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State Department to conduct internal probe of Clinton email case

The U.S. State Department said on Thursday it will conduct an internal review of whether Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and her aides mishandled classified information, after the Justice Department declined to bring criminal charges. The State Department said in April it had suspended plans for an internal review at the request of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which conducted a yearlong probe of Clinton’s use of private email servers while she was secretary of state. “Given the Department of Justice has now made its announcement, the State Department intends to conduct its internal review,” State Department spokesman John Kirby said in a statement. “I cannot provide specific information about the Department’s review, including what information we are evaluating. We will aim to be as expeditious as possible, but we will not put artificial deadlines on the process,” he said. On Wednesday, U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch said she would accept the recommendations of the FBI not to bring criminal charges against Clinton, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee for the Nov. 8 election. FBI Director James Comey said on Tuesday Clinton had been “extremely careless” in the handling of classified information, and Republicans have criticized the decision not to prosecute. Comey told a congressional hearing on Thursday that FBI employees who mishandled classified material in the way Clinton did as secretary of state could be subject to dismissal or loss of security clearance.

politicsNews

July 8, 2016

Trump sold all his shares in companies in June: spokesman

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump sold all of his shares in companies in June, aides said on Tuesday, a move that likely raised substantial cash ahead of the presidential election and could now ease some concerns about potential conflicts of interest. Trump’s stock portfolio included shares of companies including Apple Inc, Microsoft Corp, JPMorgan Chase & Co and a host of others, according to a financial disclosure form filed in May. Trump spokesman Jason Miller said in an email that Trump sold all of his shares, but he did not respond to questions about what Trump did with the sales proceeds or whether he withdrew from any other investments at the same time. The Republican’s transition team did not provide documentation of the sales. Trump will not have to file a new financial disclosure form until May 2018, according to the U.S. Office of Government Ethics. Presidents typically provide some such information voluntarily during their first year in office. Selling his shares would reduce some potential for conflicts for the businessman-turned-politician as he prepares to take over the White House from Democratic President Barack Obama on Jan. 20. It would not address concerns about Trump’s personal and family business activities, which include hotels and golf resorts from Panama to Scotland. Trump has said he will step back from running his business, but he has not given any detail about the arrangements. During the presidential campaign, Trump indicated he had pulled back from the stock market. “I did invest, and I got out, and it was actually very good timing,” he told Fox Business in an August interview. The issue arose after Trump urged the government to cancel an order with Boeing Co for a revamped Air Force One presidential plane. The New York real estate developer, who defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton in the Nov. 8 election, said, without citing proof, that costs for the aircraft were out of control. Trump had previously said he owned Boeing shares. Asked earlier on Tuesday whether the president-elect still owned them, Miller said Trump sold all his shares in June, but it was not clear at the time whether he was speaking only about Boeing stock.

politicsNews

December 6, 2016

Republicans Despondent After Final Benghazi Report Finds NO EVIDENCE Hillary Clinton Wrongdoing

When Republicans announced that they would be abruptly releasing the conclusions to their exhaustive, five-year Benghazi witch hunt this week, political strategists were stumped. Either this meant they had something explosive and wanted to unload it, or it meant they had absolutely nothing and wanted to bury the wasted energy, money and time spent on this anti-Hillary Clinton hit job long before the election rolled around.Upon releasing the document, it became instantly clear which option this was: Even after five years, the Republican-led Benghazi investigation found absolutely zero evidence that Hillary Clinton did anything wrong. Nor did they find a single way Clinton could have saved any of the victims. In short, the investigation was a complete and total dud.As the New York Times summed up:Ending one of the longest, costliest and most bitterly partisan congressional investigations in history, the House Select Committee on Benghazi issued its final report on Tuesday, finding no new evidence of culpability or wrongdoing by Hillary Clinton in the 2012 attacks in Libya that left four Americans dead.Not that Republicans didn t try their hardest. The investigation cost a truly staggering $7 million and took years to conduct. At every turn, the evidence suggested Clinton was not irresponsible with her actions while Secretary of State, and at every turn that evidence was ignored in the hopes that there was a bombshell just around the corner.Also admitted to during the final report? President Obama didn t lie to the American people about what happened in Benghazi. That was right-wing spin.The investigations generally concluded that after the attack, the Obama administration s talking points a matter of much dispute were flawed but not deliberately misleading.The idea that President Obama would have all the information to accurately describe what was unfolding in Benghazi as it happened was preposterous. As someone once wryly remarked, George W. Bush spent years telling the American public that Iraq was responsible for 9/11, President Obama spent a few hours saying we don t know what happened in Benghazi. Hardly an impeachable offense.Nevertheless, Republicans including Trump s campaign have tried to make a lot of political noise based on these rumors. In a sick irony, Trump s own lawyer spent the same morning this report was released openly accusing Hillary Clinton of murder because of Benghazi.NBC/WSJ poll has @realDonaldTrump beating #CrookedHillary on #Honesty & #NationalSecurity. This picture says it all! pic.twitter.com/E9YKIgoqnV Michael Cohen (@MichaelCohen212) June 28, 2016Clinton was understandably relieved to have this nonsense put past her. Despite the lack of evidence, certain corners of the internet routinely cited Benghazi as a reason not to vote for her. That talking point has finally and comprehensively come undone. After more than two years and more than $7 million in taxpayer funds, the Committee report has not found anything to contradict the conclusions of the multiple, earlier investigations, a spokesman for the Clinton campaign said in a statement. This report just confirms what Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy and even one of Trey Gowdy s own former staffers admitted months ago: this Committee s chief goal is to politicize the deaths of four brave Americans in order to try to attack the Obama administration and hurt Hillary Clinton s campaign. In many ways, this final white flag by Republicans represents the increasingly despondent way they are viewing the upcoming election. Their candidate is a belligerent, self-aggrandizing bigot that is currently losing by historic numbers in the polls. If the GOP had any shot at competing in this election with that guy, they needed something like Benghazi to derail Clinton. Instead, they were forced to admit there was nothing there.By releasing the report now, there is a clear sense that the Republican Party is hoping to dig their trenches, hunker down and wait out whatever comes next. The Benghazi investigation going down in flames isn t exactly a game-ender, but it s certainly not the game-changer they had hoped for either.Featured image via Drew Angerer/Getty Images

News

June 28, 2016

Harry Reid Calls For FBI Head To Be Investigated Following Russian Bombshells

Sen. Harry Reid is calling for FBI Director James Comey to be investigated after Friday revealed bombshell after bombshell regarding Russia s interference in the U.S. election. Reid put the head of the FBI on blast Saturday morning following the release of a secret CIA assessment that concluded Russia had meddled in the presidential election with the intent of helping to get Donald Trump into the Oval Office. I think [Comey] should be investigated by the Senate, he should be investigated by other agencies of the government, including the security agencies, Reid told MSNBC. You look at the accounts we have just in the press the last few days its stunning, stunning, the conclusions reached by the press. Thank goodness we ve got them still around this is not fake news, okay? he added.The CIA report found that Russia had hacked the DNC, as well as the RNC. However, we all know whose information made it onto Wikileaks and whose didn t. This tidbit of information lends credence to the theory of U.S. intelligence agencies who believe that Russia interfered for one reason: to get Trump elected.Reid is convinced that Comey knew Russia was screwing around with the presidential election, but chose to withhold this information from the American public until after Election Day. I am so disappointed in Comey. He has let the country down for partisan purposes, Reid added, calling for the FBI director to step down.Reid also took the opportunity to praise Sen. Lindsey Graham for his efforts to lead an investigation into Russia s election meddling. I believe Lindsey Graham is a voice of concern, Reid said.Graham, along with Sen. John McCain, is heading up efforts to launch a wide-ranging probe into Russia s hacking and interference. President Obama has also ordered a full review of Russian interference in November s election, which is to be completed before he leaves office in January.Watch more on Reid s call for an investigation into Comey, here;.@SenatorReid says FBI Director James Comey should be investigated in wake of CIA revelations. RETWEET 2AGREE #AMJoy https://t.co/Xu9THTOOfz AM Joy w/Joy Reid (@amjoyshow) December 10, 2016Featured image via Alex Wong/Getty Images

News

December 10, 2016

South Korea's Moon, Japan's Abe agree to raise pressure to max on North Korea

South Korean President Moon Jae-in said North Korea s launch of an intermediate ballistic missile that flew over the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido amounted to violent conduct to a neighbouring country, his office said on Wednesday. Moon agreed with Japanese Prime Minister Abe in a telephone call on Wednesday that pressure must be raised to the maximum on the North to leave Pyongyang with no choice but to come to dialogue, the presidential Blue House said in a statement.

worldnews

August 30, 2017

MUSLIM ACTIVISTS LAUNCH VOTER REGISTRATION DRIVE, As They Know 2016 Election Will Decide America’s Future

Who would ve guessed? A coalition of U.S.-based Muslim groups claiming that anti-Muslim backlash is on the rise in the wake of the terrorist attacks in Paris and San Bernardino hopes to register one million people to vote before the 2016 election as part of a civic empowerment initiative. Oussama Jammal, the secretary general of the U.S. Council on Muslim Organizations, also announced in a press conference held Monday at the National Press Club that the group will seek to increase emergency preparedness for Islamic institutions and individuals to address the rising number of incidents of hate crimes that are unfortunately happening nationwide. While the press conference participants who hailed from such groups as the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), and the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA) focused little attention on the recent terrorist attacks, they focused on some of the political rhetoric that has followed.To address what they perceive as public and political backlash, the groups plan the massive Muslim voter outreach as well as a major educational outreach which will include a One America program aimed at helping non-Muslims understand Islam.One speaker, ISNA vice president Atlaf Husain, urged local, state and federal politicians who aspire to political victory to engage Muslims.He also cautioned: If you as a political candidate choose to spew hatred, bigotry and to vilify Muslim-Americans, you do so at your own political risk. We will use every democratic small d democratic means political strategies to ensure that your candidacy never succeeds. Press conference participants were vague on how the massive Muslim voter registration effort will unfold.Responding to a reporter s question on the matter, Jammal said that the coalition will mobilize the Muslim community through early voting efforts and by busing and shuttling voters to polling stations. Via: Daily Caller

left-news

Dec 23, 2015

Twitter BURNS Trump For Thanking White Supremacist Steve Bannon In Post Attacking Hillary Clinton

Donald Trump is truly pathetic.Trump has reportedly not been able to contact Steve Bannon since signing off on his firing on Friday.Calls for Bannon s removal only increased after Trump s refusal to condemn Nazis in the wake of the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia.So, Trump decided to reach out to Bannon on Twitter and thanked his top white supremacist deputy for his service. But Trump did more than just thank Bannon.Trump also insulted Hillary Clinton in a clear demonstration that he does not care about the civility associated with the office of the presidency.I want to thank Steve Bannon for his service. He came to the campaign during my run against Crooked Hillary Clinton it was great! Thanks S Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 19, 2017This obsession with Hillary Clinton needs to stop. More Americans voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 than did for Trump. When Trump insults her, he insults the millions of Americans who voted for her.That s the kind of divisive rhetoric that presidents avoid, and it s the rhetoric that has emboldened Nazis and white supremacists.Many Twitter users took aim at Trump.I did Nazi that coming! Alt Sarah H. Sanders (@AltUSPressSec) August 19, 2017pic.twitter.com/Ea24ZPoOHp Tonneke (@ton566) August 19, 2017You will be Tweeting terrible things about Bannon within a couple weeks when the Breitbart Anti-Trump machine kicks in. Impeach Donald Trump (@Impeach_D_Trump) August 19, 2017The only thing crooked is your fake presidency. News View (@NewsView100) August 19, 2017pic.twitter.com/QHJZD8Eaes Vassilis Ntousas (@VNtousas) August 19, 2017At least Hillary isn t a White Nationalist like yours truly. pic.twitter.com/VhvS8GjOUb The Tweetwit (@TheTweetwit) August 19, 2017A bigoted, hateful man like Steve Bannon should have never been in the administration. Anirvan Ghosh (@anirvanghosh) August 19, 2017Remember to thank him for all the white supremacy he brought to the White House. You must be so proud of that achievement. Mike P Williams ? (@Mike_P_Williams) August 19, 2017Last time I checked it wasn t her accused of treason, racism and nepotism and under several federal investigations Mr HipsterPharmacist (@PhilP85) August 19, 2017Donald Trump is a divisive racist who should be impeached. His presidency has been a train wreck from day one and it s only going to get worse unless Congress does something to stop him.Featured Image: Alex Wong/Getty Images

News

August 19, 2017

Chainsaw MASS-acre: This Nun Is Doing More For Irma Victims Than Leather-Face Trump

On Tuesday afternoon, Miami-Dade Police tweeted a picture and an amazing video of one Sister Margaret Ann helping with cleanup from Hurricane Irma. Despite wearing some questionably suitable clothing for operating heavy equipment, the nun from Archbishop Coleman F. Carroll High School in the Miami suburb of West Kendall, Florida was on the scene with a chainsaw to put the fear of God into some downed trees in her neighborhood.We are #OneCommunity in @MiamiDadeCounty! Thank you Sister Margaret Ann of @ACCHS_Bulldogs for pitching in as we recover from #Irma ? pic.twitter.com/KSqdHFHJuv Miami-Dade Police (@MiamiDadePD) September 12, 2017? of Sister Margaret Ann in action. Thank you to all of our neighbors that are working together to get through this! We are #MiamiDadeStrong pic.twitter.com/5tG6nzk7Ye Miami-Dade Police (@MiamiDadePD) September 12, 2017The Sister is geared up for doing the Lord s work, and I can t help but wonder what other pious servants of Jesus are up to today. Let s see, we ve got Ted No Right To Masturbate Cruz he s got his hands full with a staffing issue Twitter mishap today. Mike Pence is probably about to give Mother her afternoon peck on the cheek, so he can t really grab a rake or a shovel. And what about the Proselytizer-in-Chief, Trump himself?He s busy congratulating his son Eric on the birth of their very-biblically nicknamed new child, Luke. Congratulations to Eric & Lara on the birth of their son, Eric "Luke" Trump this morning! https://t.co/Aw0AV82XdE Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 12, 2017I have no idea what the quotation marks are for, so I m just going to assume it s so nobody thinks Donald s newest grandchild is about to write the next book of Acts. But with a new baby to fawn over the genes of, and his Twitter to maintain, there s no way that Donald Trump has any time to be helping with any silly hurricanes. After his administration started talking about withholding Harvey aid, did anyone actually expect any different?All I know is, that s one bad-ass nun. Trump could take a lesson from Sister Margaret Ann.Featured image via Alex Wong/Getty Images

News

September 12, 2017

Trump leaves some on Wall Street wary and confused

Donald Trump has said a lot of things that, were he a sitting U.S. president instead of a candidate for the job, could be expected to roil financial markets. If investors were taking the Republican presidential nominee at his word, they would be selling shares of Apple Inc (AAPL.O), Mondelez International Inc (MDLZ.O) and Ford Motor Co (F.N), and cashing out of Mexican equities - all targets of Trump threats of boycotts, barrier walls or import taxes. Investors betting on a Trump presidency would be buying shares of U.S. companies that dealt exclusively with domestic customers and suppliers. Yet the Trump trade is not much in evidence on Wall Street, where some market strategists and investors told Reuters they find it difficult to position their portfolios for his possible presidency, in part because many of his proposals are contradictory or lack specific implementation details. MORE BUSINESS COVERAGE: Ex-Goldman banker Gordon Dyal beefs up M&A boutique Amazon makes its debut in the student loan business  More pain for U.S. crude Should Trump win the Nov. 8 election, some investors said, it is not clear how the New York businessman could push through policies that clash with mainstream Republican party views on free trade and low taxes. “The investment community in particular is having trouble figuring out what (Trump) is about,” said Bruce McCain, chief investment strategist at Key Private Bank in Cleveland. “They are not taking individual items as seriously as they would with other candidates,” he said. Traders said they will be watching Trump’s speech at the Republican convention on Thursday night for signs of how he would address business and tax issues, though they expect scant detail. The Trump campaign did not respond to calls and emails requesting comment on how investment strategists viewed his policies. U.S. stock indexes have rallied to new highs as Trump received the nomination of his party on a platform that includes a proposal to reinstate the 1933 Glass-Steagall law that would require a breakup of the largest U.S. banks. A Trump presidency “would not be good for markets at all,” because of the uncertainty among investors about his true priorities, said Paul Zemsky, chief investment officer of multi-asset strategies and solutions at Voya Investment Management in New York. Zemsky, however, said he has not so far been selling securities because of Trump. “It’s hard to react to things that are said because of the lack of specificity, and the probability of him being elected is still low so changing your portfolio because of him is not likely to be profitable,” he said. To be sure, Trump has supporters on Wall Street. Anthony Scaramucci, founder of SkyBridge Capital, has backed Trump and said he would be good for the economy because he would cut back on business-limiting regulations, such as those governing bank investments and labor policies. He also thinks Trump would bring in tax reform. Although never elected to public office, Trump defeated 16 Republican rivals to win the nomination. He trails Democratic rival Hillary Clinton by 7 percentage points, narrowing the gap from 15 points late last week, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Tuesday. If Trump’s stated proposals were carried out, that could leave the economy significantly weaker because they would result in large federal budget deficits and an anti-global stance that could hurt trade, according to a June analysis by Moody’s Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi. Zandi forecast the loss of 3.5 million jobs during a Trump administration alongside a drop in stock prices and real estate value. Trump has said he would renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement with Mexico and Canada, build a wall between the United States and Mexico to stop illegal immigrants, and raise a 35 percent tariff on products made in Mexico by Ford and United Technologies Corp’s (UTX.N) Carrier Corp. Yet there has been no selloff of Mexican stocks, which are up 10 percent so far in 2016. That is the best gauge of investment reaction to Trump, said Jack Ablin, chief investment officer at BMO Private Bank in Chicago. “For the most part,” Ablin said, “that suggests to me the investment community has not considered a Trump presidency a probable scenario at this point.”

politicsNews

July 21, 2016

New York vows to sue Trump over immigrant children protections

New York and Washington state on Monday vowed to sue President Donald Trump if he scraps a program shielding from deportation immigrants who came to the United States illegally as children. The Trump administration is expected to announce on Tuesday that he will end the so-called Dreamers program but give the U.S. Congress six months to craft legislation to replace it, according to sources familiar with the situation. [nL2N1LL01P] U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions will announce plans for ending the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program at 11 a.m. (1500 GMT) on Tuesday, but will not take questions, the Justice Department said on Monday. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, in a joint statement with the state’s attorney general, Eric Schneiderman, said, “The president’s action would upend the lives of hundreds of thousands of young people who have only ever called America their home.” The attorney general of Washington state, Bob Ferguson, also threatened legal action. “I will use all the legal tools at my disposal to defend the thousands of Dreamers in Washington state,” he said in a statement. Ferguson and Schneiderman were among 20 attorneys general who wrote to Trump in July to say that if he ended the program, they would defend it “by all appropriate means.” Nine Republican state attorneys general have said they would file suit on Tuesday if Trump did not end the program. The White House declined to comment on Monday. DACA is a policy created by former President Barack Obama that protects nearly 800,000 young people, often called “Dreamers,” from deportation and allows them to work legally. Under the shift Trump is considering, any Dreamer with a valid work permit would be able to remain in the United States until the permit expires, in the absence of congressional action, sources familiar with the matter said. At the same time, the Department of Homeland Security would not target Dreamers for deportation, one of the sources said. Dreamers are a fraction of the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants in the United States, most of them Hispanic. Trump as a candidate promised to deport all of them, but many Americans have rallied to support the young adults, who have spent large parts of their lives in the United States. While Republicans in Congress have generally taken a hard line on illegal immigration and are sympathetic to the argument that Obama overstepped his bounds in creating DACA, several have stepped forward to call for action to protect the Dreamers. House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan, the top elected Republican official, on Friday urged Trump not to rescind the program, as did Senator Orrin Hatch. Senator James Lankford said on Monday it was not appropriate to “hold children legally accountable for the actions of their parents.” Another Republican, Senator Tom Cotton, who has been particularly outspoken on reforming immigration laws, told the Washington Examiner he supports legislation that would protect dreamers and take legal steps to reduce illegal immigration. Many prominent business leaders, including the chief executive officers of Microsoft (MSFT.O), General Motors (GM.N) and Facebook Inc (FB.O) — Satya Nadella, Mary Barra and Mark Zuckerberg, respectively — have also urged Trump not to reverse the Dreamer program.

politicsNews

September 4, 2017

#NeverTrump GOP Delegates: Party Brass Intimidating Us Into Supporting Trump (VIDEO)

Donald Trump is the Republican Party s presumptive presidential nominee for the 2016 election. However, there is a growing faction of the party that is not at all happy about this. Trump has been a public relations nightmare since the day he started running, and he is showing no signs of stopping that trend. Further, anyone with a brain can see that he is dangerously unqualified to hold the office of the presidency. However, that has not stopped major GOP players from lining up behind Trump like the spineless, party-before-country morons that they are. The #NeverTrump faction of the party sees this as the massive problem that it is, though, and they have decided to openly revolt in an effort to deny Trump the nomination at the GOP convention in Cleveland.This newly formed group of #NeverTrump delegates has rebranded themselves. They are now known as Free the Delegates. The name comes from the idea that delegates bound to Donald Trump should be free to vote their conscience at the convention rather than being forced to vote for the presumptive nominee. They held a conference call Sunday night, with a reported more than 1,000 Republican delegates nationwide participating in the brainstorming efforts to stop Trump from formally taking their party s nomination.However, there is a problem. The party elite at the state and national level are not going to easily allow these country-before-party Republicans to rise up against Trump. Delegates from the #NeverTrump faction say that they are facing intimidation from party leaders who are insisting that they are all, as a party, obligated to support Trump. A delegate from North Carolina says that she and other N.C. delegates are very much under direct threat from our state with a $10,000 fine if they refuse to vote for Trump. She also alleges that she was threatened via social media over her #NeverTrump position. The same delegate says that in Arizona, in order to participate in the convention, delegates actually have to sign a pledge that they will, unequivocally, vote pro-Trump.Despite the intimidation and threats, though, those on the nationwide Sunday night call say that they want those who are uneasy about Trump to do the right thing, not the easy thing. #NeverTrump Colorado delegate Regina Thompson said to those who support their cause: We want you to be proud to tell your children and grandchildren that the person we have nominated and are ready to elect as president is a moral person who will take seriously the oath of office. Will you be able to tell them that you were not afraid of public opinion or party leaders? Luckily, the #NeverTrump delegates already have an outside PAC, called Courageous Conservatives, that is going to be collecting funds to help with legal fees due to the inevitable blowback those looking to oust Trump will face. Spokesman Steve Lonegan says to the delegates that it will help to provide you support should you be threatened on the state level with some form of retribution. Kendal Unrah of Colorado is on the RNC Rules Committee and firmly #NeverTrump. She says of the planned ousting: It s just kind of an easy sell. And I don t think that there s going to be enough organized resistance on the other side to defeat it. Unruh does acknowledge how difficult it will be to get rid of Trump, but she is also optimistic: I m just very glad that we ve just all come together so quickly, because we have a monumental task to actually accomplish. But I will tell you the momentum that I have seen within the last week it is just astonishing how fast this has come together, she said. We re going to be hitting our peak right at convention time. Good luck, #NeverTrump delegates. You re the only remotely moral GOPers left in your party.Either way, this GOP civil war should be massively fun to watch for Democrats.Here is a video detailing the newly revived #NeverTrump effort, via NBC News:Featured image via Joe Raedle/Getty Images

News

June 20, 2016

#FakeNews Made By Mainstream Media

21st Century Wire says There is no greater source of so-called fake news than the corporate mainstream media, particularly those outlets in the US. On a recent SUNDAY WIRE show, host Patrick Henningsen talks about US Mainstream Media fakery which has taken over Washington DC, exposing the litany of lies and disinformation being cranked-out by TIME Magazine, CNN, NBC News, New York Times and the Washington Post. Listen:[soundcloud url= https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/304139324 params= auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&visual=true width= 100% height= 450 iframe= true /] . READ MORE MSM FAKERY AT: 21st Century Wire MSM FilesSUPPORT 21WIRE SUBSCRIBE & BECOME A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV

US_News

January 27, 2017

Boston Globe denounces Trump candidacy in 'front page' satire

Headlines screaming “Deportations to begin” and “Markets sink as trade war looms” top a parody newspaper front page the Boston Globe posted on Saturday, with a scathing editorial denouncing Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump’s candidacy. The mock-up, offering the Globe’s satirical view of America under a Trump presidency, was set to run as the front page of the newspaper’s “Ideas” section, followed on page 2 of that section by the anti-Trump editorial. The novel front-page spoof, says the editorial, is designed to take Trump’s rhetoric and his policy positions to their “logical conclusion.” “It is an exercise in taking a man at his word,” the editorial says. “And his vision of America promises to be as appalling in real life as it is in black and white on the page.” There was no immediate comment from Trump or his campaign. The editorial brands the billionaire businessman as a “demagogue” whose own political vision is “profoundly un-American.” It casts his closest rival for the 2016 Republican nomination, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, as “equally extreme” and urges Republicans, if possible at the party’s nominating convention in July, to draft a “plausible, honorable” alternative, suggesting U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan or former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney. The mock Trump page was conceived and executed by the Globe’s editorial writers, columnists and commentary editors, who make up the newspaper’s editorial board, said Ellen Clegg, the newspaper’s editorial page editor. Noting that she reports to John Henry, the Globe’s publisher, Clegg stressed to Reuters in a telephone interview that the front-page parody “does not involve our newsroom.” Clegg said she knew of no other such expression of political satire ever published by the Globe or any other major metropolitan daily in the United States during her 30 years at the newspaper. But it was reminiscent of the kind of parody regularly featured by the farcical online news outlet, The Onion. The mock front page envisions a host of political, financial and international scenarios ranging from disturbingly surreal to darkly humorous, all playing on Trump’s real pronouncements about illegal immigration, Muslims, national security and the First Amendment. A color photograph of Trump making a speech is centered near the top of the page under a banner headline reading: “Deportations to begin,” with a subhead reporting that Trump was calling for a tripling of immigration enforcement personnel as “riots continue.” A top story on the page opens with the paragraph: “Worldwide stocks plunged again Friday, completing the worst month on record as trade wars with both China and Mexico seem imminent.” Other mock entries include a story about unrest in the ranks of the U.S. military as soldiers refuse orders to kill family members of Islamic State militants, and the headline: “New libel law targets ‘absolute scum’ in press.” In a more tongue-in-cheek vein, a brief item reports Trump on the “short list” for the Nobel Peace Prize. “His feat? Healing a 1,385-year-old schism between Sunni and Shi’ite Muslims, which has fueled bloody conflicts across the globe for centuries.” Clegg said it was not the first time the Globe, which tends to lean Democratic on its opinion pages, has editorialized against Trump, but it marked its most “resolute” opposition to his candidacy.

politicsNews

April 10, 2016

U.S. Senate leader expects review of healthcare bill by Monday

U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Thursday said he expects congressional analysts to unveil their review of the cost and impact of House Republican’s healthcare plan by Monday. In an interview with Politico, McConnell said senators will have plenty of opportunities to amend the plan, adding that U.S. President Donald Trump was “all in” the party’s efforts to roll back the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare.

politicsNews

March 9, 2017

House tax committee plans public hearings on tax overhaul

The tax oversight committee in the U.S. House of Representatives will hold public hearings in coming weeks as the panel prepares to unveil legislation to overhaul the U.S. tax code, congressional aides said on Wednesday. The plan for hearings emerged during an hour-long meeting between House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady and 15 panel Democrats, according to a House Democratic aide. There were no details about when the hearings would occur, what tax reform issues would be addressed or whether the full Ways and Means Committee would preside. “We had a positive and open discussion, and I appreciated the opportunity to engage in a two-way dialogue,” Brady, a Texas Republican, said in a statement afterward. The Republican-led committee is expected to unveil tax reform legislation this spring in preparation for a summer vote on the House floor. Committee staff have been working to craft a bill based on a House Republican blueprint that would sharply cut taxes for businesses and individuals. House Speaker Paul Ryan said on Wednesday that the House, Senate and White House, all controlled by Republicans, “aren’t on the same page yet on tax reform.” Brady announced the bipartisan meeting earlier this week, saying the discussion would focus on ways to simplify the U.S. tax code for individuals and prevent U.S. companies from moving production and research facilities overseas - two Republican objectives. “It was clear from this meeting we share the same fundamental goals on tax reform, particularly as it relates to growth and simplicity,” a Republican committee aide said. Brady underscored his intention to include a border adjustment tax provision in tax reform legislation, aides said. The policy, which would impose a 20 percent tax on imports, has divided the business community and drawn criticism from Republicans in the House and Senate. Wednesday’s meeting marked the first time Brady sat down with the committee’s Democratic members to discuss the House Republican tax reform plan, aides said. But the bipartisan atmosphere was jarred by the release of a letter from committee Republicans to President Donald Trump, calling for the removal of John Koskinen as Internal Revenue Service commissioner. Koskinen was appointed by former Democratic President Barack Obama. “Democrats raised this letter with Republicans during the meeting, noting how this type of partisan action hurts the prospects for bipartisanship in other issues, such as working together on issues like tax reform,” the Democratic aide said.

politicsNews

April 5, 2017

SEC approves budget of independent accounting board

The Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday approved the budget for the auditing watchdog that oversees the work of leading U.S. accounting firms. The SEC staff recommended approving the budget of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) and SEC Commission Chair Mary Jo White and Commissioner Kara Stein endorsed the $257.7 million budget. Commissioner Michael S. Piwowar voted against, saying he was skeptical of the nearly 3 percent increase in the PCAOB budget from a year ago. He also said he was not persuaded that the additional burden on accounting firms and broker-dealers, which fund the PCAOB through fees, was merited. “The Commission represents the only safeguard to an otherwise unilateral ability to impose the accounting support fee on companies and broker-dealers,” said. The SEC controls the budget and assigns members of the PCAOB, which was conceived to prevent future accounting scandals like the one that brought down energy company Enron in 2001. The SEC has two vacant seats and the Senate Banking Committee is due on Tuesday to consider two nominees put forward by the White House. Commission Chair Mary Jo White has said she intends to wait until the agency once again has its full, five-member panel before moving forward to appoint a new PCAOB chief. Current PCAOB Chairman James Doty’s term expired last fall.

politicsNews

March 14, 2016

Sh*t Just Got Real: FBI Looking Into Whether Agents Leaked Info To Giuliani During Campaign

FBI Director James Comey said during a Senate Judiciary Committee oversight hearing that he was looking into whether agents at the bureau leaked sensitive information to reporters or public figures, including close Trump ally Rudy Giuliani, during the 2016 presidential election.The highly anticipated hearing was revealing.During a Senate Judiciary Committee oversight hearing, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) asked about former FBI official Jim Kallstrom s and Giuliani s claims that they had inside information about the bureau s probe into Hillary Clinton s use of a private email server. Now either they re lying or there is a serious problem within the bureau, Leahy said. Did anybody in the FBI during this 2016 campaign have contact with Rudy Giuliani about the Clinton investigation? I don t know yet, but if I find out that people were leaking information about our investigations whether to reporters or private parties, there will be severe consequences, Comey said.Comey went on to say that he was very, very interested in getting to the bottom of the matter and that once the FBI did so, he would inform the committee.Last October, the former New York City mayor and Trump adviser, hinted at the FBI s reopening of its email investigation into Clinton during an appearance on Fox & Friends October 25. People speculated that Giuliani appeared to have an inside contact with the agency who was giving him information.Giuliani said the Trump campaign had a couple of surprises left , and said that further revelations were coming.The very next day Giuliani told Fox s Martha MacCallum that there was a surprise or two that you re going to hear about in the next two days. The former mayor and Trump surrogate also claimed to be in contact with numerous FBI officials, then later, he backpedaled that remark, saying that his sources were all former agents.However, during multiple cable news interviews before the election, Giuliani bragged that former agents had clued him into the revolution coming on in the FBI in regards to how the probe into Clinton s email server was handled.During the hearing, Comey also slammed Wikileaks as intelligence porn. The FBI director went on to call Russia the greatest threat of any nation on earth, given their intention and capability, to U.S. political systems.By the way, has anyone seen Rudy Giuliani lately? He has suddenly disappeared from cable news. Weird, huh? It s almost as if he knows a storm is coming.Next week it will be Sally Yates O Clock and she will testify about Michael Flynn.This is what we call karma and it s spelled, ha ha ha ha ha ha haaa! Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images.

News

May 3, 2017

Israeli air strike hits near Syria's Homs

An Israeli air strike targeted a factory south of the Syrian city of Homs on Wednesday and the Syrian army responded by firing a surface-to-air missile at the aircraft, a commander in a military alliance fighting in support of Damascus said. The commander told Reuters the air strike had hit a copper factory in the industrial town of Hisya, 35 km (21 miles) south of Homs and 112 km (70 miles) north of Damascus. The commander did not give details of any casualties. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based organization that reports on the war, said the air strike had targeted a military installation. An Israeli military spokeswoman declined to comment. Israel s Channel 10 said the aircraft were not hit and returned safely to base. The Israeli air force says it has struck arms convoys of the Syrian military and its Lebanese ally, the Iran-backed Hezbollah, nearly 100 times in recent years. Israeli officials have expressed alarm at Iranian influence in Syria, where Iran-backed groups have played a critical role fighting in support of President Bashar al-Assad during the conflict that erupted in 2011. Iran s military chief General Mohammad Baqeri warned Israel against breaching Syrian airspace and territory during a visit to Damascus last month. Last month, five projectiles from Syria set off air raid sirens in Israeli towns, prompting the Israeli military to say it would step up its response to stray fire from the Syrian war that has repeatedly spilled over the border. The Israeli air force attacked a Syrian anti-aircraft battery earlier that week that Israel said had fired a missile at its planes while they were on a reconnaissance mission over neighboring Lebanon. Tensions between Israel and Hezbollah, which last fought a major conflict in 2006, have escalated this year. Each side has warned it would unleash devastating firepower in the event of a full-scale war.

worldnews

November 1, 2017

Venezuela Supreme Court has staged effective coup: jurists' group

Venezuela s Supreme Court has progressively dismantled the rule of law, becoming an instrument of President Nicolas Maduro s government in what amounts to a coup against the constitutional order, an international human rights group said on Tuesday. The collapse of the judiciary has left victims of torture, killings and disappearances and their families without recourse to justice after months of violent street protests, the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) said. It called on the U.N. Human Rights Council to take action. We have seen a judiciary that has essentially lost its independence and become a tool of a very authoritarian executive branch, Sam Zarifi, ICJ Secretary-General, told a news briefing. This breakdown of the rule of law has also severely obstructed accountability (and) essentially made it impossible to bring to justice those responsible for gross violations of human rights, he said. The Venezuelan government did not immediately reply to a request for comment. Foreign minister Jorge Arreaza on Monday rejected as baseless a U.N. report that found excessive use of force by its security forces and other violations. Four months of demonstrations in which at least 125 people were killed have all but stopped due to fatigue among protesters and disillusionment at seeing the ruling Socialist Party cement vast powers despite the concerted opposition push. The ICJ said the top court had undermined human rights and infringed the Constitution through a series of rulings since December 2015. In two rulings in March 2017, the Supreme Court of Justice effectively claimed legislative powers for itself, depriving the National Assembly of its Constitutional powers and granting sweeping arbitrary powers to the executive, it said. These decisions amount to a coup d tat against the Constitutional order and have ushered in a new reign of arbitrary rule, Zarifi said. Judges on the Supreme Court are mainly from the Socialist Party or former officials of the government of Maduro or both, the Geneva-based jurists group said. Judges who have demonstrated independence and ruled against the executive branch have faced retaliation and punishment, Zarifi said. Maduro denies accusations of a power grab, saying his actions, which include the creation of an alternative Constituent Assembly that has granted itself law-making powers, aim to restore peace after months of protests and violence. The new Constituent Assembly at this point acts as a body outside of the rule of law. It is able to legislate and create law and new regulations in the country without accountability, Zarifi said. The ICJ report, The Supreme Court of Justice: an instrument of executive power , was issued on the sidelines of the U.N. Human Rights Council. U.N. human rights chief Zeid Ra ad al-Hussein said on Monday that Venezuelan security forces may have committed crimes against humanity against protesters and called for an international investigation. The evidence that s there, of course it is not adjudicated, but certainly suggests room for investigating crimes against humanity, Zarifi said. Such crimes are defined as grave and systematic violations including torture, enforced disappearances, and extrajudicial killings that are part of a state s policy, he said, adding: Those indicators are all there in Venezuela. Carlos Ayala, a Venezuelan lawyer and ICJ commissioner based in Caracas, told the briefing: The situation is worsening on a daily basis because of hyper-inflation (and) the lack of access for the majority of the population to medicines and health care. More than 600 civilian students are currently being tried before military courts in Venezuela, more than 1,000 young persons, students, are in jail because of the demonstrations.

worldnews

September 12, 2017

Treasury secretary's wife apologizes for Instagram sniping

The wife of U.S. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin on Tuesday apologized for sniping at a critic on social media site Instagram who called her “deplorable” for a post highlighting her expensive clothing as she exited a government plane. The flap erupted after Mnuchin’s wife, Scottish-born actress Louise Linton, posted a photo of herself emerging from the aircraft wearing a white outfit and sunglasses, using the hashtags “#tomford,” “#hermesscarf” and “#valentino,” according to images of the Monday evening post on social media. In her initially vitriolic response to the “deplorable” criticism, Linton had lashed out about how much she and her husband contribute to the economy and pay in taxes. On Tuesday, she scrolled back. “I apologize for my post on social media yesterday as well as my response. It was inappropriate and highly insensitive,” Linton said in a statement released through a publicist. Linton has since made her Instagram account private. Jenni Miller, who identified herself as a mother of three from Portland, Oregon, had said of Linton’s original post on Instagram: “Glad we could pay for your little getaway. #deplorable.” Former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said during her unsuccessful presidential run that some of U.S. President Donald Trump’s supporters were a “basket of deplorables.” Linton shot back at Miller. “Do you think the US govt paid for our honeymoon or personal travel?! Lololol,” she said, according to images of the response posted online. “Have you given more to the economy than me and my husband? Either as an individual earner in taxes OR in self sacrifice to your country? I’m pretty sure we paid more taxes toward our day ‘trip’ than you did.” The U.S. Treasury did not respond to requests for comment. The high-end fashions Linton called out in her post carry hefty price tags, with Hermes scarves retailing from $300 to more than $2,300. Mnuchin is a former Goldman Sachs Group Inc (GS.N) executive and Hollywood film financier. Linton has been at the center of controversy before. Last year she withdrew a self-published book in which she claimed to have been caught up in violence in Zambia. African leaders and aid workers said the book was filled with factual errors. Trump ran on a populist campaign platform, vowing to improve the lives of working Americans and has surrounded himself with a cabinet heavy on corporate titans, including Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, a former chief executive of Exxon Mobil Corp (XOM.N), and financier Wilbur Ross, now the commerce secretary.

politicsNews

August 22, 2017

'Economikes': the gatekeepers of Clinton’s economic policy

Hillary Clinton has no shortage of economic advisors. Scores of world-class experts pour ideas into her campaign on the policies she should champion in her bid for the White House. But before much of the input reaches the Democratic candidate, it is filtered through a pair of staffers known inside the campaign as the “Economikes.” Working out of Clinton’s campaign headquarters in Brooklyn, New York, Michael Shapiro and Michael Schmidt are helping shape what could be a lasting economic agenda if the former secretary of state overcomes Republican rival Donald Trump in November’s election. In an interview with Reuters, Shapiro and Schmidt described Clinton’s process for forming policy by broadly soliciting ideas and crafting them into the action points that she takes to voters. Before Clinton takes a position, Shapiro said, “she wants to know we have talked to and gotten input from everyone, making sure that we’re consulting with labor, making sure that we’re consulting with experts.” Clinton’s inclusive approach to developing policy positions has been faulted for being slow and unwieldy. Much of the work of sifting through the wealth of sometimes disparate ideas and data it yields falls to the Economikes. Both are recent graduates of Yale Law School. Prior to joining the campaign, Schmidt, 30, worked at the U.S. Treasury Department and the Yale Investments Office, helping manage the university’s endowment. Shapiro, 29, worked at the White House for the National Economic Council. Earlier this year, he married the daughter of New York Senator Chuck Schumer. The pair helps Clinton draw upon a deep bench of advisers, including economist Alan Krueger, Duke professor Aaron Chatterji and Simon Johnson, a former chief economist for the International Monetary Fund, along with scores of other academics and business people. Some communicate regularly through emails, conference calls, meetings and memos. Others are tapped once or twice for specific expertise. Frequent contributor Alan Blinder, the former vice chairman of the Federal Reserve, said he will “usually email the Mikes” with ideas. The fruit of the process will be on display today in Ohio, where Clinton is expected to give a speech contrasting her economic vision with that of Trump, a businessman who often names himself as his main adviser and is known for his off-the-cuff style. Clinton has called raising middle class incomes the defining economic challenge of the time. So far, she has presented a mix of goals, including making child care more affordable and boosting jobs. Some business leaders have said her approach is reassuring, but progressives have criticized her policies as too moderate. Trump, in contrast, often has taken business leaders by surprise with his policy proposals. He has promised to renegotiate international trade deals to pump up U.S. manufacturing, vowed to penalize companies that move their headquarters abroad to avoid taxes, and pledged to dismantle Obama’s financial regulation reforms.    While the “Economikes” nickname began as a joke, Shapiro said the campaign’s digital team made it stick by using it in a Q&A posted on Clinton’s web site. Their bosses, senior policy advisers Jake Sullivan and Maya Harris, have been known to stick their heads out of their offices and ask for “one of the Mikes.” On email chains, CC: notes will sometimes include “plus the Economikes.” Humor aside, their work often is serious business. After the tainted water crisis hit national headlines in January, Clinton dispatched Schmidt and her political director, Amanda Renteria, to Flint, Michigan to investigate. Schmidt said the effort informed Clinton’s approach to the water crisis during the Democratic debate in Flint, including her call for the governor to resign.     In other cases, they said, Clinton will ask the pair to research issues she’s heard on the campaign trail, such as the case of an Iowa bowling alley owner who told the candidate student debt made it hard for him to get business loans. The campaign since has rolled out proposals to allow for refinancing of student debt and the use of income-based repayment programs to cut monthly payments. Shapiro and Schmidt said the policy points they bring back to Clinton typically lead her to ask more questions, a process that can go on for several rounds before the candidate finally settles on a policy proposal.

politicsNews

June 21, 2016

MLK And Two Others Will Be on The Back Of The $5 Bill

Leave it to Obama to politicize our money some think the past presidents should be on the money but now Obama s made our money like a postage stamp. He s made this political and racial which really is what you d expect from this pitiful man.Abraham Lincoln will not be the only person depicted on the $5 bill much longer.The Treasury Department announced Wednesday that it will overhaul the design of the $5 note, a move overshadowed by its decision to revamp the back of the $10 bill to include women and to feature Harriet Tubman on the front of the $20.Civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr., famed opera singer Marian Anderson and first lady Eleanor Roosevelt will be depicted on the back of the updated $5 bill.All three will be portrayed in historical moments in front of the Lincoln Memorial, which is currently pictured on the back of the bill. King will be shown delivering his 1963 I Have a Dream speech. Anderson will be shown performing in 1939, when concert halls were still segregated and she was banned from singing in Constitution Hall, supported by Roosevelt.In redesigning the $5 bill, a previously unannounced step, the Treasury will disrupt Lincoln s long-running tenure on both the front of the bill, in a portrait, and on the back, captured as a statue within the Lincoln Memorial. The basic layout of the note hadn t changed since 1929.Read more: WE

Government News

Apr 20, 2016

SOLYNDRA ON WHEELS: THOUSANDS OF CHEVY VOLTS SIT UNSOLD

Does anyone remember the $9,000 rebate offered to anyone buying a Volt? Yep, your tax dollars at work pushing a failed model to market instead of depending on demand. The GM bankruptcy was the biggest scam and cluster that flipped the rule of law due to Obama s desire to save the Unions over just about anyone else in the company. I could go on but the following article is yet another perfect example of Obama s effort to place ideology over the free market Under capitalism, companies produce the products that people want. Under corporatism (formerly known as fascism, before that word was redefined to mean anything liberals don t like ), companies produce the products they are arm-twisted into producing by ideologically driven government thugs. The latter is less economically efficient, as the Regime of Hope & Change keeps proving:Production of the second-generation Chevrolet Volt is set to commence this summer, with the first cars going to customers sometime in the fourth quarter of this year. But before Chevrolet can concentrate on selling the all-new version of the plug-in hybrid EV, it needs to find a way to move the overstock of first-gen models currently sitting on dealer lots.According to The Detroit Free Press, Chevy dealers had about 6,000 2015 Volts on their lots at the end of April, more than twice the amount of Volts the automaker sold in the first four months of 2015.All this unsold inventory probably means that the amount Government Motors loses on each Volt produced will climb even higher and it has already been high:In 2012, Reuters reported that GM was losing about $50,000 on each Volt it produced. Experts estimated then the Volt cost about $90,000 each to produce.Don t worry, if GM lurches back toward bankruptcy due to this lunacy, the Feds will bail it out again. You won t have to pay for it. Obama thoughtfully charges his mountains of waste to the national debt.Your grandchildren will pick up the tab.Via: moonbattery

Government News

May 28, 2015

Trump, U.S. House Speaker Ryan meet to discuss policy

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump and the speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Paul Ryan, were meeting on Friday to discuss their policy agenda, a spokeswoman for Ryan said. The spokeswoman, AshLee Strong, gave no details. Officials in Trump’s team said the meeting was taking place but did not elaborate. Differences between Ryan and Trump during the presidential campaign have given way to a working relationship as the Republican president-elect prepares to take office on Jan. 20. Ryan, the top House Republican, has said the two men speak almost every day. Trump has been meeting with experts, advisers and candidates for senior positions in his administration since winning the Nov. 8 election. He has nominated a dozen people already. He has yet to fill the position of secretary of state. The long list of possible candidates for that job now includes former Ford Motor Co (F.N) CEO Alan Mulally, Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway told Fox News on Friday. A meeting with Democratic U.S. Senator Joe Manchin was rescheduled from Friday to Monday to accommodate work in the Senate on a government funding bill, Manchin’s spokesman said. The House passed legislation on Thursday to fund federal agencies until April 28. The bill now rests with the Senate, where Democrats are upset over the temporary, rather than long-term, extension of healthcare benefits for retired coal miners, a key constituency in Manchin’s state of West Virginia. Manchin’s name has been floated as a potential pick for secretary of state or energy secretary.

politicsNews

December 9, 2016

Iran deal's foes in U.S. Congress may be its unlikely saviors

Republicans in the U.S. Congress, long the staunchest opponents of the Iran nuclear deal, may be the best hope for preserving it if President Donald Trump declines on Friday to certify that Tehran is complying with the pact. Every Republican in Congress opposed the international accord reached under Democratic former President Barack Obama two years ago. Joined by several Democrats, they nearly passed legislation to kill the deal in which Iran agreed to curb its disputed nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief. However, with the agreement in place and strongly supported by co-signers Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China, many Republicans who still abhor the pact nevertheless do not want to blow it up for fear that doing so would erode U.S. credibility. They want to find other ways to clamp down on Tehran. Meeting with officials from the Trump and Obama administrations, European diplomats and among themselves, they have been preparing strategies to save it, including pushing for tougher inspections, changing the law requiring Trump to certify Tehran’s compliance and setting new sanctions over Iran’s non-nuclear activities. “As flawed as the deal is, I believe we must enforce the hell out of it,” Representative Ed Royce, the Republican chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said on Wednesday. On Friday, Trump is expected to unveil a broad strategy for Iran, including announcing that he will decertify the agreement ahead of an Oct. 15 deadline, although he could always change his mind. If the Republican president goes ahead, that would open a 60-day window in which Congress could reimpose sanctions, a step toward an unraveling of the deal. However, Trump is not expected to call on lawmakers to revive those sanctions. If he stops short of recommending that, it gives Republicans room to stand pat for now. Daniel Kurtzer, a former U.S. ambassador to Israel who is now a professor at Princeton University, said the political pressure could be intense. “There will be an onslaught of phone calls and letters and visits to senators to ‘do something’ about Iran,” he said. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has urged Washington to either fix the Iran deal or “nix it.” On Wednesday, H.R. McMaster, Trump’s national security adviser, discussed Iran with the Republican chairmen of House of Representatives national security committees. On Thursday, intelligence officials scheduled a classified briefing for members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker, a key player in the Iran debate, has suggested changing the Iran Review Act he co-authored to eliminate the requirement that Trump recertify Iran’s compliance with the deal every 90 days, several congressional sources said. Trump, who pledged during his campaign to rip up the Iran deal, has recertified it twice since taking office in January and hates having to do so. A Twitter feud that erupted this week between Trump and Corker could complicate the efforts by the influential Republican to broker a deal that would likely require both Democratic and Republican support. “Congress and the administration need to be on the same page, and a major breakdown in the working relationship between one of the very few key Republicans on the Hill who works with Democrats and the president on Iran policy bodes very poorly,” said Elizabeth Rosenberg, a former Treasury Department official now at the Center for a New American Security. To win over some conservative Republicans and Iran hawks, Corker and other leaders are considering proposing sanctions on Iran’s non-nuclear activities and broader inspections, particularly of Iranian military facilities. On Thursday, the House Foreign Affairs Committee approved sanctions targeting Iran’s ballistic missiles development. It could come up for a vote in the full House well before the end of the 60 days Congress has to react to Trump’s announcement.

politicsNews

October 12, 2017

AMERICA’S WORST FEAR: How Our Punishing President Will Harm America In His Final Months If Trump Wins

This nightmare could have all been prevented if America was able to look past their unwarranted white guilt for one second, and realize they were electing a second rate community agitator, with sealed records and a questionable birth certificate If Donald Trump wins the Republican nomination and defeats likely Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in November, President Obama will sabotage the economy in his final months in office, predicts talk-radio host Michael Savage. If Trump wins and I think he will there will be an economic crash, Savage told listeners of his nationally syndicated show, The Savage Nation, Monday. The reason I say that is not because of his policies, but because of what Obama will do on the way out the door. Savage said that if anyone thinks that a President Trump will be able to easily turn this huge ship around, you don t know much about navigation in turbulent waters. Wait until you see what happens in the last few months if Trump wins, Savage said. Wait until you see what that nice guy in the White House does. (Federal Reserve Chairman Janet) Yellen ups interest rates, Obama and his band of unmerry pranksters Sharpton and company unleash the mobs, Savage said. (George) Soros makes a last-ditch effort to distract Trump and the new Justice Department from currency manipulation and other financial games he may have been playing. Spends tens of millions on social agitation. Obama floods the U.S. with Central Americans, Syrians and Africans, mainly Muslim, mainly young males, and grants pardons to 10,000 more Central American drug dealers, Savage continued. Let s see what else might these decent Americans do? Release a few more billion pork barrel green projects? You can guess! Prior to his remarks about Obama s final days in office, Savage told his listeners he believed Trump would defeat Clinton in a landslide, describing the former secretary of state, senator and first lady as Fidel Castro in a dress. Savage cited the new Rasmussen poll of likely voters showing Trump with a 41-39 lead over Clinton nationally. And this is only an early poll, Savage noted on his show Monday. I said a long time ago that when it comes down to Trump vs. Clinton, he would win by a landslide, 60-40, 59-41, something like that. No matter how many illegal aliens Obama tried to flood into this country, Trump will win by a landslide, he said.In February, Savage warned that the banking deregulation under the Bill Clinton administration that led to the 2008 recession appears to be on the verge of impacting the economy again. We re being set up for an economic meltdown similar to the one that triggered the Great Depression, he said.This time, however, Savage continued, it s going to occur on a global scale, and it s unlikely that we ll be able to recover within even the next several decades, once it happens. For entire story: WND

politics

May 16, 2016

White House to make decision on 9/11 report by June: Bob Graham

The White House will likely make a decision by June on whether it will release some classified material withheld from the public 9/11 Commission Report, a former U.S. senator who co-chaired the congressional inquiry into the attacks said on Sunday. The withheld section of the official report on the 2001 attacks is central to a dispute over whether Americans should be able to sue the Saudi Arabian government for damages. The Office of the U.S. Director of National Intelligence is reviewing the material to see whether it can be declassified. Former Sen. Bob Graham, a Florida Democrat, has been pressing for the release of the information and said that it may shed light on the financial backers for 19 hijackers who killed nearly 3,000 people on Sept 11, 2001. Graham told NBC’s Meet the Press that he believed that some of the withheld classified material could soon be released. “The president’s staff at least has said that they will make a decision by June, and I hope that decision is to honor the American people and make it available,” Graham said. Representative Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee, said last week that he also supported releasing the material. “The release of these pages will not end debate over the issue, but it will quiet rumors over their contents,” Representative Adam Schiff said in a statement. “As is often the case, the reality is less damaging than the uncertainty.”

politicsNews

April 24, 2016

BERKELEY COLLEGE THUGS Form Human Chain To Stop White Students From Attending Class [VIDEO]

Students at the University of California, Berkeley held a day of protest on Friday to demand the creation of additional safe spaces for transgender and nonwhite students, during which a human chain was formed on a main campus artery to prevent white students from getting to class.The demonstrators were caught on video blocking Berkeley s Sather Gate, holding large banners advocating the creation of physical spaces segregated by race and gender identity, including one that read Fight 4 Spaces of Color. Protesters can be heard shouting Go around! to white students who attempt to go through the blockade, while students of color are greeted with calls of Let him through! Students turned away by the mob are later shown filing through trees and ducking under branches in order to cross Strawberry Creek, which runs underneath the bridge. Washington TimesI m pretty sure this is illegal but then again, we are living in lawless times. Hey, I ve got a great idea let s elect Hillary so we can just have complete anarchy in our streets and on our college campuses. Who needs rights anyhow?

left-news

Oct 25, 2016

Top Canadian officials met Trump team for trade talks: paper

Senior Canadian officials have met several times with advisers to U.S. President-elect Donald Trump in Washington in an effort to avert a possible trade war once he takes office this month, the Globe and Mail newspaper said on Monday. Trump vowed during his election campaign to either scrap or renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico, saying the two-decade old deal had been bad for American workers. This could have disastrous consequences for Canada, which sends 75 percent of its exports to the United States. The Globe said Gerald Butts and Katie Telford - Prime Minister’s Justin Trudeau’s two top aides - had met Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and his chief strategist, Steve Bannon, and believed they had established a decent relationship. The paper cited one official as saying the Trump administration “does not believe in free trade,” which could pose challenges for Canada. “They (the Trump team) think the basic problem in the world is that China has stolen a bunch of American manufacturing jobs that they are hell-bent on getting back,” the official said. Trudeau spokesman Cameron Ahmad, asked about the report, said “meetings have indeed been happening at every level” but gave no details. The Trump transition team did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the report. Canada’s trade minister, pressed about the potential impact of Trump’s presidency, said last Friday there was no question of separating the two nations’ economies. In a video address last week to the new U.S. Congress, Trudeau stressed the closeness of the links between the Canadian and U.S. economies. Trump, a Republican, won election in November and takes office on Jan. 20.

politicsNews

January 9, 2017

Republicans Say Everything’s Terrible Because Of Obama, Show Them THIS And Shut Them Up

Republicans insist that everything under President Obama is awful and terrible and getting worse. Their nominee for the presidency has based his entire candidacy on the idea that America is a complete trianwreck and only he alone can fix things.But when you ask actual Americans about what their lives are like after eight years of Barack Obama being president, a completely different message emerges. Gallup did just that, in a survey of over 100,000 people, and almost completely across the board people feel better off than they did before.In 2008, fewer than half of Americans said their life was good enough to be considered thriving, according to Gallup. But that s changed: The 55.4% who are thriving so far in 2016 is on pace to be the highest recorded in the nine years Gallup and Healthways have tracked it, according to the report.The report even has findings that obliterate Donald Trump s constant harping that black Americans are living lives of complete desperation inside crack-destroyed inner city ghettos. The percentages of U.S. whites, blacks, Hispanics and Asians who are thriving have all increased during the Obama era, Gallup notes. The percentage of blacks thriving has risen by about 6 points, as has the percentage of whites and Hispanics. Asian thriving has risen by about 10 points since 2008.It isn t magic or left wing propaganda. People simply feel better off and more optimistic, and it isn t a coincidence that this change has occurred between the presidency of a conservative Republican and a progressive Democrat.As a result, President Obama s approval rating has gone over 50 percent and reports are now emerging that Trump is having trouble convincing voters in key states that they need to turn the page from Obama because people are feeling positive about the situation in America.Ignore the hype and noise of the right, check out the data and you ll learn how people really feel.Featured image via Flickr

News

August 31, 2016

Republicans PROVE They Believe In Party Over Country With One Incredibly Stupid Question

Congress is chest-deep in their leak investigations, with FBI Director James Comey in the hot seat today. During the House Intelligence Committee hearing, chairman Devin Nunes thought he d try and ask some really hard-hitting questions, maybe in an attempt to trap Comey into saying something that will incriminate everyone who isn t Republican in the increasingly tangled web that is the Russia scandal.All he did was prove that this is about Republicans desperately puffing up their party instead of actually getting to the bottom of possible treason. And he did it with just one question: If this committee or anyone else for that matter, someone from the public, comes with information to you about the Hillary Clinton campaign, or their associates, or someone from the Clinton Foundation, will you add that to your investigation? Really? He s trying to make this about Hillary, despite consensus that Russia acted in the interest of Trump? It certainly sounded like that s what Nunes was doing when he followed up with: If they have ties to Russian intelligence services, Russian agents, would that be something of interest to you? Comey would not fall into Nunes trap, though. He replied with: If people bring us information about what they think is improper, unlawful activity of any kind, we will evaluate it. Not just in this context. Folks send us stuff all the time. They should keep doing that. Nunes may well by trying to follow Trump s lead on this, as Trump regularly throws Twitter tantrums in childish attempts to deflect blame. Trump is livid Comey s statements that the FBI is, indeed, investigating the Russian scandal are infuriating to him. As such, he s still all over Twitter trying to convince us that the real problem is the leaks, and that Hillary s a traitor and a crook and we supposedly all know it, rather than all the evidence piling up against him.What about all of the contact with the Clinton campaign and the Russians? Also, is it true that the DNC would not let the FBI in to look? Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 20, 2017Is it a coincidence that Nunes would also ask about Hillary? Likely not. Nunes and the rest of the GOP should give us a call when they re ready to actually go to work.Featured image via Mark Wilson/Getty Images

News

March 20, 2017

Ex-Utah Governor Huntsman accepts Trump offer to be ambassador to Russia: official

Former Utah Republican Governor Jon Huntsman has accepted President Donald Trump’s offer to be ambassador to Russia, an administration official said on Wednesday. The job, which requires Senate confirmation, would put Huntsman in Moscow at a time when U.S.-Russian ties have sunk to a post-Cold War low. Huntsman served as ambassador to China under Democratic President Barack Obama before launching an unsuccessful bid for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination. Trump has said he wants to improve relations with Russian President Vladimir Putin, which deteriorated under Obama over issues including Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea and the two countries’ backing of opposing sides in the Syrian civil war. The tensions peaked in December when Obama expelled 35 Russian suspected spies after U.S. intelligence agencies concluded that Russia hacked and leaked Democratic emails during the 2016 election campaign as part of an effort to tilt the vote in Trump’s favor. The Kremlin has denied the allegations.

politicsNews

March 9, 2017

French minister says U.S. energy secretary has not signaled climate backpedalling

U.S. energy secretary Rick Perry has said nothing about the U.S. backpedaling on climate change commitments, French Minister of Ecology, Sustainable Development and Energy Segolene Royal said on Monday. In March U.S. President Donald Trump signed an order to undo Obama-era climate change regulations, keeping a campaign promise to support the coal industry. The order called into question U.S. support for an international deal to fight global warming, prompting environmental groups to call it dangerous and against the global trend toward cleaner energy technologies.  “Contacts with the new minister are very friendly,” she said, adding the U.S. administration was in the process of elaborating its new policies. Segolene Royal was speaking on the sidelines of a G7 meeting on energy in Rome.

politicsNews

April 10, 2017

Trial By YouTube: Mainstream Media Use Second-hand Oregon Account to Cast Blame on Dead Rancher

Patrick Henningsen 21st Century WireThere exists a famous quote often attributed to 1918 US Senator Hiram Warren Johnson, who once said, The first casualty when war comes is truth. The same could be said for Waco, or Ruby Ridge or with the federal government s version of recent events in Burns, Oregon. What really happened on Highway 395? We re not sure yet, but in the meantime, it seems as if the mainstream media have already decided who is guilty and and who is not.Regarding the Tuesday evening s events at the Oregon Standoff, where federal agents shot and killed rancher Robert Lavoy Finicum, a campaign of disinformation appears to be rapidly underway. The following is a prime exhibit of how the mainstream media can spin a story to favor the government version of events.The Washington Post s brash headline reads, Report: LaVoy Finicum, armed with a handgun, reached for his waistband just before he was shot. In the absence of any actual evidence, or even analysis to support this deceptive headline, instead Washington Post writer Mike Miller attempts to weave together a classic example of yellow journalism.Any speculation or public skepticism could be easily put to rest by the FBI releasing all video footage of the event in question. (Above screen shot: Washington Post)Miller begins his piece establishing Finicum s guilt in his own murder by nature of the fact that Robert Lavoy Finicum had been seen previously carrying a gun. Everyone knew that LaVoy Finicum kept a Colt .45 on his hip. That common knowledge could help explain how the occupier in Oregon died. Miller s article then hammers home the federal thesis that any injured or dead protesters brought it on themselves : The occupiers had ample opportunity to leave peacefully, FBI Special Agent Greg Bretzing said Wednesday morning. They brought this on themselves. In other words, according to the FBI, and with the help of the media, dead rancher Lavoy Finicum is guilty in the court of public opinion.Marginalizing the WitnessMiller immediate moves to cast doubt on the testimony of 18 yr old Victoria Sharp, who was a passenger in the truck Finicum was driving, crassly describing the young woman as a self-described witness . He adds: Another self-described witness disputes that, saying that authorities opened fire before the getaway chase and that Finicum had his hands up when he was shot. STOIC: Ammon Bundy, Ryan Bundy and Lavoy Finicum at the Wildlife Refuge last week.Instead, Miller relies heavily on a YouTube video recorded and uploaded by a man named Mark McConnell who was not at the scene of the actual shooting (he admits that he was one mile away) when federal agents reportedly killed Finicum. Admittedly, McConnell s testimony, claiming that Finicum had charged at the officers is only second-hand, or possibly third-hand, depending on the accuracy of what he is attempting relaying from other passengers riding with in the vehicle with Sharp at the time, Ryan Payne and Shawna Cox.Here, McConnell is, in effect, issuing a proxy statement on behalf of Victoria Sharp s fellow passengers, Shawn Cox and Ryan Payne. This is hardly admissible, as both Cox and Payne are currently in federal custody and are not able to verify the accuracy of McConnell reiteration. And yet, mainstream media outlets are propping-up McConnell s account as if it were somehow factual.Clearly, this is a nudging exercise, carefully attempting to minimize and discredit the young female witness Sharp. The Post s Miller makes this blatantly obvious when he subtly inserts that Sharp, who said she was the 18 year old in the car with Finicum . What? Who said she was the 18 yr old ? Here is in context: McConnell s account conflicts with statements made by Victoria Sharp, who said she was the 18-year-old in the car with Finicum. One would think that a Washington Post headline journalist would have ample resources to confirm whether or not Sharp was in the truck or not.Why are mainstream media outlets so quick to try and discredit the testimony of Victoria Sharp? Unlike the mainstream media s go-to man McConnell, Victoria Sharp is an actual eye witness who saw first-hand the fateful event in question, and described it in detail immediately after the event during a phone interview. What s more amazing is how a newspaper like the Washington Post, presumably with a good reputation for high journalistic standards (one would think so anyway) would grab a recycled, second-hand account which first appeared on the tabloid news website Raw Story.What The Post is attempting to do here is clear: to try and align a secondhand speculative guess by McConnell with a vague anonymous statement leaked from the FBI to CNN.Sadly for news consumers, it s not uncommon that networks like CNN will often accept vague anonymous leaks from sources in order to construct an official narrative of any event with absolutely zero accountability from either the government source, or the news network.It s almost as if Miller is writing this piece on behalf of the FBI.At the very least here, the Washington Post is playing a supporting role acting as an additional PR channel and echo chamber for a claim which neither CNN or the government are required to either confirm or deny. Sources Say Finicum Was Reaching for His WaistbandRather than question any of the claims fashioned by CNN and its sources journalist Mike Miller does the opposite he tries to reinforce the government narrative.CNN International s report hinges on a anonymous government source claiming that Finicum was killed by federal agents because he was reaching towards his waistband. Miller writes: In the moments before he was shot by authorities Tuesday afternoon, Finicum led a high-speed getaway attempt. He then reached for his waistband, prompting authorities to open fire, according to a CNN report.The report, which cites anonymous law enforcement officials but has not been confirmed by The Washington Post, is corroborated by a statement from an occupier who said he was traveling with Finicum at the time of the traffic stop. The fact the media have chosen to label this incident as a traffic stop indicates an obvious agenda designed to minimize the obvious that this was a pre-planned, elaborate ambush by the FBI and Oregon State Police.The Washington Post then tries to enhance CNN s phantom report by aligning the government narrative with the second-hand story presented by Mark McConnell, further propping-up the government s version of events:This same unnamed source cited by CNN has also told the network that the incident was captured on video by the FBI, but that authorities have not decided whether or not the release the video. One indication that this anonymous leak to CNN is likely bogus is the fact that the statement says Finicum reached for his waistband , but chose not to say, reached for his gun which offers the government a convenient exit from their previous statement should an unincriminating video ever surface for public viewing. In addition, the fact that the alleged damning video has not already been released could mean that the video footage in question does not support the government innuendo story which has been leaked out via government-media information channels.Any public distrust or skepticism of the federal authorities would immediately be dispelled by speed release of all video footage (with dozens of agents and surveillance, there should have been more than one video feed taken, including body and gun sight cameras) of the event. Whether or not, and how fast this will happen remains to be seen.Two Versions of EventsWhat s abundantly clear after listening to both McConnell and Sharp s conflicting testimonies, is that McConnell s statement is quite obviously unreliable and full of self-contradictions and caveats, while Sharp s is clear and concise.The following is the testimony of Victoria Sharp, recorded in the immediate aftermath of the shooting on Oregon highway 395: Anyone looking at this story can see clearly that protesters vehicles were traveling to a pre-arranged community event in the nearby small town of John Day an event supported by neighboring Grant County Sheriff Glenn Palmer. Palmer was sympathetic to the Bundy s protest and publicly called for the release of the Hammond family whom he believes were wrongfully imprisoned. Oregon Live reported the Palmer was there at the FBI roadblock on Highway 395 alongside a large contingent of armed Federal Agents. If true, this would indicates that Palmer had prior knowledge federal ambush, but more importantly, that he clearly ceded his own legal and Consitutional authority as the county s chief law enforcement official over to the FBI s special agent in charge Greg Bretzing. Absent of any public statement from Palmer on the matter, onlookers can only speculate about this situation.IMPORTANT NOTE (UPDATE 1-30-16): According to this recent report by Pedro Quintana from Central Oregon local affiliate News Channel 21, Sheriff Palmer was not at the federal roadblock and had no prior knowledge of the FBI ambush of the Bundy convoy. According to the chat session relayed in Pedro Quintana s report, Palmer was asked in an online chat, Did you witness Lavoy shooting, or no? , to which Palmer replies, NO The shooting from what I hear was close to 4 and I heard of it at about 5:45pm. News 21continued: Palmer responded he had no knowledge of anything about the plans or who was coming to the public meeting. He went on to say that the FBI and Oregon State Police know me, they shared nothing with me and they know I wouldn t have allowed it. Earlier mainstream media reports that Palmer was present at the FBI roadblock would lead Bundy supporters to believe that Palmer had betrayed the Bundys and Lavoy Finicum. One the main sources, if not the main source of the original Sheriff Palmer controversy appears to be none other than Oregon Live staff writer Les Zaitz who has slipped-in this key piece of line into his report which which says: They said they didn t know how long the roadblock would be place. Grant County Sheriff Glenn Palmer was there. Not surprisingly, this has set-off a virtual backlash online against the Grant County Sheriff, as evidenced by the following screen shot of Google search link found here: Is this a case of media dirty tricks by Oregon Live? Certainly, Oregon Live s coverage of Burns events has been skewed from the beginning, and have been running character assassination pieces against Malheur occupiers in a effort to discredit the protest. Sheriff Palmer is clearly on record as being sympathetic to the Hammond Ranch protest and had recently opened up a constructive dialogue with the Bundys and occupiers from Malheur Wildlife Refuge. If Pedro Quintana s News 21 report is indeed accurate, then one might conclude that Oregon Live put out a piece of disinformation, likely designed to further divide the protest movement and create dissension in militia and activist ranks. However, until Sheriff Glenn Palmer comes out and issues clear statement declaring where he was and where he wasn t, then people will continue to speculate what really happened. (END OF UPDATE)NOTE: See more in depth and legal analysis on Sheriff Palmer and the FBI s operation at Free Capitalist.Amazingly, The Post s writer Mike Miller goes on to all but admit a premeditated ambush of the protester s vehicles on Highway 395, and yet, will not call it what it was an ambush: According to the CNN report, the FBI and Oregon State Police had been watching occupiers come and go from the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge near Burns for days before they spotted a rare opportunity to nab the militant movement s leaders all at once: Finicum, Ammon Bundy, Ryan Bundy and a handful of others climbed into two trucks and drove from the refuge to a meeting in John Day, Ore., two hours north. Authorities chose a cold, deserted stretch of highway to attempt a traffic stop. One vehicle complied with orders and pulled over, but the other allegedly driven by Finicum sped off at high speed, according to the report. It should be noted (although never by the Washington Post or CNN) that the protest s leader, Ammon Bundy, had met with FBI negotiators that morning continuing an open dialogue that had been going on for weeks. This, plus the fact that Sheriff Palmer had invited Bundy and his fellow protesters to the community event in John Day, demonstrated that both the Federal government and the local Sheriff had acted in bad faith by drawing all of the main protesters out to the town of John Day, along a pre-planned route, before staging such an ambush with overwhelming force just hours later. The fact that a man is dead definitely underlines the seriousness of their course of action which appears to be a case of deception on the part of authorities.Similarly, right after the event most mainstream media were calling the event a shoot-out , even though it was obvious that no shots were fired by vehicle passengers. Granted, such deceptive language by media is nothing new, but it s still further indication that there was a deliberate attempt to skew the narrative in favor of law enforcement s official version of events.UPDATE 1-28-2016 at 11:30PM ET: Due to public pressure and intense speculation about the events of Tuesday evening, and because of the YouTube recording of 18 yr old eye witness Victoria Sharp, the FBI has released the unedited aerial video footage from Tuesday evening s incident which took place along Highway 395 here. According to the official FBI statement: We feel that it is necessary to show the whole thing unedited in the interest of transparency. The FBI video entitled, Complete, Unedited Video of Joint FBI and OSP Operation 01/26/2016 , does show the victim Lavoy Finicum exiting the truck awkwardly in at least two feet of snow, and he clearly does not charge towards the SWAT team, and his hands are clearly held high above his head as he exits his truck when confronted by a SWAT team, before being shot multiple times by marksmen and falling in the snow. Also, the scale and size of this operation is very evident by the footage, and the apprehension of the protesters was not the result of a mere traffic stop as it was wrongly characterized in multiple mainstream media reports. On its own, this FBI drone footage would appear to support previous government and media claims by CNN, Washington Post and others that the victim was indeed reaching towards his waistband which gave federal and state police justification to unleash deadly force. However, it is still not completely clear from this aerial footage whether or not Finicum was holstered (he is said to normally carry a gun on the right hip, but FBI are claiming he had a 9mm gun in his inside left breast pocket), but also whether or not he lowered his arms before, or after he was shot multiple times. For example, if Finicum had his hands in the air and was then was shot in the abdomen first, then any man s natural reaction would be to then lower his hand(s) and clutch the wound. Additionally, if any shots were fired, even in the vicinity, then confusion could have ensued which might have prompted Finicum to reach for his weapon. Either way, it is impossible to make any such a forensic determination without a corresponding audio track which would help to determine if any shots were fired before Finicum s hand(s) could be seen lowering. WARNING: The following images depict violence and death which some readers may find disturbing. Watch: Finicum appears to temporarily lose his balance in the snow at the very moment he looks to be hit by agents.What is clear however from this video is that armed agents did not shoot to disable their suspect, but shot to kill and even had a laser sight trained on him for many minutes after he was downed. Clearly, multiple SWAT shooters could be seen emerging from the woods. After killing Finicum, police then left the victim to bleed to death laying in the snow, and did not check on him for at least another 8 minutes.Flash-bang rounds can be seen around the 14:00 mark of the FBI s unedited version, and the FBI has said that it fired CS gas and non lethal rounds (possibly pepper spray rounds, or rubber bullets) are said to have been fired at the truck while the passengers were inside. This begs the question: with nonlethal rounds already in play why did multiple SWAT shooters use so many deadly rounds against Finicum when he exited the truck with his hands up?See 21WIRE s detailed report of the federal ambush on Highway 395 in Oregon here.READ MORE OREGON STANDOFF NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Oregon Files

Middle-east

January 28, 2016

WATCH: The Media Gives MI’s Gov. Rick Snyder The Tongue Lashing He Deserves (VIDEOS)

Michigan s governor Rick Snyder is desperately trying to retain some credibility by increasing his presence in the media. It isn t working. All he is doing is proving to the world that he is as much a scumbag as the world thinks he is.In an interview with Fox 2, Snyder said that he would let his grandchildren be bathed in Flint, Michigan. During the interview, Charlie LeDuff asks Rick Snyder: Would you have your grandchildren bathe daily in that water coming out of those pipes, now? Yeah, because again, that s the advice I ve gotten, Snyder says. I wouldn t let my child chew on a Chinese made toy, I don t think I d let my child, as just as person, a rational person that doesn t know that much, bathe in water what we know there s high levels of lead, LeDuff responds. You would let your grandchild bathe in that? Snyder then tries to squirm his way out of the gaffe he just made by giving this poor explanation for his claim: We don t know that there s necessarily high levels of lead in every bath tub. But again, there could be this risk. But we ve been told by the experts by itself You just don t leave them by themselves. you need to monitor that to make sure they don t drink the water. Here s the interview.It really sounded like Snyder was trying to make the contamination of Flint s water sound safer than it is, didn t it? That s really weird because just hours earlier, Snyder went on CBS for an interview where he said that they don t want people to assume that the water in Flint is safer than it is.During that interview, Snyder was again, completely hammered for his utter incompetence. Snyder failed to answer even basic questions about what people desperately want to know.The interviewer, Scott Pelley, asks Snyder: Governor, is the water in Flint safe today? Snyder responds, saying: We don t want to consider it safe, Scott. I think we ve seen progress in terms of improvements in the water testing. But until it s been thoroughly tested, including third-party verification, we want people to assume that they should be using filters, or bottled water as an interim measure. Pelley presses Snyder: So fair to say you don t know what the lead content is in the water? Snyder responds, saying: Well, again we don t want people to believe it s safe. Extensive testing is going on, has been going on for some time. At that point, Pelley seems to have had enough of Snyder s evasiveness. He grills Snyder, saying: I don t understand why you can t give us the latest testing data and what it shows for the water in Flint. What is the number? Snyder, still trying to down play his incompetence, says: I don t have the number at the top of my head of the very latest data. And it varies by parts of the city. To this, Pelley eviscerates Snyder, saying: I would think that the governor of Michigan would have those numbers at the top of his mind right now. You can watch the interview below.Featured Image Credit: Video Screenshot via Fox 2

News

January 21, 2016

U.S. will not issue some visas in 4 nations in deportation crackdown

The U.S. State Department on Wednesday will stop issuing certain kinds of visas to some citizens of Cambodia, Eritrea, Guinea and Sierra Leone because the nations are not taking back their citizens the United States wants to deport. The new policies, laid out in State Department cables reviewed by Reuters on Tuesday and described in a department news briefing, are the latest example of U.S. President Donald Trump’s effort to crack down on immigrants who are in the United States illegally. The cables, sent by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to consular officials around the world, said the four countries were “denying or unreasonably delaying” the return of their citizens, and that visa restrictions would be lifted in a country if it accepted its deportees. “The Secretary determines the categories of applicants subject to the visa restrictions, and the categories differ slightly country by country,” State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said in the news briefing on Tuesday. The visa sanctions vary in severity, with Eritrea facing the harshest ones. Any Eritreans who apply in their own country for most U.S. business or tourist visas will be rejected, according to one of the cables. (bit.ly/2jnTWo8) In Guinea, the United States will no longer issue a range of tourist, business and student visas to government officials and their immediate family members who apply from inside the country, another cable said. (bit.ly/2y5zMSS) “We are all surprised by the American authorities’ decision but the foreign minister is at this moment working so that the situation returns to normal,” Guinea government spokesman Damantang Albert Camara told Reuters. “It must be understood that Guinea has never wanted to prevent the repatriation of its nationals who are in conflict with American law.” In Cambodia, the sanction is tailored. Only Foreign Ministry employees at or above the rank of director general, and their families, who apply inside the country will be barred from getting some visas for personal travel, a third cable said. (bit.ly/2y5AEHh) For Sierra Leone, only Foreign Ministry and immigration officials will be denied tourist and business visas at the U.S. Embassy in Freetown, according to a fourth cable. (bit.ly/2wptf3v) “American citizens have been harmed because foreign governments refuse to take back their citizens,” Thomas Homan, acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said in a Department of Homeland Security statement. In each case, there are exceptions for citizens of the four nations who apply for visas from outside their countries, as well as exceptions on humanitarian grounds or for travel “deemed in the interest of the United States.” The new rules, which go into effect on Wednesday, do not affect visas that already have been granted. Visa sanctions are allowed by U.S. immigration law to punish countries that refuse to accept their citizens back from the United States. In practice, the United States has rarely taken that step - just twice in the past decade and a half, according to a Department of Homeland Security spokesman. The most recent instance was in October 2016 when the Obama administration stopped issuing visas to Gambian government officials and their families because the government was not taking back U.S. deportees from Gambia.  Three of the four countries included in the current visa restrictions - Cambodia, Guinea, and Eritrea - were on a July list of nations deemed “recalcitrant” by U.S. immigration authorities. It was unclear immediately why Sierra Leone was included in Tuesday’s action even though it was not on the “recalcitrant” list in July. ICE has had to release roughly 2,137 Guineans and 831 Sierra Leone nationals, many with “serious criminal convictions,” the DHS statement said. In addition, around 700 Eritreans and more than 1,900 Cambodians are living in the United States who have been ordered removed, DHS said. DHS officials say in some cases, the agency has had no choice but to release convicted criminals who served prison time but could not be returned to their home country because it refused to take them back. The Trump administration has made it a priority to pressure reluctant countries to take back their citizens. As of July, the 12 nations deemed “recalcitrant” were China, Cuba, Vietnam, Laos, Iran, Cambodia, Burma, Morocco, Hong Kong, South Sudan, Guinea and Eritrea. According to 2016 congressional testimony by Michele Bond, former assistant secretary of state for consular affairs, Cuba was the “most recalcitrant country on repatriation of its nationals,” although she did not give numbers. Other countries then at the top of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) list of recalcitrant countries were China, Somalia and India, Bond said at the time. None of those countries are facing visa sanctions.

politicsNews

September 21, 2017

ACTOR WHO BLEW THROUGH $150 Million Fortune Is Worried Playing Ronald Reagan In Positive Light For Upcoming Movie Could Ruin His Career

LOL! If I was Cage s manager, I d suggest he shut his mouth and act.Think your money troubles are bad? Trying blowing through $150 million, going broke, then owing the IRS $13 million. Yes, we re talking about Oscar-winning actor Nicolas Cage.Forbes listed him as one of the highest-paid actors of all time. It s said he made $40 million in 2009 alone. That s a lot of money!Unfortunately, the fun was short-lived. As his income increased, so did his insane buying habits.By the time he reached his mid-forties (he s now 53), Nicolas Cage spent so much cash that he put the King of Arabia to shame. While he blamed his money manager for sending him down a path toward financial ruin, others say it was his crazy personal spending. Finance BuzzFast forward to today, where Nicholas Cage has been offered the role of Ronald Reagan in an upcoming film, but is reportedly voicing his concerns about how the former president will be portrayed in the picture.The Oscar-winning actor is said to be worried that it might damage his career if he plays Reagan in a flattering light reports Page Six.Cage s publicist, Stephen Huvane, dismissed that report however, saying: It s way too early in the development process. Little else is known about the film at this time, including the director, screenwriter or who else might star alongside Cage, should he accept the part. Daily MailTypical Hollywood liberal lunacy defined

politics

Dec 28, 2016

Exclusive: U.S. to announce further easing of Cuba restrictions on March 17 - sources

President Barack Obama’s administration will announce further measures to ease travel and trade restrictions on Cuba on March 17, ahead of his historic visit to the Communist-ruled island this month, U.S. congressional sources said on Tuesday. The new rules will mark the latest effort by Obama to use his executive powers to sidestep the U.S. Congress and chip away at the more than half-century-old U.S. economic embargo against Cuba. The anticipated announcement appears timed as a gesture toward Cuba just days before Obama flies to Havana for a March 21-22 visit in another step aimed at ending decades of animosity between the former Cold War foes. It will be the first visit to Cuba by a sitting U.S. president since 1928. The measures are expected to include changes to make it easier for individual Americans to visit Cuba if they qualify under 12 authorized categories of travel such as educational or cultural visits, as well as further loosening of trade and banking rules, said the sources, who were briefed on the matter by administration officials. Though details were still being finalized, the package could also include revised regulations on how the U.S. dollar can be used in trade with Cuba, a person familiar with the discussions said. U.S. regulations restrict or prohibit the Cuban government from using the dollar for international transactions. “The White House wants to make a splash on the economic front before Obama gets to Havana, and this is one way to do it,” according to the source, who was consulted by Obama aides ahead of the visit. “It will come a couple of days before he leaves.” Obama plans to hold talks with Cuban President Raul Castro in Havana but also intends to meet dissidents to show that Washington remains committed to promoting human rights on the island, a source of tension with the Cuban government. The White House has invited members of Congress to accompany the president, and congressional aides told Reuters about 20, mostly Obama’s fellow Democrats, were expected to go. Obama’s moves to normalize relations with Cuba have encountered stiff resistance from some lawmakers, mostly Republicans but also some Democrats, since the policy shift was first announced on Dec. 17, 2014. They feel the White House is not getting enough back from Castro’s government in exchange for the eased regulations. The administration believes that moves to loosen the embargo would help meet its goal of benefiting the Cuban people. But even some Democratic aides said they were taken aback by news there would be further moves by the White House without concessions from Havana. “Shouldn’t we get something from the Cubans in return?” one asked. The mainstay of the new regulatory package is expected to be further easing of limits on travel by Americans to Cuba at a time when U.S. airlines are rushing to apply for routes to the island following the recent signing of a bilateral agreement for regular scheduled flights. The rules changes are likely to allow more people to go on self-directed “people to people” and cultural trips without having to rely on group tours or be sponsored by an organization, two people familiar with the discussions said. But a ban on general tourism to Cuba will remain in force. It is part of the broader U.S. embargo and can only be lifted by Congress. Obama has called for an end to the embargo but Republicans say that will not happen during his presidency, which ends in January 2017. “We continue to look at additional regulatory changes that could be made as part of the administration’s efforts to further normalize relations with Cuba,” an Obama administration official said. But the official declined to provide specifics.

politicsNews

March 8, 2016

EU says understands U.S. strikes in Syria but political solution key

The European Union said on Friday it understood the aim of U.S. missile strikes in Syria as an effort to deter any more chemical attacks there, but highlighted political solutions as the only way to end the war. The nuanced line taken by the bloc’s 28 states reflects their disgust at a chemical attack that killed scores of people in a rebel-held area this week, but also a worry about any more escalation in the conflict following the unilateral U.S. move. “The U.S. has informed the European Union that ... (it) launched a strike on Shayrat Airfield in Syria with the understandable intention to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons,” the bloc’s top diplomat, Federica Mogherini, said in a statement on behalf of all member states. “The U.S. also informed us that these strikes are limited and focused on preventing and deterring further use of chemical weapons atrocities,” the statement read. She added that the use of chemical weapons was a war crime and perpetrators of such acts “should be sanctioned within the framework of the United Nations.” The bloc supports Syrian opposition rebels and some moderate rebels negotiating under U.N.-mediated talks with representatives of Damascus. The talks have long been stalled and the war, which is in its seventh year, has killed more than 400,000 people and sent millions from their homes. “The EU firmly believes that there can be no military solution to the conflict,” the joint statement said. “Only a credible political solution... will ensure peace and stability.” While France and Britain have led calls for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to go, some other EU states, including the Czech Republic, Hungary, Spain and Italy, are more dovish. But the bloc’s role in international peace efforts has been largely marginal as it lacks influence on the ground, where Russia’s military intervention has given Assad the upper hand. The EU is the largest aid donor in Syria, and has threatened it will not pay for reconstruction of the country if Assad and his allies take full control by wiping out the opposition. The EU says a “credible political transition” must start first with the aim of giving the opposition and Syria’s various ethnic and religious groups political representation. The chairman of EU leaders Donald Tusk, French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault, the Polish foreign ministry as well as a British government spokesman supported Washington. “U.S. strikes show needed resolve against barbaric chemical attacks. EU will work with the US to end brutality in Syria,” Tusk said on Twitter. But German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel, Belgium’s Didier Reynders and the head of the EU’s executive arm stuck to a more cautious line, saying they “understood” the aim of the strikes, but highlighting more strongly the need for a negotiated end to the war. “There is a clear distinction between air strikes on military targets and the use of chemical weapons against civilians,” said the head of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker. “Efforts to stem the spiral of violence in Syria and work toward a lasting peace should be redoubled. Only a political transition can lead to such an outcome.”

politicsNews

April 7, 2017

Too early to say if UK has made sufficient progress in Brexit talks: Irish PM

Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said on Monday it was not possible to say that Britain had made sufficient progress to move onto the next phase of Brexit talks with the European Union, adding there was a bit of a way to go yet . When it comes to making a recommendation as to whether sufficient progress has been made, it s too early to say. That s a decision that will be made by the 27 prime ministers including me when we meet in Brussels in October, Varadkar said after a meeting with British Prime Minister Theresa May in her Downing Street office. It s possible that between now and the decision point in October that may happen. I don t think at this stage it would be possible to say that sufficient progress has yet been made. Varadkar said it was important that Britain had committed to not having any physical infrastructure on the border between the Irish Republic and Northern Ireland. He also said neither he did not believe there would be any advantage in having another election in Northern Ireland to solve an impasse in the British province after a power-sharing coalition collapsed in January - but added that he did not favor a return to direct rule from London.

worldnews

September 25, 2017

WATCH: Gay Man Beaten After Lunatic Sees Him Kiss His Partner

There is a disturbing video coming out of Miami Beach, Florida which shows two men get into a fight inside of a Burger King. The fight broke out after a man saw two gay men, Jordan Schaeffer, a Los Angeles man who was visiting the area, and his partner, Eric Danko, kissing.At that point, a man who has yet to be identified began insulting the couple and using derogatory gay slurs. The heated exchange quickly escalated, becoming physical in a matter of moments. Surveillance footage shows Schaeffer and the unidentified man wrestling on the ground. The subjects in this case happen to be gay individuals and that s part of our investigation to see what provoked that attack, explained Miami Beach police officer Ernesto Rodriguez. [The men] Had some sort of exchange with victims, a verbal exchange which escalated into a violent physical attack, Rodriguez continued.The surveillance footage shows another man wearing a white shirt join the conflict, preventing people from trying to break up the fight. The man has also yet to be identified, so it is unknown if he had any relationship to the assailant.Police who have witnessed the footage have determined that the man is probably trained in some form of martial arts. Schaeffer escaped the conflict with lacerations on his lips. It is surprising that people concern themselves about what two people care about, Mark Meyer, a local community member who was disturbed by the altercation said. There s a lot of people in the world and if they re afraid to get out and see it then maybe they should just stay home and not even go to a Burger King. Police are pursuing the case as a felony battery charge. If you have any information about the assailant, please call the Miami-Dade Crime Stoppers at (305) 471-8477.You can watch the video below.Featured image from video screenshot

News

April 1, 2016

Belgian judge to decide on warrant for ex-Catalan leader on Dec. 14: lawyer

A Belgian judge will decide on the exercising of a European arrest warrant for ousted Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont on Dec. 14, his lawyers said on Monday. Puigdemont and four of his ministers left Spain after his regional government was sacked by Madrid for unilaterally declaring Catalonia independent following a referendum on secession that court authorities in Madrid had ruled was illegal. They face an arrest warrant from Spain with charges of rebellion and sedition. Paul Bekaert, one of Puigdemont s lawyers, said a decision on the execution of the arrest warrant would be made on Dec. 14. A Brussels court last month spared Puigdemont custody but ruled he could not leave Belgium without a judge s consent.

worldnews

December 4, 2017

Factbox: Soda, sugar taxes across the United States

Voters in four U.S. cities will decide on Tuesday whether they would like to tax sugary drinks, the latest in a series of such measures as officials and nutritionists seeks ways to address obesity, diabetes and other health epidemics. The following are some cities and states around the United States that have taxes or are considering imposing them for soft drinks, sugary beverages and sellers of sodas (population sizes are estimates from the U.S. Census): Voters in this small city in the San Francisco Bay area will be voting on a penny-per-ounce soda tax Tuesday. POPULATION: 4.86 million Proponents are pushing for lawmakers in Birmingham to consider a penny-per-ounce tax on sugary beverages to fill a shortfall for Medicaid. POPULATION: 2.98 million The Southern state has levied taxes since 1983 on soft drinks and syrups and related products ranging from 0.16 to 1.56 cents per ounce. Voters in Berkeley voted in favor of a penny-per-ounce soda tax in November 2014. The tax took effect in 2015. Voters in this small city in the San Francisco Bay will be voting on a penny-per-ounce soda tax on Nov. 8. POPULATION: 2.72 million The city taxes people who sell canned or bottled soft drinks, including soda and sports drinks, at 3 percent of the gross receipts of soft drinks sold at retail. POPULATION: 5.24 million Cook County’s Board of Commissioners is expected to vote in mid-November on a proposed penny-per-ounce tax on sugary drinks as part of its fiscal 2017 budget. POPULATION: 12.86 million Lawmakers in the state, home to 12.9 million people, this year renewed an effort for a penny-per-ounce soda tax. In 2015, the Navajo Nation in the U.S. Southwest passed a 2-percent sales tax on soda and junk food. Voters will decide on penny-per-ounce soda tax on Nov. 8. POPULATION: 1.57 million This month, Philadelphia became the biggest U.S. city to introduce a tax for each ounce of soda and other sweet beverages. It also applies to diet sodas. The law is due to come into effect in 2017, but the American Beverage Association (ABA), which represents soda manufacturers, is fighting it in court. Voters will decide on penny-per-ounce soda tax on Nov. 8. POPULATION: 1.84 million West Virginia has taxed bottled soft drinks, syrups and dry mixtures for decades.

politicsNews

November 4, 2016

Romney aims to stop Trump at Republican convention: CNN

Republican 2012 presidential nominee Mitt Romney is aiming to block Donald Trump from winning the nomination for president at the party’s convention, CNN reported on Thursday, citing an unnamed source close to Romney. The goal is to lock him out of the convention, CNN said. (Reporting by Timothy Ahmann; Editing by Mohammad Zargham) This article was funded in part by SAP. It was independently created by the Reuters editorial staff. SAP had no editorial involvement in its creation or production.

politicsNews

March 3, 2016

Israel questions Iranian blogger after giving her asylum

An Iranian blogger granted asylum in Israel has been questioned by its Shin Bet internal security service on suspicion of illegal communication with Iran, an Israeli official said on Friday. Israel admitted Neda Amin, 33, who was previously based in Turkey, on humanitarian grounds in August, saying that she faced forced repatriation to Iran and would be at risk given her writings for an Israeli news site. Amin, who is originally from Tehran, says her father was Jewish. Israeli law bars contact with the military or similar state agencies of its enemy Iran. As home to thousands of Iranian Jewish immigrants, Israel has in the past allowed citizens to visit family in Iran. But it outlawed these trips a decade ago over Shin Bet concerns that Tehran could recruit them as spies. A Shin Bet statement said that, after moving to Israel, Amin communicated with Iranian representatives and was questioned about this by the security service, whose responsibilities include counter-espionage. Asked by Reuters for clarification, an Israeli security official said only that the people with whom Amin was accused of communicating were not her relatives, and were inside Iran. Amin was not under arrest, said the Israeli official, who requested anonymity, adding: Whether there is a (criminal) case here is still being investigated. Amin later told Reuters she had been questioned for eight days over her contacts with a person she believed was an Israeli intelligence agent, but who her Shin Bet interrogators told her was in fact an Iranian government operative. A Farsi-speaking man had called her in Turkey, describing himself as an Israeli intelligence officer who wanted to protect her from Ankara s security services, she said, adding that they stayed in touch after she moved to Israel. Whenever the man phoned, Amin said, his number came up on her screen with an Israeli prefix. They never met, she said. They told me I am innocent as I have been in touch with an impostor, without knowing it, she said. I have spoken to this man, but I have done nothing against Israel s security.

worldnews

December 15, 2017

Wow! Ted Cruz Blasts CNBC Anchor Over Ridiculous Debate Questions

Ted Cruz takes the CNBC debate hosts to task on the idiotic questions and the political bias. Great!

politics

Oct 28, 2015

HILLARY’S PHYSICIAN CLAIMS She Has Pneumonia…Does Pneumonia Cause Convulsions?…Do People With Pneumonia Hug Little Girls, Expose Newborn Grandchildren? [VIDEO]

Hillary s been coughing to the point of almost passing out, spewing strange objects into her glass of water, flinging metal pieces from her pant legs, and convulsing as secret service agents lift her into her vehicle. So today, her doctor clarified what s been causing her Parkinson s disease like symptoms. Her doctor claims she has pneumonia, and that she s had it since last Friday. Do people who have pneumonia lie about it to reporters and blame their bizarre coughing fits on allergies? Do they convulse? Do they visit their daughter and her newborn baby unannounced after being lifted into their car by secret service? Secretary Clinton has been experiencing a cough related to allergies, Dr. Lisa R. Bardack said in the statement. On Friday, during follow up evaluation of her prolonged cough, she was diagnosed with pneumonia. She was put on antibiotics, and advised to rest and modify her schedule. While at this morning s event, she became overheated and dehydrated. I have just examined her and she is now re-hydrated and recovering nicely. Walking pneumonia can be contagious and between the ceremony today and the Barbra Streisand event on Friday night, she was among hundreds of people.Today, including Chuck Schemer and Bill De Blasio. WZEither she s lying gasp! or she s incredibly selfish or maybe she s just both?The touchy, feely infected with pneumonia Hillary can be seen here at the 9-11 memorial service, clearly taking every precaution to not infect everyone around her (that is, if she indeed does have pneumonia and not Parkinson s disease:She also staged a hug with a little girl outside Chelsea s apartment following her convulsions and falling down episode hours earlier:

politics

Sep 11, 2016

WATCH: Trump Doesn’t Want Us To Remember What He Said About Russia In 2014

As time goes on, it becomes ever clearer that Trump is Russia s puppet. There s every possibility he owes them money, and he s repeatedly blasted our intelligence community for daring to say that Russia did, indeed, engage in a concerted campaign to influence our election in Trump s favor. But did he always feel this way? Was he always Russia s puppet?It seems not, and it s by his own words that we know this. As recently as 2014, he said, in a series of interviews, that Mitt Romney was right to say that Russia was our greatest geopolitical foe: [Mitt] said [Russia is] a hell of a problem, and everybody laughed at him, including certain media, by the way. They laughed. It turned out that he s absolutely right. You look at what Russia s doing with Iran, how they controlled the situation, and Syria, and virtually every other place. He also insinuated that Obama was Putin s puppet because he felt we being meek and cowardly in the face of such a threat. We should definitely be strong, we should definitely do sanctions, and we have to show some strength. I mean, Putin has eaten Obama s lunch, therefore our lunch, for a long period of time. Now he says he s open to lifting our sanctions on Russia if we can all just get along, which is never going to happen because Russia is ruled by an autocrat. If we lift the sanctions, Russia will pull Trump s puppet strings even more. He also seems to like to kiss Putin s ass, mouth, and dick he doesn t criticize Russia at all, and staunchly defends them against other criticisms and revelations.Here s his stance back in 2014:In other words, this is another position on which he s flip-flopped. He just says whatever his strongest manhandlers want him to say. Whether they re his supporters, or foreign powers hoping to use him for their own gain, he says whatever he thinks will win him the most points.Featured image by Spencer Platt via Getty Images

News

January 16, 2017

Goldman's Blankfein: If Trump taps Powell as Fed chair wouldn't be 'one bit disappointed'

Goldman Sachs Group Inc (GS.N) CEO Lloyd Blankfein said Thursday on Bloomberg TV that he would not be “one bit disappointed” if President Donald Trump nominated Jerome Powell as the new Federal Reserve chair. “His background is a terrific background - again a lot of government service, service in the Fed, service in the private sector,” Blankfein said. “I think he is a very great, credible candidate. There were other credible candidates as well but I am not one bit disappointed if it turns out to be J. Powell.” Trump was expected on Thursday afternoon to nominate Powell for the post, putting his own stamp on the leadership of the U.S. central bank while signaling continuity on monetary policy. Asked about Powell’s lack of a PhD, Blankfein said, “I sometimes feel that people with PhDs - and believe me, I am not anti-intellectual, I have a law degree, my kids went to graduate school, I’m not against people who have PhDs — but sometimes I wish people who only have PhDs had a little more life and professional and business experience.” Blankfein also said a good U.S. tax plan will have “stimulative elements” and could get U.S. GDP growth to a higher level than 3 percent. “The free-est kind of stimulus you could provide for the economy is confidence and peeling away redundant or bad regulation, to be frank,” Blankfein said. Asked about Bitcoin, which soared past $7,000 to a new record high on Thursday, Blankfein said: “I have a level of discomfort with it as I have a level of discomfort with anything that’s new. But I learned over the years that there’s a lot of things that work out pretty well that I don’t love. “Right now, I tell you, I don’t have an investment in it. But I’m not willing to pooh-pooh it and that’s why, I say, I am open to it,” Blankfein added.

politicsNews

November 2, 2017

Tech employees vow not to help Trump surveil Muslims, deport immigrants

More than 200 employees of technology companies including Alphabet Inc’s (GOOGL.O) Google, Twitter Inc (TWTR.N) and Salesforce pledged on Tuesday to not help U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s administration build a data registry to track people based on their religion or assist in mass deportations. Drawing comparisons to the Holocaust and the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, the employees signed an open letter at neveragain.tech rebuking ideas floated by Trump during the campaign trail. The protest, which began with about 60 signatures but had more than tripled within hours of publication, comes a day before several technology company executives are due to meet with the real-estate developer in New York City. “We are choosing to stand in solidarity with Muslim Americans, immigrants, and all people whose lives and livelihoods are threatened by the incoming administration’s proposed data collection policies,” reads the letter, signed by a mix of engineers, designers and business executives. It continues: “We refuse to build a database of people based on their Constitutionally-protected religious beliefs. We refuse to facilitate mass deportations of people the government believes to be undesirable.” The letter vows to not participate in creating databases of identifying information for the U.S. government on the basis of race, religion or national origin, to minimize the collection or retention of data that could facilitate such targeting and to oppose any misuse of data at their respective organizations considered illegal or unethical. Trump clashed with Silicon Valley on several issues during the campaign, including immigration, government surveillance and encryption, and his victory last month alarmed many companies who feared he might follow through on his pledges. [nL1N1DA3VL] Those concerns have not been assuaged in recent weeks, as Trump has said he intends to nominate individuals to senior posts in his administration who favor expanding surveillance programs. Alphabet Chief Executive Officer Larry Page, Apple Inc (AAPL.O) CEO Tim Cook, Facebook Inc (FB.O) Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg and Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O) CEO Jeff Bezos and Oracle Corp (ORCL.N) CEO Safra Catz are among those expected to attend the summit with Trump’s transition team, according to two technology industry sources. The Trump transition team did not respond to a request for comment regarding the open letter.

politicsNews

December 14, 2016

Mexico report flags shortcomings in fight against corruption

The Mexican government has noted serious shortcomings in its fight against corruption in a classified report seen by Reuters, which was prepared ahead of an international evaluation of the country s efforts to combat money laundering. The undated government report estimated that the drug trade, tax fraud and other crimes were worth at least 1.13 trillion pesos ($58.5 billion) a year in Mexico, with all of that money susceptible to money laundering. In October last year the government published a much shorter official version of the findings, which broadly described the risks of money laundering without going into detail. The sum of illicit funds identified in the classified report was equivalent to 6.6 percent of the Mexican economy in 2014, when the data was compiled. It did not include an estimate of the value of corruption and several other crimes. The 321-page report was prepared ahead of an evaluation of the country s performance in preventing money laundering by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), a global group of government agencies dedicated to tackling money laundering. The view is that the risk represented by illicit funds susceptible to money laundering in Mexico generated within the jurisdiction is HIGH, the report said, capitalizing the word. The government said on Thursday the FATF evaluation, which is not yet public, showed Mexico had made significant progress in combating money laundering since the last evaluation in 2008. The FATF did not immediately reply to a request for comment. The Mexican government report is the first of its kind, according to people familiar with it, and was assembled from official data and independent research. Part of a broader investigation into illicit wealth in Mexico, the government concluded that Mexico needed more efficient mechanisms to prevent graft, including new laws that would complement the national anti-corruption architecture. Reuters contacted the ministries of finance, economy and the interior, as well as the navy, the attorney general s office and the central bank, all of which were identified as contributors to the report. All either declined to comment or did not reply. The report urged the government to standardize laws at state level to iron out differences in how authorities deal with corruption, as well as improve collaboration between agencies tasked with implementing policy and collecting data. Public policies should be overhauled to better understand the phenomenon of corruption in Mexico, the report said. Graft scandals have for decades dogged the political elite in Mexico, which ranked 128th out of 137 nations for ethics and corruption in the World Economic Forum s 2017-2018 Global Competitiveness Index. President Enrique Pena Nieto has been criticized for referring to corruption as a cultural problem in Mexico. Civil society groups and opposition lawmakers said this downplayed the severity of the problem and the government s role in fixing it. In 2016, Mexicanos Contra la Corrupcion y la Impunidad, a civil group, calculated corruption was worth between 2 percent and 10 percent of Mexico s gross domestic product, based on data from the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and others. Tax evasion and associated crimes accounted for the biggest source of illicit wealth identified by the study at 484 billion pesos ($25.3 billion), followed by trade in cocaine and marijuana at 404 billion pesos. The report did not address income from heroin and methamphetamine, which make up a large chunk of the drug trade. Nor did it include white collar crimes such as embezzlement of public funds and insider trading, trafficking in people and arms, fuel theft and sexual exploitation. While incomplete, the findings stand in contrast to the amount of illicit funds the government has said it removed from circulation in recent years. According to government data, the organized crime unit of the attorney general s office secured $11.4 million and 543.2 million pesos in its anti-money laundering efforts between September 2016 and June 2017. ($1 = 19.1472 Mexican pesos)

worldnews

November 4, 2017

WOMAN CRIES After Seeing How Easily Our Votes Are Stolen By Electronic Voting Machines [VIDEO]

There are people out there who are giving their lives trying to make our elections secure and they re being called conspiracy theorists and technophobes. And these vendors are lying and saying that everything s alright and it s not alright. It s as though our country is one country and pretending to be another country. How can this be happening in our elections? Watch:

left-news

Apr 15, 2016

UK's Boris Johnson reignites leadership speculation with Brexit plans

British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson set out his plans for a glorious Brexit on Saturday that angered colleagues and reignited speculation he would challenge Prime Minister Theresa May for the leadership of the Conservative party. With May due to set out her vision for Brexit in a speech in the Italian city of Florence on Friday, Johnson published a 4,300-word newspaper article that roamed well beyond his ministerial brief and, in some cases, went beyond the approach set out by the government. Britain, he said, would not pay to access European markets in the future. Once out of the European Union, the country should borrow to invest in infrastructure, reform the tax code and set immigration levels as it sees fit. A prominent Brexit campaigner in last year s referendum, Johnson also repeated the controversial claim that the government would be 350 million pounds ($476 million) better off per week once outside the EU. My friends, I must report that there are at least some people who are woefully underestimating this country, Johnson wrote in the Daily Telegraph. They think Brexit isn t going to happen. I am here to tell you that this country will succeed in our new national enterprise, and will succeed mightily. We have a glorious future. With some colleagues angered by the timing - Johnson s article was published a day after a bomb injured 30 people on a train - he later added on Twitter: Looking forward to PM s Florence Speech. All behind Theresa for a glorious Brexit . A favorite with grassroots members of the Conservative Party, Johnson had been expected to challenge for the leadership after May gambled away her parliamentary majority in a June election she did not need to call. Instead, he publicly pledged his loyalty. But the Times newspaper reported earlier this week that Johnson believed he had since been sidelined as May prepares to compromise over a divorce bill with the EU to ease the negotiations. We would not expect to pay for access to their markets any more than they would expect to pay for access to ours, he wrote. The article made no reference to a transition period the government is expected to negotiate. And yes once we have settled our accounts, we will take back control of roughly 350 million pounds per week, he said. It would be a fine thing, as many of us have pointed out, if a lot of that money went on the NHS (health service). During the campaign, Johnson traveled around Britain on a bus emblazoned with a slogan suggesting that Britain was sending 350 million pounds a week to the EU - a figure rejected as inaccurate by experts - and that the money would be better spent on the NHS. Saturday s article also included Johnson s belief that Britain needed to leave the EU because so many young people with the 12 stars lipsticked on their face were beginning to have split allegiances between Europe and their own country. Opposition Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said Saturday s comments also laid bare the conflicts within May s government and cut the ground from beneath the prime minister s authority. But a source within Downing Street said Johnson s views were well known. As you ll see in the PM s speech next week the government is united in our determination to make the most of the opportunities for a successful future outside the EU. Colleagues criticized the timing of the article, which came around two hours after May put Britain on the highest threat level of critical, meaning an attack may be imminent. On the day of a terror attack where Britons were maimed, just hours after the threat level is raised, our only thoughts should be on service, said Ruth Davidson, the popular leader of the Conservatives in Scotland. Will Tanner, a former adviser to May, said the timing was astonishing, self-serving and disloyal. The real PM *just* raised threat level. Meanwhile guy who wants to replace her issues a prelude to resignation, to save face over 350 million pounds. Hmm.

worldnews

September 16, 2017

MELANIA AND IVANKA SHINE: Steal the Show at G20 Summit…Lefty Media Questions Ivanka’s Role As Surrogate

Melania and Ivanka Trump were standouts at the G20 summit. The Trump women displayed plenty of style and grace while mingling with world leaders and their spouses. First Lady Melania Trump was pure perfection the entire trip. The highlight was a show stopping white flapper dress worn for a dinner where she clearly charmed Russia s Vladimir Putin.Melania has a future in diplomacy:When the Trump/Putin meeting went over time, she was sent in the room to tell the two world leaders to wind it down:The President s wife Melania has also been called upon by the US delegation, after it emerged she was sent in to Mr Trump s lengthy one-on-one meeting with Russia s President Vladimir Putin to try to wind up their conversation.Mr Trump spent 2hrs 16mins with President Putin on Friday, and Rex Tillerson, the US Secretary of State, disclosed that presidential aides became exasperated that the President was allowing it to overrun for so long. Slots of 30 minutes are usually allotted for each bilateral meeting.IVANKA STEPS IN:The lefty media went nuts when Ivanka Trump stepped in for her father during the G20 Summit meeting for leaders Does the left want empowered women or not? She is an adviser to the President after all:The Telegraph reported:On a day that the G20 hosted a Women s Empowerment working lunch, President Donald Trump went the extra mile to make sure he empowered the women in his own family. Months after appointing his daughter Ivanka as one of his official advisers, Mr Trump sent the former model to stand in for him at a G20 leaders meeting.A Trump administration spokespersons had this to say about press outrage: When other leaders stepped out, their seats were also briefly filled by others. The emphasis is on BRIEFLY!THE PRESS IS OUTRAGED ARE YOU? We d love to know what you think about Ivanka standing in.

politics

Jul 8, 2017

Republicans Respond To Trump’s Threats, Presidency In Freefall (DETAILS)

No one takes Donald Trump seriously anymore. Not the majority of Americans who voted against him, not a good portion of regretful Trump voters, and not even the members of the party that helped get him elected so he could push their agenda forward. That s right Trump has become a joke to many members of the Republican Party now, and he knows it. In fact, he s throwing a tantrum trying to get their attention. But no matter what he does now, it s not working. He s lost them for good.Trump has recently resorted to making threats to Republican lawmakers to try and show them who is boss, but they aren t afraid of him anymore. Now that Special Counsel Robert Mueller s investigation into Russia is closing in on Trump, the GOP is actually ignoring him more than they are listening, according to a report by Vanity Fair.On Thursday, Mueller decided to impanel a grand jury for Trump s Russia investigation, signaling to many Republicans that they needed to act quickly to prevent Trump from sabotaging the effort. Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) told the Washington Post: The Mueller situation really gave rise to our thinking about how we can address this, address the current situation. With Mueller targeting Trump and now that healthcare is off the table after many failures (even though Trump is still demanding that GOPers work on legislation), Republicans are moving on. Vanity Fair reported: Republicans used to be afraid of Trump. Now, they re mostly ignoring him. The administration s ham-handed attempts to coerce Senators Dean Heller and Lisa Murkowski to vote yes on Obamacare repeal were met with sharp criticism from Republican lawmakers. And Trump s threats in the aftermath of the failed health-care vote last week fell on deaf ears. Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) was also cited for his comments about Trump s bullying to Republican lawmakers over the healthcare debacle. Corker said: If that s what he wants to do, he ought to just do it. [As] probably he s learned over the last couple of weeks, threats don t really go over particularly well. My advice would be to either do it or don t do it. The GOP is finally growing a spine and abandoning Trump, who will inevitably sink his own ship. All of these threats are falling on deaf ears now.Featured image via Jeff J Mitchell /Getty Images

News

August 4, 2017

FORMER SECRETARY OF DEFENSE GATES RIPS INTO OBAMA For Putting Politics Over Our Troops [Video]

Former CIA Director Robert Gates rips into Obama for his refusal to say the troops are in a combat role in the Middle East. Obama s doing a great disservice to our troops! Ever since American forces have been deployed to fight ISIS, the White House has said that they are not there in a combat capacity, even though three Americans have been killed fighting the terror group.

politics

May 22, 2016

Nobel peace laureate group urges nuclear powers to adopt ban-the-bomb treaty

The leader of the group that won this year s Nobel Peace Prize on Sunday urged nuclear nations to adopt a United Nations treaty banning atomic weapons in order to prevent the end of us . The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) was awarded this year s Nobel Peace Prize by a Nobel committee that cited the spread of nuclear weapons and the growing risk of an atomic war. ICAN is a coalition of 468 grassroots non-governmental groups that campaigned for a U.N. Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, adopted by 122 nations in July. The treaty is not signed by - and would not apply to - any of the states that already have nuclear arms. Beatrice Fihn, ICAN s Executive Director, urged them to sign the agreement. It provides a choice. A choice between the two endings: the end of nuclear weapons or the end of us, she said in her speech at the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony in Oslo. The United States, choose freedom over fear. Russia, choose disarmament over destruction. Britain, choose the rule of law over oppression, she added, before urging France, China, India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel to do the same. Israel is widely assumed to have nuclear weapons, although it neither confirms nor denies it. A moment of panic or carelessness, a misconstrued comment or bruised ego, could easily lead us unavoidably to the destruction of entire cities, she added. A calculated military escalation could lead to the indiscriminate mass murder of civilians. Fihn delivered the Nobel lecture together with Setsuko Thurlow, an 85-year-old survivor of the Hiroshima atomic bombing and now an ICAN campaigner. Thurlow recalled on stage on Sunday some of her memories of the attack on Aug. 6, 1945. She was rescued from the rubble of a collapsed building about 1.8 kilometers (1.1 mile) from Ground Zero, she said. Most of her classmates, who were in the same room, were burned alive. Processions of ghostly figures shuffled by. Grotesquely wounded people, they were bleeding, burnt, blackened and swollen, she said. Parts of their bodies were missing. Flesh and skin hung from their bones. Some with their eyeballs hanging in their hands. Some with their bellies burst open, their intestines hanging out. The foul stench of burnt human flesh filled the air. The United States, Britain and France sent second-rank diplomats to the Nobel ceremony, which Fihn earlier told Reuters was some kind of protest . Japan, which is the only country to suffer atomic bombings and now relies on the U.S. nuclear umbrella, has also not signed the treaty. In a statement late on Sunday, Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kono expressed respect for the efforts of atomic bombings survivors toward a nuclear-weapons free world. But he added: It is essential to steadily seek ways to advance nuclear disarmament realistically, while responding appropriately to real threats, including North Korea s nuclear and missile development programs. Graphic of Nobel laureates - tmsnrt.rs/2y6ATVW

worldnews

December 10, 2017

Trump Steals $100K from Children’s Cancer Charity To Line His Own Pockets

In another despicable headline focused on the actions of President Trump, Forbes reported on Tuesday that Trump has funneled over $100,000 in St. Jude Children s Hospital donations into Trump Organization revenue.Trump s son Eric hosts an annual golf tournament to raise millions for the St. Jude children s Research Hospital. The Eric Trump Foundation reportedly funneled $100,000 of the donations right back to Trump s golf courses to take care of incurred expenses instead of going to the charity where the donors had been promised they would go.To top this off, over the past 10 years $500,000 of donated money was conveniently re-donated to different charities, including ones connected to family members of Trump. Most of these organizations were using the Trump golf courses for the fund raising tournaments, meaning Trump could have been making additional hundreds-of-thousands off of charities over the yers.The order to bill the Eric Trump charitable foundation for obscene amounts of donated money came directly from Trump himself, says the report. This means that not only did Trump swindle charity money, he also broke federal and New York state laws on misleading donors and self-dealing.The President had announced that he would dissolve his charitable foundation to avoid what people might consider conflicts of interest, but he has yet to act on that promise. New York state s attorney general isn t going to allow him to do anything of the sort while a criminal probe of the charity is on-going. The Trump Foundation is still under investigation by this office and cannot legally dissolve until that investigation is complete, said Attorney General spokesperson Amy Spitalnick, in December.Really? Hundreds-of-thousands from kids with cancer? Speechless.Photo by Olivier Douliery-Pool/Getty Images

News

June 6, 2017

Scotland's Sturgeon seeks assurance on Brexit transition

Scotland s first minister Nicola Sturgeon has sought confirmation from Prime Minister Theresa May that Britain is urgently seeking a transition agreement with the European Union before the end of the year. Sturgeon, who heads the devolved government, said in a letter to May she was increasingly concerned that Brexit talks would end in no deal and see Britain crash out, following contradictory indications from UK government officials earlier this week. The clarity of your intentions, and thus the confidence of business that there will be a sensible transition period agreed quickly, has been seriously undermined, she wrote. This relates in particular to your comments suggesting no transition can be agreed, or formalized, until there is agreement on the future relationship (with the EU). The UK government said on Wednesday it wants an agreement of the outline of transitional arrangements in early 2018, and that it expects such an agreement to be quickly and easily reached. Asked about Sturgeon s letter, a spokesman for May said: We will respond in due course . Uncertainty around formalizing a transition period ahead of agreement on Britain s future relationship with the EU was causing confusion and damaging business confidence, Sturgeon argued. She said she was seeking confirmation that the prime minister was urgently seeking agreement on a transition arrangement of at least two years, with the aim of securing that agreement by the end of this year.

worldnews

October 27, 2017

Debbie Wasserman Schultz Refuses To Debate Primary Challenger

Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz s career is in jeopardy as a wave of resentful backlash in the Democratic Party over corrupt politics has affiliated her with everything that is wrong with establishment politics. Her poor leadership and lack of impartiality as Chair of the Democratic National Committee has disenfranchised millions of Democrats around the country, and has inspired thousands of progressive independents to not only support Senator Bernie Sanders for president, but her Democratic Primary Challenger, Tim Canova, as well.Refusing to take money from corporations or Super PACs, Mr. Canova has raised over $550,000 in the first quarter of 2016 from small donations averaging $20 each. Ms. Wasserman Schultz s flailing public image began its downward spiral after allegations surfaced she rigged the debate schedule of the Democratic Primaries to shield Hillary Clinton, on whose campaign she served as co-chair in 2008, from exposure.Now Debbie Wasserman Schultz is shielding herself from exposure by refusing to debate her Democratic primary challenger. On April 11th, Tim Canova tweeted a video clip of a Debbie Wasserman Schultz s District Director, Jodi Bock Davidson, swatting a cell phone out of one of Mr. Canova s campaign staffers hand after asking Debbie Wasserman Schultz if she would agree to a debate. Most staffers of politicians would have lost their job after such an incident, but Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who is no stranger to dirty politics, most likely applauded the response. Mr. Canova told a local South Florida newspaper he has sent three letters to the Debbie Wasserman Schultz campaign requesting to schedule a debate and has yet to receive any response. He has also started a petition on his campaign website for Debbie Wasserman Schultz to debate him. Debbie Wasserman Schultz continues to remain silent regarding his inquiries. She has often dodged questions about her primary opponent, hoping his surge will go away on its own if she ignores it. She told the Miami Herald Tim Canova won t change her campaign strategy, which makes little sense as she has never been challenged in her Democratic Primary since she entered Congress in 2004 until now, and her congressional district consists overwhelmingly of Democrats. It s no different than any other election I have. I have been on the ballot virtually every time. I do the same thing no matter whether I have primary opposition, she said in the interview.Ms. Wasserman Schultz also dodged a question regarding why she thinks Tim Canova has gained the popularity he has. I really don t know, answered Ms. Wasserman Schultz. I am focused as I usually do on my own campaign, doing the best job I can to represent my constituents and that s my first responsibility is to do my job in Congress, to help elect a Democratic president and to make sure that in running for re-election people know the work I have done on their behalf. I m not remotely paying attention to what my opponent does. Apparently, not remotely paying attention to her opponent is synonymous with ignoring their requests to debate so voters can grasp a sense of where the two candidates differ on important issues to the constituency base. Ms. Wasserman Schultz s failure to engage with Tim Canova in a debate setting is undemocratic and sets a terrible example for the rest of the Democratic Party from its own Chair.Featured image via Flickr

News

April 13, 2016

Clinton’s ‘No-Fly Zone’ over Syria Will Not “Save Lives” – It Will Lead to War with Russia

Prof Michel Chossudovsky Global ReaseachThe media has failed to address the confrontation between the U.S. State Department and the Joint Chiefs of Staff.The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Joseph Francis Dunford (image, left) has warned both the US Senate as well Secretary of State John Kerry in no uncertain terms that a No Fly Zone over Syria would lead to war with both Syria and Russia, intimating a dangerous process of military escalation.In a Senate Arms Services Committee hearing, Dunford said, responding to questions from Republican Senator Roger Whicker (Mississippi): Right now, Senator, for us to control all of the airspace in Syria it would require us to go to war, against Syria and Russia That s a pretty fundamental decision that certainly I m not going to make. (Senate Armed Services Committee, September 22, 2016, emphasis added)At the third presidential debate, Hillary Clinton reasserted her commitment that if elected president, she would implement a no-fly-zone, intimating that the objective was to save lives : I think a no-fly zone could save lives and could hasten the end of the conflict. I am well aware of the really legitimate concerns you have expressed from both the president and the general, Clinton said in response to a question from Fox News debate moderator Chris Wallace. This would not be done just on the first day. This would take a lot of negotiation and would also take making it clear to the Russians and Syrians that our purpose here was to provide safe zones on the ground I think we could strike a deal and make it clear to the Russians and the Syrians that this was something that we believe was in the best interest of the people on the ground in Syria. (Fox News, emphasis added)At present, under the Obama administration, the joint chiefs of staff are opposed to the No Fly zone .The Joint Chiefs of Staff are appointed by the Secretary of Defense.Under a Clinton presidency, a new Secretary of Defense as well as a new Chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, firmly committed to A No fly Zone over Syria would be appointed.Mich le Angelique Flournoy, a former Under Secretary of Defense for Policy is Hillary s choice for the position of Secretary of Defense, who favors the No Fly Zone option.According to Defense One: The woman expected to run the Pentagon under Hillary Clinton said she would direct U.S. troops to push President Bashar al-Assad s forces out of southern Syria and would send more American boots to fight the Islamic State in the region. Confirmed by the Leaked Emails Michele Flournoy is a crony of the Clintons. She has called for limited military coercion to help remove Assad from power in Syria, including a no bombing zone over parts of Syria held by U.S.-backed rebels. This is tantamount to a no fly zone to protect the terrorists including ISIS Daesh from actions by Syrian and Russian forces.According to Defense One:Flournoy did not deny the entire report that she favors increased U.S. intervention; for instance, she acknowledged her support for U.S. strikes using standoff weapons to retaliate against Syrian military targets to enforce the no-bomb zone Continue this article at Global ResearchREAD MORE HILLARY NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Clinton Files

Middle-east

October 26, 2016

State Department Delivers Largest Dissent Document EVER In Protest Of Trump’s Muslim Ban

The State Department has a special cable designed so that employees can formally protest a policy, and this one is the largest ever.Over the weekend, chaos swept the nation and the globe after Donald Trump signed an unconstitutional executive order banning travelers from seven countries from entering the United States, even if they have green cards. Leaders around the world condemned the action and massive protests occurred.After acting Attorney General Sally Yates was fired for refusing to defend the unconstitutional order, Trump and his team said that anyone who disagrees with Trump s policy should quit their jobs.That didn t sit very well with many State Department employees, who proceeded to use the special cable to voice their dissent against Trump s policy.According to the Wall Street Journal,People familiar with the dissent cable said the document had approximately 1,000 signatures. The State Department maintains a special dissent channel as a formal and confidential vehicle for officials to express alternative views.The cable is the largest such protest ever, said Hannah Gurman, a professor at New York University who wrote a book about dissent at the State Department. Ms. Gurman said the second largest, relating to Syria, was one signed by 51 State Department officials last June.That s right. The State Department protest of Trump s ban is the largest ever recorded and literally dwarfed the protest against one of President Obama s policies last year.This is a pretty big deal and shows just how unpopular Trump is at the State Department.Clearly, a large percentage of the 25,000 employees at the State Department do not like what Trump is doing.And they have every reason to be opposed to Trump.Trump has been making a mockery of diplomacy and our foreign policy long before the election in November. And ever since that day Trump has been making a mess by overturning decades of policy that created stability and security and built alliances.Trump is threatening our allies and moving our nation to the brink of World War III. He is abandoning American values in favor of fear and hate. And Russia s influence over the State Department makes things even more dangerous.Our country faces a threat unlike any we have ever faced before. This threat is from within and he is sitting in the White House. Every employee at the State Department and every citizen in this nation should be horrified by what Trump is doing. And we need to do something about it before he destroys everything we hold dear.Featured Image: Drew Angerer/Getty Images

News

February 2, 2017

Irma heads west-northwest as it passes over Caribbean island of Barbuda

The eye of Hurricane Irma was passing over the Caribbean island of Barbuda, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said in its latest advisory on Wednesday. The hurricane was about 40 miles (65 km) north of Antigua with maximum sustained winds of 185 mph (295 kph), the NHC said. Irma is moving toward the west-northwest near 15 miles per hour (24 kph) and this motion is expected to continue for the next couple of days, it added.

worldnews

September 6, 2017

WHOA! MELANIA TRUMP BREAKS HER SILENCE…Fires Back At Trump Accusers [VIDEO]

Melanie Trump is more than just a pretty face. She is brilliant and is not likely someone who is pushed around. In her interview on Fox & Friends that will air on Tuesday between 6-9 am EST, Melania talks about her husband s accusers with Fox and Friends host Ainsley Earhardt. She makes a great point about the timing of Trump s accusers and suggests the correct way for them to handle their accusations I was not surprised in one way, because as I said before, everything was organized. It is 3 weeks before the elections, all these women coming out. These are allegations that are not true. Why now? Why 3 weeks before the election? Why they are accusing my husband that is not the man I know. They want to damage the presidency of my husband Class act

politics

Oct 17, 2016

DEMOCRAT’S WORST NIGHTMARE: [Video] Sassy Trump Girls Are Giving Americans Easy Way To Switch From Democrat To Republican

We love these ladies! YouTube sensations Diamond and Silk tell 100% FED UP Americans how to ditch the Democrats and switch to the Republican Party.They re not afraid to show their love for Trump, and now they re taking it one step further. They re pulling a trick from the Democrat Party playbook and teaching their viewers how easy it is to switch your party affiliation.Watch here:

politics

Oct 5, 2015

White House aide Omarosa Manigault Newman resigns

Omarosa Manigault Newman, a former reality television star-turned political aide to U.S. President Donald Trump, has resigned from the White House to “pursue other opportunities,” Trump’s spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said on Wednesday. Newman served as assistant to the president and director of communications for the White House’s Office of Public Liaison. A former star of Trump’s TV show “The Apprentice,” Newman worked as the director of African-American outreach on Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. Sanders said Newman’s departure would take effect Jan. 20, 2018. Newman had what sometimes appeared to be an ambiguous role in the White House orbit. The New York Times reported in September that chief of staff John Kelly had put her on a “no-fly list” of aides who he did not consider fit to attend serious meetings. Sources with ties to the White House have said they expect a wave of departures from the administration once Trump has completed his first year in office.

politicsNews

December 13, 2017

HOLY FREEDOM OF SPEECH! Obama’s Attorney General Promises To Punish Americans For Anti-Muslim Speech…UPDATE: Why Lynch May Be “Most Likely Candidate” To Quickly Push Through Supreme Court Justice Nomination Process

UPDATE: A leading Supreme Court analyst thinks Attorney General Loretta Lynch is the most likely candidate to replace the late conservative Justice Antonin Scalia.Tom Goldstein, who runs the influential SCOTUSblog, had earlier predicted Ninth Circuit Judge Paul Watford would make the top of President Obama s shortlist. But in a revised blog post, Goldstein said he now believes Lynch is the leading contender.Lynch is a very serious possibility, Goldstein wrote. The fact that Lynch was vetted so recently for attorney general also makes it practical for the president to nominate her in relatively short order. Via: NBC NewsSocial media users beware! You ve been warned by Obama s henchwoman, Attorney General Loretta Lynch The day after a horrific shooting spree by a radicalized Muslim man and his partner in San Bernardino, California, Attorney General Loretta Lynch pledged to a group of Muslim activists that she would take aggressive action against anyone who used anti-Muslim rhetoric that edges toward violence. Speaking to the audience at the Muslim Advocate s 10th anniversary dinner Thursday, Lynch said her greatest fear is the incredibly disturbing rise of anti-Muslim rhetoric in America and vowed to prosecute any guilty of what she deemed violence-inspiring speech. She said:The fear that you have just mentioned is in fact my greatest fear as a prosecutor, as someone who is sworn to the protection of all of the American people, which is that the rhetoric will be accompanied by acts of violence. My message to not just the Muslim community but to the entire American community is: we cannot give in to the fear that these backlashes are really based on.Assuring the pro-Muslim group that we stand with you, Lynch said she would use her Justice Department to protect Muslims from violence and discrimination.Claiming that violence against Muslims is on the rise and citing France s clamp down on potentially radicalized mosques, Lynch suggested the Constitution does not protect actions predicated on violent talk and pledged to prosecute those responsible for such actions. When we talk about the First Amendment we [must] make it clear that actions predicated on violent talk are not American, said Lynch. They are not who we are, they are not what we do, and they will be prosecuted. My message not just to the Muslim community but to all Americans is We cannot give in to the fear that these backlashes are really based on,' said Lynch.It is painfully clear that, like her predecessor Eric Holder, Lynch is far more concerned with promoting the social justice agenda than protecting the Constitutional rights of American citizens. What exactly is speech that edges toward violence ? What exactly are actions predicated on violent talk ? In the end, it is whatever she decides it to mean. Via: Daily Wire

left-news

Dec 4, 2015

WATCH: Joy Reid Shuts Down Right-Wing Pastor For Lying In Defense Of Racist Trump

A pastor shamefully lied in defense of Donald Trump on Saturday and Joy Reid shut him down HARD.During an interview on MSNBC, conservative Christian pastor Darrell Scott, who is one of the few black people in America who support the Republican nominee, pretended that Trump is not a racist and denied that Trump had anything to do with the birther movement against President Obama.Trump tried to sell himself to black voters on Friday in front of an audience of white people by telling them they have nothing to lose by voting for him. That led Reid to ask, If Donald Trump makes a speech to black people when there are none around to hear it, did he make a sound? Reid turned to Scott and noted that Trump has made two appeals to black voters in recent days in places where the black population only makes up about 1 percent of the total. Why is he making those appeals in front of almost exclusively white audiences? she asked.Scott made excuses for Trump, claiming that it doesn t matter where he speaks because all African-Americans hear him. When pressed on why Trump has not accepted invitations from the NAACP, the Urban League, and the National Association of Black Journalists because he supposedly had better things to do already on his schedule.Reid smiled as Scott called Trump a cultural phenomenon who draws rock star crowds. Reid then zinged back that those crowds are devoid of black people.Reid slammed Trump for pushing the false notion that every black person in America is living in poverty and going to failing schools and then asked Scott about Trump s history of housing discrimination, which has been cited by the Justice Department because the Republican nominee refused to rent to black people.Scott claimed that it was just an accusation and denied that Trump discriminated against black people, but the record shows that Trump settled the case with the government because there was a strong case against him, hardly the action of a man who didn t commit such an offense.Reid then asked Scott about Trump s prominent role in the birther movement. Despite multiple video tapes of Trump pushing the birther conspiracy and demanding President Obama s birth certificate, Scott also denied that Trump had anything to do with the movement. Don t tell me you agree with the bitherism, sir, Reid pleaded. Don t tell me you agree with that. Scott replied by claiming that Hillary Clinton started the birther movement, a notion that is totally false. And Reid shut Scott down for blatantly lying on her show. That s wrong. Even a pastor cannot make things up on this show, she cautioned. I respect you as a pastor, but you re not going to come on and make things up. Here s the video via MSNBC.Donald Trump is desperately trying to save his flailing campaign and that s the only reason why he is making feeble attempts to court black voters now. If he really cared about black people he would have been courting them from the beginning. Instead, he has been palling around with white supremacists and encouraging violence against black protesters at his rallies. Scott can t sit there and call himself a man of God while lying through his teeth to defend a bloated racist. It s just not going to fly.Featured image via screenshot

News

August 20, 2016

Japan calls snap election as new party roils outlook

A fledgling party led by popular Tokyo governor Yuriko Koike gained momentum on Thursday ahead of an Oct. 22 election as the biggest opposition Democratic Party said it would step aside to let its candidates run under her conservative, reformist banner. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, a conservative who returned to power in 2012, hopes a recent boost in voter support will help his Liberal Democratic Party-led (LDP) coalition maintain a simple majority. It now holds a two-thirds super majority. But Koike s new Party of Hope, only formally launched on Wednesday, has upended the outlook for the election after the former LDP member announced she would lead it herself. I m someone who is always ready to take action, Koike told a news conference where she spoke about her achievements since taking office as governor a year ago. A media-savvy former defense minister whose name has often been floated to be Japan s first female prime minister, Koike said she would not run for a seat herself, although speculation persists that she will. Democratic Party executives said they would not run candidates of their own and would let members run under the Party of Hope banner. The party has struggled to overcome rock-bottom ratings, defections and an image tainted by its rocky stint in power from 2009 to 2012. After the cabinet formally set the date of the election, Abe told reporters, I decided to call this election because we must overcome the national crisis of the threat from North Korea and an aging population by obtaining a mandate from the people. Some opposition lawmakers boycotted the dissolution session, in protest against Abe s election decision, which could bring about a political vacuum at a time of high tension with North Korea over its missile and nuclear arms programs. A survey by the Mainichi newspaper showed 18 percent of voters plan to vote for Koike s party, compared to 29 percent for Abe s ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). An Asahi newspaper poll showed 13 percent planned to vote for her party, versus 32 percent for the LDP. Both surveys asked voters their preference for proportional representation districts where ballots are cast for parties, rather than candidates. Voters in many countries have shown they are willing to take a risk, even a severe risk, in terms of what will actually happen because they are disappointed with the status quo, said Martin Schulz, a researcher at Fujitsu Research Institute. But Schulz, who drew a comparison to French President Emmanuel Macron s meteoric rise, added that Koike s platform might not be so appealing, given its similarities to LDP policies. Abe s personal ratings have risen to about 50 percent from about 30 percent in July, partly on the back of his leadership during the current North Korea crisis. But opposition parties say he called the election to escape questioning in parliament about suspected cronyism scandals that had cut into his support. Koike, 65, defied the LDP to run successfully for Tokyo governor last year and her novice local party then crushed the LDP in a metropolitan assembly election in July. Her Party of Hope shares policy space with the business-friendly LDP, but she has staked out different stances on two issues likely to appeal to voters. Koike, who wants Japan to abandon nuclear power, said she would study ways to eliminate dependence on it by 2030. Abe s government aims to retain its role in the energy mix, despite worries over safety after the 2011 Fukushima nuclear crisis. Koike also wants to freeze a planned rise in the national sales tax to 10 percent from 8 percent in 2019. Abe says he will raise the tax but spend more on child care and education instead of paying down public debt. Recent reforms will cut to 465 from 475 the number of lower house seats in the coming election.

worldnews

September 27, 2017

Newt Gingrich Unwittingly Makes STARTLING Prediction For 2020 – Before This Election Even Happens

Newt Gingrich, who s totally, utterly and completely up Trump s ass except for when he s not, claims to know who will be in the general election four years from now. Gingrich seriously thinks that there could be a Trump/Clinton rematch in 2020. No, seriously, that s what he thinks. The rationale he gave to Politico for that prediction is well beyond ridiculous: The challenge for everybody s going to be, What if he gets 48 or 49 percent? Gingrich said in a video interview for POLITICO s Open Mike series. And what if he says: You know, I like this campaign and stuff. I ain t leaving ? There will then be a Trump Party.' Har de har har, don t make us laugh too hard. It hurts.Trump might like the campaign stuff because it helps him promote his businesses, but whether the GOP even allows him to get very far in the process remains to be seen. That s especially true since oh, wait we haven t even had this election yet!Gingrich still thinks that the odds are better than even that Trump will win this election. Politico says that Gingrich was on Open Mike a few hours before FBI director James Comey released his vaguer-than-vague letter about new emails tied to Hillary, so that revelation must have made ol Newt cream his shorts.Alas, though, the latest so-called scandal turned out to be nothing, much to the disappointment of all the Hillary-haters out there.Gingrich isn t exactly the best prognosticator the GOP has. He s spent a lot of time predicting that Hillary s numbers will fall, while Trump s will soar. Before anyone takes that seriously, remember that he also predicted that Mitt Romney would win in a landslide in 2012. Not exactly groundbreaking, breathtaking, accurate stuff here.Trump s numbers soaring, while Hillary s crash, hasn t happened. At this point, doesn t look like it s going to happen. 10 days out from an election means most voters even many of the undecided have figured out who they d rather see in the White House.Newt Gingrich is a fucking tool.Featured image by Chip Somodevilla via Getty Images

News

October 30, 2016

Police search Finnish reporter's home after security article

Finnish police searched a reporter s home and seized her computer after she tried to destroy the hard drive to protect sources linked to a security story, her newspaper reported. The journalist, Laura Halminen, said she tried to smash up her computer with a hammer in her home, but the laptop then started smoking and she called the fire brigade, according to an interview published by her employer Helsingin Sanomat. Police officers who came to her home with the fire service to investigate the blaze then took her computer and searched her property, police said - a rare operation in a country rated high for protecting press freedom. The case centered on a story that Halminen and another journalist wrote on Saturday about a Finnish intelligence center that they said monitored neighboring Russia and, they reported, was about to get new powers to watch Finns online. After the article s publication, Finland s President Sauli Niinisto released a statement saying authorities had launched an investigation in to the leaking of material used in the story. The reporter Halminen told her newspaper in the interview she had decided to destroy the computer to make sure sources were protected in the best possible way . On Sunday, the police s National Bureau of Investigation said, officers went to the property and found the computer burning in the basement. After that, a special home search was ordered to be carried out in the apartment and basement, the force added. It said officers had had to act quickly because they feared material linked to an investigation could be destroyed. There were no reports of anyone being arrested or charged. The newspaper said the police also took phones and memory sticks in what it called a very worrying raid. A house search of this scale targeting a journalist is totally exceptional in Finland, Editor-in-chief, Kaius Niemi, said. Campaign group Reporters Without Borders ranked Finland third in its 2017 World Press Freedom Index, behind only Sweden and Norway.

worldnews

December 18, 2017

The Better Business Bureau Calls Trump Out As The Lying Liar That He Absolutely Is (IMAGES)

When someone else is trying to tell you that everyone else is lying in order for you to believe only them, they re probably lying to you. That s pretty much what Fox News does on a daily basis, and that s definitely what Donald Trump does regularly.In fact, Trump has just been called out on a pretty big lie that he really can t walk back from by any means. During a recent GOP debate on Fox News, Megyn Kelly asked Trump about the Better Business Bureau s rating of his Trump University. Kelly alleged that the university had an D-minus rating, while Trump boasted right now it is at an A. Here s the thing neither of those ratings are true. While Trump tried to claim that this is the current rating of his venture into swindling people via higher learning, even faxing an alleged copy of the report to the Fox moderators during the debate The Better Business Bureau report, with an A rating for Trump University. #GOPDebate https://t.co/ldJ5EFp3HM pic.twitter.com/1K9u09CFQQ Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 4, 2016 that report is actually from several years ago. And according to the Better Business Bureau, they did not send a document of any kind to the Republican debate site last Thursday evening. The document presented to debate moderators did not come from BBB that night. In fact, according to an official statement released by the BBB:For purposes of this statement, we will refer to Trump University, which is how it is most often referred to in news stories. There is only one BBB Business Review for Trump University, and we noted the name change to Trump Entrepreneur Initiative when it was brought to our attention by the company.1. BBB did not send a document of any kind to the Republican debate site last Thursday evening. The document presented to debate moderators did not come from BBB that night.2. Trump University does not currently have an A rating with BBB. The BBB Business Review for this company has continually been No Rating since September 2015. Prior to that, it fluctuated between D- and A+.3. The document posted on social media on Thursday night was not a current BBB Business Review of Trump University. It appeared to be part of a Business Review from 2014.4. BBB ratings are based on information we obtain about a business, including complaints received from the public. The reporting period is three years. Detailed information about BBB ratings is available on all 5.3 million Business Reviews on our website, bbb.org.5. At no point did BBB change the rating of Trump University based upon a demand from anyone. BBB followed its standard evaluation process applicable to all businesses.6. During the period when Trump University appeared to be active in the marketplace, BBB received multiple customer complaints about this business. These complaints affected the Trump University BBB rating, which was as low as D- in 2010. As the company appeared to be winding down, after 2013, no new complaints were reported. Complaints over three years old automatically rolled off of the Business Review, according to BBB policy. As a result, over time, Trump University s BBB rating went to an A in July 2014 and then to an A+ in January 2015.7. Trump University has never been a BBB Accredited Business. The document handed to the debate moderators on Thursday night could not have been an actual Better Business Bureau accreditation notice for this business.Trump flat-out LIED. Here s what the BBB actually has listed for Trump University:via Better Business BureauDoes Trump think that these facts won t make themselves known? It certainly seems that way.This sort of purposeful lying and deceit is the last thing we need as a Commander-in-Chief. We need to make sure Trump stays as far away from the Oval Office as possible.Featured image via Flickr/BBB

News

March 10, 2016

VATICAN ADVISOR: Says Pope Will Call On World At UN To Join Crusade For a New World Order…Would Like US To Pay $845 BILLION GLOBAL TAX To Combat ‘Climate Change’

Members of the Catholic church need to pay close attention to the radical statements that are being made by the Vatican s top advisor, Jeffrey Sachs. Sachs has been described as arguably the world s foremost proponent of population control, including abortion.Top Vatican adviser Jeffrey Sachs says that when Pope Francis visits the United States in September, he will directly challenge the American idea of God-given rights embodied in the Declaration of Independence.Sachs, a special advisor to the United Nations and director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, is a media superstar who can always be counted on to pontificate endlessly on such topics as income inequality and global health. This time, writing in a Catholic publication, he may have gone off his rocker, revealing the real global game plan.The United States, Sachs writes in the Jesuit publication, America, is a society in thrall to the idea of unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. But the urgent core of Francis message will be to challenge this American idea by proclaiming that the path to happiness lies not solely or mainly through the defense of rights but through the exercise of virtues, most notably justice and charity. In these extraordinary comments, which constitute a frontal assault on the American idea of freedom and national sovereignty, Sachs has made it clear that he hopes to enlist the Vatican in a global campaign to increase the power of global or foreign-dominated organizations and movements.Sachs takes aim at the phrase, which comes from America s founding document, the United States Declaration of Independence, that We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. These rights sound good, Sachs writes, but they re not enough to guarantee the outcome the global elites have devised for us. Global government, he suggests, must make us live our lives according to international standards of development. In the United States, Sachs writes, we learn that the route to happiness lies in the rights of the individual. By throwing off the yoke of King George III, by unleashing the individual pursuit of happiness, early Americans believed they would achieve that happiness. Most important, they believed that they would find happiness as individuals, each endowed by the creator with individual rights. While he says there is some grandeur in this idea, such rights are only part of the story, only one facet of our humanity. The Sachs view is that global organizations such as the U.N. must dictate the course of nations and individual rights must be sacrificed for the greater good. One aspect of this unfolding plan, as outlined in the Sachs book, The End of Poverty, involves extracting billions of dollars from the American people through global taxes. We will need, in the end, to put real resources in support of our hopes, he wrote. A global tax on carbon-emitting fossil fuels might be the way to begin. Even a very small tax, less than that which is needed to correct humanity s climate-deforming overuse of fossil fuels, would finance a greatly enhanced supply of global public goods. Sachs has estimated the price tag for the U.S. at $845 billion.In preparation for this direct assault on our rights, the American nation-state, and our founding document, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon told a Catholic Caritas International conference in Rome on May 12 that climate change is the defining challenge of our time, and that the solution lies in recognizing that humankind is part of nature, not separate or above. The pope s expected encyclical on climate change is supposed to help mobilize the governments of the world in this crusade.But a prestigious group of scholars, churchmen, scientists, economists, and policy experts has issued a detailed rebuttal, entitled, An Open Letter to Pope Francis on Climate Change, pointing out that the Bible tells man to have dominion over the earth. Good climate policy must recognize human exceptionalism, the God-given call for human persons to have dominion in the natural world (Genesis 1:28), and the need to protect the poor from harm, including actions that hinder their ascent out of poverty, the letter to Pope Francis states.Released by a group called the Cornwall Alliance, the letter urges the Vatican to consider the evidence that climate change is largely natural, that the human contribution is comparatively small and not dangerous, and that attempting to mitigate the human contribution by reducing CO2 emissions would cause more harm than good, especially to the world s poor. The Heartland Institute held a news conference on April 27 at the Hotel Columbus in Rome to warn the Vatican against embracing the globalist agenda of the climate change movement. The group is hosting the 10th International Conference on Climate Change in Washington, D.C., on June 11-12.However, it appears as if the Vatican has been captured by the globalist forces associated with Sachs and the United Nations.Voice of the Family, a group representing pro-life and pro-family Catholic organizations from around the world, has taken issue not only with the Vatican s involvement with Sachs, but with Ban Ki Moon, describing the two as noted advocates of abortion who operate at the highest levels of the United Nations. Sachs has been described as arguably the world s foremost proponent of population control, including abortion.Voice of the Family charges that environmental issues such as climate change have become an umbrella to cover a wide spectrum of attacks on human life and the family. Although Sachs likes to claim he was an adviser to Pope John Paul II, the noted anti-communist and pro-life pontiff, Sachs simply served as a member of a group of economists invited to confer with the Pontifical Council on Justice and Peace in advance of the release of a papal document.In fact, Pope John Paul II had worked closely with the Reagan administration in opposition to communism and the global population control movement. He once complained that a U.N. conference on population issues was designed to destroy the family and was the snare of the devil. Pope Francis, however, seems to have embraced the very movements opposed by John Paul II.Sachs, who has emerged as a very influential Vatican adviser, recently tweeted that he was thrilled to be at the Vatican discussing moral dimensions of climate change and sustainable development. The occasion was a Vatican workshop on global warming on April 28, 2015, sponsored by the Pontifical Academy of Sciences of the Roman Catholic Church. Sachs was a featured speaker.The plan going forward involves the launching of what are called Sustainable Development Goals, as envisioned by a Sustainable Development Solutions Network run by none other than Jeffrey Sachs. The Network has proposed draft Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) which contain provisions that are radically antagonistic to the right to life from conception to natural death, to the rights and dignity of the family and to the rights of parents as the primary educators of their children, states the group Voice of the Family.In July, a Financing for Development conference will be held, in order to develop various global tax proposals, followed by a conference in Paris in December to complete a new climate change agreement.Before that December conference, however, Sachs says the pope will call on the world at the United Nations to join the crusade for a New World Order.Sachs says, Pope Francis will come to the United States and the United Nations in New York on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the United Nations, and at the moment when the world s 193 governments are resolved to take a step in solidarity toward a better world. On Sept. 25, Pope Francis will speak to the world leaders most likely the largest number of assembled heads of state and government in history as these leaders deliberate to adopt new Sustainable Development Goals for the coming generation. These goals will be a new worldwide commitment to build a world that aims to harmonize the pursuit of economic prosperity with the commitments to social inclusion and environmental sustainability. Rather than emphasize the absolute need for safeguarding individual rights in the face of government overreach and power, Sachs writes that the Gospel teachings of humility, love, and justice, like the teachings of Aristotle, Buddha and Confucius, can take us on a path to happiness through compassion and become our guideposts back to safety. Writing elsewhere in the new issue of America, Christiana Z. Peppard, an assistant professor of theology, science, and ethics at Fordham University, writes about the planetary pope, saying, What is really at stake in the collective response to the pope s encyclical is not, ultimately, whether our treasured notions of theology, science, reality or development can accommodate moral imperatives. The real question is whether we are brave enough and willing to try. The plan is quite simple: world government through global taxes, with a religious face to bring it about.Via: Western Journalism

politics

May 23, 2015

GRAB THE POPCORN! Queen Of Corruption DENIED Special Treatment For First Debate

The Drudge Report has gained access to the rules for the upcoming Mega-Debate between Hillary and Trump. Hillary s always angling for an advantage, and when it comes to the mainstream media, Hillary usually gets exactly what she wants. It looks like she ll get a custom podium to help her with the height advantage, but when it comes to coughing up a lung, Hillary s on her own. Let s hope for Hillary s sake, she s able to keep the guy with the diazinon pen close to the stage in case unfit to run for office Hillary has another pneumonia-related incident like the one on 911 DEBATE RULES: NO COUGHING BREAKS **Exclusive** Fri Sep 23 2016 11:30:40 ETIf presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton slips into a coughing fit or any other medical crisis during Monday s high-stakes debate, she will have to power through, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned! There are no commercial breaks, a commission source explains. Period. Debate moderator Lester Holt does not have the authority to cut away from the stage during the epic 90-minute showdown. And microphone audio for either of the candidates is not to be manipulated.Clinton has experienced severe coughing episodes throughout the election year. During a Labor Day campaign stop she suffered a 4-minute choking marathon.Monday s throwdown could top out at 100 million viewers, making it the biggest political event in history.EDITOR S NOTE: The presidential debate commission settled an early flashpoint when Clinton demanded a step-stool at the podium to add height to her 5 4 frame. Campaign Chairman John Podesta expressed concern that Hillary would be dwarfed by 6 2 Trump. The request was quickly rejected. The commission is allowing for a custom-made podium, which will accommodate the difference in stature.

left-news

Sep 24, 2016

Kerry trip to Cuba for rights dialogue canceled: U.S. officials

Tentative plans for U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry to visit Cuba before mid-March for a human rights dialogue have been canceled, two U.S. officials said on Thursday, amid concerns over the Cuban government’s human rights record. Kerry told a congressional hearing on Feb. 23 that he might be in Cuba “in the next week or two” to hold a dialogue on human rights, ahead of President Barack Obama’s scheduled trip to the island on March 21-22. The sources said the trip had been canceled because U.S. and Cuban officials were deep in negotiations on issues including which dissidents Obama might see in Havana and that a trip in the timeframe Kerry had mentioned was not seen as constructive. State Department spokesman John Kirby said he had no updates regarding Kerry’s potential travel to Cuba. “The Secretary is still interested in visiting in the near future, and we are working with our Cuban counterparts and our embassy to determine the best timeframe,” Kirby said in an emailed statement. U.S. critics of Obama’s opening to Cuba have complained that the president has received little in return for restoring diplomatic relations with the former Cold War foe. On Feb. 24, the Cuban government granted seven dissidents who were out of prison on parole a one-time permission to travel outside the country in an apparent gesture to the United States ahead of Obama’s historic visit.

politicsNews

March 4, 2016

No indication Russia wants positive relationship with U.S.: Mattis

U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said on Monday there was no indication that Russia wanted a positive relationship with the United States, saying it had chosen to be a strategic competitor. “At this time ... I do not see any indication that Mr. Putin would want a positive relationship with us. That is not to say we can’t get there as we look for common ground,” Mattis told a House Armed Services Committee hearing, referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin. “But at this point, he has chosen to be competitive, a strategic competitor with us and we will have to deal with that as we see it,” he said. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, added that the United States had an adversarial relationship with Russia. Russia and the United States have a number of diverging interests, including in Syria. Russia said on Saturday it had told the United States it was unacceptable for Washington to strike pro-government forces in Syria after the U.S. military carried out air strikes on pro-Syrian government militia. U.S. senators said on Monday they were close to an agreement on legislation imposing new sanctions on Russia, including a possible provision that would prevent the White House from easing sanctions without congressional approval. Democrats and Republicans on the Foreign Relations and Banking Committees have been negotiating for about a week on an amendment to an Iran sanctions bill that also would impose sanctions to punish Russia over issues including its alleged meddling in the 2016 U.S. election, annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea region and support for the government of Syria in that country’s six-year-long civil war.

politicsNews

June 13, 2017

Trump Stages Photo Of Himself ‘Writing’ His Own Inaugural Address And Gets Hilariously Burned By The Internet

Donald Trump claims he is writing his own Inaugural Address and posted an image to Twitter as proof. The Internet laughed out loud.Trump looks like he is not enjoying anything that requires thinking and the image is clearly staged to once again dupe his gullible supporters into believing that he is actually writing it himself. Trump also dubbed his Mar-a-Lago resort the winter White House, which also pissed people off.Writing my inaugural address at the Winter White House, Mar-a-Lago, three weeks ago. Looking forward to Friday. #Inauguration pic.twitter.com/S701FdTCQu Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 18, 2017In reality, it s hard to believe Trump is capable of writing anything longer than 140 characters, so it s obvious that a speechwriter is doing all the work just like Trump hired a ghostwriter to pen his books.The image is so bad, in fact, that Twitter users couldn t help but mercilessly mock Trump.@realDonaldTrump I hope you ve been working on that vocabulary of yours. Kris Sanchez (@KrisSanchez) January 18, 2017.@realDonaldTrump Four Score and Seven Years ago, all the haters, losers and enemies (sadly of which there are many), were born fucked up! pic.twitter.com/mpg9hkN6dQ Kristina Wong (@mskristinawong) January 18, 2017.@realDonaldTrump ..I stand before you, ready to hit the sleazebags back, much better than seeing a psychiatrist (which I never have).. pic.twitter.com/FsuBAvDr06 Kristina Wong (@mskristinawong) January 18, 2017.@realDonaldTrump to fight hoaxes such as Global warming invented by the Chinese, environmentally friendly light bulbs, and vaccines.. pic.twitter.com/mhpy8BBAtJ Kristina Wong (@mskristinawong) January 18, 2017.@realDonaldTrump Oh, honey, this looks terribly staged. Is that a magic marker? Bess Kalb (@bessbell) January 18, 2017.@realDonaldTrump And, dear, I know you need a familiar bed, but the winter White House is the White House. Bess Kalb (@bessbell) January 18, 2017@realDonaldTrump Who is translating it from the original Russian for you? Neil Miller (@rejects) January 18, 2017.@realDonaldTrump plagiarize Obamas? pic.twitter.com/fTOVZcIGDn Jordan Uhl (@JordanUhl) January 18, 2017@realDonaldTrump that is a blank piece of paper and you re holding a closed sharpie pic.twitter.com/ekCcH8eTXe Jules Suzdaltsev (@jules_su) January 18, 2017I notice you re no longer hanging around live eagles pic.twitter.com/WH66BENVpV Roland Scahill (@rolandscahill) January 18, 2017@realDonaldTrump Between the staging and the obviously blank paper, I m thinking #FakeNews, right? Danielle Smith (@DanielleSmithTV) January 18, 2017@realDonaldTrump Will it start with Four Russian Whores And Seven Hacks Ago Tony Posnanski (@tonyposnanski) January 18, 2017@realDonaldTrump that s not how people write, Donald. You need to put the paper flat on the desk, and open the notepad. Matt Haig (@matthaig1) January 18, 2017@realDonaldTrump wow looks great pic.twitter.com/kRxMCN4yLB elisabeth (@esjesj) January 18, 2017Does anyone want to bet that Trump will fill his speech with many of the greatest words ever spoken by past presidents and take credit for them himself? Because he sure as hell isn t going to think of something original.Featured image via Twitter

News

January 18, 2017

(VIDEO) KEY CLINTON STATE DEPT EMPLOYEE BLOCKED RELEASE OF POLITICALLY SENSITIVE DOCUMENTS

(VIDEO ABOVE)STATE DEPARTMENT SPOKESPERSON HARF WON T COMMENT ON THE CHERYL MILLS BLOCK OF SENSITIVE DOCUMENTS ABOUT HILLARY CLINTONHillary s Chief of Staff could be part of the key to the truth of so much corruption. Cheryl Mills ran interference the night Benghazi broke. Hillary s claim that an anti-Islam video, created Benghazi, was promoted by Mills. Benghazi information was compromised by Ms. Mills but it would be asking too much to expect her to come clean on it. Truth just isn t in the cards for any of these lowlifes.WASHINGTON When Hillary Clinton was secretary of state, her staff scrutinized politically sensitive documents requested under public-records law and sometimes blocked their release, according to people with direct knowledge of the activities.In one instance, her chief of staff, Cheryl Mills, told State Department records specialists she wanted to see all documents requested on the controversial Keystone XL pipeline, and later demanded that some be held back.In another case, Ms. Mills s staff negotiated with the records specialists over the release of documents about former President Bill Clinton s speaking engagements also holding some back.The records requests came under the Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA, the public s main tool to get information from the government. Decisions on what to release belong with each agency s FOIA staff, say experts on the law, to guard against the withholding of documents for political or other inappropriate reasons.Questions about the transparency of Mrs. Clinton s State Department tenure have been bubbling ever since it was revealed that she exclusively used a private email account to conduct her work as secretary. The existence of that private system, which is being investigated by a House special committee probing the 2012 attack on a U.S. diplomatic outpost in Benghazi, Libya, meant the department didn t have access to her emails when public requests to see them came in.Read more: WSJ

politics

May 21, 2015

Dutch rightist Wilders expects Trump boost for Europe's populists

Dutch far-right politician Geert Wilders said Donald Trump’s victory in the U.S. presidential election was a sign that the West was living through a “patriotic spring” that would boost support for populist parties in Europe like his own. Wilders, whose anti-immigration, anti-Muslim Freedom Party tops polls ahead of next year’s parliamentary elections, said mainstream politicians had lost the trust of voters in the West by ignoring the issues they cared most about. “Trump winning proved to me that people are fed up with politically correct politicians who are concerned and involved with issues that regard themselves but not those that are important to the public,” he said.

politicsNews

November 9, 2016

Catalonia finds no friends among EU leaders

European Union leaders sought to minimize Spain s crisis with Catalonia on Thursday and avoid encouraging separatists across the bloc, describing Barcelona s secession bid as a domestic issue and declining a mediation role. Leaders did not hold a discussion of Catalonia s bid to break away from Spain and judged they had nothing to gain by angering Madrid, diplomats said. It is not on our agenda, European Council President Donald Tusk told reporters during the EU summit. All of us have our own emotions, opinions, assessments but formally speaking there is no space for an EU intervention. The approach contrasted with EU strategies on almost every other major issue over the past decade, including Greece s financial crash and mass migration flows from Syria. On countless occasions, EU leaders have used late-night summits to press for a common decision or joint policy statement. It s an internal Spanish matter, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte told reporters, a position echoed by French President Emmanuel Macron, who held a private meeting with Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy on the sidelines of the summit. He (Macron) has complete confidence in Rajoy to resolve the situation, a French diplomat told Reuters. Spain s government is set to suspend Catalonia s autonomy and impose direct rule after the region s leader threatened to go ahead with a formal declaration of independence if Madrid refused to hold talks. Rajoy kept a low profile at the summit while his fellow leaders held news conferences on Thursday. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she hoped there were solutions on the grounds of the Spanish constitution. Despite some disquiet over the way Rajoy handled a Catalan independence referendum on Oct. 1, which Madrid said was illegal and sent in police to disrupt voting, countries fear making any remarks that could embolden separatists at home. From Scotland to Flanders and Lombardy, the 2007-09 financial crisis, unemployment and migration have allowed separatists, anti-EU and populist parties to feed off discontent with political elites and reopen regional divisions. As Britain negotiates its exit from the EU, few leaders want to wade into another highly complex negotiation bringing new economic uncertainty and legal disruption. Smaller EU countries such as Slovenia that emerged as sovereign states after the end of the Cold War are equally uncomfortable about inspiring secessionists across the bloc. They rely on Spain, a large euro zone economy, for investment. Even in Western Balkan countries aspiring to join the European Union, there is a reluctance to fuel calls for regional autonomy at home. Spain is one of five EU countries that has yet to recognize Kosovo s independence. There is not much to gain from backing Barcelona and a lot to lose from angering Madrid, said a senior EU diplomat at the EU summit.

worldnews

October 19, 2017

Anti-Government Terrorists Forgot Snacks, Want You To Send Via U.S. Mail

On Thursday Blaine Cooper, one of the anti-government terrorists who is participating in the armed takeover of a bird sanctuary in Oregon, put out a call for snacks on social media.According to the terrorist group, now known as Ya llQueda, the armed militants decided to seize the more than 100 year old wildlife refuge because it is a symbol of everything that is wrong in America, such as not being able to set fire to public lands, turn your freeloading cattle loose to feed off American taxpayers, or even ride your ATV through ancient archaeological sites, the way, according to Ammon Bundy we used to could do. The Malheur National Wildlife Refuge was established in 1908. ATV s came on the market in the U.S. in the 1960 s. The stupidity of right wing extremism is timeless.In case you needed more proof that this is the dumbest armed takeover of a bird sanctuary EVER, the anti-government terrorists who told America that they plan to stay holed up inside the visitor s building of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge for as long as it takes, even for years, are asking people to send snacks.During a secretive press conference held on the second day of Ya llQueda s armed occupation of the federal wildlife refuge, Bundy told the press, We do have a plan and that plan is going to take several months to accomplish. What kind of idiotic plan involves living in the visitor s building of a wildlife sanctuary for months, even years if necessary, but does not also include packing snacks?Image credit: screen capture, Blaine Cooper, via Independent UKNot only is Ya llQueda already begging for snacks, but these admitted haters of the federal government would like you to send them snacks via the U.S. mail.You just cannot get any dumber than these people.(You might recognize self-proclaimed militia leader Blaine Cooper from this video, or even from the Bundy ranch fiasco, last year.)During the press conference on Saturday, Bundy referred to the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, with its 320 bird species, as a tool of tyranny. According to the official website, the Harney County Migratory Bird Festival is a major tourist attraction and a staple of the local economy. The festival draws visitors from all over the world, and reservations for bird-viewing tours fill up almost as soon as they become available.In Bundy s delusional mind he s a hero and a patriot setting an oppressed people free from bird tyranny. In the minds of the residents of Harney County, he s a lunatic.More than 50 percent of the residents of Harney County work for the government. As OPB reports here, the town has always had a collaborative, rather than an antagonistic relationship with the federal government. Signs posted throughout the town, reading Go home militia, make it clear enough that Bundy and his followers aren t wanted there.Bundy claims he s giving the land back to the people. Never mind that it s PUBLIC land, or that it already belongs to the people. Need we mention that Malheur National Wildlife Refuge was accessible to everyone right up until the day these assholes took it over, causing the government to have to close it down for public safety reasons?What these dipshits have a problem with is being asked to respect public land, and to help protect it for future generations. They want to be able to let their cows graze on it at the expense of other taxpayers. They want to be able to ride their ATV s through it and drive their pickup trucks over it (in other words exploit and destroy it) and who the hell cares about nesting birds anyways? They also want to be able to poach wildlife and burn down the forest if they feel like it, just like the two criminals they re trying so hard to turn into martyrs for their utterly stupid cause.If the government is smart, they ll send these idiots a dozen boxes of Ding Dong s laced with some hard core tranquilizers. Knock their dumb-asses out. Take away their guns. Let them wake up in jail where they belong. No-one gets hurt. The public gets its land back from these delusional lunatics. Bundy and the rest of the #Yeehawdists with him all get prison time and felony records, meaning they ll never be allowed to own guns or terrorize their fellow citizens again.Sounds like a good plan to me.Watch: Ryan Bundy, one of the leaders behind the terrorist takeover in Oregon, explains the Constitution and stuff on youtube.*Featured image credit: video screen capture, via Southern Nevada Watchdogs on youtube

News

January 4, 2016

BAHAHA! DONALD TRUMP SIGN-STEALER Gets A Verbal Beatdown [Video]

A Trump sign-stealer gets a verbal beatdown and discovers he s actually a Trump supporter! Bahaha!

politics

May 24, 2016

AMERICANS ARE LAUGHING At Michael Moore When They See Dates He Chose For Democrats To “RISE UP!” and “Storm” Offices Of Senators

The Washington Post published a propaganda organizing piece for the Democrat Party: Democrats resistance calls for a July 4th recess push to kill GOP billFrom the article: The moment that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) told Republicans that there could be no vote on the party s health-care bill this week, Senate Democrats were in a familiar position headed to a protest.In the Senate swamp, a well-kept lawn across from the Capitol, hundreds of activists from Planned Parenthood, AFSCME and smaller progressive groups were hooting and cheering their latest mini-victory. The People s Filibuster, scheduled to last all week, had triumphed in its first few minutes. The delay of BRCA, which Republicans had hoped to vote on this week, came after disagreements inside the majority party. But it was egged on by the Resistance, the loose collection of more than 1,000 groups working to stop the Republican agenda that sprang out of Trump s surprise election. A bill designed by wealthy white men, for wealthy white men will only further marginalize disenfranchised communities, said the organizers of the Jan. 21 Women s March in a statement. While a delay on the vote is a small victory, it s time to crank up the outrage and tell all Senators to vote NO. The call to action that has everyone on social media laughing however was a tweet by Michael Moore who suggested liberals storm ( nonviolently ) the local offices of Senators and pack their town halls. Hmmm .Is there such a thing as nonviolently storming someone s office? Perhaps someone should tell the irrelevant Michael Moore that the Senators don t work over the July 4th weekend.I call upon EVERYONE to observe this 4th of July week by nonviolently storming the local offices of your Senators, pack town halls, RISE UP! Michael Moore (@MMFlint) June 28, 2017Moore got called out on Twitter by several people who were smart enough to figure out the Senate would be on recess or that storming offices of US Senators was anything but nonviolent :His EVERYONE = Flint's & #OFA Soros paid violent protesters.BTW, storming is violent.#July4th @FBI adnilhoom (@adnilhoom) June 29, 2017What is the point in storming offices that are going to be completely empty because July 4th is a holiday, you utter moron? https://t.co/o8eIaKkr4f Paul Joseph Watson (@PrisonPlanet) June 29, 2017Yes, YES! Storm offices that will be closed on the 4th of July. pic.twitter.com/owUNMI7C5y The Mental Recession (@rustyweiss74) June 29, 2017The most embarrassing propaganda piece we could find was USA Today s piece titled:USA Today joined in with other leftist propaganda rags in an effort to help the left organize agains our President and the GOP. Yesterday, they ran a one-sided fear mongering article that was clearly designed to motivate Democrats to spend their extended holiday weekend harassing Republican Senators to change their votes on the replacement bill for the failed Obamacare.In an effort to discredit the efforts of the GOP, USA Today s propaganda piece mentions how Republican Senators are not 100% on board with the bill. USA Today even offers their readers a George Soros resource to help them find ways to resist our President and the GOP agenda.USA today also offered their readers a heavy dose of fear with a Youtube video featuring a woman named Priscilla and her 38-year-old daughter who has cerebral palsy and could die from seizures without health insurance.USA Today also featured 2 tweets in their article showing Americans who are singing the praises of Obamacare. Every day, we see horror stories about Americans who were financially devastated by Obamacare, not one of those stories appeared in the lopsided USA Today article. These 2 tweets were apparently the only examples a major publication like USA Today could find in their embarrassing propaganda piece:B/c of the ACA I was able to give a kidney to my husband @kevinbehr when he needed it. This is us post op '15 and now #HowTheACASavedMyLife pic.twitter.com/ilX6ikEva3 Erica Behr (@the_erica) June 27, 2017#ACA ensures my Chemo Baby and I will always have coverage despite me surviving being #pregnantwithcancer #HowTheACASavedMyLife #FacesOfACA pic.twitter.com/9L3f3O9HvU Beth KACM (@elizebethtown) June 26, 2017Here s the extent of USA Today s balanced reporting, as they mention the GOP near the end of the article, but only in a negative light, as they make a point to say the GOP is attacking Democrat Senator Elizabeth Warren. They also point out that according to polls, most Americans disagree with the GOP and want taxpayers to pay for everyone s health care: Republicans will have their own messaging campaign, as they try to tie all Democrats to comments made by Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., who is pressing for a single-payer health care system, in which the government would run a health insurance program available to any American.Republicans plan to have their own digital campaign and hold press conferences that include testimonials from Americans who ve been negatively impacted by Obamacare, said Republican National Committee spokesman Rick Gorka.Yet McConnell has acknowledged if Republicans can t pass a bill soon, they may have to work with Democrats, who will demand preserving the current Obamacare program by shoring up the individual market exchanges. People get really emotional about health care, but Republicans have clearly lost the narrative on this, and the discussion has moved towards Who are you taking health care away from? said former Republican House member Tom Davis of Virginia, who previously headed reelection efforts for his party.Republicans worry Democrats will ultimately push for a single-payer system that is anathema to their limited-government, free-market driven ideology. Once a politically toxic prospect Hillary Clinton faced significant blow back as first lady for her 1990 s flirtation with universal health care that stopped short of single payer polls now show modest increases in support for such a system.A recent survey by the Pew Research Center found 33% of respondents favor a single-payer system. More relevant to the current debate, 60% said the federal government is responsible for providing healthcare coverage to all Americans. In an interview on MSNBC, Ohio Rep. Tim Ryan, D-OH, who represents a working-class area including Youngstown, also expressed support for single-payerAdditional polling also suggests Democrats have a running start on public opinion heading into the break. According to a USA TODAY/Suffolk University poll, just 12% of Americans support the Republican plan, a similar number other major surveys including by Marist. NBC News/Wall Street Journal found just 16% of adults believe the House bill was a good idea.

politics

Jun 29, 2017

WORRIED ABOUT TRUMP LOSING HIS OWN MONEY? $6 BILLION LOST Under Hillary Clinton As Secretary Of State

The State Department misplaced and lost some $6 billion due to the improper filing of contracts during the past six years, mainly during the tenure of former Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, according to a newly released Inspector General report. The $6 billion in unaccounted funds poses a significant financial risk and demonstrates a lack of internal control over the Department s contract actions, according to the report. The alert, originally sent on March 20 and just released this week, warns that the missing contracting funds could expose the department to substantial financial losses. The report centered on State Department contracts worth more than $6 billion in which contract files were incomplete or could not be located at all, according to the alert. The failure to maintain contract files adequately creates significant financial risk and demonstrates a lack of internal control over the Department s contract actions, the alert states.Read more: WT

politics

Oct 4, 2016

Argentine court sentences 29 to life for dictatorship crimes

Argentina sentenced 29 people, some with nicknames like Blond Angel of Death and The Tiger, to life sentences on Wednesday in a trial involving some 800 cases of kidnapping, torture and murder during the 1976-1983 dictatorship. Many defendants, including former Navy Captain Alfredo Astiz and Captain Jorge Acosta, were already serving life sentences for Dirty War crimes committed at the ESMA Naval Mechanics School that was converted into a clandestine prison and torture center. For the first time in the so-called ESMA mega-case, however, Wednesday s sentence included convictions for death flights, when people were drugged and their bodies dumped in the River Plate. Giving sedatives to our loved ones before or during the flight before throwing them in the river or the sea is unbelievable; it s dismal, said Lita Boitano, head of Relatives of the Disappeared and Detained for Political Reasons. Boitano, who lost two children during the dictatorship, was among the hundreds of people gathered outside the federal courthouse in Buenos Aires listening to the convictions. They took more than three hours to read. In addition to the life sentences, 19 people received jail terms of eight to 25 years. Six were cleared of wrongdoing, including Juan Alemann, a finance minister during the dictatorship and one of few civilians who had been accused of planning rights abuses. Human rights groups estimate Argentina s military government killed up to 30,000 people during the dictatorship. Most of their bodies were never found. About 5,000 dissidents were held at the ESMA, and only about 200 people are known to have survived. Some of the initial 68 defendants died during the trial that started in 2012. Astiz had been convicted in absentia in Europe of killing two French nuns held at the ESMA, which opened to the public as a human rights memorial in 2007. Argentina has prosecuted many dictatorship-era crimes and last year convicted 15 ex-military officials of conspiring to kidnap and assassinate leftist dissidents as part of the Operation Condor program. But a Supreme Court ruling earlier this year to decrease jail time for those convicted of human rights abuses spurred protests and stoked fears of backsliding.

worldnews

November 30, 2017

Trump Kicks Off Hispanic Heritage Month By Saying ‘Puerto Rico’ In Fake Accent (VIDEO)

Donald Trump kicked off Hispanic Heritage Month on Friday during an event at the White House. He did this after his thoroughly embarrassing tour of hurricane-devastated Puerto Rico in which he lobbed rolls of paper towels at victims of the hurricane and that was after he blamed the island for the natural disaster. Puerto Ricans are very proud people, but Trump tried to diminish them.Trump spoke on different topics during his speech, from the economy to the Las Vegas massacre, then he addressed Puerto Rico which is now in crisis after Hurricanes Maria and Irma devasted the U.S. territory. We are also praying for the people of Puerto Rico, Trump said while using an exaggerated Spanish accent. We love Puerrrrtoooo Ricooo, he continued, again with the accent. Puerto Rico, he said again.At that point, a woman yelled out, We love you! and Trump then said and we also love Puerto Rico, but this time, the fake president dropped his fake accent.Watch:Trump says Puerto Rico in an affected Spanish accent three times in a row. (via CBS) pic.twitter.com/FopaVNLqAY Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) October 6, 2017Sure, the audience laughed because haha, we re used to this president offending every single group of Americans across the board. Perhaps a better way of honoring Puerto Ricans would be to not try to cover up his own misdeeds in handling the humanitarian crisis. On Oct. 4th, half of the residents in Puerto Rico had access to clean water and 5 percent of the island had electricity, according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency website. However, by Oct. 5th, FEMA had removed statistics on Puerto Rico s water and power supply from its website, so now we have no idea of what the island is dealing with and what they need to survive. The only thing FEMA left on its site was good news; not the real news which is very bleak.Information on water access and electricity on the island is available only on a website maintained by the office of Gov. Rossell , StatusPR. According to the website, 9.2 percent of the island has power and 54.2 percent of people have some form of drinking water.But Trump says he loves Puerto Ricans as he mocks their accent.Image via screen capture.

News

October 6, 2017

FACTBOX - German coalition watch: Agreeing on lowest common denominator not enough - Greens

Chancellor Angela Merkel won a fourth term in office in the German national election on Sept. 24, but a fractured vote that brings the far-right into parliament means she must try to work out a three-way coalition untested at federal level. The new alliance would comprise Merkel s conservative bloc - her Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU) - along with the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP) and environmentalist Greens. Such a tie-up is called a Jamaica coalition, because the three parties colors of black, yellow and green match those of the Jamaican flag. To secure a coalition agreement, the unlikely bedfellows must overcome differences on a range of issues including immigration policy, Europe, tax and the environment. The CDU and CSU have reached an agreement over immigration policy, but it is not clear whether it will pass muster in a full coalition. Following are remarks on the possible coalition from senior officials: We achieved a joint result (with the Bavarian CSU allies) which I think is a very, very good basis to go into exploratory talks with the FDP and Greens. On Friday, October 20th, we will have a first round of exploratory talks with all partners. The parties come from very different starting positions. There will be discussions in a lot of policy areas with the FDP and the Greens. We know that unusual combinations can, of course, bring the opportunity to find some solutions to things that had seemed unsolvable until now. So now we need to put our noses to the grindstone and see what we can do. We d be well advised not to be perfectionists in the upcoming coalition negotiations but rather to be open and to build trust that a government will be formed that acts sensibly, even during unforeseeable crises. Thoroughness is certainly more important than speed, but I m optimistic that everything will be sorted out by Christmas. All four parties are showing goodwill and the will of the voters is clear too: Jamaica should be formed. We all need to just get started now. Compromises always mean everyone needs to give a bit. If the coalition comes off, it must not be a coalition that only agrees on the lowest common denominator. That won t work. We don t have to govern. There is also the possibility of another grand coalition (between Merkel s conservatives and the Social Democrats). It can succeed. The most important thing is that trust needs to be built between participants, and that takes time. That s why it would be illusory to believe we could conclude negotiations by Christmas. No one would understand it if the new government does not pass an immigration law. We need a mix of humanity and order. We Greens also want to secure the EU s external borders and build a sensible database of fingerprints. There must be a compromise that nonetheless represents everyone. This is an agreement between the CDU and CSU, and far from the result of exploratory talks for a coalition with the FDP and Greens. Immigration is not the only issue where the parties have different ideas. I am certain that, in the end, the solution that the CDU/CSU have found with each other will not be the basis for common work (with us) for the next four years. No party can expect the others to accept its original wording without changes ... But I believe that a signal about limiting immigration on humanitarian grounds will ultimately make its way into the coalition agreement. Europe s fiscal policy needs a shift away from austerity toward a common pact for tax collection and investments, which would trigger social and ecological innovations. A red line for us in coalition talks is the mutualization of debt in Europe, the creation of new pots of money. What we Christian Democrats call preservation of Creation overlaps a lot with what the Greens call a sustainable approach to nature. A misunderstanding on the part of the chancellor must be cleared up before the exploratory talks begin: We Greens are resolutely against the driving bans of which there is a risk due to the lack of action and ignorance of her Transport Minister Alexander Dobrindt, Germany s most incompetent minister. There can only be a Jamaica tax concept if it includes the end of the solidarity surcharge without taking that money out of people s pockets somewhere else.

worldnews

October 15, 2017

Ted Cruz Tells His Fanatics To Put On Their ‘Armor Of God’ To Prepare To Fight For Him

In an effort to prepare his supporters for the upcoming Republican primary, Ted Cruz urged them to put on their armor of God and not believe any bad things people say about him. I want to tell everyone to get ready, strap on the full armor of God, get ready for the attacks that are coming, Cruz said according to the Washington Post.Cruz leads in some Iowa polls over Donald Trump and has seen a rise in national polls despite the fact that his religious zealotry is a huge threat to our democracy and Constitution.And that s why he is telling his fanatics to cover their ears and refuse to believe or even consider any attacks made against him, even if they might be true. Unfortunately, there are a lot of folks in politics who are not constrained by what they view as quaint notions of the truth, Cruz continued. They believe particularly as you get close to an election day, that they can just toss out any lie, any attack and the attack will do its damage before anyone discovers that it s not true. So I want everyone here to get ready, because that is coming, and it s coming with a ferocity none of us has ever seen. Cruz claims that establishment Republicans are trying to sabotage his campaign by telling lies about him. In reality, the only lies being told are the ones coming from Cruz s own mouth.Like when he was caught in a lie last month on live television during an appearance on Fox News while claiming that he didn t want an immigration bill to pass in the Senate, which didn t match up with previous statements he has made.Or how about when Cruz was outed as a complete hypocrite on CNN when Dana Bash pointed out that he wouldn t be running for president today had the United States not granted asylum to his father. In fact, he may not have ever existed since Cruz s father would have likely been killed in Cuba if the United States government had succumbed to fears over Communism being spread by immigrants.And then there s the time Cruz claimed that Christians do not commit acts of terrorism, conveniently ignoring the KKK, anti-abortion lunatics, Timothy McVeigh and multiple mass shootings that have occurred in recent years.Ted Cruz is basically treating his supporters like a cult leaders treat their followers. He is telling them to ignore what is said outside the campaign and is using religious rhetoric to gin them up into a frenzy. He wants them to believe that he is a divine leader sent by God to rule the country like a king, which is literally what an Iowa Republican actually does believe.Facts and truth do not matter to Ted Cruz. He only wants people to believe what he tells them to believe. And if he does win, theocracy will replace our democracy as the Bible replaces our Constitution.Featured Image: YouTube/ Wikimedia

News

January 1, 2016

Egypt kills 13 militants in raid on western desert farm

Egyptian security forces killed 13 militants during a raid on a farm hideout in the western desert region on Friday, a week after a deadly attack on a police convoy, authorities said. An Interior Ministry statement gave no details on the militants, but Egyptian forces have been battling several armed Islamist groups, mostly focused on an entrenched Islamic State affiliate that has killed hundreds of police officers and troops in the northern Sinai Peninsula since 2013. They took a house in the farm as a temporary hideout faraway from security monitoring to receive newly recruited elements and train them and prepare the explosive devices, the ministry statement said. The clashes were in an area near the Assuit-Kharga desert highway, around 400 km (248.55 miles) southwest of Cairo, in New Valley province that shares a long border with neighboring southern Libya. Southern Libya has become a hideout for militant brigades taking advantage of the security vacuum there. After clashes with the militants, the ministry said 13 bodies were recovered at the farm, some wearing militant uniforms. Security forces also recovered weapons, suicide bomb belts, cash and ammunition. The statement did not say whether the group was linked to the militants who attacked police last week in a remote area of Giza governorate, 135 km outside Cairo, when sources say they were searching for a militant hideout. Security forces dealt a severe blow to the terrorist elements in revenge for the blood of the men who were martyred last week in the oasis, the state news agency MENA said earlier, citing a high-level security source. Most of Egypt s violence is centered in the northern Sinai, where a local group, Ansar Bait al-Maqdis, pledged allegiance to Islamic State in 2014. It had mostly targeted security forces with ambushes and suicide attacks, but has spread to other areas of Egypt outside the peninsula. The western desert region has long been for a route for smugglers and arms coming across Libya s porous border. The Egyptian military said on Monday its air force hit eight four-wheel-drive vehicles carrying arms and explosives at the western border with Libya, killing the militants on board.

worldnews

October 27, 2017

Thousands donate to Planned Parenthood in name of anti-abortion U.S. vice president-elect

Thousands of people have made donations to Planned Parenthood in the name of Vice President-elect Mike Pence, an abortion opponent, so that he will receive official acknowledgements from the women’s health care provider, the group said on Tuesday. The idea of making donations in Pence’s name arose and spread on social media as a protest after Republican Donald Trump won his bid for the U.S. presidency in a surprise victory last week. Both Trump and Pence, his running mate, have pledged to curtail women’s rights to abortion. Trump said the U.S. Supreme Court ruling Roe v Wade legalizing abortion should be overturned and that he would appoint an anti-abortion justice to the nation’s highest court. Trump also said women who had abortions should be punished but later said it was doctors who perform abortions who should be punished. Pence, whose home state of Indiana has restrictive laws regulating access to abortion, has pushed for Congress to defund the nonprofit Planned Parenthood, which performs some abortions. A number of celebrities have publicized the donation campaign in Pence’s name with posts on social media, including Emmy Award-winning comedian Amy Schumer and actresses Ashley Hinshaw, Jaime Perry and Amber Tamblyn. They said their donations to Planned Parenthood included the address of Pence’s office in Indiana so it would get the acknowledgement that Planned Parenthood mails to donors. At least 20,000 people who have donated money since the U.S. election on Nov. 8 named Pence as donor, out of 160,000 people overall, a Planned Parenthood spokesman told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. Planned Parenthood has reported a surge in donations and demand for long-acting contraceptives since Trump’s election. Pence signed a law this year that would have banned abortions due to genetic abnormality, criminalized collection of fetal tissue for research, required fetal tissue be buried or cremated and made women look at their fetal ultrasounds before getting an abortion. A federal judge blocked the law in June. Pence’s office did not respond to a request for comment. Planned Parenthood, which has more than 650 health centers nationwide, relies on public funding for about 40 percent of its funding. Private donations comprise about one quarter of its revenue, it said in its 2016 annual report.

politicsNews

November 15, 2016

Britain to pay 400 million-pound debt to Iran soon, Iranian envoy says

Britain will soon repay a decades-old debt of over 400 million pounds ($527 million) to Iran, the Iranian ambassador said on Friday, adding that the payment was not linked to the case of a British-Iranian charity worker jailed in Iran. An outstanding debt owed by the U.K. to Tehran will be transferred to the Central Bank of Iran in the coming days. The payment ... has nothing to do with Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe s case, Hamid Baeedinejad wrote on his Telegram channel. Zaghari-Ratcliffe was detained in April 2016 in Tehran as she tried to leave Iran after a visit with her two-year-old daughter. She was sentenced to five years in prison after an Iranian court convicted her of plotting to overthrow the clerical establishment. She denies the charges, and Britain has called for her release. Iran does not recognize dual citizenship for its nationals. Britain s debt to Iran dates from the 1970s, before the Islamic Revolution of 1979 toppled the U.S.-backed Shah. Iran paid up front for 1,750 Chieftain tanks and other vehicles, but most were never delivered because of sanctions imposed on Tehran after the revolution. A British government official, who asked not to be named, said on Friday it was speculation that the money would be paid. The Treasury said in a statement the money was frozen by a British court and could not be paid because of sanctions. The Telegraph newspaper reported on Thursday that Britain was working on a plan to pay Iran the debt, as part of efforts to secure the release of Zaghari-Ratcliffe. On Thursday, British Prime Minister Theresa May s spokesman denied there was any link between the debt and the charity worker s case. Tehran also dismissed the Telegraph report. Zaghari-Ratcliffe is a project manager with the Thomson Reuters Foundation, a charity organization that is independent of Thomson Reuters. It operates independently of Reuters News. In 2009, the International Chamber of Commerce ordered Britain to repay Iran for the undelivered vehicles, but UN and EU sanctions prevented that. Under a deal between Iran and six major powers in 2015, most sanctions on Iran were lifted last year, in exchange for Tehran curbing its nuclear program. Iran s Foreign Ministry spokesman said that a range of issues would be discussed with Britain during a visit to Tehran this month by Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, Iranian media reported on Thursday.

worldnews

November 17, 2017

Franco-German fighter jet project likely to be opened to other countries

A Franco-German program to develop a European fighter jet will likely be widened to include other countries to lower costs, officials with the German defense ministry and Europe s Airbus said on Wednesday. France and Germany unveiled the plans in July, burying past rivalries as part of a raft of measures to tighten defense and security cooperation. Companies in Britain, Italy and Sweden have expressed interest in participating in the multi-billion-euro program, that is widely expected to be led by Airbus and France s Dassault Aviation. Bertram Gorlo, Airbus Defence and Space s head of key account management for Germany, Austria and Switzerland, told a panel at the Berlin Security Conference that details were still being worked out, but he expected the program to be expanded to include more partners than just Germany and France. I think ... we will have to ask for the support of other nations, he said. France and Germany aim to come up with a roadmap by mid-2018 for jointly leading development of the new aircraft to replace their existing fleets of warplanes. Brigadier General Gerald Funke, head of the strategic defense planning and concepts division at the German defense ministry, said development of the next-generation aircraft system would likely begin the 2020s with the goal of seeing it enter into service in 2045. In the meantime, he said Germany was looking at buying an existing aircraft to replace its aging fleet of 85 Tornado jets beginning in 2025. Funke said it would be tough to avoid the national rivalries over jobs and other considerations that plagued earlier international programs like the A400M military transport plane. In Europe, we re in a world where we still have national interests, industrial interests. And the more partners you have the more complicated it is, he said. On the other hand, I m also fully convinced that we will not be able to afford a national solution alone. The key is the will of the partners to cooperate and to find compromise. Gorlo told the panel that Airbus successfully coordinated with many partners on each of its commercial airliners. The question is less about the number of partners, it s more about the governance model under which we contract, Gorlo said. He said the German defense ministry had already expressed interest in setting up a lead nation or lead industry concept for the new fighter program, which could help ensure a more efficient and streamlined development process.

worldnews

November 29, 2017

Thousands march against coal ahead of climate conference in Bonn

Thousands of people took to the streets of Bonn on Saturday to call for the phasing out of coal as a source of power ahead of global talks on climate change in the German city next week. The issue of whether to end coal production has been one of the sticking points in coalition negotiations between German Chancellor Angela Merkel and her would-be allies: the Greens and the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP). Organizers of the march called for the German government to implement the 2015 Paris plan to shift the world economy from fossil fuels this century. The implementation of the Paris accord will be discussed at the 195-nation climate meeting in Bonn from Nov. 6-17. We expect the Federal Government to finally and effectively implement the Paris Climate Agreement, activist group Campact said in a statement. The group said 25,000 people took part in the march. A spokesman for the Bonn police said he could not provide an official figure but estimated the number of participants at around 10,000. U.S. President Donald Trump has announced plans to pull out from the 2015 Paris accord to limit global warming. His pro-coal policies and doubts that climate change is caused by man-made greenhouse gas emissions have cast a shadow over the Bonn meeting. To see a video of the march on Reuters Insider, please click:

worldnews

November 4, 2017

Treasury nominee Mnuchin says long-term dollar strength important

U.S. Treasury Secretary nominee Steven Mnuchin said on Thursday it was important to maintain a strong dollar in the long term, adding that President-elect Donald Trump’s recent comments that the currency was too strong were focused on short-term impacts. “When the president-elect made a comment on the U.S. currency, it wasn’t meant to be a long-term comment,” Mnuchin said in a confirmation hearing before the Senate Finance Committee. Mnuchin, a Wall Street veteran, added that Trump’s comments that the dollar was too strong were focused on short-term market factors that had pushed the greenback higher, hurting U.S. exports. “The long-term strength over long periods of time is important” for the dollar, Mnuchin said.

politicsNews

January 19, 2017

WOW! Do Anti-Trump Protesters REALLY Know What They’re Protesting? [Video]

Wow! Talk about clueless! Austen Fletcher approaches anti-Trump protesters and gets clueless answers on why they re against Trump:Thought you might enjoy this @PrisonPlanet @allidoisowen @JackPosobiec pic.twitter.com/kdYm2WlfdB austen fletcher (@fleccas) July 17, 2017One individual in a Spiderman mask crouching on the floor begins rambling semi-incoherantly, stating, No Trump says no to racism. Let s have a color-filled America, a melting pot, like America was supposed to be built on, he adds. The man is then asked by Fletcher, What about the diversity you re seeing on the Trump side? There s blacks, Hispanics, gays for Trump, there s a lot of different people that support Trump? Via: InfowarsHere s yet another video from Fletcher that proves the left is clueless and just protesting like sheeple:If You Thought Liberal Protesters Were Inarticulate, Uninformed & Indoctrinated, You Are Wrong OK, That s A Joke YOU RE RIGHT!!ENJOY pic.twitter.com/9zBT49gFPA Love America (@POLITICSandFUN) July 16, 2017Please check out and follow austen fletcher on twitter!

politics

Jul 17, 2017

NEW YORK TIMES BUSTED: Undercover Video Exposes Editor for Bias Against Trump [Video]

Project Veritas latest installment in the American Pravda series takes aim at The New York Times, the supposed paper of record. In the first part of this series, Nicholas Dudich, Audience Strategy Editor for the Times extensive video library speaks candidly about how his left political bias influences his editorial judgement and reveals an unusual connection to former FBI Director James Comey, and a strange association with domestic terror group Antifa.Since this video came out, the New York Times released a statement saying they ve launched an investigation:This should have been done when hiring this former antifa thug who also worked for Clinton.RT reported:In the video, Dudich calls himself the gatekeeper for all the New York Times videos posted online, saying that his imprint is on every video we do. Any video that goes on Facebook, YouTube, Instagram I have a hand in that, Dudich said.When talking journalistic ethics, Dudich is captured sarcastically making air quotes while he said that he will be objective working for the Times before quickly admitting: no I m not. That s why I m there. According to the New York Times ethical handbook, employees must do nothing that might raise questions about their professional neutrality or that of The Times. As a journalist, I m not able to give any money to any political organization. I m not able to volunteer for any political organization. I m not able to work for any nonprofit or charity. Like, there s a lot of guidelines and ethics, Dudich said.However, before joining the Times, Dudich worked social media on the 2012 presidential campaign of former President Barack Obama and the 2016 presidential campaign of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.When asked how he was able to be politically active and still work as a journalist, Dudich said that he had to leave his job at ABC to take a job where he wasn t deemed a journalist anymore in order to work for the Clinton campaign.Dudich said he made the sacrifice in order to work against Trump, who he said was a threat. I saw the threat and I was like, I want to do something, Dudich said. Trump was a threat and still is a threat, right? Trump is a threat, the interviewer interjects. He s a threat. Oh, he s a threat to everything, Dudich added.Read more President/co-founder of The Dream Corps and CNN contributor Van Jones Rich Polk CNN s Van Jones calls Russia nothing burger video edited, right-wing propaganda At one point, Dudich explains his idea to make Trump resign or leave office by going after his businesses and his dumb f**k of a son, Donald Jr., and Eric. Target that. Get people to boycott going to his hotels, Dudich said. If you can ruin the Trump brand and you put pressure on his business and you start investigating his business and you start shutting it down, or they re hacking or other things. He cares about his business more than he cares about being President. He would resign. Or he d lash out and do something incredibly illegal, which he would have to.

left-news

Oct 11, 2017

Chinese graft suspect returns from U.S. to surrender

A Chinese corruption suspect who was on the country s list of 100 most wanted overseas fugitives has returned to China from the United States after giving himself up, the anti-graft watchdog said on Monday. Xu Xuewei, who ran a technology company in the eastern Chinese province of Jiangsu, fled to the United States in late 2012 after being suspected of contract fraud, according to the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection. Xu returned to China to give himself up under the influence of policy and legal deterrence , the commission said, without elaborating. It was not immediately possible to reach Xu, his family, or a legal representative for comment. Separately, the commission played a short interview with another corruption suspect, former Beijing driving school headmaster Liu Changkai, who turned himself in last month and had been on the run in the United States since 1999 having been wanted for fraud. Against a background of downbeat music, Liu described his loneliness at having had to live on the lam. Living overseas wasn t too difficult, but it was very lonely. It was like being in jail, Liu said. It was also not possible to reach Liu or a representative for comment. As part of President Xi Jinping s vigorous anti-corruption campaign, China has pursued an overseas search dubbed Operation Fox Hunt for corrupt officials and business executives who have fled abroad with their assets. In April 2015, Chinese authorities published a list of 100 most-wanted suspects it believes to be hiding overseas, many living in the United States, Canada and Australia. Xu is the 46th person on the list to have returned to China since the operation was launched, the commission said in a statement on its website. Liu was the 19th person on the list. Many Western countries, however, have been reluctant to help, or to sign extradition treaties, unwilling to send people back to a country where rights groups say mistreatment of criminal suspects remains a problem. They also complain China is often unwilling to provide proof of the crimes that would be acceptable to a Western court.

worldnews

September 25, 2017

Trump heads to Japan with North Korea on his mind

U.S. President Donald Trump headed to Japan on the first stop of his five-nation tour of Asia on Saturday, looking to present a united front with the Japanese against North Korea as tensions run high over Pyongyang s nuclear and missile tests. Trump, who is on a 12-day trip, is to speak to U.S. and Japanese forces at Yokota air base shortly after arriving in Japan on Sunday and looked to stress the importance of the alliance to regional security. Ballistic missile tests by North Korea and its sixth and largest nuclear test, in defiance of U.N. Security Council resolutions, have exacerbated the most critical international challenge of Trump s presidency. Aerial drills conducted over South Korea by two U.S. strategic bombers have raised tensions in recent days. In a display of golf diplomacy, Trump is to play a round of golf with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. The two leaders also played together in Florida earlier this year. Trump will also have a state call with the Imperial Family at Akasaka Palace during his visit. Abe and Trump will meet families of Japanese citizens abducted by North Korea. Joined by his wife Melania on part of the trip, Trump s tour of Asia is the longest by an American president since George H.W. Bush in 1992. Besides Japan, he will visit South Korea, China, Vietnam and the Philippines. Trump departed Hawaii for Japan aboard Air Force One shortly before 7:27 a.m. Hawaii time (1727 GMT). En route to Hawaii s Hickham Air Force Base, Trump s motorcade stopped briefly at the Trump International Hotel Waikiki. It has been a tremendously successful project and he wanted to say hello and thank you to the employees for all their hard work, White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said. Trump extended the trip by a day on Friday when he agreed to participate in a summit of East Asian nations in Manila. His trip got off to a colorful start in Hawaii. He was taken by boat out to the USS Arizona Memorial, where lies the World War Two ship that was sunk by the Japanese during the Pearl Harbor attack in 1941. The Trumps tossed white flower petals into the waters at the memorial in honor of those who died at Pearl Harbor. Trump s trip is to be dominated by trade and how to muster more international pressure on North Korea to give up nuclear weapons. We ll be talking about trade, Trump told reporters at the White House on Friday. We ll be talking about obviously North Korea. We ll be enlisting the help of a lot of people and countries and we ll see what happens. But I think we re going to have a very successful trip. There is a lot of good will. Trump has rattled some allies with his vow to totally destroy North Korea if it threatens the United States and his dismissal of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un as a rocket man on a suicide mission. White House national security adviser H.R. McMaster, briefing reporters on Friday, defended Trump s colorful language. What s inflammatory is the North Korean regime and what they re doing to threaten the world, McMaster said. Trump will seek a united front with the leaders of Japan and South Korea against North Korea before visiting Beijing to make the case to Chinese President Xi Jinping that he should do more to rein in Pyongyang. Trade will factor heavily during Trump s trip as he tries to persuade Asian allies to agree to trade policies more favorable to the United States. A centerpiece of the trip will be a visit to the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Danang, Vietnam, where he will deliver a speech in support of a free and open Indo-Pacific region, which is seen as offering a bulwark in response to expansionist Chinese policies.

worldnews

November 4, 2017

U.N. rights chief urges Yemen inquiry after 'minimal' effort for justice

The United Nations has verified 5,144 civilian deaths in the war in Yemen, mainly from air strikes by a Saudi-led coalition, and an international investigation is urgently needed, U.N. human rights chief Zeid Ra ad al Hussein said on Monday. The minimal efforts made toward accountability over the past year are insufficient to respond to the gravity of the continuing and daily violations involved in this conflict, Zeid said in a speech to the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva. The devastation of Yemen and the horrific suffering of its people will have immense and enduring repercussions across the region. It is the third time that he has appealed for an international inquiry into human rights violations in Yemen where a two-year conflict pits the Saudi-backed Yemen government against Iran-supported Houthi rebels. Last week Zeid s office said the 47 countries on the Human Rights Council were not taking their responsibilities seriously, and urged them to probe the entirely man-made catastrophe . The U.N. says the civil war has created the world s biggest humanitarian crisis, with the conflict compounded by an economic collapse that has pushed millions to the brink of famine. The crippling of the health and sanitation systems has enabled cholera to take hold with unprecedented speed, with about 650,000 people infected since late April, five times the global cholera caseload in 2016. During the three-week U.N. Human Rights Council session, Saudi Arabia and the Netherlands are expected to propose rival resolutions, inviting the council to continue backing Yemen s national human rights probe or to set up its own inquiry. For the past two years, Saudi Arabia has prevailed, but the situation in the country has not improved, and Zeid s office has said Yemen s national investigation is not up to the job. The draft Dutch resolution backs Zeid s position, a Western diplomat said. The common assessment is that the situation has deteriorated. The compromise that was put in place last year hasn t delivered, the diplomat said. One of the resolutions will need to be dismissed.

worldnews

September 11, 2017

Cambodia's Hun Sen urges arrests of opposition 'rebels in the city'

Cambodia could make more arrests of people linked to a plot to overthrow the government, Prime Minister Hun Sen said on Monday, attacking opposition figures as rebels in the city bent on staging a color revolution , despite past failures. The comment is part of the strongman s widening crackdown on opposition politicians and independent media that critics and rights groups see as an effort to shore up his party s strength ahead of a general election next year. Last month, authorities arrested Kem Sokha, leader of the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP), and charged him with treason and espionage over an alleged plot to take power with help from the United States. The U.S. embassy has rejected any suggestion of interference in politics. The Sept. 3 arrest sparked condemnation from Western countries, and the CNRP has said about half its members of parliament have fled Cambodia fearing a crackdown by Hun Sen. This isn t over yet with one arrest, I would like to send out a message, Hun Sen, who has ruled Cambodia for more than 30 years, said at an opening ceremony for a hotel in Siem Reap province. This set-up is a systematic activity, he added, referring to the alleged opposition plot to overthrow his government. The rebels in the city that do color revolution are absolutely rejected. Hun Sen can claim support from his main ally, China, which has said it supports Cambodia s efforts to maintain its security. The government says a 2013 video in which Kem Sokha tells supporters he has help from unidentified Americans to gain power is evidence that he was colluding with the United States. The opposition argues the video is evidence of an election strategy, not a coup plot.

worldnews

October 2, 2017