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Casey Anthony, the Florida woman acquitted in 2011 for the death of her daughter, was spotted protesting President Donald Trump on Saturday outside of his resort. Anthony was among the crowd of an estimated 3, 000 people. She declined to speak on camera, but did tell WPTV news that she is against the president’s policies. ( The Daily Caller) Follow Breitbart. tv on Twitter @BreitbartVideo | 1 |
It’s certainly a long way from Grand Theft Auto. Henry David Thoreau’s classic “Walden” is the inspiration for what Smithsonian Magazine is calling “the world’s most improbable video game”: Walden, a Game. Instead of offering the thrills of stealing, violence and copious cursing, the new video game, based on Thoreau’s retreat in Massachusetts, will urge players to collect arrowheads, cast their fishing poles into a tranquil pond, buy penny candies and perhaps even jot notes in a journal — all while listening to music, nature sounds and excerpts from the author’s meditations. While the game is all about simplicity, it has actually been in development for nearly a decade. The lead designer, Tracy J. Fullerton, the director of the Game Innovation Lab at the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts, came up with the idea as a way to reinforce our connection to the natural world and to challenge our hurried culture. “Games are kinds of rehearsals,” Ms. Fullerton said in an interview. “It might give you pause in your real life: Maybe instead of sitting on my cellphone, rapidly switching between screens, I should just go for a walk. ” The game — which Ms. Fullerton said is likely to cost $19. 99 — takes six hours to play. It starts in the summer and ends a year later — offering players tasks like building a cabin, planting beans or chatting, virtually of course, with Ralph Waldo Emerson. Should you not leave sufficient time for contemplation, or work too hard, the game cautions: “Your inspiration has become low, but can be regained by reading, attending to sounds of life in the distance, enjoying solitude and interacting with visitors, animal and human. ” Failure to heed the warning will result in a dimming of color and thinning of music. “You can choose how to spend your time, what to emphasize, the ways the game can play out,” she said. “You might spend all your time in the woods, you might focus on bean farming, you could become a famous author — sending off articles to your editor, Horace Greeley — or you could become an activist, working on the Underground Railroad. ” At a time when the most popular video games include the active participation of the player — slay a soldier to capture enemy territory — the Walden game seems passive by contrast. But Ms. Fullerton said it’s no simple stroll in the park. Players who fail to forage for food, for example, will start to faint in the game. The goal is not to win in any competitive sense, but to achieve balance. “You’re not only trying to survive, you’re seeking inspiration in the woods,” Ms. Fullerton said, “If you spend all of your time grinding away on survival tasks, the environment will become less lush. The winning is based on whether you meet your own goals. ” The project has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities, though some say video game research is unworthy of federal funds. And some Thoreau experts are not enthused by an electronic simulation of Walden Pond. “Go out and see your own backyard,” said Richard Higgins, whose book, “Thoreau and the Language of Trees,” is to be published in April by the University of California Press. “Nature is all around us. ” But guardians of Thoreau’s legacy say it could introduce Walden to a whole new audience. “These are people who are interested in interactive games,” said Kathi Anderson, the executive director of the Walden Woods Project in Massachusetts. “Maybe they’re not the same as the people who would sit down and read Thoreau’s book. ” Ms. Fullerton — whose group also created the popular 2005 flying game Cloud — consulted Ms. Anderson’s organization, along with the Huntington Library in Los Angeles, to create the game. They went to considerable lengths to get the 1854 details right — the types of trees, the sounds of birds. Would Thoreau approve? He was clear about dismissing new technologies, if this quote is any indication: “Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end, an end which it was already but too easy to arrive at as railroads lead to Boston or New York. We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate. ” But Ms. Fullerton said the game — to be released this spring in time for the 200th anniversary of Thoreau’s birthday in July — the very questions “Walden” raises about the personal costs of progress. “Thoreau was sitting in a moment when life was beginning to speed up and he identified that, asking ‘Are our lives better because we now live on railroad time? ’” she said. “We have to ask ourselves the same question today: ‘Are our lives better because we live on internet time? ’” “Maybe we don’t all have the chance to go to the woods,” Ms. Fullerton added. “But perhaps we can go to this virtual woods and think about the pace of life when we come back to our own world. Maybe it will have an influence — to have considered the pace of Walden. ” | 1 |
Samstag, 5. November 2016 Links! Zwo! Drei! Vier! (311) Täterät ! Dschingderassa Bumm Bumm Bumm! Jeden ersten Samstag im Monat neu: Der Chefredakteur persönlich stellt nicht zwei, nicht drei – nein, vier interes- oder amüsante Fundstücke aus dem weltweiten Internetz vor: 1. Im Amazon-Eintrag des neuen Postillon -Buchs gibt es noch viel zu wenig seriöse Rezensionen. Daher lautet die Aufgabe des ersten Postillon -Gewinnspiels überhaupt: Verfassen Sie eine Rezension, in der die Begriffe "fruchtig", "Oma" und "Zylinderkopfdichtung" jeweils einmal enthalten sind: Der Postillon: Das noch bessere Beste aus 170 Jahren Die schönsten drei Rezensionen (willkürlich vom Red. bestimmt) werden in der nächsten Links234-Ausgabe verkündet. Ihre Verfasser erhalten jeweils ein Rundum-Fanpaket bestehend aus Postillon -Mousepad, -Stofftasche sowie je einem Exemplar aller bisher erschienenen Bücher! 2. Eine Liste von Titeln und Anreden von Kim Jong-il innerhalb von Nordkorea auf Wikipedia: Liste von Titeln und Anreden von Kim Jong-il innerhalb von Nordkorea Danke an Tom 3. Diese Seite spart nicht an Superlativen bei der Beschreibung, der total krassen Selbstmörder-E-Bikes, die dort angeboten werden: Moselbike Kamikaze Extrem-E-Bikes Danke an Jörg 4. Snickers für Linkshänder hat eine Ode an den orthographisch wertvollen Kommentar "Haldayn fre si du scheiser" verfasst ( Direktlink auf YouTube ): Danke an Hendrik M. Sie haben Vorschläge für Links234? Hinweise auf satirische, lustige, komische Links und Videos bitte per E-Mail an [email protected] schicken. Artikel teilen: | 0 |
John Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s former presidential campaign chairman, has claimed there was a “failing” by mainstream media to protect American democracy during the 2016 presidential election. [“The fact that there was substantiation that the Russians had hacked my emails, the DNC emails, that Wikileaks was an instrument of an attempt by Vladimir Putin and the Russian Federation to undermine our democracy, that could have been reflected in the press and I don’t believe it was,” Podesta said in an interview with the BBC’s Evan Davis. “And I think that was actually a failing on behalf of the mainstream media and particularly some of the major news outlets in our country like The New York Times,” he continued. However, there is little evidence to support Podesta’s claims, given that mainstream news outlets such as The New York Times, CNN, and The Washington Post all gave extensive coverage to potential Russian interference in the election and did not fully report the range of explosive revelations that emerged from the Wikileaks releases. “The [mainstream media] decided it was more interesting, maybe more titillating, to get into the kinda campaign gossip which was what those emails were,” Podesta continued. Podesta’s claims are also undermined by the vigorous support Clinton received from nearly all the mainstream media, earning endorsements from The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, New York Daily News, The Los Angeles Times, and nearly all metro and regional newspapers across the country. Furthermore, emails revealed by Wikileaks actually showed extensive collusion between mainstream media journalists and Clinton’s campaign, principally via Podesta, without revealing this to their audience. Prominent examples of that collusion include CNBC’s Chief Washington Correspondent John Harwood regularly emailing Podesta to congratulate him on primary wins, former POLITICO reporter Glenn Thrush asking Podesta to approve a story he wrote pertaining to Clinton’s campaign, while The New York Times’ political correspondent Maggie Haberman was described by the campaign as a “friendly journalist” who “teed up” stories and “never disappointed” the Clinton campaign. A study in the run up to the November election also found that 96 percent of campaign donations from persons in the media went toward Hillary Clinton. Discussing the future of the Democratic Party, Podesta added that he was now “fully into the resistance” against Donald Trump and the new administration. You can follow Ben Kew on Facebook, on Twitter at @ben_kew, or email him at bkew@breitbart. com | 1 |
The Department of Homeland Security announced Tuesday that Secretary John Kelly will formally unveil the Victims of Immigration Crime Engagement (VOICE) office at the ICE headquarters on Wednesday. [“There’s no intent to make a pun, but it really is to give a voice to the victims of crimes that have been committed by those who are in the country illegally,” said DHS spokesman David Lapan to reporters in Washington, D. C. in response to a skeptical question about why the government wants to launch a program helping Americans suffering from illegal alien crime. “There are a lot of offices and entities that do similar things for crime victims writ large, but nobody has the level of understanding of immigration that ICE does. And so it’s a way to keep victims and their families informed, and not just about the criminal justice aspects of their particular case, but the immigration aspects. ” “That’s something that isn’t covered by other groups and offices who maintain contact with victims of crimes … So it’s a way to ensure that families and victims who have been affected by, again, those here illegally can understand where things are in the immigration process as well as in the criminal justice process,” he said. One month after President Donald Trump assumed office, Kelly instructed ICE to create a program to provide families devastated by illegal alien crime and share more information about the foreign perpetrators who committed the alleged crimes. “Criminal aliens routinely victimize Americans and other legal residents. Often, these victims are not provided adequate information about the offender, the offender’s immigration status, or any enforcement action taken by ICE against the offender,” Kelly said in a memo. Rallying to the sides of American families and legal immigrants was a critical part of Trump’s successful presidential campaign. Trump repeatedly brought families who lost loved ones at the hands of illegal aliens on stage at campaign rallies, and was the only candidate to respond to an open letter pleading for a campaign to acknowledge and deliver justice to victimized and suffering American families. The immediacy of his campaign’s reply and the spotlight he shone on their plight was praised by an advocacy group that had fought for attention to the pressing issue for years. “Donald Trump is the only candidate whose office has responded to their open letter and that the candidate will support a national program to assist families of victims of illegal aliens. Their response was immediate and they have stated they will support our efforts in assisting our families,” said Maria Espinoza, head of the Remembrance Project. Her organization plans to open an office in Washington, D. C. to support the program. A December report estimated that some 820, 000 illegals evaded deportation under the Obama administration — including roughly 620, 000 convicted of terrible crimes such as murder and rape. Read more of Breitbart News’ coverage on crimes committed by illegals and other foreign nationals here. | 1 |
During the Inauguration of the 45th president of the United States, President Donald J. Trump, Democratic Senate Minority Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer ( ) said he was “confident in this great country for one reason,” which was the American people because of, “Whatever our race, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, whether we are immigrant or native born, whether we live with disabilities or do not, in wealth or in poverty, we are all exceptional. ” Schumer said, “My fellow Americans, we live in a challenging and tumultuous time, a quickly evolving, ever more interconnected world, a rapidly changing economy that benefits too few while leaving too many behind, a fractured media, a politics frequently consumed by rancor. We face threats, foreign and domestic. In such times, faith in our government, our institutions and even our country can erode. Despite these challenges, I stand here today confident in this great country for one reason, you, the American people. ” “We Americans have always been a optimistic, patriotic and decent people,” he continued. “Whatever our race, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, whether we are immigrant or native born, whether we live with disabilities or do not, in wealth or in poverty, we are all exceptional in our commonly held yet fierce devotion to our country and in our willingness to sacrifice our time, energy, and even our lives to making it a more perfect union. ” Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN | 1 |
When Jared Kushner, President Trump’s and senior adviser, sought the security clearance that would give him access to some of the nation’s most closely guarded secrets, he was required to disclose all encounters with foreign government officials over the last seven years. But Mr. Kushner did not mention dozens of contacts with foreign leaders or officials in recent months. They include a December meeting with the Russian ambassador, Sergey I. Kislyak, and one with the head of a Russian bank, Vnesheconombank, arranged at Mr. Kislyak’s behest. The omissions, which Mr. Kushner’s lawyer called an error, are particularly sensitive given the congressional and F. B. I. investigations into contacts between Russian officials and Trump associates. The Senate Intelligence Committee informed the White House weeks ago that, as part of its inquiry, it planned to question Mr. Kushner about the meetings he arranged with Mr. Kislyak, including the one with Sergey N. Gorkov, a graduate of Russia’s spy school who now heads Vnesheconombank. Mr. Kushner’s omissions were described by people with direct knowledge of them who asked for anonymity because the questionnaire is not a public document. While officials can lose access to intelligence, or worse, for failing to disclose foreign contacts, the forms are often amended to address lapses. Jamie Gorelick, Mr. Kushner’s lawyer, said that the questionnaire was submitted prematurely on Jan. 18, and that the next day, Mr. Kushner’s office told the F. B. I. that he would provide supplemental information. Mr. Kushner’s aides said he was compiling that material and would share it when the F. B. I. interviewed him. For now, they said, he has an interim security clearance. In a statement, Ms. Gorelick said that after learning of the error, Mr. Kushner told the F. B. I.: “During the presidential campaign and transition period, I served as a for foreign officials trying to reach the . I had numerous contacts with foreign officials in this capacity. … I would be happy to provide additional information about these contacts. ” No names were disclosed in that correspondence. Applicants for major national security positions must submit a lengthy F. B. I. questionnaire as part of a background check. They are asked to list the dates and details of all contacts with representatives of foreign governments. This is not just bureaucratic paperwork. The form warns that “withholding, misrepresenting, or falsifying information” could result in loss of access to classified information, denial of eligibility for a sensitive job and even prosecution knowingly falsifying or concealing material facts is a federal felony that may result in fines or up to five years imprisonment. Clearance holders are often allowed to amend disclosure forms and avoid punishment if omissions are deemed oversights rather than deliberate falsifications, and prosecutions are rare. Mr. Kushner is the second top White House official to have problems concerning his dealings with foreign officials. Michael T. Flynn, Mr. Trump’s first national security adviser, had his security clearance suspended and was fired for misleading Vice President Mike Pence about the content of phone calls with the Russian ambassador during the transition. Last month, the F. B. I. director, James B. Comey, confirmed to Congress that his agency was investigating Russia’s interference in the election and the possibility of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. Vnesheconombank is a target of American sanctions imposed in response to Moscow’s annexation of Crimea and aggression in Ukraine. It is controlled by members of President Vladimir V. Putin’s government, including Prime Minister Dmitri A. Medvedev, and has been used to bail out oligarchs favored by Mr. Putin and to fund pet projects like the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. Mr. Kushner has said he did not discuss sanctions with Mr. Gorkov, the Russian banker. Mr. Gorkov declined to comment on the subject of whether sanctions were discussed. | 1 |
by Tanaaz
Crystals are a great tool for healing, awakening and raising your vibration. When I first started out on my spiritual journey it took me a while to truly appreciate the power of a crystal.
When you find a crystal that really resonates with you and that you feel really attracted to, you know you have found the right one.
For years, I chose crystals based on the written metaphysical properties and for some reason they always felt “off” to me. When I started choosing crystals based on feeling alone, that is when I truly noticed their amazing abilities.
Crystals contain a powerful energy for helping you to recharge your own vibration and connection to Spirit.
Here are 3 ways to use your crystals to recharge: Mind, Body, Spirit Recharge
Perfect for an all-over recharge for your energy, best done just before bed.
1.) Choose 3 crystals that resonate with you- one for your mind, one for your body and one for your spirit. Make sure your crystals are cleansed.
2.) Hold the physical body crystal in your hand and set your intention into the stone. Whisper what outcome or feeling you would like to create in your physical body. Hold the stone close to you as you repeat and feel your intention. Repeat this process for the mind and spirit crystals as well.
3.) After setting your intention into your crystals, sleep with them under your pillow or by your bedside.
4.) Keep your crystals close to you whenever you need an energy recharge. Positive Energy Recharge
Perfect for recharging your energy after being around a negative person or situation.
1.) Choose 2 powerful, cleansed crystals that resonate with you and place them in each hand. Gently close your hand around the crystals and breathe.
2.) As your breathe feel the energy of the crystal moving up through your arms and travelling around your entire body. Feel the beautiful, vibes of the crystal cleansing and clearing your aura and energy.
3.) Keep breathing through the cleansing until the energy of the crystal has travelled to every part of your body.
4.) Cleanse your crystals if needed after you are done. Self- Empowerment Chakra Recharge
Perfect for when you are lacking confidence in yourself.
1.) Choose one crystal that resonates with you and place it out to be charged in the sunlight for at least 30 minutes. Alternatively, you can choose 7 crystals – one for each chakra.
2.) Once the crystal has been charged, start rubbing it between your hands to generate heat and more energy.
3.) When you feel the heat or charge of the crystal, place your hands over your root chakra or pelvis area (touch your skin not your clothes). Allow the energy to sink in to this area of your body.
4.) When you feel the energy has gone in, rub the crystal again and place it on your next chakra. Keep repeating this process until you have done all 7 chakras.
Happy recharging! | 0 |
HONG KONG — The United States said on Tuesday that it had begun deploying an advanced and contentious missile defense system in South Korea, prompting China to warn of a new atomic arms race in a region increasingly on edge over North Korea’s drive to build a nuclear arsenal. The American announcement came a day after the simultaneous launch of four missiles by North Korea into waters off the Japanese coast, which Pyongyang said was a drill for striking American bases in Japan. The feat, footage of which was broadcast on state television, raised concern about the North’s ability to overwhelm the new defense system being deployed. Hours later, North Korea further unnerved the region by declaring it was blocking all Malaysians from leaving its soil, sharply escalating a dispute over last month’s assassination of Kim the half brother of North Korea’s dictator, Kim . Malaysia has accused several North Korean citizens of using VX nerve agent to kill Mr. Kim in a case that has reminded the world of Pyongyang’s access to a stockpile of banned chemical weapons on top of its nuclear program — and its willingness to take extreme measures. The flurry of developments heightened anxiety in Asia over signs that Pyongyang is closing in on its goal of developing an intercontinental missile that can deliver a nuclear payload to the United States — and what the new Trump administration might do to prevent it. And they came as the United States and South Korea participated in military exercises that North Korea has condemned. The New York Times reported Sunday that President Trump’s national security deputies have discussed both the possibility of strikes that would almost certainly provoke an attack on South Korea and a reintroduction of nuclear weapons to the South. Intelligence officials say North Korea is already able to hit much of South Korea and Japan with a missile. A spokesman for the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Geng Shuang, denounced the United States’ decision to deploy the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system, or Thaad, and vowed that Beijing would “take the necessary steps to safeguard our own security interests. ” “The consequences will be shouldered by the United States and South Korea,” Mr. Geng added, warning that the two countries should not “go further and further down the wrong road. ” For days, the official Chinese news media has warned that deployment of Thaad could lead to a “de facto” break in relations with South Korea and urged consumers to boycott South Korean products. The Chinese authorities recently forced the closing of 23 stores owned by Lotte, a South Korean conglomerate that agreed to turn over land that it owned for use in the Thaad deployment, and hundreds of Chinese protested at Lotte stores over the weekend, some holding banners that read, “Get out of China. ” Xinhua, the official Chinese news agency, warned that Thaad “will bring an arms race in the region,” likening the defensive system to a shield that would prompt the development of new spears. “More missile shields of one side inevitably bring more nuclear missiles of the opposing side that can break through the missile shield,” it said. But in another article, the news agency rebuked North Korea, saying it must “face the reality that it can neither thwart Washington and Seoul nor consolidate its security in a breeze with its immature nuclear technology. ” The United States’ decision to deploy the missile technology brought new scrutiny to China’s policies toward North and South Korea and suggested that its attempts to please both countries in hopes of averting a crisis had fallen short. “To put it bluntly using a common Chinese expression, it has wanted to have a foot in two boats,” said Deng Yuwen, a current affairs commentator in Beijing who has sharply criticized North Korea. Yang Xiyu, a former senior Chinese official who once oversaw talks with North Korea, said China was worried that the deployment of the system would open the door to a broader American network of antimissile systems in the region, possibly in places like Japan and the Philippines, to counter China’s growing military as much as North Korea. “China can see benefits only for a U. S. regional plan, not for South Korea’s national security interest,” he said. The developments come as South Korea is consumed by turmoil over the impeachment of President Park whose administration agreed to the Thaad deployment. But with the president facing possible removal from office over a corruption scandal, the fate of the system has been in doubt. Its accelerated deployment could make it harder, if not impossible, for her successor to head off its installation. Moon an opposition leader who is the in the race to replace President Park, acknowledged that it would be difficult to overturn South Korea’s agreement to deploy the system. But he has insisted that the next South Korean government should have the final say on the matter, saying that Ms. Park’s government never allowed a full debate on it. Under its deal with Washington, South Korea is providing the land for the missile system and will build the base, but the United States will pay for the system, to be built by Lockheed Martin, as well as its operational costs. A cargo plane landed at the United States military’s Osan Air Base, about 40 miles south of Seoul, on Monday evening, carrying two trucks, each mounted with a Thaad launchpad. More equipment and personnel will start arriving in the coming weeks, South Korean military officials said. The South Korean Defense Ministry declined to specify when the system would be operational. But the South Korean news agency Yonhap reported that the deployment was likely to be completed in one or two months, with the system ready for use by April. Paul Haenle, director of the Center at Tsinghua University in Beijing, said that policy makers in China had failed to grasp how Washington and its allies regarded North Korea’s nuclear program as getting closer to a dangerous threshold of being able to place a warhead on an intercontinental ballistic missile that could hit American cities. “That’s a ” said Mr. Haenle, who was director for China on the National Security Council under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama. China has long opposed American missile defenses, in part because of fears that they might embolden American to consider a first strike to destroy China’s relatively small nuclear arsenal. Chinese strategists warn that the United States might consider such an attack if it was confident a defense system could intercept Chinese weapons that escaped destruction. China is believed to have already embarked on a program to modernize its arsenal and develop new weapons designed to avoid missile defenses, and analysts said the deployment of Thaad could prompt it to accelerate those efforts. Takashi Kawakami, a professor of international politics and security at Takushoku University in Tokyo, said the deployment of Thaad could put the United States in a stronger position to consider a strike on North Korea. If the United States took such action, he said, “North Korea is going to make a counterattack on the U. S. or Japan or another place, so in this case they will use Thaad” to defend against the North’s missiles. The Japanese prime minister, Shinzo Abe, said he spoke for 25 minutes on Tuesday with Mr. Trump, who reiterated his pledge to stand by Japan “100 percent,” according to the public broadcaster NHK. “I appreciate that the United States is showing that all the options are on the table,” Mr. Abe said, adding that Japan was “ready to fulfill larger roles and responsibilities” to deter North Korea. | 1 |
A criminal illegal immigrant who was deported some four times already has been arrested again by the U. S. Border Patrol. [Diego of Mexico, was arrested by Border Patrol agents after the U. S. despite being deported four times prior since 2001, according to Valley Central News. was arrested and deported in 2001 by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency in Hidalgo, Texas. Then, in 2002 and 2012, was detained and deported by ICE agents through Laredo, Texas. On Feb. 2017, was arrested for the fourth time by ICE in New Orleans, Louisiana, and subsequently deported. Since 1993, has been booked into the Hidalgo County Jail at least 18 times for a slew of charges, including aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, theft, and drunk driving. is facing charges for the U. S. for the fifth time. John Binder is a contributor for Breitbart Texas. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder. | 1 |
Israel’s Defense Minister to ‘Palestinian’ Paper: Hamas’ Next Attack on Israel will be its Last Oct 29, 2016 Previous post In an effort to communicate directly with the Palestinian people, Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman warned, in a rare interview with the Al Quds daily, that Hamas would be destroyed if it dares attack Israel again.
Israel’s defense chief threatened the Hamas terror organization which rules the Gaza Strip, and dismissed the Palestinian Authority (PA) head as an incapable leader in a rare interview published Monday in the Al Quds daily, a popular Palestinian newspaper.
The positions of Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman are well known, but it is unusual for the Palestinian media to interview him.
He started his interview saying, “it’s important for me to talk directly to Palestinian people … I tried to do that since I took office … because I believe there is misunderstanding.”
Liberman said PA head Mahmoud Abbas is not capable of signing a peace deal with Israel. “This agreement needs someone else, someone capable of taking a tough decision,” he said.
Liberman expressed support for a two-state solution, restating his proposed plan that it should be based on an exchange of territories, and saying that Israel does not need some areas, such as the Arab town of Umm el-Fahm in the north.
He warned Hamas against testing Israel with violence.
“If they (Hamas) impose a war on Israel, this war will be the final war for them; we are going to destroy them completely,” Liberman was quoted as saying in the full-page interview.
However, he said that Israel has no interest in reconquering and occupying the Gaza Strip and emphasized that Israel does not want another war with Hamas.
Hamas official Fathi Hammad said his group is “in no way afraid and this is a powerful message from Gaza to Liberman.”
In the interview, Liberman also said that Israel is ready to invest in an airport, sea port and industrial park in Gaza — if Hamas ceases its violent actions against Israel and “ stops building tunnels and launching rockets .”
“Gaza could be the Singapore or Hong Kong of the Middle East,” he said.
Israel has in the past presented
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Короткая ссылка 27 октября 2016, 00:10 Заместитель министра обороны США Фрэнк Кендалл опубликовал отчёт, согласно которому Пентагон c начала 90-х годов потратил около $58 млрд на оборонные проекты, которые так и не были реализованы. RT рассказывает о самых необычных образцах вооружения, которые так и не увидели свет несмотря на многомиллиардное финансирование. Крейсер CG(X) © DOD Крейсер CG(X)
Разработка высокотехнологичного эскадренного миноносца CG(X) (на изображении выше) по программе ВМС США началась ещё в начале 90-х годов. В результате пересмотра финансирования проекта, от него были отделены программы по созданию эсминцев DD(X) и Zumwalt. В 2010 году проект CG(X) был закрыт из-за того, что совпадал по своим задачам с уже существующими кораблями класса Arleigh Burke. Всего на программу было потрачено более $200 млн. Выросший из этой программы головной эсминец проекта DDG-1000 Zumwalt в единственном экземпляре вошел в состав ВМС США в мае этого года. О этой высокотехнологичной новинке RT уже рассказывал своим читателям. XM2001 Crusader Самоходная гаубица XM2001 Crusader © DOD
Самоходная гаубица Crusader также разрабатывалась с начала 90-х. Предполагалось, что она станет более лёгкой заменой уже существующей M109A6 Paladin. К моменту завершения проекта комитет начальников штабов США посчитал орудие, разрабатывавшееся для армии времён холодной войны, не отвечающим новым концепциям ведения боевых действий. Программа, на которую было выделено $2 млрд, была закрыта в 2002 году Дональдом Рамсфельдом, министром обороны при Джордже Буше-младшем. Плавающий бронетранспортёр EFV Бронетранспортёр EFV © DOD
Новый плавающий бронетранспортёр с тяжёлым вооружением под названием «Экспедиционная боевая машина» (Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle — EFV) для корпуса Морской пехоты США начали разрабатывать ещё в конце 1980-х годов. После многочисленных срывов срока завершения и превышения стоимости на 270%, разработка EFV была прекращена в 2011 году. Всего на бронетранспортёр потратили $3,3 млрд. Вертолёт RAH66 Comanche Вертолёт Boeing-Sikorksy RAH66 Comanche © DOD
На разработку разведывательных вертолётов поддержки RAH66 Comanche ушло 22 года и $6,9 млрд. «Команчи» должны были заменить вертолёты классов Huey, Kiowa и Cobra, состоящие на вооружении армии США. Однако с развитием технологий беспилотных летательных аппаратов, концепция RAH66 успела устареть, прежде чем была готова к производству. Вдобавок, полностью снаряжённые прототипы в ходе испытаний зачастую просто не могли оторваться от земли. Проект был закрыт в 2004 году. Boeing YAL-1 Самолёт Boeing YAL-1 с лазерной установкой © DOD
В 1996 году ВВС США приступили к реализации программы экспериментального самолёта, оборудованного лазерной установкой для поражения в воздухе баллистических ракет противника. Спустя 15 лет работ в воздух поднялся лишь один прототип, созданный на основе старого Boeing 747 компании Air India, обозначенный как Boeing YAL-1. В 2011 проект был закрыт из-за «дороговизны и технических требований», а также «больших сомнений в его практической пользе». Всего на разработку самолёта с лазерным вооружением было потрачено $5 млрд. «Боевая система будущего»— FCS © DOD
Предложенная в 1999 году начальником штаба армии США Эриком Шинсеки, «Боевая система будущего» (Future Combat System — FCS) должна была объединить в себе целое семейство управляемых и беспилотных боевых машин и летательных аппаратов, которые бы обеспечили превосходство американских вооружённых сил на поле боя XXI века. Постоянно меняющиеся требования военных в связи с открытием новых театров боевых действий после терактов 11 сентября 2001 года тормозили разработку и увеличили стоимость программы на 25%. В 2009 году, когда проект находился на стадии системного дизайна и был готов к первым демонстрациям, он был закрыт. Всего было потрачено $19 млрд, что делает FCS самим дорогим из проектов оружия будущего, так и не законченных Пентагоном. | 0 |
Harold Hayes, the last surviving member of a band of airborne American medics and nurses who in Albania in 1943 and survived German attacks, blizzards and horrific privations on a trek to their rescue on the Adriatic coast, died on Sunday in Medford, Ore. He was 94. His death, at a hospital, followed an operation to remove a blood clot from his leg, his daughter Margaret Bleakley said. The survival of the 30 noncombatants was a secret of World War II: the story of 13 female nurses, 13 male medics and the crew of a medical evacuation plane who were stranded behind enemy lines for nine weeks, hiding in villages and caves in wintry mountains, afflicted with lice and dysentery, often near starvation and hunted by German patrols. Their odyssey was classified during the war and for years afterward to protect partisan fighters, Allied agents and villagers who gave them food, shelter and guidance. Some were shot by the Germans for their acts of kindness, and after the war, as rumors became death sentences, those even suspected of helping the Americans were executed by Albania’s Communist dictator, Enver Hoxha, whose rule ended with his death in 1985. “For many years, I didn’t say anything about what happened in Albania,” Mr. Hayes said in a 2015 telephone interview with The New York Times from his home in Medford. “After the war was over, Hoxha was ruthless. If he discovered the names of anyone who had helped us, he had them and their families executed. ” Mr. Hayes had no special role in the group’s survival, but by outliving all his wartime comrades, he became a last conduit for their story, which was related in a 1999 memoir by one of the nurses, and more recently in several books, notably “The Secret Rescue” (2013) by Cate Lineberry, whose account relied heavily on Mr. Hayes’s recollections. The perilous adventure began two months after Italy surrendered and Allied forces invaded Italy to begin pushing the Germans back across Europe. On Nov. 8, 1943, the nurses, medics and fliers of the Army Air Force’s 807th Medical Air Evacuation Transport Squadron took off from Catania, Sicily, bound for Bari, on Italy’s east coast, where hundreds of wounded troops awaited air evacuation. Their cargo plane carried no weapons, but the pilot, First Lt. Charles Thrasher, 22, anticipated no fighting. With him were a radio operator and crew chief. The nurses, all second lieutenants, were 22 to 32 years old. The medics, including Mr. Hayes, 21, from Indianola, Iowa, were all equivalent to staff sergeants and ranged in age from 21 to 36. An hour into the flight, the plane became lost in a huge storm over the Adriatic Sea. Its compass and communications failed. Blown 100 miles off course, it crossed the coast of Albania and was intercepted by German fighters and attacked by antiaircraft guns. It plunged to a belly landing in a marsh 25 miles inland. Willis Shumway, 23, the crew chief, was the only casualty, with a knee injury that left him unable to walk. The disoriented Americans had no idea where they were. Fearing a fuel explosion, they scrambled out of the plane and encountered their first bit of luck. Striding out of a woods was a band of men with rifles and daggers. One spoke a little English. He was Hasan Gina, an partisan leader. He told the Americans they were in Albania. Later, they would learn that they were 150 miles east of Bari, on the wrong side of the Adriatic, surrounded by German forces that had occupied Albania for months, and were caught in a civil war between rival partisan groups. The Americans knew almost nothing of Albania, a small, mostly Muslim country that had changed little in centuries. The mountainous terrain was dotted with impoverished villages. There were no railroads and few roads. Mules and horses were the main transportation. There was little running water or electricity. Winters were brutal, food was scarce, and blood feuds were common among the ferociously proud peoples. With only a general plan to reach the west coast and somehow cross the Adriatic to Italy, the Americans began walking in the wrong direction. Over the ensuing weeks, guided by the partisans, they trekked through mountains and valleys, sometimes cutting back or traveling in circles to avoid German patrols, living in the open or sheltering in villages and sharing cornbread with peasants. The Americans were soon listed as missing in action, and War Department telegrams, beginning “regret to inform you,” were sent to their families back home. The survivors, meantime, carried Sergeant Shumway on a stretcher made of seats from the plane they later found pack animals for him. After five days, they rested at a town called Berat, where they were cheered, mistaken for the vanguard of an Allied invasion to liberate Albania. They also met other partisan leaders, and learned of a British agent who had recently parachuted into the country. Their respite lasted only a few days. Then, they awoke to gunfire and the explosion of artillery shells as German forces entered the town. In the ensuing confusion, German planes strafed a truck carrying some of the escaping Americans. Three nurses were separated from the main group and left behind in Berat they took refuge in a farmhouse, and remained in hiding in the area for four months. The main group of Americans climbed on foot to a mountain village and were caught in a crossfire between partisan groups. “It was the first time the Americans had heard of the rival group, and they were beginning to realize they were in as much danger from the country’s internal battle as they were from the Germans,” Ms. Lineberry wrote in “The Secret Rescue. ” They encountered other perils. “Some of the blankets offered to them to ward off the cold night air were infested with fleas and lice,” the author wrote. “Since they’d crashed, most of them had been unable to bathe, aside from splashing some water on their faces and arms from mountain streams or an occasional basin, and they were all filthy and now battling fleas, lice and the GIs,” Army slang for diarrhea. The Americans were often unable to find food. Facing starvation, they made tea by boiling straw and ate berries that worsened their diarrhea. Sharing with peasants was sometimes a culture shock. Mr. Hayes and another medic saw a sheep’s head roasted over coals, then split in half with an ax. “The Americans watched as two women each took of the head and ate everything, including the eyeballs,” Ms. Lineberry wrote. “Nothing was wasted. ” As autumn waned, blizzards enveloped the Americans. Their clothing was too thin. Their shoes were worn out. “Though all their feet soon felt like blocks of ice and their bodies shivered, they knew they had to keep going,” Ms. Lineberry wrote. “The snow was coming down so fast they could barely see the person in front of them, but they had to stay together to avoid losing one another in the blinding white storm. ” On Nov. 27, British intelligence in Albania learned from partisans that the American plane had crashed and that the nurses, medics and crew were alive, trying to reach the coast. Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Allied commander in Europe, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the families of the missing were told. In December, an American rescue plan was developed, led by an Army captain, Lloyd G. Smith, 24, who was assigned to the Office of Strategic Services, precursor of the Central Intelligence Agency. Under cover of darkness, he slipped onto the heavily guarded Albanian coast by boat and set up a base camp in a cave in the cliffs overlooking the Adriatic. Others joined him, and they moved inland to find the Americans. The British, meantime, organized a second rescue effort under Lt. Gavan Duffy, a secret agent who with a small team had reached Albania months earlier by parachute and on foot. Through partisan contacts, he found the Americans in eastern Albania and began leading them westward, intending to reach the coast. But halfway there, at Gjirokaster, German troops blocked the way, and the Americans were too sick and exhausted to go on. He radioed for an American air rescue. Two cargo planes flew in with fighter escorts. But the Germans disrupted the landing, and Lieutenant Duffy called it off. The Americans, after the euphoria of nearly being rescued, were crushed. But they resumed their journey, and with American and British help reached the coast. On Jan. 9, after a ordeal, 27 Americans — 10 nurses and 17 medics and fliers — boarded a British launch and crossed to Italy. Three nurses remained behind in Berat. Captain Lloyd Smith brought them to safety in March 1944. They rode pack mules most of the way to the coast and were met by a torpedo boat, which took them across the Adriatic. After the war, Mr. Hayes returned to civilian life, attended Iowa State College and became an aeronautical engineer for North American Aviation, designing military planes and conducting studies for the Air Force and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration until he retired in 1984. He married the former Betty Allen in 1944. She and their daughter survive him, as does another daughter, Victoria Sprott two brothers, Karl and James a sister, Virginia McCall two grandsons and a . Harold Lyle Hayes was born in Pekin, Iowa, on April 11, 1922, to Ralph and Jenella Van Gorp Hayes. He graduated from high school in Indianola in 1940. After Japan attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, he was drafted, volunteered as a medic and by 1943 was in Sicily, flying evacuation missions. “When he first returned to Allied lines, he had nightmares of being chased,” Ms. Lineberry wrote of Mr. Hayes. “Those faded with time, but as was true of many in the group, he rarely talked about his ordeal over the years. ” | 1 |
BREAKING : List of States Allowing you to CHANGE YOUR VOTE in Light of Hillary’s Federal Investigation BREAKING : List of States Allowing you to CHANGE YOUR VOTE in Light of Hillary’s Federal Investigation Breaking News By Amy Moreno October 29, 2016 On Friday the FBI announced they were reopening the email investigation into Hillary’s mishandling of classified information. In a statement, the FBI said that they discovered “new emails” pertinent to the earlier investigation on “several devices.” Reports indicate that one phone device belongs to Anthony Weiner and the other phone device belongs to his estranged wife Huma Abedin. Many Hillary supporters are clamoring to change their early votes, so the media has provided a list of states that allow you to change your early vote. Here’s a list of States that will allow early voters to change their early vote following the reopening of the FBI probe. #HillarysEmails pic.twitter.com/ggPZDmgBNw
— Jared Wyand (@JaredWyand) October 29, 2016
For those who have yet to vote, please do not add to the corruption inside of government by voting for a sleazy woman under federal investigation.
She has too much baggage.
Our country will spend all it’s energy on her issues and scandals and once again, get NOTHING done for the American people. Looks like a lot of Hillary voters are regretting their choice. #VoteTrump #TrumpPence16 pic.twitter.com/tIyGbOHJGl
— Neil Turner (@NeilTurner_) October 29, 2016 This is a movement – we are the political OUTSIDERS fighting against the FAILED GLOBAL ESTABLISHMENT! Join the resistance and help us fight to put America First! Amy Moreno is a Published Author , Pug Lover & Game of Thrones Nerd. You can follow her on Twitter here and Facebook here . Support the Trump Movement and help us fight Liberal Media Bias. Please LIKE and SHARE this story on Facebook or Twitter. | 0 |
BNI Store Oct 29 2016 EU using taxpayer money to give Muslim invaders in Turkey free debit cards and cash transfers to keep them out of Europe As many as one million illegal alien Muslim colonizers in Turkey will receive debit cards and monthly cash transfers to help pay for food and housing under a new €348 million ($393 million) humanitarian program from the European Union. ZeroHedge The EU’s largest-ever humanitarian program is part of a €3 billion package of assistance the bloc promised Turkey to support some three million refugees the country hosts, mainly from Syria. The new EU program will be overseen by the World Food Program, in cooperation with the Turkish Red Crescent. Each family’s need will be assessed individually and there are additional funds available for education or supporting elderly family members. Step-by-Step Progression into a sinkhole for the EU More refugees will seek free handouts. Turkey will complain €3 billion is not enough. The refugees will complain €1,000 is not enough. EU citizens will wonder why refugees are getting €1,000 and they are not. Demands for an EU-wide helicopter drop of free debit cards will soar. The amounts demanded will soar. Some economist will propose the debit cards will expire if not used quickly. And then, and then ….Under Eurozone rules the ECB cannot simply print money and give it away. Countries have budget constraints. So, either taxes go up to pay for the scheme, or the EMU rules have to change. Western media are reporting on the Muslim refugee crisis as a humanitarian problem for the West only. But where are the media questions about the huge financial and land resources available in the Arab Gulf states of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, and the UAE? So far, the richest Arab Muslim countries in the Middle East have taken in virtually no Muslim refugees. Liveleak The world is often lectured to about the urgency of respecting Arab and Islamic brotherly love, but where is the Arab action to rescue fellow Muslims and Arabs from the claws of ISIS? Where are the mighty Arab armies who waged dozens of wars against Israel? Why aren’t they fighting ISIS and building tent cities in the vast deserts of Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and the wealthy Gulf States? Where is the wealthy Arab League to coordinate safe cities on Arab land that extends from Morocco to Iraq and from Northern Syria to Sudan? Kuwaiti official explains why Kuwait will NOT take in any Syrian refugees “Kuwait and other oil-rich Muslim countries are too valuable to accept low-class Muslim refugees who we will have to support because they don’t want to work. We don’t want people who are different from us.” | 0 |
MUNCIE, Ind. — For Evan Bayh, who spent a third of his life serving this state, Susan Brown is a harrowing figure. “I was going to vote for him because he’s Evan Bayh. Evan Bayh!” said Ms. Brown, 69, a Republican, who has fond memories of the Democrat who is seeking to take back his Senate seat after a more than hiatus. “But then I saw all those commercials about all the money he made when he left office, and I think I am for the other guy now. ” When Mr. Bayh, swimming in cash and latent ambition, decided in that he would take another run at his old job, Democrats were overjoyed. They believed that Mr. Bayh, 60, whose two terms each as governor and senator were won mostly with ease, had turned a lost cause in a red state into a sure win. By collectively pushing former Representative Baron Hill, the (likely doomed) Democrat, out of the race and replacing him with Mr. Bayh, they instantly elevated the party’s chances to take back the Senate. But Republicans attacked as quickly and voraciously as a cougar whose dinner has been threatened. Over the last few months, conservative groups have buried Mr. Bayh in ads mocking his Senate retirement, questioning his ties to Indiana and criticizing his work as a consultant for a Washington lobbying firm. In an election year in which many voters appear to be embracing outsider credentials over experience, Mr. Bayh could find that there are limits to the good will that voters will extend to a candidate with fraying connections to his home state. Federal records show that nearly $6 million in media spending by outside groups has targeted Mr. Bayh since he got into the race, and groups have more ready to go next month. (Also unhelpful: Mr. Bayh flubbed his home address during an interview.) What was initially expected to be a gaping lead over Representative Todd Young, a Republican, has recently been only in the single digits, according to a Monmouth University poll, jolting Democrats’ confidence. “Yes, I’m surprised, but that’s the Citizens United world we are living in,” Mr. Bayh said in an interview in Indianapolis last weekend, referring to the Supreme Court ruling that removed many limits on political spending. After his unexpected retirement in 2010 from the Senate, Mr. Bayh joined a Washington law and lobbying firm, McGuireWoods. Republicans have tried to paint him as a handmaiden of special interests, a charge he predictably rejects. “I’ve missed public service since the day I retired from the Senate,” Mr. Bayh said. Indiana has a recent history of punishing politicians who they think have “gone Washington. ” Former Senator Richard G. Lugar, one of the state’s most respected political figures, was ousted in a primary in 2012 by a Tea Party challenger. But Senator Dan Coats, a Republican whose retirement created the opening for Mr. Bayh, made a comeback in 2010 after his own turn as a lobbyist. Mr. Coats noted that the climate this year seemed more hostile. “It might matter more this year than ever,” he said. Others have found themselves going from beloved to spurned. Former Senator Bob Kerrey had been gone from Nebraska for nearly 20 years when he tried to return to the Senate in 2012, leaving his wife and child back in New York City as he faced bruising attacks. “By November, half the people thought I had never lived in Nebraska,” said Mr. Kerrey, who was defeated and returned to New York as quickly as he had left. “Republicans are better than Democrats are in doing that sort of thing. They did such a good job they probably saved my marriage. ” But Mr. Bayh enjoys many advantages that keep him as the in the race, Democrats and Republicans agree. The son of former Senator Birch Bayh, Mr. Bayh is part of a Midwestern political dynasty that spans generations of voters. A moderate who was long viewed as working well with Republicans, Mr. Bayh fits the state’s as almost defiantly sensible. He is so closely associated with a wildly popular scholarship program he signed into law in 1990 that Mike Pence, the governor and now the running mate of Donald J. Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, helped ensure it was renamed in his honor. “I really love that program,” said Ms. Brown, a retired teacher, as a warning of sorts to Mr. Young when she met him in a bakery here last Sunday. “You should do something like that. ” (She also told Mr. Young, 44, that he was “so good looking” three times, and made a few smooching sounds for good measure.) Mr. Bayh entered the race with nearly $10 million to spend against Mr. Young’s $1. 2 million, freeing Democrats, at first, to spend money on other races. But Mr. Bayh, who served as the governor of Indiana from 1989 to 1997 and senator from 1999 to 2011, is facing some headwinds. Indiana, which has grown increasingly conservative over the last decade, is Trump country. Having Mr. Pence on the ticket, even though his popularity has waned, could further strengthen its performance here. A state not known for ticket splitting may well do so for Mr. Bayh, but a state that suffered disproportionately in the last recession may not have as much love for the insiders Mr. Trump has railed against all year, even as it recovers. “There may be a nostalgic sense for the way things were when Evan Bayh was in office,” said John Schorg, the spokesman for the Indiana House Democrats. “But keeping people thinking that the way it was is the way it’s going to be is hard. ” Mr. Young has been greatly aided by outside groups, but he said his campaign was working well before Mr. Bayh belatedly entered the race. “Our message was compelling before he got in the race,” Mr. Young said in an interview here. “I am not a career politician. I am a Marine with four kids who wants to make a difference. ” (He is also in his third term in the House.) All of this has put Mr. Bayh on defense, even insisting he was not a lobbyist in an advertisement, and focusing heavily on the things he accomplished during his service here and in Washington, like reminding a large group of black voters at the Light of the World Christian Church in Indianapolis on Sunday about his scholarship program and his long ties to its current and former pastor. He has turned the “insider” attack back on Mr. Young. “If people are angry at Washington, he’s been there and he has to be accountable for that,” he said. Mr. Bayh admits the race will probably be close, though, even as he vows to prevail. “In this political year,” he said, “a lot of things can happen. ” | 1 |
WASHINGTON — In a police shooting case that tests when people can sue law enforcement officers, Supreme Court justices on Wednesday argued sharply different views of whether improper actions by officers expose them to liability for what follows. In 2010, while looking for a wanted man, Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies did not have a warrant when they illegally searched a house and a small shack behind it. Two deputies entered the shack without knocking or announcing themselves, saw what they said was a man holding a rifle — it turned out to be a BB gun — and opened fire. They wounded the man and his pregnant girlfriend, neither of whom was the person they were looking for. Angel Mendez, who lost his right leg below the knee in the shooting and lived in the shack with Jennifer Lynn Garcia, sued the county in federal court and won $4 million in damages. The county appealed. The legal question in the case, County of Los Angeles v. Mendez, is not about the shooting itself the courts have agreed that at the moment they pulled their triggers, the deputies could have reasonably believed they were in danger. Instead, the argument has turned on whether the warrantless search, a violation of constitutional rights, was the “proximate cause” that made the deputies liable for the shooting, or if it was merely a contributing factor. “It doesn’t seem to me a fluky or random thing to say, when there’s an unauthorized entry into someone’s home, violence may result,” Justice Elena Kagan said. She likened an officer without a warrant to a trespasser, who would meet a very different response than would a guest. But Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. disagreed strongly. “If you take away the failure to get a warrant, the harm still occurs,” he said. “The search warrant is not going to change the conduct. ” Justice Anthony M. Kennedy voiced seemingly conflicting views. Without liability, “we simply have no way to enforce the warrant requirement,” he said. But calling the lack of a warrant the proximate cause of the shooting, he said, is “a difficult position to defend. ” The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled against Los Angeles County partly based on a theory that officers who recklessly provoke a confrontation can be liable for the results. Legal analysts expect that reasoning, which other appellate courts have not adopted, to be addressed in the Supreme Court’s decision. But it was barely discussed on Wednesday. The deputies’ failure to warn before entering the shack could be deemed improper, and was more directly linked to the shooting. But the Ninth Circuit ruled that it was not clear in 2010 that the “knock and announce” rule the courts have espoused would apply to a building like a shack. Using that rule to support the plaintiffs, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. said, “You end up imposing liability for what is arguably a violation of best police practices. ” But Justice Stephen G. Breyer questioned the need to break the incident down moment by moment to find liability. “The background circumstances can be such that there is no justification for the whole ball of wax,” he said. | 1 |
Thank you, China. | 0 |
The latest trove of documents released by WikiLeaks includes thousands of pages of emails between John D. Podesta, the chairman of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, and aides, Clinton family members and outside donors all angling for position and power within Mrs. Clinton’s campaign. Last week, a set of Mr. Podesta’s emails were disclosed that included potentially damaging excerpts from private paid speeches Mrs. Clinton delivered to Wall Street executives in which she praised “open trade and open borders” and lamented that her personal wealth made her “kind of far removed” from the struggles of the middle class. The latest leaked emails show Mrs. Clinton’s campaign aides trying to grapple with that reality, and establish a campaign message that could position her, a career politician and Washington insider, as an appealing agent of change. The authenticity of the emails, which were from Mr. Podesta’s account, was not challenged by Glen Caplin, a spokesman for Mrs. Clinton. Here are the highlights: Despite statements by Mrs. Clinton and her allies insisting she had not made up her mind about seeking the presidency in 2016, the emails reveal that her advisers had begun to test messages and contemplate a campaign strategy at least two years before she officially declared her candidacy in April 2015. Mr. Podesta, who would become campaign chairman, and Robby Mook, the eventual campaign manager, grappled with how to best position Mrs. Clinton, a career politician, as a change agent, how much to play up the potential of her candidacy and how to address anger over income inequality. “Gender will be a big field and volunteer motivator, but it won’t close the deal,” Mr. Mook wrote to Mr. Podesta and Cheryl D. Mills, another Clinton adviser, in March 2014. “The real challenge,” Ms. Mills wrote, “is that this likely will be when people want experience and we got so burned by that narrative” in the 2008 campaign against Barack Obama that “we won’t go back to it, even though it might be right for now. ” The emails reveal the excruciating behind every step related to how Mrs. Clinton handled everything from her splashy campaign rollout speech on Roosevelt Island in June 2015 to a single Twitter post. In one email chain from March 2015, four aides debated a Twitter post in which Mrs. Clinton would address for the first time revelations that she had used a private email server during her tenure at the State Department. “I want the public to see my email. I asked State to release them. They said they will review them for release as soon as possible,” the post eventually read. “She smacked down POTUS on trade and kept kicking for a little bit,” Huma Abedin, a close aide, wrote on June 14, 2015, using an acronym for the president. “Worth looking at the transcript but this seemed to really work for this crowd. ” At the time, Mrs. Clinton was trying to craft herself as more of a populist, pointing to differences between her and Mr. Obama. The aides also liked the personal details she shared. “She inserted some new applause lines and talked about Dorothy,” her mother, “in a more personal way that I’ve only heard talk about privately,” Ms. Abedin wrote. Aides discussed leaking it after a meeting with labor leaders — so as not to undermine her “principled stand about not the president in public. ” Mr. Mook suggested that Mrs. Clinton time her announcement to “help distract” from the barrage of criticism surrounding her use of a private email server. The emails show heightened awareness of her vulnerability to charges of and political maneuvering. “She risks looking very political, especially on this,” wrote Joel Benenson, the chief strategist on the campaign. Mrs. Clinton’s press secretary, Brian Fallon, felt that leaking her new position on Keystone “might achieve the same effect of getting her on the record on this issue, but with less perception that she is putting a finger to the wind. ” We take a closer look at how the debate over the unveiling evolved. In 2015, the Clinton campaign had to deal with escalating chatter about a potential run by Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. Donors phoned in reports on Mr. Biden’s maneuvers to advisers like Neera Tanden, who relayed them back to Mr. Podesta. Steve Elmendorf, a longtime Clinton supporter, emailed her campaign manager to grouse about one supporter in particular: Linda Lipsen, head of the trial lawyers association. “I get multiple calls every morning and I try to talk everyone off the ledge and not bug u all,” Mr. Elmendorf wrote. “But Linda is in a different category. ” Ms. Lipsen had complained about not getting enough care from the campaign at a time when she was working members of her trade association and trying to keep them from considering Mr. Biden. For all the planning, Mrs. Clinton’s campaign aides appeared blindsided by the popularity of Senator Bernie Sanders’s populist message in the Democratic primary. Concern over Mrs. Clinton’s economic message seemed to reach a breaking point after Mrs. Clinton lost to Mr. Sanders by 22 percentage points in the New Hampshire primary. “Message needs to be more positive, upbeat, hopeful,” an adviser wrote to Mr. Podesta. “Bernie is saying we can change the world. Her msg is ‘No, we can’t’ because … ” The adviser expressed particular concern about young voters gravitating to Mr. Sanders’s promise for revolution. “Bernie’s ads feature young ppl saying why they are voting supporting him,” she wrote. “Hillary’s ads need to be young people — all under 45 and a smattering of older ones — validating her. ” In January, Donna Brazile, a vice chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, passed on an email from Mr. Sanders’s outreach team about how it was planning to host a event. “Thank you for the heads up on this, Donna,” responded Adrienne Elrod, one of Mrs. Clinton’s campaign aides. Ms. Brazile, a longtime party operative, later replaced Debbie Wasserman Schultz on an interim basis as D. N. C. chairwoman on the eve of the party’s national convention, a change that came after leaked emails revealed that Democratic officials had conspired to harm Mr. Sanders’s bid for the party’s nomination. Her aides decided in January that she should avoid talking about Wall Street at an event in Nevada during her primary fight with Mr. Sanders. “Don’t know that it is most effective contrast for her,” wrote Jennifer Palmieri, the campaign’s communications director. “Seems like we are picking the fight he wants to have. ” In the fall and winter of 2011, an increasingly bitter dispute was breaking out between a top Clinton aide, Douglas J. Band, and Chelsea Clinton, over the blurred lines between the Clinton Foundation and Mr. Band’s consulting company, Teneo. Ms. Clinton had sought to reorganize and professionalize the foundation, angering Mr. Band and a fellow longtime Clinton aide, Justin Cooper, who resisted. “Doug apparently kept telling my dad I was trying to push him out, take over,” Ms. Clinton told Mr. Podesta in a November 2011 email. But the next month, Ms. Clinton was less understanding. In December, she emailed Mr. Podesta and several aides to Mrs. Clinton regarding a Clinton Foundation aide who worked for former President Bill Clinton. The aide, Ilya Aspis, had been calling members of Parliament in Britain “on behalf of President Clinton” for Teneo clients, including the chief executive of Dow Chemical. She also mentions that another former White House aide, Sara Latham, had begun working for Teneo but then quit “because she was so upset, partly because of what Doug and Declan asked her to was happening for their clients at Davos. ” The reference appears to be to Declan Kelly, a of Teneo, though what Ms. Latham was asked to do remains unclear. | 1 |
NTEB Ads Privacy Policy TRUMPED: After Deceiving The American People, The New York Times Vows To Start ‘Reporting Honestly’ New York Post columnist and former New York Times reporter Michael Goodwin wrote, "because it the New York Times demonized Trump from start to finish, it failed to realize he was onto something. And because the paper decided that Trump’s supporters were a rabble of racist rednecks and homophobes, it didn’t have a clue about what was happening in the lives of the Americans who elected the new president. by Geoffrey Grider November 12, 2016 The publisher of The New York Times penned a letter to readers Friday promising that the paper would “reflect” on its coverage of this year’s election while rededicating itself to reporting on “America and the world” honestly.
EDITOR’S NOTE: After getting their head handed to them by Donald Trump , the corrupt liberal media has come to a cold, hard, financially-motivated reality, and that is this. They have realized they can no longer continue to lie to to the American people, and that the crap they peddle will no longer be accepted. There is great satisfaction in watching them now, with their cover blown, squirming like the weasels they truly are. Thank you, president-elect Trump.
Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr. , the paper’s embattled publisher, appealed to Times readers for their continued support.
“We cannot deliver the independent, original journalism for which we are known without the loyalty of our subscribers,” the letter states. Morning Joe Calls Out WAPO & NYT For Cheerleading NOT Reporting:
New York Post columnist and former Times reporter Michael Goodwin wrote , “because it the New York Times demonized Trump from start to finish, it failed to realize he was onto something. And because the paper decided that Trump’s supporters were a rabble of racist rednecks and homophobes, it didn’t have a clue about what was happening in the lives of the Americans who elected the new president. Letter to NYT readers from Arthur Sulzberger Jr. and Dean Baquet pic.twitter.com/jORqzx3BA9
— Sydney Ember (@melbournecoal) November 11, 2016
Sulzbergers letter was released after the paper’s public editor , Liz Spayd, took the paper to task for its election coverage. She pointed out how its polling feature Upshot gave Hillary Clinton an 84 percent chance as voters went to the polls. She compared stories that the paper ran about President-elect Donald Trump and Clinton, where the paper made Clinton look functional and organized and the Trump discombobulated.
Spayd wrote, “Readers are sending letters of complaint at a rapid rate. Here’s one that summed up the feelings succinctly, from Kathleen Casey of Houston: “Now, that the world has been upended and you are all, to a person, in a state of surprise and shock, you may want to consider whether you should change your focus from telling the reader what and how to think, and instead devote yourselves to finding out what the reader (and non-readers) actually think.” The NYT would do well to plant some roots in Red America https://t.co/HDd4SFJqtq
— Liz Spayd (@spaydl) November 9, 2016 She wrote about another reader who asked that the paper should focus on the electorate instead of “pushing the limited agenda of your editors.”
“Please come down from your New York City skyscraper and join the rest of us.”
Sulzberger—who insisted that the paper covered both candidates fairly– also sent a note to staffers on Friday reminding the newsroom to “give the news impartially, without fear or favor.”
“But we also approach the incoming Trump administration without bias,” he said. source
Geoffrey Grider NTEB is run by end times author and editor-in-chief Geoffrey Grider. Geoffrey runs a successful web design company, and is a full-time minister of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. In addition to running NOW THE END BEGINS, he has a dynamic street preaching outreach and tract ministry team in Saint Augustine, FL. NTEB #TRENDING | 0 |
2016 presidential campaign by Matt Sedillo
Hillary Clinton is, no doubt, a threat to life on Earth. But the duopoly electoral system is a menagerie of warmongers. “The response to the white nationalism of Donald Trump has been the rainbow coalition of hawks.” Barack Obama has proven an awesomely prolific war maker. Bernie Sanders is no peacenik. “It is only the white nationalist orange demon -- guided only by his own whims and twitter feuds -- that is at all off script on this question.” LesserOfTwoEvilism by Matt Sedillo
“ So long as there is a ruling class they shall rule by fire and blood.”
The loathsome and shameless hypocrisy of the Democratic Party and the doctrine of lesseroftwoevilism has been laid bare this political season. This same Democratic Party that unquestionably rigged the primaries against the left-leaning Bernie Sanders campaign is now selling itself to the public as the savior of the downtrodden from the threat of an uber right wing candidate.
Hillary Clinton at this point in her election run appears to be making no promises to the public other than to not to physically morph into Donald Trump during her coronation come Election Day.
Lesseroftwoevilism is a bankrupt political ideology and the means by which the Democratic Party deadens any inkling towards decency or rational self interest that may lay dormant in the American electorate. Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party intend to use the platform of "at least not being Donald Trump" to install the most despised Democratic candidate in a generation into the White House.
It is indeed horrifying that a straight up eugenicist billionaire who brags about sexual assaulting women won the Republican primary. It is terrifying that the cult leader of a white nationalist zombie apocalypse has gotten this far through the electoral process.
“There is no greater threat to the future of much of life on the planet than Hillary Clinton.”
The country is polarizing and it is terrifying to see that much of it is polarizing in the direction of Donald Trump whose campaign is defined by phrases like “Make America Great Again” quickly followed by “Mexico Will Pay.” Much of the country is also polarized in the direction of Bernie Sanders. It was the political apparatus of the Democratic Party, not the Republicans, that prevented these two competing visions from standing before the American public.
Setting aside the fact, for a moment, that we don't live in a democracy, it must be noted that lesseroftwoevilism in American politics is an ideology by Americans for Americans. Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, AND Bernie Sanders are all advocates of the US war machine. If any of these three warlords were to sit in the seat of power children in far off lands would still be bombed in their sleep and be reported on as collateral damage.
Hillary Clinton is the most bloodthirsty advocate for murder and mayhem in a political system that thrives upon such practices. When it comes to dropping bombs, obliterating nations or possibly igniting a nuclear winter there is no greater threat to the future of much of life on the planet than Hillary Clinton.
Rainbow Coalition of Hawks
Far beyond a “basket of deplorables,” the 2016 Republican national convention was a ghastly horror show of the most reactionary, bigoted elements of American political culture. Less than esteemed actor Scott Baio captured the mood when he proclaimed, “so of course let’s make America great again, but let’s make America America again.” That largely captured the theme of the proceedings and most speeches were some variation upon that theme.
The Democrats in response sought to make their convention a big tent of peoples, ideas and movements. And indeed from the spontaneous chants of “black lives matter” to Tim Kaine leading a chant of “si se puede” to Eva Longoria reminding the audience “we didn’t cross the borders the borders crossed us” to Michelle Obama letting the thousands in attendance and the millions watching at home know that slave labor built the White House and the country, from Sebastian De La Cruz singing the national anthem in full mariachi garb to the Khan family holding a copy of the Constitution, the Democratic National Convention did present itself as a stark contrast to what the GOP was offering.
The theme of inclusion ran high and, indeed, current president Barack Obama made his call for strength in unity, explicitly saying “And most of all I see Americans of every party, every background, every faith who believe we are stronger together, black white, Latino, Asian, Native American, young, old, gay, straight, men, women, folks with different abilities, all pledging allegiance, under the same proud flag, to this big bold country that we love.” One flag to rule them all.
“America the greatest and most diverse nation on Earth shall ransack the globe as it sees fit. ”
General John Allen, standing before a multi ethnic group of people continued upon this theme and made the connection between a more inclusive union and explicit projection of American might
“Every American, in uniform or out, in the White House or at home, must be a force for unity in America, for a vision that includes all of us: every man and woman, every race, every ethnicity, every faith and creed, every gender orientation – all of us together pursuing our common values.
“From the battlefield to the capitals of our allies, friends, and partners, the free peoples of the world look to America as the last best hope for peace and for liberty for all humanity, for we ARE the greatest country on this planet.
“So we stand before you tonight to endorse Hillary Clinton for President of the United States of America.”
The message could not be clearer. Sorry Donald Trump, we are all Americans here. No apologies rest of the world, America the greatest and most diverse nation on Earth shall ransack the globe as it sees fit.
The response to the white nationalism of Donald Trump has been the rainbow coalition of hawks as chiefly embodied in the persons of Barrack Obama and Hillary Clinton.
Hillary Clinton: The Obliterator of Nations
Hillary Clinton is a war criminal. So is John Kerry. So is Condoleezza Rice. So are Colin Powell and Madeleine Albright. The secretary of state in an imperialist nation is the immediate manager of the projected might of the empire they represent.
Hillary Clinton is known to be a war hawk for much the same reason Donald Trump is known as a white nationalist. She is blatant and crass about it.
“We came. We saw. He died” – Hillary Clinton on the assassination of Ghadaffi
“In the next 10 years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them” – Hillary Clinton speaking of obliteration of 75 million Iranians.
For much of the past few months the Clinton campaign have bemoaned a Russian conspiracy to reveal the words that Hillary Clinton actually wrote and thereby influence the American election.
Hillary Clinton’s neo-Mcarthyite cold war against her own words and general war talk on Russia should come as no surprise to anyone paying any attention. She was hawkish on Russia in their land dispute with Georgia over Ossetia, even going so far as to arm the Georgian government in 2010 less than two years after the conflict. She was warlike on the conflict in the Ukraine, promising Ukrainian government officials as recent as September of this year to stand with them against “Russian aggression.”
“A Clinton presidency is the will of the ruling class.”
This is the talk of someone prepared for a nuclear apocalypse.
It should be mentioned, however, that Obama has also dialed up his anti Russian rhetoric, as has Tim Kaine, as has Mike Pence. It is only the white nationalist orange demon -- guided only by his own whims and twitter feuds -- that is at all off script on this question.
Ultimately a Clinton presidency is the will of the ruling class. If she wants war it is a reflection of their desire for war. If they want the bombs to fall then death will rain from the sky. So long as they hold power they shall exercise it. So long as there is a ruling class they shall rule by fire and blood, because there truly is no alternative. Because ultimately, this is about Clinton and then again it isn’t. And this is about the Democrats and then again it isn’t. This is about the US and this is about war. Hillary Clinton is a 2016 warlord. War is a racket. And so is this God damn election. Matt Sedillo can be contacted at [email protected] . | 0 |
Kashmiris observes Black Day decades after India occupied Kashmir Thu Oct 27, 2016 10:22PM Pakistanis shout slogans in the support of the Kashmiri people during a protest in Lahore on October 27, 2016. © AFP
Javed RanaPress TV, Islamabad
Kashmiri people observe the Black Day all over the world particularly in their disputed region which is divided between Pakistan and India. The date marks almost 7 decades of violence in Kashmir. On the eve of the event Pakistani, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif warned India that it will face serious consequences if its soldiers do not stop killing civilians in border regions along the so-called Line of Control (LoC) which divides Indian-controlled Kashmir from the Pakistani side. Loading ... | 0 |
Here's something interesting from The Unz Review... Recipient Name Recipient Email =>
The forgotten man decided the presidential election. Donald Trump persuaded the forgotten man to repose his anger and frustration and power into Trump’s hands. Who is the forgotten man? What does he want from government? Why did he vote for Trump?
When the tide began to turn against Hillary Clinton on Tuesday night, I planned to write this column about the unwarranted and unlawful injection of the FBI into the political process. At the time, I was seated with the Fox News number crunchers and generally was exposed to trends and vote totals — and the number crunchers’ lucid explanation of them — long before they were revealed on-air. I am more an ideas guy than a numbers guy.
On Tuesday night, the numbers were so overwhelming it was clear that the FBI had nothing to do with the outcome of the presidential election. The numbers on Tuesday told a tale that needs to be related. What the FBI did and failed to do assaulted the rule of law, but that is for another column.
Whatever the impression Trump may have given you — a carnival barker, a hero, a jerk, a courageous leader — he brilliantly tapped into a deep vein of millions of American men and women who believe they have been forgotten by the government they pay for. These good people have been alienated by the elites who dominate American government and culture and civic life.
On Tuesday night, they found a home.
The forgotten man believes that the Obama administration doesn’t care about him. The forgotten man knows that the government put into place regulations of economic activity that put him out of work or into a lower-paying job. These forgotten men and women resent the Obama administration’s telling them they must have health insurance or they will be taxed for it and then so incompetently manipulating the marketplace as to cause the cost of that insurance — often an unwanted product — to skyrocket.
These good folks cringed when their family doctor told them that he could no longer afford to treat them because the feds had overregulated the practice of medicine. They simply couldn’t believe that their own government would make the practice of medicine so expensive that doctors in droves could not afford to stay in business. And they were outraged when their doctors told them the feds could see their medical records and dictate their medical treatment.
The forgotten man has profound resentment for a government that is telling him how to live. The forgotten man’s union dues have shot up. His union leaders use his dues to support political candidates he doesn’t know or like. Yet he has usually voted for the Democrats — out of a traditional belief that the Democrats would think of him and his needs when framing federal legislation. They haven’t.
The forgotten man speaks his mind but isn’t drawn to lofty arguments about the freedom of speech. The forgotten man wants the government to work but couldn’t tell you which aspects of its behavior are unconstitutional. The forgotten man wants elected officials who don’t and won’t forget him. The forgotten man hopes he never sees a judge in a courtroom, but if he does, he wants to be judged by someone who understands him.
The forgotten man wants sexual freedom and privacy, but not babies being ripped from the womb for convenience. The forgotten man doesn’t want war but loathes military defeat even more. The forgotten man wants inexpensive goods but will pay more if they are made here by people like him. The forgotten man doesn’t want the government to take so much money from those who work hard that they lose their incentive to work or close up their businesses and kill jobs. The forgotten man wants everyone to be able to keep the lion’s share of what he earns. The forgotten man forgives but doesn’t forget. Trump got all that. Trump tapped into all that as no presidential candidate had since Ronald Reagan in 1980.
The forgotten man viewed Clinton as having no interest in him. The forgotten man believed that Clinton would work for special interests and not for him. The forgotten man saw that what Trump grasped, Clinton overlooked; what Trump understood, Clinton ignored; and what Trump turned into votes, Clinton took for granted.
I doubt that the forgotten man saw what I did recently. At the Al Smith dinner in New York City last month — a 1,500-person black-tie fundraiser for the Archdiocese of New York at which Trump’s speech was mediocre and Clinton’s was stellar — I tried to shake the hands of both of them but ran into a Secret Service roadblock around the head table. Trump waved to me with a twinkle in his eye. When I saw Clinton, I saw a lonely face without joy. On Wednesday morning, it dawned on me that she was doomed and she knew it.
The forgotten man knew it, as well.
Copyright 2016 Andrew P. Napolitano. Distributed by Creators.com. | 0 |
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As the protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline continue to escalate, the crackdown from law enforcement has grown harsher and harsher. Hundreds have been arrested by Morton County police, many of them without charge, and have had their civil rights violated by shockingly cruel police officers, who are sexually humiliating their prisoners by strip-searching them and leaving them naked in their cells.
When getting booked at the jail, they were all strip searched, forced to “squat and cough” to demonstrate they had nothing hidden in their rectums, then were put in orange jumpsuits. The treatment was the same for Chairman of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe Dave Archambault, to a pediatrician from the reservation, Dr. Sara Jumping Eagle, to actress Shailene Woodley, star of the films “Divergent” and “Snowden,” among others.
The use of a strip search for those arrested on trumped-up charges like “trespassing” and “rioting” is a clear intimidation tactic that shows the the United States government still sees Native Americans as savages to be abused.
LaDonna Brave Bull Allard told The Young Turks how her daughter was arrested, stripped of her clothes by three male and one female officer, and then left naked in a cell overnight. “They’re targeting our families” she said. Human rights abuses have been widely committed by police and security forces as they try to discourage the protesters.
Rebecca Kemble, Alderwoman from Madison, Wisconsin, recounts how arrested protesters are beaten and thrown into pieces of the very pipeline they are protesting. “I saw the Marathon County deputy push her down the hill and slam her body and head into the transport van after this.”
Georgianne Nienaber of the Huffington Post knows where to point the finger for these outrageous crimes.
Sheriff Kyle Kirchmeier is the official who sets the tone for police actions in Morton County North Dakota. He alone determines how prisoners are treated. He holds the authority to enforce humane treatment or encourage cruelty designed to instill fear, humiliation, embarrassment and shame. And shame is the ultimate weapon—utilized by the narcissist in a pitiful attempt to gain control and break the spirit of his victims.
This kind of systematic violence is the way the U.S. government has always treated the native inhabitants of the American continent. Very little mainstream news coverage is documenting these crimes, instinctively taking the side of the corporation plotting to desecrate the sacred grounds of the Standing Rock Sioux in order to make a quick buck off of climate-warming and water-poisoning fossil fuels. We cannot allow the police state to squash the will of the people.
Listen to LaDonna Brave Bull Allard tell her story here: | 0 |
by Karl Denninger
One final set of thoughts before you go out to vote today.
There’s one major issue that got very little play during the campaign, as the media was hell-bent on focusing on Trump and bad words.
If we all burn, that is on them — and you. But I assure you the press will fry up just like you will at 5,000 degrees.
That issue is Syria.
Hillary Clinton has committed herself to imposing a “no fly” zone over Syria. As I have pointed out on multiple occasions in this column there are two problems with that commitment.
First, the Russians are in there at Syria’s invitation. They’re protecting Syria’s government at its request, exactly as we protected Kuwait at its request . They are therefore acting with the permission of the sovereign government of Syria, and we will not be. We will effectively be invading Syria.
Second, Russia has missile systems deployed in Syria that we cannot reliably kill, and our aircraft and other flying equipment cannot reliably survive being fired upon by them either. While we can certainly find some of their batteries through intelligence and similar, and blow them up, doing so would be a clear act of war. If we do not do so then anything Russia does not want flying in the skies over Syria will not be flying. It will instead be in many pieces and any airmen inside said aircraft will be dead.
Will Russia allow us to dictate that there will be a no-fly zone and allow us to enforce it?
I doubt it.
If we attempt to implement one anyway then conflict is inevitable. This is a conflict that has not happened thus far in the nuclear age between superpowers. Oh sure, there’s been a plane forced down here and one shot down there, along with plenty of harassment, along with various proxy wars where this party or that was supplying arms to one side or the other (e.g. Afghanistan) but an actual face-off and exchange between US and Russian forces has never occurred.
Once it happens, if it does, then someone will of course believe they “won” and someone will believe they “lost.” The question will then be whether the side who believes it “lost” will admit to that and withdraw.
If that side does not do so then we are facing nuclear war – a war that inherently involves the destruction of both nation’s infrastructure and large percentages of their respective populations.
Hillary Clinton has said she intends to walk this path. We do not know whether Trump will; he hasn’t committed himself one way or the other. But his statements thus far tend to lead me, and many others, to believe he won’t try to interfere in Syria’s (or anyone else’s) sovereign affairs. In fact he’s made clear that he believes that we have had far too many foreign entanglements and they have not served us well.
There’s no guarantee that a President Trump would not find some reason to intervene, of course, and thus no guarantee that we don’t ultimately wind up in the same place. Let’s face it — Syria is a mess, and one that Hillary Clinton had a large hand in creating.
But the choice here is between someone who might get pressed into a situation that leads to armed conflict, possibly nuclear conflict, and someone who has a vested interest in continuing what she started, who has declared her intent to take an action that by definition will violate Syria’s sovereignty and, with near-certainty will lead to an exchange of weapons between the Syrian protectors, which are Russian, and the United States.
That road has a high probability of being one way and at the end are events you will not like.
Don’t vote to die — and kill your children.
If you vote for Hillary you are in fact voting for nuclear war. | 0 |
The Jimmy Garoppolo trade is starting to look like it might go down as the most trade in NFL history to never happen. [According to Adam Schefter, via Pro Football Talk, the Garoppolo trade is, “not happening. ” Now of course, this news could amount to nothing more than the Patriots putting prospective trade partners on notice, letting them know that their current offers don’t impress, and if they still want Garoppolo they need to get serious between now and Thursday night’s NFL Draft. Or, maybe Belichick truly has no intention of parting with Garoppolo? Tom Brady will turn 40 just before the start of the preseason. If Belichick retains Garoppolo the Patriots will have, beyond doubt, the best quarterback situation in football with the best quarterback to ever play the game backed up by a guy who could start for over half the league. Should Brady get hurt this year, Belichick would still have a realistic shot at making a Super Bowl run with Garoppolo, everything else staying even. On the other hand, should Belichick trade Garoppolo, a Brady injury in all likelihood ends any realistic chance at winning a championship. Tom Curran of CSN New England says it will take multiple picks for Belichick to reconsider trading Garoppolo. The most likely fit for Garoppolo would be the Browns, who have multiple picks and a huge need for a quarterback. However, if the Patriots would consider spreading those picks out over a couple years, there’s the chance that other teams could come into play. And, of course, since Belichick seems like the kind of guy who would like to watch Twitter break, there’s always the chance that he could pull off the most Belichick move of all time and trade Brady after this season, then promote Garoppolo. But he wouldn’t do that, would he? Follow Dylan Gwinn on Twitter: @themightygwinn | 1 |
President Donald Trump’s executive order halting the importation of refugees from six countries also includes a section requiring the government to publicly release information on crimes committed by foreign nationals, including honor killings of women. [This lets the government “be more transparent with the American people and to implement more effectively policies and practices that serve the national interest,” the order states. Department of Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly and U. S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions must work together to provide the public with a report on foreign nationals charged with and convicted of offenses, including those who associate with or provide support to terrorist organizations. The order also instructs the government to release information on . The government will now track cases involving individuals who commit “ violence against women,” or honor killings. Honor killings are a brutal practice wherein Muslim males will murder or mutilate female family members accused of bringing shame and dishonor to their families and Islam. Like female genital mutilation, it is a practice that would not exist in the U. S. without mass immigration bringing its practitioners into U. S. communities. “Cases of honor killings violence in the U. S. are often unreported because of the shame it can cause to the victim and the victim’s family. Also, because victims are often young women, they may feel that reporting the crime to authorities will draw too much attention to the family committing the crime,” former U. S. government analyst Farhana Qazi explained to Fox News in November 2015. The order requires the government to release its inaugural report by September 2017, close to the sixteenth anniversary of the terror attacks committed by Islamic foreign nationals admitted to the U. S. on various visas. Reports shall be issued every six months from then on. The transparency will likely increase the broad support Trump’s immigration policies enjoy. Typically, the government conceals or refuses to collect statistics that reveal troubling consequences of mass immigration policies. A Feb. 8 Morning Consult poll found 55 percent of voters supported Trump’s executive order, including 82 percent of Republicans. Another McLaughlin Associates poll release Feb. 8 found 57 percent support for a halt of refugee settlement to implement better screening procedures. A Rasmussen Reports poll released on Feb. 2 found 52 percent of voters favored a freeze on all refugee resettlement until the government could better screen out terrorists, including 57 percent of young voters. A 2015 report detailing honor killings can be read here. | 1 |
THE MIND BLOWING JEWISH PROPHECY OF WAR BETWEEN SAUDIS AND IRANIANS!
Unfortunately, the U.S. provided Saudi Arabia with patriot missiles and “the coalition forces destroyed the missile 65 km (40 miles) from the Mecca without damage and retaliated against the launch site inside Yemen,” the statement said. Mecca is home to the most sacred sites in Islam, including the Grand Mosque.
Here is a video of the interception:
The Houthis confirmed the launch of a Burkan-1 ballistic missile into Saudi Arabia in a statement to their official news agency on Friday but said it targeted King Abdulaziz International Airport in Jeddah, the kingdom’s busiest airport. However, the coalition forces reveal it was heading towards Mecca.
FOR ENTIRE ARTICLE CLICK LINK | 0 |
Emails discovered during investigation of Jew Anthony Wiener sending dick pics to jailbait!
HA!
New York Times :
Newly discovered emails from Hillary Clintonâs private server were found after the F.B.I. seized electronic devices once shared by Anthony D. Weiner and his estranged wife, Huma Abedin, a top aide to Mrs. Clinton, federal law enforcement officials said Friday.
The F.B.I. is investigating illicit text messages that Mr. Weiner, a former Democratic congressman from New York, sent to a 15-year-old girl in North Carolina. The bureau told Congress on Friday that it had uncovered new emails related to the Clinton case â one federal official said they numbered in the thousands â potentially reigniting an issue that has weighed on the presidential campaign and offering a lifeline to Donald J. Trump less than two weeks before the election.
In a letter to Congress, the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, said that emails had surfaced in an unrelated case, and that they âappear to be pertinent to the investigation.â
…
âDirector Comeyâs letter refers to emails that have come to light in an unrelated case, but we have no idea what those emails are and the director himself notes they may not even be significant,â said John D. Podesta, chairman of Mrs. Clintonâs campaign.
He added: âIt is extraordinary that we would see something like this just 11 days out from a presidential election.â
Mrs. Clinton, arriving Friday in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, waved at members of the media gathered on the tarmac but ignored shouted questions.
HA!
She won’t even take questions!
There was no damage control plan again – just like when she collapsed on 911!
I’m not really sure how it makes sense that Weiner would have these on his phone, or why the FBI would seize the phone of his wife because he was sending dick pics to jailbait (unless he was using her phone to send them, lel) – but I’ve always said, Weiner is a funny Jew!
I never thought he would turn-out to be this funny!
Original article follows. tfw you just lost the game
OH YES YOU READ THAT HEADLINE RIGHT, SIR.
YESSIREE DOG.
I knew James Comey was a pretty cool guy when a Negro in Congress asked him to investigate me and he was like “Yeah, dat nigga hot as a muffuggah. Watchoo want ah invesegate how much azz he be kickin in dem toobs? Get the fug outta here with that shit, dawg.”
And now: total bro confirmed.
RT :
The FBI has learned of more emails involving Hillary Clintonâs private email server while she headed the State Department, FBI Director James Comey told several members of Congress, telling them he is reopening the investigation.
â In connection with an unrelated case, the FBI has learned of the existence of email that appear to be pertinent â to Clintonâs investigation, Comey wrote to the chairs of several relevant congressional committees, adding that he was briefed about the messages on Thursday. â I agree that the FBI should take appropriate investigative steps designed to allow investigators to review these emails to determine whether they contain classified information, as well as to assess their importance to our investigation. â
The FBI director cautioned, however, that the bureau has yet to assess the importance of the material, and that he doesnât know how long that will take.
Stocks fell after Comeyâs announcement, CNBC reported.
More like the sky just fell.
And underneath it we see Jesus Christ himself wearing a MAGA hat, smiling like a smug Pepe and whispering “lock her up.” Yo dawg, we heard you like America. So we sent Jesus Christ himself to make sure Donald Trump gets elected.
Seriously, people. Even if you don’t necessarily believe in Christianity, you have to admit that this is some kind of divine miracle that just happened here.
Representative Bob Goodlatte (R-Virginia), chair of the House Judiciary Committee, praised the decision to reopen the case.
âNow that the FBI has reopened the matter, it must conduct the investigation with impartiality and thoroughness,â he said in a statement. âThe American people deserve no less and no one should be above the law.â
Almost 15,000 new Clinton emails were discovered in September.
In mid-October, Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), chair of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, promised at least âfour new hearingsâ after Congress returns from recess in November based on the new emails, which lawmakers received but have not been made public.
“This is a flashing red light of potential criminality,” Chaffetz said.
The new evidence points to a âquid pro quoâ arrangement between the FBI and the State Department, he noted.
Welp.
That’s it.
It’s over.
There is just no way with an open investigation hanging over her head, and the FBI openly stating that it is so severe they have to act immediately, that she can possibly be elected.
I do understand that there is no evidence that Hillary’s own people care if she is a criminal or not when it comes to polling, but this seriously demoralizes them, making them much less likely to vote. At the same time, it is a massive morale boost to the Republicans who aren’t necessarily on the Trump Train but hate Hillary, ensuring that they’ll go out and vote.
Seriously guys. I did have my doubts. But this clears them up. We are 11 days away from the election.
And this drops.
And I guarantee Team Trump has something to drop next week. The Russian conspiracy might even be memed into reality and Putin might drop the hidden server. Assange still has something big.
We won, guys.
Honestly, I’ve got tears in my eyes right now.
God Bless America. | 0 |
Thursday 3 November 2016 by Danny Soz United States of America continues to dominate baseball World Series
The all-conquering Americans last night tightened their grip on the baseball World Series, leaving 195 other countries trailing in their wake.
This time it was the turn of the Chicago Cubs to reinforce America’s total domination of the series by beating the Cleveland Indians 8-7 on a thrilling night for their millions of fans worldwide.
Since it’s inception in 1903, no other country has come close to the world title as the American baseball juggernaut has rumbled over all-comers.
One of the first to congratulate the triumphant American team was presidential hopeful, Donald Trump, who spoke to reporters from Florida where he is currently on the campaign trail.
Forming an “o” with his thumb and forefinger and moving his hand up and down, Trump told reporters: “This is a tremendous win for America. It’s just tremendous.
“In fact, if I were to try to tell you how tremendous this is, you wouldn’t believe me. Under my presidency, this sort of tremendous event would be happening all the time.
“You would all be so proud. So proud. So proud of me and proud of your country. I can’t tell you how proud you would be because you wouldn’t believe me.
“However, under Hillary, none of these tremendous achievements would happen. Hillary is a crook who belongs in jail. She is not tremendous, and I will jail her. Jail…is…where…she…belongs!”
The triumphant Cubs team will now embark on a world tour of Illinois to celebrate their remarkable world-beating achievement. Get the best NewsThump stories in your mailbox every Friday, for FREE! There are currently | 0 |
Well finally we have the big global Business/Bank Goldman Sachs officially endorsing Hillary Clinton for President !! They have been giving her money and paying for speeches for some time now. Get ready for Hillary's *actual* policies to kick in if and when she gets elected. Ironic. GS has been a target of political activism for years. Now they can bank on Hillary protecting them. Goldman Sachs Endorses Hillary Clinton For President He’s with her. On Sunday, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton earned the endorsement of Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein—an endorsement she had been working toward for years. As was revealed by Wikileaks, Hillary Clinton spent the run up to her presidential campaign giving speeches to Goldman Sachs and other Wall Street banks, where she praised their talents and explained her positions on financial regulation. On October 24, 2013, Clinton told Goldman Sachs that Dodd-Frank had to be done mostly for “political reasons” because Congress needed to look like it was doing something about the crisis. She said, “There’s nothing magic about regulations, too much is bad, too little is bad. How do you get to the golden key, how do we figure out what works? And the people that know the industry better than anybody are the people who work in the industry.” The anti-Bernie anti-Thesis | 0 |
LONDON — From Brussels to Berlin to Washington, leaders of the Western democratic world awoke Friday morning to a blunt, rebuke delivered by the flinty citizens of a small island nation in the North Atlantic. Populist anger against the established political order had finally boiled over. The British had rebelled. Their stunning vote to leave the European Union presents a political, economic and existential crisis for a bloc already reeling from entrenched problems. But the message is hardly limited to Britain. The same yawning gap between the elite and mass opinion is fueling a populist backlash in Austria, France, Germany and elsewhere on the Continent — as well as in the United States. The symbolism of insurrection was rich on Friday: Donald J. Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee and embodiment of American fury, happened to be visiting Britain. “Basically, they took back their country,” Mr. Trump said Friday morning from Scotland, where he was promoting his golf courses. “That’s a good thing. ” Asked where public anger was greatest, Mr. Trump said: “U. K. U. S. There’s plenty of other places. This will not be the last. ” Even as the European Union began to grapple with a new and potentially destabilizing period of political uncertainty, the British vote also will inevitably be seized upon as further evidence of deepening public unease with the global economic order. Globalization and economic liberalization have produced winners and losers — and the big “Leave” vote in economically stagnant regions of Britain suggests that many of those who have lost out are fed up. Time and again, the European Union has navigated political crises during the past decade with a response that has maintained the status quo and the bloc’s lumbering forward momentum toward greater integration — without directly confronting the roiling public discontent beneath the surface. But now the question is whether the dam has broken: Before breakfast on Friday, leaders in France and the Netherlands were rejoicing and demanding similar referendums on European Union membership. “Victory for liberty!” declared the French leader Marine Le Pen, writing on Twitter, who changed her profile picture to an image of the Union Jack. From its outset, the European Union was a project of elites, one that, at times, moved forward without a clear popular mandate from the masses. Adopting the common currency was deeply controversial in some places, including Germany. The issue of democratic legitimacy has always hung over the unification project, since many significant steps were achieved through treaties that stirred considerable resistance in some countries. European unity remained popular, particularly as the bloc delivered undeniable economic and social progress. But the class frictions beneath the project worsened in the past decade, as the European economy has been battered by recession and an uneven recovery. It is not clear whether the message is getting through to more establishment leaders on both sides of the Atlantic, or what lessons they are taking from the shock of the British exit. Perhaps the liberal Democrats in the House who staged a clamorous Wednesday night in Washington, while part of the system themselves, were channeling the populist anger of the American left in their willingness to break the rules to make a point about the need for gun control. In Brussels, many member governments appear divided between an instinct to respond to the British referendum vote by driving for greater integration among Germany, France and other core members of the bloc and a willingness to moderate their ambitions in recognition of public opposition. European leaders were under pressure to reassure the European public, and the world, that the bloc was not at risk of unraveling. For decades, the European Union had moved forward, always expanding in size and influence. Britain has now reversed that trend. “We’re completely in uncharted territory,” said Hans Kundnani, a expert in European politics at the German Marshall Fund of the United States. Mr. Kundnani said the British vote exposed a contradiction at the core of the European project. European leaders define success as steering member states toward greater political and economic integration. And many of the bloc’s inefficiencies and dysfunctions can be traced to the unfinished work of strengthening European institutions and achieving greater integration between member states in areas such as banking, finance, security and defense. But public opinion is deeply skeptical of this “more Europe” agenda. populist leaders have stoked public anxieties and resurgent nationalism by lashing out against immigrants, while portraying the European capital, Brussels, as a bastion of political elites out of touch with the concerns of ordinary people. populists have demanded a of the neoliberal economics of free trade and limited regulation, while resisting efforts to deconstruct the social democratic welfare state. “The E. U. robs us of our money, our identity, our democracy, our sovereignty,” said Geert Wilders, the leader of the Dutch Party for Freedom. “The elites want more E. U. They think they know better than the people. They look down on the people and want to decide in their place. They want us to be ruled by undemocratic, unaccountable bureaucrats in a faraway place like Brussels. ” And permeating everything is the weak Continental economy and the crippling debt burden across Southern Europe. “The E. U. is kind of trapped,” Mr. Kundnani said. “On the one hand, the instinct will be to move ahead with further integration and reassure the rest of the world that the European Union is not unraveling. But that is very difficult because of the fault lines that exist. ” He added: “They are trapped because moving ahead is very difficult. Moving backwards is the last thing they want to do. And the status quo is unsustainable. ” Britain has always been a skeptical member of the European household. During the 1990s, Britain chose to keep the pound and not to join the countries sharing a common European currency, the euro. Many of the British concerns about the euro proved true, undermining the bloc’s credibility, even as Britain has remained mostly insulated against the Continent’s still unresolved euro crisis. Before the referendum, some European officials portrayed Britain as an idiosyncratic case that should not be seen as a bellwether for the Continent. But that is a hard argument to make. In France, Ms. Le Pen’s National Front party is experiencing steadily rising popularity as the country prepares for national elections next year. In Germany, the Alternative for Germany polled strongly in recent state elections. leaders in Hungary and Poland are hostile to immigrants, while critics say the governments of those countries are also rewriting national laws to undermine democratic checks and balances. In Italy, the Five Star Movement scored major victories last Sunday by winning mayoral elections in Turin and, more important, in the capital, Rome. Donald Tusk, one of the European Union’s top leaders, has started to talk about the risks facing the political establishment. At a speech last month before Europe’s coalition of political parties, Mr. Tusk cautioned his fellow political elites. “Obsessed with the idea of instant and total integration, we failed to notice that ordinary people, the citizens of Europe, do not share our ” said Mr. Tusk, the president of the European Council, which comprises the heads of state of all the 28 member states in the bloc. “Disillusioned with great visions of the future, they demand that we cope with the present reality better than we have been doing until now. ” Yet taking action may be difficult, since most analysts say the European Union is paralyzed by the coming national elections in 2017 in France and Germany, the two most powerful countries in the bloc. Neither the French nor the German government is eager to endorse sweeping initiatives for more European integration before the elections out of fear of a populist whipping at the polls. “Europe is very divided and the main European country, Germany, has no will or skills to lead the union — and is approaching important national elections,” said Lucio Caracciolo, the editor of the Italian geopolitical magazine Limes. “France is a country in crisis, while Italy has its own problems. I can’t see who would assume a European leadership capable of producing a deeper integration process. ” He added: “There is a very widespread rejection of politics everywhere. There is a similar mood in the United States, an antipolitical sentiment. ” Few industries in Britain are likely to be more directly hit than the financial services industry in London. Damon Hoff, a hedge fund manager, said that he had voted to stay in the European Union, but that he understood the sentiments of those who had voted to leave. “Europeans don’t feel more prosperous,” he said. “Europeans don’t feel more empowered. And certainly the British don’t. ” He added: “You want to be part of something that continuously evolves. Does the European Union feel like it is evolving? No. ” | 1 |
WASHINGTON — President Obama is on pace to be the first president in decades to leave office with a federal prison population that is smaller than when he was sworn in, a reflection of eight years of liberal criminal justice policies, historically low crime rates and an aggressive use of presidential commutations. Mr. Obama granted clemency to 79 federal prisoners on Tuesday, bringing his total to more than 1, 000 inmates, most of whom were serving lengthy prison terms under strict sentences imposed at the height of the war on drugs. An additional 13, 000 people have been released early by the courts, the Justice Department said. But looming over the announcement was the fact that Donald J. Trump’s nominee for attorney general, Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, strongly opposed Mr. Obama’s liberal approach to criminal justice. Mr. Sessions favors vigorous enforcement of drug laws and the use of mandatory minimum sentences. Some of Mr. Obama’s criminal justice legacy is easily undone. Justice Department policies that discourage seeking mandatory minimum sentences by default, for instance, can be torn up. But other changes, such as new sentencing guidelines, will have a lasting effect and will be difficult to reverse, regardless of the administration. “I can’t speak to what the next president is going to do,” W. Neil Eggleston, the White House counsel, told reporters. “I can’t speak to whether the next administration will have a similar level of enthusiasm. ” Mr. Obama’s announcement highlights a fundamental disagreement between the departing and incoming administrations about the role that stiff penalties should play in the criminal justice system. Mr. Obama and those who have led his Justice Department regard long mandatory prison sentences for drug crimes to be an outdated legacy of the war on drugs, and one that disproportionately hurt minorities. Mr. Sessions, a former federal prosecutor, credits strict enforcement for today’s low crime rates. “I was there when we had the revolving doors in the ’60s and ’70s,” he said in 2015. “We, as a nation, turned against that. We’ve created a system that requires certainty and punishment, swifter trials. And the result is a very great drop in the crime rate. ” President Jimmy Carter was the last president to leave office with a smaller federal prison population than he inherited, according to Justice Department figures. Since then, the prison population has ballooned into the world’s largest, with about one in every 100 adults locked up in local, state or federal prisons or jails. In 2010, Congress unanimously voted to reduce the sentencing disparity between crimes involving crack cocaine and those involving powder cocaine. Crack cocaine was disproportionately prevalent in neighborhoods, while powder cocaine was favored by more affluent white users, leading to a sentencing imbalance that cut along lines of race and class. Mr. Sessions was an early supporter of legislation to correct that difference. But he adamantly opposed a subsequent bill, which died, that would have reduced mandatory minimum sentences for some drug crimes. In 2013, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. wrote a memo to federal prosecutors, telling them not to bring charges involving mandatory minimum sentences in cases pertaining to nonviolent drug crimes. Prosecutors have responded by reducing the frequency of those charges by about 25 percent, the Justice Department said. “You don’t just try to hammer everybody for as long as you can because you can,” Sally Q. Yates, the deputy attorney general, said on Tuesday. “Your obligation as a prosecutor is to look at the individual’s conduct. ” Inside the Justice Department, there is wide speculation that the next attorney general will withdraw Mr. Holder’s memo. Mr. Obama has taken an interest in the issue and has used his clemency power to free people jailed for drug crimes. Typically, those prisoners would be eligible for release if sentenced under today’s standards. Mr. Obama has written personal letters to the inmates, telling them he believed they could turn their lives around. “He is committed to using his clemency power in ways not seen in the modern era,” Mr. Eggleston said. “Our nation is a nation of second chances. ” While Mr. Obama’s commutations are the most examples of people getting out of prison early, they represent only a small fraction of those who have been freed under changes made by the Sentencing Commission, which in 2014 voted to retroactively reduce sentences for people convicted of certain drug crimes. That move, which the Obama administration supported, made thousands of people eligible for early release. In the nation’s courtrooms, judges have been freeing prisoners, often with the Justice Department’s consent. More than 13, 000 people have been freed so far, according to the Justice Department, and 29, 000 others have been resentenced. “We want sentences that are just and proportional,” Ms. Yates said. “That means we should sentence people in ways that will be fair, that will punish people for their crimes and that will serve as a deterrent. But we shouldn’t keep people in prison longer than is necessary. ” Taken together, the push for clemency and resentencing sends a message that the government is willing to address unfairness in the criminal justice system, said Caroline Platt, a federal public defender in Virginia. “It says the system can recognize its own excesses and try to correct them,” she said. Neither Mr. Trump nor Mr. Sessions has said which policies they will continue. But in two decades in the Senate, Mr. Sessions has made it clear repeatedly that he sees mandatory minimum sentences and tough enforcement as critical to reducing crime. “There still remains in this country a limited number of people who will rob, rape, shoot and kill you. There’s not that many,” Mr. Sessions said in 2004. “You identify those, and they serve longer periods of time, you’ll have a reduction in crime in America. And that’s what happened. The federal government adopted a tough mandatory sentencing policy without parole. ” | 1 |
You can listen on our player .
To listen on a smart phone, just click this link: http://listen.spacial.com/api/listen/?sid=9826&method=sc It will ask if you want to download or execute. Click “Execute”. Then on the next screen, Complete action using, click “Google Play Music”.
Get together in our chat room: The Pub. Share this: | 0 |
*Sent:* Tuesday, August 11, 2015 6:00 PM *To:* Kendall, David *Subject:* Hi again from AP (inquiry about thumb drive) Hi David, We have been told, and we are preparing to report, that the FBI has taken possession of the thumb drive that was once in your possession. This is what we have been informed, and we wanted to see whether there was any sort of comment that could be provided. If you wanted to steer us away and say that we are misinformed, then I would gladly accept that as well . But we have solid reason to believe this. We’d welcome any comment you can offer. Thanks very much. Eric Associated Press reporter says he knows it’s true, but will gladly print that it’s false
What’s truly astonishing in this email is how AP reporter Eric Tucker says he will gladly LIE to cover for the Clintons . In plain English, he explains that he has “solid reason” to believe the report about the thumb drive, but he will gladly publish a false narrative via the Associated Press , and he even suggests what that false narrative should be: “If you wanted to steer us away and say that we are misinformed, then I would gladly accept that as well.”
In other words, he’s not just corrupt, dishonest and fraudulent as a journalist, he’s also SUGGESTING the false narrative the Clintons should use!
This is the exact same way the AP talks to the CDC about vaccines and measles, by the way. Essentially, the Associated Press reporters say, “We are total media whores, we will bend over and grab our ankles while you shove your fake story down the throats of our readers who foolishly think we’re a credible news organization.”
You gotta love Eric Tucker for this. The guy takes the prize for finally spelling out in black and white what we’ve known for years: the AP is a total joke when it comes to real journalism . Note carefully that the AP won’t even fire Tucker for this admission. He’ll probably get a prize of some sort. How many other Associated Presstitutes have deliberately LIED to cover up Clinton crimes?
It all brings to mind the obvious question: How many other Associated Presstitutes deliberately lied to cover up Clinton crimes?
Just what percentage of AP stories about the Clinton scandals are actually FAKE NEWS pretending to be credible journalism? (Answer: Probably about 99%.)
It’s not just AP, either. It’s the same story at every other mainstream news organization across America: They’re all liars and crooks, and they’re all working for Hillary Clinton, the serial killer and rape excuser. SF Source Dreamcatcher Nov. 2016 Share this: | 0 |
This is not a close call.
It is not a judgement call.
It is not subject to interpretation.
It is a flat-out criminal offense.
As secretary of state, Hillary Clinton routinely asked her maid to print out sensitive government e-mails and documents — including ones containing classified information — from her house in Washington, DC, e-mails and FBI memos show. But the housekeeper lacked the security clearance to handle such material.
In fact, Marina Santos was called on so frequently to receive e-mails that she may hold the secrets to E-mailgate — if only the FBI and Congress would subpoena her and the equipment she used.
It is a crime to knowingly, say much less intentionally, give access to classified information to someone who is not cleared to receive and handle it.
Santos also had access to a highly secure room called an SCIF (sensitive compartmented information facility) that diplomatic security agents set up at Whitehaven, according to FBI notes from an interview with Abedin.
From within the SCIF, Santos — who had no clearance — “collected documents from the secure facsimile machine for Clinton,” the FBI notes revealed.
Just how sensitive were the papers Santos presumably handled? The FBI noted Clinton periodically received the Presidential Daily Brief — a top-secret document prepared by the CIA and other US intelligence agencies — via the secure fax.
This is a second and even more serious federal crime.
The PDB is one of the most-seriously classified (top secret) documents routinely prepared for the President; it contains up to the minute information relating to various events and activities all over the world.
It is also a crime to allow, through negligence or worse, intentional act, someone who is not cleared to have access to a SCIF.
There is no possible argument that Hillary can raise of “retroactive” classification; that is, material that wasn’t classified at the time she handed it, when it comes to the PDB since those are always classified.
That the FBI knew about this months ago, which is now a documented fact, and did not demand that Hillary be charged with myriad federal offenses related to said intentional and knowing conduct that threatened our national security is an outrage.
The FBI has now proved that it is not a law enforcement agency but in fact it is a rogue band of armed thugs acting in direct support of a person who they know has repeatedly and willingly, on a daily basis, violated long-standing Federal Law and in fact have documented in writing that she violated those laws and yet they have intentionally and knowingly refused to act to bring her to justice .
The FBI has documented in its own writing that it is an equally-guilty party to Hillary Clinton’s willful and intentional violation of federal law as it pertains to the handling of classified information on a literal daily basis and thus can no longer be treated as a legitimate law enforcement or investigative agency by the people of the United States.
It does not matter what James Comey says; we are supposed to be a nation of laws and our Constitutional Republican form of government demands nothing less. When you declare a willingness to allow someone to violate the law with impunity you, and everyone who allows you in that position of authority to do so stand with them and in direct opposition to the Constitution of the United States.
Originally posted at Market Ticker .
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Israelis pride themselves on the revival of ancient Hebrew, which had not been widely spoken for almost two millenniums before the Zionist movement that led to the state’s founding in 1948. It is a binding part of the identity in a nation built by immigrants. But despite the richness of the language, this nation can find itself at a loss for contemporary terms. The venerated Academy of the Hebrew Language is always working to update a vocabulary inscribed on parchment for the digital era. Among the academy’s latest crop, announced on Twitter this month, were Hebrew words for shaming (“biyush,” an outgrowth of an existing verb, to shame) hashtag (“tag hakbatza” — literally, group tag) and big data (“netunei atek”). Israel’s health minister recently made some enemies in the industry when he came up with his own word for junk food: “McDonald’s. ” The academy offered an alternative: “zlolet” — a combination of “zlila,” or gluttony, and “zol,” which means cheap. The experts also seek public comment, as in a recent plea for a new word to replace “peripheria,” from the English periphery, used to refer to geographical areas or socioeconomic groups that, the academy said, “are not central, or are far from the center. ” In general Israeli parlance, “peripheria” is often a synonym for governmental neglect. People were asked to vote online for or against the academy’s suggestion: “shula,” derived from the word for margin. But Israelis overwhelmingly disapproved, noting that this term had the same negative connotations, and suggested alternatives. The most popular were variations on the word “heikef,” denoting scope or girth. Even for correct grammar and pronunciation can be a matter of dispute or guesswork since Hebrew is mostly written without “nikkud,” or vowel signs. The academy says it receives more than 1, 300 queries a month from people working in government, the military and the legal system, and from teachers, translators, poets and even children. Some are hoping to win a bet about correct usage. Others are seeking help drafting invitations for happy occasions — or, conversely, crafting inscriptions for tombstones. | 1 |
Getty - Saul Loeb The Wildfire is an opinion platform and any opinions or information put forth by contributors are exclusive to them and do not represent the views of IJR.
With ObamaCare premiums set to soar in some states by more than 50% in 2017, Barack Obama and the Democrats are busting their butts to blame anyone and everything they can for the staggering increases and unpopularity of the so-called 'Affordable' Care Act.
On Monday, ObamaCare architect Ezekiel Emanuel and CNN blamed Republicans for the price hikes, with Emanuel actually saying they're “not a big increase.”
Thursday afternoon, Obama came up with a new scapegoat: the media . THE MEDIA. — Washington Examiner (@dcexaminer) October 27, 2016
Some would argue that the so-called 'mainstream media' has carried Obama's water for eight years. Yet, they're to blame for the ObamaCare trainwreck? Yup.
Obama told more than 25,000 volunteers on a White House call:
"We're not going to get that much help from the media. This is going to be a ground game.
There is a faction of people who are continually trying to root for failure, despite the fact that we keep on insuring people and folks continue to get help."
That “faction of people” is a majority of Americans, by the way. Here's what a recent Gallup poll found:
51% disapprove of the law; 44% approve
18% say it has helped their families; 29% say it has hurt them
Long term, most Americans believe it will hurt or not make a difference
Anyway, Obama told the volunteers that they'll have to help him “clear the mud off the windshield” to get people to sign up— mud presumably put there by the media.
Speaking of the media, Townhall's Guy Benson and The Daily Caller's Derek Hunter were a bit 'skeptical' of Obama's charge: The press is sending those premium hike letters, canceling people's plans, and forcing insurers out of the exchanges?? Wow! ???? #whining https://t.co/0b2ffrdX7I — Guy Benson (@guypbenson) October 28, 2016 Yesterday it was Republicans' fault, now it's the media. Total number of media and Republicans who voted for/had any input in Obamacare = 0. https://t.co/rGjeM95bL4 — Derek Hunter (@derekahunter) October 28, 2016
As were other Twitterers: Oh. I guess the press wrote a dumpster fire law, passed it with trickery in the middle of night, after lying about it. Interesting take. https://t.co/kvVjLaIKZT | 0 |
Le datsan d'Aguinskoïé : plongée au cœur du bouddhisme russe Aguinskoïé est un petit village situé au sud du kraï de Transbaïkalie (près de 5 000 km à l'est de Moscou), bordé par le lac Baïkal à l'ouest et la Mongolie au sud. Quand on demande aux habitants s'ils considèrent que le village se trouve en Sibérie, ils répondent résolument : « Non, c'est le kraï de Transbaïkalie ». En Transbaïkalie, l'originalité régionale et la proximité de l'Orient transparaissent de toutes parts : dans le tintement délicat des clochettes qui enveloppe le datsan d'Aguinskoïé pour s'envoler vers les cimes des pins. Dans le vent poussiéreux qui se promène dans la steppe aux odeurs d'herbe séchée. Dans l'arôme des buuz frais (grands raviolis) de mouton, qui pénètre dans les rues du village à travers les portes des cafés. Pour la plupart des habitants de la Sibérie, Aguinskoïé est un point inconnu sur la carte. En revanche, pour les Bouriates, qui représentent la majorité de la population locale, ainsi que pour les bouddhistes de Transbaïkalie, mais aussi de Bouriatie, de la République de l'Altaï, de Mongolie et du Touva, Aguinskoïé est une maison où les anciens préservent les légendes et rites nationaux. Une maison où il est facile de prier et où l'on revient après de longs voyages. 1 Un endroit sous les pins « On nous laissera rentrer dans le datsan ? C'est tout de même un monastère, un lieu fermé. Les lamas voudront-ils nous rencontrer ? » , demandé-je à mon guide à l'entrée du datsan d'Aguinskoïé. « Certainement. Dans le bouddhisme, le lama est un enseignant, c'est le sens du mot en tibétain. On considère que le lama doit répondre aux questions et apporter conseil à tous ceux qui s'adressent à lui. Peu importe s'il s'agit d'un bouddhiste, d'un chrétien ou d'un représentant d'un autre culte » , répond mon compagnon Daba Dabaïev, lama, photographe et voyageur. Nous entrons dans le datsan d'Aguinskoïé, l'un des plus anciens de Sibérie : il a plus de 200 ans. Le père de Daba Dabaïev l'a amené au datsan d'Aguinskoïé dès qu'il a terminé le collège. Daba a d'abord étudié à l'Académie du datsan, à la faculté de philosophie bouddhiste, puis, en troisième année, il a opté pour la faculté de peinture avant de travailler ensuite comme photographe au datsan. Il a 30 ans. « Je suis arrivé ici à l'âge de 14 ans et je ne comprenais pas bien ce qu'était un datsan, ce qu'était le bouddhisme. La première année, je voulais fuir. J'avais beaucoup de cours, beaucoup de travail, il fallait obéir aux lamas plus âgés et exécuter leurs ordres, c'est la règle. Je rentrais à la maison pour les vacances, je ressentais une liberté que je n'oublierai sans doute jamais et pensais : « Je suis chez moi ! ». Deux ans plus tard, en arrivant en Khakassie, je me surprenais à penser : « Vivement que je rentre au datsan ». C'est ma maison » . Nous sommes installés dans le dougan (temple dans le bouddhisme tibétain, ndlr) le plus ancien et le plus beau du datsan d'Aguinskoïé, le dougan Devajine. Il est entouré de rangées de pins et de tambours sacrés qui contiennent entre cent et quatre cent mille prières. Les bouddhistes laïcs et les lamas du monastère tournent ces tambours dans le sens des aiguilles d'une montre, c'est l'une des formes de prière. À l'intérieur, le dougan est décoré de tableaux de Koless Sansara, de portraits de lamas respectés persécutés dans les années 1930 et d'une statue dorée de Bouddha. On ressent les traditions tibétaines, mais comme les premiers dougans furent bâtis par des maçons et charpentiers russes, des éléments de l'architecture russe sont également présents. Par exemple, les grandes fenêtres grillagées rappellent celles des terems (palais en bois, ndlr) des contes avec la lueur du jour tombant sur le plancher par taches de lumière chaude. Le musée régional d'Aguinskoïé porte le nom du chercheur orientaliste et voyageur Gombojab Tsybikov (1873 – 1930). Cet habitant d'un petit village bouriate aida en 1905 la revue National Geographic à se relever économiquement et à regagner sa notoriété mondiale. En 1899, Tsybikov part en mission de recherche pour la Société russe de géographie au Tibet central, dans sa capitale fermée Lhassa. À l'époque, aucun étranger à l'exception des citoyens chinois et mongols n'a le droit de se rendre au Tibet, ainsi Tsybikov voyage déguisé en pèlerin. La direction de la Société russe de géographie équipe le Bouriate d'une caméra portative Self-Worker, d'objectifs anastigmats Hertz et de plaques anglaises de la marque Empress. La photographie étant passible de la peine de mort dans la capitale tibétaine, Tsybikov utilise une ruse : il cache sa caméra dans le tambour portatif de prière qu'il garde tout le temps sur lui. En 1905, la revue National Geographic publie un reportage sur le Tibet. Gombojab Tsybikov et son collègue Ovche Norzounov, qui photographiait également Lhassa même en avoir averti Tsybikov, offrent les images à la revue. Au début du XXe siècle, parier sur la photographie assortie d'un petit texte est nouveau pour la revue. Cette décision s'avère payante : la revue peut ainsi survivre en temps de crise et trouve son style de présentation. Baigné par cette lumière, Daba est installé sur un banc et égrène le chapelet bouddhiste entre ses mains. Il porte une veste urbaine bordeaux dont la couleur rappelle en tout point la veste des lamas en peau de mouton. Daba voyage beaucoup à travers la Sibérie, mais reste toujours rattaché intérieurement, et même extérieurement, à sa maison, le datsan : en traversant les portes du temple pour sortir dans le grand monde, un lama reste toujours lama. 2 Coucher de soleil sur le bas-côté « Quitter Aguinskoïé ou partir en voyage ne veut pas dire qu'on rompt le lien avec nos racines , estime Daba. Le Dalaï Lama dit que pour atteindre la paix intérieure absolue et le bonheur, on doit se rendre dans un endroit qu'on ne connaît pas au moins une fois par an. Ainsi, le cerveau pourra évoluer ». Nous sommes installés avec Daba et son ami photographe et opérateur Boulat dans un café en bord de route et dégustons de délicieux buuz de beauf haché, plat national des Bouriates. Daba et Boulat parcourent depuis plusieurs années leur région natale et font des reportages et des films pour leur chaîne Travelman. Leur dernière réalisation est le court-métrage de fiction Nuusa ( « secret » en bouriate). « Les amis qui sont partis me demandent parfois : « Pourquoi restes-tu à Aguinskoïé ? Pars au plus vite, tant que tu n'es pas recouvert de racines » , raconte Boulat. Mais on ne peut pas fuir ses problèmes, tout est à l'intérieur de l'homme. Il faut voyager et regarder le monde alentour, mais il faut aussi savoir trouver l'inspiration pour travailler au datsan d'Aguinskoïé. Nous la trouvons ». Auteur : Anna Grouzdeva | 0 |
Persian Gulf Bahraini human rights activist Nabeel Rajab
Prominent Bahraini human rights campaigner Nabeel Rajab has been taken to hospital from prison due to heart problems after being held in solitary confinement for three months.
In a post on his Twitter account, his son, Adam, said that his father was transferred for the third time to a police hospital after suffering from chest pain.
The 52-year-old president of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights has been repeatedly detained for organizing pro-democracy demonstrations and publishing Twitter posts deemed “insulting” to the Bahraini authorities.
He was pardoned for health reasons last year, but was re-arrested on June 13 following an intensive search of his house in the northwest of the country. Reports suggest he has been subjected to harassment in jail.
Thousands of anti-regime protesters have held numerous demonstrations in Bahrain on an almost daily basis ever since a popular uprising began in the kingdom on February 14, 2011.
They are demanding that the Al Khalifah dynasty relinquish power and a just system representing all Bahrainis be established.
On March 14, 2011, troops from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates were deployed to Bahrain to assist the Manama government in its crackdown on peaceful protesters.
Scores of people have lost their lives and hundreds of others sustained injuries or got arrested as a result of the Al Khalifah regime’s crackdown on anti-regime activists. Loading ... | 0 |
Thu, 27 Oct 2016 15:45 UTC © Lockheed An artist’s illustration of a Defense Meteorological Satellite Program satellite in orbit. A third U.S. Air Force weather satellite that launched more than 20 years ago has broken up in orbit, Air Force Space Command disclosed Monday evening. Air Force officials confirmed the breakup of the long-retired Defense Meteorological Satellite Program Flight 12 satellite (DMSP F-12) after the Joint Space Operations Center at Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, detected an additional object orbiting alongside the 22-year-old satellite . DMSP F-12, which the Air Force retired from service in 2008, had the same battery assembly that was implicated in the February 2015 breakup of DMSP F-13. While both satellites were built by Lockheed Martin and launched less than a year apart, DMSP F-13 was still in service when it suffered its breakup, producing nearly 150 pieces of debris . DMSP F-12, in contrast, was shut down in 2008 — a process that entails burning off the satellite's remaining fuel, releasing compressed gasses, and discharging the battery. The Air Force said Monday evening it was tracking just one piece of debris associated with DMSP F-12's breakup. Properly shutting down a DMSP satellite at the end of its service life is no guarantee that it won't suffer a catastrophic breakup, however. In 2004, a 13-year-old DMSP spacecraft, dubbed DMSP-F11, broke apart and produced 56 pieces of cataloged space debris, even though it had been taken out of service and gone through the normal end-of-life showdown procedures . Following the February 2015 breakup of DMSP F-13 , the Air Force said a total of nine DMSP satellites launched between 1982 and 1997 all had the same failure-prone battery assembly. At the time, only seven were still in orbit. With the breakup of DMSP F-12, that number is down to six. Of those, only one — DMSP F-14 — is still in service. The Air Force said determining the cause of DMSP F-12's breakup will be especially difficult since they have no telemetry from the long-silent satellite to help assess the incident. The Air Force still has five DMSP satellites in service. The youngest, DMSP F-18, was launched in 2009. The oldest, DMSP F-14, was launched in 1997. In February, the DMSP suffered another setback when the Air Force lost the ability to command DMSP F-19 due to an onboard power failure. The satellite had been in orbit less than two years when the failure occurred. Comment: Are these satellites just falling to pieces because of bad design? Is someone using them as target practice? Or are some of them falling victim to the increase in space rocks penetrating our skies? (For example: Space rock collision? USAF satellite explodes in Earth orbit ) What exactly are these satellites used for? From Lockheed : Today, DMSP is still providing strategic and tactical weather prediction to aid the U.S. military in planning operations at sea, on land and in the air . The satellites, equipped with a sophisticated sensor suite, can: Image visible and infrared cloud cover Measure precipitation, surface temperature, and soil moisture Collect specialized global meteorological, oceanographic, and solar-geophysical information in all weather conditions | 0 |
ATLANTA — When Michael Fitzgerald, a local Republican leader, took a break from packing up the signs after a candidate forum here last week, he appeared momentarily flummoxed about the state of his party under President Trump. Early voting has already begun in a closely watched special House election to replace former Representative Tom Price, who became Mr. Trump’s health secretary, but in the suburbs north of Atlanta, few seem quite sure what exactly the party stands for now. “There are shades,” Mr. Fitzgerald finally said as he considered what it now meant to be a Republican. “Can I point to an individual and say, ‘Here’s your ideal conservative’?” He did not answer his own question, but he did not need to. Mr. Trump’s takeover of the Republican Party has blurred the ideological distinctions that defined the right for the past eight years. Driven more by personal loyalty and a ravenous appetite to win than by any fixed political philosophy, the president has been received warmly by some mainstream conservatives. At the same time, even ideological who share the president’s pugilism but not his pragmatism have stuck by him because Mr. Trump has made the right enemies — and gleefully ridiculed them with public insults rarely heard from a president. These loyalties have upended the Tea divide, which has dominated fratricidal primary seasons since 2010 but increasingly has the air of fins on the back of a car, a quaint relic from an earlier era. With Mr. Trump in charge, the political market for purity on the right has been devalued. “Because of the loyalty that the most conservative voters in our base have to Trump, there’s a pull there that’s scrambling the ideological lines,” said Andy Sere, a Republican ad man who has been heavily engaged in the party’s internecine wars. “He wants wins on the board, and that’s traditionally been the goal of the pragmatists. ” The shifting conservative fault lines are on display in the affluent and northern suburbs of Atlanta, which were at the front end of the South’s political realignment in the 1970s when they turned away from their Democratic roots and elected a loquacious young college professor named Newt Gingrich to Congress. The special election on April 18 has drawn substantial attention because one of the Democrats running, Jon Ossoff, has raised a remarkable $8 million, and his success in a district could presage a midterm backlash against Mr. Trump. (Voters will pick from candidates of both parties on a single ballot if no one clears 50 percent, the top two finishers will advance to a runoff election.) But the way the Republican hopefuls are running is just as instructive. Even as they try to win over the sort of conservative activists dedicated enough to participate in a rare April election, the Republicans are casting themselves more as pragmatists in the spirit of Mr. Trump than unwavering ideologues. At the forum and in individual interviews afterward, three of the Republicans in the field invoked some variation of Ronald Reagan’s maxim that it is better to get 80 percent of what you want than nothing at all. Few embraced the Tea Party moniker. And none of the candidates pledged to join the Freedom Caucus, the conservative group whose uncompromising ideology helped derail Mr. Trump’s efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act. One of the leading Republican candidates, Karen Handel, even wore her practicality as a badge of honor, citing not just Reagan but also Margaret Thatcher’s “relentless incrementalism” credo. “Republican voters are expecting that we get down to business and deliver and do the job,” said Ms. Handel, a former Georgia secretary of state, failed Senate candidate and failed candidate for governor. This time around, she said, the expectations from the party base have shifted. Bob Gray, who calls himself an outsider and is a businessman supported by the conservative Club for Growth, played to type at the forum as he twice criticized Speaker Paul D. Ryan for having “failed” on the health care legislation. But in an interview, Mr. Gray allowed that he would have backed the bill (which the Club for Growth opposed) shied away from the Tea Party label and sounded more like a centrist than a conservative. “This is the problem with D. C.,” he said. “Everybody has retreated to their political corners with a jersey on. We need people like President Trump who want to go to D. C. and change the way they do business. The American people are tired of the bickering. ” Such remarks from a Club for candidate would have been jarring only three years ago, but one Tea Party leader here said the change was the inevitable result of last year’s presidential campaign. “The Republican primary voters rejected a purist ideologue when they chose Donald Trump over Ted Cruz,” said Debbie Dooley, chairwoman of the Atlanta Tea Party Patriots. Ms. Dooley’s frequently updated Facebook page is the stuff of a political scientist’s dreams, a nearly look at the shifting sands of the Republican Party at the outset of the Trump era. “People began to want results, not platitudes,” Ms. Dooley said, conceding her own “evolution,” as she called it. “You still have some who are still purists, but the Trump train has left the station. ” Republican swords have been sheathed well beyond this House race. Nine Republican senators are up for next year, but there is little talk of the sort of primaries that terrified Republican lawmakers and convulsed the party during President Barack Obama’s administration. What talk there is has come from Mr. Trump’s backers, and is based on a perceived lack of fidelity to the president rather than on any ideological apostasy. Nowhere has the newly muddled nature of the party been more evident than in the fallout from the Republican failure to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Activists are angry over the display of dysfunction, but they are uncertain whom to turn their guns on. They will not blame Mr. Trump, because to fault him is to link arms with the left and an adversarial news media, a nonstarter in an era of tribal politics. Some on the right are tempted to point a finger at Mr. Ryan, a pillar of the party establishment, but that approach has been complicated by Mr. Trump’s decision to align himself with the speaker, both on the health care issue and more broadly. This leaves the Freedom Caucus. But these lawmakers, backed by an array of outside groups, are some of the most dependably conservative members of Congress and were hailed for their steadfast opposition in the Obama years. “For eight years, the heroes in this movement were the Freedom Caucus members, and now they’re suddenly in the bad camp?” asked the Republican strategist Chip Lake, a touch of wonder in his voice. “It’s really confusing right now as a Republican to figure out who’s on first. ” To Republican veterans, the turn toward politics on the right does not represent any sort of great awakening, just activists aligning themselves with the preferences of a new president. The question is just how much Mr. Trump can tug the Republican electorate along with him if he decides to go further toward the center (or even left) than any of his Republican predecessors. For now, Ralph Reed, a longtime Republican strategist who lives just outside this congressional district, said the bedrock of the Republican base will not abandon Mr. Trump. “The guy who is enemy of our enemy can’t be our enemy,” he said. “Trump is the only game in town. ” | 1 |
ON a warm summer evening, there’s no better way to unwind than sipping a nice cold cocktail, made with the help of an app. A great one to start with is 8, 500+ Drink Cocktail Recipes, which, as its name suggests, offers so many choices that you’re bound to find many you like. This app isn’t : It is basically a list of cocktails that you can browse or search. There are no fancy photos or detailed instructions. But the app lets you search for recipes by category or ingredients, which is especially helpful if you want to stick to spirits you already have on hand. You can also mark favorite recipes to make it easier to find them again later. The instructions are clear and easy to follow. The app is free for iOS and Android, though you may find the advertisements bothersome. Modern Classics of the Cocktail Renaissance is more interesting, with a small but carefully curated list of drinks that have been popular in recent decades. The recipes are straightforward and include fascinating snippets of the drinks’ histories, as well as insights into some of their ingredients. You can ask for suggestions based on what ingredients you have available. And you can get advice on other ingredients you might want to buy to expand the range of cocktails you can make. The app looks elegant, feels professional and could be a handy tool to impress guests at your next party. It is available only for iOS, costs $10 and contains about 100 recipes. If your tastes are more Martin’s Index of Cocktails comes from the same app maker as Modern Classics but reaches farther back in history. This app contains more than 2, 400 recipes dating as far back as the 1850s, offering interesting alternatives to the kinds of cocktails that are familiar today. This app also costs $10 and is for iOS only. Cocktails — Virtual Drink Mixer and Recipes is distinguished by a clever trick: It uses the camera on your device to look at the glass you’ve chosen to drink from. You then select a cocktail recipe, and the app superimposes a guide on the glass showing how much of each ingredient you need to pour in. This could be a great option if you’re a cocktail measurements klutz. It also simplifies the process of making a batch of drinks to share, instead of just a single glass. The app features a database of common glass shapes and sizes (labeled, somewhat confusingly, in German, though the rest of the app is in English) but you can also enter the measurements of your own glassware and it will use this data to calculate the correct proportion of ingredients. Virtual Drink Mixer and Recipes is for iOS only and costs $1. Cocktails: Become a Real Bartender is also worth checking out. This app has only about 400 recipes, but it is lavishly illustrated, well designed and easy to navigate. It includes detailed instructions for mixing cocktails, including visual hints about adding ice, filling glasses and so on. The app also has a few unusual features, like letting you search for cocktails by their color or view instructions on an Apple Watch — a useful option if your hands are covered in, say, lemon juice. This app is free for iOS. Finally, Android users should try the free Cocktails Guru app. Like Real Bartender, it focuses on images and detailed instructions. It, too, has a few extra features, like showing you cocktails that are similar to the one you’re looking at. Cocktails Guru even includes tips on mixing drinks the way professional bartenders do. If you create a profile in the app, you can add comments to existing recipes and even upload images of the cocktails you’ve mixed. Scrivener, a and useful app for writing anything from a short article to a novel, is finally available for iOS. The mobile version is as comprehensive as the older desktop version and works especially well on the iPad. But since your scribbles are all saved to the cloud, you can also edit your text on your iPhone, wherever the muse seizes you. Scrivener is $20 and worth every cent. | 1 |
The Senate minority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, asked the F. B. I. on Monday to investigate evidence suggesting that Russia may try to manipulate voting results in November. In a letter to the F. B. I. director, James B. Comey Jr. Mr. Reid wrote that the threat of Russian interference “is more extensive than is widely known and may include the intent to falsify official election results. ” Recent classified briefings from senior intelligence officials, Mr. Reid said in an interview, have left him fearful that President Vladimir V. Putin’s “goal is tampering with this election. ” News reports on Monday said the F. B. I. warned state election officials several weeks ago that foreign hackers had exported voter registration data from computer systems in at least one state, and had pierced the systems of a second one. The bureau did not name the states, but Yahoo News, which first reported the confidential F. B. I. warning, said they were Arizona and Illinois. Matt Roberts, a spokesman for Arizona’s secretary of state, said the F. B. I. had told state officials that Russians were behind the Arizona attack. After the F. B. I. warning, Arizona took its voter registration database offline from June 28 to July 8 to allow for a forensic exam of its systems, Mr. Roberts said. The F. B. I. in its notice to states, said the voter information had been “exfiltrated,” which means that it was shipped out of the state systems to another computer. But it does not mean that the data itself was tampered with. It is unclear whether the hackers intended to affect the election or pursued the data for other purposes, like gaining personal identifying information about voters. The F. B. I. warning referred to “targeting activity” against state boards of elections, but did not discuss the intent of the hackers. “That incident was only a small part of what disturbed me,” Mr. Reid said on Monday. In his letter to the F. B. I. he offered no specifics about how Russian hackers could manipulate election data, an effort made harder by the varying procedures in each state. But the prospect of election tampering has been discussed since the revelation that two Russian intelligence agencies, the F. S. B. and the G. R. U. were believed to be responsible for the hacking of the networks of the Democratic National Committee. Emails published by a hacker who called himself Guccifer 2. 0 — believed to be an alias for Russian hackers linked to the intelligence agencies — revealed that the committee had denigrated the campaign of Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont. The disclosures led to the resignation of Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida as the committee’s chairwoman. Mr. Reid’s accusation that Russia is seeking not only to influence the election with propaganda but also to tamper with the vote counting goes significantly beyond anything the Obama administration has said in public. While intelligence agencies have told the White House that they have “high confidence” that Russian intelligence services were behind the hacking of the Democratic committee, the administration has not leveled any accusations against Mr. Putin’s government. Asked about that in the interview, Mr. Reid said he was free to say things the president was not. But Mr. Reid argued that the connections between some of Donald J. Trump’s former and current advisers and the Russian leadership should, by itself, prompt an investigation. He referred indirectly in his letter to a speech given in Russia by one Trump adviser, Carter Page, a consultant and investor in the energy giant Gazprom, who criticized American sanctions policy toward Russia. “Trump and his people keep saying the election is rigged,” Mr. Reid said. “Why is he saying that? Because people are telling him the election can be messed with. ” Mr. Trump’s advisers say they are concerned that unnamed elites could rig the election for his opponent, Hillary Clinton. Mr. Reid argued that if Russia concentrated on “less than six” swing states, it could alter results and undermine confidence in the electoral system. That would pose challenges, given that most states have paper backups, but he noted that hackers could keep people from voting by tampering with the rolls of eligible voters. | 1 |
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Kate Bartolotta – In this day and age where the constant use of social media demands that we label and define ourselves to others in every way possible, it’s important to understand the true meaning and use of the word introvert.
A lot of people use the words “introverted” and “shy” interchangeably; they don’t mean the same thing.
As someone who works with people all the time, you’d think I’d be an extrovert. I’m friendly. I’m not shy. But when I get close to my “people time” limit, it’s time to shut down, be quiet and hole up with a good book. I love helping people, but there’s a huge reason that I balance that type of work with work where I get to be quiet and dive in to working with words instead of being bombarded with interaction.
It’s because—although I don’t fall into some of the old stereotypes—I’m an introvert.
I spent years feeling guilty if I wanted to spend time alone instead of doing things with friends. I learned to make the best of it, and often pushed myself to be social—even when it felt exhausting. Many people do this, as extroversion tends to be prized in our society, while introversion is seen as a “second-class personality trait, somewhere between a disappointment and a pathology.” It is none of those things. It’s the way an estimated two-thirds to one-half of us are wired, and it can be our greatest asset.
As I mentioned, being introverted isn’t the same thing as being shy (though there’s nothing wrong with being shy either) . Many shy people are also introverted, but one doesn’t really have much to do with the other. The best explanation I was ever given (and maybe one of the biggest “aha!” moments of my adult life) was that while extroverts are energized by connecting and spending time with others, introverts need inward-focused, alone time to recharge.
Being introverted has nothing to do with lack of confidence. Many confident people are introverted, and gather their strength from the time they spend alone rather than from the input of others. In some ways, I believe that the ability to enjoy being by yourself says a great deal about your confidence.
It isn’t that introverts don’t like social time—it’s that for us, social time is giving out energy rather than receiving energy.
A lot of us fall somewhere in the middle between the two, and some interactions take more out of people than others.
A few things to consider if someone you care about falls more on the introverted end of the spectrum: 1. Think of each of us as having a cup of energy available.
For introverts, most social interactions take a little out of that cup instead of filling it the way it does for extroverts. Most of us like it. We’re happy to give and love to see you. When the cup is empty, though, we need some time to refuel. We aren’t mad. We don’t stop caring about you. We’ll be so happy to see you and talk to you again when we’ve had some time to decompress. 2. Silence isn’t a bad thing.
Really. It’s not an insult. It’s the introvert’s way of conserving energy and restoring him or herself. If we can be quiet with you (and you can be content being quiet with us) it’s a huge compliment and a huge relief. Other times the quiet really does need to be spent alone. We come back when we’re ready. It’s worth the wait. 3. Just because someone is friendly, she isn’t necessarily an extrovert; just because someone is quiet doesn’t mean he’s an introvert.
If you pay attention to people you care about, often you can see what energizes them and what drains them. If you aren’t sure, ask. If you notice a friend seems wiped out, ask if spending time together sounds like fun or if they’d like some down time. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve become almost giddy because plans were cancelled—even with people I love. When you know someone needs some space in order to re-energize, be respectful and give it to them. It isn’t rejection. 4. Text. Write letters. Email. We love it.
There are times that you can’t beat a face to face conversation, I’d agree 100%. But for introverts, sometimes being able to stay connected and stay in touch in a less intense and less draining way is a huge help. Being in crowds is tough. Even long conversations can be tough if we’re already “peopled out.” Having the freedom to respond when we are ready is a great feeling. Sometimes, it’s right away. If it’s not, don’t be offended. (It’s not you…it’s me. Really!) 5. All of this really comes down to respect.
Each of us has our own set of boundaries, our own way of communicating and our own needs. When you care about someone, you choose to communicate with him or her in ways that show you love and respect them. If your cup is filled by lots of interaction with others, go for it! Be in tune with your own needs, and enjoy the way that time with others energizes you. If someone you love is an introvert, and needs time to him or herself, tune into and respect that as well. We don’t do activities alone because we are sad, or negative or depressed; we do it because that’s what fills our cup back up. We’ll be even happier to see you when we come back.
Kate Bartolotta –“One of the best things I’ve read on the subject was the book Quiet: The Power of Introverts by Susan Cain. The shorter 12-question quiz on her site can give you some good insights into your own personal introversion or extroversion that bypasses some of those long held stereotypes (P.S. I’m 12 for 12).” SF Source Dreamcatcher Reality | 0 |
In the 1960s and ’70s in Moscow, Nina Brodskaya was a singing star. “I used to sing for the biggest band in Moscow,” said Ms. Brodskaya, who performed with the illustrious Eddie Rosner Jazz Orchestra in the Soviet Union before she moved to the United States in 1980. She made records here with names like “ ” and “Come to USA” but never equaled the renown she had in the Soviet Union. But she still appears regularly in a cramped basement alongside a longstanding group of fellow musicians from Russia and other former countries who have settled in and around Brighton Beach, the heavily Russian neighborhood in Brooklyn. There is no audience, but Ms. Brodskaya has the joy of jamming with her fellow immigrants as they gather on Tuesday nights below a dentist’s office in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, in a modest room adorned with posters of American and Russian jazz luminaries. The musicians are mostly over 60 and often learned jazz clandestinely and resourcefully in Russia, where the authorities were suspicious of people interested in American culture, especially cultural traditions that emphasized improvisation and artistic freedom. “They would tell us, ‘Today, you’re playing jazz tomorrow, you’re selling your country,’” recalled Ms. Brodskaya, who was a singer in the band led by Eddie Rosner, a trumpeter and bandleader known as the Polish Louis Armstrong who was imprisoned for years in a Soviet gulag under Stalin. On a recent Tuesday, Ms. Brodskaya rehearsed two numbers with the band that demonstrated its duality: a jazz standard, “Just in Time,” and a Russian song whose title translates to “Save Love. ” The rehearsals are exhaustive affairs run under the strict baton of the band’s musical director, Zinovy Pritsker, who instructs the musicians in Russian. But reward comes afterward, when a table is set up in the waiting room of the dentist’s office and a bottle of icy vodka is plunked down, along with a meal of herring, potatoes and Russian delicacies. The group plays mostly classics from the repertoires of Count Basie, Duke Ellington and others, arranged for the band by Mr. Pritsker, 69. From the back of the room, the band is propelled by its drummer, Dr. Mark Rosen, 71, whose dental office is upstairs and who named the ensemble the Dr. Mark Rosen Big Band. Asked about the name, Mr. Pritsker, a formal man with a dark Russian mood, shrugged and said: “What can I tell you? He has the rehearsal space. ” The band plays the occasional Russian wedding or dance at catering halls in Brighton Beach. Sometimes, Russian musicians visiting New York hear about the band and sit in. But, for the most part, the only outsiders who hear the band are the nighttime dog walkers in the neighborhood who, according to Dr. Rosen, say they love the sound of swinging jazz that seeps out of the basement windows. The group is mainly a rehearsal band that allows players to stay connected to one another and the music they fell in love with as young musicians. It was a time when jazz was seen as the decadent music of the West and suppressed, Dr. Rosen said, recalling his years of living under Communism. The band’s male singer, Lev Pilshik, added: “Jazz was prohibited. If you played it in certain clubs, you might have K. G. B. agents coming and asking about you. ” Despite mostly playing for one another, the band has a rare concert scheduled on Tuesday night in Manhattan, at the Cutting Room on East 32nd Street. It was arranged by Mr. Pritsker’s son, Gene Pritsker, who plays guitar in the big band and is also an accomplished modern classical composer whose works are performed at the Cutting Room. For the concert, Gene Pritsker thought he should come up with a better marketing strategy for a band that is named after a dentist. So for Tuesday’s performance, the band will be rebranded as From Russia With Swing. Even in New York City, a longstanding big band, much less one of this size, is rare: a ensemble with five saxophonists, four trombonists, four trumpeters, a rhythm section and three regular singers. Most of the band members were classically trained at Russian conservatories but had to learn jazz privately, in secret jam sessions or by acquiring recordings through friends or the black market. Some members recalled tuning in to the Voice of America on shortwave radio — despite government efforts to jam the signal — for the famous jazz broadcasts of Willis Conover, who introduced the music to Eastern bloc countries during the Cold War. “The government didn’t want you listening to the jazz broadcasts, because they felt it was all part of the American propaganda,” said Dr. Rosen, who came to the United States in 1978. One of his patients turned out to be Mr. Pritsker, a saxophonist from Leningrad, who moved to New York the same year and who fell in love with jazz while playing in the Soviet Army band. Today, the basement rehearsal space has become something of a running joke because of the notion that the musicians are playing “underground jazz,” said Dr. Rosen, who started a big band while in medical school, inspired by performances he saw in Leningrad by Duke Ellington and Benny Goodman with their bands. Those concerts were allowed by the government, Dr. Rosen said, as were certain jazz clubs that catered to tourists, government officials and other important citizens whose patriotism was beyond question. Other than that, jazz performances were suspect. “We were afraid, but we did it,” Dr. Rosen recalled. “Sometimes the K. G. B. might call you and ask if you’re playing jazz with a certain musician and ask you to watch them. ” Mr. Pritsker said a friend had given him scratchy tapes of bebop recorded from radio broadcasts that stoked his desire to become a jazzman. But to make money after he moved to New York, he became a piano tuner, if a notoriously temperamental one. He and Dr. Rosen placed advertisements in local Russian newspapers for musicians and formed the band in 1997. Many of the musicians who responded had played for the best Russian jazz bands but were busking or working modest day jobs in New York. Lev Barsevov, who plays trumpet, was a driver another trumpeter, Aaron Gerskovitch, was a kosher butcher. A saxophone player, Veniamin Popov, worked as a circus clown, which he proved on a recent Tuesday night by contorting his legs above his head while sitting down — even before the vodka was brought out. Russian immigrants playing American music can result in many moments, and one occurred when the band began hotly debating in Russian the way the English lyrics to “New York, New York” should be delivered. After a few false starts, Mr. Pritsker shook his head and said in his thickly accented English, “I hope in concert, we don’t have this problem. ” | 1 |
Did Hillary Clinton, or somebody very much like her, have to be the first woman to get this close to winning the presidency? We explore that question in the latest episode of The with Claire McCaskill, the senior United States Senator from Missouri, and Gail Collins, a New York Times columnist who has written several books on women’s history. What combination of factors is required for a country to embrace a woman as its leader for the first time? Longtime public exposure? Proximity to power? Moderate politics? And how powerful, perhaps even necessary, is it that this first woman be the spouse of a former president? History offers a guide: The first female president of any country was Isabel Martínez de Perón of Argentina, the wife of its former president. The first woman elected to the United States Senate, Hattie Wyatt Caraway, was the widow of a senator. And now the United States has the first woman candidate in the general election. “Given our history it’s not surprising it’s the wife of somebody who had the job first,” Ms. Collins said. “Some day we’ll have some really charismatic woman who gets people all excited, and it doesn’t matter that she’s only been in the senate for two years and that we don’t know much about her except her story,” Ms. Collins said. Mrs. Clinton’s presidential runs will have paved the way for that woman to have a shot. “No matter what happens in this election, one of the great contributions Hillary Clinton has made to American history is that she made it seem sort of normal to have a woman running for president in 2008,” Ms. Collins said. “Before then it had never been a normal thing. ” America is behind many other countries on that front, as Senator McCaskill pointed out. “Many of us are painfully aware of how many countries around the world have elected and admired women executives in their government, and it is embarrassing to many of us that America has not taken that step,” she said. “The irony is that everyone always would pat women on the head and say ‘well you know as soon as a woman is qualified there will be a woman president,’ ” Senator McCaskill said. “Now we have a stark differential in qualifications, and now it seems to be all about her integrity and how likable she is. ” In the episode, we discuss the challenges of running against a woman with former Representative Rick Lazio of Long Island, a man who discovered those pitfalls in a very public fashion. In 2000, he was Mrs. Clinton’s opponent in the race for the United States Senate seat in New York. In a debate moment, Mr. Lazio approached Mrs. Clinton’s podium to ask her to sign a pledge, a tactic many saw as an overly aggressive male gesture toward a female rival. Mr. Lazio told us it was a mistake that he still regrets — and one whose visual impact he underestimated in the moment. “Our folks all thought we had won the debate hands down,” he told us. But the next day, he saw that clip played over and over again and realized that the moment was going to stick. “The mistake that I made — and it was a mistake — was to create an optic where it looked like I was somebody other than who I was it looked like I was invading her space and was not chivalrous,” he told us. “It was spun in the media and shown over and over again, and it looked like it was an overbearing male approaching a female. ” Please let us know what you think of The . You can reach us at therunup@nytimes. com, or find me on Twitter. You can also rate and review us on iTunes. From a desktop or laptop, you can listen by pressing play on the button above. Or if you’re on a mobile device, the instructions below will help you find and subscribe to the series. On your iPhone or iPad: 1. Open your podcast app. It’s a app called “Podcasts” with a purple icon. (This link might help.) 2. Search for the series. Tap on the “search” magnifying glass icon at the bottom of the screen, type in “The ” and select it from the list of results. 3. Subscribe. Once on the series page, tap on the “subscribe” button to have new episodes sent to your phone for free. You may want to adjust your notifications to be alerted when a new episode arrives. 4. Or just sample. If you would rather listen to an episode or two before deciding to subscribe, tap on the episode title from the list on the series page. If you have an internet connection, you’ll be able to stream the episode. On your Android phone or tablet: 1. Open your podcast app. It’s a app called “Play Music” with an icon. (This link might help.) 2. Search for the series. Click on the magnifying glass icon at the top of the screen, search for the name of the series and select it from the list of results. You may have to scroll down to find the “Podcasts” search results. 3. Subscribe. Once on the series page, click on the word “subscribe” to have new episodes sent to your phone for free. 4. Or just sample. If you would rather listen to an episode or two before deciding to subscribe, click on the episode title from the list on the series page. If you have an internet connection, you’ll be able to stream the episode. | 1 |
Steve Cara expected to sail through the routine medical tests required to increase his life insurance in October 2014. But the results were devastating. He had lung cancer, at age 53. It had begun to spread, and doctors told him it was inoperable. A few years ago, they would have suggested chemotherapy. Instead, his oncologist, Dr. Matthew D. Hellmann of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, recommended an experimental treatment: immunotherapy. Rather than attacking the cancer directly, as chemo does, immunotherapy tries to rally the patient’s own immune system to fight the disease. Uncertain, Mr. Cara sought a second opinion. A doctor at another major hospital read his scans and pathology report, then asked what Dr. Hellmann had advised. When the doctor heard the answer, Mr. Cara recalled, “he closed up the folder, handed it back to me and said, ‘Run back there as fast as you can. ’” Many others are racing down the same path. Harnessing the immune system to fight cancer, long a medical dream, is becoming a reality. Remarkable stories of tumors melting away and terminal illnesses going into remissions that last years — backed by solid data — have led to an explosion of interest and billions of dollars of investments in the rapidly growing field of immunotherapy. Pharmaceutical companies, philanthropists and the federal government’s “cancer moonshot” program are pouring money into developing treatments. Medical conferences on the topic are packed. All this has brought new optimism to cancer doctors — a sense that they have begun tapping into a force of nature, the medical equivalent of splitting the atom. “This is a fundamental change in the way that we think about cancer therapy,” said Dr. Jedd Wolchok, chief of melanoma and immunotherapeutics services at Memorial Sloan Kettering. Hundreds of clinical trials involving immunotherapy, alone or combined with other treatments, are underway for nearly every type of cancer. “People are asking, waiting, pleading to get into these trials,” said Dr. Arlene an oncologist at the University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, who specializes in bladder cancer. The immune system — a network of cells, tissues and biochemicals that they secrete — defends the body against viruses, bacteria and other invaders. But cancer often finds ways to hide from the immune system or block its ability to fight. Immunotherapy tries to help the immune system recognize cancer as a threat, and attack it. Doctors tried a primitive version of immunotherapy against cancer more than 100 years ago. It sometimes worked remarkably well, but often did not, and they did not understand why. Eventually, radiation and chemotherapy eclipsed it. Researchers are now focused on two promising types of immunotherapy. One creates a new, individualized treatment for each patient by removing some of the person’s immune cells, altering them genetically to kill cancer and then infusing them back into the bloodstream. This treatment has produced long remissions in a few hundred children and adults with deadly forms of leukemia or lymphoma for whom standard treatments had failed. The second approach, far more widely used and the one Mr. Cara tried, involves drugs that do not have to be tailored to each patient. The drugs free immune cells to fight cancer by blocking a mechanism — called a checkpoint — that cancer uses to shut down the immune system. These drugs, called checkpoint inhibitors, have been approved by the Food and Drug Administration to treat advanced melanoma, Hodgkin’s lymphoma and cancers of the lung, kidney and bladder. More drugs in this class are in the pipeline. Patients are clamoring for checkpoint drugs, including one, Keytruda, known to many as “that Jimmy Carter drug” which, combined with surgery and radiation, has left the former president with no sign of recurrence even though melanoma had spread to his liver and brain. Checkpoint inhibitors have become an important option for people like Mr. Cara, with advanced lung cancer. “We can say in all honesty to patients, that while we can’t tell them we can cure metastatic lung cancer right now, we can tell them there’s real hope that they can live for years, and for a lot of patients many years, which really is a complete ” said Dr. John V. Heymach, a lung cancer specialist and chairman of and neck medical oncology at M. D. Anderson. Yet for all the promise and excitement, the fact is that so far, immunotherapy has worked in only a minority of patients, and researchers are struggling to find out why. They know they have their hands on an extraordinarily powerful tool, but they cannot fully understand or control it yet. Mr. Cara, an apparel industry executive from Bridgewater, N. J. had lung cancer, the most common form of the disease. The diagnosis shattered what had been an idyllic life: a happy marriage, sons in college, a successful career, a beautiful home, regular vacations, plenty of golf. In December 2014, he began treatment with two checkpoint inhibitors. They cost about $150, 000 a year, but as a study subject he did not have to pay. These medicines work on killer white blood cells that are often described as the soldiers of the immune system. are so fierce that they have brakes — the checkpoints — to shut them down and keep them from attacking normal tissue, which could result in autoimmune disorders like Crohn’s disease, lupus or rheumatoid arthritis. One checkpoint stops from multiplying another weakens them and shortens their life span. As the name suggests, checkpoint inhibitors block the checkpoints, so cancer cannot use them to turn off the immune system. Mr. Cara took drugs to inhibit both types of checkpoints. Every two weeks, he had intravenous infusions of Yervoy and Opdivo, both made by Squibb. He had no problems at first, just a bit of fatigue the day after the infusion. He rarely missed work. But turning the wrath of the immune system against cancer can be a risky endeavor: Sometimes the patient’s own body gets caught in the crossfire. About two months into the treatment, Mr. Cara broke out in a rash all over his arms, back and chest. It became so severe that he had to go off the drugs. A steroid cream cleared it up and he was able to resume treatment — but with only one drug, Opdivo. Doctors stopped the other in hopes of minimizing the side effects. Checkpoint inhibitors can take months to begin working, and sometimes cause inflammation that, on scans early in treatment, can make it look like the tumor is growing. But Mr. Cara’s first scans, in March 2015, were stunning. His tumor had shrunk by a third. By August, more than half of the tumor had vanished. The rash came back, however, and worsened. Steroids worked again, but in October a far more alarming side effect set in: breathing trouble. Doctors diagnosed pneumonitis, a lung inflammation caused by an attack from the immune system — a known risk of checkpoint drugs. Continuing the treatment posed too great a danger. Mr. Cara stopped the infusions, but the months of treatment seemed to have transformed his cancer to stage 2 from stage 4, meaning that it was now operable. This spring surgeons removed about a third of his right lung, and discovered that the cancer was actually gone. “No cancer was seen in any of the tissue they took out,” Dr. Hellmann said. “‘One hundred percent treatment effect,’” he read from the pathology report. “It was pretty cool. ” Immunotherapy had apparently wiped out the disease. “It’s amazing. Unbelievable,” Mr. Cara said. As of now, he needs no further treatment, but he will be monitored regularly. He is back to work, and golf. “He’s had the best possible response,” Dr. Hellmann said. “I hope that remains permanent. Only time will tell, and I think he’s conscious of that. ” Mr. Cara acknowledged, “Is there something in the back of me that says this thing never goes away, it could come back any time? Sure. But it’s not the main thing I think. I’m young, I’m strong, I’m healthy, my pathology report came back clean. ” He considered framing that pathology report. But, he said, “I don’t want to jinx myself. ” When checkpoint inhibitors work, they can really work, producing long remissions that start to look like cures and that persist even after treatment stops. Twenty percent to 40 percent of patients, sometimes more, have good responses. But for many patients, the drugs do not work at all. For others, they work for a while and then stop. The vexing question, and the focus of research, is, why? One theory is that additional checkpoints, not yet discovered, may play a role. The hunt is on to find them, and then make new drugs to act on them. Despite the gaps in knowledge, checkpoint inhibitors are coming into widespread use and are being tried in advanced types of cancer for which standard chemotherapy offers little hope. One example is anal cancer, a painful disease that carries a stigma because it is often linked to the sexually transmitted human papillomavirus or HPV, which also causes cervical cancer. Lee, 59, who asked that her last name be withheld to protect her privacy, found out in 2014 that she had the disease, and that it had spread to her liver. “I was told I’d be dead in 12 to 18 months with treatment, six months with no treatment,” she said. Chemotherapy and radiation at a hospital near Dallas brought a remission that lasted only a few months. The cancer spread to her lungs. Bedridden and in severe pain, she entered an immunotherapy trial at M. D. Anderson. In May 2015 she began receiving Opdivo every two weeks. The tumors in her liver and lungs have shrunk by about 70 percent. She is back at work. While the drugs initially were given only to people with advanced disease, especially those who had little to lose because chemotherapy had stopped working, Dr. Heymach of M. D. Anderson predicted that soon some patients — including some with earlier stages of lung cancer — will receive checkpoint inhibitors as their first treatment. Immunotherapy is also enabling doctors to help patients in unexpected ways. Until recently, surgeons were reluctant to operate on people with advanced cancer because they knew from experience that it would not lengthen the patient’s life. But checkpoint inhibitors are changing that. For instance, some patients have taken checkpoint inhibitors for an advanced cancer that had spread around the body, and wound up with only one stubborn tumor left. They then have had it surgically removed and have gone years without a relapse. “Time has slowed down to the point where you can pay attention to individual tumors, since you’re not running to put out the fire of wholesale systemic progression,” Dr. Wolchok said. If there is a potential downside to the advances, Dr. Hellmann said, it is that the buzz about immunotherapy has led some patients to think chemotherapy is passé. “Immunotherapy represents a hugely important new tool, but chemotherapy can work too and has been the backbone of the way we’ve treated patients with lung cancer,” he said. “Immunotherapy is not a replacement for that. It’s a new weapon. ” One of his patients, a man with lung cancer that had spread to his brain, was eager to try immunotherapy instead of chemotherapy. After having radiation treatment for one brain tumor, he began treatment with two checkpoint inhibitors. But they did not work. So his doctors switched to chemotherapy. “He’s had a tremendous response,” Dr. Hellmann said. He said it was impossible to tell whether the immunotherapy could have had some delayed effect and worked synergistically with the chemotherapy. Clinical trials are now trying to resolve that question. But the potential for dangerous side effects cannot be overemphasized, doctors say. A 2010 article in a medical journal reported that a few melanoma patients had died from adverse effects of Yervoy. In addition to causing lung inflammation, checkpoint inhibitors can lead to rheumatoid arthritis and colitis, a severe inflammation of the intestine — the result of an attack by the immune system that remedies cannot treat. Patients need steroids like prednisone to quell these attacks. Fortunately — and mysteriously, Dr. Wolchok said — the steroids can halt the gut trouble without stopping the immune fight against the cancer. But if patients delay telling doctors about diarrhea, Dr. Wolchok warned, “they could die” from colitis. Checkpoint inhibitors can also slow down vital glands — pituitary, adrenal or thyroid — creating a permanent need for hormone treatment. Mr. Cara, for instance, now needs thyroid medication, almost certainly as a result of his treatment. Doctors have reported that a patient with a kidney transplant rejected it after taking a checkpoint inhibitor to treat cancer, apparently because the drug spurred his immune system to attack the organ. Another of Dr. Hellmann’s patients, Joanne Sabol, 65, had to quit a checkpoint inhibitor because of severe colitis. But she had taken it for about two years, and it shrank a large abdominal tumor by 78 percent. Patients like her are in uncharted territory, and doctors are trying to decide whether to operate to remove what is left of her tumor. “I have aggressive cancer, but I’m not giving in to it,” Ms. Sabol said. “It’s going to be a big battle with me. ” Dr. William B. Coley, an American surgeon born in 1862, is widely considered the father of cancer immunotherapy. But he practiced a crude form of it, without understanding how it worked. Distressed by the painful death of a young woman he had treated for a sarcoma, a bone cancer, in 1891, Dr. Coley began to study the records of other sarcoma patients in New York, according to Dr. David. B. Levine, a medical historian and orthopedic surgeon. One case leapt out at him: a patient who had several unsuccessful operations to remove a huge sarcoma from his face, and wound up with a severe infection, then called erysipelas, caused by Streptococcal bacteria. The patient was not expected to survive, but he did — and the cancer disappeared. Dr. Coley found other cases in which cancer went away after erysipelas. Not much was known about the immune system, and he suspected, mistakenly, that the bacteria were somehow destroying the tumors. Researchers today think the infection set off an intense immune response that killed both the germs and the cancer. Dr. Coley was not alone in believing that bacteria could fight cancer. In a letter to a colleague in 1890, the Russian physician and playwright Anton Chekhov wrote of erysipelas: “It has long been noted that the growth of malignant tumors halts for a time when this disease is present. ” Dr. Coley began to inject terminally ill cancer patients with Streptococcal bacteria in the 1890s. His first patient, a drug addict with an advanced sarcoma, was expected to die within weeks, but the disease went into remission and he lived eight years. Dr. Coley treated other patients, with mixed results. Some tumors regressed, but sometimes the bacteria caused infections that went out of control. Dr. Coley developed an extract of bacteria that came to be called Coley’s mixed toxins, and he treated hundreds of patients over several decades. Many became quite ill, with shaking chills and raging fevers. But some were cured. and Company began producing Coley’s toxins in 1899, and continued for 30 years. Various hospitals in Europe and the United States, including the Mayo Clinic, used the toxins, but the results were not consistent. Early in the 20th century, radiation treatment came into use. Its results were more predictable, and the cancer establishment began turning away from Coley’s toxins. Dr. Coley’s own institution, Memorial Hospital (now Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center) instituted a policy in 1915 stating that inpatients had to be given radiation, not the toxins. Some other hospitals continued using them, but interest gradually waned. Dr. Coley died in 1936. Chemotherapy, developed after World War II, was another blow to his methods. And in 1965, the American Cancer Society added Coley’s toxins to its list of “unproven” treatments. (The toxins were later taken off the list.) After Dr. Coley’s death, his daughter, Helen Coley Nauts, studied some 800 case records that he had left behind, and became convinced that he was onto something important. She tried to rekindle interest in his work, but she was thwarted by doctors who opposed it, including some with high rank at Sloan Kettering. However, in 1953 she founded the Cancer Research Institute in New York, a nonprofit that has become a significant supporter of research on the interplay between cancer and the immune system. The group awarded more than $29. 4 million in scientific grants in 2015, and its advisory board includes Dr. Wolchok and the scientist credited with developing the first checkpoint inhibitor, James P. Allison. “Are you Dr. Allison?” James Allison and his wife, Dr. Padmanee Sharma, had just settled into their airplane seats when another passenger approached with tears in her eyes and thanked him for creating the drug that was keeping her husband alive. Dr. Sharma described the encounter during a joint interview with her and Dr. Allison in his office at M. D. Anderson in Houston, where both work. “Every time Jim meets a patient, he cries,” Dr. Sharma said. “Well, not every time,” Dr. Allison said. Dr. Allison, 67, and Dr. Sharma, 45, have been research collaborators since 2005, and spouses since 2014, when he proposed by saying that nobody else could stand either of them — they talk about their work all the time — so they might as well get married. The drug the woman on the plane thanked him for was Yervoy, the first of the checkpoint inhibitors. It was approved for advanced melanoma in 2011. Dr. Allison — a scientist, not a physician — has won numerous research awards and is expected by many to win a Nobel Prize. He drives a Porsche convertible with a license plate bearing the name of the checkpoint he deciphered: . A bearded, slightly rumpled figure, Dr. Allison plays harmonica with research colleagues in a band called the Checkpoints. He is good enough to have accompanied Willie Nelson onstage at the Redneck Country Club in Stafford, Tex. this spring, playing, “Roll Me Up and Smoke Me When I Die. ” Immunology, particularly the study of has been his life’s work. Cancer came later. “I became interested in cancer because I’ve lost a number of family members to cancer,” said Dr. Allison, chairman of the immunology department and executive director of the immunotherapy platform at M. D. Anderson. “My mother and two of her brothers, and my own brother, died of cancer. ” Around the time of his brother’s death from prostate cancer, Dr. Allison learned that he had the same disease himself. He was treated successfully, he said, adding with a laugh that he was more likely to die from inactivity than from cancer. In the 1990s, Dr. Allison, then at the University of California, Berkeley, and Dr. Jeffrey Bluestone of the University of California, San Francisco, independently made a landmark discovery: They proved that a molecule widely believed to activate the immune system actually shut it down. The molecule was a protein on the surface of — a crucial checkpoint — and it was nature’s way of subduing the apparently to dial back their ferocious activity and prevent them from attacking a person’s own tissue. Cancer cells can sometimes lock onto checkpoints, disabling the . Dr. Allison wondered if it might be possible to block the checkpoint and launch the against cancer. He and a graduate student, Matthew Krummel, developed an antibody — a molecule made by certain cells of the immune system — that would stick to the checkpoint and block it. When the researchers, including Dana Leach, a postdoctoral fellow, gave the antibody to mice with cancer, tumors vanished. Recalling those first tests in mice, Dr. Allison said it was astounding to see the cancers shrink and disappear. Veterinarians thought the mice had contracted an infection or a skin disease. But the sores that worried the vets were actually tumors that were ulcerating and rotting away under assault by . Many drug companies were skeptical about the findings, but one, Medarex, created a human version of the antibody. Medarex was later acquired by Squibb, and the antibody, given the trade name Yervoy, was approved in 2011 to treat advanced melanoma. It became the first drug to prolong survival in people with this deadly form of cancer. Major studies that started before it was approved found that among 1, 861 patients treated for advanced disease, about 22 percent were still alive three years later, with no signs of recurrence — an astounding result for a disease that was almost always fatal. Some have survived 10 years or longer. The discoveries that led to the drug, Dr. Allison said, came entirely from years of basic research in immunology — experiments in test tubes and mice — and not from the clinical or “translational” science, aimed at moving rapidly into humans, that is so heavily favored now by institutions that pay for studies. “None of this came from cancer research, none,” Dr. Allison said, adding that without support for basic research, “progress, if any, will be incremental, not a big leap. ” His own work is well funded, he said, but he worries about an overall trend to shortchange basic science. The focus of much of his and Dr. Sharma’s research now is to understand how and why checkpoint inhibitors work in some patients and not others. Dr. Sharma, a professor of genitourinary medical oncology, is a physician and researcher who treats patients and oversees clinical trials, and she brings stories home to Dr. Allison about patients whose lives may be extended by his discoveries. In general, checkpoint inhibitors seem to work best for tumors with many mutations, like most melanomas and cancers of the lung and bladder. “It’s like buying a lottery ticket,” Dr. Sharma said. “The more genetic abnormalities, the more lottery tickets you’ve bought — and you have a much higher chance of a recognizing something to start the immune response. ” One area of particular interest is the tissue immediately in and around a tumor, what researchers call the microenvironment. By examining that zone, scientists can tell whether are fighting the cancer. Sometimes mob the margins of a tumor, but cannot get in. Other times, they get in but cannot kill it. “How do we understand what drives the immune response in one patient to give a good clinical outcome, and how do we then drive that same immune response in all the other patients?” Dr. Sharma asked. “Did the get in? If not, is there another drug that can drive the in?” Researchers also suspect that checkpoint inhibitors might work better if combined with treatments that kill tumor cells, because debris from dead cancer cells may help the immune system recognize its target. Studies are underway to test checkpoint drugs in combination with treatments like chemotherapy and radiation. But it is a delicate balance to adjust the timing and doses, because in addition to killing cancer cells, those other treatments can knock out the immune system just when it is needed most. As word spreads about immunotherapy, a troubling fact remains: Patients do not have equal access to the new treatments, which can be prohibitively expensive. Insurers cover F. D. A. treatments, but can be high for costly drugs. Some people get costs covered by volunteering for clinical trials that are testing new drugs or novel combinations. But not everyone can, or wants to, enter a study. Participants tend to have the education, determination and means required to get second and third opinions, rearrange their lives, and buy plane tickets to get to medical centers. And they are willing to take risks for a chance to survive. Minorities have been underrepresented in studies, for reasons that are not clear. David Wight, a retired oil engineer in Anchorage, is a study participant who has been able to take every possible step to save his life. When bladder cancer began to spread in his abdomen, he was given three to 12 months to live. That was four and a half years ago. On a recent Saturday, Mr. Wight, who is 75 but looks younger, refereed a boys’ soccer game, racing up and down the field with the players. The following Wednesday he rose at 3 a. m. to fly 3, 300 miles to Houston, where he would arrive at about 5 p. m. He has been making that trip every other week for over two years to receive immunotherapy at M. D. Anderson. For about a year and a half, his disease has been in complete remission. Until recently, he paid his own airfare. But a few months ago, Squibb, the maker of the drug being studied, began picking up the tab, even reimbursing him retroactively — about $50, 000 so far. He has five children: three in their 40s, a son, 16, and a daughter, 10. The younger two were only 10 and 5 when he learned he was ill, and the thought that he might not have survived to raise them still brings tears to his eyes. Describing the time he has gained to be with his family, he said, “I won a lottery that’s bigger than anybody could imagine. ” His cancer was diagnosed in summer 2010, after a test during a routine physical found cancer cells in his urine. A small tumor had invaded the wall of his bladder. Mr. Wight had his bladder removed at a hospital in Anchorage, and was told he needed no further treatment. A year after the surgery, he and his doctors were horrified to find that a large tumor had wrapped itself around his colon. Only then did the doctors discover that he had a rare, aggressive type of bladder cancer, called plasmacytoid. His doctors consulted with a hospital in Seattle, which devised a treatment plan. “They said one word that told me I was not where I wanted to be: ‘palliative,’” Mr. Wight said. He knew palliative treatment was meant to ease symptoms, but not cure the disease. “I said, ‘No thank you. We can do better than that,’” he recalled. His next stop was M. D. Anderson. Months of chemotherapy shrank the tumor enough to allow colon surgery in May 2012. But the disease kept coming back: spots in one lung, then the other, then a tumor under his kidney. “I was getting a new tumor every six to eight months,” he said. Chemotherapy and an experimental gene therapy cleared his lungs and shrank the tumor near his kidney but could not get rid of it. In June 2014, Mr. Wight became one of the first patients with bladder cancer at M. D. Anderson to enter a study of two checkpoint inhibitors. For three months he received Yervoy and Opdivo every two weeks, and then continued with only Opdivo. The tumor under his kidney shrank, then disappeared. It has been gone for a year and a half, and he has had no other signs of cancer. He is still receiving Opdivo — the reason for his regular trips to Houston. “I’m very fortunate,” Mr. Wight said. “It has for me a single irritating side effect. It makes me itch like you wouldn’t believe. I itch all the time but it’s a small price to pay to stay alive and be feeling pretty well. ” An antihistamine helps. Regarding how long he will keep being treated, he said: “It’s experimental. You don’t know the answer. As long as I have positive results I’m eligible for the treatment. ” His oncologist, Dr. called his response to immunotherapy “fantastic” and said other patients, also in complete or partial remission, were flying or driving to Houston for treatments every two or three weeks. Many do not want to stop taking the drugs. But doctors do not know how long the treatments should continue. They wonder how long the remissions will last, and whether some will even turn out to be cures, Dr. said. Some studies were planned to last just a year or two, longer than the life expectancy of most patients with advanced disease. Researchers did not think they would have to decide whether to keep treating people for years. “We were not expecting to see patients going this long,” Dr. said. | 1 |
In the West, pregnancy outside of marriage is acceptable, and abortion on demand is considered a woman’s right. But in the West African nation of Senegal, it is taboo to be pregnant while unmarried, and abortion is not legal. [The challenges for Binta, whose name was changed to protect her privacy, were even greater because her pregnancy was caused by someone in her extended family. “I didn’t know how to tell my family about this. … The family is too sacred,” the said in a story reported by the Thomson Reuters Foundation. “So Binta made up an elaborate story about finding a job and packed her bags for Guediawaye, a poor suburb on the outskirts of capital Dakar, where a social worker had told her she could find refuge at the Maison Rose, French for ‘pink house,’” the foundation reported. The Pink House is a courthouse that has been transformed into a haven in Senegal for women whose pregnancy occurred outside of wedlock or who became pregnant because of rape or forced marriage. In the nine years since Mona Chasserio, the French woman who founded the Pink House, opened its doors, hundreds of women — and their unborn and born babies — have found sanctuary there. “Anything that can happen in Senegal, we’ve seen it,” Chasserio said. Most women who come to the house do so to continue their pregnancies and give birth, the foundation reported. The women also receive help dealing with their trauma through music, art, and other types of therapy. “Six toddlers played in the sunny courtyard one morning while their mothers shared stories as part of a workshop,” the article said. “Binta sat across from a girl who was seven months pregnant from rape. ” A video posted on the BBC Africa’s Facebook page features life at the Pink House. “I couldn’t accept my pregnancy,” one girl said in the video. “I didn’t think I would be able to take care of the child. ” “I was planning to give her up for adoption,” she said. “But the workers here helped me create a bond with the child before the birth. ” Women are taken to a nearby hospital to give birth, and they get help with their babies when they return to the Pink House. The hope is that the girls can reunite with their families, but they can stay at the Pink House for as long as they like. “It’s not just a house that welcomes women who have had problems,” Chasserio said in the video. “But it is, above all, a place about rebirth — rebirth. ” “And that, to me, is very, very important,” Chasserio said. The foundation reported that Chasserio is now also helping women learn how to support their children. “The problem here is jobs for women are extremely limited,” Chasserio said, adding that women mostly work in traditionally female fields in Senegal, such as sewing, housekeeping, and hair salons. Chasserio said she hopes to expand training programs, including joining forces with a local mill where women can learn to make bread. A fashion website features handbags that women at the Pink House helped craft: Christian Louboutin joined forces with longtime friend Valérie Schlumberger and the women of La Maison Rose to create the unique and vibrant Africaba day bag. A charity which focuses its work on assisting the most vulnerable women and children of Senegal, La Maison Rose offers a practical and reactive route to restoration whilst highlighting inherent talents of artisanal craftsmanship found within the region. “It’s helped me a lot,” a woman said. The woman’s mother took her to the Pink House after she got pregnant. She is now studying fashion and hopes to find a job in a clothing shop. “I came to rebuild myself,” she said. | 1 |
Last summer, as it wrapped up multiple settlements after the Roger Ailes sexual harassment scandal, Fox News and its parent company, 21st Century Fox, were trying hard to end the ugliest chapter in its history. The downfall of Mr. Ailes, the former chairman and chief executive, had exposed a newsroom culture that many women there called hostile and demeaning. 21st Century Fox ordered an internal investigation and stated publicly that “behavior that disrespects women” would not be tolerated. Nearly eight months later, the company finds itself still dealing with fallout from that crisis. In late February, 21st Century Fox reached a settlement worth more than $2. 5 million with a former Fox News contributor who reported that she was sexually assaulted by an executive at company headquarters two years ago, according to people briefed on the agreement. The contributor, Tamara N. Holder, has said that the network executive tried to force her to perform oral sex on him in February 2015 when the two were alone in his office, according to interviews with four people briefed on her account, and documents that detail her claims. Ms. Holder did not immediately report the episode to the company or the police, fearing that doing so would ruin her career, interviews and documents show. Ms. Holder reported her allegations to Fox News last fall. The network investigated her claims, and the executive, Francisco Cortes, the vice president for Fox News Latino, was terminated, according to two people familiar with the matter. Ms. Holder left Fox News after her contract expired on January 1, 2017. Jay Sanchez, a lawyer for Mr. Cortes, said Wednesday night in an email: “I am presently considering Mr. Cortes’ legal options. ” Multiple attempts to reach Mr. Cortes by phone, by email, on social media and in person for comment were unsuccessful. In a rare public disclosure on Wednesday, Fox News released a joint statement with Ms. Holder saying that in September 2016 she “reported an incident of sexual assault at Fox News headquarters from the prior year. ” “Immediately after Ms. Holder notified Fox News of the alleged incident, the company promptly investigated the matter and took decisive action, for which Ms. Holder thanks the network,” the statement continued. “Fox News is grateful to Ms. Holder for her many contributions during her tenure at the network and wishes her continued success. ” In an email, Ms. Holder said: “Yes, I was sexually assaulted. Immediately after I told the company where I worked about the incident, it promptly investigated the matter and took action, which I appreciate. ” In the months since Mr. Ailes’s departure, 21st Century Fox has struck agreements with several women who made sexual harassment complaints about Mr. Ailes and others at the network. They include a $20 million settlement with Gretchen Carlson, whose lawsuit against Mr. Ailes in July led to his ouster a deal with Juliet Huddy, a longtime Fox News personality who made sexual harassment claims against the network’s host, Bill O’Reilly and now the agreement with Ms. Holder, who had been a legal and political analyst at Fox News since 2010. Mr. Ailes and Mr. O’Reilly have denied the sexual harassment claims against them. Adding to the challenges facing Fox is the prospect of a criminal investigation into the network’s settlement payments, an inquiry disclosed in a court hearing last month by the lawyer for a former Fox employee suing the company. Fox News has said it had not received a subpoena but had “been in communication with the U. S. attorney’s office for months. ” Ms. Holder’s story provides a look at the struggles a woman can face when deciding whether to make accusations against an executive. Multiple lawyers, who typically take a third of negotiated settlements, told her that her case had little value because she was not a big star, like Ms. Carlson, and her claims were against a executive, rather than a powerful figure like Mr. Ailes, the people briefed on her account said. “I was told by agents and lawyers that if I opened up, I would forever be ‘toxic’ and my career would be over,” Ms. Holder said in an email. “I worked hard and loved my job but I could not be speechless. I had to turn my fear into courage. ” Ms. Holder faced much anxiety about whether she should report her claims, the people said. The people who spoke about Ms. Holder’s account and her agreement insisted on anonymity because the negotiations and the settlement were private. Ms. Holder, 37, worked as a civil rights and criminal defense lawyer in Chicago before she started as a contributor at Fox News in 2010. Over the years, she provided legal analysis and political commentary. She appeared on Sean Hannity’s show and also started a digital show for Fox News called “Sports Court” about legal and political issues in sports. She also performs comedy. After Mr. Ailes’s ouster, Ms. Holder decided to come forward with her claims. In late September 2016, Ms. Holder told Dianne Brandi, the top lawyer at Fox News who long worked under Mr. Ailes, that she had been sexually assaulted, but did not state who was involved or provide details of what had occurred, according to the people briefed on her account and documents viewed by The New York Times. Ms. Holder was offered $300, 000 in severance, equal to about one year of her contract, the interviews and documents show. She rejected the offer. Fox News executives tried to determine what had happened so that they could investigate the allegations. In late October, she disclosed the details of her claims to Fox News executives. Fox News investigated, and days later Mr. Cortes was terminated, according to one of the people familiar with the matter. Ms. Holder has said that Mr. Cortes, who was close with Mr. Ailes, invited her into his office, shut the door, then poured shots of tequila for each of them, according to a document drafted by Ms. Holder’s lawyers that outlines her claims. A copy of the document was viewed by The Times. Ms. Holder has said that Mr. Cortes then got out of his chair, approached her chair, held the door shut with his left hand and used his right hand to push her mouth toward his penis, which he had taken out of his pants, according to the document. Ms. Holder fled the room. That description of the episode was confirmed by the four people who were told of Ms. Holder’s allegations. Ms. Holder has said that she did not report the incident to Fox News previously because her earlier requests to meet with executives had been dismissed, because she did not know anyone in the human resources department and because executives had admonished her previously when she had complained about other issues, according to the documents and interviews. That included an dispute with Omarosa Manigault, the star, during Maria Bartiromo’s show on Fox Business. In the months that followed, Ms. Holder retained a lawyer. She struggled with accepting the confidentiality strictures that are common in workplace settlements and considered taking the case to trial or writing a book about her experiences, the people said. In the end, the settlement included the joint public statement issued Wednesday. Beyond that, and the emails she was permitted to send, she is prohibited from discussing her claims, the settlement and anything related to Fox News, the people briefed on the agreement said. “Moving forward, I hope that my ‘toxicity’ has transformed into authenticity and that my career is not over,” Ms. Holder said in an email. “I hope that every man, woman, and child who has been sexually assaulted, or a victim of any crime for that matter, comes to the realization that they have not done anything wrong they are not toxic. ” | 1 |
WASHINGTON — The F. B. I. secretly arrested a former National Security Agency contractor in August and, according to law enforcement officials, is investigating whether he stole and disclosed highly classified computer code developed by the agency to hack into the networks of foreign governments. The arrest raises the embarrassing prospect that for the second time in three years, a contractor for the consulting company Booz Allen Hamilton managed to steal highly damaging secret information while working for the N. S. A. In 2013, Edward J. Snowden, who was also a Booz Allen contractor, took a vast trove of documents from the agency that were later passed to journalists, exposing surveillance programs in the United States and abroad. The contractor was identified as Harold T. Martin III of Glen Burnie, Md. according to a criminal complaint filed in late August and unsealed Wednesday. Mr. Martin, who at the time of his arrest was working as a contractor for the Defense Department after leaving the N. S. A. was charged with theft of government property and the unauthorized removal or retention of classified documents. Mr. Martin, 51, was arrested during an F. B. I. raid on his home on Aug. 27. A neighbor, Murray Bennett, said in a telephone interview on Wednesday that two dozen F. B. I. agents wearing uniforms and armed with long guns stormed the house, and later escorted Mr. Martin out in handcuffs. According to court documents, the F. B. I. discovered thousands of pages of documents and dozens of computers or other electronic devices at his home and in his car, a large amount of it classified. The digital media contained “many terabytes of information,” according to the documents. They also discovered classified documents that had been posted online, including computer code, officials said. Some of the documents were produced in 2014. But more than a month later, the authorities cannot say with certainty whether Mr. Martin leaked the information, passed them on to a third party or whether he simply downloaded them. When F. B. I. agents interviewed Mr. Martin after the raid, he initially denied having taken the documents and digital files, according to the complaint. But he later told the authorities that he knew he was not authorized to have the materials. He told the agents, according to the complaint, that “he knew what he had done was wrong and that he should not have done it because he knew it was unauthorized. ” The Justice Department unsealed the complaint — which was filed in United States District Court in Baltimore — after The New York Times notified the government it intended to publish a story about Mr. Martin. In a brief statement issued Wednesday, lawyers for Mr. Martin said: “We have not seen any evidence. But what we know is that Hal Martin loves his family and his country. There is no evidence that he intended to betray his country. ” If true, the allegations against Mr. Martin are a setback for the Obama administration, which has sustained a series of disclosures of classified information. Along with Mr. Snowden’s revelations, the antisecrecy group WikiLeaks in 2010 disclosed hundreds of thousands of documents from the State and Defense Departments. In the aftermath of the Snowden disclosures, the administration took steps to put measures in place to prevent the unauthorized disclosures of classified information. Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary, defended the Obama administration’s procedures for protecting national security information, arguing on Wednesday that since Mr. Snowden’s disclosures, agencies have tightened their security measures. He cited the creation of a task force that sets and monitors security requirements for agencies that handle classified information, and an overhaul of the government’s background check process, including adding more frequent updates. The administration has also slashed the number of employees that have access to classified information, Mr. Earnest said, reducing it by 17 percent in the past couple of years. “The president’s got a lot of confidence that the vast majority of people who serve this country in the national security arena, particularly our professionals in the intelligence community, are genuine American patriots,” Mr. Earnest said. Another administration official said that investigators suspected that Mr. Martin began taking the material before Mr. Snowden’s actions became public, adding that reforms put into place after Mr. Snowden’s theft would not have stopped Mr. Martin. “This is something that has its origins certainly before Snowden came on the scene, so many of the forms that have been in place since 2013 wouldn’t be relevant to stopping what happened,” the official said. The information believed to have been stolen by Mr. Martin appears to be different in nature from Mr. Snowden’s theft, which included documents that described the depth and breadth of the N. S. A. ’s surveillance. Mr. Martin is suspected of taking the highly classified computer code developed by the agency to break into computer systems of adversaries like Russia, China, Iran and North Korea, some of it outdated. Several officials said that at the moment it did not look like a traditional espionage case, but the F. B. I. has not ruled anything out. Mr. Martin does not fit any of the usual profiles of an “insider threat,” and one administration official said that investigators thought that he was not politically motivated — “not like a Snowden or someone who believes that what we were doing was illegal and wanted to publicize that. ” Mr. Martin, a Navy veteran, has degrees in economics and information systems and has been working for a decade on a Ph. D. in computer science. Neighbors described him as cordial and helpful but knew little about his work. Law enforcement officials said that the F. B. I. was investigating the possibility that he had collected the files with no intention of passing them along. That by itself would represent a serious security vulnerability, but it would put Mr. Martin in the company of countless other senior Washington officials who have been caught taking classified information home. One of the officials described Mr. Martin as a hoarder. Samuel R. Berger, a former national security adviser, stole classified documents from the National Archives and hid them under a construction trailer. Alberto R. Gonzales took home documents about the nation’s warrantless wiretapping program home with him while he was attorney general. As C. I. A. director, John M. Deutch kept classified information on his home computer. Law enforcement officials are also looking into whether Mr. Martin was able to pass the information on, but are also entertaining a theory that he took it with that intention and then did not follow through. But there are many unanswered questions about Mr. Martin’s case, including when and how the authorities learned this identity, and when they believe he began taking information. It is also not known if the case has any connection to the leak of classified N. S. A. code in August attributed to a group calling itself the Shadow Brokers, or whether he had any role in a series of leaks of N. S. A. intercepts involving Japan, Germany and other countries that WikiLeaks has published since last year. “We’re struggling to figure him out,” the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because no indictment has been publicly released. For the N. S. A. which spent two years and hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars repairing the damage done by Mr. Snowden, a second insider leaking the agency’s information would be devastating. The agency’s director, Adm. Michael Rogers, who previously ran the Navy’s Fleet Cyber Command, was brought in to restore the agency’s credibility, open it to more scrutiny and fix the problems that allowed Mr. Snowden to sweep up hundreds of thousands of documents. It is also problematic for Booz Allen, which has built much of its business on providing highly technical services to the N. S. A. and other intelligence agencies. When the company “learned of the arrest of one of its employees by the FBI,” Booz Allen said in a statement on Wednesday, “we immediately reached out to the authorities to offer our total cooperation in their investigation, and we fired the employee. We continue to cooperate fully with the government on its investigation into this serious matter. ” | 1 |
During the 1986 race for governor of Vermont, Bernie Sanders bristled at the popularity of the Democratic incumbent, Madeleine Kunin. Mr. Sanders, who was running against her as an independent, saw himself as a leader, and viewed Ms. Kunin as a lightweight. “She does very well on television,” he told one interviewer. “She has an excellent press secretary. ” But really, he said another time, the governor’s appeal came down to one trait. “Many people are excited because she’s the first woman governor,” he said. “But after that, there ain’t much. ” Mr. Sanders has long presented himself as an politician from rural New England, now seeking the presidency with promise of a political revolution. But his combative side has now emerged as the Democratic race has tightened and Hillary Clinton has sharpened her own rhetoric. The result is a far harsher tone in the Democratic campaign and a transformed Senator Sanders, who is now making the kinds of attacks that some of his advisers regretted he did not deploy sooner. But his aggressiveness also worries some supporters who were powerfully drawn to his positive persona that forswore politics as usual. The senator’s assertiveness was on vivid display in Thursday’s debate with Mrs. Clinton ahead of the New York primary on Tuesday, which Mr. Sanders must win big to dent Mrs. Clinton’s strong lead in the delegates needed for the nomination. But he is also seeking to match the vigorous jabs from her aides and allies, who ignored Mr. Sanders for much of last year and are now assailing his policy ideas and leadership abilities on a basis. His advisers say he is reacting to the New York political environment as well. “Political combat is more restrained in places like Iowa and New Hampshire, but it’s completely different in New York, and Bernie has no problem defending his ideas in a tough way against Secretary Clinton’s,” said Tad Devine, a senior adviser for the Sanders campaign. Mrs. Clinton is now trying to hold off Mr. Sanders while not alienating his supporters, whom she would need in the general election. But she is also refusing to back down, and their spiky clashes are suddenly making for a more explosive and unpredictable race. More than anything, the recent Sanders broadsides reflect a political strategy he has carried out in previous campaigns: the use of blunt criticisms, sarcastic asides and a thundering style against his opponents. In the 1986 race, Mr. Sanders argued that he would be a strong feminist and do more for women than Ms. Kunin had. While granting that Ms. Kunin was “not corrupt,” he questioned if she had the same “courage” that he had. He repeatedly challenged her credentials as a fellow progressive, using some of the same language he aims at Mrs. Clinton. In the end, he damaged Ms. Kunin politically, as some Clinton supporters and political analysts think he may do in the current race. “In a tough fight, Bernie is hardly the guy that he claims to be,” said Garrison Nelson, a longtime political science professor at the University of Vermont. Ms. Kunin was not the only foe that Mr. Sanders attacked with insinuations, as opposed to the more overtly negative television ads that Mr. Sanders has forsworn. In his 1990 race for Congress, he frequently laid political bait for his Republican opponent and relished watching him stumble. And in his 2006 Senate campaign, Mr. Sanders relentlessly linked his moderate Republican opponent with George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, and accused him of running “the most negative, dishonest campaign in the history of the state of Vermont. ” While such tactics are not unusual in many campaigns, Mr. Sanders has long tried to claim the high road. Yet if his past opponents remember anything about him, it’s Bernie the brawler. “The way he kept tagging me as a typical rich guy who only cared about rich Republicans — it was very tough, and very effective,” said Richard Tarrant, a software executive who was the Republican Senate nominee in 2006 and ran many aggressive television ads. “Bernie knew that I earned my money myself, that my wealth was . But that didn’t matter. ” In the current race, after days of needling by the Clinton camp about his policies and ability to answer tough questions, Mr. Sanders hit back this month by saying Mrs. Clinton was “not qualified” for the presidency because she had taken money from wealthy donors and supported the war in Iraq and some agreements. Some Sanders supporters expressed dismay that their candidate was resorting to such sharp exchanges — a Guardian columnist wrote on Tuesday that she felt “betrayed” — while the leading Republican candidate, Donald J. Trump, picked up the line of attack. “Bernie Sanders says that Hillary Clinton is unqualified to be president,” Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter. “Based on her decision making ability, I can go along with that!” Mr. Sanders has started running commercials in New York criticizing Mrs. Clinton for accepting speaking fees from Wall Street banks but not supporting a federal $15 minimum wage. And in Thursday’s debate, he suggested that Mrs. Clinton’s speaking fees had influenced her to be soft on Wall Street regulation. She quickly dismissed that, saying that she had called out bankers over business practices — drawing a sarcastic response from Mr. Sanders. “Secretary Clinton called them out — oh my goodness, they must have been really crushed by this,” he said. “And was that before or after you received huge sums of money by giving speaking engagements? So they must have been very, very upset by what you did. ” While Mr. Sanders has not run and highly personal ads against Mrs. Clinton — the sort that traditionally characterize a negative campaign — Mrs. Clinton’s advisers accused Mr. Sanders of breaking his word. “At times he does it deftly, but make no mistake, every day Senator Sanders is launching another attack, and that’s not how he said he would run his campaign,” said Joel Benenson, Mr. Clinton’s campaign strategist. Mr. Devine, a longtime strategist for Mr. Sanders, said his candidate’s quips and tone were a far cry from the vitriol in the Republican race. He insisted that Mr. Sanders was seeking to reveal substantive differences with Mrs. Clinton, and denied that his candidate fears the Democratic nomination is slipping away. “I think the race is just increasingly engaged,” Mr. Devine said. In Vermont, however, Mr. Sanders was known for belittling opponents at times, rather than merely challenging their ideas. During one debate in the 1986 governor’s race, Mr. Sanders was asked if he viewed Governor Kunin as “the lesser of two evils,” given his descriptions of the Democratic and Republican parties as “Tweedledum” and “Tweedledee,” and if he thought he might contribute to her political “demise. ” Mr. Sanders chuckled and then looked at Ms. Kunin, seated a few feet away. “Governor, how does it feel to be the lesser of two evils?” he asked. “I think that really is what this campaign is about. ” Ms. Kunin was . Toward the end of that campaign, Ms. Kunin said, Mr. Sanders argued at a rally in Burlington, Vt. that he would do far more for women than Ms. Kunin. “Bernie thought I was an empty suit, and insisted that he was the better feminist because he would solve income inequality and that would help women,” Ms. Kunin said in the interview. “He could be sarcastic, but also very subtle. ” A supporter of Mrs. Clinton’s presidential bid, Ms. Kunin said she saw similarities between his treatment of the two women. “He’s not going to say, ‘She’s a woman, she’s not qualified,’” said Ms. Kunin, who was with 47 percent of the vote after Mr. Sanders siphoned off some support. “But he can paint a very subtle illusion talking about qualifications and judgment. ” Mr. Devine, the adviser to Mr. Sanders, said the senator would never make attacks, in the 1980s or today. “His focus is on issues,” he said. Peter Smith, the Republican candidate for governor in 1986 and the congressman Mr. Sanders ousted in 1990, said that Mr. Sanders used passion to create “a contrast between him and his opponent that may not, in fact, exist. ” Mr. Sanders’s aides in the 1990 campaign said they would regularly taunt Mr. Smith about his positions on issues like the minimum wage, which the congressman would dispute, and then Mr. Sanders would come forward and accuse Mr. Smith of dishonesty. As a result, a running theme of that campaign was that Mr. Sanders had integrity and Mr. Smith lacked it. “The tool he uses is his intensity and his belief that, on the major issues he cares about, there is only one right answer,” Mr. Smith said. “And it is his. ” | 1 |
Financial Markets , Gold , Market Manipulation , Precious Metals , U.S. Economy CNBC , GLD , silver eagles , Stanley Druckenmiller admin
Stanley Druckenmiller said: “I sold all my gold (sic) on the night of the election” because he sees inflation spiking and that will force money(sic) out of gold…hmmm….sell gold because you see inflation coming? That has to be the most idiotic investment rationale I’ve ever come across. Even “buy stocks because they keep going higher” is less dumb than that.
You’ll note the “sic” I added after Drunkenmiller’s comment about “gold.” “Sic” is used after a quoted word (from someone else) that seems odd or out of place. I inserted “sic” after Drunkenmiller’s use of “gold” because he never owned gold. He bought GLD, which is a paper derivative of gold. The only way you own gold is if you buy physical gold and keep it outside the system. GLD is a fraud, just like every other fiat paper “asset.”
I also inserted “sic” after his use of the word “money” with respect to “money flowing out of gold” (because he thinks inflation will spike up). Gold is money. It’s the second oldest form of transaction currency – silver being the oldest.
Finally, the idea that gold should be sold ahead of an expectation of a spike in inflation is…well, for lack of a better term, retarded (apologies to safe-space and socially correct people). Gold is the ultimate inflation hedge.
I sincerely do not know what would motivate Druckenmiller to make those remarks about gold – maybe he was patronizing what remains of CNBC’s imbecilic audience. I don’t feel any need to directly address each component Drunkenmiller’s assertions about gold – and about his expectations about feeling good about the prospects for the economy. The audiences of blogs like this one get it.
The current trading action in gold is being fueled by the paper market manipulation. If you review overnight charts for the last 3 months, you’ll see that on average and in general gold moves higher during the eastern hemisphere physical gold trading hours and gets bombed once the London and NY paper gold markets open after the Asian markets close.
It’s as simple as that. The paper gold market, like Drunkenmiller’s comments and investment rationale, are emblematic of the fraudulent, debt-riddled Ponzi nature of the U.S. and western hemisphere economies.
While the mantle of “power” in the U.S. was handed from Uncle Tom to Andrew Dice Clay, the real financial, economic and political power is being shifted from the western hemisphere to the eastern hemisphere. The massive flow of physical gold from west to east is the root of this tectonic geopolitical and economic movement. Share this: | 0 |
Asylum Seekers from the Middle East are being trained to become prison guards in a new program at the Mariefred prison set up by the Swedish government. [The new program, initiated by the Swedish probation and prison system, aims to see 450 recent migrants and disabled people placed in various internships that include prison guards, cooks and other jobs within correctional facilities across the country. Justice Minister Morgan Johansson visited the Mariefred prison where two Iraqi asylum seekers are training as guards according to the Probation service website. Mariefred prison chief Mohamed Gulied and project manager Helena Lönnkvist introduced the minister to the candidates enrolled in the program including the two Iraqis Khaled Taha and Dheyazan Sadeq who are also learning Swedish at the facility. ” I want to work, and am very happy here at Mariefred. Now I hope that I will manage basic education,” Khaled told the minister. Helena Lönnkvist who is the project manager for the program said, “trainees become role models, both in our own operations and for the relatives and friends outside the Prison and Probation Service. Our hope is that they will want to stay and go on to permanent employment. ” Mohamed Gulied added, “We need to recruit and this is a good way into the profession,” and said he hoped to receive more migrants into the program. So far the program has not run into a glaring issue that plagues many prisons across Europe, the growth of radical Islam and radicalization of inmates. In France, a report to the French National Assembly last year claimed that French prisons, in which 60 percent of inmates are Muslim, had become a breeding ground for radical Islamic indoctrination. The situation in British prisons is not much better as the former chief inspector of prisons Nick Hardwick said in 2015 that prisons were a conduit for radical Islamic recruitment. In HMP Gartree, a maximum security prison in the UK, entire cell blocks are run under a variation if Islamic sharia law according to reports. “It is so bad prisoners are refusing to move there as they feel intimidated,” a source said and added, “there is huge pressure put on them to convert and a threat of violence if they don’t. The Muslim gangs have their own rules and use Sharia law to sort out disagreements. In effect, they are setting up their own prison within a prison. ” Sweden is also experiencing a surge of support for the Islamic State terror group due to fighters returning from the Middle East and spreading their extremist ideology according to the Swedish security service. As far back as 2006 reports emerged that radical Islamists were also recruiting in Swedish prisons as well. Follow Chris Tomlinson on Twitter at @TomlinsonCJ or email at ctomlinson@breitbart. com, | 1 |
MANILA — The Philippines’ highest court ruled on Tuesday that the dictator Ferdinand E. Marcos may be granted a hero’s burial, resolving a divisive issue in a country where passions over his brutal rule still run high. A spokesman for the Supreme Court, Theodore Te, said the justices voted 9 to 5 to turn down a petition submitted by rights groups opposed to the reburial of Mr. Marcos, who died in 1989. The decision clears the way to carry out an order by President Rodrigo Duterte to bury Mr. Marcos in the national Cemetery of Heroes in Taguig City, a part of greater Manila. In a narrow ruling that did not touch on the crimes or merits of the Marcos government, the court decided that “there is no law that prohibits the burial,” Mr. Te said. The Marcos family, which for years has lobbied for the reburial, applauded the decision, saying it would help the country move forward. “It is our sincerest hope that this will lead the nation towards healing,” Mr. Marcos’s son, Ferdinand Marcos Jr. said in a statement. “I think this will be the beginning of bringing the country together. ” The groups that petitioned to stop the burial, which included many people who were tortured under Mr. Marcos’s rule, argued that the decision was part of an effort to whitewash an ugly period of history. Senator Risa Hontiveros said the decision would “effectively wipe the Marcos slate clean and negate the sacrifices of the thousands of brave souls who fought and suffered under the brutal dictatorship. ” The court, she said, had “miserably failed the test of history and broken our hearts. ” The Marcos government is believed to have killed more than 3, 000 political opponents and tortured tens of thousands. A government commission estimated that members of the Marcos family and their associates plundered about $10 billion from the country while millions of Filipinos lived in dire poverty. Mr. Marcos was ousted in a popular uprising in 1986 and died in the United States three years later. His body was repatriated in 1993 and has been stored in a refrigerated crypt in his hometown, Batac, in Ilocos Norte Province. His family has since achieved something of a political comeback. In addition to his son, a former senator who ran for vice president this year, his widow, Imelda, is a member of Congress, and one of his daughters, Imee, is governor of Ilocos Norte. Mr. Duterte has been a strong public supporter of the family and said he received a campaign contribution during this year’s election from Imee Marcos. She has denied making a contribution. Loretta Rosales, 77, a leftist politician who was tortured during martial law in the 1970s, said Mr. Duterte had been “very clear about his alliances. ” The court ruling, she predicted, would be “closely linked to schemes that may be made to restore the Marcoses back to power. ” Mr. Duterte’s chief legal counsel, Salvador Panelo, said the ruling was expected, as the law accords military veterans like Mr. Marcos the right to be buried in the Cemetery of Heroes. “It validates our theory that the law and the regulations are clear in the matter of burial of and soldiers,” he said. “It’s about time that the nation moves on and confront the more pressing concerns of the country rather than linger on an emotional issue that is as unproductive as it is divisive. ” | 1 |
We Are Change
In this video Luke Rudkowski covers more geopolitical moves and how the recent presidential election with Hillary Clinton is making the situation with Putin worse. The situation between these two super global powers is intensifying and becoming dangerous for both nations. As wikileaks keeps releasing more information the more pressure the DNC is putting against Russia instead of taking responsibility. For more invest in us on https://www.patreon.com/wearechange
Sources
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4mt_z…
http://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/20…
http://www.inquisitr.com/3225440/hill…
http://wearechange.org/putins-russian…
http://www.mirror.co.uk/tech/russia-t…
http://www.mintpressnews.com/wife-fbi…
http://www.breitbart.com/2016-preside…
https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/…
https://twitter.com/Lukewearechange/s…
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa…
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-ne…
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-10…
https://www.rt.com/news/364132-amnest…
http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016…
https://www.welt.de/politik/ausland/a…
http://time.com/4547219/nato-uk-us-tr…
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/…
http://edition.cnn.com/2016/10/27/eur…
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-10…
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-…
http://www.wsj.com/articles/russia-fl…
http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/7…
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We’re fresh over the Canadian border, in a supermarket on Vancouver Island gathering supplies for our first night on the road. There are three of us, and as we come together at checkout and pile our dinner ingredients onto the conveyor belt, the woman at the register doesn’t seem to know what to make of us. She watches our selections roll toward her: a rotisserie chicken, instant mashed potatoes, spinach, marshmallows, bottled water. We are three young women wearing motorcycle jackets and heavy boots, bandannas knotted around our necks. Lindsay asks her to add a bundle of firewood to the tally, and suddenly our presence here, just down the road from the Bamberton campground, clicks into place for her. “Did you leave your men at the campsite?” she asks. We laugh, not meaning to be rude, but the question strikes us as absurd. “Nope,” Lindsay tells her. “We left the men at home. ” She is confused and intrigued. Another woman comes to bag our purchases, and we chat with them both for a moment about the campground up the road, about our journey and about the fact that our men were not invited. The assumption that there are men waiting for us anywhere at all is a tangle for another day. They are excited for us, are thrilled to learn about our motorcycle adventure — from Seattle to Banff, then back across through Montana, Idaho and Washington. “Have the best time,” they say. We thank them, gather up our bags and head out to the parking lot, scooping up our firewood on the way. In the fading light, we pack up our two motorcycles with the purchases. We stash the bags and a of bottled water in the leg space of the sidecar we have reserved for gear, then secure the firewood under a web of bungee cords. We’re quick about it, because we’re hungry and want to make camp before it gets dark. I get on one of the bikes and back it out of the parking spot. Jenny starts the other one while Lindsay climbs into the sidecar. “Hurry!” I yell over the engines, with mock urgency. “The men are waiting,” we shout together and gun it toward the Highway. And it’s sort of true: There are men waiting. At every gas station and every diner and every campsite. They are waiting to ogle our machines, to quiz us about our trip, to ask us about our experience as motorcycle riders. Women manage uninvited attention from men every day, but there’s something particularly alluring to the male about a woman on a motorcycle. Two days in and we already know their lines of interrogation by heart. It’s not just the questions but the nonquestions that have begun to wear us down: “Let me give you directions [insert directions we don’t need]. ” “ friend rides motorcycles, too [insert random motorcycle story]. ” “Be careful [insert skeptical tone]. ” “I know things about sidecar motorcycles [insert inaccurate history lesson]. ” We take turns speaking with these interlopers, because there are just so many of them. Some are polite and curious and complimentary. Some are less so. As we wait for the ferry off Vancouver Island, a man with a neck tattoo ambles over and asks: “Did your fathers loan you these motorcycles? Or was it your uncles?” Jenny and I widen our eyes at each other in disbelief, and Lindsay tells him exactly what she thinks of his query. But we learn to put ridiculous moments like this behind us as we continue across British Columbia and Alberta. Near Whistler, we picnic on the shore of a lake. Outside Kamloops, we camp at the end of an abandoned dirt road, and in the morning we do doughnuts for so long the dust rises around us like a curtain. On our way to Banff, a tire blows out and, after struggling to change it by the side of the highway, we ride through the frigid, rainy night to make up the time I put on a midnight recital for Lindsay, who is huddled in the sidecar beside me, singing every Dolly Parton song I know. We look out on Banff’s lakes and pass through Calgary, and then, after days of rain, the weather becomes beautiful near the Montana border, where we stop for a field of yellow flowers. Along the way, every time we see a man on an expensive motorcycle, we nudge one another and whisper, “Did your mom loan you that?” After almost two weeks on the road, when we finally say goodbye, all I can think about is where I want to adventure next with these women. | 1 |
Videos More Than 1 Million ‘Check In’ On Facebook To Support The Standing Rock Sioux Most of the "visitors" are not actually at the protest camp in North Dakota, where the tribe and its supporters are gathering to oppose the pipeline. The planned route crosses the Missouri River just upstream of the reservation, and the tribe says it could contaminate drinking water and harm sacred lands. | November 2, 2016 Be Sociable, Share! A protesters is arrested by police near the Dakota Access pipeline at a construction site in North Dakota, Oct. 22, 2016. (Photo: YouTube)
More than 1 million people have “checked in” on Facebook to the Standing Rock Indian Reservation page , in a show of support for the tribe that has been rallying against construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline.
Most of the “visitors” are not actually at the protest camp in North Dakota, where the tribe and its supporters are gathering to oppose the pipeline. The planned route crosses the Missouri River just upstream of the reservation, and the tribe says it could contaminate drinking water and harm sacred lands. Facebook allows people to check in to places even if they are not physically present.
A broadly circulated rumor on social media over the weekend suggested that local police were using Facebook check-ins to track activists protesting the pipeline.
Activists then called for supporters of the protest to check-in en masse, in a move designed to confuse police.
“Water Protectors are calling on EVERYONE to check-in at Standing Rock, ND to overwhelm and confuse them,” one widely shared post said, according to The Guardian .
It’s not clear who started the rumor, but the response was immediate. “The number of check-ins at the Standing Rock reservation page went from 140,000 to more than 870,000 by Monday afternoon,” the Guardian reports. Now, that number stands at more than 1.5 million.
However, the Morton County Sheriff’s Department said in a Facebook post Monday afternoon that it “does not follow Facebook check-ins for the protest camp or any location” and called the report “absolutely false.”
The demonstration of solidarity from these Facebook users comes days after “police and National Guard troops arrested more than 140 protesters near a construction site,” Inside Energy’s Amy Sisk reported on All Things Considered . On Friday, there were reports of police using pepper spray against protesters they removed from land owned by the pipeline company, as we reported .
Here’s more from our previous coverage:
“Members of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe and their supporters have been protesting the pipeline since it was approved by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers over the summer . They are specifically trying to block the portion that is slated to run under the Missouri River near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation.”
“Earlier this month, the Standing Rock Sioux lost a bid in federal court to halt construction, paving the way for work on the $3.8 billion pipeline to continue, as we’ve reported . Almost immediately afterward, three U.S. agencies ‘announced a halt to work in one area significant to the tribe.'” | 0 |
• ON AIR NOW: LISTEN LIVE Advertisement Home > Shows > Strange Pings & ET Crash Retrievals Strange Pings & ET Crash Retrievals Date Wednesday - November 23, 2016 Host George Noory Listen with Windows Player High Low Download MP3s Hour 1 Hour 2 Hour 3 Hour 4 IMPORTANT: Some mobile devices do not download MP3s. If this is the case, please use your desktop computer or download our mobile app or download our mobile app .
Investigative reporter Linda Moulton Howe will discuss the effects of the strange pinging sound being reported since the summer of 2016 in Canada; a steady increase in drought-stressed forests and ozone; and an important UFO-related story from the son of a USAF man who was working inside ET retrieval teams at alien crash sites.
In the first hour, multi-sensory clairvoyant Janie Boisclair talks about her contact with entities on the Other Side and specifically those who've shared insights on the first Thanksgiving meal in Plymouth, Massachusetts including who was there, what they ate and why. Website(s): | 0 |
Last week’s announcement of a record-breaking US aid package for Israel underscores how dangerously foolish and out-of-touch is our interventionist foreign policy. Over the next ten years, the US taxpayer will be forced to give Israel some $38 billion dollars in military aid. It is money we cannot afford going to a country that needs no assistance to maintain its status as the most powerful military in the Middle East.
All US foreign aid is immoral and counterproductive. As I have often said, it is money taken from poor people in the US and sent to rich people overseas. That is because US assistance money goes to foreign governments to hand out as they see fit. Often that assistance is stolen outright or it goes to the politically connected in the recipient country.
Just as bad is the fact that much of what we call “foreign aid” is actually welfare for the wealthy here at home. The aid package to Israel is a very good example. According to the agreement, this $38 billion will all go to US weapons manufacturers. So the real beneficiaries are not the American people, and not even Israeli citizens. The real beneficiaries are the US military-industrial complex. Perhaps the money won’t even leave Washington – it may simply go across town, from the Fed to the Beltway bomb-makers.
While even US government aid to desperately poor countries should be opposed on moral and practical grounds, it is even harder to understand US aid to relatively rich countries. At a nominal per capita GDP of over $35,000, Israel is richer than Japan, Italy, and South Korea. Not long ago Business Insider published a report by the Institute for the Study of War showing that the Israel is the most powerful military force in the Middle East. We know they have hundreds of nuclear weapons, a sophisticated air force, drones, and even nuclear weapons-equipped submarines.
So why is the US giving a rich and incredibly well-armed country a record amount of military aid? Part of it is that the US government believes it can coerce Israel to do Washington’s bidding in the Middle East. History shows that this is a foolish pipe dream. If anything, US aid subsidizes Israeli human rights abuses in Gaza and elsewhere.
Another reason is a very powerful lobby in Washington, AIPAC, that pressures Members of Congress to focus on Israel’s interests instead of US interests. Members of Congress should look at our economy, with effectively zero interest rates, an anemic non-recovery from the 2008 crash, historically low participation in the work force, and inflation eroding the value of the dollar and conclude that this might not be the best time to start handing out billions of dollars in foreign aid. Unfortunately most Members of Congress find it impossible to say no to special interest groups like AIPAC.
Here’s a better aid package for Israel: free trade, travel, friendly relations, and no entangling alliances. Israel should be free to pursue its national interests and we should be free to pursue ours. If individual Americans feel compelled to provide assistance to Israel or any other country or cause overseas they should be allowed. But the rest of us should not be forced to do so. Trade, not aid. | 0 |
LONDON — Libyan fighters declared victory over the Islamic State at its coastal stronghold of Surt on Tuesday, ending the extremist group’s ambitions for a caliphate on the southern shores of the Mediterranean. “The battle is finally over,” said Reda Eissa, a spokesman for the coalition of militias from nearby Misurata that led the assault. “Our fighters are ecstatic. We still have to comb through the city and make sure we got them all, but we are so, so happy. ” The Libyan fighters’ apparent success was another defeat for the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, as its plans for a militant empire buckle on multiple fronts across the Middle East. In Surt, the Misuratan militias finally ousted the remaining Islamic State fighters from a cluster of houses after a grueling assault that pitted suicide bombers and snipers against Libyan forces backed by American warplanes. After moving into Surt in 2014, the Islamic State seized a stretch of coastline and instituted a brutal reign that included public killings and the imprisonment of migrants as sex slaves. The city became a transit hub for fighters traveling to Tunisia, as well as a supply stop and medical treatment center for Islamists fighting in eastern Libya. The Misuratan brigades began their drive toward Islamic State positions in Surt in May. American warplanes joined the effort in August, carrying out at least 490 sorties over the city while fighting raged in the streets below. Even as the Misuratan brigades celebrated on Tuesday, analysts warned that the Islamic State could still regroup in other parts of Libya by exploiting the economic ruin and political vacuum that has dogged the country since the ouster of Col. Muammar in 2011. “I’m concerned about the pockets of marginalization, and in some areas jihadist presence, that they could use to reconfigure,” said Frederic Wehrey, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, citing the presence of Islamic State forces in Tripoli, Benghazi and the desert town of Sabha. Islamic State fighters could carry out bombings in an attempt to destabilize the fragile United government in Tripoli, the capital, Mr. Wehrey said. But it is unlikely that the Islamic State will be able to capture such a significant town again, he added. During the battle for Surt, both sides faced accusations of human rights abuses. Many of the sex slaves held by the Islamic State in Surt were African migrants captured as they crossed the Libyan Desert in hopes of reaching the coast so they could make the perilous sea journey to Europe. At least 100 women and children who escaped Surt during the fighting, many from Eritrea, are being held at a prison in Misurata where they have given accounts of being abused and . The Libyan fighters from Misurata have faced accusations of torture and summary killings. A video recently emerged showing Misuratan militiamen interrogating and threatening to kill an Islamic State fighter named Mletan. Photographs that later circulated online showed the mutilated body of what appeared to be the same man being dragged along a street. Hanan Salah, a Libya researcher at Human Rights Watch, said on Tuesday that she had received reports from Libya that some public hospitals in Misurata had refused to treat civilians fleeing Surt on suspicion that they were members of the Islamic State. “The authorities are required to provide medical care to all those fleeing the fighting and who are in need of it, without distinction,” Ms. Salah said. The fall of Surt coincides with a concerted drive against the Islamic State in the Iraqi city of Mosul and a rapidly shifting fight in Syria. On Tuesday, Iraqi forces started shelling part of western Mosul as they prepared to open a new front in a battle now in its eighth week. The Misurata militias now in control of Surt nominally fight under the banner of the United government in Tripoli, led by Prime Minister Fayez Serraj — one of three rival administrations vying for control of Libya. The United States also supports the unity government. But the government is weak, having failed to extend its authority even over Tripoli since it started work in March. And many leaders of the Misurata militias are more concerned about Gen. Khalifa Hifter, a strongman who dominates Benghazi and the east of the country, than about the Islamic State. During a tour of the Surt battlefield in June, Misuratan commanders said they believed the Islamic State fighters were being controlled secretly by General Hifter as part of his wider ambition to seize control of Libya. There is little evidence to back that assertion — General Hifter is fighting against Islamic State militants, although opportunistic alliances are common on all sides of the conflict — but the heated talk illustrates the difficulty of bringing the country to a political settlement. Last week in Tripoli, the most violent clashes in two years erupted between competing factions, and one group blocked a major highway with shipping containers. Mr. Serraj’s administration was left to watch helplessly. The United Nations envoy to Libya, Martin Kobler, said he was “extremely alarmed” by the clashes, and Mark C. Toner, a State Department spokesman, said on Monday that the warring factions should rally behind the faltering unity government. Another uncertainty in Libya concerns the policy of the new administration of Donald J. Trump in the United States. On the campaign trail, Mr. Trump vowed to defeat the Islamic State but said he was averse to becoming involved in foreign countries. Mr. Trump’s expressed willingness to work with Russia and Egypt could lead to an alignment of United States efforts with those two countries’ policies in Libya. Egypt is a strong supporter of General Hifter, but the Obama administration has kept its distance from the general, who once worked for the C. I. A. | 1 |
New York Times Reporter Karen Crouse queried 56 PGA players at the Genesis Open last week in Los Angeles, finding a whopping 50 of those players (89. 3%) would play golf with President Trump if invited. [Despite the fact that South African legendary golfer Ernie Els and #3 golfer in the World Rory McIlroy were both trashed on social media for playing with the president, Crouse doesn’t find it surprising that Trump should have such a pull on tour professionals. She writes, “The results were hardly surprising. The clubhouses at PGA Tour stops have long trended Republican, and the sport’s target demographic — rich, mostly white men — is far different from the women, minorities, immigrants and Muslims who have at times been the most offended by the president’s statements and positions. ” Yet, despite Crouse’s above conclusion, Els didn’t say he wanted to play with Trump because he agreed with all his policies but that he did so out of respect for the office. “I’m not silly to what’s going on,” said Els, who owns 47 combined PGA and European Tour victories including four major championships. “I know this is probably the most polarizing president of my time. ” Els added, “Whether you agree or not, I felt it was a duty to play with the president when you get the call. ” golfer Pat Perez isn’t the least bit shy of acknowledging his support for the 45th president, saying that he would play with Trump “in a heartbeat. ” So, now he can expect his Twitter and Facebook feeds to be trashed by Trump haters. To his credit, he obviously doesn’t care too much about that. Moreover, Perez commented that he would have turned down an invitation from Hillary Clinton if she had won the election in November. Golf icon Tiger Woods and L. P. G. A. player Lexi Thompson, both have teed it up with The Donald, subjecting themselves to social media scorn as well. Thompson claims Trump hit his driver 250 yards. Trump becomes the fourth president with whom Tiger has played, having joined George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and Obama on the golf course during their reign as leader of the free world. Tiger quipped after playing with Trump that he was impressed with how the president took quite a “lash” at the golf ball. He added that his round was “fun,” and “Our discussion topics were . ” One particular PGA player, Jim Herman has a strong affinity toward the President. Trump took Herman under his wing as an assistant pro at his course in Bedminster, N. J. Eventually, Trump sponsored Herman early in his career in 2006. Last Year Herman won his first PGA tour event and has captured some $6 million on the tour. The Herman, who has played with Trump hundreds of times, was invited by then Trump to attend his inauguration in January. “It’s still very hard for me to separate ‘President Donald Trump’ from the guy I’ve played with for the last 10 years,” Herman admitted. “I think of how generous Mr. Trump and all of those people were in helping me make it to the PGA Tour. So on that day in Washington, the inauguration was almost surreal in seeing him and his children and some members of his clubs I hadn’t seen in many years, all of us back together to share in that unique moment in American history. ” | 1 |
David Duke October 26, 2016
Today Dr. Duke discussed the state of his campaign, including television commercials that he was preparing. He will be in a televised debate with the other leading candidates, which should be critical in putting him in the run off.
Pastor Mark Dankof took over the show at the break. He took calls from listeners. One call asked about Jesusâs warning about the Synagogue of Satan. Pastor Dankof ended the show with a passionate warning about the risk of World War III should Hillary be elections.
This is another great show that you wonât want to miss. | 0 |
groups are furiously protesting North Carolina’s political deal that will protect the sexual privacy of adults and children in public bathrooms and shower rooms while likely ending the university sports boycott of the state. [The compromise deal, titled HB142, ends economic threats to the state’s business groups by sunsetting the state’s sole authority to decide who is male and who is female in December 2020, just after the next gubernatorial election. After that date, cities and counties will regain the power to write new legal rights for gays and for “transgender” people who want to live as members of the opposite sex, ensuring renewed political fights over the role of the “gender,” and over distinctions between the male and female sexes. But the state will keep sole control of privacy rules for men’s and women’s use of public restrooms and shower rooms unless judges decide to create new rights for people who want to live as members of the opposite sex. Also, the state preserves its sole authority over the process by which people can formally change their legal sex. That is a political defeat for the gay groups and the progressives in Charlotte who ignited the “transgender bathroom” fight in February 2016 by erasing any legal distinction between men and women in public bathrooms. They erased the distinctions by declaring that men who merely say they are “transgender women” could use women’s public bathrooms and shower rooms, and effectively eliminated bathrooms in the city. In March 2016, conservatives defeated the Charlotteville challenge by passing HB2, titled the “Public Facilities Privacy Security Act. ” The popular law limited cities’ ability to impose social legislation on citizens, conserved the normal legal and civic recognition of the male and female sexes, protected sexual privacy in shared public bathrooms, and reaffirmed rules for how people can legally switch between the two sexes. Gay and progressive groups, aided by the established media, then organized a national campaign against the HB2 law. For example, they persuaded their allies in companies and universities to withdraw investment and sports tournaments from the state. The economic threat, although only partly effective, helped the 2016 defeat of the GOP’s effective governor, Pat McCrory. The business pressure also pushed GOP leaders to approval the compromise deal with the new Democratic governor, Roy Cooper. Senate passes H142 for second time on voice vote. Now goes to House. #hb2 #wral #ncga one more vote to go. — WRAL Gov’t Coverage (@NCCapitol) March 30, 2017, On Thursday, the deal was approved 32 to 16 in the state Senate’s vote and by 70 to 48 in the state House’s vote, as many GOP and Democratic legislators voted no. The deal was approved just before a deadline set by the NCAA, which threatened to withhold valuable sports events from the state from 2018 to 2022. Many polls also show the transgender agenda is supported by only voters, partly because there are so few transgender people. Since the 2016 election, former President Barack Obama has twice blamed the transgender fight for Hillary Clinton’s loss. In for example, Obama told NPR that voters “may know less about the work that my administration did on trying to promote collective bargaining or overtime rules. But they know a lot about the controversy around transgender bathrooms. ” The extension is also only a temporary win for conservatives, who will have to build assertive public support for the civic distinctions between men and women if they want to ensure that the legislature and the courts preserve the many facilities in the state. The state’s conservative Lt. Gen. Dan Forest opposed the deal, citing the state’s need to resist economic blackmail from business groups: If HB2 was right to begin with, which I believe it was, then why are we repealing it? If it is wrong, then why wait four years to fix it? Such ambiguity undercuts the legitimacy of a law that we have fought so hard to defend. We are yielding the moral high ground and giving in to a new form of corporate extortion from an unaccountable, out of state, organization (NCAA) and for what? … a ballgame? Why are we allowing them to dictate to us, laws that govern the protection of our people? We should have the backbone to tell them to take a hike. Tami Fitzgerald, the director of the NC Values Coalition, denounced the pressure from economic interests and predicted a renewed political battle in 2022: These chambers were filled today with men and women who have been under a press by the NCAA and the business community for months, and today, the leaders of our State have let the people of North Carolina down. The truth remains, no basketball game, corporation, or entertainment event is worth even one little girl losing her privacy and dignity to a boy in the locker room, or being harmed or frightened in a bathroom. Today each member cast a vote based on what they believed was in the best interest of their constituents and North Carolina. HB2 was a compassionate, reasonable law that guaranteed that [loss of privacy] wouldn’t happen, and provided sensitive solutions for transgender individuals as well so that everyone’s privacy was protected. NC Values Coalition remains committed to advocating for a standard on privacy protections in bathrooms, locker rooms and shower facilities in our schools and public buildings. Our municipalities should never erode our State’s climate by empowering cities to create a patchwork of regulations across the state to force business owners to violate their beliefs or be subject to fines and frivolous lawsuits. I am grateful for the lawmakers who remained steadfast to these principals and the thousands of coalition members that today urged them to vote against the repeal. Today’s repeal vote maintains separate facilities for men and women and leaves regulation of facilities to the state however, it leaves the state without a statewide public policy on privacy and safety in bathrooms, locker rooms and showers and simply kicks this debate three years down the road. I hope that our state will learn from this and stand stronger in the future against the bullying and intimidation tactics of groups like the NCAA, the NBA, and billion dollar corporations who care more about their political, hypocritical agendas than the and dignity of the people in our great state. The period until 2020 is also only a temporary defeat for advocates of the transgender ideology. Those groups are demanding that the state forcefully require Americans to validate the claims of “transgender” people, regardless of the cost to the roughly 99. 7 percent of normal Americans who do not wish to live as members of the opposite sex. In practice, that unpopular ideological demand requires changes in society to remove any legal or civic recognition of the two sexes. For example, in the “genderless society” sought by the transgender groups, women would be forced to accept biological males in their shower rooms, biological males in girls’ sports leagues, and curricula in their kindergartens. People, including scientists and doctors, would also be legally pressured to use incorrect female pronouns — “she” — when referring to men and teenage boys who merely say they are women, even in science classrooms or in hospitals. These requirements also would allow easy lawsuits against any practice or organization in the state, including civic groups that cater to kids. The groups denounced the compromise deal in a morning press conference and demanded full submission to their demands. “Let me express my heartfelt disdain and disappoint for what we are seeing,” said Chris Sgro, the director of Equality N. C. The deal is “ hasty, bad legislation … [which] will continue to actively discriminate against the transgender community,” he complained, adding that people in the state are “obsessed with where transgender people use the restroom. ” The deal “sold out” the lesbian, gay and transgender groups in the state, said Cathryn Oakley, the senior legislative counsel for state and municipal advocacy at the Human Rights Campaign. #RepealHB2 @equalitync ”there will be a continued fight if this passes, and there will be continued conversations with @RoyCooperNC” pic. twitter. — PP South Atlantic NC (@PPSATNC) March 30, 2017, The activists declined to tolerate any compromise. Full repeal of HB2 “is the compromise … . anything else is a terrible deal” said an ACLU staffer, Sarah Preston. “If you are a vote for this bill, you are not a friend of the LGBT community, you are not standing on the right side of the moral arc of history,” claimed Sgro. The text of the pending bill is short: Preemption of Regulation of Access to Multiple Occupancy Restrooms. § . Preemption of regulation of access to multiple occupancy restrooms, showers, or changing facilities. State agencies, boards, offices, departments, institutions, branches of government, including The University of North Carolina and the North Carolina Community College System, and political subdivisions of the State, including local boards of education, are preempted from regulation of access to multiple occupancy restrooms, showers, or changing facilities, except in accordance with an act of the General Assembly. SECTION 3. No local government in this State may enact or amend an ordinance regulating private employment practices or regulating public accommodations. SECTION 4. This act is effective when it becomes law. Section 3 expires on 19 December 1, 2020. To read more Breitbart coverage about the “gender identity” ideology, click here. | 1 |
BASEL, Switzerland (AP) — The International Organization for Migration says more than 60, 000 migrants have reached the shores of Europe so far in 2017, a sizeable decrease compared to the same period last year. [The based U. N. agency said Friday that 60, 521 migrants and refugees had entered Europe by sea with over 80 precent of them landing in Italy. The remainder arrived in Greece, Cyprus or Spain. That figure excludes an estimated 6, 000 men, women and children who have been rescued since Tuesday. The organization has also recorded at least 1, 530 deaths on the Mediterranean in 2017, the vast majority in the waters between Libya and Sicily. That figure is higher than the same period last year. Between 2016, the agency documented 193, 333 migrants and refugees arriving at sea and 1, 398 fatalities. | 1 |
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LONDON — Four days after a decisive vote to leave the European Union, Britain was consumed on Monday with questions of when and how the country’s departure from the bloc would happen — and increasingly, of whether it would happen at all. The immediate outcome of Thursday’s referendum was not the promised clarity but an epic political muddle and a policy vacuum that invited more confusion and turmoil throughout the day in Britain, on the Continent and in the financial markets. Leaders on both sides of the Channel said there was no viable option but to move gradually toward the withdrawal process. Yet the day’s developments did little to dispel the possibility that the crisis could drag on for a long time, possibly generating enough economic and political damage to encourage negotiation of a new arrangement between Europe and Britain that would sidestep the need for a formal withdrawal or at least minimize its effects. Prime Minister David Cameron and leaders of the campaign to leave stuck to their positions that they would not move quickly to begin formal talks on withdrawal, even as European leaders turned up the pressure on Britain to get on with it. Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany met in Berlin late Monday with her French and Italian counterparts. She signaled that any decision on how to negotiate a withdrawal would have to await a meeting of all 28 European Union countries on Tuesday and Wednesday in Brussels. The financial markets continued to pummel stocks and the value of the British pound, at one point sending the currency to its lowest level against the dollar in more than three decades. And Standard Poor’s, the ratings agency, downgraded Britain’s credit rating, reflecting concern about the economic implications of the Brexit vote. Mr. Cameron has announced that he will step down, and both his governing Conservative Party and the opposition Labour Party were consumed by internal warfare on Monday, leaving the country lacking strong leadership as it confronted new demands for a referendum on independence for Scotland. Leaders of the Leave campaign, including Boris Johnson, the former London mayor who is now a leading candidate to succeed Mr. Cameron, notably modulated their tone and some positions on Europe, leaving unclear exactly what issues they want to address through a withdrawal. The state of chaotic paralysis highlighted two fundamental problems that have plagued the European Union for the last decade. One is its difficulty balancing democratic accountability against its institutional drive to further the cause of unity. The other is its inability to act quickly and decisively to address the crises that regularly undercut confidence among voters and in the markets. Monday’s events spoke to the struggle on all sides to define a way forward and restore some sense of unity, both within Britain and throughout Europe. In the first meeting of Parliament since the referendum, Mr. Cameron said he considered the vote binding, though he reiterated that he would leave to his successor the decision to start the formal withdrawal process. “The decision must be accepted and the process of implementing the decision in the best possible way must now begin,” he said. About of lawmakers had supported remaining in the European Union. A senior Conservative lawmaker, Kenneth Clarke, suggested that Parliament could override the referendum — which is not, in the end, legally binding on the government — while a Labour legislator, David Lammy, called for a second referendum. Mr. Cameron brushed such ideas aside, but he also made it clear that he would not be the one in charge of Britain’s messy divorce from Europe. The man who might be, Mr. Johnson, sought to calm nerves and markets with his first extensive remarks on the way forward, setting out a position that seemed to elements of what the Leave campaign had promised. He suggested that Britain should take its time before entering separation proceedings with Brussels, and he gave no details about when he would want to start the process. And the vision he sketched out — of a Britain that is still in a trading bloc with Europe — seemed at best difficult to achieve, since the price of membership in the single market has always been the two things the Leave movement explicitly campaigned against: free movement of European citizens across borders and contributions to the bloc’s operating budget. Mr. Johnson also played down the central issue of the campaign, immigration, saying it was not really what Britons were voting on, despite considerable evidence that it was. “The only change — and it will not come in any great rush — is that the U. K. will extricate itself from the E. U.’s extraordinary and opaque system of legislation,” Mr. Johnson wrote an opinion essay in the Monday edition of the conservative newspaper The Telegraph. Mr. Cameron also suggested that the best outcome for Britain now would be a deal in which it retained access to the single market. But there were no signs that European leaders would let Britain off the hook so easily. Although Ms. Merkel has signaled a desire not to rush the process of negotiating British withdrawal, most European governments are eager to take a tough line, wanting to make clear to any other nation that might contemplate leaving that there is considerable cost to doing so. The few countries that have been given access to the European zone without joining the European Union — notably, Iceland, Norway and Switzerland — all contribute to the bloc’s budget and accept its bedrock principle of free movement of workers, the very issues that angered so many of the Britons who voted to leave. Meeting in Berlin, Ms. Merkel, President François Hollande of France and Prime Minister Matteo Renzi of Italy said there would be no discussions, formal or informal, over Britain’s withdrawal until it formally invokes Article 50, the provision in the bloc’s governing treaty that sets out the process for a withdrawal. European leaders are troubled by the prospect of a exit inducing deeper financial and economic turmoil, a concern increasingly prevalent in London as well. On Monday morning, George Osborne, the chancellor of the Exchequer, tried to calm the markets, citing Britain’s underlying economic strengths, the greater resilience of its financial system after the crisis, and the readiness of the Bank of England to step in. Markets plunged anyway. Alex Salmond, a member of Parliament and a former leader of the Scottish National Party, blamed the British government for the political vacuum, saying that neither Mr. Cameron nor Mr. Johnson had taken ownership of the mess. “If you break it, you own it,” he said. Mr. Cameron summoned his cabinet and announced the creation of a policy unit of the “best and brightest” civil servants — overseen by Oliver Letwin, a Conservative lawmaker — to orchestrate the withdrawal process. He also said he had spoken with Prime Minister Enda Kenny of Ireland to ensure that a British departure from the European Union, of which Ireland is a member, would not endanger the fragile peace in Northern Ireland. A committee of Conservative lawmakers met on Monday and proposed a timetable to select two candidates for party leader. The party’s roughly 150, 000 members would choose between the two, with the goal of selecting a new leader — and therefore a new prime minister — by Sept. 2. A decision on the timetable is expected by Wednesday, amid increased speculation that Britain could have a general election this year, after giving the Conservatives a term in May 2015. Mr. Johnson is seen as the to replace Mr. Cameron as leader of the Conservatives, but he has made many enemies. The home secretary, Theresa May, who is in charge of domestic security and who advocated remaining in the European Union, has emerged as perhaps the most credible alternative. Meanwhile, the opposition Labour Party found itself in a state of civil war, with veteran lawmakers calling for the resignation of its leader, Jeremy Corbyn, and warning that the party risked losing its position as one of Britain’s two main political parties, a status it has held since 1922. Large numbers of voters in traditional Labour strongholds in Northeast England and Wales — many of which are economically depressed areas that receive large amounts of European Union aid — voted to leave the bloc. Mr. Corbyn’s tepid approach to campaigning for the Remain campaign was cited as a reason many traditional Labour supporters threw in their lot with the nationalist, U. K. Independence Party. Secretary of State John Kerry, visiting Brussels and London to discuss the fallout from the referendum, counseled against harsh actions by either side. “So I think it is absolutely essential that we stay focused on how, in this transitional period, nobody loses their head, nobody goes off people don’t start ginning up scatterbrained or revengeful premises, but we look for ways to maintain the strength that will serve the interests and the values that brought us together in the first place,” Mr. Kerry said. | 1 |
The way the "Defense Budget" in the USA continues to grow, inspite of being incredibly bloated (USA outspends the next eight big spender countries together!), inspite of numerous scandals of unbelievable overspending and waste, with virtually no oversight, is a clear testimony to irrational, absurd, wasteful spending of public money. Even as all other items of the Federal Budget have to submit to strict oversight and austerity and continuously justify every spending, the military budget is the sacred cow that can NEVER be questioned or submit to the same scrupulous and rigorous control. It is unbelievably irrational. | 0 |
For nearly a governors and mayors in New York have been stymied in their attempts to fix Pennsylvania Station, one of the busiest transit halls in the Western Hemisphere and one of the most crowded and confusing. Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo on Tuesday presented a plan that would finally create a train hall and retail space in the James A. Farley Building, also known as the General Post Office, on the west side of Eighth Avenue in Manhattan, while renovating the cramped, dingy underground passageways and platforms across the avenue at Penn Station. The Farley Building would become a home for both Amtrak and, in a break with past proposals, the Long Island Rail Road that should bring some relief to the congestion at Penn Station, which also houses New Jersey Transit trains and two subway lines. On any given day, more than 600, 000 commuters and travelers — triple what the station was designed for — move through it. The Farley train hall is expected to open in December 2020. Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat, said his administration had selected a team — the developers Related Companies and Vornado Realty and Skanska AB, the giant construction management firm — for the $1. 6 billion plan. He announced the plan at a luncheon for the Association for a Better New York, a business organization. “This plan is smarter and better for people who will use the complex,” Mr. Cuomo said in an interview. “And it will actually happen. ” According to state officials, all of the necessary approvals are in place, as well as the funding. The developers would pay New York State about $600 million, which would include an upfront payment of $230 million and annual payments in lieu of taxes over 30 years, which the city has to approve. The developers would also provide the state an unspecified share of the retail revenues at the train hall and, possibly, advertising, officials said. Empire State Development, a state agency, would contribute $570 million toward the remaining cost, much of it coming from the probable sale of Farley’s air rights. Amtrak, which owns Penn Station the Long Island Rail Road the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and the federal government would put in a combined $425 million. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who died in 2003, originally championed the idea of creating an adjunct train depot at the Farley Building in an effort to restore grandeur to Penn Station, where the aboveground train hall was torn down in the 1960s to make way for Madison Square Garden. Both Farley and the demolished train hall were designed by architects at McKim Mead White. Plans to convert the post office into a train station have been derailed by disputes involving the Postal Service and Amtrak, a lack of funding and the difficulty of doing construction work without disrupting train service. In 2005, the state selected Related and Vornado to do the work, a $900 million project. The developers initially sought to move Madison Square Garden to the west side of the post office building so that they could build skyscrapers or a mall over the Penn Station site. But the project never really moved forward. Last January, Mr. Cuomo abruptly announced that he was starting over and requested proposals for both the post office building and Penn Station, although the original developers had a major head start over any rivals. Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and a longtime supporter of the project who has obtained federal money for preliminary work, called the governor’s announcement a “step forward in the modernization of our West Side transportation network. ” Mr. Cuomo said his new plan fixed flaws in previous proposals. Moving both Amtrak and Long Island Rail Road passengers to Farley would do a lot more to relieve congestion at Penn Station, he said. Jeff Blau, chief executive of Related Companies, who had been taken aback by the Mr. Cuomo’s announcement in January, was excited about finally moving forward. Related, Vornado and Skanska are expected to sign a formal contract early next year that would include a timetable with financial penalties if deadlines are not met. At the Farley Building, the developers would create a massive train hall beneath a glass skylight mounted on the building’s dramatic steel trusses for the daily 30, 000 Amtrak riders and 230, 000 Long Island Rail Road passengers. Tom Wright, president of the Regional Plan Association, a private planning group that has long favored the Farley project, said the announcement on Tuesday was a major advance. “The vision for the full complex,” Mr. Wright said, “has got to be a seamless, integrated system. Whether someone’s riding Amtrak, the subways or the L. I. R. R. they should be able to enter the complex and get to their platform as quickly as possible. ” State officials said they would begin soliciting bids on Tuesday for work at Penn Station. | 1 |
Fox News Channel host Jeanine Pirro praised President Donald Trump for the Syria strike Saturday in her opening statement on Fox News Channel’s “Justice. ” Pirro said Trump’s “swift, certain and decisive leadership” is something that has been missing for a long time in the United States. “When President Donald Trump ordered a targeted strike on that military base in Syria, he demonstrated swift, certain and decisive leadership absent for so long in America,” Judge Jeanine began. She continued, “His clarity, determination and compassion for the most weak among us without the accustomed indifference, whimpering, dithering, vacillating moral equivalency of the other guy reflects not only his courage, strength and honor, but finally the resurgence and the reawakening of America the great. This is what we voted for. ” Follow Trent Baker on Twitter @MagnifiTrent | 1 |
On May 30, comedian Kathy Griffin tweeted a photo of herself holding a head that was supposed to be President Trump’s, intimating that Trump had been beheaded. [The New York Daily News reported that the photographer behind the photo, Tyler Shields, defended it as an example of “art. ” Shields also said that Griffin initiated talks that led to the photo, saying, “She came to me. She said she’d like to do something political, that she’d love to do something that makes a statement. ” He added, “It’s always a collaboration. It wasn’t completely her, but it wasn’t completely me either. Without Kathy, I would’ve never done a photo like that. She’s the only person I can ever see doing this … Not a lot of people are fearless enough to do something like this. ” This is ironic when one considers January 8, 2011 — the date on which Representative Gabby Giffords ( ) was shot by the mentally ill Jared Loughner. That shooting occurred after former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin had asked conservative voters to target certain Congressional districts in the 2010 midterm elections, so as to vote representatives who voted for Obamacare out of office. Palin’s political action committee, SarahPAC, had released a graphic showing crosshairs on 20 swing districts then held by Democrats in Congress that could flip to Republicans. Due to Palin’s successful endorsements of candidates in those swing districts, 19 of those 20 targeted races were won by Republicans in the 2010 midterms. The one district that stayed Democratic was Giffords’. This is how Griffin reacted to news of the attack on Giffords: Watching the news? Congresswoman in AZ, who is ON Sarah Palin’s crosshairs map was SHOT in the head 2day. Happy now Sarah? — Kathy Griffin (@kathygriffin) January 8, 2011, AWR Hawkins is the Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and host of Bullets with AWR Hawkins, a Breitbart News podcast. He is also the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart. com. | 1 |
| February 18, 2016 at 7:33 am | Reply
Trump’s “America We Deserve” book came out on 1/15/2000. I’ve learned magnitudes of mind-changing information in 16 years. Maybe Trump has, too (though he obviously does still have some huge blind spots, such as believing whatever the “Nightly News” says about anything/everything, from mass shootings [not awake to false flags] to boogeymen terrorists/ISIS [not awake to the fact the CIA/Mossad/MI5/6 create/fund the terrorist groups] to believing the lie that we need to give up privacy for “more security” [his current anti-Apple vs. FBI opinion], etc.). Even so, I think Trump is “TEACHABLE,” if the right people are given his ear.
Steve B. said: “…I cannot and will not vote for him, until that repudiation of his pro-choice past comes.”
He has told the story quite a few times of his change of opinion re abortion. In short, he had friends who were going to abort but had the baby who then grew up to be a great kid which touched his heart personally. And in just the past few days I heard him say he basically went along with the abortion idea in his prior years because his daughter thought it was an OK thing, so he thought it was an OK thing, too. If Ivanka is nearing 35, then she probably DID think it was OK when she was 20-ish. (He did not say that in a blaming or scapegoating kind of way, btw.) Granted, Trump is obviously NOT a Biblically-discipled follower of Jesus. He may be a BELIEVER in Jesus, but he has obviously never been discipled. Trump needs an Aquila & Priscilla to “…take him unto them, and expound unto him the way of God more perfectly.” (Acts 18:26).
Here’s Trump’s anti-abortion statement from two days ago at his FB site. (Of course, I disagree with him still re: exceptions for “rape, incest or the life of the mother being at risk.” That’s still Lefty hogwash. No baby deserves to be murdered. The baby cannot determine the circumstances. Whatever happened to adoption, for pete’s sake?!):
[…] Donald J. Trump February 16 at 4:11pm
Let me be clear—I am pro-life. I support that position with exceptions allowed for rape, incest or the life of the mother being at risk. I did not always hold this position, but I had a significant personal experience that brought the precious gift of life into perspective for me. My story is well documented, so I will not retell it here. However, what I will do with the remaining space is express my feelings about life, and the culture of life, as we approach the 43nd anniversary of the Roe v. Wade.
I build things. There is a process involved in building things. We tap into a lot of disciplines with engineering being one of the most important. The rules for putting structures together are as strict as are the rules of physics. These rules have stood the test of time and have become the path to putting together structures that endure and are beautiful. America, when it is at its best, follows a set of rules that have worked since our founding. One of those rules is that we, as Americans, revere life and have done so since our Founders made it the first, and most important, of our “unalienable” rights.
Over time, our culture of life in this country has started sliding toward a culture of death. Perhaps the most significant piece of evidence to support this assertion is that since Roe v. Wade was decided by the Supreme Count 43 years ago over 50 million Americans never had the chance to enjoy the opportunities offered by this country. They never had the chance to become doctors, musicians, farmers, teachers, husbands, fathers, sons or daughters. They never had the chance to enrich the culture of this nation or to bring their skills, lives, loves or passions into the fabric of country. They are missing, and they are missed.
The Supreme Court in 1973 based their decision on imagining rights and liberties in the Constitution that are nowhere to be found. Even if we take the court at its word, that abortion is a matter of privacy, we should then extend the argument to the logical conclusion that private funds, then, should subsidize this choice rather than the half billion dollars given to abortion providers every year by Congress. Public funding of abortion providers is an insult to people of conscience at the least and an affront to good governance at best.
If using taxpayer money to facilitate our slide to a culture of death was not enough, the 1973 decision became a landmark decision demonstrating the utter contempt the court had for federalism and the 10th Amendment. Roe v. Wade gave the court an excuse to dismantle the decisions of state legislatures and the votes of the people. This is a pattern that the court has repeated over and over again since that decision. Perhaps Roe v. Wade became yet another incidence of disconnect between the people and their government.
We are in the middle of a presidential political cycle and votes will be cast in just days. The citizens of this nation will have the chance to vote for candidates that are aligned with their individual worldviews. It is my hope that they will choose the builder, the man who has the ability to imagine the greatness of this nation. The next President must follow those principles that work best and that reinforce the reverence Americans hold for life. A culture of life is too important to let slip away for convenience or political correctness. It is by preserving our culture of life that we will Make America Great Again.
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Drinking alcohol might seem like the normal or ‘hip’ thing to do, but consuming it in excess over time can take a toll on one’s health. Effects of excessive alcohol consumption include increased risk... | 0 |
Good morning. (Want to get California Today by email? Here’s the .) California’s biggest lake, about 350 square miles, is dying. It’s not the first time. The Salton Sea, straddling the Imperial and Coachella Valleys, is the latest incarnation of a body of water that has been drying and refilling over eons with water from the Colorado River. Native Americans once fished and camped on Lake Cahuilla, a prehistoric and larger version. The Salton Sea was born in the early 1900s after a canal burst sent water from the Colorado flooding into the valley over a period of two years. Beginning in the 1950s, entrepreneurs transformed it into a tourist mecca, building marinas and resorts. There were beauty pageants and boat races. Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra visited. But in time, runoff pollution, drought and blistering heat conspired to end the fun. As the saline lake evaporated, its salt concentration soared, killing fish en masse. The blooming and decomposition of algae had a powerful stench. Today, the Salton Sea is surrounded by abandoned buildings. For people fighting to revitalize it, there are two big concerns, said Michael Cohen, a researcher with the Pacific Institute, a think tank. One is dust. The receding water is exposing vast areas of the lake floor that, if unabated, could kick up more than 100 tons of dust every day by 2045, scientists say. (This winter’s bountiful rain largely avoided the Salton Sea). The particles are so fine that they cannot be coughed up, threatening the health of local children whose asthma rates lead the state. The other is the threat to wildlife. The Salton Sea is a precious way station for more than 400 species of migrating birds. Part of the solution, said Mr. Cohen, lies in restoring habitat — essentially moving earth around in ways that keeps the dust from flying while providing the birds with places to stop and refuel. A $9. 6 billion revitalization plan endorsed by state officials has been on the back burner for years. Mr. Cohen said he was often asked why we don’t just let nature take its course. “Are we fighting nature? Yes,” he said. But, he said, pristine wilderness really no longer exists — all of California is manipulated in some way by humans. “So from that perspective,” he said, “we need to make sure those places that are valuable for wildlife are preserved. ” Frank Foster, a photography instructor at Victor Valley College in Victorville, has been capturing images of the Salton Sea for years. He shared some with us. (Please note: We regularly highlight articles on news sites that have limited access for nonsubscribers.) • New actions by San Francisco and Hawaii showed how emboldened President Trump’s opponents are to attack his policies through litigation. [The New York Times] • The “A Day Without a Woman” demonstration was a test of whether fervor can be turned into a sustained movement. [The New York Times] • What’s next after the defeat of Measure S? Advocates say Los Angeles must tackle high housing costs and the need for better planning. [Los Angeles Times] • Voter turnout on Tuesday in Los Angeles was likely to be lowest ever. [Los Angeles Times] • The Los Angeles County sheriff said he expected federal drug agents would try to step up marijuana enforcement in California. [The Associated Press] • California fishermen are bracing for the worst salmon season in eight years. [The Press Democrat] • The state’s rate of sexually transmitted diseases is at a high. In Fresno, drug use is driving a syphilis epidemic. [Fresno Bee] • How a Facebook executive revived a fading surf brand in Santa Ana. [The New York Times] • Snap is betting on a trend: the eventual global dominance of visual culture, Farhad Manjoo writes. [The New York Times] • Uber is backing away from a program that thwarted local regulators in the wake of a New York Times article. [The New York Times] • With “Beauty and the Beast,” Disney is taking a $300 million risk on a remake. [The New York Times] • Two new movie theaters in San Diego and Los Angeles will have seats for the and jungle gyms for their children. [Quartz] On Monday, we wrote about a state proposal that would let bicyclists treat stop signs like yield signs. We asked if you liked the idea. Hundreds of emails poured in, with opinions sharply divided. Here is a sample: “Terrible idea. While there are many conscientious bicyclists, I regularly see bicyclists who are simply reckless. Many times I have seen bicyclists go right through red lights, at great risk to themselves and others. This measure would embolden them to engage in such dangerous behaviors, and raise the risk of crashes and serious injuries. ” — Paul D. Lerner, Beverly Hills “Yes, this would be a welcome change. Safety hardly ever requires a full stop by bikes at a stop sign. Because of that, most bicyclists currently don’t surrender their momentum by making full stops at stop signs where the traffic does not warrant them. The result is that the existing law requiring full stops at stop signs is rarely observed or enforced, which encourages disrespect of the law and stokes the resentment of motorists already annoyed by the presence of bikes on their streets and roads. ” — Len Colamarino, Atascadero “I’m a year San Francisco bike commuter. I am dubious about the rolling stop rule. I often see cyclists roll through stops when pedestrians are in crosswalks. A law change, I fear, will make this worse. ” — Alyson Jacks, San Francisco “Cyclists are well aware of the risks they assume when ‘sharing the road’ with vehicles. It’s hard to imagine how forcing cyclists to stop at empty intersections makes either group any safer. ” — Ryan Martin, Roseville California Today goes live at 6 a. m. Pacific time weekdays. Tell us what you want to see: CAtoday@nytimes. com. The California Today columnist, Mike McPhate, is a Californian — born outside Sacramento and raised in San Juan Capistrano. He lives in Davis. Follow him on Twitter. California Today is edited by Julie Bloom, who grew up in Los Angeles and graduated from U. C. Berkeley. | 1 |
Home / Badge Abuse / Like a ‘Concentration Camp’ Police Mark DAPL Protesters with Numbers & Lock Them in Dog Kennels Like a ‘Concentration Camp’ Police Mark DAPL Protesters with Numbers & Lock Them in Dog Kennels Claire Bernish October 29, 2016 2 Comments
Cannon Ball, N.D. — On Thursday, police from no less than five states sporting full riot gear and armed with heavy lethal and nonlethal weaponry, pepper spray, mace, a number of ATVs, five tanks, two helicopters, and military-equipped humvees showed up to tear down an encampment of Standing Rock Sioux water protectors and supporters armed with … nothing.
Under orders from the now-notorious Morton County Sheriff’s Office, this ridiculously heavy-handed standing army came better prepared to do battle than some actual military units fighting overseas.
But the target of their operation — a group of slightly more than 200 Native American water protectors and supporters opposing construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline — never intended to do battle with the armed, taxpayer-funded, corporate-backed, state-sponsored aggressors.
Reports vary, but no less than 141 people were arrested Thursday, and — according to witnesses — police marked numbers on arrestees’ arms and housed them in cement-floored dog kennels , without any padding, before they were transported as far away as Fargo.
“It goes back to concentration camp days,” asserted Oceti-Sakowin coordinator Mekasi Camp-Horinek, who, along with his mother, was marked and detained in a mesh kennel, reports the Los Angeles Times .
Although Thursday’s incident remained relatively peaceful for some time, with only shouts, chants, and occasional attempts by water protectors to convince this standing army to examine its motives and reconsider, clashes nonetheless broke out — solely because of gratuitous police aggression.
After facing off for a couple hours, these militant cops began closing in on the water protectors to shut down the Treaty of 1851 camp — in reference to the Fort Laramie Treaty of that year, which established a large parcel of land designated exclusively Native American territory not to be disturbed by the U.S. government. Prior to his arrest, Camp-Horinek had established the camp, stating, as cited by Indigenous Rising :
“Today, the Oceti Sakowin has enacted eminent domain on DAPL lands, claiming 1851 treaty rights. This is unceded land. Highway 1806 as of this point is blockaded. We will be occupying this land and staying here until this pipeline is permanently stopped. We need bodies and we need people who are trained in non-violent direct action. We are still staying non-violent and we are still staying peaceful.”
Despite the water protectors’ commitment to nonviolence, the militarized police response went as would be expected — horribly awry.
“A prayer circle of elders, including several women, was interrupted and all were arrested for standing peacefully on the public road,” stated a press release from Indigenous Environment Network. “A tipi was erected in the road and was recklessly dismantled, despite law enforcement statements that they would merely mark the tipi with a yellow ribbon and ask its owners to retrieve it. A group of water protectors was also dragged out of a sweat lodge ceremony erected in the path of the pipeline, thrown to the ground, and arrested.”
Claims to the contrary by Morton County Sheriff Kyle Kirchmeier aside, Native American and Indigenous water protectors and supporters have refrained from violent acts on the whole, preferring instead peaceful prayer vigils and acts of civil disobedience.
No matter how peacefully the opposition acts, armed defenders of Big Oil interests seem determined to brutalize , disrespect, and generally incite and inflict violence against those who desire unsullied water for generations to come.
In fact, at the beginning of September, a private security firm hired by Energy Transfer Partners, the company responsible for pipeline construction, indiscriminately unleashed vicious attack dogs on water protectors, press, and supporters — for reasons as yet unknown.
During the savage attack, a pregnant woman, young girl, and many others suffered serious dog bites thanks to the ineptitude of the dogs’ handlers. Afterward, a warrant for inciting a riot was issued Democracy Now! journalist Amy Goodman — for doing her job, filming events as they happened — though charges were subsequently thrown out.
Although ETP and some law enforcement officers defended the barbarous actions of the private security mercenaries, the Guardian now reports that — because the guards lacked proper licensing — they could now face criminal charges. On Wednesday, the Morton County Sheriff’s Office made the determination that “dog handlers were not properly licensed to do security work in the state of North Dakota.”
Bob Frost, owner of Ohio-based Frost Kennels, told the Guardian , “All the proper protocols … were already done. I pulled my guys out the next day because we weren’t there to go to war with these protesters.”
Frost insisted he had cooperated with authorities investigating the incident — but the sheriff’s department disagrees. Seven handlers and dogs were deployed to the scene in early September, allegedly in response to reports of trespassers; but, according to the Guardian , police have only managed to identify two people.
The sheriff’s department claims Frost has not provided necessary information, and unnamed security officials cited in the report said that “there were no intentions of using the dogs or handlers for security work. … However, because of the protest events, the dogs were deployed as a method of trying to keep the protesters under control.”
In a statement cited by the Guardian , Morton County Captain Jay Gruebele said, “Although lists of security employees have been provided, there is no way of confirming whether the list is accurate or if names have been purposely withheld.”
Water protectors, in the meantime, are left to deal with absurdly disproportionate state violence — and the altogether unacceptable, disrespectful, and demeaning insult of being relegated to dog kennels after being arrested for exercising their rights.
As Lakota Country Times editor Brandon Ecoffey wrote in an editorial Thursday,
“Over the course of the last several months the abuse of detainees by Morton County Law Enforcement has overstepped every boundary guaranteed by the American constitution. Water protectors have been seen being bound and hooded by police. People are being stripped searched and abused within their jail for misdemeanor crimes. And police have employed the use of mass surveillance through drones on the protector camps. This isn’t a war zone this is North Dakota.” Share Google + Steve Wilkins
The American establishment is at war with it’s own people. Corporate arrogance will inevitably be translated into a backlash. It’s a crying shame these people are not being supported by the American public 000’s should be there in mind body and soul. Once again government/corporate overreach squashes the citizen protest. they don’t like it when people bring guns to the party – but look how they treat those that don’t! Sharon Jeanguenat
Our government is disgraceful! This is as bad as how they treated Indians back when the West was being settled. They give lands to the Indians, then when somebody comes along that needs that land to make money, they up & take it away from the Indians. God help us if Hillary wins this election! Social | 0 |
| November 1, 2016 Be Sociable, Share! Russian army soldiers drive their tanks along the Red Square during a general rehearsal for the Victory Day military parade.
The first time a top British spy has ever given a newspaper interview, MI5 chief Andrew Parker has spoken with the Guardian , playing up the “growing threat” posed by Russia against British interests around the world.
Parker claimed a “whole range of state organs and powers” in Russia are being brought to bear against Britain and the US, claiming that the advent of cyberwarfare has increased the number of ways in which Russia can move against them.
Parker went on to claim that Russia defines itself by opposition to the West and, despite being a “covert threat for decades” has been increasingly hostile, citing their operations in Ukraine and Syria as proof that they are acting to just spite the West.
This has been a common western talking point, but in practice Western (read: US) policy in both Ukraine and Syria appears to have itself been built with an eye toward being on the opposite side from Russia in the first place, and Russia is then condemned for acting in their own interests.
This was particularly glaring in Syria, where Russia’s interest was obviously in the survival of a friendly Syrian government to host their naval base, and where “countering” Russia has brought the US “anti-ISIS coalition” into increasingly overt support for al-Qaeda’s Nusra Front, simply because they’re the ones most directly fighting against Russia. | 0 |
Hillary Clinton’s niece has revealed to Radar that she will be voting for Donald Trump next week.
Macy Smit is the daughter of Bill Clinton’s brother Roger.
“Something tells me the Clinton side of the family looks at me and my mother as not good enough, but we’re hard-working!” she said.
“I support Donald Trump — 100 percent! I have been a Democrat my entire life, but Trump is what we need right now — somebody who is going to stand up for us. I think at this point Hillary just wants it for the history books — to be the first woman president for selfish reasons.”
Macy, a hairstylist in Tampa, is married to a meteorologist with the U.S. Air Force. Her husband is currently stationed in Kuwait coordinating operations in Iraq.
“They’re not as good as everyone thinks they are,” Macy said in reference to the Clintons. “I went through some very personal things [without their support],” she added, speaking of a miscarriage she suffered last year.
“The Clintons are all talk!” said Macy’s mother, Martha. “Hillary says she’s all about family, but she’s got a niece she’s never met and never acknowledged. The Clintons have never helped us out.”
Even Hillary Clinton’s own family can’t stand her… | 0 |
Muhammad Ali, who died Friday, was part of some of the most memorable sporting moments of the 20th century. But he also once got into the ring with a Japanese professional wrestler in a bout, much anticipated at the time, that is almost forgotten today. On June 26, 1976, a week before the celebration of the United States Bicentennial, Ali, the undisputed heavyweight champion of the world, faced off in Tokyo against Antonio Inoki, a very popular wrestler in Japan. Organizers promoted the fight as the ultimate test of boxer versus wrestler and touted big paydays for the combatants, supposedly $6 million for Ali and $3 million for Inoki. Although the idea of a professional wrestler meeting the heavyweight champion might seem like a joke, it attracted tremendous attention at the time, with mainstream publications writing about it at length. Ali gleefully joined in the hunt for publicity, frequently pointing out how much money he was going to be making and how impressively he was going to win. There was no television coverage in the United States, and American fight fans had to travel to arenas, stadiums and theaters showing the fight on TV. And travel they did. More than 30, 000 turned up at Shea Stadium. The fans at Shea were treated to a preliminary bout: the wrestler Andre the Giant against the boxer Chuck Wepner, known as the Bayonne Bleeder, a game if limited heavyweight sometimes cited as a model for Rocky Balboa. The bout lived up to expectations, as Andre lifted Wepner and hurled him from the ring to win in the third round. (The fight inspired a scene in “Rocky III” in which Thunderlips, played by Hulk Hogan, does something similar to Rocky.) If that match whetted appetites for fans were destined to be disappointed. Ali came into the ring looking like a boxer with standard trunks and boxing gloves. Inoki suited up as a wrestler, with tight black trunks and bare hands. When the bell rang, Inoki quickly fell to the mat in a crablike posture and began kicking out at Ali’s legs. Ali danced around the ring looking for a chance to land a punch but not finding one. To the increasing fury of the crowd in Tokyo, and fans watching around the world, the bout continued in this manner for 15 interminable rounds. When it was over, the judges scored it an honorable draw and the paying customers hurled garbage at the ring. Ali managed only two punches in the fight, both left jabs, The New York Times reported. “Ali, Inoki Fight to Draw in Dull Bout” was the headline. “I wouldn’t have done this fight if I’d known he was going to do that,” Ali said. “Nobody knew this was going to happen, so we had a dead show. ” “It all proved boxers are superior to wrestlers,” Ali insisted. “He didn’t stand up and fight like a man. ” Commentators were unimpressed. “What was billed as ‘The Martial Arts World Championship Fight’ emerged as The ‘Farcial’ Arts World Championship Ripoff,” Dave Anderson wrote in a Sports of The Times column. With a professional wrestler involved, the natural question was whether the bout was fixed. The history is murky, and several versions exist. In one, the bout was a simple fix, though why a more entertaining spectacle wasn’t arranged is an open question. In another telling, Ali came expecting a fixed bout only to discover that Inoki was planning to fight for real. In a third version, Ali was told he was expected to lose the fight because of Inoki’s enormous popularity in Japan. Ali supposedly refused, turning a staged event into a real one. Whatever the truth, Ali’s legs were badly injured in the contest, as he took more than 100 kicks from Inoki. Although he expressed a willingness to wrestle again if the price was right, Ali returned to conventional boxing after the Inoki bout. He lost and then regained the title against Leon Spinks before losing fights to Larry Holmes and Trevor Berbick, then retiring. Inoki, now 73, went on to a career in politics and a seat in Japan’s parliament. The bout was a farce, but in a way it was a precursor to the modern spectacle of mixed martial arts in which practitioners of boxing, wrestling, judo, jujitsu and other combat sports can mix it up under unified rules. Ali was always a showman, even in the midst of his most serious and important bouts. It seems almost fitting that a strange and colorful fight against a professional wrestler in the Budokan in Tokyo would be a footnote to his glorious career. | 1 |
After claiming the lives of more than a quarter of a million people; causing the biggest refugee crisis since World War II; and fueling the rise of Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), the civil war in Syria, which started in 2011 as a peaceful protest against President Bashar al-Assad but later turned into an international proxy war, is today, signaling World War III. At least, that’s what the West and the mainstream media want you to believe . However, the truth is the United States and its allies are using the “war crimes” and “crimes of historic proportions” in Syria to prolong the proxy war, overthrow Assad, and annex an independent country. Sadly, the United Nations, Amnesty International, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, and other “concerned parties” (including the mainstream media), support the West in its malicious intent.
The Western Claim “Russia and the Syrian regime owe the world more than an explanation about why they keep hitting hospitals and medical facilities and children and women,” US Secretary of State John Kerry recently commented. Kerry begged for an investigation of the Russian and Syrian military strikes against civilians and medical facilities in Aleppo, as war crimes.
“There is clear and abundant evidence the Assad regime and the Russian government are committing crimes that include, but are not limited to, deliberate attacks on civilians, collective punishment, starvation as a tool of war, torture, murder, inhumane treatment of prisoners and the use of chemical weapons on the battlefield,” asserted The Washington Post .
“The ancient city of Aleppo, a place of millennial civility and beauty, is today a slaughterhouse — a gruesome locus of pain and fear, where the lifeless bodies of small children are trapped under streets of rubble and pregnant women deliberately bombed,” observed the UN human rights’ chief, seeking a war crimes inquiry.
The Western Evidence 1. A commission for International Justice and Accountability — a non-profit organization funded by western states including the UK, US, the EU, Germany, Switzerland, Norway, Canada and Denmark — smuggled over 600,000 top-secret Syrian government documents brought to Western Europe .
An analysis of some 400 documents “linked the systematic torture and murder of tens of thousands of Syrians to a written policy approved by President Bashar al-Assad, coordinated among his security-intelligence agencies, and implemented by regime operatives.” Current status: Neither the documents nor the evidence has been made public.
2. A decorated American journalist and a former CIA officer, Adam Ciralsky wrote about the 53,275 photos that “Caesar” (a Syrian military photographer turned war crimes whistleblower, who fled the country in August 2013) took as grisly evidence of Assad’s brutality.
“The pictures, most of them taken in Syrian military hospitals, show corpses photographed at close range — one at a time as well as in small groupings. Virtually all of the bodies — thousands of them — betray signs of torture: gouged eyes; mangled genitals ; bruises and dried blood from beatings; acid and electric burns; emaciation; and marks from strangulation,” Ciralsky explained. Current Status: The treasure trove, as well as the photographer “Caesar,” is hidden from the public eye.
3. In 2015, Amnesty International documented the systematic and widespread “unthinkable atrocities” war crimes, and crimes against humanity committed by Assad’s regime, in a 74-page report (including indiscriminate use of explosive weapons, arbitrary arrests, torture, and enforced disappearances). The ‘heartbreaking’ research involved merely 78 residents (mostly former) and 29 professionals working in Aleppo .
4. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights — the London-based monitoring group, often Quote: d as the most authoritative source of information about human rights abuse in Syria — is a tool of Western propaganda run by one man who last visited Syria in 2000 (11 years before the armed conflict began). He relies on “intelligence” allegedly gathered by around 200 “activists” who he has never met. Current Status: Whatever the SOHR claims, the mainstream media reports as truth without verifying its nature – because the SOHR does not reference any sources.
The Western Lies Why is the angry and (nowadays) concerned world not asking the United States and the mainstream media a few pertinent questions? What is the West doing in Syria? Why is the peace-loving West prolonging the war? Why is the West backing the rebels in a foreign country? Why is the West funding and arming ISIS?
Why are the Western forces not being held accountable for war crimes like bombing a hospital? Why is the mainstream media, the NGOs and the UN not holding the West accountable for crimes committed on their own land, or in Israel, Africa or Yemen?
One reason may be because of the abundance of natural gas under Syrian soil, and that this may very well be another ‘petrodollar’ war . The US had long had its gaze set on Syria – years before the civil war and the 2011 “revolution.” Leaked WikiLeaks cables show the US ambassador to Syria (2004-2007) William Roebuck discussing a plan to remove Assad from power, in December 2006 .
While the Russian and Iranian forces entered Syria on Assad’s request to fight against ISIS and armed rebels, the Western military invaded Syria — a sovereign country and United Nations member state — to violently overthrow the Syrian government.
Why didn’t the West invade Saudi Arabia to initiate “humanitarian intervention” and save innocent citizens from its brutal dictator? Saudi Arabia remains a member of the United Nations Human Rights Council and a U.S. ally, despite its poor human rights record — if attacking an independent harmless country is justified, why did the US act against Osama bin Laden?
The Western effort to annex Syria has relied on a series of crudely-spun lies and media-generated talking points. In September, RT dared to expose the top 10 Western lies about Syrian conflict that the mainstream media are trading in, to fool the Western public into backing yet another failed ‘nation-building’ project (after Yugoslavia, Iraq and Libya). Obviously, the fear mongering media didn’t find it profitable to give the lies much, if any, coverage in the West.
From calling the conflict a fault of wicked Assad, and Assad a brutal dictator who enjoyed no popular support, to portraying him as an uncompromising President interested only in ‘killing his own people’ – and not in peace and reconciliation, the list is endless. From accusing the Syrian government and Russia for helping ISIS and terming the Western interventions in Syria as humanitarian, to claiming Russia was acting out of self-interest and that the West was on the side of the ‘good guys’ in Syria, can you be certain of the ‘truth’? Realistically, the West hasn’t been fighting ‘terror’ in Syria, it has aided it.
Remember the American journalist Serena Shim, who was killed in October 2014, after she revealed the ISIS-Turkey-US link that proved the West was assisting ISIS in Syria?
The Syrian Reality Henry Lowendorf, a member of the Executive Board of the U.S. Peace Council’s Peace and Fact-Finding Delegation to Syria – who returned from Syria in August – noted: “What we saw in Syria goes against everything we read in the United States.”
Before 2011, illiteracy in Syria had been wiped out; the life expectancy was 75.9 years and the government spent massive amounts of money on improving the nation. Developing irrigation, electricity, water and road building projects, and expanding the health services and education to rural areas, all occurred; and China invested hundreds of millions of dollars to modernize Syria’s aging oil and gas infrastructure. | 0 |
Страна: Сирия В своей новой статье постоянный обозреватель НВО Тони Карталучи отмечает, что начиная с 2012 года Вашингтон практически упрашивал турецкие войска вторгнуться в Сирию, чтобы создать там «бесполетную зону» и обеспечить прикрытие контролируемым Вашингтоном «умеренным силам». При этом западные аналитики открыто признают, что данная зона нужна им для свержения сирийского режима, а также что они планируют её расширять. В этой связи проведение Анкарой операции «Щит Евфрата» можно считать своеобразным подарком для Вашингтона, хотя до сих пор остается непонятным, отважится ли Турция посягнуть на новые территории в Сирии и будет ли она продолжать поставки оружия в сирийский город Ракка, который находится в руках боевиков ДАИШ. С полной версией статьи вы можете ознакомиться здесь . Популярные статьи | 0 |
BEIRUT, Lebanon — One of the worst chemical bombings in Syria turned a northern area into a toxic kill zone on Tuesday, inciting international outrage over the government impunity shown in the country’s war. Western leaders including President Trump blamed the Syrian government of President Bashar and called on its patrons, Russia and Iran, to prevent a recurrence of what many described as a war crime. Dozens of people, including children, died — some writhing, choking, gasping or foaming at the mouth — after breathing in poison that possibly contained a nerve agent or other banned chemicals, according to witnesses, doctors and rescue workers. They said the toxic substance spread after warplanes dropped bombs in the early morning hours. Some rescue workers grew ill and collapsed from proximity to the dead. The Health Department in Idlib Province, where the attack took place, said 69 people had died, providing a list of their names. The dead were still being identified, and some humanitarian groups said as many as 100 had died. The government of Mr. Assad, who renounced chemical weapons nearly four years ago after a large chemical attack that American intelligence agencies concluded was carried out by his forces, denied that his military had been responsible, as he has done every time chemical munitions have been used in Syria. A statement from the Syrian military accused insurgents of responsibility and said they had accused the army of using toxic weapons “every time they fail to achieve the goals of their sponsors. ” But only the Syrian military had the ability and the motive to carry out an aerial attack like the one that struck the town of Khan Sheikhoun. Russia offered another explanation. A spokesman for its Defense Ministry, Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov, said Syrian warplanes had struck an insurgent storehouse containing toxic substances to be used in chemical weapons. Witnesses to the attack said it began before 7 a. m. Numerous photographs and graphic videos posted online by activists and residents showed children and older adults gasping and struggling to breathe, or lying motionless in the mud as rescue workers ripped off victims’ clothes and hosed them down. The bodies of at least 10 children lay lined up on the ground or under a quilt. A few hours later, according to several witnesses, another airstrike hit one of the clinics treating victims, who had been sent to smaller hospitals and maternity wards because the area’s largest hospital was severely damaged by an airstrike two days earlier. The scale and brazenness of the assault threatened to further subvert a nominal and often violated that had taken hold in parts of the country since Mr. Assad’s forces retook the northern city of Aleppo in December with Russian help, emboldening the Syrian leader to think he could win the war. The attack also seemed likely to dampen peace talks that have been overseen by the United Nations in Geneva and by Russia and Turkey in Astana, Kazakhstan. Incredulous over the chemical assault, humanitarian groups demanded action from the United Nations Security Council, where partisan divides over who is to blame for the Syrian war have paralyzed its members almost since the conflict began in 2011. On Tuesday night, Britain, France and the United States were pushing the Security Council to adopt a resolution that condemns the attack and orders the Syrian government to provide all flight logs, flight plans and names of commanders in charge of air operations, including those for Tuesday, to international investigators. The draft resolution, negotiated among diplomats from the three countries on Tuesday, was later circulated to all 15 members of the Council. It could come up for a vote as early as Wednesday. For Mr. Trump, who has repeatedly blamed what he has called President Barack Obama’s failures for the Syria crisis, the chemical weapons assault posed a potential policy dilemma and exposed some glaring contradictions in his own evolving positions on Syria. The White House called the attack a “reprehensible” act against innocent people “that cannot be ignored by the civilized world. ” At the same time, Mr. Trump’s spokesman, Sean Spicer, denounced Mr. Obama for having failed to make good on his famous “red line” statement in 2012, suggesting he would intervene militarily in Syria if Mr. Assad used chemical weapons. But in August 2013, Mr. Trump exhorted Mr. Obama not to intervene after a chemical weapons attack near Damascus that American intelligence attributed to the Syrian military killed more than 1, 400 civilians, including hundreds of children, according to United States government estimates at the time. “President Obama, do not attack Syria,” Mr. Trump said on Twitter. “There is no upside and tremendous downside. ” Mr. Trump’s administration, which would like to shift the focus in Syria entirely to fighting the Islamic State, has in recent days described Mr. Assad’s hold on his office as a political reality — an assertion that has drawn strong condemnation from influential Republicans who say Mr. Assad must leave power. Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson, who had said that Mr. Assad’s fate “will be decided by the Syrian people,” struck a sharply different tone on Tuesday, urging Mr. Assad’s allies Russia and Iran “to exercise their influence over the Syrian regime and to guarantee that this sort of horrific attack never happens again. ” Mr. Tillerson added that “Russia and Iran also bear great moral responsibility for these deaths. ” Russia has insisted that it had no military role in the strike. But a State Department official who briefed reporters in Washington said Russian officials were trying to evade their responsibility because Russia and Iran were guarantors of the Assad government’s commitment to adhere to a in the peace talks that the Kremlin had helped organize in Astana. Rescue workers from the White Helmets civil defense organization said that many children were among the dead and wounded. Radi Saad, who writes incident reports for the group, said that volunteers had reached the site not knowing a chemical was present and that five of them had suffered from exposure to the substance. While chlorine gas attacks have become almost routine in northern Syria, this one was different, medical workers and witnesses said. Chlorine attacks usually kill just a few people, often those trapped in an enclosed space, and the gas dissipates quickly. This time, people collapsed outdoors, and in much larger numbers. The symptoms were different: They included the pinpoint pupils of victims that characterize nerve agents and other banned poisons. One doctor posted a video of a patient’s eye, showing the pupil reduced to a dot. Several people were sickened simply by coming into contact with victims. The opposition minister of health, Mohamad Firas said in a video that he had been in a field hospital at 7:30 a. m. when more than 100 people arrived wounded or sickened. “The patients are in the corridors and on the floors of the operation rooms, the E. R. s and in the patient rooms,” he said. “I saw more than 10 deaths due to this attack. ” Symptoms included suffocation fluid in the lungs, with foam coming from the mouth unconsciousness spasms and paralysis, he said. “It’s a shocking act,” he said. “The world knows and is aware of what’s happening in Syria, and we are ready to submit evidence to criminal laboratories to prove the use of these gases. ” A resident of the attacked town, Mariam Abu Khalil, said she had left home for her examination on the Quran — scheduled for early morning because fewer bombings were expected then — when the attack took place. On the way, she saw an aircraft drop a bomb on a building a few dozen yards away. In a telephone interview Tuesday night, she described an explosion like a yellow mushroom cloud that stung her eyes. “It was like a winter fog,” she said. Sheltering in her home nearby, she saw several residents arrive by car to help the wounded. “When they got out, they inhaled the gas and died,” she said. The attack appeared to be the deadliest chemical attack in Syria since the August 2013 assault. Under threat of United States retaliation, Mr. Assad agreed to a deal to eliminate his country’s chemical weapons program, which until that time it had denied having, and to join an international treaty banning chemical weapons. But the operation took far longer than expected and raised questions about whether all the materials were accounted for. The head of the international monitoring body, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, complained in an internal report about misleading statements from Damascus and expressed concern about possible undeclared chemical weapons. Since then, the organization, working with the United Nations, has found that the Syrian government used chlorine gas as a weapon three times in 2014 and 2015, violating the treaty. Rebel fighters, doctors and antigovernment activists say there have been numerous other chlorine attacks, including at least two in the past week, in one case killing a doctor as he worked. The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons has also accused the Islamic State of using banned mustard gas in Iraq and Syria. The area around Khan Sheikhoun is not held by the Islamic State, but by other insurgents: militants and a variety of other rebel groups. A chemical weapons attack, if carried out by the government, would be a brazen statement of impunity, coming during a major international meeting in Brussels where officials are debating whether the European Union and other countries will contribute billions of dollars for reconstructing Syria if it is presided over by a government run by Mr. Assad. | 1 |
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More Filipino fisherman Arnel Balbero (R), who was held hostage for nearly five years by Somali pirates, cries as he meets his relatives after arriving at the Manila International Airport on October 28, 2016. (Photo by AFP)
Five Filipino fishermen who were released after being held hostage by Somali pirates for nearly five years have reunited with their families.
The seafarers arrived at the airport in the Philippine capital Manila on Friday.
"I am so happy. This is what I had been praying for every night," said Arnel Balbero, 33, as he was embraced by his four siblings at the airport.
"Just to be with my family, even if we have nothing, even if we have only little to eat, I am already happy," he said.
His sister, Lilia, trembled at the sight of her brother. "It's like a miracle. We never lost hope he would be freed," she said.
The Filipinos were among 26 freed hostages from Cambodia, China, Taiwan, Indonesia and Vietnam who were freed on October 22. The 26 hostages plus three others made up the crew of Naham 3, which was seized south of the Seychelles in March 2012.
The captain of their Omani-flagged but Taiwanese-owned vessel died during the hijacking and two other crew members succumbed to illness in captivity.
Recounting memories
Balbero's cousin and fellow ex-hostage, Elmer, said the Somali pirates had cared little about the health of their captives.
"We asked the pirates for medicine but they did not give us any. Instead they said, 'Where is your money?'" said Elmer.
The captives also said they suffered beatings at the hands of the pirates.
"In our first week, they called it our introduction. They used bamboo to beat us," Arnel said.
To survive, the Filipinos did chores for their captors, washing their clothes and even their weapons.
"We took it as a chance to also wash. We couldn't take a bath often because they only gave us a liter of water each day," Arnel said.
Hugging his two teenage daughters, Elmer said it was thoughts of seeing his family again that kept him going during his captivity.
Taiwan's Foreign Ministry said the men were freed after a ransom was paid by the ship's owner as well as groups contracted to negotiate with the pirates, Taiwanese media reported.
John Steed, who works with the Hostage Support Partnership, said the local community and tribal elders were involved in the "difficult situation."
"These are poor fishermen. The ship had no value, they had no insurance, and of course governments don't want to be involved in these sort of negotiations either," he said. Sailors who had been held hostage by pirates for more than four years stand for a group photograph as they prepare to board an airplane after being released in Galkayo, Somalia, October 23, 2016. (Photo by AP)
The sailors are believed to be among the last remaining captives seized by Somali pirates during the surge in hostage-taking in the mid-2000s.
Piracy off the coast of Somalia has reduced significantly in recent years due to stronger international naval presence. Loading ... | 0 |
AL MUKALLA, Yemen — A suicide bomber disguised as a disabled man blew himself up at a gathering of Yemeni security officers in the southern port of Aden on Sunday, killing 48 people and wounding dozens of others, Yemeni officials said. The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack, naming the attacker and publishing a photograph of him smiling with a rifle at his side and wearing an explosive vest. The attack was the second this month to kill scores of security forces near a military base in Aden, highlighting the failure of the Yemeni government and its allies to ensure basic security in the areas they control. Yemen has been mired in conflict since 2014, when rebels aligned with Iran, known as the Houthis, seized the capital, Sana. They later forced the internationally recognized government into exile in Saudi Arabia. The country is now split, with the Houthis and army units allied with them controlling the northwest and a coalition of forces nominally loyal to Yemen’s president, Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi, holding the south and the east. Jihadists have taken advantage of the disorder to launch attacks in the south, where the Islamic State and the Yemeni branch of Al Qaeda have a presence. Sunday’s attack occurred as hundreds of members of the Yemeni security forces crowded outside the home of Nasser the commander of the Special Security Forces, near a military base in Aden, where they hoped to receive their salaries, said Ramzi the commander’s office manager. The bomber was dressed in a police uniform and pretended to be disabled, infiltrating the crowd before detonating his explosive, Mr. Hassani said. The blast killed 48 people and wounded 84, according to of the Yemeni Health Ministry. The bombing occurred a little more than a week after a suicide bombing near the same base. That attack, on Dec. 10, targeted a gathering of soldiers, killing 57. The Islamic State also claimed that attack. | 1 |
The Hill – by Don Rosenburg
I always cared about the immigration issue, even before my son was killed. As a 30-year resident of southern California, I’d been noticing for years the extent to which concrete and sprawl was swallowing up the natural environs of my corner of the state. Of all states, I always thought, why is it the one that’s most beautiful and with the most arable and productive land that’s being torn up and paved over. And just how much traffic and gridlock are people willing to take, I would think to myself. Then my son, in his second year of law school, was run over three times and killed by an illegal-alien driver. That’s when I became an immigration-control activist and that’s why I can’t support Hillary Clinton , the open-borders candidate for president.
And that’s why I’ve just filed two lawsuits; one against the Department of Homeland Security and one against the Justice Department. With the help of the Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI), I’m pursuing a complaint against DHS for refusing to consider the environmental impacts of its mass immigration policies, a gross violation of environmental law we argue. Under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), all federal agencies must take a “hard look” at every “major action” they commit to and produce for the public an environmental assessment which a) explores all potential impacts of the action, and b) considers all possible alternatives. Since the law was enacted in 1970, California’s population has doubled from 20 to 40 million and DHS (including its predecessor, Immigration and Naturalization Services), has never published a single report exploring the possible impacts associated with its immigration policies. As we argue in our brief, if the public knew the effects of runaway population growth maybe they would have rallied that much harder for tougher enforcement and lower immigration-levels. Having ignored their obligations under the statute for so long, this could be one the biggest environmental law violations ever committed in the nation’s history.
DHS, I must add, does write some NEPA reports. For instance, it calculates the impacts caused by its illegal-alien detainment facilities, just not for the people detained inside them then released to the public. This has to be done, we argue. America’s environmental footprint is gargantuan, the biggest in the world only next to dictatorial China. The American public’s constantly harangued that so-called “Dreamers”, that insufferably inane term, simply want an American standard of living and a piece of the American pie. But as I used to tell my son as a child, ‘wanting’ is different than ‘needing.’ America is a mere 5 percent of the world’s population, yet it consumes 20 percent of its petroleum. So every time a legal or illegal alien comes into the country and settles, the level of greenhouse gases in the world goes up just a little bit more. As for urban sprawl, between 1980 and 2000 America paved over a piece of land (much of it arable) that was around the size of Illinois . But does the correlation between population growth and environmental impact, a simple logical connection your average 3rd -grader could grasp, ever get even a moment’s discussion in the major media? For the future of our kids, it must.
Same goes for illegal alien-crime. Routinely, we’re told there’s a “ scholarly consensus ” that illegal aliens commit fewer criminal offenses than citizens. As if this could be supportable. Most illegal aliens are absolutely skill-less and skill-less people commit far more crime on average—Never mind for now the labor markets-argument that the last thing our increasingly knowledge-based and roboticized economy needs is more skill-less workers. And nothing, of course, is stopping criminals on the run in Mexico from simply relocating here, out of the policia ’s reach.
In any case, we know anyway that illegal alien-crime is a Rumsfeldian “known unknown”, as DOJ apparently doesn’t even bother to tally this information–My son’s death was counted as having been killed by a citizen with a driver’s license. At least for the public, that is. And that’s why IRLI and I are suing them as well. The agency has refused to comply with our requests for records on this issue. Why they can’t divulge to the American public these sorts of facts is telling in itself. After all, the Justice Department can tell me how many pick-pocketing crimes there were last year but not how many people were killed by illegal aliens. Not that this should matter in the debate over illegal immigration. Since they shouldn’t have been here in the first place, any crime an illegal alien commits against our own, like the killing of my boy, is a special tragedy. A nightmare that will occur again and again if Hillary Clinton takes the White House.
Don Rosenberg is the founder of advocacy group Unlicensed to Kill and lives in Los Angeles County. | 0 |
Amazon is mobilizing a July 12 collective “Day of Action” for tech corporations and social justice warriors to unite in rebelling against the FCC’s efforts to overturn Net Neutrality. The 12th falls on the 96th anniversary of Lenin’s call to deploy Russian communists to start civil wars around the world. [In a “workers of the world unite “for corporate interests, Amazon’s CEO Jeff Bezos has mobilized big tech corporate support from Mozilla, Reddit, Kickstarter, Etsy and Vimeo to fill the streets with allies from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Electronic Frontier Foundation, and Greenpeace. The Day of Action seeks to upend the May 18 vote by FCC Republican Commissioners Ajit Pai and Michael O’Reilly, over the opposition by Democrat Commissioner Mignon Clyburn, to overturn the Obama administration’s 2015 adoption of “Net Neutrality. ” The Democrats’ regulatory regime gave the U. S. government the effective right to take control of the Internet, create new taxation authority, and regulate the “fairness” of political thought under rules that once applied to the old ATT telephone monopoly. Under federal administrative law, the FCC rule change allows a initial public comment until July 17, and then another 30 days for replies to those comments by Aug. 16. Advocates of Net Neutrality called it a democratizing principle. But opponents complained that under Net Neutrality, corporate interests like Amazon, Netflix and Google’s YouTube could make huge profits by clogging cable delivery pipes with enormous amounts of data at no cost. The publication The Nation classified the February 2015 FCC majority’s passage of “Net Neutrality” as “people power.“ But it appeared to be more about the “corporate power” that funded a record $139. 5 million in lobbying expenses by computer and Internet companies to influence the biggest regulatory expansion in decades. Naming July 12th the “Day of Action” will conjure 96th anniversary of the release of Vladimir Lenin’s Report on the Tactics of the Revolutionary Communist Party. Soviets cadres had believed that once Russian workers overthrew capitalism, it would cause spontaneous uprisings by the workers of the world that would quickly sweep capitalism into the dustbin of history. But after four years and no more worldwide revolutions, Lenin used the July 12, 1921 conclusion of the “Third Congress of The Communist International” publish Tactics to encourage Russian communists to export “civil war” and “openly revolutionary uprisings. ” July 12, 1948 was also the day President Truman used the Democratic Party Platform to expand Marshall Plan to fight communism: “Ours is the party under which were conceived the instruments for resisting Communist aggression and for rebuilding the economic strength of the democratic countries of Europe and Asia — the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan. ” protests against Trump administration policies have been led by Antifa (antifascist) groups who wear black clothing and as well as scarves, sunglasses, ski masks and motorcycle helmets. Antifa forces shut down Berkeley in April and May by using fists, pepper spray and heavy bike locks to prevent presentations by conservative speakers. The Urban Dictionary describes Antifa as: “ champagne white boys who don’t like nationalists or fascists. They consider themselves to be rebelling against the establishment, whilst upholding all of its correct views. ” By uniting corporate and social justice forces for a July 12 “Day of Action,” just days before the end of the FCC comment period to oppose dumping Net Neutrality, Silicon Valley could fill the streets of America’s biggest cities with large and potentially violent protests. | 1 |
I love it when libtards get their a** handed to them on a platter. Great job, O Reilly! | 0 |
SINGAPORE — Brandon Vera was recently pinned in a corner by an excited mob at a shopping mall in the Philippines, and briefly thought that he might have to fight his way out. But instead of brandishing weapons, the crowd was armed with pens and cellphones, hoping to get autographs and selfies with Vera, one of Asia’s most popular mixed martial arts fighters. The incident is a common occurrence for Asian celebrities as varied as athletes and actors and Korean boy bands, but Vera’s presence at the center of a fan frenzy made it different: he is an American, a former college wrestler from Norfolk, Va. who moved to his ancestral homeland three months ago, ahead of the first defense of his mixed martial arts heavyweight title, which he won in December in the Philippines. “It’s been overwhelming, wondering why I get so much attention,” Vera, 38, who fights for ONE Championship, Asia’s largest mixed martial arts promoter, said at a recent M. M. A. function in Singapore. “And most of the time I’m thinking, Whoa, whoa — what’s going on here? Honestly, that is the question that goes through my head every day. ” While mixed martial arts is one of the sports in the world, and most of the top M. M. A. fighters in Asia were born on the continent, an increasing number — including two current champions — have returned to their ancestral homelands to compete, some with great success and huge fan bases. “I see that their success is that they are very humble and accessible to fans,” said Matt Eaton, editor of The Fight Nation, a leading online M. M. A. news site based in Hong Kong. He said that many young fans “can go out and meet a Brandon Vera, so they don’t feel disconnected from the athletes like they are with other international sports. ” Eaton added: “And they are embracing their heritage, which a lot of people feel is very genuine. People feel they can connect to them. ” Among those projected for international fame are Vera and Angela Lee, the reigning Asian female M. M. A. fighter of the year. Lee, a atomweight fighter (105 pounds or less) who grew up in Hawaii, was crowned the ONE Championship’s first female titlist in May. Unlike Vera, a heavyweight who bears a striking resemblance to the actor Vin Diesel, Lee has lightning speed that she uses to tackle opponents before forcing them to submit with her wrestling and jujitsu skills. Five of her six professional wins with One Championship have come by submission. But with her new belt and a series of magazine covers, her profile has risen so quickly, she said, that she cannot make it home from training on Singapore’s commuter trains without being surrounded by admirers. For now, this is her home. Although she comes from a multiethnic family, Lee enters the cage for her fights draped in a Singaporean flag. “I, myself, am a American, raised in Hawaii, but of Korean and ethnicity,” Lee said. “How can you wrap your head around that? “So who do you really represent? I’m equally proud to represent everywhere — all my ethnicities, all my nationalities, because it makes me who I am. I’m not just one thing. You can’t just live with me as Singaporean, as Canadian, as American. I’m everything together. ” So is Aung La N Sang, a Burmese middleweight contender who, along with his mother and two siblings, was granted political asylum in the United States after he moved there in 2003 to attend Andrews University in Michigan. Aung graduated with an agricultural degree in 2007 and worked as a migratory beekeeper while keeping up his training. Eventually he turned professional, and he became an American citizen last December. Aung does most of his training in Baltimore, but on Oct. 7 he will fight for the second time in Yangon, Myanmar. He said he hoped to earn a title shot next year. Still, he is taking his sudden celebrity — he says he has trouble using restaurant bathrooms without people approaching him for selfies — with a grain of salt. “The way society is set up there, they don’t promote sports as much,” Aung said. “Parents in Myanmar don’t really tell you to be a football player they tell you to be a lawyer, doctor or businessman. So it’s hard to develop sports stars, in that sense, and all the industries promote singers, models, actresses — those people are always on the front of the magazine covers. They look up to them, not athletes. ” Yet that may only add to the appeal of foreign fighters. Since many Asian M. M. A. fighters, in particular those from developing countries, are still developing the skills to compete for major international titles, promoters have found that fans in the Philippines, Singapore, Myanmar and elsewhere are eager to support fighters who have embraced their heritage. “Because there is a lack of homegrown stars,” said Marcus Laur, the founder of the sports marketing company Total Sports Asia, “these foreign imports grab that vacant space and the fans jump on it. ” | 1 |
The following is the complete video and text of President Donald J. Trump’s inaugural address delivered on January 20, 2017.[ Chief Justice Roberts, President Carter, President Clinton, President Bush, President Obama, fellow Americans, and people of the world: thank you. We, the citizens of America, are now joined in a great national effort to rebuild our country and to restore its promise for all of our people. Together, we will determine the course of America and the world for years to come. We will face challenges. We will confront hardships. But we will get the job done. Every four years, we gather on these steps to carry out the orderly and peaceful transfer of power, and we are grateful to President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama for their gracious aid throughout this transition. They have been magnificent. Today’s ceremony, however, has very special meaning. Because today we are not merely transferring power from one Administration to another, or from one party to another — but we are transferring power from Washington, D. C. and giving it back to you, the American People. For too long, a small group in our nation’s Capital has reaped the rewards of government while the people have borne the cost. Washington flourished — but the people did not share in its wealth. Politicians prospered — but the jobs left, and the factories closed. The establishment protected itself, but not the citizens of our country. Their victories have not been your victories their triumphs have not been your triumphs and while they celebrated in our nation’s Capital, there was little to celebrate for struggling families all across our land. That all changes — starting right here, and right now, because this moment is your moment: it belongs to you. It belongs to everyone gathered here today and everyone watching all across America. This is your day. This is your celebration. And this, the United States of America, is your country. What truly matters is not which party controls our government, but whether our government is controlled by the people. January 20th 2017, will be remembered as the day the people became the rulers of this nation again. The forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten no longer. Everyone is listening to you now. You came by the tens of millions to become part of a historic movement the likes of which the world has never seen before. At the center of this movement is a crucial conviction: that a nation exists to serve its citizens. Americans want great schools for their children, safe neighborhoods for their families, and good jobs for themselves. These are the just and reasonable demands of a righteous public. But for too many of our citizens, a different reality exists: Mothers and children trapped in poverty in our inner cities factories scattered like tombstones across the landscape of our nation an education system, flush with cash, but which leaves our young and beautiful students deprived of knowledge and the crime and gangs and drugs that have stolen too many lives and robbed our country of so much unrealized potential. This American carnage stops right here and stops right now. We are one nation — and their pain is our pain. Their dreams are our dreams and their success will be our success. We share one heart, one home, and one glorious destiny. The oath of office I take today is an oath of allegiance to all Americans. For many decades, we’ve enriched foreign industry at the expense of American industry, Subsidized the armies of other countries while allowing for the very sad depletion of our military, We’ve defended other nation’s borders while refusing to defend our own, And spent trillions of dollars overseas while America’s infrastructure has fallen into disrepair and decay. We’ve made other countries rich while the wealth, strength, and confidence of our country has disappeared over the horizon. One by one, the factories shuttered and left our shores, with not even a thought about the millions upon millions of American workers left behind. The wealth of our middle class has been ripped from their homes and then redistributed across the entire world. But that is the past. And now we are looking only to the future. We assembled here today are issuing a new decree to be heard in every city, in every foreign capital, and in every hall of power. From this day forward, a new vision will govern our land. From this moment on, it’s going to be America First. Every decision on trade, on taxes, on immigration, on foreign affairs, will be made to benefit American workers and American families. We must protect our borders from the ravages of other countries making our products, stealing our companies, and destroying our jobs. Protection will lead to great prosperity and strength. I will fight for you with every breath in my body — and I will never, ever let you down. America will start winning again, winning like never before. We will bring back our jobs. We will bring back our borders. We will bring back our wealth. And we will bring back our dreams. We will build new roads, and highways, and bridges, and airports, and tunnels, and railways all across our wonderful nation. We will get our people off of welfare and back to work — rebuilding our country with American hands and American labor. We will follow two simple rules: Buy American and Hire American. We will seek friendship and goodwill with the nations of the world — but we do so with the understanding that it is the right of all nations to put their own interests first. We do not seek to impose our way of life on anyone, but rather to let it shine as an example for everyone to follow. We will reinforce old alliances and form new ones — and unite the civilized world against Radical Islamic Terrorism, which we will eradicate completely from the face of the Earth. At the bedrock of our politics will be a total allegiance to the United States of America, and through our loyalty to our country, we will rediscover our loyalty to each other. When you open your heart to patriotism, there is no room for prejudice. The Bible tells us, “how good and pleasant it is when God’s people live together in unity. ” We must speak our minds openly, debate our disagreements honestly, but always pursue solidarity. When America is united, America is totally unstoppable. There should be no fear — we are protected, and we will always be protected. We will be protected by the great men and women of our military and law enforcement and, most importantly, we are protected by God. Finally, we must think big and dream even bigger. In America, we understand that a nation is only living as long as it is striving. We will no longer accept politicians who are all talk and no action — constantly complaining but never doing anything about it. The time for empty talk is over. Now arrives the hour of action. Do not let anyone tell you it cannot be done. No challenge can match the heart and fight and spirit of America. We will not fail. Our country will thrive and prosper again. We stand at the birth of a new millennium, ready to unlock the mysteries of space, to free the Earth from the miseries of disease, and to harness the energies, industries and technologies of tomorrow. A new national pride will stir our souls, lift our sights, and heal our divisions. It is time to remember that old wisdom our soldiers will never forget: that whether we are black or brown or white, we all bleed the same red blood of patriots, we all enjoy the same glorious freedoms, and we all salute the same great American Flag. And whether a child is born in the urban sprawl of Detroit or the windswept plains of Nebraska, they look up at the same night sky, they fill their heart with the same dreams, and they are infused with the breath of life by the same almighty Creator. So to all Americans, in every city near and far, small and large, from mountain to mountain, and from ocean to ocean, hear these words: You will never be ignored again. Your voice, your hopes, and your dreams, will define our American destiny. And your courage and goodness and love will forever guide us along the way. Together, We Will Make America Strong Again. We Will Make America Wealthy Again. We Will Make America Proud Again. We Will Make America Safe Again. And, Yes, Together, We Will Make America Great Again. Thank you, God Bless You, And God Bless America. | 1 |
MIDWAY ATOLL — President Obama, taking his campaign to confront climate change to a pristine spit of land in the remote Pacific Ocean, said on Thursday that it was critical to examine the effects of the planet’s warming on the seas and to protect wild areas from degradation caused by human activity. “Part of what we’ve been trying to do is provide some visual aid to understanding what’s happening” with climate change, Mr. Obama said in a brief interview here, looking out over lush vegetation and a lagoon so iridescent it turned the clouds above an otherworldly shade of green. That means “being able to highlight the incredible beauty of a place like this, but also recognizing that if oceans continue to get warmer, that a lot of the marine species here could be affected, and ultimately that’s going to have an impact on human populations,” Mr. Obama said. Mr. Obama traveled to Midway, part of the uninhabited Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, to recognize his expansion last week of Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument, the world’s largest protected area and home to more than 7, 000 species of wildlife, some of them endangered and others found nowhere else. The area has millions of tropical sea birds, including rare albatrosses, and it teems with sea life such as endangered whales, sharks and dolphins, as well as black coral, considered the marine species. “For us to be able to protect and preserve this national monument, to extend it, and, most importantly, to interact with native Hawaiians and other stakeholders so that the way we protect and manage this facility is consistent with ancient traditions and the best science available, this is going to be a precious resource for generations to come,” Mr. Obama told reporters after touring the 2. atoll in a golf cart motorcade and receiving a briefing from the Fish and Wildlife Service officials who manage it. Under a blazing hot sun, white terns cruised overhead and dotted the trees, their fuzzy chicks cooling themselves in puddles by the side of the rough path Mr. Obama passed over as he took in the lush landscape. “Spectacular,” the president said as he stood at Turtle Beach, as four endangered green sea turtles rested on white sand nearby, with nothing but cyan waters stretching behind him. “I can’t wait to get in,” added Mr. Obama, who snorkeled off the coast later in the day. The expansion of the marine reserve and Mr. Obama’s trip to the island, named for its location about halfway between Asia and North America, were part of an effort by the president to showcase his commitment to combating climate change and protecting lands and waters that can serve as refuges as the planet increasingly experiences the effects of global warming. After Midway, the president was scheduled to fly to China to discuss climate change. Mr. Obama, nearing the end of his eight years in office, is reaching for lasting symbols of his achievements and seeking opportunities to check items off his list while he still has the trappings and travel perquisites of the presidency. He is also looking toward life after the presidency, when he said he might have an easier time fostering consensus on the need to confront climate change and mobilizing the public around a bipartisan approach. “My hope is maybe as I can have a little more influence on some of my Republican friends, who I think, up until now, have been resistant to the science,” Mr. Obama said in the interview. “This is something that all of us are going to have to tackle, and maybe I get a little more of a hearing if I’m not occupying a political office. ” Mr. Obama announced last week that he was vastly expanding the Papahanaumokuakea monument, created by President George W. Bush a decade ago, bringing its size to more than 580, 000 square miles — three and a half times the size of California — from a little less than 140, 000 square miles. Scientists and environmental groups have cheered the action. But commercial fishing interests have expressed strong opposition, arguing that Mr. Obama has harmed their industry by prohibiting fishing in vast waters. “We do not believe the expansion is based on the best available scientific information,” Kitty Simonds, executive director of the Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council, said in a statement. “It serves a political legacy rather than any conservation benefits. ” Mr. Obama was concerned on Thursday with both. Midway and the surrounding islands and waters are regarded as a climate refuge, a place whose natural characteristics make it more resilient to climate change. “The president has made a very bold statement that the world needs to take more tangible, bold actions to make sure that we’re protecting our ecosystems from climate change,” said Matt Rand, director of the Ocean Legacy Project at the Pew Charitable Trusts. In visiting the island, Mr. Rand added, Mr. Obama was getting “a view into what our oceans and our planet looked like 100 years ago, really before we had significant human degradation in the ecosystem,” when bird life and top predatory fish were abundant and coral was healthy. Mr. Obama is not the first American president to visit the remote island. Richard M. Nixon stopped there in June 1969, at the height of bird breeding season, for five hours of meetings with President Nguyen Van Thieu of South Vietnam, during which the two agreed on plans for the United States to begin withdrawing troops. Mr. Obama visited during a season when most of Midway’s birds have finished breeding and flown out to sea, leaving some of the island’s most fervent protectors feeling that the president was missing out. “Come back” in June 2017, Teya M. Penniman implored Mr. Obama in a message posted on the website of Friends of Midway Atoll. “Even though you won’t be the current president, it will still give you a much better understanding of what you’ve just done,” Ms. Penniman wrote. “The birds, fish, corals, seals, algae, turtles, dolphins and whales thank you. ” | 1 |
Federal Agents Will Be Watching You Vote on Election Day November 07, 2016 Federal Agents Will Be Watching You Vote on Election Day
Personnel from the U.S. Justice Department's civil rights division will be deployed to polling sites in 28 states to monitor Tuesday's election, five more than it monitored in the 2012 election, the department said on Monday. Most of those states will receive Justice Department staff who have no statutory authority to access polling sites as a result of a 2013 Supreme Court decision that struck down parts of the Voting Rights Act, curtailing the department's ability to deploy election observers with unfettered access to the polls. More than 500 Justice Department personnel will be deployed on Tuesday, compared to more than 780 personnel the department dispatched during the 2012 general election. A JusticeDepartment spokesman declined to say how many of Tuesday's personnel will be full-access observers. Tuesday's hotly contested election, including the presidential race pitting Republican Donald Trump against Democrat Hillary Clinton, will be the first in decades in which the JusticeDepartment can only send full-access observers to states where a federal court ruling has authorized it.
On the campaign trail, Trump has warned the election may be rigged and has called on supporters to keep an eye on voting activity for possible signs of fraud in large cities. Numerous studies have found that U.S. voter fraud is exceedingly rare.
"As always, our personnel will perform these duties impartially, with one goal in mind: to see to it that every eligible voter can participate in our elections to the full extent that federal law provides," said Attorney General Loretta Lynch in a statement.
Courts have granted the Justice Department permission to deploy full-access observers in five states: Alaska, California, Louisiana, New York, and Alabama. But the court order for Alabama only pertains to municipal elections and it is not on the list of states where the JusticeDepartment is deploying poll watchers this year.
READ MORE: JUSTICE DEPARTMENT WARNS OF PRE-ELECTION DAY TERROR
The Justice Department staff who are deployed to the other 24 states on Tuesday will be election "monitors", who must rely on local and state authorities to grant them access to polling locations.
“In most cases, voters on the ground will see very little practical difference between monitors and observers," said Vanita Gupta, the head of the department's civil rights division, in a statement.
Contribution by Reuters , Commentary provided by TRUNEWS Article by Doc Burkhart , Vice-President, General Manager and co-host of TRUNEWS with Rick Wiles Got a news tip? Email us at Help support the ministry of TRUNEWS with your one-time or monthly gift of financial support. DONATE NOW ! DOWNLOAD THE TRUNEWS MOBILE APP! CLICK HERE! Donate Today! Support TRUNEWS to help build a global news network that provides a credible source for world news
We believe Christians need and deserve their own global news network to keep the worldwide Church informed, and to offer Christians a positive alternative to the anti-Christian bigotry of the mainstream news media Top Stories | 0 |
Características de la nueva Nintendo Switch EL PRINCIPAL ENTRETENIMIENTO QUE OFRECE ES MONTAR SUS 357 COMPONENTES
Nintendo presentó hace pocas semanas su nueva Nintendo Switch, una consola mezcla en un mismo aparato las características de una sobremesa con una portátil. En los últimos días, se han ido desgranando nuevas características y prestaciones.
· Se puede acoplar a un aparato de televisión o a un hijo.
· Sirve como consolador asegurando diversión para toda la familia.
· Sale un montón de mierda de dentro.
· Puedes quitarle piezas y usarla de botón para la camisa.
· Si se le acoplan todos los periféricos, el jugador puede construirse un pequeño refugio e introducirse en el interior de la consola.
· Según cómo se monte, parece una Super Nintendo.
· Suena una alarma si la consola detecta que el usuario está haciendo el ridículo en público.
· Puedes llevarla a las fiestas y seguir jugando a solas tu partida mientras los demás se divierten.
· Los cartuchos desmontables son compatibles con los rifles AK- 47.
· Se puede acoplar a la Play 4 para jugar a juegos buenos.
· Es posible jugar 24 horas al día con ella, en cualquier sitio y sin hacer absolutamente nada más hasta fenecer de inanición o agotamiento.
· Incluye una ranura en la que depositar donaciones para que Nintendo salga adelante.
· Pueden jugar mujeres.
· Existe la posibilidad de pagarla a plazos o por componentes, lo que permite hacerse con una consola en 632 meses.
· Cuando ya se tienen todas las piezas, la consola es un Transformer que cobra vida e intenta destruir el planeta.
· Permite formar gobierno con la abstención del PSOE.
· Le falta una pieza que viene de Alemania. | 0 |
@wiaawistate didn’t let Jaylen give his sister, Syd, a hug after winning the STATE! He gets excited to hug her after EVERY game. He cried 💔 pic. twitter. After Appleton North won its first Wisconsin state championship in girls high school basketball this weekend, junior Sydney Levy went to give her little brother a hug to celebrate. Instead, a Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association employee ushered the boy away and told Levy to leave with her teammates. The WIAA released the following statement via : “The Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association acknowledges that the short video clip that was released on social media Sunday may be seen by the casual observer as insensitive. In the celebratory situations following a State championship, it is not possible for the WIAA to know the individual traditions and rituals of all the schools, teams, families and players involved. For the safety of all involved, we keep spectators off the playing surface. As an organization that runs large events on a regular basis, our focus is always on the safety and ‘what if’ situations that can evolve quickly and cause potential harm to innocent bystanders. When the WIAA staff receives advanced requests regarding special family situations or needs, we do our best to accommodate if and when possible. The WIAA has reached out to the family to express its regrets for any distress they may have experienced. ” ( The Big Lead) Follow Trent Baker on Twitter @MagnifiTrent | 1 |
Mainstream Media Totally Blows It On Retail Sales By Lee Adler. "U.S. Retail Sales Rose Briskly in October" screamed the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday. It was talking about the top line seasonally adjusted version of the month to month change, including inflation. Here at Contra Corner we’re not really interested in what the seasonally finagled, nominal numbers say. We want the unvarnished, not seasonally manipulated truth. | 0 |
TOKYO — A former Google executive and Silicon Valley star was on course to be the next chief executive of SoftBank of Japan, one of the world’s most prominent technology conglomerates. Now he is leaving, in an abrupt shakeout that shows cracks in SoftBank’s global ambitions. When the executive, Nikesh Arora, was poached two years ago from a coveted role as Google’s head of business operations, the hire was widely considered a coup for SoftBank. Its billionaire founder and chief executive, Masayoshi Son, crowned Mr. Arora heir apparent. Mr. Arora was vaunted for his prowess and seen as an international executive who would help transform SoftBank with a flurry of investments. One of Mr. Son’s most cherished ambitions was to turn SoftBank, a Japanese business with some notable overseas names like the American carrier Sprint, into a truly global enterprise. The honeymoon did not last. Investors have criticized Mr. Arora recently for his record of managing SoftBank’s overseas deals. Investments in like DramaFever and Housing. com, these shareholders have said, appear to have soured as the companies have faltered. And the carefully orchestrated succession plan — or what appeared to be — has collapsed. Mr. Son decided he was not ready to give up the reins soon. Mr. Son, 58, said in a statement that he still wanted to “work on a few more crazy ideas” at SoftBank. Mr. Son cited differences over when Mr. Arora would take over as chief executive as the reason he had agreed to step down. Mr. Arora, who was born in India, holds the titles of president and chief operating officer. “This will require me to be C. E. O. for at least another five to 10 years — this is not a time frame for me to keep Nikesh waiting for the top job,” Mr. Son said. Mr. Arora, 48, also presented the parting as amicable. “Masa and I are still in love with each other,” he posted on Twitter. “I will support everyone I invested in, and they know that. ” Mr. Arora’s legacy — good or bad — will ultimately be determined by his investment record. SoftBank’s strategy is centered on acquiring other companies, from established businesses to tiny . Shortly before Mr. Arora arrived, SoftBank bought Sprint for $21. 6 billion, a major expansion of Mr. Son’s empire overseas. The Japanese conglomerate also made a fortune when its early investment in the Chinese company Alibaba slowly swelled to billions of dollars in value. After joining SoftBank, Mr. Arora was put in charge of picking takeover targets around the world. His mandate was to diversify a company that, despite the Sprint acquisition and others, still makes about 70 percent of its operating profits in its home market. It owns a major mobile phone network and a controlling interest in Yahoo Japan, among other domestic assets. Mr. Arora struck more than a dozen deals, placing bets on technology, telecommunications and media companies in India, Indonesia and Singapore, among other countries. SoftBank paid $1 billion for a stake in the Korean company Coupang. It plowed $250 million into the giant American media and sports agency. India has been a particular focus, and Mr. Arora led investments into businesses like Snapdeal and OYO Rooms, which aspire to be its Amazon and Airbnb. Recently, SoftBank has been selling assets and raising cash, a pattern that has been a prelude to big, strategic deals. On Tuesday it sealed an agreement to sell its majority stake in Supercell, the developer of “Clash of Clans” and other mobile games, to China’s Tencent Holdings for about $8. 6 billion. It also recently sold about $10 billion of shares in Alibaba. Expectations for Mr. Arora had been high. Besides his Google pedigree, he had been unusually well paid. In his first six months at SoftBank, Mr. Arora earned 16. 6 billion yen, or $159 million at current exchange rates, including a signing bonus, according to company disclosures. That made him one of the best compensated executives in the world during that period, and one of the highest paid executives in Japan, a country known for relatively low pay at the upper echelon. He earned about 8 billion yen last year. Mr. Arora made a huge personal financial commitment to SoftBank in 2015, buying 60 billion yen of the company’s shares. But some of his bets haven’t panned out. DramaFever, a Korean video site, shed traffic months after SoftBank invested in the business, prompting the Japanese company to find buyers for some of its stake. This year, SoftBank has defended Mr. Arora against criticism from a group of mostly anonymous international shareholders, who laid out their case against Mr. Arora in a letter to the company’s board in April. They said a number of he backed have fizzled. They also questioned his decision to remain an adviser to an American investment firm, Silver Lake, that could potentially compete with SoftBank for deals. “Mr. Arora’s investment strategy as the C. E. O. of SIMI appears to be nothing more than throwing a dart at a dart board,” a lawyer representing the investors wrote in the letter, referring to SoftBank’s internet and media operations as SIMI. “How many more millions of dollars of shareholder value must be wasted before the board realizes something must be done?” A representative for Silver Lake declined to comment. Advisers like Mr. Arora generally receive limited insight into the private equity firm’s deliberations and spend only a few hours a month with Silver Lake. SoftBank said on Monday that an internal panel set up to investigate the investors’ claims had found no evidence of conflict of interest or other misconduct. Still, the episode may have shaken Mr. Son’s trust in Mr. Arora, soured Mr. Arora on SoftBank, or both. “Clean chit from board after through review. Time for me to move on,” Mr. Arora said in another tweet on Tuesday. And it was always an open question whether Mr. Son would readily give up control. Mr. Arora was one of only a small number of to have attained a top management position at a major Japanese company. He faced fewer bureaucratic and cultural obstacles than most, in part because SoftBank’s power structure is simple. SoftBanks starts and ends with Mr. Son, who founded the company in the 1980s and runs it with unquestioned authority. “I feel my work is not done,” Mr. Son said in a statement on Tuesday. | 1 |
GREENVILLE, Del. — The state beverage of Delaware is milk, and as Angelina Squillace was stocking it in a grocery store here, she paused, in response to a question, to think about what else defined this state. “It’s like, tax free,” said Ms. Squillace, 17, referring to her home state’s zero percent sales tax, “and it’s Joe Biden. That’s really what it is. ” The handover of presidential power in Washington, 110 miles away, has brought joy to many in the country and thoroughly unsettled others. But here in Delaware, it foretold an especially bittersweet adjustment. The end of the vice presidency of Joseph R. Biden Jr. has dimmed an spotlight on a state that, even its own residents admit, can sometimes get lost in the shuffle. “There’s this big joke, people say, ‘ ? ’” Karen Friday, 48, a mother in Hockessin, Del. said as she waited recently at the Wilmington train station — which is named after Mr. Biden — for a friend to disembark. “He’s contributed so much to letting people know who we are. ” “I think,” said Bob Jones, 72, a shoe shiner at the station, “he’s the person we ever had. ” Mr. Biden was born in Scranton, Pa. (and he speaks of it often) but he moved to Delaware as a young teenager and has considered it home, more or less, since. Over some 36 years of commuting from here to his job in the United States Senate, and after eight years as the No. 2 man in the Obama administration, Mr. Biden has kept his indelible link, forged by family and framed by tragedy, to the nation’s state. He owns a home here in Greenville, close to Wilmington, and is expected to keep spending weekends here even though he also plans to have a house in Washington. For decades, he has been Delaware’s biggest cheerleader, and the state has loved him right back. “One of the historians who specialized in Delaware history pointed out that he probably ranks in Delaware history at the same level as the Delaware leader during the Revolution who rode to Philadelphia to sign the Declaration of Independence,” said Joseph Pika, an emeritus professor of political science at the University of Delaware, referring to Caesar Rodney, who was a lawyer, a member of the Continental Congress and the president (governor in modern political view) of Delaware during most of the Revolutionary War. “There are people who if he put his foot in his mouth would say, ‘Oh that’s typical of Biden,’” Mr. Pika said. “That’s about the harshest criticism you would hear. ” The University of Delaware is Mr. Biden’s alma mater and he is planning some kind of partnership as he civilian life, although the details are still hazy. “This is a time we could make history,” said Dennis Assanis, the president of the university. “He’s one of our most prominent alumni. ” Mr. Biden, who is 74, is also planning to have a center at the University of Pennsylvania, and to work on a cancer initiative. Mr. Biden had been a lawyer and a councilor for New Castle County — one of Delaware’s three — when he won his upstart bid for Senate in 1972, at the age of 29. His first wife and their daughter were killed in a car crash that injured his two sons. Mr. Biden took his oath of office at the bedsides of his sons and decided to come home every night, binding the state to his grieving family. “Everyone could relate to the tragedy that he experienced,” Mr. Pika said. He became a ubiquitous presence on the Amtrak train, commuting between Washington and Wilmington as he climbed the ranks in the Senate, and mounted his own failed bids for the presidency before he became the vice president in 2009 as Barack Obama’s running mate. “We’re not a big state that’s produced a lot of presidents or vice presidents — or any presidents or vice presidents,” said Mike Castle, the former Republican governor and congressman for Delaware who described himself as a friend of Mr. Biden’s, “and all of a sudden, one of our residents is plucked out to be the vice president of the United States. ” “It’s a real honor for us,” Mr. Castle added. Mr. Biden’s family remained closely linked to the state. His second wife, Jill, was a longtime community college teacher here (she now teaches in Virginia) and their daughter, Ashley, now runs a nonprofit organization in the state. But no one was more prominent than his son, Beau Biden, who became the state’s attorney general and was widely expected to become the state’s governor, before he died of a brain tumor in 2015. “Joe Biden stood for eight hours one day as mourners visited to give their condolences,” Mr. Pika said. “It was felt by the entire state. ” Other American statesmen have, of course, become closely associated with their home states. Everyone knows Abraham Lincoln is from Illinois, that the Bushes call Texas home, and that Ronald Reagan lived in California. But this is a state with a population the size of a large city, and one that so many Americans have simply driven through without stopping. So Mr. Biden, who knows everyone and always came back, looms large. “We really haven’t had national figures,” said Bill Gee, a commercial and real estate lawyer who sometimes sees Mr. Biden at the Wilmington Country Club, and had voted for him for Senate despite being a Republican. “It was kind of nice for little Delaware. ” Mr. Gee, like others here, pointed out that Delaware “punches above its weight,” like with the tax laws that have drawn scores of businesses to incorporate here. It is close to Washington, Baltimore and Philadelphia. And there are nice beaches. “If you said name something in Delaware, a lot of people would know DuPont,” Mr. Gee said, referring to the chemical company. “After that, hm, people know that we’re one of the large states. ” While the state’s corporate clout is significant, it has, like much of the rest of country, shed manufacturing jobs, and even DuPont has had layoffs in recent years. Mr. Biden has “outlasted the DuPont reputation,” said Nancy Karibjanian, a former reporter who has covered Mr. Biden, and the director of the University of Delaware’s Center for Political Communication. “The sales tax is nice, but I think Joe Biden is in a category of his own. ” It helps that, in a state so small, it is easy to get to know the power players — and just about everyone else, too. Indeed, nearly every single person approached at random by a reporter on a recent day at Wilmington’s train station claimed to have personally met the man. “The very first year he ran for Senate, he was out campaigning in a strip shopping center, all by himself,” Margo Johnson, a retiree, recalled. “He just chatted it up with my mother. She just thought he was wonderful. ” Tyrone Young, 63, a denture maker, said he had waited in line for an hour and a half to pay his respects to the Biden family after Beau died. “That’s honor, dignity, respect,” Mr. Young said, adding that the Bidens “showed you the same thing. ” Mr. Biden speaks often of his love for the state. When he arrived at the train station here on Friday, after President Trump’s inauguration, he made a characteristic Joycean reference: “When I die, Delaware will be written on my heart. ” He sounded a similar note eight years ago, during a speech days before he and Mr. Obama were inaugurated. “Delaware,” Mr. Biden said, “I’d not be taking this journey were it not for you. ” | 1 |
Good morning, Milan. Proceedings kick off early on Thursday, even if you partied until the wee hours with Fergie after her set at Philipp Plein last night (as we did). There are no excuses not to be on time, people. It’s only Day 2, and as we’ve said, fashion month is a marathon, not a sprint. Here’s what’s on today: • At 9:30, after a quick espresso, the day starts with MaxMara, the label few others can touch when it comes to the cut of an overcoat. The company has hired the model Gigi Hadid to be the face of its accessories campaigns, and Ms. Hadid will be hosting a cocktail party at the Corso Vittorio Emanuele store tonight. Expect a scrum to get in. • Fendi is likely to put on yet another Karl Lagerfeld exercise in refined grandeur. (Cameos from the Fendirumi, the furry versions of the label’s $1, 500 Bag Bugs, are now standard.) The industry is still buzzing about the spectacular Fendi couture show in Rome in July, with a glass catwalk across the Trevi Fountain to celebrate its 90th anniversary. • Once a predictable riot of color and print beloved by the jet set for their summer vacation wardrobes, Pucci is only somewhat less splashy under the direction of Massimo Giorgetti, its young and energetic creative director, now entering his third season. The last show took the label off the beach and into the realm of stretchy daywear inspired by St. Moritz. Who knows what path it may take next. • With twilight (and a Negroni and antipasti beforehand) comes Prada, one of the biggest and most creative names on the Milanese calendar. Its last tour de force collection was a highlight of the season. Commercially, the company has not fared as well it said in April that 2016 would be “a turning point,” after announcing its lowest profits in five years. All eyes will be on Mrs. Prada to see what magic she can produce. Arrive early to take a spin around the art collections at the nearby Fondazione Prada. • Last but not least, Moschino rounds off the first full day. An unapologetic maximalist, the creative director Jeremy Scott makes the hectic rounds between Los Angeles (where he lives) Milan (where he shows his collection for Moschino) and New York (where he shows his namesake collection). Expect a kitschy set, voguing models and a million posts on Instagram: The label’s fans can’t seem to get enough. And in case you missed it: Gucci’s Sequined, Studded, Spangled Saga. Our reviewer weighs in. How to Get Gucci’s Dreamlike Beauty Look Italian Brands Expect Some ‘Brexit’ Benefits | 1 |
You know the left and right could be allies, even friends, if you stopped--or rather woke up to reality--blaming immigrants or making ridiculous claims like sanctuary cities are illegal. It's the other way around, national borders are illegal as humans have a right of free travel anywhere and everywhere. | 0 |
We Are Change
With only days away from the most followed and extraordinary Presidential election of all time, the debate has devolved into the sexual behaviors surrounding the candidates more than ever.
Donald Trump, the GOP nominee, Hillary’s husband Bill Clinton, the former President of the United States, and now Anthony Weiner has somehow entered the fray. It is quite sad indeed that the media has chosen to run with this angle, and it speaks volumes about the tabloid celebrity obsessed nature of the United States, but if we are going to go there, let’s go there.
First we have Donald Trump, a man who has been married 3 times, has been very open and frankly arrogant about his opinion of women, especially in televised interviews over the last 3 plus decades, and is now being crucified for grabbing the world by the pussy. Seriously? Folks everybody knew what they signed up for when he announced he was running. He ran beauty pageants for Christ’s sake. Has Trump been a misogynist in the past? Absolutely .
The truth is how many men out there can say they haven’t acted in that manner at some point in their lives, let alone yesterday? It’s not something I, or any other man should be proud of, but lets put the shoe on the other foot for a second. If a group of women were having a conversation and the most attractive one of them stated “Sometimes I just walk up to the hottest guy at the bar and grab him by his cock, they let me do it,” would anybody really be outraged? I highly doubt it.
Now let’s take a look at Bill Clinton. Ever since Bill Clinton first ran for President in 1992, his sexual promiscuities and alleged predatory sexual behavior, including rape , have been widely available to the public. I would never defend any type of unwanted sexual advances, but once again we all knew this years ago. Although the mainstream has underplayed this, perhaps the most striking thing they have failed to detail in any depth is his relationship to Jeffrey Epstein.
It was revealed in May that Clinton’s flight logs had him traveling with Epstein at least 26 times during his presidency. Epstein, a billionaire, flew in a private jet dubbed “The Lolita Express” . Those unfamiliar with Epstein should note that he is a convicted pedophile who allegedly ran what many refer as “Sex Slave Island” which trafficked in underage girls for the upper echelon of society in the Virgin Islands. To be fair, there have been allegations of Trump being tied to it as well, but so far there is no hard evidence. Meanwhile, Hillary reportedly went with Bill to the sex island – six times .
Where is the outrage regarding the sexual abuse of children among global heavyweights including the political elite?
Now this brings us to some of the latest revelations regarding Anthony Weiner who is now somehow involved in the email scandal with his regards to SEXTING A 15 YEAR OLD GIRL ! Huma Abedin happens to be married to Weiner and up until the scandal hitting the news, Hillary’s top aide. Weiner is probably the worst of the worst at being caught in his serial deviant sexual behavior, but those in the know understand this is par for the course.
Little is yet to be reported on what is actually in these emails other than they apparently contained classified information, and the fact is we can’t be expected to know before the election what’s in them…unless of course Wikileaks is planning on one last dump in the next day or so. It is again worth noting of the under-reporting of the pedophilia angle of this story.
So what’s missing here? Um, well, how about Hillary Clinton herself? The mainstream media has NEVER strayed into the possibility Hillary has been unfaithful to Bill, or that their is an open marriage arrangement between the two of them. House of Cards anyone? Those unfamiliar with the show should note that the protagonists of the series, the Underwoods, a political power couple, have an open marriage that also take part in all sorts of sexual decadence , the type only reported upon briefly in the media, if at all.
The truth is that Hillary has been rumored to have a plethora of sexual partners outside of her marriage , both male and female, the latest of which is her aid Huma. However we are not here to speculate in such matters. Instead let’s look at one case in particular. Webb Hubbell.
Those unfamiliar with Hubbell should note that he, Hillary Clinton, and Vince Foster all came up together in the Rose Law Firm during the 70’s. By all accounts they were a tight knit unit that spent countless hours together in their quests for social mobility. Hubbell would become the Mayor of Little Rock, Arkansas in 1979. Bill Clinton, who married Hillary in 1975, would take the Governorship the year prior.
So what evidence is their of an affair between the two? Many believe the existence of Chelsea Clinton, based on looks alone. Chelsea appears to have no physical resemblance whatsoever to Bill, however she looks ASTOUNDINGLY like Hubbell.
The interesting thing is that Hubbell has refused to deny that he is her biological father! When asked by World Net Daily Hubbell responded “No Comment” . Truly bizarre if indeed their is no possibility of such a thing.
In the end why would this matter? It just goes to show you the level of secrets the Clintons have kept for decades upon decades in their continued quest for more and more power. It also gives a very candid portrayal on how the media has handled scandals involving the Clintons over the years. When you go to the voting booth keep that in mind.
The post The Sex Scandal That Could Change The Election appeared first on We Are Change .
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WASHINGTON — Questions raised by the F. B. I. about the State Department’s handling of Hillary Clinton’s emails have cast a cloud of doubt over the political futures of a number of her top advisers, including some expected to hold jobs in her administration if she is elected president. Though Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch formally affirmed on Wednesday that the Justice Department would not seek criminal charges against anyone in the email case, fallout from the matter is sure to affect several dozen State Department advisers who, records show, facilitated Mrs. Clinton’s unorthodox email arrangement or used it to send her classified documents. Among those drawing the most intense scrutiny are Cheryl Mills, Huma Abedin and Jake Sullivan, onetime aides who could face difficult questions in pursuing security clearances for diplomatic or national security posts because of their involvement with Mrs. Clinton’s emails. The State Department said it would restart an internal review into the handling of Mrs. Clinton’s emails now that Justice’s investigation is formally closed, and that review could threaten the security clearances of several dozen other career officials and political appointees who knew of Mrs. Clinton’s private email server. As for Mrs. Clinton, House Speaker Paul D. Ryan said Wednesday that in light of the F. B. I. ’s findings, intelligence officials should deny her the classified briefings normally given the major nominees. “I’ve never seen anything quite like this,” Bill Savarino, a Washington lawyer specializing in security clearances, said on Wednesday. “You’ve got a situation here where the woman who would be in charge of setting national security policy as president has been deemed by the F. B. I. unsuitable to safeguard and handle classified information. ” In a briefing Tuesday on the F. B. I. ’s findings, the agency’s director, James B. Comey Jr. said that in situations similar to Mrs. Clinton’s, people found to have mishandled classified information “are often subject to security or administrative sanctions. ” He also criticized what he said were inadequate security measures at the State Department in the handling of classified material, a characterization the department has strongly disputed. While Mr. Comey’s criticism of Mrs. Clinton attracted the most attention on Tuesday, his comments included other unnamed colleagues. “Although we did not find clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of the classified information,” Mr. Comey said, “there is evidence that they were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information. ” Indeed, a review of thousands of pages of emails and depositions that have been made public over the last two months shows that State Department officials ignored numerous red flags about the problems created by Mrs. Clinton’s use of a private server, both in the handling of classified information and the preservation of public records. Those few employees who raised questions about the email arrangement were told to keep quiet about it, the State Department inspector general found. Mrs. Clinton herself seemed glib at times about the risks posed by her private email system. In one email exchange in 2011, she was puzzled about how emails from her private account to a State Department employee ended up in the aide’s Gmail account, and jokingly blamed foreign hackers. “Maybe the Chinese hacked it and focused on you!” she wrote. A federal court ordered a number of State Department aides to give lengthy depositions about their knowledge of Mrs. Clinton’s email system as part of a lawsuit brought by Judicial Watch, a conservative advocacy group. Her top aides said they gave little thought to the problems that the private server might create. Both Ms. Mills and Ms. Abedin said they now regretted the lack of attention they had given to the system, while other officials said they simply did not remember much about how it was set up and used. In a deposition last week, Patrick F. Kennedy, the under secretary of state for management and operations, said repeatedly that he could not recall details about Mrs. Clinton’s email use, even though he responded to emails from her. Asked if her use of a personal email address raised any questions in his mind, he said that “it did not strike any bells in my mind, no. ” “Why not?” the lawyer for Judicial Watch asked. “Because it did not,” Mr. Kennedy said. The State Department has continued to defend its handling of classified material, and it challenged Mr. Comey’s assertions about a small number of the Clinton emails that were marked as classified. John Kirby, the department’s spokesman, said Wednesday that because of “human error,” one of Mrs. Clinton’s aides at the time, Monica R. Hanley, had mistakenly marked as classified two emails involving routine diplomatic phone calls to foreign leaders. Those appeared to be ones that Mr. Comey singled out as bearing classified markings, in this case designating them as “confidential,” but Mr. Kirby said that information that was initially considered classified was not by the time Mrs. Clinton decided to make the calls. It was not clear if Mr. Comey also referred to other emails with such markings. Sean M. Bigley, a Los Angeles lawyer who specializes in security clearances, said the handling of classified information could be “a major issue” for officials who sent emails that ended up on Mrs. Clinton’s server. He said his firm has routinely defended clients who have lost their security clearances — often a requirement for employment — because of violations “much less egregious” than what Mr. Comey described. “The folks who were involved with this, even on a peripheral basis, at least are going to be facing administrative action, or should be, based on the historical cases we’ve dealt with,” he said. Mr. Savarino, the Washington lawyer, shared that assessment. He said that if any of Mrs. Clinton’s former aides involved in the email controversy were to approach him for help in seeking a future clearance, “I’d tell them that ‘you’ve got a fight on your hands. ’” Decisions on security clearances rest with the hiring agencies. At the White House, the Executive Office of the President makes these decisions based on background checks conducted or overseen by the F. B. I. sometimes with the help of outside contractors. But even if a clearance is rejected, the president has the power to overturn that decision and order the clearance. The rules for security clearances — including challenging decisions to strip them — were signed by President Clinton in 1995 in the wake of the Aldrich Ames spy scandal. Mr. Bigley said that contrary to Mr. Comey’s characterization, the State Department practiced strict enforcement on matters that could affect security clearances, which include not only the mishandling of classified information, but also financial problems, exposure to foreign influences, drug and alcohol abuse and other personal misconduct that could expose an official to blackmail by a foreign intelligence agency. He said the threshold for administrative punishment — including suspension of a clearance — was much lower than for criminal prosecution. Without disclosing specific clients, he cited cases involving government employees penalized for bringing their cellphones into secured areas or making Skype calls from a specially designated room, known as a SCIF: Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility. “Ten, careers we’ve had completely ruined because of mistakes like that,” he said. Cases are routine, but often shrouded in secrecy. Only two agencies — the Pentagon and the Department of Energy — publish records of decisions. The Pentagon’s, which covers private military contractors, showed that 1, 657 cases were adjudicated in 2015. In a letter in May to the State Department, Senator Charles E. Grassley, the Iowa Republican who leads the Senate Judiciary Committee, tried to find out whether a number of former Clinton aides, including Ms. Abedin, Mr. Sullivan and Philippe Reines, have kept their security clearances, “in light of the fact that classified information has been discovered” on Mrs. Clinton’s private server. The State Department declined to tell him, saying it would not discuss the status of individuals’ security clearance. Mr. Grassley pushed the issue again Wednesday, asking Mr. Comey in a letter whether the F. B. I. had recommended that Mrs. Clinton or any of her senior aides lose their security clearances. “If not,” the senator asked, “why not?” | 1 |
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