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2,700-year-old Hebrew mention of Jerusalem found Rare papyrus from 7th century B.C. refers to consignment of wineskins Published: 26 mins ago
(Times of Israel) A rare, ancient papyrus dating to the First Temple Period — 2,700 years ago — has been found to bear the oldest known mention of Jerusalem in Hebrew.
The fragile text, believed plundered from a cave in the Judean Desert cave, was apparently acquired by the Israel Antiquities Authority during a sting in 2012 when thieves attempted to sell it to a dealer. Radiocarbon dating has determined it is from the 7th century BCE, making it one of just three extant Hebrew papyri from that period, and predating the Dead Sea Scrolls by centuries.
The IAA’s Eitan Klein said the dating of the papyrus had been confirmed by comparing the text’s orthography with other texts from the period. | 0 |
We Are Change
In perhaps the most disturbing Wikileaks release to date, Tony Podesta (John Podesta’s brother) is invited to a “Spirit Cooking” dinner with performance artist Marina Abramovi?.
Dinner with a famous artist might sound deeply mundane, but there is far more to this story.
Abramovi?, 69, is a fairly famous Serbian performance artist, who now lives in New York.
In an email dated June 28, 2015, Abramovi? wrote:
“Dear Tony,
I am so looking forward to the Spirit Cooking dinner at my place. Do you think you will be able to let me know if your brother is joining?
All my love, Marina”
Tony then forwarded the email to his brother, John, asking:
“Are you in NYC Thursday July 9
Marina wants you to come to dinner
Mary?”
While this seems like a completely normal and uninspiring email, a look at what “spirit cooking” is, changes things immediately.
In the video, Abramovi? is seen painting the recipe for these “spirit dinners,” using what appears to be thickly congealed blood. The recipe read, at one point, “mix fresh breast milk with fresh sperm, drink on earthquake nights.”
So, we have to ask, did John Podesta’s brother invite him to go drink semen mixed with breast milk? Yikes.
Abramovi? is known for her often-gory art that confronts pain and ritual. Her first performance involved repeatedly, stabbing herself in her hands. The next performance featured her throwing her nails, toenails, and hair into a flaming five-point star — which she eventually jumped inside of, causing her to lose consciousness.
During the next, she ingested a medication to treat people who are catatonic, which caused violent muscle spasms.
Perhaps most famously, in 1974, Abramovi? placed 72 objects on a table, including a rose, a feather, honey, a whip, olive oil, scissors, a scalpel — and a gun and a single bullet. Alongside the items was a sign informing the audience that the items could be used on her in any way that they chose.
For six hours, she remained at the mercy of the audience, allowing them to do as they pleased. During that time, she was stripped, cut, and one audience member even held the gun to her head.
“What I learned was that … if you leave it up to the audience, they can kill you. … I felt really violated: they cut up my clothes, stuck rose thorns in my stomach, one person aimed the gun at my head, and another took it away. It created an aggressive atmosphere. After exactly 6 hours, as planned, I stood up and started walking toward the audience. Everyone ran away, to escape an actual confrontation,” she later said of the performance.
We really just want to know what Podesta had for dinner.
The post Spirit Cooking: The Most Disturbing Podesta Email Yet? (Warning: Graphic Content) appeared first on We Are Change .
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DOYLESTOWN, Pa. — Donald J. Trump has been waiting for months for a poll in which he cracks 50 percent of the vote against Hillary Clinton in any of his top battleground states: Florida, New Hampshire, Ohio or Pennsylvania. “It’ll happen after the conventions,” he said in a July 6 interview. “Believe me. ” But in the last two weeks, instead of attracting a surge of new admirers, Mr. Trump has been hemorrhaging support among loyal Republicans, independents, Democrats and others, according to polls and 30 interviews with a of voters. His dispute with the parents of a Muslim Army captain who was killed in action in Iraq, and his suggestion that “Second Amendment people” could somehow stop Mrs. Clinton, have intensified doubts about Mr. Trump even among Americans who were initially attracted to his frank and freewheeling style. For a candidate who once seemed like an electoral phenomenon, with an unshakable following and a celebrity appeal that crossed party lines, Mr. Trump now faces the possibility that his missteps have erected a ceiling over his support among some demographic groups and in several swing states. He has been stuck under 45 percent of the vote in Ohio and Pennsylvania for weeks, polls show, while Mrs. Clinton has gained support. Several Republican voters say they grow leery every time Mr. Trump speaks these days, for fear he will embarrass them, and feel increasingly repelled just when they hoped he might adjust his message to try to draw more people in. “I liked that he was politically incorrect. But now I feel, enough already,” Trish Grove, a banker, said as she finished lunch at a diner here in Doylestown, a bellwether suburb north of Philadelphia. “He’s not going to win a majority of voters by sounding offensive and ridiculous. ” After the conventions in late July, Mrs. Clinton’s support among young people rose 12 percent, and she gained ground among liberals and moderates, according to an analysis of a New York News poll before the conventions and a CBS News poll after them. Mr. Trump improved only with voters who held bachelor’s degrees but did not attend graduate school. “Undecided voters still have a long way to go before they vote for Trump,” said Frank Luntz, a Republican strategist who holds focus groups with voters. “He has high unfavorable ratings with so many voters that he would need to win most of the rest of the electorate, and his problems aren’t helping him grow. ” Mr. Trump’s troubles are perhaps most pronounced in Pennsylvania, which he has targeted for victory in November even though the state has gone Democratic in the last six presidential elections. He is running strong in the traditionally conservative western part of the state, and his advisers argue that his populist views on trade, immigration and foreign policy could resonate with independents and Democrats. “We have to win Pennsylvania,” Mr. Trump said on Friday during a campaign rally in Erie. “We win Pennsylvania, we’re going to win it,” apparently a reference to the presidency. But to carry the state, pollsters say, Mr. Trump would need to beat Mrs. Clinton here in the Philadelphia suburbs, where President Obama defeated Mitt Romney in 2012 by about nine percentage points. (Mr. Obama carried the state by about five points.) Yet Mrs. Clinton holds a wide lead in those suburbs, 52 percent to 26 percent, according to an NBC Street College poll published Wednesday. “There is absolutely no way Trump wins Pennsylvania unless he can broaden his appeal significantly and overcome his huge deficit in the suburbs,” said G. Terry Madonna, director of the Franklin Marshall College poll and a longtime analyst of Pennsylvania politics. “He does well with white voters, but there simply aren’t enough of them in Pennsylvania to win. And he can’t stick with his political message for more than five minutes. ” Mr. Trump’s advisers expressed confidence in their strategy and questioned whether public polls fully reflect his support. While some did express concern that there could be a ceiling on his support among women and members of minority groups, they also said he had room to grow among voters, white men and independents — who, they said, will not pay attention to the race until the presidential debates begin in late September. Paul Manafort, Mr. Trump’s campaign chairman, said the debates would be critical to winning over voters, but he also pointed to increased spending by the Clinton campaign on television ads in Pennsylvania and Ohio as proof of the threat Mr. Trump poses there. “We expect to do very well in the suburbs, which will help us to carry Pennsylvania,” Mr. Manafort said. “The demographics are very positive for Donald Trump and the issue agenda favors Donald Trump in Pennsylvania. ” A Clinton campaign spokesman did not respond to a request for comment, but several of Mrs. Clinton’s advisers and allies said they were highly optimistic that she would carry Pennsylvania and most other Rust Belt states. There are few greater threats to candidates than a ceiling on their support, which is why many take more moderate positions during the general election in hopes of appealing to the broadest possible constituency. Republicans and Democrats have a history of nominating presidential candidates genial and ideologically flexible enough to expand their support beyond party loyalists. Mr. Trump and Mrs. Clinton have historically high unfavorability ratings and extremely low favorability ratings among undecided voters. Yet since the conventions, Mrs. Clinton has focused her message and campaign schedule on undecided voters in swing states. Mr. Trump has shown little interest in changing his unorthodox approach: In an interview on CNBC on Thursday he said he would “just keep doing the same thing I’m doing right now,” even if he ended up losing. Many voters here in Bucks County said in interviews that Mr. Trump seemed almost to be willfully trying to alienate them: He says the right things about repealing the Affordable Care Act and cutting taxes, but then appears to revel in insulting women and Mexicans and singling out Muslims for harsh treatment. Several voters also cited Mr. Trump’s mocking of a disabled reporter, and others said that he seemed too hotheaded in confrontational situations, such as when he came under criticism from Khizr Khan, the father of the United States Army officer killed in Iraq, during his speech at the Democratic convention. “America’s role in the world matters to me, and I don’t want a president who yells at other people,” said Adam Woldow, a dermatologist in Richboro, Pa. who said he voted for Mr. Romney in 2012 and John McCain in 2008. As he waited for his station wagon to emerge from a carwash, Dr. Woldow paused to consider why Mr. Trump bothered him so much. “He just has so much baggage at this point, all the things he keeps saying,” he said. “I feel he’s even a bit racist. ” Dr. Woldow said he was leaning toward Gary Johnson, the Libertarian candidate. Penny an independent from Morrisville, Pa. who also voted for Mr. Romney, said she was dismayed when Mr. Trump insinuated that Mr. Khan’s wife, Ghazala, had not been “allowed” to speak when she appeared alongside him at the convention. “Who is Trump to make these judgments? Trump speaks all the time with his own wife by his side, silent,” Ms. said while perusing the lunch menu at a diner in Doylestown. “He should be talking about issues if he wants to actually win people over. ” But Mariann Davies, a lawyer in Doylestown who supports Mr. Trump, predicted that his popularity would grow among voters who do not want Mrs. Clinton to continue the Obama administration’s policies. “He’s talking about the issues everyone is pussyfooting around,” Ms. Davies said of Mr. Trump. “I think he could attract more voters if he would just focus on trade policy and jobs because people around here care a lot about those things. ” For most politicians, a approach has limits: Candidates who offend too many voters, or look overly impulsive or intemperate, generally lose. But Mr. Trump believes that voters who have seen hard times in their communities will embrace him as a truth teller. In the cities of northeast Pennsylvania, a traditionally Democratic area where Mr. Trump would need to overperform, several voters said they were skeptical of his leadership skills even though they shared his concerns about immigration and national security. Ody Draklellis, a Republican who owns the Queen City Diner in Allentown, said people in the area were open to Mr. Trump because they mistrusted Mrs. Clinton and were tired of Mr. Obama’s policies. But Mr. Trump’s main problem, Mr. Draklellis added, “is Mr. Trump himself. ” “Could Trump be a good president? Probably. But he might get us into a war, so the risk is too high,” said Mr. Draklellis, who has not chosen a candidate. “You would think he’d be totally focused on all of Hillary’s vulnerabilities. He could grow in the polls that way. Instead he just shoots his mouth off. ” | 1 |
$4 Billion even after they are known to be keeping all supposedly deleted messages in their server??? Well, I guess they need to somehow profit....probably selling content to rich blackmailers? | 0 |
Considering the violence that’s taking place near the Standing Rock protest camp(s) in North Dakota, it’s heartening to hear of an officer who is doing his best to help others. Recently, Officer... | 0 |
Two men punched an Army veteran and stole his service dog outside his home in the Bronx before they fled the scene, police said.[ Police say a man punched Robert Lebron, 40, from behind and then chased after him while a second man grabbed Lebron’s service dog, Mala, from his porch at Valentine Ave. and E. 194th St. May 14, the New York Daily News reported. WABC reported that Lebron suffered minor injuries, but did not seek medical attention. Police say they identified one of the suspects as Brian Cohen, whom they say is the of the victim’s wife, CBS New York reported. The Army veteran said he has the dog to help with his PTSD, NBC New York reported. Lebron says he has a special bond with his service dog. “What she gives me I can’t get from someone else: not a therapist or a family member or my friend,” he said. “It’s unconditional love. ” Police have not identified the second suspect, but they say he was last seen wearing a gray hooded sweatshirt and dark pants and shoes. The suspects are still at large, and police are asking anyone with information about the suspects to call NYPD’s Crime Stoppers Hotline at . | 1 |
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Megyn Kelly seems to think that she can get away with anything she says or does. Rupert Murdoch gave her a rude awakening when he told her that there are tons of other qualified people that would kill to take her spot.
Rupert Murdoch is making Fox News’ salary negotiations with Megyn Kelly very public by granting an interview to one of the newspapers his company News Corp. owns, The Wall Street Journal. In the interview, Murdoch said that keeping Kelly is a priority, but that he has other hosts who could take over the program should she try and go to a rival network.‘[W]e have a deep bench of talent, many of whom would give their right arm for that spot,’ said Murdoch. Kelly, who is said to be making $15million this year, is reportedly looking to make more than $20million when she renegotiates her contract next July. She declined a request to comment on the story.
Kelly’s star has continued to rise over the past year, and next month she will be releasing her first book, Settle For More. It has also been revealed that Kelly will be appearing Live With Kelly! the day after the election, marking the first time she is set to appear on Ripa’s morning show as a co-host.
Her popularity is one of the main reasons Murdoch says he wants to get her contract signer ‘very soon.’
He added however that whether or not Kelly stays at the network is ‘up to her.’ It is unclear where Kelly might land if she does not stay with Fox News, but CNN seems like a very likely possibility for the popular host. Kelly also has a huge fan in CNN head honcho Jeff Zucker, who called her a ‘tremendous anchor’ earlier this year. And former CNN president Jon Klein applauded Kelly for not backing down to Donald Trump in the first Republican debate when she questioned him about his treatment of women, this despite the fact that her then boss Roger Ailes was a supporter of the Republican nominee.‘To be able to stand up and ask tough questions to your boss’s choice of president shows a certain steeliness,’ said Klein. The article also points out that Kelly also separated herself from other Fox News anchors during the internal investigation into Ailes’ alleged sexual harrassment by speaking with the lawyers hired to look into the claims being made by former host Gretchen Carlson. That revelation about Kelly’s speaking with investigators was confirmed by people who were familiar with the matter. Some have said that Kelly is set to be the center of Fox News after the exit of Ailes, but Murdoch shot down those claims saying: ‘We’re not changing direction … that would be business suicide.’ Murdoch also said that he wants to make sure Bill O’Reilly also resigns with the network when his contract is up next month. One rival news executive told Vanity Fair in August that the rivalry between Kelly and O’Reilly has devolved to the point that one of them will likely leave when their contracts expire. O’Reilly shot down reports of a feud between himself and Kelly in June however, telling The Hollywood Reporter: ‘Oh, that’s all fabricated. She’s in a totally different part of the building. The last time I saw Megyn Kelly was in Detroit in March [at the Fox News GOP debate].’ Meanwhile, a spokesperson for Fox News said: ‘[Fox News President] Bill Shine and [Executive Vice President, Programming & Development] Suzanne Scott have maintained a close relationship with Bill and Megyn for years and have helped both of them in many instances, all while co-existing under the same roof.’ Kelly has previously hinted that she would be willing to leave the network where she has worked for the last 12 years
‘There’s a lot of brain damage that comes from the job. There was probably less brain damage when I worked in the afternoon. I was less well known. I had far less conflict in my life,’ Kelly said in an interview with Variety earlier this year.‘I also have three kids who are soon going to be school from 8am to 3pm I come to work at 3:30. I like to see my children.’ Kelly says she’s thought about hosting her own talk show but isn’t sure ‘what the market looks like for that in 2016’ and just doesn’t think ‘that’s the perfect thing for me’. As for co-hosting a morning show like Today, Kelly said she’s tried that before and she’s not much of a morning person.‘You have to wake up so early. The alarm goes off at 3:30am,’ said Kelly.‘When I did America’s Newsroom, which started at 9am, I remember saying to the makeup artist at the time, “If you could only know the afternoon me, you’d like me so much better.'” She then added: ‘Listen, this is a fickle business. What if they called me and fired me tomorrow? I have to keep my options open.’
Everybody is replaceable, even you Megyn!! Related Items | 0 |
When the people fear their government there’s Tyranny , when the government fears the people there’s Liberty !!! | 0 |
Hillary Endorsed Donald Trump for President According to Wikileaks “I endorse Donald Trump”- I am Hillary Clinton and I Approve this messageary
Here’s Gary Franchi as he reports that that before running against billionaire real estate mogul Donald Trump for the presidency, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told an audience at a private, paid speech she wanted to see more successful businessmen and women run for office because they can’t be bought.
AMAZINGLY, SHE SAID DONALD TRUMP WOULD BE AN EXCELLENT PRESIDENT!!! | 0 |
On this weekend’s broadcast of “Fox New Sunday,” veteran journalist Bob Woodward said the unverified dossier about Donald Trump and Russia is a “garbage document. ” Woodward said, “I think what is under reported here is Trump’s point of view on it. You laid it out when those former CIA people said these things about Trump, that he was a recruited agent of the Russians, and a useful fool, they started this in Trump’s mind, He knows the old adage, once a CIA man, always a CIA man. No one came out and said those people shouldn’t be saying those things, So act two is the briefing when this dossier is put out. ” “I’ve lived in this world for 45 years where you get things and people make allegations, that is a garbage document,” he continued. “It never should have been presented as part of an intelligence briefing. As you suggested, other channels have the White House counsel give it to Trump’s incoming White House counsel. So Trump’s right to be upset about that. I think if you look at the real chronology and the nature of the battle here, those intelligence chiefs who were the best we had, who are terrific and have done great work. I think they made a mistake here. And when people mistakes, they should apologize. ” Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN | 1 |
WASHINGTON — Donald J. Trump has selected Representative Mick Mulvaney of South Carolina, a conservative Republican member of the House and a fierce advocate of deep spending cuts, to be his budget director. “He’s a tremendous talent, especially when it comes to numbers and budgets,” Mr. Trump said in a statement. Mr. Mulvaney, 49, helped found the House Freedom Caucus, the group of conservative lawmakers who pushed for Speaker John A. Boehner to resign. As budget director, Mr. Mulvaney would help guide the ’s promise of a repeal of the Affordable Care Act, a tax overhaul and a huge investment in the nation’s infrastructure. An early backer of Mr. Trump’s during the campaign, Mr. Mulvaney has taken a hard line on spending during President Obama’s term, vowing not to raise the nation’s debt limit and embracing the term “Shutdown Caucus” because of his willingness to shut the government down instead. Mr. Mulvaney was elected in the Tea Party wave of 2010, when he defeated John Spratt, a veteran Democratic congressman who had been chairman of the House Budget Committee. He won by branding his opponent a liberal, unconcerned about fiscal prudence. Once on Capitol Hill, Mr. Mulvaney joined a conservative bloc that pressed for slashing federal spending more deeply than House Republican leaders preferred, and became a prominent face of the movement on Capitol Hill. He was one of several dozen House Republicans who refused to back the deal to raise the statutory debt limit. Mr. Mulvaney has repeatedly opposed some of his own party’s budget proposals, and quickly established himself as one of the most outspoken members of that 2010 class of Republicans. By 2013, at the outset of his second term, he declined to support Mr. Boehner’s as speaker, abstaining from the vote in protest. Strongly Mr. Mulvaney, who has a degree in international economics from Georgetown and a law degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, chafed as much at the Republican leadership in the House as he did at Mr. Obama’s direction from the White House. If confirmed by the Senate to run the Office of Management and Budget, Mr. Mulvaney will be responsible for helping to shepherd the president’s spending requests through a Congress. | 1 |
Why Did Attorney General Loretta Lynch Plead The Fifth? Barracuda Brigade 2016-10-28 Print The administration is blocking congressional probe into cash payments to Iran. Of course she needs to plead the 5th. She either can’t recall, refuses to answer, or just plain deflects the question. Straight up corruption at its finest!
100percentfedUp.com ; Talk about covering your ass! Loretta Lynch did just that when she plead the Fifth to avoid incriminating herself over payments to Iran…Corrupt to the core! Attorney General Loretta Lynch is declining to comply with an investigation by leading members of Congress about the Obama administration’s secret efforts to send Iran $1.7 billion in cash earlier this year, prompting accusations that Lynch has “pleaded the Fifth” Amendment to avoid incriminating herself over these payments, according to lawmakers and communications exclusively obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.
Sen. Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) and Rep. Mike Pompeo (R., Kan.) initially presented Lynch in October with a series of questions about how the cash payment to Iran was approved and delivered.
In an Oct. 24 response, Assistant Attorney General Peter Kadzik responded on Lynch’s behalf, refusing to answer the questions and informing the lawmakers that they are barred from publicly disclosing any details about the cash payment, which was bound up in a ransom deal aimed at freeing several American hostages from Iran.
The response from the attorney general’s office is “unacceptable” and provides evidence that Lynch has chosen to “essentially plead the fifth and refuse to respond to inquiries regarding [her]role in providing cash to the world’s foremost state sponsor of terrorism,” Rubio and Pompeo wrote on Friday in a follow-up letter to Lynch. More Related | 0 |
“The U. S. global ballistic missile defense poses a deep risk to the security of the region,” declared Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Monday after meeting with Japanese officials in Tokyo. [The Associated Press describes Lavrov’s visit as the first “ ” meetings of foreign and defense ministers between Japan and Tokyo since Russia annexed Crimea. Japan has participated in sanctions against Russia for that action. Lavrov specifically denounced the THAAD missile system America is installing in South Korea as a “response completely out of proportion” to the North Korean threat. He said the United States was “pumping arms into the region. ” Tokyo has been thinking about asking the United States to pump a THAAD missile system into Japan, especially since the recent launch of four ballistic missiles towards the Japanese coast stoked fears that Pyongyang may be capable of “swarm attacks” or “saturation launches” that would overwhelm Japan’s missile defenses. One of the arguments against THAAD missile shield deployment is that North Korea might be able to fire a dozen or more missiles at once and overwhelm even the Terminal Area Defense System. That would make THAAD acquisition disruptive to Japanese relations with Russia and China, both of which believe the system is ultimately intended to limit their military options, without gaining any real security against North Korean aggression. Lavrov is well aware that political turmoil in South Korea gives Russia an opening to pressure Seoul into canceling THAAD deployment. Odds are that the replacement for impeached South Korean President Park will be less enthusiastic about the system than she was. “At the end of the day, if the reality unfolds in a way that South Korea’s national security and the economy were damaged because of the THAAD, not because of the North Korea issue, then it’s not really a rational situation, is it?” Choi an adviser to presidential candidate Moon said over the weekend. The economic damage Choi referred to is coming mostly from an enraged China. Sergey Lavrov’s comments in Tokyo are a warning of national security damage that will be heard clearly in Seoul. The Associated Press notes that Russia and Japan had one other lingering bit of business to discuss at the “ ” meeting: World War II isn’t over yet. It still isn’t over because no major breakthrough on the fate of the disputed Kuril island chain was announced after Lavrov’s trip to Tokyo. The disposition of these islands has prevented Japan and Russia from signing a peace treaty and formally concluding the Second World War. On the bright side, Russian media reported on Monday that Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida expressed a willingness to make travel to the islands easier for Russian citizens, and Russia has floated similar proposals with respect to the Japanese. However, Kishida also voiced concerns about Russian military activity in the south Kuril Islands, and official conveyed those concerns to Lavrov at the meeting. Specifically, Japan is worried about Russia’s deployment of coastal missile systems. | 1 |
Syrian War Report – October 28, 2016: Militants Make Do-Or-Die Attempt to Break Aleppo Siege ‹ › South Front Analysis & Intelligence is a public analytical project maintained by an independent team of experts from the four corners of the Earth focusing on international relations issues and crises. They focus on analysis and intelligence of the ongoing crises and the biggest stories from around the world: Ukraine, the war in Middle East, Central Asia issues, protest movements in the Balkans, migration crises, and others. In addition, they provide military operations analysis, the military posture of major world powers, and other important data influencing the growth of tensions between countries and nations. We try to dig out the truth on issues which are barely covered by governments and mainstream media. What Does Washington ‘Plan B’ in Syria Really Mean? By South Front on October 29, 2016 …from SouthFront
In October a series of reports appeared in The Washington Post and other US media about expected supplies of various modern weapon systems to the so-called ‘moderate opposition’ in Syria. The reports argued that Washington was considering the new plan for Syria that included massive supplies of weapons that had to allow the oppositioneers to defend themselves from the Russian and Syrian air power and artillery. This fact was described as an indication of Washnigton’s skepticism about the prospects of so-called ‘peaceful solution’ in the country. Nonetheless, it was neither approved nor denied, according to the media.
The secret CIA program of training and arming ‘moderate terrorists’ has been the core of American strategy, aiming to overthrow Assad and set a puppet government in Syria, since the start of the war. Nonetheless, the Obama administration is likely set to postponed the resumption and expansion of this program and to pass the need to make a decision to next president. The US leadership is not ready to make the decision now because the recent military developments have shown that despite all money spending, supplies and CIA efforts, Washington still cannot rely on the moderate terrorists as a clearly pro-US force on the ground. Every US attempt to separate secular militant groups from jihadi factions, at least for PR needs, have failed. And the recently created New Syrian Army (NSyA) has shown an impotence in clashes with ISIS. The US propaganda campaign to discredit Russian-Syrian-Iranian operations to liberate Aleppo faced a significant problem – massive civilian casualties during the Mosul offensive, supported by the US-led coalition.
In this case, open and massive supplies of arms and munitions to the terrorist groups in Syria could lead to significant loses for Washington in political and PR terms and will hardly lead to strengthening of the US influence on the Syrian conflict. If the US administration avoids to do this, Moscow, Damascus and Tehran will fully take the initiative in the war that would also lead to negative effects to the US influence in the Middle East.
So, most likely, Washington will make a compromise decision to allow its regional allies – Saudi Arabia or Qatar – to supply limited numbers of man-portable air-defense systems to the so-called ‘opposition’, even if this opposition is al-Nusra Front. At the same time, the US-controlled media and diplomats will continue to put pressure on Syria, Russia and Iran over alleged civilian casualties in Aleppo city and ignore the humanitarian situation in Iraq. It will not allow the terrorists to re-take the initiative in the war but will buy time until the new US president comes into the office and start to impellent own strategy in the region. Related Posts: No Related Posts The views expressed herein are the views of the author exclusively and not necessarily the views of VT, VT authors, affiliates, advertisers, sponsors, partners, technicians, or the Veterans Today Network and its assigns. LEGAL NOTICE - COMMENT POLICY Posted by South Front on October 29, 2016, With 248 Reads Filed under World . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 . You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed. FaceBook Comments
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LONDON — Until Britain voted to leave the European Union, Philip Levine never thought deeply about his Jewish heritage. But looking for a way to ensure that he could still work and live in Europe once Britain leaves the bloc, Mr. Levine, 35, who was born in Britain and lives in London, decided to do what some Jews, including his relatives, might consider unthinkable: apply for German citizenship. He did so by employing a provision of German law that has been on the books since 1949 but that has been little used in recent years. With some exceptions, it allows anyone whom the Nazis stripped of their German citizenship “on political, racial or religious grounds” from Jan. 30, 1933, to May 8, 1945, and their descendants, to have their citizenship restored. (For those born before April 1, 1953, German citizenship can be derived through the father only.) Most of those who lost their citizenship during that period were Jews, though they also included other minorities and political opponents. He is not alone in turning to the German law after Britain’s decision to end its membership in the European Union, also known as Brexit. Since the vote in June, the German Embassy in London said it had received at least 400 requests from Britons for information about German citizenship under a legal provision known as Article 116. At least 100 are formal applications by individuals or families, said Knud Noelle, an embassy official. “We expect more in coming weeks,” he said, adding that the embassy normally receives roughly 20 such applications every year. The interest among British Jews is far greater than ever before, said Michael Newman, the chief executive of the Association of Jewish Refugees, who said that he, too, was considering applying for German citizenship. The association is based in London. “I don’t remember hearing of requests before” for German citizenship in the association’s history, he said. “It’s taken Brexit to do this. It was a . ” The development is among the most surprising techniques being used by British and European citizens as they seek a second passport that would allow them to retain their ability to travel, work and live anywhere in the bloc even after Britain’s departure is complete sometime in the next several years. People from the Continent living in Britain, Britons living in Europe and Britons living at home but eager to retain the benefits of European citizenship are investigating their heritage, considering marriage, studying residency requirements and otherwise searching for legal paths to get around the effects of the British vote. “I didn’t realize how simple it is,” Mr. Levine said of the application process for German citizenship, adding that he had done it initially for practical reasons and because his brother brought it up. “It’s literally a back door” into Europe. Britain allows dual citizenship, and Jews interviewed for this article said they planned to keep their British nationality. They said they had no immediate plans to move to Germany, either. Rather, German citizenship would allow them to keep traveling inside the European Union and maintain other benefits of belonging to Europe. Many British Jews, especially the younger generations, are comfortable with Germany, which they say has done enough to confront its past. Richard Ferrer, the editor of Jewish News, which is based in London, said he did not plan to apply for German citizenship, but only because he was a “born and bred Brit. ” Germany has done everything in its power to right its past wrongs, he said. “I’m very and I’m very happy with Germany,” he said. But if the process of applying for citizenship is straightforward, it is wrapped in complex questions of identity and statehood that tore Europe apart in the last century, one more unintended consequence of Britain’s decision to go its own way after more than 20 years in the union. In Mr. Levine’s case, his grandparents fled Germany in 1939, at the start of World War II. They kept their documents, including old passports and entry visas into Britain, which are necessary for the application process. About 70, 000 Jews from Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia arrived in Britain before 1939, Mr. Newman said. But those from Germany and Austria, enemy states, were regarded with suspicion by the British authorities. Many were held in internment camps in places like the Isle of Wight and the Isle of Man, often together with Germans who had also decided to resettle in Britain. After the Nazi Party was declared the only legal party in Germany, the government passed a law to strip individual Jews of their German citizenship, with their names listed in the Reich Law Gazette. Jews living abroad lost their citizenship in November 1941. As deportations began and the first extermination camps were being built, Jews were stripped of their assets, leaving many stranded in Germany because their passports had been nullified. For some of the British Jews now applying for German citizenship, the process has led them to confront, for the first time, a painful family history. Some American Jews are going through the same process, albeit without the additional incentive provided by Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union. Mr. Levine is an artist and uses his shaved head as a canvas for what he calls headism, artwork intended to raise awareness of mental health issues. He grew up feeling very British, but has also traveled extensively across Europe and has many German friends. His grandparents avoided talking about Nazi Germany — and he did not ask. Not long ago, for the first time, Mr. Levine held in his hands a passport belonging to his grandfather, a large red “J” stamped on the cover to signify “Jude,” German for Jew. His aunt, who kept the document, also showed him a Nazi government letter notifying his grandfather that one of his names had been changed to sound more Jewish. In the space of a couple of weeks, as Mr. Levine asked questions and dug around his family archives, what was originally a practical decision took on a more personal meaning. “My reaction became — I want to spite the Nazis,” said Mr. Levine, who asked some of his German friends to translate the letter because he does not speak German. They, too, expressed outrage over its contents. It was only then that he fully realized his part in history, he said, and felt that “now I can do something about it. ” Thomas Harding is another Jewish Briton applying for German citizenship. “I feel much more comfortable about Germany and Germans,” he said. When Britain announced it was leaving Europe, “I felt really distressed,” he said. “I felt like I was losing something. ” The of Alfred Alexander, a prominent doctor in Berlin whose patients included Albert Einstein and Marlene Dietrich, Mr. Harding, 48, said that his desire for citizenship stemmed from a project to restore his ’s home, which was seized by the Nazis and only recently returned to the family. The summer house, on Berlin’s westernmost border in Gross Glienicke, Germany, and near what used to be a Nazi airfield, was awarded a landmark status in 2014 and turned into a memorial for truth and reconciliation. The project was the focus of his recently published book, “The House by the Lake. ” Villagers of Gross Glienicke had initially reached out to him for a separate project researching the village’s Jewish families, including his. In the beginning, “I still had a lot of antagonism toward Germany and the Germans,” Mr. Harding said. “I was very distrustful. ” But as his relationship with the villagers deepened, work on the house progressed and a tentative friendship blossomed, “it gave me the confidence of walking through the door,” he said. “And they welcomed me through. ” His attitude toward Germany brightened further when it began accepting hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees. “I was very grateful to the Germans, because I think it was incredibly brave, very difficult, very controversial, but the right decision,” he said. His sister, who lives in Germany and is married to a Syrian Kurd, brought over their Syrian relatives earlier this year. Mr. Harding said he felt a sense of wonder at how history is an endless repetition. “This is not about Germans or Jews or Syrians,” he said. “This is a human condition. This is going to happen all the time. ” That all came to a head at 9 a. m. on June 23, he said, barely two hours after Britain finished tallying the vote to leave the European Union. “I thought, ‘O. K. I actually do not want to be apart from Europe,’” Mr. Harding recalled telling himself. “I love the fact that I’m not applying for citizenship — I’m having my citizenship restored,” he said. “It’s in the initial basic law when Germany was created. I just think that is so powerful. ” | 1 |
We have heard the stories about Apple fanatics selling body parts and changing their passport in order to get the latest products from the company, but this latest story coming from China gives a different perspective on how you can use Apple devices as a tool.
As a rather strange tool, in fact: an entrepreneurial Chinese woman is said to have convinced 20 men that she has been dating to buy her iPhones, which she would then sell and use the money as a downpayment for a house.
The purchase of a house is probably the single biggest one-time spending in the lifetime of a person, and it could take long years of hard work, so it is indeed remarkable that the woman found the quick way to get there (however, not the most ethical one, arguably).
Let’s make it clear: the story seems to have started on local Tian Ya Yi Du forum, where someone by the nickname Proud Qiaoba told the story of how her co-worker Xiaoli (not her real name) asked each of her 20 current boyfriends to buy her the new iPhone 7. How in the world is it possible to simulatenously date 20 people remains a mystery that gives this whole story a bit of a fairy tale aura, but knowing that China suffers from a terrible male-to-female ratio let’s assume that is somehow possible.
Xiaoli, whose life remains veiled in secrecy, then sold all of the phones to a suspiciously particular place: mobile phone recycling site Hui Shou Bao, all for a total of 120,000 Chinese yuan, the equivalent of around $17,500. The woman then used the cash for a downpayment towards a countryhouse home.
Xiaoli broke the news when she invited her co-workers for a house warming party. “Everyone in the office is talking about this now. Who knows what her boyfriendsthink now this news has become public.”
From Qiaoba we also learn that Xiaoli “is not from a wealthy family. Her mum is a housewife and her dad is a migrant worker, and she is the oldest daughter. Her parents are getting old and she might be under a lot pressure hoping to buy them a house… But it’s still unbelievable that she could use this method!”
It does indeed sound quite fantastical and made-up, and some have theorized that it’s all just a theory to popularize the local Hui Shou Bao phone re-seller (the company has confirmed that it had indeed sold 20 iPhones from a single person recently).
Meanwhile, the whole story quickly started becoming popular in China: a ’20 mobiles for a house’ hashtag went trending on local microblog Weibo and has been used more than 13 million times.
Reaction sway from admiration for Xiaoli’s boyfriend-getting and management skills to sheer awe and condemnation of her actions. Whatever it is, Xiaoli – if she even exists – is now said to shy away from the public eye and to refuse interviews from media. That’s actually not surprising… those 20 boyfriends surely would not be happy about her actions.
Phone Arena
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Ранее в СМИ появилась информация о том, что в Москве без вести пропала 13-летняя дочь Анатолия Сердюкова. Якобы 26 октября Наталья сбежала из дома вместе с 16-летней подругой, и к поиску подростков подключились сотрудники ФСБ РФ.
По данным "МК", школьницы запланировали побег еще несколько дней назад. 16-летняя девочка вела себя странно. По словам родных, в выходные школьница купила походную палатку. А 26 октября, придя домой из школы, надела теплые вещи, немного перекусила и убежала из дома на глазах удивленной бабушки. Позже родственники нашли записку, вложенную в планшет со словами: "Я ушла познавать мир".
Родители девочки сразу позвонили в полицию. Тогда выяснилось, что школьница ушла из дома с 13-летней подружкой, дочерью от второго брака бывшего министра обороны Анатолия Сердюкова. Подростки познакомилась по интернету, а за день до побега ходили вместе в театр.
Как сообщают СМИ, Наталья проживает в отцовской квартире на Рочдельской улице, рядом с Белым домом. Перед побегом девочка отправила маме смс-сообщение: "Я ухожу из дома". Телефон беглянка не отключила, поэтому аппарат успели запеленговать.
Не так давно еще один представитель "золотой молодежи" попал на страницы СМИ. Сына вице-президента "Лукойла" Руслана Шамсуарова приговорили к 300 часам обязательных работ по делу о гонке на Gelandewagen. Как сообщает РИА Новости, такое же наказание Гагаринский суд Москвы назначил Виктору Ускову.
Обвинения в угрозе применения насилия в отношении сотрудников ДПС с них сняты, однако, оба признаны виновными в оскорблении полицейских. Сидевший за рулем во время погони, Абдувахоб Маджидов, оправдан по всем эпизодам. Суд также постановил изъять элитный внедорожник в пользу государства.
Напомним, в мае 2016 года на Ленинском проспекте столицы Руслан Шамсуаров с друзьями устроили гонки. Видеоролик, на котором молодые люди на Mercedes-Benz G63 AMG нарушали правила дорожного движения, а затем пытались скрыться от полиции, вызвал большой общественный резонанс. Участники гонки получили по 15 суток административного ареста.
Позже против молодых людей были возбуждены уголовные дела по факту "угрозы применения насилия в отношении представителя власти" и "оскорбление представителя власти". Фразы, сказанные нарушителями в адрес сотрудников ДПС, "имели негативный окрас" и "порочили честь и репутацию полицейских". Лингвисты выяснили, что подсудимые пытались "показать свое превосходство".
Прокуратура просила для Шамсуарова и Маджидова наказания в виде двух лет и одного месяца колонии общего режима, а для Ускова, ранее уже судимого, два года и семь месяцев.
Читайте последние новости Pravda.Ru на сегодня "Золотая молодежь" на "Гелендвагене": гонки с полицией Поделиться: | 0 |
Around 300 civilians were killed in eleven airstrikes conducted by the US-led coalition in Syria, which Amnesty International investigated for its latest report. Amnesty says the US must come clean about the civilian toll of its fight against Islamic State.
Amnesty suspects that US Central Command (CENTCOM), which directs coalition airstrikes in Syria, “may have‌ carried out unlawful attacks†in Syria , failing to take necessary measures to prevent civilian killings.
“We fear the US-led coalition is significantly underestimating the harm caused to civilians in its operations in Syria,†said Lynn Maalouf, Deputy Director for Research at Amnesty International’s Beirut regional office.
“It’s high time the US authorities came clean about the full extent of the civilian damage caused by coalition attacks in Syria. Independent and impartial investigations must be carried out into any potential violations of international humanitarian law and the findings should be made public.â€
Amnesty investigated evidence, including eyewitness accounts, reports by human rights organizations and the media, photographs and video footage as well as satellite imagery, related to 11 suspected coalition attacks in Syria. The group estimates that the attacks have claimed as many as 300 civilian lives. So far none of these deaths has been acknowledged by CENTCOM.
The report published on Wednesday added that the total civilian death toll from coalition action “could be as high as 600 or more than 1,000†since the operation against Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS, ISIL) started in Syria in 2014.
One of the strikes investigated by Amnesty took place in the early hours of December 7, 2015. The attacks hit two houses in the village of Ayn al-Khan, near al-Hawl in al-Hasakah governorate in northern Syria, killing 40 civilians, including 19 children, and injuring at least 30 others, the report said.
According to an eyewitness account, an initial night strike was followed by a second attack from a helicopter gunship, which hit first responders trying to dig out survivors.
“At this point I had a two-month-old baby boy in my arms whom I had rescued. The hit caused me to fall and drop him‌ I fell into the hole made by the air strike. That was what saved me‌ My mother, aunt, wife and children – a daughter who was four years old and a son who was two and a half were all killed. The woman and her son who I’d rescued were killed. Everyone but me was killed,†the survivor said.
The strike is believed to have targeted IS fighters. But local Kurdish militia reportedly warned the coalition that there were civilians in the area.
Amnesty said CENTCOM’s failure to acknowledge civilian deaths in Syria, as well as the poor record of investigating such incidents in Afghanistan and Iraq, poses grave concerns over the toll which the civilian population of Mosul, Iraq is likely to face from the ongoing operation to take the city from IS. The US-led coalition is providing air support for the offensive.
“Given the likely increase in air strikes by the US-led Coalition as part of the Iraqi offensive to recapture Mosul, it is even more pressing that CENTCOM be fully transparent about the impact of their military actions on civilians. And it is crucial that they adhere scrupulously to international humanitarian law, including by taking all feasible precautions to spare civilians and to minimize harm to civilian homes and infrastructure,†said Maalouf.
A similar operation to capture Manbij, Syria, which is far smaller than Mosul, killed more than 200 civilians, Amnesty estimated.
Meanwhile, US State Department spokesman John Kirby said that the US “takes seriously all credible allegations of civilian casualties.â€
“Pentagon has a fairly comprehensive system for analyzing themselves what these allegations are and then, when they feel that they want further investigation, they do it. And unlike any other military in the world, they actually release the results of these investigations. And unlike any other military in the world, if the hold people accountable for their actions they [bring them to justice] too,†Kirby said during the press briefing on Wednesday.
At the same time, he said that the Department of State is not aware of the Amnesty’s report about the US Central Command (CENTCOM) strikes in Syria and suggested contacting the Pentagon for that matter. He also welcomed the Amnesty’s “input†and stressed that “no military tries harder than the US military to limit, to prevent casualties to civilians or damage to civilian infrastructure.â€
“We are not at all afraid to receive criticism about our efforts,†Kirby added.
The 300 fatalities are those that Amnesty considers credible, but the number is likely around 900, the report’s author, Neil Sammonds, told RT. He said that while there were some indications that the Pentagon would try to improve the targeting of its strikes in Syria, so far this hasn’t happened.
“Until now the big picture in Syria is that they are not investigating thoroughly enough, they are not aware as they should be of the amount of civilians they have killed, and it means that it is quite possible that they will be killing more civilians in their campaign to retake Mosul from Islamic State.â€
He added that Amnesty was focusing on other parties in the Syrian conflict, including the Syrian government, Russia, terrorist groups and armed rebels, who, he said, are responsible for more civilian deaths than the US-led coalition, which explains why the report didn’t come sooner.
Last week, Amnesty International blasted Russia for civilian deaths in Aleppo. The Syrian city is divided between government forces and various armed groups, including the Al-Qaeda offshoot Al-Nusra Front. Russia says that the militants use civilians as human shields and would not allow them to leave the city, derailing several attempts by Russia to open humanitarian corridors out of the city.
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These SCUMBAGS want to try and CLAIM the e-mails are “ILLEGITIMATE” because they were "stolen," but if you listen closely, you will see they are always very careful to NEVER DENY what is IN the e-mails! Typical politicianspeak! They ALL need to be HANGED for TREASON!!!! | 0 |
October 28, 2016 Venezuela crisis enters dangerous phase as Maduro foes go militant In a curious convergence of events on the same day last week, four Venezuelan provincial courts issued identical rulings, state governors quickly hit Twitter to celebrate, then the election board emailed a short but bombshell statement. Opposition hopes for a referendum to recall President Nicolas Maduro were dashed, on grounds of fraud in an initial signature drive. The vote was off. For many in the opposition, that settled a years-old debate about the nature of Venezuela’s socialist government, uniting them in conviction they are now fighting a dictatorship. Their new militancy heightens the risk of unrest as the South American OPEC member of 30 million people grapples with a dangerous economic and political crisis. “Can anyone in the world now really doubt that Venezuela is living in tyranny?” said housewife Mabel Pinate, 62, dressed in white among thousands of protesters who took to the streets against Maduro on Wednesday. “We are sick of this. It’s time to toughen up and do what we must to save Venezuela,” added Pinate, whose husband was fired from state oil company PDVSA by Maduro’s predecessor Hugo Chavez and whose two children have gone abroad. | 0 |
8. Emigre Super Blocs Part VIII:The Quasi-Legal Coup-Hillary Clinton Information Operations In Election 2016 . “The purpose of “ Inform and Influence Operations ” is not to provide a perspective, opinion, or lay out a policy. It is defined as the ability to make audiences “think and act” in a manner favorable to the mission objectives. This is done through applying perception management techniques which target the audiences emotions, motives, and reasoning.
These techniques are not geared for debate. It is to overwhelm and change the target psyche.
Using these techniques information sources can be manipulated and those that write, speak, or think counter to the objective are relegated as propaganda, ill-informed, or irrelevant. ~ Global Research, US Psychological Warfare in Ukraine .”
W hat if the strife, rumor, and clamor that the world has seen in the presidential campaign were part and parcel of an Inform and Influence Operation against Americans to determine the election outcome? Bear with me for a moment as I lay out the proofs. The quote above is from an early 2015 article with the author showing what it could look like in the civilian world.
” What would we do? Disrupt, deny, degrade, deceive, corrupt, usurp or destroy the information. The information, please don’t forget, is the ultimate objective of cyber. That will directly impact the decision-making process of the adversary’s leader who is the ultimate target.” – Joel Harding
IO or IIO (Inform and Influence Operations) as defined by the US Army includes the fields of psychological operations and military deception. All of this is used in the civilian world the same way by private contractors.
In this election, private contractors were hired to focus their capacity to influence the American population. This is proven and you deserve a step by step look at it if you are voting.
What Project Veritas shows is damning evidence of what I have been documenting in the emigre series articles since spring 2016.
By using mainstream media, they started an integrated approach which includes influencing their political opponent’s decision making. Media is given messages that follow the same themes and fill the entire information space by using an across the board effort. The effort drowns out any other message.
According to the Observer, this has been happening throughout the election cycle to benefit Hillary Clinton. “ Rather than informing voters to enrich democracy , the mainstream media has developed a feedback loop between support for particular candidates and the political agenda they intend to support. The freedom of the press is necessary for a democracy to function.” The article further points out that it was the media that helped rig the primaries against Bernie Sanders.
Wikileaks has clearly shown the interplay between mainstream media and the Clinton campaign. And they have shown clearly that most of the mainstream media are working to influence the election . This goes beyond partisan electioneering. All of this follows the exact pattern, a well planned Information Operation against the American public .
As Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton was also the Ex-Officio Board Member of the BBG . The BBG (Broadcasting Board of Governors) run RFE/RL (Radio Free Europe/ Radio Liberty). Most of the 8-member board, appointed by the President of the United States, are the who’s who of powerful media moguls in film, news, print, and radio. Appointment to the BBG is like being awarded an ambassador position for the media industry. It’s also why big media carries the same line or themes.
The 7th member of the board of directors which runs RFE/RL is Mathew Armstrong . He is a longtime friend and mentor to retired Brigadier general Joel Harding. He provides Harding a lot of access and influence in media. Armstrong’s background is public relations. He is an expert in IO and IIO operations. His bio: Author, lecturer, and strategist on public diplomacy and international media . He has worked on traditional and emerging security issues with both civilian and military government agencies, news organizations, think tanks, and academia across several continents.
In what appears to be a conflict of interest, at least two BBG board members are working actively for the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign.
Karen Kornbluh is helping refine and to get Hillary Clinton’s message out. ” All of them are names to watch if Clinton wins — and key jobs at the FCC and other federal agencies are up for grabs.”
According to her bio : Karen founded the New America Foundation’s Work and Family Program and is a senior fellow for Digital Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations. Karen has written extensively about technology policy, women, and family policy for The Atlantic , The New York Times and The Washington Post . New York Times columnist David Brooks cited her Democracy article “Families Valued,” focused on “juggler families” as one of the best magazine articles of 2006. Michael Kempner is the founder, President and Chief Executive Officer of MWW Group, a staunch Hillary Clinton supporter, and may get a greater role if she is elected . Kempner is a member of the Public Relations Hall of Fame. Michael Kempner hired Anthony Weiner after the sexting scandal broke in 2011.
Jeff Shell, chairman of the BBG and Universal Filmed Entertainment is supporting a secondary role by being an honor roll donor to the Atlantic Council . While the BBG is supposed to be neutral it has continuously helped increase tensions in Eastern Europe. While giving to the Atlantic Council may not be illegal while in his position, currently, the Atlantic Council’s main effort is to ignite a war with Russia. This may set up a major conflict of interest.
According to journalist Robert Parry “The people that will be taking senior positions and especially in foreign policy believe “This consensus is driven by a broad-based backlash against a president who has repeatedly stressed the dangers of overreach and the need for restraint, especially in the Middle East.”
Parry goes on to say that at the forefront of this is the Atlantic Council, a think tank associated with NATO. Their main goal is a major confrontation with nuclear-armed Russia.
The Atlantic Council is the think tank for the CEEC (Central and Eastern European Coalition) which is associated with NATO. The CEEC has only one goal. The question it poses to candidates that mattered is “Are you willing to go to war with Russia?” Hillary Clinton has received their unqualified support throughout the campaign.
The Central and Eastern European Coalition represent the various Central and Eastern European countries to the US government. What makes them special in an election is that they control a 20 million person strong bloc vote in key states across the country and sway elections by themselves. The price of a Clinton win is war with Russia.
While the rest of the BBG board support Clinton’s proposed policy of closing Syrian airspace, the CEEC wants it because it will mean direct conflict with Russia. Hillary Clinton’s first foray into Islamic politics led to genocide and made the way for ISIS setting up training camps in Kosovo. Hillary Clinton has been friendly with jihadists for as long as she has had a national political career. According to US Special Forces on the ground in Syria training the moderates, there are NO moderates to train .
Green Berets are forced to train jihadis that they know will eventually attack us. Support our troops? Give them good, honorable missions. They deserve better, don’t they?
As you go through the above links, the information is staggering. Shown are large groups of people strategically located in swing states that will do anything to get her elected. The question is why?
Politically, we have a two party system. If you say you are Republican, people have at least a general idea of what you mean. For Democrats, it’s no different. There are different kinds of politics that fit easily under each umbrella. But the point is they are recognizable and we know where they stand on issues.
Tell me, what are OUNb beliefs? OUNb is a political party and set of beliefs just like Republican or Democrat. The reason I am asking is that you can’t tell me. The odds are you haven’t heard about it before. When the Atlantic Council or The Project for the New American Century takes all the senior positions in the Clinton White House, it will be filled with OUNb and similar political partisans for the first time without dissenting voices.
“Unity to act when required has been the diaspora’s mantra – this cannot be disputed .
As time moves on, we see that things take a natural course. We see that two wings of the OUN – (OUNb)Banderivtsi and (OUNm)Melnykivtsi – are working actively on the international level, working in partnership and currently are in strong negotiations about becoming a single entity again.”
The OUNb political party started under Stepan Bandera and their political beliefs are quite literally Nazi. In the 1930’s they swore undying loyalty to Adolf Hitler and the Diaspora was directing Waffen SS battalions from America secretly even as other Ukrainian emigres were fighting them. The UCCA is the head of OUNb thought in America and now they want America to celebrate their totalitarian beliefs with them. If you disagree with totalitarian politics, you are the enemy. After a brief description of what kind of beliefs the people have from the Atlantic Council that are taking up cabinet positions, the proof it is happening now follows.
The OUNb were the SS that manned the concentration camps during the Holocaust. They successfully murdered 3 million war prisoners by starving them to death. The OUNb killed over 250,000 Jews, 500,000 Ukrainians, and committed the first Holocaust at Babi Yar. Today the UCCA is funding and running the volunteer battalions raping and killing in Donbass the same way.
They and the other emigre group leaders are also behind buying the media headlines and reach, damage control, and the Information Operation against Americans today. If you want to know what American politics will look like within a few years, look at Ukraine.
There are people who live abroad, who do not feel fully accepted as a minority, and here there is a phenomenon which I call long-distance nationalism. . .The members of the diaspora create for themselves an image of the home land, which is a stronger emotional investment than the country in which they live…One negative consequence of the diaspora experience is the emergence of what Ander-son calls non-responsible politics: diaspora participation in the politics in the country with which they identify can often be toxic, and their impact can be felt through the funding of particular political figures, nationalist propaganda, and even weapons…- Multiculturalism, memory, and ritualization: Ukrainian nationalist monuments in Edmonton, Alberta – Pers Anders Rudling
With the field day the Emigres and paid media had with Donald Trump over David Duke, they forgot to tell you that Ukrainian emigres supporting Hillary Clinton hired Duke in Ukraine as a professor of history and sent their American kids to learn there. Almost all Ukrainian politicians have been through this fascist education system known as MAUP . The Ukrainian American and other likeminded ethnics are the people that will fill the senior foreign and domestic cabinet positions.
“ OUNb leader Ivan Kobasa also took responsibility of making sure the Ukrainian-Americans received the proper secondary education at Ukrainian nationalist schools(MAUP) in Ukraine. From the mid-2000’s enrollment in this educational system has skyrocketed into the hundreds of thousands. Today almost all members of the current Ukrainian government are graduates of this ideological system that was taught to them by moderates like David Duke who is also a graduate of the MAUP system.”
“I do care about social and economic issues affecting every American, but given the war in Ukraine, there is only one issue that we as Ukrainian Americans must focus on: Ukraine .
The Ukrainian issue “trumps” all other personal issues!
A vote for Trump is a vote against Ukraine!
When it comes to U.S. elections, Ukrainian Americans are a statistically minor, divided, unorganized voting group. The Central and East European Coalition is a coalition of U.S.-based organizations that represent their countries of heritage, a voting group of over 20 million people. The Ukrainian Congress Committee of America and the Ukrainian National Association are member organizations of the CEEC. Americans of East and Central European heritage can make a significant difference and influence the election result if their attention is focused.” Ukraine Weekly The Presidential Election: Can We Make A Difference
Hillary Clinton’s response is she will defend Ukraine’s borders! Even though it has no eastern or northern border to defend. She has guaranteed to start a war with Russia if she is elected.
Not only is Clinton buying the media through these second parties, but they are hiring professional, former military psyops professionals to deny pertinent information from voters and disrupt her political opponents message. At the same time, they are paying an across the board mainstream media to simultaneously publish articles and video that lift her campaign up, disrupt, destroy, and drown out alternate messages.
Wikileaks noted this when it exposed the Clinton campaign’s program to incite violence and obfuscate the point. The Huffington Post example of this is” Editor’s note: Donald Trump regularly incites political violence and is a serial liar , rampant xenophobe , racist , misogynist and birther who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims — 1.6 billion members of an entire religion — from entering the U.S”.
“ We understand the Clinton camp has hired beaucoup and Zwanzig (a lot) of trolls, we also understand the Kremlin has done the same. We just do not know if Trump has followed suit. From a counterintelligence perspective, this is confusing as heck.
One of the really neat things about this election is seeing all my information operations and information warfare friends on social media, contributing and commenting, looking darned intelligent! Theirs is normally the voice of reason, maturity, and intelligence.” Joel Harding
By systematically and continually attacking the voter’s psyche, Americans are being treated in the same way our government treats countries they overthrow . The right to make an informed vote has been denied to support any particular candidate.
What does an Inform and Influence Operation entail against the American public? Read the following carefully. The term “anti-western” refers to anyone that disagrees with whom he is working for. In this case, he works for the Ukrainian Emigres. This also covers Syria. Every media outlet or journalist writing about these subjects that aren’t carrying the line he lays out is the enemy. These are the tactics being used today during the election.
“I am building a database of planners , operators, logisticians, hackers, and anyone wanting to be involved with special activities I will call ‘inform and influence activities’. I have received a few different suggestions to help organize operations – of all sorts – against anti-Western elements. No government approval, assistance or funding. This skirts legalities. This is not explicitly illegal and it may not even be legal, at this point. That grey area extends a long way. I am only trying to assess the availability of people willing to participate in such efforts. Technology, equipment and facility offers are also appreciated. If you would like to be included in my database, please send a tailored resume to joel_harding@”
If you don’t think this is possible , this has been going on around you for a long time. look at the credentials of retired Brigadier General Joel Harding and decide for yourself. But first look at what he promises he can do for you when you hire him.
“ Information operations and warfare, also known as influence operations, includes the collection of tactical, operational and strategic information about a competitor as well as the dissemination of information and propaganda in pursuit of a competitive advantage over an competitor or adversary in the corporate, government or military realm.
It is our job to maximize your advantages over your competitor while minimizing your competitor. We work on the national level down to the individual level. We seek to give you every advantage possible in order to advance your position, increase your reputation, and maximize your standing in your field.”
“ Bio- Joel Harding spent 26 years in the Army ; his first nine years were spent as an enlisted soldier, mostly in Special Forces, as an SF qualified communicator and medic, on an A-Team. After completing his degree, Joel then received his commission as an Infantry Officer and after four years transitioned to the Military Intelligence Corps.
In the mid 1990s, Joel was working in the Joint Staff J2 in support of special operations, where he began working in the new field called Information Operations. Eligible Receiver 1997 was his trial by fire, after that he became the Joint Staff J2 liaison for IO to the CIA, DIA, NSA, DISA and other assorted agencies in the Washington DC area, working as the intelligence lead on the Joint Staff IO Response Cell for Solar Sunrise and Moonlight Maze . Joel followed this by a tour at SOCCENT and then INSCOM, working in both IO and intelligence.
Specializing in Russian Information Warfare for the past 30+ months. Consultant, advisor and subject matter expert on Information Operations, Strategic Communication and Public Diplomacy with more than 19 years practical, policy in IO, SC and PD. 35 years experience in broader defense and national security matters. I have lectured all over the world about Information Warfare and Cyberwar and have spoken at numerous conferences. I am currently focusing on the Ukraine/Russia information war with a simultaneous heavy emphasis on the accompanying hybrid war. I currently teach classes about Russian Information Warfare and a second class on Propaganda/Agitprop. Specialties: Information Operations/Information Warfare, Public Diplomacy, Strategic Communication, Counter-Disinformation, Electronic Warfare, Deception, Operational Security, Cyberwar, Intelligence, Special Forces and Special Operations. Primary author Ukraine National Strategy for Information Policy, submitted in 2015 and again in 2016.”
With his resume, no guess work is needed to understand how effective his friends are. Before going further, ask yourself if this is what elections are supposed to be?
As a litmus test take Hillary’s name out and put down what is known just through Wikileaks in a list. Put McCain’s name, Kucinich, Paul, Bush, and ask yourself would this be an acceptable candidate? Add what’s been shown here. Is there an acceptable candidate?
If any of them would be acceptable, sorry like many others you drank the kool-aid already.
“ I’ve seen how our heroes, activists , journalists, and celebrities have completely sold their souls to support something no person with an iota of morality would do. I’ve seen them say and do things to derail candidates who would have been a million times better for those less fortunate around us. It’s unfortunate most pretend to fight the establishment, to act like they love the people more than they love the struggle and the relevance that it brings them. I am not one of those and I won’t continue to be until the good Lord takes me.” Cesar Vargas
Hillary Clinton is not a Nazi. But every position of relevance will be filled with people that really are political Nazis. They are technically integral nationalists. They look down on democracy in any form. At least now you know what kind of government you are voting for.
Regardless of who wins, there are 2000 tanks, artillery, and rockets pointed my way, waiting for this election to be over. I am an American that lives in Donbass, and wrote many of the early breaking stories and much of the background about the conflict in Ukraine.
If you cannot objectively look and see a more sophisticated version of what happened here through 2014 is going on, I can’t help you. Soon the OUNb will order the volunteer battalions to start killing civilians on a large scale again. I will go back to reporting on the war.
If all these things weren’t being done, I would keep it simply about policy. Russia is not an enemy of the United States. Instead, I believe I am witnessing a quiet coup that demands legality in America.
If this Information Operation is allowed to win the 2016 presidency, then elections are fruitless. Every other election will be based on the same strategy. They will have to be for any candidate to win.
Your voice, your views, your informed choice will no longer matter. The IIO practitioner kills dissent. That’s their job. They’re only doing their job. GH Eliason Mr. Eliason l ives in Ukraine. He writes content and optimizes web based businesses across the globe for organic search results, technical issues, and design strategies. He is also a large project construction specialist. When Fukushima happened it became known that he was a locked high rad specialist with a penchant for climbing. He was paid to climb a reactor at a sister plant to Fukushima 3 because of a “million dollar mistake”. His now works in project safety. | 0 |
Here’s what we learned after the ugliest presidential campaign in modern times. The voters you blame, whose ballots — for Clinton or Trump — so mystify and offend you, are not a distant, unfamiliar America. They are sitting across the dinner table, or the office cubicle, or the bed. They are your parents, your siblings, your friends. Who wants to have that tough conversation, about why they voted as they did and about how it makes you feel? Just about nobody. So we avoid it. But like it or not, these people are in your life. The holidays are upon us. And deep down, you may actually want to have this talk. You may need to have this talk. So we put together a guide for how to do it. We consulted with a professional: Liz Joyner, the executive director of The Village Square, an organization that facilitates these kinds of intimate, difficult conversations. The ground rules: Do it over a meal or drink. (Dine by Skype if the distance requires it.) Don’t jump right into politics — just catch up first. Offer the benefit of the doubt. Assume the other person has generally good intentions. Almost everyone does. Don’t let imperfect word choices tank the conversation. Forget policy debates for now. Just listen to the answers to your questions. Your turn is next. Talk again soon. Promise. The questions: We brought together pairs of family and friends — one Trump voter, one Clinton voter per pair — and had them use this guide to facilitate conversation. You can listen to the first conversation below, and subscribe to The on iTunes or Google Play Music to follow along as we release new episodes next week. | 1 |
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — Donald J. Trump has named Thomas P. Bossert, a top national security aide under President George W. Bush, to be his homeland security adviser, the Trump transition team announced Tuesday morning. Mr. Bossert will become assistant to the president for homeland security and counterterrorism, a position the transition team said would be equal in status to that of Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, whom Mr. Trump has chosen to be his national security adviser. The same position under President Obama has been a deputy national security adviser. The change in rank “reflects the unwavering commitment Trump has to the safety and security of the nation, its people and territory,” the transition team said in a statement. “Mr. Bossert will focus on domestic and transnational security priorities as General Michael Flynn remains steadfastly focused on international security challenges,” it said. Officials on Mr. Obama’s national security team challenged the assertion that Mr. Bossert had been elevated to a higher position than his counterpart in the current administration, Lisa Monaco, who also has the title assistant to the president. A senior national security official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss personnel matters relating to the incoming administration, noted that Ms. Monaco was the chairwoman of the Principals Committee of the Homeland Security Council, had a seat on the National Security Council and participated alongside the national security adviser during daily national security briefings for Mr. Obama. The new designation for Mr. Bossert may suggest a desire by the new administration to reconfigure the national security apparatus at the White House. Before Mr. Obama, the homeland security adviser oversaw a staff that was separate from the one run by the national security adviser. Mr. Obama combined those into a single, unified staff when he came into office. Mr. Trump may be thinking about splitting them again. In the statement, Mr. Trump called Mr. Bossert “an invaluable asset” and praised the breadth of experience he would bring to the new administration. “He has a handle on the complexity of homeland security, counterterrorism and cybersecurity challenges,” Mr. Trump said. Mr. Bossert served as deputy homeland security adviser for Mr. Bush, and he runs a risk management consulting firm in Washington. He is also a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, working on the research institution’s Cyber Statecraft Initiative. Helping to protect the country from cybercrimes is likely to be a major focus for Mr. Bossert in light of the hacking of the Democratic National Committee and other incidents in recent years. Mr. Bossert will face the challenge of balancing cybersecurity needs against the privacy concerns of internet companies. “We must work toward cyber doctrine that reflects the wisdom of free markets, private competition and the important but limited role of government in establishing and enforcing the rule of law, honoring the rights of personal property, the benefits of free and fair trade, and the fundamental principles of liberty,” Mr. Bossert said in the statement announcing his appointment. News of Mr. Bossert’s selection drew praise from some members of Congress and former colleagues in the Bush administration, who described him as capable and knowledgeable about threats to the country. Representative Jim Langevin, Democrat of Rhode Island, also praised the choice. Mr. Langevin, a founder of the Congressional Cybersecurity Caucus, said Mr. Bossert had approached the issues of cyberthreats in a “centrist, bipartisan” manner. “I also hope that he will impress upon the the vital national security concerns tied to Russian information warfare activities, and I encourage him to work closely with Congress in attempting to build our resilience and our defenses to forestall such operations in the future,” Mr. Langevin said in a statement. Frances F. Townsend, who was Mr. Bush’s homeland security adviser, said she was confident that Mr. Bossert would “continue to demonstrate the capacity and insight needed to take on the tough challenges facing the country. ” She focused in particular on Mr. Bossert’s expertise in another key part of the job: responding to natural disasters and other crises that require coordination among the White House, governors and other state officials. In a brief text message, Ms. Townsend called Mr. Bossert a “great pick” and recalled that he had helped lead the “ review” after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, helping to create more than 100 recommendations about how to better respond to such crises. “Tom knows the importance of partnerships and most importantly how best to establish and strengthen them,” she said. Also on Tuesday, the transition team formally announced that Jason D. Greenblatt, the chief legal officer of the Trump Organization and a longtime adviser to Mr. Trump, would serve as his special representative for international negotiations. Mr. Greenblatt has been the ’s business attorney for years, and in a statement, Mr. Trump called him “one of my closest and most trusted advisers. ” “He has a history of negotiating substantial, complex transactions on my behalf, as well as the expertise to bring parties together and build consensus on difficult and sensitive topics,” Mr. Trump said. As the president’s special representative, Mr. Greenblatt is likely to focus on peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians, renegotiating trade agreements and the relationship between the United States and Cuba, among other international issues. | 1 |
Field is correct about the 8a companies and Trump is correct about China . http://planet.infowars.com/politics/whats-the-truth-about-american-vote-fraud-anything-to-suspect As Curtis testifies they were downloading a lot of secret stuff from Nasa as well . Chinese controlling the vote in USA you couldnt make that up , no wonder they have all your industry . No one can deny this didnt happen they are all there at the testimony on video . | 0 |
By John Kaminski on October 30, 2016 John Kaminski — The Rebel.org Oct 24, 2016 Dark secrets remain unrevealed as society’s fabric disintegrates Why is every major politician surrounded by Jewish ‘advisers’?
Too many things don’t make sense.
What makes us act against our own best interests?
Why are we Americans encircling Russia with tanks and missiles? Why do we create our own terrorists and bomb our own allies? Why do we blow up our own buildings and claim that the crime was done by terrorists who simply cannot be found? What do the misanthropes who operate the gears of power want by causing constant conflict?
Sometimes Washington reminds me of the Old Testament, ruled by a wrathful God who orders us to kill those whose property we wish to steal. Why would we hire the most odious criminals in the world to butcher the inhabitants of Middle Eastern countries? I mean, whose work are we doing by these actions, covertly funding Israel-friendly Arab radicals to demolish nations who refuse to do our bidding?
There can be only one answer. America is no longer run by Americans. Because the same people who commit the crimes own the newspapers and TV networks, most Americans don’t realize their country has long ago been taken away by the very international bankers Henry Ford warned us about, who Adolf Hitler warned us about.
Now Ford and Hitler are the most widely reviled personalities from the 20th century. Not a day goes by when you don’t hear something nasty about them. They tried to stop the Jewish takeover of reality. The tidal wave of Jew-owned white noise media overwhelmed them.
What most people still don’t realize is that none of these neocon wars would have happened had Hitler won World War II. He never wanted to conquer anyone. He only wanted the return of Germany’s ancestral lands, which had been stolen by the Jewish allies (US, Britain, USSR) after World War I.
All the horror stories about Hitler are projected Jewish fantasies that have dominated the Western airwaves for a half century. They are meant to obscure Hitler’s economic miracle and the path to a financial future free of the vampire Jews.
Hitler floated seven peace proposals prior to World War II. But because he had challenged the Jewish monopoly of control of the world’s financial affairs, the Jews would let him have no peace. The secret Jew Roosevelt pushed the levers of war. Winston Churchill started bombing the first day he took office.
Think of all the wars that have been spawned by the Jewish murder machine since that time, the 1940s. It’s impossible to say that none of them would have happened, but had Hitler won, the Jews would not now be strutting around the world using U.S. military might as its brutal enforcer to rob all nations of the their most valuable possessions, and even more chilling, to stamp out all traces of opposition to their psychopathological hijacking of everyone’s reality.
You can’t live a normal life because of the Jews, harvesting and neutering everything they encounter, like some robot parasite destined to suck the life out of the world, as Hitler and Ford both warned us about, turning your food into poison and your daughters into tramps.
There is no one to turn to for help. Turn to the wrong person and you can get killed.
Call the cops and your pet’s as good as dead.
Anywhere in the white United States, if you saw a woman being raped by 20 men on the street, everyone’s first impulse would be to stop the crime, or at least report it to the cops.
Not so in the ugly deserts of the Middle East, where insane Arab terrorists hired by Jews and Americans commit the most barbaric crimes in order to blame these false flag atrocities on people it means to exterminate, a task for which any excuse will do for these world famous killers.
This is the real American personality, the goons who hired those al-Qaeda mercenaries to rape and kill Qaddafi in the streets, people like Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Stone cold killers. And they laugh about it.
If you were in your right mind, you wouldn’t ever trust people like this.
America gassed those hundreds of children in Syria and tried to blame it on Assad. People finally began to realize that nothing the U.S. government ever says is true. The terrorists who supposedly slit people’s throats are so over-the-top because they are all a Hollywood act < http://www.globalresearch.ca/isis-beheadings-of-journalists-cia-admitted-to-staging-fake-jihadist-videos-in-2010/5399345 >.
Americans have begun to realize that they are the killers they thought they had been fighting. It turns out the fight has just begun.
Unglued. Society is becoming unglued. The fabric of society is disintegrating. What horrific chaos is sure to follow can only be envisioned by our most harrowing nightmares.
There are no explanations that adequately describe what exactly is happening to the world at the present time except to note that things that once seemed to work now no longer do.
It seems like freedom has been devalued and shackled, and governments make too many decisions the people never wanted, like the World Wars, the Great Depression and the War on Drugs.
To be an American today is like living in a grand old steamship that is not so slowly sinking into a jellified ocean, petrified minds in a viscous sea of misinformation, afraid to challenge orders they know are lies, sliding into oblivion without a clue that they are doing so.
The separation of the population into chosen and neglected applies to all religions, guaranteeing perpetual sectarian strife. Those who are chosen believe it is their right to rob and kill whomever they choose, that they are simply following the laws of nature and the personalized deity they choose to hallucinate.
Governments have adopted this policy. Peace is achieved when robbers agree to divide the spoils. The rest of the people are left to scramble for scraps. It has always been this way, I think.
The government overreach to extend help to needy immigrants is really part of a ploy to dilute the American electorate into undereducated slaves who will support the government through any atrocity because it is the government that is keeping them alive.
This is how the Democrats guarantee themselves a majority of citizens too grateful for the financial help to ever quarrel with the government’s expansionist objectives and its continuing restrictions on individual rights.
There are simply too many subjects to be addressed, to be worried about.
They swathe all the final cuts of vegetables, right before it goes to market, with Glyphosate, to make sure everyone gets poisoned.
Step in brackish Louisiana water with a cut on your foot and your body will completely disintegrate in a few weeks.
The fallacy of the cloister regiments us into soldier slaves, causing us to murder those who disagree with what we say.
The more technology increases the faster human abilities dissipate.
The flaw of democracy is that the people with the money can convince the people with the guns to start shooting at any time.
The government has blackmailed states into implementing a Communist agenda that reduces the intelligence of citizens.
So many lies told over so many years.
As long as we try to see things through the toxic filter of Jewish media, what we see will be a mirage that aims to mislead, exploit or destroy us. Coming unglued.
The world is coming unglued.
Like the Atlantic Gulfstream, the circadian rhythm of the planet has been disrupted.
Ever since it was discovered that men will kill each other over practically anything, there have been those who will cultivate disagreements for profit, such as weapons makers who seek to widen their markets by endlessly promoting conflict, or newspaper owners who fan the flames of discord and scandal and watch their profits skyrocket.
It’s like we’re all spectators at the old Roman Coliseum only instead of some hapless prisoner getting chewed up by lions, the stakes in this entertainment are if the beast wins much of the known world will be turned to rubble and most of us will be suddenly dead. This is no exaggeration. Just ask the people in Syria or any of a dozen other countries that Israel, using U.S. muscle, has destroyed.
It’s like the shadow of Judaism casts its evil pall over every area of human endeavor, pollutes everything, cheapens our lives, makes everything artificial. Why do Jews seek to murder the natural?
Why do they strive toward wanting to be everyone’s jailer and demanding immunity for their obnoxious crimes against humanity, whom they call beasts while their heckling Heebs twitch and moan to the insanities of their so-called holy book.
They suck the blood of their babies’ penises. How insane do you have to be?
Failure to identify this threat and solve this mystery has now placed human society in absolute peril, as the majority of human beings sinks into a second class consciousness, while those with the keys to kosher success join the ranks of ruthless guards keeping watch on a world of pathetic prisoners.
Too many things don’t make sense.
Is our fear of death so strong that we have to destroy ourselves to prove we are immune to it? Better yet would be acknowledgment of its inevitability that would create a clearer view of who we are and what we’re doing.
Because what we’re doing now, and how we are proceeding further into this toxic reality we have created for ourselves, offers us no future except and increasing decay and corruption that the Jews seem to love so much. Like bloodthirsty vultures they look for stricken carcasses on the road that they can devour in their insatiable drive to consume the whole world and everything in it.
The Jews intend to kill everything natural and replace it with a Jewish product that can be controlled from afar. They will fail in this attempt and likely destroy humanity in the process.
In any case, we are well on our way to being completely regimented with independent consciousness no longer an option.
We have no fix on the future. Neither presidential candidate offers us a way out of our trouble because neither will admit the overwhelming control inflicted by the Jews on the whole world is leading to a mindless police state in which our only thought will be to serve the state no matter how cruel and depraved that assignment might be.
To disagree with the aims of the Jewish monster state is to court your own death, or at least to be slandered and ostracized by people you thought were your friends.
Too many things don’t make sense. What unexplored dark corner of our brains would make us create our own enemy in order to keep our fellows enslaved and exploited? John Kaminski is a writer who lives on the Gulf Coast of Florida, constantly trying to figure out why we are destroying ourselves, and pinpointing a corrupt belief system as the engine of our demise. Solely dependent on contributions from readers, please support his work by mail: 6871 Willow Creek Circle #103 , North Port FL 34287 USA. | 0 |
Trump Jr. Suspiciously Helps Arizona Woman Push Stalled Car, Uses It As A Photo Op (VIDEO) By Stephanie Kuklish
It is amazing how Trump Jr., known for his rich boy attitude, would suddenly feel the need to get out and help push a stalled car while campaigning in, the now swing state, Arizona .
Of course, he didn’t leave without a photo op or video footage being recorded. Tyler Bower, the Maricopa County Republican Party Chairman, posted the footage on Twitter and told the Arizona Republic : “She was just stunned. She was taken aback.” This is why I'm voting Trump! @DonaldJTrumpJr helping push a ladies car off the road in 101 degree heat in Arizona after a rally today #MAGA pic.twitter.com/ngp1ZhS8Wm
— Tyler Bowyer (@conservatyler) October 27, 2016
Even the woman who Trump Jr. helped was extremely surprised that any politician would stop to push a car to the side of the road. And seeing as Arizona has been stampeded by Republican rallies this season, it’s a little hard to believe this just happened to take place in Arizona. AZCentral talked about Trump’s presence in the swing state stating : “Donald Trump, whose grip on Arizona’s 11 electoral votes appears to be in jeopardy, will appear in downtown Phoenix for a Saturday rally, his seventh Arizona event this election season.”
Arizona, a historically red state through and through, has now been determined as a swing state for the 2016 election season. Arizona residents began evening out their party preference when Republican presidential nominee, Donald Trump, started making insane remarks about building walls to keep out immigrants and having Mexico pay for it. We are sure his tasteless conversations and sexual assault allegations didn’t help the situation at all.
Arizona being a border state is no stranger to immigrant issues, but even with Trump’s hardcore attack on border patrol, Arizona residents still think he is a little hard to swallow. A collaborated effort between The Arizona Republic , Morrison Institute For Public Policy , and The Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication resulted in a poll showing Democratic presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton pulling ahead of Trump in the election. Data from Arizona Republic/Morrison/Cronkite News poll from Oct.10-15,2016
If Arizona votes for Hillary Clinton it will be the second non-red candidate that Arizona has ever voted for, the last being Mrs. Clinton’s husband, Bill Clinton in 1996.
Though Trump Jr. made an interesting choice when showing his caring side, we still don’t think it will help his dad win over, what should have been, one of the easiest states for the Trump campaign to snag.
Featured Image Via Tyler Bowyer/Twitter About Stephanie Kuklish
I am a 30 something writer passionate about politics, the environment, human rights and pretty much everything that effects our everyday life. To stay on top of the topics I discuss, like and follow me at https://www.facebook.com/keeponwriting and https://facebook.com/progressivenomad . Connect | 0 |
A new report finds that the Chicago Police Department has a suicide rate 60 percent higher than the national average. [The study found that of the 10, 000 officer force up to three CPD officers per year commit suicide, the Chicago reported. The CPD’s suicide rate corresponds with the extreme level of violence seen in the Windy City. Last year Chicago’s murder rate was higher than that of New York and Los Angeles combined. “There is a problem, and nobody’s doing anything about it,” Ron Rufo, a peer support counselor, told the paper. “Supervisors don’t talk about it. The don’t talk about it. And it’s like the administration does not want to admit it’s a problem. ” Psychologist Alexa James also noted that CPD officers are living in what many might consider a “war zone” but aren’t getting the mental health treatment they need. “It is a hard, hard job, and police officers get very little support,” she insisted. The Times reported that there are only three counselors for the entire force. In contrast, the LAPD has 11 clinicians on staff for an even smaller force. One problem identified is an Illinois law that prevents anyone who has had mental health issues from being able to gain a firearms license. Because of this law many officers feel reticent to engage a mental health provider for fear of losing the license they need to remain a police officer. Illinois is one of the few states to impose such a law on mental health patients. “But that’s the ” psychologist Marla Friedman said. Police “are afraid if they go to counseling, they’ll lose their job forever. But if they hold it in, they can stay on the job. And then they snap. Which is safer?” “This is a real problem,” Friedman added. “Police officers are the only class of citizen in the U. S. who is going to lose their job for seeking mental health care. ” Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail. com. | 1 |
Report Copyright Violation So you think SUVs are safe? Shocking video Back in the 70's everybody was driving rear wheel drive cars in the worst of snowstorm. My dad was even going hunting and fishing with his Chevrolet because that all there was back then. Now every SUV ad tries to sell us the lie that SUVs are safer in the snow and you just can't drive in the snow without one. Re: So you think SUVs are safe? Shocking video SUV's are fine...the idiot driver was going to fast and went into the snow filled shoulder. Drivers fault...not the SUV. "I don't give a tuppenny fuck about your moral conundrum, you meat-headed shit-sack." ~Bill the Butcher "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." ~Arthur C. Clarke "He's a nut-bag! Just because the fucker's got a library card doesn't make him Yoda!" ~David Mills ~ Se7en "THE PLANET IS FINE! THE PEOPLE ARE FUCKED" ~George Carlin RIP Anonymous Coward | 0 |
GUYS THE PURGE WONT HAPPEN ITS A MOVIE ITS FAKE IDIOTS | 0 |
A Muslim faith healer has been arrested for the brutal drugging and stabbing of 20 of his disciples at a Sufi shrine in Punjab, Pakistan. [The victims of the massacre were reportedly drugged with food, stripped naked and then killed with a dagger and stick. Along with the 20 dead, four more people were wounded in the incident, which occurred around midnight between Saturday and Sunday. The four are in critical condition. The alleged perpetrator of the crime is the shrine custodian and faith healer Abdul Waheed, who confessed that he killed these people because he feared that they had come to kill him, according to regional police chief Zulfiqar Hameed. “The suspect appears to be paranoid and psychotic, or it could be related to rivalry for the control of shrine,” Hameed said. Pervaiz Haider, a doctor in the hospital treating the survivors of the incident, said most of the dead were hit on the back of the neck. “There are bruises and wounds inflicted by a club and dagger on the bodies of victims,” he said. Waheed was known for erratic behavior but was popular as a faith healer. “Local people say Abdul used to beat the visitors who came to him for treatment of various physical or spiritual ailments,” local rescue service official Mazhar Shah said. “Sometimes he would remove the clothes of his visitors and burn them. ” According to Deputy Commissioner Liaqut Ali Chatha, people would come to the shrine for cleansing their sins and allow the caretakers to beat them with clubs. “But in this case the visitors were first drugged and then stabbed with daggers and hit with clubs, apparently during the cleansing process,” Chatha said. The shrine was built two and a half years ago and named after the late boxer Mohammed Ali, a convert to Islam. It has become a popular place of pilgrimage and healing for Sufi Muslims. Two other suspects were reportedly arrested together with Waheed. Many hardline Muslims regard Sufis as heretics because of the mystical element of their tradition. Earlier this year, militants of the Islamic State ( ) carried out a massive suicide bombing on a prominent Sufi Muslim shrine in Pakistan, killing up to 88 people and wounding more than 300 others. Last November, another Islamic State attack at a Sufi shrine in Pakistan left a least 52 people dead and more than 100 others injured. A bomb blast hit worshipers participating in a ceremony at the shrine of the Sufi saint Shah Noorani, some 750 kilometers (460 miles) south of Quetta, the provincial capital of restive southern Balochistan province. Follow Thomas D. Williams on Twitter Follow @tdwilliamsrome | 1 |
Africa , China , Hybrid Wars , United States By Andrew KORYBKO (USA)
The most colonized and exploited continent in the history of the world is once more the center of global competition, albeit this time the form of rivalry between the Great Powers has taken on a much more nuanced, though no less intense, form. The US, France, and their unipolar allies want to retain Africa as their exclusive labor, market, and resource reserve for the foreseeable future, both out of their own material self-interest and with the added strategic benefit of depriving China and others of its economic fruits. Contrarily, China wants to integrate the world’s fastest growing economies and populations into the unfolding multipolar world order and give them a fair chance at succeeding in the global system. The contrast between the West’s neo-colonialism and China’s liberating sovereignty couldn’t be more crisp, and it’s this opposition of diametrically opposed global strategies and development models that sets the stage for the grand proxy battle between the US and China over Africa.
Just as much as China needs Africa in order to maintain its steady growth rates into the foreseeable future and ensure its domestic stability, so too does the US want to ‘poach’ Africa from China in order to offset the structural sustainability of its number one rival’s global leadership. The nature of the African-wide proxy conflict is that China is ardently working to finance, construct, and connect various infrastructural projects to one another in order to create a supraregional web of intermodal transport corridors that could then perfectly complement the maritime portion of the One Belt One Road (“New Silk Road”) global vision, while the US is trying with equal fervor to seize control of key nodes along these transnational routes as well as strategically disrupt crucial portions in order to increase China’s dependence on the unipolar-influenced areas. As the ultimate last resort, however, the US, the “world island” in all the manners that it can be strategically understood as, will pull out all the stops and unleash a ‘scorched earth’ trail of Hybrid War destruction in its wake while it strategically retreats back to its self-sufficient “Fortress North America” as the final coup de grace in the African proxy war against China.
More than likely, it won’t ever get to that dramatic of an absolute point whereby the US fully retreats from Africa or totally destroys the continent with Hybrid War, but realistically speaking, there’ll likely be a blended development of scenarios that takes place in this heated theater of competition over the coming decades that integrates elements of both extremes. China will predictably succeed in spearheading several ultra-strategic New Silk Road development corridors in Africa, while the US will probably sabotage a few others and unleash a handful of Hybrid Wars to keep the existing ways indefinitely at bay from fully actualizing their envisioned geo-economic potential. There’s no surefire way to know with absolutely certainty what the future will bring, but it’s possible to acquire an educated expectation about the structural and systemic manner in which the identified group of states will be targeted by US-provoked Hybrid Wars. Even accounting for the possibility that some of the forthcoming examined scenarios might be “naturally occurring” in that they require little if any external pressure to instigate, there’s still a strong likelihood that at least some of the investigated possibilities will eventually occur to varying extents and that the geopolitical repercussions will indisputably impact quite negatively on China and the larger multipolar world’s grand position in the New Cold War.
This section of the book is organized in such a manner that Part I will describe Africa’s overall geopolitical situation, highlighting the influence of hegemonic and institutional regionalism (sometimes overlapping, other times not) over the continent’s affairs in order to clearly illustrate the preexisting advantages and obstacles to China’s New Silk Road vision. The subsequent chapters of the African Hybrid War research will then comprehensively examine the five separate categories of states and their pertinent neighbors that the author has already identified as being relevantly incorporated into the immediate thesis. To remind the reader about what was described in Part III of the book’s Introduction and to expand upon the earlier presented paradigmatic map in a more structurally detailed manner, the following cartographic revision will be henceforth used as the point of reference in guiding the research beyond Part I:
Key
* Yellow – East Africa/East African Federation
* Blue – Central-Southern Africa
* Black – Failed State Belt
* Red – Lake Chad Region
* Hashed/Thatched Lines – countries that will inevitably become involved in the targeted category states’ Hybrid War destabilization, whether as an aggressive actor, a passive victim, or a blended mix thereof. Schematic Observations
A few comments need to be stated about the above map before commencing Part I of the African Hybrid War research:
Southern African Cone:
Firstly, while it’s conceptually possible for all states in Africa (or anywhere in the world, for that matter) to be afflicted by Hybrid War, keeping in accordance with the axiom that this method of warfare is more often than not applied in disrupting multipolar transnational connective infrastructure projects and/or seizing control of them, it can be surmised that the ones which could most radically revolutionize the continent’s geopolitical and geo-economic would be most actively targeted and consequently receive the highest likelihood of some sort of Hybrid War destabilization in the coming future. All of this will be described in detail in Part I, but for now it’s enough to know that the identified states lay along the paths of China’s presently constructed Silk Road routes or most probable forthcoming projects that it could pursue in achieving its grand strategic ends.
It should be clarified at this point that the Southern African Cone was not included in the above model because its economic corridors are relatively well-established and have already been utilized for some time by all sorts of Great Powers, the West obviously included. Furthermore, concerning Namibia and Botswana’s global connectivity via South Africa, and to an extent, even Zimbabwe and Mozambique’s as well, this mostly deals with the one-way transport of natural resources and less so with each respective state’s labor and market potential. While each of these countries have a given role that they play vis-à-vis the Chinese economy, none of them except for South Africa (the hub through which most of their exports, barring Mozambique’s, pass) is integral enough to be targeted by their own Hybrid War.
Theoretically speaking, disruptions in the regional periphery around South Africa could have a strategic effect in putting pressure on the country’s multipolar leadership and pave the way for a regime change scenario, but given the rotten nature of corrupt South African politics, it’s more expected that traditional ‘soft coup’ means such as constitutional technicalities and simple Color Revolutions (i.e. the anti-Rousseff coup in Brazil) would be used in this instance. Additionally, the resources of the population-sparse countries of Namibia and Botswana and the general market and labor potential of South Africa are already pretty much integrated into the larger global economy, so there are many existing unipolar stakeholders that would also be adversely affected by a severe disruption in or around their common point of African access. The same can’t be said so much about Zimbabwe and Mozambique, the former rich in minerals such as diamonds and platinum while the latter is poised to become one of the world’s largest LNG exporters, so it’s entirely possible that they may be targeted sometime in the future. But even so, it would be less in connection with China’s multipolar transnational connective infrastructure projects than with their own individual standalone potentials in their respective fields, thus strategically differentiating them from the other countries included in the present study (although that is not to say that Hybrid War techniques would not be used – they probably would to a large extent).
Insular Importance:
In relation to the above, the insular countries of Africa were also not included in the continental overview, although they too play an important role in its evolving geopolitical paradigm. Nevertheless, because they’re island nations, they’re not directly connected to anything else besides the high seas, so although they may have valuable transit node status for China as an integral component of its Sea Lines of Communication, they’re not as directly affected by the region-stretching Hybrid War study that was commenced for the mainland. Nevertheless, because each of them could play a pivotal role in influencing continental affairs if properly utilized by a partnering Great Power, it’s worthwhile to very concisely comment on how they fit into the larger strategic equation that will be described throughout this work:
* Yellow – Canary Islands (Spain): This legacy holding allows Madrid to exert influence near the coasts of Morocco and Western Sahara, both thought to be rich with fish and possible energy resources.
* Green – Cabo Verde (formerly Cape Verde prior to late-2013): The former Portuguese colony connects the North and South Atlantic and offers a strategic position near the mouth of the Senegal River, as well as being positioned along an important oceanic route that the US and EU must take to access West Africa.
* Blue – São Tomé and Príncipe: Another former Portuguese colony, this one is crucially located in the hydrocarbon-rich waters of the Gulf of Guinea and in close proximity to the shoreline of Africa’s largest economy, Nigeria.
* Violet – Comoros and the French overseas department of Mayotte: These two locations are almost on top of northern Mozambique’s LNG-prospected Rovuma Basin and thus near what will likely become a major energy exporting area in the near future.
* Orange – Seychelles: The former UK-colonized island chain lies along the route of approach that India and China must take in accessing the burgeoning East African marketplace, and it’s for this strategically competitive reason that New Delhi has proactively sought to build a naval base and position some of its military units there in order to “contain” China.
* Unmarked – Mauritius and the French island of Reunion: These two insular areas are not directly relevant to Africa’s mainland geopolitical order, although they do acquire significance vis-à-vis Madagascar and the US-controlled Indian Ocean bastion of Diego Garcia.
Transregional Conflict Overspill:
One of the most striking aspects of the reference map is that it clearly delineates the geopolitical fault lines where Hybrid War conflicts could easily become transregional:
Out of all of the areas designated by the map, it’s most probable that the uncontrollably violent processes in the Failed State Belt of the Central African Republic (CAR) and South Sudan would be the ones to spread to other parts of Africa, at least as regards the continent’s conflicts that are presently ongoing (and not accounting for those that have yet to possibly erupt). In particular, CAR’s chaos could result in a refugee and militant overspill to Cameroon and Chad, possibly leading to these respective Christian- and Muslim-led governments supporting their own confessional sides in the country’s unresolved civil war. The misleading “Clash of Civilizations” narrative that would assuredly be purposely pushed by the Western mainstream media will be discussed later on when addressing the Failed State Belt, but at this moment it’s useful just to be aware of the transregional “infection” potential that the CAR has in affecting the Lake Chad region. Additionally, the country’s domestic difficulties could also spread southward into the northern reaches of the Central-Southern state of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), representing a dual destabilization threat emanating from the CAR.
South Sudan can do something similar to the CAR in relation to the northern part of the DRC, but possibly even to the Horn of Africa state of Ethiopia and the East African state of Uganda as well. Tellingly, these latter two states are actively involved in the conflict resolution process in South Sudan and are jostling against one another for influence there in order to carve out defensive buffers (but also markets, of course) to protect themselves from this scenario. It should go without saying that South Sudan was only brought into existence because it was forcibly severed from Sudan proper over a three-decade-long civil war period, and the dynamic of anti-Khartoum action hasn’t stopped since Juba gained its independence in 2011. Therefore, South Sudan represents an even larger asymmetrical regional threat than CAR does, and their combined destabilization potential explains why they’re both categorized together as part of the Failed State Belt.
If their respective conflicts somehow merged into a transnational conflagration, then that would represent a large-scale Hybrid War threat in the geographic heart of Africa, but the closest this has henceforth come has been the over-exaggerated threat of Joseph Kony. With reference to the Failed State Belt’s Hybrid War vulnerabilities and the transregionalization that its internal conflicts pose, it’s little wonder then that the US exploited the mystique around this warlord in order to deploy a limited but very strategic contingent of its special forces to Uganda, South Sudan, DRC, and CAR. Almost as an afterthought but drawing on the tangent of transregional conflict overlap, it’s topically pertinent to recall the Darfur Conflict and how this essentially was a proxy competition between the Lake Chad regional state of Chad and the extended Failed State Belt and somewhat Gulf-influenced state of Sudan. It’s no longer as relevant of a geopolitical item as it once was during the mid-2000s, but it nevertheless still has the potential to re-erupt in the future, especially if the externally directed Sudanese dissolution process speeds up and makes headway in the states of Blue Nile and South Kordofan.
Lastly, there’s the realistic possibility that the US’ attempts to instigate a Hybrid War in Burundi could set off a chain reaction of destabilization in the eastern DRC, Rwanda (and by extent, possibly up to Uganda), and western Tanzania, thereby making this geographically tiny state a disproportionately large trigger in upsetting the regional balance. Although there’s not yet an active conflict in Burundi anywhere on par with the scale of what’s been raging in the CAR and South Sudan over the past couple of years, this doesn’t mean that one can’t quickly develop if the entire state collapses under Hybrid War pressure, and this disturbing scenario will certainly be explored more at length later on in the work.
Mapping out the expected transregional conflict overspill zones in Africa, one can unmistakably see that it’s the entire Upper-Central (Failed State Belt) and the eastern portion of the Central-Southern zones of Africa that are most at risk of this destructive process unfolding. Accordingly, this realization leads one to conclude that the DRC and the areas immediately abutting it provide the most fertile ground for the transnationalization of domestic conflicts, which somewhat (but not totally) explains why the Second Congo War eventually came to involve states located far away from the actual battlespace and be nicknamed “ Africa’s World War ”. To put it another way, the Hybrid War vulnerabilities of the identified area combined with its obvious geostrategic centrality to the African continent makes it doubly capable of sucking countless states into a literal Black Hole of Chaos that could easily become the ultimate proxy war climax between the US and China.
To be continued…
Andrew Korybko is the American political commentator currently working for the Sputnik agency. He is the author of the monograph “ Hybrid Wars: The Indirect Adaptive Approach To Regime Change ” (2015). This text will be included into his forthcoming book on the theory of Hybrid Warfare.
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Julian Assange to Speak Prerecorded RT Interview (11/5/16) 11/03/2016
In today’s video, Christopher Greene of AMTV reports on a prerecorded Julian Assange interview to be aired prior to the U.S. Election on Saturday November 5, 2016. Start Your FREE 14-day trial! Juror explanation for Ammon Bundy verdict 11/03/2016 OREGONLIVE Juror 4 has so far provided the only public explanation of the behind-the-scenes discussions that led to t ... Doug Casey: A Civil War Could Be in the Cards After the Election 11/03/2016 LEW ROCKWELL (Source: The 2nd American Civil War by Richard Hubal, via MN Artists) Nick Giambruno: The US preside ... Putin grants Steven Seagal Russian citizenship 11/03/2016 DAILY MAIL President Vladimir Putin signed off Thursday on a decree granting Russian citizenship to American action her ... AMTV Archives | 0 |
November 2015 Ads Watch: Israel Loving Hollywood Actor Just Issued Major Plea To America In 3 Minutes That’ll Rock The Election Oct 27, 2016 Previous post
In an impassioned reminder that the freedoms and safety enjoyed by millions of Americans are at risk, actor John Voight has issued a clarion call for voters to save their nation by preventing Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton from being elected.
“We were once a country of freedom, and now we are becoming a country of tyranny. We are witness to our own people burning down and looting our own cities: Ferguson, Milwaukee, Orlando, Baltimore,” said Voight in a new video. “We are all witness to our own people killing our police.”
Voight has said in the past that Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump stirs fear in his opponents because he “represents a form of freedom none of them ever saw before, and they are bewildered about it, and frightened about it.”
Voight said terrorism has come to America’s shores under the policies of leading Democrats.
“Islamic terrorists have killed thousands of people all over our country, and Hillary and Obama want to be politically correct and
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Man who ‘doesn’t care’ about election acting like some sort of Buddha 08-11-16 A MAN is irritating his colleagues by being self-consciously indifferent to the presidential election. Tom Booker, an accounts administrator from Maidstone, is rising above the frantic speculation with an annoyingly philosophical approach like he is some sort of mystical guru. Co-worker Nikki Hollis said: “The office is rife with chat about whether Donald Trump is going to annihilate us all by declaring war on China, or if Hillary Clinton is actually a robot controlled by the Illuminati, but Tom won’t join in. “He just gives this beatific smile and says something like ‘guys, it’s out of our hands’ or ‘it’s up to America to make their choice’ and then changes the subject. “He won’t even join in with our misty-eyed chat about how much we admire Barack Obama and secretly fancy Michelle. “I used to think he was just a laidback guy, but his lack of hysterical overreaction is making me suspect he voted for Brexit.” Booker said: “I just think they need to chill out. Also, I don’t understand politics and don’t want anyone to realise.”
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Go to Article Wow! Milwaukee’s Sheriff David Clarke nails it again! “[President] Obama is like a tenant who has been evicted from a property, and he’s going to trash the place on the way out the door just out of spite. So, nothing would surprise me from Obama in these waning days.” — Sheriff David Clarke | 0 |
45 Weird Bans on Women in Iran Gender apartheid in the Islamic Republic. October 27, 2016 Dr. Majid Rafizadeh
Under Iran’s Islamic laws, women are prohibited from performing basic day-to-day activities. I had firsthand experience of witnessing many of these strange and bizarre bans while living in Iran and other Muslim countries. Millions of women, including my relatives in Iran and Syria, continue to face these injustices. Some of the following rules, which are derived from Iran’s Islamic constitution and moral police codes, were recently reported on by Deutsche Welle Farsi . They exist in may other Islamic countries as well:
1. Women are prohibited from taking selfies with soccer players. Specifically, Iran’s “moral committee” has banned women from taking selfies with famous soccer players.
2. Iranian women are prohibited from riding bicycles. Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, recently issued an Islamic fatwa regarding officially banning women from riding bicycles. He argued that "riding bicycles often attracts the attention of men and exposes the society to corruption, and thus contravenes women's chastity, and it must be abandoned,” according to Iran’s state-run media.
3. Coffee shops are prohibited from hiring women. According to Iran’s police, women are banned from working in any cafés.
4. Iranian Muslim women cannot marry non-Muslim men. But Iranian Muslim men can marry non-Muslim women.
5. It is forbidden for women to wear boots over their pants. (Why? I am not sure what is Iran’s Islamic logic behind this.)
6. Women are not allowed to wear hats instead of veils to cover their hair.
7. Women are not allowed to wear tight clothes that show their body curves.
8. Women are prohibited from wearing tight clothes for swimming.
9. Women are forbidden from changing their religion or criticizing Muhammad, Allah, the Supreme Leader and other Muslim leaders.
10. Women are prohibited from entering sport stadiums and watching men’s sports.
11. In Iran, buses and subways are divided in two sections. The larger front section is for men, the smaller back section is for women. Women are prohibited from entering the men's section even if there are no seats left in the back and there are plenty of empty seats in front of the bus.
12. According to Iran’s moral police, women are banned from wearing leggings.
13. Women are prohibited from showing strands of their hair on any side. Article 683 states: “Those women that appear in the streets and public places without the Islamic hijab, shall be sentenced from ten days to two months’ imprisonment or fined from fifty thousand to five hundred thousand Rials.”
14. Women are banned from going camping with men.
15. Any kind of contraceptive surgery is not allowed for women.
16. Women are banned from entering coffeehouses or smoking hookah.
17. Women are not allowed to initiate divorce. Men have the right to do so.
18. According to Iran’s family code, women cannot travel abroad except with the permission of their custodian or natural guardian (husband, father, etc.). They also cannot obtain a passport without the consent of their husbands.
19. Women are banned from wearing clothes with writing on them.
20. Women are banned from taking their hijab off in any sport event, including in the Olympics.
21. Iranian women are prohibited from pursuing education in some academic fields. Iranian regime's oil minister argued that “education of women in the field of operations such as drilling and processing and so on that require (physical) activities in operational areas and sites is useless and these are masculine (men’s) jobs.”
22. Women are not allowed to work in any occupation if their husband disagrees with it. Article 1105 of the Civil Code states, “In relations between husband and wife, the position of the head of the family exclusively belongs to the husband.” In addition, when it comes to employment laws, Article 1117 of the Civil Code indicates, “The husband can prevent his wife from an occupation or technical profession which is incompatible with the family’s interests or the dignity of him or his wife.”
23. Women are banned from receiving the same amount of inheritance as their male relatives. Even if a husband dies, the wife will receive only one-eighth of the inheritance if she has a child.
24. Women are forbidden from having any physical contact with men, including shaking hands.
25. Women are banned from becoming a Supreme Leader.
26. Girls, as young as 9 years old, are not allowed to object to their parents decision to marry them off.
27. Women are not allowed to object to their husband’s requests for sex. The law of Tamkin means women’s submission, obedience, full accessibility and unhampered sexual availability to her husband. Sexual availability is considered a woman’s duty and a man’s right.
28. Women are not allowed to bring lawsuits if they are raped, unless they have four witnesses.
29. Women are banned from socializing or dating men.
30. Women are banned from attracting attention in public through “flamboyant behavior” such as laughing loudly.
31. Women are not allowed to show any part of their skin except the face. It is encouraged to cover the face as well.
32. Women are not allowed to have any kind of alcoholic drinks.
33. Women are not allowed to dance.
34. Women are forbidden from being lesbian. Sex between two women is adultery and the punishments range from stoning to execution.
35. Women are banned from listening to “forbidden” music.
36. Women are not allowed to have pets, such as a dog.
37. Women are banned from adopting except if they have a husband and he agrees to do so.
38. Women are prohibited from gambling in any kind of event.
39. Women are banned from having sex or marrying a man up to five or six months after their divorce.
40. Women are prohibited from having tattoos.
41. Women are not allowed to have premarital relationships with men.
42. In many of Iran’s provinces, women are banned from performing music on stage.
43. Women are banned from being judges.
44. Women are banned from striking their husband, but men are allowed to do so in some circumstances.
45. Women are not allowed to show their jewelry in public.
Some women continue to defy these rules, but many face severe punishment and discrimination for performing some of these normal day-to-day activities. We need to raise our voice in helping Muslim women in Iran and other Muslim countries who desire to experience freedom, social justice, equality, and do not want to be subjugated, dehumanized, treated as second class citizens, or solely as sexual toys for men. | 0 |
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Region: USA in the World When countries are in trouble they always react the same way. If they have economic troubles their governments take ever greater control of the public finances, whether through austerity or centrally-dictated spending programmes. When there is civil strife the government calls out the army and restricts liberties to regain control of the situation. When wars are taking place elections are cancelled so the government of the day remains in power to deal with the conflict. These measures have the effect of entrenching the “Establishment”, whoever that may be at a given time, and excluding others. People can only play a part in addressing the problems of the country at the whim of the Establishment, with appointments replacing elections in many such scenarios. Only when the Establishment is secure does it allow greater freedom of debate, action and participation, which are regarded as the hallmarks of stable countries . Now Donald Trump has been elected President of the United States on an avowedly anti-Establishment platform. He tapped into those disaffected by the political system and found the issues on which he could make the most noise. That in itself was a virtue with the constituency he was trying to attract. Too many people have become disaffected with politics everywhere because someone has decreed certain views to be unacceptable, without giving a reason why, and Trump was only too happy to give voice to those who have been told that their views don’t entitle them to one. But is Trump’s election the democratic revolution he claims? Does it actually give a voice to the voiceless and power to the powerless? In order to exercise any power President Trump will have to do all the things he accuses his opponents in the Establishment of, but worse. For a while he might get away with it, but he will never have the resources to win in the longer term. All we will have is the methods, with no returns: Establishment oppression on a scale beyond the worst nightmares of the enforced nobodies who now think they are somebody, but are in fact Donald Trump. Who do you think you are? As it turned out, Hillary Clinton failed to get past a problem she would not have had as a Republican. If you are on the conservative end of the political spectrum you are expected to act like you belong in power when you have it. People in more progressive parties claim to represent the interests of the broad mass of people who will never be rich and powerful. If they stay in power for too long, they create a distance between themselves and that mass which erodes their natural support. Hillary Clinton has been a national figure in the US for a generation. Her accession to the Democratic nomination was seen as almost dynastic, a factor which harmed Senator Edward Kennedy when he ran for the Democratic nomination against Jimmy Carter in 1980. She was referred to as the “Establishment candidate” throughout the campaign, particularly by members of her own party who preferred socialist Bernie Sanders, who complained throughout the primary process that the voting was being rigged and that the media were falsely reporting that she had won the nomination before it was mathematically certain . For a Republican, all this would play well, except in extreme circumstances such as Watergate. For a Democrat it was bound to depress enthusiasm in the party’s voter base, and either drive it to another candidate or persuade it to stay at home, particularly when enough scandal attaches to Clinton as it is due to her business and government dealings. Clinton was about her nice office in Washington, not the problems of real Democrats. Keeping her there would have solved nothing. This was seen most clearly in Wisconsin, a traditional Democratic mainstay which voted for Trump despite the fact exit pollsters were showing that a large numbers of voters greatly disliked both he and Clinton . Many of those who disliked Trump still voted for him because they felt disliked themselves by politicians such as Clinton, who had let them down more than a newcomer had been able to do. He was “the-none-of-the-above” candidate from early on in the primary election period. Poacher turns gamekeeper Whether Trump would have got anywhere near the Republican nomination had there been a Republican president for the last eight years is unlikely. Only as an outsider could he gain any traction within a party which thinks of itself as the natural party of government, and would pick an insider every time to maintain its hold on power. The Republican Party will remain largely embarrassed by Trump, despite his victory. He may be the voters’ idea of a president, but he isn’t what Republican politicians see as a Republican president. As the Huffington Post published underneath every article about Trump from January until election day, “Donald Trump regularly incites political violence and is a serial liar , rampant xenophobe , racist , misogynist and birther who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims – 1.6 billion members of an entire religion – from entering the US.” Ask most Republican Congressmen, who control both houses, whether this describes a Republican President and you know what the answer will be, though Trump himself revels in such depictions. Well before the end of his term Trump will have become the Establishment himself. So to achieve anything in the checks and balances system the US has he will either have to carry the party and the military-industrial establishment with him, and become more embedded than Clinton is to do it, or try and purge the very many who will oppose him. Throughout his “business career”, if repeated bankruptcy, con, robbing of contractors and tax avoidance can be dignified with such a term, Trump has relied on bluster and a stubborn refusal to face reality to prosper. Whether he can get away with that with the military and intelligence staff who have ruined America’s global reputation with impunity is another matter. Presidents who spent lifetimes working the system have not been able to control the CIA or the industrial and media barons. If Trump tries, he will have to exert extreme control to do it, and become more exclusive than the Establishment itself. Jimmy Carter was elected in 1976 as an antidote to a corrupt political establishment. Despite his long years of public service, he was discarded four years later for being exactly what he was elected to be – a good man out of his depth in murky Washington. Trump has never held any elected office. Is he going to take on those same forces and turn them into public servants? More than he can chew out
One of Trump’s selling points with poorer Americans is that he pledged to stop US involvement in costly foreign wars. In particular, he said he could work with Russia and saw no need for the continual war rhetoric coming out of every Western government. Obviously this plays well with those who can’t afford to feed their families. The money will be spent on them, not bombs. But is it even possible to reduce the US military commitment, with so many bases, so many troops employed, so many weapons which will be manufactured and sold regardless? Trump may well find that the best way to stop foreign wars is to buy up all the weapons so that potential enemies don’t get them. The War on Terror would greatly diminish if the US didn’t supply arms to its favourite terrorists whilst pretending to fight them. But there is a vast industry devoted to maintaining armament and troop levels, which can only be justified by fighting wars against enemies real or imagined . So how would Trump go about achieving such a goal? Trump and his supporters are sons and daughters of the Bolsheviks. Convinced they are right, they think they can say what they like, do what they like and everyone else just has to put up with it because any opponent is part of the corrupt Establishment. It is no coincidence that Nigel Farage, former leader of UKIP and the main proponent of the UK leaving the European Union, has described Trump’s victory as a “ Supersized Brexit . Farage’s supporters behave the same way: everyone they don’t like hasn’t got the right to an opinion anymore, because they lost, and were inherently bad to begin with. Based on all we have seen so far, if someone stands in the way of Trump’s ambitions as president they will be told that they are holdovers from a corrupt system, serving masters who are now enemies of the people, and must therefore be removed. In order to get rid of them he would have to use extralegal measures in many cases, and deny them an opinion or another job. The “people” Trump would be referring to are the dispossessed whose votes he courted, who by definition don’t have levers of power of their own. It hardly gives those people more power to demonise certain individuals on presidential say-so, but that is all Trump has offered so far, or may ever be capable of offering. Trump has enjoyed spreading hatred of various minority groups. As many commentators have pointed out, he has broken all the usual rules of presidential candidate conduct and got away with it. But this simply makes anyone a potential victim, and encourages such behaviour to go on unchecked. A system which was there long before a here-today-gone-tomorrow politician has all the levers his supporters don’t to maintain itself. But if attacked, it will have no alternative but to fight fire with fire. A battle for control fought behind the scenes would empower Trump’s supporters even less, whilst not addressing the specific problems which made them see Trump as the solution. Not beating them, only joining them This presidential election campaign was the ugliest within living memory. This played into Trump’s hands: it brought those who were told they couldn’t behave like that into the mainstream, and Trump as the outsider reaped the benefit. But it also created the expectation that this will be followed through: if you start such a process, you are expected to finish it. A poll taken just before Election Day showed that if Bernie Sanders had been running against Clinton and Trump he would have won by a landslide . Sanders supporters remain angry that he was denied the nomination by what they thought was an establishment fraud. Now Clinton has lost, they will make further efforts to ensure that anyone with Clinton credentials is neutralised so that they can present a more credible candidate in 2020, and will have much moral weight and grassroots sympathy behind this effort. As Clinton supporters will fight back in the same terms, the Democratic Party is likely to spend the next four years fighting itself rather than Trump, trying to exclude its own members in the same way Trump supporters want to get rid of everyone they don’t like. The Republicans have the same problem. Trump was as offensive to his intra-party opponents as he was to Clinton. Those who think themselves “real” Republicans will be emboldened by the pro-Sanders Democrats to seek to reclaim the party and its voters from the Trump constituency in the same way. This will generate more exclusion and counter-exclusion, even through Republican Congress versus Republican President battles, with each trying to show themselves to the public as More Republican Than Thou. Both Trump and Sanders supporters will now feel that they are the new “Establishment” because they have been backed by their respective publics to overthrow the old one. Though both Trump and Sanders were the none-of-the-above candidates, they will be the above from now on. To justify their initial behaviour, and satisfy their support, they will have to be even worse Establishments than the ones they have removed, more intolerant, more exclusive …more arbitrary. If the old guard is going to come back, they will have no choice but to adopt the same tactics. The choice at the next election will be between groups of battle-hardened intolerants who are more interested in serving their friends and stuffing their enemies than in the disaffected people in their midst. Trump has not overthrown the failed political Establishment and methods which created the disaffection he has exploited, he has confirmed their validity. Trump may change the personnel, but the Establishment will be the same animal, all the more dangerous for its delusions to the contrary. Seth Ferris, investigative journalist and political scientist, expert on Middle Eastern affairs, exclusively for the online magazine “ New Eastern Outlook ”. Popular Articles | 0 |
HONG KONG — For Asia, the bad news this week was not that Donald J. Trump detailed a plan to toughen American trade policy, especially toward China. It was that Hillary Clinton’s campaign accused Mr. Trump a few hours later of purloining her ideas, noting that she favored similar action on those issues. A strong dose of economic populism, with an occasional sprinkling of geopolitics, has suffused the trade plans of the leading American presidential candidates this year. Vying for votes, Mr. Trump and Mrs. Clinton are each promising to do more to preserve American jobs at a time of slowing global economic growth. And China — with its vast trade, rising international influence and authoritarian government — is a natural target. Presidential candidates vow every four years to do more to help American workers facing competition from abroad. After taking office, they have consistently pursued more conciliatory trade policies toward China, seeing a strategic benefit to warm relations with Beijing. But broad political distress this year over the loss of working class jobs to global competition, coupled with mounting concern about China’s increasingly assertive military posture, suggest that the next president could actually follow through on the pledges. If they do, the policies could pose a real predicament for China, and for other Asian countries that depend on its economy. Millions of jobs in China and across the region require the continued willingness of the United States to rely overwhelmingly on imports to supply American families with everything from the clothes they wear to the smartphones they carry. Rapid economic growth in China and the development of a strong consumer market had seemed to reduce the country’s need for huge exports to the American market. But China’s economy has recently slowed, hurting domestic players from small exporters to large steel makers. Weaker growth at home has made it all the more important for China to maintain a large trade surplus with the United States, selling more to consumers and businesses there than it buys. For years, China has exported four times as much to the United States as it imports, and it continues to do so. “If there are tougher trade policies from the United States,” said Shen Jianguang, an economist at Mizuho Securities Asia, “that will dampen Chinese exports. ” The candidates plan to take direct aim at the two countries’ trade gap. They want to label China as a currency manipulator that undervalues the renminbi to help its exporters win sales in overseas markets. They want to file more trade cases against China and impose more tariffs. They want to investigate how the Chinese government subsidizes businesses. They also want to rethink big trade deals. Mr. Trump wants to scrap the Partnership, a agreement between the United States and a group of countries, mostly in Asia. Mrs. Clinton’s campaign took a subtly different position, saying that she opposed the agreement in its current form. The Asian countries involved in the trade pact, notably Vietnam and Japan, made significant concessions to American negotiators because they felt threatened by China’s rise. Now, the presidential candidates are lumping them together with China, holding them responsible for killing American jobs. With few exceptions, Chinese officials have tried to steer clear of commenting on the American candidates. Even Chinese academics, the usual pipeline to Beijing’s thinking, have been wary of doing so, to avoid being accused of violating China’s policy of not interfering publicly in other countries’ politics. To the extent that Chinese experts say anything, it is to express hope that this year’s talk of getting tough on trade will not be a harbinger of policy shifts ahead. “There is no big difference from previous presidential campaigns, only more emphasis, due to the poor world trade performances” and weak global economic prospects, said He Weiwen, a of the . S. . U. Study Center at the China Association of International Trade in Beijing. The uncertainty for China, and much of Asia, is whether the candidates will sing the same trade tunes once in office. Mr. Trump’s confrontational approach would seem to indicate some . Mrs. Clinton seems less likely to change American policies, given that she supported President Obama’s free trade efforts during his first term of office, when she was secretary of state. Former Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, and Mr. Obama, at least initially, all tried to help China become more involved in the world economy. They hoped that more enmeshed trade and financial relationships would mean a more democratic China with closer diplomatic ties to the West. It seemed to work for a while. But in the last three years, China, under President Xi Jinping, has shifted toward more authoritarian rule. China has embarked on a military buildup, constructed artificial islands with runways in the South China Sea and challenged Japan’s control of a cluster of islands north of Taiwan. And a combination of strict censorship and comprehensive propaganda has fanned the already strong nationalism of the Chinese public. Those geopolitics have left American policy makers with two choices, neither of them appetizing. Further trade with China and additional investments there by Western multinationals could strengthen the Chinese economy and help Beijing afford even more ambitious territorial and military policies. Discouraging trade and investment could cause lower economic growth that might slow China’s military rise but also might feed sentiment and foster public demands for more assertive foreign policy. If the candidates’ ideas became policy, China would almost certainly retaliate in some fashion. American exports, while sharply smaller than those China sends in the other direction, are a potential focus. Beijing has proved especially adept in the past at targeting American exports from swing states in presidential elections and closely fought congressional districts, maximizing its leverage in the political process even if the economic effects were limited. The biggest immediate casualty of tougher trade policies could be the Obama administration’s effort to strengthen relations with countries like Japan, Singapore and Vietnam as a way to balance China’s growing muscle in East Asia. The economic centerpiece of the administration’s pivot to Asia has been the negotiation of the Partnership. That agreement calls for dismantling barriers to American trade with many of the countries that find themselves increasingly uneasy about China’s growing dominance. Mr. Trump denounced the pact again on Tuesday, saying that it would force American workers to compete with Vietnamese workers. Mrs. Clinton, after supporting the early negotiations as secretary of state, has come out against the pact since the fall, saying that the deal does not go far enough to address issues like currency manipulation. Yet canceling the trade pact could actually cause more problems, by pushing American allies in the region into China’s arms and preventing American companies from developing in emerging Asian markets. “If America kills the T. P. P. ,” said Kishore Mahbubani, the dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in Singapore, “then China becomes the main center of economic gravity. ” | 1 |
First things first: “The Secret Life of Pets” is preceded by a short film starring the Minions, in which those irrepressible yellow gelcaps take up landscaping so they can purchase a blender. You may regard this extra little cartoon as a bonus or a tax, depending on your level of Minion tolerance. Mine reached its end around 90 seconds before the movie did. But in any case, Illumination Entertainment and Universal Pictures are determined to keep selling toys and Halloween costumes, and it’s pointless to protest the merchandising of manufactured cuteness. Part of the Minions’ ostensibly universal charm lies in the fact that they speak no known language, but rather a chirpy, vaguely patois. “The Secret Life of Pets,” Illumination’s newest feature, relies on the more conventional sound of celebrity voices, mostly belonging to people who are professionally funny on television. Children may not be all that familiar with many of them, including Louis C. K. who plays the main character, a dog named Max. Louis C. K. on his television projects and in his tends to work on the blue end of the spectrum, trafficking in melancholy as well as profanity. His presence here may be a gift to his own children, and to their college funds. It might also provide a measure of consolation to gloomy, sensitive dads who need to sense a kindred soul on the other side of the screen. Similarly, Hannibal Buress (a dachshund) Jenny Slate (a fuzzy white lap dog whose exact breed I could not identify) and Lake Bell (a cat) might be here not because kids will recognize them from “Broad City” or “Obvious Child” or “In a World” but because youngish parents might want to feel a little bit cool at the multiplex on a Saturday afternoon. No shame in that! Fans of “Modern Family” will be happy to hear Eric Stonestreet as a big furry dog. Fans of Kevin Hart who want more after “Central Intelligence” and “Ride Along 2” will enjoy his impersonation of an angry bunny. Albert Brooks is a grumpy raptor. That sentence was a pleasure to write. There is also a guinea pig, some other birds, lizards and even a few human beings. But this is mostly a dog story, full of capers and complications arising from the arrival of Duke (the big shaggy one voiced by Mr. Stonestreet) into the household Max shares with Katie (Ellie Kemper) his millennial owner. There is rivalry and resentment and eventually friendship. “The Secret Life of Pets,” written by Cinco Paul, Ken Daurio and Brian Lynch and directed by Yarrow Cheney and Chris Renaud, is like one of those picture books about how to deal with a new baby, but with talking animals. Which is, all in all, pretty good fun. cartoons generally are, if they have even a modest quantity of wit or insight. And while this movie never achieves — and does not really aim for — the emotional richness or visual inventiveness of the better Pixar features, or the sly social consciousness of “Zootopia,” it has a playful absurdity and a winning, friendly spirit. As the title suggests, the conceit is that when we humans are away, our furry, scaly, feathered companions get up to all kinds of mischief. They visit one another’s apartments, they dance and flirt and play loud music and then, when we return, pretend that they’ve been waiting for us the whole time. Except for the cats, of course, who make a great show of not caring. Here I should say that, while Ms. Bell’s purring vocalizations are beyond reproach, the film is clearly the work of dog people, and traffics — like nearly every other movie in its genre — in some tired stereotypes. I could go on about this, but I’m not supposed to let my political opinions affect my reviews. And I’m not biased. Dogs are fine. I have shared my home and opened my heart to a few of them. But they’re also just too easy, with their wet noses and broad pink tongues and eagerness to please. Cats are demanding. Complex. A more daring movie would have ventured beyond fat, pampered house cats and scrawny alley predators in its depiction of them. Representation matters. Speaking of politics, the house pets encounter an underground militant organization led by Mr. Hart’s adorably fuzzy, implacable little rabbit. He steals the movie, of course, and helps it ascend to a level of anarchic delight. The animated action is bouncy and frenetic, and if the story becomes a little too busy, it moves quickly and makes room for a barrage of jokes and even some character development. Ms. Slate’s Gidget the lap dog evolves from a lovestruck princess (pining for Max) into a fierce and resourceful action heroine. Max himself grows less . Everyone gets home safely. Like the “Despicable Me” movies, which put Illumination on the map (and spawned those furshlugginer Minions) “The Secret Life of Pets” is adequate animated entertainment, amusing while it lasts but not especially memorable except as a catalog of compromises and missed opportunities. Among those are the New York setting, a potential wonderland of glamour, filth and imagination that is rendered as blandly as if the movie had been shot on a set. “The Secret Life of Pets” is rated PG (Parental guidance suggested). Fewer poop jokes than you might expect. Running time: 1 hour 26 minutes. | 1 |
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Как сообщает Crienglish.com, кота компания рассчитывает найти до 10 ноября. В этот день в преддверии крупнейшего в КНР торгового фестиваля состоится гала-вечер интернет-магазина Tmall (его символом является черный кот). В Alibaba рассчитывают, что животное станет объектом для новых мемов и вирусных видео, а также увеличит продажи.
Ранее Alibaba ранее уже удалось привлечь ставших популярными в сети котов, к примеру, сердитого котика из США (Grumpy Cat), кота по кличке Анри из Франции, Мару из Японии. В должности заинтересованы Милк и Орео из Великобритании, а также китайские коты, сообщает портал.
Напомним, компания Alibaba основана в 1999 году. В ее структуру входит десяток интернет-площадок, в том числе AliExpress, Taobao и китайское подразделение Yahoo!.
Американские ученые пришли к выводу, что гладить кошек - опасно для здоровья.
В ходе исследований ученые выяснили, что близкое общение с кошками опасно для человеческой жизни, сообщает РИА VladNews со ссылкой на Информинг.
Согласно исследованиям, домашние любимцы передают своим хозяевам инфекции чаще, чем считалось ранее. Результат исследования показал, что кошачьи царапины, которые появляются в ходе общения между кошками и их хозяевами, могут привести к серьезному заболеванию - «кошачьей лихорадке».
Ранки от кошачьих ногтей могут спровоцировать высокую температуру и даже могут стать причиной летального исхода.
По словам специалистов, не следует заводить кошек, когда в доме есть маленькие дети, а также после общения с животными следует тщательно мыть руки.
Специалисты-фелинологи уже полгода ведут наблюдение за хвостатыми подопытными и к 2021 году обещают объяснить, что означает вся гамма издаваемых нашими любимцами звуков.
Исследователи в процессе опыта записывают все звуки, которые выдают 50 подопытных котов, когда они голодны, испуганы, ищут ласки или просто довольны.
Полученные результаты анализируют и классифицируют. Уже установлено, что кошки способны изменять интонацию или мелодику осознанно, желая донести до хозяина определенную информацию, делится наблюдениями специалист в области фонетики Сусанна Шетц . Например, когда кошка просит еду, она мяукает тоньше.
По мнению фелинологов, вербальное общение - не главное средство связи этих животных с человеком: диалог в основном идет на языке тела и запахов. Некоторые проблемы во взаимопонимании возникают еще и потому, что по сравнению с собаками, и уж тем более людьми, мурки имеют очень мало лицевых мышц. Впрочем, научившись шифровать эмоции, сами они легко считывают информацию с лиц хозяев.
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First case of demonetisation-related HIV after man has unprotected sex with an ATM machine Posted on Tweet
10th day into demonetisation and things are going from bad to worse. There is mayhem everywhere. We have already had reports of suicides, murders, robberies, cyclones, earthquakes, and Rohit Sharma’s ouster from Indian squad because of demonetisation, and now we have the first case of HIV that this dreadful ban has caused.
The incident happened when a man contracted the disease from an already infected ATM machine in Mumbai. Despite numerous warnings issued by India Today and other media houses about ATM keypads transmitting the virus, he went to an ATM and touched the dangerous keypad. He was later diagnosed with HIV positive.
“So did he actually have sex with the machine?” we asked an insider from India Today.
“No, but withdrawing cash is as good as having sex with the machine. You have more or less the same feeling when you get the cash in your hand,” he affirmed.
“Ok that’s interesting. So the engineering students are not virgins anymore and they can proudly brag about their sex lives.”
“Well, technically speaking, yes, they can.”
“So, who is at risk of catching the virus? Someone with a poor immune system?”
“No, anyone who is withdrawing cash from an ATM.”
“You mean, balance inquiries and other transactions are safe, right?”
“Who stands in the queue for 3 hours to check balance?”
“Oh ok, you are talking about the current scenario.”
“Yes, people should avoid an ATM machine at any cost because it may cause STD as our researcher suggested, and once you are infected with an STD, you become more susceptible to HIV infection.”
“And who is the researcher at India Today you are referring to? Is it Rajdeep Sardesai?”
“No, he is in Goa. The person who published the report is Jane Carlton.”
“Ok but the report was published in 2014. Why are you linking it to currency ban?”
“Because it’s always relevant.”
“But what made you search the report two years after it was published and exactly at a time when people are desperately trying to use ATMs? We are just curious, what was going through your mind when you decided to look it up and what were the keywords you entered into Google that returned this report?”
“Listen, I think I am done with the interview. If you have more questions then ask Rajdeep Sardesai. I am going to call him. Here are your boxing gloves.”
“But you said he is in Goa,” we hurriedly wrapped-up the interview. | 0 |
By Nick Bernabe A small Standing Rock Sioux site in North Dakota called the Sacred Stone Camp has been propelled into the national news narrative following their stand against the Dakota Access... | 0 |
We Are Change
By David Armiak and Mary Bottari
The Koch network has mobilized in South Dakota to defeat the “ South Dakota Accountability and Anti-Corruption Act ,” a state-wide initiative on the ballot November 8.
The anti-corruption measure, Initiated Measure 22 or IM-22, was launched by a bipartisan group called the South Dakotans for Integrity and put on the ballot with signatures from over 20,000 state residents.
IM-22 cracks down on dark money and phony industry front groups by barring candidate coordination with outside groups and regulating independent expenditures. It cracks down on sham “issue ads,” which are really the functional equivalent of express advocacy, by requiring them to be reported electronically within 48 hours, requiring donor disclosure and requiring the top five donors to be disclosed on air. The initiative also provides a small dollar public financing mechanism, sets rules for lobbyists and gifts and creates an ethics commission to investigate violations of ethics and campaign finance rules.
The measure is one of four on ballot nationwide that seek to increase transparency in the financing of elections in a post-Citizens United world. In 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Citizens United v. FEC to strike down limits on “independent” political spending, which opened the floodgates for billions in dark money into elections nationwide.
If passed, South Dakota voters may finally have some way of knowing who is bankrolling those big money ads and before the election too.
Koch’s Americans for Prosperity Behind “Defeat 22” Group The Kochs are bankrolling the group working to defeat the initiative.
According to its statement of organization filing , Defeat22.com was founded by Ben Lee, the state director for the Koch’s astroturf group Americans for Prosperity , on July 1, 2016. The group promotes itself as a coalition, listing its 18 “partners” on its website including AFP, the South Dakota Chamber of Commerce & Industry, and the different GOP organizations, among others. But, a campaign disclosure filed on Friday with the South Dakota Secretary of State tells another story.
Of the $609,110 raised by Defeat22.com so far, $590,000 came from AFP. The next largest contribution of $1,500 from the SD Farm Bureau Federation was even dwarfed by AFP’s total in-kind contributions of $36,756 .
The opposition to IM-22 is led and organized by AFP. Chad Krier, AFP’s South Dakota Field Director, who has organized many of the campaign events to answer questions and solicit volunteers. AFP also appears to have tapped into its staff network to not only phone bank, but also go door to door to urge voters to Vote No on IM-22. Defeat22.com has send out mailings , placed radio ads , and put up billboards .
The Kochs are battling the measure because “the Kochs see IM-22 as a threat to the dominance the millionaires and billionaires have under the [current] political system,” says former Republican State Senator and co-chair of South Dakotans for Integrity Don Frankenfeld. The Kochs have been battling weaker donor disclosure laws in California in court for years.
And Koch allies in other states are lending a hand.
A right-wing Floridan think tank has been helping out the Defeat IM-22 forces. The Foundation for Government Accountability (FGA) has set up an “educational” website, Measure22.org , where it published poll results from 478 South Dakotans that demonstrates opposition to the measure in the state. The website operates under the name FGA Action, Inc., a 501(c)(04) that shares an address with FGA and lists its contact as Jonathan Bechtle , the COO and General Counsel at FGA.
The site also hosts two videos which are unsupportive of the measure, one produced by FGA Action, Inc. and another by UnitedforPrivacy.com. UnitedforPrivacy.com is the website for People United for Privacy, an SPN backed group that states , “To change our laws to subject people to the chilling effects of having their privacy invaded and their personal information compiled in government databases and Google searches is not they way our democracy should operate.”
FGA is a member of the State Policy Network (SPN) , a right-wing web of “think tanks” in 48 states, which has been working hard to convince the public that the “free speech” rights of millionaires and billionaires are harmed by campaign finance disclosure laws. Both SPN and FGA are largely funded by the Donors Capital and Donors Trust investment vehicles utilized by the Koch network.
The amount of money spent by FGA Action, Inc. and People United for Privacy against IM-22 is unknown because both groups have yet to file disclosures.
The Kochs Protest “Taxpayer Funded Elections” The Kochs are attacking the anti-corruption measure for its creation of a small dollar publicly funded campaign finance system, which will give each registered voter two $50 vouchers that she can contribute to the candidate of her choosing if the candidate agrees to only fundraise from small donor South Dakotans. AFP argues in its Defeat22.com radio ad and mailings that this system will “divert” public tax dollars from roads and schools–an interesting line of attack from the anti-government Kochs which have opposed taxes for roads in states like Wisconsin.
In state, the Kochs protest “taxpayer funded elections.” “Don’t let politicians take your tax dollars to fund their campaigns” is the Koch spin. Their preference is to put millionaires and billionaires in charge of campaigns and elections.
Nationally, Ben Lee is taking a different approach. In a recent opinion piece in Forbes , Lee trots out the Koch line that the ballot measure is a “full-on assault on the First Amendment cloaked in the guise of transparency.” The Kochs might believe that their right to bankroll politicians secretly is written into the constitution, but super majorities of average citizens–both Democrats and Republican—disagree and the popularity of campaign finance transparency and limits continues to rise .
The widespread support for IM-22 is best demonstrated by South Dakotans for Integrity’s financial disclosure submitted on Friday with attachments that list over 6,000 donations for a total of over $1.2 million. More than 99% of contributions were for $100 or less. The good government advocacy organization Represent Us provided $55,079 in in-kind contributions to South Dakotans for Integrity.
If IM-22 passes on November, it will put the brakes on secret political spending by AFP, the Kochs, and others pulling the strings in South Dakota. But, more significantly, if the law succeeds in setting up a campaign finance system that is more responsive to all citizens, not just the wealthy, it could become a model for other states to follow.
And this is precisely what the Kochs fear.
Two other two ballot measures promoting transparency and clean elections are Proposition 59 in California and Amendment 2 in Missouri.
Source; PR Center for Media and Democracy.
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Swedish writer Åsa Linderborg has claimed the Swedish economy would collapse if it was not for illegal migrants who she says are vital to the economy. [Ms. Linderborg, who serves as the cultural editor for Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet, wrote an opinion piece on Monday: “Yes, there is a problem with those who are denied their asylum applications and then go underground,” but added: “It’s equally true that Sweden would stop working if the tens of thousands of undocumented migrants who are here vanished for real. ” Linderborg made the argument that illegal migrants do the jobs that Swedes refuse to do saying illegals were the ones who worked jobs like cleaning and in the service industry. The piece comes as a reaction to the news the terrorist in the Stockholm attack was a failed asylum seeker set to be deported. Following the attack, Prime Minister Stefan Löfven said that Sweden would no longer employ an open door policy for illegal migrants. Though Linderborg claimed the Swedish economy relies solely on migrants, various reports have shown the opposite is true and that migrants are often the most likely to be unemployed in the country. A report from December 2015 predicted that six out of every 10 unemployed people in Sweden would come from a foreign background by 2017. In October 2016, the employment numbers for Swedes were so high that some economists considered Swedes to have full employment. People from migrant backgrounds were almost opposite with some 21. 6 per cent being unemployed. Of the 163, 000 migrants that Sweden took in during the migrant crisis in late 2015, fewer than 500 had found jobs as of June 2016. Linderborg claims Sweden is “exploiting” the migrants who do work because many of them are low skilled and are paid low wages. She then called on the prime minister to invest in migrants to improve their job prospects. The daughter of a former member of the Left Party, Linderborg was also a member of the Left Party and a member of the “Communist Youth” during the 1980s. Sweden is not the only country to have issues with migrants and unemployment. In Germany, economists have said the idea that migrants will become the skilled workers of tomorrow is an illusion and that mass migration will ultimately hurt economic growth in the long term. Follow Chris Tomlinson on Twitter at @TomlinsonCJ or email at ctomlinson@breitbart. com | 1 |
MONTICELLO, Iowa — The Table of Knowledge was delving into Donald J. Trump’s plans to upend government, and marveling at how he had forced his fellow Republicans in the House to reverse themselves on gutting the Office of Congressional Ethics. “He’s getting responses things are happening,” Jerry Retzlaff, a retiree, said. “He got Congress to turn themselves around with one tweet. ” “There’s no secret the press doesn’t like him, and neither does a lot of the leadership,” he added. “And that’s because he’s planning on making a lot of changes. ” The eight men around a rectangular table, sipping coffee from a hodgepodge of mugs donated by customers, meet daily for breakfasts of French toast, eggs and bacon at Darrell’s diner, all while solving the world’s problems, hence their gathering’s nickname. Washington may be veering from one Trump controversy to another: unproved reports of Russia’s holding embarrassing information against him, possible ethical conflicts, the donors and billionaires of his cabinet, his pushback against intelligence findings on Russian hacking in the election. But there does not seem to be much angst in Iowa among those who voted for Mr. Trump, including some Democrats and independents. Monticello, in rural eastern Iowa, is as close as any place to the epicenter of the political quake that made Mr. Trump president. The state’s longstanding reputation as a political bellwether had led The New York Times to move me to Iowa for a full year ahead of its presidential caucuses in early 2016. I had not returned since. In the intervening year, Iowa gave Mr. Trump his largest triumph of any battleground state: a reversal over President Obama’s easy victory here in 2012. Al Ameling, 58, a technical analyst who lives in Marble Rock, near the Minnesota border, is representative of the profound demographic shift among white rural voters in the northern Midwest that helped produce Mr. Trump’s stunning upset. Mr. Ameling voted for Mr. Obama in 2008, sat out in 2012 and enthusiastically backed Mr. Trump. Nothing he has heard since Election Day has shaken his support, including reports this week that American intelligence agencies are investigating unverified accounts of meetings between Trump aides and Russian officials, as well as sex tapes purportedly made of Mr. Trump in Moscow. On Wednesday, Mr. Trump called the allegations completely false. “The way it is nowadays, unless I see positive proof, it’s all a lie,” Mr. Ameling said in a telephone interview on Wednesday. He added he was more concerned that government officials might have leaked the material to the news media. “I don’t know if it was classified, but if it was, whoever leaked it needs to go to jail,” he said. “We need law and order back in this country. ” I headed to Monticello because it was the site of Hillary Clinton’s first campaign stop after declaring her candidacy for the Democratic nomination in 2015. When she rolled up in her black van, a pack of journalists took off at a run, myself included, an enduringly silly image. Mrs. Clinton rarely returned to the state in the general election campaign, giving it up as all but lost. Jones County, which includes Monticello, is the birthplace of the painter Grant Wood, and where older men still wear the style of pinstriped overalls in his “American Gothic. ” It is a beautiful place, with bald eagles soaring over wintry farm fields. Mr. Trump carried the county by 20 percentage points Mr. Obama easily won there four years earlier. At Darrell’s, there are actually two Tables of Knowledge, one favored by Democrats and the other by Republicans. Among them are an optometrist, farmers and former employees of a utility company. I asked if there was anyone who had voted for Mr. Trump after having previously supported Mr. Obama. “Yeah, there is, but they won’t tell you,” said Mr. Retzlaff, an outspoken conservative who usually chooses to sit with the liberals. Mel Manternach, a retired farmer, said many farmers who had once voted for Mr. Obama switched to Mr. Trump, which he found perplexing. “Trump was against T. P. P. which would help exports of ag commodities,” he said, referring to the Partnership, a deal. “They voted against their own . ” The Iowans I interviewed largely went about their lives outside the political hothouse of social media. They did not follow developments of the presidential transition. Indeed, on Wednesday, several were unfamiliar with the reports that Russia was holding compromising information on the which Mr. Trump addressed in a news conference. Many were hazy on specific policy details about how, say, House Republicans were seeking to replace Medicare with a voucher system. These voters feared an outbreak of terrorist attacks by Muslims in the United States, maybe in their own communities. And overwhelmingly, Trump supporters did not want their money redistributed to people they regarded as undeserving. A year ago, I shadowed a Clinton in Newton, a small city in central Iowa that has struggled since Maytag closed a washing machine plant. Jeff McKibben, one of the workers, traded down for work at a prison. Once a “straight Democrat,” as he called himself, he refused to commit at the time to support Mrs. Clinton. Contacted recently, he did not want to say how he voted, although Jasper County, which includes Newton, was one of the more than 30 Iowa counties that swung to Mr. Trump from Mr. Obama. “Maybe it’s time to have some change,” Mr. McKibben allowed. “I saw neighbors I knew were strong union people with Trump signs in their yards. ” The story was the same in Des Moines County, in southeastern Iowa. The local Democratic Party chairwoman, Sandy Dockendorff, knew there was trouble when she saw a Trump sign in the yard of an electrician who had always supported Democrats. “When I called him,” Ms. Dockendorff explained last month to a group of demoralized activists at a United Steelworkers union hall, “he said, ‘You stopped talking my language you don’t care about jobs.’ ” In an interview, Ms. Dockendorff, who is running for chairwoman of the state Democratic Party, said rural Iowans were critical of Democrats for opposing projects like oil pipelines while running a presidential campaign focused narrowly on Mr. Trump’s shortcomings. “It was all about making fun of Donald Trump — he would never be president and how horrible it would be,” she said. But “the only one talking about jobs was Trump,” Ms. Dockendorff added. At a Des Moines County diner in Burlington, a small city on the Mississippi River, Melissa Ell, a waitress, said she had voted for Mr. Obama in 2012. But this Election Day, she stayed home. “I didn’t want to vote for either one of them, to be honest,” she said. Ms. Ell, 46, earns a base wage of $6. 50 an hour at Jerry’s Main Lunch, a restaurant across from the Burlington Northern Railroad tracks. As she bused a table, Ms. Ell commiserated with Jackie Furman about those who take advantage of government aid. “I think they should be if they’re on welfare,” Ms. Ell said. “The welfare system needs to be reorganized,” agreed Ms. Furman, a retired commercial bakery manager, complaining that “Chicago people” were moving to Burlington to receive higher benefits and bringing crime. Ms. Furman, 70, said, “I’m ashamed to say we caucused for Obama” in 2008. “My view is he purposely got into the presidency so he could ruin America. ” There are contrary views. On Washington Street in Burlington, I expected Post 10102 of the Veterans of Foreign Wars to be a bastion of support for the who had promised repeatedly to “take care of the vets. ” But there was deep skepticism. “Forget about me,” Dan Meade, a Navy veteran, said. “What’s going to happen to our kids, our grandkids? I think the guy’s nuts. ” He and three others sipped $1. 50 draft beers from plastic cups. They sarcastically echoed notable Trump lines from the campaign trail. “He knows more than the generals he doesn’t like prisoners of war,” Dan Warren, an Army veteran, said. “When Trump was running for office he said he’d run the country like he runs his companies,” Fran Boyle, who served in the Navy, chimed in. “Which one of his bankrupt companies is he going to run it like?” Still, Trump voters in the state say they are hoping for the best. Mike Staudt, a retired farmer from Marble Rock, voted for Mr. Obama in 2012, but called the Affordable Care Act a form of socialism. He said he had no problem with a candidate who had run as the voice of the working people but was stocking his cabinet with the ultrawealthy. “I know these guys are really rich,” he said. “They may have pulled off a few plays that weren’t exactly on the but they all had to be pretty smart to be billionaires. If they replace their own concerns with the concerns of the country, they can make things really move forward. That’s what I’m excited about. ” | 1 |
Posted by Elliot Bougis | Nov 18, 2016 | National Security Trump/Pence 2016: Lawful Good vs. Chaotic Evil
I’m a nerd but please bear with me:
Yesterday I asked some friends online about an economic theory that some of them are interested in and one friend, who does not support this theory, made a joke about “getting the Marxists out of the way first.” A little later a friend who does support the theory replied with irritation that it must be a joke to think Marxists are actually in power in this country.
I won’t bore you with the rest of the discussion, but imagine my surprise when I saw an article this morning about–wait for it–powerful Marxists in America!
As Michael Volpe reports at The Daily Caller:
A Marxist, a Venezuelan diplomat and an illegal alien headlined a meeting of organizers of the Trump resistance as they announced their plan to shut down Chicago on Saturday and Washington, D.C. on Inauguration Day. Chicago ANSWER was one of the radical leftist groups that helped to organize anti-Trump protests when his campaign tried to hold a rally in March ; that rally was canceled after protesters clashed with attendees. As The DC reported last week , the group is responsible for organizing rallies in Chicago, New York, Washington, D.C., San Francisco and Albuquerque. Since holding those rallies, the group has announced “mass marches” on Inauguration Day in Washington and another one in Chicago on Saturday; the group hopes to “shut the streets down” at both rallies. In other words, if they can’t win an election legally, they’ll try to reverse it with violence and “birddogging” chaos. Before we go any further down this sad road, I want you to keep two things in mind. First, this is what Marxism always does. When it fails one group of people, it oozes away like a red version of The Blob to consume some other poor, unsuspecting populace with its cultural and economic acids. Now that Marxism has left Venezuela devastated and poor, the swarm of Marxist fire ants are trying to do the same here. The Socialist Blob: Coming Soon To A Community Center Near You! Second, like a lot of critics of Trump, these Marxist ants don’t listen to his positive message and policy proposals. Instead, like a swarm of worker ants following their queen, the mainstream media, they fixate on the “racist” or “sexist” or “mean” things Trump reportedly said. As I wrote yesterday, Trump hired Steve Bannon for many reasons, but one reason in particular is because they both care about economic justice, middle-class prosperity, and a strong national labor force. So remember: 1) these ants are making trouble for Trump because they smell fresh meat after leaving rotten meat in other places and 2) they are fighting a presidency that will actually help the people they say they care about. Now back to Volpe’s report: On Nov. 15, the group held a meeting to plot its next move in its ongoing resistance of the Trump in a space normally operated by the Mexican Solidarity Network, a less well-known group in the mold of La Raza. CHICAGO ANSWER organizers, Stephanie and Mika, co-chaired the evening and Mika said he was also an organizer with the Party for Socialist and Liberation, a radical Marxist group and a frequent partner of ANSWER. Mika fired up the crowd. “What do want?” he yelled at the crowd. “Justice,” the crowd roared back. Same as Donald Trump! Law and order! Drain the swamp! “When do we want it,” he screamed again. “Now,” the crowd roared even louder. “People can and must be organized in a deepening resistance,” Stephanie said. “As united as possible, as militant as possible.” She also said she was willing to “work with anyone to resist this administration.” Because these ants have no ideas or skills to contribute to society, they prefer to tear anyone who is trying to help in concrete ways–hence they hate a celebrated DOER like Donald Trump. Jesús Rodríguez-Espinoza is the Counsel General for the Venezuelan consulate in Chicago and while the rest of the speakers accused Trump of the normal litany of grievances — that he’s a racist, homophobe, misogynist and charlatan — Rodriguez said his diplomatic position forbade him from weighing in on Trump. “Before I was the Counsel General in Chicago, I was a regular citizen in Venezuela just like you, in 2002, was moved in my basement because of the attack against Hugo Chavez. Because of that I started getting involved in politics. Rodriguez-Espinoza said he became a supporter of Chavez after that. Just goes to show: never trust a Jesus that isn’t in the Bible. Rodriquez-Espinoza also claimed the current economic and humanitarian crisis in Venezuela is over-blown. “All the humanitarian crisis that you hear in the media most of that is an exaggeration. The only crisis we face is destabilization in Venezuelan oil. I’m not saying everything is perfect; I’m just saying it’s overmagnified because it’s in the interest of the most powerful countries in the world to get rid of the progressive government in Venezuela.” According to a June Guardian story , Venezuela has an economic crisis where Gross Domestic Product is contracting by 8 percent, unemployment was at 17 percent, and the inflation rate was at 482 percent. As always, facts are inconvenient things at times. Plus, if oil is Venezuela’s main (only??) economic problem, then people like Rodriguez-Espinoza should try to work with Trump as a successful business developer, dealmaker, and, as of this Tuesday, the President-elect over the largest oil discovery in America of all time (20 BILLION barrels in the Permian Basin in southwest Texas). But because he is a short-sighted ant, Roqriguez-Espinoza, and all Marxist ants, to be honest, only know how to swarm and scurry and bite so they can feel “progressive.” Far be it from them to take the humble, slow route of working, developing, building, and planning like Trump and most of his supporters do on a daily basis. Share this article to inform and encourage your family and friends! | 0 |
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The conservative political machine has been working overtime to try to deny that the government of the Russian Federation is interfering with the American election in support of Republican nominee Donald Trump – but this explosive investigation by former Daily Show correspondent Samantha Bee proves once and for all that dictator Vladimir Putin is using every tool at his disposal to tilt the scale in favor of Trump.
Samantha Bee, now the host of her own show, traveled to Moscow to interview two of the “thinkfluencers,” members of Putin’s underground troll farms that pose as Americans online and flood social media with pro-Russian and pro-Trump propaganda.
“The reason I’m hired is to make simple people change their mind about their vote and also about Russia” said one woman, who admitted she identifies herself as a Nebraskan housewife online. When asked why they thought their propaganda was working, she replied it was because Americans are “lazy and they believe everything they read.” | 0 |
Pop icon Cher left little to the imagination while performing some of her biggest hits at Sunday night’s Billboard Music Awards, the singer’s first awards show concert in 15 years. [The icon performed her smash hits “Believe” and “If I Could Turn Back Time” Sunday night before accepting the ceremony’s Icon Award for her career in the music industry. The and danced on stage wearing a silver diamante dress, with her chest covered up by nipple pasties. The sparkling dress, which consisted of multiple hanging diamond strips, barely covered the singers chest and groin area. She later returned to the stage in a black catsuit and a large wig, a throwback to her early 80s look. “So, I wanted to do what I do since I was 4 years old, and I’ve been doing it for 53 years,” Cher said in accepting the Icon Award. “That is not an applause thing, I’m 71 yesterday! And I can do a plank, okay? Just saying. ” The singer steered clear of politics in her acceptance speech, focusing instead on the advice she received when she was younger and on something her mother told her before she became famous, that she would never be the “smartest,” the “prettiest,” or the “most talented,” but she would be “special. ” “I think luck has so much to do with with my success,” she continued. “I think it was mostly luck and a little bit of something thrown in. ” Cher’s outfit drew plenty of commentary on social media and on television, including on Good Morning Britain, where host Piers Morgan said he was not a fan. “At what point do Cher’s outfits become inappropriate? She’s 70,” he said. “That one in particular, come on, Cher, for goodness’ sake, love. ” Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan_ or email him at lnolan@breitbart. com | 1 |
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In September the National ICE Council, representing some 5,000 Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers charged with protecting the country’s borders, did something it has never done: It endorsed a candidate for president: Donald Trump. In its statement at the time, the union said: In [Trump’s] immigration policy, he has outlined core policies needed to restore immigration security — including support for increased interior enforcement and border security, an end to Sanctuary Cities, an end to catch-and-release, mandatory retainers, and the canceling of executive amnesty and non-enforcement directives.
On the contrary, said the union, Hillary Clinton supports furthering “amnesty” and a “radical” immigration plan that will cost thousands of Americans not only their jobs but their lives .
On Friday the union issued a “final warning,” expanding its concern about how open borders would cost Americans their lives. Wrote the council’s president, Chris Crane: Hillary’s pledge for ‘open borders’ will mean disaster for our country, and turn the present border emergency into a cataclysm. Hillary’s plan would unleash violent cartels and brutal transnational gangs into US communities and cause countless preventable deaths…. ICE officers on the front lines are witnessing a deluge of illegal immigration unlike anything we have seen before. The corporate-funded media won’t cover it. Our officers are being ordered to release recent border-crossers with no idea what their intentions are or what they are planning. Gang members, drug cartels and violent smugglers are taking advantage of the situation and threatening American communities. The influx is overwhelming public resources, especially in poor communities — including Hispanic communities and immigrant communities bearing the economic brunt of the illegal immigration surge.
There are economic, cultural, and moral reasons for concerns about open borders, as noted by economist Gene Callahan. Unlimited immigration would likely lead to lower wages for Americans who would have to cut their wage demands or be replaced by immigrant workers willing to work for lower wages.
Culturally an unlimited dumping of immigrants onto an unprepared and unsuspecting culture would alter that culture irreparably. Consider the Native American culture, he said: If Native Americans had been able to limit the flow of European immigrants, they might have been able to preserve their land and cultures.
Morally there is a responsibility to take care of those less able to care for themselves but not to the point of reducing their own circumstances to penury: While the rich have an obligation to help the poor, that obligation does not extend to the degree that they must become poor themselves.
Since every resident in the United States, except maybe for those Native Americans, is either an immigrant or a descendent of one, it makes sense to welcome immigrants. Until 1875, there were no immigration laws. But with the passage of the Page Act of 1875, legislators began defining the procedures under which those desiring to immigrate into the country would have to follow.
Since then immigration laws have been heavily modified, but they have always defined those procedures and conditions. If the laws need to be changed again, then legislators should change them. But they must be followed, not ignored for political purposes. Otherwise, unintended consequences, such as those noted in the ICE Council’s warning, will overtake the culture and risk destroying the very culture that makes it presently so inviting for those seeking a better life.
An Ivy League graduate and former investment advisor, Bob is a regular contributor to The New American magazine and blogs frequently at LightFromTheRight.com, primarily on economics and politics. He can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .
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In the winding hallways and stuffy rooms of an old factory in Brooklyn, under bulbs flickering as if in a horror movie, an elite new police unit prepares, over and over again, for the attack it knows is coming. Day after day, the officers comb the highest floor of the building, looking for witnesses to point them to the right door and listening for gunshots like those that have echoed all over the world in recent months. They are conducting exercises to help them hunt down an “active shooter. ” “It’s going to happen,” said Chief James R. Waters, who leads the New York Police Department’s Counterterrorism Bureau. “Something like Orlando’s going to happen. ” Last year, the police announced the creation of a heavily armed and armored regiment called the Critical Response Command. Teams of officers work all over the city and are trained to respond to many locations in three to five minutes. They represent a new response to a new threat. Gone are the days when the first officers on a scene set up a perimeter and waited for backup or a team. The perpetrators of the most recent wave of mass shootings around the world — Paris San Bernardino, Calif. Orlando, Fla. — were not interested in taking hostages and negotiating. They came to kill for the sake of killing. And these officers are trained to find and stop them. On Thursday, Chief Waters allowed journalists from The New York Times to watch the Critical Response Command train. “This is seven months of work,” he said, standing before a team of officers in bulletproof vests who were cradling Colt M4 semiautomatic rifles. “It’s incredible progress. ” The officers were practicing in a former pharmaceutical factory on Flushing Avenue in the Fort Greene neighborhood. The Police Department is not listed among the building’s tenants, but it has worked there since before the command’s creation. The journalists were allowed to observe the exercises under restrictions. A photographer and videographer were forbidden to document the command as it moved in drills, and a reporter was asked to describe the tactics only in broad strokes. Department leaders believe terrorists study descriptions of police training in preparation for attacks. “The perpetrators in France demonstrated a familiarity with the French response,” Deputy Chief Scott Shanley said, referring to the coordinated attacks in Paris that killed more than 130 people in November. The officers, who also played the roles of gunmen and bystanders, conducted two exercises. The first began with a dispatcher’s call: shots fired in the building. Officers in a patrol car would typically be the first to respond in this situation, and that was the case in the drill. Two officers, clutching pistols, entered the hallway, crouching, one in front and the other behind him with a hand on the first officer’s back. Officers in the command do not know the details of an exercise beforehand. Suddenly, a man ran toward them, screaming for help. The officers ordered him to his knees and asked about the gunman the man pointed down the hall. The officers hurried around a corner. Gunfire rang out. “Shots fired!” the rear officer shouted into his radio, and the pair ran to the sound. A masked gunman, wearing green fatigues in a room with cubicles, opened fire. The officers fired back. Rounds with a chalklike substance, similar to paintballs, struck the gunman. He fell to the floor. The rear officer shouted “Loading! Loading! Loading!” and ejected a spent magazine from his pistol, sliding in a new one. The other officer bent and took the gunman’s pulse. Dead. They called for backup and waited. What followed was an extraordinary show of paramilitary precision and force. New Yorkers have grown accustomed to seeing heavily armed officers standing in subway stations and at city landmarks. They have not seen what journalists were allowed to see on Thursday — a response to an scene from within the scene itself. The door through which the first responding officers had entered crept open again, and a head popped out. Then the entire team emerged, six officers in this case, moving fast in single file, each touching the back of the man before him. They seemed to move as a single organism, like a long black snake darting across the hall to the closest door. There was no hesitation at the door, no peeking inside. The officers burst through and moved in different directions. “A dynamic entry,” Capt. Eugene McCarthy said, watching. “The perpetrator’s processing is disrupted by dynamic entry,” Deputy Chief John O’Connell said, standing beside him. To demonstrate, the command later allowed journalists to stand in an empty room and wait for the team to enter. The silence was startling, unnerving. The officers did not speak as they snaked toward the room. They communicated in pats on the back and hand signals. There was no warning of their arrival. One moment, the room was empty. A heartbeat later, it was filled with the six men and their guns. Traditionally, when officers stormed a room, the first one was known as the “rabbit,” likely drawing the fire of the gunman inside while the second officer took aim at him. With this team, it was as if there were no rabbit — the entire team seemed to swarm the room at once. In the exercise, the team joined the first two officers near the dead gunman, until they all heard more gunfire down the hall. The team regrouped into its line and raced toward the shots. The officer in front fired at a gunman, and others behind him stepped out of the line and did the same, and in what seemed like a second, that gunman was down and the drill over. The officers pulled off their helmets, sweating after minutes of intense action. Captain McCarthy stepped forward and ran through a quick review. The officer who played the second gunman praised the speed and accuracy of the officers who shot him. “No issues,” he said. “Good job. ” An officer who played a victim, with fake blood on his leg, said: “No shots on me. Good job. ” The officers switched roles and prepared to do it again, the details of the drill different this time. The strategy, though, was constant. “Move to the shooter,” Chief Waters said. “You’ll hear it 50 times. Move to the shooter. It’s got to be ingrained. Like muscle memory. ” The Critical Response Command is made up of 525 handpicked officers and superiors who applied and were chosen after a screening process that included interviews with Chief Waters and others. Their training must override lifelong human instinct. “It goes against all their upbringing,” Chief Waters said. “They have to walk past and run past victims on the ground. Kids crying. They’re grabbing at your legs. ” The training is always evolving with world events. The command recently introduced suicide belts into exercises. Chief Waters declined to elaborate. The visit on Thursday concluded with directions through more hallways to the elevator. There, waiting, one could hear, from behind, more gunfire. | 1 |
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The man who obliterated Donald Trump's Hollywood Walk of Fame star says on video that he just did it to 'help' people.
The man, who identified himself to Deadline Hollywood as Jamie Otis, pretended to be a construction worker to give himself cover at 5:30 Wednesday morning, as he took a pickaxe and sledgehammer to the terrazzo and cement star.
Trump earned the star, which is situated on Hollywood Boulevard near the Dolby Theater, in 2007 for his work on “Celebrity Apprentice.” But in just a few minutes it was destroyed:
Image Credit: Screengrab/ Deadline Hollywood
Now the man has reappeared on video admitting the vandalism, but says he did it for an altruistic cause:
“I really wanted to do this. I think it's a symbol for all of us against sexual assault.”
He said his intention was to sell pieces of the star to raise money for the women who have accused Trump of sexual wrongdoing. None of the women have provided concrete proof of their claims.
The man, a self-proclaimed activist, admitted in an exclusive TMZ interview that this isn't his first rodeo:
“I'm a non violent activist. I've been arrested 24, 25 times. I'd love to go to court with Mr. Trump, it would be a great honor.”
Without irony, the man claimed that Trump is “a bully” and that he needs to “ease up.”
This isn't the first time Trump's star has been the target of vandals. Recently, the star was surrounded by a cement box:
Image Credit: Screengrab/ YouTube
Unfortunately for Mr. Otis, police are currently looking for him, with the possibility that he'll be charged with a felony. Additionally, the star he destroyed in the name of justice is worth $30,000. | 0 |
America Is Better Without Borders Steven Hahn, TIME, November 1, 2016
“A nation without borders,” Donald Trump has warned us , “is not a nation at all.” Trump was explaining the logic of the multi-billion dollar wall he promises to build along the U.S.-Mexican border, but he was hardly the first to make the case. Years ago, Ronald Reagan said much the same about the threat of illegal immigration, and others urging border vigilance have wrapped themselves in the high-flown rhetoric. Tee-shirts and coffee mugs have turned the idea into a saleable slogan.
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{snip} For much of its early history, the United States had hazy borders in good part because through war, conquest and diplomacy the country was constantly expanding and the shifting boundaries were not clearly marked. There was no agreement about how far west the Louisiana Territory reached or how far south the state of Texas stretched or how far north the Oregon Territory extended. Highly charged political words and brutal conflict followed (like the U.S.-Mexican War), while the imperial eyes of many leaders fell on Cuba, Central America and Hawaii.
What’s more, the borders that were agreed upon were remarkably porous. Until well into the nineteenth century, immigrants could come and go at will and even participate in electoral politics if they simply declared an intention to become citizens; indeed, for decades it was not at all clear what a citizen of the United States was. The only international migration policed was the African slave trade, which Congress outlawed in 1808 after nearly half a million captives had been forcibly deposited on North American shores.
{snip}
It is easy, when politics and ethnocentrism serve, to proclaim the principle of the nation with borders as the nation itself, while the borders are, in fact, regularly traversed by policy makers, investors and moneyed interests pursuing the main chance and wielding the big stick. Trump himself regularly touts, though refuses to reveal, his international dealings, many of which confound his goal of keeping jobs within American borders if they don’t outright violate American laws.
Truth is that the nation’s prosperity has long rested on the labor and resourcefulness of immigrants–voluntary and involuntary, free and slave–and that those who most loudly denounce a “nation without borders” are likely descendants of immigrants who were themselves harassed for their origins, faith and lifeways at some point in the past. We would do well to recognize that in a global economy such as ours, where the movement of people and goods are the lifeblood of our sustenance, a nation’s security is best maintained not by walling itself off but by lifting the prospects–and thereby creating political allies–of working people around the world. | 0 |
Home Election 2016 Hillary Collapses On Her Way To The Stage, Sellout Bruce Springsteen Covers For Her Hillary Collapses On Her Way To The Stage, Sellout Bruce Springsteen Covers For Her Stryker Election 2016 , Leftist Corruption , Liberals Behaving Like Liberals 0
Hillary Clinton’s sad last push for votes was supposed to culminate in a gathering of “talent” the left was calling “The Avengers of campaigning.” Hillary, Slick Willy, Barry Soetoro and Moochelle along with Creepy Uncle Joe Biden were to all come together at a huge show featuring hasbeens Bon Jovi and working class sellout Bruce Springsteen.
From one libtard to the next, promises of work-free lives filled with food stamp steak and lobster flew amid delusional dreams of free college education for everyone and a health care system that will cure what ails you for eleven bucks a month, no questions asked. The $15 minimum wage and 90 percent tax on the people who have done well in America were celebrated with great vigor, until it came time for the woman of the hour herself to take the stage.
Bruce Springsteen, acting as master of ceremonies, shouted over the roar of the feminist-laden crowd, “Here she is, and I’m with her!” Unfortunately, she never appeared in the spotlight.
Springsteen, after holding a finger to his earpiece, picked up his acoustic guitar and started slowly picking away a familiar tune. He turned to the audience and said:
“You know, before the next President of the United States comes out here I want to make sure we’re all ready. Are you ready?” The crowd cheered. “If there’s one thing we’ve always known about this amazing woman, one thing that w2as never in question, it’s that she was born to run.”
As the crowd went nuts for the popular song, interns and medical staff were reportedly attending to Clinton backstage after she collapsed from an unknown ailment. The press was quickly corralled and swept aside, but a couple of rogue stagehands tweeted about the incident before they were discovered and their posts deleted. This screenshot was grabbed within a minute of it being tweeted:
Clinton is said to have looked pale and distant, unaware of her surroundings. As of the writing of this article, Springsteen was still playing his set. Join The Resistance And Share This Article Now! 234 | 0 |
Dr. David Duke and Dr. Slattery Expose Hillary’s Treason and Why Trump & Duke will Win! 25 am
Dr. David Duke and Dr. Slattery Expose Hillary’s Treason and Why Trump & Duke will Win!
Today Dr. Duke and Dr. Slattery talked about Hillary’s clear acts of treason against the United States by providing massive shipments of weapons to Saudi Arabia at a time that she knew they were providing support to ISIS. Dr. Duke, if elected to the Senate, would be in a position to expose Hillary and push for her impeachment should she win (steal) the election. BLOOD ON THE TRAITOR’S HANDS!
Dr. Slattery discussed post-election scenarios. He noted that if Trump wins in a close election, a small number of Republican electors could be bribed to vote for Hillary, throwing the election to her, or even vote for Pence, throwing the election to the House of Representatives to decide from amongst Trump, Hillary, and Pence. Should Hillary win and Trump supporters feel the election was illegitimate, impeachment would be more likely.
This is an extremely educating and enlightening show. Please share it widely.
Our show is aired live at 11 am replayed at ET 4pm Eastern and 4am Eastern.
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Hillary Clinton longs for the days when Americans knew how to execute a covert action abroad and not spill the details to reporters. Addressing a Goldman Sachs event in 2013, in one of the speeches that WikiLeaks published on Saturday, Mrs. Clinton gave a realpolitik answer to the question of how to handle a problem like Syria. If the best chance of success was to act secretly inside that country, she made clear, she had no problem doing that. She went on to say — as her audience already knew because of revelations in the news media — that as secretary of state she had advocated secretly arming the Syrian opposition and moving forcefully to counter the Russians, who at that point were supporting President Bashar but had not yet fully entered the conflict. “My view was you intervene as covertly as is possible for Americans to intervene,” she said in answer to a question from Lloyd C. Blankfein, the chief executive of Goldman Sachs, which paid Mrs. Clinton about $225, 000 a speech to give what felt like an insider’s view of the making of American foreign policy, months after she left office. But she quickly acknowledged that “we used to be much better at this than we are now. ” “Now, you know, everybody can’t help themselves,” she added, and officials go out to “tell their friendly reporters and somebody else: ‘Look what we’re doing, and I want credit for it. ’” The three hacked speeches from 2013 that WikiLeaks published, most likely with Russian government assistance, help explain how Mrs. Clinton approaches some of the world’s knottiest problems. They are a reminder of the way she often assesses her most vexing opponents when the television cameras are not on. By the time she left office that year, she had met and assessed two of the three world leaders who were determined most prominently to challenge the United States: President Xi Jinping of China, whom she clearly admires President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, whom she clearly detests (and who has returned the sentiment this election) and Kim of North Korea, whose determination to build a nuclear weapon and missiles that could “reach Hawaii and the West Coast, theoretically” poses a risk “we cannot abide,” she said. At moments in the speeches, Mrs. Clinton was cleareyed about how difficult it would be to execute some of the actions she advocated, including a zone over parts of Syria. “To have a zone, you have to take out all of the air defense, many of which are located in populated areas,” she said. “So our missiles, even if they are standoff missiles so we’re not putting our pilots at risk — you’re going to kill a lot of Syrians. So all of a sudden this intervention that people talk about so glibly becomes an American and NATO involvement where you take a lot of civilians. ” Her assessment of the risk came before she was formally running for president. But two years later, in a television interview in October 2015, she sounded willing to take that risk. “I personally would be advocating now for a zone and humanitarian corridors to stop the carnage on the ground and from the air, to try to provide some way to take stock of what’s happening, to try to stem the flow of refugees,” she said. Her successor as secretary of state, John Kerry, tried last month to open those humanitarian corridors, but the effort collapsed in a dispute with Russia. A push to get it restarted during a meeting in Lausanne, Switzerland, on Saturday between Mr. Kerry and his Russian counterpart, Sergey V. Lavrov, also failed. In the talks at Goldman Sachs, Mrs. Clinton was often more analytic than prescriptive, describing her perceptions of individual leaders and the domestic politics and foreign threats they face. In that regard, her approach is quite different from that of Donald J. Trump. In two interviews on foreign policy with The New York Times, one in March and another in July, Mr. Trump moved directly to his plans of action: bombing the Islamic State and taking oil, for example, or withdrawing troops from Europe and Asia if allies do not pay their share. While Mr. Trump often talks in terms of striking deals, Mrs. Clinton talks in the more traditional terms of . When she became secretary in 2009, she posed a question about China to an Australian leader: “How do you deal toughly with your banker?” In the Goldman transcript, she suggested that she had answered her own question when sparring with the Chinese over its claims in the South China Sea. “I made the point at one point in the argument that, you know, you can call it whatever you want to call it,” she said. “You don’t have a claim to all of it. I said, by that argument, you know, the United States should claim all of the Pacific. We liberated it, we defended it. We have as much claim to all of the Pacific. And we could call it the American Sea, and it could go from the West Coast of California all the way to the Philippines. ” “And, you know, my counterpart sat up very straight and goes, ‘Well, you can’t do that. ’” Mrs. Clinton segued into an evaluation of Mr. Xi, the Chinese leader, who she noted had consolidated power in a way his predecessor never did, but had quickly traveled to places like Russia and Africa to assuage “doubts about Chinese practices. ” “So he’s someone who you at least have the impression is a more worldly, somewhat more experienced politician,” she said. Mr. Xi has since become more aggressive in the South China Sea, and it is unclear how forcefully Mrs. Clinton, if she became president, would confront him over his claims. She acknowledged at one point that the administration had gotten distracted from its “pivot” to Asia. In North Korea, the situation has worsened much more drastically. She summarized the Chinese message to the North Koreans this way: “We don’t care if you occasionally shoot off a missile. That’s good. That upsets the Americans and causes them heartburn, but you can’t keep going down a path that is unpredictable. ” That, of course, is exactly the path they have gone down. | 1 |
Turkish Objections Won't Stop YPG's Involvement by Jason Ditz, October 26, 2016 Share This
US Lt. Gen. Stephen Townsend, the leader of the US military forces in Iraq and Syria , today announced that Kurdish YPG forces will participate in the invasion of the ISIS capital city of Raqqa, despite Turkish government demands that the Kurds not be allowed to take part.
Townsend was a bit vague on the details of Kurdish involvement, saying the US are “going to take this in steps,” and that Turkey has to realize the only way that the US is going to have enough force to take over Raqqa any time soon is with a significant portion of the YPG involved.
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu reiterated that his government wants only “local forces” involved in the Raqqa battle, and that the YPG, who Turkey considers a terrorist organization, must not be allowed to take part in any way.
Turkey’s military has been attacking the YPG in several locations around Syria over the past week, including heavy airstrikes which killed an estimated 200 YPG fighters who were engaged in an offensive against ISIS around Afrin. The Turkish government has repeatedly complained the YPG is gaining too much territory in Syria, and that they must abandon much of it. Last 5 posts by Jason Ditz | 0 |
in: Consciousness , Government Corruption , Society , Special Interests , US News No event in American history (if you ask me) has been more engineered, more anticipated and more built up than the upcoming November 8, 2016 presidential election. Face it. This presidential election season made the truth movement mainstream. Evil and corruption was brought into the light. We’ve observed what a George Soros-like engineered regime breakdown looks and feels like from the inside, our side this time. We had heard and read about all those foreign governments that the US overthrew with their “democracy” tactics using “special forces”, NGO’s, paid-for revolutionaries, activists and in some cases flat out murderous fighters (ISIS, moderate rebels). This time the engineered chaos was happening here in the US. This 2016 election season has been packed with outright exposed corruption, lies, propaganda, murders, stolen primaries, fabricated accusations, distractions, staged debates and much more. We have seen a criminally accused presidential candidate get away with crimes in broad daylight while suspected of suffering from Parkinson’s disease, passing out, having seizures and even being followed around by a creepy doctor with a seizure medication injector. This is the stuff Hollywood films are made of. The list of the insanity goes on and on, right? We’ve witnessed plenty of lies, propaganda and Jerry Springer show-like attacks by the candidates to create just the perfect smokescreen so that Americans are not looking into the events in Aleppo or Mosul much less the Hillary-DNC- mainstream media corruption scandals and revelations. Instead of keeping a close eye on the doings of the US criminal empire, the elite relied on a very in-your-face and increasingly arrogant, defiant and now very busted and discredited mainstream media to push the desired paradigm and reinforce it every which way they can. Actually, this understates the situation. What really happened was that the mainstream media joined forces with the chosen candidate of the ruling oligarchs (Hillary) and together their campaign (the DNC-Hillary-Soros-Moveon.org-Michael Moore-Hollywood-mainstream media complex) has brought us to the ending that truth seekers are now looking ahead to with great anxiety and anticipation. Actually, I’m understating the situation again. All or most Americans (awakened or not) are anticipating and anxiously awaiting the end results of the US presidential elections. The question we should all be asking then is, how did we get here? Oh, and perhaps more importantly, where are we going? And to answer this, one must realize that the ruling elite have plans. They have a lot of money and they have players willing to go along with their plans. Not sure of this? Then please research Sandy Hook or Boston bombing events. Or research many of the crisis actor events of the past few years. That’s right. While they were staging one event after another, too many Americans were too busy and too afraid to call these fake events for what they were. Too many Americans fell for the trick that we were supposed to believe mainstream media “stories” and narratives unless we could “prove” that the account didn’t happen the way mainstream media said it did. In other words, many Americans were tricked into believing that unless proven otherwise, we should BELIEVE mainstream media. Well here we are in October of 2016 and finally (though it has been common knowledge to many of us for a long while) the illegitimacy of the mainstream media is carved in stone. No longer can it be considered a “conspiracy” by anyone, that mainstream media is corrupt and acts as a tool of psychological terrorism against the public on behalf of the ruling elite. That said, now it is time to confront the fully engineered and long planned ending of this 2016 US presidential election. Will staged “ political terrorism “, a term just introduced a couple of weeks ago into the American psyche, be staged as Mike Adams at Natural News is writing about ? Will this “terrorism” or planned “event” mark the beginning of the end of America? If so, what will happen? How will it all go down? Many are now wondering how deep is this web of corruption and how far will the traitors identified before us be willing to go to destroy America? The one thing everyone should accept is that this ending has been planned just like so many “events” of the past several years have been scripted and planned. So today I invite readers to acknowledge this very important singular factor in today’s events. The fact that they are planned. The notion of organic and spontaneous results is something the ruling elite hate. They hate anything that is organic, spontaneous, unpredictable, people-powered, natural and real. They need everything to be controlled, scripted, planned, orchestrated, engineered. Do you see a pattern here? One consciousness longs for freedom, naturalness and spontaneity, the other longs to control, orchestrate, engineer and dictate the ending, like a master would want to control his slave. Understanding this fundamental contrast between the control freak consciousness (think ruling elite) and the free spirited consciousness desiring to simply be free, will allow you to see what’s coming this November 8th 2016. What’s coming is a long awaited day for which the ruling elite have paid a lot of money and hired many people to manipulate and control the ending of. So the real question is, will their operation succeed? Looking at the election day ending from a birds-eye view and seeing how the ruling elite think and operate it is not difficult to see that they too are waiting for that day so that they can implement whatever plan they’ll need based on the materializing reality at that moment. In this (what I’ll call) wait-and-see plan whose execution of plan will either be entirely controlled from the beginning or be an adjusting reaction-based plan to be determined by the emerging reality, we can be sure that at no point will the ruling elite accept an ending that ruins their plan. In other words they will adjust their plan as often and as desperately as possible and necessary to engineer an ending to their liking. This ultimately is all we need to know to plan our (truth seekers and freedom lovers) next move. And our next move should look something like this if you ask me: 1- Have a plan including options for self-sustaining yourself and your loved ones (food, water, shelter and other personal needs) 2- Expect corruption but continue fighting and exposing the perpetrators. Let’s not let one of these traitors (including crisis actors and operatives working for the state) get away with what they have done. 3- Don’t rely ONLY on the internet to keep track of developing events. You might want to write down current event information or better yet print out key articles and documents (proof). Also download important videos don’t assume these videos will always be available on YouTube or the internet. Remember we are entering a much more volatile and intense information war age. The main point is we need to archive the evidence against those criminals who have betrayed America and humanity. 4- Beware of layered psychological operations. Question everything you hear and don’t discount that some “news” is designed for you to hear it (get it?). Unfortunately the controllers have indeed upped the anti when it comes to the information war. In deceptive times like these grabbing on to the principles you believe in become much more important than agreeing with someone on every little nuance about a particular event. Stay oriented and remember who the bad guys are, especially as we see the Hillary-mainstream media complex laughably blaming Russian president Vladimir Putin for all the now-revealed corruption and criminality of the Clintons, the mainstream media, the DNC and many others. Now is the time to confront the very real and very relevant inherent concepts of truth versus lies, lightness versus darkness, freedom versus slavery and knowledge versus hidden knowledge (the occult) because this, my friends, is what we are dealing with. We (truth seekers) are all in this together. We didn’t ask to be put in this show, it sort of came to us. Perhaps we (awakened humanity) are fulfilling a role that we cannot fully understand. This species we call humans needs some members of it’s kind to save the rest of the species and if you are reading this then you are probably a chosen vessel in this battle for humanity. There is nothing to fear for the ending has surely been scripted. We (like them) will also respond in real-time in the most effective way possible. What we need to do more than anything else is …. (pay attention) … think ahead just like they do. And so today I’m thinking ahead. I have plans for both scenarios (Trump or Hillary declared victory). I have plans for no “political terrorism” and political terrorism, shock or no shock, chaos or no chaos. In my world the problem remains the same until we hold these corrupt ruling elite, their politicians and players all responsible for their criminality and corruption. Plain and simple, the ruling elite must be identified, stopped and held accountable for their crimes against humanity and the US constitution. This is more important than any presidential election. Will a Trump victory make this accountability more possible? Many are hopeful of this but ultimately we must find a way to impose our will on the future and not rely on a politician to do this for us. Finally, I’m reminded of the very last line of the film ‘ The American Dream ‘ when the villain asks “what do you think this is?” and the answer “this is AMERICA!!”. Likewise, let’s remember, this IS America, the politically hijacked land that guarantees each and every individual inherent rights which are clearly and indisputably outlined in the US constitution. Will an opportunity present itself for the rule of law to be restored or will the ruling elite have their way? That question will very likely be answered at a time not necessarily coinciding with election night. This is a reminder to all that the battle we face for humanity and truth is continuous and very long term not about one isolated moment or day. 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Protesters at last Saturday’s March for Science faced a continual downpour of rain when they gathered on the National Mall to protest President Donald Trump and his policies. This Saturday’s People’s Climate March may take place in record temperatures, as forecasters say the mercury could reach the degree mark. [Actor Leonardo DiCaprio, Virgin Airlines founder Richard Branson, and former vice president Al Gore are expected to attend, according to the Washington Post. Tomorrow, we’re marching for a better world. March with us and #BeInconvenient https: . #ClimateMarch pic. twitter. — Al Gore (@algore) April 28, 2017, The people backing the march range from the Communist Party USA, the Sierra Club, CODEPINK, and the Barack Organizing for Action. But the man funding many of the organizations listed on the march’s website as members of the steering committee have received millions of dollars from George Soros, the billionaire who has deep roots in the U. S. environmental movement and other liberal causes. “The ‘People’s Climate March,’ scheduled for the 100th day of Donald Trump’s presidency, claims to be a movement of the people. But is it really?” Newsbusters reported on Friday. “It turns out of the steering committee organizations have one thing in common — donations from George Soros,” Newsbusters reported. “The liberal billionaire gave them more than $36 million combined. ” “Between 2000 and 2014, Soros gave $36, 018, 461 million to 18 of the 55 steering committee members of the People’s Climate March,” Newsbusters reported. “Donations to six of those groups were more $1 million each: Center for Community Change, the NAACP, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) People’s Action, Public Citizen and Union of Concerned Scientists. ” Newsbusters noted that only three of these six organizations — NRDC, Public Citizen and Union of Concerned Scientists — have climate as all or part of their mission, calling into question why so many focused groups are taking part in the march. “The presence of many related organizations leading the march indicated that this climate march (just like the March for Science and the Women’s March) is not about a single issue, but about attacking the new administration,” Newsbusters reported. The People’s Climate Change website states: Everything we have struggled to move forward in the United States is in peril. Our loved ones feel under siege, and those in power in Washington are advancing a dark and dangerous vision of America that we know is untrue. To change everything, we need everyone. On the 100th Day of the Trump Administration, we will be in the streets of Washington D. C. to show the world and our leaders that we will resist attacks on our people, our communities and our planet. We will come together from across the United States to strengthen our movement. We will demonstrate our power and resistance at the gates of the White House. We will bring our solutions to the climate crisis, the problems that affect our communities and the threats to peace to our leaders in Congress to demand action. Meanwhile, the Washington Post reports, “Environmentalists will once again rally in the nation’s capital this weekend, this time for the People’s Climate March,” noting that the march “will be more political and aimed at specific Trump administration policies. ” The Post said it’s “unclear” just how many people will show up, but “organizers are prepared to accommodate 50, 000 to 100, 000 people. ” | 1 |
The summer light was fading to gold near Red Square as Oliver Stone maneuvered through the lobby bar of a Moscow hotel last year. He walked past the marble staircase and the grand piano to a table in the back. A group of businessmen in suits lingered nearby. Stone grimaced. “I think we should move,” he said. His producer, Moritz Borman, led the way to another corner. “How’s this?” Borman asked. Stone didn’t answer. He eyed an older couple slurping soup and kept moving. A moment later, Stone finally settled in by a window, comfortably beyond earshot of the other patrons. Such security precautions had become routine. Ever since Stone decided to make a biopic about Edward Snowden, the American blower currently holed up in Moscow somewhere, the director — who became a Buddhist while making “Heaven Earth” and sampled a buffet of psychedelic drugs for “The Doors” — had gone all method again. On “Snowden,” he and Borman became so preoccupied with American government surveillance that they had their Los Angeles offices swept for bugs more than once. The director hadn’t been sleeping well. Principal photography wrapped a month earlier, and now Stone had come to Moscow to film Snowden for the movie’s grand finale. He ordered a decaf coffee and began to lay out the events that led him and Borman to be hanging out in Russian hotels, on the lookout for potential spies. “Last January, Moritz calls me,” Stone said. “He says: ‘You got a call from this fella who represents Mr. Snowden. You’re invited to Moscow. ’’u2009” The call had come from Anatoly Kucherena, Snowden’s Russian lawyer. In the course of his career, Kucherena has represented Russian oligarchs, film directors, a few pop singers and a state minister. In 2012, he campaigned for Vladimir V. Putin, and soon after Snowden landed in Moscow, Kucherena showed up at Sheremetyevo Airport and offered his services. Then Kucherena wrote a novel about his new client. Titled “Time of the Octopus,” it follows a National Security Agency leaker named Joshua Cold who is marooned in the airport and the Russian advocate who liberates him. In January 2014, months before the book was published, Kucherena called Borman to see if Stone might like to make it into a Hollywood movie. “And I know you from working on, what, three films?” Stone said at the bar. “Five,” Borman said. At the time, Stone and Borman were barely speaking after a out during the making of “Savages,” a beachy Blake Lively thriller. “We’ve had our fights,” Stone said. “You know, he’s German I’m American. ” He didn’t elaborate. “He calls, and I go: ‘Oh, [expletive]. Not again,’’u2009” Stone continued. It wasn’t just about Borman. Stone wanted nothing to do with another political docudrama. He spent two decades trying to get a biopic about the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. off the ground, only to see “Selma” get made to critical acclaim. Then there was the My Lai massacre film. Merrill Lynch put up cash, Bruce Willis was set to star and Stone built an entire village in Thailand. As the economy collapsed in 2008, the financing evaporated. “You get these scars, and they don’t go away,” Stone said. So Stone was skeptical. But this was Snowden, who handedly exposed the colossal scale on which the United States had been surveilling its citizens. Plus, the director needed a hit. After early successes like “Platoon” and “Wall Street,” his more recent films didn’t receive the attention he hoped. The Snowden story had all the ingredients of an epic Stone picture: politics, government conspiracy and, at the center of it all, an American patriot who had lost faith. If it panned out, it could be Stone’s millennial up to “Born on the Fourth of July,” the Ron Kovic biopic that won him an Oscar in 1990. But first Stone and Borman had to make sure Kucherena was for real. Borman asked the lawyer to send the book and two tickets to Moscow. Both arrived the next day. In case they still had doubts, Kucherena’s office gave Borman a number to call. On the other end was an employee of the Russian consulate in San Francisco, who turned out to be a big fan of “The Life of David Gale,” a film Borman produced. They were issued visas that same week. (Kucherena denies buying tickets for Stone and Borman or helping expedite their visas.) “When that happened,” Borman said, “I thought, O. K. I guess Kucherena can pull the strings. ” As narratives go, Snowden’s is a compelling one. His transformation from a shy and pale something — full of the sort of idealism those years can afford — to political dissident made him a hero figure to establishment liberals who are in the business of storytelling. Raised in a family of federal employees, Snowden grew up near Fort Meade, Md. He enlisted in the Army, went to work for the Central Intelligence Agency and became a technology specialist for the N. S. A. By the summer of 2013, he had downloaded thousands of documents, taken off for Hong Kong and asked the journalists Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras to meet him there. The initial revelations were sensational. Not only had the N. S. A. been monitoring the calls, emails and web activity of millions of Americans, but it also had been tapping into the networks of Google, Yahoo and other companies to do so. The Guardian published the leaks, and Greenwald eventually revealed the identity of his source in a video shot by Poitras. Depending on your feelings about national security, the N. S. A. ’s actions were either necessary or unconstitutional. The Apple founder Steve Wozniak called Snowden a hero. Secretary of State John Kerry called him a traitor. Donald Trump called for his execution. As Snowden became a celebrity, a cause and a historical event, the web of people who wanted to take part in it widened. Most had his best interests in mind, but his story also happened to advance agendas that had long needed an appealing spokesperson. liberties lawyers wanted to represent him. Activist journalists wanted access to him. Publishers rushed out books, including “The Snowden Files: The Inside Story of the World’s Most Wanted Man,” by Luke Harding of The Guardian, and “The Snowden Operation: Inside the West’s Greatest Intelligence Disaster,” by Edward Lucas of The Economist. Despite promising an “inside” look, neither writer had ever met Snowden. Those with intimate knowledge documented the experience, too. In 2014, Greenwald published “No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the N. S. A. and the U. S. Surveillance State,” a dramatic retelling of how Greenwald broke the story. That fall, Poitras released “Citizenfour,” a tense and spooky documentary about a modest and intelligent young man who hid under a blanket when typing on his laptop. (It won the 2015 Oscar for best documentary.) Snowden, meanwhile, ended up in Russia. He had embarked on a trip to Ecuador, but the United States revoked his passport midflight, leaving him stranded in Moscow. For Russia, Snowden was like a bird that flew in through an open window — or, as Putin joked, an unwanted Christmas present. But politically speaking, he could be useful. After enduring the United States’ endless lectures about human rights, the Kremlin could suddenly welcome a man who exposed American hypocrisy. Kucherena entered the picture as Snowden’s lifeline, or at least as someone who could help him navigate Russia’s asylum laws. An experienced lawyer, Kucherena was appointed by Putin to the Public Council, overseeing the Federal Security Service (F. S. B. ). Snowden’s case presented a new opportunity. It took Kucherena a month to negotiate Snowden’s stay and three months to write “Time of the Octopus. ” Stone’s first meeting with Kucherena was a disaster. (“I thought he was a gruff bear,” Stone told me.) The director wanted to meet Snowden, but Kucherena said Snowden wouldn’t meet them until they agreed to option “Time of the Octopus. ” (Kucherena denies this.) According to Stone and Borman, by the end of a long weekend, they reached a gentlemen’s agreement: Stone would option the novel — if Kucherena could provide regular access to his client. I first spoke to Stone in June 2015, after reading that he was in the midst of shooting a film based on Kucherena’s novel. He said he would be traveling to Moscow again that week to shoot Snowden and agreed to let me tag along. A day later, a peeved Borman called me. “You’ve been disinvited,” he said coolly. During those 24 hours, this magazine had contacted Ben Wizner, Snowden’s lawyer at the American Civil Liberties Union, to arrange an interview with his client. Kucherena may be Snowden’s Russian representative, but in the United States, Wizner runs the show. Wizner was furious. Not just because Stone had invited a reporter to Moscow, but because of how it all looked: that Snowden was involved in a Hollywood movie and that the whole production was seemingly brokered by a lawyer with ties to the Kremlin. Borman would later tell me that we had waded into the sticky territory of Snowden’s multiple emissaries. “There are two ways to access him: One is Kucherena and one is Wizner, and it’s completely political,” Borman said. “It’s a political situation that goes way above your head. ” When Wizner and I finally got on the phone, he was in control mode. He told me that Snowden wasn’t profiting from Stone’s film in any way. “One rule Ed always had was, I’m not selling my life rights,” Wizner said. Snowden’s participation in a Hollywood movie would only fuel the claims of his critics — that he was a narcissist eager to cash in. That said, Stone’s film would be seen by millions of people, which meant it could sway public opinion. “We were choosing between two bad options,” Wizner said. “He could have stubbornly stayed completely at arm’s length and had no input whatsoever. Or he could have some input and compromised the arm’ relationship. And I didn’t know how to advise him on that. ” According to Wizner, Snowden met with Stone only to make sure that the film told an accurate story. “It’s been us walking this tightrope between clearly not having any formal connection to the project — not deriving any benefit from it — and also not wanting to just be completely helpless and, you know, see what Oliver Stone comes up with,” Wizner said. Despite some initial discomfort, he was tentatively optimistic. “Maybe it’ll be good,” Wizner added. “You know, Oliver Stone wrote ‘Scarface. ’’u2009” Still, Stone was heading to Moscow to film Snowden for an appearance in the movie, which could be seen as an endorsement. checking is one thing, I said a cameo is another. “It is, and I’m not entirely comfortable with it,” Wizner said. Wizner had negotiated veto control over any footage featuring Snowden in the film. After we spoke, the lawyer says he asked Borman to put that in writing. He also reiterated that if Stone took a reporter along, Snowden would not participate. Stone and I eventually reached a compromise: I wouldn’t observe the shoot, but I could still come and meet Kucherena. A few days later, I met Stone in Moscow. The director, who is 69, has a leaning gait and unruly eyebrows, so that he looks a bit like a bull that is always about to charge. He emerged from the hotel’s elevator with a pained look on his face. It was drizzling, and Stone’s hair, which is the color of dark shoe polish, was pointing laterally. “I have some bad news,” he said. “I cannot deliver Anatoly. ” He had just seen Snowden, who had been in touch with Wizner and was very upset, Stone said. “Ed said he doesn’t want Anatoly talking to you, and he said that very clearly,” Stone added. I would spend the next few days camped out at the hotel. When Stone wasn’t shooting, we would meet in the lobby bar as he continued to tell me about the making of his film. Soon after optioning Kucherena’s novel, Stone had returned to Moscow with his writer, Kieran Fitzgerald, a recent University of Texas M. F. A. graduate. Anticipating a homesick Snowden, Fitzgerald hauled over a duffel bag packed with the stuff of Americana dreams: Kraft macaroni and cheese, cups, Oreos, Pepperidge Farm cookies, Twizzlers, peanut butter, Spam, an Orioles baseball cap and a pair of Converse sneakers. “It was like delivering a care package to a kid at summer camp,” Fitzgerald told me. He also slipped in a copy of “The Odyssey” translated by his grandfather, Robert Fitzgerald. “I thought it was appropriate, since Ed was on his own kind of odyssey trying to get home. ” Snowden and Stone had gotten off to a slow start. Snowden was squeamish about a movie being made about his life. Stone, in turn, said the film would be made with or without him. Fitzgerald says he played referee. “Oliver can be a bit of battering ram,” Fitzgerald said. “He’s accustomed to hard men who need to be cracked, but that’s not Edward Snowden. He’s not an male type. He’s a very sensitive mind. So I was there to say: ‘Everything is going to be O. K. He’s a good guy. It’s going to be a good movie. ’’u2009” Eventually, Snowden began to open up, answering questions about his childhood his girlfriend, Lindsay Mills and what he could about his work for the N. S. A. While Fitzgerald returned to Austin to work on the script, Stone set out to plant his flag in the Snowden story. In Hollywood, book options are the equivalent of calling dibs, and Stone had competition. In May 2014, Sony Pictures optioned Greenwald’s “No Place to Hide. ” By June, Stone had announced that he acquired Kucherena’s book and Harding’s “The Snowden Files. ” The tactic worked. Sony got nervous. “Now what?” Amy Pascal, then Sony’s chairwoman, wrote to another executive. (The email would be leaked during the Sony hack.) Pascal’s colleague reminded her of the case of the dual Steve Jobs biopics — “Jobs,” with Ashton Kutcher, might have come out first, but it was “Steve Jobs,” starring Michael Fassbender, that was the better film. Pascal wasn’t convinced. “Oliver Stone is not Ashton Kutcher,” she responded. She wrote to George Clooney to pique his interest in adapting Greenwald’s book, but Clooney passed. “Stone will do a hatchet job on the movie, but it will still be the film of Snowden,” he replied. For Stone, the impending Sony project was a call to arms. Fitzgerald cranked out a first draft of the script, and that fall Stone went out to studios with a budget of $50 million and a release date in December 2015. Each one turned it down, and Stone became convinced that the studios wanted to quash the project because of its controversial subject matter. “This is why corporations owning movie studios is not a good idea,” he said. While Borman hustled to find independent financing, Stone dove into casting. For the lead, he chose Joseph Levitt, the son of liberals from Sherman Oaks, Calif. and a former child actor who has retained a pleasingly boyish look. “There’s an interesting blandness to him in the same way that Jimmy Stewart might’ve been considered bland,” Stone said. “There’s a neutrality there, which allows him to grow on you. ” Shailene Woodley was cast to play Lindsay Mills, Zachary Quinto as Greenwald and Melissa Leo as Poitras. By early 2015, Borman and Stone had racked up several hundred thousand dollars in debt, but the money was still short. The shoot was ultimately delayed three weeks as the producer cobbled together European partners. In the United States, “Snowden” was picked up by Open Road Films, a small production company that had just put out “Jobs” — the Kutcher version. “It was painful that we ended up with this independent distributor,” Stone said. Borman offered that Open Road was not so independent anymore. “I’d never heard of it,” Stone said, adding: “I’ve been there before, but not on this level and not at this age. So for me, it was very difficult personally. ” The cover of “Time of the Octopus” features a image of Snowden’s face and a globe peeled like an orange to reveal the logo of the C. I. A. In his author photo, Kucherena indeed looks bearish, with a round face, matted white hair and a cellphone pressed to his right ear — as if he were midnegotiation. “The whole truth about the American agent on the run,” the cover boasts. Also: “Oliver Stone is currently shooting a film based on this book. ” I had gotten my copy from Stone, who handed it to me with a disclaimer. “Now, it’s easy to take a shot at this,” he said. “You know, it wasn’t the basis of the movie. But it’s fun. I enjoyed reading it. ” “Time of the Octopus” takes place in a single night. The protagonist, Joshua Cold, is sequestered in a bunker at Sheremetyevo Airport, where his Russian lawyer keeps him company. The chapters alternate between their stamped conversations and those labeled as digital files (“File 004. wav”) suggesting that they are the lawyer’s transcribed recordings. The basic facts of Cold’s case sound familiar, as do the character names: There are journalists named Boitras and Greywold and an organization called Mikileaks run by an Augusto Cassangie. For the most part, Cold and the lawyer sit and talk about life, quoting Laozi to each other. But there is also a distinctly Soviet tone to the novel, which reads both like a love letter to American culture — Steven Spielberg, B. B. King, “The Terminator,” Penthouse magazine, Popeye, “The ” Paul Newman, Bon Jovi, “ Man,” “Braveheart,” Quentin Tarantino and Tupac Shakur are all mentioned — and a gleeful taunt to its government. “Not only did [Cold] snap the beak of the American eagle,” Kucherena writes, “but he also gave him a good kick and a very humiliating one, as if it was not a menacing predator but a rural hen. ” In the bunker, Cold enjoys pizza and whiskey, but he is worried about American agents coming to retrieve him. “Believe me, Russia is not the worst option for you,” the lawyer tells Cold. “And you needn’t regard us with such mistrust. ” Once Cold is granted asylum, the propaganda is dialed up. “I shall work in Russia and get an apartment!” Cold announces. “I thought I would spend the rest of my life in this underground prison. ” “As far as I know Mr. Putin, he is not one to change his mind easily,” the lawyer assures him. “All will be O. K. ” The novel concludes with Cold vowing to learn to drink like the Russians, but the lawyer suggests he try Kvass instead, a fermented beverage made from rye bread. (“It is the Russian Cola,” the lawyer says.) Then they leave the bunker. “Weird, huh?” Fitzgerald said when I asked about the novel. In fact, few people associated with either Snowden or “Snowden” wanted to discuss it. “I don’t want to say anything on the record about that book,” Levitt told me. According to WikiLeaks, Stone paid a million dollars for “Time of the Octopus,” which seemed like a hefty amount to pay for material that Stone admitted he had no plans of using. (That’s the same figure Sony reportedly paid for the rights to “Eat, Pray, Love. ”) “We bought it because we did get good access to Ed,” Stone explained. “He had to be brought along. ” During Stone’s visits, Kucherena hosted the director at his favorite restaurants and at his dacha outside Moscow. “They had a kind of bromance,” Fitzgerald told me. Photos from the trips look like vacation postcards, with Stone and Fitzgerald grinning in Red Army caps (a gift from Kucherena) and Fitzgerald and Levitt posing for a selfie in front of St. Basil’s Cathedral. While out in public, the group referred to Snowden as “Sasha,” a nickname Kucherena had given him. Kucherena and I would eventually speak by phone. He said he wrote the novel because he had received calls from many “representatives of Hollywood,” writers and filmmakers. “At some point, I just thought to myself, Why don’t I try to write the book?” he said. I asked which writers and directors had called him. “Very many people called me,” he replied. “But I honestly don’t remember their names now. ” The lawyer was deeply troubled by the news media’s insinuations that he is connected to the Kremlin. He pointed to several clients he has defended against the F. S. B. including Platon Obukhov, a writer accused of spying for Britain. “I never had any kind of agreement with the Kremlin,” he said. “They tried to say I’m tied to the F. S. B. but that’s complete nonsense, excuse me. ” Kucherena said he was inspired by his favorite authors, who include Tom Clancy, Aldous Huxley and George Orwell. “The Octopus in my novel is, you can say, a direct offspring of Big Brother,” he said. Like most writers of fiction, he was reluctant to discuss which parts of his book were based in reality. “A person can only be open with someone he trusts,” Kucherena said. “And here, because he had no one else, it turned out that I took on the role of mother and father. Accordingly, we had confidential conversations of various sorts. ” He did not see a conflict of interest in his writing the novel. “I wrote an artistic book,” Kucherena said. Because he represents Snowden pro bono, he never expected to capitalize on the relationship. “I don’t take any money from him,” Kucherena said. “He doesn’t have any. So I wrote a book, yes, fine. So I got a little, as we say in Russian. ” Despite being the one to put the “Snowden” project into motion, Kucherena shied away from assuming any credit. “I’m very far from all that,” he said. “I’m just an advocate. Look at where I am and where Hollywood is!” When I told Wizner that Stone said he bought Kucherena’s book to gain access to Snowden, his voice climbed a few octaves again. “Virtually every single other person who’s met with Snowden, and there have been dozens of them, have just gone through me, and we’ve hooked it up,” Wizner said. He listed some names, which included the film director Doug Liman, as well as the actors Jared Leto and John Cusack. (Cusack took Snowden Cool Ranch Doritos, as well as DVDs of “Network” and “Dr. Strangelove. ”) Wizner, who is 45, has been at the A. C. L. U. since 2001. Before Snowden, he tried to bring several suits to increase oversight over the intelligence community. Wizner likes to say that he spent a decade banging his head against a wall, and then Snowden came along and brought that wall down. Snowden had not only revealed the scope of the surveillance apparatus, but also that top government officials routinely misled the public about it. Since becoming Snowden’s advocate, Wizner has become a figure of not insignificant geopolitical importance. Those revelations have since formed a critical backdrop for legislative reforms, and there are few things that irritate Wizner more than claims that threaten to tarnish Snowden’s character and their common cause. It would not be a stretch to say that for Wizner, Kucherena has become a bit of a liability. Since 2013, the Russian lawyer has announced that Snowden landed a job at a major Russian website — news that turned out to not be true — and has supplied the news media with photos of his client enjoying his new life in Russia, attending an opera at the Bolshoi Theater and cheerfully hugging a dog named Rick. (Rick later turned out to be the dog of one of Kucherena’s friends.) Now Kucherena had sold a novel to Stone, making it seem as if the director had to pay a Russian fixer to have access to Snowden — or worse, that Snowden was somehow under the lock and key of the Russian authorities, lent to Stone for a Hollywood movie. Wizner’s counterefforts in the United States have been successful. Former Attorney General Eric Holder, once a fierce critic, has acknowledged that Snowden performed “a public service. ” President Obama has called for the reform of phone metadata collection, and last June, Congress passed the U. S. A. Freedom Act, a law that directly resulted from Snowden’s leaks. Snowden has come to be seen as a levelheaded activist. According to Wizner, he leads a free existence in Russia, making appearances via live video and publishing against Russia’s human rights violations. “I think people are inclined to believe that Russia would never let him stay there unless he was paying for it in some way,” Wizner said. “But it’s just not true. Not only is he not cooperating, but he’s actually being critical. ” When I asked Wizner about Kucherena’s book, we were meeting at a cafe near his office in Lower Manhattan. “Maybe you should just characterize my facial expression — ‘He smirked,’’u2009” Wizner said. (Except that his smirk was mixed with a frown.) According to him, Snowden has not read Kucherena’s book. “The thing is, Ed has much bigger fish to fry,” he said. “If you had people calling for your assassination, you’d be annoyed. If you were facing life in solitary confinement, you’d be concerned. If someone wrote some book in Russia that no one is going to read, it doesn’t register. ” Wizner was reluctant to discuss Kucherena’s role in Snowden’s life, but he conceded that it was somewhat unorthodox. “It seems like the ethical rules governing the client relationship may be somewhat different in Russia,” he said. “It would be very unusual for a lawyer in a profile case to provide exclusive photos of his client to newspapers or write an unauthorized book and sell it to Hollywood. ” Kucherena and Wizner have never met. Whatever uneasiness there may be, Kucherena spoke warmly about his American counterpart. “We are on the same team!” he told me. “Ben works in America, I work in Russia. If he wanted to write a book, I would have no problem. ” Wizner told me he has no plans to write a book about Snowden, fictional or otherwise. “Mission accomplished,” Stone announced. We had met in the lobby bar again, the day after he filmed Snowden, and the director was in better spirits. The shoot took place at Kucherena’s dacha. The day went long. Stone’s idea was to interview Snowden and capture an affecting moment that would give the film its dramatic ending. But the first takes were stiff. “Ed is used to answering questions on a level of intelligence,” Stone said. “But I was interested in the emotional, which is difficult for him. ” Stone ended up doing nine takes. At one point, they took a break and went for a walk around Kucherena’s property. By the end of the day, Stone decided that he had gotten Snowden to go as far as he was going to. “He was cooperative,” Stone said. “He wanted to make it work. But as an actor — he’s not used to that. I mean, he’s not an actor. And I don’t think he became one that day. ” To make Snowden more comfortable, Stone worked with a minimal crew. Some were meeting the blower for the first time and still seemed a bit . “Suddenly this little creature comes teetering in — so fragile, so lovely, such a charming, behaved, beautiful little man,” the cinematographer, Anthony Dod Mantle, told me. “He’s like an old soul in a very young body. He’s got fingers like violins. ” Filming Snowden reminded Mantle of shooting other men with outsize reputations and slight builds. “It’s like Bono or Al Pacino,” he added. “Those guys are weenies. But if you isolate him into a frame, he can be as big as anybody else. ” Mantle shot Danny Boyle’s “Slumdog Millionaire” and “127 Hours,” but “Snowden” proved to be a special challenge. Convinced that making the film on American soil would be too risky, Stone decided to film in Germany, where Borman was able to score some tax subsidies. With roughly 140 script pages to shoot in 54 days, the crew sprinted from Munich to Washington, to Hawaii, to Hong Kong, and then back to Munich. Often, Mantle wouldn’t get to see locations before he had to film in them. To cut costs, the suburbs of Munich had to stand in for rural Maryland and Virginia, with German extras cast as Americans. “Thank God the Germans act like Americans,” Stone said. The production itself resembled a covert operation, with a code name (“Sasha” had stuck) and elaborate security protocols. Worried that “Sasha” would be of interest to the N. S. A. Borman and Stone avoided discussing production details by phone or email — “It was all handwritten notes and long walks in the park,” Borman said — and kept the script on gapped computers, ones that have never been connected to the internet. If it had to be mailed, Borman would mix up the pages into four packages, which he would send with four different couriers to four different addresses. “Maybe nobody gave a [expletive],” Borman told me. “Or maybe the N. S. A. is laughing at us like, ‘Look at those idiots — of course we copied everything that came through DHL and FedEx!” For the actors, the frenetic schedule and paranoia on set added to the mood of the production. “Snowden himself was in the midst of a stressful situation, so the fact that our shoot was a little bit that way, I think, helped,” Levitt said, before catching himself. “Making the movie was obviously a walk in the park compared to what he did. But just to have those little emotional touch points can help when you’re acting. ” Committed to inhabiting Snowden’s robotic speech pattern, Levitt lifted the audio from “Citizenfour” and played it on repeat while he slept. He also worried that some of the dialogue felt handed. “Oliver is very into making his point,” the actor said, “as he should be. I really admire him for that. But I felt like it was my job to be like, ‘O. K. I want to make the point, too, but this is a human being and not just a mouthpiece. ” Stone found Levitt’s approach too “ ish” at times. “I was trying for the dramatic side as much as possible,” Stone said. Fitzgerald was ultimately flown in to the set to execute minute rewrites. By late spring of 2015, Stone was close to wrapping when his mother, Jacqueline Goddet Stone, died at 93. She had called him in Munich, but Stone felt he couldn’t risk leaving. “To go to L. A. would have cost us three down days,” Stone told me. “I knew she was going to pass, but I thought I could make it. ” Stone remained on set during the funeral and kept shooting. Stone’s trip to Moscow to film the real Snowden was the last bit he needed to complete the film. But he was still worried — that the footage would be leaked, that critics would eviscerate it, that Snowden wouldn’t like it. “I want him to vet it,” he said. He was heading to New York to begin editing and planned to return to Moscow at the end of the summer to show Snowden a rough cut. “O. K. my dear,” Stone said, getting up to leave. “See you in New York. ” Then he disappeared for six months. Before Stone set out to make his film, he had met Snowden’s chief biographers, Greenwald and Poitras. Stone and Greenwald became friendly, and when Greenwald’s book drew interest in Hollywood before it was published, the journalist turned to Stone for advice. “In the back of my mind, I thought if he had any interest in making a film, that would be a good segue for him to say so,” Greenwald told me. At the time, Stone wasn’t interested, and Greenwald negotiated the deal with Sony. Stone later came back and offered to match Sony’s bid, but Greenwald declined. “I think he was a little perturbed,” Greenwald said. Of the principal cast, Zachary Quinto, who plays Greenwald in Stone’s movie, was the only actor who didn’t meet his counterpart as research. “I always thought that was a little weird,” Greenwald said. “I think Oliver thought I had some competitive hostility toward his project, or he had some hostility — I’m not really sure. ” (According to Stone, Quinto didn’t need to meet Greenwald because there were so many videos of the journalist online.) In the spring of 2014, Stone flew to Berlin and met with Poitras. The meeting did not go well. According to Poitras, Stone proposed that she delay the release of “Citizenfour,” which she was then in the middle of editing, to time up with his film. “Because his film would be the real movie — because it’s a Hollywood movie,” Poitras told me. “Obviously I wasn’t interested in doing that. To have another filmmaker ask me to delay the release of my film was — well, it was somewhat insulting. ” Stone was annoyed, but he stuck around for a few drinks. They discussed new movies, including “12 Years a Slave. ” As Poitras recalls, Stone found the film too violent, while Poitras thought the brutality was appropriate given the subject matter. Stone was growing increasingly frustrated. “At some point, he reached over and had his hands around my neck,” Poitras said. “It was sort of in a joking way. I think he was a little bit drunk. But it was not a particularly pleasant evening. ” According to Stone, he only offered to help Poitras get distribution. “We thought we’d help her either bring out her film with our film, or in the wake of it or before it, if we could,” Stone said. He didn’t recall pretending to strangle Poitras. “I think from talking to her, you sense she’s superparanoid,” he said. “But I liked her,” he continued. “I admired her. I saw her films. I was trying to help her. If Laura is accusing me of trying to aggress her or kill her, she’s crazy. ” Despite his occasional bullishness, Stone craves approval. His films tend to resemble his character: at once original, impetuous, dogmatic and stubbornly ambitious. They typically run up to three hours, and he is often hurt when they’re underappreciated. Once, I was with Stone when he was handed a copy of “A Child’s Night Dream,” the novel he wrote at 19. Stone began to recite the blurbs aloud. “The language moves in torrents, always energized . .. shamanistic,” Stone read, quoting The Boston Globe. “I don’t get many good reviews, but this is good. ” I said that he has gotten plenty of good reviews since then. “You should see Rotten Tomatoes,” he said, referring to the review aggregator. Stone’s torment is at least in part inflicted. Biopics can be a nasty business, and Stone routinely throws himself into historical narratives and the messy negotiation between fact and fiction. The haggling with historians and family estates is the reason Stone was never able to make films about Martin Luther King Jr. and Hank Williams, and it was why he had to wait for Richard M. Nixon to die to make “Nixon. ” For Stone, the characters of the stories he is after have become both the obstacles and the necessary arbiters of his work. It’s why he refused to make “Snowden” without Snowden, and why his appeals to Greenwald and Poitras were his way of getting them on board. If Poitras had a strong reaction to Stone’s proposal, it was because she had already been hounded by Sony. After the studio optioned Greenwald’s book, Poitras says Sony asked to buy her life rights — an offer she declined. Sony suggested that she come on as a consultant, but when the contract arrived, it stipulated that the studio would have access to Poitras’s tapes and notebooks. “So I’d already gone through that when Oliver came in trying to position himself,” she said. Poitras is a spoken, cautious woman who has spent much of the past decade on government watch lists. Her resistance to participating in various Snowden projects has less to do with her feeling territorial than with her trying to maintain some control as she has become a character in a story that is no longer hers. Poitras’s radical position is that the “Snowden story” can really belong only to Snowden. “I could have asked him for a contract in Hong Kong, but I don’t believe in that as a concept,” she said. “It’s his story, and I hope he tells it when he’s ready. ” Neither Greenwald nor Poitras ultimately object to Stone making his film. While his own movie still lingered in development, Greenwald thought Snowden’s story might in fact be safer in Stone’s hands than it would be elsewhere. The Sony leaks would eventually reveal that Stone’s paranoia may have been justified: In emails about the purchase of Greenwald’s book, an executive in Sony’s affairs office suggests toning down the news release, changing “illegal spying” to “intelligence gathering” and “misuse of power” to “actions. ” “My big worry with Hollywood and the Snowden story is that they’re either going to be cowards and completely drain it of its political vitality,” Greenwald told me, “or that they’re going to do a superbiased smear job. For all the talk about how liberal Hollywood is, the reality is that they’re really close to the government. And whatever other things you might say about Oliver, I was actually relieved that someone was going to do this film where there was no danger of those things happening. ” This January, I drove to Stone’s office in West Los Angeles to watch a rough cut of “Snowden. ” Stone works out of a discreet suite in a pristine office complex. The décor is eclectic. There are tribal masks, Indonesian throw pillows, a Che Guevara painting and a lone potted palm tree. Like “Citizenfour,” “Snowden” takes place in Hong Kong, but this time the story has the eerie feeling of a familiar scene enacted by skilled Hollywood actors. Stone was right about Levitt. His performance is not an interpretation so much as a direct replica of the blower’s even demeanor and intonation. Quinto plays Greenwald with such intensity that he appears perpetually enraged. Melissa Leo’s Poitras is in turn warm and protective, almost maternal. Stone came in just as the credits rolled. He was nursing a cold but was back on caffeine and asked his assistant for Bulletproof, the trendy coffee brand made with “ butter. ” “It’s supposed to be nutritional,” Stone said. “No radicals. ” Since I last saw him, the film’s release had been pushed from December 2015 to May 2016 as Stone rushed to complete it, and then once more to September 2016. The biggest challenge was pacing. Stone likes to structure his movies around a series of pivoting, battlelike scenes — the concerts in “The Doors,” the football games in “Any Given Sunday” or actual warfare in “Alexander. ” A story in which the drama hinges on a tech specialist downloading classified documents was more subdued than he was accustomed to. “Coding is not exciting,” Stone said. “At the end of the day, it’s a nerdlike behavior — it’s dull on a screen. ” Stone got around the tedium of reality by turning his film into a cross between a cyberthriller and a love story, using Snowden’s relationship with Mills to inject emotional stakes. Cutting between Snowden in Hong Kong and flashbacks to his past, the film speeds through Snowden’s biography with the help of techno music, snappy explanations of N. S. A. programs and tricky camerawork to build in the tension of surveillance. (There are scenes filmed from the perspective of tiny phone cameras — the modern peephole — and suggestive on eye pupils.) But there are also unmistakable . “I just don’t really like bashing my country,” Levitt says to Woodley as they stroll past a era antiwar protest in front of the White House. “It’s my country, too,” Woodley says. “And right now, it’s got blood on its hands. ” Snowden’s N. S. A. boss is unsubtly named Corbin O’Brian, after the antagonist in Orwell’s “1984. ” “Most Americans don’t want freedom,” O’Brian tells Snowden. “They want security. ” Snowden’s many storytellers all tell a similar hero narrative. But if Greenwald’s account is about journalism, Poitras’s is a subtle and artful character study and Kucherena’s is an attempt at the Russian novel — a man alone in a room, wrestling with his conscience — Stone’s is the explicit blockbuster version, told in high gloss with big, emotional music and digestible plot points that will appeal to mass audiences. As Wizner wisely anticipated, it is the narrative most likely to cement Snowden’s story in Americans’ minds. Snowden declined to comment for this article, but Stone told me he had seen the film and liked it. At a screening at Con a few months later, Snowden would beam in via satellite to give his somewhat wary approval. “It was something that made me really nervous,” he said of Stone’s film. “But I think he made it work. ” As Stone intended, Snowden shows up at the end of the film. He appears in a paneled room in Kucherena’s dacha, a modest, looking space, with little to see except a vase of flowers and some curtains in the background. The Snowden who speaks is not the stoic version, but one who manages to deliver a caliber movie line. “I no longer have to worry about what happens tomorrow,” he says, “because I’m happy with what I’ve done today. ” Just before the screen fades to black, Snowden is shown gazing toward a window, a faint, inscrutable smile on his face. By this summer, whatever anxieties there may have once been seemed to have dissipated. With the film completed, Stone would officially beat Sony’s project. Open Road, the distributor he was worried about, had won an Oscar for “Spotlight. ” After “Snowden” earned similar marks to that film during test screenings, everyone seemed optimistic, if a little surprised. “At first I thought there must be something wrong,” said Borman, who told me that he hadn’t seen such high scores in 25 years. Open Road had pushed for a fall release, placing it firmly among Oscar contenders. (“Snowden” will open in theaters on Sept. 16, the day after Stone’s 70th birthday.) Levitt was so moved by Snowden’s story that he donated most of his salary from the film to the A. C. L. U. and used the rest to collaborate with Wizner on a series of videos about democracy. Wizner was preparing to petition Obama to grant Snowden a presidential pardon in the fall, and he hoped Stone’s film would help transform the public’s perception of his client. Kucherena, meanwhile, had turned “Time of the Octopus” into a trilogy — in the sequel, the N. S. A. sends an assassin to Russia to “eliminate” Joshua Cold. He hoped to come to the United States for the premiere of the film, in which he has a cameo as a Russian banker who encounters Snowden at a party. “If I can get a visa, why not?” he said. In July, Stone and Wizner joined forces for an A. C. L. U. event. The evening was billed as a conversation with Wizner about surveillance and Edward Snowden, with Stone hosting at his style home in the Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles. As several dozen West Coast supporters of the A. C. L. U. filtered into Stone’s backyard, the director sat camped out on a bench by the pool, taking the party in from a distance. He boasted that he had recently cut four more minutes from the film, bringing the run time to a lean 134 minutes. I asked if he would keep finessing until the end. “No, it’s over,” he said. “This is it. Now I die. ” Wizner roamed around, inspecting a meditation gazebo outfitted with a large gold Buddha. After several people inquired who was playing him in the movie, the lawyer came up with a pithy reply. “Kevin Spacey, reprising his role as Keyser Soze,” he joked. “The guy behind the guy behind the guy — hiding in plain sight. ” (Wizner is not a character in Stone’s film.) That week, NPR ran an interview with a Russian security official who posited that Snowden is maybe, probably, most definitely cooperating with Russian intelligence. This inevitably set Wizner off. “Of course, this is the same week that Snowden is blasting Putin on Twitter every day,” Wizner said to Borman, who nodded along. The producer suggested that Snowden’s critics would claim it’s a cover. “That’s what they say!” Wizner said. “This is preapproved criticism so that it’ll seem like he’s free, but actually Putin is the master pulling the strings. ” Eventually, everyone moved to the den, a spacious, brightly lit room filled with family photos. Matthew Weiner, the “Mad Men” creator, took a seat by a stack of DVDs, which included multiple seasons of his own hit TV show. Others arranged themselves along wicker chairs that lined the room’s perimeter. The whole thing had the feeling of a P. T. A. meeting, but without the stale cookies. Wizner got up and spoke for some time about his efforts as Snowden’s lawyer. As he opened the room to questions, someone asked how long Russia could be relied on to keep Snowden safe. Wizner turned the question over to Stone. “Oliver is the Russia expert,” he said with a hint of aggression. Since completing “Snowden,” Stone had become absorbed in his newfound interest in Russia and announced that he was making a documentary about Putin. In recent months, he had accompanied the Russian president to a theater performance and a World War II Victory Day parade in Moscow. “He represents a different point of view that Americans don’t want to hear,” Stone had told RIA Novosti, a Russian news service. When someone else asked about Stone’s experience of making “Snowden,” his answer was despondent. “It was really a horrible experience in every way,” he said. Everyone laughed except for Stone. As the guests dispersed, Wizner lingered in the foyer, admiring Stone’s art collection depicting important and mostly dead men. He thought that a print of Sartre looked like Steve Buscemi and that a looking Beethoven was actually Stone. On the opposite wall was a sketch of Genghis Khan, the feared Mongolian emperor. Stone called him a liberal. “Yes, Genghis Khan — misunderstood,” Wizner teased. Stone smiled and cocked his head. “Listen, the A. C. L. U. should defend him!” | 1 |
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Republican nominee Donald Trump has been strategically placing certain people behind his him at rallies to create a false illusion about the diversity of his supporters. You may have noticed a man holding a “BLACKS FOR TRUMP” sign behind the racist rabble-rouser at his events, with a website URL “GODS2.com” underneath it. If you’ve wondered just what kind of black Americans could bring themselves to support Trump or if this election could get any weirder, well, hold on to your seat.
The man holding the sign is “Michael the Black Man,” also known as Maurice Woodside or Michael Symonette. LittleGreenFootballs did some research and discovered that Michael isn’t your ordinary concerned citizen. He’s a former member of a murderous cult , Yahweh ben Yahweh, led by preacher Hulon Mitchell Jr.
Michael, along with 15 other Yahweh followers, was charged for allegedly conspiring in two murders; his brother, who was also in the cult, told jurors that Michael had helped beat one man who was later killed and stuck a sharpened stick into another man’s eyeball. But jurors found Michael (and six other Yahweh followers) innocent. They sent Mitchell away for 20 years in the federal pen.
Michael later reinvented himself as a radio host and an anti-gay, anti-Obama preacher and soon found himself in the spotlight at Republican events, whose organizers were delighted to have found another person of color to attack Obama without being obviously racist. His website, GODS2.com, is filled with the delusional, vaguely anti-Semitic rantings of a madman and homages to Yahweh.
This may not mean much in the long run, but it’s worth pointing out just how outrageous the hypocrisy of the Trump campaign is. Trump attacked Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton when the father of the Orlando nightclub shooter appeared in the stands behind her at a rally out of chance, accusing her of associating with the father of a deranged murderer – but this man is actually being planted behind Trump because of his skin color. Related Items: | 0 |
Bill Clinton is a sex-addicted ‘monster’ who mocked Hillary Clinton by calling her ‘The Warden’ in front of friends and privately boasted about his high notch count, according to his long-time mistress and childhood friend Dolly Kyle. Kyle, now 68, says she had a decades-long affair with before and during his marriage and had a front-row seat to Bill’s salacious double-life in the 1970s and ’80s. Their on-again, off-again relationship ended abruptly in the 1990s, after Bill Clinton allegedly threatened to ‘destroy’ Kyle if she spoke to the media about their relationship. Kyle’s decades of observations, shared in an interview with the DailyMail.com as well as in her 2016 book The Other Woman, provide a unique perspective on the Clintons’ marriage and the couple’s treatment of the women who have accused of infidelity or sexual assault over the years. Kyle, an Arkansas native who has since befriended several of Bill Clinton’s sexual assault accusers, said she was determined to come forward with her story after hearing Hillary Clinton say on the campaign trail that women who have been sexually assaulted have the ‘right to be believed’. 35 | 0 |
Home / News / Fox News Just Exposed Hillary’s ILLEGAL VOTING Scheme To The Entire Country! Fox News Just Exposed Hillary’s ILLEGAL VOTING Scheme To The Entire Country! fisher 2 mins ago News Comments Off on Fox News Just Exposed Hillary’s ILLEGAL VOTING Scheme To The Entire Country! Fox News Just Exposed Hillary ’s ILLEGAL VOTING Scheme To The Entire Country!
Hillary Clinton has taken her illegal actions to a new level with a new move that involves enlisting the help of illegal immigrants to help her beat Donald Trump in November.
Once again, Hillary is in violation of 8 U.S. Code § 1324, which makes it a felony to ‘conceal’ or ‘harbor’ any ‘alien’ ‘including any means of transportation.’ The penalty is five years in prison (ten years if it was done for “commercial advantage or private financial gain,” could be made for that). Hillary and the DNC also violated this law a few weeks back at the Democratic National Convention when they paraded two illegal immigrants across the stage to give an anti- Trump speech.
Hillary Clinton is enlisting undocumented “Dreamers” into a new voter registration drive aimed at signing up sympathetic voters with warnings that Donald Trump ’s immigration plans could result in their deportation – though the Dreamers themselves cannot legally vote.
Clinton’s national voter registration program, called “Mi Sueño, Tu Voto/My Dream, Your Vote,” was announced Sunday, on the four-year anniversary of the 2012 order that temporarily shielded from deportation some young immigrants brought to the country illegally as children.
The 730,000 young people known as Dreamers are prohibited from voting. However, they remain a powerful political organizing force, and the Clinton campaign hopes to use them to convince Latino and other households to go to the polls for the Democratic nominee. HERE’S WHAT LOU HAD TO SAY… | 0 |
Russia, Cina e Arabia Saudita domano l’egemonia del dollaro di Ariel Noyola Rodríguez
Gli Stati Uniti aumentano gli ostacoli tentando di mantenere l’egemonia del dollaro come valuta di riserva mondiale. Negli ultimi mesi, i Paesi emergenti hanno venduto un molti buoni del tesoro degli USA, principalmente Russia e Cina, ma anche Arabia Saudita. Inoltre, per proteggersi dalle violente fluttuazioni del dollaro, le banche centrali di diversi Paesi acquistano enormi quantità di oro per diversificare le riserve valutarie. In breve, l’offensiva globale nei confronti del dollaro è esplosa attraverso la vendita massiccia di debito degli Stati Uniti e, in parallelo, l’acquisto colossale di metalli preziosi. Rete Voltaire | Città del Messico (Messico) | 5 novembre 2016 français Español
La supremazia di Washington nel sistema finanziario globale ha subito un colpo tremendo ad agosto: Russia, Cina e Arabia Saudita vendevamo titoli del Tesoro degli Stati Uniti per 37,9 miliardi di dollari, secondo l’ultimo aggiornamento dei dati ufficiali pubblicato da pochi giorni [ 1 ]. Dal punto di vista generale, gli investimenti globali nel debito pubblico degli Stati Uniti sono al livello minimo dal luglio 2012. Chiaramente, il ruolo del dollaro a valuta di riserva mondiale è ancora messo in discussione.
Nel 2010, l’ammiraglio Michael Mullen, presidente del Joint Chiefs of Staff statunitense, avvertì che il debito era la principale minaccia alla sicurezza nazionale [ 2 ]. A mio avviso, non è tanto l’alto debito pubblico (oltre i 19 000 miliardi [ 3 ]) ad ostacolare l’economia degli Stati Uniti, ma per Washington è di fondamentale importanza garantirsi un enorme flusso di risorse estere ogni giorno, per coprire i deficit gemelli (commercio e bilancio); cioè per il dipartimento del Tesoro è questione di vita o di morte vendere titoli di debito nel mondo e così finanziare le spese degli USA.
Si ricordi che dal fallimento di Lehman Brothers nel settembre 2008, Bank of China ha subito forti pressioni da Ben Bernanke, allora presidente della Federal Reserve (FED), a non vendere i titoli del debito degli Stati Uniti. In un primo momento, i cinesi decisero di mantenere il dollaro. Tuttavia, da allora, per due volte, la PBoC evitava di acquistare altri titoli degli Stati Uniti e, allo stesso tempo, avviava un piano per diversificare le riserve valutarie.
Pechino acquista oro in maniera massiccia negli ultimi anni, e lo stesso fa la banca centrale della Russia. Nel secondo trimestre del 2016, le riserve auree della Banca di Cina hanno raggiunto le 1 823 tonnellate contro le 1 762 tonnellate registrate nell’ultimo trimestre del 2015. La Federazione Russa ha aumentato le riserve auree di circa 290 tonnellate tra dicembre 2014 e giugno 2016, chiudendo il secondo trimestre di quest’anno con un totale di 1 500 tonnellate.
Di fronte ai brutali scossoni del dollaro è fondamentale acquistare asset più sicuri come l’oro che, in tempi di grave instabilità finanziaria, agisce da rifugio sicuro. Quindi la strategia di Mosca e Pechino nel vendere titoli del Tesoro degli USA e comprare oro, viene seguita da molti Paesi. Come stimato dal Fondo monetario internazionale (FMI), le riserve auree delle banche centrali nel mondo hanno già raggiunto il massimo degli ultimi 15 anni, registrando ai primi di ottobre un volume di circa 33 000 tonnellate [ 4 ].
La geopolitica fa la sua parte nel plasmare il nuovo ordine finanziario mondiale. Dopo l’imposizione delle sanzioni economiche al Cremlino, a partire dal 2014, il rapporto con la Cina ha avuto grande rilevanza per i russi. Da allora, le due potenze hanno approfondito i legami in tutti i settori, dall’economia e finanza alla cooperazione militare. Inoltre, assicurando la fornitura di gas alla Cina per i prossimi tre decenni, il Presidente Vladimir Putin ha costruito con l’omologo Xi Jinping una potente alleanza finanziaria che cerca di porre fine una volta per tutte al dominio della moneta statunitense.
Attualmente, gli idrocarburi che Mosca vende a Pechino sono pagati in yuan, non dollari. Così, la “moneta del popolo” (‘renminbi’ in cinese) emerge gradualmente nel mercato mondiale degli idrocarburi con il commercio tra Russia e Cina, Paesi che, a mio parere, guidano la costruzione del sistema monetario multipolare.
La grande novità è che alla corsa per la dedollarizzazione dell’economia globale si è unita l’Arabia Saudita, Paese per decenni fedele alleato della politica estera di Washington. Sorprendentemente, negli ultimi 12 mesi Riad s’è sbarazzata di più di 19 miliardi di dollari investiti in titoli del Tesoro degli Stati Uniti, divenendo insieme alla Cina uno dei principali venditori di debito degli Stati Uniti [ 5 ]. A peggiorare le cose, il regno saudita si accanisce sempre più con la Casa Bianca.
A fine settembre, il Congresso degli Stati Uniti approvava l’eliminazione del veto del presidente Barack Obama ad una legge che impediva negli USA di denunciare l’Arabia Saudita in tribunale per il presunto coinvolgimento negli attentati dell’11 settembre 2001 [ 6 ]. Insieme, l’Organizzazione dei Paesi Esportatori del Petrolio (OPEC) ha raggiunto un accordo storico con la Russia per ridurre la produzione di petrolio e quindi promuovere l’aumento dei prezzi [ 7 ].
E’ anche sorprendente che giusto oggi Pechino abbia aperto allo scambio diretto tra yuan e riyal saudita attraverso il Trading System Foreign Exchange della Cina (CFETS, nell’acronimo inglese) per le transazioni tra le due valute senza passare dal dollaro. Di conseguenza, è molto probabile che, più prima che poi, la compagnia petrolifera Saudi Aramco accetti pagamenti in yuan invece che dollari [ 8 ]. Se si accadesse, la Casa dei Saud punterebbe tutto sul petroyuan [ 9 ]. Il mondo cambia davanti ai nostri occhi… | 0 |
NEW DELHI — First, Yashpal Singh Rathore’s marriage was delayed by his future who, like most Indians, ran short of cash after Prime Minister Narendra Modi banned the country’s largest currency notes in November. Then the lost his job when the ensuing cash crunch hit demand for motorcycles and scooters sold by the company where he worked, Hero MotoCorp Ltd. After that, the prospective refused to let the wedding go forward until he found another job. “So I lost my job and I lost my marriage,” he said in an interview at a protest, where he shouted slogans with more than 100 workers let go by Hero. Mr. Rathore is one among a large number of Indians — the precise number is not known — who have lost their jobs since Nov. 8, when Mr. Modi abruptly banned 86 percent of the country’s currency in a bid to eliminate “black money,” currency on which taxes had not been paid. For the sake of secrecy, the government largely avoided printing replacement notes in advance. So there has been an acute and protracted shortage of cash as the government struggles to catch up. That, in turn, has proved economically damaging. Exactly how harmful remains hard to determine, but the available data is not reassuring. Demand for vegetables is declining because people don’t have the money to pay for them, for example, and some service industries are reporting steep job losses. The International Monetary Fund this month cut its projected growth rate for India by one percentage point for the current fiscal year, to 6. 6 percent. While the full impact is still difficult to discern, there is little doubt who is suffering the most. “This has actually hurt the poor enormously,” said Nasser Munjee, chairman of DCB Bank and a company director at HDFC and Tata Motors. The pain is hidden, for the most part. Accustomed to hardship, many who lost employment were at first convinced by Mr. Modi’s speeches that their setbacks were transitory and, in the long run, would be worth the suffering. But as the crisis drags on, with no end in sight, some are growing frustrated, as they told us in a series of interviews at protests and at day labor gathering points. Many of them, even children, are forced to go without fruit, vegetables and milk — now unaffordable luxuries. Most had not paid apartment rents and their children’s school fees in the months since the cash ban. Many had sent their families back to their villages, and were ready to give up and follow if things did not turn around soon. Sending cash to the elderly parents they had long supported is now out of the question. As is common in India, the workers said that although they had worked on Hero MotoCorp’s shop floor, wearing company uniforms, they had been formally employed by other contractors, meaning they could be let go more easily without benefits. Sunil Kumar, 28, who had been earning 15, 000 rupees a month, about $220, at Hero, said he had been supporting his wife and two children when he lost his job without notice Nov. 29. They immediately cut milk, green vegetables and fruit from their diets, including for their and children. Paying rent is out of the question. “This is like a massacre for us,” he said. “My livelihood is gone after the cash ban. What do I do now?” The decline in vegetable demand is so steep that the prices of eggplants, potatoes, cauliflower and tomatoes dropped between 42 percent and 78 percent, the NCDEX Institute of Commodity Markets and Research said. In the first month alone after the currency ban, micro and service industries cut staff by 35 percent, the All India Manufacturers’ Organization said, based on a survey. It released a study this month saying that job losses in a variety of industries, including automobile parts, infrastructure and construction, would swell to as much as 35 percent by March. The anecdotal evidence is painful. Mr. Rathore, whose wedding was postponed, is among 582 workers who reported losing their jobs at Hero MotoCorp in November and December, as the company suffered a 34 percent drop in sales in December from a year earlier. Hero did not respond to requests for comment. Most economists believe the economy will rebound, but nobody knows how long it will take. In Noida, a satellite city of New Delhi, hundreds of unshaven men in rumpled clothing stood recently at a intersection called Khoda Labor Chowk that is a gathering place for people seeking work. Before the currency ban, they told us, they would be hired most days, earning 400 to 600 rupees, about $6 to $9, for a day of carpentry, floor tiling or masonry. But since the ban, most interviewed said, they had worked for only a week each month, at best, and even on the few days when they were hired their wages had fallen by half. Rafiq Ali, 46, said that, having worked only 12 days in the last two months, he had sent his wife and two children back to his native village about 200 miles away, where it is cheaper to live. “I am surviving on roti and potato with salt,” Mr. Ali said, referring to the flat Indian bread that is a staple in the Indian diet. “I’ve stopped taking milk, even in tea, and eating vegetables. ” But what hurt him most, he said, was a recent call from his wife, back in the village, who wanted money to take their sick daughter to a doctor. Mr. Ali said he had nothing to send. “A sense of desperation and helplessness is emerging,” he said. “This currency ban is not helpful for poor people. ” Hoti Lal, a father of three, said he could get work for only six days during the last two months, forcing his family to survive on money his son made cleaning offices. Mr. Lal had hoped his son could give up that job to go to college, but that dream is fading fast. His son’s salary of 7, 000 rupees a month, a little over $100, is about half of what he used to earn regularly, Mr. Lal said. So, Mr. Lal said, his family has cut back entirely on green vegetables and milk. Almost every man we interviewed said he was a migrant who had been sending a portion of his salary home to support his parents in his native village — and had been unable to do so since the currency ban wiped out work. Vikas Sahu, 30, who had been working at Hero for four years, has been unable to send money back to his parents, wife and children, who live in his village about 100 miles west of New Delhi. His first grader’s school fees are overdue by months, and his father took out a loan of 70, 000 rupees, about $1, 000, for agricultural expenses, including paying for repairs on the family’s tractor. “How long I can survive like this?” he asked. With little else to do, Rakesh Yadav, 28, shows up most days to protest, hoping for some relief from the government or some upbeat economic news that might induce Hero to begin rehiring. He had worked there for eight years as a machine operator on the shop floor. To cut costs, his wife and daughter went home to his village. He gave up the one room they had shared at a monthly rental of 3, 300 rupees, or about $50, and moved in with four other men who share a room. “I do not know where to go or what to do,” he said. Mr. Rathore said he thought about giving up and returning to his village in Bilaspur district, about 750 miles south of Delhi, but he just cannot bear to do so, at least not yet. “What can I do in my village?” he asked. | 1 |
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Speaking at a Hillary Clinton fundraiser in Canton, Ohio, last November, former President Bill Clinton (right) expressed disappointment concerning a then-recent Democratic presidential candidates’ debate, during which, he said, there was not a single mention of the fact that “84 percent of the American people, after inflation, had not had a raise of 1 cent since the financial crash.”
The financial crash of which Clinton spoke began in late 2007 and extended into 2008 — the year Barack Obama was elected president. Though his administration was not responsible for the crash, when Clinton spoke last year, Obama had been president for more than six years. Therefore, Clinton’s observations indicated that the vast majority of Americans had made no financial progress during Obama’s entire first term and half of his second term.
Britain’s Daily Mail reported that the former president’s speech was published by WikiLeaks as part of the website’s release of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta’s e-mails.
In addition to the lack of income growth among most Americans, Clinton revealed a remarkable statistic: The life expectancy of middle-aged, non-college-educated white Americans is declining. Said the former president: And in the middle of all this we learned, breathtakingly, that middle-aged, non-college-educated white Americans’ life expectancy is going down and is now lower than Hispanics, even though they make less money. And the gap between African Americans and whites is closing, but unfortunately not because the death rate among African Americans is dropping but because the death rate among white Americans is rising. Why? Because they don’t have anything to look forward to when they get up in the morning. Because their lives are sort of stuck in neutral.
Clinton’s explanation that the reason that middle-aged, non-college-educated white Americans’ life expectancy is going down is because “they don’t have anything to look forward to when they get up in the morning” is probably an oversimplification that requires greater analysis.
The obvious reason why someone may not have anything to look forward to when they get up in the morning is because they are unemployed and therefore have no job to go to. Figures released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics for 2015 — the year Clinton gave his speech — indicated that those with only a high-school diploma had a 5.4 percent unemployment rate, compared with a 2.8 percent rate for those with bachelor’s degrees. (These figures did not account for race, and they didn't count literally millions of unemployed Americans: After a few months of looking for work, the government drops them from the unemployment rolls, deeming them to not want to work. In 2009, 80 million Americans were deemed not in the labor force; now it's 95 million. Also, if an American is able to find a low-paying part-time job out of his field, he is considered employed by the government.)
An article published by Fortune on November 3, 2015 (about two weeks before Clinton’s speech) may have provided him with a basis for his statement. The article’s headline? “Is the Economy Killing Middle-Aged White People?” The article cited a survey released by a pair of researchers at Princeton University the previous day showing “a striking increase in the death rates of white, middle-aged Americans who have less than a college education.”
Though the researchers Angus Deaton, the 2015 Nobel laureate in Economics, and his wife, Anne Case, both professors at Princeton, didn’t form any steadfast conclusions about the reasons for the increase in death rates, they did speculate that economic factors are likely at least partly responsible. Fortune reported: Between 1999 and 2013, white men and women ages 45-54 saw their mortality rate increase by a half-percent per year, reversing decades of improvements up until that time. The main causes were suicide and the use of alcohol and drugs (both legal and illegal), according to the study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The article noted that while it is impossible to know for sure how attributable the high death rates are to economic forces without more study, the Princeton researchers have speculated that the economic crisis of 2008 might have been a major factor.
The research paper considered an explanation for why the higher death rate has affected white middle-aged people more than those in other ethnic and racial groups subject to the same economic downturn. Their explanation was that “working-class whites have decades of relative success and security behind them…. For the first time, perhaps, that group has seen a reversal of its fortunes.”
We might add another explanation for the increased mortality rates: Workers accustomed to having their medical care paid for by their employers may find that, upon becoming unemployed, they can no longer afford medical insurance and, as a result, neglect the healthcare necessary to maintain their health.
While Clinton did not refer to the Princeton professors' paper in his speech, it is possible that its release just weeks before did provide him with some talking points.
Clinton’s comments were made in the context of a stump speech on behalf of his wife’s candidacy, and he did not offer any substantive solutions for the crisis among white middle-aged Americans. He instead offered this vague proposal: We have unlimited potential in America to grow our economy if we do a few things right, and not a lot. Five or six or seven things, really we’ll see jobs start forming again; we’ll see business formation going up again; we’ll see wages rising again. And I believe she’s outlined reasonable responses to all the things that will do that. And I ought to have some credibility on that, because the only time in 50 years when all sections of the American economy have grown together were in the eight years I had the privilege to serve.
In that regard, Clinton (on behalf of his wife) shared in rival candidate Donald Trump’s tendency to make many promises to grow the economy and create jobs offering higher wages, while offering few concrete details about how these lofty goals might be realized. Considering that the best thing that government can do to stimulate the economy is simply to get out of the way and allow the free market to flourish, however, any plan offered by a former Cabinet member of the administration that gave us ObamaCare might well be viewed with skepticism. We might also want to remember that the former president is the one who signed NAFTA, the trade deal that negatively impacted American jobs — leaving many Americans without "anything to look forward to when they get up in the morning.” | 0 |
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Former US Attorney General Eric Holder just wrote an op-ed warning the American people to disregard the FBI Director James Comey’s unprecedented decision to release information about an ongoing investigation during the heat of an election. Comey released a vague memo when he had little more to go on other than a mere suspicion and is now facing bipartisan calls for removal from office. Democratic congressional staffers now claim that their first warning of the Comey memo was when a House Republican tweeted it out with the usual anti-Hillary spin. That alone demonstrates exactly what Holder wrote about preventing “investigations from unfairly or unintentionally casting public suspicion,” which happened nearly instantly on Friday afternoon.
Former Attorney General Holder also pointed out that Comey’s “newly discovered” emails have no known significance and that the FBI Director violated long standing policies in the Department of Justice – which are non-partisan – aimed at upholding the integrity of America’s form of electoral democracy, free from government intervention:
I understand the gravity of the work our Justice Department performs every day to defend the security of our nation, protect the American people, uphold the rule of law and be fair. That is why I am deeply concerned about FBI Director James B. Comey’s decision to write a vague letter to Congress about emails potentially connected to a matter of public, and political, interest. That decision was incorrect.
The department also has a policy of not taking unnecessary action close in time to Election Day that might influence an election’s outcome. These rules have been followed during Republican and Democratic administrations. They aren’t designed to help any particular individual or to serve any political interest. Instead, they are intended to ensure that every investigation proceeds fairly and judiciously; to maintain the public trust in the department’s ability to do its job free of political influence; and to prevent investigations from unfairly or unintentionally casting public suspicion on public officials who have done nothing wrong.
Director Comey broke with these fundamental principles. I fear he has unintentionally and negatively affected public trust in both the Justice Department and the FBI. And he has allowed — again without improper motive — misinformation to be spread by partisans with less pure intentions. Already, we have learned that the importance of the discovery itself may have been overblown. According to the director himself, there is no indication yet that the “newly discovered” emails bear any significance at all. And yet, because of his decision to comment on this development before sufficient facts were known, the public has faced a torrent of conspiracy theories and misrepresentations.
High ranking former Justice Department officials like Eric Holder do not make a career out of slamming their former colleagues, so it’s a very rare break in the ranks to see a former Attorney General publicly slam his former subordinate. The Hatch Act prevents federal officials from interfering in partisan elections and strictly demands that public officials refrain from doing anything that could impact an election. Holder wrote :
I served with Jim Comey and I know him well. This is a very difficult piece for me to write. He is a man of integrity and honor. I respect him. But good men make mistakes. In this instance, he has committed a serious error with potentially severe implications. It is incumbent upon him — or the leadership of the department — to dispel the uncertainty he has created before Election Day. It is up to the director to correct his mistake — not for the sake of a political candidate or campaign but in order to protect our system of justice and best serve the American people.
FBI Director James Comey knew better than to release a vague memo about an ongoing investigation, which, even under normal circumstances, should never be done. That is why former Attorney General Holder felt compelled to rebuke him in this scathing op-ed.
Hopefully, the current members of the Justice Department tasked with reviewing the bipartisan complaints read the memo and expedite their decision concerning the future of the FBI Director.
It should not take long for any rational investigator to determine that James Comey’s “cry wolf” memo was little more than a partisan prop handed to a failing campaign — and to remove the FBI Director from his office. | 0 |
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“In victory, magnanimity!” said Winston Churchill.
Donald Trump should be magnanimous and gracious toward those whom he defeated this week, but his first duty is to keep faith with those who put their faith in him.
The protests, riots and violence that have attended his triumph in city after city should only serve to steel his resolve.
As for promptings that he “reach out” and “reassure” those upset by his victory, and trim or temper his agenda to pacify them, Trump should reject the poisoned chalice. This is the same old con.
Trump should take as models the Democrats FDR and LBJ.
Franklin Roosevelt, who had savaged Herbert Hoover as a big spender, launched his own New Deal in his first 100 days.
History now hails his initiative and resolve.
Lyndon Johnson exploited his landslide over Barry Goldwater in 1964 to erect his Great Society in 1965: the Voting Rights Act, Medicare and Medicaid. He compromised on nothing, and got it all.
Even those who turned on him for Vietnam still celebrate his domestic achievements.
President Nixon’s great regret was that he did not bomb Hanoi and mine Haiphong in 1969 — instead of waiting until 1972 — and bring the Vietnam War to an earlier end and with fewer U.S. casualties.
Nixon’s decision not to inflame the social and political crisis of the ’60s by rolling back the Great Society bought him nothing. He was rewarded with media-backed mass demonstrations in 1969 to break his presidency and bring about an American defeat in Vietnam.
“Action this day!” was the scribbled command of Prime Minister Churchill on his notepads in World War II. This should be the motto of the first months of a Trump presidency.
For the historic opportunity he and the Republican Party have been given by his stunning and unanticipated victory of Nov. 8 will not last long. His adversaries and enemies in politics and press are only temporarily dazed and reeling.
This great opening should be exploited now.
Few anticipated Tuesday morning what we would have today: a decapitated Democratic Party, with the Obamas and Clintons gone or going, Joe Biden with them, no national leader rising, and only the power of obstruction, of which the nation has had enough.
The GOP, however, on Jan. 20, will control both Houses of Congress and the White House, with the real possibility of remaking the Supreme Court in the image of the late Justice Antonin Scalia.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan have indicated they are willing to work with President Trump.
There is nothing to prevent the new GOP from writing history.
In his first months, Trump could put a seal on American politics as indelible as that left by Ronald Reagan.
A partial agenda: First, he should ignore any importunings by President Obama to permit passage of the Trans-Pacific Partnership in a lame-duck session — and let the trade deal sink by year’s end.
On Jan. 20, he should have vetted and ready to nominate to the high court a brilliant constitutionalist and strict constructionist.
He should act to end interference with the Dakota Access pipeline and call on Congress to re-enact legislation, vetoed by Obama, to finish the Keystone XL pipeline. Then he should repeal all Obama regulations that unnecessarily restrict the production of the oil, gas and clean coal necessary to make America energy independent again.
Folks in Pennsylvania, southeast Ohio, Kentucky and West Virginia should be shown, by executive action, that Trump is a man of his word. And when the mines open again, he should be there.
He should order new actions to seal the Southern border, start the wall and begin visible deportations of felons who are in the country illegally.
With a new education secretary, he should announce White House intent to work for repeal of Common Core and announce the introduction of legislation to put federal resources behind the charter schools that have proven to be a godsend to inner-city black children.
He should propose an immediate tax cut for U.S. corporations, with $2 to $3 trillion in unrepatriated profits abroad, who will bring the money home and invest it in America, to the benefit of our economy and our Treasury.
He should take the president’s phone and pen and begin the rewriting or repeal of every Obama executive order that does not comport with the national interest or political philosophy of the GOP.
Trump should announce a date soon for repeal and replacement of Obamacare and introduction of his new tax-and-trade legislation to bring back manufacturing and create American jobs.
Donald Trump said in his campaign that that this is America’s last chance. If we lose this one, he said, we lose the country.
The president-elect should ignore his more cautious counselors, and act with the urgency of his declared beliefs.
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OTTAWA — The entire community of Fort McMurray, the heart of Alberta’s oil sands region, was ordered to evacuate on Tuesday night as a wildfire advanced on the city and cut off its only highway link to the south. The fire destroyed a number of homes in one neighborhood and some trailers in a trailer park, said Robin Smith, a spokesman for the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo, which includes Fort McMurray. According to television news reports, commercial buildings downtown were also ablaze. There were no reports of injuries by early evening. A video showed flames and smoke rising hundreds of feet into the sky, prompting the largest fire evacuation in Alberta’s history, The Edmonton Journal reported. The fire was expected to get worse on Wednesday, when winds were forecast to switch direction and increase in speed. Mr. Smith said early Tuesday that Highway 63, which connects Fort McMurray to Edmonton, Alberta, to the south and the main oil sands production areas to the north, was heavily congested with cars fleeing the fire, which began over the weekend. Late in the afternoon, however, the fire jumped over the highway, making evacuation to the south impossible, Mr. Smith said. He added that there was no immediate danger in areas north of Fort McMurray. The highway was later reopened. As of early Tuesday evening, the city’s airport was open, but some airlines were canceling flights, said Jillian Philipp, an airport spokeswoman. After leaving the airport earlier in the day, Ms. Philipp said she was unable to return because of the fire. But employees still there told her that it did not appear to be in the immediate path of the flames. The provincial government had ordered residents out of six neighborhoods and a trailer park by late in the afternoon after declaring the fire “out of control. ” The fire had consumed about 6, 500 acres of forest by late Monday night and increased substantially in size by Tuesday, said Laura Stewart, a spokeswoman for the provincial government. Ms. Stewart said that strong, changing winds were shifting the fire’s direction, making it unsafe for firefighters on the ground. As a result, their efforts had been limited to aerial water bombing. A photograph posted by the government showed only a relatively small line of trees and a hill separating a commercial district from a tower of flame. Until last year, the oil sands had made Fort McMurray Canada’s boomtown, where the biggest concern was dealing with frenetic growth and the housing shortages and social problems it created. The collapse of oil prices, however, has hit the city particularly hard. Oil sands companies have been laying off workers as projects are completed, but no major oil sands projects have shut down. Last year, the regional municipality had a population of about 125, 000, excluding thousands of workers who officially claimed residency elsewhere but who commuted by air to Fort McMurray and lived in work camps. | 1 |
On Sunday’s broadcast of on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer ( ) said Attorney General Jeff Sessions seemed to be violating his recusal over Russian interference during the 2016 presidential election by participating in the firing and replacement of FBI Director James Comey. Partial transcript as follows: TAPPER: As you know, the Attorney General Jeff Sessions who had said he would recuse himself for anything having to do with the probes raised eyebrows when he participated very directly in the firing of Comey, and then there are questions about him interviewing candidates to replace Comey, but what do you think about Sessions claim to have recused himself? Do you think he should be investigated by the senate and should it be investigated by the inspector general at DOJ? yes. SCHUMER: Yes. I have asked the inspector general and the request I’ve made is not only to look into any interference to thwart the investigation but whether Attorney General Sessions should have participated in the firing of Comey and should participate in FBI director. You know Attorney General Sessions has a higher obligation. He didn’t tell the truth meeting with the Russians so he recused himself. He seems to be violating that recusal that seems on its face to be part of this. And look, I called for him to step down when he didn’t tell the truth about the Russians because it’s the highest law in enforcement officer in the land. If the actions of the last week make all the more reason he should not be attorney general. ( The Hill) Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN | 1 |
A movement is growing to bring together women across race, creed and political beliefs by luring them off social media and arranging for them to meet in person. It’s a nice idea, but there’s one catch: The Women’s March on Washington is being organized on Facebook, the nation’s preferred platform to battle over race, gender, politics and just about everything else. The timing of the event, which organizers began planning the morning after the election but are careful not to call a protest, is aimed at the coming administration of Donald J. Trump. More than 100, 000 people have said on Facebook that they will travel to the capital to participate. The plan is to walk from the Lincoln Memorial to the White House on Jan. 21, 2017, the morning after Mr. Trump’s inauguration. “We’re doing it his very first day in office because we are making a statement,” one organizer, Breanne Butler, said. “The marginalized groups you attacked during your campaign? We are here and we are watching. And, like, ‘Welcome to the White House.’ ” Since Election Day, there has been momentum around supporting groups that are opposed to Mr. Trump’s espoused views on women and minority groups. Nonprofit organizations, including the Planned Parenthood Federation of America and the American Civil Liberties Union, have reported a surge in donations after the election. But the election taught Americans that women are deeply divided along party lines, education level and race: 53 percent of white women voted for Mr. Trump, according to exit poll data. On the march group’s Facebook page, it is easy to see how complicated the idea of the “women’s vote,” an already mythological concept, has become, and how difficult it might be for organizers to fulfill their aim of gathering women who remain fiercely divided on reproductive rights, gun control, marriage and immigration, among other issues. Not everyone on the page believes, for instance, that Hillary Clinton would have made a good president, or that Stephen K. Bannon, a chief strategist under Mr. Trump, holds divisive views about minorities. Debates over both have sprung up in recent days. Bob Bland, one of the march organizers, said in an email that organizers in Maryland had to change a Facebook page from public to private to protect the safety of women who want to attend. Evvie Harmon, a yoga teacher from Greenville, S. C. who is helping efforts to organize for the march, said the group had nixed a possible idea for a slogan — “Human rights are women’s rights, and women’s rights are human rights” — because it was something that Mrs. Clinton once said. “This is not an protest,” Ms. Harmon said. “This is the reaction of women and minorities across the world who are very disturbed by the rhetoric that was said over the last year and a half. ” Aside from dueling political views, organizers are trying to take feedback from a cacophony of voices in real time as they try to assemble a network of state volunteers, plan programming and arrange transportation and lodging for the event. Ms. Butler, a chef who is organizing the event in her spare time, said the march had no official means of funding yet. There are women on the page who have said that the march is not inclusive enough, and that they don’t want an event organized by white women. Ms. Butler acknowledged the criticism but stressed that the women who are organizing are from different racial and religious backgrounds. (There was even controversy over the original name: Organizers have changed the name from Million Woman March to the Women’s March on Washington because observers took issue with the fact that the original name echoed a black women’s march held in Philadelphia in 1997.) Ms. Butler, 27, said the greater concern would be helping local groups raise money to help women who can’t afford to travel to Washington. “The reality is that it’s incredibly expensive to fly to D. C. on inauguration weekend,” Ms. Butler said. “We don’t want only an class of people at this march because no one else can afford to go. ” Tabitha St. 34, who plans to help sign up attendees by visiting churches, synagogues and community centers in New York City, said she had been working to include all types of people — including those who have not been on Facebook lately. “I am a woman of color and I am an immigrant,” said Ms. St. who lives in Brooklyn. She said of the march: “For me, it has been completely inclusive. ” This is all plenty of pressure for a movement without a concrete path to funding itself, but organizers are optimistic as they look ahead to January. According to Ms. Butler, the group’s request for a permit to march is still pending. On Friday, Michael Litterst, a spokesman for the National Park Service, said in an email that the group’s request to march is one of at least 13 requests currently under review for areas the agency administers in the nation’s capital. Those also include rallies and demonstrations. Mr. Litterst said the Park Service was also reviewing five requests for official inauguration events. | 1 |
actress Zoe Saldana says Donald Trump won the election, thanks, in part, to “arrogant” celebrities whose personal insults created sympathy for the Republican candidate and galvanized his supporters. [“We got cocky and became arrogant and we also became bullies,” the told AFP. Saldana, the face of multiple blockbuster film franchises — Star Trek, Avatar, and Guardians of the Galazy — says celebrities demonizing Trump only emboldened the voters who believed in him. “We were trying to single out a man for all these things he was doing wrong … and that created empathy in a big group of people in America that felt bad for him and that are believing in his promises,” she said. While she did not support Trump’s candidacy, Saldana says, “I’m learning from (Trump’s victory) with a lot of humility. ” She said she is hopeful that America under Trump will not become the racially segregated society that it once was. “If we have people continue to be strong and educate ourselves and stand by equal rights and treat everyone with respect, we won’t go back to those times,” Saldana said. The actress is but one of a growing number of stars who have condemned the cockiness of celebrities during the campaign and now insists that Americans rally around Trump. “A lot of celebrities did, do, and shouldn’t [talk about politics] Patriots Day star Mark Wahlberg told Task Purpose about a month after the election. “A lot of Hollywood is living in a bubble. ” “You know, it just goes to show you that people aren’t listening to that anyway. They might buy your CD or watch your movie, but you don’t put food on their table. You don’t pay their bills. ” Last week, actress Nicole Kidman said, “[Trump is] now elected and we, as a country, need to support whoever is the president. ” Follow Jerome Hudson on Twitter @jeromeehudson. | 1 |
Videos ‘Anti-Establishment’ Trump Plans to Appoint Goldman Sachs and George Soros Insiders “I know the guys at Goldman Sachs. They have total, total control over him. Just like they have total control over Hillary Clinton.” Be Sociable, Share! Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally in Sunrise, Fla.
Contrary to his anti-establishment stance — which supporters readily boast as a viable alternative to Hillary Clinton — Donald Trump’s establishment roots run so deep, the billionaire real estate mogul plans to appoint a former Goldman Sachs partner and George Soros Fund manager as Secretary of the Treasury should he win the election.
Steve Mnuchin came on board Trump’s campaign as finance chair in May, raising eyebrows of many who felt his 17-year history with Sachs — and affiliation with liberal globalist George Soros as an Investment Professional of Soros Fund Management — conflicted directly with the then-presumptive nominee’s conservative stance and criticisms of establishment politicians.
“It is difficult to see how a second-generation Goldman Sachs partner would secure such a prominent position in an administration delivered by a populist wind,” Compass Point analyst Isaac Boltansky told Politico of Trump’s curious choice for Treasury Secretary.
According to Fox Business Network , Trump’s confidence in winning the White House has fomented enough to begin picking Cabinet members, and besides the anomalous choice of Mnuchin for the Treasury, sources said he’s considering New Jersey Governor Chris Christie for Attorney General and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani for Homeland Security Secretary.
Trump has, of course, expended great efforts in criticizing opponent Hillary Clinton’s deep ties to the banking and Wall Street elite; and prior to garnering the Republican nomination, extended that critique to competitor Ted Cruz, saying in one debate:
“I know the guys at Goldman Sachs. They have total, total control over him. Just like they have total control over Hillary Clinton.”
Zero Hedge noted when Trump hired the left-leaning hedge fund manager and financier as finance chair that Mnuchin had previously donated multiple times to various Democrats, including Barack Obama and none other than Hillary Clinton.
Further substantiating his establishing banking insider status — the precise profile Trump claims publicly to loathe — Mnuchin worked at Goldman Sachs for 17 years, headed OneWest Bank prior to its purchase by CIT Group in 2015, and now sits on CIT’s board while also serving as chairman and chief executive of Dune Capital Management, a private investment firm with a focus on financing big-time Hollywood movies, like “Avatar.”
If Mnuchin’s Wall Street ties don’t trouble Trump’s supporters enough, the hedge fund manager’s links to George Soros — an ardent Clinton fan — certainly will.
In fact, in terms of opposition, Soros has spent billions influencing global politics by inserting his brand of leftism wherever possible — and earlier this year even pledged , with others, some $15 million specifically to mobilize Latinos and immigrants to defeat Donald Trump.
“Steven is a professional at the highest level with an extensive and very successful financial background,” Trump said upon bringing Mnuchin into his campaign. “He brings unprecedented experience and expertise to a fundraising operation that will benefit the Republican Party and ultimately defeat Hillary Clinton.”
Indeed, Trump’s campaign, quoted by the Daily Caller , said Mnuchin “has previously worked with Mr. Trump in a business capacity and brings his expertise in finance to what will be an extremely successful fundraising operation for the Republican Party.”
While business dealings certainly bring ordinarily clashing personalities into contact on occasion, these details about the relationship between Trump and Mnuchin evidence the former’s links to the left.
Despite the nominee’s many diatribes excoriating Hillary Clinton as out-of-touch with the American populace, Trump’s own status as a billionaire belies both their decades-old friendship and striking similarities — particularly as darlings of the establishment.
Should you choose to vote on the 8th, it would be prudent to keep in mind blustery campaign rhetoric — from any politician — only constitutes so much hot air.
This article originally appeared on The Free Thought Project. Be Sociable, Share! | 0 |
Statins my disrupt vascular function On the Greenmedinfo.com Statin Research database we have cataloged over 15 studies from the National Library of Medicine indicating the heart-damaging properties of this class of supposedly ‘heart friendly’ drugs. View our professional data page here , or if you are not a member, view the open access reference page for public view and linking here . Statins do not only reduce lipoprotein production but have so-called pleoitropic properties, which include immune system down-regulating and anti-inflammatory properties, which is why they are believed to have a small benefit in reducing the inflammatory burden caused by autoimmune processes in the artery that can precipitate myocardial infarction (heart attack) in some individuals — but not without having the unintended, adverse effect of increasing cancer risk (at all sites) and contributing to congestive heart failure, effectively cancelling out the small, mostly theoretical benefit of reduced heart attack risk. For instance, it has been estimated that “…at least 23,000 low-risk people would have to take statins for five years to prevent one death from heart disease.” [ Source ] Statins are also clearly diabetogenic , increasing the risk of type 2 diabetes by about 50% in some populations , with the FDA now requiring drug manufacturers to include a warning of diabetes risk on statin drug labels . Considering morbidity and mortality from type 2 diabetes is caused not by the elevated blood sugar in and of itself, but the damage glycated sugar does to the vascular system and the subsequent cardiovascular harm it produces, the case against using statins for primary and secondary prevention of heart disease seems clear as day. Moreover, cardiovascular harm is not the only concern. Statin drugs have been linked to over 300 adverse health effects. We issued a consumer alert on the topic several years ago . For the more technically minded, here is the database page on Statin drugs listing 300+ adverse health effects based on 465 published studies. Heart Disease Is Not Caused By A Lack of A Drug Should we be surprised to find so much research on this drug class’s adverse health effects? After all, cholesterol is fundamental for the health of each cell in the human body, and low cholesterol has been found to cause a wide range of health problems , including psychiatric states such as violence against self and other. The food and drug industries have used cholesterol phobia to manipulate health professionals and the lay public into believing that the cause of heart disease is genetic, and can only be addressed through the use of synthetic, patented, essentially toxic chemicals, i.e. pharmaceuticals, or eating semi-synthetic ‘low fat,’‘low cholesterol’ foods with very little nutritional value. This latest study speaks to why we must exercise the precautionary principle when considering taking a patented chemical – technically a xenobiotic alien to human physiology – for suppressing a symptom of a much deeper and more complex problem. While oxidized cholesterol forms a significant part of the problem of atherosclerotic build-up in the arteries, it is not the primary cause of the damage to the inner lining of the arteries (endothelium), and the pre-existing endothelial dysfunction that can go on for many decades silently in the background. Ox-LDL deposits in atheromatous lesions have been viewed as an epiphenomenon, generated as part of a cascade of immune-mediated events the body activates in order to attempt to heal arterial damage. In certain respects, cholesterol deposits in the arteries at the site of damage can be likened to a Band-Aid. Do we blame the Band-Aid for causing the injury upon which it is placed? It is important to point out that oxidized cholesterol (ox-LDL) can be toxic and harmful to the vascular system, but the problem with modern blood testing for ‘cholesterol’ is that it does not take into the quality of the lipoproteins, only their quantitative dimensions. Depending on one’s diet, environmental factors, and overall bodily health, LDL particles will oxidize at different rates. If you are eating an antioxidant rich diet, full of healthy fats, phytocompounds, etc., your properly functioning LDL will be less susceptible to conversion to ox-LDL. On the other hand, eating a diet full of non-essential, oxidized fats, deficient in phytonutrients, antioxidants, etc. – and adding in environmental toxins and toxicants, e.g. smoking – will produce more ox-LDL, rendering it artherogenic. Obviously, therefore, diet and lifestyle form the basis for a sound preventive approach if the ‘ lipid hypothesis ‘ of cardiovascular disease is even deemed truly relevant. [For more research on natural substances which inhibit cholesterol oxidation, view our database on the topic: Prevent Cholesterol Oxidation .] Furthermore, there are many ways to address underlying vascular pathologies without suppressing the production of a vital building block and signaling molecule, which is what cholesterol is. Pomegranate , chocolate , and many other natural substances, have been confirmed in research to have profound heart disease preventive and reversing properties . You can explore our database sections relevant to the topic within our Heart Health guide , to find hundreds of studies proving this point. Basic nutritional incompatibilities, including the consumption of wheat which has cardiotoxic properties in genetically susceptible individuals, and excessive consumption of omega-6 versus omega-3 fats can profoundly increase the risk of heart disease. One groundbreaking study published last year, in fact, indicates that statins actually reduce the health benefits of omega-3 fats in the diet – adding another mechanism by which statin drugs exert heart disease promoting effects . Beyond the Pharmaceutically-Driven Medical Paradigm If statin drugs are toxic to human sperm, and if the men within whom this statin-induced damage is occurring are of reproductive age, the implications of this latest study on statins and fertility are potentially devastating to the health of future generations. Changes in our species germlines – sperm or egg – are carried on to future generations, possibly forever. With recent research indicating that even changes to somatic cells in this lifetime are capable of transferring information to the sperm , what we do here and now – our chemical exposures, our nutritional status, and even our psychospiritual and mental orientation (which gear into real physiological and genetic/epigenetic processes – can have critical and irreversible affects on our offspring. Clearly, the time has come both to re-evaluate the role of pharmaceuticals in ‘preventive’ health care, as well as the effects these novel new chemical compounds will have on the next generation, and the next. For alternatives to lipid lowering chemicals, take a look at the following, evidence-based natural interventions: | 0 |
Wednesday during a joint press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President Donald Trump addressed the resignation of Michael Flynn as National Security Adviser. Trump said, “General Flynn is a wonderful man. I think he has been treated very very unfairly by the media. As I call the fake media in many cases. I think it is a sad thing he was treated so badly. In addition to that, from intelligence, papers are being leaked, things are leaked. It is a criminal action. It’s a criminal act. It has been going on for a long time, before me. Now, it is really going on. People are trying to cover up for a terrible loss that the Democrats had under Hillary Clinton. I think that it is very, very unfair what happened to General Flynn, the way he was treated and the documents and papers that were illegally, I stress that, illegally leaked. Very very unfair. ” Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN | 1 |
Good morning. (Want to get California Today by email? Here’s the .) Today’s introduction comes to us from Adam Popescu, a reporter based in Los Angeles. In turning the Trayvon Martin tragedy into a virtual reality film, the director Nonny de la Peña combed through public court records and stitched together 911 calls to structure an auditory narrative of the rainy night that ended in the shooting death of the unarmed by George Zimmerman. To get the look of the apartment complex in Sanford, Fla. where the events took place, Ms. de la Peña, a former Newsweek correspondent who runs a virtual reality company in Santa Monica, found architectural drawings of the location online, designs that were then rendered as video C. G. I. models. The final product, called “One Dark Night,” was recently shown at Los Angeles’ Hammer Museum and is now available on Google Play and Steam. “This is immersive journalism,” she said, intended to drive empathy. But it also raises issues about taste and truth. I caught up with Ms. de la Peña by phone. Here are some excerpts from the conversation: Q. How did this piece come together? A. “One Dark Night” is sourced entirely from 911 calls, trial testimony and architectural drawings of the condo complex where the shooting took place. I’m still an investigative journalist at heart, and it was very much the kind of story I used to cover as a print reporter. I really wanted to make a piece about the shooting, to be able to cast any kind of additional spotlight on the case using V. R. Q. Why Trayvon Martin? Why not Freddie Gray or another tragedy? A. Nothing other than I had the ability and I had the time and I felt I was the person to do it. Something clicked when I began investigating the Trayvon case. Q. You say it’s meant to draw empathy. Do you acknowledge that videos of shootings can be interpreted in multiple ways, and that this piece is subject to such questions? A. Definitely. I’ve had a journalist say that they better understood Zimmerman’s position. We’re always trying to figure out what we can convey to the viewer and what’s appropriate to show. For audiences not reading newspapers or watching broadcast TV, V. R. can reach them where they play. This is how you keep an informed global citizenry and keep democracy robust. What do we decide to shield them from? I think that that question is only going to be more pronounced as this media becomes more mature. (Please note: We regularly highlight articles on news sites that have limited access for nonsubscribers.) • The Trump administration said it would crack down on marijuana sales in states that have approved recreational use. [The Cannifornian] • “This has violated the trust of our community. ” The Santa Cruz police chief accused federal officials of misleading the city on immigration raids. [NBC Bay Area] • Far fewer students are applying for financial aid through the California Dream Act amid fears over deportation. [Los Angeles Times] • How an Los Angeles police officer telling teenagers to stay off his yard escalated to gunfire, protests and investigations. [Los Angeles Times] • America’s dams are showing their age — more than 70 percent are more than 50 years old. [The New York Times] • Some Silicon Valley executives think a universal income will be the answer to automation. The beta test is happening in Kenya. [The New York Times] • Since moving to Venice, Snap has alienated a community that prizes itself for a quirky sensibility. [Bloomberg] • Google’s car unit noticed a “striking resemblance” in Uber’s design and its own. [The New York Times] • Bette Kroening, whose Bette’s Oceanview Diner in Berkeley exerted influence on the Bay Area restaurant world, died at 71. [San Francisco Chronicle] • Famous during the 1980s for hosting game shows like “Love Connection,” Chuck Woolery has turned to podcasting. [The New York Times] • The Academy Awards are on Sunday. And the winners will be . .. [The New York Times] • Isabelle Huppert’s subversiveness and underplayed chic have transformed the actress, an Oscar contender, into fashion’s unlikely new muse. [The New York Times] • A new book includes about 170 images — many never before published — from the internment of during World War II. [The New York Times] • Video: Aerial views of the intense flooding in San Jose. [YouTube | Kevin Lowe] Among those most pleased by the return of rain to California have been wild mushroom enthusiasts. Years of drought put a damper on the foraging of fungus in the state’s forests, a hobby that has burgeoned with the growing popularity of fresh, local food. Amateur clubs up and down the state are organized around both the culinary and scientific celebration of California’s many mushroom species. As the rainfall began to surge last October, so did the autumn mushrooms, said Debbie Viess, a of the Bay Area Mycological Society. “We had a tremendous year for porcinis,” she said, “and it’s been a really good year for chanterelles too. ” Even with the continuing rain, several mushroom experts were wary about making predictions for the spring season, when popular morel mushrooms are normally abundant. While water is necessary, it isn’t sufficient, said Patrick Hamilton, a longtime mushroom picker in Sonoma County. “There are so many things, from soil conditions, to climatic conditions, to the age of the trees, all these things are difficult to understand,” he said. But the mystery, he added, “is part of the fun. ” 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 attended U. C. Berkeley. | 1 |
LaGRANGE, Ga. — Some people here had never heard about the lynching of Austin Callaway — about how, almost 77 years ago, he was dragged out of a jail cell by a band of masked white men, then shot and left for dead. Some people never forgot. But on Thursday evening, the fatal cruelties inflicted upon Mr. Callaway — long obscured by time, fear, professional malfeasance and a reluctance to investigate the sins of the past — were acknowledged in this city of 31, 000 people when LaGrange’s police chief, Louis M. Dekmar, who is white, issued a rare apology for a Southern lynching. “I sincerely regret and denounce the role our Police Department played in Austin’s lynching, both through our action and our inaction,” Chief Dekmar told a crowd at a traditionally church. “And for that, I’m profoundly sorry. It should never have happened. ” He also said that all citizens had the right to expect that their police department “be honest, decent, unbiased and ethical. ” “In Austin’s case, and in many like his, those were not the police department values he experienced,” he said. The apology for the Sept. 8, 1940, killing is part of a renewed push across the American South to acknowledge the brutal mob violence that was used to enforce the system of racial segregation after Reconstruction: In a 2015 study, the Equal Justice Initiative, a nonprofit based in Montgomery, Ala. documented 4, 075 of what it called the “racial terror lynchings” of blacks by white mobs in 12 Southern states from 1877 to 1950. The group has begun construction of a memorial to lynching victims in Montgomery, which could open by March 2018. To Chief Dekmar, however, the apology in the town he has called home since 1995 is about more than righting history’s wrongs. It is also an effort, in the age of the Black Lives Matter movement, to address some of the deepest roots of minority mistrust in the police, and create a better working relationship between officers and the community. “It became clear that something needed to be done to recognize that some things we did in the past are a burden still carried by officers today,” Chief Dekmar said in a recent phone interview. “Institutions are made up of people, and relationships go like this: Before you trust somebody, you need to know that they know that they did you wrong, and that you’re stepping up and apologizing for it. ” Chief Dekmar, 61, a New Jersey native raised in Oregon, embraces a view of law enforcement that extends beyond the narrow goals of protecting the good and locking up the bad. He tends to speak about his department as one organ of a broader social body, though one that is perhaps more exposed than others to its ills. He leads regular meetings of a “community outreach committee” in which he shares with other civic leaders what his officers see on the streets — homelessness, juvenile delinquency, children with learning and literacy issues — and looks for ways that various entities might work together to solve them. He has also sought to address trust issues: The department, he said, has mandated the use of body cameras on officers for the last five years. The chief became familiar with the lynching of Mr. Callaway only about two or three years ago, when one of his officers overheard two older women who were looking at old photos of the LaGrange police on display at the headquarters building. One woman said to the other, “They killed our people. ” Chief Dekmar began researching the episode but found, he said, only “sketchy reports” — there was “no investigation I could find, no arrest, no by the media. ” Indeed, the details of the crime appear to have been deliberately obscured for the residents of LaGrange. Then, in 2014, Jason M. McGraw, a student at the Northeastern University School of Law in Boston, wrote a research paper about the lynching. He noted that while newspapers around the country had reported that a band of masked whites had abducted Mr. Callaway, the local paper, The LaGrange Daily News, wrote only that Mr. Callaway had died “as a result of bullets fired by an unknown person or group of individuals. ” The paper’s headline on the Sept. 9, 1940, article declared, “Negro Succumbs to Shot Wounds. ” Mr. Callaway is generally believed to have been 16 or 18 years old on Sept. 7, the day he was arrested and charged with trying to assault a white woman. According to Mr. McGraw’s research, six white men arrived at the jail that night with at least one gun, forced the jailer to open the cell and forced Mr. Callaway into a car. He was driven to a spot eight miles away and shot in the head and arms. He was later found by a roadside and taken to a hospital, where he died. Mr. McGraw noted that the investigation of Mr. Callaway’s death fell to the town’s police chief, J. E. Matthews, and the Troup County sheriff, E. V. Hillyer, but that an investigative report was never made public. Chief Dekmar has learned that generations of were well aware of what happened. “There are relatives here and people who still remember,” he said. “Even if those people are not still alive, down through the generations, that memory is still alive. That’s a burden that officers carry. ” As Chief Dekmar learned more about the case, he decided that something must be done to acknowledge it. The city he has sworn to protect is less than 70 miles southwest of Atlanta. Before the Civil War, LaGrange was a wealthy hub in Georgia’s cotton kingdom: Troup County, of which LaGrange is the seat, had the state’s number of slaves. Today, according to recent census figures, the city is about 48 percent black and 45 percent white. A Kia plant in nearby West Point, Ga. suggests an economic future for the area beyond the textile industry that once sustained it. But nearly one in three LaGrange residents live in poverty. Residents say race relations here, as in many multicultural American communities, run the gamut from friendly to frayed, depending on the day and the issue. When LaGrange College, a private liberal arts school in town, announced that it had invited Representative John Lewis, the Georgia Democrat, to speak at a Martin Luther King Jr. event scheduled for Thursday, protests poured in, in part because Mr. Lewis had questioned the legitimacy of President Donald J. Trump. On Thursday, some businesses around town bore signs promoting Mr. Lewis’s appearance, while some homes featured signs declaring “Back the Blue. ” For the last two years or so, city and county residents, including Chief Dekmar, have been engaged in a program of racial reconciliation and racial . At a monthly meeting this summer, Chief Dekmar approached the president of the county N. A. A. C. P. chapter, Ernest Ward, and asked if he would help set up a public apology for the lynching. Mr. Ward served on the police force for nearly two decades starting in the . He acknowledged that some of his fellow black residents harbored an attitude toward the police. “I lost many friends when I became a police officer,” he said, “because they felt that I sold out. ” He was asked how much the apology would help with police work. “I believe it’s a start,” he said. “And it’s helped me to have a newfound respect for Chief Dekmar. ” “Historically certain people in the white race don’t like to bring up the past when it may not show a good light on their ancestors,” Mr. Ward said. “And so they would prefer to keep things hidden. ” Chief Dekmar issued his apology to relatives of Mr. Callaway on Thursday night at Warren Temple United Methodist Church here. The month after the shooting, Mr. McGraw noted, a church minister named L. W. Strickland wrote to Thurgood Marshall, the future Supreme Court justice who was then a lawyer for the N. A. A. C. P. telling him that the local branch of the rights group had asked the authorities to look into the case, but that “nothing is being done — not even acknowledgment of our requests. ” Some white LaGrange residents said on Thursday that they were deeply skeptical about whether the apology would have any practical effect. They noted that the crime took place before most people here were even born. “I don’t care if they apologize or don’t,” said Jessie East, 74, who works at a furniture and appliance shop. “It’s not going to change a thing that happened 77 years ago. ” But to others, including one of Mr. Callaway’s relatives, the apology was a step toward healing. “I speak your name, Austin Callaway, and ask God for forgiveness for the people that did this inhumane thing to you,” Deborah Tatum, a descendant of Mr. Callaway, told the congregation. “Some might say ‘forgiveness’? And I say to you that I believe God when he tells us that there is power and freedom in forgiveness. ” | 1 |
LOS ANGELES — From the stars to the producers to the executives, no one involved with “The People v. O. J. Simpson: American Crime Story” seemed to realize the significance of where they were celebrating their triumphant Emmy night after the awards ceremony Sunday. They were all at an at an event space called Vibiana, about two blocks from the courthouse where the Simpson case was tried. A couple of decades later, the case was recreated on this FX program, which won the Emmy for best limited series, capping a big night for the show. When the Fox executive Dana Walden heard about the proximity of the courthouse to the party, she said, “That just gave me chills,” a sentiment echoed by FX’s chief executive, John Landgraf, who called it “a little chilling. ” But there was one person who understood the odd coincidence of ending up back where it all started, after a circuitous and sometimes torturous route. “I know where I am,” Marcia Clark, the prosecutor in the Simpson case, said, a little gravely. She was sitting on a couch, inches away from the actress Sarah Paulson, who was holding the Emmy she won for portraying Ms. Clark. Ms. Clark, who was Ms. Paulson’s guest at the Emmys, said she couldn’t help but think about how near the courthouse was on the ride over from the ceremony. It was a bitter reminder for Ms. Clark, who was ridiculed in the news media in the — the perception being that she had blown the prosecution and let Mr. Simpson go free. She has found her public comeback only in the last year, after the explosive popularity of the series and the sympathetic portrayal from Ms. Paulson, who in her acceptance speech for her best actress award offered up a moving public apology to Ms. Clark. “The world saw me in sound bites,” Ms. Clark said. “Now I feel like I’m more understood. ” As Ryan Murphy, the prolific television producer who shepherded this show, put it: “The great story tonight is Marcia Clark finally won. ” And so did FX. At the Emmys, it’s usually an HBO night, and to a certain extent it was again: The premium cable channel won the best drama and comedy categories for a second consecutive year with “Game of Thrones” and “Veep. ” It also broke Comedy Central’s hold on the variety category, with a victory by John Oliver’s “Last Week Tonight. ’’ But propelled by a category that FX is reinventing — the limited series — the network arguably stole the show, smashing the basic cable Emmy record by winning 18 awards over all. The previous record was eight awards. The FX show also won acting Emmys for Courtney B. Vance’s portrayal of the defense lawyer Johnnie Cochran and Sterling K. Brown’s depiction of another prosecutor, Christopher Darden. (Louie Anderson won his first Emmy for his role as the mother of Zach Galifianakis’s character in FX’s “Baskets. ”) Mr. Landgraf has said in the past that he feels like he has to play “Moneyball” to compete with his rivals. Last month, he said his budget was about a sixth the size of Netflix’s. (Netflix’s programming budget is about $6 billion, HBO’s is $3 billion, and FX’s is about $1 billion.) But despite that, FX outshined them on Sunday. The success of the O. J. show wasn’t a sure thing. For decades, Hollywood did everything it could to stay away from the Bronco chase, Judge Lance A. Ito and the trial, in what proved to be a divisive national episode. “Like most things, it’s a in retrospect, but it wasn’t at the time,” said Brad Simpson, a producer of the show, with his Emmy in hand. “There was such a heavy saturation of O. J. that nobody wanted to hear about it again. When we announced the show, all the comments were, ‘Oh lord, don’t put the country through this again.’ But the show touched on things that obsesses America: class, race, the criminal justice system. ” By turning it into a limited series, which requires a relatively easy time commitment, FX was able to attract actors including John Travolta, Cuba Gooding Jr. and David Schwimmer. (All were nominated for awards on Sunday night.) And though the Academy Awards have been criticized for their lineup of acting nominees, the Emmys have done better with diversity: Three won acting awards on Sunday, including Mr. Vance and Mr. Brown from “The People v. O. J. Simpson. ” “Actors and directors follow the writing,” Mr. Vance said at the party. “The writers in TV are writing for different hues of color. Hopefully the movies start to see that if you want to get the people, you better do the writing. ” Mr. Murphy, the producer, has been a regular at the Emmys (he’s the man behind shows including “Glee,” “ ” and “American Horror Story”) and he said that between the diversity onstage and the large number of winners, Sunday night’s ceremony represented “a sea change. ” “I feel like sometimes you go to those award shows, and there are some people who win over and over again, but it wasn’t that type of night,” he said. “The Television Academy and the voters have moved onto a different feeling, a different embrace, and it felt good. ” There was arguably nobody who benefited more on Sunday night than Ms. Clark. Though Ms. Paulson was joined at the hip with Ms. Clark on Sunday, the two did not meet until late in production. They’ve become close since then, and Ms. Paulson provided one of the night’s stirring moments when she apologized to Ms. Clark during her acceptance speech, saying that the public in the 1990s was “superficial and careless. ” Ms. Clark seemed to be enjoying the rehabilitation of her reputation. “I think the benefit of this was people got to see the fullness of everyone involved,” she said. “Not just me. Chris Darden, too. Everyone. As well as the historical context. I think everybody got more of what was going on, more than they did ever before. ” For two hours, Ms. Clark and Ms. Paulson sat cozily in a corner near Mr. Murphy and the “Narcos” star Pedro Pascal. At a little before midnight, Ms. Paulson got up to leave with Ms. Clark. As they walked through a courtyard, a group of young women were gawking at them, but they weren’t interested in the one holding the Emmy. “Oh my God, that’s Marcia Clark!” one woman said. Ms. Clark heard it, looked over, pointed triumphantly and waved. She walked out of the party and toward an S. U. V. with Ms. Paulson, and just a few blocks away from her first brush with fame, Ms. Clark finally had her Hollywood ending. | 1 |
LONDON — “Get on with it. ” With those words late in a major speech on Tuesday, Prime Minister Theresa May charted Britain’s course toward a clean break with the European Union and expressed her fondest hope: that the time for “division and discord” is over. Her speech outlined what promised to be a hugely complex, negotiation, and it defined the broad objectives, but not the details, of British withdrawal. “The United Kingdom is leaving the European Union, and my job is to get the right deal for Britain as we do,” she said. With the address, Mrs. May began the jockeying that will lead to a break after more than four decades of tight integration, and define Britain’s relations with its neighbors for decades to come. She confirmed that Britain is determined to regain control of migration from the European Union and rejected the supremacy of the European Court of Justice. That stance is anathema to the European Union, which has made the free movement of people — as well as goods, capital and services — a bedrock principle and which relies on the court to arbitrate. “Let me be clear,” Mrs. May said, acknowledging the differences. “What I am proposing cannot mean remaining in the single market. ” She said that she hoped to complete a final deal with the European Union by March 2019 and that it would be voted on by both houses of Parliament. She was not clear about what would happen if Parliament rejected the deal, though some speculated that a rejection would result in the sort of chaotic, “cliff edge” breakup that she and Britain’s bankers and business leaders hoped to avoid. Mrs. May struck a diplomatic note, including an appeal for a new partnership with Continental Europe, but not at all costs. “We seek a new and equal partnership — between an independent, global Britain and our friends and allies in the E. U.,” Mrs. May said. “Not partial membership of the European Union, associate membership of the European Union, or anything that leaves us half in, half out. ” And she appealed to Britons, especially to those in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, to unite behind the government and stop refighting the referendum that backed leaving the bloc, which she had opposed. The reaction among her opponents in the “remain” camp was predictably harsh and seemed to herald a long and bruising process. “Theresa May has confirmed Britain is heading for a hard Brexit,” said Tim Farron, the leader of the centrist Liberal Democrats. “She claimed people voted to leave the single market. They didn’t. She has made the choice to do massive damage to the British economy. ” The Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, accused the Tories of turning Britain into “a tax haven,” with their recent threat to slash corporate taxes if a good deal cannot be reached with the European Union. The speech, which provided some degree of substance, gained a warmer reception in the markets, with the pound seeming to stabilize after several jittery days. It rose as much as 1 percent against the dollar during her speech, while stocks on the London exchange fell. Supporters of a withdrawal have been encouraged as well by reports that other countries in the bloc have recognized that they might suffer if there was a complete rupture and they were denied access to London’s financial services sector. But British businesses remained nervous. Carolyn Fairbairn, director general of the Confederation of British Industry, a business lobbying group, welcomed the greater clarity provided by Mrs. May but worried that “ruling out membership of the single market has reduced options for maintaining a trading relationship between the U. K. and the E. U. ” Kallum Pickering, senior Britain economist at Berenberg Bank in London, was more blunt, writing in an analysis that “as we do not expect the E. U. to compromise its principles, the U. K. is set to face significant economic consequences from Brexit. ” Few analysts expect the negotiations to go as smoothly or as quickly as Mrs. May seemed to say in her speech. In recognition of the troubles that may lie ahead, Mark Boleat, the policy chairman for the City of London Corporation, the heart of Britain’s financial services industry, urged Mrs. May to swiftly secure a transition deal that would provide the certainty that businesses crave. Charles Brasted, a partner at Hogan Lovells, an international law firm, cautioned that the deal Mrs. May wanted was likely to be seen by the European Union as “precisely the cherry picking that they have warned against. ” He added: “The objectives are now clear. The path towards them is uncharted. ” But he warned that “every one of the aspirations expressed by the U. K. government today will demand exceptional political skill to negotiate and will be complex to implement legally and commercially. ” In Europe, Donald Tusk, the president of the European Council, said on Twitter: “Sad process, surrealistic times but at least more realistic announcement on #Brexit. ” Germany’s foreign minister, Steinmeier, welcomed Mrs. May’s “desire for a positive and constructive partnership, a friendship with a strong E. U.,” which Germany would reciprocate. Mrs. May’s speech, delivered in the grand surroundings of Lancaster House in London, was the most closely watched statement on European policy since January 2013, when the prime minister at the time, David Cameron, promised to hold a referendum on European Union membership. The prospect that Britain would remain part of the single market has been fading since Mrs. May said in October that she would demand complete control of migration from the European Union and release from the European Court of Justice. The extent to which Mrs. May would be willing to compromise to maintain some access to the single market and to the customs union for goods was less clear. Membership in the customs union limits the ability of member countries to strike individual deals with nations. So she said she wanted a deal that would allow Britain to trade freely with the world, but still have as much trade as possible with European Union countries. Ideally, Britain would like to have its cake and eat it, in the memorable phrase of the foreign secretary, Boris Johnson. In other words, Britain would reject what it disliked about the bloc, like freedom of movement, but keep trade unencumbered as it tried to get the best possible trading deal consistent with its other objectives. While European nations are expected to be stingy with market access, Mr. Pickering says he believes they will eventually bend. In the final deal, he wrote, he still expects Britain and the European Union to agree to a deal in which “the U. K. maintains a good level of access to the E. U.’s goods markets and limited access to the services markets. ” “Crucially, we expect the U. K. to lose its E. U. financial services passport,” Mr. Pickering wrote, referring to a system that allowed banks based in Britain to offer financial services throughout the bloc. “This follows from the U. K. raising some modest barriers to migration from the E. U. ” Many European Union countries have backed taking a hard line against Britain to send a message to other member states that might consider leaving. Anticipating that, Mrs. May said that Britain wanted a successful European Union and a friendly partnership, but that “no deal for Britain is better than a bad deal for Britain. ” | 1 |
Since he was a boy he has hated black men. A bitter hatred of black men that boiled in his mind and consumed him. Then last week, apparently, he decided to kill them. This was the investigators say they gathered of James Harris Jackson, a morose and seemingly directionless white man who lived in Baltimore and had been having trouble getting rooted since leaving the Army. He had registered few obvious traces of who he was and what he stood for. Those who intersected with him found him to be a disagreeable and solitary figure who waved away contact with others. By all accounts, Timothy Caughman, 66, was a benevolent man content with an unassuming life. He lived in a former single room occupancy residence that had been his longtime home. The son of a home health care aide and a pastor, he had worked in antipoverty programs in Queens. Religion and philosophy were constants in his conversations over unhurried meals of turkey bacon and grits at local diners. In recent years, he had caught the familiar New York infatuation with celebrities and delighted in collecting their autographs and pictures. On St. Patrick’s Day, Mr. Jackson boarded a bus in Washington and rode it to New York. There were black men everywhere, and he told investigators he contemplated going elsewhere, but settled on New York because of the flood of media there. His goal was to draw the widest possible attention to his murderous plan. He made his statement of what hate looks like late on Monday night when the authorities said he pulled out a sword and fatally stabbed Mr. Caughman. He had been scavenging for cans in Midtown Manhattan around the corner from his home. Presumably, Mr. Jackson had little intention of getting away with it. Just after midnight on Wednesday, he surrendered to the police and took responsibility for the murder. He was arraigned on Thursday in Supreme Court in Manhattan and charged with murder as a hate crime. He was ordered held without bail. The attack comes at a particularly anxious moment in America as hate crimes are on the rise in the country and especially in New York City. Both Mayor Bill de Blasio and Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo forcefully condemned the killing. At the arraignment, Joan Illuzzi, the prosecutor, said that Mr. Jackson was particularly offended by black men who were with white women. She told the judge that additional charges may be filed, including murder in the first degree, “as this is an act, most likely, of terrorism. ” Dressed in a Tyvek suit, handcuffed and his legs in shackles, Mr. Jackson sneered several times as the charges were read. At one point, he gazed at the ceiling as though bored. He did not enter a plea. Sam Talkin, Mr. Jackson’s defense lawyer, declined to comment on the specifics of the case. “We just need for the dust to settle,” he said. If the information put forth by the authorities is accurate, he added, they will have to deal with Mr. Jackson’s “obvious psychological issues. ” The investigation into Mr. Jackson is still in its early stages and much remains unknown. But pieces of his life — and of the man he is accused of killing — were beginning to come together. Thus far, investigators have not linked Mr. Jackson to any white supremacy or hate group. Their sense is that he’s a discontent, not unlike many others who carry out senseless killings. But he was blunt about his prejudices when questioned by detectives. According to a law enforcement official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity since the investigation is continuing, “He told the cops, ‘I’ve hated black men since I was a kid. I’ve had these feelings since I was a young person. I hate black men. ’” Mr. Jackson told detectives, according to the official, that his intention was to keep on killing, the first attack being a springboard. At one point during his interrogation, he said he thought about grabbing a police officer’s gun and using it to shoot others. Investigators have not yet determined the origins of this hate. Mr. Jackson told them that he had written his beliefs down and was going to deliver his writings to The New York Times. “He said, ‘Listen, I wrote this all down, it’s in my laptop,’” the law enforcement official said. He apparently grew up in Baltimore. In 2007, he graduated from the Friends School of Baltimore, a small and prestigious Quaker day school. Matt Micciche, the head of school, said the campus community was “shocked and saddened by the news of this horrific attack. ” “Our school — and the Religious Society of Friends — has a long history of commitment to diversity, racial equality, social justice and nonviolence,” Mr. Micciche said in a statement. “The entire Friends School community extends our deepest sympathy to the family and friends of Timothy Caughman. ” In March 2009, Mr. Jackson joined the Army and served at various locations in the United States, working in military intelligence. He was deployed to Afghanistan between December 2010 and November 2011. Afterward, he was stationed in Baumholder, Germany, before being discharged in August 2012, when his rank was specialist. During his service, the Army said, he received several awards. It’s unclear what he did after leaving the Army, though he seemed lost. In the spring of 2015, he was nearly evicted from an apartment building in Baltimore’s Mount Vernon neighborhood for falling behind on his rent, according to Marcus Dagan, who was filling in then as the building’s manager. Speaking by phone from Omaha, where he now lives, Mr. Dagan said Mr. Jackson occupied a apartment and was at least six months in arrears. Mr. Dagan described him as a “slob” and a “deadbeat,” who refused to let anyone inside his apartment and never engaged in the building’s social atmosphere. “He turned into the tenant from hell,” Mr. Dagan said. He began eviction proceedings, but Mr. Jackson left before they were completed. The apartment, Mr. Dagan said, was the most disgusting thing the person hired to clean it had ever seen. “He definitely had some issues of some kind,” Mr. Dagan said. “How do you describe it? He was off. ” Yet he said he had never heard Mr. Jackson say anything that could be construed as racist. “Never had an intimation of that,” he said. “When you shake hands with somebody you can guess the character,” he said. “In his case, you’d get like three fingers and a cold fish. ” Mr. Jackson’s most recent address was a house wedged into a narrow street lined with rowhouses in the Hampden neighborhood of Baltimore, just west of Johns Hopkins University, a historic area that is filled with restaurants and shops. No one answered the door at the home on Thursday. A patrol car from the Baltimore Police Department was posted outside. Members of Mr. Jackson’s family appeared to be together in his parents’ home in a gated community several miles away. On Thursday afternoon, his family issued a brief statement through a lawyer: “Our family is shocked, horrified and heartbroken by this tragedy. We extend our prayers and condolences to the family of Timothy Caughman. We have no further comments at this time and ask that our privacy be respected. ” After Mr. Jackson got to New York last Friday, he checked into the Hotel at Times Square on West 46th Street, using an assumed name. As far as the police know, he attacked no one else during those first days. As best they can tell, he was hunting. His weapon was a sword, and he carried two smaller knives. From surveillance cameras, investigators managed to track some of his movements, though there are gaps. In one video, he can be seen tailing a black man. When detectives questioned Mr. Jackson, they said he acknowledged zeroing in on that man but didn’t strike because there were too many people around. Late Monday evening, he found a target on a Midtown street corner. Timothy Caughman was bent over some garbage. Like many New Yorkers living spare lives in their retirement years, Mr. Caughman was once someone else, his identity not defined by empty pockets and a modest address. He was born in Jamaica, Queens, and grew up in a comfortable apartment in the South Jamaica Houses. One of his cousins said the family has roots in Georgia dating back to the 1700s when their ancestors were first brought to America as slaves. He was the son of Tula Caughman, a home health care aide for wealthy residents of nearby Jamaica Estates, and William Caughman, the pastor of Mount Zion Baptist Church. Growing up, he was called Hard Rock, for he knew his way around a boxing ring — and a street fight. “He was known in the community as not to be someone who started a fight, but if you started it, he finished it,” said one of his cousins. According to Seth Peek, another cousin, Mr. Caughman earned an associate degree after attending college in Brooklyn and Staten Island. For several years in Queens, Mr. Caughman ran a division of the Neighborhood Youth Corps, a federal antipoverty program designed to provide jobs to poor youths. “He probably gave out about two or three thousand jobs to people in the community,” said one of his cousins. He also freely contributed homespun advice on how to excel: “‘If you know that someone is going to be somewhere, and you want to meet them, you got to be there an hour early,’” the cousin recalled Mr. Caughman instructing him. Later, he held a succession of jobs, including as a concert promoter. He was particularly proud of booking an early gig by Earth Wind Fire, before they attained fame, his cousin said. For the last 20 years, he lived in a room at the Barbour Hotel on West 36th Street that now houses formerly homeless people transitioning to permanent housing. Svein Jorgensen, the chief executive of Praxis Housing Initiatives, which manages the Barbour, said that of the residents, Mr. Caughman was one of the few who were actually permanent tenants and not part of the transient program. In reports of the murder, Mr. Caughman was incorrectly assumed to be homeless. “He was an extremely gracious individual and respectful of his neighbors,” Mr. Jorgensen said. He read avidly, and mainly kept to himself. He was a recycler of redeemables, his currency for his modest wants. His relatives said he viewed this as an entrepreneurial undertaking, a way to keep active and help pay for his room. He did maintain a social media presence. He had a Twitter account, and in his profile he defined himself as a can and bottle recycler, autograph collector and a good businessman. He said he aspired to visit California. On his Twitter feed, sandwiched between posts about celebrity culture, are links to articles about preventing cholesterol in babies and others about autism, echoing his broad interests. Among those aware of his fandom is Shari Headley, an actress who most recently played a district attorney on Tyler Perry’s “The Haves and the ” television soap opera. She held a live chat on Twitter every Tuesday, and she said Mr. Caughman rarely missed one. One day he requested a photo of her, and she mailed him an autographed photo. “What kind of world are we living in right now?” she said, overcome with emotion. “What a harmless guy. He spends his days just wanting to take pictures with celebrities. ” When Ms. Headley’s character on “The Haves and the ” was killed off recently, she said Mr. Caughman was downcast, wishing it weren’t true. When her agent told her Mr. Caughman had been stabbed, she hoped the same thing. Late Monday evening, as Mr. Caughman rooted through trash on Ninth Avenue, near his home, a white man in a dark coat approached him from behind. He said nothing. The man withdrew a sword from beneath his coat. A woman heard commotion, but didn’t realize what was actually happening and she ran off. But she told detectives she heard Mr. Caughman say, “Why are you doing this? What are you doing?” | 1 |
WASHINGTON — Michael T. Flynn, the national security adviser who was forced out of the job in February, failed to list payments from entities on the first of two financial disclosure forms released Saturday by the Trump administration. The first form, which he signed in February, does not directly mention a paid speech he gave in Moscow, as well as other payments from companies linked to Russia. The second, an amended version, lists the names of the companies that made the payments under a section for any nongovernment compensation that exceeds $5, 000 “in a year. ” That list appears to include all of the work that Mr. Flynn, a retired Army general, has done since leaving the military in 2014, without providing compensation figures for any of it. No reason was given for the discrepancy between the two forms. The payments were detailed in a letter released in March by congressional investigators, and included a $45, 000 speaking fee from RT, formerly known as Russia Today, a news network, for a speech in 2015 in Moscow. During the same trip, Mr. Flynn attended the network’s lavish anniversary dinner and was photographed sitting at the elbow of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. Mr. Flynn has faced fierce criticism for the Moscow speech and for his lobbying efforts for Turkey. But the work paid well, and the disclosure forms showed income of nearly $1. 5 million, a sizable amount for a man who left the military less than three years ago. What Mr. Flynn, who spent most of his adult life earning a military officer’s salary, does not appear to possess is the kind of investment portfolio enjoyed by most wealthy Americans, including the numerous millionaires and billionaires in the Trump administration. His form listed assets valued at $380, 000 and $800, 000, most of which is tied up in retirement funds. Mr. Flynn reported an income of $1. 37 million to $1. 47 million. The bulk — $827, 055 — came from the Flynn Intel Group, the consulting business he founded after being pushed out as the chief of the Defense Intelligence Agency in 2014. The rest included speaking fees and income earned for doing consulting work and sitting on corporate boards, such as that of Adobe Systems, which paid him $125, 250. The speaking fees, all of which were from 2016, ranged from about $10, 000 to about $22, 000. He gave talks to relatively groups like the Lincoln Chamber of Commerce in Nebraska, but also to the David Horowitz Freedom Center in California, which the Southern Poverty Law Center describes as an hate group. It is unlikely that Mr. Flynn, who is seeking immunity from congressional and federal investigations into Russia’s meddling in the election, will match the same income this year. He shuttered the Flynn Intel Group at the end of 2016, and then was forced out of the White House in February for misleading Vice President Mike Pence about the nature of phone calls he had with the Russian ambassador to the United States in December. The payments for lobbying work that Mr. Flynn did for the Turkish government — and did not disclose until March — were handled through the Flynn Intel Group, and are not listed separately on the disclosure forms. Mr. Flynn did not work directly for the Turkish government the firm that hired him, Inovo, is owned by a businessman with links to leaders in Ankara and asked him to work on an issue important to the government. | 1 |
Society US Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas
A female lawyer has accused US Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas of sexually assaulting her in 1999, a report says.
Moira Smith, who works as a corporate lawyer with an Alaska energy company, said the judge made unwanted sexual advances on her during a dinner party when she was 23-year-old, the National Law Journal reported on Thursday.
She said Thomas grabbed and squeezed her buttocks several times during the party in Falls Church, Virginia.
“Justice Thomas touched me inappropriately and without my consent,” Smith said.
“He groped me while I was setting the table, suggesting I should sit ‘right next to him,’” Smith said.
“He was 5 or 6 inches down and he got a good handful and he kept squeezing me and pulling me close to him,” she stated, according to the journal.
In a statement to the National Law Journal, Thomas, 68, dismissed the allegation as “preposterous”, saying that the incident “never happened."
Smith, currently vice president and general counsel at Enstar Natural Gas Co in Alaska, said she decided to speak out after hearing Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump's lewd comments about women.
A 2005 video was released earlier this month by The Washington Post, in which Trump can be heard making lewd comments about women and bragging about groping them.
A number of women have since come forward claiming that the business mogul has sexually assaulted them.
Trump has called the allegations “slander and libel” and part of a “concerted, coordinated and vicious attack” by Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton and the news media to undercut his campaign. Moira Smith said Justice Clarence Thomas groped her at her boss' dinner party when she was 23.
"That willingness by men in power to take advantage of vulnerable women relies on an unspoken pact that the women will not speak up about it," Smith, now 41, told the journal.
"Why? Because they are vulnerable. Because they are star-struck. Because they don't want to be whiners. Because they worry about their career if they do speak out. But silence no longer feels defensible; it feels complicit,” she stated.
"As the mother of a young daughter and son, I am coming forward to show that it is important to stand up for yourself and tell the truth," Smith said.
Thomas was nominated to the top court in 1991 by Republican President George H.W. Bush. Loading ... | 0 |
A federal judge threw out a convicted D. C. sniper’s four life sentences Friday because he was 17 when he was originally sentenced. [U. S. District Judge Raymond Jackson in Norfolk, Virginia, ruled that Lee Boyd Malvo has a right to be in new sentencing hearings due to a 2012 Supreme Court ruling that made it unconstitutional for juveniles to receive mandatory life sentences in prison without parole, the Daily Mail reported. Malvo, now 32, was arrested in 2002 for his role in several shootings in the District of Columbia, Maryland, and Virginia that left ten dead and injured three. The attacks were widely covered in U. S. and international media over concerns that the sniper attacks, which were carried out from a modified car trunk, were acts of terrorism. Malvo entered a guilty plea in Spotsylvania County, Virginia, and agreed to two sentences of life in prison without parole. A judge in Fairfax County, Virginia, also sentenced him to two additional life terms in Fairfax County. In 2012, the Supreme Court ruled it was unconstitutional for courts to issue mandatory life sentences without parole to juvenile offenders. The Supreme Court further ruled in 2016 that the 2012 ruling could be applied retroactively to all sentences before the 2012 ruling. Jackson, as a result of these two rulings, threw out the four life sentences and ordered that Malvo be in the counties of Fairfax and Spotsylvania. The Virginia attorney general, however, can appeal Jackson’s ruling, according to Fairfax County prosecutor Ray Morrogh, who prosecuted Malvo in 2003. The Virginia Attorney General’s Office is “reviewing the decision and will do everything possible, including a possible appeal, to make sure this convicted mass murderer serves the life sentences that were originally imposed,” Michael Kelly, a spokesman for Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring, said Friday. Kelly added that Malvo could still be to life in prison based on the convictions even if he is granted a new sentencing hearing. Defense lawyers for Malvo, however, have argued that he was an adolescent who did not know any better and was influenced by his older accomplice, John Allen Muhammad, USA Today reported. They remain hopeful that these new court hearings might give him a shot at parole. The Washington Post reported that Jackson’s ruling does not apply to Malvo’s six life sentences in Maryland that he received after pleading guilty to six counts of murder there, but Malvo’s Maryland lawyers are trying to appeal his convictions based on the Supreme Court rulings at the state and county levels. A hearing is set for June in that state. | 1 |
19 МЧС направило 57-ю по счёту автоколонну с гуманитарной помощью для жителей Донбасса.
«В её составе более 40 автомобилей, которые везут свыше 440 тонн гуманитарных грузов. Основная масса груза — это продукты питания, медикаменты и пожарно-техническое имущество», — отмечается в сообщении , опубликованном на официальном сайте ведомства.
Колонна движется в направлении пунктов пропуска «Донецк» и «Матвеев Курган», где автомобили пройдут все положенные процедуры. Затем части колонны направятся к двум пунктам назначения – Луганской и Донецкой области.
С августа 2014 года 56 автоколонн МЧС России доставили в Донецкую и Луганскую области более 64 тысяч тонн гуманитарной помощи. | 0 |
Taming the corporate media beast The Crisis of the European Union Is Irreversible
The political-economic block and its common currency cannot be salvaged Donate! The author is an Italian industrialist and honorary member of the Academy of Science of the Institut de France
According to a well-known Italian Research Centre, from 2003 to 2014 the European single currency cost an 11% GDP reduction throughout the Eurozone and 18 million additional unemployed people. Conversely, as a result of the Maastricht agreement only, throughout the Eurozone we have lost 8 million jobs and an additional 5% of Gross Domestic Product, owing to the obligation to eliminate deficit and cut investment. Furthermore, the report of said Research Centre shows that, again in late 2014, the average EU unemployment rate was approximately 11.6%. In a scenario of parity with the dollar, the EU unemployment in the Eurozone would have been 5.8%, more or less the same as the US rate in that phase. Hence a monetary policy characterized by an excessive overvaluation of the European currency blocked both exports and the internal market at the same time. Furthermore, it created the conditions for a deterioration of public budgets in terms of deficit and debt. In fact, again at the end of 2014, the Eurozone recorded a public deficit totalling 269 billions which, without the single currency, would even be turned into a surplus of 165 billion euro, with a difference equal to 445 billions. In terms of GDP percentage, the difference would be 4.1 points while, with specific reference to the Eurozone’s public debt, we would have had three trillion euro less. Only for Italy, as many as 400 billion public debt less. Working on this assumption, all current evils would have been avoided if there had not been the overvaluation of the euro against the dollar. There would have not been the massive impact of the financial crisis coming from the United States, at first with Lehman Brothers’ bankruptcy on September 15, 2008 and later with the recurrent banking crises in Europe, which put a strain on the public finances of major European governments. Considering that all EU governments were accustomed to borrow huge sums directly from the banking system, we can imagine the effects of the financial and credit crisis on the various European countries’ budgets. It is worth recalling that the United States have never liked the euro – quite the reverse they have always considered it "imaginative and useless", as former President George Bush I stated in recently-published public papers. Reading between the lines of its official documents, the EU itself maintains that the financial crisis came from the United States and that it made serious mistakes. Also according to the EU official documents, the mistakes were allegedly the following: 1) too much attention focused on the public budget deficit on an yearly basis, without being too much worried about the public debt as a whole. According to European standards, the EU government submitted reduced annual budgets for obtaining EU funding - later obviously the public debt increased anyway and real trouble came. Also thanks to the EU operating logic, the naive myth that the crisis was not structural and could be managed with some cosmetic measures has led to the current decline. Said decline has been triggered off by the rapid growth of interest rates on the EU Southern countries’ public debt. 2) Again according to the EU papers, there has also been a lack of surveillance over competitiveness and macroeconomic imbalances. This is not great news. However, there is always someone who benefits from the economic disharmonies – just to use the old terminology of the remarkable Italian philosopher Mario Calderoni - while others stand to lose as a result of them. There has never been a solidarity-based Europe during crises, but only in "good times". Therefore, in the losing countries, we recorded growing indebtedness of the private sector, not controlled owing to the myth of companies’ autonomy - and hence an increasing weakening of banks. The other EU "winning" countries took over the losers’ market shares. Again, instead of imposing draconian penalties which worsen the economic problems, we should have supported the weakest economies and the most unbalanced ones in terms of trade with the United States. The United States exported their mass of bad loans, disguised as new securities, to the European Union, the financial enemy that had dreamt of relegating the dollar to the rank of a Euro ancillary currency. There was also this geopolitical war within the crisis of the European currency. Moreover, the European Central Bank aimed at maintaining financial stability but, by statute, it could not buy public debt from other non-EU countries, as all issuing banks do. This is the main way in which central banks can nip in the bud speculative attempts against them. Furthermore, in Italy, as in other South Europe’s economies, foreign competition has kept wages at very low levels and, in dealing with competition for exports, our political and economic structure has only reduced the labour incomes almost to the level of the worst competitor. 3) Another EU public self-criticism is relating to the slow decision-making mechanism: the European establishment has interpreted the small shocks of the global crisis as isolated phenomena and not as a common geoeconomic problem. Hence the slow pace and often the ineffectiveness of the EU "solutions". And this faced with a "market" - if we may call it so - of investors who, as soon as they saw the crisis in the South, played a downward game or went away quickly. Good old days when the Treasury rightly bought the unsold debt securities at the Bank of Italy’s auctions. And, it is worth noting that, in so doing, it did not create inflation at all. Currently, however, markets are fast like jackals, which smell corpses, while States have been slow as marmots. This is the real problem of today’s politicians. States must increase their pace and be very quick and capable of understanding both adverse media and the political and military operations which are objectively dangerous for them. Moreover considering that, at the time, the public debt securities were held mostly by banks, their default was possible and easy to take place. Today there is a new crisis looming large on Europe, namely the crisis of non-performing loans: in Portugal, Italy and Spain, but also in some North European countries, the non-performing loans are worth over 540 billion euro. Hence shortly another European debt crisis will materialize. 4) Currently the European Union is basically a Gaullist-style "Europe of States"– even though it strongly denies so. Hence the idea of creating the "United States of Europe" is extraordinary nonsense: the EU Member States are so different from one another, and with such a diversified economy, that these "United States of Europe" would create more contrasts internally than externally, namely with the United States of America, Russia and China. Not to mention that, with a view to becoming today’s USA, America had to undergo a wide civil war, whose echoes are not completely over even today. 5) Moreover, the united Europe - and I am talking about the Euro zone - will be increasingly entangled in an area of structural deflation which condemns 'Italy, together with other less economically strong countries, to face an indefinite period of very low growth rates. On the contrary, the other North European countries will continue to grow and, above all, will not have to tackle the same problems we have, namely low wages and exports facing fierce competition, not protected by the Euro. 6) Hence what can be done? We must prepare for a slow but safe exit from the Euro, not waiting for the EU "bureaucratic Caesarism", as well as redefining and protecting our export area. Then we must use our credit instruments and debt securities as alternative currency, where possible – as well as use some well-disguised protectionism also vis-à-vis the EU itself. Finally, we must rethink our overall strategy, which we have never done. The economic crises are always geopolitical crises. Furthermore we must fund the companies’ technological upgrade projects with State funds, without waiting for the EU claims. Last but not least, we must put an end to young people’s "brain drain". It is true that, as some liberal-masochists maintain, the current professions’ market is global, but it is also true that the cost of their education and training has been borne by our State and our families. Did you enjoy this article? - Consider helping us! Russia Insider depends on your donations: the more you give, the more we can do. $1 $10 Other amount
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Corbett • 11/12/2016 • 20 Comments
The voting machines have decided who will be the next puppet figurehead of the Pax Americana deep state for the next four years. The circus is over and the peanut shells are being swept out of the stands. So what do we have to show for all of it?
Well, I have some good news, some bad news, and some not-so-good news for you. Let’s start with the bad news.
Apparently some people voted for Trump in the belief that he was some sort of anti-establishment truth-telling hero of the working class. I hate to be the one to disabuse you of this notion, so let’s just look at his transition team, his campaign team, the people who have already been tapped to be part of the new administration and the people who are being contacted for potential cabinet appointments. Warning: It’s not a pretty picture.
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Next Swipe left/right Vine 2013-2016: celebrate the life and death of an app with these 12 clips Sad news for fans of six second videos – Twitter has announced it will be closing Vine , the app it bought in 2013. Let’s say goodbye by looking back at 12 of the most important Vines ever made.
1. This dog, drifting a car in the snow.
2. The time George Osborne was a toddler who has just been on gas at the dentist.
3. This army of screaming ducks
4. Leonardo DiCaprio getting scared by Lady Gaga
5. This kid pretending he likes the avocado he’s been given.
6. Limmy tricks Matt Lucas into thinking he’s posing for a photo.
7. The last 6 seconds of “Rabbit” by Chas and Dave looped.
8. This dancing robot, set to Toto’s “Africa”.
9. This encounter with a rotating foam arm.
10. The struggle faced by Jay Z’s accountant.
11. This dog riding a scooter.
12. Another dog, this time helping out on “Seven Nation Army” by The White Stripes
But let’s not get too sentimental – Vine also had its problems. A Vine is a short video that requires 3 clicks to start and between 7-10 clicks to stop playing. It usually features someone screaming. | 0 |
Posted on October 31, 2016 by Dr. Eowyn | 5 Comments
Last Saturday, Oct. 29, the Medford Police Patrolmen’s Association (MPPA) of Medford, Massachusetts, posted 3 photos on its Facebook page of two Medford police officers seemingly arresting a person in a Hillary Clinton mask and orange prison clothes at the Halloween Fall Festival in Haines Square, West Medford.
CBS Boston reports, Oct. 30, 2016, that the caption on the photos read:
“Look who MPD grabbed at the Fall Festival in Haines Square today…”
Another photo showed three Medford police officers posing with someone in a Donald Trump mask, with the caption, “Making America GREAT again in West Medford Square!!”
By 8:15 pm that night, MPPA removed the posts from its Facebook page, with an apology in a statement from MPPA President Harry MacGilvray:
“These were Halloween costumes. It was meant totally as a joke. I apologize if this offended anyone in any way. I never expected this sort of reaction. It was poor judgment on my part.”
MacGilvray was one of the officers in the photos. LOL
Fox25 WFXT reports that the police union removed the photos because of a flurry of negative Facebook comments from Hillary supporters, such as:
Jennifer Popkin: “I can’t believe this unprofessional behavior. Police in uniform should not be espousing political beliefs, let alone the kind of irresponsible rhetoric coming from Donald Trump. Absolutely deplorable and also likely illegal under Section 23(b)(2)(ii) of the conflict of interest law.”
Mike Piehl: “Trump goes on trial for fraud in November and child rape in December but YOU . . . .”
Jeremy Thorpe: “This is illegal. I am screen-shotting this comment to demonstrate that you are deleting critical comments.”
Katarina Dutton: “As a citizen of Medford, I am appalled by police making it clear that I, and so many others, are not welcome or safe here.”
Tamar Amidon: “This is so shameful for Medford. I’m so glad I don’t live there now. I never thought of them being one of the bad apple bins.”
That Popkin, Piehl, Thorpe, Dutton, Amidon, et al. are outraged by the Medford police Halloween prank but not in the least bothered by of Hillary Clinton’s criminal use of an unsecured email server, her utterly corrupt pay-for-play Clinton Foundation, and her abandoning four Americans to die in Benghazi, can only mean one thing:
~Eowyn | 0 |
Posted on November 6, 2016 by Eric Zuesse. Eric Zuesse The leading financiers of the Republican Party, the Koch brothers, were exposed on November 4th by the great investigative journalist Lee Fang, as being solid supporters and heavy financiers of congressional candidates who have been leaders in expanding the U.S. military budget and moving America toward a police state (including militarization of the police). The leading financier of the Democratic Party, George Soros, has long been known to provide major financial backing for the most-neoconservative Democratic candidates, such as Hillary Clinton, who favor every possible military invasion and coup (and see this , for more on that). In fact, Soros was one of the top three financial backers (the other two were the U.S. government and the Netherlands government) for the television station in Ukraine that championed extermination of the people in Ukraine’s Donbass region, where the coup-imposed government, which he helped to install, is loathed . And also on the Ukrainian matter, the Kochs have championed the view that when considering whether Crimea should be part of Russia, or else part of Ukraine, or else entirely independent, the people who live there shouldn’t have any opportunity to vote on the matter, and they should instead be forced to be ‘Ukrainians’ , even if they loathe this post-coup Ukrainian governmen t. Soros and the Kochs insist that this Ukrainian government should be imposed upon Crimeans, regardless of what they want. In fact, Soros has proposed adding from 20 to 50 billion taxpayer dollars to the effort by the coup-imposed Ukrainian government’s military, in order for that government to achieve this conquest of Crimea (to restore it to Ukraine, to which it had been forcibly joined, by the Soviet dictator Khrushchev in 1954, after having been for hundreds of years a part of Russia — and to which Obama and the Kochs and Soros insist it belongs). Regarding the U.S. Presidential contest, the difference between the Kochs and Soros is that the Kochs in 2016 directed all of their political financing away from the Presidential contest altogether, so as to weaken Trump’s effort to beat Hillary, whereas Soros has devoted tens of millions of dollars to the financing of Hillary’s campaign and of PACS (such as this) that support Hillary against Trump. Hillary is supported by Kochs and the big oil-and-gas firms as well as by Soros and Wall Street. Virtually all of the U.S. aristocracy want Hillary Clinton to become President. Right after the nominating conventions, the Kochs withdrew their financial backing of the Republican ‘hawk’ U.S. Senatorial candidate Ron Johnson in Wisconsin because Johnson had just endorsed Trump . But afterwards, the Kochs — as Lee Fang noted — spent big on the campaigns of Ron Johnson and of other pro-Lockheed-Martin (etc.) Senators. To be pro ‘Defense’ industry, isn’t to be pro-U.S. defense, but instead to be pro-mega-corporate investors, and that’s something America’s entire aristocracy are, because they control all of the large U.S.-based corporations. Those corporations expand by the U.S. military having the might to enforce in foreign countries what their owners want — so that America’s State Department and USAID etc. can serve as spokespersons for, essentially, the billionaires who own controlling blocs of stock in U.S.-based international corporations. That’s “the system,” which Hillary Clinton and the Kochs and Soros and all the rest of the U.S. aristocracy support, and which Bernie Sanders opposed without understanding it. If Donald Trump understands it, he’s been keeping that fact secret from his followers, who generally understand nothing of it at all. Maybe if he were to try to explain it to them he’d be called ‘unpatriotic’ — even though his trying to explain it to them would actually be the deepest form of patriotism. Unfortunately, for him to be patriotic in that way would probably be politically suicidal for his campaign. He instead points to “foreigners” as being America’s enemies, when the real enemies are actually right at home in America — and they’re enemies of the entire world, not just their own country. These are the people at the top of the global food-chain. It’s not clear whether Trump feels mainly that he’s one of them, or instead that they’re his chief enemies. How much more ambiguous could a person be than that? And is the ambiguity intentional? The most reliable answer might be found by identifying whom his actual political enemies are — and they seem to be virtually all of the global aristocracy. Maybe they know him in ways that the U.S. public don’t and can’t. The public will just have to guess. But no guesses are necessary in order to understand Hillary Clinton. She has a lengthy record in public office, and it’s entirely consistent, as a neoconservative . | 0 |
WASHINGTON — Donald J. Trump is broadening the field of candidates for secretary of state as his transition team remains divided nearly a month after the election over how to fill the most prominent gap in his prospective cabinet. Kellyanne Conway, a top adviser to Mr. Trump, told reporters on Sunday that the search had expanded beyond the four men thought to be under consideration and that Mr. Trump planned to interview additional candidates early this week. Those new candidates appeared to include John R. Bolton, an ambassador to the United Nations under President George W. Bush Jon M. Huntsman Jr. the former Utah governor and ambassador to China under President Obama Rex W. Tillerson, the president and chief executive of Exxon Mobil and Senator Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia. Asked about the search on the ABC program “This Week,” Vice Mike Pence mentioned Mr. Bolton as a potential candidate and said others could be added to the list. Mr. Bolton met with Mr. Trump for about an hour on Friday, and Mr. Tillerson is set to meet with Mr. Trump on Tuesday, according to two people briefed on the meetings. Despite their differences over the Iraq war, which Mr. Bolton ardently supported, Mr. Trump said during the campaign that he turned to Mr. Bolton for military advice and called him “a tough cookie. ” The transition team had previously signaled that the group under consideration had narrowed to four men: Mitt Romney, the 2012 Republican presidential nominee Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former mayor of New York and a close ally of Mr. Trump Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee, the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee and David H. Petraeus, the retired general and director of the C. I. A. under President Obama. Some of those candidates may be brought back in for further interviews, the people briefed on the meetings said. An announcement of a selection for the post is not expected for at least several more days. In an audition of sorts, Mr. Petraeus appeared on “This Week” to highlight his foreign policy experience in the military and his work abroad in the private sector. He also sought to put behind him a potentially significant hurdle to his candidacy: his mishandling of classified material while he was a top general. He pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge in 2015 and was forced to resign as C. I. A. director. “Five years ago, I made a serious mistake,” Mr. Petraeus said. “I acknowledged it. I apologized for it. I paid a very heavy price for it, and I’ve learned from it. ” But he added that it was up to others to “determine whether that is indeed disqualifying or not. ” The wrangling over who should be America’s top diplomat comes as Mr. Trump’s team continues to face questions about his phone conversation with the president of Taiwan last week, which angered China and rattled other Asian nations. Mr. Bolton advocates closer ties with Taiwan as a means of putting pressure on China, arguing that Beijing’s growing power in the region should be checked. Mr. Trump’s advisers are battling, at times publicly, over whether he should choose from among his campaign loyalists or go outside that circle, a move that could alienate voters who were angry at the Republican establishment. Much of that wrangling has centered on Mr. Romney, who was among Mr. Trump’s fiercest critics during the campaign. Mr. Trump has told aides that he believes that Mr. Romney would “look the part” as the face of American outreach to the world and would make a fine secretary of state. But Ms. Conway, who has been openly critical of Mr. Romney, continued to attack him during a “Fox News Sunday” appearance, saying that the backlash to his candidacy among Mr. Trump’s core supporters had been “breathtaking. ” Asked if her criticism of him was appropriate, she said, “I would turn the question around and ask, was it appropriate for Governor Romney to stick his neck out so far in attacking Donald Trump, and never walking it back, never encouraging people to support the nominee once Mr. Trump had won the nomination squarely and fairly. ” Ms. Conway, answering questions from reporters about the expanded search as she entered Trump Tower in New York on Sunday, said the transition team had been happily surprised by the number of wealthy businesspeople who had come forward to express interest. Mr. Trump, who was lifted to victory in the election in large part by the support of white voters, has faced criticism over his appointment of several people to top posts. “There are a number of people that we may not have thought wanted to leave their very lucrative private industry positions to go and serve the government,” Ms. Conway said. “It’s exciting, frankly, to at least get their counsel. ” Another person who will meet this week with Mr. Trump is James G. Stavridis, a retired admiral whose name was floated as a potential running mate for Hillary Clinton. It was unclear if he was being considered for a specific position. Despite the very public over the secretary of state appointment, Mr. Trump remains well ahead of the pace set by most of his predecessors in naming members of his cabinet. In addition to meetings this week, he is scheduled to travel at least twice, to Fayetteville, N. C. and to Des Moines, on his “thank you” tour. Mr. Petraeus spoke on the ABC program from the sideline of a conference in Germany, greeting the host, George Stephanopoulos, with a “guten tag” before beginning the interview. The retired general praised Mr. Trump as “actually quite pragmatic. ” He appeared careful not to contradict Mr. Trump on a range of his foreign policy priorities, including building a border wall between the United States and Mexico, potentially working with Russia to defeat the Islamic State, and discarding the Iran nuclear accord. “In our conversation, what I enjoyed, most frankly, was the discussion of issues, or, say, campaign rhetoric, if you will, and then placing that in a strategic context,” Mr. Petraeus said. Before he appeared on the show, Mr. Petraeus seemed to get a lift from Mr. Pence, who dismissed concerns about Mr. Petraeus’s mishandling of classified material, in which he gave secret materials to a biographer with whom he was having an affair. Mr. Pence called Mr. Petraeus an “American hero” and said Mr. Trump would consider him based on “the totality” of his career. “Look, he made mistakes, and he paid the consequences for those mistakes,” Mr. Pence said. | 1 |
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“That’s going to be you,” the Academy of Excellence teacher allegedly warned a 12-year-old Muslim student after showing the class a movie about the 9/11 attacks. And if that sounds outrageous, brace yourself because it gets a lot worse.
No wonder the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the ACLU of Arizona are siccing the U.S. Dept. of Justice and the U.S. Dept. of Education on this travesty of a public charter school and this shameful example of an educator’s sorry a**. Heather Weaver from the ACLU’s national office reports they’ve filed formal complaints on behalf of the Muslim student and his family.
Asli Noor and her five children are refugees who settled in Phoenix, Arizona after fleeing Somalia. Like most parents, she wants opportunities and a good education for her children. And for many families — especially those living in low-income neighborhoods — that means a public charter school like the sadly misnamed “Excellence Academy.”
The boy and his eight-year-old sister (referred to in the complaint as A.A. and F.A.) had started the 2015-2016 school year when the family’s new set of troubles began.
According to the complaints, an “Academy of Excellence” teacher named Faye Myles began “singling out” the then 11-year-old, sixth grade Muslim student as the 2015-16 school year began for “disfavorable treatment because of his faith and nationality.”
‘Another time, when A.A. raised his hand to answer a question, his teacher snapped at him — “All you Muslims think you are so smart” — in front of the entire class.’
Oh, and then the boy recalls the math and science teacher for grades 5-8 digressing into a special kind of lesson in civics and current events.
‘I can’t wait until Trump is elected. He’s going to deport all you Muslims. Muslims shouldn’t be given visas. They’ll probably take away your visa and deport you. You’re going to be the next terrorist, I bet.’
Faye Myles also allegedly found other ways to wound her young Muslim student with her bigotry. She repeatedly denied him the right to pray during recess, which is hard to imagine ever happening to a Christian student. The child also claims his “Academy of Excellence” teacher would also would tell him to “shut up” and punish him during class “downtime” when the other students were allowed to talk with each other.
The bus rides home added to the child’s misery as his classmates began to follow the teacher’s example and pile on the insults.
‘On the bus ride home, A.A.’s classmates took up his teacher’s anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant crusade, taunting him about the fact that his visa would be revoked because he is a Muslim, calling him a “terrorist,” and accusing him of planning to blow up the bus.’
The child, of course, started feeling anxious and physically ill “with a stomach ache” and had no desire to return to the “Academy of Excellence.”
In January, Asli Noor met with school officials to complain about these incidents. Three days later, the school asked her to pick her son up early because he had supposedly tried to open the school bus’ emergency window. Noor demanded they verify these accusations with footage from the security camera but school officials refused.
And then Brenda Nelson, an “Academy of Excellence” board member, printed out two “voluntary” withdrawal forms for A.A. and his younger sister F.A. She then allegedly ordered Ms. Noor to sign them, saying:
‘Get your kids out of here. I don’t want them here.’
When Asri Noor begged for time to find another school for her children, Brenda Nelson callously refused.
Unfortunately, these incidents of anti-Muslim bigotry in publicly-funded schools are happening more frequently. Think Progress reports that even in schools where teachers try to fight it, Trump-inspired bullying is a serious issue.
‘In spite of some teachers’ valiant efforts to teach students about Trump, it would appear that schoolchildren already invoke the candidate’s name to scare their Latino and Muslim classmates, referencing the candidate’s harsh claims of Latino criminals and Muslim terrorists.’
And, sadly, it’s not just the kids.
‘A predominantly Latino elementary school in California was graffiti-tagged with the words “Build the wall higher” last week, alluding to Trump’s policy plan to build a southern U.S. border wall to keep out undocumented immigrants.’
And in case you assume the “Academy of Excellence” teacher is one of those mean white Trump supporters, you’re wrong. Apparently, she’s a mean black Trump supporter. @KhaledBeydoun The teacher works at Academy of Excellence & her name is Faye Myles per the article. She should be called out. pic.twitter.com/BbL3YdzEG8
— John Q Archibald (@JohnQarchibald) October 30, 2016
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It is all about the price. Millions of people buying insurance in the marketplaces created by the federal health care law have one feature in mind. It is not finding a favorite doctor, or even a trusted company. It is how much — or, more precisely, how little — they can pay in premiums each month. And for many of them, especially those who are healthy, all the prices are too high. The unexpected laser focus on price has contributed to hundreds of millions of dollars in losses among the country’s top insurers, as fewer healthy people than expected have signed up. And that has created two vexing questions: Will the major insurance companies stay in the marketplaces? And if they do, will the public have a wide array of plans to choose from — a central tenet of the 2010 Affordable Care Act? “The marketplace has been and continues to be unsustainable,” said Joseph R. Swedish, chief executive of Anthem, one of the nation’s largest insurers. Most Americans with health insurance get it through their employers or from government programs like Medicare and Medicaid. The marketplaces were created under the health care law to give the millions of people not covered in those ways a way to buy health plans. While major insurers continue to make profits over all, they say that the economics of the marketplaces do not work for them. Insurers can offer marketplace plans at four different coverage tiers, and the government subsidizes the premiums for millions of people. The thinking was that enough healthy people would buy insurance to balance out the costs for the . But things are not going exactly as envisioned. People shopping in the marketplaces are overwhelmingly choosing the cheapest plans they can find, according to a federal analysis. In 2014, of people went for the or plans in each of the tiers. In 2015, about half chose the cheapest plans. The pricing pressure is playing out on multiple fronts. People with expensive medical conditions, knowing that they need reliable coverage, seem willing to pay a little more for plans offered by the large companies. Those plans tend to have a wider choice of doctors and a stronger brand name, and the insurers say the people signing up are sicker than they expected. Healthy and young people — who are essential to insurers to offset the costs of care for unhealthy people — are regularly turning to whatever plan is cheapest, including those from insurers or with the smallest networks of hospitals and doctors. Many other young and healthy people, particularly those not eligible for generous subsidies, are shunning plans altogether, finding all of the prices too high. That decision puts them at risk of tax penalties. By some estimates, about 10 million people are signed up, fewer than half of the 21 million expected by now. All of this has the major insurance companies, as they finish their third year of selling individual policies under the law, reevaluating their role in the marketplace. The top insurers have essentially stopped talking about expanding their marketplace ambitions. Two companies, UnitedHealth Group and Humana, have said they plan to largely exit the marketplaces. Aetna has halted plans to enter more states. Even insurers that insist they are committed, like Anthem, which offers Blue Cross plans in more than a dozen states, are struggling to find their way. Mr. Swedish describes the market as “not predictable and not reliable. ” If the major insurers keep cutting back, it could lead to a cascade of effects for the people who depend on the marketplaces for coverage. People could potentially face higher premiums because there are fewer insurers competing, and they could have more limited choices of plans and doctors. The apprehension is not lost on regulators and lawmakers. On Thursday, the Obama administration said it was exploring ways to protect insurers from very expensive medical claims. And recently in The Journal of the American Medical Association, President Obama wrote that more financial assistance for people may be needed. So the mainstream insurers are struggling to find a business model for the marketplaces that works. If an insurer is successful at being the cheapest in a market, it has often found that it priced its plans too low to cover its medical costs. Some smaller insurers have already gone out of business. But if an insurer prices a plan too high, it might not attract enough healthy people to break even. Companies both large and small now plan to raise prices sharply for 2017, which could prevent even more people from buying policies. “The price competition has turned out to be much more cutthroat than anyone expected,” said Larry Levitt, an executive with the Kaiser Family Foundation, which closely tracks the law. Still, most experts say there is no immediate danger that the market will collapse. Marjorie Connolly, a spokeswoman for the Department of Health and Human Services, said in a statement that the Obama administration was confident that the marketplaces would “continue to thrive for years ahead. ” The department said on Thursday that the people entering the marketplaces are becoming more mixed over time, and the marketplaces are attracting more young and healthy people over all. The major insurers, though, say the healthy people are going to other plans, often the least expensive ones offered by their smaller competitors. Some defenders of the law say it is working as intended, harnessing competition to keep premiums as low as possible. “We have to be realistic,” said Linda J. Blumberg, a health care expert at the Urban Institute, noting that some large companies may not be nimble enough to succeed. “You can’t lower costs without breaking some eggs. ” Not every insurance company is struggling. The exceptions seem to be those that offer the most limited choice of doctors and hospitals and may pay them the least, including plans offered by companies like Molina and Centene, which previously specialized in covering Medicaid patients. The insurers faring the worst sell plans that resemble those traditionally offered through employers. The plans give customers much greater latitude over where to get care and cover some of the doctors and hospitals. The trouble is that people signing up for those plans are less healthy — and more expensive to treat — than anticipated. The companies also say that the provisions of the law aimed at stabilizing the market and protecting them from heavy losses are not working. Several say that consolidation is the answer. Anthem, for example, says the only way it can expand in the marketplaces is by merging with Cigna, a deal the Justice Department is trying to block. Another remedy is to attract a broader range of customers. “We have to get a healthier pool of people in the market,” said Kurt Kossen, an executive at Health Care Service Corporation, which operates nonprofit Blue Cross plans in several states but lost $1. 5 billion last year. The result could be a market essentially left to insurers that offer the same narrow networks found in Medicaid plans and some remaining Blue Cross plans, said Mr. Levitt, of the Kaiser Family Foundation. “The market is sustainable but with a different mix of plans,” he said. | 1 |
NBA Hall of Fame’s Shaquille O’Neal announced he plans on running for sheriff in 2020. “In 2020, I plan on running for Sheriff,” Shaq told Atlanta’s NBC affiliate WXIA. “This is not about politics for me,” he added. “This is something I always wanted to do. It’s about bringing people closer together. You know, when I was coming up, people loved and respected the police, the deputies. And, I want to be the one to bring that back, especially in the community I serve. ” The NBA said he is a perfect fit for the job because he can relate to anyone. “I’m a guy that speaks all languages. I can throw on a suit and have a conversation with Bill Gates, I can go in the hood and talk to the homies, and talk to the children,” Shaq explained. He said he is unsure yet where he would run. He could run for Sheriff in Henry County, GA, where he is a resident and where the incumbent is up for reelection in 2020. Another option for Shaq is in Florida where he also has residency. He could also establish new residency somewhere else and run in that location. Follow Trent Baker on Twitter @MagnifiTrent | 1 |
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Hafnarfjorður, Iceland.
The votes are in. In a greater-than-expected 79% turnout, election results show that Iceland’s Pirate Party has not come out in first place as earlier polls indicated might be the case. They have, however, increased their size in the Parliament 3-fold (from 3 seats to 10) but this will not be enough to steer Iceland in their direction.
Now it´s all about coalition building.
Had they maintained those poll numbers from earlier this summer (at a one-time high of 35%), that would have given them the probable first choice to form a coalition government with either the Left-Greens, the Social-Democrats, or the center-leftish Bright Future. As it stands now, they will need to band together, something they all they agreed to consider during a pre-election press conference.
The largest single party remains the corporate-right Independence Party with 29% or 21 seats and which is now part of the governing coalition along with the center-right Progressive Party (who suffered a humiliating loss of 11 seats, now down to 8). This coalition is the same center-right configuration which led Iceland to financial disaster, the flight of skilled doctors and other professionals, and whose members were implicated in off-shore money scams which led to the resignation earlier this year of their last PM from the Progressive Party, causing these early elections, and now to the formal resignation of their present PM just a few hours ago. Technically these two parties could form a 3-party coalition along with the new Regeneration Party. However, Regeneration leader Benedikt Jóhanesson has said he wouldn´t consider a coalition with the governing parties. Thus that particular scenario is doubted.
After years of political stagnation following the collapse of the economy, and controversy over the Panama Papers leaking of wealthy Icelanders´ involvement in Tortola, this new development reflects a growing, widespread disgust at the traditional two party coalition rulers who have alternately or in pairs run the country for most of its years following Iceland’s independence.
The ship is floundering and the present course is unsustainable.
The other numbers however, are pointing to a change of course: The Pirates won 14.5% giving them 10 seats in the 63 seat Parliament, the Althing. The Left-Greens received 15.9% (for 10 Seats); the Social Democrats 5.7% (3 seats) and Bright Future 7.2% (winning 4 seats).Together they represent almost 30% of the electorate. These are the groups which began talking about joining forces this past week, just before the election.
If a four party coalition is solidified, then Iceland becomes the second nation to have a viable Pirate Party within its government (Germany is the first) and the first to have it this close to the helm in the country´s governance.
The kingmakers could very well be Regeneration, a new, center-right grouping who won 10.5% of the votes getting them 7 seats. They characterize themselves as “liberal”, though the head was a long-time supporter of the Independence Party before leaving this past year. On the 18th of October he said he wouldn’t consider joining a coalition with the two-headed ruling hydra of the Independence and Progressive parties. Were he instead to agree to an alliance with the four roughly left, center-left groups of which the Pirates are a part (something he declared he was open to the morning after the election), then that would net a total of 34 seats (27 + their 7) and a solid majority. A five party coalition.
What does this all mean? It means several things: in the short run, the helm of the Icelandic political ship will remain loosely dominated by the Independence Party as the largest single grouping in the Althingi (Parliament). But aside from that approximately 30% of the electorate who aren´t swayed by anything but their loyalty to the ruling class, the rest of the country is moving on. They are actively exploring hitherto unheard of politics (with the Pirates) and considering broad coalition politics (5 groups trying to control the direction of the country). This may be the wave of the future. Or it may simply be a transitional era where loyalties are split and serious discussions about radical ideas like ownership of public resources (and actually and clearly defining such) occur openly as the public coalesces around a new, dominant ideology. In the long run, things are changing. And then there is this issue of a new Constitution which was voted on and accepted by the public but which the ruling coalition simply ignored and shelved. If that was now formally accepted, then some serious changes may be in store for the Owners of the country. But today is only the day after, and nothing has been decided yet.
So what´s next? Well, the new President’s job just got more complicated as he is the one who traditionally asks the leading party to form the new government and, if they fail in securing a stable majority, the next leading party would get a shot. This was easier when the totals were generally in favor of one or the other of the two ruling groups. Now, however, a new multi-party dynamic is at play. Who knows how the discussions are heading right now, and which horses are being traded?
Iceland has always been the most USAmerican of the Nordic countries but with tugs in both directions. Much like the island itself, rent down the middle by volcanic cracks dividing the European and American tectonic plates, these tugs are causing great tension as to which political direction the country should follow. With history having taken them this far and a growing unease about the dominant parties´ corruption and rehashed free market rhetoric, it appears Iceland is not quite ready to jump ship and hand the wheel over to the Pirates. But they and their kind are looking better and better as each year passes and Iceland drifts without a clear direction to prosperity and fairness. In the long run, that tectonic split in politics is getting wider and wider, just like its geographical counterpart.
But it is the Pirates who at least have captured the imagination of the people (and, in particular the young). If they can convince the rest of the public that they are more seriously interested in governing than in luring Edward Snowden here (a publicity stunt at best) and have more relevant meat and potato concerns beyond internet privacy, then they may very well be the ultimate winners a few years down the road. Join the debate on Facebook José M. Tirado is a Puertorican poet, Buddhist priest and political writer living in Hafnarfjorður, Iceland, known for its elves, “hidden people” and lava fields. His articles and poetry have been featured in CounterPunch, Cyrano´s Journal, The Galway Review, Dissident Voice, La Respuesta, Op-Ed News, among others. He can be reached at . | 0 |
It happened so fast: One moment I was running trails, the next I was staring a sow in the face, so close I could smell it, wild and pungent and alarming, and I knew it could smell me, too, my fear. I was in the middle of a rainy run in Far North Bicentennial Park on the outskirts of Anchorage, where I live. It was late July, a time when grizzlies sweep down from the mountains to feast on the salmon swimming up Campbell Creek. But I was miles from the water. I had planned my route away from the creek, and I hadn’t seen bear scat in more than an hour. As I crested a hill, a crash sounded from my right, and I instinctively moved to the left, expecting a moose. But it was the sow with three cubs. The cubs fled up a tree. The sow paused in front of me, as if waiting. I backed into the brush, fortifying myself behind a skinny grove of alder trees, moving slowly, carefully, never taking my eyes off the bear. When it veered as if to leave I felt such relief that my throat loosened and small gasps escaped my lips. Then it abruptly turned and charged directly at me. It’s impossible to run the trails around Alaska without thinking about bears. There are piles of scat everywhere, dotted with blueberry and cranberry seeds that glint in the sun, reminders that you have to be careful. You have to be versed in bear awareness, bear etiquette and bear protocol. Headphones are a and going alone is discouraged. Making noise and carrying bear spray is recommended. Still, I often ran alone. I preferred it that way. I liked the serenity and the loneliness, liked the hours of nothing but me and the mountains and the trees. That day, I wore a bear bell attached to my hydration pack, and I sang, too, whenever I came to dense areas. I sang old rock ’n’ roll songs, loudly and badly. I was cautious but not afraid. I ran these trails all summer and the summer before, and while I saw bears on many other trails, I only twice saw them on these sections. Maybe I let down my guard. Maybe I felt invincible, the way you feel when you repeat risky behavior without negative results. Maybe the bear was having a bad day. When the bear charged, time stood still. I felt every millisecond. I stood in the drizzle, rain coating my face like tears, and I did what they tell you to do if a black bear charges: I waved my arms and yelled. “I’m human!” I cried, my voice rising through the birch trees, through that silent and moment. “I’m a person!” The bear paused and ran back toward the brush. A minute later, it charged a second time. And again I waved my arms and yelled and again it stopped, this time so close I could almost reach out and touch its snout. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t swallow. I wondered, briefly and almost idly, if this was how I would die. Suddenly, I wanted to talk to my son, who was grown and off living his own life. I wanted to hear his voice. A lifetime later, the bear turned and ran off, its backside swaying into the trees. I had to get back to the trail, to the possibility of safety, yet I couldn’t step away from the alders. It was my only protection. That’s when the bear began circling around me in a wide arc. That’s when I knew I was in trouble, became really afraid. When my son was young and nothing would comfort him, I would talk. It didn’t matter what I said, he needed my voice, the steady flow of words. As I stepped from the shelter of the alders, I talked out loud, my voice surprisingly calm. I talked to the bear to show that I meant no harm, but mostly I talked to reassure myself. As the bear circled for a second time, I stumbled through devil’s club, snagging my shorts and scratching my legs, and I talked about the day my son was born, how I recognized his face immediately. When I reached the trail, I kept talking. The bear followed, but I didn’t look back. A half a mile later, I glanced over my shoulder, and the bear was gone. I started running and didn’t stop until I encountered two hikers, and I collapsed at their feet. For weeks I saw that bear’s face in my dreams, and I woke up, heart pounding. I swore I would never run trails again, but I missed it too much, and soon I was out with the trees and that big, big sky. Some things are worth the risk, though I made sure to carry a canister of bear spray, just in case. And sometimes even now when I’m running, I think of that bear charging and how I stood there, so still and yet so alive. It opened something inside of me that can never be closed. It offered a taste of the unknown: At any time I might find myself crouched in the brush, face to face with my own fragile existence. So much of life is chance. There are no guarantees. But there are vast landscapes and dangers and wild moments of good luck. | 1 |
Ve la película de su vida y descubre que ha llevado siempre un trozo de lechuga entre los dientes NOTICIA PATROCINADA POR SAMSUNG Verano Azul
Jordi Carrasco, un informático de Tarragona de 33 años, sufrió ayer una experiencia cercana a la muerte al atragantarse con un “dorito” y, en unos pocos segundos, pudo ver el transcurso de su vida pasar por delante de él “como en una película en definición 4K y formato panorámico”.
Pese a lo impresionante de la calidad de imagen, Carrasco lamenta que el guión de su vida no estuviera a la altura. “Además, con tanta definición en la imagen he comprobado que llevo treinta años con un trozo de lechuga entre los dientes y nadie jamás me ha avisado”, lamenta.
“Los mejores momentos de mi vida, mi primer ordenador, mi primera novia online… todos los momentos memorables en la existencia de un informático se vieron empañados por un simple trozo de lechuga. Qué pena de vida y qué pena dedicar la última tecnología a esto”, se queja.
Tras una profunda remodelación de sus instalaciones, la antesala de la muerte ha adquirido varios televisores Samsung con tecnología Quantum dot que permiten a los usuarios como Jordi vivir una experiencia más realista. Esto, por supuesto, pide que las vidas de las personas estén a la altura de los avances tecnológicos.
La misma tecnología, además, ha permitido destapar grandes mentiras del pasado: la popular doña Rogelia, personaje de “Mari Carmen y sus muñecos”, era en realidad el actor Quique San Francisco. Por si esto fuera poco, los detalles en alta definición de la serie “Verano Azul” muestran que Chanquete fingió su muerte para huir de la atención mediática y pasó a formar parte de un programa de protección de testigos. | 0 |
Thursday night’s Congressional Baseball Game took on added meaning and importance after the shooting at the Republican practice on Wednesday, which left Louisiana Representative Steve Scalise seriously wounded. [The Democrats would go on to win the game, convincingly, by a final . Though, the postgame scene became one of unity and camaraderie as the Democrats presented the trophy to Scalise, who is still in critical condition after the attack. Representative Joe Barton of Texas accepted the trophy on Scalise’s behalf. According to ESPN: A huge ovation came from the crowd, which swelled to a record 24, 959, when Special Agent David Bailey, one of the Capitol Police officers injured in the attack on Republicans at their ball practice in Virginia, threw out the first pitch. “ONE FAMILY,” proclaimed a sign in the crowd. The announcer’s mention of Scalise, the House majority whip who was critically wounded in the attack Wednesday, brought the masses to their feet. The highlight of the evening featured President Donald Trump delivering a video message to the assembled crowd. The said, “By playing tonight we are showing the world that we will not be intimidated by threats, acts of violence or assaults on our democracy. The game will go on. ” ESPN reported, “When the president intoned three words he said have brought Americans together for generations — ”Let’s play ball” — cheers rang out. ” While the game provides some relief and bipartisanship in a town dominated by faction and division, the other more important aspect of the game has to do with how it benefits various charities. This year, the charities are the “Boys Girls Club of Greater Washington, Washington Literacy Center, the Washington Nationals Dream Foundation and, after Wednesday’s shooting, the Capitol Police Memorial Fund. ” After Thursday’s result, the record in the game is 39 wins each, for both Democrats and Republicans, with one tie. Follow Dylan Gwinn on Twitter: @themightygwinn | 1 |
52 Views October 31, 2016 GOLD , KWN King World News
With most markets on lockdown on Halloween trading day, here is a big picture view of where the world is headed.
Stephen Leeb: “This past week a New York Times headline that caught my eye was: “At Heart of U.S. Strategy; Weapons That Can Think.” The gist was that over the next few years the U.S. will be spending billions of dollars to make “smart” weapons, while also boosting our cyber budget by billions of dollars. It struck me as another example of how anytime we in the U.S. pound our chest about our mighty military, we always point to how much money have spent and plan to spend… IMPORTANT: To hear which legend just spoke with KWN about $8,000 gold and the coming mania in the gold, silver, and mining shares markets CLICK HERE OR ON THE IMAGE BELOW.
In a recent issue of Foreign Affairs, Michael O’Harlan and David Petraeus, men with exceptional military pedigrees, declare: “U.S. forces have few, if any, weaknesses and in many areas…they play in a totally different league from the militaries of other countries…Nor is this likely to change anytime soon, as U.S. defense spending is almost three times as large as that of the United States’ closest competitor, China.”
Reassuring words? Maybe for a moment. But as soon as you think about it, they become anything but reassuring, showing that even when it comes to our most vital security issues, we make the fundamentally flawed assumption that money equates to wealth.
I’ve long been convinced that if the U.S. continues on what appears an ever more inevitable slide, historians will point to the day Nixon dropped the gold standard as launching that skid. Gold is wealth; paper is merely money. Money can facilitate the exchange of wealth, but by itself it is just paper or entries on a computer ledger and a very poor substitute for wealth. Commodities are wealth, and many vital commodities, as we pointed in a recent interview, can’t even be purchased any more – period. Information is also wealth. And no amount of money can guarantee an edge in information.
A few weeks ago, a 15- or 16-year-old who had recently become interested in chess wrote a letter to a chess blog asking how much he’d need to spend to become a Grand Master – how much for training, how much for practice time, coaches, etc. The only possible answer: not all the money in the world could turn a novice who’s already a teenager into a world-class player. Grand masters have a wealth of knowledge and savvy that can’t be acquired once you’re much past 7 or 8 years old. You’ve missed the boat.
Similarly, no amount of money enabled U.S. experts to crack the cell phone of the San Bernardino terrorists. But cyber experts from Israel, which spends a lot less on cyber issues, cracked it with relative ease. Israel, along with China and Russia, are among a number of countries, mostly located in Asia, that develop the skills of their gifted children at early ages. This has left the U.S. a poor second in critical areas ranging from cyber security to super computers, which will be the most essential tools in the next generation of a gold-centered monetary system.
Even nonbelievers should be starting to perceive the inevitability of gold replacing paper. A few metrics tell the story. First is the relationship between the dollar and economic growth. Despite the recent report of better-than-expected third-quarter GDP, the economy’s growth has been declining as the dollar has risen. In the wake of the Great Recession the dollar traded in a fairly tight range, while GDP growth in fits and starts peaked at 5 percent in the third quarter of 2014. The higher dollar has held GDP growth to less than 2 percent for the past two years.
But commodities have begun to rise. Most major commodity indexes have climbed 10 percent or more this year. Even the temporary setback in obtaining an OPEC agreement won’t hold back real goods. Recently, for the first time since China announced its Silk Road initiative in 2013, a major article on the undertaking appeared in a major magazine, Foreign Affairs. Gal Luft , a senior advisor to the United States Energy Security Council, urged Washington to get aboard or lose out on the chance to benefit from the greatest infrastructure project in the history of civilization, many times the size of the Marshall Plan and already the destination of $1 trillion in Chinese exports this year, with dramatic growth likely for the foreseeable future.
But instead we’re likely to continue to use our dollars in ways that bear ever less connection to real wealth. Bear in mind that any effort to hold inflation down will crumble in the face of Western economies even weaker than ours. The result is that real interest rates will remain negative, an unalloyed positive for gold. At the same time the currency used along the Silk Road will be some combination of gold, the SDR, and the yuan. As we have said before, China’s edge in critical information technologies ensures its domination in virtual currencies such as the bitcoin, which will have multiple advantages in tomorrow’s gold-based world.
How High Will Gold & Silver Trade? How high will gold go? Much depends on how much trade the Silk Road generates. Which means that if think gold could go to five digits, you don’t need a shrink – you’re sane as can be. And let’s not overlook gold’s poor cousin, which in the end could make you even richer, silver. The energies of our future will be anchored to solar, nuclear, and wind. The solar anchor will mean that already peaking silver will become some of the scarcest wealth around. If you’re dreaming of $100 silver, your dreams will be coming true before long.
To me it’s an ironic footnote to the Nixon years. Yes, history will record that America’s decline began when the much-maligned Nixon delinked the dollar from gold and let us conflate money and wealth. Meanwhile, though, you can make a fortune on the coming bull market in gold that will be the direct result of that decision.”
The Coming Super Depression, Cyberwars, $10,000 Gold & $1,000 Silver CLICK | 0 |
Rock and folk legend Bob Dylan has been accused of lifting sections of his 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature acceptance speech from a SparkNotes. com summary of Moby Dick. [Andrea Pitzer, a contributor for Slate, wrote that Dylan’s speech last week included plagiarized lines from an abridged summary of Moby Dick, the Herman Melville novel that the “Blowin’ in the Wind” singer has cited as a personally inspiring text. One of the phrases used in the lecture, Pitzer writes, matches wording found on SparkNotes — a study guide website that provides summaries of literature and other texts — but is not, however, in the classic novel. From the lecture: “Some men who receive injuries are led to God, others are led to bitterness” From SparkNotes: “someone whose trials have led him toward God rather than bitterness. ” Pitzer highlights at least 20 examples from Dylan’s lecture of sentences and phrases that are similar to those found in the SparkNotes summary of the novel. The Nobel Foundation awarded Dylan the prestigious prize in October, which sparked considerable controversy over the very definition of literature, and and the enigmatic music legend didn’t acknowledge the honor for weeks. The musician declined to attend December’s Nobel ceremony in Stockholm, citing scheduling issues. The Swedish Academy, which delivers the Nobel Prize, published Dylan’s speech on June 5, in the form of a recording, and called it “extraordinary” and “eloquent” in a press release. The organization has not responded to the accusations. While Dylan has not responded to the accusations, however, he has been accused of borrowing phrases from other artists in the past. “It is nothing new that Mr. Dylan might take inspiration from a work to prepare something else,” Steven Weinberg, a copyright lawyer and musician, told the Associated Press. “Songwriters, including Dylan, have been borrowing from other literary works to turn pop phrases for ages. Consider Led Zeppelin’s ample use of Tolkien’s classic works in many of their songs. ” The “surprise here is that rather than borrowing from classic literature, Mr. Dylan took his ‘inspiration’ this time from crib notes,” Weinberg said. “But that should not raise eyebrows either. Even John Lennon was known to use things as ordinary as a newspaper clipping or circus posters to embellish lyrics. ” Listen to the lecture in full below: Follow Jerome Hudson on Twitter: @JeromeEHudson | 1 |
ERIN, Wis. — On the heels of a fiery blimp crash and evidence of E. coli at a hydration station, the U. S. Open lost a spectator on Friday to a sudden death. [Washington County Sheriff Dale Schmidt informed the United States Golf Association (USGA) that the decedent was a male who appeared to die of natural causes. The death follows a dramatic fire on a commercial blimp high above the course that resulted in a crash and serious injuries for the pilot and evidence of E. coli bacteria found at a hydration station connected to a well. Here is video of the blimp crash from @msiggyy. We will continue to update here as information is available: https: . #USOpen pic. twitter. — GOLF. com (@golf_com) June 15, 2017, Update: USGA releases statement, says blimp that crashed is unaffiliated with the #USOpen — https: . (: @FOXSports) pic. twitter. — GOLF. com (@golf_com) June 15, 2017, The unfortunate series of events has not dampened enthusiasm around Erin Hills as the U. S. Open heads into the weekend with the national championship on the line. Fans tried to find some solace in the passing of the elderly man. Kate Hoffmann of nearby Hartland, Wisconsin sympathized: “Very sad news about the man passing away, you just hope he was enjoying his final day watching the sport he loved. ” Emergency personnel performed CPR by the grandstand on the Wauwatosa, Wisconsin, man but he could not be revived. He was taken to an ambulance and soon thereafter pronounced dead. Out of respect for the family, the USGA is not providing additional information at the moment. Play continued without interruption as Rickie Fowler stumbled on Day Two in his try to win his first major championship and Brooks Koepka, Brian Harman, and Paul Casey surged into a tie for first. While golf is the focus of the fans, some, such as Marcus Stout of Leesburg, Virginia, worried: “Blimp crash, E. coli, fan dying. What will tomorrow bring”? | 1 |
Subsets and Splits