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Rachel Maddow had a big scoop, and she handled it her way. With a single tweet on Tuesday, Ms. Maddow, the MSNBC anchor, set the political world ablaze, announcing at 7:36 p. m. that she was poised to reveal previously unseen tax records from President Trump on her 9 p. m. program. (“Seriously,” Ms. Maddow added.) In the world of online news, 84 minutes struck some journalists as an awfully long time to wait. The White House took advantage, releasing a statement that detailed Mr. Trump’s tax figures from 2005 before MSNBC had a chance to air its own report. The Daily Beast and other news outlets ran items as well. Ms. Maddow, who is enjoying the biggest viewership of her show’s run, did not appear to mind. She opened her program on Tuesday as she usually does: with a deliberately paced, monologue, in this case reviewing Mr. Trump’s past refusal to release his taxes to catch up viewers on why this new revelation mattered. The revelation itself, however, was held back until after the first commercial break, a windup that some fellow journalists, eager for any bombshells, found exceedingly lengthy. “If you have news, Rachel please tell us. Soon. I’m not young,” tweeted Bob Ley, an ESPN anchor. “Of course — right after a commercial break. This is the worst episode of American Idol,” complained Zeke Miller, a White House reporter for Time. The wait, about 20 minutes in all, may have irked political reporters, but it was of a piece with the strategy Ms. Maddow has laid out for herself and her staff. In an interview last week, she described “a real sense of responsibility” to educate her 2. 6 audience, particularly those who may be casual consumers of the news. “There’s new people here every night,” Ms. Maddow said in her NBC office in New York. “I don’t feel like I’m doing a clubhouse update. I don’t feel like I’ve got a choir that was here at last night’s practice too. I definitely feel like, hey, if you’re new, let me meet you where you are. ” Ultimately, the reporting that Ms. Maddow eventually aired on Tuesday night’s show — two pages from a single, federal tax return — was less groundbreaking than the mere fact that a portion of the president’s records had surfaced at all. The journalist who obtained the records, David Cay Johnston, a former tax reporter for The New York Times, said that the documents arrived “over the transom” in his mailbox. Mr. Johnston even speculated that Mr. Trump had sent the documents himself. The discussion between Ms. Maddow and Mr. Johnston veered into some odd directions, with Mr. Johnston mentioning a connection between Mr. Trump and the mob. And Ms. Maddow’s opening monologue raised lingering questions about links between Mr. Trump and Russia — questions that no simple 1040 form, like the one sent to Mr. Johnston, could address. It was not until the end of the program that Ms. Maddow invited on an NBC News political reporter, Hallie Jackson, who dialed in by telephone for a more sober analysis of the tax findings. By then, Ms. Maddow’s show was about to end. On Twitter, journalists complained that Ms. Maddow had overhyped her findings with the initial teasing tweet, noting that the information in the returns did not amount to a scandal. Others asked why so much of the focus was on Ms. Maddow and not the subject at hand. “The President of the United States has not released his tax returns,” wrote Peter Hamby, a journalist at Snapchat who previously worked for CNN. “Journalists are attacking Maddow for using her show to discuss this. ” Good reviews or bad — scoop or no scoop — Ms. Maddow’s Tuesday program is sure to keep her at the center of the political conversation. Last week, Ms. Maddow achieved a ratings milestone, beating out Fox News heavyweights Bill O’Reilly and Tucker Carlson among viewers aged 25 to 54, the most coveted demographic in television news. “Never imagined I would want to choose a restaurant based on their willingness to turn on Rachel Maddow’s show,” the Politico reporter Josh Dawsey wrote on Twitter on Tuesday evening. “Yet here we are. ” | 1 |
Trump Whistles His Dogs ‹ › South Front Analysis & Intelligence is a public analytical project maintained by an independent team of experts from the four corners of the Earth focusing on international relations issues and crises. They focus on analysis and intelligence of the ongoing crises and the biggest stories from around the world: Ukraine, the war in Middle East, Central Asia issues, protest movements in the Balkans, migration crises, and others. In addition, they provide military operations analysis, the military posture of major world powers, and other important data influencing the growth of tensions between countries and nations. We try to dig out the truth on issues which are barely covered by governments and mainstream media. Syrian War Report – November 2, 2016: ISIS and Al-Nusra Attempt to Cut Off Govt Supply Line to Aleppo By South Front on November 2, 2016 …from SouthFront
The Syrian Air Force has delivered a high number of air strikes in western Aleppo, targeting militants in in Al-Assad, Rashidin 4, Rashidin 5, the 1070 Apartment Project (1070 AP), Southern Sawmills and along the road to Khan Tuman.
Since November 1, the fighting in the area has become stationary. The western part of the al-Assad Neighborhood is contested. The al-Nusra led coalition, Jaish al-Fatah, controls the southwestern part of the 1070 AP. The militants’ attacks on the 3000 Apartment Project have failed.
In the 1070 AP, the government forces keep control of 3 groups of buildings. The supply line #1 has been cut off by Jaish al-Fatah. The supply line #2 is vulnerable to fire by militants. The government-controlled sector is separated from Jaish al-Fatah units by an open ground. This is why the militants are not able to take control of these building blocks.
Clashes in this non-populated area allow the Syrian military to use its advantage in firepower to whittle the jihadist manpower and military equipment, repelling their frontal attacks. Jaish al-Fatah suicide vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices remain the main threat to the army’s defenses.
While Jaish al-Fatah cannot take control of the 1070 AP, the alliance’s attacks on the 3000 Apartment Project will hardly be able to lead to any success.
Syrian troops have repelled an ISIS attack on the government only supply line to Aleppo in the sector between Ithriyah and al-Salamiyah. ISIS attacked the Syrian army in the Wadi al-Adhib region but was forced to retreat after a fierce battle. Last weekend, al-Nusra Front, the leading force of Jaish al-Fatah, attacked the supply line in the sector between Ithriyah and Aleppo, but also failed.
This clearly shows that despite all controversies, ISIS and the so-called ‘moderate opposition’ are playing in the same game, attempting to prevent liberation of Aleppo by the government forces.
Turkey’s engineer units are currently building a military base, with an airfield, in the area of Ziyar, south of the Syrian border town of al-Rai, the As Safir newspaper revealed. The newspaper believes that the Turkish regime is going implement the Iraq-like strategy in Syria and set a series of military installations in order to project the military power in the area.
On November 1, Iraqi security forces (ISF) liberated the strategic Kurdish village of Gogjali in the eastern outskirts of Mosul and seized the nearby state-TV building. By doing this, the ISF has entered the ISIS-controlled city for the first time since it was occupied by ISIS in 2014. Related Posts: | 0 |
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At least two sources are confirming that a Grand Jury has been called to decide if there is enough evidence to indict four FBI HRT team members in the coverup of LaVoy Finicum , who was shot and killed on January 26, 2016 by Oregon State Police.
Guerilla Media Network reports :
Guerilla Media Network received information 10 days ago that a Grand Jury had been called to decide if there was enough evidence concerning a coverup by "FBI HRT" Team Members on the ground in Burns Oregon, to formally charge them with a crime. Members of HRT, (Hostage Rescue Team) have been accused of shooting at LaVoy Finicum as he exited his vehicle on January 26, 2016 with his hands in the air.
Legal sources in Portland told GMN that they were aware the Grand Jury had been convened but did not have information about an actual indictment, at the time the information was passed down to us.
GMN went on to report that Bob Powell of The Truth is Viral stated that he confirmed with sources at the Justice Department that an indictment may soon come against the 4 agents involved in the coverup.
"In all there were 4 shots fired at Mr. Finicum by these rouge agents, before and after he exited his truck," Powell said.
Finicum's widow, Jeanette Finicum, also confirmed that she had heard about the convening of the Grand Jury as well. She has also filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Oregon State Police and called on American Patriots to stand against the growing tyranny of the central government .
"I'll believe it – When I see it," said Mrs. Finicum on Wednesday.
Though the Oregon State Police were apparently responsible for actually shooting Finicum to death , the FBI claimed to investigate several of their agents concerning failing to report that they fired shots at Finicum and his vehicle . They apparently disposed of the bullet casings as well.
Listen to Bob Powell's report on what is taking place. 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 . shares | 0 |
. Gardasil is a Decision We Will Always Regret Reading about the young lives that have effectively been destroyed by Gardasil tears my soul; not on... Print Email http://humansarefree.com/2016/11/gardasil-is-decision-we-will-always.html Reading about the young lives that have effectively been destroyed by Gardasil tears my soul; not only for these young women, but for their parents, their friends and for the millions of families around the globe that may yet be hoodwinked into thinking they are protecting their daughter — or son. Sharyl Attkisson, the former CBS reporter who became an independent truth investigator and author, filed this report back in 2008. In 2006, the National Vaccine Information Center railed against Merck’s insistence that Gardasil was just fine to inject into preteens. President Barbara Loe Fisher was livid when she wrote: "Merck’s pre and post-licensure marketing strategy has positioned mass use of this vaccine by pre-teens as a morality play in order to avoid talking about the flawed science they used to get it licensed." But nothing stopped the train. And the shots, and the serious injuries, including death, kept mounting. Natural News reported the tremendous grief of Katy Robinson’s parents, after this vibrant child took the Gardasil shot in 2010 at the tender age of 11. “Katie’s list of symptoms included the following: 24/7 headaches and migraines, 24/7 stabbing ear pain, hyperacusis, fatigue, abdominal pain, nausea, all over joint pain, constant sore throat, visual disturbances, light sensitivity, cognitive issues such as memory and severe comprehension problems, random numbness and tingling, weird “bug crawling” skin sensations, generalized weakness throughout her body (it was difficult for Katie to just sit in the shower to bathe), dizziness, fainting and heart palpitations. “She slept long hours and stayed in her bedroom shielding herself from the noise of everyday living... She was also highly positive for Mycoplasma Pneumonia... Katie even had the classic Bartonella rash (looks like purple and red stretch marks) surrounding her breasts and hips which is confirmation of an active Bartonella infection... [a] diagnostic center diagnosed Katie with the beginning stages of Dysautonomia (a malfunctioning automatic nervous system). We were told that there was no cure and that symptoms were managed with medications...” Thousands of dollars and hours later, the parents discovered that the Gardasil Vaccine can “activate a latent Bartonella infection that was otherwise being suppressed by a properly functioning immune system.” They finally knew that it was Gardasil injections that nearly destroyed their daughter and still do not know if she will ever return to normal. They live with regret. Finally, a little too late, the American College of Pediatricians is now warning parents about Gardasil. But what they are warning about is an entirely new subset of difficulties. The Holistic Works reports: “Gardasil vaccines could be ‘associated with the very rare but serious condition of premature ovarian failure (POF),’ says the America College of Pediatricians (ACP)... “[L]ong-term ovarian function was not assessed in either the original rat safety studies or in the human vaccine trials,” explains the ACP. “Even more, because doctors are so aggressively propagandized by the cash-rich vaccine industry, they don’t even realize that HPV vaccines can cause ovarian failure.” Toxic ingredients in Gardasil and all vaccines are already known to cause harm. From The Holistic Works also stated: “The ACP explained that ‘potential mechanisms of action have been postulated based on autoimmune associations with the aluminum adjuvant used and previously documented ovarian toxicity in rats from another component, polysorbate 80.’ “In other words, the science already knows about the mechanisms of potential harm caused by these ingredients. “It’s not a mystery, and it’s not even debatable that injecting children with aluminum, mercury, MSG, formaldehyde and polysorbate 80 will inevitably cause severe damage in some of those children.” By D. Samuelson | 0 |
Dienstag, 8. November 2016 Frau von Maus aufgefressen, weil sie nicht sofort kreischend auf Stuhl gesprungen ist Remscheid (Archiv) - Es ist eine Tragödie, die leicht hätte verhindert werden können: Eine 43-jährige Frau ist heute im nordrhein-westfälischen Remscheid in ihrer eigenen Wohnung von einer Maus angegriffen und grausam zerfleischt worden. Nach Polizeiangaben hatte es die Frau leichtsinnigerweise unterlassen, rechtzeitig auf einen rettenden Stuhl zu springen und zu kreischen. Wie aus dem Polizeibericht hervorgeht, bereitete das Opfer Susanne B. gerade gemeinsam mit einer Freundin Essen zu, als das Nagetier ohne jede Vorwarnung in der Küche erschien. Daraufhin rettete sich die 38-jährige Freundin der Frau geistesgegenwärtig sofort auf einen Stuhl und versuchte, das Tier mit lautem Kreischen zu verjagen. So kann nichts passieren. Susanne B. hingegen sei unbeeindruckt stehengeblieben und habe erklärt, es handle sich nur um eine "völlig ungefährliche Maus", die "niemandem" etwas zuleidetue – laut dem Bericht ihre letzten Worte, bevor sie von dem Tier angefallen und vor den Augen ihrer entsetzten Freundin zerfleischt und gefressen wurde. Als die von der Freundin verständigte Polizei in Begleitung eines Notarztes eintraf, waren von Susanne B. nur noch eine Blutlache und einige Kleidungsfetzen übrig. Die Maus war spurlos verschwunden. Um tödliche Mausangriffe wie diesen zu verhindern, raten Experten, beim Erblicken einer Maus sofort ein erhöhtes Möbelstück (Stuhl, Sofa, Schrank) zu erklimmen und dort auszuharren, bis sich die blutrünstige Bestie wieder verzogen hat. Biologen zufolge können Mäuse nämlich nicht klettern, weil ihre Krallen ausschließlich auf das Aufschlitzen und Zerteilen von Menschen ausgelegt sind. Auch möglichst hysterisches Kreischen hilft bei der Abwehr der herkömmlichen Hausmaus, die aufgrund der Größe ihrer Ohren derartige Töne im oberen Frequenzbereich nicht verträgt. In Remscheid wird derzeit noch nach der flüchtigen Maus gefahndet, Polizisten mit Katzenstaffeln patroullieren seit dem frühen Nachmittag in der Nachbarschaft. Der Augenzeugin zufolge ist die Gesuchte grau-braun, etwa ein bis drei Jahre alt und hat dunkle Augen. Sachdienliche Hinweise an die zuständige Polizeidienstelle werden mit bis zu 200 Euro belohnt. fed, ssi, dan; Fotos: Shutterstock; Hinweis: Erstmals erschienen am 5.11.15 Artikel teilen: | 0 |
Barack Obama has agreed to a $400, 000 fee for speaking to a prominent Wall Street firm, according to Charlie Gasparino of the Fox Business Network. [Former president Obama will speak to a health care conference sponsored by Cantor Fitzgerald in September, Gasparino reports. #BreakingNews @POTUS44 agrees to speak at Wall Street conference. @CGasparino has the latest pic. twitter. — FOX Business (@FoxBusiness) April 24, 2017, The huge fee puts Obama at the top of the list of speaking fees for former government officials. Former Fed chair Ben Bernanke charges between $200, 000 and $400, 000, former Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner charges $200, 000, and former President George Bush charges around $150, 000, according to a person familiar with the matter. Hillary Clinton received over $200, 000 apiece for each of her speaking engagements at Goldman Sachs. Those payments later were used against her by political rivals, who argued they were evidence that the former Secretary of State was too close to Wall Street. Gasparino points out that Obama has been out of office for less than 100 days. | 1 |
Fifteen years ago, I was a Peace Corps volunteer living in a village of mud huts on the dry Sahel landscape of northern Ivory Coast. The nearest market town, Ferkessédougou, was 20 miles away, and every Thursday morning I would mount my Trek 820 and pedal out past the last huts, announcing in limited my intention to ride to Ferké and return by sundown. In town, I would collect groundnut paste and cucumbers, down a cold Coke and buy a local newspaper. Once, below the fold, I saw a picture of a man playing tennis. The man was bending low for a backhand, and his form evoked something of yesteryear. attire, planted leg, clean stroke. The man was Ivorian, and Abidjan, Ivory Coast’s largest city, had just hosted some kind of national tennis tournament. At this information, I considered my days on the high school tennis team and my friends in Ferké and the village. I figured I might just be one of the best tennis players in the entire country. Today, I live across the African continent in Rwanda, and I thought of this photo recently when a United States Tennis Association newsletter dropped into my inbox acclaiming a charity project with the subject line “Maine Woman Brings Tennis to Africa. ” No, she did not. And I am nowhere near the best player in any African country. If my difficulty handling the groundstrokes of Ernest Habiyambere, Rwanda’s top player, is any indication, I should be ashamed I ever considered the possibility I was a national contender. Except for two South Africans, no players from Africa will play in this year’s United States Open, but the world’s poorest continent indeed plays tennis, and plays it well. I have spent some time exploring African tennis during my many years in Africa. I have watched Habiyambere clean up at local tournaments, sat courtside at International Tennis junior championships, and been stomped by Ghanaian teenagers. I suspect that — to inversely paraphrase the U. S. T. A. newsletter — an could bring Africa to tennis sooner than we think. Regional ascendancy tends to happen quickly in sports. In 1990, only six Eastern Europeans were among the top 50 players in women’s tennis. Today a legion occupies nearly half of those slots. The world’s man, Novak Djokovic, led a class of Serbian players who emerged in the . For its part, Africa has scaled to the heights of another sport over the same period: soccer. The youngsters who watched Cameroon’s pioneering run to the 1990 World Cup quarterfinals have filled roster spots on Europe’s greatest teams, including superstars like Samuel Eto’o, who scored more than 100 goals for Barcelona. Is African tennis the next African soccer? Where might the African counterpart to Djokovic, who struck tennis balls in an empty Belgrade swimming pool as a child, be found ripping forehand after forehand? To understand African tennis is to understand the fate of the game’s juniors, the children who learn the game as ball boys at private clubs, the teenagers who rally with local businessmen for cash to enter tournaments, and the talent tapped by the I. T. F. to compete worldwide. It is also to understand why, in any given week, rarely is more than a single black player from Africa ranked among tennis’s top 1, 000 players. Habiyambere likes this, an opportunity for an angle when a backhand lands near his service line and hangs waist level. At the sight of this sitter, he cocks low and then snaps his racket through the ball, drilling a forehand that smacks the clay and kicks off the deuce side beyond the flail of Olivier Havugimana, Rwanda’s No. 2 player. Habiyambere has early control of the Gasigwa Memorial Tournament final. It is March at Cercle Sportif de Kigali, Rwanda’s premier tennis club. Rwanda, an area smaller than Massachusetts, is known as the land of a thousand hills, and Cercle Sportif sits pinched between two of them. The leafy Kiyovu neighborhood rises above the club’s six clay tennis courts on one side on the other, a soccer field sunk at the valley bottom abuts the poorer Gikondo neighborhood. At Court 1, Rwanda’s tennis establishment has clustered on a wooden grandstand to watch Habiyambere and Havugimana: older weekend players in Adidas tracksuits, returned members of the diaspora in slacks and oxford shirts, and Maj. Gen. Jean Bosco Kazura, whose résumé includes the military campaign to end Rwanda’s 1994 genocide and a nice kick serve to the backhand. Shouts of “ !” and “oui!” punctuate clean baseline winners. The felt concussion of competitive tennis — of racket thud, air hiss and friction — is all over this match. The players are wearing white emblazoned with a blanched photo of Gasigwa, for whom the tournament is named. Last year, Gasigwa, 31, collapsed and died at Cercle Sportif while jogging around the soccer field. He was one of Rwanda’s most accomplished tennis players, having won the national tournaments of Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. Habiyambere learned the game from Gasigwa and is his heir apparent. In 2013, at 13, Habiyambere won the East African Junior Championships in Tanzania, dropping only two sets. Over the next months, he won matches at regional tournaments. Then he reached the semifinals of the African Junior Championships, narrowly losing to the eventual continental champion. His run caught the attention of the I. T. F. the organizer of the tournaments, the sport’s governing body and the institution most responsible for developing junior players in countries without serious tennis traditions or budgets. The I. T. F. awarded Habiyambere a scholarship to its training center in Morocco, and he was soon playing in junior tournaments across Europe, telling the Rwandan news media that a professional tennis career was his dream. “I want to be among the best tennis players this country will ever have,” he said. Tennis may be played worldwide, but excluding Antarctica, Africa is the only continent with a lone player among the top 50 men or women: Kevin Anderson, a white South African. Many of Anderson’s countrymen and women — all white — have excelled in elite tennis, including the former No. 3 Amanda Coetzer Wayne Ferreira Kevin Curren, Africa’s last Grand Slam singles finalist and Johan Kriek, who won Australian Open titles in the 1980s. North Africans have also starred. The Moroccans Younes and Hicham Arazi were players who made deep runs in Grand Slam tournaments in the early 2000s. Ons Jabeur of Tunisia won the girls’ title at the French Open in 2011, and No. 53 Malek Jaziri of Tunisia will play at the United States Open this week. Technically, a North African has won Wimbledon: Jaroslav Drobny of Egypt in 1954. Czechoslovakian by birth, Drobny defected in 1949 and settled on Egyptian citizenship before securing British papers. But aside from South Africans, Africa is deeply underrepresented in world tennis. Once ranked 74th, Yahiya Doumbia of Senegal won two ATP tournaments in France, in Lyon in 1988 and in Bordeaux in 1995. For most fans, Doumbia’s will be the only unrecognizable name on the list of those competitions’ champions, dropped in among John McEnroe, Pete Sampras, Ivan Lendl, Andy Roddick and Richard Gasquet. Nduka Odizor of Nigeria topped out at No. 52 in 1984, a year after he won his only ATP tournament. Odizor learned to play tennis in Lagos but was spotted there by a visiting University of Houston professor, who sponsored a move to Texas, where Odizor finished high school and became an for Houston. Emigration from Africa to lands of greater tennis opportunity remains viable. The black player from Africa today is Takanyi Garanganga of Zimbabwe, which has its own history of successful white players. Garanganga benefited from Zimbabwe’s relatively strong junior program, but the country’s economic woes and interest from a United Zimbabwean coach prompted his family to move to Atlanta when he was 13. Garanganga climbed the junior rankings, emerged as a top college prospect and declined scholarship offers to turn pro in 2009. Although once ranked as high as No. 288, Garanganga was 495th as of last week. The only other black African players in the men’s top 1, 000 are No. 930 Alexis Klegou of Benin, who grew up in France and attended Texas AM, and No. 988 Duncan Mugabe, a Ugandan who has played mostly in Africa. The black African women are No. 551 Valeria Bhunu of Zimbabwe and No. 892 Lesedi Jacobs of Namibia. At Cercle Sportif, Habiyambere has little trouble with Havugimana, one of the few players within Rwanda’s borders capable of giving him a match. Habiyambere wins, closing with a winner down the line to break and a service game held at love. Three days later, I take the court for my weekly session with Habiyambere. He charges expatriates like me $6 for an hour’s lesson. It is the only income his family earns. One hot January several years ago, when I lived in Accra, Ghana, I boarded a minibus headed west to Winneba, home of Ghana’s National Sports College and site of the I. T. F. ’s West and Central African Junior Championships. I was playing tennis regularly with one of Ghana’s juniors. As with Habiyambere, I paid him several dollars an hour to hit and, basically, to be badly beaten. In Winneba, a taxi dropped me at a semicircle campus of concrete basketball courts, concrete classroom buildings and concrete dormitories. Through these were the tennis courts, and while they were lined with concrete grandstands, the backstop fences were sturdy and the courts painted the fresh green and blue of professional tournaments. They were the first hardcourts without cracks that I had seen in Africa. I met Amine Ben Makhlouf, the director of the I. T. F. training center in Casablanca, Morocco. A Moroccan a few years past his playing prime, Ben Makhlouf was there to manage the tournament and scout promising players. I asked him if there was talent in Africa. “Our feeling,” Ben Makhlouf said, “is if Africa can make it in football, why not tennis?” The boys’ draw included a New named William Bushamuka. He would eventually rank among the world’s top 200 juniors, train at IMG Academy in Florida and compete for the University of Kentucky, where today he ranks among the top collegians. Bushamuka did not win the tournament. Seydou Diallo did. Diallo was from sparsely populated Mali, its team by a Peace Corps volunteer who estimated there were only 40 Malian children playing organized tennis. One of them — Diallo — beat Bushamuka twice, in the stage and in the semifinals. The lanky Diallo possessed height that suggested a power game, but he relied instead on looping groundstrokes to pin opponents behind the baseline and wear them down with consistency. In both victories over Bushamuka and in the final against Nigeria’s best player, he dropped the opening set before his unassailable defense frustrated his opponents into impatience, errors and lost sets. For Ben Makhlouf, such evidence of African tennis promise abounds. When I spoke with him again this year, he cited the presence of Africans on American college teams and the success players have had with I. T. F. traveling teams. “We have seen that some of them who were part of the training center made good results by beating some of the top European players,” he said. Ben Makhlouf’s colleague Thierry Ntwali, a Rwandan who runs the I. T. F. ’s East Africa training center, told me, “It’s possible to get our best players in the top 50, top 20, in I. T. F. juniors rankings. ” Ntwali’s best evidence is Sada Nahimana, a girl from Burundi. Nahimana has won continental championships three times, and excluding South Africans, she is the junior from Africa, at No. 176. “We feel that around the age of 17, she will be top 50,” Ntwali said. At Wimbledon this year, Serena Williams was asked if she was surprised that so few African women played on the world tour. “Yes,” she replied. Williams, who has conducted clinics on the continent, said she saw “so much talent. ” She added, “There has to be, one day, a player from Africa that can do really well. ” I sat with Habiyambere one morning at Cercle Sportif’s bar. He spoke imperfect English, a reflection of spotty schooling in Rwanda, which has spurned French. Although English became an official language after the 1994 genocide — exiles toppled the perpetrating government — it was not till 2009 that the country, a former Belgian colony, switched to English in schools. The result is a tennis club where only younger players and educated members possess any English, scores are called in French, and net chatter carries on in Kinyarwanda. Habiyambere was describing his rise from disciple of Gasigwa to I. T. F. prospect at the federation’s High Performance Center in Morocco. “I was thinking I would never go in Europe,” he said. “I went in Europe because of tennis. ” Habiyambere had proved too strong for the competition at the smaller East Africa I. T. F. center. The move to Morocco, where the Malian Diallo was also training, was intended to push Habiyambere up the federation’s Pyramid of Opportunity, the pinnacle of which is a junior ranking, an achievement thought to indicate that a boy can mature into a man. An important step is participation on travel teams because, Ben Makhlouf said, “the best way to improve is to play competitions. ” Habiyambere’s first European match, on his first trip out of Africa, was in France. “I was excited,” he said. “First match I was really scared. ” Habiyambere lost and listed the reasons: “changing weather,” “you’re thinking too much,” “my body was tight. ” But he settled down and won elsewhere in Europe. “The time you play more matches,” he said, “is the time you feel like you get match it’s normal. You feel like it’s practice. You feel like, I can do this I can do this. ” Still, Habiyambere did not win any tournaments on the tour. I asked if he thought the European players were simply better. “The difference was, they have more matches,” he said, adding, “For them, the tournaments and matches, they don’t get scared. ” One day last year at the Morocco center, Habiyambere collapsed during training. He recovered but fainted again days later. Habiyambere could not articulate a diagnosis, but I. T. F. coaches I spoke with suggested he was having seizures, an ailment the federation would not monitor. They sent Habiyambere home to Rwanda. Doctors in Rwanda found no medical problems. Habiyambere said he was assured that he could return to Morocco if he felt better. But since last August, he has played only at Cercle Sportif. Ntwali, of the I. T. F. told me that Habiyambere was welcome back but that the federation needed proof he was medically sound. Habiyambere’s coach at Cercle Sportif, Sylvain Rutikanga, insisted that Habiyambere was healthy and that returning to the I. T. F. was a matter of paying tuition or playing tournaments to revive his scholarship. Tuition was not something Ntwali had mentioned. Vagueness of diagnosis, conflicting stories, opacity of the way forward, authorities acting (or not) for the powerless — Habiyambere is in a limbo all too common for many young Africans. He is highly skilled in his discipline, but without the means to leverage it. Another thing makes it difficult for Habiyambere: His father died when he was very young, relatives were lost in the 1994 genocide, and his mother has back and leg problems so severe that Habiyambere says she cannot work. “I’m the one who tries to take care of her,” he said. For an East African tennis champion, for a ranked among the world’s top 750 juniors, fainting at tennis practice is not just a setback. It might mean a life derailed. “Ernest can be a bon joueur” — a good player — Rutikanga said. In Rutikanga’s French, the phrase translates better as “someone who can make it. ” “He has everything he has everything,” Rutikanga said. “He has la force he has la tête” — the strength and the head. “He is in bon condition. Now, he trains all alone. Now, it hurts me. ” Rutikanga is considered by many the best teaching coach in Rwanda. At 43 and with tournament experience, he can still play with Habiyambere or feed flawless balls to a diplomat. Rutikanga made clear something I have heard at clubs across the continent. In Africa, he said, “the players who play tennis, they are people who come from families who are not rich. ” Habiyambere is an example, but so is Rutikanga. He came from a poor family, but one that lived near Cercle Sportif. As a child, Rutikanga could not afford club membership — I pay $110 annually for unlimited court time — but he was captivated by the foreigners and wealthy Rwandans driving by his neighborhood to play tennis. There was a back door: play at the more welcoming Hotel Diplomat courts by day and work for tips as a Cercle Sportif ball boy by night. “All the players you see here,” Rutikanga said of Cercle Sportif, “first they worked as ball boys. ” When Rutikanga talks about “the players,” he is making a distinction between club members and the young men and women who can really hit. Those players almost exclusively emerge from the handful of ball boys who fetch netted serves and water the dusty clay, or from clinics that Cercle Sportif holds for neighborhood children. (The club, at the Rwanda Tennis Federation’s request, is more open to nonpaying children than in Rutikanga’s childhood days.) Thus, the tennis talent pool in Rwanda is tiny and impoverished. I brought this up with Ben Makhlouf, the I. T. F. center director. “How many players are getting the right training, are getting the right coaching, are getting the right competition?” he said. “Let’s be nice: We will find a hundred persons. But if you go, for example, to a city like Barcelona, and all the academies there, you will find 5, 000 — only in Barcelona. ” Further, Africa’s elite talent is so scattered it lacks competition for itself — hence the I. T. F. strategy of congregating top African players and exposing them to European competition. “We don’t have enough players playing competition at such level compared to Europe,” Ben Makhlouf said. In the case of Habiyambere, Ntwali, of the I. T. F. said bluntly, “Rwanda does not produce enough competition for him. ” No one is more aware of this than Habiyambere. “Our coaches, they are good,” he said proudly of Cercle Sportif and Rwanda. “They are not very good, but they are good. But the thing, you can’t coach someone who is not playing tournaments. ” The value of competition, Habiyambere said, is not just being pushed to another level but also facing different styles of play. “You have some people who hit hard, who hit flat,” he said. “There are some who like to push the ball inside the court. They make you like running. You find some players who have a lot of spin. ” He added, “You play matches you feel comfortable you feel the confidence. ” The U. S. T. A. newsletter that caught my eye recently, about “bringing tennis to Africa,” was highlighting an American volunteer’s clinic in Cameroon and donation of rackets. Used equipment and guest clinics might help address the quantity factor of African tennis, perhaps drawing a few more youngsters to the game. But when it comes to Africa’s dearth of players, the “lack of resources” lament boils down to access to competition. Habiyambere never asks me for a new racket he asks me for a bus ticket to Nairobi for the Kenya Open. Eric Hagenimana, a Rwandan coaching at a New Mexico tennis club, and Garanganga, today’s top black player from Africa, do not harp on poverty when describing Africa’s tennis plight. Hagenimana, 31, posted a youth record that still stands as the Rwandan benchmark. He reached No. 102 as a junior and defeated a Kevin Anderson. “I don’t think about resources to produce a good tennis player,” Hagenimana told me over a Skype call from Albuquerque. “Look at Serbia, Djokovic and other guys from there. It doesn’t matter where you start. ” But support — financial and otherwise — becomes critical when players are vying for ranking points and meager prize money on the professional circuits, Hagenimana conceded. Tennis careers come not to winners of junior tournaments but to players who show up week in and week out at disparate tournaments, cobble victories together to secure higher rankings, and maintain the rigor year after year. The costs of these logistics pose a serious challenge even for American and European players, who at least have several tournaments each month to choose from and often have backing from their families to keep the dream alive. Garanganga said those juniors also had the advantage of an accepted “blueprint for tournaments kids need to play by the time they are 16 if they decide to turn pro. ” But if you are from the steep dirt streets by Cercle Sportif, you may have had access only to the 23 boys’ I. T. F. tournaments and the 14 men’s Futures tournaments that were held across Africa in 2015. And a bus ticket to Nairobi amounts to months of wages for the average family airfare to North Africa, where tournaments are more frequent, can run $1, 000. Garanganga said African coaches, tennis federations and parents often had distorted perceptions of players’ options. “The reason why we have junior players with some skill they haven’t developed is because they don’t have the right guidance to transition into the professional career,” he said. A couple of months ago, Habiyambere showed me a spreadsheet prepared by a local coach. The cost of competing in two Futures tournaments in Egypt totaled $3, 000. What, Habiyambere asked, could I do? His question captured more than an unfathomable financial stratosphere. It captured the mechanics of a livelihood. Hagenimana and Garanganga are tennis pros, but so are Habiyambere and the players at Cercle Sportif. There, a member typically forms a relationship with a single and the association runs deeper than lessons and hourly rates. The relatively negligible fee I pay to hit with a national champion is supplemented by an unspoken expectation that I will pay for many sessions in advance that I will bring gifts of racket string when I return from an American vacation that I will have cash on hand should there be a problem at home that I will not abandon my coach for another that I will help sponsor him to compete in tournaments. All this I do. The fate of the best tennis players in Rwanda, then, is closely tied to the largess of those with whom they play. Life as an I. T. F. darling ends age, stagnated skill and hardship preclude money tournaments not everyone can move to the United States, as Hagenimana did. Perhaps Habiyambere will find a way back to an I. T. F. center. Perhaps a rich benefactor will sponsor him for a tennis academy abroad. Maybe Habiyambere is destined to remain at Cercle Sportif and become the next generation’s Sylvain Rutikanga. “My career is good,” Rutikanga told me. “I have a lot of clients. ” He is indeed always on the court when I am at Cercle Sportif. But there are not enough members and expats to sustain the dozen or so other players I know. What if Habiyambere never takes the next step? And what about all the other coaches? Rutikanga said each would give lessons “until he dies. ” Rutikanga added: “He will give lessons, play competitions. He will continue if he doesn’t have a problem — until he isn’t capable of playing. ” Across the continent, ever since I saw that newspaper photo of an Ivorian playing tennis during my Peace Corps days, I have asked African players and coaches whether a black player from Africa will reach the top 100 in the next 10 years. Rutikanga was skeptical, saying, “We don’t have the players. ” Garanganga said he thought “the level of top African juniors participating internationally has dropped. ” And Hagenimana strained to be positive. “Top 200, maybe it can happen,” he said. “Top 100? I can never say no. ” But Ben Makhlouf and Ntwali of the I. T. F. want to believe. Ntwali, who has seen Nahimana, the Burundian teenager, scale the junior rankings, was the most optimistic. “WTA: Yes, 100 percent,” Ntwali said. “We will see some black girls coming up. For men, within five years we can get someone close to 200. ” There are days I believe, too. Especially when Habiyambere passes me with brutally paced, angled and dipped shots. Or when Rutikanga demonstrates a slight open racket face for a soft volley, the kind of instruction I would pay $75 an hour for in the United States. Then there are the matches on the Cercle Sportif clay. I recall how Habiyambere won the Gasigwa Memorial Tournament. He torqued forehands with such force that the resulting yellow arc appeared harshly parabolic. He skipped confidently beneath overheads. When his opponent stretched as if to suggest a tight back was slowing him down, he gazed with patient silence and remained merciless. On changeovers he organized water bottles with a deliberation worthy of Rafael Nadal and sat with the posture and flat feet of Andy Murray. When he won, Habiyambere shook hands with his opponent and the umpire. Then he turned to the grandstand and softly clapped his hand against his racket like Roger Federer. | 1 |
Home / BREAKING NEWS / DAPL Protesters Proven Right as Largest Gas Pipeline in U.S. Experiences Massive and Deadly Explosion DAPL Protesters Proven Right as Largest Gas Pipeline in U.S. Experiences Massive and Deadly Explosion Claire Bernish November 1, 2016 Leave a comment
A massive explosion of a gas pipeline in Shelby County, Alabama — near the site where the same pipeline leaked some 336,000 gallons of gasoline just last month — evidences the exact reason activists and Native American water protectors oppose the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline over 1,400 miles to the northwest.
One person was killed and at least five people were injured in the blast — tentatively described as an accident — as Colonial Pipeline shut down operations black smoke billowed, sending millions into a panic over the abrupt and unexpected coming gas shortage.
“Our deepest condolences go out tonight to the family and friends of the person who was lost today, and our thoughts and prayers are with those who were injured,” Colonial said in a statement, reported NBC News .
Cited by the Chicago Tribune , Alabama Governor Robert Bentley said the explosion occurred roughly a mile west of last month’s rupture, adding of the likely crippling shortage of fuel, “We’ll just hope and pray for the best.”
“It appears to have been an accident, and they’re allowing fuel to burn,” Bentley told WBRC . “It’s about one mile west of where the repair took place on the Colonial Pipeline just recently.” #LiveOn3340 : @BrianPia3340 reports on Colonial Pipeline company history after today's explosion in Shelby County https://t.co/6JjMNC6sce pic.twitter.com/Y8nT2Wo81s
— ABC 33/40 News (@abc3340) October 31, 2016
Refined gas poured from the pipeline as workers rushed to construct a 75-foot-long ‘earthen dam’ to contain the flaming spill, where fuel will then be allowed to burn itself out. Dry tinder from an ongoing drought in the area quickly ignited two wildfires after the explosion — which then charred 31 acres — and area residents were forced to evacuate without any indication when they would be permitted to return.
“There’s a large plume of smoke; there’s a large fire,” noted Shelby County Sheriff’s Captain Jeff Hartley, as quoted by the Chicago Tribune . “We’re not sure exactly how it started or what caused it,” he said, adding of the massive deployment of fire and emergency personnel, “We’ve got first responders entering the area, and a lot of them.”
Apart from the worker killed, subsequent reports downplayed the extent of injuries suffered by those at the blast site, AL.com reported seven of the “eight or nine” subcontractors working in the area had suffered severe burns from the explosion. According to Shelby County Sheriff John Samaniego, two of those workers — all of whom had begun digging in an effort to flush one of the lines as repairs continued on the original leak — may still be missing , though that information was both unconfirmed and unclear because extreme heat from flames emanating at the site of the explosion prevented further assessment.
Colonial noted in a brief statement cited by a local ABC affiliate that both pipelines — one transporting gasoline, the other distillates, had been shut down, and, further,
“Colonial’s top priorities are the health and safety of the work crew on site and protection of the public.”
According to a later report from Reuters , the fire had been ‘contained’ by around 9 pm local time — yet no further word about the possibly-missing subcontractors has been provided. Incredible video of the Colonial Pipeline leak from Ryan Burtis. Our thoughts & prayers to all pic.twitter.com/NUOdoaW7O5
— WBRC FOX6 News (@WBRCnews) October 31, 2016
Fears of yet another gas shortage akin to that from the September leak — as well as consequent soaring prices — spawned lengthy lines at gas stations as soon as news of the explosion hit headlines. Reuters explains:
“Colonial, the biggest refined products system in the United States, is responsible for supplying about one-third of the 3.2 million barrels per day of gasoline consumed on the East Coast, according to U.S. Energy Department data.”
Further, “It was not clear whether the explosion happened on the gasoline or the distillates pipeline, the governor said in the briefing.”
Although the aforementioned details handily summarize the facts of the explosion — occurring during active repairs of the previous, sizeable leak — the facts do little to quantify potential environmental and health impacts of an explosion and leak of this magnitude.
This explosion of a major pipeline supplying fuel to large portions of the Southeast and East coast serves an ominous portent for ongoing opposition to construction of the hotly contentious Dakota Access Pipeline slated to cross four states, traversing just north of the Standing Rock Sioux reservation in North Dakota.
Standing Rock Sioux water protectors and Native Americans and Indigenous peoples from over 200 nations and their supporters fear that pipeline’s route — undercutting the Missouri River in several places — threatens to poison the tribal water supply and that of no less than 18 million others living downstream. Indeed, the Colonial Pipeline’s tragic mishap — the second in essentially the same section of pipe in about one month — darkly parallels the hundreds of similar accidents such pipelines are prone to.
Residents of Bismarck, aware of Big Oil’s horrendous safety record, managed to thwart Energy Transfer Partners’ original plans for the pipeline to be routed near the city — so ETP, with assistance from the State, diverted Dakota Access to cross just north of the Standing Rock Sioux reservation on privately-owned land.
Rightly viewed by pipeline opponents as blatant exploitation of Native Americans — as well as a violation of an 1851 treaty with the U.S. government — Standing Rock Sioux water protectors and supporters have camped along the Missouri for months in an effort to halt construction as a lawsuit languishes in federal court.
Big Oil, Big Banks , and government backers obviously view future profiteering from the pipeline important enough to send in absurdly militarized police from at least five states to combat pipeline opponents — who have remained on the whole peaceful, prayerful, and unarmed.
ETP insists the opposition is misguided and Dakota Access offers a safe alternative to the ‘riskier’ oil transportation methods of railroad and tanker truck — but even the company’s own records listing thousands of spills in just the last six years flatly dispute such claims. Worse, although pipeline leaks and spills might technically be less frequent than those caused by railroad accidents, the International Energy Agency notes pipeline mishaps leaked three times more crude over an eight-year period.
In fact, Big Oil’s general safety record is nearly impossible to fully track, in part because such spills, leaks, explosions, and other accidents are startlingly common and no less perilous to workers, residents, the environment — and, yes, the rapidly dwindling water supply.
A report by the Center for Effective Government attempting to map and quantify crude and other industry spills found not only are “ruptures and leaks a daily occurrence,” but “Eighty people have died and 389 have been injured in such incidents in the last five years.
“Since 2010, over 3,300 incidents of crude oil and liquefied natural gas leaks or ruptures have occurred on U.S. pipelines. These incidents have killed 80 people, injured 389 more, and cost $2.8 billion in damages. They also released toxic, polluting chemicals in local soil, waterways, and air.”
According to the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, as noted in the report , those spills and ruptures sent 7 million gallons of crude into the environment. Further illustrating the imperative to oppose construction of Dakota Access, one of the worst spills occurred in North Dakota — not by human error or poor maintenance — but when lightning struck a crude oil pipeline, spilling 840,000 gallons of crude into a wheat field in 2013.
While the oil and gas industry and its wealthy proponents in government would attempt to pull the wool over the public’s eyes about pipeline safety, using crafty language and skewed statistics, the truth is, no safe manner for transporting oil and gas actually exists.
Opposition to the Dakota Access Pipeline simply isn’t confined to a Native American issue, as exploitive as that facet is — but when pipelines traverse pristine lands, farm acreage, and the rivers and waterways we depend on to sustain us, we’re all at risk.
What scant corporate media coverage of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s stand against Big Oil does exist has painted the fight as limited in scope; but thousands encamped along the pipeline’s planned route — who face an unusually bitter winter , no less — are in fact taking a stand for every person and every creature who would be devastated in the event of a future oil spill. Share | 0 |
I’m ready come to me , you will regret your action. | 0 |
Thursday on his nationally syndicated radio show, conservative talker Rush Limbaugh dismissed the possibility of President Donald Trump working alongside Democrats as “fantasy. ” Limbaugh said this fantasy would come to an end when Democrats filibuster the Supreme Court confirmation vote of Judge Neil Gorsuch likely to happen next month, which Limbaugh said will be done out of a necessity for Democrats to fundraise. Transcript as follows (courtesy of Rushlimbaugh. com): Now, folks, I did not mean to cause any undue concern here. Let me close the loop, dot the I’s and cross the T’s. This fantasy of working with the Democrats, and the New York Times clearly is hot and bothered. The New York Times, when you read this editorial, they’re clearly in the advanced stages of foreplay. They’re on the verge, they think that it’s gonna happen. I’m gonna tell you, they’re gonna have a cold shower, everybody is. This fantasy of working with the Democrats is gonna be put to bed on April 7th or whenever the Senate votes on Gorsuch and the Democrats filibuster it. ‘Cause I don’t care what the Freedom Caucus has done, when it comes down to Gorsuch, the Democrats are not gonna vote for the guy. If they have to, they’ll filibuster him. The name of the game is resistance. That’s how the Democrats keep their donations coming in. It’s how the DNC is gonna be reconstituted, resistance, resistance, oppose. Hillary was out there talking about it in San Francisco in the black leather jacket. You think that was an accidental wardrobe choice? Ha. Hardly. So Trump’s gonna get angry all over again at the Democrats when they filibuster Gorsuch. I was watching Lindsey Grahamnesty on TV today. Lindsey Grahamnesty is a guy, the last thing in the world that he would ever want to do is pull the nuclear option. Preserve the Senate rules. But he was loaded for bear today talking about the Democrats. He said (paraphrasing) “If they can’t vote for Neil Gorsuch, then it’s clear there’s not a single judge any Republican would ever nominate they would vote for. ” I’m sitting there saying, are you just now figuring this out? But I’ll take it, if he’s just now figuring it out. So they’re gonna filibuster Gorsuch. Did you hear what Pelosi said about Gorsuch? I know you guys, I know you get tired of me sometimes being repetitive, but I’m telling you, I only repeat what they say. Did you hear what Pelosi said about Gorsuch? I’m paraphrasing, it’s pretty close. “If you drink water and breathe air, you need to oppose Neil Gorsuch. ” I know. I know. The Republicans are blamed for all this pollution out there. And you don’t think anybody takes it seriously. The question is, why is Nancy Pelosi not laughed and hooted out of politics with a comment like that? Why does anybody give her any credence whatsoever? And yet the media and Democrat analysts talk about that, “She’s brilliant. That’s a brilliant strategy, to blame the guy for dirty water and dirty air. ” It’s akin to Republicans want to destroy the planet. Why do Republicans want to destroy where they live? But the Democrats live and die with this stuff. She uses it because it still works, is the problem, and it works with the lunatics that send her money and vote for her. Imagine, if you like drinking water — it’s not a matter of like you have to do that. And if you like breathing, Neil Gorsuch is not your judge, as though Gorsuch is gonna try to stop you from drinking water, breathing air, or poison it. It’s just absurd. Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor, | 1 |
Topics: Donald Trump , Theresa May Friday, 11 November 2016
If nothing else, Donald Trump's election has at least proven a godsend for the bricks and mortar industry. Walls are in....so to say.
In the wake of America's intention to erect a wall along its border to Mexico, Britain's Prime Minister, Theresa May, has declared she will do the same around the coast of Britain, and is hoping for a considerable discount from masonry moguls and brick-wall builders.
"The Mexico-USA border is around 2,000 miles, and the coastline of Britain is also around 2,000 miles. We could go for a 2 for 1. I always do that at Sainsbury's, I'm sure those nice wall companies will oblige."Trump immediately voiced support for the idea. "A cute businesswoman that May...2 for 1 ... I like it. Maybe I'll appoint a Minister of State for Walls".
Walls are becoming popular on the domestic front, too. Compounds and fencing are changing the face of British housing complexes."It's crazy." said an enclosure expert, "People are now building a home and then buidling a huge wall around it. Fencing is often not enough. Walls eliminate visibility. That's what people want. You can't look out and you can't look in. Can't see anything. People are simply yearning to be destitute of vision."
But things can get out of hand. Matthew Clement was arrested in Chingford this week for building a wall around his mother-in.-law. "I just felt..we've got to protect ourselves," explained Clement, "I want my country back...er...I want my peace and quiet back...So a wall is...well...fair do...innit".
A mortar dealer welcomed the development. "Solid walls are magnificent structures. You can't push them down and they hide the truth, which can be painful. And you can sit on them. You can't sit on a fence..unless you're in the Labour party of course..." Make T. Loaf's day - give this story five thumbs-up (there's no need to register , the thumbs are just down there!) | 0 |
Obama’s Last Stand Against War on Syria November 4, 2016
Exclusive: For five years, President Obama has resisted neocon/liberal-interventionist pressure to go to war against Syria, but – as his departure grows near – the hawks see more “regime change” wars coming into view, says Joe Lauria.
By Joe Lauria
Through five years of war in Syria, President Obama has been in a constant internal struggle with hawks in his administration who want the U.S. to directly intervene militarily to overthrow the Syrian government.
On at least four occasions Obama has stood up to them, although at other times he has compromised and gone half way toward the hawkish position. Now, with less than three months to go in office, Obama appears to be leaving his Syria policy to those aligned with the lead hawk who might soon take Obama’s place. President Barack Obama in the Oval Office.
As Secretary of State until early 2013, Hillary Clinton failed to convince Obama to consistently take a tough line on Syria. She wanted him to realize her two main policies, which she still clings to: a “safe zone” on the ground and a “no-fly zone” in the air – meaning that Syrian government forces and their allies, including the Russians, would be barred from operating in those areas.
Protected by U.S. air power and other military means, rebels seeking to oust Syrian President Bashar al-Assad would, in effect, have an untouchable staging area to launch attacks on the government without its ability to hit back. Clinton has called removing Assad a top foreign policy priority.
Clinton followed a similar model in 2011 when she convinced a reluctant Obama to adopt a plan in Libya to overthrow Muammar Gaddafi under the pretext of “protecting civilians” when Gaddafi launched an offensive against rebels in eastern Libya whom he identified as terrorists. After the U.S. and European military intervention, Gaddafi was ousted, tortured and murdered – prompting Clinton to quip “we came, we saw, he died” – but the “regime change” turned Libya into a failed state.
Indeed, the Libyan chaos – now with three rival governments and terrorist enclaves – has become emblematic of the disarray following “regime change” that has marked nearly two decades of neoconservative influence in Washington, a strategy of dividing and weakening defiant states while U.S. contractors profit from the chaos that bleeds the locals to death.
Lost Lessons
Obama learned from Libya, which he deemed his biggest regret for having no plan for the aftermath. The fiasco left him deeply skeptical about intervention in Syria, although – given his prescient opposition to the 2003 invasion of Iraq – he should have already understood what happens after the U.S. overthrows regimes these days. Ousted Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi shortly before he was murdered on Oct. 20, 2011.
In the early years of the CIA — in Syria in 1949, Iran in 1953, and Guatemala in 1954, as illegal and as unjustified as those coups were — the agency had viable leaders groomed to take over. But all that changed after the Cold War ended. Then careless wishful thinking replaced any careful planning.
“We can use our military in the Middle East and the Soviets won’t stop us,” arch-neocon Paul Wolfowitz boasted before the Iraq invasion.
Today neoconservatives and liberal interventionists (such as Clinton) act like gamblers who can’t leave the table. Disasters for Iraqis, Libyans and others haven’t dissuaded these American war advocates from pushing more chips onto the table over Syria. Indeed, their failures – and the lack of any personal accountability for their catastrophes – seem to have only emboldened them to keep gambling.
These “regime change” schemes – in the guise of “spreading democracy” in the Middle East – have only spread chaos and terrorism, but those conditions only give the hawks more reasons and excuses to intervene, thus creating more chaos and making more money, while weakening nations defying Washington.
Clinton began laying a bet on “regime change” in Damascus by pushing to arm rebels in the summer of 2012. One of her leaked emails explains her motive: to break up the Teheran to Damascus to southern Lebanon supply line to Hezbollah — a longstanding Israeli objective.
At that point, Obama refused to arm the rebels, but the President apparently didn’t have full control over his national security bureaucracy, which seemed to have found ways to aid the Syrian rebels despite Obama’s reluctance, possibly by encouraging U.S. regional allies, including Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey and Israel.
An August 2012 Defense Intelligence Agency document , which was made public last year, showed that U.S. intelligence agencies were well aware of where these operations were headed, with or without Obama’s approval.
Ret. Gen. Mike Flynn, who ran the DIA at the time, has said it was a “willful decision” in Washington to support a “Salafist principality” — a safe area for jihadist rebels — in eastern Syria to put pressure on Assad’s government in Damascus. Flynn didn’t say who in Washington ultimately decided on this risky scheme, but the DIA document warned that the Salafists could join with jihadists from Iraq to form an “Islamic State.” And indeed two years later, that was exactly what happened.
While this “Salafist principality” was gestating in summer 2013, Obama again showed some independence on Syria after assessing the disastrous consequences of the Clinton-led “regime change” in Libya, i.e., a failed state radiating arms and jihadis to Syria and the Sahel.
However, at this point – battered by think-tank and media commentaries decrying him as “soft” and “weak” – Obama compromised with the hawks and eventually agree d to arm and train some of the rebels, supposedly the “moderate” kind. But he resisted pressure to launch cruise missiles against Syrian government targets after his “red line” was supposedly crossed by a chemical weapons attack outside Damascus that killed hundreds of people.
As we now know, the CIA did not think it was a “slam dunk” that the Syrian government did it, though the mainstream U.S. media imposed a “group think” blaming the sarin attack on Assad. But significant evidence pointed to the rebels trying to create an incident that would draw the U.S. military into the war directly on the jihadist side.
Sensing that a trap was being laid to entice the U.S. into another Mideast war, Obama instead took Russia’s offer to have Syria give up its chemical weapons stocks, which in time it did, infuriating the neocons.
An Even Bolder Putin Offer
Russian President Vladimir Putin followed with another offer to the United States in September 2015, delivered from the podium of the U.N. General Assembly. He proposed joint U.S.-Russian airstrikes against the now fully formed Islamic State and associated jihadists. Russian President Vladimir Putin addresses UN General Assembly on Sept. 28, 2015. (UN Photo)
More than three years earlier, I reported that Russia’s motive to support Assad was to stop the spread of jihadism that threatened the West and Russia. Before the U.N., Putin put it on the record, invoking the World War II alliance between the Soviet Union and the West to confront a greater threat, Nazism.
“Similar to the anti-Hitler coalition, it could unite a broad range of parties willing to stand firm against those who, just like the Nazis, sow evil and hatred of humankind,” Putin said.
By then, the jihadists had clearly become the greater evil in Syria with their practice of decapitating Western hostages as well as locals deemed religious “apostates.” In time Islamic State also would plan or inspire terror attacks in France, Belgium, Germany, Egypt and the United States. By contrast, Assad was an undemocratic leader governing a police state but he posed no threat to the West.
However, by 2015, the demonization of Vladimir Putin was well underway and his offer was spurned by Western leaders. Obama, who faced mainstream ridicule for “failing to enforce his red line” in Syria and for not being tough enough on Russia, joined in rejecting Putin’s offer.
We now know why. In a leaked audio conversation with Syrian opposition figures in September, Secretary of State John Kerry said the U.S., rather than seriously fight Islamic State in Syria, was ready to use the growing strength of the jihadists to pressure Assad to resign, just as outlined in the DIA document.
“We know that this was growing, we were watching, we saw that Daesh [a derisive name for Islamic State] was growing in strength, and we thought Assad was threatened,” Kerry said. “We thought however we could probably manage that Assad might then negotiate, but instead of negotiating he got Putin to support him.”
Russia began its military intervention in late September 2015 without the United States, with the Kremlin’s motives made abundantly clear by Putin and other Russian officials.
For instance, last month, Putin told French TV channel TF1: “Remember what Libya or Iraq looked like before these countries and their organizations were destroyed as states by our Western partners’ forces? … These states showed no signs of terrorism. They were not a threat for Paris, for the Cote d’Azur, for Belgium, for Russia, or for the United States. Now, they are the source of terrorist threats. Our goal is to prevent the same from happening in Syria.”
Such clear explanations are rarely reported clearly by Western corporate media, which instead peddles the line from officials and think tanks that Russia is trying to recover lost imperial glory in the Middle East.
Worries about Damascus
But Kerry knew why Russia intervened. “The reason Russia came in is because ISIL [another acronym for Islamic State] was getting stronger, Daesh was threatening the possibility of going to Damascus, and that’s why Russia came in because they didn’t want a Daesh government and they supported Assad,” he said in the leaked discussion. Kerry’s comment suggests that the U.S. was willing to risk Islamic State and its jihadist allies gaining power in order to oust Assad. Secretary of State John Kerry with Samantha Power, U.S. Permanent Representative to the U.N., at the U.N. General Assembly on Sept. 20, 2016. (UN Photo)
Kerry’s comments echoed those of senior Israeli officials who have pronounced the “Shiite crescent” from Iran through Syria to Hezbollah’s territory in Lebanon as Israel’s greatest strategic threat and have expressed a preference for an Al Qaeda or even an Islamic State victory in Syria to shatter that centerpiece of the “Shiite crescent.”
In September 2013, in one of the most explicit expressions of Israel’s views, its Ambassador to the United States Michael Oren, then a close adviser to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, told the Jerusalem Post that Israel favored the Sunni extremists over Assad.
“The greatest danger to Israel is by the strategic arc that extends from Tehran, to Damascus to Beirut. And we saw the Assad regime as the keystone in that arc,” Oren told the Jerusalem Post in an interview . “We always wanted Bashar Assad to go, we always preferred the bad guys who weren’t backed by Iran to the bad guys who were backed by Iran.” He said this was the case even if the “bad guys” were affiliated with Al Qaeda.
In June 2014, Oren reiterated his position at an Aspen Institute conference. Then, speaking as a former ambassador, Oren said Israel would even prefer a victory by Islamic State, which was then massacring captured Iraqi soldiers and beheading Westerners, than the continuation of the Iranian-backed Assad in Syria.
“From Israel’s perspective, if there’s got to be an evil that’s got to prevail, let the Sunni evil prevail,” Oren said.
Israel’s preference extended into a tacit alliance with Al Qaeda’s Nusra Front in Syria, with which the Israelis developed essentially a non-aggression pact, even caring for Nusra fighters in Israeli hospitals and mounting lethal air attacks inside Syria against Lebanese and Iranian advisers to the Syrian military.
In hoping that the jihadists could spearhead the overthrow of Assad while somehow not achieving a full-scale victory, U.S. officials may have thought they could somehow eat their cake and have it, too.
Yet, that represents a major risk, essentially assuming that Assad would step down in some orderly transition of power rather than be ousted in a chaotic fight to the finish. But U.S. officials were apparently willing to take the chance of an Al Qaeda/Islamic State victory in Damascus.
Putin warned the General Assembly about such a gamble with terrorism: “The Islamic State itself did not come out of nowhere. It was initially developed as a weapon against undesirable secular regimes.” He added that it was irresponsible “to manipulate extremist groups and use them to achieve your political goals, hoping that later you’ll find a way to get rid of them or somehow eliminate them.”
Stopping the Jihadists
Russia’s intervention seriously reversed the jihadists’ advances, alarming Saudi Arabia and Turkey. In February, they demanded that the U.S. support their invasion of Syria. It was a momentous moment for Obama: Would he risk war with Russia to save another “regime change” project? Video of the Russian SU-24 exploding in flames inside Syrian territory after it was shot down by Turkish air-to-air missiles on Nov. 24, 2015.
U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter, a committed neocon, “welcomed” the Saudi-Turk plan to launch an invasion by air from Turkey’s Incirlik NATO air base and by land through the wastelands of Jordan or western Iraq. The Saudis staged a 30,000-man invasion war game in the desert. But Obama again stood up for reason and stopped it, at least for a time.
In July, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his backers crushed an attempted coup . Erdogan seized the opportunity to eliminate almost all opposition to his near-total one-man rule. By late August, Erdogan was ready to make his next move with no one left in Turkey to oppose him.
On Aug. 24, with U.S. air cover, Turkey invaded Syria. This time Obama did not stop him. Washington clearly approved as its planes protected Turkish tanks and infantry rolling across the border. Vice President Joe Biden was in Ankara a day before the invasion.
The pretext was to fight Islamic State, but it became clear immediately that Turkey’s main target was to block advances by the Syrian Kurds, one of Islamic State’s toughest foes on the ground. The U.S. protested those attacks, but Washington surely knew what Turkey’s intentions were.
The date – Aug. 24 – was significant because it was the 500 th anniversary of the start of the Ottoman empire when the Ottomans left Turkey and invaded their first country — Syria.
It was hardly a coincidence when one considers Erdogan’s history. He spurred a violent police crackdown in Istanbul’s Ghezi Park in 2013 against demonstrators protesting his plan to build a replica of an Ottoman barracks in the park. In April, Erdogan named a new bridge over the Bosphorus after Osman, founder of the Ottoman Empire.
An initial target of the invasion also was significant. On Oct. 16, Turkish-backed rebels captured the Syrian town of Dabiq from Islamic State, the site of a victory in 1516 that established the Ottoman Empire.
Listening to Russia
Still, Obama continued to drag his heels regarding a deeper U.S. role in Syria. Obama resisted the hawks again this summer by allowing Kerry to negotiate with Russia on Putin’s offer at the U.N.: to form a military alliance against Islamic State and Al Qaeda in Syria. Russia’s 2015 entry had turned the tide of the war in Syria’s favor but the war against the insurgency has stalled in Aleppo, where a third of the city remains largely under Al Qaeda control. Map of Syria.
While Obama publicly slammed the Russians, projecting that they were on an imperial adventure that would wind up in a quagmire (exactly what has afflicted U.S. imperial adventures in various theaters), he kept plans for a safe zone and no-fly zone on hold.
Nearly a year after Putin’s U.N. offer and after months of intermittent talks, Kerry and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Sept. 9 finally reached a deal to jointly fight terrorists in Syria. It was clear the agreement would ground the Syrian air force, resume humanitarian aid and agree on the identity of rebels to be jointly attacked, but U.S. officials insisted the terms remain secret.
But Defense Secretary Ash Carter made no secret of his objection. On Sept. 8, he said : “In the current circumstance, it is not possible for the United States to associate itself with — let alone to cooperate in — a venture that is only fueling violence and civil war.”
It was an extraordinary act of insubordination for which Carter was not punished. Once again Obama chose not to completely stand up to the hawks while authorizing a policy that they opposed.
But then Carter’s objection to the deal went beyond words. Two days before it was to go into effect, warplanes from the U.S. military coalition killed more than 60 Syrian soldiers near Deir ez Zor in an air strike the Pentagon later said was an “accident.” U.N. Ambassador Samantha Power was hardly repentant as she condemned Russia’s attempt to discuss the incident at the Security Council as a “stunt.”
Four days later, a U.N. aid convoy was attacked near Aleppo, killing more than 20 aid workers. The U.S. immediately blamed Russian air strikes without presenting any evidence. Russia says rebels were responsible. The U.S.-Russia deal was dead.
Moscow eventually revealed the deal’s terms. At its heart was the separation of U.S.-backed rebels from Al Qaeda, which dominates a third of Aleppo. But once again, despite repeated pledges to do so, the U.S. government failed to separate them. Indeed, some “moderate” groups double-downed on their alliance with Al Qaeda.
Syria and Russia had enough and declared all rebels fighting with Al Qaeda to be fair game. They commenced a furious bombardment of east Aleppo to crush the insurgency there once and for all. Putting all of Aleppo back into government hands would be a major turning point in the war but it has not proven easy. Instead the fierce aerial assaults have claimed numerous civilian lives, handing Russia’s opponents a public relations coup.
Complaints of War Crimes
Washington, London and Paris are leading the chorus of war crimes accusations against Russia (though the U.S. and Britain invaded Iraq without Security Council authorization in an act of aggression that led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and can reasonably be seen as the supreme war crime.) British Prime Minister Tony Blair and U.S. President George W. Bush shake hands after a joint White House press conference on Nov. 12, 2004. (White House photo)
Russia’s actions in Aleppo have been compared to Israel’s in Gaza. Two U.N. reports have said Israel may have been guilty of war crimes in 2012 and 2014 attacks on Gaza, but Israel has not been prosecuted at the International Criminal Court.
The differences between Gaza and Aleppo are stark, however. Gazans are an indigenous people attacked by an Occupying Power. Syria and Russia are attacking the occupiers of east Aleppo – many of them foreign-backed mercenaries.
People in Gaza cannot escape the city because of their attackers, while people in east Aleppo can’t escape because civilians who attempt to leave come under sniper fire. Also, rebel rockets fired from east Aleppo into west Aleppo kill large numbers of civilians, unlike Hamas’ rockets fired into Israel.
But the most significant difference between the two cases of terrible human suffering is that the West defends Israel and deflects charges of war crimes while it accuses Russia and Syria of war crimes.
Isolated from the context of the entire Syrian war against a foreign-backed rebellion, the battle for east Aleppo (usually reported as the whole city) has been framed by Western liberal media in the same way Sarajevo was in the 1990s.
Then a highly complex war was boiled down to one battle, where Bosnian Serbs fired into civilian areas as part of a larger war aim (although the attacks were portrayed as simply a lust to kill civilians). Today it is Russia that Is accused of acting out of the pure intent to kill civilians with no other motive.
The media’s reaction to the bombardment of east Aleppo has led to a sharp increase in rabid calls for Western military intervention against the Syrian government and possibly against Russia. The British parliament held a Russia-bashing session in October, including calls for war against Moscow. Neocon newspapers, such as The Washington Post, are itching for battle. A British general said the U.K. would be ready to fight Russia in two years — enough time for a Clinton administration to prepare.
Already, U.S. neocons and liberal hawks are dreaming about “regime change” in Moscow with Putin replaced by a Wall Street-friendly leader like Boris Yeltsin who let Western interests plunder Russia’s resources during the 1990s. Yet, that may be just another example of the U.S. failure to anticipate the likely consequences of interventions.
Even if Russia could be destabilized sufficiently to unseat Putin, the more likely result would be the rise of a fierce Russian nationalist, not a pro-Western “liberal” in the mold of Yeltsin. That might increase the risks of nuclear war, rather than give the West another compliant Russia.
Plus, Putin would not be easily ousted, especially given his strong popular support, according to opinion polls. Indeed, some internal criticism of Putin has been that he has tried too hard to accommodate the West.
But Washington’s modus operandi has been to continually provoke and blame a country until it becomes an adversary and stands up for itself, as Putin’s Russia has done. Then, the West accuses the country of “aggression” and justifies attacks against it as “self-defense.”
We see these winds of war blowing in Ukraine, the Baltics, Poland and the Balkans — with NATO’s military posturing to counter “Russian aggression”— and in Syria, where neocon calls are increasing for the U.S. to strike the Syrian government.
One More Stand
Obama, apparently for the fourth time, kept the hawks at bay after a White House meeting last month in which military action was turned down in the face of Russia’s warning that it would target attacking U.S. aircraft. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton addressing the AIPAC conference in Washington D.C. on March 21, 2016. (Photo credit: AIPAC)
Over the past five years, Obama has been almost the only brake on keeping the Syrian conflict — and relations with Russia — from spiraling completely out of control. But his voice is fading as he prepares to leave office on Jan. 20, 2017.
Into this fevered environment steps Hillary Clinton who may win the White House within the week. She continues to call for a safe zone and a no-fly zone, despite the warning last month from Gen. Joseph Dunford, the chairman of the joint chiefs, that that would mean war with Russia.
Still, Hillary Clinton has continued pushing for a military intervention as recently as the last presidential debate.
“I’m going to continue to push for a no-fly zone and safe havens within Syria … not only to help protect the Syrians and prevent the constant outflow of refugees, but to gain some leverage on both the Syrian government and the Russians,” Clinton declared.
She said this after admitting in one of her paid speeches , released by Wikileaks, that a no-fly zone will “kill a lot of Syrians.”
The “safe zone” is supposed to shelter internally displaced Syrians to prevent them from becoming refugees. But it could also be used as a staging ground to train and equip jihadists intent on regime change, as was done in Libya. A safe area would need ground troops to protect it, although Clinton says there will be no U.S. ground troops in Syria.
But Turkey also has been clamoring for a safe area on the ground for the past few years. Erdogan called for one (as well as a no-fly zone in northern Syria) as recently as last September in his address to the U.N. General Assembly.
Russia’s reaction has been defiant, setting up an ominous game of chicken that could go nuclear. Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov said Russia would shoot down any American plane attacking the Syrian government. Russia has also deployed sophisticated air defenses in the country. This has given U.S. brass deep pause about confronting Russia in Syria. So far Russia has come out on top there, lessening the risks of confrontation that could escalate to the most dangerous levels.
But would Hillary Clinton back down from her harsh rhetoric if she’s elected? Or would she appoint more hawkish military leaders? Obama’s half-way measures in Syria have left the door open to a Clinton administration that appears determined to ratchet up the regime change operation by calling Putin’s bluff.
She also seems poised to arm the Ukrainian government and perhaps give Putin an ultimatum: give back Crimea or else. But what if Putin calls Clinton’s bluff and refuses, given the fact that the people of Crimea voted by 96 percent in a referendum to leave Ukraine and rejoin Russia? It’s a roll of the dice the hawks might be ready to toss.
Washington’s hawks appear to have bested Obama this last time, since he has not stood in the way of Clinton’s allies inside his administration letting Erdogan pursue his neo-Ottoman fantasy (even to the point of fighting U.S.-backed Kurds) in exchange for Turkish NATO forces establishing a safe area without U.S. ground troops. Turkey and its rebel forces already control about 490 square miles in northern Syria.
With less than three months left in office, Obama appears to have finally surrendered on Syrian policy, ceding it to the next president.
Joe Lauria is a veteran foreign-affairs journalist based at the U.N. since 1990. He has written for the Boston Globe, the London Daily Telegraph, the Johannesburg Star, the Montreal Gazette, the Wall Street Journal and other newspapers. He can be reached [email protected] and followed on Twitter at @unjoe . | 0 |
He deemed BuzzFeed News “a failing pile of garbage,” mocked an inquiry about his tax returns — “Gee, I’ve never heard that one before” — and, in an moment for a presidential news conference, shouted down questions from a CNN reporter, declaring, with some menace, “Not you. ” “Your organization is terrible,” said Donald J. Trump, his voice rising as Jim Acosta of CNN tried to interject. “No, I’m not going to give you a question. I’m not going to give you a question. ” “You,” the said, as Mr. Acosta and other stunned journalists looked on, “are fake news. ” Any hope that Mr. Trump would temper his attacks on the news media after the campaign seemed to dissipate in the marble atrium of Trump Tower on Wednesday, as the holding his first news conference since July, turned a controversy over his ties to Russia into a deft and unrelenting attack on the journalists who reported it. It was a spectacle that attracted nearly 300 reporters to Midtown Manhattan — the news conference was carried live in Australia, England and Germany — and it came against an extraordinary backdrop: reports that intelligence officials had briefed Mr. Trump on a document alleging collusion between the Russian government and his campaign. CNN broke the news on Tuesday but declined to publish specific allegations, saying its reporters could not verify them. BuzzFeed News published the unverified claims in full, a move that prompted an ethical debate in journalistic circles — and offered Mr. Trump an opening. “The fact that BuzzFeed and CNN made the decision to run with this unsubstantiated claim is a sad and pathetic attempt to get clicks,” the incoming White House press secretary, Sean Spicer, said, inaccurately lumping the two news organizations together. But the result was classic Trump: Not only did he break the norms of presidential engagement with the news media, snubbing organizations because of an unflattering story, but he also had elements of a frustrated political press corps warring with one another. Immediately after the news conference, CNN defended its reporting and drew a sharp distinction between its news story and “BuzzFeed’s decision to publish unsubstantiated memos. ” On a broadcast, the CNN anchor Jake Tapper said that BuzzFeed’s move “hurts us all. ” “It’s irresponsible to put uncorroborated information on the internet,’’ Mr. Tapper said. “I can understand why Trump would be upset about that I would be upset about it. too. ’’ Later, Chuck Todd, the NBC News moderator, repeatedly pressed BuzzFeed’s editor in chief, Ben Smith, on why unverified claims did not amount to “fake news. ” Mr. Smith, for his part, said he was “not going to participate in an attempt to divide the media against each other. ” (In a memo on Wednesday, BuzzFeed’s chief executive, Jonah H. Peretti, defended the move. “We are going to keep doing what we do best, which is deliver impactful journalism,” he wrote.) Still, by the time the news conference finished — with Omarosa Manigault, the “Apprentice” star and future member of the White House staff, heckling Mr. Acosta, shouting, “Cut it out!” — Mr. Trump had bobbed and weaved his way through nearly an hour of interrogation, offering vague answers to critical questions about his administration. Yet the conduct of the news media, a familiar foil from Mr. Trump’s campaign days, remained at the center of the day’s story. The treatment of Mr. Acosta raised alarms among news media advocates and his fellow journalists, particularly after Mr. Acosta described a threat by Mr. Spicer to eject him from the news conference when he persisted in trying to ask the a question. Harsh words between reporters and press secretaries happen. But an anchor for a rival network, Shepard Smith of Fox News, later came to Mr. Acosta’s defense, saying that no “journalists should be subjected to belittling and delegitimizing by the of the United States. ” The National Press Club also lamented Mr. Trump’s behavior, saying in a statement: “Presidents shouldn’t get to pick and choose which reporters’ questions they will answer based on what news outlet for which they work. ” Mr. Trump, who ultimately took one question from a CNN reporter, also called on journalists from two organizations: BreitbartNews and One America News. Matthew Boyle, the Breitbart reporter, asked the for his ideas on how to reform the news media. Mostly, however, Mr. Trump took questions from journalists at the major television networks, with John Roberts of Fox News going first. A Greek chorus of sorts — mostly Trump supporters and aides, including Ms. Manigault — watched from the side, applauding Mr. Trump and jeering questions from reporters they deemed unpleasant. A man who prides himself on finding an opponent’s weakness, Mr. Trump at one point zeroed in on an existential question that has lingered in many newsrooms since his surprise victory: How much does the traditional news media still matter in a polarized age? When Hallie Jackson, an NBC News correspondent, asked the if he would finally release his tax returns, to verify his claim that he has no financial dealings in Russia, Mr. Trump scoffed. “You know, the only one that cares about my tax returns are the reporters, O. K.?” the said. “They’re the only ones who ask. ” “You don’t think the American public is concerned about it?” Ms. Jackson asked. “I don’t think so,” Mr. Trump replied, before laying down the political equivalent of a : ”I won. ” | 1 |
Without intention, Mike kind fulfills the proverb that not all who wander are lost. A 1973 graduate of the College of the Holy Cross with a BA in Philosophy, he had successfully dodged the draft during Vietnam, despite his lottery number of 29. Logically, after failing at being a bum for a year after college, he then enlisted in the Army. His theory was to hang out for two years, go to Germany, date blondes, drink lots of beer, improve his wretched German and come home to use the GI Bill for Graduate School. Didn’t quite work out that way; he did go to Germany and stayed five years first tour; married a red-headed American GI who worked in S2; did drink lots of beer and developed some acuity with pidgin Deutsch. Mike re-enlisted and then wandered through a great 23 years as a soldier. A lot of it sucked, of course; but, he avoided ending his adolescence until the end of the 23 years…since then, he’s been in a fight to regain that feeling of camaraderie, purpose and trust. Mike chose to stay a career NCO. There were a couple of dozen reasons, but they’re best summed up by the fact that he really didn’t like officers. He still doesn’t, sheepishly at times admitting that “Some of my best friends are officers. Some of my best friends are gay. Some of my best friends are gay officers. I’m not gay and I’m not an officer – I like it better that way.” He got his initial First Sergeant assignment in his 14th year and basically stayed a First Sergeant until he retired, as a First Sergeant. If he hadn’t retired, the day after the retirement would have been the day he pinned on CSM stripes but, as he says, “Some of my best friends are Sergeant Majors; some of my best friends are hookers. I’m not a Sergeant Major and I’m not a hooker and that works fine for me.” Since retiring, Mike’s worked in Labor Relations, HR and General Management for government, tribes, nonprofits and for profits including Defense Contractors. He’s found that his “not being a hooker” approach hasn’t necessarily worked to his career advantage. He’s picked up a bunch of irrelevant graduate degrees, that basically were there to teach you how to be a Hobbit. Hobbits are small, insignificant fearful types who scurry around getting in the way and accomplishing nothing of any great merit. He believes that the movies would have been infinitely better had the bad guys killed off all the Hobbits in the first part of the first movie, and then spent the rest of it avenging the little twits. Mike really hates Hobbits He’s a Senior Professional in Human Resources and a Six Sigma Black Belt. He plays guitar, reads, broods and drives too fast in fast cars – currently, a Mustang GT – channeling Hunter S. Thompson, patrolling “on the edge of the desert, just outside of Barstow.” An avowed leftist and philosophical Stoic, Mike admits that everything is probably going to hell, but thinks that it’s the duty of people of honor to work to stop it from going there too quick. Since he regards all veterans as his extended family, he expects that they’ll do the same. An oddly religious guy, Mike believes that God is a not very bright, self—entered and hormonal teenage girl obsessed with the Jonas Brothers and whether or not her Daisy Duke jeans make her ass look fat. They do, but he’s not going to be the one to tell her the truth. God can’t handle the truth. While he might write about anything, he’s really interested in business, economics and how to keep people from being screwed by machines, be they corporate, government, or societal. He's also interested in guitars... Dispatches from Wolf Country — Kale and Seal Liver By Mike Farrell on October 29, 2016 The reason why young people don't turn out for elections is because they don't remember how badly things can go. How hard can it be to run a country is a question asked by outsiders; how bad can it be is a question asked by those who don't remember; what's the worst thing that can happen is the one asked by well-insulated di pshits who should watch some footage of the Cultural Revolution in China interspersed with Triumph of the Will and 1984. A Center Right Party for Progressives! Pirate Party Logo With Dragon Head The Pirates promise to introduce direct democracy, subject the workings of government to more scrutiny and place the country’s natural resources under public ownership. The party also seeks tough rules to protect individuals from online intrusion. Jonsdottir, the Pirates’ most prominent voice, is a former ally of WikiLeaks who has called on Iceland to offer citizenship to National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden.Opponents claim the inexperienced Pirates could scare off investors and destabilise an economy that is now recovering, with low unemployment and high growth. “We’d rather be naive than corrupt,” Jonsdottir said. – The Guardian, Oct 29, 2016
Bill Mahar, the commentator comedian, had a bit going during the height of the “If Trump wins, I’m going to Canada!” thing that American progressives and liberals couldn’t all go to Canada because if they did, “Who’s going to eat all this fucking Kale!?” Well, perhaps this offers a solution. If the best thing in the world happens, perhaps we can export it to Iceland… Birgitta Jonsdottir, Iceland’s Pirate Party Leader — Stuff.Co.NZ
Iceland strikes me more and more as a very cool place. Cold, but cool. Michael Lewis had a great Vanity Fair article “Wall Street on the Tundra” about the 2008 economic crisis worldwide focusing on Iceland. Iceland had no reason to be sucked into that mess but was, like a Long Ship dragged under the ocean by a Krakken powered whirlpool. Fishermen found themselves as real estate magnates and shepards as billionaire speculators, largely in the UK, leveraging debt and selling tranches of fish futures while getting used to driving Bentley’s and Astons around Reykjavik in Trump designer label suits under their seal skins.
When it all went to hell, and it did, the country convulsed, shook it off, sent the fishermen-shepherd speculators back to sea and sheep while the poets, intellectuals and activists led largely by lesbian politicians,’various poets and saga translators; and World Strong Man champions took over and got things running again only with more transparency, efficiency and effectiveness. What the hell do you expect in a country where everybody is related to Bjork? And, of course, to Eric the Red and Leif Ericsson? In a country where the Parliament’s Official Name Translate from Danish to The Thing?
Anyway, they have an election today, and there’s a good possibility that the Pirate Party, founded on-line in the post 2008 period and led by female poet named Brigitta Jonsdottir could end up in a leading role in one or another version of a governing coalition. Of course, before we get too excited, we should remember that despite an average electoral turnout of 80%, young people tend to blow off elections at a very high rate and the Pirate Party is a youth party, so…
Selling tranches of fish futures driving Astons around Reykjavik in Trump designer suits under their seal skins.
I suspect the reason why young people don’t turn out for elections is because they don’t remember how badly things can go. How hard can it be to run a country is a question asked by outsiders; how bad can it be is a question asked by those who don’t remember; what’s the worst thing that can happen is the one asked by well-insulated dipshits who should watch some footage of the Cultural Revolution in China interspersed with Triumph of the Will and 1984.
It’s possible that for Iceland and Europe as a whole, 2008 is close enough to encourage people to remember; and, since Iceland is limited from the Nationalist and Corporatist hysteria facing the UK and the rest of the EU, they might be able to avoid the Fascist tinge to so much…after all, I think their platform, for a center-right party is to the left of Bernie Sanders. Hope so. Related Posts: | 0 |
We Use Cookies: Our policy [X] BREAKING: Honey G Fatally Gunned Down In Bitter Rap Feud November 8, 2016 - BREAKING NEWS , ENTERTAINMENT Share 0 Add Comment
FANS of London rap artist Honey G have flooded social media with condolences this afternoon following a fatal shooting linked to a West London rap feud.
Real name Anna Georgette Gilford, the X-Factor contestant was reportedly shot 17 times by a group of unknown assailants who cut off the car she was a passenger in.
“I saw the blacked out jeep overtaking her car, forcing her driver to stop,” one eyewitness recalls, “Five men in balaclavas got out and began trying to open her door, but then she seemed to open fire on them from the inside, hitting one in the shoulder and another guy in the chest”.
CCTV footage from the scene showed the two men hitting the ground, before the other three men took out semi-automatic machine guns and opened fire. Honey G can be seen crawling out of the opposite side of the car. She then began shooting at her assailants.
“She started shouting ‘you East side pansies will never take me alive’,” said another witness, “She went at them all guns blazing”.
Police confirmed Honey G stood up from behind the car, wielding duel gold plated desert eagle handguns in each hand before slowly firing off rounds while walking calmly towards the men.
“They fired back, and hit her several times. She was bleeding from several areas on her torso, but it didn’t seem to stop her,” police investigators confirmed, “She took out the three guys, executing one of them on the ground to the line ‘I say Honey, you say…’ before then putting two slugs behind his ear, finishing him off to the letter ‘G’. Unfortunately, she didn’t see the driver of the vehicle coming around from the other side”.
In a split second, the X-Factor hopeful was gunned down by the driver of the vehicle, who then sped off through the busy London streets. The SUV was later found burned out in the East side of the city.
It is understood Honey G was involved in a bitter East/West feud which has been spanning over 5 years.
Her family have asked for bottles of Hennessy to be spilled over her grave instead of flowers. | 0 |
Abdullah Muhammad al-Muhaysini, a senior al Qaeda-linked cleric and the religious leader of Jeish al-Fatah terrorist group, admitted that the militants in Syria have received financial and military aid from Saudi Arabia and certain other Persian Gulf Arab states. 36 Shares
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According to the Syrian dissidents' news website, Enab, Muhaysini has released a video recently in which he appreciated Riyadh and other Arab states for equipping his comrades with missiles.
The Saudi preacher said that the missiles that they have sent would be used to break the Syrian army and its allies' siege of Aleppo.
He also thanked Turkey for supporting the terrorists and treating the wounded militants in its hospitals.
Jaish al-Fatah is a conglomerate of terrorist groups with Al-Nusra (Fatah Al-Sham) Front comprising its main body.
In relevant remarks in June, a source said that Saudi Arabia has sent new cargoes of weapons and financial aid to the terrorists in Aleppo in Northern Syria to strengthen them against the Syrian army and its allies' fresh attacks.
MORE... Why do we only hear of the “humanitarian crisis in Aleppo” and not everywhere else in Syria? Is Maintaining Assad the Least Worst Option? The Criminal West’s State Sponsorship of Terrorism Israel wants Syria destroyed as presaged by the Oded Yinon plan "The Saudi regime has recently sent small arms and new equipment, including 5 drones, to the terrorists in Syria," the source said.
To this end, Riyadh has sent one of its ranking officers to the regions controlled by terrorists in Northern Aleppo to supply them with money and arms to intensify attacks and open new fronts against the Syrian army and popular forces, the source added.
Also, a prominent Syrian military analyst said earlier this month that the terrorists in Aleppo take orders from outside and don’t dare to leave the city in anticipation of punishment by Saudi Arabia and Turkey.
"Violation of the ceasefire by the terrorists and their opposition to the evacuation of Aleppo is of no surprise as they are not the ones in charge of the decision-making for remaining or leaving the city, rather they take orders from the regional and international sides for whom they are working," Turki Hassan told FNA last Saturday.
Noting that the main cause of the terrorists' stubborn stay in Aleppo is that leaders of Fatah al-Sham (formerly known as al-Nusra Front and Ahrar al-Sham) are afraid of punishment by their Qatari, Saudi and Turkish masters, he said, "If they move in defiance of their Qatari, Saudi and Turkish lords, they might be killed and their properties be seized." | 0 |
Posted on October 31, 2016 by Dr. Eowyn | 2 Comments
Christians are one of the main targets of the Islamic State as they cut a murderous swath through Syria and Iraq. And yet, Christians constitute only 0.5% of the Syrian refugees whom the Obama administration has admitted into the United States.
On October 21, 2016, in his concurrent opinion in the case of Heartland Alliance National Immigrant Justice Center v. U.S. Department of Homeland Security , Judge Daniel Manion , a federal appellate court judge for the U.S. Seventh Circuit, issued a sharp rejoinder to the Obama administration over the almost complete lack of Syrian Christian refugees being admitted to the U.S. Note: Heartland Alliance National Immigrant Justice Center is a “progressive” liberal advocacy organization. The Heartland Alliance v. DHS case has nothing to do with Christian refugees, but pertains to Heartland Alliance’s FOIA request to the DHS for information on Tier III terrorist organizations.
While concurring in the 7th Circuit Court’s ruling, Judge Daniel Manion explains why he’s writing separately. On pages 7-8 of U.S. Court of Appeal for the Seventh Circuit No. 16-1840 Heartland Alliance National Immigrant Justice Center v. U.S. Department of Homeland Security , Judge Manion writes: “I write separately for a second, critical reason, which is my concern about the apparent lack of Syrian Christians as a part of immigrants from that country . It is possible that our case bears a direct link to this enigma. It is well‐documented that refugees to the United States are not representative of that war‐torn area of the world. Perhaps 10 percent of the population of Syria is Christian, and yet less than one‐half of one percent of Syrian refugees admitted to the United States this year are Christian. ¹ Recognizing the crisis in Syria, the President in 2015 set a goal of resettling 10,000 refugees in the United States. And in August the government reached this laudable goal. And yet, of the nearly 11,000 refugees admitted by mid‐September, only 56 were Christian. To date, there has not been a good explanation for this perplexing discrepancy.”
Judge Manion also noted that while the Obama administration is bringing Syrian refugees into the country by the thousands, it is concealing basic information about those refugees behind a wall of government secrecy, including whether terrorists are among the refugees. The administration refuses to tell the American public or the states how it is making its decisions on who are accepted for resettlement in the U.S., or even what steps it is taking to ensure there are no terrorists among the refugees. Nor is Congress exercising its oversight functions.
As Manion writes in his concurrent opinion: “The good people of this country routinely welcome immigrants from all over the world. But in a democracy, good data is critical to public debate about national immigration policy. When we demand high evidentiary burdens for states seeking to keep their citizens safe, and then prevent the states from that evidence, we create a Catch-22.² […] And yet, Congress, through the exemptions to FOIA, has consciously made the decision to limit what governmental information is available to the public. If Congress is concerned about how immigration officers are making their decisions related to the designation and application of the Tier III terrorist organization affiliation, Congress has the authority to act. Congress has its own oversight capabilities and subpoena power, and Congress could choose to amend our nation’s sunshine laws or our immigration laws. Until that time, however, many of us remain in the dark as a humanitarian catastrophe continues.”
Daniel Manion , 74, is a senior jurist on the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit whose chambers are located in South Bend, Indiana. He was an Indiana state senator (R) from 1978-82. In 1986, Manion was nominated by President Ronald Reagan to the 7th Circuit Court. | 0 |
Clouds Architecture Office has designed a skyscraper that would stretch toward Earth from the sky, suspended from an orbiting asteroid. [The New York architecture firm wants to build a skyscraper 31, 068 miles above the Earth. Analemma Tower is a project meant to “apply design thinking on a planetary scale” to create “the world’s tallest building ever. ” The building will float in a massive figure eight through the northern and southern hemispheres, passing over several major cities as it goes. The firm’s plan suggests building in Dubai specifically because of the country’s ability to craft massive superstructures for about the cost of building in the U. S. Analemma would employ a Universal Orbital Support System (UOSS) to hang by “high strength cable” from the aforementioned asteroid. And if it becomes reality, Analemma would be a sectional world all its own. Business centers would dominate the lower levels, with apartments situated above. Gardens, religious areas, as well as commercial and entertainment areas all have their place. The tower is full of engineering, including windows that adjust their height for differences in temperature and air pressure. Solar panels placed on the uppermost levels will harness energy to keep the whole thing running, while fresh water is harvested from the clouds below. Of course, they’ll need to position an asteroid of appropriate size to accomplish their science fiction Wonderland. The firm cited the European Space Agency’s “Rosetta” mission and NASA’s 2021 asteroid retrieval mission as evidence that the concept doesn’t stray too far from modern realities. Follow Nate Church @Get2Church on Twitter for the latest news in gaming and technology, and snarky opinions on both. | 1 |
Home / Be The Change / Mark Ruffalo Delivers Mobile Solar Trailers to Standing Rock Camps in Preparation for Harsh Winter Mark Ruffalo Delivers Mobile Solar Trailers to Standing Rock Camps in Preparation for Harsh Winter Jay Syrmopoulos October 30, 2016 2 Comments
Cannon Ball, ND – In a show of kindness and solidarity with the Standing Rock Sioux, actor Mark Ruffalo and Native Renewables founder Wahleah Johns presented Sioux tribal elders with mobile trailers equipped with solar collection arrays. The trailers provide a clean energy source for the protest encampment where over 500 Native American tribes have taken a stand against the Dakota Access Pipeline in the largest gathering of American Indians in modern history.
“This pipeline is a black snake that traverses four states and 200 waterways with fracked Bakken oil,” said Ruffalo, co-founder of The Solutions Project, a venture that works to transition society to clean and renewable energy.
“We know from experience that pipelines leak, explode, pollute and poison land and water. But it doesn’t have to be that way.”
The solar trailers will allow for medical tents and numerous other critical facilities to be powered with clean energy, and represent exactly the healthy/abundant future of energy for which the Standing Rock Sioux are currently fighting.
“Water is life,” said Johns, a Navajo leader. “By leading a transition to energy that is powered by the sun, the wind and water, we ensure a better future for all of our people and for future generations.”
According to a report by EcoWatch :
Johns’ company, Native Renewables, promotes low-cost clean energy solutions for Native American families throughout the U.S., with an emphasis on job creation and on benefiting the community as a whole. The trailers were built by members of the Navajo nation and were financed by Empowered by Light and Give Power.
Research led by Stanford Prof. Mark Jacobson, another Solutions Project co-founder, shows that it would be technically possible and economically beneficial to transition to 100 percent clean renewable energy in each and every state across the country. In North Dakota, for example, wind and solar energy would be the primary sources of clean power and transitioning to 100 percent renewables would create 30,000 jobs.
The reality of the situation is that the Standing Rock tribe is fighting to protect their source of clean water. The Dakota Access Pipeline puts the tribe’s clean water supply, as well as that of millions of others, in danger, as the pipeline is scheduled to go directly under the Missouri River.
— Dan Zukowski (@danzukowski) October 25, 2016
The construction of the “black snake” marks the conglomeration of corporate/banking interests being elevated above that of the public interest. Furthermore, the ongoing construction has already desecrated sacred burial sites and cultural artifacts. “Around the world, more than 80 percent of the forests and lands with protected waterways and rich biodiversity are held by indigenous tribes. This is no coincidence,” Ruffalo said. “As so many of us suffer from polluted water, air and land in our rural and urban communities, the water defenders at Standing Rock are showing us another way.”
Imagine how you would respond if an oil pipeline was being dug through the cemetery where your grandparents and great grandparents were buried.
Mark Ruffalo taking a stand for the Standing Rock Sioux is a great example for all individuals, celebrity, and non-celebrity alike. Rather than simply donating some money to a cause, he has utilized his celebrity to bring much greater attention to the continued injustices being perpetrated against the Native American community.
It’s clear that Ruffalo has taken a page out of Ghandi’s book, and is “being the change he wishes to see in the world.”
Please share this inspiring human story — and take a stand for Standing Rock! Share | 0 |
Friday 4 November 2016 by Spacey People on benefits receive award for outstanding contribution to Channel 5’s schedule
Benefit claimants have defied critics who say they don’t contribute anything by receiving an award for their outstanding contribution to Channel 5’s TV schedule.
Editor of What Scapegoat? magazine Simon Williams presented the award at an arsehole-studded event in London yesterday evening.
“What better way to unwind after a hard day at work than by getting angry because an overweight man on benefits has a pet cat and a dirty fridge,” he said.
“Why get worked up about tax avoidance on a massive scale when you can experience the fury of watching a work-shy teenager playing Call of Duty on his Xbox?”
Iain Duncan Smith, who accepted the award on behalf of benefit claimants, said: “Creating the impression that everyone on benefits is undergoing plastic surgery in a bid to become a glamour model has been invaluable in gathering support for welfare cuts.
“When people think of benefits claimants, it’s important they don’t think I, Daniel Blake , but that they think iPhone and iPad.
“If you or your family have ever gone hungry or cold because of welfare cuts then I will treasure this award on your behalf.
“Thank you.” Get the best NewsThump stories in your mailbox every Friday, for FREE! There are currently | 0 |
TANTA, Egypt — Rattling a country already wrestling with a faltering economy and deepening political malaise, two suicide bombings that killed 44 people at Coptic churches in Egypt on Palm Sunday raised the specter of increased sectarian bloodshed led by Islamic State militants. The attacks constituted one of the deadliest days of violence against Christians in Egypt in decades and presented a challenge to the authority of the country’s leader, President Abdel Fattah who promptly declared a state of emergency. Security is the central promise of Mr. Sisi, a strongman leader who returned on Friday from a triumphant visit to the United States, where President Trump hailed him as a bulwark against Islamist violence. Mr. Trump made it clear that he was willing to overlook the record of mass detention, torture and extrajudicial killings during Mr. Sisi’s rule in favor of his ability to combat the Islamic State and defend minority Christians. On Sunday, Mr. Sisi found himself back on the defensive, deploying troops to protect churches across the country weeks before a planned visit by Pope Francis. Mr. Sisi rushed to assure Christians, who have traditionally been among his most vocal supporters and now fear that he cannot protect them against extremists. “I won’t say those who fell are Christian or Muslim,” Mr. Sisi said in a speech shown on state television on Sunday night. “I will say that they’re Egyptian. ” One attack on Sunday struck at St. Mark’s Cathedral, the seat of the Coptic Church in Alexandria, where the bomber blew himself up at the church gates as the Coptic patriarch, Pope Tawadros II, led a Palm Sunday service inside. The other struck in the Nile Delta city of Tanta, where the attacker slipped past security to the front pews of the church and blew himself up, turning a religious celebration of joy into a ghastly scene of bloodshed and death. The Islamic State, which claimed responsibility for the attacks through its Aamaq news agency, signaled in December its intention to step up attacks on Christians when a suicide bombing at a major Cairo church killed at least 28 people. In February, hundreds of Christians fled their homes in north Sinai after a concerted campaign of assassination and intimidation in the area. Although Mr. Sisi had already stepped up security at churches, Sunday’s bloodshed underscores the difficulty of stopping suicide attacks. More starkly, it highlighted the failure of Egypt’s powerful intelligence agencies to anticipate a coordinated wave of devastating attacks. The explosion in Tanta, about 50 miles north of Cairo, occurred at St. George’s church, where the authorities had already sealed the main door to prevent attacks. The bomber managed to slip past security measures, including a metal detector, at one of the side doors, and blew himself up near the altar. At least 27 people were killed and 78 others injured, officials said. Children, their parents and deacons — lay Christians who help with the service — accounted for many of the dead. Hours later, victims’ relatives stood silently outside the city morgue, waiting to identify and collect the remains of their loved ones. The Rev. Daniel Maher, a priest who had been leading the Mass, was still wearing his bloodstained white vestments. The priest said he had not been harmed in the attack, but he lost his son, Bishoy, who was to get married later this year. “What can I say? Thank God,” he said in a cracking voice. Next to the priest, a young woman sat on the sidewalk, sobbing as a group of women tried to comfort her. “God, what did he do to deserve this?” she asked, bemoaning the loss of her own loved one. The second attack occurred just over two hours later in the coastal city of Alexandria, where a suicide bomber tried to enter St. Mark’s Cathedral. Surveillance footage, later aired on a private Egyptian television channel, showed a man wearing a bulky jacket being directed into a metal detector at the church gates, where he paused to be searched by a police officer. A moment later, a giant blast rang out. At least 17 people were killed, including a district police chief and a police officer, and an additional 48 were wounded, according to the Health Ministry. Pope Tawadros, who is due to meet with Pope Francis during his visit to Egypt at the end of this month, was not injured in the blast. He later issued a statement saying that “these acts will not harm the unity and cohesion of the people. ” Christians make up about 10 percent of Egypt’s 90 million people, who are mostly Sunni Muslim, and have long complained of discrimination and sporadic violence at the hands of extremists. Christian leaders were vocal supporters of Mr. Sisi after he came to power in 2013 when the military ousted the elected president, Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood. Many Christians see Mr. Sisi as their defender, but Sunday’s events underscored how difficult it is for him to deliver on that promise, and raised pressing questions about security arrangements for Pope Francis’ visit on April 28 and 29. As forensics specialists combed through bloodstained wreckage at the site of the two church bombings, security officials found and defused explosive devices at other locations in Alexandria and Tanta, the state news media reported. Two devices were found at the Sidi Abdel Rahim Mosque in Tanta, home to one of the most famous Sufi Muslim shrines in the city, and another was found at the Collège St. Marc, an school in downtown Alexandria. Hours later, Mr. Sisi convened a meeting of the National Defense Council, which includes the prime minister and commanders of the Egyptian armed forces, in response to the bombings. He then declared a state of emergency, though it was not immediately clear what extra powers he required, given that his government enjoys largely unfettered powers, has already imprisoned or exiled thousands of political opponents, and oversees a Parliament that is dominated by his supporters. In his televised speech, Mr. Sisi indicated that news media coverage of attacks that embarrass his authority could be restricted. “The media discourse has to be responsible,” he said. “It’s not acceptable to have the incident aired repeatedly on television stations all day. ” Egyptians are used to such moves. The country was officially under a state of emergency for all of Hosni Mubarak’s rule, and again for three months in 2013. When Pope Francis arrives in Egypt, he will find a country where the Islamic State is intent on driving a wedge between Islam and Christianity. The pontiff offered his condolences to the Copts and all Egyptians, and in his statement from Rome he referred to the Coptic patriarch as his “brother. ” Francis’ scheduled visit to Egypt has been billed as the latest step in a effort to forge stronger ties between the Roman Catholic Church and Muslim leaders. Relations became strained in 2011 when Francis’s predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, denounced what he called “a strategy of violence that has Christians as a target” after a bombing at a church in Alexandria killed at least 23 people. Francis has sought to rebuild ties with Muslim clerics since becoming pope in 2013. And last year he welcomed to the Vatican Sheikh Ahmed the grand imam of Al Azhar, a mosque and university that is revered by Sunni Muslims In Egypt, the pontiff is to visit with Mr. Sisi the leadership of the Coptic Orthodox Church and the grand imam. The grand imam condemned Sunday’s attacks as a “despicable terrorist bombing that targeted the lives of innocents. ” For many Christians, though, the attacks at the start of the Holy Week before Easter are a harbinger of worse to come. “I think people will not only be too scared to be inside a church, they will be too scared to pass by one now,” said Mina Mansy, a prominent Christian rights activist. “This will continue to happen because the state is not interested in protecting Christians, or anyone else for that matter. The police’s only job is to crush political opponents. They don’t care about the real terrorists. ” | 1 |
Home / Badge Abuse / Shots Fired, 117 Arrests Made as Militarized Police Remove Pipeline Protesters Shots Fired, 117 Arrests Made as Militarized Police Remove Pipeline Protesters The Free Thought Project October 28, 2016 1 Comment
Standing Rock, ND — (RT) Hundreds of police in riot gear and with heavy military equipment have moved Dakota Access Pipeline protesters from their encampment on private land in North Dakota. Police have reportedly arrested at least 117 demonstrators so far.
“117 protesters have been arrested [as of 8:15 pm Thursday]. Morton County will be utilizing other jails in this mass arrest operation,” said Donnell Hushka, a spokeswoman for the Morton County, North Dakota, Sheriff’s Department.
Police have entered the sacred ground camp and surrounded protesters there. Livestream videos showed more than one hundred protesters on the front line. Police have protesters more or less surrounded. #noDAPL pic.twitter.com/G4xGQuXpZM
— Jason Patinkin (@JasonPatinkin) October 27, 2016
The Morton County Sheriff’s Office confirmed to the Associated Press that it had cleared the private land of protesters around 6:30pm EST Thursday.
Shortly after 7:00pm EST Thursday, the sheriff’s office posted on its Facebook page that “one woman has been arrested for firing a weapon at the police line near Highway 1806.”
The sheriff’s office just after 8:00pm EST stated in a Facebook post that it received reports of “several incidents involving firearms.” One “involved a private individual who was run off the road by protestors. The victim was shot in the hand and is being treated. An investigation in underway. No law enforcement was involved with this shooting.”
With regard to the woman arrested, the sheriff’s office said she “pulled a .38 caliber revolver and fired three shots at law enforcement, narrowly missing a sheriff’s deputy.” The sheriff’s office claims it did not fire any shots when taking her into custody.
“Ten shots were reported in the area. It’s possible it is local hunters. This incident is under investigation,” the Facebook post concluded. BREAKING: Sheriff: Dakota Access pipeline protesters cleared from private property.
— The Associated Press (@AP) October 27, 2016
According to KFYR, police made 16 arrests by evening time Thursday.
“The protesters are not being peaceful or prayerful. Law enforcement has been very methodical in moving ahead slowly as to not escalate the situation. However, the protesters are using very dangerous means to slow us down. Their aggressive tactics include using horses, fire and trying to flank us with horses and people,” said Cass County Sheriff Paul Laney in a press release Thursday. 16 arrests at DAPL today…. #kfyrkafe
— KFYR AM 550 (@KFYR550) October 27, 2016
“Move to the south,” police said over the loudspeaker.
“We see some of you have bows. Do not shoot bows and arrows at us,” they added, as protesters laughed.
National Guard troops and police removed tents and other possessions from the new encampment, which the Standing Rock Sioux tribe says is sacred land granted to them via treaty in 1851.
Police also dismantled the barricade across the road.
As police corralled the protesters southward, some activists remained facing the police and even engaged with them while walking backwards. Atsa E’sha Hoferer was livestreaming on Facebook, telling officers that they should be on the side of the protests and that they too would suffer from contaminated water should the pipeline burst. Police are pulling down tents now. Just saw them spray paint an X on a teepee. pic.twitter.com/nNrWRPDggP
— Caroline Grueskin (@cgrueskin) October 27, 2016
The stand-off with police had lasted for several hours before authorties moved closer to the camp and started arresting people. The number of arrested is currently unclear.
The protesters are currently blocking state Highway 1806, which law enforcement is attempting to clear using cop cars and military – style vehicles. Police said they will defend themselves against horses if necessary #DAPL #NoDAPL pic.twitter.com/5yWqKBUeGW
— wes enzinna (@wesenzinna) October 27, 2016
Police have said that they will defend themselves against horses, journalist Wes Enzinna tweeted.
“Do not ride horses at the police,” law enforcement announced.
“You’re endangering people’s lives by what you’re doing,” police told the protesters, telling them to move south or be arrested. People will not be arrested if they return to the main camp, one officer said at the barricade.
Protesters are burning tires, logs and other objects, sending smoke onto the roadway. A car has also been torched, journalist Jason Patinkin tweeted.
— Jason Patinkin (@JasonPatinkin) October 27, 2016
Although the Federal Aviation Administration has restricted flights over the Cannon Ball area until November 5, there is a police helicopter above the faceoff, journalist Antonia Juhasz tweeted.
More than 260 protesters have been arrested in the weeks leading up to Thursday’s operation, AP reported.
In the morning police made a line in front of the fence and the company workers are behind them. The tents of the so-called North Camp were located a stone’s throw away from the police line. Authorities insist that this camp should be removed, according to activist Atsa E’sha Hoferer live-streaming from the site.
People on the barricades are retreating peacefully amid chants of “hands up, don’t shoot!”
People are moving from the road towards the construction site. “We might as well get arrested defending the sacred,” a protester told the Bismarck Tribune’s Caroline Grueskin. We need to band together and keep the pressure up against them. One is a map of Native American reservations the other is the DAPL. #NoDAPL pic.twitter.com/VQ5MXgXkpY
— Bart Starr Mistrot (@bartmistrot) October 27, 2016
Construction on the pipeline has resumed within sight of the confrontation on the state highway. While police came from north and things riled up, pipeline construction restarted to west. False flag much? pic.twitter.com/XxgC7vH11Z
— Jason Patinkin (@JasonPatinkin) October 27, 2016
“Protesters’ escalated unlawful behavior this weekend by setting up illegal roadblocks, trespassing onto private property and establishing an encampment, has forced law enforcement to respond at this time. As I said yesterday, I visited the protesters roadblock and requested them to remove the barricade and have protesters vacate the private property. However, the spokesperson at the roadblock, Mekasi Camp-Horinek of Oklahoma, told law enforcement they ‘were not moving’,” Morton County Sheriff Kyle Kirchmeier said in a statement . “I can’t stress it enough, this is a public safety issue. We cannot have protesters blocking county roads, blocking state highways, or trespassing on private property.” So @potus , this means you're going to remove the National Guard from Standing Rock and cancel DAPL, right? Right? #NoDAPL https://t.co/FVV5KsgUom | 0 |
When Scott Parker wanted his six offspring to know more about the value of money, he decided to do something that many parents would consider radical: show them exactly what he earned. One day, he stopped by his local Wells Fargo branch in Encinitas, Calif. and asked to withdraw his entire monthly salary in cash. In singles. It took 24 hours for the tellers to round up that many bills, so he returned the next day and took away the $100 stacks in a canvas bag. His oldest son, Daniel, who was 15 at the time, remembers the moment his father walked into the house and dumped the $10, 000 or so on a table. “It looked like he had robbed a bank,” he said. After a pause to let it all sink in, Mr. Parker began peeling off bills. He told them about taxes, set aside money for a tithe to their church and made a big pile for the house payment. The singles piled up for soccer and scouting and hamburger night. By the end, there wasn’t much left over. “I was trying to make as big of an impact as I could, and I definitely had their attention,” he said recently. Your children deserve to know what you make, too. It may sound improbable, but you can begin to initiate them when they’re as young as 5 or 6, building their knowledge slowly and giving them the real answer while they’re still teenagers. Handle it right, and it will be one of the most valuable lessons of their childhood. Here’s the bigger problem this helps to solve: Money is a source of mystery to children. They sense its power, so they ask questions, lots of them, over many years. Why isn’t our house as big as my cousin’s? Why can’t I have a carnivorous plant terrarium? Why should I respect my teachers if they earn only $60, 000 per year? (Real question!) Are we poor? Why didn’t you give money to the man who asked you for some? If my sister can have Beats by Dre headphones, why won’t you get me the Lego Mindstorms set? (It’s only $349, and it’s educational, Mom!) We adults, however, tend to do a miserable job of answering. We push our children’s money questions aside, sometimes telling them that their queries are impolite, or perhaps worrying that they will call out our own financial hypocrisy and errors. Sometimes we respond defensively and viscerally, barking back, “None of your business,” unintentionally teaching our children that the topic is off limits despite its obvious importance. Others want to protect their children from a topic many of us find stressful or baffling: Can’t we keep them innocent of all of this money stuff for just a little bit longer? But shielding children from the realities of everyday financial life makes little sense anymore, given the responsibilities their generation will face, starting with the outsize college tuitions they will encounter while still in high school. “It’s dangerous, like not telling them about how their bodies are going to change during puberty,” said Amanda Rose Adams, a mother of two in Fort Collins, Colo. “That’s how kids come out of college $100, 000 in debt with an English degree. ” Or not knowing how and why to start saving right away for retirement, or how to pick a health insurance plan. This does not mean that children are entitled to your tax returns the first time they ask how much you earn. Financial transparency comes only with readiness, as Joline Godfrey, a family financial education consultant, puts it, and it takes a decade or so to give them enough knowledge and context to make the information meaningful and for you to feel safe sharing it. Start by using the same, simple line every time your child asks you a money question: “Why do you ask?” Don’t say it with disapproval or defensiveness make it clear that you’re glad your child asked. This is a stalling tactic to give you time to think of an answer. (It also works well with questions about sex and drugs.) Even better, it can allow you to figure out exactly what is on your child’s mind. If two parents are fighting about money and a child overhears, it’s natural to wonder how much the family has or if it has enough. At that moment, it can be easy to reassure a child that the family is fine — if that’s true — and that the argument was merely about the best way to use what it does have. Still, when it comes to your children’s financial initiation, you don’t want to play defense, merely responding to their inquiries. Instead, you want to build their awareness slowly of how to build a household budget. Start with something that you spend money on regularly — anything, really. Children as young as 6 or 7 can begin to understand the grocery bill. They often tag along to the store or add to the wish list each week, so it’s a great opportunity to introduce the idea of wants and needs as you navigate the aisles. Some children even get in on the couponing, collecting a portion of the savings from the parents. This is all part of helping them answer basic family budget questions: What do we spend each month to cover the necessities, and what do we choose to spend on things that we merely want? Our spending isn’t a secret in the first place children see plenty. But watching us whip out plastic cards in the store or in front of the computer, completely out of context, may give them the wrong impression entirely, which is why it’s good to introduce them to all of the expenses before they are teenagers. Some parents start with even larger line items. Trisha Jones, a mother in Norfolk, Va. sends her children, who are 6 and 8, to private school. Each month, she has them sit with her while she pays the tuition online, asking them to click the button. “We jokingly say that it costs $92. 50 to send them each to school every day,” she said, adding that they know that the daily number is akin to a nice Lego set. “But it’s a privilege to go to the school that they do, and we want them to know that we are making sacrifices to send them there. ” Other families focus on expenses that derive from the children’s extracurricular interests. When the local ballet studio raised prices just as her daughter was increasing her commitment to dance, Rebecca Miller Goggins showed her the bills. A professional who lives in Northampton, Mass. Ms. Goggins is used to being direct about money and gave her daughter the option of having one fewer lesson per week or cutting back elsewhere. Rather than reducing the number of lessons, her daughter started babysitting more and contributing money toward her pointe shoes. In the Adams house in Colorado, every line item in the budget is available for inspection by the children, who are 10 and 11. Each Sunday, the family reviews it. “You feel deprived if you’re not part of the process,” said Ms. Adams, a program manager for a technology company. Her children are now involved in deciding on too. Skipping dinner at the Vietnamese restaurant means more money in the Disneyland fund. One idea one of the children had: Rather than hang out at the Barnes Noble after dinner, where spending temptations abound, they head to the public library. If your child knows how to use the Internet, you might be shocked by how much financial information about your family he or she may already possess. Search your home address: Did the approximate value of your home pop up? Mine, too, and it will happen when many children search their addresses for the first time and find the Zillow estimates. Once a child discovers this, it’s a quick step to looking up the address of every friend. Then comes research into salary information. If it can’t be found, the child may go looking through your belongings for your tax returns, as I did as a young snooper. At this point, you may be in a bit of a pickle. Information about household income and home values is data it ought to stay in the family. But if you can’t control exactly when family members acquire some of it, you need to at least try to imprint the idea of discretion. The script can go something like this: We’re trusting you with this information because we want you to know where our income goes, and we expect you to show the same maturity with other information you’ve found yourself. The same principles apply with medical information, friends’ secrets and other private things. “We’ve had other issues that we’ve talked about that are private and confidential,” said Ms. Goggins, the in Massachusetts. So she and her husband recently told their and daughters what they earn. “They’ve proven themselves. ” As will many children in middle and high school. Most of them don’t want their peers singling them out as having more or less than others, so they may try harder than you think to keep the information private. For some families, this advice will work only selectively. Ms. Adams, who wrote the book “Heart Warriors” about her son’s heart disease, shields him from knowledge of the family’s medical bills. Child patients often feel guilty for inconveniencing their families. Families who struggle generally, or are experiencing a period of unemployment, are naturally among the most reticent. Still, even the youngest generally understand when budgets have become tighter and want to know why. Pretending that there hasn’t been a reduction in income or some other difficult circumstance doesn’t help them. “If you are not talking to them, then they are drawing their own conclusions,” said Sara Solnick, an associate professor of economics at the University of Vermont who has written about social comparison. Leveling with them about the reality and how you’re managing it may help ease their fears. When Andrea Dutton and her husband separated and she moved with her daughter and son to a smaller house in Gainesville, Fla. she addressed the matter simply. “I’m not apologizing to them about it,” she said. “I want them to realize that the right decision is not always the easy one. I’d rather have them see that you can do the right thing and get out of a bad situation even if it means taking a hit financially. ” Keep in mind that if you are planning on applying for financial aid for college, you will have no choice but to disclose your financial information when your child is a senior in high school. That’s because anyone who wants financial aid must fill out a form called the Fafsa. It asks for information about income and assets. Parents sign it, and so must the students everyone attests to the accuracy of the information. Coming clean about income and assets can pose special challenges if you are truly wealthy you may worry that children will flaunt their good fortune or think they never have to work. But you don’t get a pass: If you don’t work (or don’t work much) older children will wonder how the family affords its life. At the very least, it’s worth trying some starter exercises, like showing your children the details of what a vacation or a second home actually costs. Explain, too, that it requires a great deal of money to throw off whatever dividends and interest contribute to the family budget, and that the investments that do so may not last or may not fall to the next generation if the children don’t make something of themselves in college and beyond. Given the near inevitability that parents will have to disclose their incomes or their children will find out some other way, it’s best to think of that moment of revelation and the years leading up to it as opportunities. For those of us who have at least a little bit more than what we need to scrape by, what we spend says a lot about what we stand for how we determine value is a reflection of our values. The same is true for whatever we have left over each month. How much do we save? Why does it fluctuate? Who has helped us, what do we give to people who have less, and why don’t we give more? It’s impossible to answer these questions for children with conviction and clarity if they don’t know the size of the number at the beginning of the equation. When Mr. Parker came home with his big bag of money from Wells Fargo 20 years ago, he was acting as much on reflex as anything else. “I just remember distinctly that I never knew myself growing up, and I felt it was a big disadvantage,” he said. “I had no idea what it would take to take care of a family. ” That night, the lessons couldn’t have been clearer: The family’s life was expensive. Every decision mattered. Savings and faith were high priorities. And there wasn’t much left at the end of the month. His son, Daniel, is now an adult and has two small children. He and his wife intend to share their financial information with their children as they grow. “He had little tolerance for entitlement in any of us,” Daniel said of his father. Scott Parker did have confidence that his children would know what to do with the information he had literally dumped onto the table. “I wasn’t swearing anyone to secrecy,” he said. “But I can tell you, it never became an issue. I figure that whatever the risk was, it was worth it. ” | 1 |
Email
Aren’t you surprised that Hillary and the presstitutes haven’t blamed Putin for FBI director Comey’s reopening of the Hillary email case? But the presstitutes have done the next best thing for Hillary. They have made Comey the issue, not Hillary.
According to US Senator Harry Reid and the presstitutes, we don’t need to worry about Hillary’s crimes. After all, she is only a political woman feathering her nest, just as political men have done for ages. Why all this misogynist talk about Hillary? The presstitutes’ cry is that Comey’s alleged crime is far more important. This woman-hating Republican violated the Hatch Act by telling Congress that the investigation he said was closed is now reopened. A very strange interpretation of the Hatch Act. During an election it is OK to announce that a candidate for president is cleared but it is not OK to say that a candidate is under investigation.
In July 2016 Comey violated the Hatch Act when he, on orders from the corrupt Obama Attorney General, announced Hillary clean. In so doing, Comey used the prestige of federal clearance of Hillary’s violation of national security protocols to boost her standing in the election polls.
Actually, Hillary’s standing in the polls is based on the pollsters over-weighting Hillary supporters in the polls. It is easy to produce a favorite if you overweight their supporters in the poll questions. If you look at the crowds attending the two candidate’s public appearances, it is clear that the American people prefer Donald Trump, who is opposed to war with Russia and China. War with nuclear powers is the big issue of the election.
Hillary’s problem has the ruling American Oligarcy, for which Hillary is the total servant, concerned. What are they going to do about Trump if he wins? Will his fate be the same as John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King, George Wallace? Time will tell. Or will a hotel maid appear at the last minute in the way that the Oligarchy got rid of Dominique Strauss-Kahn?
All of the American and Western feminists, progressives, and left-wing remnant fell for the obvious frame-up of Strauss-Kahn. After Strauss-Kahn was blocked from the Presidency of France and resigned as Director of the IMF, the New York authorities had to drop all charges against Strauss-Kahn. But Washington had succeeded in putting its French vassal, Sarkozy, in the presidency of France.
This is how the American Oligarchy destroys those it suspects might not serve its interests. The corrupt self-serving Oligarchy makes sure that it owns the government and the media, the think tanks and increasingly all of the major universities, and, of course, through the presstitutes, Americans’ minds.
The Oligarchs are now hard-pressed to rescue Hillary as US president, so let’s see if the Oligarchs can once again deceive the American people.
While we wait, let’s concern ourselves with another important issue. The Clinton crime syndicate in the closing years of the 20th century allowed a small handful of mega-corporations to consolidate the US media in a few hands. This vast increase in the power of the Oligarchy was accomplished despite US anti-trust law. The media mergers destroyed the American tradition of a dispersed and independent media.
But really, what does federal law mean to the One Percent. Nothing whatsoever. The One Percent’s power makes them immune to law. Hillary’s crimes might cost her the election, but she won’t go to jail.
Not content with 90% control of the US media, the Oligarchy wants more concentration and more control. Looks like they will be getting it, thanks to the corrupt US government. The Federal Trade Commission is supposed to enforce US anti-trust law. Instead, the federal agency routinely violates US anti-trust law by permitting monopoly concentrations of business interests.
Because of the failure of the federal government to enforce federal law, we now have “banks too big to fail,” unregulated Internet monopoly, and the evisceration of a dispersed and independent media.
Not so long ago there was a field of economics known as anti-trust. Ph.D. candidates specialized in and wrote dissertations about public control of monopoly power. I assume that this field of economics, like the America of my youth, no longer exists.
Rahul Manchanda explains that “yet again another huge media conglomerate is being swallowed and acquired by another huge media conglomerate, to create another gargantuan media outlet, in another consolidation of the enormous power, money, wealth, intimidation, conspiracy and control” that eviscerates the US Constitution and the First Amendment. Join the debate on Facebook Paul Craig Roberts is a former Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury and Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal. Roberts’ How the Economy Was Lost is now available from CounterPunch in electronic format. His latest book is The Neoconservative Threat to World Order . More articles by: Paul Craig Roberts next - | 0 |
The two murderers who escaped from the Clinton Correctional Facility last year intentionally picked a Friday night when they knew an officer named Ronald Blair was on duty. They had watched him for months, recording his movements on a calendar and knew he never made the rounds he was supposed to. They were right: Officer Blair did not discover them missing until hours after they had made it through the tunnels under the prison and climbed out a manhole to freedom. Officer Blair’s failure was just one of scores of serious security lapses detailed in a report released on Monday by state investigators to coincide with the first anniversary of the escape at the maximum security state prison in northern New York. The breakout touched off a manhunt that drew nationwide attention to the dense woods around Dannemora, home to the prison. The report from the state inspector general, Catherine Leahy Scott, documented a host of “systemic deficiencies” that gave the two men, Richard W. Matt and David Sweat, time and space to plan and execute an intricate and sophisticated prison break. At the start of overnight shifts, guards would falsify records to make it appear as if they were conducting rounds when they were in fact not instead, officers acknowledged to investigators that they would read books or play crossword puzzles, the report said. “We’d get lazy,” said Officer Blair, according to the report. As a result, Mr. Sweat was able to spend 85 nights outside his cell exploring the tunnels beneath the prison in search of an escape route. That added up to about 400 compulsory bed checks, the report said, that should have been carried out by guards, who never once noticed his absence. Three months before the escape, a random search of Mr. Matt’s cell failed to detect an 18 hole in the rear wall. Tools were left unsecured in the tunnels, allowing Mr. Sweat to obtain an sledgehammer that he pounded away with underneath the prison for over a month. “I couldn’t have asked for anything better,” Mr. Sweat later told investigators. The two murderers took six months to plan their escape, beginning in January 2015. “Just one properly performed night round during this monthslong period would have foiled the escape,” the report said. Night after night, Mr. Sweat, whom the report described as the mastermind, left a dummy in his bed and slipped out a hole cut in the back of his cell. He climbed down five stories using piping along the walls and spent hours exploring tunnels beneath the prison looking for a way out. The two inmates eventually crawled out through a steam pipe. Over 1, 000 law enforcement officials chased down leads from the Canadian to the Mexican borders. In the end, they never made it far. Mr. Matt was shot and killed about 40 miles from the prison Mr. Sweat was caught just days later after he was shot and wounded by a New York state trooper. While the broad contours of the events leading to the escape have been known for months, the report for the first time constructs a coherent narrative, in detail, from when the men hatched their plan to the moment Mr. Sweat and Mr. Matt emerged from a manhole, carrying a guitar case filled with assorted clothes, 20 packs of peanuts, 40 granola bars and a dozen sticks of pepperoni. Investigators from the inspector general’s office interviewed 170 people for the report, including corrections officers, their supervisors and inmates. They also conducted extensive interrogations of Mr. Sweat, who was put into solitary confinement at Five Points Correctional Facility after his capture. In response to the findings, the State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision said it had instituted a number of reforms at Clinton, including installing new security cameras, disciplining employees involved and appointing a new superintendent. Crucial to the escape plot was the assistance of Gene Palmer, an officer, and Joyce E. Mitchell, a civilian employee who was a supervisor at the prison tailor shop where both Mr. Sweat and Mr. Matt had worked. Ms. Mitchell, described in the report as a lonely women with a shaky marriage, acknowledged to investigators that she allowed herself to be seduced by Mr. Sweat and her belief that “a younger guy would actually like an older woman. ” Mr. Sweat told investigators that he became aware that Ms. Mitchell harbored “some kind of star lust thing in her mind where she was like in love with me,” and sought to manipulate her. For months, Ms. Mitchell had been smuggling them food, including packages of cookies, bags of Café Bustelo coffee and 70 containers of black and cayenne pepper that the inmates planned to use to throw off tracking dogs. In time they persuaded her to bring in tools for their escape. She bought six hacksaw blades for about $6 from Walmart and was able to smuggle them into the prisons because her bag was not searched, the report said. She gave them to Mr. Matt, “who carried them to his cell taped to his side under his shirt,” being careful to avoid metal detectors. In the weeks that followed, she hid two chisels, a steel punch, two concrete drill bits and two additional hacksaw blades in frozen ground beef that she gave to Mr. Palmer for delivery to the inmates. Both Mr. Palmer and Ms. Mitchell later pleaded guilty to aiding the inmates. Ms. Mitchell was sentenced to up to seven years in prison Mr. Palmer received six months in jail. The inspector general’s office has referred the findings of their investigation to the Clinton County district attorney’s office for potential additional criminal charges. After obtaining the tools from Mr. Palmer and Ms. Mitchell, the two inmates took about three weeks to cut holes in the rear walls of their cells, working from 6:30 to 8 p. m. while other inmates were at recreation or in the mess hall, the report said. Mr. Sweat said that the first night he climbed out of his cell he was surprised at the almost complete lack of security in the tunnels below the prison. Inspections were supposed to be done quarterly, but there had not been one since September 2014. During the months he toiled in the tunnels, Mr. Sweat lost 30 pounds. He said he loved his nights out. “You kind of felt free,” he told investigators, adding that he would leave his prison ID behind in the cell “so I didn’t feel like an inmate anymore. ” “I was having a hell of a time,” he said. He carried his escape tools in a tote bag he had sewed in the tailor shop out of the green fabric used for prison uniforms. Mr. Sweat said he had a particular dislike for Officer Blair, the regular night shift officer, and hoped that because of the escape he would face disciplinary charges. It worked: Officer Blair and a second guard on duty that night, Thomas Renadette, were among nine officers suspended after the escape. Both officers retired from the department in March, according to state comptroller records. The night before the escape, Mr. Sweat made a trial run, according to the report, finding his way through the tunnels to a manhole cover outside the prison. He lifted it up, “just enough to confirm his location on a village street,” the report said. “I actually had my head out into freedom,” he told investigators. He then “hastened back to his cell and advised Matt that the escape route was complete,” the report said. It was about 4 a. m. on June 5. To celebrate, the two men smoked a Marlboro in their cells. A little before midnight the next night, they left for good. Mr. Matt put a handwritten note on a table in his cell: “You left me no choice but to grow old and die in here. I had to do something. ” And a second note on a picture of Tony Soprano: “Time to go kid. ” It was not until 5:17 a. m. on June 6 that Officer Blair finally did a round of bed checks and noticed the killers were gone. “I grabbed the sheet and I almost threw up, then saw the dummy,” he told investigators. He set off in a “dead run” to tell his supervisor, the report said, but on the way, he was so worked up, he fell down the stairs. | 1 |
NORRISTOWN, Pa. — She was a rising Democratic star. She was the first in her party to be elected state attorney general. She was one of the most powerful women in Pennsylvania. But on Monday night, Kathleen G. Kane, the state’s top prosecutor, became a convicted criminal. Update: Attorney General Kathleen G. Kane resigned Tuesday. A jury found Ms. Kane, 50, guilty of nine criminal charges, including perjury and criminal conspiracy, convicting her of leaking grand jury information, and then lying about it, in an effort to discredit a political rival. Ms. Kane was caught up in a web of scandal and counterscandal, threaded with lewd emails, political rivalries and alleged leaks. It has cost other state officials, including two State Supreme Court justices, their jobs and Ms. Kane her law license, although she has remained on the job as attorney general. Ms. Kane stared straight ahead as the word “guilty,” uttered decisively by a juror in a flowered dress, echoed nine times around the courtroom. The lawyers immediately went into a private conference with the judge, leaving Ms. Kane, who campaigned on a promise to uncover political interference in Pennsylvania, alone at the defense table. And when Judge Wendy returned to the courtroom, she turned directly to Ms. Kane with a stern warning, her words slicing through the silence. “There is to be absolutely no retaliation of any kind against any witness in this case, either by your own devices, from your own mouth or your hand, or directing anybody to do anything,” the judge said. She threatened Ms. Kane, who is currently free on bail, with immediate incarceration if she failed to comply. “Is that clear, Ms. Kane?” the judge asked. “Yes it is, your honor,” Ms. Kane said. After the verdict, Gov. Tom Wolf immediately renewed his call for her to step down. “The Office of Attorney General and its employees, as well as the people of Pennsylvania deserve to move on,” Mr. Wolf said in a statement. Gerald Shargel, a lawyer for Ms. Kane, said a decision about her job would be made in the coming days. Ms. Kane was elected in 2012. The first half of her tenure was marked with moments that she claimed as successes, like closing a loophole in gun laws. But she soon became embroiled in scandal, in a state with a rich history of them. “It turns on the perception that she abused her power. She is the chief law enforcement officer for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania,” said David Zellis, a former prosecutor in Bucks County who has observed the trial but is not involved. He added, “I think that it’s turned the whole criminal justice system in the state upside down. ” To her detractors, she had abused her power and broken the law to her supporters, she had rousted the state’s ’ network and become a victim herself. But in court, she was silent: Though her defense team the prosecution’s witnesses, it rested without calling a single one of its own. Ms. Kane, who faced nine charges, including two felony perjury counts, criminal conspiracy and obstruction, was accused of leaking secret grand jury documents to the news media in an effort to discredit the prosecutor Frank Fina, and then lying to cover it up. “‘This is war,’ the defendant’s words,” said the lead prosecutor, Kevin Steele, in reference to an email written by Ms. Kane. “Wars have casualties. Wars leave scars. ” Earlier Monday, in a nearly closing statement, wrought with text messages, newspaper front pages and grand jury testimony, Mr. Steele painted a picture of Ms. Kane trying to “go on the offensive” after a newspaper article that criticized her for shutting down an undercover investigation into possible corruption by Democratic state representatives. Prosecutors say she believed Mr. Fina was behind the story. Ms. Kane, he said, sought to leak details from a 2009 grand jury investigation into the financial affairs of J. Whyatt Mondesire, a former leader of the N. A. A. C. P. because she wanted residents to know that Mr. Fina had chosen not to prosecute. She then lied about it when a grand jury investigated, Mr. Steele said. A defense lawyer, Seth Farber, said the state had not proved its case, urging the jurors not to take Ms. Kane’s words out of context. “Things that the commonwealth says do not hold up to scrutiny when you look at the actual evidence,” Mr. Farber said, and cast blame instead on two prosecution witnesses: Adrian King, a former deputy to Ms. Kane, and Josh Morrow, a political strategist who was given immunity to testify. “Those are two witnesses who will say whatever they need to in order to protect themselves,” Mr. Farber said, adding, “You would not even buy a used car from one of them. ” Ms. Kane was elected after she campaigned with a promise to review the investigation into Jerry Sandusky, the assistant football coach for Penn State who was convicted of sexual abuse, which was led by the attorney general at the time, Tom Corbett, and Mr. Fina. She did not find evidence of political interference, but Ms. Kane did find that lewd and racist emails had been exchanged by state officials, and began to release them to the news media. She has said that some in the state’s political establishment have concocted her political difficulties to retaliate for the disclosures and to prevent more emails from being leaked. Judge limited discussion of those emails at the request of prosecutors — a point to which Ms. Kane’s lead attorney, Mr. Shargel, seemed to allude after he left the courtroom. “We have been denied the opportunity to mount a full defense,” said Mr. Shargel. Outside the courthouse, Michelle Henry, a prosecutor in the case, said she was “offended” by Ms. Kane’s crimes. “What she did while she was attorney general — the fact that she committed criminal acts when she’s the top prosecutor — is a disgrace,” Ms. Henry said. The judge has not yet set a sentencing hearing, but Ms. Kane could face prison time. The two felony perjury charges alone each carry up to seven years in prison. | 1 |
Good morning. Here’s what you need to know: • François Hollande, the French president, announced he would not seek . The prime minister, Manuel Valls, is likely to step up as a leading contender in the party’s primary. Mr. Hollande’s unprecedented decision only slightly improved the chances of the ruling Socialists in presidential elections in April as and populist forces gain strength in France and across Europe. In Italy, the Five Star Movement has campaigned aggressively against a referendum on constitutional changes on Sunday, turning it into a virtual plebiscite on Prime Minister Matteo Renzi. And Austrian voters on Sunday could become the first in Europe since World War II to elect a head of state. _____ • A remarkably subdued Vladimir V. Putin, the president of Russia, called for cooperation with the new American administration in his annual state of the nation address. But a new foreign policy doctrine signed by Mr. Putin stressed the gravity of “the serious crisis between Russia and the West” and placed the blame for it on “geopolitical expansion” by NATO and the European Union. _____ • In the United States, Donald J. Trump’s arrangements to save jobs in Indiana involved significant government subsidies. In his first rally, Mr. Trump said James N. Mattis, a former general who served in the Middle East and is known for his critical stance toward Iran, will be his nominee for defense secretary. We mapped out the array of conflicts of interest that Mr. Trump’s global business empire presents. And the ’s freewheeling exchanges with foreign dignitaries prompted the White House to urge him to seek diplomats’ counsel. _____ • Hallucinogens help cancer patients. Psilocybin, an ingredient found in hallucinogenic mushrooms, can significantly reduce anxiety and depression in the patients, according to a new study. The drug, administered via wooden goblet in one study, has been illegal in the U. S. for more than 40 years. _____ • British ministers said that the country could agree to pay the European Union to retain access to its single market. Zac Goldsmith, to the left in the photo above, a key proponent of Britain’s departure from the bloc, lost his seat in Parliament in a . • In Reykjavik, commercial real estate construction is racing to keep up with demand and is transforming the Icelandic capital. • When a wealthy businessman set out to divorce his wife, their $400 million fortune vanished. The quest to find it would reveal the depths of an offshore financial system bigger than the U. S. economy. • The U. S. Labor Department’s monthly jobs report today will be scrutinized as the last indicator of unemployment and wages before the Federal Reserve’s likely increase in interest rates. • Global bond markets are plunging. Here’s a snapshot of global markets. • In Germany, a challenger to Chancellor Angela Merkel has emerged from the ranks of her party: Jens Spahn, a critic of her refugee policy. [Der Spiegel] • Greece’s war of words with Turkey on territorial claims has deepened before bilateral talks this weekend. [Ekathimerini] • Ban the departing secretary general of the United Nations, apologized for the organization’s role in the cholera outbreak that has claimed 10, 000 lives. [The New York Times] • At least 350 people have come forward to report sexual abuse at the hands of youth soccer coaches in Britain, deepening a scandal that has engulfed English soccer. [The New York Times] • Israel sent its first ambassador to Turkey in five years, just as the Turkish high court takes up a case involving the debacle that broke relations: the lethal Israeli raid on the Mavi Marmara, a ship challenging the Gaza blockade. [Hürriyet] • There are no laws in the Shuafat Refugee Camp, where 80, 000 people live surrounded by a concrete wall, despite it being inside the city of Jerusalem. [The New York Times] • Scotland plans to raise the age of criminal responsibility to 12, from 8, currently the lowest in Europe. [The Scotsman] • century Paris, the harrowing escape of an American slave and a seemingly ordinary Korean housewife turning vegetarian after a terrifying dream: These are The New York Times Book Review’s 10 Best Books of 2016. • In memoriam: The actor Andrew Sachs, who played Manuel in the British comedy series “Fawlty Towers,” died at 86. • Buzz Aldrin, the adventurer and former astronaut who was the second person to walk on the moon, was evacuated from Antarctica after he became ill while visiting the South Pole with a tourism group. • Isabelle Huppert, the French actress, chooses roles that are sometimes hard to watch. And yet we can’t bring ourselves to look away. • Recipients of a new British scholarship will spend time in Buckingham Palace, but don’t get the wrong idea: They will cook, cater and otherwise serve the British royals. • A Alaskan environmentalist with no formal design education is challenging a fashion world dogma: Is all fur bad fur? • Zinedine Zidane may not be the perfect soccer club manager, but he could well be perfect for Real Madrid. • And “Snow Beach,” a new book, chronicles the style of snowboarding culture in the 1980s and 90s. Artists, art collectors, curators and the scenesters who surround them are in Miami this week for Art Basel Miami Beach. It’s a spinoff of the fair held in Switzerland. (There’s also a Hong Kong version). Despite the party atmosphere, the art world may intimidate the uninitiated — especially with its terminology — so we’re here to offer some help. Showcasing “the masters of Modern and contemporary art” is Art Basel’s stated aim. Those categories may sound redundant, but they’re not. While “modern” can indicate the present, it is also tied to ideas that “were new or even experimental” when they were developed, according to the Museum of Modern Art. Contemporary means work by living artists. Just don’t confuse “master” with “Old Master,” which is a “distinguished European artist from about 1500 to the early 1700s. ” Think Michelangelo. At a gallery, you might enter a room with related sculptures. This isn’t an installation unless it encourages “active engagement” by the spectator. And if you’re thinking of calling something “sublime,” you’re saying the piece is “worthy of reverence,” according to MoMA. One last tip: Remember, the artists and the dealers are also nervous about how you’ll react. “What depresses me the most is if people walk past the booth and don’t stop,” a dealer told The Times this summer. “I want people to come in and then have a journey. ” Christopher Shea contributed reporting. _____ Photographs may appear out of order for some readers. Viewing this version of the briefing should help. Your Morning Briefing is published weekday mornings. What would you like to see here? Contact us at europebriefing@nytimes. com. | 1 |
The Central Bank sees Russia’s moving up in the Doing Business rating as a good sign, Deputy CEO of the Central Bank Vladimir Chistyukhin told reporters.
"That is a very significant leap and a very positive sign for us. It shows that the efforts we made in many fields, in particular in corporate management were not in vain," he said.
Earlier this week it was reported that Russia moved up to the 40th position in the Doing Business-2017 rating, which is annually prepared by the World Bank.
In 2012, Russia ranked 124th in that rating.
In his May decrees issued in 2012 President Vladimir Putin set the task for the country to reach the 20th position in the rating of the World Bank by 2018.
In 2016, Russia was on the 51st place in the Doing Business rating.
However the methods of calculation of the World Bank’s rating changed earlier this year. Taking into account these changes Russia could have been on the 36th place already in 2015. | 0 |
Home / Be The Change / The State / “I Can’t Believe I’m Doing this’— Man Livestreams Himself Stealing a Cop Car on Facebook “I Can’t Believe I’m Doing this’— Man Livestreams Himself Stealing a Cop Car on Facebook The Free Thought Project November 3, 2016 3 Comments
Tulsa, OK — (RT) Live footage has emerged on Facebook of a convicted felon stealing an unlocked police cruiser from outside a coffee shop in Oklahoma and taking it for a 40-minute joyride to his parents’ house.
John Pinney, 25, is alleged to have taken the police vehicle from a parking spot on Halloween night, after a Tulsa Police Department officer left her keys inside while she went on an 8pm coffee break, reports CBS News .
Oklahoma man Pinney is said to have then led police on a 40 minute chase across the state, using the police officer’s iPad to livestream the incident from inside the vehicle.
Part of the livestream remains public on Pinney’s Facebook page and shows the 25-year-old singing to the “sh*t I want to go out to” while racing away from state police in one of their own vehicles.
At one point Pinney appears to play with the sirens on the car while wishing viewers a “Happy Halloween.”
“This is my last video for sure, probably. I don’t even know where the f**k I’m going, honestly.
“I’m trying to learn how to work all these lights and stuff,” Pinney tells the camera. “I can’t believe I’m doing this for real. I’m driving with my knees right now trying to show you all this.”
Tulsa police sergeant Steve Stoltz told reporters that the joyride prompted the response of “multiple agencies” and saw the suspect reach speeds of over 120mph before his arrest.
“The suspect was seen [driving] at high speed towards Sand Springs [Oklahoma] and then went north. The vehicle was eventually located by Skiatook Police Department, who initiated pursuit. The suspect, at high speeds, led them to an address… turned out that was where the suspect’s parents were,” Stoltz said.
— Annie Chang (@AnnieNewsOn6) November 1, 2016
Pinney has since been charged with possession of a stolen vehicle, eluding and resisting arrest, as well as the possession of a firearm. Share | 0 |
MANILA — On Thanksgiving Day, a Philippine developer named Jose E. B. Antonio hosted a company anniversary bash at one of Manila’s poshest hotels. He had much to be thankful for. In October, he had quietly been named a special envoy to the United States by the Philippine president, Rodrigo Duterte. Mr. Antonio was nearly finished building a $150 million tower in Manila’s financial district — a symbol of affluence and capitalism, which bluntly promotes itself with the slogan “Live Above the Rest. ” And now his partner on the project, Donald J. Trump, had just been elected president of the United States. After the election, Mr. Antonio flew to New York for a private meeting at Trump Tower with the ’s children, who have been involved in the Manila project from the beginning, as have Mr. Antonio’s children. The Trumps and Antonios have other ventures in the works, including resorts in the Philippines, Mr. Antonio’s son Robbie Antonio said. “We will continue to give you products that you can enjoy and be proud of,” the elder Mr. Antonio, one of the richest men in the Philippines, told the 500 friends, employees and customers gathered for his celebration in Manila. Mr. Antonio’s combination of jobs — he is a business partner with Mr. Trump, while also representing the Philippines in its relationship with the United States and the — is hardly inconsequential, given some of the weighty issues on the diplomatic table. Among them, Mr. Duterte has urged “a separation” from the United States and has called for American troops to exit the country in two years’ time. His antidrug crusade has resulted in the summary killings of thousands of suspected criminals without trial, prompting criticism from the Obama administration. Situations like these are already leading some former government officials from both parties to ask if America’s reaction to events around the world could potentially be shaded, if only slightly, by the Trump family’s financial ties with foreign players. They worry, too, that in some countries those connections could compromise American efforts to criticize the corrupt intermingling of state power with vast business enterprises controlled by the political elite. “It is uncharted territory, really in the history of the republic, as we have never had a president with such an empire both in the United States and overseas,” said Michael J. Green, who served on the National Security Council in the administration of George W. Bush, and before that at the Defense Department. The globe is dotted with such potential conflicts. Mr. Trump’s companies have business operations in at least 20 countries, with a particular focus on the developing world, including outposts in nations like India, Indonesia and Uruguay, according to a New York Times analysis of his presidential campaign financial disclosures. What’s more, the true extent of Mr. Trump’s global financial entanglements is unclear, since he has refused to release his tax returns and has not made public a list of his lenders. In an interview with The Times on Tuesday, Mr. Trump boasted again about the global reach of his business — and his family’s ability to keep it running after he takes office. “I’ve built a very great company and it’s a big company and it’s all over the world,” Mr. Trump said, adding later: “I don’t care about my company. It doesn’t matter. My kids run it. ” In a written statement, his spokeswoman, Hope Hicks, said Mr. Trump and his family were committed to addressing any issues related to his financial holdings. “Vetting of various structures and immediate transfer of the business remains a top priority for both Trump, his adult children and his executives,” she said. But a review by The Times of these business dealings identified a menu of the kinds of complications that could create a running source of controversy for Mr. Trump, as well as tensions between his priorities as president and the needs and objectives of his companies. In Brazil, for example, the beachfront Trump Hotel Rio de Janeiro — one of Mr. Trump’s many branding deals, in which he does not have an equity stake — is part of a broad investigation by a federal prosecutor who is examining whether illicit commissions and bribes resulted in apparent favoritism by two pension funds that invested in the project. Several of Mr. Trump’s real estate ventures in India — where he has more projects underway than in any location outside North America — are being built through companies with family ties to India’s most important political party. This makes it more likely that Indian government officials will do special favors benefiting Mr. Trump’s projects, including pressuring banks to extend favorable loans. In Ireland and Scotland, executives from Mr. Trump’s golf courses have been waging two separate battles with local officials. The most recent centers on the Trump Organization’s plans to build a sea wall at the course on the Irish coast. Some environmentalists say the wall could destroy an endangered snail’s habitat — a dispute that will soon involve the president of the United States. And in Turkey, officials including President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a religiously conservative Muslim, demanded that Mr. Trump’s name be removed from Trump Towers in Istanbul after he called for a ban on Muslims entering the United States. More recently, after Mr. Trump came to the defense of Mr. Erdogan — suggesting that he had the right to crack down harshly on dissidents after a failed coup — the calls for action against Trump Towers have stopped, fueling worries that Mr. Trump’s policies toward Turkey might be shaped by his commercial interests. Mr. Trump has acknowledged a conflict of interest in Turkey. “I have a little conflict of interest because I have a major, major building in Istanbul,” he said during a radio interview last year with Stephen K. Bannon, the Breitbart News executive who has since been designated his chief White House strategist. “It’s a tremendously successful job. It’s called Trump Towers — two towers, instead of one. Not the usual one. It’s two. ” These tangled ties already have some members of Congress — including at least one Republican representative — calling on Mr. Trump to provide more information on his international operations, or perhaps for a congressional inquiry into them. “You rightly criticized Hillary for Clinton Foundation,” Representative Justin Amash, Republican of Michigan, said in a Twitter message on Monday. “If you have contracts govts, it’s certainly a big deal, too. #DrainTheSwamp” David J. Kramer, who served as assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor during the Bush administration, said Mr. Trump’s financial entanglements could undermine decades of efforts by Democratic and Republican presidents to promote government transparency — and to use the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act to stop contractors from paying bribes to secure government work abroad. “This will make it a little harder to be able to go out and proselytize around these things,” Mr. Kramer said. Even if Mr. Trump and his family seek no special advantages from foreign governments, officials overseas may feel compelled to help the Trump family by, say, accelerating building permits or pushing more business to one of the new president’s hotels or golf courses, according to several former State Department officials. “The working assumption on behalf of all these foreign government officials will be that there is an advantage to doing business with the Trump organization,” said Michael H. Fuchs, who was until recently deputy assistant secretary at the bureau of East Asian and Pacific affairs. “They will think it will ingratiate themselves with the Trump administration. And this will significantly complicate United States foreign policy and our relationships around the world. ” At the same time, Mr. Fuchs said, American diplomats in countries where Mr. Trump’s companies operate, fearful of a rebuke from Washington, may be reluctant to take steps that could frustrate business partners or political allies. Another question is, who will be responsible for security at the Trump Towers around the world, especially in the Middle East, which terrorism experts say may now become more appealing targets as symbols of American capitalism built in the name of the president? What is clear is that there has been very little division, in the weeks since the election, between Mr. Trump’s business interests and his transition effort, with the or his family greeting real estate partners from India and the Philippines in his office and Mr. Trump raising concerns about his golf course in Scotland with a prominent British politician. Mr. Trump’s daughter Ivanka, who is in charge of planning and development of the Trump Organization’s global network of hotels, has joined in conversations with at least three world leaders — of Turkey, Argentina and Japan — having access that could help her expand the brand worldwide. Mr. Trump, in the interview with The Times on Tuesday, acknowledged that his move to the Oval Office could help enrich his family. He cited his new hotel a few blocks from the White House, which the Trump Organization has urged diplomats to consider patronizing when in town to meet the president or his team. Federal law does not prevent Mr. Trump from taking actions that could benefit him and his family financially the president is exempt from most laws. But the Constitution, through what is called the emoluments clause, appears to prohibit him from taking payments or gifts from a foreign government entity, a standard that some legal experts say he may violate by renting space in Trump Tower in New York to the Bank of China or if he hosts foreign diplomats in one of his hotels. “I mean it could be that occupancy at that hotel will be because, psychologically, occupancy at that hotel will be probably a more valuable asset now than it was before, O. K.? The brand is certainly a hotter brand than it was before. I can’t help that, but I don’t care,” Mr. Trump said, adding, “The only thing that matters to me is running our country. ” Robert D. Blackwill, a former National Security Council member who also served as ambassador to India during the Bush administration, said Mr. Trump still had a chance to demonstrate that he could manage these challenges once he was sworn in. “Let’s listen and not prejudge,” said Mr. Blackwill, a Republican who was so critical of Mr. Trump that he endorsed Hillary Clinton. “I want to see what he does as president. ” Nation Under Pressure, Ventures Under Scrutiny Donald Trump Jr. the ’s oldest son, gushed with triumphalism when he announced a deal in 2014 to attach the family name to the Trump Hotel Rio de Janeiro, a lavish beachfront project featuring cavernous suites with private plunge pools and a nightclub. “This is an exciting time to develop our first project in South America and the perfect location to do so,” the younger Mr. Trump (his brother Eric is also involved in the family business) said at the time. But just two years later, the venture is embroiled in a criminal investigation in Brazil, pointing to unfulfilled promises that are casting a pall over both the Trump business empire and the in their dealings in Latin America’s largest country. Anselmo Henrique Cordeiro Lopes, a crusading federal prosecutor in the capital, Brasília, opened an investigation in the weeks before the American election into $40 million in investments made by two relatively small Brazilian pension funds in the Trump Hotel Rio. The Trump hotel inquiry is looking at why the funds — Serpro, which invests on behalf of retirees of a information technology firm, and Igeprev, which manages the pensions of public employees of the sparsely populated Tocantins State — put so much of their capital into the venture, which is owned by Mr. Trump’s Brazilian partner, LSH Barra. Back in 2014, the hotel might have seemed like a good deal. Brazil was about to host the World Cup soccer tournament that year, while Rio was preparing to be the venue for the 2016 Summer Olympics. At the same time, Rio, the nerve center of Brazil’s energy industry, had been bolstered by large offshore oil discoveries. But Brazil’s economy began to weaken in 2014, undermined by falling commodities prices, colossal graft scandals and political instability that culminated in the ouster this year of President Dilma Rousseff, who was replaced by her vice president, Michel Temer. The result: Brazil is still grappling with its most severe economic crisis in decades. The hotel officially opened for the Olympics, but months later remains unfinished. The top floors of the property, whose design evokes a futuristic pyramid, are closed. Parts of the hotel still resemble a construction site, including the second floor, where were supposed to mingle in a nightclub overlooking the Atlantic. The examination of the project by Mr. Lopes, the federal prosecutor, has already found a series of “highly suspicious” potential irregularities warranting a criminal investigation, according to court documents. “It is necessary to verify if the favoritism shown by the pension funds to LSH and the Trump Organization was due to the payment of illicit commissions and bribes,” Mr. Lopes said in documents filed in October. In his filings, Mr. Lopes said the size of the hotel investments relative to the overall holdings of the small pension funds reflected a highly unusual level of risk, especially for an unfinished venture that failed to capitalize fully on the demand for accommodations during the Olympics. Going further, Mr. Lopes positioned the inquiry within a broader investigation of public pension funds, pillars of the Brazilian economy that often work in tandem with large banks and energy companies. Mr. Trump first took interest in a Rio hotel venture in 2012, when Ivanka Trump was having lunch in Florida with Paulo Figueiredo Filho, a businessman who is a grandson of João Figueiredo, the last autocrat of Brazil’s military dictatorship, which ended in 1985. The younger Mr. Figueiredo spearheaded the hotel venture until recently. In a statement, Mr. Trump’s Brazilian partner, LSH, said it was innocent of any wrongdoing in connection with the investments by the pension funds, and was cooperating with the criminal inquiry. Alan Garten, the Trump Organization’s general counsel, said in a statement issued Friday that the investigation was not targeting Mr. Trump or his company — given that it does not own the hotel — and “has no knowledge whatsoever regarding any governmental inquiry. ” The investigation of the Trump projects is unfolding at an awkward time for the Brazilian authorities. Foreign Minister José Serra, Brazil’s top diplomat, publicly declared in July that a Trump presidency would be a “nightmare. ” Although President Temer has formally congratulated Mr. Trump on his victory in a letter, he is still among world leaders who have not yet spoken by telephone with the . Even if Brazil’s executive branch actively tries to seek warmer relations with Mr. Trump, officials will face obstacles if they try to quell the investigation. Brazil differs from some other countries in Latin America where presidents can easily exert pressure on prosecutors and judges, with the judiciary steadily growing more independent. “Brazilian diplomats could try to avoid the problem of referring to the investigation when dealing with the Trump administration, but that’s about all they can do,” said Maurício Santoro, a political scientist at the State University of Rio de Janeiro. “This is something that could hang over relations between the two countries for years. ” Potential Pitfalls in Dual Roles On the other side of the world, Donald Trump Jr. had other projects he was pushing. In 2012, he flew into Mumbai for a brief meeting with the state’s chief minister at that time, hoping to salvage a residential tower representing the Trump Organization’s first planned project there. He was hoping the chief minister, Prithviraj Chavan, would intervene on his behalf to get the permission needed. The participants recall the meeting differently: Mr. Trump’s partner, Harresh Mehta of Rohan Lifescapes, said development regulations had changed, leaving the project in limbo, and they hoped Mr. Chavan could formalize a policy so that the project could continue. Mr. Chavan said that in a meeting, Mr. Trump and his partner were “requesting a concession that could not be given. ” By the end of the meeting, in any case, it was fairly clear that the younger Mr. Trump’s presence had not worked any magic. The project was shelved soon after. “He thought the name was so big, we would bend backwards to satisfy him, but that was not the case,” Mr. Chavan said. Kalpesh Mehta, managing partner of Tribeca Developers of Mumbai, the Trump Organization’s development partner in India, confirmed that Donald Trump Jr. had met with the chief minister, but disputed the claim by Mr. Chavan that he had sought a special favor. “The notion that a request was made by Donald Jr. to waive any regulations is absolutely false,” Mr. Mehta said in the statement, which was issued Friday. “The Trump Organization does not get involved in the regulatory aspects interacting with government officials related to its projects in India. ” This example, analysts here say, points to a potentially serious ethical hazard for a United States president who is also a real estate mogul in India, with five projects underway. Mr. Trump was operating much like other developers in India, who cozy up to politicians — officially or unofficially — to push projects through the bureaucracy. Often, they must obtain as many as 60 permissions and building permits from government officials, including bureaucrats “whose main goal in life is to attract rent,” said Saurabh Mukherjea, the chief executive of institutional equities at Ambit Capital, a leading investment bank in India. One of Mr. Trump’s projects, Trump Towers Pune, is in fact under investigation by local authorities after another builder alleged that one of its permits was fraudulent. Panchshil Realty has disputed that accusation, saying the permit in question was not required for the construction. The very nature of the country’s real estate business, however, underscores larger concerns about potential damage to American efforts to discourage corruption in business abroad. In India, real estate is the main vehicle politicians and businessmen have used to invest black money, on which taxes have not been paid. In cities, where land is scarce and extraordinarily valuable, special favors from top political leaders can lead to windfall profits, and negotiations between developers and officials are informal affairs. It is so routine for developers to pay bribes at every step of the approval process that many bureaucrats have informal rate sheets showing exactly how much must be paid to each official. Politicians not only pressure the bureaucracy to approve their pet projects, sometimes even when they are against local regulations, they also squeeze government banks to give out favorable loans. Top officials might “think in some way the U. S. president will help them,” and “can put in a friendly word with the banks” to extend loans for around 8 percent interest, rather than the characteristic 15 percent, said Vikas S. Kasliwal, the chief executive officer and vice chairman of Shree Ram Urban Infrastructure. “If the son goes himself, if the son is willing to go and meet the prime minister of India, or the urban development minister, that is a very big thing,” he said. “They will think the president is meeting them. ” Another pitfall is that Donald Trump’s partners in major projects are, in some cases, politicians themselves. Most major Indian developers have some sort of alignment, direct or indirect, with regional political leaders, who can assist in acquiring the necessary permits. Mr. Trump’s first projects in India, which are expected to increase in number over the next year, follow this pattern: His partner for Trump Towers Pune is Panchshil Realty, owned by a family that has a close and longstanding family relationship with one of the state’s most powerful politicians, Sharad Pawar, the head of the small but influential Nationalist Congress Party. (Mr. Trump was photographed — in an image distributed on Twitter but since taken down — with executives from Panchshil Realty on Nov. 15.) Mr. Pawar’s daughter, Supriya Sule, a member of Parliament, holds a 2 percent share in Panchshil’s parent company, she said in an interview. Mr. Trump’s partner in the Trump Tower Mumbai is the Lodha Group, founded by Mangal Prabhat Lodha, vice president of the Bharatiya Janata Party — currently the governing party in Parliament — in Maharashtra State. The Lodha Group has already negotiated with the United States government it announced a landmark purchase of a property, known as the Washington House, on tony Altamount Road, from the American government for 3. 75 billion rupees, almost $70 million. His partner in an office complex in Gurgaon, near New Delhi, is IREO, whose managing director, Lalit Goyal, is the of a Bharatiya Janata member of Parliament, Sudhanshu Mittal. Mr. Mittal, in an interview, has denied having any connection with the real estate company. Suraj Hegde, the secretary of the All India Congress Committee, a national body of Indian National Congress party members, said he was troubled by the dual roles Mr. Trump and his family would play in Indian affairs — particularly given real estate’s important role in India’s economy, and the clout the United States has on the world stage. “Basically this is the globalization of lobbying across countries, which then tries to establish monopoly over real estate,” Mr. Hegde said in an interview. He added that he was already calling for an independent parliamentary investigation of such maneuvers, including Mr. Trump’s real estate ventures in India. “Establishing monopoly at the cost of small players by business connections to Mr. Trump is very worrisome,” he said. “This is not at all healthy for a democracy. ” Mixing Business, Politics and Islam Mr. Trump’s business interests in Turkey are emblematic of two weighty contradictions for a businessman turned politician. As a candidate, Mr. Trump railed against moving American jobs overseas and promised to do something about it. As a businessman, he invested in a partnership with a furniture company here, making luxury furniture in the firm’s factory in western Anatolia and selling it in the United States and worldwide — a partnership that apparently remains active. Mr. Trump the candidate inveighed against Muslims and threatened at least a temporary ban on their entering the United States. Mr. Trump the businessman has in recent years had some of his biggest expansions overseas, including in Muslim countries like Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and even Azerbaijan. One of the most visible symbols of that contradiction is in the bustling commercial district of Sisli, on the European side of Istanbul, where a pair of cantilevered modernist towers, nearly 40 stories high, bear Mr. Trump’s name. Turkey’s leader, Mr. Erdogan, visited Trump Towers Istanbul — one holds luxury apartments and one office space, with a shopping mall connecting the two — after their completion in 2012, with Mr. Trump and Ivanka Trump appearing as part of the celebration the next day. “We look forward to this being the first of many developments undertaken together in Istanbul and throughout Turkey,” Mr. Trump said in a statement issued during the visit. Beyond real estate, there is the Trump Organization’s 2013 partnership with Dorya International, a luxury furniture maker with a factory in Manisa Province, near the city of Izmir, to build pieces sold under the Trump Home Collection. But the presidential campaign demonstrated how the goals of his business and politics ventures can come into direct conflict, particularly once Mr. Trump in December proposed barring Muslims from entering the United States, implying that all Muslims might pose a terrorist threat. “We regret and condemn Trump’s discriminatory remarks,” Bulent Kural, the manager of the Trump Towers Mall, wrote in an email to a reporter at the time, as he announced that the mall was considering removing Mr. Trump’s name. “Such statements bear no value and are products of a mind that does not understand Islam, a peace religion, at all. Our reaction has been directly expressed to the Trump family. We are reviewing the legal dimension of our relation with the Trump brand. ” Mr. Erdogan weighed in on the issue, too, saying, “The ones who put that brand on their building should immediately remove it. ” Mr. Trump’s next move helped his standing. After a failed coup in Turkey in July, he defended Mr. Erdogan’s crackdown on dissidents, saying in an interview with The Times that the United States has to “fix our own mess” before trying to alter the behavior of other nations. “I don’t think we have a right to lecture,” Mr. Trump said in the interview. “Look at what is happening in our country,” he added, referring to violence in the United States. “How are we going to lecture when people are shooting policemen in cold blood?” In between his two remarks — one infuriating the president of Turkey, the other comforting him — the calls for the renaming of the Trump Towers Mall ended. But much more is at stake in relations between the United States and Turkey than a shopping mall and two skyscrapers. Turkey is a key player in United States efforts to combat the Islamic State in the Middle East, and sits next door to Syria as the United States has armed rebel groups in an attempt to remove Syria’s president, Bashar from power. The recent postelection telephone call between Mr. Trump and Mr. Erdogan suggests that business and political roles will continue to be mixed. According to a Turkish journalist, Amberin Zaman, writing in the independent online news outlet Diken, Mr. Trump told the Turkish leader that he and his daughter — who participated in the call — admired both Mr. Erdogan and Mehmet Ali Yalcindag, Mr. Trump’s business associate in the towers, whom he called “a close friend. ” Ms. Zaman, a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, said no government officials had disputed her account of the conversation. “I’m of the opinion they were quite happy for this to be published,” she said. A spokeswoman for Mr. Trump declined to comment about the call. Jennifer Harris, who served on the staff of the National Intelligence Council and on the State Department’s policy planning staff, said the twin hats that Mr. Trump and his family would be wearing in Turkey would almost certainly complicate the jobs of American diplomats there. “It makes me wonder if the Trump administration will use the power of the state to help political or business allies and hurt political adversaries and business rivals,” she said. What Stance Toward Duterte? President Duterte’s antidrug campaign has led to the summary deaths of thousands of suspected criminals at the hands of police and vigilantes since he took office June 30. The killing has been condemned by human rights activists — and the Obama administration. In August, Elizabeth Trudeau, a State Department spokeswoman, said the United States was “very deeply concerned” about reports of “extrajudicial killings by or at the behest of government authorities of individuals who are suspected to have been in drug activity in the Philippines. ” She added, “We have also made our concerns known. ” The question now, former State Department officials say, is just what kind of a stand the Trump administration will take as Mr. Trump and his family balance their personal and financial ties with foreign policy demands. Mr. Antonio first met Mr. Trump casually in the 1990s and has been his business partner in the Philippines for five years. President Duterte named him special envoy to the United States as the Philippines angrily pushed back at President Obama for criticizing his deadly campaign. At the time of the appointment, Mrs. Clinton was leading in the polls in the United States presidential election. Mr. Duterte has made clear that he does not appreciate American meddling in his country’s domestic affairs. “I am a president of a sovereign state, and we have long ceased to be a colony,” Mr. Duterte told reporters in early September, before a scheduled meeting in Laos with Mr. Obama that never took place. “I do not have any master except the Filipino people, nobody but nobody. ” Mr. Duterte handpicked Mr. Antonio as his intermediary with the United States, said his press secretary, Ernesto Abella, because of his business success, his previous experience as a special envoy to China and the Philippine president’s “deep intuition about people. ” The appointment will be advantageous for the Philippines, Mr. Abella added, because Mr. Trump already knows Mr. Antonio. Even before Mr. Trump has been sworn in, Mr. Antonio flew to New York and visited Trump Tower, where he met with Mr. Trump’s children, who are executives at the Trump Organization — which oversees the ’s real estate ventures. This was a business trip, not a diplomatic one, Robbie Antonio, Mr. Antonio’s son and the managing director of the family business, said in an interview. The two families are considering new ventures as they finish work on the Trump Tower in Makati City, a financial center within metropolitan Manila that is one of the country’s wealthiest enclaves and home to many of the nation’s elite. The $150 million tower — one of the tallest in the Philippines — is on the gritty side of Makati about two blocks from Manila’s most notorious district, where it is common to see prostitutes soliciting business and people sleeping on sidewalks. Completion, originally scheduled for this year, is now expected in 2017. About 240 of the 260 units have been sold, said Kristina Garcia, the director for investor relations. “We are bringing Trump to the Philippines because we believe that Trump exemplifies the best quality of real estate anywhere in the world,” Mr. Antonio said in a 2011 video promoting the project — in which Mr. Antonio is identified as “ambassador” and Mr. Trump also appears. “It also exemplifies luxury and it exemplifies exclusivity. ” In the interview at the celebration in Manila on Thursday evening, Robbie Antonio said he had little doubt of his father’s priorities: He will put the Philippines’ interests above those of his company. “It is for the good of the country now,” he said. But Mr. Fuchs, who helped oversee United States relations with the Philippines as the deputy assistant secretary of state until early this year, said he was deeply troubled by Mr. Trump’s overlapping priorities, particularly given the long list of globally significant issues in play with the Philippines. These include planned joint military exercises in the South China Sea, the fight against militant Islamic groups based in the country’s southern islands, and the human rights abuses taking place. “What we already have is a blurring of the lines between official and business activities,” Mr. Fuchs said. “The biggest gray area may not be a President Trump himself advocating for favors for the Trump Organization. It’s the diplomats and career officers who will feel the need to perhaps not do things that will harm the Trump Organization’s interests. It is seriously disturbing. ” Over a Tiny Snail, Big Concerns The vertigo angustior snail is only two millimeters long. But it punches above its weight. The endangered little snail has helped stall Mr. Trump’s plans to build a sea wall to protect the coastline along his Trump International Golf Links course on the west coast of Ireland, in County Clare. Environmentalists, as well as surfers, list a host of concerns about the proposed wall, particularly its potential impact on sand dunes. Along with the snails, a patch of the dunes near the course is protected by European Union rules. But Mr. Trump’s organization has said the golf resort development might be dead in the water without the sea wall, and many locals welcome the business and the jobs it brings. The battle is likely to be decided next year in front of a national planning board, in the weeks or months after Mr. Trump is inaugurated on Jan. 20, several people said. The planning board was overhauled in the 1980s to insulate it from political meddling, and it now has the confidence of environmentalists. But there is little precedent for the Trump situation, which could involve a public hearing. “They can be long, they can be lively, and a lot of things could be aired,” said Sean O’Leary, the executive director of the Irish Planning Institute, which represents the majority of the country’s professional planners. He noted that the national planning board had considered a development proposed by a politician before, but that was a holiday home that the Irish president wanted to build. “The scale is slightly different,” he said. Local officials have said the Trump Organization needs to resubmit its application by the end of the year. In a statement, the Trump Organization said it was “considering all potential coastal protection options at present” and would be in contact with the local authority before Christmas. The snail, the statement said, “is thriving on the site. ” “Its only material threat is that presented by coastal erosion,” it added. Certainly, Mr. Trump’s golf courses in Scotland and Ireland have remained at the fore in the ’s mind, even in recent days. Shortly after his election, he urged a group of “Brexit” campaigners led by Nigel Farage, the head of the U. K. Independence Party, to fight against wind farms in Britain. Wind farms have been a favorite target of Mr. Trump’s in both Britain and Ireland, where he has railed against proposed installations as a potential blight on the views from his resorts. After a spokeswoman for Mr. Trump initially denied that the matter had been raised with Mr. Farage’s group, Mr. Trump conceded during his interview with The Times this past week that “I might have brought it up. ” Tony Lowes, an activist who runs a group called Friends of the Irish Environment, said Mr. Trump had once called him because Mr. Lowes’s group also happened to oppose a proposed wind farm near Mr. Trump’s Irish course on environmental grounds. “He certainly hates wind farms, that’s for sure,” Mr. Lowes said about the call. His group decided against working with Mr. Trump, and is now a leading opponent of his planned sea wall. “The dune system will not be able to develop naturally,” Mr. Lowes said. “It will be starved of the sand it needs to develop and evolve and it will die. ” He added, “The whole system there is alive and mobile and moving, and the wall is intended to stop that. ” Mr. Trump’s representatives have advanced a number of rationales for the sea wall, with the most straightforward being that they simply want to buffer the land from a continuing erosion problem. The proposal has previously attracted attention because an statement submitted by Mr. Trump’s team highlighted the risks of climate change and its influence on “coastal erosion rates. ” That was a noteworthy claim, since Mr. Trump has called global warming a hoax perpetrated “by and for the Chinese. ” The Irish government has zealously courted Mr. Trump. When he visited the course in 2014, he was greeted on the airport tarmac in Shannon with a red carpet, a harpist, a violinist and a singer whose voice cut through the runway clamor. Malachy Clerkin of The Irish Times called it “a preposterous welcome” and “the worst kind of . ” Many locals, however, support Mr. Trump’s development. Hugh McNally, the owner of Morrissey’s Bar in Doonbeg Village, about two miles from the course, said the issue had been “sensationalized by the media” because of the Trump connection. “I’ll give you an example,” he said. Roche, the Swiss pharmaceutical company, announced last year that it would close a plant in nearby Clarecastle, causing the loss of more than 200 jobs. “If someone told them you’d save those jobs by building any wall, everyone would do it,” he said. “The only reason people are objecting here is because of Trump. ” A Transition and a Business Plan Mr. Trump’s family appears to have been preparing for the transition to the Oval Office and ways to capitalize on it both in the United States and around the globe. In April, even before Mr. Trump had secured the Republican nomination, his business moved to trademark the name American Idea for use in branding hotels, spas and concierge services, according to the United States Patent and Trademark Office. It was one of more than two dozen trademark applications that Mr. Trump and members of his family filed in the United States and around the world while he was running for president. The applications offer a glimpse of where the Trumps may intend to focus their business endeavors. Last month, representatives of the Trump Organization in Indonesia, where Mr. Trump has been pursuing two hotel deals, filed trademark registrations for use of the Trump name in connection with hotel management. Similar filings have been made in Mexico, Canada and the European Union. Ivanka Trump has filed at least 25 trademark registrations for her brand of clothing, cosmetics and jewelry in the United States, Canada, the European Union and Mexico since the beginning of the year, most recently in October. Mr. Trump’s wife, Melania, filed an American trademark application for a line of jewelry in August. As he prepares for the presidency, Mr. Trump has made at least one concession so far, he said in the interview with The Times this past week. “In theory, I can be president of the United States and run my business 100 percent, sign checks on my business,” Mr. Trump said, before later adding, “but I am phasing that out now, and handing that to Eric Trump and Don Trump and Ivanka Trump for the most part, and some of my executives, so that’s happening right now. ” | 1 |
in: Medical & Health , Multimedia , Natural Medicine , Sleuth Journal , Special Interests Cannabis contains a compound that may kill brain cancers that chemotherapy and radiation can’t touch, so why isn’t it being used today? In recent years, we’ve focused heavily on educating our readers about the still relatively unknown role that cancer stem cells play in cancer, both in terms of conventional cancer treatment failure and the exceptionally promising role that natural interventions play in targeting these highly malignant cells. It is encouraging to witness a growing awareness that cancer has been completely misunderstood , and that in order to make progress against the global epidemic we will have to go back to the wisdom of the ancients by using foods and spices instead of toxic chemicals and radiation to fight a disease that should be classified more as a survival mechanism unmasked than an inexorably lethal, genetically-driven condition . Even the National Cancer Institute now admits that it had been wrong for decades about “early stage” breast ( DCIS ) and prostate (HGPIN) “cancers,” and that they should be reclassified as indolent or benign lesions of epithelial origin, i.e. not “cancer” at all! Essentially, therefore, millions were overdiagnosed and overtreated for cancers they never had. Even now, despite this admission, the vast majority of conventional doctors have yet to account for, acknowledge, or integrate this radically different definition of cancer and its implications for treatment into their “standard of care.” Only last week, we featured a new review on natural therapies that target cancer stem cells , many of which included common foods and spices. You can view it here. But one substance conspicuously absent from the list was cannabis , which is the herb we now turn to to give it a fair representation in the context of this topic. A recent article published in the Journal Neuroimmune Pharmacology titled, “ The Antitumor Activity of Plant-Derived Non-Psychoactive Cannabinoids ,” reviewed the therapeutic potential of a non-psychoactive class of phytochemicals found in cannabis known as cannabinoids . Unlike THC, cannabinoids do not activate the cannabinoid 1 and cannabinoid 2 receptors in the central nervous system in any significant way, making their activity less controversial as they do not produce changes in perception and sensation associated with “recreational” and/or “psychedelic” drugs. There are actually over 60 cannabinoids in cannabis, but the second most abundant one, cannabidiol (CBD), has been found to inhibit and/or kill a wide range of cancers in the animal model, including gliobastoma (a difficult-to-treat type of brain cancer), breast, lung, prostate, and colon cancer. There have been a wide range of mechanisms identified behind these observed anti-tumor activities, including anti-angiogenic (preventing new blood vessel formation), anti-metastatic, anti-cell viability, but the one we wish to focus on in this report is its ability to to inhibit the stem-like potential of cancer cells. Stem cells are unique within the body as they are capable of continual self-renewal, theoretically making them immortal relative to regular body cells (somatic cells), which die after a fixed number or replication cycles. In their normal state of function they are essential for healing and bodily regeneration, as they are capable of differentiating into the wide range of cells that make up the body and need to be regularly replaced when damaged. This so-called pluripotent property of stem cells is also observed in tumor formation and maintenance, as cancer stem cells are capable of producing the entire range of different cells that make up a tumor colony. Unlike regular tumor cells, cancer stem cells are uniquely tumorigenic because they are capable of breaking off from an existing lesion or tumor and forming a new tumor colony of cells. In this sense, they are “mother cells” at the heart of cancer malignancy, whose ability to colonize other tissues by producing all the “daughter cells” necessary to form a new tumor make their existence highly concerning from the perspective of cancer prevention and treatment. Radiation and chemotherapy, while capable of reducing the size of a tumor, actually enrich the post-treatment residual lesion or tumor with higher levels of cancer stem cells , and in some cases transform non-cancer stem cells into cancer stem cells , ultimately making the post-treatment state of the treated tissue far worse than its pre-treatment condition. This is why identifying and using natural, safe, effective and affordable ways to target cancer stem cells versus the non-tumorigenic tumor cells in a lesion or tumor is the only rational way to treat cancer, and should be the primary focus of present day cancer treatment approaches. The new review discussed the way that cannabidiol targets and/or inhibits the cancer stem cell subpopulation in cancers such as the highly treatment-resistant form of brain cancer known as glioblastoma, which is widely considered by conventional medicine as “incurable.” A 2013 study, 1 mentioned in the review, found that patient-derived glioblastoma cells when exposed to cannabidiol saw a significant down-regulation of the genetic tumor marker Id-1, which has been closely correlated with brain cancer cell invasiveness. They also found that cannabidiol was capable of inhibiting neurosphere formation (a sign of cancer stem cell tumor formation), as well as was capable of inhibiting glioblastoma tumor invasiveness in an animal model. The results of this preclinical study were so compelling that the researchers concluded cannibidiol might make an ideal adjunct treatment: With its lack of systemic toxicity and psychoactivity, cannabidiol is an ideal candidate agent in this regard and may prove useful in combination with front-line agents for the treatment of patients with aggressive and high-grade glioblastoma tumors. Integrative approaches often focus on using natural interventions as “adjuncts” to conventional, inherently toxic approaches like chemotherapy and radiation, we believe that another possibility exists, namely, that cannabidiol in combination with a wide range of other natural substances studied for targeting glioblastoma is more effective (and certainly far safer) than a combination approach. To view other anti-glioblastoma substances, view our database on the subject . Another highly relevant study published in 2007 titled, “Cannabinoids induce glioma stem-like cell differentiation and inhibit gliomagenesis,” 2 found that cannabinoids target the stem-like properties of glioma cells, encouraging their differentiation into functioning, non-tumorigenic cells, and inhibiting the dysregulated increased production of glioma cells. A more recent 2015 study, 3 found that glioblastoma cells treated with cannabidiol inhibited their self-renewal by down-regulating “critical stem cell maintenance and growth regulators.” Another study, published last month, found that cannabidiol inhibits glioma stem-like proliferation by inducing autophagy, a natural form of programmed cell death. 4 Consider, finally, that the cancer stem cell targeting and killing properties of cannabidiol are only one of a wide range of potential mechanisms through which cannabis as a whole plant, comprised of hundreds of different phytochemicals and phytonutrients, can treat cancer. We have indexed hundreds of studies on cannabis’ therapeutic properties, a good subset concerning its ability to prevent, kill, or regress a wide range of different cancer types. You can view them all on our cannabis research database . Research on cannabis and brain cancer has only just begun, but considering the abject failure if not also sheer violence of conventional approaches, waiting for sufficient quantities of Pharma or government capital to flow in the direction of a non-patentable substance already saddled with archaic laws in some cases criminalizing its possession is a no win proposition. Anecdotes of healing with cannabis are not uncommon. One such report can be viewed on our colleague Dr. Jeffrey Dach’s website, titled, “ Cannabis Oil Brain Tumor Remission ,” demonstrating just how powerful cannabis and its cannabinoids may be for accomplishing what conventional approaches can not. A couple years ago, we reported on a similar case of temporary remission in childhood leukemia using cannabis extract . Also, consider reports like this one, where a woman clearly being victimized by conventional medicine was able to replace 40 different medications through using raw cannabis juice . The short of it is that the future of medicine , if it is to continue to advertise itself to be concerned with alleviating human suffering and being guided by “evidence,” must incorporate this safe, time-tested, affordable and effective healing agent into its standard of care. Failing to do so will not de-validate cannabis, rather, but the medical system itself. One might ask, if cannabis can treat “incurable” brain cancers, and is safer and more effective than chemotherapy and radiation, shouldn’t withholding it or information about its healing properties be considered criminal? Instead we still live in a time and age where simply possessing it or using it is in some jurisdictions classified as a criminal offense of dire if not irreparable consequence to our civil liberties. Perhaps we are at a critical turning point now and the aforementioned research will lead us all forward to a more enlightened medical ethos that respects the right of a patient to choose his or her treatment as long as it does no harm to others. References 1 Soroceanu L, Murase R, Limbad C, Singer EL, Allison J, Adrados I, Kawamura R, Pakdel A, Fukuyo Y, Nguyen D, Khan S, Arauz R, Yount GL, Moore D, Desprez PY, McAllister SD (2013) Id-1 is a Key transcriptional regulator of glioblastoma aggressiveness and a novel therapeutic target. Cancer Res 73:1559–1569 2 Tania Aguado, Arkaitz Carracedo, Boris Julien, Guillermo Velasco, Garry Milman, Raphael Mechoulam, Luis Alvarez, Manuel Guzmán, Ismael Galve-Roperh. Cannabinoids induce glioma stem-like cell differentiation and inhibit gliomagenesis. J Biol Chem. 2007 Mar 2;282(9):6854-62. Epub 2007 Jan 2. 3 Singer E, Judkins J, Salomonis N, Matlaf L, Soteropoulos P, McAllister S, Soroceanu L (2015) Reactive oxygen species-mediated therapeu- tic response and resistance in glioblastoma. Cell Death Dis 6:e1601 4 Nabissi M, Morelli MB, Amantini C, Liberati S, Santoni M, Ricci-Vitiani L, Pallini R, Santoni G. Cannabidiol stimulates Aml-1a-dependent glial differentiation and inhibits glioma stem-like cells proliferation by inducing autophagy in a TRPV2-dependent manner. Int J Cancer. 2015 Oct 15;137(8):1855-69. doi: 10.1002/ijc.29573. Epub 2015 May 8. PubMed PMID: 25903924. © November 1, 2016 GreenMedInfo LLC. This work is reproduced and distributed with the permission of GreenMedInfo LLC. Want to learn more from GreenMedInfo? Sign up for the newsletter here http://www.greenmedinfo.com/greenmed/newsletter . Submit your review | 0 |
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This entire election season has been insane and no one has broken it down like Seth Meyers has in his nightly segments A Closer Look.
On the eve of the election, Meyers decided to focus this segment on how the two candidates have handled their campaigns during the final stretch. He took a few minor shots at Hillary, but the bulk of his time was spent incredulously trying to make sense out of what has gone on with Trump during the last 3 days in particular. He also shares a highly entertaining clip of President Obama’s “burns” on Trump.
While Hillary Clinton has been campaigning with mega-stars like Katy Perry, Beyonce, Jay-Z, Bruce Springsteen and Lady Gaga, Trump has…Scott Baio. Trump couldn’t seem to stop whining about Hillary’s celebrities all weekend, even saying how horrible and inappropriate Jay-Z’s lyrics were. Yes. This…coming from the man who inspired the newest phrase “p*ssygate” and had the likes of Ted Nugent grabbing his crotch and referencing his “blue balls” at a rally over the weekend.
After showing a clip of Trump bitching about all of these A-listers and saying he doesn’t need them or their guitars and pianos, Seth had a message for the Republican candidate:
“That’s okay, I’ve got an instrument for you Donald — the world’s smallest violin,” Meyers said. “It should be noted that with your hands, it would be a regular size violin.”
Watch the entire segment below:
Featured Image via screenshot | 0 |
JERUSALEM — In a politically fractious country troubled by monumental security challenges, Israel’s military has long served as an equalizer and unifier, a “people’s army” that, at least in the eyes of the Jewish majority, reflected the general interest. But the Israeli people, and with them the government, have shifted to the right amid an upsurge of Palestinian stabbings and other attacks. Now the military finds itself at the center of a tumultuous debate about its role as the nation’s conscience and most trusted institution. Some government ministers and an increasingly shrill segment of the public have been pushing for tougher action in the face of months of Palestinian attacks that have killed about 30 civilians and soldiers. Other Israelis want the military to remain a moderating force and a bulwark against extremism. The debate about the military’s role has been highlighted by a series of clashes among its high command, the government and an aggressive segment of the public in recent months. The pressure on the military is also growing in light of the appointment of Avigdor Lieberman, a as defense minister. Mr. Lieberman has been among the harshest critics of Israeli security policies and will now serve as the army’s overlord. His immediate predecessor, Moshe Yaalon, a conservative and former military chief of staff who was pushed out, had staunchly backed the generals, who have spoken out against manifestations of extremism in the ranks and in broader society. “Generally, the image of an army is that it wants to push forward and it has to be restrained sometimes by the politicians, statesmen who think in a wider context and know that they need to make compromises,” said Shlomo Avineri, a professor of political science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. “In Israel, the present situation is almost the opposite. ” The military chiefs, Mr. Avineri said, are “not liberals. ” The fissure is not between the traditional Israeli right and left, he said, but between “strategic hawks,” or pragmatists who put Israel’s security first, and “ideological hawks” who are more concerned with historical rights and Jewish nationalism. In recent years, Mr. Avineri said, senior military officials, together with the Mossad and Shin Bet security chiefs, were widely credited with having opposed and ultimately blocked Israeli government plans to prepare for an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities, believing that it would have disastrous consequences. The debate over the military’s role could have a profound impact in Israel, where most Jewish are drafted for compulsory service, and many perform reserve duty for decades after. During Independence Day celebrations this month, millions looked skyward to catch a glimpse of the traditional flyover of fighter jets, Hercules transport planes, refueling craft and attack helicopters. The commanders of the air, ground and naval forces often become household names here. But the recent surge in violence has strained those views of the military. “The wave of terrorist attacks or intifada or whatever you want to label the events of the past eight months have raised the level of fear in Israeli society,” said Yohanan Plesner, the president of the Israel Democracy Institute, a nonpartisan research group. “That puts a lot of tension on the military leadership and the soldiers who are put in situations where they are supposed to fight terror, protect themselves and comply with the I. D. F. ’s values,” he said, referring to the Israel Defense Forces. Lt. Gen. Gadi Eisenkot, the chief of staff of the Israeli military, recently caused a stir when he told an audience of high school students that he would not want a soldier to empty a magazine on a Palestinian girl of 13 holding a pair of scissors. He was attacked by rightist politicians who advocate a policy based on the Talmudic lesson “Whoever comes to slay you, slay him first. ” The military chiefs have urged restraint and a strict adherence to regulations, saying a soldier should shoot to neutralize a threat, but not beyond that. At the same time, Palestinians and human rights groups accuse the military of excessive use of force in the West Bank, where it enforces Israel’s occupation. The military brass also came under fire for its swift condemnation of the actions of an Israeli sergeant, Elor Azaria, who fatally shot a disarmed and wounded Palestinian assailant in the head as he lay on the ground after he had stabbed and wounded another soldier. Many Israelis, including Mr. Lieberman, said the denunciation prejudged the case and undermined the troops as they battled Palestinian violence. Outraged Israelis flooded social networks and hailed Sergeant Azaria, who has been charged with manslaughter, as a hero. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu backed the military prosecutors but, sensing the public mood, also called the soldier’s father in a show of support. Then Maj. Gen. Yair Golan, the deputy chief of the military, caused an uproar in a speech for Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day this month, when he said he discerned disturbing trends in Israeli society that reminded him of processes that led to the rise of Nazi Germany. Mr. Netanyahu rebuked General Golan, criticizing his remarks as outrageous, and said, “The I. D. F. is the people’s army and must remain out of political debates. ” The military’s code of ethics, known as the Spirit of the I. D. F. states clearly that the army’s mission is to protect Israel and its independence while being “subordinate to the directions of the democratic civilian authorities and the laws of the state. ” Still, commanders are encouraged to voice their opinions freely in what the politicians call appropriate forums. Yaakov Amidror, a major general in the reserves and a former national security adviser, said that “there is no war” between the military and the prime minister. Instead, he said, General Golan crossed a forbidden line between the professionals and the decision makers. “Because we force everybody to serve,” Mr. Amidror said, “we have to be even more conservative in what officers can say. ” Underlying the complexity of the issue, Mordechai Kremnitzer and Yedidia Z. Stern, both vice presidents of the Israel Democracy Institute, penned opposing views about General Golan’s speech in the Hebrew edition of the Haaretz newspaper. In an article written with Prof. Avi Sagi, one of the authors of the “Spirit of the I. D. F. ,” Mr. Stern criticized General Golan for becoming involved in the public discourse while in uniform. Mr. Kremnitzer countered, “Army values do not spring up from within the military but are derived from the core values of Israeli society. ” He argued that it was General Golan’s right, and even his duty, to warn of any damage to those values. lines are further blurred in Israel by the number of retired generals who try to capitalize on their army prestige by entering politics. But the army remains the one island of social solidarity where the country’s political and economic divides vanish. Micah Goodman, an Jewish philosopher, had just returned from a week of reserve duty with his infantry unit in northern Israel where, he said, he slept in the field with investors and truck drivers, all wearing the same uniform. “According to the ethos,” said Mr. Goodman, 42, “the people are meant to educate the army, meaning that the values of the army are a projection of the values of the people. ” But as in many other places in the world, he said, there is a sense that those social values are eroding. “The more that Israelis feel that Israel is losing its core values and that the army is the last bastion of those Israeli values,” he said, “so the temptation of reversing the model grows. ” | 1 |
The Debate NATO's eastward expansion
In this episode of The Debate, Press TV has conducted an interview with Center for Research on Globalization President Michel Chossudovsky from Montreal, and Ian Williams, a senior analyst with the Foreign Policy in Focus, from New York, to discuss NATO’s biggest military build-up in Eastern Europe near Russia’s borders since the Cold War. Loading ... | 0 |
Videos Noam Chomsky: US Commenced Plan To Dominate ‘Grand Area’ Of The Globe After WWII After World War II, Chomsky said the U.S. implemented a plan ‘in which the United States would have pretty much complete economic and political control’ over a massive percentage of the planet. | October 27, 2016 Be Sociable, Share! U.S.Army 4.7mm anti-aircraft gunsare lined up in the final assembly area of the Grand Rapids stamping division of Fisher Body in Detroit on June 1, 1944, prior to shipping.
MUNICH — World War II marked a crucial turning point for U.S. empire building and the growth of global capitalism, according to the historical analysis of noted political philosopher and scholar Noam Chomsky.
Chomsky examined U.S. domination of world affairs in “ Who Owns The World? ,” a speech he delivered at the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2012. In May, he published a book, “Who Rules The World?,” which examines similar themes. Watch ‘ Noam Chomsky: Who Owns the World? Resistance and Ways Forward ‘ :
He revisited the topic in a recent conversation with Zain Raza, a senior editor at the independent media outlet acTVism Munich. An excerpt from that conversation was published on Tuesday as part of acTVism Munich’s “Reexamining History” series .
Much of the U.S. government’s global strategy both during and after World War II was based on a plan proposed by the State Department and the Council on Foreign Relations , which Chomsky describes as the “major, non-governmental institution concerned with foreign affairs” whose membership “draws from a wide range of elite elements, business, politics, academics, and so on.”
Between 1939 and 1945, the State Department and the Council on Foreign Relations held regular strategy meetings to develop a post-war economic plan. These meetings led to proposal under which the United States would dominate a vast swath of the globe that came to be known as the “Grand Area,” Chomsky said. Explaining that the “Grand Area” would include “the Western Hemisphere,” Chomsky said: “It included the former British Empire, which the U.S. was intending to largely take over, maybe Britain would be a junior partner. And as much of Europe, the commercial and industrial center of Europe, as much of that as possible. Certainly Western Europe, its industrial, technological, commercial center.”
Within the “Grand Area,” Chomsky continued, “the United States would have pretty much complete economic and political control.”
With the collapse of the German economy after the war, and amid the beginnings of the Cold War with Russia and China, the United States was in a unique position to implement this plan. Chomsky said: “The war was very beneficial to the U.S. economy. Its industrial production virtually quadrupled, wartime spending ended the Depression, which had not been ended before — enormous stimulus to the economy. The technology that was developed just laid the basis for post-war growth. In that context ‘Grand Area’ planning of the kind I described was by no means unrealistic.”
Far from a Pentagon pipedream, the “Grand Area” became concrete U.S. foreign policy, and its effects linger to this day.
“If you look at the policies implemented and developed in the early post-war period, they follow these prescriptions pretty closely,” Chomsky said.
As Chomsky and other historians have observed, Washington’s plans to dominate the “Grand Area” led directly to the Vietnam War. They were also crucial in the development of the International Monetary Fund , which continues to disrupt global economies for the benefit of multinational corporations and the military-industrial complex. | 0 |
A trio of asylum seekers will be prosecuted after they livestreamed the rape of a young Swedish woman on Facebook from an apartment in the Swedish city of Uppsala in late January. [Two of the asylum seekers involved, one aged 18 and the other 21, are to be tried for the rape of the unnamed victim. The third migrant, aged 24, will be prosecuted for being complicit in the rape and not disclosing the incident to Swedish authorities. The is also said to have been the one who filmed the ordeal and will also be prosecuted for aggravated slander for broadcasting the incident over social media, Swedish broadcaster SVT reports. Stefan Wallin, the lawyer for the suspect, claims it was not rape but was a consensual sexual act. The lawyer went on to say his client could prove the woman had been in the apartment willingly and showed consent throughout the incident. “In the witness evidence the prosecution presents, we have seen this movie, but the intimate moment between my client and the victim occurred about 45 minutes to one hour before this film,” Wallin said. Henry Stolare, another lawyer for the suspects, claimed the video was incomplete and said there was a large portion missing. Prosecutor Pontus Melander said the basis of the prosecution comes from the testimony of eight separate witnesses. Melander said the prosecution has contacted Facebook directly for the entire footage, but said Facebook has not provided it. Speaking to Swedish media, Melander said: “The footage we have collected is not nearly complete. ” He added: “We know that there is more material than we have so far received. We know this through the testimony. ” The three men, two of which have been identified as Afghan asylum seekers by Swedish conservative site Friatider, were arrested during the course of the live stream which was viewed by hundreds before being taken down by the police. Another witness came forward a day later claiming she had also been raped by the same men in 2015. The said one of the men in the video had attacked her while she was in the shower. “I had bruises and scratches all over my body, the throat, and where he squeezed my breasts. ” “I hope he is convicted, this should not happen again,” she said. Follow Chris Tomlinson on Twitter at @TomlinsonCJ or email at ctomlinson@breitbart. com | 1 |
41 Views November 07, 2016 GOLD , KWN King World News
With stocks surging along with the U.S. dollar and gold and silver getting hit, here is a look at what is unfolding in China and other key regions right now.
Here is a portion of what Peter Boockvar wrote today as the world awaits the next round of monetary madness: It IS the best of times, it IS the worst of times, it is the age of wisdom, it is the age of foolishness, it is the epoch of belief, it is the epoch of incredulity, it is the season of light, it is the season of darkness, it is the spring of hope, it is the winter of despair, we have everything before us, we have nothing before us, (I switched the Tale of Two Cities lines from Was to Is and to Have from Had), etc… The former because the most bizarre and embarrassing presidential campaign in our life time is about to end. The latter because someone is going to win… IMPORTANT: To find out which company Doug Casey, Rick Rule and Sprott Asset Management are pounding the table on that already has a staggering 18.1 million ounces of gold that just added another massive deposit and is quickly being recognized as one of the greatest gold opportunities in the world – CLICK HERE OR BELOW: Sponsored
In terms of the market and its possible response on Wednesday, today’s reaction to the FBI news is obvious evidence that market participants have wrapped up the world in a nice and easy box. Hillary wins, good for stocks. Trump wins, bad for stocks. But, anyone who thinks deeper than this knows that the response is going to be much more nuanced. Ask any owner of a healthcare, financial or defense stock. Ask any business person who cares about taxes, regulation and global trade. Also, no matter who wins, the FOMC will be most likely raising interest rates again next month just as the economy has slowed to a 1.5% growth rate. And lastly, who’s going to win the Senate?
Over the 9 day market losing streak, the S&P 500 lost just 66 pts, thus this morning’s rally in the S&P futures is retracing almost half of that loss.
China’s FX reserves continued to shrink in October. It’s pile now stands at $3.12T, down $66b m/o/m and was $12b less than expected. This level was last seen in 2011 and is now down $870b from its peak in 2014. Some of the decline is certainly outright outflows but some is the impact from valuation changes of the US dollar that rallied against many currencies in the China basket in October. I saw one estimate that said almost $30b of the decline was FX valuation related and about $10-15b was due to PBOC intervention. The dollar rallied about 1.5% against the yuan in October. China is fighting economic battles on many fronts. The War is the massive debt burden they now carry. The daily battles are how to keep growth continuing, how to transition the economy away from huge investments, and how to manage orderly weakness in its currency in the face of the fog of its debt war. The yuan is lower while the Shanghai comp index was up slightly. The H share index jumped 1.2% and the Hang Seng was up by .7% but property stocks in Hong Kong got slammed after Friday’s announcement of a hike in the stamp tax to 15% (from 8.5% for residents) for all purchases of residential housing except for 1st time buyers that are full time residents. The Hong Kong housing market is in an epic bubble.
A few days after BoJ Governor Kuroda basically waved the white towel on achieving his 2% inflation obsession, the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare said base earnings for Japanese workers in September grew .4% y/o/y vs a .3% gain in August. It was 1997 the last time wage growth was 1% and it was 1994 the last time it saw 2%. Thus, it is a good thing Kuroda is waving that towel because he would have greatly damaged the standard of living of his citizenry. Of course all central bankers believe that higher wages come with higher inflation but theory doesn’t always work in practice.
Legend Says Bears Attacking Gold & Silver Markets May Get Torched Here | 0 |
The Republican Party’s trek into the darkness took a fateful step in Indiana on Tuesday. The Hoosier State delivered an victory to Donald Trump, who beat Ted Cruz soundly in the state, sweeping up at least 51 delegates. On the Democratic side, Bernie Sanders won an unexpected victory over Hillary Clinton, though it was not enough to halt her march to the nomination. Shortly after the Republican race was called, Mr. Cruz announced that he was ending his campaign, leaving Gov. John Kasich as the sole rival to Mr. Trump in the G. O. P. contest. That the had hoped to fall back on Mr. Cruz, perhaps the most reviled politician in his party, was a measure of their panic about the prospect now before them. With Mr. Trump’s success, “I’m watching a political party commit suicide,” said Henry Olsen, an elections analyst with the Ethics and Public Policy Center, a conservative think tank. Republicans will all but certainly nominate Mr. Trump, who would be the most volatile and least prepared presidential candidate nominated by a major party in modern times. A man once ridiculed by many prominent Republicans will become the G. O. P. . This is a moment of reckoning for the Republican Party. It’s incumbent on its leadership to account for the failures and betrayals that led to this, and find a better way to address them than the demagogy on offer. Republicans haven’t yet begun to grapple with this. Instead they’re falling into line. Republican leaders have for years failed to think about much of anything beyond winning the next election. Year after year, the party’s candidates promised help for people who lost their homes, jobs and savings to recession, who lost limbs and to war, and then did next to nothing. That Mr. Trump was able to enthrall voters by promising simply to “Make America Great Again” — but offering only xenophobic, isolationist or fantastical ideas — is testimony to how thoroughly they reject the politicians who betrayed them. Now, myopic as ever, Republican leaders are talking themselves into supporting Mr. Trump. At a party retreat in Florida last month, Mr. Trump’s adviser Paul Manafort, brought in to make the candidate seem safer to the old guard, assured them that Mr. Trump will better prepare himself for the presidency. “That was all most of these guys needed to hear,” said an operative in the room. “Maybe he’s trainable. ” But within a day, Mr. Trump was back to making vile comments at his rallies. In his confused foreign policy address, he demonstrated nothing but a willful refusal to learn. Some Republicans still seem to hope they can direct voters’ attention past the Trump candidacy. Last week in Washington, Paul Ryan, the speaker of the House, told a dismayed young Republican at Georgetown University to try not to worry so much about Mr. Trump. “I would just ask you to raise your gaze and look at the horizon that we’re trying to paint,” he said, promoting #ConfidentAmerica, his plan to create a plan. Its mission reads like this: “We do not like the direction the country is going, and we have an obligation to offer an alternative. That’s why House Republicans are developing a bold, agenda to take to the country. By giving the people a clear choice in 2016, we can earn a mandate to do big things in 2017 and beyond. ” It is the Republicans who are making a clear choice in 2016, one that seemed unimaginable a year ago: To stamp what they still like to call the party of Lincoln with the brand of Donald Trump. | 1 |
Good one Doc! | 0 |
Pinterest
C.E. Dyer reports that President Obama claimed back in March of 2015 that he found out about former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s private, unsecured email server the same way other Americans found out —“ through news reports .” But WikiLeaks has released emails hacked from the account of Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta, that proved otherwise and may point to a big reason why the FBI let Clinton off the hook.
“They know POTUS and HRC emailed,” Jennifer Palmieri, Clinton’s communications director, wrote in a March 2015 email approximately a month before Clinton announced her presidential run.
“Josh has been asked about that,” Palmieri continued, in reference to Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary.
“Standard practice is not to confirm anything about his email, so his answer to press was that he would not comment/confirm,” Palmieri wrote. “I recollect that Josh was also asked if POTUS ever noticed her personal email account and he said something like POTUS likely had better things to do than focus on his Cabinet’s email addresses.”
Better things to do, like golfing? Drawing red lines in the sand? Even if Obama had “better things to do,” someone should have been concerned about cyber security and the fact that the secretary of state was using a private server.
In the email exchange, Palmieri was discussing Obama’s CBS statement with Clinton aide Phillippe Reines who suggested that they should warn the White House about the likelihood that Obama’s statement to CBS would fall apart under scrutiny.
“One of us should connect with the WH just so they know that the email will show his statement to not make sense,” Reines wrote. “I’m happy to do so to Josh Earnest since Jen is in a weird position, unless Cheryl or John you want to (or already have) with someone else. But it’s not unreasonable to assume that Josh is going to get asked how this was possible, and he should have the factset.”
“Especially if it’s some weird technical thing with the President’s email setup that he doesn’t see addresses,” Reines wrote.
Some “weird technical thing?” Must have been the Russians’ fault, eh? The FBI found out, during their investigation of Clinton’s use of private servers run out of her New York home, that Obama used a pseudonym to email Clinton on her home brew server. That’s a big fat lie as part of a massive coverup, not some “weird technical thing.”
In another March 2015 email released by WikiLeaks, Podesta asked Clinton lawyer Cheryl Mills about emails between POTUS and Clinton: “Think we should hold emails to and from potus?”
“That’s the heart of his exec privilege. We could get them to ask for that. They may not care, but I seems like they will,” Podesta wrote.
Well, this revelation may have been a big reason why the Obama administration let Clinton off the hook — Obama himself was in on it. | 0 |
Chart Of The Day: Even Janet Yellen's Favorite Labor Market Index Just Went Negative
David | 0 |
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Billionaire tech entrepreneur and adviser to President Trump, Peter Thiel, declared globalization to be over on Tuesday, claiming it’s “so 2005, it feels so dated. ”[“I’m naturally inclined to think of it in those terms,” said Thiel on the topic of how Trump’s victory showed the American people’s dissatisfaction with globalization. “There’s something around globalization that’s not been working that well. ” “The internet was designed to survive a nuclear war, but even so, I think there are a lot of regulatory challenges that Silicon Valley will be facing from Western Europe and elsewhere in the years ahead,” he continued. “There’s a technological determinism story you can tell where this is the future and China will eventually buckle under and cave and eventually adopt all of these things. But then you might wonder, maybe this doesn’t happen at all, and maybe it’s possible for the internet to actually fragment and not to have this historical necessity to it. ” According to CNBC, Thiel added that “No one in their right mind would start an organization with the word ‘global’ in its title today,” before claiming “That’s so 2005, it feels so dated. ” “A decade ago, this was a group of people who were running the world, and now, it’s just a group of people who messed up the world,” concluded Thiel. “I’m not sure this is a good thing, but it is a fact that maybe politics is becoming more important, it’s becoming more intense, the range of outcomes is becoming greater, and that we’re in a world in which there’s a bull market in politics that’s getting started. ” Charlie Nash is a reporter for Breitbart Tech. You can follow him on Twitter @MrNashington or like his page at Facebook. | 1 |
Attorney Robert Barnes joined SiriusXM host Alex Marlow on Thursday’s Breitbart News Daily to discuss his latest Breitbart News column, “Hawaii Obama Judge Rules Muslim Imam Has Special Constitutional Rights to Bring Anyone from Terror Countries into America. ”[Marlow asked Barnes to begin by explaining why Trump’s temporary ban on various terror countries was blocked. LISTEN: “The district court judge in Hawaii, who was a fellow law graduate of Harvard law school with former President Obama — and, in fact, Obama was in Hawaii yesterday before the decision was issued, so some people have speculated on the coincidence of that. But he issued a decision that blocks the ability of anybody to enforce the order anywhere,” Barnes said. “So he went beyond just the district of Hawaii. He said no state can enforce it. Nobody in any part of the country can enforce it. Nobody anywhere in the administration can enforce it. He issued what’s called a nationwide injunction, and it precludes any application of the order, pretty much, on any aspect of the order, pretty much, until there’s further review. ” “His basis for doing so was an extraordinary interpretation of the right to travel and the freedom of association, which before, has only been associated with U. S. citizens,” Barnes continued. “Every court decision in the 200 years prior to this has said that people who are not citizens of the United States, who are not present within the United States, have no First Amendment constitutional rights. The Constitution doesn’t extend internationally to anybody, anywhere, anyplace, at any time. Instead, this judge said it did, as long as you had a university here who wanted to assert, the foreigner’s rights, or you had some physical person here. In this case, it was one of the leading Muslim imams in Hawaii he wants to bring over various family and friends from the Middle East. ” “The Hawaii judge’s decision says he has a First Amendment constitutional right to do so because he’s Muslim. It was one of the most extraordinary interpretations of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment ever given, which is that because these are Muslim countries that were banned where the issue of terror arises from that that meant they had a special right to access the country and visit the country,” he said. “As long as there is somebody here that wants them here, no president can ever preclude them from coming here. He basically gave First Amendment rights to everybody around the world and gave special preferences to people who are Muslim under his interpretation of the First Amendment,” Barnes summarized. “So it’s an extraordinarily broad order. Its legal doctrine has no limits. If you keep extending this, it means people from around the world have a special right to access the United States, visit the United States, emigrate to the United States, get visas to the United States. There wouldn’t be any limit, and the president would never be able to control our own borders. It would be up solely to the whim of a federal judge who effectively delegated it, in this case, to a Muslim imam in Hawaii,” he contended. Barnes noted that the judge did not “cite any prior decision” that has ever established this astonishing new quirk of the Constitution. “Just last year, the Supreme Court implicitly said the opposite, when they said your right to association does not include a right to bring foreigners into the United States, in the Din decision,” he pointed out. “Now, there were several concurrences, so the binding precedent of that has been left open, but he does not even reference or mention or discuss the decision. He doesn’t even mention the statute, the main statute that gives the president the right to ban any alien from the country, for any reason the president deems appropriate, for any temporary time period, that the president yesterday cited in his national speech. Like the prior Ninth Circuit decision, the Hawaii judge never mentions the decision at all. ” “So there’s no real legal precedent. He’s taking three or four different concepts that have been applied in completely different areas of law, that only ever have historically applied to U. S. citizens, and he’s magically adding it to foreigners and acting like that’s always been the case when it’s never been the case,” he said. “It is a product of what I call liberal law school education that was happening when I was in law school, which is they’re increasingly teaching lawyers to replace objective analysis with their subjective preference, but to pretend their subjective bias was really objective reality, even when it wasn’t,” Barnes said. “They basically taught you to lie to yourself about what the law really was and what it really stood for. ” “Obama reflects that, and this judge deeply reflects that,” Barnes asserted. “He’s someone whose opinion would be taken apart. If it was a law school exam, he would get an ‘F’ because of how badly he misapplied the law. Unfortunately, in the liberal law school mentality, it’s what they’ve taught people to do. This judge, who’s a relatively recent judge, he’s been on the bench a few years, extended it in that way. ” “To give you an idea of how bad it is, yesterday, five Ninth Circuit judges dissented from reviewing the decision about the prior Ninth Circuit decision,” he pointed out. “The prior Ninth Circuit decision effectively became moot when President Trump replace his old executive order with the new one, and these five judges said that prior decision was so bad that they needed to vacate the decision and should vacate the prior decision, even though that’s very rare under those circumstances. They referred to the obligation to correct the ‘manifest many, obvious, fundamental errors’ that went against all the precedent the guy overlooked or neglected in the prior panel decision. ” “It was one of the harshest condemnations ever issued, and one of its authors was former chief judge of the Ninth Circuit Alex Kozinsky, who is regarded as one of the best and brightest judges from anywhere in the country, even though he’s usually more on the liberal side of the spectrum,” he noted. “What they all pointed out is it doesn’t matter what your politics are, the law is clear. There was no basis for the prior Ninth Circuit decision. Well, this Hawaii decision goes further than any court had ever gone before. Hopefully, it will get reviewed and reversed, but in the interim, the country’s safety is put into jeopardy because one federal judge decided to anoint himself the one Supreme Court of the country. ” Marlow asked if President Trump had any recourse, other than waiting for a higher court to overturn the Hawaii decision. Barnes suggested he could “always do a true Andrew Jackson, since he was there yesterday,” referring to Trump’s visit to Andrew Jackson’s grave. “When the Supreme Court issued a decision, Andrew Jackson’s famous comments were, ‘Well, they’ve issued their decision now, they can enforce it,’” Barnes recalled. “He was the last president to really challenge a Supreme Court usurping authority they did not have. ” “In this particular context, because it’s a district court decision — Professor Dershowitz even argued this, earlier in the cycle, when the Ninth Circuit even issued its decision — was that because there was a conflict between the courts, because you have a court in Boston that actually approved of the original Trump order, a great detailed order, order, cited by the five Ninth Circuit judges yesterday — the president would be in his legal rights to say: ‘There’s a conflict between the courts. Until the Supreme Court addresses this, I’m going to do what’s appropriate to keep the country safe,’” he suggested. “The flip side is if he did that, the media would go on a field day and say the president thinks he’s above the law and is refusing to honor a court order,” he acknowledged. “He’s more likely to wait for this issue to get adjudicated. It ties his hands, unfortunately, and endangers the country in the interim, but politically speaking, he’s sort of put between a rock and a hard place. His only real alternative is to either go full Andrew Jackson or let it play out in the courts, and in the interim, the order is not enforced. ” “You definitely can do impeachment proceedings,” Barnes said when Marlow asked if there was any course of action that could be taken against the Hawaii judge for abusing his authority. “I do think that all the political pressure put on the courts and all the public criticism by legal scholars and everybody else publicly about these decisions, and how reckless they are, and how dangerous they are to the and safety of the country, and how they are, and how they mirror and reflect the aspects of Obama’s shadow government undermining the government through its Deep State connections and its undemocratically elected officials has real value,” he said. “That’s even reflected in the decision of the five judges yesterday who were so harsh in the criticism of their former colleagues,” he pointed out. “They mention that the attention drawn to the court is a particular concern to them in jeopardizing the credibility of the court — because, at the end of the day, America’s courts only have power as long as people respect and believe and have confidence in the independence and integrity of those courts. ” “As that gets sacrificed, courts lose power, and we may return back to a time and place where someone like President Trump needs to go back to Andrew Jackson and invoke his tradition and legacy in order to challenge judicial usurpation of the safety and security of the country. At the current time, there’s not a lot we can do without being willing to go full Andrew Jackson against the court system,” he judged. “Impeachment is always an option in the House. Some congressmen could pursue it because of these judges usurping their authority and invading the security and safety of the country, and violating the tripartite branches of power, where the judiciary is always supposed to have respected the president in this area. But right now, there’s not a lot we can do under the current political and legal environment,” Barnes concluded. He agreed with President Trump’s contention that this level of judicial overreach was unprecedented. “When you have law professors like Jonathan Turley or Alan Dershowitz or Jeffrey Toobin saying that the prior Ninth Circuit decision — which did not go as far as this case did, as the Hawaii judge did — saying it basically is bad law, then you know how bad the law actually is,” Barnes said. “It’s law that has no precedent, that has no historical application. For example, the Supreme Court and our Congress banned anarchists from coming into the country. It banned people that were Communists from coming into the country. We have always been able to use just mere ideology as a test. ” “We’ve also favored several religious groups, disfavored other religious groups,” he added, agreeing with Marlow’s example of how the Obama administration treated Christian refugees. “This Hawaii judge is close friends with Obama, may have met with Obama before the decision was issued, is here condemning President Trump from just trying to keep the country safe as to who can come in. Well, if you apply his doctrine legally, how was Obama Americans and all kinds of people overseas? So you don’t have a right not to be but you have a right to live next to somebody in the state of Hawaii or anywhere else in the country?” he asked sarcastically. “There’s no logic. If you start to apply logically all of the consequences of this judge’s ideas, it goes to places that would destroy the whole concept of borders, destroy the whole concept of nationhood sovereignty, destroy the presidential prerogative to destroy our borders. There’s just no limit to where this judge’s decision could go,” Barnes warned. He said there is no question executive power has been used in a discriminatory fashion against Christians “for almost the entire Obama tenure, particularly the Syrian Christians and others who were being actually harassed and persecuted. ” Barnes said the judicial action against Trump’s revised executive order dispelled the notion his first order was merely worded poorly or rolled out in a clumsy manner. “No, the problem is you have Deep State saboteurs, and you have unelected officials who think they’re above the law try to create the law, try to change the law, try to rewrite the law. ” “The problem wasn’t how he rolled out the prior order. The problem is, the opposition are people who don’t respect democratic elections and don’t respect the limits of their office,” he charged. “This problem is now right center with the way this judge issued his decision and particularly applying it nationally. He prevented every other federal judge, every other federal circuit, from weighing in on the decision because he unilaterally opposed it across the whole country — which both the Supreme Court and the Ninth Circuit have said you’re not supposed to do, in cases just like this,” Barnes said. “Judges think they can do whatever they want, whenever they want, wherever they want, however they want. The media will celebrate them. Nobody will do anything negative or adverse to them. And the only person pushing back on it is President Trump,” he said. Breitbart News Daily airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 weekdays from 6:00 a. m. to 9:00 a. m. Eastern. Listen to the full audio of the interview above. | 1 |
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Federal immigration officials said Friday they were deporting a California prostitute to Canada after she completed a jail sentence for involuntary manslaughter for giving a fatal heroin shot to a Google executive she had been entertaining aboard his yacht. [Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesman James Schwab said a judge ordered Alix Tichelman, 29, deported to Canada because of her felony convictions connected to the accidental overdose death of Forrest Hayes in November 2013. She also pleaded guilty to a felony charge of administering drugs. Immigration agents arrested her after she finished her jail sentence on March 29. Schwab declined to disclose Tichelman’s immigration status in the United States or whether she was represented by an immigration attorney. The San Jose Mercury News reported Wednesday that Tichelman holds a permit to permanently work and live in the United States. The paper reported that Tichelman was raised in Georgia and spent little time in Canada. Police said a surveillance video at the harbor showed Tichelman at first panicking and trying to revive Hayes. Then it showed her casually step over Hayes’ body, finish a glass of wine and lower a blind before leaving the yacht. Hayes had hired Tichelman several times previously. They were doing drugs and having sex the night he died, authorities said. The call girl was arrested eight months after Hayes’ death. After Tichelman was charged in California, police in Milton, Georgia, took another look at the 2013 overdose death of Tichelman’s former boyfriend Dean Riopelle, 53. He was the owner of a popular Atlanta music venue. Authorities said a panicked Tichelman had called Milton police, saying Riopelle had overdosed on drugs and wasn’t responding. Tichelman was not charged. An autopsy report listed Riopelle’s death as an accidental overdose of heroin, oxycodone and alcohol. | 1 |
November 1, 2016 - Fort Russ - Anastasiya Kazimirko-Kirillova, Tsargrad - translated by J. Arnoldski -
On October 28th, the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAN) selected its foreign members. This tradition dates back centuries and is of a more symbolic nature. In addition to bearing the honorary title, foreign members can participate in the life of RAN and even vote at the academy’s general meetings, even though they have no decisive vote.
This year, the ranks of RAN’s foreign members expanded to include seven Nobel laureates, among them the well known diplomat and former US Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger…
As reported by Boris Chetvertyushkin who announced the results of academicians’ voting, the procedure implies that scholars, including Kissinger, are informed of their nomination and give their consent. The Russian Academy of Science’s foreign members are chosen from among the greatest foreign scholars recognized by the scientific community. If it is clear why some were chosen for physics and chemistry, then Kissinger received the offer for his geopolitical studies.
The historical role of Kissinger is still debated to this day, including in the US. He is usually respected for his agreement to end the war in Vietnam and the Cold War detente between the United States and USSR. Interestingly enough, the leader of the North Vietnamese Communists, Le Duc Tho, received the Nobel Prize together with Kissinger for the success of the Paris Agreement, but refused to accept the award.
Then Kissinger overthrew the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia which, ironically, he had brought to power insofar as he was the initiator of secret missions in Cambodia which dropped 110,000 tons of bombs on the country and plunged it into bloody chaos and genocide. And the concept of the “honorable peace” which preceded the conclusion of the ceasefire in Vietnam and cost the lives of millions of Vietnamese and tens of thousands of Americans, not to mention wounded, injured and missing, is also one of Kissinger’s achievements.
His other striking “achievement” was the fascist coup in Chile through which Augusto Pinochet came to power and submerged the country in mass purges and arrests. Only one month after the coup, 30,000 people had been killed.
Kissinger also achieved rapprochement between the US and China against the USSR, which in the US is to this day considered to be one of his greatest successes. He has been called the modern Machiavelli and the architect of the new world order.
Kissinger cannot but be admired as a worthy opponent. All the agreements, operations, and projects worked out by him, regardless of their cruelty and consequences, worked out brilliantly. This is why Kissinger’s services have always been used by all the powers in this world worth at least something. For decades, Kissinger has been a trustee of the Rockefeller clan.
The 93-year-old diplomat came to Russia in 2016 to meet with Vladimir Putin and once again participate in the settlement of the new Cold War. Following their meeting, Kissinger wrote an article in which he expressed concern for the fate of the world. In his opinion, US-Russian relations are now worse than they were during his time as Secretary of State. He urged the two superpowers to work together, because this is the only way to maintain the otherwise shaky world balance.
Kissinger is an old school diplomat symbolizing the peak of the US’ greatness. Today, he is a beneficial icon contrasted to the Obamas and Clintons who build their policies on the eternal dichotomy between imaginary US democracy and the imaginary totalitarianism of the US' opponents. Instead of ideology, Kissinger speaks of pragmatic things, real politik, and even his most ardent opponents' hatred for always contains an ounce of respect.
The gesture of nominating Kissinger for the Russian Academy of Sciences can be perceived as Russia demonstrating its willingness to listen even to its geopolitical opponents. Russia supports a realistic approach and sober consideration of national interests, as opposed to the current American elite.
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WASHINGTON, D. C. — The U. S. military has not “relaxed” the rules of engagement (ROE) to avoid civilian casualties in the ongoing fight against the Islamic State ( ) commonly known for using the home of innocent people as shelter and the inhabitants as shields, the top American commander in the region told lawmakers. [On Wednesday, American Gen. Joseph Votel, the chief of U. S. Central Command (CENTCOM) told the House Armed Services Committee: The nature of this fight has evolved over the course of the operation on this two and a half year campaign, and our approach has evolved as well. One example of how we have evolved has been our effort to enable and entrust our leaders at the tactical edge with the authorities they need to help our partners win. We have not relaxed the rules of engagement. I have authorized Lt. Gen. [Stephen] Townsend to delegate the employment of rules of engagement to the appropriate level due to the tough urban fight that we knew was coming in Mosul. To be clear, there were no changes … to the rules of engagement that allows us to engage. Gen. Townsend is the top commander of U. S. ground troops in Iraq. Votel’s testimony came in response to an allegation by a human rights group that a recent decision to loosen the U. S. military’s rules of combat continues to fuel an ongoing spate in civilian casualties in the besieged Iraqi city of Mosul. The Amnesty International report explicitly highlights the death of an estimated 150 people in a U. S. coalition airstrike on March 17, calling it “one of the deadliest strikes in years. ” Gen. Votel stressed that the U. S. military is investigating the allegation. Wednesday’s House panel hearing was focused on security challenges faced by Gen. Votel in his area of responsibility (AOR) which includes the Middle East and Northeast Africa as well as South and Central Asia. Echoing Gen. Townsend, the CENTCOM chief told House lawmakers, “There is a fair chance that our operations may have contributed to civilian casualties [in Mosul]. But I would highlight to each of you that this investigation continues, and there is still much to learn from this. ” Gen. Votel noted that the U. S. had assigned a general officer to dig up the facts of the incident and help the American military address the situation, adding: While we consider and establish accountability over our actions in this incident, I think is also important to clearly recognize that the enemy does use human shields, has little regard for human life and does attempt to use civilian casualty allegations as a tool to hinder our operations. And so they bear responsibility for this as well. Nevertheless, Amnesty’s report suggests that a loosening of American military combat rules under President Donald Trump are to blame for the high number of civilian casualties in Mosul. “The high civilian toll suggests that coalition forces leading the offensive in Mosul have failed to take adequate precautions to prevent civilian deaths, in flagrant violation of international humanitarian law,” proclaimed Donatella Rovera, the senior crisis response adviser at Amnesty International, who carried out field investigations in Mosul. Alluding to the rise in civilian fatalities in Mosul, Votel told lawmakers, “This should be an indicator to you of how intense of a combat situation this is,” later adding, “The investigation [into the March 17 strike] will confirm or deny our initial impressions and highlight the lessons learned. ” The U. S. military believes ISIS may have rigged the building targeted by the coalition on March 17 with explosives after forcing civilians to hide inside. However, Amnesty insists alleged evidence collected in Mosul “points to an alarming pattern of U. S. coalition airstrikes which have destroyed whole houses with entire families inside. ” Gen. Votel declared Wednesday: These are absolutely tragic and heartbreaking situations, And our hearts go out to the people of Mosul and of Iraq and other places where we are operating. We acknowledge our responsibility to operate at a higher standard. It is my responsibility as a combatant commander to ensure that our forces operate in accordance with those goals and standards. We take every allegation seriously, and we are executing … a process to assess — and if necessary investigate each of these allegations … we are doing everything humanly possible to prevent these types of events and incidents from occurring as a result of our operations. The U. S. coalition and its Iraqi allies believe Mosul in Iraq and Raqqa in Syria are ISIS’s last major strongholds in their ever diminishing caliphate. | 1 |
SEOUL, South Korea — South Koreans will go to the polls in May to elect a successor to Park whose presidency ended last week in a historic court ruling, the government announced on Wednesday. The vote will be May 9, nearly two months after the Constitutional Court decision last Friday, which formally removed Ms. Park from office. The ruling approved the National Assembly’s December vote to impeach her. By law, the country must elect a new president within 60 days of the ruling, and all the major political parties have announced schedules for primary races to select their candidates. Prime Minister Hwang who is serving as acting president, announced the date of the election. He also said that he would not run for the job, choosing to focus instead on his role as acting president during the transition period. Mr. Hwang, an ally of Ms. Park, had been cited as a potential candidate for conservatives in a race in which Moon a liberal opposition leader, has been the consistent . South Korea’s conservative camp, which has led the country for the last nine years, has been deeply discredited by the scandal engulfing Ms. Park and her former aides. In recent surveys, Mr. Hwang has been the only viable potential conservative candidate, but he has still ranked a distant second in the surveys, or third behind Ahn a liberal provincial governor. “I know there are people who want me to run,” Mr. Hwang said on Wednesday. “But I have concluded that it is not appropriate for me to run and that I should focus on working for the stability of state affairs and the fair management of the presidential election. ” Ms. Park was the first South Korean leader forced from office under popular pressure since the country’s founding president, Syngman Rhee, fled into exile in Hawaii in 1960. Also on Wednesday, prosecutors summoned Ms. Park for questioning in the scandal. Although prosecutors have identified Ms. Park as a criminal suspect accused of bribery, extortion and abuse of power in recent months, they could not indict her or even summon her by force while she was president. But now that she is an ordinary citizen, prosecutors told her to appear for questioning next Tuesday. Prosecutors said that she conspired with her secretive longtime confidante, Choi to collect tens of millions of dollars from big businesses like Samsung, and that some of the money represented bribes for political favors. Ms. Choi is already under arrest and on trial. | 1 |
Radio Aryan October 28, 2016
Sven Longshanks , Dennis Wise and Messerschmitt bring us another episode of Truth Will Out Radio, this week looking at the Laconia incident and the British Freikorps.
Messerschmitt deviates somewhat with his Axis War Heroes series in that the main subject is not a person but the so-called “Laconia Incident”. In September 1942 a German U-boat under the Command of Werner Hartenstein torpedoed the British troopship Laconia. As Hartenstein realized that a lot of Italian prisoners of war and even civilians including women and children were among the survivors struggling for their lives he ordered that as many as possible were to be taken on board the U-boat. Even though he radioed his intentions to all surrounding vessels in plain English and had a Red Cross flag draped across the U-boat he and the survivors they were carrying were attacked by an American B-24. What happened to the survivors and what the response of the German Navy was when it learned of this atrocity is elaborated on by Schmitt and the presentation ends with a letter from a relative of one of the casualties, thanking the U-boat commanders for their courageous and honourable behaviour.
This presentation shows how the Allies were breaking the rules of war while the Germans were keeping to their treaties. During the Nuremberg trials this incident was brought up in the hopes of convicting Admiral Doenitz for advising the U-boats not to pick up survivors, but it had the inadvertent effect of exposing the British and Americans of waging unrestricted submarine warfare, in itself a possible war crime as it breaks the law of the sea that any shipwrecked mariners must be rescued, no matter who they are. Dennis points out the hypocrisy of the British and Americans in this before reminding us that not all the British behaved like this during the war. Some became members of the Freikorps and fought to defend Europe from the Bolshevik menace alongside the other SS Volunteer Legions. These heroes were called traitors by the British establishment, yet their oath was to protect Europe from Communism, not to fight against Britain. It is a testament to the truthful ideology of National Socialism that prisoners of war could be set free to fight against Communism once they had heard the truth about it from their kinsmen in the League of St George.
After giving us a brief history of these brave young British men, Dennis and Sven conclude the podcast by talking about the importance of race and how the Freikorps highlighted this in their propaganda.
Presented by Sven Longshanks, Dennis Wise and Messerschmitt
Truth Will Out Radio: The Laconia Incident â TWOR 102816 | 0 |
Fragment of Old Tax Bill Meant to Undercut Muslims' Claim to Important Mosque by Jason Ditz, October 26, 2016 Share This
While the UNESCO resolution which recognized the al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem as a “Muslim holy site of worship” was barely reported around the world, and considered fairly non-controversial, Israeli officials have been expressing fury over the matter for two solid weeks.
And the Muslims may have a huge, ancient mosque that has been a key part of Islam for 1,300 years, but Israel has a small strip of papyrus they found in a cave, which they’re pretty sure is a far more conclusive document, since it mentioned the word Jerusalem and was written in Hebrew.
Israeli officials have claimed that the UNESCO resolution, in recognizing the mosque as important to Islam, was tantamount to denying Israel’s absolute and eternal control over the entire city of Jerusalem. Israeli Culture Minister Miri Regev said the papyrus strip proved Jerusalem “was and will remain the eternal capital of the Jewish people.”
The al-Aqsa mosque was built on a site which is believed to have previously housed an important Jewish temple, and some Israelis advocate the eventual destruction of the mosque and the construction of a new temple, though the details of such a construction would be hugely religiously complicated, and since the destruction of the mosque would undoubtedly start a massive war, it is considered unlikely. Still, the far-right government wants to ensure that they have some international precedent for their claim to the territory. Last 5 posts by Jason Ditz | 0 |
The president charges that the Obama administration conducted surveillance on Trump Tower during the 2016 campaign. His critics charge him with making baseless accusations. [Bernie Sanders labeled Trump’s claim “delusional,” a Politico article by Bradley Moss calls the notion “preposterous,” and Al Franken dubbed it “ridiculous. ” John McCain reentered the fray over the weekend, opining, “The president has one of two choices, either retract, or to provide the information that the American people deserve. ” Put another way, either Barack Obama snooped or he didn’t snoop. President Trump releasing Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court requests may go a long way toward proving or disproving his claim. While forthcoming information may substantiate or invalidate Trump’s specific accusation, the general notion that presidents, particularly Democratic presidents, remain above abusing the security apparatus to violate civil liberties of private citizens ranks as, if not delusional, preposterous, and ridiculous, at least slightly naïve. If Barack Obama spied on a political enemy under the guise of spying on a foreign enemy, he finds himself in bad company. Contrary to the “shocked, shocked” reactions, presidents other than Richard Nixon abused power to abuse political enemies — and violate the civil liberties of strangers. President Woodrow Wilson signed the Alien Act, the Sedition Act, Espionage Act, and the Trading with the Enemy Act, which empowered the federal government to send socialist leader Eugene Debs to prison for opposing the draft, to revoke the postal privileges of the American Socialist, the New York Call, and other publications, and to deport sundry radicals, most notably on the famous “Soviet Ark. ” Although the president’s prejudices recently sparked a reorientation of his legacy among liberals, his vindictive use of federal power to punish adversaries goes barely mentioned. President Franklin Roosevelt, over the objections of “Mr. Republican” Robert Taft, instituted an internment and relocation program for those of Japanese, German, and Italian descent in America. The Korematsu decision, in which six justices — five appointed to the court and the sixth appointed as chief justice by the 32nd president — upheld Roosevelt’s 1942 executive order barring Americans of including the Fred Korematsu, from residing on the West Coast. The order and decision regularly receive condemnation from Democrats decades after the fact. In real time, Democrats devised, praised, and upheld the constitutionality of the policy. President John F. Kennedy’s administration launched a federal invasion of Martin Luther King’s privacy that ended only with the minister’s death. The president’s brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, authorized wiretaps and bugs to glean personal information about King. The president, himself a man of great appetites, shared stories of King’s sexual interests, including allegedly attempting to organize a sex party coinciding with 1963’s March on Washington, with intimates. The prying says more about the Kennedys than King. But historians don’t say much about the role of the eavesdroppers. Taylor Branch, for instance, maintains that J. Edgar Hoover “manipulated” the Brothers Kennedy into hounding the leader. This popular narrative imagines that the FBI director ordered around the president and the attorney general rather than the reverse. So many policies decried as infringements on civil liberties by today’s Democrats came into existence because yesterday’s Democrats regarded them as enlightened. The Palmer Raids and the McCarran Act got their names from a progressive Democrat and a conservative Democrat, respectively. Samuel Dickstein, the congressman whose resolution launched the House Committee on Activities (HCUA) actually served as a paid agent of the Soviet Union. Republicans controlled the House, and its controversial committee, in just four of the 36 years of the HCUA’s existence. Democrats jailed Eugene Debs, forcibly relocated Fred Korematsu and barred Joe DiMaggio’s from his profession, and authorized the bugs that mined the most personal details from Martin Luther King’s private life. But trust them. They don’t do such things any longer. | 1 |
WHAT TOMI LARHEN JUST DID MADE HILLARY CLINTON’S LIFE A LIVING HELL! Tweet
Danny Gold for Liberty Writers reports, Oh man, you gotta love Tomi Lahren. I mean forget the fact that she is easy on the eyes, this conservative bombshell has the bite of a cobra and the wit of Albert Einstein! Now she has come out all guns blazing ready to shoot down Hillary Clinton, and boy is Hillary in for a world of hurt.
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The pilot of the Malaysia Airlines jetliner that mysteriously vanished more than two years ago had used his personal flight simulator to practice a path over the remote southern Indian Ocean, where the aircraft is believed to have crashed, the country’s transport minister said on Thursday. The remarks by the minister, Datuk Seri Liow Tiong Lai, represented the first time the Malaysian government had acknowledged that the flight simulator belonging to the pilot of Flight 370, Capt. Zaharie Ahmad Shah, contained such a path, leading far from any route his airline flew. The minister did not say when the pilot might have practiced that route, and he emphasized that it was one of many found on the simulator, which the pilot kept at his home. The minister also said it would be premature to draw any conclusions from the disclosure. Nonetheless, it added to telltale indications that the aircraft, a Boeing jet carrying 239 passengers and crew members, might have been deliberately crashed into the sea by Mr. Zaharie after departing Kuala Lumpur for Beijing on March 8, 2014. “Yes, there is simulation showing it flew to many parts of the world,” the minister was quoted by Malaysia’s Bernama News Agency as saying at a monthly Transport Ministry briefing. The remote southern Indian Ocean route was “one of many,” he said. The minister appeared to be responding to a report published on July 22 by New York magazine, which said it had obtained a confidential document from a Malaysian police investigation showing that Mr. Zaharie had practiced the route on his simulator less than a month before Flight 370 disappeared “under uncannily similar circumstances. ” The magazine called the revelation, which was not in the Malaysia government’s public report on the Flight 370 investigation, the strongest evidence yet that the pilot had “made off with the plane in a premeditated act of mass . ” Flight 370’s deviation from its planned route, taking the aircraft thousands of miles off course, remains a mystery of modern civil aviation. One of the working theories is that the plane flew for hours on autopilot with its crew dead or incapacitated and then crashed when its fuel ran out. Technical signals sent by the plane suggested that it might have wound up in a area of the southern Indian Ocean, but aircraft and ships have scoured the area without turning up a sign of the aircraft. Last month, the three countries leading the search — Australia, China and Malaysia — said they would suspend the operation, but would revive it if “credible new information” emerged about the plane’s whereabouts. A small amount of debris believed to be from the plane has been found thousands of miles to the west. The most significant pieces appeared to be a wing part known as a flaperon — discovered last year on Réunion, an island near Madagascar that is part of France — and another wing segment found more recently near the coast of Tanzania. A prominent crash investigator caused a stir last weekend by asserting that the flaperon appeared to have been placed in an extended position when it hit the water, and that it had to have been done deliberately. The assertion by the investigator, Larry Vance, who led an inquiry into the 1998 crash of Swissair Flight 111 in the Atlantic Ocean, has not been confirmed by officials in charge of the Flight 370 inquiry. “Somebody was flying the airplane at the end of its flight,” Mr. Vance said in an interview on Australia’s “60 Minutes” program. “Somebody was flying the airplane into the water. There is no other alternate theory that you can follow. ” | 1 |
WASHINGTON — In the end, she checked every box. Elegant, unexpected dress? Check. Unknown designer elevated to overnight sensation? Check. New York brand? Check. Implicit message about cooperation and embracing the melting pot? Check. When Melania Trump took the stage with her husband, President Trump, on Friday night for the inaugural balls, she demonstrated that, while she may have been out of the spotlight since the election, she hasn’t been sticking her head in the sand. She has been closely studying the vernacular of first lady dress. In an architectural white crepe column with a thin burgundy ribbon as a belt, a high slit and a gazar wave curving from sleeve to hip and then down the skirt, she looked — especially when compared with the younger generation of Trump women, most of whom opted for sparkling princess gowns — understated and adult. Not remotely mired in the 1980s, though her husband’s look and rhetoric may be. And despite rampant speculation about the designer behind the dress, she cannily managed to surprise the entire fashion world. The gown was, according to a statement from her office, a “collaboration” between Mrs. Trump and the designer Hervé Pierre, a Frenchman who moved to New York in the early 1990s and eventually became creative director of Carolina Herrera, where he and Mrs. Trump met and where he worked on clothes for Laura Bush and Michelle Obama, though largely behind the scenes. He left that post last February. This is his first major dress under his own name (he does not yet have a collection in that context). It will eventually join the exhibit of first ladies gowns at the Smithsonian stretching back to Helen Taft in 1909. Though rumors had surfaced earlier in the week that Mrs. Trump was working with Chanel’s creative director Karl Lagerfeld on her gown, in the end she used the opportunity — and indeed, her entire inaugural wardrobe — to do what her husband, standing on the steps of the Capitol building, said they would do: “follow two simple rules: Buy American and Hire American. ” After over 20 years in this country, Mr. Pierre counts. Indeed, with one notable exception — Kellyanne Conway’s coat at the which looked like she might have borrowed it off a toy soldier (it was her “Trump revolution wear” she told reporters) but in fact turned out to be a $3, 600 design from the Italian brand Gucci — the inaugural weekend overall was a series of America First fashion moments, literally and metaphorically. And not just when it came to the women. There has been a lot of speculation over whether the office of president will change Mr. Trump — encourage moderation of his Twitter account, for example, or his language. As yet that is unclear, but it does appear to have changed how his family dresses. On Friday the president wore an overcoat and shirt to the said to be by Brooks Brothers, the American men’s wear brand that outfitted 39 presidents before him. Lincoln, Grant, Chester Arthur, Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson and Barack Obama wore Brooks Brothers for their ceremonies, and Mr. Obama even wore his overcoat again on Friday when he stood with Mr. Trump. For a man who often overtly rejected the Washington establishment and what came before in his speech, it was nevertheless a nod to tradition and history. The day before, Melania Trump (who during the campaign tended toward European brands) stepped off the military jet that brought the Trumps to Washington for a ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery in a strict, coat by Norisol Ferrari, a small, independent New York designer who described herself to WWD as a “ minority woman. ” Then, that evening at the donors’ black tie dinner, the first lady wore a nude sequined gown by Reem Acra, the designer based in New York. And Ivanka Trump wore three different outfits from Oscar de la Renta, a name of New York Fashion Week: a coat and matching dress to Arlington a gown to the donor’s dinner and a white pantsuit to the . (Oscar de la Renta himself dressed both Hillary Clinton and Laura Bush for their husbands’ second inaugural balls the brand is something of an inaugural .) For the balls, she donned Carolina Herrera. It was when Mrs. Trump wore a Ralph Lauren cashmere dress and coat to the Inauguration Day festivities, however, that it became indubitable that something strategic was going on. It is not just because Mr. Lauren is a designer who has built an empire on the mythology of the American dream, or because he has outfitted the U. S. Olympic team and donated $13 million to help restore the Banner at the National Museum of American History. And it is not because he had dressed four first ladies before, crossing political parties in service to the role. It is because the dress and coat he made for Mrs. Trump, in shape and shade, created an image that was redolent of nothing so much as Jacqueline Kennedy at her Camelot inaugural, with all the new beginnings and freighted history that implies. Whatever you think of the reality of that connection — and on social media, there was a lot of verbal — the outfit oozed appropriateness. If it looked like something of a first lady costume, and it did, it also suggested that Mrs. Trump had studied up and was prepared to assume the starring role she played later in the evening. Just as Ivanka Trump’s trouser suit, which was designed by Fernando Garcia, one half of the new young creative duo at Oscar de la Renta, seemed a sign of the unofficial role she has often suggested she will pursue: women’s advocate. White pantsuits, after all, became famous over the summer when Hillary Clinton wore one, also by Ralph Lauren, to accept the Democratic nomination for president, at least in part in acknowledgment of the suffragists, who chose white as one of their signature colors. Later, the white outfits were adopted as a uniform of sorts by women as they went to the polls. It was thus a fairly pointed (and, to some, poignant) moment when Mrs. Clinton appeared in a final white Ralph Lauren pantsuit to accompany her husband to the inauguration — a suit that had been made as part of her campaign collaboration with Mr. Lauren, but never worn. And it was probably not by chance that Ms. Trump selected a similar look. The politics of clothing may be subtle, and may strike some as frivolous, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t a requisite part of the pageantry that surrounds the presidency — especially on a day with more photo opportunities than speeches. They paint a picture of the family that now represents the country, of their ambitions, goals and values, at a moment when the world is watching. This time, the brush strokes swirled: not with accessibility, but with aspiration, and nationalism. A case of the emperor’s new clothes, or a harbinger of things to come? We’ll have to keep looking to find out. | 1 |
Eric Zuesse Here’s why: Hillary has repeatedly said: “We should also work with the coalition and the neighbors to impose no-fly zones that will stop Assad from slaughtering civilians and the opposition from the air. Opposition forces on the ground, with material support from the coalition, could then help create safe areas where Syrians could remain in the country, rather than fleeing toward Europe.” This would mean that U.S. fighter-jets and missiles would be shooting down the fighter-jets and missiles of the Syrian government over Syria, and would also be shooting down those of Russia. The Syrian government invited Russia in, as its protector; the U.S. is no protector but an invader against Syria’s legitimate government, the Ba’athist government, led by Bashar al-Assad. The CIA has been trying ever since 1949 to overthrow Syria’s Ba’athist government — the only remaining non-sectarian government in the Middle East other than the current Egyptian government. The U.S. supports Jihadists who demand Sharia law, and they are trying to overthrow and replace Syria’s institutionally secular government. For the U.S. to impose a no-fly zone anywhere in Syria would mean that the U.S. would be at war against Russia over Syria’s skies. Whichever side loses that conventional air-war would then have to choose whether to surrender, or instead to use nuclear weapons against the other side’s homeland, in order for it to avoid surrendering. That’s nuclear war between Russia and the United States. Would Putin surrender? Would Hillary? Would neither? If neither does, then nuclear war will be the result. Here are the two most extensive occasions in which Hillary has stated her position on this: To the Council on Foreign Relations, on 19 November 2015: We should also work with the coalition and the neighbors to impose no-fly zones that will stop Assad from slaughtering civilians and the opposition from the air. Opposition forces on the ground, with material support from the coalition, could then help create safe areas where Syrians could remain in the country, rather than fleeing toward Europe. This combined approach would help enable the opposition to retake the remaining stretch of the Turkish border from ISIS, choking off its supply lines. It would also give us new leverage in the diplomatic process that Secretary Kerry is pursuing. … QUESTION: When you were secretary of state, you tended to agree a great deal with the then-Secretary of Defense Bob Gates. Gates was opposed to a no-fly zone in Syria; thought it was an act of war that was risky and dangerous. This seems to me the major difference right now between what the president — what Obama’s administration is doing and what you’re proposing. Do you not — why do you disagree with Bob Gates on this? CLINTON: Well, I — I believe that the no-fly zone is merited and can be implemented, again, in a coalition, not an American-only no-fly zone. I fully respect Bob and his knowledge about the difficulties of implementing a no-fly zone. But if you look at where we are right now, we have to try to clear the air of the bombing attacks that are still being carried out to a limited extent by the Syrian military, now supplemented by the Russian air force. And I think we have a chance to do that now. We have a no-fly zone over northern Iraq for years to protect the Kurds. And it proved to be successful, not easy — it never is — but I think now is the time for us to revisit those plans. I also believe, as I said in the speech, that if we begin the conversation about a no-fly zone, something that, you know, Turkey discussed with me back when I was secretary of state in 2012, it will confront a lot of our partners in the region and beyond about what they’re going to do. And it can give us leverage in the discussions that Secretary Kerry is carrying on right now. So I see it as both a strategic opportunity on the ground, and an opportunity for leverage in the peace negotiations. … QUESTION: Jim Ziren (ph), Madam Secretary. Hi. Back to the no- fly zone. are you advocating a no-fly zone over the entire country or a partial no-fly zone over an enclave where refugees might find a safe haven? And in the event of either, do you foresee see you might be potentially provoking the Russians? CLINTON: I am advocating the second, a no-fly zone principally over northern Syria close to the Turkish (ph) border, cutting off the supply lines, trying to provide some safe refuges for refugees so they don’t have to leave Syria, creating a safe space away from the barrel bombs and the other bombardments by the Syrians. And I would certainly expect to and hope to work with the Russians to be able to do that. [She expects Putin to join America’s bombing of Syria’s government and troops and shooting-down of Russia’s planes in Syria, but no question was raised about this.] … To have a swath of territory that could be a safe zone … for Syrians so they wouldn’t have to leave but also for humanitarian relief, … would give us this extra leverage that I’m looking for in the diplomatic pursuits with Russia with respect to the political outcome in Syria. During a debate against Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primaries: Hillary Clinton, in a debate with Bernie on 19 December 2015, argued for her proposal that the U.S. impose in Syria a “no-fly zone” where Russians were dropping bombs on the imported jihadists who have been trying to overthrow and replace Assad: “I am advocating the no-fly zone both because I think it would help us on the ground to protect Syrians; I’m also advocating it because I think it gives us some leverage in our conversations with Russia.” She said there that allowing the jihadists to overthrow Assad “would help us on the ground to protect Syrians,” somehow; and, also, that, somehow, shooting down Russia’s planes in Syria (the “no-fly zone”) “gives us some leverage in our conversations with Russia.” Bernie Sanders’s response to that was: “I worry too much that Secretary Clinton is too much into regime change and a little bit too aggressive without knowing what the unintended consequences might be.” He didn’t mention nuclear war as one of them. The “no-fly zone” policy is one of three policies she supports that would likely produce nuclear war; she supports all of them, not merely the “no-fly zone.” Hillary Clinton has never been asked “What would you do if Russia refuses to stop its flights in Syria?” Donald Trump has said nothing about the proposal for a no-fly zone (other than “I want to sit back and see what happens” ), because most Americans support that idea , and he’s not bright enough to take her on about it and ask her that question. Probably, if he were supportive of it, he’d have said so — in which case it wouldn’t still be an issue in this election. Trump muffed his chance — which he has had on several occasions. But clearly he, unlike her, has not committed himself on this matter. Hillary Clinton is obviously convinced that the U.S. would win a nuclear war against Russia . The question for voters is whether they’re willing to bet their lives that she is correct about that, and that even if the U.S. ‘wins’, only Russia and not also the U.S. (and the world) would be destroyed if the U.S. nuclear-attacks Russia. Every other issue in this election pales by comparison to the no-fly-zone issue, which is virtually ignored, in favor of issues that are trivial by comparison. But a vote for Hillary Clinton is a vote for nuclear war against Russia, regardless of whether or not the voters know this. And a vote for Trump is a vote for the unknown. Could the unknown be even worse than Hillary Clinton? If so, would it be so only in relatively trivial ways? This election should be about Hillary Clinton, not about Donald Trump. | 0 |
(Reuters) — Japanese automakers are looking beyond the industry trend to develop cars and turning their attention to robots to help keep the country’s rapidly graying society on the move. [Toyota Motor Corp said it saw the possibility of becoming a mass producer of robots to help the elderly in a country whose population is ageing faster than the rest of the world as the birthrate decreases. The country’s changing demographics place its automakers in a unique situation. Along with the issues usually associated with falling populations such as labor shortages and pension squeezes, Japan also faces dwindling domestic demand for cars. Toyota, the world’s second largest automaker, made its first foray into commercializing rehabilitation robots on Wednesday, launching a rental service for its walk assist system, which helps patients to learn how to walk again after suffering strokes and other conditions. Read the rest of the story at Reuters. | 1 |
The Australian government is planning to revoke the passports of child sex offenders as part of a new law aimed at cracking down on pedophiles who engage in child sex tourism. [The proposed law, which was unveiled by Foreign Minister Julie Bishop Tuesday, would affect approximately 20, 000 registered sex offenders who already served their sentences but must periodically report to authorities if they are still under supervision, NPR reported. The Associated Press reports 2, 500 newly convicted pedophiles are estimated to be added to the sex offender registry every year and would be required to forfeit their passports. Approximately 3, 200 serious offenders would be banned from travel outside the country for life, but less serious offenders would be able to get themselves off the registry if they report to the authorities regularly and comply with the law for several years and renew their passports. “This new legislation represents the toughest crackdown on child sex tourism by any government, anywhere,” Bishop said. Bishop added that the nation is “determined to prevent the sexual exploitation of vulnerable young children overseas. ” The law prohibits child sex offenders from traveling to what Bishop says are “vulnerable countries” where children susceptible to being harmed are not under the jurisdiction of Australian law enforcement. Child sex tourism can be defined as “the exchange of cash, clothes, food or some other form of consideration to a child or to a third party for sexual contact,” according to ECPAT International, a that aims to combat sexual exploitation of children. NPR reports that in 2016 alone, 800 child sex offenders traveled abroad, and half of them traveled to southeast Asia, where these types of crimes are rampant. Lawmakers in the group of countries called on Australia to do something about the issue. Australia’s ABC reports that sex offenders are required under the current law to tell authorities about any overseas travel, but many do not report their travel to authorities. The law will be introduced in Parliament this week. | 1 |
The head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Scott Pruitt, has called for America to “exit” the Paris Climate Agreement signed by Barack Obama last November. [In an interview with FOX and Friends, Pruitt said that “Paris [agreement] is something that we need to really look at closely. It’s something we need to exit in my opinion. ” “It’s a bad deal for America,” he continued. “It was an America second, third, or fourth kind of approach. China and India had no obligations under the agreement until 2030. We all of our costs. ” Pruitt’s comments increase the likelihood the U. S. will pull out of the agreement, which requires governments to present national plans to reduce emissions to limit global temperature rise, as well as regularly report on their progress. Pruitt has previously referred to the agreement as a “bad deal,” but has never openly called for America to quit. During his presidential campaign, Donald Trump was a prominent critic of the deal, promising to “cancel” it, and this week he refused to sign a statement endorsing the agreement. Although Trump could not instantly pull America out, he could initiate the process for the country’s exit. Since taking office, Trump has revoked a range of environmental legislation — including Barack Obama’s climate orders — with a plan to focus on energy independence and revitalize the coal industry. In his first White House budget, Trump also proposed a 31 percent cut to the EPA’s overall budget. However, reports in March suggested that members of Trump’s senior team were divided over pulling out of the deal, with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and his own daughter Ivanka advising him not to pull the plug over concerns it would upset major allies. On Thursday, Energy Secretary Rick Perry confirmed that his department is conducting a review of all energy policy, adding that it was “the right to do. ” You can follow Ben Kew on Facebook, on Twitter at @ben_kew, or email him at bkew@breitbart. com | 1 |
November 8, 2016, 11:00 am A+ | a- Warning
Episode 60 of my podcast is now posted here (with copious links) and on YouTube . I joked a few weeks ago that Hillary Clinton will not be elected President because “God doesn’t hate America.” And then I woke up on Saturday and learned that John Podesta, Hillary’s grey eminence, has an especial interest in a Satanic artist called Marina Abramović. Later that day, I learned that a DC pizza restaurant called Comet Ping Pong (which is owned by David Brock’s ex-lover) is an especial favorite of the Hillary team and has, shall we say, a sinister take on what constitutes “kid friendly.”
After such knowledge, what forgiveness? We recorded this show before James Comey announced that the FBI investigation into Hillary’s emails is OFF ON OFF. Hillary’s supporters made a little holiday in their hearts, but I can’t but help think this is too late to save her. There has never been a major-party candidate for President who boasts such a unique combination of incompetence and corruption. The elite and the media are entirely on her side, but of course Wikileaks has revealed that so many members of the MSM can be regarded only as unofficial Hillary staffers, and in the event the people are no longer buying what they are selling.
I daresay Hillary has a program, but the MSM has not deigned to inform us what it is. They know that the destruction of the American nation is no longer as popular as it once was, and that Hillary faces a challenger, Donald Trump, who has promised the American people that “Invade the world; invite the world; immiserate the world” will no longer be American policy when he becomes President.
So the MSM has instead instructed Americans that they daren’t vote for Trump because he’s a sexual vulgarian and a big meanie who has engaged in fat shaming. They forget (or at least pretend to) that it was Hillary’s husband, Bill Clinton, who administered the coup de grâce to American public modesty.
Trump has a program, one that is expressed powerfully and succinctly in his two-minute YouTube video, “Donald Trump’s Argument For America.” America First. America for Americans, not America for bankers, globalists and the theorists of “Cheap chalupas.” Fancy that. The MSM was roused to fury by Trump’s heartfelt patriotism and accused him of “anti-Semitism.” A serious error. These people have no idea of the force they have unleashed. In asserting that it is forbidden to criticize Jewish malefactors solely because they are Jewish, they have given credence to the most sweeping anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. You hear the words “failed”&“corrupt”& you think, “He means the Jews.” So revealing #Trumpslide https://t.co/TMVJCO4I3G
— Kevin Michael Grace (@KMGVictoria) November 5, 2016
The MSM forgets (or at least pretends to) that Trump is not John McCain or Mitt Romney. He has no interest in virtue-signalling, particularly to those who do not bother to hide their dishonesty and malice. Trump has demonstrated, repeatedly, that he cannot be cowed.
This is indeed an existential election, and I remain confident that America will choose the candidate committed to the American nation.
Epilogue: At long last, the Grace & Steel podcast has solved its recording problem. We now employ Audacity (free!) as our primary recording program, with Total Recorder as a backup. Aspiring podcasters, of which there are many, will benefit from the detailed (and illustrated) instructions compiled by my broadcasting partner, Kevin Steel. And listeners to our podcast will discover that the result of our struggle is a profoundly improved broadcasting quality. | 0 |
Fungus: The Hidden Cause of Almost Every Major Disease? Oct 29, 2016 Previous post
There is reason to believe that fungus could be the hidden cause of many diseases from the flu all the way to cancer.
Sounds like a big claim and a sweeping generalization, but when you take a closer look at it, you will be staggered to discover just how ubiquitous the humble fungus is, and how much ill-health it can cause.
Let’s start at the beginning. Nature has a way of eliminating old, decaying matter, whether plant or animal: the fungus. While bacteria are also decomposers, fungi are largely unrecognized for the role they can play in disease, and breaking down the human body prematurely.
Not all every kind of fungus is “bad” or harmful to your health. For example, many of the Chinese and Japanese medicinal mushrooms, such as reishi, shiitake and maitake, are among the greatest stimulators of the immune system and are superb natural remedies. Other mushrooms like the common button mushroom are also good for your health and high in certain nutrients like vitamin D, which is hard to get from food sources.
However, I am focusing here not on the more rare beneficial types of fungus, but on the more common and widespread deleterious types of fungus, including yeast (candida), strains of mold and mycotoxins.
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We Use Cookies: Our policy [X] One Simple Trick To Beat Your 10AM Sugar Crash! November 2, 2016 - BREAKING NEWS , LIFESTYLE Share 0 Add Comment
DO you find yourself slumping at 10 in the morning, lethargic and unable to continue with your day? That’s the perils of starting your morning with a sugary breakfast!
Studies have shown that people who eat high-in-sugar cereals, pastries, or pancakes and syrup suffer what is known as a “sugar crash”, when the short-term energy of their sweets burns off and they’re left hungrier than they woke up.
So how does one beat this sugar crash? By employing one simple trick!
EAT MORE SUGAR.
It’s the best way to boost your energy, mental focus and productivity back up to the levels it was at ten minutes ago.
A Mars bar, a can of coke, coffee and biscuits, a muffin… whatever it takes, just chomp on something nice and it’ll carry you through until lunchtime at least.
“I had been advised to eat a more substantial, wholesome breakfast to feel fuller and more energetic throughout the day, ” said Eunice O’Shea, a housewife who doctors hate because she discovered this one simple trick.
“But the secret is, you don’t need porridge, you just need a bigger bowl of coco-pops. You don’t need fruit, you need a pain-au-chocolat. The answer is right there in front of you! Get stuck in!”.
Next week, find out our one simple trick to getting around the house after diabetes robs you of a foot. | 0 |
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — Syria’s war escalated abruptly on Friday as government forces and their Russian allies launched ferocious aerial assaults on areas of Aleppo amid threats of a big ground offensive, while efforts at the United Nations to revive a appeared to collapse. Repeated airstrikes that obliterated buildings and engulfed neighborhoods in flames killed about 100 people in Aleppo, the divided northern Syrian city that has epitomized the horrors of the war, turning the brief of last week and hopes for humanitarian relief into faint memories. The bombings knocked out running water to an estimated two million people, the United Nations said. “It is the worst day that we’ve had for a very long time,” said James Le Mesurier, the head of Mayday Rescue, which trains Syrian rescue workers. “They are calling it . ” A video shot by a witness showed buildings burning after an airstrike on the Mwasalat neighborhood in the eastern part of the city. The bombings shook the ground, left residents cowering in their homes and made streets impassable, according to activists in Aleppo. “You don’t know if you might stay alive or not,” said Modar Shekho, a nurse at hospital in an part of the city. “There are no more roads to walk on,” said Zaher Azzaher, an Aleppo activist reached through WhatsApp. “Even between our neighborhoods, the roads are full of rubble and destruction. ” The assault left residents buried in debris, including a child in the neighborhood of the city. The bombardment targeted districts in eastern Aleppo and opposition communities in the surrounding countryside. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which opposes the government and tracks the conflict from Britain, said 72 people had been killed in all of Aleppo Province, including 24 women and children. But most of the dead were in the city itself. Mr. Le Mesurier reported 95 dead and 147 people hospitalized in Aleppo city alone. Rescue workers shared numerous videos of men digging children out of piles of debris and entire neighborhoods reduced to rubble. Hanaa Singer, the representative for Unicef in Syria, said in a statement that attacks had damaged the pumping station that provides water to eastern Aleppo, where 250, 000 residents are surrounded by government troops. In retaliation, she said, a pumping station in the city’s eastern side was shut off, stopping water from flowing to 1. 5 million residents in the city’s western side. The population would have to rely on well water, which is often contaminated and would raise the risk of outbreaks of disease, she sad. Ammar head of the Aleppo branch of Syria Civil Defense, a volunteer rescue organization, said that three of his group’s centers had been bombed and that some of their rescue vehicles had been knocked out. “It is as if Russia and the regime used the truce only to maintain their weapons and plan on next targets,” Mr. Salmo said from Aleppo. “It is like doomsday today in Aleppo. ” The Syrian government announced the new offensive in its news media, quoting an unidentified Syrian military official who described the Aleppo operation as “comprehensive” and said it could continue for some time. The official said the operation would “include a ground offensive. ” That appeared unlikely, as many analysts have said that the Syrian military does not have the manpower to seize and hold significant territory. Its air force, however, has been able to pummel areas with relative impunity. As airstrikes intensified, any hopes for a diplomatic breakthrough between Russia and the United States, which support opposite sides in the conflict, disintegrated in New York, on the sidelines of the annual conclave of the United Nations General Assembly. Secretary of State John Kerry and his Russian counterpart, Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov, met briefly but there was no indication that a cessation of hostilities that ended early this week could be revived anytime soon. Speaking at his own news conference, Mr. Lavrov said the United States had failed to ensure that moderate Syrian rebels separated themselves from extremist militants of the Nusra Front. That separation is one of the conditions in the agreement Mr. Kerry and Mr. Lavrov announced on Sept. 9. Until that happens, Mr. Lavrov said, any other measures would be “senseless. ” Ayrault, the foreign minister of France and a member of the International Syria Support Group, the effort led by Russia and the United States, said earlier on Friday that he feared that the diplomatic paralysis reflected a growing weariness with the daily brutalities in Syria. “Will we be inured to this?” he asked. “Let’s not let Aleppo become the Guernica. ” Aleppo, Syria’s largest city and industrial center before the civil war began in 2011, has been divided for years between government and rebel forces. Before the partial declared last week, rebels often shelled civilian neighborhoods in western Aleppo, and the government of Bashar regularly bombed eastern Aleppo, cutting civilians off from aid. The map below, based on data from a United Nations report issued in February, shows the location of damaged buildings in Aleppo. A preliminary analysis of new satellite imagery from as recently as this month shows more damage, said Lars Bromley, a research adviser at Unosat, a branch of the United Nations that has analyzed satellite data since the conflict began. The more recent destruction has occurred on the northwest outskirts of the city and in industrial areas in the northeast. Despite the violence, most of the city’s front lines have remained stable, with both sides lacking the manpower necessary to seize and hold significant new territory. | 1 |
WASHINGTON — A California man who climbed over the White House fence last week managed to roam undetected on the grounds for about 17 minutes, as Secret Service agents appeared to ignore several alarms, officials said Friday. The new details indicated that the episode was more serious than the Secret Service had originally stated. A Republican lawmaker said it also suggested the Secret Service’s security measures remain inadequate two and a half years after a series of lapses tarred the agency and led to major upheaval. In a separate episode, officials also reported Friday that a Secret Service laptop was stolen from an agency vehicle in Brooklyn. But the Secret Service said in a statement about the theft that agency laptops are fully encrypted and “are not permitted to contain classified information. ” The episode took place on the night of March 10, and President Trump was inside the White House residence at the time. Jonathan Tran, 26, of Milpitas, Calif. breached the outer perimeter of the White House by the Treasury Department building while carrying a backpack holding two cans of pepper spray, a book by Mr. Trump, a letter to the president and other items, the authorities said. After an officer ultimately detained him, Mr. Tran — who appears to have a history of mental illness — said, “I am a friend of the president. I have an appointment,” according to a court filing. “Secret Service did a fantastic job last night,” Mr. Trump said the next day. Representative Jason Chaffetz, Republican of Utah and the chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, wrote in a letter on Friday to the Secret Service that the committee received “additional information” about the episode, including indications that Mr. Tran “may have moved around on the White House grounds undetected for a considerable amount of time. ” The Secret Service said in a statement late Friday that Mr. Tran, after climbing several gates as high as eight feet, was inside the grounds for about 17 minutes before he was apprehended at 11:38 p. m. The agency said it is conducting an investigation. CNN first reported on the new details in the case. Mr. Chaffetz also said that the committee had received information indicating that the Secret Service “ignored” alarms that Mr. Tran tripped and that he may have attempted to get into the White House itself. “If true, these allegations raise questions about whether the agency’s security protocols are adequate,” Mr. Chaffetz said, stressing “longstanding concerns” about security episodes at facilities protected by the Secret Service. Last week’s recalled an embarrassing episode for the Secret Service in September 2014, when an intruder with a knife, Omar J. Gonzalez, managed to run through the ceremonial East Room of the White House before he was apprehended. The Secret Service was criticized for playing down the severity of the episode until a fuller account emerged in an investigation by a House subcommittee led by Mr. Chaffetz. That episode, along with a series of other safety lapses revealed at the time, led to intense congressional criticism, a of the Secret Service’s top management and the addition of spikes atop the White House fencing to deter climbers. Plans were recently approved for a taller, stronger fence. A 2015 report by the House Oversight Committee called the Secret Service “an agency in crisis” and found that over a period, there had been 143 security breaches and attempted security breaches at secured facilities. | 1 |
SEOUL, South Korea — When North Korea held a state funeral for its leader, Kim in 2011, one son was conspicuously absent. The absence of Kim — the eldest son of the family, who was bound by Korean tradition to preside over the funeral — was all the evidence outside analysts needed to see how isolated he had become from the center of power in North Korea, the world’s most secretive regime. Never fully accepted by his family, sidelined by his powerful stepmother and haunted by fears of assassins, Mr. Kim lived much of his life wandering abroad, in Moscow, Geneva, Beijing, Paris and Macau, the Chinese gambling enclave. On Monday, Mr. Kim, 45, met his end at Kuala Lumpur International Airport in Malaysia. According to the National Intelligence Service of South Korea, he was poisoned by two women who appeared to be carrying out an assassination order from Pyongyang, the North Korean capital. Mr. Kim died on his way to the hospital. Two women have been detained in connection with the killing. It remains uncertain if Mr. Kim was traveling alone or if bodyguards were present. It was also unclear how many people were involved in the attack. Grainy footage released on Wednesday showed a woman suspected of being one of the assassins, who appeared to be of Asian descent and wore a shirt emblazoned with “LOL” in large letters, before she fled the airport. The Royal Malaysia Police announced late Wednesday afternoon that they had arrested a woman that morning and that she had been carrying a Vietnamese passport in Terminal 2, where the attack occurred. They said she was “positively identified” from video, and was alone at the time of her arrest. She was identified as Doan Thin Hoang, 28, according to the inspector general of the police, Khalid Abu Bakar. On Thursday, the Malaysian police said they had detained a second suspect, a woman with an Indonesian passport. A police official told the Bernama news agency that more arrests were expected. The authorities also said that an autopsy on Mr. Kim had been completed. There were no markers or police tape at Terminal 2 on Wednesday to indicate that a crime had been committed. Airport workers said that they had been ordered not to discuss the case. South Korea’s acting president, Hwang said on Wednesday that his government was working with the Malaysian authorities to find the assailants. But officials in Seoul quickly pointed fingers at Mr. Kim’s half brother, the North Korean leader Kim who has ordered the executions of a number of senior officials, including his own uncle, who have been deemed potential challenges to his authority. Ever since Kim succeeded his father in 2011, “there has been a standing order” to assassinate his half brother, Lee the director of the South’s National Intelligence Service, said during a briefing at the National Assembly, according to lawmakers who attended it. “This is not a calculated action to remove Kim because he was a challenge to power per se, but rather reflected Kim ’s paranoia,” Mr. Lee was quoted as saying. Kim wanted his half brother killed, Mr. Lee said, and there was an assassination attempt against him in 2012. Mr. Kim was so afraid of assassins that he begged for his life in a letter to his half brother in 2012. “Please withdraw the order to punish me and my family,” Mr. Kim was quoted as saying in the letter. “We have nowhere to hide. The only way to escape is to choose suicide. ” Mr. Lee said that Kim had no power base inside North Korea, where Kim had swiftly established his monolithic rule with what the South called a reign of terror. Kim arrived in Malaysia last week, Mr. Lee said. He was in line at the airport to check in for a flight to Macau on Monday morning when he was attacked by the two women, Mr. Lee said, citing security camera footage from the airport. The women fled the airport in a taxi, Mr. Lee said. If North Korea’s involvement is proved, Washington could face intense pressure to put the country back on its list of nations that sponsor terrorism, said Cheong an analyst at the Sejong Institute, a think tank in South Korea. North Korea was first put on the terrorism list after the South caught a woman from the North who confessed to planting a bomb on a South Korean airliner that exploded over the Indian Ocean, near Myanmar, in 1987. The North was taken off the list in 2008, after a deal aimed at ending its nuclear program. South Korea’s military plans to use loudspeakers along the shared Korean border to inform North Koreans of Mr. Kim’s killing and of their government’s brutality, a South Korean news agency, Yonhap, reported on Wednesday. The Defense Ministry declined to confirm the report. “By assassinating Kim Kim may have removed a thorn in the side, but it will further isolate his country,” Mr. Cheong said. “It is also expected to worsen his country’s relations with China, which has been protecting his brother. ” Kim ’s life illuminates the hidden intrigue in the Kim family, which has ruled North Korea for almost seven decades. While the lives of the rest of the family remained shrouded in mystery, Mr. Kim, the oldest of three known sons of Kim has been the closest thing the isolated Stalinist state has had to an international playboy. He was often seen with fashionably dressed women in international airports and spent much of his time in casinos in Macau, where he also kept an expensive house. Outside analysts often saw him as a possible candidate to replace Kim if the North Korean leadership imploded and China, traditionally an ally, sought a replacement in its client state. Chinese experts on North Korea said they doubted that Kim had special security protection from Beijing. “Chinese elites had no expectation this guy could play an important political role,” said Cheng Xiaohe, an associate professor of international relations at Renmin University. “If China wanted to use him as an alternative leader, China would have offered good protection, but this assassination shows he had no security protection. ” In Macau, where Mr. Kim was headed, he was safe just by being there, said Zhang Baohui, director of the Center for Asian Pacific Studies at Lingnan University in Hong Kong. “Macau is part of China and is a safe haven in itself,” he said. Mr. Kim was a prince in exile with little chance of returning home, analysts and officials in South Korea said. His wife and a daughter and son are in Macau under Chinese protection, Mr. Lee said. The South Korean intelligence agency did not disclose how it had obtained the letter from Mr. Kim begging his half brother to spare his life. But government sources said that emails Mr. Kim sent home through North Korean embassies had been obtained in a hacking operation. In one of the emails, they said, Mr. Kim bitterly complained that the North Korean government stopped sending him cash after his father died and Kim took over. In 2012, a news report said Mr. Kim was thrown out of a luxury Macau hotel, unable to pay a $15, 000 bill. The Kim family has never been known for its togetherness. Kim ’s mother, Sung a decorated “people’s actress,” was already married and the mother of a child when Kim forced her to divorce her novelist husband to marry him. Kim adored his first son, Kim . He once seated his young son at his desk and told him, “This is the place where you will one day give orders,” according to Lee a relative who defected to the South in 1982. But Kim ’s grandfather, the North’s founding president, Kim never approved of the marriage. “My father was keeping highly secret the fact that he was living with my mother, who was married, a famous movie actress, so I couldn’t get out of the house or make friends,” Mr. Kim was quoted as saying in a 2012 book by a Japanese journalist. “That solitude from childhood may have made me what I am now, preferring freedom. ” Mr. Kim was born in secret, and when his mother fell out of favor with Kim and was forced to live in Moscow, he was left in the care of her sister. He was later sent to Geneva, where he learned English and French. (His mother was alone in Moscow when she died in 2002.) Kim would later begin a relationship with Ko a star of Pyongyang’s premier opera, who gave birth to Kim and then Kim . According to a Japanese sushi chef who published a 2003 memoir about his experience working for the Kim family, Kim was by that time the father’s favorite. Kim squandered what little chance he may have had to succeed his father when he embarrassed Pyongyang in 2001 he was caught trying to enter Japan on a fake passport from the Dominican Republic. He told Japanese investigators that he wanted to visit Tokyo Disneyland. But rumors of intrigue never left Mr. Kim, as analysts speculated that if the young, inexperienced Kim failed to meet the expectations of generals, they might summon home the eldest brother. In a way, Mr. Kim helped fuel such rumors. In the 2012 book by the Japanese journalist, Mr. Kim called his younger brother “a figurehead. ” | 1 |
France: Muslim Screams ‘There is Only One Master — Allah’, Punches Teacher in Front of Pupils Oct 28, 2016 Previous post
This is the France of today and the France of the future, courtesy the suicidal Muslim immigration policies that French authorities (and European authorities in general) continue to pursue, even to the point of national suicide.
“Attacker Says ‘There is Only One Master — Allah’, Punches Teacher in Front of Pupils,” by Virginia Hale, Breitbart , October 21, 2016 (thanks to The Religion of Peace ):
A primary school teacher was beaten outside his classroom by two young men who called him a racist after seeing the man rebuke a child of non-European origin.
The teacher was violently attacked near the entrance of his school while walking back from Marais Stadium, in Argenteuil in Val-d’Oise, with his pupils after a PE class.
After Paul Langevin reprimanded one of the children in his class on Monday who was being disruptive and using bad language, two young men jumped out of their car screaming “Don’t you talk to her like that, racist”, at the 50 year old.
Mr. Langevin protested: “But I am their master”, using the word maître, which also means ‘primary school teacher’ in French. One of the men replied: “And I am a thug” as the other knocked him to the ground
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link Donald Trump could have a disability that used to be known as Aspergers, and this can cause people trouble when they try to socialize because their theory of mind is not complete. Basically, they have trouble thinking of how others perceive their actions. These people tend to be highly intelligent. Trump's IQ is 156, which makes sense considering he has built more businesses than most of us have, and although he could have invested his father's money and made the same amount back as he did in the end through business deals, he put a lot of work and thought into his business. I would like to know what kind of medicines Trump is on and what his mental health diagnosis are. If he has Aspergers, then that would explain why he makes so many social mistakes. Being super rich from a young age might also account for it since he would not be trained to interact with people on an equal level (which is a lot more complicated than interacting with people when you are rich and they are poor). However, an article in The New York Times recently focused on Trump's fears of making social blunders. He has a fear of losing social status or being embarrassed publicly. However, he doesn't seem to do well publicly, which must be a disability because he would *want* to be a good public speaker and not make social gaffes yet he still does it. It must be accidental. Donald even stated he is a difficult man to be married to, which means he knows himself and his weaknesses. Many people with Aspergers don't get married because they have a hard time in relationships. | 0 |
DCG | 7 Comments
But it’s perfectly acceptable when liberals do something similar to highlight their point.
From Fox News : The Young Conservatives of Texas club at the University of Texas at Austin sparked outrage Wednesday after hosting an “affirmative action bake sale” and charging people different prices based on their race and sex.
The Dallas Morning News reported that a cookie at the sale cost $1.50 for Asian males, $1 for white males and 50 cents for African-American and Hispanic males. Native American men and women were given free cookies.
Asian women had to pay $1.25, white women 75 cents and Hispanic and African-American women 25 cents.
The club drew heavy scrutiny from a crowd of hundreds, but it insisted that the bake sale was a protest against the “institutionalized racism” of affirmative action programs at colleges and universities . Some in the crowd chanted “racists go home.”
“Our protest was designed to highlight the insanity of assigning our lives value based on our race and ethnicity, rather than our talents, work ethic and intelligence,” club chairman Vidal Castañeda said. “It is insane that institutional racism, such as affirmative action, continues to allow for universities to judge me by the color of my skin rather than my actions.” Gregory Vincent
According to the paper, the Young Conservatives of Texas came under fire in 2013 for holding a similar bake sale. The university’s vice president for diversity and community engagement Gregory J. Vincent called that sale “deplorable.”
This time, Vincent said this bake sale was “inflammatory and demeaning.”
“Yet focusing our attention on the provocative nature of the YCT’s actions ignores a much more important issue: They create an environment of exclusion and disrespect among our students, faculty and staff ,” he said.
He further questioned the club’s motive behind the bake sale. “In seeking an audience for their ideas, the YCT resorted to exercising one of the university’s core values to the detriment of others,” he added. “Such actions are counterproductive to true dialogue on our campus, and it is unrepresentative of the ideals toward which our community strives.”
DCG | 0 |
I accompanied Iraq’s elite counterterrorism force and other units from the Iraqi military and the federal police into Falluja at the end of June, during the final days of their long battle to wrest back control of the city from the Islamic State. Falluja was the first Iraqi city to fall to the Islamic State, more than two years ago, and the militant group had all that time to learn the city, sowing traps everywhere. It was only after a long siege that the Iraqi forces moved to take the center. In the last stages of the battle, members of the counterterrorism force, in coordination with other Iraqi units, fought their way into the neighborhood of Al Jolan in Falluja, where Islamic State fighters were making their last stand. As we moved through the streets, gun battles raged, and the insurgents’ improvised mortars exploded among the narrow alleyways and rubble in a effort to halt the advance of Iraq’s security forces. What, exactly, the Islamic State fighters were holding out for was lost on me. The city had been surrounded for months. Nearly all the civilians were gone, either driven out by their rulers’ brutality in the early days, or escaping during breaks in the fighting as the Iraqi forces approached. The Iraqi Army, special forces and the federal police relied on heavy artillery, close air support from United States aircraft and a patient advance through the city. The remaining Islamic State fighters were forced to be opportunistic. During one visit with the Iraqi special forces, I saw a soldier who had been shot through his right calf, either by a sniper’s round or random gunfire. Gruesome markers of the battle dotted the roads leading into Falluja. A charred body of an Islamic State fighter had been left on the side of a road that the Iraqi forces had bulldozed through a small field south of the city as they began the assault. A metal cable was tied tight around one of the body’s legs, and the head had been lopped off. A police commander chastised two Shiite militiamen who were taking cellphone pictures of each other stomping on the corpse triumphantly. Much of the heavy fighting in Falluja was done by the counterterrorism forces. The units were designed for night raids and targeted extractions. Instead, as the fight to retake Iraq has turned into a series of urban battles and checkpoint fights, the small, specialized units have been called on for infantry assignments. For the counterterrorism units, Falluja was the latest in a long string of assaults. They have been sent wherever the fighting was heaviest and the target most critical while the government has struggled to reconstitute its failed and deserted regular army. It has left the elite units threadbare, run down. Islamic State fighters had built underground bunkers in homes they had commandeered. When the Iraqi counterterrorism forces moved in, they discovered steel doors covering holes cut in the marble and tile floors of the houses. In other buildings in the city center, storage bunkers held caches of weapons. As the Iraqi forces advanced block by block, courtyards and rooftops became vital vantage points, sniper nests and, despite the brutally hot weather, crash pads under the sun. During one of my final days in Falluja, Islamic State fighters hiding out in the city showered us with large mortar shells, probably made in a makeshift factory set up in someone’s kitchen. The unit I was traveling with discovered large stocks of crudely made mortar rounds: improvised mortars, or IRAMs. In one house, ordnance, including explosives, was piled in the kitchen. Other deadly ingredients — bags of ball bearings, rusty screws, nails and other shrapnel — were strewed about. Other homes in Falluja had been converted into torture chambers and, according to some of the security forces, dormitories for the Islamic State’s sex slaves. Iraq has been at war since some of the soldiers were in grade school. But evidence of the Islamic State’s brutality took aback even some of the most soldiers. One officer, who spoke openly only on the condition of anonymity, citing military protocol, told me that the Islamic State was different from the insurgents he was used to fighting. You can negotiate with insurgents, he said in English laced with military jargon he picked up from years of working with United States Special Forces, but the Islamic State fighters seemed to have embraced unbridled and inflexible savagery. Another officer, Lt. Hassan Almosawi, from Iraq’s Emergency Response Brigade, took me to an Islamic State prison his unit had discovered in a once upscale neighborhood in central Falluja. Homes in the area were outfitted with bars on the doors and grated metal sheets welded over the windows. Some of the rooms — possibly for the female slaves — were furnished with fans, carpets, pillows and blankets. Nearby, we discovered a home where the Islamic State had established a torture operation. A heavy chain with a hook at the end hung from the ceiling of a parlor, and car batteries were arrayed on the floor near the wall, connected to an transformer. Across the street from the prison and torture chamber, in a former school, decomposing bodies were tangled in a hastily dug grave, left to rot in the heat. The victims had been blindfolded and appeared to have been killed as the Islamic State fled the city. Almost 60, 000 Iraqis who managed to escape Falluja were now stuck in the desert in Anbar Province. Though Falluja is on the doorstep of Baghdad, only 40 miles away, the authorities were limiting access to the capital for fear that retreating militants might try to infiltrate the city. The fleeing families have been forced to live in camps in the desert, like the one I visited in Amiryat Falluja, south of the Euphrates River. Women and children sleep in the open, exposed to heat and gusts that whip the fine desert dust through the frames of unfinished trailers. Aside from a few older men, there are few men or boys in the camps. They have been taken to screening where the government tries to weed out possible Islamic State fighters. After weeks, some of the displaced families still have no word about what has happened to their men. Most of the forces securing Falluja and the surrounding area are Shiite. But the families, and the detained men, are Sunnis. And though there have been few verified reports of extrajudicial killings or abuse, the people’s resentment and fear are being carried in whispers. Victory is never the end of the story here. | 1 |
By Brianna Acuesta
Although the Federal Drug Administration is thought to serve American consumers by keeping them safe and well-informed, they are doing just the opposite by controlling the media and science press in order to create misleading and one-sided articles.
An investigation into documents released through the Freedom of Information Act by Scientific American revealed that the FDA uses a variety of tactics to prevent the full truth from being revealed about a certain product. The biggest tactic is the “close-hold embargo,” where they invite a select few news sites to a briefing about the to-be released information with conditions. They stipulate that the journalists have to surrender their reportorial independence by agreeing to only speak with sources approved by their agency.
When NPR reporter Rob Stein was extended one of these loaded invitations, he responded by saying, “My editors are uncomfortable with the condition that we cannot seek reaction,” and asked that they be given a bit more wiggle room to speak with others. When Stein was met with a resounding no, he decided to agree to the terms and attend the briefing.
Stein wasn’t the only reporter to attend this particular briefing, as other sites such as The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and The New York Times were all present. Despite agreeing to the terms, not everyone is actually comfortable with these conditions. The New York Times former Public Editor, Margaret Sullivan, said:
“I think embargoes that attempt to control sourcing are dangerous because they limit the role of the reporter whose job is to do a full look at a subject. It’s really inappropriate for a source to be telling a journalist whom he or she can and can’t talk to.”
Other tactics used by the FDA include denying major media outlets any access to the briefing prior to the public release of information, and the deliverance of half-truths when asked questions directly to hinder an investigation. Those who intend to speak with unapproved sources or announce these embargoes are met with threats.
These embargoes are often used within the science community, but none as strict as the FDA’s rules on whom reporters can confer with. The usual restrictions only focus on the date and time that a news story can be published about a particular study, which is why the stories tend to break at the same time across media outlets.
The Association of Health Care Journalists said that the close-hold embargo is “a serious obstacle to good journalism. Reporters who want to be competitive on a story will essentially have to agree to write only what the FDA wants to tell the world, without analysis or outside commentary.”
If the FDA was truly concerned about the well-being of American citizens, it wouldn’t be so shrouded in secrecy and insistent on the way news stories are covered. Instead, they put up their list of demands in an effort to protect the medical industry and pharmaceutical companies whose interests and profits matter more than having a well-informed public.
Source: True Activist
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When the comedian Jeff Ross started flinging insults at the Friars Club in the the comedy roast was mostly seen as a relic. “It was like jousting or some lost art,” he said, recalling that comics poked fun at him for participating. “It was corny. ” Two decades later, what was once nostalgic has become cool again. The roast battle, which pits comics against each other in gladiatorial combat, has become the hottest new form in comedy today, with dozens of shows across the country and abroad. This week, it’s the focus of a special on Comedy Central called “Jeff Ross Presents Roast Battle. ” At a time when rap battles have become popular online and onstage, the roast battle uses a similar format to update the ancient art of dueling . It probably began in Los Angeles in 2013, when a dispute between two comics was settled onstage at the Comedy Store in three rounds of insults after midnight. The organizers (the comics Brian Moses and Rell Battle) brought it back the next week, and buzz quickly built, turning the roast battle format from a cult hit among to a frequently affair. When Mr. Ross, who had become known as the Roastmaster General because of his performances on Comedy Central’s celebrity events, attended his first battle, he became rapidly convinced that the form was the next wave of roasting. The early Comedy Store shows, however, were too raw for television. “We had fights at the start,” Mr. Ross said. “The cops were called one time when a woman poked another in the chest. ” Along with coaching roasters between rounds and recruiting friends like Dave Chappelle and Sarah Silverman to judge, Mr. Ross established three rules: Use only original material, no physical contact and always end with a hug. Today there are battles from Vancouver to Johannesburg (and two different regular live shows in New York) with many variations. There was even a naked roast battle. What convinced Comedy Central that it would translate to television, said Jonas Larsen, a senior vice president at the network, was a tournament at the Just for Laughs Festival in Montreal last year, which was repeated and filmed this year. On the TV special, 16 comics will compete for the crown. One early favorite, Mr. Ross said, is Jimmy Carr, a popular British comic, largely unknown here, who has a jarringly elegant style. “He brings a notebook onstage and cradles it like a baby and reads his material as if he’s addressing British Parliament,” Mr. Ross said. “It’s disarming. ” If the early rounds, which were broadcast last weekend, are any indication, the finals will feature less delicate styles. When the New York comic Mike Lawrence told his opponent, Scott Chaplain, that Mr. Chaplain’s father had spent “59 years in the Garden State and three in a vegetative one,” Mr. Chaplain retorted: “At least I know my dad’s watching this from heaven. Your dad won’t even watch you on Seth Meyers. ” While roast battle borrows elements from and even reality television — as with “American Idol,” the judging can be the most entertaining part — its knowing, personal jokes are a return to the clubby roots of the roast. The Comedy Central celebrity roasts focused on a star who was usually a stranger to the comics, and often an easy target, like Charlie Sheen. “We drifted into territory of trainwrecky,” Mr. Larsen said. “We’ve worked to change that. ” (David Spade hosts the next Comedy Central celebrity roast, of Rob Lowe, on Aug. 27.) “Roast Battle” is less than the traditional roast. In live shows, the participants often know each other and are of roughly similar career stature. As a consequence, the jokes are more specific and even a bit inside baseball, like a fight at the family dinner table. Just as important as the prepared jokes is the interplay, the improvised retort, the way you take a punch. The most entertaining insult humor has always depended on the chemistry of a double act (Don Rickles was funniest cracking wise at Johnny Carson) but that’s even more evident in “Roast Battle. ” Some roasters win through intimidation, and others lose before they utter their first joke. In two recent live shows I attended, the contenders leaned heavily on jokes about appearance and unfunniness (the harshest cut for a comic) and on transgressive humor, which went wrong when a combatant at the New York Comedy Club referred to the Orlando shooting the week of the tragedy. Rory Albanese, one of the judges, said it was too soon. The Stand puts on Roastmasters NYC, a better show with sharper comics and a D. J. interjecting sound effects like a Homer Simpson “D’oh. ” The judges are also funnier and more involved, a gantlet the comics have to run before they even get to each other. When a lanky roaster named Sean McCarthy took the stage recently, Mark Normand, one of the judges, said, “Wow, I didn’t know anyone still had scurvy. ” Then the other judges piled on. By the time his friend and competitor for the round, Ross Parsons, joined him, Mr. McCarthy looked defeated, stammering out his jokes. At “Roast Battle,” where comics perform in front of their peers, bombing can be brutal, and killing appears euphoric. Where does roasting go from here? Mr. Ross points to the election: “This is where the roasts have gone — to politics,” he said, adding that he has roasted Donald J. Trump twice. Mr. Trump, he said, was a good sport, and the only jokes he was sensitive about referred to finances. The Comedy Central writers sent him a list of jokes before the event, and Mr. Trump took issue with only one punch line, crossing out a reference to his wealth as $2 billion and replacing it with $10 billion. When the writers pushed back, they settled on $7 billion. Today’s political language sounds so much like insult comedy that a Hillary Clinton line in a speech about Mr. Trump (“He’s written a lot of books about business, but they all seem to end at Chapter 11”) was similar to one that Mr. Ross uttered at a Trump roast. “I read your book. It had four Chapter 11s,” he told Mr. Trump in a bit that was shot for the 2006 Comedy Central roastfest but was edited out of the final show. When our politics increasingly traffic in pointed insults, perhaps it’s no surprise that roasts have become more popular. Mr. Ross sees the lines blurring, saying he thinks that when Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Trump debate, it will resemble “Roast Battle. ” “They want to humiliate each other,” he said, adding that the funnier “one might win. ” | 1 |
Политика
Военные хакеры США проникли в энергосистему России, телекоммуникационные сети и системы командования Кремля и сделали их уязвимыми для кибератаки, передает NBC News со ссылкой на высокопоставленного чиновника из разведки и секретные документы.
Много раз твердили американцы: «Не трогайте, ребята, нашу избирательную систему! Не трогайте. Пусть она у нас и реликтовая, 200 лет назад сформированная, но наша родная, проверенная». Не послушались российские хакеры. Нет, чтобы пробовать на прочность Пентагон или НБА, на худой конец НАСА. Захотелось им покопаться во внутренних материалах одной из противоборствующих партий. Вряд ли они смогли вынести оттуда секреты государственной важности: все, что можно было, слил мировой общественности Джулиан Ассанж. А вот за избирательную систему обидно стало. Не поймет простой американский избиратель, если вдруг окажется, что в выборах приняли участие 146% населения страны, включая младенцев и пораженных в правах зэков, или что результаты в нескольких соседних городках Огайо, Кентукки и Индианы вдруг сойдутся до сотых и составят 62.2%.
Это мы, россияне, над их наивностью снисходительно посмеемся, а у них демократия!
Сначала осерчал их шоколадный президент и пригрозил распоясавшимся российским мальчишкам несколькими альтернативными ответами. Он поручил ЦРУ разработать кибероперацию против кремлевских властей. А затем построжился: вице-президент пообещал, что удар будет нанесен тогда, когда эффект от него будет наибольшим.
И что же мы имеем накануне часа Х в США?
Американских хакеров, ломанувших Кремль, не заинтересовало содержимое серверов КПРФ, ЛДПР и «Единой России». Да, и право, что там может быть, кроме нетленки её при жизни мумифицированных лидеров? Не мелочась, они заложили в кремлевские сети возможность единовременно «уронить» интернет и электроснабжение во всех крупных городах. А на закуску оставили электронные системы высшего командования и неограниченный доступ к сверхсекретной и личной переписке. В любой момент все это может быть придано огласке.
Уже представили себе? Имена и телефоны кремлевских пластических хирургов, база данных художественных гимнасток, фигуристок, всегда готовых подменить своих более успешных подруг, если они кому-то надоедят, список любимых марок спортивной одежды самых высокопоставленных особ, секреты любимого повара или тренера по дзюдо… Да мало ли что составляет в России государственную тайну. Смешные. Кто-то видел в руках у российского президента смартфон или сидящего его за компьютером? Вот так надо хранить государственные тайны. А они со взломами баз данных.
Источники | 0 |
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[11/3/16] The Kansas Board of Regents confirms all 10 of Heritage College’s locations, including those in southeast Wichita and Kansas City, Mo. are closed. The board or regents says the school is closed effective “immediately” and “indefinitely.”
Tuesday afternoon, Eyewitness News heard from a student at the college’s location on South Rock Road in Wichita, who was preparing to graduate.
The student says there was a note on the door of the school that they weren’t letting anyone in. The note read that the school went bankrupt, the student says. She says neither students nor staff received notice of the shutdown. Some learned of the closure by finding the notes, others heard from classmates.
“I actually got a text message from a classmate and then I called the school several times and couldn’t get an answer so I decided to come up here,” said Machelle Hatter, who went to Heritage.
Many students say they feel angry and confused.
“I don’t know where I’m going, I don’t know what’s going on with my loans, I don’t know what to do next,” said Stephanie Hermrack, who attended Heritage College.
Hermrack said now she and many others who attended Heritage are left with only a partial education and thousands of dollars in student loans.
“So I don‘t know if I owe the government $20,000 now even though I didn’t get a degree out of this or what,” added Joshua Anderson, another Heritage student. Post navigation Warning : array_key_exists() expects parameter 2 to be array, null given in /home/content/p3pnexwpnas07_data02/05/3222705/html/wp-content/plugins/widget-options/core/functions.widget.display.php on line 182 Warning : array_key_exists() expects parameter 2 to be array, null given in /home/content/p3pnexwpnas07_data02/05/3222705/html/wp-content/plugins/widget-options/core/functions.widget.display.php on line 182 Warning : array_key_exists() expects parameter 2 to be array, null given in /home/content/p3pnexwpnas07_data02/05/3222705/html/wp-content/plugins/widget-options/core/functions.widget.display.php on line 182 Warning : array_key_exists() expects parameter 2 to be array, null given in /home/content/p3pnexwpnas07_data02/05/3222705/html/wp-content/plugins/widget-options/core/functions.widget.display.php on line 182 RESOURCES | 0 |
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Zero Hedge The Fix Is In: NBC Affiliate Accidentally Posts Election Results A Week Early: Hillary Wins Presidency 42% to Trump’s 40% Mac Slavo Comments (46) Read by 12,991 people
NBC affiliate WRCB TV in Chattanooga, Tennessee has inadvertently posted election night results. The results page appears to be similar to what mainstream news networks display on election night, including Presidential and Congressional results, the popular vote count, electoral votes, and percentage of precincts reporting.
The page, a screen shot of which has been sourced from internet archive site The Wayback Machine , is posted below and shows totals for the upcoming Presidential race. It announces Hillary Clinton as the winner.
As Jim Stone notes, the page was pulled directly from the WorldNow.com content management platform utilized by major networks like NBC, CBS, ABC and Fox and appears to be a non-public staging area for news and election results.
The original page has since been reset. ( Click here for full size image )
Though the results information appears on an FTP server at WorldNow.com, media companies like NBC’s WRCB TV utilize the platform, also know as “Frankly,” to power their news content. This can be verified directly a the WRCB web site by scrolling to the very bottom of the page footer which notes that it is, “Powered By Frankly.”
In addition to national results, Jim Stone has identified another page at the WorldNow.com FTP server that appears to show the State-By-State Presidential election results. This page is also accessible in archive format at WayBack Machine with a line by line breakdown available at Stone’s website.
Of interest is that the State-By-State results indicate a Hillary Clinton win in states like Texas (42% to 40%), Florida (44% to 40%) and Pennsylvania (44% to 40%) which have all been identified as states Clinton must steal to win the election . Do these latest election “results” confirm that the fix is in and the vote is rigged? If so, then we are no longer looking at an election where our votes will count, but rather, a selection where the winner is determined by those who count the votes. Related: | 0 |
In a victory speech Sunday evening, Front National migration candidate Marine Le Pen called on patriots in France to support her against Emmanuel Macron, who she called the heir of unpopular French President Francois Hollande. [Ms Le Pen, who exit polls show finished second in the first round of the French presidential election, told a large crowd gathered in the north of France that the battle was now between supporters of globalism and those against. ”Ce n’est pas avec l’héritier de François #Hollande que cette alternance tant attendue viendra.” #Présidentielle2017, — Marine Le Pen (@MLP_officiel) April 23, 2017, Calling the first round projected result, which will see her face off against Emmanuel Macron, “historic” she thanked her supporters for bringing her to the second round which is set to take place on May 7th. Le Pen outlined her main priority as president as to “defend the French nation” emphasising her previous campaign rhetoric which focused on restoring order to a country plagued by Islamic extremist terrorism and riots in various Paris suburbs. The Front National leader hit out against the French political and media establishment, saying that the system had attempted to “choke political debate”. Her victory ensured that the debate could now happen, she said. Formidable soirée à : nous appelons ce soir à un grand rassemblement de tous les Français qui croient encore en la France ! pic. twitter. — David Rachline (@david_rachline) April 23, 2017, “What is at stake here is a wild type of globalisation endangering our country,” she said, claiming it is time for France to not just vote in establishment candidates, “who have done nothing” but bring in new policies and new faces into government. “It is time to release the French people of arrogant elites who want to dictate their conduct,” she added. Le Pen called on all French patriots to support her regardless of their background or what candidate they voted for in the first round, saying that “the survival of France” was at stake in the upcoming second round. ”Vive le Peuple ! Vive la République ! Vive la France !” #Présidentielle2017 #AuNomDuPeuple pic. twitter. — Marine Le Pen (@MLP_officiel) April 23, 2017, Finally, she invoked World War Two hero and former French President Charles De Gaulle saying, “the grandeur of the people, only proceeds from the people. ” Polls show that Le Pen may face an uphill battle against Macron on May 7th — all head to head polls show Macron with a comfortable lead. Le Pen has promised to not only restore order to French streets, which has earned her more support from police officers than any other candidate but also to hold a referendum on the membership of France in the European Union. | 1 |
November 6, 2016 @ 12:34 pm
The same in the EU. YOu now there are EU Elections.And everybody who have 2 Passports from EU can vote-but only 1 time is allowed.
But in TV the Leftwing Journalist DI LORENZO from the Socialdemocratic Newspaper DIE ZEIT-sayed that he voted 2 times.And what happened?The charge was stopped.
And this leftwing guy who always behave like he knews all sayed:In didnt know that it is forbidden to vote 2 times… | 0 |
Can Hillary Escape This Time? Posted on Home » Headlines » World News » Can Hillary Escape This Time?
The information that emerges from the Weiner laptop is going to BLOW PEOPLE’S MINDS…
From Dave Kranzler :
Stewart Dougherty presents the 2nd part of his disembowelment of the Clinton crime machine. The Weiner email bomb dropped in the middle of this. As it turns out, the Weiner lap-top mishap appears to a “Black Swan” of sorts that eluded Hillary’s tentacles of control. In the piece below, Stewart presents useful background knowledge and intellectual tools with which to help you analyze and interpret the next sequence of events before and after the election (assuming the election is not postponed).
The information that emerges from the Weiner laptop is going to blow people’s minds – John Titus, Best Evidence Productions, in an upcoming Shadow of Truth
Author’s Preface: We are far more interested in markets than politics. To us, free markets represent liberty in motion. But today, politics, and particularly the most corrupt political institution on earth, the Federal Reserve, have markets in a hammer-lock. At this point, we have to understand what is happening in politics in order to understand what is likely to happen in markets. We write a great deal about politics at this critical juncture in order to help you understand markets and achieve the financial freedom you desire and deserve.
Regarding the breaking Clinton-scandal developments, we believe that in addition to the 650,000 emails retrieved from the Abedin / Weiner computer which are going to show a level of corruption in this nation never before even imagined let alone proved, the FBI’s decision to re-open the investigation was related to the Bundy acquittals on October 27, 2016. We believe that government officials are looking up the barrel of a full-blown American revolution. Not the shooting kind, but rather something much worse for them: complete moral rejection of government and Establishment corruption by the PRODUCTIVE CLASS in America, which threatens to rapidly spread into and cripple the American economy just ahead of the holiday selling season.
The National Retail Federation has just reported that 25% of shoppers are waiting for the election outcome prior to deciding how much they are going to spend during the holidays, something the NRF has never seen before. If principled, productive people feel that this election was stolen from them by Clinton and Establishment corruption, they are going to shut down.
They are going to WITHDRAW THEIR FINANCIAL CONSENT from a rigged, dirty system that is looting them and destroying their futures. While the government can effectively deal with many kinds of protest, it cannot even begin to deal with a general economic boycott by the productive class, even if it is just at the margin. (All profits are at the margin.) The consequences of such a boycott upon general business activity; tax receipts at all levels from municipal to federal; the stock and bond markets; and the national mood, with its extraordinarily complex and critical interconnections and ramifications would be monumental, and perhaps beyond all American precedent.
Despite a multi-million dollar, taxpayer-funded Federal legal onslaught in the case against the Bundy’s and their co-defendants, the jurors re-confirmed something communicated throughout history. Namely, that while there are a very few things that universally disgust human beings, one of them is bullies. The people are not pleased, and the Establishment knows it is in trouble. Now on to our article.]
The Clinton Syndrome Curse: A Clinton – Obama Co-Presidency. (The Clinton Syndrome: Part 2)
In Part 1, we defined the Clinton Syndrome as a psychological condition in which voters develop a favorable attitude toward a political predator who deceives, disdains, swindles and abuses them. It is a variant of the Stockholm Syndrome, but much larger in scope and scale, as demonstrated by the fact that tens of millions of American voters currently exhibit the pathological condition. This Syndrome was identified by Inferential Analytics (IA), an accurate and reliable forecasting method we have developed and use. You can read a detailed explanation of the syndrome in our first article on the subject: “The Clinton Syndrome: The Establishment’s Weapon for National Conquest (Part 1)” LINK
In this article, Part 2, we delve deeper into what the 2016 presidential election is really all about, and outline the consequences that will occur should the Clinton Syndrome prevail on November 8 th . The Clinton Syndrome has resulted in a potentially deadly national disease which will wreak havoc if it spreads out of control at this time.
We regard as an existential threat to the United States the fact that tens of millions of American voters have no idea how deeply fraudulent the entire 2016 presidential campaign has been, from the very beginning. If Donald Trump had not appeared out of nowhere, this would never have been an election at all, but rather an orchestrated, planned enablement of the Clintons and their Establishment handlers to engage in unprecedented corruption, regime change and outright plunder.
If successful, this still-active effort to fraudulently inject the Clintons into the power seat will become a multi-trillion dollar gift to the Establishment elite who know exactly how to profit from Clinton graft and corruption; will destroy what is left of the American economy, which simply cannot sustain four more years of intense looting and fraud; and will result in the outright overthrow of the American form of governance by a deadly new political system that we call “crony communism (outlined in our article: Crony Communism: Hillary Clinton’s Game Plan for America. LINK
The people have been so confused and deceived by the multi-billion dollar avalanche of deliberately concocted lies and propaganda about this election that they don’t even know who is running for President on the Democrat ticket.
Hillary Clinton has both a co-presidential and a vice presidential running mate, neither of which is Tim Kaine, a corrupt political suck-up and hack who was selected precisely because he will do exactly what he is told, not matter how criminal or immoral.
Clinton’s co-presidential running mate is Barack Hussein Obama; her vice-presidential candidate is the United Nations. This is the Establishment’s Dream Team, cooked up to make the fastest possible progress toward their crony-communist and globalist overthrow of the United States. The Establishment realizes that the people are waking up fast to what is being done to them and their country. Therefore, they have put their corrupt machinations into high gear in order to beat the clock, which is ticking loudly.
When people say that a vote for Clinton means four more years of Obama, they have their arithmetic wrong. A Clinton victory means eight more years of Obama in the next four, and a total knock-out for the nation.
The Mainstream Media’s (MSM) deliberately false narrative is that Obama has been campaigning non-stop for Clinton because he wants to protect his “legacy,” and believes that Clinton will do this for him.
This is yet another of the “Big Lie” mind bombs that have been dropped onto the American people’s heads during this colossally fraudulent, dishonest and propagandistic Establishment onslaught to get Clinton elected.
This narrative is meant to suggest that Barrack Obama wants to retire, and then ride out the rest of his life looking upon his “legacy.”
There are two problems with this story. First, Obama’s legacy is already blowing up in his and the entire nation’s face, so there is nothing Clinton will be able to do to salvage it. Obamacare and the Iran Deal are just two examples among dozens of the collapse of Obama’s so-called legacy, which would much better be called a national damnation.
The second problem is that Obama is only 55 years old and has not given even ONE indication our model can detect that he actually wants or intends to retire. (Soros, one of his champions, is 86 years old and still wreaking havoc worldwide. These people never stop until the Reaper drops in.) In fact, what we see in Obama is the exact opposite: he demonstrates a strong desire not only to remain on the political stage, but to assume a larger presence upon it.
Speaking at a rally in Philadelphia on September 13, 2016 (while Hillary was at home recovering from “pneumonia”), Obama said, “It’s good to be back on the campaign trail.” He then said, “I really, really, REALLY want to elect Hillary Clinton.” (Please carefully consider that sentence, because it is a textbook example (although just one of hundreds over the years) of Obama’s pathological Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD). He did not say, “I really, really, REALLY want YOU [the people to whom he was speaking] to elect Hillary Clinton,” but rather, “I really, really, REALLY want to elect Hillary Clinton,” making the people’s national election all about himself. Comments such as this are extraordinarily important to our analysis, and their significance has been borne out time and again over our 15+ years of doing this work. Paradoxically, the smallest factors often have the greatest implications.
Later in the same speech, Obama boasted (our comments added within brackets): “More Americans are working [in part time, minimum wage jobs], more have [100% subsidized] health care, incomes are rising [for the establishment elite], poverty is falling [according to false, politically doctored numbers] and gas is $2.00 a gallon. Thanks, Obama!!!” In Obama’s narcissistically crippled mind, the entire United States economy is a function of one thing and one thing only: him. Narcissists in positions of power are extremely destructive (e.g. Obamacare), because they are completely out of touch with what is happening in the real, as opposed their self-flattering fantasy world. In any event, this kind of campaign bragging, swagger and grandiosity is not indicative of someone who plans to retire from politics in the next few weeks.
Obama’s clear desire to remain in the game makes him valuable to Clinton, while also making Clinton valuable to him. Intersecting motives are where deals get done. And a Clinton – Obama collaboration would be ideal for the Establishment. Obama has been the gift that keeps on giving to the elite, as they have raked in trillions from his presidency. They want as much of Obama as they can get, because he is a money machine. (For example, witness Obama’s continuing efforts to ram the TPP, an Establishment fraud against the people, down the nation’s throat. Obama does whatever the Establishment tells him to do, in the full knowledge his “Library” Slush Fund will be richly rewarded for his efforts, just as the Clinton Slush Fund has been enriched by more than $1.8 billion, with a “b,” for the Clinton sell-out of people to the elite.)
Obama is the most internationally-traveled president in the nation’s history, having made 51 international trips to 56 different countries during his two terms in office. It is as if he has been running for international office, and now we can see that he has been . His globetrotting has required strength, stamina and energy, the exact physical attributes that Clinton, who has been pictured requiring assistance to climb a short set of stairs, lacks. Given her health issues, Clinton cannot possibly perform on a global stage going forward; she will be lucky to successfully navigate the White House.
This presents a problem. For the Establishment agenda to be fully executed, Clinton needs international support, and ideally, that international mandates be imposed upon the United States. But she will not be capable of traveling internationally to seal the deals that must get done.
This is where Obama comes in. While he would never step “backwards” into a role such as, for example, Secretary of State (an ego-wounding demotion), his passion for continued political involvement would find an excellent home at the United Nations.
In this Inferential Analytics scenario, Hillary Clinton will get Obama placed in a high level United Nations position. The United States pays for roughly 25% of total United Nations annual budget, far more than any other nation, and still has clout even though more and more countries are turning their backs on America.
Other nations would support the idea of a senior role for Obama if it were made clear to them that his mission would be to continue the “fundamental transformation” of the United States that he promised during his 2008 campaign and has been conducting ever since. This “transformation” has done extreme damage to the United States, and while it has been a disaster for America, it has been good for the rest of the world. Finally, they see a means by which to bring the United States to heel. The idea of the further weakening of the United States will sound to them like a very good deal. The one assurance they will seek is that in exchange for giving Obama an important role at the U.N., Obama will get Clinton to agree not to incinerate the northern hemisphere in a nuclear war, at least not until they have finalized their preparations for it.
A Clinton – Obama co-presidency will be a double body-blow to the nation, with Clinton turning it into a corrupt, crony-communist Establishment lootocracy from within, and Obama destroying it from without.
Leveraging the United Nations, Clinton and Obama can effect two personal agendas they have long sought: gun control, and a multi-million person “open borders” invasion of America. The first agenda will disarm the people, which has been Job #1 in every communist takeover in history; the second will ensure that the “Last American Presidential Election” occurs on November 8, 2016. In the future, presidents and all other politicians and government agency heads will be appointed by the Establishment, exactly as happens in communist regimes. While there might be “show elections,” the outcomes will have been pre-determined at every level far in advance.
A Clinton – Obama co-presidency will also ensure that other Establishment objectives are met. These include the institution of carbon taxes (an enormous and unprecedented new revenue source and looting opportunity); the passage of the TPP (an Establishment bonanza); and the maximum-possible imposition of the New World Order regime change agenda upon the nations and their people.
While Obama could advance the Establishment’s aims in virtually any high level position at the U.N., a role that would make him particularly deadly at the outset would be Co-chair of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), joining current head Filippo Grandhi.
Obama could make his appointment a matter of smooth sailing by stating his belief that the United States is a large, wealthy, relatively under-populated nation that could rapidly absorb a large number of immigrants. By promising to tap into the country’s private wealth, Obama could warrant that all new immigrants would be fully covered by the country’s comprehensive welfare system upon arrival, which is exactly what happens today. This idea would be intoxicating to the new Secretary General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres, who was the former head of the UNHCR and is an avowed socialist.
The United Nations currently reports the existence of more than 60,000,000 displaced persons and refugees in the world. If the United States pledged to take in, say, 5,000,000 of them, senior U.N. officials would be delighted. What would they have to lose? Dealing with the integration and cost issues would be America’s problem, not theirs. The U.N. could pass a resolution, written by Obama in such a way as to make it convertible into an Executive Order by Clinton, mandating the acceptance of these refugees by the United States. Clinton would put up her hands and say, “I didn’t do it. The U.N. did it, and we must do our “fair share,” while also complying with international law and being decent and responsible international citizens.”
As we have pointed out in the past, the United States government is irredeemably bankrupt by any accounting definition one wishes to use. With $20,000,000,000,000.00 in on-the-books debt, another $10,000,000,000,000.00 in debt projected to be added over the next decade (it will be far greater than this, given current trends), and at the very minimum another $120,000,000,000,000.00 in unfunded debt and contingent liabilities, there is absolutely no way the government can ever pay its obligations. So you might wonder, how could the government possibly pay for an immigrant invasion of this magnitude?
The answer is, the government won’t pay for it; the people will. This is what crony communism is all about. It is estimated that today, there is roughly $70 trillion in private wealth in America. Assuming that half of it, or $35 trillion belongs to the cronies and is off-limits, this leaves $35 trillion that is available for expropriation and looting. While this is certainly not enough to fix America’s fiscal problems, not even close, it could fund 4 years’ worth of radical fiscal adventurism as well as crony communism regime change.
As Hillary Clinton has repeatedly said during this campaign, “We are going to go where the money is,” and if you don’t take that statement seriously, we believe you are making a very big mistake. She and top colleagues such as Sanders and Warren have said in plain English, at a high decibel level that they are coming for your money, and they are, because in their minds, you don’t deserve to have any. Just as Obama once famously said, in a rare, honest, off-script, non-tele-prompted moment, “If you have a business, you didn’t build that,” he and his fellow crony communists also believe, “If you have saved some after-tax money, you don’t deserve to have that.” To them, any savings you possess represent funds the government should have gotten its hands in the first tax cycle, but didn’t. They intend to rectify that error going forward.
We have outlined this theme to demonstrate that this election is about an agenda that very few people understand, because it has deliberately been withheld from them. In actuality, the voters have no idea what Clinton truly stands for, or what the Establishment agenda, which she fully believes in and will implement, really is. The stakes in this election are therefore greater than those of any other election in our nation’s history, in our view. This is why the Establishment has spent billions of dollars rigging it. They intend to collect trillions in plunder on the other side, but they can only do so if it goes their way. As we have already seen, they will stop at nothing to get what they want.
Some Implications of a Clinton – Obama Co-presidency:
Here is a snapshot of the forecast generated by IA in the event of a Clinton – Obama victory: The Clinton – Obama Co-presidential regime will be the most secretive and non-transparent presidency in U.S. history. Clinton will become invisible, just as she often has during the campaign, not just for health reasons, but because she will turn her back on everyday citizens, whom she disdains, once she gets the prize she has sought her entire life. Obama will make secret deals all over the world (think of the secret Iran cash payments and deal, and his behind-the-scenes agitating for TPP, but on a much larger scale, as illustrations). Every one of these deals will be a dagger in the nation’s back. The American people will never again know the truth about what actually goes on behind government doors, or about the corruption that infects the entire political and establishment system. The political class will never again allow itself to suffer Wikileaks-like exposure. Politics will shift to a CIA-like “need to know” model, where information is doled out selectively and in piece-parts. Only a very few at the top will know the overall agenda, and the full set of tactics being employed to achieve it. Anyone who compromises or exposes the system will simply be executed. (Seth Rich comes to mind.) Going forward, the people will know absolutely nothing about what is really happening in Washington, D.C., or about the D.C. / Wall Street and Establishment initiatives. Orwell’s prophecy, “1984,” which is already quite real, will become even more so. The United States will experience an accelerating Brain Drain. Forward-thinking people will realize that America’s slide into predatory crony-communism can and will never be reversed, and that it will be impossible for them and their loved ones to get ahead in such a corrupt, suffocating environment. (Imagine being scolded, lectured, insulted and talked down to on a regular basis by people like Clinton, Obama and Warren, because that is exactly what will happen.) Progressive countries will put out the welcome mat for hard-working, principled, skilled, entrepreneurial Americans. No one will want America’s whining, lazy, non-productive, “entitled” mooches. That’s just a fact. Virtually every nation anyone would actually want to move to for a better opportunity grades potential immigrants according to age, education, language proficiency, skills and likelihood to be productive. Prospects are disqualified if they do not earn a sufficient score. No sensible nation on earth wants to bring in do-nothings whose only capability is to leech off its producers. Productive Americans who remain in the country for their own reasons will quietly adopt a John Galt mindset, sidestepping the corruption and crony communist expropriation by shutting down, dropping out and fading off the radar screen. This will result in an immediate slow-down of business activity, which will ultimately lead to economic collapse. Given that all profits are at the margin, relatively small percentage declines in sales can entirely wipe out income. The John Galt effect will result in the collapse of the nation’s many Ponzi schemes, such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, pensions (government and private) and the biggest one of all, Government Debt. These schemes simply cannot be maintained in a dramatically slowing business environment, no matter how much private wealth is looted. Government will take draconian steps to shut down all non-government-sanctioned news and information outlets. Their prime target will be the Alternative Media, which will only be further empowered, and embraced by the people. A powerful Resistance movement will spread like wildfire. Nonetheless, people should fill their minds with as much truth as they possibly can right now, because it will become much harder and more expensive to find in the future. Today’s Alternative Media is the greatest gift any people in history have ever received, and people should leverage it as best they can while they can. A steady retreat by government officials and establishment elitists to their multi-trillions of dollars’ worth of taxpayer-funded bunkers will occur, as they seek to hide from the American people, who will be waking up by the additional tens of thousands every day. A Federal Reserve December rate hike has a 0% chance of happening if Clinton is elected; there is a 100% chance of a rate hike if Trump is elected. The Fed is a totally political organization, and they will do everything they can to punish the voters and scorch the economic earth if the people choose Trump over the Establishment agenda the Fed has been 100% behind. If Clinton wins, people will IMMEDIATELY be bombarded with MSM reports about the implications of the 2016 election upon the 2018 mid-term and 2020 general elections. This will be part of a full-scale effort to inject mass quantities of Hopium into the Trump supporters’ brains, and get them to focus not upon the rigged election of 2016, but on the “next” election where, they will falsely be told, their vote will “really count!” In the meantime, the Establishment will be doing everything necessary to ensure that the 2018 and 2020 “elections” are completely rigged, fraudulent and meaningless. A massive move into real money will begin, and this will be the subject of our next article. There are developments in this sphere that you must know about, and one of the most important Inferential Analytics themes we have ever examined was triggered on October 27, 2016. We will have a full description in the next week or so.
In conclusion, the 2016 election is an existential event for the United States. W believe that the situation is becoming so unstable that you have little time to do everything you can to prepare, and get your personal houses in order. We are writing to help as best we can, while we can.
Stewart Dougherty
Stewart Dougherty is the creator of Inferential Analytics, a forecasting method that applies to events proprietary, time-tested principles of human instinct, desire and action. In his view, forecasting methods not fundamentally based upon principles of human action are unlikely to be reliable over time. He is a graduate of Tufts University and Harvard Business School and has developed IA over a period of 15+ years.
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Former United States Department of State official Steve Pieczenik Steve Pieczenik: U.S. Intelligence Waging Coup Against Corrupt Clintons Jon Hall November 1, 2016
Rumors and allegations that Bill and Hillary Clinton belong to a high-level pedophile ring have surfaced on the Internet. Without much credence or proof behind the claims, I initially dismissed them. The rumors only persisted and grew and now Steve Pieczenik has now come forward with stunning claims that add fuel to this fire.
Pieczenik served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State under Henry Kissinger is well-versed in foreign policy, international crisis management, and psychological warfare. He also served under presidential administrations as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and George H.W. Bush’s White House. In other words Steve Pieczenik — with his proven history of experience — is the real deal. Pieczenik claims that the Clintons and their close associates have successfully pulled off a coup via corruption.
He explains that total corruption and co-option were the two strategies behind this coup. Pieczenik says Bill and Hillary Clinton co-opted many central facets of our government — the White House, the judiciary, the CIA, the FBI. As far as I’m concerned, this idea is well beyond some lunatic conspiracy theory but increasingly likely.
Attorney General Loretta Lynch is obviously in the pocket of the Clintons, intervening and obstructing FBI investigations into Hillary Clinton’s private home server and e-mails at every turn. James Comey, who was on the board of directors at HSBC bank, a bank that gave $81 million to the Clinton Foundation, is also the current head of the FBI. Pieczenik goes further to explain that the U.S. Intelligence community has started a counter-coup against the Clintons, providing information to Julian Assange and Wikileaks.
We can finally stop blaming Russians. Pieczenik states clearly that US intelligence offered data to Julian Assange. This counter-coup is working against Hillary Clinton and her campaign and seeks to indict major players in her alleged corrupt scheme. Steve Pieczenik ends the video and tells us “the second American revolution” is happening.
Pieczenik claims both Clintons are frequent travelers on the Lolita Express — billionaire Jeffrey Epstein’s private plane. The Lolita Express flies to Epstein’s private island where the elite duo can ‘have sex with minors’ says Pieczenik. He claims the NYPD has a record of the Clintons and close associates that could potentially implicate them in pedophilia.
Pieczenik tells that officials will charge Hillary Clinton with multiple crimes including obstruction of justice and other charges. He says that Bill Clinton may also suffer criminal charges. He explains the US Intelligence is aware of Clinton’s shady and illicit misdeeds and that these trips on the Lolita Express were supposedly frequent. The following two tabs change content below. Latest Posts Jon Hall Jon Hall is a reformed two-time Obama voter with a degree in Digital Media. He covers US politics, corruption, tech interests and more. Latest posts by Jon Hall ( see all ) | 0 |
WASHINGTON, DC — Vice President Mike Pence presided over the of the eighteenth United States Trade representative, Robert Lighthizer, on Monday in the White House Indian Treaty Room, declaring, “And with this ceremony, President Donald Trump’s cabinet is finally complete. ”[Pence acknowledged several of the about 50 guests in attendance, including Sen. Pat Roberts and Sen. Bob Dole, then stated, “To hear Bob Lighthizer tell it, he learned everything that he knows from Bob Dole, serving with him for nearly a in his Senate office. ” The vice president said with the appointment of Lighthizer, President Trump is keeping his promise to “fight for trade that puts America first. ” He called Lighthizer “one of the leading experts on trade in all of America. ” Pence detailed some of the new trade representative’s career. After working as a private practice lawyer, Lighthizer joined the Senate Committee on Finance, eventually taking on the role of chief counsel and staff director. In 1983, President Ronald Reagan appointed Lighthizer as deputy U. S. Trade representative. Pence continued: In this capacity, he directly contributed to the renewed growth and prosperity of that era by negotiating more than two dozen bilateral trade agreements with nations all across the wider world. For the past 30 years, Robert has represented the American businesses that are the beating heart of our economy as a trade litigator. From manufacturing to agriculture, to financial services, Robert Lighthizer has distinguished himself as a tireless defender of America’s workers and America’s future, and now he’ll be doing it for the United States of America. The vice president expressed the great confidence he and President Trump have in Lighthizer’s ability to help them “restore trade that is both free and fair,” which “benefits the American people above all else. ” Lighthizer thanked the vice president, Sen. Roberts, and Secretary Wilbur Ross. He then said to his mentor, “But mostly Sen. Dole, who I — when I had my hearing, I said — ‘I wouldn’t be here but for you.’ And he said, ‘No, no, no.’ I said, ‘People say that, but it’s, in fact, true this time. ’” He added, as a student of presidential history, when the dust settles, “The Trump administration will be ranked as one of the greatest in American history. ” Lighthizer expressed gratitude that he had been chosen to serve the president on the important issue of international trade. He added: I further believe that when my grandchildren, who are here today, talk to their grandchildren, they will say that President Trump permanently reversed the dangerous trajectory of American trade, put America first, made our farmers, ranchers, and workers richer and the country safer. And I hope I can make some small contribution to that accomplishment. Several members of Lighthizer’s family were in attendance for the ceremony, including children and grandchildren. Sen Pat Roberts, the Senate Agriculture Committee chairman, also attended and gave remarks ahead of the vice president. The Kansas senator said he spoke for farmers, ranchers, and people throughout rural and America who have been going through a rough patch these days. Roberts also acknowledged Dole and the 15 years he has served as mentor to his dear friend Lighthizer. Commerce Secretary Ross, Peter Navarro, and Kellyanne Conway were also in attendance. Dole and Pence stood beside Lighthizer as he signed his commission document. President Trump’s cabinet, including Lighthizer, is listed on the White House website. Follow Michelle Moons on Twitter @MichelleDiana. | 1 |
Supporters of President Hassan Rouhani of Iran have won more seats in parliamentary runoff elections, the Iranian state news media reported Saturday, but they failed to win enough of the 68 contested seats to secure a majority, limiting their ability to carry out significant political and social changes. The gains made by the moderates and reformists were not enough to decisively alter the balance of power in Iran, the president’s supporters acknowledged. They added that political clashes between their lawmakers and conservative were bound to increase. “Expect a Parliament with a slightly friendlier tone, but also many political crises,” said Farshad Ghorbanpour, a political analyst close to the government. After Friday’s runoff elections for races that were not decided in the first round of voting in February, the reformists and moderate supporters of Mr. Rouhani hold 122 seats in the Parliament, and the conservative have 84, the state media reported. Independents — who are likely to side with Iran’s conservative clerical leaders, particularly the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, on crucial issues — have 82 seats, according to the results announced by the state media. Results in the contests for two seats were not available late Saturday. Because there is no party system in Iran — all factions have to support the ideology of the Islamic republic — candidates for Parliament run as individuals. That means alliances can shift because those who are elected are not bound by the constraints of party affiliation when they vote. Mr. Rouhani had some disagreements with the departing Parliament, but they were minor compared with the open battles between his predecessor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and lawmakers, who impeached many of his ministers. Reformists and moderates are hoping that their increased influence will help Mr. Rouhani enact the modest political changes he has proposed, including fewer restraints on Internet use and more personal freedoms. Since he took office in 2013, he has faced resistance in Parliament, but even more opposition from unelected watchdog councils and the judiciary, which is dominated by conservatives. The judiciary and the police recently ordered 7, 000 undercover police officers to patrol the streets and enforce morality standards regarding the way many urban Iranians dress, which conservatives say is not Islamic enough. Mr. Rouhani complained about the move, but he lacks the legal authority to oppose it, his supporters say. Conservatives expect that many of the independent candidates will vote with them, one political analyst said. With no group controlling a majority, many decisions will be hotly contested. “There will be many, and intense, discussions,” said Hamidreza Taraghi, a political analyst close to Iran’s conservative leaders. “Making decisions will be more complicated. ” | 1 |
LAWRENCEBURG, Ind. — Donnie Gaddis picked the wrong county to sell 15 oxycodone pills to an undercover officer. If Mr. Gaddis had been caught 20 miles to the east, in Cincinnati, he would have received a maximum of six months in prison, court records show. In San Francisco or Brooklyn, he would probably have received drug treatment or probation, lawyers say. But Mr. Gaddis lived in Dearborn County, Ind. which sends more people to prison per capita than nearly any other county in the United States. After agreeing to a plea deal, he was sentenced to serve 12 years in prison. “Years? Holy Toledo — I’ve settled murders for a lot less than that,” said Philip Stephens, a public defender in Cincinnati. Dearborn County represents the new boom in American prisons: mostly white, rural and politically conservative. A bipartisan campaign to reduce mass incarceration has led to enormous declines in new inmates from big cities, cutting America’s prison population for the first time since the 1970s. From 2006 to 2014, annual prison admissions dropped 36 percent in Indianapolis 37 percent in Brooklyn 69 percent in Los Angeles County and 93 percent in San Francisco. But large parts of rural and suburban America — overwhelmed by the heroin epidemic and concerned about the safety of diverting people from prison — have gone the opposite direction. Prison admissions in counties with fewer than 100, 000 people have risen even as crime has fallen, according to a New York Times analysis, which offers a newly detailed look at the geography of American incarceration. Just a decade ago, people in rural, suburban and urban areas were all about equally likely to go to prison. But now people in small counties are about 50 percent more likely to go to prison than people in populous counties. The stark disparities in how counties punish crime show the limits of recent state and federal changes to reduce the number of inmates. Far from Washington and state capitals, county prosecutors and judges continue to wield great power over who goes to prison and for how long. And many of them have no interest in reducing the prison population. “I am proud of the fact that we send more people to jail than other counties,” Aaron Negangard, the elected prosecutor in Dearborn County, said last year. “That’s how we keep it safe here. ” He added in an interview: “My constituents are the people who decide whether I keep doing my job. The governor can’t make me. The legislature can’t make me. ” But many criminal justice experts say that the size of the disparities undercuts the basic promise of equal protection under the law. “Letting local prosecutors enforce state laws differently throws all notions of equality under the law out the window,” said Peter Wagner, executive director of the Prison Policy Initiative, which advocates reducing incarceration rates. “This data puts governors and legislative leaders on notice that if they want to put criminal justice reforms into effect, they need to look at how prosecutors use and abuse their discretion. ” The analysis is based on previously unpublished data from the Department of Justice on state prisons, which hold the vast majority of American inmates sentenced to a year or more. The divide does not appear to be driven by changes in crime, which fell in rural and urban areas at roughly equal rates, according to the F. B. I. Instead, it reflects growing disagreement about how harshly crime should be punished, especially drivers of the criminal justice system like theft, drugs, weapons and drunken driving. Cities have adopted a more lenient approach to drug offenses in particular, diverting many drug offenders to probation or treatment rather than to jail. Those choices have started to reverse — if only modestly — longstanding racial disparities in American prisons, where blacks and Hispanics are incarcerated at drastically higher rates than whites. The annual number of new black prison inmates fell by about 25 percent from 2006 to 2013, and the number of Hispanic inmates fell by about 30 percent, while the number of new white inmates fell by only about 8 percent, according to the most complete federal data. The number of black prisoners is still “shockingly high,” said Marc Mauer, executive director of the Sentencing Project. “Nonetheless, these numbers are encouraging. It suggests that this is not necessarily an intractable problem. ” But rural, mostly white and politically conservative counties have continued to send more drug offenders to prison, reflecting the changing geography of addiction. While crack cocaine addiction was centered in cities, opioid and meth addiction are ravaging small communities like those in Dearborn County, where 97 percent of the population is white. A collection of small, quiet towns near the Ohio River, Dearborn County does not look like a prison capital. Violent crime is rare. There are few empty storefronts. And local officials, flush with money brought in by a popular local casino, have built a convention center and a high school football field fit for a movie set. But the extraordinarily high incarceration rate here — about one in 10 adults is in prison, jail or probation — is driven less by crime and poverty than by a powerful prosecutor, judges and a growing heroin epidemic. Opioid addiction spread early here. Mr. Negangard, the prosecutor, has fought the heroin crisis by aggressively going after drug crimes. “If you’re not prosecuting, then you’re de facto legalizing it,” Mr. Negangard said. Mr. Negangard has faced few obstacles to getting more convictions. He supervises his own police force, an unusual arrangement that allows him to investigate and prosecute most of the county’s serious crime. The police go after even minor drug cases, often offering to dismiss drug possession charges in exchange for information on friends or family members who sell drugs. Probation officials are just as strict. Offenders released on probation are tested for drugs frequently, and hundreds of people who violate the terms of their probation have been sent to state prison in the past few years. By 2014, Dearborn County sentenced more people to prison than San Francisco or Westchester County, N. Y. which each have at least 13 times as many people. “It’s government run amok,” said Douglas A. Garner, a local criminal defense attorney. Lawmakers in Indiana, concerned about the rising cost of incarceration, enacted a law that reduced criminal penalties starting in 2014 — one of at least 40 states to approve measures to reduce incarceration in the past few years. The bill was signed into law by Gov. Mike Pence, now the Republican nominee. But the new rules, which Mr. Negangard fought, have done little to curb incarceration rates in Dearborn County. Mr. Negangard said the long sentences here are the envy of police officers in Cincinnati. If a suspect is willing to sell drugs in Dearborn County, the Cincinnati police will help steer the case here, where greater punishment is almost assured, he said. One Cincinnati man, Scott Huy, drove from Cincinnati to Dearborn County in 2013, enticed by a heroin deal set up by a police informer. Mr. Huy had already been convicted of drug trafficking twice in Ohio, for which he had served a total of five years in prison. After Mr. Huy sold seven grams of heroin to an undercover officer, he was sentenced to serve 35 years. Lawyers here have a term for when defendants like Mr. Huy realize the geographic disparity: “sticker shock. ” Defense lawyers outside Dearborn County respond with disbelief as well. “That is so far out of line with the crime itself and any common notion of decency,” Jeff Adachi, San Francisco’s public defender, said of Mr. Huy’s sentence. The rural resistance to lighter penalties goes beyond Indiana. Prosecutors in New York City have sharply cut incarceration rates in part by diverting drug offenders from prison after state changes encouraged paths to treatment. But in the rest of the state, prosecutors and judges continue to put drug offenders in prison at a steady flow. In Texas, a series of changes intended to cut the prison population led to large reductions in new prisoners from Houston and Austin. But the rest of the state has had only modest declines. Court systems and jails in many populated areas are overcrowded, putting pressure on judges to offer probation. A federal court ordered California to reduce chronic prison overcrowding in 2009, leading to the largest declines in admissions in the country. offenders are now released on probation or diverted to local jails. At the same time, cities tend to have more resources to fight addiction outside of jail and prison. In Cincinnati, most people who are caught with small quantities of drugs are charged with a crime but are diverted to drug court, where they are placed in an outpatient treatment program, said Mr. Stephens, the public defender. If the offender completes the program, the charge is dismissed. “People are trying to work with it here in Cincinnati so it doesn’t overwhelm the justice system,” Mr. Stephens said. In smaller counties, prisons are often the only response to a range of social ills, including drug abuse and mental illness. To handle the expanded caseload, Dearborn County officials spent $11. 5 million to double the size of the local jail and approved $11 million more to expand the county courthouse. But money for drug treatment is scarce. At least 225 of the 250 inmates in the Dearborn County jail have a drug addiction, estimated Jonathan L. Cleary, a county judge. But drug treatment programs can serve only about 40 of them. Mr. Negangard said he wished the county could find more money for drug treatment. But he said about half of all addicts in prison had a criminal and would keep committing crimes whether they got clean or not. “We can’t just let the bad guys go,” he said. | 1 |
WASHINGTON — Struggling to respond to Donald J. Trump’s victory, a group of shellshocked Democrats moved swiftly to endorse Representative Keith Ellison of Minnesota for chairman of the Democratic National Committee, hoping that he would be a fresh face for a party with a depleted bench. But after steadily adding endorsements from leading Democrats in his bid to take over the party, Mr. Ellison is encountering resistance from a formidable corner: the White House. In a sign of the discord gripping the party, President Obama’s loyalists, uneasy with the progressive Mr. Ellison, have begun casting about for an alternative, according to multiple Democratic officials close to the president. The battle pits the titans of the Democratic Party against one another, with Mr. Obama’s camp at odds with figures like Chuck Schumer, the new Senate Democratic leader, and Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts. Mr. Obama’s advisers, some of whom discussed the party leadership race at a White House meeting last week, have talked about whether Labor Secretary Thomas E. Perez and former Gov. Jennifer Granholm of Michigan would be willing to run for the post. Mr. Perez met with Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. last week and had lunch Tuesday in the White House Mess with Valerie Jarrett, Mr. Obama’s senior adviser, while also visiting with David Simas, Mr. Obama’s political director. Some in Mr. Obama’s circle were even holding out hope that Mr. Biden himself could be persuaded to step into the chairmanship as a unifying force for a party reeling after losing the presidency and making scant gains in the House and Senate. But Mr. Biden’s office said Tuesday that he was “not interested in being D. N. C. chair,” though he plans to “remain deeply involved in helping shape the direction of the Democratic Party moving forward. ” The tumultuous tenure of Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who was forced out as party leader in July, convinced a wide range of Democrats that whoever takes over the committee must make it their sole focus. “There’s too much at stake for us not to have somebody working in a capacity,” said Michael Blake, a New York assemblyman and veteran of both of Mr. Obama’s campaigns, who is considering a D. N. C. vice chairmanship. “This has to be your priority. ” But there are other reasons for the discomfort with Mr. Ellison that illustrate lingering divisions after a bruising presidential primary fight and a general election in which Hillary Clinton suffered deep losses among whites and could not match Mr. Obama’s support among young and nonwhite voters. Some Democrats, in Mr. Obama’s orbit and beyond, say that elevating Mr. Ellison would amount to handing the party to Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, Mrs. Clinton’s primary race opponent, and his liberal followers. Mr. Ellison was a backer of Mr. Sanders’s presidential campaign, and Mr. Sanders has been rallying support for Mr. Ellison’s D. N. C. bid. Already a polarizing figure among Democrats, he ignited new controversy this week by saying the party needed to “go beyond identity politics. ” “It’s not good enough for someone to say: ‘I’m a woman! Vote for me! ’” Mr. Sanders told students in Boston on Sunday, a comment widely seen as a criticism of Mrs. Clinton. “No, that’s not good enough. What we need is a woman who has the guts to stand up to Wall Street, to the insurance companies, to the drug companies, to the fossil fuel industry. ” This call for an brand of liberalism is what galvanized so many of his supporters, but his blunt language also served to remind some Democrats of the divisive primary race. There is little appetite for a replay of that fight in the D. N. C. race, which will be decided by members of the committee when they gather in February for their winter meeting. Some top Democrats had hoped to a contest by backing Mr. Ellison’s bid. Mr. Schumer, Ms. Warren and an array of House members and unions were lining up behind him even before he formally entered the race. But along with his inability to do the job full time and his links to Mr. Sanders, Mr. Ellison’s past criticism of Mr. Obama and praise for Louis Farrakhan, the Nation of Islam leader, worry some Democrats looking for a figure to lead the opposition to Mr. Trump. Mr. Ellison, a Muslim, defended Mr. Farrakhan in the 1990s, saying he was “not an ” and has positioned himself on the left flank of congressional Democrats on Israel. Jonathan Greenblatt, the head of the League, called Mr. Ellison “an important ally in the fight against ” but said he had taken positions on the conflict “on which we strongly differ and that concern us. ” “We hope that all candidates for this post will make clear where they stand on these issues, and that the Democratic National Committee will make a choice that affirms the longstanding bipartisan consensus on a strong U. S. relationship,” he said. Aides to Mr. Ellison were going to make him available for a telephone interview, but then declined when informed that he would be asked about his past comments on Mr. Farrakhan. They emailed a list of his links to the Jewish community and a statement that said, “Democrats need an organizer who will energize the across this country to build the party from the bottom up. ” A handful of state Democratic leaders have entered or are considering entering the race, and Howard Dean, the former Vermont governor and D. N. C. chairman, has also expressed interest. But it is Mr. Perez, a son of Dominican immigrants, whom many prominent Democrats would like to see enter the race, and who appears most willing to consider it. The A. F. L. . I. O. has been considering an endorsement of Mr. Ellison but delayed its decision, in part because organized labor has a good relationship with Mr. Perez. Mr. Perez called Richard L. Trumka, the president of the A. F. L. . I. O. to tell him he was seriously considering a run and to ask him to hold off on an endorsement, according to three Democratic officials familiar with the conversation. A spokesman for Mr. Obama declined to comment on the race and said the administration was neutral. But many in the president’s sphere think highly of Mr. Perez and Ms. Granholm. “He’s very connected to the experience of everyday people, and he has a connection to immigrant communities, as well,” David Axelrod, Mr. Obama’s longtime strategist, said of Mr. Perez, who is also mulling a run for governor in Maryland in 2018. “He comes to this with a lot of assets if he were to step forward. ” Mr. Perez and Mrs. Granholm, who both declined to discuss whether they intended to run, were early supporters of Mrs. Clinton’s campaign, which could turn the D. N. C. race into the proxy war some Democrats want to avoid. | 1 |
What hyperbole did you see in my post? Please be specific. I will wait for the list. You can't think of anything? Nothing? I didn't think so.
You should go back to AlterNet and MotherJones. You will have more Hillarybots there to console you. | 0 |
posted by Eddie To be normal is to be sick Krishnamurti once said that “it is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.” However, being born and brought up in such a society, most people can’t realize that it is sick, let alone that they are part of this sickness, just like fish, which, living in water, cannot realize that they are in water and part of the sea life. What does it mean to live a normal life? In the modern world, especially in the West, it means to be brainwashed at a very young age for over a decade by what we callschooling, to later on work as a wage slave for almost the rest of your life competing with others so as to merely survive, to mindlessly consume products without end because manipulative advertising convinced you to do so, while at the same time you unconsciously harm the planet we inhabit, to slowly poison your physical organism by feeding it with disease causing foods, to obey to the rules and believe in the dogmas handed down to you by those in authority, to be passive and uncreative, suppressing yourself in countless of ways, living in suffering yet doing nothing to overcome it. If you stop for a moment and think, you might realize that this kind of living is absolutely sick, yet it is accepted by almost everyone as healthy and is actually rewarded by society. In fact, those of us who are better at living this way are considered to be the most successful and respected, while those who are different, more sensitive and intelligent, desiring to create a different path in life, are ridiculed and looked down upon, being considered as stupid, weird, or even crazy. But what is the point of living the way most people live? Life can be lived so much better — we can live playfully, filled with laughter and love, with a desire to be creative, at peace with ourselves and others, savoring the gifts of existence. Unfortunately, only a few people manage to think outside the mental boxthat society has provided us with and escape from the matrix they’ve been unconsciously living in since they were born. Those are the rebellious ones who at some point in their lives felt the need to break free from the chains of tradition and help create a more beautiful world for all beings on earth. Rebelling against normalcy To rebel against normalcy is the most difficult thing you can do because you need the guts to be honest with yourself and others. To voice the truth in a world where almost everyone is living in lies is quite a risky thing to do. Speaking the truth means going against the current of tradition, which in turn means confronting the herd mentality and having the strength to keep on going your way regardless of the hardships you might face. There have been many people who had the courage to rebel against the normalcy of our sick society, but most of them couldn’t deal with the negative consequences their actions had on themselves. When nobody embraces your uniqueness and is able to understand you, and when everybody is trying to suppress you and help you to fit back into society, it is easy to lose courage, and not uncommon to experience immense psychological anguish. That’s why some of the greatest minds to have ever walked on earth were suffering from serious mental and emotional issues. And although now, after a long time since they passed away, they are recognized as geniuses, when they were alive they were seen by the majority as weirdos or lunatics. Once you realize how sick the way you and most people are living is and openly go against it, trying to reclaim your freedom and create your own path in life, you are bound to get in trouble. People, including family members and friends will do everything to put obstacles on your path with the intention to “help” you become normal again, exactly like they are. Instead of helping you to grow your wings of consciousness and leave behind what is burdening your psyche, they do their best to cut them off and make you crawl by their side so that you can suffer together. Dare to be crazy Your inner voice has for a very long time been telling you that life could be lived much more beautifully, and you should trust it because it’s right. And although it might be the most difficult thing to achieve, it is the only thing worth working for, because what is the point of living otherwise? What is the point of wasting your entire life just because others told you that’s how you are supposed to live? If you desire to live the way you want to live and not the way others expect you to live, you need to gather the courage in your heart to be a little crazy — crazy according to society’s standards. You need to distance yourself from the comfort of the herd and follow your calling, without caring what others think of you. You need to be willing to go through hardships and experience pain, without giving up trying to turn your dreams into reality. Remember: no matter how much pain you might experience by walking the path of non-conformity, the rewards of doing so far outweigh the disadvantages. Just like a mother experiences tremendous pain while giving birth, you are experiencing immense pain birthing a new kind of life. A life of beauty, of joy, of celebration. Pain goes hand in hand with change, so embrace it, allow it to guide you and let it be a catalyst for your inner metamorphosis. source: | 0 |
”Clearly this is an effort by the president to try to distract attention from our hearings today and tomorrow,” @MarkWarner says. pic. twitter. In an appearance Wednesday on “CBS This Morning,” Sen. Mark Warner ( ) accused President Donald Trump of attempting to distract from the upcoming Senate Intelligence Committee hearing that will include testimony from former FBI Director James Comey by nominating Christopher Wray as his choice to be the next director of the FBI. Despite having said Wray had a good reputation, Warner still maintained there was the possibility of wrongdoing that deserved focus. “[B]ut clearly this is an effort by the president to try to distract attention from our hearings today and our hearings tomorrow,” Warner said. “I think we’re going to see some pretty interesting things this morning. Because not only do we have reports that the president tried to intervene with FBI Director Comey and ask him to back off the investigation of General [Michael] Flynn, which would be totally inappropriate, but we also have reports that he also asked the Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats and the head of the NSA Adm. Mike Rogers to also back off or try to downplay the FBI investigation into Mr. Trump and his affiliates. ” Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor | 1 |
We Are Change
Oceti Sakowin, ND – As water protectors dig in for the winter near construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL), many rumors have been circulating about whether DAPL was in fact going to halt construction, as had been requested by the Department of Justice and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in September .
Many claims have been made that the Army Corps of Engineers, in negotiations with the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, had ordered a 30-day pause on DAPL construction. As we reported on Sunday , the Army Corps has in fact clarified that the 30-day halt was “ only a proposal ” and no work stoppage has been implemented.
On Monday, November 7th, Unicorn Riot documented active DAPL construction that could be seen from the main Oceti Sakowin encampment.
Morning of Monday November 7th, Dakota Access Pipeline excavators & bulldozers can be seen working from the Oceti Sakowin #NoDAPL camp. pic.twitter.com/ZVze32V4Ik
— Unicorn Riot (@UR_Ninja) November 7, 2016
The afternoon of November 8th, 2016, as the US Presidential election was well underway, Dakota Access, LLC released a statement denying recent claims from the Army Corps of Engineers that they had agreed to a slowdown in pipeline construction.
Dakota Access also claims a public statement made by the Army Corps was “ a mistake and the Army Corps intends to rescind it. ”
Dakota Access, LLC had previously made a statement announcing that eviction would take place of the Oceti Sakowin 1851 treaty camp which had been set up directly in the path of the pipeline.
The appearance of Dakota Access making public statements which accurately predicted police actions was denounced in an article by Sarah Lazare at Alternet as “ clear evidence ” of “ outrageous militarized police collusion with Big Oil. ”
The statement by Dakota Access, LLC goes on to claim that they have “ completed construction of the pipeline on each side of Lake Oahe ” and states that they are “ currently mobilizing horizontal drilling equipment to the drill box site. ”
Below you can see drone footage of Dakota Access machines building Hesco barriers , normally used to protect US military bases in war zones like Iraq or Afghanistan, to protect an area believed to be the drill box site from water protectors.
According to the release, Dakota Access expects to have fully mobilized all equipment needed to drill under the Missouri River within 2 weeks. Once all the equipment is in place at the construction site, Dakota Access plans to immediately commence horizontal drilling underneath the river.
Dakota Access, LLC closes their statement by admitting their company is still waiting on two construction permits from the Army Corps of Engineers to start the process of drilling underneath the Missouri River.
Below is the full public statement by Dakota Access, LLC.
The Dakota Access, LLC statement is reported to be in response to a comment given to Bloomberg News on Monday, in which an Army Corps of Engineers spokesman claimed that DAPL had agreed to slow down construction.
In an interview with NowThis on November 2nd, when asked about the Dakota Access Pipeline, President Barack Obama said “ we’re gonna let it play out for several more weeks. ”
Democratic Vice Presidential candidate Tim Kaine mentioned in a recent interview the possibility of re-routing the pipeline, which Dakota Access now seems to have repudiated as a possible outcome. DAPL spokeswoman Vicki Granado told the Guardian :
“ We are not aware that any consideration is being given to a reroute, and we remain confident we will receive our easement in a timely fashion. ” – Vicki Granado, DAPL spokesperson
Jan Hasselman, attorney for the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, reacted to DAPL’s plan to openly pursue drilling:
“ Starting construction without permits would be beyond the pale, even for Dakota Access. It is deeply irresponsible to keep putting investors’ money into this route when both the President and Senator Tim Kaine are openly discussing rerouting away from Lake Oahe. ” – Jan Hasselman, Attorney
Tuesday’s comments from Dakota Access appear intended to reassure investors who may be starting to have doubts about funding the pipeline project. It was reported earlier this week that Norweigan bank DNB was considering withdrawing its loan of $342.36 million to Energy Transfer Partners – almost 10 percent of the total funding for the pipeline.
DNB issued a statement on their website expressing concern:
“ DNB is concerned about how the situation surrounding the oil pipeline in North Dakota has developed. The bank will therefore use its position as lender to the project to encourage a more constructive process to find solutions to the conflict that has arisen. If these initiatives do not provide DNB with the necessary comfort, DNB will evaluate its further participation in the financing of the project. ” – DNB statement
On Tuesday, it was announced that the North Dakota Public Service Commission has proposed fining Dakota Access, LLC $15,000 for failing to properly notify state agencies of ancient cultural artifacts discovered at pipeline work sites. Dakota Access is alleged to have violated the terms of its permits by not properly announcing artifact discoveries, as well as by changing the pipeline route without seeking the permission of the Public Service Commission.
Unicorn Riot will continue to regularly provide direct updates about resistance to the Dakota Access Pipeline . Follow our media on Twitter , Facebook , and our website for more information surrounding the ongoing struggles against the Dakota Access Pipeline.
To support our volunteer-operated, horizontally-organized, non-profit media collective please consider a tax-deductible donation:
Unicorn Riot’s coverage of the anti-Dakota Access Pipeline struggle #NoDAPL from early summer 2016 to present:
March – May 2016
March 29th, “ Tribal Citizens Prepare to Blockade Bakken Oil Pipeline “. April 3rd, “ Tribal Citizens Build Camp in Path of Oil Pipeline “. May 5th, “ Sacred Stone Camp Resists Dakota Access Pipeline “. May 27th, “ Dakota Access Pipeline Blockade Enters 2nd Month “. August 2016
After covering the camp in the spring of 2016, Unicorn Riot returned to Standing Rock Reservation on Wednesday, August 10th, when Standing Rock tribal members and allies blocked the entrance to the Dakota Access Pipeline construction site . On Thursday, August 11th, a dozen or so people were arrested blocking the construction site entrances . Day 3, Friday, the fight to protect land & water intensified around the construction sites of the Dakota Access Pipeline . On the 4th day, the pipeline resistance encampment swelled and prepared for more action . Monday, August 15th, land defenders stormed the construction site halting construction , and the next day construction was halted as well . August 17th saw State Police begin checkpoints, roadblocks, and psyops as protesters united to defend water . August 24th, camps prepared as Federal injunction hearing looms . Camps Organize to Stay as Injunction Postponed . On August 31st, Non-Violent Direct Action Stopped DAPL Construction for Over 6 Hours . September 2016
September 6, indigenous water protectors swarmed Dakota Access Pipeline site, stopped work September 7, U?pa Nu?pa was interviewed about ongoing #noDAPL actions North Dakota highway patrol refused to release email correspondence with Energy Transfer Partners September 8, ND National Guard took over Dakota Access Pipeline checkpoints Friday, September 9, US Govt. overruled federal judge and requested pipeline construction halted at Lake Oahe Meanwhile, cultural activities continued at #NoDAPL camps despite more arrests/warrants September 13, 20 were arrested during #NoDAPL lockdown, including 2 Unicorn Riot journalists September 14, direct actions continued against Dakota Access Pipeline while legal repression intensified On September 16 a federal judge dissolved the unconstitutional temporary restraining order Dakota Access, LLC had filed against Stranding Rock tribal members September 19, as solidarity protests spread nationwide, the federal appeals court ordered construction temporarily stop on Dakota Access segment as Solidarity Protests Spread Nationwide September 21, #NoDAPL noise demo demanded freedom for jailed water protector Olowan Martinez September 22, water protectors disrupted the annual meeting of the North Dakota Petroleum Council September 25, water protectors planted trees on DAPL construction site In Iowa on September 26, a non-violent direct action from the Mississippi Stand camp stopped DAPL construction for the day September 26, a caravan of water protectors stopped work at DAPL site September 27, militarized police arrested 23 water protectors in DAPL work stoppage September 29, a #NoDAPL solidarity action took place at MN Enbridge office October 2016
October 3rd-4th saw the “Toxic Tour,” Governor debate disruption, and water protectors attend their court arraignment October 4, we learned North Dakota Governor Dalrymple’s email inbox was full of support for #NoDAPL October 5, Buffer Zone Holds as Caravans Continue to Disrupt DAPL – New Felony Charges October 7, 6 Arrested in Iowa #NoDAPL Action, Including Unicorn Riot Journalist October 8, Iowa Water Protectors Blockade DAPL Drill Site Twice in 24 Hours October 9, Federal Appeals Court Rules to Allow DAPL Construction October 10, 27 Arrests After Water Protectors Pray at DAPL Site on Indigenous People’s Day October 12, Lockdown Stops DAPL Construction in Iowa, 3 Arrested, Including Unicorn Riot Journalist October 14, Emails Show North Dakota Budget Bureaucracy Behind #NoDAPL Policing October 16, Direct Actions Continue to Stop DAPL Construction in Iowa and North Dakota October 17, Four Unicorn Riot Journalists Face Charges For Covering #NoDAPL October 17, Water Protectors Blockade Highway in Bismarck, Some Charges Dropped October 20, As DAPL Construction Advances, Water Protectors Continue Direct Action October 22, Water Protectors’ Prayer Walk Ends up with 127 Arrests, Including Unicorn Riot Journalist October 23, Law Enforcement Attack Private Drone as Water Protectors Erect Blockade & New Winter Camp October 24, Mississippi Stand Blockades Iowa DAPL Drill Waste Site, Drilling Stops October 25, Records Release: Morton County’s Law Enforcement Mutual Aid Assistance Agreement Hundreds Flood Minneapolis City Hall to Demand Local Sheriff Withdraw from North Dakota October 26, Tensions Rise as Pipeline Construction Nears #NoDAPL Blockade October 27, Police and Military Attack Oceti Sakowin Treaty Camp November 2016
November 1, #NoDAPL Solidarity Rally & Sit-In in Minneapolis Prods Sheriff into Removing Deputies November 1, DAPL Resistance Continues Despite Advancing Construction November 2, Police Attack Water Protectors Defending Sacred Sites November 5, DAPL Construction Nears US Army Corps Land While Still Lacking Permits November 6, Water Protectors Attempt to Reclaim Sacred Burial Site, Demonstrate in Cemetery
The post Dakota Access Announces Plan to Drill Under Missouri River Within Weeks appeared first on We Are Change .
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Breitbart Senior Editor MILO appeared on “Real Time With Bill Maher” tonight, as well as the show’s online segment, “Overtime,” where he compared The Dangerous Faggot to the late, renowned columnist and author Christopher Hitchens.[ “You have the potential to morph,” said Maher, “you remind me of like a young, gay, alive Christopher Hitchens but you gotta lose that kinda shit,” said Maher referencing MILO’s earlier jabs at other guests on the show. “What, telling them they’re stupid?” asked MILO. “They are being stupid!” MILO had previously appeared on “Real Time” where he and Bill Maher came to a point of strong agreement on the importance of free speech, and both expressed their exasperation with the hypersensitivity of modern liberals. Watch MILO’s appearance on Real Time at this link, and his appearance on Overtime below. MILO wears camouflage jeans by True Religion, $189. 99. Grey tank top by All Saints, $38. Flower embroidered bomber jacket by All Saints, $415. Leather high top sneakers with lion by Gucci, $695. Glasses by Givenchy, $350. Jewelry by Swarovski. Pearls: model’s own. | 1 |
For many parents with disabled children in public school systems, the lure of the private school voucher is strong. Vouchers for special needs students have been endorsed by the Trump administration, and they are often heavily promoted by state education departments and by private schools, which rely on them for tuition dollars. So for families that feel as if they are sinking amid academic struggles and behavioral meltdowns, they may seem like a life raft. And often they are. But there’s a catch. By accepting the vouchers, families may be unknowingly giving up their rights to the very help they were hoping to gain. The government is still footing the bill, but when students use vouchers to get into private school, they lose most of the protections of the federal Individuals With Disabilities Education Act. Many parents, among them Tamiko Walker, learn this the hard way. Only after her son, who has a speech and language disability, got a scholarship from the John M. McKay voucher program in Florida did she learn that he had forfeited most of his rights. “Once you take those McKay funds and you go to a private school, you’re no longer covered under IDEA — and I don’t understand why,” Ms. Walker said. In the meantime, public schools and states are able to transfer out children who put a big drain on their budgets, while some private schools end up with students they are not equipped to handle, sometimes asking them to leave. And none of this is against the rules. “The private schools are not breaking the law,” said Julie Weatherly, a lawyer who consults for school districts in Florida and other states. “The law provides no accountability measures. ” McKay is the largest of 10 such disability scholarship programs across the country. It serves over 30, 000 children who have special needs. At the Senate confirmation hearing for Betsy DeVos, President Trump’s education secretary, she cited research from the conservative Manhattan Institute, saying that “93 percent of the parents utilizing that voucher are very, very pleased with it. ” Legal experts say parents who use the vouchers are largely unaware that by participating in programs like McKay, they are waiving most of their children’s rights under IDEA, the landmark 1975 federal civil rights law. Depending on the voucher program, the rights being waived can include the right to a free education the right to the same level of services that a child would be eligible for in a public school the right to a or teacher and the right to a hearing to dispute disciplinary action against a child. It’s not just Florida. Private school choice programs in Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, Oklahoma, Mississippi, Tennessee and Wisconsin also require parents to waive all or most IDEA rights. In several other states, the law is silent on the disability rights of voucher students. The Walkers obtained a McKay voucher midway through their son’s year, when the Port St. Lucie school district told them it planned to remove the boy from general education classes and place him in a “cluster” classroom for students with emotional difficulties. (Ms. Walker, and another parent quoted in this article, asked that their children’s names not be published to protect their privacy.) “He has more potential than that,” Ms. Walker said. The family, which is black, has filed a federal lawsuit accusing the district of racial discrimination and other wrongdoing, for disciplining their son harshly and refusing to place him in a classroom. The McKay program has not provided a simple alternative for the Walkers. They used an $11, 000 voucher to enroll their son in the Achievers Institute of Science, Art and Technology. But they were caught unaware, they said, when the private school charged them an additional $2, 400 in fees. (Achievers Institute has since gone out of business.) The boy now uses his McKay voucher to attend the Virtual Schools of Excellence. He visits a local “learning center” two to three days a week, and the Port St. Lucie school district sends contractors there to provide him with speech and occupational therapy. He completes the rest of his instruction online, at home. “We’re happy to the point where he’s safe,” Ms. Walker said, but she regrets that her son no longer receives the same intensive instruction in social cues that he benefited from in public school, before he became a voucher student. Federal law requires public school districts to assess the needs of students enrolled in private schools. But districts are not obligated to provide those children with the same services they would receive in a public setting — even if a child’s private school tuition is taxpayer funded through a voucher. Private schools that participate in McKay are not required to demonstrate that they use any type of specialized curriculum to meet disabled children’s needs. Still, many private schools say they go beyond the letter of the law in an effort to serve McKay students. Trina Angelone, chief executive of the Virtual Schools of Excellence, said the school employed teachers in both its online program and its learning center, even though this is not required by law. A disabled child “going to a typical public school classroom is going to be with maybe 20 or 25 students, using textbooks, following along at the pace of the class,” she said. “In the virtual space,” she said, “the child is really getting attention, moving at their own pace. ” But ultimately, there is no guarantee that students will receive the same level of disability services in private schools that they were entitled to in public school, a limitation that parents may not fully understand. The state affidavit that parents sign in order to receive a McKay scholarship, for example, says nothing about forfeiting IDEA rights and services. It also does not explain that parents are responsible for any additional fees a private school may charge on top of a voucher, which can range from $5, 000 to $23, 000. The Florida Department of Education website provides other materials with more detail on the legal implications of participating in McKay, but the documents are difficult to find and decipher. documents are often similarly opaque. In a statement provided to The New York Times, the Port St. Lucie school district said, “Every effort is made to fully inform parents of the difference between public school services and private school services when a child utilizes a McKay Scholarship. ” The Florida Department of Education declined requests for a phone interview. In an email, a department spokeswoman said there had been “very few complaints on this issue. ” Robyn Rennick, a board member of the Coalition of McKay Scholarship Schools, said that private schools should be transparent with families about the services they provide but that the onus was on parents to ask detailed questions. “This is a buyer’s market,” she said. “You go and say, ‘I love your big building, but what is the expertise of your teachers? ’” Many McKay recipients, it appears, do eventually end up back in the public school system. The average length of time in the program is 3. 6 years, according to data provided to The Times by the Florida Department of Education, and 85 percent of McKay recipients are in elementary or middle school. Families who leave the program sometimes do so after moving residences. Other times they conclude that their child’s needs would be better met in a public school. Carla Donaldson of West Palm Beach used a McKay voucher to send her son Zachary, who has autism spectrum disorder, to a private school that specializes in serving students. “I needed a break from the fight” for adequate services in a public setting, she said. Zachary blossomed there socially, his mother said. “Unfortunately, he did pay the price academically,” she said. When Zachary returned to public school in eighth grade, he had to work to catch up. “There is no perfect school,” Ms. Donaldson said. Some families find they do not have a choice about whether to continue at a private school. Last year, Lisa Siegel was surprised to learn that she had few legal options after her seventh grader, who received a McKay scholarship, was suspended and then asked not to return to a religious school in Davie, Fla. near Fort Lauderdale, after a series of behavioral incidents. Ms. Siegel’s son is on the autism spectrum. In public schools, IDEA guarantees parents the right to a hearing in which they can seek to overturn a disciplinary action if the child’s misbehavior was a manifestation of a disability. That is not the case in a private school. “You don’t have much recourse,” said Ms. Siegel, whose son is now at a public school magnet program for marine sciences. “I never in a million years thought that in this private educational setting that my child would not be protected by state and federal law. ” | 1 |
GLASGOW — Russian athletes, under intense scrutiny after revelations of widespread doping, remain elusive to antidoping authorities, failing to provide updates on their whereabouts and training inside military areas that are inaccessible to officials, according to the global watchdog for sports doping. “There are still challenges when working within Russia,” Rob Koehler, the deputy director general of the World Agency, told dozens of government and sports officials on Sunday at the agency’s board meetings here. Mr. Koehler said that recent Russian cyberattacks on WADA made it difficult to trust the country, as did Russia’s refusal to admit to doping after WADA published an investigative report in July that invoked forensic proof of violations. Russia’s national antidoping agency and laboratory remain decertified as a result of the investigation, and its track and field athletes are still barred from international competition. Mr. Koehler also said that the Russian authorities had locked down the Moscow lab’s storage facilities, hindering global investigators’ progress in analyzing doping samples. “To cross the line is a criminal offense,” Mr. Koehler said of the security perimeter, requesting that it be lifted. Sunday’s meetings focused on the future, not just for Russia but also for the antidoping agency itself, which has faced criticism that it was slow to pursue tips from Russian for years. With momentum from a coordinated group of national governments that help fund WADA, the agency is now seeking a stronger role in unearthing antidoping violations and imposing discipline in response rather than deferring to sports organizations like the International Olympic Committee, which have financial interests in competitions. “It sounds like a very intriguing spy novel, the things this organization has to deal with recently,” said Edwin Moses, the American Olympic hurdler, who is on the WADA board. Minutes after Mr. Koehler’s report on the continuing obstacles in Russia, President Vladimir V. Putin’s antidoping appointee, Vitaly Smirnov, denied that the government had taken part in the elaborate cheating scheme that was detailed in the WADA report in July, weeks before the Rio de Janeiro Olympics. That report, which prompted WADA to urge the I. O. C. to bar Russia from the Rio Games, said that Russia’s internal intelligence service had helped breach doping controls at the 2014 Sochi Olympics. The report also said that Russia’s deputy sports minister had played a critical role in the effort to cover up doping. Mr. Smirnov, an former Soviet sports official, said that the deputy sports minister, Yuri D. Nagornykh, had been fired and had never represented the government. “If a certain person is a criminal doesn’t mean the whole country is,” he said. Vitaly Mutko, a former sports minister for Russia who was recently promoted to deputy prime minister, was accused in the WADA report — written by the Canadian lawyer Richard McLaren — of being complicit in athletic cheating. Mr. Koehler expressed frustration that Mr. Mutko had suggested that the McLaren report was fabricated and that people associated with creating it could be prosecuted. Mr. McLaren has continued his inquiry into which Russian athletes benefited from the state system he detailed in July. The results are expected on Dec. 9, WADA said Sunday. At WADA’s last board meeting, in May, the agency detailed the challenges that professionals had encountered in collecting doping samples in Russia, including athletes’ smuggling clean urine, offering bribes and climbing out of windows to escape when testers arrived at their doors. The difficulties have continued in recent months, Mr. Koehler said, noting that although there had been no reports of the most brazen behavior, people had been nonetheless uncooperative with the relatively few officials dispatched to cover the whole country. The number of drug tests conducted in Russia this year amounts to about 10 percent of the usual total. That percentage represents about 1, 660 tests throughout the country, including hundreds of failed attempts to track down athletes at specified locations. Still, WADA’s president, Craig Reedie, called the current situation “a lot better than it was” a few months ago and said that he was eager to restore the country to good standing. “They are the biggest country in the world, a very enthusiastic sporting country,” Reedie said, though some have suggested that breaches such as those that happened at the Winter Games in Sochi, Russia, may warrant further sanctions at the 2018 Winter Olympics. “Not only do they want to take part in competition, but they want to host them. ” It can be expensive and logistically burdensome to host major athletic events, and Russian cities regularly welcome numerous major competitions. The International Bobsleigh and Skeleton Federation is set to hold the sports’ world championships in Sochi early next year. At Sunday’s public meeting and in private meetings in preceding days, officials in Glasgow discussed WADA’s own plans for overhaul, outlining a framework for strengthening the agency’s investigative powers with six employees dedicated to intelligence work. The board approved a policy to protect as well as a proposal to empower WADA to discipline sports organizations and national delegations of athletes. Günter Younger, WADA’s new investigative chief and a former employee of the German criminal police and Interpol, emphasized that his work would be walled off within WADA and called the backbone of his operations. “Everyone is picking on Russia,” said Mr. Younger, who in 2015 took part in the first inquiry into doping there. He said that Russian had inspired reforms in the first place, adding, “It was Russians who took down this system. ” Mr. Younger said that other informants might be more willing to come forward if they knew WADA could then mete out punishments to doping violators, as it is now seeking to do. “You need power,” Mr. Younger said. “If you’re an advisory body, you come at me with a feather — if there’s no punishment, why should I talk to you?” How exactly to assign WADA such authority, and when that authority might take effect, is unclear. It could be achieved through amendments to the global antidoping code, which would be voted on by board members at a future meeting. The I. O. C. is a signatory to that code, and it is unclear if the organization would challenge such a change. Mr. Reedie, whose longstanding ties to the I. O. C. have raised concerns in the past, was to the WADA presidency on Sunday in an uncontested vote. Last summer, he told The New York Times that WADA was better suited to give advice than to play an active regulatory role. “We’re not going to turn to people and say, ‘These are the rules obey them,’” he said in June. He said on Sunday that he regretted those words and that his outlook had evolved. “People pretty much thought WADA was a service provider,” he said of the agency’s history. “I think as this whole business develops, now we may have a little more effective authority. ” Richard W. Pound, the founding president of WADA and a former I. O. C. executive, praised the prospect of WADA growing into a fiercer watchdog. “It’s a unique opportunity to make that step,” he said, “to go from cheerleader to regulator. ” | 1 |
CHICAGO — Chicago officials on Friday released hundreds of videos and other investigative materials from 101 cases in which police officers fired their weapons or otherwise used force against civilians — a remarkable turnaround for an administration that fought last year not to release a video showing an officer fatally shooting a teenager as he lay sprawled on the ground. Some of the Police Department’s critics hailed the release by Chicago’s Independent Police Review Authority, which investigates claims of misconduct and excessive force, as a watershed moment for a city whose police and political culture have a long history of secrecy and obfuscation. Chicago officials refused to release a video showing Officer Jason Van Dyke, who is white, shooting Laquan McDonald, who was black, 16 times, until a judge’s order forced the city to make it public last November, more than a year later. Officer Van Dyke was charged with murder. “This is a significant step towards transparency in Chicago,” said Craig B. Futterman, a University of Chicago law professor who directs a civil rights and police accountability project at the law school. “We’ve had decades of the code of silence and a lack of police accountability and institutional denial. The real test is, what does the new normal look like going forward?” But he noted that the city had changed its practices only under tremendous pressure, and argued that the change did not go far enough, still allowing too much time to pass before evidence is released. Police conduct and the city’s handling of it have become a political crisis for Chicago’s leaders, including Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who faced accusations that he did not want the McDonald video made public while he was in a fight. For months after the video’s release, he faced calls for his resignation. Mr. Emanuel appointed a task force to look into police practices, and dismissed the city’s police superintendent. Anita Alvarez, the state’s attorney for Cook County, the prosecutor who did not charge Officer Van Dyke until 13 months had passed and a judge had forced release of the video, lost a primary election in March. The Justice Department has begun an investigation into the Police Department, and the mayor’s task force issued a scathing report saying that racism had contributed to a long pattern of institutional failures by a department that had lost the trust of residents. Many of the videos released on Friday, recorded by police dashboard cameras, business surveillance cameras and bystanders’ cellphones, were blurry or grainy, or showed little that was of interest. But some contain stark images of the kind of violent, even deadly, encounters that critics of the Chicago Police Department say are all too common. In a case from 2012, surveillance video shows three men inside an electronics business, apparently robbing it, loading a minivan and then crashing it through a closed garage door, causing officers who were standing outside to leap out of the way. Officers can be seen shooting at the van — one ejects a spent magazine and reloads — killing one man, David Strong, 27, and wounding two others, Leland Dudley, 33, and John Givens, 32. The two survivors were later convicted of murder because Mr. Strong died during their commission of a felony they also sued the city for excessive force. In another 2012 case, witnesses called the police to report that a man had been hitting people, and multiple videos show the man, Ismael Jamison, shirtless and heavily muscled, pacing up and down a sidewalk, gesturing and grabbing a woman. Shortly after the police arrived, Mr. Jamison rushed at an officer, and the police shot him and shocked him with an electric stun weapon, struggling to subdue him even as he bled on the pavement. Mr. Jamison, 28, survived. In a 2014 video, officers shoot into a vehicle, wounding a man, Michael Cote, who was trying to get away. Videos from 2015 show an officer in plain clothes beating a man, Terrence Clarke, who was eating with his family in a restaurant, after Mr. Clarke complained about his meal, and then saying that Mr. Clarke had attacked him. relations between the Chicago police and residents, especially boiled over after the release of the McDonald video. Since then, the city has experienced a marked increase in bloodshed. Shootings are up by 50 percent for the year, with hundreds injured and more than 230 people dead. There are indications that the department is getting little cooperation from mistrustful citizens, making it harder to solve crimes on the streets. In a statement on Friday, Mr. Emanuel said the release of the new materials was “a major step forward to promote transparency, and it makes us one of the leading cities in America to guarantee timely public access to this breadth of information involving sensitive police incidents. ” But, he added, “We know there is a lot more work to do. ” Chicago’s chapter of the Fraternal Order of Police criticized the release of the material as “irresponsible,” saying the city took the action with little notice to union leaders. “It is sad when, with all the talk about transparency and communication, they decide to operate in this manner,” the union said in a statement. William Calloway, a Chicago activist who pushed for the release of the McDonald video, called Friday’s release “damage control” by a mayor who was “trying to appease the public. ” But he said the videos offered valuable evidence that excessive force was endemic, not isolated. Basileios J. Foutris, a Chicago civil rights lawyer, said Friday’s release was welcome, but that the review authority “should have been doing this a long time ago,” and seemed to still be withholding some written material. He represents the family of Quintonio LeGrier, a who was fatally shot in a confrontation with the police, in a lawsuit against the city. The 101 cases, 68 of which had video, date from 2011. They include every open investigation into shootings — whether anyone was hit or not. They also include every case in which a civilian was killed or seriously injured by an officer or in police custody, excluding wounds, according to officials on the review board, who are appointed by the mayor. It was not always clear what the videos were showing, in part because most have no sound. The videos of Mr. Jamison, for example, “left me with more questions than answers,” said Maria Haberfeld, a professor of police science at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, who analyzed the recordings. “There’s this guy who is walking around, very agitated,” she said. “And there’s suddenly a police officer holding a gun, pointing a gun at this individual — but I don’t see where he’s arrived from, if there was some type of exchange before. ” But the recordings offer a set of raw, if incomplete, looks at some of the confused, and dangerous moments that punctuate police work. In one video, an officer can be heard saying, “We got to get our story straight,” and later an officer says he is glad he “didn’t miss” a suspect, adding, “I was running when I shot him. ” But the action they are describing is unseen. Officials from the police review authority emphasized that they were not making any judgments about whether excessive force or other misconduct occurred in any of the cases, which are all still under investigation. And they did not single out any cases with the potential to become the most controversial. Instead, the officials emphasized their hope that disclosing the videos and other materials from the investigative files would make people in Chicago more confident in the procedures for investigating police misconduct. “These past few months, as the city has struggled with so many questions about policing and about police accountability, it has been clear that we all agree that there is a lack of trust, and that increased transparency is essential to rebuilding that trust,” said Sharon Fairley, the police review authority’s chief administrator. “Today represents an important first step toward that. ” | 1 |
Secret Service Rushes Donald Trump Offstage In Nevada As Paid Hillary Supporter With Gun Attacks 'Nobody said it was going to be easy for us,' Trump declared. 'But we will never be stopped. Never, never be stopped.''I want to thank the Secret Service. These guys are fantastic. They don't get enough credit. They don't get enough credit. They're amazing people.' 5, 2016 Secret Service agents rushed Donald trump offstage on Saturday evening during a rally in Reno, Nevada after they determined a protester in the audience with a gun posed a threat to the Republican presidential candidate. ‘Go! Go!’ they shouted as they whisked him away and a combination of local police and private security wrestled the suspect to the ground. Thousands of people scattered like a sea of bodies, screams rang out and authorities dragged the man away as he kicked and strained. Trump returned to the stage just five minutes later. ‘Nobody said it was going to be easy for us,’ Trump declared. ‘But we will never be stopped. Never, never be stopped.’ ‘I want to thank the Secret Service. These guys are fantastic. They don’t get enough credit. They don’t get enough credit. They’re amazing people.’ Secret Service Swarms in to Protect Donald Trump After Scare in Reno Trump had spotted the protester and claimed he was a Hillary Clinton supporter before asking security to ‘take him out.’ As he returned to his speech, Trump thanked a group of fans near the stage who had stepped in to subdue his would-be attacker. ‘You were amazing, fellas,’ he said. ‘I saw what you were doing. That’s a tough group of people right that… Nobody messes with our people, right?’ Trump then returned to his regular speech. JUST NOW: Donald Trump was just rushed off stage during his Nevada campaign rally: https://t.co/7fTJ3N3MQN pic.twitter.com/Hm7CRdFDTU
— CBS News (@CBSNews) November 6, 2016 Federal agents and tactical officers from Reno Police removed the man and placed him in a bathroom near a secure entrance where Trump’s motorcade and the press vehicles were staged. Two audience members told DailyMail.com that they had seen the man holding a firearm. That has not been confirmed by law enforcement. As police and good Samaritans took him down, the crowd surged backward and strained against the press section. ‘CNN sucks!’ one man yelled. ‘You people caused this!’ Audience members at the front of the crowd reportedly said they saw the man raise up a sign before a scuffle ensued. Saturday’s incident marked the second time Secret Service had to intervene to get Trump out of harm’s way. In March a man leaped over a police barricade during a Trump rally at an airport hangar in Dayton, Ohio. The man,Thomas Dimassimo, was charged with disorderly conduct and inciting panic, but he never reached the stage. Secret Service tackled him when he was still several yards away from the candidate. ‘I was ready for him, but it’s much easier if the cops do it, don’t we agree?’ Trump said at the time. ‘And to think I had such an easy life! What do I need this for, right?’ At this time a motive is not clear. source | 0 |
Friday on “CBS This Morning,” CBS News personality Bob Schieffer reacted President Donald Trump’s decision to fire FBI Director James Comey earlier this week. While many have made comparisons to Trump’s handling of Comey to Watergate, Schieffer said he saw “parallels” to the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy. “You know, there are many parallels Watergate,” Schieffer explained. “But I have to tell you, I think all the way back to the Kennedy assassination, to draw parallels. I was there, as you know. I have always felt that if Lee Harvey Oswald had been put on trial, a lot of these conspiracy theories that are still circulating today would have been put at rest then. It is absolutely imperative that Donald Trump finds a way to reassure the American people that these questions about Russia are not true if that is his version. He’s got to lay it all out and find ways not just to tweet out every morning the news is being made up by the news media. ” “He’s got to show some proof,” he continued. “He has got to give them some reason to believe that these things are not true. Frankly, unless he is able to do this, this is going to dog his presidency for the rest of his term. Look at what’s happened in Washington right now. It’s come to a complete stop while the country and Washington tries to digest the firing of James Comey. Putting this to rest is not going to be helped by firing the guy who was doing the investigation. Sending these people out to explain the inexplicable is not going to help. He’s making fools of his own staff. The White House appears to be in chaos. It is the original amateur hour as we look at it from the outside. He’s got a lot of work to do, and so far what he has done has not helped in my view. ” Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor | 1 |
A sobering new Security Council ( SC ) analytical report on the US presidential election states that a new American Revolution has begun which today’s popular vote is just the beginning of; and that could fully last up to an entire decade, especially if this election is stolen from Donald Trump. [Note: Some words and/or phrases appearing in quotes in this report are English language approximations of Russian words/phrases having no exact counterpart.]
According to this report, Federation intelligence analysts in their “deciphering/uncovering” what the current US presidential election is really all about have heavily relied on “outliers” [a thing situated away or detached from the main body or system] such as artificial intelligence ( AI ) models, social media trends and psychological analysis of the American electorate.
This report notes that the Security Councils use of these “outliers” to both understand and explain what is occurring during this US presidential election provides the only proven scientific evidence of what is occurring as the so called polling data used by the American propaganda media has been proven to be nothing more than a manipulation device used to keep people from voting for or supporting the anti-establishment candidate Donald Trump.
Examples of this being true, this report explains, lie in too many examples to fully cite—but includes the once respected Monmouth University poll found manipulating data to favor Hillary Clinton , news networks NBC and CBS found manipulating polling data to show Hillary Clinton leading Donald Trump when she was actually losing , and CNN manipulating their poll data to favor Hillary Clinton too .
Unlike manipulated polling data showing Hillary Clinton will win this election, however, this report continues, the objective and independent scientific “outliers” used by Security Council research analysts show not only Donald Trump winning—but winning in a landslide victory.
Evidence proving this assertion of a Donald Trump US presidential win, this report notes, lies first with artificial intelligence analysis—that includes the MogIA supercomputer showing Trump winning in landslide and showing he is more popular than President Obama , and a just released AI computer simulation showing Trump winning with 289 electoral votes compared to Clinton’s 249 .
Social media trend lines in this election, likewise, proves a Donald Trump landslide win in this election, this report continues, as his Facebook-Twitter-Instagram-YouTube “presence” dwarfs Hillary Clinton’s by a staggering 74 million —and that is further validated by the over 700,000 Americans who have come to his campaign rallies, as opposed to the barely 60,000 that have attended Hillary Clinton’s .
Most fascinating though of the “outliers” used in this Security Council report is the psychological analysis of the American electorate conducted by a virtually unknown US political project called “ We Need Smith ”—whose scientifically conducted studies shockingly proved that anyone from a liberal Democrat, to a conservative Republican was able to win the US presidency as long as they promised to destroy the corrupt political system currently ruling America .
The “We Need Smith” project, this report explains, is named after a popular US Great Depression era movie called Mr. Smith Goes To Washington about a newly appointed United States Senator who fights against a corrupt political system—and that during this present US presidential election only Donald Trump and US Senator Bernie Sanders fit the mold of.
Critical to note about the “We Need Smith” project too, this report continues, is that it was co-founded by the legendary American pollster Patrick Caddell —who almost singlehandedly was responsible for putting President Jimmy Carter in office in 1976, but also presided over Carter’s unprecedented defeat in 1980 at the hands of the US establishments most hated candidate Ronald Reagan.
Seeking to understand how President Carter could go from victory to defeat in just 4 years, this report details, Patrick Caddell spent the past nearly 4 decades examining it—and coming to the scientific conclusion that the conventional wisdom that America is absolutely divided into warring tribes is simply not true, they are all just tired of being lied to .
In fact, this report continues, Caddell’s research proved that the American political battleground is no longer over ideology but instead is all about insurgency—and with a staggering 84% of the American public believing that the elites live by a different set of rules and laws than ordinary people do , anyone running against them is assured victory.
Interestingly to note too, this report says, is Caddell’s scientific analyses showing that the hatred of the American people towards their elites comes from both the left and right —and as evidenced by the equal explosive political movements known as Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party insurgencies .
This report grimly concludes, however, with a warning that Soviet Communist leader Joseph Stalin’s attributed statement—“ Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything. ”—may, indeed, be active in the present US presidential election after newly released secret documents revealed that Hillary Clinton’s main supporter, multi-billionaire George Soros, has not only been manipulating the entire American election system , but one of his companies is, also, providing vote county software to 16 States ( they’ve since denied )—and that should Donald Trump have this election stolen from him the people of that nation will most surely revolt.
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While the protest movement plotting to disrupt Donald Trump’s inauguration is largely attempting to portray itself as grassroots, in actuality professional activists are leading the charge. [A main protest coalition group calls itself DisruptJ20. The organization’s website does not say much about who is behind the group. DisruptJ20 “rejects all forms of domination and oppression, particularly those based on racism, poverty, gender and sexuality, organizes by consensus, and embraces a diversity of tactics,” the site reads. Claiming it stands for the vast majority of Americans, the group calls itself the “start of the resistance. We must take to the streets and protest, blockade, disrupt, intervene, sit in, walk out, rise up, and make more noise and good trouble than the establishment can bear. The parade must be stopped. ” DisruptJ20 is planning a slew of actions aimed, as the group relates, at “disrupting the ceremonies. ” According to the website, those actions include “spontaneous, unpermitted events,” an “unpermitted, anticapitalist march,” civil disobedience and disruption plans. Lacy MacAuley has been one of the main public faces of DisruptJ20, conducting numerous interviews with the news media as an activist with the group. Her contact details are listed on DisruptJ20’s website. From 2011 until the end of 2013, MacCauley, who turned down a Breitbart News interview request, served as a media activist at the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) which has received financing from George Soros’s Open Society Institute. IPS regularly partners with the Center for American Progress to produce joint documents and reports on progressive issues. CAP was founded by John Podesta, the former chairman of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. Podesta previously served as a counselor for President Obama’s White House and chief of staff to President Bill Clinton. IPS and CAP previously released a “Unified Security Budget,” a list of defense spending recommendations that were partially adapted by the Obama administration. MacAuley’s IPS bio evidences her ties to professional leftist groups, including the controversial, now defunct Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) Project Vote, and United for Peace and Justice. Her IPS bio reads: Lacy came to IPS after doing communications for a variety of progressive organizations through the progressive PR firm Massey Media LLC and as a single contractor. She has done media relations work with groups such as Project Vote and ACORN, United for Peace and Justice, Jubilee USA, Mountain Justice Summer, the IMF Resistance Network, and the Solidarity Center (international affiliate of the ). The only other contact listed on DisruptJ20’s website is for organizer Legba Carrefour. Speaking to the Boston Herald, Carrefour made clear DisruptJ20’s intention is to cause “chaos” at the inauguration. “If the headline (on Jan. 21) is ‘Donald Trump inaugurated amid complete chaos and a cluster (expletive),’ then we won,” Carrefour said. “A lot of us are people who could be considered anarchists. None of us have respect for the office or the man. ” On his Twitter account, Carrefour describes himself as a “rather glam anarchist who lives, writes, and organizes a metric f*ckton of protests in Washington, DC. ” Another protest organizer has been identified as Scott Green, a leader with the D. C. Coalition. Green was captured allegedly plotting inauguration hijinks in an undercover video released yesterday by Project Veritas. “I was thinking of things that would ruin their evening, ruin their outfits and otherwise make it impossible to continue with their plans. So they get nothing accomplished,” Green says in the video. Green and his group were involved in violent protests in Sacramento in June. Local Fox40 reported: “I would use the word force. and other fascists don’t back down, they can, and they ought to be made to back down,” said Scott Green, a supporter of the Action group, also known as Antifa. Green, who used an alias while speaking to FOX40 for safety, did not attend the protest, but he says he has been present at similar ones that ended violently. Antifa itself isn’t new, but is an offshoot of the group Action, which started in the late ’80s in Minneapolis. Anther activist caught allegedly plotting against the inauguration in the Project Veritas video is Luke Kuhn. “If you had a pint of butyric acid, I don’t care how big the building is, it is closing,” Kuhn says in the video during a conversation about setting off a chemical concoction to cause the evacuation of one of the planned inauguration balls. One Luke Kuhn protested President Bush’s inaugural in 2001 and was quoted at the time in the Baltimore Sun as a “veteran protester. ” Kuhn told the newspaper about his plans to bypass police checkpoints at Bush’s inauguration that year. “If people pass through the checkpoints and the police take their signs, the demonstrators will be made ineffective,” he said. “What I encourage people to do … have 30, 000 people march to one of the checkpoints and demand to get through. ” In February 2006, Kuhn led a at a Minuteman Project rally on Capitol Hill against the U. S. guest worker program. Activist Dylan Petrohilos was also filmed by Project Veritas allegedly participating in the DisruptJ20 planning meeting. He doubles as a digital journalist for ThinkProgress, which is a media project of the Center for American Progress. Aaron Klein is Breitbart’s Jerusalem bureau chief and senior investigative reporter. He is a New York Times bestselling author and hosts the popular weekend talk radio program, “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio. ” Follow him on Twitter @AaronKleinShow. Follow him on Facebook. With research by Brenda J. Elliott. | 1 |
November 7, 2016
Today the world awaits the results of a record-breaking American vote against the worst Not President of the United States (NPOTUS) in history, instead electing by default someone it is already ashamed of. In the past twenty-four hours, the two front-runners have finally ceased in their last-ditch attempts to sway swing voters to detest them less than the other contemptible candidate.
The UK has recently emerged from a similar vote on the basis of limited information on two outcomes where the consequences were indeterminate and the candidates literally lied for Britain. Most voters voted for the thing they least understood because the consequences of the other thing sounded dire. The politicians then found themselves in the invidious position of defending and implementing the thing they really didn’t vote for, or would not have given an ounce of integrity.
Sympathetic British voters have been sending advice and best wishes to their American counterparts via social media. Tristram Hopgood, a civil servant from Winchester gave the least-twattish words of advice:
“Ideally, one would avoid having a massive, bungling-man child with ridiculous yellow hair and no concept of poverty or morality anywhere near the process. If this is unavoidable, at least never allow him to act unsupervised and offer him a pretend steering-wheel on the family car and hope he is delighted with that.
If you end up voting in a scary female super-villain who makes her shoes and cloak from the skins of puppies, it is best to dig a big hole and hide in it until the financial melt-down blows over. It should be noted that the lady in question is likely to show an unhealthy interest in all things nuclear within twenty-four hours of gaining office, so best dig that hole good and deep.”
Media outlets world-wide have had an unexpectedly easy time of it preparing the front pages for the next day, with headlines reading: “America, what HAVE you done?”, regardless of the outcome. Squudge Squudge World News 0 | 0 |
Home » Headlines » World News » Breaking: Anthony Weiner Cooperating With FBI Investigation
Fox News reported moments ago that Anthony Weiner is cooperating with the FBI investigation. Implications? The FBI no longer needs a search warrant to examine the contents of Weiner’s laptop seized in the investigation.
As intelligence agency whisperings have been suggesting for days, We suspect there must be a SMOKING GUN on Weiner’s laptop for the FBI to be forced into reopening the investigation.
For if FBI Director Comey REALLY wanted to conduct a complete investigation including Hillary’s thousands of bleached emails, he would simply contact the NSA and request the results of an X-Keyscore search for the results of the email address [email protected]
The fact that this never happened (despite the fact that the FBI and DOJ assuredly knows of this capability and uses it in the investigation of suspects NOT named Hillary Clinton) indicates to us that the FBI has been forced into this action due to an imminent criminal bombshell regarding Hillary’s emails, likely from an intelligence agency insider. | 0 |
Tuesday, 1 November 2016 Back in those days, Bill would do anything to get away from Hillary's watchful eyes.
Gross, Nebraska From the campaign trail, Trump delivered the news that he said has recently been discovered by historians hired by the Trump organization, that Bill Clinton was, in fact, Jack the Ripper!
"We have learned of some documents that will irretrievably prove that, while he was President of the United States, Bill Clinton used a prototype of a time machine invented by a consortium of Linus Pauling, Stephen Hawking, and Brian Mays in the 1990s to go back to the 18th Century, in the Whitechapel area of London, to commit the Jack the Ripper murders.
"In fact, when we submit the proof, I think you'll all agree that it couldn't be anyone else!" trumpeted Trump. Make Al N.'s | 0 |
This post was originally published on this site By Jeremiah Johnson Ready Nutrition November 3, 2016
ReadyNutrition Guys and Gals, “Old Man Winter” is starting to rear his ugly head. Yeah, so what? So there is a difference this year on three fronts. The first has to do with the weather itself, and the second is the situation in the U.S. and the world. Throughout history winter has been (at times) so severe as to cause large numbers of deaths and great hardships. Throughout history warfare has been conducted during the winter months after the harvest has been taken in. Between you and I, the harvest is being taken in, and the whole world has been on the brink of war for quite some time. The third front: in the U.S., with the election.
Weather, War, and Domestic Issues Could be a Recipe for Disaster
Let’s address the weather portion first. Think Progress posted an article on the polar vortex shift that will affect our winter considerably. The polar vortex is usually “confined” to an area around the North Pole. It is a gigantic, constantly-moving system of air that is circulating and swirling. As the site mentioned, the last polar vortex shift affected more than 200 million people in 2014. I can attest to the fact that I was one of them: in January of 2014, it was -26 Fahrenheit outside of my cabin, and never rose above -10 Fahrenheit for almost the entire month.
From the perspective of a global war, the Ukrainian-Russian situation is intensifying with the Ukrainian Army moving troops and equipment into Eastern Ukraine for operations against the separatists. As we speak, a Russian fleet is sailing toward Syria. The fighting in Syria between Assad’s forces and the Russian army and the Islamic terrorists is burning fiercely. The U.S. and Russia are facing off toward a nuclear war. North Korea continues to test missiles and threatens an EMP (Electromagnetic Pulse) and/or nuclear attack on the U.S. about once a week.
That “third front” of the domestic situation in the U.S…. believe it or not, here is the highest potential for something bad to occur. Such is because Obama will think nothing of enacting Martial Law with either the advent of civil unrest and rioting, and/or a nuclear war. The volatility and unpredictability of the situation can be the undoing of the entire country. | 0 |
The two masked killers burst through a door and, without saying a word, swept the conference room with semiautomatic rifle fire, spraying more than 100 rounds before they fled, just two or three minutes later. A new report chronicles in vivid detail the Dec. 2 terrorist attack in San Bernardino, Calif. where Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, killed 14 people and wounded 24 others. The couple pledged allegiance to the Islamic State, committed the rampage and died hours later in a wild shootout with the police, when Mr. Farook was shot 25 times and Ms. Malik was hit 13 times. The report contains the first official account of how the killers were identified and tracked down, with a handful of officers playing crucial roles. And it reveals a wealth of specifics that had not been made public before, including the number of gunshots, and the horrors that officers and victims encountered. The scene that police officers found minutes after the massacre overwhelmed the senses: dozens of maimed or dead bodies, spattered and pooling blood, the haze and smell of gunfire, a shattered pipe pouring water from the ceiling, a wailing alarm. And wounded victims pleading for help, clutching at officers whose first priority was to find the attackers. The report was produced by the Police Foundation, a policy study group in Washington, with help from the Justice Department and local law enforcement agencies the authors interviewed more than 200 people, from police chiefs to survivors. After The New York Times obtained a draft version and reported on its contents, the Justice Department on Friday released the final document. Some details changed — including the number of times the killers were shot, how many shots they fired and how their vehicle was traced — but the overall picture was unaltered. Three men tried to stop the slaughter, rushing Mr. Farook, but he shot all three, the earlier version of the report said. It did not say whether the men survived. The anecdote was left out of the final report, but a Justice Department official confirmed that it was correct. The report shows how officers from multiple agencies handled a rapidly unfolding crisis, making decisions on the fly, often with little coordination or direction. The results were quick, sometimes heroic responses that may have saved lives but also created confusion and mistakes, though none proved fatal. Perhaps most disturbing, more than six hours passed before officers searched a bag the killers had left at the scene of the shooting. Inside were three pipe bombs. The victims were familiar with the site of the massacre, a conference room at the Inland Regional Center where about 80 employees of the San Bernardino County Department of Public Health were attending a training session. They had met there before — in fact, many of them had attended training in that same room a year earlier. Mr. Farook, 28, was born in the United States to parents from Pakistan. Ms. Malik, 29, was born in Pakistan but had lived much of her life in Saudi Arabia. After they met and married in 2014 in Saudi Arabia, she moved to the United States, obtained legal residence and gave birth to a daughter. Mr. Farook, a food inspector whose colleagues never suspected him of radicalism, put the bag with the bombs in the room and left. He and his wife returned about half an hour later, shortly before 11 a. m. masked and clad in black, armed with rifles — a civilian variant of the military rifle — and semiautomatic pistols. Mr. Farook’s rifle had been modified in a failed attempt to make it fully automatic. The first people killed were two men sitting outside along the walkway to the conference room. One was shot while eating at a picnic table the other was found with his cellphone still in his hand. The couple then entered the conference room and opened fire, calmly emptying and reloading their rifles. A county official quoted in the draft version of the report said he thought at first that it was “the most glorified training I had ever seen,” adding, “probably on the second or third clip, it finally clicked that this wasn’t an exercise. ” Some people ran through the far door, deeper into the building. Others ducked under tables or hid in bathrooms, closets and cupboards. One woman dashed through the door the attackers had entered, but they shot her dead as she fled. A bullet ripped through a wall and wounded a woman in another room. One woman quoted in the earlier version of the report said that as she lay wounded, a female who had been shot in the head asked her to call her mother to say goodbye. She tried to comfort the other woman, saying she was all right. “‘I’m not, I’m bleeding from the mouth,’ the colleague said before closing her eyes for good,” the report said. Within six minutes of the first 911 call, San Bernardino officers reached the center — not a team, just the scattered few who arrived fastest. One was riding in a car driven by a trainee when the call came, he took the wheel, sped to the scene, grabbed his shotgun and helmet, and told the trainee to hide. Thinking the attackers were still present, the first four officers entered the south side of the conference room. They followed their training, arranging themselves like the points of a diamond. They stuck to the guideline “locate, isolate, evacuate,” meaning find and neutralize the threat before helping victims. Officers from the county Probation Department quickly arrived and set up a triage area for the wounded. “The terror in their eyes was unbelievable it was scarier than the wounds,” a probation sergeant said. The draft version of the report quoted another sergeant describing a woman with “a hole in her leg that was the size of a cereal bowl,” who said, with a blank expression, “I am going to die, please don’t let me die. ” A San Bernardino SWAT team reached the scene within 11 minutes of the first call. A second SWAT team, drawn from the police departments of surrounding cities, came shortly after. Soon there were legions of officers from several local agencies. Many of them “” heading to the scene without waiting for instructions, which produced a rapid response but also uncertainty about who was doing what. The report describes confusion and missteps similar to those that marked the police response to other mass attacks, like the Washington Navy Yard shooting in 2013 and the shooting at a movie theater in Aurora, Colo. in 2012. But the authors of the report also praised San law enforcement agencies, noting that they had learned from previous episodes and had practiced working together. The SWAT teams went room to room through the multiple buildings of the Inland Regional Center, which houses social service agencies, but they had no protocol for marking which rooms had been searched. Officers stood outside with their guns trained on the second and third floors of one building, incorrectly suspecting that the shooters were hiding there. So many emergency vehicles were parked at random angles that ambulances could not get close to the complex, and officers carried the wounded out. Despite the confusion, emergency workers got all of the wounded to hospitals within 57 minutes of the first 911 call — inside the “golden hour” that experts say is a critical benchmark. All of them survived. Investigators spent almost three hours inspecting a package on the second floor that proved harmless, but officers did not notice the bag containing the pipe bombs until 5:08 p. m. After the shootout with the terrorists, some officers said that while they were still trying to record the crime scene, federal agents were already removing evidence like weapons and a cellphone. A rookie officer got a crucial piece of information while interviewing witnesses and forwarded it to his father, a police sergeant. A county health worker had noticed that Mr. Farook had left early and told the officer that “there was just something about the shooter, from his body language to his body composition, that seemed familiar. ” A search turned up several people in the region named Syed Farook, and officers were sent to all of the addresses. After the police put out word that a black S. U. V. had been seen leaving the center, several people called with tips, including one caller who had memorized a Utah license plate. A Police Department analyst found that the vehicle belonged to a rental car company and learned by calling the company that the S. U. V. had been rented by a Syed Farook. Word went out on the radio that he lived a few minutes away, in the city of Redlands. Among those responding was a San Bernardino police narcotics team, but other officers did not know that. The narcotics officers were undercover, driving unmarked cars and not talking on their radios, in case criminals were listening. As they neared the Redlands address, the narcotics officers saw the S. U. V. and followed it. One officer flagged down a passing Redlands police sergeant and told him what was happening the sergeant put the information out over the police radio. The sergeant and a sheriff’s deputy joined the undercover officers following the couple. After the couple drove back to San Bernardino, the sergeant tried to pull them over, alerting them that they were being followed. Ms. Malik started shooting at the officers through the back window of the S. U. V. Mr. Farook then stopped the vehicle and stepped out, firing his rifle as his wife kept shooting from the back seat. Together they fired at least 81 shots and had almost 2, 400 more rounds of ammunition, but as more officers arrived, they were heavily outgunned. Most of the shots that hit Mr. Farook struck his legs, possibly because officers believed — erroneously — that the couple were wearing body armor. Two of the 13 rounds that hit Ms. Malik struck her in the head. The shootout lasted about three minutes, but in that time, 24 officers fired at least 440 rounds, riddling the S. U. V. with bullet holes. By the time it ended, more than 175 local, state and federal officers were at the scene. Remarkably, only two officers were hurt, each with a wound to the thigh. One did not realize he had been hit until 13 hours later, when he took a shower. | 1 |
You are here: Home / *Articles of the Bound* / Can Trump Survive the Media Onslaught? Can Trump Survive the Media Onslaught? November 23, 2016, 12:48 pm by Cliff Kincaid Leave a Comment 0
Accuracy in Media
With CNN and MSNBC depicting the incoming Trump administration as the advent of a Fourth Reich, it should be obvious that the President-elect will have to go beyond his blistering tweets to cultivating sympathetic media and getting his own message out in a systematic way. But is the Trump transition team up to the job?
President Obama was ahead of the curve in this regard, having established an office of “Progressive Media and Online Response” to cooperate with “progressive” media sources. The Hillary Clinton presidential campaign understood this form of “outreach” as well, as we saw in the WikiLeaks disclosures of how they colluded with major media outlets and reporters. Trump has used tweets, meetings with the press, official statements, and an occasional video. But much more will be needed if the President-elect hopes to survive the transition with a team in power that can get things done and communicate directly with the American people.
In addition to Trump’s tweets, which serve a legitimate purpose, the President-elect should consider a position that is comparable to what the Obama administration had, albeit with a focus on conservative and alternative news media. Trump appears to have great confidence in Dan Scavino , who now carries the title of Director of Social Media & Senior Advisor to President-elect Trump. Scavino has a fascinating bio and has worked for Trump nearly half his life, including as the former Executive Vice President and General Manager of Trump National Golf Club, Westchester. But it’s not clear what role he is playing in the presidential transition.
What Obama did is worth studying. Jesse Lee was named as the White House Director of Progressive Media and Online Response in 2011. He helped Obama win a second term. According to Lee’s bio , he previously worked as Online Programs Director in the White House and in the New Media department for the Presidential Transition team doing online outreach. He also had worked in online communications for the Democratic National Committee leading up to the 2008 election, served as Senior New Media Advisor to Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) for the 110th Congress, and helped the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee launch its online program from 2004 to 2006.
His current effort , as special assistant to the president and “director of rapid response,” includes dissemination of propaganda points about the greatness of Obamacare and other Obama administration initiatives.
While the Trump administration is being painted by the media as an extension of the White Power movement, it’s clear that the Democrats, including Obama, are going on the attack. Together, the media and the Democratic Party are functioning as the new obstructionists, determined to thwart progress and destroy the next administration’s nominees. Trump calls the media names and issues tweets, but there doesn’t seem to be much else being done in response to this coordinated assault.
A group called UltraViolet has placed full-page ads in The Arizona Republic, The Lincoln Star Journal, and The Reno Gazette Journal attacking Republican senators Jeff Flake (AZ), Deb Fischer (NE), and Dean Heller (NV) “for failing to speak out” against Trump’s appointment of Stephen Bannon, “a white supremacist and domestic abuser,” as chief White House strategist. The first charge is apparently a reference to Bannon’s Breitbart News having covered groups which talk about protecting the European heritage and Judeo-Christian traditions of the United States and other Western nations. Some of these groups are controversial and out of the conservative mainstream. But the idea that they are in favor of white supremacy is ludicrous. The “domestic abuser” charge against Bannon was dismissed as a spurious accusation made by an angry spouse in a divorce case.
Significantly, UltraViolet is run by Nita Chaudhary, who is married to Obama White House official Jesse Lee. She served as the Democratic National Committee’s first Director of Online during the 2004 cycle and started her career at People for the American Way. She was also the National Campaigns and Organizing Director at MoveOn.org Political Action.
Publicly, Democrats are saying that they intend to work with the Trump administration on some issues. Consider that the University of Arizona just took out a full-page ad in Politico, advertising a statement from the “ National Institute for Civil Discourse ,” whose members include such prominent Democrats as former U.S. Secretary of Labor Robert Reich, a Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley. The statement signed by Reich and others says Americans should move beyond the “bitter” election and “ensure that America’s next chapter is civil and respectful…”
Despite talk of “civil discourse,” Reich has just written a column titled, “The Trump Administration Will Be the Most Dangerous Since Richard Nixon.” And he writes this before Trump takes office!
Rather than take a wait-and-see attitude, Reich has also written a column , “The First 100 Day Resistance Agenda,” in which he advises, “Get Democrats in the Congress and across the country to pledge to oppose Trump’s agenda. Prolong the process of approving choices, draw out hearings, stand up as sanctuary cities and states.” He also suggests, “Boycott all Trump products, real estate, hotels, resorts, everything. And then boycott all stores (like Nordstrom) that carry merchandise from Trump family brands.”
Reich is a Democrat double-talker who puts his name on a statement promising peace and harmony, while telling the far-left to do everything possible to obstruct and destroy the next administration.
Reich’s double-talk will not be worthy of any media scrutiny, of course.
One way to overcome this onslaught is to continue to go on the offensive, not only against the media but also the media’s darlings, such as Hillary Clinton. When the liberal media see that Trump is apparently backing away from holding Mrs. Clinton accountable for her corruption, they know they are winning the information war and that they have the President-elect on the run.
Meeting personally with The New York Times, as Trump did on Tuesday, will not mollify his critics. The media will see such a meeting as a sign of weakness. He needs to reach out to allies in the media who are willing to cover him and his administration in a fair and objective manner. Another way to do this is to open up the White House press briefings of his new administration to conservative bloggers and media outlets. There’s no reason to reserve front-row seats for what he once called the “crooked media.” Let them stand in the back with their hands raised. Cliff Kincaid
Cliff Kincaid is the Director of the AIM Center for Investigative Journalism and can be contacted at [email protected]. View the complete archives from Cliff Kincaid . 0 | 0 |
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