The United States is plotting to install pro-Western puppet regimes in sovereign and independent states like Iran, according to Stephen Lendman, an American journalist, writer and political analyst based in Chicago.

The US State Department has formed an “Iran Action Group” to coordinate and run an aggressive US policy toward the Islamic Republic on the eve of the 65th anniversary of a previous American action against Iran – the CIA-led 1953 coup against the democratically elected government of Mohammad Mosaddegh.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced the creation of the “Iran Action Group” on Thursday, saying that the initiative would be “directing, reviewing and coordinating all aspects of the State Department’s Iran-related activity.”

“I call it the anti-Iran Action Plan for regime change,” Lendman told Press TV on Friday.

“For nearly 40 years, Washington had wanted to transfer Iran back to the way it was after the 1953…

Originally appeared on The American Conservative.

There have been dozens of Saudi coalition airstrikes on civilian vehicles in Yemen this year, and coalition investigations almost never fault coalition forces:

The bombing of a bus full of schoolchildren last week was just one of more than 50 airstrikes against civilian vehicles by the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen so far this year, according to new data.

The data also shows that the monitoring body set up in Riyadh purportedly to investigate incidents of civilian casualties has supported the Saudi military version of events in almost every case.

The Joint Incidents Assessment Team (JIAT) has not issued comprehensive statistics but has instead issued periodic press statements. And according to an analysis by Human Rights Watch (HRW), out of 75 incidents where civilian casualties were reported, JIAT has admitted Saudi rules of engagement may have been broken in only two.

The frequency of coalition attacks on these vehicles confirms their blatant disregard for civilian lives that we have seen repeated again and again over the last three years. As the Yemen Data Project has shown, at least close to a third of coalition strikes hit civilian targets in the last year. That figure has been consistent for the last several years. The number of civilian vehicles attacked by the coalition this year is higher than the year before, so that should put to rest the idea that the U.S. has done anything to “improve” how coalition conducts itself in this war. There can’t be measurable improvement in protection of civilians when all signs keep pointing to the coalition’s frequent, deliberate targeting of civilian vehicles and structures. Perpetrators can’t be trusted to investigate themselves, and the Saudi coalition has proven to be most untrustworthy. When the US and U.N. allow the Saudi coalition to investigate their own crimes, they are aiding the Saudis and their allies in covering up massacres.

Some in Congress see through this charade:

“When the Saudi-led coalition’s investigative process basically says they are not responsible for ninety-something percent of these airstrikes hitting civilians, it calls into question the legitimacy of that process,” said Ted Lieu, a Democratic congressman from California.

This week Lieu wrote to the acting inspector general at the Pentagon calling on him to launch an investigation over whether US service members providing support for coalition air operations, or US officials selling arms to Saudi Arabia, “could be responsible for aiding and abetting war crimes”.

The congressman told the Guardian: “I believe both the US and United Kingdom and other governments providing support to the Saudi-led coalition could be liable for war crimes.”

When the US and U.K. governments are providing coalition forces with the means to carry out these attacks, and when they do so knowing that it is likely that the coalition will use them to kill civilians, it is…

Late Fiat Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne lied to federal investigators about gift to UAW official

By
Marcus Day

17 August 2018

Former Fiat Chrysler Automobiles CEO Sergio Marchionne, who died on July 25 following complications during surgery to treat cancer, lied to federal investigators in 2016 about whether he had given a luxury Italian watch to United Auto Workers Vice President General Holiefield, according to a report Thursday morning in the Detroit News.

The report is the second this week in the ongoing UAW corruption scandal, which since last summer has revealed that money from the UAW-Chrysler National Training Center was funneled to union officials in return for pushing through pro-company contracts.

Holiefield and Marchionne, Credit: FCA

On Monday, attorneys for indicted former FCA executive Alphons Iacobelli filed a memorandum asserting that the conspiracy to bribe union officials “started long before” 2009, the year to which investigators have thus far nominally traced the scheme.

An autoworker with nearly six years at FCA’s Kokomo, Indiana, transmission plants—where workers recently voted nearly unanimously to authorize a strike over hundreds of health and safety violations—told the WSWS Autoworker Newsletter that the latest revelations should raise questions about the forced bankruptcy of the company in 2009. During that time, the administration of Democratic President Barack Obama, with the collaboration of the UAW, oversaw the bankruptcy of both Chrysler and GM and rammed through a brutal restructuring of the auto industry, shuttering numerous plants and slashing the pay of all newly hired autoworkers in half.

“With this newest information, maybe they should go back before the bankruptcy and find out why Chrysler was in the shape it was…

Breitbart
August 17, 2018

A teenager is fighting for his life after allegedly being disembowelled during a quadruple stabbing in London’s so-called ‘murder mile’.

Describing the incident on the Elmington Estate in Camberwell, a witness said they saw “four or five black boys running, [then] all of a sudden I could hear, ‘Help, help’.”

Another resident said they saw one of the four stab victims grievously wounded with his “intestines falling on the ground”, according to MailOnline.

Boris Johnson: Khan Prefers ‘Politically Correct Virtue-signalling’ to Fighting Crime https://t.co/jiRdWF1Z6v

— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) July 23, 2018

Six male suspects, said to be aged between 15 and 16, were arrested following the incident, which took place a stone’s throw from the street where ‘drill’ rapper Sidique Kamara, also known as ‘Incognito’, was stabbed to death earlier this month.

“This incident is in its very early stages and at present we cannot speculate on what the nature of it may be,” commented Superintendent Annmarie Cowley.

Read more

This article was posted: Friday, August 17, 2018 at 7:13 am

Breitbart
August 17, 2018

A teenager is fighting for his life after allegedly being disembowelled during a quadruple stabbing in London’s so-called ‘murder mile’.

Describing the incident on the Elmington Estate in Camberwell, a witness said they saw “four or five black boys running, [then] all of a sudden I could hear, ‘Help, help’.”

Another resident said they saw one of the four stab victims grievously wounded with his “intestines falling on the ground”, according to MailOnline.

Boris Johnson: Khan Prefers ‘Politically Correct Virtue-signalling’ to Fighting Crime https://t.co/jiRdWF1Z6v

— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) July 23, 2018

Six male suspects, said to be aged between 15 and 16, were arrested following the incident, which took place a stone’s throw from the street where ‘drill’ rapper Sidique Kamara, also known as ‘Incognito’, was stabbed to death earlier this month.

“This incident is in its very early stages and at present we cannot speculate on what the nature of it may be,” commented Superintendent Annmarie Cowley.

Read more

This article was posted: Friday, August 17, 2018 at 7:13 am

I was born Boston Irish Catholic, did First Communion and Confession (but balked at Confirmation, I am pleased to note), went to a Catholic junior high and a Jesuit college, and taught at a Catholic high school. The first and only CCD (think “Sunday School”) teacher I ever had was the now-notorious rapist of children, Father Paul Shanley. Suffice it to say, I know the Church, and can still recite the “Our Father” prayer in Latin. Pater noster, qui est en chaelis, etc. etc. etc.

I abandoned the Church years before the pedophilia scandals erupted into public consciousness, but when the pedophilia scandals exploded two blocks from my house on the doorstep of the cardinal’s residence in Boston, I realized who Shanley was, and how close I had come to danger (I very specifically remember him looking like an animated cadaver as he stood in the light from the window, so I skipped all but the first CCD classes because he creeped me out so much). Behind all the incense and the soaring cathedral walls was an edifice built on hiding the tears of children that were shed because of the actions of trusted priests and the church leadership who protected them.

My relationship with the Church began with fear, then morphed over the years into fearful respect, then respect in disagreement, then disdain, until I finally landed in a cold puddle of perfect horror … and that was all before the Pennsylvania report this week:

A priest raped a 7-year-old girl while he was visiting her in the hospital after she’d had her tonsils removed. Another priest forced a 9-year-old boy into having oral sex, then rinsed out the boy’s mouth with holy water. One boy was forced to say confession to the priest who sexually abused him.

Those children are among the victims of roughly 300 Roman Catholic priests in Pennsylvania who molested more than 1,000 children — and possibly many more — since the 1940s, according to a sweeping state grand jury report released Tuesday that accused senior church…

All right, QAnon community believes that observable reality is false and the QAnon narrative is real. There is a question as to whether that sort of speech should be abridged or not and quite tellingly we are now more interested in what social media rather than the Supreme Court will decide.

I am interested in the way in which First Amendment rights have descended into the court of popular opinion where it seems true and false are in the eye of the beholder and social media now has the authority to post or take down what those eyes can see. What is involved here is a radical change in mindset — though “mind” seems not at all to be involved here — contextualizing what both speech and authority might be in a cyberspace age.

The climate of First Amendment talk has changed from what it was at any time in the past. The change is foundational. J.S. Mill’s interpretation of free speech was grounded in the belief that falsehoods, whether lies or bullshit, both wittily distinguished by the philosopher Harry Frankfurt, if exposed in open, uncensored debate would collapse, fall away defeated like a vanquished adversary.

If repressed or suppressed by censorship, lies and bullshit would fester beneath the cultural surface, as an infection untended. Best to bring every opposing view out in the open, regardless of how it seems that such views offend the norms and value beliefs in sway.

And so our view has always been that falsehood and fake news could not stand firm against…

The European Union has accused British intelligence agencies of disrupting Brexit negotiations—creating a new public dispute that could poison further an already toxic situation, says Annie Machon. 

By Annie Machon
in Brussels
Special to Consortium News

Just after midnight on Aug. 16, I was called by LBC Radio in London for a comment on a breaking story on the front page of The Daily Telegraph about British spies hacking the EU. Even though I had just retired to bed, the story was just too irresistible, but a radio interview is always too short to do justice to such a convoluted tale. Here are some longer thoughts.

For those who cannot get past the Telegraph paywall, the gist is that that the European Union has accused the British intelligence agencies of hacking the EU’s side of the Brexit negotiations. Apparently, some highly sensitive and negative EU slides about British Prime Minister Theresa May’s plan for Brexit, the Chequers Plan, had landed in the lap of the British government, which then lobbied the EU to suppress publication.

Of course, this could be a genuine leak from the Brussels sieve, as British sources are claiming (well, they would say that, wouldn’t they?). However, it is plausible that this is the work of the spies, either by recruiting a paid-up agent well placed within the Brussels bureaucracy, or through electronic surveillance.

The Ugly Truth of Spying

Before dismissing the latter option as conspiracy theory, the British spies do have experience. In the run-up to the Iraq war in 2003, the United States and the United Kingdom were desperate to get a United Nations Security Council resolution to invade Iraq, thus providing a fig leaf of apparent legitimacy to the illegal war. However, some countries within the UN had their doubts (including France and Germany), and the U.S. asked Britain’s listening post, GCHQ, to step up its surveillance game. Forewarned is forearmed in delicate international negotiations.

Gun: Threatened with prosecution.

How do we know this? A brave GCHQ whistleblower named Katharine Gun leaked the information to The Observer. For her pains, she was threatened with prosecution under the draconian terms…

Breitbart
August 17, 2018

A new report from Gallup revealed that young people prefer socialism to capitalism.

The Gallup report, which was published on August 13, details American attitudes on socialism and capitalism. The results specifically identified that positive attitude towards socialism amongst millennials. The majority of Americans, aged 18 to 29, now prefer socialism to capitalism.

Americans aged 18 to 29 are as positive about socialism (51%) as they are about capitalism (45%). This represents a 12-point decline in young adults’ positive views of capitalism in just the past two years and a marked shift since 2010, when 68% viewed it positively. Meanwhile, young people’s views of socialism have fluctuated somewhat from year to year, but the 51% with a positive view today is the same as in 2010.

A report from CNBC on the Gallup poll argued that many young Americans are struggling to get by in the current economy. For example, wages haven’t risen to match the rise in the cost-of-living. As a result, many young Americans are blaming the system for their struggles.

Despite today’s strong economy, many young Americans are struggling to make ends meet. That’s because wages are not keeping up as day-to-day costs continue to soar, author and executive director of the Economic Hardship Reporting Project Alissa Quart tells CNBC Make It: “Stop blaming yourself and start blaming the system, or start blaming the deeper causes of your economic fragility and instability. There are forces that are constructed against you, everything from your taxes to whether you can have job security.”

The Gallup poll revealed that older Americans have a much more negative view on socialism. This may be a consequence of the failures of socialist systems around the globe in the 20th century. Younger people, still, often point to the Scandinavian countries for their success with the Nordic…

No matter who sits in the White House, the United States is bent on world domination, says Dennis Etler, an American political analyst who has a decades-long interest in international affairs.

Etler, a former professor of Anthropology at Cabrillo College in Aptos, California, made the remarks in an interview with Press TV on Friday while commenting on a statement by the US military in which it has claims that China has expanded its bomber operations, and is “likely training for strikes” against the United States.

A Pentagon report released on Thursday said Chinese bombers are developing capabilities to hit targets as far from China as possible.

“Over the last three years, the PLA (People’s Liberation Army) has rapidly expanded its overwater bomber operating areas, gaining experience in critical maritime regions and likely training for strikes against US and allied targets,” the report said.

The Pentagon report added that China’s…

Shop all books by Patrick Buchanan

If ex-CIA Director John Brennan did to Andrew Jackson what he did to Donald Trump, he would have lost a lot more than his security clearance.

He would have been challenged to a duel and shot.

“Trump’s … performance in Helsinki,” Brennan had said, “exceeds the threshold of ‘high crimes & misdemeanors.’ It was … treasonous.”

Why should the president not strip from a CIA director who calls him a traitor the honor and privilege of a security clearance? Or is a top-secret clearance an entitlement like Social Security?

CIA directors retain clearances because they are seen as national assets, individuals whose unique experience, knowledge and judgment may be called upon to assist a president in a national crisis.

Nixonu2019s White Hous…
Patrick J. Buchanan
Best Price: $10.02
Buy New $9.93
(as of 02:10 EDT – Details)

Not so long ago, this was a bipartisan tradition.

Who trashed this tradition?

Was it not the former heads of the security agencies — CIA, FBI, director of national intelligence — who have been leveling the kind of savage attacks on the chief of state one might expect from antifa?

Are ex-security officials entitled to retain the high privileges of the offices they held, if they descend into cable-TV hatred and hostility?

Former CIA chief Mike Hayden, in attacking Trump for separating families of detained illegal immigrants at the border, tweeted a photo of the train tracks leading into Auschwitz.

“Other governments have separated mothers and children” was Hayden’s caption.

Is that fair criticism from an ex-CIA director?

Thursday, The New York Times decried Trump’s accusation that the media are “the enemy of the people.”

“Insisting that truths you don’t…

The Hill
August 17, 2018

President Trump on Friday said that he was canceling plans for a military parade, blaming a $92 million price tag and local politicians in Washington, D.C.

The cost of the parade had appeared to be escalating, with reports on Thursday estimating it would be $80 million more than previously estimated at a time of rising debt.

Trump said “local politicians” in D.C. were responsible for the cost in announcing the cancelation, thought he offered no specific evidence.

“The local politicians who run Washington, D.C. (poorly) know a windfall when they see it. When asked to give us a price for holding a great celebratory military parade, they wanted a number so ridiculously high that I cancelled it. Never let someone hold you up! I will instead attend the big parade already scheduled at Andrews Air Force Base on a different date, & go to the Paris parade, celebrating the end of the War, on November 11th,” Trump wrote.

Read more

This article was posted: Friday, August 17, 2018 at 8:31 am

It takes a remarkable force to keep nearly a million people quietly indoors for an entire day, home from work and school, from neighborhood errands and out-of-town travel. It takes a remarkable force to keep businesses closed and cars off the road, to keep playgrounds empty and porches unused across a densely populated place 125 square miles in size. This happened … not because armed officers went door-to-door, or imposed a curfew, or threatened martial law. All around the region, for 13 hours, people locked up their businesses and ‘sheltered in place’ out of a kind of collective will. The force that kept them there wasn’t external – there was virtually no active enforcement across the city of the governor’s plea that people stay indoors. Rather, the pressure was an internal one – expressed as concern, or helpfulness, or in some cases, fear – felt in thousands of individual homes.

— Journalist Emily Badger, “The Psychology of a Citywide Lockdown”, April 22, 2013

It has become way too easy to lockdown this nation.

Five years ago, the city of Boston was locked down while police carried out a military-style manhunt for suspects in the 2013 Boston Marathon explosion.

Four years ago, the city of Ferguson, Missouri, was locked down, with government officials deploying a massive SWAT team, an armored personnel carrier, men in camouflage pointing heavy artillery at the crowd, smoke bombs and tear gas to quell…

A dozen former American intelligence leaders have criticized US President Donald Trump for revoking security clearance of former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) chief, John Brennan.

Trump removed on Wednesday the ability for the former CIA director to access sensitive government information, citing the Russia investigation as the reason behind the decision.

In a statement on Friday, 12 former CIA chiefs, representing previous Republican and Democratic administrations, denounced Trump’s move as “an attempt to stifle free speech.”

The former US security officials said they felt “compelled” to respond to the “unprecedented” decision by the US president and branded as “baseless” allegations leveled against Brennan.

“We all agree that the president’s action regarding John Brennan and the threats of similar action against other former officials has nothing to do with who should and should not hold security clearances – and everything to…

In 1970, Aretha Franklin offered to post bail for Angela Davis, who was jailed on trumped-up charges. Aretha Franklin told Jet magazine in 1970, “My daddy says I don’t know what I’m doing. Well, I respect him, of course, but I’m going to stick by my beliefs. Angela Davis must go free. Black people will be free. I’ve been locked up (for disturbing the peace in Detroit) and I know you got to disturb the peace when you can’t get no peace. Jail is hell to be in. I’m going to see her free if there is any justice in our courts, not because I believe in communism, but because she’s a Black woman and she wants freedom for Black people. I have the money; I got it from Black people—they’ve made me financially able to have it—and I want to use it in ways that will help our people.” We speak with activist and scholar Angela Davis about what Aretha Franklin meant to her.

TRANSCRIPT:

AMY GOODMAN: I want to go back to 1970. Aretha Franklin offered to post bail for Angela Davis, who was jailed on trumped-up charges. And I want to read from a Jetmagazine article from December 3rd, 1970. It’s headlined “Aretha Says She’ll Go Angela’s Bond If Permitted.” In it, Aretha Franklin is quoted saying, “My daddy says I don’t know what I’m doing. Well, I respect him, of course, but I’m going to stick by my beliefs. Angela Davis must go free. Black people will be free. I’ve been locked up (for disturbing the peace in Detroit) and I know you got to disturb the peace when you can’t get no peace. Jail is hell to be in. I’m going to see her free if there is any justice in our courts, not because I believe in communism, but because she’s a Black woman and she wants freedom for Black people. I have the money; I got it from Black people—they’ve made me financially able to have it—and I want to use it in ways that will help our people.” Those the words of Aretha Franklin. She’s talking about professor Angela Davis, who joins us now from Martha’s…

Photo: Atlantic Records.

It wasn’t an emotive voice.

Wait. Stop there. The “Queen of Soul”? What’s “emotive” mean?

“Able to arouse intense emotion”

Respect” “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman” Shall I go on?

Maybe I mean it could arouse emotion but didn’t … convey it. Or contain it.

I’m listening.

Compare what she did to Nina Simone, Dinah Washington, Billie Holiday. For all of them, there’s a sense – almost note by note – of a range of feeling. Listen to Aretha cover Dinah (there’s a whole album), and it’s an amazing voice in its range and its dynamics, but there’s none of the sadness, the sense of being surprised by happiness or overwhelmed by love.

She was a different kind of singer. Different times, too.

Absolutely. But isolate her voice on almost anything she’s recorded, and it isn’t …. for lack of a better word, “emotive.” Nina groans and growls and gets breathy like a child. Billie slings from the hip.

Part of the difference is Aretha never sounds like a victim. Or not often. Part of what we hear in those others is the sound of a woman surviving abuse. She doesn’t go there.

That’s part of it for sure. So where does she go? “Respect”: signature tune. From the opening horn riff and twangy country guitar, we know we got a beat. The arrangement’s incredibly strong. She sets her voice way up high from the start. Its inflection is mostly aimed towards confidence. She will – in the astonishing break –…

Yet former CIA head still wants security clearance

Steve Watson
Prison Planet.com
August 17, 2018

Senator Rand Paul appeared on Fox News Thursday night, to discuss both his recent diplomatic trip to Russia, and his endorsement of President Trump revoking the security clearance of former CIA head John Brennan.

Noting that he is scheduled to meet with Trump this weekend to discuss both topics, Paul stated that was was more than happy with Trump’s decision as concerns Brennan, saying “I’ve been calling for a review of the security clearances of a lot of folks…for months and months.”

The Senator note that he contacted the FBI Director last January to voice concerns over former officials who still have security clearance and who are clearly opposed to the current administration.

Today I will meet with the President and I will ask him to revoke John Brennan’s security clearance!

— Senator Rand Paul (@RandPaul) July 23, 2018

I applaud President Trump for his revoking of John Brennan’s security clearance. I urged the President to do this. Read more here: https://t.co/SAQNTJ1UAn

— Senator Rand Paul (@RandPaul) August 15, 2018

“With John Brennan I think he should have had his clearance revoked for cause. He leaked information that came out in the media that we had a double agent in Yemen, when we were going after the underwear bomber, there still is a bomber in Yemen. He leaked that to the media.” Paul exclaimed.

“The double agent was still there,” Paul added, “He put that agent’s life at risk. John Brennan should have been fired for that.” The Senator said.

Paul also noted that there are questions over whether Brennan lied to the House Intelligence committee concerning details of the Clinton campaign funding the fake Trump intelligence dossier.

“He said ‘I didn’t know,’ so there are two possibilities. He’s either lying, or he’s incompetent. Because…

Australian government facing defeat over energy policy and company tax cuts

By
Mike Head

17 August 2018

There has been renewed political turmoil since the Australian parliament resumed this week. During the long winter break, the Liberal-National Coalition government suffered serious blows in five simultaneous by-elections on July 28, two of which it did not even contest.

Such is the hostility toward the government that in one electorate, just north of Brisbane, the Queensland state capital, its vote fell below 30 percent. Neither of the two other main parliamentary parties, Labor and the Greens, fared much better in any of the seats, pointing to deepening political disaffection after years of falling wages, social spending cuts and soaring living costs.

Already, it is clear from the events of this week that the government’s two signature policies are in tatters. They are multi-billion dollar tax cuts for the largest companies and a so-called National Energy Guarantee (NEG) to resolve a decade-long impasse over energy policy, which has blocked corporate investment and sent electricity prices sky-rocketing.

Increasingly, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s government seems incapable of legislating either of these policies, both long demanded by the financial elite.

Despite formal denials, the government is preparing to abandon the tax cuts, perhaps after one final token effort to get them through the Senate. The NEG bill, which has yet to be made public, seems doomed also, unless the opposition Labor Party backs it. At least 10 government members are reportedly threatening to cross the floor to vote against it.

The frustrations in the ruling class with the government, which has barely clung to power since winning only a one-seat majority in the 2016 election, are…

A new study has found that the chief executives at the 350 largest companies in America earned 312 times more than their average employees in 2017.

The research, released on Thursday, was conducted by the Economic Policy institute, a think tank based in Washington, DC.

The study showed these companies paid $18.9 million to their chief executives on average last year, which is a 17.6 percent increase from the previous year.

But the wages of average workers grew just 0.3 percent in the same amount of the time, the new study revealed.

The study also indicated a spectacular raise in wages for chief executives in the past several decades.

The CEO-to-average-worker pay ratio in 1995 was 112-to-1, 58-to-1 in 1989, 30-to-1 in 1978, and 20-to-1 in 1965, according to the study, but in 2000, the ratio jumped to 344-to-1 and in 2017 the ratio it was 270-to-1.

“CEO compensation has grown far faster than stock prices or corporate profits,” the institute…

It would be horrible if this happened nationwide

Paul Joseph Watson
PrisonPlanet.com
August 17, 2018

The ‘come and take it’ girl who enraged leftists by open carrying on campus changed all devices at an Apple store to show Infowars.com in protest against the company’s censorship of Alex Jones.

Apple led the purge of Infowars on Sunday August 5th, when Tim Cook personally made the decision to pull Infowars podcasts from iTunes.

This then led to a cascade of Big Tech giants purging Alex Jones and Infowars content from the Internet.

Gun rights activist Kaitlin Bennett, who made headlines back in May when she posed at the graduation ceremony with an AR-10 rifle on the campus of Kent State University, decided to protest the censorship by making some changes at her local Apple store.

Putting up https://t.co/QZSsWmZvV5 on all the computers in the Apple Store to stand in solidarity with @RealAlexJones after they banned his show pic.twitter.com/KCmYxyLyFd

— Kaitlin Bennett (@KaitMarieox) August 17, 2018

“So I heard that Apple banned Alex Jones and Infowars from their iTunes store,” said Bennett, adding, “We just wanted to leave them with a little gift.”

The clip then shows four Apple laptops changed to show the home page of Infowars.com and a iPad which then begins playing the Alex Jones Show.

Since this behavior is perfectly legal, so long as no products are damaged and it is done peacefully without disturbing other people, Infowars encourages Americans across the country to express their views in a similar manner and post the video online.

Meanwhile, Bennett plans to return to Kent State on September 29th for an open carry rally.

Really excited to announce that I’m going back on Fox News tomorrow morning at 4:45am EST to talk about my upcoming open carry rally I’m organizing at @KentState. Be sure to tune in! #KSUOpenCarryRally #CampusCarryNow pic.twitter.com/BU3I2C7P7z

—…

US President Donald Trump has postponed until next year plans for a military parade originally slated for November in Washington, DC, citing the increased cost of the event.

Trump made the announcement in tweets on Friday, blaming a $92 million price tag as well as “local politicians” opposing the now-cancelled November 10 parade, which would honor US military veterans and commemorate the 100th anniversary of the end of World War One.

The US president pointed the finger of blame at “local politicians who run Washington, D.C. (poorly)” for the delay, saying the cost was “ridiculously high” and that they “know a windfall when they see it.”

Trump said he would instead attend a parade at Andrews Air Force base in Maryland and then go to the French capital of Paris for events on November 11 to commemorate Armistice Day.

The local politicians who run Washington, D.C. (poorly) know a windfall when they see it. When asked to give us…

Disturbing case takes another bizarre turn

Paul Joseph Watson
PrisonPlanet.com
August 17, 2018

In a move that has caused further controversy, authorities have partially destroyed the compound in New Mexico where a group of alleged Islamic terrorists were training children to carry out school shootings.

“The remote New Mexico compound police believe was a school-shooter training ground has been partially destroyed, burying in rubble the underground tunnel at the location where the remains of a young boy were found,” reports Crime Time, noting that the move came after a court order was released allowing for the seizure of a stolen trailer that was located on the compound.

Some have questioned whether the destruction of part of the compound will eliminate vital evidence.

As we reported earlier this week, a judge ordered the release of four of the five alleged jihadists on a signature bond after prosecutors claimed that they were only being targeted because they were “black and Muslim”.

New Mexico Governor Susana Martinez said she “strongly disagreed” with the decision to release the suspects on signature bail, remarking, “Unfortunately, it highlights how extreme the New Mexico Supreme Court has been in dictating pretrial release for all kinds of dangerous criminals.”

Body found at New Mexico compound identified as missing Georgia boy https://t.co/gk8iqGS5lm pic.twitter.com/XEFu6M7jeR

— KOAT.com (@koat7news) August 17, 2018

On Thursday, authorities found the decomposing body of three-year-old Abdul-ghani Wahha, who was killed in a religious ritual by his father Siraj Ibn Wahhaj, the son of a famous New York imam who is also an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing case.

The suspects hoped that the boy would be resurrected as Jesus and help the group target “corrupt institutions and people” with “violent actions.”

During the…

Where precisely, is Jordan now? Is it with the West, or with the Arab world? How independent is it, really, and what future lies ahead?

Recently, in the middle of the capital city – Amman – several sleek 5-star hotel towers grew towards the sky, including the trendy “W” and Rotana. Dressed to kill women from the Gulf, wearing high heels and suggestive make up, are now sipping cappuccinos in various cafes at the posh new pedestrian area called The Boulevard. Saudi men can be seen downing pints of beer and carafes of wine. It is a scene not unlike that commonly observed in Bahrain. The Gulf now comes to Amman to escape strict regulations, to play, to be careless, to enjoy life. Some people travel here for medical treatment, staying in overpriced private hospitals which resemble 4-star hotels more than medical facilities.

Built with money from the Gulf

But predominately, here in Amman, it is all about fashion, about food and drinks, about showing off and being seen – the entire area doesn’t have one single decent bookstore (there is only a tiny kiosk at the entrance to the Abdali Mall), art cinema or a concert hall.

Unlike Beirut, with its vibrant international art scene and thirst for knowledge, Amman’s affluent residents and visitors are obsessed with consumerism. With half-closed eyes, The Boulevard could be located in some smaller city of Texas or Georgia.

*****

Just a few kilometers away, at Al-Basheer Hospital (the biggest public medical facility…

Vitalik Buterin, a powerhouse in crypto, the mastermind behind the Ethereum network, effectively denounced those obsessed with the price of crypto and its possibility for breeding derivative financial instruments, tweeting recently “I think there’s too much emphasis on BTC/ETH/whatever ETFs, and not enough emphasis on making it easier for people to buy $5 to $100 in cryptocurrency via cards at corner stores. The former is better for pumping price, but the latter is much better for actual adoption.”

But this too misses the point.

Crypto provides no value to the average Westerner. Making crypto more accessible is not enough.

There’s no reason for the average Westerner – my aunt and uncle for example – to care, because crypto brings no additional functionality to their lives. They ask me about it practically every time we talk. When they ask me what to do with it, despite my five years of involvement in the industry, I have no answer.

All crypto, Bitcoin included, is a speculative play at this stage. Like any early stage technology, we have yet to figure out many uses in which Bitcoin beats the legacy competition in functionality.

As an example, for payments, credit cards are better than crypto. So is PayPal. Cash is better too, if only for the network effects, but in reality for far more. That’s why more people use those methods for payments than Bitcoin.

The Bitcoin Manifesto
Allan J Stevo
Best Price: $17.10
Buy New $17.16
(as of 02:15 EDT – Details)

Cheering on or otherwise attempting to rush the price movements of Bitcoin is futile. Praying for its movements is futile. Pitching its potential with slick marketing is more than futile, such marketing is in fact most likely counterproductive as it will leave early…

Detroit Democratic congressional candidate Rashida Tlaib is poised to become the first Palestinian-American woman and first Muslim woman to serve in Congress, after winning the Democratic primary for John Conyers’s old House seat in Michigan last week. Tlaib is a Democratic Socialist who supports the Palestinian right of return and a one-state solution, Medicare for all, a $15 minimum wage and abolishing ICE. The child of immigrants, she has spoken out against the Trump administration’s travel bans. We speak with Rashida Tlaib about her historic victory and her plans for Congress.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: We turn now to a congressional candidate in Michigan who’s poised become the first Palestinian-American woman and first Muslim woman to serve in Congress. Rashida Tlaib is a Democratic Socialist who supports the Palestinian right of return and a one-state solution. She also supports Medicare for all, a $15 minimum wage and abolishing ICE. The child of immigrants, she has spoken out against the Trump administration’s travel bans.

AMY GOODMAN: Last week, Rashida Tlaib won the Democratic primary for John Conyers’ old House seat in Michigan. This is a part of her victory speech.

RASHIDA TLAIB: I will uplift you in so many ways, not only through service, but fighting back against every single oppressive, racist structure that needs to be dismantled, because you deserve better.

The stories you care about, right at your fingertips

Get Truthout’s daily edition delivered to your inbox.

Some people were encouraged by the small number of white supremacists who gathered on the anniversary of Charlottesville. It is indeed a good sign that this form of branding is less appealing than it was a year ago. The admirable goal of making racists afraid again may have won in Charlottesville. Alas, a more insidious brand of white supremacy has gripped the country. Look at Portland, Oregon where anti-fascists were attacked by police. Police watched as fascists used violence in Charlottesville a year ago. We know whose side the police are on.

The anti-fascists in Portland were protesting the group known as Patriot Prayer. This ugly group of pro-Trump white nationalists is fairly transparent. When Donald Trump says he is anti-establishment he means that he is against the protections of nature, poor people, peace, immigrants, minorities and women the state has traditionally provided, however lamely.

Donald Trump has replaced the concept of a government with the concept of a fascist oligarch state. The focus of trade deals is “winning”. The number one purpose of the United State government is not to provide for its people, but to keep immigrants out. Environmental protections of the land in the United States are a joke to Trump, as the only purpose is the growth of global business, a.k.a the 1%. Remarkably, many people do not care. Reagan Republicans and Clinton Democrats don’t give you anything much better but it is safe to say Trump supporters are choosing…

Judicial Watch
August 16, 2018

Judicial Watch today released two batches, 184 pages and 45 pages, of newly uncovered emails of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton from the U.S. Department of State sent and received over her unsecure, non-“state.gov” email system. Five emails contain classified information.

Judicial Watch obtained the documents in response to a FOIA lawsuit filed on May 6, 2015, after the State Department failed to respond to a March 4, 2015 FOIA request (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:15-cv-00687)) seeking:

All emails sent or received by former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton in her official capacity as Secretary of State, as well as all emails by other State Department employees to Secretary Clinton regarding her non-“state.gov” email address.

The documents are part of the accelerated schedule of production ordered by U.S. District Court Judge James E. Boasberg, which requires the State Department to complete processing by September 28, 2018, the remaining documents of the 72,000 pages recovered by the FBI in its investigation into Hillary Clinton’s illicit email server. These new classified and other emails appear to be among those that Clinton had attempted to delete or had otherwise failed to disclose.

The new documents include material classified “confidential” on negotiations between Northern Ireland and UK, as well as negotiations with Israel, Palestine, and France. They also include a reference to a Clinton meeting with controversial leftwing billionaire George Soros, and advice to Clinton from Sid Blumenthal, who was barred from a State Department position by the Obama administration and regardless continued to advise her on matters of state.

• On June 7, 2011, Clinton received classified information on her non-secure email account from former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, which Blair also forwarded to…

In our political and personal lives most of us have been conned. Here’s how to recognize how politicians and people manipulate us and how to stop them, according to Caitlin Johnstone.

By Caitlin Johnstone

Humans are hackable. Ask any conman. Our desire to think we have control over our lives often hides this from ourselves, but most of us are highly suggestible and hypnotizable. If you think you’re not, you’re in more danger of being hacked than someone who has humbled themselves enough to see how this works in them.

There’s no need to be ashamed of being conned. Realizing that you’ve been, or are being, conned will naturally bring up feelings of embarrassment, but it’s never your fault that someone’s taken you for a ride. Get clear: conning someone is the crime; being conned is being a victim of that crime. That’s how the law sees it in fraud cases. Manipulators would love you to think that it’s your fault for allowing yourself to be manipulated, but that’s just another manipulation isn’t it?

Manipulators use one of our most astounding, useful, and beautiful human characteristics when they con us?—?empathy. Our innately trusting nature is the reason why we’ve been able to collaborate on large scales to create and innovate in extraordinary ways unseen anywhere else in the animal kingdom. Because we learn by modeling, and we are shaped by the group we inhabit and our urge to create harmony will make life viscerally uncomfortable until we are back in alignment with our tribe. We are the peacemakers; we seek alignment, which is how we are paced by manipulators into aligning with their sick agendas. How gross is it then that our ability to empathize and relate to each other is one manipulators use to control us?

Because of the reach of mass media, every single one of us is in an abusive relationship with plutocratic manipulators. Many of us are in personal relationships with manipulators too. Conveniently, the strategies for dealing with sociopathic manipulators are the exact same, from plutocrats to your live-in partner.

The Pentagon claims China has expanded its bomber operations, and is “likely training for strikes” against the United States.

A Pentagon report released on Thursday said Chinese bombers are developing capabilities to hit targets as far from China as possible.

“Over the last three years, the PLA (People’s Liberation Army) has rapidly expanded its overwater bomber operating areas, gaining experience in critical maritime regions and likely training for strikes against US and allied targets,” the report said.

The Pentagon report added that China’s space program was progressing as well.

“The PLA continues to strengthen its military space capabilities despite its public stance against the militarization of space,” it said.

The report, which comes amid heightened US-China tensions over trade, claimed that China is seeking to rapidly increase its global influence, with defense spending that the Pentagon estimates exceeded 190 billion…

German government places Socialist Equality Party on subversive watch-list

By
the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei

17 August 2018

Last month, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, added the Socialist Equality Party to its official list of “left-wing extremist” organizations subject to state monitoring in its annual “constitutional protection report.” It is a calculated political attack on the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (Socialist Equality Party—SGP).

In previous years, the annual report did not mention the SGP. Now it appears twice—as one of three “left-wing extremist parties” and as an “object of observation,” to be monitored by the secret service.

Monitoring by the secret service means massive restriction on basic democratic rights, and is a precursor to a possible ban. The SGP and its members must assume that they are being watched, their communications are being intercepted and they are being spied on by covert means. They are branded as “enemies of the Constitution” and can expect to face harassment in regard to elections, public appearances, renting rooms or looking for a job.

For example, the RCDS, the student organisation of the governing Christian Democratic parties (Christian Democratic Union and Christian Social Union), demands that organizations and their members that are subject to monitoring by the secret service be excluded from universities.

The secret service has made no accusation that the SGP is breaking any law or is engaged in violent activity. It even explicitly confirms that the SGP pursues its goals by legal means—that it “tries to gain public attention for its political ideas by participating in elections and through lectures.”

It justifies…

The Democratic Party in the United States has shifted to the right in its foreign policy, increasingly aligning with the interventionist agenda of neoconservatives, an American writer and academic says.

 “The neocons today do not differ very much from the Democrats and the liberals who are also calling for greater aggression against Russia, China and Iran,” said James Petras, a retired professor who has published on political issues with particular focus on Latin America, the Middle East and imperialism.

“So these distinctions between neocons, liberals, real estate speculators; they’re diminishing and we’re finding a kind of uniformed reaction in the United States” to perceived foreign threats, Petras told Press TV on Thursday.

neocons have “resonance with other political tendencies which have moved to the right,” he added.

Former US Congressman and presidential candidate Ron Paul say President Donald Trump may not be a…

RT
August 16, 2018

A hearty bowl of oatmeal is a healthy way to start your day, but according to a new study, that bowl of oatmeal can contain dangerous levels of glyphosate, a weed-killing chemical linked to cancer.

The study, carried out by the non-profit Environmental Working Group, found that 43 out of 45 popular breakfast cereals tested in three locations in the US contained traces of glyphosate. 31 of these contained dangerously high levels of the chemical.

Glyphosate is the active ingredient in Roundup, a weedkiller manufactured by Monsanto. Roundup is the most popular weedkiller in the US, and last week a court in California ordered the company to pay $39 million in compensation and $250 million in punitive damages to a school groundskeeper who developed non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma after years of using Roundup at work.

The World Health Organization’s cancer research agency classified glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic to humans” in 2015. In the US, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) labeled glyphosate a carcinogen in 1985, but reversed its position in 1991. In 2017, California listed glyphosate in its Proposition 65 registry of chemicals known to cause cancer.

The cereals tested weren’t all lurid-colored Lucky Charms or sugar-crusted Frosties, but oat-based ‘healthy’ choices. The high levels of glyphosate came from the oats themselves.

The highest levels were found in Quaker Old Fashioned Oats – 1,000 parts per billion (ppb) of glyphosate. The EWG calculated levels above 160 ppb as unsafe for children. Giant Instant Oatmeal contained 760 ppb, and three samples of Cheerios contained concentrations of between 470 and 530 ppb.

250 million pounds of glyphosate are sprayed on American crops every year, but the highest concentrations of the chemical are found in non-GMO wheat, barley, oats, and beans. Farmers spray these crops with glyphosate right before harvest…

The Vatican has expressed “shame and sorrow” over the sexual abuse of at least 1,000 children by more than 300 Catholic priests in the US state of Pennsylvania, and has said Pope Francis is “on the side” of survivors.

“Victims should know that the pope is on their side. Those who have suffered are his priority, and the Church wants to listen to them to root out this tragic horror that destroys the lives of the innocent,” the Vatican said in a statement.

“There are two words that can express the feelings faced with these horrible crimes: shame and sorrow,” it said.

The comments came after a devastating US grand jury report was published on Tuesday that decried a systematic cover-up by the US Catholic Church.

The Vatican statement added that the church needed to learn “hard lessons from its past, and there should be accountability for both abusers and those who permitted abuse to occur”.

A grand jury in the US state of US grand jury…

In the early days of the browser based internet, Google came to prominence as a search engine because it was able to feature the most relevant websites at the top of its search results. Google measured relevancy by determining how many websites were linking to a particular website or article. The website with the most links back to it was deemed the authority on a topic and placed at the top of the search results. This was a huge step up from manually cataloged websites and is what set Google up to become what it is today.

Google gained a huge audience in the early 2000’s and eventually became the de facto standard for internet search. Initially, many analysts questioned how Google was going to monetize their offering. Its website was incredibly clean, had no banner advertisements and its rankings were strictly based on relevance. As Google grew, it leveraged its search capabilities to offer dozens of products and over time it created and advertising model called Google Ad Sense. It did this very elegantly and users were comfortable with the trade off between the service they received and the new advertisements they had to deal with.

Life After Google: The…
George Gilder
Best Price: $16.05
Buy New $19.71
(as of 11:50 EDT – Details)

Over time, Google became hugely profitable and also became the gateway to internet content for the vast majority of users. Since then, Google no longer appears to be committed to “not being evil” and has begun managing which websites appear at the top of searches. It also acquired web properties like Youtube and started monetizing user data. Google today along with other players like FaceBook has recreated an old internet concept called the “walled garden”. If your onramp to the internet…

The US has warned that it’s ready to impose more sanctions on Turkey if Ankara refuses to release a jailed American pastor; a threat that is likely to draw more harsh reactions from Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

“We have put sanctions on several of their cabinet members,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told President Trump in a cabinet meeting attended by the press on Thursday. “We have more that we are planning to do if they don’t release him quickly.”

The threat of news sanctions made it clear that no immediate end was in sight to the showdown between Ankara and Washington that has rattled financial markets and strained decades of strong military and political alliance.

Bilateral ties have spiraled into a full-blown crisis over the trial of Andrew Brunson, a Christian pastor, who is accused of having links with perpetrators of a failed military coup against Erdogan in 2016.

The row has seen Ankara put around $500 million of…

An interesting new study: lays out the pathway for Earth entering a Hothouse Climate State.

Our planet is still in danger of becoming a ‘Hothouse’ Earth despite our current efforts to manage global warming.

Counter-intuitively, that sounds like a breath of fresh air, meaning, get the bad news out of the way ahead of time so people can brace for it, no surprises. Assuming the Hothouse Planet happens, certain areas would be uninhabitable as global temps crank up to 4C-to-5C beyond pre-industrial. The planet would be gnarled and unattractive, a nasty place to live, no more Goldilocks climate. And, all kinds of warfare would breakout as mobs vie for tillable land.

The article’s general thesis is that, as of today, the planet retains its Goldilocks “not too hot, not too cold” swagger because of a series of natural mechanisms that “maintain a balance,” for example, carbon sinks, like the ocean or like the Amazon Rain Forest keep the balance in place. In fact, the study identifies ten tipping elements that maintain a balance for the planet, any one of which, once out of whack, would cascade into all the others, bringing on the onset of a hothouse planet.

Assuming the world exceeds the 2C pre-industrial marker set by the Paris Agreement, the study envisions a dangerous out of control spiral downwards, as planetary mechanisms crash in domino fashion, resulting in a planetary climate hothouse. Maybe that’s what happened to Venus (865F, CO2 950,000 ppm)…

Zero Hedge
August 16, 2018

A Sacramento police investigation is underway after a Trump supporter alleged he was severely beaten by the lead singer of the well-known punk rock band Social Distortion at one of their concerts. 

Trump supporter Tim Hildebrand of Galt, California says that when 56-year-old band lead singer Mike Ness went on an anti-Trump rant while performing at the the Ace of Spades club in Midtown Sacramento, the concert attendee responded with a middle finger, and the chaos started from there.

“I stood pretty much with my silent protest with my middle finger up for the next two songs,” Hildebrand told reporters, saying he came to hear music, not a political speech. “I pretty much said I paid for your music, not your politics,” he said.

Cellphone video taken at the early August concert captured the moment the fan says he was brutally beaten when the group’s frontman took off his guitar mid-set, jumped into the audience below the stage and began punching the Trump supporter in the face.

Cell phone video of the incident…

Cell phone video footage shows the altercation beginning as Ness spits on the fan from the stage, reportedly in response to the latter’s protesting the band’s anti-Trump statements by raising his middle finger toward the stage.

Hildebrand, who looks to be in his late 30’s or early 40’s described: Lead singer Mike Ness “takes his guitar off, jumps off the stage and proceeds to punch me multiple times in the head.”

The fan is moving forward with charges, and though an official statement from the band wasn’t immediately forthcoming, an eyewitness to the altercation was cited in local media as saying, “If you’re that into politics, don’t put yourself in a situation where it could become a problem for you.”

The eyewitness and fellow Social Distortion concert…

Hundreds of newspapers in the US have launched a coordinated campaign to defend the freedom of press and have rebuked President Donald Trump for criticizing some media organizations as enemies of the American people.

“A central pillar of President Trump’s politics is a sustained assault on the free press,” an editorial by the Boston Globe, which coordinated publication among more than 350 newspapers, said on Thursday.

“The greatness of America is dependent on the role of a free press to speak the truth to the powerful,” the Globe said. “To label the press ‘the enemy of the people’ is as un-American as it is dangerous to the civic compact we have shared for more than two centuries.”

Each of the newspapers, including some in states that Trump won during the 2016 presidential election, ran an editorial, which is usually an unsigned article that reflects the opinion of an editorial board and is separate from the news and other…

In Pennsylvania, a grand jury report has revealed that more than 300 Catholic priests sexually abused 1,000 children, and possibly thousands more, over seven decades, and that church leadership covered up the abuse. On Tuesday, Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro described harrowing accounts of priests raping young girls and boys, including one priest who raped a young girl in the hospital after she had her tonsils out. Another priest impregnated a young girl and then arranged for her to have an abortion. The report reveals that the church orchestrated a massive, systematic cover-up to conceal the abuse, including lying to the community about why a priest was removed from a parish, transferring predator priests rather than firing them, and locking abuse complaints away in what the church called a “secret archive.”

NERMEEN SHAIKH: In Pennsylvania, a new grand jury report has revealed how more than 300 Catholic priests sexually abused a thousand children, and possibly thousands more, over seven decades, and that the church leadership covered up the abuse. On Tuesday, Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro described some of the report’s findings.

ATTORNEY GENERAL JOSH SHAPIRO: In the diocese of Pittsburgh, the grand jury named 99 priests who sexually abused children. A group of at least four predator priests in Pittsburgh groomed and violently sexually assaulted young boys. One boy was forced to stand on a bed in a rectory stripped naked and posed as Christ on the cross for the priests. They took photos of their victim, adding them to a collection of child pornography, which they produced and shared on church grounds. To make it easier to target their victims, the priests gave their favored boys gifts, gold crosses to wear as necklaces. The crosses were markings of which boys had been groomed for abuse.

Stay in the loop

Never miss the news and analysis you care about.

Deutsche Welle
August 16, 2018

A young Afghan’s application for asylum in Austria was rejected over authorities’ doubts about his stated sexual orientation, Austrian weekly magazine Falter reported on Wednesday. Officials based the rejection on their belief that he did not “act” or “dress” like a homosexual.

“The way you walk, act and dress does not show even in the slightest that you could be homosexual,” the official reportedly wrote. For this reason, the Austrian official found no grounds for the young man to fear for his safety in Afghanistan. The Afghan plans to appeal the decision, Falter said.

In Afghanistan, homosexuality is illegal and considered a crime that carries a maximum sentence of death, according to Sharia law. Homosexuals face rejection from society at large, which considers their sexual orientation immoral.

‘Aren’t homosexuals rather social?’

The young Afghan came to Austria alone in 2016 and was placed in the SOS Children Village refugee camp. Initially, he rested his asylum case on the fact that he was a part of the Hazara minority, which is persecuted in his home country, and later appealed on the grounds of his sexual orientation. Advocates of the teenager said he was initially afraid to come out.

The migration official took issue with the Afghan’s behavior problems, the fact that he had been involved in fights at the refugee center and concluded that he had “potential for aggression” that “wouldn’t be expected from a homosexual.”

Read more

This article was posted: Thursday, August 16, 2018 at 6:30 am

The catastrophic bridge collapse in Italy this week has prompted a public outcry over the country’s crumbling infrastructure and how it is putting lives at risk. But the question the public in Italy and across Europe should be asking is: why are their governments spending extra tens of billions of dollars on NATO militarism, while neglecting vital civilian infrastructure?

When the iconic Morandi motorway viaduct came crashing down this week over the city of Genoa – with a death toll so far of 39 people – the consensus among Italian news media and members of the public is that the bridge was a disaster waiting to happen.

Nearly 200 meters of the motorway flyover section spanning a river, houses and an industrial area collapsed while dozens of cars and trucks were passing. Shocked witnesses described the scene as “apocalyptic” as vehicles plunged 40 meters along with concrete and iron girding to the ground below.

Water Capitalism: The …
Walter E. Block, Peter…
Best Price: $22.85
Buy New $27.87
(as of 01:59 EDT – Details)

Lack of due maintenance has been blamed for why the bridge collapsed. Weather conditions at the time were reportedly torrential rain storms and lightning. But those conditions can hardly explain why a whole motorway viaduct wobbled and crashed.

The Morandi Bridge was built 51 years ago in 1967. Two years ago, an engineering professor from Genoa University warned that the viaduct needed to be totally replaced as its structure had seriously deteriorated. There seems little doubt that the disaster could have been avoided if proper action had been taken by the authorities rather than carrying out piecemeal repair jobs over the years.

Italian media reports say the latest is the fifth bridge collapse in…

Zero Hedge
August 16, 2018

“Trains and hospitals don’t work, but immigration continues,” Roger Mathson, a retired vegetable oil factory worker in Sweden, told Bloomberg on the same day as the violent, coordinated rampage by masked gangs of youths across five Swedish cities.

We noted earlier that Swedish politicians were quick to react with anti-immigrant party ‘Sweden Democrats’ seeing a surge in the polls ahead of the September 9th election.

“I’m not a racist, but I’m a nationalist,” Mathson said. “I don’t like seeing the town square full of Niqab-clad ladies and people fighting with each other.”

Is Sweden set to have its own political earthquake in September, where general elections could end a century of Social Democratic dominance and bring to power a little known (on the world stage), but the now hugely popular nationalist party often dubbed far-rightand right-wing populist, called Sweden Democrats?

Sweden, a historically largely homogeneous population of 10 million, took in an astounding 600,000 refugees over the past five years, and after Swedes across various cities looked out their windows Tuesday to see cars exploding, smoke filling the skies, and possibly armed masked men hurling explosives around busy parking lots, it appears they’ve had enough.

Riots in #Sweden. 6 or 7 black dressed masked youths , Around 60 cars have been put on fire several places in #Gothenburg on Monday night. Vehicle fires are also reported in Helsingborg, Trollhättan and Malmö. #EU #Trump pic.twitter.com/JxuBfuoxxe

— Alexander Hansen (@AlexanderXV) August 13, 2018

Over the past years of their rise as a political force in Swedish politics, the country’s media have routinely labelled the Sweden Democrats as “racists” and “Nazis” due to their seemingly single issue focus of anti-immigration and strong Euroscepticism.

A poll at the start of this week…

In divinity school I learned that a priest represents God to his congregation and represents his congregation to God. We were gathered in a small parlor on an early spring afternoon, with cool sun filtering in slant on the table. How enormously important this arrangement seemed to me at the time — that ordinary Christians ought to have emissaries to heaven — and how unspeakable it seems now, in light of the Pennsylvania grand jury report detailing the sexual abuse and torture of some 1,000 children over seven decades by more than 300 members of Catholic clergy.

The crimes documented in the report are not new, with the oldest report dating to the 1940s. In fact, Pennsylvania’s statute of limitations for sexual assault places most of the incidents detailed beyond the reach of criminal prosecution. And many of the findings are, by now, grimly familiar: For decades, it appears, the church’s hierarchy knowingly kept a protocol of silence, misdirection and lies in place that protected sexual predators, denied justice to victims and endangered innocents.

But there are more damning details in the document, too, which distinguish it from prior discoveries about clerical abuse. One victim reported that the rape he suffered at the hands of his priest was so violent that he sustained severe back injuries that led to his addiction to prescription painkillers; he later overdosed on that medication and died. Another reported that he was made to pose naked in a blasphemous imitation of Christ on the cross, while priests took photographs of his body. There were reports of sadism and prostitution, the use of ropes and whips, the impregnation of teenage girls and the production of child pornography on church property.

We enlightened moderns have a tendency to confront such horrors as physicians, seeking to identify systems that foster wrongdoing and the disorders that inspire it. We will form diagnoses. Generalists will argue that abuse of this kind is a byproduct of the power generated by massive, monocultural, authoritative organizations — such as the military, for instance, which has its own struggles with sexual abuse and silence. Particularists will argue that Catholic doctrine itself is to blame, with all its premodern sexual prudishness and expectations of priestly celibacy. Shared between the general and the particular approaches will be a medicalizing tendency which holds that people with particular mental illnesses, such as pedophilia, find themselves drawn to and sheltered by organizations that give them credible proximity to children and plentiful opportunities to offend.

Yet each of those explanations leaves something to be desired. Abuse may be typical of major institutions, but the church understands itself to be different from other institutions and ought to be held to higher standards by its own account. Likewise, perfectly modern organizations, free of all traces of medieval superstition — such as Hollywood, for instance — also suffer from epidemics of sexual abuse and rape, which suggests that an elimination of the doctrine wouldn’t solve the problem. And whatever the abusers’ compulsions, that certainly doesn’t account for those who, for many years, systematically aided and abetted them, and without whom their damage would have been vastly less.

What was destroyed in Pennsylvania — and doubtlessly all over this country and the world — can’t be restored in this realm. There are vital measures that would help. States should consider Pennsylvania’s moves to reform its criminal and civil statutes of limitation, as suggested by the grand jury’s report, which would give victims the opportunity to pursue justice even if their abuse took place long ago. And Catholic lay people, such as myself, must demand that church authorities cooperate fully with law enforcement, having proved themselves utterly incompetent to address this crisis themselves. That there should be mass defrockings is obvious. That there should also be a swath of criminal convictions also seems beyond question. A full surrender is in order; no sacrifice, at this point, is too great. Nothing can amount to the penitence that is deserved.

This is because the nature of the crime is more horrifying and more wretched than one generation can really reckon with. It is the role of priests to represent God to their congregation, and to represent their congregations to God. But there are other powers in the universe, darker ones — the yawning, ruinous void, whose name is evil. For many decades, in many ordinary parishes, it was this hellish presence that some 300 priests, and dozens of their complicit superiors, represented to their congregations. Evil is real, and it walked the earth in Pennsylvania. It entered through our church doors.

A year after Hurricane Harvey hit Houston, victims still face long recovery

By
Trévon Austin

16 August 2018

In the midst of the 2018 Atlantic hurricane season, families in Texas are still struggling to recover from the calamitous floods brought by Hurricane Harvey in late August of last year.

The storm dumped more than 40 inches of rain in coastal areas over a four-day period, displacing more than 30,000 people and inflicting over $150 billion in damage. Texas lawmakers and officials estimated the state would need $121 billion in federal assistance to rebuild public infrastructure and housing but acknowledged the state wouldn’t get anywhere near the sum required.

The federal government has virtually abandoned the victims of the storm, providing only a small fraction of the required aid. Only last month, 11 months after the storm made landfall, Congress and the Trump administration approved $5 billion for recovery aid, little of which has actually reached struggling families.

Chris, a flood victim in Southwest Houston, had been living with her mother until their home flooded. “I’ve been staying with my grandma ever since Harvey,” she said. “I have to work and take care of her because she’s sick too.”

A Houston home being elevated

Chris explained that her family was lucky enough to receive aid so they could rebuild their home but said recovering has still been slow. Assistance granted by state and federal agencies has been limited, so many victims have had to bear the costs themselves while still struggling with day-to-day life.

Following last year’s flood, thousands of residents were forced to elevate their homes to protect against future flooding. Families often have to pay six figures to raise their homes six feet off the ground. A report by the Texas…

US President Donald Trump has run into a maelstrom of criticism over his decision to revoke the security clearance of former CIA Director John Brennan.

In a statement on Wednesday, Trump said he had revoked Brennan’s security clearance for what he called the latter’s “unfounded and outrageous allegations” about the Russian collusion.

Trump has repeatedly denied a collusion with Russians.

“I call it the rigged witch hunt, (it) is a sham,” Trump told the Wall Street Journal on Thursday.

However, the US intelligence agencies claim otherwise and Special Counsel Robert Mueller has been appointed to get to the bottom of Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. 

Brenan’s reaction

Brenan,  on Thursday, described Trump’s repeated denials that his campaign colluded with Russia during the 2016 election as “hogwash”.

The ex-CIA chief accused the president of revoking his security clearance as part of a “desperate”…

Some 300 newspapers, large and small, joined today in publishing, often on their front pages, editorials defending the First Amendment’s freedom of the press, often making note of their own efforts to combat current threats to that freedom posed by President Trump’s attacks on journalists and the entire Fourth Estate, which Trump routinely denounces in tweets and at rallies as “enemies of the people.”

However, missing from most of these full-throated editorials is any real defense of those who are in the trenches doing the hardest job of a free press, which is exposing the worst offenses of government: the war crimes, the craven systemic corruption of the political system, and the purveying of propaganda and disinformation in the furtherance of anti-democratic policies. (A good example would be the employment by most major news organizations of retired generals and colonels as war commentators without noting their roles on corporate boards of arms merchants that profit form war — a scandal that not one major news organization will expose.)

Nowhere does one read, in these coordinated impassioned editorial paens to press freedom, a condemnation of the five-year torture and pursuit of journalist and Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, who has been holed up in the London embassy of Ecuador, hiding from a secret sealed indictment that since the days of the virulently anti-free-press Obama administration has been sitting in the Attorney General’s office…

Daily Caller
August 16, 2018

A suspected Islamic State member wanted for murder in Iraq faces extradition after being arrested Wednesday by the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force in California, where he applied for refugee status.

Federal authorities say that Omar Ameen, 45, is wanted for the June 21, 2014, murder of an Iraqi police officer from the town of Rawah in the Anbar province.

An Iraqi court alleges that Ameen and a group of ISIS fighters entered Rawah after the town was overtaken by the terrorist group. Ameen and other ISIS members drove to the home of the officer, Ihsan Abdulhafiz Jasim, and allegedly began firing at him. Ameen allegedly shot Jasim, who was lying on the ground, on behalf of ISIS.

According to an extradition document filed in federal court Wednesday, Ameen fled Rawah following the alleged crime and settled in Sacramento.

Read more

This article was posted: Thursday, August 16, 2018 at 6:36 am

“What the Japanese Imperial government could not do in 250 years of persecution (ie, destroy Japanese Christianity) American Christians did in mere seconds”

“An irradiated crucifix lies in the ruins of the Urakami Cathedral Following the Atomic Bombing of Nagasaki”

73 years ago (August 9, 1945) an all-Christian bomber crew dropped a plutonium bomb over Nagasaki City, Japan, instantly vaporizing, incinerating or otherwise annihilating tens of thousands of innocent civilians, a disproportionately large number of them Japanese Christians. The explosion mortally wounded uncountable thousands of other victims who succumbed to the blast, the intense heat and/or the radiation.

In 1945, the US was regarded as the most Christian nation in the world. (Christian, that is, if you can label as truly Christian a nation whose churches are proponents of 1) eye-for-an-eye retaliation, 2) are supportive of (at least by their silence) America’s military and economic exploitation of other nations and 3) fail to sincerely and thoroughly teach the ethics of Jesus as taught in his manifesto, the Sermon on the Mount). Sadly, the two military chaplains of the Nagasaki bomber crew were also products of those institutional failures to teach what Jesus taught – and then live that way – as has been the case for the vast majority of Christians, both clergy and lay, for the past 1700 years.

Ironically, prior to the bomb exploding nearly directly over the Urakami Cathedral at 11:02 AM, Nagasaki was the most Christian city in Japan, and the massive cathedral was the largest Christian church in the Orient.

On Western Terrorism: …
Noam Chomsky, Andre Vl…
Best Price: $5.00
Buy New $13.52
(as of 08:20 EDT – Details)

Those baptized and confirmed Christian airmen, following their…

By Myles Hoenig

Is Donald Trump right about modern journalism? (Certainly for all the wrong reasons)

They cause war? Absolutely.

Division and mistrust? Can that be denied?

The one thing all must understand about Donald Trump is that everything he does is based on how it affects him personally. At his rallies he still talks about the enormous crowd sizes and the love that jumps right out to him all the time. All the people he has attacked personally said or did something that offended him. Not America. Not the Constitution. Not the security of the US but him personally and directly. We see the latest with Trump going off on Amarosa Manigault by using misogynistic and racist language because her new book exposes the dirty inside of the Trump White House.

His relations with world leaders seems to be one-on-one, mano-a-mano, tête-à-tête, but usually one sided. He thinks he has a personal relationship with many world leaders that he can just…

Fair warning. Stop reading right now if you want, because I’m going to repeat myself. What choice do I have, since my subject is the Afghan War (America’s second Afghan War, no less)? I began writing about that war in October 2001, almost 17 years ago, just after the US invasion of Afghanistan. That was how I inadvertently launched the unnamed listserv that would, a year later, become TomDispatch. Given the website’s continuing focus on America’s forever wars (a phrase I first used in 2010), what choice have I had but to write about Afghanistan ever since?

So think of this as the war piece to end all war pieces. And let the repetition begin!

Here, for instance, is what I wrote about our Afghan War in 2008, almost seven years after it began, when the US Air Force took out a bridal party, including the bride herself and at least 26 other women and children en route to an Afghan wedding. And that would be just one of eight US wedding strikes I toted up by the end of 2013 in three countries, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Yemen, that killed almost 300 potential revelers. “We have become a nation of wedding crashers,” I wrote, “the uninvited guests who arrived under false pretenses, tore up the place, offered nary an apology, and refused to go home.”

Here’s what I wrote about Afghanistan in 2009, while considering the metrics of “a war gone to hell”: “While Americans argue feverishly and angrily over what kind of money, if any, to put into health care, or decaying infrastructure, or other key places of need, until recently just about no one in the mainstream raised a peep about the fact that, for nearly eight years (not to say much of the last three decades), we’ve been pouring billions of dollars, American military know-how, and American lives into a black hole in Afghanistan that is, at least in significant part, of our own creation.”

Here’s what I

North Americans depending solely on English-language sources for unbiased political information from Latin America have few options. They include TeleSUR’s English-language reports on the entire region and news from Venezuela provided by Venezuelanalysis.com. The government of the late Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, vilified by the United States, provided the impetus for TeleSUR.

On August 9 the account of Venezuelanalysis with Facebook inexplicably disappeared. The Facebook account of TeleSUR English did likewise on August 13 – and also briefly in January, 2018. Both accounts were restored within two days.

The message is clear, however, that the flow of essential information from Latin America via Facebook is precarious.  Why that might be is now evident.

Generally there is limited access to reliable news for that quarter. One commentator on the August 4 violent coup against the government of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, for example, cites frequent media reference to a coup that is “apparent” or “alleged.” The mainstream media, he notes, is predicting that Maduro’s government will use the coup as a pretext for repression.

According to Venezuelanalysis.com, Facebook moved against the platform because it published “important pieces which challenge the corporate mainstream media narrative on Venezuela.” Its coverage of “the growing international campaign to End US and Canadian Sanctions against Venezuela” also played a role.

Basically,…

The backlash accelerates

Paul Joseph Watson
PrisonPlanet.com
August 16, 2018

Minds.com CEO Ottman lays out solutions to the Big Tech censorship purge.

Infowars has been banned by Facebook. Please help us by sharing this article on your own Facebook page.

SUBSCRIBE on YouTube:

Follow on Twitter: Follow @PrisonPlanet

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/paul.j.watson.71

*********************

Paul Joseph Watson is the editor at large of Infowars.com and Prison Planet.com.

This article was posted: Thursday, August 16, 2018 at 5:01 pm

By Sam Husseini

Today, hundreds of newspapers, at the initiative of The Boston Globe, are purporting to stand up for a free press against Trump’s rhetoric.

Today also marks exactly one month since I was dragged out of the July 16 Trump-Putin news conference in Helsinki and locked up until the middle of the night.

As laid in my cell, I chuckled at the notion that the city was full of billboards proclaiming Finland was the “land of free press“.

So, I’ve grown an especially high sensitivity to both goonish behavior toward journalists trying to ask tough questions — and to those professing they are defending a free press when they are actually engaging in a marketing exercise.

As some have noted, the editorials today will likely help Trump whip up support among his base against a monolithic media. But, just as clearly, the establishment media can draw attention away from their own failures, corruptions and falsehoods simply by focusing on Trump’s.

Big media outlets need not actually report news that affects your life and point to serious solutions for social ills. They can just bad mouth Trump. And Trump need not deliver on campaign promises that tapped into populist and isolationist tendencies in the U.S. public that have grown in reaction to years of elite rule. He need only deride the major media.

They are at worst frenemies. More likely, at times, Trump and the establishment media log roll with each other. The major media built up Trump. Trump’s attacks effectively elevate a select few media celebrities.

My case is a small but telling one. Major media outlets were more likely to disinform about the manhandling I received in my attempt to ask about U.S., Russian and Israeli nuclear threats to humanity — I’ll soon give a detailed rebuttal to the torrent of falsehoods, some of which I’ve already noted on social media — than to crusade against it.  

Husseini: Dragged out for wanting to ask a question.

Other obvious cases: None of the newspaper editorials I’ve seen published today mention the likely prosecution of Wikileaks. If there were solidarity among media, the prospect of Julian Assange being imprisoned for…

The US State Department has formed an “Iran Action Group” to coordinate and run an aggressive US policy toward the Islamic Republic on the eve of the 65th anniversary of a previous American action against Iran – the CIA-led 1953 coup against the democratically elected government of Mohammad Mosaddegh.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced the creation of the “Iran Action Group” on Thursday, saying that the initiative would be “directing, reviewing and coordinating all aspects of the State Department’s Iran-related activity.”

The group will be headed by senior policy adviser Brian Hook, who is currently the State Department’s director of policy planning. He will report directly to Pomepo.

“Our hope is that one day soon we can reach an agreement with Iran but we must see major changes in the regime both inside and outside of its borders,” Pompeo said in a brief address at the State Department. 

“The Iranian people and the…

The United States Senate has adopted a resolution affirming support for a free press and declaring that “the press is not the enemy of the people.”

The US Senate on Thursday unanimously approved the non-binding resolution by voice vote, reafirming the essential role of media uncovering the truth and delivering information.
 
The resolution “reaffirms the vital and indispensable role that the free press serves to inform the electorate, uncover the truth, act as a check on the inherent power of the government, further national discourse and debate, and otherwise advance the most basic and cherished democratic norms and freedoms of the United States.”

The White House did not immediately comment on the Senate action.

US President Donald Trump has frequently called media “fake news” and reporters “the enemy of the people.”

The resolution is a rebuke to the president in support of more than 300 news publications across the country who…

Voice Of Europe
August 16, 2018

A 64-year-old man from Sittard is set to be prosecuted in The Hague on Friday over insulting emails he sent to Turkish president Recept Tayyip Erdogan in 2016. 

In his emails he likened Erdogan to Hitler and called him a “goat f*cker”, according to Dutch newspaper De Limburger.

“Erdogan, you f*cking goat f*cker, burn in hell.” he writes in one email in which he included a meme showing Hitler and Erdogan with a swastika between them with the text: “There’s no difference”.

In a second email he said, “Erdogan takes the whole world hostage with his pernicious ideas. More than seventy years ago, a similar dictator made exactly the same mistake. I regret the Turkish people with this idiot, you do not deserve better.”

Read more

This article was posted: Thursday, August 16, 2018 at 6:38 am

This week, we welcome back Joel Salatin to the podcast. Labeled by The Washington Post as “the most famous farmer in America”, Joel has spent his career advocating for sustainable farming practices and pioneering models that show how food can be grown and raised in ways that are regenerative to our topsoils, more humane to livestock, produce much healthier & tastier food, and contribute profitably to the local economy.

Who wouldn’t want that?

Well, the government and Big Ag for starters. Joel refers to himself as a ‘lunatic farmer’ because so many of the changes he thinks our food system needs are either illegal under the current law or mightily resisted by the deep-pocketed corporations controlling production and distribution.

And this anti-competitive restriction and stifling of small sustainable food producers is only getting worse. While dismayed at this, Salatin finds hope in the burgeoning rebellion of the “rogue food” resistence breaking out:

You Can Farm: The Entr…
Joel Salatin
Best Price: $14.17
Buy New $15.26
(as of 04:10 EDT – Details)

I’m not optimistic at all about where the government and all its bureaucracy is headed. It is getting more and more stifling. The Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) that Obama put through, it’s absolutely stifling. It’s size prejudicial. It’s putting an inordinate price pressure on smaller producers. That’s a fact all the way across the board. And the cost of compliance is escalating — the amount of paperwork, the amount of licensing, the amount of testing and procedural stuff that’s happening on farms — is through the roof.

So on the federal level, I think it’s getting worse. Now, I think what’s happening on the local level, the other thing…

Turkish crisis hits working people

By
Halil Celik

16 August 2018

The Turkish lira’s (TL) freefall depreciation against the US dollar and the euro has immediate repercussions on prices of goods and services, raising the official inflation rate to 15.4 percent in July—the highest level in 14 years. This, however, largely underestimates the real increase in prices.

At the beginning of the year, the minimum wage, paid to almost half of Turkish workers, was 1,603 TL, equivalent to 424 USD, when one dollar was 3.78 TL. Now it is only 221 USD. At the beginning of August, the average monthly gas and electricity bills rose to 14.7 percent of the minimum wage, while prices of staple food products have increased two- or in many cases three-fold.

Widespread workplace closures, bankruptcies and downsizings are threatening all sectors of the deficit-ridden Turkish economy, including construction, banking, automotive, metal, textile and even agriculture. Within a year, Turkey’s Istanbul 30 stock market index has fallen by more than 50 percent in US dollar terms, indicating a danger of stagflation.

Turkey’s heavily import dependent construction sector, mainly responsible for the growth of the Turkish economy over the last decade, has already come to a standstill, leaving tens of thousands of workers unemployed, as the collapse of lira led to a drastic increase in costs.

The number of redundancies and unpaid days off are increasing in the textile and metal industries. According to a current statement of the Dev-Tekstil trade union’s Cukurova branch, some 1,500 textile workers have already lost their jobs in the region.

Meanwhile, there are growing rumors among metal and automotive workers that multinational conglomerates, such as Bosch, Ford, Mercedes Benz, Siemens, Renault and…

It is the rare intellectual who can withstand the pressures of groupthink. This is a fundamental truth, or a truism, borne out not only by daily experiences in an academic or other “intellectual” context (e.g., the newsroom or editorial board of any establishment media outlet) but also by critical scholarship from the likes of Ed Herman and Noam Chomsky. Left-wing intellectuals tend to be vigilantly aware of irrational groupthink among mainstream, establishment types, or even among other leftist sects with which they don’t identify; but, like all intellectual cliques—indeed, like nearly all individual intellectuals—they’re reluctant to turn their critical gaze on themselves. They imbibe certain ideas and ideologies in their formative years and perhaps refine them as they mature, but on the whole their commitment to the ideology is apt to become rigid and uncritical.

This complacency has always most disturbed me with regard to Marxists, whose system of thought, if correctly formulated, is precisely the most critical, the most self-critical, the most democratic and revolutionary ideology ever devised. I expect intellectual laziness from most “postmodernists,” from liberals and centrists, from all witting or unwitting servants of power. I’m disappointed, though, when I see it in Marxists and semi-Marxists. There’s a pronounced dogmatism in most Marxist circles. Personally, I’ve tried to stimulate some critical rethinking of Marxism in various…

CNS News
August 16, 2018

A CNN commentator said Wednesday that if a tape of President Donald Trump using the N-word surfaced, it might increase support among his supporters.

“I think that if you found the tape of him using the N-word, it might actually increase his support among the people who support him. This does nothing to them. They are so baked in. They believe wholeheartedly in this approach that he is taking, and none of these insults to people who look like me hurt them, because it is not them,” Charles Blow, op-ed columnist for The New York Times, told CNN’s “New Day with Alisyn Camerota and John Berman.”

Berman pointed to a Quinnipiac poll that said more Americans than not believe Trump is a racist.

“Right, and they have a reason to believe that,” Blow said. “I think that when we keep questioning whether or not he’s a misogynist or a sexist or a racist as if it is not born out by the facts, we undermine the fact that in fact it is born out by the facts. This is a 70-year-old man who has given decades of interviews, said all manner of thing when he was not a politician, when he never thought that he was gonna be a politician.”

Read more

This article was posted: Thursday, August 16, 2018 at 6:39 am

The ruling conservatives in the United Kingdom have become clearly aware that Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn has a high chance of leading the next government in the country, a political analyst says.

“It is now evidently clear to Conservative Party members … and many conservative politicians that Jeremy Corbyn is on the threshold of power,” said Marcus Papadopoulos, a British publisher and editor at the Politics First website.

Senior Conservative Party members who used to ridicule the possibility that Corbyn could become the next British prime minster have now seen him showing his “real leadership skills,” Papadopoulos told Press TV on Thursday.

“Jeremy Corbyn does have what it takes to become the next prime minister of the United Kingdom,” he added.

“Mr Corbyn has prevailed … despite ferocious attacks on him from the British mainstream media, from the Conservative Party and even from people within his own party on the…

A shocking new Pennsylvania grand jury report has revealed that more than 300 Catholic priests sexually abused 1,000 children, and possibly thousands more, over a span of seven decades. The church leadership covered up the abuse, lying to communities, transferring predator priests rather than firing them, and locking abuse complaints away in what the church called a “secret archive.” For more, we speak with Shaun Dougherty, a survivor of sexual abuse by a Pennsylvania priest. His story was included in Tuesday’s grand jury report. He was molested by a priest from the Altoona-Johnstown diocese in Pennsylvania for three years, starting when he was 10 years old. George Koharchick, the priest responsible, has been defrocked. Even though the FBI determined he was a child predator, Koharchick cannot be tried as such because of an expired statute of limitations. We also speak with Bob Hoatson, a former Catholic priest and the co-founder and president of Road to Recovery, which assists victims of sexual abuse.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: We’re continuing to look at the shocking new Pennsylvania grand jury report that has revealed how more than 300 Catholic priests sexually abused a thousand children, and possibly thousands more, over seven decades, and that the church leadership covered up the abuse. We’re joined now by two guests.

AMY GOODMAN: Shaun Dougherty is with us. He was molested by a priest from Altoona-Johnstown diocese in Pennsylvania for three years, starting when he was 10 years old. The priest responsible, George Koharchick, has been defrocked. Even though the FBI determined he was a child predator, the priest cannot be tried as such because of expired statute of limitations. Shaun Dougherty’s story was one of many included in the grand jury report released on Tuesday.

Why Do Democrats Hate America?

Steve Watson
Prison Planet.com
August 16, 2018

Imagine if Hillary Clinton was President. *Shudder*. Preemptive war, regime change, a huge increase in Federal government spending, mass immigration and amnesty, socialized health care and education, a crackdown on Second Amendment rights. All anti-American policies. Little wonder then that Hillary still exudes everyday anti-Americanism, the latest example being heaping praise on a little girl who decided to ‘take a knee’ during a pledge of allegiance.

“Keep up the good work,” Hillary proudly told 11-year-old Mariana Taylor, who decided, for no apparent reason, to kneel during a pledge of allegiance, and was disciplined by a teacher.

It takes courage to exercise your right to protest injustice, especially when you’re 11! Keep up the good work Mariana. https://t.co/vnGheuWyJ0

— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) August 15, 2018

The issue here is not that a child expressed protest, but that there is no actual legitimate reason that this girl should kneel during the pledge.

The Washington Post reported back in May that Mariana choose to kneel because she has “strong beliefs about racial injustice, sexism, gay rights and President Trump’s proposed wall at the Mexico border.”

‘It is in my rights that I am allowed to kneel.’ — Mariana Taylor, 11, was disciplined by her teacher for kneeling in protest during the Pledge of Allegiance pic.twitter.com/up4PoHAmtS

— NowThis (@nowthisnews) August 13, 2018

OK, so she is mimicking the rabid leftists and anti-Trumpers who have declared ad-nauseum that Trump is a racist, misogynistic demon king.

No wonder Hillary jumped on board.

Imagine if the US had a President who actually applauds when people refuse to stand to pledge allegiance to the flag. Isn’t the country divided enough already?

Thank God you’re not President.

— Kelly Mooney…

A new study has shown that police staff in the United Kingdom have been subject to widespread cases of sexual harassment by colleagues.

The study published Wednesday by the London School of Economics and UNISON, the second largest trade union in the UK, revealed incidents of inappropriate touching, leering and pressuring colleagues to have sex among staff at British police departments.

Unison said its research among police staff, including constables, community support officers, crime scene investigators, clerks and detention officers, found high levels of sexual harassment.

The study found that one in 25 officers had been pressured to have sex with a colleague, while one in 12 was told sexual favors could result in preferential treatment.

The research, which surveyed almost 1,800 police staff in England, Wales and Scotland, also showed that nearly half of the country’s police force had an experience of hearing sexual jokes, while one in…

US drug overdose deaths surged to about 72,000 last year as addicts increasingly turn to extremely powerful synthetic opioid fentanyl, according to data by the US government.

Overdose deaths jumped in 2017 nearly seven percent to a record 71,568, far more than traffic accident deaths, gun-related deaths or suicide, new estimates from the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) showed Thursday.

That was up from 67,114 in 2016 and just over 54,207 the previous year, according to the CDC.

Deaths increased in all but 12 of the 50 US states, with the most deaths occurring in California, Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

The US overdose crisis began in the early 2010s, mostly rooted in the overprescription of Oxycontin and other legal painkillers, leading to more than two million people becoming addicted.

But in the past three years, addicts have been forced to turn to heroin and the cheaper, far more potent fentanyl, as authorities have begun to…

In October 1901, President Theodore Roosevelt invited Booker T. Washington to dine at the executive mansion. This was an unprecedented move. No African-American had ever been asked to dine with the president, and while neither Roosevelt or his staff said much of the event, it was surely done in the spirit of reconciliation and Roosevelt’s desire to be “the people’s president.” Reaction to the visit was mixed. The pro-Republican press tended to support Roosevelt’s unexpected gesture while Democratic organs, North and South, either questioned Roosevelt’s intentions or denounced the meeting altogether.

Historians have mostly focused on the Southern response to the event, primarily “Pitchfork” Ben Tillman’s vicious statements condemning the dinner as a slippery slope toward the creation and acceptance of a “mongrel race.” But less than one month later, William Jennings Bryan dedicated nearly three pages of his personal newspaper The Commoner to what one Southern paper called the “peculiar” interview. Bryan was no race baiter. He showed sympathy toward African-Americans and argued that they were as capable of “self-government” as any member of white American society, yet he also believed in the status quo in regard to race relations. Bryan wrote that he:

…hoped that both of them will upon reflection realize the wisdom of abandoning their purpose to wipe out race lines, if they entertain such a purpose. Prof. Washington’s work as an educator will be greatly impaired if he allows it to be understood that his object is to initiate the members of his race into the social circles of the whites, and he will do injustice to those of his own color if he turns their thoughts away from intellectual and moral…

Woman who celebrated white people going extinct gets blue check mark

Paul Joseph Watson
PrisonPlanet.com
August 16, 2018

Twitter has verified New York Times’ new editorial board hire Sarah Jeong just two weeks after Jeong was embroiled in a racism controversy after tweets were uncovered in which she celebrated white people going extinct.

Jeong was hired by the Times despite tweets complaining about “dumbass f**king white people marking up the internet with their opinions like dogs pissing on fire hydrants” and another where she pondered whether white people’s skin color made them “only fit to live underground like groveling goblins,” adding that the whiter they were, the more “awful” they were.

“White people have stopped breeding,” Jeong bragged in another tweet. “You’ll all go extinct soon.”

Jeong also made public her bizarre interest in the claim that white people smell like dogs when it rains as well as revealing how she gets “joy” out of “being cruel to old white men.”

Despite Twitter suspending its verification program last year in an effort not to make the platform look like it was endorsing racists, Jeong’s account is now officially verified.

Remember when Twitter suspended its verification program over concerns racists were getting verified?

Well looky here….. pic.twitter.com/iZKiiyceyN

— Paul Joseph Watson (@PrisonPlanet) August 16, 2018

This occurred on the same day that the company suspended Alex Jones for 7 days based on comments that were taken completely out of context and misreported by the media.

Infowars has been banned by Facebook. Please help us by sharing this article on your own Facebook page.

SUBSCRIBE on YouTube:

Follow on Twitter: Follow @PrisonPlanet

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/paul.j.watson.71

*********************

Paul Joseph Watson is the editor at large of Infowars.com and Prison Planet.com.

…

Activists and politicians have called on former British foreign minister Boris Johnson to pay back to the public the costs of a trip he made to Afghanistan in June amid a public row over the construction of a third runway at the Heathrow International Airport.

The British foreign ministry on Thursday responded to media calls for clarification on Johnson’s trip to Afghanistan on June 25, the day of the controversial Heathrow Airport vote, saying the trip cost UK taxpayers nearly 20,000 pounds ($25,500).

At the time, Johnson was widely criticized for missing the crucial Heathrow vote, having once promised to lie down in front of the bulldozers to prevent a third runway being built at the airport, close to his Uxbridge constituency in west London.

He was accused of taking the last-minute trip to Afghanistan to avoid having to abandon his position or resign his cabinet post to vote against the government.

Johnson reportedly spent just nine…

The latest revelation of widespread child sexual abuse by US Catholic clergy has given impetus to efforts by legislators, including a Pennsylvania lawmaker who has said he was raped by a priest as a child, to make it easier to prosecute such cases.

Pennsylvania State Representative Mark Rozzi, 47, said he has fought for years to give people who say they were sexually assaulted as children more time to report such crimes to police in Pennsylvania, one of 14 US states considering bills to extend the statute of limitations for such offenses.

“We’re going to get what the victims want,” Rozzi said in a telephone interview on Wednesday, a day after a grand jury found that about 300 priests had sexually abused about 1,000 children over the past 70 years in Pennsylvania.

“You either support victims or you support pedophiles,” Rozzi said.

The grand jury report was the latest revelation in a scandal that has rocked the Catholic Church…

Divest from War, Invest in Peace, Reclaim Armistice Day

A network of 187 organizations has come together to urge a mass protest against the military parade in November called for by President Trump. The military parade is widely opposed. Army Times conducted a poll of its readers; 51,000 responded and 89 percent said, “No, It’s a waste of money and troops are too busy.” A Quinnipiac University poll found 61 percent of voters disapprove of the military parade, while only 26 percent support the idea. The national consensus is there should not be a military parade.

The organizations signed on to a letter that calls for the parade to be stopped, “We reject this gross display of power and violence. We call on you to stop the military parade.” If the parade goes forward, the organizations will urge their members to come to Washington, DC to protest the parade or to organize sister-protests in their communities. Urge organizations you are a member of to sign on. This is an issue that impacts the economy, jobs, the environment, as well as wars and militarism. Sign on here.

The groups call on the nation to divest from war and invest in peace. The United States’ military budget is growing, now constituting 57% of federal discretionary spending, while programs for domestic needs such as food, education, housing and health care are being cut and US militarization is impacting most of the countries of the world, as well as our schools and communities.

President Trump…

Young woman returns to Iraq, vowing “I will never go back”

Paul Joseph Watson
PrisonPlanet.com
August 16, 2018

A Christian Yazidi teenager who was enslaved by the Islamic State has moved back to Iraq after she met her captor on the streets of an area near Stuttgart, Germany where he had registered as a refugee.

Ashwaq Ta’lo said she was walking home in February when she encountered Abu Humam, a former ISIS guard who had previously purchased her for $100.

“I froze when I looked at his face carefully,” Ta’lo told Bas News, a Kurdish agency. “It was Abu Humam, with the same scary beard and ugly face.”

The teenager said Humam immediately made threats, telling her, “I am Abu Humam and you were with me for a while in Mosul. And I know where you live, with whom you live, and what you are doing.”

Ashwaq a Yazidi girl, kidnapped by ISIS in 2014, she fled to Germany. And there she saw the ISIS man who bought her for 100$ walking free in Germany. He even confronted her After talking to German police, the officers told her that the man is an asylum seeker just like her pic.twitter.com/wGrEFkZHfN

— Rênas (@Rojavian) August 14, 2018

Ta’lo reported Humam to the authorities, but German police said there was no grounds for arrest because the former ISIS man had registered as a refugee.

The teenager decided to leave Germany after the encounter and moved back to Kurdistan to live with her father.

“I will never go back,” she vowed.

The fallout from Germany’s decision to accept over a million migrants, mostly from the Middle East, since 2015 continue to reverberate.

While Chancellor Angela Merkel’s approval rating has plunged to an all time low, partly thanks to her open border policy, many on the left have expressed their glee over the situation.

Last month, a write for Huffington Post Germany said, “it would actually be best to just replace” the German people with…