It won t lead to any solution. It s a kind of European Union dictatorship towards smaller members An extra 1 billion ( 733 million) has been pledged by EU leaders to help tackle the refugee crisis following an emergency summit in Brussels.It comes as Slovakia says it will go to court to challenge compulsory quotas for relocating 120,000 refugees approved by European Union ministers.Britain has not signed up to the plans, instead opting for a relocation scheme to take 20,000 Syrian refugees from countries in the Middle East over the next five years. Via: itvFour of the 28 EU countries voted against the quota system on Tuesday, with Finland abstaining. Slovakia, one of the loudest critics of the decision, which was advocated strongly by Germany and France, announced it would challenge it in court. We will go in two directions: first one, we will file a charge at the court in Luxembourg secondly, we will not implement the (decision) of the interior ministers, the Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico told reporters on Wednesday, before leaving for an EU leaders summit in Brussels. We have been refusing this nonsense from the beginning, and as a sovereign country we have the right to sue, he added, saying his country would not submit to the quota as long as he leads it.Slovakia, which has a population of 5.4 million, objects to the relocation of 120,000 migrants and refugees from Italy and Greece throughout the EU. It currently has only a small migrant community and the public opinion is against accepting Muslim asylum seekers, who make up the majority of those looking to enter Europe this year.Fico called the decision passed by a rare vote, rather than the accepted unanimous vote by all EU member states, a dictate of the majority and said the plan fails to address the core issues of the refugee crisis.Meanwhile, Jurgen Elsaesser, editor-in-chief of the German-based magazine Compact, told RT that the way the quota vote took place, threatens European unity, while it was also a total nonsense in practical terms. It won t lead to any solution. It s a kind of European Union dictatorship towards smaller members, he said, speaking to RT. Brussels tries to press them into accepting more refugees, but the people and the governments of these countries are not willing to do so. This will become a serious rift within the European Union.


U.S. President Donald Trump is scheduled to speak with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe later on Wednesday, the White House said in a statement that gave no other details. The scheduled telephone calls come as a senior ally of Merkel earlier on Wednesday pressed Japan to quickly seal a trade deal with the European Union.


Antonin Scalia was one of our most reliable, conservative US Supreme Court Justices. Pray for our nation Conservative U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has died, setting up a major political showdown between President Barack Obama and the Republican-controlled Senate over who will replace him just months before a presidential election. On behalf of the court and retired justices, I am saddened to report that our colleague Justice Antonin Scalia has passed away, Chief Justice John Roberts said in a statement on Saturday, calling Scalia, 79, an extraordinary individual and jurist. Scalia s death was first reported by the San Antonio News-Express, who said he had apparently died of natural causes while visiting a luxury resort in West Texas.Appointed to the top U.S. court in 1986 by President Ronald Reagan, Scalia was known for his strident conservative views and theatrical flair in the courtroom.Obama, who is traveling in California, extended his condolences, and the White House said he would have more to say about Scalia s death later on Saturday.The U.S. president will face a stiff battle to win confirmation of a nominee to replace the dead jurist, with Republicans likely to delay in the hope that one of their own wins the November election.Obama could tilt the balance of the nation s highest court, which now consists of four conservatives and four liberals, if he is successful in pushing his nominate through the Senate confirmation process. Conservative Justice Anthony Kennedy sometimes joins with the liberals on high profile issues, including gay rights and the death penalty. Justice Scalia was an American hero. We owe it to him, and the nation, for the Senate to ensure that the next president names his replacement, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, a Republican presidential candidate, said on Twitter.The court is set to decide its first major abortion case in nearly 10 years as well as key cases on voting rights, affirmative action and immigration.POSSIBLE REPLACEMENTSScalia s replacement would be Obama s third appointment to the nine-justice court.Obama s first two appointments to the court, liberals Sonia Sotomayor in 2009 and Elena Kagan in 2010, both experienced relatively smooth confirmation hearings in the Senate, which was then controlled by Democrats. Sotomayor was approved by a 68-31 vote and Kagan by 63-37.The battle over Scalia s replacement will be different, with Republicans now in charge of the Senate and keen to exert their influence over the process. Obama is likely to be forced into picking a moderate with little or no history of advocating for liberal causes.


Republican front-runner Donald Trump said on Wednesday he would not attend the next televised Republican presidential debate scheduled for next Monday. "I think we've had enough debates," Trump, who won three states in Tuesday's nominating contests, told Fox News in an interview. Fox on Monday announced the new debate, its latest in the primary season as the party chooses its candidate ahead of the Nov. 8 presidential election. Trump said he had scheduled a major speech the same night - before the American Israel Public Affairs Committee - and was surprised to hear Fox had planned another debate. "How many times can the same people ask you the same question?" Trump asked. "So I was very surprised when I heard that Fox called for a debate. Nobody told me about it and I won't be there, no." The pro-Israel lobby group holds its annual policy convention in Washington Sunday through Tuesday and has confirmed both Trump and Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton as speakers. It has not issued a formal schedule. It would not be the first time Trump has skipped a debate. He also sat out the Fox News/Google debate on Jan. 28, after complaining of unfair treatment in a previous Fox debate.


Despite decades of fervent student protests that reached a peak last fall, the president of Yale announced on Wednesday that the university would keep the name of a residential college honoring the politician and white supremacist John C. Calhoun. The president, Peter Salovey, also said the university would name its two new residential colleges for Anna Pauline Murray and Benjamin Franklin. The selection of Ms. Murray, a legal scholar and civil rights activist who graduated from Yale Law School in 1965, represents the first time the school has honored either an or a woman with the naming of a college. Many students were perplexed by the selection of Franklin, who received an honorary degree from Yale. Franklin, like many other founding fathers, was once a slaveholder himself before he became involved in the abolitionist movement. Mr. Salovey explained that Franklin was a "personal hero and role model" of Charles B. Johnson, a businessman and Yale alumnus who donated $250 million to pay for the new buildings — the largest gift in the school's history — and who suggested the honor. In a conference call with reporters on Wednesday, Mr. Salovey said that while Mr. Johnson's gift was not contingent upon naming the college after Franklin, "I really want you to remember this is the largest single gift ever given to Yale. " In addition, the faculty leaders of all Yale residential colleges will shed their title of master they will now be called heads of college, acknowledging the discomfort many students and faculty members felt toward a title that conjures the country's history of slavery. As part of the resolution, Yale will start a historical study examining the " people, events and narratives behind the familiar facades seen on campus," beginning with an appraisal of Mr. Calhoun's legacy. The various decisions came in consultation with the Yale Corporation, the university's governing body. On Wednesday night, the Black Student Alliance at Yale issued a statement calling the naming of Murray College and the abandonment of the master title " first steps towards creating a better and more inclusive Yale. " Retaining the name Calhoun, they said, "is a regression. " Mr. Salovey defended the Calhoun decision as the best possible way for the university to confront its history. "Universities have to be the places where tough conversations happen," he said. "I don't think that is advanced by hiding our past. " Similar heated discussions about historic ties between universities and their racist pasts have inflamed campuses across the country. Princeton's board of trustees decided this month that the name Woodrow Wilson would remain on its buildings and school, despite vociferous student objections. Mr. Wilson was an admirer of the Ku Klux Klan and reinstated segregation in the federal government. Yale has long grappled with the legacy of Mr. Calhoun, who advocated slavery as "a positive good," but the issue found footing last fall after an online petition demanding that the college's name be changed garnered around 1, 500 supporting signatures. The dispute over Calhoun College, founded in 1933, that ensued soon revealed deeper discontent among students and professors over more substantive issues regarding race, in particular what many saw as the university's lack of commitment to faculty diversity and the alienation experienced by many minority students. A group of student activists — operating under the name Next Yale — handed Mr. Salovey a list of demands last year that included increasing the number and tenure of diverse faculty members increasing the budgets for ethnic and racial cultural centers abolishing the title of master and naming the two new residential colleges after minorities. Those demands were met in part, but students have largely remained skeptical. In November, the university announced that it was committing $50 million to a initiative, an effort to address the fact that less than 3 percent of its Faculty of Arts and Sciences is black. Among Yale's roughly 5, 400 undergraduates, 11 percent identify themselves as black or . Karléh Wilson, a senior from Louisiana who has helped organize the Next Yale protests, said she felt the university did not go far enough to meet student demands. "There are more than enough alumni of color who the naming committee could have drawn from," Ms. Wilson, 22, said. Crystal Feimster, a professor of studies, agreed, saying she was "deeply disappointed with the decision not to rename Calhoun" and found the selection of Franklin "a missed opportunity. " Still, she lauded the choice of Ms. Murray, whom she called "a relentless advocate for racial equality and women's rights. " Jonathan Holloway, the college's first black dean of students, called this year "a moment of reckoning" that he hoped would strengthen the university. "We're trying to reconcile our current values and aspirations with these names," he said. "We will have failed if we do not do that work going forward. "


21st Century Wire says Back to square one. Quietly, president Barack Obama is deploying more and more US troops in Iraq, not necessarily to fight ISIS , but firstly to guard the Iraqi oil fields.Notice how this announcement is perfectly timed with the Iraqi Army s military offensive this week to retake the supposed ISIS stronghold of Mosul in Northern Iraq.Will a new Kurdistan rise from the ashes of this geopolitical conundrum, or will it just be more instability?There s more to this new trend than meets the eye. Watch this space Fighting Centers on Key Town of MakhmurJason Ditz Antiwar.comEven as Pentagon officials have sought to emphasize their claims of ISIS being on the run, ever more US ground troops are being deployed into Iraq to try to cope with ISIS offensives, with the battle of Makhmur leading to the introduction of US Marines in front-line combat roles.Officials are trying to downplay the operation as force protection for Iraqi ground troops, who have been massing in the area in an effort to ultimately launch an attack on the ISIS-held city of Mosul, not far away.The explanation is unsatisfying for several reasons, but primarily because this tactical assembly area already includes thousands of Iraqi troops and Kurdish Peshmerga, and these are the same troops who are supposed to attack Mosul. Yet these troops are apparently unable to even hold Makhmur, let alone advance toward Mosul.The Makhmur District is also a key to holding oil fields around Kirkuk, and the ISIS offensive is seen by many analysts as part of an effort to ultimately regain control over those lucrative oil fields, and have been outgunning the thousands of Iraqi troops in the area.Whether they re trying to save Iraqi ground troops who still can t stand up to ISIS, or save oil fields, however, the latest escalation puts US troops even further in harm s way, and has put the war even further afield from the no boots on the ground affair initially promised by the Obama Administration.READ MORE IRAQ NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Iraq Files


Catalan pro-independence party ERC would leave the regional government if regional president Carles Puigdemont calls a snap election, a party source said on Thursday. Puigdemont is set to call a snap regional election, according to political allies, a move that could help break a one-month deadlock between the Madrid government and separatists seeking a split from Spain. It is not justified. It is an explicit renouncement of the Oct. 1 mandate without any sort of compensation, the party source said.


Opinions about the Supreme Court's legitimacy and value usually depend on ideology. Conservatives shouted tyranny after the Supreme Court upended bans on same-sex marriage. Liberals were outraged when the court overturned campaign finance limitations in the Citizens United ruling and gutted the Voting Rights Act in the Shelby County case. But absent the ideological scoreboard, how can we judge the merit of the court? Is judicial review of laws the best way to avoid political influence? Or is major change more lasting and accepted when it's accomplished legislatively?


"honour crimes" have risen by 40 per cent in five years in London, with the number of forced marriages doubling in the same period. [According to the figures, obtained by the Evening Standard, some of the children involved in the abuse were younger than . Since 2012, honour crimes reported to the Metropolitan Police rose to 1, 081 and those relating to forced marriages shot up to 367. Women and girls were the victims in the vast majority of reported incidents, with over half coming from "Asian" backgrounds, the paper reports. Knives and guns were involved in more than 70 incidents, and dozens of rapes and other sexual crimes were reported. Detective Chief Inspector Sam Faulkner, of the Met's Community Safety Unit, said the crimes stem from communities using "cultural religious justifications for male violence against women and girls and other people". They were often based on traditions whereby "an individual, family and community's honour is weighted on women and girls" he said, including refusing to go along with a marriage. "We see an increase in these types of offences as a positive step, an indication that victims have more confidence to report offences to police and seek the support they need" he added. Politicians today called the findings "troubling" "shocking" and "abhorrent". Labour MP Yvette Cooper, chair of the Commons Home Affairs Select Committee, told the Evening Standard: "Too many of these awful crimes are still hidden. There is no 'honour' in violence against women, rape, torture or abuse of a family member. "These are deadly crimes and there is still too little protection, too few prosecutions and too much stigma which prevents people coming forward. "It's vital that when victims do speak out they get proper help from support groups and from the police to keep them safe. " The figures, obtained using Freedom of Information requests, show that "violence against the person" was the most common "honour" attack, accounting for 85 per cent of incidents. Sexual violence was the second largest category, with 56 rapes and 11 "other sexual" crimes. 84 per cent were perpetrated against women, with "Asian" women accounting for more than half.


Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte urged the United States on Tuesday to help control drugs smuggling, blaming Taiwan and Hong Kong-based criminal gangs for using his country as a shipping hub. In a speech, he also said illegal drugs had funded the seizure by Islamist militants of large parts of the southern city of Marawi in May. More than 800 people have died in the conflict, which Duterte said was triggered by an attempt to arrest a drug personality, who he did not identify. The Philippines is a transhipment of shabu to America, Duterte told members of the Philippine Constitution Association, referring to the local term for methamphetamine. It behoves upon America to work closely with the Republic of the Philippines, especially on this serious matter. Duterte, who was elected 16 months ago on promises to fight corruption, crime and drugs, said the so-called 14-K triads in Hong Kong and the Taiwan-based Bamboo triads were using the country as a transhipment point. We are flooded with drugs. This is the first time I would reveal it ... the Philippines today is a client state of the Bamboo triad. They have taken over the operations, he added. Duterte gave no details of the source of his information. Washington has said it supports the country s anti-drug efforts but has also urged Manila to respect human rights and the rule of law in its operations. More than 3,800 people have died in gunfights with police and soldiers in anti-drug operations nationwide since June last year, according to the government. Human rights groups say the figure is much higher.


Chaosistan , Phenomenon of Terrorism by Gulam ASGAR MITHA (Canada)  The American lust for power and neo-con agendas has been causing catastrophes in the Middle East and the Muslim world now for over four decades. What is, however, a cause for greater fear is that this is leading towards a global conflict. The world just got another warning, this time from Donald Trump the US Republican Presidential candidate who has been speaking the truth though rather incoherently since he is not a politician. He has been set up by a strong establishment to ensure that Hillary Clinton wins the November 4 elections. It may seem that the Republicans did not want to host a conflict which is why they provided an opening for Trump against Hillary who will go down in history as the first US woman President. She has no qualms towing the neo-con agenda.  Trump has now openly come out on CNN on October 26 and suggested that Hillary Clinton, when elected, will start World War 3. Why? In my opinion the best reasonings were provided by WeAreChange in a video titled ISIS: The Start of World War 3 (2014) . So here we've Trump who warns not only about the Great War but he is mentioning the need to focus on ISIS and not on Syria. One must remember that the seeds for the Great War were planted in 2011 in Libya first and following that in Syria under the pretext of toppling Assad.  There are too many dots to connect but by connecting some dots chronographically, it is interesting to note a few facts. One is that ISIL (the L being Levant) drove through from Eastern Syria into Iraq stretching from Mosul to Tikrit to slightly north of Baghdad along the banks of River Euphrates for establishing the "Islamic Caliphate". Euphrates is the eastern boundary that Israel claims is the Biblical greater Zion; the Nile being the western boundary. Two, ISIL fighters appeared in a most enigmatic manner in early 2014, very well armed. Some sources have suggested that the weapons were looted from Libyan armories stashed by NATO to topple Gaddafi in 2011 and then smuggled into Syria through Turkey a key NATO ally. On June 13, 2013 the New York Times reported that three Qatari C-17 cargo planes collected arms from Libya then returned to Al-Udeid base from where the cargo was then flown to Ankara, Turkey, along with other weapons and equipment that the Qataris had been gathering for the rebels, officials said. Sources have suggested that funding of $2-4 billion initially came from Saudi Arabia and Qatar through Turkey.  Three, the behaviour of the "terrorists" was unbecoming of Islamic preaching or what any Muslim would condone, especially that towards women and children. Four, within one year of ISIL takeover of a large part of Iraq, the P5+1 nuclear deal was finalized as a historic achievement.  Though US-NATO may not have directly created ISIL or ISIS, there has most definitely been suggestions that the US played a covert role with the overt objective of creating a Sunni bloc.  With retrospect to Iran, the Supreme Leader Ayotallah Ali Khamenei had told Javed Zarif that he supports the P5+1 N-deal maintaining that Iran never had the need for a N-bomb. His reservations were about the Israeli-American interests specifically that "beneath the nuclear bowl lies a half nuclear bowl". He suggested to Zarif to try and find out the agenda but most importantly to get the sanctions lifted. In words of many experts the Iranians got more out of the deal. The Ayatollah was probably aware of the agenda which could well be the Shia-Sunni conflict. The sanctions against Iran had failed to satisfy the US towards weakening Iran; in fact Iran has become stronger much to American chagrin. By lifting the sanctions the US has economically and politically empowered Iran and by default created a Shia bloc extending from Iran to Lebanon which includes Iraq, Syria and Yemen.  Iran had covertly supported Hezbollah in the July 2006 conflict with Israel and now they're again supporting Iraq to successfully oust ISIL from Iraq. Mosul is the last remaining ISIL bastion after which they might flee and regroup with Jabhat Fatal al-Sham (formerly Al-Nusra) and the Sunni coalition (including Turkey, Egypt and Arab countries) in Syria where Russia, Iran and Hezbollah might become engaged in an open conflict.  President Obama has not supported the no-fly zone (NFZ) in his watch mentioning that the Syrian civil war is "not a conflict between the US and any party in Syria" although former US secretary of State Hillary Clinton has publicly supported the idea. In a paper published by the Washington based Institute for the Study of War (ISW) on November 4, 2015, it is mentioned that a UN sponsored NFZ resolution is desirable but not essential for US action. The ISW paper has stated that "if the US intends to lead a sustainable negotiated settlement to the Syrian Civil war or to reinvigorate the moderate rebels, establishing a NFZ is essential."If as President, Hillary Clinton does arbitrarily institute the NFZ without a UN approval that would certainly imply the direct involvement of the US in the conflict which could well become the flashpoint for the Great War  It might interest the reader that the founder of ISW is none other than Dr. Kimberly Kagan, wife of Dr. Frederick Kagan who is associated with the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a Washington based conservative (neo-con) think tank and a signatory to the Project for the New American Century (PNAC). The Kagan family also include Donald, Robert (characterized as a leading neo-conservative) and Victoria Nuland, Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs in which position she maneuvered the Ukrainian crisis in early 2014. Are these diplomats, including John Kerry, slated to be a strong part of Ms. Clinton's cabinet?  In conclusion, it is not unreasonable to forego that Trump is correct that Hillary Clinton could catalyse the Syrian civil war into a global conflict. This author's premise and We Are Change video provides the reasoning that ISIS is the start of WW III.  Gulam Asgar Mitha is a retired Technical Safety Engineer. He has worked with several N. American and International oil and gas companies. He has worked in Libya, Qatar, Pakistan, France, Yemen and UAE. Currently Gulam lives in Calgary, Canada and enjoys reading and keeping in tune with current global political issues. RELATED POSTS


The cellphone video shows Zambrano-Montes, a Mexican national, running away from cops after allegedly throwing rocks at police officers and cars, according to the New York Times. At one point, Zambrano-Montes turns around, and police open fire, killing him. Investigators said police shot at the unarmed man 17 times, hitting him five to six times. Police arrested Zambrano-Montes for assaulting an officer in January 2014, according to the Times. Police said he had thrown objects at them and tried to grab an officer's gun. He pleaded guilty in June. Family members told the Times that Zambrano-Montes was unemployed in recent months. They said he was increasingly depressed and disoriented after he fell from a ladder at an apple orchard and broke both his wrists. In January, he was caught in a house fire that destroyed his belongings. "What I know is that he was alone, that his wife had left him, that he couldn't see his daughters," Pedro Farias, his 32-year-old cousin, told the Times. "I don't know what his reasons were" for throwing rocks at police, "but I know all of this affected him." Among the similarities between Ferguson, Missouri, and Pasco are racial disparities between the city's residents and local government. Pasco is nearly 56 percent Hispanic, but its local government isn't representative of the city's racial makeup, the New York Times reported: The same was true in Ferguson following the August 9 police shooting of Michael Brown. The St. Louis suburb is 67 percent black, but at the time of the Brown shooting the mayor and police chief were white, just one of six city council members was black, zero school board members were black, and only three out of 53 commissioned police officers were black, according to the Los Angeles Times. The Zambrano-Montes shooting fanned tensions between the local Hispanic community and city government. Hundreds of protesters marched in the week following Zambrano-Montes' death, with some voicing concerns that their own children could be killed by police. In response, the Pasco Police Department claimed it's working to recruit more Hispanic officers. Similar protests, now under the banner of "Black Lives Matter," came about following several police killings of black boys and men in 2014. In Ferguson, former police officer Darren Wilson fatally shot Brown, an unarmed 18-year-old. In Ohio, police killed 22-year-old John Crawford and 12-year-old Tamir Rice in two separate shootings after mistaking toy guns for actual weapons. In New York City, NYPD officer Daniel Pantaleo killed Eric Garner by putting the unarmed 43-year-old black man in a chokehold. The most reliable data on police shootings, gathered by the FBI through local and state agencies, is extremely limited — to the point that some criminal justice experts disavow analyzing it altogether — since it's based on voluntary self-reporting. But the data is especially limited for Hispanic victims of police shootings. Samuel Walker, a retired criminal justice professor from the University of Nebraska at Omaha, said there's no research on how many Hispanic victims are left out of police shooting data, but he has reason to believe they're undercounted. Walker pointed out that other parts of the criminal justice system sometimes classify Hispanic people as white, likely overestimating the number of non-Hispanic white people shot and killed by police and underestimating Hispanic victims. In many cases, determinations of race and ethnicity are made by low-level officials, potentially leading to even more errors based on perceptions and prejudices regarding race. Florida, the state with the third largest Hispanic population, is entirely excluded from the FBI's national tally of police shootings, further skewing the numbers. "In short," Walker wrote in an email, "we have no reliable data on Hispanic/Latino people shot and killed by the police." Two Supreme Court decisions in the 1980s, Tennessee vs. Garner and Graham v. Connor, set the legal framework for determining when deadly force by cops is reasonable. Constitutionally, "police officers are allowed to shoot under two circumstances," David Klinger, a University of Missouri-St. Louis professor who studies law enforcement officers' use of force, said in August. The first circumstance is "to protect their life or the life of another innocent party" — referred to as the "defense-of-life" standard by police departments. The second circumstance is to prevent a suspect from escaping, but only if the officer has probable cause to think the suspect poses a dangerous threat to others. The logic behind the second circumstance, Klinger explained, comes from Tennessee vs. Garner. That case involved a pair of police officers who shot a 15-year-old boy as he fled from a burglary. (He'd stolen $10 and a purse from a house.) The court ruled that cops couldn't shoot every felon who tried to escape. But, as Klinger said, "they basically say that the job of a cop is to protect people from violence, and if you've got a violent person who's fleeing, you can shoot them to stop their flight." what matters is the officer's "objectively reasonable" belief that there is a threat The key to both of the legal standards — defense-of-life and stopping a fleeing violent felon — is that it doesn't matter whether there is an actual threat when force is used. Instead, what matters is the officer's "objectively reasonable" belief that there is a threat. That standard comes from the other Supreme Court case that guides use-of-force decisions: Graham v. Connor. This was a civil lawsuit brought by a man who survived his encounter with police officers, but was treated roughly, had his face shoved into the hood of a car, and broke his foot — all while suffering a diabetic attack. The court didn't rule on whether the officers' actions had been justified, but said police couldn't justify their conduct solely based on whether their intentions were good. They had to demonstrate that their actions were "objectively reasonable," given the circumstances and compared to what other police officers might do. What's "objectively reasonable" changes as the circumstances change. "One can't just say, 'Because I could use deadly force 10 seconds ago, that means I can use deadly force again now,'" Walter Katz, a California attorney who specializes in oversight of law enforcement agencies, said in August. In the case of Zambrano-Montes, the legal questions are whether he was actually fleeing after he turned around and whether he posed an imminent threat to the officers or others, which police could substantiate if he was throwing rocks at officers as they allege.


AUSTIN, Texas — Texas is set to get its first immigrant detention center under the Trump administration after a private prison company announced that it won a contract with ICE. [The GEO group announced in a press release on Thursday that it has been awarded a contract by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for the construction and operation of a detention facility located in Conroe, Texas, which is just north of Houston. Under the $110 contract with ICE, GEO is expected to, "design, finance, build, and operate the Facility. " GEO has a long history of partnering with ICE spanning well over two decades. "We are very appreciative of the continued confidence placed in our company by U. S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement," said George C. Zoley, GEO's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. The GEO group has a total of 23 facilities in the state of Texas which includes correctional centers, detention centers, residential reentries, and youth services. According to GEO's website, ICE is a client at four of the facilities in Texas. The largest of the facilities that ICE has a contract for, the South Texas Detention Complex, is in Pearsall, Texas, which can house 1, 904 detainees. The other facilities are the Rio Grande Detention Center, located in Laredo with a capacity 1, 900 Joe Corley Detention Facility, located in Conroe with a capacity 1, 517 and Ector County Correctional Center, located in Odessa with a capacity 235. Ryan Saavedra is a contributor for Breitbart Texas and can be found on Twitter at @RealSaavedra.


In a scientific triumph that will change the way the world fights a terrifying killer, an experimental Ebola vaccine tested on humans in the waning days of the West African epidemic has been shown to provide 100 percent protection against the lethal disease. The vaccine has not yet been approved by any regulatory authority, but it is considered so effective that an emergency stockpile of 300, 000 doses has already been created for use should an outbreak flare up again. Since Ebola was discovered in the former Zaire in 1976, there have been many efforts to create a vaccine. All began with a sense of urgency but then petered out for lack of money. Although only about 1, 600 people died of Ebola over those years, the grotesque nature their deaths — copious hemorrhaging from every orifice — has lent the disease a frightening reputation. Ultimately, only the huge, explosive 2014 outbreak that took 11, 000 lives in Africa and spread overseas, reaching a handful of people in Europe and the United States, provided the political and economic drive to make an effective vaccine. The test results of the trial in Guinea were released Thursday in The Lancet. The vaccine was not ready in time to stop the outbreak, which probably began in a hollow, tree in Guinea and swept Liberia and Sierra Leone before being defeated. But the prospect of a vaccine stockpile now has brought optimism among public health experts. "While these compelling results come too late for those who lost their lives during West Africa's Ebola epidemic, they show that when the next outbreak hits, we will not be defenseless," said Kieny, the World Health Organization's assistant for health systems and innovation and the study's lead author. "The world can't afford the confusion and human disaster that came with the last epidemic. " The vaccine opens up new, faster, more efficient ways to encircle and strangle the virus. The many small Ebola outbreaks that occurred between 1976 and 2014 were all stopped in remote villages by laborious methods: medical teams flew in, isolated the sick, and donned protective gear to treat them and bury the dead. But that tactic failed in 2014 when the virus reached crowded capital cities, where it spread like wildfire and dead bodies piled up in the streets. The new vaccine has some flaws, experts said. It appears to work only against one of the two most common strains of the Ebola virus, and it may not give protection. Some of those who get it report side effects like joint pain and headaches. "It's certainly good news with regard to any new outbreak — and one will occur somewhere," said Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which makes many vaccines and did some early testing on this one. "But we still need to continue working on Ebola vaccines. " The Lancet study was done in 11, 841 residents of Guinea last year. Among the 5, 837 people who got the vaccine, none came down with Ebola 10 or more days later. There were 23 Ebola cases among the thousands of others not immediately vaccinated. (The window was important because the trial used the "ring vaccination" technique developed during the drive to eliminate smallpox. Once a confirmed case was found, researchers contacted everyone in the circle of family, friends, neighbors and caregivers around the victim. About half the "circles" were offered vaccine. No one who fell ill within the first nine days after vaccination was counted, however, because it was assumed that they had already been infected before vaccination.) The Ebola trial was led by the World Health Organization, the Guinean Health Ministry, Norway's Institute of Public Health and other institutions. The vaccine, known as was developed over a decade ago by the Public Health Agency of Canada and the United States Army and is now licensed to Merck. Its genetic "spine" is that of a vesicular stomatitis virus, which sickens cattle but usually does not infect humans. Spliced into the spine is the gene coding for an Ebola virus surface protein that prompts the immune system to make antibodies. Tests in monkeys showed that one shot protected all of them when it was given at least a week before they were given a high dose of Ebola. The shot even protected a few monkeys who received it a day after being infected with Ebola. The Ebola virus has five known subtypes, the most common of which are the one that caused the West African outbreak, and . Ebola is also related to Marburg virus, which is similarly lethal. An ideal vaccine would protect against all Ebola strains and Marburg. However, Dr. Kieny said, it may not be possible to make a shot effective against several strains if it is t based on the VSV spine because VSV triggers a lot of side effects. Risks that are acceptable in the midst of a deadly epidemic are not acceptable in a preventive vaccine given to healthy children and adults, several experts noted. The new vaccine is "a step in the right direction but not the ultimate solution," said Dr. Gary J. Nabel, chief scientific officer for global health research at the Sanofi pharmaceutical company, who designed a different Ebola vaccine in the 1990s when he worked at the National Institutes of Health. A randomized clinical trial involving tens of thousands of subjects is the preferred way to test any vaccine, he noted. But by the time testing could start in in West Africa, isolation and treatment of the sick in tent hospitals had made Ebola cases so rare that researchers had to switch to ring vaccination around the few they could find. A likely candidate for a routine Ebola vaccine is one now being developed by GSK, Dr. Nabel said. It uses two shots: the first has the Ebola surface protein attached to a chimpanzee adenovirus that can infect humans without harming them the second uses a weakened pox virus similar to that used in smallpox vaccine. Dr. Seth F. Berkley, chief executive of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, said his organization's board voted in late 2014 to spend up to $390 million for 12 million doses of an Ebola vaccine. At the time, several companies had candidates but none had been fully tested in humans. "That was at a time when the epidemic was raging and we did not know if it could be controlled without a vaccine," he said. By early last year, when preliminary results suggested the Merck vaccine worked well, Gavi gave the company $5 million to make 300, 000 doses as an emergency supply to be used if exploded again. It is not yet clear how big a stockpile will eventually be created. Merck is now required to seek approval of its vaccine from the World Health Organization, which itself requires licensing by a major regulatory agency like the United States Food and Drug Administration or the European Medicines Agency.


Smaller lavatories are helping airlines to add extra seats to new and existing aircraft for more profit, but some passengers — if they can get into the bathrooms — say they are being shortchanged. The continuing installation of smaller and reconfigured bathrooms, which began in late 2013, has led to complaints about safety issues, say travelers and flight crew, who are concerned about restricted access for the physically disabled, as well as ease of use for other passengers Barry Brandes, a retired singer from Somers, N. Y. travels several times a year on United Airlines. At Mr. Brandes said that getting into the new lavatories on the Boeing a airplane, is not easy. "If I don't duck, I hit my head on the door," he said. "I can't stand up completely, so I have to twist myself into a pretzel to use the facility. " United has a total of 250 Boeing and aircraft that feature a combination of the new lavatory and the traditional lavatory, according to Erin Benson, a spokeswoman. In an email, she said the airplanes are reconfigured for the best use of space. In some aircraft, she noted, lavatories in first class have a new design, but have not decreased in size, while new lavatories located between first class and the first row of economy have decreased in size. The configuration of the toilets can make it especially difficult during medical emergencies to help travelers who are incapacitated or unable to move on their own, said Jeffrey A. Tonjes, a spokesman for United flight attendants in the Association of Flight a union that represents 50, 000 flight attendants at 18 airlines. "Both passenger and flight attendant are in harm's way for injury or slowed response if we have difficulty getting to the passenger," Mr. Tonjes said. "United Airlines is aware of this, and committed to addressing the issue about a year ago, but has been slow in getting the fix done. " The square footage of the old and new bathrooms varies, depending on their location — whether they are in the back next to the galley, on the sides of the plane in front of the galley, in coach or in first class — and the model of aircraft. This reporter recently measured the lavatories on a Boeing which had the traditional, older bathrooms, and on a which had the newer bathrooms. The traditional lavatories in first class and coach on a Boeing measured, 41 inches long by 34½ inches wide by 75 inches high. On a Boeing the new bathroom in first class measured 36 by 27 by 77, and in coach measured 39¾ by 24½ by 77. The new lavatories, which had smaller sinks and trash receptacles, were a bit taller than the traditional bathrooms, but narrower and less deep. Ms. Benson, who declined to give official dimensions, said only that the newer bathrooms shrank three to four inches from the sink to the opposite wall, and lengthened two to three inches from the back of the toilet to the door. The smaller bathrooms, combined with smaller galleys and trimmer seats with less pitch, allow space for an extra row of seats in the rear. Doug Alder, a spokesman for Boeing Commercial Airplanes, said that airlines choose their own lavatory, galley and seat arrangements from various suppliers to create optimal use of cabin space. He declined to reveal lavatory dimensions and added, in an email, that "there is currently only one supplier for lavs across all models of the 737 — Aerospace. " Numerous phone calls requesting an interview with executives from Aerospace, which has its headquarters in Wellington, Fla. were not returned. Ms. Benson of United declined to comment on complaints about the smaller bathrooms and referred questions to Airlines for America, a trade group that represents major United States airlines. Jean Medina, a spokeswoman for the group, wrote in an email: "I'm not aware of issues or complaints on the matter. " United is not the only airline to install smaller lavatories on its newer aircraft. Bobbie Egan, an Alaska Airlines spokeswoman, said six of its airline's 153 Boeing 737s have lavatories that were slightly reduced in size, and that no customer complaints have been registered. "Separately, adjusting [the seat] pitch and removing a lavatory and closet on these six planes enabled us to add one row of seats," Ms. Egan wrote in an email. Delta Air Lines flies the Boeing which all have the smaller lavatories, and Airbus 320s, which are undergoing cabin modification. "A small number of the A320s now have the smaller lavs," said Morgan Durrant, a spokesman for Delta. He said that in customer surveys, there has been no significant feedback or complaints about the size of the lavatories, and no reports of related injuries. Sara Nelson, the international president of the Association of Flight has a different perspective. "The concerns are uniform across the industry," said Ms. Nelson, who added that does not represent Delta flight attendants, who are not unionized. Describing facing lavatories, she said that "the doors of these restrooms open into each other, creating safety issues. There are a lot of injuries, with smashed fingers, doors hitting people, bumps and bruises. " Ms. Nelson said that the rear cabin restroom doors also create a barricade between the cabin and the back galley when open, limiting the ability of crew to maneuver if a passenger in the cabin is in trouble. Some parents with small children say they cannot help their kids in the toilet unless the door stays open. Passengers of size, and those with physical challenges, say getting into the smaller lavatories is often not possible for them. Jake Fitzpatrick, who is in the process of introducing a that reviews travel accommodations for the physically challenged, has cerebral palsy and uses a wheelchair, which requires a caregiver's help in order to use the restroom. When he takes Delta and Alaska Airlines, Mr. Fitzpatrick said, it's impossible for him to get into their bathrooms, so he uses restrooms at the airport before boarding. "It's hard to hold it, even for three to four hours," said Mr. Fitzpatrick, who lives in Portland, Ore. "If I go before, it takes 30 to 45 minutes to board everybody, and when we land, we often have to wait for a gate. A to flight means someone with a disability might have to wait five to six hours to go to the bathroom. " Department of Transportation rules require at least one accessible lavatory on aircraft, but do not require accessible lavatories on aircraft like the Boeing or Airbus 320, which are used for many to flights. Caitlin Harvey, a spokeswoman for the department, wrote in an email that the department has not received a significant number of written complaints from passengers with disabilities about the size of bathrooms on aircraft. However, she said, disability rights advocates have consistently raised the issue, advocating a rule requiring airlines to provide an accessible lavatory on aircraft. So the department has formed the Advisory Committee on Accessible Air Transportation, which comprises industry representatives, disability rights advocates and other experts, to look into it. "The committee is studying a range of promising design and layout solutions, both with respect to the lavatories themselves and with respect to onboard wheelchair design, that may be implemented in the and " Ms. Harvey wrote in an email. "The committee is also studying the costs and that may come with imposing any new accessibility standards. " Such changes can't come soon enough for travelers like Wilma Abbey, a retired teacher from the Nashville area, whose two hip replacements have made maneuvering in airplane bathrooms very difficult. "Just wait until someone gets stuck in one of those bathrooms, causing an emergency landing, and the airline gets sued," Ms. Abbey said. "How much money do the airlines have to make before they provide the basic necessities? I'd like to see airline executives sit in coach and use the bathrooms they've provided us. It's just an insult to the customers. "


Egypt summoned several western ambassadors on Sunday in protest against a statement criticizing the country s detention of a human rights lawyer who was helping investigate the case of a murdered Italian student. Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Britain and Canada issued a statement late on Friday critical of the detention of Ibrahim Metwaly, who was helping investigate the murder of Giulio Regeni. The PhD student s body was discovered in a ditch on the outskirts of the Egyptian capital in 2016 showing signs of extensive torture. An Egyptian Foreign Ministry statement said the German, Dutch and Italian ambassadors had been summoned and that procedures to summon the British and Canadian ambassadors were ongoing. The ministry said the criticism from the five Western countries was a blatant and unacceptable interference in domestic affairs and the work of the judiciary. It is unfortunate that such a statement would be issued from countries that call for respecting rule of law and the principles of separation of powers, it said. Metwaly founded the Association of the Families of the Disappeared after his son disappeared four years ago. He was taken by airport security in September while heading to Geneva to attend a U.N. conference on enforced disappearances, members of his group said. They later said a state prosecutor had ordered his detention. Judicial sources told Reuters on Saturday that Metwaly was detained on charges of spreading false news and joining an illegal group, and that his pre-trial detention was in accordance with the law. Rights activists say Egyptian authorities kidnap dissent and keep them in secret jails without charges. Egypt denies the accusations.


Get short URL 0 13 0 0 The 40-million strong African American community deserved "new deal" to transform their communities, safety and economic prospects as well as the future of their children, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump told a campaign rally in Charlotte, North Carolina.  WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — The city of Charlotte was the site of a mass-murder that shocked the United States last year when nine African Americans holding a Bible study in their church were shot dead. A young white racist Dylann Storm Roof is facing trial charged with the crime. © REUTERS/ Mike Segar Half of US Voters Concerned About Potential Violence on Election Day "[It is time for] a new deal for black America," Trump said in on Wednesday. "I am asking for the honor of your vote and the privilege of serving as your president and I will not let you down… Whether you vote for me or not , I will be your greatest champion." © AP Photo/ Don Ryan Black Lives Matter Activist Endorses Clinton for US President in Opinion Article  Trump said he proposed a three-point plan for the African American community that focused on creating safe communities, great education and high paying jobs. "My vision rests on a principle that has defined this campaign right from the beginning: It is called America First… Every African American citizen in this country is entitled to a job that puts them first… I work for you and I work only for you," Trump noted. ...


A North Korean state agency threatened on Thursday to use nuclear weapons to sink Japan and reduce the United States to ashes and darkness for supporting a U.N. Security Council resolution and sanctions over its latest nuclear test. The Korea Asia-Pacific Peace Committee, which handles the North s external ties and propaganda, also called for the breakup of the Security Council, which it called a tool of evil made up of money-bribed countries that move at the order of the United States. The four islands of the archipelago should be sunken into the sea by the nuclear bomb of Juche. Japan is no longer needed to exist near us, the committee said in a statement carried by the North s official KCNA news agency. Juche is the North s ruling ideology that mixes Marxism and an extreme form of go-it-alone nationalism preached by state founder Kim Il Sung, the grandfather of the current leader, Kim Jong Un. Regional tension has risen markedly since the reclusive North conducted its sixth, and by far its most powerful, nuclear test on Sept. 3, following a series of missile tests, including one that flew over Japan. The 15-member Security Council voted unanimously on a U.S.-drafted resolution and a new round of sanctions on Monday in response, banning North Korea s textile exports that are the second largest only to coal and mineral, and capping fuel supplies. The North reacted to the latest action by the Security Council, which had the backing of veto-holding China and Russia, by reiterating threats to destroy the United States, Japan and South Korea. Let s reduce the U.S. mainland into ashes and darkness. Let s vent our spite with mobilization of all retaliation means which have been prepared till now, the statement said. Japan s Nikkei stock index and dollar/yen currency pared gains, although traders said that was more because of several Chinese economic indicators released on Thursday rather than a reaction to the North s latest statement. South Korea s won also edged down around the same time over domestic financial concerns. Despite the North s threats, South Korean President Moon Jae-in said he was against having nuclear weapons in his country, either by developing its own arsenal or bringing back U.S. tactical nuclear weapons that were withdrawn in the early 1990s. To respond to North Korea by having our own nuclear weapons will not maintain peace on the Korean peninsula and could lead to a nuclear arms race in northeast Asia, Moon said in an interview with CNN. South Korea s Unification Ministry also said it planned to provide $8 million through the U.N. World Food Programme and UNICEF to help infants and pregnant women in the North. The move marks Seoul s first humanitarian assistance for the North since its fourth nuclear test in January 2016 and is based on a longstanding policy of separating humanitarian aid from politics, the ministry said. The North s latest threats also singled out Japan for dancing to the tune of the United States, saying it should never be pardoned for not offering a sincere apology for its never-to-be-condoned crimes against our people , an apparent reference to Japan s wartime aggression. It also referred to South Korea as traitors and dogs of the United States. Japan criticized the North s statement harshly. This announcement is extremely provocative and egregious. It is something that markedly heightens regional tension and is absolutely unacceptable, Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told reporters. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, visiting India, called for strict enforcement of the U.N. resolution, saying the world must force a change. The 15-member Security Council voted unanimously on a U.S.-drafted resolution and a new round of sanctions against North Korea on Monday in response to its latest and most powerful test, banning North Korea s textile exports that are the second largest only to coal and mineral, and capping fuel supplies. North Korea had already rejected the Security Council resolution, vowing to press ahead with its nuclear and missile programs. A tougher initial U.S. draft of Monday s resolution was weakened to win the support of China, the North s lone major ally, and Russia. Significantly, it stopped short of imposing a full embargo on oil exports to North Korea, most of which come from China. The latest sanctions also make it illegal for foreign firms to form commercial joint ventures with North Korean entities. U.S. President Donald Trump has vowed that North Korea will never be allowed to threaten the United States with a nuclear-tipped missile, but has also asked China to do more to rein in its neighbor. China in turn favors an international response to the problem. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said the international community had reached a high consensus on trying to realize a peaceful solution. We urge the relevant directly involved parties to seize the opportunity and have the political nerve to make the correct political choice as soon as possible, Hua told a regular press briefing. The North accuses the United States, which has 28,500 troops in South Korea, of planning to invade and regularly threatens to destroy it and its Asian allies. The United States and South Korea are technically still at war with North Korea because the 1950-53 Korean conflict ended with a truce and not a peace treaty. (For a graphic on North Korea's missile and nuclear tests, click tmsnrt.rs/2vXbj0S)


Email Print This has been the worst week for Hillary Clinton and the best week for the American people. For years, Americans have accepted that Hillary Clinton is simply "too big to jail." We began to lose hope when the FBI let her off the hook the first time, but it appears Director Comey knew he had to correct a major wrong. An avalanche of investigations has now occurred against Hillary Clinton, her campaign, and her foundation. FBI Director James Comey made the announcement in a letter last Friday afternoon that the bureau will be reopening the investigation into Hillary Clinton's illegal use of a private email server. Two days later, the FBI opened a second investigation into the Clinton Foundation. As on November 4th, we have reports that two more investigations have been opened by the FBI. The third investigation spawned from WikiLeaks releasing thousands emails and documents purporting that the Clinton Foundation was linked to child exploitation and Jeffrey Epstein. The fourth investigation entails the IRS reviewing the Clinton Foundation for tax evasion, money laundering, and many other things. Hillary sure does make history. Second time she has been under criminal investigation this year as a presidential candidate.  — Martin Walsh (@mrwalsh8) October 28, 2016 According to sources with the FBI , it is being heavily reported that FBI Director James Comey has ordered all agents in the Washington D.C. field office and Hoover Building headquarters to report to work immediately Friday morning. "We're preparing for many arrests from the top down," an FBI source stated. "I cannot elaborate beyond that." When the FBI source was asked to elaborate on what he meant by "from the top down," he added, "You're a smart guy; read between the lines." FBI protocol indicates that two scenarios could be unfolding in this situation: The FBI is either preparing to obtain search warrants where they will search any and everything dealing with the Clinton Foundation or they are preparing to make arrests on any and all individuals involved. Or, they are preparing to carry out both actions. We cannot confirm what documents the FBI has, but an FBI source has indicated that they are preparing to make arrests in the coming days. We are unsure if that means Hillary Clinton, but we are confident that many of her cronies will be arrested and charged with several crimes in the coming days. The FBI has the opportunity to right their wrongs. They have more than enough evidence to charge @HillaryClinton . Do your job.  — Martin Walsh (@mrwalsh8) November 2, 2016 At this moment, here is a list of the crimes Hillary Clinton and her team are being investigated for by the FBI: Money laundering Sex crimes with minors (children) Perjury Pay to play through Clinton Foundation Obstruction of justice Other felony crimes The FBI would not open several investigations weeks before a presidential election unless the evidence was overwhelming. For the first time in American politics, it appears that no one is too big to jail–even a Clinton. Sources with with the FBI are indicating that orders have come down from the very top that they will be taking actions immediately against Hillary Clinton, her team, and her foundation. Charges for these crimes would result in long prison sentences as well as hefty fines. They would also result in Hillary Clinton losing this election in a complete landslide. We very well may see Hillary Clinton arrested by the FBI in the coming days. Time will tell. Stay tuned.  If you haven't checked out and liked our Facebook page, please go here and do so. Leave a comment...


This needs to happen.David Letterman is no stranger to dealing with Donald Trump. The comedy legend humiliated Trump repeatedly as host of The Late Show. And since retiring, Letterman hasn t shied away from commenting on Trump s dumpster fire presidency when he is asked about it.During an interview with the Associated Press on Monday, Letterman made it clear that he is sick of Trump s constant whining and offered a brilliant solution. We know there s something wrong, but what I m tired of is people, daily, nightly, on all the cable news shows telling us there s something wrong, Letterman said before calling for action. I just think we ought to direct our resources and our energies to doing something about it, Letterman continued. And other people have made this point: If the guy was running Dairy Queen, he d be gone. This guy couldn t work at the Gap. So why do we have to be victimized by his fecklessness, his ignorance? Indeed, Trump would have been fired long before now and definitely would not have even been hired after many of the things he has said in public. Ordinary American workers would no longer have a job if they repeated some of things Trump has said.Letterman also had a message for Trump s supporters. Letterman said he feels bad for them because they got duped into thinking Trump would be best for America. Letterman said that he wishes Trump would be the one who fixes the problems our country faces. But Trump is not the right person to get the job done. In fact, Trump should be ousted from office and placed in a home where he can get the medication he needs whenever he feels the need to rant uncontrollably. But it s just the behavior is insulting to Americans, whether you voted for him or not and I feel bad for people who did vote for him because he promised them things that they really needed and one wonders if he s really going to come through. I know there s trouble in this country and we need a guy who can fix that trouble. I wish it was Trump, but it s not, so let s just stop whining about what a goon he is and figure out a way to take him aside and put him in a home. David Letterman s solution is a great idea but the only place Donald Trump should really be right now is prison. Either that or a mental health facility.Featured Image: Screenshot


Italy seized more than 24 million tablets of a synthetic opiate that Islamic State militants planned to sell to finance attacks around the world, the head of a southern Italian court said on Friday. The pills were seized by finance police and customs officials in the container port of Gioia Tauro, Italy s biggest, according to a statement. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration collaborated in the investigation. A video shows police opening a container filled with boxes of Tramadol, a powerful painkiller normally available only on prescription. With an average sale price of about 2 euros ($2.33) per tablet, the haul was worth 50 million euros, the statement said. Foreign investigators told the court in the city of Reggio Calabria that the drugs belonged to Islamic State. The drugs sales were managed directly by Islamic State to finance the terrorist activities planned and carried out around the world , Reggio Calabria s chief prosecutor Federico Cafiero De Raho said. Part of the illegal profit from their sale would have been used to finance extremist groups in Libya, Syria and Iraq, he said. The seizure comes three days after an Uzbek immigrant, Sayfullo Saipov, drove a truck on a New York City bike path, killing eight, in the latest attack claimed by Islamic State. No details on how the illegal shipment was discovered or on its final destination were provided by the court. A similar shipment was discovered in Greece last year, and an even larger one was found in Italy s Genoa port in May.


German authorities investigating the delivery of a package containing powerful firecrackers, wires and nails to a pharmacy near a Christmas market in the city of Potsdam said on Sunday it was criminal activity rather than terrorism. Karl-Heinz Schroeter, interior minister of the state of Brandenburg where Potsdam is located, told a news conference criminals were behind the package which they had used to try to extort millions of euros from logistics firm DHL, which had delivered the package. Police said it was highly likely that the package could have exploded. Staff at the pharmacy in Potsdam, just outside Berlin, called the police on Friday after they discovered the suspicious package. The Christmas market was evacuated and the package was made safe by a police robot. DHL warned the public not to open packages if they did not recognize the sender s address or if the sender s address was suspicious. As we find ourselves approaching Christmas, which is not only a time of peace, but also a time when many presents are sent, such an act of extortion is reprehensible, Schroeter told the news conference. He said all efforts were being made to catch those who sent the package. Authorities said the people who sent the package most likely lived in Berlin or in the state of Brandenburg, which surrounds the German capital. They did not say how much money they had demanded, but said they had told DHL they would send more packages that could kill or injure if DHL, owned by Deutsche Post, refused to pay up. Brandenburg police chief Hans-Juergen Moerke said that a QR barcode that can be read using a smart phone was found on a piece of paper inside the package. The extortion letter addressed to DHL was found in the barcode. (The story was refiled to remove the reference to the police search after the news conference)


Will Hillary Clinton Get America Back on Track? Posted on Oct 31, 2016 U.S. Embassy London / CC BY-ND 2.0  The parallels are striking. In the last decades of the nineteenth century – the so-called "Gilded Age"— America experienced inequality on a scale it had never before seen, combining wild opulence and searing poverty.  American industry consolidated into a few giant monopolies, or trusts, headed by "robber barons" who wielded enough power to drive out competitors. A few Wall Street titans like J.P. Morgan controlled the nation's finances.  These men used their huge wealth to rig the system. Their lackeys literally deposited stacks of money on the desks of pliant legislators, prompting the great jurist Louis Brandeis to tell America it a choice: "We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we cannot have both."  We face a similar choice today.  Advertisement Square, Site wide  Then, America chose democracy. President Theodore Roosevelt, railing against the " malefactors of great wealth ," broke up the trusts. And he pushed Congress to end the most blatant forms of corruption.  His fifth cousin, FDR, went further – enacting social insurance for the elderly, the unemployed, and the disabled; a minimum wage and forty-hour workweek; the right to unionize; compensation for workers injured on the job; and strict limits on Wall Street.  In other words, between 1870 and 1900, American capitalism got off track. Between 1901 and 1937 (the effective end of the New Deal), America put capitalism back on track.  We're now in the Second Gilded Age, and American capitalism is again off track. It takes about three generations for Americans to forget how our system, unattended, goes wrong. And then to right it.  Inequality is now nearly at the same level it was in the late nineteenth century. Half of all families are poorer today than they were a decade-and-a-half ago, the pay of CEOs and Wall Street bankers is in the stratosphere, and child poverty is on the rise.  Meanwhile, American industry is once again consolidating – this time into oligopolies dominated by three or four major players . You can see it in pharmaceuticals, high tech, airlines, food, Internet service, communications, health insurance, and finance.  The biggest Wall Street banks, having brought the nation to the brink of destruction a few years ago, are once again exercising vast economic power. And big money has taken over American politics.  Will we put capitalism back on track, as we did before?  The vile election of 2016 doesn't seem to offer much hope. But future historians looking back on the tumult might see the start of another era of fundamental reform.  Today's uprising against the established order echoes the outrage average Americans felt in the late nineteenth century when they pushed Congress to enact the Sherman Antitrust Act, and when Democratic presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan fulminated against big business and finance.  One hundred twenty years later, Bernie Sanders – the unlikeliest of presidential candidates – won 22 states and 46 percent of the pledged delegates in the Democratic primaries, and pushed Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party to adopt many of his proposals.  At the same time, Donald Trump – a faux populist – has laid bare the deep discontents of America's white working class, which both parties have long neglected. Not incidentally, Trump has also jeopardized the social fabric of America and nearly destroyed the Republican Party.  Hopefully some of America's current elite will conclude, as it did at the turn of the last century, that they'd do better with a smaller share of a growing economy fueled by a flourishing middle class, in a society whose members feel the system is basically fair, than in one riven by social and political strife.  History has proven the early generation of reformers correct. While other nations opted for communism or fascism, Americans chose to make capitalism work for the many rather than the few.  If Donald Trump is elected next week, all bets are off.  But if Hillary Clinton assumes the presidency, could she become another Teddy or Franklin D. Roosevelt?  You may think her too much of an establishment figure, too close to the moneyed interests, too cautious. But no one expected dramatic reform when each of the Roosevelts took the reins. They were wealthy patricians, in many respects establishment figures. Yet each rose to the occasion.  Perhaps she will, too. The timing is right, and the need is surely as great as it was over a century ago.  As Mark Twain is reputed to have quipped, "history doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes."


Report Copyright Violation Face It. Nobody Cares About Wikileaks Because Trump Doesn't Have The "Temperament" To be President. He's Scary. Trumps twitter rants and threats show him as petty and vindictive, he said Saudi Arabia should have nukes,he throws tantrums.Trumps dangerous temperament overrides everything else because he can't be trusted with the nuclear football.And that is not even speaking of his racism and sexism. Page 1


We re living in a world where we have willingly surrendered our privacy for the sake of making identification of ourselves, and our children more convenient for our government and for private businesses and entertainment venues like Disney World. Students and faculty at Harrison Street Elementary School just love the new thumbprint scanner in the school s lunch line, but civil rights experts are warning parents about serious privacy concerns with the technology.The Geneva Unit District 304 replaced a different biometric scanner system for school lunch lines this year with devices from a local company, PushCoin Inc., that read students thumb prints to track their accounts, the Daily Herald reports. It s good, because you don t have to carry your own money or anything like that, fifth-grader Quinlan Bobeczko told the news site. It s just there. Your thumb is easy, because you just have to put your thumb on (the device). Officials in several area school districts are watching District 304 in hopes of installing similar devices in their schools.East Maine Elementary District 63 spokeswoman Janet Bishop said the district hired PushCoin Inc. this spring to begin offering the thumb scan option this month, and Lake Zurich Unit District 95 board president Doug Goldberg said schools there will implement the biometric scanners in the 2016-17 school year, the Daily Herald reports. I will tell you that many of the kids aren t very good about keeping track of their ID cards, Goldberg said. And so moving to biometrics was felt to be sort of the next generation of that individual, unique ID. We ll record their thumbprints, there will be thumbprint readers at all the cash registers, and they ll simply come by and bang hit their thumbprint. It makes it faster and, also, there s a lot less opportunity for any kind of misuse or fraud when they re using biometrics. PushCoin Inc. allows parents to closely monitor their children s lunch accounts through email updates, and the company s CEO, Anna Lisznianski contends the scanners can help school officials use lunch time more efficiently.


On Election Day the enthusiasm of receiving an I Voted sticker never came for many Massachusetts voters. The oval sticker that never came for many voters bears an American flag. Woburn resident Elisabeth Sweeny, who was rejected, stated that she did not get one. Sweeny also said that she was a little bit excited because it is entertaining to post the sticker on social media. She also declared that to wear it shows people that it is important to vote and that she was also extremely disappointed that she did not receive one. Daniel Stiffler who answered the phones at the city clerk's office said that due to budget cuts the local government of Woburn decided not to give voters the stickers. Stiffler also stated that because the state government does not supply the stickers for the cities and towns when the local budget is cut. Elections Division spokesman, Brian McNiff, said it is the responsibility of the individual city and town to stock up on the stickers for election day. However, it is not an obligation to pass out an emblematic tag to any voter who passes through the door. Written by John A. Federico Edited by Cathy Milne Source: Boston.com: Some people are upset they didn't get an 'I Voted' sticker Featured Image Courtesy of Thomas Hawk's Flickr Page – Creative Commons License election


Michael Savage is a very well known radio talk personality. The Savage Nation is a nationally syndicated talk show that is the second most listened-to radio talk show in the country with an audience of over 20 million listeners on 400 stations across the United States.Earlier today he was discussing his perspectives on the presidential debate and giving examples of current and anticipated debate bias.In addition, the broadcaster began discussing Hillary Clinton s mysterious health condition that Savage believes might be Parkinsons.Almost immediately, and without any notification, New York (tri-state area) radio station WABC-Radio TV cut Savage off the air and replaced him with the lesser rated Curtis And Cooby Show.Shortly thereafter, as Michael Savage discovered the issue and began discussing what was going on in/around the New York broadcast area, all Savage affiliates nationwide cut off the broadcast and replaced the live transmission with a recording of a previous show. HERE S THE SHOW AS IT HAPPENED:


Among those killed last Friday in an attack on Coptic Christians that resulted in 30 deaths was Atef Mounir Zaki, who had recently renovated a local mosque for free. [According to Coptic academic Iz Tawfiq, who spoke with the website Al Arabiya, Zaki was a renovations contractor from the town of Abou Karkass in the Minia district where the attack on a bus of Coptic pilgrims occurred last Friday. Zaki was also used to provide equipment and workers to construction sites. Several months ago, when the Altaqwa Mosque in his city needed renovations due to cracks that endangered the structure, Zaki was asked by the mosque's managers to do the required work. Zaki agreed and, according to witnesses, did the best job possible. Upon completion of the task, when the managers wanted to pay for the work, Zaki refused to take the money and said, according to Tawfiq, that he "contributed to the renovation of a house belonging to Allah" and his work "was a contribution for Allah. " According to the report, he wasn't killed in the bus itself because he traveled to the monastery where the Coptic pilgrims' bus was headed in his private vehicle. During their escape from the area of the attack, and after a malfunction in their vehicle, a number of terrorists stopped Zaki and shot him and those with him in the car before stealing his vehicle and using it to flee. According to the Al Arabiya report, Zaki's funeral was very large and attended by many Muslims. Copts, including many children, were killed in the attack. Almost all the deaths occurred after armed men disguised as Egyptian security personnel stopped the bus on its way to the St. Samuel the Confessor Monastery in the Minia district south of Cairo.


The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday rejected a bid by Michigan to reinstate its Republican-backed ban on straight-ticket voting for the Nov. 8 general election. The justices left in place a decision by a federal district judge in Michigan who in July suspended a law that abolished straight-ticket voting, the practice of using one mark to vote for all candidates from one party, finding that it would disproportionately affect black voters. The 6th U.S. Court of Appeals upheld that finding last month, prompting the state to seek a stay from the Supreme Court. Two conservative justices on the eight-member court, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, voted to grant the request, the brief order said. The Michigan law, passed by a Republican-controlled legislature and signed by a Republican governor, was one of numerous voting measures passed at the state level that put new restrictions on voting. These measures also include stricter voter-identification laws and reduction of early-voting periods before election day. Proponents of the law, enacted in January, have said most states have moved away from a straight-ticket voting option. Removing the option forces voters to study candidates and encourages voters to make decisions based on criteria other than party affiliation, they said. Opponents say voting restrictions are aimed at reducing turnout of minorities, who are more likely to vote for Democrats. U.S. District Judge Gershwin Drain in July granted a preliminary injunction sought by civil rights and labor groups who sued Michigan's Secretary of State Ruth Johnson and Attorney General Bill Schuette. The judge said elimination of straight-ticket voting would be a burden on voting rights and cause long wait times at polls. After Friday's decision, Schuette said, "It is my duty to defend Michigan's laws, in this case a law that stands in 40 other states. Now the U.S. Supreme Court has spoken and I will respect that decision." The case is one of several voting disputes being litigated ahead of the election and is the second emergency application the Supreme Court has recently been asked to handle. On Aug. 31, the court rejected a bid by North Carolina to reinstate for November's elections several voting restrictions, including a requirement that people show identification at the polls. The high court is short one justice following the death of conservative Antonin Scalia in February. As a result the court is evenly split 4-4 between liberals and conservatives.


White House press secretary Sean Spicer told reporters Wednesday that an alleged draft executive order titled "Detention and Interrogation of Enemy Combatants" "is not a White House document. "["I have no idea where it came from," stressed Spicer. Various mainstream media outlets, including the New York Times (NYT) and the Washington Post (WaPo) published the contents of this document, suggesting it was a legitimate draft from White House officials. The alleged draft directs national security officials to "recommend to the president whether to a program of interrogation of alien terrorists to be operated outside the United States," and addresses whether to lift the ban on the use of "black site" prisons overseas implemented by Barack Obama. Moreover, it orders the Pentagon chief to "maintain and continue to use the detention and trial facilities at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base for the detention and trial by military commission of alien enemy combatants [already] captured in the armed conflict … including for the detention and trial of newly captured alien enemy combatants" not only affiliated with the Taliban and but also the Islamic State ( ). NYT acknowledged in their report that the Trump White House did not respond to a request for comment on the draft order. Today, the White House press secretary denied any affiliation with the document. The alleged draft order would have also directed U. S. Secretary of Defense James N. Mattis to work with the Attorney General and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) to "review the military commissions system and recommend to the president how best to employ the system going forward to provide for the swift and just trial and punishment of unlawful enemy combatants detained in the armed conflict with violent Islamist extremists. "


One "brutally honest" Oscar voter says nominee Meryl Streep played her role in this year's Florence Foster Jenkins "like a clown" — and believes the actress was only awarded a nomination in return for delivering her infamous Trump speech at last month's Golden Globes. ["I thought Meryl [Streep in Florence Foster Jenkins] played it like a clown — she's cute and adorable, but this woman didn't matter to me in the end — but people are gaga over Meryl, and I think she solidified her nomination when she gave that speech at the Golden Globes," the anonymous Oscar voter told the Hollywood Reporter. The Academy member — a female member of the acting branch — added: "I don't think she would have gotten nominated without it. " In January, Streep used her Cecil B. DeMille Lifetime Achievement Award acceptance speech at the Golden Globes to rebuke President Trump for what she called his "disrespect" and his "violence" the actress also challenged a "principled press" to stand up to the president, and urged Hollywood to support the Committee to Protect Journalists. The 's Globes speech was lauded by the film industry and the press and set the tone for other awards shows to feature screeds. Later that month, actors including Ashton Kutcher and Julia trashed Trump and his executive order on immigration from the podium at the Screen Actors Guild Awards. In February, a number of artists at the 59th annual Grammy Awards used their performances to make political statements, including Busta Rhymes, A Tribe Called Quest and Katy Perry. The Hollywood Reporter solicits opinions from anonymous Oscar voters every year in the week before the ceremony. While the responses of one Academy member are hardly an indication of how the entirety of the 6, 000+ members will ultimately vote, the "brutally honest" ballots usually offer a refreshing perspective on the process. In addition to her comments on Streep, this year's anonymous voter said La La Land star Emma Stone's performance wasn't "as wonderful" as everyone is saying, the thriller Arrival "just sucked" and the Denzel Davis starring Fences underwhelmed because "they just filmed the play. " See the rest of the anonymous voter's "brutally honest" ballot here. The Academy Awards air Sunday night on ABC. Follow Jerome Hudson on Twitter @jeromeehudson


As reported earlier today, Reuters has named the whistleblower in Uranium One as William D. Campbell. According to John Solomon of Circa News, the undercover whistleblower is a consultant and his evidence will show Russian agents with suitcases of cash to bribe the Clintons for US uranium:Campbell says he s in fear for his life and will be testifying on Monday.John Solomon disputes the Reuters attempt to downplay the information from this informant He says this guy has big info on the Dems and Hillary OUR PREVIOUS REPORT ON REUTERS OUTING CAMPBELL AND THE GAG ORDER ON CAMPBELL: The FBI informant who went undercover to look into Hillary Clinton s role in an Obama administration-era uranium company was identified yesterday in an exclusive from Reuters:William Campbell, a Russian lobbyist, is the informant, according to Reuters. He will be testifying before a congressional committee about the 2010 sale of Uranium One, where a Russian-backed company bought a uranium firm with mines in the U.S. Campbell gave information to the FBI about what he saw while undercover as an informant. I have worked with the Justice Department undercover for several years, and documentation relating to Uranium One and political influence does exist and I have it William CampbellCongressional committees have previously tried to interview Campbell, as he was undercover for roughly five years, working to get information on Russia s efforts to grow its atomic energy business in the U.S.Department of Justice spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores told The Hill that a deal was reached in late October, clearing the informant to talk to Congress for the first time almost eight years after he first went undercover.Two House chairmen also announced a probe in late October which is digging into new reports about Russian efforts to influence the Uranium One nuclear purchase that gave Russia control of roughly 20 percent of America s uranium.When Clinton served as secretary of state, Russia routed millions of dollars to the Clinton Foundation, and former President Bill Clinton collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in Russian speaking fees as part of Russian efforts to influence the U.S. government to approve the deal, The Hill reported.OUR PREVIOUS REPORT ON THE GAG ORDER THAT HAS BEEN LIFTED BY SESSIONS:LAWYER FOR FBI INFORMANT: My Client Knows What Russians Were Saying During Bribery of Clintons [VIDEO]Campbell s attorney, Victoria Toensing, said on Fox Business that former attorneys general under the Obama administration are the reason her client hasn t been able to tell what all the Russians were talking about during the time that all these bribery payments were made. The lawyer for the FBI informant under a gag order that prevents him from going before Congress spoke out about what s to come with the Clinton/Russia Uranium story:Fox Business reported: An informant for the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is under a gag order that prevents him from testifying before the United States Congress that Russian nuclear officials were involved in fraudulent dealings in 2009 before the Uranium One deal was approved.Former Attorney General Loretta Lynch blocked the informant from testifying last year and threatened criminal action against him if he were to do so.In an interview with FOX Business Lou Dobbs, Victoria Toensing, the attorney representing the FBI informant, said she has never heard of a criminal penalty for breaching a non-disclosure agreement (NDA). If it does and it is unconstitutional and it s invalid, if it prohibits my client from giving information to the legislature, the executive cannot say to people, Hey, you can t give information to another body of the government, Toensing said.KEY POINTS: The Republican leadership was blocking the investigation into both Benghazi and the Russia uranium scandal involving Clinton.The NDA (gag order) is unconstitutional and Toensing says this type of gag order has a criminal penalty. She says she s never heard of this type of gag order.Victoria Toensing is one of the best lawyers in DC and will get to the bottom of this one way or another. The plot thickens on this one


President Donald Trump put pressure on Democrats on Sunday as U.S. lawmakers worked to avoid a government shutdown, saying Obamacare would die without a cash infusion the White House has offered in exchange for their agreement to fund his border wall. The escalated push to get Trump's priorities, which Democrats reject, into spending legislation could jeopardize prospects for an agreement to keep the government open. If talks fail, the government would shut down on Saturday, Trump's 100th day in office. "Obamacare is in serious trouble. The Dems need big money to keep it going - otherwise it dies far sooner than anyone would have thought," the Republican president said in a Twitter post. In a second tweet, he added: "The Democrats don't want money from budget going to border wall despite the fact that it will stop drugs and very bad MS 13 gang members." MS-13 is a criminal gang with members of Central American origin. The president's tweets appeared after White House budget director Mick Mulvaney accused Democrats of "holding hostage national security" by opposing $1.5 billion to help build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, one of Trump's top campaign pledges. Democrats have said they would not support legislation that ends federal subsidies to help low-income people buy health insurance under the Affordable Care Act, popularly known as Obamacare. The healthcare law was former Democratic President Barack Obama's signature domestic policy achievement, which Republicans are trying to repeal and replace. On Sunday, Democrats called for Trump to stop making "poison pill" demands. Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said negotiations between Democrats and Republicans in both the House of Representatives and the Senate were "going quite well" and that he was hopeful a deal could be reached. "The only fly in the ointment is that the president is being a little heavy handed, and mixing in and asking for things such as the wall," Schumer told reporters. "We'd ask him to let us do our work, not throw in some last-minute poison pills that could undo it, and we could get this done," he said. Trump wants money for the wall included in spending legislation that Congress must pass by Friday to keep the federal government operating through Sept. 30, when the 2017 fiscal year expires. Mulvaney and White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus played down the danger of a shutdown. Mulvaney said talks between Republicans and Democrats could produce an agreement as early as Sunday. "I'm pretty confident we're going to get something that's satisfactory to the president in regard to border security within the current negotiations," Priebus said on NBC's "Meet the Press." Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly said Trump had been clear about his desire for a wall. "I would suspect he will be insistent on the funding," he told CNN's "State of the Union." The White House is expected to address another Trump campaign promise this week with a Wednesday announcement on tax reform that Mulvaney said would offer "governing principles, some guidance, also some indication of what the rates will be." But he said basic elements of the plan remained undecided, including whether to have deficit-funded tax cuts that would not be permanent. "You can either have a small tax cut that's permanent, or a large tax cut that is short term," he said. In a tweet on Saturday, Trump promised that a "Big TAX REFORM AND TAX REDUCTION will be announced next Wednesday." Legislative text on tax reform is not expected until June, Mulvaney said. Spending legislation will require Democratic support to clear the Senate, and the White House says it has offered to include $7 billion in Obamacare subsidies to help low-income Americans pay for health insurance, if Democrats accept funding for the wall. Democrats showed no sign of softening their opposition to wall funding on Sunday and sought to place responsibility for any shutdown squarely on Trump and Republicans who control the House of Representatives and the Senate. "The Democrats do not support the wall," House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi told NBC's "Meet the Press." "The wall is, in my view, immoral, expensive, unwise." Senator Richard Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, called on Trump to "back off." "To think that he would consider shutting down the government of the United States of America over this outlandish proposal of a border wall ... that would be the height of irresponsibility," he told CNN.


For this Sunday's Arts and Leisure section, I profiled John Mayer, the singer, songwriter and guitar virtuoso, who also happens to be a prodigious talker — for better or worse. In 2010, a run of interviews changed the course of his career as both a musician and a celebrity. "Only recently do I make decisions about putting a record or a video out that aren't saddled with guilt," he said this month in Los Angeles. "I feel like I have a) done the work and b) been out long enough so that people can believe I've done the work. " He added: "It took me five years to go, 'O. K. come on, let's go back to the party. You're not going to make a fool of yourself. '" As Mr. Mayer prepped for the release next month of his new album, "The Search for Everything," which he hopes will be return to the pop mainstream, I trailed him between the recording studio and a shoot for a music video, a frenetic four days capped by an additional interview over dinner. Below are some additional edited excerpts from our hours of conversation. (You can read the full story here.) "Your No. 1 Google result is a certain thing, but you've got to do something bigger than that to knock it off of first place. For me, when I was at my most popular, I maligned myself. It's a very interesting thing because if, when you mellow out in your life, it's the wrong time . .. I think a lot of people's last impression of me is outdated. "As I autopsy that part of my life, it turns out that I was under the impression that I was a bigger star than I was. I appreciate that there was a market correction. I actually really do. There was a market correction and I'm probably about as big as I should be. " [He quickly revised this statement.] "I'd like to be a little bigger. " "My brother just had a baby. That'll rattle you, man. I'm looking at these pictures of him giving her a bath when I'm lying in a hotel penthouse in Hollywood and it's almost a cliché. The oxytocin flows freely in my brain when I see that stuff. "[For me,] everything anatomically and chemically is healthy. It works. All the mechanisms are in place. It's just the life that I have, which is fabulous — it's just a bit more time on the International Space Station. Don't ever let me give you the sense that I don't love being on the International Space Station. It's a pretty cool reason why you haven't settled down — because you're an astronaut. I've never hated it. Sometimes I get upset at the way that it is, but the real question is: Will the appearance of this job prevent what I'm absolutely entitled to psychologically? That's the scary part. "I'm still always going to be a kid from Fairfield, Conn. They don't make rock stars in Fairfield, Conn. They don't. They make good people who get a job, get married, they watch TV together, they start a life together and make other good people. " "I live for FedEx tracking numbers. I have a FedEx tracking number that's so hot right now I'll be watching it all night like Norad tracking Santa Claus. It's from Japan, it's getting here tomorrow. But [my stuff] gets held up in customs a lot because it's so much Japanese clothing that customs is like, 'What store is this going to?' Like, no, it's a person. 'It can't be going to a person, this is too much commercial value. '" "'Your Body Is a Wonderland' lives so much in its own atmosphere that it's like it's been handed to me by some other person. There was a time where I didn't want to play it, where I took it very personally that people were making jokes about it. Now I go: 'It's kind of cool to have one.' I don't know if you've made it if you don't have the one [thing] that the least initiated person can yell at you when they see you. Dave Chappelle has Rick James, you know?" "We live in a time right now where the message will be judged against the messenger. There are times when I say to myself, 'I don't have the right to.' Because I haven't introduced myself to the world or placed myself as a mouthpiece in that way, I guess I shied away from it. " "I had the most incredible time there and I learned a lot about who I used to be, because I used to have my heart out in front of me to every person I met. It didn't matter who you were. I didn't have time to make a value judgment. Everybody would get to look at it and touch it and put their gum out on it. And I would leave sad because I would go in with this huge, heavy beating heart for somebody to come put their arms around me and think I was great. And they just wouldn't because you don't do that at a party. "But I go through the therapy and I grow up and I dig out the things that were stuck in the fibers. [At the party,] I didn't put my heart out to anybody that I didn't know. I didn't even bother going up to people that I didn't know. The thing I told myself, which is so healthy — so please don't tell me that I'm wrong — was: 'She doesn't care about me.' It's not my job to win them all over. " "You are not included in something if you are a solo artist. You cannot feel inclusion. You cannot feel being under a wing. I had never before been out of that role where you are in the saddle and everything is your call and all eyes are on you. Since I was a teenager! I was just there as a piece of their puzzle. " "Here's what'll happen: Some people will write, 'I can't front, John Mayer's got moves, though.' And some people are going to write, 'John Mayer looks hideously dumb dancing.' Here's my prediction: The people who say that I have moves aren't fans of mine and the people who say that I was hideous and made a fool of myself are John Mayer fans. Because they just don't see me that way. "