68 Shares 67 0 0 1 Mohsen Abdelmoumen : Do you think the United States can claim to be democratic simply by electing a woman president? Can we talk about democracy in the USA with a candidate of the financial lobbies and AIPAC? Ann Garrison: No, of course not. No more than we could claim to be a democracy because we elected a Black president. These two elections signify nothing more than the inclusion of previously excluded classes of people in the super elite. The United States is an oligarchy of the .01%, 1% of the 1%. Any president who is not already among the .01%, like Bill Clinton, becomes part of the .01% by serving its interests and then peddling influence after leaving office. No one has developed an influence peddling machine as well-oiled as the Clintons, with Bill working the Clinton Foundation and the Clinton Global Initiative while Hillary was Secretary of State. Just imagine the new depths of corruption that the next eight years and beyond could bring. Obama has said he's now considering a move from the White House to venture capitalism that has Silicon Valley slathering at the opportunity. Every four years Americans are given the illusion of choice between oligarchs and/or aspiring oligarchs who will serve the interests of oligarchy. Candidates who aspire to actually represent the interests of the people are marginalized by the corporate media and the pay-to-play campaign contributions of the oligarchs. In municipal and county elections and ballot measures, Americans often do have real choices, but the higher and more powerful the office, the greater the corruption and oligarchic control. Nevertheless, only a small minority of Americans actually vote n local elections; The Atlantic's CityLab reporting project recently concluded that fewer than 20% vote in mayoral elections in 15 of the 30 most populous cites. Disengagement is one of the most fundamental facts of American political life. Regarding federal elections, this concept of democracy within the largest, most lethal military power the world has ever seen is bogus to begin with. When U.S. citizens cast ballots to elect a new commander-in-chief who will continue the project of perpetual war, military industrial profits, and global hegemony, how democratic is that? The vast majority of those who will suffer and die don't get to vote; the only exceptions are members of the U.S. Armed Services who die in U.S. wars. If those on the other side of the Pentagon's crosshairs were able to vote, I'm sure they would elect our Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein, who said, "We say to Trump, we don't need no friggin' wall! We just need to stop invading other countries." Her running mate, vice presidential candidate Ajamu Baraka has called the humanitarian interventionist argument a new version of the white man's burden and said, "You have to ask yourself, when was the last time the U.S. has been on the side of the people? And the answer is: NEVER." MORE... Top Aide to Hillary Clinton Urges the FBI to Disclose what it Knows about Trump's Russia Ties What will Hillary Clinton do for India? Not Much and Here's Why Clinton's Policies Look Like a Death Sentence for Americans 10 Things to Expect with a Hillary Clinton Presidency How do you explain the dynastic governance Clinton? Is the American dream in all its glory? I'm not sure I can explain the Clinton dynasty except to agree that it is one. Chelsea has been very involved in the Clinton Foundation and is quite likely to enter political life and even run for president one day. We have had other political dynasties, most notably the Roosevelts, the Kennedys and the Bushes, and there are many lower level dynasties, like the Browns in California. Jerry Brown, the current governor of California, is the son of former California governor Pat Brown. New York State has the Cuomos; Governor Andrew Cuomo is the son of former Governor Mario Cuomo, and his brother Chris Cuomo is a prominent corporate television host. Regarding the American dream, I assume you're referring to the dream that if you work hard and play by the rules, you can achieve some proportionate degree of status, security and prosperity. If so, the Clintons certainly aren't living the American dream because, although they did well in school, they've hardly played by the rules. They've enriched themselves with that well-oiled influence peddling operation I mentioned earlier, the Clinton Foundation and the Clinton Global Initiative. We're all wondering whether Hillary Clinton, and maybe even Bill Clinton, might finally be indicted now that the FBI has reopened its investigation of Clinton e-mail because more of it was discovered on the laptop that Anthony Weiner - a former Congressman under FBI investigation for sex offense - shared with his wife, Clinton aide Huma Abedin. If Hillary Clinton is elected, she'll have to be impeached, convicted and removed from office, but that's extremely unlikely - no matter what's in the newly discovered e-mail - if her party, the Democrats, win a majority in the House and more than a one- third minority in the Senate. It takes a majority in the House to impeach a president and a two-thirds majority in the Senate to then convict and remove a president. So Hillary Clinton is at a Berlusconi moment in her sordid career; her best chance of avoiding indictment is getting elected. Getting back to the American dream that you can get ahead by working hard and playing by the rules, Bill Clinton was impeached by the House of Representatives, for perjury and obstruction of justice regarding his affair with a 19-year-old White House intern and his testimony in a sexual harassment lawsuit brought by another former employee. However, his own party held a majority in the Senate and they acquitted him. This was all legal, according to the U.S. Constitution, but does it really sound like he was "playing by the rules"? During the final days of his presidency, Clinton acquitted Glencore International founder Mark Rich, an international fugitive who had fled to Switzerland. His ex-wife had donated to the Democratic National Committee, the Clinton Presidential Library and Hillary Clinton's New York Senate campaign. According to the law, President Clinton had the authority to acquit Rich, but how would any rational person consider that anything but bribery and corruption? In 2006, Clinton polished the reputation of President Nursultan Nazarbayev, Kazakhstan's autocratic leader and human rights offender, who then gave a uranium mining lease to Canadian businessman Frank Giustra's Shell Company, making it worth tens of millions of dollars overnight. Giustra then made a big contribution to the Clinton Foundation. No one has claimed that this was illegal, but is it "playing by the rules"? When Guistra sold a majority stake in his company, Uranium One, to Rosatom, the Russian atomic energy agency, it was approved by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Giustra then contributed $2.35 million to the Clinton Foundation and Bill Clinton was offered a $500,000 speaking engagement with a Russian investment bank with links to the Kremlin. Does that sound like playing by the rules? And now Hillary's trying to make us believe that Russia's meddling in our elections and threatening confrontation with Russia over Syria. I don't think she's kidding about the confrontation, but the Clinton Foundation rarely passes up the chance to make another million dollars or more in any circumstances. Meanwhile, most of the rest of us are not living the American dream. Sixty-three percent of Americans are living on the edge of financial catastrophe, unable to handle a $500 car repair or a $1000 emergency room bill . The Clintons, as I said, serve the oligarchy they have also managed to join. When Bill Clinton was on his way out, in the last months of his presidency, he worked with Republicans in the lame duck Congress to deregulate the banking industry. By 2008, its dishonest, excessive and abusive financialization scams had crashed the economy, costing millions of Americans their jobs and/or homes. Then, as a New York Senator, Hillary Clinton voted to bail out the big banks who committed the crime while many of the rest of us struggled in the crash's wake. How do you explain that candidate Clinton, who failed as Secretary of State with the death of the US Ambassador in Libya, her health problems, the scandal of emails, is the candidate of the Democrats? Again, Clinton serves the interests of the oligarchy that she herself has joined. Many people believe that the nomination was stolen from Bernie Sanders, the Democratic candidate who spoke out against oligarchy, growing income inequality, and even the Israeli lobby's dominance in American politics. But there's one other important element to this. Americans who identify as liberals, supporters of women's rights, and/or anti-racists have such a longstanding allegiance to the Democratic Party that supporting its nominee every four years is their knee-jerk reaction. Ever escalating foreign wars don't seem to penetrate their consciousness or conscience, especially when those wars are waged primarily with drones and proxy armies instead of U.S. troops. And once the Republicans nominated the openly racist and misogynistic Donald Trump, defeating Trump became a liberal crusade. There are, of course, glimmers of rationality and hope. Yesterday I was out canvassing for an Oakland, California ballot measure with a young Black man, a college sophomore. Despite Trump's overt racism, he told me that he considers Clinton even more dangerous because he understands that she has essentially promised confrontation with Russia over Syria. He understands that such escalation increases the chance of a nuclear war, accidental or not, and that Trump, for all his faults, says that the Cold War is over, that NATO is largely obsolete, and that Clinton is recklessly risking confrontation with Russia by promising to remove Bashar Al-Assad. Our Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein is reported to be polling at 16% among voters under 35, and much of Bernie Sanders's support was quite visibly from the same age group. Local, grassroots organizing is also empowering people to create institutions free of oligarchic and corporate control. They include community gardens, renewable energy buyers' co-operatives, and GMO-free zones. If a ballot initiative to make California's Sonoma County GMO-free passes, the whole northwest coast of California will be a GMO-free zone, from Santa Cruz to Humboldt Counties and including one inland county, Trinity. Don't you think that the two-headed American system with the candidates of two traditional parties, Democratic and Republican is out of breath? I wouldn't say it's out of breath because it's still very much in control. However, Trump has left the Republican Party in disarray, with many Republican luminaries and funders defecting to Clinton, who is welcoming them with open arms. As Black Agenda Report Editor Glen Ford has written , the Clintons "have succeeded in assembling under one party roof nearly the whole of the U.S. ruling class and their hordes of attendants and goons. The scam that undergirded the duopoly system that has served the Lords of Capital so well for so long, has come undone. Thanks to a white nationalist billionaire who was too spoiled to play by the corporate rules, the two parties of the ruling class have become one." It's hard to say whether or not the Republican Party will survive this election or what it will be in another four years if it does. One possibility could significantly change this. If Green Party presidential candidate Dr. Jill Stein wins 5% in this election, the Green Party will become an official national party eligible for 5% of the federal funds made available to official national parties to host their presidential nominating conventions and support their nominee. This year all federal funds went to the two official national parties, Republicans and Democrats, who also have access to huge amounts of plutocratic and corporate money. The Greens take no corporate money. Five percent of the vote and five percent of the federal funding for elections may not sound like much, but it would be a huge watershed for the U.S. Greens. It would be a big psychological and visibility boost, and it would mean starting the next presidential campaign year with more than twice the funds that Jill Stein's campaign has been able to raise. Winning 5% would also ensure ballot access for the Greens in most states, not only in federal elections but also in down ballot races. As it is, Greens are required to spend much of their time and money just gathering enough signatures to satisfy all the byzantine ballot access requirements that vary in each of the 50 states. Everyone knows that Clinton is the future president of the USA. In your opinion, why they are facilitated her task and who has interest in seeing Clinton in the Oval Office? She is backed by the oligarchy, corporate and dynastic, particularly the investment bankers, the oil industry, and the weapons manufacturers who not only profit but also lobby for foreign wars. They are advancing their own interests by promoting a candidate who will serve them. Liberals have been conditioned to function as unpaid Clinton operatives in this election, and the corporate media, like the cops, serve as protectors of the oligarchy. And again, the majority of Americans are politically disengaged. You are close to Jill Stein, head of the Green party, which emerged late in the campaign. Why was this alternative sabotaged? Well, I wouldn't say I'm close to Jill personally, but she knows who I am and I, of course, know who she is. I've reported on her campaign and on the U.S. Greens for the past year, on radio and in print and online outlets, and I'm always honored when she shares those reports on her social media pages. I write for the Black Agenda Report and feel politically and intellectually close to its editors, who have given their full support to the Green Party this year, even as Bernie Sanders surged in the polls and many imagined he might actually win the Democratic nomination. In these times that are so easy to see as the end times, shared rationality and humanity are the closest bonds that many of us have, regardless of the geographic distance between us. Jill's campaign could hardly compete with the Republicans' and Democrats' because neither she nor any other Greens solicit or accept corporate money. We stand behind the slogan, "People and Planet before Profits." And we call for a halt to the death march led by the weapons manufacturers, fossil fuel giants, and agro-chemical companies who profit from it. Jill calls for immediately cutting the military budget by half, closing all the U.S. military bases in foreign countries and launching a "peace offensive." She proposes free public education from kindergarten through college, the abolition of student debt, national health insurance and a "Green New Deal" that would reinvest the resources now squandered on weapons manufacture and all the illegal, immoral, lethal and environmentally catastrophic U.S. wars. The Green New Deal would create a renewable energy infrastructure and sustainable agriculture before it's too late to stop the climate meltdown - if it isn't too late already. And it would fully employ Americans in meaningful, dignified and cooperative work for the common good. Of course that all makes far too much sense and threatens the highly concentrated wealth and power of the death-march industries. I would not be surprised if there were voter fraud to prevent Jill Stein and Ajamu Baraka from winning the 5% that would make us an official national party. I have also seen enormous oligarchic determination to stop Greens at the local level. In 2003, Matt Gonzalez, the Green Party's mayoral candidate in San Francisco, seemed to have a good chance of winning. That so alarmed the Democratic Party that it sent all its best known, most powerful names and faces to San Francisco to campaign for the Democratic candidate. They sent Hillary and Bill. They sent Jesse Jackson. They sent many Democratic Party superstars more than once. They seemed to be more concerned about defeating Matt Gonzalez and the Greens in San Francisco than they were about defeating George Bush and the Republicans in the following year's presidential election. One of the founders of the San Francisco Green Party was elected to the City and County Board of Supervisors twice, but when he ran for Sheriff, an executive office, Democrats pulled him aside and said they could not allow his election unless he left the Greens and joined the Democratic Party, which he did. They still got rid of him after his first term, with a really ugly campaign, but that's another complicated story in itself. The City and County of San Francisco once had more elected Greens than any city or county in the country, but many of those that Greens worked so hard to elect have since defected to the Democratic Party for the sake of their political careers. Is not Hillary Clinton a danger for humanity? Hell yes. I agree with Congolese author and political activist Patrick Mbeko, who said she's more dangerous than ISIS, for all the reasons I've already mentioned. Her dark alliance with the death-march industries, and her seeming eagerness to confront Russia over Syria and/or on Russia's borders in the interest of global hegemony. Russian uranium deal aside, I think that Diana Johnstone was most likely right when she wrote that "her strategic ambition in a nutshell is regime change in Russia." And I have to mention my friends from the African Great Lakes Region - particularly Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of the Congo - which became the killing grounds of the 1990s, as the U.S., using African proxies, established itself as the dominant power there. Most of my friends from that part of the world are horrified by the Clintons' all but certain return to the White House. The Clintons are deeply committed to the false history of the Rwandan war and massacres that was used to justify the First and Second Congo Wars and later the "humanitarian" interventions in Libya, Syria, and Iraq. If the truth about Rwanda and DR Congo were known, Bill Clinton would be implicated in mass murder, but that's true of every U.S. president in office in my lifetime and probably long before that. No one's going to try to refer the most lethal military power in history to an international criminal court with more than symbolic authority. You have many worked on Africa. How do you explain the French leadership in Africa? Well, I'm no expert in this, but I can say a few things. First, I wouldn't call it leadership. I'd say that France sustains a neocolonial and military presence in Africa. France was a partner in the destruction of Libya. In Mali, Niger, the Central African Republic, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, France is protecting the uranium mines essential to the nuclear power that generates 75% of its electricity. There's no doubt that France was complicit in the assassination of resource nationalist and debt resister President Thomas Sankara and the installation of President Blaise Compaoré in Burkina Faso. I don't see any sign that French policy towards Burkina or any of its other former colonies is any more benign now, despite its resignation to Compaoré's ouster by a popular movement. France and the U.S. now appear to be military partners in Africa more often than not, but during the Rwandan war and massacres and the Congo Wars of the 1990s, the U.S. displaced France as the dominant power there. However, a source of ongoing tension between France and the U.S. has been their divergent accounts of the massacres known as the Rwandan Genocide. The U.S. defends Rwandan President Paul Kagame's account, in which he is the savior who swept in to stop the carnage. Kagame blames France, particularly for Operation Turquoise, in which French troops created a humanitarian corridor for Rwandan refugees, mostly Hutus, who were fleeing the advance of Kagame's Rwandan Patriotic Army. This conflict has recently been renewed, first with France reopening its investigation of allegations that Kagame ordered the assassination of Rwanda and Burundi's Hutu presidents, Juvenal Habyarimana and Cyprien Ntaryamira, in 1994. Rwanda responded by accusing 22 French officers of helping to plan and organize genocide in Rwanda. In 2010, Nicholas Sarkozy attempted to ease the tension between France and the U.S. and Rwanda by accepting the U.S./Rwandan account of the massacres. He publicly apologized for France's alleged guilt in Rwanda's tragedy , and shortly thereafter, France was rewarded with greater access to DR Congo's resource riches. However, Alain Juppé, who was the French prime minister at the time of the Rwandan massacres and Operation Turquoise, was having none of that. He even left the country during Kagame's 2011 "reconciliaton" visit to Paris . Now Juppé seems to be leading Sarkozy in the bid for his party's nomination, and if he is elected president, the history of Rwanda and DR Congo in the 1990s will be more fiercely contested. Most of my Rwandan friends very much hope that Juppé will be elected because he defends the dissident history of what really happened. They believe, for one, that Operation Turquoise saved many Rwandan lives. While Africa is a young continent, How do you explain that the countries are often directed by old presidents with several mandates and who don't want lose the power? The old presidents cling to power, and the Western powers with geo-strategic interests enable them because autocrats are easier to corrupt and control than rowdy democrats and resource nationalists who try to represent their own people. Rwanda's Kagame and Uganda's Museveni are two prime examples of autocrats who have proven very useful to the U.S. and other Western interests. France, the U.S., and all the rest of the NATO nations appear to be united in their determination to topple Burundi's Nkurunziza, who has dared to raise an independent head and to favor the East, particularly Russia, in resource extraction contracts. I can't explain Mugabe's hold on power at age 92 or Omar al-Bashir's at 72, since neither are U.S. aliies. You'll have to ask Africans in those countries to explain that. In your opinion, is not tribalism a major factor in the destabilization of Africa? Why doesn't Africa progress and does it stay in the tribal model? I really hesitate to say anything about that because I'm not African myself and I think Western media often use the word "'tribe" as a racial slur that disguises Western resource interests at play in African conflicts. I recently wrote a piece about the new film A Brilliant Genocide , and Milton Allimadi, the Ugandan-born editor of the Black Star News, told me he loved the piece but asked me to remove the one instance in which I'd used the word "tribe." I told him I'd been hesitant about using that word and was glad to remove it. I'm now reading his book, " Hearts of Darkness: How White Writers Created the Racist Image of Africa ." Why are Congolese being massacred in Beni Territory, North Kivu Province ? The first question I've asked to try to answer that question is, "What resources are there?" In Beni, the answer is oil, timber, gold, diamonds, wolfram, coltan and cassiterite. Beni is a vivid example of the saying, "Everybody wants a piece of Congo." No one could convince me that the industrial nations' hunger for all these riches is not at the heart of these conflicts. Why are all the deadly "ethnic" conflicts in DR Congo's resource-rich eastern provinces? The competition and/or animosity between ethnicities or groups is often real, as they are in the West, but in Africa, the geostrategic and resource interests of the industrial nations are always in play behind the scenes. Western powers often exacerbate local rivalries in pursuit of their own interests. I sometimes co-host a show called AfrobeatRadio with my friend Wuyi Jacobs on WBAI-New York City, and we both hope to someday produce a show about Rwanda and Burundi in which we won't have to use the words "Hutu" or "Tutsi." Dr. Léopold Munyakazi convinced me that these two groups are better understood not as tribes or ethnicities but as social classes in Rwandan history that were exaggerated by Europeans who have found it convenient to pit one group against the other. Libya lives total chaos. How do you analyze the situation in Libya? It's horrible. Like so much else, it makes me deeply ashamed to be an American. If you read Hillary Clinton's e-mail, it's easy to see that the U.S.]/NATO war on Libya was, for one, another Western war against another defiant resource nationalist, Muammar Gaddafi. Regardless of whatever human rights offenses Gaddafi or Saddam Hussein were guilty of, both were resource nationalists, as was Mohammed Mossadegh, the secular, democratically elected prime minister of Iran who nationalized Iranian oil before our CIA and the UK's M16 ousted him in the 1953 coup. I wrote about how this played out in Libya in " Clinton E-MaIl: We came, we saw, we got oil ." Obama says that failing to prepare for the aftermath of the Libyan War was the greatest mistake of his presidency, but I'd say his greatest mistake was waging the Libyan War in the first place. Like the Iraq War, it has created chaos and perpetual war that continues to spread through the Middle East and North Africa. Interview realized by Mohsen Abdelmoumen Who is Ann Garrison? Ann Garrison is an independent journalist who contributes to the San Francisco Bay View, Global Research, the Black Agenda Report and the Black Star News, and produces radio for KPFA-Berkeley and WBAI-New York City. In 2014, she was awarded the Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza Democracy and Peace Prize by the Womens International Network for Democracy and Peace . She can be reached at https://twitter.com/AnnGarrison?lang=en .


AG Jeff Sessions is a complete change from the lawless Obama administration. We are so lucky to have someone like Sessions running the Department of Justice! The interview below by Judge Jeanine is so worth the watch! They discuss immigration and lawfulness in America. Great interview!https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BjW_JgrXuoOur Previous Report on Sessions at the Border another GREAT speech! THE TRUMP ERA : JEFF SESSIONS Puts An End To Obama s Open Border Policies With Law & Order [Video]Attorney General Jeff Sessions toured the Nogales, Arizona border today with the border patrol. He made a bold statement (transcript below) on law and order: This is a new era.This is a Trump era. Catch & release policies of the past are over .KEY POINTS FROM THE SPEECH:Starting today, federal prosecutors are now required to consider for prosecution all of the following offenses: The transportation or harboring of aliens. As you know too well, this is a booming business down here. No more. We are going to shut down and jail those who have been profiting off this lawlessness people smuggling gang members across the border, helping convicted criminals re-enter this country and preying on those who don t know how dangerous the journey can be. Further, where an alien has unlawfully entered the country, which is a misdemeanor, that alien will now be charged with a felony if they unlawfully enter or attempt enter a second time and certain aggravating circumstances are present. Also, aliens that illegally re-enter the country after prior removal will be referred for felony prosecution and a priority will be given to such offenses, especially where indicators of gang affiliation, a risk to public safety or criminal history are present. Fourth: where possible, prosecutors are directed to charge criminal aliens with document fraud and aggravated identity theft the latter carrying a two-year mandatory minimum sentence. Finally, and perhaps most importantly: I have directed that all 94 U.S. Attorneys Offices make the prosecution of assault on a federal law enforcement officer that s all of you a top priority. If someone dares to assault one of our folks in the line of duty, they will do federal time for it. The bottom line is that he s bringing back rule of law after the lawless Obama open borders policy.Border traffic is the lowest its been in 17 years but we need to keep at it! We re thinned that this administration means business when it comes to sovereignty!Attorney General Jeff Sessions: The catch and release policies of the past are over #TuesdayMotivation #BuildWall pic.twitter.com/OkhmZaD5In STOCK MONSTER (@StockMonsterUSA) April 11, 2017THE ENTIRE SPEECH FROM AG JEFF SESSIONS:TRANSCRIPT: Attorney General Jeff Sessions Delivers Remarks Announcing the Department of Justice s Renewed Commitment to Criminal Immigration Enforcement Nogales, AZUnited States ~ Tuesday, April 11, 2017Good morning, everyone. Let me start by thanking the brave men and women of Customs and Border Protection, who not only served as our gracious hosts today, but who put themselves in harm s way each day to secure our borders and protect us.Here, along our nation s southwest border, is ground zero in this fight. Here, under the Arizona sun, ranchers work the land to make an honest living, and law-abiding citizens seek to provide for their families.But it is also here, along this border, that transnational gangs like MS-13 and international cartels flood our country with drugs and leave death and violence in their wake. And it is here that criminal aliens and the coyotes and the document-forgers seek to overthrow our system of lawful immigration.Let s stop here for a minute. When we talk about MS-13 and the cartels, what do we mean? We mean criminal organizations that turn cities and suburbs into warzones, that rape and kill innocent citizens and who profit by smuggling poison and other human beings across our borders. Depravity and violence are their calling cards, including brutal machete attacks and beheadings.It is here, on this sliver of land, where we first take our stand against this filth.In this fight, I am here to tell you, the brave men and women of Customs and Border Protection: we hear you and we have your back. Under the President s leadership and through his Executive Orders, we will secure this border and bring the full weight of both the immigration courts and federal criminal enforcement to combat this attack on our national security and sovereignty.The President has made this a priority and already we are seeing the results. From January to February of this year, illegal crossings dropped by 40 percent, which was unprecedented. Then, last month, we saw a 72 percent drop compared to the month before the President was inaugurated. That s the lowest monthly figure for at least 17 years.This is no accident. This is what happens when you have a President who understands the threat, who is not afraid to publically identify the threat and stand up to it, and who makes clear to law enforcement that the leadership of their country finally has their back. Together, we will drastically reduce the danger posed by criminal aliens, gang members and cartel henchmen.To that end, the President and I want to do our best to arm you, and the prosecutors who partner with you, with more tools in your fight against criminal aliens. So today, I am pleased to stand here with you and announce new guidance regarding our commitment to criminal immigration enforcement. As we speak, I am issuing a document to all federal prosecutors that mandates the prioritization of such enforcement.Starting today, federal prosecutors are now required to consider for prosecution all of the following offenses:The transportation or harboring of aliens. As you know too well, this is a booming business down here. No more. We are going to shut down and jail those who have been profiting off this lawlessness people smuggling gang members across the border, helping convicted criminals re-enter this country and preying on those who don t know how dangerous the journey can be.Further, where an alien has unlawfully entered the country, which is a misdemeanor, that alien will now be charged with a felony if they unlawfully enter or attempt enter a second time and certain aggravating circumstances are present.Also, aliens that illegally re-enter the country after prior removal will be referred for felony prosecution and a priority will be given to such offenses, especially where indicators of gang affiliation, a risk to public safety or criminal history are present.Fourth: where possible, prosecutors are directed to charge criminal aliens with document fraud and aggravated identity theft the latter carrying a two-year mandatory minimum sentence.Finally, and perhaps most importantly: I have directed that all 94 U.S. Attorneys Offices make the prosecution of assault on a federal law enforcement officer that s all of you a top priority. If someone dares to assault one of our folks in the line of duty, they will do federal time for it.To ensure that these priorities are implemented, starting today, each U.S. Attorney s Office, whether on the border or interior, will designate an Assistant United States Attorney as the Border Security Coordinator for their District. It will be this experienced prosecutor s job to coordinate the criminal immigration enforcement response for their respective offices.For those that continue to seek improper and illegal entry into this country, be forewarned: This is a new era. This is the Trump era. The lawlessness, the abdication of the duty to enforce our immigration laws and the catch and release practices of old are over.In that vein, I am also pleased to announce a series of reforms regarding immigration judges to reduce the significant backlogs in our immigration courts.Pursuant to the President s executive order, we will now be detaining all adults who are apprehended at the border. To support this mission, we have already surged 25 immigration judges to detention centers along the border. I want to thank personally the judges who answered the call to help us with this new initiative.In addition, we will put 50 more immigration judges on the bench this year and 75 next year. We can no longer afford to wait 18 to 24 months to get these new judges on the bench. So today, I have implemented a new, streamlined hiring plan. It requires just as much vetting as before, but reduces the timeline, reflecting the dire need to reduce the backlogs in our immigration courts.With the President s Executive Orders on Border Security, Transnational Criminal Organizations and Public Safety as our guideposts, we will execute a strategy that once again secures the border; apprehends and prosecutes those criminal aliens that threaten our public safety; takes the fight to gangs like MS-13 and Los Zetas; and makes dismantlement and destruction of the cartels a top priority. We will deploy a multifaceted approach in these efforts: we are going to interdict your drugs on the way in, your money on the way out, and investigate and prosecute your trafficking networks to the fullest extent of the law.Why are we doing this? Because it is what the duly enacted laws of the United States require. I took an oath to protect this country from all enemies, foreign and domestic. How else can we look the parents and loved ones of Kate Steinle, Grant Ronnebeck and so many others in eye and say we are doing everything possible to prevent such tragedies from ever occurring again?Let me finish where I started, by thanking you the brave men and women in uniform who are at the front lines of this fight. I know we ask a tremendous amount from all of you, but know this: we have your back, and will do all we can to empower you and support you in your work.God bless you and thank you.


Brazil s new Prosecutor General Raquel Dodge said on Tuesday she is committed to continuing the sprawling Car Wash corruption investigation that has implicated dozens of Brazilian politicians, including President Michel Temer. In her first news conference since taking office on Sept. 18, Dodge declined to comment on charges filed against Temer by her predecessor Rodrigo Janot, but she said she could not withdraw them. Janot charged Temer with obstruction of justice and being a member of a criminal organization days before leaving office based on plea bargain testimony by the owners of meatpacker JBS SA. Janot had to revoke that plea deal after evidence emerged of crimes committed by the witnesses. Dodge, however, told reporters that the revoking of a plea deal did not erase the evidence provided. The lower house of Congress, which has the authority to decide whether a president should stand trial, began to discuss the new charges on Tuesday and is expected to block them as it did last month with an earlier graft charge brought against Temer for allegedly accepting bribes paid by JBS. Dodge said the Supreme Court must decide whether the Federal Police can also negotiate plea bargains with criminals, an authority currently limited to prosecutors who have opposed sharing the function with the police. Plea bargains have been instrumental for prosecutors in the uncovering of a massive network of bribes and political kickbacks in Brazil s largest corruption scandal. I am sure that the Supreme Court will hand down a ruling that will turn this into an valuable tool, she said.


One word China That s the only reason you should be furious with our government that s usually overreaching but not so much in this case. Because we were being penalized by the WHO, we decided to stop requiring a country of origin on meat. Just to clue you in, here s one of our articles that will make you furious that the meat labels are gone:Yuck! It s bad enough that China had a dog meat festival last week but now this! The USDA just removed the country of origin off of meat but it needs to come back ASAP! If there s meat smuggling going on you really don t know where it originated, but if it s China I would like to make the informed choice not to buy their meat for this reason:Chinese authorities have seized more than 100,000 tonnes of smuggled meat some of it more than 40 years old, according to state media.The frozen meat, estimated to be worth about 300 million (3bn yuan; $483m), was seized in a nationwide crackdown. It was smelly and I nearly threw up when I opened the door, an official from Hunan province, where 800 tonnes were seized, told the AFP news agency. Poor standards have made food safety a major concern in China. According to state newspaper the China Daily, officials from Guangxi, a southern region bordering Vietnam, found meat dating back to the 1970s. Thawed several times: Some of the meat seized in Hunan province was found to have been refrozen after thawing out while in transit, according to the reports. Yang Bo, an anti-smuggling official in Hunan province, was quoted as saying food was often transported in ordinary rather than refrigerated vehicles to save money. So the meat has often thawed out several times before reaching customers, he said. The Hunan province haul reportedly included beef, chicken feet and duck necks. Authorities believe meat is smuggled into China via neighboring Hong Kong and Vietnam, from countries such as Brazil and India, to sidestep import restrictions. WASHINGTON (AP) It s now harder to find out where your beef or pork was born, raised and slaughtered.After more than a decade of wrangling, Congress repealed a labeling law last month that required retailers to include the animal s country of origin on packages of red meat. It s a major victory for the meat industry, which had fought the law in Congress and the courts since the early 2000s.Lawmakers said they had no choice but to get rid of the labels after the World Trade Organization repeatedly ruled against them. The WTO recently authorized Canada and Mexico, which had challenged the law, to begin more than $1 billion in economic retaliation against the United States. U.S. exporters can now breathe a sigh of relief, said Republican Sen. Pat Roberts of Kansas, chairman of the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee. The longtime opponent of the labels helped add the repeal to a massive year-end spending bill. After the law was passed, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said the government immediately would stop requiring the labels.Consumer groups say the repeal is a disappointment just as consumers are asking for more information on their food packages. Advocates say the labels help people make more informed buying decisions and encourage purchases of American meat.Before repeal, the labels told shoppers that a particular cut of meat was born in Canada, raised and slaughtered in the United States or born, raised and slaughtered in the United States. Congress first required the labels in 2002 amid fears of mad cow disease from imported cattle. The labels weren t on most packages until 2009, though, due to delays pushed by the meat industry.Repeal became inevitable once the United States lost all its WTO appeals and the retaliation became a possibility. But the consumer groups criticized Congress for repealing the law for ground meat and pork in addition to the fresh cuts of meat that were the subject of WTO concerns.The bill was a holiday gift to the meatpacking industry from Congress, complained the advocacy group Food and Water Watch. Meatpackers who buy Mexican cattle were some of the law s most aggressive opponents.The repeal also was a big defeat for lawmakers from northern border states where U.S. ranchers directly compete with Canadian ranchers. Those lawmakers insisted on including the labeling in the 2002 and 2008 farm bills and this year fought to replace it with a voluntary program once the WTO rulings came down. But after years of success, this time they were not able to find enough support.Roger Johnson of the National Farmers Union, which has heavy membership in those states, said the group was furious about the repeal. Packers will be able to once again deliberately deceive consumers, Johnson said.Still, there was some good news for food labeling advocates in the spending bill. Despite an aggressive push by the food industry, lawmakers decided not to add language that would have blocked mandatory labeling of genetically modified ingredients. Also, a provision by Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, would require labeling of genetically modified salmon recently approved by the Food and Drug Administration.The issue is expected to come up again in 2016, with Vermont set to require labeling on genetically modified food this summer.The day the spending bill passed, Vilsack said he would try to help Congress come up with a middle ground on labeling of engineered foods in a way that doesn t create significant market disruption, while at the same time recognizing consumers need to know and right to know basic information.


President Donald Trump has given very hard thought into who will be in his Cabinet. He has several names in mind, names that will literally change America and CNN doesn't like this at all. Well, too bad! VIA Conservative 101 According to Politico , some of those names include Gingrich for Secretary of State, Mnuchin, a 17 year veteran of Goldman Sachs for Treasure Secretary and Mayor Giuliani for Attorney General. And of course Sheriff David Clarke as the Homeland Security Secretary. He has been an incredible patriotic American and leader in Blue Lives Matter. CNN was terrified by this. "I think the one major flag I have is that someone like Sheriff Clarke would be considered as his Homeland Security secretary? Someone who I very much see as if he's not a terrorist inciting terrorism?" said CNN commentator Angela Rye. "If people are afraid of Sheriff Clarke, afraid of the policies which he represents, I think that's terrorism," she said. This of course, makes no sense. You can't just call people who disagree with you terrorists. Check out the video below and see for yourself.  Now, this makes me wonder… what gives Angela the right to call an honest person like Sheriff Clarke a terrorist? Is it jealousy?  You can't call someone a terrorist just because you don't agree with them. It's absurd!  What are your thoughts on this? Do you think that Anglea Rye is a disgrace to journalism?  Share us your thoughts in the comments section below.  Thank you for reading.  If you haven't checked out and liked our Facebook page, please go here and do so. Leave a comment...


For like the eleventy-billionth time, Sarah Palin posted a broken link to a Facebook post on Twitter Sunday. Now, at first glance her months of posting dead links and not figuring out how to fix the problem might seem moderately stupid until you see the content of the actual post on the half-term, half-wit former Governor of Alaska s Facebook timeline.Referencing Clinton s recent, mundane campaign stop at a bar, Palin who regularly appears to be heavily intoxicated whenever she has a camera in front of her and was involved in a drunken hillbilly brawl in 2014 quipped, she s gonna drive us all to drink. Thinking she is clever, she then adds that Clinton should have been thinking Sam Adams rather than drinking Sam Adams. Naturally, as Palin brought up drinking, the internet decided it couldn t let this one go:@SarahPalinUSA I see you've already started Clodagh Smith (@Clodagh831) October 30, 2016@SarahPalinUSA Any excuse to drink, eh Sarah? #Lush John Yuma (@JohnYuma) October 30, 2016@SarahPalinUSA Have you been day drinking again? Mr. Wolfcastle (@tew156) October 30, 2016@SarahPalinUSA oh Sarah, remember when you mattered?Me neither. Open another Box O' Wine. jmsullivan (@Jfordhamusn) October 30, 2016@SarahPalinUSA have you been sober during your speaking engagements? I always thought you were drunk as a skunk. Jeff Bender (@JeffBikeBender) October 30, 2016@SarahPalinUSAYour kid keeps shacking up with different dudes and Hillary's driving you to drink? Hot Takes (@HotTakes1) October 30, 2016@SarahPalinUSA From what I've seen, You've been drinking non stop for YEARS! Steve Derebey (@SDerebey) October 30, 2016Yes, as was heavily pointed out, we have been enjoying Palin s drunken rants for years. Unfortunately for her, she is so irrelevant that mockery is all she has warranted since she helped John McCain lose in 2008.You can enjoy one of her best drunken ravings below:Classic: Visibly Drunk Sarah Palin Fumbles Response to Elizabeth Warren


Ratings agency Moody's said on Monday it did not believe global property reinsurance prices trends would be materially affected by Hurricane Harvey, though rates in affected regions could rise. Intense competition led to declining property and casualty reinsurance premiums in the second quarter, Moody's said in a report, but it added that "reinsurers have ample capital to absorb Harvey losses".


Mexican and Canadian stocks and currencies fell on Wednesday after reports that the White House was considering withdrawing from the North American Free Trade Agreement, a long-standing trade deal between both countries and the United states. The Toronto Stock Exchange's S&P/TSX composite index .GSPTSE was down 0.11 percent and Mexico's IPC fell 1.17 percent after earlier touching a record high. The Canadian dollar CAD=D4 weakened 0.29 percent versus the U.S. currency while the Mexican peso MXN= touched its weakest in 6 weeks versus the greenback. The peso was last at 19.2397 per dollar, down 2.07 percent on the day. The iShares MSCI Mexico ETF (EWW.P) fell 2.8 percent to $50.59 and the iShares MSCI Canada ETF (EWW.P) was last down 0.4 percent at $26.66. A senior Trump administration official said and executive order on withdrawing the United States from NAFTA is under consideration. The story was first reported by Politico.


The Department of Homeland Security plans to enforce President Donald Trump's executive order to dramatically reduce immigration from high threat countries in the Middle East. ["The Department of Homeland Security will continue to enforce all of President Trump's Executive Orders in a manner that ensures the safety and security of the American people," the agency made in a statement sent to reporters on Sunday. They reminded Americans that only a small percentage of travelers were affected by the new restrictions. The agency noted that although some individuals were held for further screening, some of them were allowed entry into the United States, despite protesters at area airports describing the order as a "Muslim ban. " "These individuals went through enhanced security screenings and are being processed for entry to the United States, consistent with our immigration laws and judicial orders," the department said. The agency did not signal that they were prepared to back down from the rigorous enforcement of Trump's executive action. "The Department of Homeland Security will comply with judicial orders faithfully enforce our immigration laws, and implement President Trump's Executive Orders to ensure that those entering the United States do not pose a threat to our country or the American people," the statement concluded.


WAR is a racket. It always has been.  It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.  A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small "inside" group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.  – From Major General Smedley Butler's War is a Rackett  Former Congressman Dennis Kucinich has just penned an extremely powerful warning about the warmongers in Washington D.C. Who funds them, what their motives are, and why it is imperative for the American people to stop them.  The piece was published at The Nation and is titled: Why Is the Foreign Policy Establishment Spoiling for More War? Look at Their Donors .  Read it and share it with everyone you know.  W ashington, DC, may be the only place in the world where people openly flaunt their pseudo-intellectuality by banding together, declaring themselves "think tanks," and raising money from external interests, including foreign governments, to compile reports that advance policies inimical to the real-life concerns of the American people.  As a former member of the House of Representatives, I remember 16 years of congressional hearings where pedigreed experts came to advocate wars in testimony based on circular, rococo thinking devoid of depth, reality, and truth. I remember other hearings where the Pentagon was unable to reconcile over $1 trillion in accounts, lost track of $12 billion in cash sent to Iraq, and rigged a missile-defense test so that an interceptor could easily home in on a target. War is first and foremost a profitable racket.  How else to explain that in the past 15 years this city's so called bipartisan foreign policy elite has promoted wars in Iraq and Libya, and interventions in Syria and Yemen, which have opened Pandora's box to a trusting world, to the tune of trillions of dollars, a windfall for military contractors. DC's think "tanks" should rightly be included in the taxonomy of armored war vehicles and not as gathering places for refugees from academia.  According to the front page of this past Friday's Washington Post, the bipartisan foreign-policy elite recommends the next president show less restraint than President Obama. Acting at the urging of "liberal" hawks brandishing humanitarian intervention, read war, the Obama administration attacked Libya along with allied powers working through NATO.  Indeed, I warned about this in last week's piece: U.S. Foreign Policy 'Elite' Eagerly Await an Expansion of Overseas Wars Under Hillary Clinton .  The think tankers fell in line with the Iraq invasion. Not being in the tank, I did my own analysis of the call for war in October of 2002, based on readily accessible information, and easily concluded that there was no justification for war. I distributed it widely in Congress and led 125 Democrats in voting against the Iraq war resolution. There was no money to be made from a conclusion that war was uncalled for, so, against millions protesting in the United States and worldwide, our government launched into an abyss, with a lot of armchair generals waving combat pennants. The marching band and chowder society of DC think tanks learned nothing from the Iraq and Libya experience.  The only winners were arms dealers, oil companies, and jihadists. Immediately after the fall of Libya, the black flag of Al Qaeda was raised over a municipal building in Benghazi, Gadhafi's murder was soon to follow, with Secretary Clinton quipping with a laugh, "We came, we saw, he died." President Obama apparently learned from this misadventure, but not the Washington policy establishment, which is spoiling for more war.  The self-identified liberal Center for American Progress (CAP) is now calling for Syria to be bombed, and estimates America's current military adventures will be tidied up by 2025, a tardy twist on "mission accomplished." CAP, according to a report in The Nation, has received funding from war contractors Lockheed Martin and Boeing, who make the bombers that CAP wants to rain hellfire on Syria.  The Brookings Institute has taken tens of millions from foreign governments , notably Qatar, a key player in the military campaign to oust Assad. Retired four-star Marine general John Allen is now a Brookings senior fellow . Charles Lister is a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute , which has received funding from Saudi Arabia , the major financial force providing billions in arms to upend Assad and install a Sunni caliphate stretching across Iraq and Syria. Foreign-government money is driving our foreign policy.  As the drumbeat for an expanded war gets louder, Allen and Lister jointly signed an op-ed in the Sunday Washington Post, calling for an attack on Syria. The Brookings Institute, in a report to Congress , admitted it received $250,000 from the US Central Command, Centcom, where General Allen shared leadership duties with General David Petraeus. Pentagon money to think tanks that endorse war? This is academic integrity, DC-style.  And why is Central Command, as well as the Food and Drug Administration, the US Department of transportation, and the US Department of Health and Human Services giving money to Brookings?  Former secretary of state Madeleine Albright, who famously told Colin Powell , "What's the point of having this superb military you're always talking about if we can't use it," predictably says of this current moment , "We do think there needs to be more American action." A former Bush administration top adviser is also calling for the United States to launch a cruise missile attack on Syria.  The American people are fed up with war, but a concerted effort is being made through fearmongering, propaganda, and lies to prepare our country for a dangerous confrontation, with Russia in Syria.  The demonization of Russia is a calculated plan to resurrect a raison d'être for stone-cold warriors trying to escape from the dustbin of history by evoking the specter of Russian world domination.  It's infectious. Earlier this year the BBC broadcast a fictional show that contemplated WWIII, beginning with a Russian invasion of Latvia (where 26 percent of the population is ethnic Russian and 34 percent of Latvians speak Russian at home).  The imaginary WWIII scenario conjures Russia's targeting London for a nuclear strike. No wonder that by the summer of 2016 a poll showed two-thirds of UK citizens approved the new British PM's launching a nuclear strike in retaliation. So much for learning the lessons detailed in the Chilcot report.  As this year's presidential election comes to a conclusion, the Washington ideologues are regurgitating the same bipartisan consensus that has kept America at war since 9/11 and made the world a decidedly more dangerous place.  The DC think tanks provide cover for the political establishment, a political safety net, with a fictive analytical framework providing a moral rationale for intervention, capitol casuistry. I'm fed up with the DC policy elite who cash in on war while presenting themselves as experts, at the cost of other people's lives, our national fortune, and the sacred honor of our country.  Any report advocating war that comes from any alleged think tank ought to be accompanied by a list of the think tank's sponsors and donors and a statement of the lobbying connections of the report's authors.  It is our patriotic duty to expose why the DC foreign-policy establishment and its sponsors have not learned from their failures and instead are repeating them, with the acquiescence of the political class and sleepwalkers with press passes.  It is also time for a new peace movement in America, one that includes progressives and libertarians alike, both in and out of Congress, to organize on campuses, in cities, and towns across America, to serve as an effective counterbalance to the Demuplican war party, its think tanks, and its media cheerleaders. The work begins now, not after the Inauguration. We must not accept war as inevitable, and those leaders who would lead us in that direction, whether in Congress or the White House, must face visible opposition.  Thank you Mr. Kucinich, I couldn't agree more.  For related articles, see:


Donald J. Trump's stunning election victory on Tuesday night rippled way beyond the nation's boundaries, upending an international order that prevailed for decades and raising profound questions about America's place in the world. For the first time since before World War II, Americans chose a president who promised to reverse the internationalism practiced by predecessors of both parties and to build walls both physical and metaphorical. Mr. Trump's win foreshadowed an America more focused on its own affairs while leaving the world to take care of itself. The outsider revolution that propelled him to power over the Washington establishment of both political parties also reflected a fundamental shift in international politics evidenced already this year by events like Britain's referendum vote to leave the European Union. Mr. Trump's success could fuel the populist, nativist, nationalist, movements already so evident in Europe and spreading to other parts of the world. Global markets fell after Tuesday's election and many around the world scrambled to figure out what it might mean in parochial terms. For Mexico, it seemed to presage a new era of confrontation with its northern neighbor. For Europe and Asia, it could rewrite the rules of modern alliances, trade deals, and foreign aid. For the Middle East, it foreshadowed a possible alignment with Russia and fresh conflict with Iran. "All bets are off," said Agustín Barrios Gómez, a former congressman in Mexico and president of the Mexico Image Foundation, an organization dedicated to promoting its reputation abroad. Crispin Blunt, chairman of the foreign affairs committee in Britain's House of Commons, said, "We are plunged into uncertainty and the unknown. " Many linked Mr. Trump's victory to the British vote to exit the European Union and saw a broader unraveling of the modern international system. "After Brexit and this election, everything is now possible," Gérard Araud, the French ambassador to the United States, wrote on Twitter. "A world is collapsing before our eyes. " The election enthralled people around the world on Tuesday night: night owls watching television in a youth hostel in Tel Aviv computer technicians monitoring results on their laptops in Hong Kong and even onetime oil pipeline terrorists in Nigeria's remote Delta creeks, who expressed concern about how Mr. Trump's election would affect their country. It is hardly surprising that much of the world was rooting for Hillary Clinton over Mr. Trump, who characterized his foreign policy as "America First. " He promised to build a wall along the Mexican border and temporarily bar Muslim immigrants from entering the United States. He questioned Washington's longstanding commitment to NATO allies, called for cutting foreign aid, praised President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, vowed to rip up international trade deals, assailed China and suggested Asian allies develop nuclear weapons. Polls indicated that Mrs. Clinton was favored in many countries, with the exception of Russia. Last summer, the Pew Research Center found that people in all 15 countries it surveyed trusted Mrs. Clinton to do the right thing in foreign affairs more than Mr. Trump by ratios as high as 10 to one. Mr. Trump's promise to pull back militarily and economically left many overseas contemplating a road ahead without an American ally. "The question is whether you will continue to be involved in international affairs as a dependable ally to your friends and allies," said Kunihiko Miyake, a former Japanese diplomat now teaching at Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto. "If you stop doing that, then all the European, Middle Eastern and Asian allies to the United States will reconsider how they secure themselves. " In Germany, where American troops have been stationed for more than seven decades, the prospect of a pullback seemed bewildering. "It would be the end of an era," Henrik Müller, a journalism professor at the Technical University of Dortmund, wrote in Der Spiegel. "The postwar era in which Americans' atomic weapons and its military presence in Europe shielded first the west and later the central European states would be over. Europe would have to take care of its own security. " Norbert Röttgen, chairman of the German parliamentary committee for foreign policy and a member of the ruling party, said Mr. Trump was "completely inadequate" to his office. "That Trump's election could lead to the worst estrangement between America and Europe since the Vietnam War would be the least of the damage," he said. Perhaps nowhere was Mr. Trump's win more alarming than in Mexico, which has objected to his promises to build a wall and bill America's southern neighbor for it. "I see a clear and present danger," said Rossana director of the Mexico Media Lab, a think tank, and a founder of the Latin American edition of Foreign Affairs. "Every moment will be a challenge. Every move or declaration will be something that will not make us comfortable in the neighborhood — and that is to everyone's detriment. " With about $531 billion in trade in goods last year, Mexico is America's partner after Canada and China. Supply chains in both countries are interdependent, with American goods and parts shipped to Mexican factories to build products that are shipped back into the United States for sale. Five million American jobs directly depend on trade with Mexico, according to the Mexico Institute. The Mexican peso immediately fell 13 percent after the election, its biggest drop in decades. Mr. Barrios Gómez, the former congressman, predicted a peso devaluation of 20 percent and a Mexican recession "as supply chains across the continent become sclerotic and investments dry up. " The business community, he said, was "freaking out. " The economic fallout will probably reverberate farther. Izumi Kobayashi, vice chairwoman of Keizai Doyukai, a Japanese business group, predicted a drop in foreign investment in the United States as executives skeptical of Mr. Trump wait to see what he does. "He has been focusing on the negative side of the global markets and globalization," Ms. Kobayashi said. "But at the same time it is really difficult to go back to the old business world. So how will he explain to the people that benefit and also the fact that there is no option to go back to the old model of business?" The uneasiness with Mr. Trump's victory overseas ranged far beyond the country's traditional partners. Abubakar Kari, a professor at the University of Abuja, said most Nigerians believed a Trump administration would not bother with issues outside the United States. "If Trump wins, God forbid," Macharia Gaitho, one of Kenya's most popular columnists, wrote on Tuesday before the votes came in, "then we will have to reassess our relations with the United States. " One of the few places where Mr. Trump's victory was greeted enthusiastically was Russia, where television has been feasting on the circuslike elements of the American election. Not since the Cold War has Russia played such a big role in a presidential election, with Mr. Trump praising Mr. Putin and American investigators concluding that Russians had hacked Democratic email messages. "Trump's presidency will make the U. S. sink into a crisis, including an economic one," said Vladimir Frolov, a Russian columnist and international affairs analyst. "The U. S. will be occupied with its own issues and will not bother Putin with questions. " "As a consequence," he added, "Moscow will have a window of opportunity in geopolitical terms. For instance, it can claim control over the former Soviet Union and a part of the Middle East. What is there not to like?" Others tried to find the upside. Mr. Blunt, the British lawmaker, said he was heartened by Mr. Trump's selection of Gov. Mike Pence of Indiana as his running mate and thought that Britain might be the exception to the new president's hostility toward trade deals. Israel was another place where Mr. Trump enjoyed some support, mainly because of the perception that he would give the country a freer hand in its handling of the longstanding conflict with the Palestinians. But Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders and commentators worried about a broader disengagement from a Middle East awash in war, terrorism and upheaval. "Decisions cannot be postponed," said Yohanan Plesner, a former member of the Israeli Parliament now serving as president of the Israel Democracy Institute. "The situation in Syria is very chaotic. The unrest in the region is continuing. America has to decide whether it wants to play an active role in shaping the developments of the region. " And even some countries that might expect to see some benefits from an American retreat worried about the implications. Counterintuitive as it might seem, China was concerned about Mr. Trump's promise to pull American troops back from Asia. "If he indeed withdraws the troops from Japan, the Japanese may develop their own nuclear weapons," said Shen Dingli, professor of international relations at Fudan University in Shanghai. "South Korea may also go nuclear if Trump cancels the missile deployment and leaves the country alone facing the North's threats. How is that good for China?" For American voters, that was not the point. After decades of worrying about what was good for other countries, they decided it was time to worry about what was good for America. And Mr. Trump promised to do just that, even if the rest of the world might not like it.


Donald J. Trump is now the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, but he is also keenly aware that many in his own party — and many Americans, frankly — are scared and anxious about the idea of him in the Oval Office. Even he is not sure how a deeply divided nation would adjust to the first 100 days of a Trump presidency. What he does know, however, is what he wants to do in those early months. In a series of recent interviews, he sketched out plans that include showdowns with business leaders over jobs and key roles for military generals, executives and possibly even family members in advising him about running the country. Shortly after the Nov. 8 election, Trump and his vice president — most likely a governor or member of Congress — would begin interviewing candidates for the open Supreme Court seat and quickly settle on a nominee in the mold of Justice Antonin Scalia. He would start "building a government based on relationships," perhaps inviting the Republican leaders Paul D. Ryan and Mitch McConnell to escape the chilly Washington fall and schmooze at over golf and lobsters. On Inauguration Day, he would go to a "beautiful" gala ball or two, but focus mostly on rescinding Obama executive orders on immigration and calling up corporate executives to threaten punitive measures if they shift jobs out of the United States. And by the end of his first 100 days as the nation's 45th leader, the wall with Mexico would be designed, the immigration ban on Muslims would be in place, the audit of the Federal Reserve would be underway and plans to repeal the Affordable Care Act would be in motion. "I know people aren't sure right now what a President Trump will be like," he said. "But things will be fine. I'm not running for president to make things unstable for the country. " The New York Times interviewed Mr. Trump three times over the past two months, most recently on Saturday, as well as several campaign advisers and Trump confidants. The possibility of Mr. Trump in the Oval Office — an outcome that once seemed fanciful — became less remote on Tuesday night when his main challenger, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, quit the race. On Wednesday, Gov. John Kasich of Ohio said he would withdraw too. Despite his radical vision of how to remake America, and all his outrageous talk on juvenile subjects like his anatomy — to say nothing of the polls showing him behind Hillary Clinton — Jan. 20 may find the most underestimated politician in America assuming the presidency. While professing some surprise at his success, Mr. Trump increasingly sounds like a man who thinks he knows where he will be eight months from now, and the unrivaled power he will hold. He talked of turning the Oval Office into a board room, empowering military leaders over foreign affairs specialists in national security debates, and continuing to speak harshly about adversaries. He may post on Twitter less, but everyone will still know what he thinks. "As president, I'll be working from the first day with my vice president and staff to make clear that America will be changing in major ways for the better," Mr. Trump said in a telephone interview on Saturday. "We can't afford to waste time. I want a vice president who will help me have a major impact quickly on Capitol Hill, and the message will be clear to the nation and to people abroad that the American government will be using its power differently. " But he also acknowledged that he might face significant and incessant protests — even thousands of demonstrators massing on the National Mall as he takes the oath of office nearby at the Capitol. Mr. Trump said he would try to unite Republicans and disaffected Democrats and independents over the next six months before the November election, and then work in office to show Americans that his chief interest was fighting for their needs. He argued that the fact that he would not have to rely on wealthy donors to finance his campaign would ultimately prove appealing to many voters as they realize he is not "bought and paid for. " "I know everyone won't like everything I do, but I'm not running to be everyone's favorite president," Mr. Trump said. "Things are seriously wrong in this country. People are hurting, business is hurting. I'm running to move quickly to make big changes. " Several friends and allies of Mr. Trump said that "negotiating" was the word he used the most to encapsulate his first 100 days in office. He wants to put people — business executives and generals are mentioned most often — in charge of cabinet agencies and throughout his senior staff, and direct them to negotiate deals and plans with congressional leaders and state officials, as well as insurance companies and others in the private sector. They say he will accomplish the things he has promised or else keep trying, well aware that his supporters will have his head if he does not. "He's not going to depart from the agenda he's laid out, not a bit," said Roger Stone, a longtime adviser and confidant. Mr. Stone declined to describe details of his private conversations with Mr. Trump, except to say: "Having gone out a thousand times to say 'I'm going to build a wall,' he has to build a wall. He has said he would scrap trade deals his voters will demand he scrap trade deals. He knows that. " Modern America has never seen anything like a Trump administration. Business leaders and even entertainment figures new to politics have been elected governors, of course, and insurgents like Newt Gingrich rose to power. But this is different. A Manhattan real estate developer and bombastic reality television star, Mr. Trump would be a president like no other. Yet historians suggest the country would adjust: He would quickly find himself consumed with the urgent and normalizing tasks of building a cabinet, assembling senior staff and reassuring Wall Street and the public that he was capable of governing America. "Trump is predicting he'll be able to do all these things, but his workload will be pretty enormous and his power would be so limited by precedent, by the bureaucracy, by the Constitution," said Robert Dallek, a presidential historian. "Even in trade and immigration, where Trump says he will make revolutionary changes, Congress has a say on those things. A lot of people have a say. The president is not king. " But Mr. Trump pledged in the interviews to deliver on his campaign promises, even if they prove disruptive or explosive. On his first day in office, he said, he would meet with Homeland Security officials, generals, and others — he did not mention diplomats — to take steps to seal the southern border and assign more security agents along it. He would also call the heads of companies like Pfizer, the Carrier Corporation, Ford and Nabisco and warn them that their products face 35 percent tariffs because they are moving jobs out of the country. Democrats and some Republicans have warned that financial markets would react poorly and that Mr. Trump's protectionist stances might plunge the country into recession, but he insisted that trade is "killing the country" and "the markets would be fine. " "Bilateral talks with Mexico would start pretty quickly on the wall, and I would have chief executives into the Oval Office soon, too," he said. "The Oval Office would be an amazing place to negotiate. It would command immediate respect from the other side, immediate understanding about the nation's priorities. " As for which foreign leader he would call first as president, he said "they would not necessarily be a priority. " "We have to take a tougher stand with foreign countries," Mr. Trump said. "We're like the policemen of the world right now. So I wouldn't be calling them up right away and getting more entangled. " For good or ill, he would command the nation's attention unlike any modern president, and not simply because of his penchant for redecorating in gold and renaming planes and buildings after himself. (For the record, he said he had no ambitious renovation plans.) "His first 100 days would be riveting," said Ari Fleischer, a former press secretary for President George W. Bush. "The question would be whether he is capable of downshifting from the hot rhetoric of his campaign to the serious business of building a presidency based on sound judgment and necessary coalition building. " Mr. Fleischer said it was possible that Mr. Trump would make the adjustment, given his frequent comments about negotiating with Democrats and Republicans to reach compromises. "That side of him intrigues me," Mr. Fleischer said. "He keeps alluding to how well he gets along with people. It's almost like Trump is playing a shrewd game. Tough campaigner today. Great deal maker later. " He added, "Of course, if he wins he'll have some level of strength and momentum akin to a mandate. That would help. " Mr. Trump did seem aware that his early months could be consumed with trying to win confirmation for his cabinet and perhaps a new Supreme Court justice and with making appointments throughout the bureaucracy. He made it clear that he was not interested in delegating these tasks and that he wanted to make sure his appointees shared his governing philosophy. One of his closest advisers, his daughter Ivanka, would probably stay with his company, but he said he would seek counsel from her and her husband, the businessman Jared Kushner, and noted that family members had served in administrations before. Even jobs that might seem incidental in a Trump universe, like a United States ambassador to the United Nations, have apparently crossed his mind. "I think about a U. N. ambassador, about a secretary of defense and secretary of treasury, but I think more about winning first," Mr. Trump said. "Otherwise I'm wasting time. I want people in those jobs who care about winning. The U. N. isn't doing anything to end the big conflicts in the world, so you need an ambassador who would win by really shaking up the U. N. "


President Donald Trump's Strategic and Policy Forum is disbanding because debate over member participation "has become a distraction" from its goals of aiding policy discussions, the business advisory group said in a statement on Wednesday. "As such, the President and we are disbanding the Forum," the group said. "Intolerance, racism and violence have absolutely no place in this country and are an affront to core American values," it said, after corporate CEOs quit two Trump business advisory councils in protest at his remarks blaming violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, not only on white nationalists but also on the protesters who opposed them.


A statement by the leader of Spain s northeastern region of Catalonia Carles Puigdemont due to have been made at 1430 CET (1230 GMT) on Thursday has been canceled, the regional government said.


21st Century Wire says Is McMaster going to reignite tensions with Russia?In the follow video Stuart J. Hooper asks if we should be worried about General McMaster replacing General Flynn as Trump s National Security Advisor.While Flynn understood that Russia has a sphere of influence in the world that the US should be wary of encroaching upon, McMaster is the author of a report entitled The Russia New Generation Warfare Study , which is, is intended to ignite a wholesale rethinking and possibly even a redesign of the Army in the event it has to confront the Russians in Eastern Europe .Watch the report video here: READ MORE TRUMP NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Trump FilesSUPPORT 21WIRE SUBSCRIBE & BECOME A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV


The orange highway sign with black letters holds a familiar warning: "Lane closed ahead. " What do you do? If your instinct is to immediately get out of the lane that will be closing, you may think you are being courteous to fellow drivers by reacting early — but in reality you could be slowing traffic, experts say. It may sound like a breach of etiquette to wait until the last minute to merge, but traffic engineers and transportation departments in several states are promoting that exact move, sometimes with mixed results as they try to overcome drivers' ingrained habits. The maneuver is known as the late merge — or zipper merge, for the way that cars taking turns getting into a lane resembles the teeth of a zipper coming together. The move, in which drivers in dense, traffic remain in the lane that will be closed and then pull into the other lane at the merge point, helps ease congestion and drivers' frustrations, experts said. As Tom Vanderbilt, the author of "Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us)," noted, "Merging late, that purported symbol of individual greed, actually makes things better for everyone. " Colorado started to promote the late merge during a highway project more than 10 years ago. Signs were posted, starting two miles from the point of the lane closing. The first signs read, "Use both lanes during congestion. " The next signs said, "Use both lanes to the merge point. " When the lane was ending, the last signs read: "Take turns. Merge here. " The result? A 15 percent increase in the volume of cars moving through the work zone and a 50 percent decrease in the length of the line, K. C. Matthews, a traffic specifications and standards engineer at the Colorado Department of Transportation, said in an interview last week. The approach is effective in traffic and it allows drivers to take advantage of the lane that is about to close. In traffic, there is less need to rely on the late merge, officials said. A work zone engineer for the Kansas Department of Transportation, Kristi Ericksen, said in an email that officials would customarily expect in work zones to see "large differences in the speed of traffic (nearly at a standstill in one lane and highway speeds in the adjacent lane) and road rage (rude gestures, eliminating gaps, lane blocking). " Since the late merge was introduced, the queues for those two types of lanes are about half the length officials expected, and drivers take turns at the merge point, she said. "As for traffic flows, the data suggests that while the speeds are lower and the travel time may not be shorter, traffic continues to move and is predictable," she wrote. "In other words, the travel conditions are more reliable, which has its own set of benefits. " But when people apply their " sensibilities" to their driving, the late merge can be harder to manage, Mr. Vanderbilt, the author, said in an interview last week. For instance, a person would be considered rude if he or she walked to the head of a line of customers waiting for a bank teller. A driver in a free lane who zipped to the merge point and then tried to cut in could be judged similarly. Some drivers then take it upon themselves to become traffic monitors, enforcing societal norms and straddling the lanes to block those who might try to get ahead, he said. "In a car moving at a certain speed, when the moment comes to make a quick decision, we may become more interested in getting into a battle for progress," he said. When the Minnesota Department of Transportation tried to promote the zipper merge, officials found that some drivers in the lane that was going to end kept pace with the car next to them "whether acting out of perceived courtesy or a sense of vigilante justice," Mr. Vanderbilt wrote in his book. The result was confusion and congestion. Quoting the puzzled Minnesota transportation officials, Mr. Vanderbilt wrote, "For some unknown reason, a small number of drivers were unwilling to change their old driving behaviors. " Officials report mostly positive feedback from drivers about the late merge, though some occasionally take a dim view of it. Mr. Matthews recalled a Federal Highway Administration official who was in her own vehicle and driving through a construction zone in Colorado. She was excited to see a zipper merge in action and zoomed to the merge point in the lane that was to end. Another driver, who was apparently not as impressed as she was, threw a burrito at her car, he said.


The U.S. Senate took a procedural vote on Monday to clear the way for confirming Jay Clayton as the next head of the Securities and Exchange Commission. In a 60-36 vote, the Republican-led Senate voted to end debate on Clayton, with some Democrats joining Republicans in support. A final confirmation vote is expected later this week, and the Senate may take up to 30 hours to debate his confirmation prior to the vote.


Donald J. Trump thanked supporters at a rally in Cincinnati on Thursday, and announced that he intends to nominate James N. Mattis as defense secretary. Watch the video below. After claiming credit for saving jobs in Indiana, Mr. Trump held a rally in Cincinnati to say thank you to Ohio, which he carried and where no recount is being demanded. Mr. Trump exulted in rallies during the campaign and seems to be itching to return to the adulation of the crowds. Other states are expected to be added to the tour in the days and weeks ahead. Mr. Trump revealed at the rally that he had chosen James N. Mattis, a retired Marine Corps general who led a division to Baghdad during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, to serve as his secretary of defense. Read more. The decision by Gov. Jerry Brown of California to name Representative Xavier Becerra to be the state's attorney general has set off another round of among Democrats — and opened a crucial post in the Trump era. Mr. Becerra, like Representative Chris Van Hollen of Maryland before him and former Representative Rahm Emanuel of Illinois (now the mayor of Chicago) before them, had risen as far as he could in the House leadership. Mr. Becerra faced a blockade of older members of Congress, like Representatives Nancy Pelosi, Steny H. Hoyer, and James E. Clyburn, in the top ranks. Unlike Mr. Van Hollen, who was elected to the Senate last month, Mr. Becerra opted against running for his state's open Senate seat, but he has found his own way to statewide office. Mr. Becerra was in line for a huge consolation prize in the House, however. The veteran Representative Sander M. Levin of Michigan had just stepped aside as the ranking Democrat on the Ways and Means Committee — and he recommended the telegenic Californian for the post. That would have put Mr. Becerra on the front lines as Mr. Trump tries to repeal the Affordable Care Act, cut taxes, overhaul the tax code and possibly convert Medicare into a system that offers fixed sums to seniors to buy private health plans. Instead, it looks as if that role will go to Representative Richard E. Neal of Massachusetts, who may be less camera ready but is actually better versed on the intricacies of tax policy. So far Representative Keith Ellison's drive to be the next Democratic National Committee chairman has gone swimmingly, with no strong competition in sight. But CNN went where other outlets have feared to tread, printing old writings of Mr. Ellison, the first Muslim elected to Congress, in defense of the Nation of Islam and other contentious black activists. As a law student at the University of Minnesota, Mr. Ellison, writing under the name Keith E. Hakim in the student newspaper, said: "Whether one supports or opposes the establishment of Israel in Palestine and Israel's present policies, Zionism, the ideological undergirding of Israel, is a debatable political philosophy. Anyone, including black people, has the right to hear and voice alternative views on the subject — notwithstanding our nominal citizenship. " He continued: Mr. Ellison long ago renounced his associations with the Nation of Islam, and has had Jewish groups defend him. But the report could prove troublesome, to say the least. The League, which has been mildly supportive, reacted strongly. Senator Heidi Heitkamp, Democrat of North Dakota, is paying a visit to Trump Tower on Friday, and Senator Chuck E. Schumer of New York, the incoming minority leader, is having heart palpitations. To Democrats, that last line can mean two things, neither of them good. If she is in line for an administration job, her Senate seat would turn Republican. If not, she seems to be indicating she is a possible vote for the Trump agenda. And no matter what, her seat is up in 2018 — in a state that went to Mr. Trump with 62 percent of the vote. The great chronicler of this year's presidential vote, Dave Wasserman of the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, declared it official on Thursday: Jill Stein is the Ralph Nader of 2016. Her vote tallies in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania now exceed Mr. Trump's margins in the three Rust Belt states that gave him the presidency. Another point: In the end, the difference between a Trump presidency and another Clinton administration came down to 79, 646 votes — fewer than a sellout for a Wisconsin Badgers football game. For the record, Mrs. Clinton's overall lead in the popular vote stands at 2, 544, 817. Trump took phone calls Wednesday from Pakistan's prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, and President Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan. The results were instructive. According to Kazakhstan, Mr. Trump said "that under the leadership of Nursultan Nazarbayev our country over the years of Independence had achieved fantastic success that can be called a 'miracle'. " Through some rather circuitous paths, Mr. Trump's real estate empire has been tied to Kazakhstan in ways a Financial Times investigation labeled "dirty. " Mr. Nazarbayev has run Kazakhstan since it gained independence from the Soviet Union in 1989. Last year, he won a fifth consecutive term with 97. 7 percent of the vote. The Pakistani government released its own account of the telephone conversation between and Mr. Trump and Mr. Sharif that sounded, well, Trumpian. While not exactly confirming the content, the Trump transition team did acknowledge both calls. The White House has been trying its best not to criticize Mr. Trump, but after those two phone calls, a top administration official suggested that Mr. Trump get some expert help. Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary, noted that the relationship between Pakistan and the United States was "quite complicated" and got more so after the American raid into Pakistan that killed Osama bin Laden. And then Mr. Earnest mentioned where Mr. Trump could get some assistance. "I'm just making the observation that there are dedicated experts, public servants at the State Department that have years of experience that they have amassed that they're prepared to use to advise the incoming president," Mr. Earnest said. Ten Democratic senators have sent a strongly worded letter to Mr. Trump criticizing the number of "lobbyists and others with extensive ties to the fossil fuel industry" in his transition team and among potential nominees for the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Energy and the Department of the Interior. Citing advisers like Myron Ebell of the libertarian Competitive Enterprise Institute and the former fossil fuel lobbyist Thomas Pyle, the senators argued that "you have raised serious questions about your desire to 'drain the swamp' with respect to energy and environmental issues. " The letter, signed by Senators Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Ron Wyden of Oregon and others, quoted a 2009 advertisement signed by Mr. Trump calling climate change "scientifically irrefutable," with "catastrophic and irreversible consequences for humanity and our planet. " Chalk up another tradition broken in the Trump era: the practice of cabinet picks going mum once they are named, shunning the news media until confirmed by the Senate. Steven Mnuchin, the newly named choice for Treasury secretary, made that break most evident on Wednesday, appearing on CNBC and before reporters at Trump Tower, musing at length on tax policy. Others including Wilbur L. Ross, tapped for commerce secretary, have been similarly voluble. This has surprised people in both parties familiar with the tortuous Senate confirmation process — and with what they see as the good reasons to stay silent. Talking to the press is "an opportunity to fail — it can only kind of cause you more headaches and questions," said Dean Zerbe, a former adviser to Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, on the Senate Finance Committee. Mr. Mnuchin, for example, said the Trump tax plan would give a big tax cut to the middle class but not to the wealthy, though a range of nonpartisan analyses have concluded the opposite. "As soon as I saw that," Mr. Zerbe said, "my immediate thought was, 'O. K. you've just now given about a dozen questions to senators to ask about. '" Not that the 1, 000 workers whose jobs were saved will care, but the deal to keep that Carrier plant in the United States, which included a multiyear, $7 million incentive package from Indiana, is starting to take flack from the right and the left. To conservatives, government intervention at such a microlevel is just bad economics. The Representative Justin Amash, Republican of Michigan, weighed in early: Now it's coming from more intellectual circles. "This is all terrible for a nation's economic vitality if businesses make decisions to please politicians rather than customers and shareholders. Yet America's private sector has just been sent a strong signal that playing ball with Trump might be part of what it now means to run an American company," wrote James Pethokoukis, the DeWitt Wallace Fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. Liberals have latched onto the tax breaks and incentives offered to Carrier's parent company, United Technologies, by Gov. Pence of Indiana just before he leaves for Washington. Senator Bernie Sanders, independent of Vermont, put it this way in The Washington Post: If companies can extract tax concessions by threatening to move to Mexico, they may have found a partner willing to play ball with the new president, the critics say. Economists call that "moral hazard. "


Chinese distributors of overseas publications must verify that the content is legal in China, Beijing said late on Sunday, after a major western publisher blocked access to some content in the country citing local regulations. Springer Nature, which publishes science magazines Nature and Scientific American, said last week that it had pulled access to less than 1 percent of its articles in China, which it said was regrettable but necessary to avoid all content being blocked. All publications imported into the Chinese market must accord with Chinese laws and regulations. The publications import management company is responsible for carrying out content checks on publications, the State Council Information Office, the Chinese government s information and propaganda arm, said in a faxed response to a request for comment sent by Reuters last Wednesday. The Chinese government made a similar statement after Britain s Cambridge University Press (CUP) in August removed and then reposted about 300 papers and book reviews published by the China Quarterly journal from its Chinese website. Under President Xi Jinping, Beijing has heightened censorship, tightened controls on the internet, and strengthened Communist Party authority over academia and other institutions. CUP s decision was originally taken at the request of the Chinese government, the publisher said at the time. CUP later reversed its decision after an outcry from academics who said the decision impinged upon academic freedom. Springer Nature in a statement last week denied that its decision to limit some content was a form of editorial censorship, saying that the move was local to China and was taken to comply with specific regulations as enforced by distributors. The publisher said that not complying would mean it ran the risk of being banned from distributing all content in China, which it said was not in the interests of its authors and customers or the wider scientific or academic communities. At least 1,000 Springer Nature articles had been blocked in China, containing sensitive key words like Taiwan, Tibet and Cultural Revolution, the Financial Times reported. One of Springer Nature s China distributors, the state-run China National Publications Import and Export (Group) Corp, did not immediately respond to a request for comment when contacted by Reuters on Monday. It was unclear if the decision by Springer Nature to block content followed a request by just one of its China distributors or a number of different distributors. It was also unclear whether the distributor request was made at the behest of the Chinese government.