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TRIPOLI (Reuters) - Gunmen killed at least four people and wounded nearly 40 on Wednesday in a suicide attack on a court complex in the Libyan city of Misrata, officials and a witness said. Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack, saying in a statement run by the group s Amaq news agency it had targeted one of the most prominent strongholds of Libya s U.N.-backed Government of National Accord (GNA). The attack shows the enduring militant threat in Libya after a Misrata-led coalition under nominal GNA command battled for more than six months last year to oust Islamic State from its former stronghold in Sirte, about 230 km (140 miles) southeast of Misrata. Since then, militants have been trying to regroup in the desert south of Sirte. They have stepped up their presence in remote areas, though attacks in urban centers have been rare. Wednesday s attack was launched by several assailants who drove up to the complex in central Misrata in a black vehicle, a witness said. One of them blew himself up at the gate and the other two with Kalashnikovs opened fire at random, he said. Shooting could be heard all over the city center after the attack. The witness, who asked not to be named, said he believed the attackers had used rocket propelled grenades. The military alliance from Misrata that led the campaign in Sirte said two suicide attackers were involved in the operation, and that there had been an explosion after a gun battle lasting about 20 minutes. The attackers killed four and wounded 39, Misrata hospital said in a statement, listing names of victims. Two of the attackers blew themselves up and a third was killed during the gun battle, said a local security source, speaking on condition of anonymity. Bomb disposal experts also defused a booby-trapped car that had been packed with explosives to be used in the attack, he said. Misrata, a large commercial port about 190 km east of Tripoli, is one of Libya s major military power bases but the city itself has been largely immune from armed clashes and attacks in recent years. Dozens of Islamic State suspects are being held in the city. Libya slid into turmoil after a NATO-backed uprising that toppled long-time leader Muammar Gaddafi six years ago. It remains divided between loose political and military alliances based in the east and west, resulting in a security vacuum in the center of the country. As militants increased their activity in recent weeks to the south and east of Sirte, the United States launched two sets of air strikes against jihadist desert camps. The U.S. also provided air support for the Misrata-led campaign last year. | 1 |
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Hypothesis: There are Major Bombings that have been printed on the U.S. Currency many years BEFORE the events actually happened.
There is a common denominator between all the images and how they were spiritually discerned by what was recorded in the prophets of Isaiah spoken 2,700 years ago.
There are multiple layers of ink and watermarks printed on the bills when magnify appear to produce animations. Tags | 0 |
Bernie Sanders likes to talk about how everyone will be equal using other people s money. It s the most asinine concept and it s not like it hasn t been tried before. We love Larry Elder s personal take on equality and the common sense reasons there will NEVER be total equality especially INCOME EQUALITY:Is there a more brain-dead concept than to empower the government to fight income inequality ? What sane, normal, rational human being thinks that human talent, drive, interests and opportunity can or should result in equal outcomes?Despite my love of athletics, I knew in third grade that my friend, Keith, could run much faster than I could. For two years I played Little League ball, and I got better at it. But no matter how hard I tried or how many hours I spent, I could not hit, run or throw as well as my friend Benji.Later in life, I started playing tennis, and I became quite passionate about it. But most of the people I played against had started playing years earlier, and most had taken lessons for years. I got better, but given my competitors head start, the gap remained.Financial planners advise clients to start early and stick to some sort of game plan. Is there any wonder that those who do so will have more net worth than those who started later, or who lacked the discipline to follow and stick to a plan? How is government supposed to address these unequal outcomes?Most entrepreneurs experience failure before hitting on an idea, concept or business that makes money. Even then, it takes 20 to 30 years of long hours and sacrifice, along with occasional self-doubt and a dollop of luck, to become a multimillionaire.I recently saw a movie starring Cate Blanchett. She is a very good actress, but she is also strikingly beautiful. Is there any doubt that her good looks, over which she had no control, are a factor in her success? Is it unfair that an equally talented actress, but with plain looks, will likely have an unequal career compared with that of Blanchett?Speaking of acting, most who venture into that field do not become successful, if success is defined as making a living as an actor. These overwhelming odds still do not deter the many young people who flock to Hollywood every year to make it. Had a would-be actor dedicated that same drive and personality to some other profession, success would have been more likely, if less enjoyable. Should the government intervene and take from the successful non-actor and give to those who unsuccessfully pursued a long-shot acting career? An ex-actor told me of her recent lunch with a friend she had met when they both left college and pursued acting. While the ex-actor moved on to a different, successful career, her friend stuck to acting, through thick and thin. The actor informed her friend that she recently turned down a commercial. Why? What struggling actor turns down this kind of work? Turns out, through some sort of assistance program, said the friend, the state of California is assisting with her mortgage. She has no obligation to repay the money, and she will continue to receive the assistance as long as her income is not above a certain level. How does this strengthen the economy? The ex-actor, through her taxes, subsidizes the lifestyle of the actor, who admits turning down work lest she be denied the benefits.But this is exactly the world sought by Bernie Sanders a government that taxes the productive and gives to the less productive in order to reduce income inequality. In the real world, two individuals, living next door to each other, make different choices about education, careers, spouses, where to live, and if and how to invest. Even if they make exactly the same income, one might live below his or her means, prudently saving money, while the other might choose to regularly buy new cars and fancy clothes and go on expensive vacations. Is there any question that the first person will end up with a higher net worth than the latter? Is their inequality something that government should address?Although Beyonce is a good singer, is there any question that there are others with superior voices? But Beyonce is also blessed with unequally good looks, charisma and perhaps better management maybe better than the other two ladies in her musical trio, Destiny s Child, whom she once sang with. Three singers, in the same group, have had unequal outcomes.Communism, collectivism and socialism rest on the same premise that government possesses the kindness, aptitude, judgment and ability to take from some and give to others to achieve equality. Karl Marx wrote, From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs. And that s the problem. The statement implicitly acknowledges that some have more aptitude, drive, energy and ability than others. To take from some and give to others reduces the initiative of both the giver and the givee.This is the fundamental flaw with income redistribution, the very foundation of communism, socialism and collectivism. One would think that Bernie Sanders would have figured this out by now. But wisdom among 74-years-olds, like outcome, is not distributed equally.Larry Elder is a best-selling author and radio talk-show host. To find out more about Larry Elder, or become an Elderado, visit www.LarryElder.com. Follow Larry on Twitter @larryelder.Via: Black Community News | 0 |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Senior Boeing (BA.N) executive Patrick Shanahan is U.S. President Donald Trump’s nominee to take over the No. 2 role at the Pentagon as deputy U.S. defense secretary, the White House announced on Thursday. The White House also announced plans to nominate: * David Norquist to become Under Secretary of Defense, Comptroller. Norquist is a partner with Kearney and Company, a Certified Public Accounting firm. * David Joel Trachtenberg to become Principal Deputy Under Secretary of Defense, Policy. Trachtenberg is president and CEO of Shortwaver Consulting, LLC, a national security consultancy. * Kenneth Rapuano to become Assistant Secretary of Defense, Homeland Defense and Global Security. Rapuano is senior vice president and director of the studies and analysis group at the ANSER Corporation. | 0 |
Ousted Egyptian president Mohammed Morsi, along with more than 100 other defendants, was sentenced to death by an Egyptian court Saturday for his role in a mass prison break in 2011.
Morsi, Egypt's first freely elected president, is already serving a 20-year jail sentence in jail for ordering the arrest and torture of protesters while president.
The then-leader of the Muslim Brotherhood movement was elected president in 2012 after the resignation of President Hosni Mubarak.
The Egyptian military deposed Morsi in 2013 following a series of street protests against his rule. In May 2014, Morsi's successor, former military chief Abdul Fattah al-Sisi, who led the coup, won a landslide victory in presidential elections.
The Muslim Brotherhood was banned and its supporters rounded up by the thousands.
As with all capital punishment cases, the sentence will be sent to the Grand Mufti, Egypt's highest authority, for his opinion. Convictions can still be appealed, even if the Grand Mufti approves the sentencing. A decision is expected on June 2. | 1 |
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Shares of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac opened higher on Wednesday, reaching their highest levels in more than a month after U.S. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said the Trump administration will take up reform of the two mortgage finance agencies in the latter half of 2017. Fannie Mae’s stock price was up over 3 percent at $2.94 a share, while Freddie Mac shares were 3 percent higher at $2.77. | 0 |
WARSAW (Reuters) - One day before his first meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, U.S. President Donald Trump said on Thursday that no one knows for sure whether Moscow intervened in the 2016 U.S. election but that he suspected Russian involvement. Speaking to reporters in Poland, Trump played down the assessment of his own intelligence agencies that Russia meddled in the election by hacking Democrats’ emails and distributing online propaganda. “I think it was Russia, but I think it was probably other people and/or countries, and I see nothing wrong with that statement. Nobody really knows. Nobody really knows for sure,” Trump told a news conference. Investigations by a special counsel, Robert Mueller, and several U.S. congressional committees are looking into whether Russia interfered in the election and colluded with Trump’s campaign. Those probes are focused almost exclusively on Moscow’s actions, lawmakers and intelligence officials say, and no evidence has surfaced publicly implicating other countries. Moscow has denied any interference, and Trump says his campaign did not collude with Russia. Trump, who defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton in the November election, will meet Putin on Friday at a G20 summit in the German city of Hamburg for their first official encounter. It was not clear whether the Republican president would bring up the issue of election interference when the two men meet. In a speech in Warsaw, Trump affirmed U.S. commitment to the defense of NATO allies and gently criticized Russia. Trump frequently praised Putin as a strong leader during the election campaign and called for better U.S. relations with Moscow but he has since tempered that rhetoric. Representative Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House of Representatives’ Intelligence Committee, said Trump’s remarks in Poland about the election only propagated “his own personal fiction.” “The President’s comments today, again casting doubt on whether Russia was behind the blatant interference in our election and suggesting – his own intelligence agencies to the contrary – that nobody really knows, continue to directly undermine U.S. interests,” Schiff said in a statement. Trump cast doubt at his news conference over media reports that all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies concluded in January that Russia had meddled in the election. “Let me just start off by saying I heard it was 17 agencies. I said, boy, that’s a lot, do we even have that many intelligence agencies, right? Let’s check it. And we did some very heavy research. It turned out to be three or four. It wasn’t 17,” Trump said. The U.S. intelligence report in January accusing Russia of meddling in the U.S. election was issued by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which oversees the 17 U.S. intelligence agencies. But the report acknowledges that it is based on an assessment by the CIA, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National Security Agency, which held the key classified information on Russian activities. Trump said the CIA told his predecessor, Democratic President Barack Obama, last August about Russian interference in the election but he did nothing to stop it. “I think what happened is he thought Hillary Clinton was going to win the election, and he said let’s not do anything about it. Had he thought the other way, he would have done something about it,” Trump said. | 0 |
Unprecedented Surge In Election Fraud Incidents From Around The Country Zero Hedge
Mounting evidence would suggest it's getting more and more difficult for the left to claim that there are "no signs" of fraud in the 2016 election cycle...though we're sure they will continue to try. Just this morning the Miami Herald noted that two arrests were made in Miami-Dade county on election fraud charges including efforts by one woman to illegally register voters (some of whom were dead...a recurring theme this election cycle) while another 74-year-old election worker was charged with actually " illegally marking ballots" .
A 74-year-old woman tasked with opening envelopes sent by Miami-Dade County voters with their completed mail ballots was arrested Friday after co-workers caught her illegally marking ballots, resulting in an unknown — but small — number of fraudulent votes being cast for mayoral candidate Raquel Regalado.
Investigators linked Gladys Coego, a temporary worker for the county elections department, to two fraudulent votes, but they suspect from witness testimony that she submitted several more.
In a separate election-fraud case, authorities also arrested a second woman for unlawfully filling out voter-registration forms on behalf of United for Care, the campaign to legalize medical marijuana in Florida.
The Miami-Dade state attorney’s office plans to accuse Tomika Curgil, 33, of filling out forms for five people without their consent. She also submitted at least 17 forms for people who apparently don’t exist — and several forms for people who are dead.
Police officers arrested Curgil at her Liberty City home Friday morning and intend to charge her with five felony counts of submitting false voter-registration information.
Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernández Rundle was quick to praise the "swift arrest of the wrongdoers" and ensure voters of the " integrity of the electoral process." That said, we, like many others, wonder just how many similar cases of election fraud will go unnoticed between now and election day.
“Our law enforcement effort against these election law violators was swift and resulted in an immediate arrest of the wrongdoers,” Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernández Rundle, a Democrat, said in a statement. “The elections department was quick to detect and report these violations to our task force.
“Anyone who attempts to undermine the democratic process should recognize that there is an enforcement partnership between the elections department and our prosecution task force in place to thwart such efforts and arrest those involved. Now we need to move forward with the election.”
“I want to ensure the voters of Miami-Dade County that the integrity of the electoral process is intact because our procedures work,” White said in a statement. “While disappointed by these incidents, I am very proud of the safeguards the Elections Department has in place to prevent these fraudulent attempts, and I commend the employees who remained vigilant just as they were trained to do.”
Meanwhile, Florida isn't the only state with fraud problems as an NBC affiliate in Virginia is reporting that a former resident of Alexandia was also arrested after being caught creating fictitious voter registrations and faces up to 40 years in prison. Of course, Virginia, run by long-time Clinton confidant Terry McAuliffe, is no stranger to election fraud as one democratic organization was already caught earlier this month re-registering dead voters .
A former resident of Alexandria, Virginia, is facing up to 40 years in prison after he allegedly used fake names to fill out voter registration applications.
Vafalay Massaquoi, 30, is facing four felony charges related to allegations of voter registration fraud , the Commonwealth's Attorney's Office said. Each charge carries a maximum of 10 years in prison.
In the spring of 2016, Massaquoi was registering new voters as an employee of a local advocacy group. According to the Commonwealth's Attorney, Massaquoi fabricated applications and used fake names to fill out the registration forms.
The fake applications were filed with the Alexandria Office of the General Registrar, who reported the issue to Commonwealth's Attorney Bryan Porter.
All of these reports simply add fuel to the fire of Trump who has been relentlessly attacking the "rigged" elections for the past several weeks. The election is absolutely being rigged by the dishonest and distorted media pushing Crooked Hillary - but also at many polling places - SAD
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 16, 2016 'Obama Warned Of Rigged Elections In 2008.' Time to #DrainTheSwamp https://t.co/AkczH8l0FJ pic.twitter.com/7mIkwAHTuV
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 25, 2016
Of course, these are just a few of the people who have actually been caught for their election "rigging" efforts. Meanwhile, there have seemingly been an unlimited number of other fraud cases pop up around the country involving everything from illegal voter registrations to dead people voting. In fact, a recent report from CBS Chicago found that over 100 dead Chicagoans had voted 229 times over the past decade.
Susie Sallee was buried in 1998. Yet records show she voted in Chicago 12 years later.
Victor Crosswell died in 1994, but records show he’s voted six times since then.
And then there’s Floyd Stevens. Records show he’s voted 11 times since his death in 1993.
“It’s crazy,” Sharon Stevens Anderson, Stevens’ daughter, tells CBS 2’s Pam Zekman. “I don’t see how people can be able to do something like that and get away with it.”
Those are just a few of the cases CBS 2 Investigators found by merging Chicago Board of Election voter histories with the death master file from the Social Security Administration.
In all, the analysis showed 119 dead people have voted a total of 229 times in Chicago in the last decade.
Moreover, an ABC affiliate in Philadelphia uncovered similar instances of dead voters in the "City of Brotherly Love."
So, Action News dug through a decade's worth of election and death records to see if there was any truth to the claim.
Some of what Action News investigation found was stunning.
Pezzano passed in 2006 . But state voting records show the South Philadelphia native still listed as an "Active Voter" who cast ballots in 2008, 2012, 2014, and the 2016 primary election.
Our investigation also found Joseph B. Haggarty resting peacefully in a Bucks County cemetery. His grave marker confirmed he died in 2010, but records show he voted five years after his death.
Action News also found Paul Bunch, who died in 2006, also cast a vote in this year's primary which was nearly ten years after death records show he died.
But, while all of this may seem shocking, in due time, we're confident these arrests and all other instances dead people voting, etc. will be seen for what they really are, namely another blatant attempt to suppress low-income and minority votes. Share This Article... | 0 |
AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) - A Texas-based LGBT advocacy helped spark a grammar debate this week over whether an errant comma in the stridently anti-homosexual Republican Party of Texas platform can be read as saying the majority of Texans are gay. The plank that was approved by delegates at the party’s convention this month reads: “Homosexuality is a chosen behavior that is contrary to the fundamental unchanging truths that has been ordained by God in the Bible, recognized by our nations founders, and shared by the majority of Texans.” Lone Star Q, which describes itself as the state’s No. 1 source for LGBT news, asked on Twitter on Wednesday to have a “grammar debate” over the wording. In response, grammarians pointed out that placement of the final comma in the plank could lead to understanding it to mean that homosexuality is a chosen behavior shared by the majority of Texans. They also noted that “nations” should have an apostrophe and that by using “has been,” the plank gives the impression that homosexuality has been ordained by God. Party officials did not respond to requests to comment. The party, which dominates Texas politics, has been hostile toward homosexuality for years. Its platform has said homosexuality must not be presented as an acceptable lifestyle and gays should not be allowed to marry. Over the years, the party’s platforms have favored a number of hard-right positions, such as cutting off funding for about a dozen U.S. government agencies, including the Internal Revenue Service, abolishing the Federal Reserve, a return to the gold standard for the U.S. dollar and U.S. withdrawal from the United Nations. | 1 |
LONDON (Reuters) - North Korea will continue to regularly test missiles and any military action against it by the United States would prompt “all out war”, a senior North Korean official told the BBC on Monday. North Korea has conducted several missile and nuclear tests in defiance of U.N. sanctions and has said it has developed a missile that can strike the U.S. mainland. Its latest missile test on Sunday failed a few seconds after launch. U.S. Vice President Mike Pence warned North Korea on Monday that recent U.S. strikes in Syria, one of Pyongyang’s few close allies, and Afghanistan showed that the resolve of President Donald Trump should not be tested. “We’ll be conducting more missile tests on a weekly, monthly and yearly basis,” the BBC quoted Vice Foreign Minister Han Song-Ryol as saying in an interview. “If the U.S. is reckless enough to use military means it would mean from that very day, an all out war.” North Korean state media last week warned of a nuclear attack on the United States at any sign of American aggression, but the White House said there was no evidence it possessed that capability. The BBC reported Han also said North Korea believed its nuclear weapons protect it from the threat of military action by the United States. | 1 |
Counterfeiting is illegal by the way and shouldn t be rewarded with American citizenship This could be the story of an American dream. An immigrant family builds a successful business and buys a four-bedroom house in a quiet neighborhood with good schools for their young son. But not all is as it seems on the steep, curving streets of San Diego s Rancho Penasquitos.A 45-year-old Chinese woman, Xu Ting, lives in a brown shingle house with a weedy driveway. She has been sued for counterfeiting by eight luxury brands, including Gucci and Louis Vuitton, and owes Chanel Inc. $6.9 million in damages. None of this has stopped her from becoming a legal permanent resident of the United States and achieving a comfortable suburban life.China is not the only country with a counterfeiting problem. Most fakes are made in China, but they are sold in America. Counterfeiting is not a priority on par with drug smuggling or money laundering, and is rarely prosecuted as a crime. The lack of legal cooperation with China makes it easy for counterfeiters to move their money beyond the reach of Western law enforcement and hard to root out counterfeiting kingpins. As long as counterfeiters can stay out of jail and hold on to their profits and consumers continue to buy the trade in fakes will likely thrive.Despite spending millions on brand protection, companies often end up playing whack-a-mole, shutting down producers and distributors of fakes, only to see them pop up again. Xu Ting simply refused to show up in court over the years. Instead, doing graduate studies in statistics at San Diego State University, helped her family amass at least $890,000 in bank accounts back in China, and bought the $585,000 Rancho Penasquitos house with her husband, who has also been involved in selling counterfeit luxury goods, public records and court cases in China and the U.S. show. There s a million ways to game the system, said Dan Plane, an intellectual property lawyer at Simone IP Services in Hong Kong, who is not involved in litigation against Xu Ting. Probably the only thing that s going to stop her is when she passes away probably on an island resort somewhere or if she gets arrested. FINDING XU TINGIn the web of lies that counterfeiters weave fake names, fake addresses, fake Internet domain registrations one thing is always true: their bank account information.The need to get paid is the counterfeiter s fatal flaw, and Xu Ting s bank accounts were the first crack in her armor of misdirection.Her legal troubles began in 2008, when a federal judge in California ordered Xu Ting who declined multiple requests for comment for this story to pay Chanel Inc. $6.9 million in damages for selling counterfeits online. She still hasn t paid the damages, according to Chanel spokeswoman Kathrin Schurrer. The essential point for Chanel is really shutting down the counterfeiting operations, which we did successfully, Schurrer wrote in an email.But after the lawsuit, Xu Ting s business continued to grow.In 2009, a Florida judge ruled against Xu Ting and shut down seven websites she was accused of helping run that sold fake Louis Vuitton, Marc Jacobs and Celine. She did not show up in court.That case didn t stop her either.The next year, Gucci, Balenciaga, Bottega Veneta and Yves Saint Laurent all brands belonging to France s Kering group filed a lawsuit in New York federal court against Xu Ting, her future husband, her younger brother, her mother and six others who the companies said sold more than $2 million worth of fake handbags and wallets online to U.S. customers. Gucci alleges that the group shipped merchandise from China to a house in San Diego, where it was repackaged and passed off as genuine.Four days after the suit was filed, Xu Ting married a Chinese man, Xu Lijun, a civil engineer licensed in California who is six years her junior, according to her marriage license issued in the San Diego suburb of El Cajon.Gucci subpoenaed banking records. JP Morgan Chase handed over account records with a wealth of information about the couple: addresses, dates of birth, driver s license, Social Security and passport numbers and a student identification card.In November 2010, Xu Lijun reached a settlement with Gucci the only defendant to do so. He denied wrongdoing but agreed to let Gucci keep $400,000 in counterfeiting proceeds seized from accounts outside China. He also agreed to pay a $7,500 fine, according to a copy of the judge s order.Eric Siegle, a New York City lawyer who represented Xu Lijun, said he was a small-time nobody, and that Gucci s lawsuit, like many others, failed to tackle the real powers behind the operation. The people they are arresting or suing here in the United States are low-level people, Siegle said. If you can find where the money is going, you can get to the heart of the problem. It s like the drug wars. Why are we arresting all these kids on street corners? But Gucci, which is seeking $12 million in damages, couldn t find where the money was going because Chinese banks, including the state-run Bank of China, refused to disclose transaction details about the counterfeiters accounts in China. BOC cannot comply with such orders without violating Chinese law, the Bank of China said in an email. GREEN CARD? NO PROBLEMXu Ting s legal troubles did not prevent her from getting a green card. In February 2014, she became a legal permanent resident by virtue of being married to someone with an advanced degree or extraordinary ability, according to the person familiar with the matter.U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services spokesman Christopher Bentley declined to comment, citing privacy concerns.Dan Kowalski, an immigration attorney and editor of Bender s Immigration Bulletin, said immigration officials may not have known about Xu Ting s legal problems but, more likely, didn t consider them disqualifying. Grounds for denying a green card range from committing a serious crime to having communicable disease but there s nothing about civil liabilities. A vaguer requirement for good moral character is more commonly applied for citizenship, not legal residence.In the U.S., most counterfeiting prosecutions are civil cases brought by companies seeking to shut down websites selling fakes and get financial compensation. Criminal cases, which lawyers say are a far more effective deterrent, are rare. A person is more likely to be struck by lightning than imprisoned for counterfeiting, said Geoffrey Potter, an intellectual property lawyer at New York s Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler.In an email, Justice Department spokesman Peter Carr said, Large-scale commercial counterfeiting is one of the top enforcement priorities of the department s Intellectual Property Task Force, which continues to have a number of significant prosecutions. The Department of Homeland Security seized $1.2 billion worth of fakes at U.S. borders last year, but the Justice Department filed just 91 criminal cases for selling counterfeit goods and services in fiscal year 2014. By comparison, the Justice Department filed 22,530 cases for immigration violations, 12,184 cases for drug-related offenses and 12,509 violent crime cases during the same period.The National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center, a multiagency group led by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, reports slightly more counterfeit-related crime 683 arrests, 454 indictments, 461 convictions in the 2014 fiscal year because its tally includes local prosecutions and counterfeit-related activity, like wire fraud.Decisions about whether to prosecute criminally typically start with a U.S. attorney s office, whose priorities vary by district, said Bruce Foucart, director of the multiagency group. Some may give weight to the volume of faked goods, others to the suspect s history. If the U.S. attorney s office declines a case, investigators try to persuade local prosecutors.China is the largest source country for seized counterfeit goods, and apparel and accessories are the largest category of merchandise. Foucart, who didn t know about Xu Ting, said luxury goods are typically made in Guangzhou and sent by container or courier like FedEx to the U.S. They may be sold in stores or flea markets but are usually hawked online. Unfortunately, once you shut one (website) down, they have 10 more ready to open up in a different name, said Foucart.Brand owners also bear responsibility. Government agencies often rely on them for tips and investigative legwork.U.S. law gives companies broad powers to enforce court judgments. Unpaid judgments accrue interest and last for 20 years, said Potter, the intellectual property lawyer. Even a bankruptcy won t erase the debt. The counterfeiter can t own a business, buy a house, have a bank account or borrow money from a bank, Potter said. If the counterfeiter takes a regular job, the judgment holder can garnish her wages. But doing the kind of work required to root out debtors like Xu Ting public records searches to see whether they own real estate, subpoenaing credit card bills to track spending habits, hiring investigators to determine whether they have jobs takes relentless commitment, and money.Via: AP | 0 |
LONDON — Britain’s political crisis was set aside, at least temporarily, on Friday as leaders made their way to France to attend commemorations for the 100th anniversary of the Battle of the Somme. Still, contenders to replace Prime Minister David Cameron are beginning to firm up the groundwork for their campaigns, with Michael Gove making a speech a day after throwing his hat in the ring. Here’s your daily “Brexit” briefing. • Michael Gove, whose surprise entrance into the race for Conservative Party leader (and prime minister) helped knock Boris Johnson out of the contest, said on Friday that while he lacked charisma, he could deliver change. Challengers to Mr. Gove, including former Defense Secretary Liam Fox, have also been making their cases. Ken Clarke, a former chancellor of the Exchequer, said Mr. Gove should stand aside. Read our rundown of the contenders to be Britain’s next leader. • Mr. Cameron and the Labour Party’s embattled leader, Jeremy Corbyn, attended commemorations for the Battle of the Somme. Members of the royal family will be there as well. Smaller ceremonies are taking place across the country. • George Osborne, the chancellor of the Exchequer, met with business leaders in Manchester. And John McDonnell, the Labour Party’s shadow chancellor, spoke to a business audience in London. • Mr. Gove’s candidacy turned the race on its head. Several British newspapers have accounts of how that happened. The BBC’s political editor runs through conspiracy theories about Thursday’s events. The Daily Mail has thrown its weight behind the oddsmakers’ favorite, Home Secretary Theresa May. • Mr. Johnson, once the favorite, said on Thursday he would not run a Conservative stalwart says he has “ripped the party apart. ” My colleague Sarah Lyall writes that Mr. Johnson was done in by his own hubris and lack of preparation. A piece in our section likens the former London mayor to someone who would “order a lavish meal and the best wine on the menu and then walk out. ” • Whither London? It’s been only a week since the referendum, and already European cities are jockeying to lure away businesses. My colleague James B. Stewart ranks the alternatives. • Tony Blair, the former Labour prime minister, argues that Britain is “in peril” and pleads for the Conservatives to conduct their leadership election with “genuine patriotic regard. ” • Slovakia takes over the rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union today. Why is that interesting? It will hand off to Malta, which in July 2017 was supposed to hand off to . .. Britain. People on the Continent aren’t happy, and there are reports that Britain wants to hand off the presidency anyway. • Mr. Osborne abandoned a pledge to return to a budget surplus by 2020. He and his party have long argued that austerity was necessary in order to restore health to Britain’s public finances. • The pound fell sharply against the dollar when Mark J. Carney, the governor of Britain’s central bank, said on Thursday that the bank may need to cut interest rates, but the currency recovered somewhat. British and Continental European stocks were headed for a fourth straight day of gains. Jeff Sommer writes that past crises give clues that markets will recover their losses after the announcement of the referendum result. • Standard Poor’s lowered its rating on European Union debt, citing the uncertainty after the British referendum results. There will be more Brexit news to come. Keep checking back for updates. | 0 |
A group of mostly pro-life college students came together in Detroit last weekend to stand up for the most vulnerable among us. They were praying to end abortion when a group of loud, vile protesters approached them and and start screaming, My body is true, don t like it, f*ck you! in their faces. While protesters screamed at them, the pro-lifers remained calm and peaceful, while praying and doing their best to ignore them. The more they prayed the rosary, the louder the vile protesters screamed at them, Not my ovaries, screw your rosary. These pro-abortion advocates are doing exactly what Democrats are encouraging and even paying them to do. Party leaders like our former President Barack Obama and now Hillary are becoming more and more engaged and vocal in their support of these nasty people. Hillary just released a video of herself telling Democrats to, Keep fighting! against Trump and the opposition.Democrats are bullying innocent people simply because they have an opposing view. They re attempting to shut down free speech and freedom of religion by threatening people who don t agree with them. Is this really how they plan to save their party? Is this how they prove they re the party of tolerance or compassion and love? Is this the future of the Democrat party?:Watch protesters interrupt a pastor during his opening prayer in a town hall meeting being hosted by Republican Senator Cassidy of LA. We all know that these people are being paid, but are they really doing the Democrat Party any favors by behaving in such a vile and disrespectful way during an opening prayer? | 1 |
WASHINGTON/TEGUCIGALPA (Reuters) - The United States on Friday backed the re-election of Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez despite widespread misgivings about the vote count, prompting the opposition candidate to describe his bid for the presidency as a lost cause. The Honduran electoral tribunal declared Hernandez winner of the Nov. 26 election last weekend amid strident opposition protests over the vote count in the impoverished Central American country, which is a major hub for drug trafficking. The vote tally had initially clearly favored opposition candidate Salvador Nasralla, a center-leftist, but it swung in favor of the incumbent after a 36-hour delay. After the United States weighed in, Nasralla was pessimistic about his chances of winning support in Honduras, claiming in an interview with Reuters that the nation s supreme court and electoral tribunal are in Hernandez s camp. But he maintained that he had a path to victory at the international level, noting the Organization of American States (OAS) had called for new elections to resolve the dispute. Nationally, we think it s a lost cause, he told Reuters. But internationally, we are confident that the OAS, which understands the great fraud in Honduras, will take action so that they repeat the elections. Earlier in the day, Nasralla appeared all but ready to bow out of the race, saying in an interview with TV network France TV that his political career was over. The situation is practically decided, he told the network. I no longer have anything to do in politics, but the people, which are 80 percent in my favor, will continue the fight. The United States followed Mexico and other Latin American countries in supporting Hernandez, who has been a reliable U.S. ally. The U.S. State Department congratulated Hernandez and said Honduras should pursue a long-term effort to heal the political divide in the country and enact much-needed electoral reforms, spokeswoman Heather Nauert said in a statement. The Honduras election tribunal s declaration in Hernandez s favor last week sparked violent protests in Honduras, and the OAS s call for new elections has been rejected by the Honduran government. Nasralla had been backed by former President Manuel Zelaya, a leftist who was ousted in a 2009 coup after he proposed a referendum on his re-election, which was barred by the constitution at the time. But Zelaya said Friday that Nasralla was no longer a member of his alliance. Nasralla said that he had no need for party membership anymore. I am the president elect of all Hondurans, he said. It no longer makes sense to belong to the Alliance. The streets of the Honduran capital Tegucigalpa and other major cities were largely calm on Friday with a few protests cleared by the armed forces. By mid-week some 27 people had died in clashes, according to local human rights group COFADEH. The State Department called for all sides to refrain from violence, for those who wish to challenge the result to use legal means, and for the government to ensure that security services respect the rights of peaceful protesters. It also called for the electoral tribunal to transparently and fully review any challenges filed by political parties. Hernandez has led a military crackdown against gangs in the Central American country, and Honduras notoriously high murder rate has slid since he took power in 2014. Nasralla, a television host, traveled to Washington this week to urge the United States not to recognize the vote, but a senior State Department official said on Wednesday the government had not seen any evidence that would alter the vote s outcome. Nasralla said the U.S. decision reflected Washington s strategic concerns over a leftist government in Honduras. They re afraid of losing Honduras, he told local television. | 0 |
CAP-HAITIEN/PORT-AU-PRINCE (Reuters) - Haiti s president on Saturday heralded the re-establishment of the country s military after 22 years, a divisive issue in the impoverished Caribbean nation which has a history of bloody coups and political instability. Haiti has been without military forces since 1995, when former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide disbanded the army after returning to power following a coup, leaving the national police responsible for security. The army s comeback has been a divisive topic in a country still suffering from a catastrophic earthquake and a fierce hurricane in recent years, with critics and activists concerned that armed forces would meddle in politics and rob essential resources from education and health care. Haitian President Jovenel Moise on Thursday named former army colonel Jodel Lesage as acting commander-in-chief, moving troops closer to full operation. The appointment still needs to be approved by Haiti s senate. On Saturday, Moise welcomed the army s anticipated return with a parade featuring dozens of camouflaged soldiers toting rifles in the northern coastal city of Cap-Haitien, calling on Haitians to recall the Battle of Vertieres won against French colonialists exactly 214 years ago. The army is our mother, he said. When your mother is sick and wears dirty clothes, you do not kill her. You take her to the hospital. So let us join forces to provide needed care to our mother. After Haiti s independence, the military mounted dozens of coups and its forces were accused of rampant human rights abuses. Moise acknowledged that history, but vowed that the new military would be different. The United Nations has called for increased support for the Haitian National Police (HNP) with about 15,000 members. A U.N.-backed mission to aid Haiti s justice system and law enforcement arrived in October, replacing a much larger peacekeeping mission that had focused on stability efforts since 2004. Having demonstrated its ability to maintain stability and guard against security threats, the HNP has emerged as one of the most trusted governmental institutions in Haiti, U.N. spokeswoman Heather Nauert said in a statement last month. Haitian defense minister Herve Denis told Reuters the army will begin with 500 soldiers in engineering, medical and aviation corps, but is still working to fill its ranks. A recruiting process was well underway by last July, attracting many young men in a country that is the poorest in the Americas. Denis said the government plans to ultimately expand to 5,000 troops working to protect Haitian borders, fight terrorism, curb illegal trade and aid Haitians affected by natural disasters. Government opponents fear the Moise administration could use the military to crack down on foes despite the president s claims that troops will steer clear of politics. I don t believe the Moise regime really wants to reinstate the army, but instead set up a political militia to persecute political opponents, said Andre Michel, spokesman for an opposition coalition that has called for Moise s resignation. | 1 |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump is open to authorizing additional strikes on Syria if its government uses chemical weapons again or deploys barrel bombs in the country, the White House said on Monday. “The sight of people being gassed and blown away by barrel bombs ensures that if we see this kind of action again, we hold open the possibility of future action,” White House spokesman Sean Spicer told reporters. “If you gas a baby, if you put a barrel bomb in to innocent people ... you will see a response from this president.” Barrel bombs are oil drums or cylinders packed with explosives and shrapnel. Trump ordered a cruise missile strike on Syria’s Shayrat air base last week in response to what his administration and U.S. allies say was a poison gas attack by Syria’s military in which scores of civilians, including many children, died. Spicer said later his mention of barrel bombs as a potential trigger for further action by the United States did not reflect a change in position. “Nothing has changed in our posture,” he said by email. “The president retains the option to act in Syria against the Assad regime whenever it is in the national interest, as was determined following that government’s use of chemical weapons against its own citizens. And as the president has repeatedly made clear, he will not be telegraphing his military responses.” | 0 |
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Hillary Clinton’s lead over Donald Trump in the U.S. presidential race has narrowed since late last week, according to the results of the first Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted since the Orlando shooting rampage on Sunday. Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for the Nov. 8 election, has blamed Democratic policies for the worst mass shooting in U.S. history and doubled-down on his pledge to ban Muslim immigration, while Clinton has warned against demonizing Muslim-Americans. The poll, conducted from Friday to Tuesday, showed Clinton with an 11.6-point lead - 44.6 percent to 33.0 percent - over Trump, down from the 13-point lead she had in the five days that ended Saturday. The Florida attack, in which a gunman killed 49 people at a gay nightclub and wounded 53 could have a lingering impact on the presidential race, mixing concerns about immigration, gun violence and religious tolerance into what has already been a volatile and sharply negative campaign. The shooter, Omar Mateen, 29, the U.S.-born son of Afghan immigrant parents, called authorities during the massacre to pledge allegiance to the Islamic State militant group. Federal investigators have said Mateen, who was killed by police, was likely self-radicalized and there was no evidence he received any instruction or aid from outside groups such as Islamic State. Trump seized on the attack to accuse Democratic President Barack Obama of failing to address “radical Islamic terrorism,” to warn that Clinton’s policies on immigration would allow more potential attackers into the country, and to fine-tune his call for a suspension of Muslim immigration. In a speech on Monday, Trump said he would suspend immigration from countries with a “proven history of terrorism” against the United States, Europe and allied countries “until we fully understand how to end these threats.” Clinton, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, said Trump’s response to the attack was disturbing. “Prejudice, paranoia and partisanship are not a plan, and will not protect anyone,” Clinton said in a statement. She re-emphasized her support for coordinated military action in Syria and Iraq and called for tougher controls on firearms sales. Clinton’s slip in the polling was not all Trump’s gain. The proportion of voters who said they would not vote for either candidate has risen steadily over the past week. About 22.4 percent of likely voters would not pick either candidate, according to the five-day average of results on Tuesday. That was up from 20.6 percent a week ago. Trump’s strident tone on Muslims and national security appears to have helped him in the past, at least with Republicans. He surged in opinion polls among Republicans late last year after attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, California. According to Reuters/Ipsos polls over the past several months, a majority of Republican voters said he was their party’s best choice to deal with terrorism and trusted him more than his Republican rivals to be commander in chief. Most Republicans also support Trump’s proposed ban on Muslim immigration, while a majority of Americans oppose it. The online poll included 1,063 likely voters and had a credibility interval, a measure of accuracy, of about 3.5 percentage points. | 1 |
Killing Obama administration rules, dismantling Obamacare and pushing through tax reform are on the early to-do list. | 0 |
Apparently, keeping a slave and repeatedly raping her is not against his Islamic faith From International Business Times:A Saudi national who was convicted of keeping his Indonesian maid as a sex slave has refused to attend a mandatory sex offender s course, arguing that his Muslim beliefs do not allow him to look at pictures of scantily-clad women.Homaidan al-Turki, 45, was jailed for 28 years in 2006 after his maid claimed she had been forced to work 12 hour days with no break and then locked in a cellar and abused regularly by the Saudi, who was in the US on an academic scholarship with his wife and five children.Al-Turki s sentence was reduced in 2011 to eight years-to-life but his parole applications have been repeatedly denied because of his refusal to attend a sex offenders course.Al-Turki told prison officials in 2013 that the sex offender treatment programme conflicts with [his] Islamic faith , according to a letter by the then executive director of the Colorado Department of Corrections, Tom Clements.Eight years for keeping a slave in America. Shameful.Via: Gateway Pundit | 0 |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump defended embattled U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore on Tuesday, saying the Alabama Republican had denied allegations of sexual misconduct and emphasizing that he did not want Moore’s Democratic opponent to win. Trump previously said that Moore should step aside if the allegations were true. Speaking to reporters at the White House before leaving Washington for Florida, Trump left open the possibility of campaigning for Moore, saying he would make an announcement on that next week. The president also ripped into Moore’s opponent, Democrat Doug Jones, describing the former prosecutor as liberal and soft on crime. The comments represented a shift in strategy for the White House, which previously tried to keep its distance from the controversy sparked by a Washington Post report detailing accusations by four women that Moore pursued them when they were teenagers and he was in his 30s. More women have since spoken out with allegations of their own. “He totally denies it. He says it didn’t happen. And, you know, you have to listen to him also,” Trump said. Trump’s position was a break from that of other national Republicans. U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and other prominent lawmakers have pressed Moore to quit the race. It also contrasted with comments from his daughter Ivanka Trump, a White House adviser who told the Associated Press there was a “special place in hell for people who prey on children.” She said she had no reason to doubt the women’s accounts. Moore, 70, has denied any wrongdoing. The married Christian conservative has said he is the victim of a witch hunt and has declined to drop out of the race. Reuters has not been able to confirm any of the accusations independently. During the 2016 presidential campaign, Trump himself faced accusations from several women that he had in the past made unwanted sexual advances or inappropriate personal remarks about them. Trump denied the allegations, accusing Democrats and the media of a smear campaign. Trump supported Moore’s opponent, Senator Luther Strange, in the Republican primary race for the open U.S. Senate seat vacated by now-Attorney General Jeff Sessions, but he backed Moore after the former Alabama chief justice won the nomination. Republicans hold a slim 52-48 majority in the Senate. They are eager to hold on to that advantage to pass Trump’s legislative agenda on taxes, healthcare and other priorities. Since the accusations against Moore were reported, White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders has said repeatedly that Alabama voters should decide the election and called the allegations “troubling.” The White House also backed the Republican National Committee’s decision to withdraw support for Moore. But the administration’s position appeared to start evolving this week when White House counselor Kellyanne Conway criticized Jones during an interview with Fox News and said the White House wanted a Republican to win the seat in order to support Trump’s plan for a tax overhaul. Trump, who had declined until Tuesday to answer questions about the Alabama race, was prepared with a list of complaints about Jones when facing reporters on the south lawn of the White House. “I can tell you one thing for sure: We don’t need a liberal person in there, a Democrat, Jones,” Trump said. “I’ve looked at his record. It’s terrible on crime. It’s terrible on the border. It’s terrible on the military. I can tell you for a fact, we do not need somebody that’s going to be bad on crime, bad on borders, bad with the military, bad for the Second Amendment.” Before the allegations came to light, Moore was heavily favored to defeat Jones, a former federal prosecutor, in the special election on Dec. 12. Two opinion polls last week showed Moore now trailing Jones. “Doug believes the women, and that the people of Alabama will hold Roy Moore accountable,” Jones’ spokesman, Sebastian Kitchen, said in a statement. Among those prosecuted by Jones when he was a U.S. attorney in Alabama were two former Ku Klux Klan members for their involvement in a 1963 church bombing in Birmingham that killed four girls. | 1 |
Report Copyright Violation OFFICIAL ONLINE NATIONAL DONALD TRUMP POLLS UPDATED IN REAL-TIME Traditional media outlets such as CNN, MSNBC, FOX and ALL major newspapers nationwide have been proven to be 100% corrupt. The masses have ‘caught on’ and have turned to social media as the new, dominant news source.All polling records shown on this website are 100% accurate and reveal the true national polling numbers, which are completely our of sync with the fraudulent MSM results shown nightly. [ link to www.donaldjtrumppolls.com ] Go Vote!! The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. Thomas Jefferson | 1 |
In times of great stress, or of flickering, dread, I find that canceling all my plans and staying in to make mashed potatoes generally helps. This year, there were quite a few opportunities to do so. anxiety gnawed at me for months, lighting up old networks of pain in my shoulders and back. Mold bloomed around the mysterious wet patch that appeared in my bedroom ceiling. I started a thrilling, but terrifying, new job. And as the holidays neared, I worried about my grandmother, almost 80, living alone. Still, I let about half her calls go to voice mail each week, and hated myself for it. I turned to aligot, the mashed potatoes with roots in central France. Aligot doesn’t fix anything, but it does put a little cushion between you and the abyss, whatever form the abyss might take. To make it, you’ll need a ricer. You could, technically, blitz everything together in the food processor, but you risk potatoes with the gooey, elastic texture of an glue, setting up between planks. If you’re in a delicate emotional state, as I usually am when I start these potatoes, it’s better not to risk it. Besides, pressing down on the ricer is an essential part of the process. Squashing hot, tender potatoes through tiny holes is a pure and simple joy, one of the rare cooking tasks that’s just as fun as those sets once had you believe. The potato rushes out in tiny, twirling, noodles. You don’t need to worry about lumps. In France, aligot is traditionally made with tomme fraîche or unripened Cantal, but those cheeses can be hard to find. At North End Grill, a restaurant in Manhattan’s Battery Park City, the chef Eric Korsh makes aligot with a little bit of roasted garlic and a lot of Comté. Any cheese that melts well will do, but for aligot you also want to seek out a cheese with a capacity for stringiness. I’ve had great aligot with Comté, Gruyère and Emmental, and fresh mozzarella can also work in a pinch. Ham a chef at the Brooklyn diner Hail Mary, starts with Robuchon potatoes. Among cooks, the phrase “Robuchon potatoes” is shorthand for what many still consider the Platonic ideal of mashed potatoes: a flawless purée, mounted with an obscene amount of butter and named for the celebrity French chef Joël Robuchon. In a video dedicated to his famous mashed potatoes, Robuchon leans over a cook and says in French, quite sternly: “More butter! More butter! More butter! More butter! More, more, more!” Robuchon uses ratte potatoes — an expensive variety from France. He boils them whole, then peels them while hot. After pushing the potatoes through a food mill, he adds loads of cold butter over the heat and finally some milk or cream, whisking the whole thing until it’s an airy, cloud. Waylly starts around there, then adds a mix of Gruyère and a cow’s milk cheese from Vermont, even throwing in part of the bloomy rind. The key, he told me, is to whip the potatoes with confidence, vigor and speed once you add the cheese, to build up the stringiness as it melts. “When you pull it, you want it to seem like you’re pulling at fondue,” Waylly said. “You want to see a good amount of strands falling, and they should have some strength. They should fight with you. ” Stringiness is the whole point of aligot, that long, delightful stretch, the way it takes on all the qualities of melted cheese but remains mashed potato. And though it’s tough to get it like the cooks in Auvergne, some of whom can pull spoonfuls of hot aligot that stretch several feet, you can still get a good, cheesy texture as a beginner, working with a small amount of potato over low heat. At home, in the 20 minutes or so it takes for the potatoes to cook through, I like to get the rest of the meal going. I brown sausages and wilt a big bunch of greens in the same pan. I have a glass of whatever wine is open in the fridge. By now, things are looking up. Cheesy mashed potatoes are on the horizon, like sunshine after a long, dark night. And by the time those potatoes are ready, so am I. Recipe: Aligot (Mashed Potatoes With Cheese) | 0 |
Everyone suspected the sketchy Steele Dossier was what corrupt FBI and DOJ officials used to get the October 2016 FISA warrant against Trump. FBI and DOJ officials refuse to answer that question publicly.Rep Ron DeSantis (R-FL) said in a statement: We now know that the so-called Steele dossier was paid for by the Democratic Party in an effort to gin up negative information regarding then-candidate Trump. What the American people deserve to know is whether the information compiled by Steele on the Democrats dime was used by the Obama administration to obtain approval to conduct surveillance against Trump associates. The FBI has stonewalled producing these documents for months and their production shouldn t be limited to closed door viewing by a small number of members of Congress. The Trump administration should immediately declassify all the documents used to obtain surveillance warrants against Trump or his associates. Immediately after his inauguration, President Trump came out swinging over the fake Russian dossier. He even went as far as to blame the intelligence community. President Trump was immediately criticized for his comments, and the media behaved as though he was insane to even insinuate such a wild theory. As it turns out, he wasn t too far off the mark.CT Despite a hundred different ways congressional investigators have asked the question, and despite numerous on-camera questions to FBI and DOJ officials about the 2016 FISA process, no-one had definitively confirmed the Christopher Steele Russian Dossier was the underlying evidence for the 2016 FISA application to gain wiretaps and electronic surveillance upon presidential candidate Donald Trump. UNTIL NOW.Senator Lindsey Graham just confirmed the sketchy Steele Dossier was used to get the wiretap and surveillance warrant from the FISA court. Brian Kilmeade understood what he was hearing was serious, but didn t quite catch the specific gravity of it. Watch at starting at the 04:10 mark: The back-story to the FISA warrant is the cornerstone. The back-story contains both the FBI and the DOJ scheme. Expose it, remove it, and the entire muh Russia conspiracy collapses under the weight of sunlight This is critical and important because the specific use of the Steele Dossier underpins the BIG UGLY and exposes the entire top-tier apparatus of the FBI Counterintelligence Division (Peter Strzok, Bill Priestap, James Baker, Andrew McCabe) and the DOJ National Security Division (John Carlin, Stuart Evans, Mary McCord and Sally Yates), as well as DOJ Bruce Ohr and FBI lawyer Lisa Page directly to conspiracy charges.The 2016 FBI counterintelligence operation was surveillance on the Trump Campaign and was thinly disguised under the fraudulent auspices of a FISA warrant, sold as a defense of U.S. democracy from Russia, which permitted the wiretaps and surveillance etc.The DOJ involvement surrounds legal arguments, processing of FISA applications, and use of the legal system to support the FBI operation with actionable legal framing (against Trump). The DOJ National Security Division carried out that collaboration with the FBI.Tablet Mag did a deep dive into the Fusion-GPS connection to the creation of the Steele Dossier; and more specifically how Fusion-GPS head Glenn Simpson and his wife Mary Jacoby were instrumental in getting the dossier assembled and into the hands of the White House prior to the DOJ and FBI applying for the FISA warrant SEE HERE.Tablet Mag outlines how Mary Jacoby even bragged about getting the Russiagate narrative started:A Tablet investigation using public sources to trace the evolution of the now-famous dossier suggests that central elements of the Russiagate scandal emerged not from the British ex-spy Christopher Steele s top-secret sources in the Russian government which are unlikely to exist separate from Russian government control but from a series of stories that Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson and his wife Mary Jacoby co-wrote for TheWall Street Journal well before Fusion GPS existed, and Donald Trump was simply another loud-mouthed Manhattan real estate millionaire.Understanding the origins of the Steele dossier is especially important because of what it tells us about the nature and the workings of what its supporters would hopefully describe as an ongoing campaign to remove the elected president of the United States.[ ] In a Facebook post from June 24, 2017, that Tablet has seen in screenshots, Jacoby claimed that her husband deserves the lion s share of credit for Russiagate. (She has not replied to repeated requests for comment.) It s come to my attention that some people still don t realize what Glenn s role was in exposing Putin s control of Donald Trump, Jacoby wrote. Let s be clear. Glenn conducted the investigation. Glenn hired Chris Steele. Chris Steele worked for Glenn. This assertion is hardly a simple assertion of family pride; it goes directly to the nature of what became known as the Steele dossier, on which the Russiagate narrative is founded. (read more)The Tablet-Mag outline shows the distinct trail of the finished Steele Dossier entering into the White House and how President Obama likely saw and reviewed the content.However, missing from this report is an origination angle even more nefarious.Remember, previous media reporting -in conjunction with Clinton campaign admissions- have confirmed the DNC and Clinton Campaign financed Fusion-GPS through their lawyers within Perkins Coie. Fusion then hired Nellie Ohr the wife of DOJ Deputy Bruce Ohr who thereafter sub-contracted with retired British MI6 agent Christopher Steele to write/research/provide credibility for the dossier. The dates here are important because they tell a story.The origin of the Clinton effort with Fusion-GPS was April 2016. That s the same month Fusion hired Nellie Ohr, wife of DOJ Deputy Bruce Ohr, to gather opposition research on candidate Trump. It would be most likely that Nellie Ohr was in contact with Christopher Steele. DOJ Deputy Attorney Bruce Ohr was later demoted for his unreported contacts with Christopher Steele and Fusion-GPS founder Glenn Simpson in October 2016; the same month the FISA warrant was granted.However, there was another event in this April 2016 timeline which enhances the trail of the Dossier origination. [Hat Tip Katica] Check this out:In April 2016 Mary Jacoby shows up on White House visitor logs meeting with President Obama officials. In April 2016 the Clinton Campaign and DNC hired Fusion-GPS to organize the Russia research, that later became known as the Steele Dossier .(link to White House Logs)The wife of Glenn Simpson (Fusion GPS), Mary B. Jacoby, with years of Russia-angled reporting including Donald Trump visits the White House in April 2016, at the same time as the DNC and Clinton hire Fusion GPS to conduct the opposition research on Donald Trump, surrounding Russia?This timeline is entirely too obvious to be coincidental.Expand slightly and consider:April: Mary Jacoby, wife of Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson, visits the White House. The Clinton Campaign and DNC then hire Fusion GPS to conduct Opposition Research , with a Russian emphasis. Fusion GPS then hires Nellie Ohr who specializes in Russian-centric counterintelligence. Nellie Ohr then contacts MI6 agent Christopher Steele to write a Russian Dossier. A month later, May 2016: Nellie Ohr s husband inside the DOJ, Bruce Ohr, is then working with FBI counterintelligence head Peter Strzok. By June 2016: Peter Strzok, Bruce Ohr, and DOJ Attorney Lisa Page then apply for the first FISA warrant.[June 24th, 2017, Mary Jacoby appears on Facebook taking credit for the origination of the Russiagate narrative.]This timeline is so transparent it s deafening.[More from the Tablet] Simpson and Jacoby had ID d Manafort as a world-class sleazeball and they were right. A slick Georgetown Law grad running in GOP circles since the Reagan campaign, Manafort used his talents and connections to get paid by some very bad people. I would only add here that, in my personal experience, journalists are not in the habit of forgetting major stories they ve written, especially stories with a character like Manafort at the center.So when the Trump campaign named Paul Manafort as its campaign convention manager on March 28, 2016, you can bet that Simpson and Jacoby s eyes lit up. And as it happened, at the exact same time that Trump hired Manafort, Fusion GPS was in negotiations with Perkins Coie, the law firm representing the Clinton campaign and the DNC, to see if there was interest in the firm continuing the opposition research on the Trump campaign they had started for the Washington Free Beacon. (more)Mary Jacoby and Glenn Simpson Fusion GPSIf the counterintelligence FISA warrant was obtained through deception, misleading/manipulated information, or fraud; and that warrant is what led to the wiretapping and surveillance of candidate Donald Trump and General Flynn; and that warrant was authorized by FISA Court Judge Contreras who was the judge in Flynn s case, and is now recused the entire tenuous FBI and DOJ operation begins to collapse and the outline of a conspiracy becomes clearly evident.The back-story to the FISA warrant is the cornerstone. The back-story contains both the FBI and the DOJ scheme. Expose it, remove it, and the entire muh Russia conspiracy fraud collapses under the weight of sunlight.Go HERE to see the entire fascinating investigation compiled by The Conservative TreehouseWATCH President Trump tell FOX Business Lou Dobbs what he thinks about the Democratic efforts to smear him during his presidential campaign in an exclusive interview. | 0 |
HONG KONG — Hundreds of pilot whales that swam into a shallow New Zealand bay died overnight after they got stuck in the waterway and beached themselves on the coastline. More than 500 rescuers tried frantically to send the pilot whales back out to sea, but at least 250 died in what officials called one of the worst whale strandings in New Zealand’s history. Attempts to refloat the remaining whales during high tide met with partial success. About 50 whales had swum out of the bay after high tide, according to the Department of Conservation, but as many as 90 others had rebeached themselves by Friday afternoon. Volunteers said they would try to refloat the stranded whales again on Saturday. Whale strandings at Farewell Spit, at the northern tip of New Zealand’s South Island, happen most years, Kath Inwood, a ranger, told The Associated Press. But the high number of whales trapped this year has surprised conservation officials. The whale stranding was the largest in the country since 1985, when 450 were stranded near Auckland. New Zealand has one of the highest rates of whale strandings, which are believed to occur when the mammals, who are known for their social bonding, make navigational mistakes while chasing prey, escaping predators or trying to protect sick members of the group. | 0 |
For the last ten years, Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski have been co-hosts on MSNBC s Morning Joe. They have often seemed a little too chummy, and it has long been speculated that the two were an item. However, both were also married to other people. Scarborough got divorced from his wife in 2013, and Brzezinki was officially free in 2016. To that end, it seems that now that we are in 2017, a respectable enough amount of time has passed to where they can go ahead and confirm the public s belief that they were more than co-hosts.It is now being reported that the two are not only an item, but are actually engaged to be married. This comes after a bizarre round of congratulations on the Thursday edition of the show. Of course, the duo s guests said the congratulatory sentiments were about ratings, but now we know that it was about upcoming nuptials. The news comes courtesy of the New York Post s Emily Smith, who writes: We re told Scarborough, 54, got down on one knee and proposed at the scenic Bar Bellini at the Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc in Antibes, which has a breathtaking moonlit outdoor terrace overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. Now, think what you want of Mika and Joe I personally have mixed feelings and a bit of a love/hate relationship with Morning Joe but at least they are finally being honest with the public and their fans. It could be just a bit scandalous, because if they are engaged so soon after Mika s divorce, obviously there was an affair happening while either one or both of them were still married.Of course, these days scandalous affairs are pretty routine for celebrities, though they are supposedly news people or, at the very least, pundits so who knows how the network will handle it.There have been no public statements on the announcement from Joe, Mika, or MSNBC as of this writing.Featured image via Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images | 1 |
HE KNEW | 1 |
Amateur president Donald Trump met with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Monday to speak in a joint press conference, and he thoroughly embarrassed the U.S. again by feeding his ego in front of the entire world. The topic of Syrian refugees was brought up by a reporter, and of course, Trump had to bring up his election victory. President Trump, you seemed to suggest that Syrian refugees are a Trojan horse for potential terrorism, while the prime minister hugs refugees and welcomes them with open arms, a reporter asked. Are you confident the northern border is secure? You can never be totally confident, Trump replied. Trump heaped praise on Department of Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly for doing a great job of deporting very, very hardened criminals so far, as reported by Talking Points Memo. That s what I said I would do. I m just doing what I said I would do, and we won by a very, very large electoral college vote, Trump said.Trump went on to say that he knew he would win the election. That s an odd statement to make since he admitted to being surprised that he won after the election during his thank you tour following the election. I knew this is what people were wanting. That wasn t the only reason, that wasn t my only thing that we did so well on, but that was something that was very important, Trump said. I think that in the end, everyone is going to be extremely happy. And I will tell you right now, a lot of people are very, very happy right now. Watch:A lot of people are not very happy right now as Trump suggested. His approval rating is tanking like the Titanic. Before taking the oath of office, Trump s approval rating as president-elect was the worst in modern history, and it s gotten even worse since Inauguration Day. Trump s disapproval rating has risen 5 percentage points since just last week. Since his election, Trump has witnessed mass protests across the country. The Women s March on Washington, which took place the day after he was sworn in, garnered a far larger crowd than his inauguration. Nope, people are not happy right now, but he knows that. That s why he repeatedly brings up his election victory and most times, tries to claim he won the popular vote by saying that 3 million people voted illegally in the U.S. election. That s nearly the same number by which Hillary Clinton won the popular vote.Featured image by Alex Wong via Getty Images. | 1 |
We ve been telling you all week to ignore the manufactured polls and lies being told by mainstream journalists (of which 65 have been found to be in collusion with Hillary s camp)designed to discourage and deflate Donald Trump supporters. The crowds, the enthusiasm and the fundraising for Trump is on fire, while Hillary and Tim Kaine can barely fill a phone booth with supporters. This SUNY professor has a model that s been working for over 100 years of elections and he s giving the race to Trump The most important thing Trump supporters can do right now, is to reach out to their friends and family and convince them to get out to the polls for Trump. There will undoubtedly be a lot of voter fraud committed by Democrats and it s up to us to help make up that difference with actual voters for Trump. Donald Trump may be behind in most polls, but one veteran New York prognosticator still predicts he will win come Election Day. I think he was the strongest candidate in the primaries and that he will prevail, Helmut North, a political science professor at SUNY Stony Brook, told The Post on Monday, even as the RealClearPolitics average shows the Republican candidate trailing Democrat Hillary Clinton by 6.1 percentage points.The sale of halloween masks have also always been correct in predicting the winner of the presidential election. Check out who s winning in sales: Norpoth developed a model that, applied retroactively in earlier races, would have correctly predicted the winner of every presidential election since 1912 with the exception of 2000, when predicted winner Al Gore barely lost to George W. Bush.The model looks at which of the candidates performed better in the primaries and caucuses and concludes that the stronger performer there will enter the White House. NYP | 1 |
Beyonc is reportedly set to join Democratic Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton on Friday in Ohio, as the final days in race for the Presidency begin.According to a source for CBS News, the singer will be joining her husband Jay-Z at Cleveland State University for a get-out-the-vote concert, although the Clinton campaign has not provided a comment on the report. Ohio is a key battleground state in the 2016 U.S. Presidential election, where a recent poll put Clinton s opponent Donald Trump ahead by two points.With a line up of performers including Katy Perry and John Legend, CBS News reported that Friday s concert is an attempt to win over the area s young and African-American voters, as well as encourage Ohio residents to vote early ahead of Tuesday s election day.Via: CBS | 0 |
Former Representative Gabby Giffords has made a remarkable recovery after suffering a gunshot wound to the head five years ago, but now she is possibly being sued by her attacker.On January 8, 2011, Giffords was speaking to a group of her constituents outside of a Safeway in Casas Adobes, Arizona when Jared Lee Loughner began firing on the crowd. Loughner s bullets killed six people and injured thirteen, including Giffords. The shooter was detained by people at the event and later pleaded guilty to 19 charges related to the shooting he is currently serving seven consecutive life sentences in prison.However, although he admitted to his crimes and was sentenced accordingly, a lawsuit has allegedly been filed by Loughner against the former congresswoman for $25 million for psychological and emotional distress. It claims claims that he is innocent and was hand-picked to be an assassin. My incarceration is illegal. I am actually innocent. I was Framed. I am a victim of project mk-ultra the govt. put a chip in my head to control my mind .Gabby Giffords is in the Illuminati and I have evidence of this I was handpicked illegally to be a sleeper assassin. MY HEAD is full of chips and this evil empire govt is controlling me within. The lawsuit claims all sorts of other insane things, as well. It says that he has been waterboarded repeatedly during his incarceration by the ATF, NSA and CIA. The suit also alleges that his attorney is a global spy who forced him to plead guilty and that authorities are making him sick from microwave testing and chemtrails. It even accuses Giffords of funding the San Bernardino shooters.The timing of this lawsuit has made some people think that it is a hoax. Just days before it was filed, a similar lawsuit was filed in Michigan against Uber, supposedly by the Kalamazoo mass shooter, Jason Brian Dalton. That lawsuit turned out to be fake and apparently the Giffords suit looks a lot like the Dalton suit. Tucson News reports:The envelopes of both the alleged Loughner lawsuit and the fake Dalton lawsuit have very similar characteristics.Both have the same three stamps in the top right corner, have similar handwriting and are postmarked in Philadelphia, PA.The envelopes, do indeed look very similar and when you read Loughner s alleged lawsuit there seems to be a whole lot of crazy crammed into it. Almost an unbelievable amount, in fact.Addicting Info will keep you updated on this story as it develops.Read the Loughner complaint HERE.Featured image via Justin Sullivan/Getty Images | 0 |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - AAR Supply Chain Inc, a subsidiary of AAR Corp, has been awarded a $909.4 mln supply chain management contract for the U.S. Air Force’s Landing Gear Performance Based Logistics One program, the Pentagon said on Friday. Work will be performed at Wood Dale, Illinois; Miami; and Ogden, Utah, and is expected to be complete by March 31, 2032, the Pentagon said in a statement. | 1 |
Steve Harvey, the comedian and television host, became the latest celebrity to ascend Trump Tower on Friday to discuss federal policy with Donald Trump, in this case housing issues. But before Mr. Harvey was off the premises, he unexpectedly revived a recent controversy over his comments about Asian men. After the meeting, Mr. Trump and Mr. Harvey briefly appeared together in the lobby. When Mr. Trump left, Mr. Harvey said they had discussed ways he could work with Ben Carson, Mr. Trump’s nominee to run the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Mr. Harvey has spoken openly in the past of being homeless as an adult while struggling to start his comedy career, though he gave no reason on Friday for why he was consulted on housing affairs. Mr. Harvey said he was invited a week ago by “both transition teams,” referring to representatives of President Obama and Mr. Trump, and emphasized that the visit was informal. “Well, you know it’s not my jump into politics,” Mr. Harvey said. “I ain’t gonna pass a background check. It’s just me following orders from my friend President Obama who said, ‘Steve, you gotta,’ as he told everybody, ‘get out from behind your computer, stop tweeting and texting and get out there and sit down and talk. ’” The Trump team confirmed the invitation. The White House did not comment. Mr. Harvey announced his support for Mr. Trump’s opponent, Hillary Clinton, last March in the presidential primaries. In September, during an interview with her on “The Steve Harvey Morning Show” on iHeartRadio, he said: “She’s a mother, she’s a grandmother, and we’re going to put her back in the White House, just flat out. Simply put. ” This was just the latest crossover for Mr. Trump during his transition. Last month the surprised reporters at Trump Tower by posing for photographs in the lobby with Kanye West. For Mr. Harvey’s part, he said that the incoming president was “a great guy” and “genuine. ” He deflected questions about Mr. Trump’s history of questionable comments regarding race from the campaign trail, and was diplomatic about his doubts about Mr. Trump. “You don’t kill it with one conversation, but you can start it with the conversation,” Mr. Harvey said. “So, you know, a lot about what people say, ‘Now, well, it’s time to see what you do.’ And he said he wanted to do something. ” Mr. Harvey also mentioned a controversy in which, during his television show last week, he mocked the dating skills of Asian men. At Trump Tower, Mr. Harvey said, unprompted, that he hadn’t laughed recently as a result of the controversy. “I ain’t been laughing that much over the past few days,” Mr. Harvey said. “They’re kinda beating me up on the internet right now for no reason. But, you know, that’s life, ain’t it?” After the meeting, Mr. Harvey put out a message on Twitter, saying that he found Mr. Trump “congenial and sincere” and that he would “sit with him anytime. ” Here are some edited excerpts from Mr. Harvey’s conversation with reporters in Trump Tower: REPORTER: There have been a lot of doubts about this administration about race. Jeff Sessions, his record in Alabama, some of the things the said during the campaign about the inner cities. Are your doubts fully gone or are you going to still try and work them out? STEVE HARVEY: Well, I mean, you know, look, you don’t kill it with one conversation, but you can start it with the conversation. So, you know, a lot about what people say, now, well, it’s time to see what you do. And he said he wanted to do something. You can’t beat better than that. You know, and so, we’re gonna see. I’ve been put in contact with Ben Carson, which was great, I spoke with him. And so, we’re gonna get some things started, and they have a plan for the inner cities but they need help. And so, that’s why they called me. So we’ll see what I can do. REPORTER: Do you have any lingering things you still want to talk further about, that you’re still concerned about, you haven’t heard quite what you wanted to hear yet? HARVEY: Well, I mean for this, we got off to a great start. I think it could be the beginning of something. For them to invite me here to talk about a specific problem and thought that I might be able to help — I know I got a big radio show, I got a lot of people listening every morning. So I’ve always been concerned about inner city problems because they’re huge. My mentoring problem, excuse me, my mentoring program has been a part of this type of — and that’s what I want to see happen. And they were spot on with it. And Ben Carson got on the phone. I met with him over the phone today, but I sat with Trump and we laughed a little bit. I ain’t been laughing that much over the past few days. They’re kinda beating me up on the internet right now for no reason. But, you know, that’s life, ain’t it? REPORTER: What did you laugh over? HARVEY: Well we talked about golf. We laughed about my score in golf, his score in golf, we talked about some of the friends that we have in common. Mark Burnett. Talked about TV shows. Things like that. He’s a fan. So he’s seen it. I met his daughter, she was very sweet. So I think we’re off to a good start. | 0 |
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Former Mexico finance minister Jose Antonio Meade, who resigned to seek the presidential nomination of the ruling party, is lagging far behind in public support ahead of next year s election, according to a newspaper poll published on Wednesday. Meade, who is widely expected to receive the nomination of the centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), came in third in two scenarios polled by Mexican newspaper El Universal, while leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador maintained a strong lead in both instances. The survey found that 31 percent of respondents would vote for Lopez Obrador, who leads the National Regeneration Movement (MORENA) party, followed by the conservative National Action Party s (PAN) Ricardo Anaya, leading a coalition of parties, with 23 percent. Meade came in third with 16 percent. When Mexico City Mayor Miguel Angel Mancera was entered into the mix for the coalition, Obrador had 32 percent support, followed by Mancera with 22 percent and Meade with 15 percent. The poll was conducted from Dec. 1 to Dec. 4, after Meade resigned to seek the presidency. Meade, who has served in both PRI and PAN administrations, has a reputation for honesty that PRI officials hope will help the party recover from a spate of corruption scandals. But he remains unknown to much of the Mexican public. A victory for the combative and nationalist-leaning Lopez Obrador, who promises to revive economic growth by battling graft, could stoke tensions with the Trump administration just as the United States, Mexico and Canada seek to seal a renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement. Support for MORENA and the PAN slipped 1 percentage point from the previous poll in November, while support for the PRI held steady at 16 percent, according to El Universal. The survey by pollster Buendia & Laredo included 744 face-to-face interviews and has a +/- 4.1 percent margin of error. | 1 |
[Photo: Chiquibul Forest Reserve near Guatemalan border: top showing significant illegal clear cuts. while the bottom shows the beginnings of cutting. Credit: Tony Rath .] =By= Jeff Abott Editor's Note The forests, waterways, and tribal homelands are under growing threat across Latin and South America. Increasingly, the indigenous peoples are taking strong stands against the illegal activities, as well as the government sponsored intrusions into the Reserves. It seems that they are virtually the only ones willing to stand in the way of the decimation of their homelands, and of the wild rainforest on which out planet depends. The rainforest is essentially the lungs of the planet and it is being continuously destroyed. A cross Guatemala, indigenous communities are organizing to challenge logging in the country’s vast forests. These communities are concerned with the impact that both legal and illegal logging will have on their watersheds and on the environment.
On June 15, concerned residents from the highland Ixil Maya municipality of Nebaj, Quiche staged a protest outside the municipal building to express their concern with the steady increase in trucks leaving town loaded with lumber.
The action was organized by residents and members of the Indigenous Authority of Nebaj in order to pressure the state authorities to strip the nine companies of their licenses to exploit timber on private lands. Residents raised concern over the fact that the deforestation affects everyone in the area.
Following the protest, concerned residents in the neighboring Ixil municipality of Chajul blocked and detained several trucks transporting lumber from the region for a number of hours. They demanded that the National Institute of Forests, or INAB, and the Division for the Protection of the Environment cease their operations and described the amount of lumber being taken from the local forests as “excessive.”
The Indigenous Authorities of Nebaj also issued a statement to INAB asking them to take action. But the government body declined to act and issued a statement that they are planting new trees for every one that is cut down. But this response did not satisfy concerned residents. “We went to the government bodies and issued statements asking to cease extending licenses for the exploitation of forests,” said Caty Terraza, the communications representative for the Indigenous Authorities of Nebaj. “They told us that they are sowing new trees, but how long will it take for those trees to grow to the same size as the trees that were there before?”
The companies involved in logging operations responded to the protests by significantly reducing the number of trucks transporting lumber from mountains. According to residents, however, it is unclear if this will continue into the future.
The mobilization of communities organizing to challenge logging operations in the highlands of Guatemala represent a growing concern over the destruction of the environment by companies. This challenge to logging companies reflects the understanding of communities of the vital part forests play in the protection of the water sources.
“The trees serve us and the animals,” Terraza said. “The loss of trees is drying up the aquifers. As a youth and as human, I must think of my future, and what I’m leaving my children.” Other communities held similar protests following the actions taken in the Ixil region. On June 26, a similar action was held in Santa Cruz del Quiche, the department’s largest city. Once again protesters were demanding that authorities stop issuing licenses for the exploitation of forests. Increase in Logging across Guatemala
Guatemala is home to vast forests and jungles, but these regions have increasingly come under threat to deforestation. Critics blame uneducated campesinos clearing land for agriculture as one of the prime culprits. This does represent a threat, but there are other bigger threats, including lumber companies, and organized crime. The protest over logging industry activity in indigenous regions occurs at a time in Guatemala of increased concern over deforestation, and comes after the historic march for water in April 2016. Community representatives, nongovernmental organizations, and activists see a connection between forests and water. The Guatemalan government, too, maintains a campaign of reforestation, but this has not stopped companies from cutting down forests for the valuable woods, or the razing of forests by narco-traffickers in the northern department of Petén to build landing strips.
The Guatemalan Ministry of the Economy actively promotes the investment of companies interested in exploiting the country’s nearly 2 million acres of forests. Logging companies and lumber traders have taken an interest in the vast forests of the highlands of Guatemala, where they can find rare hard and soft woods, such as teak, mahogany, oak and the more common pine. These resources can fetch hefty prices at market.
The exportation of lumber and products produced from wood from Guatemala has increased significantly. From 2013 to 2014, lumber exports increased 8 percent, from $6.7 million dollars to $8.6 million. This continues the long trend of the increase in the exportation of lumber and wood products, such as furniture.
But this increase in export of lumber brings the companies into conflict with indigenous communities. According to research by Guatemalan environmentalist and researcher, Juan Skinner, the indigenous regions of the country on average contain more forest cover than the non-indigenous regions of the country.
A 2005 report that Skinner authored highlights that municipalities that are less than 25 percent indigenous have forest cover of around 12 percent. Whereas regions where the population is more than 75 percent indigenous have forest cover of around 35 percent. Guatemala’s Mayan communities are not alone in their concern with the destruction of forests. The southern Xinca community of Quesada, Jutiapa has long taken steps to protect the forests that make up their communal territory. The Xinca people are one of the many ethnicities that make up Guatemala. The rural community in the southern department of Jutiapa has held their forest as communal lands since the 1850s, with subsequent generations continuing to protect the mountain and the forests. Today the forests represent 80 percent of the more than 13,500 acres of land, with the remainder utilized for crops, such as coffee and maize. “Our ancestors left us the land and a group to protect our mountain,” said Jak Mardogueo Ogorio, a representative of the communities’ Directive Council. “All this was passed down through the generations, and we continue this today. In order to cut a tree down, you first must receive permission from the council.” The community leaders have also barred any large-scale logging operations. “We don’t permit companies to operate in our forests,” Ogorio said. “In past epochs companies tried to negotiate for access to the forests, but they always wanted more. How many years for a new tree to grow? Up on the mountain there are trees that you cannot encircle with three people. This is what we are protecting.”
Ogorio and the other 13 members of the community council work directly with the residents to build awareness of the importance of the forests through regular meetings, trainings and a campaign to build alternative cooking stoves that utilize less firewood. In August and September 2016, the council implemented the insulation of 400 cooking stoves in conjuncture with Utz Che, a Guatemalan non-governmental organization.
“This project allows us to slow deforestation because the stoves use less firewood, and there is no need for more and more wood,” Ogorio said. “These stoves allow us to protect our forests.”
Community leaders of Quesada maintain vigilance over the threat of forest fires on communal lands for which they receive funding from INAB. This has generated work opportunity in a region where there are not many options.
The community of La Bendición in the southern department of Esquitla is one of the few regions on Guatemala’s southern coast not dominated by sugar and African oil palm plantations. Residents of the small community were displaced by the country’s 36-year-long internal armed conflict. At the end of the war they negotiated the purchase of a 5,500-acre coffee farm through the Land Fund in 2000 for about $1 million, far more than the value of the land.
When the families already burdened by debt arrived in 2001, they were shocked to learn that the land was not in the state that the Land Fund had promised. There were no rivers, as they were promised there would be, and the high winds meant that their crops were damaged, and there was no paved road. But there was a forest that contained an aquifer. Disappointed residents quickly left the community, leaving just 53 families of the original 170.
Residents continued to be burdened by debt, despite the rich forests. In 2002, the Land Fund proposed a solution: sell the forest. “The same Land Fund that assisted us in purchasing our land was pressuring us to sell the forests in order to resolve the debt,” said Veronica Hernandez, a 47-year-old community leader. “But we refused because if we would have sold our forests, we would have been left without water, or with contaminated water.” Since refusing to sell the land to logging interest, the community has organized to maintain the forests, and protect them from illegal logging and from forest fires. The residents also hold regular community-wide meetings to work to train everyone on the importance of the forests, and to guarantee that no one goes up into the mountain to cut down the precious trees.
Residents have also worked to develop projects like those being implemented in Quesada in order to decrease their impact on the forests. These stoves and solar projects are received across the community to great success. The residents’ resolve to protect their forest was further strengthened following the April 2016 water march, when thousands of campesinos marched to demand the protection of Guatemala’s water sources.
“The April march was important for us and other communities along Guatemala’s coast,” Hernandez said. “It has strengthened our drive to protect the forests and the mangroves along the coast.”
Despite the fact that the community was able to hold off the lumber interests following the purchase of the land, Hernandez and the other residents maintain vigilance to guarantee that no company comes to exploit their land and forests. “These companies always come into our communities to rob from us,” Hernandez said. “They then leave us with all the costs.”
Back in Nebaj, the Indigenous Authority is working to replicate the awareness in La Benedición and Quesada over the importance of forests.
“We are trying to inform community members of the impacts of deforestation,” Terraza said. This sharing of information is strengthened through the local Ixil University, which works to build awareness, and bring higher education to the region.
“But we have to do more,” Terraza added. “We must struggle to guarantee that people know what the impacts are.”
The Indigenous Authorities of Nebaj stated that they are considering other actions, including the continuation of pressure on the state bodies, including INAB, the continuation of protests, and the direct action of blocking trucks transporting lumber.
“[INAB] is an institution of the state,” Terraza said. “If we have all these trees, then it is because we have protected the forests for some time; our ancestors also protected these forests. It should not be so easy for them to arrive and issue licenses to companies to exploit the forests.”
Source: Z Magazine ( N0v 2016 )
Nauseated by the Had enough of their lies, escapism, omissions and relentless manipulation? | 1 |
Trump mouthpiece Kayleigh McEnany just made the most asinine claim about Mike Pence and got roundly hammered for it on CNN.Unless you ve been hiding in cave over the last decade, you know that Mike Pence is a hateful bigot who thinks gay people are an abomination. He not only tried to legalize discrimination against gay people in Indiana, he supports inhumane conversion therapy and took money away from HIV funding to fund that right-wing bullshit cure instead.Angela Rye kicked off the panel discussion about Mike Pence being booed by the audience prior to a performance of Hamilton on Broadway. The cast of the play then delivered a thoughtful message to Pence expressing their hope that he learned something.Rye explained that the lead actor is a gay man who is HIV-positive and could not imagine what he felt when the biggest anti-gay bigot in the country walked in to watch the performance.McEnany responded by attacking the Hollywood elite, the media elite, the political elite and whined about people calling Trump a racist and homophobe even though Trump is a racist and homophobe.Lemon finally shut her up by getting the discussion back on point, asking her to imagine how gay people feel when Mike Pence discriminates against them. He then pointed out that the Hamilton cast was expressing their hope that Pence will treat the LGBT community like human beings. Can you imagine how that feels when Mike Pence, who has rallied and railed against gay people, and tried to shoot down and block gay legislation? Lemon asked. He s saying, I m giving you a chance to give me a chance, he added in reference to the star of Hamilton. But then McEnany opened her mouth her spewed a monster lie. Mike Pence loves all people, she claimed, drawing an emphatic rebuke from Lemon, who is also openly gay. Mike Pence does not love gay people. His record shows that he does not love gay people. Here s the video via YouTube.Make no mistake, Mike Pence is an anti-gay bigot and he will stop at nothing to try and roll back gay rights to the point where they have no rights left. He is hateful and divisive and does not deserve the office he is about to occupy.Featured Image: Screenshot | 0 |
The generation of African Americans pushing criminal-
justice issues and institutional racism to the forefront of the presidential election had little effect at the ballot box during this primary season, according to an analysis of exit polling across 25 states.
African Americans account for a larger share of Democratic primary voters this year than they did in 2008, but that is because of older black voters, not higher participation by younger black people.
Across two dozen states where exit polls were conducted in 2008 and this year, black voters older than 45 grew from 12 percent of the electorate on average in 2008 to 16 percent this year. In those same states, black voters younger than 45 made up 11 percent of voters in 2008 vs. 10 percent this year.
President Obama, in his commencement address last weekend at Howard University, praised young black activists for bringing new energy to the ongoing movement for racial justice and equality, but he said: “You have to have a strategy. Not just awareness, but action. Not just hashtags, but votes.”
“It’s thanks in large part to the activism of young people like many of you, from ‘Black Twitter’ to Black Lives Matter, that America’s eyes have been opened — white, black, Democrat, Republican — to the real problems, for example, in our criminal-justice system,” Obama said. “But to bring about structural change, lasting change, awareness is not enough. It requires changes in law, changes in custom.”
He added: “Passion is vital, but you’ve got to have a strategy. And your plan better include voting, not just some of the time, but all the time.”
Obama’s comments echoed continuing concerns that some young black activists involved in the current wave of political action do not share the belief in the critical importance of the right to vote — one of the most important achievements of the civil rights movement of the 1950s and ’60s.
Democratic candidates and strategists have stressed the importance this year of all young voters, who heavily favored Obama in both of his election contests — and Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont in this year’s Democratic primaries. But younger Americans are the least likely to turn out in elections: The share of eligible voters ages 18 to 29 who cast ballots fell from a record high of 48 percent in 2008 to 41 percent in the 2012 presidential election, according to the U.S. Elections Project.
Fredrick Harris, a political science professor and director of the Institute for Research in African American Studies at Columbia University, said the success of the Black Lives Matter movement should not be measured only by voter turnout or candidate preference. It has succeeded at doing what no other black leaders have done, especially those who have lined up to endorse either Sanders or Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton.
The young activists have “placed criminal-justice reform on the political agenda. Both Sanders and Clinton have been falling over each other talking about the need for reform and the persistence of institutionalized racism,” Harris said. “That did not happen in 2008 and would not have happened in 2016 without BLM. A movement does not have to necessarily influence electoral outcomes in order to be successful. Look for criminal-justice reform in the party’s platform at this summer’s convention, which will prioritize the issue if a Democrat wins [the White House]. There were no serious criminal-justice-reform platform in 2008 or 2012. In essence, the movement has been influential in the Democratic selection process without even officially endorsing a candidate.”
Interviews with some activists inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement revealed a nuanced view of electoral politics. None advocated a total boycott of elections, and some have been actively involved in various local contests across the country.
At the same time, many were not enthusiastic about the value of voting, particularly in this year’s presidential election cycle. Some activists have staged protests at campaign events and received ample media coverage in the process. The sharpest criticism was aimed at Clinton, but most did not endorse Sanders, either.
These activists argued that neither candidate had adequately addressed the issues affecting black communities.
“Voting is definitely one way, and I wouldn’t insult my ancestors by telling people they shouldn’t vote, but there are other ways of reimagining and restructuring the world, and that lies in organizing our communities,” said Ashley Williams, a 23-year-old activist who attends the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.
Williams crashed a fundraiser for Clinton in Charlotte in February, where she stood up and asked the candidate whether she would “apologize to black people for mass incarceration.” Williams also said, “I’m not a super-predator, Hillary Clinton” — a reference to Clinton’s use years ago of a racially charged term meant to describe young offenders who are beyond rehabilitation. Williams was escorted from the event, but the next day, Clinton told a Washington Post columnist, “Looking back, I shouldn’t have used those words, and I wouldn’t use them today.”
Williams, who said she joined other protesters in disrupting a Trump rally in Raleigh in December, said she did not endorse Sanders, because “I’m not sure he should be the nominee, either.”
Lindsey Burgess, 22, a student at Spelman College in Atlanta who is supporting Sanders, is concerned that many young African Americans are already disenchanted with politics because of their view that two terms of an Obama presidency have done little to dismantle institutional racism. The rhetoric of the Black Lives Matter movement, she said, risks turning off these would-be voters even more.
“It’s very much ideology-driven, and it is anti-establishment,” Burgess said of the movement. “They want to eradicate this whole political system, the two-party system. But that’s not feasible right now. I do think that type of language has permeated the [presidential] campaign and stopped a lot of people from getting involved.”
Exit polls show African Americans overwhelmingly supported Clinton over Sanders in this year’s primaries and were crucial to fueling her large delegate lead. Clinton won an average of 79 percent support among black Democratic voters, compared with 21 percent for Sanders. Clinton won black voters under age 45 by 33 points across 12 states where exit polls broke down electoral choice by age — and won older voters by a larger 79 points.
Joyce Ladner, who was a member of one of the leading organizations of the civil rights era, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, said the cynicism toward voting on the part of some young activists is dangerous because “so much is at stake, if not for them, for the masses of black people.”
“What to substitute for not voting? They need to put forth an alternative political, social or economic structure that delivers some relief to black people,” Ladner said. “This is where the critical issue of accountability comes in. To whom are BLM folks accountable when they remove the vote from black people?”
And, she argued, “If voting isn’t important, why are white legislators gerrymandering districts and using other tactics to prevent blacks from voting?”
Activists in the Black Lives Matter movement don’t always sit on the sidelines. In Chicago, several groups rallied voters to unseat Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez, who they said helped cover up the shooting death in 2014 of Laquan McDonald, the black teenager who was walking away from police officers when one of them shot him 16 times.
Authorities did not charge the officer until a year later, prompting allegations of a coverup. Activists launched a campaign dubbed #ByeAnita, and Alvarez, who was seeking a third term, was soundly defeated in the March 15 primary.
Activists in Cleveland similarly organized and turned out voters to oust Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Timothy J. McGinty, who was criticized for his handling of the shooting death in 2014 of Tamir Rice, the 12-year-old who was playing with a toy gun when a police officer shot him to death.
Jessica Pierce, national chair of the Black Youth Project 100, said that Alvarez was directly targeted because she “will use her position of power to support violence against black people.”
The organization did not choose sides in the Democratic primary and has no plans to endorse in the general election, although they will encourage young black people to vote. More important, Pierce said, is educating and organizing black communities to hold elected officials accountable between elections. She said she doesn’t take issue with Obama’s challenge to young activists.
“For Black Youth Project 100, a core purpose of leading election work is not just the votes that we will turn out in this election but what those votes represent,” Pierce said. “The votes represent power — concrete power of black youth across the country. This is power that then builds into our direct action organizing campaigns and policy work that we have been leading locally and will continue to lead after Election Day.” | 1 |
When a group of imams tried to bring a form of Shariah light to Texas, they met an unlikely foe Irving Mayor Beth Van Duyne.Van Duyne was thrust into the national media spotlight, and her city was being called ground zero in the battle to prevent Islamic law from gaining a foothold, no matter how small, in the U.S. legal system.The media frenzy was touched off by reports that an Islamic tribunal was being set up in the Dallas, Texas, area. A group of imams from surrounding mosques would sit on what they call a mediation panel, as defacto judges, and mediate disputes between Muslims who voluntarily submit to its edicts. They denied this was a Shariah court, saying the panel would mete out nonbinding decisions in business disputes, divorces and other family matters in full accordance with the law. She worked with state legislators to craft a bill that would declare it illegal for any U.S. court to adopt any foreign legal system for the basis of its rulings. Islam was not mentioned in the bill, nor was any religion.The Irving City Council voted 5-4 to endorse the bill before a packed room full of mostly angry Muslims. WNDWatch: Irving Mayor Van Duyne also made news when she took on clock boy and his family.The mayor said the records would help to describe why it progressed as it did. Nobody is going to walk in and say, Oh you re a 14-year old child, you re totally cooperating, we have all the answers we need, let s arrest you, Van Duyne said, adding she had information that Mohamed was being passive aggressive and non-responsive when police questioned him.Van Duyne also noted that the family seemed more interested in seeking press than resolving the issue.Irving Mayor Beth Van Duyne will be joining the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to work under Secretary Ben Carson, a source with direct knowledge of the situation confirmed to The Daily Caller.Van Duyne announced at a luncheon Thursday that she would be joining the Trump administration, but declined to say which department she will be joining, CBS DFW reported. She is expected to make an official announcement sometime next week after completing the necessary paperwork. Daily Caller | 1 |
In these trying times, Jackie Mason is the Voice of Reason. [In his latest exclusive clip for Breitbart News, Jackie takes aim at critics who say Israel’s embassy cannot possibly be moved to Jerusalem from its current location in Tel Aviv. “It’s as if somebody would get mad that you moved the capital [of the United States] to Washington,” Jackie says. “Imagine if another country decided that the American capital doesn’t deserve to be in Washington because they don’t like it, because they said we’re occupying their territory by being there. People that you’ve never heard of, that were never there before. ” Jackie says that as far as Arab countries in the Middle East are concerned, Israel doesn’t have a right to exist anywhere. “If they had their way, every Israeli and every Jew would be wiped out immediately, so how would they have a capital any place if they don’t even have a right to be here?” Jackie asks. Still, the comedian holds no ill will toward these Arab countries, even though they’d prefer he’d drop dead. In his first cable news interview from the White House on Thursday, President Trump signaled it was “too early” to discuss his plans to move the embassy to Jerusalem. Watch the full clip above. Follow Daniel Nussbaum on Twitter: @dznussbaum | 0 |
JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - Zimbabwe s ruling ZANU-PF party called on Friday for President Robert Mugabe to resign, the main state newspaper The Herald reported, the latest sign that the aging leader s authority has collapsed after an army takeover. The newspaper said that ZANU-PF branches in all 10 provinces had met on Friday and had also called for Mugabe s wife Grace to resign from the party. | 0 |
Donald Trump s treatment of journalists is so bad that the Reuters news agency is now advising reporters to treat Trump like they would treat a foreign dictator.On Tuesday, Trump and his team announced that they will no longer send surrogates to appear on CNN, an escalation of the war Trump has been waging against the news network, which he calls fake news because they won t promote his agenda.Trump has even praised Fox New s biased reporting as something CNN should copy.Furthermore, Trump and his team have repeatedly threatened and tried to intimidate journalists for doing their jobs just because they aren t writing puff pieces that kiss Trump s ass.Well, Reuters is doing something about it.For 165 years, Reuters has been bringing us news from around the world. They ve been in the most peaceful and democratic places, but they ve also been in war zones and reported on the most dangerous and tyrannical regimes in world history.In a message to staff on Tuesday, Reuters Editor-in-Chief Steve Adler advised his reporters to start dealing with Trump the way they have dealt with brutal dictators in the past. It s not every day that a U.S. president calls journalists among the most dishonest human beings on earth or that his chief strategist dubs the media the opposition party, Adler wrote. It s hardly surprising that the air is thick with questions and theories about how to cover the new Administration. Adler then revealed his solution for how reporters should handle Trump.So what is the Reuters answer? To oppose the administration? To appease it? To boycott its briefings? To use our platform to rally support for the media? All these ideas are out there, and they may be right for some news operations, but they don t make sense for Reuters. We already know what to do because we do it every day, and we do it all over the world.To state the obvious, Reuters is a global news organization that reports independently and fairly in more than 100 countries, including many in which the media is unwelcome and frequently under attack. I am perpetually proud of our work in places such as Turkey, the Philippines, Egypt, Iraq, Yemen, Thailand, China, Zimbabwe, and Russia, nations in which we sometimes encounter some combination of censorship, legal prosecution, visa denials, and even physical threats to our journalists. We respond to all of these by doing our best to protect our journalists, by recommitting ourselves to reporting fairly and honestly, by doggedly gathering hard-to-get information and by remaining impartial. We write very rarely about ourselves and our troubles and very often about the issues that will make a difference in the businesses and lives of our readers and viewers.We don t know yet how sharp the Trump administration s attacks will be over time or to what extent those attacks will be accompanied by legal restrictions on our news-gathering. But we do know that we must follow the same rules that govern our work anywhere.If Donald Trump thinks his relationship with the media is going to get better because he attacks them, he should think again. Reuters is coming for him and he should be scared, especially if other news organizations follow their example.Featured image via Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images | 0 |
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Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture October 28, 2016
Perhaps one of the most used and abused political expressions in recent years has been that of “American exceptionalism.” Politicians and commentators routinely invoke it as a high principle and accuse their opponents of insufficient devotion to it, or contrariwise blame it for all the ills of the world.
For example, in 2013, Russian President Vladimir Putin ruffled many Americans’ feathers:
“It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional, whatever the motivation. . . . We are all different, but when we ask for the Lord’s blessings, we must not forget that God created us equal.”
Hillary Clinton weighed in on exceptionalism in an August speech before the American Legion, in which she also took a swipe at Donald Trump :
The United States is an exceptional nation. . . . But, in fact, my opponent in this race has said very clearly that he thinks American exceptionalism is insulting to the rest of the world. In fact, when Vladimir Putin, of all people, criticized American exceptionalism, my opponent agreed with him, saying, and I quote, ‘if you’re in Russia, you don’t want to hear that America is exceptional.’ Well maybe you don’t want to hear it, but that doesn’t mean it’s not true.
It needs to be asked, though: when people praise or criticize “American exceptionalism,” are they always talking about the same thing?
America, like any country, has its own distinctive history, culture, and traditions. America’s unique founding principles—consent of the governed, due process, a constitutionally limited division of powers, representative government—justly have been an inspiration to the world for over two centuries. Thomas Jefferson wrote of the “palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God.”
This “exceptional” idea was new in human history. Any American worthy of the name justly takes pride in it. This is the genuine American exceptionalism of Washington, Jefferson, and Madison, lately championed by Reagan. The fact that we have strayed so far from it, both domestically and internationally, is shameful.
The unique moral revolution to which the Founding Fathers pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor has little connection to the bastard term (usually capitalized as “American Exceptionalism”) that describes post-Cold War U.S. global behavior, by which policymakers in Washington assert both an exclusive “leadership” privilege and unsupportable obligation to undertake open-ended international missions in the name of the “Free World” and the “international community.” This is the counterfeit “Exceptionalism” of a tiny clique of bipartisan apparatchiki —GOP “neoconservatives” and Democrat “liberal interventionists” and their mainstream media mouthpieces —who have little regard for our country’s oldest traditions or the security and welfare of the American people. Tags: Edward Lozansky is president of the American University in Moscow. | 1 |
(CNN) - As he considers another run for the White House, Rick Santorum is reaching out to working-class voters, bucking the GOP on the minimum wage and touting his new book in hopes of rebranding the Republican Party.
In an interview with CNN's Candy Crowley that aired Sunday on "State of the Union," the former senator from Pennsylvania and 2012 Republican presidential candidate was candid on the possibility of launching another White House bid in 2016.
2016: "I'm looking at it"
Santorum wouldn't throw his support behind a specific Republican on a list of possible 2016 White House contenders but admitted that he wrote his new book "Blue-Collar Conservatives" in part because he's considering launching another campaign.
"I'm looking for candidates who connect with average voters," he said. "Someone who has a heart and an understanding of those difficult times those voters are going through, and whether it's Rick Santorum or somebody else - it's someone who has that appeal and connection.
"I put this book out there because I'm looking at it - whether other people join in; I hope they do. I've been talking to a lot of candidates across the country, saying, ‘you really need to look at this book and take the opportunity that's present right now to create a new image for this party. It doesn't have a very good one right now,’ " Santorum added.
One issue that could create conflict between Republicans and average Americans is their opposition to increasing the minimum wage.
Dems seek to rally base over GOP's block of minimum wage bill
The Senate voted last month on raising the minimum wage to $10.10 per hour, but the bill failed to garner the 60 votes needed to pass. Only one Republican voted for the measure.
Santorum joins 2012 presidential nominee Mitt Romney and former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty as Republicans who have come out in favor of some sort of increase.
But Santorum, who long voted for minimum wage increases in his time in Congress, was quick to draw a distinction between his views on the issue and those of his former GOP presidential rival.
"I think Romney came out in favor of President Obama's increase. I'm not in favor of President Obama's increase. When I was in the Senate and when I was in the House, I did vote for minimum wage increases that were incremental," he said.
Asked by Crowley whether Republicans’ opposition to minimum wage increases will hurt the party's image among working-class voters, Santorum said it does and cautioned that lawmakers "need to be reasonable about it and offer an alternative."
The most recent polls on the issue indicate that a strong majority of Americans supports raising the minimum wage, with Republicans mostly divided on the issue.
Watch State of the Union with Candy Crowley Sundays at 9am ET. For the latest from State of the Union click here. | 0 |
While the overwhelming majority of Americans accept the scientific consensus on climate change, a new study shows that a similar majority of Americans are represented in Congress by someone who denies the reality of climate change.Congress is supposed to be representative of the American people, yet while less than a quarter of U.S. citizens deny the reality of climate change, 63 percent of voters are now represented in Washington by someone who claims that climate change is not real.Far from being representative of the American people, new research from the Center for American Progress Action Fund suggests that Congress is far more representative of the fossil fuel industry than every day voters.There are 182 representatives in Congress who deny the reality of climate change. These federal lawmakers are supposed to represent the nearly 203 million people in their congressional districts.While 76 percent of voters believe that climate change is very real problem which must be addressed, these representatives spend their time in Washington fighting against any legislation that help tackle the problem.As Think Progress reports here, these legislators have received a total of $73,294,380 from dirty energy companies in the coal, oil, and gas industries. Even more revealing, Think Progress reports that dirty energy money characterizes climate deniers in Washington: In general, the average career dirty energy contribution per Senate denier was $889,101, compared to $207,272 for those who had not publicly revealed themselves to be deniers. The average House contribution was $274,365 per denier, and $92,000 for non-deniers. In total, House deniers pulled in $39,508,554 in dirty energy money, while deniers in the Senate pulled in $33,785,826. These facts show that GOP climate change deniers, like Texas representative Joe Barton, are getting huge amounts of money to push an agenda laid out by the fossil fuel industry, even though it flies in the face of science.Barton has collected nearly $2,100,000 from dirty energy contributors, according to an interactive map published by Think Progress, here.Heading into the November elections, the map serves as a useful tool for voters who would like to weed out climate deniers in Congress. It allows voters to search for climate change deniers by state, and to view the extent of industry contributions each legislator has received in return.The American people deserve a Congress that reflects their priorities, not the priorities of dirty energy companies.To find out which representatives in your state deny the reality of climate change, check out the map published here.Watch Bill Nye explain the reality of climate change in four minutes. Featured image via video screen capture via National Geographic on YouTube | 1 |
To say that David Brooks is not impressed with Donald Trump and the GOP is an understatement. Using his column at the New York Times, Brooks has been flaming the Republican establishment to a crisp over allowing the rise of Donald Trump. Of course, Brooks was part of that establishment that gave a pass to the Tea Party and all of their hate and rage that paved the way so it s hard to feel bad for him now.Still, it s fun to watch conservatives eat their own and Brooks did not mince words on this week s Meet The Press:Turning back to Trump, Brooks said he ll be the eventual nominee and predicted he will become infamous for a crushing defeat in the November general election. I think it s likely to be Trump. I think he s the walking dead, he explained before adding the final insult. I think he ll get the nomination and he will just go down to a crushing defeat. And will be known for a hundred years from now, people will say, Who s the biggest loser in American politics? And it won t be McGovern, it won t be Dukakis, the word Trump. And I hope when he s down there in Hades he s aware of all that. Well, damn! Looks like Brooks was finally right about something! Too little, too late, though. A very large part of the reason Trump is so popular is that the useful idiots of the GOP base have finally tumbled to the fact that the Republican Party only exists to cater to the wealthy, not to their prejudices and bigotry. As long as the rich don t care about banning abortion or opposing homosexuality, they re happy to pay Republicans to lie to their base about how wonderful deregulation is.But once the rich see no profit in ignoring the right s anti-LGBT laws, they order their puppets to reverse course and Republicans obey. It s hard to tell yourself that your elected leaders care about you when they re so obvious about who they REALLY serve. That s what made it so easy for Trump to swoop in and steal the base.Too bad that s ALL he s stealing, though. Trump does not appeal to moderate conservatives or Independents at all. His appeal is limited to angry bigots and that s who he plays to. In a general election, there s going to be a mass defection from the right to vote for ANYONE running against Trump and that s going to end in a devastating landslide that will takes years for Republicans to recover from.What s not to love?Featured image via AI archives | 0 |
NEW YORK (Reuters) - A leading U.S. promoter of Latino boxing, All Star Boxing Inc, will give free television advertising space to Hispanic civic group Mi Familia Vota, which openly criticizes Donald Trump’s anti-immigration stance, in an effort to encourage Latino Americans to vote in November’s presidential election. The partnership will put the name and website of the group on signs in boxing ring corners and on T-shirts worn by the athletes on Spanish language network Telemundo’s Boxeo Telemundo program, starting at the end of June, officials at both organizations told Reuters. The partnership will be announced on Tuesday. “Desperate times call for desperate measures,” said Ruben De Jesus, the director of operations at Florida-based All Star Boxing, referring to this year’s presidential election. He said he decided to contact Mi Familia Vota with the offer of free advertising after hearing “just the whole rhetoric with regards to the Hispanic community” in the current election. He did not mention any candidate by name. “Our platform is not to tell our Latino citizens who to vote for, but it’s important that this year especially we engage,” he told Reuters in an interview, adding the free advertising space could reach as many as 5 million people. Ben Monterroso, the executive director of Mi Familia Vota, was blunter about the partnership’s aim. “I think Mr. Donald Trump lives in another world,” he said. “In my experience working with the community, a big majority of the people that I talk to, they definitely don’t like what Donald Trump has done.” Trump, the Republican who will likely face Democrat Hillary Clinton in the Nov. 8 presidential election, launched his candidacy last year by calling for a crackdown on illegal immigration from Mexico, a country he said was sending rapists and drug dealers into the United States. The wealthy New York businessman has also repeatedly vowed to build a wall along the border and force the Mexican government to pay for it if elected. More recently Trump angered Latinos by criticizing a federal judge overseeing a fraud trial against Trump University, calling the Indiana-born man a Mexican and, later, saying his Mexican heritage meant he couldn’t do his job properly. Trump has rejected accusations that his comments are racist and has said he is well-liked by Hispanics. A spokeswoman for Trump was not immediately available to comment. The partnership between All Star Boxing and Mi Familia Vota will begin on June 24 and run for four events this summer, then another four events after a brief hiatus, comprising 128 boxers in total, De Jesus said. Half the shows will take place in Florida and half in Mexico. The fighters will also hold local events in Florida to boost voter engagement in the critical swing state, De Jesus said. That could include visits to political events around Tampa and Orlando, such as helping to register voters. “The boxers are coming out of their corners to fight for the community,” Monterroso said. Boxeo Telemundo, with an over 25-year history, calls itself the most-watched Spanish-language boxing show in the United States. The show attracts an average 550,000 viewers weekly, especially among men 18 to 49, De Jesus said. Mi Familia Vota is a non-profit, non-partisan group that works to register Latino voters and get Latinos involved in U.S. political life. | 0 |
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is lobbying world powers to prevent further setbacks to Iraqi Kurds as they lose ground to Baghdad s army, Israeli officials say. Israel has been the only major power to endorse statehood for the Kurds, partly, say analysts, because it sees the ethnic group - whose population is split among Iraq, Turkey, Syria and Iran - as a buffer against shared adversaries. Iraqi armed forces retook the oil-rich Kirkuk region this week, following a Sept. 25 referendum on Kurdish independence that was rejected by Baghdad, delivering a blow to the Kurds statehood quest. Israeli officials said Netanyahu raised the Iraqi Kurds plight in phone calls with German Chancellor Angela Merkel last week and with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday. It has also come up in his contacts with France and the Israeli national security adviser, Meir Ben-Shabbat, has been discussing the matter with Trump administration officials in Washington this week, the officials said. A Netanyahu government official, who declined to be named, given the sensitivity of Israel-Kurdish ties, suggested Israel had security interests in Kurdistan, given its proximity to Israel s enemies in Tehran and Damascus. This (territory) is a foothold. It s a strategic place, the official said without providing further detail. He said Israel wanted to see Iraqi Kurds provided with the means to protect themselves, adding: It would be best if someone gave them weaponry, and whatever else, which we cannot give, obviously. Israel has maintained discreet military, intelligence and business ties with Kurds since the 1960s, in the absence of open ties between their autonomous region in northern Iraq and Israel. Netanyahu s recent lobbying has focused on Kurdish ambitions in Iraq, where the central Baghdad government has grown closer to Israel s foe Iran. The issue at present is ... to prevent an attack on the Kurds, extermination of the Kurds and any harm to them, their autonomy and region, something that Turkey and Iran and internal Shi ite and other powers in Iraq and part of the Iraqi government want, Netanyahu s intelligence minister, Israel Katz, told Tel Aviv radio station 102 FM on Friday. It was not clear to what extent Netanyahu s outreach may have been solicited by the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) in northern Iraq, which shies away from public engagement with Israel, worried about further alienating Arab neighbours. The United Nations has voiced concern at reports that civilians, mainly Kurds, were being driven out of parts of northern Iraq retaken by Iraqi forces and their houses and businesses looted and destroyed. The prime minister is certainly engaging the United States, Russia, Germany and France to stop the Kurds from being harmed, Katz said. Another Israeli official, speaking to Reuters on condition of anonymity, framed Netanyahu s efforts as a moral imperative. They (Kurds) are a deeply pro-Western people who deserve support, he said. | 0 |
WASHINGTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. President-elect Donald Trump pumped a total of $66 million of his own money into his campaign - far from the $100 million he frequently boasted he was going to spend, according to campaign finance disclosures filed on Thursday night. Trump-related business industries - those bearing his own name, including his private jet and the Manhattan building that served as his campaign headquarters - received $11 million in payments from his campaign. Trump shocked the political world when he defeated Democratic rival Hillary Clinton in the Nov. 8 election for the White House, overcoming a spending deficit and outperforming polls in several swing states to propel him to victory. Earlier this week, Trump’s campaign revealed that he sold his entire stock portfolio in June, a holding that was estimated at about $40 million. Opting to liquidate his assets could have been a move to pump cash into his campaign, which at the time was struggling to raise funds from private donors. The move to sell his stocks came weeks after he forgave about $47 million in loans he had already given his campaign. In total, Trump raised $339 million and spent $322 million - a far cry from the $565 million spent by Clinton, according to the latest Federal Election Commission disclosure reports. Trump spent $94 million in the final days of the campaign, compared with the $132 million spent by Clinton. Trump frequently promised to run a shoe-string campaign and argued his self-funding model meant he wasn’t obligated to any special interests. He blasted polling as a useless art and pollsters as a waste of money as he overcame 16 Republican foes during the primary election season in early 2016. Trump rode to victory on more than $5 billion in “free” television on news programs that provided wall-to-wall coverage of his every word, according to data analytics firm mediaQuant. But when the realities of the general election began to sink in - and Trump’s poll numbers sank - he shifted and began spending money on polling and television ads. In total, Trump spent $107 million on advertising, including television ads, and another $85 million in digital and online advertising. His second largest expense was air travel, totaling $26 million and accounting for more campaign spending than his payroll. | 0 |
MADRID (Reuters) - The Spanish government is committed to seeking a joint response with other political parties to the pro-independence challenge in Catalonia after Sunday s outlawed referendum, a government statement said on Monday. In meetings with leaders of two other parties, the Socialists and the centrist Ciudadanos, Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy had shown his readiness to study proposals put forward by other parties to respond to the Catalan issue, the statement said. In conversations with European leaders on Monday, Rajoy thanked them for their support for Spain s constitutional order, the statement said. | 0 |
Just before Donald Trump s inauguration, David Leavitt who claims he writes for CBS and Yahoo said he wished Trump would die before his inauguration. CBS denies he works for them or has ever worked for them. Well, that was back in November and Levitt s profile on Twitter still says he s a contributor to CBS:Comedian and political commentator Mark Dice actually made a video exposing Daniel Leavitt, who claims to be a member of the press and the vile remarks he made about our President:Here is Leavitt s response to the outrage over his disgusting comments:If I knew that I'd gain over 500 followers within 12 hours of angering sexist racist #trump supporters, I'd have done it sooner #ImWithHer David Leavitt (@David_Leavitt) November 30, 2016Because what could possibly be funnier than a terrorist attack in a stadium packed with young innocent children right David? Apparently Leavitt who has no obvious conscience, doubled down on his sick joke and instead of deleting it after realizing that he was receiving quite a bit of backlash, he attempted to make another joke asking, too soon? Leavitt is no stranger to making sick jokes about dead people. Just last week he made another sick joke about the death of Roger Ailes:Every day liberals confirm to independent and Democrat voters who have two brain cells to rub together, why the majority of Americans truly believe liberalism is a mental disorder.Here are a few more tweets by a guy who gets paid to write for major publications that every day Americans accept as actual news. ***WARNING*** Some of the tweets contain strong language:And lastly, from a guy who was bashing Comey on Twitter, there s this post from a stereotypical liberal: | 1 |
SAN FRANCISCO/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Uber Technologies Inc Chief Executive Officer Travis Kalanick quit President Donald Trump’s business advisory group on Thursday amid mounting pressure from activists and employees who oppose the administration’s immigration policies. Critics included Uber drivers, many of whom are immigrants themselves. “Joining the group was not meant to be an endorsement of the president or his agenda but unfortunately it has been misinterpreted to be exactly that,” Kalanick, who had planned to attend a meeting of the group on Friday, said in an email to staff that was seen by Reuters. Uber spokeswoman Chelsea Kohler later confirmed that he had left the group. Social media campaigns had targeted Uber, urging users to delete accounts and opt for rival Lyft Inc. Uber has been emailing users who deleted their accounts to say it shares their concerns and will compensate drivers affected by the ban. Kalanick said he spoke briefly to Trump about the immigration order “and its issues for our community” and told the president he would not join the economic council. The CEO came under increasing pressure to leave the council after Trump issued an executive order temporarily barring people from seven majority-Muslim nations from entering the United States. “There are many ways we will continue to advocate for just change on immigration but staying on the council was going to get in the way of that. The executive order is hurting many people in communities all across America,” he wrote in a note to employees. “Families are being separated, people are stranded overseas and there’s a growing fear the U.S. is no longer a place that welcomes immigrants.” The White House said in a statement Thursday evening that did not mention Uber that Trump “understands the importance of an open dialogue with fellow business leaders to discuss how to best make our nation’s economy stronger.” The move could put pressure on other CEOs expected to attend a meeting with Trump on Friday. General Motors Co said its chief executive would attend, while Walt Disney Co said earlier Thursday its chief executive would not attend because of a long-planned board meeting. Others expected to take part include the CEOs of JPMorgan Chase & Co, Blackstone Group LP, IBM Corp and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. Others that are part of the council include Tesla Inc CEO Elon Musk, PepsiCo Inc CEO Indra Nooyi and Boston Consulting Group CEO Rich Lesser. Musk said he would attend the meeting. “In tomorrow’s meeting, I and others will express our objections to the recent executive order on immigration and offer suggestions for changes to the policy,” he said in a tweet on Thursday. Kalanick’s departure could signal a growing rift between technology companies and Washington. “There is a battle brewing between Trump and Silicon Valley,” said Neeraj Agrawal, general partner at Battery Ventures. “They (the Trump administration) clearly don’t value the economic activity generated by tech.” Microsoft Corp on Thursday said it proposed a modification of Trump’s travel limits. Technology companies including Microsoft, Google owner Alphabet Inc, Apple Inc and Amazon.com Inc have opposed Trump’s order, arguing that they rely on workers from around the world. Amazon and Expedia Inc have filed court documents supporting a legal challenge to the order by the Washington state attorney general. | 0 |
We all knew that Donald Trump would be a nightmare for the Supreme Court. His nominee, Judge Neil Gorsuch, is trying to present himself as some sort of legal scholar who will enforce the law fairly regardless of his personal views. However, his past is coming back to haunt him, and it turns out that he is a a misogynistic bastard and would make horrific decisions when it comes to protecting women s rights in the workplace. In a letter written to the judiciary, a former student of Judge Gorsuch from his days as a law school professor says the following of his views regarding women in the workplace: Judge Gorsuch outlined how law firms, and companies in general, had to ask female interviewees about pregnancy plans in order to protect the company. At least one student countered that an employer could not ask questions about an interviewee s pregnancy plans. However, Judge Gorsuch informed the class that was wrong. Instead Judge Gorsuch told the class that not only could a future employer ask female interviewees about their pregnancy and family plans, companies must ask females about their family and pregnancy plans to protect the company. Another anonymous declaration to the judiciary also confirmed and complained of Gorsuch s views on working women, saying that he said that many female lawyers became pregnant, and questioned whether they should do so on their law firms dime. This goes against a ruling from the Court in 2003, which says of asking women about deeply personal issues such as family planning, which says: Historically, denial or curtailment of women s employment opportunities has been traceable directly to the pervasive presumption that women are mothers first, and workers second. This prevailing ideology about women s roles has in turn justified discrimination against women when they are mothers or mothers-to-be. This opinion was authored by Chief Justice Renquist, and it went on to say: These mutually reinforcing stereotypes created a self-fulfilling cycle of discrimination that forced women to continue to assume the role of primary family caregiver, and fostered employers stereotypical views about women s commitment to work and their value to employees. This should come as no surprise; after all, Trump himself, as well as Mike Pence, are huge misogynists. However, it is downright terrifying. If this guy is confirmed to the Supreme Court, he ll turn back women s rights 100 years. And let s not even get started on women s reproductive health. Roe V. Wade will be gone in a heartbeat with this guy.Democrats, if ever there was an important fight to take on, it s this one. Keep Neil Gorsuch off the Supreme Court, no matter what it takes.Featured image via Alex Wong/Getty Images | 0 |
Earlier today, President Trump tweeted about the Alabama Senate race where Republican candidate for Senate Judge Roy Moore has been the target of the left ever since he won in the GOP primary race in September, against the less conservative candidate, Luther Strange.The last thing we need in Alabama and the U.S. Senate is a Schumer/Pelosi puppet who is WEAK on Crime, WEAK on the Border, Bad for our Military and our great Vets, Bad for our 2nd Amendment, AND WANTS TO RAISES TAXES TO THE SKY. Jones would be a disaster! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 26, 2017Since the first day I took office, all you hear is the phony Democrat excuse for losing the election, Russia, Russia,Russia. Despite this I have the economy booming and have possibly done more than any 10 month President. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 26, 2017Unfortunately for the Democrats, their attempt at destroying the character of Roy Moore, by attempting to paint him as a sexual predator of teenage girls, continues to fall apart. Roy Moore s team is coming out and demanding that the high school yearbook used as evidence by one of Moore s accusers is more looked at by forgery experts after it was discovered that the signature doesn t match that of Roy Moore s and that two different colors of ink were used for the signature. The stepson of the woman who used what many are saying was a forged Roy Moore signature in her yearbook, has also come out to say his stepmother is lying about her encounter several decades ago with Roy Moore. Even the high-profile, leftist, media-whore lawyer, Gloria Allred, who represented the accuser with the yearbook, appears to have gone into hiding. Meanwhile, polls are showing that Roy Moore is ahead by anywhere from 5-15 points and that the left s shameful attempt at stealing the election from the popular conservative candidate in Alabama, is quickly falling apart.Now that President Trump has endorsed Roy Moore, the left appears to be giving up the ship Sunday on ABC s This Week, network analyst Cokie Roberts said now that President Donald Trump had supported Alabama GOP U.S. Senate hopeful Roy Moore, it will be very hard to defeat Moore in the December 12 special election.Roberts said, He doesn t have to go to Alabama. He s done plenty for Roy Moore. Moore can put it in his ads, which he s doing. He s clearly got the endorsement of President Trump. Without the endorsement of President Trump, he won the primary. I think with the endorsement of President Trump, it will be hard to defeat him in the general election. Breitbart News.@CokieRoberts tells @ThisWeekABC Roy Moore clearly has the endorsement of Pres. Trump: Without the endorsement, he won the primary. I think with the endorsement, "it is going to be very hard to defeat him." pic.twitter.com/Hyw6wSligG ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) November 26, 2017 | 1 |
Throughout the course of Donald Trump s campaign for the presidency, he s been stoking fears around the nation. His goal seems to be to lead through fear and if he can get enough people to believe the lies that he tells, they ll fall in line behind him to be their leader and protector.All of that is absolute poppycock because Trump wouldn t know how to protect you from a falling feather, let alone understand what it takes to be leader of the free world.Now, appearing at Trump s running-mate Mike Pence s campaign event on Tuesday, a Trump supporter brought up Trump s myth of voter fraud. Which is that if he loses, it s because Hillary cheated, not at all because he s a horrible human being.Ironically, the only voter fraud currently being perpetrated is by Republicans trying to suppress the vote.However, this woman in the audience, with fear and horror in her voice, brought up the voter fraud Trump often talks about. The woman said she s ready for a revolution because we can t have [Hillary] in. When Pence heard that he stopped the woman in her tracks and said, don t say that. And good on him for doing so. Pence then reiterated that the revolution needs to happen is at the voting booth on November 8th. Which, in all honesty, is an incredibly accurate and thoughtful response.Pence seems to understand that democracy isn t claiming the other side won because they cheated, but rather getting out the vote so that your side wins.That being said, Hillary Clinton is about to kick Trump s ass this November and it s because more people will want her over a racist a**hole who admits to sexual assault.Watch the video here: Woman: If Hillary Clinton gets in I m ready for a revolution, b/c we can t have her in Pence: Don t say that https://t.co/P5OrJBGW55 Bradd Jaffy (@BraddJaffy) October 11, 2016Featured image via video screen capture | 0 |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Justice Department said on Tuesday it tapped Robert Patterson, a career investigator, to temporarily lead the Drug Enforcement Administration, after the drug office’s previous acting chief stepped down. Patterson, considered the highest-ranking special career agent at the DEA, has been serving as the agency’s principal deputy administrator since November 2016. He started his DEA career in the New York Division in 1988. Chuck Rosenberg, a holdover from Democratic President Barack Obama’s administration, left his job on Sunday. His departure came two months after he criticized Republican President Donald Trump for telling law enforcement officers not to be “too nice” to suspects. It is unclear who will ultimately be named to permanently lead the DEA. Trump has yet to put forth a nomination. Rosenberg had led the DEA as acting administrator since 2015. Prior to that, he was chief of staff to former FBI Director James Comey, whom Trump fired in May. The United States is facing a major opioid drug epidemic and the Justice Department has been stepping up efforts to police it. There are also questions about whether the Justice Department will take a more aggressive approach toward enforcing federal laws prohibiting the use of or distribution of marijuana. | 0 |
November 7, 2016, 8:05 pm A+ | a- Warning
Writing at the Federalist , libertarian NeverTrumper Cathy Young [ ] makes a convincing case that the election of Donald Trump, the supposed anti-PC candidate, could actually lead to an intensification of PC culture. Young’s basic thesis is that, if someone as, umm, let’s say immoderate, as Trump could get elected President (in part as an anti-PC champion, no less), it would validate the PC belief that “crude xenophobia” and “toxic masculinity” really are pervasive problems. [ Why Electing Donald Trump Could Make Political Correctness Worse , November 7, 2016] And so the PC crowd would double-down even further.
I think this is a good analysis. Of course, Young’s implicit assumption is that increasing political polarization is a problem that can be solved, that a center-Right, classical liberal consensus is the goal. But the time for that has passed. So kudos to Young for identifying the problem, but we need a new solution—such as Michael Hart’s proposal for the peaceful secession of Red State America. | 1 |
Shelley Brannon, 62, can sum up the Obama presidency with three words. Well, three words and an exclamation.
“He screwed us,” said Brannon, a coal miner from Wise County, Va., as he sat outside a rally for the United Mine Workers of America. “Man, he screwed us.”
He shook his head under a camouflage hat that matched his camouflage UMWA T-shirt, and he described his fantasy of dumping nuclear waste in the yards of environmentalists, “if they think coal’s so bad.” He mulled over the mistake he says the UMWA made in 2008, when it endorsed Barack Obama over Hillary Rodham Clinton. Then he explained why he would probably be voting for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in the next Democratic primary.
“For one thing, he knows what union is, and he respects it,” Brannon said. “That’s all we need is respect. He’s just a likable fellow, trustworthy. I don’t think she has the same respect for the union, and she really shot herself in the foot over, you know, all that secretive stuff.”
West Virginia has rejected the Obama-era Democratic Party more dramatically than any other state outside the South, with Appalachian counties that voted for Michael Dukakis and Walter Mondale turning blood red over the past eight years. But if you think it’s in places like this where the insurgent Sanders campaign faces its most formidable test, here’s what he thinks: It is also one of his greatest opportunities.
The Vermont socialist believes that white, working-class voters — the sort of people Obama once self-defeatingly said “cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them” — are just one honest argument away from coming back.
“We have millions of working-class people who are voting for Republican candidates whose views are diametrically opposite to what voters want,” Sanders said in an interview. “How many think it’s a great idea that we have trade policies that lead to plants in West Virginia being shut down? How many think there should be massive cuts in Pell grants or in Social Security? In my opinion, not too many people.”
This state, one of the last to vote in the 2016 primary race, is supposed to be Clinton country. Seven years ago, in the 2008 primary, West Virginia Democrats gave Clinton a landslide victory over Obama. She won 69 percent of the white vote and did even better with voters who lacked a college education. A Democrat who improved a few points on Obama’s 39 percent of the national white vote in the 2012 general election would stroll into the White House.
Sanders, who has won elections only in a white, rural state, thinks his brand of bold democratic socialism can sell. He has never campaigned here, yet at Friday’s rally in Morgantown, miner after miner said they basically agreed with the former mayor of Burlington more than they agreed with Clinton. Several were aware that Sanders had walked picket lines, something that resonated as they packed a hotel ballroom to demand that Washington fully fund UMWA pensions. When the room quieted, a man recited a prayer against greed. “Lord, we know that Satan has those corporate thieves,” he said, “and they’re still trying to rob us.” Then a singer-songwriter started in:
It’s a long way to Wall Street from 12th and Main and the back roads of my home town.
There’s a new world order and times have changed, so they let these deals go down.
Sanders’s campaign theory may be that there’s a larger electorate hiding in plain sight. Over the summer, as he gained in polls, Sanders was criticized for bringing seemingly every issue back to the sediment of economics and class. Black Lives Matter activist Marissa Johnson dubbed it “class reductionism.” Clinton allies had trouble seeing how his support could grow beyond white liberals.
Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.), who has endorsed Clinton, said Sanders has a weakness in West Virginia greater even than the socialist label: coal. Although the economics-first focus makes sense, Manchin said, Sanders’s support for every major Obama initiative on the environment makes his candidacy a “nonstarter” here.
“His environmental stance?” Manchin asked. “Oh, my, it would be awful.”
But Sanders believes that such naysayers are missing the weight of his cardinal argument — for greater economic fairness — and voters’ willingness to look past the other issues where they disagree.
He has won elections in Vermont, a white, rural, gun-owning state, as a socialist. The social-issue “distractions” bemoaned by red-state Democrats have seemed to bounce right off his armor. (He has taken mixed positions on gun control, supporting a ban on assault rifles, for instance, but opposing the Brady Bill.) In the end, is the white guy who voted for him in Vermont any different than the white guy in West Virginia or Kentucky or Ohio who was told to blame liberals for his problems?
[A key to the Southern vote lies centuries ago on another continent ]
“What I’ve found in Vermont and around the country is that we go to people and say, ‘Look, we do have differences,’ ” Sanders said. “ ‘I believe in gay marriage. I’m not going to change your view if you don’t. I believe climate change is absolutely real, and some of you do not. But how many of you think we should give hundreds of billions in tax breaks to the richest 1 percent?’ ”
Conservative Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) has made a similar argument — that his party can win, with no changes to its message, if more evangelical voters are inspired to come out. Bolstering Sanders’s case are his strong numbers in independent polls. A national Quinnipiac survey last month found him polling marginally better against leading Republican candidates than Clinton did. A Marquette University poll last week indicated that Sanders is running just as strong as Clinton in Wisconsin, home to some of the white voters who have abandoned the Democrats in off years.
Something similar may be happening in West Virginia. In Morgantown, home to West Virginia University, a 62-year-old activist named Andy Cockburn went to an early organizing meeting for Clinton and found only 10 other people. In July, more than 100 people packed a bar basement and started organizing for Sanders. Railing against oligarchies and “the 1 percent” means one thing in New York or San Francisco. It means more in West Virginia, where coal magnate Don Blankenship is standing trial and Patriot Coal is trying to spend most of a $22 million settlement for miners on its own attorneys. On Friday night, at the Democrats’ Jefferson-Jackson dinner in the state capital, Charleston, Bill Clinton echoed his wife and condemned Patriot.
But Sanders is the candidate with consistency on corporate greed — a fact that has helped him slow down some labor endorsements for Clinton. According to the New York Times, the International Association of Fire Fighters hit the pause button on its expected endorsement after too many local leaders blanched. On Saturday, Sanders lost the endorsement of the National Education Association but only after a similar protest made Clinton work for it.
The UMWA has never endorsed Clinton. In 2008, it went for the doomed campaign of John Edwards, switching to Obama only after he had basically sewn up the nomination. In 2012 it made no endorsement, in an avowed protest of the administration’s environmental regulations. This year, the union, with 32,354 of its 71,160 members based in West Virginia, is not yet close to a decision.
“What we’re going to do is base our decision on our future here,” UMWA President Cecil Roberts said in an interview — “whether we’re going to have health care, have pensions, have jobs for people in Appalachia.”
That question could vex Sanders just as much as Clinton. In his energy talking points, Sanders notes that he “introduced the gold standard for climate-change legislation with Sen. Barbara Boxer to tax carbon and methane emissions,” a résumé item that would be about as welcome in West Virginia as a University of Maryland Terps jersey. Asked what he would say to a coal miner who blames Environmental Protection Agency regulations for the loss of his job, Sanders said he could only be straight with him.
“What we have to say is, ‘Look, through no fault of your own, you’re working in an industry which is helping to cause climate change and in fact having a negative impact on the country and world,’ ” Sanders said. “What the government does have is an obligation to say: ‘We’ll protect you financially as we transition away from fossil fuel. We are going to create jobs in your community, extended unemployment benefits. If you lose your job to a trade deal, you get benefits for two years. You get job training.’ I would take that same approach to energy jobs that are lost because of the threat of climate change.”
Nothing about Sanders’s pitch is easy, but this piece is especially rough.
State Rep. Mike Caputo (D), a miner and a union member, said his brothers need jobs, not pity. In an interview at the UMWA office in Fairmont, he asked: “You can train a guy to be a truck driver, but what’s he going to haul? Coal miners don’t want unemployment. They want work.”
Still, on Thursday, at his farm in Grafton, Democratic former state legislator Mike Manypenny was firm that enthusiasm for Sanders is big and getting bigger. Manypenny, one of the many casualties of a 2014 Republican sweep, is running for Congress on the theory that the progressive politics he shares with Sanders — a living wage, the return of Glass-Steagall’s repealed restrictions on banks — are the way to break the conservative grip on voters’ imaginations.
“The problem last year was that everybody focused on getting the vote out from the historic Democratic voters,” he explained. “Those are the seniors — I don’t need to tell you that each year you lose a little more of them. This is something new. Barring anything happening in the Democratic debate, like Bernie stumbling badly, I don’t see anything changing the momentum. I think he wins.” | 1 |
Who is silencing political speech, physically attacking those with divergent views, demanding that every American share one single ideology. But sadly, the real truth is that these violent agitators have little idea about why they march. Theirs is a movement with no cause, a temper tantrum with no purpose. They are a generation lost in space .a propaganda arm of the party of disappointment. If I were wrong, would Hillary Clinton really be their standard bearer? These rioters are being manipulated by big government forces who need them to regain political power | 0 |
The fast food industry has been warning those demanding a $15/hr. wage that they could be easily replaced.In the social sciences, unintended consequences (sometimes unanticipated consequences or unforeseen consequences) are outcomes that are not the ones foreseen and intended by a purposeful action. The term was popularised in the twentieth century by American sociologist Robert K. Merton. It s cheaper to buy a $35,000 robotic arm than it is to hire an employee who s inefficient making $15 an hour bagging french fries, former McDonald s USA CEO Ed Rensi said in an interview on Tuesday on the Fox Business Network s Mornings with Maria. It s nonsense and it s very destructive and it s inflationary and it s going to cause a job loss across this country like you re not going to believe. According to Rensi, rising labor costs are forcing chains to cut entry-level jobs and replace workers with machines. Currently, Wendy s, McDonald s, and Panera are rolling out kiosks across the US, in part because of the rising cost of labor. Business InsiderAccording to statista.com, in 2016, there were over 3.7 million people in the US who were employed in the fast food industry. When those jobs go away, where will these workers go for employment? Will they be forced to do the jobs that only the illegal aliens will do? Wendy s just announced their plans to install self-ordering kiosks at about 1,000 locations by the end of the year.A typical location would have three kiosks, The Columbus Dispatch reported. Higher-volume restaurants will be given priority for the kiosks.Wendy s chief information officer, David Trimm, said the kiosks are intended to appeal to younger customers and reduce labor costs. Kiosks also allow customers of the fast food giant to circumvent long lines during peak dining hours while increasing kitchen production.Trim estimates the company will see a return on its investment in less than two years. They are looking to improve their automation and their labor costs, and this is a good way to do it, said Darren Tristano, vice president with Technomic, a food-service research and consulting firm. They are also trying to enhance the customer experience. Younger customers prefer to use a kiosk. Customers will still be able to order at the counter for now, although Tristan predicts that mobile ordering and payment via smartphones will one day overtake self-ordering kiosks and cash registers. Weasel Zippers, WMUR | 1 |
GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump has taken a ridiculously hardline and even bigoted stance on immigration. He has promised to build a wall and force Mexico to pay for it, and he has said that he will erect deportation forces to root out and get rid of all people in the United States without proper documentation. Well, as we already knew, it turns out that The Donald is the ultimate hypocrite on this one.According to the Associated Press, it turns out that Donald Trump s wife Melania violated immigration laws by working illegally in the United States when she first arrived from her native Slovenia. Melania often modeled using just her first name, and was first granted entry into the country on a visitor s visa, known as a B1/B2 visa. This occurred on August 27, 1996. Melania did not get a legal work visa until October 18, 1996. During the time when she was prohibited from working in the country, Melania made money on ten different modeling assignments, totaling upwards of $20,000. She got a green card in 2000, and became a naturalized citizen in 2006.So, in other words, Melania Trump lied about her immigration story, as recently as Thursday, when she once again touted how a million percent legal immigration is the only way to go, and that this is how she did it. Melania said, in part, in her stump speech: As a young entrepreneur, I wanted to follow my dream to a place where freedom and opportunity were in abundance. So of course, I came here. Living and working in America was a true blessing, but I wanted something more. I wanted to be an American. Well, it appears that, as has long been suspected, that Melania Trump wasn t as kosher in her immigration and work practices as she claims. The information obtained by the AP include, but are not limited to, her contract from Metropolitan International Management a modeling agency. Also, there s the ledgers from the agency, which is no longer in business, that shows Melania working during the time when she had the visitor s visa, but no work visa. It seems to be a complicated story full of many attempts to cover up Melania s wrongdoing, but it is certainly quite interesting. This would be why Melania Trump never released actual records regarding her initial immigration to the United States and her eventual path to citizenship. While it is unlikely that her citizenship is at risk, it certainly means that she committed immigration fraud. You can read more here at the Associated Press.The long and short of it is this: Donald Trump launched his crazy bid for the presidency preying on the fears of the other. Namely, immigrants. That is the height of hypocrisy, seeing as how his own wife didn t completely comply with immigration law. Hopefully this story, and the many other lies and cover-ups and shady dealings surrounding the Trump campaign break through the hypnotism that the demagogue has spun onto so many desperate citizens of this great country, and they figure out that they are falling for the biggest con of all time.Featured image via Alex Wong/Getty Images | 0 |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Congressional Republicans reached a deal on final tax legislation on Wednesday, clearing the way for final votes next week on a package that would slash the U.S. corporate tax rate to 21 percent and cut taxes for wealthy Americans. Under an agreement between the House of Representatives and the Senate, the corporate tax would be 1 percentage point higher than the 20 percent rate earlier proposed, but still far below the current headline rate of 35 percent, a deep tax reduction that corporations have sought for years. As they finalized the biggest tax overhaul in 30 years, Republicans wavered for weeks on whether to slash the top income tax rate for the wealthy. In the end, they agreed to cut it to 37 percent from the current 39.6 percent. That was despite criticism from Democrats that the Republican plan tilts toward the rich and corporations, offering little to the middle class. “I think we’ve got a pretty good deal,” Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch told reporters. The emerging agreement would repeal the corporate alternative minimum tax, set up to ensure profitable companies pay some federal tax, and expand a proposed $10,000 cap for state and local property tax deductions to include income tax, lawmakers and sources familiar with the negotiations said. It was also expected to limit the popular mortgage interest deduction to home loans of no more than $750,000 and provide the owners of pass-through businesses, such as sole proprietorships and partnerships, with a 20 percent business income deduction. The deal would gut part of the Obamacare health law by repealing a federal fine on individuals who fail to obtain health insurance, while authorizing oil drilling in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Both add-on measures were part of nailing down sufficient votes for passage. Moving the corporate tax target rate to 21 percent from 20 percent gave tax writers enough revenue to make the tax cuts immediate, Republican Senator Ron Johnson told reporters. News of the deal began circulating just before a formal House-Senate conference committee began debating it in public, leading Democrats to decry the gathering as a sham. A final bill could be formally unveiled on Friday, with decisive votes expected next week in both chambers. Despite expressions of confidence about passage from party leaders, the path to a final vote in the Senate could still be perilous. Republicans, who hold a 52-48 majority in the 100-seat Senate, can lose no more than two votes on the tax bill. Republican Senator John McCain, who has brain cancer, was in a military hospital to undergo treatment for the side effects of cancer therapy. At least three other Senate Republicans still seemed to be undecided, including Arizona’s Jeff Flake, who was not specific about his hesitation in brief hallway remarks to reporters. Bob Corker, a fiscal hawk, said he was undecided on whether to support the bill. He told reporters: “My deficit concerns have not been alleviated.” Susan Collins, who helped sink her fellow Republicans’ efforts to dismantle former Democratic President Barack Obama’s healthcare law earlier this year, said she would not make a final decision on which way to vote “until I see the bill.” In a White House speech, Trump said the Internal Revenue Service had advised that if he signs the bill into law before Christmas, the tax cuts would take effect in February. The IRS had no immediate comment. But a Trump administration official said the IRS would have to readjust its paycheck tax withholding tables for employers and that new withholding levels would take effect in February. Under the bill, tax returns being filed next year for 2017 would not be affected, but returns filed in 2019 for 2018 would. Trump appeared in the White House with several middle-class families he said would benefit from the tax bill. The Joint Committee on Taxation and the Congressional Budget Office, both nonpartisan research units of Congress, have forecast that wealthy taxpayers and businesses would gain disproportionately from the debt-financed Republican proposals. As drafted, the Republican plan was expected to add as much as $1.5 trillion to the $20 trillion national debt in 10 years. With that in view, Republicans have been urgently trying to finalize details of their package without increasing its estimated impact on the federal deficit and the debt. At a tax event held by Democrats, Moody’s Analytics Chief Economist Mark Zandi said the Republican bill, if enacted, would cause interest rates to rise, meaning the benefits of a lower corporate tax rate would be “completely washed out.” Stock markets have rallied for months in anticipation of lower taxes for businesses. The benchmark Dow Jones Industrial Average Index .DJI closed up 0.33 percent at 24,585.43. With their defeat on Tuesday in an Alabama special U.S. Senate election, Republicans were under pressure to complete their tax overhaul before Christmas and before a new Democratic senator can be formally seated in the Senate. Democrat Doug Jones’ victory in Alabama came hours ahead of the final tax deal. When Jones arrives in Washington, the Republicans’ already slim Senate majority will narrow to 51-49. Fast action by Republicans on taxes would prevent Jones from upsetting expected vote tallies since he will not likely be seated until late December or early January. Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer called on Republicans to delay a vote on overhauling the tax code for the first time in 30 years until Jones can be seated. But that was unlikely. “Who would’ve thought they could have made the bill even less favorable to the middle class and more slanted towards the wealthy?” Schumer told a news conference. | 0 |
Good morning. Here’s what you need to know: • South Korea’s Parliament voted to impeach President Park over a corruption scandal. Ms. Park has been suspended from office as the Constitutional Court considers whether to formally remove her from office. The court has six months to decide whether the charges are true and merit her ouster. Here are the accusations against her. Hwang the prime minister, is the acting president while Ms. Park is suspended. And here are some of the contenders to replace her, including Ban the departing United Nations secretary general. _____ • In the U. S. Donald J. Trump is expected to name Andrew F. Puzder, a executive, as secretary of labor. Mr. Puzder has opposed expanding overtime and raising the minimum wage. Here’s the latest on the transition. _____ • “This is all uncharted territory. ” That’s the feeling in America’s auto industry, which expects to be reshaped by the Trump administration. A chief concern is Mr. Trump’s threat of tariffs on the millions of vehicles sold in the U. S. each year that were built in Japan, Korea and other countries. In Britain, Asian automakers want assurances from the government that “Brexit” won’t block their access to the European Union. _____ • President Hassan Rouhani of Iran has signed a wave of oil deals with Asian and European energy companies in recent weeks. “Our officials are in a rush to sign contracts with big oil companies in order to have leverage when Trump enters the White House,” said an economist with close ties to the government. _____ • A state of emergency has been declared in the Aceh province of Indonesia, where a powerful earthquake on Wednesday killed more than 100 people and injured hundreds of others. “All the victims were crushed in collapsed buildings,” said a spokesman for the national disaster management agency. _____ • The dollar has surged since the U. S. election: up 8 percent against the Japanese yen and 10 percent against the Mexican peso. Against the Chinese yuan, the move has been less pronounced — just 1. 5 percent. But for emerging markets, accustomed to cheap dollar debt, the surge may signal instability in the future. • Michael Jordan owns the right to his name in Chinese characters, China’s highest court ruled, in a landmark decision for future trademark cases. • Microsoft acquired LinkedIn for $26. 2 billion. But there are ample reasons to be skeptical that the deal, the biggest by far in Microsoft’s history, will pay off. • Airbnb has faced regulatory battles in cities around the world. But New Orleans was able to gain concessions from the company that few other towns have received. • The gadget age is over, our columnist writes, and it could make life a lot less fun. • U. S. markets were up. Here’s a global snapshot. • Nguyen Ngoc Luong, a journalist who was essential to The Times coverage of the Vietnam War and refused an offer to be relocated, died in Ho Chi Minh City. He was 79. [The New York Times] • Foreign diplomats in India have lodged protests over the country’s limit on bank withdrawals. [CNN Money] • A recent cyber attack has Germany concerned about becoming a target of Russia’s campaign to destabilize Western democracies. [The New York Times] • Satellite imagery shows that Vietnam is dredging on a disputed reef in the South China Sea, which could anger Beijing. [Reuters] • Here’s a look at how the Pearl Harbor attack, 75 years ago this week, shaped the modern world. [The New York Times] • The Democratic Party may want to look to California in its search for future leaders. [The New York Times] • A city in Japan is keeping track of elderly dementia patients by sticking bar codes with personal data to their fingers and toes. [BBC] • Traveling to Sydney, Australia? We’ve got recommendations on how to spend 36 hours in the city. • John Glenn, the first American to orbit Earth, died on Thursday. He was 95. • In a Myanmar market, a paleontologist discovered a chunk of amber with the feathered tail of a dinosaur trapped inside. • The recovery of a woman with advanced colon cancer, after treatment with cells from her own immune system, may help doctors develop new treatments for other patients. • And remember the trend of new bank notes featuring women that we told you about yesterday? Canada’s finance minister announced that Viola Desmond, a civil rights pioneer, will be the first Canadian woman on a note. On this day in 1917, the First World War was entrenched in some of its darkest days. The Allies were in a stalemate on the Western Front, and good news was in short supply. So it was a huge morale booster for the Allies when Turkish forces surrendered the holy city of Jerusalem to Britain’s Gen. Edmund Allenby. Prime Minister David Lloyd George called it “a Christmas present for the British people. ” The New York Herald’s front page proclaimed: “Jerusalem is rescued by British after 673 years of Moslem Rule. ” Jews in the city, inspired a month earlier by Britain’s Balfour Declaration in support of a Jewish homeland, rejoiced. Some Arabs, many of whom had been conscripted by the Ottomans, danced in the streets. Two more details: When General Allenby entered the Old City, he did so on foot and unfurled no flags, in a sign of respect. He also deployed Muslim troops to ease sectarian tension. Until he arrived, the mayor of Jerusalem had been scrambling to find a British official to whom he could cede control. An army cook who got lost while looking for food was initially asked. He declined, saying “I don’t want the city I want eggs. ” _____ Your Morning Briefing is published weekday mornings. What would you like to see here? Contact us at asiabriefing@nytimes. com. | 0 |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said on Friday he hoped Congress had reached a turning point on efforts to repeal Obamacare and it was time for the parties to work together to stabilize the insurance markets and fix the system’s weaknesses. Schumer, speaking at a news conference, praised the three Republican senators who decided join Democrats in voting against a Senate effort to pass a slimmed-down version of the Republican healthcare bill. “I hope this is a turning point,” Schumer told reporters. “On healthcare, I hope we can work together to make the system better in a bipartisan way.” | 1 |
Civil Rights activist Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr. attended the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition convention in Chicago on Thursday, where he claimed President Donald Trump stole the election.Jackson was introducing the Democratic National Committee chairman Tom Perez when he made the accusation against Trump. To have a head of our party who is sensitive to the plight of working people is the order of this day, Jackson told the crowd. Don t forget when you lose, you tend to amplify would ve, could ve, should ve. When you win you cover up your sins. We worked last year. We won the election. It was stolen, Jackson concluded. -WFBTrump derangement syndrome is apparently alive and well with the Reverend Jesse Jackson at his Rainbow Push shakedown convention in crooked Chicago, IL. If it wasn t so funny, we d almost feel sorry for these two bit jack-holes like Jesse Jackson, former Democrat presidential candidate, lifetime shakedown artist and father of former IL State Rep and convicted felon Jesse Jackson Jr | 1 |
It s no secret that Donald Trump got a lot of help from the Russian government this election. From the wildfire of fake news spread across the internet to leaks on Hillary Clinton, Russia and its dear leader Vladimir Putin were in the bag for the new president-elect.But there s proof that the Kremlin and its band of thugs may have acted in a more nefarious, intricate way and Democrats want to expose that.House Democrats, led by ranking member Adam Schiff (California) of the Committee on Intelligence, are set to introduce legislation that calls for a federal probe into whether or not and to what extent the Russian government played in the U.S. election via hacking, to take action on evidence of foreign interference in the 2016 U.S. elections. California Rep. Eric Swalwell and Maryland Rep. Elijah Cummings will introduce the bill in the lame duck sessionIn a letter to the White House, Schiff asked that President Obama share with members of Congress a classified report that details Russia s potential role in swaying the outcome of the election and that it very well could have given us President Trump:We are deeply concerned by Russian efforts to undermine, interfere with and even influence the outcome of our recent election. By eroding Americans and foreigners trust in US institutions, Russia both weakens our country and sows global instability and uncertainty.The letter, signed by all six Democrats on the committee, comes days after Senate Democrats sent the White House a similar letter urging transparency on Russia.In Time magazine, Donald Trump told interviewers that he does not believe Russia had instigated a hack (or any other meddling) and that the concern of such was politically motivated by the Democrats: I don t believe it. I don t believe they interfered, Trump said in an interview with Time magazine, which named him person of the year.When asked by Time if the conclusion reached by U.S. officials was motivated by politics, Trump responded, I think so. While it s unclear how much of an impact the intrusions had on the election outcome, the revelations proved embarrassing for the Democratic Party and cost DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz her job at the top of the committee.Instead, Trump famously blamed any hacking and counter-election offenses by a 400 pound guy in a basement somewhere in the United States (without providing evidence).While Trump peddles conspiracy theories, Democrats seek to legitimize the electoral process of the United States.Featured image via Winn McNamee/Getty Images | 0 |
Friday at the National Rifle Association (NRA) Leadership Forum in Atlanta, President Donald Trump declared he would build a wall on the U. S. border, adding, “That’s an easy one. ” Trump said, “We’ve already seen — listen to this, it’s never happened before — people can’t even believe it. And by the way, don’t even think about it. Don’t even think about it. You know, they are trying to use the number against us because we’ve done so unbelievably at the borders. They are trying to use it against us. But you need that wall to stop the human trafficking, to stop the drugs, to stop the wrong people you need the wall. But listen to this, we’ve already seen a 73 percent decrease — never happened before on the southern border — since my election, you see what they’re doing, right? So why do you need a wall? We need a wall. ” “We’ll build the wall,” he continued. “Don’t even think about it. Don’t even think about it. That’s an easy one. We’re going to build a wall. It’s the final element. We need the wall. And it’s a wall, in certain areas where you have massive physical structures, we don’t need, and certain big rivers and all, but we need a wall. And we’re going to get that wall. And the world is getting the message. They know that our borders are no longer open to illegal immigration and that if they try to break in, you’ll be caught and you’ll be returned to your home. You’re not staying any longer. ” “If you keep coming back illegally after deportation, you will be arrested, prosecuted and put behind bars,” Trump added. “Otherwise, it will never end. Let’s also remember that immigration security is national security. We’ve seen the attacks from Boston to San Bernardino, hundreds of individuals from other countries have been charged with offenses in the United States. We spend billions and billions on security all over the world, but then we allow radical Islamic terrorists to center right through our front door. That’s not going to happen anymore. It’s time to get tough. It’s time we finally got smart. And yes, it’s also time to put America first. ” Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN | 0 |
“Hail Hitler” and “Heil Victory” – do they eerily sound the same? It’s because it is. Alt-Right groups are performing Nazi-like salutes for President-Elect Donald Trump. What is the Alt-Right?
The Alt-Right consists of white supremacist groups most likely composed of college-educated white men upholding the superiority of their skin color and believing in every right-wing propaganda.
Such groups have gone almost extinct under President Obama’s administration, reduced to a few sites and pages on social media. However, they surfaced with renewed vigor after Donald Trump’s victory in the 2016 elections.
Their leader, Richard B. Spencer, emerged as something of a wannabe Adolf Hitler and is calling for his followers to take back the U.S. as theirs.
Read Also: Russia Bombs Syria After Putin Speaks With Trump
On November 20, a crowd of people gathered in front of the Ronald Reagan pavilion in Washington to listen to Spencer’s speech.
After quoting the Nazi propaganda in German, Spencer called the assembled white people “children of the sun.” In his speech, he expressed the central idealism of the group – that white-skinned Americans were born to conquer, not follow.
The speech concluded with shouts of “Heil the people! Heil victory!” The people had their arms stretched out in front of them, reported the New York Times .
There was little doubt as to what Spencer meant when he reiterated the belief that white-skinned Americans should not live in the shadows anymore. That the time had come for their “awakening to their own identity.”
Read Also: US, Syria, Russia And Iran International Relations Improving After Donald Trump Win Donald Trump Cabinet
During his Presidential campaign, Trump’s demeanor and discourse were equated with the most notorious leader of all time, Hitler. However, after his victory, his cabinet choices are leaving little to the imagination.
Trump has picked Steve Bannon, founder of the Breitbart website, to be his strategist. Breitbart is widely known to to be a platform for alt-right news.
What’s more, Richard Spencer expressed that he is looking forward to Bannon shaking things up in the White House.
The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum vehemently condemned the “hateful rhetoric” spreading throughout the nation.
Read Also: Mike Pence Upholding Torture For Interrogation Under Donald Trump Administration?
“The Holocaust did not begin with killing, it began with words,” said the museum in a statement, reported Business Insider . “The Museum calls on all American citizens, our religious and civic leaders, and the leadership of all branches of the government to confront racist thinking and divisive hate speech.” Nazi-Like Salute For Trump
There are other instances of alt-right supporters celebrating Trump’s victory in a Nazi-esque fashion.
A restaurant called Little Italy in Washington D.C. recently issued an apology for mistakenly hosting a banquet for a group called National Policy Institute (NPI), reported CBS News . Apparently, the group had tweeted a photo of some of their members giving a Nazi-salute to Donald Trump .
“This expression of support of Hitler is extremely offensive to us, as our restaurant is home to Teammates and Guests of every race, religion and cultural background,” said the restaurant on its Facebook page .
“We want to sincerely apologize to the community of Friendship Heights for inadvertently hosting this meeting, which resulted in hateful sentiment,” it added. ICYMI! A restaurant unintentionally hosted a white supremacist dinner that included #TilaTequila ! https://t.co/jnVdtUUKkr pic.twitter.com/f6sdPCwVpS | 1 |
العراق يمنع الكحول شبكة فولتير | 26 تشرين الأول (أكتوبر) 2016 français Español italiano Deutsch أقر البرلمان العراقي بجلسة مغلقة في 22 أكتوبر 2016، تعديلا على قانون البلديات، يقضي بحظر بيع واستيراد وإنتاج الكحول
اعتمد هذا الحظر لارضاء الإسلاميين عشية إطلاق تحرير الموصل المحتلة من قبل داعش .وينص القانون على غرامات من 8 إلى 20 ألف دولار لكل مخالف
بانظر إلى أن هذا القانون تمييزي بحق المسيحيين الذين يستخدمون النبيذ في إحياء القداس، فقد قرروا رفع دعوى ضد نص القانون أمام محكمة فدرالية
ترجمة
سعيد هلال الشريفي | 1 |
Jared Kushner is an Orthodox Jew working in a White House surrounded by neo-Nazis, but he s also the son-in-law of Donald Trump, so principles be damned. Now, Kushner is normally a reasonably handsome man, if you like the boyish white collar criminal type, but lately it seems, he s been channeling some of his father-in-law s worst qualities, including (bizarrely) his hair, which he s been wearing in that famous Trump combover/swirl/whatever the hell that thing is.I think we re in big trouble now. For some reason, Jared Kushner has started styling his hair like Donald Trump.? pic.twitter.com/mvHoPGN9ps Mike Sington (@MikeSington) April 28, 2017Jared and the kids bring treats out to the Secret Service https://t.co/TmTsUnQXZi pic.twitter.com/kvNh9V13OF Daily Mail US (@DailyMail) April 28, 2017Twitter, obviously, has their theories.@SqueegeeSink @MikeSington Ivanka wants him to look like her dad? Yeah I went there. A (@amatorah) April 29, 2017@MikeSington Ivanka wants him to role play daddy NQCowboy (@nqcowboy68) April 29, 2017@MikeSington @annanotherthng I had a terrifying thought. What if Ivanka chose the style, because the weird fascination and inappropriate relationship is a 2 way street?! pic.twitter.com/Hq7YPGntRi Loryn Kilpatrick (@Lo_K_87) April 30, 2017Ick.@MikeSington Well, he s in charge of everything I m sure his hair is falling out and a weird combover is necessary. Sad Sheila H Garland ? (@SheilaGinHB) April 29, 2017@MikeSington @gillyarcht The right-posterior oblique partline, combined with an anterior pushthrough, is classic emerging authoritarian. pic.twitter.com/D5VWw0nuGU Alan (@GammaCounter) April 29, 2017@MikeSington I ve heard of being groomed to take over, but this is ridiculous. Monica A. (@StillSheResists) April 29, 2017Some see something a bit more calculated.@MikeSington Mimic the narcissist. That is how you rise in power. That is how you stay in power. Trump will notice & limp ego will get momentary rise. SnohoMo (@SnohoMo) April 29, 2017It s entirely possible that Kushner chose this new look to impress his father-in-law, although he was made the de facto president with his old hair, so he had clearly already made the right impression.More likely, this hairdo was Trump s doing. Despite the fact that Trump is a one man What Not to Wear (ties too long, suits too big and that hair!), #45 is obsessed with what everyone around him wears. Kushner s monstrosity reportedly came courtesy of Trump s stylist which is located across the street from Trump s New York residence. It s not tough to imagine him telling Kushner to get the Trump. On a subconscious level, though, this hair style speaks to more than just trying to suck up to the boss. It s about a full makeover, which with Kushner, includes his principles.Featured image via Win McNamee/Getty Images | 0 |
Thank you to the American Mirror for putting this video together showing Nancy s very bad week.Nancy Pelosi is apparently the best leadership Democrats have to offer America, so drink it in.During two public appearances this week, she confused Iran with Iraq, pronounced words strangely, and claimed Republicans are offering a Mini Me or Mickey Mouse budget. Ends her very strange press conference by saying, I don t know. But there s no there there . We re beginning to wonder if Nancy is still there ?Is Nancy so flustered and panicked by Trump s presidency and her diminished role in Congress that she is no longer able to speak in public? Or, is it possible (all kidding aside) that she needs to be examined by a medical professional?You be the judge | 1 |
ANKARA (Reuters) - The Turkish government has launched an investigation into a poster unfurled by fans of Istanbul s Galatasaray soccer team that pro-Turkish media said was clearly linked to organizers of the 2016 attempted coup. Just before Sunday s match kicked between Galatasaray and local rivals Fenerbahce, the home fans opened a giant red and yellow poster behind the goal showing Sylvester Stallone s famous fictional boxer Rocky , with the caption Stand Up and They look big because you are kneeling. Pro-government Turkish media linked the poster and its caption to the network of U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gulen, whom Ankara accuses of masterminding the July 2016 failed coup attempt. Pro-government daily Takvim said the poster was a reference to a speech by Gulen, where he was quoted reading from a poem that ends with the words Stand Up Sakarya . Sakarya is a province in northwest Turkey. Prime Minister Binali Yildirim on Monday ordered authorities to carry out an investigation into the poster, sources from his office said. The game between Galatasaray and Fenerbahce, Turkey s biggest fixture, ended in a 0-0 draw after a match that was marred by violence in which a referee was injured. In a statement, Galatasaray said the accusations were a pathetic attempt to discredit the club, adding that the same poster was used at a match in May. We will use all our legal rights against any institution, person and social media account who tried to put the Galatasaray name next to that of the red-handed leader of the heinous terrorist organisation by using the choreography as an excuse, the club said on its website. Some 50,000 people have been jailed pending trial over suspected links to last year s failed coup and more than 150,000 have been sacked or suspended from their jobs in the military, public and private sectors. Rights groups and Turkey s Western allies have said President Tayyip Erdogan is using the failed coup as a pretext to crush dissent, but the government says the measures are necessary to fight the threats it is facing. Following the statement from Yildirim s office, Galatasaray s shares were down 4.89 percent as of 1535 GMT. Current league leaders Galatasaray are Turkey s most decorated soccer club, with 20 league championships, and became the first Turkish club to win a major European trophy when they won the 2000 UEFA Cup, the predecessor to the Europa league. | 1 |
REDDING, Calif. (Reuters) - Presumptive Republican U.S. presidential nominee Donald Trump on Friday denounced protesters in California as “thugs” a day after another demonstration outside one of his political rallies turned violent ahead of the state’s presidential primary. Demonstrators traded blows on Thursday evening in the street outside the San Jose Convention Center, videos posted to Twitter and online by media showed. Hundreds of protesters waved Mexican flags, chanted anti-Trump slogans and burned Trump hats and at least one U.S. flag. Speaking before a packed crowd in the northern California city of Redding on Friday, Trump described the previous night’s rally as “a love fest inside. No problems whatsoever.” But then his supporters “walked out and they got accosted by a bunch of thugs,” he said. The protesters, many angry over Trump’s rhetoric against illegal immigration, have gathered at Trump rallies for months. Trump, now the Republican Party’s likely presidential nominee for the Nov. 8 election, canceled a rally in Chicago in March after clashes broke out between his supporters and protesters. The San Jose Police Department reported 300 to 400 protesters had gathered outside the Trump rally on Thursday, where police formed lines to protect attendants exiting the convention center. A number of the skirmishes occurred beyond police lines on nearby streets and at a parking garage, a Reuters photographer said. One sergeant suffered minor injuries after a protester struck him with a metal object. Police reported four arrests. Over 250 officers staffed the “all-hands on deck event,” said San Jose Police Chief Eddie Garcia. “In hindsight, we’d say that wasn’t enough,” said Garcia. For future events of that scope, “we would need more officers with an absolute, number one goal of keeping both parties separate as much as we can.” San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo, a Democrat, told the Associated Press that Trump needs to take responsibility for his supporters’ conduct at the rallies. But Trump, speaking in Redding on Friday, made light of the mayor’s concerns. “You know what I say when we have a protestor, which isn’t very often, I say, ‘Be very gentle, please don’t hurt him ... If he punches you in the face, smile,’” Trump said. Violence has peppered Trump’s recent rallies in New Mexico and California, the U.S. state with the largest immigrant population, in advance of primary elections there on Tuesday. The latest violence followed Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton’s scorching critique of Trump in a speech on Thursday in which she derided the real estate developer as a dangerous man with an angry, fearful world view. Clinton told CNN on Friday that Trump had set a “low bar” regarding violence at political events. “Now is it a surprise that people who don’t like him are stepping over that bar? I don’t think it is,” Clinton said. But Friday afternoon’s rally was peaceful as supporters from Redding and neighboring towns gathered as early as 8 a.m. local time (1500 GMT) to catch a glimpse of the candidate, many wearing hats emblazoned with Trump’s signature slogan: “Make America Great Again.” Despite the unrest in San Jose, attendees said they felt at ease at Friday’s event. “We’re both retired law enforcement,” Heather Jimenez, a 45-year-old Cottonwood resident, said of herself and her husband. “No worries.” Although no formal protests broke out in Redding, the event attracted some who disapprove of Trump, but wanted to witness his high-flying campaign style in person. “We’ve been hearing his nonsense,” said Rachel Ochoa, a 57-year-old Redding resident who teaches English as a second language. “All we hear is him attacking the opponents and others.” Trump has accused Mexico of sending drug dealers and rapists across the U.S. border and has promised to build a wall between the two neighboring countries and make Mexico pay for it. “We’re gonna build that wall, folks,” Trump said on Friday as the crowd chanted its support. Trump also lamented the loss of American jobs to other countries, a key theme in his campaign. The message resonated in Redding, which residents say has been hit hard by the economic downturn. “We’ve got a lot of people here out of work,” said Joyce Tausch, a 78-year-old retiree who lives in Redding. “Trump is gonna do things for us.” | 1 |
Elizabeth Warren (@elizabethforma): Get this Donald: nasty women are tough, nasty women are smart, and nasty women vote. pic.twitter.com/rUIw7Yzxc8 CSPAN (@cspan) October 24, 2016 | 1 |
But that s another story Make a sub-standard movie win sub-standard prizes.Moving on to 2017 Who has time to worry about slights against black actors or directors this year, it s TRASH TRUMP time, and regardless of FACTS (like uh the FACT that Obama and his DHS actually created the list of Muslim Majority countries who Trump used in his temporary ban) DuVernay showed up wearing a dress she claims was made in a majority Muslim country. How very progressive A small sign of solidarity. I chose to wear a gown by a designer from a majority Muslim country. Thanks to @AshiStudio of Lebanon. #Oscars pic.twitter.com/CbEkK7rCpG Ava DuVernay (@ava) February 27, 2017Here s our response to her on Twitter:If you re going to attempt to represent how women REALLY look in Muslim majority nations, we re happy to provide you with a few actual pictures. We re just two moms with teenage daughters who want to see our girls grow up in a Sharia-free zone. So while you re out at the Academy s pretending there s something glamorous about being a woman in a majority Muslim nation, you might want to consider what you re promoting. Here s a few more photos of women s fashion in majority Muslim nations just for fun: So next time you re going to wear a dress that represents Muslim women from majority Muslim nations, maybe you should remember the burka You don t want to be caught dead without one in Yemen or something like that. | 1 |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. advisory commission warned on Wednesday that China’s growing military might may make it more likely to use force to pursue its interests and called for a government probe into how far outsourcing to China has weakened the U.S. defense industry. The annual report of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission pointed to a growing threat to U.S. national security from Chinese spying, including infiltration of U.S. organizations, and called on Congress to bar Chinese state enterprises from acquiring control of U.S. firms. The release of the report to Congress comes a week after Donald Trump won the U.S. presidential election. Trump, an outspoken Republican who has vowed to take a tougher line in trade and security dealings with China than President Barack Obama, will take office on Jan. 20. The panel is a bipartisan body set up in 2000 to monitor the national security implications of the U.S. trade and economic relationship with China and to make recommendations to Congress for legislative and administrative action. Its report also called on Congress to back more frequent U.S. Navy freedom-of-navigation operations in the South China Sea, one of the world’s busiest trade routes where China’s building of artificial islands with military facilities has raised concerns about future freedom of movement. Beijing and its neighbors have conflicting territorial claims there. The commission said ongoing reforms of the People’s Liberation Army would strengthen Beijing’s hand and noted that China was close to completing its first domestically produced aircraft carrier. “China’s pursuit of expeditionary capabilities, coupled with the aggressive trends that have been displayed in both the East and South China Seas, are compounding existing concerns about China’s rise among U.S. allies and partners in the greater Asia,” the report said. “Given its enhanced strategic lift capability, strengthened employment of special operations forces, increasing capabilities of surface vessels and aircraft, and more frequent and sophisticated experience operating abroad, China may also be more inclined to use force to protect its interests,” it said. The panel said that U.S. responses to the threat from Chinese intelligence gathering had suffered from a lack of a coordinated effort by U.S. intelligence agencies. It said Congress should also direct the U.S. Government Accountability Office to prepare a report “examining the extent to which large-scale outsourcing of manufacturing activities to China is leading to the hollowing out of the U.S. defense industrial base.” “This report should also detail the national security implications of a diminished domestic industrial base (including assessing any impact on U.S. military readiness), compromised U.S. military supply chains, and reduced capability to manufacture state-of-the-art military systems and equipment,” it said. The commission’s report also recommended that Congress call on the U.S. State Department to produce educational materials to alert U.S. citizens overseas and students going to China to the dangers of recruitment efforts by Chinese agents. | 1 |
Sam Sifton emails readers of Cooking five days a week to talk about food and suggest recipes. That email also appears here. To receive it in your inbox, register here. Good morning. Nigella Lawson wrote a terrific article for us a few years ago about the pleasures of cooking ahead rather than, as the French put it, à la minute. She included in it a recipe that would become one of our favorites for fall: spiced beef in red wine. You could make that today, cool it, bag it in single portions and freeze them for use later — order in some Chinese food for dinner. Or you could just eat it for dinner tonight, accompanied by some rice, or polenta. Fall Sundays are great for either way. On Monday night, if you’re not celebrating Rosh Hashana, maybe give Anna Jones’s recipe for a spaghetti dinner with tomatoes and kale a try. As our Tejal Rao wrote last week, “you boil the raw pasta not just with water, but also with halved cherry tomatoes, lemon zest and greens. By the time the pasta has cooked, the liquids have reduced to form a thick, starchy sauce. ” At the start of the week, that sounds pretty great. Of course, if it’s not just the start of the week for you, but the start of a new year, maybe you’ll need more substantial fare. Cooking Melissa Clark’s braised brisket with plums, star anise and port today will allow it to cure nicely in the refrigerator overnight. Reheat and serve! While you’re at it, give one of Joan Nathan’s new recipes for a Rosh Hashana dessert a try. Choose between a plum almond tart and an apple cider honey cake. Or make both. On Tuesday, maybe you could cook Melissa’s recipe for sweet and spicy roast chicken? (It’s awesome with couscous.) Or Mark Bittman’s curried tofu with soy sauce? Wednesday, we’re eating fish. Would you like some salmon with parsley sauce? Or some arctic char with spinach butter? If it’s chilly enough, and you have a fireplace (lucky you) you could make Tamar Adler’s fireplace trout. Read Trollope afterward by candlelight, and check on the horses before bed. Then, on Thursday, how about a warm bread salad to beat all bread salads, from the indefatigable Florence Fabricant, via the late, great Judy Rodgers? Accept no substitutions. And then on Friday night, you could wrap the week up with a big, fat turkey meatloaf. Or if that does not inspire, with a thick steak. No? O. K. let’s make it a quinoa and rice bowl and call it a week. There are many, many more recipes on Cooking that you might make this week. Please save the ones you’re interested in to your recipe box, and rate them when you’re done cooking. (Share them around, as well, on email and social media: People you know need to see, right now, this easy, awesome Nancy Silverton recipe for roasted chicken thighs.) And if you run into trouble, or have something to tell us for good or for ill: cookingcare@nytimes. com. Operators are standing by. Now, do you know the term “subtweet”? Here’s an example of an excellent one, from Michiko Kakutani — and it’s not even on Twitter! See you tomorrow. | 0 |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The FBI plans to hand over some of its notes from its interview with U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton regarding her use of private email while secretary of state to news outlets that requested them, CNN reported on Tuesday. However, the Federal Bureau of Investigation will not yet release other notes from the law enforcement agency’s interviews with Clinton aides or turn over other investigative material, CNN said, citing unnamed sources. The materials could be released as soon as Wednesday to media companies that formally sought them under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), according to CNN. FBI representatives declined to confirm the report to Reuters. In addition to the notes, CNN said the FBI will give the news outlets the roughly 30-page report it sent to the U.S. Department of Justice last month when it recommended against pursuing criminal charges against Clinton, who is vying for the White House in the Nov. 8 U.S. election. The Clinton campaign, which had expressed concern about selective leaks from the notes, welcomed the release. “This is something that we wanted to have happen,” campaign spokeswoman Kristina Schake told CNN in an interview. Several media outlets, including Reuters, have made FOIA requests for a summary of the interview. Such requests are often returned with sensitive information redacted. FBI Director James Comey told Congress that the interview was not recorded, so the agency would only be able to provide a summary. | 0 |
B b but Baron Trump wore a t-shirt that said The Expert! With classes at Harvard starting in just a few short weeks, Malia Obama is making sure to end her gap year in style.The former First Daughter was caught on video rolling wildly on the ground while pounding her fists and during a performance at the Lollapalooza music festival in Chicago.Video obtained by TMZ shows Malia and a gal pal dancing wildly as the Las Vegas rock band played its hits during the headlining set on Friday night.This isn t the first time Malia has been spotted enjoying herself while out in public with her friends.The 19-year-old was videotaped last year at the festival twerking and grinding while listening to rapper Bryson Tiller.Malia s friend throws herself to the ground while Obama s daughter jokingly pretends to play the drums, matching her moves with the music.She then helps her friend up before they turn to watch the rest of the show, but the party was far from over.Footage later captured Malia taking her turn to writhe and roll on the grass, thrashing around before headbanging and pounding the ground during a guitar riff.Malia and her friends reportedly spent most of their time backstage during The Killers set, before going to the grassy area to dance. Daily Mail In other words, Malia Obama was backstage hanging out with the one-percenters. Don t tell her racist mom it could blow the whole victim narrative she pushed for 8 painful years | 1 |
The irony here isn t lost on us. Hillary is being compared to the President she wanted to take down. Nixon s got nothing on this criminal who wiped her server clean after e-mails were requested from her. John Fund questions the Democrat s strategy to support a Nixonian type candidate with more baggage than a Samsonite factory She s secretive, scandal-plagued, and seemingly inevitable. Ever since Hillary Clinton s e-mail scandal broke, comparisons between her secretive style and that of Richard Nixon, whom she ironically pursued as a young lawyer on the House impeachment committee, have been frequent. But with the revelation that she wiped her private e-mail server clean after her records were requested by the State Department last year, the comparisons are becoming more concrete. Washington wags note that even Nixon never destroyed the tapes, but Hillary has permanently erased her e-mails.Exactly what would a Hillary presidency look like, and could it plunge the nation into another round of debilitating Clinton scandals? That s a question Democrats should ask themselves before they hand the nomination over to her. Many Democrats have reservations about Hillary s cozy relations with Wall Street, her 2002 vote for the Iraq War, and the Clinton couple s flexibility on issues. They love winning. They re both masters of it, Hillary maybe even more than Bill. But that s not the same as having a belief system, noted the liberal Rolling Stone magazine. But some Democrats also want Hillary to be challenged on her Nixonian penchant for slipperiness and questionable fundraising.A strong primary challenge has provided clues as to how she would run in a general election something Democrats should know. After all, the first Clinton presidency was good for the Clintons, but not for the Democratic party, which lost both houses of Congress along with a majority of the nation s governorships and during a time of economic prosperity and peace.Read more: National Review | 0 |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Donald Trump’s company was pursuing a Moscow real estate deal while he was running for U.S. president in late 2015 and early 2016, the Washington Post reported on Sunday. The Post report cited people familiar with the proposal and records viewed by Trump Organization lawyers. The newspaper said investors and Trump’s company had signed a letter of intent to build a Trump Tower in Moscow but the project, lacking land and permits, was abandoned at the end of January 2016, just before the U.S. presidential primaries began, according to several people familiar with the proposal. The White House initially referred Reuters’ queries to White House special counsel Ty Cobb and later to the Trump Organization. Neither responded immediately to a request for comment. The Washington Post report comes amid investigations by an independent special counsel and congressional committees into whether Trump campaign aides colluded with Moscow to influence the 2016 U.S. election. Trump and the Russian government have denied any collusion. In July 2016, Trump denied business connections with Russia and said on Twitter: “for the record, I have ZERO investments in Russia.” He told a news conference the next day: “I have nothing to do with Russia.” Discussions about the Moscow project began in earnest in September 2015, the Washington Post said, citing people briefed on the deal. An unidentified investor planned to build the project and, under a licensing agreement, put Trump’s name on it. However, it was unclear how involved or aware Trump was of his company’s negotiations, the newspaper reported. Before the project was dropped, a Russian-born real estate developer had urged Trump to visit Moscow to promote the proposal and suggested he could get Russian President Vladimir Putin to say “great things” about Trump, according to the report, which cited people briefed on the correspondence. Trump, who was elected in November 2016, never went to Moscow, the newspaper said. Details about the proposed deal were contained in a batch of emails to be turned over to congressional investigators shortly, the report said. | 1 |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump on Monday told reporters that he would renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement “at the appropriate time.” Trump’s remarks came at the start of a meeting at the White House with union leaders, where he pledged to stop trade deals that harmed American workers. | 0 |
TOKYO (Reuters) - Election campaigning in Japan began in earnest on Tuesday with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe seeking to repel an upstart new party that has pledged to rid the government of cronyism in a challenge to Abe s near-five year hold on power. The Oct. 22 lower house election pits Abe s Liberal Democratic Party-led coalition against the less than one-month-old Party of Hope headed by popular Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike, a former LDP lawmaker often floated as a possible first female premier. Abe says he needs to renew his mandate to tackle a national crisis stemming from North Korea s nuclear and missile threat and the demographic time-bomb of Japan s fast-ageing population. The 63-year-old Abe called the poll amid opposition disarray and an uptick in approval ratings that had slid due to a series of scandals over suspected cronyism. But the sudden emergence of Koike s party, which also appeals to conservative voters, could upset Abe s calculation. The main opposition Democratic Party imploded last month and a big chunk of its candidates are running on the Party of Hope ticket. In his first campaign speech Abe attacked the opposition for using populist slogans. What creates our future is not a boom or slogan. It is policy that creates our future, Abe said in Fukushima in northeast Japan. We just cannot afford to lose. The LDP-led coalition is defending a two-thirds super majority in parliament s lower house, so losing its simple majority would be a major upset. Abe s LDP had 288 seats in the lower house before it was dissolved for the election, while its junior partner the Komeito had 35. The total number of seats has been cut to 465 from 475. Recent opinion polls show the LDP in the lead and some analysts think Abe could still pull off another landslide victory. A poll of 3,119 voters by public broadcaster NHK released on Tuesday showed 36 percent had positive expectations for the Party of Hope, down from 47 percent in a survey a week ago. Support for Abe s government was unchanged, at 37 percent. A soggy performance for the LDP, however, could stir calls from inside the party to replace Abe or deny him a third term as LDP leader in September 2018, ending his chances of becoming Japan s longest-serving premier. Koike, who defied the LDP last year to run for governor, calls her fledgling party a reformist, conservative group free from the fetters of vested interests an often popular campaign slogan in Japan. We have a surplus of things in this country, but what we don t have is hope for the future, said Koike, 65, kicking off her campaign outside one of Tokyo s major train stations. Koike decided not to run for a lower house seat needed to make her eligible for the premiership and has declined to say whom her party would support for the post, leaving the door open to a variety of possible tie-ups including with Abe s LDP. The Party of Hope looks a lot like the LDP, but doesn t have the same problem with vested interests, said Koji Sasaya, 82, a U.S. resident and longtime LDP supporter who traveled to Japan to vote in the election for Koike s new party. Others outside the station were less convinced by Koike s talk of cleaner politics, while trusting Abe to safeguard national security. I doubt she can deliver politics free from vested interests, said Minori Hiramatsu, a 28-year-old mother of one who was on her way to a job interview. Abe has problems domestically, but he is the best person to protect us from North Korean threats. The Party of Hope echoes Abe s LDP on security and diplomacy - it backs tough sanctions on North Korea and controversial security measures adopted in 2015 to expand the military s role overseas. Koike also agrees with Abe that Japan s post-war, U.S.-drafted, pacifist constitution should be amended, though not necessarily on the changes needed. On economic policies, Koike s party has sought to differentiate itself by demanding an end to nuclear power by 2030 and a freeze on a sales tax hike planned for 2019. Abe wants to keep nuclear power as a key part of Japan s energy mix, and raise the sales tax and spend more of the revenues on education and child care. A center-left Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan, formed from the liberal wing of the failed Democratic Party, is wooing voters dissatisfied with both conservative options. | 0 |
Waking Times
Mainstream media is completely silent on this story, so it is up to you to share the findings of this important research with everyone you know.
New testing conducted by an FDA-registered food safety lab found alarming levels of the chemical glyphosate (known as Monsanto’s Roundup weed-killer) in several very common foods. This independent research reveals that many popular foods have over 1000 times the glyphosate levels that have been established to be harmful.
“With the widespread increase in glyphosate use over the past 20 years and the fact that independent science has confirmed low level exposure to Roundup causes liver and kidney damage at only 0.05 ppb glyphosate equivalent, as reflected by changes in function of over 4000 genes, the American public should be concerned about glyphosate residues on their food.
Additional research points to harmful impacts at levels between 10 ppb and 700 ppb. Considering these shocking new scientific test results, regulators must take the below findings into account during any reauthorization of glyphosate.” ~ Glyphosate: Unsafe on Any Plate
Below are two images that show food testing results published by Food Democracy Now! and The Detox Project, which commissioned the research.
Full laboratory reports for this food testing can be found here . A searchable database of results can be found here .
It is no surprise that Monsanto does not want the public to know about these food safety test results. They pay-off mainstream media outlets and regulatory agencies, keeping the media silent when independent research such as this is published, so they can continue making billions from selling glyphosate.
This new research is only supplement to numerous other independent studies that basically show that Monsanto is poisoning us with glyphosate and the government is doing nothing to stop it. Read: Dramatic Increase in Kidney Disease in the US and Abroad Linked To Roundup (Glyphosate) ‘Weedkiller’ ; and Glyphosate (Roundup) Carcinogenic In the Parts Per Trillion Range .
It is up to each person who sees this story to share it and help others realize that Monsanto is poisoning our food. Anna Hunt . About the Author
Anna Hunt is co-owner an online store offering GMO-free healthy storable food and emergency kits . She is also the staff writer for WakingTimes.com . Anna is a certified Hatha yoga instructor and founder of Atenas Yoga Center. She enjoys raising her children and being a voice for optimal human health and wellness. Visit her essential oils store here . Visit Offgrid Outpost on Facebook . Like Waking Times on Facebook . Follow Waking Times on Twitter . This article ( Monsanto Desperately Hoping to Hide New Food Safety Test Results Anna Hunt Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of WakingTimes or its staff.
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TOKYO (Reuters) - Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said he and U.S. President Donald Trump agreed on Sunday that the international community must step up its response to North Korea after Pyongyang announced it had tested a hydrogen bomb. Abe said he had agreed separately with Russian President Vladimir Putin to cooperate on North Korea. “President Trump and I shared the view that we cannot overlook North Korea’s reckless act and that the international community must show its resolve by applying stronger pressure than had so far been used”, Abe told reporters after the call. “We again confirmed that Japan and the United States are 100 percent together.” It was their second phone call of the day and their fourth since North Korea fired a missile over Japan on Tuesday. Abe said he and Putin agreed that “North Korea’s reckless act is a serious threat” and that they would maintain close contact on the issue. He noted that he and the Russian leader are scheduled to meet this week on the sidelines of a gathering in Vladivostok. | 1 |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Senate on Wednesday approved a bill that would upgrade security at U.S. airports in the aftermath of the Brussels and Istanbul attacks while extending funds for the Federal Aviation Administration for another 14 months. In an 89-to-4 vote, the lawmakers sent the legislation on to the White House for President Barack Obama’s signature. The House of Representatives approved the same measure on Monday. It includes provisions that require tougher vetting of aviation workers with access to secure airport areas, expedited security checks to move passengers more quickly from airport areas that are not secured and a larger number of police dogs for security duty in the U.S. transportation system. It extends the current level of federal funding for FAA programs through September 2017. Congress has been struggling to find agreement on a more comprehensive package to reauthorize the U.S. aviation regulatory agency. A measure that would have provided FAA funding over six years stalled in the House earlier this year, amid disagreement over a proposal to privatize the U.S. air traffic control system. The House later failed to take up a Senate reauthorization bill but added security features from that measure into the legislation approved this week. House Republicans say they intend to use the time between now and September 2017 to find ways to move the privatization plan forward. A Turkish court has jailed seven suspects pending trial on terrorism charges over last month’s triple suicide bombing at Istanbul’s main airport. The attack killed 45 people. Islamic State suicide bombers killed 16 people at Brussels airport - as well as 16 on a Brussels metro train - on March 22 this year. | 0 |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. intelligence officials told top congressional leaders a year ago that Russian hackers were attacking the Democratic Party, three sources familiar with the matter said on Thursday, but the lawmakers were unable to tell the targets about the hacking because the information was so secret. The disclosure of the Top Secret information would have revealed that U.S. intelligence agencies were continuing to monitor the hacking, as well as the sensitive intelligence sources and the methods they were using to do it. The material was marked with additional restrictions and assigned a unique codeword, limiting access to a small number of officials who needed to know that U.S. spy agencies had concluded that two Russian intelligence agencies or their proxies were targeting the Democratic National Committee, the central organizing body of the Democratic Party. The National Security Agency and other intelligence agencies sometimes delay informing targets of foreign intelligence activities under similar circumstances, officials have said. The alleged hacking of the Democrats and the Russian connection did not become public until late last month when the FBI said it was investigating a cyber attack at the DNC. The DNC did not respond to a request for comment for this story. The congressional briefing was given last summer in a secure room called a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility, or SCIF, to a group of congressional leaders informally known as the “Gang of Eight,” the sources said. The group at the time included four Republicans: Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell and House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner, and Senator Richard Burr and Representative Devin Nunes, the House and Senate intelligence committee chairs. Their Democratic counterparts were: Senator Harry Reid and Representative Nancy Pelosi, and Senator Dianne Feinstein and Representative Adam Schiff of the intelligence committees. AshLee Strong, press secretary for the current House Speaker, Paul Ryan, declined to comment, and Pelosi’s office did not immediately respond to requests for comment.Pelosi on Thursday called the hacking an “electronic Watergate” and said the Russians were behind it. DNC officials have said they did not learn about the hacking until months after the initial congressional briefing, when an agent from an FBI cybersecurity squad asked them last fall about the party’s data security arrangements. Even then, the Democratic sources said, the FBI agent never mentioned that U.S. intelligence officials suspected that Russian hackers were targeting the organization. The attack on the DNC later led the hackers to other party organizations, including the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which raises funds for House candidates, Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, and other groups. A DCCC spokeswoman declined to comment. The hackers initially used “spearphishing” - attacks on the private email accounts of dozens of people working for the organizations, several sources said. One of the sources said the Clinton campaign first detected attacks on its data system in early March, and was given what the source described as a “general briefing” about it by the FBI later that month. The source said the FBI made no mention of a Russian connection in that briefing and did not say when the penetration first took place. According to a memo obtained by Reuters, interim DNC Chair Donna Brazile said on Thursday she was creating a Cybersecurity Advisory Board “to ensure prevent future attacks and ensure that the DNC’s cybersecurity capabilities are best-in-class.” (This version of the story corrects seventh paragraph to show that John Boehner was House speaker at time of briefing) | 0 |
Oakland Raiders running back Marshawn Lynch sat during the national anthem over the weekend, ahead of a Saturday preseason game against the Arizona Cardinals, the AP reports.The NFL player was photographed on top of an orange cooler with a banana in Glendale, Ariz.Last year, San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick sat and kneeled during the national anthem and protested police brutality.Lynch previously backed Kaepernick, telling comedian Conan O Brien in September 2016, I d rather see him take a knee than stand up, put his hands up and get murdered. If you re really not racist then you won t see what he done, what he s doing, as a threat to America, but just addressing a problem that we have, Lynch said at the time.Raiders coach Jack Del Rio says he didn t know about Lynch s plans ahead of the game, according to NFL.com. On Marshawn, talked to Marshawn trying to make sure we re on the same page, the coach said. He said, This is something I ve done for 11 years. It s not a form of anything other than me being myself. I said, So you understand how I feel, I very strongly believe in standing for the national anthem. But I m going to respect you as a man, you do your thing. We ll do ours. It s a non-issue for me. Via: Fox News | 1 |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Vice President Mike Pence expressed deep concern to Turkey s prime minister on Thursday about the arrests of American citizens and local staff of U.S. missions in Turkey, the White House said. The matters raised by Pence are some of the issues that have created tension between the two NATO allies in recent months, along with a dispute over a Turkish cleric living in the United States whom Ankara accuses of orchestrating a failed military coup in Turkey last year. In a White House meeting with Prime Minister Binali Yildirim, Pence voiced deep concern over the arrests of American citizens, Mission Turkey local staff, journalists, and members of civil society under the state of emergency and urged transparency and due process in the resolution of their cases, the White House said in a statement. In May, a translator at the U.S. consulate in the province of Adana in southern Turkey was arrested. More recently, a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration worker was detained in Istanbul. Both are accused of links to last year s coup attempt. The U.S. embassy has said the accusations are baseless. Before leaving for the United States, Yildirim had said Turkey s demand for the United States to hand over cleric Fethullah Gulen, who has lived in Pennsylvania since 1999, would be discussed during his visit. U.S. officials have said courts require sufficient evidence to order Gulen s extradition. Another issue to be raised, Yildirim had said, was the fate of some Turkish citizens arrested in the United States - a reference to a wealthy gold trader who was arrested over Iran sanctions evasion last year and an executive at a state-owned bank arrested this year. The White House statement made no mention of any discussions about either subject. It said the two officials expressed hope that their meeting would help to usher in a new chapter in U.S.-Turkey relations and agreed on the need for constructive dialogue, as friends and allies, on bilateral challenges. Pence reaffirmed the enduring strategic partnership between the two countries and stressed the U.S. commitment to stand with Turkey against the militant Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and other terrorist threats. The United States partially resumed issuing visas in Turkey on Monday after getting what it said were assurances about the safety of staff at its missions following a number of detentions. Turkey said it would relax a visa ban of its own. | 0 |
During an interview with New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump referred to Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren as Pocahontas. In the piece published on Saturday, Dowd says that she asked Trump if Trump had received any negative comments from Republicans about him and Sen. Elizabeth Warren s Twitter feud. Trump responded to the question with a question, saying, Who, Pocahontas? The jab is a part of a conservative conspiracy theory that alleges that Warren does not actually have the Native American heritage she claims she does. Apparently conservatives are not capable of understanding that a person can have a mixed racial and ethnic background. Which shouldn t be surprising considering Tea Party types aren t capable of understanding that a man named Barack Hussein Obama,isn t automatically a Muslim terrorist sleeper agent sent here to destroy the United States from the inside.Once again, Trump has denigrated a person based on racial lines. When pressed on any issue Trump falls back to posturing as a bully. He ll take any ridiculous notion and just run with it because he knows that his followers will simply laugh it up.However, even the Republican candidate who seems impervious to gaffes and criticism should reconsider accusing someone of inventing an identity after recent reports of Trump s bizarre John Miller scandal. The Washington Post s Marc Fisher uncovered audio recordings that show that Trump invented a fictional spokesman for himself named John Miller back in the 1970 s, 80 s and 90 s. During that period, Trump would pretend to be Miller or on occasion John Barron - and call reporters where Miller would say wonderful things about Trump, in an attempt to inflate Trump s personal brand.Trump has denied the allegations, though the Post reports that there is courtroom testimony where Trump himself had admitted to creating the fictional personality.Featured image (Photo by David Becker/Getty Images) | 1 |
Real “patriots,” the Bundys claim, stand against a behemoth government that has grasped their lands and their rights. America, after all, is made by ambitious individuals working their way up. A government that promotes social welfare or regulates business destroys the American system because it both limits a man’s ability to make money and requires tax revenue. Those taxes strike at the very heart of individualism because they redistribute money from hard workers to lazy people.
Ammon and Ryan Bundy and their compatriots are quite clear about exactly who those lazy people are. The younger Bundys’ father, Cliven, the Nevada rancher who started an armed standoff with government officials in 2014 over grazing rights, had plenty to say about the “Negro” who lived in government housing and “didn’t have nothing to do.” African-Americans’ laziness led them to abort their children and send their young men to jail. Bundy wondered: “are they better off as slaves, picking cotton and having a family life… or are they better off under government subsidy? They didn’t get no more freedom. They got less freedom.”
And yet, the Bundys are perfectly comfortably taking money from government programs themselves. Aside from animal kill programs that protect herds, drought relief payments, and the 93 percent discount at which the government assesses grazing fees, Ammon Bundy borrowed more than $500,000 from the federal government through a loan guarantee program for small businesses. Ammon Bundy’s father, Cliven, owes the government more than $1 million in grazing fees for running his cattle on public land. No matter how you slice it, taxpayers have subsidized the Bundys.
Observers have made much of this obvious contradiction. But it is not a sign only of the Bundys’ lack of self-awareness, or even simply of white supremacy. It is the intellectual formula that has driven American politics since 1980.
That formula was laid down immediately after the Civil War. In 1865, the South was so devastated by the war that Southerners, white and black, were starving. To provide rations and medical care, and to place homeless Southerners on farming land, Congress created the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands. To emphasize that government aid would be temporary, they placed what became known as the Freedmen’s Bureau within the War Department. In summer 1865, military officers distributed 150,000 rations, a third of them to white people. But the agents also took on an unexpected role. Southern states refused to let ex-slaves testify in court, leaving them to the tender mercies of angry white Southerners, who cheated, beat, raped and murdered them. So Freedmen’s Bureau officers began to hear the cases that pitted black and white Southerners against each other.
While agents often forced black people back to work for abusive employers or demanded subservient behavior, they decided cases in favor of ex-slaves about 68 percent of the time. So Southern Democrats rewrote history. They had not fought the Civil War over slavery after all, they insisted. They had fought it to stop a huge government bureaucracy from forcing its way into their homes and regulating the way they treated “their people.” They had fought, they now claimed, not for slavery, but for states’ rights.
When Congress tried to expand the Freedmen’s Bureau the following year to enable it to provide education for poor Americans of all races, President Andrew Johnson added the final ideological piece to the Democrats’ attack on an activist government. That piece was taxation. During the war, the Republican Congress had created the nation’s first national taxes, including the income tax. Johnson vetoed the bill expanding the Freedmen’s Bureau on two grounds. First, although the schools in the bill would have disproportionately helped whites in the border states, Johnson claimed that it provided benefits for African-Americans that had never been accorded to white people. Second, he explained that the bill would create an army of officials that would harass Southern whites, while the taxes necessary to support them would impoverish hardworking white people.
This formula—that an activist government sucks white tax dollars to provide for lazy minorities—has been sold to voters ever since. It caught on largely because of the odd happenstance that it coincided with the rise of the American cowboy. During this very moment, the cattle industry was taking off on the Western plains. Cowboys tended to be former Confederates who were dirt poor and good with a horse and a gun. Their dirty, hard, ill-paid and dangerous lives mirrored those of Eastern industrial workers, but Southern Democratic newspaper editors grabbed hold of the idea of the free and independent cowboy as the embodiment of American individualism. Cowboys, they said, were the very opposite of the ex-slaves the government was coddling. Cowboys were hardworking young men who asked nothing of the government. The reality, of course, was that the cattle industry depended almost entirely on the American government. The Army protected herds and cattlemen against Indians, Congress funded the railroads that moved cattle to Eastern markets, and Indian agents bought cattle to fulfill the ration provisions of treaties. Cattlemen, in short, received massive government subsidies. But the image of the Western cowboy as a hardworking man who asked only to be left alone got traction among Southerners and Northern Democrats who hated the idea of black rights, and who loathed the Republicans’ activist government that was trying to enforce those rights. By the 1870s, ex-Confederates had taken their support for Western individualism a step further. They insisted the federal government was actively persecuting Western individuals. Their hero was Jesse James, the former Confederate guerilla-turned-criminal. When a Republican state government in Missouri refused to let ex-Confederates sit on juries or practice law, Democrats used the fugitive James to bludgeon their political opponents. James was “an angel of light,” as one said, who wanted to turn himself in to authorities, but could not because he would not get a fair trial in a courtroom full of his political opponents. He was a good man, the story went, but the government was forcing him into criminality. And then, the governor of Missouri cut a deal with Robert Ford to kill James. That a government official had colluded to murder a citizen added fuel to the idea that Westerners were in danger from an overweening government. The political construct that lionized Western individuals and demonized an activist government, a government that apparently helped minorities, was a product of a peculiar moment in American history. Neither the moment nor the ideology lasted. The political construct that idealized cowboys fell into disrepute during and immediately after the New Deal. In those years, Americans turned away from Western individualism and toward the idea of an activist government. Westerners and Southerners both, after all, were suffering from the Dust Bowl and the boll weevil. They wanted government programs even more than Easterners did. But in the 1950s, the Movement Conservative war on the New Deal resurrected the post-Civil War political cliché. Since the Brown v. Board of Education decision of 1954, Movement Conservatives have tapped into the idea that an activist government redistributed wealth to lazy minorities. But they have also pushed hard on the idea that true Americans are Western individualists. Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater launched this association in 1964 by dismissing Brown v. Board as governmental overreach and fictionalizing his wealthy upbringing as a hardscrabble Western frontier story; Ronald Reagan made it even more explicit by contrasting his image of the Welfare Queen with his own cowboy hat and Western ranch. And yet, the Goldwater and the Reagan stories mirrored those of the historical Western individual: their regions, and their own families, prospered only when government contracts poured money into their communities. To them, there was no contradiction between their championing of individualism and benefiting from government largess. According to Movement Conservatives, Americans who believe in individualism want nothing from the government, and thus, unlike grasping minorities, they are the nation’s true patriots. The government should do nothing for “lazy black Americans,” who only want an un-American redistribution of wealth through taxes. But, paradoxically, the government can—and should—use tax money to help America’s individualists. This is the peculiar contradiction that defines today’s politics. Confederates, cowboys, anti-government diatribes from people who are prime beneficiaries of government programs … thanks to the Bundys we are celebrating the 150th anniversary of Reconstruction by reliving it. | 0 |
VIDEO : Sean Hannity “The American People Have Finally Been Heard” VIDEO : Sean Hannity “The American People Have Finally Been Heard” Videos By TruthFeedNews November 10, 2016
Sean Hannity Reacts to Trump’s Historic Victory.
“The Washington Establishment is TERRIFIED and they should be. These people do NOT get it. I’m going to try to explain it to them.”
Watch the video:
Support the Trump Presidency and help us fight Liberal Media Bias. Please LIKE and SHARE this story on Facebook or Twitter. | 0 |
Most Americans understand that we should all give the utmost honor and respect to those who fight for our safety and our freedom, as well as their families. That is especially true of our Gold Star families those families who have lost a loved one in battle. Of course, as he has demonstrated on more than one occasion Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump does not share these values.Trump spent the last 72 hours insulting the parents of a Muslim soldier, Army Captain Humayun Khan, for daring to speak out against his anti-Muslim bigotry. Well, President Obama, on the other hand, spent his Monday afternoon at an event in Atlanta, Georgia for disabled veterans. He also had very harsh words for Donald Trump.Without even mentioning the GOP nominee s name, the President took him to the woodshed over his attacks on the Khans and on the military in general: As Commander-in-Chief, I m pretty tired of some folks trash-talking America s military and troops. You know, our military is somewhat smaller after two major ground wars come to a close. That s natural. We re going to keep doing everything we need to do to improve readiness and modernize our forces. But let s get some facts straight. America s Army is the best trained, best equipped land force on the planet. Our Navy is the largest and most lethal in the world. The precision of and reach of our Air Force is unmatched. Our Marines are the world s truly only expeditionary force. We have the world s finest Coast Guard. WE have the most capable fighting force in history, and we re going to keep it that way. President Obama is right, of course. How dare Trump or anyone else who has never served or had family members serve trash talk troops and Gold Star families? Trump isn t fit to be Commander-in-Chief. He needs to take a cue from President Obama when it comes to how a potential president should act with regards to our military families and the sacrifices they make.Watch President Obama s remarks below:Featured image via video screen capture | 1 |
When far left publications like Democracy Now and Global Research start questioning Hillary s involvement in the murder of Honduran environmental activist, Berta C ceres, there is probably good reason to look a little deeper into the controversy. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is facing a new round of questions about her handling of the 2009 coup in Honduras that ousted democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya. Since the coup, Honduras has become one of the most violent places in the world. Last week, indigenous environmental activist Berta C ceres was assassinated in her home.Before her murder on March 3, Berta C ceres, a Honduran indigenous rights and environmental activist, named Hillary Clinton, holding her responsible for legitimating the 2009 coup. We warned that this would be very dangerous, she said, referring to Clinton s effort to impose elections that would consolidate the power of murderers.Berta C ceres was an award-winning land activist, a leader in her community and a mother of four. She was shot four times while in bed, at 1am on 2 March. As a founding member of the Civic Council of Indigenous and Popular Organizations of Honduras (COPINH), C ceres fought against logging, hydro-power and mining projects threatening indigenous people in Honduras. Her death has exposed the poor judgement of impact investor bank FMO, the bully tactics of mining corporations, and murky situations from Clinton s time as Secretary of State. We re coming out of a coup that we can t put behind us. We can t reverse it, C ceres said. It just kept going. And after, there was the issue of the elections. The same Hillary Clinton, in her book, Hard Choices, practically said what was going to happen in Honduras. Via: Democracy NowThe military coup in 2009 did nothing to protect Honduran land or people. President Manuel Zelaya had moved towards grassroots social movements, the kinds of social reforms that the United States has always opposed (Chomsky), and deals with Venezuela. The military kidnapped President Zelaya at gunpoint and flew him out of the country in his pyjamas. This was certainly a coup d etat and was defined as such by the UN, the EU and other Latin America nations and dictionaries everywhere.As Obama s Secretary of State, Clinton refused to call what had happened a coup in public. Doing so would have automatically cut off US non-humanitarian aid to Honduras. Members of Clinton s own party wrote to Barak Obama about the outrage. But Hillary did not relent, despite being informed that the coup question was an open and shut case in US embassy cables.In a video interview, given in Buenos Aires in 2014, C ceres says it was Clinton who helped legitimate and institutionalize the coup. In response to a question about the exhaustion of the opposition movement (to restore democracy), C ceres says (around 6:10): The same Hillary Clinton, in her book Hard Choices, practically said what was going to happen in Honduras. This demonstrates the bad legacy of North American influence in our country. The return of Mel Zelaya to the presidency (that is, to his constitutionally elected position) was turned into a secondary concern. There were going to be elections. Clinton, in her position as secretary of state, pressured (as her emails show) other countries to agree to sideline the demands of C ceres and others that Zelaya be returned to power. Instead, Clinton pushed for the election of what she calls in Hard Choices a unity government. But C ceres says: We warned that this would be very dangerous. The elections took place under intense militarism, and enormous fraud. The Clinton-brokered election did indeed install and legitimate a militarized regime based on repression. In the interview, C ceres says that Clinton s coup-government, under pressure from Washington, passed terrorist and intelligence laws that criminalized political protest. C ceres called it counterinsurgency, carried out on behalf of international capital mostly resource extractors that has terrorized the population, murdering political activists by the high hundreds. Every day, C ceres said elsewhere, people are killed. Interestingly, Hillary Clinton removed the most damning sentences regarding her role in legitimating the Honduran coup from the paperback edition of Hard Choices.According to Bel n Fern ndez, Clinton airbrushed out of her account exactly the passage C ceres highlights for criticism: We strategized on a plan to restore order in Honduras and ensure that free and fair elections could be held quickly and legitimately, which would render the question of Zelaya moot and give the Honduran people a chance to choose their own future (see Fern ndez s essay in Liza Featherstone s excellent False Choices: The Faux Feminism of Hillary Rodham Clinton).Aside from Hard Choices shape-shifting account of the crisis, Clinton has ignored criticism of her role in enabling the consolidation of the Honduran coup. That is, until C ceres s murder forced a response. Last week, her campaign answered my Nation post on her broader responsibility for C ceres s execution: simply nonsense, a spokesperson said: Hillary Clinton engaged in active diplomacy that resolved a constitutional crisis and paved the way for legitimate democratic elections. We still don t have a clear idea of the events surrounding C ceres s murder. There is one witness, Gustavo Castro, a Mexican national, activist, and journalist, who was with C ceres when gunmen burst into her bedroom. Berta died in his arms. Castro was himself shot twice, but survived by playing dead.The Honduran government that unity government Clinton is proud of has Castro in lockdown, refusing him contact with the outside world. Via: The NationIn Clinton s memoir, she admits thatIn the subsequent days [after the coup] I spoke with my counterparts around the hemisphere, including Secretary [Patricia] Espinosa in Mexico We strategized on a plan to restore order in Honduras and ensure that free and fair elections could be held quickly and legitimately, which would render the question of Zelaya moot.Clinton s emails revealed that she played a crucial role, delaying any action that could quickly restore Zelaya.Grahame Russell from Rights Action is not alone in describing the coup as US and Canadian-backed . Media Lens has bemoaned the under-reporting of Hillary Clinton s connection to the state of affairs in Honduras in the US print media, as has FAIR. But it is online. The Nation ran an article titled, The Clinton-backed Honduran Regime is picking-off indigenous leaders the day after C ceres murder.The Clintons have a great ally in Canadian billionaire Frank Giustra. Along with media outlets, Giustra has gold mining interests in Africa. He is known in the industry as a mining promoter and presumably connects investors and miners. Although Bill and Frank like to fly around Latin America, and do philanthropic work together, Bill did bump into Frank in Kazakhstan when Frank was doing a spot of uranium shopping.The Clintons connection with the Canadian mining magnate is labeled a threat to her campaign by Bloomberg Politics. Certainly, The Clintons ties to big business have dogged her campaign, and many democrats are uncomfortable with her performance as Secretary of State. Revelations about the Clinton Foundation do little to dispel the image of Hillary as an entrenched member of the establishment let alone the oligarch hegemony. Given that her nomination looks increasingly insecure, C ceres murder is untimely for them both. Via: Global Research | 0 |
DENPASAR, Indonesia (Reuters) - A window appeared to be closing on Friday for travelers stranded on the Indonesian holiday island of Bali as airlines cut back on flights, fearing a return of plumes of volcanic ash. An erupting volcano closed the airport for most of this week, stranding thousands of visitors from Australia, China and other countries, before the winds changed and flights resumed. Australian budget airline Jetstar said it would cancel nine flights on Friday after meteorological officials warned the ash could hit operations at Bali airport, about 60 km (37 miles) southwest of the Mount Agung volcano. Malaysia s AirAsia Bhd said it would only operate out of Bali during the day, as the ash could impair visibility at night and wind conditions in the area were unpredictable. They don t have an answer if they have space for us for the next flight, said Martim Cazado, a traveler who was trying to get home to Portugal via Singapore but had been unable to get a flight. He was worried he might be stuck waiting in front of the Bali airport s departure hall for a few days, he added. A column of white smoke and ash hung above Mount Agung, where tremors continued, meteorological officials said, although with decreasing frequency, while lava sparks flash at night. Ash was visible to the southeast of Mount Agung, the Darwin Volcanic Ash Advisory Centre said on its website. Volcanological sources indicate a larger eruption is still possible, it said. The wind was blowing the ash toward the east and the airport was clear for normal operations, Indonesia s transport ministry said in a statement. Jetstar and its parent, Qantas Airways Ltd, had planned up to 18 flights on Friday to ferry 4,300 passengers home to Australia, including one by a Qantas 747 jet. But Jetstar will cancel nine flights after a sudden change in today s forecast for this evening in Bali, it said in a website update. Other airlines with regular Bali flights, including Singapore Airlines Ltd and Garuda Indonesia, have not posted website updates on Friday evening s flight plans. Airlines avoid flying through volcanic ash as it can damage aircraft engines, clogging fuel and cooling systems, hampering pilot visibility and even causing engine failure. A tropical cyclone south of Java island altered wind direction in the area, including for Bali, where it could bring heavy rains and strong winds until Saturday, the Indonesian Meteorological, Climatological and Geophysics agency said. About 10,700 foreign and 6,400 domestic tourists left Bali on Thursday, airport data showed. Thousands of residents remain in a 10-km (6-mile) danger zone around the volcano, reluctant to leave for religious reasons or unwilling to abandon homes and livestock. A rescue team escorted 10 people off its southwestern slope on Friday, some of whom said they had endured days of falling ash and feared potentially deadly volcanic mud flows. An estimated 90,000 to 100,000 people live in the danger area near the volcano in eastern Bali. | 1 |
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump was in Minneapolis Friday night for a fundraiser held at the city s convention city that was besieged outside by violent liberal protesters.Trump supporters attending the rally were punched, spit on and robbed while Trump s Secret Service motorcade was blocked by protesters who jumped on one of the vehicles.Update: Protests at Donald Trump event turn unruly late. Police: No arrests, minor damage. https://t.co/T6fT3A7dk1 pic.twitter.com/RbJLBZK024 Star Tribune (@StarTribune) August 20, 2016Now this The Trump supporters said the police stood back at they were assaulted, robbed and spit on. No arrests were made. PJ Media reported:A week ago in Minneapolis, Republican donors attending a Trump fundraiser were assaulted, robbed and spat upon by a violent leftist mob as they were leaving the event. Attendees say that even though there was a strong law enforcement presence at the convention center downtown where the fundraiser was held, they were not afforded any police protection when coming to and leaving the event and even more incredibly, there were no arrests.Many people who attended the event told Fox 9 that police seemed to back down from intervening, but the Minneapolis Police Department insists there was no stand-down order. GP | 1 |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Trump administration on Monday will order federal agencies to adopt common email security standards in an effort to better protect against hackers, a senior Department of Homeland Security official said. DHS Assistant Secretary for Cybersecurity Jeanette Manfra, speaking at an event in New York, said the agency would issue a binding directive to require implementation of two cyber security measures, known as DMARC and STARTTLS, intended to guard against email spoofing and phishing attacks. The new requirements are “discrete steps that have scalable, broad impact” that will improve federal government cyber security, Manfra said. DMARC, or domain-based message authentication, reporting and conformance, is a decade-old popular technical standard that helps detect and block email impersonation, such as when a hacker might try to pose as a government official or agency. STARTTLS is a form of encryption technology that protects email traveling between servers, making it more difficult for a third-party to intercept. Civilian agencies will have 90 days to implement the new security measures, Manfra said. Many agencies already use DMARC and STARTTLS but recent reviews have found the protocols are not used universally across government. Foreign governments and other hackers have pilfered millions of personal records and other sensitive data from the U.S. government in recent years. The Trump administration has made upgrading government agencies’ much-maligned network security a top cyber priority. Democratic Senator Ron Wyden, who earlier this year pushed federal agencies to adopt the security standards more widely, said in a statement the moves were “two cheap, effective ways to secure email from being intercepted or impersonated by bad guys.” He said he hoped the decision would compel private sector companies to upgrade their own email security quickly. An August report from the Global Cyber Alliance, an international non-profit, found that federal government adoption of DMARC had been rising in recent months but that less than 10 percent of domains had the protocol fully implemented. Usage of DMARC is much higher on the consumer level with 85 percent of inboxes, including those hosted by Alphabet’s Google (GOOGL.O) or Microsoft (MSFT.O), supporting the standard, according to the Global Cyber Alliance. | 1 |
Kellyanne Conway will be joining the White House as counselor to the president, the Trump transition team announced Thursday.Conway, Donald Trump s final campaign manager, has been a fierce advocate for the president-elect. Kellyanne Conway has been a trusted advisor and strategist who played a crucial role in my victory, Trump said in a statement. She is a tireless and tenacious advocate of my agenda and has amazing insights on how to effectively communicate our message. I am pleased that she will be part of my senior team in the West Wing, he added.Watch Conway as she masterfully deconstructs CNN s New Day host Alisyn Camerota s false accusations about Trump and exposes her overt and unprofessional allegiance to Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton and her campaign:Conway joins incoming chief of staff Reince Priebus and chief strategist Steve Bannon in making up the most senior advisers in the Trump White House. NYP | 0 |
(Reuters) - After months of internal discord, Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday approved a bill to overhaul the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare, which they have been attacking since it was enacted in 2010. Two attempts in recent weeks to pass an overhaul bill had collapsed in confusion, but Republicans overcame their differences in a 217-213 vote that will send the bill to the Senate, where its outlook was uncertain. Obamacare brought health insurance coverage to millions of Americans. An early estimate by nonpartisan congressional researchers of the impact of the Republican rollback bill, known as the American Health Care Act, or AHCA, said it would leave 24 million more Americans without insurance coverage by 2026. Here are the bill’s main provisions: The Republican plan would maintain some of Obamacare’s most popular provisions. It would allow young adults to stay on their parents’ health plan until age 26. The bill would let states opt out of Obamacare’s mandate that insurers charge the same rates on sick and healthy people. It would also allow states to opt out of Obamacare’s requirement that insurers cover 10 essential health benefits, such as maternity care and prescription drug costs. The measure would provide states with $100 billion, largely to fund high-risk pools to provide insurance to the sickest patients. The bill also would provide $8 billion over five years to help those with pre-existing conditions pay for insurance. It would let insurers mark up premiums by 30 percent for those who have a lapse in insurance coverage of about two months or more. Insurers won a provision they had long sought: The ability to charge older Americans up to five times more than young people. Under Obamacare, they could only charge up to three times more. The bill would end in 2018 Obamacare’s income-based tax credits that help low-income people buy insurance. These would be replaced with age-based tax credits ranging from $2,000 to $4,000 per year that would be capped at upper-income levels. While Obamacare’s credits gave more help to those with lower incomes, the Republican plan would be largely age-based. The Republican bill would abolish most Obamacare taxes, including on medical devices, health insurance premiums, indoor tanning salons, prescription medications and high-cost employer-provided insurance known as “Cadillac” plans. Those taxes paid for Obamacare. Republicans have not said how they would pay for the parts of the law they want to keep. The bill would also repeal the Obamacare financial penalty for the 2016 tax year for not purchasing insurance, as well as a surtax on investment income earned by upper-income Americans. It would repeal the mandate that larger employers must offer insurance to their employees. Under Obamacare, more than 30 states, including about a dozen Republican states, expanded the Medicaid government health insurance program for the poor. About half of Obamacare enrollees obtained insurance through the expansion. The bill would allow the Medicaid expansion to continue until Jan. 1, 2020. After that date, expansion would end and Medicaid funding would be capped on a per-person basis. State Medicaid plans would no longer have to cover some Obamacare-mandated essential health benefits, fulfilling a Republican promise to return more control to the states. | 0 |
Exactly one year ago today on arrogant Hillary Clinton s birthday, she was so sure she d win the presidency, that Hillary actually tweeted a birthday message calling herself the future president. LOL! What a difference one year makes. Not only is Hillary nowhere near the Oval Office, but she s traveling around the world, on an embarrassing blame everyone but me book tour . Ironically, the name of the book that Hillary s pushing is What Happened . Well, unfortunately for Hillary, when it comes to Russian collusion, the world is about to find out what happened and Hillary s gonna wish she still some friends in government who could protect her. Hopefully, this time next year, Hillary will be celebrating her birthday in a federal penitentiary, while wearing an orange jumpsuit.Twitter users destroyed the arrogant Hillary and her future president birthday message to herself. Here are some of the hilarious responses to her tweet from exactly one year ago:Here s a hilarious video featuring a surprise guest to help Hillary celebrate her birthday:One year anniversary of Hillary "Happy Birthday To This Future President" tweet; #HappyBirthdayToThisFutureInmate #ThursdayThoughts pic.twitter.com/Rrk0BCWYCK Cris (@ThePatriot143) October 26, 2017Donald Trump Jr. (whose tweets are usually hilarious) had this to say about Hillary s birthday message: A year later the arrogance and entitlement in this tweet is exactly why it was never going to happen. #maga A year later the arrogance and entitlement in this tweet is exactly why it was never going to happen. #maga pic.twitter.com/zQ68AQpPE0 Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) October 26, 2017Former presidential deputy assistant Sebastian Gorka nailed it with this uranium cake birthday message to Hillary. LOL!It's Hillary's Birthday. Here's a cake. #ClintonUraniumGate pic.twitter.com/vk1jBJ1Vsl Sebastian Gorka DrG (@SebGorka) October 26, 2017Since she was old enough to dream of the day she d hold the ultimate office of President of the United States, Hillary s been involved in some sort of shady dealing or criminal activity. That s what makes this tweet so hilarious. If there s a crime that s been committed in Washington DC, Hillary s fingerprints are probably on it somewhere.Today is the release of the #JFKFiles. Coincidentally, it s also crooked Hillary s birthday. pic.twitter.com/VyjFbxdQiO GRANT J. KIDNEY (@GrantJKidney) October 26, 2017Stacey Stiles, like most of America, is just waiting patiently for the day when Hillary is permanently behind iron bars:Happy Birthday, Hillary. May your next be celebrated behind bars. #UraniumOne #RussiaDossier #ClintonFoundation pic.twitter.com/Bis5tgOOPV StacyLStiles (@StacyLStiles) October 26, 2017 | 0 |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican Senator Rand Paul, a fiscal hawk who has sometimes opposed his party’s spending plans, said on Monday he planned to vote for the U.S. Senate tax bill and urged his colleagues to do the same. Paul, writing in a Fox News online opinion piece, said that while the bill was not perfect and he would “prefer a larger cut,” he planned to support the measure because it achieved some of his goals, and he could push for more changes next year. “This tax bill is a true test for my colleagues,” wrote Paul, who represents Kentucky. “I’m not getting everything I want — far from it. But I’ve been immersed in this process. I’ve fought for and received major changes for the better — and I plan to vote for this bill as it stands right now.” President Donald Trump, also a Republican, had set a goal of signing a sweeping tax overhaul into law before the end of 2017. About a half-dozen lawmakers have voiced concerns about provisions including a nearly $1.5 trillion addition to the federal deficit, the treatment of small businesses and the potential impact on health insurances costs for people with medical conditions. Senate Republicans hope to pass their bill as early as Thursday. With only a 52-48 majority in the 100-seat Senate, and Democrats unlikely to vote for the measure, they can lose support from no more than two members of their own ranks. With the clock ticking, Trump was set to meet top Senate Republican tax writers at the White House as the administration considered policy tweaks to make the bill more palatable to potential Republican holdouts. | 1 |
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