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LAW ENFORCEMENT ON HIGH ALERT Following Threats Against Cops And Whites On 9-11By #BlackLivesMatter And #FYF911 Terrorists [VIDEO] | No comment is expected from Barack Obama Members of the #FYF911 or #FukYoFlag and #BlackLivesMatter movements called for the lynching and hanging of white people and cops. They encouraged others on a radio show Tuesday night to turn the tide and kill white people and cops to send a message about the killing of black people in America.One of the F***YoFlag organizers is called Sunshine. She has a radio blog show hosted from Texas called, Sunshine s F***ing Opinion Radio Show. A snapshot of her #FYF911 @LOLatWhiteFear Twitter page at 9:53 p.m. shows that she was urging supporters to Call now!! #fyf911 tonight we continue to dismantle the illusion of white Below is a SNAPSHOT Twitter Radio Call Invite #FYF911The radio show aired at 10:00 p.m. eastern standard time.During the show, callers clearly call for lynching and killing of white people.A 2:39 minute clip from the radio show can be heard here. It was provided to Breitbart Texas by someone who would like to be referred to as Hannibal. He has already received death threats as a result of interrupting #FYF911 conference calls.An unidentified black man said when those mother f**kers are by themselves, that s when when we should start f***ing them up. Like they do us, when a bunch of them ni**ers takin one of us out, that s how we should roll up. He said, Cause we already roll up in gangs anyway. There should be six or seven black mother f**ckers, see that white person, and then lynch their ass. Let s turn the tables. They conspired that if cops started losing people, then there will be a state of emergency. He speculated that one of two things would happen, a big-ass [R s?????] war, or ni**ers, they are going to start backin up. We are already getting killed out here so what the f**k we got to lose? Sunshine could be heard saying, Yep, that s true. That s so f**king true. He said, We need to turn the tables on them. Our kids are getting shot out here. Somebody needs to become a sacrifice on their side.He said, Everybody ain t down for that s**t, or whatever, but like I say, everybody has a different position of war. He continued, Because they don t give a f**k anyway. He said again, We might as well utilized them for that s**t and turn the tables on these n**ers. He said, that way we can start lookin like we ain t havin that many casualties, and there can be more causalities on their side instead of ours. They are out their killing black people, black lives don t matter, that s what those mother f**kers so we got to make it matter to them. Find a mother f**ker that is alone. Snap his ass, and then f***in hang him from a damn tree. Take a picture of it and then send it to the mother f**kers. We just need one example, and then people will start watchin . This will turn the tables on s**t, he said. He said this will start a trickle-down effect. He said that when one white person is hung and then they are just flat-hanging, that will start the trickle-down effect. He continued, Black people are good at starting trends. He said that was how to get the upper-hand. Another black man spoke up saying they needed to kill cops that are killing us. The first black male said, That will be the best method right there. Breitbart Texas previously reported how Sunshine was upset when racist white people infiltrated and disrupted one of her conference calls. She subsequently released the phone number of one of the infiltrators. The veteran immediately started receiving threatening calls.One of the #F***YoFlag movement supporters allegedly told a veteran who infiltrated their publicly posted conference call, We are going to rape and gut your pregnant wife, and your f***ing piece of sh*t unborn creature will be hung from a tree. Breitbart Texas previously encountered Sunshine at a Sandra Bland protest at the Waller County Jail in Texas, where she said all white people should be killed. She told journalists and photographers, You see this nappy-ass hair on my head? That means I am one of those more militant Negroes. She said she was at the protest because these redneck mother-f**kers murdered Sandra Bland because she had nappy hair like me. #FYF911 black radicals say they will be holding the imperial powers that are actually responsible for the terrorist attacks on September 11th accountable on that day, as reported by Breitbart Texas. There are several websites and Twitter handles for the movement. Palmetto Star describes himself as one of the head organizers. He said in a YouTube video that supporters will be burning their symbols of the illusion of their superiority, their false white supremacy, like the American flag, the British flag, police uniforms, and Ku Klux Klan hoods.Sierra McGrone or Nocturnus Libertus posted, you too can help a young Afrikan clean their a** with the rag of oppression. She posted two photos, one that appears to be herself, and a photo of a black man, wiping their naked butts with the American flag.For entire story: Breitbart News | 1real
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null | Did they post their votes for Hillary already? | 1real
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UNBELIEVABLE! OBAMA’S ATTORNEY GENERAL SAYS MOST CHARLOTTE RIOTERS WERE “PEACEFUL” PROTESTERS…In Her Home State Of North Carolina [VIDEO] | Now, most of the demonstrators gathered last night were exercising their constitutional and protected right to peaceful protest in order to raise issues and create change. Loretta Lynch aka Eric Holder in a skirt | 1real
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Bobby Jindal, raised Hindu, uses story of Christian conversion to woo evangelicals for potential 2016 bid | A dozen politically active pastors came here for a private dinner Friday night to hear a conversion story unique in the context of presidential politics: how Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal traveled from Hinduism to Protestant Christianity and, ultimately, became what he calls an “evangelical Catholic.”
Over two hours, Jindal, 42, recalled talking with a girl in high school who wanted to “save my soul,” reading the Bible in a closet so his parents would not see him and feeling a stir while watching a movie during his senior year that depicted Jesus on the cross.
“I was struck, and struck hard,” Jindal told the pastors. “This was the Son of God, and He had died for our sins.”
Jindal’s session with the Christian clergy, who lead congregations in the early presidential battleground states of Iowa and South Carolina, was part of a behind-the-scenes effort by the Louisiana governor to find a political base that could help propel him into the top tier of Republican candidates seeking to run for the White House in 2016.
Known in GOP circles mostly for his mastery of policy issues such as health care, Jindal, a Rhodes Scholar and graduate of the Ivy League’s Brown University, does not have an obvious pool of activist supporters to help drive excitement outside his home state. So he is harnessing his religious experience in a way that has begun to appeal to parts of the GOP’s influential core of religious conservatives, many of whom have yet to find a favorite among the Republicans eyeing the presidential race.
Other potential 2016 GOP candidates are wooing the evangelical base, including Sens. Rand Paul (Ky.) and Ted Cruz (Tex.) and Indiana Gov. Mike Pence.
But over the weekend in Lynchburg — a mecca of sorts for evangelicals as the home of Liberty University, founded in the 1970s by the Rev. Jerry Falwell — Jindal appeared to make progress.
In addition to his dinner with the pastors, he delivered a well-received “call to action” address to 40,000 Christian conservatives gathered for Liberty’s commencement ceremony, talking again about his faith while assailing what he said was President Obama’s record of attacking religious liberty.
The pastors who came to meet Jindal said his intimate descriptions of his experiences stood out.
“He has the convictions, and he has what it takes to communicate them,” said Brad Sherman of Solid Rock Christian Church in Coralville, Iowa. Sherman helped former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee in his winning 2008 campaign for delegates in Iowa.
Another Huckabee admirer, the Rev. C. Mitchell Brooks of Second Baptist Church in Belton, S.C., said Jindal’s commitment to Christian values and his compelling story put him “on a par” with Huckabee, who was a Baptist preacher before entering politics.
The visiting pastors flew to Lynchburg over the weekend at the invitation of the American Renewal Project, a well-funded nonprofit group that encourages evangelical Christians to engage in the civic arena with voter guides, get-out-the-vote drives and programs to train pastors in grass-roots activism. The group’s founder, David Lane, has built a pastor network in politically important states such as Iowa, Missouri, Ohio and South Carolina and has led trips to Israel with Paul and others seeking to make inroads with evangelical activists.
The group that Lane invited to Lynchburg included Donald Wildmon, a retired minister and founder of the American Family Association, a prominent evangelical activist group that has influence through its network of more than 140 Christian radio stations.
Most of the pastors that Lane’s organization brought to Lynchburg had not met Jindal. But they said he captured their interest recently when he stepped forward to defend Phil Robertson, patriarch of the “Duck Dynasty” television-show family, amid a controversy over disparaging remarks he made about gays in an interview with GQ magazine.
Throughout his Lynchburg visit, Jindal presented himself as a willing culture warrior.
During his commencement address Saturday, he took up the cause of twin brothers whose HGTV reality series about renovating and reselling houses, “Flip It Forward,” was canceled last week after a Web site revealed that they had protested against same-sex marriage at the 2012 Democratic National Convention in Charlotte.
The siblings, Jason and David Benham, both Liberty graduates, attended the graduation and a private lunch with Jindal, who called the action against them “another demonstration of intolerance from the entertainment industry.”
“If these guys had protested at the Republican Party convention, instead of canceling their show, HGTV would probably have given them a raise,” Jindal said as the Liberty crowd applauded.
He cited the Hobby Lobby craft store chain, which faced a legal challenge after refusing to provide employees with insurance coverage for contraceptives as required under the Affordable Care Act. Members of the family that owns Hobby Lobby, who have become heroes to many religious conservatives, have said that they are morally opposed to the use of certain types of birth control and that they considered the requirement a violation of their First Amendment right to religious freedom.
The family was “committed to honor the Lord by being generous employers, paying well above minimum wage and increasing salaries four years in a row even in the midst of the enduring recession,” Jindal told the Liberty graduates. “None of this matters to the Obama administration.”
But for the pastors who came to see Jindal in action, the governor’s own story was the highlight of the weekend. And in many ways, he was unlike any other aspiring president these activists had met.
Piyush Jindal was born in 1971, four months after his parents arrived in Baton Rouge, La., from their native India. He changed his name to Bobby as a young boy, adopting the name of a character on a favorite television show, “The Brady Bunch.”
His decision to become a Christian, he told the pastors, did not come in one moment of lightning epiphany. Instead, he said, it happened in phases, growing from small seeds planted over time.
Jindal recalled that his closest friend from grade school gave him a Bible with his name emblazoned in gold on the cover as a Christmas present. It struck him initially as an unimpressive gift, Jindal told the pastors.
“Who in the world would spend good money for a Bible when everyone knows you can get one free in any hotel?” he recalled thinking at the time. “And the gold lettering meant I couldn’t give it away or return it.”
His religious education reached a higher plane during his junior year in high school, he told his dinner audience. He wanted to ask a pretty girl on a date during a hallway conversation, and she started talking about her faith in God and her opposition to abortion. The girl invited him to visit her church.
Jindal said he was skeptical and set out to “investigate all these fanciful claims” made by the girl and other friends. He started reading the Bible in his closet at home. “I was unsure how my parents would react,” he said.
After the stirring moment when he saw Christ depicted on the cross during the religious movie, the Bible and his very existence suddenly seemed clearer to him, Jindal told the pastors.
Jindal did not dwell on his subsequent conversion to Catholicism just a few years later in college, where he said he immersed himself in the traditions of the church.
He touched on it briefly during the commencement address, noting in passing that “I am best described as an evangelical Catholic.” Mostly, he sought to showcase the ways in which he shares values with other Christian conservatives.
“I read the words of Jesus Christ, and I realized that they were true,” Jindal told the graduates Saturday, offering a less detailed accounting of his conversion than he had done the night before with the pastors. “I used to think that I had found God, but I believe it is more accurate to say that He found me.” | 0fake
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SATAN 2: Russia unvelis an image of its terrifying new ‘SUPERNUKE’ – Western world takes notice | The RS-28 Sarmat missile, dubbed Satan 2, will replace the SS-18 Flies at 4.3 miles (7km) per sec and with a range of 6,213 miles (10,000km) The weapons are perceived as part of an increasingly aggressive Russia It could deliver a warhead of 40 megatons – 2,000 times as powerful as the atom bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 By LIBBY PLUMMER and GARETH DAVIE S Russia has unveiled chilling pictures of its largest ever nuclear missile, capable of destroying an area the size of France. The RS-28 Sarmat missile, dubbed Satan 2 by Nato, has a top speed of 4.3 miles (7km) per second and has been designed to outfox anti-missile shield systems. The new Sarmat missile could deliver warheads of 40 megatons – 2,000 times as powerful as the atom bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. Scroll down for video Russian President Vladimir Putin is reportedly planning to replace the country’s older SS-18 Satan weapons with the new missiles amid a string of recent disagreements with the West. The Kremlin has stepped up the rhetoric against the West and carried a series of manoeuvres that has infuriated politicians in the US and UK. The pictures were revealed online by chief designers from the Makeyev Rocket Design Bureau. A message posted alongside the picture said: ‘In accordance with the Decree of the Russian Government ‘On the State Defense Order for 2010 and the planning period 2012-2013’, the Makeyev Rocket Design Bureau was instructed to start design and development work on the Sarmat. ‘ The RS-28 Sarmat missile is said to contain 16 nuclear warheads and is capable of destroying an area the size of France or Texas, according to Russian news network Zvezda, which is owned by Russia’s ministry of defence. The weapon is also able to evade radar. It is expected to have a range of 6,213 miles (10,000 km), which would allow Moscow to attack London and
FOR ENTIRE ARTICLE CLICK LINK | 1real
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About Time! Christian Group Sues Amazon and SPLC for Designation as Hate Group | All we can say on this one is it s about time someone sued the Southern Poverty Law Center!On Tuesday, D. James Kennedy Ministries (DJKM) filed a lawsuit against the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), the charity navigation organization GuideStar, and Amazon, for defamation, religious discrimination, and trafficking in falsehood. The SPLC listed DJKM as a hate group, while GuideStar also categorized it in those terms, and Amazon kept the ministry off of its charity donation program, Amazon Smile. We embarked today on a journey to right a terrible wrong, Dr. Frank Wright, president and CEO at DJKM, said in a statement Tuesday. Those who knowingly label Christian ministries as hate groups, solely for subscribing to the historic Christian faith, are either woefully uninformed or willfully deceitful. In the case of the Southern Poverty Law Center, our lawsuit alleges the latter. The SPLC has labeled DJKM an anti-LGBT hate group for its opposition to same-sex marriage and transgenderism. These false and illegal characterizations have a chilling effect on the free exercise of religion and on religious free speech for all people of faith, Wright declared. After having given the SPLC an opportunity to retract, we have undertaken this legal action, seeking a trial by a jury of our peers, to preserve our own rights under the law and to defend the religious free speech rights of all Americans, the DJKM president concluded.The lawsuit laid out charges against the SPLC, GuideStar, and Amazon.Read more: PJM | 1real
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DR BEN CARSON TARGETED BY THE IRS: “I never had an audit until I spoke at the National Prayer Breakfast.” | DR. BEN CARSON TELLS THE STORY OF WHAT HAPPENED WHEN HE SPOKE OUT AGAINST OBAMA: | 1real
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HOUSE INTEL CHAIR On Trump-Russia Fake Story: “No evidence of anything” [Video] | 1real
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Sports Bar Owner Bans NFL Games…Will Show Only ‘True American’ Sports: ‘I’d like to speak for rural America’ [Video] | The owner of the Ringling Bar, located south of White Sulphur Springs, is standing behind his Facebook post that criticizes NFL players who take a knee during the national anthem to protest police brutality. The post was made on the Ringling Bar s Facebook page Tuesday night and has since received hundreds of comments and shares. The post reads: The Ringling Bar will no longer show any NFL games. This will allow us to air the PBR, Rodeo and NASCAR events whose competitors are true Americans! Sorry for any inconvenience. Ringling Bar Co-owner Kurt Bekemans, who grew up in the Paradise Valley, published the post and said he doesn t care if the post turns some customers away. Seriously, I would not care if non-Americans didn t patronize the place, said Bekemans. I d like to speak for rural America: I bet you wouldn t see any farmers or ranchers in our whole country take a knee such as these guys do, I bet you couldn t find one. They appreciate what our great nation has given them and I think that s the least you could do to give thanks to our country is stand for the flag and the anthem. As of Wednesday morning, a majority of the comments were in support of the bar. We all love ya for this, I ll be by with as many people I can round up!! said one commenter.Another person was critical, writing: Ha Ha of course NASCAR is not protesting the treatment of minority s because they don t care about them!!! Read more: krtv | 1real
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Latest Pipeline Leak Underscores Dangers Of Dakota Access Pipeline | FILE – In this Sept. 15, 2005 file photo, the marker that welcomes commuters to Cushing, Okla. is seen. (AP Photo/The Oklahoman, Matt Strasen, File)
Underscoring once again the dangers of America’s unreliable fossil fuel infrastructure, a significant U.S. oil pipeline has been shut down after a leak was reported Monday morning.
Enterprise Products Partners said Monday it had shut its Seaway Crude Pipeline, a 400,000-barrel per day conduit that transports crude oil from Cushing, Oklahoma to Gulf coast refineries. The leak occurred Sunday night in an industrial area of Cushing. The company did not provide an estimate of the volume spilled, but said there was no danger to the public.
“Seaway personnel continue to make progress in cleaning up the spill, substantially all of which has been contained in a retention pond at Enbridge’s facility,” the company said in a news release (pdf), explaining that the pipeline is a “50/50 joint venture” between Enterprise and Enbridge Inc. “Vacuum trucks are being used to recover the crude oil and return it to storage tanks on-site.”
“The impacted segment of the legacy pipeline has a capacity of 50,000 barrels,” the release added, “however the actual amount of crude oil released will be significantly less and won’t be determined until recovery efforts are complete.”
The incident comes after another pipeline rupture in Pennsylvania early on Friday, where 55,000 gallons of gasoline poured into the Susquehanna River, and about one month after a major gasoline pipeline run by Colonial Pipeline Co. had to halt pumping for a couple of weeks due to a spill in Alabama .
Meanwhile, UPI reports that “[t]he release from the Seaway pipeline is the second associated with the Cushing storage hub in less than a month. Plains All American Pipeline reported problems with infrastructure from Colorado City [Texas] to Cushing earlier this month.”
Environmentalists, Indigenous people, and energy companies are in the midst of a heated debate over pipeline safety . Water protectors and their allies along the proposed route of the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) have been saying for months that the project threatens their right to safe drinking water.
“Oil pipelines break, spill, and leak—it’s not a question of if, it’s a question of where and when,” 13-year-old Anna Lee Rain YellowHammer, a member of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, wrote in a recent appeal.
“With such a high chance that this pipeline will leak,” she wrote of the Enbridge-backed DAPL , “I can only guess that the oil industry keeps pushing for it because it doesn’t care about our health and safety. The industry seems to think our lives are more expendable than others’.”
Indeed, referring to the Cushing leak, one observer tweeted on Monday: “That’s why we’re screaming #NoDAPL ! They always break!”
Seaway Crude pipeline system shut after Cushing, OK spill. That's why we're screaming #NoDAPL ! They always break! https://t.co/oXiLXcBRly
— Deanna Rilling (@DeannaRilling) October 24, 2016 | 1real
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GOP Senator Just Smacked Down The Most Punchable Alt-Right Nazi On The Internet | The most punchable Alt-Right Nazi on the internet just got a thorough beatdown from Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) on Twitter during an epic tweetstorm. Richard Spencer, the Alt-Right leader who has become a human punching bag, just got the racism smacked out of him by the Republican Senator on Thursday after the white nationalist tweeted that only goober conservatives blame Russia for racial divisions in the United States. Spencer was responding to a tweet Sasse sent out on Wednesday.Sen. Ben Sasse had shared an article regarding Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.), who explained that Russian internet trolls helped fuel divisions in a controversy which Donald Trump ignited over NFL athletes who choose to kneel rather than stand during the national anthem in protest of racial inequality and police brutality.No one loves American-vs-American fighting more than Putin. His intel agencies stoke both sides of every divide.https://t.co/H6BwjHzokH Ben Sasse (@BenSasse) September 28, 2017Spencer responded by writing, In the minds of goober conservatives, the Russians are to blame for racial divisions. In the minds of goober conservatives, the Russians are to blame for racial divisions. https://t.co/CzpGfL6u4M Richard ?Spencer (@RichardBSpencer) September 28, 2017Sasse tore into Spencer, calling him a clown and one of the brown-shirt-pajama-boy Nazis. 1/Oh let goobers & nongoobers agree on this: Racists like you are to blame. But Putin's agencies also love using you as their divisive tool https://t.co/DaD4XaNvI5 Ben Sasse (@BenSasse) September 28, 20172/Don t get me wrong: we ll always have brown-shirt-pajama-boy Nazis like you & your lonely pals stoking division. But here s America 101: https://t.co/SboVZmOuu2 Ben Sasse (@BenSasse) September 28, 20173/You don t get America. You said: You do not have some human right, some abstract thing given to you by God or something like that. https://t.co/ScXDGFcbGp Ben Sasse (@BenSasse) September 28, 20174/Actually, that's exactly what America declares we do have: People are the image-bearers of God, created with dignity& inalienable rights. https://t.co/d4orBrHJMw Ben Sasse (@BenSasse) September 28, 20175/Sadly, you don't understand human dignity. A person's skin, ancestry, and bank balance have nothing to do with their intrinsic value. https://t.co/5JsyVAKQRL Ben Sasse (@BenSasse) September 28, 20176/This declaration of universal dignity is what America is about. Madison called our Constitution "the greatest reflection on human nature" https://t.co/NQluVs1KvA Ben Sasse (@BenSasse) September 28, 20177/You talk about culture but don't know squat about western heritage which sees people not as tribes but as individuals of limitless worth https://t.co/VKNvDUXLtT Ben Sasse (@BenSasse) September 28, 20178/The celebration of universal dignity IS our culture, & it rejects your "white culture" crybaby politics. It rejects all identity politics https://t.co/Adlj9AvNPR Ben Sasse (@BenSasse) September 28, 20179/Sometime after moving back into your parents' basement, you knock-off Nazis fell in love with reheated 20th century will-to-power garbage https://t.co/XDTeATVGSe Ben Sasse (@BenSasse) September 28, 201710/Your "ideas" aren't just hateful, un-American poison they're also just so dang boring. The future doesn't belong to your stupid memes. https://t.co/bNHSlf1uOx Ben Sasse (@BenSasse) September 28, 201711/11Get a real job, Clown. Find an actual neighbor to serve. You'll be happier.Have a nice day. https://t.co/ToREd7VwDM Ben Sasse (@BenSasse) September 28, 2017Jake Tapper weighed in to say, Wherein a piece of garbage is thrown into a receptacle with grace and artistry. Wherein a piece of garbage is thrown into a receptacle with grace and artistry https://t.co/L09bBy8gHh Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) September 28, 2017This is how Donald Trump should have responded to the violent rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, which, by the way, was organized by Richard Spencer.Spencer previously said that he felt proud after Trump blamed many sides for the violence at the hate-rally which resulted in the murder of Heather Heyer, and left at least 19 others injured. Spencer is one of Trump s very fine people who just got smacked down on Twitter by a Republican.You don t have to like his politics to admire that Sasse was among the Republicans who joined civil rights leaders and Democrats who reacted angrily when Trump said that he condemned this egregious display of hatred, bigotry, and violence on many sides on many sides. Of course, if Sasse would call out Roy Moore over his bigoted remarks, that would be nice to see, too.Photo: Chip Somodevilla via Getty images. | 1real
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May Brexit offer would hurt, cost EU citizens - EU parliament | BRUSSELS (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Theresa May s offer of settled status for EU residents is flawed and will leave them with fewer rights after Brexit, the European Parliament s Brexit coordinator said on Tuesday. A family of five could face a bill of 360 pounds to acquire the new status, Guy Verhofstadt told May s Brexit Secretary David Davis in a letter seen by Reuters a very significant amount for a family on low income . Listing three other concerns for the EU legislature, which must approve any treaty on the March 2019 exit, Verhofstadt told Davis: Under your proposals, EU citizens will definitely notice a deterioration of their status as a result of Brexit. And the Parliament s aim all along has been that EU citizens, and UK citizens in the EU-27, should notice no difference. Verhofstadt, a former Belgian prime minister, wrote in response to Davis, who had written to him after Parliament complained last week that there remained major issues to be settled on the rights of the 3 million EU citizens in Britain. On Tuesday, he told reporters that Parliament was determined that expatriates should not become victims of Brexit . May had unveiled more details last week of a system aimed at giving people already in Britain a quick and cheap way of asserting their rights to stay there indefinitely. The issue, along with how much Britain owes and the new EU-UK border across Ireland, is one on which the EU wants an outline agreement before opening talks on the future of trade. Verhofstadt said lawmakers were not dismissing British efforts to streamline applications but saw flaws in the nature of settled status itself. As well as the cost, which is similar to that of acquiring a British passport, he cited three others: - Europeans should simply declare a whole household resident, without needing an application process; the burden of proof should be on the British authorities to deny them rights. - more stringent conditions on criminal records could mean some EU residents, including some now with permanent resident status, being deported for failing to gain settled status . - EU residents would lose some rights to bring relatives to Britain as the new status would give them the same rights as British people, who now have fewer rights than EU citizens. | 0fake
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Schumer calls on Trump to appoint official to oversee Puerto Rico relief | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Charles Schumer, the top Democrat in the U.S. Senate, called on President Donald Trump on Sunday to name a single official to oversee and coordinate relief efforts in hurricane-ravaged Puerto Rico. Schumer, along with Representatives Nydia Velàzquez and Jose Serrano, said a “CEO of response and recovery” is needed to manage the complex and ongoing federal response in the territory, where millions of Americans remain without power and supplies. In a statement, Schumer said the current federal response to Hurricane Maria’s impact on the island had been “disorganized, slow-footed and mismanaged.” “This person will have the ability to bring all the federal agencies together, cut red tape on the public and private side, help turn the lights back on, get clean water flowing and help bring about recovery for millions of Americans who have gone too long in some of the worst conditions,” he said. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The Democrats contended that naming a lone individual to manage the government’s relief efforts was critical, particularly given that the Federal Emergency Management Agency is already stretched thin from dealing with other crises, such as the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey in Texas and the wildfires in California. The severity of the Puerto Rico crisis, where a million people do not have clean water and millions are without power nearly a month after Hurricane Maria made landfall, demand a single person to focus exclusively on relief and recovery, the Democrats said. Forty-nine people have died in Puerto Rico officially, with dozens more missing. The hurricane did extensive damage to the island’s power grid, destroying homes, roads and other vital infrastructure. Now, the bankrupt territory is struggling to provide basic services like running water, and pay its bills. “It’s tragically clear this Administration was caught flat footed when Maria hit Puerto Rico,” said Velàzquez. “Appointing a CEO of Response and Recovery will, at last, put one person with authority in charge to manage the response and ensure we are finally getting the people of Puerto Rico the aid they need.” On Thursday, Trump said the federal response has been a “10” on a scale of one to 10 at a meeting with Puerto Rico Governor Ricardo Rossello. The governor has asked the White House and Congress for at least $4.6 billion in block grants and other types of funding. Senator Marco Rubio called on Congress to modify an $18.7 billion aid package for areas damaged by a recent swath of hurricanes to ensure that Puerto Rico can quickly access the funds. | 0fake
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WATCH: HILARIOUS AD Calls Into Question Health Of Aging Clinton Crime Family Bosses | After watching this telling video, you ll wonder if instead of working so hard to get back into the White House, Hillary s time would be better spent looking into an assisted living situation for her and Bill | 1real
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No Change Expected for ESPN Political Agenda Despite Huge Subscriber Decline - Breitbart | As more and more sports fans turn off ESPN to protest the network’s social and political agenda, parent company Disney’s decision to extend current CEO Bob Iger’s contract through 2019 means the “world’s leader in sports entertainment” will continue on its merry way of alienating a large segment of Americans. [Breitbart reported in November that ESPN lost 3. 2 million subscribers in just over a year. Moreover, for the last few years the sports network has lost 300, 000 subscribers a month. In October alone, the beleaguered network lost 621, 000 subscribers. The decision to keep Iger instead of moving in another direction, such as promoting COO Thomas Staggs to the spot, has a number of substantial business implications for ESPN. Awful Announcing reports: From the outside, at least, it seems like Iger is quite satisfied with ESPN’s leadership and with the network’s path on most fronts. Specifically, he’s regularly spoken about how important it is for ESPN to be in “skinny bundles” (including streaming options from Sling, DirecTV and more) and about ESPN’s forthcoming offering. Those views wouldn’t necessarily be shared by a different CEO Staggs, for example, spoke much more about the importance of the traditional bundle, so a Disney CEO with his views might focus more on that side, or conversely, another Disney CEO might want ESPN to quickly go into in a larger way (standalone access to all ESPN content, including TV channels) rather than starting with the light approach Iger seems to be promoting. Putting those circumstances aside, the crux of ESPN continuing on in its political and social agenda derives from the fact that Iger is a strident lifelong Democrat. One so committed, in fact, that the Disney stalwart a Hillary Clinton fundraiser last summer along with supporters such as entertainment Mogul Haim Saban, Chernin Group chairman and CEO Peter Chernin, and entertainment and sports executive Casey Wasserman. To get an idea of Iger’s taste on social issues, one of his proposed “entertainment” ideas is a filmic version of Girls, a popular television show starring Lena Dunham. Somewhat surprisingly, and to the chagrin of many of his supporters and shareholders, Iger is serving on President Donald Trump’s Strategic and Policy Forum council of CEOs. Iger agrees with Trump on shutting down certain tax loopholes and strongly supports lowering corporate tax rates (no surprise there). Earlier this month, Iger reportedly defended his participation in Trump’s mastermind group, asserting, “I think there is an opportunity for me to express views that I think … are of value to the company and its shareholders. ” Insisting that he won’t be Iger informs that he will be “adversarial to the view of the administration,” which includes “immigration. ” Yet, the CEO argues that claims asserting ESPN is politically slanted are “just a complete exaggeration. ” With that said, it looks like ESPN’s cable subscription downward spiral will persist as long as Iger remains as Disney’s top executive. | 0fake
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Billionaire Odebrecht in Brazil scandal released to house arrest | RIO DE JANEIRO/SAO PAULO (Reuters) - Billionaire Marcelo Odebrecht, the highest-profile executive imprisoned in Brazil s massive graft scandal, was released from jail on Tuesday to continue his sentence for corruption under house arrest, according to a federal court. The former chief executive officer of Odebrecht SA [ODBES.UL], Latin America s largest construction firm, was arrested in 2015 during an investigation dubbed Car Wash that exposed billions of dollars in kickbacks to politicians and executives at state-run companies in exchange for inflated contracts. Odebrecht was set to travel to Sao Paulo to begin his house arrest under electronic surveillance on Tuesday, according to the federal court in Parana. A representative for the former executive said he remained committed to collaborating with authorities under a leniency deal. Odebrecht was first sentenced to 19 years in prison in one of the many cases related to Car Wash. That was reduced to 10 years after he signed a leniency deal last December in exchange for paying a nearly $2 billion fine, admitting guilt and providing evidence to authorities. He has already served two-and-a-half years in prison. Under the deal, he must serve another two-and-a-half years under house arrest. He will then be permitted to leave his home for work for another two-and-a-half years. He will then be required to do community service for the rest of his 10-year sentence. Separately Tuesday, Brazil s antitrust watchdog Cade said it was investigating two alleged cartels involved in bidding for Sao Paulo infrastructure projects after receiving information provided by Odebrecht executives. | 0fake
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BRITISH WOMAN LOSES VIRGINITY To Asylum Seeking Rapist On Her Way To Church | Europe is likely not going to be a top destination for families with young daughters, and they have no one to blame but themselves for this idiocy. Political correctness will be the death of Europe as we know it. Do Americans have the fortitude to stop the bleeding here, before the invasion of foreigners on our soil is officially out of control? PREDATORY asylum seeker who chillingly raped a 21-year-old devout Christian woman next to a church was starting a 10 year jail sentence today.Eritrean-born Mebrehtom Abrha, 25, stalked the vulnerable virgin for 10 minutes as she walked through Liverpool city centre to her boyfriend s house at 6am last July 19.Liverpool Crown Court heard he dragged her off the pavement and into a grassy area before raping her twice in a harrowing four-minute ordeal.The terrifying attack left the devout Christian angry at God and fearing she had contracted HIV, an appalled judge was told.Abrha, who lived in Liverpool before fleeing to Birmingham, was arrested following a BBC Crimewatch appeal on October 12.Today he started an extended sentence of 10 years imprisonment with a further five years on licence as his victim told the court: I felt ashamed, dirty and unclean. Going to church has always been in an important part of my life but since the attack I was not able to go to church for many months. I was angry at God and I was angry at myself for feeling this way. The victim also admitted the attack caused her to end her relationship with her boyfriend, adding: I have lost any desire to do anything in my life. I feel terrified in the shower. I get the feeling that someone is going to get me and I start to panic. The victim who cannot be named for legal reasons had been out clubbing on Saturday July 18 last year and agreed to meet her boyfriend the following morning.Prosecutor David McLachlan told the court she could not get a taxi so opted to walk the mile-and-a-half route.Despite warnings to not cut through the park from her boyfriend, she did and was confronted by the East African man who dragged her off into a wooded area nearby.He then subjected her to a horrific attack, ripping open her dress before raping her and chillingly walking away.Afterwards the woman covered in dirt and with injuries to her back and neck ran to her boyfriend s house and he raised the alarm.Michael O Brien, defending Abhra, read out part of a letter of apology from his client, which went: This was an un-Christian act and I did a horrible thing to this woman. I ask for forgiveness. Ahbra was granted asylum for five years in June 2014 after claiming he was forced to flee his native country after being conscripted to the Eritrean army aged 18.Ahbra, who has no previous convictions and spoke through a Tigrignan interpreter, claimed he had no memory of the attack as he was too inebriated.Ahbra held his hand to his eyes as David Aubrey QC sentenced him before he made the sign of the cross as he was led down in to custody.Judge Aubrey told him: You watched her, you followed her, pursued her, threatened her and raped her before, somewhat chillingly, walking away calmly. I cannot ignore the tragic irony of this case that you attacked her next to a church. Afterwards Merseyside Police Det Insp Terry Davies said: There is no doubt that this had had a significant impact on his young victim, who will now have to live with this for the rest of her life. Via: Express UK | 1real
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U.N. seeks humanitarian pause in Sanaa where streets "battlegrounds" | GENEVA (Reuters) - The United Nations called on Monday for a humanitarian pause in the Yemeni capital of Sanaa on Tuesday to allow civilians to leave their homes, aid workers to reach them, and the wounded to get medical care. Jamie McGoldrick, U.N. humanitarian coordinator in Yemen, said in a statement that the streets of Sanaa had become battlegrounds and that aid workers remain in lockdown . Thus, I call on all parties to the conflict to urgently enable a humanitarian pause on Tuesday 5 December, between 10:00 a.m. and 16:00 p.m. to allow civilians to leave their homes and seek assistance and protection and to facilitate the movement of aid workers to ensure the continuity of life-saving programs, he said. McGoldrick warned the warring parties that any deliberate attacks against civilians, and against civilian and medical infrastructure, are clear violations of international humanitarian law and may constitute war crimes . | 0fake
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MAJOR LIBERAL RAG RELUCTANTLY PUBLISHES Article On President Trump’s Outstanding Accomplishments…It’s How They Explain His Successes That Has Everyone Laughing | The Atlantic, a publication that wouldn t know unbiased journalism if it bit them in the a$$ published what appears to be a reluctant piece on President Trump s outstanding accomplishments during his first 6 months in office. Most of the people reading this piece by The Atlantic are fans of their writing because they ve bought into the progressive, anti-American sentiment they were fed like crack cocaine in college. Almost like the patch that smokers wear to help them get through the withdrawal of nicotine while going through a cessation program, The Atlantic provides their readers with enough anti-Trump propaganda to keep them in business, while acting like a support group for their readers, who fear every anti-American piece of legislation Barack Obama worked so hard to implement, is all unraveling, thanks to this guy who foolishly wants Make America Great Again . Of course, in the eyes of The Atlantic reader, America was never great to begin with.The parts where The Atlantic talks about President Trump s accomplishments are italicized and the comments the writer makes to counter Trump s successes have been highlighted.The Atlantic starts out the article by giving credit to Trump s shadow government , as somehow being responsible for his amazing successes in his first 6 months. According to The Atlantic, the actual government is the fake news stories and the obsession with negative chatter surrounding Trump s presidency, while President Trump s accomplishments have been hidden in the shadows .The Atlantic Imagine, if you will, that there is a shadow government.The actual government, the administration of Donald Trump, is coming off the worst week of his presidency, although there haven t been any smooth weeks. Trump s top legislative priority, repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act, seems dead for the moment. (Tax reform? Forget it.) His administration has set a new standard for chaos and dysfunction, rolling through staffers the way other administrations run through, well, legislative initiatives. Trump s foreign policy remains inchoate and ineffective. Meanwhile, a special counsel investigation looms over the entire administration, threatening both its legitimacy and legal jeopardy for some of its members.Things are going considerably better for the shadow government. With the Trump administration s chaos sucking up all the attention, it s been able to move forward on a range of its priorities, which tend to be more focused on regulatory matters anyway. It is remaking the justice system, rewriting environmental rules, overhauling public-lands administration, and greenlighting major infrastructure projects. It is appointing figures who will guarantee the triumph of its ideological vision for decades to come. let s consider the Trump administration s accomplishments. Spoiler alert: like climate change, they re real.One of the two biggest victories has come on border security, which was one of Trump s top campaign priorities. Border crossings have already plummeted, suggesting that rhetoric making it clear to immigrants that they are not welcome is effective in its own right. Customs and Border Protections report that apprehensions of unauthorized people are down nearly 20 percent from the same time in 2016. (Trump continues to radically exaggerate these figures, though.) This decline has occurred despite Trump being foiled on his actual policy proposals at the border. Construction hasn t begun on his border wall yet, and federal courts have repeatedly smacked down his Muslim travel ban.That said, he did get one good result in courts and that points to a second area of success. The Supreme Court allowed parts of the travel ban to go forward, in a victory that would not have happened without Neil Gorsuch on the court, filling a seat that under all previous customs would have been filled by Barack Obama s appointee Merrick Garland. Given his legislative struggles, the most enduring Trump victories are likely to come in the judicial branch.Trump may get to appoint several more justices to the high court. And in the meantime, he s filling up lower courts with lifetime appointees. As the veteran Democratic official Ron Klain wrote recently, A massive transformation is underway in how our fundamental rights are defined by the federal judiciary. For while President Trump is incompetent at countless aspects of his job, he is proving wildly successful in one respect: naming youthful conservative nominees to the federal bench in record-setting numbers. There are the quiet, far-reaching changes. Getting back to Pruitt, the environment is one of the places where the Trump administration has had its largest impact. The most prominent move was Trump s June 1 announcement that the U.S. will withdraw from the Paris climate accord. But the EPA is moving on other fronts as well. It s working to dismantle Barack Obama s Clean Power Plan, a signature policy aimed at reducing greenhouse-gas emissions. In June, following a February executive order from Trump, the EPA began the process of rescinding the 2015 Waters of the United States rule, which aimed at protecting smaller bodies of water and streams in the same way that larger ones had been. In December, in the closing weeks of his administration, Obama banned drilling in the Arctic and parts of the Atlantic Ocean; the Trump administration promptly set about undoing that ban. (How interested oil companies will be remains to be seen.)The New York Times found in June that Pruitt s EPA has moved to undo, delay or otherwise block more than 30 environmental rules, a regulatory rollback larger in scope than any other over so short a time in the agency s 47-year history. And it might have done more if not for constraints imposed by judges. EPA tried to abandon an Obama-era rule on methane emissions, but a court on Monday forced it to continue enforcing the rule.Other agencies are also in on the environmental deregulation act. The State Department reversed an Obama-era decision, clearing the way for the Keystone XL pipeline to begin construction. The Interior Department is considering reversing a rule on fracking on public lands, and might also reverse some equipment regulations on offshore drilling equipment implemented after the 2010 Gulf oil spill. The department has rolled back a ban on coal mining on public lands.Although the Justice Department had staunchly opposed a Texas voting law that has repeatedly been smacked down by courts as discriminatory, Sessions switched the department s position, and it has now told courts the law ought to be allowed to remain. The attorney general has also sought to cut off funding to so-called sanctuary cities, though his legal authority to do so is disputed.Curiously, since he campaigned as an atypically LGBT-friendly Republican, Trump has also made a range of changes on gay issues. Last week alone, the Justice Department announced that sexual orientation was not covered by Section VII, and the president said that transgender people would not be allowed to serve in the military. The administration has also rejected Obama-era protections for transgender students. | 1real
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Second judge says Clinton email setup may have been in 'bad faith' | NEW YORK (Reuters) - A second federal judge has taken the rare step of allowing a group suing for records from Hillary Clinton’s time as U.S. secretary of state to seek sworn testimony from officials, saying there was “evidence of government wrong-doing and bad faith.” The language in Judge Royce Lamberth’s order undercut the Democratic presidential contender’s assertion she was allowed to set up a private email server in her home for her work as the country’s top diplomat and that the arrangement was not particularly unusual. He described Clinton’s email arrangement as “extraordinary” in his order filed on Tuesday in federal district court in Washington. Referring to the State Department, Clinton and Clinton’s aides, he said there had been “constantly shifting admissions by the Government and the former government officials.” Spokesmen for Clinton did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The case is a civil matter, but the order adds to the legal uncertainty that has overshadowed Clinton’s campaign to be the Democratic nominee in the Nov. 8 presidential election. The FBI is also conducting a criminal inquiry into the arrangement after it emerged that classified government secrets ended up in Clinton’s unsecured email account. Clinton has said she does not think she will be charged with a crime. Lamberth’s order granted the request by Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog group suing the department under open records laws, to gather evidence, including sworn testimony. The group has filed several lawsuits, including one seeking records about the 2012 attack in Benghazi, Libya, that killed U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans. “Where there is evidence of government wrong-doing and bad faith, as here, limited discovery is appropriate, even though it is exceedingly rare in FOIA (freedom-of-information) cases,” Lamberth noted in his order. The government is normally given the benefit of the doubt that it properly searched and produced records. Since the email arrangement came to public knowledge a year ago, the State Department has found itself defending Clinton in scores of lawsuits from groups, individuals and news outlets who say they were wrongly denied access to Clinton’s federal records. Clinton left the department in 2013, but did not return her email records to the government until nearly two years later. Last month, Judge Emmet Sullivan, who is overseeing a separate Judicial Watch lawsuit over other Clinton-related records, allowed a similar motion for discovery. (Story refiles to fix date of presidential election, paragraph 6.) | 0fake
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America gives Grand Piano to horse | Wednesday 9 November 2016 by Lucas Wilde America gives Grand Piano to horse
America has given a grand piano to a horse and is expecting some quality tunes.
“I’m particularly looking forward to Beethoven’s Ninth,” beamed horse supporter and piano enthusiast, Jay Cooper.
“A horse has never been given a piano before because, frankly, the establishment wouldn’t allow it.
“Now, at last, change has come, and America will change for the better.
“There are a lot of doubters out there, and those doubters will soon be silenced by the graceful notes of Chopin, Mozart and maybe even Little Richard.”
Horse, Dobbin Williams, said, “I’m not really sure what’s expected of me here.
“I’m a horse. I am absolutely not qualified to play a piano.
“I mean… Look at these hooves and the way I am in general. I can’t even sit on the chair properly.
“Why on earth did anyone think this was a good idea?”
Cooper grinned, “We did it. We’ve made pianos great again.”
Democrat, Elizabeth King, said “We wanted to get a pianist of low-to-medium standard for the piano.
“She wouldn’t have thumped out anything exciting, but it would have been perfectly reasonable background music.
“But the people have spoken, and the people wanted a horse.
“God Bless America.” Get the best NewsThump stories in your mailbox every Friday, for FREE! There are currently witterings below - why not add your own? | 1real
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Hillary’s crime family: End of days for the U.S.A | Hillary’s crime family: End of days for the U.S.A Based on the foregoing, SOMEONE got to Comey—somewhere along the line By Daily Coin - November 8, 2016
An investor in Dave’s fund emailed him asking which way Colorado would vote tomorrow. He replied: “Depends on who counts the votes. I don’t believe this is a fair election. I think the Clinton crime machine, with the help of George Soros and a few others, have everything under their control now.”
After taking the better part of a year to sift through 55,000 emails in analyzing Hillary Clinton’s behavior with regard to conducting classified Government business on her private server – which apparently was accessible to hackers and, surreptitiously, by Anthony Wieners porn laptop – Jim Comey determined in 8 days that 650,000 emails downloaded from Hillary’s private server were not relevant.
Sorry Jim, that’s impossible to believe. One highly plausible is that operatives in the Deep State shut down the FBI investigation in order to preserve the treasure trove of material that will give it power over Clinton’s Presidency. The SoT was perplexed by this, so we asked John Titus his take on this. His answer was quite compelling:
Here’s what I’m reasonably sure of, based on experience. (1) Jim Comey looked sick when, at the conclusion of round one, and having proven beyond all doubt that Hillary violateed 18 U.S.C 793(f), he said no reasonable prosecutor would charge her. He wasn’t acting. Bad acting comes right through camera lens, and that man looked like he was about to vomit when he left that dais; (2) it took the FBI a year to conclude round one of its investigation, which was based on its review of 55,000 emails; (3) Comey had promised to get back to congress should more info arise, and when 650,000 unexpected emails showed up, he made good on his word by letting congress know; and (4) the FBI terminated its investigation LONG before reviewing 650,000 emails. I once reviewed 250,000 documents on a case, Based on the foregoing, SOMEONE got to Comey—somewhere along the line. For all I know, though, the whole thing was scripted from start to finish, and Comey read his script at every point along the way, even when it physically disgusted him in round one. So while you might be right about the time, I think if the Deep State made a move on Comey, it happened awhile ago. That’s wholly speculative on my part. You could well be right that they got to him just recently. I just doubt it. I think he’s the Company Man because he’s a company man. For DAMN SURE you’re right about holding Hillary hostage, but she’s so evil it’s like throwing a pedophile into a daycare center with no supervision, the shades drawn and the doors locked.
With that as the preface, today’s episode of the Shadow of Truth discussed the latest development in the HRC Crime Family saga: | 1real
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Sean Spicer Baffles Reporters, Claims Trump Isn’t Responsible For Hiring Flynn (VIDEO) | On Tuesday, White House Propaganda Minister Sean Spicer once again baffled reporters and other thinking individuals by once again saying the dumbest thing imaginable.Asked why the White House refuses to provide documents related to former National Security Advisor and registered foreign agent Michael Flynn s hiring, Spicer took the tried-and-true route of blaming President Obama.Spicer explained that the Trump White House isn t responsible for anything related to Flynn s hiring because the documents were filled out during the Obama administration and those are not documents that the White House would ever possess. Everything that the White House has been asked to do, the only documents that were made available to [Congress] that they asked for were the ones that the Department of Defense had, Spicer said, explaining that he doesn t feel that the White House has an obligation to provide the information Congress has requested. How about these calls made where [Flynn] was working during the transition on behalf of a future President Trump? CBS s Major Garrett asked. Aren t those things that you should have some responsibility or obligation to provide if you can? It s a question [of] if you can, Spicer said. To ask for every call a national security adviser made is pretty outlandish. Those calls were made on behalf of the Trump transition were they not? Garrett asked. Spicer, of course, told him that Trump isn t responsible for anything that happened before January 20 even if it was done by a member of the Trump transition team. When? Spicer asked. We started this administration on Jan. 20. All the information that they re talking about occurred prior to him being at the White House. Working for the transition! Garrett pressed. Not at the White House! Spicer snapped. Everything that is being questioned occurred prior to Jan. 20th. Trump and his White House are absolutely responsible for Flynn which is not good, as even Hillary Clinton witch hunter, Congressman Jason Chaffetz, admits that Flynn likely committed crimes.Watch this all happen below:Featured image via screengrab | 1real
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UNHOLY ALLIANCE: Hillary Clinton’s Saudi Sponsors Support Terrorism, Islamist Extremism | 21st Century Wire says Amid the tossing and turning of media hit pieces and partisan mud slinging in advance of the US presidential vote in November, very little focus is given on the actual record and policies of Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State.With this week s damning revelations regarding Gulf Arab monarchs buying access into the US State Dept via the Clinton Foundation, a clearer picture is now emerging about how the sponsorship of religious extremism, as well as geopolitical instability in the Middle East and beyond links directly back to the Clinton global network of international oligarchs. Watch this week s ABC News segment: Based on this line of inquiry, what will four years of a Clinton presidency bring in terms of US foreign policy? A few answers to this question from Global Research Andre Vltchek Global ResearchIf the West in general and the United States in particular, left the Arab and Muslim world alone and in peace, we would most likely never see all those terrorist attacks, which are rocking the world from Indonesia to France. There would be no Mujahedeen and its mutation into al-Qaeda; in Afghanistan or elsewhere. There would be no traces of the ISIS (or ISIL or I.S. or Daesh or however you choose to call it), in Syria, Iraq, Libya or anywhere else.And the super-conservative Wahhabi Islam, that outdated, freak Saudi mutant, would remain in the religious schools of the ultra-regressive Kingdom, instead of gaining ground all over Southeast Asia, the Middle East and Africa.Secular IslamBut the West embarked on a brutal, Machiavellian path: it decided to destroy socialist Islam that (historically) moderate, compassionate and progressive religion. It smashed once secular Egypt; it overthrew the government in socialist Iran and then in near-Communist Indonesia, implanting in all these places horrifically degenerate and fully outdated religious concepts. It used extremists to destroy healthy patriotism and socialism. Like the Brits in the 19th Century ( You can control people s brains, while we will control your natural resources ), the West embraced Wahhabi teaching, because it was able to guarantee full obedience, dictatorial (pro-Western) governance and oppressive feudalism.Islam has been used and abused, manipulated and virtually stripped of its essence. The process has gone so far that two leading Iranian scholars, during my visit last-year to Tehran, declared to me: In so many parts of the world, the West created an absolutely new religion. We don t recognize it, anymore. It has nothing to do with Islam. If the West in general and the United States in particular, left the Arab and Muslim world alone and in peace, we would most likely never see all those terrorist attacks, which are rocking the world from Indonesia to France Correct. Like a naughty, spoiled and heartless child, the West, after destroying the Soviet Union, painstakingly constructed its new enemy militant Islam so it could continue indulging in its favorite activity, which is perpetual conflict, endless wars and plunder.It is as simple as that.The greatest oppressors of the Muslim people, those in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Indonesia have all been closely allied to the West. The most terrible terrorist Muslim organizations, from Al-Qaida to ISIS, have been created, armed and supported by the West and its cronies.In Europe and in the United States, the fear of terrorists is fully exploited by the Western regime a global class alliance of plutocrats, in actuality, with headquarters in Washington, where the main military and media muscle reside. It still clings to power mainly thanks to such fear implanted in the brains of ordinary people .And what about the War on Terror ? Yes, there really is such war, but the West is not the one who fights it. As this goes to print, the war against terrorism is being fought by Russia, Iran, China, Syria, Hezbollah and their allies!The West is still closely collaborating with the terrorists. It miraculously avoids targeting them when fighting wars against them ; it financially supports some and trains others. It criticizes and antagonizes those who are actually fighting the extremist militant groups.Extremists have been unleashed, like Rottweiler fighting dogs, against almost all progressive governments in the Middle East, but also against China and Russia. Extremist Muslims, extremist Christians, even extremist Buddhists!In turn, the politicians in the United States are regularly supported, financially, by the regimes (including those of Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, etc.) that are spreading, relentlessly, throughout the world, the most intolerant and grotesquely violent religious concepts.Despite their essential servility and cowardice, even some North American mainstream media outlets are now actively discussing various schemes involving the financing of the Clinton Foundation by Saudi Arabia (alongside several leading transnational corporations and Wall Street s largest banks).On its Breaking News , as far back as in 2008, CNN reported:The donations to the William J. Clinton Foundation include amounts of $10 million to $25 million from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and real estate mogul Stephen Bing, a personal friend of the Clintons.The Clintons came under intense pressure during Hillary Clinton s campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination to release the names of donors to both the Foundation and to the Clinton presidential library in Arkansas.Bill Clinton agreed to the release of the list after President-elect Barack Obama nominated Hillary Clinton to become Secretary of State.The governments of Kuwait and Qatar are also on the list, as is Saudi businessman Nasser Al-Rashid, who has close ties to the Saudi royal family. Saudi Sheikh Mohammed H. Al-Amoudi, reputed to be one of the richest men in the world, is among the donors as well. Both Saudis contributed in the $1 million to $5 million range. A group called Friends of Saudi Arabia and the Dubai Foundation appear in the same category. As recently as on August 20th, 2016, The New York Times wrote something similar, essentially reconfirming the validity of the earlier reports, while adding many more details and adjusting the figures: The kingdom of Saudi Arabia donated more than $10 million. Through a foundation, so did the son-in-law of a former Ukrainian president whose government was widely criticized for corruption and the murder of journalists. A Lebanese-Nigerian developer with vast business interests contributed as much as $5 million.For years the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation thrived largely on the generosity of foreign donors and individuals who gave hundreds of millions of dollars to the global charity. But now, as Mrs. Clinton seeks the White House, the funding of the sprawling philanthropy has become an Achilles heel for her campaign and, if she is victorious, potentially her administration as well. Long time Clinton s top aide, Huma Abedin (who spent part of her childhood in Saudi Arabia) has been an intermediary between the former Secretary of State and pro-Saudi interests. She also negotiated financial support for Ms. Clinton from Mr. Chagouri and other individuals, organizations and businesses originating from the Middle East.The accusations and evidence keep coming in, from different media outlets, both left wing and right wing. On August 1st, 2016, the conservative Breitbart News stated: Khizr Khan, the Muslim Gold Star father that the mainstream media and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have been using to criticize Donald J. Trump, has deep ties to the government of Saudi Arabia and to international Islamist investors through his own law firm. In addition to those ties to the wealthy Islamist nation, Khan also has ties to controversial immigration programs that wealthy foreigners can use to essentially buy their way into the United States and has deep ties to the Clinton Cash narrative through the Clinton Foundation. Hillary s Saudi SponsorsHillary Clinton s dependence on Saudi sponsors has been strongly influencing her decision to maintain a foreign policy in the service of Riyadh and support for various terrorist groups controlled by Saudi Arabia and Qatar, in and beyond the Middle East region [including those currently active in Syria and Iraq].In reality, she is simply representing continuity of an already existing, deadly trend. The regime has been evolving for decades, but especially since the Ronald Reagan years. Republicans or Democrats: it truly matters very little. Both parties spread terror all over the world. True, George W. Bush invaded Iraq, but people like Bill Clinton are close friends and supporters of Paul Kagame, the Rwandese butcher of Congo , with the blood of some 10 million people on his hands. Democrat and moderate , Bill Clinton, was also responsible for the criminal bombing and destruction of socialist Yugoslavia. And so it goes But under Barack Obama s rule, the last hope for an independent Middle East and the Arab world has virtually evaporated. Libya has been destroyed; the Syrian civil war was launched from Washington, London and Paris. Saudis bathed rebellious Yemen in blood using UK and US produced weapons. Virtually all Arab Spring revolutions were infiltrated and diverted. And in Bahrain, the Shi a majority was literally raped by Saudi Arabia and its own ruthless rulers, with British advisors standing-by.The US and Europe have kept selling arms to the Gulf, building new military bases while supporting the most appalling and bloodthirsty regimes.The Obama/ (Hilary) Clinton Era has greatly improved the symbioses of Western imperialism, big business, and pro-Western fascist regimes worldwide, but particularly in the Middle East and Africa.This toxic embrace has proved fatal to millions of people in these two parts of the world. Hopes for self-governance have been ruined. Corpses keep piling up in Syria, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, South Sudan, Somalia, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), and elsewhere.The West does not care, as long as it stays in charge of the show , and for as long as hundreds of billions of dollars are made by weapons producers. Even if millions are dying, there is still an uninterrupted flow of raw materials to the West and Japan. Therefore, it is business as usual . Un-people and their lives are worth nothing.At one point, Russia, Iran, China and others have said enough is enough; let s fight against the true terrorists! Let s fight ISIS and other bigots! Let s give a hand to the independence-minded, socially-oriented patriots .Predictably,. this led to total outrage in Washington, London, and Paris (and Tokyo). Disobedience and rebellion against the global (Western) order could not be tolerated! It had to be crushed, even at the cost of new and deadly world war.NATO, Washington, Europe, Japan, and South Korea all started a direct confrontation policy against Russia, China, Iran, North Korea (DPRK) and other members of the Coalition of Daring . Brazil, an important member of BRICS, was recently destroyed by the extreme-right coup supported by the West.Even the Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump, in his rare moments of sanity, is clearly aware of the danger. He does not wish to confront Russia. He is obviously not willing to sacrifice tens of millions of human lives for some grotesque dreams of total world domination by a market fundamentalism backed by the white (or Western) supremacist dogmas.But Trump s moments of sanity are defined as madness by the mainstream propaganda. Not surprisingly! As was correctly stated by the great Indian thinker, Arundhati Roy, some several years ago: now war is called peace and black is called white . Orwellian indeed, with a vengeance.The Clinton CampaignThe Clinton campaign has gone into overdrive. It attempts to distract attention from its own funding scandals, by accusing Donald Trump s aides of receiving financing from abroad. Trump is now described as Russia s agent .This game it is all self-serving: nothing to do with the interests of the world, or even the interests of the common American people .For as long as the general political trend of the West does not radically change, or for as long as the West is not stopped by outside forces, perpetual wars will continue. Monstrous genocides in Africa, the destruction of entire states and regions in the Middle East, all this could easily spread to other parts of the Planet.It is clear now that if provoked and confronted, countries like China, Russia and Iran would not hesitate to fight back. They also may fight for others for their tortured allies.The Western implants and their buddies, Mujahedeen/Al-Qaida, have already destroyed Afghanistan and the Soviet Union. ISIS, another mutant unleashed by the West and its allies, have been devastating Iraq, Syria, Libya and now what is left of Afghanistan.These movements have really nothing to do with Islam. They were manufactured in Washington, Riyadh, London, and Doha (and most likely even in Tel Aviv), for several concrete purposes, all of them thoroughly foul.They are making sure to ruin the socialist nature of Islam, insisting exclusively on the implementation of outdated, medieval fundamentalist interpretations.Huma Abedin s mother, Dr. Saleha Mahmood Abedin, is one of the founding members of the Muslim Sisterhood, and chairperson of the International Islamic Committee for Woman and Child (IICWC). She is also a well known writer and editor based in Saudi Arabia. Her organization (IICWC) had repeatedly argued that laws banning female circumcision should be revoked, as well as laws prohibiting child marriage and marital rape. During her visit to KSA, Hillary Clinton spoke at the Islamic college of Dar El-Hekma (where Dr. Saleha Abedin was a vice-dean) shoulder-to-shoulder with her favorite aide Huma.Was this just an insignificant episode? Like those millions of dollars in Saudi Arabian funding for Clinton s foundation? Like the US foreign policy in the Gulf and in the Middle East, like spreading Muslim extremist groups to all corners of the world, from Africa, the Middle East, to Southeast Asia and even China? Like unleashing conservative Islam against socialist Muslim countries?Too many episodes ! Too much blood It is time to say what is by now obvious: The US establishment is not fighting Muslim terrorism or even extremism ; it is manufacturing it, and injecting it everywhere. The only real enemy that Washington, London and Paris have, for decades, even for centuries, is the anti-colonialist struggle, and the burning desire of people, worldwide, to terminate the West s global dictatorship. Philosopher, novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist, Andre Vltchek has covered wars and conflicts in dozens of countries. His latest books are: Exposing Lies Of The Empire and Fighting Against Western Imperialism . Discussion with Noam Chomsky: On Western Terrorism. Point of No Return is his critically acclaimed political novel. Oceania a book on Western imperialism in the South Pacific. His provocative book about Indonesia: Indonesia The Archipelago of Fear . Andre is making films for teleSUR and Press TV. After living for many years in Latin America and Oceania, Vltchek presently resides and works in East Asia and the Middle East. He can be reached through his website or Twitter account. | 1real
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Even Trump’s Best Friend Joe Scarborough Can’t Handle His ‘Disqualifying’ KKK Support (VIDEO) | Recently, Joe Scarborough has found himself the subject of, shall we say, criticism because of his insanely pro-Trump bias something that bothers pretty much everyone at MSNBC. In fact, their relationship has traditionally been so strong that Scarborough bragged about giving The Donald debate tips. Recently Scarborough was busted revealing his pro-Trump bias in hot mic comments captured during a commercial break. The Morning Joe host can be heard steering Mika Brzezinski away from tougher topics like immigration in his effort to provide the billionaire with a softball interview.Following Trump s repeated refusals to disavow the Ku Klux Klan something that would be easy for anyone who did not depend so heavily on them for support Scarborough expressed what can only be referred to as disgust during a segment of the show on Monday: It s breathtaking. That is disqualifying right there. To say you don t know about the Ku Klux Klan? Scarborough said. You don t know about David Duke? On Sunday, Trump acknowledged his heavy support from white supremacists, including former KKK Grand Wizard David Duke, but said it would be unfair to renounce the White Power Rangers supporting him until he has more information. Just so you understand, I don t know anything about David Duke, OK? Trump told CNN s Jake Tapper. I don t know anything about what you re even talking about with white supremacy or white supremacists. I have to look at the group. I mean, I don t know what group you re talking about, he added despite Tapper s repeated clarifications that he was talking about the Ku Klux Klan. You wouldn t want me to condemn a group that I know nothing about. I d have to look. Scarborough called this course of action stunning in that it isn t buying him a single vote : I mean is he really so stupid that he thinks Southerners aren t offended by the Ku Klux Klan and David Duke? Is he really so ignorant of Southern voters that he thinks this is the way to their heart to go neutral, to play Switzerland when you re talking about the Klan? And to say he doesn t know enough information about the Klan to condemn them exactly what does Donald Trump expect to learn in the next 24 hours about the Klan. Watch the segment below:Featured image via screengrab | 1real
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BOOM! Danish Government Considers Seizing Migrant’s Valuables To Pay For Benefits | Is the European gravy train finally coming to an end?The Danish parliament is considering a bill to seize migrants valuables to pay for their benefits.The leftists are very upset about this commonsense legislation. Daily Sabah reported:A controversial Danish bill to seize migrants valuables to pay for their stay in asylum centers looks set to pass in parliament after the government on Tuesday secured a parliamentary majority.Parliament was set to begin a series of debates on the bill yesterday, ahead of a vote on Jan. 26. Faced with a storm of criticism, Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen, whose right-wing Venstre party is behind the plan, called it the most misunderstood bill in Denmark s history. His minority government and its right-wing allies, the far-right Danish People s Party (DPP), the Liberal Alliance and the Conservative People s Party, reached an agreement on the bill on Tuesday with the opposition Social Democrats, meaning it is now supported by a majority of parties in parliament.The amended bill would allow Danish authorities to seize migrants cash exceeding 10,000 kroner ($1,450), as well as any individual items valued at more than 10,000 kroner.Via: Gateway Pundit | 1real
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Supreme Court Won’t Hear Appeal From Texas on Voter ID Case - The New York Times | WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court rejected on Monday an appeal from Texas officials seeking to restore the state’s strict voter ID law. As is the court’s custom, its brief order in the case, Abbott v. Veasey, No. gave no reasons for turning down the appeal. But Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. issued an unusual statement explaining that the Supreme Court remains free to consider the case after further proceedings in the lower courts. The Texas law, enacted in 2011, requires voters seeking to cast their ballots at the polls to present photo identification, like a Texas driver’s or gun license, a military ID or a passport. Federal courts have repeatedly ruled that the law is racially discriminatory. The Texas law was at first blocked under Section 5 of the federal Voting Rights Act, which required some states and localities with a history of discrimination to obtain federal permission before changing voting procedures. After the Supreme Court effectively struck down Section 5 in 2013 in Shelby County v. Holder, an Alabama case, Texas officials announced that they would start enforcing the ID law. After a trial in 2014, Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos of Federal District Court in Corpus Christi struck down the law on Oct. 9 in a opinion. She said that it had been adopted “with an unconstitutional discriminatory purpose” and that its effect was to disenfranchise “a disproportionate number of and Hispanics. ” In 2015, a panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, in New Orleans, vacated part of the ruling concerning the law’s purpose but affirmed the part concerning its effect. Last July, the full Fifth Circuit largely adopted the panel’s distinctions and reasoning, and it returned the case to the trial court to consider an appropriate remedy. Texas officials nonetheless asked the Supreme Court to review the appeals court’s ruling immediately. The people and groups challenging the law, the officials said, “presented no evidence that the law resulted in diminished minority political participation or prevented even a single person from voting. ” The challengers responded that about 600, 000 registered voters in Texas, or about 5 percent of all registered voters in the state, lacked the required forms of ID. The law, they said, “disproportionately affects minority voters at a statistically significant rate. ” On Monday, Chief Justice Roberts wrote that the case would be better suited for Supreme Court review after the lower courts completed their work. Ken Paxton, Texas’ attorney general, said he was disappointed that the court “did not immediately take our case. ” “Chief Justice Roberts made it very clear that the case will be an even stronger posture for Supreme Court review after further proceedings in lower courts,” Mr. Paxton said in a statement. “Texas enacted a common sense voter ID law to safeguard the integrity of our elections, and we will continue to fight for the law. ” J. Gerald Hebert of the Campaign Legal Center, which represents voters challenging the law, said he was pleased that “the justices recognize that this case does not merit review at this time. ” “Texas, which ranks poorly in voter participation, should work to ensure that every eligible voter in the state is able to cast a ballot going forward,” Mr. Hebert said in a statement. | 0fake
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Islamic State driven out of last stronghold in northern Iraq | BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraqi forces announced on Thursday they had captured Islamic State s last stronghold in northern Iraq, leaving the militant group holed up near the Syrian border as its self-proclaimed caliphate shrinks further. The town of Hawija and the surrounding areas fell in an offensive by U.S.-backed Iraqi government troops and Iranian-trained and armed Shi ite paramilitary groups known as Popular Mobilisation. Some fighting took place to the north and east of the town where the militants were surrounded. With the fall of Hawija, which lies near the Kurdish-held oil city of Kirkuk, the only area that remains under control of Islamic State in Iraq is a stretch alongside the western border with Syria, where the militant group is also in retreat. The capture of Hawija was a boost for the Iraqi government, which faces a separate crisis in the north of the country, where the Kurdish minority last month voted overwhelmingly in support of independence for their autonomous region. In Hawija, state TV showed footage of Iraqi forces raising flags in one of the town's squares while Humvees patrolled empty streets littered with car wrecks, houses riddled with bullets and shattered storefronts. (Graphics on 'Iraqi Kurds' independence push' - here) The army s 9th armored division, the Federal Police, the Emergency Response division and ... Popular Mobilisation liberated Hawija, said a statement from the joint operations commander, Lieutenant-General Abdul Ameer Rasheed Yarallah. Thick black smoke rose from areas surrounding Hawija, from oil wells set on fire by the militants to prevent air detection. The capture of Hawija brings Iraqi forces into direct contact with Kurdish Peshmerga fighters who control Kirkuk, a multi-ethnic region claimed by both Baghdad and the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG). Kirkuk shaped up as a flashpoint last month when the KRG included the city in the referendum on Kurdish independence in northern Iraq. We don t want any aggression or confrontations but the federal authority must be imposed in the disputed areas, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi told a news conference in Paris with French President Emmanuel Macron. Macron offered to mediate between the Iraqi government and Kurdish regional authorities, and promised to maintain a military presence there until Islamic State was defeated. The Iraqi government has imposed sanctions in response to the independence vote, but Abadi said he could understand the Kurds aspirations , provided they were expressed in accordance with the constitution. The outcome of the referendum has raised concerns in Iraq and abroad that a conflict might break out there along ethnic lines, potentially weakening the campaign against Islamic State. Turkey, which is battling a three-decade-old insurgency by its own Kurdish militants, has led regional opposition to the Iraqi Kurds independence hopes. Stepping up his rhetoric on the issue, President Tayyip Erdogan said Turkey would soon close its border with northern Iraq and shut its air space in response to the referendum. He added that Turkey, Iran and Iraq would jointly decide on closing the flow of oil from northern Iraq, a vital source of earnings for Iraqi Kurdistan. On Wednesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose country has big energy interests in Kurdistan, said it was in no one s interest to cut off oil supplies from the territory. But Erdogan said that if a decision will be made on closing oil taps in the region, that will be made by us. Turkey, Iran and Iraq s central government will do so together . Erdogan s stance has been backed by Iran. After meeting Erdogan in Tehran on Wednesday, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Iran and Turkey should prevent the Iraqi Kurds from declaring independence. Relations have been cool between Shi ite Iran and mainly Sunni Turkey. But both have been alarmed by the independence vote, fearing it will encourage separatism among their own Kurdish populations. The Kurds are the region s fourth-largest ethnic group, spread across Iran, Turkey, Syria and Iraq, all of which oppose any moves towards a Kurdish state. Iraq launched an offensive on Sept. 21 to dislodge Islamic State from the Hawija area, where up to 78,000 people were estimated to be trapped, according to the United Nations. The militants control the border town of al-Qaim and the region surrounding it. They also hold parts of the Syrian side of the border, but the area under their control is shrinking as they retreat in the face of two different sets of hostile forces - a U.S.-backed, Kurdish-led coalition and Syrian government troops with foreign Shi ite militias backed by Iran and Russia. Islamic State s cross-border caliphate effectively collapsed in July, when U.S.-backed Iraqi forces captured Mosul, the group s de facto capital in Iraq, in a grueling battle which lasted nine months. The militants leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who declared the caliphate from Mosul in mid-2014, released an audio recording last week that indicated he was alive, after several reports he had been killed. He urged his followers to keep up the fight despite setbacks. | 0fake
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Senators Propose Giving States Option to Keep Affordable Care Act - The New York Times | WASHINGTON — Several Republican senators on Monday proposed a partial replacement for the Affordable Care Act that would allow states to continue operating under the law if they choose, a proposal meant to appeal to critics and supporters of former President Barack Obama’s signature health law. But the plan was attacked by Democrats as a step back from the Affordable Care Act’s protections, and it was unlikely to win acceptance from conservative Republicans who want to get rid of the law and its tax increases as soon as possible. If anything, the proposal — by Senators Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, a medical doctor, and Susan Collins of Maine, a moderate Republican — may show how difficult it will be for Republicans to enact a replacement for the Affordable Care Act. Legislation that can pass muster in the more conservative House may not win enough support in the Senate. A bill with broad appeal in the Senate may fail in the House. Under the proposal, states could stay with the Affordable Care Act, or they could receive a similar amount of federal money, which consumers could use to pay for medical care and health insurance. “We are moving the locus of repeal to state government,” Mr. Cassidy said. “States should have the right to choose. ” The proposal shares some features with House Republican proposals: It would encourage greater use of health savings accounts and eliminate the requirement for most Americans to have insurance or pay a tax penalty. But the option for states to keep the Affordable Care Act alive will rankle the most conservative Republicans who have been trying for nearly seven years to blow it up. “Obamacare is flawed, failing and not fixable, and it needs to be fully repealed,” said Representative Mark Meadows of North Carolina, the chairman of the House Freedom Caucus. A stalemate between the House and Senate would leave in place Mr. Obama’s health law, but efforts by President Trump and Congress to undermine it could send health insurance markets into a tailspin. On Friday, as one of his first official acts as president, Mr. Trump signed an executive order that could allow officials to ease up on enforcement of the mandate requiring most Americans to have insurance. Supporters of the Affordable Care Act panned the proposal. “Millions of Americans would be kicked off their plans, costs and deductibles for consumers would skyrocket, and protections for people with conditions, such as cancer, would be gutted,” said the Senate Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer of New York. Ronald F. Pollack, the executive director of Families USA, a consumer group, said the bill “falls way short of providing the protections and coverage people have under the Affordable Care Act. ” Ms. Collins said the bill would allow states to “keep the Affordable Care Act if it is working for their residents. ” But she predicted that most states would choose something different. Under the bill, states could enroll people who would otherwise be uninsured in health plans providing basic coverage. These health plans are intended to protect consumers against catastrophic medical expenses. They would cover generic versions of prescription drugs, and they would also have to cover recommended childhood immunizations without . States would contract with one or more insurers to offer this coverage. Consumers could buy “more robust coverage” if they want, Mr. Cassidy said, but they could be automatically enrolled, by default, in the health plans providing basic coverage. “A state could say, ‘All those eligible are enrolled unless they choose not to be,’” he explained. This “passive enrollment” would provide insurers with a large pool of customers, including many healthy people, without the coercion of an “individual mandate,” Mr. Cassidy said. “We think that we could cover more people than Obamacare,” Mr. Cassidy said, although he acknowledged that the effects of his bill had not been analyzed by the Congressional Budget Office, which serves as Capitol Hill’s official scorekeeper. If a state opts out of the Affordable Care Act, many of the federal insurance standards established under the law would no longer apply. The bill would repeal federal benefit mandates that “often force Americans to pay for coverage they don’t need and can’t afford,” Mr. Cassidy said. But some protections would remain in place. Parents would still be allowed to keep children on their insurance until the age of 26, and insurers could not impose annual or lifetime limits on benefits. The bill, called the Patient Freedom Act, would eliminate not only the unpopular individual mandate, but also the federal requirement for larger employers to offer coverage to employees. Mr. Cassidy said that Senators Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia and Johnny Isakson of Georgia, both Republicans, were also sponsors of the bill. The Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky, and the No. 2 Senate Republican, John Cornyn of Texas, were sponsors of a similar bill that Mr. Cassidy introduced in 2015. But the legislative landscape is different now. Republicans in Congress can repeal the Affordable Care Act, with support from Mr. Trump. In the Senate, they will need help from Democrats to adopt a replacement because Republicans are eight votes shy of the 60 needed to stop a filibuster. | 0fake
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Do You Belong To An Extraterrestrial Lineage? | According to Sitchin’s interpretation of Mesopotamian iconography and symbolism, outlined in his 1976 book The 12th Planet and its sequels, there is an undiscovered planet beyond Neptune that follows a long, elliptical orbit, reaching the inner solar system roughly every 3,600 years. This planet is called Nibiru (although Jupiter was the planet associated with the god Marduk in Babylonian cosmology).According to Sitchin, Nibiru (whose name was replaced with MARDUK in original legends by the Babylonian ruler of the same name in an attempt to co-opt the creation for himself, leading to some confusion among readers) collided catastrophically with Tiamat (a goddess in the Babylonian creation myth the Enûma Eliš), which he considers to be another planet once located between Mars and Jupiter. This collision supposedly formed the planet Earth, the asteroid belt, and the comets. Sitchin states that when struck by one of planet Nibiru’s moons, Tiamat split in two, and then on a second pass Nibiru itself struck the broken fragments and one half of Tiamat became the asteroid belt. The second half, struck again by one of Nibiru’s moons, was pushed into a new orbit and became today’s planet Earth.
According to Sitchin, Nibiru (called “the twelfth planet” because, Sitchin claimed, the Sumerians’ gods-given conception of the Solar System counted all eight planets, plus Pluto, the Sun and the Moon) was the home of a technologically advanced human-like extraterrestrial race called the Anunnaki in Sumerian myth, who Sitchin states are called the Nephilim in Genesis. He wrote that they evolved after Nibiru entered the solar system and first arrived on Earth probably 450,000 years ago, looking for minerals, especially gold, which they found and mined in Africa. Sitchin states that these “gods” were the rank-and-file workers of the colonial expedition to Earth from planet Nibiru.
There is a lot of confusion about the origin of the word Nephilim and what it means. In Hebrew it literally means to fall. As in fallen angel. The Bible, the Talmud and the Koran (where they are referred to as Djinn) all speak of fallen angels.
In the Book of Genesis in the Bible it relates how the Nephilim produced children with humans. One was even depicted as killing Japheth, Noah’s son, and taking his place whereupon he fathered many children with Japheth’s unsuspecting wife which eventually populated much of Northern Europe.
In the following video, journey into the world of Fallen Angels, Satan, Shadow People, Aliens, Demons, Anunnaki, Archons, Ancient Giants, “Ancient Aliens” & Genetic Hybrids. Almost all of what we know about the Nephilim comes from the Holy Bible in Genesis Chapter 6. If you’ve studies or looked into the Nephilim at all, or even if you haven’t, I’m sure you’ll find the video below refreshingly different than many other videos on the topic. I certainly did, and I’ve seen a ton.
WATCH THE VIDEO:
Locklip
SOURCE | 1real
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Zimbabwe's Mugabe appears in public for first time since coup | HARARE (Reuters) - Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe arrived at a university graduation ceremony in the capital on Friday, his first public appearance since a military seizure of power that political sources say is aimed at ending his 37 years in office. Wearing a blue and yellow academic gown and mortar board hat, the 93-year-old sat in large wooden chair at the front the hall. He was greeted by ululations from the crowd as he declared the ceremony open. | 0fake
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Credit Suisse Boss Faces Revolt From Bankers Over Strategy Shift - The New York Times | When Tidjane Thiam took over at Credit Suisse last July, he laid out a new direction for a financial giant with a storied investment banking history: Do less investment banking. And he used forceful language in doing so. He has referred to once core businesses — such as trading in distressed bonds and derivatives — as “ugly ducklings. ” He has suggested publicly that traders increased their investments in risky debt without his knowledge. Instead, Mr. Thiam said, the firm should dedicate itself to cultivating billionaires in China, Indonesia and Africa. The message: The future for the company is in managing the wealth of others. One year in, Credit Suisse stock is down 50 percent. And the investment bank, the second largest in Switzerland after UBS, is in open revolt. Credit Suisse has a wide range of businesses, like overseeing the fortunes of billionaires and managing initial public offerings for technology companies. But for decades, the bank has been dominated, both culturally and financially, by a richly paid banking elite. These deal makers in New York and London are now furious at Mr. Thiam, not just for cutting their pay but also because they resent his blaming them for the $6 billion in losses that the firm has suffered on his watch. Across Europe, banking giants like Barclays, Deutsche Bank, UBS and Royal Bank of Scotland have, to varying degrees, moved away from traditional investment banking activities because of increased regulation and volatile markets. Sluggish growth in large European economies — not to mention the remarkable phenomenon of negative interest rates — have not helped matters, either. But what makes the situation at Credit Suisse stand out is that Mr. Thiam appears to have done little to cloak his disdain for these activities. The question is not whether Mr. Thiam is right to grab power and capital from these declining businesses but whether his blunt, domineering style as a change agent will end up alienating bankers instead of winning them over. “It is never easy to tell people that whole parts of the business that have put bread on their table and bought them a second house have become uneconomic,” said Guy Moszkowski, a longtime securities analyst at Autonomous Research. By any measure, Mr. Thiam is an unconventional choice to lead an investment bank. Born to a prominent family in Ivory Coast, he cut short a career at McKinsey Company in Paris in 1994 to join a government in his home country as a top banker and minister. Following a military coup in 1999, Mr. Thiam returned to McKinsey, and in 2009, he was named chief executive of Prudential, the British insurance conglomerate — becoming the first African to head a major listed company in Britain. and snugly tailored, Mr. Thiam has an air about him of not suffering fools. He had a successful run at Prudential (no relation to an American company with a similar name) overcoming an uproar following a failed bid to buy the Asian operations of the American International Group. Along the way, he became one of London’s more celebrated executives and a regular on the circuit of global . That he has not bent to the complaints of bankers and traders in unprofitable businesses should not come as a surprise. “There needs to be a cultural change,” he said in a televised interview in March, in which he argued that bankers were pursuing risky trades to justify their high pay. “A lot of the problems in the investment bank are that people are trying to generate revenue at all costs. ” In turn, deal makers in London and New York, who have seen their bonuses slashed by nearly 40 percent, are not hiding their dislike of the man. More than any other bank on Wall Street, Credit Suisse restricts the cash portion of its bonuses, allocating large chunks in company stock, which has halved in value. So when their new chief executive gave a speech in May and said that Credit Suisse’s stock price “reflected reality,” bankers, especially the many who have worked at the firm for decades, could not believe it. On Credit Suisse’s newly renovated trading floor in New York, several bankers, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, grumbled that Mr. Thiam had “lost the building,” which is Wall Street parlance for chief executives who no longer command the respect of their traders. And when he has appeared on television in recent months, employees loudly vented their frustrations at the screen, according those bankers, who witnessed the events but were not authorized to speak publicly. Mr. Thiam was hailed during his first visit to the trading floor in New York last year, but the reception during a more recent appearance was chillier, said two employees who were on the floor during his visits but were not authorized to speak publicly. In particular, many at Credit Suisse find Mr. Thiam’s personal style to be jarring at a time when thousands are being laid off and the stock is trading at a multiyear low. This is particularly true when compared with Brady W. Dougan, his predecessor: Mr. Thiam’s own dealings with the media are handled by a British firm, Powerscourt. He enjoys a robust social life and has been seen doing the rounds at clubs in London and Davos, Switzerland. And he recently purchased a luxury home in Herrliberg, an exclusive lakeside enclave in Zurich. To be sure, analysts agree that Credit Suisse can no longer rely on trading derivatives with firms like Deutsche Bank as a profit center. Instead, Mr. Thiam is encouraging his deal makers to support the firm’s private bankers in Asia, by providing loans to magnates in Indonesia or helping billionaire clients in China with initial public offerings. Mr. Thiam is clearly enamored with the prospect of tapping growth markets in emerging economies. He has been to China and broader Asia at least four times in his new capacity, and his business cards carry a Mandarin translation on the back. Mr. Thiam’s defenders say that with the future of Credit Suisse in doubt, he has no choice but to make these painful changes and that resistance from traders and bankers should not deter him. And it is also true that wealth managers in Switzerland and Asia, where Mr. Thiam is adding resources, are embracing the new strategy. Following last year’s losses, he also asked his board for a 40 percent cut in his bonus, taking in $4. 5 million for the six months he worked last year. To date, the Credit Suisse board appears to be standing with Mr. Thiam. Indeed, having had two Wall Street chiefs since 2001, the board clearly believes that only a prominent nonbanker like Mr. Thiam can wean the firm off a line of business that has so long defined it. Nevertheless, directors were not happy with his televised comments in March when Mr. Thiam suggested that traders at the bank were hiding losses from him. Mr. Thiam quickly corrected himself at a conference that same day and said no limits were breached, though not without taking another dig at his traders by questioning their judgment. Mr. Thiam also called these traders and offered what a spokeswoman for the bank said was a “clarification” of his remarks. “The board is 100 percent behind the strategy, Tidjane and the executive board,” said Richard E. Thornburgh, a former Credit Suisse banker with 30 years of experience at the firm who is now chairman of the board’s risk committee. With morale in New York at a low point, Mr. Thornburgh has had recent meetings with top bankers and traders, hearing them out and urging them to remain focused on their clients. For many, though, this is easier said than done. It is unusual, after all, for an incoming chief executive to be so publicly critical of employees responsible for a quarter of a firm’s revenue. That is particularly true on Wall Street, where punctured vanities can quickly harm a firm, as productive bankers head for the exits in droves. Over the last six months, at least 18 bankers and traders have left the firm, with many of these coming from Credit Suisse’s once prestigious technology unit in San Francisco. The culture clash at Credit Suisse recalls a similar dispute at Morgan Stanley a decade ago. Like Mr. Thiam, Philip J. Purcell was a former whiz kid consultant from McKinsey who preferred slow and steady brokers over bankers with big egos and even bigger paychecks. A uprising forced Mr. Purcell’s departure, since power on Wall Street was then still in the hands of deal makers and traders. With wealth managers now ascendant, Mr. Thiam seems willing to accept the wounded cries of his own bankers as a painful necessity if his grand plan is to succeed. “Is there a vision. Is there a direction?” Mr. Thiam asked aloud last year in a speech introducing his strategy. “The Germans say that the horrible end is better than horror without end. ” | 0fake
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THE ROBBING OF INNOCENCE: 12 Yr Old Students Given CDC Survey About Transgender, Gay And Oral Sex | 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 | 1real
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Schaeuble to head German parliament, unblocking coalition talks | BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany took a first decisive step on Wednesday toward forming a new government when its veteran finance minister, conservative Wolfgang Schaeuble, agreed to become president of the parliament, clearing the way for another party to take his job. Chancellor Angela Merkel will hope that Schaeuble, deeply respected in Germany for helping to steer the euro zone through its debt crisis, can stamp his authority on a fractious Bundestag lower house that will include two more parties after Sunday s federal election. Merkel must assemble Germany s first three-way coalition since the 1950s after her conservatives lost support and a far-right party, the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD), entered parliament for the first time in half a century. In a sign of the challenges ahead, Andrea Nahles, the Social Democrats newly elected parliamentary leader, told reporters her party would hit conservatives squarely in the jaw after four years as junior partner in a Merkel-led grand coalition . Merkel s most realistic coalition option now is a deal with the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP), returning to parliament after a four-year hiatus, and the Greens. But the parties disagree on issues such as energy, Europe and migration, complicating the path to a so-called Jamaica coalition - a reference to the parties colors: black, yellow and green, which are also those of the Jamaican flag. Schaeuble, 75, who emerged as one of Europe s most influential politicians during the euro zone crisis, will bring unprecedented weight to the role of Bundestag president, normally a low-profile position. His willingness to quit as finance minister after eight years in the post makes it easier for the FDP to join a Merkel-led coalition. The FDP, who are as fiscally hawkish as Schaeuble, have said they want his old job. As an outstanding personality Wolfgang Schaeuble possesses a natural authority that is of particular importance in these times, said FDP leader Christian Lindner, himself seen as a likely successor at the finance ministry. Lindner s deputy, Wolfgang Kubicki, another possible candidate for the post, told the RND newspaper chain that Schaeuble s move showed Merkel s openness to a Jamaica coalition. He also underscored his party s call for a shift in fiscal policy. Schaeuble was criticized in southern Europe, especially Greece, for his insistence on tax hikes and spending cuts at a time of deep recession, but is popular at home for balancing the books and presiding over high growth and low unemployment. European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, speaking in Munich, said he did not think Schaeuble s departure would soften the EU s approach to heavily indebted Greece. The austerity measures will be continued by those who carried them out together with Wolfgang Schaeuble, he said. The Free Democrats, with a voter support base among Germany s small and medium-sized businesses, are as committed to budgetary discipline as Schaeuble but less pro-European, meaning Wednesday s news drew a mixed reception from the euro zone. I don t think there will be radical changes in German economic policy if the FDP replaces him, said one official close to euro zone policy-making. The FDP are also hardliners on deficits. But another euro zone official said the euro zone was losing one of the most pro-European politicians I know and instead getting a party markedly cooler on political integration. Italian Finance Minister Pier Carlo Padoan told the Handelsblatt newspaper he would miss Schaeuble s steady hand. Wolfgang Schaeuble was a loyal discussion partner, serious, competent and also a good friend, he said. Merkel emerged from Sunday s election a weakened figure after her conservatives, still the largest bloc in the Bundestag, bled support to the AfD. But the exit of Schaeuble, the most powerful counterweight to the long-serving chancellor, could paradoxically strengthen her position. As Bundestag president, Schaeuble will not be involved in coalition negotiations, removing one strong-minded negotiator from the table and potentially giving Merkel a freer hand. Coalition negotiations will only begin in earnest after Oct. 15, when the conservatives hope to wrest power from the Social Democrats in a state election in Lower Saxony. By law, the new parliament must convene for its first session 30 days after the election, so by Oct. 24 at the latest. | 0fake
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At U.S.-China summit, Trump presses Xi on trade, North Korea; progress cited | PALM BEACH, Fla. (Reuters) - President Donald Trump pressed Chinese President Xi Jinping to do more to curb North Korea’s nuclear program and help reduce the gaping U.S. trade deficit with Beijing in talks on Friday, even as he toned down the strident anti-China rhetoric of his election campaign. Trump spoke publicly of progress on a range of issues in his first U.S.-China summit – as did several of his top aides – but they provided few concrete specifics other than China’s agreement to work together to narrow disagreements and find common ground for cooperation. As the two leaders wrapped up a Florida summit overshadowed by U.S. missile strikes in Syria overnight, Xi joined Trump in stressing the positive mood of the meetings while papering over deep differences that have caused friction between the world’s two biggest economies. Trump’s aides insisted he had made good on his pledge to raise concerns about China’s trade practices and said there was some headway, with Xi agreeing to a 100-day plan for trade talks aimed at boosting U.S. exports and reducing China’s trade surplus with the United States. Speaking after the two-day summit at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson also said that Xi had agreed to increased cooperation in reining in North Korea’s missile and nuclear programs – though he did not offer any new formula for cracking Pyongyang’s defiant attitude. Trump had promised during the campaign to stop what he called the theft of American jobs by China. Many blue-collar workers helped propel him to his unexpected election victory on Nov. 8 and Trump is under pressure to deliver for them. The Republican president tweeted last week that the United States could no longer tolerate massive trade deficits and job losses and that his meeting with Xi “will be a very difficult one.” On Friday, the unpredictable Trump not only set a different tone but also avoided any public lapses in protocol that Chinese officials had feared could embarrass their leader. “We have made tremendous progress in our relationship with China,” Trump told reporters as the two delegations met around tables flanked by large U.S. and Chinese flags. “We will be making additional progress. The relationship developed by President Xi and myself I think is outstanding. “And I believe lots of very potentially bad problems will be going away,” he added, without providing details. Xi also spoke in mostly positive terms. “We have engaged in deeper understanding, and have built a trust,” he said. “I believe we will keep developing in a stable way to form friendly relations ... For the peace and stability of the world, we will also fulfill our historical responsibility.” “Well, I agree with you 100 percent,” Trump replied. China’s official Xinhua news agency said Xi had encouraged the United States to take part in the “One Belt, One Road” plan, Xi’s signature foreign policy imitative aimed at infrastructure development across Asia, Africa and Europe, seen in some policy circles as a partial answer to the pivot to Asia strategy of Trump’s predecessor Barack Obama. Xi also hailed military to military exchanges and said China and the United States should “make good use of the dialogue mechanism to be established between the two countries’ joint staffs of the armed forces”, although Xinhua did not give further details. Chinese state media on Saturday cheered the meeting as one that showed the world that confrontation between the two powers was not inevitable and established the tone for the development of U.S.-China relations. But in a sign that rough spots remained, Tillerson afterwards described the discussions as “very frank and candid.” “President Trump and President Xi agreed to work in concert to expand areas of cooperation while managing differences based on mutual respect,” he said. After the meeting, Trump took Xi on a walk around the manicured grounds of his lavish Spanish-style complex. Trump could be seen chatting and gesturing to Xi, who did the same. Tillerson said Trump had accepted Xi’s invitation to visit China and that they also agreed to upgrade a U.S.-China dialogue by putting the two presidents at the head of the forum. U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said the Chinese had expressed an interest in reducing China’s trade surplus as a way of controlling their own inflation. “That’s the first time I’ve heard them say that in a bilateral context,” he said. Ross declined to say whether the United States was ready to designate China a currency manipulator, however, referring to an upcoming report in which that issue would be addressed. Although Trump during the presidential election campaign had pledged to label China a currency manipulator on the first day of his administration, he has refrained from doing so. The highly anticipated U.S.-China summit was upstaged by U.S. missile strikes overnight against a Syrian air base from which Trump said a deadly chemical weapon attack had been launched earlier in the week. It was the first direct U.S. assault on the Russian-backed government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in six years of civil war. The swift action in Syria could be interpreted as a signal especially to defiant nuclear-armed North Korea – and by extension, its ally China – as well as other countries like Iran and Russia of Trump’s willingness to use military force. North Korea is developing missiles capable of hitting the United States. Tillerson said Xi agreed with Trump that North Korea’s nuclear advances had reached a “very serious stage.” He said Trump also raised U.S.concerns about China’s activities in the South China Sea. Beijing is building and fortifying islands in pursuit of expansive territorial claims in the strategic waterway. | 0fake
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Clinton extends lead over Trump to 7 points: Reuters/Ipsos | NEW YORK (Reuters) - Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s lead over Republican rival Donald Trump increased to more than 7 percentage points in a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Tuesday, from less than 3 points on Thursday. The shift came as Trump struggled to reset his campaign following a stretch of controversies. About 42 percent of likely voters favored Clinton and about 35 percent preferred Trump, according to the Aug. 4-8 online poll of 1,152 likely voters, which had a credibility interval of plus or minus 3 percentage points. The others would either pick another candidate, would not vote, or “don’t know/refused.” The results reflected a decline in support for Trump, rather than a boost for Clinton: In last Thursday’s poll, 42 percent of likely voters favored Clinton and about 39 percent favored Trump. Among registered voters over the same period, Clinton held a lead of nearly 13 percentage points, up from about 5 percentage points on Thursday, according to the poll. The five-day survey concluded on a mixed day for the Trump campaign. After squabbles last week with party leaders and the parents of a Muslim American soldier killed in Iraq, Trump sought to turn the page with a speech outlining an economic platform of tax breaks and regulatory rollbacks. But in what was surely unwelcome news for Trump’s campaign, 50 heavyweight Republican national security officials, in a letter published on Monday, said that Trump would be “the most reckless president in American history.” Trump hit back, saying the signatories “deserve the blame for making the world such a dangerous place.” Trump faced more dissent within his party on Monday. A former CIA officer, Evan McMullin, announced he would run as an independent alternative to Trump for conservative Republicans, and Republican Senator Susan Collins said she would not vote for Trump. In a separate Reuters/Ipsos survey that gave respondents the option to choose from Clinton, Trump, Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson and Green Party candidate Jill Stein, Clinton leads Trump by about 6 percentage points. Of the alternative party candidates, Johnson came in third with nearly 8 percentage points, up from 6 points on Thursday. Stein has about 2 percentage points. The Aug. 4-8 survey of 1,154 likely voters had a credibility interval of 3 percentage points. McMullin was not an option in the poll. | 0fake
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JOE BIDEN’S SHOCKING ANNOUNCEMENT: “What the hell, man?” [Video] | VP Joe Biden: Yeah, I m going to run in 2020. Reporter: For what? Biden: For president! What the hell, man? https://t.co/fsRl25AD12 pic.twitter.com/GMco1PkJiL CNN (@CNN) December 6, 2016 | 1real
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Comment une petite fille russe de 4 ans a appris à parler 7 langues | langues , enfants
En octobre dernier, Bella est devenue célèbre du jour au lendemain grâce au projet Personnes extraordinaires présenté par la chaîne de télévision Rossiya 1. La vidéo dans laquelle la petite fille répond aux questions, chante des chansons et parle dans plusieurs langues a suscité un grand intérêt sur les réseaux sociaux. « Je me sens stupide par rapport à cet enfant » , écrivaient les internautes dans les commentaires.
Ioulia Deviatkina, la mère de Bella, affirme que sa fille n’est pas un enfant prodige, ses parents accordant simplement beaucoup d’attention à son développement. « Les enfants n’ont pas forcément besoin de parler sept langues, mais chaque petit est capable de maîtriser deux ou trois langues » , assure Ioulia.
Les parents de Bella sont conscients que dans la vraie vie, la petite fille n’utilisera pas les sept langues activement : c’est tout simplement impossible. « Quand elle ira à l’école, nous nous concentrerons sur l’anglais, le français et le chinois » , précise la mère de la petite fille.
« Nous n’avons pas peur que Bella s’ennuie en classe non plus. Elle possède les connaissances obligatoires pour tout enfant de quatre ans. Simplement, elle est capable de parler sur ces sujets « enfantins » dans plusieurs langues différentes » . Le gazouillis en français
La mère de la petite fille est linguiste de formation et enseigne l’anglais aux enfants depuis sept ans. Son père travaille à l’Institut de recherche Radio. C’est une famille de classe moyenne. Cependant, pour les parents de Bella, le développement de leur fille est l’investissement le plus important. Окт 18 2016 в 3:35 PDT
Initialement, les parents de Bella voulaient qu’elle parle couramment l’anglais. Ainsi, dès la naissance, sa mère lui parlait en deux langues, les alternant jour après jour. Elle veillait à ce que les langues ne se mélangent pas et interdisait à sa fille d’utiliser des mots russes dans les conversations en anglais.
Quand Bella a eu 10 mois, ses parents ont rajouté le français. Elle ne savait pas parler, mais pouvait montrer du doigt les objets nommés par les adultes. Lire aussi : De jeunes mères russes racontent comment leur enfant a bouleversé leur vie
Bella a appris à lire avant de commencer à parler. Dès l’âge de cinq mois, ses parents lui apprenaient à lire grâces à des cartes spéciales. Par exemple, quand on montrait à Bella, âgée de neuf mois, le mot « main » en russe ou en anglais, elle montrait sa main. Avant l’âge d’un an, la petite fille a appris 60 de ces cartes avec ses parents. Elle a commencéà lire couramment à l’âge de deux ans. Dessins animés en chinois
À deux ans, Bella savait parler avec des phrases courtes et lire avec aisance dans trois langues. Avant l’âge de trois ans, ses parents ont rajouté le chinois au « programme » . Ioulia raconte que la petite fille montrait un grand intérêt pour la nouvelle langue. Elle demandait même qu’on lui mette des dessins animés en chinois . Окт 5 2016 в 5:26 PDT
À l’âge de 3 ans et 2 mois, la petite Bella étudiait volontiers l’espagnol et l’allemand, mais aussi la danse, le violon et le chant . Puis, on a rajouté l’arabe. Bella se promène, joue à cache-cache et lit des livres pour enfants, mais elle le fait en plusieurs langues différentes. Tous ses cours se déroulent sous forme de jeu.
Ses parents organisent des voyages ludiques avec des locuteurs natifs, elle fréquente un club de théâtre en anglais, apprend le dessin en français, la danse en espagnol et suit des cours de patinage avec un locuteur allemand. Par ailleurs, ses parents lui organisent régulièrement des cours collectifs avec des amis qui sont également élevés dans un milieu multilingue. Lire aussi : Le russe, cinquième langue dans les écoles de l’UE Outil de développement du cerveau
Les chercheurs confirment que la capacitéà parler plusieurs langues et de passer de l’une à l’autre dépend de l’interaction entre différentes zones du cerveau. Elles se mettent en marche en fonction des caractéristiques phonétiques de la langue, de son système grammatical, de l’imagerie linguistique et même de la tonalité de la prononciation.
« Chaque nouvelle expérience se reflète dans le cerveau par l’émergence de connexions nerveuses. L’hippocampe, responsable de la mémoire, stimule la croissance de nouveaux neurones. Le volume de certaines zones du cerveau croît littéralement » , explique la psychologue Tatiana Diatchenko. Окт 16 2016 в 1:18 PDT
« Le multilinguisme a une influence positive sur le développement général de l’enfant, même s’il peut provoquer un retard du développement du langage à cette étape, par rapport aux enfants qui n’apprennent qu’une seule langue » , explique Kira Ivanonva, spécialiste de l’Institut de recherches linguistiques auprès de l’Académie russe des sciences.
Cependant, un apprentissage précoce ne garantit pas que l’enfant parlera couramment la langue plus tard. « Je connais une mère qui ne parlait qu’anglais avec son enfant à partir de l’âge de trois ans. Aujourd’hui, ce petit n’est même pas capable de maîtriser le programme d’une école normale, non-spécialisée » , raconte Maria Molina, chercheuse à l’Institut de linguistique auprès de l’Académie russe des sciences. Lire aussi : | 1real
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Emboldened NRA Threatens New York Times: ‘We’re Coming For You’ (VIDEO) | The NRA has a new favorite toy, but there are no bullets involved except maybe the bullet points they include in their scripts. Dana Loesch has transformed herself from useful Fox News idiot to darling of the Second Amendment, and the NRA is more than happy to put her stern but beautiful face on camera.Earlier this year, Loesch and the NRA put out a video recruiting ad they called The Clenched Fist of Truth. It accused the left of assassinating real news and using wedge issues like homophobia, racism, and sexism to stifle the views of conservative Americans. In the video, schoolchildren are depicted on a playground just before Loesch says they re being indoctrinated to believe Trump is another Hitler. In short, it s disgusting. Civil rights activist DeRay McKesson summed it up:This NRA ad is an open call to violence to protect white supremacy. If I made a video like this, I'd be in jail. pic.twitter.com/LD65yMUMVn deray mckesson (@deray) June 29, 2017But the backlash was short-lived, and in an environment as rich with news as the Trump era, it was quickly forgotten, despite its gross, dangerous message.Now Dana and the NRA are back with a new ad, equally violent, this time aimed at the New York Times. Loesch carefully phrases her threats as a shot across the proverbial bow of the Times, so as to avoid being accused of outright incitement. But the accusations in the video mirror perfectly the paranoia, suspicion, and resentment of Trump fans who want to believe that news they don t like is fake. And the final phrase in the video We re coming for you is as menacing as anything else the NRA has done.In a near-derailing of the conversation, a few pundits misheard Loesch s use of the word Fisk (a verb-ing of the last name of a writer considered easily debunked by right-wingers who disagree with him), thinking instead that she had said fist. If that seems like a silly thing to get hung up on, the context clears it up:We re going to fisk the New York Times and find out just what deep rich means to this old gray hag.If you thought that said fist, the meaning is changed considerably. Their mistake wasn t just one of hearing, though the tweet from the NRA accompanying the video uses the hashtag #ClenchedFistOfTruth. The mistake is understandable. Loesch didn t think so: She blew up at a few notable tweeters who made the error.The new, Orwellian video says, in part:We ve had it with your constant protection of your Democrat overlords, your refusal to acknowledge any truth that upsets the fragile construct that you believe is real life.Somebody is confused about what s real and what s not and it s not the New York Times.Watch the video here:.@DLoesch has a message for the @nytimes: We're coming for you. One non-#fakenews story is not enough. #NRA #ClenchedFistofTruth pic.twitter.com/Hm1QkJi5Tp NRATV (@NRATV) August 3, 2017Featured image via Alex Wong/Getty Images | 1real
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Noam Chomsky GOES OFF On Donald Trump: ‘He’s A CLOWN!’ (VIDEO) | It s no secret that world-renowned political theorist Noam Chomsky does NOT want Donald Trump in the White House, and thinks it s an absolute tragedy that the presumptive Republican nominee has even managed to get as far as he has.In an interview with Art Is Power, the author and MIT professor criticized The Donald for using generalized anger and his racist white supporters fear of becoming a minority to his advantage, knowing full well that it was a strategy that would work in the polls. Chomsky also likened Trump s hateful rhetoric to Adolf Hitler as he explained Trump s formula for success: So every time Trump makes a nasty comment about whoever, his popularity goes up. Because it s based on hate, you know, hate and fear. And it s unfortunately kind of reminiscent of something unpleasant: Germany, not many years ago. Chomsky pointed out how interesting this year s presidential primaries had been not in a good way and used the business mogul as a prime example. He s a clown literally, he could be in the circus. He s getting huge support from people who are angry at everything. Mostly white males. Working-class, middle-class, poor white males. And their wives and traditional families. They are furious about everything. In his analysis of Trump s campaign, Chomsky explained that all the disgraced candidate had done was tap into America s nativism. In the past, Americans had been worried about being replaced by Germans or Irish immigrants. All Trump did was change the words to make his racist supporters scared of Muslims and Mexican immigrants and he did a great job fear mongering and relentlessly attacking those specific minorities to achieve his goals.You can watch Chomsky rip Trump below:Chomsky has expressed his disgust over the presidential candidate before, when he called the GOP the most dangerous organization in human history , criticizing it for creating the kind of hostile, extremist political environment that would allow a joker like Trump to rise.Featured image via William B. Plowman and Spencer Platt / Getty Images | 1real
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5 Ways The Media Responded With Butthurt To Donald Trump’s Victory | The media doesn’t even try to hide its shameless pro-Socialist bias these days. Since nobody really pays attention to them anymore, you might have missed some of the more entertaining butthurt spouted by shameless propagandists posing as journalists.
2016 election night coverage on the propaganda news channels is a lesson in hilarity when examining the reaction of lamestream media talking heads. What is most entertaining about Trump’s ascendancy to the Oval Office is that it was totally unexpected, catching cocksure Marxists at CNN and other alphabet channels completely off guard.
Let’s go over some of the more entertaining reactions last Tuesday.
5. Hillary Shill Martha Raddatz Breaks Down In Tears
Over at ABC, the wrinkled old Hillary shill Martha Raddatz was at a loss for words as she attempted to perform an off the cuff hamster rationalization to fellow Clinton operative George Staphylococcus, explaining why The Bitch lost the election.
Raddatz looked like her mother just died as victory turned into defeat for the criminal Hillary Clinton. She’s sure to be moving from a pack of smokes a day to two packs a day as the reality of the election continues to settle into her pea brain over the next 4 years. Her tears say more than her boilerplate language ever could.
4. Bernstein Plays The Race Card
To the mainstream media, white people voting in accordance with their own self-interest is racist. In fact, white people acting in any other manner than total subservience is racist to CNN. Washington Post “journalist” Carl Bernstein even went so far as to say Trump’s election is “tragic and dangerous” as despondent and quite possibly drugged CNN propagandists looked on. Bernstein seemed most upset about Trump’s immigration policy proposals, in which Mexico will no longer be able to flagrantly let its citizens violate U.S. immigration law.
Bernstein completely forgot the racism white people have endured all year long at the hands of Black Lives Matter, La Raza and other black and brown supremacist groups.
3. Chris Matthews Goes Into Hamster Rationalization Mode
Hamster rationalizations are usually reserved for women, but effeminate, low-T manlets like Chris Matthews also have them. His first spin of the hamster wheel makes him say Hillary won the debates. She didn’t. Then he says she had the best ad campaign. Nobody believes advertising or anything you say, anymore Chris. Then Matthews says she had the best ground game. She might have, but she was a terrible candidate. The half-man, half-alligator James Carville looked ready to give Chris a hug as the reality of Hillary’s defeat began to settle in on MSNBC.
2. The Racist Van Jones Whines About White People
Van Jones looked like he needed a change of underwear as he fell back on tired, old leftist talking points from the 1960s about the evil white male —especially white males that haven’t been turned into geldings. He then goes on with an emotional overreaction to say families will be afraid to have breakfast the next day because whitey got back into office. LMFAO. Really, dude?
He then says immigrants are afraid now that Trump is going to be President. No Van, immigrants aren’t afraid. Illegal hordes who figuratively if not literally say “Fuck you!” to U.S. immigration law are afraid, as they should be.
Jones then goes on to make a supremely ironic quote as he talks about a so-called white-lash: He says Trump’s campaign was based on “Throwing away some of us to appeal more deeply to others.” Umm, isn’t that what the entire platform of the Democratic party is, Van? Throwing away, nay, crucifying white men to appeal more deeply to others ? Your entire career is based on just that, Mr. Jones.
1. CBS Does A Mea Culpa CBS published an article admitting how badly the press is biased
CBS was so stunned it did a full mea culpa on the network’s shoddy coverage of the 2016 election. This stunning article entitled “The Unbearable Smugness of the Press” needed to be written 10 years ago. Better late than never. CBS actually echoed what we in the manosphere and alt-right have been saying since day one with the Op-Ed piece.
This is all symptomatic of modern journalism’s great moral and intellectual failing: its unbearable smugness . Had Hillary Clinton won, there’d be a winking “we did it” feeling in the press, a sense that we were brave and called Trump a liar and saved the republic.
The Eyeball network even admitted the contempt the network has for men like us.
So much for that. The audience for our glib analysis and contempt for much of the electorate, it turned out, was rather limited. This was particularly true when it came to voters, the ones who turned out by the millions to deliver not only a rebuke to the political system but also the people who cover it. Trump knew what he was doing when he invited his crowds to jeer and hiss the reporters covering him. They hate us, and have for some time.
And can you blame them? Journalists love mocking Trump supporters. We insult their appearances. We dismiss them as racists and sexists. We emote on Twitter about how this or that comment or policy makes us feel one way or the other, and yet we reject their feelings as invalid.
Damn. At least some people over there know why we hate them. (That includes this former mainstream media news anchor who defected!)
Shameless Activism Got Marxism? It’s the guiding philosophy of the alphabet channels
Anyone who has the capacity to perform an iota of critical thinking knows the mainstream media is NOT on the side of the average American. It hates and seethes at traditionalists and works to tear down every institution of Western civilization while attempting to impale the most hated of creatures on this planet, the Evil White Male.
The rebuke of a sorry candidate like Hillary when the socialist shills thought she was a shoe-in caught the smug son of a bitches off guard. Their reactions are priceless, and need to be documented and remembered. These reactions are undeniable proof that blogs like Return Of Kings and web sites like Breitbart and Drudge are sorely needed, indispensable resources in this day and age.
We have not been getting the truth from media for generations. And now, as alternative voices appear, the rift between the two versions of reality grows wider and deeper. The once mainstream media have become nothing but shameless activists for New World Order socialism. The election night “horror show” only solidifies this point.
We should be proud to be activists pushing our own agenda, if nothing else to balance the scales. The media are NOT friends of the American public. Ultimately, the tired old Socialist media must be dismantled in order for freedom and traditionalism to survive .
Read More: Did The Anti-Donald Trump Riot In Chicago Help Trump Cruise To Victory On Tuesday?
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Iran, Russia and Turkey Agree to Enforce Syria Cease-Fire, but Don’t Explain How - The New York Times | ASTANA, Kazakhstan — Two days of talks over the Syrian civil war concluded on Tuesday with an agreement by Iran, Russia and Turkey to enforce a fragile partial . But neither the Syrian government nor the rebel fighters — who briefly met face to face for the first time in nearly six years of war — signed the agreement. While the three powers agreed to establish a mechanism to monitor and enforce the nearly they did not say what the mechanism should look like, deferring that issue for now. The statement, at least on paper, brought Iran on board with recent new cooperation between Russia and Turkey, and it strengthened Turkey’s commitment to separating rebel groups it supports from jihadist groups. But representatives of the Syrian delegations — both from the government and opposition — immediately expressed reservations. They emphasized that they had not signed on to a document that had been brokered by the main sponsors of the warring sides in the country, but not by Syrians themselves. Russia is the most powerful backer of the Syrian government, which is also closely allied with Iran, while Turkey has been among the main supporters of rebel groups. Despite the supposed new clashes were reported in Wadi Barada, a besieged area and source for most of the drinking water for Damascus, the Syrian capital. Water supplies have been cut off for weeks, and the government and rebel sides have blamed each other. The agreement among Iran, Russia and Turkey was announced a day after the Syrian factions exchanged harsh words at the start of the talks, held in Astana, capital of Kazakhstan. A main result of the meeting was to firm up Russia’s growing role in the Syria diplomacy, establishing the Astana talks as a part of, but not a replacement for, the Geneva process that has been spearheaded for years by the United Nations and the United States. The new document said meetings in Astana, a capital five time zones east of Geneva with close ties to Turkey but firmly within Russia’s sphere of influence, would be a forum to discuss specific issues that come up within the Geneva framework. There had been tentative hopes among some rebel negotiators that Russia might be ready to take on a more active role in seeking a political compromise. But there was no concrete progress on political issues, which were excluded from the narrowly focused talks. Iran, Russia and Turkey affirmed their commitment “to the sovereignty, independence, unity and territorial integrity of the Syrian Arab Republic as a multiethnic, multireligious, nonsectarian and democratic state,” and their conviction “that there is no military solution to the Syrian conflict and that it can only be solved through a political process. ” Those sentiments echo principles that the United Nations Security Council has laid out. The countries also reiterated “their determination to fight jointly” against the Islamic State and against Al Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria, formerly known as the Nusra Front, pledging to “separate” them from armed opposition groups. That could be an important provision, since the Syrian government led by President Bashar tends to classify all the opposition fighters indiscriminately as terrorist groups, and many have been unable or unwilling to separate themselves from forces of the former Nusra Front on the battlefield. The agreement did not specify how such a separation might occur, however. In Astana, government representatives said that they still considered the rebel fighters to be terrorists and were waiting to see if Turkey followed through on the agreement. Rebel negotiators said the meetings had given them hope that Russia might be open to hearing rebel concerns and become more willing to press the Syrian government for a political resolution, but such optimism did not extend to Iran, which had stuck to a harder line. Staffan de Mistura, the special United Nations envoy for Syria who had been invited to the Astana talks, said in an interview after the joint statement was issued that in the interactions he had watched between Russia and opposition commanders, “The body language was of people who were seriously talking to each other and taking each other seriously. ” At the same time, rebels are concerned that the new agreement puts Iran in the position of taking part in a that its own militias have been accused of violating. The next round of talks between the Syrian government and the opposition will occur on Feb. 8 in Geneva, according to the announcement by the three countries. But diplomats in Astana said it was unclear if that date was firm. Bashar the Syrian ambassador to the United Nations who led his government’s delegation to the talks in Astana, said an offensive by the government and its allied troops would continue, arguing that “terrorist groups” controlled Ain a town in Wadi Barada. Residents in Wadi Barada say that some fighters from the former Nusra Front are present there, but that they are at most a tiny minority. Also on Tuesday, United Nations officials appealed for more than $8 billion in funding this year to help millions of people displaced by the Syrian conflict. The United Nations refugee agency is asking for $4. 6 billion to help at least 4. 8 million people who have fled abroad, mainly to Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey, and around $3. 4 billion for an estimated 13. 5 million internally displaced Syrians. | 0fake
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BREAKING: OBAMA POISED To Exact Revenge On PUTIN With Unprecedented Cyber Attack For Allegedly Exposing Hillary Emails…While Campaigning For Hillary | Putin Tells Russian Army To Prepare For WWWIII With U.S While Obama whines about Trump campaigns for Hillary Is our Community Organizer In Chief actually willing to put our nation s security at risk because he believes Putin is responsible for Hillary s email hacks? What kind of sick, reckless and vengeful clown do we have running our nation? The Obama administration is contemplating an unprecedented cyber covert action against Russia in retaliation for alleged Russian interference in the American presidential election, U.S. intelligence officials told NBC News.Current and former officials with direct knowledge of the situation say the CIA has been asked to deliver options to the White House for a wide-ranging clandestine cyber operation designed to harass and embarrass the Kremlin leadership.The sources did not elaborate on the exact measures the CIA was considering, but said the agency had already begun opening cyber doors, selecting targets and making other preparations for an operation. Former intelligence officers told NBC News that the agency had gathered reams of documents that could expose unsavory tactics by Russian President Vladimir Putin.Vice President Joe Biden told Meet the Press moderator Chuck Todd on Friday that we re sending a message to Putin and that it will be at the time of our choosing, and under the circumstances that will have the greatest impact. When asked if the American public will know a message was sent, the vice president replied, Hope not. Retired Admiral James Stavridis told NBC News Cynthia McFadden that the U.S. should attack Russia s ability to censor its internal internet traffic and expose the financial dealings of Putin and his associates. NBC NewsFULL REPORT: @NBCNews has learned the CIA is preparing a major unprecedented cyber-strike against Russia. @CynthiaMcFadden reports pic.twitter.com/MjxKrdL7zS NBC Nightly News (@NBCNightlyNews) October 14, 2016Vladimir Zhirinovsky, a flamboyant veteran lawmaker known for his fiery rhetoric, told Reuters in an interview that Trump was the only person able to de-escalate dangerous tensions between Moscow and Washington.Americans should vote for Donald Trump as president next month or risk being dragged into a nuclear war, according to a Russian ultra-nationalist ally of President Vladimir Putin who likes to compare himself to the U.S. Republican candidate.By contrast, Trump s Democratic rival Hillary Clinton could spark World War Three, said Zhirinovsky, who received a top state award from Putin after his pro-Kremlin Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR) came third in Russia s parliamentary election last month.Zhirinovsky s comments coincide with deep disagreements between Washington and Moscow over Syria and Ukraine and after the White House last week accused Russia of a campaign of cyber attacks against Democratic Party organizations.Even as WikiLeaks released another trove of internal documents from Clinton s campaign on Wednesday, Putin insisted his country was not involved in an effort to influence the U.S. presidential election. Via: Reuters | 1real
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null | True. Hillary needs a distraction and what better than a real "wag the dog" with Russia. | 1real
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Trump says Brexit to be 'a great thing', wants quick trade deal with UK | LONDON (Reuters) - U.S. President-elect Donald Trump said that Brexit would turn out to be a great thing and other countries would follow Britain out of the European Union but promised to strike a swift bilateral trade deal with the United Kingdom. Speaking in an interview with The Times of London newspaper five days before his inauguration, Trump described himself as a big fan of Britain and endorsed last year’s vote to leave the European Union. “I think Brexit is going to end up being a great thing,” Trump said. “I’ll tell you, the fact that your pound sterling has gone down? Great. Because business is unbelievable in a lot of parts in the UK.” The June 23 vote took many investors and chief executives by surprise, triggering the deepest political and financial turmoil in Britain since World War Two and the biggest ever one-day fall in sterling against the dollar. Sterling has since fallen further against the U.S. dollar as traders, businesses and investors fret about the type of relationship Britain will have with its biggest single trading partner after it leaves the bloc. Trump’s election campaign seized on the Brexit vote as an example of disillusioned voters rising up against the political establishment, and he forged a friendship with leading Brexit campaigner Nigel Farage - a fierce critic of Prime Minister Theresa May. Trump’s election has raised questions over the future of the so called ‘special relationship’ that has underpinned close British-American ties for decades. But in Sunday’s interview Trump played up his ancestral ties to Britain, saying his Scottish mother was “so proud” of Queen Elizabeth, and said he was eager to get a trade deal done. “We’re gonna work very hard to get it done quickly and done properly. Good for both sides,” Trump said. “I will be meeting with [May]. She’s requesting a meeting and we’ll have a meeting right after I get into the White House ... we’re gonna get something done very quickly.” However, he predicted that more countries would seek to follow Britain’s example and quit the EU. “I believe others will leave,” he said. “If refugees keep pouring into different parts of Europe . . . I think it’s gonna be very hard to keep it together because people are angry about it.” He singled out German Chancellor Angela Merkel - whose open-door policies have allowed about 1.1 million refugees from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere into Germany since mid-2015 - calling her immigration policy a catastrophic mistake. | 0fake
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Sekulow: Expect ‘Whining Testimony’ from Comey ‘He Needs to ‘Grow up and Act Like an Adult’ | Jay Sekulow, Chief Counsel of the American Center for Law and Justice joined Breitbart News Daily SiriusXM host Raheem Kassam on Wednesday to discuss the coming testimony of former FBI Director James Comey and the case of Reality Winner, who was arrested for leaking secrets from the National Security Agency. [Said Sekulow on Comey, “He’s not exactly a credible witness,” while pointing out several previous issues with testimony he’s given that has to be corrected later. As for what to expect now, said Sekulow, “You don’t want to be left alone with the President of the United States? Well, that’s why you’re not the FBI director. Grow up and act like an adult. ” “It’s going to be whining testimony,” added Sekulow, saying he’s not sure what the intelligence community is even going to gain from the testimony. Comey is already leaking parts of his testimony and is said to not believe Trump tried to obstruct justice. Breitbart News Daily airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 weekdays from 6:00 a. m. to 9:00 a. m. Eastern. LISTEN: | 0fake
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Mayday on the Carolina Queen - The New York Times | The seven fishermen aboard the Carolina Queen III, a scalloping boat that set out from Norfolk, Va. had been at sea for four days when the skies darkened off the coast of the Rockaways. A powerful storm system that had already lashed the East Coast, bringing tornadoes, thunder, lightning, high winds and heavy rains, was barreling down on them. Homes had been flattened, vehicles had been tossed like Tinkertoys and trees had been ripped from their roots. At least seven people had died. The crew knew they were in for nasty weather, but they were scallopers. Weather comes with the job. As night fell on Feb. 24, the winds started to blow across New York City. At 8:45 p. m. a large section of a facade collapsed on Fordham Street in the Bronx. At 9:19, a was blown over on the upper level of the George Washington Bridge. By midnight, there were reports of downed trees and power lines around the region. Off the coast, winds were gusting up to 69 miles an hour, according to data collected by the National Weather Service. The men on the Carolina Queen had a decision to make. One successful scalloping trip can pull in a profit of $500, 000. Each fisherman can make $40, 000 on a good voyage. The crew was fishing, about 30 miles off the coast, as the storm approached. The men decided to steer the vessel closer to shore — past a predetermined demarcation line that would stop the clock on their allotted yearly limit at sea. The Carolina Queen had only 50 bags of scallops — 60 pounds per bag — on ice in the hold. With the scallop season drawing to a close, this trip was the crew’s last chance for a major haul. When the skies cleared, they expected, they would get back to business. But shortly after 2 a. m. on Feb. 25, the vessel, battered by wind and waves, ran aground. Soon, one of its generators failed and the Carolina Queen issued a desperate mayday, setting in motion a harrowing rescue operation. In the next few hours, a Coast Guard boat capsized and Fire Department vessels were unable to reach the stranded scallop boat because of the weather. Ultimately, the Coast Guard decided to undertake a daring airlift operation by a crew dispatched from Atlantic City. “Nothing about this really was routine,” said Deputy Chief George Healy of the New York Fire Department. “This was a very treacherous operation. ” The airmen and women at Coast Guard Air Station Atlantic City keep a goldfish in their “survival shop,” where they gear up before missions. The swimmer, as they call it, is named Ashton, a reference to Ashton Kutcher in his role as a Coast Guard rescue swimmer in the widely mocked, 2006 movie “The Guardian” — and a wry acknowledgment that the Coast Guard is not always accorded the kind of respect reserved for other branches of the military. But the Coast Guard plays a vital role in protecting the nation’s maritime interests. Since it was absorbed into the Department of Homeland Security, combating terrorism has been added to the sprawling mission carried out by its 88, 000 reserve, civilian and auxiliary men and women serving around the world. Despite the expanded responsibilities, its budget has been buffeted in his 2015 State of the Coast Guard Address, Adm. Paul F. Zukunft, the Coast Guard commandant, said 40 percent of the acquisition budget had been slashed over the previous four years. “I’m concerned that aging platforms and crumbling infrastructure continue to hinder mission success,” Admiral Zukunft said. “Today we’re seeing significant increase in demand across all of our daily activities, and it limits our ability to respond to major contingencies. Indeed, we are facing a time like none other in our nearly 225 years of service. ” Air Coast Guard Station Atlantic City, at the William J. Hughes Federal Aviation Administration Technical Center at the Atlantic City International Airport, is the closest air station to New York City. It was formed in 1998 when Coast Guard Air Station Brooklyn and Group Air Station Cape May, New Jersey, were merged. The squadron comprises 10 Dolphin helicopters. Its crews are responsible for covering hundreds of miles of coastline in Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland and Virginia — as well as interior bays and rivers such as Chesapeake Bay, the Delaware and Hudson Rivers and Long Island Sound. Two helicopters are always ready to be airborne within 30 minutes. Lt. Mark Bruno, 31, was the aircraft commander on duty on Feb. 25 when the call came in that a fishing vessel off the coast of the Rockaways was in trouble. At 4:30 a. m. his team was dispatched to New York City. The Dolphin helicopter can fly faster than 160 m. p. h. but it would still take about 45 minutes to reach the Carolina Queen. The helicopter crew members — including Lt. j. g. Maggie Champlin, 32, the Petty Officer Second Class Kensuke Caldwell, 34, the flight mechanic and Petty Officer Third Class Joe 27, the rescue swimmer — took off in darkness shortly before 5 a. m. knowing very little about what they might find. “We knew it was a fishing vessel, and fishing vessels are always tricky,” Lieutenant Bruno said. There are lines and riggings to contend with, and there often is very little room for error, especially when trying to pluck someone off the deck. And it can be more complicated when the vessel is no longer afloat. “Normally, when a boat is on the waves, it has a certain rhythm,” Lieutenant Bruno said. That is not the case when it has run aground. As the crew sped north, it was in communication with the Fire Department, which arrived on the scene shortly before 5 a. m. It was soon clear that this would not be a straightforward operation. The first distress signal to the outside world from the Carolina Queen was an emergency flare that lit up the sky shortly after 4:30 a. m. Aaron Bell, 25, a UPS worker who lives in an apartment near the water on Beach 56th Place in Queens, said it was so windy and foggy “you couldn’t even see the ocean” from the shore. But someone spotted the flare. Chief Healy said the first 911 call came in at 4:42 a. m. Emergency responders were on the scene at 4:47. Chief Healy has 25 years on the job. He has seen all sorts of disasters and is not one for overstatement. The ship was not more than 80 yards from shore. But once contact was made with those on board, it was clear that the ship and its crew were in dire trouble. “We directed the captain and crew to put on exposure suits,” Chief Healy said. “We had a fear that the boat was going to capsize. ” Waves were cresting as high as 14 feet and breaking on the ship. The scallopers were as stranded as they might have been in the open ocean. As the Fire Department was responding, a Coast Guard rescue boat was also racing to the scene. Dispatched by Coast Guard Station Jones Beach, the boat capsized in the rough waters near East Rockaway Inlet before it reached the Carolina Queen. Its crew members had to save themselves, swimming to shore. The team aboard the helicopter learned of that accident as they made their way up the coast. “You get a little nervous hearing that,” Lieutenant Bruno said. “But it was good to know they were safe. ” That part of the incident is still under investigation the Coast Guard declined to answer questions about what might have gone wrong. The Fire Department had rescue boats to deploy, but the seas were so severe that the F. D. N. Y. decided to wait for air support. A Fire Department helicopter, only a short distance away at Floyd Bennett Field, was grounded because of the heavy fog. The crew of the Carolina Queen would have to wait. Scallop fishing may not conjure up the of those catching crabs in the icy waters of the Bering Strait or the exploits of tuna fisherman chronicled on shows like “The Deadliest Catch. ” But the most dangerous fishing grounds in America remain those off the Northeast Coast — more dangerous than the Bering Sea, according to data collected by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. From 2000 to 2009, the years covered by the agency’s data, 504 people died while fishing at sea and 124 of them were in the Northeast. The scallop industry had the rate of fatalities: 425 deaths per 100, 000 workers. Among all workers in the United States over the same period, according to the C. D. C. there were four deaths per 100, 000 workers. The size of the crew and the time at sea contribute to the dangers. Drew Minkiewicz, a lawyer who represents the Fisheries Survival Fund, said that since 2010, the number of vessels permitted to fish for scallops has been limited, and with fewer unregistered ships at sea, there have been fewer accidents. The Atlantic sea scallop — Placopecten magellanicus — has been popular since the 1950s, when Norwegian immigrants first scoured the seas south of New Bedford, Mass. The supply could swing between scarcity and plenty, but in the 1980s huge algae blooms known as brown tides appeared several years in a row and threatened to destroy the scallops’ ecosystem on the East Coast. Even after those tides passed, the industry almost did itself in by overfishing. Only after regulations were passed in the 1990s and the industry banded together with the scientific community to improve fishing techniques did the fisheries rebound. Now, scalloping along the Atlantic Coast from Maine to North Carolina is among the most lucrative fishing in the world. In 2014, the catch was estimated to be worth more than $424 million. Most of the ships that fish these waters are registered with the National Marine Fisheries Service, including the Carolina Queen. The ship is owned by the Wells Scallop Company, a family operation that stretches back four generations. Bill Wells, who runs the company, declined to talk about the incident. Through an industry spokesman, he said he wanted to thank both the Coast Guard and the New York City emergency responders and said that the incident had been classified as an accident, with no fault found on the part of the crew and no fines issued against his company. The industry operates under strict guidelines, many aimed at ensuring sustainability of the fisheries. To fish some areas with known scallop beds, a permit is needed, and the haul is capped. fishing, on the other hand, is restricted only by the annual limit. The clock is always ticking. “We get so few days to go out, we have to find every efficiency to maximize our days at sea,” said Joe Gilbert, who owns Empire Fisheries and, as captain of a boat called the Rigulus, is part of the scalloping community. In preparation for the Carolina Queen’s voyage, the crew would have spent days getting ready, buying $3, 000 in groceries, loading more than 20, 000 pounds of ice and prepping the equipment on the vessel. The vessel steamed north from the Chesapeake Bay, traveling 15 hours to reach the coast off New Jersey, where the crew would probably have started fishing. Then the work would begin. It is pretty standard for a crew to work eight hours on and take four hours off, but in reality it often is more like nine hours on and three off. If you are a good sleeper, you are lucky to get two hours’ before heading back on deck. The huge tows scouring the ocean bed for scallops dredge for about 50 minutes and are then hauled up, their catch dumped on deck before the tows are reset and plunged back into the water, a process that can be done in as little as 10 minutes. While the dredge did its work, the crew on duty on the Carolina Queen sorted through the muddy mix of rocks and sand and other flotsam on the ship’s deck, looking for the wavy round shells of the scallops. “The biggest danger is handling the gear on deck,” Mr. Gilbert said. “It is very heavy gear on a pitching deck, and you get a lot of injured feet, injured hands. ” Once the scallops are sorted, according to industry regulations, they must be shucked by hand. The crew spends hours opening the shells and slicing out the abductor muscle of the mollusks — the fat, tasty morsel that winds up on plates at a restaurants like Oceana in Midtown Manhattan, where a plate of sea scallops à la plancha costs as much as $33. A single boat can haul 4, 000 pounds in a day. By the time the Carolina Queen ran aground, it was carrying only around 3, 000 pounds. As the Coast Guard helicopter circled overhead, however, the scallops on ice below deck were not the most pressing concern. It was around 5:30 a. m. “It was definitely a dangerous situation they were in,” Lieutenant Bruno said. “They had lost their generator and were taking on water, and I think that is when they made the decision that they had to come off. ” But how? As the helicopter approached the Rockaways, the Coast Guard, in consultation with the Fire Department on shore, had come up with a plan. By then there were dozens of emergency workers on the beach. Petty Officer the rescue swimmer, would be lowered into the surf to assess the situation, and if all went well, swim each stranded fisherman to shore. The fog was still thick as the helicopter made its first sweeping pass overhead. Circling around a second time, the fog had cleared enough to put Petty Officer into the water. Petty Officer had joined the Coast Guard knowing he wanted to become a rescue swimmer. He had made up his mind after spending a summer working as an ocean lifeguard in Kitty Hawk, N. C. He completed Aviation Survival Technician A School in December 2014 and is now, at 27, a fully qualified rescue swimmer. In the course of his training, he had been part of scores of rescue drills. But he had never drilled on a ship that had run aground. As soon as he splashed down in the churning surf, it was clear that putting the fishermen into the water would not work. “I swam in to shore, where the helicopter picked me up and then subsequently deployed me to the bow of the boat,” he said. “It was really rocking, bouncing back and forth. ” “The ship was listing 45 degrees to port,” he said. “The crew was all dressed in their survival suits when I landed on the bow of the boat. They were very cooperative. Several of them had small black garbage bags filled with personal effects that they asked if they could bring with them. They definitely seemed ready to leave. ” Even if the rescuers had managed to rig some wires from ship to shore, which the Fire Department was prepared to do, the scallopers would have had to leap 25 to 30 feet into the water and then contend with waves more than 12 feet high. “It had looked different from the air, but once I was on the ship it was clear that that plan would not work,” Petty Officer said. The Coast Guard decided to lift each of the seven stranded men from the boat using a rescue basket — a delicate operation. “Water was already in the hull, and the ship was moving in a way separate from the way the ocean was moving,” recalled Petty Officer . Lieutenant Bruno hovered the helicopter some 40 feet above the vessel as Petty Officer loaded the scallopers, one by one, into the basket. And one by one, they were ferried to shore, where the Fire Department was waiting. As morning broke, the helicopter had been airborne for more than two hours, and there were still fishermen on the ship. Fuel was running dangerously low. Time was running out. The seventh man — the captain — wearing jeans and a sweatshirt, was the last to leave the ship. He asked about remaining with the vessel but agreed in the end that it was best to go. “His life being more valuable than a piece of equipment,” Petty Officer noted. As the captain was loaded into the basket, Lieutenant Bruno looked at his fuel gauge. He had four minutes left. With the captain safely deposited on shore and the mission complete, Lieutenant Bruno flew to Floyd Bennett Field and set the helicopter down. All seven fishermen were safe and were transported to Jamaica Hospital Medical Center for observation. None was seriously injured. The ship, too, was salvaged. It is now being repaired at a shipyard in Massachusetts. Even the scallops on board were saved. They were sold to a dealer based in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Petty Officer reflecting on the rescue, said it was both the easiest and the hardest he had ever taken part in. “It was my first,” he said. | 0fake
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Illinois House passes $5 billion tax package, spending plan | CHICAGO (Reuters) - Illinois’ Democratic-controlled House of Representatives passed big, permanent increases in income tax rates and a $36 billion fiscal 2018 spending plan on Sunday with the help of some Republican votes as the cash-strapped state scrambled to stave off a bond rating downgrade to junk. The $5 billion tax package, which passed in a 72-45 vote and drew an immediate veto threat from Republican Governor Bruce Rauner, would boost the personal income tax rate to 4.95 percent from 3.75 percent and the corporate rate to 7 percent from 5.25 percent. It would also close tax loopholes and expand tax credits. The spending plan won passage in a 81-34 vote. Both bills now head to the Democratic-led Senate, which returns to session on Monday, for concurrence votes. The country’s fifth most populous state began an unprecedented third-straight fiscal year on Saturday without a complete budget. A fiscal stalemate between Illinois’ governor and Democrats who control the legislature has pounded the state’s credit ratings to a step above junk and ballooned its unpaid bill backlog to $15 billion. The pair of decisive House votes set Democrats on a collision course with Rauner, who vowed to veto the 32 percent personal income tax hike he pinned to House Speaker Michael Madigan. “The legislature could have passed a no reform budget like this one two years ago,” Rauner said in a statement. “Instead, they allowed Mike Madigan to play his political games, passed phony budgets, racked up our debt and inflicted pain on the most vulnerable.” Rauner has insisted for two years that a budget be coupled with a property tax freeze and legislative term limits, among other things. In order for Rauner to match his tough words with results, he will have to persuade at least two of the 15 House Republicans to switch their yes votes in favor of the tax hike legislation. The measure passed the House with one more vote than the threshold necessary to override a gubernatorial veto. In his own statement after the votes, Madigan praised how Republicans and Democrats together took a “crucial step toward reaching a compromise that ends the budget crisis by passing a fully funded state budget in a bipartisan way.” The tax legislation would give the state a revenue boost to support a full-year budget and start paying down the bill pile that was on track to grow even larger after a federal judge on Friday ordered increased payments on Medicaid provider bills. In giving Democratic supporters the narrow margin to move the legislation to the state Senate, some House Republicans shed tears during debate, predicted their tax votes could topple them politically in next year’s elections and delivered a pointed challenge to Rauner to set aside his budgetary preconditions and do what was right for the state’s fiscal health. “I say to the governor, if these bills pass the House and Senate, the revenue bill and expenditure bill, we will have sent you a balanced budget. Have the courage to do what is right and sign the bills,” said State Representative David Harris, who was among 15 Republicans to side with Democrats. “Bring this madness to an end.” Their defiance came after House Republican Leader Jim Durkin, a Rauner ally, noted the deal was not negotiated with the governor and did not represent “an exercise in good faith,” given that negotiations involving some of the governor’s non-budgetary priorities were shunted to the sidelines. | 0fake
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AT&T, Time Warner and the Death of Privacy | AT&T, Time Warner and the Death of Privacy
By Amy Goodman and Denis Moynihan AT&T plans to buy Time Warner for $85.4 billion. ( Mark Lennihan / AP )
It has been 140 years since Alexander Graham Bell uttered the first words through his experimental telephone, to his lab assistant: “Mr. Watson—come here—I want to see you.” His invention transformed human communication, and the world. The company he started grew into a massive monopoly, AT&T. The federal government eventually deemed it too powerful, and broke up the telecom giant in 1982. Well, AT&T is back and some would say on track to become bigger and more powerful than before, announcing plans to acquire Time Warner, the media company, to create one of the largest entertainment and communications conglomerates on the planet. Beyond the threat to competition, the proposed merger—which still must pass regulatory scrutiny—poses significant threats to privacy and the basic freedom to communicate. AT&T is currently No. 10 on the Forbes 500 list of the U.S.‘s highest-grossing companies. If it is allowed to buy Time Warner, No. 99 on the list, it will form an enormous, “vertically integrated” company that controls a vast pool of content and how people access that content. Free Press, the national media policy and activism group, is mobilizing the public to oppose the deal. “This merger would create a media powerhouse unlike anything we’ve ever seen before. AT&T would control mobile and wired internet access, cable channels, movie franchises, a film studio and more,” Candace Clement of Free Press wrote. “That means AT&T would control internet access for hundreds of millions of people and the content they view, enabling it to prioritize its own offerings and use sneaky tricks to undermine net neutrality.” Net neutrality is that essential quality of the internet that makes it so powerful. Columbia University law professor Tim Wu coined the term “net neutrality.” After the Federal Communications Commission approved strong net neutrality rules last year, Wu told us on the Democracy Now! News hour, “There need to be basic rules of the road for the internet, and we’re not going to trust cable and telephone companies to respect freedom of speech or respect new innovators, because of their poor track record.” Millions of citizens weighed in with public comments to the FCC in support of net neutrality, along with groups like Free Press and The Electronic Frontier Foundation. They were joined by titans of the internet like Google, Amazon and Microsoft. Arrayed against this coalition were the telecom and cable companies, the oligopoly of internet service providers that sell internet access to hundreds of millions of Americans. It remains to be seen if AT&T doesn’t in practice break net neutrality rules and create a fast lane for its content and slow down content from its competitors, including the noncommercial sector. Another problem that AT&T presents, that would only be exacerbated by the merger, is the potential to invade the privacy of its millions of customers. In 2006, AT&T whistleblower Mark Klein revealed that the company was secretly sharing all of its customers’ metadata with the National Security Agency. Klein, who installed the fiber-splitting hardware in a secret room at the main AT&T facility in San Francisco, had his whistleblowing allegations confirmed several years later by Edward Snowden’s NSA leaks. While that dragnet surveillance program was supposedly shut down in 2011, a similar surveillance program still exists. It’s called “Project Hemisphere.” It was exposed by The New York Times in 2013, with substantiating documents just revealed this week in The Daily Beast. In “Project Hemisphere,” AT&T sells metadata to law enforcement, under the aegis of the so-called war on drugs. A police agency sends in a request for all the data related to a particular person or telephone number, and, for a major fee and without a subpoena, AT&T delivers a sophisticated data set, that can, according to The Daily Beast, “determine where a target is located, with whom he speaks, and potentially why.” Where you go, what you watch, text and share, with whom you speak, all your internet searches and preferences, all gathered and “vertically integrated,” sold to police and perhaps, in the future, to any number of AT&T’s corporate customers. We can’t know if Alexander Graham Bell envisioned this brave new digital world when he invented the telephone. But this is the future that is fast approaching, unless people rise up and stop this merger.
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An Architect Who Built His Career on Resuscitating New York Landmarks - The New York Times | Grand Central Terminal, the main building on Ellis Island and the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory at the New York Botanical Garden — all among the greatest New York City landmarks — look better today than they have since their earliest years. Many hands were responsible. John Belle was the common denominator. Mr. Belle, the retired founding partner of Beyer Blinder Belle, an architectural and planning firm that has specialized in preservation, restoration and contextual design, died last week at 84. With his death, the city has lost an architect who conveyed a genial joy in resuscitating the masterworks of his predecessors. That made him an appealingly modest figure in a room full of big architectural egos, since he was at his best when his own interventions were least obvious. New York has also lost a link to the intellectual crucible of the 1960s, when Jane Jacobs and others demanded that architects stop obliterating the past and, instead, take time to understand the many ways in which people were well served by older buildings and neighborhoods. “Preservation is one of the highest forms of good citizenship,” Mr. Belle said on his firm’s website. “As a witness to the aftermath of the urban renewal movement in New York, I was determined to find a different way. ” For her part, Ms. Jacobs held Beyer Blinder Belle in high regard. “They were looking at the fabric of the community,” she said in an interview in 1998. “That was very welcome and very exciting, that there were professionals who were, at last, doing that. ” She added: “A community can’t just come by waving a wand. It has history. History was, to the modernists, an enemy. So this was a very radical realization. And an important one. ” John Belle was born on June 30, 1932, in Cardiff, Wales. His father, Arthur, was a clerk at a Lyons tea shop in Cardiff. His mother, Gladys, was a housewife. Mr. Belle received diplomas from the Portsmouth School of Architecture in England and the Architectural Association in London before moving to the United States in 1959. Once in America, Mr. Belle worked for Josep Lluís Sert and Victor Gruen before starting his own firm in 1968 with Richard L. Blinder and John H. Beyer. Mr. Blinder died in 2006. Mr. Beyer is still active. Mr. Belle’s early work included community planning projects in Manhattan. With the addition of James Marston Fitch to the practice in 1979, Beyer Blinder Belle began moving to the forefront of architecture. The firm attracted wide attention in 1990 with its renovation and restoration of the abandoned Ellis Island immigration station into the Ellis Island National Museum of Immigration. The vaulted ceiling in the former Registry Room, made of 28, 258 Guastavino tiles, was cleaned until it looked — as Mr. Belle aptly put it — like . Where modern interventions were needed, they were made as inconspicuous and respectful as possible. When the Haupt Conservatory at the botanical garden in the Bronx was restored in 1997, Herbert Muschamp, who was then the architecture critic at The New York Times, said it could “once again hold its sparkling glass head up high amid the great architectural symbols of New York. ” Though critics have faulted Beyer Blinder Belle’s conservatism, it is worth recalling that the firm was associated in 1998 with the daring architect Santiago Calatrava in what proved to be a losing bid to redesign the James A. Farley Building, also known as the General Post Office, as a Pennsylvania Station annex. Penn Station was not where Mr. Belle was to win his greatest renown. That was at Grand Central. You almost had to have been there in the 1970s and ’80s to believe how far the terminal had fallen into decrepitude, even after its status as a landmark was upheld by the United States Supreme Court in 1978. Travelers shared Grand Central with a large homeless population. “The building was divided into turf claimed by different drug dealers,” Mr. Belle and Maxinne R. Leighton wrote in “Grand Central: Gateway to a Million Lives. ” “Commuters were scared to take trains there at night. Parents warned their children not to use the dangerous bathrooms. ” In 1990, a design and engineering consortium led by Beyer Blinder Belle began work. Their strategic first strike was to demolish a billboard called the Kodak Colorama, which had blocked daylight into the main concourse for 40 years. “It was as if life were being breathed back into the building,” Mr. Belle and Ms. Leighton wrote. “Many commuters stopped in their tracks, speechless and amazed at the change that had so instantly brought back the majesty of the space. ” Their astonishment increased as the concourse ceiling was cleaned by workers on a scaffold that was rolled slowly through the room over a period. The mud brown sky turned a startling teal, with stars, constellations and zodiac signs popping out in contrast. Besides restoring the past, Beyer Blinder Belle made fundamental changes, too, starting with the construction of an entirely new marble staircase to the east balcony. It echoed, but did not replicate, the ornate western staircase. Some preservationists hated the idea. But the firm prevailed before city and state preservation agencies after it uncovered a plan by the original architects, Warren Wetmore, that showed a staircase to the east balcony. That proved, Mr. Belle and Ms. Leighton wrote, that the idea “was not an ploy to have our personal imprint on the building, but that in fact our goal was to complete the original design. ” Mr. Muschamp, the architecture critic, approved. “The new eastern staircase, which threatened to diminish the room’s amplitude, has the opposite effect of magnifying it,” he wrote in 1998, as the $425 million renovation neared completion. He continued, “Even more impressive is the uncovering of the ramps, located just behind the ticket windows, that lead down to the lower level and its fabled Oyster Bar. ” “Beyer Blinder Belle’s greatest accomplishment,” Mr. Muschamp said, “has been to reveal that Grand Central is above all a monument to movement. ” Mr. Belle’s first wife, Wendy Adams Belle, an artist and teacher, died in 1974. His second wife, Anne Belle, a documentary filmmaker, died in 2003. He died on Thursday in Remsenburg, N. Y. where he had a home. He also lived in Manhattan. The cause was Lewy body disease, said his son David Belle, who survives him, along with another son, Sebastian three daughters, Amelia, Fenella and Antonia Chapman and eight grandchildren. Mr. Belle knew his work would never fully be done. “The act of restoring a building to its original state is only half the battle,” he and Ms. Leighton wrote. “The other half is to guard against its denigration throughout its future existence. ” | 0fake
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American dream, revisited | by Pepe Escobar for the Strategic Culture Foundation
Will Trump pull a Brexit times ten? What would it take, beyond WikiLeaks, to bring the Clinton (cash) machine down? Will Hillary win and then declare WWIII against her Russia/Iran/Syria “axis of evil”? Will the Middle East totally explode? Will the pivot to Asia totally implode? Will China be ruling the world by 2025?
Amidst so many frenetic fragments of geopolitical reality precariously shored against our ruins, the temptation is irresistible to hark back to the late, great, deconstructionist master Jean Baudrillard. During the post-mod 1980s it was hip to be Baudrillardian to the core; his America , originally published in France in 1986, should still be read today as the definitive metaphysical/geological/cultural Instagram of Exceptionalistan.
By the late 1990s, at the end of the millennium, two years before 9/11 – that seminal “before and after” event – Baudrillard was already stressing how we live in a black market maze. Now, it’s a black market paroxysm.
Global multitudes are subjected to a black market of work – as in the deregulation of the official market; a black market of unemployment; a black market of financial speculation; a black market of misery and poverty; a black market of sex (as in prostitution); a black market of information (as in espionage and shadow wars); a black market of weapons; and even a black market of thinking.
Way beyond the late 20 th century, in the 2010s what the West praises as “liberal democracy” – actually a neoliberal diktat – has virtually absorbed every ideological divergence, while leaving behind a heap of differences floating in some sort of trompe l’oeil effect. What’s left is a widespread, noxious condition; the pre-emptive prohibition of any critical thought, which has no way to express itself other than becoming clandestine (or finding the right internet niche).
Baudrillard already knew that the concept of “alter” – killed by conviviality – does not exist in the official market. So an “alter” black market also sprung up, co-opted by traffickers; that’s, for instance, the realm of racism, nativism and other forms of exclusion. Baudrillard already identified how a “contraband alter”, expressed by sects and every form of nationalism (nowadays, think about the spectrum between jihadism and extreme-right wing political parties) was bound to become more virulent in a society that is desperately intolerant, obsessed with regimentation, and totally homogenized.
There could be so much exhilaration inbuilt in life lived in a bewildering chimera cocktail of cultures, signs, differences and “values”; but then came the coupling of thinking with its exact IT replica – artificial intelligence, playing with the line of demarcation between human and non-human in the domain of thought.
The result, previewed by Baudrillard, was the secretion of a parapolitical society – with a sort of mafia controlling this secret form of generalized corruption (think the financial Masters of the Universe). Power is unable to fight this mafia – and that would be, on top of it, hypocritical, because the mafia itself emanates from power.
The end result is that what really matters today, anywhere, mostly tends to happen outside all official circuits; like in a social black market.
Is there any information “truth”?
Baudrillard showed how political economy is a massive machine, producing value, producing signs of wealth, but not wealth itself. The whole media/information system – still ruled by America – is a massive machine producing events as signs; exchangeable value in the universal market of ideology, the star system and catastrophism.
This abstraction of information works as in the economy – disgorging a coded material, deciphered in advance, and negotiable in terms of models, as much as the economy disgorges products negotiable in terms of price and value.
Since all merchandise, thanks to this abstraction of value, is exchangeable, then every event (or non-event) is also exchangeable, all replacing one another in the cultural market of information.
And that takes us to where we live now; Trans-History, and Trans-Politics – where events have really not happened, as they get lost in the vacuum of information (as much as the economy gets lost in the vacuum of speculation).
Thus this quintessential Baudrillard insight; if we consider History as a movie – and that’s what it is now – then the “truth” of information is no more than post-production synch, dubbing and subtitles.
Still, as we all keep an intense desire for devouring events, there is immense disappointment as well, because the content of information is desperately inferior to the means of broadcasting them. Call it a pathetic, universal contagion; people don’t know what to do about their sadness or enthusiasm – in parallel to our societies becoming theaters of the absurd where nothing has consequences.
No acts, deeds, crimes (the 2008 financial crisis), political events (the WikiLeaks emails showing virtually no distinction between the “nonprofit” Clinton cash machine, what’s private and what’s public, the obsessive pursuit of personal wealth, and the affairs of the state) seem to have real consequences.
Immunity, impunity, corruption, speculation – we veer towards a state of zero responsibility (think Goldman Sachs). So, automatically, we yearn for an event of maximum consequence, a “fatal” event to repair that scandalous non-equivalence. Like a symbolic re-equilibrium of the scales of destiny.
So we dream of an amazing event – Trump winning the election? Hillary declaring WWIII? – that would free us from the tyranny of meaning and the constraint of always searching for the equivalence between effects and causes.
Shadowing the world
Just like Baudrillard, I got to see “deep” America in the 1980s and 1990s by driving across America.
So sooner or later one develops a metaphysical relationship with that ubiquitous warning, “Objects in this mirror may be closer than they appear.”
But what if they may also be further than they appear?
The contemporary instant event/celebrity culture deluge of images upon us; does it get us closer to a so-called “real” world that is in fact very far away from us? Or does it in fact keep the world at a distance – creating an artificial depth of field that protects us from the imminence of objects and the virtual danger they represent?
In parallel, we keep slouching towards a single future language – the language of algorithms, as designed across the Wall Street/Silicon Valley axis – that would represent a real anthropological catastrophe, just like the globalist/New World Order dream of One Thought and One Culture.
Languages are multiple and singular – by definition. If there were a single language, words would become univocal, regulating themselves in an autopilot of meaning. There would be no interplay – as in artificial languages there’s no interplay. Language would be just the meek appendix of a unified reality – the negative destiny of a languidly unified human species.
That’s where the American “dream” seems to be heading. It’s time to take the next exit ramp. The Essential Saker: from the trenches of the emerging multipolar world $27.95 | 1real
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Fear of Iranian general left Iraqi Kurdish oil fields deserted | BAGHDAD/LONDON (Reuters) - When the Iraqi army and Iranian-backed Shi ite militia entered a key oil processing facility in Iraq s north to retake it from Kurdish Peshmerga forces last week, the installation was deserted and its alarm bells ringing. Engineers and workers on the facility, which processes oil from two major fields in the Kirkuk area of predominantly Sunni Kurdistan, had fled, fearing the military advance. No one wanted to risk their life and decided to evacuate as stories about the Shi ite militia and Qassem Soleimani were spreading fast, said a senior Kurdish oil industry source, referring to the head of foreign operations for Iran s elite Revolutionary Guards. The source declined to be identified. Iraqi engineers arrived to the sound of alarm bells warning about system malfunctions, prompting them to immediately shut down wells. Now, they need passwords and expertise from their Kurdish counterparts to restore oil output fully. The loss of control of Kirkuk oil fields is likely to starve the KRG of vital oil revenue and cause deep concern to global trading houses such as Vitol and Glencore, which have granted the semi-autonomous government billions of dollars in loans against future oil sales. Baghdad s lightning military offensive into northern Iraq came after the Kurdistan Regional Government held an independence referendum last month. Major-General Soleimani, one of the most influential military figures in the Middle East, with reach in Syria and Lebanon, issued tough warnings to Kurdish leaders ahead of the Iraqi military advance. We went inside the oilfield facilities after Kurdish workers fled and we found overalls and safety boots thrown on the ground, said an engineer from the Baghdad-run North Oil Company, who declined to be named because he was ordered not to speak publicly about the issue. It seems that workers took them off and escaped very quickly. NOC crews entered oil facilities in the Bai Hassan and Avana fields on Oct. 17 for the first time since 2014, when Peshmerga forces drove Islamic State from the area and found all crude oil stations unmanned. Peshmerga fighters had also withdrawn. After we discovered that some of the key equipment was missing and the control panel was ringing alarms of crude processing malfunction, we immediately shut down oil wells, the NOC engineer said. A week after the operation, Iraqi engineers are still struggling to resume Kirkuk s oil production, saying they had yet to understand how to operate the equipment processing some 350,000 barrels per day. The military offensive more than halved Kurdistan s oil output and cut its exports to global markets via Turkey by two thirds. The drop in exports has deprived the region of more than $200 million in revenues over the past week, a Kurdish oil industry source familiar with loadings told Reuters. It has also dealt a further blow to the region s finances already stretched by a fight against Islamic State and a budget crisis caused by a fall in oil prices. The United States has called on both sides to resume dialogue, saying the tensions hamper efforts to fight Islamic State. Resuming normal oil production and exports will be challenging and will take at least another week and will only succeed if Iraqi and Kurdish engineers agree to cooperate, according to both sides. On Tuesday, NOC officials asked Kurdish engineering firm Kar Group to send back its workers, according to sources on both sides. Iraqi engineers need guidance on how to operate recently installed equipment at Bai Hassan and Avana, the sources said. The pumping and operational stations for both oil fields are located in the city of Dahuk, which unlike Kirkuk is still under the control of the Peshmerga forces. Energy facilities in Kirkuk are more like a locked box and only their crew have the password, the Iraqi engineer said. Kar Group has, however, so far refrained from going back without security guarantees, according to sources close to the engineering company. Kirkuk, one of the oldest and best known oil areas in the Middle East, had long been under the control of Iraqi forces until it was over-run by Islamic State. In 2014, it was retaken by the Peshmerga, the official security forces of the KRG, as part of their advance on Islamic State. That allowed Kurdistan to regain control of an area it believes is historically Kurdish and ramp up exports from the oil fields while borrowing billions of dollars from trading houses and Russian state oil major Rosneft. We need to figure out who gets what when the fields resume production. At the moment the potential split of revenues is far from clear, said the Kurdish oil industry source. Before the referendum, Kurdistan was exporting some 600,000 bpd of crude via Turkey, which it said had made it almost totally economically independent as it could pay its own bills without the need to wait for budget transfers from Baghdad. Under the deal with Baghdad, Kurdistan was exporting 540,000 bpd on behalf of the government in the city of Erbil and some 60,000 bpd on behalf of NOC. With the loss of control of the Kirkuk area, Kurdistan will be in theory left with only 250,000-300,000 bpd of its own output, less than it needs to cover its debt obligations. Vitol, Glencore, Petraco and Trafigura have loaned Kurdistan some $2.5 billion and Russia s Rosneft has loaned some $1.2 billion. Glencore s boss Ivan Glasenberg said last week he could not rule out a rescheduling of the payments. | 0fake
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In Once-Tolerant Mosul, a Social Unraveling That Feels Permanent - The New York Times | ERBIL, Iraq — More than two years ago, a Christian farmer in his 70s named Mosa Zachariah fled his village near Mosul with, as he put it, only the pants he was wearing. He left behind his house, “tons of wheat” and a BMW. But now that his town, an early target of the Iraqi security forces as they advance on Mosul itself, has been cleared of the Islamic State forces, it is not jubilation he feels, but fear of what awaits him if he tries to return. He wistfully talked about his city’s diversity as something completely unattainable now. “In that time, the Muslims and Christians were like brothers,” he said. Musab Juma, a Shiite who used to live in the Mosul area, said he would not be going back, either. He relocated to Najaf, in southern Iraq, where he has a food stall and has decorated his home with old photos and antiques from his hometown. Yazidis and Kurds and Shabaks, other minorities that were once vital pieces of Mosul’s human tapestry, have moved on, too. And many Sunni Arabs, who make up most of Mosul’s population, say they will never go home again, even if that is where their parents and grandparents are buried. Before the Islamic State’s occupation began more than two years ago, Mosul was Iraq’s most diverse city. Its rich culture, stretching back to the ancient Assyrians, and reputation for tolerance made it a vital symbol of an Iraq that could at least aspire to being a unified and whole nation. Now, as Mosul’s exiled civilians watch the battle for their city unfold, the only thing they seem to have in common is the belief that they once shared a special history that can never be reclaimed. Some of that belief, but not all, was torn apart after the invasion of Iraq in 2003, when many Christians felt threatened and fled as Arabs and Kurds fought over old animosities. Mosul, home for many former Baathist army officers suddenly tossed from power after the invasion, became a center of the Sunni insurgency and a stronghold of Al Qaeda in Iraq, the precursor of the Islamic State. “Until 2003, the Mosul community was living in peaceful coexistence, but after that, things changed,” said Jafar Khaleel, 46, who left Mosul in 2014 after the Islamic State onslaught. “The Sunnis don’t trust the Shiites. The Shabak cannot live with the Christian. This is what the American occupation left behind. ” Back then, there was a social compact for Iraq’s minorities that at least promised security in exchange for tolerating the tyranny and lack of personal freedoms under Saddam Hussein’s government, led by an elite class of Iraq’s minority Sunni population. Today, there is widespread nostalgia for that time, though it is not shared by most of Iraq’s Shiite majority, now in power. “For generations, life was normal there,” said Sabah Salim Dawood, 62, a Christian from Mosul. “In the factories, on the farms, in the offices, nobody asked, ‘What are you?’ ” Now there is a sense of unraveling that feels permanent. “A man cannot describe in words what he misses,” said Omar Ahmed, 29, who used to work in Mosul’s Health Ministry and is now exiled in the northern Kurdish region. Walking through a ransacked church recently in Bartella, a mostly Christian town at the edge of Mosul, reveals an elegy to what has been lost. Some walls have been burned others are streaked with Islamic State graffiti. A whiteboard on a wall in an anteroom lists a daily schedule for Islamic State recruits — fitness routines, weapons instructions and Shariah law lessons. Strewn on the floor are dusty reminders of those who once prayed there: Christian storybooks, copies of a “quarterly social cultural journal” published by the Chaldean Church, a Santa Claus figurine, photographs of schoolgirls and a pink plastic rose. An old Iraqi tourist guide from the 1980s celebrated Mosul as a city whose rich history as a place of great Arab conquests important to the region’s past that made it “a city of great importance. ” Its nickname as the “the city of two springs” — because autumn and spring weather are so similar — was a testament to the city’s livability. “Since 1969, a Spring Festival has been held every year in Mosul,” the tourist guide noted. “Flower processions and folk dancing by thousands of people from every walk of life bring much gaiety to the place. ” Moslawis, as they are known, have their own dialect, and jokes, many based on their reputation for being stingy, which goes back to a famine in 1917, when they suffered as the Ottoman Empire took food from the city to feed its starving army. The rest of Iraq is known for its generosity, but a common joke goes that the only time a Moslawi will invite someone in for lunch is during Ramadan, when everyone is fasting. Even so, the city is also known for its food, especially Mosul’s kibbe, flat bulgur wheat discs stuffed with ground meat that are famous all over Iraq. There is the abundance of cultural heritage, the remnants of empires: ancient churches, monasteries, tombs, shrines and an antiquities museum that is important not just to Mosul but the broader Middle East. Nearly all have been destroyed or defaced by the Islamic State. Putting the city back together socially is “going to take a very, very long time,” said Rasha a Sunni Arab from Mosul who now lives in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, where she is a research fellow at the Studies and Research Center and writes about her home city. “I think everyone is going to live on their own. The Yazidis are going to live on their own. Christians are going to live on their own. The Sunnis are going to live on their own. ” As a child, she recalls, her classroom had seven Christians, seven or eight Kurds, two or three Yazidis, one or two Shiites, and the rest Sunni Arabs. There were four or five languages spoken, she said, plus three religions and two sects of Islam. “That diversity you didn’t find anywhere else,” she said. Walking to school, she would pass by a winged bull statue from Assyrian times, at the old city walls, that has been demolished by the Islamic State. “I really regret now that I took them for granted,” she said. Perhaps most painful is seeing former friends turn into enemies. Muhammad Sayed, 26, is Shiite, so for him there was only this choice when the Islamic State took over Mosul: Leave or be killed. Like many Shiites from the city, he eventually moved to Najaf, a holy city for his sect, where he now bakes bread and sells it on the street. “The Islamic State destroyed my childhood and my memories,” he said. “They turned some of my friends into murdering terrorists, some of the friends that I studied with in primary school and high school, and I have the most beautiful memories with them. But they have joined the terrorists, and for them, I have become an infidel. ” The task of trying to stitch Iraq back together is immensely complicated. But for Iraqis who have been displaced, it all boils down to a single, simple human emotion. “The major problem in Iraq is dealing with fear,” said Falah Mustafa, the Kurdish region’s foreign minister, at a recent panel discussion in Erbil, about Mosul’s future. “It’s immensely painful to be betrayed by your neighbor. ” | 0fake
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U.S. patent review board becomes conservative target | NEW YORK(Reuters) - In August, a dozen inventors gathered around a fire pit outside the headquarters of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in Alexandria, Virginia, and set alight patents they said had been rendered worthless by an overreaching federal government. “It’s time for us to make patents great again,” Michael Caputo, an advisor to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, told those gathered. US Inventor, the group behind the protest Caputo now represents as a spokesman, is calling for the abolition of the U.S. Patent Trial and Appeal Board, an administrative tribunal run by the patent office that reviews the validity of patents. The rallying cry marks an about-face for some conservatives, who broadly supported the board’s creation in 2011 as a way to rein in trial lawyers and “patent trolls,” who hold patents for the sole purpose of suing big companies for licensing fees. “Things have really flipped when it comes to the conservative perspective on patents,” said Charles Duan, a lawyer with left-leaning consumer group Public Knowledge. Much of the credit goes to activists who have convinced many conservatives that the real problem is not out-of-control litigation but how the tribunal designed to speed up resolving patent disputes favors big business over smaller rivals. The change of positions has been aided by deepening right-wing distrust of tech giants, such as Apple Inc and Alphabet Inc's Google, which have benefited the most from PTAB while embracing liberal causes like immigration or gay and transgender rights. (Graphic: tmsnrt.rs/2A1LfXV) The U.S. Supreme Court is due to rule sometime next year on whether the tribunal is an unconstitutional intrusion of the executive branch onto matters reserved for the courts and influential conservative groups are already weighing in. The Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute, Federalist Society, and the American Conservative Union have published articles or submitted briefs arguing that PTAB should be abolished. Most legal experts expect it to survive, though, noting the Supreme Court has largely accepted the powers of executive-branch courts in other areas, such as public employee benefits. The mounting criticism of PTAB could still convince the court’s conservative justices to vote for abolition, said Q. Todd Dickinson, a lawyer with the firm Polsinelli and a former director of the patent office. The advocacy effort by conservative groups could also convince the Trump administration to curb the patent board’s power, Dickinson said. AN ANTI-TROLL WEAPON More than 70 percent of the Republicans in Congress backed the legislation that created PTAB. At the time, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce said the law would “help reduce unnecessary litigation against American businesses.” In February the same business lobbying group criticized PTAB for creating “cost and uncertainty for patent owners.” U.S. Representative Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican who holds patents relating to computer interfaces, was not in Congress at the time the board was created, but said conservatives’ initial intent to curb excessive litigation has gradually given way to fears that PTAB is helping the wrong businesses. The board’s creation was pushed by big tech companies, banks and retailers, who complained they were being inundated with “troll” lawsuits. Successfully defending a patent case in federal court often takes years and costs millions of dollars, escalating pressure to settle. PTAB offered a cheaper and faster alternative. The average cost of litigating a PTAB petition to a final decision is about $250,000, according to patent risk management company RPX Corp. There are no juries and limited live witness testimony in PTAB proceedings, and its administrative judges apply a lower standard of proof than would be required in federal court. About 80 percent of the patents that PTAB makes final decisions on are either partially or fully invalidated, according to a report issued in October by the patent office. But the agency also said 56 percent of patents challenged at PTAB are upheld, in part because the court frequently declines requests to review patents. A spokesman for the patent office declined to comment. Inventors say PTAB has made it much harder to get patents licensed by big technology, which now routinely respond to patent infringement claims by initiating PTAB proceedings. “Patents owners who don’t have the wherewithal to withstand serial challenges to the validity of their patents just can’t license them,” said David Pridham, chief executive of Dominion Harbor, a firm that owns and attempts to license former Eastman Kodak Co patents. Paul Morinville, a cowboy hat-wearing entrepreneur from Indiana and the founder of US Inventor, said it has become harder for him to get funding for his business based on software patents he holds. Morinville has been speaking to Republican lawmakers and their staffers for the past four years and many conservatives credit his group with raising alarm about the patent tribunal. “They are as close to your iconic garage inventor as you can get, so their stories really resonate,” said James Edwards, a conservative lobbyist focused on patent law. While conservative groups have been most vocal, the debate transcends party lines. Some Republicans, such as Representative Darrell Issa of California, keep supporting the PTAB, while some Democrats have joined Republicans in calls to curb its powers. Many trial lawyers whose case loads have fallen also oppose it. But many liberals have embraced PTAB as a means of eliminating brand-name pharmaceutical patents that keep drug prices high. Generic drug makers and large tech companies are also among the board’s supporters, arguing it has actually increased competition by weeding out low-quality patents. The conservative backlash in part reflects how the right views tech giants like Apple and Google, which thanks to the tribunal have prevailed in hundreds of disputes with patent owners seeking hefty compensation. “Google, Amazon, and Apple and other big tech companies - you look at their power and it is really astounding. And they are generally left-leaning companies,” said Matthew Dowd, a conservative patent lawyer in Washington D.C. who has represented US Inventor. “Those dynamics are definitely playing into the increasing willingness of conservatives to speak up about patents.” | 0fake
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Trump interviews four for Fed chair job, to decide in two-three weeks | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump is ramping up his search for a new chief for the U.S. central bank, meeting with former Federal Reserve Governor Kevin Warsh and three others and promising a decision next month. “I’ve had four meetings for Fed chairman and I’ll be making a decision over the next two or three weeks,” Trump told reporters on the White House South Lawn. Trump has previously suggested he may reappoint Fed Chair Janet Yellen to the post. Jerome Powell, one of the current governors on the Fed’s board, also met with Trump earlier this week about the Fed job, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday. Trump on Friday did not provide details on his meetings. A new Fed chair would take the helm as the central bank eases well away from crisis-era policies in response to a strengthening economy and falling unemployment, though inflation still lingers below the Fed’s 2-percent goal. Under Yellen, the Fed has raised interest rates and launched a plan to shrink its $4.5 trillion balance sheet. Much of the latter was accumulated through a controversial bond-buying program that Yellen said helped the economy avert an even deeper downturn. Her term as chair expires in February. Warsh was a Fed governor between 2006 and 2011 and resigned from the board because of his opposition to the bond-buying program. He has called for a revamp of how the Fed makes monetary policy, saying it needs “fresh air” from markets and from the “real economy.” Treasury yields spurted higher on news of the Trump meetings; Warsh is viewed as more of a hawk than Yellen. “He’s definitely more hawkish on the spectrum. He is quite a contrast to Yellen. It does seem he is the front-runner even though it’s not a sure thing he will be nominated,” Gennadiy Goldberg, interest rates strategist at TD Securities in New York, said of Warsh. As recently as July, Trump had not ruled out reappointing Yellen, telling the Wall Street Journal that he liked her demeanor and desire to keep interest rates low. In addition to Warsh and Powell, Stanford University economist John Taylor’s name also has been floated as a contender. Powell specialized in financial regulatory matters during his five years on the Fed Board of Governors, which is led by the Fed chair. There has also been speculation that Trump could turn to his top economic aide, Gary Cohn, for the Fed chair position. A Fed spokesman declined to comment on the process while Warsh and Taylor did not respond to requests for comment. | 0fake
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Delingpole: Top Physicist and Leading Republicans Urge Trump to Quit Paris Climate Agreement | Should Donald Trump hamstring the U. S. economy, rip off the consumer, despoil the landscape, give succour to America’s enemies and promote junk science — all in order to keep a “seat at the table” with people who despise him and think he’s an idiot? [To some people — including several senior members of the Trump administration — the answer isn’t immediately obvious. Which is why this week both a leading U. S. scientist and a number of top Senate Republicans have had to urge the president to see sense and ignore the siren voices urging him to stay in the UN’s Paris climate agreement. The 20 top Republicans, led by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, . have signed a letter warning the president that remaining in Paris “would subject the United States to significant litigation risk that could your administration’s ability to fulfill its goal of rescinding the Clean Power Plan. ” Meanwhile, the distinguished physicist Will Happer — long mooted as a possible Science Advisor in the Trump administration — has argued that staying in Paris will not only be pointless but will be a betrayal of Trump’s election promise to voters that he would pull out. Climate policy, however, poses a grave threat. Yes, those who engineered the Paris Agreement will be upset if the United States withdraws. Withdrawal will also outrage the many who profit from climate alarmism. But remaining in the Paris Agreement will not sit well with many of those who voted for Mr. Trump in part because of his campaign promises to withdraw from the agreement. These voters rightly perceived that the agreement would benefit a privileged international elite, at the expense of the common people of the United States and of the rest of the world. You might think that such interventions ought to be unnecessary. President Trump is, after all, an avowed climate skeptic who has already taken several important steps towards tackling the Green Blob, most recently by promising to eliminate “nearly $1. 6 billion in international programs aimed at promoting green energy and fighting global warming. ” Among the targets on his hit list: the United Nations’ Green Climate Fund (GCF) which hands out money for programs to adapt or mitigate global warming the Clean Technology Fund and the Strategic Climate Fund — saving $239 million and the Global Climate Change Initiative, saving U. S. taxpayers $362 million. But Trump is still wavering over the Paris climate agreement, which senior members of his administration, including Jared Kushner, daughter Ivanka, and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson are urging him not to quit. Anyone puzzled by the fact that the former CEO of Exxon is supporting an agreement totally opposed to the company’s business model and shareholder interests really needs to read this piece by Steve Milloy. Exxon, Milloy explains, like most Big Oil companies has effectively been hijacked by green activists. As described in George Washington University professor Jarol B. Manheim’s 2004 book “ and the Elite: The Progressive Attack on the Corporation,” political activists met and decided after the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 that one way back to political power was to become activist shareholders in publicly owned corporations. That is, they would exercise the rights and status of shareholders to pressure, if not, capture corporate managements so as to use corporate resources and influence to help achieve their political agenda. It has been an enormously successful strategy for the activists, especially when it comes to the controversy over climate change. Not only do many of the largest and corporations now openly advocate for climate policies, even oil and gas companies have been pressured into pursuing policies that militate against their own products. This is one of the many disastrous side effects of the growing power of the green blob: it is stopping businesses from doing business, making everyone poorer as a result. As Milton Friedman famously wrote in 1970: “There is one and only one social responsibility of business — to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud. ” So businesses serve as society’s wealth generators. They are not governments, charities, or activist groups. When it comes to climate, Exxon Mobil’s job is to create wealth via production and sale of oil and gas — not to participate in the dubious pursuit of returning the atmosphere to Revolution conditions. Amen, bro. Mr President — jobs, the economy and the American way are in peril here. Are you listening? | 0fake
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Internationally-backed Libyan forces attack Daesh positions in Sirte | Fighters loyal to Libya’s UN-backed government guard a look-out point in the city of Sirte, east of Tripoli, as they try to clear the last remaining Daesh terrorists from the al-Jiza al-Bahriya neighborhood, October 26, 2016. (Photo by AFP)
Libyan forces have launched a fresh offensive against Daesh positions in the Mediterranean port city of Sirte.
On Thursday, fighters from the nearby city of Misrata, allied with forces of the UN-backed unity government in Tripoli, were pushing their way through the last pockets of resistance in the city’s Ghiza Bahriya District.
They were supported by tanks and armored vehicles during the renewed offensive.
“Bonyan Marsous forces and the Libyan army forces are advancing onto Ghiza Bahriya to free it ... The Bonyan [forces] have been advancing in Ghiza Bahriya and thank God there have been no causalities so far, there are only some wounded," said Hussien Edra, a member of the Bonyan Marsous Brigade.
In May, the internationally-backed pro-government troops started a large-scale military operation, including street-by-street fighting backed by heavy airstrikes and artillery fire, to eradicate Daesh militants in Sirte. They have so far recaptured most areas in the city.
Most of Daesh commanders in the city fled to other places and the remaining rank has been holding out via sniper fire, booby traps and car bombs.
Sirte is the only key base of the Takfiri militant group outside Iraq and Syria. Members of the forces loyal to Libya's UN-backed government gather in the coastal city of Sirte, east of the capital Tripoli, during their military operation against Daesh, on October 14, 2016.(Photo by AFP)
The city fell into the hands of Daesh Takfiri militants more than a year ago after the group extended their reach into North Africa by taking advantage of the chaos gripping Libya.
The North African country has witnessed unrest since 2011, when a NATO military intervention followed the uprising that led to the ouster and killing of long-time dictator, Muammar Gaddafi.
Liberating the key city would deal a major blow to the militant group in its drive to expand its influence to territories beyond the Middle East. Loading ... | 1real
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OBAMACARE: Wheels Slowly Falling Off The Socialized Healthcare Train…Billions Wasted | Wasn t the point of Obamacare to provide health insurance for everyone? After BILLIONS spent on a website that was unworkable and BILLIONS spent to set up exchanges across America, it looks like the ones who need Obamacare the most can t afford it .the irony is certainly not lost on us! Just ten days ago we described the latest unintended consequence of the Affordable Care Act known as Obamacare, when Colorado s largest nonprofit co-op health insurer and participant in that state s insurance exchange, Colorado HealthOP, announcing it was abruptly shutting down ahead of the November 1 start of enrollment for 2016, forcing 80,000 Coloradans to find a new insurer for 2016.It wasn t the first: the Colorado co-op was at least the fifth in the nation to collapse. Similar nonprofit insurers have already failed in Louisiana, Iowa/Nebraska, Nevada and New York. A health insurance cooperative in Tennessee announced this week that it would stop offering new policies.The insurer failed because it would fail to be profitable, in the process burning through $23 million in taxpayer-funded loss that would not be repaid. Taxpayers are on the hook for millions of dollars in loans given out to the CO-OP, money that will likely never be repaid, U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner said in a statement after the announcement.And while many had anticipated from the beginning that the Obamacare tax was merely a subsidy for the large insurance companies (or rather, their public shareholders), few had expected a far more sinister consequence of the Affordable care plan: that the employer mandate would turn out to be unaffordable for a vast majority of low-income workers the very people who were supposed to benefit from it.It is the failing of Obamacare to address the needs of America s struggling lower-middle class, those women and men who work long, hard hours, often at minimum wage, scrambling to make ends meet. It is them, that the NYT writes about in its recent scathing critique of Obamacare (traditionally, it has been the WSJ that gives scathing reports on the disaster that is Obamacare, usually involving soaring monthly premiums for those who were dragged into the Scotus-enabled tax beyond their will).Take the case of Billy Sewell who began offering health insurance this year to 600 service workers at the Golden Corral restaurants that he owns. He wondered nervously how many would buy it. Adding hundreds of employees to his plan would cost him more than $1 million a hit he wasn t sure his low-margin business could afford. His actual costs, though, turned out to be far smaller than he had feared. So far, only two people have signed up. We offered, and they didn t take it, he said.But isn t that against the stated primary objective of Obamacare: to make affordable health insurance more accessible and affordable to everyone? The answer, according to the NYT, is no.The Affordable Care Act s employer mandate, which requires employers with more than 50 full-time workers to offer most of their employees insurance or face financial penalties, was one of the law s most controversial provisions. Business owners and industry groups fiercely protested the change, and some companies cut workers hours to reduce the number of employees who would be eligible.But 10 months after the first phase of the mandate took effect, covering companies with 100 or more workers, many business owners say they are finding very few employees willing to buy the health insurance that they are now compelled to offer. The trend is especially pronounced among smaller and midsize businesses in fields filled with low-wage hourly workers, like restaurants, retailing and hospitality. (Companies with 50 to 99 workers are not required to comply with the mandate until next year.) Hold on, aren t those some of the best performing job categories in the past year? Why yes they are, in fact, with 11.1 million workers, those employed by food service and drinking places are the single largest job subcategory tracked by the BLS. It is almost as if the bulk of the jobs growth went to fields that would be mostly disadvantaged by Obamacare.Well, there may be millions of waiters and bartenders in the US, but contrary to what Obamacare promised the vast majority are and will remain uninsured: Based on what we ve seen in the marketplace, we re advising some of our clients to expect single-digit take rates, said Michael A. Bodack, an insurance broker in Harrison, N.Y. One to 2 percent isn t unusual. The reason? What was supposed to be affordable remains painfully unaffordable for the lowest rung of the employment pyramid.Here is the actual math as experienced by both the abovementioned Mr. Sewell of Golden Corral restaurants, and his mostly minimum-wage employees.He employs 1,800 people at the 26 Golden Corral franchises he owns in six Southern and Midwestern states, and previously offered insurance only to his salaried management staff. In January, when the employer mandate took effect, he made the same insurance plan, with a bigger employer contribution, available to all employees working an average of 30 or more hours a week.Running the math on his plan a typical one for the restaurant industry illustrates why a number of low-wage workers are falling through gaps in the Affordable Care Act.The annual premium for individual coverage through the Golden Corral Blue Cross Blue Shield plan is $4,800. Mr. Sewell pays 65 percent for service workers, leaving them with a monthly cost of $140.The health care law defines affordable employer-sponsored insurance as that priced at 9.5 percent or less of an employee s annual household income for individual coverage. (Because employers do not know how much money their workers relatives make, there are several safe harbors they can use for compliance, including basing their calculation on only their own employees wages.) Mr. Sewell s insurance meets the test, but $65 per biweekly paycheck is more than most of his workers are willing or able to pay for insurance that still carries steep out-of-pocket costs, including a $2,500 deductible.And this is where Obamacare s employee mandate fails for a vast majority of US workers.Clarissa Morris, 47, has been a server at the Golden Corral here for five years, earning $2.13 an hour plus tips. On a typical day, she leaves the restaurant with about $70 in tips. Her husband makes $9 an hour at Walmart but has been offered only a part-time schedule there, without benefits. Their combined paychecks barely cover their rent and daily essentials. It s either buy insurance or put food in the house, she said. On the rare occasions that she gets sick, she visits a local clinic with sliding-scale fees. It costs her $25 for a visit, and $4 to fill prescriptions at Walmart.Other business owners find the same paradox:Brad Mete, the managing partner of Affinity Resources, a staffing agency in Dania Beach, Fla., began offering insurance this year to most of his workers only because the law required it. He said the alternative, paying a penalty of about $2,000 per full-time employee, was unthinkable, That would put us out of business, in one swoop. Trying to persuade his hourly workers to buy the insurance is like pulling teeth, he said. His company s plan costs $120 a month, but workers making about $300 a week are reluctant to spend $30 of it on insurance. That s ok if you beleive the Obama administration, wages are about to soar.Or maybe not.What is truly tragic, however, that just like in the case of punishing work when Earned Income Tax benefits for those living around the poverty line, see their after tax pay rise above what comparable workers who make up to $50k per year, Obamacare seems to have been designed only for those making above the median US wage and above:A study by ADP, the payroll processing giant, found an income tipping point at which most employees who are eligible for health insurance will buy it: $45,000 a year.Workers making $15,000 to $20,000 a year buy employer-sponsored individual insurance when it is offered only 37 percent of the time. That rate rises at every income increment ADP studied until $45,000, when it reaches 82 percent and levels off. Further income gains have virtually no effect on the rate, ADP found. And so the wheels slowly fall off the socialized healthcare train Read more: ZERO HEDGE | 1real
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MSNBC, DNC reach deal to host Democratic debate in New Hampshire | The tentative deal reached this weekend between the presidential campaigns of Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders includes a debate Thursday at the University of New Hampshire in Durham.
MSNBC announced Sunday it will host the debate, scheduled for 9 p.m. Eastern with Chuck Todd and Rachel Maddow moderating. New Hampshire's first-in-the nation primary is Feb. 9.
Clinton and Sanders are in a tight race before Monday's Iowa caucuses, and Clinton trails the Vermont senator in New Hampshire, raising the possibility that the Democratic front-runner could lose the first two contests. Former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley has trailed them by wide margins.
The Democratic National Committee says it's reached an agreement in principal to have the party sanction and manage more debates during the primary schedule, including the New Hampshire debate. | 0fake
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Georgetown Professors Instruct Students on How to ’Resist’ Trump Presidency - Breitbart | An event at Georgetown University that took place on Saturday featured professors and activists discussing how the left can best “resist” Donald Trump during his presidency. [The event, which was entitled, “Resisting, Organizing, and Building in the Age of Trump,” featured professors and activists who are concerned about America’s future under Donald Trump. The description from the event’s Facebook page claims that the event was a discussion on how the left can ensure the freedom and dignity of all individuals during a Trump presidency. The stakes of this political moment couldn’t be higher. We need to collectively think through how we can best respond, resist, organize, and build a future that guarantees the freedom and dignity of all during the next four years of Trump’s presidency and beyond. On January 14th, Georgetown doctoral and law students will hold a at Georgetown University bringing together DC and academics from across disciplines to discuss the nature of the relationship of Trumpism to racism, bigotry, and oppression in all its multifaceted forms and the urgent question of how the left should move forward. “The Georgetown administration is not your friend,” argued campus employee Josh Armstead of UNITE Here Local 23, which represents hotel, gaming, food service, and airport industry workers. Armstead claimed that Georgetown’s administration benefits from “prison labor. ” The discussion segments frequently mentioned topics of privilege, systematic oppression, and stereotyping. George Washington University Philosophy Professor Vanessa Wills defined oppression as an “exclusion from full personhood or society based on identity. ” Jessica Lee, a program director at the Center for Social Justice at Georgetown, suggested that students need to check their privilege. She said that students need to understand their privilege so that they know when it is appropriate for them to speak up. Others complained about the electoral college system, suggesting that Donald Trump will be an illegitimate president. Georgetown History Professor Joseph McCartin claimed that America is “facing a crisis of democracy. ” Tom Ciccotta is a libertarian who writes about social justice and libertarian issues for Breitbart News. You can follow him on Twitter @tciccotta or email him at tciccotta@breitbart. com, | 0fake
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U.S. House approves bill on financial regulation costs | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday passed a bill requiring the country’s top securities regulator to add up the costs of following new rules before putting them into force, part of a Republican push to reform the federal bureaucracy. By a vote of 243-183, the chamber passed the bill, largely along party lines, which would also require the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to periodically review its existing rules. “Whether it is buying a car or choosing a college savings plan, every American family weighs the pros and cons before making major life decisions,” said Representative Ann Wagner, the Missouri Republican who sponsored the bill. The legislation “simply requires that the Commission engages in the same process and can justify that the benefits of a proposed regulation will outweigh its costs,” she said. At the same time, the House passed a bill requiring the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the country’s derivatives regulator, to assess the costs and benefits of proposed regulations or orders. The CFTC legislation also treads into two long-standing disputes. It bars the SEC from lowering the dollar-amount threshold for requiring swap dealers to register with it. Currently the bar is at $8 billion, and there have been moves to drop it to $3 billion. It also restricts the commission in limiting positions that traders can hold in the commodity markets. The CFTC has pushed off finalizing those limits, included in the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform law to prevent fraud and manipulation, over Republicans’ concerns they will hurt farmers and small businesses. Republican lawmakers who control Congress are eager to ease regulation and undo rules enacted under President Barack Obama, a Democrat. Nonetheless, Democrats hold enough seats in the U.S. Senate to block the SEC and CFTC legislation. Only nine Democrats in the House voted for the SEC bill, and seven for the CFTC bill. A single Republican, North Carolina’s Walter Jones, voted against both bills. | 0fake
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Ron Paul: ‘I Can’t Support Trump if He’s GOP Pick’ and ‘Neocons Will Love Hillary’ | David Sherfinski Washington TimesFormer Texas Rep. Ron Paul said Friday he couldn t support GOP presidential front-runner Donald Trump if Mr. Trump wins the party s nomination, saying Mr. Trump s views on the scope of executive authority could surpass those of President Obama. No, I couldn t do that, Mr. Paul said on Fox Business Network when asked if he would support Mr. Trump, should the billionaire businessman win the GOP nomination. He s [the] opposite of a libertarian. Mr. Paul, a three-time presidential candidate, said on foreign policy, Mr. Trump probably wouldn t be that much different than former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, the Democratic front-runner. I think the die-hard neoconservatives would not be that extremely unhappy with Hillary, Mr. Paul said. Trump is going to be the most efficient [at] using the executive orders, he said. He ll say this is the way it is, you know. Obama was pretty arrogant. If you don t do it, [the] Congress, I ll write an order Continue this story at Washington TimesREAD MORE TRUMP NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire 2016 Files | 1real
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“PROGRESSIVE” DE BLASIO VISITS IOWA: Denies He’s Running For President…So He Just Wanted To Visit Iowa? | Soooo, NYC Mayor de Blasio wants you to believe he just wants to visit Iowa. He s been running for President since before he became Mayor, that s why he ran for Mayor. And even in progressive NYC, everyone still despises him for doing nothing. And yes, he s further left than Hillary and Obama.Via Free Beacon: New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio (D.) on Tuesday repeatedly denied that he is running for president in 2020 during a trip to Iowa, a state that automatically begs questions about White House ambitions if politicians head there. No, de Blasio said. I m not running for president. The New York Times noted, however, that de Blasio made Iowa his first stop since his easy re-election to the mayorship. The Iowa caucuses launch the nominating process each presidential election cycle, so any jaunts to the midwestern state attract attention.The Washington Post described the far-left mayor as fielding versions of the 2020 question throughout the day. He described himself as focused on his second term.De Blasio is a total phony HERE S A PREVIOUS REPORT ON DE BLASIO S PROGRESSIVE AGENDA:Why would anyone expect anything else from a mayor who criticized Barack Obama for being too conservative and too afraid to take the bold kind of action that President Roosevelt took during the Great Depression. Last week, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio unveiled a 13-point national Progressive Agenda that is being touted as the liberal Contract with America. The aim is for the Progressive Agenda to become the basis for the Democratic Party s main economic policies, including those of its 2016 presidential candidate.De Blasio has compared his plan to the Contract with America, a document released by the Republican Party during the 1994 congressional election and drawn up by future House Speaker Newt Gingrich to serve as the GOP policy agenda.Now WND documents that most of the 13 points in de Blasio s Progressive Agenda can also be found in the manifestos and literature of the Communist Party USA and the Socialist Party USA.The full progressive plan, entitled, The Progressive Agenda to Combat Income Inequality, can be found on the agenda s new website.Here is a comparison of the Agenda s plan with literature from the manifestos and writings of the Community Party USA, or CPUSA, and the Socialist Party USA, or SPUSA. Progressive Agenda: Raise the federal minimum wage, so that it reaches $15/hour, while indexing it to inflation. SPUSA: We call for a minimum wage of $15 per hour, indexed to the cost of living. CPUSA: Calls for struggles for peace, equality for the racially and nationally oppressed, equality for women job creation programs, increased minimum wage. Even with ultra-right control of the Federal government, peoples legislative victories, such as increasing the minimum wage, can be won on an issue-by-issue basis locally, statewide, and even nationally. Progressive Agenda: Pass comprehensive immigration reform to grow the economy and protect against exploitation of low-wage workers. SPUSA: We defend the rights of all immigrants to education, health care, and full civil and legal rights and call for an unconditional amnesty program for all undocumented people. We oppose the imposition of any fees on those receiving amnesty. We call for full citizenship rights upon demonstrating residency for six months. CPUSA: Declares the struggle for immigrant rights is a key component of the struggle for working class unity in our country today. Progressive Agenda: Make Pre-K, after-school programs and childcare universal. SPUSA: We support public child care starting from infancy, and public education starting at age three, with caregivers and teachers of young children receiving training, wages, and benefits comparable to that of teachers at every other level of the educational system. Progressive Agenda: Earned Income Tax Credit. Implement the Buffett Rule so millionaires pay their fair share. SPUSA: We call for a steeply graduated income tax and a steeply graduated estate tax. CPUSA: No taxes for workers and low and middle income people; progressive taxation of the wealthy and private corporations. Dems hail beginning of revolution De Blasio criticized Obama as too conservative to assert a progressive economic vision and too afraid to take the bold kind of action that President Roosevelt took during the Great Depression, reported the liberal news network.Speaking at the Progressive Agenda launch event outside the Capitol building last Tuesday, de Blasio said something is changing in America. It s time to take that energy and crystallize it into an agenda that will make a difference, he said. We ll be calling on leaders and candidates to address these issues, to stiffen their backbones, to be clear and to champion these progressive policies. Read more at WND | 1real
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Elijah Cummings Made Sure The GOP Is Well Aware They’re Hypocritical A**holes Regarding Flint | There seems to be a definite double standard when it comes to how Republicans in Congress want to go about investigating terrible governors. When it came to investigating former Oregon Governor John Kitzhaber (D), Republicans like Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) were fast and furious with their requests to obtain the information they wanted in regards to a scandal surrounding Oregon s health insurance exchange. However, when it comes to going after Republican Governor Rick Snyder of Michigan over the horrendous Flint water crisis, those same Republicans so adamant at going after a Democratic governor, failed to send requests to investigate Flint.Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) is not about to let them get away with this hypocrisy whatsoever.In a letter sent by Cummings to Chaffetz, who is the Chairman of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Cummings points out the clear double-standard of the committee going after Kitzhaber, but not Snyder in the same regard. And while Cummings does give them some credit for called Snyder before the Committee in March, it is clear that they are not going after Snyder with the same vigor. Cummings wrote: During our meeting last week, you explained that you had spoken directly with Governor Snyder, and you suggested that one reason not to request documents from him is because he might claim that his communications about the Flint water crisis are protected by executive privilege. Although I was not a part of your conversation with Governor Snyder, any claim of executive privilege to withhold documents from Congress would be a surprising turn of events that directly contradicts the Governor s own promises of accountability to the people of Michigan. Cummings also wrote: I believe that the Committee should apply the same standards for requesting documents to all governors, regardless of whether they are Democrats or Republicans. By declining to send any document request at all to Governor Snyder, the Committee is creating the perception of a double-standard in which it has requested documents from a Democratic governor, but not from a Republican governor. He then goes on to give the example of former Oregon Governor John Kitzhaber.It is simply woefully irresponsible to so blatantly neglect going after Gov. Snyder, especially considering the Flint, Michigan water crisis is so irreversibly severe causing lifelong health issues to those affected. Not only should they be investigating Snyder to the fullest extent, but they should be pushing for his resignation, as is what happened with Kitzhaber.Cummings sums it up best when he states: The Committee has never accepted this practice as an adequate standard of investigation, and we should not do so now. Governor Snyder and his staff are central figures in the decision-making process that led to the poisoning of Flint residents, and the Committee owes it to these residents to conduct a comprehensive and bipartisan investigation. Snyder needs to be held responsible and party politics need to be checked at the door. End of story.Featured image via YouTube | 1real
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Will FBI Director Comey’s October Surprise Derail Hillary’s White House Bid? | in: Government , Special Interests (image credit: AP) Having closed his earlier investigation into Hillary’s use of her private email server for classified State Department documents without bringing charges, dismissing indictable evidence, it’s hard imagining a shift of agency policy now. So what’s going on? Is FBI Director Comey trying to save face, even at this late stage, having tarnished the reputation of the agency and himself. The fullness of time will show what he has in mind. He faces intense political pressure from key Democrat senators, demanding immediate answers about why he’s reopening his investigation days before November’s election, an unprecedented act. Senators Patrick Leahy, Dianne Feinstein, Thomas Carper and Ben Cardin wrote Comey, saying: “(N)o later than Monday, 31 October 2016, we request you provide us with more detailed information about the investigative steps being taken, the number of emails involved, and what is being done to determine how many of the emails are duplicative of those already reviewed by the FBI.” They want Attorney General Loretta Lynch explaining her involvement in Comey’s action, if any. The Hillary campaign called for “public answers” to clarify what new information the FBI discovered. After saying that revisiting his decision last July would be unlikely, Comey opted for an October surprise – the likes of which Washington hasn’t seen since the tumultuous end of Nixon’s tenure. Paul Craig Roberts said he’s gotten word “that the FBI has reopened the Hillary case of her violation of US National Security protocols, not because of the content of the new email releases, but because voter support for Trump seems to be overwhelming, while Hillary has cancelled appearances due to inability to muster a crowd. The popular vote leaves the FBI far out on the limb for its corrupt clearance of Hillary. The agency now has to redeem itself.” How remains to be seen. Like Roberts, I’m puzzled. Washington power brokers chose Hillary to succeed Obama. Enormous resources, energy, corporate pollsters consistently showing her ahead, and one-sided scoundrel media support have gone into assuring it. Have things changed days before November 8? Are power brokers abandoning Hillary this late in the game? The last 48 hours have been breathtaking – the stuff Hollywood thrillers are made of. Will Hillary supporters blame Russia for Comey’s action? One Democrat congressman suggested it. Will Comey be accused of being a Kremlin agent? However things unfold in the campaign’s final days, Trump got a significant boost – whether enough for a “master of suspense” Alfred Hitchcock ending remains to be seen. My view, right or wrong, remains the same. After going all-out for Hillary throughout months of campaigning, it’s hard believing power brokers decided otherwise this late in the game – unheard of in US electoral politics. At the same time, this political season has been unlike any I remember since the 1940s. Nothing ahead will surprise me. Submit your review | 1real
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Man seems to think he helped out with World War Two | Man seems to think he helped out with World War Two 14-11-16 A 42-YEAR-OLD man thinks he had something to do with Britain’s historical military victories. Office manager Martin Bishop frequently expresses pride at how ‘we’ defeated enemies like the Nazis, despite having no military training and not being born at the time. Bishop said: “We showed tyrants like Hitler and Napoleon who’s boss, although my ability to fight them personally has been limited by being born in 1974. “It’s in our national character to never give up, like during the Battle of Britain or when I did that 5km charity run. “I may not have been at our wars in person, but I feel I’m continuing our proud military tradition by watching documentaries about them while having my tea. “If I’d been around at the time I’d definitely have been getting stuck in on D-Day or at the Battle of Agincourt, because I’m a dab hand at archery on the Wii.” However colleague Nikki Hollis said: “When the office went paintballing, Martin mostly hid in a wooden fort. “Also I can’t see him surviving World War One mentally unscathed because he was totally traumatised by the last episode of Blackadder .”
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GOP Lawmaker To Trump: Stop Acting Like A ‘Fragile’ Snowflake Over Town Hall Protests | Angry constituents have inundated town hall meetings over concerns of Obamacare being repealed and other issues. There is so much frustration with constituents over Trump s policies that Republicans in Congress are avoiding in-person town hall meetings. Vice News reports that 200 Republicans in Congress are skipping town hall meetings with their constituents in February. Rep. Tom Emmer (R-MN) will not allow protesting, or what he calls disruptive behavior at his upcoming town hall Wednesday or the event will be canceled. Specifically, no chanting will be allowed at the Snowflake s event. Of course, we never heard the same to be said when tea partiers descended on Democratic lawmaker s town hall meetings and shut them down over Obamacare. Republicans are feeling the heat and so is the alleged president. The so-called angry crowds in home districts of some Republicans are actually, in numerous cases, planned out by liberal activists. Sad! Trump said on Tuesday.The so-called angry crowds in home districts of some Republicans are actually, in numerous cases, planned out by liberal activists. Sad! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 21, 2017In order to discredit those who offend our fragile POTUS, Trump routinely uses the term so-called, just as he did with a federal judge who ruled against his Muslim ban.Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.) pushed back against Trump s claim that liberal activists are organizing agitated protests in Republican districts. They are our fellow Americans with legitimate concerns. We need to stop acting so fragile. I m proud to defend liberty and the Constitution, he tweeted.They are our fellow Americans with legitimate concerns. We need to stop acting so fragile. I m proud to defend liberty and the Constitution. https://t.co/2CcD02mXzl Justin Amash (@justinamash) February 22, 2017Amash called out Trump before after the amateur president kept attacking Rep. John Lewis. Dude, just stop, he tweeted in January.Dude, just stop. https://t.co/UCIqhqGnXu Justin Amash (@justinamash) January 15, 2017He s not wrong but he s in a swing state so we re wondering if he s pandering to voters in his area, however, he has faced packed town halls in his home state recently with hundreds of constituents. I think it is critical that members of Congress hold in-person town halls like this, Amash said at an event about two weeks ago, according to The Hill. There aren t enough of people on either side of the aisle who do it. Image: Gage Skidmore via Flickr. | 1real
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Trump extols corporate profits while seeking corporate tax cut | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump sent a Twitter message bragging about corporate America’s high profits under his presidency on Tuesday, prompting critics to say he was undercutting Republican arguments in favor of a tax cut for corporations. As Republicans in Washington try to refocus on taxes after the collapse of their failed drive to repeal Obamacare, Trump sent a morning tweet that said: “Corporations have NEVER made as much money as they are making now.” Corporate lobbyists and Republicans consistently argue that a cut in the corporate income tax is needed to help corporations be more competitive. But highlighting corporate profits could diminish that argument. “This is a weird way to launch their proposal to cut corporate taxes,” Democratic Senator Brian Schatz said in a tweet of his own responding to Trump. The largest U.S. public companies have seen profits accelerate in 2017, with quarterly earnings rising at a double-digit pace compared with a year ago, according to Thomson Reuters data. Full-year earnings are expected to be up 11.5 percent, which would be the strongest growth since 2011. More than six months into his presidency, Trump still sends out tweets that catch aides and allies off guard and sometimes clash with Republicans’ messaging on their policy agenda. The Trump tweet “takes the edge of urgency off the plea to reduce the burden on corporations,” said William Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution think tank. Trump later took credit for surging U.S. stock prices that pushed the Dow Jones Industrial Average to a new record high on Tuesday. But the broader market saw a bigger rally under former President Barack Obama. The benchmark S&P 500 Index has gained 9.4 percent since Trump took office on Jan. 20, lagging a 16.2 percent S&P gain during Obama’s first months in office. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said on Tuesday that Congress would take up tax reform after the U.S. Labor Day holiday on Sept. 4, beginning in the House of Representatives. A White House timeline envisions a House vote on tax legislation in October and Senate vote in November. But there is little consensus on the issue. The White House insists on cutting the corporate rate to 15 percent, while House Republicans favor 20 percent. A top Senate Republican this week said lawmakers would be lucky to get it down to 25 percent. On Tuesday, Senate Democrats offered to work with Republicans on a bipartisan tax package, but only if it does not cut taxes for the wealthy, add to the federal deficit or allow Republicans to enact legislation on their own. But McConnell rejected the offer from 45 lawmakers led by Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer. “Most of the principles that would get the country growing again, they’re not interested in addressing,” the Kentucky Republican told reporters. McConnell said he hoped Republican legislation might win support from three Senate Democrats who face reelection next year in Republican states and did not join the offer from other Democrats. | 0fake
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Michael Moore Owes Me $4.99 | 28, 2016 | Reviews Michael Moore in New York City's Union Square Barnes & Noble to discuss his book Here Comes Trouble , September 13, 2011 ( David Shankbone / CC BY 3.0 ) Michael Moore’s “Trumpland” is a textbook illustration of how the mindset of voting for “the lesser evil” just results in self-delusion—and ever more evil.
M ichael Moore has made some terrific movies in the past, and Where to Invade Next may be the best of them, but I expected Trumpland to be (1) about Trump, (2) funny, (3) honest, (4) at least relatively free of jokes glorifying mass murder. I was wrong on all counts and would like my $4.99 back, Michael.
Moore’s new movie is a film of him doing a stand-up comedy show about how wonderfully awesome Hillary Clinton is—except that he mentions Trump a bit at the beginning and he’s dead serious about Clinton being wonderfully awesome.
This film is a text book illustration of why rational arguments for lesser evilist voting do not work. Lesser evilists become self-delusionists. They identify with their lesser evil candidate and delude themselves into adoring the person. Moore is not pushing the “Elect her and then hold her accountable” stuff. He says we have a responsibility to “support her” and “get behind her,” and that if after two years—yes, TWO YEARS—she hasn’t lived up to a platform he’s fantasized for her, well then, never fear, because he, Michael Moore, will run a joke presidential campaign against her for the next two years (this from a guy who backed restricting the length of election campaigns in one of his better works).
Moore maintains that virtually all criticism of Hillary Clinton is nonsense. What do we think, he asks, that she asks how many millions of dollars you’ve put into the Clinton Foundation and then she agrees to bomb Yemen for you? Bwahahaha! Pretty funny. Except that Saudi Arabia put over $10 million into the Clinton Foundation, and while she was Secretary of State Boeing put in another $900,000, upon which Hillary Clinton reportedly made it her mission to get the planes sold to Saudi Arabia, despite legal restrictions—the planes now dropping U.S.-made bombs on Yemen with U.S. guidance, U.S. refueling mid-air, U.S. protection at the United Nations, and U.S. cover in the form of pop-culture distraction and deception from entertainers like Michael Moore.
Standing before a giant Air Force missile and enormous photos of Hillary Clinton, Michael Moore claims that substantive criticism of Clinton can consist of only two things, which he dismisses in a flash: her vote for a war on Iraq and her coziness with Wall Street. He says nothing more about what that “coziness” consists of, and he claims that she’s more or less apologized and learned her lesson on Iraq.
What? It wasn’t one vote. It was numerous votes to start the war, fund it, and escalate it. It was the lies to get it going and keep it going. It’s all the other wars before and since. She says President Obama was wrong not to launch missile strikes on Syria in 2013. She pushed hard for the overthrow of Qadaffi in 2011. She supported the coup government in Honduras in 2009. She has backed escalation and prolongation of war in Afghanistan. She skillfully promoted the White House justification for the war on Iraq. She does not hesitate to back the use of drones for targeted killing. She has consistently backed the military initiatives of Israel. She was not ashamed to laugh at the killing of Qadaffi. She has not hesitated to warn that she could obliterate Iran. She is eager to antagonize Russia. She helped facilitate a military coup in Ukraine. She has the financial support of the arms makers and many of their foreign customers. She waived restrictions at the State Department on selling weapons to Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Oman, and Qatar, all states wise enough to donate to the Clinton Foundation. She supported President Bill Clinton’s wars and the power of the president to make war without Congress. She has advocated for arming fighters in Syria and for a “No Fly” zone. She supported a surge in Iraq even before President Bush did.
That’s just her war problem. What about her banking problem, prison problem, fracking problem, corporate trade problem, corporate healthcare problem, climate change problem, labor problem, Social Security problem, etc.?
Moore parts company from substantive critique in order to lament unproven rightwing claims that Hillary Clinton has murdered various people. “I hope she did,” screams Moore. “That’s who I want as Commander in Chief!” Hee hee hee.
Then Moore shamelessly pushes the myth that Hillary tried to create single-payer, or at least “universal” healthcare (whatever that is) in the 1990s. In fact, as I heard Paul Wellstone tell it, single-payer easily won the support of Clinton’s focus group, but she buried it for her corporate pals and produced the phonebook-size monstrosity that was dead on arrival but reborn in another form years later as Obamacare. She killed single-payer then, has not supported it since, and does not propose it now. (Well, she does admit in private that it’s the only thing that works, as her husband essentially blurts out in public.) But Moore claims that because we didn’t create “universal” healthcare in the 1990s we all have the blood of millions on our hands, millions whom Hillary would have saved had we let her.
Moore openly fantasizes: what would it be like if Hillary Clinton is secretly progressive? Remember that Moore and many others did the exact same thing with Obama eight years ago. To prove Clinton’s progressiveness Moore plays an audio clip of her giving a speech at age 22 in which she does not hint at any position on any issue whatsoever.
Mostly, however, Moore informs us that Hillary Clinton is female. He anticipates “that glorious moment when the other gender has a chance to run this world and kick some righteous ass.” Now tell me please, dear world, if your ass is kicked by killers working for a female president will you feel better about it? How do you like Moore’s inclusive comments throughout his performance: “We’re all Americans, right?”
Moore’s fantasy is that Clinton will dash off a giant pile of executive orders, just writing Congress out of the government—executive orders doing things like releasing all nonviolent drug offenders from prison immediately (something the real Hillary Clinton would oppose in every way she could).
But when he runs for president, Moore says, he’ll give everybody free drugs.
I’ll tell you the Clinton ad I’d like to see. She’s standing over a stove holding an egg. “This is your brain,” she says solemnly, cracking it into the pan with a sizzle. “This is your brain on partisanship.”
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Philippine ferry capsizes with 251 on board, four dead | MANILA (Reuters) - Four people were killed and seven were missing after a Philippine ferry with 251 people on board capsized during bad weather on Thursday near the capital, Manila, disaster officials and a coastguard spokesman said. Accidents involving boats sailing between the many islands of the Philippines are common. Vessels are often overloaded but the coastguard said that was not the case on Thursday and the ferry had the capacity to carry 286 people. A total of 240 people were rescued from the sea by fishermen and rescue boats sent out by the coastguard hours after the ferry capsized and sank, about eight miles off Real town in Quezon province. Search and rescue operations will continue until all crew and passengers are accounted for, said coastguard spokesman Captain Armand Balilo. Most of the rescued passengers were brought to Dinahican port. Two men and two women drowned, he said. The ferry set sail at around dawn from a port in Real. Survivors told reporters the weather turned bad three hours later with strong winds and huge waves. The ferry began taking in water and in minutes it capsized and sank, they said. Disaster officials said search and rescue operations were hampered by heavy rain and huge waves caused by a tropical storm affecting the southern Philippines. A tropical storm is expected to make landfall on the southern island of Mindanao late Thursday or early on Friday. The weather bureau has warned of extensive flooding and landslides as the storm, packing center winds of 65 kph (40 mph), approaches the Philippines. | 0fake
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HILLARY DNC SPEECH: “We Are Going To Follow The Money” [VIDEO]… WHILE GEORGE SOROS Makes Stunning $25 Million Donation To Hillary And Other Dems | Are you paying attention America? A vote for Hillary is a vote for communist billionaire, and chaos financier George Soros. Her election has nothing to do with helping the working class or middle America. Hillary is beholden to Wall Street and one-world-order, communist freaks like George Soros who fund radical groups like Black Lives Matter and Occupy Wall Street re-treads Occupy Spring. He and Hillary will ALWAYS put themselves and their massive fortunes before the little people. Isn t it time to elect someone who really cares about America?Watch Hillary boldly proclaim, We are going to follow the money! Meanwhile back to reality:Billionaire investor George Soros has re-emerged this election cycle as a major Democratic donor, committing more than $25 million to Hillary Clinton and other party candidates and causes, according to Politico.Soros has committed $5 million to a super PAC called Immigrant Voters Win that s devoted to increasing turnout among low-propensity Hispanic voters in key swing states, though FEC records show he d donated only $3 million through the end of June, the period covered by the most recent filings.Soros spent roughly $27 million in a bid to unseat then-President George W. Bush in 2004 but later scaled back his giving, the website reported. Some associates of the Soros Fund Management chairman told Politico they expect him to give even more as Election Day approaches.FOX News host, Bill O Reilly does an excellent job of exposing the truth about billionaire radical George Soros and his anti-American intentions:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KegE285GQucThe Hungarian-born financier is worth $24.9 billion, according to Forbes most recent estimate, and his return as a big-time contributor will be a boon to the party as it seeks to retain control of the White House and regain a majority in the Senate.Soros advisor Michael Vachon told Politico that Soros has been a consistent donor to Democratic causes, but this year the political stakes are exceptionally high. Vachon confirmed to CNBC Politico s report of the roughly $25 million in donations so far this cycle. Via: Politico | 1real
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Donald Trump, Indonesia, Aleppo: Your Wednesday Evening Briefing - The New York Times | (Want to get this briefing by email? Here’s the .) Good evening. Here’s the latest. 1. Donald J. Trump picked a retired Marine general, an advocate of China and a close ally of the fossil fuel industry for three crucial posts. Gen. John F. Kelly, above, a retired Marine general, will be nominated as secretary of homeland security, and Gov. Terry E. Branstad of Iowa was named ambassador to China. Mr. Branstad is close to President Xi Jinping of China, whom he has known since 1985. Scott Pruitt, the Oklahoma attorney general, was chosen to run the Environmental Protection Agency. _____ 2. Mr. Trump, who was named Time magazine’s person of the year, said in a interview on NBC’s “Today” show that Mitt Romney remained a candidate for secretary of state. Mr. Trump did not dispute the interviewer’s comparison of his campaign promises to crack down on undocumented immigrants he considers dangerous to comments made by the Philippine president, Rodrigo Duterte, about annihilating drug dealers and users. A Times photojournalist documented 57 homicides over 35 days in Mr. Duterte’s bloody crackdown. (Warning: graphic images.) _____ 3. An earthquake on the Indonesian island of Sumatra killed scores of people while they slept. Rescue teams are searching for victims and survivors, but the death toll is nearing 100, and more are feared dead. The quake, which struck after 5 a. m. had a preliminary magnitude of 6. 5, and at least five aftershocks followed. _____ 4. We talked to Edgar Welch, the who is in jail after firing a gun inside a Washington pizzeria. Mr. Welch said he first learned about the fake news story suggesting Hillary Clinton was linked to a child trafficking ring being run out of the restaurant through word of mouth, then looked it up online. “The intel on this wasn’t 100 percent,” he said. He has two kids and said that he didn’t vote for Mr. Trump or Mrs. Clinton. _____ 5. “We are trapped under bombs. ” The Twitter account shared by a girl in Aleppo, Bana and her mother has captured global attention with posts about bombs, death and despair. It has also raised questions about authenticity. Syrian government forces appear to be pushing deeper into the city. _____ 6. For the first time in decades, powerful rival law firms have joined forces to file suits nationwide on a polarizing social issue: gun control. “There is an epidemic of gun violence in this country, and the law can save innocent lives without infringing constitutional rights,” a partner at one of the firms said. _____ 7. This is the 75th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States naval base in Hawaii, where more than 2, 000 Americans were killed. We spoke with John Morris, above, a photojournalist whose 25th birthday was underway when editors called to tell him of the attack. Now celebrating his 100th birthday, he reflected on a career largely defined by war, saying, “Mankind is not as bright as one would hope. ” _____ 8. A cancer patient who was twice rejected from a study may hold the key to new treatment options for thousands of people. Celine Ryan, above, had advanced colon cancer that spread to her lungs when she was accepted for an experimental treatment that used cells from her own immune system. Today, she has no signs of cancer. _____ 9. The gadget age is over, our tech columnist declares. The little electronic things that did stuff for you — from transistor radios to the Walkman, iPods and GoPros and Fitbits — have been replaced by the “Thing That Does Everything” (better known as a smartphone). _____ 10. Phil Jackson, president of the New York Knicks, has a nickname: Zen Master. The team has been taking part in mindfulness exercises since Mr. Jackson took over in 2014. This year, he began leading the sessions himself. Players told us that they found the exercises useful, even if they were not quite sure what they were doing. _____ 11. Finally, we’ve gathered our film critics and asked them to share their picks for the best movies of the year. Their selections veer away from box office hits. Only two movies made the lists of all three critics: “Moonlight,” above, and “O. J.: Made In America. ” _____ Photographs may appear out of order for some readers. Viewing this version of the briefing should help. Your Evening Briefing is posted at 6 p. m. Eastern. And don’t miss Your Morning Briefing, posted weekdays at 6 a. m. Eastern, and Your Weekend Briefing, posted at 6 a. m. Sundays. Want to look back? Here’s last night’s briefing. What did you like? What do you want to see here? Let us know at briefing@nytimes. com. | 0fake
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Death toll from blasts in Somalia's capital Mogadishu tops 200 | MOGADISHU (Reuters) - More than 200 people were killed by twin bomb blasts that struck busy junctions in the heart of Somalia s capital Mogadishu, officials said on Sunday, marking the deadliest attacks since an Islamist insurgency began in 2007. President Mohamed Abdullahi Farmaajo declared three days of national mourning and called for donations of blood and funds to victims of Saturday s attack. At least 100 others were wounded. Today s horrific attack proves our enemy would stop nothing to cause our people pain and suffering. Let s unite against terror, he tweeted. Police said a truck bomb exploded outside a hotel in the K5 intersection that is lined with government offices, restaurants and kiosks, flattening several buildings and setting dozens of vehicles on fire. Two hours later, another blast struck the capital s Medina district. We have confirmed 200 civilians died in yesterday s blast. We understand the death toll is higher than that. Many people are still missing their relatives, Abdifatah Omar Halane, the spokesman for Mogadishu s mayor, told Reuters. A spokesman for Aamin Ambulance service said it knew of more than 250 people wounded during the bombings on Saturday. Some people who searched for their relatives just found unrecognizable body parts, its director Abdikadir Abdirahman told Reuters. In our 10 year experience as the first responder in #Mogadishu, we haven t seen anything like this, tweeted the ambulance service, which is reliant on private donations and the only free ambulance service in the city. We re mourning the loss of 5 Somali Red Crescent volunteers, also killed in this attack, tweeted the International Committee of the Red Cross. Police and emergency workers searched the rubble of destroyed buildings on Sunday. They had recovered dozens of corpses the night before, most of which were charred beyond recognition. Hundreds of people came to the junction in search of missing family members and police cordoned off the area for security reasons. There was no immediate claim of responsibility, although the Islamist militant group al Shabaab, which is allied to al Qaeda, stages regular attacks in the capital and other parts of the country. The group is waging an insurgency against the U.N.-backed government and its African Union allies in a bid to topple the weak administration and impose its own strict interpretation of Islam. The militants were driven out of Mogadishu in 2011 and have been steadily losing territory since then to the combined forces of African Union peacekeepers and Somali security forces. But al Shabaab retains the ability to mount large, complex bomb attacks. Over the past three years, the number of civilians killed by insurgent bombings has steadily climbed as al Shabaab increases the size of its bombs. | 0fake
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Donald Trump Returns to Bashing ’Fake Media’ | President Donald Trump returned to his attacks on the biased media, after a weekend away from Washington D. C.[“The Fake Media (not Real Media) has gotten even worse since the election,” he wrote on Twitter. “Every story is badly slanted. We have to hold them to the truth!” Last week, some in the media were surprised after Trump referred to them as “very honorable people” during an event at the White House. Trump appeared to be watching Fox and Friends on Monday morning, praising the show for some of their analysis. “’The first 90 days of my presidency has exposed the total failure of the last eight years of foreign policy! ’” he wrote. “So true. ” | 0fake
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Idiot Who Destroyed Trump Hollywood Star Gets EXACTLY What He Deserves | Share This
Although the vandal who thought it was “cool” to destroy Donald Trump’s Hollywood star looked pretty comfortable making a video from the comfort of his own home, that can’t be said for him today. In fact, it seems that the idiot just got exactly what he deserved – and that’s not even the real kicker.
Yesterday, Mad World News reported on James Otis, the man who was recorded destroying Trump’s star on Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles, California and stealing the two plaques that were in the concrete. Of course, he later stated that the two stolen objects would be auctioned off on election day with the proceeds promised to Trump’s so-called “victims.”
Proving to be a cocky moron, Otis gave an itinerary, saying that he wanted to deliver a few remarks at the location of his crime at 9:30 this morning. Unfortunately for him, things didn’t go according to plan as the man just got exactly what he deserved. Donald Trump’s Hollywood star before (left) and after (right) James Otis destroyed it
Although Otis had promised to turn himself in today, Deadline reports that police tracked him down and arrested him before he could use the incident to further himself any more. Unfortunately for him, the news got even worse when he was officially slapped with a felony vandalism charge. Oh, and that little “auction” he was going to have isn’t going to happen since police confiscated at least one of the plaques, which they found stashed in Otis’s car: Police confiscated at least one part of the plaque (Source: TMZ )
The real kicker came next, though. Since damages were valued at over $400 , Otis is facing up to 3 years in jail and more than $10,000 in fines. Of course, Otis didn’t seem to mind facing the consequences – until, that is, he heard what he’d actually earned. James Otis
In fact, he only made himself out to be more of an idiot during an interview with the Los Angeles Daily News when he said, “I was just so fed up, so saddened and fed up by Mr. Trump and how he continues to denigrate women, and he continues to joke and make fun about sexual violence and his own exploits against women.”
Clearly uninformed on the truth, he then added , “It’s just a big joke to him. I have children; I have many women in my life who don’t think it’s a joke. But he does.” He continued, “He lies about it, he shuffles and I don’t see, there’s no reason to believe at all that it will ever stop now. He’ll continue to do this, he’ll continue to make women suffer. So that’s what I’d tell him. “You need help. Please understand that.” Trump’s star is already being repaired (Source: Breitbart )
Otis doesn’t even understand that what he did wasn’t really any big deal. As of right now, the star is being replaced. Furthermore, destroying that property didn’t do a darn thing to Trump since it wasn’t his property – it was the states. In short, he just cost the American taxpayer more money because now we have to fix it.
That’s the problem with the entitled mentality these days – it doesn’t matter to them who they hurt in the process. Of course, coming off looking like an idiot sure can’t feel good, but he’ll get a nice long time to think about that while he’s rotting in prison for a few years. | 1real
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Before The Great Flood 8 Kings Ruled Earth For 241,200 Years | “…In 5 cities 8 kings; they ruled for 241,200 years. Then the flood swept over…” that is written on the first part of the Sumerian King List. But how is it possible for eight kings to rule for a period of 241,200 years?
If we take a look at the Sumerian King list, we will find fascinating details that contradict everything we have been told about our history. This ancient text describes a time on Earth when Gods ruled humankind for tens of thousands of years. It explicitly says that before the Great Flood swept across Earth, eight ancient kings lived on Earth and ruled for a total period of 241,200 years. Today, this historical fact is dismissed as mythology.
Many of us will agree that the most puzzling detail about the Sumerian King list is that it describes EIGHT kings who ruled over planet Earth for a total period of 241,200 years after the ORIGINAL kingship ‘descended from heaven’ lasting all the way until the ‘Great Flood’ which swept over mankind and once more “the kingship was lowered from heaven” after the Flood.
So how is this possible? What exactly are we missing here? How could eight kings have ruled over five cities for hundreds of thousands of years? Where they immortal? Were they otherworldly beings? Or is it possible that we misinterpreted years for days? Or, as many others believe, did these ancient kings really live through such lengthy reigns?
According to this ancient text its crystal clear: the first part of the Sumerian King List reads :
After the kingship descended from heaven, the kingship was in Eridug. In Eridug, Alulim became king; he ruled for 28800 years. Alaljar ruled for 36000 years. 2 kings; they ruled for 64800 years. Then Eridug fell and the kingship was taken to Bad-tibira. In Bad-tibira, En-men-lu-ana ruled for 43200 years. En-men-gal-ana ruled for 28800 years. Dumuzid, the shepherd, ruled for 36000 years. 3 kings; they ruled for 108000 years. Then Bad-tibira fell (?) and the kingship was taken to Larag. In Larag, En-sipad-zid-ana ruled for 28800 years. 1 king; he ruled for 28800 years. Then Larag fell (?) and the kingship was taken to Zimbir. In Zimbir, En-men-dur-ana became king; he ruled for 21000 years. 1 king; he ruled for 21000 years. Then Zimbir fell (?) and the kingship was taken to Curuppag. In Curuppag, Ubara-Tutu became king; he ruled for 18600 years. 1 king; he ruled for 18600 years. In 5 cities 8 kings; they ruled for 241200 years. Then the flood swept over.
There are more than a dozen of copies of Sumerian King Lists, found in Babylon, Susa, and Assyria, and the Royal Library of Nineveh from the VII century BC. All of these are believed to originate from one original list believed to have been written during the Third Dynasty of Ur or even earlier. The best-preserved specimen of the Sumerian King List is called the Weld-Blundell Prism, which is a clay, cuneiform inscribed vertical prism housed in the Ashmolean Museum.
Ancient-Code
SOURCE | 1real
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Three Arrested for Starting Massive Fire on Atlanta Interstate Bridge | Three people were arrested Friday in connection with a massive fire under a bridge on Interstate 85 in Atlanta that caused part of the bridge to collapse. [Deputy Insurance Commissioner Jay Florence said Basil Eleby, Sophia Bruner, and Barry Thomas were the three suspects arrested, the Daily Mail reported. Eleby, whom Florence believes started the fire, faces a charge of criminal damage to property. Bruner and Thomas each face charges of criminal trespass. “We believe they were together when the fire was set and Eleby is the one who set the fire,” Florence told the Atlanta . Florence did not release details of how or why the fire was started, saying that those details would be released as the investigation continues. He said the suspects may have used “available materials” at the site and added that all three suspects may have been homeless. Crews worked to restore the bridge Thursday after the blaze caused it to collapse during rush hour. Nobody was injured despite the large clouds of smoke and flames that filled the air. Officials say reconstruction of the damaged section of the bridge could take several months, causing the 225, 000 commuters who use that section of the highway daily a traffic nightmare. | 0fake
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Collapsing: Why the ‘Russia Hack’ Witch Hunt Will Not End Well for Congress, or America | 21st Century Wire says Washington s Russian witch hunt is now collapsing before our eyes. As host Patrick Henningsen revealed last Wednesday on ACR Radio, the supposedly damning information submitted by the FBI s private cyber security contractor Crowdstrike, of which the entire Russian Hack conspiracy theory hinges on is fraudulent. Here is a link to their primary invented piece of evidence included in the US Intelligence Assessment. This means that we were correct back on Nov 1st when we said the Russian Hack story was a hoax designed distract from the explosive contents on the DNC and Podesta email leaks, and also to bolster a failing Hillary Clinton campaign by discrediting Donald Trump as being somehow in league with the evil Russians.If they keep pressing this story, it will only hurt the credibility of a Democratic Party that still refuses to admit the abject failures and corruption within of their political organization.Now the question remains: how more millions in US taxpayer money will Hollywood s Congressman Adam Schiff, and ringleaders Lindsey Graham waste before they re done trying to look tough on Russia and Trump? Will they be held accountable by anyone?In the end, we discover that Schiff, Feinstein, Graham, McCain and so many others in Washington have done extreme damage to American interests, and in the long run to national security. Here s the story US Congressman and NeoMcCarthyite Adam Schiff has himself become a ridiculous-looking caricature as of late. Justin Raimondo Antiwar.comThe allegation now accepted as incontrovertible fact by the mainstream media that the Russian intelligence services hacked the Democratic National Committee (and John Podesta s emails) in an effort to help Donald Trump get elected recently suffered a blow from which it may not recover.Crowdstrike is the cybersecurity company hired by the DNC to determine who hacked their accounts: it took them a single day to determine the identity of the culprits it was, they said, two groups of hackers which they named Fancy Bear and Cozy Bear, affiliated respectively with the GRU, which is Russian military intelligence, and the FSB, the Russian security service.How did they know this?These alleged hacker groups are not associated with any known individuals in any way connected to Russian intelligence: instead, they are identified by the tools they use, the times they do their dirty work, the nature of the targets, and other characteristics based on the history of past intrusions.Yet as Jeffrey Carr and other cyberwarfare experts have pointed out, this methodology is fatally flawed. It s important to know that the process of attributing an attack by a cybersecurity company has nothing to do with the scientific method, writes Carr: Claims of attribution aren t testable or repeatable because the hypothesis is never proven right or wrong. Neither are claims of attribution admissible in any criminal case, so those who make the claim don t have to abide by any rules of evidence (i.e., hearsay, relevance, admissibility). Likening attribution claims of hacking incidents by cybersecurity companies to intelligence assessments, Carr notes that, unlike government agencies such the CIA, these companies are never held to account for their misses: When it comes to cybersecurity estimates of attribution, no one holds the company that makes the claim accountable because there s no way to prove whether the assignment of attribution is true or false unless (1) there is a criminal conviction, (2) the hacker is caught in the act, or (3) a government employee leaked the evidence. This lack of accountability may be changing, however, because Crowdstrike s case for attributing the hacking of the DNC to the Russians is falling apart at the seams like a cheap sweater.To begin with, Crowdstrike initially gauged its certainty as to the identity of the hackers with medium confidence. However, a later development, announced in late December and touted by the Washington Post, boosted this to high confidence. The reason for this newfound near-certainty was their discovery that Fancy Bear had also infected an application used by the Ukrainian military to target separatist artillery in the Ukrainian civil war. As the Post reported: While CrowdStrike, which was hired by the DNC to investigate the intrusions and whose findings are described in a new report, had always suspected that one of the two hacker groups that struck the DNC was the GRU, Russia s military intelligence agency, it had only medium confidence. Now, said CrowdStrike co-founder Dmitri Alperovitch, we have high confidence it was a unit of the GRU. CrowdStrike had dubbed that unit Fancy Bear. Crowdstrike published an analysis that claimed a malware program supposedly unique to Fancy Bear, X-Agent, had infected a Ukrainian targeting application and, using GPS to geo-locate Ukrainian positions, had turned the application against the Ukrainians, resulting in huge losses: Between July and August 2014, Russian-backed forces launched some of the most-decisive attacks against Ukrainian forces, resulting in significant loss of life, weaponry and territory. Ukrainian artillery forces have lost over 50% of their weapons in the two years of conflict and over 80% of D-30 howitzers, the highest percentage of loss of any other artillery pieces in Ukraine s arsenal. Alperovitch told the PBS News Hour that Ukraine s artillery men were targeted by the same hackers, that we call Fancy Bear, that targeted DNC, but this time they were targeting cell phones to try to understand their location so that the Russian artillery forces can actually target them in the open battle. It was the same variant of the same malicious code that we had seen at the DNC. He told NBC News that this proved the DNC hacker wasn t a 400-pound guy in his bed, as Trump had opined during the first presidential debate it was the Russians.The only problem with this analysis is that is wasn t true. It turns out that Crowdstrike s estimate of Ukrainian losses was based on a blog post by a pro-Russian blogger eager to tout Ukrainian losses: the Ukrainians denied it. Furthermore, the hacking attribution was based on the hackers use of a malware program called X-Agent, supposedly unique to Fancy Bear. Since the target was the Ukrainian military, Crowdstrike extrapolated from this that the hackers were working for the Russians.All somewhat plausible, except for two things: To begin with, as Jeffrey Carr pointed out in December, and now others are beginning to realize, X-Agent isn t unique to Fancy Bear. Citing the findings of ESET, another cybersecurity company, he wrote: Unlike Crowdstrike, ESET doesn t assign APT28/Fancy Bear/Sednit to a Russian Intelligence Service or anyone else for a very simple reason. Once malware is deployed, it is no longer under the control of the hacker who deployed it or the developer who created it. It can be reverse-engineered, copied, modified, shared and redeployed again and again by anyone. In other words malware deployed is malware enjoyed! In fact, the source code for X-Agent, which was used in the DNC, Bundestag, and TV5Monde attacks, was obtained by ESET as part of their investigation! During our investigations, we were able to retrieve the complete Xagent source code for the Linux operating system . If ESET could do it, so can others. It is both foolish and baseless to claim, as Crowdstrike does, that X-Agent is used solely by the Russian government when the source code is there for anyone to find and use at will. Secondly, the estimate Crowdstrike used to verify the Ukrainian losses was supposedly based on data from the respected International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS). But now IISS is disavowing and debunking their claims: [T]he International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) told [Voice of America] that CrowdStrike erroneously used IISS data as proof of the intrusion. IISS disavowed any connection to the CrowdStrike report. Ukraine s Ministry of Defense also has claimed combat losses and hacking never happened . The CrowdStrike report uses our data, but the inferences and analysis drawn from that data belong solely to the report s authors, the IISS said. The inference they make that reductions in Ukrainian D-30 artillery holdings between 2013 and 2016 were primarily the result of combat losses is not a conclusion that we have ever suggested ourselves, nor one we believe to be accurate. One of the IISS researchers who produced the data said that while the think tank had dramatically lowered its estimates of Ukrainian artillery assets and howitzers in 2013, it did so as part of a reassessment and reallocation of units to airborne forces. No, we have never attributed this reduction to combat losses, the IISS researcher said, explaining that most of the reallocation occurred prior to the two-year period that CrowdStrike cites in its report. The vast majority of the reduction actually occurs before Crimea/Donbass, he added, referring to the 2014 Russian invasion of Ukraine. The definitive evidence cited by Alperovitch is now effectively debunked: indeed, it was debunked by Carr late last year, but that was ignored in the media s rush to prove the Russians hacked the DNC in order to further Trump s presidential ambitions. The exposure by the Voice of America of Crowdstrike s falsification of Ukrainian battlefield losses the supposedly solid proof of attributing the hack to the GRU is the final nail in Crowdstrike s coffin Continue this story at Antiwar.comREAD MORE RUSSIAN HACK NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Russian Hack FilesSUPPORT 21WIRE SUBSCRIBE & BECOME A MEMBER@ 21WIRE.TV | 1real
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White House voices concerns on Senate Sept. 11 lawsuit bill | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House said on Tuesday that it had “serious concerns” about a bill the U.S. Senate passed that would allow survivors and relatives of those killed in the Sept. 11 attacks to sue to seek damages from the government of Saudi Arabia. “Given the concerns that we have expressed, it’s difficult to imagine the president signing this legislation,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters. | 0fake
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‘Arab Spring’ and the Washington-Brussels-Riyadh Axis | Be the First to Comment! Search articles | 1real
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Women knit pink 'pussyhats' for rally after Trump inauguration | LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Editors Note: Attention to language that may be offensive to some readers in paragraph 3 The National Mall in Washington could become a sea of bright pink the day after Donald Trump is inaugurated as U.S. president if the vision of a pair of Los Angeles women is realized. For two months, Krista Suh and Jayna Zweiman have called on people around the world to make 1.17 million pink “pussyhats” for those attending the Women’s March, a rally on Jan. 21 organized with hopes of bringing attention to civil and human rights issues. The name of the hats comes partly from President-elect Trump’s comments in an infamous 2005 tape that came to light during his campaign in which, discussing women, he said: “Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything.” The project is meant to “create a sea of pink hats which is going to be a strong collective visual statement,” Zweiman said. It is also meant to involve “people across the country and the world who want to be a part of the march but can’t physically be there and want to support the marchers,” she said. The women have asked volunteers around the world to help sew, crochet or knit pink hats with ears by using simple patterns available on the project’s website. They say it is easier than knitting a scarf, the typical starter project for novices. “It’s a rectangle folded in half, stitched up the sides and when you put it on your round head, these ears come out,” said Zweiman, surrounded by women stitching away at a knitting store on Friday night. Marchers can get a hat by contacting a maker through an online distribution system, through social media or at sites in Washington. “So it’s a distribution system that’s very grassroots and our aim is to get a hat on every marcher’s head who wants one,” Zweiman said. Organizers have said the protest could draw around 200,000 people, but Suh and Zweiman decided to aim for the 1.17 million people that could feasibly fit in the Mall. For some knitters at Friday’s “pussyhat party,” it was hard to put the needles down as the deadline nears. “Doing this is taking my mind off things,” said Marina Mont’Ros. “This will be my 35th hat. Every time I think ‘OK, that’s enough. I’ve made enough, I’m going to stop,’ I read something in the news and, give me that yarn! I’m making more.” | 0fake
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UNsilenced: Whistleblower Exposes UN Culture of Corruption | Email
When she stumbled across massive corruption and made-up statistics in her job at the United Nations, Rasna Warah knew she needed to act. But when she tried to blow the whistle, she was viciously attacked, publicly humiliated, threatened, intimidated, and more. Unfortunately, though, as Warah explains in her new book UNsilenced: UNmasking the United Nations' Culture of Cover-ups, Corruption and Impunity , her case is far from unique.
In fact, the corruption and lawlessness across the UN appears to be systemic. Some of the cases described in the book and the pages of The New American magazine make the scandals she exposed and the retaliation she suffered seem mild by comparison. Indeed, in her book, she actually spends very little time dwelling on her own case, but delves instead into some of the many other known and unknown scandals to rock the global organization.
Perhaps the most grotesque whistleblower-related story in recent memory surrounds the now-infamous case of Anders Kompass, the UN human-rights official who exposed child-rape by “peacekeeping” troops in Africa after the UN refused to act on it. But the book is filled with startling examples of corruption, mismanagement, and more, ranging from brazen theft of taxpayer money to the sexual abuse and exploitation of children by UN “peace” troops. Just the quotes from the UN whistleblowers exposing the putrid UN culture of impunity make the book worth reading. Apparently the UN did not want a “culture of snitches,” as one whistleblower put it.
It got so bad that in 2015, as Warah explains, a coalition of nine UN whistleblowers got together to raise the matter with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon. “Each of us has blown the whistle on serious wrongdoing, gross misconduct, and even criminal acts at the United Nations,” the group wrote in the letter, which is quoted in the book. “Our collective experience of reporting misconduct in the UN covers sexual exploitation, abuse of power, corruption, and other criminals activity over a period of more than a decade and a half.”
Instead of the UN scrambling to make things right, though, it responded in every case by attacking the whistleblower instead of the crimes, abuse, and the people behind the problems. “Each of us has faced retaliation for reporting the wrongdoing,” the whistleblowers continued. “Our cases are well-known, and sadly, deter others from reporting wrongdoing. This must change.” Unfortunately for humanity, despite threats from Congress to cut funding, and increasingly widespread media attention, nothing has changed, as the book documents extensively.
Warah's realization that something was very wrong at the UN began while she was serving at UN-Habitat as an editor of various publications, including the important “State of the World's Cities” report. Her troubles began in 2009, when she traveled to Bahrain with Anna Tibaijuka, the executive director of the UN-Habitat agency that focuses on promoting “sustainable” cities. During the visit, Warah explained, some Bahrain officials asked how their money was being used.
“The executive director did not provide an adequate response, and thinking that perhaps she had not been briefed about it, I made my own inquiries when I returned to Nairobi,” explained Warah, a Kenyan of Indian heritage. “I discovered that at least $350,000 of the $1 million donation Bahrain had made to UN-Habitat could not be accounted for. When I asked my supervisors if they knew where the money went, they descended on me like a tonne of bricks, even threatening to not talk to me any more.”
At that time, Warah realized that “the money had probably been used on personal projects or maybe even diverted to individuals within the organization.” In an interesting turn of events, Warah later concluded that the monarchy in Bahrain did not even really care if its money has been used properly. Instead, it seems that the regime was involved in a sort of tit-for-tat agreement.
“In 2007, the Prime Minister of Bahrain, Shaikh Khalifa, had been awarded the UN-Habitat Scroll on Honour award for ´his outstanding efforts in raising the living standards of Bahrainis,´” Warah added in an e-mail about her experiences. “This was just before Bahrain experienced its own Arab spring, when the monarchy's legitimacy was being questioned. The huge donation to UN-Habitat was probably how Bahrain's monarchy 'bought' international legitimacy through the UN.”
Around that same time, Warah had already started to question how some of the alleged statistics used in the State of the World's Cities reports were actually being computed. “Many UN agencies deliberately exaggerate the scale of a problem or disseminate statistics that are not based on any scientific survey or research,” she wrote in the book. Many also “manufacture data,” she added, “because that is how they remain relevant, how they push their agenda on the international stage, and how they attract donor [taxpayer] funding.”
Sometimes UN officials and other international bureaucracies make up numbers and lie to coerce governments into changing policies, she explained. The book cites a number of examples of cooked up numbers to justify bigger budgets, more power and prestige, and various policy prescriptions. Some of the alleged “famines” in Somalia, for example, appear to have been concocted by UN bureaucrats by simply inventing or massaging statistics. Clueless journalists then parrot the invented UN numbers as part of a process that Warah referred to as the “CNN effect.”
Warah considers it a crime akin to plagiarism that should be severely punished. “When a UN agency publishes inaccurate, misleading, or unscientific statistics, it is even more unforgivable because the world's governments (i.e. member states of the UN) rely on those statistics to determine their national policies, priorities, and programs,” she continued, adding that “millions of people's lives can be affected by a single misleading or erroneous statistic.”
In particular, during her stint editing the UN world cities report, she was concerned about the “Gini coefficient” numbers used for cities, which seek to measure income inequality. She tried to figure out how these were being arrived at. Unsurprisingly, her superiors at the UN office were not pleased with the curiosity and additional scrutiny, Warah explained.
“My questioning resulted in several acts of retaliation, including public humiliation at office meetings, threats of non-renewal of contract, intimidating questioning during an interview for a post I had applied for and petty revenges, like forcing me to share my office with visiting consultants, even though I had made it clear that as editor of this important report I needed privacy and silence to carry out my work,” she explained in an e-mail. “I left the organization soon after due to frustration and a sense that my supervisors were hell-bent on making my life miserable.”
In response to the retaliation, Warah filed an official complaint at the UN “Ethics Office,” which is supposed to investigate claims and provide relief to whistleblowers. The office claimed that, “while there probably was evidence of wrongdoing at UN-Habitat, they could not establish whether I had experienced any retaliation,” Warah said, adding that determining whether retaliation took place is key to getting justice from the UN's internal systems.
The book also contains a very informative introduction by Beatrice Edwards, the international program director at the whistleblower advocacy group Government Accountability Project. Despite her general acceptance of the UN line regarding why it was founded and its alleged humanitarian purposes, Edwards highlights a number of extremely serious issues. Among those is the fact that UN personnel enjoy immunity from national and local laws, leading to a total lack of accountability that produces lawlessness and impunity. She also blasts the UN's supposed “internal system of justice” as subject to manipulation, calling its set-up “increasingly opaque and arbitrary.”
And indeed, as the book shows, the UN's pseudo-justice system is almost tragically discredited, and totally undeserving of the term “justice.” According to the book, only between three percent and four percent of whistleblowers who sought assistance from the UN “Ethics Office” had the retaliation against them substantiated by the “Ethics” people. That means a stunning 96 percent or more of whistleblowers who reported being persecuted for blowing the whistle at the UN received no relief.
Imagine being a UN worker who has observed criminality, and thinking about those odds. Of course, most people would simply choose to stay silent rather than jeopardize their career and livelihood for such meager odds. And so, with potential whistleblowers terrorized into submission, the widespread corruption, criminality and other horrors that plague the UN go unreported. The UN knows that, too, as it acknowledges in its reports about the drastic under-reporting of sexual exploitation and abuse of women and children by its scandal-plagued “peace” troops.
When Warah tried to blow the whistle and seek relief, she witnessed the failures firsthand. “Since the Ethics Office could not determine retaliation, I could not take my case forward,” she explained. “Later I realized that the Ethics Office fails to prove retaliation in about 98 per cent of the whistleblower cases it receives, which suggests that it protects senior UN management rather than UN whistleblowers.” Numerous UN whistleblowers who have spoken to this magazine in recent years have made the exact same charge, and the UN has done little to dispel that notion.
“The UN's culture of impunity ensures that those who do not rock the boat with uncomfortable truths get promoted while those who dare to speak out are castigated, ignored, demoted or fired,” wrote Warah in the book. “This is especially true in cases where the perpetrators of crimes are from powerful or influential countries that exert political pressure to ensure that their nationals' cases are not brought forward or are buried.” Think about the implications of that.
In the case of Danish UN diplomat Paul Bang-Jensen, who blew the whistle on the deliberate sabotage of a UN probe into Soviet atrocities in Hungary, and tried to protect the identity of witnesses to protect them and their families from torture and murder, the saga ended with his suspicious “suicide.” His death came after he had told his wife and others not to believe any claims that he would commit suicide. The New American magazine will publish an in-depth story on Bang-Jensen in the coming weeks.
There is so much more to learn from the UNsilenced book. For instance, Warah describes how international “aid” outfits bring in huge quantities of tax-funded food supplies right around harvest time, flooding the market with basically “free” food in huge quantities. This crushes prices, thereby destroying the incentive for locals to farm while perpetuating dependence on corrupt agencies funded by Western taxpayers, in addition to ensuring budget increases for global bureaucrats.
Another interesting fact brought out in the book: The British government's tax-funded propaganda arm, the BBC, has an unwritten policy that prevents the “news” agency from “coming down too hard” on the UN or its senior bureaucrats. The reason, according to an unnamed BBC journalist cited by Warah, is that exposing UN wrongdoing and crime might be perceived as “anti-development.” Other self-styled media organs refuse to expose UN wrongdoing because the left-wing journalists fear being associated with right-of-center individuals who want to shut down the UN, Warah, herself a left-winger, acknowledges in UNsilenced .
Some of the ideas proposed in the book to remedy the many problems include reforming the UN's internal justice system, setting up outside independent mechanisms, ensuring protection of whistleblowers, and more. Unfortunately, though, none of those recommendations get to the heart of the problem, which is that the dictator-dominated UN was flawed from the start and cannot be “reformed” enough to make it worth keeping. Surely protection for whistleblowers is needed — if only to ferret out criminals and bring them to justice, and to protect their victims, often children. But it will not solve the broader UN problem.
If there is anything to quibble about with the book, it is that it accepts as true many of the fundamental (and false) premises upon which the UN was established — the idea that “world peace” was the goal of leading UN founders such as butcher Joseph Stalin of Moscow and Soviet spy Alger Hiss of the United States, for instance. The book also occasionally treats leftist ideological claims — the idea that governments are responsible for feeding people, as just one example — as if they were facts. The ideological lens through which Warah reports, though, is easy to discern, and does not interfere with, or take away from, the excellent and brave work she has done exposing this cesspool of corruption and crime.
The book is well worth reading for anybody seeking information on UN corruption or the persecution of UN whistleblowers who try to do the right thing. For the sake of humanity and liberty, it needs to stop. Photos: Rasna Warah and her book UNsilenced
Alex Newman, a foreign correspondent for The New American , is normally based in Europe. Follow him on Twitter @ALEXNEWMAN_JOU . He can be reached at
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CNN Advertises Job Listing for Full Time ’Fake News’ Reporter | CNN, the news organization branded as “fake news” by Donald Trump, recently posted a job listing for a full time reporter focusing on fake news. [The Hill reports that a job listing was posted to Turner Media’s website seeking a “Senior Writer” for CNN media. The reads, “CNNMoney is expanding its Media team. We’re going to be examining the wave of ‘fake news’ stories and the people behind them, but more than that we’re going to be looking at truth — what happened to it, why so many of us no longer believe it, and where those people are going to get their information instead. ” The ad states that applicants must have at least six years of writing experience and aim for a high level of accuracy within their reporting, and they should, “get angry every time they see any inaccuracy in any story, whether large or small. ” CNN is also apparently looking for someone tech savvy, as ideal applicants should “live on the Internet, and be intimately aware of its darkest corners. ” Applicants will apparently be focusing on: “Investigating fake news, hoaxes and untruths of all kinds” “Debunking myths” and “Confronting the ‘real’ media. ” Applicant’s should also be “the kind of person who can’t pass by a single rabbit hole without being desperate to jump in to see where it leads,” and they must have “Intimate knowledge of and fascination with the parts of the Internet from which dubious news stories bubble up. ” Despite the level of detail given relating to the expectations CNN will be placing on applicants, no salary is listed on the Turner Media website. Successful applicants will be working under CNN media team leader, Brian Stelter, a senior CNN media correspondent and the host of “Reliable Sources. ” Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan_ or email him at lnolan@breitbart. com | 0fake
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Snapchat Discover Takes a Hard Line on Misleading and Explicit Images - The New York Times | SAN FRANCISCO — On Snapchat last week, MTV published an article with the headline “Is this the thirstiest person on earth?” The article, which ran on Snapchat’s news service, Discover, appeared with a picture of a blond woman taking a selfie, even though the piece was about a fully clothed man. Those kinds of risqué and misleading images will now be much less prominent on Discover because early on Monday, Snapchat updated its guidelines for publishers in a way that essentially cleans up what is shown on its news service. The new rules more explicitly restrict publishers from posting questionable pictures on Discover that do not have news or editorial value. Snapchat also clarified guidelines that prevent publishers from including reports or links to outside websites that could be considered fake news, saying that all content must be and accurate. The changes aim to “empower our editorial partners to do their part to keep Snapchat an informative, factual and safe environment for everyone,” said Rachel Racusen, a spokeswoman for the company. Snapchat said it also planned to give publishers a tool in February that would allow them to content, or stop minors from seeing some content altogether. The moves — which come ahead of an initial public offering expected for this spring by Snapchat’s parent company, Snap — underscore how the company is trying to distinguish itself from rival social media services. Facebook and Twitter typically give users, including publications, wide latitude in what they can post, which has led the companies into one controversy after another — including criticism over fake news and outrage over harassment and abuse by internet trolls. Snapchat is acting to limit those problems in a way that is reminiscent of how traditional media companies curate what they show people. “Snapchat thinks about the role that its content plays in the lives of consumers differently,” said Steven Kydd, one of the founders of Tastemade, an online food publication. “This is cable all over again, except for a mobile and global audience. ” Cleaning up what is published on Discover could have many benefits for Snapchat, like helping the service appeal to advertisers, which would not have to worry as much that they would be advertising alongside inappropriate content for Snapchat’s primary audience of teenagers and . The new rules could also whet investors’ appetites for Snapchat if they help the company avoid the taints of fake news and online abuse that have dogged its rivals. “In this environment, every technology company that touches media is concerned about being vulnerable to connections to fake news and disinformation,” said Joshua Benton, director of the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard University. “That’s doubly true for a company planning for an I. P. O. ” Snapchat introduced Discover in January 2015 as a part of its mobile app, where it publishes content from established media brands like CNN and Cosmopolitan, as well as newer outlets like the political channel We the People. For Snapchat, Discover is a way to engage users more deeply. Publishers see Discover as an avenue to reach a new and younger audience. From the start, Snapchat approached news differently from other social networks. While Facebook has said it is not a media company and does not want to be an arbiter of truth in news on its website, Snapchat has long prohibited false or deceptive content and is thoroughly involved in editorial standards for content on Discover. In a blog post published when Discover began, Snapchat said: “Social media companies tell us what to read based on what’s most recent or most popular. We see it differently. We count on editors and artists, not clicks and shares, to determine what’s important. ” As a result, Snapchat has always exercised a large degree of control over Discover. To secure a place on Discover, publishers have had to agree to fairly stringent guidelines around editing and video production, including having audio play at a consistent volume and a ban on images that are misleading or gimmicky. Snapchat also mandated that all images and headlines be appropriate for an audience as young as 13 years old. Discover has grown quickly. More than 100 million Snapchat users view content on Discover each month, according to the company. While some publishers said people were initially slow to embrace Discover, interest has increased over the past year. Tastemade, which publishes different editions for different areas around the world on Discover, said it had been pleased enough with the size of its Snapchat audience that it planned to grow with Snapchat as it rolled out worldwide. Still, Snapchat has not been able to entirely sidestep criticism about what it shows on Discover. In July, a lawsuit filed against the company alleged that Discover intentionally exposed minors “to harmful, offensive, prurient and sexually offensive content without warning minors or their parents that they would be exposed to such explicit content. ” The lawsuit cited examples of inappropriate content on Discover, like a post from BuzzFeed that sexualized images from Disney movies and a post from Cosmopolitan, with photos, about a performance artist who let strangers touch her genitalia. While the lawsuit was dismissed in November because the sides agreed to settle, Snapchat said it had decided to take action in response to the litigation. It soon created a new tool, which Snapchat said it had been discussing for a while, that let publishers prevent Snapchat users who were under age 18 from seeing certain content. When people sign up for Snapchat, they must enter their age and a phone number that is confirmed by the service. Snapchat also reserves the right to gate content for youngsters, even if a publisher has chosen not to do so. In updating its publisher guidelines, Snapchat aimed to clarify vague language and provide more examples around its restrictions on the use of nudity, profanity and violent images. The new rules more clearly state that publishers should not use overly sexualized or violent images as the initial visual that users are exposed to when they look at Discover and that content intended simply to shock or disgust is not allowed. Some exceptions are made for material that has news value. For the first time, the guidelines have a dedicated section detailing the warnings that publishers must run when graphic images are deemed newsworthy, as well as when to that content. Some of these updates came out of conversations that began months ago with several publishers that routinely published racier content, including The Daily Mail and Cosmopolitan, as well as news services that published controversial images. “We have been collaborating closely with all of our publishers, whose content has continued to evolve,” said Nick Bell, Snapchat’s vice president for content. “We want to be a great partner to all of our editorial partners, and updating our content guidelines to better reflect where our platform is today is an important part of that. ” One of the publishers that talked with Snapchat about the new rules was Sweet, a channel created by the media company Hearst, which said its viewership on Discover had grown substantially over the past few months. Ross Clark, Sweet’s general manager and vice president, likened the updated guidelines to a parental advisory sticker on an album or to ratings on movies. “The media industry has always included clearly established content guidelines,” Mr. Clark said. “It’s what allows a platform to have a large, diverse set of users. ” | 0fake
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“IN YOUR FACE”: OBAMA LAUNCHES NEW #RefugeesWelcome Twitter Campaign On Twitter | Never mind that a new poll shows Americans oppose bringing Syrian Refugees to America by a 2-1 margin! Carry on King Barry to hell with the American people For five days a coordinated DC Media has been attacking as racists anyone opposed to President Obama s plan to resettle thousands of Syrians refugees here in America. A new poll shows that the emotional blackmail being hurled by both Obama and his DC Media allies has failed miserably. By nearly 2-to-1 (53% to 28%), Americans oppose the resettlement program.The Obama administration launched a hashtag last night to promote the concept of welcoming Syrian refugees into the United States after a growing number of governors proposed halting the program after the terrorist attacks in Paris.The White House debuted a hashtag on their Facebook page last night: #RefugeesWelcome Even as we intensify our efforts in coordination with our partners to take out ISIL, we cannot turn our backs on those most threatened by the terrorist group, the message on the White House page read.A video on the page insisted that U.S. law enforcement officials were vetting each of the refugees before allowing them to settle in the United States.On the White House website, Deputy Assistant to the President for Homeland Security Amy Pope denounced Republicans for calling to block refugees in the country. The Administration rejects the flawed view that we can t ensure our own safety while also welcoming refugees desperately seeking their own safety, she wrote. The truth is: America can and must do both. Via: Breitbart News | 1real
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U.S. allies show support for strikes on Syria | (Reuters) - U.S. allies expressed support on Friday for Washington’s missile strikes on Syria, calling them a proportionate response to Syrian forces’ suspected use of chemical weapons. The strikes were denounced as illegal by Syria and its allies Russia and Iran. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani called on the world "to reject such policies, which bring only destruction and danger to the region and the globe". (Graphic locator map on attack - tmsnrt.rs/2nm68H0) Iraq criticized “hasty interventions” in an apparent comment on the U.S. action. But a wide range of U.S. allies from Asia, Europe and the Middle East expressed support, if sometimes cautiously, in similar terms. “The U.K. government fully supports the U.S. action, which we believe was an appropriate response to the barbaric chemical weapons attack launched by the Syrian regime and is intended to deter further attacks,” a British government spokesman said. Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told reporters: “Many innocent people became victims from the chemical attacks. “Japan supports the U.S. government’s determination to prevent the spread and use of chemical weapons,” he said. Turkey viewed the strikes positively and the international community should sustain its stance against the “barbarity” of the Syrian government, Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus said. In an interview with Turkish broadcaster Fox TV, Kurtulmus said Assad’s government must be punished in the international arena and the peace process in Syria needed to be accelerated. French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said Russia and Iran needed to understand that supporting Assad made no sense and that the escalation of the U.S. military role in Syria was a “warning” to “a criminal regime”. “Use of chemical weapons is appalling and should be punished because it is a war crime,” Ayrault told Reuters and France Info radio. French President Francois Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel issued statements saying Assad was solely to blame for the air strikes. The Dutch government said: “The United States has given a clear signal that the use of poison gas crosses a line.” It also labeled the strikes a “proportionate” response. “U.S. strikes show needed resolve against barbaric chemical attacks. EU will work with the US to end brutality in Syria,” the chairman of the council of EU leaders, Donald Tusk, said on Twitter. Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said the strikes sent “a vitally important message” that the world would not tolerate the use of chemical weapons. “The retribution has been proportionate and it has been swift,” he told reporters in Sydney. “We support the United States in that swift action.” Saudi Arabia and Qatar, which back rebels fighting Assad, said they supported the U.S. strikes and held only the Syrian government responsible for the attacks. Other Gulf countries, including the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Kuwait, also expressed support for the attacks. Some countries expressed reservations about the U.S. decision to launch strikes without authorization from the U.N. Security Council. Indonesia, home to the world’s largest Muslim population, condemned the use of chemical weapons in Syria. “At the same time, Indonesia is concerned with unilateral actions by any parties, including the use of Tomahawk missiles, in responding to the chemical weapon attack tragedy in Syria,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Armanatha Nasir said in a text message. “Military actions, undertaken without prior authorization of the U.N. Security Council, are not in line with international legal principles in the peaceful settlement of disputes, as stipulated in the U.N. Charter.” | 0fake
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Homophobes Lose Their Damn Minds After Request To ‘Give Elsa A Girlfriend’ Hits Twitter | In case people weren t already aware, lesbians exist. I know, shocking, right? I mean, one even wrote this article. Reading this could be exposing you to unadulterated homosexuality. Yet, if you re not gay, it s not going to turn you gay. Just as me watching every Disney film featuring an extremely heterosexual princess did not turn me straight. So, how great would it be if their were a lesbian princess?However, it looks as though some folks just couldn t wrap their heads around a simple, innocent request to give Elsa from Disney s hit movie Frozen a girlfriend.I hope Disney makes Elsa a lesbian princess imagine how iconic that would be Alexis Isabel (@lexi4prez) May 1, 2016Dear @Disney, #GiveElsaAGirlfriend Alexis Isabel (@lexi4prez) May 1, 2016It would be iconic, and about damn time. Although, many of us already assumed Elsa was gay, and maybe Merida from Brave too. Oooh, how cute would they be together?Unfortunately, there are still a lot of stupid people out there who love to make sure their hatred of the LGBT community is as visible as possible. The homophobia speweth over:Why? This is a CHILDRENS FILM #giveElsaAGirlfriend pic.twitter.com/XXWSoXJqLh Witchy the Kitten. (@WitchySmiles) May 2, 2016#GiveElsaAGirlfriend is disgusting Conrad Schwarz (@ConradAnCat) May 2, 2016This person apparently believes homosexuality is an alternative who knows, maybe it is for them. Who am I to judge?.@Disney Please #DontGiveElsaAGirlfriend. #GiveElsaAGirlfriend is a terrible idea. Don't make alternative sexuality an issue for children. EvangelicalArminians (@ArminianSociety) May 2, 2016This person thinks everyone is gay now. In a perfect world, but alas, no #GiveElsaAGirlfriend , are y'all fr? Why does everyone have to be "gay" now? Disney characters? Wow. mini sosa (@AlyssaAriyanna) May 2, 2016Then there s just your typical homophobes:#GiveElsaAGirlfriend? No I'm sorry but this is sickening. brandon (@handstomyseIf) May 2, 2016And the people who think exposing their children to lesbians would fuck things up:Dear Disney Don't fuck up my daughter's favorite movie!#GiveElsaAGirlfriend my ass!!!? https://t.co/ts3f4mtX13 StayCalm4Change (@tiarrabanks1) May 2, 2016Some just kept it simple:#GiveElsaAGirlfriend ? I'm not with it pen griffey (@Naee_Noelle) May 2, 2016It would be so great if @Disney were to #GiveElsaAGirlfriendThere are multiple race princesses, now there needs to be more diversity ???? Kaz (@FluffetteKaz) May 2, 2016The fact that #GiveElsaAGirlfriend is trending makes me so happy, I wish I had gay @Disney characters to look up to ?? Tyler Thompson (@the_tythompson) May 2, 2016#GiveElsaAGirlfriend there is no reason not to, it's time to teach children of all genders that homosexuality is just as normal and valid wasd (@phancied) May 2, 2016#GiveElsaAGirlfriend WE NEED THIS. So many families could benefit from this, lets bring kids up to accept all kinds of love. Jenny 2.0 (Jasmine) (@LaurenToMyHolly) May 2, 2016Some pointed out the delicious hypocrisy:#giveelsaagirlfriend if it's "okay" for a girl to date a beast&sexualize a fish, then ofc its okay to date the same gender. #loveislove Reana (EP trash) (@reana_s_) May 2, 2016Ya think?!Although, this tweet pretty much sums things up perfectly:Spoiler alert: Frozen was a metaphor for a closeted person learning to love herself and your children adored it. #GiveElsaAGirlfriend Twitnter is Coming (@OhNoSheTwitnt) May 3, 2016No matter which way you look at it, it shouldn t matter either way, and the all the homophobes out there really need to let it go. Featured image via Facebook | 1real
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Obama trolls Trump over 'mean tweet' on late night TV | (This October 24 story has been refiled to say “go” instead of “do” in second paragraph) By Roberta Rampton LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - President Barack Obama on Monday trolled Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump - known for his prolific use of Twitter to settle scores - making Trump the punch line for jokes on ABC’s late-night show “Jimmy Kimmel Live.” Obama read aloud a series of “mean tweets” culminating in one from Trump: “President Obama will go down as perhaps the worst president in the history of the United States!” “At least I will go down as a president,” Obama said. Kimmel joked that Obama had to “take time away from helping rig the election” to appear on the show, a dig at Trump, who has repeatedly said the Nov. 8 vote is rigged against him. Obama picked up on the joke while describing how comedian Bill Murray beat him in a contest to putt golf balls into a glass in the Oval Office during a recent visit - a stunt the White House designed to promote Obamacare health insurance. “He won repeatedly,” Obama said. “The glass was rigged!” Kimmel asked Obama, “Do you ever laugh” when watching Trump on television. “Most of the time,” Obama said. Obama also revealed he has been called on a special phone by his bed “three or four times” in the middle of the night during his time in office to deal with emergencies, including when the 2011 tsunami hit Japan. But he said he does not reach for his smartphone in the wee hours - another dig at the Republican candidate. “I don’t tweet at 3 a.m. about people who insult me,” Obama said. Obama’s second and final term ends on Jan. 20. Under the U.S. constitution, presidents are limited to two terms - which is just as well, Obama said. “If I were able to run for a third term, Michelle would divorce me,” he said, noting his wife does not like politics. Not all the jokes were at Trump’s expense. Comedian Will Farrell channeled deceased but beloved Chicago Cubs sportscaster Harry Caray to recommend that Obama “open a shrimp shack” after he leaves office. And Joel McHale feigned outrage when told he had been bumped from the show for Obama. “You got the president, huh. Wow, that’s a big deal - he’s got two months left in the job,” McHale said, oozing sarcasm. “That’s a real good get there, Jimmy: Lame! Duck!” McHale said. | 0fake
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ANOTHER CLINTON CASUALTY? Sister Of Woman Who Allegedly Had Photos Proving Affair With Bill Clinton, Questions His Involvement In Her Mysterious House Fire Death | As more and more women line up to tell their stories about sex with Bill Clinton both consensual and forced there is one who is unable to relive the details of her alleged affair.Penthouse Pet Judi Gibbs died in a mysterious house fire in 1986 amid rumors that she had pictures that proved she and the then-Governor of Arkansas had been regular sex partners.And even now, 30 years after she died alongside her much-older other lover, doubts remain about how and why Gibbs and her long-time beau Bill Puterbaugh met their grizzly deaths.But now DailyMail.com has pieced together the life and death of Judi Gibbs, telling for the first time how the auburn-haired woman from a pin-prick of an Arkansas town managed to bed the man who went on to be one of the most powerful men in the world.And the question remains unanswered: Was Judi Gibbs killed because Bill Clinton and his advisers feared the affair was about to become public? I have always been convinced that Bill Clinton was responsible for the fire, but I have no proof, Gibbs older sister Martha, who still lives in Sims, Arkansas, told DailyMail.com. And what would happen if I had proof you can t touch those people. At the time of her death, Gibbs was 32 and living with 57-year-old developer Puterbaugh in a large isolated home a quarter-mile drive opposite a tiny airport outside Fordyce, Arkansas.Their bodies were both found in the huge master bedroom. They died of smoke inhalation.Puterbaugh s son, Randy, who followed him into the real estate business, tells a similar story to Martha Gibbs, even though the two have not spoken since the days following the double death. There are so many pieces of the puzzle. Puterbaugh said. I believe it is a possibility that Bill Clinton was involved in their deaths. I know I wish I had hired my own private investigator but I didn t, so I guess I will never know. Judi Gibbs and Bill Puterbaugh died on January 3, 1986. According to a report in the local Fordyce News-Advocate, Gibbs called the fire department at 2.26 am wailing in her Marilyn Monroe-type voice: Bill Puterbaugh s house is on fire, hurry, you all, hurry. Puterbaugh s body was found by a window. Gibbs was still clutching the phone right next to the king-sized bed.Local fire chief Roy Wayne Moseley has no explanation as to why the lovers did not manage to get out of the house. The only reason I can think why they didn t is they were overrun with smoke so quick and so fast, he said. It was a real tragedy. As far as residential fires go, that was the worst we ve had, added Moseley, now 80 and still chief of the Fordyce Volunteer Fire Department a post he has held since 1960.Many people around the Clintons have died in unusual circumstances over the years, leading conspiracy theorists to claim they could be connected.As DailyMail.com reported earlier this year, five deaths in a six-week span between June 22 and August 2 this year had connections to the former first family. I m not saying the Clintons kill people. I m saying a lot of people around the Clintons turn up dead, Larry Nichols, who worked with the former First Family before turning against them, told DailyMail.com.And the names of Judi Gibbs and her lover Bill Puterbaugh could be added to that list.Gibbs was the sixth of seven children born to a hardscrabble family in Sims, a two-hour drive west of Little Rock.In her teens, she was lured into prostitution by her brother-in-law Dale Bliss, who is now 85 and 32 years into a life prison sentence for child rape. Daily Mail | 1real
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Challenges to Trump's immigration orders spread to more U.S. states | (In this Jan. 31 story, in 11th paragraph corrects to show two Iranian plaintiffs are a man and a woman, not two men) By Scott Malone and Dan Levine BOSTON/SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Legal challenges to President Donald Trump’s first moves on immigration spread on Tuesday, with three states suing over his executive order banning travel into the United States by citizens of seven majority-Muslim countries. Massachusetts, New York, Virginia and Washington state joined the legal battle against the travel ban, which the White House deems necessary to improve national security. The challenges contend the order violated the U.S. Constitution’s guarantees of religious freedom. San Francisco became the first U.S. city to sue to challenge a Trump directive to withhold federal money from U.S. cities that have adopted sanctuary policies toward undocumented immigrants, which local officials argue help local police by making those immigrants more willing to report crimes. The legal maneuvers were the latest acts of defiance against executive orders signed by Trump last week that sparked a wave of protests in major U.S. cities, where thousands of people decried the new president’s actions as discriminatory. Both policies are in line with campaign promises by Republican businessman-turned-politician Trump, who vowed to build a wall on the Mexican border to stop illegal immigration and to take hard-line steps to prevent terrorist attacks in the United States. The restrictions on the seven Muslim-majority countries and new limits on refugees have won the support of many Americans, with 49 percent of respondents to a Reuters poll conducted Monday and Tuesday saying they agreed with the order, while 41 percent disagreed. Massachusetts contended the restrictions run afoul of the establishment clause of the 1st Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits religious preference. “At bottom, what this is about is a violation of the Constitution,” Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey said of the order halting travel by people with passports from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen for 90 days. The order also barred resettlement of refugees for 120 days and indefinitely banned Syrian refugees. “It discriminates against people because of their religion, it discriminates against people because of their country of origin,” Healey said at a Boston press conference, flanked by leaders from the tech, healthcare and education sectors who said that the order could limit their ability to attract and retain highly educated workers. Massachusetts will be backing a lawsuit filed over the weekend in Boston federal court by two Iranian men who teach at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth. A federal judge blocked the government from expelling those men from the country and halted enforcement of the order for seven days, following similar but more limited moves in four other states. The attorneys general of New York and Virginia also said their states were joining similar lawsuits filed in their respective federal courts challenging the ban. “As we speak, there are students at our colleges and universities who are unable to return to Virginia,” Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring told reporters. “This is not an action I take lightly, but it is one I take with confidence in our legal analysis.” On Monday, liberal-leaning Washington state became the first U.S. state to have its attorney general initiate a lawsuit against Trump to challenge the travel ban. Multiple foreign nationals have also filed lawsuits challenging the ban. They included one filed in Colorado on Tuesday by a Libyan college student and two filed in Chicago, including one on behalf of an Iranian father of three children all living in Illinois. Protests against Trump’s executive action continued on Tuesday in several cities. A crowd of several thousand demonstrators gathered at the federal courthouse in Minneapolis, chanting “Hey, hey, ho, ho Muslim ban has got to go!” Dozens of protesters chanted the same slogan at Los Angeles International Airport, and more than 400 demonstrators gathered in downtown Miami to protest both the travel ban and Trump’s crackdown on sanctuary cities. San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera filed suit over Trump’s order threatening to cut funds to cities with sanctuary policies, a move that could stop the flow of billions of dollars to major U.S. population centers including New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. “If allowed to be implemented, this executive order would make our communities less safe. It would make our residents less prosperous, and it would split families apart,” Herrera said. Sanctuary cities adopt policies that limit cooperation, such as refusing to comply with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainer requests. Advocates of the policies say that, beyond helping police with crime reporting, they make undocumented immigrants more willing to serve as witnesses if they do not fear that contact with law enforcement will lead to their deportation. Both the San Francisco and Massachusetts actions contend that Trump’s orders in question violate the 10th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which states that powers not granted to the federal government should fall to the states. Michael Hethmon, senior counsel with the conservative Immigration Reform Law Institute in Washington, called the San Francisco lawsuit a “silly political gesture,” noting that prior federal court decisions make clear that the U.S. government “can prohibit a policy that essentially impedes legitimate federal programs.” | 0fake
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Labour leader and other UK lawmakers could lose seats in cost cutting plan | LONDON (Reuters) - The leader of Britain s main opposition Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn, and other politicians could lose their seats if proposals to cut the cost of politics go ahead, a report suggested on Tuesday. Under former prime minister David Cameron, the governing Conservative Party pledged to reduce the number of lawmakers from 650 to 600 to make cost savings after criticism of expense claims made by those working in parliament. The independent boundary commission has made proposals to make sure most electoral districts in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are roughly equal in the number of voters, meaning certain seats, like Corbyn s, are set to be abolished. But it is not clear whether parliament will back the plan, which is not due to take effect until 2022. Since losing the Conservatives parliamentary majority at an election in June, Prime Minister Theresa May is dependent on the support of a small Northern Irish party, the Democratic Unionist Party, which has opposed any changes in earlier votes. Labour has also said it would vote against the measures, accusing the Conservatives of using the review to pursue their own political advantage . The Daily Telegraph newspaper said if the changes had been in place before the June election, May s Conservatives would have won a majority. | 0fake
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In a Corner of the Everglades, a Way of Life Ebbs - The New York Times | EVERGLADES NATIONAL PARK, Fla. — As the airboat skimmed across the shallow water, scattering blue dragonflies and launching a heron into the air, Keith Price squinted into the sun and relished the isolation of Florida’s unrivaled river of grass. Then he cut off the deafening motor, making the silence in the park all the sweeter, turned his one working ear my way, and asked, “Isn’t this beautiful?” No answer was required, but the question itself was a kind of lament. Private airboating inside the pristine Everglades National Park, a pastime that stretches back decades, will officially end with Mr. Price and others like him. For Mr. Price, 62, it is the latest broadside against the unique but dwindling culture among devotees of the park known as Gladesmen, their traditions curbed over time by restrictions on hunting and camping, development booms and other intrusions. “This is the only part of the park where you can ride your own airboat,” said Mr. Price, who calls himself a “citizen of the Everglades” and is the president of the Airboat Association of Florida. “Why wouldn’t I want to pass this on to my kids and grandkids. ” Beginning this year, federal park officials will restrict airboat use to those who, in 1989, used them regularly in the eastern part of Everglades National Park near Miami. That was the year Congress passed a law to protect and expand the park by nearly 109, 000 acres, and to help it recover from engineering projects that had left the Everglades starved for water. In keeping with that mission, the law called for the use of airboats in the national park to be phased out. Regulators say the boats can destroy the saw grass prairies and disturb wildlife with their noise. Airboat owners who were 16 or older in 1989 will most likely be grandfathered and, for the first time, given a permit, said Justin Unger, the park’s deputy superintendent. But the permits expire when their holder dies, guaranteeing the eventual demise of private airboat use inside the park. Mr. Unger said he expected to issue hundreds of such permits, if not more, mostly on an honor system, adding that the park wants to be as generous as possible. The four commercial airboat concessions that ferry tourists around the park will also be affected. The three that own their land will have to sell it to the federal park, but all four can continue to operate under new park rules, Mr. Unger said. The owners are unhappy about having to sell their land and eventually hand over their concessions. “We are trying to enforce the law in the most evolving, respectful way, while still honoring the heritage that exists in South Florida,” Mr. Unger said. In addition, private airboat riding is allowed in several hundred thousand acres of the Everglades that are outside the park’s boundaries, and in stretches of the neighboring Big Cypress National Preserve. But there is something special about Everglades National Park. Folded inside the country’s largest subtropical wilderness, it is a flat 1. 5 million acres of marshland, hardwood hammocks, tangled mangroves and cypress domes on the tip of Florida. A shallow sheet of water flows slowly south from Lake Okeechobee across the saw grass and into Florida Bay, attracting a multitude of wading birds, snakes, alligators, fish and frogs. “There are no other Everglades in the world. They are, they have always been, one of the unique regions of the earth remote, never wholly known,” Marjory Stoneman Douglas marveled in her book “The Everglades: River of Grass” published in 1947. Teeming with mosquitoes and tough to penetrate or tame (even the grass will cut your fingers) the swampy Everglades has long been inhospitable to all but the hardiest. Airboats, built to skim atop the water with their flat bottoms and propellers, helped crack open the door. “You can’t see the Everglades if you can’t get in the Everglades,” said Jesse Kennon, owner of Coopertown Airboats, one of the four concessions inside the national park. Some of the Everglades trace back to the gritty pioneering Gladesmen who settled in the wilderness and survived off the land, much like the Miccosukees and Seminoles before them. Some of these settlers’ descendants live here still, holding tight to traditional habits and culture. Today’s Gladesmen, a largely recreational bunch numbering in the hundreds, do less surviving and more enjoying. They intuit the Everglades — their complaints, their equilibrium. They know what can be eaten (the hearts of saw grass leaves). They know how to read the water trails (and not get lost). They even know how to read the minds of alligators and wrestle them down (at least some do). “He wants to know if you want to go on a walking tour with him,” Mr. Kennon ribbed, nodding at the alligator that swam silently up to the bobbing airboat, stopped and locked eyes with us for several long minutes. Mr. Kennon wrestled his first gator as an climbing on its back, lifting its chin, then tying up its mouth and legs, a trick he can still handle at 73. He learned the trade from the Miccosukee alligator wrestler Bobby Tiger, who lived on a nearby reservation. Mr. Kennon, who lives in the back of his gift shop in the Everglades, first set foot here as a boy, in the 1950s. He spent summer vacations with a cousin, John Cooper, who had moved to the Everglades from Missouri. Mr. Cooper built a rustic airboat so the family could ride into the swamp to gig bullfrogs they could sell to restaurants or . In time, the business became Coopertown Airboats, which Mr. Kennon took over in 1981. Soon, film crews and fashion photographers were following him into the photogenic Everglades. “This is how I make a living, off the Glades,” said Mr. Kennon, who wears a gold ring in the shape of a gator. “I’d go out of my mind working in an office. ” It is easy to see what the airboaters love about life inside the park. The canopy of pink, red and orange as the sun sets beyond the grass. The bass fishing trips with buddies in isolated hammocks that once housed hunting camps. The trumpet blast of the bullfrogs. When the Everglades protection law passed in 1989, the members of the Airboat Association of Florida lobbied so effectively to save their land that they got to keep it and their clubhouse. Of the remaining 200 or so members, most are weekenders who use the club’s ramp, hang out in the clubhouse and regularly host visiting Boy Scouts. They view themselves as stewards of the park, and say they will fight the law as long as commercial airboats, which they argue are much larger and more damaging to the park, are allowed to remain. Mr. Price, who goes by his onetime trucker handle, Sawgrass Cowboy, and who could double as Walter Sobchak, a character from the film “The Big Lebowski,” said small, airboats do not harm the saw grass. And the wildlife adapted to the noise long ago, he said. “The airboat sound matches my wife’s angry voice,” joked Mr. Price, who grew up near the park and said he took his first steps here as a baby. His friend Cecil M. Pierce, 71, who has been airboating for more than three decades, said America has just “too much government,” a common grievance among the club’s members. A few minutes later, Mr. Price snatched a tiny apple from a pond apple flower on park property. Mr. Pierce pointed to the sky and said, “there’s a little drone up there watching you. ” By afternoon’s end, the airboaters navigated back to the club for a beer, happy to have skirted the hustle and bustle of another day. “Some people like the ocean,” Mr. Price said. “We like the Everglades. ” | 0fake
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Trump adviser: TPP 'dead,' will move quickly on bilateral trade deals | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President-elect Donald Trump will not revive his predecessor’s stalled Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal in any form, but will quickly pursue bilateral trade agreements, a Trump transition policy adviser said. “TPP is dead. I cannot stress that more strongly,” said the adviser, who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly for the administration that takes office on Jan. 20. “TPP, or a multilateral agreement that looks like TPP but is called something else, is emphatically dead.” On Wednesday, Trump’s nominee for secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, said he was not opposed to President Barack Obama’s 12-country Pacific Rim trade deal but shared some of Trump’s views “on whether the agreement that was negotiated serves all of America’s interests at best.” Speaking by phone late on Thursday, the Trump adviser said Tillerson was expressing some personal views on free trade theory. The adviser said the administration was not going to pursue multilateral trade deals. “You will be shocked by the speed at which bilateral agreements begin to materialize,” the adviser said. Britain has expressed strong interest in a bilateral trade deal with the United States once it exits the European Union. Official spokespeople for the Trump transition team did not respond to Reuters’ requests for further comment. The adviser said he would not rule out declaring China a currency manipulator or levying tariffs on Chinese goods as a means of reducing massive U.S. trade deficits with China. He declined to speculate how quickly a currency designation could come, adding that the issue needed further review. The Trump policy adviser said the new administration is determined to reverse years of Chinese trade practices that have “hollowed out” the U.S. manufacturing base. “You have to understand the view of this administration that China is essentially perpetrating an economic war, they’re already engaged in a trade war against us,” the adviser said. | 0fake
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Trevor Noah Compares Texans Excited About Open Carry Law To Gay Pride Parade Celebrators (VIDEO) | Trevor Noah compared the excitement of the people of Texas over the new open-carry law to men celebrating their homosexuality at a gay pride parade. Texans already could carry hand guns but had to conceal their weapons. Now they could simply be open about it.He said: You see, gun lovers in Texas they just want to stop hiding who they really are. Although it is a little odd how as soon as people got this right they immediately went out into the streets. They were just running like yah! Ooh now I m gonna bring my gun everywhere! We re in the streets! Let s go shopping and at the laundry-mat and hey I m late at my shift at the coffee shop! He then went on to compare the excitement of gun owners over the new law to a gay pride parade: You know what, a little exuberance is fine but what made this weird for me is this is almost a little bit like when gay people first realized that society was starting to accept them for being openly gay and they immediately went out and started dancing on trucks dressed as giant penises, which on the one hand, is great. But after a certain point, we get it: you love giant penises. Texas expanded its open-carry laws to include handguns. Military rifles and other long guns have been legally openly carried for years.Featured image via video screen capture | 1real
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LOL! DEMOCRATS’ “Poster Child For Stupidity” Can’t Tell MSNBC Host What Her Party Stands For Besides Hating Trump [VIDEO] | Rep. Maxine Waters (D., Calif.) struggled Friday on MSNBC to explain what the Democratic Party stands for besides opposing President Trump.Waters has been one of the most outspoken critics of Trump in Congress, repeatedly calling for his impeachment and insisting that if investigators connect the dots, then his campaign s alleged collusion with Russia will become apparent.Given Waters public profile as a staunch Trump opponent, MSNBC host Katy Tur asked the lawmaker what Democrats actually stand for beyond opposing Trump s agenda. Congresswoman, what do the Democrats stand for other than being against Donald Trump? Tur asked. What do you stand for other than trying to get Donald Trump impeached? Everyone knows that I am the ranking member of the Financial Services Committee and that I have spent many, many hours and days implementing the Dodd-Frank reforms, Waters responded.The California Democrat proceeded to frame her work on Dodd-Frank in the context of opposing Republicans, which Tur noted. We pushed back on the Republicans, we fight against them, Waters said. [They] attempt[ed] to go get rid of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau before we came up with the reforms under Dodd-Frank. Tur pushed back. Are Democrats focusing enough on their ideas? she asked.Waters then went on to explain how effective the Democrat Party has been in their organizing efforts to disrupt town halls where Republican political leaders are speaking to their constituents. Listen, if you have not been keeping up with the town halls that have been going on, Waters said, referring to the protesters at many Republican town halls, where we have basically organized America around the [Affordable Care Act] and protected Obamacare and the thousands of people who have come out who now are very much informed about the difference between Obamacare and Trumpcare. WFBWhat Maxine doesn t understand is that when Tea Party members attended town hall meetings across American and challenged their elected leaders on reckless tax legislation they didn t need to be organized by the Republican Party. Tea Party members weren t just targeting Democrat politicians, they were targeting anyone who they felt wasn t representing the people who elected them into office. | 1real
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Trump THREATENS Comey Via Twitter In His Most Autocratic Move Yet | Donald Trump has some very scary authoritarian instincts. He regularly makes it his mission to discredit and attack the free press, has nothing but contempt for our Constitution and our system of checks and balances, and he and his officials regularly lie and spread propaganda to the American public. Now, in his most autocratic move yet, Trump has threatened the FBI Director he just fired via Twitter. This, after he just fired the man who was investigating him.Supposedly, Trump is upset because fired FBI Director James Comey s associates disputed Trump s account of what happened during a dinner meeting between the two. According to the New York Times, Trump asked for Comey s loyalty, and Comey refused to give it. Therefore, Trump threatened Comey with the leaking of supposed tapes of their meetings.James Comey better hope that there are no "tapes" of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 12, 2017Trump has also threatened to stop the White House tradition of daily press briefings, since the media is reporting on the continuously changing story with regards to the reasoning behind Comey s firing: Maybe the best thing to do would be to cancel all future "press briefings" and hand out written responses for the sake of accuracy??? Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 12, 2017This is beyond anything we have ever seen. Even Richard Nixon wasn t this much of a dictator in the making. This so-called presidency is nothing more than a dictatorship. We are literally devolving into something more like Russia or Turkey than the United States of America. This is not normal, this is not safe, and this is not healthy.The people in Congress with the power to do something about Donald Trump and his band of incompetent authoritarians better wake up and do their jobs before it s too late. The very soul of our republic depends on it.Featured image via Andrew Harrer-Pool/Getty Images | 1real
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Lithuania gets minority government as junior partner leaves | VILNIUS (Reuters) - Lithuania s government lost its majority in parliament on Saturday after its junior coalition partner quit, saying they has been sidelined over policies ranging from alcohol age limits to subsidies on central heating. A parliament vote on next year s budget, expected by early December, will be the first test for the minority government following the departure of the Social Democrats after less than a year in power. The government will need to convince opposition parties to support it on a case-by-case basis. The Lithuanian Farmers and Greens Union, the sole party remaining in power, have a block of 57 members in Lithuania s 141-seat parliament. The country, once ruled from Moscow but now a member of both the European Union and NATO, is rebuilding its military in the face of an assertive Russia but has found development hampered by emigration and raising wages, eating away at competitiveness. All preconditions are in place for our government to continue until the next general election in 2020, Saulius Skvernelis, prime minister since November 2016, told Reuters. The Social Democrats took a short-sighted and suicidal decision, he added. Lithuania s Foreign Minister Linas Linkevicius, a Social Democrat, told Reuters he will leave his party to continue in the government. At least one of the two other Social Democrat appointees will leave the 15-member government, said Social Democrat chairman Gintautas Paluckas, elected in April this year on a reform mandate. Relationships within the coalition were bad, our opinions differed on almost all major issues and, since Farmers and Greens looked for votes elsewhere, we had scant possibilities to shape its politics, he told Reuters. This will cost us influence in the short term, but we ll be in a position to better represent our supporters in the long term, he said. The Social Democrats, which have held power for long stretches since Lithuanian independence, have been looking for a way to reconnect with the voters after finishing a distant third in the 2016 general election. Social Democrat rank-and-file overwhelmingly supported leaving the government in a recent poll, in contrast to the party s members of parliament who preferred staying in power. | 0fake
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Boiler Room EP #124 – Weather Warfare & CNN Goblin Pits | Tune in to the Alternate Current Radio Network (ACR) for another LIVE broadcast of The Boiler Room tonight 6:00 PM PST | 8:00 PM CST | 9:00 PM EST for this special broadcast. Join us for uncensored, uninterruptible talk radio, custom-made for bar fly philosophers, misguided moralists, masochists, street corner evangelists, media-maniacs, savants, political animals and otherwise lovable rascals.Join ACR hosts Hesher and Spore along side Jay Dyer of Jay s Analysis and Andy Nowicki the Nameless One, for the hundred and twenty fourth episode of BOILER ROOM. Turn it up, tune in and hang with the ACR Brain-Trust for this weeks boil downs and analysis and the usual gnashing of the teeth of the political animals in the social reject club.This week on the show the ACR Brain-Trust is back with another meeting of the Social Reject Club in the No Friends Left Zone and the gang is discussing the ongoing aftermath of the Charlottesville protests, Hurricane Harvey, weather warfare, geoengineering, movies, CNN faking flood rescues and more.Direct Download Episode #124Please like and share the program and visit our donate page to get involved! Reference Links, for your consideration and research: | 1real
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COLLEGE REPUBLICANS PRESIDENT Attacked by Antifa : “Like a pack of wolves” | So much for trying to come together like the left always says they think we should do It was a brave gesture but not a smart one for Caleb Slater to try and attend a Black Lives Matter vigil for the young woman who was killed at the riot on Saturday in Charlottesville .The president of a College Republicans chapter said he was attacked and choked by hard-left activists as he attended a vigil for the woman killed Saturday at the Charlottesville Unite the Right demonstration.Ithaca College student Caleb Slater wrote in a statement that masked members of Antifa assaulted him at a Syracuse event held on Sunday in memory of Heather Heyer, who died when a driver plowed into counter-protesters in Virginia.Slater wrote that he wore a Young America s Foundation (YAF) hat to the vigil as a symbol of peace, and he hoped showing up to the left-wing Black Lives Matter program as an identifiable conservative would demonstrate that conservatives condemn the actions of the alt-right just as much as anyone else in our culture. Slater s symbol of peace was clearly a symbol to beat him up instead.The tactics by Antifa are like Germany in 1933 You follow what they believe or else.Read more: YAF | 1real
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BEYONCE DOUBLES DOWN…Debuts #LEMONADE, Another Race Baiting, Cop-Hating, Pro-Obama Song…With Sweet Michael Brown’s Mama and Serena Williams | Most of the world will be obsessed with Beyonce s new release, Lemonade because of her unexpected confession that she is married to a cheating pig. We have instead chosen to focus instead on the continuing efforts of the dynamic racist duo to promote distrust and hate for our law enforcemen, while helping their dear friend Barack Obama to promote racial division in America. Beyonce s self-portrayal as a saint leading women to baptism is laughable considering the hateful and divisive messages she continues to promote in her songs. She has become nothing more than a tool for Obama and the Black Lives Matter terror group. Anyone who buys her music from her husband s racist label is making a direct contribution to hate.The mothers of Trayvon Martin and and Michael Brown are featured in Beyonce s new album, which was released on Jay-Z s Tidal streaming service on Saturday night after an HBO special promoting it.Lemonade is the title of both the singer s first album in three years, and the visual album which aired on HBO to promote it. And the singer continued to lace her work with a political message, as well as hitting out at her husband Jay-Z amid rumors of infidelity while ultimately appearing to forgive him.The film which aired on HBO served as a bold tribute to the perseverance of African American women and the Black Lives Matter movement.The pop queen drew a theme early in Lemonade as the film cuts to a snippet from late civil rights leader Malcolm X, who is heard saying: The most disrespected person in America is the black woman. Later, Mike Brown s mother Lesley McSpadden is seen crying as she holds a photo of her late son, whose shooting death by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014 sparked protests and a Department of Justice investigation.Trayvon Martin s mother Sybrina Fulton is also seen holding a photo of her son, who was shot dead at the age of 17 by George Zimmerman, in a case that sparked national outrage in 2012. After screening on HBO, the album will only be available on Tidal, Jay Z s pay-for music subscription. However, HBO will screen a rerun on Sunday April 24 at 8pm Eastern Time.Beyonc has been known to get political with her music she caused controversy at the Super Bowl after she and her dancers dressed similarly to the Black Panther Party, which was known for being confrontational with officers.Just before the Super Bowl, Beyonc released Formation and accompanied the song with a video in line with the burgeoning Black Lives Matter movement against perceived police brutality, with one scene showing officers raising their hands up as if under arrest.The video won wide praise from activists and Beyonc s fan base, although her political turn outraged some conservatives.Beyonc , one of the most successful contemporary artists who has mostly avoided controversy in the past, later said in an interview that she was taking issue with abuses, not with all police.The pop queen, whose Formation World Tour begins next month, again got political in the visual album.In addition to playing a quote from Malcolm X, the singer included the mothers of African-American victims of police brutality and gun violence.Mike Brown s mother Lesley McSpadden is seen crying as she holds a photo of her late son, whose shooting death by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014 sparked protests and a Department of Justice investigation.Trayvon Martin s mother Sybrina Fulton is also seen holding a photo of her son, who was shot dead at the age of 17 by George Zimmerman, in a case that sparked national outrage in 2012. In another segment, Beyonc sings about breaking her own chains and being free.And in a spoken-word interlude, a young African-American man talks about how President Obama inspired him.Lemonade also included clips of a young Beyonc with her father, Mathew Knowles. Beyonc sits next to him on the sofa, as they exchange I love yous. The film begins with a mention of her father, as Beyonc whispers: Where do you go when you go quiet? You remind me of my father, a magician, able to exist in two places at once. In the tradition of men, in my blood you come home at 3am and lie to me. What are you hiding? she whispers.And she makes numerous pointed references to an unfaithful lover before her husband Jay Z appears as she sings about forgiveness. In the fourth track of the album, titled Sorry, Beyonc sings: Middle fingers up, put them hands high. Wave it in his face, tell him, boy, bye. Tell him, boy, bye, middle fingers up. I ain t thinking bout you. She concludes: He better call Becky with the good hair. The scene drove viewers and listeners wild, with thousands of comments flooding Twitter about this elusive Becky . Within minutes #BeckyWithTheGoodHair was trending on Twitter.As she sits at a piano alone, viewers see flashback scenes of her wedding to Jay Z in 2008, and them lying in bed together. My daddy warned me about men like you, she sings. Cause every promise, don t work out that way. Nothing seems to hurt like the smile on your face. At one point she sings Are you cheating on me? then later says she is jealous and crazy .Later, the couple appear together as she sings: Baptize me. Now that reconciliation is possible, if we re gonna heal, let it be glorious. Another clip showed the pair getting matching IV tattoos on their ring fingers in a tribute to their daughter Blue Ivy.But anyone that wants to rewatch it will have to download Tidal, which holds exclusive rights to the whole album.Tidal, which costs $9.99-a-month, is Jay Z s attempt to rival free services like Spotify and YouTube, which he claims to not value artists content. It was set up in early 2015 after Jay Z bought the company from its Swedish founders. Via: Daily Mail | 1real
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