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Las imágenes libres de derechos más destacadas de la semana EL DISCURSO DE GABRIEL RUFIÁN Y EL DÚO DE CHENOA Y BISBAL EN IMÁGENES GRATUITAS
Uno de los disfraces que más han triunfado en este Halloween: Pablo Escobar.
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Varios diputados de Podemos se han disfrazado de Angela Merkel.
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El dirigente del PSC, Miquel Iceta, preparado para pasar una buena noche de Halloween vestido de Jessica Rabbit.
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Finalmente, Bob Dylan contestó a las llamadas de la Academia de los Premios Nobel, mostrando su alegría por el galardón.
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Pedro Sánchez a punto de coger su coche e ir a todos los rincones de España.
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Felipe González llama al Consejo de Administración de Gas Natural para decirles que “todo sigue según lo previsto”.
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La espontaneidad de la Princesa Leonor, socialista de toda la vida, al ver que Rajoy entraba en la Zarzuela para jurar su cargo.
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Gabriel Rufián (ERC) pronunciando su discurso en el debate de investidura, ante un escandalizado Antonio Hernando (PSOE).
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The Great Wall Street/Washington Con Job: Part 4 Of The Recovery Which Didn't Happen By David Stockman. During the last few days we have been debunking the notion that Imperial Washington's massive monetary and fiscal stimulus caused the so-called "recovery". To the contrary, it has actually poisoned the regenerative powers of American capitalism by causing capital and resources to flow out of the main street economy and into the speculative casinos of Wall Street. | 0 |
Home › US NEWS › FBI LAUNCHES PROBE AFTER OWN TWITTER ACCOUNT LEAKS DOCUMENTS – REPORT FBI LAUNCHES PROBE AFTER OWN TWITTER ACCOUNT LEAKS DOCUMENTS – REPORT 0 SHARES [11/3/16] An internal investigation has reportedly been launched by the FBI into one of its automated Twitter accounts after a series of documents were released.
The Twitter bot ‘FBI Records Vault’ had not been in use for over a year, but suddenly released several documents on October 30.
The FBI is now investigating the account, according to Judd Legum, editor of Think Progress . TP is a project of the Center for American Progress, the Democratic think tank founded by John Podesta, campaign chairman for Hillary Clinton.
The account’s puzzling activation was referred to the FBI’s Inspection Division for an “investigation” by Candice Will, the assistant director for the FBI’s Office of Professional Responsibility. Following the investigation, it will then be referred back to Will’s department for “adjudication,” according to Legum.
A complaint is said to have been filed by Jonathan Hutson, a former employee of the Center for American Progress and a public-relations consultant, leading to the investigation. Post navigation | 0 |
Professor Shares Insights on Paranormal, Cannibalism and Vampires. # Edward777 0
Durham University lecturer Richard Sugg deals with history and analysis of esoteric themes as well as corpse medicine in European history, vampirism in ancient and modern Europe, ghosts and poltergeists. He deals with how society sees these subjects, some explanations, some items that have no scientific explanations, and even the psychological basis for these topics. Some of these you may have heard about, most of his research is probably new to listeners. Tags | 0 |
Next Prev Swipe left/right This true story about training a dog has gone massively viral because “It’s the best god damn story you’ll ever read.”
@Pastelpouts over on Twitter says, “This is the best god damn story I have ever read.”
Mia ‘s tweet has gone viral with over 110k retweets and likes. | 0 |
After Terrorizing America With Zika Scaremongering, MSM Admits Zika Doesn't Cause Brain Deformities The entire leftist media is not merely dishonest and corrupt, their science writers are unbelievably... Print Email http://humansarefree.com/2016/11/after-terrorizing-america-with-zika.html The entire leftist media is not merely dishonest and corrupt, their science writers are unbelievably stupid and ill-informed about nearly everything in the natural world. Today, after months of printing fear-inducing "Zika terrorism" stories that scared America half to death while convincing the government to funnel billions of dollars into Zika vaccine research for Big Pharma, the Washington Post now admits it had no idea what it was talking about . But rather than admitting its own science writers were scientifically illiterate propagandists pushing quack narratives as news, the paper now blames other scientists for the gross error by publishing a headline that's once again dishonest and deceptive: "Scientists are bewildered by Zika's path across Latin America," it proclaims.Bewildered about "Zika's path?" The story headline should actually read, " Zika HOAX revealed... it doesn't cause brain damage after all ." (You can read it here ). Washington Post has been shamelessly pushing the Zika HOAX for months... with no apology to readers In the story, writers Dom Phillips and Nick Miroff essentially reveal that what the Washington Post has been writing about the Zika virus has been based entirely in government propaganda and pandemic lies pushed by the CDC, which of course has close ties to the criminal vaccine industry: Nearly nine months after Zika was declared a global health emergency, the virus has infected at least 650,000 people in Latin America and the Caribbean, including tens of thousands of expectant mothers. But to the great bewilderment of scientists, the epidemic has not produced the wave of fetal deformities so widely feared when the images of misshapen infants first emerged from Brazil. Yes, the Washington Post now says the scientists are "bewildered" that their apocalyptic scare stories that caused female athletes to skip out on the Rio Olympics and scared tens of millions of Americans into poisoning themselves with DEET (a neurotoxic chemical) turned out to be total hogwash. DEET, by the way, combines with carbamate class pesticides to cause neurological dysfunction in humans , which coincidentally increases the number of people who watch CNN or read the Washington Post. For the record, no one who reads Natural News or alternative media websites is surprised by this revelations that has left mainstream scientists "bewildered." It's not bewildering to me. I called Zika a total hoax from day one, pointing out that the brain deformities were caused by larvacide chemicals dumped into the water supply , not by Zika. If anyone from the Washington Post bothered to read Natural News and learn about real science, they would have learned that Zika has infected tens of millions of people throughout South America for decades , with absolutely no measurable increase in neurological deformations. (But facts be damned, the WashPost had a panic to push!) Nation after nation records tens of thousands of infections with ZERO birth defects... Despite the factual reality of the situation, the state-controlled propagandists writing for rags like the Washington Post — a bogus newspaper that has lost all credibility in the minds of intelligent people — continued to pummel home their kooky science theories that claimed much of the U.S. South would be overrun by brain damaging mosquitoes, turning Southerners into shrunken-brained mutants while pregnant women fled northward to survive the airborne insect onslaught. Instead, nothing happened . No explosion in shrunken-headed babies. No wave of birth defects across Florida, even as city officials desperately bombarded their own cities with brain-damaging insecticides. No national emergency declared by Obama to bring back DDT and eradicate baby-murdering mosquitoes by dousing our open streets with thick clouds of organophosphate neurotoxins. Instead, the rate of neurological birth defects in most countries approached zero. Via the Washington Post's own graphic (partial list): Venezuela: 60,791 Zika infections... ZERO birth defects Honduras: 31,933 Zika infections... ONE birth defect Guadalupe: 30,969 Zika infections... ZERO birth defects Puerto Rico: 29,084 Zika infections... TWO birth defects Mexico: 4,837 Zika infections... ZERO birth defects From the WashPost article: Brazilian officials were bracing for a flood of fetal deformities as Zika spread this year to other regions of the country, Marinho said. However, “we are not seeing a big increase.” Gee, really? The vast majority of the brain defects, it turns out, came from just one small region of Brazil. A total of 2,033 children are so far recorded with neurological defects there, even while most other countries throughout the region had ZERO birth defects (or near zero). So what gives? Zika mosquitoes apparently carry geopolitical maps so they can solely target Brazil You don't have to be a genius to figure out that the stupid science theories of the mainstream media are total hokum and bunk . If Zika really did cause brain defects, it would have spread all across South America by now. It would have spread into Florida, California, Mississippi and Louisiana. It would have devastated the American South, Cuba, Haiti, Curacao and all the other island nations across the Caribbean. Yet the neurological defects were limited almost exclusively to Brazil. Somehow, if we believe the illiterate Washington Post science writers — who may in fact be the only brain damage victims of Zika in North America — mosquitoes carry MAPS to make sure they only activate their brain damage voodoo in Brazil . "...[A]lthough the outbreak has spread this year to more than 50 nations and territories across the Western Hemisphere, U.N. data shows just 142 cases of congenital birth defects linked to Zika so far outside Brazil," says WashPost. Yes, my friends: GPA-carrying Zika mosquitoes are very careful to limit their pandemic voodoo to just one region of Brazil. By sheer coincidence, that's the same region where larvacide chemicals were dumped into the public water supply. Apparently, there isn't a single "official" scientist in the entire global government who has thought to test the water. Just freaking WOW... Let's throw these morons out of power in every election, okay? They don't deserve any positions of authority over anyone else. They're all so incredibly stupid, they couldn't survive at all unless they functioned as parasites on the taxpayers. They aren't giving up hope just yet... science writers desperately hope for more brain damaged babies to prove them right Enthusiasm for more brain damaged babies runs high at the Washington Post, which explains why they are all in for Hillary Clinton, the candidate of choice for brain damaged adults. Writing with a sense of real enthusiasm, the Washington Post can't wait for more brain damaged babies to appear: Scientists at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are closely watching Puerto Rico, which has reported more than 26,800 cases of Zika. More than 7,000 pregnant women could be infected by the end of the year, according to the CDC. (Yippee?) And now, the loony tunes quack science of the Zika "scientists" goes apoplectic, grasping for silly metaphors to try to obscure the fact that they are all stupid beyond belief. Via the WashPost: “Now we’ve settled on Zika as the smoking gun, but we don’t know who pulled the trigger,” said Marques, speaking from Recife, where he is working with government researchers. Huh? Wha? The metaphor doesn't even make any sense. Maybe the problem is too much fornicating. Seriously, this is now part of their idiotic theory: “Sexual habits and hygiene may also play a role,” he said, explaining that researchers are looking at whether sexual transmission can infect the uterus and placenta with the virus, potentially exposing the fetus to elevated risk. “We suspect the villain has an accomplice, but we don’t know who it is,” Marques said. Huh? Do they seriously think that people only have sex in Brazil but not other South American countries? Where does the Washington Post find these morons? I'm a real scientist saying all this As you read all this, remember that I have rapidly become one of the world's leading research scientists on the quantitation of cannabinoids in hemp extracts using mass spec instrumentation. I led the team that developed the most pioneering (and accurate) CBD mass spec analysis method in existence today. You can read about it at this link . I also routinely test water, food and environmental samples for heavy metals, pesticides and a multitude of chemical contaminants. When I say these Zika scientists are complete morons, that's the educated opinion of an accomplished scientist correctly pointing out the lunacy of Zika scaremongering. I could have solved this entire problem in the first few days by analyzing and detecting brain-damaging larvacide chemicals in the public water supply in Eastern Brazil. The entire project would have taken just a few days and cost almost nothing. Instead, Obama handed $1.8 billion to the vaccine companies in the midst of the Zika panic pushed by laughable rags like the Washington Post. It's all a racket, of course, just like their coverage of elections and political candidates. Everything you read at the Washington Post is a deception of one kind or another . The paper exists solely to promote the propaganda of the state so that the population can be manipulated and controlled. The Washington Post exists to terrorize the citizens with fascist propaganda parading as science As you've also learned by now, the corrupt leftist establishment of junk science, criminal politicians and idiotic journalists isn't interested in legitimate scientific solutions . They all function as extensions of a fascist state that must routinely terrorize its citizens with pandemic boogeyman scare stories in order to demand absolute obedience to the vaccine mandates that actually do damage the brains of children. Thus, SCIENCE be damned. They've got an agenda to push, and it doesn't matter to them whether that agenda is based on a single shred of real science. Zika is dangerous because they told you so, in exactly the same way they told you Hillary Clinton is totally honest, Obamacare would make health care more affordable, there's no such thing as voter fraud in America, and GMOs and vaccines are really, really good for you. So you can put down the DEET and stop poisoning your skin like an obedient idiot. Yes, it was all a scam. Yes, the official "science" was totally rigged. Yes, the media lied to you yet again. Yes, the CDC is a criminal racket. Yes, all the health "officials" were completely full of s**t. And no, Zika is not going to cause your babies to be born with shrunken heads. VACCINES, on the other hand, will most definitely cause brain damage, as they still contain mercury, a potent neurotoxin the Washington Post ridiculously insists becomes magically neutralized when you inject it into the body of a child. By Mike Adams Dear Friends, HumansAreFree is and will always be free to access and use. If you appreciate my work, please help me continue.
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A powerful array of the Republican Party’s largest financial backers remains deeply resistant to Donald J. Trump’s presidential candidacy, forming a wall of opposition that could make it exceedingly difficult for him to meet his goal of raising $1 billion before the November election. Interviews and emails with more than 50 of the Republican Party’s largest donors, or their representatives, revealed a measure of contempt and distrust toward their own party’s nominee that is unheard of in modern presidential politics. More than a dozen of the party’s most reliable individual contributors and wealthy families indicated that they would not give to or raise money for Mr. Trump. This group has contributed a combined $90 million to conservative candidates and causes in the last three federal elections, mainly to “super PACs” dedicated to electing Republican candidates. Up to this point, Mr. Trump has embraced the hostility of the Republican establishment, goading the party’s angry base with diatribes against wealthy donors who he claimed controlled politicians. And he has succeeded while defying conventions of presidential campaigning, relying on media attention and large rallies to fire up supporters, and funding his operation with a mix of his own money and contributions. But that formula will be tested as he presents himself to a far larger audience of voters. Mr. Trump has turned to the task of winning over elites he once attacked, with some initial success. And he has said he hopes to raise $1 billion, an enormous task given that he named a finance chairman and started scheduling only this month. Among the party’s biggest financiers disavowing Mr. Trump are Paul E. Singer, a New York investor who has spent at least $28 million for national Republicans since the 2012 election, and Joe Ricketts, the TD Ameritrade founder who with his wife Marlene has spent nearly $30 million over the same period of time, as well as the hedge fund managers William Oberndorf and Seth Klarman, and the Florida hospital executive Mike Fernandez. “If it is Trump vs. Clinton,” Mr. Oberndorf said, “I will be voting for Hillary. ” The rejection of Mr. Trump among some of the party’s biggest donors and reflects several strains of hostility to his campaign. Donors cited his fickleness on matters of policy and what they saw as an ad hoc populist platform focused on trade protectionism and immigration. Several mentioned Mr. Trump’s own fortune, suggesting that if he was as wealthy as he claimed, then he should not need their assistance. Among the more than 50 donors contacted, only nine have said unambiguously that they will contribute to Mr. Trump. They include Sheldon G. Adelson, the casino billionaire the energy executive T. Boone Pickens Foster Friess, a wealthy mutual fund investor and Richard H. Roberts, a pharmaceutical executive. Mr. Friess wrote in an email that Mr. Trump deserved credit for inspiring “truckers, farmers, welders, hospitality workers — the people who really make our country function. ” Many more donors declined to reveal their intentions or did not respond to requests for comment, a remarkable silence about the de facto nominee of their party. Asked how Mr. Trump intended to win over major donors, Hope Hicks, a spokeswoman for the Trump campaign, responded in one sentence. “There is tremendous support for Mr. Trump,” she said. Mr. Trump has declared that he expects the Republican Party to unite around him, and in recent weeks has made inroads among party leaders who once vowed to oppose him. He delivered a winning performance before lawmakers on Capitol Hill in a whirlwind visit to Washington this month. And polls show the party’s rank and file are beginning to coalesce behind Mr. Trump, and that they want party leaders to do the same. Some major donors have not explicitly closed the door on helping Mr. Trump, but have set a high bar for him to earn their support, demanding an almost complete makeover of his candidacy and a repudiation of his own inflammatory statements. “Until we have a better reason to embrace and support the top of the ticket, and see an agenda that is truly an opportunity agenda, then we have lots of other options in which to invest and spend our time helping,” said Betsy DeVos, a Michigan Republican whose family has given nearly $9. 5 million over the last three elections to party causes and candidates. But others simply believe Mr. Trump is unfit to serve in the Oval Office. Michael K. Vlock, a Connecticut investor who has given nearly $5 million to Republicans at the federal level since 2014, said he considered Mr. Trump a dangerous person. “He’s an ignorant, amoral, dishonest and manipulative, misogynistic, philandering, isolationist, protectionist blowhard,” Mr. Vlock said. Mr. Vlock said he might give to Hillary Clinton instead, describing her as “the devil we know. ” “I really believe our republic will survive Hillary,” he said. At a dinner of the Manhattan Institute in New York earlier this month, Bruce Kovner, a New investor who has given $3. 1 million to national Republicans in recent years, argued to a collection of influential conservatives that Mr. Trump and Mrs. Clinton were both unacceptable choices. “When I talk to my colleagues and friends in similar positions, they have the same degree of discomfort,” Mr. Kovner said in an interview. Unless Mr. Trump can win over more benefactors, he is likely to become the first Republican presidential nominee in decades to be heavily outspent by his Democratic opponent, and may find it difficult to pay for both the operations and the paid advertising campaigns that are typically required in a general election. Both President Obama and Mitt Romney raised over $1 billion in 2012, and Mrs. Clinton is expected to exceed that figure easily. Charles G. and David H. Koch, the country’s two most prolific conservative donors, are not expected to back Mr. Trump, and their advisers have been scathing in private assessments of Mr. Trump’s candidacy and his policy agenda. The Kochs, who command a vast network of conservative donors, have scheduled a conference of their allies in Colorado in late July, where much of their 2016 spending may be determined. A spokesman for the Kochs, James Davis, said they were chiefly focused on helping Republicans retain control of Congress, and many of their allies, along with other Republican givers, indicated in interviews that they were focused exclusively on the same goal. Even among the handful of big donors Mr. Trump has won over, doubts persist about both his abilities as a candidate and the political apparatus supporting him. Mr. Adelson, the most important donor who has endorsed Mr. Trump, has indicated that he will cut big checks to aid his campaign only if there is a credible advocacy group set up for that purpose. But Mr. Trump still has no sanctioned “super PAC” able to raise unlimited sums to support his campaign. A gathering next month at Mr. Pickens’s Texas ranch that was to be sponsored by one of the groups, Great America PAC, has been called off because Mr. Pickens was not sure he was hosting Mr. Trump’s preferred super PAC. At a Republican Governors Association donor retreat last week in New Mexico, there was a debate on the sidelines about whether to support Mr. Trump. Mr. Friess argued that the Supreme Court vacancy made it imperative to rally around Mr. Trump. But Mr. Friess acknowledged in an email that enthusiasm for Mr. Trump was limited among his fellow major donors. If some agreed there was “no sensible choice other than to rally around Trump,” Mr. Friess said, many contributors viewed that prospect with “the same enthusiasm as a root canal. ” Walter Buckley, the founder of a Pennsylvania financial management company, said he decided to support Mr. Trump after Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey endorsed him. Predicting that Mr. Trump would shake up Washington, Mr. Buckley, said, “This political system needs a shaking like it’s probably not had in 100 years. ” But Mr. Buckley, who said he would be willing to contribute to the Trump campaign or to a super PAC supporting him, said he remained upset about Mr. Trump’s mockery of Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, for having been captured in Vietnam. “I don’t think anything that anybody’s ever said on the political front has bothered me more than that,” Mr. Buckley said. | 1 |
LOS ANGELES — Laurence D. Fink, the leader and founder of BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, had come home. A Bruin to the bone — class of 1974 — he had a story to tell the 5, 000 giddy graduates packed into the cavernous basketball arena at the University of California, Los Angeles. Once upon a time he was a rock star on Wall Street. He had big hair and flashed turquoise jewelry, and making money had never seemed so easy. Until it wasn’t. “I screwed up,” Mr. Fink declared, recalling the $100 million he blew thanks to failed mortgage trades in 1986. “And it was bad. ” For the graduating millennials, the morality tale resonated not least because it came from a U. C. L. A. grad who had ascended, fallen from and again scaled Wall Street’s treacherous peaks. But it was his description of why he stumbled that truly explained his evolution from bond trader to master of a firm that has its eye on a sum about equal to the $16 trillion United States economy. “I had become complacent — too sure of what I thought I knew,” Mr. Fink said. “I believed I had figured out the market. But I was wrong because while I wasn’t watching, the world had changed. ” Over the last decade, no other financial firm has gone further in challenging the classic Wall Street moneymaking model for investment banks and traditional mutual fund companies: Hire — and handsomely pay — hotshots to make big bets with other people’s money. The future of finance, Mr. Fink has argued, lies with investment styles such as funds, which track a variety of stock and bond indexes or adhere to a set of financial rules. The idea is that such an approach eliminates at least some of the potential for human error, while lowering costs. It is this notion of using technology to root out investment risks that lies at the heart of BlackRock’s investing strategy. Putting this into practice is the firm’s platform, Aladdin, which enjoys a ubiquity within the firm — it tracks everything from bond trades to head count — that evokes HAL 9000, the sentient computer in the movie “2001: A Space Odyssey. ” Some employees even use Aladdin as a verb, as in, “Has the new portfolio manager been Aladdinized yet?” On Wall Street, prestige and influence have always been functions of a firm’s ability to capture a large amount of what investors call flow — the trillions of dollars in securities that are bought and sold on a given day worldwide. Before the financial crisis, Goldman Sachs’s reputation was made because the choice transactions ran through its bankers and traders. The same could be said of the hedge fund SAC Capital Advisors under Steven A. Cohen, who rose to fame (and also became the target of regulators) on his ability to trade off this cascade. But in today’s world of violent price swings and markets, those with near infinite buying power — central banks, sovereign wealth funds and the largest money manager in the land — have become the new arbiters of flow. “We have never seen a paradigm shift like this,” said Anthony J. Perrotta Jr. an analyst with the Tabb Group, which analyzes the structure of financial markets. “It is not about the flow of securities anymore, it is about the flow of information and indications of interest. ” BlackRock’s strategy was forged, and ultimately empowered, by two market calamities over the last three decades. The first, of course, was Mr. Fink’s experience at First Boston in 1986, when he bet big on mortgages without assessing how the securities would trade in a period of extreme stress. But BlackRock became the behemoth it is today only after the events of 2008. That is when a toxic variety of the securitized mortgages that Mr. Fink helped design years earlier at First Boston imploded — setting off a chain of bank failures and the deepest global economic downturn since the Great Depression. Chastened investment banks were forced to exit these businesses under pressure from regulators. And in stepped BlackRock. Its assets under management swelled as investors — starved for higher returns — piled into the company’s E. T. F. s, which tracked the highflying markets. “The balance of power is now with firms like BlackRock because they have the ‘bid,’” said Mr. Perrotta of Tabb, using Wall Street argot to describe the buying power of large asset managers. The power shift was on display this spring, when Mr. Fink took the stage at an investor conference alongside John Cryan, recently charged with reviving the sagging fortunes of Deutsche Bank, one of the global investment firms that was minting money before the markets collapsed in 2008. While the event was billed as a cozy exchange of ideas between two Wall Street it played out instead as a series of slightly peevish questions posed by Mr. Cryan to Mr. Fink. “You are effectively becoming the supplier of liquidity of last resort — beyond the central banks,” Mr. Cryan said to Mr. Fink. The assertion bordered on the impudent — suggesting that BlackRock and its $5 trillion stash of assets had become the new guarantor of stability because of its ability to buy and sell stocks and bonds in times of duress. Investment banks, which previously aspired to this duty, have been complaining for years that the financial system has become riskier because BlackRock and similar firms cannot perform such a function. But to say as much to Mr. Fink directly — and in a room full of investors, no less — was highly unusual. Mr. Fink was clearly irritated by the query. “Well that is not our role — we won’t play that role,” he replied stiffly. It was not the most convincing of replies. Over the last 10 years, Mr. Fink has transformed BlackRock from a bond shop catering to pension funds and insurance companies into an machine that uses advanced technology to reimagine how investors buy, sell and assess the risks of a wide variety of securities. Via its $1 in funds, BlackRock has been instrumental in creating newly liquid markets in and corporate bonds — a direct attack on the business model of banks like Deutsche Bank. And through its big risk platform, Aladdin, or Asset Liability and Debt and Derivatives Investment Network, BlackRock says it has developed the market’s most highly evolved framework for how securities will respond to certain situations — such as a sudden rise in interest rates or what happens in the event of a political surprise, like Donald J. Trump being elected president. Staffed by 2, 300 of BlackRock’s 13, 000 employees, Aladdin promises to help firms trade, analyze and keep a compliant eye on the assets they manage. In an era of severe regulatory scrutiny, the service has become quite popular. firms — including Deutsche Bank’s asset management unit and Freddie Mac — managing a total of $10 trillion, now use it. For a man who, in his speeches, consistently spends more time talking about technology and risk analytics than the vagaries of the capital markets, Mr. Fink is no techie. Like many Wall Street titans of his vintage, the Mr. Fink rarely sends emails. An infrequent texter, he does most of his communicating by phone, in meetings or over a plate of spicy pasta at his Italian restaurant in Midtown Manhattan. Mr. Fink maintains a grueling schedule, mixing regular bicoastal trips in the United States with frequent client jaunts to China and the Middle East. “This job requires an enormous commitment,” he said. “The pace is relentless. There will be a day when I wake up one day and say I just can’t do it anymore. ” That day remains well in the future, he says. Still, with BlackRock’s growth in size and sway, the issue of who, if anyone, from within the firm is qualified to succeed Mr. Fink has become an existential question for the company’s board of directors. The problem is typical when replacing a founder: Mr. Fink has increased assets to $5 trillion from zero, and the imprint of his domineering personality has become so profound that virtually anyone will suffer to some degree in comparison, considering his track record. After all, in 1983, he structured one of the first collateral mortgage obligations, and along with Lewis Ranieri at Salomon Brothers made it possible for large investors to enter the market for mortgages. A quarter of a century later, Mr. Fink recognized that the time was right for E. T. F.s and — in the depths of the financial crisis — bought Barclays’s iShares business, a deal analysts consider one of the shrewdest in recent Wall Street memory. And beyond a soaring stock price, there are few better ways for a financial chief to command the respect of his peers than to slip through the grasp of regulators. So when Mr. Fink and his lobbyists in Washington were able to make the case, after the 2008 financial crisis, that major fund companies like BlackRock posed no risks to the markets because of their size, it only added to his aura. There is a moment in Don DeLillo’s “Cosmopolis,” his meditation on the alienating effects of money and machines, when the protagonist financier offers a bit of advice to a colleague. There’s only one thing worth pursuing professionally and intellectually, he says: the interaction between technology and capital — its inseparability. That, more or less, is what Mr. Fink told Dexter Senft, his computer expert at First Boston in 1982. “We are bringing the computer onto the trading floor, Dexter,” Mr. Fink recalls saying at the time. “If we can do this, it will change our business forever. ” Not only would Mr. Fink and his bond wizards be able to sell billions of dollars of new securities, giving birth to today’s market for asset backed mortgages, they could also analyze how these securities would trade in certain situations. The immense losses at First Boston in 1986 taught a lesson that eventually shaped BlackRock. Mr. Fink realized that his clients on the “buy side” (the fund managers, insurance companies and pension funds shopping for investments) had become dependent on the ability of the “sell side” (the Wall Street investment banks) to analyze mortgages. That was because few clients had invested in computers and technology to the level First Boston had. Most money management firms highlight their investment returns first, and risk controls second. BlackRock has taken a reverse approach: It believes that risk analysis, such as gauging how a security will trade if interest rates go up or down, improves investment results. That is where Aladdin comes in. Aladdin is a network of code, trades, chat, algorithms and predictive models that on any given day can highlight vulnerabilities and opportunities connected to the $15 trillion the firm tracks — $10 trillion of which belongs to outside firms that pay BlackRock a fee to have access to the platform. Aladdin fills the monitors of most BlackRock employees. One portfolio manager even went so far as to hang a nearly screen on his office wall in order to get the full Aladdin experience. And at the company’s investor day in June, Mr. Fink and other top executives mentioned Aladdin 82 times — more than any other business line — even though the platform represents just 5 percent of the $11. 3 billion in revenues BlackRock took in last year. Or consider a recent marketing video that shows Mr. Fink and other top executives gazing at the camera and intoning one after the other, “I am Aladdin. ” From Mr. Fink’s early days on Wall Street, his ambition has been stoked by a sense that he has not been receiving the proper credit for his achievements. At First Boston, even though he was among the earliest to popularize trading in mortgage securities, his peers including Mr. Ranieri and others drew more public attention as innovators and moneymakers. As a successful, albeit mostly anonymous, bond manager at BlackRock in the 1990s and 2000s, he saw acclaim, pay and influence go to the chief executives of Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley. That began changing only in 2009, when he bought Barclays’s E. T. F. business. Last year he was among a small circle of Wall Street executives to attend the state dinner at the White House for the Chinese president, Xi Jinping. A part of Mr. Fink — a fervent Democrat today — believes he would make a pretty good Treasury secretary, say people who have discussed politics with him. Although he recently persuaded Cheryl Mills, one of Hillary Clinton’s closest advisers, to join the board of BlackRock, the view is fairly strongly held that if Mrs. Clinton becomes president, there is little chance that she will tap a Wall Street insider for the Treasury job. With BlackRock’s stock having more than doubled since 2011, far outpacing the likes of Goldman and JPMorgan and trading close to its record high, it seems that the market has come around to Mr. Fink’s financial worldview: that a low cost, systematic style of investing will, over time, grow faster than the costlier “active investing” model in which individuals, not algorithms, make stock, bond and asset allocation decisions. And the numbers in that regard are arresting. Through July, E. T. F.s and traditional index funds made up 30 percent of total mutual fund assets, according to the Investment Company Institute, a ratio that has doubled in just under 10 years. Of course, with close to $1. 5 trillion in actively managed funds, Mr. Fink is not ready to write off a segment of the industry that even after years of outflows clocks in at $11 trillion. And he underlines the importance of being able to offer the best of both active and passive investing styles to BlackRock clients. But inside the firm and out, there is little doubt that he is betting the ranch on E. T. F.s and similarly themed investments choices. These include factor strategies, in which a bet is made on a certain investment outcome — like value stocks outpacing growth stocks, or a basket of equities beating the broader indexes. In San Francisco, a team of equity investors deploys data analysis to study the language that a chief executive uses during an earnings call. Does he seem unusually bearish this quarter, compared with last? If so, maybe the stock is a sell. “We have more information than anyone,” Mr. Fink said. Some analysts, in fact, argue that BlackRock should be valued as a technology company, as opposed to an asset manager. Mark Wiedman, 45, a BlackRock executive who is on the short list to succeed Mr. Fink, believes that bond E. T. F. s, in particular, are creating a liquid market where a new generation of bond investors can freely buy and sell. For years, he and Mr. Fink have been pitching insurance companies and pension funds to stop buying individual bonds (from the likes of Deutsche Bank) and instead choose a BlackRock bond E. T. F. Now it’s happening. “I think of E. T. F.s as technology,” Mr. Wiedman said, as he leaned back in a swivel chair in his office. “It is a product that bundles up a bunch of securities, puts them on a screen and makes them easier to trade. ” Like many top executives here, Mr. Wiedman can get a bit manic when discussing the subject: Midway through an interview, he felt the need to somewhat violently undo his tie and cast it aside. Regulators are less enthusiastic. Global watchdogs like the Bank for International Settlements and the International Monetary Fund have described these bountiful flows into and out of BlackRock bond E. T. F.s as a liquidity illusion. Which means, according to Ken Monaghan, an investor in corporate bonds, that E. T. F.s have lured “tourist” investors — people seduced by the rich yields, but who may not be able to stomach a sustained market reversal. And if they all leave at once, watch out. “E. T. F.s do not create liquidity,” said Mr. Monaghan, of the global fund manager Amundi Smith Breeden. “These new investors are not permanent. ” Aside from Mr. Wiedman of BlackRock, the short list to succeed Mr. Fink includes Robert S. Kapito, 59, a founding partner and current president of the firm who is seen as the top choice if a handover occurs sooner rather than later. Other candidates are Rob Goldstein, the chief operating officer and driving force behind Aladdin’s growth Mark McCombe, 50, a former HSBC executive who looks after the firm’s big clients Rich Kushel, 50, who oversees investment strategies for clients and Gary Shedlin, 52, the chief financial officer. There is also Mark Wiseman, a new hire who joined the firm this month to oversee its equity business. It is a long list, and purposely so. For Mr. Fink, recommending a successor to his board is probably the weightiest decision he will make as BlackRock chief. He has taken pains to not tip his hand. “I want to make sure that the day after I leave, the firm is better off without me,” he said. This spring, Mr. Fink called together more than 100 of the firm’s most senior executives for two days of meetings in Barcelona, Spain. BlackRock was approaching its 30th anniversary and Mr. Fink was in a nostalgic mood. Yet there was an edge to his remarks. Yes, BlackRock was thriving because of its focus on funds and the wonders of Aladdin. But now was not the time to coast. “We cannot let someone brand us as a vampire squid,” warned Mr. Fink, referring to a defining article in Rolling Stone magazine that so described Goldman Sachs. Nor was this a time to sit fat and happy on a big pile of assets and let the fees roll in, an indirect slap at actively managed giants such as Franklin Templeton and Pimco, where assets under management have recently been declining. Never before, he said, had the fund management industry been so competitive and changing. “If you think you know everything about our business, you are kidding yourself,” he said. “The biggest question we have to answer is: ‘Are we developing the right leaders? ’” And then, looking out over the striving BlackRock executives gathered before him, he put it to them directly. “Are you,” he asked, “prepared to be one of those leaders?” | 1 |
Actress Rosie O’Donnell took to social media and praised contractor Reality Leigh Winner, who was recently arrested and charged for allegedly leaking a National Security Agency report on Russian election hacking to news site The Intercept. [In one Twitter message, the former View applauded the alleged leaker. “Brave young patriot,” O’Donnell wrote Wednesday in a Twitter message that linked to a GoFundMe page dedicated to raising money for Winner’s “loss of wages, counseling”: brave young patriot — https: . — ROSIE (@Rosie) June 7, 2017, On Thursday, O’Donnell tweeted, “I support Reality Winner speak truth to power #resist #womenUNITE”: https: . support reality winner speak truth to power #resist #womenUNITE https: . — ROSIE (@Rosie) June 8, 2017, A vocal critic of President Donald Trump, O’Donnell also reportedly confirmed that she donated $1, 000 to Winner’s GoFundMe campaign. As of Saturday, more than $32, 000 from over 770 people had been raised. The comedian also defended Winner, insisting that she was “brave” and not “careless” for allegedly leaking government documents: brave not careless @flightbomb @clb0137 @JeanetteSharon1, — ROSIE (@Rosie) June 9, 2017, Winner was denied bail at a hearing in federal court Thursday and will remain behind bars as she awaits trial. Last week, filmmaker and activist Michael Moore launched a website called TrumpiLeaks to encourage government employees and contractors to engage in the kinds of leaks in which Winner allegedly participated. “Today, I’m launching TrumpiLeaks, a site that will enable courageous whistleblowers to privately communicate with me and my team,” the Oscar winner wrote. Moore cited the historical significance of the 1778 whistleblower protection law, saying, “Patriotic Americans in government, law enforcement or the private sector with knowledge of crimes, breaches of public trust and misconduct committed by Donald J. Trump and his associates are needed to blow the whistle in the name of protecting the United States of America from tyranny. ” Follow Jerome Hudson on Twitter @jeromeehudson. | 1 |
Hillary BUSTED Holding Closed Door Meeting with Florida Elections Director in Possible Voter Fraud Scheme Hillary BUSTED Holding Closed Door Meeting with Florida Elections Director in Possible Voter Fraud Scheme Breaking News By TruthFeedNews October 27, 2016
More proof of a RIGGED SYSTEM and likely voter fraud taking place right before our eyes in the critical state of Florida. There have been several reports that Broward County Election Director Brenda Snipes has met with Hillary Clinton behind closed doors and several sources of claim to be coming forward with pictures soon.
The Conservative Treehouse reports this may be part of a bigger voter fraud scheme.
Anyone with any political knowledge is aware the best chances for Hillary Clinton in Florida come from two specific counties, Broward and Dade. It is not coincidental that both counties continue to be the historic nucleus of multiple voting irregularities.
This year is no different. In a recent series of events Broward County is at the epicenter of another voting malfunction. However, this one might not be a mistake, it might be by design. The essential outline of the current year concern surrounds a scheme to present double voting to benefit Hillary Clinton:
Broward County officials intentionally screw up sending out mail-in ballots to a key demographic constituency. The correction therein then allows the same official to send a second set of ballots to the same constituency thus providing two possibly counted ballots for each voter.
Sounds incredible. Maybe. But as incredulous as it sounds that’s exactly what’s taking place.
The issue stems around the second page of the ballot for a ballot initiative, a specifically democrat ballot initiative, an amendment to Florida’s constitution, Amendment #2, whereby legalized marijuana is up for a vote.
The Amendment #2 ballot initiative is the long-standing objective of John Morgan an Orlando lawyer who is the name and face behind the Morgan and Morgan law firm.
John Morgan, lives in Orlando and is a big donor and benefactor of the Democrat party. You might remember it was John Morgan who hired former governor Charlie Crist ( Republican, then Independent, then Democrat ) after his failed Senate bid. John Morgan is also attached to the Multi-billion Pigford settlements via a partner in his law firm Greg Francis.
John Morgan is also a key donor , financial bundler, and contributor to President Obama and Hillary Clinton. Morgan has hosted numerous high-dollar ( $30k+ per plate ) events for Obama and this year f or Hillary Clinton .
Legalized marijuana sales in Florida, under the auspices and ruse of “medical marijuana”, has been a goal of Morgan for several years. Politically, Morgan also wants to be FL Attorney General and/or U.S Attorney General.
By structuring a flawed ballot distribution in Broward County both Hillary Clinton and John Morgan can achieve both their objectives. A rather brilliant Win/Win.
The scheme works by “accidentally” failing to print one of the pages in a strategic regional area guaranteed to be dominated by Clinton/Morgan supporters. It takes only a modicum of ‘ plausible deniability ‘ to provide the arms-length distance from a scheme.
Sending out “some” or “a few” ballots with a blank page, a “flaw” per se’, then resending an entire second set of ballots (173,000) to the full area, provides multiple opportunities.
See if you can spot how it plays out. Beginning with the small flaw:
( Miami Herald October 20th ) The Broward County elections office, already under scrutiny for two blunders in the past few weeks, played defense once more Friday as its supervisor came under fire after mail-in ballots turned up that skipped a constitutional amendment question on medical marijuana.
One of the organizations supporting the amendment, NORML of Florida, has asked for an emergency hearing after filing a lawsuit on what it called an error that could be “catastrophic and cataclysmic.” A Broward judge has scheduled a hearing for 10 a.m. Tuesday.
“In reviewing and reviewing and going back looking through our ballots we found Amendment 2 on all 92 of those styles so it’s still not totally clear why this voter did not have Amendment 2,” Snipes said. She added that she believes that the faulty ballots were test samples for Oakland Park. After a city candidate dropped out, she said, her office recoded the Oakland Park ballot, leading to a creation of a new test ballot. Her office did not notice the missing marijuana question on the test ballots, which are not supposed to be sent to voters but somehow were.
At a maximum, Snipes said, only seven of those test ballots were printed. She allowed reporters, as well as a representative from United for Care, the political committee backing the amendment, to review the 92 ballot styles Friday.
But amendment backers were skeptical of Snipes’ explanation after it became clear that she didn’t know precisely what went wrong or exactly how many ballots lack the closely watched amendment. Broward is the most left-leaning county in the state, and amendment backers are counting on its voters for a large share of support.
“What continues to concern me is it does not seem that the supervisor knows for certain the extent of the problem,” said Ben Pollara, campaign manager for United for Care. “They have a strongly held belief it is this very isolated incident [Snipes] described this afternoon but they don’t know for sure. Until they do I remain incredibly concerned.” ( read more including video and press conference)
OK, so that’s the ground work for the “small flaw” in Broward County ballots . Note in the video Ms. Brenda Snipes positioning 173,000 ballots as the full distribution to be concerned with.
Now lets look at what they finally claimed was the origin of the problem , and the solution they came up with :
( Via Sun Sentinel october 24th ) Broward elections workers checking mail-in ballots from Oakland Park found none without the statewide medical marijuana question that had been missing from at least two ballots.
But an early voter at the Fort Lauderdale Regional Library/Art Serv said her ballot was missing Amendment 2.
The Broward Supervisor of Elections Office said there was no evidence of a incorrect ballot. The pages were stuck together because of humidity in the machine, said spokeswoman Tonya Edwards.
“There was an issue with the humidity so it printed twice on one side instead of on the other,” Edwards said. “On one page it was blank and on the other page was the actual amendments.”
Debbi Ballard, 57, of Fort Lauderdale, said she filled out her ballot and realized the amendment wasn’t there. “I checked once, twice, three times,” she said.
“This is an irregularity and needs to be addressed,” Ballard said. She said she pointed out the error to voting staff and received a new ballot.
Ballard said she was not satisfied with the “pages stuck together” theory and has lost confidence in Broward’s Supervisor of Elections Office. “That doesn’t explain it,” she said. “Because the layouts were completely different.”
Broward Supervisor of Elections Brenda Snipes said there wasn’t an amendment issue. “It’s a moisture issue,” she said. “So I can understand why the voter, you know, became concerned or upset, because there’s been so much about it out there in the air. It’s a moisture issue, it’s a moisture issue.”
Last week, two voters in Oakland Park reported that the amendment had been left off their mail-in ballots.
[…] Snipes said that voters who are missing the amendment, all of whom should be in Oakland Park, will get new ballots . Edwards said later that Snipes was aware of the early voter’s issue. ( read more )
Remember the concept behind the “ bathtub principle “, and how small chaos is used to cloud, mask, hide and deceive much bigger solutions (intentions)?
And where was Hillary Clinton yesterday? Breaking: Hillary in private meeting with Brenda Snipes, Election Director of Broward County Florida. Collusion, fraud or both? #MAGA
— Marshall Buffins (@PoliticalTropes) October 26, 2016
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The Federal Aviation Administration is investigating actor Harrison Ford after he flew his private plane over a jet airliner awaiting takeoff at a Southern California airport on Monday. [Air traffic controllers had instructed Ford to land on a runway at Orange County’s John Wayne Airport, but the Star Wars star landed on a parallel taxiway, narrowly missing a parked Boeing 737 carrying 110 passengers and six crew members. “Was that airliner meant to be underneath me?” Ford asked air traffic controllers, NBC News reported. FAA spokesman Ian Gregor said Ford had received and read back air traffic control’s instruction on where to land his Aviat Husky. “Air traffic controllers cleared the pilot of a Aviat Husky to land on Runway 20L at John Wayne Airport Monday afternoon. The pilot correctly read back the clearance,” Gregor said in a press statement. “The pilot then landed on a taxiway that runs parallel to the runway, overflying a Boeing 737 that was holding short of the runway. The FAA is investigating this incident. ” The FAA investigation could result in a warning or the suspension of Ford’s pilot’s license. Of course, the Indiana Jones star has been the subject of several crashes and through the years. In 2015, Ford a vintage World War airplane he was piloting after the engine failed. Witnesses said the actor “saved several lives” by rerouting his plane away from a suburban neighborhood and landing it on the Penmar Golf Course in Venice. Ford has been inducted by the Kiddie Hawk Air Academy as a Living Legend of Aviation. Follow Jerome Hudson on Twitter @jeromeehudson | 1 |
Indiana State Police are reporting that a truck flying a “Make America Great Again” flag was fired upon while traveling down just outside Indianapolis. [Bullet holes were seen in a 2001 Dodge truck Tuesday after another motorist took offense at the Donald flag flying from its bed. The truck was also flying an American flag, police say. Officials think that the shots were fired from another vehicle, a newer model, white, Chevy Malibu, sporting a Louisiana license plate, according to Fox News. The driver of the truck told police that the male driver of the Malibu drove up beside him in the eastbound lane, and waved a handgun out the window at him. The driver of the Malibu then reportedly fired several shots. Fortunately, no one was injured. The driver of the Malibu is described as an man about 23 years of age. His passenger was also a younger black man who had a sleeve tattoo on his right arm. Anyone who may have witnessed the exchange or have information about the incident should call the Indiana State Police at . Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail. com. | 1 |
Ben Rhodes, who ran foreign policy errands for President Barack Obama as Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications Speechwriting, created an infamous “echo chamber” of fake news to sell the Iran deal. [Now, Rhodes is part of a new echo, repeating and retweeting smears aimed at one of his successors, Dr. Sebastian Gorka, Deputy Assistant to President Donald Trump and a key media spokesman for the White House. Rhodes first took aim at Gorka in response to a tweet by Tommy Vietor, a former National Security Council spokesman under President Obama who infamously attempted to dismiss the Benghazi scandal by telling Fox News’ Bret Baier: “Dude, this was like two years ago. ” Vietor was, in turn, quoting a Newsweek article criticizing Gorka for criticizing a critic for criticizing his credentials. Rhodes piled on, mocking the “Breitbart credentialed Gorka” for his sensitivity. Rhodes and Vietor ought to be the last to question anyone’s credentials. Rhodes had no national security experience before being plucked from a struggling career as a fiction writer and promoted up the ladder. Vietor was literally the “dude” who drove the press van for Obama on the campaign trail. Both symbolize the callow nature and culture of the Obama West Wing. (Rhodes still claims today that Syria gave up “all” of its chemical weapons in 2013.) Since that first swipe in February, Rhodes has joined the latest round of smears aimed at Gorka, tweeting an article from the Forward that attempted — and failed — to prove that Gorka supported an antisemitic Hungarian militia. This person works in the WH: “Gorka … publicly supported a violent racist and militia” https: . via @jdforward, — Ben Rhodes (@brhodes) April 3, 2017, (Be warned before clicking on the link to the Forward article itself: readers are hit with a popup request for donations to continue funding the smear campaign against Gorka. They are literally fundraising off this character assassination.) The article included an old video interview in Hungarian with Gorka, with English subtitles — but the video was obviously spliced together. The raw video was also provided, but without subtitles. David Reboi of RedState undertook a full translation. As David P. Goldman of PJ Media noted, “the Forward’s clip edits out Gorka’s denunciation of the parties for exploiting popular fears in order to advance their own agenda” (original emphasis). A lie good enough, as the joke goes, for government work — or work, in Rhodes’s case. He tweeted later: “Picture if Gorka was a Muslim who supported an militia and had associations with Nazi groups. Would he be in the White House?” Here Rhodes did more than repeat the false accusations in the Forward: he also took aim at Gorka’s notable criticism of radical Islam, a threat Rhodes and his former boss refused even to pronounce. The culmination of this new “echo chamber” came last weekend, with an NBC News piece that tried, and failed, to prove Gorka’s associations with Hungarian extremists but smeared him anyway, citing a fraudulent organization. And so a smear that started with a discredited report on an blog has been promoted, via the Forward — which has an actual problem with antisemitism, having linked Zionists absurdly and outragously with Nazis — into the front ranks of the mainstream media and finally to the big network news stage, but remains essentially empty. It is the “echo chamber,” reborn — or, rather, undead, a sort of zombie, totally impervious to truth. Note that none of Gorka’s detractors actually question his support for Israel, or even his links with Jews, because they do not care. The echo chamber depends on a factual void, and repetition by false authorities. Just ask the man who invented it. Joel B. Pollak is Senior at Breitbart News. He was named one of the “most influential” people in news media in 2016. His new book, How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak. | 1 |
Dr. Duke and Andrew Anglin discuss the most important vote and election of our lives! November 7, 2016 at 12:32 pm
Dr. Duke and Andrew Anglin discuss the most important vote and election of our lives!
Today Dr. Duke had Daily Stormer publisher Andrew Anglin as his guest for the hour. They talked about the importance of the election tomorrow. They remarked that the Clinton campaign makes baseless accusations that the Russians could hack our voting machines to manipulate the election, but then insisting that Trump is beyond the pale for suggesting that the Hillary forces could possibly rig the vote.
They also talked about New York Times columnist David Brooks admission on the PBS News Hour that as a result of globalization, immigration, and feminism, white men in America have been “displaced,”“shafted,” and “ruined,” and that their support for Trump is due to them “going with their gene pool.” Brooks, a Jewish Republican, says the one person he cannot support for President is Donald Trump.
And now, a message from Andrew Anglin:
Meanwhile, the media is admitting that voting machines will be hacked .
We have to overwhelm the polls tomorrow. You must get everyone you know to vote . Call them right now. Don’t wait. Go through your phonebook on your cellphone and call up every single person you know who is not a totally liberal commie, and make sure they are going to vote. Offer to give them a ride if they need it.
Let’s do this, people.
Immediately following the show Dr. Duke got an mailbox full of emails saying this was the most powerful and inspiring radio broadcast they ever heard! Spread it around.
Our show is aired live at 11 am replayed at ET 4pm Eastern and 4am Eastern.
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2016 presidential campaign by BAR executive editor Glen Ford
An architect of regime-change, coups, no-fly zones, rule of the rich and mass incarceration is about to become Commander-in-Chief, yet the bulk of what passes for the Left is “engaged in a 1930s-style ‘united front’ against a ‘fascism’ that was never a threat in 21 st century America.” Donald Trump, the orange menace, didn’t have a chance of becoming president. Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, is a 21 st century fascist and threat to life on Earth. Fighting Ghost Fascists While Aiding Real Ones by BAR executive editor Glen Ford
“Trump’s anti-“free trade” stance and opposition to regime change and military confrontation with Russia and China drove most of the Republican-allied section of the ruling class straight into Hillary Clinton’s imperial Big Tent.”
Hillary Clinton’s impending -- and totally predictable -- landslide victory on November 8 will prove only that there never was any danger of a “fascist” white nationalist takeover of the U.S. executive branch of government in 2016. That was always a red (or “orange”) herring, a phony “barbarians at the gate” threat that -- as Wikileaks documents confirmed -- John Podesta and Hillary’s other handlers fervently hoped would convey “lesser evil” status to their manifestly unpopular candidate.
There was nothing particularly devious or out of the ordinary in the Hillary camp’s favoring Donald Trump or, alternatively, Ted Cruz. It is standard Democratic Party practice to position themselves just to the left of the Republicans. In a duopoly electoral system, victory lies in where the cake is cut. By hugging close to the GOP’s flanks, national Democratic candidates can lay claim to a “center-left” spectrum of political space that encompasses a clear majority of U.S. public opinion on most issues. By this calculus, Democrats are supposed to win, unless they are tripped up on the closely related issues of race (failure to “stand up” to the Blacks) and foreign policy (failure to “stand up” to whoever is the designated foreign enemy).
Race is the trickiest part of the equation, since white supremacy is embedded in the American political conversation, hiding just beneath the surface of most discourse on social and economic policy.
“His overt racism probably weakened his appeal to whites.”
Trump thought he could win by combining an overt white racist appeal with an anti-corporate message that laid the blame on Wall Street for (white) American job losses and falling living standards. He also calculated -- correctly, it turns out -- that in the wake of the 2008 economic meltdown, many white Americans were more upset about their own economic and social status than they were angry at Russians; that they wanted regime change at home more than abroad.
Both of Trump’s central policies backfired, dooming his campaign. His overt racism probably weakened his appeal to whites, who have given majorities to national Republicans since 1968 but whose self-image is that they are not, as individuals, racist. (Certainly, white women found further reason to reject his candidacy.) Much more spectacularly, Trump’s anti-“free trade” stance and opposition to regime change and military confrontation with Russia and China drove most of the Republican-allied section of the ruling class straight into Hillary Clinton’s imperial Big Tent.
At the national level, the duopoly system, as we had known it, virtually ceased to exist – a fact dramatically driven home by the near-universal corporate media rejection of Donald Trump, the candidacy they had done so much to create. The near-collapse of the duopoly system was the great fracture of the 2016 election, a potential historic opening to a far wider space of progressive political struggle, including on the moribund electoral level. With the ruling class gathered in one Big Tent, and the overt racists occupying the imploded shell of the GOP, the system itself was in disarray. What was once two vibrant parties of the ruling class, with a virtual monopoly on the totality of the electorate, had become one ruling class party plus a hollowed-out husk, at least temporarily occupied by white nationalists under the leadership of a narcissistic and incoherent billionaire, yet without enough funds to mount a competitive general election campaign.
“The near-collapse of the duopoly system was the great fracture of the 2016 election.”
In these pages, we had been saying since last year that Donald Trump could not win; that Bernie Sanders’ fate would be sealed in the southern primaries; and that, although ruling class money would insure Clinton an election by landslide, it could not buy her legitimacy among a significant section of the Democratic “base,” who would now be pushed to the latrine area of her Big Tent. As we wrote on May 18 of this year:
“Outsized fear of Trump is hysteria. These days, the ‘brown shirts’ wear blue. Hillary is the candidate of Wall Street, War and Austerity – not Trump, the racist America Firster. And, he can’t win, anyway – not with tens of millions of ‘moderate’ Republicans and most of the party’s funders rushing into Hillary’s welcoming embrace.”
But sadly, hysteria does reign in most of the “left” precincts of America. Those who did not hesitate to kick Hillary when she appeared to be “down” -- in those heady days when they imagined it was possible she could lose to Sanders -- are terrified to kick her when she is “up” and primed to take the helm of the hyper-power. They are engaged in a 1930s-style “united front” against a “fascism” that was never a threat in 21 st century America, where a different kind of dictatorship of the rich (but also a fascism) has made brown-shirts (and Klansmen) utterly superfluous. These trembling leftists refuse to oppose the modern manifestation of fascism, which is now firmly entrenched in power with Hillary as its champion, in favor of a crusade against an “orange” menace that did not have a ghost of a chance of seizing national power. They have made themselves perfectly irrelevant and useless -- except, of course, to the fascists-in-charge. BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at [email protected] . | 0 |
SHANGHAI — Until he was appointed manager of a Taco Bell in China, Will Cao had never seen a taco before. When confronted with its hard, shell in Los Angeles last June, he wondered: How do you eat it? “Everything was spilling all over the place,” said Mr. Cao, a Shanghai resident. “Then I looked at the other customers to learn that, actually, you are supposed to tilt your neck to eat it. ” Mr. Cao’s employer is betting that other Chinese diners will figure it out. Yum China, the company behind KFC there, last month opened the first Taco Bell in China in years, and says it plans to open an unspecified number more. The company is turning to tacos and overstuffed quesadillas in hopes of regaining ground in a market where its fried chicken has shown the limits of its appeal. It won’t be easy. First, there is the matter of what’s on the menu: Mexican food. Tacos and burritos are virtually unknown in China, where many diners prize aspirational noshes from America, Japan and Europe and look skeptically at what they see as poorer fare from other developing countries. Then there is Taco Bell’s very American take on Mexican meals. Even among fans, many of its more menu items are best considered guilty pleasures. “It’s like a dirty thing that I love Taco Bell so much,” the actress Anna Kendrick once said on Conan O’Brien’s talk show, adding, “it has to be under cover of darkness in my car. ” For its new store in Shanghai, Taco Bell is leaving behind some of those greasy American favorites, such as taco shells made out of Doritos or fried chicken cutlets. Instead, as it once successfully did with KFC, Yum China is tailoring the menu to local tastes. It is offering basic, understandable fare such as a crunchy taco supreme and a chicken quesadilla. Other dishes made for the Chinese market include a shrimp and avocado burrito and a spicy fried chicken dish, a meal that has broader appeal with the Chinese. And in a feature rare in America — perhaps for good reason — the China store offers Japanese beer and alcoholic slushes. Yum China is aware of the magnitude of the challenge. Micky Pant, its chief executive, says eating a taco is “a whole new way of learning. ” The company is learning its own lessons. In the 1990s, Chinese consumers flocked to KFC and other Western chains, drawn by their clean bathrooms and — a novelty in China at that time. But restaurants like McDonald’s and KFC have since struggled against increasing competition from Chinese restaurant chains and a shift toward healthier eating. While China is still a lucrative market for companies including Apple, Nike and Starbucks, other American firms are finding the going tougher than it used to be. The once seemingly insatiable appetite for all things foreign has stalled in a marketplace where domestic brands are catching up and consumers are richer, with more choices than ever. Big American chains are now distancing themselves from their China operations. Yum Brands divested Yum China last year, while McDonald’s is selling a controlling stake in its business to a locally led investor group. That led to Yum China’s gamble on Taco Bell. Instead of Taco Bell’s American approach — quick, cheap, often unabashedly junky — the Shanghai restaurant seems intent on easing Chinese diners into ordering. The menu in China features enlarged images of foods on a lighted board and a transparent kitchen, where skeptical customers can watch their food being assembled. Yum dropped fajitas because focus groups said Chinese people did not like the “peppery type of spiciness that Westerners like,” said Jimmy Chen, senior director of Yum China’s brand development division. Chinese consumers wanted warm cheese on their tacos, not the cold grated variety offered in the United States. They asked for alcohol to be offered. The bean burrito was “controversial,” Mr. Chen said while some Chinese who had studied abroad considered it a must, others found two types of starches layered on top of one another unfamiliar. Ultimately the bean burrito was booted. Said Mr. Chen, “We just need a little more time. ” Yum has tried Taco Bell in China before. In 2003 it opened restaurants called “Taco Bell Grande” in Shanghai, then in the southern city of Shenzhen, offering fare like steaks and fajitas. But it pulled out five years later. “They had little Chinese girls with sombreros on them looking ridiculous,” said Joel Silverstein, president of the consultancy East West Hospitality Group and a former senior executive with PepsiCo restaurants, the onetime parent of Yum Brands. “That was a complete disaster. ” Still, Yum once seemed to have cracked the China code. Since opening its first KFC near Tiananmen Square in 1987, Yum has grown into the biggest Western chain in the country, with more than 7, 300 stores in over 1, 100 cities, three times that of its rival McDonald’s. Part of the secret was localization: KFC offered fried dough sticks and congee for breakfast, while its sister brand Pizza Hut served pizzas topped with seafood and durian, a pungent fruit from Southeast Asia. But in recent years Yum has grappled with a series of scandals in China. In 2012, Chinese news media reported that KFC chicken suppliers used antibiotics and growth hormones in their meat, news that hurt sales and prompted Yum to cut its number of suppliers. The company emphasized that its food was safe. Two years later, a Chinese broadcaster reported that a meat supplier used by Yum was suspected of selling expired meat. Yum terminated the supplier, which was later fined about $3. 5 million by regulators in Shanghai. Sales growth weakened after both episodes, and by 2015 sales at stores that had been open for at least a year continued to decline. Adding to the decline: an increasingly sophisticated customer base that eschews Western fast food for other options. “The biggest challenge is making the connection with the younger generation,” said Ye Liyan, marketing director in China for Pizza Hut. In its own effort to refurbish, Pizza Hut is rolling out “concept stores” across China — in Shanghai, one features a robot waiter and a table with a screen for customers to build their own pizzas. Taco Bell may be an unlikely restaurant to connect. “Chinese people have mostly admired things from Europe and the United States,” said Darcy Zhang, a food blogger based in Shanghai. “But Mexico itself is a developing country, and so many Chinese people would wonder why they would have to try Mexican food. ” Yum China formally opened the Taco Bell on Jan. 9 in Shanghai’s prime Lujiazui area, a popular tourist spot. The former basketball star Shaquille O’Neal, who made the famous “Taco Neck” commercial in 1995, participated in a competition. On a recent Tuesday, the store was packed at lunch, with a wait to get a table. Diners sat on chairs below surfboards suspended from ceilings. Workers in polo shirts served margaritas and draft beer. “If you didn’t tell me, I wouldn’t even know this was Mexican food,” said Zang Jing, 30, a bank clerk, adding that she thought the food was “not bad. ” Liu Xiaoyi, chief editor of a local food guide, said she believed Mexican food could take off in China because people are “willing to try new things. ” “They are willing to listen to people telling them, ‘You have to look at it from a different angle to appreciate it, it’s not the same as a Chinese meal but it’s also delicious,’” she said after photographing her burrito. Her friend, Zhu Li, disagreed. “It really does not look good when you eat it,” said Ms. Zhu, 45, an insurance agent. “It’s all over your hands and dripping on the table. It just makes me uncomfortable. ” | 1 |
November 3, 2016 at 7:14 am
Hostility toward women is one of the strongest predictors of Trump support Vox (ChiGal)
Seems rather obvious – so would “Hostility toward men is one of the strongest predictors of Hillary support”. Neither sentence makes a conclusion about what percentage of bigots in either group.
One other thing I find odd is the chart for Romney vs. Trump. Unless I’ve missed something about Obama being a woman cross-dressing, then Romney wasn’t running against a woman, so anyone having said bias as their primary motivator for decision making would have had to look further down their decision logic tree to secondary motivators to decide which ballot lever to pull. There is very little interest in rigor in political science or social science. | 0 |
The topic of Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs), alongside the extraterrestrial hypothesis being one of multiple explanations for their appearance (which seems to be quite a common phenomenon), is an area of interest for many people that’s continually growing, and for good reasons.
Via CollectiveEvolution
“Intelligent beings from other star systems have been and are visiting our planet Earth. They are variously referred to as Visitors, Others, Star People, Et’s, etc…They are visiting Earth now; this is not a matter of conjecture or wistful thinking. – Theodor C. Loder III, Phd, Professor Emeritus of Earth Sciences, University of New Hampshire
Scroll Down For Videos Below This is in large part due to the fact that we now have hundreds of credible witnesses that have officially testified to the reality of an extraterrestrial presence, and its relation to the already disclosed UFO ‘problem.’
This is why members of government, like John Podesta, Chief of Staff for Bill Clinton, Counsellor to Barack Obama and head of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign before she dropped out, stated that “the time to pull the curtain back on this subject is long overdue. We have statements from the most credible sources, those in a position to know, about a fascinating phenomenon, the nature of which is yet to be determined.” (taken from Leslie Kean’s 2010 New York Times bestseller, UFOs: Generals, Pilots, And Government Officials Go On The Record, in which Podesta wrote the forward)
Although keep in mind, governments have been deceiving us on several different topics throughout history, it’s safe to assume that they would use “UFO disclosure” for their own personal interests in the same way they’ve used ‘false flag’ terrorism. Something to think about, but definitely a topic for another article.
As the F-4 approached a range of 25 nautical miles it lost all instrumentation and communications. When the F-4 turned away from the object and apparently was no longer a threat to it, the aircraft regained all instrumentation and communications. Another brightly lighted object came out of the original object. The second object headed straight toward the F4. ” – One example out of hundreds involving the military intercept of a UFO that was tracked on air radar, ground radar, and visually confirmed by pilots (source)
Why It’s Time To Listen To Contactees, Abductees & Experiencers/ A Psychological Standpoint Just to clarify, ‘contactees’ are usually those who have reported ‘friendly’ contact experiences with extraterrestrials, ‘abductees’ are those who have had what they perceive to be fearful experiences, and experiencers are those who neither view the experience as ‘good’ or ‘bad,” but simply just an experience. It’s important to note this, because various people have reported different types of experiences with different types of beings.
“Yes there have been crashed craft, and bodies recovered … We are not alone in the universe, they have been coming here for a long time.” – Dr. Edgar Mitchell, ScD, 6th man to walk on the Moon(source) (source)
The reality is that some people who claim to have had contact with intelligent extraterrestrial beings actually have.
John Mack, A Harvard professor, psychiatrist and Pulitzer Price recipient stresses that:
“Yes, it’s both. It’s both literally, physically happening to a degree; and it’s also some kind of psychological, spiritual experience occurring and originating perhaps in another dimension. And so the phenomenon stretches us, or it asks us to stretch to open to realities that are not simply the literal physical world, but to extend to the possibility that there are other unseen realities from which our consciousness, our, if you will, learning processes over the past several hundred years have closed us off.” (source)
We published an article earlier this year regarding John Mack, and more than 60 school children witnessing non-human beings and a large craft landing. The children were interviewed by him, and it was quite a remarkable story with all of the children providing very similiar stories. Until this day these children have been speaking of it, an event occurred more than 20 years ago….
“They describe these events like a person talks about something that has happened to them. I can tell that these are people of sound mind telling me something…” (quote continued and taken from the video linked below) -Dr. John Mack, professor of psychiatry, Harvard Medical School
You can watch THIS video of Mack Interview the children, and you can read THIS article that goes more into detail on that case.
According to retired McGill University professor in the Department of Psychology (research areas beings cognition and cognitive Neuroscience), Dr. Don Donderi:
“Some of what people report as UFOs are extraterrestrial (ET) vehicles. Some of those extraterrestrial vehicles actually have ET crews, and some of those ET crews catch and release humans.” (source)
Academicians like these, and others like Richard Dolan, David M. Jacobs and more have been studying this phenomena for decades, and the reports of beings and examining why they are here, what they are doing, what they look like and more has been documented by their (and others) research.
What I find most fascinating about these stories is how many of them seem to compliment each other instead of contradicting each other, which just adds to the mystery.
As far as physical research goes:
“There are a great many photographs of such body marks, many of which are in an equilateral triangle pattern of red dots on the wrist or near the ankle. Also common are scoop marks,” in which it appears as if a small amount of tissue was removed from beneath the skin, leaving an indentation.” -Richard Dolan (taken from his book, UFOs for the 21st century mind)
Below is a clip of Dr. Roger Leir. a doctor of podiatric medicine, and arguably the best known individual with regards to extracting alleged alien implants. He has performed more than fifteen surgeries that removed sixteen separate distinct objects. These objects have been investigated by several prestigious laboratories, including Los Alamos National Laboratories, New Mexico Tech, and many others. Unfortunately, he passed away in March 2014, but his legacy lives on.
Truth is, as former NASA astronaut and Princeton Physics Professor puts it, “there is abundant evidence that we are being contacted, that civilizations have been visiting us for a vary long time.”
**The information below is a very brief summary of a few of the most commonly reported extraterrestrials based on all of the research I’ve done on this subject.
Human Looking Extraterrestrials
Extraterrestrials with features drastically similar to human beings have reported by contactees, abductees and experiencers for a long time. This type of experience is actually quite common. Many people have reported that they’ve been taken into ships, and warned about the direction the human race is heading. They’re also often portrayed as assisting our planet in various ways, both on a physical level and an energetic one.
“Decades ago, visitors from other plants warned us about where we were headed and offered to help. But instead, we, or at least some of us, interpreted their visits as a threat, and decided to shoot first and ask questions after.” – Paul Hellyer, Former Canadian Defense Minister (source)
There have also been reports of human looking extraterrestrials working with humans inside of what’s known as the military industrial complex with regards to making technological advancements. This is why in the highly classified world, the black budget world, it’s probably the independent government contractors that are working in these areas.
Stories of human like extraterrestrials date from the beginning of time all the way up to the present day, and historical literature is littered with accounts of these types of encounters.
My people tell of Star People who came to us many generations ago. The Star people brought spiritual teachings and stories and maps of the cosmos and they offered these freely. They were kind, loving, and set a great example. When they left us, my people say there was a loneliness like no other.” – Richard Wagamese, Ojibway Author (source)
As far as the picture above, I am not sure if it’s real or fake, but that’s not the point. It was used to spark your imagination, it is supposedly one of the extraterrestrials that was discovered dead inside of a ship that was located on the moon – retrieved from one of the Apollo missions.
The picture to your left was released by a professor by the name of Bruno Sammaciccia. A Catholic historian with degrees in psychology and psychiatry, he was the author of more than 100 books and a well-known, distinguished figure in Italian academic circles.
He is thought to have taken this photograph of an alleged 10 foot tall extraterrestrial being in Italy in 1976.
If you read the lore, there are many stories of a mysterious group of extraterrestrials who look like humans and who established underground bases in Italy, meeting with local residents between 1956 and 1978.
Not long before his death, Sammaciccia claimed he had had direct physical contact with extraterrestrials over several decades. Dr. Roberto Pinotti, a leading Italian UFOlogist, has since confirmed his decades-long knowledge of the Sammaciccia cases. When it comes to human extraterrestrial contact in modern history, this case ranks among the most compelling, given the pictures and the number of witnesses involved.
Here is a brief summary of the Sammaciccia contact story as given by UFO researcher Dr. Michael Salla (founder of exopolitics.org):
In 1956 when Bruno Sammaciccia and two friends met with two mysterious individuals who said they were extraterrestrials. One was over 8 foot tall while the other was just over 3 foot. Sammaciccia and his friends, initially skeptical, were eventually taken into a large underground base where they saw more of the alleged extraterrestrials. They also saw their children being educated, some of the advanced technologies they used, and their space ships. Finally convinced that they were really having physical contact with extraterrestrials, Sammaciccia and his friends began to help the extraterrestrials. They began with material support by arranging for truckloads of fruit, food and other material to be transported and unloaded at an extraterrestrial base. Eventually, two truckloads of supplies were being delivered every month to bases in different regions of Italy where Sammaciccia and his assistants lived.
Sammaciccia finally described a violent conflict between two factions of extraterrestrials trying to influence humanity’s development and future. While his ‘Friendship’ faction promoted cosmic unity and ethical development, the other faction promoted technological development at all cost. This led to periodic violent clashes between the factions. Eventually, the underground bases of Sammaciccia’s extraterrestrial friends was destroyed in 1978. Survivors had to leave the Earth but promised to return at a future time when humanity was ready for a more ethical future of humanity interacting with extraterrestrials.
Sammaciccia’s astounding story sounds like an episode from Star Trek, but it is well supported by documentary evidence, some of Italy’s finest UFO researchers, and first hand witnesses of the events described. Some of the witnesses were leading statesmen, scholars and high society figures from Italy and Europe.
Below is a lecture given by one of the world’s foremost researchers of this topic, Timothy Good. He goes into detail about this supposed encounter, as well as many others.
To the left you will see a picture that was given to the world by Phil Schneider.
Phil was a very controversial figure, as was his death. He was born in 1947 and was the son of Oscar and Sally Schneider. Oscar was a Captain in the United States Navy who apparently worked in nuclear medicine and helped design the first nuclear submarines. He was also supposedly part of the famous ‘Philadelphia Experiment,’ as well as Operation Crossroads, a program to test nuclear weapons.
Oscar Schneider is the gentleman to the right of the man with the red circle around his head. Phil (man in the video below, apparently Oscars son, and Oscar appear to resemble each other quite strongly. The man with the circle around his head is the supposed extraterrestrial. The others are apparently some of the world’s top physicists from the time.
Philip claimed to be an ex-government structural engineer who was involved in building underground military bases (DUMB) around the country. We’ve actually published a couple of detailed articles about DUMBs, whose existence is not mere speculation.
Other common looks are tall, muscular with long hair, blue eyes and blond hair. The same type of figure has also been reported with black and white beings. Some reports have detailed beings with blue skin, larger eyes, as well as shorter beings, with a little more ’round’ of a head. There seems to be a large variation and a possibility of several different looking human-like extraterrestrial beings. This raises some very interesting questions regarding the origin of our species, if the humanoid form is common throughout the universe, what does that mean?
Contanctee’s commonly refer to these beings being from various star systems like Arcturus, Sirius, Andromeda and the Pleiades, just to name a few. Cat/bird like humanoid (like above) beings are also fairly common among supposed encounters.
It’s also noteworthy to mention that all types of beings seem to communicate using telepathy. The following is a selected list of downloadable peer-reviewed journal articles on psi (psychic) phenomena, most published in the 21 st century, you can click HERE Related CE Article: U.S. Defence Physicist Spills The Beans On What’s Really Happening On The Moon
The Grey Alien The grey alien is another very common type of extraterrestrial that’s been reported by several abductees, contactees and experiencers. Reports range from small, three to four feet tall beings all the way up to seven to nine foot tall beings and everything in between.
One of the most common types of experiences among several abductees is one in which they have their sperm or eggs extracted. Many have gone through what seems to be a pretty scary experience, despite the fact that multiple times people have reported the beings communicating to them and trying to calm them down, and tell the person that they weren’t going to cause any harm to them. At other times, forceful abduction goes without any communication. Many abductee’s report being impregnated, and then abducted years after to see their hybrid child. This seems to be a very common experience, and suggests that this race (Greys) are creating a human/grey hybrid race, or have been tinkering with the DNA of human beings for quite some time. Many researchers have suggested that these hybrids are already here, and that many babies being born today could have been ‘tinkered’ with. There have also been sightings of Grey like beings taking vegetation from our planet (perhaps’s to study, alien scientists?).
There have also been reports of woman being impregnated by a supposed extraterrestrial or extraterrestrial/human hybrid. Shortly after the experience the women are taken by ‘government’ agencies and the baby is removed and taken away to be studied by them. It’s not uncommon for these people who have had these experiences to get visits by these unknown people who seem to want to know more about the UFO/extraterrestrial phenomenon.
There are some reports of races like these working with certain governments (or ‘shadow governments’) in a technological exchange program. I have come across stories in my research where some groups of beings warn the human race not work with other groups of beings. These stories are endless, and quite fascinating, but I’ll save that for another article.
Reptilians
The ‘Reptilian’ type being is one that’s been reported and depicted in various human cultures that date back thousands of years all the way up to the present day. These beings have been reported as ‘friendly,’not so friendly and in between. That’s a common theme throughout most supposed extraterrestrial species. The fact that two different beings of the same race can be reported as benevolent and the other as malevolent.
Many people seem to believe that reptilian type beings are one (out of many) working behind the scenes with those who control the government to ‘en-slave’ the human race. Some even believe that that the global elite are in large part reptilian in origin.
To be honest, it’s not that far fetched. After researching this topic in depth for almost a decade, there is no doubt in my mind that not only have governments and ‘shadow governments’ become aware of the extraterrestrial presence, but they’ve interacted with several different groups of extraterrestrials.
It’s Ok To Ask These Questions Just to re-emphasize that things like this need to be discussed more, because they are and have been discussed at the highest levels of government, in secret, for almost one hundred years. For example, this particular FBI document was addressed to “certain scientists of distinction,” to “aeronautical and military authorities,” and to “a number of public officials.”
The document is a letter that was sent to the director of FBI in Washington from the San Fransisco office, on a matter pertaining to UFOs & extraterrestrials:
“Lt. Colonel (name redacted) of G2 [G2 means army intelligence], San Francisco advised today he has no further information, and that our Seattle office is in possession of all information known by him and is handling the matter at Tacoma, Washington.”
The document goes on to provide a copy of a letter written by someone with “several university degrees” and a former “university department head.”
The memorandum also states that “the mere fact that the data herein were obtained by so-called ‘supernormal’ means is probably sufficient to insure its disregard by nearly all persons addressed.”
Key words above – the fact that they would like to “insure its disregard” by “nearly” everyone addressed.Does this mean that ‘some’ of the people addressed should not disregard it?
The letter goes on to outline and state that: (pages 21 & 22)
Part of the disks carry crews, others are under remote control. Their mission is peaceful, the visitors contemplate settling on this planet. These visitors are human-like but much larger in size. They are not excarnate Earth people, but come from their own world The disks posses some type of radiant energy. They do not come from any “planet” as we use the word, but from an etheric planet which interpenetrates with our own and is not perceptible to us. The bodies of the visitors, and the craft also, automatically materialize on entering the vibratory rate of our dense matter. They re-enter the etheric at will, and so simply disappear from our vision, without trace. The region they come from is NOT the astral plane, but corresponds to the Lakas or Talas. Students of esoteric matters will understand these terms Please keep in mind that there are probably many different types of extraterrestrials out there, and many different kinds that have interacted with humanity in some way. The above document is probably referring to one specific race? I don’t know.
This is one out of thousands of examples of documents, and it’s not even one that I would pick as most startling. We should definitely be thinking about why these documents were concealed from the public for decades, and think about what other information still lay dormant inside of the military industrial complex when it comes to extraterrestrial beings. You can see examples of documents that go into detail on what happens when the military tracks a UFO on radar HERE.
For our latest articles on the UFO/Extraterrestrial topic, you can check out the exopolitics section of our website by clicking HERE.
There is a serious possibility that we are being visited and have been visited for many years by people from outer space, from other civilizations . . . [and] it behooves us, in case some of these people in the future or now should turn hostile, to find out who they are, where they come from, and what they want. This should be the subject of rigorous scientific investigation and not the subject of ‘rubishing’ by tabloid newspapers.
– Lord Admiral Hill-Norton, Former Chief of Defence Staff, 5 Star Admiral of the Royal Navy, Chairman of the NATO Military Committee (source)
You may be thinking that this is absolutely ridiculous. I know many people read the titles of articles like this one and turn their heads and scoff, immediately shutting down the possibility that these could be actual photos of extraterrestrial beings. Why do we hold onto our views so staunchly, at the expense of logic and reason? What prevents us from considering new ideas and new ways of viewing the world? So much new information is emerging every day which challenges the current accepted framework of knowledge, and it can be difficult for our opinions to evolve as quickly as the science. Nonetheless, this is an extremely important topic, especially with the recent disclosures of Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs) by various governments and defence intelligence agencies, and we must work past our reluctance to accept new ideas. These objects are constantly photographed and tracked on radar, as well as visually confirmed by the pilots who are sent out to see them, and we would be foolish to discount this kind of evidence.
A photo taken by two Royal Canadian Air Force pilots on August 27th, 1957, in McCleod, Alberta, Canada is another example of such evidence. The pilots were flying in a formation of four F86 Sabre jet aircraft. One of the pilots described the phenomenon as a “bright light which was sharply defined as disk-shaped” and which looked like “a shiny silver dollar sitting horizontal.” Another pilot managed to photograph the object, as you can see above.
There are a number of studies published in reputable peer-reviewed journals analyzing these cases. This specific sighting lasted for a couple of minutes, and the case was analyzed by Dr. Bruce Maccabee, who estimated (from available data) the luminosity of the object (the power output within the spectral range of the film) to be many megawatts. The Sturrock Panel also found that a strong magnetic field surrounding the phenomenon or object was a common occurrence:
If it does indeed turn out that there is relevant physical evidence, if this evidence is carefully collected and analyzed, and if this analysis leads to the identification of several facts concerning the UFO phenomenon, then will be the time for scientists to step back and ask, what are these facts trying to tell us? If those facts are strong enough to lead to a firm conclusion, then will be the time to confront the more bizarre questions. If, for instance, it turns out that all physical evidence is consistent with a mundane interpretation of the causes of UFO reports, there will be little reason to continue to speculate about the role of extraterrestrial beings. If, on the other hand, the analysis of physical evidence turns up very strong evidence that objects related with UFO reports were manufactured outside the solar system, then one must obviously consider very seriously that the phenomenon involves not only extraterrestrial vehicles but probably also extraterrestrial beings. -Peter Sturrock, An emeritus professor of applied physics at Stanford University
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Other than President Elect Donald Trump himself, NOBODY deserves to gloat about Donald Trump’s epic victory more than the impeccable Ann Coulter.
Watch the video as Ann describes what she got right and the media, establishment, pollsters and pundits got WRONG.
Watch the video:
Support the Trump Presidency and help us fight Liberal Media Bias. Please LIKE and SHARE this story on Facebook or Twitter. Comment on this Article Via Your Facebook Account Comment on this Article Via Your Disqus Account Follow Us on Facebook! | 0 |
PARIS (AP) — WikiLeaks will work with technology companies to help defend them against the Central Intelligence Agency’s hacking tools, founder Julian Assange said Thursday, an approach which sets up a potential conflict between Silicon Valley firms eager to protect their products and an agency stung by the radical transparency group’s disclosures. [In an online press conference, Assange acknowledged that some companies had asked for more details about the CIA cyberespionage toolkit whose existence he purportedly revealed in a massive leak published Tuesday. “We have decided to work with them, to give them some exclusive access to some of the technical details we have, so that fixes can be pushed out,” Assange said. Once tech firms had patched their products, he said, he would release the full data of the hacking tools to the public. The CIA has so far declined to comment directly on the authenticity of the leak, but in a statement issued Wednesday it suggested that the release had been damaging by equipping adversaries “with tools and information to do us harm. ” Assange began his online press conference with a dig at the agency for losing control of its cyberespionage arsenal, saying that all the data had been kept in one place. “This is a historic act of devastating incompetence,” he said, adding that, “WikiLeaks discovered the material as a result of it being passed around. ” Assange said the technology was nearly impossible to keep under wraps — or under control. “There’s absolutely nothing to stop a random CIA officer” or even a contractor from using the technology, Assange said. “The technology is designed to be unaccountable, untraceable it’s designed to remove traces of its activity. ” | 1 |
RT October 26, 2016
Top NATO & EU officials expressed anger at Spain’s permit reportedly issued to a Russian aircraft carrier group to take on fuel and supplies at Ceuta, a city with unclear political status. Spain says Russia’s warships have been mooring there “for years.”
A barrage of harsh statements followed when Spanish media reported that Russia’s naval battle group led by aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov would make a stopover at the autonomous port of Ceuta after passing the Straits of Gibraltar on Wednesday.
Battle Stations! Putin’s fearsome fleet locked, loaded & ready for war with Britain… or not
Russian ships would moor in Ceuta to take on fuel and supplies under a permit issued by Spain’s Foreign Ministry, Spanish newspaper ABC reported on Tuesday, also citing Defense Minister Pedro Morenes, who said that “there was a prior authorization for this particular case.”
Guy Verhofstadt, former Belgian prime minister and currently EU envoy for Brexit talks with the UK, expressed his outrage, calling Spain’s decision “the harassment of EU and NATO forces.”
In a Facebook post, he said that NATO member Spain “provides assistance to a fleet which has one purpose,” adding that “only last week this Spanish Government signed up to a statement from the European Council accusing Russia of war crimes against civilians in Aleppo.”
Later in the day, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg made it clear that the bloc wants Madrid to rethink the stopover permit. A d v e r t i s e m e n t
“We are concerned and I have expressed that very clearly about potential use of this battle group to increase Russia’s ability and to be a platform for airstrikes against Syria,” he said.
“This is something I have conveyed very clearly before and I repeat those concerns today and I believe that all NATO allies are aware that this battle group can be used to conduct airstrikes against Aleppo and Syria.”
He then downplayed the rhetoric, noting that “it’s for each nation to decide whether these ships can get supplies and be fuelled in different harbors along the route towards the eastern Mediterranean.”
Late Tuesday night, the Spanish Foreign Ministry said it was “reviewing” the decision. “The latest stopover requests are being reviewed at the moment based on the information we are receiving from our allies and from Russian authorities,” the ministry said in a statement, quoted by Reuters.
Earlier in the day, however, the ministry told RIA Novosti that Madrid allows Russian ships to dock in Spanish ports as “routine navigation” which effectively lies outside EU sanctions imposed on Moscow.
In the meantime, a spokesman for the Foreign Ministry told the Telegraph the requests from the Russian Navy “are considered on case-by-case basis,” stressing that “Russian navy vessels have been making calls in Spanish ports for years.”
Ceuta, an autonomous Spanish enclave on the tip of Africa’s northern coast, lies along the Straits of Gibraltar and borders Morocco, which also claims the territory as its own.
Although Ceuta is part of the EU, its status within NATO is still unresolved. Since 2011, Spain has rankled the bloc by allowing 57 Russian warships to refuel at the enclave.
The mission of the Admiral Kuznetsov carrier group has already triggered a media frenzy across Europe, with British, Norwegian, and Dutch navies sending frigates and surveillance vessels to shadow the Russian warships as they round European shores through international waters.
Once they reach Syrian shores, the ships will provide backup for Russia’s naval standing group already deployed to the area, according to the Russian Defense Ministry. This article was posted: Wednesday, October 26, 2016 at 6:21 am Share this article | 0 |
Thousands of demonstrators gathered at San Francisco International Airport (SFO) and Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) on Saturday to protest President Donald Trump’s executive order temporarily banning entry to nationals from countries. [Though the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) helped obtain a judicial stay of the deportation of several arriving passengers, hundreds of protesters vowed to stay at SFO until those who had been detained were released. SFO protesters are hearing that two more detainees remain in the airport. This crowd is committed to staying until every last one is out. pic. twitter. — Meagan Day (@meaganmday) January 29, 2017, 10, 000+ At JFK Protesting #MuslimBan … NYC Taxi Union On the Way — More Protests at EWR, Dulles, SFO, SEA, BOS, DEN, PHL, LAX pic. twitter. — Impeach Donald Trump (@Impeach_D_Trump) January 28, 2017, ”Let them in.” Protesters are blocking the entrance to the International Arrivals terminal at #SFO. #MuslimBanprotest pic. twitter. — AJ+ (@ajplus) January 29, 2017, #BREAKING — Police are blocking @CityAttorneyLA Mike Feuer from entering customs section at #LAX to speak with #MuslimBan detainees @KNX1070 pic. twitter. — Cooper Rummell (@KNXCooper) January 29, 2017, The San Francisco Chronicle reported: “Among the protesters were local politicians, including Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom and state Sen. Scott Wiener of San Francisco, who held a sign reading, ‘We are a sanctuary state! Let them in! ’” At LAX, seven people were still detained by immigration officials as of Saturday night, according to the Los Angeles Times, though at least one woman with a valid green card had been released. Protests were held in other cities, including Chicago and New York. Peoples mic + Elizabeth Warren = Occupy never ended pic. twitter. — Dave Weigel (@daveweigel) January 29, 2017, Protester and cops in #JFKTerminal4 #MuslimBanprotest pic. twitter. — Charlotte Alter (@CharlotteAlter) January 29, 2017, The executive order, issued Friday and effective at midnight that evening, temporarily bars most visitors and immigrants from seven countries previously identified by the Obama administration as problematic — Iran, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Sudan, Somalia, and Yemen — for 90 days. It also suspends refugee arrivals for 120 days, ends the resettlement of Syrian refugees, and sets a limit for refugees in the 2017 fiscal year at 50, 000 people. It represents a fulfillment of a key Trump campaign promise. Those initially detained at the nation’s airports included several with the legal right to reside in the U. S. apparently including some children who were U. S. citizens traveling with parents — prompting criticism of the order’s implementation. At least some of those were apparently later allowed to continue into the U. S. In 2011, the Obama administration suspended the resettlement of Iraqi refugees in the U. S. after two Al Qaeda terrorists were discovered living in Kentucky as refugees. Joel B. Pollak is Senior at Breitbart News. He was named one of the “most influential” people in news media in 2016. His new book, How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak. | 1 |
WASHINGTON D. C. — Rep. Barbara Lee ( ) introduced legislation on Friday that would prevent funding for U. S. boots on the ground in Syria as the fight against the Islamic State in the city of Raqqa is intensifying, including the recent deployment of U. S. Marines and Army Rangers. [“The bill I am introducing today prohibits the Department of Defense from funding any attempt by the administration to expand our presence in Syria by putting U. S. combat boots on the ground,” Rep. Barbara Lee ( .) explained in a statement to The Hill. “It is our constitutional duty as members of Congress to place a check on the executive branch in matters of war and peace,” Lee said. Lee was the only lawmaker who voted against the authorization for the use of military force (AUMF) in the days following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks that killed 3, 000 people. The AUMF has given ongoing authority to the U. S. military to continue to fight radical Islamic terror around the globe in all of its incarnations, including the Islamic State in Syria. Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, a retired United States Marine Corps General who served as the 11th Commander of the United States Central Command and has experience in the Middle East, Northeast Africa, and Central Asia, said during his confirmation hearing that the campaign to retake Raqqa should be accelerated. On Thursday, Gen. Joseph Votel, commander of U. S. Central Command, confirmed the deployment in a hearing with the Senate Armed Services Committee, The Hill reported. “Our intention here with this — and this fell within the authorities that are provided to me right now — was to ensure that we had redundant capable fighters support on the ground to support our partners and ensure that we could take advantage of opportunities and ensure the continuing progress that we’ve been seeing,” Votel said. U. S. forces in Syria total 400 in addition to the 500 U. S. military personnel deployed during the Obama administration. Lee’s bill would bar the Pentagon from funding ground combat operations in Syria or hire a private security firm to do the same. The bill includes exceptions to “protect, rescue or remove” U. S. personnel, The Hill reported. Lee also attempted to impose these restrictions in the form of an amendment to the defense spending bill passed by the House on Wednesday, but the House Rules Committee blocked the amendment, The Hill reported. | 1 |
Imagine losing one of your senses: sight, touch, taste, etc… It’d be quite difficult, yes? Now, imagine losing the ability to use your senses, despite still retaining them. It might be agreed that... | 0 |
Nathan Lane knows how to make an entrance, and this is not just a cliché but an understatement. Bursting forth variously over the years in pinstriped suit, in Roman tunic, or in Barbara Bush jumbo faux pearls and softly curled wig, he has earned perhaps the best perk of Broadway stardom: a welcoming round of applause from Jane and John Q. Public. So what was he doing on a recent Monday night, arriving on stage as a disembodied voice coming out of an telephone? (One you actually talk on.) Mr. Lane plays the cynical, cantankerous editor Walter Burns in a new revival of Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur’s voluble 1928 newspaper comedy, “The Front Page,” at the Broadhurst Theater on West 44th Street. That he doesn’t appear in the flesh until the bottom of the second act, in a production that the Johns Slattery and Goodman and runs almost three hours, frankly delights him. “I’m jumping on a speeding train — they all have a head start,” Mr. Lane said not long before curtain on a recent Monday, sitting in a back room of Joe Allen, the Midtown restaurant beloved by the theater crowd. He seemed to be hiding behind the stiff mustache he grew for the part. “I mean, it’s a great character. And he sort of takes over the play till the end, the big Shakespearean finale, when things resolve and everything pays off in a wonderful way. ” At 60, Mr. Lane is enjoying a sense of resolution and payoff. He has been married for almost a year to Devlin Elliott, a playwright and producer he dated for almost two decades. “Married life is great,” he said, after ordering some mineral water and vegetable soup. “Nothing major, nothing dramatic. It’s a very subtle change. ” The ceremony took place at City Hall, with the comedian Mike Birbiglia and his wife, Jen Stein, another producer, as witnesses. “I had thought, ‘O. K. we’ll do this, and we’ll go have lunch,’” Mr. Lane said. “And then I started to say those words that you’ve heard in a thousand movies, and Devlin was fine, and I could barely get the words out. I got very, very emotional. It really got me. ” Like many actors — heck, like many people — Mr. Lane had a difficult childhood, with his father, a truck driver, drinking and dying young and his mother suffering a mental breakdown. He was born Joseph Lane and chose his name from the “Guys and Dolls” character Nathan Detroit, whom he ended up playing on Broadway in the musical’s acclaimed 1992 revival. Growing up in Jersey City, N. J. he had two nurturing older bothers and found solace in farce (the first Broadway show he saw was Peter Shaffer’s “Black Comedy,” with Michael Crawford and Geraldine Page) and the past. “You know, when I was young, I was fascinated by the Algonquin Round Table, by all those witty alcoholics,” he said, with a rueful laugh. “With all their personal problems, and yet they’re all writers, they’re all incredibly complicated. ” Unable to afford college despite a scholarship, Mr. Lane moved to New York in the fall of 1977, when the city was just turning itself around from the Ford to City: Drop Dead years. He did summer stock and commercials, “thousands of them. ” He delivered singing telegrams, including one to an Italian wedding. “You know you’ve hit a new low when accordion players are heckling you,” Mr. Lane said. But the guests asked him to stay, and laughed uproariously at his jokes. “They threw money,” he said, with faint wonderment still. “Dollar bills. ” Following in the tradition of Laurel and Hardy, Abbott and Costello and the Clark and McCullough, Mr. Lane formed a duo with a friend named Patrick Stack. Stack and Lane went to Los Angeles, played the Comedy Store, opened for rock bands. “As an actor, you’re dependent on people casting you, and in this case we had a product,” Mr. Lane said, slurping some soup. The act broke up after he got a job on the sitcom “One of the Boys,” with Mickey Rooney, a yet undiscovered Dana Carvey, and Meg Ryan in a recurring part. After the show flopped, Mr. Lane got his big Broadway break, with George C. Scott in a revival of Noël Coward’s “Present Laughter. ” He played “an aspiring young provincial playwright fond of leaping onto couches and giggling loonily,” as Frank Rich put it in The New York Times, adding that he “alternately hits and overshoots his broad mark. ” Critics! Mr. Lane spoke with nostalgia of an era when “there was sort of a friendlier vibe” between these creatures and playwrights, exemplified by the venerable Elliott Norton of Boston encouraging Neil Simon to add the Pigeon Sisters to the last act of “The Odd Couple. ” And of the old days when a company could tinker with a show out of town, as Mr. Lane himself did with Mr. Simon and “Laughter on the 23rd Floor,” before John and Jane Q. could record damning snippets and post them on the internet. Mr. Lane, who also reprised the role of Oscar Madison with his in “The Producers,” Matthew Broderick, has written the introduction to a forthcoming new edition of Mr. Simon’s memoirs. “His editor said, ‘You know, if you ever want to write your’ — ha, ha — ‘memoir,’” he said. “Well, no. I’m not doing that. ” His work as an author has been limited to his collaborations with his husband, Mr. Elliott, on a children’s book series, “Naughty Mabel,” about the insouciant French bulldog with whom they share an apartment in TriBeCa and a house in East Hampton, N. Y. Perhaps disappointingly for those who relish Mr. Lane’s dexterity with a there is no script of his own languishing in a drawer. “I mean, I like making contributions, I’m a great man,” he said, twirling an imaginary cigar. “But it’s hard. They don’t like you to change job titles. ” (As evinced, perhaps, by the cool reception he received for his version of Stephen Sondheim and Burt Shevelove’s adaptation of Aristophanes’s “The Frogs. ”) “I would lean more toward directing. Everyone keeps saying I have to direct something because I’ve got a lot of opinions. ” Reached on the phone later, Jack O’Brien, the actual director of “The Front Page,” said he and Mr. Lane had been working to spit ‘n’ polish parts of the dense script. “It’s a matter of keeping 25 plates in the air,” Mr. O’Brien said, noting that Mr. Lane, long renowned for making them laugh, has been of late going for roles like Theodore (Hickey) Hickman in Eugene O’Neill’s “The Iceman Cometh” and, soon, another aficionado of the phone: Roy Cohn in a London production of Tony Kushner’s “Angels in America. ” “He’s not just being an entertainer,” Mr. O’Brien said. “These are Alps. These are mountains that actors with real ambition and real talent must scale. And he’s taking himself seriously and doing it. ” Although “The Front Page” is funny, preview audiences have been gasping at some of its speeches and, once Mr. Lane walks on stage, his tough love of Mr. Slattery, who plays the reporter protégé, Hildy Johnson. After various makeovers over the years — Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell in “His Girl Friday” Burt Reynolds and Kathleen Turner in “Switching Channels” — Hecht and MacArthur’s work, about the framing of a white convict who killed a black policeman, has been fully restored to its naughty, glory. “There’s never been a more politically incorrect play,” Mr. O’Brien said. “It’s misogynistic. It’s everything. And appallingly isn’t very different from our own time. ” It was “the play that uncorseted the American theater with its earthy, vitality” according to Tennessee Williams. “Because it was considered so profane and vulgar on a certain level,” Mr. Lane said at Joe Allen. “They don’t write ‘em like this anymore. People will go, ‘Oh, Jesus, no one would produce this.’ Even though it’s one set, so many things happen, people crashing through windows. ” The man who agreed to bring it back was Scott Rudin, whom Mr. Lane called “a throwback to those guys,” like the original producer of “The Front Page,” the Machiavellian but brilliant Jed Harris. He was shivering a little in his woolen cardigan. “Is it suddenly cold in here?” he asked. “It really does feel like the early bird special. ” Mr. Lane called to a waitress. “Is it possible to turn down the air?” On the restaurant’s brick wall of failure, the framed posters of infamous Broadway flops include one of Mr. Lane’s early musical vehicles, “The Wind in the Willows,” in which he played Toad of Toad Hall. The tagline: “Hear It With Your Heart. ” “I used to say, ‘Hear it with your heart, because you won’t believe your ears,” Mr. Lane said. Though now invited to lecture students, he is not mentoring anyone in particular. “I don’t do that anymore,” he said. “I’m married now. Ha, ha, ha,” he added, all but twirling his mustache. “I’d like to mentor Ryan Gosling, if he has the time. ” Did he ever have a moment when he thought he’d quit the profession? “Saturday!” he said. “Who doesn’t have dark moments?” It was time to exit, and as he walked onto the sidewalk toward the theater, he seemed to shrink ever so slightly. “Oh, God, it’s Monday. ” Mr. Lane said, standing in front of the stage door, just another salaryman. “Mondays can be shaky. ” | 1 |
While speaking with the Washington Post’s “Cape Up” podcast, Representative Maxine Waters ( ) stated, “I believe that this president has colluded with the Russians,” and vowed to “keep working until he’s impeached. ” Later in the interview, she admitted that she hasn’t seen any evidence to back up the collusion charge. Waters said, [relevant remarks begin around 4:00] “I believe that this president has colluded with the Russians, with the Kremlin, with the oligarchs — perhaps — of Russia to undermine our election system, and thus undermine our democracy. I do realize that you can’t just speculate about this. You’ve got to connect the dots. You’ve got to get the facts. ” She added that she would “keep working until he’s impeached. ” Later on, [relevant exchange begins around 19:15] Waters repeated her charge, saying, “I think that he absolutely colluded. ” Host Jonathan Capehart then asked Waters if she had seen anything to back any of the accusations she’s made up. Waters pointed to intelligence agencies’ documentation that Russia was behind the hacks of the DNC. Capehart followed up by asking Waters if she had seen evidence to back up the collusion charges. Waters answered, “No, we have not. And that’s why investigations are so important, to drill down and to connect those dots and to get the facts. What we have is a lot of smoke, that causes us to want to know more about what has happened. Why is it there are so many people around him [who] are connected to oil? Why is it that Michael Flynn, who, evidently has a great relationship with Putin, who has received payments for speeches, and who’s spent a lot of time in Russia, and was accused of talking about sanctions, he lied about it and he got caught?” ( Grabien) Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett | 1 |
Get short URL 0 6 0 0 US Department of State spokeswoman Julia Mason said that Washington is fully confident that bilateral relations with Philippines remain strong, including in trade, investment and remittances. © AFP 2016/ THOMAS PETER Philippines Understands China, Not US Its 'Real Friend' WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — The United States expects the current government of the Philippines to continue fulfilling the country’s obligations under a military alliance with Washington, Department of State spokeswoman Julia Mason told Sputnik on Wednesday. “US forces have been providing support and assistance in the southern Philippines for many years, at the request of several different Philippine administrations,” Mason said. “We will continue to honor our alliance commitments, and we expect the Philippines to do the same. We will work closely with the government of the Philippines to address any concerns they may have.”
She emphasized that the countries’ military-to-military relationship remains robust and multifaceted, including joint work on matters of national security as well as responses to natural disasters and other crises.
The State Department spokeswoman’s remarks follow statements by Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte earlier Wednesday that all foreign military forces would be withdrawn from his country within two years. “We’ve seen a lot of this sort of troubling rhetoric recently, and this is not a positive trend,” Mason said. “This recent string of comments does not reflect the warmth, breadth and depth of the US-Philippines partnership.” © REUTERS/ Ng Han Guan/Pool Philippines Turning Away From 'Unilateral Ties' With US to 'Diversified Contacts' With China, Russia Mason stressed that Washington is fully confident that bilateral relations remain strong, including in trade, investment and remittances. “As we have stated, we continue to focus on our broad relationship with the Philippines and will work together in the many areas of mutual interest to improve the livelihoods of the Philippine people and uphold our shared democratic values,” she explained.
Duterte made his statement during a three-day visit to Japan, Mason noted. “We welcome the Philippines having strong, productive relationships with other neighbors in the Asia-Pacific region,” she said. “This is not a zero-sum game; we don’t think that the Philippines, or indeed any country, should choose between good relations with the US and with another partner.”
Duterte recently said it was time for Manila to "say goodbye" to the United States’ long use of Philippine land for military bases, and on a visit to Beijing he announced his country was separating from the United States in order to realign with China. ... | 0 |
Sunday on ABC’s “This Week,” while discussing his concerns over what will happen once Donald Trump is in office, former Speaker Newt Gingrich expressed his concern that the administration “will lose their nerve. ” When asked what he fears the most during the Trump presidency Gingrich said,”That they will lose their nerve. I mean, look, they’re going to arrive in Washington and for them to be successful, they have to stake out positions that Donna will not like and the left will hate. My deepest concern is that they’re going to arrive, you’re going to have the greens going crazy over at EPA and Interior. You’re going to have the government employees going crazy about civil service reform. You’re going to have the teachers union going crazy over school choice. And these are pretty nonnegotiable. I mean, if you’re serious about school choice, there is no agreement with the teachers union. ” He added, “I’m worried when they realize how big the problem is that they decide that they’re just going to do the best they can and give in. ” ( ABC News) Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN | 1 |
Virginia Republican Rep. Dave Brat told reporters in a hallway just off the House floor that he is confused by President Donald Trump’s tweets attacking the House Freedom Caucus for hindering the president’s agenda — specifically the American Health Care Act, or Ryancare. [“I don’t know who has his ear,” said Brat, who is a member of the House Freedom Caucus and was part of the HFC team negotiating with the White House and the House Republican leadership to amend the Ryancare bill. “I don’t think he is hearing that we are trying to serve him a victory — right? — Right now, this bill is at 17 percent in the polls, and that’s not a winner. ” The Freedom Caucus will hurt the entire Republican agenda if they don’t get on the team, fast. We must fight them, Dems, in 2018! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 30, 2017, Speaker Paul Ryan ( ) pulled the bill from the House floor Friday minutes before it was sure to be defeated. The Ryancare bill is a modification of the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act that created Obamacare. Although it was pulled from the floor, it is still active legislation and subject to manager’s amendments from the chairmen of the Ways and Means, Energy and Commerce, and Budget committees, as well as changes made by the House Rules Committee, which reports the bill to the House floor with its final language. Brat said the key to fixing the American Health Care Act is to correct Obamacare provisions that drove up premiums, but in the current language in the Ryancare bill, premiums would still go up 10 percent or 15 percent. “Right now, no young person can go out and buy a cheap insurance policy — by law,” he said. “The federal regulations and mandates prevent you from shopping across state lines, which President Trump campaigned on. ” The president campaigned all over the country and told every arena audience that he would repeal Obamacare. Brat said the House Freedom Caucus is staying true to the president’s campaign promises, which were not reflected in the Ryancare bill. See my statement on the American Health Care Act #AHCA https: . — Rep. Dave Brat (@RepDaveBrat) March 25, 2017, Another problem with the speaker’s bill was that it was rushed through in a process that took only three weeks from Ryan releasing the text of the bill to what would have been a vote on the House floor. “If you have a good process, it will result in a good policy and then, that’s good politics,” he said. | 1 |
Carol Adl in News , World // 0 Comments
Russia has failed to win re-election to the United Nations Human Rights Council.
President Putin was beaten by Hungary and Croatia in a vote by the 193-member U.N. General Assembly on Friday.
For the first time since its inception in 2006, Russia will not be a member of the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) after being narrowly beaten by Croatia in a vote.
More than 80 human rights and aid organizations had urged UN member-states to vote Russia off the council because of its military support to President Bashar al-Assad during the crisis in Syria.
Saudi Arabia on the other hand was successfully re-elected despite criticism from human rights organizations.
RT reports:
Saudi Arabia sailed through the Asian ballot with 152 votes, and will represent the region on the UNHRC alongside China, Japan and Iraq for the next three years.
South Africa, Rwanda, Egypt and Tunisia were chosen from the African group, Cuba and Brazil from Latin America and the Caribbean, and the US and the UK will represent the Western bloc, which comprises Western Europe and North America.
Over the next term, which will last between 2017 and 2019, the 14 chosen members will be tasked with formulating the UN’s official position on conflicts occurring around the world, as well as the domestic policies of member states.
The elections took place against a backdrop of criticism from non-governmental human rights organizations, who say that the body has been hijacked by oppressive regimes looking to deflect criticism and drive their own agendas.
Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International produced a joint statement earlier this year condemning Riyadh for “an appalling record of violations” in Yemen, where it has conducted a bombing campaign against Houthi rebels since 2015, which has resulted in the deaths of up to 4,000 civilians. The two organizations called for Saudi Arabia, a member of the UNHRC since it was created in 2006, to be suspended – to no avail.
Saudi Arabia used its power in the council to block an outside inquiry into the campaign last month, while leading a successful resolution that placed the responsibility of investigating human rights abuses in the hands of its allies, the exiled Yemeni government.
Saudi Arabia carried out 157 executions domestically last year – the highest number in two decades, and is on pace to match the number this year. Critics of the regime have often faced detention, while women do not enjoy autonomy and equal status before the law. | 0 |
Matt Damon says the Mexican government is not going to pay for the wall along the country’s border with the United States, one of President Donald Trump’s major campaign promises. [“I’m not a believer in walls,” Damon said in a recent interview with People to promote his upcoming movie, The Great Wall, a film that presents an alternate history of The Great Wall of China as providing protection from creatures and other monsters. “I believe that history belongs to the cooperators and nor am I of a mind that Mexico is going to pay for our infrastructure anymore than we’re going to pay for their highways, you know what I mean?” he added. “That’s just not going to happen but, that’s where we are and we’ll see how it all plays out. ” Building a border wall and making Mexico pay for it was one of Trump’s first campaign promises. The president took to Twitter on January 26 and said if Mexico refuses to pay for the wall then “it would be better to cancel an upcoming meeting” with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto. Damon says he hopes the people of Mexico know that most Americans don’t support building a security wall on the U. S. border. “We’ve got to watch, but hopefully the people of Mexico understand that the people of our country, the majority of them don’t believe that we should be putting any walls up. ” However, most Americans support Trump’s plan to build a border wall, according to a recent Rasmussen poll. The Great Wall opens in theaters February 17. Follow Jerome Hudson on Twitter @jeromeehudson | 1 |
For the anniversary of the heinous attack on Orlando Pulse nightclub, Moms Demand Action is pushing a #DisarmHate campaign. In so doing, they fail to note that everyone in Pulse was disarmed it was a zone. [This is one of the inconvenient truths the gun control movement does not acknowledge because it is hard to push gun control on the back of a heinous attack if Americans are given all the information. And all the information includes the fact that Orlando Pulse had a ban on guns, period. t was actually an illustration of the failure of gun bans, rather than justification for implementing them. It was actually an illustration of the failure of gun bans, rather than justification for implementing them. Consider so many of the other horrific criminal terrorist attacks that gun control proponents use in hopes of pushing their agenda: the Virginia Tech University (April 16, 2007) the Aurora movie theater (July 20, 2012) Sandy Hook Elementary (December 14, 2012) the DC Navy Yard (September 16, 2013) Fort Hood (April 2, 2014) Umpqua Community College (October 1, 2015) San Bernardino (December 2, 2015) UCLA (June 1, 2016) and Orlando Pulse (June 12, 2016) to name a few. And what do all of these horrific events have in common? The common thread in all is that they occurred in zones. But as it turns out, zones do not #DisarmHate. Instead, they actually give vent to it. zones give hate a place it can be unleashed because the attacker does not have to worry about facing an armed response. Regardless of these facts, Moms Demand Action has spent the day tweeting and retweeting people who have used the hashtag #DisarmHate or who are attending #DisarmHate marches and rallies. Their tweet of 13 attendees at a Washington state rally exemplifies what they are tweeting: Seattle and Tacoma @MomsDemand represent at Seattle Pride! #DisarmHate pic. twitter. — NW Mama (@PhdTeresa) June 11, 2017, The cold hard truth is that the people in Orlando Pulse were disarmed, so they had no way to fight back. Following the horrific Orlando Pulse attack, Gwendolyn Patton, spokesperson for the LGBT gun rights group Pink Pistols, warned people not to be fooled into blaming guns for the attack. Patton stressed: Let us not reach for the fruit of blaming the killer’s guns. Let us stay focused on the fact that someone hated gay people so much they were ready to kill or injure so many. A human being did this. The human being’s tools are unimportant when compared to the bleakness of that person’s soul. Patton also pointed out that one of the viable responses to the attack is to keep a gun close for not to disarm. In fact, less than a month before the attack on Orlando Pulse, the Pink Pistols announced, “We teach queers to shoot. Then we teach others that we have done so. Armed queers don’t get bashed. ” AWR Hawkins is the Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and host of Bullets with AWR Hawkins, a Breitbart News podcast. He is also the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart. com. | 1 |
aries 21 March – 20 April
Look at that stupid baby, smiling. Yeah get a job and a mortgage and tell us how much you smile then, kid. taurus 21 April – 21 May
You wait around after the credits of Schindler’s List, but there’s nothing. No gag, nothing setting up the next movie, nada. gemini May 21 – June 20
You put Humpty Dumpty back together again. it wasn’t such a big deal. You wonder what sort of morons the King’s men were. cancer
Just like your iPhone charger, you work if held at just the right angle. leo July 23 – August 22
Leo, like Leo DiCaprio. Without the money, talent, fame, and beautiful girls. And indeed anything else, the similarities more or less end with Leo. virgo August 23 – September 22
You discover you are too big for your big coat. Wow, you really enjoyed this year, didn’t you? Fair play. libra September 23 – October 22
You shouldn’t have yelled so loud at that guard but it just felt s good. scorpio October 23 – November 21
You’ve a load of bangers left over from Halloween. Like what the fuck are you supposed to do with them now? sagittarius November 22 – December 21
You suffer a sick burn, but luckily you get rushed to the sick burns unit on time. capricorn
5 retweets, wow, we’ll book your place on The Ellen Show right now. aquarius January 20 – February 18
You agree to bake as many gay wedding cakes as people want. Shit, at 400 quid a pop, you’ll bake a Hitler cake. pisces February 19 – March 20 | 0 |
‘Conspiracy Theorists’ Believe They’ve Found Justice Scalia’s MURDER Plot Posted on October 27, 2016 by Dawn Parabellum in Politics Share This
It’s troubling to uncover the dirty secrets in the emails leaked from John Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, and it just keeps getting worse. Since the mainstream media refuses to do it, many “conspiracy theorists” are investigating for themselves, and internet sleuths believe they’ve uncovered the murder plot of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. Unsurprisingly, the Clintons may have even more blood on their hands. Supreme Court Justice, Antonin Scalia.
The evidence does look damning. In the email, where coded language and a disjointed writing technique was used, Podesta is offered a “script” to a “movie.” However, that’s the only normal part of this email.
The script writer of the movie is asking Podesta to fund the film, which right away makes the exchange odd since the movie isn’t political and Podesta is Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager, not a movie investor. It seems even more strange once the plot of the movie is revealed in the emails as well. What’s worse, this is not the first email thought to be about the assassination of Antonin Scalia, but I digress.
The movie is about a “Mexican” girl on a journey to find her mother. She crosses paths with a man named Alex who assists her on her journey. They end up at an isolated ranch house with a massive underground tunnel in Tecate, California. There is a Smithsonian map included in a link, which has a line pointing to the “setting” of the film, as seen below. Map included in the Podesta emails showing the “setting” of the “movie”
The map seems inconspicuous enough until it was realized that the pointer of the map is showing the exact location of the Cibolo Ranch where Antonin Scalia died. Below is a Google map showing the location of the Cibolo Ranch. Google map depicting the location of the Cibolo Ranch
The maps were enough to draw the attention of internet sleuths. Digging deeper, they have uncovered more in the same email discussing the details of this “movie,” and honestly, it doesn’t feel right. The entire script of the “movie” can be read in the leaked emails , but one part stands out in addition to connecting the dots with the maps. Ronald Reagan is discussed for some strange reason
It’s difficult to imagine what President Ronald Reagan has to do with a movie about a Mexican woman’s journey, other than the fact that Antonin Scalia was a Reagan appointee. However, it gets a little more creepy further down the slightly discombobulated email. A portion of the lengthy email conspiracy theorists believe details the murder plot of Antonin Scalia
His five “film projects” aren’t detailed. All he says are “two are political, one is spiritual, and two are just for fun.” Conspiracy theorists believe this is a list of his assassinations and the best way to describe who has been killed and why.
Could this all be an elaborate movie and the email sender a poor writer? That seems unlikely, considering he’s claiming to have written an entire script. But, could conspiracy theorists have jumped the gun? That’s also possible.
There’s still no absolute proof that this is the murder plot of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, but with just over one week left until the nation decides who will be the president and Wikileaks still having many more John Podesta emails to release, it’s possible we may see more about this “movie” if that’s what was really being discussed. | 0 |
Donald Trump challenged Toyota for plans to build a new plant in Mexico, warning them that they would face big taxes if they tried to sell the cars built there in America. [“Toyota Motor said will build a new plant in Baja, Mexico, to build Corolla cars for U. S.,” Trump wrote on Twitter. “NO WAY! Build plant in U. S. or pay big border tax. ” Trump appeared to react to a statement by Toyota’s president Akio Toyoda during an industry event in Tokyo. “We will consider our option as we see what policies the incoming president adopts,” Toyoda said, according to Reuters. Toyota broke ground on a new $1 billion plant in Mexico after Trump was elected in November, according to the Wall Street Journal. | 1 |
WASHINGTON — In the middle of her dynamic show at the Verizon Center here on Friday, Amy Schumer swigged from a bottle of wine like a movie pirate and asked, “Can I just tell you guys all my secrets?” Giving an arena show the intimate feel of a sleepover requires the presence of a star, and Ms. Schumer doesn’t pretend she isn’t one. “It’s been an insane year,” she said early on. “I’ve gotten very rich, famous and humble. ” When she soberly brings up her “passion project,” she’s referring to her appearance in those ubiquitous Bud Light ads. “People say you sold out for money,” she said midstride, before stopping and flashing a look that announced: Duh. Ms. Schumer was a gleefully raunchy comic who found a pointed feminist voice on her Comedy Central sketch show “Inside Amy Schumer. ” But in her new global tour, which comes to Madison Square Garden next month, she has slyly found an arena language to match her evolving reputation. Ms. Schumer smuggles social commentary about gender into broad bits. At one point on Friday, she lay down onstage, took off her high heels and invited a guy in the audience to try them on. After she flirted with him onstage, he stepped into the shoes and teetered awkwardly. Then she ordered him to walk around like she had, which he tried to do, uneasily. A man stumbling in woman’s shoes is an easy joke, but this bit of crowd work evoked the old line about Ginger Rogers doing everything Fred Astaire did, except backward and in heels. It got a huge response, but around me, the women laughed louder. The most significant shift in her is one of perspective. Her early work used the voice of a blinkered, entitled party girl who often said dumb and offensive things, many of which were false. And yet there were moments when a different voice interrupted for a punch line that broke the fourth wall, like the : “My best friend is black … in this story. ” The early criticism of Ms. Schumer’s work came from comedy snobs who dismissed her jokes as character comedy, shorthand for material rooted in a fake persona, an approach deemed by some to be inferior to in your own personal voice. This distinction between character and personal comedy is rooted in naïve notions about the authenticity of certain kinds of a belief as simplistic as the one that indie are more real than pop stars. But there is some truth (and usefulness) in these aesthetic categories, particularly when it comes to describing Ms. Schumer’s evolution. In her new when Ms. Schumer says something happened to her, she wants you to believe it. She also doesn’t play dumb. She speaks in a confident, savvy voice that doesn’t sound that different than the one you might read in interviews with her. This dovetails with the politics of her comedy, which offers a sustained critique of how the media and culture make women feel insecure and apologetic. You might say Ms. Schumer has merely changed rude personas, replacing the ditsy girl with that of the arrogant celebrity. If so, she’s still keeping a firm eye on her audience’s sympathies. Her harshest gibes are for famous people (Gwyneth Paltrow, the Kardashians) who market fantasies of perfection masked as something more down to earth. Ms. Schumer positions herself as a star so relatable she’s not going to try to trick you into thinking she’s relatable. While she delivered some topical jokes (a funny about gun laws, a scene about meeting Hillary Clinton, for whom she appeared at a before the show) the content of her material — much of it new, some repurposed — could still be described by the title of her first special: “Mostly Sex Stuff. ” She still favors a jaunty style of joke that depends on pinpoint pauses. “I’m going to make him wait,” she says about sex on a first date, waiting a beat. “All through dinner. ” Pivot, deepening voice: “We didn’t go to dinner. ” Most of her laughs, however, are earned not from concise jokes but detailed stories, punched up by an animated performance style. Ms. Schumer has long cut sour material with a sweet glance, but now she uses a more theatrical vocabulary for such incongruities. When she describes telling her boyfriend that she is finished performing oral sex, she employs the cheery voice of a game show host. And when she gets really dirty, Ms. Schumer pairs jokes with pantomimes of tap dancing or a tip of a cap accompanied by a . Ms. Schumer, who made the leap to movies last year with “Trainwreck,” makes a point of saying is her favorite thing, but her comedy, like that of Louis C. K. increasingly leans on acting chops. She moves from prim scold to maniac princess to aggression with alacrity — and without ever seeming as if she’s working too hard. She makes hustle look effortless. Yet after a breakthrough 2015, Ms. Schumer’s stardom has shifted into a slightly precarious position. She remains at the center of pop culture — her book, “The Girl With the Lower Back Tattoo,” is on the lists — but often for reasons peripheral to her work. She’s become a fixture on the online controversy circuit, garnering headlines not for the last season of her sketch show, but for accusations that she stole jokes (which she denies) and for criticism of comments about rape from one of her TV show’s writers. Such are part of being a famous and provocative comic today. And she has proved herself canny at negotiating the digital world, creating her own viral moments by releasing a clip of her handling a heckler or posting a photo on Instagram skewering double standards in publishing. Still, Ms. Schumer repeatedly called herself an awful famous person onstage here. “I say what I mean,” she said, “so I probably won’t be able to do this much longer. ” It’s unclear exactly what she meant, but it’s the kind of intriguing aside that makes you sit forward in your chair. In comedy, meaning what you say doesn’t beat saying it in a meaningful way. | 1 |
Ausbildung französischer Soldaten in der Führung von Daesch Voltaire Netzwerk | 26. Oktober 2016 français Español italiano Am 22. September 2016 sahen Arbeiter bei der Reinigung der Umgebung einer verlassenen Höhlenunterkunft nahe der Kirche Saint-Florent an der Ausfahrt von Saumur (Frankreich) drei Männer, die überstürzt in einem weißen Lieferwagen flohen. Als sie in die Grotte eindrangen, entdeckten sie Videomaterial, einen Generator, Zeitschriften in arabischer Sprache und die Fahnen von Daesch.
Bei der Beschwichtigung der Aufregung in der Bevölkerung, bei der Polizei und Gendarmerie und dem Unterpräfekten erklärte Arnaud Nicolazo de Barmon, der Kommandant der Militärschulen von Saumur, dass es sich nicht um Terroristen handele, sondern um eine Übung des teilstreitkräfteübergreifenden Zentrums für die nukleare, radiologische, biologische und chemische Verteidigung (CIA NBCR).
Wenn dies mitten im Ausnahmezustand der Fall war, hat die CIA NBCR gegen die Vorschriften zur Bekanntmachung dieser Übung vor ihrer Durchführung bei verschiedenen Kommunalbehörden verstoßen. Darüber hinaus ist nicht einsichtig, inwiefern dieses Material irgendeinen Nutzen für Übungen zur nuklearen, radiologischen, biologischen und chemischen Gefahrenabwehr haben sollte.
In denselben Räumlichkeiten der CIA NBCR in Saumur befinden sich Schulen, die auf Nachrichtendienste und das Gefecht der Verbundenen Waffen spezialisiert sind.
Seit Beginn der Ereignisse in Syrien 2011 ist dort die Anwesenheit französischer Streitkräfte nachgewiesen. 2012 waren 19 französische Soldaten, die gefangen genommen worden waren, an der libanesischen Grenze dem Generalstabschef der Streitkräfte, Édouard Guillaud, zusammen mit anderen Soldaten, die dem Islamische Emirat von Baba Amr zugeordnet waren, übergeben worden. Der Tod von französischen Soldaten in Begleitung islamistischer Truppen ist an vielen Orten bescheinigt worden, besonders 2013 in Sanayeh. Obwohl Frankreich 2014 al-Qaida gegen Daesch unterstützt hat, wurde 2016 die Anwesenheit französischer Offiziere im Kalifat von mehreren Zeugen bestätigt.
Im November 2014 gab das Pentagon bekannt, in Samarda einen Agenten des französischen Auslandsnachrichtendienst (DGSE), David Drugeon, der innnerhalb der al-Qaida arbeitete, getötet zu haben, während das französische Verteidigungsministerium jede Verbindung zu dem Opfer dementierte. Im Anschluss bestätigte die US-amerikanische Presse, David Drugeon habe Mohamed Mera (Attentat von Toulouse und von Montauban) und die Brüder Kouachi (Attentat gegen Charlie Hebdo ) ausgebildet.
Frankreich hat sich nie offiziell dazu bekannt, Soldaten auf syrischem Boden zu haben, obwohl es zugegeben hat, dort ein gemeinsames Hauptquartier mit verbündeten Spezialkräften zu unterhalten.
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Hispanic voters were largely credited with President Obama’s victory in 2012, but they weren’t as crucial as many believed. Mr. Obama didn’t even need to win the Hispanic vote to put him over the top, thanks to high black turnout and support among white voters in the North. The turnout among Hispanic voters didn’t surge, even though exit polls implied that it had. This year, Hispanic voters, perhaps motivated by Donald J. Trump’s policy proposals (including deportation) and harsh language aimed at undocumented Hispanic immigrants, really might decide this election. Early voting data unequivocally indicates that Hillary Clinton will benefit from a long awaited surge in Hispanic turnout, vastly exceeding the Hispanic turnout from four years ago. It’s too soon to say whether it will be decisive for her. The geographic distribution of Hispanic voters means that many of her gains will help her in noncompetitive states like Texas and California, not Michigan and Pennsylvania. But the surge is real, and it’s big. It could be enough to overcome Mr. Trump’s strength among class voters in the swing states of Florida and Nevada. If it does, it will almost certainly win her the election. In Florida, voters who indicated they were Hispanic on their voter registration form represent more than 15 percent of the early vote. In 2012, Hispanic voters were just 12 percent of the final electorate. The numbers are striking in part because of the sheer magnitude of the early vote so far. Already, more than 6. 4 million total voters have cast their ballots in the state — equal to 75 percent of the final turnout in 2012. In total, as many Hispanic voters have already cast ballots in Florida’s early voting period as cast ballots in all of 2012. The Hispanic surge in Florida isn’t simply because Mrs. Clinton has drawn typically reliable Election Day voters to vote early instead: According to Daniel Smith of the University of Florida, fully 36 percent of the Hispanics who have voted so far did not vote in 2012. It’s also striking because Hispanic voters are typically among the least likely to participate in early and absentee voting. If that pattern continues this year — suggesting a robust Hispanic turnout on Election Day — Mr. Trump is probably in serious trouble. The polls in Florida appear to have assumed a lower level of Hispanic turnout. The final poll in Florida suggested that the state’s electorate would be 67 percent white, by registration, and 14 percent Hispanic — just two percentage points higher than the 12 percent of 2012. A new Quinnipiac poll today had Mrs. Clinton ahead by one point in the state, and put Hispanic voters at 16 percent of the electorate. But this was based on the race that registered voters to pollsters, not the race that they indicated on their voter registration form. In our two Florida polls, registered Hispanic voters represented 13. 6 percent of the electorate, but 16 percent of likely voters were Hispanic voters. If registered Hispanic voters represent 15 percent of the electorate, Hispanic voters could be 18 or 19 percent of voters. The data on Hispanic turnout is not as illustrative elsewhere in the country, because most other states do not ask about race and Hispanic origin on voter registration forms. But this is a national trend. The Hispanic vote in Nevada has propelled Democrats to a considerable lead in the early vote. Many analysts believe that it has already been enough to secure the state for Mrs. Clinton. The turnout has surpassed 2012 levels in several of Las Vegas’s heavily Hispanic precincts. The huge surge in Hispanic turnout is possible — and sustainable — in part because there was no surge four years ago. Even now, the turnout among white registered voters is at a higher percentage in the Florida early vote than among Hispanic voters because Hispanic turnout, historically so low, has a long way to go to catch up. There’s another possible error in the polls: Mrs. Clinton’s share of the Hispanic vote. In general, the polls of Hispanic voters give her a larger lead than the one Mr. Obama held with that group in 2012. But there are plenty of surveys where this doesn’t seem to show up. There are very few surveys that show Mrs. Clinton faring much, much better than Mr. Obama, suggesting an underlying bias in many public polls. Why would the polls tend to underestimate Democratic strength among Hispanic voters? There’s considerable evidence that pollsters tend to contact too many Hispanic voters who live in less Hispanic areas. These voters tend to be more Republican. If true, Mrs. Clinton’s strength among less assimilated, and Hispanic voters in heavily Hispanic and urban areas might be missed in the polls. Mrs. Clinton had a lead of 60 to 26 percent among Hispanic voters in Florida polls, which used English and Spanish interviews and had the right number of voters and voters in heavily Democratic areas. Whether Hispanic turnout will be enough for Mrs. Clinton to win the presidency is hard to say. In the most contested states, Hispanic voters represent a larger than average share of the electorate only in Florida and Nevada. They’re just a fraction of the electorate in many of the states that could prove decisive — North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire or Michigan. Hispanic voters can give Mrs. Clinton a knockout blow with a win in Florida. It would be especially symbolic if it came early in the night. But if Hispanic voters don’t put Mrs. Clinton over the top in Florida, she’ll need to cobble together enough strength among black voters and white Northerners in states like Pennsylvania and Michigan. In that event, Hispanic voters would still be an important part of Mrs. Clinton’s path — say, in helping win Nevada and Colorado — but not clearly decisive. Either way, it’s likely that the Hispanic vote will pad Mrs. Clinton’s margin in the national popular vote and sustain her chances in the Electoral College. | 1 |
BNI Store Oct 31 2016 UK MUSLIMS want to subject non-Muslims to the noise pollution of the amplified ‘Islamic Call to Prayer’ several times a day If Muslim supremacists get their way, British residents and visitors will be forced to endure the eardrum-shattering, highly offensive Islamic Call to Prayer (‘Adhan’) being blasted from mosque amplifiers – so it can be heard for miles around – at least three times a day, EVERYDAY! UK Express (h/t Rob E) A petition to allow the Islamic call for prayer has been signed by more than 25,000 Muslims. Those behind the petition say: “The Islamic Call to Prayer, is an integral part of the Muslim faith ” which actually means unbelievers are my inferiors and I have no respect for their country, customs, and its citizens. The petition says: “I believe it is the right time to experiment and allow highly Muslim populated areas with a loud call for prayer at least three times a day, not during anti-social hours.” “The number of people practicing the religion of Islam in the United Kingdom exceeds three million. “Some neighbourhood towns have more than 50% Muslim population.” The Government’s official response to the petition has advised people to speak to their local authority about public calls to worship. Officials said: “The Government recognizes the unique contribution (to violence, rape, and terrorism) that Muslims make to their own local communities and to wider society.” | 0 |
William F. Buckley, Jr. ran for mayor of New York City in 1965, he was asked, “What will you do if you win?” His reply: “Demand a recount. ” Of course, he was being flippant. The young Conservative Party of New York had no chance of winning even a plurality in the liberal bastion of New York. [I would not have been surprised to have heard Paul Ryan or Mitch McConnell utter those words in October of 2016. Not only did they expect Trump to lose to Hillary Clinton in a landslide, they were counting on it. In a divided government, with a Democrat in the White House and Republican majorities in the Senate and House, governing the country was a matter of bipartisan — and they were in the driver’s seat. No one could hold them accountable for actually governing the country — what a deal! What a creepy bunch of establishment swamp denizens the Congressional Republicans have shown themselves to be. Precious days are being wasted by them because every passing news cycle makes it more difficult to advance the President’s agenda. And they know it. And I think they are okay with that because it is not their agenda. They are wallowing in the swamp Trump is trying to drain. Of course, there are a few true believers who would brave the slings and arrows of the irrational ninnies in the media who live only to see Trump and his agenda be sent to the ash heap of history. However far too many of those calling themselves Republicans are no more than Democrats who have perfected their ability to obfuscate. It is clear to me that some Republicans in Congress secretly embrace the “resistance” and are hoping Trump will quit or be impeached. It seems Democrats are always eager to enact the Democrat agenda. What’s so frustrating is that so are many Republicans! Republicans have maintained their House majority since the turnaround election of 2010. In November of 2016, besides sending Donald Trump to the White House, Republicans maintained their majorities in both the Senate and House and also won control of a majority of governorships and state legislatures. The Republican Party now controls 69 of 99 state legislative chambers (Nebraska is unicameral) and 33 governorships, the most it has held since 1922. Republicans will have total control of government (legislative chambers and governorship) in 25 states, the most since 1952. Consider this startling fact: with Donald Trump in the White House, the Republican Party today has more control over Congress than Eisenhower had in 1953, Nixon in 1969, or Ronald Reagan in 1981. Reagan never had a Republican majority in both houses of Congress! These amazing numbers send a clear message: it is now time to govern! If not now, when? But to judge by Republican behavior since November, the Grand Ol’ Party can’t handle success and seems to be working hard to surrender the reins of power. In the last month, we have heard Senator McConnell and Speaker Paul Ryan say they don’t think they have the votes for repealing Obamacare, reforming the tax code and securing the borders. Translated, that means they believe they don’t have the Republican votes to pass landmark Republican bills. My 10 years of experience in the Congress tells me that this is total hogwash. When you have both houses of Congress and the White House, there is no excuse for failure — even when you don’t have a 60 votes in the Senate. Besides the various parliamentary rules that can be employed when you have the majority on every committee as well as the floor, the sausage factory model of legislation is always available. A good example is the Republican enactment of the Medicare Prescription Drug Act of 2003. That historic expansion of Medicare was a horrible bill and every Republican knew it. But President Bush wanted it and the Republicans held both Houses, albeit by only one vote in the Senate. That 2003 battle is described here. The bill came to the floor for a vote late in the evening, but when the vote was called, what was supposed to be a vote turned into an — because leadership did not have the necessary 218 “Yeas. ” Democrats didn’t want to give Bush and the Republican Party the win, and about half the Republicans saw the bill for what it was — the single biggest increase in government since Medicare. It stunk. That was when the real lobbying — that is, the arm twisting — started. The president was calling members about 5 a. m. and badgering them — mainly with yummy carrots but also some big sticks. Every Cabinet member was dispatched to the House to lobby members with whom they had influence. The House Republican leadership team was actually calling the largest donors to the recalcitrant members and asking them to call their reluctant representatives and urge them to change their vote. A colleague of mine who was a subcommittee chair had his chairmanship threatened. Sufficient golden promises and nasty threats were made, and by 6:30 a. m. they had the 218th vote. I was a “No” vote, but I still wanted to throw up. Apparently, keeping Republican promises made in every national election since 2010 by repealing Obamacare is not as important to the Republican Party leadership in 2017 as expanding Medicare by $400 billion was in 2003. And these geniuses wonder why Republican voters chose Donald Trump over Jeb Bush, Lindsay Graham and John Kasich? Gimme a break! If Republicans cannot unite to repeal the single biggest federal power grab of the last 50 years, why should anyone have faith they will have the courage to tackle other looming crises? The message being sent to Republican rank and file voters across the country is pathetic: Elect us and we will slow down the growth of the leviathan state but we lack the courage to reverse course. That, my friends, is a suicide note. Senate Republican leadership is also skeptical they can find the money Trump has requested for the first stage of a border wall. They have put off a decision on the matter until September. The truth is they don’t want a border wall! That leadership and many of their caucus members are happy with the status quo when it comes to immigration. Cheap labor will satisfy the Chamber of Commerce Republicans and thereby keep the donations from big business flowing to their reelection campaigns. But it is not just Trump’s immigration plans that they secretly want derailed, it’s the whole conservative agenda that they speak so glowingly of to their constituents at home but work so hard to avoid implementing when they are back in the swamp. | 1 |
Videos Human Rights Watch: Nigerian Officials Raping Women, Girls Displaced By Boko Haram “It is bad enough that these women and girls are not getting much-needed support for the horrific trauma they suffered at the hands of Boko Haram,” said Mausi Segun, senior Nigeria researcher at Human Rights Watch. “It is disgraceful and outrageous that people who should protect these women and girls are attacking and abusing them.” | October 31, 2016 Be Sociable, Share! In this photo taken with an iPad on Friday, Jan. 31, 2014, women and children who survived attacks by Boko haram sits outside a compound at St. Paul’s Roman Catholic Church, in Wada Chakawa, Yola, Nigeria.. (AP Photo/ Ibrahim Abdulaziz)
ABUJA – Government officials and other authorities in Nigeria have raped and sexually exploited women and girls displaced by the conflict with Boko Haram. The government is not doing enough to protect displaced women and girls and ensure that they have access to basic rights and services or to sanction the abusers, who include camp leaders, vigilante groups, policemen, and soldiers.
In late July, 2016, Human Rights Watch documented sexual abuse, including rape and exploitation, of 43 women and girls living in seven internally displaced persons (IDP) camps in Maiduguri, the Borno State capital. The victims had been displaced from several Borno towns and villages, including Abadam, Bama, Baga, Damasak, Dikwa, Gamboru Ngala, Gwoza, Kukawa, and Walassa. In some cases, the victims had arrived in the under-served Maiduguri camps, where their movement is severely restricted after spending months in military screening camps.
“It is bad enough that these women and girls are not getting much-needed support for the horrific trauma they suffered at the hands of Boko Haram,” said Mausi Segun , senior Nigeria researcher at Human Rights Watch. “It is disgraceful and outrageous that people who should protect these women and girls are attacking and abusing them.”
Four of the victims told Human Rights Watch that they were drugged and raped, while 37 were coerced into sex through false marriage promises and material and financial assistance. Many of those coerced into sex said they were abandoned if they became pregnant. They and their children have suffered discrimination, abuse, and stigmatization from other camp residents. Eight of the victims said they were previously abducted by Boko Haram fighters and forced into marriage before they escaped to Maiduguri.
A situational assessment of IDPs in the northeast in July 2016 by NOI Polls, a Nigerian research organization, reported that 66 percent of 400 displaced people in Adamawa, Borno, and Yobe states said that camp officials sexually abuse the displaced women and girls.
Women and girls abused by members of the security forces and vigilante groups – civilian self-defense groups working with government forces in their fight against Boko Haram – told Human Rights Watch they feel powerless and fear retaliation if they report the abuse. A 17-year-old girl said that just over a year after she fled the frequent Boko Haram attacks in Dikwa, a town 56 miles west of Maiduguri, a policeman approached her for “friendship” in the camp, and then he raped her.
“One day he demanded to have sex with me,” she said. “I refused but he forced me. It happened just that one time, but soon I realized I was pregnant. When I informed him about my condition, he threatened to shoot and kill me if I told anyone else. So I was too afraid to report him.”
The Boko Haram conflict has led to more than 10,000 civilian deaths since 2009; the abductions of at least 2,000 people, mostly women and children and large groups of students, including from Chibok and Damasak; the forced recruitment of hundreds of men; and the displacement of about 2.5 million people in northeast Nigeria.
Women and children queue on September 15, 2016 to enter a nutrition clinic at an informal settlement in the outskirts of Maiduguri, the capital of Borno State, in northeastern Nigeria. © 2016 Getty Images
Irregular supplies of food, clothing, medicine, and other essentials, along with restricted movement in the IDP camps in Maiduguri, compounds the vulnerability of victims – many of them widowed women and unaccompanied orphaned girls – to rape and sexual exploitation by camp officials, soldiers, police, members of civilian vigilante groups, and other Maiduguri residents. Residents of the Arabic Teachers Village camp, Pompomari, told Human Rights Watch in July that the camp had not received any food or medicines since late May, just before the start of the month-long Muslim fast of Ramadan.
Restricted movement in the camps is contrary to Principle 14.2 of the United Nations Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement , which provides that internally displaced people have “the right to move freely in and out of camps and other settlements.”
In some cases, men used their positions of authority and gifts of desperately needed food or other items to have sex with women. A woman in a Dalori camp said residents get only one meal a day. She said she accepted the advances of a soldier who proposed marriage because she needed help in feeding her four children. He disappeared five months later when she told him she was pregnant.
Victims of rape and sexual exploitation may be less likely to seek health care, including psychological counselling, due to the shame they feel. Fewer than five of the 43 women and girls interviewed said they had received any formal counseling after they were raped or sexually exploited. A medical health worker in one of the camps, which has 10,000 residents, said that the number of people requiring treatment for HIV and other sexually transmitted infections has risen sharply, from about 200 cases when the camp clinic was established in 2014 to more than 500 in July 2016. The health worker said she believed that many more women could be infected but were ashamed to go to the clinic, and are likely to be suffering in silence without treatment.
The Borno State Emergency Management Agency (SEMA) has direct responsibility for distributing aid, including food, medicine, clothes, and bedding, as well as managing the camps. Its national counterpart, the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), supplies raw food and other materials for internally displaced people to the state agency under a memorandum of understanding.
Aid workers have warned since early 2016 that displaced women have been forced to exchange sex for basic necessities and that various elements, including members of the security forces in northeast Nigeria, have been subjecting some of them to sexual and gender-based violence. A Rapid Protection Assessment Report published in May by the Borno State Protection Sector Working Group, made up of national and international aid providers, identified sexual exploitation, rape, and other sexual abuse as major concerns in nearly all 13 camps and several local communities hosting displaced people in and around Maiduguri.
Following his visit to Nigeria in August, the United Nations special rapporteur on the human rights of internally displaced persons, Chaloka Beyani , said Nigeria’s government had “a tendency to downplay the problem of sexual violence and abuse” of internally displaced people. He expressed concern that this tendency “constitutes a hidden crisis of abuse with fear, stigma and cultural factors as well as impunity for perpetrators leading to under-reporting of abuse to the relevant authorities.”
Human Rights Watch wrote to several Nigerian authorities in August requesting comment on the research findings. The minister of women affairs and social development, Senator Aisha Jumai Alhassan, promised in a meeting with Human Rights Watch on September 5 to investigate the allegations and then respond. Her response has not yet been received at time of writing.
“Failure to respond to these widely reported abuses amounts to severe negligence or worse by Nigerian authorities,” Segun said. “Authorities should provide adequate aid in the camps, ensure freedom of movement for all displaced people, safe and confidential health care for survivors, and punish the abusers.”
Victims’ Accounts
Movement Restrictions, Food Shortages Fuel Sexual Abuse Most of the victims interviewed lived in camps for displaced people. While victims living at the Arabic Teachers’ Village camp said they were allowed to leave the camp for about eight hours daily, victims from other camps said that their movement was severely restricted. The women and girls became victims of rape and sexual exploitation when they accepted offers of friendship or marriage from men in positions of authority.
Rape A 16-year-old girl who fled a brutal Boko Haram attack on Baga, near the shores of Lake Chad, northern Borno in January 2015, said she was drugged and raped in May 2015 by a vigilante group member in charge of distributing aid in the camp:
He knew my parents were dead, because he is also from Baga. He would bring me food items like rice and spaghetti so I believed he really wanted to marry me. But he was also asking me for sex. I always told him I was too small [young]. The day he raped me, he offered me a drink in a cup. As soon as I drank it, I slept off. It was in his camp room.
I knew something was wrong when I woke up. I was in pain, and blood was coming out of my private part. I felt weak and could not walk well. I did not tell anyone because I was afraid. When my menstrual period did not come, I knew I was pregnant and just wanted to die to join my dead mother. I was too ashamed to even go to the clinic for pregnancy care. I am so young! The man ran away from the camp when he heard I delivered a baby six months ago. I just feel sorry for the baby because I have no food or love to give him. I think he might die.
An 18-year-old girl from Kukawa, a Borno town 112 miles from Maiduguri, the state capital, said that a member of Civilian Joint Task Force – a self-defense vigilante group working with government forces in their fight against Boko Haram – initially gave her privileges, including passes that allowed her to leave the camp, but then raped her:
The man started with preaching, telling me to be a good Muslim girl and not to join bad groups in the camp. He then sent his mother to propose to me, which convinced me that he was serious. He allowed me to go outside the camp when necessary. When he asked me to visit his newly allocated room in the camp, I didn’t see any reason not to go because I felt safe with him. He gave me a bottle of Zobo [locally brewed non-alcoholic drink] and I immediately felt dizzy and slept off. I don’t know what happened thereafter but when I woke up he was gone and I was in pain and felt wet between my legs. For three days I could not walk properly.
Some weeks later I fell very ill, and was told at the hospital that I was pregnant. Then everyone turned away from me: [He] refused to help me, and my step-mother who I lived with in camp pushed me out, saying I was a disgrace. I reported [him] to the police in camp several times but they have not done anything to him because they work together. Whenever I see him, I wish something terrible will happen to him. It is because of him that I have lost everything. I don’t even think the baby will last because she is always crying and I can’t cope. I pray that God will forgive me for neglecting the baby but I am helpless.
Sexual Exploitation A 30-year-old woman from Walassa, near Bama, about 43 miles west of Maiduguri, said that she fled into a nearby wooded area after Boko Haram fighters killed her husband and abducted her daughters, ages 12 and 9. She stayed there for three months, hoping to find a way to rescue her daughters, until Nigerian government soldiers arrived in the area and the fighters escaped with their captives:
A few weeks after soldiers transported us to the camp, near Maiduguri, one of the soldiers guarding us approached me for marriage. He used to bring food and clothes for me and my remaining four children, so I allowed him to have sex with me. He is a Hausa man from Gwoza. That is all I know about him. Two months later he just stopped coming. Then I realized I was pregnant. I feel so angry with him for deceiving me. When he was pretending to woo me he used to provide for me, but as soon as I agreed and we began having sex, his gifts began to reduce until he abandoned me. Now my situation is worse as the pregnancy makes me sick, and I have no one to help me care for my children.
A woman from Bama living at the same camp said:
The soldier showed his interest by bringing me food and clothes. He used to wear the green army uniform and carried a gun. I accepted him because I needed help to take care of me and my four children. Feeding in the camp is only once a day so you have to accept any help that comes. We started having sex in my camp tent – my sister who was sharing it with me left – or at night in the open field where soldiers stay in the camp. Five months later when I realized I was pregnant and told him, he stopped coming. I have not seen him since then. I feel so ashamed because my neighbors talk and stare at me. I cry whenever I think about him. I delivered the baby two months ago but he is also suffering – I eat once a day so [am] not producing enough milk to breast feed him well. Things are so bad in the camp, there is not enough water or food.
An 18-year old girl from Baga said when she met a member of the Civilian Joint Task Force in the camp, she felt she could trust him because he is also from Baga:
He took me from the camp to a house on Baga Road so we could meet freely. I stayed with him in that house for about one month. Then I fell ill, and went to a clinic. The people at the clinic asked for the person I was living with, and invited him. That was when they told him I was pregnant, and he accepted the pregnancy. But immediately [when] we came out of the clinic he took me to a man to abort the pregnancy. I refused and he said if I would not abort we should separate. Then I moved to the camp. I gave birth almost a year ago but the man has refused to take responsibility. Some months ago he followed the military to catch Boko Haram far from Maiduguri. Even when he visits his two wives in the camp he never asks for me and my baby. I go outside the camp to beg so that we can survive.
A 25-year-old woman at from Dikwa said that when she fled Boko Haram’s attack on the town, she lived with her brother in a rented apartment in Maiduguri. When he was no longer able to feed her and her three children, he took her to the camp where he handed her over to camp elders. One of these elders, a local government employee – who are often financially better off than most displaced people because they receive salaries – proposed marriage and regularly brought her food and money. But the marriage did not materialize, and he began to shun her when she became pregnant. He continued to ignore her when she delivered twins and asked him for money to pay for her midwife. The woman said:
If I have a gun, I will shoot him. It is because of him that people call me and my babies names. I am so ashamed that I cannot participate in camp activities and keep to myself because of the jeers.
A 17-year-old girl said that a young man she knew took her home to his grandmother when she arrived Maiduguri from Dikwa in mid-2014:
He told me he wanted to marry me, and his grandmother referred to me as her grandson’s wife. I lived with them, cooking and cleaning the house, until a month later when he disappeared for weeks. The grandmother asked me to leave, promising to come to the wedding… It was a lie. I did not know it but I was already pregnant. Maybe she already saw the pregnancy signs and I was too young to understand. I heard the grandson fled the town because he heard I have given birth. Now I have been left alone to fend for the baby. I don’t know if any other member of my family survived the Boko Haram attack on Dikwa.
Restricted Movement A 32-year-old woman from the Damasak said:
Life is terrible here in this camp. For the past three days we have not eaten because there is no firewood to cook the food. To make it worse, they will not even allow us to go out to fend for ourselves. Most times you have to beg the camp officials to intervene with the guards before they will give you the pass to go out. Why will you refuse if any of those people ask you for marriage? You have to survive.
Another camp resident, a 47-year-old mother of eight from Abadam, a northern Borno town, said:
We used to get food at least twice a day when I first arrived at the camp in 2014. But now, sometimes we get nothing at all. We can’t even buy food ourselves because they will not let us go out. My relatives in the town have to plead with camp officials for hours before the officials will agree to let them give us some money or foodstuff from the little they have.
A 20-year-old widowed mother of one at a camp for displaced people said:
I have been refusing marriage proposals from the men in camp because I see how they are deceiving others. I am just not sure how long I can remain in this situation. The last time I ate was four days ago when the one cup of maize I was given finished. I am suffering because I have no husband or anyone else to assist me.
A 16-year-old single mother of one in the same camp said:
Life is difficult in the camp, hardly enough to eat. There is food but whoever gets it, gets it. We are not allowed to go out to find work or get extra food. Sometimes I go to the kitchen to scrape pots to get something to eat. They distribute tickets, some get tickets and some don’t get. If you don’t get a ticket you get no food. The IDP elders distribute the tickets, so they distribute amongst themselves, they make sure their families get first. Usually distribution of tickets take place at odd times such as at midnight.
If you are not married, you hardly get anything that comes in. Women who have husbands insult us: “If you want to eat in [this camp], you should get married in [the camp] so husbands can get food for you.”
Military Screening Centers Displaced women from several communities re-captured from Boko Haram by the Nigerian army, including Baga, Bama, and Gwoza, told Human Rights Watch in Maiduguri that the Nigerian military operated screening centers where they interrogated local people to determine how much involvement they had with militants. While some women are screened in a few days, others are interrogated daily for months before being released to a camp. Witnesses said the interviewees were separated by gender, but that male soldiers interrogated everyone.
A woman who escaped her Boko Haram abductors in Sambisa with her three children while four months pregnant described their reception after an eight-hour trek back to her home town of Bama, then under government control:
Soldiers were already back in Bama when we arrived. They took us to a primary healthcare center near the entrance into Bama to search and question us. We thought they would soon let us go, but they locked us with other women (about 20 people) for more than three months. They bring us out one by one every day to ask whether we joined Boko Haram freely or they forced us. Many of us were naked or in rags until about one month later soldiers took us to town to search for clothes among the burnt ruins of houses in the town. I was very ill because of the pregnancy. After the third month passed they drove us in lorries to Maiduguri, and dropped off sick ones like me in the hospital.
A 20-year-old woman who was abducted in Gwoza by Boko Haram, and then escaped, said:
I was three months pregnant from the Boko Haram fighter that raped me when I escaped Gwoza with my three children. Our relief on arriving at Maiduguri after a two-day trek was crushed when soldiers arrested us. They took us to Giwa barracks, where we saw up to 300 other women and children. Soldiers used to question us every day until my children and I were released four months later.
There appears to be at least one other screening center around Maiduguri, Human Rights Watch found. A 17-year-old girl from Dikwa was held in a place she described as “a compound with about five buildings just before you enter Maiduguri proper.” She was allowed to receive visitors for the month she was there before being cleared by the military to enter Maiduguri.
Lack of Mental Health Support for Victims Many of the women and girls interviewed said that their experiences affected their psychological well-being. Some said they had difficulty sleeping, and deliberately isolated themselves to avoid insults and slurs. Many also said they felt constantly angry with their abusers, wishing they could harm them in retaliation. None said they had professional counselling.
A 30-year-old woman from Gwoza said:
I feel sad all the time. I am always thinking about all the bad things that have happened to me. Sometimes I cry; at other times I try to resign to my fate. But it is hard. My neighbors in the camp encourage me to pray. That is all I can do, pray.
A 16-year-old rape survivor said she was always thinking about death, and wished she had the courage to kill herself:
Nobody comes to this camp to talk to us. We IDPs only have one another, but even that is hard because you do not know who to trust. If you tell them your secret pain or shame, they can use it to mock you later.
A 28-year-old woman who survived rape and became pregnant by a Boko Haram insurgent said she developed hypertension from constantly thinking about her ordeal and imagining ways she could take revenge on him. Doctors have told her during hospital visits outside the camp to stop thinking about the past so she can get better. She was not referred to a counselor.
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Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin activated the Wisconsin National Guard on Sunday to assist local law enforcement following a night of violence in Milwaukee that began hours after a police officer fatally shot a fleeing armed man there. Angry crowds confronted the police in Milwaukee on Saturday night, setting fires and throwing rocks following the shooting that afternoon. One fire, at a gas station in the Sherman Park neighborhood, burned unattended while gunshots kept firefighters from extinguishing it. Other fires burned at an store, a beauty supply company and a bank branch. One police officer was hospitalized with a head injury after a brick was thrown through the window of his patrol car, Mayor Tom Barrett said at a news conference early Sunday morning. The police reported just before 3:30 a. m. that order was being restored to the area. In a statement, Governor Walker praised volunteer efforts on Sunday morning. “This act of selfless caring sets a powerful example for Milwaukee’s youth and the entire community,” he said. “I join Milwaukee’s leaders and citizens in calling for continued peace and prayer. ” Mr. Walker noted that, under Wisconsin law, the shooting was being examined by an independent investigation and asked that people give law enforcement “the respect they deserve for working so hard to keep us safe. ” Mr. Walker said he decided to make the National Guard available to provide assistance upon request after consulting with the mayor of Milwaukee and the Milwaukee County sheriff. Three people were arrested on unspecified charges during the mayhem, in which crowds of at least 200 people filled the streets, said Assistant Chief James Harpole of the Milwaukee police. The shooting and protests come as communities across the nation scrutinize what many see as excessive use of force by law enforcement officers, particularly against black people. Protests broke out across the country last year after a police officer in Madison, Wis. fatally shot an unarmed biracial man. The race and identity of the officer and the man shot and killed on Saturday were not immediately released. Many of the protesters were black, and Alderman Khalif J. Rainey expressed the frustration within the community. “The black people of Milwaukee are tired,” he said. “They’re tired of living under this oppression. “What has happened may not have been right,” Mr. Rainey said, “I’m not justifying that, but nobody can deny that there are racial problems here in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, that have to be rectified, because if you don’t, you’re one day away. ” The Saturday shooting came after more violence in Milwaukee. Five people were shot and killed overnight Friday, Mr. Barrett said at a news conference recorded by The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel earlier on Saturday. At least two of those occurred near where the officer shot the man on Saturday. The violence overnight Saturday erupted after an officer killed a man who the police said was armed with a semiautomatic handgun and who fled after a traffic stop. The police said two uniformed officers stopped two people in a car at about 3:30 p. m. on Saturday. The police did not provide details on why the car was stopped, though Mr. Barrett said the episode began when police spotted a “suspicious vehicle. ” Both occupants ran from the car. During the pursuit, Mr. Barrett said, an officer ordered the man to drop his gun and fired when he did not, striking the man in the chest and an arm. He said the gun held 23 rounds. The man, described by the police as a Milwaukee man with a lengthy arrest record, died at the scene. The handgun had been taken in a burglary in March, the police said. The officer was not named, but officials said he was 24 and had been an officer for three years. He was placed on administrative duty. Mr. Barrett appealed to parents to keep their children off the streets in order to restore calm in the neighborhood. “Parents, get your kids home,” he said at the news conference. Mr. Barrett said that the officer was wearing a body camera that he understood to be operating and that the investigation into the shooting would be conducted by the Wisconsin Department of Justice because the case involved a Milwaukee police officer. | 1 |
Here's something interesting from The Unz Review... Recipient Name Recipient Email =>
When Time-Warner announced it planned to merge with another major communications firm, many feared the new company would exercise near-total monopoly power. These concerns led some to call for government action to block the merger in order to protect both Time-Warner’s competitors and consumers.
No, I am not talking about Time-Warner’s recent announced plan to merge with AT&T, but the reaction to Time-Warner’s merger with (then) Internet giant AOL in 2000. Far from creating an untouchable leviathan crushing all competitors, the AOL-Time-Warner merger fell apart in under a decade.
The failure of AOL-Time-Warner demonstrates that even the biggest companies are vulnerable to competition if there is open entry into the marketplace. AOL-Time-Warner failed because consumers left them for competitors offering lower prices and/or better quality.
Corporate mergers and “hostile” takeovers can promote economic efficiency by removing inefficient management and boards of directors. These managers and board members often work together to promote their own interests instead of generating maximum returns for investors by providing consumers with affordable, quality products. Thus, laws making it difficult to launch a “hostile” takeover promote inefficient use of resources and harm investors, workers, and consumers.
Monopolies and cartels are creations of government, not markets. For example, the reason the media is dominated by a few large companies is that no one can operate a television or radio station unless they obtain federal approval and pay federal licensing fees. Similarly, anyone wishing to operate a cable company must not only comply with federal regulations, they must sign a “franchise” agreement with their local government. Fortunately, the Internet has given Americans greater access to news and ideas shut out by the government-licensed lapdogs of the “mainstream” media. This may be why so many politicians are anxious to regulate the web.
Government taxes and regulations are effective means of limiting competition in an industry. Large companies can afford the costs of complying with government regulations, costs which cripple their smaller competitors. Big business can also afford to hire lobbyists to ensure that new laws and regulations favor big business.
Examples of regulations that benefit large corporations include the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) regulations that raise costs of developing a new drug, as well as limit consumers ability to learn about natural alternatives to pharmaceuticals. Another example is the Dodd-Frank legislation, which has strengthened large financial intuitions while harming their weaker competitors.
Legislation forcing consumers to pay out-of-state sales tax on their online purchases is a classic case of business seeking to use government to harm less politically-powerful competitors. This legislation is being pushed by large brick-and-mortar stores and Internet retailers who are seeking a government-granted advantage over smaller competitors.
Many failed mergers and acquisitions result from the distorted signals sent to business and investors by the Federal Reserve’s inflationary monetary policy. Perhaps the most famous example of this is the AOL-Time-Warner fiasco, which was a direct result of the Fed-created dot.com bubble.
In a free market, mergers between businesses enable consumers to benefit from new products and reduced prices. Any businesses that charge high prices or offer substandard products will soon face competition from businesses offering consumers lower prices and/or higher quality. Monopolies only exist when government tilts the playing field in favor of well-connected crony capitalists. Therefore those concerned about excessive corporate power should join supporters of the free market in repudiating the regulations, taxes, and subsides that benefit politically-powerful businesses. The most important step is to end the boom-bust business cycle by ending the Federal Reserve. | 0 |
The Electoral College was put in place by the Founders as a safeguard against mob rule or what they called 'factions' unrepresentative of ALL Americans coming to power and taking over the government. Obviously someone as unfit and Fascist as Donald Trump meets that criterion of danger to the Republic and it only remains to see if the Electoral College will now behave with the integrity that the Founders hoped they would have.
And it is NO MORE UNFAIR for the Electoral College to say NO to American Fascism than it would be for Trump to 'win' with a MINORITY of the popular vote. | 0 |
On June 16, just two days after unarmed Republican house members were attacked in Alexandria, Virginia, gun control proponent Mark Kelly pledged to fight the national reciprocity legislation that would allow congressmen to be armed for . [Rep. Steve Scalise ( ) was left in critical condition, and four others were also wounded when the attacker opened fire during Wednesday’s congressional baseball practice. The gunman carried an “assassination” list in his pocket that contained the names of three GOP house members who were at the baseball practice. GOP lawmakers responded to the shooting by stressing a renewed focus on national reciprocity, with some pointing out that they have concealed carry licenses but cannot keep guns with them because they have to drive into Washington D. C. which has draconian gun control laws. On Thursday, Rep. Thomas Massie ( ) sought to remedy this situation by introducing legislation that would that would force D. C. to recognize the carry permit of every state. In other words, D. C. would adopt national reciprocity. But on Friday, Kelly pledged to stop any effort to pass legislation that would allow citizens to be armed in this fashion. Speaking to NPR, Kelly said he and his wife are fighting against “concealed carry reciprocity. ” He also vowed to fight efforts to remove “ zones in schools. ” He couched these statements amid a larger discussion of creating a “safer society. ” But the problem — as Wednesday’s attack showed — is that barring citizens from having guns with them for only makes them vulnerable. Congressional baseball practice attendee Rep. Mike Bishop ( ) said it made them “sitting ducks. ” Kelly spoke in favor of passing universal background checks, claiming that background checks lower crime. He did not point out that the Alexandria attacker acquired his firearms from a Federal Firearm License (FFL) holder, which means he passed background checks to get them. Kelly also failed to note that his wife, Gabby Giffords, was shot by a man who passed a background check to acquire his gun. AWR Hawkins is the Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and host of “Bullets with AWR Hawkins,” a Breitbart News podcast. He is also the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart. com. | 1 |
0 комментариев 0 поделились Фото: AP
"В конце этого года в Крым должна прийти магистральная газовая труба. И с этого момента начнется настоящая, полноценная газификация и электроснабжение уже от собственной генерации: первичный источник — газ. Мы планируем и уже осуществляем строительство электростанции на газе", — сказал Путин, выступая на организованным ОНФ "Форуме действий. Крым" в Ялте. По его словам, "с этого момента начнется действительно реальная газификация и энергообеспечение всего полуострова, включая Севастополь".
Российский лидер также напомнил о том, как прошедшей зимой с Украины на полуостров прекратили поставлять электроэнергию. По его мнению, это было "преступление против человека": "Что касается прекращения подачи воды или вот эта ситуация, связанная с прекращением подачи электроэнергии, — это, конечно, на грани преступления против человека. Взять крупный регион, в котором несколько миллионов человек проживают, и отключить от электроснабжения зимой — это, знаете, очень серьезная вещь", — сказал глава государства.
Он подчеркнул, что не понимает, на что рассчитывали те люди, которые отключили энергоснабжение в Крым.
"Думали, что все встанут на колени и будут просить подачку? Удивительные идиоты", - сказал Путин.
Недоумение вызывает и поведение международных правозащитный организаций, которые никак не выразили своего отношения к создавшейся тогда вопиющей ситуации, сказал Владимир Путин.
"У нас правозащитные организации чего-то воды в рот набрали, язык проглотили и молчат. А на самом деле это же серьезное преступление. А больницы? А дети? А старики? Все молчат, как будто так и надо. Но бог с ними, в конце концов", — посетовал президент.
Для исключения подобной ситуации, а именно — обесточивания полуострова, в будущем до конца текущего года в Крым будет проложен магистральный газопровод.
Кроме того, как рассказывала Правда. Ру, в своем выступлении на форуме ОНФ в Ялте глава государства коснулся и ряда других вопросов. В частности, как заявил президент, до 2020 года Россия потратит более 40 миллиардов рублей на обеспечение Крыма пресной водой.
"Мы направили на решение этой задачи из федерального бюджета 23 с лишним миллиарда рублей. С 2015 по 2020 г. планируется в федеральной целевой программе по развитию Крыма и Севастополя еще свыше 40 млрд руб.", — сказал Путин. Он также добавил, что эти деньги необходимо израсходовать рационально. "Федеральные и региональные органы власти эту проблему должны решить и обязательно решат, у меня в этом сомнений нет никаких".
Президент также напомнил, что на первых порах проблема с пресной водой на полуострове стояла "очень остро, особенно после того как наши соседи отключили Крым от Северо-Крымского".
Читайте последние новости Pravda. Ru на сегодня | 0 |
By Kshama Sawant / counterpunch.org
In the ten days since the election, several thousand people have phoned and emailed my Seattle City Council office in their fury over my call to shut down Donald Trump’s agenda with massive peaceful protests on Inauguration Day.
Many messages were from middle- and working-class people who had voted for Trump because they hated corporate Democrats and Hillary Clinton, and mistakenly believed that Trump was going to stand up for the ordinary Americans. Many were also racist and misogynist, saying things like, “You don’t belong here with the bull***t you spew from your c***su**er,” or “Drop dead and go back to turbanville.”
Call after call, while having zero tolerance for bigotry and threats, my staff patiently explained to the more reasonable Trump supporters that we agree working people have been sold out by corporate politicians. That we completely oppose the bipartisan, big business policies of “free trade” deals like the TPP and NAFTA, corporate tax handouts, and the close ties of both parties to Wall Street. Callers were surprised to learn that while I fiercely oppose Trump, I did not back Hillary Clinton (I campaigned for Bernie Sanders, and later Jill Stein). Many were simply not reachable, as they spewed hate on all those protesting their president-elect. They will have to experience Donald Trump’s policies in office to see him for what he is: a con man and representative of the billionaire class who sold the lie that he will bring back the American Dream.
My first grim thoughts as I saw some of the horrifying emails was that I will be far from the only person targeted after the dangerous rise of Donald Trump. Bigots are feeling emboldened. Already a surge in bullying and hate crimes has taken place, and the KKK felt confident to hold a rally in North Carolina to celebrate Trump’s victory.
Disconcerting in a different way have been the hit pieces in local publications like The Seattle Times and The Stranger attacking me and other Stein supporters, and trying to shift blame for the outcome of the presidential election. The Stranger article even went so far as to say that since I didn’t support Clinton, I should not continue to call protests against Trump: that this would be “poor form.”
But as everyone from prominent Clinton surrogate Robert Reich to the New York Times have more or less acknowledged, in failing to defeat the most unpopular major party candidate in modern American history, the Democrats have no one to blame but themselves. The NY Times editorial board questioned the disastrous strategy of attempting a “Clinton restoration at a moment when the nation was impatient to escape the status quo,” while Reich called for a “new Democratic Party,” and said the election served as a “repudiation of the American power structure, including the old Democratic Party.”
At every stage of the Democratic Primary, the DNC and party leadership fiercely opposed Bernie Sanders and backed Clinton to the hilt. In the general election, Clinton could have reached out to young and working class Sanders supporters instead of arrogantly assuming she didn’t need them. By choosing to tell the millions of people who have been sold out and disenfranchised by neoliberal policies over several decades that America is “already great,” Clinton received several millions fewer votes than Obama in 2012, including fewer votes from women.
Now, having assisted Trump’s ascension to the White House, Clinton and this same Democratic Party leadership tell us we should “give him a chance.” But make no mistake, Trump’s success is not “our success,” in spite of Obama’s comments to that effect. And while we would be happy to be surprised by any progressive measures from a Trump administration, we simply have no time to waste in building an organized opposition against the damage he has already vowed to do, including his promise to deport three million immigrants.
We must bring together millions of progressive workers and young people to build a wall of mass resistance against Trump, and to defend immigrants, women, Muslims, LGBTQ people and all others targeted by his presidency.
Hundreds of thousands of people have already poured into the streets since November 8th. On the night of the election result, my organization, Socialist Alternative began to organize protests around the country for the next day. More than 50,000 answered that call: in Seattle, New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and Oakland. Many more protests have followed, as well as dozens of student walkouts, including 5,000 Seattle students on Monday alone.
Our movement will need to be independent of both major political parties. The Democratic Party cannot be relied on to stop Trump, anymore now than during the election. And to truly defeat the right, we will need to build our own mass party – a party of, by and for the 99% – completely free of corporate cash and corporate influence.
We have a historic responsibility to fight back against this administration. On January 20th and 21st, activists will be organizing protests and student walkouts across the country. Hundreds of thousands will gather for the Women’s March on Washington DC and to “Occupy Inauguration,” to send a message to the new president that there is no space whatsoever for his bigoted agenda in America.
I hope you will join us.
Kshama Sawant is Seattle City Council Woman and member of Socialist Alternative . 3.8 · | 0 |
Gambling on the Unknowable Trump November 13, 2016
Donald Trump’s victory may have shaken up the System but it also revealed a recklessness (or a desperation) among Americans in handing over such immense power to someone so untested, says Michael Brenner.
By Michael Brenner
At this moment of unprecedented upheaval, it is striking that some things never change. We are being subject to a tidal wave of interpretation and speculation as to what a Trump administration means for American foreign relations in regard to inter alia Russia, Syria, the Iran nuclear deal, the “pivot to Asia,” trans-Atlantic ties and, of course, Mexico.
It is entirely natural for a distraught political elite to wonder what comes next from this unstable, quixotic showman who soon will be sitting in the White House. It is neither natural nor appropriate, though, to make believe that Washington in experiencing a transition of power to be approached in standard terms. The unpalatable truth is that we have no idea as to what Trump will do or not do. President-elect Donald Trump.
Trump’s campaign remarks are the sole evidence available for indications of the direction that he will take. That is an extremely flimsy a basis for forecasting actions abroad. For two reasons. Candidates’ calculated sound bites while running almost never are a reliable guide to their thinking – in its rudimentary form or as it takes shape under the influence of real life conditions and the counsel of advisers.
Consider Barack Obama, a far more thoughtful, sober and intelligent man. Remember the objective of eliminating nuclear weapons (rather than committing $1 trillion to the development of a more “usable” arsenal). Remember closing Guantanamo and reining in electronic surveillance of Americans. Remember ending the engagement of American troops in the “GWOT” (we now are fighting in 38 places by one means or another).
Remember “resetting” relations with Vladimir Putin’s Russia to emphasize dialogue. Remember the stated goal of normalizing relations with the Mullahs in Teheran instead of treating them as inherently hostile to America. Remember promoting democracy as the long-term cure to what ails the Middle East (instead, backing full tilt the Gulf autocracies, including Saudi Arabia’s homicidal war on the Yemeni people; Sisi’s oppressive autocracy in Egypt; and Israel’s increasing brutalization of the Palestinians).
Points of Demagoguery
Second, Trump’s comments about foreign policy were mere points of demagoguery meant, as with everything else he said, to appeal to the primitive instincts of an aroused audience. There is not the slightest sign that he had thought seriously about any of it. Donald Trump finds serious thinking itself an alien mental activity. Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, one of the few Senate Republicans to support Donald Trump, donning one of Trump’s “Make America Great Again” caps.
Moreover, he has few experienced advisers in his entourage. Apart from some conversations with retired General Michael Flynn, the off-beat former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, and the chairman of his national security advisory panel, James Woolsey, former Director of the CIA, his “advisers” have been a collection of odd-balls, non-entities and dogmatists. Woolsey himself is an uber-hawk whose views on all matters of consequence align with those of the neocons, the Cheney-like hard nationalists and Hillary Clinton – and are diametrically opposite to Trump’s much publicized iconoclastic remarks.
So what we will be seeing between now and the Inauguration, and afterwards, is a mad rush by a horde of aspirants for the power and access to occupy Donald Trump’s mind – if they can find it.
This is the brutal reality. Since it provides little of substance for the habitual commentators, they are inclined to play a game of make-believe – conjuring supposedly meaningful evidence from what is a kaleidoscope of emotional outbursts and a fantasia of day dreams.
There is good reason to believe that within six months of Trump’s taking office, when his administrations undertakes its first half-baked measures abroad, the think tank crowd will be writing articles and monographs on “The Trump Doctrine.”
In other words, the same mentality that helped get us into this mess. Americans have become committed to a new categorical imperative: I sound off, therefore I am.
If Truth be told, the America we have known and imagined is ended. It never will return. In terms of relations with others, image is of enormous importance. The United States has gained great advantage from being seen as exceptional. From its earliest days, it fascinated and gave inspiration as the first working democracy, as the embodiment of the hope-filled New World, as the land of the common man and common decency.
Later, as it grew into a world power, it held the allure for many as being somehow beyond the world’s pervasive tawdriness. These images held even as contradicted by slavery and racism, by imperial wars of expansion, by signs of hypocrisy. America did tip the balance in favor of the right side in two world wars; it did demonstrate uncommon magnanimity in its support for German and Japanese reconstruction and democracy. Even when playing the game of power politics, it retained a measure of credibility as the one underwriter and arbitrator to whom others might resort.
The resulting “soft power” or “soft influence” has been a unique asset. Already dissipated to a high degree over the decades of the Global War On Terror, it now is destined to fade into a shadow of its former self. A blatantly racist, xenophobic, studiously ignorant, and belligerent country cannot retain the respect of other governments or the high regard of their peoples.
A country so feckless as to choose Trump the buffoon as its President is mocking itself. The negative impact will be compounded as the United States is riven by internal conflicts of all kinds, repressive actions and perhaps another serious economic crisis.
The damage to America’s standing in the world should hardly be a surprise; yet many are inclined to underestimate the effect. One cannot appreciate what we have become by talking to foreign friends on the Washington circuit, or by listening to the polite regrets of those around the world who are interviewed by the media. Walk the streets of cities abroad for unscripted reactions to this historic act of national self-mutilation.
We can expect that whoever winds up in senior policy positions in a Trump administration will downplay these intangibles – if they even acknowledge them. In this, they will be encouraged by the tradition of self-delusion that has become a feature of American thinking about its place in the world.
Think of the Middle East where just about everything that we have been doing since 2001 has been guided by a fantastical view of the region – from Iraq, to Syria, to Yemen, to the Gulf, to Turkey, to Palestine and Israel.
Divorced from Reality
This tendency to divorce ourselves from reality so as to perpetuate myths of American omnipotence and superiority is also witnessed at the operational level. Consider these examples: President George W. Bush in a flight suit after landing on the USS Abraham Lincoln to give his “Mission Accomplished” speech about the Iraq War on May 1, 2003
–The U.S. habitually characterizes anybody who resists our use of force against them as evil and criminal. Thus, the insurgents in Iraq are “anti-Iraqi” forces; the Houthis in Yemen are Iranian proxies, the Palestinians are nothing but terrorists, the Russian population in the Donbas region of Ukraine are Russian commandos directed from the Kremlin with the aim of unraveling all of Europe and NATO, etc. etc.
–American policy-makers find it convenient to pursue strategies that entail squaring circles. The outcome is predictable. The outstanding case in point is Syria where for four years they have committed themselves to ousting Assad by force while continuing the fight against violent Islamist groups. That has placed us in the absurd position of allying with Al Qaeda (providing indirect material, and indirect political support) while still fulminating about the grave danger of terrorism.
–We present ourselves as the promoter and well-wisher of democracy while giving unstinting support to oppressive regimes in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and elsewhere while facilitating the ouster of democratically elected reformist leaders in Honduras, Bolivia. Ecuador, Bolivia, Paraguay and Brazil.
These self-delusional practices have prepared the psychological ground for the grand illusion to come in assuming that the America of Trump will continue to draw the world’s admiration and its deference to American leadership.
Normalizing Trump
The inclination to “normalize” the transition in treating Trump, his utterances and his odd-lot entourage as if they somehow could be squeezed into conventional molds is understandable. It is a manifestation of an unwitting coping strategy for coming to terms with the shattering event of his election.
Americans in general are pursuing a similar psychological strategy for the sake of preserving the conception of themselves and their country deeply rooted in their consciousness. Hence, the impulse to minimize the singularity of this revolutionary development without precedent – not only in the United States but anywhere in the democratic world. This is one instance where American “exceptionalism” is not prized.
This is a natural reaction to a brutal Truth about Americans – and its dire consequences. For the choice of Trump reveals most Americans as immature and prone to juvenile behavior. To vote for Trump is the ultimate act of political immaturity.
There are, of course, identifiable reasons why many were drawn to the flamboyant candidate, why his demagoguery resonated, why his exaggerated imagery struck a receptive nerve. However, for that emotional response to translate into the actual selection of this man to be President crosses a critical threshold.
Children – at times – let emotion rule their conduct. Children only weakly feel the imperative to impose logic and a modicum reason on their impulses. Children disregard consequences. Children overlook the downside in their implicit weighing of the balance in giving in to those impulses or not. Grown-ups do not.
Immediate satisfaction – at all and any cost – does not eclipse other considerations for adults. Even a child’s tantrum usually lasts no more than ten minutes or so. The tantrum of Trump voters has lasted 18 months.
That’s pathological – anyway you cut it. Admittedly, some Trump supporters share his perverted view of the world – even if contradicted by his own personal history. Let’s say 12 to 15 percent of the electorate. A larger slice was represented by dyed-in-the-wool Republicans who relished sticking it to the Hillary and the Democrats to such a degree that their thrill at the spectacle overcame their realization that Trump was unfit for the office. Indeed, many probably expected him to lose and, therefore, felt free to go along for the fun of it.
That leaves roughly 10 to 20 percent of the electorate who placed their emotional gratification above their responsibilities as citizens and above the wellbeing of the Republic. That is the difference between the nearly 50 percent he received and what a broad rejection would represent. They constitute the hard core of the culpable juveniles.
What about those who could not stand Hillary, who felt an irresistible impulse to express that feeling somehow? Many options were open to them: abstain, vote for one of the minor candidates, go to the gym and exhaust oneself on an elliptical trainer, get drunk, smoke some weed, pick a fight with one’s spouse. Any of these represents more grown-up behavior than voting for Donald Trump.
By comparison, in France when Jean Marie Le Pen – candidate of the racist far-right party, the Front National – FN, made it into the second round of their presidential election, he and his party were rejected by 82.2 percent of the electorate. In other words, the French rallied together to reject Le Pen. That is what a mature polity does. And Le Pen is sane, albeit a crypto-fascist.
Michael Brenner is a professor of international affairs at the University of Pittsburgh. | 0 |
(Want to get this briefing by email? Here’s the .) Good evening. Here’s the latest. 1. There have been doping problems, housing problems, sewage problems, torch failures, one arrest of an athlete and a scary virus to contend with, but despite it all, the 2016 Rio Olympics have prevailed. The opening ceremony began at 7 Eastern tonight (Our live coverage is here. ). We’ve got 24 percent of our sports desk at the Games — they’re carrying 64 bottles of bug repellent — and all eyes will be on the athlete selected to light the caldron. And when Simone Biles, the American gymnast believed to be the best in history, competes, all eyes will be on her check out a detailed interactive on what makes her so good. _____ 2. The American economy is also looking good. The latest jobs report had a lot of positive news: 255, 000 jobs were added last month, wages went up, and more people are looking for, and finding, work. This makes it more likely that the Federal Reserve will raise rates, though probably not as early as September. There’s no question that the strong economy helps Hillary Clinton in her quest for the presidency, our columnist writes. _____ 3. Donald J. Trump was in Iowa and Wisconsin on Friday, while Hillary Clinton, who rarely gives news conferences, spoke at a convention of minority journalists in Washington, taking more questions from reporters than she has in months. This was a tough week for Mr. Trump, including conflicts with prominent Republicans, but it’s nearly impossible for the party to fire him and nominate someone else before the election. On Friday evening, Mr. Trump belatedly endorsed the primary campaign of Speaker Paul D. Ryan, seeking to heal his rift with the party. _____ 4. The United States is on pace to meet and even surpass President Obama’s goal of resettling 10, 000 Syrian refugees in the country by the end of September. Mr. Obama announced the goal in October, and so far, 8, 000 refugees have been allowed into the country despite a fierce political debate that has become a theme of the presidential campaign and despite the refusal of many states to accept them. _____ 5. Don’t call me “honey. ” It’s a sentiment reflected by many female lawyers, who say it’s not rare for them to be addressed by pet names or subjected to grating remarks by male colleagues in the courtroom. Above, Lori Rifkin, a lawyer, said she was “well accustomed” to such comments. A group representing 5, 200 women in law is pushing for the American Bar Association to amend their rules of professional conduct to prohibit harassment and discrimination. The amendment, which has been criticized as inhibiting the ability to speak freely, will come up for a vote on Monday. _____ 6. The party that helped liberate black South Africans from rule has had its worst election since the end of apartheid. The African National Congress, which was the party of Nelson Mandela, has become mired in corruption. Above, members of the party discussed election results. Two of the most highly contested races, in Johannesburg and Pretoria, were too close to call on Friday. _____ 7. Police in Chicago released video from the night that a black teenager was fatally shot by an officer after crashing a stolen car, but it did not show the moment of the shooting. The officer who shot Paul O’Neal, 18, on July 28 was wearing a body camera, but officials have said it was not recording at the time. A lawyer for Mr. O’Neal’s family called the teenager’s death an execution and accused the police of a . _____ 8. The United States is 10 months into the rollout of credit cards, and it seems as if frustration is only growing. Though things are likely to improve — more businesses will have chip readers and be able to use them, and the transaction time may get shorter — it will remain up to each merchant whether to upgrade, and that awful noise isn’t going anywhere. Maybe it’s time to try a mobile wallet option. _____ 9. The day we’ve been waiting for has finally arrived … or so we thought. Frank Ocean’s new album, “Boys Don’t Cry,” was set to be released on Friday, but it has yet to materialize. The album was expected to be released exclusively through Apple music, which gives the artist more control — and that makes musical tinkering possible. The singer is, after all, a notorious and perfectionist. _____ 10. Eight people have leapt or fallen to their deaths this year from the George Washington Bridge, which connects Manhattan and New Jersey. But last Thursday, a bicyclist on his way home from work prevented a man from become the ninth. Julio De Leon, above, cannot recall his exact words but said he told the young man something along the lines of: “Don’t do it. We love you, my heart” before curling an arm around him and, with the help of a bystander who had been taking a photo of the situation, pulled the man back to safety. Your Evening Briefing is posted at 6 p. m. Eastern. And don’t miss Your Morning Briefing, posted weekdays at 6 a. m. Eastern, and Your Weekend Briefing, posted at 6 a. m. Sundays. Want to look back? Here’s last night’s briefing. What did you like? What do you want to see here? Let us know at briefing@nytimes. com. | 1 |
“Who are you?” I asked my daughter, curious how the concept of identity applied to a girl living in “Brexit” London. She looked at me as if I were crazy. “I am Mali,” she said. “Mali Agnes Grace,” giving her full name. What else, I pressed her. She thought hard. “Ein Mensch,” she said. A human. Then: “A mammal. ” We at The New York Times recently asked women around the world to tell us about their decision to keep or change their names when they married. We heard from more than 16, 000 readers — many of whom talked about how their names defined them. In a year that has challenged some building blocks of who I am, it got me thinking about my own family. The name my daughter carries with such easy pride in many ways tells the story of Europe’s transformation from warring Continent to postnational laboratory of peace in which multiple identities, at least for some of us, have been happily layered. Mali is a Welsh name, a tribute to my husband’s visceral Welshness. He grew up in Cardiff, the capital of Wales went to a school and still frets over every rugby game with England as if it were 1282 all over again and his plucky little nation was fighting subjugation by the English crown. Agnes is a name carried by several women in my German family, not least my paternal grandmother. One of her brothers was killed during a bombing mission to England in World War I, but she welcomed two English into her family after World War II. Grace is the family name handed down on my husband’s paternal English side of the family. His grandfather, a decorated officer of the British Empire, was captured by the Germans in 1940 — as his grandmother swiftly pointed out to me the first time we met. “Do you know Laufen?” she asked. “My husband was a prisoner of war there. ” It was one of the rare moments in my life when I was acutely aware of being German. But things have changed. On June 24, I woke up to the news that Britain, my current home, is leaving the European Union. Ever since, my German identity has stopped being an afterthought. I belong to that lucky generation of Western Europeans who did not experience war and were barely touched by the Cold War. I was a child when the Berlin Wall fell, and I came of age in the 1990s, that brief vacation from history before Sept. 11. My generation studied, dated, lived and worked across borders, taking for granted the peace our grandparents had fought for and our parents had harnessed and amplified. My mother marched for abortion rights in the 1970s, and my father was a leader in the 1968 student movement in Berlin that forced open the taboos about Germany’s Nazi past. War is not an abstract concept to him. To this day, the firecrackers on New Year’s Eve remind him of the bombs falling on Hamburg when he was 5 years old. When he reads about Aleppo, his eyes well up. The big debates of my youth centered on the market economy. Nationalism, nativism, fundamentalism and identity — these were concepts that belonged in the 20th century. Or so I thought. Will they now define my children’s future? What will their names and their passports mean to them when they grow up? When we named our children we opted for my husband’s surname, Grace. It had a nice ring to it, we thought. One European name was enough, and so, surely, was one European passport. All three children are British citizens. But as 2016 winds down, given Britain’s decision to quit the European Union, I am applying for their German passports. When I married, I kept my own surname. I was 32 and had been a journalist for eight years. My name was my personal and professional identity. But when I traveled alone with my children, having a different last name from them sometimes raised questions. I eventually added my husband’s last name to my passport, although I do not use it in everyday life. I now find myself wishing that I had given my children my last name as well. A double surname would have been unwieldy, but it would have been European instead of just British — and it would have signaled a connection to me. I come from a line of strong women. This, too, is something that has been on my mind this year: Did I let them down by not giving my children my own name? My paternal grandmother, who came from a family of Swabian aristocrats in southwestern Germany, studied medicine just as German women won the right to vote. But when she married my grandfather she had to give up her career, her noble title — and her name. My mother studied engineering in the 1960s. She was the first in her family to go to university and the only woman in her class. For a time, she cut her hair short and called herself “Max. ” Being one of the boys, as she put it, kept the sexist jokes at bay. When she married my father, she paid five Deutschmarks for permission to hold a double name — with his name first. By the time I got married, in France in 2007, keeping my own name was the default setting on the paperwork. My daughters do not seem to think too much about their gender. One says she wants to become a doctor. The other one a firefighter. So far being female is not a factor in their aspirations. My older daughter, Elena, who is 7 and has been learning about world religions, recently came home from school and announced that she was Muslim. She took off her shoes, got to her knees and pressed her forehead to the kitchen floor (facing south, but no matter). This is how you pray, she explained. (Her sister, Mali, was so impressed that she promptly told the extended family. Asked whether he was Muslim, too, her Welsh cousin replied: “No. I’m vegetarian. ”) Six months after the Brexit vote, my children’s world remains effortlessly inclusive. We are all mammals. I speak German to them, their father Welsh. Ask them where they are from and they will tell you “Brixton,” our bustling colorful neighborhood in south London. Their friends’ parents are Portuguese, Indian, Catalan, Ethiopian, Nigerian and occasionally even English. But the mood in Britain is changing. And in subtle ways it is changing even at our school, which is in a part of London that overwhelmingly voted to remain in the European Union. This year, an email from the head teacher went around, asking parents to refrain from discussing Brexit in the yard. Passions were running high among some parents. The children, though, are mostly unaware of how the world is turning upside down around them. When my husband explained that many Britons wanted to leave Europe, our older daughter was baffled. “Where do they want to go?” she asked. “Africa?” | 1 |
The judgment of the Ninth Circuit upholding the temporary restraining order (TRO) against President Donald Trump’s recent executive order restricting travel from seven countries would have allowed one of the hijackers to sue the government to come to, or stay in, the United States. [Under the court’s novel theory of legal standing, “injuries” to public universities that result from foreign students and teachers not being able to enter the country give the states standing to sue. Moreover, the court held that foreigners with visas have due process rights under the Fifth Amendment of the U. S. Constitution, even though the precedent it cited applied to people already in the United States. Those due process rights could also be asserted by states on behalf of people in the U. S. illegally or “who have a relationship with a U. S. resident or … institution,” the court held in its ruling. Hani Hasan Hanjour was one of the four pilots in the September 11, 2001 attack. He flew American Airlines flight 77 into the Pentagon, killing 184 people, including everyone on the flight. He was in the U. S. on a student visa, according to the Commission report. He was from Saudi Arabia, a country not covered by the executive order. By the reasoning of the Ninth Circuit, however, Hanjour would have due process rights to challenge his exclusion from the United States once he had been granted a student visa. His relationship with a U. S. “institution” — in this case, an English as a Second Language school in Oakland, California — would have been enough to grant him standing. A state could have sued on his behalf even while he was still abroad. Hanjour did not, in fact, attend the English as a Second Language school in California, but resumed flight training in Arizona that he had begun on an earlier visit, the Commission found. Joel B. Pollak is Senior at Breitbart News. He was named one of the “most influential” people in news media in 2016. His new book, How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak. | 1 |
CHILLING: What Netanyahu Is Bracing for Obama to Do During Last Days in Office
“And most amazingly, I can vote for someone that I know fought for me and called my name so many times,” he continued. “He met my family and gave them a $10,000 gift.”
He added that unlike Trump, Democrat nominee Hillary Clinton had never once either mentioned him or contacted his family.
“As a woman who says she stands for women’s rights when she was foreign minister, she never contacted my mom, wife, sister or my daughter,” he wrote. “She never did anything to help when I was in prison as an American pastor who was detained in Iran as a hostage.”
Read his full post below:
In another post published two days later, this one about the relation between King Cyrus of Persia and Trump, the pastor added these three powerful words: “Vote for Trump.”
He also explained how God had chosen King Cyrus to “save Israel” (see the Old Testament book of Ezra) — and how he was now doing the same with Trump. | 0 |
On Friday, mainstream media reporters from the New York Times and CNN whined after President Donald Trump’s White House relegated them to the rear of the Rose Garden during Trump’s press conference with Romanian President Klaus Iohannis. “We were in the equivalent of Siberia, no pun intended, when it comes to where we were seated,” CNN’s Jim Acosta reportedly said on Friday evening. “That could be seen as an oversight on the part of the White House staff but it could also be seen as retaliation over the reporting we’re doing over here at CNN. ” CNN’s Wolf Blitzer said it was “outrageous. ” And Acosta, mustering up the courage mainstream media reporters never found while Barack Obama was president, said the poor seating assignments are “not going to deter us from what we’re doing over here. ” Breitbart’s Matt Boyle has described Acosta as “a vehemently media figure in the heart of the opposition party’s mothership CNN. ” CNN was placed away from the other TV networks in the equivalent of Siberia (no pun intended) at today’s news conference. — Jim Acosta (@Acosta) June 9, 2017, Of course, this may just be an oversight by WH staff. But it could also be seen as retaliation for our coverage. I have emailed @PressSec https: . — Jim Acosta (@Acosta) June 9, 2017, Trump has referred to outlets like CNN and the Times as part of the “opposition party” and slammed them for publishing “fake news” based on anonymous sources. The New York Times was sent to the very last row a day after former FBI director James Comey revealed on Thursday while testifying before the Senate Intelligence Committee that the Times published a fake news story in February suggesting that Trump’s campaign had colluded with Russians a year before the 2016 election. The White House has put the New York Times in the last row at today’s joint press conference with Trump and Romania’s president pic. twitter. — Gabby Morrongiello (@gabriellahope_) June 9, 2017, “In the main, it was not true,” Comey said of the story, which was based on four anonymous sources. “And again, all of you know this. Maybe the American people don’t. The challenge, and I’m not picking on reporters about writing stories about classified information, is the people talking about it often don’t really know what’s going on, and going on are not talking about it. We don’t call the press to say, hey, you don’t that thing wrong about the sensitive topic. We have to leave it there. ” In addition to the Times’ “fake news” story, Comey also revealed that have been “many, many” stories in the mainstream press about the Trump campaign and Russia that have been “dead wrong. ” | 1 |
Email
Over the past year, a few high-profile court cases involving rape have spurred an intense national discussion on the topic. Whether it was Brock Turner, a Stanford swimmer who was sentenced to six months in a county jail for his rape of an unconscious woman, or Owen Labrie, a student at an elite prep school who raped a 14-year-old classmate but was arraigned on lesser charges, our justice system has tried to convict rapists with varying degrees of success. As a father, I look at these cases, and I can’t help but worry for my children. In times like these, we must take a stand, and we must teach our sons that being brought to trial and then convicted of rape is simply, utterly wrong.
Our children, and more specifically, our boys, need to know that they should never, under any circumstances, be put in a situation where they could potentially lose a case accusing them of sexual assault. My son knows that, and every parent should make an effort to teach their boys the same.
Whether they made the vile, unforgivable mistake of having a bad lawyer, calling an unreliable witness, or openly admitting to their crime to an undecided jury, America’s youth must understand that being convicted of rape should never, ever happen. Going to court for sexual assault is one thing, but being declared guilty is quite another, and as responsible parents, we need to do everything in our power to ensure that no child crosses that line, no questions asked.
Bottom line, we need to do a better job at showing our sons that there is no worse mistake a young man can make than being declared guilty of rape, not now, not ever.
I don’t care who you are—if you have a son, you need to teach him that being convicted of rape, even just one time, is unforgivable. The truth is, the moment your boy loses a rape trial is the moment that lives are ruined, and there’s absolutely no taking that back.
As a father of a young man myself, I would not be able to live with myself if he someday went to jail just because of something as easily preventable as a sexual assault conviction. When I look into my 8-year-old Callum’s eyes, the last thing I want to think about is my little guy becoming the type of man who can’t somehow weasel his way out of a high-profile court case, in front of all his friends, family, and the public at large.
Bottom line, we need to do a better job at showing our sons that there is no worse mistake a young man can make than being declared guilty of rape, not now, not ever. Because if we want this generation of boys to grow into men that we truly take pride in, we have to start teaching them that any young man who gets punished for rape brings shame not only to himself but also to his gender, and this country as a whole.
So please, don’t wait. Please talk to your son today about his responsibility to never be convicted of rape, and to speak up if he ever sees someone else in danger of being convicted of rape. Our future depends on it. | 0 |
REYNOSA, Tamaulipas — A kindergarten teacher did her best to keep her students calm as cartel gunmen and police officers engaged in a series of firefights in this border city. [At least six individuals were killed on during the most recent bout of violence that spread fear and terror through this city as cartel gunmen continue to fight for control. As Breitbart Texas reported, two rival factions of the Gulf Cartel have been fighting for control of Reynosa, the fighting has led to at least 42 murdered individuals, including a police officer and one innocent bystander. On Friday morning, rival factions of the Gulf Cartel began clashing throughout the city. One of the fierce clashes took place near a kindergarten school where young children were forced to huddle under their desks in an effort to avoid being struck by a stray bullet. A video taken inside one of the classrooms revealed the moment when a female teacher tries to calm down her students. “There’s a situation of risk so we all have to get down,” the unidentified teacher can be heard in the video trying to calm down the students in Spanish. “Everyone remain calm, nothing bad is going to happen. I am here with you all … Keep your little heads covered. ” The teacher continues to calm her students while singing children’s songs. Violent cartel clashes continued throughout the city as rival cartel gunmen fought each other while authorities tried to arrest them. Editor’s Note: Breitbart Texas traveled to the Mexican States of Tamaulipas, Coahuila, and Nuevo León to recruit citizen journalists willing to risk their lives and expose the cartels silencing their communities. The writers would face certain death at the hands of the various cartels that operate in those areas including the Gulf Cartel and Los Zetas if a pseudonym were not used. Breitbart Texas’ Cartel Chronicles are published in both English and in their original Spanish. This article was written by “A. C. Del Angel” from Reynosa, Tamaulipas. | 1 |
Several students at the University of admit that Muslims should not be forced by law to do business with Christians. Those same students, however, had a hard time agreeing that Christians or conservative Americans have the right to decline work that conflicts with their conscience or religion. [In a viral video published by nonprofit Alliance Defending Freedom (ADL) students were asked if they support Sophie Theallet’s decision not to dress Melania Trump. Several students agreed that Theallet — one of many fashion designers declining to dress the first family — has every right to refuse to dress Mrs. Trump. The students were also asked if a Muslim singer solicited by a Christian church to sing had a right to refuse. Again, the students agreed that the Muslim singer has a right to not sing in a Christian church. “Yeah, if that goes against your religious view, I feel you have a right to turn that down,” one student said. The students also said that a law forcing Muslims to sing inside a Christian church should not exist. When asked if a Christian photographer should be allowed by law to decline to shoot a wedding, the students appeared torn. “For them,” the ADL notes, “it seems that the freedom to live and work according to your beliefs really depends on what you believe. ” Incidentally, Wisconsin resident Amy Lawson, a blogger and owner of Amy Lynn Photography, is challenging a state law forcing her to take photographs for a marriage. Watch the full ADL video below: Follow Jerome Hudson on Twitter @jeromeehudson. | 1 |
Getty - Michael Loccisano, Mike Nelson
Despite the fact that Hillary Clinton is the one running for president, as the election looms ever closer, new details continue to emerge about former President Bill Clinton — particularly regarding his alleged affairs and sexual assaults.
Gennifer Flowers has long claimed that she engaged in a consensual affair with the former president while he was still governor of Arkansas. The affair lasted some 12 years, according to Flowers, who refers to her former boss as “the love of her life.”
When she first went public with allegations of the affair, she provided the press with a series of tape-recorded phone calls as evidence. But there was something else in that alleged audio, something that was all but overlooked until Flowers gave a new interview this past week to Breitbart's Aaron Klein.
In the midst of several conversations regarding a lawsuit alleging that Clinton had engaged in numerous affairs, Flowers also recorded a brief exchange referencing her job.
The job wasn't anything special on the surface — a clerical position working for the state of Arkansas, making around $17,000 per year. Flowers secured the job just over a year prior to Clinton's run for the presidency.
But prior to getting the job, Flowers sent a letter in which she told Clinton about her financial troubles. The National Memo reported on the contents of that letter:
"Gennifer wrote Clinton again on February 25. 'Since we were unable to connect by phone,' the letter began, 'I thought I should drop you a note.' Flowers complained that Gaddy hadn’t been very successful in helping her and that her financial situation was dire. She enclosed a copy of her lawyer’s letter threatening to sue the radio station, and closed by asking Clinton to 'Please, be in touch.'
Three months later, Gaddy sent Flowers to the Arkansas Merit System to be tested for an administrative assistant position that paid $17,524."
As Clinton prepared his campaign for the presidency, he and Flowers spoke again on the phone — after a woman in her office had complained that she was more qualified for the job — and Flowers again allegedly recorded their conversations :
GF – But anyway, then Wednesday, there was a grievance filed in my office when I got the job by a girl who felt like she should have gotten it, a black girl named (deleted). And they called me as a witness. So I go in and uh, nothing big came of it. It’s just that they were questioning me about how I found out about the job. And I said, “Well, that personnel said it that it was a possibility there would be a position,” and then uh, “they told me that it would be advertised in the newspaper. And it was and I pursued it from there."
BC – Good for you.
GF – Well the only thing that concerns me, where I’m, where I’m concerned at this point is the state job.
BC – Yeah. I never thought about that, but as long as you say you’ve just been looking for one, you’d uh, check on it. If they ever asked if you’d talked to me about it, you can say no.
GF – Well and I would. But I’m… here is the thing I’ve got to consider, too, is I’ve gotta go in there to work every day. You know what I mean?
BC – Yep.
GF – And if, and if these people start talking or someone in the press…
BC – Well, have they been nice to you there?
GF – Yeah they have been. But I don’t, you know, I mean, I just want you to know what’s going on. And I’ll be glad to hang in there.
BC – Has the, has the…
GF – But if it gets real…
Clinton did eventually admit to having sexual relations with Flowers, though he insisted there had only been a single encounter.
Flowers, who has never been a fan of Hillary Clinton's, has come out in recent months in support of Donald Trump. She was one of the women Trump invited to sit in the front row during the debates in an effort to make the Clintons uncomfortable.
You can listen to Klein's interview with Flowers below: | 0 |
Lincoln Applegate Hahn November 4, 2016 @ 6:30 pm
We’ve seen your “French Values”…. and they are the problem …. comme ci comme ca (like this and that) ? Etti November 4, 2016 @ 6:09 pm
What a foolish man! He believes that accepting migrants and teaching them to learn French will see them in the French Parliament. Of course you will and they will be forcing sharia law on to the French population not making the country more civilised. Lisa November 4, 2016 @ 6:03 pm
Because rightly or wrongly, people project their view of the world onto others.We live according to the golden rule and don’t do to others that which we do not want them to.do to us. Many cannot fathom or conceive just how vile the followers of the murderous paedophile can be. It’s incomprehensible. Even animals that have been traumatised and abused don’t behave like that when rescued. Europeans have mostly been peaceful for the last 70 years because they made a concerted effort to live in peace and to uphold dignity of life and human rights. That came at a price. Followers of the paedophile savage are socialised differently. They are pathetic and emotionally infantile. In the West we are taught to take personal responsibility for our actions. They are taught to blame everyone but themselves often turning victims into the guilty in the case of raped women. In the West violent displays of anger are frowned upon and we are taught to apologise for our wrong doIngs. Muslims have a warped and messed up sense of honour. An honour they will gladly kill their families to restore. In short they accept everything that is a crime in our countries as somehow permissible. Incompatible. In the West they are given human rights they don’t deserve and freedoms they can’t handle. Proven recipe for disaster. You have to be very very naive to believe that people who are fed a steady diet of intolerance, opression and hatred since birth will miraculously change just because they cross a border from hell hole to civilsed country. It should be obvious by now that Muslims born in europe cannot be integrated so what hope do we have integrating the rest. Nicolai sennels wrote a great paper on why islam is prone to creating monsters. Puts it all into perspective and is a must read in my opinion. | 0 |
Students4Justice, a student activist group at the University of Michigan, is demanding campus officials provide them with “a permanent designated space on central campus for Black students and students of color to organize and do social justice work. ”[The student activists are disappointed with school administrators and launched a petition aimed at University President Mark Schlissel. They claim he has shown “lackluster leadership” in “protecting the safety” of students on campus. The activist group spent the last month marching on campus, holding and even protested outside of Schlissel’s home “in the middle of the night. ” “Our president has blatantly ignored us and it is time for us to speak up. We have been told that our demands are ‘rude,’” states a Facebook post. “We are calling on someone to care about students’ concerns and to lead us with integrity and help us fight against the oppression and hateful acts that try to destroy us and our community. ” The Michigan Review — an independent student news outlet that first reported Student4Justice’s list of demands — reports the group’s insistence on a segregated space for students of color to launch social justice projects is raising eyebrows, given that the university has already begun construction on a $10 million center for students in the center of campus. “The same organization that criticizes the University for failing to create ‘an environment that engages in diversity, equity and inclusion,’ is calling upon the University to undermine these ideals by facilitating a sort of de facto segregation? One where space and resources are designated for students based solely on the color of their skin?” the Michigan Review reported. “To advocate for the ideals of diversity, equity and inclusion, while simultaneously calling upon the University to sanction these spaces on campus is both unprincipled and laughably regressive. ” Students4Justice’s list of demands, the College Fix reports, insists that school administrators offer “‘marginalized” students ‘when oppressive attacks occur,’ increasing the affirmative action of ‘Black, Arab, and other PoC’ in tenured faculty, more readily alerting students on campus of ‘bias incidents,’ and offering more financial aid for those of lower socioeconomic status. ” “Our president has blatantly ignored us and it is time for us to speak up. We have been told that our demands are ‘rude,’” states a Facebook post. “We are calling on someone to care about students’ concerns and to lead us with integrity and help us fight against the oppression and hateful acts that try to destroy us and our community. ” Follow Jerome Hudson on Twitter: @JeromeEHudson | 1 |
Rail Traffic Depression: 292 Union Pacific Engines Are Sitting In The Arizona Desert Doing Nothing May 4th, 2016
We continue to get more evidence that the U.S. economy has entered a major downturn. Just last week, I wrote about how U.S. GDP growth numbers have been declining for three quarters in a row , and previously I wrote about how corporate defaults have surged to their highest level since the last financial crisis . Well, now we are getting some very depressing numbers from the rail industry. As you will see below, U.S. rail traffic was down more than 11 percent from a year ago in April. That is an absolutely catastrophic number, and the U.S. rail industry is feeling an enormous amount of pain right now. This also tells us that “the real economy” is really slowing down, because less stuff is being shipped by rail all over the nation.
One of the economic commentators that I have really come to respect is Wolf Richter of WolfStreet.com . He has a really sharp eye for in the economy and in the financial world, and I find myself quoting him more and more as time goes by. If you have not checked out his site yet, I very much encourage you to do so.
On Wednesday, he posted a very alarming article about what is happening to our rail industry. The kinds of numbers that we have been seeing recently are the kinds of numbers that we would expect if an economic depression was starting. The following is an excerpt from that article …
Total US rail traffic in April plunged 11.8% from a year ago, the Association of American Railroads reported today. Carloads of bulk commodities such as coal, oil, grains, and chemicals plummeted 16.1% to 944,339 units.
The coal industry is in a horrible condition and cannot compete with US natural gas at current prices. Coal-fired power plants are being retired. Demand for steam coal is plunging. Major US coal miners – even the largest one – are now bankrupt. So in April, carloads of coal plummeted 40% from the already beaten-down levels a year ago.
Because rail traffic is down so dramatically, many operators have large numbers of engines that are just sitting around collecting dust. In his article, Wolf Richter shared photographs from Google Earth that show some of the 292 Union Pacific engines that are sitting in the middle of the Arizona desert doing absolutely nothing. The following is one of those photographs…
As Wolf Richter pointed out, it costs a lot of money for these engines to just sit there doing nothing…
These engines are expensive pieces of equipment. When they just sit there, not pulling trains, they become “overcapacity,” and they get very expensive. Then there are engineers and other personnel who suddenly become unproductive. Some of them have already been laid off or are getting laid off.
All over the world, similar numbers are coming in. For example, the Baltic Dry Index fell 30 more points on Wednesday after falling 21 on Tuesday. Global trade is really, really slowing down during the early portion of 2016. What this means on a practical level is that a lot less stuff is being bought, sold and shipped around the planet.
It is becoming increasingly difficult for authorities to deny that a new global recession has begun, and at this moment we are only in the very early chapters of this new crisis.
Another thing that I watch very closely is the velocity of money. When an economy is healthy, people feel pretty good about things and money tends to circulate fairly rapidly. For example, I may buy something from you, then you may buy something from someone else, etc.
But when times get tough, people tend to hold on to their money more tightly, and that is why the velocity of money goes down when recessions hit. In the chart below, the shaded areas represent recessions, and you can see that the velocity of money has declined during every single recession in the post-World War II era…
During the last recession, the velocity of money declined precipitously, and that makes perfect sense. But then a funny thing happened. There was a slight bump up once the recession was over, but then it turned down again and it has kept going down ever since.
In fact, the velocity of money has now dropped to an all-time low. The velocity of M2 just recently dipped below 1.5 for the first time ever.
This is not a sign of an “economic recovery”. What this tells us is that our economy is very, very sick.
And we can see evidence of this sickness all around us. For instance, the Los Angeles Times is reporting that homelessness in Los Angeles increased by 11 percent last year, and this marked the fourth year in a row that homelessness in the city has increased…
Homelessness rose 11% in the city of Los Angeles and 5.7% in the county last year despite an intensive federal push that slashed the county ranks of homeless veterans by nearly a third, according to a report released Wednesday .
The increase marks the fourth consecutive year of rising homelessness in L.A., as local officials struggle to identify funding for billion-dollar plans they approved to solve the nation’s most intractable homeless problem.
Let us also not forget that about half the country is basically flat broke at this point.
Just recently, the Federal Reserve found that 47 percent of all Americans could not pay an unexpected $400 emergency room bill without selling something or borrowing the money from somewhere.
With numbers such as these being reported, how in the world can anyone possibly claim that the U.S. economy is in good shape?
It boggles the mind, and yet there are people out there that would actually have you believe that everything is just fine.
The current occupant of the White House is one of them.
With each passing month, the real economy is getting even worse. We may not have slipped into a full-blown economic depression just yet, but it is coming.
For now, let us be thankful for whatever remains of our debt-fueled prosperity, because we don’t deserve the massively inflated standard of living that we have been enjoying.
We have been consuming far more than we produce for decades, but it won’t last for much longer. And when those days are gone for good, we will mourn them bitterly. A New Digital Cash System Was Just Unveiled At A Secret Meeting For Bankers In New York » alan
Somebody will go out there and strip the copper out of them. The railroad then can write them off on insurance, problem solved. Jim Speaker
I bet A lot of those engines get graffitied soon. Randy
The spot price of copper is too low right now to make it worthwhile. Have you ever seen how difficult it is to take wire out of a motor or generator? It’s not like peeling a grape. The health of the economy of any nation can be gauged by the price of its copper. Scarcity of copper due to it being used for motors, generators and conductors in conduits makes the price go high, lack of expansion means the price will be low. Outside of industrial use and as a medium of exchange, there’s not much use for copper. Except in the brass used for bullet casings. On our last scrap metal run down to the recycling place, we got $20.71 for 550 pounds of scrap iron. Pitiful. greyprepper
Don’t go giving me ideas now! I’m reformed by golly. Fiona
Nobody tells us, but we’re in a deep recession. And with either Trump or Clinton as next president, there is no hope for a change. (I really wonder if Sanders could do a better job). Bring the popcorn and the camping seats, the economic collapse is about to begin. K2
Sad that you find this entertaining. Scott Comin
the shadow government controls it all!!! they give us entertainment every four years so we can hope for the change that never happens!!! Steeve Girard
We are in this mess because of Abrahamic beliefs. Steeve Girard
That is true, rotating politicians will not solve the problem, nor will they be willing to enforce an un-democratic change to the social order. The system will have to be abolish to repair society and adapt it to the new reality of a low energy world. It is unlikely to happen until we are totally immobilized. DareToCreateYourBestLife
I see many people dying in this world before harmony is restored in a “low energy world”. Nature of humankind… ALWAYSTOMORROW
Your article looks very similar to this one.
investmentwatchblog dot com /freight-rail-traffic-plunges-haunting-pictures-of-transportation-recession/
Interesting SunnyFlaSnotress
off topic: I know one of our “buddies” was planning a vacation, but Rorschach has been interestingly absent. hmm.. I wish a few others would have gone on vacation with them too. Robert
There is no telling when the locomotive photo was taken. That is a mainline track. Unused engines are stored in large train yards where they are kept maintained until used or sold off. I doubt they are stored in AZ as aircraft. Google photos can be years out of date.
I am not doubting the numbers for freight traffic decline but the photo is not evidence. Jim Speaker
I know where those locomotives are stored at. They are stored on the old Southern Pacific out of service Pheonix line east of Wellington,AZ. I took A picture of A few trains their back in 1996. Amtrak used to use that line. When the SP/UP merger came in 1996 it was abandond. Stephen
There is 50 to 70 maybe more BNSF train engines that have been sitting near downtown Oklahoma City for the last two months or more. While I agree that it is sad about the economic state of the country I have no sympathy for that criminal fraudster Mr. billionaire himself Warren Buffet that got a bailout from the tax payers back in 2008. Yup he Berkshire Hathaway owns BNSF and Union Pacific too I believe. He makes money as those goods move down the railway. Why do you think he fights that trans atlantic pipeline because competition is a sin. Steeve Girard
That means the QE money keep falling into vaults, and never comes out. Especially the Treasury vault. Once in there it can only do one thing, pay the Treasury Bonds that are coming back from the BRICS countries, which makes it disappear. The black holes they tried to fill (with QE programs) and never was able to blow it away from existence are still there, and are still doing damages to the economy. . And with the energy crisis increasing, new black hole vaults have started to appear around the world, because they are trying to decouple the US dollar from the energy sector. Richard
“Global trade is really, really slowing down”
Really really? I haven’t seen this double repetition for months (a couple of years, maybe). Please don’t let it creep back again. Barry Goldwater
Am I wrong or shouldn’t the content be the focus in the comment section ? Having said that I can say I read this article and as usual applaud Michael for getting news out that goes unmentioned by the lame stream media. Personally I’ve been on the net for years and found the “Grammar Police ” a bit obnoxious to say the least. Michael is doing a superb job and my hat’s off to him. Jomine Jose
They went the way of the MarcoBird. rentslave
On the other hand,Powerball sales almost doubled since the last drawing.It seems that many TV stations show the drawing before the 11 PM news once it passes a certain point,proving that many affluent people still exist.It’s still taking an inordinate amount of time to reach that level as the regular street players are just about tapped out. K2
Coal is slowing down because of natural gas. tom
Let’s not forget that the EPA under the president’s direction is going after the coal industry too. I remember Hillary Clinton saying earlier this year that she would basically kill the US coal industry. SmallerGovNow2
and then she just recently said, “that’s not what I meant”. what a lying POS she is… tom
Now I know that you have a highly developed sense of humor. Have you begun searching for a puppy? SunnyFlaSnotress
I can think of something better to worship than one’s self or a government. SunnyFlaSnotress
Does this ring a bell, Snotty?
A god complex is an unshakable belief characterized by consistently inflated feelings of personal ability, privilege, or infallibility. A person with a god complex may refuse to admit the possibility of their error or failure, even in the face of irrefutable evidence, complex, or intractable problems or difficult or impossible tasks, or may regard their personal opinions as unquestionably correct. The individual may disregard the rules of society and require special consideration or privileges.
And just whom is this paragraph describing?
Here’s a hint: Hillary is NOT God!
…She is GODESS!….(compliments of rarefied snotress) arresun
There is no Hillary 😀 Richard O. Mann
Obama said pretty much the same thing. He has been after coal for some time. It’s responsible for climate change and has to go. Steeve Girard
All fossil fuels are slowing down due to quality and EROEI. We have now reached the commercially non-viable level 8:1… In 2030, we will reach the industrial non-viable level 5:1… that is when you will realize that industrial society just died. Priszilla
No money nothing to buy. Current “economy” lives from ammo and derivatives. billtheguy
As the movie “The Big Short” says “the music hasn’t stopped, its just slowing down.” This time around, it will slow down to almost stopping. Get prepared spiritually and economically. Steeve Girard
The Limits to Growth scenario (Business as Usual) scenario is still on course. It all points to an energy crisis in 2030, that is when everything will go hectic. dauden
How do you “get prepared spiritually”? When times are good ignore your soul but when times are about to get ugly, get spiritual? Explain please. SunnyFlaSnotress
“U.S. rail traffic was down more than 11 percent from a year ago in April.” Oil dropped in Nov 2014. A few months gave people time to believe the drop wasn’t a blip and trucking went into higher gear with new lower gas prices, passing the savings onto the clients. Hence, trucking likely gained more popularity for shipping some items. “This also tells us that “the real economy” is really slowing down” It’s inordinately skewed to make that statement without showing a traffic comparison chart of trucking vs railing during that timeframe. p.s. waves and kisses to my adoring fans 😀 Ricardo
Stop blowing your snot everywhere you gross person SunnyFlaSnotress
Ricardo the Beaner starts the day on a good note Bill
Thanks for sharing your intelligence, now leave it at that and ignore the insults. SunnyFlaSnotress
BillTheController took several moments to think of the right compliment for me. Bill
At the end of the day, it’s all just a game. Willard Ferch
The surge was already there. Diesel is still relatively cheap. If there were buyers, there would be tons of shipping. Sales are needed to create the shipping. The Lord loves you and all Christians love you. They may disapprove of your life-style and your ideology, but they still love you. Fiddlin SunnyFlaSnotress
The surge was building momentum Richard O. Mann
That should be “may no god bless you”. Just keeping you constant there Sunny. SunnyFlaSnotress
No, no no.. it’s “G0ddess Bless You” Richard O. Mann
Another cut & paste for you to display. Nothing from that pea brain of yours SunnyFlaSnotress
The majority was in my words or otherwise quoted unlike BarkingBill NCA who just copies others’ work w/o acknowledgement Mark
Remember everyone we need push the flag button on Sunny the Honey. Bill and I are doing so please join the party. SunnyFlaSnotress All_has_An _END_.
attention attention you must be fat and ugly and lonely and confused , and that is a good thing K2
I have seen her in real life and she is slim and beautiful. cuchulain
But with big ol’ stained fangs. Ouwy wowy ow ow !! arresun
Trains use diesel as well cuchulain
Yo Snotty !!!! Very good. I like that someone did some fact checking. Now, be a good girl and find out the trucking volume stats the last 2 years. Go ahead. We’ll be here when ya get back :–).
Seriously… good job. Not sure it changes the big picture, though. Zaphod Braden
Eerily close – Who is John Galt? 😉 watchmannonthewall
Maybe if Trump is elected TPTB will close up shop and just disappear and leave the good old US of A to fend for itself since voters didn’t want to go along with their program. History repeats. Oh, sorry! That first was the book! sistersoldier
I think the bomb shell that Trump dropped after winning the GOP nomination left a bad taste in the mouths of his supporters. He reported that he is not self funding the general election but rather will put together a finance committee with ties to George Soros to help raise the money to defeat Hillary. I’m not sure but I think that some are suffering a hangover this morning as it is now apparent you cannot be a DC insider with out enlisting DC aid. Only the future will tell the whole story. But you are correct about the book. 😀 watchmannonthewall
Don’t know if you ever heard of Larry Burkett, was a mentor of Dave Ramsey. He wrote one novel, “The Illuminati” about 1990 before his death. Seems a lot of what was in the book are actually being played out in events of today in the US.
It will be very interesting, and seems most likely, if Trump were to chose a running mate with strong ties to inside the Beltway and spcifically (though not actually known) with the elite. In the book, the president the people wanted but the elite didn’t, was forced to chose a female VP the elite wanted and then they orchestrated events such that the Pres had to step down and, wow, they still got what they wanted! Interesting times!! sistersoldier
Wow! That is compelling! No I am not familiar with Larry Burkett but I most certainly will search to see if one of my local libraries has the novel you mentioned. If I am able to find it I will work it in with my fishing trip this weekend – if the fish are not biting I will be gearing up for the next leg of this race. We must enjoy the simple things while they last. Thanks for the heads up! watchmannonthewall
If I remember correctly Larry said, in the Forward, the only reason he wrote the book was because so many Christians were asking him to write a novel where he would lay out the events he thought would be most likely to occur to bring the anti-christ to power. When I read the book I sensed the content may have been prompted by the Holy Spirit, and Larry may have been more acccurate on events than he could have hoped for or dreamed. Funny thing is, I came across the book as a throwaway, cleaning out lockers, at an assembly plant I worked at 15 years ago. I need to get it out again and reread it. The book started with a major earthquake in Japan. sistersoldier
I must find it! You appear to be a fellow truth seeker and the similarities to what is going on today appear to be striking to say the least. There is just too much going on in the world today and so much has been hidden from the masses that the truth is often buried in our past or by those who were not afraid to print what the Holy Spirit was leading them to do for a time such as this! Good information and good post! Bill
It is great to read good economic discourse and understand the true picture. Now let’s get to some solutions. Chris
Work hard. Stay out of debt. Save . greyprepper
And don’t forget to PREP! 😉 All_has_An _END_.
Great advise. I have done the last 2 for years.
The first one, not so much. Guest
For some, staying out of debt and saving is hard work (as in self-discipline). If you fit in either one of those two categories, then you can say the first one applies to you, too. grumpyhillbilly
Between the decades of lousy education and mass drug use, there is no simple fix. Steming the inflow of poverty might be a good start. End the war on men, especially white ones, would be another. And killing the Fed. Chris
Forget the trains!! What about the super volcano in the Yellowstone? The Zika virus? Jade Helm? The Illuminati? The housing bubble? The Fed? Low interest rates? Oil bubble? AAAAGGG Evan Elliott
My thoughts exactly. Such a confluence of events all at once…. Richard O. Mann
Information overload. Oh yeah, that is problem too. Yes, it is an exciting time to be alive. Something about the tech market bubble deflating on one of the morning report programs. May have been Fox. Think I’ll take a nap. Gay Veteran
not to mention outrage overload CASTIEL
one problem at a time friend K
In my area it was defiantly the war on coal, that killed the trains. Coal trains was about all that ran on the line. In my case it was CSX that was involved. Quite a few people were laid off. Because it ended up closing a repair shop for the railroad. People do not understand why Trump has the support, he has. Simple, people are sick and tired of D.C. making decisions, that cost them their jobs. It is really just that simple. When D.C. boasts they shut down the coal industry. You will have to excuse coal men, and railroad personnel for not cheering. SmallerGovNow2
great post k, thanks… Steeve Girard
Even if the coal men did decide, it would not last long, because the coal they would produce would not be in acceptable standards for the buyers, for very long. K
Would have to disagree, because I lived it. I live in the smoky mountains in Tn. Every winter, I could tell you how cold it was in Virginia, by how much smoke was in my area. This was from the coal fired electrical plants. Then around 2010 it all changed. The latest filters were installed on the stacks, and you know what. They worked. I seldom saw smoke during the winter. When it was cold enough. The ice went from opaque to being perfectly clear. But they had already decided to kill coal. So no amount of improvement mattered. The simple fact is. Once D.C. makes a decision, no amount of facts will make a difference. Their arrogance knows no bounds. sistersoldier
Yes indeed ‘K’ I agree. States such as Indiana, Kentucky, Virginia(s) are all under the same mandate by the “EPA” (supposedly) to reduce carbon emissions 32% by the year 2030. Converting the coal plants to natural gas which is reported to be cheaper and cleaner energy is underway where I live and near completion. There are trains collecting rust in my town as well. There is also a spike in my area of solar powered energy. Solar panels and equipment sales are soaring. Currently under construction are solar powered businesses, hotels, homes, new police station and state of the art hospital. I am not surprised to see the trains parked as they say “the only thing that is constant is change.” jsmith
Coal is an asset that this country has relied on for ages. And as you pointed out, much cleaner, and through the process of hydrogenation a cleaner gasoline than fracking can be made. I just can’t understand if the Germans were relying on hydrogenation during WW2, why haven’t we done it? Steeve Girard
It does not matter where the mercury ends, in the environment or the filters as you say. It’s the quality of coal that is the problem: it’s EROEI, Coal is getting more and more costly to produce and contains more impurities with passing time. It is only a matter of time before, it’s grade is not acceptable. Mark
Good observation and agree. mtntrek3
Coal will always have a part in the energy sector, but I’m not seeing it returning to levels in the days of yesteryear. I’ve suffered job losses because of the downturn in coal as well. The thing is all of the shale gas production has brought natural gas cost down considerably in the country, and of course gas burns cleaner. It has an unfair advantage in that respect over coal easily. We need some suitable substitutes for the coal industry jobs lost in the country for sure. If corporate greed would stand aside to allow our jobs to come back to the country……. it would be a big help. We manufacture little of what we use/consume in the country. Globalism is another factor in all of this. God help. Mike_Travis
Coal would be much less expensive were it not for the insane regulations that no one else in the world follows. Besides, it is NOT a function of the government to choose winners and losers in the market, nor is it within their power to CREATE losers which they frequently do.
Globalism is the driving force behind all this mess which is why we are in this mess as governments everywhere WANT a collapse so they can force their criminal NWO on us all, then rule over us as subjects, NOT citizens. mtntrek3
Yes…. globalism being pushed by the powers that be in this world the main problem. We don’t need all the reg’s on coal , but some are needed to keep pollution down. Nat. gas very cheap now and burns cleaner that coal that’s been scrubbed…….. so that’s why coal is hurting so much now. Coal may make somewhat of a comeback in the future depending on what happens to gas production and geopolitical events here/worldwide. XSANDIEGOCA
“How did you go bankrupt?”
Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.” – Hemingway
We have been through the Gradual part. We may be on the cusp of the Sudden Part. Guest
Excellent post. Many “suddenlies” yet to happen. sistersoldier
“It is easier, more delightful, and more profitable to build with other peoples’ money than our own.”
So now we are beginning to see what happens when the powers that be run out of OTHER peoples’ money. The economy derails and stalls. David
There is an old saying about putting lipstick on a Pig and it’s still a pig. I think Obama & our economists that are so optimistic about our economy are running out of lipstick. Deny what you can & downplay what you can’t seems to be DC Policy these days. as much as I love my country & miss the days of prosperity I would rather be told the Ugly truth about what is happening with our economy than to be lied to on a daily basis. Randy
that truth since 1996, the year I found out just how the world wide fiat paper currency/electronic bookkeeping entry financial system scam is actually set up and runs! And who wanted to listen to me and take real steps to get out of the way of that runaway train that is going to fly off the rails when it hits the curve? NOBODY!! Everyone I talked to said that I was a nut job, didn’t know what I was talking about, et cetera, except for one guy. He did some preps, but then let life get in the way and undid most of it. Now he and his family are left standing nearly naked out in the cold night air. 1996 was also the year I wrote my first treatise on the subject, called What is Money? and it was ignored by most whom I shared it with. Steeve Girard
You can’t make blind people read or deaf people hear. Randy
Yes, I have seen that over and over again. But I still do my best to give them sight and make them hear. Mark Sivad
Where I live in South Texas, I see many fairly new tank cars and bottom-dropping bulk carriers similarly stockpiled in places they never have been before (causing some local cities to complain). Must have been a tremendous over-building in all aspects of rail in recent years. LIZ THE SHIZ
my future son in law just got back from Barcelona which is one of the busiest ports in the world and the commercial side was completely shut down , something’s going on??? jox
They keep changing the way GDP is calculated, so perhaps we will never see another recession, no matter what the true economic output is. Joltin Joe
All the government numbers are HIGHLY manipulated at best, and flat out lies most of the time. DareToCreateYourBestLife
All statistics coming from DC are manipulated now. John
Living in Arizona I have seen these train engines, what a sight. Scott Pease
But, you ain’t seen nothing yet. Bu,bu,baby,you ain’t seen nothing yet. TellTheTruth-2
I made the same observation when I saw over 100 engines sitting idle in the Roseville, California Union Pacific freight yard. BIGOTIST
Rail workers? another “special” group of overpaid, over benefitted extortionists- Hopefully the thieves will all lose their job?~ JustBill
If the train derailment risk calculation uses these metrics: number of active locomotives, and miles logged by locomotives with no change to maintenance of both locomotives and rail equipment then we may see fewer train derailments. I’ve found a bit of sunshine in the storm. All_has_An _END_.
Make no mistake about it ,after the election it is all down hill. I also think the elites will do anything to stop Trump. We could see a major revolt if Hitlary wins JustBill
The largest overcapacity of any productive item on the planet is the human. JustBill
If the American household is the center of the American economy, then the products and services it purchases, the wages earned by and the taxes/rent from collected from would drive the economy.
If the economy and financial systems were not artificial then I think Production and Consumption would be shackled together.
We’ve been provided data that displays the retail slowdown, slowdown of both CONUS and OCONUS shipping, decreasing velocity of money, and many traditional concrete indicators of activity and economic health and all are trending down.
Collapse or not nothing financial or economically appear to be healthy.
Is this the new normal? Are we treading Water? Ex Tempus
….these idle trains should be transporting all of the hot selling Government Motors cars, throughout North America! toktomi
I would offer that you probably should verify your source information before generating conclusions based on that information.
As best as I can deduce from investigating the images of the engines, these pictures are two or three years old. I am not offering that as fact but merely as the best information that I can find in short order.
~toktomi~ jamesgwolfe
Come on you guys. They have put out there for some R&R and to soak up some rays. mister_roboto
The same would be true if a caucasian member of the other major party were sitting in the Oval Office right now. Obama is as bought and paid for as nearly any other politician, so he says exactly what he is payed and commanded to say. The Kool-Aid drinkers of both of the major parties who are in the economic top 20%, as well as those who identify with them, have been increasingly adopted what I would call a “prison guard” sort of mentality towards the rest of society! House of Cards
The most alarming stat here is the crashing velocity of money, how fast money changes hands. If money isn’t changing hands often, then the economy is slowing, period. These zero interest rates are creating more distortions. And the fact that the velocity of money is crashing along with zero rates is quite alarming. A major divergence. This cannot continue indefinitely. Orange Jean
I wouldn’t put too much stock in a photo from Goggle Earth showing a bunch of trains in the desert… unless there was other data proving they are idle.
Years ago I took Amtrack cross country (from New Orleans to Chicago and then from Chicago to Orange County, CA). Going through the desert they had to stop and creep … no more than 30 mph they said because it was too hot and if it gets too hot the train could derail. We were 11 hrs late getting into CA from the last leg of my journey where I stopped in SLC for a week. WTP1776
Obama promised that he would destroy the coal industry. sharonsj
Well, if the stupid politicians had not taken bribes from the auto and gas industry, we might still have a functioning rail system instead so that ordinary people could still travel by train.
I live in a rural area with no public transportation. All the small towns still have a rail line (and railroad stations) that are hardly used. If I could take a trail to the big city for shopping and entertainment, I would do it a minute.
Meanwhile, as the rich get richer and the rest of us are impoverished, there is no extra money for us to buy anything other than the necessities. angie hoekstra
Helpful writing . For my two cents , if someone has been looking for a YMCA Trading Post & Warm Fuzzies , my assistant encountered a sample form here https://goo.gl/tM1Tbq DIONNA CRIMMINS
Good article, Thanks! | 0 |
On March 22, the Washington Post reported on House Republican efforts to repeal the gun ban for military veterans by claiming Congress is making it easier for “mentally incompetent” vets to carry guns. [This is more Fake News about efforts to protect the Second Amendment rights and due process rights of military veterans. According to WaPo, “A bill moving through Congress could make it easier for veterans who can be considered mentally incompetent to carry a firearm. ” The fake aspect of this claim can be seen by contrasting it with the WaPo’s accurate summary of what the ban really does: Under a Department of Veterans Affairs program, the agency appoints a fiduciary if it determines that a veteran — because of injury, disease or advanced age — is unable to manage his or her finances. That means the agency also can classify a veteran as mentally incompetent and submit their names to the FBI for inclusion in the National Instant Criminal Background Check System database, banning them from buying or owning a firearm or ammunition. This is the gun ban for military veterans a ban that allows the VA to unilaterally apply a broad mental health label to strip military veterans of their Second Amendment rights without any due process. The bill which the House passed on March 16 — the Veterans 2nd Amendment Protection Act — repeals this ban, not by striving to allow those with severe mental illness “to carry a firearm,” but by instituting a rule that that a veteran cannot be ruled “mentally incompetent” without a judge’s order. That’s it. The GOP efforts protect the due process rights of military veterans. Yet the WaPo reports that the House is making it “easier” for “mentally incompetent” veterans “to carry a firearm. ” On March 18, Breitbart News reported that NPR took a similar Fake News approach in covering the House vote to the repeal the gun ban for military veterans. NPR claimed the House was helping “mentally incapacitated’ veterans get guns. It is worth noting that the gun ban for military veterans also impacts those who have not sought any treatment for mental duress nor any help with their finances. It does this by creating an atmosphere in which veterans who love to hunt and shoot simply internalize any struggles — be it depression or PTSD — for fear of having their gun rights abolished. The NRA reports: This policy stands to have a tremendously adverse effect on the health and of our veterans: Imagine that you’re a veteran who loves to hunt and shoot. You don’t have trouble managing your finances, but you worry that if someday you do, you could permanently lose your right to defend yourself, your ability to put extra food on the table and one of your most cherished hobbies with the stroke of a pen. Would you seek treatment for PTSD, an eating disorder, depression? Or would you resign yourself to suffering, telling yourself it isn’t worth the risk and “tough it out”? AWR Hawkins is the Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and host of Bullets with AWR Hawkins, a Breitbart News podcast. He is also the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart. com. | 1 |
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Laraine C. Abbey – President Obama’s statement “giving up some freedom in exchange for security” [1] was a lance through my heart. Give up freedom for security?? Patrick Henry, of “Give me liberty or give me death” fame, must be rolling over in his grave! We are losing America.
Love him or hate him, Donald Trump has been the catalyst for a volcanic eruption of raw emotion about all that seems wrong in the governance of our country. Citizen unrest predates Trump’s electoral campaign but it has acted as a lightning rod that laser-focused on many issues alarming and infuriating Americans. In “shock and awe” style, ultra-liberal filmmaker and Bernie Sanders supporter Michael Moore had this to say in his “out of context” Ohio theater speech:
Our citizenry has increasingly lost its faith and trust in government following the 9/11 World Trade Center attacks. The Benghazi situation, Middle East wars, banking/financial crisis and housing market mortgage mess have done nothing to support confidence in the powers-that-be. Leadership has failed us. We’ve seen millions maimed or killed in these horrific unjust globalist wars. A call for change is on many lips and given a voice in presidential candidate Donald Trump.
Trump threatens the power structure, while Hillary is the power structure.
Do you see any personal gain for Trump in spending his own money on the campaign and possibly harming his Trump brand around the world to lead this country?
Asked many times over the years if he would consider running for president always brought forth the same answer: He didn’t want the job, but repeatedly said that he loved this nation and would consider running if he felt it was absolutely necessary for the well-being of our nation…and here we are.
In this currently circulating video Trump starts out saying he doesn’t want to enter politics because “it’s a mean life.” Many mostly-good people would agree that they dare not even attempt running for office fearing some inevitable wrong-doing will hit the public arena and wreck their personal life. No good deed goes unpunished!
It’s becoming ever clearer how criminal the Clinton enterprise really appears following Hillary’s deleting thousands of State Department emails—after being subpoenaed. This is a criminal activity that should be prosecuted and would seem to make her ineligible to run for president. The repeated WikiLeaks Clinton email dumps coupled with the Project Veritas Action videos make serious accusations, and lay bare political warts on what many are calling criminality here and here and here .
It’s odd how the media goes after every gaffe or faux pas from Trump, while saying nothing of the alleged suspect Clinton behaviors over the years, including the cocaine scandals back from the Arkansas days. If this is news to you, go into YouTube and search ‘Clinton cocaine scandal’ and watch some of the many videos and documentaries. Here’s a short one to get you started. There are so many YouTube documentaries on “Clinton scandals” and “Clinton murders,” it would take a bite out of your lifetime to watch them all!
While everybody’s focusing on who is the more flawed of these two presidential candidates, the darker undercurrent issues are barely discussed by the political establishment of Democrats, Republicans, and the liberal mainstream media. My guess is they are petrified of the politically incorrect Donald Trump exposing their self-serving and criminal agendas.
Mainstream media has put no focus on the Washington, DC pedophilia and drug dealing scandal of some years back [2, 3] that still infests seats of power. Instead they focus on feel-good talk that favors fixing things via an agenda of bigger government, increased taxation, centralization of control, and dominance in the name of the so-called ‘greater good’ as founded in collectivism (the hallmark of Socialism and Communism) rather than by maintaining limited government, individual liberty, and private property rights upon which our country’s foundational documents are based.
The Founding Fathers efforts via the U.S. Constitution to protect against over-reaching and corrupt governance, while appearing to have functioned successfully for over 200 years, is now under siege by powerful people on both sides of the isle, and in ownership of media, to foster globalist agendas, for their own benefit.
Another example of losing our country is found in the erosion of private property rights; “ over the last 25 years, 68 percent of America’s National Parks, Preserves and Monuments have been designated as a United Nations World Heritage Site , Biosphere Reserve or both by Executive Branch action with virtually no Congressional oversight or approval and out of the sight of the public scrutiny.” [4] Even more alarming: your right to own personal property is seriously threatened by UN Agenda 21 . Note this statement from an article in Conservative News and Views on July 27, 2011: To see what UN Agenda 21 really means, read the Local Agenda 21 Planning Guide . This 241-page book talks of balancing the needs of the economy, the community, and the environment. But a close read makes the real goal clear. People would lose many of the rights to their properties—and so would not really have property at all. In fact, people would have no inherent rights to anything. [5]
Government is known for its frequent inefficiency, incompetency, cronyism, pedophilia, drug and gun running and other wrongdoings. Enlarging and expanding government only increases such problems. The Founding Fathers tried to limit the size and power of the federal government, but unfortunately, the populace consistently looks to government to solve problems; and governments, as perpetual seekers of power, are only too happy to comply.
What are the results? A 20 trillion national debt; 6 trillion dollars unaccounted for in the Pentagon Budget, over 2 trillion of which was missing and announced the day before the 9/11 World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks and ‘forgotten’ in the chaos—some saying intentionally. A VA system, failing the care of our veterans, funded by a government that now prefers to spend money on refugees that may be dangerous to our populace rather than on taking care of its needy citizens and veterans. An IRS that improperly targets its citizens An FDA that attacks anything threatening to the pharmaceutical and commercial food industries— protecting them at the expense of the public and the CDC now repeatedly accused of fraudulent actions, involving manipulation and misrepresentation of research data including vaccine research, which endangers our children and the public while protecting the pharmaceutical and medical industries in their abuse of power.
[T]he latest [abuse of power] comes as Thomas Frieden, director of the CDC, is attempting to block CDC whistleblower Dr. William Thompson from testifying in response to a congressional subpoena on the destruction of data and scientific fraud committed by senior CDC officials in a critical vaccine safety study to conceal a causative relationship between vaccines and autism.
Thompson was among the authors of widely cited studies debunking a link between vaccines and autism. [6] In apparent defiance of Thompson’s subpoena, Frieden stated “Dr. William Thompson’s deposition testimony would not substantially promote the objectives of CDC or HHS [Health and Human Services].” Since when does one’s boss have the power to override a congressional subpoena, no less with an agency protecting motive at the expense of the public’s benefit?
The CDC fraud story is detailed in movie VAXXED , now available for rent or purchase at Amazon.com.
Bad as all this is, it’s merely a piece of the globalist agenda as detailed in such things as the U.N. Agenda 21 and 2030, the Codex Alimentarius (the world food code which will take away food and nutrient supplements rights), and the TPP (Trans Pacific Partnership) for which we are systematically destroying our national sovereignty. While NAFTA and CAFTA seem to have started this destruction of the U.S. most recently, President Obama handed over the Internet (U.S. created and taxpayer funded) to the U.N. for no apparent reason, and then, as mentioned previously, said Americans should give up some freedoms for increased security. (Heard at approximately 37:50):
I personally prefer Patrick Henry’s “Give me liberty or give me death!”
We’re giving billions of dollars to the U.N. for the Global Warming initiative. Is this money well spent, when funds are needed for our country’s internal problems including the restoration of our crumbling infrastructure?
Besides shipping out billions of dollars, Obama’s attempt to blame cyclical global “Lukewarming” [7] as man-made—rather than nature-made in order to impose a carbon tax—is another of his many ‘grind America down’ behaviors, as is his open border policy to flood America with illegal aliens and drug runners, and to destroy American culture with hundreds of thousands of Muslim refugees in service of his stated plan to reform America. In my view, this behavior along with flouting the Constitution and subordinating the U.S. to the U.N. clearly establishes Obama and his associates as engaging in treasonous behavior . Judge Janine says the Obama administration has acted treasonously (at 0:24)
Obama has expressed a desire to become the Secretary General of the U.N. after leaving office so he can apparently further promote his globalist, one-world goals. Such efforts will only lead us down a path of more unconstitutional bureaucratic control, which is the very thing Brexit is a reaction to, and which I believe will eventually lead to destruction, or major reform, of the European Union. Brexit represents a turning away from the centralized control of totalitarianism—a good thing, I say! With Hillary as president an expansion of globalism and disintegration of U.S. sovereignty is guaranteed, so you can kiss the American Dream goodbye.
I loved the insights from the following shows. | 0 |
Putin Still Hopes to See Moderate Rebels Separated From Nusra Front by Jason Ditz, October 28, 2016 Share This
Russian President Vladimir Putin has officially rejected a request from his nation’s Defense Ministry to endorse a resumption of Russian airstrikes against the Syrian city of Aleppo, after 10 straight days of no Russian airstrikes being conducted.
Russia launched a brief ceasefire in Aleppo last week, and extended it for four days. Even after it officially expired, they have not resumed strikes against the city, with officials saying they want to convince Western nations to separate the moderate rebel factions within East Aleppo from the al-Qaeda-linked Nusra Front.
So far that’s not been working so well, as indeed separating the two was the primary goal of a weeklong ceasefire a month ago, and a public US call to separate never amounted to anything. After that, the idea appears to have been given up on by the US, and Russia has also sought Turkey and Saudi Arabia’s influence on the more moderate factions.
As the rebel factions are launching a new offensive trying to brief the Aleppo siege, the Russian defense ministry has gone to the unusual step of publicly announcing their request to Putin, and Putin’s very public rejection may suggest there is some debate within the Russian leadership on how to proceed. Last 5 posts by Jason Ditz | 0 |
7. Emigre Super Bloc Part VII: Why Hillary Clinton Will Appoint Old World Nationalists to Cabinet Positions . Editor's Note If you learn nothing else from reading Eliason’s “Emigre” series, you should take away how interlinked world events truly are. When you add in the machinations of various intelligence agencies and national covert operations groups, tracing a thread through from point A to point B can become an epic journey. It is also a journey that leaves you wondering whose interests are being served? In answering that question, it becomes clear that the answer is much more likely a small, influential group than a nation state. Just look at the map of the countries involved in Syria’s “civil war,” and it becomes exceedingly clear that what is happening in Syria is anything but a civil war. It also casts a totally different light on Europe’s rejection of Syrian refugees. How cruel and mean spirited can you get than to be involved in the war that has displaced most of a nation’s population, and then close your borders to those displaced?
W hether you are for Hillary Clinton or against her, the problem with Hillary Clinton isn’t her lack of experience. Almost the entire political establishment is behind her. Throughout all the bumps and scandal in this whole election cycle, Republicans and former presidents are coming out of the woodwork supporting her. According to the LA Times she may well be one of the most experienced candidates in US history, even accounting for severe conflicts of interest inside the Clinton Foundation. Neither friend or foe doubt Hillary Clinton’s experience after 30 years in politics.
The problem is even Hillary Clinton’s friends say she has, is a history of acting without thinking, of making bad decisions. According to Neera Tanden : “Almost no one knows better than me that her instincts can be terrible.”
Does Hillary Clinton show bad instincts and terrible decision-making skills, and if she does, how will this affect the USA?
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… Taken together, the studies and reports call for more aggressive American action to constrain Iran, rein in the chaos in the Middle East and check Russia in Europe.”One of the lead organizations revving up these military adventures and also counting on a big boost in military spending under President Clinton-45 is the Atlantic Council, a think tank associated with NATO that has been pushing for a major confrontation with nuclear-armed Russia.”
The Atlantic Council is the think tank for the CEEC which is associated with NATO. The CEEC (Central and Eastern European Coalition) has only one goal. At the beginning of the presidential campaign they put out a small list of questions for the candidates to decide who they would support for the president.
The first question was essentially “Are you willing to go to war with Russia?” Hillary Clinton has answered that question and received their unqualified support throughout the campaign. Who is the CEEC?
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.
If that seems a little too much to be believable, reconsider the Iraq war. All it took was for the Iraqi diaspora to develop strong ties with like-minded people f rom “ The Project for the New American Century” that wanted regime change in Iraq. Many of the people associated with the PNAC crossed over into the Bush administration . They pushed the invasion together.
Josh DeWind’s and Renata Segura’s paper Diaspora-Government Relations in Forging US-Foreign Policies utilized the following source to discuss the diaspora link to US-Iraqi relations:
Walt Vanderbush’s essay, “The Iraqi Diaspora and the US Invasion of Iraq” (chapter 9), traces the collaboration between leaders of the Iraqi diaspora and neoconservative Americans, many of them linked to the Iraqi National Congress (INC) and the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), to convince the US government to wage war and bring about “regime change” in Iraq… The INC claimed credit for placing 108 articles in the news media, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Times (of London), during a nine-month period before the war.”
It wasn’t terror, Osama, or even oil that the Iraq war was fought for. It was a guy named Ahmed Chalabi who was the only victor of the Iraq war.
American-emigre groups use their strategically settled populations in key battleground states, deep pockets, and unbridled political ambition to gain control over their home “old” countries. Even more insidious is the influence they exert over the United States to destroy old enemies.
Do we want senior cabinet and policy positions filled by people who think starting WWIII is a good goal? Let’s take a look at the make-up and politics of some of these.
Starting at the top let’s look at the Ukrainian emigres who lead the CEEC and the Atlantic Council. One thing anyone represented by the UCCA (Ukrainian Congressional Committee of America) or the UWC (Ukrainian World Congress) has in common is Axis-political heritage and beliefs. The OUN is the political grouping of Ukrainian nationalists and it would vote for Adolf Hitler if he was running in a heartbeat.
Unless real Nazi political views (not neo-nazi) found a way to survive all these years with this group of people, the statement is just insulting. Anyone reading should be insulted because that level of offensiveness in a politically charged environment is wrong.
Nazism or Axis-Nazism are political beliefs and principles that structure a government the same as Republican or Democratic control would. The only difference is the “ism.” The “ism” means everything you do in your life revolves around your politic so it’s not just political or social guides or guidelines. It’s your lifestyle and everything wraps around it. Anything or anyone that goes against it is an enemy of the state, and it is personal.
From their own words in the Ukrainian Weekly, real, active political Nazi’s are alive, kickin’ and ready for a Clinton win! It is the sheer number of groups self-identifying as practicing real Nazi beliefs in the US gaining policy and cabinet positions under a Clinton win that is incredible.
The Ukrainian World Congress, with its affiliates in over 40 countries , and others work tirelessly in trying to keep Ukraine and the Ukrainian spirit front and center. “We have had a minister of finance, Natalka Jaresko, in the Cabinet. We now have Ulana Suprun as acting minister of health. We have many from the diaspora assisting with strategizing, reforming and supporting the overall cause. We have a highly successful program in Patriot Defence. We are out to change the way business is done. 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.”
With all you’ve heard about Stepan Bandera’s OUN since the Maidan coup in Ukraine, I’ll bet you didn’t know they call New York, Chicago, Boston, and Philadelphia home.
The UCCA and the UWC still celebrate their Nazi SS because they are still Axis-nazis. The OUN were the vile Holocaust murderers during and after WWII and their politics live on in their children today. This is no different from the children of other Waffen-SS leaders, or if Hitler had surviving children that stood up and ran other countries based in Hitler’s policy. These American kids are sent to Ukraine to learn how to copy and act like Stepan Bandera before they come back to America and get involved in policy making.
“ 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. 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 (former head of the Ku Klux Klan in the U.S.) who is also a graduate of the MAUP system.”
While American media criticizes David Duke’s support for Donald Trump, they say nothing about Hillary’s strongest supporters hiring David Duke as a professor to teach their children college level history. Is Hillary Clinton too far right for David Duke? After all, he has no plans to conquer Russia.
When you look at her campaign coffers and the most active political activists supporting Hillary Clinton, many are groups whose politics are not republican or democrat, but old-world nationalist. They are spread across America and still idolize their Waffen SS heroes, literally. They have statues and holidays and children’s groups across America in cities like New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and Chicago celebrating some of the vilest mass murderers in history. And they teach their children to idolize them and grow up using them as role models. They also bring up their children in the same political mold of ultra-nationalism.
Now they want an America that will do the same. Over the last 30 years, the old world nationalists have moved into media and policy positions to make this happen. If that wasn’t enough they control a 20 million person bloc vote in key states and swing states in important cities across America.
I am not using the word nazi as an insult, this isn’t neo-nazi or even a nazi revival. These groups have been the most extreme political activists in the USA over the last 50 years and are a continuation of what their parents were in the 1930’s. In their own words, they never assimilated into American culture. They assimilated the culture to them. In the words of the CIA, they are political animals. Today, their wagons are circled around a Hillary Clinton presidency.
The OUN were the guards at the Holocaust prison camps, Waffen SS, and volunteer brigades that were famous for torture and murder. In Ukraine, they killed over 3 million people and conducted the first act of Holocaust at Babi Yar.
The funny part, if there was one, is that with every fiber of your being, you want to argue against these facts. The OUN on the other hand featured at least one of my articles on their rise in American politics even though I called them devils. The fact they find me credible shouldn’t get lost on you.
When these good friends of Hillary Clinton from the CEEC start getting tapped for advisory posts, and cabinet positions through the Atlantic Council or Project for a New American Century, will they automatically become Democrats or Republicans?
Does America want a war with Russia so the losers of WWII can settle old scores?
For the first time, under a Clinton presidency, America will have unbridled Axis-nazis/old world nationalists/ nazis in most of the cabinet and policy positions. They are getting the positions because they are delivering donations, bloc votes, political propaganda, and hard activism in battleground states.
The results for the Clinton campaign in emigre dominated states is the same as it was when they first got together. Clinton is up by 11 points in important emigre bloc voting districts. …In last month’s heavily publicized Pennsylvania Senate race. Ukrainian and Baltic groups, protesting the administration’s attempts to prevent the break-up of the USSR, supported the Democratic candidate, Harris Wofford. This position contributed to the defeat of Dick Thornburgh, a former attorney general in the Bush administration….”The Ukrainian Weekly, December 8, 1991, No. 49, Vol. LIX
In a Ukraine Weekly interview with candidate Bill Clinton- “ For the last 40 years, many Ukrainians have been supporters of the Republican Party . However, Mr. Bush severely damaged his relations with Ukrainians with his “Chicken Kiev” speech, and by his unwillingness to see Ukraine’s point of view in disputes with Russia. How will your party seek to secure the goodwill of voters concerned by this issue?” … Clinton’s answer…“The Bush administration has had a spotty record abroad… including the president’s insulting warning against “suicidal nationalism” made before proindependence forces in Kiev in the summer of 1991 — and a failed economic record at home. We hope Ukrainian Americans will join our effort to put people first.” – Interview with Candidate Bill Clinton-Ukrainian Weekly Issue 43, 1992
In what has become the ultimate pay to play scheme, the Clinton’s gave over Ukraine to OUNb nationalists to run as they saw fit. This was payment for political support and bloc votes that won the 1992 elections for Bill Clinton. American citizens were given a country to run and represent in any manner they chose to do it.
According to Ukrainian nationalist scholar Taras Kuzio , the Axis-nazi political beliefs started to be taught to children in Ukraine after the OUNb took the reins. This was the preparation for what would become a nationalist coup in 2014 Ukraine.
This pattern follows the Clinton-NATO expansion and every CEE (Central and Eastern European) country freed by the Clintons followed suit. In Croatia, Croatian-Americans have more parliamentary seats and representation than any group from Croatia.
Other than American-emigre groups gaining rule and representing the “home country” in the US, there is only one other universal factor each of them revived. Axis- nazi politics and political views became normal in their home countries. In Croatia, they even revived the Waffen SS Battalions.
The people at the CEEC are behind the Atlantic Council and PNAC will be making the domestic and foreign policy decisions in a Clinton administration. While I would not call Hillary Clinton a Nazi, the people she surrounds herself with actively are. There is very little doubt that Victoria Nuland, a Ukrainian-American brought up in these beliefs will be Secretary of State under a Clinton Administration.
To get an understanding of what that means, the same people that are deciding Ukrainian domestic and foreign policy will be sending their people to those cabinet positions.
The one thing for sure is even publications that support her candidacy wonder about Hillary Clinton’s lack of judgment and surrounding herself with nationalist war-hawks that want war with Russia.
According to the WEEK : “At first, Obama went over the top of public opinion to avenge American honor against ISIS. Slowly, America’s mission has crept to include some form of regime change with the ouster of Assad. Now Clinton is selling the American people on greater military interventions so that the U.S. can challenge Putin. Clinton seems unable to distinguish between what is of vital interest to the Russians and peripheral interest to America. She combines this with her bias toward always taking action — of any sort, for good or ill. The combination is dangerous.”
The article ends in the hope that Clinton is once again lying. Both current president Obama and Hillary Clinton are trying to sell America on the idea that there are moderates fighting a civil war in Syria. We are arming and training them. Are there moderates in Syria worth supporting? Do we have any business there to begin with? The article goes as far as stating the US is determined to overthrow every country that is friendly to Russia.
Right now Clinton wants to establish a no-fly-zone to protect her moderates. Who are they? US Special Forces on the ground are adamant that Clinton wants to give US military support to ISIS even if it means starting an open war with Russia.
“ Nobody believes in it. You’re like, ‘Fuck this,’” a former Green Beret says of America’s covert and clandestine programs to train and arm Syrian militias. “Everyone on the ground knows they are jihadis. No one on the ground believes in this mission or this effort, and they know they are just training the next generation of jihadis, so they are sabotaging it by saying, ‘Fuck it, who cares?’” “I don’t want to be responsible for Nusra guys saying they were trained by Americans,” the Green Beret added.
Since 2014, Ukraine has fully supported al Nusra and at the beginning of the civil war pulled 200 ISIS fighters to the Ukrainian front lines. These fighters are jihadis from Crimea. They have also set up an ISIS training camp near Mariupol. Like all other volunteers, they don’t receive government support and rob to make a living.
Before this, the Kosovo example looms large. Does inviting indicted mass murderers and people preparing for illegal organ trade (crimes against humanity) trials to your national party convention as special guests qualify as good judgment? Does it showcase Hillary Clinton’s good instincts to be president?
Welcome to the 2016 Democratic National Convention. Hillary Clinton’s special guest from Kosovo took time-out from preparing for his crimes against humanity case to give support and wish her well. “Invited as a guest to the 2016 Democratic National Convention is none other than Kadri Veseli, the Speaker of the Kosovo Assembly. Veseli is a former Kosovar Albanian leader of the KLA and its spy organization SHIK. He’s being indicted along with the current president of Kosovo, Hashim Thaci for small things like organ trafficking and crimes against humanity .’ The main witness against Clinton friends, Veseli and Thaci, is a man that was ordered to cut the heart out of another man that was begging for mercy. In a 1998 interview with the BBC , US special envoy to the Balkans, Robert Gelbard had this to say about Veseli and Thaci; “I know a terrorist when I see one and these men are terrorists.”
Clinton’s relationship with the Albanian and Kosovo killers stretches back to the Bill Clinton’s first election in 1992. During the campaign season the Clinton duo found out quickly how powerful the emigre national vote was in America. In one fell swoop, the Albanians and the KLA after them went from what the USA definitely recognized as Islamic terrorists to victims we were going to war for.
The Clinton humanitarian bombing in the Balkans drove victims into the waiting clutches of the KLA, and the spread of Islamic terrorism worldwide.
In what became her first executive decision, first lady, Hillary Clinton brow-beat the unwilling president Clinton into bombing the Balkans and creating a humanitarian catastrophe. Today, as a result of this, ISIS is setting up training camps in what is widely referred to as “Clinton country. “
“ On the territory of Kosovo and Metohija , the local police detained three militants of so-called “Islamic State” (a terrorist organization banned in Russia), is going to organize a series of terrorist attacks in Serbia.” Terrorists LIH (IGIL/ISIS) break through the Balkans to Western Europe March 2016.
Clinton’s jihadi bloc vote in America remains central to her winning this election along with the rest of the CEEC. Does America want people advising the president that openly support genocide like the Kosovars, Albanians, or Ukrainians?
Hillary Clinton is not an Islamist. Hillary Clinton is not a Nazi. But the question remains. Why is she surrounded by, and listening to, people that are? Is that her best judgment? 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 |
What role Ivanka Trump plays in her father’s White House is among the pressing questions at the intersection of politics and business under the Trump administration. Since her father became president, Ms. Trump has sat in meetings with political and business leaders at the White House, drawing criticism that she could use her informal adviser role to promote her brand. Now, she also works out of a West Wing office and is in the process of getting a security clearance and devices. To address those concerns, Ms. Trump handed over control of her company to her top executive, Abigail Klem, and transferred its assets to a new trust overseen by relatives of her husband. But details of the arrangement, which have not been disclosed, indicate how much power Ms. Trump continues to hold over the brand that bears her name. Under the trust, which was executed in the first week of March, Ms. Trump may address potential conflicts in one of two ways: recuse herself from related White House business or veto a potential business deal for her company, said Jamie Gorelick, a longtime ethics lawyer in Washington who is an independent adviser to the Ivanka M. Trump Business Trust. Ms. Trump is the sole beneficiary, said Ms. Gorelick, who provided details of the trust and Ms. Trump’s expanding White House role in interviews. On Monday, Ms. Trump said the trust was part of a voluntary pledge to follow rules placed on government employees. For about a decade, Ms. Trump has licensed her name to partners that manufacture her clothes, shoes and other items. Ms. Trump, who appeared in her own advertisements, was the face of it all. Her brand is privately held, meaning that its inner workings, partners and investments are not subject to public disclosure. Under the new arrangement, Ms. Trump will no longer appear in advertisements, Ms. Gorelick said, and she has separated her business and personal social media accounts. Photos of her posing next to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada or the chief executive of Boeing have replaced pictures of her shoes and handbags on her personal Instagram account. Ms. Trump could have opted for a blind trust, which keeps beneficiaries in the dark about their assets — a move favored by modern presidents but not commonly used by employees in the executive branch, said Richard W. Painter, the chief White House ethics adviser under President George W. Bush. That was an untenable option for Ms. Trump, Ms. Gorelick said, because it would have forced her to sell the company, giving another owner the ability to use the family name. “Ivanka created the trust to separate herself from the business and implement controls and processes that facilitate compliance with ethical requirements,” Ms. Gorelick said. In a statement, Ms. Trump said she would continue to offer “candid advice and counsel” to her father, who has resisted calls for a blind trust. Instead, President Trump has moved his business interests into a trust overseen by his eldest son, Donald Trump Jr. and Allen H. Weisselberg, the chief financial officer of his real estate company, the Trump Organization. The president will continue to receive reports on the company’s profit and loss. Ms. Trump will receive regular financial reports on her company. Her Josh Kushner, and her Nicole Meyer, are her named trustees. “While there is no modern precedent for an adult child of the president, I will voluntarily follow all of the ethics rules placed on government employees,” Ms. Trump said in a statement. But even if Ms. Trump is trying to tread carefully, her trust raises questions about how effectively a voluntary arrangement can minimize conflicts, said Norman L. Eisen, the chief White House ethics adviser under President Barack Obama. “There’s no enforcement,” he said. “If this is voluntary, what if she voluntarily decides not to do it?” Ms. Gorelick is acting purely as an adviser and does not have the power to make decisions about deals on Ms. Trump’s behalf. Questions about Ms. Trump’s potential conflicts of interest have trailed her from nearly the moment her father won the presidency. She was criticized over the promotion of a $10, 800 bracelet from her fashion line that she wore during her family’s Nov. 13 interview on “60 Minutes” on CBS. Ms. Klem blamed a marketing executive. In December, The New York Times reported that she had joined her father’s meeting with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan even as her brand was completing a deal with a company whose largest shareholder was a bank owned by the Japanese government. The deal was called off after the Times article appeared. Unlike her husband, Jared Kushner, who is a top adviser to Mr. Trump, Ms. Trump does not hold a formal job at the White House and therefore is not likely to be considered a federal employee under ethics rules, which prohibit government workers from participating in matters that can enrich their personal business interests, according to government ethics specialists. But the more Ms. Trump participates in White House affairs — sitting in on meetings, conducting business from an office in the West Wing — the more likely it is that she could cross that line, Mr. Painter said. With that in mind, he said it was “wise” for Ms. Trump to act as though she were already subject to such rules. The trust prohibits her brand from reaching agreements with foreign governments or enterprises. But deals with domestic companies could also present problems. Macy’s and other stores sell Ms. Trump’s clothes and accessories in the United States. At the same time, the retail industry has been lobbying against a tax on imports that President Trump is considering. “She ought to stay away from anything to do with trade,” Mr. Painter said. Mr. Painter and Mr. Eisen praised the appointment of Ms. Gorelick as an ethics adviser. Ms. Gorelick, a former deputy attorney general under President Bill Clinton, has attracted some criticism for her role as a top executive at Fannie Mae in the late 1990s and early 2000s, several years before the firm’s need for a bailout during the financial crisis. But Mr. Eisen said Ms. Gorelick was independent and “ . ” “Whatever questions I and others may have about the arrangement,” Mr. Eisen said, “I think it speaks well of Ivanka and of the process that has been set up to manage the conflicts that the trustees’ monitor is one of the most prominent Democratic lawyers in the country. ” | 1 |
Melania Trump smiles at passersby on a highway in Sevnica, Solvenia that reads “Welcome to the Hometown of First Lady” — a billboard that represents more than a celebration of its most famous citizen. [The number of tourists in Slovenia rose by 8 percent in March, with tourists booking overnight stays jumping a whopping 30. 6 percent and tourists visiting by 22. 5 percent, CNBC reported using data from the government’s statistics office. “Analysts said domestic tourist figures reflected improved economic conditions in Slovenia, a country which narrowly avoided an international bailout for its banks in 2013 but expects economic growth of 3. 6 percent this year versus 2. 5 percent in 2016,” CNBC reported. The unemployment rate also has improved — although no direct connection to the first lady is implicated — from 12 percent in March 2016 to 10. 2 percent in March 2017. In April the central European nation of Slovenia celebrated a milestone, CNN reported, at a time when one of its own will be living in the White House after First Son Barron Trump finishes the school year in New York. Slovenian Ambassador to the United States Dr. Božo Cerar commemorated the 25th anniversary of U. S. recognition of the European nation by planting a Linden tree in the National Arboretum in Washington, D. C. “Slovenians are ‘very proud’ that Trump is first lady, Cerar told CNN recently. “She has helped the nation’s visibility considerably, he said, noting that Americans no longer mix his country up with Slovakia, a ‘huge improvement. ’” | 1 |
The media, and the left in general, are taking pride in sales of Orwell’s Nineteen as if these confirm their fantasies about Donald Trump as a totalitarian leader. One wonders if they have read the book. [The regime in George Orwell’s “1984” declared “War is Peace — Freedom is Slavery — Ignorance is Strength. ” The dystopian fiction drew flocks of book buyers after Trump advisor Kellyanne Conway’s comment about “alternative facts. ” — Los Angeles Times, Jan. 25, 2017, Orwell’s novel is an attack on socialism, and particularly on the media’s role in an imagined socialist state. The lead character, Winston Smith, is a bureaucrat in the Ministry of Truth whose role it is to rewrite history to suit the political preferences of the Party, and to destroy historical evidence that contradicts the official narrative. (It is a state, interestingly, that suppresses gender roles to control sex. Only in a forbidden, and subversively traditional, sexual liaison does Smith briefly find refuge.) One hopes, therefore, that the people rushing to buy Nineteen because they see it as some kind of talking point against the Trump administration will actually read the novel. Perhaps they will be shocked by the parallels between the Two Minutes Hate — an organized demonstration of outrage against a largely imagined adversary — and the unhinged protests last weekend. Perhaps they will be alarmed at the degree to which our media also serve a “Party” — voluntarily. More likely, however, their new copies of Nineteen will sit on their relatively empty bookshelves, right next to the U. S. Constitutions they bought after Khizr Khan waved his copy from the podium at the Democratic National Convention. Nothing in the Constitution prevents the U. S. from excluding aliens on the basis of objectionable religious or political beliefs — indeed, we do it already and have done it for decades — but you have to read the thing to know that, and few apparently did. The “hook” on which the supposed Orwellian analogy hangs is “Kellyanne Conway’s comment [to NBC’s Chuck Todd] about ‘alternative facts. ’” The phrase has been distorted to mean the opposite of what Conway intended. In any legal dispute, opposing sides will present the court with alternative versions of the facts in the case. That is clearly what Conway meant. But the media, and the left, spun “alternative facts” as if she meant “alternatives to fact,” i. e. deliberate lies, reckless disregard of the truth. Recall that NBC — the network on which Conway appeared — was the network that selectively edited the audio of the 911 call by George Zimmerman to police in February 2012 to make it appear that Zimmerman had targeted Trayvon Martin because of his race. That deliberate lie put Zimmerman’s liberty at risk and inflamed race relations nationwide. More recently, it was Todd himself who declared in October — citing Republicans, but clearly in agreement — that the presidential race was “over. ” It is true that Trump is prone to exaggeration. It is also true that there is usually some basis for his claims. Recall the furore over his claim that “thousands” of Muslims in New Jersey celebrated the terror attacks. The media treated the claim as if Trump had simply made it up. But it turned out to be based on a kernel of truth: there had, in fact, been some limited celebrations. And Trump correctly recalled that there had been a local news report that had shaped his impression of events. Likewise with the crowd size at the inauguration. From the steps of the Capitol, and even near the front of the ceremony, it would have been nearly impossible to see any gaps in the crowd. A photograph by CNN confirms that fact. And yet the gaps did exist: Trump’s crowd on the Mall was almost certainly not as large as Obama’s in 2009. But that cannot, and does not, negate the administration’s claim that more people watched overall, through electronic media. Both can be true. Sometimes you need the “alternative facts” — what journalists used to call “both sides of the story” — to paint the full picture. But the mainstream media presume that the Trump administration doesn’t have a side — nor do Trump’s voters and supporters. Instead, the mainstream media have taken the other side. They dress it up in platitudes about holding the new administration accountable — as if, just like Nineteen the past eight years of servility can be shoved down the “Memory Hole. ” While the mainstream media were nitpicking over crowd size, and fabricating stories like the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. bust, Breitbart News — falsely impugned as Trump’s “Pravda” — was taking the administration to task over its failure to address the immigration issue on day one. Earlier, Breitbart reported Trump’s broken promise to pursue Hillary Clinton’s email scandal. The truth is that the mainstream media, collectively, are Big Brother. Unlike Winston Smith, we have finally been liberated. Joel B. Pollak is Senior at Breitbart News. He was named one of the “most influential” people in news media in 2016. His new book, How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak. | 1 |
The sales pitches seeking to separate Cheryl Lankford from her money began during the recession as she struggled to get back on her feet after the death of her husband, an American soldier serving in Iraq. Two of them were from companies that have boasted the Trump name. One was Trump University, the real estate sales seminar that Donald J. Trump promoted as a way for average people to profit from opportunities in the housing market. Ms. Lankford said she spent $35, 000 from an Army insurance payment to learn Mr. Trump’s secrets. Another was Cambridge Who’s Who, a vanity publisher promising “branding services” that seemed to complement the real estate business she hoped to create. She paid thousands of dollars to Cambridge, whose spokesman and “executive director of global branding” was Mr. Trump’s eldest son, Donald Jr. Six years later, Ms. Lankford, who is 44 and has a son, has little to show for the money she spent, aside from a nagging sense that she was taken advantage of. Several friends in her community in San Antonio fell for similar offers, she said, but most are not eager to talk about it. “As a widow, you find you were so dependent on your husband, and when you make a mistake because of predatory businesses, it’s embarrassing,” Ms. Lankford said. “We’re an easy target. ” “Easy target” might describe the audience for several enterprises stamped with the Trump brand that have been accused of preying upon desperation, inexperience or vanity. Some are well known. Trump University has most recently gained notice because of Mr. Trump’s attacks on the Mexican heritage of the judge overseeing a fraud lawsuit brought by former students. There was also a multilevel enterprise, the Trump Network, that Mr. Trump had said would give hope to people looking to “opt out of the recession. ” But intersecting with these was another, largely unexamined, business venture, Cambridge Who’s Who, which generated hundreds of complaints that it deceptively peddled the promise of recognition in a registry, as well as branding and networking services of questionable value. Dozens of people who paid businesses were also sold products by Cambridge, which benefited from its partnership with Donald Trump Jr. through “leveraging relationships built by the Trump empire,” according to Cambridge. Cambridge was not a Trump company it was operated by Randy Narod, a Long Island, N. Y. nightclub and bagel store owner barred from the securities industry for having had an impostor take his licensing exam. However, Cambridge gained the Trump imprimatur when the younger Mr. Trump came on board in 2010 and began promoting its services as a way for people to distinguish themselves in a tough economic climate. He worked in plugs for Cambridge during interviews on the Fox Business Network and TheStreet. com, did a promotional video and appeared in photos with Mr. Narod. Among them was one with another Trump executive at Trump Tower in New York, where, according to a news release, the three men discussed “strategies to expand the personal branding and professional networking services offered by Cambridge Who’s Who. ” Mr. Narod’s company said on its website that it had embarked on a “global expansion with the Trump Organization. ” “Branding is the best way to gain recognition and exposure, and nobody knows this more than the Trump Organization,” the younger Mr. Trump said in a promotion for Cambridge. Cambridge employees played up the Trump association when pursuing customers. “We had scripts to read when we made our calls to people, and when Donald Trump Jr. came along, our scripts were changed to include him in it,” said Joy Debono, a former Cambridge telemarketer. “We would basically say that Cambridge was a good company because Trump was involved in it. ” Donald Trump Jr. declined to answer questions about his work for Cambridge. His father’s presidential campaign issued a statement saying the younger Mr. Trump’s role at the company “was an arrangement made totally outside of the Trump Organization and there was never any commingling of the two corporations at any level. ” Mr. Narod said that the younger Mr. Trump worked with Cambridge for a year while also continuing as a top executive with the Trump Organization, and that he had been aware of the complaints against Cambridge, as well as Mr. Narod’s censure by the securities industry. “Don Jr. was hired for a very short time as a spokesperson to help our members with their personal branding, since he and his family build one of the biggest brands in the world,” Mr. Narod said. “We believed that he could be essential to enhance their online presence. ” The “who’s who” industry has a long and dubious history. There are some companies that publish directories of professionals in various fields, such as lawyers and top corporate executives. But there are many others that target people of little distinction, shower them with accolades and then try to sell them costly “honors” such as placement in a directory or wall plaques. Cambridge and its subsidiary, Worldwide Branding, took the model a step further, adding the promise of branding — news releases, video biographies and a personalized web page — and networking with other Cambridge customers who paid a membership fee to join. When Donald Trump Jr. joined Cambridge, the company had already had about 400 complaints filed against it with the Better Business Bureau since 2006. Scores more appeared in online consumer forums like Ripoff Report, where customers vented about misleading sales calls, worthless products and difficulties getting refunds. Many of the complaints describe a similar pattern of aggressively steering people into ever more expensive products. A woman from Kansas reported that she had paid $788 for services she claimed were “not worth $50 collectively” while she was going through a divorce and “looking for a way to make a living, build a new life and expand my career through this organization. ” After she complained to the New York State attorney general’s office, she eventually received a refund. “I felt so stupid,” the woman, identified only as “Pepper,” wrote in an online posting. “My takeaway is this: all is not gold that glitters, and that includes the Trump name. Buyer beware!” In Oregon, Phyllis Fread was in her 80s, dealing with Parkinson’s disease and had been retired from teaching for almost two decades when Cambridge started calling her at home, where she lived alone. Cambridge salespeople telephoned Ms. Fread — who did not use the internet — 42 times trying to sell her networking services, a website and other products she did not need, according to an investigation by the Oregon attorney general’s office. Over a period, Cambridge charged her $14, 593 for a video biography, calendars, a plaque and other items, including a news release in June 2010 titled “Phyllis J. Fread Reveals Her Secret to a Long Career in Education. ” The release included a mention of Donald Trump Jr. saying he “was eager to share his extensive experience” with Cambridge clients. Eventually, Ms. Fread reached her credit card limit and her son disconnected her telephone to stop Cambridge from calling. In a recorded interview with an investigator from the attorney general’s office, Ms. Fread became emotional as she recalled how “there were all kinds of things they’d push and I’d say, ‘I don’t want it at all. ’” “I remember saying, ‘Wait a minute, I don’t need anything, I don’t want anything.’ And then you couldn’t get a word in edgewise. I probably should have hung up,” she said. “But I didn’t. ” Cambridge was accused by the state of “unfair, deceptive and unconscionable practices” and settled without admitting guilt, issuing a refund to Ms. Fread in 2012. She died 18 months later. Mr. Narod said many complaints about Cambridge stemmed from early “growing pains” before it transitioned from just a vanity publisher to one that added branding services. Cambridge — which in recent years has shifted its focus to finding customers outside the United States through a related venture called Worldwide Who’s Who — has worked to improve its sales techniques and to better address complaints, he said. The latest Better Business Bureau records show close to 100 complaints in the last three years about Cambridge and Worldwide. “It has been quite some time since Cambridge has received negative comments, and we believe that is a testament to the strength of our products and the work that we did to make necessary operational improvements,” Mr. Narod said. A search of online records, as well as interviews, turned up dozens of members who also paid other companies licensed or endorsed by the Trumps, although Mr. Narod denied that the businesses exchanged customer leads. “We have never shared or sold our data with the Trump Organization, Trump University or Trump Network,” he said. What they did have in common were sales appeals that had a similar theme of offering help navigating the recession. Ads for Trump University referred to government bailouts for banks, and asked the question, “Who’s helping you?” Similarly, Donald Trump Jr. went on Fox Business and said Cambridge clients “are people that the stimulus should be benefitting. ” “It’s a very difficult economy out there, a very difficult job market,” he told TheStreet. com while discussing Cambridge. “And you really have to position yourself so you can take advantage of all those things properly. ” Ms. Lankford, who heads her local Texas chapter of Gold Star Wives, which represents spouses of fallen soldiers, said she had lost money in the stock market collapse and decided to use an insurance payment from her husband’s death to try to start her own business. Her husband, Jonathan M. Lankford, a command sergeant major in the Army, died in Baghdad in September 2007. In late 2009, she responded to an appeal from Trump University, which promised to “turn anyone into a successful real estate investor” and paid for the full package of seminars. Soon, however, she found they were of little practical value and she began “calling them and asking for help. ” “They ended up putting me in touch with some fellow out in California who tried to talk me into investing in trailer parks,” she said. “It was a joke. ” Cambridge, meanwhile, was supposed to help Ms. Lankford “create my brand” to promote her real estate efforts, and in some of the many calls she received over several years, the company’s representative cited Donald Trump Jr. ’s role, she said. But after spending several thousand dollars — which got her, among other things, a wall plaque, a news release and a web page — she said she received no meaningful benefits. Ms. Lankford never filed complaints or pursued refunds, saying that it probably would have been fruitless, and that she was too busy raising her young son on her own and trying to rebuild her life. She came away from her experience believing both businesses were “all about taking money from people who don’t have much to begin with. ” Besides Trump University, there were other enterprises that resonated with Cambridge members struggling to get ahead. On one of several Cambridge websites for its members, a chat group created in 2010 titled “Making Money in a Recession” contained an appeal to join ACN, a multilevel marketer of telecommunications and energy services that was “endorsed by Donald Trump and was featured in an episode of ‘Celebrity Apprentice. ’” Mr. Trump’s financial disclosure shows that he has collected more than $1 million in speaking fees from ACN, which charged people $499 to sell its products with the promise of profits for bringing in additional members, and has been the subject of numerous complaints. There was also an appeal for the Trump Network, the marketer of vitamins and nutritional supplements to which Mr. Trump licensed his name. Originally called Ideal Health and rebranded in 2009, the Trump Network and its top salespeople lured those hit by the economic downturn, suggesting they could become rich through commissions for bringing in new recruits. Christine Turner, a disabled nurse in upstate New York, said a friend persuaded her to spend “close to $500” to get started with the Trump Network, but that it “didn’t pan out” after she struggled to get others involved. She also paid to join Cambridge, attracted to the prospect of networking with other members, but that did not work either. “I didn’t have any good experiences with members coming or approaching me or asking for products,” Ms. Turner said, adding that she did not hold her bad experiences against the Trumps. “I was fine with it, even with losing a little bit of money,” she said. “I really think that Donald Trump is a powerful businessman and I’m actually for him, I’m not afraid to say that. ” | 1 |
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According to the reports, it appears the Muslims who accused him had no proof- they did this just for spite. They hate Christians and wanted to see a Christian die.
The boy was eventually released, but not after pressure from international Christians aid groups. No Koran copy was ever found. The boy and his family are now in hiding, since Muslims are threatening to murder them if they find them:
Inzam was at school when he was accused of having burnt a Koran on 20th October 2016, his mother Shakil who works as a Nurse at Civil Hospital, in Quetta was arrested with him on 21st October after registration of First Information Report (FIR) 167.
The arrests were made without investigation on the testimony of a Muslim witness and was totally in accordance with the draconian blasphemy laws of Pakistan. A Muslim witness is given higher authority then non-Muslim testimonies under sharia law, these are Islamic laws that determine Pakistani law.
News of the arrests created huge community tension, however prompt police action prevented threats to the Christian community and the formation of a mob from becoming a full scale attack on an innocent Christian community.
Over the next four days local politicians and the BPCA have been clamouring for justice for the innocent mother and child. Four days by a miracle the two victims were released from Civil Lines Police station in Quetta on 25th October. The mother and child have expressed in no uncertain terms that they had been interrogated and suffered torture during their 4 day detainment. However despite their treatment they both did not confess to the crime of blasphemy.
Moreover, Police have confirmed that no evidence of any alleged Koran desecration was found. ( source )
…
Nasir Saeed, director of the Centre for Legal Aid, Assistance and Settlement, said in a statement that bringing blasphemy charges against a 9-year-old child shows just how the blasphemy laws are being used to promote hatred toward Christians.
“He may have never have even heard the word of blasphemy,” Saeed said, referring to Izhan. “Unfortunately, this is the worst example of hatred and intolerance against Christians and treatment toward them in Pakistan.”
“The government of Pakistan must look into such cases and take appropriate steps to bring necessary changes to stop the ongoing misuse of this law,” he added. “The international community has continuously expressed its concern and called for amendments.” ( source )
Violence against Christians in the Muslim world is rampant. Nobody is safe from accusations, torture, and death for no reason other than being a Christian, not even a small child. Daily life is for many Christians in places like Pakistan like living under the reign of Diocletian during the 4th century, who had Christians arrested and tortured just for fun, no differently than what happens in the Muslim world today.
The West is not without its problems, and certainly there is a tremendous one today with Islam. However, there are many places in this world where Christians have literally no money, no place to go, and no help from anybody except Christ alone absolutely. Never forget them- for they are truly the Church suffering.
Article posted with permission from Shoebat.com . Article by Andrew Bieszad. Don't forget to Like Freedom Outpost on Facebook , Google Plus , & Twitter . You can also get Freedom Outpost delivered to your Amazon Kindle device here . shares | 0 |
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SAN FRANCISCO — After a string of scandals this year, Uber has rushed to repair its corporate culture. The company has started an internal investigation into workplace practices, issued apologies for some of its behavior, and has had several female executives and a board member speak up on its behalf. On Tuesday, Uber continued its mea culpa tour by releasing its first report detailing the composition of its work force, which depicted an overwhelmingly male employee base and showed that the largest ethnic group is white. In addition, the company forcefully repudiated its past, saying that its intense, masculine culture went too far. “Every strength, in excess, is a weakness,” Liane Hornsey, the recently appointed chief human resources officer, said in an interview at the company’s headquarters in San Francisco. “What has driven Uber to immense success — its aggression, the attitude — has toppled over. And it needs to be shaved back. ” Fixing Uber’s culture and image has become a top priority for the privately held company, which is valued at nearly $70 billion. Last month, Uber’s dysfunctions were thrust into the public eye after a former engineer detailed her experience with sexual harassment and a lack of support from human resources at the company. Employees have described a cutthroat, political environment among some managers. Scrutiny has fallen on Uber’s chief executive, Travis Kalanick, who helped found the company and has set its tone. In recent weeks, Uber has moved quickly to shed that past. The company hired Eric H. Holder Jr. the former United States attorney general, and others to conduct an investigation of the workplace. Arianna Huffington, a board member, has repeatedly said that the company would no longer hire “brilliant jerks. ” Ms. Hornsey, a former executive at Google, has also moved into the hot seat. She joined Uber late last year from SoftBank and has essentially been given a blank check — money, head count, resources — to revamp the workplace processes and managerial styles put into place when the company was still a fledgling . Along with resources, Ms. Hornsey has embarked on a “listening tour” with employees who wish to share grievances. She is reworking the human resources structure and how Uber rates employee performance, long considered a problem area for insiders. And she spoke on behalf of the company about the diversity report, which covered employees but not drivers, who work as freelancers. The report’s numbers were stark. Only 36 percent of Uber’s work force is made up of women, while the technology jobs at the company — some 85 percent — are overwhelmingly held by men. In terms of racial composition, 50 percent of Uber’s employees in the United States are white and 31 percent are Asian, while 9 percent are black and 6 percent are Hispanic. “We have to build more trust with our employees, and transparency will build that trust,” Ms. Hornsey said of the report. In the past, Mr. Kalanick has resisted publishing a diversity report, current and former employees have said. In a statement on Tuesday, Mr. Kalanick said, “I know that we have been too slow in publishing our numbers — and that the best way to demonstrate our commitment to change is through transparency. And to make progress, it’s important we measure what matters. ” Compared with statistics at other technology companies, Uber’s diversity figures are not that different — and are modestly better than some. According to Google’s most recent diversity report, for example, just 31 percent of its work force are women. Google also said 81 percent of its technical jobs were held by men, while 1 percent of its employees in the United States were black and 3 percent were Hispanic. Many of the numbers stack up roughly along the same lines at Apple and Facebook. Many of the diversity issues at Uber are also endemic to Silicon Valley. The venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers was sued over gender discrimination in 2012 by a former partner it won the case in 2015. The software development GitHub has also dealt with allegations of sexism and harassment. At Uber, issues of internal culture may have been compounded by its dizzying growth over the past few years. The service is available in hundreds of cities across more than 70 countries and completes hundreds of thousands of trip requests a day. In the last year alone, the company’s employee base has doubled in size to more than 12, 000. But that turbocharged expansion has come at a cost, employees have said. Growth, they said, was prioritized above anything else. That skewed the development of the organization into something that embraced the “cult of the individual,” Ms. Hornsey said. Top performers were rewarded and promoted into management positions. Some 63 percent of managers had never previously held a leadership position, and Uber did not provide much training for new managers, some said. “For the first several years, we had to just focus on executing our operational goals, and that was kind of the ” said Nicole Cuellar, an operations and logistics manager who has worked at Uber for nearly four years. “There was never the need to think about our culture like that. And I don’t think it sunk in until we all had this really experience. ” Among the things that Uber now has on the table to change are its list of 14 corporate values, which include being “super pumped” and “always be hustlin’. ” Mr. Kalanick is open to revising or adding new values, Ms. Hornsey said. She added that Uber was creating a task force to pinpoint major human resources failings, aided by Frances X. Frei, an adviser from Harvard Business School who has helped companies through organizational change. Uber also pledged to donate $3 million over the next three years to groups working on bringing women and underrepresented minorities into the tech industry. Some current and former employees have expressed concern over whether Uber will be able to change, given the trait of aggressive individualism that Mr. Kalanick has fostered. But others like Tasneem Minadakis, who is active in Uber’s LadyEng organization, an internal group at the company that supports and campaigns for women, said they have been galvanized by the efforts to fix the culture. In total, Ms. Minadakis said LadyEng has more than 500 employees eager to enact change. “They really do believe that this company can be a force for good,” Ms. Hornsey said. “If it could only stop shooting itself in the foot. ” | 1 |
Terrorism Threat: Trump is Right — Profile, Profile, Profile Written by Selwyn Duke Email
You do it. I do it. He does it. She does it. The guy down the block does it. Everyone engages in profiling — continually.
For example, if you see a bunch of rough-hewn young men walking down the block and you move to the other side; if you patronize the deli with the clean-cut guy behind the counter and not the one with the tattooed, body-pierced, greasy-haired Greenwich Village retread; or prefer a 50-year-old school bus driver for your child to a 22-year-old one, you’ve engaged in profiling. How about when a mother would choose a 17-year-old girl to babysit her child but definitely not a 17-year-old boy because most child molestation is committed by males? Is that fair? After all, just as most Muslims don’t engage in terrorism, most young men don’t molest children. But life’s not fair. And anyone who thinks a profile is invalidated simply because most members of the group in question don’t conform to it, doesn’t understand profiling.
As Dr. Walter Williams has put it, profiling is a method by which we can make decisions based on scant information when the cost of obtaining more information would be too high. For example, since you can’t spend a month living with a prospective babysitter, getting to know him personally, we have to use “an observable or known physical attribute as a proxy or estimator of some other unobservable or unknown attribute,” as Williams has put it . It’s the same with airport security, where thousands of people must be screened within a short time. And doctors profile, too; to use some examples Williams has cited, black men have a prostate cancer rate twice that of white men, physicians check women and not men for breast cancer even though men occasionally develop it, and recommend prostate exams for men over 40 but not for 25-year-olds. When a doctor does this, is he guilty of “racism,” “sexism” and “ageism”?
What all this reflects is simply the reality of “diversity.” And given that criminality isn’t the one area of life where differences among groups suddenly cease to exist, it’s not surprising that authorities, instead of checking their brain at the door, also use profiling. In their realm, the practice is used to determine the probability that a given individual has committed a crime or has criminal intent. And a profile can include many factors. For example, I’m a member of perhaps the most profiled group in the nation — men — who police view more suspiciously than women because men commit an inordinate portion of the crime. Young people are also viewed more suspiciously for the same reason.
Aside from sex and age, other factors in a criminal profile can pertain to dress, behavior, the car being driven, whether a person is out of place in a given neighborhood and many other things — including race, ethnicity and religion. And this is where we have to be careful not to descend into prejudice and unjust discrimination.
Of course, we have to know what that would be. Here’s a good example: if you bat not an eye at profiling men or young people but then complain about profiling Muslims or blacks, you’re prejudiced. If you insist that considering racial factors is “racism” but don’t call the profiling of men and the young “sexism” and “ageism,” you’re prejudiced. And if after having been made aware of this double standard, you persist in it, you are, practically speaking, a bad person.
This point cannot be made often enough. There are only two kinds of profiling: Good profiling and bad profiling. Good profiling considers all relevant factors, in accordance with legitimate criminological science; bad profiling does not. Yet propagandists, and the genuinely misguided, have convinced people that the truth is precisely the opposite of what it is: that not cherry-picking — refusing to exclude certain relevant racial factors from a profile — is so-called “racial profiling” and is wrong. (They descend into further inanity in claiming that profiling Muslims is “racial profiling” even though “Islam” is not a race.)
I wrote “certain relevant racial factors” because the anti-profiling crew has no problem profiling whites. For example, we often hear that mass shooters are inordinately white; the kicker here is that this is untrue . As I demonstrated in 2014 by analyzing data provided by left-wing site Mother Jones , whites commit mass shootings in accordance with their overall percentage of the population (interestingly, the only group overrepresented in this category was Americans of Asian descent). This brings us to another point: leftists engage in profiling no less than anyone else.
They just do it all wrong.
Consider: immediately following the 2015 San Bernardino shooting, MSNBC suggested it might have been perpetrated by pro-lifers (profile: “white Christians”). CNN opined that it could have been the handiwork of militia types (profile: “white Christians”). Of course, probability dictated the culprits were precisely who they turned out to be: Muslims. This brings us to the last point: the Left engages in projection when it complains that comprehensive profiling reflects prejudice and unjust discrimination.
In reality, the Left’s profiling is all about prejudice and unjust discrimination.
As Dictionary.com informs , a prejudice is “an unfavorable opinion or feeling formed beforehand or without knowledge, thought, or reason.” The assumption that the San Bernardino terrorists were Muslim wasn’t a prejudice, but simply a reflection of criminological knowledge. Likewise, that 87 percent of those targeted by the NYC police’s stop-and-frisk program were black or Hispanic didn’t reflect prejudice, but the reality that 96 percent of all crimes in NYC are committed by blacks and Hispanics.
In contrast, the Left’s profiling is not about scientific correctness but political correctness, not about what a group does but what it is . Can a group be profiled? Christians, yes; Muslims, no. Whites, yes; blacks, no. Men, yes; women, no. Heterosexuals, yes; homosexuals, no. It is all prejudice, all of the time.
Unfortunately, none of the arguments above, no matter how well or how often stated, will do anything to purge this leftist prejudice. To paraphrase satirist Jonathan Swift, “You cannot reason a man out of a position he has not reasoned himself into.” Leftists are divorced from Truth and operate based on feelings, and a misbegotten emotional attachment cannot be remedied with an intellectual approach. Instead, political correctness must die. Until exhibiting such means what speaking the Truth does now — scorn, ostracism and career destruction — until it is rooted out from the culture-shaping media, academia and entertainment, we’ll be left with the Left’s profiling and not the right profiling.
How could this be accomplished? By counteracting the social code of political correctness and its attendant social pressure with social pressure designed to deny posturing leftists their illusory high ground; turn a source of moral preening into a source of shame. To oppose proper profiling is to harm our society. To support unjust double standards in profiling is to be prejudiced. And doing this even after hearing the truth, is to be a bad person.
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Ivanka Trump said she was surprised by the level of viciousness in Washington, D. C. after her family moved to the city to join her father President Donald Trump in the White House. [“It is hard and there is a level of viciousness that I was not expecting,” she admitted in an interview with Fox and Friends. “I was not expecting the intensity of this experience. ” Trump made an appearance on the network to discuss her work on job training and skills based education to help people looking for work. “I’m trying to keep my head down, not listen to the noise and just work really hard to make a positive impact in the lives of many people,” Trump said, reminding viewers that life was more difficult for people who were laid off or for a mother that lost their child to opioid abuse. “My father’s administration intends to be transformative and we want to do big, bold things. We’re looking to change the status quo,” she said. President Trump will travel with his daughter Ivanka to a technical school in Wisconsin this week to highlight the importance of education and apprenticeships. Ivanka Trump said she was also surprised by the amount of photographers outside her home in Washington, D. C. “That is a weird experience,” she laughed. “I’m looking for alternative routes out of my home but you know, there is a scrutiny and there is an interest that exceeds anything that I’ve ever experienced before. ” | 1 |
How much money can one steal?
New information has surfaced regarding more criminality of the Clinton Foundation. The trail of criminality never ends. Here is the latest.
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Video: ‘Rude’ CNN Reporter Asks Trump Why He’s Taking Time Off To Open A Hotel Meanwhile Hillary Clinton is at home sleeping Steve Watson | Infowars.com
GOP nominee Donald Trump took time out of a relentless campaign schedule Wednesday to spend around an hour opening a new hotel, prompting one CNN reporter to accuse Trump of “taking time out of swing states.” Meanwhile Hillary Clinton is again nowhere to be seen.
CNN’s Dana Bash suggested that Trump should be more concerned with campaigning in swing states, yet Trump had three campaign stops scheduled for the same day. Dana Bash: Is your DC hotel opening free advertising?Donald Trump: “No, not at all” https://t.co/6OZtrfIwim https://t.co/9HHqooom8r
— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) October 26, 2016
“So to people who say you’re taking time out of swing states to go do this, you say?” Bash asked.
“I say the following: You have been covering me for the last — long time. I did yesterday eight stops and three major speeches, and I’ve been doing this for weeks straight,” Trump responded.
“For you to ask me that question is actually very insulting because Hillary Clinton does one stop and then she goes home and sleeps. And yet you’ll ask me that question. I think that’s a very rude question, to be honest with you.” Trump exclaimed.
Trump added that the opening of the hotel also served to prove a point that he can get things built under budget and ahead of schedule, suggesting that the country needs to be able to follow suit.
While CNN has continuously run defense for Hillary Clinton amid a myriad of scandals, and even rigged its own polls to suggest she won the debates, the network has been forced to admit that Hillary is running an extremely light campaign schedule.
Last month, for example, Hillary went six days without an event except for a short speech she gave in Orlando, Florida.
And in August, Hillary took seven of the first 14 days of the month off and even went four days without a single campaign appearance.
“Her speeches are so short – they don’t last long, they’re like 10 minutes and ‘let’s get out of here,’” Donald Trump said about her schedule. “Go back home and go to sleep.” NEWSLETTER SIGN UP Get the latest breaking news & specials from Alex Jones and the Infowars Crew. Related Articles | 0 |
The Boeing Company announced a tentative agreement on Tuesday to sell up to 60 737s to an Iranian airline, a transaction valued at $6 billion that angered American critics of Iran and appeared likely to test the Trump administration’s avowed hostility toward that country. Boeing, a leading commercial aerospace company and a top American exporter, said in a statement that the agreement, which requires United States government approval, would create about 18, 000 American jobs. The company’s agreement with Aseman Airlines, an Iranian carrier described as the nation’s third largest, is the first to be announced by any big American business with Iran since President Trump took office in January. Boeing announced an agreement last December to sell 80 commercial aircraft to Iran Air, the national carrier, a deal valued at $16. 6 billion. Commercial aircraft sales to Iran are permitted under the nuclear agreement reached in 2015 involving Iran and major global powers, including the United States. The agreement relaxed many economic sanctions against Iran in return for the country’s verifiable pledges that its nuclear work would be peaceful in nature. Mr. Trump has repeatedly denounced the nuclear agreement, describing it as a giveaway to a country that he and his aides have called a leading state sponsor of terrorism and a destabilizing force in the Middle East. But Mr. Trump also has vowed to protect American industries and workers from foreign competition. Aerospace analysts said that together, Boeing’s deals with Iran amount to a test of the Trump administration’s priorities. If Boeing is forbidden to sell the aircraft to Iran, plane makers in other countries might fill the gap. “There was always going to be a clash over this issue,” said Richard Aboulafia, vice president of analysis at the Teal Group, an aviation research consultancy in Fairfax, Va. “Trump campaigned on getting tough with Iran,” Mr. Aboulafia said, but “at the end of the day, these are manufacturing jobs. It’s really hard to say, ‘Yes, we are giving this work to the Europeans. ’” The Boeing announcement contrasted with other signs of growing hostility between the Trump administration and Iran. Last month, the United States imposed sanctions on 25 Iranian entities and individuals over what the White House called illegal Iranian missile tests. Mr. Trump included Iran on the blacklist of countries subject to his proposed visa ban, which is currently blocked in the courts. It was not clear from the Boeing announcement whether the tentative deal with Aseman Airlines had been negotiated under President Trump or under President Barack Obama. Boeing officials did not immediately return emailed requests for comment. The announcement, posted on Boeing’s website, said Aseman intended to buy 30 Boeing 737 MAX aircraft valued at $3 billion, with rights to purchase an additional 30. Deliveries would be scheduled to start in 2022. Aseman currently has a fleet of 31 aircraft, a mixture of Boeing, Airbus and Fokker models with an average age of 25 years, according to the website Planespotters. net. The Boeing deal requires permission from the Office of Foreign Assets Control of the Treasury Department, which has regulatory authority over such transactions with Iran. Not mentioned in the Boeing announcement, but still a significant hurdle for both sides, is how the company would be paid for the aircraft. Under sanctions that are still in place against Iran, the country cannot use the American banking system, so transactions must be conducted overseas in currencies other than the dollar. Iran has one of the oldest commercial aircraft fleets in the world, a legacy of the prolonged estrangement with the United States that blocked the Iranians from refurbishing or replacing many of their planes. American critics of Iran in Congress and elsewhere have repeatedly objected to Boeing’s plans to sell new aircraft to Iran, arguing that at least some of the planes could be diverted for illicit military use. Representative Peter Roskam of Illinois, an influential Republican who has long opposed Boeing’s intentions in Iran, called the tentative deal announced on Tuesday “outrageous” and observed that it had coincided with reports that President Bashar of Syria, Iran’s Middle East ally, was responsible for a deadly chemical weapons attack in his country. “On the same day Bashar ’s air force dropped chemical weapons onto children, an American company announced its intent to sell airplanes to Assad’s patrons in Tehran,” Mr. Roskam said in a statement. He expressed hope that the Trump administration would “everything within its power” to stop the sale. Boeing says that there are sufficient safeguards in place to prevent Iranian misuse of the aircraft, and that the tentative deal announced on Tuesday is legal under the nuclear agreement. “This deal presents Trump with the mother of all dilemmas,” said Cliff Kupchan, chairman of the Eurasia Group, a political risk consultancy based in Washington. “It would create a lot of jobs — he’s all about that,” Mr. Kupchan said. “But planes are inherently can ferry troops around, and Trump is dug in on curbing Iranian influence in the region. It’s a big bet by Boeing, and the firm probably has an uphill fight on its hands. ” | 1 |
Onstage at a recent industry conference with the longtime leaders of the country’s biggest magazine publishers, Rich Battista, the new chief executive of Time Inc. did not seem the outsider. Tieless, with legs crossed, he ticked off his company’s latest accomplishments — robust digital growth, updated advertising capabilities — with the swagger of a knowing publishing chieftain. “There’s something really exciting happening at our company,” he said, echoing what had become something of a rallying cry at Time Inc. “We’re taking our brand to really exciting new places. ” A former television executive, Mr. Battista, 52, has been charged with revitalizing the most storied magazine publisher in the country. At the helm of the nearly Time Inc. since September, he has quickly worked to transform the home of Time, People and Sports Illustrated into a multimedia, multipurpose company, with a strategy heavy on online video, television and entertainment — and noticeably lighter on magazine journalism. Among the ideas the company has floated: offering people paid services like a club and insurance for pets. Mr. Battista’s zeal, however, may not be enough to save the Time empire, whose weekly publications helped propel the national conversation for decades but have struggled to maintain their relevance in the digital media environment. Time Inc. ’s revenue has fallen every year since 2011, and investors have punished its stock since the company was spun off from Time Warner nearly three years ago. Brutal cost cuts and relentless executive churn have roiled the company. Smelling blood, potential acquirers have been circling the company for months. And while the board has not yet decided whether to pursue a sale, it has asked suitors to submit formal bids by this week, according to two people briefed on the company’s plans. Five parties, including Meredith Corporation and an investor group led by Edgar Bronfman Jr. and the media executive Ynon Kreiz, have expressed interest in buying the company in its entirety, the people said. Early last month, Time Inc. filed an amended severance plan with the Securities and Exchange Commission that protects bonuses for executives deemed most likely to be affected by a sale. Time Inc. rebuffed a takeover bid of at least $18 a share from Mr. Bronfman and Mr. Kreiz last year, and it could ultimately decide not to sell. The company is also considering bringing on an outside investor. Mr. Battista and Jen Wong, 42, Time Inc. ’s new chief operating officer, maintain that they are committed to advancing their plans for the company. During a recent interview at its new headquarters in downtown Manhattan, both insisted that Time was on solid footing despite its lackluster financial performance, and that it was done with any about what its strategy should be. “Those things are behind us,” said Ms. Wong, a former executive of the website PopSugar. “We’re really focused on growth now. ” In a note to employees several weeks ago, Mr. Battista introduced an “innovation challenge” intended to “surface ideas for new products and services to offer our consumers. ” The winning team will receive $10, 000. “Think of it,” he said, “as a Time Inc. ‘Shark Tank. ’” Time Inc. with its portfolio of 22 magazine titles in the United States and 15 digital properties, has for years been a vastly different company from the one Henry R. Luce founded in 1922. Although the print business still brings in roughly of the company’s $3 billion in annual revenue, focus has shifted toward other revenue opportunities, including short online videos and events. The magazines share resources, and editors work with the business side, an idea that for much of the company’s history would have been anathema. More symbolically, Time Inc. recently moved from the iconic Time Life building in Midtown to a nondescript skyscraper in Lower Manhattan. “It has always been the case that former Time Inc. people say it’s not what it used to be. Now it’s really not what it used to be,” said Daniel Okrent, a longtime former editor at Time Inc. who was also the first public editor of The New York Times. “It has the misfortune of having the same name, but it’s not related. ” Like other print publishers that have experienced drastic declines in advertising and circulation, Time Inc. has slashed costs, closed bureaus and let talented but expensive journalists go. In the last year, it has replaced longtime editors at Real Simple and InStyle and laid off about 100 people across the company. While the occasional story in People still generates buzz and Time’s covers sometimes draw attention (one from October featuring an illustration of President Trump won the American Society of Magazine Editors’ Cover of the Year award) Time Inc. ’s magazines no longer set the agenda or break memorable stories the way they once did. But analysts and former employees also describe distinct challenges and missed opportunities that made it hard for the company to adapt to a shifting media landscape. Management disagreements and cost cuts in the 2000s led to departures that bled the company of talent and left it without a clear succession plan. Until the spinoff, Time Warner and its chief executive, Jeffrey L. Bewkes, took Time Inc. ’s earnings and invested them in businesses like HBO, leaving Time Inc. itself with little money for reinvestment. “He saw that he had a stable full of horses, but he also saw that he had a garage full of cars,” Josh Quittner, a former editor and digital editorial director at Time Inc. said about Mr. Bewkes. “So he was going to invest in the garage full of cars. ” A Time Warner spokesman said, “Time Warner has always fully invested in all of our operations, including Time Inc. when we owned it. ” Sitting on opposite sides of a table in a conference room near Time Inc. ’s boardroom — where a painting of Luce hangs — Mr. Battista and Ms. Wong lauded new services and products, including a platform for youth sports, called Sports Illustrated Play, and a streaming video channel from People and Entertainment Weekly. The company has also poured resources into digital video. It recently started a personal finance video series called Coinage. Just last week, it introduced Well Done, a brand for social platforms including Facebook and Instagram. For the bigger screen, the company is working with television networks, including ABC and Investigation Discovery, on shows and special events that it can also cover in its magazines. “It’s very organic for us to write an article about a new show that’s launching that we happen to be involved in,” Mr. Battista said. “That’s a great example of using our print assets to build new revenue streams. ” Time Inc. is also focusing more on advertising. The company recently purchased several ad technology and data companies, including Viant, the owner of Myspace. And it now has its own advertising studio in Brooklyn called the Foundry. Mr. Battista and Ms. Wong insisted that Time Inc. ’s magazines were still important to the company. And in early February, Mr. Battista and Alan Murray, Time Inc. ’s chief content officer, sent a note to employees praising recent developments at the company, including a bump in Time magazine’s online audience. “These achievements are a testament to one of our key points of difference — Time Inc. ’s trusted, quality journalism,” they wrote. But Mr. Battista and Ms. Wong also said the company was looking to leverage the company’s titles into other revenue opportunities. “The foundation of the company is, has been and will remain the power of these brands,” Mr. Battista said. “It’s about extending these brands and taking these brands far beyond, obviously, the printed word, which was the legacy of this company. ” To some in the industry, Time Inc. seems to be on the right track even if its financial results suggest otherwise. And within the company, some have described a new sense of collaboration. Employees congregate in common areas, where there are bowls of fruit and free snacks. The company’s new headquarters feature bright video studios and test kitchens, instead of the bar carts and palatial executive offices of yore. (Laura Brown, the new editor in chief of InStyle, coyly described the space as “high concept. ”) “I think they’re absolutely doing the right thing,” said Tim Nollen, an analyst at Macquarie Capital. But, he added, “It remains to be seen how they actually can monetize what they’re doing. ” Still, the on traditional journalism has not gone unnoticed. One editorial employee, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid angering his employer, noted that whether the strategy worked or not, it was not going to lead to the kind of work that the company had historically prized. Time Inc. is now targeting $100 million in cost cuts this year, though it will not specify what parts of the company will be affected. The company expects revenue for this year to be roughly flat. Still, Mr. Battista and Ms. Wong are optimistic about Time Inc. ’s future. They project that digital advertising revenue will reach $600 million this year and $1 billion in the coming years, and are confident that the company will return to growth. But Time Inc. ’s future as an independent company is uncertain. There are certainly obstacles to a sale. Meredith flirted with buying Time Inc. in 2013, but a sale fell through in part because Meredith reportedly did not want to buy four of the titles — Time, Fortune, Money and Sports Illustrated. And while some see value in Time Inc. ’s videos, others involved in the magazine industry say the company’s appeal may not be in all of its new bells and whistles. In the end, it may be in those venerable magazines that made it so prominent in the first place. | 1 |
ISTANBUL — A car bomb destroyed a police vehicle near a central tourist district in Istanbul on Tuesday morning, instantly killing 11 people and wounding dozens more, Turkish officials said, the latest in a series of deadly attacks in the country. Explosives in a parked car were detonated by remote control as a police shuttle bus passed through the historic Beyazit district during rush hour, Gov. Vasip Sahin of Istanbul said in a televised statement. Seven of the dead were police officers, Governor Sahin said. Although there was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, militants from two groups Turkey is currently fighting — the Islamic State and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or P. K. K. — have staged major suicide attacks in urban areas this year. Militants from the P. K. K. which has carried out an insurgency against the Turkish state for more than three decades, have claimed responsibility for similar attacks against Turkish security forces since the breakdown of a fragile peace process last July. A militant group with links to the Kurdish organization claimed responsibility for two major attacks this year in the capital, Ankara, that struck a military convoy and civilians, killing dozens. Violence has surged in the country’s predominately Kurdish southeast in recent months, after Turkey undertook a major military operation to eradicate militants from their strongholds in the region. The Turkish authorities have imposed curfews across several southeastern cities and pounded Kurdish militant targets with tanks and artillery, and they claim to have killed almost 5, 000 militants. In the process, they have reduced many Kurdish cities to rubble. Critics of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan say he deliberately the peace process with the Kurds last year to stir nationalist sentiments after his ruling Justice and Development Party fared poorly in a first round of parliamentary elections. Premeditated or not, the tactic worked, as the party went on to win in a landslide in November, prompting the president to say the country had voted for stability. Despite that victory, violence sharply escalated and the P. K. K. ’s youth branches, fighting for began carrying out increasingly sophisticated attacks in urban areas. Last month, lawmakers from Mr. Erdogan’s governing party pushed through a contentious amendment to the Turkish Constitution that would strip lawmakers’ immunity. Analysts say the move will lead to the ouster of Kurdish politicians, many of whom could face terrorism charges. Kurdish politicians have warned that their exclusion from Parliament could aggravate tensions in the southeast. On Tuesday, Mr. Erdogan visited the victims of the Istanbul attack in the hospital, where he vowed to continue to battling terrorism. “Let me be clear, terrorist organizations distinguishing between civilians, soldiers and police does not mean anything to us. The end target is always human beings,” he told reporters outside the hospital. “Turkey will never abandon its fight against terrorism. ” The attack on Tuesday occurred close to Istanbul University, the Vezneciler subway station and the city’s historic district, which includes the Suleymaniye Mosque. Video from the scene showed a police shuttle bus flipped on its side with its windows blown out, alongside another police bus with scorch marks and near the wreckage of a charred car. Other damaged vehicles littered the street nearby. Istanbul has been on high alert since two suicide attacks this year that were attributed to the Islamic State. Fears about terrorism have been blamed for the greatest decline in tourism in Turkey since 1999. The Ministry of Tourism announced last month that the number of visitors in April had fallen 28 percent from a year earlier. | 1 |
Shock!!!! Hasn't this been in the news for years??? Businesses were finding that Chinese chips had built in vulnerabilities allowing Chinese intelligence easy access???
Why is there a big surprise??
Obama and the Libs have dropped the US's drawers and presented a willing posterior for the Chinese, (who Soros favors most, and Obama second after Shiia Theocracies). | 0 |
BAGHDAD — If there were one safe place in Iraq, it should be a hospital nursery, locked down for the night with dozens of babies nestled inside. But here, not even that is a given. When a fire started late Tuesday night in the maternity wing of one of Baghdad’s main hospitals, it quickly engulfed the babies’ room. And then, in another Iraqi tragedy in a horrifying line of preventable ones, nothing worked. Hospital workers raced to save the infants, but no one could find the keys to unlock the nursery. Inexplicably, no nurses seemed to be inside. Apparently, none of the fire extinguishers functioned. It took nearly an hour and a half for firefighters to arrive. Some thought the initial cause may have been an oxygen tank explosion that set off an electrical fire. But on Wednesday morning, only one thing was certain: At least 13 infants were dead, and with them a small piece of Iraq’s future. There was Yaman Muaad, a baby boy born by cesarean section on Tuesday who died a few hours later. There was Jafar Kahtan, a baby being treated for breathing difficulties. There was Zahra Hussein, a baby girl born on Monday, whose grandfather was frantically looking for her on Wednesday. Many more were still unaccounted for. And at least 25 people, mostly infants, were being treated for burns or smoke inhalation. All Iraqi officials could manage was what they typically do in the face of tragedy: establish a committee. “A committee has been formed to investigate the incident, and so far we don’t know the reasons of the incident,” Dr. Ahmed a spokesman for the Health Ministry, said at a news conference on Wednesday. “We are awaiting the results of the investigations. ” After years of unsolved tragedy and unanswered demands for improvements, hardly anyone here believes official promises anymore. “Such tragedies have become normal to Iraqi officials, and this case will be closed, just as the other ones,” said Adnan Hussein, the acting editor in chief at Al Mada, one of Baghdad’s daily newspapers. In their agony and tears as they gathered outside Yarmouk hospital on Wednesday morning, families of the dead babies were inconsolable. Some even made accusations of arson, though there was no evidence to support that claim. “There was screaming,” said Mariam Thijeel, the mother of Yaman, describing the scene at the hospital early Wednesday. “The power was cut off, and then the doors got locked on us, and there was no man in the newborn section, and we could not save any babies. ” She described a scene of panic and chaos, and said that people in the hospital had tried desperately to find someone with keys to the hospital wing that was on fire, the doors of which were locked. “We asked the help of one of the employees, but she said, ‘I cannot help you with anything, because it’s a fire,’ ” Ms. Thijeel said. Zainab Ali, Jafar’s mother, said: “Today I have come to see him and I was told, ‘A fire happened in the newborn unit, and your baby died. ’” She said she had heard that none of the fire extinguishers worked. A third mother, Shayma Husain, came to the hospital looking for her infant son, Haider Mohammad Azeez, who had not been accounted for. Angry and tearful, she compared the leaders of the hospital to the militants of the Islamic State — saying, in effect, that politicians and terrorists were both responsible for Iraq’s endless trauma. Painful reminders of the Iraqi state’s degradation are all around. The United States spent tens of billions of dollars of reconstruction money in Iraq to build hospitals and schools and improve electricity. Yet the lights are on just a few hours a day from the public grid. Generators, if Iraqis can afford them, provide the rest. Hospitals are facing deprivation not seen since the economic sanctions of the 1990s, in part because plummeting oil prices have left the government impoverished in the middle of a war against the Islamic State. “The structure of the system of the state is wrongly built, and there is no seriousness in building state institutions,” said Ahmed Saadawi, a prominent writer who chronicled Baghdad’s tragedies in his prizewinning novel, “Frankenstein in Baghdad. ” Many Iraqis say the state’s dysfunction is caused by a political system the Americans helped establish that is based on sectarian quotas. People are given jobs in ministries based on patronage and sect, not competence, and corruption is rampant. And then bad things happen, like a fire breaking out in a hospital maternity ward and terrorists driving car bombs through checkpoints staffed by police officers with fake bomb detectors. “We have good medical competence and good doctors, but there are problems and defects in the state administration,” Mr. Saadawi said. “They always put the wrong people in the important places. ” The last big news out of Iraq was a devastating truck bomb last month in Baghdad that killed close to 300 people, the worst terrorist attack in the capital since the American invasion of 2003. The bombing set off an inferno that engulfed a shopping mall where families and young people were celebrating one of the last nights of the holy month of Ramadan — eating with friends, shopping, watching a big soccer game on television. In that attack, many more died from the fire than from the bomb blast, and in the aftermath officials blamed poor safety procedures and a lack of fire exits for the number of deaths. Like the bombing, the fire at the hospital would probably have been less deadly had the government put in place adequate safety measures or responded sooner. “I was at the incident today and saw the disaster with my own eyes,” said Mohammed a member of the security committee on Baghdad’s provincial council. “There was clear negligence from the administration of the hospital, and there were no safety measures. ” There were no protests in Baghdad on Wednesday as there were after last month’s terrorist attack, only muted outrage and a tragic sense of familiarity. One man, Mohammed Sameer, wrote on Facebook, “A crime after a crime, death followed by death, and the government keeps silent. ” He added, “Oh my God, what a big crime today. ” There was also the usual violence on Tuesday and Wednesday, the sort that has long been a feature of the city’s routines. According to the Interior Ministry, a suicide car bombing at a checkpoint in the neighborhood of Dora killed four soldiers and injured 11 people a roadside bomb killed four people at a public market in the Nahrawan district and a suicide bomber killed four soldiers in the Rasheed district. As Mr. Hussein, the newspaper editor, put it: There is “no safe place in Iraq at all. ” | 1 |
Le e-mail di Hillary Clinton e la Fratellanza di Thierry Meyssan L’indagine dell’FBI sulle e-mail private di Hillary Clinton non verte su una negligenza in merito alle norme di sicurezza, ma su un complotto mirante a distrarre ogni traccia delle sue corrispondenze che avrebbero dovuto essere memorizzate sui server dello Stato federale. Potrebbe includere scambi su finanziamenti illeciti o su casi di corruzione, e altro sui collegamenti dei coniugi Clinton con i Fratelli Musulmani e i jihadisti.
Rete Voltaire | Damasco (Siria) | 2 novembre 2016 ελληνικά English Español français Türkçe русский Deutsch Português Hillary Clinton e il suo capo di gabinetto Huma Abedin. Il rilancio dell’inchiesta dell’FBI sulle e-mail private di Hillary Clinton non verte tanto su questioni di sicurezza, quanto su intrighi che potrebbero andare fino all’alto tradimento.
Tecnicamente, anziché utilizzare un server sicuro del governo federale, il Segretario di Stato aveva installato nel suo domicilio un server privato, in modo da poter utilizzare Internet senza lasciare tracce su una macchina dello Stato federale. Il tecnico privato della signora Clinton aveva ripulito il suo server prima dell’arrivo del FBI, così che non era possibile sapere il motivo per cui lei avesse messo in opera questo dispositivo.
Inizialmente, l’FBI ha osservato che il server privato non aveva subito la procedura di sicurezza del server del Dipartimento di Stato. La Clinton aveva quindi commesso solo un errore di sicurezza. In un secondo tempo, l’FBI ha sequestrato il computer dell’ex parlamentare Anthony Weiner. Costui è l’ex marito di Huma Abedin, capo dello staff di Hillary. Lì sono stati trovati messaggi di posta elettronica provenienti dalla Segretaria di Stato.
Anthony Weiner è un politico ebreo, molto vicino ai Clinton, che aspirava a diventare sindaco di New York. Fu costretto a dimettersi dopo uno scandalo assai puritano: aveva inviato SMS erotici a una giovane donna diversa da sua moglie. Huma Abedin si separò ufficialmente da lui nel corso di questa bufera, ma in realtà non lo lasciò.
Huma Abedin è una statunitense allevata in Arabia Saudita. Suo padre gestisce una rivista accademica – di cui è stata per anni la segretaria editoriale - che riproduce regolarmente il parere dei Fratelli Musulmani. Sua madre presiede l’associazione saudita delle donne che fanno parte della Fratellanza e ha lavorato con la moglie dell’ex presidente egiziano Mohamed Morsi. Suo fratello Hassan lavora per conto dello sceicco Yusuf al-Qaradawi, predicatore dei Fratelli Musulmani e consigliere spirituale di Al-Jazeera.
In occasione di una visita ufficiale in Arabia Saudita, la segretaria di Stato visita il collegio Dar al-Hekma accompagnata da Saleha Abedin (madre del suo capo di gabinetto), presidente dell’Associazione delle Sorelle che fanno parte della Fratellanza. Huma Abedin è oggi una figura centrale nella campagna elettorale clintoniana, accanto al responsabile della campagna, John Podesta, ex segretario generale della Casa Bianca sotto la presidenza di Bill Clinton. Podesta è inoltre il lobbista ufficiale del Regno dell’Arabia Saudita al Congresso, per la modica cifra di 200 mila dollari mensili. Il 12 giugno 2016, Petra, l’agenzia di stampa ufficiale della Giordania, ha pubblicato un’intervista con il principe ereditario saudita, Mohamed bin Salman, nella quale affermava la modernità della sua famiglia che aveva illegalmente finanziato circa il 20% della campagna presidenziale di Hillary Clinton, anche se si tratta di una donna. Il giorno dopo questa pubblicazione, l’agenzia ha annullato questo servizio e ha assicurato che il suo sito web era stato violato.
Secondo l’agenzia di stampa giordana Petra (12 giugno 2016), la famiglia reale saudita ha illegalmente finanziato il 20% della campagna presidenziale di Hillary Clinton. La signora Abedin non è l’unica componente dell’amministrazione Obama ad aver legami con la Fratellanza. Il fratellastro del presidente, Abon’go Malik Obama, è il tesoriere dell’Opera missionaria dei Fratelli in Sudan e presidente della Fondazione Barack H. Obama. Lavora direttamente sotto il comando del presidente sudanese Omar al-Bashir. Un Fratello musulmano è membro del Consiglio di Sicurezza Nazionale, la più elevata istanza esecutiva negli Stati Uniti. Dal 2009 al 2012, è stato il caso di Mehdi K. Alhassani. Non si sa chi gli sia succeduto, ma la Casa Bianca aveva negato che un Fratello fosse membro del Consiglio fino a quando non emerse una prova. È inoltre un Fratello l’ambasciatore degli Stati Uniti alla Conferenza islamica, Rashad Hussain. Gli altri Fratelli identificati occupano funzioni meno importanti. Occorre tuttavia ricordare Louay M. Safi, attuale membro della Coalizione Nazionale siriana ed ex consigliere del Pentagono.
Il presidente Obama e il suo fratellastro Malik Obama Abon’go nello Studio Ovale. Abon’go Malik è il tesoriere del lavoro missionario dei Fratelli Musulmani in Sudan. Nell’aprile 2009, due mesi prima del suo discorso al Cairo, il presidente Obama aveva segretamente ricevuto una delegazione della Confraternita allo Studio Ovale. Aveva già invitato, in occasione del suo insediamento, Ingrid Mattson, la presidente dell’Associazione dei Fratelli e delle Sorelle Musulmani negli Stati Uniti.
Da parte sua, la Fondazione Clinton ha impiegato come responsabile del suo progetto "Clima" Gehad el-Haddad, uno dei dirigenti mondiali della Fratellanza che era stato fino ad allora responsabile di una trasmissione televisiva coranica. Suo padre era stato uno dei co-fondatori della Fratellanza nel 1951 in occasione della sua rifondazione da parte della CIA e dell’MI6. Gehad ha lasciato la fondazione nel 2012, quando al Cairo divenne il portavoce del candidato Mohamed Morsi, e in seguito quello ufficiale della Fratellanza Musulmana su scala mondiale.
Sapendo che la totalità dei leader jihadisti nel mondo sono emersi sia dalla Fratellanza sia dall’Ordine sufi Naqshbandi - le due componenti della Lega islamica mondiale, l’organizzazione saudita anti-nazionalista araba - vorremmo saperne di più sulle relazioni della signora Clinton con l’Arabia Saudita e i Fratelli.
Si scopre che nella squadra del suo sfidante Donald Trump, ci trova il generale Michael T. Flynn, che ha cercato di opporsi alla creazione del Califfato da parte della Casa Bianca e si è dimesso dalla direzione della Defense Intelligence Agency (Agenzia d’intelligence militare) per rimarcare la sua disapprovazione. Gli si affianca Frank Gaffney, un "reduce della guerra fredda", ormai qualificato come "cospirazionista" per aver denunciato la presenza dei Fratelli nello Stato federale.
Va da sé che, dal punto di vista dell’FBI, tutto il sostegno alle organizzazioni jihadiste sia un reato, indipendentemente dalla politica della CIA. Nel 1991, la polizia – nonché il senatore John Kerry - avevano causato il fallimento della banca pakistana (benché registrata nelle Isole Cayman) BCCI, che la CIA utilizzava in ogni sorta di operazioni segrete con i Fratelli Musulmani e anche con i cartelli latini della droga.
Thierry Meyssan Traduzione
Matzu Yagi
Fonte
Megachip-Globalist (Italia) | 0 |
How To Remove Uric Acid Crystallization in Joints http://blogs.naturalnews.com/remove-uric-acid-crystallization-joints/
By Twain Yobra
Posted Tuesday, November 1, 2016 at 03:54pm EDT
Joint pain prevents us from exercising or doing simple tasks like walking. Unfortunately, it only gets worse as we age. This happens because the fluid (synovial fluid) in the joints reduces as we age. Reduction of this fluid increases friction on the joints and leads to arthritis.
But research also shows that uric acid can cause arthritis. Build-up of uric acid in the joints can damage joint tissues and cause pain. The build-up happens when the kidneys don’t excrete enough uric acid. It can also be triggered by the body converting purines to uric acid fast. Long-term build-up of uric acid can cause inflammation and reduce your mobility.
Switch to an Alkaline Diet
There’s been a never-ending argument about whether alkaline diets reduce acidity in the body or not. In fact, some experts have discredited them as useless. But what does research say? Well, this study found that alkaline diet enhances excretion of uric acid through urine. On the other hand, researchers found that acidic foods reduce excretion of uric acid.
Another study affirms that alkaline diets can help reduce uric acid in the body. And they can prevent uric acid crystallization in joints.
Note that more research needs to be conducted on effect of diet on uric acid crystal.
Eat these alkaline foods
You simply need to reduce intake of acidic foods and eat more alkaline foods. Alkaline foods are mostly vegetables and legumes. Red pepper | 0 |
— Bana Alabed (@AlabedBana) September 26, 2016
She's 7 years old and lives in Aleppo, Syria. As Vox reports, Aleppo has been one of the “most significant battlefield” in the country's continuous fight between Bashar al-Assad and government rebels since 2012.
Bana recently created a Twitter account with her mother, Fatemah, to finally show the world what life is like for those in their war-torn city.
In an interview with Independent Journal Review, Bana said the violence in her country is “all she knows.”
When asked to describe what happens when a bomb goes off, she said:
“The bombing is predictable. It always hits civilian places so there’s always fear — not just me, but thousands live in fear every day.” I am very afraid I will die tonight. This bombs will kill me now. - Bana #Aleppo pic.twitter.com/KqVHwqRClK — Bana Alabed (@AlabedBana) October 2, 2016
Unlike many children, Bana doesn't go to school. She explained that a typical day doesn't even involve playing outside:
“[We just] keep strong & [have] hope.” This is what remains of our childhood memories. - Bana #Aleppo pic.twitter.com/O7NjuxnAzP — Bana Alabed (@AlabedBana) October 21, 2016
Here she is in what used to be her family's garden, which is now just a pile of rubble: This is our bombed garden. I use to play on it, now nowhere to play. - Bana #Aleppo pic.twitter.com/drWnwflSOE — Bana Alabed (@AlabedBana) October 4, 2016
As you can see, life in Aleppo is a far cry from what many in the United States will ever experience.
Bana hopes that her message for President Barack Obama will be heard loud and clear. Instead of a plea for her personal safety, her request shows tremendous understanding of the broader picture and concern for all involved:
“Stop [the] war and bring peace.”
Pretty profound for a 7-year-old.
Bana has amassed a Twitter following of more than 77,000 people. When asked about having such a huge platform to share Aleppo’s story, she gave the most humble and selfless response:
“[I'm] very happy and good. One day people will help us.” Hello world we are still alive. Wake up this morning alive. - Fatemah #Aleppo pic.twitter.com/EZz7xqbJ6E — Bana Alabed (@AlabedBana) October 3, 2016
Bana possesses an innate ability to have faith in a situation that should give her every reason to doubt God's existence.
The 7-year-old admitted she believes in God, prays and said her faith has “increased” in light of her circumstances.
But she doesn't just pray for herself. She also said she prays every day for “peace around the world.” This is me before the war. Tonight I'm praying for peace #Aleppo pic.twitter.com/vvMV6EtpVl — Bana Alabed (@AlabedBana) September 26, 2016
When Bana grows up, she wants to be three professions she “loves most”: a teacher, author and actress.
She says her faith will not falter in the face of violence, war and evil. Bana firmly believes better days are coming, but has a lasting message for not just President Obama, but the entire world:
“I want us saved.” | 0 |
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The signs that the Republican Party is purposefully doing everything they can to repress the vote and use every trick in the book to somehow sway voters is clear as day. As the Donald Trump campaign is hit with four different lawsuits over their voter suppression campaigns, it’s been discovered that the early voting ballots in Arkansas have a very disturbing “typo” on t hem.
Early voting ballots in Lanoke County read “Hilliary Clinton.”
Since the Republican Party has been demonizing Hillary Clinton for being “crooked” and a “liar” and a literal demon for years on end, it’s hard to imagine this being an honest “typo.”
It’s just another subliminal way that the right-wing is trying to tip the scales in favor of their candidate, who, we need not remind you, is actually an a pathological liar, a serial sexual predator, a thief, and a racist.
Watch NBC’s report here: | 0 |
in World — by Mirza Yawar Baig — November 10, 2016
Whew! Finally, the charade is over. Donald Trump is now the President of the United States of America. What does that mean? It means that Simpsons prediction came true: https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/2146815/the-simpsons-correctly-predicted-a-donald-trump-presidency-16-years-ago-in-episode-set-in-the-near-future/
So now you know who to refer to for accurate predictions about the future. Goodbye Tarot cards, et al. In 1995 I recall reading a survey which concluded that America was not likely to be ready for a woman president for the next twenty years. Twenty-one years later, it looks like that prediction was true. Given that women in America to this day are paid 80% of what men are paid, it is not surprising that Americans find it tough to visualize a woman in the White House in any place other than the President’s bed.
So, what does Trump mean for America, for American Muslims, for Muslims worldwide, for non-whites in America and globally? I am asking this rhetorical question as I see all kinds of doomsday predictions flying around. I apologize for taking a different view. I see the Trump presidency as an opportunity for those who believe in the opposite of everything that Donald Trump promoted in his campaign to put their actions where their mouths are and show that they are as willing to stand up for what they believe in as he was.
What does Trump mean for America? I hope he will be the best thing that happened to America ever. I hope that he can truly make ‘America Great Again’. I say that because though I am not American (should I say, ‘Thank God?’), I am one who believes that a truly ‘Great America’, can make this world great. The world truly needs to change. We need someone to lead the way to make the world compassionate, caring, fighting against injustice, corruption and poverty; disease and ignorance. Which nation is better suited to lead that fight? America has the resources, the intelligence, the education and the leadership ability which I hope it chooses to exercise. Trump won on the anti-establishment platform. I support that fully. The establishment has shown that what it can do is to fail spectacularly. The economy crashed and Obama rewarded those who crashed it. People were and are homeless when there are empty homes on foreclosed loans enough for every American to have two homes, not only one. Yet they are on the streets. I hope Trump can put Americans back in their own homes.
Bush father and son, started never ending wars. Obama continued them adding his own flavor to it of drone strikes – using technology to create bug splats (the arrogance is incredible) – thereby escalating the global threat level that comes from driving people to desperation. Obama’s dabbling (what else to call it?) in Middle Eastern politics resulted in continuing the misery for people of Afghanistan and Iraq and new misery for people of Syria and by inference for the rest of the world. And to top it all ISIS came into being because of all of the above. The credit can be shared by all of them. So, Trump standing against the establishment means that he is against all of this. I sincerely hope so.
All the jingoism that he rode on will get tempered when it comes to facing reality. It is easy to talk about kicking out the Mexicans and so on. But the day he does that, reality will dawn on him and his cohorts like it did on those who voted Pro-Brexit; that the rich need the poor to survive while the poor don’t need the rich. When nice white Americans get to pay $3 per potato, they will realize the value of cheap labor. Meanwhile some contractor will get the contract to build the Wall, which he will do from the Mexican side, no doubt as otherwise his margin will not make it worthwhile. So also, the wonderful idea to outlaw the H-1 visa. I don’t think it will take very long for Trump and his gang to realize that there is a reason there are blond jokes. And that Indians are not blond. Go figure that.
The good news is that Trump made public what was private – racism, misogyny in a country that never stops ‘trumpeting’ about women’s equality, support for genocide, wars and weapons sales, the evils of unbridled capitalism, locker-room conversations which indicate attitudes – have all come out of the closet and locker-room. Now it is up to those who like to say that they believe in the opposite of all these things, to get off their backsides and bring about change. They can no longer live the lives of pretense and lies that they had become used to, saying, ‘It is not happening here.’ Trump proved that it is happening and has trumpeted it from the top of Trump tower. Sorry for so much bad punning in one breath. But there you go.
As for Muslims and Trump, believe me Trump is far better than what Muslims have seen in the past. He is far better than what we have today. Take Sisi, the Oily royals who are personal friends of every weapons dealer, the Paki leadership and I can think of several more and Trump begins to look like a choir boy. What will he do that is not already happening? Frankly I don’t know and don’t care to speculate because the prime movers behind Muslim affairs and how they are, are Muslims themselves. Our leadership or more correctly its spectacular failure. Ordinary citizens pay the price, but what’s new about that? The fact remains that until we sort that out and do something about taking charge of our destiny, we must remain satisfied with others writing the script we are compelled to live by. Play endings depend on the script, not on the players.
India is a classic example where a so-called minority of 200 million is kicked around like a football and used at will by every mercenary politician for his own ends. But Indian Muslims seem to be satisfied with that, so who is anyone else to complain. If you disagree and tell me that they are not satisfied, then I must ask you what it is that prevents them from doing what is glaringly obvious; get their act together, change their leaders and write their own script. 200 million is not a minority. It is a nation. But only if it chooses to be. Same story for Muslims globally. No point in blaming Trump or looking up to him to find solutions. It is our problem and we must solve it, so let us start doing that.
Two other points: what about wars, global warming and such issues? Well, when you have a nation that lives on perpetual warfare and is supported in that by all the other major industrial nations who either manufacture and sell weapons or buy them, how can you pin it all on Trump? If weapons are made and sold, there will be wars. Wars will happen if they continue to make profits for those who run them. That people die is incidental. Those at the top who laugh all the way to the bank, don’t. Those that do, don’t count. They are ‘collateral’, who are necessary to prove the efficacy of the weapons that were used to vaporize them. If it wasn’t for the bugs who splatted, how would you assess the drones or their operators? The fact that the bugs were innocent or that they had families and so on; well, bugs are bugs. And that’s all that there is to it.
Global warming? America decided on that when it chose Bush instead of Al Gore. For a minute I thought that was because they got confused because his name is Al Gore like Al Ghurair. But then I realized that it was because he had a terminal problem; he had a brain. See his famous movie, An Inconvenient Truth, and you will see what I mean. https://www.algore.com/library/an-inconvenient-truth-dvd If you do nothing else, buy this and see it. At least you will know why you died. Since you chose that, especially Americans, I believe it is only fair that you understand what you did. With Trump, that came out in the open, so get used to summer all year long. You won’t need to go to the French Riviera for a tan. You can get it at home. That is not inconvenient.
Add to this the effect ofunending wars, refugee movement, changing cultures, security nightmares coming true, widening gap between the rich and the poor, global poverty and hunger, preventable disease which is not prevented because there’s no profit in it – when I think about all this and Trump’s election, Nero comes to mind. Renewing our link with tradition. Let us dance to the tune. What’s the use of fiddling otherwise?
Final question that everyone is asking, ‘How safe is it to have someone like Trump with his finger on the nuclear button?’
My answer is, ‘The one who actually pressed that button was as different from Trump as could be. Yet he did it.’ Let me leave you to figure out the rest.
Meanwhile it is midnight where I live, far away from Trump and America and time to go to bed. Truly it is said that there is solace in sleep. So, good night, world. Sleep well. As long as you stay asleep you can escape responsibility.
Mirza Yawar Baig is based in Hyderabad, India and is the founder and President of Yawar Baig & Associates; an international leadership consulting organization. He can be reached at [email protected] Share this: | 0 |
WASHINGTON — Senator Marco Rubio of Florida is leaning heavily toward running for to the seat he swore he was giving up after six often frustrating years and a failed presidential run, associates said on Friday, a reversal that would upend one of the most competitive races in the country. Mr. Rubio could make his decision public early next week after he spends the weekend with his family in Florida weighing the personal, political and financial considerations of another campaign. One adviser who described the senator as “all in” said Mr. Rubio’s staff members had already begun scouting a site for a possible announcement. The likelihood of a bid seemed to grow on Friday when one of Mr. Rubio’s potential rivals, Representative David Jolly, suddenly dropped out of the race and said he would seek another term in the House instead. Earlier in the day, Mr. Jolly foreshadowed his move, telling CNN, “Marco is saying he’s getting in. ” Ever restless, strategic and ambitious — and only 45 years old — Mr. Rubio has spent the past few weeks discussing with his friends and colleagues the difficulties he would face maintaining his political profile if he left the Senate. He would like to run for the presidency again, either in 2020 or 2024, and is concerned that his opportunities would be far more limited if he were no longer in office. Mr. Rubio’s desire to get into the race and his reasons for doing so were described by three people inside his political operation, two of whom have spoken with him directly in recent days. All insisted on anonymity because Mr. Rubio had not yet completely made up his mind. A spokesman for Mr. Rubio had no comment. There are some sobering drawbacks, none of which Mr. Rubio is naïve about, these people said. Florida is one of the few states with a true purple political hue, a quintessential swing state in which Democrats and Republicans often win in statewide elections largely depending on the national mood. And like many Republicans who face election on the same ticket as Donald J. Trump, the presumptive presidential nominee, Mr. Rubio is said to be concerned about the possibility that Mr. Trump could drag him down to defeat. Mr. Trump’s poor standing among minorities could be especially problematic in Florida, a state with 1. 8 million registered Hispanic voters, or 15 percent of the state’s total electorate. And it is a group that has become less Cuban and Republican and more Puerto Rican, Mexican and Democratic in recent years. Still, despite his misgivings about Mr. Trump’s politics and temperament, Mr. Rubio has said he will vote for Mr. Trump and speak at the Republican convention in July if asked. Mr. Rubio has personal factors to consider, as well. He has told people that he is eager to spend more time with his four children and that he wants to make enough money to be able to provide for them comfortably well into the future. He had been planning to spend the next few years giving speeches and doing other civic and political work that would allow for that. To help sift through the offers coming in, he retained the Washington lawyer Robert B. Barnett. Mr. Rubio’s thinking has taken a quick and dizzying turn from just last month, when he was still insisting that he had no desire to run again. On May 16, he wrote a sarcastic message on Twitter: “I have only said like 10, 000 times I will be a private citizen in January. ” He has often complained — privately to his colleagues, and publicly when he was a presidential candidate — that the stagnant and highly polarized Senate frustrated him. He lamented the inability to get much done in Congress, saying at one point, “We’re not going to fix America with senators and congressmen,” words that are sure to come back to haunt him in Democratic attack ads if he chooses to run. Mr. Rubio’s critics have said that his distaste for the job could be seen in his absenteeism. Mr. Rubio racked up the worst attendance record in the Senate while he was running for president, another potentially damaging issue for Democrats to use against him. Without Mr. Rubio on the ballot, though, Republicans stand a greater chance of losing the seat to Democrats and jeopardizing their majority in the Senate. He and his aides have carefully set the stage for a possible candidacy. First, he floated the idea on Monday on the radio show of Hugh Hewitt, a respected conservative radio host, saying he had been “deeply impacted” by the massacre at a gay club in Orlando on Sunday. Then, one of Mr. Rubio’s friends and potential rivals in the race, Lt. Gov. Carlos said in an interview that he would bow out if Mr. Rubio wanted to run. But by the time Mr. Rubio stepped in front of a group of reporters at the Capitol on Wednesday to announce that he was reconsidering, the challenges he faces were immediately apparent. Before he could utter a word about himself, he was asked about Mr. Trump. | 1 |
SAN FRANCISCO — In the last five years, Ahmed Mansoor, a human rights activist in the United Arab Emirates, has been jailed and fired from his job, along with having his passport confiscated, his car stolen, his email hacked, his location tracked and his bank account robbed of $140, 000. He has also been beaten, twice, in the same week. Mr. Mansoor’s experience has become a cautionary tale for dissidents, journalists and human rights activists. It used to be that only a handful of countries had access to sophisticated hacking and spying tools. But these days, nearly all kinds of countries, be they small, nations like the Emirates, or poor but populous countries like Ethiopia, are buying commercial spyware or hiring and training programmers to develop their own hacking and surveillance tools. The barriers to join the global surveillance apparatus have never been lower. Dozens of companies, ranging from NSO Group and Cellebrite in Israel to Finfisher in Germany and Hacking Team in Italy, sell digital spy tools to governments. A number of companies in the United States are training foreign law enforcement and intelligence officials to code their own surveillance tools. In many cases these tools are able to circumvent security measures like encryption. Some countries are using them to watch dissidents. Others are using them to aggressively silence and punish their critics, inside and outside their borders. “There’s no substantial regulation,” said Bill Marczak, a senior fellow at the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs, who has been tracking the spread of spyware around the globe. “Any government who wants spyware can buy it outright or hire someone to develop it for you. And when we see the poorest countries deploying spyware, it’s clear money is no longer a barrier. ” Mr. Marczak examined Mr. Mansoor’s emails and found that, before his arrest, he had been targeted by spyware sold by Finfisher and Hacking Team, which sell surveillance tools to governments for comparably cheap and sums. Both companies sell tools that turn computers and phones into listening devices that can monitor a target’s messages, calls and whereabouts. In 2011, in the midst of the Arab Spring, Mr. Mansoor was arrested with four others on charges of insulting Emirate rulers. He and the others had called for universal suffrage. They were quickly released and pardoned following international pressure. But Mr. Mansoor’s real troubles began shortly after his release. He was beaten and robbed of his car, and $140, 000 was stolen from his bank account. He did not learn that he was being monitored until a year later, when Mr. Marczak found the spyware on his devices. “It was as bad as someone encroaching in your living room, a total invasion of privacy, and you begin to learn that maybe you shouldn’t trust anyone anymore,” Mr. Mansoor recalled. Mr. Marczak was able to trace the spyware back to the Royal Group, a conglomerate run by a member of the Al Nahyan family, one of the six ruling families of the Emirates. Representatives from the Emirates Embassy in Washington said they were still investigating the matter and did not return requests for further comment. Invoices from Hacking Team showed that through 2015, the Emirates were Hacking Team’s customers, behind only Morocco, and they paid Hacking Team more than $634, 500 to deploy spyware on 1, 100 people. The invoices came to light last year after Hacking Team itself was hacked and thousands of internal emails and contracts were leaked online. Eric Rabe, a spokesman for Hacking Team, said his company no longer had contracts with the Emirates. But that is in large part because Hacking Team’s global license was revoked this year by the Italian Ministry of Economic Development. For now, Hacking Team can no longer sell its tools outside Europe and its chief executive, David Vincenzetti, is under investigation for some of those deals. New evidence suggests to Mr. Marczak that the Emirates may now be developing their own custom spyware to monitor their critics at home and abroad. “The U. A. E. has gotten much more sophisticated since we first caught them using Hacking Team software in 2012,” Mr. Marczak said. “They’ve clearly upped their game. They’re not on the level of the United States or the Russians, but they’re clearly moving up the chain. ” Late last year, Mr. Marczak was contacted by Rori Donaghy, a journalist who writes for the Middle East Eye, an online news site, and a founder of the Emirates Center for Human Rights, an independent organization that tracks human rights abuses in the Emirates. Mr. Donaghy asked Mr. Marczak to examine suspicious emails he had received from a fictitious organization called the Right to Fight. The emails asked him to click on links about a panel on human rights. Mr. Marczak found that the emails were laden with highly customized spyware, unlike the varieties he has become accustomed to finding on the computers of journalists and dissidents. As Mr. Marczak examined the spyware further, he found that it was being deployed from 67 different servers and that the emails had baited more than 400 people into clicking its links and unknowingly loading its malware onto their machines. He also found that 24 Emiratis were being targeted with the same spyware on Twitter. At least three of those targeted were arrested shortly after the surveillance began another was later convicted of insulting Emirate rulers in absentia. Mr. Marczak and the Citizen Lab plan to release details of the custom Emirates spyware online on Monday. He has developed a tool he called Himaya — an Arabic word that roughly means “protection” — that will allow others to see if they are being targeted as well. Mr. Donaghy said he was frightened by Mr. Marczak’s findings, but not surprised. “Once you dig beneath the surface, you find an autocratic state, with power centralized among a handful of people who have increasingly used their wealth for surveillance in sophisticated ways,” Mr. Donaghy said. The Emirates have cultivated an image as progressive allies of the United States in the Middle East. Their rulers often highlight their sizable foreign aid budget and their women’s rights efforts. But human rights monitors say the Emirates have been aggressive in trying to neutralize their critics. “The U. A. E. has taken some of the most dramatic steps to shut down individual human rights activists and dissenting voices,” said James Lynch, the deputy director for Amnesty International’s program in the Middle East and North Africa. “It is highly sensitive to its image and fully aware of who is criticizing the country from abroad. ” Last summer, Mr. Lynch was invited to speak about labor rights at a construction conference in Dubai and was turned away at the airport. Officials did not give a reason, but he later saw that his deportation certificate listed reasons of security. Mr. Mansoor, who still resides in the Emirates, has been outspoken about the use of spyware but is increasingly limited in what he can do. He worries that anyone he speaks to will also become a target. And more recently, the state has started punishing the families of those who speak out, as well. In March, the Emirates revoked the passports of three siblings whose father was charged with attempting to overthrow the state. “You’ll wake up one day and find yourself labeled a terrorist,” Mr. Mansoor said. “Despite the fact you don’t even know how to put a bullet inside a gun. ” | 1 |
Регион: Европа Как отмечает в своей новой статье постоянный обозреватель «Нового Восточного Обозрения» французский эксперт Жан Перье, европейские политики, следуя в фарватере политики Белого дома и наращивая в последние годы безосновательную пропагандистскую риторику о якобы увеличившейся для Европы военной угрозе со стороны России, Ирана, Китая, все больше переориентировали свои политические курсы на дальнейшую милитаризацию Европы в ущерб социальным программам в ЕС. Как подчеркивает автор, на фоне предстоящих в ближайшие месяцы выборных кампаний в ряде европейских стран, не трудно догадаться, какова на эти предложения военно-промышленных кругов США и Европы будет реакция населения ЕС, которое вряд ли будет поддерживать нынешних политиков и с большей активностью пойдет по пути американского «Трампсита». Тем более, что социальное положение европейцев в последние годы только ухудшается, обрекая на бедственное положение все более широкие массы населения Старого света. 25 миллионов детей в странах ЕС живут «под угрозой бедности», такие данные приводит доклад Eurostat — статистической службы Евросоюза . Как написала The Guardian , рождение ребенка и одновременный съем жилья — недоступные «роскошь» для молодых семей в Великобритании. В Германии продолжает расти разрыв между бедными и богатыми, говорится в докладе министерства труда ФРГ. В Финляндии количество детей, живущих в бедных семьях, за последние 20 лет почти утроилось, пишет Yle . От нехватки денег страдают не только одинокие родители и безработные, но также семьи, родители в которых работают. С 2008 года в странах ЕС растет народный протест по поводу продолжающегося финансового кризиса, глобализации, самоустранения правящих элит от трудностей, которые переживает простое население, от замены социальных программ на увеличение военных расходов. В этих условиях, подчеркивает автор, все отчетливее просматриваются очевидные параллели между недовольством, которое привело к «Брекситу» и победе Трампа, с требованиями сторонников AfD в Германии, падением до самого низкого уровня рейтинга французского президента-социалиста Ф.Олланда, с ростом влияния популистской Партии свободы Вилдерса в Голландии, с возможностью прихода к власти крайне-правого кандидата в президенты Австрии Норберта Хофера. С полным содержанием статьи вы можете ознакомиться здесь . Популярные статьи | 0 |
Things got heated Wednesday on ESPN’s “First Take” during a debate about retiring Dallas Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo suiting up for the Dallas Mavericks Tuesday night. “First Take” Stephen A. Smith questioned Romo’s special treatment because of the lack of success he experienced as the starter in Dallas compared to black athletes such as former Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb. “Do you know of any black athlete that won just two playoff games, didn’t have any kind of postseason success whatsoever that gets celebrated like this?” Smith asked. “Usually there is a requirement to have some kind of success in order to garner the celebratory atmosphere and ambiance that we saw for Romo. ” Max Kellerman responded by saying he could not think of any athlete of any race who is “feted” to the same extent as Romo. “[A]s an … I’m enlightening you about the fact that these are the kinds of things away from the white community that when folks in the black community huddle amongst ourselves and talk about things and talk about discrepancies, it’s the kind of stuff that irks us,” Smith replied. “Because we know that those are the kinds of things that are not reserved for us. Sports is supposed to be the closest thing to a meritocracy. Where is it here?” ESPN’s Will Cain called Smith’s white privilege argument “so much nonsense and so much junk,” adding to make the debate racial “detracts” from the “real racial issues. ” “What you just said was so much nonsense, and so much junk,” Cain told Smith. “To make this racial is so far beyond the pale that it makes real racial issues hard to pay attention to. It detracts. ” Smith angrily replied, “You don’t get to just chirp chirp chirp and talk about what we’re supposed to feel, and I don’t get a chance to respond. What the hell do you think this is? Let me be very, very clear: You’re not black. Don’t think for one second you get to tell me how to feel. ” Follow Trent Baker on Twitter @MagnifiTrent | 1 |
WTF!!! There is not a simgle thread about the Podsesta ET topic after this morning's leak I have encouraging news for White House Counselor John PodestaDear John Podesta,I recently surmised upon viewing and listening to a DVD I received unexpectedly earlier this week that you are an advocate for U.F.O. Disclosure. Well, I have got some very good news for you which you will see and hear from the enclosed VHS tape, which I personally edited with you in mind. Please review the two hours of footage and let me know what you think. Thank you, (name redacted) Just saw the below this morning. You are right Tom. Wikileaks did mess some stuff up. They showed the attempt to s*** spin the whole ET Disclosure by You, Barrack Obama, John Podesta and Hillary Clinton to just half tell the truth and then control the narrative to suit their own political goals. | 0 |
Thomas DiLorenzo https://www.lewrockwell.com/lrc-blog/obamas-definition-high-integrity/
When Obama’s press secretary was asked today what he thought of Dirty Donna Brazile’s rigging of the Democratic debates by giving Hitlery the questions (from CNN, where she worked but has now been fired) in advance, he responded by praising her as “a person of the highest integrity.”
To the lunatic left fringe their ends always justify any means. 6:41 pm on October 31, 2016 | 0 |
Late last Saturday evening, The New York Times delivered an scoop to its readers — tax documents of Donald Trump’s that showed he may not have paid taxes for 18 years thanks to a nearly $1 billion loss suffered by his business. That was a winning story for The Times. It took aim at an issue that has dogged Trump for months and it gave the public insight into Trump the businessman, his main pitch for the presidency. Then, one day later, came an investigative look into Hillary Clinton that surfaced revelatory material on: her questionable behavior as the wife of a philandering husband. Not as the secretary or state, or the junior senator from New York, or even the first lady behind a calamitous health care initiative. Instead, it probed an issue whose relevance to the election and certainly to her potential presidency seems hard to make. Even the boundless Trump has shown partial restraint around the issue. He feigns that he is only considering bringing it up in the future (despite a few jabs) but mostly he leaves the frontal attacks to surrogates like Rudy Giuliani. The Times piece ran nearly 3, 000 words and was played prominently on the front of the home page and on A1 of Monday’s print edition. It focused on whether Clinton played a key role in efforts to discredit and undermine various women who came forward claiming to have had sexual relations with Bill Clinton, who was running for president. The reporting was exhaustive and balanced, and the tone measured. Its conclusion, from numerous interviews and from resurfacing previously disclosed material, didn’t feel like a big reveal but it was a fair interpretation of the material: “Mrs. Clinton’s level of involvement in that effort, as described in interviews, internal campaign records and archives, is still the subject of debate. By some accounts, she gave the green light and was a motivating force by others, her support was no more than tacit assent. ” But the response from readers writing into the public editor was heavily tilted against the piece, especially but not exclusively the response from women. This email from Suzanne Burke of Savannah, Ga. was typical: I asked the Times’s political editor, Carolyn Ryan, if she would lay out the justification for the piece. Here’s her response in an email: I don’t think this one is an easy call. There is a defensible case to be made that this subject is moving closer to the daily beat of the campaign. And The Times isn’t the only publication that has circled this topic. But a few things bother me about the story. One is the conceit of this piece. It seemed more intent on scoping out possibly unethical behavior by a woman whose husband had cheated than on exploring the full dimensions of an undoubtedly brutal period in her life. I also felt shortchanged on the question of whether Hillary Clinton indeed knew whether the women alleging to have had sexual relationships with her husband were telling the truth. If Clinton didn’t believe them — or was determined to believe her husband — then it’s more understandable that she would strike out against women that to her were menacing liars. On the other hand, if she was trying to smear women she knew were telling the truth, well, that’s a different story. But I left the Times article uncertain which it was. Could some type of biographical piece be done on this period of Clinton’s life? Perhaps. It would be hard to look the other way if Trump engages a detailed assault on her behavior. But by launching a probe like this one, The Times feels more brazen than the Republican challenger himself. | 1 |
NEW DELHI — An Islamic State publication offered a detailed account of the bloody July 1 siege of a restaurant in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, including the use of religious tests to distinguish Muslims from who would then be killed. The article, which appeared this week and also threatened further attacks in the country, bears the byline of Tamim Ahmed Chowdhury, a militant who was killed with two associates in a police raid in late August. Mr. Chowdhury, a Canadian citizen, had been identified by some analysts as the coordinator of the Islamic State’s activities in South Asia but had never been named by the group. It is unusual for the Islamic State to publish the real names of its fighters, said Amarnath Amarasingam, a fellow at George Washington University’s Program on Extremism. Mr. Amarasingam said the Islamic State has been eager to “take ownership” of the Dhaka attack, which came at a time of military setbacks in its core territory in the Middle East. Since Mr. Chowdhury’s death, there has been a lull in the attacks on foreigners, secular Bangladeshis and members of religious minorities that had occurred at regular intervals in recent years. The July attack, on the Holey Artisan Bakery, in which 22 people were killed, was the most complex and operation to date by Islamic militants in Bangladesh’s recent history. Among the dead were numerous foreigners working in Bangladesh’s garment sector or for aid organizations. In the aftermath of the attack, Bangladesh officials were under pressure to acknowledge that transnational terrorist organizations like the Islamic State were trying to build a presence in the country. The authorities in Dhaka are still investigating the attack, and said on Wednesday that they were analyzing the account in Rumiya, the Islamic State’s newest media product. “It is a long piece, with a lot of information to go through, so I cannot speak clearly now on things like authenticity,” said Sanwar Hossain, additional deputy commissioner of the counterterrorism unit in the Dhaka Metropolitan police. He said that the police also knew Mr. Chowdhury by the kuniya, or nom de guerre, cited in the magazine. “We have known for a while that this is how Tamim Chowdhury was referred to,” he said. On Sunday, police granted bail and released Tahmid Hasib Khan, a Bangladeshi man. A second hostage, Hasnat Karim, remains in police custody, though some of the charges against him have been dismissed in court. Sharmina Parveen Karim, Mr. Karim’s wife, said she hoped her husband would be released soon. “We are just waiting,” she said. “We can’t do anything but wait. ” The article published in Rumiyah said the Holey Artisan Bakery had been selected as a target because it was “a sinister place where the Crusaders would gather to drink alcohol and commit vices throughout the night, feeling secure from the wrath of Allah that was awaiting them. ” It said the attackers set out to kill only in the restaurant and sorted their prisoners by religion, asking “very basic religious questions whose answers any Muslim youth or elderly would know. ” “Those who proved their Islam were treated with respect and mercy,” the account says, while those who did not “were treated with harshness and severity. ” The account partially tallied with the testimonies of survivors. A Bangladeshi cook who survived said gunmen told him not to worry, because the attackers were killing only foreigners. Ms. Karim, who was dining at the restaurant with her husband and two children, said the attackers had targeted Japanese and Italian customers who were obvious foreigners at first, and later began to ask those who remained whether they were Bangladeshi Muslims. “They entered and started shooting straight away,” she said. “People were screaming, ‘Help, help,’ and fell to the floor once they were shot. Once they were certain that people were injured, they started to chop their throats, hands. ” Ms. Karim added that as dawn approached, the attackers debated whether to kill the remaining hostages and decided against it. The article gives detailed biographies of the five attackers, noting that at least two had unsuccessfully tried to join Islamic State forces in Libya, Syria and other battlegrounds outside Bangladesh. It goes on to threaten further attacks on foreigners in Bangladesh, singling out “expats, tourists, diplomats, garment buyers, missionaries, sports teams and anyone else from the Crusader citizens to be found in Bengal. ” Masudur Rahman, a police spokesman, said that the police in Bangladesh had killed at least a dozen known militants since the restaurant siege. “The way we see it, looking at the number of people we’ve arrested, and then adding that up with the number of people who have been killed in our raids, of course the militants’ operation is weaker,” he said. | 1 |
WHITEHALL TOWNSHIP, Pa. — With downcast eyes and a microphone clenched in one fist, Brian Farley stood uneasily before nearly 400 children from the Youth Soccer Club in eastern Pennsylvania. He had stolen their money. Mr. Farley, 55, the longtime treasurer of the nonprofit club, had pocketed $120, 000 from the organization’s bank accounts — money paid by parents so that their children could play. A county court judge had ordered Mr. Farley to repent publicly to club members as part of his guilty plea, and so there he stood, in front of a throng of children sitting on a grassy ball field waiting to play. The club’s leaders were so fearful that an irate parent might charge or assault Mr. Farley that they hired security to maintain order. “You try to be a good example to your children,” Mr. Farley, whose son and daughter had played for the club, told the gathering. “What I did was one of the worst examples you could ever set for your children. ” The youth sports boom in the United States, fortified by at least 30 million participants, has turned what were once homespun local leagues into enterprises with annual budgets that experts who track nonprofits say regularly reach $250, 000 — if not twice that. Yet with the growth and development has come a long list of embezzlement and other corruption cases unfolding in a void of oversight and regulation and capitalizing on community trust. Across the country, people who volunteered as treasurers and other officers for Little Leagues and sports clubs have been prosecuted for pilfering gobs of money from the coffers: $220, 000 in Washington, $431, 000 in Minnesota, $560, 000 in New Jersey, and so on, according to law enforcement authorities, league officials, experts on nonprofit organizations and news reports. The approximately 14, 000 youth sports organizations in the United States take in annual revenue of about $9 billion, according to the National Center for Charitable Statistics. Oversight of those sums is haphazard and not centralized, as there is no national agency in the country watching over youth sports. Investigators and prosecutors in several states say embezzlement investigations involving youth sports have become common, almost always committed by unpaid board members who are highly regarded in their communities. It is difficult to say whether the problem with embezzlement has worsened or if the growth of the leagues simply means more cases there is no clearinghouse comprehensively tracking fraud in youth sports. But investigators say the problem gets little public discussion even as, by some measures, there are signs of mounting cases. In the last five years, there have been hundreds of arrests and convictions in 43 states involving 15 sports, based on a study of news accounts and a database compiled by the Center for Fraud Prevention, an organization that aims to mitigate embezzlement in youth sports. And those are only the cases that have become public. Law enforcement officials estimate that they see only about half of the actual fraud in youth sports because organizations often cover up smaller misappropriations to protect their reputations and preserve the ability to raise money in the future. Some leagues have dissolved as a result. Most organizations survive, but they often must defer buying new uniforms fixing up insufficient or dangerous fields purchasing equipment and financing capital projects. Over all, the rate of fraud across the youth sports landscape, which includes thousands of prosperous travel teams, is probably small in scale given the vast scope of youth sports. In general, there is little data of any kind on how extensive embezzlement is among all nonprofit groups, let alone youth sports associations. Yet watchdogs of the nonprofit industry note that youth sports organizations rarely put in place routine checks and balances, such as having multiple people in charge of the money, opening the door to fraud. “People treat youth sports groups as social clubs and vest all their trust in one individual because they all know each other, but these organizations need to be treated like businesses with all the same internal and external financial controls,” said James Martin, the Lehigh County district attorney, whose office prosecuted Mr. Farley’s case. “Yes, everyone starts out with the best intentions, but then something usually goes wrong and no one is really watching. ” A husband and wife were implicated in Michigan after a neighbor, an accountant whose sons played for the baseball league, joined the board and scrutinized the books, leading investigators to a case that uncovered $300, 000 in missing money. In Winslow, Me. (population 7, 794) there were three theft charges against members of volunteer sports clubs in a span, including one person who was charged with stealing from two clubs. In Wisconsin, a soccer mom confessed to another soccer mom about taking money from the local club, only to discover she was taking even more money. A woman in Vermont was convicted of stealing from a fund established to honor a dead child who had been a club member. The exposure of embezzlement leaves communities thunderstruck and wounded at the revelation of neighbors stealing from neighbors, friends cheating friends. The children of the accused are often best friends with the children of the accusers. “I couldn’t comprehend having to tell the 700 kids in our entire membership that the money was gone and they couldn’t play soccer anymore because their treasurer was a thief,” Diane Miller, the Youth Soccer Club’s current treasurer, said last month, recalling Mr. Farley’s arrest in 2013. “I wanted to cry. ” While a preponderance of cases occur in suburbia, there have been dozens of arrests in farm communities and in big cities, too, including Manhattan. “There’s always a lot of cash involved in these organizations, and whenever there’s cash, there’s people eyeing the cash,” said Tim Delaney, president and chief executive of the National Council of Nonprofits. Erik Carrozza, the founder of the Center for Fraud Prevention, said: “Someone can easily skim 20 percent off the top and it will not be noticed for a while. Twenty percent for five years ends up being a lot of money. ” That money gets spent in a variety of ways. The police have reported that purloined money has gone to dog grooming, tickets to Walt Disney World, illicit drugs, a child’s wedding, fishing trips, financial advice, N. F. L. and Major League Baseball tickets, lingerie, large deliveries of yard mulch, college loans and the interest on personal property being held in pawn shops. Gambling debt has played a role in many cases. Kevin Short, a lawyer who represented a hockey league official in Minnesota convicted of tax evasion after stealing more than $400, 000 from a league, said casino debt in fraud cases is so common now that investigators routinely check gambling habits when embezzlement is suspected. “It’s a standard question,” Mr. Short said. “Since gambling came into Minnesota, we’ve been having problems and embezzlement. ” Prosecutors and defense lawyers say that many others who have embezzled from youth sports organizations have done so because they were enduring a period of financial distress because of a divorce, a job loss or both. From a facility where he is confined after serving several months in jail, Kevin L. Baker said he stole more than $200, 000 from the Kent Little League in Washington State because he was trying to survive financially. “I’m usually a trustworthy, honest person,” Mr. Baker, who was the league’s treasurer for seven years, said in a telephone interview last month. “I got in a bad situation, and when you’re in a bad situation, you make decisions that you wouldn’t normally make. ” Since 2007, Mr. Baker, who coached his two sons in the league, had been a responsible volunteer at the league’s many activities. But in 2011, he lost his job, and his wife moved to Idaho with the couple’s sons as part of a divorce. A grandfather who had helped raise Mr. Baker and had been a father figure also died around the same time. To raise his spirits and to try something new — his grandparents had run a tavern — Mr. Baker decided to spend $100, 000 to buy a bar. The business started strong, then flagged precipitously. Mindy Young, who prosecuted the case, said Mr. Baker had taken money from the Kent Little League in 271 transactions that included cashier’s checks for as much as $20, 000. He knew that no one truly scrutinized the treasurer’s books he had been doctoring. But on Dec. 9, 2014, Kent’s Little League president, Greg Whitcomb, went to an Office Depot and tried to use the league’s A. T. M. card to buy $18 worth of envelopes. The purchase was denied. Based on the financial reports he had been receiving from Mr. Baker, Mr. Whitcomb believed the league had $227, 000 in bank and investment accounts. For a decade, the league had been soliciting donations and were finally on the verge of buying their own baseball and softball fields. The Kent Little League was actually in debt, owing uniform manufacturers $20, 000. “Worse, all the hard work by volunteers raising money for years was lost,” Mr. Whitcomb said. Mr. Baker turned himself into the Kent police. “I felt so guilty I couldn’t sleep at night,” said Mr. Baker, who has since been ordered to pay $208, 000 in restitution. Last year, Mr. Baker, who had no previous criminal record, was sentenced to 22 months in jail. It often takes suspicious board members or officers to uncover the wrongdoing. In the case involving Pennsylvania’s Youth Soccer Club, Mr. Farley’s crime was not uncovered until a new club president, Tino Babayan, hired a lawyer to advise the club about various matters, including its finances. The lawyer quickly became suspicious of Mr. Farley’s bookkeeping, especially when the club’s retainer check bounced. Mr. Babayan learned that 80 percent of the club’s money was missing. “Farley was basically paying off his bills and living as if the club’s account were his own,” said Steven Luksa, the assistant district attorney who prosecuted the case. Mr. Farley declined to be interviewed last month, but his lawyer, George Heitczman, said that when his client lost his job working on Wall Street, he began making loans to himself from the club’s account. “He felt he was just borrowing, but that is a slippery slope,” Mr. Heitczman said. “There were some payments back to the league, but Brian got so far behind. ” Meanwhile, the club’s board members, facing a host of unpaid bills, were suddenly desperate to keep solvent. Mr. Farley offered the club and prosecutors a restitution deal the organization’s leaders and the club’s parent group balked. Diane Miller, the new treasurer, had pored over the bank records and saw that the club’s A. T. M. card had been used to pay for $500 hairdressing appointments, hotel stays, wine and cigars. “At that point, I wanted to find him,” Ms. Miller said of Mr. Farley, “and spit in his face. ” But the club, which needed the infusion of cash, took the deal, which amounted to $55, 000. Mr. Farley received five years of probation and was ordered to make gradual, systematic repayments to for the remainder of what he owed the club. Mr. Farley, who has remained in the Allentown, Pa. area, has been paying back the money at about $225 a month and recently told another board member that he intended to pay back the roughly $60, 000 he owes the club. Ms. Miller is skeptical. “We’ll never see it all,” she said. Board members were forced to dip into their own pockets for $200 or $300 each to pay some of the club’s most urgent expenses and keep it afloat. This year, the club is thriving, with a growing membership roll. Coaches and other club members have adapted to new policies mandating invoices and receipts for any reimbursable expenses, regardless of how small the sum. Two board members are also required to extensively review the club’s books monthly. “We can’t let anything go unexamined,” Ms. Miller said. Like the Soccer Club, the Kent Little League in Washington had to run on a skeleton budget before it rebounded in part because several local sponsors donated time and money when they heard of Mr. Baker’s theft. A software company that had been working on a new league website chose to finish and install the website for free, allowing valuable registration fees to flow into the league’s bank accounts faster. Still, the Kent Little League misses the more than $200, 000 it intended to spend on new fields, cash Mr. Whitcomb knows the league will probably never recoup. As Mr. Whitcomb retrieved the mail at home not long ago with his son, he saw an envelope from Mr. Baker. “I smirked and handed it to my son and said, ‘Here’s the first restitution payment to your Little League,’” Mr. Whitcomb said. Inside the envelope were two checks for $14 and $11. There is another common thread to many fraud cases in youth sports: the scarcity of people running them, which significantly hampers the necessary oversight. Overscheduled, working parents are hesitant to commit the time to serve on boards. And no one wants to be an organization’s treasurer, which is the most tedious, thankless job. “People are always asking, ‘Can I pay to get out of my time working in the concession stand? ’” Mr. Whitcomb said. Many affluent organizations have turned to paying the officers of their boards of directors as an incentive to serve. Others are hiring bookkeepers. Crime or fraud insurance designed specifically to cover youth groups is gaining in popularity. There are groups that have tried to fill the void, like the National Alliance for Youth Sports, a nonprofit and youth sports advocate that helps train coaches and administrators. Little League offers guidelines to community leagues and training and information for volunteers. Nonetheless, in recent years youth sports officials have found themselves forced into unforeseen roles: crime investigator, mediator and crisis management specialist. “You start out wanting to help kids and you end up doing things you never thought you’d have to do,” said Mr. Babayan, no longer the Soccer Club president. When Mr. Farley concluded his apology to hundreds of young soccer players, Mr. Babayan, who had exposed Mr. Farley’s embezzlement, was standing a few feet away. As Mr. Farley dropped one arm and uncomfortably raised his gaze to the crowd, Mr. Babayan diplomatically stepped forward to grasp the microphone from Mr. Farley’s clenched fist. The children appeared confused. The parents were miffed. An awkward silence enveloped the grounds. “No one had ever seen anything like that before,” Mr. Babayan said. Eventually, the players stood and separated into groups. It was time to play. | 1 |
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia — The Malaysian Foreign Ministry said Friday that it was “greatly concerned” by the use of a banned chemical weapon in a public place to assassinate Kim the half brother of North Korea’s leader, and has asked for international help in responding to the episode. “The ministry strongly condemns the use of such a chemical weapon by anyone, anywhere and under any circumstances,” the ministry said in a statement. “Its use at a public place could have endangered the general public. ” Malaysia has reported the use of the toxic chemical, VX nerve agent, to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, which monitors chemical weapons banned under international conventions. The organization must now decide whether to bring the matter of the chemical’s illegal use before the United Nations Security Council. Analysis of chemical residue on Mr. Kim found it to be VX nerve agent. South Korea has blamed the North for the killing. The Malaysian police have identified seven North Korean men who remain wanted for questioning in the case. If there is compelling evidence that North Korea used the substance, the United States and its allies can push for a resolution against the North at the Security Council and for new sanctions. Washington can also place the North back on its blacklist. But North Korea has already been under heavy sanctions for decades, and analysts say that new steps against the North will have a largely symbolic effect of “naming and shaming. ” Such a move could further dampen what is an already weak desire to start dialogue with the North to address its growing nuclear and missile threats, they said. Malaysia reported the incident to the O. P. C. W. soon after the discovery that the poison was VX nerve agent, and since then the organization has been providing Malaysia with assistance in its investigation of the killing. “The ministry is in close contact with the O. P. C. W. regarding the recent incident and the latter has provided the Malaysian authority with some technical materials that have been requested to assist in its investigation,” the ministry said. Mr. Kim, the elder brother of North Korean leader Kim was killed on Feb. 13 at Kuala Lumpur International Airport by two foreign women who smeared his face with poison, the police say. The two women, one from Indonesia and one from Vietnam, have been charged with murder. North Korea, which has not been allowed to examine Mr. Kim’s body, asserts that he died of heart failure. North Korean officials contend that it is absurd for Malaysia to say that VX nerve agent was used since it is so toxic that many others at the airport also would have died. After Malaysia reported the use of the chemical, representatives of the O. P. C. W. came to Kuala Lumpur to provide assistance, one official said. “The government of Malaysia will fully cooperate with the O. P. C. W. and other international organizations to bring the perpetrators to justice,” the ministry said. The Malaysian authorities on Friday released Ri the only North Korean detained in the killing so far, and handed him over to immigration officials for deportation. The police also issued an arrest warrant for Kim 37, a North Korean who works for Air Koryo, the national airline. The authorities have said that they believed Mr. Kim was at the North Korean Embassy in Kuala Lumpur along with another suspect, Hyon an embassy employee. | 1 |
Austria should withdraw completely from the European Union’s migrant redistribution programme because it has already taken enough, government ministers have said. [Defence Secretary Hans Peter Doskozil proposed the idea at a cabinet meeting Tuesday morning, with Chancellor Christian Kern agreeing to send a letter to Brussels requesting the country’s withdrawal. Mr. Doskozil said Austria had already “ ” its contribution as migrants continue entering the country via Italy and Greece, meaning it has taken far more than many other EU nations. Nachrichten. at reports that he pointed to statistics showing that in 2015 and 2016, Italy had to bear “far less of a burden” accepting 1, 998 asylum applications per million inhabitants, while Austria had to process 4, 587. “I believe that Austria has made a sufficient humanitarian contribution,” the minister said, adding that the nation was “one of the most heavily loaded countries” in the EU. Chancellor Kern agreed, saying Austria had already fulfilled its obligations and would seek an amicable way to escape the agreement. The comments came as leaders of the Central European Visegrad group rejected the EU’s migrant redistribution policy in protest at suggestions the level of their compliance could affect the EU funds they receive. The prime ministers of Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic said they will not yield under any financial pressure, describing it as an attempt at blackmail. Brussels wants each EU member state to accept its “fair share” of some 160, 000 migrants to ease the pressure on Greece and Italy. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán also said that he was further strengthening his country’s borders in order to seal off the “Balkan route”. Last month, Austrian Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz also defended closing the border the deter migrants, saying the move, although initially criticised, had become accepted practice. Before the route was shut, over a million migrants travelled up through Macedonia and Serbia from Greece to reach wealthier EU nations. | 1 |
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To celebrate Donald Trump’s inauguration this week, I’m returning to my new favorite parlor game: quoting Republican consultants on the 2016 campaign. [It never gets old! Also, this exercise reminds us of the many things we are thankful for this week: Donald Trump, the cluelessness of his opponents, and Nexis transcripts. Our featured GOP consultant this week is Matthew Dowd, chief strategist for the campaign and Mr. Magoo. Nominally a conservative in a liberal business, Dowd couldn’t pull off a full Arianna, so if he wanted to sit in a warm studio on Sunday mornings issuing pronouncements as if from Mount Olympus, he had to come up with an act. Even a guy like Dowd — wrong on everything else, from the time of day to whether it’s raining — accurately sussed out what the media wanted: a playing “the conservative. ” How else to explain the fact that the entire American media refused to have on anyone who supported the man who just won a landslide presidential election? The territory Dowd carved out for himself was: patriotic sage, above partisanship, announcing on every subject that both sides were wrong, he alone was right. This made him a regular panelist on ABC’s “This Week” with George Stephanopoulos. Dowd’s “both sides are wrong” offering to the church was condescending and tiresome, but it would help if he were, from time to time, correct. Instead, from the moment Trump announced, Dowd treated us to hilariously boneheaded prognostications that were instantly proved wrong and never acknowledged as he issued each successive boneheaded prediction. On Feb. 7, 2016, Dowd pronounced that the nominations would be wrapped up in “April for the Democrats and May for the Republicans. ” Trump won the nomination by May 4 and Hillary won it in June — two months after Dowd’s confident prediction. On April 3, Dowd said Trump “can’t win a general election for all intents and purposes. ” (“For all intents and purposes” is what consultants add to statements to make them sound weighty.) Trump won the election — and he won it with far more electoral votes than Dowd’s candidate ever got. On May 1, Dowd said, “It’s going to be a election, unfortunately. ” Trump won both white men and white women, decisively. White women without a college degree carried the Midwest for Trump. (See here.) Dowd spent several Sundays in May assuring viewers that a candidate would be on stage at the debates: “I think there is likely to be somebody else standing in the debates and that changes the dynamics. ” That never happened. After Trump wrapped up the nomination, Dowd claimed he had predicted it! “Well, I was very bullish on Donald Trump in the primaries,” he said on May 8. His use of the term “bullish” was, well, . As for Trump winning the general election, Dowd declared it “unlikely. ” (Based on his fantastical recollections of his own predictions, I assume he is currently claiming to have predicted Trump’s win in the general election.) In the week leading up to the election, Dowd was a whirling dervish of soothsaying on Twitter: NOVEMBER 1, “@matthewjdowd Any expenditure of time or money by Trump in PA, VA, MI and NH is a total waste. Campaign mismanagement if they keep it up. ” Of the four states Dowd considered “a total waste” for Trump to campaign in, he won the two biggest, worth more than twice as many electoral votes as the other two combined — and one of those he lost by only 0. 3 percent. NOVEMBER 2, “@matthewjdowd clinton has a better chance of carrying Arizona than trump does of carrying Mi or Wi” Trump carried both Michigan and Wisconsin. Hillary did not win Arizona. NOVEMBER 4, “@matthewjdowd Look for sure signs Trump will lose: 1. ‘The only poll that matters is election day’ 2. ‘Our vote doesn’t show up in polls.’ 3. ‘Truman’” Although Trump never made any excuses — he won! — all three of those statements turned out to be true. (See Time magazine’s “Madam President” issue.) NOVEMBER 5 was Dowd’s Latino Appreciation Day: “@matthewjdowd even if Trump gets the exact % of votes of whites, blacks Asians as Bush in 2004, Trump would lose by 3 million votes due to Latinos. ” “@matthewjdowd Trump will lose latino voters by a larger margin than romney. Who set a new modern low. ” “@matthewjdowd It looks like Trump campaign was right, the silent hidden vote is showing up: Latinos are voting at record levels. Motivated by Trump. ” Trump won more of the Hispanic vote than either McCain or Romney — and probably more than Bush, for whom we only have nonsense numbers (as both Republican and Democratic analysts agree — see here and here). NOVEMBER 6, “@matthewjdowd If trump loses Ohio and Florida one reason is that Clinton campaign head faked them into thinking he had chance in Michigan. media helped” Trump won Michigan. Also Ohio and Florida. On Nov. 6 — 48 hours before the election — Dowd announced on ABC’s “This Week” that Trump would lose, “and lose badly. ” Bored with his own omniscience, Dowd explained, “George, to me, this election has been … incredibly predictable actually from the primary. ” Mr. Magoo had more wisdom to impart: “On election night, Hillary Clinton’s margins among nonwhite voters and among voters are going to be the highest margins we’ve ever seen. ” Dowd’s sweeping declarations turned out to be less accurate than a blindfolded monkey throwing darts in a bar. On Twitter, Dowd assured his readers: NOVEMBER 7, “@matthewjdowd Clinton wins by five points. Over 300 electoral votes. Trump loses by more popular votes than Romney. ” Final electoral vote: Trump, 304 Clinton, 227. TV bookers couldn’t get enough of Dowd. What smugness! What monumental cluelessness! ABC’s “This Week” is a show famous for confronting guests with their own prior statements. Would ABC play this game with its own Powerhouse Roundtable prognosticators? Surely a man of Dowd’s integrity would come on the air and admit, “I couldn’t have been more wrong!” HELLO! That didn’t happen at all! Dowd was allowed to sit out the Sunday after the election. The following Sunday, he was in his usual seat on the Powerhouse Roundtable, right back to giving his sweeping, grinning predictions, with no acknowledgment that he had been spectacularly — and characteristically — wrong in every prediction he’d made, all year long. That’s why Dowd is our Mr. Magoo. As Trump is being sworn in and visions of the wall are dancing in your head, remember that if he ever runs out of bricks, he can always use Republican consultants. | 1 |
Rep. Schiff: US Doesn't Want to Provoke Retaliation Before Vote by Jason Ditz, October 27, 2016 Share This
While the Obama Administration has made much of its intention to start a full-scale cyberwar against Russia at a “time of their choosing,” the most recent reports suggest that the war is effectively on hold at least until the presidential election in two weeks.
From President Obama’s standpoint, the hope is to work with Hillary Clinton, if she becomes president-elect, to launch a cyber war that they both can get behind. Indeed, both have appeared very hawkish against Russia, and Obama apparently doesn’t want to deny Clinton a chance to participate in the early days of a war she’d inherit.
Starting a cyberwar ahead of a Trump win would be even less wise, as Trump has opposed the idea of picking fights with Russia, and expressed strong doubts about Democratic Party “certainty” that Russia is behind hacks against them.
Rep. Adam Schiff (D – CA), the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, says that another factor is concern about provoking Russian retaliation for such a US attack before the vote, with many Democrats concerned Russia could release “forged” documents to embarrass the Clinton campaign.
Earlier this month, Vice President Joe Biden reported that he has informed Russia of an imminent retaliatory hack, and says the Obama Administration will pick a time which will “have the greatest impact.” Russia has denied any involvement in the hacks. Last 5 posts by Jason Ditz | 0 |
Email Print After writing a lengthy suicide note exposing terrifying plans the government has for American citizens, a US Customs Agent walked onto a pier in NYC and blew his brains out. Sources inside the New York City Police Department have revealed to SuperStation95, the contents of a suicide note found on the body and they are utterly frightening. The note, which says it was written over the course of a full week in advance, outlines why the officer chose to shoot himself: “The America I grew up in, and cherished, has been murdered by its own federal government. Our Constitution has become meaningless and our laws politicized so badly, they are no longer enforced except for political purposes” the note said. “Our elected officials are, to a person, utterly corrupt and completely devoid of any love or respect for the country which pays them. To them, everything is about getting and keeping power, and making illicit money from backroom deals.” The 42-year-old U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement deportation officer shot himself with a 40 caliber service pistol inside Pier 40 in Hudson River Park at around 11 am. (1) A source at the scene described how the officer calmly walked into the park, took out his pistol and shot himself in the head. A ICE federal agent fatally shot himself in the head at waterfront Chelsea park (pictured) in New York Friday The 42-year-old worked as U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement deportation officer and his offices were nearby to the scene of the shooting. He was rushed to Lenox Hill Hospital but doctors were unable to save him. (2) ICE released a statement Friday afternoon: ‘Tragically, a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) deportation officer from the New York field office suffered a self-inflicted gunshot wound and has passed away.’ It added: ‘The agency is not releasing further details pending notification of the officer’s next of kin. According to the suicide note, the Officer said: “I was hired to enforce the law; to capture and deport people who come to this country against our laws. But now, if I dare to do that, I face being suspended or fired because our President refuses to faithfully execute the duties of his office. Instead, I come to work each day, and collect a paycheck twice a month, for intentionally doing little to nothing. I cannot and will not be party to this fraud; to this usurpation of the law, or to the despicable politicians betraying our nation” the note continued. ICE’s Office of Professional Responsibility is reviewing the matter and coordinating with the New York Police Department on the investigation. The agent worked at a field office in lower Manhattan, just blocks away from the scene of the shooting. MENTIONS “FEMA CAMPS” FOR AMERICANS (3) In the suicide note, the officer revealed what he claimed are terrifying plans the feds have been finalizing: “If the American people knew what this government is planning, they would rise-up and overthrow it. If I or anyone else in the federal government revealed what is coming, we would be killed anyway, so now I will reveal what I know. We in federal law enforcement have been drilling for several years to control riots and uprisings from a coming financial collapse and widespread bank failures. The drills involve life-sized images of American men, even women and children, whom we are told to shoot for “practice” and to “get used to it.” We have been told that the economy is terminally ill and will fail in 2016. We are also told the banks are all insolvent and the FDIC doesn’t have nearly enough funds to bail out depositors. We are told these events are unavoidable and it is imperative that the government survive when people rise-up over this. When the collapse takes place, detention camps created under the FEMA REX-84 program in the 1980’s to house illegal aliens whom we were going to deport, will instead be used to imprison American Citizens whom the government feels constitute a “threat.” American citizens will be rounded-up without warrants and imprisoned without trial for God knows how long. These camps have been equipped to carry out Hitler-scale killings! An actual “purge” of Americans citizens by the very government which they, themselves, created and pay for! I cannot be party to this.” The Note goes on to say talk about state-level national guard being disarmed by the feds (4) and over 1 Billion rounds of ammunition purchased by the feds (5) and the Military over-deployed and being shrunk (6) : “The government knows the military will rise-up to stop this, so our military is being deployed overseas, intentionally involved in foreign fights, and deliberately shrunk in size so they cannot be here or help Americans! This is why certain ammunition and weaponry has been removed from state-level National Guard Armories and over a Billion rounds of hollow point ammunition has been bought by the federal government. The states themselves have been disarmed of military-grade firepower so they cannot defend themselves from the federal activities. This is also why local police departments have been militarized and provided with armored vehicles and weapons of war” the note says. “When the inevitable collapse begins to take place, electric power to the entire country will be shut off, as will all forms of communication. All banks will be immediately closed; no one will be able to get any money because all ATM’s will be offline. Credit, Debit and EBT cards will not function. Anyone without cash will have no way to get any. The Emergency Alert System will be used to takeover all broadcast stations and tell the public this is a result of a cyber attack. But while the American people patiently await things to get back to normal, the government will unleash round-ups of citizens they deem militants or dangerous . With all civilian communications out, and all TV and radio stations taken over by the Emergency Alert System, by the time word spreads of what is taking place, the government will already have the upper hand. Federal Prisoners to be GASSED TO DEATH The note goes into a wide array of very specific plans and does so in extremely specific detail about what the feds are allegedly planning. For instance, it talks about federal prisons: “Every federal prison has been outfitted with lethal gas systems. When things go bad, all prisoners in all prisons will be placed in their cells on lock-down. Prison staff will depart the facility, and a certain designated person will trigger a lethal gas system. All federal prisoners, regardless of their crime or their sentence, will be gassed to death in their cells. Once the gas clears, the dead will be removed and the prisons will then be used to house citizens who fight against the federal onslaught.” PRIESTS RECRUITED TO QUELL OPPOSITION (7) The note makes mention about Priests, Rabbis and Clerics from various religious denominations having been recruited and trained to quell resistance: “So intent is the government to succeed they have recruited priests, rabbis and clerics from various religions to quote appropriate Scriptures about “obeying government.” They are being trained to tell people not to fight back and that their best hope is to pray.” EXECUTIVE ORDER 13603 (8) The suicide note goes to great lengths about Executive Order #13603 signed by President Obama on March 16, 2012. The note details:
Executive order 13603 about “National Defense Resources Preparedness.”
This 10-page document is a blueprint for a federal takeover of the economy. Specifically, Obama’s plan involves seizing control of:
* “All commodities and products that are capable of being ingested by either human beings or animals”
* “All forms of energy”
* “All forms of civil transportation”
* “All usable water from all sources”
* “Health resources – drugs, biological products, medical devices, materials, facilities, health supplies, services and equipment”
* Forced labor ( or “induction” as the executive order delicately refers to military conscription)
Moreover, federal officials would “issue regulations to prioritize and allocate resources.” SuperStation95 took a look at this Executive Order from the Government Printing Office (GPO) web site and, sure enough, everything contained in the Officer’s suicide note about this Executive Order is true! To be sure, much of this language has appeared in national security executive orders that previous presidents have issued periodically since the beginning of the Cold War. But more than previous national security executive orders, Obama’s 13603 seems to describe a potentially totalitarian regime obsessed with control over everything. Obama’s executive order makes no effort to justify the destruction of liberty, no effort to explain how amassing totalitarian control would enable government to deal effectively with cyber sabotage, suicide bombings, chemical warfare, nuclear missiles or other possible threats. There’s nothing in executive order 13603 about upholding the Constitution or protecting civil liberties. In what circumstances, one might ask, would a president try to carry out this audacious plan? Executive order 13603 says with ominous ambiguity: during “ the full spectrum of emergencies .” DATABASE OF PREPPERS The suicide note touches on the subject of “Preppers:” “We in federal law enforcement have also been told that the government has a full database of all so-called “Preppers.” Those people will be dealt with first — by armed federal agents coming to take their guns, then their food stocks, so food can be re-distributed as the government sees fit.” If the dead Officer’s claims about an unavoidable economic and banking collapse are true, would it then follow that the Executive Order put in place by Obama, might be activated? Would all of us find ourselves in forced labor, while the government takes OUR food and re-distrubutes it under the Executive Order’s paragraph about “allocating resources?” This is terrifying stuff! There is much more to the suicide note and SuperStation95 is considering how much more to publish. As such, this is a developing story and readers should check back for further updates. THESE COULD SIMPLY BE INSANE RAMBLINGS It is not our intent to cause panic or alarm and while we expect readers to be intelligent enough to discern this on their own, we feel compelled to point out that these could simply be paranoid ramblings of an insane person who killed himself. On the other hand, these could also be revelations by a person who was so distraught over the ugly truth, that he killed himself. We at SuperStation95 just don’t know. We urge everyone to stay calm, think rationally, and decide whether or not to take any action to prepare, in case this person’s suicide note is telling the truth. SOURCING / CORROBORATION
(1) ICE Agent Suicide in NYC: NY Daily News
(2) Taken to Lenox Hill Hospital NY Post
(3) REX-84 FEMA CAMPS Wikipedia
(4) National Guard being stripped of Crew-Serviceable Weapons and communications gear – Republic Broadcasting, John Stadmiller
(5) Dept. of Homeland Security Orders 1.6 BILLION rounds of ammunition Forbes Magazine
(6) US Army over-deployed and intentionally shrunk ARMY TIMES
(7) Clergy Recruited by Gov’t to quell opposition KSLA-TV Channel 12
(8) Executive Order 13603 White House US Government Printing Office UPDATE – MAY 10, 2016 10:00 PM EDT– The web site SNOPES.com has issued a declaration that our story is some sort of hoax, that we are somehow NOT a radio station and attributed the story – and this web site – to a former FBI National Security Intelligence Asset named Hal Turner, whom she smears as a “White Supremacist.” This is not the first time SNOPES.com has made accusations against us simply because we have been the exclusive source of politically-incorrect news. And while we stand-by our stories in every regard, this barrage of attacks by SNOPES.com is becoming libelous.
We address the SNOPES.com accusations one at a time: 1) No aspect of our story above is a hoax. What Snopes.com seems to take issue with is the existence and content of a suicide note which was revealed to us by the NYPD. The person from NYPD who gave us this information did so after trying to get two other New York Media outlets, (one TV, the other a newspaper) to publish the story and was rebuked within minutes by media contacts who said “we won’t touch this with a ten foot pole.” The fact that the NYPD now claims “no note was found” does not surprise us at all; NYPD has very close ties with the feds and the feds have an intense interest in concealing or discrediting the information it contained. 2) According to the FCC Licensing Bureau, 95.1 FM in New York City is the HD-4 frequency for WNSH 94.7 FM as licensed by the FCC as shown HERE 3) Our story was written by our News Room staff, not anyone named Hal Turner. 4) Mr. Turner was formerly a paying customer of this radio station from October 7, 2015 thru March 30, 2016. He bought air time from us to air his personal radio show “The Hal Turner Show.” Finances caused Mr. Turner to cancel his programming on our radio station and continue his show on WBCQ International Shortwave , where he is on the air live from 9-11 PM every Wednesday evening. Mr. Turner’s web site is: HalTurnerShow.com . He is welcome to return to our airwaves if his finances improve. 5) SNOPES.com claims Mr. Turner is a “white supremacist.” In reality Mr. Turner worked for the FBI from 1993 – 2008, with his TOD as the Joint Terrorism Task Force from 2003-2008. His job was to infiltrate white supremacist groups to thwart violent criminal acts by such persons. This information came out when the Obama Administration betrayed Mr. Turner in 2009 and arrested him for writing in 2009, what the government PAID HIM $3,000 TO SAY on DATELINE NBC and FOX NEWS CHANNEL just four years earlier in 2005! After three trials (two hung juries) Mr. Turner was Bankrupted by legal fees, was appointed a public defender, who threw the case, resulting in Mr. Turner’s conviction. For SNOPES.com to smear Mr. Turner as a “White Supremacist” when federal court records show the exact opposite, is a prime example of the utterly shoddy research and reporting provided by SNOPES.com
The criticism and SNOPES.com outright falsehoods about this story, and others, have been written mostly by:
Ms. Kim A Lacapria, Age 37 (born Mar 20, 1979 )
39 Cockonoe AVE
Babylon, NY 11702-1901 Those of you who are offended by this type of journalistic misconduct, may wish to contact Ms. LaCapria in a peaceful, lawful, non-threatening and non-violent manner to complain about her shoddy journalism. PLEASE DO NOT HARASS THIS IGNORANT PERSON and PLEASE,PLEASE,PLEASE do not make any threats or commit any intimidation. None of us need that and it will only result in serious legal trouble.
Ms. La Capria can be reached at: Tel. (516) 422-7943
(516) 422-7494 | 0 |
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