like the politics of fear, isolation, and xenophobia had delivered an utterly devastating and enduring blow to the body politic. There are many lessons from that night, and indeed we in Britain are only just beginning to learn them. But as it relates to the American elections, I want to dwell on just three.
The fact that the messenger is deranged doesnt mean the message itself contains no significant truths.
First, dont let the polls guide your strategic decisions about voting. If you want Hillary Clinton to win, vote for her. If you favor Jill Stein, vote for her. Dont cast your vote thinking youre compensating for a result that has not been declared but that you think youve factored in. You dont know.
The Brexit result caught the currency traders, pollsters, betting agencies, and commentators off guard. One of the leading voices of the Leave campaign, Nigel Farage of the UK Independence Party, conceded defeat at 10 pm the night of the election; less than six hours later he claimed victory.
As I write, polls suggest a runaway victory for Clinton. They could be right. But politics is in a very volatile statethey could also be wrong. And the only way youll know for sure will be when its too late to do anything about it.
Second, the fact that the messenger is deranged doesnt mean the message itself contains no significant truths. Before the Brexit referendum, liberals broadly dismissed Leave voters as ignorant, angry, and bigoted. Some of them were undoubtedly all three. But thats not primarily what was driving many of them. It took the Brexit result for the nation to pay attention to communities devastated by neoliberal globalization. Had Remain won, those who were forgotten would have remained forgotten.
True, politicians have drawn mostly the wrong conclusions: condemning the free movement of people rather than the free movement of capital. Nonetheless, regions long ignored, accents rarely heard, and issues seldom raised are traveling from the margins to the mainstream of British politics.
Similarly, if Hillary Clinton wins, that should not blind us to some of the themes that have made Trumps candidacy viable. In Muncie, Indiana, where I have spent most of this election season, huge manufacturing plants have closed since the passage of NAFTA, leaving one-third of the town in poverty. And while Trumps base is not particularly poor, a significant portion of the nation is desperate. Its not difficult to see why. The price of everything apart from labor has shot up in the past 40 years, while inequality has grown and social mobility has slumped. Trumps original Brexit strategy of targeting Rust Belt towns in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin may not have worked electorally, but what he identified remains a politically salient fault line that doesnt just go away if Clinton wins. If these problems are not tended to, a less erratic and more focused right-wing populist than Trump could easily exploit them.
Which brings us to the third lesson. Trump is deluded about many things, but hes right to insist that the media and political classes are out of touch with the population. They exist in a fetid ideological comfort zone where radical change is considered apostasy at precisely the moment when radical change is both necessary and popular.
Leading up to the Brexit vote, leaders of the Remain campaign preferred to caricature those in the opposing camp rather than engage them. They derided not only the leaders of the Leave campaign but its followers. You cannot convince people they are doing well when they are not. Yet throughout the Brexit campaign, Remain advocates lectured voters on all the advantages they derived from the European Union and how much worse things would be if they left. From Tony Blair to David Cameron, people who had stiffed working people in a range of ways now insisted they alone could save them from themselves. People just werent buying it.
Similarly, people in Muncie and elsewhere are aware that some of the worst things to come out of Washingtonincluding NAFTA, financial deregulation, and the Iraq Warwere bipartisan efforts in which the mainstream media acted as cheerleaders. That is why, I assume, Delaware County, where Muncie resides, voted for both Trump and Bernie Sanders in the primaries. When Democrats wheel out high-ranking Republicans who now disown Trump, they dont realize they are making Trumps point for him: The establishment that has done nothing for you hates meI must be doing something right .
Brexit and the US elections are not synonymous. But there is plenty of overlap in the nationalist nostalgia, xenophobia, political dislocation, and class grievance that they draw upon.
Time and again in Muncie, Trump supporters, some of whom voted for Obama, say they really just want to shake things up. They are not alone. The Democratic establishment is very, very happy with incremental change, says Dave Ring, who backed Bernie and runs an organic farm and food store in Muncie called the Downtown Farm Stand. And the rest of the public is out here like, We dont have time for incremental change. We dont have time for that. Why would we want to wait?
This sense of urgency will not go away if Hillary wins, any more than a Remain vote would have signaled that all was well with British society. We didnt wake up in a different country on June 24; it was simply a country we had ceased to recognize. A defeat for Trump, regardless of its magnitude, should not be misunderstood as an endorsement of the status quo. Just because you havent descended into the abyss, as Britain did, doesnt mean youre not standing dangerously close to its edge.
Š 2015 The Nation FBI in Internal Feud Over Hillary Clinton Probe: The surprise disclosure that agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation are taking a new look at Hillary Clintons email use lays bare, just days before the election, tensions inside the bureau and the Justice Department over how to investigate the Democratic presidential nominee.
Former FBI Official: FBI Has An Intensive Investigation Ongoing Into Clinton Foundation [VIDEO] : The FBI has an intensive investigation ongoing into the Clinton Foundation, Fuentes said Saturday, citing current and former senior FBI officials as sources.
Ex-FBI assistant director calls the Clintons a 'crime family' and claims their 'foundation is a cesspool': A former FBI official described the Clintons as a 'crime family' days after the bureau reopened its investigation into Hillary's personal email server.
Hillary's emails matter: A retired CIA officer explains why: Apparently while investigating disgraced ex-Congressman Anthony Weiners transmission of sexually explicit images to a fifteen-year-old girl, the FBI discovered more emails relevant to Hillary Clintons own infamous case.
Hillary's exiled aide pleads ignorance over emails on her sexting husband's laptop, but faces JAIL if it's proved she lied to FBI : Questions are mounting over right-hand woman Abedin's future on the Clinton campaign as she was pictured in New York today at campaign HQ while her boss was in Florida.
Yahoo holds key to FBI probe of Hillary-Huma emails: Huma Abedin and Hillary Clinton may have violated national-security laws with emails that Huma forwarded to herself at [email protected], which ended up on a laptop owned by her husband, former Congressman Anthony Weiner.
Clintons unfavorable rating hits new high in poll | Trump targets Democratic states in final sprint: Sixty percent of voters view Hillary Clinton unfavorably, according to a ABC News/Washington Post poll released Monday morning, the highest level of unpopularity yet for the Democratic presidential nominee | 1 |
Ever since Uber showed up in Europe in late 2011, the American service has faced vocal opposition. Some of its drivers have been attacked by angry taxi drivers in Paris. Two of the company’s most senior European executives have stood trial on charges of running an illegal transportation service in France. And taxi associations from London to Frankfurt have accused Uber of flouting local rules and undermining European rivals. The company denies the accusations. These heated battles will culminate on Tuesday in arguments before the European Court of Justice, the region’s highest court, which will most likely determine how Uber can operate across the European Union, one of the company’s largest international markets. At stake is the service’s often aggressive worldwide expansion. Uber has opened in more than 300 cities on six continents. That has helped the American tech company reach an valuation of $68 billion, making it one of the most successful ever to come out of Silicon Valley. Such rapid growth has often pitted Uber against traditional taxi services and local labor unions, which have accused the company of disregarding working standards and transportation rules. “We will fight against Uber in Germany and across Europe,” said Hermann Waldner, the head of a taxi dispatch center in Berlin. “We will try to do what we can to defend ourselves through the law. ” But as people increasingly turn to services like Uber and rivals like Lyft, policy makers worldwide are starting to question how such businesses in the sharing economy should be governed. “Our role is to encourage a regulatory environment that allows new business models to develop,” Jyrki Katainen, the European Commission vice president for jobs, growth investment and competitiveness said this year, before adding that a critical priority was “protecting consumers and ensuring fair taxation and employment conditions. ” For Uber and its rivals in Europe, the court case represents a watershed moment for how companies will be able to operate in the region. The hearing relates to a standoff between Uber and a Spanish taxi association, which filed legal proceedings in 2014, claiming unfair competition. Later that year, Uber suspended its services in the country, including its UberPop offering, which had allowed almost anyone — after some basic security checks — to use the company’s platform to pick up passengers. Uber recently returned to Spain, this time in partnership with licensed taxi drivers. In July 2015, a judge in Barcelona referred the case to the European Court of Justice, asking the court to determine whether Uber should be treated as a transportation service or merely as a digital platform. If the court decides that Uber is a transportation service, the company will have to obey Europe’s often onerous labor and safety rules, and comply with rules that apply to traditional taxi associations. Though Uber already fulfills such requirements in many European countries, the ruling could hamper its expansion plans. But if the judges rule that Uber is an “information society service,” or an online platform that merely matches independent drivers with potential passengers, then the company will have greater scope to offer products like UberPop and other services that have been banned in many parts of Europe. “This case should show that European laws fully support the development of a digital single market,” Gareth Mead, an Uber spokesman, said in a statement, referring to efforts to reduce barriers that currently restrict the access Europeans have to digital content, products and other online services. Asociación Profesional Élite Taxi, the Spanish group that brought the case, did not respond to repeated requests for comment. A ruling is not expected before March at the earliest. The judges may decide to consider Uber a transportation service, an online platform, or a combination of the two, further complicating the legal standoff. Other European taxi associations are keeping a close eye on the outcome, which will apply across the bloc. “Uber is appealing to Europe at the very moment when Europe is starting to seize upon problems linked to the web,” said Séverine Bourlier, secretary general of the National Taxi Union in France. “You can sense that countries are worried, so I think Europe is starting to think about this problem and ways to regulate it. ” The future of Uber’s European operations has become increasingly important for the company since it sold its Chinese unit this year to Didi Chuxing, a local rival, after a lengthy price war between the two companies. While Travis Kalanick, Uber’s chief executive, had targeted China for major expansion, the company settled for a minority stake in a combined Chinese operation with Didi Chuxing that is valued at roughly $35 billion. As Uber has grown beyond San Francisco, where it was founded in 2009, it has become embroiled in a number of legal disputes around the world that have challenged its business model and some of its working practices. Last month, for instance, New York State regulators ruled that two former Uber drivers were eligible for unemployment payments, finding that they should be treated as employees rather than independent contractors, as the service had maintained. A British court also recently made a similar ruling, saying that Uber drivers should receive a minimum wage and vacation pay. Mr. Kalanick has been charged in South Korea with running an illegal taxi service, an accusation the company denies, while in India, a former Uber driver was sentenced last year to life in prison for the rape of a passenger. Other businesses like Airbnb, the vacation rental site, have also been targeted for legal action, particularly in Europe, where traditional hotels have viewed such competition with skepticism. Last week, the city government in Barcelona — one of Airbnb’s largest markets — fined the company and its rival, HomeAway, a combined $1. 2 million for advertising and operating vacation rentals without appropriate licenses. BlaBlaCar, a French service, also was ordered to pay almost $10, 000 to Madrid’s regional authorities for operating without required authorization. The companies deny the allegations. Uber’s European legal woes have often set governments against one another, as countries have taken opposing views on how the company should operate. The European Commission, the executive arm of the European Union, and countries like Finland and Portugal have supported such new digital services, often proposing new legislation to help them grow locally. But in other countries, notably France and Germany, national politicians have favored rules that have either banned some of Uber’s services or required the company to operate within existing transportation rules. “We’re focused on working within the regulatory environment,” said Andrew Pinnington, chief executive of MyTaxi, an Uber rival owned by Daimler, the German automaker. “We want to be seen as a constructive disrupter of the industry, not a destroyer of it. ” | 1 |
Millions of Americans are missing out on a chance to avoid debilitating fractures from weakened bones, researchers say, because they are terrified of exceedingly rare side effects from drugs that can help them. Reports of the drugs’ causing jawbones to rot and thighbones to snap in two have shaken many osteoporosis patients so much that they say they would rather take their chances with the disease. Use of the most commonly prescribed osteoporosis drugs fell by 50 percent from 2008 to 2012, according to a recent paper, and doctors say the trend is continuing. Last month, three professional groups — the American Society for Bone and Mineral Research, the National Osteoporosis Foundation and the National Bone Health Alliance — put out an urgent call for doctors to be more aggressive in treating patients at high risk, and for patients to be more aware of the need for treatment. It followed a flurry of recent articles in medical journals documenting and bemoaning patients’ abandonment of traditional osteoporosis drugs. But osteoporosis experts are afraid their efforts will do little to change minds. “Ninety percent of patients, when you talk to them about starting one of these drugs, won’t go on,” said Dr. Paul D. Miller, medical director of the Colorado Center for Bone Research, a medical practice in Lakewood. “Ninety percent who are on the drugs want to come off. The fear factor is huge. ” Half of those who start taking the drugs stop within a year. Even patients who just broke a hip, which makes another hip fracture extremely likely, are refusing them. In 2011, only 20 percent of patients discharged from a hospital with a broken hip had a prescription for one of the drugs, compared with 50 percent in 2002. There is little question that fractures caused by fragile bones are a real problem, particularly for women. A woman has a 50 percent chance of having an osteoporotic fracture in her remaining years. The drugs, meant to be started when bone density falls very low and the chance of a fracture soars, can reduce that risk by half, studies show. But to many, it matters little that the drugs’ frightening side effects are extremely rare. Estimates are that 10 to 40 in 100, 000 osteoporosis patients taking the drugs — including alendronate, ibandronate, risedronate and zoledronate — have sustained broken thighbones. Fewer than one in 100, 000 have had the jawbone problem. “You only need to treat 50 people to prevent a fracture, but you need to treat 40, 000 to see an atypical fracture,” said Dr. Clifford J. Rosen, a professor of medicine at Tufts University who has no association with the makers of the drugs. Lawsuits over the rare side effects resulted in large jury awards and drew widespread attention. And after reports of these problems began to surface, the Food and Drug Administration requested that the drugs’ labels include a warning about the association. Doctors had hoped that a new class of medications might avoid the rare side effects, but their hopes were dashed when Amgen announced the same problems in a clinical trial of a drug called romosozumab: a sudden shattering of a thigh bone in one patient and an area of jawbone that inexplicably rotted in two. “This was the new miracle drug,” Dr. Rosen said. “It means these effects might occur with any of the newer drugs for osteoporosis. ” Some patients say that even though their doctors have explained the relative risks to them, the specter of those side effects frightens them. That is what happened with Mildred Canipe, 79, who lives in Charlotte, N. C. She had a spine fracture two years ago and now lives with continual back pain. She worries about another spine fracture or, even worse, a fractured hip. But she resists taking osteoporosis drugs, she said, because she tends to have side effects with almost any drug, and that makes her think that if anyone will suffer an atypical fracture from the medicine, it is she. “Of course I am worried about my bones,” Mrs. Canipe said. “Who wouldn’t be? But I am between a rock and a hard place. ” She is right to worry about a hip fracture, doctors say. Those injuries are often the start of a downward spiral for older adults. Many never walk normally again. Many end up in nursing homes, unable to care for themselves. “You see someone go from being a mobile elderly person to someone gripping a walker, afraid to move,” said Joan A. McGowan, who directs the division of musculoskeletal diseases at the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases. “And the less they walk, the more frail they become. ” Dr. McGowan has no associations with makers of osteoporosis drugs. The pain from spine fractures may improve, but physical disfigurement does not. Many patients with osteoporosis have multiple fractures of their spines. They become hunched and have trouble breathing. Their posture makes it hard for their hearts to pump blood, Dr. McGowan said, adding, “It’s not pretty. ” Yet it is an uphill battle trying to persuade people to take the drugs, said Dr. Steven T. Harris, an osteoporosis specialist at the University of California, San Francisco. “I have that discussion all day every day with my patients,” he said. One issue, Dr. Harris said, is the relentless promotion of diet and exercise for patients with fragile bones, which, he said, is insufficient to protect them from fractures. It gives people a false sense that they can control their risk. Another, said Dr. Ethel S. Siris, an osteoporosis expert at Columbia, is that with the drugs off patent, there is no longer an aggressive advertising push to make people aware of them. Their cost ranges from less than $10 a month for alendronate pills to about $1, 200 for a infusion of zoledronate. Doctors who have seen one of the rare patients who have an atypical fracture are shaken by the experience and have to remind themselves of the power of the data showing that the drugs’ benefits far outweigh their risks. Dr. Elaine Carlson, who until her recent retirement practiced internal medicine in Kennebunk, Me. had a patient who sustained two such fractures. The patient, 89, who asked that her name not be used to protect her privacy, said her left leg had broken suddenly when she was walking across her kitchen floor. A surgeon put in a rod and three screws, and it healed. Then, she said, her right thigh began to hurt six months later. She called Dr. Carlson’s office and was talking to her nurse practitioner when suddenly her right leg broke. She saw three doctors and had two operations before it healed, but she still cannot walk normally and can no longer do the gardening she loves. “I hobble around on a cane,” she said. “I am a cripple. ” She called the drug she took for osteoporosis “that wretched, dreadful stuff. ” Having that happen to her patient was “very tough, very tough,” Dr. Carlson said. And when the next osteoporosis patient came to her office? “Yeah, you do hesitate,” she said. “Your job is ‘do no harm. ’” But Dr. Carlson said she had continued to prescribe the drugs. “You do have to stick with the science,” she said. | 1 |
President Trump signed an executive order Tuesday that calls on Scott Pruitt, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, to take steps to dismantle the Clean Power Plan, a set of rules regulating energy plants powered by fossil fuels. The plan, which would have regulated carbon dioxide emissions from existing fossil electricity plants, has been tied up in courts for more than a year, after more two dozen states, industry representatives and others sued the E. P. A. They claimed that the plan was unconstitutional, and it hadn’t yet taken effect because the Supreme Court had said the plan could not be carried out while it was being argued before a lower federal court. Mr. Trump criticized the Clean Power Plan during the campaign and promised to bring back coal mining jobs and create new jobs in the fossil fuel industry the rules would have made that more difficult. Mr. Pruitt, as Oklahoma’s attorney general, sued the E. P. A. 14 times over environmental regulations, including the Clean Power Plan. The problem for Mr. Trump and Mr. Pruitt is that, if they get rid of this plan, they are legally required to come up with another one. Plus, in order to repeal regulations, federal agencies have to follow the same system (requiring periods of public notice and comment) used to create regulations, which can take about a year. Keep in mind that 18 state attorneys general and several environmental advocacy groups had previously moved to defend the rule, and they may challenge whatever alternative Mr. Pruitt might devise. Some of the arguments against the Clean Power Plan have come from the fossil fuel industries — specifically the coal industry, since power plants are the main target of the rules. They have argued that the plan is overly punitive toward them. However, the proliferation of cheap natural gas and a rise in renewable energy sources have made coal less financially sustainable. Removing regulations on power plants wouldn’t necessarily bring back a lot of coal jobs. Most coal mining, especially mountaintop removal mining, is done by machines, so it would be hard to bring back the thousands of jobs that have been lost as coal becomes less and less profitable. And opening up more federal lands and waters to fossil fuel extraction might lead to a glut of coal in the market, which could make it even less financially viable than it is now. The Obama administration used the creation of the Clean Power Plan to show other countries that the United States was serious about taking meaningful action on climate change during the Paris climate talks in late 2015. The plan is the most significant part of the strategy to cut emissions by the amount specified in the Paris agreement. Even with the Clean Power Plan in effect, it would have been tough for the United States to meet its Paris agreement targets. Without the plan or another one at least as stringent on greenhouse gases, it will be nearly impossible, experts say. If the rule is completely abandoned and no comparable alternative is offered, it might signal to the rest of the world that the United States isn’t serious about its obligations under the Paris agreement (which Mr. Trump has also said he would “cancel,” though there is disagreement about that in his cabinet). That might make other countries feel less bound by the terms of the agreement, too. | 0 |
LOS ANGELES — When Donald J. Trump claimed on Twitter that he was losing the popular vote because of major fraud by millions of voters, one of the states he pointed to was California, where the latest voting returns showed Hillary Clinton, the Democrat, crushing Mr. Trump. But Mr. Trump’s baseless claim led to a furious reaction from California’s top election official, Alex Padilla, the secretary of state, this weekend. Mr. Padilla asserted that there was no evidence for the claim by the and denounced Mr. Trump for what he said was unpresidential behavior. “His unsubstantiated allegations of voter fraud in California and elsewhere are absurd,” Mr. Padilla posted on Twitter. “His reckless tweets are inappropriate and unbecoming of a . ” This state has historically been slow to count ballots, a reflection of both its vast size and inefficiencies in many county voting operations. Given the fact that this is an overwhelmingly Democratic state, that has meant that Mrs. Clinton’s total vote count has grown steadily as ballots were tallied, adding to a national lead of close to two million votes. As of Saturday, Mrs. Clinton had 8. 1 million votes in California, compared with 4. 2 million for Mr. Trump, according to the secretary of state’s office. It was not clear when the vote count might be concluded. The count, and outcome, has been no surprise to anyone in a state with a history of slow . Officials in both parties had predicted this would happen as early as election night. Given California’s long Democratic history, it was never in play during this presidential election. But as the nation’s most populated state, it tends to have a significant influence on final national voting margins, as is apparently the case this year. Mr. Trump signaled out three states in his post of Twitter on “serious voter fraud” — Virginia, New Hampshire and California. He offered no evidence to back up the claim. His remarks came as he denounced calls for a recount in three states that he won by relatively small margins: Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. Jill Stein, who was the Green Party candidate for president, said that she would move for a recount. Aides to Mrs. Clinton said they would cooperate with the effort, even as they made it clear they thought it would not change the outcome. Mr. Padilla is the Latino elected to state office in California. Mr. Trump’s poor showing here, many Democrats and Republicans said, came in no small part because of his attacks on what he described as the threat of illegal immigration — particularly by Mexicans. About 40 percent of California’s population is Latino. “It appears that Mr. Trump is troubled by the fact that a growing majority of Americans did not vote for him,” Mr. Padilla said. | 0 |
In the last year, Amazon has dramatically increased employment of robots, going from 30, 000 robots in 2015 to 45, 000 in 2016. [When Amazon acquired Kiva Systems for $775 million in 2012, they immediately began implementing the squat automatons into their network of massive warehouses. The 16 inch, 320 lb. machines can carry more than twice their own weight and have taken over a sizable chunk of transport and packing tasks. For now, the increase in robotic employment at Amazon is only outpacing actual people by a narrow margin — 50% as opposed to 46% more humans, according to The Seattle Times. Human awareness and dexterity still prevent us from becoming a redundant part of these processes … for now, as white collar insurance claims agents are being replaced with AI and the development of synthetic muscle that could make robots as graceful as any person. Amazon is perhaps the biggest company leading the charge toward an automated workforce, in the process of hashing out ideas that range from drone delivery services to the flying motherships that could someday house them. According to Amazon Chief Financial Officer Brian Olsavsky, “[Amazon has] changed, again, the automation, the size, the scale many times, and we continue to learn and grow there. ” They’re already running an Amazon storefront without a single cashier, and their latest corporate campus in Seattle is being built inside of biospheres. We’re constantly seeing news about Amazon’s relentless march into new territory, and the pace continues to increase. I’m not sure whether to buy stock, or build a fallout shelter. Just to be sure, maybe I’ll ask Watson. Follow Nate Church @Get2Church on Twitter for the latest news in gaming and technology, and snarky opinions on both. | 0 |
Natural Blaze As if the November elections weren’t bad enough news for the world, a new report by the Living Planet Index was recently released that contains very frightening visions for the future.
According to the report, the number of living wild animals is expected to fall by two-thirds by 2020 from its 1970 levels. The report suggests that this massive disappearance is actually part of a mass extinction that will have effects that reach every corner of the globe and ultimately destroying the natural world and thus, humanity itself.
The report is considered the most comprehensive analysis published so far by many experts. It points out that animal populations between 1970 and 2012 declined by 58 percent and that by 2020 it is projected to reach 67 percent.
In other words, we are in the midst of a mass die-off and only four years away from seeing an irreparable amount of damage to the natural world.
Researchers from the World Wildlife Fund (an admittedly questionable organization) and the Zoological Society of London were responsible for compiling the report drawn from various data sources and determined that pollution, over-hunting/fishing and the destruction of wild habitats were to blame.
Not only endangered species like elephants and gorillas are in danger, however. For instance, vultures and salamanders appear to be on their way to extinction and the animals at risk reside in forests, jungles, mountains, deserts, rivers and oceans.
According to the Guardian ,
The report analysed the changing abundance of more than 14,000 monitored populations of the 3,700 vertebrate species for which good data is available. This produced a measure akin to a stock market index that indicates the state of the world’s 64,000 animal species and is used by scientists to measure the progress of conservation efforts.
According to the report, logging and the destructing of natural habitats for farming purposes are the biggest cause of animal deaths. Poaching and over fishing and over-hunting for food are other major causes.
Recent research shows that 300 mammal species are being eaten into extinction .
Pollution is also an obvious significant factor.
For instance, dolphins and killer whales in European seas are being killed by the presence of industrial chemicals. In Southeast Asia the vulture population has been decimated for two decades due to the fact that the birds are dying after eating cattle carcasses of cows who had been treated with anti-inflammatory drugs.
Fungal diseases are having a horrific effect on the amphibian population – a disaster that many believe to be caused by world trade of frogs and newts.
Rivers and lakes are having the most dramatic declines. Here, animal populations are down 81% since 1970.
As Marco Lambertini, Director General of WWF, said:
The richness and diversity of life on Earth is fundamental to the complex life systems that underpin it. Life supports life itself and we are part of the same equation. Lose biodiversity and the natural world and the life support systems, as we know them today, will collapse.
While Westerners wring their hands and obsess over CO2, they continue to ignore real environmental catastrophes like industrial chemical pollution, over-fishing, loss of biodiversity through genetic modification and unsustainable farming.
If the world wants to survive 21st century, it will immediately begin to look at ways in which development and higher living standards can be produced while at the same time ensuring that the natural world is protected.
At this point, we have no other choice. | 0 |
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A tidal wave is coming.
Michael Moore, a liberal’s liberal who holds die-hard loyalty to Hillary Clinton , is acknowledging what everyone with a clear head recognizes: that she doesn’t even remotely connect with the average voter, doesn’t understand their problems – and above all, doesn’t care about them.
Although Moore can’t support Donald Trump , he seems to admire his ability to resonate with the actual problems that the people who formerly made up the middle class are going through – economic and otherwise. Moore, like Trump, understands the pulse of the people, though they differ in just about every other way.
This election represents a pivotal point, and an end of the line for the deal that people once held with their leaders. After decades of broken promises and deals to sell them short and sell them out, people have had enough.
THAT’S what this election is about.
Right or wrong, Trump represents a rebuke of the system – as Moore calls it, the ultimate “F––– You” ever directed at the system.
Listen to the audio of what Moore said ( Warning: Foul Language ):
Here’s some of what he said in an epic rant (reportedly excerpted from his rush-election film Trumpland) that is strangely validating of Trump’s entire campaign:
Whether Trump means it or not, it’s kind of irrelevant because he’s saying the things that people who are hurting. And it’s why every beaten down, nameless, forgotten working stiff who used to be part of what was called the middle-class loves Trump.
“They’re not racists or rednecks, they’re actually pretty decent people. So, after talking to a number of them, I sort of wanted to sort of write this.”
[…]
Donald Trump came to the Detroit Economic Club and stood there in front of the Ford Motor executives and said: if you close these factories, as you are planning to do in Detroit, and rebuild them in Mexico, I am going to put a 35% tariff on those cars when you send them back and nobody’s going to buy them.
It was an amazing thing to see. No politician — Republican or Democrat — had ever said anything like that to these executives. It was music to the ears of people in Michigan and Ohio and Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. The Brexit states. You live here in Ohio. You know what I am talking about.
He is the human Molotov cocktail that they have been waiting for. The human hand grenade that they can legally throw into the system that stole their lives from them. And on November 8th — Election Day — although they have lost their jobs. Although they’ve been foreclosed on by the bank. Next came the divorce and now the wife and kids are gone. The car’s been repossessed. They haven’t had a real vacation in years. They’re stuck with the shitty Obamacare bronze plan. They can’t even get a f**king percocet.
They have essentially lost everything they had…except one thing. The one thing that doesn’t cost them a cent and is guaranteed to them by the American Constitution: the right to vote.
[…] So, on November 8th, the dispossessed will walk into the voting booth, be handed a ballot, close the curtain, take that lever — or felt pen or touchscreen — and put a big f**king X in the box by the name of the man who has threatened to upend and overturn the very system that has ruined their lives: Donald J. Trump.
[…]
They see that the elites who have ruined their lives hate Trump.
Corporate America hates Trump. Wall Street hates Trump. The career politicians hate Trump. The Media hates Trump…
The enemy of my enemy is who I am voting for on November 8th.
Trump’s election is going to be the biggest F**K YOU ever recorded in human history.
And it will feel good.
What red-blooded American, working stiff or laid off schmo wouldn’t want to stick it to the establishment and rebuke the very system that brought them to this point? After all, it is their fault.
People have been hurting and in decline for eight long years – and for all his smiles and posturing, Obama hasn’t done a damned thing. And Hillary can’t even pretend.
The people who will be deciding the popular vote in this election want to take down that system and put someone in who will – once and for all – stand up for them. Basically, Americans want revenge.
What the electoral college decides is another matter altogether, of course.
Article reposted with permission from SHTF Plan Don't forget to Like Freedom Outpost on Facebook , Google Plus , & Twitter . You can also get Freedom Outpost delivered to your Amazon Kindle device here . | 1 |
Here are the week’s top stories, and a look ahead. 1. The Obama administration made its stance on transgender rights clear to public schools across the country, sending a letter telling districts to allow transgender students to use the bathrooms that match their gender identity. The directive isn’t a law, but the threat of lawsuits or loss of federal aid is implicit. The move came at the end of a week that also saw the Justice Department and North Carolina sue one another over access to public restrooms. _____ 2. Donald Trump dominated campaign news, both in political maneuvering on Capitol Hill and seamier stories — like a former butler threatening to lynch President Obama and his contradictory relationships with women. The sheer volume of such reports may be dulling their impact. “He moves so quick and creates outrages so fast, you almost forget what happened,” a Republican strategist said. _____ 3. On the Democratic side of the presidential contest, some supporters of Bernie Sanders are working on a proposal that he suspend his campaign after the June 7 California primary, concede to Hillary Clinton and use his popularity to focus his efforts on helping defeat Mr. Trump. A spokesman for Mr. Sanders rejected the idea. _____ 4. The leadership struggle in Brazil turned decisive, as the Senate suspended President Dilma Rousseff to try her for fiscal skullduggery. The move could push the country, a bastion of the South American left, farther to the right. _____ 5. Did Russia cheat to be the top at the 2014 Olympics at Sochi? A former Russian official said he had overseen a vast doping program, years in the making, and that at Sochi, his team was able to access urine samples through a hole in a wall, open supposedly bottles and replace dozens of athletes’ tainted samples with clean urine. Russia denounced the account. _____ 6. Years of debate within the White House ended in an announcement that, yes, President Obama would visit Hiroshima. In less than two weeks, he will become the first sitting U. S. president to visit the memorial to the victims of the atomic bombs the U. S. dropped on Japan in World War II. The two countries, now allies, still tend to see the other as failing to fully accept its responsibility. _____ 7. Forget the fountain of youth: Scientists are working on a second skin to erase the effects of aging. The invisible film has been successful, in small studies, at making undereye bags vanish and wrinkles disappear, as on the left above. It might also be used to treat eczema, psoriasis and other skin conditions, researchers say. _____ 8. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau promised federal money to help rebuild the Canadian city of Fort McMurray, which was nearly destroyed by a wildfire. Damage estimates rise into the billions of dollars. Fires have been ravaging vast swaths of boreal forests in northern latitudes around the world, with climate change often a major factor. _____ 9. Time for a bit of greener news: Researchers are restoring Emily Dickinson’s beloved gardens at her home in Amherst, Mass. She died 130 years ago today, and her extensive flower and vegetable fields, along with an orchard and greenhouse, were removed by later owners. She once wrote: “Some keep the Sabbath going to Church — I keep it, staying at Home — With a Bobolink for a Chorister — And an Orchard, for a Dome. ” _____ 10. An extraordinary bank heist: For a second time, thieves penetrated the Swift global financial messaging system, apparently targeting a commercial bank in Vietnam. A few months ago, digital robbers got away with $81 million from Bangladesh’s central bank, above. In both cases, the thieves used real network credentials — suggesting the possibility of insider accomplices — and hid their actions behind malware. _____ 11. Finally, a sweet note. Japan just loves Kit Kat. There are nearly 300 varieties (including Adzuki Bean and Wasabi) and you can find them in department stores and specialty shops. And at least for a few weeks last year, a single stick coated with gold leaf was being sold. Have a great week. _____ Karen Workman contributed reporting. Your Weekend Briefing is published Sundays at 6 a. m. Eastern. And don’t miss Your Morning Briefing, weekdays at 6 a. m. Eastern, and Your Evening Briefing, weeknights at 6 p. m. Eastern. Want to look back? Here’s Friday’s Evening Briefing. What did you like? What do you want to see here? Let us know at briefing@nytimes. com. | 1 |
Germany — The United States broke with other large industrial nations over trade on Saturday as the Trump administration rejected concerns among allies about spreading protectionism and made clear that it would seek new approaches to managing global commerce. At a meeting of finance ministers and central bankers from the Group of 20 industrialized and emerging nations and the European Union, Steven Mnuchin, attending his first major international gathering as Treasury secretary, signaled that American policy would follow the campaign promises made by President Trump to put “America first” and review existing trade agreements to seek better deals for the United States. As a result, the ministers’ joint statement, normally a study in blandness, became an unlikely focus of controversy here. The representatives could agree only on a tortured compromise stating, in effect, that trade is a good thing. Adjectives like “open” were dropped, and the ministers omitted language used in previous communiqués that condemned protectionism, repudiating decades of free trade doctrine. For Asian and European officials, many of them meeting their Trump administration counterparts for the first time, it was a startling lesson in how Mr. Trump and his team are overturning assumptions about international commerce. Mr. Mnuchin led off the ministers’ meeting on Friday with a declaration that current trade rules were unfair to the United States, positioning the administration against virtually all the other participants, according to an official who attended the closed session and spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the talks. “We thought that it was very important for the communiqué to reflect what we discussed here,” Mr. Mnuchin said at a news conference on Saturday. “The historical language was not relevant. ” At the insistence of the United States, the communiqué also dropped a pledge to observe the Paris accords on climate change. Mr. Mnuchin deflected questions on the issue, saying it was outside his purview. The American government’s lack of reverence for existing norms and treaties is particularly unsettling to the Europeans, who are coping with weak economic growth and a surge in populism. The last thing they need is a disruption in commerce with their biggest trading partner. Some complained privately that the American delegation rode into this stately spa and casino town, where Romans once bathed in the waters, determined to shake up the existing order but without any clear idea of what should replace it. The disagreement over trade principles was a sharp contrast to the statement issued when the central bankers and finance ministers met in Chengdu, China, last July. “We underscore the role of open trade policies,” the leaders said in the Chengdu communiqué, which used the word “trade” six times. They promised to “resist all forms of protectionism. ” Less than a year ago, such a statement was not questioned. Business leaders on both sides of the Atlantic still hoped for a trade pact between the United States and the European Union that would eliminate already low tariffs and harmonize regulations governing things like vehicle headlights. Since then, Mr. Trump has pulled out of the Partnership negotiated by President Barack Obama, vowed to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement with Mexico and Canada, and criticized the German carmaker BMW for building a factory in Mexico. The best that the Group of 20 participants could come up with on Saturday was this: “We are working to strengthen the contribution of trade to our economies. ” Mr. Mnuchin argued that the news media’s focus on the language of the communiqué was overblown and said that the discussions in Baden Baden had been congenial. “We were incredibly productive,” he said. But he also made it clear that the Trump administration had a vastly different view than its recent predecessors. “We believe in free trade,” he said. But he added, “We want to certain agreements. ” “Balanced trade has to be what’s good for us and what’s good for other people,” Mr. Mnuchin said. “It has to be a situation. ” The communiqués issued at the end of Group of 20 summit meetings are meant to show that nations like Brazil, China, France and Japan can put aside competing interests and reach consensus, however vague, on major issues. The statements emerge from tortuous deliberations and are the opposite of impulsive. But even the usual boilerplate platitudes proved fraught at this summit meeting. For many European and Asian officials, meeting in a Belle Époch spa building with polished marble floors and chandeliers dangling from the ceiling, it was their first encounter with the Trump administration and its “America first” foreign policy. Some viewed the meetings as a chance to socialize with the new American representatives and to try to absorb them into the international order. Angel Gurría, the of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and a participant in the meetings, said the chance to get to know Mr. Mnuchin was more important than any joint statement. “We want to make him feel comfortable we want to make him feel at home,” Mr. Gurría told reporters. “These meetings are not about the communiqué. ” In their public statements, European leaders played down the conflicts and said that the discussions had been amiable. The meetings in came after Mr. Mnuchin visited Wolfgang Schäuble, the German finance minister, in Berlin. “Naturally we have different points of view,” Mr. Schäuble said at a news conference on Saturday in . But he added, “We worked very hard for two days in a pleasant atmosphere. ” He also denied that the American delegation was at odds with other participants. “The Americans were not isolated,” Mr. Schäuble said. Mr. Trump’s threats to impose punitive taxes on imported goods are a particular worry for Germany, whose economy is built around exports of automobiles and industrial machinery. The United States is the biggest purchaser of German goods, buying 107 billion euros, or $115 billion, worth last year. Germany imported goods from the United States worth 58 billion euros. The trade imbalance has made Germany a target for Trump administration officials, who have accused Germany of manipulating the value of the euro and have said they want to renegotiate trade terms directly with Berlin, even though that task is done at a European level by Brussels. “We are going to look to our counterparts to continue to trade, but to look to have more balanced trade,” Mr. Mnuchin said. “That means over time reducing our trade deficits. I think we can do that in a way that’s good for the American worker, that’s good for our companies and that’s good for our counterparties. ” | 1 |
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In these trying times, Jackie Mason is the Voice of Reason. [With buzz surrounding the Academy Awards heating up just days before the show, Jackie says that instead of armchair critics debating whether La La Land or Moonlight will win Best Picture, the country should be focused on recognizing a different group of Americans. “The most important conversation in America now is about which movie [will win] which Oscar … . who cares?” Jackie says. “It’s not going to affect your life it’s not going to make any difference. You know what we should be discussing? Who’s the best plumber. Because a plumber is a lot more important than an actor. And you know what’s more important than a movie? A toilet. ” “You can’t get into a toilet, you’re in a lot of trouble. You can’t get into a movie, who cares?” he added. “You ever see a guy who can’t get into a toilet? Can’t walk, can’t move. It looks like he was hit by lightning. ” Besides, Jackie explains, an awards show for plumbers would be a lot more entertaining than watching movie stars all say the exact same thing in their Oscars acceptance speeches: “To hell with Trump. ” It will be a contest to see which actor can say they hate Trump the most, Jackie says: “‘I want to thank my daughter, my cousin and my … you thought [the previous guy] hated Trump? That’s nothing compared to how much I hate Trump.’ And then another guy: ‘Do you know how much those two people hate Trump? That’s nothing compared to what I wish on Trump, and I hope he gets it faster than everybody else gets it. ’” Either way, Jackie’s probably tuning out. Watch his full clip above. Follow Daniel Nussbaum on Twitter: @dznussbaum | 0 |
US Military Prepares To Shut Down Russia’s Internet If It Hacks The Election 11/08/2016
DAILY CALLER
American hackers recently broke into Russia’s communications networks, electrical grid and government systems in preparation for a retaliatory cyber strike should Russian hackers meddle in the U.S. election, according to NBC News.
Officials do not expect any major attacks on U.S. infrastructure, which would be tantamount to an act of war, but they are concerned that Russian hackers may meddle in the election by spreading false information. The hacker “Guccifer 2.0” — which officials and some cyber security experts believe is a front for Russian intelligence — claimed they would be monitoring elections “from inside the system.”
The U.S. preparations are no different than Russia and China’s probing of U.S. networks. The penetration caused no damage to Russia, instead it was the equivalent of a military scouting mission. Cyber weapons could be deployed if the U.S. suffered a significant attack, but officials tell NBC News that is an unlikely scenario. Just to be sure though, Obama administration officials issued a back-channel warning to Russia to stay out of the election.
“You’d gain access to a network, you’d establish your presence on the network and then you’re poised to do what you would like to do with the network,” Gary Brown, a former legal adviser to U.S. Cyber Command (CYBERCOM), told NBC News.
U.S. cyber capabilities are top of the line, but the Obama administration has been wary of deploying them, despite consistent Russian provocation. CYBERCOM and the National Security Agency, the agencies responsible for U.S. cyber security, are incredibly secretive regarding U.S. capabilities. Stuxnet is the most well-known, publicized U.S. cyber weapon. The highly advanced computer worm wreaked havoc on Iran’s nuclear enrichment program in 2010.
CYBERCOM is currently involved in cyber attacks against the Islamic State, but Pentagon officials have been especially silent on the exact details of the “ cyber bombs ” being dropped on the terrorist group. Russia may find itself the next target, should it decide to go from misinformation campaigns to attacks on infrastructure. | 0 |
You are here: Home / US / Progressive Hypocrisy On Tolerance BRUTALLY Exposed Progressive Hypocrisy On Tolerance BRUTALLY Exposed October 27, 2016 Pinterest
Robert Gehl reports that, in her Washington Post article explaining why she and her lady friends decided to drive around the neighborhood and steal Donald Trump signs from private property, there’s one line that explains perfectly the leftist mentality.
The liberal idea that your feelings are more important than the law – your personal opinions, or grudges, or perceived injustices grant you permission to commit criminal acts with little regard to the consequences.
Betta Stothart wrote her article in The Post on Tuesday (she provided a link to her Twitter feed, which was brand new at the time she wrote it, but has already been taken down) confessing to driving around her Falmouth, Maine, neighborhood with two other compatriots stealing dozens of Donald Trump signs from people’s yards.
She was caught and arrested and now has to go to court. She tells us she’s sorry, but she’s not. Because her feelings about this campaign are more important. Read how she describes her situation:
I committed a crime this month, along with two of my friends. I’m not the lawbreaking type. In fact, as a 52-year-old mom, my life is pretty predictable and boring. But this election, a particular candidate’s boasts about women pushed me over the edge.
In the suburban, upper-middle-class part of Maine where I live, Republicans and Democrats live together mostly in harmony. In every election cycle, there’s some tension. But the 2016 presidential campaign has been different. Tensions in my town are running at a fevered pitch.
Which is how three middle-aged moms came to be running down the road, tearing up the Donald Trump signs along our version of Main Street. We’d been talking about the infamous Billy Bush tape and the women who have since come forward to share their own stories of abuse. We were angry. Getting Trump’s name off our median strip seemed like the best way to express our rage.
These three women must have been proud of themselves, probably laughing heartily as they committed theft, trespassing and violated the First Amendment of their neighbors. Why? Because she thinks she was assaulted by the signs.
In retrospect, I realize I shouldn’t be proud of my transgression. Hanging out with a bunch of moms, we started grousing about the proliferation of signs. Can you believe someone would put that many Trump signs so close together on our roads? It’s so rude. Who is this jerk? We felt assaulted by the number of signs . The idea of “cleansing” our streets seemed like the fastest way to restore balance and alleviate our election stress — at least, that night it did.
“ Assaulted” ? This is exactly why the Left is so dangerous. They are “assaulted” by ideas – by mere thoughts or opinions that are not their own. They will do anything- and Ms. Stothart did – to silence any dissent.
And she writes that “ in retrospect, I realize I shouldn’t be proud of my transgression. ”
She doesn’t say she isn’t proud, she merely tells us that in retrospect she shouldn’t be proud.
Which tells us that she is . She is proud of what she did.
When asked what she would say to the victims of her trespassing and theft, she offers no apology, merely a justification that Trump is bad, and that because she herself was a victim of an unwanted sexual advance, it justifies her behavior.
She claims she’ll go to court in December with some sense of humility and shame – she’ll “explain” and “apologize.”
But she’s not sorry. Not really.
To her – and the millions of Leftists like her – the ends justify the means. Silence dissent, crush the opposition, tear down and destroy any thing that strays from your worldview.
This is the world that Ms. Stothart lives in. She still lives in it today. She takes pride in suppressing the political view of her fellow Americans.
She writes that the “agitation and fear is rising on both sides.”
No, Ms. Stothart. I have yet to see a single story about a Trump supporter violating the Constitutional rights of a Hillary Clinton supporter by stealing yard signs.
This is liberal America. This is Ms. Stothart’s America.
This is not the America I want to live in. | 1 |
Trinh Thi Ngo, a radio announcer known as Hanoi Hannah who entertained American forces during the Vietnam War while trying to persuade them that the conflict was immoral, died on Friday in Ho Chi Minh City. She was believed to be 85. Nguyen Ngoc Thuy, a former colleague of Mrs. Ngo’s at Voice of Vietnam, the state broadcaster where she worked for decades, confirmed her death in a telephone interview on Tuesday and said she had been treated for liver ailments. Mrs. Ngo, who broadcast in English, was a propaganda weapon for North Vietnam as it battled the United States and the South Vietnamese government. Her work was in the tradition of Tokyo Rose and Axis Sally, whose radio broadcasts were intended to damage the morale of American troops during World War II. Mr. Thuy said that Mrs. Ngo was both a national celebrity and a role model to her younger colleagues, including himself. “We admired her perfect voice and her legendary role” in the war effort, he said in the interview. Mrs. Ngo was born in Hanoi, the capital, in 1931, when Vietnam was a French colony. (Her exact birth date could not be learned, nor was there information on survivors.) She learned English from private tutors in the early 1950s — partly, she later recalled, because she loved watching Hollywood films like “Gone With the Wind. ” “I always preferred American movies to French films,” she said in an interview with The New York Times in 1994. “The French talked too much. There was more action in American movies. ’’ Mrs. Ngo began broadcasting for Voice of Vietnam in 1955, a year after Vietnamese revolutionaries defeated France at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu, forcing the French from Indochina. Early in her career she used the name Thu Huong, or Autumn Fragrance, because it was easier for her listeners to pronounce, she told The Times. “Fewer syllables,” she said. Her broadcasts aimed at United States forces began in 1965, and she was still on the air in 1975, when North Vietnam captured Saigon, the South Vietnamese capital, and renamed it Ho Chi Minh City. As part of her programs, each 30 minutes long, Mrs. Ngo would announce the names of American soldiers who had died in battle the previous month. Her listeners included the Navy pilot John McCain, the future United States senator, who was a prisoner of war in Hanoi for five and a half years after his plane was shot down in October 1967. On a visit to Hanoi in April 2000, Senator McCain said he had listened to Mrs. Ngo’s broadcasts on loudspeakers that hung from the ceiling in a cellblock illuminated by a single bulb. “I heard her every day,” he said. “She’s a marvelous entertainer. I’m surprised she didn’t get to Hollywood. ” Mrs. Ngo’s broadcasts included music by Pete Seeger, Joan Baez and other antiwar American folk singers, and she took a friendly approach to her listeners, Mr. Thuy said. But beneath her gentle tone, he added, was a steely confidence in the North Vietnamese cause. Nguyen Van Vinh, a Vietnamese cameraman who filmed Mrs. Ngo’s meeting the actress and antiwar activist Jane Fonda in Hanoi in 1972, said Mrs. Ngo had “talked in a whisper to the G. I. s. ” “Soldiers used a gun, but in Hanoi, in North Vietnam, she used her voice,” he said. Mrs. Ngo acknowledged as much in the 1994 interview with The Times. “My work was to make the G. I. s understand that it was not right for them to take part in this war,” she said. “I talk to them about the traditions of the Vietnamese, to resist aggression. I want them to know the truth about this war and to do a little bit to demoralize them so that they will refuse to fight. ” She said the Americans had called her Hanoi Hannah for a simple reason: alliteration. “The Americans like nicknames,” she added. | 1 |
Donald Trump a KGB Spy? 11/02/2016 In today’s video, Christopher Greene of AMTV reports Hillary Clinton campaign accusation that Donald Trump is a KGB spy is about as weak and baseless a claim as a Salem witch hunt or McCarthy era trial. It’s only because Hillary Clinton is losing that she is lobbing conspiracy theory. Citizen Quasar
The way I see it, one of two things will happen:
1. Trump will win by a landslide but the election will be stolen via electronic voting, just like I have been predicting for over a decade, and the American People will accept the skewed election results just like they accept the TSA into their crotches.
2. Somebody will bust a cap in Hillary’s @$$ killing her and the election will be postponed. Follow AMTV! | 0 |
WASHINGTON — Since President Obama named James B. Comey director of the F. B. I. in 2013, the former prosecutor has spoken often of dark chapters in the bureau’s history, notably J. Edgar Hoover’s order to wiretap the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and use the tapes to try to drive the civil rights leader to suicide. “The reason I do those things,” Mr. Comey said in a talk at Georgetown University last year, “is to ensure that we remember our mistakes and that we learn from them. ” His point: The nation’s leading law enforcement agency must preserve investigations from any taint of political motive or extralegal influence. So it may be especially painful to Mr. Comey that today, after his second sensational public statement on the F. B. I. ’s investigation of Hillary Clinton’s email, some critics and historians are comparing him to Hoover. “I think this is sort of a flashback to the days of J. Edgar Hoover,” said Sanford J. Ungar, a Georgetown scholar, former journalist and author who has written about the F. B. I. ’s history. “I don’t mean to smear Comey, and it may be an unfair comparison. But Hoover would weigh in on issues without warning or expectation. I just wonder how Comey sees his role. ” The parallels to Hoover, who ran the F. B. I. and its predecessor from 1924 to 1972 as a fief that reflected his personal and political views, may be quite a stretch. People who know Mr. Comey well dismiss out of hand the notion that he acted to tip the election to either Mrs. Clinton or Donald J. Trump. If he is guilty of anything, they say, it may be a sort of moral hubris, a desire to put his rectitude and incorruptibility on public display. After all, Mr. Comey first came to wide public attention for his role in a 2004 drama at the hospital bedside of John Ashcroft, then the attorney general. Acting in place of the ailing Mr. Ashcroft, Mr. Comey had refused to sign off on the reauthorization of National Security Agency surveillance programs that he believed were legally flawed. When he heard two top aides to President George W. Bush planned to have Mr. Ashcroft sign the reauthorization, Mr. Comey sped to the hospital to head them off. It was a rare Washington drama that has often been recounted, usually with Mr. Comey as the heroic agent of justice. But before Mr. Comey, Hoover was the last F. B. I. director to be accused — at least by some historians — of trying to influence a presidential election, by feeding useful scraps of information on Harry S. Truman, a Democrat, to the campaign of Thomas E. Dewey, a Republican. To his critics, Mr. Comey has twice flagrantly violated the longstanding norms of law enforcement, politicizing the F. B. I. by injecting it into a election. His defenders say the controversy may simply show the difficulty of running a law enforcement organization as a purely professional, apolitical endeavor in an election year awash in political passions, suspicions and accusations. (Just ask Loretta E. Lynch, Mr. Comey’s boss as attorney general, who said after an airport encounter with former President Bill Clinton that drew Republican criticism that she would accept whatever the F. B. I. recommended on the Clinton email inquiry.) Several F. B. I. directors have found themselves tangled in politicized disputes — Louis J. Freeh, the director from 1993 to 2001, had a contentious relationship with Mr. Clinton. But in the Hoover years, the bureau was a deeply political instrument. Hoover’s personal crusade against communists, real and imagined, his targeting of antiwar and civil rights activists, and his use of F. B. I. files to pressure or blackmail other officials — sometimes including presidents — defined the bureau for decades. “The bureau played a very important role behind the scenes in shaping American politics during the Cold War,” said Athan G. Theoharis, a professor emeritus at Marquette University and a historian of the F. B. I. “When you have a secret agency that uses its huge resources to influence politics, that’s a dangerous thing. ” The actions that have put Mr. Comey in the spotlight, however unusual, are starkly different from Hoover’s secret maneuverings. Indeed, it may be his determination to be the transparent and above politics, that has gotten Mr. Comey in hot water, first with Republicans and now with Democrats. Unlike Hoover’s clandestine efforts for Dewey in the 1948 campaign, Mr. Comey’s actions have been very public and directly related to legitimate F. B. I. business. In July, at a news conference that some former prosecutors now characterize as a mistake, he announced that Mrs. Clinton would not be charged in connection with her use of a private email server, but added that he believed her conduct was “extremely careless. ” On Friday, he announced that agents had found additional emails that might be relevant to the investigation, raising the possibility that Mrs. Clinton’s exoneration had been premature. While Hoover acted to further the fortunes of one candidate, Mr. Comey has been accused, at different times, of seeking to help both sides. Overnight, the F. B. I. director went from being vilified by supporters of Mr. Trump for covering up Mrs. Clinton’s supposed wrongdoing, to coming under attack from backers of Mrs. Clinton for what they said was his improperly handing political ammunition to Mr. Trump. As F. B. I. director, Mr. Comey was faced with a rare phenomenon: a criminal investigation of a leading candidate for president. He responded in July with a rare display of openness about an investigation, saying, “I am going to include more detail about our process than I ordinarily would, because I think the American people deserve those details in a case of intense public interest. ” He even testified to Congress in September about the inquiry and was grilled by Republicans. Pressed by Representative Lamar Smith, Republican of Texas, Mr. Comey offered a seemingly obvious promise: “We would certainly look at any new and substantial information. ” Then an unrelated investigation of Anthony D. Weiner, a former congressman from New York and the estranged husband of Huma Abedin, a top Clinton aide, led to an archive of emails that agents thought might be relevant to the Clinton email matter. Mr. Comey, in an email of his own to the F. B. I. work force, made clear that he felt his July statement necessitated another public disclosure. “We don’t ordinarily tell Congress about ongoing investigations, but here I feel an obligation to do so given that I testified repeatedly in recent months that our investigation was completed,” Mr. Comey wrote. Going public the first time, he suggested, forced him to go public a second time. By Justice Department convention, however, Mr. Comey’s repeated public statements may have been a mistake. Stephen Gillers, a professor at New York University School of Law who specializes in legal ethics, said Mr. Comey would have been justified had he simply announced that the Clinton investigation was over. But his first mistake, Mr. Gillers said, was to go further and criticize her sloppy handling of email. “If you decide not to go ahead with a case, you don’t say bad things about a person you have been investigating because there is no forum in which that person can defend themselves,” said Mr. Gillers, a Democrat. “He made a terrible, terrible error. ” With his recent statement, Mr. Gillers said, Mr. Comey again exceeded his authority and “got himself in deeper. ” He should have said nothing, Mr. Gillers said. Instead, “he injected himself into a political campaign. ” Michael Chertoff, a Republican who led the Justice Department’s criminal division under Mr. Bush but who supports Mrs. Clinton, said Mr. Comey violated longstanding department rules and practices in July and again Friday. In doing so, Mr. Chertoff said, he has provided “fodder for a lot of unsubstantiated allegations and accusations. ” | 1 |
A rape victim who was jailed in Texas for nearly a month because prosecutors feared she would not return to testify after having a mental breakdown on the stand has sued the Harris County district attorney’s office, county officials and jail employees. The woman, identified as Jane Doe in the lawsuit, was held in the general population at the county jail — the same place where the rape suspect, Keith Hendricks, was housed. There, the suit says, she was misclassified as the perpetrator of a sexual assault — not as a victim — attacked by an inmate, denied medication and punched in the face by a guard. Jane Doe’s treatment amounted to “an absolute deprivation of her personal integrity,” her lawyer, Sean Buckley, said in an interview Thursday. “As a rape victim, the psychological trauma she experienced was an overwhelming sense of hopelessness and helplessness. ” “And if you take out the sexual violation itself and you look at the underlying psychological trauma,” he added, “this is exactly what these defendants did to her again while she was still in recovery for her rape. ” According to the suit filed Monday in United States District Court in Houston, the woman began testifying in December against the man she said had choked, beaten and raped her two years earlier. The woman has bipolar disorder, the suit says, and did not finish her testimony. In what the district attorney later called “an extraordinarily difficult and unusual situation,” because of concern she would not return to the courtroom, a judge had her locked up until the trial resumed, even though she was not charged with a crime. A spokesman for the Harris County district attorney’s office declined to comment on Thursday, though prosecutors and the Harris County sheriff’s office have defended their decisions. The decision raises questions about the treatment of people with mental health disorders in the Texas justice system and about the wisdom of jailing someone already victimized and traumatized by a suspect the district attorney called “a serial rapist. ” But the move was not unheard of. In a case in Sacramento, Calif. prosecutors in 2012 demanded that a victim of sexual assault be held in juvenile detention to ensure that she showed up to testify at the trial of her alleged attacker. She had failed to appear at two previous hearings. But a judge decided about a month later that she could be released and monitored by a GPS device. Advocates for sexual assault survivors said they feared that the Texas case could have a chilling effect on other victims’ willingness to speak up. The case was originally reported by a local television station. The woman was sent to St. Joseph’s Medical Center for 10 days after she broke down on the stand, the lawyer said. There was no after she was released from the hospital, and she was handcuffed, arrested and sent to jail on Dec. 18, Mr. Buckley said. During that time, the woman was taken to the courtroom to testify against Mr. Hendricks. He was convicted and sentenced to two life sentences without parole. A judge allowed her to go home on Jan. 14 — 27 days after she was jailed. In a video statement that has been uploaded to YouTube, Devon Anderson, the county district attorney, said the rape victim had suffered through a mental health crisis and had expressed her intention during the trial not to testify again. “If nothing was done to prevent the victim from leaving Harris County in the middle of trial, a serial rapist would have gone free, and her life would have been at risk while homeless on the street,” Ms. Anderson says in the video. “This was an extraordinarily difficult and unusual situation. There were no apparent alternatives that would ensure both the victim’s safety and her appearance at trial. ” Mr. Buckley, the woman’s lawyer, acknowledged that the woman had said she might not testify again. But he said that was “while she was having a mental breakdown. ” He said county officials did not have the legal right to detain her since she lived outside Harris County — in an apartment in Longview, Tex. — and had not been subpoenaed. Instead of putting the woman in jail, officials should have arranged with a community organization or provided a hotel room with a sheriff’s deputy as a chaperone, Mr. Buckley said. “Had they done that, she would have testified, she would have testified well, and she would not have been abused in the jail,” he said. The Harris County Sheriff’s Office said the woman was taken to jail after a district judge issued a bench warrant, ordering the sheriff’s office to detain her as a material witness. “The sheriff’s office had no authority but to follow the court’s order to detain Jane Doe,” Ryan Sullivan, a spokesman for the sheriff’s office, said in a statement. Mr. Sullivan said the woman would have been placed in a separate cell had the court ordered that she be kept separate from the general population, but no such order was issued. The lawsuit says that when the woman was processed, she was accidentally classified as having committed a sexual crime, leading to negative treatment from the jail’s medical staff members who didn’t believe her protests. She was in at least two physical confrontations while in jail. On Dec. 23, an inmate pushed her to the ground and repeatedly slammed her head into the concrete floor, according to the lawsuit. On Jan. 8, she suffered “an acute psychiatric episode,” the lawsuit says. The prison guards’ response caused her to have a panic attack, during which “she became hysterical and physically uncontrollable,” the suit said. At one point, a guard punched her, causing a bruised eye socket, the lawsuit said. She was also charged with felony aggravated assault but that charge was later dropped. The Harris County Jail, one of the nation’s largest, has become known for allegations of deaths, beatings, civil rights abuses, unjust prosecutions and medical neglect, according to a series in The Houston Chronicle. Jane Doe’s lawsuit, which seeks punitive damages, names the Harris County sheriff, Ron Hickman Taylor Adams, the prison guard Nicholas Socias, an assistant district attorney Harris County and unnamed employees of the jail and the district attorney’s office. In a statement, Rebecca White, the chief executive of the Women’s Center, said, “We appreciate the importance of doing all we can to hold perpetrators accountable, but also believe that respecting the dignity of survivors and providing full support are paramount. ” Ms. White added that the group was “concerned that sexual assault is already underreported and that this may further deter survivors from coming forward. ” | 1 |
filmmaker Michael Moore sent a warning to Democratic lawmakers on Wednesday: block President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Judge Neil Gorsuch or face a “true progressive” in the next election. [“This Supreme Court pick was Obama’s to make and it was stolen by Republicans. Democrats had better block this and demand a nom we approve,” Moore tweeted to his 3. 8 million Twitter followers. Moore continued, “Senate Dems, let’s be very clear: You will filibuster block this SC nom or we will find a true progressive and primary u in next election”: This Supreme Court pick was Obama’s to make and it was stolen by Republicans. Democrats had better block this and demand a nom we approve. — Michael Moore (@MMFlint) February 1, 2017, Senate Dems, let’s be very clear: You will filibuster block this SC nom or we will find a true progressive and primary u in next election. — Michael Moore (@MMFlint) February 1, 2017, Moore’s gripes invoke the liberal argument that Democrats should block the nomination of Trump’s SCOTUS pick in the same way that Republicans halted Merrick Garland’s hearings after Obama picked him to fill the Supreme Court seat left vacant by Justice Antonin Scalia’s death. One U. S. senator has already heeded Moore’s demand that Democrats block Gorsuch’s nomination proceedings. Senator Jeff Merkley took to Twitter Wednesday and said, “Not only is this a stolen seat, but @realDonaldTrump has nominated a far right extremist. Unacceptable. ” Not only is this a stolen seat, but @realDonaldTrump has nominated a far right extremist. Unacceptable. https: . pic. twitter. — Senator Jeff Merkley (@SenJeffMerkley) February 1, 2017, Follow Jerome Hudson on Twitter @jeromeehudson. | 0 |
People magazine has named Dwayne Johnson, a. k. a. The Rock, its “Sexiest Man Alive” for 2016, ushering him into an elite group of physically appealing men that over the years has included George Clooney, Matt Damon and David Beckham. The award is, of course, a naked public relations enterprise, bestowed upon a celebrity — often an actor — who is in the throes of promoting a new project. In Mr. Johnson’s case, that would be “Moana,” an animated Disney film, which will open in wide release on Nov. 23. He will also in the eighth film of the “Fast and the Furious” franchise next year as well as in a remake of “Jumanji,” and he has been chronicling daily the filming process of that film on his Instagram account, which has nearly 70 million followers. Mr. Johnson told the magazine: “I’m not quite too sure where we go from here. I’ve done it all this is it. ” The magazine has been criticized for nearly always choosing a white man for the cover of this issue. But in Mr. Johnson, the magazine chose its first actor of Samoan heritage. (In interviews, Mr. Johnson has described himself as half black and half Samoan.) Denzel Washington was the first black actor to hold the title. Mr. Johnson, who is 44 and the father of two girls — Simone, 15, and Jasmine, 11 months — became famous in the late 1990s and early 2000s as a performer with World Wrestling Entertainment. He turned toward Hollywood and found success with films like “The Mummy Returns” (2001) and a spinoff, “The Scorpion King” (2002). He joined the “Fast and the Furious” franchise in 2011 for its fifth film. This year, according to Forbes magazine, he became the world’s actor. (It may be noteworthy that four of the Top 5 earners — Mr. Johnson, Mr. Damon, Tom Cruise and Johnny Depp — have each been People’s Sexiest Man Alive. It may also be noteworthy that with one exception, Kate Upton in 2014, the magazine does not traditionally name a “Sexiest Woman Alive. ”) “Remember, sexy isn’t something you ‘try and be.’ Sexy happens naturally when you’re comfortable just being yourself,” Mr. Johnson wrote on Instagram Tuesday when sharing the news. At and 245 pounds, he is, physically, one of the largest men ever chosen by the magazine. Muscle and Fitness magazine once chronicled his daily diet at the height of his bodybuilding regimen: more than 5, 000 calories spread over seven meals, including a dozen eggs, a lot of cod and a steak. (In “Moana,” he voices the demigod Maui, a character that has been criticized as promoting negative stereotypes of Polynesians as overweight.) The actor is unabashedly populist in his career choices, telling British GQ last summer that he is “in the business of making movies for people, making content for people. ” “And that means people all over the world,” he continued. “Because as soon as you start thinking on a global scale, you are making more people happy, you are making more money, you are making the studios more money, you are making everybody happy. ” In that same interview, Mr. Johnson floated the idea of following the model set by Arnold Schwarzenegger, a fellow and perhaps going into politics. “I can’t deny that the thought of being governor, the thought of being president, is alluring,” he said. “And beyond that, it would be an opportunity to make a real impact on people’s lives on a global scale. ” | 0 |
The United States Supreme Court on Monday denied a request to review the N. F. L. ’s settlement with retired players who had accused the league of hiding the dangers of head trauma, paving the way for some players with brain ailments to begin receiving payments of as much as $5 million. The decision ends a contentious fight between the league and many former players, some of whom are suffering from Alzheimer’s, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and other debilitating conditions. The settlement, worth perhaps as much as $1 billion, covers nearly every former player for the next 65 years the league’s actuaries estimated that just under 30 percent of them could develop Alzheimer’s or other conditions covered in the settlement. The agreement is by far the largest settlement, and a landmark in light of the league’s repeated denials, made over many years, of the links between repeated head trauma and brain disease. The N. C. A. A. agreed to a far smaller settlement, while the N. H. L. is still fighting its former players, who have filed a suit largely similar to the one brought by the retired N. F. L. players. “This decision means that, finally, retired N. F. L. players will receive care and support for the serious neurocognitive injuries they are facing,” Christopher Seeger, one of the lead lawyers for the retired players, said in a statement. “These courageous men and their families, who in the face of great adversity took on the N. F. L. have made history. ” The Supreme Court was asked to review the settlement by a subset of retired players who believed, among other things, that the agreement unfairly excluded players who received a diagnosis of a severe brain disease linked to head hits, chronic traumatic encephalopathy, after Judge Anita B. Brody of United States District Court approved the settlement last year. They also argued that the settlement did not adequately account for scientific innovations that may allow for C. T. E. to be diagnosed in people while they are alive. Currently, the disease can be confirmed only in autopsies. The United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit already rejected those arguments, and the Supreme Court, without comment, followed suit by refusing to review the case. “We are pleased that the Supreme Court has decided not to review the unanimous and decisions of Judge Brody and the Third Circuit approving the settlement of this litigation,” the league said in a statement. “We look forward to working with class counsel and Judge Brody to implement the settlement and provide the important benefits that our retired players and their families have been waiting to receive. ” Cullin O’Brien, the lawyer who represented the former N. F. L. player Cookie Gilchrist in the petition to the Supreme Court, had no comment. He and other lawyers representing players who petitioned the court could ask the court to reconsider its refusal, but legal experts said that would be a long shot. Still, the agreement did not come easily. For several years, the N. F. L. insisted that arbitrators, not the courts, should be used to settle disputes between players and the league. The players would likely have had to prove that the concussions they received in the N. F. L. led directly to their current conditions. After Judge Brody questioned whether the initial agreement, worth $765 million, would be enough to cover every player, the league agreed to pay an unlimited amount of damages. Some estimates suggest that the league could pay $1 billion to cover all claims. Critically, the players will not have to prove that they sustained any concussions while playing in the N. F. L. or whether those concussions led to their ailments. The N. F. L. faced with the potentially damaging possibility of players testifying on the stand about their brain injuries and ailments, agreed to settle the case in August 2013. Judge Brody still must rule on the status of more than 100 former players who opted out of the settlement. She also must rule on the $112 million payment that the N. F. L. has agreed to pay the plaintiffs’ lawyers. Starting next month, the league must make six monthly deposits of $20 million into a special account for players covered by the settlement. By April, the plaintiffs’ lawyers must set up the apparatus to allow players to start filing claims. Mr. Seeger said players with diseases that have already been diagnosed should receive checks within weeks after filing their paperwork. Mr. Seeger said he was negotiating with Medicare, which is allowed in cases of this kind to recoup its medical expenses already spent. As he is negotiating on behalf of a large group of about 20, 000 Mr. Seeger said, he expects Medicare to offer a substantial discount. Those medical liens would be deducted from any settlements. | 1 |
A family has suffered injuries described as “ ” after ‘strong acid’ was thrown at a two year old boy and his parents on a street in North London. [Emergency services were called to a residential street in Islington on Saturday just after 1 pm following reports of an assault, where they found a 40 year old father, 36 year old mother and their young son suffering effects of having a “noxious’ acid thrown at them. Acid was thrown at the man, in the attack on Copenhagen Street, with the substance then splashing onto a woman then the child, according to The Sun. All three were taken to hospital by ambulance, and the child found to have slight chemical burns to his face, after firefighters at the scene used water from a hose to cool down the family’s burns. But his father’s injuries were described as “ ” and both parents suffered 15 per cent chemical burns on their hands and bodies as a result of the attack. Shop owner Murat Kayran said: “They were a Chinese family, a woman frantically ran in here when it happened and said ‘there’s been an acid attack’. “She bought one bottle at first and then after that bought three more bottles of 1. 5l water to pour on the man’s burns after a person threw acid in his face. “Then a gentleman came in and bought another three. “About five minutes later and ambulance and police cars turned up, as well as the fire brigade. “It’s such a scary thing to happen” he told the Sun. Authorities have now launched an investigation into the alleged assault and to ascertain exactly what the substance used was. “Tests have found a strong acid and oxidising substance” said a London Fire Brigade (LFB) spokesman of the unknown liquid, which examinations showed to have a PH level of 1. Appealing for witnesses Saturday, a spokesman for the Met Police said: “Three people — a man, woman and a boy — were found with injuries consistent with a noxious substance being thrown. “The woman and child suffered minor injuries. The man’s injuries are not being treated as life threatening, however we await an update as to whether they are . “Enquiries are ongoing to establish the full circumstances and ascertain what the substance is. ” | 0 |
Posted on November 1, 2016 by Eric Zuesse. Eric Zuesse On November 1st, The Intercept headlined “HERE’S THE PROBLEM WITH THE STORY CONNECTING RUSSIA TO DONALD TRUMP’S EMAIL SERVER” , and the reporting team of Sam Biddle, Lee Fang, Micah Lee, and Morgan Marquis-Boire, revealed that: “Slate’s Franklin Foer published a story that’s been circulating through the dark web and various newsrooms since summertime, an enormous, eyebrow-raising claim that Donald Trump uses a secret server to communicate with Russia. That claim resulted in an explosive night of Twitter confusion and misinformation. The gist of the Slate article is dramatic — incredible, even: Cybersecurity researchers found that the Trump Organization used a secret box configured to communicate exclusively with Alfa Bank, Russia’s largest commercial bank. This is a story that any reporter in our election cycle would drool over, and drool Foer did.” The Intercept team concluded their detailed analysis of the evidence by saying: “Could it be that Donald Trump used one of his shoddy empire’s spam marketing machines, one with his last name built right into the domain name, to secretly collaborate with a Moscow bank? Sure. At this moment, there’s literally no way to disprove that. But there’s also literally no way to prove it, and such a grand claim carries a high burden of proof. Without more evidence it would be safer (and saner) to assume that this is exactly what it looks like: A company that Trump has used since 2007 to outsource his hotel spam is doing exactly that. Otherwise, we’re all making the exact same speculation about the unknown that’s caused untold millions of voters to believe Hillary’s deleted emails might have contained Benghazi cover-up PDFs. Given equal evidence for both, go with the less wacky story.” However, they failed to dig deeper to explain what could have motivated this smear of Trump: was it just sloppiness on the part of Slate, and of Foer? Hardly — it was anything but unintentional: A core part of the Democratic Party’s campaign for Hillary Clinton consists of her claim that Donald Trump is secretly a Russian agent. This is an updated version of the Republican Joseph R. McCarthy’s campaign to “root communists out of the federal government,” and of the John Birch Society’s accusation even against the Republican President Dwight Eisenhower that, “With regard to … Eisenhower, it is difficult to avoid raising the question of deliberate treason.” Neoconservatives — in both Parties — are the heirs of the Republican Party’s hard-right, which now, even decades after the 1991 end of communism and the Soviet Union, hate Russia above all of their other passions. Neoconservatism has emerged as today’s Republican Party’s Establishment, and (like with the Democratic Party’s original neocon, U.S. Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson, the “Senator from Boeing”) they’ve always viewed Russia to be America’s chief enemy, and they have favored the overthrow of any nation’s leader who is friendly toward Russia, such as Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi, Viktor Yanukovych, and Bashar al-Assad. Hatred and demonization of Russia is the common core of neoconservatism — the post-Cold-War extension of Joseph R. McCarthy and the John Birch Society. Both Slate and especially Foer have long pedigrees as Democratic Party neoconservatives — champions of U.S. invasions, otherwise called PR agents (‘journalists’) promoting the products and services that a few giant and exclusive military corporations such as Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Dyncorp, and the Carlyle Group, offer to the U.S. federal government. I’ll deal here only with Foer, not with his latest employer (in a string, all of which are neocon Democratic ‘news’ media). Foer wrote in The New York Times , on 10 October 2004, against ‘isolationist’ Republicans, who regretted having supported George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq, and he headlined about them there, “Once Again, America First” , equating non -neoconservative Republicans with, essentially, the pro-fascist isolationists of the 1930s. He concluded that they would come to regret their regret: “Conservatives could soon find themselves retracing Buckley’s steps, wrestling all over again with their isolationist instincts.” That’s how far-right Franklin Foer is: he’s to the right of those Republicans. On 7 June 2004, Foer, in a tediously long, badly written and argued, article in New York Magazine , “The Source of the Trouble” , described the downfall of The New York Times’s leading stenographer for George W. Bush’s lies to invade Iraq, their reporter Judith Miller. He closed by concluding that “the source of the trouble” was that Miller was simply too earnest and tried too hard — not that she was a stenographer to power: “People like Miller, with her outsize journalistic temperament of ambition, obsession, and competitive fervor, relying on people like Ahmad Chalabi, with his smooth, affable exterior retailing false information for his own motives, for the benefit of people reading a newspaper, trying to get at the truth of what’s what. ” (She was anything but “trying to get at the truth of what’s what.” She was the opposite: a mere stenographer to George W. Bush and to the Administration’s chosen mouthpieces, such as the anti-Saddam exiled Iraqi Ahmad Chalaby.) On 20 December 2004, when the question of whether to bomb Iran was being debated by neoconservatives, Foer, who then was the Editor of the leading Democratic Party neoconservative magazine, The New Republic , headlined in his magazine, “Identity Crisis: Neocon v. Neocon on Iran” , and he introduced a supposed non-neocon from the supposedly non-neocon Brookings Institution, Kenneth Pollack, to comment upon the conflict among ( the other Party’s ) neocons: “In part, the lack of neocon consensus [on whether to, as John McCain was to so poetically put it, ‘Bomb, bomb, bomb Iran’ ] can be attributed to the nature of the problem. Nobody — not the Council on Foreign Relations, not John Kerry’s brain trust — has designed a plausible policy to walk Iran back from the nuclear brink. Or, as Kenneth M. Pollack concludes in his new book, The Persian Puzzle, this is a ‘problem from Hell’ with no good solution.” But, actually, both Pollack and Brookings are Democratic Party neocons themselves; and among the leading proponents of invading Iraq had been not only Pollack but Brookings’s Michael O’Hanlon . Brookings had no prominent opponent of invading Iraq. (Brookings has a long history of neoconservatism , and routinely leads the Democratic Party’s contingent of neocon thinking, even urging a Democratic administration to have its stooge-regimes violate international laws .) The real reason why neocons (being the heirs of the far-right extremists’ Cold-War demonization of Russia, even after communism is gone) wanted to conquer both Iraq and Iran, was that both countries’ leaders were friendly towards Russia, and were opposed by the Saud family who own Saudi Arabia, which family quietly worked not only with the U.S. government but with Israel’s government, against both Iraq and Iran, as well as against Syria — those three nations (Iraq, Iran, and Syria) all being friendly toward Russia, which both the Saudi aristocracy, and not only the U.S. aristocracy, hate. It’s not just the conservative ‘news’ media that are neoconservative now. The so-called ‘liberal’ media are so neoconservative that, for example, Salon can condemn Donald Trump for his having condemned Hillary and Obama’s bombing of Libya. Salon condemned Trump’s having said “We would be so much better off if Qaddafi were in charge right now” — as if Trump weren’t correct, and as if what happened after our overthrow and killing of Qaddafi weren’t far worse for both Libyans and the world than what now exists in Libya is. (But, of course, for Lockheed Martin etc., it is far better). CBS News and Mother Jones condemned the Trilateralist Joseph Nye for having veered temporarily away from his normal neoconservatism. Then, Nye wrote in the neocon Huffington Post saying that David Corn of Mother Jones and Franklin Foer of The New Republic had misrepresented what he had said, and that he was actually a good neocon after all. Nye closed: “In any case, I have never supported Gaddafi and am on record wishing him gone, and also on record supporting Obama’s actions in recent weeks. We now know that Gaddafi’s departure is the only change that will work in Libya.” Sure, it did. Oh, really? It’s Trump who is crazy here? More recently, Foer headlined at Slate, “Putin’s Puppet: If the Russian president could design a candidate to undermine American interests — and advance his own — he’d look a lot like Donald Trump.” Foer proceeded to present the view of Trump that subsequently became parroted by the Hillary Clinton campaign (that Trump=traitor). Wikipedia has a 450-person ”List of Republicans opposing Donald Trump presidential campaign, 2016″ , and it’s almost entirely comprised of well-known neoconservatives — the farthest-right of all Republicans, the people closest to Joseph R. McCarthy and the John Birch Society. Foer cited many neoconservative sources that are not commonly thought of as Republican, such as Buzzfeed; and he even had the gall to blame the Russian government for having made public its best evidence behind its charge (which was true ) that the overthrow of Ukraine’s democratically elected President Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014 was no authentic ‘democratic revolution’ such as the U.S. government and its ‘news’ media said, but was instead a very bloody U.S. coup d’etat in Ukraine , which was organized from the U.S. Embassy there, starting by no later than 1 March 2013 , a year beforehand. Foer wrote: “The Russians have made an art of publicizing the material they have filched to injure their adversaries. The locus classicus of this method was a recording of a blunt call between State Department official Toria [that’s actually ‘Victoria’] Nuland [a close friend of both Hillary Clinton and Dick Cheney] and the American ambassador to Kiev, Geoffrey Pyatt. The Russians allegedly planted the recording on YouTube and then tweeted a link to it — and from there it became international news. Though they never claimed credit for the leak, few doubted the White House’s contention that Russia was the source.” To a neoconservative, even defensive measures (such as Russia’s there exposing the lies that America uses to ‘justify’ economic sanctions and other hostile acts against Russia) — indeed, anything that Russia does against America’s aggressions against Russia, and against Russia’s allies (such as Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi, Bashar al-Assad, and Viktor Yanukovych) — anything that Russia does, is somehow evil and blameworthy. And, of course, America’s aggressions are not. The U.S. government and its neocon propagandists are outraged that some people are trying to expose — instead of to spread — their lies. The American government isn’t yet neocon enough, in the view of such liars. | 1 |
Former Miss Finland accuses Trump of sexual assault, bringing number of accusers... Former Miss Finland accuses Trump of sexual assault, bringing number of accusers to 12 By 0 58
Miss Finland 2006 has become the 12th woman to accuse Donald Trump of sexual assault. Ninni Laaksonen claims the presidential candidate groped her while they took a picture together before an appearance on ‘The Late Show with David Letterman’ 10 years ago.
Laaksonen, now 30, told Finnish newspaper Ilta-Sanomat on Thursday that Trump groped her in New York in July 2006. A translation provided by the Daily Beast explains that the incident occurred when she and three other Miss Universe contestants were taking photos outside the Late Show studio.
“ Trump stood right next to me and suddenly he squeezed my butt. He really grabbed my butt, ” she said. “ I don’t think anybody saw it but I flinched and thought, ‘What is happening?’ ”
The beauty queen also attended parties at Trump’s residence with Melania, whom he had married one year prior to the incident.
“ Somebody told me there that Trump liked me because I looked like Melania when she was younger ,” she told The Telegraph.
Trump has vowed to sue all of his accusers, calling them “ horrible, horrible liars .” However, he may have a difficult time taking Laaksonen to court, as she currently lives in Finland where she runs Ninnin Lifestyle and Living, a beauty and cosmetic company.
Via RT . This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News with permission or license. | 0 |
A man was injured Tuesday night while attempting to start a fire outside the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D. C.[D. C. Fire and EMS was called at 9:23 p. m. to respond to a report that a man was setting himself on fire, CNN reported. “We did arrive and did find a male adult with burns and we transported that patient to an area hospital with potential but not burns,” DC Fire and EMS Department spokesman Vito Maggiolo told CNN Wednesday. The man suffered minor burns and was taken to a hospital for treatment, Fox News reported. The man, who told a reporter that he was from California, said he tried to set himself on fire “as an act of protest”: “We have a dictator that has been elected,” the unidentified man told WRC. The D. C. Police Department said they notified Secret Service officials of the incident. It is unclear whether the man will face charges. Nearly a million people are expected to be in D. C. this weekend for the inauguration and for the protests accompanying it. | 0 |
The CEO of Goldman Sachs has come out against President Trump’s executive order on immigration. [Lloyd Blankfein, the company’s CEO, told employees of the firm that the company does not support Trump’s policy and that it goes against the company’s principles. “This is not a policy we support, and I would note that it has already been challenged in federal court,” he said in a voicemail to employees, as reported by Business Insider. “If the order were to become or remain effective, I recognize that there is potential for disruption to the firm, and especially to some of our people and their families,” he said. “I want to assure all of you that we will work to minimize such disruption to the extent we can within the law and are focused on supporting our colleagues and their families who may be affected. ” Blankfein’s position against the order is noteworthy because several Goldman Sachs alumni have joined the Trump administration. Steven Mnuchin, Trump’s pick for treasury secretary, top economic adviser Gary Cohn, top adviser Anthony Scaramucci, and chief strategist Steve Bannon all had careers at Goldman, the Hill reported. Blankfein, who supported Hillary Clinton during the presidential campaign, is not alone in his opposition to the President’s executive order. Ridesharing company Lyft donated $1 million to the American Civil Liberties Union to fight against Trump’s executive order, while online residential lodging company AirBnB criticized the executive order and offered free housing Saturday to anyone who was stranded as a result of the travel ban, Breitbart News reported. | 0 |
Black November
The Balfour Declaration 99 years ago marked the beginning of a settler colonial project of tragic proportions.
By Ilan Pappe Al Jazeera " - November is a painful month in the Palestinian calendar. It is dotted with commemorative days that have one theme in common: the partitioning of Palestine.
Today is the 99th anniversary of the Balfour declaration. Although it did not offer partition, it sowed the seeds for it, which eventually allowed the Zionist movement to take over Palestine.
On November 15, we commemorate the Palestinian Declaration of Independence (issued by the Palestinian National Council (PNC)), which was a reluctant national Palestinian consent to partition, notwithstanding the injustice and criminality involved in such an act.
At the end of the month, on the 29th, we commemorate the UN General Assembly Resolution 181, which recommended in 1947 the partition of Palestine into two states.
Put into the right chronological sequence, we can see a direct line between the 1917 Balfour Declaration, the 1947 UN partition resolution and the 1988 PNC's document. It is worth our while to re-read Edward Said's wise words about the Balfour Declaration.
"What is important about the Declaration is, first, that it has long formed the juridical basis of Zionist claims to Palestine, and second, more crucial for our purposes here, that it was a statement whose positional force can only be appreciated when the demographic, or human realities of Palestine are clearly understood. For the Declaration was made (a) by a European power (b) about a non-European territory (c) in a flat disregard of both the presences and the wishes of the native majority resident in that territory, and (d) it took the form of a promise about this same territory to another foreign group, that this foreign group might, quite literally, make this territory a national home for the Jewish people."
In fact, it was more than that: It allowed a settler colonial movement, appearing very late in history, to envisage a triumphant project even before it set proper foot in the land or had a meaningful geographical and demographic presence there.
'The logic of the elimination of the native' The native population in Palestine was much better equipped than the American Indians or Aborigines to deal with the danger of Zionism when it had just arrived.
They also had far better understanding of self-determination and nationhood than any of the other indigenous people at the time.
In 1917, the Palestinians inhabited their homeland almost exclusively and possessed most of its lands. Only with the help of British bayonets could the settler colonial project of Zionism survive in its early stages through the Palestinian uprisings of 1920, 1921, 1929 and, in particular, 1936.
The British army employed immense force, which included the Royal Air Force, to quell the 1936 Palestinian uprising. It lasted for three years and ended with the British elimination of the Palestinian national leadership, either by killing or by exiling.
This was the main legacy of the Balfour project: not its hallowed text but the policy that ensued in its wake, leading eventually to the catastrophe of 1948.
There were British officials at home and on the ground who had second thoughts and qualms about the alliance with Zionism. They had their say when the British government despatched a Royal Inquiry Commission to examine the origins of the 1936 revolt.
The commission hoped to rectify some of the injustice by suggesting partition between the settlers and the native population.
The Zionist leadership urged the British to transfer the Palestinians from any area that would be accorded to the Zionist settlers, but this was something London refused to do.
However, by legitimising partition in Palestine as a "solution" with international credibility, Britain associated this geographical arrangement clearly with the basic impulse of any settler colonial movement, the one so brilliantly defined by the late Patrick Wolfe as "the logic of the elimination of the native".
With such a blessing, no wonder that, henceforth, partition and ethnic cleansing in Zionist thought and practice went hand in hand.
When the British cabinet announced its decision to leave Palestine at the beginning of February 1947, and referred the future of the country to the UN, the historical opportunity arose to fuse once more partition with transfer of population.
This time, the Zionist leadership did not seek international legitimacy for the transfer; they sought it only for the partition. It assumed correctly that partition, in particular two years after the Holocaust, would be accepted internationally as a just, moral and reasonable solution.
A European crime The natural Palestinian rejection of the notion of dividing their homeland with settlers, the majority of whom had arrived only few a years earlier, fell on deaf Western ears.
Locating the Jews in Palestine, without the need to come to terms with what Europe did to them in World War II, became the easiest corridor out of Europe's ugliest historical moment.
As is clear today from the documents, the Zionist leadership regarded the partition resolution as both international legitimisation for a Jewish state in Palestine, and the Palestinian rejection of it as a valid pretext for the ethnic cleansing of the native population.
The Arab world supported the Palestinian rejection and hoped at first through diplomatic means to change it. When it became clear during the first of months of 1948 that the ethnic cleansing of Palestine was beginning in earnest (by the beginning of May, most Palestinian towns were depopulated and some wiped out entirely by the Zionist forces), Arab public opinion demanded more from its governments.
The last straw was the Deir Yassin massacre of April 1948. In its wake, the Arab League began to coordinate a large-scale military operation to stop the destruction of Palestine.
Not all the Arab leaders were genuinely interested in this goal, and not one of them was willing to throw into the campaign a meaningful military force.
The result was a total defeat by the Israeli forces, which continued, without any international rebuke or intervention, the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians.
Occupation Two areas remained outside Israel's reach: the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. Not because Israel at the time lacked the power to occupy them, but because its leaders decided that the West Bank was a demographic liability and the Gaza Strip could serve as a huge receptor for the hundreds of thousands of refugees Israel pushed out south of Jaffa and Jerusalem.
However, ever since 1948, a lobby had been operating in Israel demanding the occupation of these last bits of Palestine. The opportunity came in 1967.
Soon after it became clear that, at least for some of the Israelis, this was not a welcome development: Occupying the lands of millions of Palestinians proved an unexpected political headache and for a while a financial burden.
Thus the Israeli peace camp was born wishing to control these two areas from the outside and grant them autonomy, and later some members of the movement were even willing to call the areas a state.
At the same time, settlers, with and without government blessing, began to colonise the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
As in 1936, so in 1987, an oppressed people tried to shake off the colonial project. This time there was some positive international reaction which the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) was hoping to galvanise for the cause. It seemed that even the US in the post-Cold War era might change its attitude.
Substituting presence with absence American blessing came with a price - a demand that the PLO would acknowledge the partition of Palestine and accept the loss of almost 80 percent of the homeland.
The Declaration of Independence navigated between the pragmatism required and loyalty to the moral and basic principles of the liberation movement. Partition was recognised both as a crime and a fait accompli.
Despite the historical injustice done to the Palestinian Arab people in its displacement and in being deprived of the right to self-determination following the adoption of General Assembly Resolution 181 (II) of 1947, which partitioned Palestine into an Arab and a Jewish State, that resolution nevertheless continues to set preconditions to international legitimacy that guarantee the Palestinian Arab people the right to sovereignty and national independence.
This might have worked had partition been a genuine strategy or vision of the settler state of Israel. However, conceding demographic exclusivity and total geographical ownership is an unthinkable scenario for any settler colonial project. The aim is to displace the natives and replace them; or, as Edward Said put it so well, substituting presence with absence.
From the Israeli/Zionist perspective, partition can only be a means of completing the project of settler colonialism; it can never be used for limiting or forsaking the project.
Thus, the Declaration of Independence did not affect the reality on the ground, and neither did all the next international, regional or local attempts to resell the idea of partition as a "two states solution".
The discourse on partition continued, while the reality of settler colonialism covered now almost every inch of historical Palestine.
November is a good month to ponder why partition, described in American parlance as the best way of keeping neighbours happy, equates occupation, colonisation and ethnic cleansing.
The seeds were sown in 1917, reaped in 1947 and poisoned the country ever since. It is time to adopt a fresh moral and political view on this history for the sake of a better future.
Ilan Pappe is the director of the European Center of Palestine Studies at the University of Exeter. He has published 15 books on the Middle East and on the Palestine Question. | 1 |
WASHINGTON — Take it from a corrupt lobbyist: When it comes to peddling influence and buying politicians, the Supreme Court just doesn’t get it. Jack Abramoff, the former superlobbyist who ended up in prison, said he fears the court’s unanimous decision to toss out the bribery conviction of Bob McDonnell, the of Virginia, reflects a regrettable innocence about how things work in the real world. “I continue to be concerned by what seems to be a lack of understanding on the part of the justices that a little bit of money can breed corruption,” Mr. Abramoff said when I asked him about the McDonnell case. “When somebody petitioning a public servant for action provides any kind of extra resources — money or a gift or anything — that affects the process,” Mr. Abramoff said. He should know. Once a man with Republican connections and easy access to the White House and Capitol leadership suites, Mr. Abramoff and his partners were masters of spreading favors around Washington. They parceled out tickets to major sporting events, escorted influential officials on golf junkets, paid the tabs for lavish dinners and cozied up to politicians at Signatures, a restaurant Mr. Abramoff once owned on Pennsylvania Avenue. All the while they were soliciting and obtaining help on issues ranging from gambling to wages to tax policy. It all came crashing down ignominiously in January 2006, when Mr. Abramoff pleaded guilty to conspiracy, fraud and tax offenses, ending his career and landing members of his inner circle behind bars with him. Dealings with Mr. Abramoff also sent Bob Ney, a former Republican representative from Ohio, to the penitentiary and contributed to the downfall of Tom DeLay of Texas, the powerful No. 2 House Republican. Mr. Abramoff, now chastened and repentant, spent nearly four years in prison. Since his release, he has spoken out against the dangers of what he says is an inherently corrupt system where financial aid and other perks are provided to politicians who only naturally take care of benefactors they consider friends. “People come to think those seeking favors and giving you things are your friends, your buddies,” he said, remembering his own days as an insider. “Human nature is such that your natural inclination is, ‘He has done something for me, what can I do for him?’ The minute that has crept into the public service discussion, that is a problem. ” Such favors were at the heart of the case against Mr. McDonnell. During a period of personal financial turmoil, he received a Rolex, loans, trips, clothing and other benefits from Jonnie R. Williams Sr. a wealthy businessman who was seeking the governor’s help in securing state testing of a dietary supplement. While the governor arranged meetings, made recommendations and appeared with Mr. Williams, the court ruled that he may never have committed an “official act” on Mr. Williams’s behalf and that the jury should have received clearer instructions on that point. To many observers, the court essentially said that a politician can be found guilty of corruption only if the government can definitively show an official “quo” in response to a benefactor’s “quid” — a very high bar in a world of winks and nods. “When you have a system that defines the line between illegal and legal as it does, there are ways of kind of working through it,” Mr. Abramoff said. “Maybe 95 percent or 99 percent of what I did wasn’t really illegal. ” The court’s decision was quietly celebrated by politicians who believe that prosecutors who are intent on criminalizing ordinary political wheeling and dealing have overreached in a number of cases and needed to be slapped down. They worry that too wide a net could eventually ensnare them and their colleagues. But the ruling was loudly protested by advocates who worried that the court had thrown open the door to more misdeeds and undermined already flagging public confidence in government. “This is an absolutely terrible message to the public at the worst possible time, when our campaigns are being flooded with huge contributions that are going to buy influence in the future,” said Fred Wertheimer, a longtime campaign watchdog and the president of Democracy 21, a group that pushes for government transparency. “The court forgot about the public. ” The decision was the latest in which the court has seemed to play down, even minimize, the power of money to influence outcomes. The justices did not seem persuaded that donations, trips or expensive meals could make politicians beholden to the giver. After all, the justices themselves take free trips to fancy locales to meet and speak with private groups. In this case, the court seemed to accept Mr. McDonnell’s argument that his efforts on behalf of Mr. Williams amounted to routine constituent work, something he might have done without the watch or the $15, 000 for his daughter’s wedding. During oral arguments in April, some justices seemed worried that politicians were at the mercy of vague rules that could leave them the prey of overzealous prosecutors. “For better or worse, it puts at risk behavior that is common, particularly when the quid is a lunch or a baseball ticket, throughout this country,” Justice Stephen G. Breyer said. Mr. Abramoff said the justices seem far removed from the unpleasant realities of his old life. “I do think there is a disconnect, and I understand it because none of them have been in the political process,” he said of the justices. And that remove may now have diminished both the practice and public perception of politics. | 1 |
Koch Brothers Secretly Allied w. George Soros for Hillary Clinton → Jay Kurtz
Why would Bernie supporters vote Clinton? Because if she wins, his movement will be finished, and she will see to it that it is.
On the other hand, if Trump wins, Hillary is finished, and Bernie will become the driving force in the Democratic Party, and will crush Trump in 2020.
I just don’t understand why ANY Bernie supporter would be DUMB ENOUGH to vote for Hillary. gmatch
There are many reasons not to vote for Hillary. Bernie is a proven fraud and should go away. If Trump wins – the DNC will have to change or it will not survive. kimyo
while we’re talking about podesta emails, what is your interpretation of the following email from podesta re: a 2015 cnbc interview in which sanders stated “When you hustle money like that, you don’t sit in restaurants like this” and “That type of wealth has the potential to isolate you from the reality of the world.”
podesta: This isn’t in keeping w the agreement. Since we clearly have some leverage, would be good to flag this for him. I could send a signal via Welch–or did you establish a direct line w him?
my interpretation: you fell for sanders’ schtick like an egg from a tall chicken. he was never for real. you’ve been reporting on wrestlemania 2016 without comprehending that the whole thing is staged.
you never said a single word about the theft of california, brooklyn and beyond. WHY?
the word ‘agreement’, that doesn’t raise any red flags for you? Donate | 0 |
Donald J. Trump and Hillary Clinton barreled toward a general election showdown on Tuesday night as they dominated primaries in Pennsylvania, Maryland and other Eastern states, piling up enough delegates to close in on their parties’ nominations. Looking past their fading rivals, the two even taunted each other in dueling events. Mrs. Clinton chided the Republican’s penchant for harsh language by saying that “love trumps hate. ” Mr. Trump was more bluntly dismissive of Mrs. Clinton, saying her appeal boiled down to her gender. “Frankly, if Hillary Clinton were a man, I don’t think she would get 5 percent of the vote,” Mr. Trump said. Mr. Trump had the more convincing performance on Tuesday: He swept all five primaries, winning landslides of more than 30 percentage points over his rivals, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas and Gov. John Kasich of Ohio. His routs represented a breakthrough: He received more than half the vote in every state, after months of winning most primaries by only pluralities. The big night for Mr. Trump and Mrs. Clinton intensified the aura of inevitability around their nomination bids and created urgent new challenges for their rivals. More significant, it increased Mr. Trump’s chances of avoiding a fight on the floor of the Republican convention in July and of claiming the nomination on the delegates’ first ballot. “When the boxer knocks out the other boxer, you don’t have to wait around for a decision,” he said boastfully at an appearance before supporters at Trump Tower in New York. He added: “As far as I’m concerned, it’s over. ” Mr. Cruz and Mr. Kasich fared so poorly on Tuesday that together they were likely to win just 10 of the 118 bound delegates up for grabs. Rhode Island, Connecticut and Delaware also went for Mr. Trump, who was on track to bring his total to about 950 of the 1, 237 needed to clinch the nomination outright. Mr. Cruz is now under growing pressure to beat Mr. Trump in Indiana’s primary next week, perhaps the last real chance the forces have to halt his march to the nomination. He and Mr. Kasich forged an alliance to thwart Mr. Trump in Indiana, but it has yet to show signs of working. Even before polls closed in the East on Tuesday night, Mr. Cruz tried to the rush of coverage about Mr. Trump’s dominance. “Tonight this campaign moves back to more favorable terrain,” Mr. Cruz told supporters in the Knightstown, Ind. gymnasium where the high school basketball movie “Hoosiers,” about underdogs who triumph over a rival, was filmed. On the Democratic side, Senator Bernie Sanders won only the primary in Rhode Island and fell further behind Mrs. Clinton in their race to amass 2, 383 Democratic delegates to clinch the nomination. Clinton advisers predicted late Tuesday night that she was poised to net roughly 50 more pledged delegates than Mr. Sanders, out of 462 up for grabs, adding to her lead of about 240 going into the primaries. Clinton advisers said Tuesday’s final delegate tally would reveal not if, but when, Mrs. Clinton would win the nomination: either in early June, if she continues at her current pace, or as soon as the Kentucky and Oregon primaries on May 17, if she does better than expected in the coming weeks, once her support from more than 500 superdelegates is included. Superdelegates could switch their votes at any point, but Mrs. Clinton’s are widely considered to be staunch supporters. Mrs. Clinton predicted that she would return to Philadelphia this summer for the Democratic convention “with the most votes and the most pledged delegates. ” She pledged to heal the party’s wounds after a long nomination fight, telling Sanders supporters that “there is much more that unites us than divides us. ” But she also looked past Mr. Sanders to take a swipe at Mr. Trump and his campaign motto, “Make America Great Again. ” “Despite what other candidates say, we believe in the goodness of our people and the greatness of our nation,” Mrs. Clinton said. Mr. Sanders, speaking Tuesday night to an audience of 6, 500 people in West Virginia, which votes May 10, said emphatically that he would stay in the race. He made an unusually pointed appeal to superdelegates, arguing that he had won more votes from independents and from Republicans than Mrs. Clinton and would be a stronger general election candidate. After the rally, however, Mr. Sanders issued a statement saying he would go to the Democratic convention in July “with as many delegates as possible to fight for a progressive party platform” — a remark that some Democrats interpreted as his first acknowledgment that he would not attend the convention as the nominee. Still, for all his fortitude, Mr. Sanders plans to reassess his candidacy on Wednesday and decide whether to adjust his strategy if Mrs. Clinton’s delegate lead appears all but insurmountable. His senior strategist, Tad Devine, said the Sanders team would discuss a range of issues including how to adjust messaging about the nominating process and what route if any there is to winning it. Mr. Devine said he could still see a mathematical path to securing the nomination but added that, if it changed, the campaign would have to adjust. “If we are sitting here and there’s no sort of mathematical way to do it, we will be up front about that,” Mr. Devine said Tuesday. The broad support for Mr. Trump spanned some of the dividing lines that have characterized the Republican race until now: He won among the affluent and as well as with voters and those with no more than a high school education, according to exit polls. But the unease about Mr. Trump’s candidacy in some quarters of the party persisted, a potential warning sign if he emerges as the nominee. About a quarter of Republican primary voters in Connecticut, Maryland and Pennsylvania said they would not support him if he were the party’s nominee. The resistance to Mr. Trump was greatest among Mr. Kasich’s supporters, who are more : Six in 10 said they would not vote for Mr. Trump in November. Mrs. Clinton was lifted once again by strong backing from blacks and older voters, but she also ran stronger with white voters than she has in many states. In Pennsylvania, she narrowly won among whites. Her performance was even better in Maryland, where she carried white voters by 12 points. Mr. Trump’s advantage across all five states was so forbidding that Mr. Cruz abandoned the Northeast entirely on Saturday, and Mr. Kasich was left to pick up stray delegates. Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Sanders campaigned aggressively in Pennsylvania and Connecticut, but they focused largely on policy issues like fracking, gun control and Wall Street reform rather than sniping at each other as they did in a raucous televised debate in Brooklyn. Not only did Mr. Trump have significant prospects for a substantial delegate haul Tuesday, a week after his dominating performance in New York, he also had the opportunity to send a clear message to party leaders and other Republicans that resistance to his nomination is futile. Mr. Trump’s path toward a delegate majority becomes far clearer if Mr. Cruz is unable to defeat him in Indiana. That is why Mr. Cruz left Pennsylvania on Saturday to head to Indiana, and he plans to campaign there as aggressively as he has anywhere since the Iowa caucuses, where he scored a surprise victory. The stakes for Mr. Cruz are so high that within political circles, speculation has been swirling this week that he would try to change the subject from his latest losses and announce his pick for vice president before the primary in Indiana. Advisers to Mr. Cruz were cagey about whether he would take such an extraordinary step in an effort to win Indiana, where polls last week put Mr. Trump ahead. But the advisers did not dismiss the possibility, an indication that they were thinking about such a move, wanted to keep the speculation alive, or both. But Mr. Trump has no intention of giving Mr. Cruz the opening in Indiana he so plainly needs. He planned a rally Wednesday night in Indianapolis with a beloved figure in the state who has also been known to speak his mind and find controversy: Bobby Knight, the former Indiana University men’s basketball coach. The two Democrats have also been eyeing Indiana, with Mrs. Clinton campaigning there on Tuesday. Mrs. Clinton narrowly beat Barack Obama in the Indiana primary in 2008, winning support from a sizable majority of white voters — who made up nearly 80 percent of the electorate in that primary — while Mr. Obama won about 90 percent of the black vote. In the 2016 primaries and caucuses, Mr. Sanders has often beaten Mrs. Clinton among white voters, especially white men, and he also performs well with independents, young people and college students, all of whom were expected to be forces in Indiana. “While our area has lost a lot of manufacturing jobs, and Senator Sanders has a way of tapping into that, I think Democrats are ready to rally around Mrs. Clinton and help her get ready to take on Trump and the Republicans,” said Dennis Tyler, a Clinton backer who is mayor of Muncie, Ind. in a county Mrs. Clinton carried eight years ago. Sanders advisers have been steadily optimistic about Indiana, but they also acknowledged that a victory there would not matter much if Mr. Sanders fell even further behind Mrs. Clinton in the race for delegates. “If we do,” said Mr. Devine, the senator’s strategist, “we may have to go back to the drawing board. ” | 1 |
Posted on October 27, 2016 by Claire Bernish
Tony Podesta — brother of the now-disgraced Hillary Clinton campaign chair John Podesta , whose files Wikileaks has been publishing — is not only a powerful Democratic Party lobbyist, but a registered foreign agent receiving a hefty monthly paycheck from the nefarious government of Saudi Arabia.
No — as tinfoil-hat conspiracy theorist as it might sound — that scenario is the absolute truth.
In 1988, John and Tony Podesta formed the Podesta Group and have used their bigwig party-insider status to lobby and influence government policies — while, at various times, simultaneously holding positions of power — which has created a number of glaring conflicts of interest.
According to the March 2016 filing made in accordance with the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938, Tony Podesta is an active foreign agent of the Saudi government with the “ Center for Studies and Media Affairs at the Saudi Royal Court ,” and acts as an officer of the Saudi Arabia account.
At this point, the web of pay-for-play between the Washington, political heavyweights, and foreign governments comes lurching into the spotlight.
For starters, the Podesta brothers’ lobbying firm receives $140,000 every month from the Saudi government, which, in no uncertain terms — and despite a status as privileged U.S. ally — wages a bloody campaign of censorship, murder, suppression, human rights abuse, and worse against its civilian population, while bombing hospitals, schools, and aid convoys in neighboring nations.
John Podesta previously served as President Bill Clinton’s chief of staff, founded the think tank Center for American Progress (which oh-so-coincidentally touts the need to reframe Saudi Arabia’s hopelessly tarnished image), counseled President Obama, and now chairs Hillary Clinton’s campaign.
Tony Podesta acts as a foreign agent for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia — lobbying to influence government policy in favor of the Kingdom — while also contributing to and bundling for Hillary Clinton’s campaign.
Think about that for a moment.
One brother uses the influence of money to both affect United States foreign policy and infuse the Clinton campaign with cash — while the other wields the influence of power as a political insider for the same entities.
As the Washington Post reported months ago in July, Tony Podesta’s lobbying efforts “raised $268,000 for the campaign and $31,000 for the victory fund.”
“The Saudis hired the Podesta Group in 2015 because it was getting hammered in the press over civilian casualties from its airstrikes in Yemen and its crackdown on political dissidents at home, including sentencing blogger Raif Badawi to ten years in prison and 1,000 lashes for ‘insulting Islam,’” Alternet reported . “Since then, Tony Podesta’s fingerprints have been all over Saudi Arabia’s advocacy efforts in Washington DC. When Saudi Arabia executed the prominent nonviolent Shia dissident Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, causing protests throughout the Shia world and inflaming sectarian divisions, The New York Times noted that the Podesta Group provided the newspaper with a Saudi commentator who defended the execution.”
Notably, the Saudis’ reputation has only worsened as further atrocities pile up — concerning not only a record number of barbaric beheadings this year, but suspiciously reckless and errant U.S.-backed coalition bombings of civilian sites in several regions of active conflict.
Additionally, Tony Podesta’s status as a registered foreign agent for Saudi Arabia is at least obliquely discussed in an email from April 15, 2015 — ironically revealed by Wikileaks’ publishing of his brothers personal communiques — in which former Clinton Foundation chief development officer and now campaign national finance director Dennis Cheng wrote to a small group of insiders:
“Hi all – we do need to make a decision on this ASAP as our friends who happen to be registered with FARA [Foreign Agents Registration Act] are already donating and raising.
“I do want to push back a bit (it’s my job!): I feel like we are leaving a good amount of money on the table (both for primary and general, and then DNC and state parties)… and how do we explain to people that we’ll take money from a corporate lobbyist but not them; that the Foundation takes $ from foreign govts but we now won’t. Either way, we need to make a decision soon.”
To which general counsel to the Clinton campaign, attorney Marc Elias, replied [all errors original and emphasis added],
“Responding to all on this. I was not on the call this morning, but I lean away from a bright line rule here. It seems odd to say that someone who represents Alberta, Canada can’t give, but a lobbyist for Phillip Morris can. Just as we vet lobbyists case by case, I would do the same with FARA. While this may lead to a large number of FARA registrants being denied, it would not be a flat our ban. A total ban feels arbitrary and will engender the same eye-rolling and ill will that it did for Obama.”
As the exchange continues, how to precisely handle the campaign’s image with potentially controversial donors — while, at all costs, maintaining the flow of cash — becomes even more apparent. As strategist and campaign manager Robby Mook responds,
“Where do we draw the line though?”
Elias suggests a particularly intricate solution:
“If we do it case by case, then it will be subjective. We would look at who the donor is and what foreign entity they are registered for. In judging whether to take the money, we would consider the relationship between that country and the United States, its relationship to the State Department during Hillary’s time as Secretary, and its relationship, if any, to the Foundation. In judging the individual, we would look at their history of support for political candidates generally and Hillary’s past campaigns specifically.
“Put simply, we would use the same criteria we use for lobbyists, except with a somewhat more stringent screen.
“As a legal matter, I am not saying we have to do this – we can decide to simply ban foreign registrants entirely. I’m just offering this up as a middle ground.”
Mook eventually decides plainly,
“Marc made a convincing case to me this am that these sorts of restrictions don’t really get you anything…that Obama actually got judged MORE harshly as a result. He convinced me. So…in a complete U-turn, I’m ok just taking the money and dealing with any attacks. Are you guys ok with that?”
All of this political wrangling appears to have had the desired effect — despite increasing calls for the United States to either rein in or sever completely its support for the bloody Saudi regime — the U.S. approved a stunning $1.29 billion sale of smart bombs to the Kingdom in November 2015.
Tony Podesta’s specific contract with the government-run Center for Studies and Media Affairs at the Saudi Royal Court, which will earn $1.68 million by year’s end, does, indeed, suggest the infusion of a pro-Saudi message into the U.S. media propaganda machine.
“Saudi Arabia is consistently one of the bigger players when it comes to foreign influence in Washington,” Sunlight Foundation spokesman Josh Stewart told the Washington Post . “That spans both what you’d call the inside game, which is lobbying and government relations, and the outside game, which is PR and other things that tend to reach a broader audience than just lobbying.”
That broader audience — the American public — has indeed been manipulated courtesy of at least the thoroughly-corrupt Clinton campaign if not surreptitiously by the Saudis, as well.
As The Free Thought Project has repeatedly reported , the evidence of collusion among the Democratic National Committee, Hillary Clinton’s campaign, and the mainstream presstitutes is indisputable — including no less than 65 so-called journalists listed by name in various leaks as darlings of the campaign.
Although this level of corruption and collusion would be considered intolerable in nearly any other nation on the planet. And yet, at the center of this shit storm of contention is an official nominee for the White House — who will not be held responsible for any number of questionable and criminal acts.
The system isn’t rigged — it’s performing exactly as intended — and always will as long as the vote validates its existence. Don't forget to follow the D.C. Clothesline on Facebook and Twitter. PLEASE help spread the word by sharing our articles on your favorite social networks. Share this: | 1 |
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With premiums set to spike dramatically in 2017, MIT economist and so-called Obamacare “architect” Jonathan Gruber shared his big idea to fix the struggling health care law during an interview on CNN Wednesday.
“Once again, there’s no sense in which this has to be fixed. The law is working as designed, however it could work better,” Gruber said. “I think probably the most important thing experts would agree on is that we need a larger mandate penalty.”
So Gruber’s idea is to make it more expensive for people choosing to incur the “mandate penalty” in order to nudge them to enroll in Obamacare and take on higher premiums. The theory is that as more people enroll, the associated costs will go down.
You might remember Gruber from a 2014 video in which he bragged about the Obama administration was able to take advantage of the “stupidity of the American voter” to get Obamacare passed.
“Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage,” he said in the video. “Call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical to get anything to pass.”
On several occasions, Gruber has been captured on video talking about exploiting American voters “lack of economic understanding.”
The Obama administration admitted on Monday that Obamacare premiums for mid-level benchmark plans will increase by 25 percent on average across the country. Further, 20 percent of consumers will also have just one insurer to select from.
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has vowed to “repeal and replace” Obamacare with a new plan to provide ”great health care at a fraction of the cost.” He has offered few details on what that plan would entail.
Hillary Clinton has promised to build on Obamacare and enact fixes rather than trashing the entire program. | 0 |
Keywords: Body Detox , breath , breathing exercises , Breathing Techniques
Breathing – a process that goes almost unnoticed and happens on such a deep subconscious level, yet it is vital for our being. Nowadays, there are more and more cases of people breathing incorrectly.
Living in a big city surrounded by constant stress, pollution and technology can sometimes bring the body out of sync with the nature’s flow. Young children know how to breathe correctly on an intuitive level. Their body follows the rhythm of nature.
With time, as the stress increases and obstacles come into our lives we quickly forget our calm manner of breathing and switch to a frantic one instead, without even realizing it. Cancer Prevention
In 1931, Dr. Otto Warburg received a Nobel Prize when he proved that cancer cells are anaerobic . This means that they cannot survive in high levels of oxygen. When a body is low on oxygen some cells start to replace it by fermenting sugar. A normal cell gets its energy through a process of respiration of oxygen, whereas a cancer cell does it through fermentation. Cardiovascular Health
Hypertension is all too common, quite often as a result of stress. In order to lower the blood pressure, it’s important to decrease the stress levels . One of the oldest and most natural ways to do that is through deep, slow breathing. Not only does it calm your heart beat, but it allows the blood to flow at a more even pace.
Research was conducted over a 30 year period that showed how proper breathing can prolong the lifespan , as well as increase general health. The Framingham study found a correlation between the vital capacity, meaning the largest amount of air that can be expelled from the lungs after a deep breath, and the lifespan of that person. An increased vital capacity means a potentially longer lifespan. Cure for Depression
Brain needs oxygen to work, just like any other organ in the body. Stroke has a tendency to leave the body paralyzed as a result. One of the causes is the lack of oxygen supply to the brain during a stroke. This is an extreme example, but looking on a smaller scale there is a connection between improper breathing and depression. Long periods of even a slightly limited air supply to the body caused by improper breathing, can lead to a decrease in cognitive functions. Symptoms such brain fog, forgetfulness, lack of concentration and in the end depression are all interconnected. Increased Energy Levels
Have you ever told someone you’re tired and in return you were told to go for a walk or do a light exercise? This is because the body converts oxygen into energy through a process called cellular respiration . When you inhale the air correctly, more of it gets to your body, thus increasing the energy levels through conversion. It is also one of the reasons why people who exercise on a regular basis are generally more energetic than those with sedentary lifestyles. Different Breathing Techniques
There is a countless number of breathing techniques for different purposes and each one of them has its own benefits. Breathing exercises can lower or raise blood pressure, improve sleep, help with anxiety and much more.
Yoga is one of the practices that incorporates breathing exercises called Pranayama as an essential part of the process. Coming from the East, it’s uncertain when exactly yoga originated, but there is evidence that it has been around for at least 5,000 years . Yogic breathing techniques have been applied for thousands of years, making them timeproof. I will share with you a couple of my favorite breathing techniques that I personally use in different situations. Best Body Detoxifier
Kapalbhati is a breathing technique that detoxifies your body, opens up your nasal passages and allows your mind to concentrate. After doing the exercise you will feel a rush of energy that will immediately wake you up.
Instructions: Sit comfortably with a straight spine. Place your left hand on the knee with the palm facing upwards and your right hand on the stomach. Take a deep breath. Quickly exhale. While exhaling, pull the stomach in as if you’re trying to touch the back and do it to an extent that feels comfortable. However, do not apply strength or pressure beyond the level of comfort. 20 repetitions per set. Come back to normal breathing after each set and observe your body’s sensations. It’s advised to do 100-200 repetitions daily. Sleeping and Stress Reducing Technique
It’s a simple slow breathing 4-7-8 exercise that helps you fall asleep faster or calm down during an anxiety attack. All you have to do is: Fully exhale through your mouth with a sound whoosh With a closed mouth, slowly inhale with your nose on a count of four Hold your breath for seven seconds Exhale fully through your mouth on a count of eight , making a whoosh sound Repeat until you feel sleepy or calm | 1 |
LOS ANGELES — Hollywood’s summer lineup continued to falter over the weekend, at least in North America, as two movies carrying a combined $500 million in production and global marketing costs arrived to $57. 7 million in total ticket sales. “The BFG,” directed by Steven Spielberg and released by Walt Disney Studios, was envisioned as a return to family form for the director — marketing materials reminded consumers that he made “E. T. ” — but it ended up as a colossal misfire. The movie, an fantasy that drew appreciative reviews, took in about $19. 6 million Friday through Sunday, according to comScore, which compiles box office data. Faring better was “The Legend of Tarzan. ” Starring Alexander Skarsgard as the and made by Warner Bros. and Village Roadshow, “Tarzan” collected roughly $38. 1 million over the period. That total was much higher than analysts predicted before release. Most critics turned up their noses, but audiences gave the film an in CinemaScore exit polls, suggesting positive word of mouth. Even so, “Tarzan” remains squarely in the loser column when it comes to profitability. Loaded with visual effects — violent apes, stampeding wildebeests — the movie cost a $180 million to make, not counting marketing. “This property has always really been about the international opportunity,” Jeff Goldstein, Warner’s executive vice president of domestic distribution, said by phone on Sunday. “You can best assess it a month from now. ” Directed by David Yates and Margot Robbie, “Tarzan” opened in limited overseas release over the weekend, taking in $18. 8 million. Important markets like Britain and China are still to come. While acknowledging a “frustrating” result for “The BFG” at home, David Hollis, Disney’s distribution chief, also pointed to international audiences as a potential salvation for the movie, which is based on a book by Roald Dahl. “We’re really proud of the film,” Mr. Hollis said. “We’re going to be reliant in a lot of ways on international. ” So far, “The BFG” has opened in only two overseas markets, Russia and Australia. With “The BFG” collapsing in North America and “Tarzan” not exactly sizzling, the No. 1 movie on Hollywood’s home turf over the July Fourth weekend was again “Finding Dory. ” That sequel, from Disney’s Pixar division, took in an estimated $41. 9 million for a domestic total of $372. 3 million. “Tarzan” was second. Third place went to “The Purge: Election Year” (Universal) a horror sequel that cost only $10 million to make and roughly $20 million to market. It sold a strong $30. 9 million in tickets. Blumhouse Productions, the company behind the “Purge” series, has successfully kept this franchise going by pursuing different storytelling styles. The previous installment had action underpinnings this one added a political dimension. The summer box office always has ups and downs, but the current season has been much bumpier than usual. Disney has found two monster hits (“Finding Dory” and “Captain America: Civil War”) but has also suffered two major flops (“The BFG” and “Alice Through the Looking Glass”). Other movies that have received a disappointing response from domestic audiences include “Independence Day: Resurgence,” “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows” and “Warcraft. ” An on sequels has been one reason for Hollywood’s rough ride. But analysts have cautioned about overgeneralizing at the season’s midway point. Several movies ahead could still salvage the summer box office, including “The Secret Life of Pets,” “Ghostbusters” and “Suicide Squad. ” | 0 |
Share on Facebook ABC News has been caught staging a fake “crime scene” for reporter Linsey Davis to report from in a segment broadcast on Good Morning America. Viewers were presented with the sight of Davis standing in front of yellow police tape with the words “SHERIFF'S LINE DO NOT CROSS” and ABC News, reporting from the site for hours, claimed Davis was in the middle of an active crime scene. But she wasn't. The ABC News report had more in common with a Hollywood production than a breaking news report. Linsey Davis was actually standing in a field in Woodruffe, South Carolina – not at the crime scene she was claiming to be reporting from. Sources with knowledge of the matter say the sheriff's tape was placed there by the ABC News crew for the purpose of its inclusion in the live shot. A photo leaked by an anonymous source shows the sheriff's tape running no more than 30 yards – and tied at both ends to ABC News camera stands. Busted – and ABC know it. “This action is completely unacceptable and fails to meet the standards of ABC News,” said Julie Townsend, the vice president of communications at ABC News. “As soon as it was brought to our attention, we decided to take the producer out of the field, and we're investigating further.” Fake Sheriff's Tape, Fake News But ABC News' recent behavior gets even worse. While they are spending money and resources on faking crime scenes to set their viewers' pulses racing, they have also been exposed misleading their audience about real news. After ignoring the bombshell news that the FBI has been conducting an active investigation into the Clinton Foundation for more than a year, Good Morning America on Friday finally realized they couldn't continue ignoring the story without losing credibility. So they covered the story. But only for 40 seconds and only to dismiss it as “inaccurate and “unsubstantiated.” CBS This Morning's Major Garrett followed up by chiding “unconfirmed speculation.” On Good Morning America, correspondent Tom Llamas continued the misleading angle. “With just four days to go, Trump in full attack mode against Hillary Clinton, sending his crowds into a frenzy with these unsubstantiated reports ABC News sources say are inaccurate.” How can anybody trust these exposed liars anymore? Deceit and manipulation are fundamental to mainstream media operations these days. Sources: Cable News Network , Mashable Related: | 0 |
Jews are the old pedophiles: | 0 |
HONG KONG — In the nearly two decades since Hong Kong returned to Chinese rule, the Communist government in Beijing has tolerated all manner of activity in the city that it generally finds intolerable on the mainland: annual vigils for those killed in the Tiananmen Square massacre, newspapers publishing scurrilous gossip about China’s leaders, huge demonstrations for free elections. But by deciding to intervene in a local court case and essentially blocking two politicians from taking seats in Hong Kong’s legislature, China signaled more clearly than ever on Monday that there was a limit to its tolerance in this former British colony, which was promised a “high degree of autonomy” in an international treaty. The two young activists who are testing that limit are advocates of independence for Hong Kong. While being sworn in, they made a statement of defiance against Chinese rule, using a crude obscenity and a term that many consider a slur against Chinese people. In acting against them, the government of President Xi Jinping has asserted new authority to set policy in Hong Kong, opening what could be a more chaotic era here, in which elected officials are held to a vague standard of political loyalty and blacklisted if they fall short. The Communist Party’s intervention in Hong Kong’s independent legal system could also damage the territory’s reputation as an international trade and finance hub in Asia. Many multinational corporations, banks and law firms are based here because of the dependability and fairness of the city’s courts. Businesses also find Hong Kong appealing because of its political stability, but thousands of people demonstrated and clashed with the police on Sunday night in anticipation of Beijing’s action, which could incite more street protests. China’s move came in the form of a rare interpretation of the Basic Law, the charter that governs Hong Kong and that was negotiated with Britain before the territory’s return to Chinese rule in 1997. The charter gives China’s Parliament the right to interpret the Basic Law, and the Communist leadership has done so four other times since the handover. Monday’s ruling breaks new ground because it is the first time that Beijing has acted in a pending court case without a request by the Hong Kong government or judiciary, and because it appears to establish a mechanism for the authorities to block critics of Communist rule from taking elected office or even getting their names on ballots. Some scholars said the decision went beyond interpreting the charter and amounted to rewriting the local statute governing how officials are to be sworn in. It requires lawmakers to read their oaths “completely and solemnly,” exactly as written, and orders those who administer oaths to disqualify lawmakers who alter or deliver the words in an “insincere or undignified manner,” barring them from office without another chance to be sworn in. The decision also says lawmakers will be held liable if they violate their oaths, but it provides no guidance on who has the power to determine whether a lawmaker is in breach or what the punishment should be. The fear is that this will inject a degree of arbitrariness into a system that is based on rules underpinned by centuries of precedent under British common law. “Whether it would affect my seat is secondary,” Nathan Law, 23, a new member of the Legislative Council who advocates greater for Hong Kong, said of the ruling by Beijing. “What’s most important is that the interpretation is vesting so much power in a person to decide whether someone is sincere and allegiant enough to take office, and there is no against that person. ” The Basic Law says little about oaths, only that officials must swear allegiance “in accordance with law” to the “Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China. ” Two politicians elected to the legislature in September, Sixtus Leung, 30, known as Baggio, and Yau 25, set off the legal case by changing the wording of their oaths, replacing the word China with “” a term that many find offensive and that was used by Japan during World War II, when it occupied much of China, including Hong Kong. Ms. Yau also inserted an obscenity. The Chinese government condemned the pair and labeled them threats to national security for their advocacy of independence, and officials in Beijing left little doubt in announcing Monday’s decision that it was intended to keep them out of office. Li Fei, the chairman of China’s parliamentary committee on the Basic Law, compared Mr. Leung and Ms. Yau, and their supporters, to traitors espousing a “fascist” line. “There is a great patriotic tradition in the Chinese nation,” he said. “All traitors and those who sell out their countries will come to no good end. ” He added that the government’s stance “will not be ambiguous or lenient. ” The United States, on the eve of its own presidential election, urged China not to undermine the “one country, two systems” formula that has protected basic civil liberties in Hong Kong. The United States believes “an open society with the highest possible degree of autonomy and governed by the rule of law is essential for Hong Kong’s continued stability and prosperity as a special administrative region of the People’s Republic of China,” the State Department spokesman, Mark C. Toner, said on Monday. Hong Kong’s politicians reacted along predictable lines, with the establishment endorsing the decision and the opposition criticizing it as an infringement on in the territory. The unpopular chief executive, Leung vowed to fully enforce the decision, saying, “This is about the country’s unity and sovereignty. ” Michael Tien, a lawmaker in Hong Kong who endorsed the ruling, said it could be used to screen future candidates running for office and to challenge those who have already taken seats in the Legislative Council, including several opposition lawmakers who have made statements in favor of or independence for Hong Kong. “This thing is expansive,” Mr. Tien said in a telephone interview, adding that Beijing’s allies in Hong Kong could ask courts to rule on whether these lawmakers were sincere in swearing allegiance or had violated their oaths. Such a process is likely to be contentious, said Simon Young, a legal scholar at the University of Hong Kong, because the language of Beijing’s decision is short on specifics. It says nothing about whether advocating or independence violates an officeholder’s oath, for example, or how to handle candidates who change their position on the issue. As a result, politicians such as Mr. Leung and Ms. Yau could seek to win back their seats by renouncing support for independence and going back to court. And that could lead Beijing to intervene further and issue new decisions to stamp out people it wants to disqualify. “This will possibly be the first of a possible series of interpretations,” Mr. Young said. In the meantime, he added, “the courts in Hong Kong will have to interpret the interpretation. ” The Chinese government’s overarching goal is to crush a small but growing independence movement in Hong Kong, which gained momentum after Beijing rejected calls for free elections in the territory during the enormous demonstrations of 2014. But by intervening in the legal case over Mr. Leung and Ms. Yau, Mr. Xi has drawn more attention to their cause, and he risks provoking a backlash that could strengthen it. In a scene that resembled the 2014 demonstrations, the police used pepper spray early Monday to battle crowds of protesters who had gathered around the Chinese government’s liaison office in Hong Kong, some of whom were shouting, “Hong Kong independence. ” | 1 |
Wed, 26 Oct 2016 03:20 UTC From CARDIFF UNIVERSITY Why does our planet experience an ice age every 100,000 years? Deep storage of carbon dioxide in the oceans may have triggered this unexplained phenomena, new research shows. © Lisieki and Raymo LR04 δ18O from Lisieki and Raymo (2005) correlated to the temperature anomaly inferred from the deuterium concentration in ice cores from EPICA Dome C, Antarctica (Jouzel et al., 2007). The main orbital (purple), tectonic (brown) and oceanic (blue) events are indicated (see the text for the references of each event). The orange box represents the start of the onset of the Northern Hemisphere glaciations. 100 kyrs and 40 kyrs correspond to the orbitally-driven glacial/interglacial cycles period. This period changed from 41 kyrs to 100 kyrs during the Mid-Pleistocene Transition toward 1 Ma (MPT). click to enlarge Experts from Cardiff University have offered up an explanation as to why our planet began to move in and out of ice ages every 100,000 years. This mysterious phenomena, dubbed the '100,000 year problem', has been occurring for the past million years or so and leads to vast ice sheets covering North America, Europe and Asia. Up until now, scientists have been unable to explain why this happens. Our planet's ice ages used to occur at intervals of every 40,000 years, which made sense to scientists as the Earth's seasons vary in a predictable way, with colder summers occurring at these intervals. However there was a point, about a million years ago, called the 'Mid-Pleistocene Transition', in which the ice age intervals changed from every 40,000 years to every 100,000 years. New research published today in the journal Geology has suggested the oceans may be responsible for this change, specifically in the way that they suck carbon dioxide (CO2) out of the atmosphere. By studying the chemical make-up of tiny fossils on the ocean floor, the team discovered that there was more CO2 stored in the deep ocean during the ice age periods at regular intervals every 100,000 years. This suggests that extra carbon dioxide was being pulled from the atmosphere and into the oceans at this time, subsequently lowering the temperature on Earth and enabling vast ice sheets to engulf the Northern Hemisphere. Lead author of the research Professor Carrie Lear, from the School of Earth and Ocean Sciences, said: "We can think of the oceans as inhaling and exhaling carbon dioxide, so when the ice sheets are larger, the oceans have inhaled carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, making the planet colder. When the ice sheets are small, the oceans have exhaled carbon dioxide, so there is more in the atmosphere which makes the planet warmer. "By looking at the fossils of tiny creatures on the ocean floor, we showed that when ice sheets were advancing and retreating every 100,000 years the oceans were inhaling more carbon dioxide in the cold periods, suggesting that there was less left in the atmosphere." Marine algae play a key role in removing CO2 from the atmosphere as it is an essential ingredient of photosynthesis. CO2 is put back into the atmosphere when deep ocean water rises to the surface through a process called upwelling, but when a vast amount of sea ice is present this prevents the CO2 from being exhaled, which could make the ice sheets bigger and prolong the ice age. "If we think of the oceans inhaling and exhaling carbon dioxide, the presence of vast amounts of ice is like a giant gobstopper. It's like a lid on the surface of the ocean," Prof Lear continued. The Earth's climate is currently in a warm spell between glacial periods. The last ice age ended about 11,000 years ago. Since then, temperatures and sea levels have risen, and ice caps have retreated back to the poles. In addition to these natural cycles, manmade carbon emissions are also having an effect by warming the climate. | 0 |
The World Health Organization (WHO) have told scientists to stay silent on documents relating to the cancer-causing dangers associated with glyphosate.
Via YourNewsWire
In a letter, officials from the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) warned scientists against disclosing information from a 2015 study that suggests that Monsanto’s weedkiller Roundup is carcinogenic.
The WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) distributed a report in early 2015 calling the weed killer “probably carcinogenic.” Makers of the product say the claim is false, citing their own research into the product.
Since then, several groups using Freedom of Information Laws have asked for documents related to how the IARC decision was made, including scientists on the panel that live and work in the U.S. at U.S. institutions. In response, the WHO said those documents pertaining to glyphosate research are private and its own property.
Reuters reports some parties are considering a lawsuit seeking to clarify whether that’s the case and if it’s subject to U.S. FOIA laws. Glyphosate is the key ingredient of Roundup, which is sold by Monsanto.
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Where to Invade Next Official Trailer 1 (2016) – Michael Moore Documentary HD M ichael Moore has made some terrific movies in the past, and Where to Invade Next may be the best of them, but I expected Trumpland to be (1) about Trump, (2) funny, (3) honest, (4) at least relatively free of jokes glorifying mass murder. I was wrong on all counts and would like my $4.99 back, Michael. Moore’s new movie is a film of him doing a stand-up comedy show about how wonderfully awesome Hillary Clinton is — except that he mentions Trump a bit at the beginning and he’s dead serious about Clinton being wonderfully awesome. This film is a text book illustration of why rational arguments for lesser evilist voting do not work. Lesser evilists become self-delusionists. They identify with their lesser evil candidate and delude themselves into adoring the person. Moore is not pushing the “Elect her and then hold her accountable” stuff. He says we have a responsibility to “support her” and “get behind her,” and that if after two years — yes, TWO YEARS — she hasn’t lived up to a platform he’s fantasized for her, well then, never fear, because he, Michael Moore, will run a joke presidential campaign against her for the next two years (this from a guy who backed restricting the length of election campaigns in one of his better works). Moore maintains that virtually all criticism of Hillary Clinton is nonsense. What do we think, he asks, that she asks how many millions of dollars you’ve put into the Clinton Foundation and then she agrees to bomb Yemen for you? Bwahahaha! Pretty funny. Except that Saudi Arabia put over $10 million into the Clinton Foundation, and while she was Secretary of State Boeing put in another $900,000, upon which Hillary Clinton reportedly made it her mission to get the planes sold to Saudi Arabia, despite legal restrictions — the planes now dropping U.S.-made bombs on Yemen with U.S. guidance, U.S. refueling mid-air, U.S. protection at the United Nations, and U.S. cover in the form of pop-culture distraction and deception from entertainers like Michael Moore. Standing before a giant Air Force missile and enormous photos of Hillary Clinton, Michael Moore claims that substantive criticism of Clinton can consist of only two things, which he dismisses in a flash: her vote for a war on Iraq and her coziness with Wall Street. He says nothing more about what that “coziness” consists of, and he claims that she’s more or less apologized and learned her lesson on Iraq. What? It wasn’t one vote. It was numerous votes to start the war, fund it, and escalate it. It was the lies to get it going and keep it going. It’s all the other wars before and since. *She says President Obama was wrong not to launch missile strikes on Syria in 2013. *She pushed hard for the overthrow of Qadaffi in 2011. *She supported the coup government in Honduras in 2009. *She has backed escalation and prolongation of war in Afghanistan. *She skillfully promoted the White House justification for the war on Iraq. *She does not hesitate to back the use of drones for targeted killing. *She has consistently backed the military initiatives of Israel. *She was not ashamed to laugh at the killing of Qadaffi. *She has not hesitated to warn that she could obliterate Iran. *She is eager to antagonize Russia. *She helped facilitate a military coup in Ukraine. *She has the financial support of the arms makers and many of their foreign customers. *She waived restrictions at the State Department on selling weapons to Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Oman, and Qatar, all states wise enough to donate to the Clinton Foundation. *She supported President Bill Clinton’s wars and the power of the president to make war without Congress. *She has advocated for arming fighters in Syria and for a “No Fly” zone. *She supported a surge in Iraq even before President Bush did. That’s just her war problem. What about her banking problem, prison problem, fracking problem, corporate trade problem, corporate healthcare problem, climate change problem, labor problem, Social Security problem, etc.? Moore parts company from substantive critique in order to lament unproven rightwing claims that Hillary Clinton has murdered various people. “I hope she did,” screams Moore. “That’s who I want as Commander in Chief!” Hee hee hee. Then Moore shamelessly pushes the myth that Hillary tried to create single-payer, or at least “universal” healthcare (whatever that is) in the 1990s. In fact, as I heard Paul Wellstone tell it, single-payer easily won the support of Clinton’s focus group, but she buried it for her corporate pals and produced the phonebook-size monstrosity that was dead on arrival but reborn in another form years later as Obamacare. She killed single-payer then, has not supported it since, and does not propose it now. (Well, she does admit in private that it’s the only thing that works, as her husband essentially blurts out in public.) But Moore claims that because we didn’t create “universal” healthcare in the 1990s we all have the blood of millions on our hands, millions whom Hillary would have saved had we let her. Moore openly fantasizes: what would it be like if Hillary Clinton is secretly progressive? Remember that Moore and many others did the exact same thing with Obama eight years ago. To prove Clinton’s progressiveness Moore plays an audio clip of her giving a speech at age 22 in which she does not hint at any position on any issue whatsoever. Mostly, however, Moore informs us that Hillary Clinton is female. He anticipates “that glorious moment when the other gender has a chance to run this world and kick some righteous ass.” Now tell me please, dear world, if your ass is kicked by killers working for a female president will you feel better about it? How do you like Moore’s inclusive comments throughout his performance: “We’re all Americans, right?” Moore’s fantasy is that Clinton will dash off a giant pile of executive orders, just writing Congress out of the government — executive orders doing things like releasing all nonviolent drug offenders from prison immediately (something the real Hillary Clinton would oppose in every way she could). But when he runs for president, Moore says, he’ll give everybody free drugs. I’ll tell you the Clinton ad I’d like to see. She’s standing over a stove holding an egg. “This is your brain,” she says solemnly, cracking it into the pan with a sizzle. “This is your brain on partisanship.” NOTE: ALL IMAGE CAPTIONS, PULL QUOTES AND COMMENTARY BY THE EDITORS, NOT THE AUTHORS PLEASE COMMENT AND DEBATE DIRECTLY ON OUR FACEBOOK GROUP CLICK HERE ABOUT THE AUTHOR David Swanson wants you to declare peace at http://WorldBeyondWar.org His new book is War No More: The Case for Abolition . Note to Commenters Due to severe hacking attacks in the recent past that brought our site down for up to 11 days with considerable loss of circulation, we exercise extreme caution in the comments we publish, as the comment box has been one of the main arteries to inject malicious code. Because of that comments may not appear immediately, but rest assured that if you are a legitimate commenter your opinion will be published within 24 hours. If your comment fails to appear, and you wish to reach us directly, send us a mail at: [email protected]
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What will it take to bring America to live according to its own propaganda? =SUBSCRIBE TODAY! NOTHING TO LOSE, EVERYTHING TO GAIN.= free • safe • invaluable If you appreciate our articles, do the right thing and let us know by subscribing. It’s free and it implies no obligation to you— ever. We just want to have a way to reach our most loyal readers on important occasions when their input is necessary. In return you get our email newsletter compiling the best of The Greanville Post several times a week. | 1 |
A 59. 6 carat pink diamond broke the world record for the priciest diamond ever sold. [The diamond, known as the “Pink Star,” sold for $71. 2 million at Sotheby’s auction house in Hong Kong, the Associated Press reported. The oval, mixed cut diamond surpassed Sotheby’s estimate of $60 million. The gem was sold for $83 million at another Sotheby’s auction in Geneva, but the buyer defaulted and the purchase never went through. The jewel is the largest pink diamond ever graded by the Gemological Institute of America. “We’re very happy,” said Sotheby’s Asia Chairwoman Patti Wong. Wong identified the winning bidder as Hong Kong jewelry firm Chow Tai Fook. The company’s chairman, Henry Cheng placed the winning bid over the phone, CNN Money reported. Wong said the company is not worried about a default this time because the auction house vetted the bidders, who also just so happen to have longstanding relationships with Sotheby’s. The last gem to hold the record of most expensive jewel ever sold was the “Oppenheimer Blue,” which sold for $57. 5 million at Christie’s auction house in Geneva in May 2016, NBC News reported. | 0 |
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Sonia Morales didn't hesitate for a moment when she was told that her unborn daughter would be born with a severe birth defect. While doctors suggested she terminate the pregnancy, Sonia knew she had been given a gift.
And when online strangers make hateful comments about her daughter now, Sonia has the perfect response. Loading Facebook Post...
As WJLA News reports, Sonia was 16 weeks pregnant when she learned that her child had anencephaly. Her daughter would be born without a portion of her brain, skull, and scalp.
Doctors predicted that the baby would survive a few hours or days, but Sonia refused to consider abortion. She tells WJLA:
“God made no mistake giving Angela to Rony, Elizabeth, and I. He chose us for this sacred task and we said yes to his calling. We made the commitment even before her birth. We will take care of her the rest of her life here on earth.”
Sonia and her family welcomed baby Angela on March 23, 2014. Sonia began working to raise awareness about anencephaly, creating a Facebook page about her daughter and her “miraculous journey.” Loading Facebook Post...
With the internet being what it is, however, it was only a matter of time before the horrible remarks came trickling in.
Quite a few commenters wrote about how they thought Angela was less than human. Some even suggested that Sonia would be doing her daughter a favor if she ended Angela's life.
Sonia says that the hateful messages bring tears to her eyes, but that she tries to move past them. However, one comment in particular drove her to respond. She recounts on Facebook what one poster wrote:
“Angela looks less attractive now that she is growing and gaining weight.”
Sonia decided to reply for the daughter who could not. After pointing out that beauty lies within, she writes:
“I know that Angela looks different from my typical child, but she is beautiful just the way she is. ... She is full of grace and has great peace despite the struggles. She is a radiant light in the darkness in this materialistic and shallow culture that defines beauty in the pleasure of interests. She is a true picture of strength; she is a precious little girl with a beautiful soul. So this statement does not define whom Angela IS, it defines who YOU really are!”
In response to those who hold her daughter's life cheap, Sonia only says that they can't know what it's like to enjoy her daughter's smiles and laughter. She tells WJLA:
"Even if her life does not please some people, we can’t play God and assume the right to dictate who should live and die. If you get to spend five minutes with her, you will see that she is perfect the way she is.”
Now two years old, Angela has defied expectations, and her family says that they are blessed to have her with them for as long as they can. Loading Facebook Post...
After seeing how her daughter has been an inspiration to so many, Sonia knows exactly how meaningless the harsh words from strangers are. She tells NBC10 News :
“It is so amazing to see how many lives Angela has touched around the world. She hasn't said a word, but her testimony of life and love has reached more than 50 countries. God chose Angela before she was even born. She might never walk or talk or go to school or run a marathon, but she has done more than I have ever done in my entire life.”
And despite the negative comments, Sonia knows that she gets to spend her days with a miracle. | 0 |
Since Election Day, Donald J. Trump has proposed a in American diplomatic relations with Cuba, boasted about negotiations with a major manufacturer, trumpeted false claims about millions of illegal votes and hinted that he might upend current free speech laws by banning flag burning. All in 140 characters or less. As news organizations grapple with covering a commander in chief unlike any other, Mr. Trump’s Twitter account — a bully pulpit, propaganda weapon and attention magnet all rolled into one — has quickly emerged as a fresh journalistic challenge and a source of lively debate. How to cover a president’s pronouncements when they are both provocative and maddeningly vague? Does an tweet amount to a planned shift in American policy? Should news outlets, as some readers argue, ignore clearly untrue tweets, rather than amplify falsehoods further? In interviews on Tuesday, political editors and reporters said that, for now, they planned to apply the same news judgment they would apply to any statement by a powerful leader, even as some acknowledged that social media allows Mr. Trump to reduce complicated subjects to snappy, and sometimes misleading, slogans and sound bites. “Reporting complex policy issues out of tweets, I would say that’s not ideal,” said Carrie Budoff Brown, the newly installed editor of Politico, adding: “We have to treat it as one piece of a bigger reporting puzzle that we have to put together. ” But fundamentally, she said, the thoughts of a are inherently newsworthy — as long as journalists also provide readers with the right context, like whether a proposal is feasible or legal, or correct a baseless claim. “This is the way he’s communicating with millions upon millions of people, and as journalists we can’t ignore that,” Ms. Brown said. Some readers disagree. On social media, there have been calls for news outlets to boycott covering Mr. Trump’s tweets entirely. Critics say that any coverage elevates unsubstantiated assertions and murky policy suggestions. “Media would be wise to stop of Trump’s tweets — they distract, distort and debase,” Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor and publisher of The Nation, said in a Twitter post on Tuesday. The historian Fred Kaplan declared, “It’s time to ignore his tweets,” echoing others who wondered whether Mr. Trump’s provocative statements were a deliberate effort to distract journalists. Part of the concern is that Mr. Trump’s Twitter posts can have a ripple effect in the media ecosystem. Producers of morning shows and newspaper assignment editors wake up to statements from the future leader of the free world those remarks sometimes dominate coverage for hours. Even if journalists insert caveats or clearly label a statement as false, the remarks still reach a large audience. But many veteran journalists argue that keeping the public in the dark about their president’s comments would be a worse sin. “Anything that a president would say — even if it was libelous or scandalous — it’s the president talking, and I think you report it,” said Chris Wallace, the “Fox News Sunday” host who moderated this year’s third presidential debate. “Under any definition, it’s news, whether it’s sensible or not, factual or not, productive or not. ” Mr. Wallace recalled that as a reporter in Washington, he reported from President Ronald Reagan as he boarded a helicopter to Camp David. “As far as I’m concerned, this is like Donald Trump making a statement on the way to the helicopter,” Mr. Wallace said of the ’s tweets. Handling Mr. Trump’s Twitter account has been a hot topic in big newsrooms. Matthew Purdy, a deputy managing editor at The New York Times, said on Tuesday that the Mr. Trump’s remarks had to be assessed one by one. “Clearly his tweets are a window into policy decisions or his state of mind,” Mr. Purdy said in an interview. “Just because he tweets it doesn’t make it news. But just because he tweets it doesn’t make it frivolous either. ” Steven Ginsberg, senior politics editor at The Washington Post, agreed. “My view, frankly, is that everybody is getting way too caught up with the fact that he’s tweeting,” he said, adding that even if Mr. Trump “shouts something on a street corner, I think it’s worth taking up on its own merits. ” “In this postelection period, anything he says in any way you have to consider it and you have to weigh whether it deserves a story,” Mr. Ginsberg said. At some publications, the calculus about coverage is more about the resources on hand. At The Los Angeles Times, covering every Twitter post would prevent reporters from focusing on other political issues, like the future of the Affordable Care Act. “We’ve got a smaller staff than some other folks do, so I’m sure there have been ones that we’ve passed on,” said David Lauter, the paper’s Washington bureau chief. Still, Mr. Trump’s tweets have become particularly intriguing. Typically, hold news conferences after the election — but Mr. Trump has not, offering few opportunities for journalists to question him about plans for his administration. (He has granted interviews to “60 Minutes,” The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times.) “These pronouncements on Twitter are the only available evidence of what the man is thinking, or wants us to think he’s thinking,” said Todd Gitlin, a former political activist who has criticized press coverage of Mr. Trump. There is also a novelty factor. American presidents, aware that their words carry gravity and consequence worldwide, are typically circumspect in their remarks, opting for dry statements and withholding major proposals until a legislative or legal framework is in place. Mr. Trump seems to relish doing the opposite, as he did throughout the election season. Jack Shafer, who writes about the media for Politico, said that journalists could ultimately best serve the public by being judicious in the way they report on Mr. Trump’s tweets. “I think that you starve the troll by just pointing out that the troll is lying and the troll is trolling,” Mr. Shafer said. “Don’t ignore him, but hold him accountable when he tweets for effect. ” Some have speculated that come January, Mr. Trump may rely less on Twitter, once he moves into the White House and has the Oval Office and West Wing briefing room at his disposal. But asked about this on Tuesday, Hope Hicks, a spokeswoman for Mr. Trump, issued a reply: Don’t bet on it. “ Trump has amassed an incredible social media following, one he used very effectively throughout the campaign to communicate his message,” Ms. Hicks said in an email. “He intends to continue utilizing this modern form of communication, while taking into account his new role and responsibilities may call for modified usage. ” For now, Ms. Hicks declined to say if Mr. Trump would move his musings to the White House’s official @POTUS Twitter account. As of Tuesday, @POTUS had 12. 3 million followers. And @realDonaldTrump? 16. 3 million. | 1 |
Militarized Police Shot Journalist At Standing Rock During An Interview Please scroll down for video
Scenes at Cannon Ball in North Dakota are turning increasingly ugly as peaceful protestors continue to clash with riot police and the National Guard. The protest concerns the planned drilling in the area to build a gas pipeline.
The Standing Rock Sioux tribe have spoken out against the plans as they will run through a sacred burial ground in violation of Native American treaties. They have found support and partnership with environmental activists who do not believe that the United States government should be creating new fossil fuel infrastructure. Militarized police tactics escalate at Standing Rock
Despite the fact that the United Nation has called on the American government to cease construction, the government shows no signs of abating their plans. Instead, they have turned their attention to a brutal crackdown on the protestors. According to a journalist, an activist Erin Schrode, protestors have been maced, beaten with batons, subject to Taser fire and been shot with rubber bullets.
I can’t believe what is happening here in Standing Rock. It’s a scene like I’ve never seen anywhere else in the world, and it’s right here at home.
Schrode herself had conducted an interview on camera when she was shot with a rubber bullet. In a post on her Facebook profile, she claims that while she was physically unhurt, she was shaken by the attack and simply could not understand why she had been targeted in such a violent way. In an interview with Fusion she said;
I couldn’t fathom that I’d just been hit. Why would they target me? Why would they shoot anyone? There was absolutely nothing violent, aggressive, provocative going on at the protests yesterday.
This entire disturbing incident was caught on camera which Schrode has shared on her Twitter feed. The full video can be viewed here:
The use of rubber bullets for crowd control has been outlawed in most places in the developed world owing to the number of fatalities and serious injuries they caused when deployed in the long-running conflict in Northern Ireland. Their use in situations without the threat of serious violence is practically unheard of. But despite this unprecedented level of police brutality, the protestors at Standing Rock are not intimidated and will refuse to leave the protest site until construction has ceased or they are forced off the land .
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It was a tough day for the A. C. C. with Louisville and Duke both getting knocked out in the round of 32, and No. 1 North Carolina narrowly escaping an upset against Arkansas. Here’s a look at what happened Sunday: Wisconsin, Florida, Baylor and South Carolina. That’s what is left of your East region. North Carolina. That’s what is left from the Atlantic Coast Conference in the N. C. A. A. tournament, after the No. 7 seed Gamecocks knocked off No. 2 Duke in a stunning upset, on Sunday night. The winners of the A. C. C. tournament championship in Brooklyn, Duke roared into March like a team finally hitting its stride. Paced by star freshman Jayson Tatum, the conference’s leading scorer Luke Kennard, and an enigmatic talent off the bench, Grayson Allen, the Blue Devils were looking like favorites to tear through the bracket, potentially setting up a showdown with top seed Villanova in the Round of 8 at Madison Square Garden. Well, Wisconsin took care of the Wildcats on Saturday. And a day later, South Carolina, playing in front of a raucous crowd just 100 miles from its campus, obliterated Duke in the second half. The Gamecocks had not won an N. C. A. A. tournament game before Friday since 1973. But they played the role of aggressors in the second half against Duke and its champion coach, Mike Krzyzewski. After making just seven field goals in the entire first half, South Carolina shot 71 percent from the floor in the second, looking quicker, stronger and hungrier than the Blue Devils. Foul trouble kept Kennard from becoming a factor, and South Carolina stretched its zone to really bother Duke’s shooters. Sindarius Thornwell, who scored 29 points in the Gamecocks’ win over Marquette on Friday, was terrific again, finishing with a 24 points. “When you shoot 7 for 35 in the first half and you’re down just 7 points, I tell you, it just gives you confidence,” Thornwell said. “It was our defense. It kept us in it. We thought we could win the game coming out the second half because of shooting so poorly the first half. ” Point guard Duane Notice was impossible to keep out of the paint, scoring 17 points on 6 of 8 field goals. North Carolina nearly lost on that same court in Greenville in the game before this one, but the Tar Heels rallied to hold off Arkansas. After No. 2 Louisville’s loss earlier in the day, though, the A. C. C. which set a record with nine teams in the tournament, is down to just one: the Tar Heels. Meanwhile, South Carolina moves on to play in New York, where it will face No. 3 Baylor in a matchup that few could have ever seen coming. Oregon is moving on to the round of 16 after coming from behind to beat upstart No. 11 seed Rhode Island, . Down by eight at halftime, and by 11 with 13 minutes remaining, the Ducks leaned on sophomore Tyler Dorsey (27 points) and junior Dillon Brooks (19 points) to climb back in it. Rhode Island got a huge performance from Stanford Robinson, who scored 21 points off the bench on field goals, including a with 2:11 left to give Rhode Island a lead. A by Tyler Dorsey tied it 30 seconds later. He would put Oregon up again with 30 seconds left after burying another three. Down with no timeouts, Rhode Island had one last chance to tie the game. But a long by E. C. Matthews, defended by Jordan Bell, sailed long. Well, that was interesting. North Carolina narrowly — narrowly — avoided being the second No. 1 seed to get knocked off in the opening weekend, beating Arkansas, . The Tar Heels did not make it easy on themselves. After leading at one point late in the first half, North Carolina let No. 8 Arkansas creep back and then, finally, take the lead with 12 minutes remaining in the game. The Tar Heels were sloppy with the ball (17 turnovers) and putrid shooting the ball (38 percent from the field). The Razorbacks led by three with just over two minutes remaining. But it seemed as though Arkansas simply ran out of gas. A run and some energized defensive stands against an exhausted Arkansas team gave the Tar Heels a lead with 35. 7 seconds left. Arkansas had a chance to trim it but Moses Kingsley missed two free throws. After a missed free throw by Isaiah Hicks, Arkansas guard Anton Beard pulled up for a potential with 14 seconds left. It clanged off the back rim. Arkansas went scoreless in the final 3 minutes 31 seconds of the game. North Carolina won with its defense, because its offense looked very out of sorts. When Michigan State cut Kansas’s lead to with 12 minutes remaining, fans buckled up for an exciting finish. Unfortunately, it never came to be. The No. 1 Jayhawks outscored the Spartans, from that point on to win easily, . There just was no stopping Kansas out in the open floor. The game became a highlight reel of and dunks. Four players scored in double figures, led by Josh Jackson (23 points) Frank Mason III (20 points) and Deonte Graham (18 points). Foul trouble for Michigan State’s Nick Ward, and a banged up Miles Bridges meant the Spartans were not the same as they had been on Friday. Coach Tom Izzo squeezed everything he could out of his team, but they just ran out of steam. The No. 2 seed in the South region is still alive. Kentucky withstood a late rally by No. 10 seed Wichita State in what was a highly physical, strong defensive matchup, winning, . The Shockers did not let the Wildcats play their style: and . But this young and dangerous Kentucky team proved it could win anyway. The Shockers trailed by five, with 2:30 left when Landry Shamet was fouled attempting a . He hit all three free throws to cut the deficit to 2. Shamet hit another with 55 seconds left to make it a game — 19 of his 20 points came in the second half. After a Kentucky miss, Wichita had a chance to take the lead. But Malik Monk blocked a deep shot attempt by Markis MaDuffie with 10 seconds remaining. It was one of two blocks on deep shots in the closing seconds that sealed the win and showed how good Kentucky’s perimeter defenders can be at closing out. After Monk connected on two free throws, making it a game, the Shockers still had a chance. But Bam Adebayo blocked Shamet’s attempt as time expired. Now it’s getting serious. No. 7 Michigan’s improbable run continued Sunday as it stormed back from a deficit to upset No. 2 Louisville, in Indianapolis. The Wolverines have not lost since that plane incident before the Big Ten tournament. Now they are heading to the round of 16. Sophomore forward Mo Wagner had a huge second half, finishing with a 26 points on 11 of 14 field goals to lead Michigan. A Louisville steal and a layup out of the press made it a game with just under a minute. But Derrick Walton Jr. drove and scooped it high off the glass with 29 seconds left to put the Wolverines back ahead by 4. Layups by Donovan Mitchell (19 points) kept bringing the margin down to 2. But Michigan’s D. J. Wilson was clutch at the line, going 4 for 4 in the closing seconds to keep Louisville at bay. Louisville’s defense flustered Michigan in the first half, but the Cardinals’ youth and inexperience showed down the stretch with some bad fouls and stagnant offense. Coach Rick Pitino had cracked before the game that many of his players are so young they did not know who Grant Hill is. On the other side, Michigan, led by seniors Walton and Zak Irvin, still have yet to crack under pressure. Before any action tipped off, a shockwave was sent around the college basketball world early Sunday: Mike Hopkins, an assistant under Coach Jim Boeheim for 22 years, and the designated once Boeheim retires, was named the new coach at Washington, according to the Huskies’ twitter account. The move was initially reported by ESPN. Coach Hop, a respected tactician and recruiter, apparently got tired of waiting. Though he has had offers to leave Syracuse in the past, Hopkins had always remained at the Hall of Famer Boeheim’s side. Boeheim has said repeatedly he intended to retire after the season. Now, that might have to be seriously . Or perhaps Hopkins knew it already was. Hopkins, a Southern California native, played for Syracuse and began coaching there in 1995. At Washington, he will inherit a program that had the No. 3 recruiting class in the nation, according to ESPN, although a lot of that depends on what happens with the top prospect Michael Porter, Jr. who has indicated he might reopen his recruitment. It was certainly not a good weekend for Syracuse, which lost in the second round of the N. I. T. on Saturday to Ole Miss. f | 1 |
The authorities in El Cajon, Calif. on Friday released video footage of an officer fatally shooting an unarmed black man, as part of an effort to quell what has been growing unrest in the community since the episode on Tuesday. The footage shed little new light on what happened to the man, Alfred Olango, 38. The video came from two perspectives — one from a civilian’s cellphone and the other from a surveillance camera at a window at a taco shop. In both videos, the faces and heads of the officers and Mr. Olango were blurred to appear as gray dots. Also, both videos were taken from a distance. The surveillance video shows the scene before the shooting and as a patrol car arrived. The second video shows Mr. Olango walking toward an officer and then walking away backward and sideways as the officer approaches. The officer and Mr. Olango, facing each other, then move side to side in tandem six times before a second officer appears. Multiple shots are fired, and a woman can then be heard screaming. The angle and distance of the videos made it difficult to see clearly what happened because one of the officers was standing in front of Mr. Olango when the shooting happened. The police previously said they responded to a report of a person acting “erratically. ” Mr. Olango refused “multiple instructions” by the first officer to remove his hand from his pocket, the police said in a news release on Tuesday. The officer drew his weapon and pointed it at Mr. Olango while continuing to direct him to take his hand out of his pocket. A second officer arrived and prepared to use an electronic control device. As Mr. Olango paced and the officers tried to talk to him, he “rapidly drew an object from his front pants pocket, placed both hands together and extended them rapidly toward the officer taking up what appeared to be a shooting stance,” the police said. The object he pointed was a silvery vape smoking device with a cylinder, the police said. At that point, the officer with the electronic control device discharged his weapon, the police said. Simultaneously, the officer with the firearm discharged his weapon several times, striking Mr. Olango. No gun was found. Mr. Olango’s mother said during an emotional news conference on Thursday that her son was having a mental breakdown when he was confronted by the police at the taco shop, Reuters reported. The shooting has touched off days of growing unrest and violence in El Cajon, a suburb of San Diego. On Thursday night, about 75 protesters gathered near the scene of the shooting and threw rocks, bricks and bottles at officers, broke windows and jumped on cars, the El Cajon police chief, Jeff Davis, said at the news conference. A San Diego police officer was struck on the head with a brick, the chief said. The officer was not seriously hurt. Four demonstrators were charged with unlawful assembly and one was charged with assault with a deadly weapon for the episode with the officer. The chief was joined at the news conference by religious and civic leaders who said they wanted the community to move forward in peace. Bonnie Dumanis, the San Diego County district attorney, said that the shooting was under investigation and that “no decision has been made” about filing charges. Chief Davis said the department released the footage in the interest of public safety because protests had shifted from peaceful to more violent over the past days. “This is a difficult situation as any law enforcement officer will encounter and not one we seek,” the chief said. | 0 |
Help Blow Up the Globalists Plot to Steal the Presidency- Make This Go Viral
The Benedict Arnold of the Republican Party, Paul “Rat” Ryan, your next President if the globalists get their way.
People laughed at me when I said back in April, that Paul Ryan would be your next President. How could I be so sure, because he would not actively campaign and endorse anyone, in a meaningful way during the Republican Primary. He filed paperwork to run for President on January 30, 2016. And he is a Clintonista, a globalist, a traitor to the American people. He doesn’t carry the criminal baggage of Clinton, but he supports all free trade agreements, the elimination of all national borders, the weakening of our military. etc., etc.
Paul Ryan represents the globalists and their Plan B since Hillary Clinton is going to be indicted AFTER the election.
Please watch the following video and you will see the inescapable conclusion that Hillary Clinton is no longer useful to the globalists and Ryan’s lack of a criminal record , whose election will not spark rioting in the streets from 50% of Americans who do not know any better, and who will do what he is told by the Rothschild/Rockefeller cartel.
All the documentation you need is on The Common Sense Show.
Please make this go viral. Awareness of this insidious plot designed to fool the American people can blow this plan up. Every American needs to see this evidence so that even the casual Clinton supporters will not cast their vote for her knowing she will never make it to Inauguration Day. | 0 |
Get short URL 0 5 0 0 A strong energy sector will serve as an economic driver for the UK's economy, Britain's former minister for energy and climate change told Sputnik.
MOSCOW (Sputnik) — The United Kingdom is interested in a strong energy sector as an economic driver for the whole British economy, and consequently in the stabilization of prices on the global oil market, Charles Hendry , a former UK Minister for Energy and Climate Change, told Sputnik on Wednesday. "Oil consumers have enjoyed low oil prices, that's been good, but ultimately we need strong oil and gas sector because the economic driver which it creates and provides. So for the United Kingdom we have seen both the upside and the downside. … There is a beginning consensus of people [in the United Kingdom] recognizing that action needs to be taken [to stabilize oil market]," Hendry said.
He added, however, that few countries could take steps that would contribute to stability of the global oil market, among them are Saudi Arabia and Russia . © AP Photo/ Vahid Salemi Russian Companies Set to Get a Slice of Iranian Oil Pie The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), which comprises Saudi Arabia among other 13 major oil producers, is in ongoing consultations on finalizing a preliminary agreement on oil output cuts reached in late September and aimed at stabilizing oil prices, that may see non-OPEC oil producers also joining the deal.
The agreement, which is expected to be finalized on November 30 during OPEC's next meeting in Vienna, was reached against the backdrop of decline in oil prices, which have dropped from some $110 a barrel to the below-$50 mark since mid-2014. ... | 0 |
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If you’re always making excuses to skip the gym, you’ve got to check this out.
Let’s be honest: We all can use a little extra push to get the most out of our workouts. Now, there’s one spin studio that has a brand-new approach to take motivation to the next level. At SpinZone NYC, they’ve got a great new twist to keep riders active and focused the whole 45 minutes: Every one of their bikes is hooked up to a sick child’s life support.
Too cool! Where do we sign up???
If you thought spin class was intense before, just wait until you see this setup. With 16 bikes, each hooked up to the equipment needed to keep one child alive, there’s no doubt that every bit of effort counts—if you stop pedaling, the machines stop, too. Even with the array of pulsing lights and music we’ve come to expect from spin class, the distinct sound of an EKG flatlining on a 7-year-old can be a powerful motivator to let riders know it’s time to step things up.
In an increasingly competitive fitness market, the innovative approach at SpinZone NYC is a breath of fresh air, and it’s winning them new customers left and right. With no backup generators and no excuses, they’ve created exactly the kind of environment people need to get real results. Instructors are always there to offer a word of encouragement and remind cyclists how severe their child’s condition is. And forget about plateauing—once participants make it through a full session with one sick kid, that just means a bigger and sicker child for the next workout.
“I used to make it 30 minutes, tops,” said Erika Perry, a regular who says she never breaks eye contact with her kid for extra motivation to keep going. “Now I regularly make it the full class. There’s something about a child depending on me for survival that really gets me going in the morning. And I’ve dropped 11 pounds and feel great!”
Wow, it sounds like things are off to a great start! If this catches on, it’s exactly the kind of bold idea that can transform an entire industry. Way to go, SpinZone NYC. Keep on pedaling! | 0 |
PARIS — Heavy rains in France lifted the Seine on Friday to its highest levels since 1982, threatening Paris’s cultural institutions and soaking the French countryside east of the capital. The Seine has continued to swell since the river burst its banks on Wednesday, raising alarms throughout the city. As of 10 p. m. on Friday, its waters had reached 20 feet. The river was expected to crest on Saturday morning at up to 21. 3 feet, and to remain at high levels throughout the weekend, the French Environment Ministry said in a statement. “The situation is still evolving hour by hour,” a deputy mayor of Paris, Colombe Brossel, said at a news conference at City Hall, adding that the authorities estimated that it would take at least a week or more for the water to recede to normal levels, which are typically three to six feet above the standard reference point for measuring the height of the river. Near the Cathedral of pieces of tree trunks floated along the swollen river. The waters had risen to the waistline of the Zouave, a notable statue next to the Pont de l’Alma that has traditionally been used as a gauge of the Seine’s levels. The city’s government urged residents to move valuables out of their basements. An art collection had to be removed from the city hall in a southeastern suburb of Paris. “Around the Eiffel Tower, the banks are flooded,” said Julien Rogard, 23, an engineer who takes the No. 6 Métro line, which crosses over the Seine on the Pont de . “Where we usually can walk, we can’t anymore. ” The Seine has not overflowed this much since December 1982, when it rose to about 20 feet, but the river’s level is still short of the 26. 2 feet reached in the catastrophic flood of January 1910. Parisians and tourists thronged to take photos of the swollen river, prompting a warning from Ms. Brossel, who said: “There are still people going on the riverbanks to take pictures. It is not safe. We are asking you to respect the ban on going there. ” The government has made emergency plans to shift operations from the Élysée Palace, the seat of the French presidency, to the Château de Vincennes, a former royal fortress just east of the capital, if the waters go above 21 feet. “We’re not yet at this stage,” an official at the general secretariat for national defense and security told the magazine Le Point. “For now, we’re making sure that all plans are ready and that the different measures may be set in motion to ensure the continuation of governmental work. ” Officials expressed fears that telecommunications and computer equipment on the lower floors of the Foreign Ministry building on the Left Bank could be inundated. They said the ministry’s archives had been moved to the suburbs in 2010 for safekeeping. Across France, 20, 000 households were without power on Friday, mostly in the area, east of Paris, and in Essonne, south of Paris, a result of the swelling of the Marne and Loing tributaries of the Seine. Workers in Paris erected a special barrier on Friday morning to protect an underground electrical transformer station near the Pont de l’Alma. The substation provides power to about 80, 000 customers in the Seventh and Eighth Arrondissements. The evacuation of artworks from the Louvre, which was closed to visitors, has attracted particular attention. Starting on Thursday, officials at the museum activated an emergency plan established in 2002, prioritizing the most fragile artworks, such as tapestries. An estimated 150, 000 artworks in storage rooms and an additional 7, 000 pieces in galleries were vulnerable to flooding, and a large portion of those were moved to higher floors as a precaution, officials said. Officials emphasized that no waters had entered the museum. Other cultural institutions that were closed on Friday included the Musée d’Orsay, which is in a former train station on the Left Bank the Musée du Quai Branly, which is devoted to art and the main Bibliothèque Nationale building, named after former President François Mitterrand. The Musée Girodet in Montargis, a town about 77 miles south of Paris, suffered heavy damage on Thursday. The museum is devoted mainly to the work of Girodet, a Romantic painter who died in 1824. Heavy rains also caused deadly flooding in Germany, particularly in the southwestern state of and in the southern state of Bavaria. | 1 |
Judging from a couple of Twitter messages by Donald J. Trump, he had scored a victory for American autoworkers by persuading Ford Motor to keep a Lincoln plant in Louisville, Ky. rather than move it to Mexico. The reality proved less straightforward. Ford had never said it was moving a plant to Mexico, only that it was transferring the production of a small Lincoln sport utility vehicle there so it could fully dedicate a Louisville plant to a model. That decision has now been reversed — but either way, it will have no impact on jobs at the factory. The plant is already operating virtually around the clock at full capacity. The decision, which Ford Motor said it made before Mr. Trump spoke by phone on Thursday with William Clay Ford Jr. the company’s executive chairman, will simply keep the current product mix in place at the factory. The Louisville plant will continue making a far larger number of Ford Escapes, a small S. U. V. that is a less luxurious vehicle than the Lincoln model, the MKC. Ford, which during the election campaign was a frequent target of Mr. Trump’s criticism for moving jobs to Mexico, was no doubt waving a political olive branch by deciding to keep Lincoln MKC production in Kentucky. But the move was largely symbolic. And that Mr. Trump seemingly overstated its impact — if it proves emblematic of his future dealings with the industry — could indicate that his promises to save and restore auto jobs may not require significant changes on the part of carmakers. Mr. Trump’s vows to protect manufacturing jobs in the United States helped him win the support of voters, including many factory workers in Michigan, Ohio and Kentucky. He sought to underscore the message in his Twitter dispatches on Thursday night. “Just got a call from my friend Bill Ford, Chairman of Ford, who advised me that he will be keeping the Lincoln plant in Kentucky — no Mexico,” Mr. Trump wrote in a message. In a subsequent post, he wrote: “I worked hard with Bill Ford to keep the Lincoln plant in Kentucky. I owed it to the great State of Kentucky for their confidence in me!” Both posts overstated certain issues. The plant is not primarily a Lincoln plant — the MKC represents roughly 10 percent of its total output. The MKC is a more expensive version of the Ford Escape, which is a much bigger seller than the MKC. Production of the Escape alone is enough to keep the Louisville plant running at full capacity. Moreover, the decision to keep the MKC in Louisville was made before the two men spoke on Thursday, not as a result of their conversation, according to Ford. “We have been reviewing the sourcing of this product, and Bill Ford spoke to the yesterday and shared our recent decision to keep Lincoln MKC in Kentucky,” a Ford spokeswoman, Christin Baker, said in a statement on Friday. “We are encouraged the economic policies he will pursue will help improve U. S. competitiveness and make it possible to keep production of this vehicle here in the U. S. ” Ford’s chief financial officer, Robert L. Shanks, held a conference call with analysts on Thursday morning in which he expressed hope that Mr. Trump’s policies would “provide an environment where it makes economic sense to build back up manufacturing jobs here. ” But how Mr. Trump governs may be “a bit different” from his campaign speeches, Mr. Shanks said. “So let’s just wait and see. ’’ During the campaign, Mr. Trump heavily criticized Ford for deciding to shuffle its manufacturing operations so that all its small cars are made in Mexico. At times, he even suggested hitting the company and others with a 35 percent tariff on vehicles imported from Mexico. Ford has countered that moving assembly to Mexican plants would have no impact on American jobs. For example, a factory in Wayne, Mich. that now makes the weakly selling Ford Focus compact will be retooled to make trucks and S. U. V. s, which are selling briskly. Ford said the higher profit margins on trucks and S. U. V.s allow it to absorb the higher labor costs of building the vehicles in the United States. The Wayne plant is expected to remain fully staffed with 3, 700 workers. In October, speaking to reporters at an auto technology conference, Mr. Ford voiced frustration with the criticism Mr. Trump was then aiming at the company. “Look, we are everything he should be celebrating about this country,” Mr. Ford said, noting that the company makes more cars and trucks in United States plants than any of its rivals and that it was investing in its American operations and adding jobs. “He knows all that,” Mr. Ford said of Mr. Trump at the time. “I can’t control what he says. ” This week, Ford’s chief executive, Mark Fields, spoke at the Los Angeles Auto Show and reiterated the company’s commitment to shift assembly of small cars like the Focus to Mexico. The decision on the MKC gave Mr. Ford some good news to pass on to Mr. Trump. Ford wanted to move the MKC to another plant to increase production of the Escape, a change that had been planned for 2018. It could still increase output of the Escape by cutting back the number of MKCs it makes in Louisville, or it could move the Lincoln model to another plant in the United States. The Louisville plant’s work force would remain unchanged even if the MKC were moved to a new factory. The factory employs 4, 500 hourly workers and is operating on three shifts, producing vehicles almost around the clock. In the first 10 months of this year, the plant made nearly 300, 000 Ford Escapes and just over 37, 000 Lincoln MKCs. In the auto industry, plants are considered to be operating at 100 percent capacity if they are running two shifts a day. Most typically produce 200, 000 to 250, 000 vehicles a year. | 1 |
WASHINGTON — “Are you up?” The emails arrive late, often after 1 a. m. tapped out on a secure BlackBerry from an email address known only to a few. The weary recipients know that once again, the boss has not yet gone to bed. The interruptions from President Obama might be sharply worded questions about memos he has read. Sometimes they are taunts because the recipient’s sports team just lost. Last month it was a 12:30 a. m. email to Benjamin J. Rhodes, the deputy national security adviser, and Denis R. McDonough, the White House chief of staff, telling them he had finished reworking a speechwriter’s draft of presidential remarks for later that morning. Mr. Obama had spent three hours scrawling in longhand on a yellow legal pad an angry condemnation of Donald J. Trump’s response to the attack in Orlando, Fla. and told his aides they could pick up his rewrite at the White House usher’s office when they came in for work. Mr. Obama calls himself a “night guy,” and as president, he has come to consider the long, solitary hours after dark as essential as his time in the Oval Office. Almost every night that he is in the White House, Mr. Obama has dinner at 6:30 with his wife and daughters and then withdraws to the Treaty Room, his private office down the hall from his bedroom on the second floor of the White House residence. There, his closest aides say, he spends four or five hours largely by himself. He works on speeches. He reads the stack of briefing papers delivered at 8 p. m. by the staff secretary. He reads 10 letters from Americans chosen each day by his staff. “How can we allow private citizens to buy automatic weapons? They are weapons of war,” Liz O’Connor, a Connecticut middle school teacher, wrote in a letter Mr. Obama read on the night of June 13. The president also watches ESPN, reads novels or plays Words With Friends on his iPad. Michelle Obama occasionally pops in, but she goes to bed before the president, who is up so late he barely gets five hours of sleep a night. For Mr. Obama, the time alone has become more important. “Everybody carves out their time to get their thoughts together. There is no doubt that window is his window,” said Rahm Emanuel, Mr. Obama’s first chief of staff. “You can’t block out a and try to do it during the day. It’s too much incoming. That’s the place where it can all be put aside and you can focus. ” President George W. Bush, an early riser, was in bed by 10. President Bill Clinton was up late like Mr. Obama, but he spent the time in lengthy, freewheeling phone conversations with friends and political allies, forcing aides to scan the White House phone logs in the mornings to keep track of whom the president might have called the night before. “A lot of times, for some of our presidential leaders, the energy they need comes from contact with other people,” said the historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, who has had dinner with Mr. Obama several times in the past seven and a half years. “He seems to be somebody who is at home with himself. ” When Mr. Obama first arrived at the White House, his routine started around 7:15 p. m. in the game room, on the third floor of the residence. There, on an old Brunswick pool table, Mr. Obama and Sam Kass, then the Obama family’s personal chef, would spend 45 minutes playing . Mr. Kass saw pool as a chance for Mr. Obama to decompress after intense days in the Oval Office, and the two kept a running score. “He’s a bit ahead,” said Mr. Kass, who left the White House at the end of 2014. In those days, the president followed the billiards game with bedtime routines with his daughters. These days, now that both are teenagers, Mr. Obama heads directly to the Treaty Room, named for the many historical documents that have been signed in it, including the peace protocol that ended the War in 1898. “The sports channel is on,” Mr. Emanuel said, recalling the ubiquitous images on the room’s large television. “Sports in the background, with the volume down. ” By 8 p. m. the usher’s office delivers the president’s daily briefing book — a large binder accompanied by a tall stack of folders with memos and documents from across the government, all demanding the president’s attention. “An insane amount of paper,” Mr. Kass said. Mr. Obama often reads through it in a leather swivel chair at his tablelike desk, under a portrait of President Ulysses S. Grant. Windows on each side of Grant look out on the brightly lit Washington Monument and the Jefferson Memorial. Other nights, the president settles in on the sofa under the 1976 “Butterfly” by Susan Rothenberg, a canvas of burnt sienna and black slashes that evokes a galloping horse. “He is thoroughly predictable in having gone through every piece of paper that he gets,” said Tom Donilon, Mr. Obama’s national security adviser from 2010 to 2013. “You’ll come in in the morning, it will be there: questions, notes, decisions. ” To stay awake, the president does not turn to caffeine. He rarely drinks coffee or tea, and more often has a bottle of water next to him than a soda. His friends say his only snack at night is seven lightly salted almonds. “Michelle and I would always joke: Not six. Not eight,” Mr. Kass said. “Always seven almonds. ” The demands of the president’s day job sometimes intrude. A photo taken in 2011 shows Mr. Obama in the Treaty Room with Mr. McDonough, at that time the deputy national security adviser, and John O. Brennan, then Mr. Obama’s counterterrorism chief and now the director of the C. I. A. after placing a call to Prime Minister Naoto Kan of Japan shortly after Japan was hit by a devastating magnitude 9. 0 earthquake. “The call was made near midnight,” the photo caption says. But most often, Mr. Obama’s time in the Treaty Room is his own. “I’ll probably read briefing papers or do paperwork or write stuff until about 11:30 p. m. and then I usually have about a to read before I go to bed, about midnight, 12:30 a. m. sometimes a little later,” Mr. Obama told Jon Meacham, the editor in chief of Newsweek, in 2009. In 2014, Mr. Obama told Kelly Ripa and Michael Strahan of ABC’s “Live With Kelly and Michael” that he stayed up even later — “until like 2 o’clock at night, reading briefings and doing work” — and added that he woke up “at a pretty reasonable hour, usually around 7. ” Mr. Obama’s longest nights — the ones that stretch well into the early morning — usually involve speeches. One night last June, Cody Keenan, the president’s chief speechwriter, had just returned home from work at 9 p. m. and ordered pizza when he heard from the president: “Can you come back tonight?” Mr. Keenan met the president in the usher’s office on the first floor of the residence, where the two worked until nearly 11 p. m. on the president’s eulogy for nine fatally shot during Bible study at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S. C. Three months earlier, Mr. Keenan had had to return to the White House when the president summoned him — at midnight — to go over changes to a speech Mr. Obama was to deliver in Selma, Ala. on the 50th anniversary of “Bloody Sunday,” when protesters were brutally beaten by the police on the Edmund Pettus Bridge. “There’s something about the night,” Mr. Keenan said, reflecting on his boss’s use of the time. “It’s smaller. It lets you think. ” In 2009, Jon Favreau, Mr. Keenan’s predecessor, gave the president a draft of his Nobel Prize acceptance speech the night before they were scheduled to leave for the ceremony in Oslo. Mr. Obama stayed up until 4 a. m. revising the speech, and handed Mr. Favreau 11 handwritten pages later that morning. On the plane to Norway, Mr. Obama, Mr. Favreau and two other aides pulled another as they continued to work on the speech. Once Mr. Obama had delivered it, he called the exhausted Mr. Favreau at his hotel. “He said, ‘Hey, I think that turned out O. K.,’” Mr. Favreau recalled. “I said, ‘Yes.’ And he said, ‘Let’s never do that again. ’” Not everything that goes on in the Treaty Room is work. In addition to playing Words With Friends, a online game, on his iPad, Mr. Obama turns up the sound on the television for big sports games. “If he’s watching a game, he will send a message. ‘Duke should have won that game,’ or whatever,” said Reggie Love, a former Duke basketball player who was Mr. Obama’s personal aide for the first three years of his presidency. The president also uses the time to catch up on the news, skimming The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal on his iPad or watching cable. Mr. Love recalls getting an email after 1 a. m. after Mr. Obama saw a television report about students whose “bucket list” included meeting the president. Why had he not met them, the president asked Mr. Love. “‘Someone decided it wasn’t a good idea,’ I said,” Mr. Love recalled. “He said, ‘Well, I’m the president and I think it’s a good idea. ’” Mr. Obama and his wife are also fans of cable dramas like “Boardwalk Empire,” “Game of Thrones” and “Breaking Bad. ” On Friday nights — movie night at the White House — Mr. Obama and his family are often in the Family Theater, a screening room on the first floor of the East Wing, watching films they have chosen and had delivered from the Motion Picture Association of America. There is time, too, for fantasy about what life would be like outside the White House. Mr. Emanuel, who is now the mayor of Chicago but remains close to the president, said he and Mr. Obama once imagined moving to Hawaii to open a shack that sold only one size (medium) and one color (white). Their dream was that they would no longer have to make decisions. During difficult White House meetings when no good decision seemed possible, Mr. Emanuel would sometimes turn to Mr. Obama and say, “White. ” Mr. Obama would in turn say, “Medium. ” Now Mr. Obama, who has six months left of solitary late nights in the Treaty Room, seems to be looking toward the end. Once he is out of the White House, he said in March at an Easter prayer breakfast in the State Dining Room, “I am going to take three, four months where I just sleep. ” | 1 |
(Want to get this briefing by email? Here’s the .) Good evening. Here’s the latest. 1. Signs of friction threatened to undercut a deal between Ted Cruz and John Kasich to coordinate against Donald Trump. Mr. Trump is expected to dominate in Tuesday’s primaries in five northeastern states, but his delegate count could fall short if he loses in Indiana next week, allowing the rivals to fight it out at the convention. Polls show Bernie Sanders gaining on Hillary Clinton in Rhode Island, Connecticut and Indiana, though she appears ahead in Pennsylvania and Maryland. _____ 2. President Obama, wrapping up a trip to Europe, said he would send 250 more U. S. military personnel to Syria to help local forces fight the Islamic State. Addressing Europe’s economic and migration problems, he appeared to refer to Mr. Trump’s divisive politics. Mr. Obama said challenging conditions opened the door to “those who would try to exploit those fears and frustrations and channel them in a destructive way. ” _____ 3. The family of Tamir Rice, the fatally shot by the Cleveland police in 2014, is set to receive $6 million if a court approves. It’s the latest in a series of settlements made by major cities over the deaths of at the hands of the police. _____ 4. Beyoncé’s surprise album, “Lemonade,” and an accompanying video focus on the harm men have done to black women, insinuated that her husband, Jay Z, had an affair. (Above, the couple last year.) Her admirers — the Beyhive — took the other woman identified in song as “Becky with the good hair” to be the designer Rachel Roy. But, oops, some accidentally exacted their social media revenge on the Food Network star Rachael Ray. (Also oops, we spelled her name Rachel earlier.) _____ 5. Tough news for the Golden State Warriors. Stephen Curry is likely to be out for at least two weeks because of a sprained right knee. The king of will miss, at minimum, the start of the second round of the N. B. A. playoffs. He took a positive tone on Twitter: “Thanks 4 all the prayers messages. Can feel all the positive energy. God is Great! All things considered I’m Gonna be alright!” _____ 6. Football made headlines off the field. A U. S. appeals court reinstated Tom Brady’s suspension in the Deflategate case, agreeing that the N. F. L. commissioner, Roger Goodell, had broad discretion to suspend players. And Johnny Manziel, the quarterback, pictured above in December, was indicted on a misdemeanor assault charge. Commentary on his fall, our reporter says, exposes “the underbelly of fandom. ” _____ 7. At North Carolina’s statehouse, supporters and critics held battling protests over a law blocking protections for gay people and limiting transgender people’s bathroom access. _____ 8. Attorney General Loretta Lynch announced a “road map for ” to help those leaving prison stay out. The plan includes a federal focus on job training and substance abuse treatment before release, and closer monitoring after. And Ms. Lynch urged states to allow the newly released to trade their prisoner IDs for IDs. Above, an auto repair training shop at the Louisiana state penitentiary in Angola. _____ 9. An international panel’s report on 43 missing Mexican students reverberated through the government of President Enrique Peña Nieto. The students had been engaged in a night of confrontation with the police that turned unexpectedly violent before they disappeared, the report said, countering the official narrative that they fell victim to a drug gang. _____ 10. China halted plans for power stations in many parts of the country after signing the Paris climate accord. That means about planned 200 plants, with a combined generating capacity of 105 gigawatts, may not be built. “It’s a lot of power,” a coal specialist said. “It’s a heck of a lot of power. ” _____ 11. Finally, meet a few of the dwindling population of the world’s largest primate, Grauer’s gorilla. Conservationists say years of conflict in the jungles of the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo have eased, enabling them to make a head count that confirmed their fears. With fewer than 3, 800 remaining, extinction is possible. _____ Your Evening Briefing is posted at 6 p. m. Eastern. And don’t miss Your Morning Briefing, posted weekdays at 6 a. m. Eastern, and Your Weekend Briefing, posted at 6 a. m. Sundays. Want to look back? Here’s the Weekend Briefing. What did you like? What do you want to see here? Let us know at briefing@nytimes. com. | 1 |
Abby Martin Exposes John Podesta Video
Abby Martin explores John Podestas political rise, his vast network of corporate connections and his think tank "Center for American Progress." Learn why the Podestas and the Clintons are a match made in ruling class heaven.
With the Wikileaks release of thousands of emails belonging to John Podesta, very little is known in US society about Podesta himself. While hes maintained a low profile, John Podesta is actually considered one of Washingtons biggest players, and one of the most powerful corporate lobbyists in the world. Posted November 06, 2016 | 0 |
One vandal rang in the New Year early Sunday morning by trekking up to the iconic Hollywood sign in Los Angeles and altering it to read, “Hollyweed. ”[A law enforcement official told CBS Los Angeles that the prankster hiked up Mount Lee and draped two tarps over the “O”s in the sign to make them appear as “E”s. As the sun rose over Los Angeles Sunday morning, locals took to social media to share snaps of the altered sign. THE HOLLYWOOD SIGN GOT VANDALISED AND IT NOW SAYS HOLLYWEED pic. twitter. — ebola ✨ (@mileynoticedme) January 1, 2017, Last night the Hollywood sign was vandalized into ’Hollyweed’ Starting 2017 on a high note. #2017 #hollyweed pic. twitter. — Kory DeSoto (@Korsoto) January 1, 2017, Someone managed to change the Hollywood sign to say ”Hollyweed” — 2017 starting off strong 😂😂😂😂😂 pic. twitter. — Jon (@MrDalekJD) January 1, 2017, The incident was reportedly caught on tape by security cameras and police are investigating it as misdemeanor trespassing. The vandal may have been making a political statement, or may have simply been celebrating in November, California legalized marijuana for recreational use for those 21 and older, the most significant statewide change in marijuana laws since the passage of Proposition 215 in 1996, which legalized the drug for medical use. As other outlets have noted, this is not the first time the iconic sign has been altered to read “Hollyweed. ” On New Year’s Day 1976, a student at Cal State Northridge similarly draped tarps over the “O”s to change them into “E”s, and the same thing reportedly happened again in 1983. Follow Daniel Nussbaum on Twitter: @dznussbaum | 0 |
During Friday’s “Real Time” on HBO, host Bill Maher went on a rant about how he is cheering for the Atlanta Falcons Sunday in Super Bowl LI all because President Donald Trump is close with New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady, head coach Bill Belichick and owner Robert Kraft. “The Falcons are playing a team where the owner, the coach, and the star quarterback all love and support Donald Trump, so I’d really like for them to lose by a score of a million f***ing thousand to none,” Maher said to applause. Later, Maher told both Brady and Belichick, “F*** you!” Follow Trent Baker on Twitter @MagnifiTrent | 0 |
(Want to get this briefing by email? Here’s the .) Good evening. Here’s the latest. 1. Federal health officials advised pregnant women to avoid a second area of County where the Zika virus is spreading. The new zone includes South Beach, the tourist mecca of Miami Beach, above. The officials also sounded the alarm about the virus’s possible spread in a much larger area of South Florida. “All it takes is one mosquito bite to change the entire course of our lives,” a worried pregnant woman said. Here’s what travelers need to know. _____ 2. Donald Trump’s campaign lost its chairman, Paul Manafort, another bump in a tumultuous week for his team. Mr. Trump visited Baton Rouge with his running mate, Mike Pence, to offer consolation and draw attention to what many in Louisiana feel has been a lack of media and presidential attention. President Obama, who has been in Martha’s Vineyard on a family vacation, plans to visit Baton Rouge on Tuesday. In our latest campaign podcast, the author of “Hillbilly Elegy,” a memoir of growing up as part of the white underclass, explains Mr. Trump’s political rise. _____ 3. The faltering of Mr. Trump’s campaign has encouraged Democrats to press for action on President Obama’s nomination of Judge Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court. Separately, F. B. I. documents given to Congress this week show that Hillary Clinton told investigators that former Secretary of State Colin Powell had advised her to use a personal email account. Above, a meeting in 2014. _____ 4. “I want to apologize for my behavior last weekend — for not being more careful and candid,” the Olympic swimmer Ryan Lochte posted. He was referring to his account of a gunpoint robbery in Rio, which has been contradicted by witnesses, including teammates, who say he had a clash with employees of a gas station that he was drunkenly vandalizing. The apology did little to soothe angry Brazilians. “He’s still portraying himself as a victim,” said a sports commentator. “So much arrogance. ” _____ 5. The Rio Olympics are speeding toward Sunday’s closing ceremony, with just a few focal events left. One is the women’s 800 meters on Saturday night, with the South African runner Caster Semenya heavily favored to win. She still faces sporadic backbiting over whether she has a hormonal advantage over rivals. The U. S. won the women’s relay on Friday, taking a final for which they almost did not qualify. Usain Bolt won three sprinting gold medals for the third straight Olympic Games, helping Jamaica to victory in the 4x100 relay. The U. S. women’s water polo team won its second consecutive gold medal, and the U. S. men’s basketball team advanced to Sunday’s final. Russia won in synchronized swimming. _____ 6. Russia fired cruise missiles into Syria from warships in the Mediterranean for the first time, intensifying its efforts to turn back insurgent forces. The missiles, aimed near Aleppo, came days after Russia began flying bombing missions from an Iranian base. _____ 7. The former Navy SEAL who wrote an account of the raid that killed Osama bin Laden apologized for failing to clear his disclosures with the Pentagon. Matt Bissonnette, who wrote under the pen name Mark Owen, agreed to forfeit $6. 8 million in book royalties and speaking fees, hoping to settle more than two years of investigations. “I acknowledge my mistake and have paid a stiff price, both personally and financially, for that error,” he said in a statement. The deal awaits court approval. _____ 8. In theaters this weekend: Natalie Portman’s “elegant and intimate” directing debut, “A Tale of Love and Darkness,” based on a memoir by the Israeli novelist Amos Oz. If you’d rather hang by the small screen, Amazon Prime has “Mission Impossible — Rogue Nation. ” Our reviewers recommend nine new books, including Colson Whitehead’s daring novel, “The Underground Railroad,” and Jules Feiffer’s latest graphic novel, “Cousin Joseph. ” Foodies might want to try our recipe for creamy tomato gazpacho with crunchy pecorino. _____ 9. And finally, here’s an idea for an alternative vacation: a voyage on a freighter along the most traveled inland waterway in the U. S. a corridor that connects the Atlantic Ocean with the Great Lakes and the Mississippi. Travelers stay in private cabins, taking shore leave while the crew loads, unloads or navigates locks. During his passage of Lake Ontario, our travel writer observed, “The air was still and the view ahead was so wide I could see the curvature of the earth. ” Have a great weekend. _____ Your Evening Briefing is posted at 6 p. m. Eastern. And don’t miss Your Morning Briefing, posted weekdays at 6 a. m. Eastern, and Your Weekend Briefing, posted at 6 a. m. Sundays. Want to look back? Here’s last night’s briefing. What did you like? What do you want to see here? Let us know at briefing@nytimes. com. | 1 |
Chairman of the House Freedom Caucus Rep. Mark Meadows (R. . C.) told Breitbart News on Friday that he will work with moderate Republicans to pass better Obamacare legislation than the bill offered by Speaker Paul Ryan (R. .) — as part of his understanding with President Donald Trump. [“Based on my conversations with the president and the they want to get it right, and they want to get it done quickly,” said Meadows. “They also want to make sure they reduce premiums for Americans — and when that happens, we’re in total solidarity with our president and . ” The congressman said the American Health Care Act does not have the mechanisms to reduce premiums, nor costs, until further on down the path of replacement of the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare. “I want to applaud the president, having met with him yesterday,” he said. “He’s negotiating in good faith. I committed to him that I would negotiate in good faith,” Meadows said. “The only troubling thing that I continue to hear is that no amendments are going to be going to be allowed to be made in order. Certainly, no amendments were supported by either of the chairmen in either of the committees of jurisdiction. ” As part of his good faith commitment to the president, Meadows said he would work with more moderate Republicans, whose districts are less conservative than his, in order to find common ground. One of the frustrations Capitol Hill conservatives are dealing with is the contrast between the 2o17 repeal effort and the 2015 repeal effort. In December 2015, Republicans in the House and Senate passed an Obamacare repeal bill authored by Rep. Tom Price (R. . ). Price is a physician and now the secretary of Health and Human Services, but in 2o15, he was the chairman of the House Budget Committee. The Price bill was the “root and branch” repeal conservatives demanded from the party. Although it was vetoed by President Barack Obama, conservatives expected the return of the 2015 bill as the opening move, followed by a replacement bill that combined parts of Obamacare that had already become part of the national consensus and a transition period that gave the economy and body politic time to adjust. The RyanCare bill was crafted to be “RepealPlus,” Meadow said. “The 2015 bill that all of us vote on? He doesn’t want to do,” he said. “He is saying that the reason why he doesn’t want to do the 2015 bill is that it won’t pass in the Senate. Well, my encouragement is to send it over to the Senate and let them amend it and then they can send it back to us. ” I support my friends @RandPaul, @SenMikeLee, and @tedcruz. Every tax, every mandate, every regulation of #Obamacare needs to go. https: . — Mark Meadows (@RepMarkMeadows) February 28, 2017, Meadows said he does bank on promises of future reform and adjustments. “In Washington, D. C. you have to make the assumption that the only thing that is going to get done is the one thing you are voting on today,” he said. “History shows us that if count on just the thing you are voting on today to get done, that is a more prudent calculation than assuming that you vote on something and assuming you’ll get three or four things that may or may not happen. ” This between the two chambers is the normal legislative process Ryan and the Republican leadership are hoping to avoid. If the RyanCare bill can progress through the House and Senate unchanged, then there is no need for a conference to reconcile two versions of the same bill. In a conference, the power shifts to the Senate from the House because a senator chairs the conference committee. For Ryan, the additional risk is that a conference committee is free to produce whatever bill they come up with for votes in the House and Senate. There is a suspicion on Capitol Hill that the RyanCare language is frozen because of agreements made between the Republican leadership and insurance company representatives when the bill was written. Certainly, it is strange for a bill to be touted as the return of “regular order” when it was developed outside the committees, without hearings. It also has not escaped notice among conservatives that not a single Republican member of either the Ways and Means Committee nor the Energy and Commerce Committee offered amendments to the RyanCare bill in their committee markups. Ryan dropped his bill Monday at 6 p. m. as members were coming back to Washington from the weekend recess and with no outreach to conservative media. A leadership staffer familiar with the RyanCare rollout told Breitbart News that the rollout was part of the party’s plan that takes Capitol Hill Republicans from January through Labor Day. January and February were devoted to confirmations and regulatory relief through the Congressional Review Act, the staffer said. March is devoted to passing leadership’s health care bill, the staffer said. The RyanCare bill is meant to be the first phase of the process, and it is written in such a way as to preserve its status as a privileged motion through the budget reconciliation process. Republicans hold a majority in the Senate, but for regular legislation, there is a requirement to close debate and bring up a vote. Because the Republicans do not have the 60 votes required for cloture, they must use the budget track, which means the repeal bill can only address issues. Further changes to the PPACA legislation are vulnerable to Democratic efforts to extend debate indefinitely as long as they control 41 votes. This maneuver is the filibuster and Republicans are anticipating that once the financial underpinnings of Obamacare are restricted through the budget bill, enough Democrats will participate in the process to pass the additional phases of replacement. As a practical matter, the House Republican Leadership must get to 216 votes, not 218, because there are five vacant House seats. The House Freedom Caucus does not list its members publicly, but during the 2015 fight to Speaker John Boehner (R. ) it was accepted that the HFC was solid for 30 votes. With 237 sitting Republicans, 22 defections are enough to kill the RyanCare bill on the floor. In the recent past, so many Republicans have bucked the House GOP leaders that the Republicans needed Democratic votes to pass leadership’s compromises with Obama and the Democrats. There were 67 Republicans who voted against the Dec. 11, 2014 “Cromnibus” budget deal. Republicans voted against Ryan’s budget agreement with Democrats in 2013. In the fiscal cliff vote Jan. 1, 2013, 151 Republicans voted against the Republican leadership. But these votes were before Ryan took the gavel and Trump moved into the White House. The next hurdle for the American Health Care Act is the House Budget Committee, chaired by Rep. Diane Black (R. . ). | 1 |
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So you say you want a revolution? Well don’t worry, it’s already happening and it has nothing whatsoever to do with the political game that the ruling oligarchs entice you to play once every four years. As the radical decentralization transforms the economy and finance and manufacturing and the media itself, the only question is whether or not you’re taking part in it. Yes, the revolution is happening, and no, it will not be televised.
SHOW NOTES | 0 |
Archives Michael On Television Everybody Is Telling Me That Trump Is Going To Win – So Why Do I Have Such An Ominous Feeling? By Michael Snyder, on November 6th, 2016
I hope that I am wrong. On Tuesday night we will find out who our next president will be, and I have a very ominous feeling about what is going to happen. But all around me there are people telling me that Trump is going to win. They tell me to disregard the polls because they cannot be trusted, and that very well may be true . They tell me that new voters and independent voters will overwhelmingly vote for Trump, and they tell me that it is obvious that Trump has more enthusiasm for his campaign because of the size of his rallies. I have even heard some people say that God told them that Donald Trump is going to win the election. Well, we will find out on Tuesday night who was right and who was wrong. Personally, I don’t know what is going to happen, but I am quite skeptical of Trump’s chances and I can’t shake this ominous feeling about what Tuesday night will bring.
Even if Trump could legitimately get the votes that he needs, would the elite just stand by and allow him to win the election? There was evidence of widespread fraud in the last election , and there have already been reports of vote switching in this election . Bev Harris of blackboxvoting.org has been documenting how our elections have been stolen for many years, and at this point I have very little faith in the integrity of our system.
But I still voted.
Early voting is available where I live, and on Friday I voted for Donald Trump.
I just wish that I could believe that my vote is going to matter. On Sunday we got another glaring example of how rigged the system is. In a letter to Congress, FBI Director James Comey announced that his agency is ending the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails . By some miracle, the FBI was able to examine approximately 650,000 emails in just eight days. But there are only 691,200 seconds in eight days. So the FBI somehow reviewed these emails at the rate of about one every second, and now they have conveniently come to the conclusion that Hillary Clinton is totally innocent just two days before the election.
When this story broke, it really did hit me on an emotional level, and I already detailed my thoughts in an article for The Most Important News entitled “ I Just Lost All Faith In Our Deeply Corrupt Legal System And In The Rule Of Law In The United States “. I don’t know how any American is going to be able to have faith in our system of justice after this. We truly do live in a lawless nation, and if the American people elect Hillary Clinton they are willingly choosing lawlessness.
But let’s pretend for a moment that our elections are completely and totally fair and that Donald Trump has an honest chance. Even though the polls have tightened up over the past week, it is still very difficult to see a path to victory for Trump.
Virtually everyone agrees that the electoral map gives the Democrats a built-in advantage. In order to win the election, Donald Trump is going to have to win all of the “battleground states” plus steal a mid-size state from Hillary’s column.
For Hillary, there are many paths to victory for her.
If Hillary Clinton wins Florida, she wins the election.
If Hillary Clinton wins Ohio, she wins the election.
If Hillary Clinton wins North Carolina or Arizona, she almost certainly wins the election.
In order for Donald Trump to win, he has got to win Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Ohio, Iowa, Arizona, Nevada and either Pennsylvania or Michigan.
Of course that is possible, but it is not probable even if the fight was fair.
And apparently I am not the only one that has an ominous feeling about what is coming. NBC News is reporting on a tremendous surge in emergency food sales as preppers get ready for the outcome of this election…
In case of an election night Doomsday, preppers are running up sales of emergency survival food.
While sales for “long term food” typically see an increase around natural disasters and elections, “this is more intense than what we saw in 2012,” said Keith Bansemer, VP of marketing for My Patriot Supply, a manufacturer and seller of survival food. During the previous election his company saw sales double. This time it’s triple.
“We have everyone we can on the phones,” he said. “We are overwhelmed.”
And a Yahoo article is warning that militia groups “are preparing for the possibility of a stolen election”…
As the most divisive presidential election in recent memory nears its conclusion, some armed militia groups are preparing for the possibility of a stolen election on Nov. 8 and civil unrest in the days following a victory by Democrat Hillary Clinton.
They say they won’t fire the first shot, but they’re not planning to leave their guns at home, either.
Tens of millions of Americans are very deeply emotionally invested in this campaign, and undoubtedly some of my readers will get upset with me for writing this article.
But I am not writing this article to get people down. In fact, I am strongly urging everyone to vote.
If you don’t vote now, you may never get a chance to vote in a pivotal election such as this one ever again.
And everyone needs to be watching for signs of election fraud when they go to vote. People are freaked out about the potential for a stolen election because of what has happened in the past, and we want to do our very best to make sure that it doesn’t happen this time.
If Donald Trump wins on Tuesday, I will be very, very happy to have been proven wrong.
And if Hillary Clinton wins, I will take absolutely no joy in being right.
I truly do believe that this election represents America’s “last chance”. The most evil politician in the entire country is on the verge of becoming our next president, and the American people have a decision to make.
If the American people willingly choose Hillary Clinton, I believe that will be the final nail in our coffin.
So please vote on Tuesday, because the fate of our nation hangs in the balance. November 6th, 2016 | Tags: 2016 Election , Anxiety , Clinton , Depression , Donald Trump , Election , Election 2016 , Feeling , Feeling Pain , Hillary Clinton , Pain , Painful , Painful Feeling , Trump | Category: Commentary If Donald Trump Wins, He Will Be 70 Years, 7 Months And 7 Days Old On His First Full Day In Office » ALWAYSTOMORROW
COUNTDOWN. Today, November 6, 2016. In 2 days I predict Mrs. Clinton will be elected our next president. Bob332
God gave this country TWO chances over the past 8 trs to get this country back on course & people BLEW it. Now it will be 3 strikes and your out IF this evil, corrupt POS is elected. As Lenin once said ” America is like a healthy body and it’s resistance is three fold , it’s PATRIOTISM, it’ s MORALITY and it’s Spiritual life.If we can undermine these three areas America WILL COLLAPSE from within” Ask yourself one question. Have these area’s finally been undermined? The answer is YES and we WILL suffer the ramifications! ALWAYSTOMORROW
Mike, what happened to your “A Hillary Clinton Indictment Is Coming” article?
Those rotten Russian hackers I’ll bet. | 1 |
As part of their free speech countermarch following last nights event, MILO and the Davis College Republicans reenacted the 2011 UC Davis incident with silly string.[ The reenactment was a mockery of the 2011 UC Davis incident, in which protestors from the Occupy Movement were pepper sprayed by police after refusing to leave when asked. The incident led to mass protests on the campus at the time, with every affected student receiving $30, 000 in compensation. It also led to a against former UC Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi, who was ousted after a relentless campaign by leftists angry that she defended the police officer involved in the incident. MILO and the members of the College Republicans sat down in the quad and were sprayed by silly spring by a team of Donald Trump supporters. The countermarch was a response to last nights cancellation of the event with MILO and Martin Shkreli, after violent protestors assaulted cameramen and security staff, and the event was deemed too great a security risk to go ahead. You can follow Ben Kew on Facebook, on Twitter at @ben_kew, or email him at bkew@breitbart. com, | 0 |
The fact that you are ALWAYS on here dogging him with your Liberal bullshit makes it obvious that You’re a shill and a troll !!! He has a lot of valid points in his reporting and most of us that read his articles recognize that ! You and a few other people that I’ve called out on here have become obvious to most of the rest of us on here for just what you really ARE !!! If you don’t LIKE thi s type of reporting then why don’t you just get on a LIBERAL website where you can “Express” your liberal opinions along with all of your other Liberal troll buddies ?!!! Your just a closet queer that drives a cab for a living !!! If you REALLY had those two “Advanced” degrees that you like to BRAG about on here and if you were a REAL “Professional Sports Bettor” you wouldn’t be driving a cab , hanging out in casinos and spending so much time on HERE !!! You’re just a Real Looser that’s never done anything or gone anyplace in life Snitch and that’s ALL you are !!! | 0 |
US secretly using Tunisia airbase for drones spying on Libya: Sources US secretly using Tunisia airbase for drones spying on Libya: Sources By 0 184
The US military forces have secretly been using an airbase in Tunisia for drone operations to gather intelligence from inside oil-rich Libya, officials say.
The announcement was made by unnamed sources cited in a Washington Post report on Wednesday.
Libya has been struggling to contain the Daesh Takfiri terrorists, who started expanding their presence in the country following the overthrow and death of longtime dictator, Muammar Gaddafi, in 2011.
The base has apparently been in use since late June in an alleged effort to support the Libyan government’s fight against the terrorists currently in control of the northern city of Sirte.
The US has also been using bases in Niger and Djibouti but those ones are farther away.
Efforts by the administration of President Barack Obama to Access the airbase were meant to keep drones and small Special Operations teams within striking distance of the militants and close a “blind spot” for US and Western spy… | 0 |
New York City apartments are notorious for their quirks and annoyances, from awkward layouts to windows that face a brick wall. When it’s time to sell, these can be major turnoffs for potential buyers. But, with a little creativity, many of these issues can be minimized, and you don’t have to spend a lot of money to do it. THE PROBLEM Low ceilings THE SOLUTION White paint, tall window dressings and furniture Using a lighter shade of paint on the ceilings than the walls tends to draw the eye upward and make the ceiling look higher. “Use flat, not semigloss, on the crown molding, in the same shade as the ceiling,” recommends Pat Christodoulou, who stages homes in Connecticut and New York. “This gives you an uninterrupted perspective, which results in visually raising the ceiling. ” If you don’t have moldings, she said, adding a cove molding, which begins on the wall and extends to the ceiling, will create an elongating effect. Minimalist furnishings that sit low to the floor will help increase the impression of height. sheers will also “give the illusion of larger windows and higher ceilings,” said Elizabeth Kee, a broker at CORE in Manhattan, who recently hung curtains in a $ rental in Chelsea to “create an optical illusion that the ceilings are soaring. ” THE PROBLEM Windows that face a brick wall or let in scant light THE SOLUTION Pops of bright color, strategically placed bulbs or decorative window film “At a window that faced an alleyway or brick wall, we’ve had success with placing a fixture with a daylight florescent bulb behind the curtain,” said Jeff Schleider, the senior vice president of Business Development for Citi Habitats. “It gives the illusion of natural sunlight. ” In a small on the Upper West Side, where all the windows faced out on an air shaft, Joseph G. Sheehan, a salesman with Bond New York, used “cheery yellow drapes” and sheer white curtains to dress up the windows, and bright throws, pillows and rugs to offer “a nod to sunlight and brightness” in the dark space. The apartment, which had originally been listed by another broker for $399, 000, went into contract for $435, 000 just two weeks after Mr. Sheehan brightened it up. Deanna Kory, an associate broker at the Corcoran Group, recommends white shutters or white wooden Venetian blinds with to slats. “Any light that hits the windows will be reflected favorably and create a lighter feeling within the apartment,” she said. Another option: decorative window film, which lets in light while obscuring an unattractive view it can be found at Home Depot from about $25 for elderberry or etched lace designs. Hanging a framed panel in front of the window offers a similar effect. If you’re willing to splurge, a custom window may be the solution. That’s what a client of Madeline A. McKenna, a broker at Stribling Associates, did more than a decade ago in a Midtown apartment with “a very depressing view” from the living room. It wasn’t a cheap fix, she said, noting that the multipane frosted window with inlay cost about $10, 000. But the investment eventually paid off: In 2005, the client was able to sell the apartment quickly, for about $975, 000. “We didn’t have to apologize or make excuses for the ugly window view onto the ugly, dark, dank air shaft. It became a beautiful centerpiece for the living room instead,” Ms. McKenna said, adding that the unit sold again, in 2012, for $1. 25 million and was in 2014, at $1. 35 million, with the same frosted window. “Seems everyone likes the aesthetic. ” THE PROBLEM An awkward layout THE SOLUTION Rework the floor plan The Yorkville, Manhattan, duplex apartment that Jai Lee, a saleswoman at Mdrn. Residential, listed for $599, 000 in July had plenty of assets: “The bathroom was amazing, with heated floor, enormous deep, deep tub and shower heads on both sides,” she said. But to get to it, “you had to walk past the open kitchen into the barely bedroom. ” Down a spiral staircase from the living room was a finished basement area with a and small adjoining den. “It certainly was not ideal,” said Ms. Lee, who came up with the idea of recasting the downstairs space as an unconventional master bedroom, with the master bathroom upstairs, along with a spacious closet (in what was the old master bedroom). “I started selling the idea of using the ‘master’ as your own dream closet, with spa bathroom,” she said. To help potential buyers picture her vision, she drafted a new floor plan showing the lower level as a potential bedroom with a and adjacent office or hobby room. “I made sure to only show the listing by appointment,” she added. “This way I could control the narrative and envisioning process. ” The unit sold within a month for the full asking price. THE PROBLEM A unit with windows facing the street THE SOLUTION Curtains, decorative film or window boxes For homes, especially those with bars on the windows, Anna Kahn, an associate broker at Halstead Property, recommends installing window boxes. “Live flowers add color and take away from the starkness of the grates,” she said. Another option: “ ” curtains, which are opaque near the floor and sheer at the top, to “allow sunlight to enter the apartment while still providing a sense of privacy,” suggested Mr. Schleider of Citi Habitats. Or consider using opaque film: “We sold an apartment with razor wire outside the bedroom windows,” said Vivian Ducat, a saleswoman at Halstead, who had covered part of the window, obscuring the wire. “Even though everyone opened the windows to see what was out there, they seemed satisfied that the apartment had integrity and could look good, from the look we gave it. ” | 1 |
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