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The people have spoken and it s clear that Americans are 100% FED Up! with the sanctuary city policy and illegal immigration. Embattled San Francisco Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi convincingly lost his bid for re-election Tuesday after spending months in the national spotlight as the face of his city s controversial sanctuary city policy on illegal immigration. The murder of Kate Steinle brought to the forefront the sanctuary city policy in San Francisco. The refusal to acknowledge the illegality of this policy and the treatment of the Steinle family couldn t be more shameful. Our hope is that this landslide sends a message to those who have been ignoring the rule of law. Our thoughts and prayers go out to the Steinle Family who ve suffered so much.Mirkarimi, 54, was defeated by Vicki Hennessy, a former sheriff s official who had the endorsement of San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee and the sheriff deputies association. With 42 percent of precincts reporting, Henessy had received 63 percent of the vote to 31 percent for Mirkarimi.Mirkarimi and his office received heavy criticism after Mexican illegal immigrant Francisco Sanchez allegedly shot and killed 32-year-old Kate Steinle on San Francisco s waterfront July 1. Sanchez had been released from Mirkarimi s jail in March even though federal immigration officials had requested that he be detained for possible deportation.San Francisco declared itself a sanctuary city in 1989, passing an ordinance that bans city officials from enforcing immigration laws or asking about immigration status unless required by law or court order. A follow-up ordinance in 2013 allows detention only under a court order targeting violent felons. Last month, San Francisco s board of supervisors unanimously approved a resolution to maintain the city s sanctuary status.San Francisco and other cities and counties have routinely ignored requests from Immigration and Customs Enforcement officals to keep people in custody. The jurisdictions say they can t hold arrestees beyond their scheduled release dates without probable cause.Hennessy has previously said the sheriff s order barring the San Francisco jail from cooperating with immigration officials is misguided. There are cases, she said, when federal immigration officials should be notified that the jail is about to release an inmate who is in the country illegally.Read more: FOX News
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President Trump, who flew across the country on hundreds of nights during the 2016 campaign to sleep in his own bed, has now spent five straight days in the unfamiliar surroundings of the White House. His aides said privately that he seemed apprehensive about the move to his new home, but Mr. Trump has discovered there is a lot he likes. “These are the most beautiful phones I’ve ever used in my life,” Mr. Trump said in a telephone interview Tuesday evening. “The world’s most secure system,” he added, laughing. “The words just explode in the air. ” What he meant was that no one was listening in and recording his words. The president sat at his desk — the one used by former Presidents Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan and John F. Kennedy, among others — at the end of his fourth full day in office. His mornings, he said, are spent as they were in Trump Tower. He rises before 6 a. m. watches television tuned to a cable channel first in the residence, and later in a small dining room in the West Wing, and looks through the morning newspapers: The New York Times, The New York Post and now The Washington Post. But his meetings now begin at 9 a. m. earlier than they used to, which significantly curtails his television time. Still, Mr. Trump, who does not read books, is able to end his evenings with plenty of television. In between, Mr. Trump signs executive orders in the Oval Office and has meetings in the West Wing. “They have a lot of board rooms,” he said of the White House, an apparent reference to the Cabinet Room and the Roosevelt Room. The White House is the only property that Mr. Trump has slept in that is more famous than one of his own, and he seems in awe. Although he made his name building extravagant, gilded properties, the new president has marveled to aides about the splendor of the White House and the lengths he must walk to retrieve something from a room. His preference during the day is to work in the Oval Office. And to stare at it, still. So do his staff members and relatives. “I’ve had people come in they walk in here and they just want to stare for a long period of time,” Mr. Trump said. Among modern American presidents, Mr. Trump may be best situated to work where he lives. For decades, he has lived in a penthouse apartment on the 58th floor of Trump Tower and taken an elevator down to the 26th floor, where he has a corner office with views of Central Park. Many presidents have complained of being cooped up inside the White House — George W. Bush in particular said he missed the outdoors — but Mr. Trump can go for days without breathing in fresh outside air. Mr. Trump’s wife, Melania, went back to New York on Sunday night with their son, Barron, and so Mr. Trump has the television — and his old, unsecured Android phone, to the protests of some of his aides — to keep him company. That was the case after 9 p. m. on Tuesday, when Mr. Trump appeared to be reacting to Bill O’Reilly’s show on Fox News, which was airing a feature on crime in Chicago. At 9:25 p. m. Mr. Trump posted on Twitter: In the interview, Mr. Trump demurred when asked about whether it was hard having his family away from him, and he pointed to Thursday, when Mrs. Trump and Barron, who is finishing the school year in New York, are expected to return. “They’ll come down on weekends,” Mr. Trump said. “She’ll come down on Thursdays and stay. ” He said he was enjoying himself so far, despite his visible displeasure with the coverage of his inauguration and the first performance of his press secretary, Sean Spicer, who shouted at the news media and made numerous false statements about Mr. Trump’s inaugural crowds in the White House briefing room on Saturday. Mr. Trump and his chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, and his chief of staff, Reince Priebus, watched Mr. Spicer’s on Monday while eating lunch in the West Wing dining room, where the president murmured approval of Mr. Spicer’s Monday performance and called his press secretary a “superstar. ” His first breakfast at the White House was Saturday morning — a buffet in the residence spread with fresh fruit, pastries and other treats — where his adult children and their families joined him. The kitchen has been stocked with the same types of snacks that Mr. Trump had on his private plane, including Lay’s potato chips. His oldest daughter, Ivanka, and her husband, Jared Kushner, the president’s senior adviser, stayed with him in the White House through Sunday. They left for their own new home at the end of the weekend to get their children ready for their new schools. Mr. Trump has not brought along any household staff from Trump Tower, an aide said. The president spent a part of Tuesday poring over artwork from the White House collections, settling on a portrait of Andrew Jackson — America’s first populist president, who has been invoked by Mr. Trump’s aides as inspiration — to hang in the Oval Office. “Now, I’m working,” Mr. Trump said in the interview, punctuating his focus by cataloging the work of the day: an executive order restarting the Keystone XL pipeline and his plans for actions over the next days. Mr. Trump is in the meantime pondering his first break away from the White House, a potential trip to his private club in Palm Beach, Fla. possibly the weekend of Feb. 3. Until then, he is breaking in the residence, which Mrs. Trump is still working on decorating. “It’s a beautiful residence, it’s very elegant,” Mr. Trump said, deploying one of his highest forms of praise. “There’s something very special when you know that Abraham Lincoln slept there,” Mr. Trump said. “The Lincoln Bedroom, you know, was his office, and the suite where I’m staying is actually where he slept. ” Mr. Trump was referring to the White House master bedroom, which is now his own. “Knowing all of that, it’s different, than, you know, just pure elegance and room size,” Mr. Trump said. “There’s a lot of history. ”
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(Reuters) - Two Republicans on the Federal Communications Commission told a congressional panel Tuesday the partisan divide at the nation’s telecommunications regulatory body is growing. FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai, a Republican, said at a House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing that the number of votes splitting along party lines at the five-member FCC is growing under FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler - and is twice as high as under four prior chairmen. “Proposals from Republican commissioners have been roundly rejected as crossing a ‘red line,’ even when an identical proposal from a Democratic commissioner is accepted later on,” Pai told a U.S. House panel. “Collaboration has fallen by the wayside.” Wheeler has a busy agenda in the final year of the Obama administration and has drawn the ire of some industry groups and Republicans in Congress. He has proposed allowing consumers access to pay TV without renting an expensive set-top cable box. He also has proposed privacy rules that would require Internet service providers to get consent for using consumer data and has unveiled a plan to expand a subsidy for low-income Americans that covers mobile phones to include broadband Internet access. Kim Hart, a spokeswoman for Wheeler, said the chairman “has tackled complex issues resulting in more competition, strong protections and improved access to networks for consumers. During the first two years of the Chairman’s tenure, 88 percent of votes have been unanimous.” FCC Commissioner Michael O’Rielly, another Republican, criticized Wheeler for “constantly pushing the envelope into questionable directions, at the expense of collegiality, staff morale and soundness of decisions.” Republican commissioners have ramped up the rhetoric in recent months. After a federal appeals court put on hold two separate FCC decisions, Pai said the FCC “needs to follow the law and return to the tradition of bipartisan, collaborative decision-making.” Many Democrats back Wheeler’s aggressive agenda. Representative Anna Eshoo, of California, praised Wheeler for his aggressive agenda that “puts the consumer first and strengthens competition.” Representative Greg Walden, an Oregon Republican who chairs the panel that held the hearing, lamented the “sharp divisions” on the FCC, saying the commission should not give “short shrift to collaboration in favor of expediency.” At a Senate hearing this month, Wheeler declined to confirm he will step down at the end of the Obama administration, as is customary for the chair of the commission. The Senate has so far declined to reconfirm a Democratic commissioner, Jessica Rosenworcel, who was renominated in 2015.
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Isn t Alluha Akbar Islamic? I m pretty sure these cowards aren t Christians. Obama will still try to convince the world these nine armed terrorists have no affiliation with the religion of peace. All kidding aside, please pray for the innocent people who are trapped inside this restaurant by these Islamic monsters DEVELOPING: A group of up to nine attackers set off bombs and took hostages while shouting Allahu Akbar inside a restaurant frequented by both locals and foreigners in a diplomatic zone in Bangladesh s capital, local media reported Friday.ISIS Amaq News Agency later reported that ISIS fighters carried out the attack.Bangladesh TV stations reported that the attackers entered the Holey Artisan Bakery in Dhaka s Gulshan area around 9:20 p.m. Friday and were holding customers and staff hostage.The exact number of hostages was not known. While some reports said there could be up to 60, others put the figure lower.The TV reports said the identities of the attackers were not immediately known.The U.S. State Department said all Americans working at the U.S. mission in the area had been accounted for, according to Reuters. We have accounted for all Americans working for the chiefof mission authority in Dhaka, John Kirby, a State Department spokesman said. He called the situation fluid. The reports say a huge contingent of security guards cordoned off the area and the restaurant as they traded gunfire with the attackers who set off explosions.Jamuna Television reported, quoting a kitchen staff worker at the restaurant who escaped the attack, said that the gunmen chanted Allahu Akbar as they launched the attack.Sumon Reza, the worker, told The Daily Star that several armed men entered the restaurant and took hostages. They blasted several crude bombs, causing wide-scale panic among everyone. Benazir Ahmed, director general of the elite anti-crime force Rapid Action Battalion or RAB, told reporters that security forces were working to save the lives of the people trapped inside. Several foreigners are believed to be among the hostages. Some derailed youths have entered the restaurant and launched the attack. We have talked to some of the people who fled the restaurant after the attack. We want to resolve this peacefully. We are trying to talk to the attackers, we want to listen to them about what they want, Ahmed said. Via: FOX News
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WASHINGTON — In what appears to be the largest leak of C. I. A documents in history, WikiLeaks released on Tuesday thousands of pages describing sophisticated software tools and techniques used by the agency to break into smartphones, computers and even televisions. The documents amount to a detailed, highly technical catalog of tools. They include instructions for compromising a wide range of common computer tools for use in spying: the online calling service Skype networks documents in PDF format and even commercial antivirus programs of the kind used by millions of people to protect their computers. A program called Wrecking Crew explains how to crash a targeted computer, and another tells how to steal passwords using the autocomplete function on Internet Explorer. Other programs were called CrunchyLimeSkies, ElderPiggy, AngerQuake and McNugget. The document dump was the latest coup for the antisecrecy organization and a serious blow to the C. I. A. which uses its hacking abilities to carry out espionage against foreign targets. The initial release, which WikiLeaks said was only the first installment in a larger collection of secret C. I. A. material, included 7, 818 web pages with 943 attachments, many of them partly redacted by WikiLeaks editors to avoid disclosing the actual code for cyberweapons. The entire archive of C. I. A. material consists of several hundred million lines of computer code, the group claimed. In one revelation that may especially trouble the tech world if confirmed, WikiLeaks said that the C. I. A. and allied intelligence services have managed to compromise both Apple and Android smartphones, allowing their officers to bypass the encryption on popular services such as Signal, WhatsApp and Telegram. According to WikiLeaks, government hackers can penetrate smartphones and collect “audio and message traffic before encryption is applied. ” Unlike the National Security Agency documents Edward J. Snowden gave to journalists in 2013, they do not include examples of how the tools have been used against actual foreign targets. That could limit the damage of the leak to national security. But the breach was highly embarrassing for an agency that depends on secrecy. Robert M. Chesney, a specialist in national security law at the University of Texas at Austin, likened the C. I. A. trove to National Security Agency hacking tools disclosed last year by a group calling itself the Shadow Brokers. “If this is true, it says that N. S. A. isn’t the only one with an advanced, persistent problem with operational security for these tools,” Mr. Chesney said. “We’re getting bit time and again. ” There was no public confirmation of the authenticity of the documents, which were produced by the C. I. A. ’s Center for Cyber Intelligence and are mostly dated from 2013 to 2016. But one government official said the documents were real, and a former intelligence officer said some of the code names for C. I. A. programs, an organization chart and the description of a C. I. A. hacking base appeared to be genuine. The agency appeared to be taken by surprise by the document dump on Tuesday morning. A C. I. A. spokesman, Dean Boyd, said, “We do not comment on the authenticity or content of purported intelligence documents. ” In some regard, the C. I. A. documents confirmed and filled in the details on abilities that have long been suspected in technical circles. “The people who know a lot about security and hacking assumed that the C. I. A. was at least investing in these capabilities, and if they weren’t, then somebody else was — China, Iran, Russia, as well as a lot of other private actors,” said Beau Woods, the deputy director of the Cyber Statecraft Initiative at the Atlantic Council in Washington. He said the disclosures may raise concerns in the United States and abroad about “the trustworthiness of technology where cybersecurity can impact human life and public safety. ” There is no evidence that the C. I. A. hacking tools have been used against Americans. But Ben Wizner, the director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, said the documents suggest that the government has deliberately allowed vulnerabilities in phones and other devices to persist to make spying easier. “Those vulnerabilities will be exploited not just by our security agencies, but by hackers and governments around the world,” Mr. Wizner said. “Patching security holes immediately, not stockpiling them, is the best way to make everyone’s digital life safer. ” WikiLeaks did not identify the source of the documents, which it called Vault 7, but said they had been “circulated among former U. S. government hackers and contractors in an unauthorized manner, one of whom has provided WikiLeaks with portions of the archive. ” WikiLeaks said the source, in a statement, set out policy questions that “urgently need to be debated in public, including whether the C. I. A. ’s hacking capabilities exceed its mandated powers and the problem of public oversight of the agency. ” The source, the group said, “wishes to initiate a public debate about the security, creation, use, proliferation and democratic control of cyberweapons. ” But James Lewis, an expert on cybersecurity at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, raised another possibility: that a foreign state, most likely Russia, stole the documents by hacking or other means and delivered them to WikiLeaks, which may not know how they were obtained. Mr. Lewis noted that, according to American intelligence agencies, Russia hacked Democratic targets during the presidential campaign and gave thousands of emails to WikiLeaks for publication. “I think a foreign power is much more likely the source of these documents than a C. I. A. ” Mr. Lewis said. At a time of increasing concern about the privacy of calls and messages, the revelations did not suggest that the C. I. A. can actually break the encryption used by popular messaging apps. Instead, by penetrating the user’s phone, the agency can make the encryption irrelevant by intercepting messages and calls before their content is encrypted, or, on the other end, after messages are decrypted. WikiLeaks, which has sometimes been accused of recklessly leaking information that could do harm, said it had redacted names and other identifying information from the collection. It said it was not releasing the computer code for actual, usable weapons “until a consensus emerges on the technical and political nature of the C. I. A. ’s program and how such ‘weapons’ should be analyzed, disarmed and published. ” The codes names used for projects revealed in the WikiLeaks documents appear to reflect the likely demographic of the cyberexperts employed by the C. I. A. — that is, young and male. There are numerous references to “Harry Potter,” Pokémon and Adderall, the drug used to treat hyperactivity. A number of projects were named after whiskey brands. Some were single malt scotches, such as Laphroaig and Ardbeg. Others were from more pedestrian labels, such as Wild Turkey, which was described by its programmers, in mock dictionary style, as “(n.) A animal of the avian variety that has not been domesticated. Also a type of alcohol with a high proof (151). ” Some of the details of the C. I. A. programs might have come from the plot of a spy novel for the cyberage, revealing numerous highly classified — and, in some cases, exotic — hacking programs. One program, Weeping Angel, uses Samsung “smart” televisions as covert listening devices. According to the WikiLeaks news release, even when it appears to be turned off, the television “operates as a bug, recording conversations in the room and sending them over the internet to a covert C. I. A. server. ” The release said the program was developed in cooperation with British intelligence. If C. I. A. agents did manage to hack the smart TVs, they would not be the only ones. Since their release, televisions have been a focus for hackers and cybersecurity experts, many of whom see the sets’ ability to record and transmit conversations as a potentially dangerous vulnerability. In early 2015, Samsung started to include in the fine print terms of service for its smart TVs a warning that the television sets could capture background conversations. “Please be aware that if your spoken words include personal or other sensitive information, that information will be among the data captured and transmitted to a third party through your use of Voice Recognition,” the warning said. Another program described in the documents, named Umbrage, is a voluminous library of cyberattack techniques that the C. I. A. has collected from malware produced by other countries, including Russia. According to the WikiLeaks release, the large number of techniques allows the C. I. A. to mask the origin of some of its attacks and confuse forensic investigators. The WikiLeaks material includes lists of software tools that the C. I. A. uses to create exploits and malware to carrying out hacking. Many of the tools are those used by developers around the world: coding languages, such as Python, and tools like Sublime Text, a program used to write code, and Git, a tool that helps developers collaborate. But the agency also appears to rely on software designed specifically for spies, such as Ghidra, which in one of the documents is described as “a reverse engineering environment created by the N. S. A. ” The Vault 7 release marks the latest in a series of huge leaks that have changed the landscape for government and corporate secrecy. In scale, the Vault 7 archive appears to fall into the same category as the biggest leaks of classified information in recent years, including the diplomatic cables taken by Chelsea Manning, the former Army intelligence analyst, and given to WikiLeaks in 2010, and the hundreds of thousands of National Security Agency documents taken by Mr. Snowden in 2013. In the business world, the Panama Papers and several other leaks have laid bare the details of secret offshore companies used by wealthy and corrupt people to hide their assets. Both government and corporate leaks have been made possible by the ease of downloading, storing and transferring millions of documents in seconds or minutes, a sea change from the use of slow photocopying for some earlier leaks, including the Pentagon Papers in 1971.
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November 2015 Ads THE BIG CHILL: Kill Fat Cells Instantly Just by Freezing Them! You’ll Never Believe How it Works
For most people, fat bulges are something they don’t want. It makes our thighs jiggle, our clothes fit tight and look bad, and typically lingers despite our torturous attempts to eliminate it. Too much of it increases our risk for certain illnesses like heart disease and type 2 diabetes, so for decades researchers have looked for ways to reduce it. Humans have two types of fat: white fat & brown fat, and understanding the differences between the two, can help people lose weight. “White fat” is the thin layer of blubber we see on the human belly. backs of arms and on the thighs. This particular fat acts as a thermal insulator, that keeps body temperatures stable. LEARN MORE: “Brown fat,” on the other hand, is less abundant in the body and creates heat, rather than trapping it like white fat does. Brown fat actually warms a cold body by burning energy or calories. White fat however, can take on brown fat characteristics, with the resulting product called “beige fat.” This process is called “browning.” Because beige and brown fat are able to burn calories, they are a positive force for weight loss, while an excess of white fat is associated with weight gain and obesity. According to Dr. Philip A. Kern, a researcher of the University of Kentucky School of Medicine, browning fat tissue would be an excellent defense against obesity, as it would make the body burn extra calories rather than converting them into fatty tissue. Where Do We Have Brown Fat? Brown fat can be difficult to study because it is hard to find in adults, and typically found in unpredictable locations in the body, and not always in the same place on every person. There’s a region in the neck and the shoulders, where you typically find it, but again not on everybody. In a recent study, brown fat was found in the chests and down the spines of a group of healthy young men, along with places in the abdomen…..
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The Democratic Party has descended into madness. Democratic voters are split. The convention is going to be a disaster. Bernie Sanders may take his supporters and walk away, thus handing Trump the presidency.These are the headlines the mainstream media has been peddling now for months. As the omega primary creeps up (with California and New Jersey up for grabs), it s becoming evident that one candidate will walk away the nominee.This, of course, has incensed members of the opposite candidate and naturally so. And of course the media has pounced on these feelings, and has ran nonstop coverage in an effort to tear the party apart.No matter how loud the pundits scream, and no matter how blistering the op-eds are, don t buy into the hype. Because there is one truth that the media doesn t want to report on:The Democratic Party is more united now than it was in 2008 and Obama won in a landslide. The one outlet that seems to have the guts to report on it is Vox, not surprisingly.In fact, what the mainstream media doesn t want to remind you is that in May 2008, 15 percent of Democrats overall said they wouldn t vote for Obama. Today, May 2016, only 6 percent of Democrats say they won t support Clinton.When Clinton dropped out in 2008, 40 percent of her supporters said they would not vote for then-candidate Barack Obama. Today, as it becomes increasingly likelier than Clinton will become the nominee, only 25 percent of Sanders supporters claim they will not support her candidacy should she win (a number that is shrinking).As Vox puts it, Obama needed, in other words, to overcome a hurdle that was twice as big as the one facing Clinton. And they also noted:Last but by no means least, McCain was a broadly popular figure with considerable cross-party appeal. He wound up losing pretty badly in the end due to a very unfavorable economic situation and a campaign that saw him abandoning most of his crossover positions. But as of late May it really wasn t totally crazy to imagine a hawkish, domestically moderate white Democrat feeling that he had a lot in common with McCain, especially if there was a little covert racial bias in the mix.And for Democrats freaking out over Trump overcoming Clinton in a handful of polls, at this time in 2008 and 2012, McCain and Romney respectively overtook President Obama in the polls multiple times.The explanation for that is, presently, the Republican Party is more united now than the Democrats, considering they have one candidate while the Democrats have two still running.Bottom line: Democrats are smarter than the media conglomerates think, and they see firsthand the risk of a Trump presidency. They aren t going to blow it.Featured image via Joe Readle/Getty Images
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HAVANA (Reuters) - Communist-run Cuba extended the term of its current leadership to April on Thursday, signaling a two-month delay in the historic handover from Raul Castro to a new president, while announcing tighter regulations on the non-state sector. Castro, 86, was originally set to step down in February after two consecutive terms, ending nearly 60 years of Castro brothers rule and marking a transition from the leaders of the 1959 revolution to a new, younger generation. The National Assembly, however, said that devastation wrought by Hurricane Irma in September had caused a delay to the start of the political cycle in which voters and electoral commissions pick delegates of municipal, provincial and national assemblies who then select a Council of State and president. As a result, the assembly, which is holding one of its twice-yearly meetings, extended its term through to April 19. When the National Assembly is constituted, I will have concluded my second and last mandate, and Cuba will have a new president, Castro said, according to state-run media. All that is left for me is to wish you and our people a happy new year, he said. Castro, who officially took over the presidency from his late, older brother, Fidel Castro, in 2008, is set to remain head of the Communist Party, the only legal party in Cuba and its guiding force. His heir apparent, First Vice President Miguel Diaz-Canel, 57, was born the year after the revolution but has argued for the need to defend its achievements and provide continuity. Analysts say Diaz-Canel is unlikely to reveal his true colors until he is designated president, and even then his room to maneuver could be limited by the need to establish himself as a legitimate successor to the historic generation. Hopes that the next president might deepen market reforms to the centrally planned economy introduced by Castro were dampened on Thursday by the announcement of new regulations on the fledgling private and cooperative sectors. State-run media cited Marino Murillo, chief of the reform commission, as saying that income distribution at cooperatives would be more closely regulated and business licenses would be limited to one per person. The economic measures announced today suggest a continued slowing down, if not an undoing, of the economic reforms implemented between 2010 and 2016, said Michael Bustamante, an assistant professor of Latin American history at Florida International University. Cuba s political transition comes as it faces a host of challenges from declining aid from socialist ally Venezuela to U.S. President Donald Trump s partial reversal of the U.S.-Cuban detente and tightening of the decades-old U.S. embargo. We have witnessed a serious and gradual deterioration in relations with the United States that cannot be blamed on our country, Castro was cited by state-run media as saying. He said the United States was fabricating pretexts to continue its failed policy toward Cuba. The Trump administration said this year that U.S. diplomats in Havana had been victims of health attacks . A cash crunch has left Cuba behind on payments to its foreign providers, thereby affecting imports, Economy Minister Ricardo Cabrisas told the assembly. Hurricane Irma also caused damage worth the equivalent of 13.2 billion pesos, Cabrisas said. When evaluating damages from natural disasters, Cuba traditionally assumes a peso is equal to one U.S. dollar. Many other official exchange rates exist in Cuba, valuing the peso at much less. The economy nonetheless recovered this year from recession in 2016 - the first in nearly a quarter century - growing 1.6 percent, the minister said, citing expansion in the tourism, transport and communications, agriculture and construction sectors. Despite Hurricane Irma and a renewed U.S. crackdown on travel to Cuba, the number of foreign visitors grew 19.7 percent on the year to 4.3 million in the first 11 months of 2017, Tourism Minister Manuel Marrero told parliament earlier this week. Cabrisas forecast the economy would grow around 2 percent next year.
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ABUJA (Reuters) - The United States has formally agreed to sell 12 Super Tucano A-29 planes and weapons to Nigeria, the West African country s air force said, confirming the resurrection of a deal frozen by the Obama administration over rights concerns. Former U.S. President Barack Obama delayed the sale in one of his last decisions in office after the Nigerian Air Force bombed a refugee camp in January. But his successor Donald Trump decided to press on with the transaction to support Nigeria s efforts to fight Boko Haram militants and to boost U.S. defense jobs, sources told Reuters in April. The U.S. ambassador to Nigeria presented letters of offer and acceptance to Nigeria s air force earlier on Wednesday, the air force said in a statement. It said the U.S. State Department had approved the sale and final agreements would be signed and necessary payments made before Feb. 20. There was no immediate statement from the U.S. embassy or from authorities in Washington. U.S. government and Nigerian Air Force officials would meet in early January to discuss the early delivery of the aircraft once payment had been made, the Nigerian air force said. The sale of the 12 aircraft, with weapons and services, is worth $593 million, and includes thousands of bombs and rockets. The propeller-driven plane with reconnaissance, surveillance and attack capabilities, is made by Brazil s Embraer. A second production line is in Florida, in a partnership between Embraer and privately held Sierra Nevada Corp of Sparks, Nevada. The Super Tucano costs more than $10 million each and the price can go much higher depending on the configuration. It is powered by a Pratt & Whitney Canada PT 6 engine.
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Trump's True Mission----Lance The Boil By David Stockman. It can't be emphasized enough. On Tuesday night the Wall Street/Washington ruling elites got fired and their policies of war, debt and bubble finance got ash-canned. But Donald Trump was just the agent of the voters' dismissal order not the recipient of a programmatic mandate ala beltway briefing books or even the airy nostrums of standard party platforms.
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(Before It's News)
Date of discovery: October 26, 2016
Location of discovery: Bancroft Crater, Earths Moon
Google Earth Coordinates: 27°54’52.71″N 6°23’23.82″W
I found this entrance to an underground alien base inside of Bancroft crater. The dark opening measures 70 meters by 50 meters exactly. The outer edges measure 114 meters by 114 meters. I used Google ruler to measure this, so it is their statistics. The base entrance is just outside the shadow of the crater, which means it was placed there deliberately to be in the light and make entering and exiting it with smaller ships much easier. Similar base entrance have been found before. For instance, a very similar entrance was found on Google Mars and was 160 meters across, but with similar design. (Click here to view the Mars entrance) .
Scott C. Waring
Thanks http://www.ufosightingsdaily.com/ Check out more contributions by Jeffery Pritchett ranging from UFO to Bigfoot to Paranormal to Prophecy
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Your daily reality snack Georgia Abandons Ukraine's Anti-Russian Obsession
After a brief period in which both Ukraine and Georgia appeared to be united against Russia, it now appears that the two nations are moving along very different paths Originally appeared at Russia Direct
In October, Georgia didn’t support any of Ukraine’s resolutions denouncing the Kremlin’s foreign policy within the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE). That is surprising, given how many analysts had by now assumed that Georgia and Ukraine were on the same page when it came to Russia.
The two resolutions deal with “the political implications of Russia’s aggression in Ukraine” and human rights abuses “on the occupied Ukrainian territories.” By supporting them, PACE recognized the military conflict in Ukraine as “Russian aggression” for the first time and called on the Kremlin to withdraw its forces from the eastern part of Ukraine. Moreover, it denounced the parliamentary elections , recently conducted by Russia in Crimea .
When the Georgian delegation in PACE didn’t support these resolutions, the nation’s pro-Western parties reacted strongly. For example, the United National Movement lambasted the Georgian government and accused the country’s former Prime Minister, Bidzina Ivanishvili, of supporting Russia. Moreover, Mikheil Saakashvili, the former Georgian president and now the governor of the Odessa region in Ukraine, described such a stance as a “disgraceful” move.
However, an immediate response came from one of the members of the Georgian delegation in PACE, Eka Beselia. She retorted that Tbilisi needed to defend its own national interests. Even though this statement seems to have alleviated the increasing conflict, the video of Russian-Ukrainian journalist Matwey Ganapolsky, who accuses Georgia of betraying Ukraine in favor of Russia, fuelled the tensions. In contrast, Russian pundits see the unwillingness of Georgia to vote for the PACE resolution as a sign of improvement in Tbilisi-Moscow relations.
In reality, the reluctance of the Georgian Dream, the ruling party in Georgia, to approve these resolutions is just the logical conclusion of complicated relations with Kiev. Since the start of the color revolutions in the post-Soviet space , Georgia and Ukraine were largely in the same boat.
After the success of the Rose Revolution in Tbilisi and the Orange Revolution in Kiev, the newly elected governments were closely connected with each other and teamed up against Russia. This resulted from friendly relations between Ukraine’s former prime minister Yulia Timoshenko and former president Viktor Yushchenko on the one hand, and Georgia’s Saakashvili on the other hand.
However, their relationship was rather pragmatic in its nature, although officially Tbilisi recognized Ukraine as one of its closest allies. Since 2007 the democratic processes in the two countries have started moving in a reverse direction. Saakashvili’s penchant for conducting an aggressive policy as well as his authoritarian inclinations was increasing, while Ukraine faced the corruption and the political rivalry between Timoshenko and Yushchenko.
The more impact this had on the countries’ stability and development, the more obvious became the fact that the ruling elites from both sides did not support democratic reforms, but only the regimes that were friendly to them. Thus, Georgian-Ukrainian relations could be seen as a form of cooperation between governments, not between the people.
And this trend became relevant until the 2010 presidential elections, when Georgia’s civil society and population called on the government to support democratic processes and regime change in its “brother” country. From then on, Georgia has been shying away from supporting the political regime in Ukraine and focusing more on the support of the country’s own population.
However, Ukraine refused to consider such tactics, with its official representatives criticizing the Georgian Dream coalition for supporting Russia during the 2012 parliamentary elections. Moreover, Kiev cooperated with Georgia’s United National Movement, which was openly accused of building an authoritarian regime and egregious human rights abuses.
Logically, the new Georgian government under Ivanishvili cannot help paying attention to this fact. But it was relatively reticent and didn’t respond, even when Georgian volunteers came to fight in Eastern Ukraine to support Kiev and accused Tbilisi of supporting Russia. That had some implications for the Georgian Dream: It was seen as a political force that is capable of defending the country’s national interests.
Moreover, Georgian voters also saw the fact that Saakashvili was appointed as the governor of the Odessa region as an unfriendly move from Ukraine, as a slap in the face, because the former Georgian president was legally prosecuted in his home country, which meant that Ivanishvili couldn’t fulfill his pledges and restore justice [During the election campaign he promised to put Saakashvili in jail for corruption and the abuse of power — Editor’s note]. The problem was exacerbated when Kiev granted Saakashvili Ukrainian citizenship, which made it impossible to imprison the former Georgian president.
Saakashvili crossed the red line during the latest parliamentary elections in Georgia during the campaign. First, his colleagues from the United National Movement visited Ukraine. Second, he openly called for a coup d’état against the Georgian government, which he sees as pro-Russian. In fact, he threatened to conduct a new revolution in Georgia. This was the last straw for the Georgian Dream.
It is safe to say that the current Georgian political elites started seeing Ukraine as a real headache and the shelter for dubious and controversial Georgian politicians from the United National Movement accused of different wrongdoings and legal violations.
However, with the victory of the Georgian Dream in the 2016 parliamentary elections, a lot has changed. Moreover, the odds of the party of winning the constitutional majority are really high. It means that the influence of the party is growing in the Georgian parliament and even more could change.
As a result, the government won’t necessarily have to take into account the views of other political forces to take decisions. It can be pretty outspoken now that it won’t put up with anti-government moves and initiatives like the ones promoted by Saakashvili. Moreover, the Georgian voters, who are seeking to have those involved in the violations during Saakashvili’s tenure prosecuted. So, in this regard, the electorate supports the Georgian Dream.
Thus, all this indicates that Georgian-Ukrainian relations have always been more complex and nuanced than they seemed to be at first glance. During Saakashvili’s tenure, there was cooperation between his government and the ones of Timoshenko and Yushchenko. However, eventually, Tbilisi shifted its priority from supporting top political officials to supporting society and people.
Ukrainian politicians should keep in mind that the Russian factor is not the only one that determines the Ukrainian-Georgian agenda. Providing shelter to Saakashvili also does matter. So, to improve the relations with Tbilisi, Kiev should take into account its national interest and support the Georgian people instead of the country’s politicians.
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan unveiled a national security policy featuring stronger defense on Thursday, the next step in a conservative policy agenda rolling out as he works to unify Republicans after a divisive primary campaign. The plan is sharply critical of President Barack Obama, blaming the Democrat for “eight years of broken promises, concessions, and retreat” in the Syrian civil war, nuclear deal with Iran, chilly relations with Russia and dealings with a bellicose North Korea. It would overturn some of what Obama allies consider his foreign policy achievements, including the Iran deal and his moves toward normal relations with Communist-ruled Cuba. And it criticizes efforts to close the Guantanamo detention center. While not providing figures, it also calls for an end to military rollbacks and demands “adequate, predictable budgets.” The blueprint includes several departures from foreign policy statements by presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, whom Ryan has endorsed in the White House race. It does not demand the erection of a massive wall along the Mexican border, a centerpiece of Trump’s campaigning. Ryan calls for border security measures including “high fencing,” aerial surveillance and radar. But it echoes some of Trump’s concerns about Muslim immigrants, with calls to tighten refugee screening and discussion of ways not to radicalize youths. Trump sparked outrage by promising to temporarily ban Muslims from the United States. “We must constantly reassess our defenses in order to find and close security gaps so that Islamist militants cannot slip into our country undetected,” Ryan’s plan said. The plan is not isolationist. It takes a strong line on battling militants abroad, saying the United States must keep all options on the table and “eliminate terrorist sanctuaries.” Trump has been critical of some U.S. alliances. Ryan’s plan, in contrast, underscores the importance of NATO, calls ties to Israel “the cornerstone of stability in the Middle East,” advocates severe sanctions on Iran and says the United States should stand up to Russian aggression while bolstering Ukraine. It also calls for more trade agreements and says foreign aid programs should make recipient countries self-sufficient. The plan calls for increased security for diplomats and facilities overseas. In that context, it mentions the 2012 attacks on Benghazi, which many Republicans cite to criticize then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Trump’s rival in the White House race. Ryan, the country’s highest-ranking elected Republican, has described the agenda as a way to offer voters a coherent policy message for 2017. He unveiled an anti-poverty agenda on Monday. Initiatives on regulation, constitutional authority, healthcare and tax reform are expected in the coming weeks.
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Liberalism is truly a mental disorder. Sadly, the children of these parents who are so consumed by hate, that they behave like schoolyard bullies, are going to be the ones who pay the price in the end Kids tossing bean bags at a mock tombstone for President Trump at a public school was a despicable display of dirty politics the adults forced on the unwitting children, a Gloucester Republican official said, as the furor continued to grow.School officials have apologized for a parent-teacher organization fundraiser last week at West Parish Elementary School but one GOP official fears the damage is already done. I don t think it s appropriate to put the sitting president s name on a tombstone. It s disrespectful to the office of the president, no matter who he is, said Amanda Kesterson, who heads the Gloucester Republican City Committee. Unfortunately, she told the Herald, in Massachusetts in particular, where Republicans are the minority party and the president is unpopular, I think there is a belief that joking about the president is acceptable and it s not. Boston Herald
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Umm Yeah Okay Would it be acceptable to the school if this teacher asked her students to close their eyes and pretend to be Jesus? It s a rhetorical question of course UNION GROVE, Wis. Pretend you re a Muslim. That s what a 10th grade World History writing assignment asks students to do at a Wisconsin high school.WISN talk radio host Vicki McKenna posted Union Grove High School teacher Beth Urban s email for a five-paragraph essay on Twitter.It reads: Pretend you are:1. Muslim male/female in U.S.2. Give 3 examples of what you do daily for your religion and any struggles you face.3. Again, 5 paragraphs (intro, 3 body paragraphs, closing.)**Keep in mind we ve been doing work and watching documentaries that have the facts needed to write the essay.Union Grove Muslim essay assignment fullEAGnews emailed Urban to obtain more information on the assignment but she did not respond.Specifically, we wanted to know if there were similar assignments based on other religions or just Islam, as well as what documentaries were watched to prepare for the essay.A parent of the student who received the assignment tells EAGnews, I feel that the purpose of the assignment is to show prejudices towards Muslims in America or to invent them or exaggerate them. The parent, who asked to remain anonymous, doesn t blame the teacher for the essay s instructions. I did not voice my concerns directly to the teacher because I do not blame the teacher. I believe this is a curriculum issue. The teachers are not using their own curriculum, the school boards/superintendents do generally, according to the parent. I brought attention to it because I felt that it was inaccurate for World History. I would have no problem with this assignment if they were to pretend they were in the Middle East and practicing their religion. I first was bothered because it seems that if any Catholic issues are brought up attention is brought to the school and (the assignment) banned being a public school. EAGnews reported on another controversial lesson two years ago almost to the day at the same high school.At that time, students were given a crossword puzzle that defined conservatism as the political belief of preserving traditional moral values by restricting personal freedoms The definitions of conservatism and liberalism make me sick, parent Tamra Varebook told EAGnews. I think it s horribly distorted and it s biased. After EAG s report, the publishing company, Cerebellum Corporation, announced it would discontinue selling the skewed assignment. Although we are careful to screen the quality of our products, we are not always able to identify the problems seen in Liberalism vs. Conservatism, Cerebellum President James Rena said in a statement sent to EAGnews.
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OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canada s ruling Liberals won a special election in Quebec on Monday, picking up a parliamentary seat in a province where insiders say the party needs to do better if it is to retain power in a 2019 federal election. Provisional results showed Prime Minister Justin Trudeau s Liberals won the constituency of Lac-Saint-Jean with about 36 percent of the vote, with the separatist Bloc Quebecois in second place and the opposition Conservatives close behind in third. The Conservatives had held the seat before the sitting legislator retired earlier this year. The Liberals, who now hold 41 of Quebec s 78 seats, privately say they need to win another 12 in the province to offset expected losses elsewhere and maintain their majority in the House of Commons in an election in October 2019. Quebec polls show the party far ahead of the Conservatives and Bloc Quebecois in province-wide support. National opinion surveys though show Trudeau s government is slipping in popularity amid an alleged conflict-of-interest problem involving Finance Minister Bill Morneau. Provisional results also showed the Conservatives easily retaining the seat of Sturgeon River-Parkland in the western province of Alberta, the party s stronghold.
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The United States kept up its breakneck pace of hiring in January, adding 257,000 jobs as workers received wage increases unseen since the financial crisis, according to government data released Friday morning.
The unemployment rate ticked up by one-tenth of a point, to 5.7 percent, largely because so many people — nearly 1.1 million — entered the workforce, some coming off the sidelines after years of discouragement.
The latest data indicates a fully firing labor market that has become the engine for the American recovery. The United States has added jobs over the last year at its steadiest pace in two decades, and January offered fresh evidence that employers are now willing to raise wages and compete for workers.
“We’re finally getting to that point where a self-sustaining recovery is going on,” said Jeremy Lawson, chief economist at Standard Life Investments, an asset management firm.
The U.S. labor market has expanded quickly enough in the last year that President Obama recently called 2014 a “breakthrough year in America.” And as it turns out, 2014 just got even better. As part of the latest data from the Department of Labor, net jobs growth figures from November and December were significantly revised upward. November’s net jobs gain now stands at a whopping 423,000, up from the previous 353,000, the biggest one-month gain since 2010. The November through January stretch qualifies as the nation’s best three-month stretch of jobs growth in 17 years.
The monthly jobs data can be volatile, particularly in January, when government economists try to calculate seasonally adjusted hiring growth amid the layoffs of holiday workers. U.S. stocks were up and the dollar strengthened Friday morning on the jobs news, which slightly exceeded market expectations.
Perhaps the best sign in the jobs report wasn't the net payroll gain — the figure has topped 200,000 for 11 months in a row — but rather the nascent sign of rising salaries. The average hourly worker saw a 12-cent-per-hour raise in January, the best one-month increase since 2007. Since the Great Recession, real wages have remained stagnant, but this is slowly beginning to change. Over the last year, wages have risen 2.2 percent. Meantime, consumer prices are seeing inflation below 1 percent, largely because cheaper oil has caused gasoline prices to plummet.
"When I look at this report, I see a confident economy," Department of Labor Secretary Thomas E. Perez said Friday in an interview. "Companies that are bullish. New job-seekers who are more optimistic. And when you factor low gas prices and wage growth, that adds up to money in people’s pockets, a greater hop in their step."
The January wage numbers were being closely watched, because wages had taken a slight step backward in December. Real wages are an important indicator for labor market health, as they rise when more workers leave the sideline and companies feel pressure to compete for employees.
Some economists caution about reading too much into one month’s salary data and say only sustained wage growth will help the country fill one of the missing pieces of the recovery.
“Earnings are increasing, but the rates of real wage growth suggest that more must be done to ensure that all families can feel the strengthening recovery in their own lives,” Jason Furman, chairman of the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers, said in a statement.
For the Federal Reserve, this report offered perhaps the strongest evidence yet encouraging a short-term rate hike in the middle of this year — even as inflation falls below the central bank’s target.
“The pick-up in average hourly earnings gains was a belated Christmas present,” Scott Anderson, chief economist at Bank of the West, said in an e-mail. “It should help the Fed look past a temporary drop in inflation this year and keep their eye on gradually normalizing interest rates.”
In January, jobs growth was broad-based. The health-care and retail sectors were again strong, as they’ve been throughout the recovery. But so, too, were construction (with 39,000 jobs added) and professional and technical services (33,000 jobs added).
For months now, the U.S. economy has looked like the strongest in the developed world. But the recovery here came with a mystery: Some prime-aged workers were sitting on the sideline, unmoved to again begin actively seeking work. That meant they weren’t counted as unemployed. It also left the U.S. economy below its full potential.
January’s data showed at least some evidence that these workers are again looking for work. The labor force participation rate — which tracks the proportion of Americans holding or seeking a job — nudged up from 62.7 to 62.9 percent. That number looks small, but it was caused by a wave of new entrants — some 1.05 million, roughly the population of Rhode Island.
The labor force participation rate is still at its lowest point since the 1970s, but some of that decline is demographic, the result of a retiring wave of baby boomers. The key for the labor force, economists say, is encouraging frustrated middle-aged potential employees to resume their job searches, even if it requires new training or skills.
“There is this drumbeat — we’re seeing more and more jobs in a wide range of different occupations and industries,” said Tara Sinclair, chief economist at Indeed.com, a job search Web site. “Hopefully that will attract these people to get the necessary skills and jobs.”
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NEW YORK (Reuters) - Authorities were investigating a threatening letter containing a granular substance that was sent to Donald Trump’s son urging an end to the elder’s presidential campaign, a New York City police official said on Friday. The letter was addressed to the Manhattan home of Eric Trump, 32, who has appeared frequently on the campaign trail with his father, the Republican front-runner for the White House in 2016. “There was a substance inside that is being tested, it’s not lethal,” the official said. The letter, which contained threats over Trump continuing his campaign, was being examined by law enforcement experts, the official said. No suspects have been identified. Police were called to Trump Parc East, a luxury apartment building in mid-Manhattan, at 7:15 p.m. EDT (2315 EDT) on Thursday with a report of a suspicious letter received by a tenant. No injuries were reported.
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CHICAGO (Reuters) - The Republican Party’s grip on U.S. state legislatures could loosen in next month’s election as Democrats seek to link Republican candidates to the sinking fortunes of the party’s White House candidate, Donald Trump. Republicans, who have dominated control of legislatures since the mid-term election in 2010, currently hold the majority in 67 of the country’s 98 partisan legislative chambers, while Democrats have 31. Nebraska’s single chamber is nonpartisan. More than 80 percent of the nation's 7,383 state legislative seats are up for grabs on Nov. 8 and the race between Trump and Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton is expected to influence races further down the ballot papers. (See related graphic tmsnrt.rs/2ePmLDI) The bipartisan National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) estimates 18 legislative chambers in 12 states could switch party control, including in Arizona, Colorado, Kentucky, Minnesota, Nevada, Washington and Wisconsin. “More than three-fourths of the time the party winning the White House also makes gains in state legislatures. So the odds are Democrats would pick up chambers and seats on the whole if (Clinton) wins,” said Tim Storey, a NCSL elections analyst. National opinion polls show Clinton leading Trump with just under two weeks to go until Election Day. Democrats are also getting a big boost for down ballot races with Clinton surrogates such as President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, and first lady Michelle Obama on the campaign trail stumping for party candidates. Trump, on the other hand, is openly feuding with Republican leaders, many of whom distanced themselves from the candidate after a 2005 video surfaced earlier this month in which he is heard bragging about groping women and making other unwanted sexual advances. Storey said while Trump has his pockets of popularity, the top Republican on the party’s ticket has become a main line of attack by Democrats in swing districts. “Instead of taxes or health care or public safety or education, Trump has been an issue in many places,” he said. According to Jessica Post, executive director of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee (DLCC), which is working to elect Democratic state lawmakers, “Trump is quicksand for legislative Republicans.” But Matt Walter, president of the Republican State Leadership Committee (RSLC), which hopes to spend $40 million on legislative and other state races this election cycle, said the Democrats’ strategy of using Trump to campaign against Republicans is not working. He contended his party’s candidates can win even without presidential coattails. “A good candidate who understands her district, who presents viable solutions for that district in that state has a better than even odds of winning in any type of environment,” he said. In addition to defending legislative turf, Republicans are trying to play offense, targeting 13 chambers in 10 states for seat gains, including Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Vermont, Colorado and Oregon. Post said Democratic candidates are offering voters “a crucial firewall against Republican overreach” in states dominated by Republicans, like North Carolina, where there has been a backlash against a law on use of public bathrooms that critics say discriminates against transgender people. With all of Minnesota’s legislative seats up for election, Democrats need a net gain of seven seats to take control of the House and turn the state, which has a Democratic governor, in their favor. Larry Jacobs, a University of Minnesota political science professor, said a Democratic sweep could open the way for legislation funding capital projects and transportation as well as early childhood education. In Illinois, Republican Governor Bruce Rauner, his wife and two of his wealthiest donors have contributed a combined $18 million since the March primary to House Republican leader Jim Durkin and to a super-PAC devoted to chipping away at Democrats’ veto-proof majorities in the state’s House and Senate. Democrats have been in a political stalemate with Rauner for nearly two years over the budget and other issues. In West Virginia, historically a Democratic stronghold state, Republicans took control of the state’s House, Senate, and governor’s office in 2014 for the first time in 83 years. This election, Democrats want the Senate back. Tom Susman, president of TSG Consulting, a Charleston, West Virginia-based government affairs public relations firm, said the likely scenario is the Senate remains Republican, with much of the power ceded to a growing fiscally conservative faction. “Moderate Republicans are in trouble,” said Susman. “We could be looking at a Kansas-like situation. Then, it would basically be the Tea Party running the state Senate. No new taxes. All cuts.”
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259 Views November 17, 2016 1 Comment Analyses The Saker
This article was written for the Unz Review: http://www.unz.com/tsaker/putin-is-finally-purging-the-medvedev-government/
While the word was focused in rapt attention on the outcome of the US Presidential election, Vladimir Putin did something quite amazing – he arrested Alexei Uliukaev , Minister of the Economy of the Medvedev government, on charges of extortion and corruption. Uliukaev, whose telephone had been tapped by the Russian Security Services since this summer, was arrested in the middle of the night in possession of 2 million US dollars. Putin officially fired him the next morning.
Russian official sources say that Uliukaev extorted a $2 million bribe for an assessment that led to the acquisition by Rosneft (a state run Russian oil giant) of a 50% stake in Bashneft (another oil giant). Apparently, Uliukaev tried to threaten Igor Sechin , the President of Rosneft and a person considered close to Vladimir Putin and the Russian security and intelligence services.
Yes, you read that right: according to the official version, a state-owned company gave a bribe to a member of the government. Does that make sense to you? How about a senior member of the government who had his telephone tapped and who has been under close surveillance by the Federal Security Service for over a year – does that make sense to you?
This makes no sense at all and the Russian authorities fully realize that. But that is the official version. So what is going on here? Do you think that there is a message from Putin here?
Of course there is!
Remember the corrupt Minister of Defense Anatolii Serdiukov ? He was first fired from his position and only then arrested. But this time around, it is a member of the government which is arrested in the middle of the night. For a few hours, his subordinates could not even reach him – they had no idea what had happened to him. Was that a mistake? Hardly.
The way Uliukaev was detained was carefully choreographed to instill the strongest sense of fear possible in all the other 5 th columnists still in power because in so many ways Uliukaev was a symbol for all the the “Atlantic Integrationists” (those in the Kremlin who want to integrate Russia into the US controlled international security system): Uliukaev was a known liberal, just like Nikita Belykh , governor of Kirov Region, who was detained in a high-publicity arrest in June for taking a 400’000 Euros bribe. I would even say that Uliukaev could be considered the ultimate symbol of the Atlantic Integrationists and a faithful member of the Russian “liberal” (meaning the “Washington consensus” type) sect who, in the past had worked with Egor Gaidar and Alexei Kudrin and who now has been brought down by the Russian “ siloviki ”, the top officials of the so-called “power ministries” (defense, state security, intelligence). Sergei Korolev, the Head of the Economic Security service of the FSB
This was immediately recognized by everybody and the main headline of the popular website Gazeta.ru could not be clearer, it read: “ The Siloviki brought down Uliukaev ” and featured a photo of the key actors of this drama, including the tough-looking man thought to have brought Uliukaev down, Sergei Korolev, the Head of the Economic Security service of the FSB (shown on photo here).
In April, I predicted that a government purge was in the making . I have to admit that I thought that this would have happened earlier. Apparently Putin decided to take action while Uncle Sam was busy with his own, internal, problems. If that is indeed the reason for the late timing, that says a lot about the power of the USA still wields in Russia. Some observers noticed that the arrest of Uliukaev took place after the telephone conversation between Trump and Putin, hinting that Trump might have given Putin the go ahead for the arrest. That is, of course, utter nonsense, but if that can make Putin look bad – it’s good enough for the 5 th columnists.
The list of potential ‘candidates’ to be purged next is still long and includes names like the Deputy Prime Minister Arkadii Dvorkovich , the First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov , the Governor of the Russian Central Bank Elvira Nabiullina , the Minister of Finance Anton Siluanov and, of course, Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev. Uliukaev was only one amongst many more. Still, he was definitely a top-level target and the manner in which he was arrested must have sent a chill down the spine of all the other 5 th columnists in the Kremlin. Just the fact that his phone was tapped for so long is quite unthinkable and clearly points to the fact that nobody is safe from Putin’s purges. And that, by itself, is truly a most welcome change: every member of the Medvedev government now has been put on notice that his/her life is now spent under the close scrutiny of the FSB.
It really matters little what will happen to Uliukaev next. He has be formally arraigned, now his case will be further investigated and then Uliukaev will have his day in court (right now he has only be detained and he will be kept under house arrest for the next two months). Potentially, he faces 15 years in jail and a fine equivalent to 70 times the amount of the bribe he took. Judging by the case of Serdyukov, who is managed to escape any prison time thanks to a Presidential Amnesty for the 20 years of the Russian Constitution, Putin seem to be reluctant to inflict any form of retribution upon his enemies. But even if Uliukaev does not get to enjoy the fresh air of the Siberian taiga, he is already finished as a power broker, and that is all that really matters to Putin.
What matters here is that in the course of one night, a top level Russian Minister went from his Ministerial Offices to a holding cell and that absolutely nobody saw it coming or could prevent this. Yet again we have a case of 100% Putin style: no warnings of any kind, no hints even, just sudden dramatic action with an immediate result. His “handwriting” is clearly all over the case. Uliukaev ain’t laughing no more…
The reaction to this arrest in Russia was predictable, especially after sources in the security services told the Russian media that Arkadii Dvorkovich and Andrei Belousov were also under investigation. Anatolii Chubais, for example, declared that he was in “total shock”. Even better was the reaction of Prime Minister Medvedev who said that this development was at the “edge of his understanding”.
It will be interesting to observe the inevitable reaction from the Atlantic Integrationists: if they really feel defeated, they will pay lip-service to the need to “fight corruption on all levels” and generally keep a low profile. If they still have some fight in them, they will denounce a “Stalinist” crackdown, the return to “1930’s -like purges” and a “new campaign of terror” against democracy. The western corporate media, whose only “value” is money, will write about how the Russian “secret police” is cracking down on “business entrepreneurs” and how that will end up damaging the Russian economy. Basically, a repeat of the whining which we all heard when Putin dismantled the infamous semibankirshchina . As Elton John would say, we “have seen that movie too…”
As for the rabid Putin-hating nationalists, they will say that this is too little too late. For years they have been complaining about corruption and how top level officials were never investigated, and now that they seem to have gotten their wish, it’s “too little, too late”. But that doesn’t really matter, since they have almost as little credibility with the Russian general public as the pro-western parties like Iabloko or Parnass.
The main media outlets and political commentators are all giving Putin a standing ovation right now. That is hardly surprising since they are the ones who for many months now have been loudly and constantly complaining about the “economic bloc of the government”, meaning the pro-US 5 th columnists inside the Medvedev government. Quite literally all the main political commentators have been begging and demanding a purge of this “economic bloc” and a radical change in the economic policies of Russia. Well, they got one villain purged, which is a good start, but there are no signs that more heads will roll or that the economic course of Russia will finally break from the Washington consensus kind of policies and be replaced it with much needed policy of internal growth. But then, knowing Putin, we should not expect any signs – only action.
In Russia, just as in the USA, changing the people is far easier than changing the system while the only way to achieve real change is, precisely, to change the system, not the people. So far, Putin has only succeeded in kicking some of the worst people out and, to his credit, getting some very good people in. Now that a threat of war with the USA is very substantially reduced and that Uncle Sam will be busy with his own, internal, struggles, I hope that Putin will finally take some very strong action to liberate Russia from the Washington consensus types and replace them with real patriots who will finally make it possible for Russia to become a truly sovereign country, even in the economic sense.
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NBC Entertainment chairman Bob Greenblatt took to his Facebook account to rip demented Donald Trump, calling him pompous and toxic, then took a shot at the ratings of Celebrity Apprentice. That post has since been deleted but Marlow Stern of The Daily Beast took a screen shot. The sad state of affairs thanks to a pompous businessman turned reality-TV star (whose show consistently ran LAST in its time period, by the way) who thinks speaking his mind is refreshing, Greenblatt wrote. It s actually corrosive and toxic because his mind is so demented; and his effect will unfortunately linger long after he s been told to get off the stage. The Donald often brags about the ratings for The Apprentice, just like he bragged about polls until recently when all national polls showed his campaign spiraling downward. Apparently, his ratings were nothing to brag about either.The Daily Beast reports:Greenblatt s Facebook post was a personal response to a recent New York Times op-ed penned by Nicholas Kristof that shows how all across America Donald Trump is mainstreaming hate. The column touches on bullying in schools, and recounts a moment during a high-school physics class in Forest Grove, Oregon, in which a group of white students suddenly began jeering at their Latino classmates and chanting: Build a wall! Build a wall!' (Greenblatt, who is the first openly gay broadcast TV chairman, has long been active in pro-LGBT advocacy, as well as in anti-bullying efforts.)In 2015, Donald tweeted, People don t understand that I left The Apprentice to run for Pres the Apprentice DID NOT leave me. Bob Greenblatt & folks @NBC were GREAT! Donald has claimed many times that The Apprentice was the number one show on television. As television critic Tim Goodman put it at the time, Nobody spins like Trump. Nobody. It s just bloviation. Bloviation is a good word for Donald s presidential run, too. Bloviate is to talk at length, especially in an inflated or empty way. That s him alright.The GOP presidential candidate is going to be a sad panda today after reading Greenblatt s opinion of him.Featured image via screen capture.
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While two of his potential Republican presidential opponents were dodging press and scrambling to clean up gaffes on vaccinations, Rubio on Tuesday presided over his first hearing as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Western Hemisphere Subcommittee.
He peppered two panels of witnesses with pointed questions on President Barack Obama's move to normalize relations with Cuba, which he called "disgraceful."
And immediately after the hearing, Rubio became one of the GOP's fiercest advocates for vaccinations since the issue emerged as a political football this week, asserting children should "absolutely" be vaccinated.
It was a senatorial move from a senatorial perch for the Florida Republican, who has told his staff to prepare as though he'll run for president in 2016, though he hasn't yet made a decision publicly.
The hearing highlighted two of his primary advantages in the potential presidential race: His measured, charismatic speaking style, and compelling personal story and heritage. But the hearing also hinted at the troubles ahead for Rubio, as he's vies for attention in a party crowded with rising stars and a different high profile issue seemingly each week. The U.S.-Cuba relations remain a less-than-glamorous storyline, and an initially packed hearing room cleared out midway through when most of the senators left to vote. And with the threat from ISIS taking center stage in the debate over U.S. foreign policy, and others with considerable foreign policy chops, like South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, contemplating a run, it remains to be seen whether the Cuba issue will be a sufficient launching pad to keep Rubio in the national spotlight. Rubio opened the initially full hearing with a series of assertive and pointed questions for a State Department official, seeking to pin her down on whether the U.S. would agree to limit its meetings with democracy activists as a condition for the U.S. government opening an embassy in Havana. "Can you categorically say we will never accept that condition?" he ultimately asked. "It's not a real condition," the official replied. While the questions were incisive, they came in stark contrast to Sen. Rand Paul's prickly interview with a CNBC host on Monday, during which he shushed her and yawned while she asked questions. The interview quickly went viral and drew him negative press. And Rubio's appeal as the son of Cuban immigrants for a party seeking to make inroads with Latinos was on display during the second panel, which featured witnesses delivering testimony almost entirely in Spanish, with the help of a translator. At one point, Rubio moved to ask a question after a witness had given her answer in Spanish, interrupting the interpreter. He apologized, adding, "I could understand." "I told Sen. Flake...not to worry about the translation. I'll let you know what they said later" he joked, drawing laughter from the audience. The senator's backers believe his experience on national security issues, and particularly his leadership on Cuba, could give him a leg up on the competition in the primary. Just last month, Rubio won high praise for his command of foreign policy issues at a Koch-sponsored panel that allowed him to differentiate himself from fellow 2016 contenders Sens. Rand Paul and Ted Cruz. He emerged as the administration's most ardent critic after Obama announced in late December plans to thaw diplomatic relations with Cuba. And he's kept up the heat on the issue since, appearing on local and national media and writing op-eds hammering the move. The subcommittee chairmanship, too, doesn't come without risks. If he ultimately decides to run for president, as is expected, he'll face questions about his ability to get things done on Capitol Hill. Leadership of a subcommittee raises the expectations to deliver with concrete results — and can underscore the limits of a first-term senator's power.
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If you re like me . . . it s probably been an entertaining year Full of liberal lunacy, hypocrisy, and fear. There s been so many episodes , it s easy to forget. Luckily, they ve all been logged upon the internet.The circus added one more ring when Donald got the nod To represent the GOP . . . the libs cried Oh my God. The media assured them there s no way that Trump could win So they sat back on their parent s couch, enamored by the spin.Election Day was coming . . . entertainment getting slow, Thank God the folks in Hollywood maintained the status quo. A host of A-list wannabes began to trickle forth, And told us that if Trump should win . . . they d all be headed north.When Donald passed two-seventy . . . and victory was at hand, A Trump-induced psychosis sprouted up in Liberal land. The fireworks were cancelled, and purveyors of fake news Were left to invent reasons why their candidate would lose.They blamed it all on Comey, then they blamed a Russian hack A dog that ate their homework, and of course . . . the men in black. A unicorn, a sasquatch, and a faulty Gallup Poll Next . . . they ll blame the shooter who was on the grassy knoll.Those celebs that promised egress . . . failed to adhere We waited for the moving trucks, which never did appear. Yes, not a star left Hollywood, although we wished it so, Despite the fact that Rush and Sean would pay for them to go.So now we re stuck with Miley, and we re stuck with Barbra too, Several washed-up actors . . . and the women of The View. We still have Maddow s meltdowns, and Sharpton s brand of hate. And, we still have Lena Dunham . . . though she s lost a little weight.In Congress, you can bet there s more than one defective gene. Just climb on board the crazy train with Nancy and Maxine. They often make me wonder just how awesome it would be, If parts of California could just slide into the sea.I m watching Liberal journalists like Cooper, Wolf, and Tapper, Spew the Leftist mantra . . . as their careers go down the crapper. Deplorables will have their fun with Liberal rank and file, Watching rats abandon ship when Clinton goes on trial.When Debbie left the DNC, I thought we d lost our clown. Then, from the state of Idaho, came Sally Boynton Brown. The DNC will be reborn, no matter what it takes. And the mix will look like cereal . . . with fruit loops, nuts, and flakes.Then, I saw the women s march, a feministic treat. I watched with fascination as they spilled into the street. Among the more disturbing sights were lady Democrats Who dressed up as vaginas . . . others wore their kitty hats.An incoherent Ashley Judd paraded round a stage Saying all those nasty women should demand a higher wage. Then ranting about blood-stained sheets upon those women s beds. Somewhere a doctor s wondering why he took her off her meds.Madonna parked her walker to begin her caustic din, Dreams of blowing up the Whitehouse as senility sets in. Even in her senior years . . . the party never ends. She dances round her nursing home in Vera Wang Depends.The Liberals, you must admit, have done some crazy things. It s fun to see them come unhinged as Donald pulls the strings. So, if you feel you need a shot of petulance and mirth, Sit back and watch the Liberals, it s the greatest show on earth. This poem (Ode to Liberal Lunacy) is republished here with permission and attribution to author Tony Olson About the Author: Tony Olson is an American journalist, and bestselling author. His book SPIN GAME: Exposing Political Lies And Tactics was an Amazon Top Ten Bestseller. Tony also authored the recent poem Twas The Night Before Inauguration. Tony currently lives in Boise, Idaho.
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NEW YORK (Reuters) - Argentina will not increase defense spending, despite the loss of a submarine with 44 crew aboard that has sparked criticism of the state of its armed forces, a close ally of President Mauricio Macri said on Friday. Argentina has given up hope of rescuing the crew of the ARA San Juan, which disappeared over two weeks ago in the South Atlantic. The tragedy underscored what some critics have described as the parlous state of the country s military, which has faced dwindling resources for years. There were no plans to provide extra funding for the armed forces, said Esteban Bullrich, a former education minister under Macri who is now a senator representing Argentina s powerful Buenos Aires province. We have to work within the constraints of our (budget) policy in general, we re not going to go out of our plan because of this incident, Bullrich told Reuters in an interview in New York. There will be no change in Argentina s 2018 budget allocation for defense, he said. Defense spending in the budget is lower than in the previous year in real terms. It is the lowest in the region compared to gross domestic product, and the government has limited room for maneuver. Since Macri took power in 2015, the country has returned to international debt markets but investment has been slower than the government had hoped. Bullrich was in New York to attend a United Nations event and meet with investors, as part of the government s charm offensive to convince them that Argentina is open for business after over a decade of protectionist rule. October s congressional elections - which saw sweeping victories for Macri allies like Bullrich - were a sign to investors that Argentines want change, he said. The vote was widely seen as a referendum on Macri s government. His market-oriented changes have not all been popular. But government supporters say they are starting to benefit Latin America s third largest economy. Although Macri s coalition does not have a congressional majority, Bullrich said he believed that opposition politicians were ready to work with the government. We can pass (reforms) even with a minority, because senators realize this, we had huge support from Argentinians in general, he said. Bullrich expressed confidence that key Macri legislation on pensions, tax, and capital markets - as well as the 2018 budget - could be voted on before the end of 2017. Yes it is (tight). But the thing is a lot of these reforms have been discussed in advance, and we re very open to changes, he said.
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SOFIA (Reuters) - Bulgaria s parliament passed anti-corruption legislation on Wednesday under European Union pressure over its failure to prosecute venal officials, but President Rumen Radev has said the bill is not fit for purpose and he will veto it. The Balkan, formerly communist country is the poorest as well as one of the most corrupt countries in the EU, which it joined in 2007, and has made scant progress towards stamping out graft and organized crime. The European Commission, the EU s executive, has repeatedly rebuked Bulgaria for failing to prosecute and sentence allegedly corrupt officials and for not overhauling a creaking judiciary. This law corresponds to the wishes of Bulgarian citizens and the European Commission, said Tsvetan Tsvetanov, chairman of the ruling GERB party s parliamentary group. Analysts voiced concern, though, that the bill would not allow efficient investigations of corruption networks. The management of a special anti-graft unit envisaged by the legislation would be appointed by parliament, something analysts said could limit its objectivity. Radev said the new five-person unit, meant to investigate persons occupying high state posts as well as assets and conflict of interest, may not be truly independent and could be used by those in power to persecute opponents. The instruments envisaged in this law are ineffective, Radev said last week. It does not deal a blow on those who feed corruption, and it can be used as a weapon against inconvenient people. He said he would veto the measure. The president, prime minister and lawmakers could be targets of investigation, as well as municipal councillors, directors of hospitals and border customs bosses. The new law also focuses on improving control and accountability of law-enforcement agencies, just before Bulgaria assumes the six-month, rotating EU presidency in January. Corruption has deterred foreign investment since communism collapsed in Bulgaria in 1989, and the EU has kept Sofia as well as neighboring Romania - for the same rule-of-law failings - outside its Schengen zone of passport-free travel.
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SHARM AL-SHEIKH, Egypt (Reuters) - Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said on Wednesday he was against military strikes on Iran or the Tehran-backed Lebanese group Hezbollah, saying there was enough turmoil in the Middle East. In a meeting with a group of journalists, Sisi also pledged support for Saudi Arabia in its stand-off with Iran. Asked about the prospect of attacks on Iran and Hezbollah - two days after Saudi Arabia had accused Lebanon of declaring war because of Hezbollah s aggressive actions , Sisi stressed the importance of de-escalation. I am always against war, Sisi said, without spelling out who might be involved in military action. Sunni powerhouse Saudi Arabia called for sanctions against Hezbollah this week and accused Iran of supplying Yemen s Houthis with missiles used to target it. I have said it once and I will say it again, Gulf national security is Egyptian national security. I have faith in the wise and firm leadership of Saudi Arabia, Sisi said. Sisi said the situation in the kingdom was reassuring and stable following last weekend s arrests of 11 princes, former and current ministers, and a group of elite businessmen on corruption allegations. They face allegations of money laundering, bribery, extortion and exploiting public office for personal gain. Sisi stressed his backing of Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Arab states, which have showered Egypt with aid ever since the general-turned-president led the military s ouster of former President Mohamed Mursi of the Muslim Brotherhood in 2013 following mass protests. Lebanon has been thrust to the center of regional rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran since the Saudi-allied Lebanese politician Saad al-Hariri quit as prime minister on Saturday, blaming Iran and Hezbollah in his resignation speech. Hezbollah is both a military and a political organization that is represented in the Lebanese parliament and in the Hariri-led coalition government formed last year. Its powerful guerrilla army is widely seen as stronger than the Lebanese army, and has played a major role in the war in neighboring Syria, another theater of Saudi-Iranian rivalry where Hezbollah has fought in support of the Syrian government. Sisi was elected a year after he ousted Mursi and his first four-year term ends next year. He would not be drawn on when he would announce a re-election bid, although he is widely expected to run and win. He hinted at doing so by February. I have to present achievements over the past four years to Egyptians first, before saying whether I will run or not. I will do this over the next two months, December and January, and based on their response I will reach a position on running. One candidate has already declared his intention to challenge Sisi. Rights lawyer Khaled Ali announced his 2018 bid on Monday in a speech criticizing Sisi s administration; accusing it of suppressing freedoms and causing deteriorating economic and security conditions. Egypt s economy has been struggling to recover since a 2011 uprising scared away tourists and investors, two main sources of foreign currency, but a three-year International Monetary Fund program is expected to help restore confidence. The IMF program is tied to harsh reforms, chief of which was the central bank s decision to float the pound currency last year, which halved its value from 8.8 to the dollar to almost 18. Sisi said on Wednesday he expected the pound to rally in the near future. I expect that the exchange rate will strengthen in the coming period, because all the problems that created the crisis over the past few years before the float, I believe, have been solved, he said. Tourism, a major source of hard currency, took a massive hit in 2015 when Russia suspended flights to Egypt, after Islamic State blew a plane out of the air that took off from Sharm al-Sheikh, the Red Sea resort in which Sisi was speaking on Wednesday, killing all 224 people, mostly Russians, on board. Sisi said he was not pressing the Russian government to restore flights because he understood its need to protect its citizens. I have never, and will never, insist on the restoration of flights, he said. He said security forces were making significant gains against militants, however. The military had captured a foreign fighter in a raid it carried out against militants responsible for a deadly attack on a police convoy in Egypt s Western Desert last month, he said. Three security sources said at the time that at least 52 police officers and conscripts were killed on Oct. 21 when their patrol came under attack, but the interior ministry rebutted the figure the next day and said only 16 policemen had been killed. A new militant group with links to al Qaeda claimed responsibility for attack last week. The foreign militant is the sole survivor of the raid and his confession would be revealed to the public soon, Sisi said. The Western Desert, which spans Egypt s more than 1,200 kilometre (745 miles) border with Libya, is a new battlefront for security forces, who have been fighting Islamic State militants in the Sinai Peninsula since 2013. Sisi did not specify the fighter s nationality but the porous border with Libya has been used to smuggle people and weapons regularly. When asked about his support for Khalifa Haftar, the eastern Libyan commander whose Libyan National Army has been fighting Islamist militant groups and other fighters in Benghazi and Derna for more than two years, Sisi said it did not mean he opposed the U.N.-backed Tripoli-based government, even though Haftar and his supporters reject it. Our support for Haftar is in line with the constants of Egyptian policy; we support a political solution and our backing of Haftar is not at the expense of Fayez Seraj s government.
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When you imagine partisan government overreach, it’s hard not to think about the Bush administration, especially when it comes to ignoring the law to accomplish their goals (think “enhanced interrogation”). When they tell the FBI they’ve gone too far, well, the FBI had better listen.
In an Op-Ed in the New York Times , Richard Painter, George W. Bush’s White House ethics lawyer from 2005 – 2007, wrote about his problems with the FBI’s latest investigation of Hillary Clinton and, most surprisingly, he’s taking legal action to stop it. According to Painter, it’s an abuse of power.
(I)t would be highly improper, and an abuse of power, for the F.B.I. to conduct such an investigation in the public eye, particularly on the eve of the election. It would be an abuse of power for the director of the F.B.I., absent compelling circumstances, to notify members of Congress from the party opposing the candidate that the candidate or his associates were under investigation. It would be an abuse of power if F.B.I. agents went so far as to obtain a search warrant and raid the candidate’s office tower, hauling out boxes of documents and computers in front of television cameras.
The F.B.I.’s job is to investigate, not to influence the outcome of an election.
Beyond that, Painter says it’s against the law, the Hatch Act in particular, to try to influence the outcome of an election. On that basis, Painter is taking action. George W. Bush's ethics lawyer filed a complaint yesterday against the FBI for violations of the Hatch Act. Via NYT: https://t.co/cXbs2xFYxj pic.twitter.com/3FbVRCPTyi
— Nick Gourevitch (@nickgourevitch) October 30, 2016
And that is why, on Saturday, I filed a complaint against the F.B.I. with the Office of Special Counsel, which investigates Hatch Act violations, and with the Office of Government Ethics. I have spent much of my career working on government ethics and lawyers’ ethics, including two and a half years as the chief White House ethics lawyer for President George W. Bush, and I never thought that the F.B.I. could be dragged into a political circus surrounding one of its investigations. Until this week.
The Hatch Act specifically prohibits government officials, with the exception of the President, the Vice President and a handful of others from engaging in political activities. Painter is particularly concerned about the fact that FBI director James Comey has made comments about Hillary Clinton in the past, such as his statement that Clinton’s handling of classified information was “extremely careless.”
What seems “extremely careless” is the way Comey has handled this investigation.
On Friday, the director of the F.B.I., James B. Comey, sent to members of Congress a letter updating them on developments in the agency’s investigation of Mrs. Clinton’s emails, an investigation which supposedly was closed months ago. This letter, which was quickly posted on the internet, made highly unusual public statements about an F.B.I. investigation concerning a candidate in the election. The letter was sent in violation of a longstanding Justice Department policy of not discussing specifics about pending investigations with others, including members of Congress. According to some news reports on Saturday, the letter was sent before the F.B.I. had even obtained the search warrant that it needed to look at the newly discovered emails. And it was sent days before the election, at a time when many Americans are already voting.
Painter notes that Comey’s intent doesn’t matter. He violated the rules simply by taking the actions that could influence the election and frankly, there was no reason for Comey to release those emails, which aren’t even directly tied to Clinton, now.
He finished his op-ed with a dire warning to Americans:
This is no trivial matter. We cannot allow F.B.I. or Justice Department officials to unnecessarily publicize pending investigations concerning candidates of either party while an election is underway. That is an abuse of power. Allowing such a precedent to stand will invite more, and even worse, abuses of power in the future.
Painter isn’t alone in sharing this concern about Comey. Before these latest emails, Politico published an op-ed comparing Comey to the notorious J. Edgar Hoover , who was the first FBI director, who was perhaps best known for using questionable tactics to bring down dissidents.
Since taking office, Comey has repeatedly injected his views into executive branch deliberations on issues such as sentencing reform and the roots of violence against police officers. He has undermined key presidential priorities such as crafting a coherent federal policy on cybersecurity and encryption. Most recently, he shattered longstanding precedent by publicly offering his own conclusions about the FBI’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s email. (The FBI did not respond to a request for comment.)
It would be difficult to argue—in terms of temperament, manner, or motivation—that he is, or ever will be, the next J. Edgar Hoover. But increasing numbers of critics believe he has displayed a worrying disregard for the rules and norms that have constrained all but one of his predecessors, straying with blithe confidence—and with increasing regularity—across the fine line that separates independence from unaccountability.
If nothing else, this election year has shown us something completely unprecedented and completely undemocratic. It’s not just that Comey is influencing the election, he’s using emails stolen by a foreign government to influence an election. As Donald Trump says, this is “ worse than Watergate ,” just not in the way Trump thinks.
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LUXEMBOURG (Reuters) - Britain s rejection of a transgender woman s claim for a women s state pension because she was still married to her spouse from before her transition is discriminatory, an EU court adviser said on Tuesday. Advocate General Michal Bobek of the Court of Justice of the European Union (ECJ) stated in a non-binding opinion that marriage status does not play a role in accessing state retirement pensions for people who are not transgender. This amounts to direct discrimination on the basis of sex, which is not open to objective justification, a news release of the opinion stated. The opinion was issued for a case where a transgender woman - who was registered as a boy at birth but has lived as a woman since 1991 and had gender reassignment surgery in 1995 - in the UK applied for a state retirement pension when she turned 60 in 2008. According to UK law, a woman born before Apr. 6, 1950 must be 60 to access the state retirement pension, whereas for a man born before Dec. 6 1953 the age is 65. Her application was denied because she didn t apply for a full gender recognition certificate due to the fact that she remained married to a woman and her marriage would have been annulled at the time as same-sex marriage was not legal in Britain. The UK Supreme Court asked the ECJ if the requirement to be unmarried to recognize a change in gender, and thus determine the qualifying age for a state pension, was allowed under EU law. The Advocate General concludes that there is unequal treatment since marital status does not play any role for cisgender persons in order to access a state retirement pension, whereas married transgender persons are subject to the requirement to annul their marriage, the court s press release said. The court tends to follow the advice given by the advocate general in most cases, but it is not bound to do so. The advocate general stressed that this was not a case about same-sex marriage. Member states are not compelled to recognize same-sex marriage, and they can still determine the conditions under which a change of gender will be legally recognized.
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In a speech at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida on Tuesday, President Obama declared that [n]o foreign terrorist organization has successfully planned and executed an attack on our homeland. The claim earned perfunctory applause, but a closer look at the reaction of many of the servicemen and women there made clear what they really thought about the administration s handling of national security.Obama speaks to our troops at MacDill Air Force Base about foreign terror attacks on our homeland:The President s claim which he has repeated in some form or fashion over the last few years is an obvious rhetorical attempt to gloss over the reality of the threat of radical Islamic terror on American soil. The attempt to disconnect lone wolf terrorists from the terror organizations who often inspire them does nothing to alleviate the pain of those who have suffered at the hands of jihadists and only hurts prevention efforts. Rhetorical tricks aside, the reality is that during Obama s tenure scores of innocent Americans have been murdered on U.S. soil by jihadists, most of whom were inspired by or acting under the direction of foreign terror groups, particularly the Islamic state.Below is a list of the major, verifiable radical Islamic terror attacks successfully planned and executed on U.S. soil since Obama first took office in 2009 (the first section provided by Daily Wire s Aaron Bandler): Little Rock, Arkansas, June 1, 2009. Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad shot and murdered one soldier, Army Pvt. William Andrew Long, and injured another, Pvt. Quinton Ezeagwula, at a military recruiting station in Little Rock. Muhammad reportedly converted to Islam in college and was on the FBI s radar after being arrested in Yemen a hotbed of radical Islamic terrorism for using a Somali passport, even though he was a U.S. citizen. In a note to an Arkansas judge, Muhammad claimed to be a member of al-Qaeda in the Arab Peninsula, the terror group s Yemen chapter.Fort Hood, Texas, November 5, 2009. Major Nidal Malik Hasan shot up a military base in Fort Hood and murdered 14 people. Hasan was in contact with al-Qaeda terrorist Anwar al-Awlaki prior to the attack and shouted Allahu Akbar! as he fired upon the soldiers on the Fort Hood base. After being sentenced to death, Hasan requested to join ISIS while on death row. It took six years for Obama to acknowledge the shooting as a terror attack instead of workplace violence. Boston, Massachusetts, April 15, 2013. Tamerlan and Dhozkar Tsarnaev set off two bombs at the 2013 Boston marathon, killing three and injuring over 260 people. The Tsarnaev brothers later shot and murdered Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officer Sean Collier. The Tsarnaev brothers were self-radicalized through online jihadist propaganda and through a mosque with ties to al-Qaeda.Moore, Oklahoma, September 24, 2014. Alton Nolen beheaded a woman, Colleen Huff, at a Vaughan Foods plant and stabbed and injured another person. While Nolen s motives are unclear, he appears to have been another radicalized Muslim who was obsessed with beheadings.Queens, New York, October 23, 2014. Zale Thompson, another self-radicalized Muslim, injured two police officers with a hatchet before being shot dead by other cops. Thompson reportedly indoctrinated himself with ISIS, al-Qaeda and al-Shabab a Somali jihadist terror group websites and was a lone wolf attacker.Brooklyn, New York, December 20, 2014. Ismaayil Brinsley shot and murdered two police officers execution-style and his Facebook page featured jihadist postings and had ties to a terror-linked mosque.Garland, Texas, May 3, 2015. Two gunmen shot up the Curtis Culwell Center in Garland, where a Mohammed cartoon contest was taking place, and were killed by a police officer. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack.Chattanooga, Tennessee, July 16, 2015. Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez shot and killed four Marines and a sailor at a military base in Chattanooga and was believed to have been inspired by ISIS.San Bernardino, California, December 14, 2015. Two radical Islamists, Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik, shot and murdered 14 people and injured 22 others at an office holiday party.Orlando, Florida, June 12, 2016. Omar Mateen, 29, opened fire at a gay nightclub, killing 49 and injuring 53. The FBI investigated Mateen twice before his rampage, but did not take any substantive action. Officials believe Mateen was self-radicalized but he pledged fealty to ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi before his death. The real muslims will never accept the filthy ways of the west, Mateen posted on his Facebook page after committing his heinous act at Pulse nightclub. I pledge my alliance to (ISIS leader) abu bakr al Baghdadi..may Allah accept me, he wrote.St. Cloud, Minnesota, September 17, 2016. Dahir Ahmed Adan, a 20-year-old Somali refugee, began hacking at people with a steak knife at a Minnesota mall, injuring nine people before he was shot dead by off-duty police officer Jason Falconer. The FBI said numerous witnesses heard Adan yelling Allahu akbar! and Islam! Islam! during the rampage. He also asked potential victims if they were Muslims before inflicting wounds in their heads, necks, and chests. The FBI believe he had recently become self-radicalized. (As the Daily Wire highlighted, the Minneapolis Star Tribune attempted to blame anti-Muslim tensions for his murderous actions.)New York City/New Jersey, September 17, 2016. Ahmad Khan Rahami, a 28-year-old naturalized citizen from Afghanistan, set off multiple bombs in New York and New Jersey. In Chelsea, his bomb resulted in the injury of over 30 people. Rahami wrote in his journal that he was connected to terrorist leaders, and appears to have been heavily influenced by Sheikh Anwar, Anwar al-Awlaki, Nidal Hassan, and Osama bin Laden. I pray to the beautiful wise ALLAH, [d]o not take JIHAD away from me, Rahami wrote. You [USA Government] continue your [unintelligible] slaught[er] against the holy warriors, be it Afghanistan, Iraq, Sham [Syria], Palestine Columbus, Ohio, November 28, 2016. Abdul Razak Ali Artan, an ISIS-inspired 20-year-old Somali refugee who had been granted permanent legal residence in 2014 after living in Pakistan for 7 years, attempted to run over his fellow Ohio State students on campus. After his car was stopped by a barrier, he got out of the vehicle and began hacking at people with a butcher knife before being shot dead by a campus police officer. He injured 11 people, one critically. ISIS took credit for the attack, describing Artan as their soldier. Just three minutes before his rampage, Artan posted a warning to America on Facebook that the lone wolf attacks will continue until America give[s] peace to the Muslims. He also praised deceased al-Qaeda cleric Anwar Al-Awlaki as a hero. Daily Wire
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The U.S. is the great enemy of mankind! raved Ernesto Che Guevara in 1961. Against those hyenas there is no option but extermination. We will bring the war to the imperialist enemies very home, to his places of work and recreation. The imperialist enemy must feel like a hunted animal wherever he moves. Thus we ll destroy him! We must keep our hatred against them (the U.S.) alive and fan it to paroxysms! -Che Guevara, head of Cuba s Foreign Liberation Department, Nov. 17, 1962We have a president who won t tie Islamic terrorists to Islam, has cut a one-sided deal with Iran, as they continue to chant death to America, and has made an open alliance with a communist country who has a long history of hating America. The same country Obama is fighting to normalize relations with, would have committed an unspeakable act of terrorism against us, had our FBI not thwarted their plans. Why the rush to embrace so many nations and leaders who have a long history of wanting to harm us Barry? On the morning of November 17th, 1962, FBI headquarters in Washington D.C. took on all the trappings of a military command post, according to historian William Breuer. The previous night an intelligence puzzle had finally come together. The resulting picture staggered the FBI men. And these had served at their posts during WWII and the height of the Cold War. They d seen plenty. Now they had mere days to foil a crime against their nation to rival Hideki Tojo s.The agents and officers were haggard and red-eyed but seriously wired. Like hawks on a perch they d been watching the plot unfold, sweating bullets the whole time. It was nearing time to swoop down on Fidel Castro and Che Guevara s agents, busy with a terror plot that would have made ISIS drool decades later.Alan Belmont was second to J Edgar Hoover at the time. Raymond Wannall headed the Bureau s Intelligence Division. That nerve-jangling morning both were in Belmont s office just down the hall from Hoover s. Both were burning up the telephone lines to their agents in New York. On one phone they had Special Agent John Malone who ran the New York field office. On other lines they talked with several carloads of FBI agents slinking around Manhattan. These were keeping a touch-and-go, but more or less constant, surveillance on the ringleaders of the Cuban terror plot.Castro s agents had targeted Macy s, Gimbels, Bloomingdales, and Manhattan s Grand Central Station with a dozen incendiary devices and 500 kilos of TNT. The holocaust was set for detonation the following week, on the day after Thanksgiving.A little perspective: For their March 2004 Madrid subway blasts, all 10 of them, that killed and maimed almost 2,000 people, al-Qaeda used a grand total of 100 kilos of TNT. Castro and Che s agents planned to set off five times that explosive power in the three biggest department stores on earth, all packed to suffocation and pulsing with holiday cheer on the year s biggest shopping day. Macy s get s 50,000 shoppers that one day. Thousands of New Yorkers, including women and children actually, given the date and targets, probably mostly women and children were to be incinerated and entombed. ( We greeted each other as old friends, gushed Jimmy Carter when visiting Fidel Castro in 2002.)At the time, the FBI relied heavily on HUMINT (Human Intelligence.) So they d expertly penetrated the plot. One by one the ringleaders were ambushed. The first was named Roberto Santiesteban and he was nabbed while walking down Riverside Drive. As the agents closed in, Santiesteban saw them and took off! And as he ran, Santiesteban was jamming paper in his mouth and chewing furiously.But six FBI agents were after him, all fleet of foot themselves. Finally they closed the ring and triangulated the suspect. Santiesteban fell, raging and cursing, flailing his arms and jabbing his elbows like a maniac. They grabbed his arm and bent it behind his back just as he was reaching for his pistol.While this group got their man, another FBI squad arrested a couple named Elsa Montero and Jose Gomez-Abad as they left their apartment on West 71st Street. The FBI speculated that as many as 30 others might have been in on the plot, but these were the head honchos. Had those detonators gone off, 9/11 might be remembered as the SECOND deadliest terrorist attack on U.S. soil.Some of these plotters belonged to the New York Chapter of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, an outfit that became MUCH better known a year later on that very week. Incidentally, at the time of the Manhattan terror plot, the Fair Play For Cuba Committee also included among its members, CBS correspondent Robert Taber (an early version of Dan Rather, who conducted Castro s first network television soft-soaping on Aug. 30, 1957), along with The Nation magazine co-owner Alan Sagner. In 1996 President Clinton appointed Alan Sagner head of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.Terror-plotters Roberto Santiesteban, Elsa Montero and Jose Gomez-Abad belonged to the Castro-Cuban Mission to the U.N. and escaped prosecution by indignantly claiming diplomatic immunity. Via: TownhallIt s hard to imagine any American would ever consider Che Guevara to be a hero And then again, maybe it s not so hard to imagine:Maria Isabel is the campaign volunteer who hung this Che Guevara poster in the Obama campaign office in Houston, TX. She s no low-level volunteer either. She is a campaign precinct captain and the co-chair of the Houston Obama Leadership Team.
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VALLETTA (Reuters) - Maltese investigators believe a man charged with murdering an anti-corruption journalist set off the car bomb which killed her via SMS from a cabin cruiser out at sea, police sources said on Wednesday. Three men were charged on Tuesday over the death of Daphne Caruana Galizia, whose car was blown up as she drove out of her home on Oct. 16. The crime shocked the Mediterranean island and raised concerns among European Union lawmakers about the rule of law there. The three, named as Vince Muscat, and brothers Alfred and George Degiorgio, have all pleaded not guilty. Police sources said investigators suspected George Degiorgio sent the text message after receiving a signal from his brother Alfred, who they believe acted as a lookout. A boat has been impounded. There was no immediate statement from the men s lawyers. Caruana Galizia wrote a popular blog which highlighted cases of alleged graft and targeted politicians in government, including Prime Minister Joseph Muscat, and the opposition. Seven other men were arrested in connection with the probe and then released without charge, police said. Caruana Galizia s family, which has criticized the handling of the case, said in a statement on Wednesday that the murdered journalist had not been investigating any of the 10 people arrested. Simon Busuttil, former leader of the opposition in the Maltese parliament, tweeted a link to the statement, adding: This can only mean that those who commissioned the assassination of #DaphneCaruanaGalizia are still out at large. Evidence gathered so far suggests the bomb was placed inside her rented car while it was parked in an alley outside her house six miles from Valletta on the night before her death. Mobile phones were recovered from the sea in Marsa, an inland area of Valletta harbor, the sources said. Prime Minister Muscat has called the killing an attack on press freedom, and asked the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation to help local police investigate. Caruana Galizia s son said she was killed because of her work. Members of an EU fact-find mission said last week there was a perception of impunity in Malta.
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SIMI VALLEY, Calif (Reuters) - The U.S. agency tasked with protecting the country from missile attacks is scouting the West Coast for places to deploy new anti-missile defenses, two Congressmen said on Saturday, as North Korea s missile tests raise concerns about how the United States would defend itself from an attack. West Coast defenses would likely include Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) anti-ballistic missiles, similar to those deployed in South Korea to protect against a potential North Korean attack. The accelerated pace of North Korea s ballistic missile testing program in 2017 and the likelihood the North Korean military could hit the U.S. mainland with a nuclear payload in the next few years has raised the pressure on the United States government to build-up missile defenses. On Wednesday, North Korea tested a new type of intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) that can fly over 13,000 km (8,080 miles), placing Washington within target range, South Korea said on Friday. Republican party Congressman Mike Rogers, who sits on the House Armed Services Committee and chairs the Strategic Forces Subcommittee which oversees missile defense, said the Missile Defense Agency (MDA), was aiming to install extra defenses at West Coast sites. The funding for the system does not appear in the 2018 defense budget plan indicating potential deployment is further off. It s just a matter of the location, and the MDA making a recommendation as to which site meets their criteria for location, but also the environmental impact, the Alabama Congressman told Reuters during an interview on the sidelines of the annual Reagan National Defense Forum in southern California. After this story was published Congressman Rogers told Reuters in a statement he was unaware of any effort by the Department of Defense to locate additional intermediate missile defense assets on the West Coast. He added that his earlier comments to Reuters should not be interpreted as confirmation of such an effort. Reuters global head of communications, Abbe Serphos, said We stand by our story. When asked about the plan, MDA Deputy Director Rear Admiral Jon Hill said in a statement: The Missile Defense Agency has received no tasking to site the Terminal High Altitude Air Defense System on the West Coast. The MDA is a unit of the U.S. Defense Department. Congressman Rogers did not reveal the exact locations the agency is considering but said several sites are competing for the missile defense installations. Rogers and Congressman Adam Smith, a Democrat representing the 9th District of Washington, said the government was considering installing the THAAD anti-missile system made by aerospace giant Lockheed Martin Corp, at west coast sites. The Congressmen said the number of sites that may ultimately be deployed had yet to be determined. THAAD is a ground-based regional missile defense system designed to shoot down short-, medium- and intermediate-range ballistic missiles and takes only a matter of weeks to install. In addition to the two THAAD systems deployed in South Korea and Guam in the Pacific, the U.S. has seven other THAAD systems. While some of the existing missiles are based in Fort Bliss, Texas, the system is highly mobile and current locations are not disclosed. A Lockheed Martin representative declined to comment on specific THAAD deployments, but added that the company is ready to support the Missile Defense Agency and the United States government in their ballistic missile defense efforts. He added that testing and deployment of assets is a government decision. In July, the United States tested THAAD missile defenses and shot down a simulated, incoming intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM). The successful test adds to the credibility of the U.S. military s missile defense program, which has come under intense scrutiny in recent years due in part to test delays and failures. Currently, the continental United States is primarily shielded by the Ground-based Midcourse Defense system (GMD) in Alaska and California as well as the Aegis system deployed aboard U.S. Navy ships. The THAAD system has a far higher testing success rate than the GMD. The MDA told Congress in June that it planned to deliver 52 more THAAD interceptors to the U.S. Army between October 2017 and September 2018, bringing total deliveries to 210 since May 2011. North Korea s latest missile test puts the U.S. capital within range, but Pyongyang still needs to prove it has mastered critical missile technology, such as re-entry, terminal stage guidance and warhead activation, South Korea said on Friday.
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MADRID (Reuters) - Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy said on Thursday he would ask Spain s constitutional court to revoke a referendum law passed on Wednesday by the Catalan parliament that sets the stage for a Oct. 1 vote on splitting from Spain. The law, passed by a majority of Catalan lawmakers, was unconstitutional, Rajoy told a news conference. Spain s state prosecutors office said on Thursday it would present criminal charges against leading members of the Catalan parliament for allowing Wednesday s parliamentary vote to go ahead.
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Ohio has become the second state – after Nevada – to order the Trump campaign to appear in court and answer charges of voter intimidation and suppression in urban areas.
A federal judge ordered Republican nominee Donald Trump, his longtime political advisor Roger Stone and the Ohio Republican Party into court this week to face charges of violating the Voting Rights Act and the remaining provisions of the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871, which makes it illegal to conspire to deprive citizens of their civil rights, specifically voting rights. Cleveland.com reports :
The order entered Tuesday by U.S. District Judge James Gwin in Cleveland says the defendants’ response must include any objections to an order “limiting voter intimidation” or “limiting people at polling locations who are not authorized poll watchers or outside the polling stations.”
The speed in which Gwin ordered the response, while not necessarily signaling how he feels about the case, shows that the judge is taking the accusations of voter intimidation seriously before Nov. 8 Election Day.
The candidate may use a wink and a nod, but that doesn’t allow anyone to circumvent the federal laws governing elections. The US Constitution places all federal elections under the realm of congressional control, and the Voting Rights Act makes it illegal to intimidate or pressure anyone seeking to exercise their right to vote.
As the lawsuit indicates, even Ohio Republicans are reporting Trump supporters using illegal intimidation tactics in Cuyahoga County, the home of Cleveland’s large minority population:
According to Pat McDonald, the Republican Director of the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections, Trump supporters have already visited the county elections board identifying themselves as poll observers, even though they did not appear to be credentialed as poll observers as required under Ohio law. Indeed, Trump’s fearmongering has caused Cuyahoga County election officials to express concerns of instability on Election Day and to raise the prospect of deploying law-enforcement officials to the polls if necessary to address polling place issues.
Democrats filed suit late Sunday night to enjoin Republicans from efforts which have included fake poll watcher badges and verbal conduct by the Trump campaign and nominee, plus efforts by Roger Stone’s Super PAC to exit-poll minority polling places, when in fact Stone doesn’t run a polling operation and hasn’t during this year’s campaign:
The lawsuit cites several examples of such comments by Trump made in Ohio, including a statement made at an Aug. 22 rally in Akron. “You’ve got to get everybody to go out and watch, and go out and vote,” Trump said at the rally. “And when I say ‘watch,’ you know what I’m talking about, right?” It also references an unnamed senior Trump campaign official who told Bloomberg News that “we have three major voter suppression operations under way.”
It also takes aim at Stone and a group he controls, Stop the Steal Inc., and seeks to stop them from conducting “exit polling” in nine cities that historically vote Democrat. These include Cleveland, Philadelphia and Las Vegas. Stone said in an emailed statement that the polls his organizations will conduct will be scientific. “We seek only to determine if the election is honestly and fairly conducted and to provide an evidentiary basis for a challenge to the election if that is not the case,” he said in the statement. “I assume the purpose of this bogus lawsuit is to distract from the voter-fraud the Democrats have traditionally engaged in.”
Stone did not provide any evidence to back up his fraud claim.
Ohio isn’t the only battleground state in the fight against Republican dirty tricks at the polls. Lawsuits in Pennsylvania, Nevada and Arizona are also being fought over the same issues , but with each local problem, such as the 94 vigilante poll watchers Roger Stone has signed up in Arizona for his Super PAC.
The Democratic National Committee is also suing its national counterpart, and just received extensive information about the RNC’s poll watching plans and geographic targeting which is still being held under seal by the federal court. A federal judge is hearing that case in Newark, N.J. tomorrow at 10am and a decision is expected sometime later in the day.
Ironically, the multi-state litigation is happening because the national Republican Party successfully separated state level parties from the 1982 court monitoring agreement , so now the Democratic Party must file new lawsuits in multiple states in addition to the national case. However, two state party chairmen that are also RNC members have become embroiled in the national case, as well as some of the Ohio issues have been cited in the national case against the RNC.
The Ohio federal court has greatly expedited this case, so expect more news before election day about rulings meant to protect the general public from vigilante “ballot security” operations.
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By Gordon Duff, Senior Editor on October 30, 2016 Constitutional Crisis: FBI used prohibited FISA domestic terror warrant in Clinton-Weiner email search …by Gordon Duff, with Ian Greenhalgh , Editors – Veterans Today
In a surprise announcement, the Department of Justice just admitted that there was no legal authorization in place to access email accounts of Hillary Clinton aide, Huma Abedin, estranged wife of accused sex offender former Congressman Anthony Weiner.
The government admitted that no warrant had been requested and that discussions to seek a warrant had not yet begun, making the letter FBI Director James Comey wrote to Congress on Friday a potentially criminal act, if it can be proven that Comey was aware of this fact and of the actions of his subordinates in “planting” Clinton emails on Weiner’s laptop.[14]
(CNN)Justice Department and FBI officials are working to secure approval that would allow the FBI to conduct a full search of top Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin’s newly discovered emails, sources familiar with the discussions told CNN.
Government lawyers haven’t yet approached Abedin’s lawyers to seek an agreement to conduct the search. Sources earlier told CNN that those discussions had begun, but the law enforcement officials now say they have not.[14]
FBI Director James Comey is under assault for what is being perceived as more than simply partisan behavior. Former presidential advisor, Lanny Davis writes for The Hill:
“Comey as FBI director — an investigative agency, not a prosecution agency — (does not) have any authority to send a report to Congress in the middle of an investigation about the past or present subject of an investigation. He appears to be in violation of the limits on his authority as FBI director by disclosing investigation information — or possible investigation information — directly to Congress with obtaining permission from the attorney general or someone else delegated authority by her. His decision to reveal the results of an ongoing investigation, before a published criminal indictment, violates due process principles and pre-indictment secrecy rules and guidelines of the Justice Department.”[16]
Through court challenges to FBI search tactics under FISA and other counter-terror legislation, accessing “cloud” based emails and either representing them as “found” in a warranted search of a hard drive or in “syncing” a computer to place emails on a drive under a warranted search, clear prohibitions have been established.[Addendum I]
In this case, with no warrant in place at all, there are no possible interpretations of FBI actions that could be consistent with admissibility.
In what has been seen by most a the long expected “October Surprise,” the highly controversial letter written by FBI Director James Comer, something more far reaching has developed, a constitutional crisis that may well exceed that of Watergate or even Iran/Contra. Like the Federal Reserve, the FBI itself lacks a clear constitutional authority. There is no mention of nor authorization given, in the constitution, for a national police force. In fact, the Constitution, in the 10th Amendment ratified in 1791 states:
“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”[12] More often than not, this has been ignored, a “stepchild” of the Bill of Rights. Here, however, the FBI, created initially as the “sex police”[11], created to enforce the Mann Act[13], has assumed not only “powers not granted” under the constitution, but has exponentially expanded its reach, well beyond constitutional limitations on rights of privacy and against unreasonable search and seizure, assailed by laws like the Patriot Acts.”
Behind the current controversy, that of an FBI director being accused of interfering in an election and acting against policy, procedure and advice of the Attorney General, is something more. The FBI has crossed into the area of possible criminality, violating clear cut Federal Court restrictions, not only through an illegal search but by actually planting evidence and then channeling misleading information into the press with a clear intent to subvert constitutional authority.
Another issue is the kind of language Comey has been using to mollify critics who have kept a flurry of investigations going and who have subjected him to hostile interrogation for endless hours in front of highly partisan committees. Colonel Jim Hanke (ret), former US attache to Israel and ranking NATO military intelligence planner commented on the nature of Comey’s assertions of Hillary’s classified emails:
“Take the text of any of the emails we have seen. Anything here could have been said in a press conference or on a television interview and, in those formats, would not have been considered classified. There would have been fallout, for sure, not from disclosing policy or in endangering operations, real issues that get high level classification. Hillary’s emails, were they made public, and there was reason to expect this might well happen, are revealing and reflect on her personal judgement and, at times, demonstrate a lack of grasp, particularly when it comes to Russia or Syria. These are issues of public confidence, not criminality nor are they areas of real security classification.
Conversely, what we have seen Comey do may well rise to the level of something serious, certainly he undermines the FBI and attacks the American system of government. As to what his intent was or to what laws apply, this is not my area of expertise but I would like to think that criminal code could deal with this kind of threat.”
One additional consideration to put into the mix is Wikileaks. During recent weeks while Wikileaks has released two dozen batches of emails, the Clinton campaign has mirrored earlier charges made against Wikileaks by former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinsky, that Wikileaks “sexes up” and even fabricates documents that are, according to Brzezinsky, when speaking to Judy Woodruff of National Public Radio, “seeded” into a virtual deluge of material.
The FBI used FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) powers when it downloaded and “synced” Clinton emails into former Congressman Anthony Weiner’s computers, according to legal experts.[1,4,6,7] The FBI knowingly violated the law in applying terror statutes when they illegally expanded their search into Weiner’s computers and downloaded emails from a 3rd party account. With only days before an election, the term “October Surprise” has never been more applicable.
The question people are asking is; “Why did Director Comey choose to ignore legal advice and, more importantly, was he aware that he was upsetting an American presidential election based on a pattern of criminal-level misconduct by his own agency?”
The FBI lied when it claimed the it found Clinton emails when it searched Anthony Weiner’s computer. Sources now tell VT that the FBI in fact “synced” the email account of Weiner’s estranged wife, Huma, downloading the emails “from the cloud” and falsely claiming they were discovered as part of a legal search warrant. However, there is no case law supporting the expansion of such warrants to spouses or others whose email accounts may be accessible through devices but were not stored on hard drives and not by any stretch of the imagination, legally accessed under any possible search warrant tied to Weiner’s sexual indiscretions.
What did in fact happen here was planting of evidence, by the FBI, illegally accessing a “cloud based” email account not included in a search warrant and downloading to a hard drive that was included in a warrant. This is a common FBI/DHS practice used in terror investigations, making use of a single warrant to follow cloud accounts for multiple users.
In an article in today’s Washington Post, the issue of how the FBI found emails that should not been on Weiner’s computer were brought to light.
“Top Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin has told people she is unsure how her emails could have ended up on a device she viewed as her husband’s computer, the seizure of which has reignited the Clinton email investigation, according to a person familiar with the investigation and civil litigation over the matter.
The person, who would not discuss the case unless granted anonymity, said Abedin was not a regular user of the computer, and even when she agreed to turn over emails to the State Department for federal records purposes, her lawyers did not search it for materials, not believing any of her messages to be there.
That could be a significant oversight if Abedin’s work messages were indeed on the computer of her estranged husband, former congressman Anthony Weiner, who is under investigation for allegedly exchanging lewd messages with a 15-year-old girl. So far, it is unclear what — if any — new, work-related messages were found by authorities. The person said the FBI had not contacted Abedin about its latest discovery, and she was unsure what the bureau had discovered.”[8]
There is no evidence, of yet, that Director Comey was aware the “evidence” he took to congress was illegally planted on Weiner’s computer but Comey was aware of the practice. Typically, the FBI search warrants used can give access to cloud based emails as outlined below by FBI Special Agent James M. Cauthen:
“An alternative is for the investigator to search in the same manner as the user would—with the computer turned on and connected to the data. In this example, the investigator needs access to the subject’s computer with the relational database software and connection to the cloud. The investigator could consider combining two search warrants—one on the computer owner for the location being searched under Rule 41 and one on the cloud provider under §2703 for the content to which the computer is connected.
With this approach, the investigator will need to understand how to operate database software and make queries. These queries must comply with the search warrant. The investigator must conduct the search carefully as actions taken on a live system will change the data on the computer. Using this method, it may be possible to obtain a single search warrant combining the provisions of Rule 41 and §2703; however, it should be noted that there is no case law yet on implementing this strategy.” [7]
In light of the controversy over the handling of this issue by FBI Director Comey, an article in The New Yorker, dated October 28, 2016 cuts to the director’s state of mind. From that article: WASHINGTON ( The Borowitz Report )—James Comey, the embattled director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, presided over a special ceremony on Friday evening to commend the brave F.B.I. agents who had to touch Anthony Weiner’s computer. In awarding the commendations to the agents, whom Comey called “the bravest men and women this country has to offer,” the F.B.I. director criticized the political uproar that he said had overshadowed “their selfless acts of heroism.” “These agents have performed far and beyond the call of duty,” a visibly angry Comey said. “I know we’re eleven days away from an election and tensions are running high, but we shouldn’t let that subtract in any way from what these brave agents did with their own hands.” “Who among us could look at ourselves in the mirror and say, ‘I have what it takes to touch Anthony Weiner’s computer ’?” Comey asked. “I know I sure as hell couldn’t.”[15] A common way to hide ones train in Washington is to wrap whatever the smell is “in a bloody flag” or to hand out medals for heroism. This is “deception 101” and Comey wasn’t in the least bit coy about using his agents, who may be steeped in ethical or even criminal complicity, in that same “bloody flag” theatrics.
The Clinton/Weiner connection may well be an abuse of expanded counter-terrorism powers the FBI assumed during the Bush era. However, in 2008, these powers were curtailed by a Federal court decision. [Addendum I] From the New York Times, April 19, 2016:
“WASHINGTON — A federal judge has rejected a legal challenge to rules permitting F.B.I. agents, when working on domestic criminal cases, to search emails written by Americans that the government has intercepted without a warrant in the name of gathering foreign intelligence.
In an 80-page opinion that was issued in November and remained classified until being made public on Tuesday, Judge Thomas F. Hogan, the chief judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, ruled that what critics call “backdoor searches” of messages by the F.B.I. comply with both the Constitution and the FISA Amendments Act. That 2008 statute legalized a form of the government’s once-secret warrantless surveillance program.”[9]
There has been considerable controversy involving the FBI’s illegal expansion of search warrants in criminal cases. With the expanded powers under the Bush administration’s Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, covering the use of broad “single warrant” powers in domestic terrorism cases, the FBI has on numerous occasions misused FISA powers in criminal investigations.
This has been brought before the Federal Courts in 2008 [Addendum I] and the FBI should well consider itself forewarned not to attempt to apply questionable expanded powers under FISA legislation intended to apply to terror threats. That FISA was applied here, knowing a court challenge would take far too long to correct the damage, in this case a “rigged” presidential election, as claimed by Clinton campaign advisor, John Podesta. References:
[1] Elena Kagan: Supreme Court Hasn’t “Gotten to” Email , CBS News, August 21, 2013.
[2] Josiah Dykstra, “Seizing Electronic Evidence from Cloud Computing Environments,” in Cybercrime and Cloud Forensics: Applications for Investigation Processes , ed. K. Ruan (Hershey, PA: IGI Global, 2013).
[3] Tony Sammes and Brian Jenkinson, Forensic Computing: A Practitioner’s Guide , (London, UK: Springer-Verlag, 2000). Forensics was developed on the idea of copying data from a hard disk drive that was turned off or dead. Live recovery involves changes to the contents of a computer’s storage space, 18 U.S.C. §2510(15). Therefore, it is essential that someone competent to give testimony performs it, showing that the continuity and integrity of the evidence has been preserved.
[4] U.S. Department of Justice, Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section, Criminal Division, Searching and Seizing Computers and Obtaining Electronic Evidence in Criminal Investigations 3d ed., (Washington, D.C.: Office of Legal Education, Executive Office for United States Attorneys, 2009), 84. Although the courts have not directly addressed the matter, the language of Rule 41 combined with the Supreme Court’s interpretation of “property” may limit computer searches to data that physically resides in the district in which the warrant was issued.
[5] For legal purposes, there are two classes of cloud providers: those who provide “electronic communication services,” and those who provide “remote computing service.” See 18 U.S.C. §2510(15) and 18 U.S.C. §2711(2) respectively.
[6] United States v. Gorshkov , 2001 WL 1024026 (May 23, 2001). In this case, the defendants moved to suppress the evidence, but the motion was denied. Nonetheless, the investigator was charged with hacking by foreign authorities who requested that the investigator be extradited for trial. U.S. authorities have not complied.
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Trump just will not stop hammering his border wall as the solution to every problem we ve ever had. In addition to the U.S. government sending notices of taking to Texans living along the U.S.-Mexico border, the White House has now released its requirements for the wall. Fox News posted the list to Twitter, and it s just ridiculous.Border wall requirements. pic.twitter.com/AFYG0s5pCS Fox News (@FoxNews) March 19, 2017At first it looks like this could be a joke, until you see the blue checkmark next to Fox News Twitter name. These three requirements are hilarious because they re so vague they say absolutely nothing. It s like Fox called Trump up out of the blue, said, What are the requirements for the border wall, and Trump replied with, Oh. Um. Yes. The wall. Yes. Um. Requirements Nothing about a better pricing estimate, what materials they think they need where, how they plan to keep it from interrupting migration patterns or diverting floodwaters, or anything that might actually tell us what the true requirements for this wall are. Just three vague things that demonstrate the Trump administration is more about touting the wall than they are about actually planning for it.The last two are especially odd. Look good from U.S. side. It must also look imposing from the Mexican side. Aside from the fact that this looks like a toddler wrote it, we do know that nobody wants an eyesore in their backyard.But a 30-ft wall may well be an eyesore anyway no matter how tasteful they try and make it look. For instance, those living along the Rio Grande, where their view is of a river and they re closely intertwined with sister cities in Mexico, are likely to suffer both from the eyesore that is a giant wall. Are they going to build it out of Plexiglas to avoid interrupting views? No. It has to look imposing from the far side.In reality, some communities might benefit from rising property values, while others would suffer grievously when their local economies crash as people from their sister cities can t come across to shop anymore. The way it looks won t help the communities that are going to suffer regardless. Difficult to climb or cut through. Well duh. Really? They ve been saying the entire time that the whole point of having a wall is to keep people from being able to climb over it or cut through it like they can in places along the existing fence. But people will still climb it, people will still tunnel under it, and some might find ways around them via the oceans.When you consider the fact that most undocumented immigrants entered the U.S. legally on a visitor visa, and then just never left, it makes difficult to climb or cut through seem even more absurd. It would be nice to know what the administration believes this wall will truly require in terms of, well, everything, since we re the ones who are going to pay for it. But it would be even nicer if they d drop it altogether, since our tax dollars are going towards a massive waste of time, money and resources.Featured image by Chip Somodevilla via Getty Images
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Sometimes, politics can get so ridiculous that one is forced to wonder if what he or she is seeing is really happening. One of those moments occurred on the second day of the GOP convention. After Melania Trump blatantly plagiarized part of Michelle Obama s 2008 Democratic convention speech, the GOP leaped into action, offering every ridiculous excuse they could muster to defend the prospective next First Lady including the Trump campaign s official hamburger delivery boy Chris Christie s well-she-didn t-plagiarize-all-of-it-so-it-wasn t-plagiarism defense.But the most insane thing to come out of this scenario is perhaps Republican National Committee communications director Sean Spicer s My Little Pony defense. Melania Trump said, You work hard for what you want in life. Akon said, Work hard for what you get in life. John Legend said, Work hard, Spicer offered during an interview on MSNBC. You re quoting Akon and John Legend? asked host Craig Melvin. Hold on, it s getting better, Spicer continued. And he was right it did get better: Melania Trump said, The strength of your dreams and your willingness to work for them. Twilight Sparkle from My Little Pony said, This is your dream, anything you can do in your dreams. A simple Google search of three phrases comes up with everything from Sparkle Pony to John Legend to Akon, Spicer said, ignoring that an entire paragraph was quoted by Mrs. Trump nearly word-for-word.Naturally, the internet had a lot of fun with this:A presidential campaign quoting from MY LITTLE PONY. There just isn't enough popcorn in all the world for this. pic.twitter.com/wMl166jHQZ Scott Sigler (@scottsigler) July 19, 2016My Little Pony is trending, my 7yr old girl is going to be ecstatic, a new movie! Then I come to realize, it's even better!! Jason MacDonald (@jasonm_stones) July 19, 20164wait they actually cited my little pony?! kath bishop (@holeygeorge) July 19, 2016Why is my little pony trending . Oh god CHOROMATSU GIRL (@zero_ukai) July 19, 2016I always go watch My Little Pony to find phrases I can use in my speeches. Doesn't everyone? Bella Elle (@Preciosa_Liz) July 19, 2016Republicans are trying in every which way possible to defend Melania stealing that speech ?? they're out here quoting my little pony ? Gabby (@LoveeeGabby_) July 19, 2016When "My Little Pony" is being referenced seriously in political discourse, you know the end is near. pic.twitter.com/xPkmcQMKau Candace Blessed (@blessedcandace) July 19, 2016YOU GUYS @seanspicer just quoted Twilight Sparkle from My Little Pony to defend Melania Trump and I am DONE Hayes Brown (@HayesBrown) July 19, 2016RNC, why are you bringing My Little Pony into this?! What did Twilight Sparkle do to you?! https://t.co/ouEIt88shg Kimberly Ann (@KimmyEason) July 19, 2016The My Little Pony defense like totally works here pic.twitter.com/vMcGXyHU3K Max (@MaxDeChiara) July 19, 2016The My Little Pony defense? Could this election get any crazier? (The answer is yes, I know, I know.) #MelaniaLovesMichelle Noah Evslin (@nevslin) July 19, 2016My little pony Really? pic.twitter.com/AyhkCDgX1Z Jill (@jedichica) July 19, 2016So she also plagiarized "My Little Pony"? Has she no shame? https://t.co/wQ5xZbHXXi Lenny (@DimeStoreNinja) July 19, 2016I can't even with this using "My Little Pony" as a defense? Really?! The absurdity has become surreal. (((Jeff))) (@progpoet) July 19, 2016The bottom line #MelaniaTrump did commit #plagiarism if not of #MicheleObama then of My Little Pony ? #PlagiaristMelania Souad (@minouche_tlm) July 19, 2016Oh well if she was just paraphrasing My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic then it s totally less idiotic https://t.co/P64WN0iUtr Rebecca Marie Kocsis (@BeccaMarie82) July 19, 2016@CNN so your future First Lady has the same mindset as my little pony!! Is that what you're saying?!? _______ (@DontCare_w) July 19, 2016Why couldn't Twilight Sparkle from My Little Pony save me when I handed in that paper in 9th grade? Adam Parker (@goatsonparade) July 19, 2016GOP's Sean Spicer defends Melania Trump against accusations she plagiarized Michelle Obama by suggesting Melania plagiarized My Little Pony. I, Hoebot. (@eclecticbrotha) July 19, 2016So she has also plagiarized My Little Pony and Kid Rock. What noble leaders to emulate. https://t.co/YMTR3TrGj8 Cassie Gibbs (@trojan_roo) July 19, 2016I bet this is one My Little Pony the RNC isn't down with. pic.twitter.com/aLAaRaiylp Dolly Llama (@BrandonLBC) July 19, 2016OMG,my Little Pony and then they include John Legend!.Just like they ignored Brian May's( Queen's)copyright! https://t.co/9ccPz4LMsm Angels4Autism (@Angel4Autism) July 19, 2016If Republicans are now messing with My Little Pony, I m pretty sure that crosses a line. They re at risk of losing the key brony vote. Mike Knell (@mpk) July 19, 2016With the My Little Pony defense of Melania Trump s plagiarism, GOP proves Partisanship is Magic. https://t.co/4a4ObPrau8 Jeet Heer (@HeerJeet) July 19, 2016Please tell me the RNC did NOT just go into My Little Pony oh what a year! Diz Foley (@DizFoley) July 19, 2016You know how all those guys were like "Girl Ghostbusters ruined my childhood?"Well the RNC quoting My Little Pony is doing nothing for mine Marla Rosenthal (@half_shiksa) July 19, 2016Let s say Spicer is 100% correct in that Michelle Obama lifted the phrases from My Little Pony. He s not, but let s pretend that this is some alternate universe where rabid, tentacular beasts rule the planet, the sky is constantly on fire, and a smart, classy woman like Michelle Obama needs to dip into the brilliant and thought-provoking scripts of My Little Pony in order to write a speech.Does it really make it any better that Melania Trump lifted quotes third-hand from a children s TV show? Is the fact that Mrs. Trump couldn t steal from someone more respectable than a show about magic horses actually comforting?Here s the thing, though. While Spicer really had to reach to connect Trump s (and Obama s) to My Little Pony, the difference in wording between the two speeches was minimal. In any case, this tweet from California Senate candidate Thomas Del Beccaro keeps getting more hilarious by the minute.#MelaniaTrump proved tonight she is total opposite of #MichelleO. No anger. No complaints. Just about what can happen through opportunity. Thomas Del Beccaro (@tomdelbeccaro) July 19, 2016Watch this ridiculous attempt to defend Mrs. Trump below:And watch him double down on CNN here:Featured image via screengrab (NBC)/screengrab
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Former National Guardsman turned Islamic State sympathizer Mohamed Jalloh of Sterling, Virginia pled to guilty in federal court Thursday to a terrorism charge related to a July arrested during an FBI sting operation.
Jalloh, a 27 year old naturalized citizen from Sierra Leone was arrested on July 3rd as part of an FBI counterterrorism operation in which he had communicated to a federal informant that he was interested in participating in a “Fort Hood ” style attack.
Jalloh was apprehended by federal agents after purchasing a Stag Arms rifle at a Virginia arms dealer that had been rendered inoperable as part of the operation.
According to the U.S. Attorney’s office , authorities discovered during their operation that Jalloh was attempting to provide material support to the Islamic State by “assisting in the procurement of weapons” to be used in an attack on U.S. soil.
Following his arrest, Jalloh admitted to traveling to Africa to join the Islamic State, adding that he had quit the National Guard after listening to online lectures from deceased al-Qaeda leader Anwar al-Aulaqi.
Via Justice.Gov
…in March 2016, a now-deceased member of ISIL brokered an introduction between Jalloh, 26, of Sterling, Virginia, and an individual in the United States who actually was an FBI confidential human source (CHS). The ISIL member was actively plotting an attack in the United States and believed the attack would be carried out with the assistance of Jalloh and the CHS.
…Jalloh stated that he recently had taken a six-month trip to Africa, where he had met with ISIL members in Nigeria and first began communicating online with the ISIL member who later brokered his introduction to the CHS.
During their meeting, Jalloh also told the CHS that he often thought about conducting an attack and that he knew how to shoot guns. Jalloh praised the gunman who killed five U.S. military members in a terrorist attack in Chattanooga, Tennessee, in July 2015, and stated that he had been thinking about conducting an attack similar to the November 2009 attack at Ft. Hood, Texas.
During the May 2016 meeting, Jalloh asked the CHS about the timeline for an operation and commented that it was better to plan an operation for the month of Ramadan. Jalloh also asked if the CHS could assist him in providing a donation to ISIL. Ultimately, Jalloh provided a prepaid cash transfer of $500 to a contact of the CHS that Jalloh believed was a member of ISIL, but who was in fact an undercover FBI employee.
During federal court Thursday Jalloh’s attorney , Joe Flood, stated that the defense plans to “ provide context ” during a February sentencing hearing in an effort to explain the defendant’s actions and what lead to his decisions.
Jalloh currently faces up to 20 years in federal prison.
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Amateur president Donald Trump told the drought-stricken Dakotas that he can make the drought go away and told attendees during a tax reform speech that they are better off than cities flooded by Hurricane Harvey. I know you have a little bit of a drought. They had the opposite, believe me, Trump said during his speech in Mandan, North Dakota. You re better off. You are better off, they had the absolute opposite, the climate change denier said.Trump continued to say that he was surprised that droughts could happen this far north. We re doing everything we can but you have a very serious drought, he said. I just said to the governor, I didn t know you had droughts this far north. Guess what: you have them. We re working hard on it, and it will disappear, it will all go away, he said.According to a federal drought monitor report which was issued last week, it said there were long-term precipitation deficits in parts of the Dakotas, Nebraska and Montana, where 41 percent of the state s pasture and range conditions are rated very poor, The Hill reports.Trump said his Agriculture Department has been working closely with states in the region to alleviate the impact of the drought on farmers and ranchers. We will always stand strong with our farmers and our ranchers, the backbone of America, that I can tell you 100 percent, he added.Trump nominated an Oklahoma politician who is a climate change skeptic to run NASA an agency which monitors man-made climate change. The former reality show star, a purveyor of fake news, once tweeted that the concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive. During the presidential debates, Trump walked it back and said he was joking but now that Houston is underwater and Hurricane Irma is pummeling Puerto Rico on its way to Florida and the Dakotas are in the midst of a drought, we re wondering how funny that joke is because it certainly garnered a lot of likes and retweets from his fans.Maybe Trump plans to call Michele Bachmann so she can pray the drought away. Now there s a novel idea.Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images.
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and close adviser, Jared Kushner, has used a private email account alongside his official White House account to exchange messages with other administration officials, Politico reported on Sunday. Politico said the emails included correspondence about media coverage, event planning and other subjects. Kushner’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell, said Kushner complied with government record-keeping rules by forwarding all the emails to his official account. During Trump’s 2016 election campaign, the Republican derided Democratic rival Hillary Clinton for her use of a private email server for official correspondence when she was secretary of state under President Barack Obama. Some of those messages were later determined to contain classified information. Trump often led crowds in chants of “Lock her up!” during the campaign and vowed in October she would “be in jail” over the matter if he became president. He has since said he would not pursue prosecution. Politico said other senior Trump aides had also used private email accounts, including former chief of staff Reince Priebus, former chief strategist Steve Bannon and economic adviser Gary Cohn. “Mr. Kushner uses his White House email address to conduct White House business,” Lowell said in a statement provided to Politico, as well as other media organizations including Reuters. “Fewer than a hundred emails from January through August were either sent to or returned by Mr. Kushner to colleagues in the White House from his personal email account,” the lawyer said. “These usually forwarded news articles or political commentary and most often occurred when someone initiated the exchange by sending an email to his personal, rather than his White House, address,” the statement added. Many White House officials use personal phones to communicate by text message with reporters and others.
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VATICAN CITY/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders was invited to speak at an April 15 Vatican event by the Vatican, a senior papal official said on Friday, denying a report that Sanders had invited himself. “I deny that. It was not that way,” Monsignor Marcelo Sanchez Sorondo told Reuters in a telephone interview while he was traveling in New York. Sorondo, a close aide to Pope Francis, is chancellor of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, which is hosting the event. He said it was his idea to invite Sanders. A Bloomberg report quoted Margaret Archer, president of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, as saying that Sanders had broken with protocol by failing to contact her office first. “This is not true and she knows it. I invited him with her consensus,” said Sorondo, who is senior to Archer. An invitation to Sanders dated March 30, which was emailed to Reuters, was signed by Sorondo and also included Archer’s name.
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Reino Unido reanuda la formación de yihadistas en Siria Red Voltaire | 1ro de noviembre de 2016 français Deutsch El ministro de Defensa británico, Michael Fallon, anunció que el Reino Unido reformará el Ejército Sirio Libre. El gobierno británico retoma así el programa de formación de combatientes supuestamente « moderados », iniciado en 2014 por el presidente de Estados Unidos, Barack Obama.
El llamado « Ejército Sirio Libre » (ESL) fue creado por Francia, en 2011, alrededor del jefe de al-Qaeda en Libia, Abdelhakim Belhadj. Aquella operación francesa fue presentada como una ayuda a un grupo de desertores sirios encabezados por el coronel Riad al-Asaad. Poco a poco, los miembros del Ejército Sirio Libre fueron uniéndose a al-Qaeda. En 2016, Turquía resucitó la denominación de « Ejército Sirio Libre » al poner esa etiqueta a los miembros de sus propias milicias de combatientes turcomanos.
Anteriormente, Estados Unidos había dedicado 500 000 millones de dólares a la formación de nuevos « combatientes rebeldes »… que también acabaron uniéndose a al-Qaeda.
Es por lo tanto muy probable que tras el nuevo programa británico se esconda una nueva contribución a al-Qaeda.
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican leaders of the Senate on Tuesday rebuffed President Barack Obama’s appeal for hearings and a vote on his U.S. Supreme Court nominee during a face-to-face meeting that failed to budge them from their vow to block any nominee he offers. Obama, planning to name a replacement for the late Justice Antonin Scalia in the coming weeks, huddled with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley in the White House Oval Office for less than an hour. “Senator Grassley and I made it clear that we don’t intend to take up a nominee or to have a hearing,” McConnell told reporters after the meeting. The meeting failed to produce any progress on how to proceed with finding a replacement for Scalia, a long-serving conservative justice who died on Feb. 13. McConnell and Grassley are insistent that Obama not pick a nominee and leave the decision to his successor, who takes office next January after the Nov. 8 U.S. presidential election. Obama is insistent that it is the Republican-led Senate’s constitutional duty to act on his nominee. “They made clear in their meeting with the president that they’re not going to change their mind just because the president says so,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest said of the Republicans. Earnest said Obama still believes it was worthwhile to consult with the lawmakers before making his nomination. Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid said Obama stated during the meeting he would be willing to consider candidates for the Supreme Court proposed by the Republicans, but McConnell and Grassley offered no names. “We killed a lot of time talking about basketball and other stuff,” said Reid, who attended along with the Judiciary Committee’s top Democrat, Patrick Leahy. Under the Constitution, the president nominates Supreme Court justices and the Senate must confirm them. Without Scalia, the court has four conservative and four liberal justices, meaning any potential Obama nominee could tip the court to the left for the first time in decades. McConnell and Grassley have said allowing the next president to pick the new justice would let voters have a say in the selection when they elect a new president. “Whether everybody in the meeting today wanted to admit it, we all know that considering a nomination in the middle of a heated presidential campaign is bad for the nominee, bad for the court, bad for the process and ultimately bad for the nation,” Grassley said in a statement.
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The First Amendment of the United States Constitution guarantees that we have the right to speak our minds about the government and anyone and anything else we damn well please. However, since Donald Trump was inaugurated, that right has been under attack. Trump is a thin-skinned, narcissistic bully who cannot take criticism, and his allies are now doing all they can to discredit anyone who dares to say a word against Trump. Of course, at the top of that list is the National Rifle Association (NRA), the terrorist organization that thinks that all these mass shootings and gun-related deaths are just the price of freedom.Therefore, it comes as no surprise that Dana Loesch, a spokeswoman for the organization, has just released a new advertisement video that can only be described as purely fascist. She attacks anyone and everyone who dares to criticize Trump as saboteurs who wish to take the victory of Trump and his base away. You see, to these people, those who do not support Trump are the REAL threat to the republic, not Trump s fascist, authoritarian regime. Loesch s statement culminates in the following chilling statement: From the highest levels of government, to their media, universities and billionaires, their hateful defiance of his legitimacy is an insult to each of us. So, educational institutions, the free press, anyone and everyone who sees the dangers of Trumpism we must be dealt with. It comes complete with violent imagery and creepy music to boot. This is what fascism looks like, folks. Trump is turning America into North Korea before our very eyes. We better wake up and get him out of office before he declares martial law. We are witnesses to the most ruthless attack on a president & the people who voted for him in American history." @DLoesch #NRA pic.twitter.com/rcPAKMVJI0 NRATV (@NRATV) October 20, 2017Featured image via video screen capture
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Donald Trump Jr. defends father’s tweets on London mayor to @GMA: ”He’s been proven right about it every time.” https: . pic. twitter. Tuesday on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” Donald Trump, Jr. defended his father’s response to the London terrorist attack over the weekend that has resulted in at least seven people dead. Trump, Jr. argued it was time to be more proactive in taking on terrorism rather than to “keep calm and carry on. ” “Every time he puts something out there, he gets criticized by the media, all day every day,” Trump, Jr said. “And then guess what? Two weeks later, he’s proven to be right. It happened again, and we keep appeasing it, and we keep saying OK it’s going to be great, we’re going to hold fast, and we’re going to keep calm and carry on. ” “Maybe we have to keep calm and actually do something,” he continued. “And I think that’s what he’s trying to say, because he’s been proven right about it every time. This is a recurring theme and we’re attacked. But maybe, rather than the mayor of London attacking, maybe he should do something about it. Maybe he should do something to fix the problem rather than just sit there and pretend there isn’t one. ” Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Former CIA Director James Woolsey, a vocal advocate of the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq who promoted allegations that Saddam Hussein harbored illegal weapons, will serve as a senior national security adviser to Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, the campaign announced on Monday. Woolsey’s hiring contrasted with Trump’s repeated assertions that he was a stalwart opponent of the invasion, although he initially supported it. In the announcement, Woolsey said he supports Trump’s plan to expand the U.S. military, which calls for ending Pentagon budget caps and spending billions of dollars for additional troops, ships and aircraft. “Mr. Trump’s commitment to reversing the harmful defense budget cuts signed into law by the current administration, while acknowledging the need for debt reduction, is an essential step toward reinstating the United States’ primacy in the conventional and digital battlespace,” Woolsey said. Woolsey, who served for two years as CIA chief under then-President Bill Clinton, also criticized the presence of classified information in emails stored on Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton’s private server. In an appearance on CNN, however, he called Trump’s plan to temporarily ban Muslims from entering the United States “a bad decision.” He also has warned about the threats posed by climate change, something Trump has called a hoax that benefits China. Woolsey was an outspoken proponent of the Iraq invasion, suggesting that Saddam was hiding nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs from U.N. inspectors. He also promoted the erroneous allegation that the Iraqi dictator backed al Qaida’s Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States. Shortly after former President George W. Bush took office in 2001, Woolsey visited Britain on a Defense Department trip in a fruitless hunt for evidence that Saddam masterminded the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center in New York. He made a second visit to Britain for the same purpose shortly after Sept. 11, and again came up empty. At the time of his second trip, Woolsey was a member of the Defense Policy Board, a panel of outside advisers to the Defense Department that advocated Saddam’s overthrow even in the absence of any evidence of his complicity in 9/11. The following year, he arranged for the Defense Intelligence Agency to debrief an Iraqi defector who claimed that Iraq had mobile biological-warfare laboratories disguised as yogurt and milk trucks. The man was later determined to be a fabricator. In 2000, Woolsey briefly served as a corporate officer of a foundation that managed U.S. funding for the Iraqi National Congress, the exile group that produced a series of defectors who peddled false information to bolster the allegations that Saddam was hiding illicit weapons programs. No such weapons or facilities have ever been found.
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One woman s awful experience at the airport could soon be what we all go through to travel by air. This is the day of terrorism where Islamists will do pretty much anything to hide explosives or a weapon so we now have to endure a very intimate examination in order to keep us all safe when flying. The new procedure was put in place a month ago-Please see the specifics below.Do you have a story to tell? We d like to hear it. Here s Jenna s story below:Jenna MacFarlane was on the way to visit a friend in Baltimore in April when her carry-on bag triggered an alarm at Charlotte s airport.A Transportation Security Administration screener told MacFarlane she would have to undergo a full-body pat-down by a female officer. Late for her flight and with no option other than to be searched in private, MacFarlane agreed.The pat-down, done over her clothes, explored her breasts, crotch and buttocks. I did not imagine that she would ask me a few times to spread my legs wider and in fact touch my vagina four times with the side of her hand, MacFarlane later wrote in a complaint to the TSA.Just a month before her search, TSA had launched a new, more involved pat-down procedure:Pat-down procedures are used to determine whether prohibited items or other threats to transportation security are concealed on the person. You may be required to undergo a pat-down procedure if the screening technology alarms, as part of random or unpredictable security measures, for enhanced screening, or as an alternative to other types of screening, such as advanced imaging technology screening. Even passengers who normally receive expedited screening, such as TSA Pre passengers, may at times receive a pat-down.A pat-down may include inspection of the head, neck, arms, torso, legs, and feet. This includes head coverings and sensitive areas such as breasts, groin, and the buttocks. You may be required to adjust clothing during the pat-down. The officer will advise you of the procedure to help you anticipate any actions before you feel them. Pat-downs require sufficient pressure to ensure detection, and areas may undergo a pat-down more than once for the TSA officer to confirm no threat items are detected.TSA officers use the back of the hands for pat-downs over sensitive areas of the body. In limited cases, additional screening involving a sensitive area pat-down with the front of the hand may be needed to determine that a threat does not exist.You will receive a pat-down by an officer of the same gender. TSA officers will explain the procedures to you as they conduct the pat-down. Please inform an officer if you have difficulty raising your arms or remaining in the position required; an external medical device; or areas of the body that are painful when touched. You may request a chair to sit if needed.At any time during the process, you may request private screening accompanied by a companion of your choice. A second officer of the same gender will always be present during private screening.Read more here: Charlotte Observer
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PARIS (Reuters) - Eight suspects have been placed under formal investigation in France following their arrest in joint counter-terrorism raids with Swiss authorities, a judicial source said on Saturday. The suspects were among 10 detained on Nov. 7 by French and Swiss police as the result of a four-month investigation into a group of young Islamists thought to have been radicalized by a Swiss imam, who was among those detained. [nL5N1ND33T] Following the arrests, French Interior Minister Gerard Collomb told French lawmakers the group was believed to have been planning attacks but had not yet chosen specific targets. Seven of the eight suspects placed under formal investigation have been remanded in custody, the judicial source said. A ninth person arrested in the French swoop was released without charge.
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BAUCHI, Nigeria (Reuters) - Unidentified attackers killed more than 30 cattle herders in the northeastern Nigerian state of Adamawa, a police spokesman said on Tuesday. The attack, in the Numan area of Adamawa, began on Sunday night and fighting continued into Monday morning, said Othman Abubakar, a police spokesman for the state, adding that an investigation was underway. He gave no further details. Earlier on Tuesday, a suicide bomber killed 50 worshippers during morning prayers in a mosque in the town of Mubi in northeastern Nigeria, police said, in one of the deadliest attacks in the region in years.
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Chris Christie went ballistic on Ted Cruz Wednesday night following the Texas senator s failure to endorse Donald Trump during his speech at the Republican National Convention. It was an awful, selfish speech by someone who tonight, through the words he said on that stage, showed everybody why he has richly earned the reputation that he has on Capitol Hill, Christie declared angrily.The New Jersey governor wasn t the only one who was less than pleased with Cruz and his refusal to endorse Trump, who has now officially secured the Republican nomination. During Cruz s speech, the crowd chanted Endorse Trump, Endorse Trump! and then erupted in a chorus of boos when that endorsement never came. If you love our country and love your children as much as I know that you do, stand and speak and vote your conscience, Cruz said during his prime-time speech at the RNC on Wednesday night. Vote for candidates up and down the ticket who you trust to defend our freedom and to be faithful to the Constitution. Christie slammed Cruz for his dramatic words: I don t understand how someone can present themselves as a person of integrity and then come into this room tonight and give that cute speech. And that was cute. Speaking with CNN, Christie said spoke of the crowds reaction to Cruz s steadfast refusal to throw his support behind Trump. The crowd was waiting for him to do the right thing, the governor said of Cruz. I think the performance you saw there is why Ted has so richly deserved the reputation he s developed. Cruz isn t the only former Republican presidential hopeful that has chosen not to endorse Trump, even though they signed the pledge saying they would support whoever ended up winning the nomination. Jeb Bush, Carly Fiorina, and John Kasich have also refused to back The Donald. But Christie pointed out that they are not in the room tonight. The fact is: He came into this room today and then did not keep his word, the New Jersey governor said.Watch Christi s interview with CNN here:[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=giZGaFjxb8g]Featured image via Alex Wong/Getty Images
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MOSCOW (Reuters) - Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro on Wednesday thanked Russian President Vladimir Putin for his political and diplomatic support in difficult times. I thank you for all the support, political and diplomatic, in difficult times which we are living through, Maduro told Putin at talks in the Kremlin. I m very thankful for the agreement on grain, it has helped keep consumption in Venezuela stable, Maduro said.
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OUAGADOUGOU (Reuters) - Two paramilitary police officers were killed and two others wounded in Burkina Faso when a convoy carrying fuel to the Inata gold mine hit a landmine, Avocet Mining Plc and the government said on Wednesday. Nobody immediately claimed responsibility for the incident although security analysts have attributed other recent attacks in gold-rich northern Burkina Faso to a new local jihadist group known as Ansaroul Islam. The explosion destroyed the leading vehicle, killing two gendarmes and seriously wounding two others, the defense ministry said in a statement. The explosion was caused by an improvised explosive device on the road from the town of Djibo, about 150 kilometers (90 miles) north of the capital Ouagadougou, it added. The mining firm said it would review security measures and take measures to ensure the safety of the mine and its employees. Burkina Faso, like other countries in West Africa, has been targeted sporadically by jihadist groups, including one founded by a local radical preacher, Ibrahim Dicko, who was released from prison in Mali in 2015. Most attacks have been along its remote northern border with Mali, which has seen activity by Islamist militants for more than a decade. A security source said that short bursts of gunfire rang out briefly overnight near the Inata mine as an anti-terror unit of the paramilitary police pursued the suspected attackers. Suspected Islamist militants killed at least 18 people and wounded several during a raid on a restaurant in Burkina Faso s capital in August. Shares in Avocet closed down 4.9 percent after initially falling some 10 percent on the London stock exchange. Avocet had said earlier this month that its unit, Societe des Mines de Belahouro (SMB), which operates the Inata gold mine, may file for insolvency after a loan repayment freeze with its creditors expired. The company owns 90 percent of the Inata Gold Mine that produced 72,485 ounces of gold in 2016. Avocet is struggling to keep the mine operating after former workers seized a shipment of gold last year. Its shares have dropped nearly 60 percent this year.
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Chaos broke out after legal Americans and illegal aliens clashed at a town hall in California:The Los Angeles Times put their spin on what happened to make it seem as though Trump supporters were the trouble. They downplayed the Antifa anarchist in attendance and other pro-illegal people. It just didn t fit their narrative One of the other issues not addressed in the LA Times article is that these town halls have reportedly been used to teach illegals how to escape deportation and how to work the system : Anti-illegal protesters aka American tax payers have characterized it as teaching people who are in the country illegally how to avoid deportation and get federal benefits. Federal benefits and rights? They have no rights and shouldn t be getting ANY federal benefits! Notice how they call the illegal aliens immigrants Congressman Holds Town Hall to Explain (Illegal) Immigrants Rights:The majority of calls into Rep. Lou Correa s Orange County congressional office are about immigration worries and what the Trump administration s enforcement policies mean for Correa s many Latino constituents. There s a lot of fear in my district. he said.So the freshman Democrat has held seven town halls, all focused on immigration and explaining immigrants rights. They ve been peaceful, with representatives from groups such as the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles (CHIRLA) and the Mexican Consulate invited to help Correa answer questions.But as the crowd of about 100 people gathered at Santa Ana s Delphi Center on Tuesday evening, Correa knew this time would be different. We had some people there, probably a dozen of them, that immediately had signs that were not complimentary to yours truly, he said.Two women arguing about immigration issues had already gotten into an altercation outside the town hall. They were cited for assault and battery, and barred by police from going inside.Correa told the crowd inside he would give a short presentation about immigration policy coming out of Washington, and then have a question-and-answer session.About a dozen people were having none of it. Some of the most tense moments came when Correa started talking about green card holders who served in the U.S. military and have since been deported. Ma am, I m trying to be courteous here, he said as a woman kept speaking over him. As soon as I started speaking, it became very clear they were not going to let me speak, Correa said Wednesday. They just got louder and louder. Video of the town hall posted on social media shows people in the crowd yelling Americans first and illegals have no rights. Correa repeatedly asks them to let him speak. Are you guys going to cooperate, or am I going to have to ask you to leave? he said.About 15 minutes in, as some in the crowd continued to shout and their attention turned to berating a group of counter-protesters, Correa declared the meeting over.
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In an interview that is a tradition before the Super Bowl, the Obamas sat down with Oprah s BFF Gayle King to chitty chat about trivial things. Injecting politicians into the Super Bowl festivities has become more and more a normality. The Obamas have taken it to an all new level. It s to be expected but the real concern today is the question of whether Michelle Obama tipped her hat to the fact that she was in on the anti-American, cop-hating half-time performance by Beyonce. You be the judge:Michelle Obama s pre-game Super Bowl fluff interview revealed that she cared deeply about the halftime show, even coordinating her outfit for Beyonce s approval.President and Mrs. Obama sat down Sunday with CBS This Morning anchor Gayle King, a family friend, for what has become a tradition a pre-Super Bowl interview.Sunday s performance was a far cry from the contentious exchange that occurred two years earlier with Fox News host Bill O Reilly. In fact, it was nothing short of a love fest that threatened to ruin the day for serious sports fans.Joined by the first lady for the first time, it was a given that the Obamas complained about such things like bad Wi-Fi service at the White House before discussing first dates and post-presidency plans, among other hard-hitting topics.The first lady said she cared deeply about the halftime game show, likely because pal Beyonc , one of this year s halftime performers, was planning to get political in support of Black Lives Matter. I got dressed for the halftime show, Michelle said. I hope Beyonc likes what I ve got on. Mrs. Obama was dressed in all black, we assume in simpatico with the artist s dancers who performed in wardrobes that resembled the Black Panthers. The only thing missing was a Black Panther beret. Furious Americans are expressing their disappointment and outrage that the Super Bowl halftime show was allowed to be hijacked for political purposes and given a racist, black power theme.Read more: Biz Pac Review
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BRUSSELS (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Theresa May said on Friday that Brexit talks were making progress but that there were outstanding issues on the divorce settlement and the border with EU member Ireland. After meeting European Council President Donald Tusk in Brussels, May described their discussion as positive and painted a picture where the two sides were edging towards agreement to move Brexit talks onto a discussion of future trade. But shortly afterwards, Tusk again repeated that Britain had 10 days to deliver on all the major areas of the initial divorce talks, something he said on Twitter was possible but still a huge challenge . May told reporters after their meetings: There are still issues across the various matters that we are negotiating on to be resolved. On one of the major sticking points how much Britain should pay when it leaves the European Union May said the two sides were making progress, but declined to offer any figures which could unlock the talks. I said that we would honour our commitments, and that s what we ve been talking about, she said. Referring to Britain s border with Ireland, where the government is set to collapse, May said her government was talking to Irish officials about solutions for that. We have the same desire, we want to ensure that movement of people and trade across that border can carry on as now.
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BRUSSELS (Reuters) - European Council President Donald Tusk appealed to Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy on Monday to seek ways to avoid escalation in Catalonia and the use of force following Sunday s independence referendum in the region. After speaking to Rajoy, Tusk tweeted: Sharing his constitutional arguments, I appealed for finding ways to avoid further escalation and use of force.
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21st Century Wire says Arguably irrelevant Hollywood personality, Rosie O Donnell has taken to social media to support the concept of the US Government imposing Martial Law on the nation to avoid a Trump presidency. The Hollywood personality, who by all accounts of her own should be in Canada by now, seems to have very little understanding of not only politics, but of the law as well. She, in caps-lock Tweet shouting, said that the inauguration should be delayed under martial law until Trump is cleared of all charges. Obviously she s referring to the dossier that was discredited as a fake within hours of its release by BuzzFeed and subsequent republication by many left leaning mainstream media outlets. Charges implies a legal case yet there was no legal case, no victim, no crime, nothing of substance at all because it was a fake document.Have a look at her whacky, ill fated attempts at affecting the political dialog on her social media output.I FULLY SUPPORT IMPOSING MARTIAL LAW DELAYING THE INAUGURATION UNTIL TRUMP IS "CLEARED" OF ALL CHARGES https://t.co/fUn8FZ8RTj ROSIE (@Rosie) January 12, 2017As though the high horsed Hollywood liberal echo chamber didn t get enough with the caps-locked illogical rant above, she followed with yet another cry to interrupt a legitimately elected US political official with a military take over and suspension of constitutional rights.delay the day do not swear him in until it is investigated for the love of god america we must stop the inaugruation @frankielucy ROSIE (@Rosie) January 12, 2017As the final days of the Obama administration tick away we continue to bear witness to many Hollywood celebs throwing tantrums and wearing their ignorance of political realities on their sleeves (and social media feeds.) Rosie is one of the ultimate examples of the hypocrisy that we ve been shown by others of her ilk such as Meryl Streep recently. These Hollywood celebs say they support equality, tolerance, and freedom out of one side of their mouth then push for totalitarian, military enforced, martial law and disruption of free elections when the elections don t go their way.Read More Election News at: 21st Century Wire Election CoverageSUPPORT 21WIRE SUBSCRIBE & BECOME A MEMBER@ 21WIRE.TV
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An Afghan migrant attacked a woman at an asylum centre in Austria because she was reading a bible. [The attack took place in the town on Timelkam in the state of Upper Austria. The attacker was a migrant from Afghanistan who became annoyed that the woman had been invited by Christian residents to read the bible. Austrian paper Kronen Zeitung says he ran into the kitchen where the woman was talking and attempted to stab her in her upper body. Her thick winter coat protected from serious harm, however she fell and injured her ear due the force of the blow. Police arrived at the scene and arrested the migrant. He admitted he had overreacted, although he told police this was due to “personal problems”. He also stated that he had never seen the woman before the attack. There have been numerous incidents of Christians coming under attack in migrant centres across Europe. One charity said that over 700 Christians have been attacked in German asylums homes since May 2016, with the majority of perpetrators being Muslim. Christian charity Open Doors said that 83 per cent of the cases reported included multiple assaults, while almost half of victims claim they have received death threats from fellow migrants. Another 44 said they had been sexually assaulted. Over 90 per cent of the attackers were Muslim, and in 205 cases the attackers were not only Muslim but also guards at the centres. Breitbart London also reported in August how an German politician who converted to Christianity said that Christians face ongoing persecution in migrant homes. Mahin Mousapour said Christians in asylum centres were being told they are “impure as a dog”. “Toys of Christian children are being destroyed, Christian asylum seekers are told not only to wash their dishes after eating but also that they must clean the entire kitchen as it would otherwise be ‘unclean’. Many Muslim asylum seekers call all Christians unclean. Church services are held in secret, bibles and crucifixes have to be hidden,” she said.
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CAIRO (Reuters) - Syrian opposition will form a 50-member delegation to participate in U.N.-sponsored talks in Geneva, the main Syrian opposition meeting in the Saudi capital Riyadh told a news conference late on Thursday. There will be further meetings tomorrow to decide the members of the delegation and determine its working mechanism, Basma Qadmani, a member of the National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces, said.
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BOGOTA (Reuters) - A bomb attack by Colombia s leftist ELN rebel group has halted pumping operations along the country s second-largest oil pipeline, the Cano-Limon Covenas, sources from the military and state oil company Ecopetrol said on Monday. The attack took place in rural El Carmen municipality in Norte de Santander province, near the border with Venezuela, the sources said. The bombing caused a crude spillage into a nearby river. The sources spoke on condition of anonymity because an official announcement has not yet been made. Production at the Cano Limon oilfield, operated by U.S.-based Occidental Petroleum Corp, and exports have not been affected, the sources said. Ecopetrol officials said a team from the company was in the area to carry out clean-up operations. Repairs are expected to take several days, they said. Attacks against the pipeline have left 751 victims over the last 17 years, including 167 deaths. Since 1986 the pipeline has been out of service 3,800 days, or 10.4 years, 30 percent of its life. Some 66 million gallons of crude have been spilled since 2000, according to Ecopetrol figures. The 485-mile (780-km) pipeline can carry up to 210,000 barrels per day. The National Liberation Army (ELN), considered a terrorist group by the United States and European Union, has frequently attacked Colombia s oil infrastructure during the group s five-decade war with the government. Despite peace talks begun with the government in February, the ELN has continued pipeline attacks. It opposes the presence of multinational companies in the mining and oil sector, claiming that they seize natural resources without leaving benefits to the country s population or economy.
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21st Century WireZbigniew Brzezinski, national security adviser to President Jimmy Carter and founding member of the Trilateral Commission, died yesterday at the age of 89.Arguably one of the most influential thinkers and authors of the 20th and early 21st centuries, Brzezinski is regarded by many as the vanguard of modern globalism and the architect of the new world order.Brzezinski s two seminal publications, Between Two Ages and The Grand Chessboard are near blueprints of how globalization and geopolitics has progressed in the post-WWII world under an international system of Anglo-American economic and political hegemony.Brzezinski was born in Warsaw, Poland and attended university in both Canada and the US. In mainstream politics, Brzezinski first came to prominence in the early 1960 s as adviser to president John F. Kennedy and later with his successor Lyndon B. Johnson.During his tenure as chief national security advisor to president Jimmy Carter began in 1976, Brzezinski is said to have helped to broker the Panama Canal treaty, as well as Camp David negotiations between Israeli and Egyptian leaders, Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat. He is also credited with opening up China to the West, and helping to topple the Soviet Union.In his final years, Brzezinski s efforts focused on the US-EU project to encircle and isolate Russia by pulling former Soviet republics and Balkan countries under the umbrella of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).READ MORE NWO NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire NWO FilesSUPPORT OUR WORK BY SUBSCRIBING & BECOMING A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV
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TEGUCIGALPA (Reuters) - Honduras faced a growing election crisis on Wednesday, with its U.S.-friendly president edging ahead in troubled vote count that his centrist rival, a television game show host allied with leftists, has rejected, saying he is being robbed. Three days after polling stations closed in Honduras presidential election, there was growing international concern with no clear winner and both men claiming victory, despite nearly a fifth of ballots remaining uncounted. Stricken with poverty, drug gangs and one of the world s highest murder rates, Honduras is one of the United States closest military and ideological allies in Central America. On Wednesday, the U.S. State Department urged a quick conclusion to the vote count, which has been widely criticized. Resolution to the festering crisis had appeared possible on Wednesday when both candidates vowed to respect the final result once disputed votes had been scrutinized, issuing identical signed statements brokered by the Organization of American States (OAS). But the accord did not last long. Centrist opposition candidate Salvador Nasralla - who had watched with disbelief as his original 5-point lead evaporated, allowing center-right President Juan Orlando Hernandez to edge ahead by 3,000 votes - told reporters that he rejected the document he had signed just a few hours before. Nasralla cited an hours-long technical glitch at the election tribunal, and fears that Hernandez was planning to unilaterally declare himself victorious, as his reasons for dismissing the results of the electoral body. They take us for idiots and want to steal our victory, said Nasralla, who heads a coalition of leftist and centrist parties. The document I signed today with the OAS has no validity, he added, calling it a trap and pledging to take to the streets to defend his votes. The OAS said in a tweet that it regretted Nasralla had withdrawn from the pact, and that it would continue working for justice in the elections. Later on Wednesday, police fired tear gas to disperse Nasralla supporters gathered outside the election tribunal where the vote was being counted. The fumes entered the building, prompting its staff to be evacuated, television images showed. With around 82.89 percent of ballots counted, the center-right Hernandez had 42.2 percent of the vote, while Nasralla was on 42.1 percent, the tribunal said. Hernandez s National Party appears set to retain control of Congress. As he caught his rival, Hernandez s blue-clad supporters celebrated, chanting the president s name at a party base in capital Tegucigalpa, TV images showed, while thousands of Nasralla supporters took to the streets. I m here so that justice and the will of the people is carried out, because we elected Salvador Nasralla, and Juan Orlando Hernandez wants to steal his victory, said 22-year-old David Ramirez, a red political flag draped over his shoulder. The election body published more than half of the results of Sunday s election early on Monday, but faced international criticism for an ensuing 36-hour delay in releasing further data. The count halted again late on Wednesday afternoon. Tribunal chief David Matamoros apologized to the nation for a fresh computer glitch that derailed operations. We ve had a problem that we regret and that we didn t expect to have, and that we re resolving as quickly as possible, he said. Sometimes in an election, you can have a system failure, but never in a moment as critical as this. International observers said the delays were damaging the credibility of authorities and threatened to undermine the legitimacy of the next president. On Wednesday, U.S. State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert urged Honduran authorities to review the election results without delay. We urge all candidates to respect the results, she said. Behind closed doors, the parties of Hernandez, the pre-vote favorite, and Nasralla were discussing immunity from prosecution for current officials and carving up positions in government, two diplomats told Reuters on Tuesday. With a booming voice and finely coiffed hair, Nasralla is one of Honduras best known faces, hosting a sports programme and a television game show that features scantily clad women. In one interview, he boasted of his penis size and his sexual performance. He is backed by leftist former President Manuel Zelaya, who was ousted in a coup in 2009 after he proposed a referendum on his re-election. The possible return of Zelaya risks fueling concern in Washington. Hernandez has won U.S. praise for helping tackle a flow of migrants to the north and extraditing drug cartel leaders to the United States. He was credited with lowering the murder rate and boosting the economy, but was also hurt by accusations of ties to illicit, drug-related financing that he denies.
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SEVNICA, Slovenia (Reuters) - If Melania Trump succeeds Michelle Obama as First Lady, she may trace her road to the White House back to 1987 and a chance encounter in the capital of her native Slovenia. “I was leaving a fashion show in Ljubljana and saw her in front of the building. She was probably waiting for a friend,” said Slovenian photographer Stane Jerko. “She was tall and slim so she caught my eye and I approached her and suggested that she come in for a trial photo shoot.” Jerko says the resulting black-and-white pictures of the 17-year-old known then as Melanija Knavs – round face, bare feet, hair in a ponytail – launched a career that would take her to Milan and the United States, where she met Donald Trump at a party in New York in 1998. Though not quite a tale of rags to riches, the lifestyle she leads as the third wife of the billionaire businessman is a far cry from her roots in Slovenia, a tiny former Yugoslav republic of 2 million people comparable in size to New Jersey and nestled below the Julian Alps between Italy, Croatia, Austria and Hungary. Residents of the small town of Sevnica in southeastern Slovenia, where Melania grew up on the banks of the River Sava, say her father sold car parts and that her mother worked for a factory that made children’s clothing. She was often seen sewing late into the evening at home. Some media reports have said her father was a member of the then ruling Communist Party, like many other people in socialist Yugoslavia, but Reuters could not independently confirm this. The Trump campaign team offered Reuters a different account of her childhood and career, saying Melania began modelling at the age of five, that her mother was a fashion designer and her father a manager in a car company. “Her father was never a member of the Communist Party,” a spokesperson said. Since taking a gilded escalator with her husband at his Fifth Avenue Trump Tower skyscraper in June last year when he announced his decision to run for president, Melania has adopted a low profile in his campaign for the Republican Party nomination. She does not appear at his rallies, where Trump occasionally brings out his children instead, though he rarely fails to mention her. “When I saw whom she married I noticed a number of similarities between Donald Trump and Melanija’s father,” said Mirjana Jelancic, who said she was a childhood friend of Melania. “They have similar features and behaviour and are both hard workers. I think she met a soul mate in him, someone she can feel safe with.” The Knavs family lived in an apartment block, moving when Melania was a teenager to a modest two-storey house above the Sava on the outskirts of Sevnica, where a well-maintained medieval castle sits on a hill overlooking the town of some 4,500 people. Melania’s parents still live in the house, which has a small garden and a few fruit trees, though they spent a lot of time in the United States, where Melania’s sister Ines also lives. The house was empty when Reuters reporters visited and repeated phone calls went unanswered. Jelancic recalled Melania as a model student keen on the arts, geography and history. “She loved reading. She always carried books with her,” said Jelancic. “I also remember she had wall bars at home and trained regularly to keep her body in shape.” “Melanija liked beautiful clothes and knew how to wear them,” said Jelancic, now headmistress at Melania’s former elementary school. “She liked to give them a personal touch by redesigning them and was very good at upgrading old things. It was clear she would work in fashion though she never said that she wanted to be a model.” “I remember her telling me how she cannot wait to go to Ljubljana where she attended a high school for design. She had a wish to see the world.” It was in Ljubljana that she was discovered and began modelling full-time, coming second place in a 1992 national beauty pageant the year after Slovenia declared independence from Yugoslavia and fought a ten-day war to strike out alone. “She was shy at first but learnt quickly and showed great interest in every detail of the shoot,” said Jerko. “She was like a sleeping chrysalis that transformed into a glamorous butterfly,” he gushed. The future Mrs Trump did not look back, changing her name to the more easily pronounceable Melania Knauss. No one in Sevnica spoken to by Reuters recalled having seen her there in recent years. She did, however, donate an ambulance to the local health clinic to celebrate the birth of her son, Barron, in 2006, a year after marrying Trump, 24 years her senior. Some speculated that the town might receive another donation or more publicity if Trump wins the presidency. Those Reuters spoke to would not be drawn on his politics, which are stridently anti-immigration. Jerko, a youthful 78 years-old with short grey hair and beard, still keeps a file with Melania’s pictures and measurements. “I’m sure she would be happy if her husband became U.S. president. I think she is very proud of his achievements and I believe I had something to do with where she is today.”
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A We The People petition was started on July 6TH, asking the government to formally designate Black Lives Matter as a terrorist organization . The White House requires that the person or group who initiates a petition on their We The People petition page must gather at least 100,000 signatures in 30 days. Once they have the signatures, the White House site guarantees they will review the petition and offer an official response. Obama will no doubt spin this, but in the meantime, it s a statement by over 100,000 American citizens about their belief that Black Lives Matter is nothing more than a terror organization. The overwhelming support for labeling Black Lives Matter at terror group won t bode well for Hillary, who has openly supported them in an embarrassing effort to pander for votes.From the White House created We The People Petition page:About We the PeopleThe right to petition your government is guaranteed by the First Amendment of the United States Constitution. We the People is a platform that empowers the American public to take this action like never before it s a way for anybody, anywhere, to speak directly to the government and become an agent for change.With We the People, you can easily create a petition online, share it, and collect signatures. If you gather 100,000 signature in 30 days, we ll review your petition, make sure it gets in front of the appropriate policy experts, and issue an official response.Petitioning has the potential to enact real change just check out some of our petition creator s success stories but it s also your fundamental right as an American citizen, and an opportunity to connect with a community of like-minded people who are invested in making a change. Ideally, running a petition on We the People is just the start of something bigger a long-term, robust form of civic engagement.The White House Reviews and RespondsOnce the petition reaches the required threshold (100,000 signatures), it will be put in a queue to be reviewed by the White House. Others can still sign the petition while it is awaiting a response. When the White House responds, everyone who has signed the petition will get email from the White House to let you know that we ve reviewed and responded to the petition.Q: How will the White House decide which petitions to respond to?The White House plans to respond to each petition that crosses the current signature threshold, which you can view on the Terms of Participation page. In some cases, the White House response might not address the facts of a particular matter to avoid the appearance of improper influence (such as in specific procurement, law enforcement or adjudicatory matters). In addition, the White House will not respond to petitions that violate We the People s Terms of Participation. In some cases, a single update may be used for petitions on similar topics.To date, the petition has collected 107,652 signatures. If you d like to add your name, click HERE.
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SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Twitter Inc (TWTR.N) said on Tuesday it would add labels to election-related advertisements and say who is behind each of them, after a threat of regulation from the United States over the lack of disclosure for political spending on social media. Twitter, acting a month after Facebook Inc (FB.O) launched a similar overhaul of political ads, said in a blog post it would start a website so people could see identities of buyers, targeting demographics and total ad spend by election advertisers. Silicon Valley social media firms and the political ads that run on their websites have generally been free of the disclaimers and other regulatory demands that U.S. authorities impose on television, radio and satellite services. Calls for that to change have grown, however, after Twitter, Facebook and Alphabet Inc’s (GOOGL.O) Google said in recent weeks that Russian operatives and affiliates bought ads and used fake names on their services to spread divisive messages in the run-up to the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Russia has denied interfering in the election. Citing Russia-linked ads, Facebook last month said it for the first time would make it possible for anyone to see any political ads that run on Facebook, no matter whom they target. The attempts at self-regulation by Facebook and Twitter have not satisfied lawmakers. U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar said in a statement that Twitter’s announcement was “no substitute for updating our laws.” A Democrat, she is co-sponsoring legislation that would make disclosures mandatory. Twitter said its changes would take effect first in the United States and then globally. The new approach to ads would be visible in people’s Twitter feeds, where election ads would have the label “promoted by political account,” the company said. “To make it clear when you are seeing or engaging with an electioneering ad, we will now require that electioneering advertisers identify their campaigns as such,” Bruce Falck, Twitter’s general manager of revenue product, said in the blog post. Twitter said it would limit targeting options for election ads, although it did not say how, and introduce stronger penalties for election advertisers who violate policies. The company said it would also allow people to see all ads currently running on Twitter, election-related or otherwise. Twitter’s latest move would not tackle its longstanding problem with fake or abusive accounts that some users and lawmakers also blame for influencing last year’s U.S. election. Unlike Facebook, Twitter allows anonymous accounts and automated accounts, or bots, making the service more difficult to police. Transparency by itself “is not a solution to the deployment of bots that amplify fake or misleading content or to the successful efforts of online trolls to promote divisive messages,” Representative Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said in a statement. Twitter said last month it had suspended about 200 Russia-linked accounts as it investigated online efforts to influence last year’s election. The general counsels for Facebook, Google and Twitter are scheduled to testify next week before the Senate and House intelligence committees.
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STRASBOURG, France (Reuters) - Lawyers for Silvio Berlusconi argued on Wednesday at the European Court of Human Rights against his ban from holding public office, hoping for a green light that will allow him to run for prime minister at Italy s election early next year. In a hearing before the Strasbourg court, the four-times prime minister appealed against his banishment from holding public office that followed a 2013 tax fraud conviction. It is supposed to remain in place until 2019. The billionaire media tycoon was widely written off after he quit as prime minister in 2011 amid a sex scandal involving his bunga bunga parties, while Italian bond yields surged to unsustainable levels at the height of the euro zone debt crisis. However, the 81-year-old Berlusconi has made a remarkable comeback after open heart surgery last year and his Forza Italia (Go Italy!) party is now the lynchpin of a center-right coalition which leads in opinion polls ahead of the election. The Berlusconi versus Italy case is being heard by 17 judges who make up the court s Grand Chamber, which is used for particularly important and complex matters. Berlusconi has hired a top London law firm to represent him. At the end of the hearing Edward Fitzgerald, a lawyer for Berlusconi, told reporters an injustice had taken place in the Italian courts. Basic procedural guarantees were lacking for doing something as massive and draconian as depriving an elected official of his electoral mandate, and the people who elected him of their right to be represented by the person they chose. The court will not issue a verdict on Wednesday, and even if it eventually decides in favor of Berlusconi the ruling may not come in time for him to run in the election, which must be held by May next year. In an interview on Wednesday with la Repubblica newspaper, Berlusconi said he would still be campaigning for his party whether he can stand for office or not. Irrespective of whether I can stand, I ll be a player and I ll bring the center-right to power, he said. Berlusconi was not present at the hearing. Berlusconi argues that because the tax fraud took place many years before the 2013 Italian law that bars him from running for office was passed, the legislation is being applied retroactively and is therefore illegitimate. Berlusconi received a four-year prison sentence in August 2013 for organizing a complex scheme to illegally lower the tax bill of his Mediaset media company. Three of the four years were immediately waived due to an amnesty to relieve prison overcrowding, and he was allowed to serve the remaining year in community service, helping out in an old people s home. After the conviction, Berlusconi was expelled from Rome s Senate, or upper house of parliament. With or without Berlusconi, the election is expected to produce a hung parliament. The anti-establishment 5-Star Movement leads in opinion polls with around 28 percent of the vote, followed by the ruling center-left Democratic Party on about 25 percent. The center-right bloc is made up of Forza Italia and the anti-immigrant Northern League, each on around 14 percent, and the right-wing Brothers of Italy, with around 5 percent.
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Donald Trump’s convention will feature an eclectic mix of cultural figures, including the first woman to command a space shuttle mission, survivors of the attacks in Benghazi, Libya, in 2012 and an underwear model.
But while several Republican Party establishment figures will take the stage next week in Cleveland, the national convention to officially make Trump the party’s presidential nominee will be devoid of some of the GOP’s most seasoned leaders and brightest new stars.
Republican officials on Thursday released a long-awaited list of convention personalities billed as “non-conventional speakers” who emphasize “real world experience.”
The convention’s theme will be Trump’s campaign slogan, “Make America Great Again,” with a core focus on national security, immigration, trade and jobs.
The program includes more than a dozen current and former elected officials, including the leaders of the party’s congressional wing, House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (Wis.) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.).
[Analysis: The stumbling blocks for an anti-Trump mutiny]
A handful of governors and other lawmakers are scheduled to give addresses, including former primary opponents Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.), Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson.
“There’s going to be a unified convention,” Trump spokesman Jason Miller told reporters Thursday, adding that the announced agenda was only a partial list of speakers. “People are going to be united behind Mr. Trump.”
The unusual collection of nonpolitical speakers seems designed to broaden Trump’s appeal. Roster names include retired astronaut Eileen Collins, the first female space-shuttle pilot and mission commander; Mark Geist and John Tiegen, two survivors of the 2012 attacks on a U.S. diplomatic outpost in Benghazi; and Antonio Sabato Jr., a former Calvin Klein underwear model, soap-opera actor and reality-television star.
Some sports figures will take the stage here, including pro golfer Natalie Gulbis and Ultimate Fighting Championship President Dana White.
Tim Tebow, a 28-year-old former National Football League quarterback and Heisman Trophy winner, was expected to speak at the gathering, according to GOP officials. Tebow is admired by many conservatives because of his outspoken evangelical Christian beliefs.
But Tebow said Thursday night in a Facebook video that he would not be speaking: “It’s amazing how fast rumors fly. And that’s exactly what it is, a rumor.”
But some sports heroes of decades past whom Trump has said he would like to see at the convention — such as former Indiana University basketball coach Bobby Knight and boxing promoter Don King — are not listed as speakers.
Also notably absent from the list of speakers was Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, who was identified by Trump allies Thursday as the candidate’s likely vice presidential pick. If chosen, Pence would deliver an acceptance speech after being formally nominated for vice president.
Two other vice-presidential finalists, Christie and former House speaker Newt Gingrich (Ga.), are listed on the program, as is Sen. Jeff Sessions (Ala.), who also was vetted as a vice-presidential prospect.
Not speaking in Cleveland are the GOP’s past two presidential nominees, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney and Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), as well as its only two living former presidents, George W. Bush and George H.W. Bush. None will be in Cleveland for the week-long festivities.
Also excluded from the speakers list are many of the party’s more diverse rising stars, including South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez, Sens. Marco Rubio (Fla.) and Tim Scott (S.C.), and Rep. Mia Love (Utah).
By contrast, the Democratic National Convention the following week in Philadelphia is expected to feature a full assortment of party stars — past, present and future — including President Obama, first lady Michelle Obama, Vice President Biden, former president Bill Clinton, and Sens. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.) and Bernie Sanders (Vt.).
The disparity in political star power between the conventions speaks volumes about the state of the two parties, with Republicans divided over their controversial new standard-bearer.
[Cleveland braces for spillover on the streets]
Looking ahead to Philadelphia, Republican strategist Rick Wilson said of the Democrats, “Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Michelle Obama, Elizabeth Warren — they’re all going to be out there swinging for the fences. But the Republicans, it’ll be like a hostage video of people forced on stage.”
The Cleveland convention will be orchestrated to help expand Trump’s appeal to the general electorate. To that end, several members of his family are expected to give speeches, including his wife, Melania, and his four oldest children: Donald Jr., Ivanka, Eric and Tiffany.
In addition, other speakers who have known Trump and his family through the years plan to take the stage. They include Haskel Lookstein, a rabbi in New York who converted Ivanka Trump to Judaism; Tom Barrack, a wealthy California-based investor who has worked with Donald Trump on real-estate deals; and Kerry Woolard, the general manager of Trump Winery in Virginia.
With the public on edge following a spate of shootings by police and last week’s killing of five officers in Dallas, Trump has sought to brand himself as the law-and-order candidate. Some speakers at the Cleveland convention could help him make that case, including Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke, a Democrat who is an outspoken critic of the Black Lives Matter movement and is a frequent Fox News Channel guest; former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani; and two female attorneys general, Pam Bondi of Florida and Leslie Rutledge of Arkansas.
Several early Trump backers are being rewarded with convention speaking slots, among them Jerry Falwell Jr., the president of Liberty University, a college founded by his late televangelist father. Falwell campaigned frequently at Trump’s side leading up to the Iowa caucuses.
But one especially prominent Trump surrogate is not listed as a speaker: Sarah Palin, a former Alaska governor and 2008 vice-presidential nominee, who has garnered mixed reviews for her campaign-trail appearances supporting Trump.
Here in Cleveland, the Republican National Convention’s Rules Committee convened early Thursday and met late into the night to review the 42 rules governing the party structure and the selection of a presidential candidate. The big undecided issue remains whether or not to continue binding convention delegates to the results of caucuses and primaries or to unbind delegates and allow them to vote however they want.
Another subject of talks, which eventually collapsed with no resolution, centered on whether to return the party to closed contests — meaning that only Republicans could vote in presidential caucuses and primaries. A group led by Ken Cuccinnelli, the former Virginia attorney general, also wanted to make other changes to party operations.
Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus and several members of the party’s leadership generally support the idea of reverting back to closed contests by awarding more convention delegates to states that hold closed contests.
Cuccinnelli said he proposed giving 20 percent more delegates to states that opted to hold a closed contest. Priebus and his team considered the offer, cut ultimately declined, according to people familiar with the talks.
Ed O’Keefe and Dan Balz contributed to this report.
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Hillary Rodham Clinton’s attorney has agreed to provide the FBI with the private server that housed her e-mail during her four years as secretary of state, Clinton’s presidential campaign said Tuesday.
Her attorney also has agreed to give agents a thumb drive containing copies of thousands of e-mails that Clinton had previously turned over to the State Department.
The FBI has been looking into the security of Clinton’s unusual private system, which has emerged as an issue in her campaign amid growing questions from Republicans and some U.S. intelligence officials about whether government secrets might have been put at risk.
The development in the FBI inquiry came the same day that a top intelligence official whose office has been reviewing some of Clinton’s e-mails informed congressional leaders that top-secret information had been contained in two e-mails that traveled across the server.
The finding, contained in a letter sent to leaders of key oversight committees, marked the first indication from government officials that information regarded as top secret — the government’s highest category of security designation — may have passed across Clinton’s server while she led the State Department.
A State Department spokesman late Tuesday described the top-secret designation as a recommendation and said they had not been marked classified at the time, but said staffers “circulated these e-mails on unclassified systems in 2009 and 2011 and ultimately some were forwarded to Secretary Clinton.”
Nick Merrill, a Clinton spokesman, said Tuesday night that Clinton is cooperating with the FBI probe. He declined to say whether the FBI ordered that she turn over the devices and when her attorney, David Kendall, had done so.
“She directed her team to give her e-mail server that was used during her tenure as secretary to the Department of Justice, as well as a thumb drive containing copies of her e-mails already provided to the State Department,” Merrill said. “She pledged to cooperate with the government’s security inquiry, and if there are more questions, we will continue to address them.”
The inquiry by the FBI is considered preliminary and appears to be focused on ensuring the proper handling of classified material. Officials have said that Clinton, the Democratic presidential front-runner, is not a target.
The FBI’s efforts have included contacting the Denver-based technology firm that helped manage the Clintons’ unusual private e-mail system.
Clinton has resisted relinquishing control of the server. In March, she said the server contained “personal communications from my husband and me.”
“I believe I have met all of my responsibilities, and the server will remain private,” she said then, in response to a question from a reporter about whether she would allow an independent party to examine the device
Clinton turned over more than 30,000 e-mails from the account to the State Department in December, and the agency is vetting those messages for release to the public. She has said that she deemed an additional 32,000 e-mails to be personal and chose not to keep them.
Kendall told a congressional oversight committee in a letter that there was “no basis” to support a third-party examination of the server. He indicated that he had confirmed with IT staffers that no e-mail sent or received by Clinton’s account while she was secretary of state remained on the server or backup systems associated with the system. “Thus, there are no [email protected] emails from Secretary of State Clinton’s tenure on the server for any review, even if such a review were appropriate or legally authorized,” he wrote.
Meanwhile Tuesday, 17 House and Senate members from both parties were informed about the presence of “top secret” information on the Clinton e-mail system in a letter from the inspector general for the intelligence community, I. Charles McCullough III. The letter was first reported Tuesday by the McClatchy news service.
Much of the classified information in the e-mail conversations originated with the CIA, according to two government officials familiar with the records. Some of the information was deemed to be classified by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency’s classification guidelines. The information included references to information related to satellite images and electronic communications, according to the officials.
The findings by McCullough stemmed from his office’s review of a sample of 40 of Clinton’s e-mails. Previously, he had said that the sample included four classified e-mails, but on Tuesday he adjusted his assessment — saying that intelligence agencies deemed two of those e-mails to have contained top-secret information.
McCullough has asked for access to all of the e-mails to conduct a more thorough review but was denied by State Department officials in July.
Last week, State Department spokesman John Kirby said that while the agency was working to “resolve whether, in fact, this material is actually classified, we are taking steps to ensure the information is protected and stored appropriately.”
McCullough also located two e-mails that included classified material from among a separate batch of 296 related to the 2012 attacks on U.S. outposts in Benghazi. One of those e-mails had been publicly released by the State Department, causing consternation within the intelligence community.
He has also located one additional e-mail in the sample of 40 that was classified at the time it was sent but has since been declassified, suggesting that there is no longer a reason to protect the information or that it has since become public, two people familiar with the finding said.
McCullough also told lawmakers that his reviewers found two e-mails they believe contain information that the State Department considers classified, and they have alerted the agency so it can conduct its own review.
All told, McCullough has pointed to seven e-mails that he said contained classified information, including two with top-secret material.
His findings appear to contradict Clinton’s earlier comments.
“I am confident that I never sent or received any information that was classified at the time it was sent and received,” she told reporters last month in Iowa.
Clinton said she had “no idea” which e-mails have caught McCullough’s attention.
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U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn could find himself in hot water.A writer for The New York Times Magazine and National Geographic tweeted that Clyburn invoked the name of Susan Smith, South Carolina s infamous child murderer, in his defense of Conyers. James Clyburn compared Conyers accusers to the child murderer Susan Smith, who initially claimed a black man had abducted her kids. Clyburn said, these are all white women who ve made these charges against Conyers, Robert Draper tweeted.When asked if that comment was true, Draper said he verified it through two sources, adding Clyburn has used the Susan Smith parallel more than once, to members & staffers. Clyburn responded on Twitter, saying This is inaccurate in many regards. The Congressional Black Caucus tweeted about the alleged Susan Smith comment, saying Clyburn used the Smith example to illustrate the dangers of convicting people before getting all the facts. Umm yeah, sure he did.Meanwhile, Clyburn just kept digging a deeper hole. Following his baseless and disgusting and racist claims to Congress, Clyburn was met in the basement of Congress, where he was asked about fellow Black Caucus member and accused serial sexual assaulter, Rep. John Conyers (D-MI). His response was stunning.When asked about sexual harassment allegations against colleague Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), Clyburn seemed to suggest elected officials should be held to a different standard than other public figures.In a video posted on Twitter, the 77-year-old Clyburn is walking to an elevator with Congressional Black Caucus chairman Cedric Richmond (D-La.), when asked Other men in other industries have faced similar accusations and gotten out of the way, resign, stepped down, far faster than he has, right Harvey Weinstein, Charlie Rose, Matt Lauer? Clyburn s response, Who elected them? CBC Chair Richmond asks for ex. of ppl leaving jobs faster than Conyers when face sexual harassment claims; Clyburn asks "who elected them?" pic.twitter.com/FGDNbvBUcg Alex Moe (@AlexNBCNews) November 29, 2017That was followed by another question, So it s different because he s elected, but the elevator doors closed before Clyburn might have responded.A HIGHER STANDARDBut after 5 p.m., Clyburn posted his official statement regarding a House Resolution that read very differently than the flippant response to reporters in the halls of the Capitol.Congress must streamline the process, protect victims that wish to be protected, and ensure all allegations of wrongdoing are investigated with professionalism, urgency and due process. Read my full statement here, https://t.co/P3eEnkTIS5 James E. Clyburn (@Clyburn) November 29, 2017 As elected officials, we ought to be held to a higher standard, Clyburn said in his statement. Congress must review and improve the current administrative procedure for victims to come forward. All harassment and discrimination allegations must be taken seriously. The StateClyburn took to Twitter again tonight to cover his ass:This is inaccurate in many regards. That discussion had nothing to with Conyers. https://t.co/EWeokwGn50 James E. Clyburn (@Clyburn) November 29, 2017New York Times reporter Rober Draper responded to Clyburn, refuting his claim that it had nothing to do with Conyers .That discussion was specifically & exclusively about Conyers, according to 2 attendees. Who else could you have been referring to when bringing up Susan Smith? https://t.co/MtbIdDbxT7 Robert Draper (@DraperRobert) November 29, 2017Liberal rag Buzzfeed, immediately came to Clyburn s defense:Clyburn's people dispute this. "That is not accurate. That discussion had nothing to do with Conyers." https://t.co/gqRSuZYi4Z Paul McLeod (@pdmcleod) November 29, 2017Draper refused to back down and stated that his sourcing is solid on this . Draper then went on to say, Further, I m also told it isn t the first time Clyburn has used the Susan Smith parallel with reference to Conyers. My sourcing is solid on this. Further, I'm also told it isn't the first time Clyburn has used the Susan Smith parallel with reference to Conyers. https://t.co/vToUxKbgVW Robert Draper (@DraperRobert) November 29, 2017The Black Caucus then came after the New York Timer reporter Robert Draper:.@RepRichmond: "This is not accurate. @Clyburn used the Smith example to illustrate the dangers of convicting people before getting all the facts. Although Smith killed her kids, she blamed an innocent person & a lot of people believed that innocent person was guilty." 1/2 https://t.co/Rm5NkXk7BY Black Caucus (@OfficialCBC) November 30, 2017Again, Draper stood his ground and refused to be bullied by the Black Caucus on this issue:Correct. But with specific contextual reference to Conyers. Are you suggesting this was some detached academic discussion in which Conyers wasn t brought up? Not credible & also not what the two attendees say. https://t.co/pOtph6T7qI Robert Draper (@DraperRobert) November 30, 2017
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If you ve subjected yourself to cable news over the last few days, you ve probably noticed a non-stop barrage of coverage of the most pressing issue of the week. Hillary Clinton is *gasp* human, and she sometimes succumbs to germs.If anything, the fact that Hillary made an appearance at New York s 9/11 Memorial Service, despite the fact that she had pneumonia, is a testament to her stamina, not a sign of weakness, but the media has turned it into just another way Hillary is deceiving the public.This tactic might backfire on the media. Nearly every woman can relate to the idea of trying to forget they are sick, so they can get s**t done, whether that s**t includes taking care of a household or taking care of a country (or anything in between).CNN reporter Christiane Amanpour is pretty angry. Her network has been among the worst in the non-stop bullying of a woman recovering from a common illness. So, Amanpour took to the air to beg the media, Can t a girl have a sick day or two? Finally tonight, imagine a world where you can t slow down, you absolutely cannot, can t get sick. This weekend after attending a 9/11 memorial in New York after more than a year of relentless campaigning, the Democratic presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton, fell ill and these pictures have boomeranged across the world. Several hours later the campaign revealed the former secretary of state had been diagnosed with pneumonia on Friday. But surely this can t be a case of a human being having an off day. Nope. Like so many things Hillary, the media are having a field day, off to the races with another debilitating case of indignant outrage. This must be another typical Clinton conspiracy to fool them with total transparency breakdown. Talk about a transparency breakdown what about Donald Trump s tax returns? Where are they? Can t a girl have a sick day or two? Don t get me started because when it comes to overqualified women having to try 100 times harder than underqualified men to get a break or even a level playing field, well we know that story. And then, to hammer home the double standard, Amanpour talked about the male presidents who have suffered from their various forms of frailty. And seriously now, the 14th president of the United States, Franklin Pierce rose to that role after earning the nickname Fainting Frank for twice collapsing in two battles in 1847, she continued. Who could ever forget George Bush senior throwing up all over the Japanese prime minister and then fainting at a state dinner? And he oversaw the fall of the Soviet Union and won the first Gulf War. Considering the media outrage over Hillary failing to tell them she had pneumonia on Friday, consider the media activity shielding some great American presidents, agreeing for instance, not to show these photographs of Franklin D. Roosevelt, whose Polio kept him confined to a wheelchair, but did that stop his New Deal for America or winning World War II? And then there is everyone s favorite president, John F Kennedy. Now he saved the world from possible nuclear Armageddon during the Cuban missile crisis, called for a new frontier in space and generally inspired whole generations around the globe while the press kept secret his painful struggle with Addison s disease. Leading the world in sickness and in health if the boys can do it, why not the women? Here s the video courtesy of Media Matters:The bottom line is, human bodies are flawed, and even the most healthy of us occasionally gets sick. Treating that as a moral failing is insulting to all women, not just to Hillary Clinton.Featured image via video screen capture
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21st Century Wire says Defendants in the Federal case against Nevada rancher, Cliven Bundy, his sons and a group of their supporters have had a key weapons charge against them dropped in a recent pretrial hearing but there is still a major legal battle ahead of them. The charges stem from an event in April 2014 when Federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM) agents tried to seize Bundy s cattle over a dispute between the Ranchers and the government about grazing fees in what the ranchers saw as federal over-reach in management of public land being at the heart of the dispute.Mark Anderson reports on the developing story of the Bundy Ranch Trials in the article below from American Free Press Mark Anderson American Free PressA key charge on weapons was recently dropped from the charges that were filed against Nevada ranchers Cliven Bundy, his sons, and several of their supporters over their protest in 2014. So far, the case has been split into three separate trials, set to start soon in Las Vegas. AFP will continue to follow this case as it evolves throughout the summer.LAS VEGAS, Nev. A federal judge in a pretrial hearing on Feb. 2 dismissed the third count, related to firearms, in the 16-count indictment against rancher Cliven Bundy and 17 others stemming from their April 2014 resistance of a crackdown carried out by federal agents in Bunkerville, located in southern Nevada.The standoff happened when federal agents unsuccessfully tried to seize Bundy s cattle following a decades-long dispute that, according to the government, was over unpaid grazing fees. The event is widely seen as a collision of two worldviews emblematic of Western landowners longtime efforts to resist and turn back what they see as heavy-handed federal micro-management of vast stretches of Western lands.While the Las Vegas Review Journal online called U.S. District Judge Gloria Navarro s decision to drop count three as a minor victory for the men accused of organizing a mass assault on law enforcement, other observers have insisted that federal agents, especially those from the Bureau of Land Management, were the actual assailants.Judge Navarro ruled to drop that count amid requests by the defense for several of the charges contained in the federal indictment to be dismissed, according to the Journal.Paralegal Tatum Wehr, assistant to Bret Whipple, attorney for Cliven Bundy, told this AFP writer Feb. 3 that Navarro s decision applies to all the defendants awaiting trial. That was seconded by Roger Roots, an astute Montanan who s a legal adviser to both Cliven Bundy and his son, Ryan.Roots explained to AFP in a phone interview that, while the dropped count has to do with the alleged use of a gun to impede federal officers, the three other similar gun counts that weren t dropped allege the use of a gun to assault, threaten, and interfere with federal officers. In his view, those are just three ways of saying the same basic thing and that such wording is a deliberate way for the feds to get something to stick.Roots added that a motion to dismiss the case was filed on Feb. 2. That will be ruled on in a couple weeks. Unless that succeeds, this thing is definitely going to trial, he said, adding, This case is a big exposure for these guys. We re talking high stakes. According to Roots, the three remaining gun counts carry mandatory minimum sentences of several years each under what he described as an evil statute [USC 18, Sect. 924 (c)]. It carries stiff sentences (especially for second offenses) and mandates that the sentences be served consecutively, instead of the usual concurrent approach. The defendants could be looking at 25 years to life, depending on how many counts stick, as Roots understands it.Roots also said the federal government has been withholding critically important evidence from the defense, amid severe moral and ethical breaches and enormously wasteful and improper spending of tax dollars during the standoff by BLM agent Dan Love, a key figure in this saga.And with Love s testimony being the only thing the grand jury heard in the Bundy case before issuing its indictment meaning that the grand jury s inherent right to do its own investigation was never exercised the federal case evidently is far weaker than many people assume.An insightful overview of Love s behavior concerning the Bunkerville standoff and related matters can be heard here in an interview with Brianna Bundy, wife of defendant Mel Bundy, conducted by KSDZ-FM The Twister in Nebraska. They [BLM agents] laugh and joke about shooting women, shooting children, and dogs and horses, Brianna told KSDZ, referring to evidence in the form of body-cam footage evidently being withheld from public knowledge. Love is accused of egging other agents on to aggressively view Cliven Bundy and his supporters as an allegedly mortal threat. The discovery process could bring this matter to light, but that has yet to happen Continue this report at American Free PressREAD MORE BUNDY RANCH NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Bundy Ranch FilesSUPPORT OUR WORK BY SUBSCRIBING & BECOMING A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV
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This is probably not an untypical Muslim taxpayer supported family. Once a government makes the decision to open its borders to anyone who cares to come in and to support them, regardless of the size of family, or age of the wife (or in many cases multiple wives), it s very hard to turn off the government spigot Politicians in Denmark have condemned the asylum seeker policy which will allow Daham Al Hasan to rake in thousands in benefits once his huge family is reunited.The 47-year-old fled war-torn Syria two years ago with a wife and eight children before arriving in Denmark.The unemployed migrant, who claims to be too sick to work, has now been granted family reunification for his remaining 12 children and two wives who are still in Syria.The migrant also said the pain was so overwhelming that he could not learn Danish yet.The approval will see the Danish taxpayer fork out 214,128 Danish Kroners ( 21,883) in child support for the family each year.Outraged officials have raised concerns about the policy and suggested the Syrian man is exploiting the country s welfare system.Integration spokesperson for the Conservatives, Naser Khader, said: It is highly problematic that a Syrian refugee can be allowed to call himself sick to avoid working and learning Danish, so he can support 20 children. The politician added it should not be possible for someone who does not intend to work to be given such vast sums and called for Denmark to implement an upper limit for the number of children a person can claim contributions for.Shader said: We need to save and it can t be right that a man, who has not contributed, is granted hundreds of thousands in child support. Via: Express UK
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By Allen L Roland, PhD on November 2, 2016 The politics of fear is ruling this Presidential election and it’s time for our conscience and self-respect to take over and erode fear in the process. There is no better reminder in this process than Chris Hedges whose activist voice to power echoes those of Amy Goodman and others, including myself, who know that this is our moment in 2016 and our conscience and self-respect, not our fears, must be our guide: Allen L Roland, PhD
“ Just remember,’ a Marine Corps lieutenant colonel told me as he strapped his pistol belt under his arm before we crossed into Kuwait, ‘that none of these boys is fighting for home, for the flag, for all that crap the politicians feed the public. They are fighting for each other, just for each other.” ~ Chris Hedges , War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning
On a realistic note ~ there is only one party (the War party) ~ there is only one candidate ~ there is only one choice because in the New World Order, there is no choice for it has already been decided by the global establishment ~ all the rest is kabuki theater presented for our entertainment ~ but there are still pockets of truth although their voices have been muted by the corporate media. Chris Hedges is one of those voices as is Amy Goodman and Abby Martin ~ see Abby’s take on Hillary Clinton; Video / 24 minutes ~
Abby Martin Exposes What Hillary Clinton Really Represents
On a much lighter note ~ kindly allow me to digress for a few hilarious moments and offer Lionel Nation’s take on the total absurdity of this latest Clinton Weiner gate email scandal ~ You Tube / 30 minutes ~
Returning to the subject at hand ~ the following are excerpts from a public endorsement letter from Chris Hedges to the STEIN/BARAKA HEADQUARTERS ~
“ My reporting and writing, which has taken me to many parts of America, has convinced me that the traditional mechanisms of reform, including the two major political parties, have been captured by corporate power .
We no longer live in a functioning democracy, but a system the political philosopher Sheldon Wolin calls “inverted totalitarianism.”
We will step outside this system and build alternative movements, including alternative political parties, or see the rise of a Christianized fascism, of which the Trump campaign is the dress rehearsal.
It is imperative that you join me in contributing to the Stein/Baraka presidential campaign and vote for Jill and Ajamu in the upcoming election. There is no longer any genuine threat from Donald Trump that can be used as an excuse to vote for Hillary Clinton.
The current policies of austerity and endless war, of wholesale surveillance, of Wall Street fraud and abuse, along with a refusal to enact a massive green energy program to save our environment, will by 2020 ensure the rise of a far-right candidate endowed with a discipline and political skill that eludes Trump.
If Jill and the Green Party can get 5 percent of the vote we will have $10 million in federal funds in 2020 and broad, nationwide ballot access. This election is about building the momentum for this historical moment.
The time for resistance, genuine resistance, is now. We must step outside the political mainstream. We must, like Greece and Spain, invest in movements and parties to reverse our corporate coup.
We must dismantle the neoliberal policies and imperial adventurism that have laid waste to our civil liberties and are destroying the nation and the planet .
Don’t be ruled by fear this election. Be ruled by your conscience. “
Chris Hedges
Allen L Roland, PhD
Heart centered spiritual consultant and advisor Allen L Roland can be contacted at Allen is also a lecturer and writer who shares a weekly political and social commentary on his web log and website allenroland.com . He is also featured columnist on Veterans Today and is a featured guest on many radio and Television programs.
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BRUSSELS (Reuters) - European Commission head Jean-Claude Juncker has invited the leaders of four eastern European countries to a dinner, according to a letter seen by Reuters, in an effort to ease tensions between them and wealthier western member states. In his letter, dated Oct. 2 and addressed to the leaders of Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, Juncker stressed the paramount importance of EU unity, strained by disputes over immigration and other issues as well as by Brexit. While Prague and Bratislava have sometimes struck a more moderate tone, Warsaw and Budapest have constantly been at loggerheads with the bloc s executive Commission in Brussels, as well as with EU heavyweights Germany and France, over what the bloc increasingly sees as their flouting of democratic rules. Juncker proposed a dinner with the leaders of the four Visegrad group nations in Brussels on Oct. 18, ahead of an EU summit on Oct. 19-20, citing the need to build a more united, stronger and more democratic Europe despite Britain s exit. I believe that preserving the unity of the (remaining) 27 in this process is of paramount importance, he said. The eastern states, especially Poland and Hungary, have resisted an EU program for all member states to accept refugees after a mass influx of people in 2015-16, mostly Muslims from the Middle East and Africa. Other points of contention include a reform of EU s labor rules, which France and some other western states say give unfair competitive advantage to cheap workers from the east. Some western countries, notably Italy - on the frontline of taking in refugees and migrants from across the Mediterranean - have suggested cutting the generous aid provided to the easterners through the EU budget if they fail to show European solidarity over migration. Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico s recent reassurances that his country, a member of the single-currency euro zone, sees itself firmly at the heart of the EU seem to have gone down well in Brussels. The Commission has responded by saying it would work with Slovakia and other eastern member states in tackling what they see as the malpractice of second-class food products being sold by big Western multinationals on their home markets. Soothing relations with Poland and Hungary, however, will prove more challenging. Poland, led by the eurosceptic Law and Justice party (PiS), is under an unprecedented EU investigation over the rule of law following a series of reforms that critics say threaten the independence of the Polish judiciary. The EU also faces a tough challenge agreeing its next multi-year budget that runs from 2021, with generous handouts to the eastern nations under particular threat as Britain, a leading net donor, prepares to leave the bloc in 2019. After pro-EU centrist Emmanuel Macron won the French presidency this year, Brussels hopes a reinvigorated Paris-Berlin alliance can help usher in reforms needed for the bloc to thrive despite Brexit. The Franco-German axis is promising to be the strongest in years. They (the easterners) either play along that or they lose, a senior EU diplomat said.
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By Bill Sardi November 1, 2016 Journalist Carl Bernstein, who played a key role in uncovering the Watergate scandal in the Nixon era, says Hillary Clinton’s email fiasco is in no way “bigger than Watergate.” [ Politico Oct 29, 2016] But Watergate was a simple break-in at a Democrat electioneering office. Hillary Clinton not only operated her email system outside normal security procedures but did so to hide the fact she was operating her pay-to-play schemes at the State Department and was lining her pockets with millions of dollars in the process. Hillary Clinton literally put the State Department up for sale says a report published in the New York Post. [ New York Post Aug 9, 2016] Even more criminal is that the Democrat Party is attempting to cover up Clinton’s scheme that keeps offering favors to even foreign donors to the Clinton Foundation, making the Democrat Party a complicit to criminal activity (as if that is something new to them). The Justice Department sought to bar the Justice Department (FBI) from proceeding ahead with its investigation of Hillary’s emails, which is the reason why Anthony Weiner’s emails were not scrutinized early on. [ Daily Mail UK Oct 31, 2016] Is America going to elect Hillary Clinton and watch her use her power to appoint an Attorney General and a new FBI chief to get off the hook? Hillary Clinton may still be under investigation after she is elected. [ Daily Mail UK Oct 30, 2016] Hillary Clinton could go to prison for 20 years if charged with obstruction of justice. [ Info Wars Oct 31, 2016] Expect a Presidential pardon if that ever happens. While Hillary Clinton is now playing the role of victim of an “October Surprise” that the FBI chose to run against her, 24 years ago Bill Clinton cheered an 11 th -hour indictment in his bid for reelection. [ Washington Examiner Oct 30-2016] Meanwhile, another email gets uncovered where Hillary Clinton’s top aides were drooling over a Super Pac that planned to work hand-in-hand with Hillary Clinton’s campaign, something that is legally forbidden. As Hillary’s team ponders this development, one of Hillary’s top aides says in her email: “That’s fine. But skirting if not violating the law doesn’t help her INMHO” (slang/acronym: in my humble opinion). [ Zerohedge.com Oct 31, 2016] Hillary Clinton opened her last week of campaigning with a TV advertisement that revisits the 1964 “Daisy” ad that attempts to claim Trump is a reckless leader who can’t be trusted with the “bug red button” that would launch a nuclear war. Clinton has said there is only a 4-minute window to decide to launch a nuclear war. [ Washington Post Oct 31, 2016] The irony is that a vote for Hillary Clinton has been said to be a vote for war. CNN has been caught drumming up a claim that Donald Trump urged his supporters to vote multiple times. [ Mediaite.com Oct 30, 2016] The Best of Bill Sardi Tags: Bill Sardi [ ] is a frequent writer on health and political topics. His health writings can be found at www.naturalhealthlibrarian.com . His latest book is Downsizing Your Body . Copyright © 2016 Bill Sardi Word of Knowledge Agency, San Dimas, California. This article has been written exclusively for www.LewRockwell.com and other parties who wish to refer to it should link rather than post at other URLs.
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The whole world knows about the bombshell report of Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, and the former campaign manager for Donald Trump s 2016 presidential run, Paul Manafort, holding a secret meeting with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya. Of course, despite how shady this is on its face, Team Trump s party line has been, nothing to see here. Well, it seems that there just might be something to see here, considering that Veselnitskaya actually once represented a Russian spy agency.Reuters reports that Veselnitskaya was involved in a bitter fight over elite, exclusive pieces of property in Moscow. Who was her client? The FSB, of course. Meaning, essentially, she was working for the Kremlin and Vladimir Putin. Supposedly, that connection ended in 2013 when Veselnitskaya won the case for the FSB. However, with the way Russia operates, once a Russian spy operative, always a Russian spy operative. Here is how Reuters describes the chain of events:Reuters could not find a record of when and by whom the lawsuit which dates back to at least 2003 was first lodged. But appeal documents show that Rosimushchestvo, Russia s federal government property agency, was involved. It did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Veselnitskaya and her firm Kamerton Consulting represented military unit 55002 in the property dispute, the documents show.Now, to play devil s advocate, it is very possible that Trump Jr. and the rest didn t know Veselnitskaya s history. That is possible, but certainly not probable, considering the fact that Trump Jr. himself has admitted that his family has been getting money from Russia to fund their business ventures for years. That makes it highly unlikely that the Trumps and those in their orbit weren t well aware of who this woman was, what her background was, and who she worked for.At the end of the day, this is a woman that never should have been allowed into this nation at all, and she definitely shouldn t have been anywhere an American presidential campaign. All of this is shady as hell, and hopefully Robert Mueller can get to the bottom of it while we still have a republic to save.Featured image via Flickr
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21st Century Wire says One of the most elaborate crimes of the century continues to be whitewashed SMOKE SCREEN Photo Illustration 21WIRE s Shawn Helton There are many doorways into the crimes of 9/11. After the attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center, President George W. Bush called for the creation of remote control systems in commercial airliners in the event of an emergency. By design, this technology would grant air traffic controllers, along with other government entities, the ability to control an aircraft and steer it towards its final intended destination.Based on history, we know that the Flight Management Systems within Boeing models have been capable of assisting the entire flight through its remote autopilot functions since at least 1984, well before Bush s politically motivated calls for remote control flights in the aftermath of 9/11.From the mid-1980 s, the coded software on the plane would send data to ground control stations, accepting any return flight information or auto-land command. In addition to civilian aircraft being flown remotely before it was acknowledged, the U.S. Air Force apparently constructed an F-106 Delta Dart fighter to be controlled remotely on a combat mission in 1959 under the direction of the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD).There has been an endless dispute over the how of 9/11 and the who, as well as the various methods used to carry out the crimes of that day. There s an even heavier debate over what brought down WTC Building 7 and since then, other 9/11 rabbit holes have also challenged the nature of the planes said to be involved in both New York and Washington DC.Whether you re curious and bold enough to head down that path is a whole different matter, but the fact remains, the technology to take over a commercial flight existed long before 9/11.Whatever your thoughts are concerning planes on 9/11 it s still worth noting that even the mainstream media admitted at the time that there was, no evidence of a plane at all, following the destruction of a portion of the Pentagon s western side.Indeed, 15 years on, there are still many more question than there are plausible answers.More from Paul Craig Roberts below Einst rzende Neubauten A single day has shaped the modern world. (Image Source: downtownexpress)9/11: 15 Years Of A Transparent LiePaul Craig RobertsThere are many conspiracy theories about 9/11. The US government s own explanation of 9/11 is a conspiracy theory in which a few Saudi Arabians outwitted the American national security state. Little doubt that many of the more imaginative conspiracy theories were created for the purpose of stigmatizing any skepticism, no matter how well reasoned and supported, of the official story.When thinking about 9/11, it is important to differentiate expert opinion from improbable explanations.Among the expert opinion are 2,600 structural engineers and high-rise architects who comprise Architects & Engineers for 9/11 truth and have written to Congress asking for a real investigation, Firefighters for 9/11 truth, Pilots for 9/11 truth, physicists and chemists who analyzed the dust from the twin towers and report finding reacted and unreacted materials used in controlled demolitions, and former government officials who understand that a security failure as great as 9/11 would have produced an immediate and exacting investigation.These groups of qualified and experienced people say that the official story of 9/11 is false. Architects, engineers, and scientists say that the official story is physically impossible. Firefighters and WTC maintenance personnel say that there were numerous explosions within the towers and that the first explosions were in the sub-basements prior to the buildings being hit by airplanes. Experienced military and civilian pilots say the maneuvers of the aircraft are beyond the capability of the alleged hijackers. Both co-chairman of the 9/11 Commission and the legal counsel have written books in which they have said that information was withheld from the Commission, that the US government lied to the Commission, and that the Commission was set up to failIn other words, the hard evidence simply does not support the official story.We know that the official story is false. We don t know who is responsible or the purpose the event was intended to serve. However, circumstantial evidence strongly supports suspicion of the neoconservatives whose high positions in the government would have enabled them to succeed with a false flag attack and to delay and divert any investigation until the official story was set in stone. We also know from the dancing Israelis that elements in the Israeli government had advance notice of the attack as Israeli agents were set up ready to film the destruction of the twin towers.More from Paul Craig Roberts here READ MORE 9/11 NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire 9/11 Files
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If this had been a Tea Party group attacking Nancy Pelosi s home, it would have been international news Angry leftists with rocks, wood chunks and torches attacked a Chicago alderman s home this weekend. Once you start throwing objects, that crosses the line, he said. He said there wasn t any major damage to the home, just debris near the windows and objects on the sidewalk.Alderman Cardenas provided a video of the attack to authorities:Three people landed behind bars Saturday night after mobbing a home owned by Ald. George Cardenas (12th) with rocks, pieces of wood and tiki torches, according to the alderman and police.The mob of more than 50 people was protesting police violence in the city, said Cardenas, who provided DNAinfo Chicago with a video clip shot outside the home, where his ex-wife, two daughters and his mother live.Police eventually arrested three protesters in the 2100 block of South Marshall.Efrain Montalvo, 23, of the 2600 block of West 22nd Place; Javier Ramos, a 29-year-old Des Plaines resident; and Billie Kincaid, a 25-year-old woman from the 1500 block of West Lunt Avenue, each stand charged with one misdemeanor count of mob action.Cardenas had been eating dinner with a friend across town when the mob rolled down 26th Street in Little Village and ended up in front of his house. Via: Gateway Pundit
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Join the Health Ranger's FREE email newsletter Get breaking news alerts on GMOs, fluoride, superfoods, natural cures and more... More news on human complacency About the author: Mike Adams (aka the " Health Ranger ") is a best selling author (#1 best selling science book on Amazon.com) and a globally recognized scientific researcher in clean foods. He serves as the founding editor of NaturalNews.com and the lab science director of an internationally accredited (ISO 17025) analytical laboratory known as CWC Labs . There, he was awarded a Certificate of Excellence for achieving extremely high accuracy in the analysis of toxic elements in unknown water samples using ICP-MS instrumentation. Adams is also highly proficient in running liquid chromatography, ion chromatography and mass spectrometry time-of-flight analytical instrumentation. Adams is a person of color whose descendents include Africans and American Indians. He self-identifies as being of American Indian heritage , which he credits as inspiring his "Health Ranger" passion for protecting life and nature against the destruction caused by chemicals, heavy metals and other forms of pollution. Adams is the founder and publisher of the open source science journal Natural Science Journal , the author of numerous peer-reviewed science papers published by the journal, and the author of the world's first book that published ICP-MS heavy metals analysis results for foods, dietary supplements, pet food, spices and fast food. The book is entitled Food Forensics and is published by BenBella Books. In his laboratory research, Adams has made numerous food safety breakthroughs such as revealing rice protein products imported from Asia to be contaminated with toxic heavy metals like lead, cadmium and tungsten . Adams was the first food science researcher to document high levels of tungsten in superfoods . He also discovered over 11 ppm lead in imported mangosteen powder , and led an industry-wide voluntary agreement to limit heavy metals in rice protein products. In addition to his lab work, Adams is also the (non-paid) executive director of the non-profit Consumer Wellness Center (CWC), an organization that redirects 100% of its donations receipts to grant programs that teach children and women how to grow their own food or vastly improve their nutrition. Through the non-profit CWC, Adams also launched Nutrition Rescue , a program that donates essential vitamins to people in need. Click here to see some of the CWC success stories. With a background in science and software technology, Adams is the original founder of the email newsletter technology company known as Arial Software . Using his technical experience combined with his love for natural health, Adams developed and deployed the content management system currently driving NaturalNews.com. He also engineered the high-level statistical algorithms that power SCIENCE.naturalnews.com , a massive research resource featuring over 10 million scientific studies. Adams is well known for his incredibly popular consumer activism video blowing the lid on fake blueberries used throughout the food supply. He has also exposed "strange fibers" found in Chicken McNuggets , fake academic credentials of so-called health "gurus," dangerous "detox" products imported as battery acid and sold for oral consumption, fake acai berry scams , the California raw milk raids , the vaccine research fraud revealed by industry whistleblowers and many other topics. Adams has also helped defend the rights of home gardeners and protect the medical freedom rights of parents . Adams is widely recognized to have made a remarkable global impact on issues like GMOs, vaccines, nutrition therapies, human consciousness. In addition to his activism, Adams is an accomplished musician who has released over a dozen popular songs covering a variety of activism topics.
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A fumbling Nancy Pelosi tried to defend former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick s First Amendment right to kneel during the national anthem. She couldn t quite get the name out and stuttered to say it. If you ve been following pelosi, you know this is a common occurrence. Pelosi is a great example of why we desperately need term limits. During an appearance on Meet The Press, Pelosi sided with the former 49ers quarterback, and other players refusing to stand for our country It was a hot pink mess SHE JUST DOESN T GET IT OUT -OF-TOUCH LIBERALS HAVE NO CLUE! Colin Kaep Kaep Kaepernick, uh, doing what he did, says this flag enables me to do this. This national anthem enables me to do this, she said, initially struggling to speak. This is about freedom of expression, Pelosi said.NO NANCY, THIS IS ABOUT SHOWING RESPECT FOR WHAT OUR FLAG AND NATIONAL ANTHEM REPRESENT. THIS IS WHAT PRESIDENT TRUMP SAID: We re proud of our country. We respect our flag, Wouldn t you love to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag to say, Get that son of a bitch off the field! He s fired. He s fired! MAGA!
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MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexico s top prosecutor for electoral crimes on Friday said he would no longer fight his dismissal by the acting attorney general, ending a simmering dispute that had caused embarrassment to the government of President Enrique Pena Nieto. Mexico s acting attorney general last week fired Santiago Nieto on the grounds that he broke a code of conduct for officials. Nieto s firing came just days after he spoke publicly about a graft investigation linked to the campaign of Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto. His summary dismissal stirred up a major row in Congress that at one point threatened to impede the passage of legislation, but with the passing of a key budget bill late on Thursday, there were signs the dispute was receding. In a letter to the Senate and a news conference, Nieto said that he had become too polarizing a figure to keep working ahead of national elections next year. However, he insisted he had broken no law and that he had been unfairly dismissed. For all these reasons I have decided to withdraw my objection to (my dismissal), he said in the letter. Nieto was fired after an interview with newspaper Reforma in which he said Emilio Lozoya, the former boss of state oil firm Pemex, wrote to him to ask that he be declared innocent of accusations he funneled cash from Brazilian construction firm Odebrecht into Pena Nieto s 2012 election campaign. Lozoya, who was a senior adviser to Pena Nieto in the campaign, denies the allegations about Odebrecht. The firm is at the heart of a bribery and kickback probe, known as Lava Jato or Car Wash, that has reverberated across Latin America. Pena Nieto has also denied involvement in any wrongdoing related to the 2012 campaign.
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The Blind Prophetess claims Barrack Obama will be the last president of the United States.
Baba Vagan is a cult figure in some circles in the Balkan states because of her uncanny knack for making astonishingly accurate predictions about the future.
Baba Vagan, who is sometimes referred to as the blind prophetess, is credited with predicting the events of September 11th, 2001 in the 1980s. It has been said that she had a vision of ‘American brethren’ being attacked by two steel birds which some believe could have symbolised the two hijacked jet planes which smashed into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Centre complex.
Perhaps even more impressively, she also made a prediction that the 44th President of the United States would be an African-American. However, unfortunately for the controversial president-elect Donald Trump, Vagan has said that Barrack Obama would be the last president that America would ever have and that Trump will never actually come to power. Extrapolating from this, supporters of Vagan have suggested that something catastrophic will happen to American civilisation in the space of the next two months and that the ramifications will be so deep that it would irrevocably abolish the office of the presidency. Others have suggested that it means that Trump will eschew the title and role of ‘president’ and instead install himself as a permanent dictator of the United States .
It has been estimated that 85% of Baba Vagan’s prophecies have come to pass. However, sceptics have suggested that her prophecies are so vague that she is credited with being accurate more often than is reasonable. Her supporters have also been criticised for making fraudulent claims about her powers of psychic deduction.
However, for those who are inclined to find out more about the mysterious blind prophetess it may be of interest to know about some of her other predictions for the future. Vagan believes that human beings will have established cities under the oceans in 2130, that there will be a war on Mars in the year 3000 and by 3797 the Earth will be destroyed, but humanity will survive after fleeing to another universe.
Disclose TV
SOURCE
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Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz dropped a big bomb during an interview on CNN today. She claimed that Jeh Johnson s testimony about the DNC computer hack is wrong in every respect and utterly misinformed. Whoa! Who s telling the truth?Schultz told the CNN anchor He s wrong in every respect. Let me be very clear. At no point during my tenure at the DNC was I contacted by the FBI, DHS, or any government agency, or alerted or made aware that they believed that the Russians, an enemy state, was intruding on our network. In case you missed it, former DHS Director Jeh Johnson testified to lawmakers this week that the DNC rejected his agency s offer to protect its network despite receiving warnings about a computer hack. Instead, the DNC chose an outside cyber security firm to help solve the computer hacks that led to WikiLeaks publishing thousands of its emails.CNN s Bolduan asked Schultz how both accounts could be true: Secretary Johnson says DNC rebuffed the help offered. You are saying no one contacted you? Schultz replied with a shocking statement: Secretary Johnson is utterly misinformed. That is simply not accurate. Schultz went further and blamed the FBI for not helping: They left the Russians on our network for more than for almost a year before we discovered that they were there.
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This expert on climate who s been studying climate change for 25 years weighs in on the global warming scam. Please share!
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BERLIN (Reuters) - German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Monday that the strong showing of Austria s anti-immigrant Freedom Party (FPO) in Sunday s election was a big challenge for other parties. Speaking at a news conference in Berlin, Merkel added that she was hoping for close cooperation with Austria s conservative election winner Sebastian Kurz at the European level.
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21st Century Wire says When the news broke in 2013 that Amazon.com founder and Bilderberg member Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post, we started asking the same question many others were asking at the time: what does it mean for the paper and what will happen next? As the media whips up a public frenzy over which city will go to what extreme lengths to prove their worthiness of hosting the online retailer s next company headquarters replete with an odd reality TV like competition backdrop we now see further signs of exactly what the plan was all along.SEE ALSO: Washington Post Sloppy Journalism Blames Russia for Fake News Crisis and Trump s Win, While Pushing Neo-McCarthyismAccording to Adam Johnson, contributing analyst for FAIR.org, the Washington Post has been caught reposting Amazon press releases in their coverage of the HQ2 story. This amounts to essentially copy and paste PR by the Bezos-owned newspaper on behalf of Bezos-owned Amazon with no regard for citation or explanation of the projected economic benefits a host city could expect to receive. If only quality control of shipping their news at the Amazon Washington Post was as tight as shipping their retail.Continue reading about this story at FAIR.org READ MORE MEDIA CRITIQUE AT: 21st Century Wire Media Cog FilesSUPPORT 21WIRE SUBSCRIBE NOW & BECOME A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV
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The president s Saturday morning address is chock-full of good news for working class Americans. Unemployment is at the lowest it s been since before Bush tanked the economy. With 70 straight months of job growth, confidence that the American jobs market will reach full employment is high. As President Obama points out, however, it s never enough to stand on your laurels.One of the major problems with the recovery has been that when companies started hiring again, they hired at lower wages. It may have been out of fear that thew worst may still be ahead or it could be out of a need to recoup the losses they experienced from 8 years of Bush policies. Regardless, the working class American is the one who pays the price. Most of corporate America operates on bottom line numbers, not whether or not their employees can afford to eat. Passing on the losses to those who work their butts off to rebuild their companies has become standard operating procedure.The President has vowed to change that in his final year in office, starting with those who need it most. He s initiating a plan of not just improved unemployment insurance and job training for those who still can t find a job, but wage insurance for those people making under $50K per year who are re-hired for a job at a lower wage. The plan would cover up to $10K in wage replacement over two years to struggling families making less now for the same job they were doing before they were let go.The president says in his address: If a hardworking American loses her job, regardless of what state she lives in, we should make sure she can get unemployment insurance and some help to retrain for her next job. It s a way to give families some stability and encourage folks to rejoin the workforce because we shouldn t just be talking about unemployment; we should be talking about reemployment, Moving the country forward has been the goal of this administration from day one. It used to be that we could be sure that Republicans would block whatever the president tried to do, causing him to move on to the next thing, but lately he s been taking matters into his own hands, not giving a sh*t what the Republicans think or want.That s the way we like it, Mr. President. Keep up the good work.Watch President Obama s full address below:Featured image via screen capture
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More than two decades before he died on Sunday at age 53, George Michael was publicly struggling with the trappings of fame. And when he spoke out about his concerns about the nature of celebrity, Frank Sinatra pulled out his stationery and responded. A 1990 story by The Los Angeles Times focused on Mr. Michael’s refusal to promote his music by making videos which, at the height of MTV, was a risky move at best, and career suicide at worst. “I’m not stupid enough to think that I can deal with another 10 or 15 years of major exposure,” Mr. Michael said at the time. “I think that is the ultimate tragedy of fame. ” He added: “People who are simply out of control, who are lost. I’ve seen so many of them, and I don’t want to be another cliché. ” Mr. Sinatra, who was then in his and had experienced the ups and downs of celebrity, gently admonished the younger star in a letter that appeared in The Los Angeles Times a week later. The letter was later published by the online museum Letters of Note. “Come on, George,” Mr. Sinatra wrote. “Loosen up. Swing, man. Dust off those gossamer wings and fly yourself to the moon of your choice and be grateful to carry the baggage we’ve all had to carry since those lean nights of sleeping on buses and helping the driver unload the instruments. ” Mr. Sinatra, who died of a heart attack in 1998 at age 82, knew something about the other side of fame. After years of soaring popularity, Mr. Sinatra, a baritone, saw his career slide in the late 1940s. By the early 1950s, he had retooled his musical persona and won a string of acting roles. To call it a career revival was an understatement: Sinatra had transformed himself from a fledgling wartime singer into a pop culture titan. “The tragedy of fame is when no one shows up and you’re singing to the cleaning lady in some empty joint that hasn’t seen a paying customer since Saint Swithin’s day. ” Mr. Sinatra wrote. “And you’re nowhere near that you’re top dog on the top rung of a tall ladder called Stardom, which in Latin means who were there when it was lonely. ” Mr. Sinatra finished the letter succinctly: “Trust me. I’ve been there. ” As the letter resurfaced after Mr. Michael’s death, it quickly spread on social media. In 1990, not all readers had taken Mr. Sinatra’s side, either. One urged for a more compassionate treatment of Mr. Michael, whose struggle with fame continued until his death. “For Mr. Sinatra to trivialize George Michael’s statements and make them seem superfluous or indicate his grasp of the downside of ‘the business’ is minuscule. A performer is, foremost, a human being, not a commodity, a windup toy or machine,” a reader, Mike Sekulic, wrote to The Los Angeles Times on Sept. 23, 1990.
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The left believes these are all perfectly acceptable topics to discuss with our young children. Whatever you do, just don t mention God!A public hearing is taking place Wednesday morning in the Massachusetts State House to look into a controversial sex survey given to middle school and high school students.Developed by the Centers for Disease Control and called the Youth Risk Behavior Survey, the survey asks students as young as 12 a series of very personal and highly ideological questions.The survey asks students if they are homosexual and if they are transgender. It also asks if they have had oral or anal sex and if they have performed such acts with up to six people.Whether or not they have carried a gun, smoked cigarettes, consumed alcohol and how much also appear on the questionnaire, as well as whether they have taken drugs, such as OxyContin, Percocet, and Vicodin. It asks how often their guardian uses a seat belt, if the youngster has a sexually transmitted disease, and where they sleep.The group MassResistance says the survey is psychologically distorting and will lead the child to think he is abnormal if he is not doing it all. The group stated that having children reveal personal issues about themselves and their family can have emotional consequences. They also complain that the survey results are used by radical groups from Planned Parenthood to LGBT groups to persuade politicians to give more taxpayer money [to] these groups. Though students fill out the survey anonymously, MassResistance warns that they are administered by the teacher in the classroom and there is often pressure for all kids to participate. The test is given nationally and not without controversy. The Chicago Tribune reported two years ago that a Chicago teacher was reprimanded for telling students they had a constitutional right not to fill out the survey.Via: Breitbart News
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A newly released email from 2011 from Hillary aide Huma Abedin reportedly said that her BlackBerry wasn’t working. In response, Justin Cooper — the IT guy who set up Hillary’s private email server — said, “We were attacked again.” Justin Cooper was the Clinton aide who set up the email server.Huma: "My clinton [black]berry not working"Cooper: "We were attacked again" pic.twitter.com/KjQcbocQzz
— Lachlan Markay (@lachlan) October 28, 2016
Given that such an attack probably wouldn’t have been carried out by wolverines with distemper, I’m going to assume that the attack was one carried out by hackers. Advertisement - story continues below
Also, one typically doesn’t use the word “again” unless it’s happened before — and in this context, a lot of times before.
I am not privy, of course, to the inner workings of Hillary Clinton’s world. In fact, very few people are, considering that Clinton isn’t exactly ruler of the Principality of Transparencyland. However, given her history, I find that it’s usually safe to assume the worst when it comes to her.
It’s not that we’ve been lied to yet again. If I got angry every time Hillary Clinton lied to us, my blood pressure could run a hydroelectric power plant. It’s that she lied so cravenly about an issue that affects our national security .
And she wants to take this mentality to 1600 Pennsylvania? Give me a break. Advertisement - story continues below
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After receiving heavy backlash, the Latino Victory PAC took down the controversial ad depicting latino children running from a Confederate flag waving white male (video below) It s disgusting..The PAC issued this statement: We knew our ad would ruffle feathers, Latino Victory Fund President Crist bal J. Alex began. We held a mirror up to the Republican Party, and they don t like what they see. We have decided to pull our ad at this time. Given recent events, we will be placing other powerful ads into rotation that highlight the reasons we need to elect progressive leaders in Virginia. Latino Victory Fund Statement: pic.twitter.com/VE8T3N3zI2 Latino Victory (@latinovictoryus) October 31, 2017When supporters of the Democrat Party start using ads that appear to be inspired by Islamic acts of terror, you know they are not the party your parents and grandparents supported, and they re certainly not the party that most Americans want to be affiliated with. When the Latino Victory group released a disgusting video (see below) a couple of days ago, many thought that it was made to resemble terror attacks that have become all too common in European nations. Sadly, today, that concept of using a truck as a weapon to kill innocent people became a reality in New York City, as an Islamic terrorist driver used a rented Home Depot truck as a weapon to kill 9 innocent people and to injure dozens more.Note to Democrats: Creating a terror-inspired ad with a man chasing down innocent kids in a truck through their neighborhood is not funny, and it s definitely not a clever way to get people to vote for your candidate. According to FOX News Democratic candidate for Virginia governor Ralph Northam is not distancing himself from the controversial ad suggesting supporters of Republican candidate Ed Gillespie are seen as Confederates who attack minority children.The new opposition ad titled American Nightmare was released Monday by Democratic group Latino Victory Fund (LVF) and is scheduled to run through Election Day. The opposition ad shows minority children seemingly being chased by a driver in a pickup truck, decked out with a Confederate flag, a Gillespie for governor bumper sticker and a Don t tread on me license plate.The driver makes his way toward the scared children who shout, Run! Run! Run! when they see the truck. The ad concludes with a scene of a Charlottesville-like rally, with a narrator asking: Is this what Donald Trump and Ed Gillespie mean by the American Dream? The Latino Victory group tweeted the video that was so violent, that Twitter has now suspended their account. Here is what their tweet said:Ed Gillespie and Donald Trump promise the American dream, but can only deliver an American nightmare. No more. Vote @RalphNortham. #GameOnVA pic.twitter.com/mwpWXM47HZ Latino Victory (@latinovictoryus) October 30, 2017Northam s campaign told Fox News Tuesday that the ad was not shocking based on Gillespie s campaign. Independent groups are denouncing Ed Gillespie because he has run the most divisive, fear-mongering campaign in modern history, Northam campaign spokeswoman Ofirah Yheskel said in a statement to Fox News. It is not shocking that communities of color are scared of what his Trump-like policy positions mean for them. But Gillespie said the ad was an attack on his supporters, whom he calls good decent hardworking Virginians who love their neighbors. - FOX NewsMaking an ad that depicts a white man with a confederate flag flying from his pick-up truck, sporting an Ed Gillespie (Republican candidate for Governor) bumper sticker on the back, chasing minority kids around their neighborhood is not only sick, it is hateful and divisive. It s ironic that the end of the ad, the words REJECT HATE are flashed across the screen with a message asking, Is this what Donald Trump and Ed Gillespie mean by The American dream ?
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On February 25, 1994, Israeli-Zionist terrorist Barch Goldstein walked into the Ibrahimi Mosque in the Palestinian city of Khalil (Hebron) and executed 29 kneeling Palestinian worshipers and wounded another 129. Soon after, protests broke out in the city and at least 20 more Palestinians were killed by Israeli soldiers guarding the illegal Jewish settlers Israel implanted in the city. Israel also imposed a permanent closure on Al-Shuhada Street, once a bustling strip of Palestinian businesses. The street is the main road leading to the Tomb of the Patriarchs and today, only Jewish Israelis are allowed access to the street, turning the area, which was once the heart of the city, into a virtual ghost town.As Palestinians mark 22 years since the massacre at the mosque and the closure of Al-Shuhada Street, Amnesty International is calling on Israel to lift their military restrictions and collective punishment of Palestinians, a war crime under international law: Since October 2015, as violence in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) and Israel has surged, the Israeli authorities have drastically increased the arbitrary and discriminatory restrictions on movement imposed on Palestinians in and around Hebron s Old City, declaring parts of it a closed military zone. This has further entrenched and exacerbated a pattern of long-standing violations of the rights to freedom of movement, work, health and education of Palestinians in Hebron, especially tens of thousands residing or working in or near the Old City. The arbitrary and discriminatory restrictions, which are not applied to the Israeli Jews living in the illegal settlements in and around the city, constitute collective punishment and violate international humanitarian law. Furthermore, Palestinian and international human rights defenders, including monitors, have been prevented from accessing the areas of al-Shuhada Street and el Rumeida, and are constantly harassed by Israeli forces and settlers. In typical fashion of tyrannical states, Israel has also attacked human rights activists who have protested Israel s brutal policies toward the Palestinians. Amnesty International states: International activists and human rights defenders, who have played a crucial role for many years in documenting Israeli violations against Palestinians living in Hebron, have also been harassed and attacked by Israeli forces and settlers, and prevented from entering the area designated a closed military zone. Activists from the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) told Amnesty International in October that Israeli settlers had physically attacked them frequently, including in the presence of Israeli forces, who did not act to stop the attacks. The ISM also reported that the Israeli police arrested two international activists on 3 November 2015 at the request of Israeli soldiers at a checkpoint the two activists were observing. The two were released, ISM said, when they agreed to leave the city for a week despite the Israeli police telling them there was no evidence against them. The report ends by pointing to Israel s colonies or what are typically referred to as settlements, which are illegal under international law, as the main source of tension in the area. Israel has built colonies and an infrastructure exclusively for Jews, stealing Palestinian land and then killing them when they resist Israel s Orwellian experiment. Amnesty International states: The presence of illegal settlements in and around Hebron is both the cause of the long-standing human rights crisis in the city, and the primary reason for the escalating violence seen there in recent months. The settlements were established in violation of international law, their presence has resulted in grave violations of Palestinians human rights over many years, and Israel s settlement policy is a war crime under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. Instead of continuing the discriminatory measures and actions that compound an illegal situation and violate Palestinians human rights, Israel must evacuate the Israeli civilians living in the illegal settlements in and around Hebron, as well as elsewhere in the OPT. To get an idea what Palestinians go through on a daily basis, see the video below:[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ygi Mnys24] Featured image via video screen capture.
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Fox News blowhard Bill O Reilly really doesn t want the future to give us a President Bernie Sanders. That s no surprise; after all, O Reilly is obviously as far right as Sanders is left. However, O Reilly has taken his fear of another left-winger as president to a whole other level. In fact, he says that if Sanders gets in, he ll move to Ireland.On a recent edition of the O Reilly Factor, the bloviating talking head said that things would be even worse than they are under President Obama, because Sanders would take all of Obama s policies and amp them up. He says that Sanders would dismantle current social programs, specifically Obamacare in the sense that it would be Berniecare and it would be much more than it is now. That s when he said he ll be leaving the United States if forced to live under such rule. And you know, look, I m fleeing. If Bernie Sanders gets elected president, I m fleeing. I m going to Ireland. And they already know it. I shouldn t say it publicly because that will get Sanders more votes. But I m not going to pay 90 percent of my income to that guy. I m sorry. I m not doing it. Well, I got news for ya, Bill-O. Look at the clown car that makes up your side of the aisle. It s gonna be either Bernie or Hillary for the next eight years, if the good people of this nation have any sense at all. So, you better be packing your bags and getting your affairs in order. Go ahead, leave. One less right-wing talking head stoking fear and hate in the minds of ignorant viewers.Watch the comments below:Featured image via screen capture from Raw Story
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Trump s transition team is certainly doing a good job of keeping things moving along, but that s about the only thing they re doing well. What they re busy doing, while keeping things humming along, is another story entirely. Trump s pick for head of the Environmental Protection Agency is enough to send alarm bells ringing, but then his transition team had to go and make things considerably worse.Trump s team has contacted the Department of Energy with some unusual requests that would worry pretty much anyone. They want to know who had attended the U.N. s climate summits over the last five years. As we all know, there was a major climate change summit in Paris at the end of 2015, and we eventually ended up signing onto the agreement that emerged, much to the dismay of climate deniers who want to derail all the progress we ve made as a global climate leader.Their questionnaire, which has 74 questions (more than many tests, employment exams, etc.), also asked who had attended any meetings on the social cost of carbon, which is what our government uses to determine the costs and benefits of new climate and energy regulations. They also want a list of all publications from employees who are at the 17 national laboratories run by the Dept. of Energy for the last three years. Dan Reicher, a professor at Stanford University, said: They re certainly sending an aggressive signal here with some of these questions and they need to be careful. Yeah well, Trump and his cronies, his lapdogs, and the people who are giving him blow jobs and sucking his balls don t really want to be careful. They want to prove they re on Cheetolini s side. Why? Likely because Trump is a massive climate denier, regardless of what he says now, and because everyone he s choosing to run the agencies in charge of both energy production and environmental protection are avid climate deniers.If you re not a climate denier, good luck keeping your job. Trump and his cabinet picks could undo every environmental regulation we ve implemented in the last, well, who knows? 20 years? 30? The people who oppose that, and the people who are just dying to sleep with King Cheeto, would rather perform fellatio than stick by the truth of climate change.Some employees at the Dept. of Energy feel like this is an enemies list, of sorts: When Donald Trump said he wanted to drain the swamp it apparently was just to make room for witch hunts and it s starting here at the DOE and our 17 national labs. Yup. Most likely. Energy and environmental policy are good places to start since not many people really think about those things. Care? Absolutely, but not think about on a daily basis, which is sad considering the fact that we still need this planet to survive, and if it changes faster than we can adapt, we ll all die.But who cares about that, right? Climate change is always happening, and it s not man-made because man can t be so arrogant as to thwart the Almighty Christian God, so trying to save the environment is dumb since businesses need profit and man will either survive or die anyway.Or that s how they sound.Anyway.The Dept. of Energy should be afraid because they might be the start of a government-wide purging of people who don t agree with every single syllable Trump utters, either in front of a mic or on his Twitter account. They ll be first, but who might follow?Featured image by Drew Angerer via Getty Images
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Is This A New Escalation? BLACK Chemtrails Reported Around The World! Please scroll down for video
For many years there have been theories floating around about the potential dangers of chemtrails, the white stripes with a cloudlike appearance that can often be seen in the skies. Some have suggested that these chemtrails are not as innocent as most people tend to think and some people have even gone so far as to say that they may be biological and chemical agents.
This kind of theory has often been dismissed in the past as faulty reasoning and paranoid thinking. The phenomenon that believers identify as chemtrails are nothing more than the perfectly innocent condensation trials left behind by all kind of air vehicles. However, recent sightings of highly unusual chemtrails might well challenge this particular line of thinking. Black chemtrails in the sky stump sceptics
According to many witnesses from all across the world, the chemtrails or ‘condensation trials’ appearing in their local areas are not white anymore – they’re black. No scientific body or government has chosen to offer an explanation about the sudden change in the appearance of numerous trails in the sky, but many believe that it is irrefutable evidence that chemtrails are being utilised for chemical or biological testing on civilian populations .
Sceptics have suggested that these unusual black trails might be nothing more than a shadows of a typical white condensation trail left by a plane. However, this theory has been robustly dismissed by others who have pointed out that clouds leave no shadows in the sky and therefore it would be impossible for a condensation trail left by a plane to do the same thing.
Not all of the people who believe that chemtrails are a real phenomenon believe that they are used to covertly test chemical and biological weapons. Others have suggested that they are part of a weather modification technology, often referred to as HAARP. The chemtrails are being used to electrify portions of the sky so that they can be used for testing by scientists working in this field.
Whatever the truth of the matter is, one thing is for sure; these black chemtrails cannot be easily explained away.
This article (Is This A New Escalation? BLACK Chemtrails Reported Around The World!) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with full attribution and a link to the original source on Disclose.tv Related Articles
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(Reuters) - A federal judge in New Jersey on Tuesday ordered the release of a list of unindicted co-conspirators in the criminal case against two former allies of Republican Governor Chris Christie in a 2013 scandal involving lane closures on the George Washington Bridge. U.S. District Judge Susan Wigenton in Newark ruled in favor of several media organizations that sought the list, saying the public interest in seeing names linked to “Bridgegate” outweighed the privacy interests of those named. U.S. Attorney Paul Fishman had opposed the release, citing the potential harm to reputations and privacy, and saying the co-conspirator designation “will become relevant, if at all” only at trial. A spokesman for Fishman declined to comment. Last May, Fishman’s office unveiled criminal charges against Bridget Kelly, a former Christie deputy chief of staff, and Bill Baroni, a former deputy executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. The defendants were accused of wire fraud and civil rights deprivation for arranging the September 2013 shutdown of bridge access lanes in Fort Lee, New Jersey, allegedly to punish the Democratic mayor there for not endorsing Christie’s successful reelection bid. The closures snarled traffic for several days, causing big delays for drivers and hurting local businesses. Kelly and Baroni have pleaded not guilty. David Wildstein, another former Port Authority official, pleaded guilty to two conspiracy charges. Christie has not been charged, and has denied involvement in wrongdoing. In her decision, Wigenton said the scandal has received such extensive media coverage that “very little” remained private. She also called it likely that anyone on the list would be a public employee, or an elected or appointed official. “Although privacy for third-parties is indeed important, this court is satisfied that the privacy interests of uncharged third parties are insufficiently compelling to outweigh the public’s right of access,” she wrote. Bruce Rosen, a lawyer for the media companies, on Tuesday asked the judge for the “immediate” release of the list. Christie made an unsuccessful run for the White House this year. He was chosen on Monday to lead the White House transition team for Donald Trump, the only candidate left in the race to be the Republican candidate in the Nov. 8 presidential election.
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NEW YORK (Reuters) - New Jersey Governor Chris Christie’s approval ratings have fallen after the one-time presidential hopeful endorsed Republican front-runner Donald Trump, according to a statewide opinion poll. The poll by Fairleigh Dickinson University, released on Wednesday, showed that Christie’s approval rating fell to 27 percent from 33 percent before the endorsement. The drop was greater among those without party affiliation, with approval falling to 18 percent from 34 percent among that group. Only 29 percent said New Jersey was headed in the right direction, with 59 percent saying it was not. Fairleigh Dickinson said the rating was the lowest it had recorded during Christie’s tenure. Christie has drawn fire for spending much of his time out of the state while campaigning for the Republican presidential nomination. He was expected to return to New Jersey politics after he dropped out of the running, but endorsing Trump has put him back on the campaign trail. The most recent survey by Fairleigh Dickinson’s PublicMind was conducted Feb. 24-28 by telephone. It had a randomly selected sample of 694 self-identified registered voters in New Jersey. (Reporting by Edward Krudy; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn) This article was funded in part by SAP. It was independently created by the Reuters editorial staff. SAP had no editorial involvement in its creation or production.
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WASHINGTON(Reuters) - Former candidate Jeb Bush endorsed Ted Cruz for the Republican presidential nomination on Wednesday, saying the U.S. senator from Texas represents the party’s best chance of winning the White House. In a statement, the former Florida governor called Cruz a consistent, principled conservative who has demonstrated an ability to appeal to voters and win primary contests. “Washington is broken, and the only way Republicans can hope to win back the White House and put our nation on a better path is to support a nominee who can articulate how conservative policies will help people rise up and reach their full potential,” Bush said. The 63-year-old Bush, whose father and brother served as president, dropped out of the presidential nomination fight after losing badly in South Carolina on Feb. 20. The endorsement comes as establishment Republicans scramble to stop front-runner Donald Trump from winning the nomination because of his divisive proposals like a plan to deport 11 million illegal immigrants. Cruz has run in second place behind Trump and could conceivably win enough Republican delegates to take the nomination. Ohio Governor John Kasich’s lone path to the nomination is to extend the nomination race until the party’s national convention in July. The idea is to deny Trump the required 1,237 delegates needed and force party leaders to consider someone else. A source close to Bush said Bush picked Cruz because he has the most viable path to the nomination and has shown that he can win states. The source said Bush considers a push for a contested convention to be a “hail-Mary strategy at best.” In the weeks after he withdrew, Bush met in Miami with former rivals Cruz, Kasich and U.S. Senator Marco Rubio of Florida. Rubio dropped out of the race after losing Florida last week. Bush spoke by phone to Cruz on Monday. In his statement, Bush resumed his sharp criticism of Trump, saying Republican voters must move to overcome “the divisiveness and vulgarity” that Trump has brought into the political arena “or we will certainly lose our chance to defeat the Democratic nominee and reverse President (Barack) Obama’s failed policies.” “To win, Republicans need to make this election about proposing solutions to the many challenges we face, and I believe that we should vote for Ted as he will do just that,” Bush said. In a statement, Cruz said Bush’s endorsement “is further evidence that Republicans are continuing to unite behind our campaign to nominate a proven conservative” to defeat Democratic favorite Hillary Clinton in the Nov. 8 election.
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YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio (Reuters) - In a new twist to his immigration proposals, U.S. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump held out the possibility of legal status for millions of illegal immigrants, but only after many other border enforcement steps are taken. Trump, in remarks to a small group of reporters whom he invited on his plane for the first time since accepting his party’s nomination, said parts of his hardline immigration speech last week in Phoenix had been misinterpreted and that he had in fact softened his position to some extent. The New York businessman said that before considering how to deal with millions of illegal immigrants who are obeying U.S. laws and contributing to American society, he first wants to evict criminal elements like drug smugglers and build a border wall. Any illegal immigrants who want to gain citizenship will have to first return to their home countries first and get in line behind legal applicants, he said. But for those who stay behind, Trump said their cases would be considered at some undefined point. Asked about a potential legal status for this group, Trump did not rule it out. “We’re going to make that decision into the future. That decision will be made,” he said. “The first thing will be to get the bad elements out, the gang members, get ‘em all out. We secure the border. We stop the drugs from coming in, because the drugs are pouring in ... We’re going to build the wall. We need the wall to stop the drugs.” Such a piecemeal approach has been pushed by Republican congressional leaders over the years because it is extremely hard to get a comprehensive immigration reform bill through the U.S. Congress. Trump has struggled to strike the right tone on how he would take on illegal immigration if elected on Nov. 8. After flirting with a softer tone, he stuck to his hardline position in Phoenix last week, saying that anyone in the United States illegally would be subject to deportation. Trump, seated with vice presidential running mate Mike Pence in tan leather seats aboard his private jet, was relaxed for a session with reporters of more than a half hour, clearly feeling better about his campaign after polls showed him closing the gap with Democratic rival Hillary Clinton. Talking about his recent effort to appeal to African-American voters, Trump was asked if it was difficult to attract black voters since he has raised doubts about whether Democratic President Barack Obama was born in the United States. Trump waved off the question, saying it was an issue he did not want to get into anymore because reporters would seize on it. In 2011 while under fire from Trump, Obama produced his long-form birth certificate to prove that he was, indeed, born in Hawaii. “I don’t talk about it because if I talk about that, your whole thing will be about that,” Trump said. “So I don’t talk about it.” He said his focus for the final two months of the campaign will be mostly about how to create jobs for struggling middle-class Americans.”I’m all about the jobs now,” he said. Trump also pledged to participate in all three presidential debates, saying he considered it an important part of being a candidate. He also said he was fine with the moderators announced last week.
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MOSCOW (Reuters) - The Russian Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday that anti-Russian forces in the West were trying to destroy progress made in Syrian peace talks with Moscow’s help. Russia, along with Iran and Turkey, has promoted a separate track of Syrian peace talks in Kazakhstan.
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