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Tuesday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Sen. Rand Paul ( ) called on former National Security Advisor Susan Rice to be brought in front of Congress under subpoena and asked questions about allegations she was behind the unmasking of American identities in raw surveillance. Paul also said she should be asked about former President Barack Obama’s knowledge of these alleged activities. “For years, both progressives and libertarians have been complaining about these backdoor searches,” Paul said. “It’s not that we’re searching maybe one foreign leader and who they talk to we search everything in the whole world. There were reports a couple of years ago that all of Italy’s phone calls were absorbed in a one month period of time. We were getting Merkel’s phone calls we were getting everybody’s phone calls. But by rebound we are collecting millions of Americans phone calls. If you want to look at an American’s phone call or listen to it, you should have to have a warrant, the old fashioned way in a real court where both sides get represented. ” “But a secret warrant by a secret court with a lower standard level because we’re afraid of terrorism is one thing for foreigners but both myself and a Progressive Ron Wyden have been warning about these back door searches for years and that they could be politicized,” he continued. “The facts will come out with Susan Rice. But I think she ought to be under subpoena. She should be asked did you talk to the president about it? Did President Obama know about this? So this is actually, eerily similar to what Trump accused them of which is eavesdropping on conversations for political reasons. ” Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor

One Love Manchester

Yep that s correct. Your hard earned tax dollars are helping to pay her salary Just days before Easter, one professor took to the internet to blast Christian conservatives for inventing a white supremacist Jesus. On Wednesday, Rutgers University professor Brittney Cooper published a column for online magazine Salon excoriating supporters of Indiana s Religious Freedom Restoration Act which she dubbed religious freedom garbage and alleging that conservative Christians harbor antagonistic political views toward every single group of people who are not white, male, Christian, cisgender, straight and middle-class. Any time right-wing conservatives declare that they are trying to restore or reclaim something, we should all be very afraid, Cooper wrote in reference to the controversial Indiana law that prevents the state from constraining individuals free exercise of religion without demonstrating a compelling government interest.According to Cooper, the law is the culmination of conservative anxieties over the legalization of same-sex marriage in Indiana, and will lead the state back to the idyllic environs of the 1950s, wherein women, and gays, and blacks knew their respective places and stayed in them. Cooper says the Supreme Court s ruling last June in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby which allowed owners of closely held, for-profit corporations to seek exemptions from laws that violate their owners religious beliefs provided the logic Indiana has used to curtail and abridge gay rights. She also claims the Indiana law sanctions the exercise of Islamophobia and declares it a slippery slope that will lead to racially inflected religious discrimination. Nothing about the cultural and moral regime of the religious right in this country signals any kind of freedom, writes Cooper, adding that this kind of legislation is rooted in a politics that gives white people the authority to police and terrorize people of color, queer people and poor women. The self-proclaimed Christian professor says she often questions if she worship[s] the same God of white religious conservatives, who she describes as a white, blond-haired, blue-eyed, gun-toting, Bible-quoting Jesus. I call this god, the god of white supremacy and patriarchy, Cooper writes.According to Cooper, if your politics are rooted in the contemporary anti-Black, misogynist, homophobic conservatism, then we are not serving the same God. That God, she claims, is an asshole with nothing holy, loving, righteous, inclusive, liberatory theologically sound about him. Cooper concludes by encouraging others to declare death to the unholy trinity of white supremacist, capitalist, heteropatriarchy allegedly created by those on the Religious Right who have pimped Jesus death to support the global spread of American empire vis-a-vis war Cooper, who teaches Women s and Gender studies and Africana Studies at the publicly-funded university in New Brunswick, N.J., describes herself as a next generation black intellectual. Via: Campus Reform

Chart Of The Day: Wealth Of the Top 0.1% Now Equals Bottom 90%

Fiorina and Trump are both touting their CEO qualities in their bid for the White House. But the differences between executive and political power are enormous. As yet another general joins Trump's team, what does the pick reveal? Was Carly Fiorina a good business executive, or a poor one? That’s a hot question in United States politics as Ms. Fiorina rises in the polls. Right now, the media is full of in-depth examinations of her tenure as CEO of Hewlett-Packard and her 20 years at Lucent. Both firms grew during her tenure but both struggled after she left, and it remains unclear whether her decisions contributed to their stumbles. However, amid the flurry of competing profit claims and clashing job figures, there’s a third question that’s going largely unasked: Is the top-level business experience of Fiorina and Donald Trump actually relevant to the presidency? After all, the Oval Office is a very different place from a Fortune 500 corner office. Government bureaucrats don’t instantly obey orders. Troublesome lawmakers can’t be dismissed. Reporters are so interested in your decisions that a horde of them occupies a press office in your own building. Some CEO qualities are indeed useful in politics, JPMorgan Chase Chairman and CEO Jamie Dimon said Sunday on “Meet the Press." Successful business executives have a general talent for running things, he said, and for identifying and recruiting successful subordinates. “It’s not sufficient, though. You have a whole other set of attributes” necessary to the presidency, said the JP Morgan chief. “It’s complex. It’s three-dimensional chess.” Mr. Dimon is a self-identified Democrat who has supported Hillary Clinton in the past. So it’s possible he has a partisan interest in pushing the notion that CEO experience isn’t a White House prerequisite. But it’s undeniable that the greatest presidents weren’t business leaders. In at least one case – Harry Truman – a successful president was a private sector flop. Herbert Hoover was a prominent mining engineer, executive, and investor before his disastrous Oval Office tenure. Jimmy Carter, peanut broker, is typically ranked near the bottom of modern presidents. George H. W. Bush made a fortune in oil, and then lost his presidential reelection bid amid an ailing economy. George W. Bush was the first US president with an MBA. Given the rise of that credential among the American elite class, it’s unlikely he’ll be the last. In fact, 2016 could be a business executives’ year. Fiorina and Trump both insist that business experience is crucial to understanding the economy and job creation and to bringing order and clarity to difficult issues. Trump in particular boasts that America would be transformed by the sheer power of his business acumen. Pressed last month by George Stephanopoulos of ABC News about how he would find and deport the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants in the US, and where he’d get the billions to pay for the move, Trump said, “It’s called management." The substance of Trump’s immigration proposals aside, “management” might not be enough to carry them out, or indeed to push though and then execute any complex, controversial US political action. The differences between executive and political power are simply enormous. By comparison, executives are the masters of their domain. Their leverage over subordinates is direct, and considerable. Their ability to set strategy for their entity is similarly unchallenged. Presidents have little of that. Their hiring power extends to their own staff and cabinet top levels. Congress holds the purse strings and has a huge say in the direction of the nation. Public opinion is a powerful influence. In his classic study of the office, “Presidential Power and the Modern Presidents,” the influential scholar Richard Neustadt argued that presidents are weak when it came to domestic matters. They weren’t in any sense the nation’s CEO. “Presidential power is the power to persuade,” Mr. Neustadt concluded. That involves lots of skills CEOs don’t need. They include the ability to cajole 435 lawmakers, all of whom think they should be sitting in your chair. They include the ability to take an indirect line toward your goal, and often settling for far less than you wanted. They include an inclination to compromise and an acceptance that muddling through isn’t so bad, particularly when it comes to foreign policy. “There’s no equivalent in the corporate world to the separation of powers that often thwarts a president’s will. And the job demands political savvy more than managerial experience,” wrote Bloomberg’s David Lynch in 2012 when considering businessman Mitt Romney’s presidential qualifications. This doesn’t mean CEOs are by definition unqualified for presidential duties. To reach the top, they need drive, clarity, the ability to set goals, and the ability to rally a staff – all useful qualifies in politics. And business failure can lead to political success. The outline of Harry Truman’s story is well-known: He’s the failed haberdasher who rose to finish World War II and save Europe with the Marshall Plan. But Truman’s Kansas City clothing store thrived, until an economic downturn sucked it under. Many of Truman’s friends from National Guard days used the store as an informal clubhouse, and through the store he met many local small businessmen and joined civic associations. This gave him his entrée into the local Democratic machine. He entered county politics, then won a US Senate seat, and was chosen as Franklin D. Roosevelt’s vice president. On the afternoon of April 12, 1945, Truman received an urgent summons from the White House. Eleanor Roosevelt met him and told him that FDR had died. Truman asked Mrs. Roosevelt “Is there anything I can do for you?” “Is there anything we can do for you?” she replied. “For you are the one in trouble now.”

@Proncey @phippsjm @mavrick803 I stand with people over profits, with workers over exploitative interests. I know which side I'm on. Do you?

@mashable #JeSuisCharlie

Says Royce West stood with Wendy Davis "to support painful late-term abortions."

GAZA (Reuters) - A Palestinian militant group said on Friday that five of its members had been killed earlier this week when Israel blew up a cross-border tunnel being dug by militants from the Gaza Strip, bringing the death toll in the strike to 12. Neither side seemed eager to seek escalation after the tunnel was blown up on Monday by Israel, which pointed out that its action was carried out on its own side of the border. The Islamic Jihad group said it was denied access to the collapsed tunnel and was unable to recover the bodies of its five members. Both Islamic Jihad and Hamas, the dominant Islamist group in Gaza that had said earlier it lost two people in the tunnel collapse, have sworn to retaliate. Hamas accused Israel of trying to undermine a reconciliation agreement it reached with Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, last month. Israel has been constructing a sensor-equipped underground wall along the 60-km (36-mile) Gaza border, aiming to complete the $1.1 billion project by mid-2019. During the last Gaza war, in 2014, Hamas fighters used dozens of tunnels to blindside Israel s superior forces and threaten civilian communities near the frontier, a counterpoint to the Iron Dome anti-missile system that largely protected the country s heartland from militant rocket barrages. Israel and the United States have called for Hamas to be disarmed as part of the pact between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, so Israeli peace efforts with Abbas, which collapsed in 2014, could proceed. Hamas has rejected the demand.

In congressional hearing rooms and on national television, Wells Fargo has vowed to make things right for the thousands of customers who were given sham accounts. The bank’s new chief executive, Timothy J. Sloan, in his first week on the job, said his “immediate and highest priority is to restore trust in Wells Fargo. ” But in federal and state courtrooms across the country, Wells Fargo is taking a different tack. The bank has sought to kill lawsuits that its customers have filed over the creation of as many as two million sham accounts by moving the cases into private arbitration — a secretive legal process that often favors corporations. Lawyers for the bank’s customers say the legal motions are an attempt to limit the bank’s accountability for the widespread fraud and deny its customers their day in open court. Under intense pressure to meet sales goals, Wells employees used customers’ personal information to create unauthorized banking and credit card accounts in a scandal that has rattled the San Francisco bank to its core, forcing the retirement of its longtime leader, John G. Stumpf, and enraging regulators and politicians of all stripes. The bank’s arbitration push in recent weeks is fanning those flames anew. “It is ridiculous,” said Jennifer Zeleny, who is suing Wells Fargo in federal court in Utah, along with about 80 other customers, over unauthorized accounts. “This is an issue of identity theft — my identity was used so employees could meet sales goals. This is something that needs to be litigated in a public forum. ” In arbitration, consumers often find the odds are stacked against them. The arbitration clauses prevent consumers from banding together to file a lawsuit as a class, forcing them instead to hash out their disputes one by one and blunting one of most powerful tools that Americans have in challenging harmful and deceitful practices by big companies. Strict judicial rules limiting conflicts of interest also do not apply in arbitration, enabling some companies to steer cases to friendly arbitrators, according to a 2015 investigation by The New York Times. Arbitration is also conducted outside public view, and the decisions are nearly impossible to overturn. Ms. Zeleny, a lawyer who lives outside Salt Lake City and opened a Wells Fargo account when she started a new law practice, said it would be impossible for her to agree to arbitrate her dispute over an account that she had never signed up for in the first place. The bank’s counterargument: The arbitration clauses included in the legitimate contracts customers signed to open bank accounts also cover disputes related to the false ones set up in their names. Some judges have agreed with this argument, but some lawmakers and others consider it outrageous. “Wells Fargo’s customers never intended to sign away their right to fight back against fraud and deceit,” said Senator Sherrod Brown, an Ohio Democrat, who introduced a bill last week that would prevent Wells from forcing arbitration in the sham account cases. Yet even as the bank reels in the court of public opinion, Wells Fargo has been winning its legal battles to kill off lawsuits. Judges have ruled that Wells Fargo customers must go to arbitration over the fraudulent accounts. In dismissing one large case seeking status in California, a federal judge ruled last year that it was not “wholly groundless” that customers could be forced to arbitrate over accounts they had never agreed to. That case is now being settled, according to legal filings. In a statement, Wells Fargo said it was working with customers to reimburse any improper fees. If the issues are still not resolved, the bank offers free mediation services. Arbitration, the bank said, is a “last resort. ” “We want to make sure that no Wells Fargo customer loses a single penny because of these issues,” the statement said. Although the extent of the scandal became known only in September, some fraudulent acts may have started a decade or more ago. And Wells Fargo has been moving disputes about unauthorized accounts into arbitration for years, which lawyers say may have helped keep the problems from bursting into public view sooner. In 2013, David E. Douglas, a Wells Fargo customer in Los Angeles, filed a lawsuit claiming that several bank employees had forged his signature and opened many sham accounts in his name to meet sales quotas. The actions he described in his complaint are precisely the kinds of illegal acts the company acknowledged this year, when it paid $185 million to settle cases brought by federal regulators and the Los Angeles city attorney. But Mr. Douglas’s testimony never reached a courtroom. A judge granted Wells Fargo’s request to move the case to arbitration, whisking it out of public view. Wells Fargo’s legal success shows the overwhelming power that arbitration clauses have in shaping disputes between everyday Americans and huge corporations. Since a pair of Supreme Court rulings in 2011 and 2013 allowed for the widespread use of arbitration, companies have had great success enforcing these clauses. Proponents of arbitration say the process is a more efficient way to settle disputes than lawsuits that end up mostly enriching plaintiffs’ lawyers. “By resolving legal disputes through arbitration, both the consumer and the business have the ability to reach a positive resolution at a lower cost,” Wells Fargo said in its statement. Arbitrators are typically lawyers or retired judges who are paid large fees to conduct hearings. The arbitrators, critics say, have an economic interest in siding with the companies, which bring them multiple cases, while individual consumers are likely to appear before them only once. At the moment, regulators can do little to prevent a bank customer from being forced into arbitration. Most Americans never bother to take their disputes to arbitration, particularly for a dispute over a small amount of money, the Times investigation showed. And that is likely to be the case for many of the Wells Fargo customers who are sent into arbitration, lawyers say. In many instances, the fees that customers were charged on the unauthorized accounts were less than $100. Few lawyers will take up individual arbitration claims when the potential damages are low. “This is meant to have a chilling effect,” said Zane Christensen, a lawyer who represented customers in a suit against Wells Fargo in federal court in Utah. “They know customers will have a hard time finding a lawyer to represent them in arbitration. ” But those damages could cost the bank a fortune if multiplied over potentially thousands of customers in a lawsuit. This is not the first time Wells Fargo has been accused of trying to use arbitration to its advantage. In June 2009, Wells was one of about 30 banks that were sued over overdraft policies designed to maximize the fees charged to customers. Wells first decided to fight the lawsuit in Federal District Court in Miami. Typically, once a bank decides to litigate a case in court, it gives up its right to go to arbitration. But after more than a year in court, Wells argued that it still had the right to arbitrate the overdraft dispute. The vast majority of the banks have resolved their parts of the overdraft case, agreeing to pay, in total, more than $1. 2 billion to affected customers. Wells, meanwhile, has filed several appeals. “Wells Fargo keeps trying to push this down the road,” said Robert Gilbert, a Miami lawyer representing bank customers in the overdraft case. Members of the Senate Banking Committee sent Wells Fargo a list of detailed questions about its arbitration history over the last nine years, including how many cases were decided in the bank’s favor. The company did not provide any specifics in its response. In the wake of the scandal, under heavy pressure from lawmakers, the bank made changes that included formally separating its chairman and chief executive roles. (Mr. Stumpf had held both.) On Thursday, the bank’s board formally approved the separation of these roles — and simultaneously gave a huge raise to the new chairman, Stephen W. Sanger, who was named to the role in October. Mr. Sanger, a Wells Fargo board member since 2003 and a former head of General Mills, will see his annual retainer bumped to $250, 000 from $60, 000. Ana Bárbara, a Mexican music star who lives in Los Angeles, sued Wells Fargo in June, saying a bank employee had created sham accounts and credit lines in her name and taken out more than $400, 000 of her money. To cover his tracks, the employee regularly stopped by Ms. Bárbara’s house and stole Wells Fargo statements from her mailbox, according to her lawsuit. Devin McRae, Ms. Bárbara’s lawyer, said he would have preferred to try the case in court, where it would generate a trail of public records. But the case was moved into arbitration in September. “I think it’s a major problem when you have a bank that is so large, doing the things that Wells Fargo did on a systematic basis, to be able to keep that under wraps,” Mr. McRae said.

HOUSTON (Reuters) - U.S. Republican rivals Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz ganged up on front-runner Donald Trump at a raucous debate on Thursday in a last-ditch bid to keep the billionaire from winning victories next week that could set him up to clinch the presidential nomination. The CNN-hosted debate at the University of Houston was the two first-term senators’ last, best chance to try to shake up the race for the Republican nomination. The contest is dramatically shifting toward Trump, who is leading in opinion polls in nearly all 11 states set to make their choices on next Tuesday. Rubio and Cruz landed blows on Trump, took some withering fire in return and may wonder why they did not pursue such a strategy in the debates of past weeks and months when former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, now out of the race, was the lead Trump attacker. A confident-sounding Trump was unbowed and dismissed the attacks from his center-stage position. He declared Rubio a “choke artist” for a faltering debate in New Hampshire, again labeled Cruz “a liar” and urged his rivals to take their best shot. “Swing for the fences,” he said, wielding a baseball metaphor. Rubio, who got some momentum with a second-place finish to Trump in South Carolina last Saturday and has picked up some Bush supporters, gave his most aggressive performance to date. The senator from Florida wants to be the last Trump opponent standing and perhaps stretch the contest to the Republican nominating convention in July. He brought up Trump’s four past bankruptcies and his use of imported Polish workers to work at a Florida resort, and pointedly suggested the New Yorker would not be where he is today in the real estate business without a family inheritance. Without the family money, Rubio said, “You know where Donald Trump would be right now? Selling watches in Manhattan.” Significantly, Rubio sought to raise doubts about the depth of Trump’s policy knowledge, a point of attack that Trump’s critics in the Republican establishment have been urging candidates to pursue for months. Rubio pointed out that Trump’s sole plan to replace and repeal Democratic President Barack Obama’s signature healthcare law is to allow insurance companies to operate across state lines. When Trump repeated the same point twice, Rubio interrupted. “Now he’s repeating himself,” said the senator, who was skewered at a debate in New Hampshire last month for robotically repeating his talking points. Trump fired back: “I watched him repeat himself five times four weeks ago, and I gotta tell you it was a meltdown. I watched him melt down on the stage like I’ve never seen anybody.” Cruz, who needs to win his home state of Texas when it votes on Tuesday, also piled on Trump, saying his rival would be a weak Republican opponent to Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton in the Nov. 8 general election because he had donated to the Clinton Foundation founded by her husband, former President Bill Clinton. Cruz said Hillary Clinton would say to him, “‘Gosh, Donald you gave $100,000 to the Clinton Foundation. I even went to your wedding.’ ... He can’t prosecute the case against Hillary.” Trump ridiculed Cruz for his inability to win more than the early voting state of Iowa and taunted him for being behind Trump in opinion polls in Texas. Since a second-place finish in Iowa, Trump has won New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada. “If I can’t beat her (Clinton), you’re really going to get killed aren’t you? ... I know you’re embarrassed, but keep fighting,” Trump said. The crossfire was so intense that CNN moderator Wolf Blitzer lost control of the proceedings at times. Among the other two candidates on the stage, Ohio Governor John Kasich turned in a positive performance with an optimistic message, hoping Rubio and Cruz will falter and he will end up as the central Trump alternative. Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, flagging in the polls, provided some comic relief. He said that, as president, when considering potential Supreme Court nominees he would look at “the fruit salad of their life” and asked plaintively for more time to talk: “Can someone attack me please?” Even with his bombast, Trump turned in a more measured performance than usual, defending his moderate positions on Planned Parenthood and retaining popular parts of the Obamacare law, perhaps mindful that he is closing in on a victory in the Republican race. He said he would not support a ceasefire deal about to go into effect in Syria and declared that Libya would be better off had Colonel Muammar Gaddafi not been toppled from power by a U.S.-backed uprising in 2011. Pressed on whether he would release his tax records as 2012 Republican nominee Mitt Romney said he should do, Trump said he would eventually do so after a “routine audit” is completed. This did not satisfy Romney, who tweeted that there was no legitimate reason for withholding them even if they were under audit. Rubio went after Trump hard on illegal immigration. He said Trump may talk tough on illegal immigration now, but previously said Romney lost his race against Obama by promoting the idea that illegal immigrants should self-deport. “A lot of these positions that he’s taken now are new to him,” Rubio said. Trump said Romney lost in 2012 because he was a terrible candidate. “Excuse me, he ran one terrible campaign,” Trump said. While Trump has scored early victories and is well ahead in national opinion polls, he has some ways to go to clinch his party’s nomination, which is decided by the number of delegates sent to the July party convention following the state-by-state nominating contests. So far Trump leads the race with 81 delegates, with Cruz and Rubio well behind at 17 apiece. To secure the nomination, a candidate needs 1,237 delegates. Super Tuesday will be critical because there are nearly 600 delegates at stake in Republican races that day. (Additional reporting by Ginger Gibson and Valerie Volcovici in Washinton; Writing by Steve Holland; Editing by Peter Cooney, Leslie Adler and Jonathan Oatis) This article was funded in part by SAP. It was independently created by the Reuters editorial staff. SAP had no editorial involvement in its creation or production.

What Regina George's little sister from Mean Girls looks like now

Brad Pitt Is Spending Time With Kids While Filming New Movie With Leonardo DiCaprio

A Russian girl was raped in Berlin by migrants.

Wait wasn't Michael Brown stopped because of a routine patrol? Police can't even keep their stories straight. #Ferguson @OpFerguson

WHEN YOU AGREE WITH LIZ WARREN YOU KNOW SOMETHING S WRONG!Democrat Sens. Joe Manchin (WV) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) went to the Senate floor to push for immediate consideration of a bill that would make the Obamatrade text public. Currently, Congress has to go to a secured room to review the text and can t take notes out or discuss what is in it with the public. The motion to make the text public failed when Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT)objected.Manchin and Warren even praised President George W. Bush, who released his free trade text in 2001. President Obama, who promised to have the most transparent administration in history, is not releasing his trade deal text. We re just asking for some transparency before we have this crucial vote, said Warren. She said people have heard a lot about the trade bill, but haven t seen it. The press hasn t seen it, neither have economists or legal experts because the administration is making it impossible for any of those people to read it. We should keep the deal secret because if the details were made public now, the public would oppose it, mocked Warren. Well, that s not how our democracy is supposed to work. Warren went on to introduce her legislation with Manchin in order to make the bill public and transparent. This bill would require the president to publically release the scrubbed bracketed text of a trade deal at least 60 days before Congress votes on any fast-track for that deal. That would give the public, the experts, the press an opportunity to review the deal. It would allow for some honest pubic debate, Warren said.Via: Breitbart

Iran said on Sunday that a person close to the government team that negotiated its nuclear agreement with foreign powers had been arrested on accusations of espionage and released on bail. The disclosure, reported in the state news media, appeared to be the latest sign of the Iranian leadership’s frustration over the agreement, which has failed so far to yield the significant economic benefits for the country that its advocates had promised. Iranian officials have blamed the United States for that problem. Despite the relaxations of many sanctions under the accord, which took effect in January, Iran faces enormous obstacles in attracting new investments and moving its own money through the global financial system. The Iranians are still blocked from using American banks, an important transit point for international capital, because of sanctions imposed by the United States. There were unconfirmed reports last week that the Iranian authorities had arrested Abdolrasoul Dorri Esfahani, who has dual Iranian and Canadian citizenship, on espionage suspicions. Mr. Esfahani, an adviser to Iran’s central bank, helped the Iranian nuclear negotiators bargain for sanctions relief in exchange for Iran’s pledges of verifiably peaceful nuclear work. The official Islamic Republic News Agency said a spokesman for Iran’s judiciary, Gholam Hossein Mohseni Ejei, speaking at a weekly news conference on Sunday in Tehran, had “confirmed the arrest of an individual from the negotiating team. ” But the spokesman also said that “his charge of spying has not been proved” and that the suspect had been released on bail pending an investigation. The spokesman did not identify the suspect by name, which was considered unusual. He also did not explain why bail had been granted for an espionage charge, regarded as one of the gravest offenses. Nonetheless, it seemed clear that he was referring to Mr. Esfahani. Western analysts following the progression of the nuclear agreement said the arrest was worrisome. Cliff Kupchan, the chairman of the Eurasia Group, a political risk consultancy in Washington, said in an email that it was a clear sign that Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, “is unhappy over the slow pace at which the deal has been implemented. ” There was no immediate comment on Mr. Esfahani’s fate from the government of Canada, which has been contending with the arrest of another dual citizen in Iran in recent weeks. In July, the Iranian authorities arrested Homa Hoodfar, a anthropologist who studies the role of women in Muslim societies. The reason for her incarceration has not been made clear. The arrest was one of a number of hostile signals from Iran recently. Three weeks ago, the authorities announced the execution of a nuclear scientist who had returned home from the United States, where, he claimed, he had been kidnapped by the C. I. A. The Iranians said the scientist had betrayed secrets to the enemy. And last week, boats from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy harassed American warships patrolling international waters in the Persian Gulf region at least four times, United States officials said, calling the actions dangerous and illegal. Ayatollah Khamenei, who supported the nuclear agreement, has increasingly denounced what he calls American duplicity in the negotiation and other matters. In a speech on Sunday reported by the state news media, for example, he criticized the United States for opposing Iran’s purchase of a system. “We face such an enemy that does not recognize any right of defense for our nation,” the state news media reported Ayatollah Khamenei saying in the speech to air force commanders. “In fact, it says you should remain defenseless so that when we wish, we can invade you. ”

@Ssirleaf @PoliticsNation You are a disservice to the conversation, stop yelling.

@jljacobson @heidiyog_tom @stephenfhayes his friend said that he took cigars. The PC said in press conf. That the officer didn't know that.

Ai Wei-Wei denounced China s crackdown on lawyers and free speech on Wednesday but saw little hope that the upcoming Communist Party Congress would lead to more freedoms. The Chinese dissident artist spoke while inaugurating an exhibit in the Swiss city of Lausanne that includes some of his political works symbolizing repression. They are not accepting what we call common values such as democracy and freedom of speech and the freedom of religious practice and independence of the press or independence of a judicial system or people having the right to vote, Ai told a news conference. China has been booming and become very powerful in the economic sense but at the same time it doesn t trust its own people, he said. After 60 or 70 years in power, still its own people are not trusted to have a chance to vote. Asked about the five-yearly leadership reshuffle of the ruling Communist Party set to begin on Oct. 18, Ai said: You have a party that functions more like a family. It doesn t matter how many meetings they have, it s always closed-door. So there s no trust remaining in society. Human Rights Watch said on Wednesday that China has launched more rigorous investigations into rights lawyers and law firms that take on politically sensitive issues. Ai, who lives in Berlin but returns to China regularly, voiced concern about two friends who are human rights lawyers ruthlessly put in jail for five and 10 years, respectively. So the danger is there but I have no fear for myself because I have been through everything and what I have done is not for myself. It s for my father s generation and my son s generation, the 60-year-old said. The exhibit entitled It s Always the Others , on view at the Cantonal Fine Arts Museum in Lausanne until Jan. 28, brings together 46 works made in wood, jade, porcelain, bamboo, and silk, along with photographs and videos. Dragon in Progress , a 50-metre-long bamboo and silk kite hung from the ceiling, transforms a traditional symbol of Chinese imperial power with quotes from imprisoned or exiled activists including Nelson Mandela, Edward Snowden and Ai. A marble sculpture, Surveillance Camera with Plinth , depicts a camera set up outside his Beijing studio. I m a free man, that means I can go and come back. Which is fine. They kept their promise, they didn t touch me. But of course when a state is not really ruled by law you can see that anything still can happen at any moment because it s unpredictable, you re not protected by law.

Tune in to the Alternate Current Radio Network (ACR) for another LIVE broadcast of The Boiler Room starting at 6 PM PST | 9 PM EST for this special broadcast. Join us for uncensored, uninterruptible talk radio, custom-made for barfly philosophers, misguided moralists, masochists, street corner evangelists, media-maniacs, savants, political animals and otherwise lovable rascals.Join ACR host Hesher along with Daniel Spaulding from Soul of the East, Andy Nowicki from Alt Right Blogspot and Stewart Howe of 21Wire for the 76th episode of BOILER ROOM. Dim the lights, dawn the headphones and indulge in some Boiler Room with the crew. This week we re boiling up some media maniac conversation with topics like the new low tech facial recognition police squad coming soon to an insanely militarized police force near you, NPRs pathetic attempt to paint independent journalists like Vanessa Beeley as conspiracy theorists for pointing out simple truths from the ground in West Aleppo, Syria, Daniel Spaulding pleads with Glen Beck not to drown himself in a bucket of blood, Andy Nowicki analyzes the darkest hidden factors of Angelina Jolie s persona and Stewart Howe goes through readily available litmus tests to run on new acquaintances.Please like and share the program and visit our donate page to get involved!BOILER ROOM IS NOT A POLICTALLY CORRECT ZONE! LISTEN TO THE SHOW IN THE PLAYER BELOW ENJOY!Reference Links:

(Reuters) — Japanese automakers are looking beyond the industry trend to develop cars and turning their attention to robots to help keep the country’s rapidly graying society on the move. [Toyota Motor Corp said it saw the possibility of becoming a mass producer of robots to help the elderly in a country whose population is ageing faster than the rest of the world as the birthrate decreases. The country’s changing demographics place its automakers in a unique situation. Along with the issues usually associated with falling populations such as labor shortages and pension squeezes, Japan also faces dwindling domestic demand for cars. Toyota, the world’s second largest automaker, made its first foray into commercializing rehabilitation robots on Wednesday, launching a rental service for its walk assist system, which helps patients to learn how to walk again after suffering strokes and other conditions. Read the rest of the story at Reuters.

NEW DELHI: Companies having not less than 300 workers will soon be allowed to hire and fire workers without seeking prior government permission, with the labour ministry proposing changes to rules in a bill introduced in Lok Sabha on Saturday.The proposal, which was the bone of contention between the ministry and trade unions, is part of the Industrial Relation Code Bill 2020.Currently, only those industrial establishments with less than 100 employees are permitted to hire and fire their staff without permission of the government.The bill was introduced by labour minister Santosh Gangwar amid opposition from Congress and few other parties.The Industrial Relation Code Bill 2019 was introduced in Lok Sabha last year and subsequently sent to the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Labour. This bill was withdrawn on Saturday.An earlier draft bill circulated by the labour ministry for discussion had also proposed the criteria that companies having not less than 300 employees can hire and fire without the government's permission. However, this provision faced stiff opposition from trade unions and was not included in the 2019 bill.Earlier this year, the Parliamentary committee also made a case of allowing companies having less than 300 workers to go for retrenchment of staff or closure without government permission.States like Rajasthan have already increased the threshold to 300 workers, which according to the labour ministry has resulted in an increase in employment and a decrease in retrenchment, the committee had pointed out in its report.With regard to the threshold, the government has proposed Section 77(1) in the The Industrial Relation Code 2020.According to the Section, the provisions of "this Chapter (lay-off, retrenchment and closure in certain establishment) shall apply to an industrial establishment (not being an establishment of a seasonal character or in which work is performed only intermittently) in which not less than three hundred workers, or such higher number of workers as may be notified by the appropriate Government, were employed on an average per working day in the preceding twelve months".Apart from this code, two others- Occupational Safety, Health And Working Conditions Code, 2020 and the Code On Social Security, 2020- were also introduced by the minister in Lok Sabha.Among others, Congress leaders- Manish Tewari and Shashi Tharoor- opposed the introduction of the three bills.Tewari noted these three bills are fundamentally changed versions of their earlier forms and urged the minister to withdraw them and hold wider consultations before introducing them.These bills are also a blow to the rights of workers, he added.With respect to the industrial relations code, Tharoor said it severely restricts the right of workers to strike and also allows state or central governments to amend the threshold for applicability relating to layoffs and retrenchment.In Lok Sabha, Gangwar said that over 29 labour laws have been merged into four codes and that one of them has already been passed.The Code on Wages Bill, 2019 was passed by Parliament last year.Gangwar noted that the government engaged in wider consultations over these bills with various stakeholders and that more than 6,000 comments were received online on the bills.These bills were later sent to a standing committee and 174 of its 233 recommendations have been accepted, the minister said.

2016 elections by Robin D.G. Kelley The author writes: “I am not suggesting that white racism alone explains Trump’s victory. Nor am I dismissing the white working class’s very real economic grievances. It is not a matter of disaffection versus racism or sexism versus fear. Rather, racism, class anxieties, and prevailing gender ideologies operate together, inseparably, or as Kimberlé Crenshaw would say, intersectionally.” Trump Says Go Back, We Say Fight Back by Robin D.G. Kelley This article previously appeared in Boston Review . “We need to reject a thoroughly bankrupt Democratic Party leadership that is calling for conciliation and, in Obama’s words, “rooting for [Trump’s] success.” “If we are to keep the enormity of the forces aligned against us from establishing a false hierarchy of oppression, we must school ourselves to recognize that any attack against Blacks, any attack against women, is an attack against all of us who recognize that our interests are not being served by the systems we support. Each one of us here is a link in the connection between antipoor legislation, gay shootings, the burning of synagogues, street harassment, attacks against women, and resurgent violence against Black people.” — Audre Lorde, “Learning from the 60s” Donald J. Trump’s election was a national trauma, an epic catastrophe that has left millions in the United States and around the world in a state of utter shock, uncertainty, deep depression, and genuine fear. The fear is palpable and justified, especially for those Trump and his acolytes targeted—the undocumented, Muslims, anyone who “looks” undocumented or Muslim, people of color, Jews, the LGBTQ community, the disabled, women, activists of all kinds (especially Black Lives Matter and allied movements resisting state-sanctioned violence), trade unions. . . . the list is long. And the attacks have begun; as I write these words, reports of hate crimes and racist violence are flooding my inbox. The common refrain is that no one expected this. (Of course, the truth is that many people did expect this, just not in the elite media.) At no point, this refrain goes, could “we” imagine Trump in the Oval office surrounded by a cabinet made up of some of the most idiotic, corrupt, and authoritarian characters in modern day politics—Rudolph Giuliani, Chris Christie, Newt Gingrich, Sarah Palin, John Bolton, Ben Carson, Jeff Sessions, David “Blue Lives Matter” Clarke, Joe Arpaio, to name a few. Meanwhile, paid professional pundits are scrambling to peddle their analyses and to normalize the results—on the same broadcast media that helped deliver Trump’s victory by making him their ratings-boosting spectacle rather than attending to issues, ideas, and other candidates (e.g., Bernie Sanders or Jill Stein). They deliver the same old platitudes: disaffected voters, angry white men who have suffered economically and feel forgotten, Trump’s populist message represented the nation’s deep-seated distrust of Washington, ad infinitum. Some liberal pundits have begun to speak of President-Elect Trump as thoughtful and conciliatory, and some even suggest that his unpredictability may prove to be an asset. The protests are premature or misplaced. All of this from the same folks who predicted a Clinton victory. “Trump’s followers are attracted to his wealth as metonym of an American dream that they, too, can enjoy once America is ‘great’ again.” But the outcome should not have surprised us. This election was, among other things, a referendum on whether the United States will be a straight, white nation reminiscent of the mythic “old days” when armed white men ruled, owned their castle, boasted of unvanquished military power, and everyone else knew their place. Henry Giroux’s new book America at War With Itself made this point with clarity and foresight two months before the election. The easy claim that Trump appeals to legitimate working-class populism driven by class anger, Giroux argues, ignores both the historical link between whiteness, citizenship, and humanity, and the American dream of wealth accumulation built on private property. Trump’s followers are not trying to redistribute the wealth, nor are they all “working class”—their annual median income is about $72,000. On the contrary, they are attracted to Trump’s wealth as metonym of an American dream that they, too, can enjoy once America is “great” again—which is to say, once the country returns to being “a white MAN’s country.” What Giroux identifies as “civic illiteracy” keeps them convinced that the descendants of unfree labor or the colonized, or those who are currently unfree, are to blame for America’s decline and for blocking their path to Trump-style success. For the white people who voted overwhelmingly for Trump, their candidate embodied the anti-Obama backlash. Pundits who say race was not a factor point to rural, predominantly white counties that went for Obama in 2008 and 2012, but now went for Trump, and to the low black and Latinx voter turnout. However, turnout was down overall, not just among African Americans. Post-election analysis shows that as a percentage of total votes the black vote dropped only 1 percent compared with the 2012 election, even while the number of black ballots counted decreased by nearly 11 percent. (Why this happened is beyond the scope of this essay, but one might begin with Greg Palast’s findings about voter suppression and the use of “crosscheck” to invalidate ballots.) Moreover, claims that nearly a third of Latinxs went for Trump have been disputed by the website Latino Decision, whose careful research puts the figure at 18 percent. The turnout does not contradict the fact that Trump drew the clear majority of white votes. This is not startling news. “We cannot ignore the fact that the vast majority of white men and a majority of white women, across class lines, voted for a platform and a message of white supremacy.” If history is our guide, “whitelash” usually follows periods of expanded racial justice and democratic rights. In the aftermath of Reconstruction, there were many instances in which southern white men switched from the biracial, abolitionist Republicans to the “redeemers,” whether it be the Democrats or, in states like Texas, the “White Man’s Party.” (No ambiguity there.) Or in the 1880s and ’90s, when white Populists betrayed their Black Populist allies in a united struggle to redistribute railroad land grants to farmers, reduce debt by inflating currency, abolish private national banks, nationalize railroads and telegraphs, and impose a graduated income tax to shift the burden onto the wealthy, among other things. Many of these one-time white “allies” joined the Ku Klux Klan, defeated the Lodge Force Bill of 1890 which would have authorized federal supervision of elections to protect black voting rights, and led the efforts to disfranchise black voters. Or the late 1960s, when vibrant struggles for black, brown, American Indian, Asian American, gay and lesbian, and women’s liberation, the anti-war movement, and student demands for a democratic revolution were followed by white backlash and the election of Richard Nixon—whose rhetoric of “law and order” and the “silent majority” Trump shamelessly plagiarized. Of course, Hilary Clinton did win the popular vote, and some are resorting to the easy lament that, were it not for the arcane Electoral College (itself a relic of slave power), we would not be here. One might add, too, that had it not been for the gutting of the Voting Rights Act opening the door for expanded strategies of voter suppression, or the permanent disfranchisement of some or all convicted felons in ten states, or the fact that virtually all people currently in cages cannot vote at all, or the persistence of misogyny in our culture, we may have had a different outcome. This is all true. But we cannot ignore the fact that the vast majority of white men and a majority of white women, across class lines, voted for a platform and a message of white supremacy, Islamophobia, misogyny, xenophobia, homophobia, anti-Semitism, anti-science, anti-Earth, militarism, torture, and policies that blatantly maintain income inequality. The vast majority of people of color voted against Trump, with black women registering the highest voting percentage for Clinton of any other demographic (93 percent). It is an astounding number when we consider that her husband’s administration oversaw the virtual destruction of the social safety net by turning welfare into workfare, cutting food stamps, preventing undocumented workers from receiving benefits, and denying former drug felons and users access to public housing; a dramatic expansion of the border patrol, immigrant detention centers, and the fence on Mexico’s border; a crime bill that escalated the war on drugs and accelerated mass incarceration; as well as NAFTA and legislation deregulating financial institutions. Still, had Trump received only a third of the votes he did and been defeated, we still would have had ample reason to worry about our future. “White privilege is taken for granted to the point where it need not be named and can’t be named.” I am not suggesting that white racism alone explains Trump’s victory. Nor am I dismissing the white working class’s very real economic grievances. It is not a matter of disaffection versus racism or sexism versus fear. Rather, racism, class anxieties, and prevailing gender ideologies operate together, inseparably, or as Kimberlé Crenshaw would say, intersectionally. White working-class men understand their plight through a racial and gendered lens. For women and people of color to hold positions of privilege or power over them is simply unnatural and can only be explained by an act of unfairness—for example, affirmative action. White privilege is taken for granted to the point where it need not be named and can’t be named. So, as activist/scholar Bill Fletcher recently observed, even though Trump’s call to deport immigrants, close the borders, and reject free trade policies appealed to working-class whites’ discontent with the effects of globalization, Trump’s plans do not amount to a rejection of neoliberalism. Fletcher writes, “Trump focused on the symptoms inherent in neoliberal globalization, such as job loss, but his was not a critique of neoliberalism. He continues to advance deregulation, tax cuts, anti-unionism, etc. He was making no systemic critique at all, but the examples that he pointed to from wreckage resulting from economic and social dislocation, resonated for many whites who felt, for various reasons, that their world was collapsing.” Yet Fletcher is quick not to reduce white working-class support for Trump to class fears alone, adding, “This segment of the white population was looking in terror at the erosion of the American Dream, but they were looking at it through the prism of race.” A New York Times poll shows that Trump supporters identified immigration and terrorism, not the economy, as the two most important issues in the campaign. Immigration and terrorism are both about race—Mexicans and Muslims. That there are “illegal” immigrants from around the globe, including Canada, Israel, and all over Europe doesn’t matter: anti-immigrant movements target those who can be racially profiled. And while Trump’s America fears “terrorism,” it does not disavow homegrown terrorist organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan, despite the fact that white nationalist movements are responsible for the majority of violent terrorist attacks on U.S. soil. On the contrary, Trump was not only endorsed by white nationalists and U.S.-based fascists, but during the campaign he refused to renounce their support, and Trump’s leading candidate for attorney general, Rudy Giuliani, has openly called Black Lives Matter “terrorists.” So where do we go from here? If we really care about the world, our country, and our future, we have no choice but to resist. We need to reject a thoroughly bankrupt Democratic Party leadership that is calling for conciliation and, in Obama’s words, “rooting for [Trump’s] success.” Pay attention: Trump’s success means mass deportation; massive military spending; the continuation and escalation of global war; a conservative Supreme Court poised to roll back Roe v. Wade, marriage equality, and too many rights to name here; a justice department and FBI dedicated to growing the Bush/Obama-era surveillance state and waging COINTELPRO-style war on activists; fiscal policies that will accelerate income inequality; massive cuts in social spending; the weakening or elimination of the Affordable Care Act; and the partial dismantling and corporatization of government. What must resistance look like? There are at least five things we have to do right now: 1. Build up the sanctuary movement. In the 1980s, when nearly one million refugees fled U.S.-backed dictatorships in Guatemala and El Salvador, churches offered shelter, sanctuary, and assistance to those seeking political asylum, and over thirty cities were subsequently designated “sanctuary cities” by their local governments. The Obama administration’s deportations of undocumented workers rebooted the sanctuary movement, along with a vibrant immigrant rights movement that pushed the president to use executive authority to launch the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program and the Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents (DAPA). Trump has vowed to end both programs, leaving some five million immigrants vulnerable to deportation and identifiable through their applications, and he has promised to immediately cut all federal funding for sanctuary cities. To those who argue that millions of undocumented people are not “political refugees,” I counter that Trump’s war on immigrants is driven entirely by his quest to take power—they will become casualties of his political machinations. Some states have already outlawed the longstanding principle of sanctuary status, but this should not deter us from strengthening and expanding the sanctuary movement to other institutions. For example, many of us who work in the University of California system are working to turn our campuses into sanctuaries—preferably with legal and administrative backing. But even without the law behind us, we must act on moral principle. 2. Defend all of our targeted communities. We must defend against hate crimes, Islamophobia, anti-black racism, attacks on queer and trans people, and the erosion of reproductive rights. There is no need to reinvent the wheel since there are already hundreds of organizations across the country dedicated to the fight, including INCITE: Women of Color Against Violence, Radical Women, the Immigrant Solidarity Network, the Praxis Project, the Praxis Center, CAAAV: Organizing Asian Communities, the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles (CHIRLA), the African American Policy Forum, the Network Against Islamophobia, and Causa Justa, to name only a few. One of the main targets of attack, of course, is the Movement for Black Lives, along with the dozens of organizations upon which it was built—Black Lives Matter, the Dream Defenders, Million Hoodies, Black Youth Project 100, Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, We Charge Genocide, and Black Organizing for Leadership and Dignity (BOLD), among others. We need to support these movements and institutions, financially and by doing the work. And we must defend the political and cultural spaces that enable us to plot, plan, build community and sustain social movements. Here in Los Angeles this means spaces such as the L.A. Black Workers Center, the Labor/Community Strategy Center and its new community space, Strategy and Soul, the L.A. Community Action Network, the Southern California Library for Social Studies and Research, the Community Coalition, and Revolutionary Autonomous Communities, among many others. In New York we can point to Decolonize This Place; in Detroit, the Boggs Center; in St. Louis, Organization for Black Struggle, and so on. There are literally hundreds of centers around the country building for local power, and while none were immune to state surveillance in the past, we can expect heightened monitoring and outright attacks under this extreme right-wing regime. Now is not the time to retreat to our identity silos. We need solidarity more than ever, recognizing that all solidarities are imperfect, often fragile, temporary, and always forged in struggle and sustained through hard work. In our state of emergency, political disagreements, slights, misunderstandings, and microaggressions should not prohibit us from fighting for peoples rights, privileges, and lives. 3. Stop referring to the South as a political backwater, a distinctive site of racist right-wing reaction. First, white supremacy, homophobia, and anti-union attitudes are national, not regional, problems. Second, black and multiracial groups in the South are at the forefront of resisting Trump’s authoritarian agenda and building power outside the mainstream Democratic Party. Among them are Project South, Southerners on New Ground (SONG), the Moral Mondays Movement, Kindred: Southern Healing Justice Collective, Jackson Rising in Mississippi, Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ) in Louisville, Asian Americans Advancing Justice in Atlanta, and the Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights. The frontline battles that preceded Trump’s election must not be abandoned. On the contrary, they need to be strengthened. We must redouble our fight against the Dakota Access Pipeline and support the Standing Rock Sioux Nation’s historic resistance. There is no question that Trump’s election has further empowered the corporation behind the pipeline—the Texas-based Fortune 500 company Energy Transfer Partners—to continue to build no matter what the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers or the Obama Justice Department says. We need to recognize Standing Rock as not only a struggle for environmental justice but an episode in Native people’s five-hundred-year resistance to colonialism. And speaking of colonialism, the crisis in Puerto Rico has not abated—not in the least. As I write, Puerto Ricans on the island and in the U.S. mainland are using every means at their disposal to resist PROMESA, the U.S. plan that empowers a seven-member, unelected board to impose austerity measures as a way of restructuring its debt—measures that include wage reductions, selling off public assets, altering retirement plans for public employees, and fast-tracking changes even if they violate existing laws. 4. Support and deepen the anti-Klan and anti-fascist movement. We must especially support groups such as Southern Poverty Law Center, which has been on the frontlines of this movement for decades. Although the fight against white supremacist organizations has been continual since the 1860s, the federal government has never successfully outlawed the Klan and similar vigilante groups (although in the 1950s the state of Alabama succeeded in outlawing the NAACP). With Trump’s election we are likely to see a surge in white nationalist and other right-wing terrorism, including attacks on black churches, synagogues, mosques, abortion clinics; and against non-white, queer, and trans people and immigrants. Some on the left will argue that resisting the so-called “alt-right” is a secondary issue since these are fringe movements and building class unity across racial lines ought to be our priority. But with the memory of Colorado Springs and Charleston seared into our memory, this argument rings hollow. And while President Obama’s poignant rendition of “Amazing Grace” at Reverend Clementa Pinckney’s funeral moved much of the nation, the truth is that it is easier to pass laws criminalizing organizations that support the boycott of businesses and institutions complicit in Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine than it is to outlaw the Ku Klux Klan. 5. Rebuild the labor movement. As obvious as this may seem, the entire labor movement is under attack on a global scale. Today labor unions are portrayed as corrupt, bloated, a drain on the economy, and modern-day cartels that threaten workers’ “liberty.” Corporations and the CEOs who run them are portrayed as the most efficient and effective mode of organization. In our neoliberal age, emergency financial managers are sent in to replace elected government during real or imagined economic crises; charter schools organized along corporate lines are replacing public schools; universities are being restructured along corporate lines with presidents increasingly functioning like CEOs; and a businessman with a checkered record, a history of improprieties and legal violations and allegations of sexual assault, and no experience whatsoever in government is elected president. Today’s economic debates focus not on alternatives to capitalism but on what kind of capitalism—capitalism with a safety net for the poor or one driven by extreme free-market liberalization? A capitalism in which the state’s role is to bail out big banks and financial institutions, or one where the state imposes (or rather restores) greater regulation in order to avoid economic crises? In both of these scenarios, a weakened labor movement is a given. The once-powerful unions are doing little more than fighting to restore basic collective bargaining rights and deciding how much they are going to give back. Union leaders are struggling just to participate in crafting austerity measures. In the New Deal era, the state’s efforts to save capitalism centered on Keynesian strategies of massive state expenditures in infrastructure, job creation, a social safety net in the form of direct aid and social security, and certain protections for the right of unions to organize. All these measures were made possible by a strong labor movement. There was a level of militant organization that we did not see in our post-2008 collapse, in spite of Occupy Wall Street. While Occupy was massive, international, and built on preexisting social justice movements, it lacked the kind of institutional power base and political clout that organized labor had in the 1930s. Of course, labor unions have also been powerful engines of racial and gender exclusion, working with capital to impose glass ceilings and racially segmented wages, but the twenty-first-century labor movement has largely embraced principles of social justice, antiracism, immigrant rights, and cross-border strategies. “I am talking about opening a path to freeing white people from the prison house of whiteness.” Obviously there is much missing here, like abolishing the Electoral College and continuing to wage a fight for local power in the legislative and electoral arenas as well as in the streets. Local campaigns to raise the minimum wage, for example, have not only produced key victories but served to mobilize people around issues of injustice and inequality. The sites of resistance will become clearer as the political situation becomes more concrete, especially after January 20. But I want to return to the white working class and how we might break the cycle of “whitelash.” First, we cannot change this country without winning over some portion of white working people, and I am not talking about gaining votes for the Democratic Party. I am talking about opening a path to freeing white people from the prison house of whiteness. True, with whiteness comes privilege, but many of the perceived privileges are inaccessible to most, which then generates resentment. Exposing whiteness for what it is—a foundational myth for the birth and consolidation of capitalism—is fundamental if we are to build a genuine social movement dedicated to dismantling the oppressive regimes of racism, heteropatriarchy, empire, and class exploitation that is at the root of inequality, precarity, materialism, and violence in many forms. I am not suggesting we ignore their grievances, but that we help white working people understand the source of their discontent—real and imagined. Is this possible? The struggle to recruit the white working class is an old story. Black movement leaders have been trying to free white working people from the paltry wages of whiteness since Reconstruction, at least, and it seems to always end badly. This history is not necessarily legible because we tend to conflate populism and fascism with what Henry Giroux astutely identifies as authoritarianism. Populism is the idea that ordinary people ought to have the power to control their government and their communities, especially along lines that benefit the collective. In the 1880s and ’90s, the black populist movement adopted a vision of a new society based on cooperative economics. The great writer and activist Timothy Thomas Fortune gave their unique vision eloquent voice and plans for action in his book Black and White: Land, Labor and Politics in the South (1884), which offered a path for the emancipation of the nation as a whole, not just black people. He attacked America’s betrayal of Reconstruction, identified monopoly and private ownership of land as the central source of inequality, and articulated a vision of a democratic, caring political economy based on equity and fairness. The National Colored Alliance members had advanced beyond printing more money or demanding free silver, adopting instead a more radical redistribution of wealth and power. They wanted more than a short-term alliance just to raise wages for picking cotton or reducing debt. But Fortune understood that a genuine cooperative commonwealth is not possible unless white workers and farmers join the movement. “The hour is approaching,” he wrote, “when the laboring classes of our country, North, East, West and South, will recognize that they have a common cause, a common humanity and a common enemy; and that, therefore, if they would triumph over wrong and place the laurel wreath upon triumphant justice, without distinction of race or of previous condition they must unite!” Whatever unity they managed to create proved ephemeral. As in so many other scenarios, most whites chose white supremacy over liberation. The lessons here are crucial. We cannot build a sustainable movement without a paradigm shift. Stopgap, utilitarian alliances to stop Trump aren’t enough. I concur with Giroux, who calls on all of us to wage “an anti-fascist struggle that is not simply about remaking economic structures, but also about refashioning identities, values, and social relations as part of a democratic project that reconfigures what it means to desire a better and more democratic future.” Robin Davis Gibran Kelley is the Gary B. Nash Professor of American History at UCLA.

Wedding Ideas: Inspiration and Style, Celebrity Weddings

Throughout Fox News Channel’s summer of discontent last year, executives at its parent company, 21st Century Fox, assured reporters that the young, corporate leadership — Rupert Murdoch’s sons, James and Lachlan — understood the severity of the sexual harassment allegations pending against the network’s founding chairman, Roger E. Ailes. It was why they moved quickly to hire a law firm to investigate the charges against Mr. Ailes, executives at the company told reporters at the time. And, these people said, it was why they forced Mr. Ailes’s resignation after that investigation found enough potential evidence to preclude them from standing by his denials. The company’s response, the executives said, was an example of how it had reined in the wild “ ’ ” impulses that led to the crisis that was almost its undoing a few years ago. That, of course, was the phone hacking scandal at its British newspaper division, in which reporters and a private investigator hacked phone messages of the royal family, actors, athletes and various others. This time around, after Mr. Ailes’s departure, the company promised that things would get cleaned up quickly. It said it was committed to “maintaining a work environment based on trust and respect,” and spent millions on settlement deals that also happened to keep accusers from speaking about their experiences with Mr. Ailes — who, company executives implied, was the isolated cause of all the problems. And that was to be that. Except, clearly, it wasn’t. Not if you go by the meticulously reported piece last weekend by Emily Steel and Michael S. Schmidt of The New York Times, which said that some $13 million had been paid out to settle claims of harassment leveled against another man vital to Fox News’s success, its top star Bill O’Reilly. (Two of those settlements came after Mr. Ailes’s ouster.) Not if you go by a federal investigation that is exploring whether Fox News failed to properly account for settlement payments, granting immunity to the network’s former chief financial officer, Mark Kranz, as The Financial Times reported. Certainly not if you go by the latest lawsuit, from the Fox News contributor Julie Roginsky, who said her own claims against Mr. Ailes — and her refusal to attack his first public accuser, Gretchen Carlson — caused the current Fox News (and former Ailes deputy) Bill Shine to deny her a promotion. Her complaints weren’t even investigated, she said. Mr. Ailes through a lawyer denied her charges after she filed her suit on Monday, just as Mr. O’Reilly has denied all the claims that have been made against him. But the latest cascade of news involving allegations of misbehavior at Fox News makes it pretty hard to see what, exactly, has changed. Fox News executives say they’ve made more workplace improvements than they’re getting credit for, and I’ll get to that. But it still stands that, other than the senior Mr. Murdoch taking the reins of the network as executive chairman, the leadership has remained fairly stable two of Mr. Ailes’s deputies, Mr. Shine and Jack Abernethy, took over as with the executive vice president for programming, Suzanne Scott, and the network counsel, Dianne Brandi, remaining as well. On top of that, take a look at the news, first reported by The Wall Street Journal, that the network went ahead and renewed Mr. O’Reilly’s contract despite the two new settlements — and a third one from years ago that 21st Century Fox learned about only last year. Then consider that another Fox News star, Sean Hannity, brandished his licensed (and, he said, unloaded) handgun in his studio and (jokingly) pointed its laser sight at his liberal sparring partner, Juan Williams, with no apparent reprimand, as CNN reported last month. It’s hard not to see the Murdoch pirate flag moving back up the mast — or to wonder whether it was ever really taken down, at least at Fox News. The network, led by Mr. O’Reilly, remains the most watched cable news network by a wide margin, and it sure seems that the old proclivity to look the other way in the face of victory remains in place. But this isn’t just another story about a big public company with potentially serious problems in its corporate culture — which, given the growing number of advertisers pulling out of Mr. O’Reilly’s program, could prove costly. It’s about one of the biggest and most influential media companies in the world its cable behemoth, Fox News, is the network of choice for the current United States president. (And this president is more reactive to news than any who came before him.) The wildness that allegedly permeates Fox News’s office culture has extended to its reportage in ways that have at times helped President Trump create his famous alternative reality. The most notable recent example: a declaration by Andrew Napolitano, a network contributor, saying Fox News had learned that President Barack Obama enlisted British intelligence officers to spy on Mr. Trump before his inauguration. The White House press secretary, Sean Spicer, repeated this at a daily briefing, drawing fury from 10 Downing Street. Fox News followed up by reporting that it had learned no such thing. The network soon let it be known that Mr. Napolitano was being sidelined “for the foreseeable future,” as The Los Angeles Times reported. The foreseeable future lasted just about two weeks. And when Mr. Napolitano returned to Fox’s programming last week, he repeated his claim about Mr. Obama and the British, despite the news division’s disavowal, only this time with no consequences (as if there had really been any up to that point). Those who wondered whether Fox News was somehow going to moderate its editorial direction following Mr. Ailes’s ouster have their answer. The questions were based, at least in part, on the notion that the sons were more politically moderate than their father, though Lachlan less so than James. But the questions were misguided, given that the sons have made it clear that Fox wouldn’t and shouldn’t change too much, given its profits. “There’s no desire or need to shift the position that it has in the market,” Lachlan Murdoch told Wall Street analysts over the summer. And evidence is piling up that the elder Mr. Murdoch is the one running the show at Fox News, anyway. Fox News was as much his creation as it was Mr. Ailes’s, after all. But let’s remember: 21st Century Fox repeatedly said that all three Murdochs were on board to change the corporate culture. Fox News said Tuesday that it was doing so by “expanding our Human Resources department with regional people and adding more people in New York,” a tacit acknowledgment that when Mr. Ailes was there, employees viewed the department as loyal to him above all, and often didn’t trust it enough to make complaints. In January, the network hired a new human resources chief, Kevin Lord, who on Monday issued a memo encouraging employees with complaints to step forward, assuring them of confidentiality and a swift response (though one name listed as an avenue of complaint was that of Ms. Brandi, an holdover). But then there’s Mr. O’Reilly. This week, people familiar with his contract extension told my colleagues Ms. Steel and Mr. Schmidt that it includes provisions giving the company “leverage over his behavior. ” The ultimate leverage, of course, could come by way of Mr. O’Reilly’s loss of advertisers. That was the thinking behind the call from the online civil rights group Color of Change for a bigger O’Reilly advertising boycott. “Fox News and the Murdochs only listen when they hear money rushing out the door,” said the group’s executive director, Rashad Robinson. That’s logic even a pirate has to appreciate.

BMC’s Appeal in 2018 to Drink Boiled Water Shared Amid COVID-19

Says that in Curry County, if you make a 911 call youre likely to wait for an hour for a response.

The obnoxious anti-Trump Hallie Jackson of NBC is constantly trying to play gotcha with Sean Spicer on policy issues related to President Trump. Normally, we wouldn t post a video of a reporter in such an embarrassing situation while on camera, but NBC s Hallie Jackson is a special case, so we ll make an exception. Here s a little dose of karma for the anti-Trump Chief White House correspondent for NBC Hallie Jackson.*Thinking to myself#MSNBC #HallieJackson is a HACK & always unfair to @POTUSso should I tweet this?OF COURSE #MAGA #MondayMotivation pic.twitter.com/3qyqPA4Ma3 USA OVER PARTY (@michaelbeatty3) June 26, 2017Watch NBC s Hallie Jackson get Spiced after she attempted to mock Republicans for working to keep the seat former US Rep Tom Price vacated in Georgia after joining the Trump administration in DC. Jackson tries, but fails to make the case that the GOP is in trouble because Price s seat in what is traditionally a Republican leaning district is in jeopardy. As we all know, NBC s Hallie Jackson wasted a lot of time manufacturing a story about Georgia s over-rated special election. After over $50 million was spent in the special election to promote the Democrat candidate (most of which came from out-of-state donors), the so-called rising star Democrat John Ossoff ended up losing the seat to Republican Karen Handel.Here s the obnoxious Hallie Jackson attempting to trip up Sean Spicer over tweets by President Trump:*The embarrassing video of Jackson happened several months ago, but since it s being recirculated on Twitter, we thought we d share it for our followers who love Hallie Jackson as much as we do.

This guy is a joke! Scott Dworkin: A paper trail leads directly back to Mike Pence Pence knew Michael Flynn was a foreign agent MSNBC is actually ok with this lunatic spouting his BS? A paper trail leads directly back to Mike Pence Pence knew Michael Flynn was a foreign agent @Funder on #AMJoy https://t.co/mK7L0yJI2Y Scott Dworkin (@funder) July 15, 2017All you have to do is go on his twitter page and see that he s now calling for an investigation into Trump s new communications director Anthony Scaramucci. Dworkin might want to check into what happened to the three CNN employees who tried to attack Scaramucci. Yes, they were fired from CNN and had to retract the article. This brainiac is all about the money. He s asking for donations to investigate Scaramucci! What a grifter!Time for Trump to hit back at this Dwork ! Trump is one of the biggest mobsters in the world. Scott Dworkin #AMJoy pic.twitter.com/joU24OnzDw Scott Dworkin (@funder) July 22, 2017

There has been rioting in the streets of every major city of the United States after the US presidential election and all of the governors have declared states of emergency. As you’re heading home from work, a presidential announcement is made that martial law has been declared, and the US government has temporarily suspended your rights under the Constitution. An executive order demanding the turn-in of all firearms has been signed and placed into effect. The federal government with the aid of local police departments and other state law enforcement agencies is now confiscating the firearms door-to-door. You’ve been catching all of this in a radio broadcast as the announcer in a faltering voice also states that the US is on the brink of war. As you turn off the main highway, listening to the news and heading home, you notice that there are a number of vehicles…about a half dozen black blazers and several police cars…parked outside of your house with federal agents pounding on your front door. The S has hit the fan, and it looks as if you might have to skip dinner. You drive by without stopping, only to see the road blocked off about 200 feet down and similar operations occurring at your neighbors’ homes. Parking your car off the shoulder, you grab your backpack and supplies from the vehicle. It’s time to run. Read part 1 of Mantracker here It is the hope of all decent people that such events do not occur. But what if they do? It’s time to make a getaway and not play around with the semantics or second guess any longer. This is just one reason out of innumerable that you may be on the run and the hunt has begun. Now is the time to focus your energies on getting away. Let’s cover some of the basics and finer points now, in this article to prepare you for bleak circumstances such as the outlined scenario. Basic Escape and Evade Techniques Part of your E & E , your Escape and Evasion is going to depend on how much notice you receive before you are actually being pursued. The situation above is a bleak one: the hunted individual is about to be stripped of all of his belongings and equipment. He must now retreat from what was to be his retreat and cut his losses. 1. Know the area of your immediate E&E Urban , suburban , or rural , you have to focus on cover and concealment. Cover physically protects you (in varying degrees) from gunfire. Concealment may provide cover, but primarily it obstructs or prevents your pursuers/attackers from seeing you. In an urban or suburban area, it is difficult to slip undetected into the woodline, due to the higher population density and the scarcity of woods. Have you pre-planned a hide location until you can escape the populated area under cover of darkness? Do you have some maps to aid you in your endeavors? 6 laws of survival How to create a bug out plan A rural area is a better start. The woods can hide you, support you, and shelter you if you know how to use them. When you enter the woods, you want to stay off any main paths or trails and “bust brush” as much as possible. 2. Keep your signature low, and cover your tracks When you’re “busting brush,” you want to move through the woods and thickets through the paths of least resistance, taking care not to break off branches or step into places that leave a noticeable (and trackable) sign, such as a dried, muddy creek bed or open area with snow on the ground. You can take a stout pine branch with needles (green is best) to brush away signs of your passage akin to a broom. Make sure you take the branch off of the direction of your travel, so the trackers don’t see a branch removed from the tree. Move stealthily and with a purpose, don’t just stagger through the brush with your emotions getting the best of you. Focus and concentrate on taking care with each step, yet don’t move as slowly as a sloth. 3. Don’t make tracks if possible One method is to take two heavy trash bags and place a good quantity of leaves and twigs in them. Take two to three sticks and lash them to the bottoms of your shoes/boots. Stepping into the bags, tie them off around your feet up by the instep. This will break up the pattern of your boot-print and enlarge the surface area of your tread…spreading your weight out to prevent you from making a track. You’ll have to fix and adjust the bags periodically. The thick contractor-type bags are the best that can take the wear. Don’t walk all over or step over things such as a moss-covered log that will show you’ve stepped there. 4. Move at night after the initial escape Once you’ve put some distance between yourself and the pursuer(s), wait until it’s dark before you travel again. This is as the situation dictates, depending on how badly they want you. It may be necessary to flee and postpone that normal wait time until it’s dark out of urgency. When moving at night, be aware of the moon and the amount of light that is on you. Cover up exposed portions of the skin, both to protect your body and to shield you from reflecting any light. 5. Mask your smell Mud, dirt, and other “stuff” can be rubbed all over you to help conceal your scent, as dogs may come into play. If you wear cologne or any other fragrance, wash it off when the opportunity presents itself from a stream or creek. 6. Dogs could be your worst nightmare A tracking dog can present a problem. Bleach or cayenne pepper can help to throw those dogs off the scent. Another thing you can prep in advance is skunk scent. You see one as a roadkill? Remove the glands and store them in an airtight container, glass is best. Later you can use this either through diluting (a container with water and a little of the gland/musk added to the container), and then spreading it in the area the dogs will travel. The more the merrier. Rule: You don’t beat the dog; you beat the handler . If you come to a fence? Happy Birthday, especially if the fence is a long one that’s high. Chain-link is the best. Where you can, cross the fence. When you’re across run down about 30-40 feet, and then re-cross it, going back to the first side. Run another 30-40 feet, and then climb across again. Do this over and over again, the whole length of the fence. Take care when you cross over it not to run right along it…go out and away from the fence, perpendicular to it by about 10-15 feet, and then come back in at the end of 30-40 feet. The dog will have to keep the trail, and the handler will have to put the dog(s) over the fence, and then climb over to follow…the handler will be half dead after about a couple hundred feet of this. The real art is at the end of the fence to take a “hide” sight, watch where they appear, double back, and then go across from the first (original) crossing point on the fence, and head on a 90-degree angle away from all of it. That’ll kill them. With dogs, take ‘em on a “joy ride” and give them plenty of fairly steep rocks to climb, hills to traverse, and bust through brush and stickers the whole time…this will give the dogs a hard time and half kill the handler. It’s up to you if you want to ambush them when they’re most tired or when you see the opportunity. Take out the handler or handlers first. The dogs are not your enemy: they’re a tool in the hands of men who know how to use them. You should be armed: the 2 nd Amendment gives you the permission, and it’s up to you to actually use it…it is one of your rights. Use your own judgment as to whether to take out the dogs or not. Don’t forget to capitalize on the resources the handler may have left you when you deal with him. A radio might come in handy for the cross-chatter, and you may also have more equipment and tools. 7. Areas to avoid while fleeing Open areas are an invite to be picked up, or to be seen from even a tremendous distance. Skirt the woodline, staying back within it by at least 30 to 50 feet. Bodies of water should only be crossed when you must. Don’t worry…the dogs can pick up your trail on the other side, and maybe even better when you’re dripping water all over the place. Tunnels are death-traps; stay out of them at all cost, especially man-made tunnels. Better to walk another ¼ mile than enter a concrete tunnel where even a ricochet bullet from a pursuer may find its mark. Stay away from all human habitations and avoid any main roads or built-up areas with a lot of human traffic. 8. They know your needs and have the edge (so they think) You have to drink, eat, and sleep. They know it. They can work in shifts, and have the manpower to continue the search uninterrupted. You must eat on the move, drink on the move, and sleep in “bursts” that give you enough time to rest, yet ample time as they move closer to you. 9. Use every means at your disposal You have to get away, or you can end up in a FEMA camp , a prison, or worse. Live off of the land …that’s why you have been studying and training so much…it has to be in preparation for the worst-case scenario and this is it! You’ll have to feed yourself from the rivers and streams , shield any fire that you may use, construct camouflage lean-to’s and “spider holes” to hide in. You also need to plan on where you’re eventually going to go to completely evade the pursuers and give them the slip. Adapt, overcome, and survive . 10. Know their relentlessness Look at guys such as Eric Rudolph and the Unabomber. They’ll hound you to the very corners of hell, and for decades. When does it end? It never ends…just as your preparations never truly end. In the type of scenario that we just outlined at the beginning of this article, it ends when we have restored the Constitution of the United States to its primacy as the law of the land. It ends when we can form a government of the people, by the people, and for the people that governs with such a mindset. It ends when we can be safe and secure with our neighbors and our own family members…not having to constantly look over our shoulder to see if “Big Brother” is watching you. Therefore, in reality, it never ends. Even in times of good, you must always be vigilant that things do not take a turn for the worse and denigrate into what we have now. Nothing is new under the sun. We have seen such times before and we’ll see them again. Prepare yourself mentally and physically for the challenges ahead of you, and keep fighting that good fight…one day at a time. JJ out! Jeremiah Johnson is the Nom de plume of a retired Green Beret of the United States Army Special Forces (Airborne). Mr. Johnson was a Special Forces Medic, EMT and ACLS-certified, with comprehensive training in wilderness survival, rescue, and patient-extraction. He is a Certified Master Herbalist and a graduate of the Global College of Natural Medicine of Santa Ana, CA. A graduate of the U.S. Army’s survival course of SERE school (Survival Evasion Resistance Escape), Mr. Johnson also successfully completed the Montana Master Food Preserver Course for home-canning, smoking, and dehydrating foods. Mr. Johnson dries and tinctures a wide variety of medicinal herbs taken by wild crafting and cultivation, in addition to preserving and canning his own food. An expert in land navigation, survival, mountaineering, and parachuting as trained by the United States Army, Mr. Johnson is an ardent advocate for preparedness, self-sufficiency, and long-term disaster sustainability for families. He and his wife survived Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath. Cross-trained as a Special Forces Engineer, he is an expert in supply, logistics, transport, and long-term storage of perishable materials, having incorporated many of these techniques plus some unique innovations in his own homestead. Mr. Johnson brings practical, tested experience firmly rooted in formal education to his writings and to our team. He and his wife live in a cabin in the mountains of Western Montana with their three cats. This information has been made available by Ready Nutrition Originally published November 14th, 2016 How Your Guard Dog Security Could Easily Be Compromised ManTracker: How to Be One and How to Avoid One How To Navigate Using the Sun and Stars A Green Beret’s Guide to Improvised Home Defense, Part Land Navigation: Finding Your Way in an Urban Environment…

Country: Yemen With six previous attempts to observe truce having already failed to mitigate the intensity of the crisis, the US brokered seventh truce has yet again —and unsurprisingly— failed to end the fighting in Yemen where the death toll has already risen to 7,000. Despite the fact that both rebels and the Yemeni government had agreed to observe the truce and the ceasefire announced by the Saudia led coalition, fighting has surged, with both sides accusing each other of violation, around the flashpoint southwestern city of Taez, where violence has killed dozens this week, despite clashes subsiding on several fronts. While the fighting itself is a clear reflection of the US’ inability to control the situation on the ground even in a limited sense, the irony of the matter is that—and what turns the tragedy into farce—the US, which is trying to broker peace, happens to be the biggest provider of weapons to Saudi Arabia which has been bombing Yemen for last 19 months. This is where the crux of the problem lies and this is where the original cause of the war must be traced back to. Yemen war continues to drag on not because the warring parties are unable to come to terms; it continues to defy a negotiated end due primarily to the US’ dual-game in the region—a policy that utilises the war-scenario to not only to deepen the Arab countries’ dependence upon the US for military assistance and aid but also to earn billions in terms of weapons sold to the same countries. Therefore, John Kerry’s involvement in many rounds of talks notwithstanding, it is also a fact that many strikes are actually carried out by Saudi pilots who have received their training by the US and who fly US-made jets that are refuelled in the air by American planes. And Yemenis often find the remains of American-made munitions, as they did in the ruins after a strike that killed more than 100 mourners at a funeral last month. Graffiti on walls across Sana reads: “America is killing the Yemeni people.” To the US’ disappointment, no graffiti reads “America is brokering peace in Yemen”, or that “America, is protecting the Yemenis from brutal bombing.” With the US thus playing a double game in Yemen and with the US-made missiles and jets pounding the Yemenis indiscriminately, the question of the US being a committer of war crimes becomes pertinent. The allegation has concrete material base. For instance, consider this: while the UN officials were expressing their concerns over the rising toll of civilian deaths in Yemen in September this year, the US Senate backed, on September 21, the Obama administration’s plan to sell more than $1 billion worth of American-made tanks and other weapons to Saudi Arabia, soundly defeating a bid to derail the deal pushed by lawmakers critical of the kingdom’s role in Yemen’s war. The deal involves more than 100 main battle tanks, machine guns, smoke grenade launchers, night-vision devices, vehicles to recover damaged tanks from the battlefield, and thousands of rounds of training ammunition. The primary contractor for the equipment is General Dynamics Land Systems of Sterling Heights, Michigan. With Saudi Arabia being such an important buyer of the US made weapons, which are being currently used in Yemen against the Houthis, and with the US being eager to fulfil its security commitments and equally facilitating the Saudi led coalitions’ bombing campaigns both logistically and militarily, peace cannot really be established, not unless the US forces Saudia to stop its bombing campaign—something that comes at a high-cost for the US weapon-makers: hence, unlikely to happen. What adds insult to injury is that the supporters of the deal say that the US cannot deny its Middle East allies the weapons they need to combat Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) extremists and check Iran’s aggression in the region. “Blocking this sale of tanks will be interpreted by our Gulf partners, not just Saudi Arabia, as another sign that the United States of America is abandoning our commitment to the region and is an unreliable security partner,” said John McCain. The support continues despite the fact that the Saudi-led coalition was responsible for 60 percent of the 2,067 civilians killed in the conflict over a yearlong span starting on July 1, 2015, according to a report released by U.N. human rights chief Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein. Given the dual game the US is playing in Yemen, it cannot be gainsaid that truce and ceasefire cannot hold the fighting and pave the way for an end of the war, not unless Saudi Arabia’s source of military power, the US, decides to cut off the chain of supply and brings it to the negotiating table—something that is unlikely to happen under Obama administration and something that would be paid lip service only under the Trump administration. In this context, the off and on saga of truce and ceasefire means nothing except that it allows the US administration to feed the general public with the impression of maintaining a ‘neutral’ stance towards the war. Salman Rafi Sheikh, research-analyst of International Relations and Pakistan’s foreign and domestic affairs, exclusively for the online magazine “ New Eastern Outlook ”. Popular Articles

Word has gone out through the White House that anyone caught speaking with reporters is as good as gone, according to reports that have come out today. Staffers are making themselves scarce, not answering their phones, and keeping their heads down. According to senior aides, some staffers are literally hiding in their offices and refusing to come out while the White House press corp is around. This comes in the wake of startling revelations that President Trump leaked Israeli intelligence to the Russians during a closed-door meeting last week. Do not ask me about how this looks, we all know how this looks, a senior White House aide told The Daily Beast earlier this week.Asked a longtime House GOP staffer where things are headed. "This is like Reservoir Dogs. Everyone ends up dead on the floor." Molly Ball (@mollyesque) May 17, 2017Those sentiments, implying that Trump is obviously guilty of collusion and mishandling classified information, have driven morale even lower. It s especially ironic, given how vocal President Trump was during the campaign, hammering Secretary Clinton over and over again for her allegedly poor handling of classified emails. Now that the tables have turned, White House staffers are losing faith in the administration.Part of the problem with morale stems from Trump s leadership, or lack thereof. He s notorious for shifting blame and firing whoever sticks their heads up at the wrong time. In part, because Trump doesn t seem to be able to take responsibility for his own actions.None of that will surprise anyone paying attention to his disastrous administration, and it s not news to White House staffers either. They re waiting for the fallout, to see who will be blamed for Trump s latest mess and whose head will roll in response to the latest news. Until it becomes apparent which way the wind is blowing, smart staffers are in hiding.That speaks to huge problems within the administration. The lack of trust, and fear of raising the ire of President Trump sounds more like an abusive household than a presidential administration.Photo by Win McNamee via Getty Images

shares leader at alhashd alshaabi in hawija district hassan alsawfi announced on thursday that the islamic state extremist group abducted civilians southwest of kirkuk for leaving the land of caliphate sawfi said in a press statement this evening isis militants abducted civilians from hawija district while fleeing the district adding that the civilians were abducted for leaving the land of caliphate and helping other civilians to flee the isisheld areas toward kirkuk and salahuddin the abduction took place in the area between hamrin mountains and southwest of kirkuk sawfi explained isis militants are collapsing and lost their ability to fight sawfi added sawfi also called on officials to accelerate the battles to liberate the district of hawija to rescue the civilians who are used as human shields meanwhile a new photo report purportedly released by the isis shows iraqi army spies mass beheaded in wilayat kirkuk southeast of the current mosul military operation the photo report was released on isis terrorist channels on november viewer discretion is advised recommended for you isis executes scores and hangs their bodies from electrical poles around mosul un isis terrorists have executed scores more people around the northern iraqi city of mosul this week and are reported to be stockpilin by aht staff isis uses suicide dogs to restrain iraqi armys advance in mosul fahmi abbas an officer in iraqi armored units had an interview with irna and said isis terrorists have equipped dogs wi by aht staff mosul civilians stormed city main prison and free isis prisoners iraqs alsumaria satellite television quote d an unnamed security source that claimed mosul residents on friday evening killed isis terror by aht staff iraqi soldier battling isis in mosul reunited with his family after two years of estrangement

Washington (CNN) President Barack Obama announced Thursday that U.S. forces will remain in Afghanistan at their current levels throughout much of 2016, yet another delay in their scheduled withdrawal and an acknowledgment that America's longest war won't be concluded on his watch. Obama campaigned as the president who would end two wars, and Thursday's decision was a major political reversal that jeopardizes a cornerstone of his legacy. Taliban gains in Afghanistan and appeals from Kabul for ongoing U.S. assistance contributed to postponing the troop withdrawal and underscored Obama's continuing difficulty in fulfilling his intention to remove all American forces by the time he leaves office. On Thursday, however, he told reporters at the White House that he wasn't disappointed at having to make the announcement that plans for the withdrawal had been put on hold. Instead, he said, his job was to make necessary adjustments given events on the ground. He also stressed that the formal combat mission there has ended, and that he is a president who does "not support the idea of endless war." He ended the Iraq war and removed American troops there in 2011. The plan announced Thursday keeps 9,800 U.S. troops in Afghanistan before an anticipated drawdown to around 5,500 by the time Obama leaves office. The troop's mission will remain the same, Obama emphasized -- to train and support Afghan security forces and carry out counterterrorism operations. Obama began his announcement by highlighting U.S. gains in Afghanistan and noted that the Afghan government and its security forces are now "fully responsible for securing their country." But he also said that the U.S. still needs to bolster those forces to maintain the progress achieved and because "it's the right thing to do." "While America's combat mission in Afghanistan may be over, our commitment to Afghanistan and and its people endures," Obama said from the Roosevelt Room. "As commander in chief, I will not allow Afghanistan to be used as a safe haven for terrorists to attack our nation again." Obama stressed that the decision to maintain 9,800 troops in Afghanistan until late 2016 came after months of discussions with Afghanistan's president, Ashraf Ghani, and the nation's chief executive officer, Abdullah Abdullah -- a nod to the fact that the U.S. is maintaining a presence in the country with the support of its leaders, unlike in Iraq, where the Obama administration could not reach an agreement with the Iraqi government on leaving a residual military force. "The decision to maintain the current level of the United States' forces in Afghanistan once again shows renewal of the partnership and strengthening of relations of the United States with Afghanistan on the basis of common interests and risks," he said. NATO also welcomed the move, saying in a statement that it "paves the way for a sustained presence" in Afghanistan for the organization and its allies. Obama also noted that he had consulted with U.S. military commanders on the ground in Afghanistan as well as his entire national security team before deciding to maintain the current troop level. White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest later told reporters that Obama chose to go with the Pentagon's greatest suggested number of troops. "The highest recommendation that came into the President was the level that the President announced today," he said. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said in a news conference Thursday that while the fight in Afghanistan "remains a difficult fight," the adjusted force numbers will ensure that the U.S. can carry out its mission and help Afghans confront the continued challenge posed by the Taliban. "Today's decision from the president to adjust our troop presence in Afghanistan honors that sacrifice (of U.S. troops) and gives us a chance to finish what we started," Carter said at the Pentagon. The decision comes on the heels of recent Taliban gains in Afghanistan, notably the militant group's takeover of Kunduz, the first major city to fall to Taliban hands since 2001. Two weeks later, the Taliban pulled out of the city -- but the incident sent ripples through Afghanistan and shook Washington. Obama noted as much when he said that while Afghan forces are "taking the lead" and fighting "bravely and tenaciously," those forces "are still not as strong as they need to be." The U.S. plan is to now maintain 5,500 U.S. military personnel in Afghanistan after a drawdown set to take place in late 2016 or early 2017, more than five times the number of troops previously set to remain in the country at the start of 2017. Only about 1,000 troops had previously been set to remain in Afghanistan at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul. Obama said the 5,500 troops post-drawdown would be based at the U.S. embassy and at military bases in Baghram, Jalalabad and Kandahar. Carter said the Pentagon viewed that figure as "enough" to sustain the U.S. mission and accomplish the two-pronged goal of assisting the Afghan security forces and carrying out counterterror missions. Though the decision clearly was a break from the game plan he had laid out and pitched to the American public, on Thursday he downplayed any suggestion that the delay in the withdrawal was a major setback. Obama said the decision was not "disappointing" and said his mission has consistently been to "assess the situation on the ground" and make adjustments as necessary. "This is not the first time those adjustments have been made," Obama said. "This won't probably be the last." While Obama highlighted the sacrifices of the Afghan people and American forces who have circulated in and out of the war-torn country for more than 14 years of U.S. operations, Obama stressed that casualties are down overall and that U.S. troops will not be heading back into combat. "The nature of the mission has not changed and the cessation of our combat role has not changed," Obama said. Still, speaking to the American service members who will need to deploy to Afghanistan, he said: "I do not send you into harm's way lightly." This is the second draw-down delay announced by Obama this year. In March, Obama said he planned to reduce U.S. forces in Afghanistan 5,500 U.S. military personnel by the end of this year, and then to an "embassy-only" presence by the end of 2016. "The timeline for a withdrawal down to a embassy center presence, a normalization of our presence in Afghanistan, remains the end of 2016," Obama said in a joint press conference with Ghani last March. Administration officials stressed U.S. military personnel in Afghanistan would continue to serve under two missions -- to root out remnants of al Qaeda as well as train and equip Afghan security forces. U.S. forces could also conduct counterterrorism operations against elements of ISIS in Afghanistan, should the group present a threat to the U.S. homeland, senior administration officials added. The original White House goal was to hand over the counterterrorism side of the U.S. mission to Afghan security forces this year. "It's in our interest to build up the Afghan security forces," said a senior administration official. The estimated annual cost of maintaining current U.S. force levels in Afghanistan is $14.6 billion, a separate senior administration official said. Obama had previously vowed to conclude the U.S. commitment in Afghanistan before he leaving office. "We will bring America's longest war to a responsible end," Obama said at a Rose Garden ceremony in May 2014. Retired Lt. Col. Rick Francona, a CNN military analyst and former intelligence officer, said Obama's decision is simply "kicking this can down the road" for the next president. Obama will be out of office by the time troops are set to be drawn down again. "This is this administration pushing this off to the next administration because the next time they have to make this decision, it will be a different president in the White House," Francona said. Republicans who have been seeking higher U.S. troop commitments gave a lukewarm response to Obama's announcement Thursday. "While this new plan avoids a disaster, it is certainly not a plan for success," House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mac Thornberry said in a statement. "Given the troubling conditions on the ground in Afghanistan and the other security problems in the region, keeping 9,800 troops there through at least 2016 is necessary to our security interests."

The media will ignore the fact that this man was reportedly on his way to harm gays or that he appears to be a Bernie Sanders supporter. The media and Democrats will instead, be laser focused on the weapons and ammunition that were found in his possession. Democrats and other gun-control fanatics should be reminded that they are just inanimate objects until they end up in the hands of unstable Bernie Sanders supporters Authorities on Sunday were trying to determine the intentions of an Indiana man with a cache of weapons, ammunition and explosive-making materials in his car and apparent plans to attend the L.A. Pride festival in West Hollywood.Santa Monica Police Chief Jacqueline Seabrooks said on Twitter that the 20-year-old man told one of her officers after he was arrested that he wanted to harm Gay Pride event. But she did not provide any details, and officials said they are still trying to sort out his motives.Police identified him as James Wesley Howell of Indiana. A Facebook page for someone with the same name in Indiana shows a young man posing next to a white Acura with the same license plate as the car searched in Santa Monica for the weapons and explosives.At a news conference Sunday afternoon, police stressed they were still trying to figure out what Howell planned to do with the weapons.Howell s friend and fellow car club member Joseph Greeson, 18, said Howell didn t harbor any ill will toward gays or lesbians.Greeson said Howell s family in Jeffersonville hadn t seen him for days and that his parents had called Greeson s parents looking for him.He added that Howell was known to have a gun collection.According to Indiana court records, Howell was charged in October 2015 with intimidation and felony pointing a firearm at another person. On April 19, Howell pleaded guilty to misdemeanor intimidation, and prosecutors dropped the pointing a firearm charge. Court records show he was sentenced to a year in state prison and placed on probation. Under the deal, He agreed to forfeit all weapons during his term of probation.Oct 21, 2015- Around 11:17 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 15, Charlestown Police Department officers were dispatched to Winthrop Drive to investigate a report of James W. Howell, 19, pointing a gun at his neighbors, according to a police report.When the officers arrived, the neighbors pointed out Howell, who was then handcuffed until the officers could determine the nature of the allegations. While doing so, one officer noticed a Smith and Wesson handgun sticking out of the back waistband of his pants, which the officer secured in his car.One of the neighbors who reportedly had the gun pointed at him told officers he, his wife and several other neighbors and friends had been sitting on the porch having beers and discussing his cat being poisoned several months ago. At that point, a woman who lives at Howell s residence with her husband, who was on the porch, came around from the back of the house yelling that they were talking about her and calling her names. An argument ensued between the woman and the complainant, and Howell went into his residence and returned with a gun, witnesses said.The complainant said Howell pointed the gun at him and his wife, who said she would call the police. Howell withdrew the gun and went into the house.The officers said that the other complainants and witness stories were consistent and none seemed intoxicated. Two of them referred to an incident earlier in the day in which Howell had pointed his gun at his boyfriend. A report was taken after this incident as well. James is going to get someone hurt, one witness said. He needs to stop pointing guns at people. Federal and local law enforcement decided against canceling the annual parade, which went forward Sunday morning under tightened security. Investigators are now trying to piece together what happened but said they don t believe there is any connection between the incident and the massacre at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Fla., that killed at least 50 people overnight.Early Sunday, Santa Monica police received a call about a suspected prowler who was knocking on a resident s door and window about 5 a.m. in the 1700 block of 11th Street, Santa Monica police said. Patrol officers responded and encountered Howell, who was sitting in a car registered in Indiana, police said. Officers inspected the car and found three assault rifles, high-capacity ammunition and a five-gallon bucket containing chemicals capable of forming an improvised explosive device, police said.A law enforcement source who spoke on condition of anonymity said the contents of the bucket included tannerite, an ingredient that could be used to create a pipe bomb. The maker of the material said that was not the case and that it can only be detonated by high-velocity impact such as a bullet strike. But tannerite is known as a material used in the construction of other types of explosive devices.The source, who was not authorized to speak publicly about the ongoing investigation, said authorities also found camouflage clothing in the car.Los Angeles County sheriff s officials said the suspect told police he was going to the Pride parade to look for a friend. Authorities were looking for that individual.Santa Monica police spokesman Saul Rodriguez said detectives are not aware of what the suspect s intentions were at this point. Santa Monica police continued to search the suspect s white Acura on Sunday morning. All four of the car s doors were open and a green blanket, red gasoline canister and several other smaller items were being piled on the sidewalk next to it. The car s license plate included a symbol of the National Rifle Assn. on the left side and the bottom said, Teaching Freedom. A Facebook page for Howell said he attended high school in Louisville, Ky., and lives in Jeffersonville, Ind., where he works for an air filtration company. A car enthusiast, Howell posted numerous photographs of the Acura along with a couple of videos taken from inside cars. Another 10-second video includes gunfire, with shots striking grass.Here is the comment James Wesley Howell made under the pro-Bernie Sanders meme:The site includes political posts, including one in which he compares Hillary Clinton to Adolf Hitler. In another, he repeats conspiracy theories that the government was behind notorious terrorist attacks, including Sept. 11, 2011. That post shares a video claiming that last year s terror attack on the Paris offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo was a hoax and attributable to the New World Order. They found him with weapons that were very disconcerting, said one source, adding officials are taking the appropriate safety precautions. One source in West Hollywood said there was discussion of calling off the parade but that officials decided to go forward, with heavy security including undercover officers in the crowd. Via: LA Times

YENAGOA, Nigeria (Reuters) - Four Britons have been kidnapped in Nigeria s southern Delta state, a police official said on Wednesday. The police are attempting to rescue the four people, who were taken by unidentified gunmen on Oct. 13, said Andrew Aniamaka, a spokesman for Delta state police. Kidnapping for ransom is a common problem in parts of Nigeria. A number of foreigners have, in the last few years, been kidnapped in the Niger Delta region, which holds most of the country s crude oil - the country s economic mainstay. The abductors have not made any contact but we are doing our investigations to know the motive and have them rescued without jeopardising their lives, said Aniamaka. Information available to us shows they are missionaries giving free medical services, he said, adding that the British nationals had been working in a very rural area. There was an increase in crime in the southern region last year that coincided with a series of attacks on energy facilities. However, there have been no militant attacks on energy installations so far this year.

Americans are bracing for a summer of racial disturbances around the country, such as those that have wracked Baltimore, with African Americans and whites deeply divided about why the urban violence has occurred, a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll has found. A resounding 96% of adults surveyed said it was likely there would be additional racial disturbances this summer, a signal that Americans believe Baltimore’s recent problems aren’t a local phenomenon but instead are symptomatic of broader national problems.

In their rush to make radical Muslims terrorists feel as though they are welcome in Belgium, coupled with their naive belief that if they coddle them enough, they will assimilate, the authorities have clearly forgotten about the victims of a horrific terror attack that took place in Brussels only months ago. When european nations start coddling terrorists and terror recruiters who are attracting Muslims from their homeland to commit horrific acts of violence against innocent people, the entire nation is screwed Erin McLaughlin of CNN told the story of a young man, a teen who became caught up in the ISIS recruiting web after a vacation in Belgium. Eight months after that trip to vacation in Belgium, Salia said her son became radicalized. He sent her a Facebook message to let her know he was in Syria.Then came a chilling phone call. the Syrian guide said, Congratulation, congratulation. Your son died as a martyr, and then he hung up.It was horrible. when I heard about his death, I felt like I died myself. she says her son was the happiest of her four children. She didn t know the most dangerous jihadist recruitment network in Brussels approached her son.It was the most dangerous of webs. Some were convicted and given lengthy prison sentences but, remarkably, were free on bail.It is veteran jihadists and recruiters. Some would go on to carry out the terrorist attacks in Paris and Brussels. Authorities prosecuted for man 60 recruiters and foreign fighters. One of them was Sala. His recruiters were declared guilty as you see here, the judge allowed them to walk free pending their appeal. CNN tracked down one of the recruiters to his home address that is neighborhood of a convicted recruiter.Her son said he pleaded, he wanted to come home. The recruiter said, no . We re here to ask him why.We ring the doorbell. His mother answers. She screams at us to leave her alone. As we walk away, the recruiter appears and confronts us. His words are not welcoming. He refuses to talk to us on camera.Families living in the complex don t even know they are living amongst them. It must be the EU PC.Belgian authorities tell CNN they have NOT notified residents that a convicted jihadist recruiter is living in their midst.We saw a teenage boy entering the same apartment building. the president of Brussels tribunal says in Belgium it is not unusual for a criminal to go free while they re waiting for appeal. If they re not considered a flight risk. How s it that a convicted member of a terrorist organization sentenced to seven years in prison is allowed to walk free after his trial? They re free, the official said, because they behaved during the trial.His mother said it s like her son died twice seeing his recruiters running loose on the streets.For entire story: Independent Sentinel

@WesleyLowery who paid for all those weapons that tiny town's PD has? Who sold them?

After working for months to build a solid white supremacist base, Donald Trump suddenly started focusing on minority outreach last week. But CNN commentator and New York Times columnist Charles Blow explained just who these efforts are really aimed at, and it isn t African-Americans.According to Blow, Trump s minority outreach isn t aimed at people of color at all. Rather, his message is targeting white moderate Republicans who have reservations about voting for a raging bigot. Blow said that this is the most horrible form of bigotry. It is the kind of bigotry that says, I will knock you down while I pretend to pick you up,' Blow said. It says that, I m not talking to you, I m talking to the guy behind you or over your shoulder. It s the kind of bigotry that says, I m urinitaing on you and telling you to dance in the rain.' Blow said that he has spent the past week trying to find out if Trump s bullsh*t message had resonated with any people of color. Here s a shocker, it didn t. Blow said this just goes to show that Trump s outreach isn t reaching anybody except for right-leaning whites. It is the moderate ones who say, I don t want to be the woman/man who votes for the racist guy, and if this guy can now change his opinion, I do want to be conservative, but I don t want to be the conservative who votes for the racist guy, and now he s different,' Blow said. Actually, he s not different. He s not talking to us. He s pretending to talk to us while he talks to you. This is an insult to all people of color, black, Hispanic and otherwise, because he s using us as pawns, and you do not get an out, Blow continued. He was a bigot yesterday, he s a bigot today, and he ll be a bigot tomorrow, and if you vote for him, you re voting for a bigot. That s it. Watch Blow drop a truth bomb about who Trump s minority outreach is really aimed at, here: [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54Eni-v3Hkw]Featured image via video screen capture

When a Muslim man with dual citizenship in Egypt and America tells his fellow agents: A Muslim doesn t record another Muslim and gets a promotion, every American should be concerned. When that same Muslim is in an advisory role in our government and is advocating for a federal gun registry, every American should be very concerned A Muslim doesn t record another Muslim, said Gamal Abdel-Hafiz (shown). This might not have been noteworthy except that Abdel-Hafiz was an FBI agent at the time and was refusing to do his duty, which at that moment involved taping a Muslim suspect. That was 2002, and this is now. And now the Cairo-born Abdel-Hafiz has moved on to bigger and perhaps better things he s a homeland-security advisor to Barack Obama. And while recording a single Muslim is a problem for him, putting every single American firearm owner on a gun-registry he fancies a good idea. WFAA.com reports on his idea: A former FBI counter-terrorism agent says lawmakers could make mass murders less likely. What we need to do is keep the ownership of guns known to the government, so we know who has what, said security consultant Gamal Abdel-Hafiz. And I know a lot of people are against that. He shouldn t have been able to buy a gun legally. He shouldn t, said Abdel-Hafiz about 29 year-old Omar Mateen [the Orlando jihadist]. He says 3 FBI interviews should have been enough to keep Mateen on the radar, but he also knows why he wasn t. Once you investigate someone and clear them, you have to remove them from the watch list by law, he explained Monday from his office in Dallas.And even if Mateen had been on a terror watch list, or no-fly list, that would not have prohibited him from legally buying weapons That means the list is useless then, the former agent said.Responding to this, PJ Media notes, Remarkably, he [Abdel-Hafiz] admits that the various terror watch lists and no-fly lists are useless. Moments after suggesting another list. He doesn t explain how a national gun registry yet another government list targeting millions of law-abiding Americans would prevent another terror attack. For sure. All car owners are registered, but that doesn t guarantee they re all sane and doesn t stop me, if I am unhinged, from plowing my vehicle into a group on a sidewalk. Likewise, let s say all legal firearms in America were registered. Then what? Given that the lists Mateen already was on ultimately had no remedial effect in his case, how would the FBI having knowledge of his weapons purchases have stopped his Orlando malevolence? We don t have to wonder, though, because the FBI already knew about them. As Breitbart reported last week: Robbie Abell, owner of a Florida gun shop, says he alerted authorities that a suspicious man had come in asking about body armor. The Wall Street Journal quotes Abell as telling them that his store, Lotus Gunworks of South Florida, shut him down on all sales after he began asking bizarre questions about body armor and bulk ammunition. The questions he was asking were not the normal questions a normal person would be asking . He just seemed very odd, Abell said. The armor Mateen asked about is not traditionally available to civilians.In addition, Abell witnessed Mateen talking on a phone in what the gun dealer believed was Arabic. In other words, Mateen fit the terrorist profile like a glove, yet this wasn t enough to inspire the FBI to take the gloves off. And now we re supposed to believe that somehow, some way, information about innocent American gun owners will help an agency that lacked the wisdom to act on already available information about a dangerous, un-American gun owner?Shockingly, Abdel-Hafiz was never fired by the FBI. This is despite allegations he perpetrated insurance fraud and then lied about it to the agency; despite his I won t record another Muslim remark; and despite the fact that a colleague of his, FBI special agent Robert Wright, and Chicago federal prosecutor Mark Flessner both attest that the Muslim agent seriously damaged the investigation inspiring the remark. Instead, here s what did transpire, as reported by ABC News in 2002:Wright said he was floored by Abdel-Hafiz s refusal and immediately called the FBI headquarters. Their reaction surprised him even more: The supervisor from headquarters says, Well, you have to understand where he s coming from, Bob. I said no, no, no, no, no. I understand where I m coming from, said Wright. We both took the same damn oath to defend this country against all enemies foreign and domestic, and he just said no? No way in hell. Far from being reprimanded, Abdel-Hafiz was promoted to one of the FBI s most important anti-terrorism posts, the American Embassy in Saudi Arabia, to handle investigations for the FBI in that Muslim country.Of course, there are no allegations that Abdel-Hafiz who has dual American/Egyptian citizenship has commissively aided terrorists. But given his infamous 2002 refusal to perform his duty, some questions must be asked. In what other ways did/does Abdel-Hafiz s Muslim faith constrain or even warp his actions with respect to Muslim terrorists? How is it influencing his advice? And how many of his theological soul mates are today working in intelligence agencies? Note here that Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson is himself a Muslim.And we should also ask, is this possible Fifth Column corruption responsible for something else Agent Wright complained of: FBI ineptitude? As he also told ABC News in 2002, September the 11th is a direct result of the incompetence of the FBI s International Terrorism Unit. No doubt about that. Absolutely no doubt about that. And as he related to another source prior to 9/11:Knowing what I know, I can confidently say that until the investigative responsibilities for terrorism are removed from the FBI, I will not feel safe. The FBI has proven for the past decade it cannot identify and prevent acts of terrorism against the United States and its citizens at home and abroad. Even worse, there is virtually no effort on the part of the FBI s International Terrorism Unit to neutralize known and suspected terrorists residing within the United States. Unfortunately, more terrorist attacks against American interests, coupled with the loss of American lives, will have to occur before those in power give this matter the urgent attention it deserves.And the rest is in the past. Unfortunately, unless political correctness is purged, it will also be prologue. Via: InfoWars

MSNBC screws up Interviews TWO African-American Donald Trump Supporters that Destroy MSNBC’s Negative Stereotyped Narrative!

If Milwaukee approves reducing its maximum forfeiture for marijuana possession to $50, the city would have "23 different bicycle violations that have a higher forfeiture."

On Tuesday, the Grammys announced their nominations for the 2018 awards shows, and there are some notable additions and snubs that make it look like the Recording Academy is getting into the business of identity politics.For the first time in 14 years, no country music acts were nominated for the top awards: record of the year, song of the year, and album of the year. Instead, the Grammys took a sharp turn towards honoring hip-hop, R&B, and funk for the top awards.According to Buzzfeed: The night s biggest category, Album of the Year, not only has majority black nominees, but also has no white male nominees for the first time in 19 years.This is also the first year the Record of the Year category is only people of color (with the exception of Justin Bieber, who is featured on Luis Fonsi & Daddy Yankee s Despacito ).The Best New Artist category is also majority black this year with SZA, Khalid, and Lil Uzi Vert all gaining nominations. SZA is also this year s most Grammy-nominated woman.Rapper Jay-Z and pop singer Bruno Mars got nods in all three top categories, while rapper/singer Childish Gambino (a.k.a. Donald Glover), rapper Kendrick Lamar, and the coupling of Luis Fonsi & Daddy Yankee got nods in two of the top three categories. Meanwhile, rapper Logic got nominated for his anti-suicide song 1-800-273-8255 for song of the year.Objectively speaking, Jay-Z, Mars, Gambino, Lamar, Fonsi, and Yankee put out some great product this past year, and with any awards show, there are going to be some snubs. However, it appeared that Ed Sheeran, Lady Gaga, Pink, Kelly Clarkson, Kesha, and Miranda Lambert were all looked over from the top categories because of concerns about white supremacy. Instead, Lorde, the 20-year-old New Zealand singer, and Julia Michaels, the 24-year-old singer from Iowa, were the only pop acts to be nominated for the top categories. Washington ExaminerSince rap seems to have surpassed country in popularity (well, at least according to the Grammys), in an effort to address White supremacy , perhaps it s worth taking a look at the black rapper, Snoop Dogg, who shamelessly promotes killing our President and violence against his supporters. Paul Joseph Watson made a brilliant video that exposes how gangster rap increases racism in America. racist 45-year-old rapper Snoop Dogg (**Language warning**):

Woman awarded $70M after contracting cancer from Johnson & Johnson talcum powder Wednesday, November 02, 2016 by: David Gutierrez, staff writer Tags: talc , ovarian cancer , jury award (NaturalNews) Once again, a St. Louis jury has ruled that Johnson & Johnson damaged women's health by engaging in a decades-long coverup about the potential risks of talcum powder ("baby powder") as a feminine hygiene product. On October 27, Johnson & Johnson was ordered to pay $70.1 million to Deborah Giannecchini of Modesto, California, who received an ovarian cancer diagnosis in 2012.For 40 years, Giannecchini had used Johnson & Johnson's Baby Powder to keep her genital area dry, a use promoted by the company.The main ingredient in talcum powder is talc, a mineral widely used in paints and plastics as well as cosmetics, where it is used to absorb moisture. Some evidence suggests that regular exposure to talc, particularly in the genital area, can increase the risk of ovarian cancer.The jury found Johnson & Johnson guilty of negligence for failing to warn customers of this fact. Conspiracy to conceal risks Ovarian cancer is a rare but highly lethal disease. Well-established risk factors include obesity, not having children, estrogen therapy after menopause, and a family history of ovarian or breast cancer.The evidence linking talc to ovarian cancer is compelling but not yet conclusive. The International Agency for Research on Cancer lists talc as a "possible" carcinogen.Among the robust studies suggesting a connection are two meta-analyses that found a roughly one-third increase in ovarian cancer risk among women who were regularly exposed to talc . The first, published in 2003, found the connection in all cases. The second, published in 2013, found it only in women who applied talc directly to the genital area.The case marks the third guilty verdict against Johnson & Johnson over this issue. St. Louis juries have previously slapped the company with $55 million and $72 million judgments.The first case was filed by the family of Jackie Fox of Birmingham, Alabama, who had died of ovarian cancer after long-term use of talcum powder. In that case, the jury found the company guilty not just of negligence, but also of "failure to warn and conspiracy to conceal the risks of its products."Another 2,000 lawsuits are pending. Thirty years of deception Even after the recent verdict, Johnson & Johnson continues to insist on the safety of its product, including for genital use. In its home state of New Jersey, the company has successfully gotten two lawsuits over the issue dismissed. It is appealing all three guilty verdicts from Missouri.Investors seem to believe the company will prevail. Its stock price seemed unaffected by the recent guilty verdict.Alexandra Scranton, director of science and research at Women's Voices for the Earth, has characterized Johnson and Johnson's behavior as typical of Big Pharma and other companies that go to extreme lengths to keep selling products even as evidence mounts of their dangers.Scranton said that documents uncovered during the Fox trial show that for decades, Johnson & Johnson sought to take advantage of the scientific uncertainty over the talc-ovarian cancer link, downplaying the potential risk rather than pursing a "clearly more ethical role, to take a precautionary approach." Indeed, Scranton notes, the company "poured money over years into defending talc."Among the documents revealed during the Fox case are internal memos showing that Johnson & Johnson had been preparing to be sued over the health risks of talc for 30 years. In one 1997 memo, a medical consultant warned that anyone who continued to deny a connection between ovarian cancer and genital talc use would eventually be seen as on par with tobacco companies denying a cancer link: "denying the obvious in the face of all evidence to the contrary."Another memo laid out a strategy to counter falling talc sales caused by health concerns by more aggressive marketing to minority communities. Sources for this article include: http://www.naturalnews.com/053112_Johnson_&_talc_ovarian_cancer.html Health Ranger Approved AquaTru Water Filter Back in Stock I've secured 500 units of the amazing AquaTru at $100 off for Natural News readers (while supplies last). Breakthrough filter removes nearly 100% of hundreds of contaminants. No plumbing needed. SHIPS TODAY .

Who Is Tess Ward? 5 Things to Know About Harry Styles' Rumored Love Interest

Remarkably, despite the military-style police presence in #Ferguson, a known killer was able to skip town http://t.co/lDGjp6Wt1j

Former President Jimmy Carter said recently that he provided maps of Islamic State positions in Syria to the Russian embassy in Washington, a move apparently at odds with the Obama administration’s official policy of not cooperating with Russia in the Syrian war. Carter said on Sunday in Georgia that he knows Russian President Vladimir Putin “fairly well” because they “have a common interest in fly fishing.” When he met with Putin in April along with other global leaders to discuss the crises in Syria and Ukraine, the Russian president gave him an email address so the two could discuss his “fly fishing experiences, particularly in Russia,” Carter said. The civil war in Syria, where U.S. officials say Russia has bombed rebels and CIA-backed groups rather than the Islamic State terrorist group, has also been a topic of conversation between the two. Carter said he sent maps of the Islamic State’s locations in Syria, produced by the Carter Center, to the Russian embassy so Moscow could improve the accuracy of its strikes. “I sent [Putin] a message Thursday and asked him if he wanted a copy of our map so he could bomb accurately in Syria, and then on Friday, the Russian embassy in Atlanta—I mean in Washington, called down and told me they would like very much to have the map,” Carter said at his Sunday school class in Georgia, according to a video of his remarks first aired by NBC News. “So in the future, if Russia doesn’t bomb the right places, you’ll know it’s not Putin’s fault but it’s my fault,” he added as the audience laughed. Obama administration officials have publicly said the United States will not collaborate with Russia as long as it targets U.S.-backed rebels in an effort to prop up Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, a longtime ally of Moscow. The administration has said Assad must eventually step down as part of efforts to seek a political resolution to the Syrian war. “We are not prepared to cooperate on strategy which, as we explained, is flawed, tragically flawed, on the Russians’ part,” said Ash Carter, U.S. defense secretary, earlier this month. Click for more from the Washington Free Beacon.

The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) have accused Saudi Arabia of organizing an Islamic State attack on Iran’s Parliament and the shrine of the leader of the Iranian revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. The Islamic State have officially taken responsibility for the attack. [At press time, Reuters reports that the IRGC say Saudi officials coordinated the attack, which left at least 12 dead and 42 wounded. JUST IN: Iran’s revolutionary guards say Saudi Arabia was behind deadly attacks in Tehran — statement pic. twitter. — Reuters Top News (@Reuters) June 7, 2017, The Presse reports that the IRGC claim America is also “involved” in the attack in some way: #BREAKING Iran Guards claim US, Saudi ’involved’ in Tehran attacks, — AFP news agency (@AFP) June 7, 2017, “Let there be no doubt that we will take revenge for today’s attacks in Tehran, on terrorists, their affiliates, and their supporters,” Brigadier General Hossein Salami, the deputy commander of the IRGC, said in a statement, according to Russian propaganda outlet RT. Iranian state media responded to the attack by publishing articles quoting Saudi officials’ recent statements against Iran, implying that, at the very least, Saudi Arabia inspired the Sunni Islamic State terrorists to attack the centers of power in Iran. An estimated eight percent of Iran is Sunni Muslim, compared to 89 percent Shiite. “Saudi Arabia’s deputy crown prince Mohammed bin Salman in challenging remarks made a few weeks ago warned that his country would take the battle to Iranian soil,” the Fars News Agency recalled Wednesday morning. Bin Salman had reported noted in May that the Iranian government perceived Riyadh as a “primary target” for terrorism, and said: “We won’t wait for the battle to be in Saudi Arabia. Instead, we’ll work so that the battle is for them in Iran. ” Fars also quoted Saudi Foreign Minister Adel in a separate article, who told officials in France that reported indicated Iran was harboring terrorists. According to Fars, “said Iran must be punished for what he claimed as interference in the region and support for terrorist organizations. ” reportedly demanded Iran become a “normal state,” not a sponsor of terrorism, and abide by international law, in a report published hours before the Islamic State attack. The articles do note cite similar remarks from Iranian officials. In May, for example, Iranian Defense Minister Hossein Dehghan warned that Tehran would “leave no area untouched” of Saudi Arabia “except Mecca and Medina,” the holy cities, if Iran felt threatened. Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has repeatedly claimed the United States, Israel, and “the West” created the Islamic State to keep the Middle East destabilized. In recent remarks, he mocked the West for losing control of what he claimed was their own creation: “This is a fire that [Western powers] themselves ignited and now has backfired on them. ” A combination of armed attackers and suicide bombers targeted the two locations in the Iranian capital Wednesday, with Iranian officials identifying one of the suicide attackers as female. The gunmen, dressed as women and carryingKalashnikov rifles, executed a siege on the Parliament that lasted four hours before Iranian law enforcement announced that they had killed all assailants. The attack interrupted an active Parliament committee session. ISIS suicide bomber detonates himself at Imam Khomeini shrine south of Tehran. #pt pic. twitter. — Hayder (@Hayder_alKhoei) June 7, 2017, Videos began surfacing on social media of the attack, indicating that the gunmen wore body cameras to ensure their attack was documented. In one of the videos, a man is heard repeating phrases popularized by late ISIS propagandist Abu Mohammad . The attack is the latest in what is shaping up to be the bloodiest Ramadan in recent memory. Ramadan is the holy month of Islam, in which jihadists believe their acts of violence will reap them more rewards in Jannah, the afterlife.

For two years the tenor saxophonist Kamasi Washington has ridden on the strength of “The Epic,” his hit triple album from 2015, playing almost 200 concerts last year and cementing a level of cultural prominence rarely afforded to jazz musicians. This week he will debut his first new work since the album, at the 2017 Whitney Biennial, which opens on Friday in its first iteration since the museum moved downtown in 2015. A gallery will feature Mr. Washington’s “Harmony of Difference,” a sweep of music with accompanying video from the filmmaker A. G. Rojas. As he has gained attention, Mr. Washington, 36, has taken up the role of a jazz ambassador. And with “Harmony of Difference,” he adopts a familiar but still relevant argument: Improvised music can represent a metaphor for a more perfect American union. In this case, Mr. Washington set out to use the musical concept of counterpoint (various melodic crosscurrents flowing together) to symbolize a coexistence that is not just peaceful but actively engaged. “With our political climate right now, there’s just so much focus on the negative aspect of our diversity,” he said last week in a phone interview from Los Angeles. “I thought it was ironic that we look at it as this problem that we have to solve, when it’s really a gift. ” Of “Harmony,” he said: “I didn’t want it to sound chaotic. I wanted to show how you can pull these different musical pieces together in a way that felt harmonious. ” The suite coheres around harmonies and rhythms that mix swing, funk and calypso. It’s of a piece with “The Epic,” which Mr. Washington recorded with a large band, a choir and a string section, though here only the final song, over 13 minutes long, features strings and voices. Through the first five tracks, Mr. Rojas’s video pans patterns painted by Mr. Washington’s sister Amani Washington. At the end of the fifth tune we see a composite canvas, with all five patterns creating an abstract face. In the gallery, that video will play simultaneously on TVs on three walls. When it ends, a projector will illuminate the one bare wall with a different video as the sixth tune begins. Patrons would presumably gather around the single screen to watch the culminating piece together. The visuals here are mostly portraits of young Angelenos, alone or in small groups, with a cosmic production style that reflects elements of Mr. Washington’s aesthetic. Mr. Rojas, who makes music videos often but rarely works with jazz musicians, said he felt a sense of freedom working with Mr. Washington. He described “a kind of fluid emotion that doesn’t really exist when you’re doing a video for an artist that has lyrics or a certain specific structure. ” This exhibition is Mr. Washington’s entree into a major museum since arriving on the national scene. Successful jazz musicians usually depend on grants and professorships if they ascend far enough, working in museums is a natural part of the career path. But Mr. Washington has come via a slightly different route. He grew up in South Central Los Angeles, the son of a jazz musician and the nephew of a dance company director, and he came of age in a small ecosystem of mentorship, learning from elders like Billy Higgins and Gerald Wilson. Working with fellow young musicians he had known since grade school, such as Ronald Bruner Jr. and Cameron Graves, he has gone on to record and tour with major Los Angeles musicians outside jazz, like Flying Lotus, Snoop Dogg and Kendrick Lamar. He recorded most of “The Epic” in 2011, during a monthlong recording binge with the loose federation of young jazz musicians calling themselves the West Coast Get Down. Since its release, he has toured constantly, playing his rigorous, largely instrumental music at rock clubs more often than jazz venues. Mr. Washington’s album experienced remarkable success partly thanks to his reputation for working across genres, but also because it responded to a desire for dauntless, farseeing art in the age of Black Lives Matter. “The Epic” loops in elements of 1970s funk and 1980s RB without abandoning jazz’s guiding ethic — one of earnest and determined humanism. On that triple album, for all the dozens of musicians, there seems to be another, more ambiguous layer in the recording. It could just be all those instruments resonating with one another, or a result of the microphones that were used, or something more inexplicable. But a humid electricity — some illusory, conductive force — certainly hangs throughout most of the songs. It’s something like the feeling of an orchestra tuning, or the swell of a bass amplifier just before it feeds back. “When you have a lot of musicians who are connected to each other on a special level, and are really reaching for that, you get a feeling,” Mr. Washington said. “It’s a stirring. ”

@mickgoddess @mrmedina THANK YOU!!!

During a press conference on Thursday, Attorney General Jeff Sessions stated, “I never had meetings with Russian operatives or Russian intermediaries about the Trump campaign,” and “no such things were discussed” during his meeting with the Russian ambassador, and “my reply to the question of Senator Franken was honest and correct as I understood it at the time. I appreciate that some have taken the view that this was a false comment. That is not my intent. That is not correct. ” Sessions said, “First, about the comments that I made to the committee that have been said to be incorrect and false. Let me be clear, I never had meetings with Russian operatives or Russian intermediaries about the Trump campaign, and the idea that I was part of a, quote, ‘continuing exchange of information, during the campaign, between Trump surrogates and intermediaries for the Russian government’ is totally false. That is the question that Senator [Al] Franken ( ) asked me at the hearing, and that’s what got my attention, as he noticed it — noted, it was the first — just breaking news, and it got my attention, and that is the question I responded to. I did not respond by referring to the two meetings, one very brief after a speech, and one with two of my senior staffers, professional staffers, with the Russian ambassador in Washington, where no such things were discussed. In my reply to the question — my reply to the question of Senator Franken was honest and correct as I understood it at the time. I appreciate that some have taken the view that this was a false comment. That is not my intent. That is not correct. I will write the Judiciary Committee soon, today or tomorrow, to explain this testimony for the record. ” Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett

'Riverdale' Stars Gush Over Lili Reinhart and Cole Sprouse's Real-Life Romance (Exclusive)

France has suspended payment of rent and taxes for citizens due to coronavirus crisis.

"Ohio student suspended for staying in class during National Walkout Day"

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Michelle Obama has been wearing some interesting fashion choices during her overseas trip to Italy. To each his own but the latest outfit crossed over the line because it was disrespectful to the religious guests of Siena Cathedral. Women are supposed to cover their shoulders upon entry into the cathedral. Who does that?Rules must be for the little people and not for the Obamas Sienna, Tuscany is one of the stops for the Obamas on their trip to Italy.

The investigations into the Trump-Russia scandal are an increasing problem for Trump as he desperately tries to steer any and all spotlights away from him and onto, well, pretty much everything else. Unfortunately for him, Rep. Adam Schiff drew an absolutely brilliant map between Trump and Russia during his statement this morning.Schiff left absolutely nothing out of his statement. His map is as follows:Schiff does acknowledge that all of this could just be a bunch of wild coincidences, but with a caveat: Is it possible that all of these events and reports are completely unrelated, and nothing more than an entirely unhappy coincidence? Yes, it is possible. But it is also possible, maybe more than possible, that they are not coincidental, not disconnected and not unrelated, and that the Russians used the same techniques to corrupt U.S. persons that they have employed in Europe and elsewhere. We simply don t know, not yet, and we owe it to the country to find out. He s right. When mapped out, this string of coincidences is pretty damning indeed. We need an investigation, and if Trump really were innocent, he and his minions would likely not be trying to deflect. They d be saying, Go ahead, investigate us! Investigate to your heart s content! You won t find anything. But they aren t. This scandal is about to blow up again. Watch Schiff s full statement in the videos below:Featured image by Drew Angerer via Getty Images

Recently appointed Special Counsel on the Russia investigation Robert Mueller has begun the process of interviewing senior intelligence officials as part of an investigation into President Donald Trump’s conduct according to a Washington Post report that cites anonymous officials. [The Post reported that according to five officials briefed on requests, those to be interviewed include: Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats, National Security Agency head Mike Rogers and Rogers’ now former deputy Richard Ledgett. They said that these three have agreed to interviews with Mueller’s team. Those interviews could happen within days. The Post also reported that according to “people familiar with the matter” the investigation into Trump began shortly after the President fired Director James Comey. Those “people” also told the outlet that investigators are looking for people both inside and outside of government that can attest to the President’s comments on why he fired Comey, the Russia investigations, and others. Comey revealed last week, in a hearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee, that he had informed President Trump three times that the president was not under FBI investigation. The now former FBI Director failed to reveal that information publicly while he was still in his position. During that testimony, Comey also revealed that he had leaked a memo containing his notes from a February 14 meeting with Trump. Mueller’s probe is looking into any possible contact between Trump and Russian operatives and for any potentially suspicious financial dealings with those individuals according to the Post. The report adds that the officials say Mueller is interested in a March 22 conversation between Trump, Coats, and CIA Director Mike Pompeo. According to the officials that spoke with the Post, Coats told associates that the president asked about intervening with Comey in regards to the investigation into former National Security Adviser Mike Flynn. The report states “Coats later told lawmakers that he never felt pressured to intervene. ” A phone request from the president to each Coats and Rogers a few days later asked for public statements denying coordination between Trump’s presidential campaign and the Russians, the officials told the Post. They added that Coats and Rogers refused to comply. The anonymous officials said that Ledgett’s contact with Trump was uncertain, but that he wrote a memo about the call between Rogers and Trump. This news comes just after news broke that brought Mueller’s investigative team into question. CNN reported that three members of Mueller’s Russia investigation team have donated to Democrats, including Hillary Clinton’s campaign for President. The report cites Federal Election Commission records. CNN reported, “More than half of the more than $56, 000 came from just one lawyer and more than half of it was donated before the 2016 election, but two of the lawyers gave the maximum $2, 700 donation to Hillary Clinton last year. ” Follow Michelle Moons on Twitter @MichelleDiana

Iran put a ballistic missile on display as thousands marched on Saturday to mark the anniversary of the 1979 seizure of the U.S. embassy, with a senior official accusing President Donald Trump of a crazy return to confrontation with Tehran. Turnout for the annual Iranian street rallies commemorating the embassy takeover, a pivotal event of the Islamic Revolution, appeared higher than in recent years when Trump s predecessor Barack Obama pursued detente with Tehran. Last month, Trump broke ranks with European allies, Russia and China by refusing to re-certify Iran s compliance with its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, reached during Obama s tenure. Under that deal, most international sanctions on Iran were lifted in exchange for Tehran curbing nuclear activity seen to pose a risk of being put to developing atomic bombs. Iran has reaffirmed its commitment to the deal and U.N. inspectors have verified Tehran is complying with its terms, but Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has threatened to shred the pact if the United States pulls out. All the governments confirm that the American president is a crazy individual who is taking others toward the direction of suicide, Ali Shamkhani, secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, told a rally in Tehran, state media reported. Trump s policies against the people of Iran have brought them out into the streets today, Shamkhani said. He did not identify the governments he had in mind. The other parties to the nuclear deal

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NIAMEY (Reuters) - Mali and Niger, two of the West African nations worst affected by jihadist violence, appealed on Wednesday for international funding for a regional force they have set up to counter Islamist insurgencies. Mali s President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita and Niger s Mahamadou Issoufou said the force assembled by the G5 Sahel bloc Mali, Mauritania, Burkina Faso, Niger and Chad was crucial to fighting a threat that went well beyong their borders. We bring this combat against terrorism not only to protect our own people and countries but for the whole world, Issoufou told a news conference in Niger s capital Niamey. For terrorism knows no border. It will go to Europe, it will go to the United States, he said. The world has to be mobilized. The idea of the G5 force was first dreamed up in 2015, but only in July last year did the countries set it up. It is expected to comprise around 5,000 troops. French President Emmanuel Macron has said he expects it to be operational by the autumn. Islamist groups, some with links to al Qaeda, seized Mali s desert north in 2012. French-led forces scattered them the following year but they still attack peacekeepers, soldiers and civilian targets in Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso and Ivory Coast. Issoufou said a multinational force in the Lake Chad region, including soldiers from Niger, Nigeria, Chad and Cameroon, had had some success against Islamist Boko Haram militants, but that this was financed by Africa s biggest economy, Nigeria, whereas no country in the G5 had sufficient resources. It is important that the international community takes note of this and gets together to give us resources to ensure our mission can be accomplished, he said. Analysts see the G5 force as the basis of an eventual exit strategy for around 4,000 French troops deployed to the region on counter-insurgency missions, mostly in Mali. We have only limited means, but if we mutualize our power, our sovereign elements will have more force, more vitality than we imagine, Malian President Keita said. Issoufou said the force would be divided into three deployments across the Sahel region: an eastern one consisting of Chadian and Nigerien forces, a central one with forces from Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso, and a Western one with troops from Mali and Mauritania.

@AwwalJakada Right you are. I'm punk ass to the core: Sex Pistols, Ramones, Clash. And no I don't fuck goats, like you Muzzies seem t'enjoy

@wagner_darren You didn't have people rioting and looting either.

At the moment that Hillary Clinton was all but clinching the Democratic nomination for president, Meryl Streep was on a stage in Central Park, impersonating Donald J. Trump. In orange face makeup and pompadoured hair, Ms. Streep, the chameleonic Oscar winner, did a more than credible version of the presumptive Republican nominee, down to the pursed lips and belly. She got the voice, too, even while singing. Ms. Streep was part of the Public Theater’s gala benefit celebration on Monday night, a tribute to Shakespeare at the Delacorte Theater, home to Shakespeare in the Park. She was the closing act with Christine Baranski, doing “Brush Up Your Shakespeare,” a number from the Cole Porter musical “Kiss Me, Kate. ” “We could do a deal — you’ll let me know — why it is all the women say no?” she sang, stretching out her arms in a Trumpian gesture. Later she strolled the stage, gesticulating to the audience in Mr. Trump’s signature style. The song, traditionally a duet for men, offers advice for picking up women — in this case, female voters. Some of the original lyrics were altered, but some could stand as is, for Mr. Trump’s combative attitude: “If she says your behavior is heinous, kick her right in the Coriolanus!” The crowd, which included Michael R. Bloomberg, the former mayor: the United States ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power Miranda and Bette Midler, loved it. Her performance came as something of a surprise to the event organizers, who knew only that Ms. Streep, a supporter of Mrs. Clinton’s, wanted to take on Mr. Trump. “Utterly her idea, beginning to end,” Oskar Eustis, the Public’s artistic director, said after the show. “There were skeptics, there were doubters, but one of those skeptics was not Meryl Streep. She was absolutely sure she could do it. None of us had seen her in costume or makeup, till she walked out tonight. ” Ms. Streep skipped the dinner before the show to get into character, and spent time holed up in her dressing room. “She was showing us this thing that Donald Trump always does,” said the actress Kate Burton, who shared the dressing room with Ms. Streep along with Ms. Baranski, Lily Rabe and Phylicia Rashad. “He apparently does this thing, where he goes to close to his jacket but it doesn’t close all the way, and so he kind of goes for it and then he tries to close it again. ” It was a mannerism that only Ms. Streep seemed to catch, Ms. Burton said. “She treats this like she would her greatest roles: she’s working on it all the time. ” For the show, she came onstage in a black suit, white shirt and overlong, clownish red tie. Her transformation astounded her cast mates, who had only glimpsed her with the Trumpian coif in rehearsal. “She showed up, and I thought, ‘Meryl’s having a terrible hair day,’” said the Shakespeare in the Park veteran Hamish Linklater. (Ms. Burton reported that Ms. Streep even used her own hair: “She did some funky thing with pins. ”) Other performers watched from the wings as she and Ms. Baranski, in a black pantsuit, did their finale. “She’s willing to try anything, and have fun with what she tries,” Mr. Eustis said of Ms. Streep, who has appeared at the Delacorte several times in starring roles. “She’s just fearless. ” Mr. Linklater, who played a comic Romeo in another number, called Ms. Streep’s take “naughty. ” But, he added, Shakespeare “wanted to be valuable to his times. And she gave a performance that was valuable to her times. So absolutely, she’s honoring the spirit of the evening. ” On Tuesday afternoon, shortly after her name trended on Twitter with news of the Trump portrayal, Ms. Streep issued an statement through a Public Theater spokeswoman. “I appreciate the interest, but this was a a once in a (last in a) lifetime appearance of this character,” she said.

BEIJING/SEOUL (Reuters) - The U.S. military staged bombing drills with South Korea over the Korean peninsula and Russia and China began naval exercises ahead of a U.N. General Assembly meeting on Tuesday where North Korea s nuclear threat is likely to loom large. The flurry of military drills came after Pyongyang fired another mid-range ballistic missile over Japan on Friday and the reclusive North conducted its sixth and most powerful nuclear test on Sept. 3 in defiance of United Nations sanctions and other international pressure. A pair of U.S. B-1B bombers and four F-35 jets flew from Guam and Japan and joined four South Korean F-15K fighters in the latest drill, South Korea s defense ministry said. The joint drills were being conducted two to three times a month these days , Defence Minister Song Young-moo told a parliamentary hearing on Monday. In Beijing, the official Xinhua news agency said China and Russia began naval drills off the Russian far eastern port of Vladivostok, not far from the Russia-North Korea border. Those drills were being conducted between Peter the Great Bay, near Vladivostok, and the southern part of the Sea of Okhotsk, to the north of Japan, it said. The drills are the second part of China-Russian naval exercises this year, the first part of which was staged in the Baltic in July. Xinhua did not directly link the drills to current tension over North Korea. China and Russia have repeatedly called for a peaceful solution and talks to resolve the issue. On Sunday, however, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said the U.N. Security Council had run out of options on containing North Korea s nuclear program and the United States might have to turn the matter over to the Pentagon. In response, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said the most pressing task was for all parties to enforce the latest U.N. resolutions on North Korea fully, rather than deliberately complicating the issue . Military threats from various parties have not promoted a resolution to the issue, he said. This is not beneficial to a final resolution to the peninsula nuclear issue, Lu told a daily news briefing. U.S. President Donald Trump has vowed that North Korea will never be able to threaten the United States with a nuclear-tipped ballistic missile. Asked about Trump s warning last month that the North Korean threat to the United States would be met with fire and fury , Haley said: It was not an empty threat. Washington has also asked China to do more to rein in its neighbor and ally, while Beijing has urged the United States to refrain from making threats against the North. The U.N. Security Council unanimously passed a U.S.-drafted resolution a week ago mandating tougher new sanctions against Pyongyang that included banning textile imports and capping crude and petrol supply. North Korea on Monday called the resolution the most vicious, unethical and inhumane act of hostility to physically exterminate its people, system and government. The increased moves of the U.S. and its vassal forces to impose sanctions and pressure... will only increase our pace toward the ultimate completion of the state nuclear force, the North s foreign ministry spokesman said in a statement carried by its official KCNA news agency. Gasoline and diesel prices in the North have surged since the latest nuclear test in anticipation of a possible oil ban, according to market data analyzed by Reuters on Monday. The international community must remain united and enforce sanctions against North Korea after its repeated launch of ballistic missiles, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said in an editorial in the New York Times on Sunday. Such tests were in violation of Security Council resolutions and showed that North Korea could now target the United States or Europe, he wrote. Abe also said diplomacy and dialogue would not work with North Korea and concerted pressure by the entire international community was essential to tackle the threats posed by the north and its leader, Kim Jong Un. However, the official China Daily argued on Monday that sanctions should be given time to bite and that the door must be left open to talks. With its Friday missile launch, Pyongyang wanted to give the impression that sanctions will not work, it said in an editorial. Some people have fallen for that and immediately echoed the suggestion, pointing to the failure of past sanctions to achieve their purpose. But that past sanctions did not work does not mean they will not. It is too early to claim failure because the latest sanctions have hardly begun to take effect. Giving the sanctions time to bite is the best way to make Pyongyang reconsider, the newspaper said. Pyongyang has launched dozens of missiles as it accelerates a weapons program designed to provide the ability to target the United States with a powerful, nuclear-tipped missile. It says such programs are needed as a deterrent against invasion by the United States, which has 28,500 troops stationed in South Korea. On Saturday, it said it aimed to reach an equilibrium of military force with the United States. The United States and South Korea are technically still at war with North Korea because the 1950-53 Korean conflict ended with a truce and not a peace treaty.

CHICAGO (Reuters) - U.S. President-elect Donald Trump has left the agriculture secretary as the last department head to be named to his Cabinet, while a meeting with the chief executives of two agribusiness giants gave a hint at a roster of farm issues the incoming president will face. Trump met on Wednesday with the leaders of Monsanto Co (MON.N) and Bayer AG (BAYGn.DE), who pitched the benefits of their proposed $66 billion merger. While critical of other large tie-ups, Trump has not publicly taken a stance on the Bayer-Monsanto deal. The secretary of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) will not approve or reject the merger but will face the issue of industry consolidation. Dow Chemical Co DOW.N has proposed to merge with DuPont DD.N, and China National Chemical Corp (ChemChina) [CNNCC.UL] is seeking to acquire Syngenta AG SYNN.S. Trade, environmental regulation and the 2018 federal farm bill are also expected to be at the top of the farm agenda once Trump takes office Jan. 20, according members of an agricultural advisory committee he formed during the campaign. How Trump responds on those issues - and who he picks to lead the USDA - could determine whether he is able to maintain the strong rural support he demonstrated in the Nov. 8 election. Some committee members told Reuters they have had meetings with Trump and his advisers, and have suggested possible nominees to help define the type of person who should lead the department. Former Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue is Trump’s leading candidate to run the department, a senior Trump transition team official said last week. Trump has also met with Elsa Murano, undersecretary of agriculture for food safety under President George W. Bush, and Chuck Conner, head of the National Council of Farmer Cooperatives. He has also talked with Abel Maldonado, former lieutenant governor of California and co-owner of Runway Vineyards; Tim Huelskamp, former Republican U.S. representative from Kansas; and Sid Miller, Texas agriculture commissioner. Trump’s committee wants someone who is familiar with day-to-day farm life, can open up new markets for trade and will pressure federal regulators to ease environmental restrictions, according to a dozen committee members interviewed by Reuters. “The sooner we have someone in place (as Agriculture Secretary), the better,” said Mike Strain, Louisiana’s commissioner of agriculture and forestry, and part of Trump’s agricultural advisory committee. A.G. Kawamura, a former California agriculture secretary who is on the committee, said discussions within Trump’s transition team were “free and flowing” about who should head the agency. The USDA is made up of 29 agencies and offices that perform jobs ranging from agricultural research to working with foreign governments to facilitate trade. “Generally, the country knows who the proposed cabinet is going to be before Inauguration Day. But if I’ve learned anything this past year, it’s that you can’t make assumptions about what will happen,” he said. John Block, an Illinois corn, soybean and hog producer who served as USDA secretary under President Ronald Reagan, is certain Trump will make the right choice. “We like to think we’ll see a conclusion soon, so we can look to the future,” he said. “But we have plenty of confidence in Trump, and we’re hanging in there.” One key trait some are looking for: someone to stand up for farmers amid a flurry of merger deals, such as the Bayer-Monsanto tie-up. But even members of Trump’s own agricultural advisory committee disagree about the deal’s merits. Bayer CEO Werner Baumann and Monsanto CEO Hugh Grant had a “productive meeting with President-elect Trump and his team to share their views on the future of the agriculture industry and its need for innovation,” according to a statement issued by both companies. Bill Northey, Iowa’s agriculture secretary and a member of Trump’s agricultural advisory team, said he believed the president-elect was paying attention to the Monsanto-Bayer merger because rural voters supported him in the election. He said it was possible that parts of the deal might be “beneficial and pieces of it would be detrimental.”

With the things heating up just days before what is arguably the craziest Presidential election in American history, Joe Joseph weighs in on the latest leaks, the potential for post-election unrest, and looming crisis. They’re so worried about… ‘maybe at the end of the day I might not be able to sit in my Barca lounger at the end of the night’ or ‘I might not be able to watch that football game on Sunday’ … Let me tell you… If things go the way that The Powers That Shouldn’t Be want them, there will be no Barca lounges and there will be no NFL. So it’s either we do things now while we have the chance… because there will come a time when it’s too late.. and you will be begging to have your old life back. And the answer’s going to be, ‘you had the opportunity and now it’s gone.’ There’s a lot of things here in the United States, in the western world and in society that we used to have and used to enjoy… quality of life… the ability to earn a liveable wage… fast evoparting… those used to be a lot more present… people used to be a lot more comfortable.. And it’s just not the case anymore… And it’s only going to get worse… Unless we the people draw the line in the sand and we stick with it. Watch the Daily News Brief from The Daily Sheeple Youtube Channel : ( Watch at Youtube ) Don’t forget to share and subscribe:

Most are familiar with the “Jaywalking” quizzes Jay Leno regularly did on the streets of Universal Studios. They often included American civics questions. The answers were often laughably pathetic.  Unfortunately, they are representative of the general citizenry’s knowledge. According to studies byAnnenberg Public Policy Center, only about a third (38 percent) of Americans can name the three branches of America’s government (executive, legislative and judicial), much less explain what each does. Also surprisingly, only 32 percent of Americans could correctly identify the U.S. Constitution as the supreme law of the land, according to the Xavier Center for the Study of the American Dream. According to this same study, only 32 percent of Americans knew how many U.S. Senators there were (100), and only 29 percent knew the length of a U.S. Senator’s term in office (six years). Voter turnout for the 2014 national election was the lowest it has been since World War II according to the United States Election Project. In a country that is supposed to be thegold standard for democracy this is simply unacceptable. Why is this happening? One reason is the lack of emphasis put on civics education in our educational curricula. Voters don’t vote because they don’t understand the process or the power that comes from their votes. These jarring facts are why I have been actively involved in Utah’s successful effort to pass the American Civics Education Initiative in Utah’s recently concluded legislative session. If you don’t know it takes four balls for a walk and three strikes for a strike out in baseball, it’s not likely you’re a baseball fan. If you don't know the basics in American civics, you’re not likely to be interested in voting. The American Civics Education Initiative is simple in concept: Students must pass a test from the 100 basic facts of U.S. history and civics taken from the same test all potential citizens must master before becoming American citizens. This legislation, now enacted in Utah, as well as Arizona, Idaho, North Dakota and South Dakota, allows students to take the test any time during their high school career and as many times as necessary to pass. By using this well-established test and the study materials that are already easily available online for free, this legislation has nearly no implementation costs. Some 91 percent of immigrants applying for citizenship pass the civics test on their first try. I recently attended a citizenship swearing-in ceremony at Liberty Park in Salt Lake City (an appropriately named place for this inspiring event). New citizens swore an oath of allegiance to our Republic dedicated to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. I saw firsthand how excited these new citizens were to become Americans, as well as the sense of pride they had in having passed the test. They knewtheir stuff. Utah high school students will now be able to share in that satisfaction of accomplishment. As I travel around Utah to meet with students, I see how bright, enthusiastic and capable they are.  I hope that they are also inspired to participate in our democracy. When leaving Independence Hall at the close of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, Benjamin Franklin was asked, “Well, Doctor, what have we got — a republic or a monarchy?” Franklin responded, “A republic, if you can keep it.”  The question is how do we keep it? Our republic depends on an informed, engaged citizenry. When so many of our fellow citizens don’t know how our government works — and even fewer vote — power becomes concentrated in the hands of the few. We put the bedrock concept of “We the People” at risk. If our students don’t know how our democracy works and who we are as a people, their participation ourgovernment will continue to wane. We can’t risk that. As Representative Steve Eliason, one of the sponsors of Utah’s law, aptly said during the legislative debate, “The American Civics Education Initiative is chicken soup for our ailing civic soul.” Utah has taken an important first step in helping bolster American civics education. Legislators across the country need to follow suit and pass similar American civics education legislation in their own states. Only then will the phrase “We the People” live up to its original intent. Jonathan Johnson is the chairman of Overstock.com, Inc. and the co-chairman of the Civics Education Initiative in Utah.

CHICAGO —Donald Trump, the GOP presidential front-runner, on Saturday first blamed "thugs" for his decision to cancel a rally in Chicago over alleged security concerns and then said supporters of his Democratic rivals caused disruptions there. "It is (Hillary) Clinton and (Bernie) Sanders people who disrupted my rally in Chicago - and then they say I must talk to my people," Trump tweeted. "Phony politicians!" "Obviously, while I appreciate that we had supporters at Trump’s rally in Chicago, our campaign did not organize the protests," the Vermont senator said in a statement. “What caused the violence at Trump’s rally is a campaign whose words and actions have encouraged it on the part of his supporters." The Chicago Police Department said on that four men and a woman were arrested at the rally after brief scuffles broke out at the event at the University of Illinois at Chicago Pavilion. Four of the individuals were still in police custody on Saturday morning but had not yet been charged, said Officer Jose Estrada, a department spokesman. One individual was given an ordinance citation and released. However, CBS News said its reporter, Sopan Deb, was detained by law enforcement while covering the scene. Another man, activist William Calloway, said he was arrested and charged with misdemeanor criminal trespassing. Calloway said police told him they arrested him because he failed to immediately exit the arena after the rally was canceled and guests were ordered to exit. The police department, however, said he was not among the five they had taken into custody. Calloway said that he was arrested by UIC campus police. Calloway played a prominent role in the court-ordered release of a police video of a white officer fatally shooting a black teenager, which triggered months of protests in the city. Calloway said he believes that his role in the McDonald case may have factored into police detaining him. He said police released him about three hours after taking him into custody. "They knew who I was," Calloway said in a phone interview Saturday. Anthony Guglielmi, a police department spokesman, said the Trump campaign did not consult the police department before canceling. "The decision was made by the campaign on its own," Guglielmi said. Trump held a rally in the Dayton suburb of Vandalia Saturday afternoon and planned an event in Cleveland ahead of primary voting in Ohio on Tuesday. Trump denied some media reports that a rally in Cincinnati on Sunday had been canceled. On Twitter, Trump blamed the protesters for Friday's canceled rally. "The organized group of people, many of them thugs, who shut down our First Amendment rights in Chicago, have totally energized America!" he said on Twitter. At the Dayton rally, Trump said some of the people taunting and harassing his supporters in Chicago "represented Bernie, our communist friend." "With Bernie, he should really get up and say to his people, 'stop, stop.' Not me," Trump said. Chaos ensued after organizers announced at 6:30 p.m. that Trump, who never arrived at the pavilion, had scrubbed the event. Some protesters rushed the arena floor in celebration, many shouting, "Bernie, Bernie" and "We stopped Trump!" Police ejected at least a half dozen anti-Trump demonstrators, including one man who got onto the stage and approached the podium. Joe Fritz, 20, who came to hear Trump speak, said a woman punched him outside the arena after the rally was canceled. He said the woman, who was with a girl about 10 years old, landed a glancing blow to his chin after he questioned her for yelling epithets toward police and about Trump. "I told her, 'What kind of example are you setting?'" Fritz said. Fritz said he and his friend were then surrounded by other anti-Trump protesters who screamed at them before police pulled them out of the crowd. Still, the pushing and shoving was brief, and some protesters said security concerns were overstated. "(Trump) felt us tonight and felt our power tonight," said Angelica Salazar, 30, of West Chicago, Ill. Salazar, who went to speak out against Trump's anti-immigrant rhetoric, said she did not feel unsafe. Matthew Ross, a Chicago activist, said suggestions from Trump that protesters presented a security risk don't hold up. "Have you seen what his supporters have incited at their rallies?" asked Ross, who said a Trump supporter threw water on him after it was announced that the rally was canceled. "I think what [Trump] is doing is inciting violence." Afterward, Trump spoke by phone with several news networks and described many anti-Trump protesters, including those at previous rallies, as violent. "I just don't want people hurt," he told MSNBC. Trump has been criticized about violent comments he and his supporters have made on the campaign trail. When attendees at an event in November kicked a Black Lives Matter activist, Trump said, "Maybe he should have been roughed up." Another supporter, John McGraw, sucker-punched a protester at a rally Wednesday in North Carolina. McGraw later told Inside Edition that "we might have to kill him" next time the protester shows up. Trump insisted that anti-Trump protesters were instigating incidents at his events. “I certainly don’t incite violence," he said. “If a protester is swinging a fist at a man or a group of men, and if they end up going back," he said, "I’m not looking to do him any favors." Trump's rivals for the GOP nomination quickly weighed in on the uproar. Sen. Marco Rubio, speaking Saturday in Florida, blamed the rhetoric of the front-runner for the violence, and the media for ignoring his "offensive" statements for too long. "This is what happen when a leading presidential candidate goes around feeding into a narrative of anger and bitterness and frustration," Rubio said. Sen. Ted Cruz, Trump's closest rival in the race, noted that "in any campaign, responsibility starts at the top." "When the candidate urges supporters to engage in physical violence, to punch people in the face, the predictable consequence of that is that it escalates," Cruz told reporters in Illinois. "Today is unlikely to be the last such incidence." "Some let their opposition to his views slip beyond protest into violence, but we can never let that happen," the Ohio governor said in a statement. Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton said the "divisive rhetoric" of the Trump campaign should be of "grave concern." "We all have our differences, and we know many people across the country feel angry," Clinton said in a statement. "We need to address that anger together."

geoengineeringwatch.org Are unimaginably powerful microwave transmissions actively and aggressively being used as weapons of mass destruction? If all available evidence is examined, the logical conclusions are chilling. Understanding the full potential of the power that can be projected from the ionosphere heater installations (like HAARP) is difficult and complex. We all know and understand that microwave transmissions produced in our countertop ovens can heat a cup of water (or frozen TV dinners) at blinding speed. Unfortunately, most don't know and thus have never even considered (let alone investigated) what massively powerful and interlinked microwave transmissions can do to the planet . When immensely powerful microwave transmissions are bounced off the atmosphere (facilitated by the atmospheric aerosol saturation) and directed back into the Earth's strata (in a seismically sensitive location), the triggering of seismic activity becomes scientifically possible. The constant jet aircraft spraying of reflective and electrically conductive particles into the atmosphere (as part of the ongoing climate engineering/geoengineering assault) is a verifiable fact. Is New Zealand, yet again, the victim of microwave transmission super-weapons? There is a long list of shocking facts surrounding a number of recent catastrophic earthquakes. It is imperative to examine these facts without preconceptions or programmed denial. Let's start with the month leading up to the extremely destructive 2010 earthquake in Haiti, MIT satellite monitoring detected a radical increase in ULF (ultra low frequency/microwave) radio transmissions over the quake epicenter . Spacecraft Saw ULF Radio Emissions over Haiti before January Quake A French satellite observed a dramatic increase in ultra low frequency radio waves over Haiti in the month before the M7.0 earthquake earlier this year. DEMETER’s is an unusual mission. Its job is to monitor low frequency radio waves generated by earthquakes. Today, a group of geoscientists release the data associated with the M 7.0 earthquake that struck Haiti in January. They say that DEMETER saw a clear increase in ultralow frequency radio waves being emitted from the Earth’s the crust in that region in the build up to the quake. The anecdotal evidence of electromagnetic effects associated with earthquakes is legion. Various accounts link earthquakes with mysterious light and heating effects. After the Haiti quake, the US military moved in and occupied the country. In addition, the long drawn-out Clinton Foundation reconstruction debacle began. The following year a deadly earthquake struck Christchurch, New Zealand. Many circumstances surrounding this disaster were also troubling. Did US officials know the earthquake was coming? Some excerpts from a report on the disaster are below. Was the Christchurch earthquake a terrible natural disaster, or was it a terrible MAN MADE disaster? 9 members of US Congress were in Christchurch for a summit meeting on Feb 21 & 22 but left Christchurch 2.5 hours before the earthquake hit and relocated to Wellington even though the meeting was not due to finish until the evening of Feb 22nd. The US Secretary of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano, was supposed to be visiting Christchurch and speaking at the summit meeting on Feb 22, but on Feb 18 announced she was cancelling her visit 3. The Deputy Administrator of FEMA (US Federal Emergency Management Agency), Timothy Manning, just happened to be in Christchurch at the time with a US delegation. All of the rest of the delegation left Christchurch shortly before the quake hit except for Mr Manning who stayed behind, and then after the quake hit he assisted with directing the emergency response. Exactly the same thing happened with FEMA delegates with the Haiti earthquake. In Haiti , the FEMA delegates just happened to be there at the time conducting training exercises for responding to major earthquakes. Recent releases from Wikileaks resulted in the headline below: Hillary Clinton Emails Show Advanced Warning of Christchurch Earthquake . In the days before the catastrophic Japanese Earthquake (that occurred on March 11, 2016), world renowned research institution, MIT, yet again, noted extremely profound and anomalous atmospheric heating directly over the quake epicenter . MIT published the following report: Atmosphere Above Japan Heated Rapidly Before M9 Earthquake Infrared emissions above the epicenter increased dramatically in the days before the devastating earthquake in Japan, say scientists. They say that before the M9 earthquake, the total electron content of the ionosphere increased dramatically over the epicentre, reaching a maximum three days before the quake struck. At the same time, satellite observations showed a big increase in infrared emissions from above the epicentre, which peaked in the hours before the quake. In other words, the atmosphere was heating up. Though the science community is desperately trying to link pre-quake atmospheric heating to some unknown phenomenon of an atmospheric coupling with the pressure buildup in the strata, is this a rational conclusion? The much more logical and straightforward conclusion is this, the atmospheric heating is being intentionally created by the global network of ionosphere heaters as immense microwave signals are bounced off of the atmosphere and back down into the planet. Unfortunately, the science community is not allowed to even consider this possibility, let alone talk about it. In the period preceding the decimating Japanese earthquake, US Japanese relations were very strained . The post-quake scenario of US/Japanese relations seemed to suddenly be unquestionable, was there a connection? Was the catastrophic quake just a natural event? Or an engineered warning to Japan? On the 13th of November, 2016, another catastrophic earthquake struck near Christchurch, New Zealand . The list of troubling questions surrounding this earthquake is long and growing. Below are some quotes from seismologist Anna Kaiser (who is investigating the latest New Zealand earthquake activity): We don't know what we are dealing with right now but it may be … it involves potentially more than one fault … we need to figure out what was going on before and after the 7.5 magnitude quake… Kaiser went on to say this: We're working very hard … this is looking quite complex. The epicenter was possibly just south of the Hope fault, but it did look like "something else was going on. The seismologist statements are only the beginning, there are many more concerning factors surrounding the latest New Zealand Earthquake that should be considered. In spite of the unfolding US election circumstances, in the days before the latest New Zealand quake John Kerry first went to Christchurch, and then on to McMurdo Station, Antarctica . The stated purpose of Kerry's visit was to examine the effects of global warming and the record low sea ice, but this trip at this time was criticized by some. US Secretary of State John Kerry is scheduled to head back to New Zealand after checking out summer in Antarctica. He's been criticized for heading to such a remote place while the US election riveted the world He tweeted a photograph of himself boarding C-17 cargo plane in Christchurch saying "headed to Antarctica to see firsthand some of the drastic effects of climate change". In Antarctica he was scheduled to meet with scientists and researchers at McMurdo Station, the largest research station of the US Antarctic programme, as well as visit surrounding areas on Ross Island, and the US Government's Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station. He is the first secretary of state and the most senior US government official to ever travel to Antarctica. He is hosted by the US National Science Foundation, which manages the US Antarctic program me. In fact Antarctica has just broken a new climate record, with record low winter sea ice . After a peak of 18.5 million square kilometers in late August , sea ice began retreating about a month ahead of schedule and has been setting daily low records through most of September. Though Antarctic sea ice (and global sea ice) are at record shattering low levels, why else might John Kerry go to McMurdo Station at this exact window of time? Could the ionosphere heater (microwave transmission) facility that is constructed at McMurdo be a factor? Noctilucent clouds in the skies above Antarctica are an ominous harbinger of the atmospheric damage that is occurring there. Many are under the belief that HAARP, now labeled IRI, no longer exists Operationally due to the Gakona, AK spin. One must understand that these Frequency Generators are Globally Ubiquitous. There are so many that are of dissimilar designs, and go by different acronyms, it is not seen as functionally one and the same. In the case of McMurdo’s Radome and all of the Radar equipment there ; Raytheon has had the contracts beginning to end. The National Science Foundation and Raytheon Polar Services Company are housed in the same building. For years the station has grown. It can house 1258 personnel and an average of 200 winter over. Raytheon is one of the largest private "defense contractors" on the planet, this corporation is also the holder of numerous climate engineering patents including some that relate directly to ionosphere heaters. The power structure is likely microwaving the skies for a multitude of reasons , none of those reasons are in the interest of the common good. Shocking atmospheric flashing lights were filmed in the skies above New Zealand as the massive Earthquake was occurring. Kerry returned to Christchurch from Antarctica, and then promptly (and conveniently) departed only hours before the catastrophic earthquake struck . The statement below is from CBS news. Sec. John Kerry had left the country before it struck, and just landed in Singapore on his way to Oman when news of the quake was reported. Is it just a coincidence that US officials always seem to safely depart quake impact zones just prior to the event? Then there is this headline to consider: World’s Biggest Seismic Testing “Blast” Ship – Amazon Warrior – Parked on top of New Zealand Fault Line Is this just a coincidence? The New Zealand Prime Minister's apparent apprehension about the US election results just days prior to the quake are also of interest. Microwave transmission signals/rings near Antarctica are clearly visible in the satellite composite image shown below. The regions of New Zealand near the epicenter have been constantly assaulted with aerosols spraying and microwave transmissions. The uniform ribbing of aerosolized cloud cover is a clear indication of microwave transmission exposure. Though some "official" sources try to explain this type of cloud pattern as being a result of the underlying land topography, this explanation is patently false. The same patterns are now regularly seen over oceans as well as land as is shown in the satellite photo below that was taken of New Zealand directly over the quake region. The image below bears testimony to what the global power structure does to those that try to get in the way of their agendas and operations. This photo is of the bridge of the Greenpeace ship "The Rainbow Warrior". It was bombed and sunk by the French Secret Service in order to prevent the ship and its crew from witnessing ongoing illegal and unimaginably destructive nuclear detonations. Over 2 decades ago I dove alone on the wreck of the Rainbow Warrior, as it laid on the seafloor off the coast of New Zealand. I swam through the area shown above, around the ship, and examined the gapping bomb blast hole in the hull of the once noble vessel. I hovered over the wreck and contemplated the tyranny of those who rule the world. We are all at a crossroads, and the horizon is darkening rapidly. The power structure wields weapons of unimaginable destruction, they can only do so because of the order-followers that carry out their insanity. As the saying goes, "we have seen the enemy, and they are us". It is up to us, the people, all of us, to refuse any further participation in the insanity. It is up to us to fully investigate and fully face the whole truth. It is up to us to prioritize the fight for the greater good because we owe that debt to our children, to the planet, and to the whole. Make your voice heard , while you can, while it can still matter.

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RT @nytimes: The men behind the cartoons at Charlie Hebdo http://t.co/gElSjL7etP #Charb #CharlieHebdo #JeSuisCharlie

@LouiseMensch Not often i agree with you but on this i will

They got the heater turned up on high.

Teresa Giudice Can’t Afford To Send Daughter To College?

Twice a month a few dozen Russian orthodox believers gather in a small Catholic chapel whose foundations date back to the 11th century, their temporary place of worship as they do not have a church of their own in western Hungary. These worshippers now have a good chance of having their own church built in the spa town of Heviz, after Prime Minister Viktor Orban granted 2.4 billion forints ($9 million) in the budget to the renovating and building of Russian Orthodox churches. Channelling state money to the Hungarian branch of the Russian church, which had just 2,365 followers in the latest census in the mostly Catholic country of 10 million, was seen by political analysts and critics as a bid to win favor with President Vladimir Putin. Orban signed off the decree and it was published on Feb. 1, the day before he received Putin in Budapest. It was their fourth meeting in two years and Putin was back on Aug. 28 for a judo event when they met again. On that day, Orban allocated an additional 313 million forints to the Russian Orthodox church. Although the amounts are small, some analysts and critics see the bolstering of the Russian Orthodox Church with state cash as significant in the context of Russian-Hungarian relations. This move is on the one hand a gesture toward Vladimir Putin, and the Russians, a small community living here in Hungary, but at the same time it really shows the ... influence of Russia on Hungary, said Peter Kreko, director of think-tank Political Capital. Hungary s alignment to Russia is unsettling to fellow European Union member states where Russia s alleged interference is taken with such alarm that several countries have moved to set up agencies to counter it. Inside the European Union, Hungary promotes scrapping economic sanctions imposed after Russia s annexation of Crimea in 2014, saying it hurts trade. Trade ties between Russia and Hungary include a gas supply pact with Gazprom and a deal for Russia to finance and build a nuclear power plant. Construction is due to start next year. In February, Orban said Hungary wanted open and transparent relations with Russia. On the western half of the continent, there is a strong anti-Russian sentiment ... and anti-Russian politics has come into fashion, Orban said at a joint news conference with Putin. We had to defend our economic relations in this environment. When asked about the church grant, Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto told Reuters: We work together with all the churches very closely. The 2.4-billion-forint grant to Russian Orthodox churches compares to around 11 billion for similar investments and programs in other churches also in the 2017 budget. Andras Racz, an associate professor at Pazmany Peter Catholic University, said that both sides wanted different dividends from the relationship. The cooperation is pragmatic from both sides, just they want different things: the Hungarian side wants primarily economic benefits ... while the Russian side has primarily political and strategic motivations, which of course includes some long-term strategic economic position building, he said. After the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the Russian Orthodox church emerged from decades of oppression to find post-communist politicians ready to help re-establish its role. Religion helped fill the ideological vacuum left by the failure of Marxism, while the church, an integral part of Russian history and culture, fitted well into the new nationalism. The church has developed into a thriving institution that works closely with the Kremlin to promote common interests. With backing from oligarchs, it has built or restored tens of thousands of churches, mostly at home but also in over 60 countries including distant locations such as Havana, Caracas, Bangkok and Pyongyang. As the Russian Orthodox believers left the small, Christian chapel in Zalavar, with the smell of incense lingering, priests removed Russian icons from the walls. Some Russian tourists were happy to hear that a church would be built in the spa town of Heviz, where thousands of Russians arrive on charter flights to take the waters of one of the world s biggest thermal lakes, landing at a nearby airport at a former Soviet army base. I think this is not only a matter of religion, but also our history ... so this is good, this is appropriate, Aleksander Kulchitskii, on holiday from the Russian city of Ryazan, said. Some Hungarians, however, were less convinced. Klara Kispal, a pensioner on holiday in Heviz, said she agreed with Orban s anti-migration policies but she could not support paying for a Russian Orthodox church in the town. I don t think this is a good move... I am religious, Roman Catholic, and (the government) should promote our religion not a foreign religion, she said.

A dramatic video capturing rainwater from a water-logged road enter into the lower deck of a public bus in Jaipur is being peddled on social media as Delhi. In the 12 seconds clip, water can be seen gushing into a bus as it makes its way through a road flooded with rain water. The clip is viral in the backdrop of Delhi witnessing heavy rains with many areas in the city getting flooded. The video is being shared with the caption when translated reads, "Kejriwal giving the people of Delhi a tour of Venice in a DTC bus." Kejriwal ji delhi walon ko Venice ka tour DTC mein karate hue😉🤣😂 pic.twitter.com/G4tPojWPcL — Binod Caravaan 2.0 (@Being_Habibi) August 13, 2020 Click here to view, and here for an archive Viral on Twitter The viral clip was also shared by the Vice President of Delhi Congress, Abhishek Dutt taking a jibe at Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal with the caption, "Kejriwal ji tomorrow morning what will be promoting with full page ads in newspapers? How to make pakodas with tea at the time of water filling due to the rain?". Click here to view, and here for an archive Nature at its best. Cruise along like a motorboat in heart of Delhi . Kerala in Delhi pic.twitter.com/DBMOWOprC2 — Col DPK Pillay,Shaurya Chakra,PhD (Retd) (@dpkpillay12) August 13, 2020 Click here to view, and here for an archive Also Read: Cattle Washed Away By Floodwaters In Mexico Falsely Shared As Kerala FACT-CHECK from Jaipur, Rajasthan Taking a cue from replies pointing out that the viral clip is not from Delhi, we searched with keywords 'Jaipur' 'flooded bus' on Google and found news reports on the incident which stated that it is Patrika on August 11, 2020, reported that heavy rains led to waterlogging on the streets in the city on August 10, 2020. It also had the viral clip inside its article which has the same visuals. report on the incident On comparing the sequence of events in both the clips, we found that both were the same as water is seen entering the bus as it drives through the flooded road. On can view a longer video of the incident which was uploaded on YouTube by Khaskhabar, an online news portal on August 11, 2020, with the caption 'Water enters the low-floor bus during the heavy rains in Jaipur'. At the 59 seconds timestamp in the video, we can spot in Hindi written 'Jaipur Bus', which shows that is indeed a bus from Jaipur. 'Jaipur Bus' written Also Read: Also Read:Video From China Viral As Vehicles Driving On Potholed Mumbai Roads

No-Fly Zone over #Ferguson MO bans News Copters from Reporting on Protests http://t.co/hcsRiULLoy Anyone gotta drone? #OpFerguson

S M M F H “@brennamuncy: Someone please remind me what year it is again? #ferguson http://t.co/hzB4xruRsQ”

Secretary of State John Kerry found himself on the defensive Thursday at a Senate hearing where he was hard-pressed to find support for the Iran nuclear deal from either side of the aisle -- and sharply sparred with Republicans who accused him of being "fleeced" and "bamboozled." The Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing was the first on the controversial deal to lift economic and other sanctions in exchange for concessions of the Islamic state's nuclear program. With Congress taking up the deal and expected to vote on it sometime in September, the hearing underscored the deep resistance the Obama administration faces from both parties. "From my perspective, Mr. Secretary, I'm sorry ... I believe you've been fleeced," Committee Chairman Bob Corker, R-Tenn., told Kerry, claiming the agreement paves the path for Iran to eventually develop a nuclear bomb. Critics repeatedly suggested the Obama administration's negotiating team gave in to pressure from the Iranians on key points. They question whether sanctions indeed can be reinstated once they're lifted; whether Iran might be able to stall international inspectors; and whether Iran might be closer to a weapon once the deal expires. Sen. James Risch, R-Idaho, said: "You guys have been bamboozled." Kerry, though, vigorously defended the agreement, calling it "fantasy, plain and simple," to think the United States failed to hold out for a better deal at the bargaining table. "Let me underscore, the alternative to the deal we've reached isn't what I've seen some ads on TV suggesting disingenuously," he told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. "It isn't a quote better deal, some sort of unicorn arrangement involving Iran's complete capitulation." Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz also said the deal is not "built on trust." Some lawmakers tried to play referee when the hearing got heated. Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., said the remarks from Corker and Risch were "disrespectful and insulting." "If you were bamboozled, the world has been bamboozled -- that's ridiculous," Boxer told Kerry. Kerry still had to contend with skeptical Democrats, notably Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., who questioned whether the language in the deal is tough enough and like Corker said the deal aids Iran in building an "industrial-scale" nuclear program. Kerry earlier warned that Iran will not come back to the negotiating table to pursue a new deal, voicing frustration that: "We've got 535 secretaries of state." The hearing comes as lawmakers raise new concerns about alleged secret "side deals" struck with Tehran over its nuclear program. Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., and Rep. Mike Pompeo, R-Kan., first brought attention to them Tuesday, saying they learned from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that there were two "side deals" between Iran and the IAEA. According to the lawmakers, one agreement covers inspection of the Parchin military complex, and the other concerns potential military aspects of Iran's nuclear program. On the former, they said, Iran would be able to strike a separate arrangement with the IAEA concerning inspections at Parchin. House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell joined Cotton and Pompeo in sending a letter to President Obama on Wednesday requesting that the agreements be made available to Congress so that they can be reviewed. "We request you transmit these two side agreements to Congress immediately so we may perform our duty to assess the many important questions related to the JCPOA [Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action]," the letter says. National Security Adviser Susan Rice, while defending the overall nuclear agreement, appeared to acknowledge the existence of the side deals on Wednesday. She said the matter of the Iran nuclear program's "possible military dimensions" (PMD) has long been an issue between Iran and the IAEA. She said they "negotiated and concluded an agreement to deal with this issue of PMD, which was one of the major sticking points in our dealings." She added: "These documents are not public, but nonetheless, we have been briefed on those documents, we know their contents, we're satisfied with them and we will share the contents of those briefings in full in a classified session with the Congress. So there's nothing in that regard that we know that they won't know." Pompeo also asked Kerry about the secret deals in a briefing Wednesday and said afterwards that Kerry "confirmed that there were in fact side deals and himself had not seen the agreement." "I was incredibly surprised to learn there were components of the deal that Congress was not going to be privy to," Pompeo said, adding that he had expected that American negotiators would have demanded to see the side deals being cut. Kerry said after Thursday's hearing, though, "there are no side deals." The letter to Obama expressed concern that Congress was being kept in the dark. "Most troubling, Iran and the IAEA reached agreement to resolve issues related to research at Parchin, but Congress will not have the ability to review this agreement, nor will we know the results of the IAEA's assessment until December 15," the letter says. It goes on to request access to the side deals so that Congress can effectively review the deal as a whole: "Failure to produce these two side agreements leaves Congress blind on critical information regarding Iran's potential path to being a nuclear power and will have detrimental consequences for the ability of members to assess the JCPOA," the letter says. The Associated Press contributed to this report.

@Aliasalpha @linc0lnpark @lousycanuck It would definitely be interesting.

After Bill and Chelsea Clinton both dodged reporters asking if their foundation would return donations from Harvey Weinstein, an announcement came that is pretty amazing.The Clinton Foundation WILL NOT return as much as $250,000 in donations from Harvey Weinstein, saying on Sunday the money had already been spent on the organization s programs and used for charitable purposes.WHAT? THE MONEY HAD ALREADY BEEN SPENT???The foundation s decision comes as politicians and philanthropic groups grapple with whether to return donations they have received from Weinstein, after numerous women stepped forward this month to accuse the movie mogul of sexual assault, harassment and rape.HILLARY LIES AGAIN:The Clinton Foundation faced questions about Weinstein s funding after Hillary Clinton said last week she would re-gift his campaign donations to charity. Weinstein was a major bundler for Clinton, hosting fundraising events with deep-pocketed Hollywood donors.Hillary Clinton tells @FareedZakaria she'll donate Weinstein contribs to charity as part of her usual 10% income donation to charities pic.twitter.com/I0o8M3iMCy Salvador Hernandez (@SalHernandez) October 11, 2017ALREADY SPENT???A spokesperson for the Clinton Foundation told DailyMail.com that the group will not return Weinstein s donations, which totaled between $100,000 and $250,000.WOULDN T YOU LOOOVE TO SEE THEIR BOOKS?The spokesman said the foundation already spent the money on its programs, such as lowering the cost of HIV medication and supporting women and girls in developing countries.The foundation said it supports commitments to combat human trafficking, and runs the No Ceilings Project which aims to advance the full participation of girls and women around the world through data-driven analysis on gender inequality, an in-depth conversation series, innovative partnerships, and CGI commitments. The explanation comes after foundation board member Chelsea Clinton ducked questions about Weinstein s money from a DailyMail.com reporter while attending a Clinton Global Initiative University event at Northeastern University in Boston on Saturday.The former first daughter hustled out a side door after the event, evading a reporter as she rushed to her car surrounded by aides and security.The Clinton Foundation and a spokesperson for Hillary Clinton had previously declined to comment on the Weinstein matter.Organizations have been divided on whether to return money to Weinstein, who gave to numerous political and philanthropic causes over the years.Read more: Daily Mail

The tide of misinformation surrounding protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) has been fast and furious, with a volume and variety that caught even fact-checkers off guard. One such type of misinformation has been the curious case of mistaken identities. The public square of social media has often misidentified people appearing in viral videos and images related to the protests, arriving at hasty conclusions. BOOM brings you five such instances when photos of similar looking people were used to spread misinformation. 1. Delhi Cop Patrolling CAA Protests Is An RSS Worker? A viral video of a Delhi police officer being questioned about not wearing a badge was shared with an old photo of a Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) member, claiming the cop was a member of the RSS. Our fact check found that the police officer is Vinod Narang, an inspector at the Connaught Place police station whereas the RSS worker is Ashok Dogra, a Rajasthan BJP leader. The two have nothing in common, except they look slightly similar. Read our story here Days after the Delhi Police was accused of allegedly beating student protesters from Jamia Milia University, a set of three photos started going viral. One picture showed a plain-clothes cop with riot gear, the second was of a plain-clothes policeman beating female protesters and the third of a man kicking a protester. All the three were shared as photos of Bharat Sharma, a ABVP leader. BOOM found that only one photo, of a man in a jacket kicking a protester was Sharma, while the others were real Delhi police officers. The Delhi police confirmed to BOOM that one of the officers was Arvind Kumar, a constable with the Anti Auto Theft Squad. Read our fact-check here A photograph of Congress leader Rahul Gandhi interacting with a school student in Kerala was viral with misleading claims. Safa Febin, the student who Gandhi called on stage to help him translate a speech, was misidentified as Aysha Renna, one of the two students who stood up to the Delhi Police post the anti-CAA protests at JMI. Read our fact-check here After violent protests broke out in Uttar Pradesh's Muzzafarnagar, social media posts were abuzz drawing a link between photos of an injured Muslim cleric allegedly beaten up by police along with another image of a similar looking man throwing stones in Kanpur. BOOM found that the two photographs do not show the same man. The photo of a protester pelting stones is from Kanpur whereas the other picture is of Maulana Asad Hussaini from Muzzafarnagar - 500 kilometres away from Kanpur. The image of the stone pelter is from the Lucknow edition of Hindustan Times showing an unidentified rioter while the second photo shows Maulana Hussaini who allegedly sustained severe injuries in UP police's custody. Read our fact-check here A photo of a female politician - Sabiha Khan went viral claiming she pretended to be a Hindu woman - Swati and took part in an Anti-CAA protest in Delhi. Several posts online called her an impostor. BOOM found that the woman protesting was Swati (last name held on request), a Delhi University law student while the woman politician is a local leader in Mumbai and a former member of AIMIM - All India Majlis-ul-Ittahedul Muslemeen (AIMIM). Read our fact-check here

@JayBally12 Will we ever really know the truth.

For years, the New York hedge fund Platinum Partners stood out for investment returns that rivaled some of the biggest names in the industry. It turned out that those returns were too good to be true, according to federal prosecutors. Federal agents on Monday arrested Mark Nordlicht, a founder and the chief investment officer of Platinum, and six others on charges related to a $1 billion fraud that led the firm to be operated “like a Ponzi scheme,” prosecutors said. It is one of the largest such fraud cases since Bernard L. Madoff’s investment firm unraveled in 2008. David Levy, the firm’s investment officer, was also among those arrested in the morning by agents in Texas, Manhattan and New Rochelle, a suburb of New York City. The men were charged with securities fraud and investment adviser fraud, according to an unsealed indictment filed in Federal District Court in Brooklyn. The Securities and Exchange Commission filed a parallel civil case. Platinum tapped prominent families and foundations within the Orthodox Jewish community in New York to fuel bets on payday lenders, oil companies and even the terminally ill. But prosecutors said these investments and the firm’s performance were misrepresented by its executives. Ultimately, Platinum took in new money in order to pay longtime investors who wanted their money back, something the firm’s executives called among themselves “Hail Mary time. ” “As investors sought redemptions, the defendants engaged in numerous improper measures in an attempt to meet redemption requests, including taking out rate loans, commingling monies among funds and raising money from new investors through fraudulent misrepresentations,” said Andrew J. Ceresney, the director of the S. E. C. ’s enforcement division. Located a few blocks from Central Park, Platinum, founded in 2003, made a splash early on with some of its investments. In one bet, the firm sought to profit from the death of terminally ill patients by investing in variable insurance payouts. As part of the scheme, a rabbi in Los Angeles sought out hospice patients to get their personal details that could be used to buy insurance payouts in their names. A company that Platinum set up to make the investments was fined by the S. E. C. in January 2015. “We definitely were exploiting a loophole, but it was fully vetted by legal counsel,” Mr. Nordlicht said in an interview with Bloomberg later that year. In other bets, Platinum misled both investors and auditors — sometimes brazenly. In December 2012, for example, executives misrepresented to auditors the value of Black Elk Energy, an oil and gas company controlled by Platinum, valuing it at $283 million, prosecutors said. In fact, there had been an explosion on a Black Elk platform in the Gulf of Mexico the month before that had caused the deaths of three workers, injuries to other employees and an oil spill. Black Elk no longer exists. Jeffrey Shulse, who worked at Black Elk and is named in the government’s indictment, denied the charges. “Mr. Shulse’s indictment is a clear case of overreaching,” said F. Andino Reynal, Mr. Shulse’s lawyer, adding that his client was “confident that once a jury has had a chance to hear all the facts, it will exonerate him of any wrongdoing. ” Lawyers for the defendants Mr. Nordlicht, Daniel Small, Uri Landesman, Joseph Mann and Joseph San Filippo did not respond to a request for comment. Michael Sommer, a lawyer for Mr. Levy, said he looked forward to “clearing David Levy’s good name. ” As recently as March, Platinum had $1. 7 billion of investor money, as of a March regulatory filing. For years it reported a strong performance — with annual average returns of 17 percent. As recent as last year, Platinum said it made gains of 8 percent, a strong performance in a year when the average hedge fund lost 0. 85 percent, according to the Hedge Fund Research Composite Index, a gauge of industry performance. Platinum began to have trouble extracting investor money when some of its obscure investments started to sour, according to prosecutors. From 2013 to 2016, the firm could not stanch the losses in certain funds and the investor requests to withdraw money, so it began to move money between funds in what Mr. Nordlicht called a “big stew,” the indictment said. Things seemed to reach a crisis point in June 2014, prosecutors said. “It can’t go on like this or practically we will need to wind down. ...this is code red,” Mr. Nordlicht wrote to Mr. Landesman, a managing director at Platinum, at the time. Yet investors remained in the dark about the firm’s precarious liquidity position. A month later, when an investor emailed to ask about the reliability of Platinum’s reported performance figures, Mr. Landesman replied, “The numbers are all kosher, they have had verbal input every month. ” Investors grew restless. By March 2015, the total amount they requested to withdraw from the firm exceeded $83 million. Eventually, executives decided to pay some ahead of others, prosecutors said. “Platinum Partners purported to be a in the hedge fund industry,” said Robert L. Capers, the United States attorney for the Eastern District of New York. “In reality, their returns were the result of the overvaluation of their largest assets. ” This inflation led to Mr. Nordlicht and others “operating Platinum like a Ponzi scheme, where they used loans and new investor funds to pay off existing investors,” Mr. Capers added. The arrests on Monday were part of an investigation among several government agencies, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the United States Postal Inspection Service. In June, Murray Huberfeld, a former Platinum executive, was arrested. He has pleaded not guilty to conspiracy and wire fraud. Soon after Mr. Huberfeld’s arrest, agents from the F. B. I. and the Postal Inspection Service raided Platinum’s New York offices. Faced with mounting pressure from federal investigators, as well as an investigation by the S. E. C. Platinum liquidated its main hedge fund. For some at Platinum, there was already a sense late last year that government investigators were closing in on the firm. In an email exchange, Mr. Nordlicht, Mr. Landesman and an unnamed principal partner in Platinum discussed fleeing to Israel, according to prosecutors. “Don’t forget the books,” the unnamed partner wrote. “Assume we are not coming back to ny. ”

@JillJhorvath Robbery involves threat or the use of force or violence to take the property

@TarekFatah secular response to rabid fanatics, what an oxymoron.

November 21, 2016 How White Helmets Videos Are Made The video below was originally uploaded on November 18 in the channel of the RFSMediaOffice (Revolutionary Forces of Syria Media Office), a propaganda organization supporting various groups fighting the Syrian state. It depicts the "Making of" a scene where people in White Helmets outfit "rescue" a man. For some 20 seconds the two "rescuers" and the "victim" are motionless waiting for the command to start a hectic "rescue operation" and, when that starts, adds on the usual background sound of screaming people. The embed is a copy I made from the original and posted on my account to make sure that it is preserved. I do not know why the RFS Media Office would upload this. To show that the White Helmets and their videos are fake? Did they not pay their dues? Or was the channel hacked and the upload done by someone else? The original title "Edge of death | #MannequinChallenge" points to some social media nonsense which The Telegraph describes as: A viral video craze, it involves people imitating mannequins and freezing for the camera while music plays in the background. So is this a fake? Or a fake of the fakes the original White Helmets videos are ( this one for example)? Anyway - have fun with it while I keep nursing my not so fake influenza (no video). 21, 2016 at 01:40 PM | Permalink

Manitoba s Criminal Code Review Board announced Friday it has given Will Baker, formerly known as Vince Li, an absolute discharge, meaning he is longer subject to monitoring.Baker, a diagnosed schizophrenic, killed Tim McLean, a young carnival worker who was a complete stranger to Baker, in 2008. A year later he was found not criminally responsible due to mental illness.McLean s mother, Carol de Delley, has been outspoken against granting Baker freedom, saying there would be no way to ensure he continued to take his medication.She declined comment in a post on Facebook Friday, saying I have no words. Baker was initially kept in a secure wing of a psychiatric hospital but was given more freedom every year.He has been living on his own in a Winnipeg apartment since November, but was still subject to monitoring to ensure he took his medication.Baker s doctor, Jeffrey Waldman, told the board earlier this week that he is confident Baker will remain on his medication and will continue to work with his treatment team if released. Waldman testified that Baker knows it s the medication that keeps his illness at bay.In a written decision, the review board said it is of the opinion that the weight of evidence does not substantiate that Mr. Baker poses a significant threat to the safety of the public. Waldman said Baker plans to visit his native China if released but would live in Winnipeg for the next two to three years. He is on the waiting list for a post-secondary training program and plans on establishing a career in the city. Baker emigrated to Canada from China in 2001 and became a Canadian citizen four years ago. Fox NewsSurely this immigrant from China must have had some sort of medical record that may have caused the person or group reviewing his file to think twice about allowing him to become a Canadian citizen, right?

Alex Morgan Apologizes For Drunken Disney World Incident

The party of diversity waits for Hillary to be dragged out of the primary in handcuffs kicking and screaming Former GOP presidential candidate George Pataki is predicting that Democrat Hillary Clinton s legal issues will force an outside candidate to jump into the 2016 White House race as a white knight. People talk about the problems in the Republican Party, but I think Democrats have a bigger problem, the former New York governor told host John Catsimatidis on The Cats Roundtable on New York s AM-970 on Sunday. Hillary Clinton is cratering, the scandals just keep coming. She has grave legal issues that could totally prevent her from continuing her campaign, and the alternative is a self-avowed socialist who has never run anything. Pataki added that it would not surprise him to see an outsider jump into the race like Vice President Joe Biden, California Gov. Jerry Brown or Secretary of State John Kerry. Despite his previous pronouncements that Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump has no chance at the GOP nomination, Pataki conceded that his prediction isn t borne out by reality. He s just tapped into anger towards Washington, anger towards politicians, he said. I understand the anger, but the solution is not to get behind someone who expresses the anger but does not have the necessary solution. I hope people coalesce around somebody who has a positive vision about how to bring Americans together. Via: The Hill

@ZebraPinstriped @BaKaiyaTeru @stephenfry Read the Old Testament lately? http://t.co/uQBT3RF0zl

@UniTraSols @BDUTT @Rajyasree Challenge if you can respond. Now everyone has understood who is fool?

Top Georgian health official Gamkrelidze said there will not be a second wave of the coronavirus.

BERLIN (Reuters) - Barring an upset, the main uncertainty surrounding Europe s most important election this year is not whether Angela Merkel will continue to lead Germany after this weekend s vote, but who with and how long they will take to get going. Although a surprise cannot be ruled out in the wake of any Russian interference, pollsters say they are confident about their surveys, which show Merkel s conservatives winning the most seats in the Bundestag lower house. The far-right, anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) is set to enter parliament for the first time, and some experts have said it may gain more support than the roughly 10 percent polls suggest, an alarming prospect for many at home and abroad. But all the other parties have ruled out joining it in a coalition - an inherent part of Germany s electoral system - and the most likely scenario is probably a repeat of Merkel s grand coalition with the Social Democrats (SPD). She will start sounding out partners right after the Sept. 24 vote, but coalition building is a protracted process, which could paralyze policy for months at a time when Brexit has shaken Europe s foundations. The process is especially complex this time as the number of parliamentary groups could rise to six from four. Informal soundings and then exploratory talks precede formal coalition negotiations and party leaders may also seek approval from their members before signing off on any deal. Depending on the shape of the coalition, the main issues at stake are the integration of the more than 1 million migrants who have arrived in Germany in the last two years, and investment in Europe s biggest economy as well as Merkel s leading role in talks on reform of the European Union and relations with Russia and Turkey. Here are the main scenarios: CONSERVATIVES, SOCIAL DEMOCRATS ( GRAND COALITION ) The most likely option, according to opinion polls. Merkel s parliamentary party, made up of her Christian Democrats (CDU) and the Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU) has governed with the SPD for eight of the 12 years that Merkel has been chancellor, including the last four. WHAT MAKES IT POSSIBLE: Merkel, who has steered the conservatives towards the political center ground, looks comfortable ruling with the SPD. Such a coalition would likely have a large majority, provide continuity and broadly agree on Europe, Turkey, foreign policy, migration and security issues. HURDLES: It is a last resort for both sides, especially the SPD, which fears it will lose out as junior partner. It wants more emphasis on investment, education, tackling inequality and fair pensions while conservatives are more focused on tax cuts. The SPD is also reluctant to back planned defense spending hikes. CONSERVATIVES, FREE DEMOCRATS ( BLACK-YELLOW ) The conservative block and pro-business Free Democrats (FDP) are traditional partners, especially on financial and economic policy, having ruled together for almost half of post-war Germany s seven decades. If they win sufficient votes, this is the most likely scenario. WHAT MAKES IT POSSIBLE: The pro-business FDP has rebounded this year, winning enough votes in a vote in Germany s most populous state, North Rhine-Westphalia, in May to share power with the CDU there. A repeat at federal level would herald tax cuts and deregulation and possibly tighter laws on immigration, asylum seeking and security. HURDLES: The FDP was wiped out of parliament in 2013 after four chaotic years ruling with Merkel. It has more radical tax reduction and privatization plans, opposes deeper EU integration and wants EU countries to be able to quit the euro zone. Party leader Christian Lindner has also suggested Germany accept Russia s 2014 annexation of Crimea from Ukraine, something Merkel has ruled out. CONSERVATIVES, FDP, GREENS ( JAMAICA - REFERENCE TO PARTIES COLORS: BLACK, YELLOW, GREEN) As yet untested at a federal level, this combination rules in the northern state of Schleswig-Holstein. WHAT MAKES IT POSSIBLE - If Merkel s bloc can t form an alliance with the FDP or the Greens alone, it may try a three-way deal. Both smaller parties have played down this option but may be lured by the prospect of power. HURDLES - The Greens and FDP are at opposite ends of the political spectrum. Policy clashes would be likely on tax, energy, the EU and migrants. CONSERVATIVES, GREENS ( BLACK-GREEN ) Untested at a federal level, this has been mooted as an option under Merkel, who has pushed renewable energy. The CDU and Greens have worked together at regional level, including in a Greens-led coalition in the rich southern state of Baden-Wuerttemberg. WHAT MAKES IT POSSIBLE: The Greens leaders are pragmatic, worlds away from the eco-warriors who founded the party. The prospect of power may persuade them to compromise. Such a coalition would promote a strong Europe and focus on fighting climate change. The Greens would push for a phaseout of coal-fired power stations. HURDLES: Doubtful they would win a majority. Conservatives want lower taxes while Greens want to tax the super rich. Greens have a more liberal migrant policy which could pit them against the CSU, and they oppose plans to increase defense spending. Clashes are also likely on some aspects of energy policy and auto emissions regulation following the diesel scandal. A minority government would be a first and stability-craving Germans would not like it but may prefer it to new elections. WHAT MAKES IT POSSIBLE: If Merkel fails to find a partner, she may feel she has a mandate to rule given her personal popularity. She would probably get support for individual policies from the FDP, SPD and Greens. HURDLES: Merkel s natural caution coupled with Germans fear of instability, a legacy of the fragmentation in the years that preceded the rise of Hitler s Nazi party. SPD, LEFT, GREENS ( RED-RED-GREEN or R2G ) Highly unlikely. Never tested at a federal level, a tie up between the SPD and Greens, preferred partners, and the radical Left party, could be the only way for the SPD to take the chancellery. It is being tested in the state of Berlin under SPD leadership and, with a Left premier, in the state of Thuringia. WHAT MAKES IT POSSIBLE: For the first time, the SPD has not excluded the possibility of joining the Left. Such a coalition would probably focus on boosting investment and tackling inequality and adopt a more Russia-friendly stance. HURDLES: The Left s links with Communists in former East Germany and painful SPD memories of an exodus to the Left over deep labor market reforms more than a decade ago. While the SPD and Greens could rule together relatively easily, the Left wants a top tax rate of 75 percent, a 30-hour week and to replace NATO with an alliance including Russia. For an interactive on German elections, click: tmsnrt.rs/2fv8Yqv

ANKARA (Reuters) - An artillery shell from Syria hit Turkey s southeastern province of Hatay on Thursday and Turkish border troops retaliated in kind, broadcaster CNN Turk said. There were no immediate reports of casualties or injuries, after the shell hit a rural area in the Yayladagi district of Hatay, CNN Turk said, adding that the shell came from an area of Syria controlled by the Syrian government.

@BreadunCircuses Orwell