Consortium News Radio— Episode 2: Joe Meadors – Consortiumnews

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A USS Liberty survivor who was arrested by Israel this month trying to break the Gaza blockade joins Episode 2 of Consortium News Radio.  

Joe Meadors was a signalman on the USS Liberty surveillance ship on June 8, 1967 when Israel attacked, killing 34 U.S. sailors and injuring 173 more. This month Meadors was arrested by Israeli soldiers onboard a boat taking part in a flotilla to break the Gaza blockade. Meadors tells Consortium News Radio in this episode how he first became sympathetic to the Palestinians while growing up in Saudi Arabia; how he was told by his superiors not to discuss what happened on the Liberty; why he broke his silence 12 years later; who he thought was attacking the Liberty; why the U.S. covered it up; what he believes was Israel’s motive in trying to sink his ship; what it was like in Israeli custody this month and much more.

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Prison Planet.com » ‘Dozens dead’ as major road bridge collapses in Genoa

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Sky News
August 14, 2018

Dozens of people are reported to be dead after a large section of a road bridge collapsed in the northern Italian city of Genoa.

The Italian Ambulance Service says there are “dozens of dead”, the Adnkronos news agency reported.

It is believed about 10 vehicles were involved when a 200m (650ft) section of the Morandi Bridge collapsed during a sudden and violent storm.

The collapse is believed to have been caused by a structural weakness, the ANSA news agency said.

Video showing parts of the structure falling into the water has been posted to Twitter by local police.

What appears to be flashes of electricity are visible as concrete columns shatter and drop.

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This article was posted: Tuesday, August 14, 2018 at 6:30 am








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Roger Stone posts ‘Space Force’ image with swastikas to Instagram… to support Trump — RT US News

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In an apparent effort to show support for President Donald Trump’s ‘Space Force’ project, former adviser Roger Stone posted a photoshopped image of himself and other US officials posing in spacesuits adorned with Nazi symbols.

The image included Trump himself, along with Vice President Mike Pence, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders and Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani. A caption on the bottom read: “In space no one can hear you lie.”

Stone posted the digitally-altered (and since-deleted) image on his Instagram account with the caption: “I love this — proud to be in this crew — but the only lies being told are by liberal scumbags.”

The image had previously been shared by critics of the Trump and his attempts to create a Space Force branch of the military, but it seems that Stone somehow managed to miss the fact that there were Nazi swastikas all over the image — including a large, rather unmissable one in the top right-hand corner. He quickly deleted the post, but not before plenty of eagle-eyed critics had taken screen shots and expressed their confusion and outrage on Twitter.

Stone has come under scrutiny for his alleged connections to WikiLeaks and has been a target of US special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

The former Trump advisor said this week that he would be willing to cooperate with the Mueller investigation but that he does not intend to testify against Trump under any circumstances.

“I have nothing that I could say about him that would be negative. Secondarily, I’m just not going to do that,” Stone told CNN.

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Via RT. This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News with permission or license.

PressTV-‘Trump frustrated with Turkey’s refusal to free pastor’

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US President Donald Trump is said to have “a great deal of frustration” over Turkey’s refusal to release an American evangelical pastor, whose nearly two-year detention in the country has already caused an unprecedented deterioration in Ankara-Washington relations.

“The president has a great deal of frustration on the fact that Pastor (Andrew) Brunson has not been released as well as the fact that other US citizens and employees of diplomatic facilities have not been released,” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said at a briefing on Tuesday.

“We’re going to continue to call on Turkey to do the right thing and release those individuals,” she added.

US White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders holds the daily briefing at the White House in Washington, DC, on August 14, 2018. (Photo by Reuters)

The 50-year-old Christian pastor was arrested in December 2016 and later indicted by a Turkish court on charges of…

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Video: Historic Ruling Against Monsanto Finds Company Acted with “Malice” Against Groundskeeper with Cancer

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https://democracynow.org – California jurors have awarded $289 million in a historic verdict against Monsanto in the case of a school groundskeeper who …

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Video: Bills to Ban Styrofoam and Crude Oil Terminals Pass Baltimore City Council

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Activists expect the mayor to support the styrofoam ban and wonder whether she will do the same for the ban on crude oil terminals.

Via Youtube

‘There is a Strong Reason for All Americans to Feel more Economically Insecure than they Did Before the Great Recession’

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Janine Jackson interviewed Dedrick Asante-Muhammad about the racial wealth divide for the August 10 episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.

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Janine Jackson: Last September, elite media were heralding numbers suggesting that incomes were up among middle class Americans, but tiptoeing around the fact that the rising tide was not lifting all boats. Dedrick Asante-Muhammad is Senior Fellow, Racial Wealth Divide, at the group Prosperity Now. He told CounterSpin about a report he co-authored, called The Road to Zero Wealth: How the Racial Wealth Divide Is Hollowing Out America’s Middle Class, from Prosperity Now and the Institute for Policy Studies.  I asked why they chose to focus on racial disparities in wealth.

Dedrick Asante-Muhammad: I think wealth as a foundational economic indicator is very important. Wealth tells a stronger story about where people are situated socio-economically. Wealth is what allows people to ride out or deal with challenging economic times, which we all go through. Wealth is what allows you to take advantage of opportunities that might put you in a better socio-economic position in the future, whether it’s starting a business, money to buy a home, money to go to higher education with less debt. And so we see that wealth is a much stronger indicator of socio-economic status, and we think this is what needs to be looked at more often to help us understand how the economy’s doing.

And let me point out, related to the article you previously mentioned about middle income being at the highest it’s been, and that we’ve kind of recovered from the Great Recession. I think it’s great, you know, we need strong incomes, we need strong employment figures, and racial minorities, blacks and Latinos in particular, still have great divides in income and employment.

The Washington Post proclaims an economic recovery for the middle class, but ignores the racial wealth gap. (9/12/17)

But I also want to note that for the country as a whole, black, white or Latino, no one has recovered in terms of wealth from where they were before the Great Recession. And I think too often people get it wrong, [they think] that people just feel like the recovery hasn’t touched them, but it deeply has. But when you look at wealth, no one has gotten near to the wealth they had before the Great Recession, regardless of race. So there is a strong reason for all Americans to feel more economically insecure than they did before the Great Recession.

JJ: So the numbers and the information in this report, there are a number of different ways that you come at it, in terms of data. But what can you tell us about the size of this gap in wealth according to race?

DAM: Well, I think it’s also helpful to understand the difference in income and wealth. Like African-Americans, Latinos make about 60 cents on every dollar, about that, depending on how you measure it, that whites make. But in terms of wealth, the disparity is much greater. The median wealth for whites in 2013, where you have the most recent data, is about $117,000. That’s the median wealth for whites. The median wealth for blacks is $1,700. The median wealth for Latinos is $2,000. So you see this huge gap, of around $2,000 to $117,000, that shows a disparity that’s even much greater than the strong disparity in income, or in employment as well.

JJ: Before I ask what drives the wealth gap, what doesn’t drive it, that people might think does?

DAM: That’s an interesting question. There’s been some reports coming out recently, from some Yale authors, about how it’s interesting that higher-income whites are those who seem to be most off in understanding the economic difference between blacks and whites, historically. And the Yale authors point to this idea that when people are economically successful, they like to believe that a system is working. And so then they must assume that when people aren’t doing well, there’s something that they aren’t doing right, and they will underestimate inequality.

And I think in general, in terms of economic differences and with wealth differences, there’s some belief that, well, if African-Americans or Latinos, whatever group you want to focus on, would just use their money better, that they would be in a much better economic situation, versus that maybe something structurally has been driving the inequality that’s existed throughout the history of the United States. And I think we can point to what has structurally helped create the wealth divide, and what is a challenge to the American middle class as a whole.

JJ: Yeah, you often hear about, well, if communities would value education…. You know, that educational attainment is really the difference between lacking wealth and having wealth.

DAM: That’s one thing we highlight in the report as well, is we highlight that even if you look at educational attainment, you see there’s massive wealth disparities. We see that whites with a high school diploma have more wealth, almost twice the wealth, of blacks and Latinos with a college degree. So education in itself does not at all bridge the racial wealth divide.

And, too, if you look back, again, median wealth for blacks is $1,700, median wealth for Latinos is $2,000. That’s a very small amount. A minor car accident will wipe that away. That might cover your salary for a week or two, depending on what you’re paid. So there’s not much room for any type of error or crisis or setback, and not much money to take advantage of opportunity. That won’t pay for a semester of college almost anywhere. So we see when you have that little, there’s very little you can do to actually advance your economic fortunes, when you’re stuck at a $1,700, $2,000 median wealth that seems to be on the decline.

JJ: You sort of hinted toward it, but here’s where we do need to know some history. Because when you hear about the creation of the middle class in this country, it wasn’t just history’s inevitable march, you know. When we’re talking about structural drivers, there was policy behind that, right?

DAM: No, absolutely. Many people might assume that the country has always historically been a large middle-class economy, and that’s not true. And it wasn’t just market forces that created a strong middle class, and it wasn’t just market forces that created, in particular, a strong white middle class. The majority of whites did not become homeowners until the ‘40s and ‘50s, after the New Deal, following the Great Depression, helped create a strong social safety net to help all Americans, and white Americans in particular, to get back on their feet after the Great Depression, and provided things like Social Security and other things to help people, and actually even work opportunities to help people stabilize themselves economically.

And then this was followed up with a very strong economy post–World War II, with a lot of the benefits of becoming a victor in a global war, and with this policy, like the GI Bill, that did massive investment in social infrastructure, and massive subsidies for higher education, home ownership. As we know, in the ’40s and ’50s, we had outright legal segregation, outright legal discrimination, that prohibited African-Americans and other people of color to benefit from this mass investment that helped create the middle class, that made whites the majority of homeowners for the first time, that made the American economy a strong middle-class economy for the first time. Blacks, Latinos, Native Americans were not able to get that type of investment. And my analysis is without that investment, blacks, Latinos and Native Americans, and other people of color, never will be able to catch up to the historic strong white middle class that we like to think back upon.


This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News with permission from FAIR.

Video: How Monsanto Plants Stories, Suppresses Science & Silences Dissent to Sell a Cancer-Linked Chemical

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https://democracynow.org – As Monsanto comes under scrutiny for allegedly hiding the dangers of its weed killer, Roundup, we talk to a reporter who says the …

Via Youtube

Crash at London’s Parliament treated as terrorist incident – Met police — RT UK News

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Car ramming incident near the UK parliament is currently being treated as terrorist attack and the Met’s Counter Terrorism Command is now leading the probe. The driver was arrested on suspicion of terrorist offences, police say.

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© Hannah McKay / Reuters

No arms have been found in the car and no one, except for the arrested driver, was inside. Police are still searching the vehicle and officers remain at the scene and cordons are in place to assist the investigation.

The Westminster tube station and some roads in the area are currently closed.

British Prime Minister Theresa May said her thoughts were with those injured in the incident. “My thoughts are with those injured in the incident in Westminster and my thanks to the emergency services for their immediate and courageous response,” the PM tweeted. 

Early witness accounts suggested that the crash was a deliberate act. Ewalina Ochab, who was walking on the other side of the pavement from where the incident occurred, said on Twitter that the vehicle drove into the barriers at speed.

READ MORE: London Houses of Parliament attack: What do we know so far?

“I heard some noise, and someone screamed. I turned around and I saw a silver car driving from the crossing – very fast and close to the railings, maybe even on the pavement. The car did not have any registration plate,” Ochab said. She added that the police arrived very quickly.

“The guards started screaming to people to move away. One elderly man rushed me to hide behind a monument, just in case.”

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Via RT. This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News with permission or license.

Prison Planet.com » Trump Has ‘Bizarre’ Desire to Call Macron Without Particular Aim – Reports

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Sputnik
August 14, 2018

US President Donald Trump has a “bizarre” desire to frequently hold phone conversations with his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron, often leaving the latter confused about the concrete agenda of the talks, media reported, citing a White House official.

On Friday, Trump tweeted that he “had a very good phone call” with French President Emmanuel Macron and discussed various subjects including security and trade.

“He wanted to talk to him constantly… Macron would be like: ‘Hey, what are we talking about?’ These are very busy people. You don’t just call to check in,” the official said, as quoted by the Politico media outlet on Monday.

According to the official, Trump’s love of chatting with Macron on the phone looks like a “bizarre” fascination. The official, however, added that the majority of calls had been requested by Macron.

A former White House official said that, at the beginning of his presidential term, Trump tended to frequently call foreign leaders with little preparation.

“The standard is you don’t have your principal call unless you’re asking for something or trying to reward a behavior, either a carrot or a stick. You don’t just randomly call,” the former official said, as quoted by the media outlet.

The media outlet also reported that the US president’s aides had to remind him on a “constant basis” about time zones due to his habit of calling his counterparts at awkward hours.

In a comment to Politico, White House spokesperson Sarah Huckabee Sanders idefended the president, saying that “foreign leaders appreciate that the president is willing to take their calls day and night” and Trump himself “never wants another leader to wait before their call is returned.”

This article was posted: Tuesday, August 14, 2018 at 6:34 am




…

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Bolton to meet Russian counterpart for ‘Helsinki summit follow-up’ – White House — RT US News

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President Donald Trump’s national security adviser John Bolton will meet with his Russian counterpart next week for follow-up discussions on issues raised at the Helsinki summit, the White House confirmed.

After meeting officials in Israel and Ukraine, Bolton will head to Geneva to meet with an unnamed Russian representative to “discuss a range of national security issues,” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters on Tuesday, calling it a “follow-up” to last month’s summit in Helsinki.

The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said earlier that a meeting between Bolton and secretary of the Security Council Nikolay Patrushev could happen “by the end of the summer.”

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© Erin Scott

News of the meeting comes just hours after the website of the Congress published the text of a “sanctions bill from hell” proposed by some of the most outspokenly anti-Russian US Senators.

Last week, the State Department announced the US would be imposing additional sanctions on Russia over the alleged chemical attack in Salisbury, England this spring. Unless Russia provided “reliable assurances” that it wouldn’t use chemical weapons in the future and agreed to “on-site inspections” by the UN, the State Department said another round of sanctions would be imposed within 90 days. This would include a near-total trade blockade, downgrading diplomatic relations and banning the Russian airline Aeroflot from flying to the US.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Trump met in the Finnish capital on July 16. While Moscow hailed the summit as a positive step in normalizing relations with Washington, the US political and media establishment just about accused Trump of treason.

While some of Trump’s critics in his own party echoed the claims of the opposition Democrats, they thought the demand to have the translator from the meeting with Putin testify before Congress was going too far.

Relations with Russia should not be held hostage to internal US political disputes, Putin told Fox News after the summit. Democrats have latched onto accusations that Russia interfered in the 2016 US presidential election – and helped Trump – as a way to explain Hillary Clinton’s defeat.

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Via RT. This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News with permission or license.

PressTV-‘Britain deporting child trafficking victims’

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A new report shows that the United Kingdom has refused to give asylum to children who have been victims of human trafficking and slavery in other countries.

In a Tuesday report, the Thomson Reuters Foundation uncovered data from UK Home Office (interior ministry) which showed that Britain had denied asylum to 183 people trafficked or enslaved as children between 2015 and 2017.

The report said the rejection rate was double the total for the previous three years, adding that many of those children had a right to be protected, especially in a country like Britain which claims to be one of the pioneers of   international fight against slavery.

The report said many of the children had been deported to other countries as soon as they turned 17 and a half, when their automatic right to stay in Britain as child asylum seekers ends.

Most of the ex-slave children whose asylum request had been rejected were from poor countries like Vietnam, Eritrea…

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Video: 40 Yemeni Children Dead by U.S.-Made Bomb? Outrage Mounts Over U.S. Role in Airstrike on School Bus

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https://democracynow.org – Thousands of mourners gathered in Yemen’s northern city of Saada Monday for the funerals of 51 people, including 40 children, who …

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How Worried Should We Be About Steve Bannon’s ‘Movement’?

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When Donald Trump visited the UK, Steve Bannon wasn’t far behind. The president’s former chief strategist breezed effortlessly into TV and radio studios, trying to sanitise his old boss’ politics and keep himself relevant. On his foray across the Atlantic, he unveiled his new plans: a foundation called “The Movement”. Just how worried should we be about it?

Based in Brussels, the heart of the EU, and planning to hire 10 full-time staff, according to Bannon, The Movement will aim to influence the 2019 European elections by organising and giving advice to far-right parties. Bannon founded far-right website Breitbart, known for spreading anti-migrant stories, and if you name a far-right group, he’s probably campaigned for it – lending his support to Germany’s AfD, France’s Front National and Spain’s Vox. As Trump retweeting a fascistic group didn’t stop UK Prime Minister Theresa May holding his hand, Bannon’s far-right credentials did not deter wannabe PM, Boris Johnson – notorious for making racist statements – from meeting up with him.

But Bannon is just one man and within days of him making this announcement far-right figures from across Europe signalled they weren’t all that interested in his plans. What’s far more dangerous is the type of ideas he and others want to foster: the far-right politics that diverge on a number of different issues but can manifest in all kinds of nationalist cloaks across the world. And in some ways, that’s already happening, without any help from “The Movement”.

From Brexit to EU elections, what people like Bannon thrive off is the “culture war” narrative. Despite often hailing from a country’s most elite institutions (see Nigel Farage), they rail against “the establishment” and all the economic problems the moribund status quo has created. But they’re less interested in financial solutions and more focussed on stoking divides. They want to reshape politics by positioning it as fundamentally a clash between “traditional” and “progressive” values. Values matter: social attitudes werefar more important than social class in the UK’s vote to leave the EU, for instance. Racism, misogyny, Islamophobia – these are all issues about attitudes, history and power.

Using the “culture war” narrative, Bannon and his ilk lump together liberals and the left, as if they want the same thing, and make them seem like the enemy of the “ordinary” person (of course, migrants and people of colour are rarely classed as ordinary). Take Bannon’s endorsement of far-right, anti-Muslim figure Tommy Robinson when he was in the UK. In an off-air conversation, he described Robinson, who was in prison for contempt of court, “the f**king backbone of this country”. This is the language of Robinson’s acolytes, feverishly determined they are being silenced as the country is being taken over by Muslims and freedom of speech is being shut down.

This couldn’t be more false; they’re playing a role in shaping and setting political agendas. The far-right are in ascendance across significant parts of the world, and in places where they aren’t in power, they’re influencing the people that are in a frightening way. Because when the so-called “centre” adopts the politics of the far-right, it only strengthens its message. The warning signs are there.

In Lower Austria, one of the nine states that make up the country, a cabinet minister defended plans to limit access to kosher meat to people who had permits, which would be issued to Jews.

In Assam, the northeastern state of India, the country’s ruling party, the BJP, have just released a list that effectively strips millions of people of their citizenship unless they can show they came into the state before Bangladesh became independent in 1971.

In Denmark, the government just passed a law called the “ghetto deal”, which will apply to 25 neighbourhoods classified as “ghettos” on the basis of peoples’ income, education levels and “non-Western” background. The “deal” will include a whole range of policies, including harsher punishments for crimes committed in these areas. If you’re born to parents who live in one of these areas, you’ll be classed as a “ghetto child” and from the age of one, you’ll be forced to spend a minimum of 25 hours a week apart from your family, excluding naps, to learn about “Danish values”. Otherwise, your family could lose their benefits.

In different parts of the world and implemented by parties of different political persuasions, these cases aren’t all the same. The different contexts – geographical, socioeconomic, politics and historical – all matter to make sense of them individually. But they’re a sign of what the far-right, who use this culture wars narrative, want to help pave the way for: aggressive state control, marginalising minorities and going after migrants.

The far-right doesn’t just announce itself as extreme, it creeps in under xenophobic language that’s not totally alien to the mainstream – declaring the importance of controlling borders and clamping down on immigration. And like Bannon, far-right politicians walk right onto our television screens raving about how they’re being sidelined as they slowly try to normalise themselves and their messages. The Movement could prove a dangerous vehicle for these very ideas, but without it or not, the far-right is already helping set the political agenda in a significant way.

Via Common Dreams. This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News with permission or license.

America’s Lengthening Enemies List – LewRockwell

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Friday, deep into the 17th year of America’s longest war, Taliban forces overran Ghazni, a provincial capital that sits on the highway from Kabul to Kandahar.

The ferocity of the Taliban offensive brought U.S. advisers along with U.S. air power, including a B-1 bomber, into the battle.

“As the casualty toll in Ghazni appeared to soar on Sunday,” The Wall Street Journal reported, “hospitals were spilling over with dead bodies, corpses lay in Ghazni’s streets, and gunfire and shelling were preventing relatives from reaching cemeteries to bury their dead.”

In Yemen Monday, a funeral was held in the town square of Saada for 40 children massacred in an air strike on a school bus by Saudis or the UAE, using U.S.-provided planes and bombs.

“A crime by America and its allies against the children of Yemen,” said a Houthi rebel leader.

Nixonu2019s White Hous…
Patrick J. Buchanan
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Yemen is among the worst humanitarian situations in the world, and in creating that human-rights tragedy, America has played an indispensable role.

The U.S. also has 2,000 troops in Syria. Our control, with our Kurd allies, of that quadrant of Syria east of the Euphrates is almost certain to bring us into eventual conflict with a regime and army insisting that we get out of their country.

As for our relations with Turkey, they have never been worse.

President Erdogan regards our Kurd allies in Syria as collaborators of his own Kurdish-terrorist PKK. He sees us as providing sanctuary for exile cleric Fethullah Gulen, whom Erdogan says was behind the attempted coup in 2016 in which he and his family were targeted for assassination.

Last week, when the Turkish currency, the lira, went into…

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Saudi-US Propaganda by PBS NewsHour in Houthi-held Yemen

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One of the poorest countries in the Middle East, Yemen’s war has pushed it to the brink of famine. A Saudi blockade has slowed the flow of food and helped push prices up. Markets and businesses are ruined from airstrikes. Millions are destitute. Special correspondent Jane Ferguson smuggled herself across front lines to report on what’s happening inside the world’s worst humanitarian disaster.

— PBS NewsHour summary, July 2, 2018

This is what American tax-supported propaganda looks like when an organization like the PBS NewsHour wants to maintain a semblance of credibility while lying through its intimidated teeth. Yes, Yemen is one of the poorest countries in the world, long dependent on imported food and other life support. But to say “Yemen’s war” is major league deceit, and PBS surely knows the truth: that the war on Yemen is American-backed, initiated – illegally – in March 2015 by a Saudi-led coalition that includes the UAE (United Arab Emirates). The US/Saudi war is genocidal, creating famine and a cholera epidemic for military purposes. These are American and Arab war crimes that almost no one wants to acknowledge, much less confront.

The “Saudi blockade” is also a US Navy blockade. The blockade is a war crime. Starving civilians is a war crime.

The most amazing sentence is: “Markets and businesses are ruined from airstrikes.” Seems rather bland. But this is a tacit admission of more war crimes – Saudi bombing of civilian…

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Video: AP Investigation: Behind the Scenes in Yemen, U.S.-Backed Saudi Coalition Is Working with al-Qaeda

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https://democracynow.org — The U.S.-backed Saudi-led coalition in Yemen has repeatedly cut secret deals with al-Qaeda, even paying its fighters to retreat from …

Via Youtube

Horizon Air worker dead after stealing airplane, crashing near Tacoma, Washington

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Horizon Air worker dead after stealing airplane, crashing near Tacoma, Washington

By
Alec Andersen

14 August 2018

Richard Russell, a ground crew worker for Horizon Air, was found dead Friday after taking an airplane from a maintenance area at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport and going on an hour-long joyride before crashing onto a largely unpopulated island in the Puget Sound near Tacoma, Washington. The tragic circumstances surrounding Russell’s death have called renewed attention to the working conditions experienced by ground crew workers at Horizon and throughout the airline industry.

Russell, known as “Beebo” to friends and coworkers, stole one of Horizon’s fleet of 76-seat Bombardier Dash 8 Q400 twin turboprop airplanes from a northern section of the airport after his shift ended Friday evening, using a tow vehicle to point the plane in the direction of the runway.

Just after 7:30 p.m. Friday evening, Russell took off in the plane from Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, located 11 miles south of Seattle, and began flying south over the Puget Sound, performing aerobatic maneuvers and speaking intermittently with air traffic controllers.

In an audio recording of his communications Russell described himself as a “broken guy,” expressing a desire for this to be “the end” and apologizing to his family for disappointing them, while repeatedly stating his desire not to harm anyone.

“I’ve got a lot of people that care about me, and it’s going to disappoint them to hear I did this. I would like to apologize to each and every one of them. Just a broken guy, got a few screws loose, I guess. Never really knew it until now,” Russell says in the recording.

Asked to explain what drove him to steal the plane, Russell told air traffic controllers, “…

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FBI Warns Of Imminent Global ATM Hack

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Zero Hedge
August 14, 2018

The FBI is warning of an “imminent” global cyberattack on ATM machines that could result in millions of dollars withdrawn from bank accounts far and wide, in a similar “cash-out” attack to one in 2009 which hit ATMs worldwide to the tune of $9 million. 

“The FBI has obtained unspecified reporting indicating cyber criminals are planning to conduct a global Automated Teller Machine (ATM) cash-out scheme in the coming days, likely associated with an unknown card issuer breach and commonly referred to as an ‘unlimited operation’,” according to an FBI alert to banks that was obtained by noted cybersecurity expert Brian Krebs.

Krebs describes it as a “highly choreographed, global fraud scheme known as an “ATM cash-out,” in which crooks hack a bank or payment card processor and use cloned cards at cash machines around the world to fraudulently withdraw millions of dollars in just a few hours.”

“Historic compromises have included small-to-medium size financial institutions, likely due to less robust implementation of cyber security controls, budgets, or third-party vendor vulnerabilities. The FBI expects the ubiquity of this activity to continue or possibly increase in the near future,” the FBI statement reads.

In other words, financial institutions which haven’t upgraded to the latest and greatest in security measures are vulnerable to attack. And since banks will likely reimburse anyone affected by the breach, the FBI’s warning should particularly interest small-to-mid sized banks using outdated technology.

In July, two similar “unlimited operation” attacks resulted in losses of $2.4 million from the National Bank of Blacksburg according to Krebs, who broke the story.

In both cases, the attackers managed to phish someone working at the Blacksburg, Virginia-based small bank. From there, the intruders compromised systems the…

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Westminster targeted by terrorists for 3rd time in 18 months — RT UK News

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A man ploughed his car into a security barrier outside the UK Parliament on Tuesday. It brought the total number of actual and attempted terrorist attacks against Britain’s seat of democracy to three in just under 18 months.

Here is a recap of the attacks which took place at London’s iconic Houses of Parliament, as well as those which were foiled by London’s Metropolitan police.

READ MORE: VIDEO of Houses of Parliament suspected terror attack released

March 22, 2017: Car ramming & stabbing kills 5

The Westminster attack last March was the first of five terrorist attacks to rock the country in 2017. It claimed the lives of five people and injured at least 50.

Khalid Masood, 52, first drove a rental car into pedestrians on Westminster Bridge, killing three. He then headed towards Parliament, where he crashed into railings outside the Palace of Westminster.

READ MORE: One year since Westminster attack, top cop admits Britain had become ‘less hostile’ to terrorists

After exiting the car, Masood stabbed police constable Keith Palmer to death. He had been guarding an entrance to the Houses of Parliament. Masood was then shot dead by police.

Romanian Andreea Cristea, was hurled into the Thames during the initial car ramming, died of her injuries two weeks later.

The Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) terrorist group claimed responsibility for the attack, saying Masood was a “soldier” responding to its calls for attacks on the Western world. But police found no evidence directly linking Masood to IS or Al-Qaeda.

April 27, 2018: Taliban bomber arrested with knives

Westminster was about to become the scene of another vicious attack with Khalid Ali, 28, plotting to carry out an assault on police officers and MPs at Parliament in April.

His plot was foiled thanks to a team of counter-terror police who arrested him in Parliament Square. He was found in possession of three knives.

Ali had been on a police watchlist since he returned from Afghanistan, where he spent five years making bombs for the Taliban designed to maim and kill coalition troops. He was handed three life sentences after being tried at the Old Bailey in June.

August 14, 2018: Car plows into pedestrians, injuring 3

Britain awoke to some disturbing news on Tuesday as reports emerged of a man in his late 20s driving his car into pedestrians and cyclists before ramming into security barriers outside London’s parliament.

Three people were injured after being hit by the silver Ford Fiesta shortly before 7:40am. The driver was arrested by armed officers at the scene moments later. 

READ MORE: London Houses of Parliament attack: What do we know so far?

“Given that this appears to be a deliberate act, the method, and this being an iconic site, we are treating it as a terrorist incident,” London Assistant Commissioner Neil Basu said.

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Via RT. This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News with permission or license.

Vatican covered up sex abuse by 300 ‘predator priests,’ 1000s of victims possible – Penn. grand jury — RT US News

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Authorities in Pennsylvania have released a redacted version of a grand jury report accusing over 300 ‘predator priests’ of sex abuse and the Roman Catholic Church of covering it up for decades.

The 900-plus-page report was made public on Tuesday by Attorney General Josh Shapiro, whose predecessor empaneled the grand jury in 2016 to look into allegations of child molestation and other sexual abuse.

“The main thing was not to help children, but to avoid scandal,” says the report. “Priests were raping little boys and girls and the men of God who were responsible for them not only did nothing: They hid it all.”

The jury looked into the claims in eight dioceses in Pennsylvania, covering more than half of the state’s 3.2 million Catholics: Harrisburg, Pittsburgh, Allentown, Scranton, Erie and Greensburg. The archdiocese of Philadelphia and the diocese of Altoona-Johnstown were subjects of an earlier report.

“Several diocesan administrators, including the bishops, often dissuaded victims from reporting abuse to police, pressured law enforcement to terminate or avoid an investigation or conducted their own deficient, biased investigation without reporting crimes against children to the proper authorities,” says the report.

Some of those named have died, and the statute of limitations prevents the state from pressing criminal charges against many others.

Ahead of the report’s release, the former bishop of Pittsburgh who now leads the Washington archdiocese told CBS that the church was trying to rid itself of abusive priests and that the report would vindicate the reforms he advocated in 2002 to that effect.

“We’re very, very sorry this happened. And that’s why we’ve taken the steps to see that it doesn’t go on,” Cardinal Donald Wuerl said on Tuesday. He could not confirm that no abuse was happening in the church today, however.

“I’m not sure that there’s any way you can guarantee that there won’t ever be a failure in the life of any priest going into the future,” Wuerl said. “You can’t do more than give your very best to try to eradicate a problem.”

After Wuerl became the archbishop of Washington in 2007, his diocese agreed to pay $1.25 million to settle with 35 survivors of abuse.

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Via RT. This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News with permission or license.

PressTV-Corbyn will become next PM: Tory grassroots

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A poll conducted by the United Kingdom’s Conservative Party has revealed that around half of the party members think Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn will become the next British prime minister.

The poll published on The ConservativeHome website on Tuesday showed that’s some 45 percent of the Conservative Party’s grassroots think that Corbyn will take the keys to No. 10 as part of a coalition government after the next general election.

The poll showed that number of Tories who think their party will remain in power has decreased from the 73 percent recorded last month to 55 percent. That means a huge fall in the popularity of the current conservative-led government of Prime Minister Theresa May.

The poll, which spoke to 1,181 Tory members, is the first survey since May announced her controversial plans for final phases of negotiations with the European Union on Brexit early last month. Two senior ministers resigned from May’s cabinet…

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PressTV-‘US first has to stop wielding stick to talk with Iran’

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American writer and retired professor James Petras has said that the understanding in Iran is very clear that the United States first has to stop wielding the stick and then Tehran will think of sitting with Washington on a negotiating table.

Petras, who has several books on Middle Eastern political issues, made the remarks in an interview on Tuesday with Press TV while commenting on a statement by Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, who said on Monday that the Islamic Republic will not enter into new negotiations with the United States due to cheating and bullying nature of the US government.

Speaking in a meeting with a large group of Iranian people in Tehran, Ayatollah Khamenei dismissed talks with the US after President Donald Trump called for direct negotiations with Tehran, saying Washington is only after concessions. 

In a clear reference to Trump’s withdrawal from a landmark nuclear deal with Iran, called…

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Outrage Mounts Over US Role in Airstrike on Yemeni School Bus Carrying Children

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Thousands of mourners gathered in Yemen’s northern city of Saada Monday for the funerals of 51 people, including 40 children, who were killed in a US-backed Saudi-led coalition airstrike on a school bus last week. The massacre of school boys between the ages of 6 and 11 was one of the worst attacks on children in the history of Yemen’s brutal war. Images posted online suggest a US-built Mark 82 bomb was used in the bombing. We speak with Shireen Al-Adeimi, a Yemeni scholar and activist and an Assistant Professor at Michigan State University. Her latest piece for In These Times is titled “Fine Print in Defense Bill Acknowledges US-Backed War in Yemen Will Go On Indefinitely.”

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, Democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman. As we continue to look at Yemen, we now turn to an absolutely critical report on what has been taking place in Yemen right now — the bombing of a school bus. The bombing of a school bus. Thousands of mourners gathered in the northern city of Sa’dah for funerals of 51 people, including 40 children killed in a US-backed Saudi-led coalition airstrike on a school bus last week. Images posted online suggest a US-built Mark 82 bomb was used in the bombing. The massacre of school boys between the ages of six and 11 was one of the worst attacks on children in history of Yemen’s brutal war. This is Moussa Abdullah who witnessed the bombing.

MOUSSA ABDULLAH: The strike happened in the middle of the market and it targeted a bus carrying children. Our shops were open and the shoppers were walking around as usual. All of those who died were residents, children and shop owners.

AMY GOODMAN: The children had spent the day celebrating the end of summer school by taking a field trip to a cemetery, one of the last remaining green spaces in a region devastated by war. Video released by Houthi media captures the school boys…

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Turning Space Into a War Zone

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The Trump administration is pushing hard on its scheme to create a Space Force.  Last week Vice President Pence, chairman of a newly reconstituted National Space Council, in a speech at the Pentagon declared: “The time has come to write the next great chapter in the history of our armed forces, to prepare for the next battlefield.”

Pence claimed—falsely: “Our adversaries have transformed space into a warfighting domain already and the United States will not shrink from the challenge.”

Trump, who in June announced he was “directing the Department of Defense and Pentagon to immediately begin the process necessary to establish a Space Force as the sixth branch of the armed forces,” following Pence’s address Thursday promptly tweeted: “Space Force all the way!”

At the same time, signaling that the Space Force drive will be used politically, the Trump campaign organization sent out an email asking supporters to choose between six Space Force logos that were depicted. “President Trump wants a Space Force—a groundbreaking endeavor for the future of America and the final frontier,” wrote Brad Parscale, campaign manager of “Donald J. Trump for President, 2020.” “To celebrate President Trump’s huge announcement, our campaign will be selling a new line of gear.” He asked backers pick “your favorite logo.”

“This is a crucial moment where the public must stand and say ‘hell no!”…

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Trump Vs. His Own Administration?

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Ron Paul
The Ron Paul Institute
August 14, 2018

Are President Trump’s senior cabinet members working against him? It’s hard not to conclude that many of the more hawkish neocons that Trump has (mistakenly, in my view) appointed to top jobs are actively working to undermine the president’s stated agenda. Especially when it seems Trump is trying to seek dialogue with countries the neocons see as adversaries needing to be regime-changed.

Remember just as President Trump was organizing an historic summit meeting with Kim Jong-Un, his National Security Advisor, John Bolton, nearly blew the whole thing up by making repeated references to the “Libya model” and how it should be applied to North Korea. As if Kim would jump at the chance to be bombed, overthrown, and murdered at the hands of a US-backed mob!

It seems that Trump’s appointees are again working at cross-purposes to him. Last week, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced that he was invoking a 1991 US law against the use of chemical weapons to announce yet another round of sanctions on Russia over what he claims is Putin’s involvement in the poisoning of a former Russian spy and his daughter in the UK.

The alleged poisoning took place in March and only now did the State Department make its determination that Russia was behind it and thus subject to the 1991 sanction law. Was there new information that came to light that pointed to Russian involvement? According to a State Department briefing there was none. The State Department just decided to take the British government’s word for it.

Where do we get authority to prosecute Russia for an alleged crime committed in the UK, by the way?

President Trump’s own Administration is forcing him to accept the State Department determination and agree to sanctions that may well include, according to the 1991 law, a complete break of diplomatic relations with Russia. This would…

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Rees-Mogg to ambush May with ‘positive’ no-deal plan, released before Tory conference – reports — RT UK News

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Scores of MPs are planning to challenge Theresa May by backing a ‘positive’ plan for leaving the EU with no deal, according to reports. The move follows warnings of civil strife should the UK leave the bloc without a deal.

Hard-right Tory MP, Jacob Rees-Mogg, is arranging the plan which will outline the benefits of a Brexit on World Trade Organisation (WTO) terms, reports the Times.

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(L) Sir Jim Ratcliffe, CEO of INEOS poses with British Olympic sailor (R) Ben Ainslie, during a news conference in London, Britain, April 26, 2018. © Toby Melville

The plan is likely to have the support of up to 80 MPs, many of whom are members of the European Research Group (ERG), chaired by Rees-Mogg. The proposal is provocatively scheduled for release only days before the Tory conference in September.

The plan, which is still in development, will reportedly propose a Canada-style free trade agreement with the EU, on the provision that it reverses its position on the Irish border. Should the bloc fail to agree to this, the paper proposed a no-deal Brexit on WTO terms.

Rees-Mogg’s reported plan is in direct opposition to May’s own Brexit blueprint, referred in the press as the Chequers plan, which proposed a soft-Brexit enraging many grassroots Tories and the hard-right of the party.

The plan is creating disquiet amongst May’s aides, who fear that it could undermine her position in negotiations with Brussels. The prime minister has a working majority of just 13 and the prospect of a rebellion, even from a minority of ERG MPs, would see May reaching out to the Labour party for support.

According to the government’s forecasts a no-deal Brexit, posited in Rees-Mogg’s plan, would have a devastating effect on the economy. A leaked treasury report detailed that if the UK reverted to WTO trade rules, the country’s economy would decline by 8% over the next 15 years.

READ MORE: ‘Posh scum’ and sex toy: Vandals strike at Tory MP Jacob Rees Mogg’s home – reports

Beyond economics, fears that a no-deal Brexit could lead to civil unrest have been abundant. Many local authorities are reportedly preparing for such a scenario, while iNews reported that the government was discussing canceling police leave for the months following Brexit.

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Via RT. This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News with permission or license.

US Congress publishes entire text of Russia sanctions ‘bill from hell’ — RT US News

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The full text of Congress’ latest sanctions bill has been released, revealing a punitive piece of legislation that aims to undermine Russia economically – and even suggests designating Moscow a state sponsor of terrorism.

Dubbed the “sanctions bill from hell” by its authors, the ‘Defending American Security from Kremlin Aggression Act of 2018’ was introduced by a group of Republican and Democratic senators on August 2. The bill would place restrictions on US cooperation with Russia’s oil industry, target Russian sovereign debt transactions as well as Russian uranium imports. In addition, the legislation calls for sanctions against “political figures, oligarchs, and other persons that facilitate illicit and corrupt activities, directly or indirectly, on behalf of the President of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin.”

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FILE PHOTO A ship transporting liquified natural gas cargo from Russia © China Stringer Network

The bill, which was recently published in full on Congress’ official website, also pledges full support for NATO and would require a two-thirds majority vote in the Senate if the United States ever wishes to exit the transatlantic alliance.

The legislation also declares that “the United States will never recognize the illegal annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation” and that Washington, in conjunction with NATO, should “prioritize efforts to prevent the further consolidation of illegal occupying powers in Crimea.”

The pending ‘Kremlin Aggression Act’ decrees that Congress should also determine whether Russia “meets the criteria for designation as a state sponsor of terrorism.”

The bill also accused Russia of “enabling the brutal regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria to commit war crimes,” adding that Moscow has shown itself to be “incapable or unwilling” to compel Assad to “stop using chemical weapons against the civilian population in Syria.”

The Act calls for a congressional committee to investigate “alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity attributable to [Russia]” and resolves to “punish the Government of the Russian Federation for, and deter that Government from, any chemical weapons production and use through the imposition of sanctions, diplomatic isolation, and the use of the mechanisms specified in the Chemical Weapons Convention for violations of the Convention.”

The legislation is just the latest addition to a laundry list of sanctions and laws passed in the months following the 2016 presidential election.

READ MORE: Snr Russian senator likens US sanctions plan to police torture for confession

Republican hawk Lindsey Graham (South Carolina) and Bob Menendez (D-New Jersey), who both sponsored the bill, said in a joint statement that the legislation is designed to show that the US will “not waver in our rejection of [Russian President Vladimir Putin’s] effort to erode western democracy as a strategic imperative for Russia’s future.” The Russia-obsessed Senator John McCain (R-Arizona) was one of the five co-sponsors of the bill.

Moscow has brushed off the new wave of accusations as a projection of internal US struggle. Some elements in the US government are trying to “keep afloat” the conspiracy that Russia meddled in the US elections, in hopes of derailing constructive relations with Moscow and using the issue “purely for internal American purposes,” Senator Konstantin Kosachev, who chairs the Upper House Committee for International Relations, has said in response to the latest sanctions.

Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev has warned that the adoption of any US legislation that targets Russian banking operations and currency trade would be considered a declaration of economic war.

“If they introduce something like a ban on banking operations or the use of any currency, we will treat it as a declaration of economic war. And we’ll have to respond to it accordingly – economically, politically, or in any other way, if required,” Medvedev said last week. “Our American friends should make no mistake about it.”

Moscow has vowed to respond to any new sanctions. Russia’s Finance Ministry said it would continue to sell off its holdings of US Treasury securities, while some lawmakers have called for Russia and its allies to stop using the US dollar for mutual payments.

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Via RT. This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News with permission or license.

PressTV-Labour MPs defend Corbyn over spat with Netanyahu

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Since Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s public attack on Jeremy Corbyn, senior Labour MPs have rushed to Corbyn’s aid, voicing their support on Twitter.

Labour’s Shadow Chancellor and a close ally of the Labour leader, John McDonnell, accused the Israeli prime minister of joining a “media feeding frenzy” and declared: “Enough is enough.”

Corbyn has been targeted by Netanyahu in a tweet following allegations that the British politician laid a wreath at the funeral for a Palestinian man involved in the 1972 Munich kidnapping.

The Labour leader has denied the accusation saying that Mr….

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PressTV-‘Trump’s proposed Space Force is waste of resources’

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A former secretary of the US Air Force, Deborah James, has said that President Donald Trump’s proposal to create a separate Space Force is a waste of time and resources.

“I don’t think it will address any of the challenges we need to focus on – I think it’s the wrong way to go,” James told Hill.TV on Tuesday.

“The question is: Does a brand-new bureaucracy that needs to be stood up with perhaps thousands of new people, and billions of dollars to set up the infrastructure, is that the right way to address what really needs to happen? And I say no,” added James, who served under the Obama administration.

 She acknowledged the importance of developing new technology to help the military win wars in space, but said the US military should test and develop technologies rather than create a whole new division.

 “A new branch of the military would take focus and resources away from technology – not toward it,” she told…

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The DNC -Leaks, Hacks, and Beyond Treason

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Summary: People have been divided about the DNC hack-leak ever since the story began with the Chalupa-Isikoff article. These divisions run so deep they mark where people stand politically. Mutually exclusive positions range from whether or not Russians hacked the DNC or if the information was downloaded and then leaked, presumably by Seth Rich.  All three are different positions.

This article culminates what I’ve learned about the hack-leak and the Information Operation surrounding this. It presents a much different perspective.

There were multiple DNC hacks. There is also clear proof supporting the download to a USB stick and subsequent information exchange (leak) to Wikileaks. All are separate events.

Here’s what’s different in the information I’ve compiled.

  • The group I previously identified as Fancy Bear was given access to request password privileges at the DNC. And it looks like the DNC provided them with it.
  • I’ll show why the Podesta email hack looks like a revenge hack.
  • The reason Republican opposition research files were stolen can be put into context now because we know who the hackers are and what motivates them.

At the same time this story developed, it overshadowed the Hillary Clinton email scandal. It is a matter of public record that Team Clinton provided the DNC hackers with passwords to State Department servers on at least 2 occasions, one wittingly and one not. I have already clearly shown the Fancy Bear hackers are Ukrainian Intelligence Operators.

This gives some credence to the Seth Rich leak (DNC leak story) as an act of patriotism. If the leak came through Seth Rich, it may have been because he saw foreign Intel operatives given this access from the presumed winners of the 2016 US presidential election. No political operative is going to argue with the presumed president-elect over foreign policy. The leaker may have been trying to do something about it. I’m curious what information Wikileaks might have.

The real crime of the DNC hack wasn’t the hack.

If only half of the following proved true in context and it’s a matter of public record, that makes the argument to stop funding for Ukraine immediately barring an investigation of high crimes by Ukrainian Diaspora, Democrat, and Republican leaders in Congress, private Intel for hire, and Ukrainian Intel’s attacks on the US government and political processes.

Perhaps it’s time Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump should consider treason investigations across the board. Make America great again by bringing justice and civility back

After reading this it’s time to demand Congress to stop funding Ukraine.

DNC Hack – High Crimes or Misdemeanors?

So what went on at the DNC way back in 2016? Do you know? Was it a hack or a leak? Does it matter?

Recently, an investigative journalist who writes under the name Adam Carter was raked over the coals. Carter writes at Disobedient Media and has been providing a lot of evidence supporting the DNC leak story former Ambassador Craig Murray and Wikileaks claim happened.

When the smear article came out and apparently it’s blossoming into a campaign, a few people that read both of us wrote to the effect “looks like your work is the only thing left standing.” I immediately rebuffed the idea and said Carter’s work stands on its own. It has nothing to do with anything I’ve written, researched, or plan to.

I’d say the same about Scott Humor, Lee Stranahan, Garland Nixon, Petri Krohn, or Steve McIntyre. And there are many others. There has been a lot of good work on the DNC hacks and 2016 election interference. Oftentimes, what looks like contradictory information is complimentary because what each journalist is working on shows the story from a different angle.

There are a lot of moving parts to the story and even a small change in focus brings an entirely new story because it comes from a different direction.

Here’s what I mean. If the DNC hack was really a leak, does that kill the “hack” story? No, it doesn’t and I blame a lot of activist journalists for making the assumption that it has to work this way. If Seth Rich gave Ambassador Craig Murray a USB stick with all the “hacked info,” it doesn’t change an iota of what I’ve written and the evidence you are about to read stands on its own. But, this has divided people into camps before the whole situation could be scrutinized and that’s still not done yet.

If for example you have a leak on Jan 5th, can you have “a hack” on Jan 6th, 7th, or 8th? Since there is so much crap surrounding the supposed hack such as law enforcement teams never examining the DNC server or maintaining control of it as evidence, could the hacks have been a cover-up?

Hang em’ High

According to Obama the hacks continued until September 2016. According to ABC, Donna Brazile says the hacks didn’t stop until after the elections in 2016. According to Crowdstrike the hacks continued into November.

“Democratic National Committee Chair Donna Brazile said Russian hackers persisted in trying to break into the organization’s computers “daily, hourly” until after the election — contradicting President Obama’s assertion that the hacking stopped in September after he warned Russian President Vladimir Putin to “cut it out.”-ABC

This time frame gives a lot of latitude to both hacks and leaks happening on that server and still agrees with the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPs). According to Bill Binney, the former Technical Director for the NSA, the only way that data could move off the server that fast was through a download to a USB stick. The transfer rate of the file does not agree with a Guciffer 2.0 hack and the information surrounding Guciffer 2.0 is looking ridiculous and impossible at best.

The DNC fiasco isn’t that important of a crime. The reason I say this is the FBI would have taken control over material evidence right away. No law enforcement agency or Intel agency ever did. This means none of them considered it a crime Comey should have any part of investigating. That by itself presents the one question mark which destroys any hope Mueller has proving law enforcement maintained a chain of custody for any evidence he introduces.

It also says the US government under Barrack Obama and the victimized DNC saw this as a purely political event. They didn’t want this prosecuted or they didn’t think it was prosecutable.

Once proven it shows a degree of criminality that makes treason almost too light a charge in federal court. Rest assured this isn’t a partisan accusation. Team Clinton and the DNC gets the spotlight but there are Republicans involved.

Identifying Team Fancy Bear

There are a couple of caveats that need to be made when identifying the Fancy Bear hackers. The first is the identifier used by Mueller as Russian FSB and GRU may have been true- 10 years ago. This group was on the run trying to stay a step ahead of Russian law enforcement until October 2016. So we have part of the Fancy bear hacking group identified as Ruskie traitors and possibly former Russian state security. The majority of the group are Ukrainians making up Ukraine’s Cyber Warfare groups.

Identifying the hackers as FSB or GRU today is as helpful and has the same validity as identifying Special Prosecutor Mueller as a cashier at McDonalds because he worked there during school. It’s insulting and self-defeating, so stop it.

How Mueller is Making a Russian Attribution for the DNC Hackers

If you look at the attribution section for the Tallinn Manual 2.0 on the International Law Applicable to Cyber and specifically the section that deals with peacetime attributions of a non-state actor/ hacker we have an answer.

The hackers, OSINT, Cyber, spies, terrorists, etc call themselves volunteers to keep safe from State level retaliation, even though a child can follow the money. As volunteers motivated by politics and patriotism they are protected to a degree from retribution.

They don’t claim State sponsorship or governance and the level of attack falls below the threshold of military action. Mueller has a lot of latitude for making the attribution Russian, even though the attacks came from  Ukrainian Intel. Based on how the rules are written, because the few members of the coalition from Shaltai Boltai are Russian in nationality, Fancy Bear can be attributed as a Russian entity for the purposes of retribution. The caveat is if the attribution is proven wrong, the US will be liable for damages caused to the State which in this case is Russia.

How large is the Fancy Bear unit? According to their propaganda section InformNapalm, they have the ability to research and work in over 30 different languages.

This can be considered an Information Operation against the people of the United States and of course Russia. We’ll get to why shortly.

After 2013, Shaltay Boltay was no longer physically available to work for Russia. The Russian hackers were in Ukraine working for the Ukrainian government’s Information Ministry which is in charge of the cyber war. They were in Ukraine until October 2016 when they were tricked to return to Moscow and promptly arrested for treason.

From all this information we know the Russian component of Team Fancy Bear is Shaltai Boltai. We know the Ukrainian Intel component is called CyberHunta and Ukraine Cyber Alliance which includes the hacker group RUH8. We know both groups work/ worked for Ukrainian Intelligence. We know they are grouped with InformNapalm which is Ukraine’s OSINT unit. We know their manager is a Ukrainian named Kristina Dobrovolska. And lastly, all of the above work directly with the Atlantic Council and Crowdstrike’s Dimitry Alperovich.

In short, the Russian-Ukrainian partnership that became Fancy Bear started in late 2013 to very early 2014 and ended in October 2016 in what appears to be a squabble over the alleged data from the Surkov leak.

But during 2014,2015, and 2016 Shaltai Boltai, the Ukrainian Cyber Alliance, and CyberHunta went to work for the DNC as opposition researchers.

The First Time Shaltai Boltai was Handed the Keys to US Gov Servers

The setup to this happened long before the partnership with Ukrainian Intel hackers and Russia’s Shaltai Boltai was forged. The hack that gained access to US top-secret servers happened just after the partnership was cemented after Euro-Maidan.

In August 2009 Hillary Clinton’s Deputy Chief of Staff at the State Department Huma Abedin sent the passwords to her Government laptop to her Yahoo mail account. On August 16, 2010, Abedin received an email titled “Re: Your yahoo account. We can see where this is going, can’t we?

“After Abedin sent an unspecified number of sensitive emails to her Yahoo account, half a billion Yahoo accounts were hacked by Russian cybersecurity expert and Russian intelligence agent, Igor Sushchin, in 2014. The hack, one of the largest in history, allowed Sushchin’s associates to access email accounts into 2015 and 2016.”

Igor Sushchin was part of the Shaltai Boltai hacking group that is charged with the Yahoo hack.

The time frame has to be noted. The hack happened in 2014. Access to the email accounts continued through 2016. The Ukrainian Intel partnership was already blossoming and Shaltai Boltai was working from Kiev, Ukraine.

So when we look at the INFRASTRUCTURE HACKS, WHITE HOUSE HACKS, CONGRESS, start with looking at the time frame. Ukraine had the keys already in hand in 2014.

The DNC’s Team Fancy Bear

The “Fancy Bear hackers” may have been given the passwords to get into the servers at the DNC because they were part of the Team Clinton opposition research team. It was part of their job. Let that concept settle in for a moment.

According to Politico “In an interview this month, Chalupa told Politico she had developed a network of sources in Kiev and Washington, including investigative journalists, government officials and private intelligence operatives. While her consulting work at the DNC this past election cycle centered on mobilizing ethnic communities — including Ukrainian-Americans — she said that, when Trump’s unlikely presidential campaign began surging in late 2015, she began focusing more on the research, and expanded it to include Trump’s ties to Russia, as well.”

The only investigative journalists, government officials, and private intelligence operatives that work together in 2014-2015-2016 Ukraine are Shaltai Boltai, CyberHunta, Ukraine Cyber Alliance, and the Ministry of Information.

All of these hacking and information operation groups work for Andrea Chalupa with EuroMaidanPR and Irena Chalupa at the Atlantic Council. Both Chalupa sisters work directly with the Ukrainian government’s Intel and propaganda arms.

Since 2014 in Ukraine, these are the only OSINT, hacking, Intel, espionage, terrorist, counter-terrorism, cyber, propaganda, and info war channels officially recognized and directed by Ukraine’s Information Ministry.  Along with their American colleagues, they populate the hit-for-hire website Myrotvorets with people who stand against Ukraine’s criminal activities.

Alexandra Chalupa hired this particular hacking terrorist group called Fancy Bear by Dimitry Alperovich and Crowdstrike at the latest in 2015. While the Ukrainian hackers worked for the DNC, Fancy Bear had to send in progress reports, turn in research, and communicate on the state of the projects they were working on. Let’s face it, once you’re in, setting up your Fancy Bear toolkit doesn’t get any easier. This is why I said the DNC hack isn’t the big crime. It’s a big con and all the parties were in on it.

Indict Team Clinton for the DNC Hacks and RNC Hack

Hillary Clinton exposed secrets to hacking threats by using private email instead of secured servers. Given the information provided she was probably being monitored by our intrepid Ruskie-Ukie union made in hell hackers. Anthony Weiner exposed himself and his wife Huma Abedin using Weiner’s computer for top-secret State Department emails. And of course Huma Abedin exposed herself along with her top-secret passwords at Yahoo and it looks like the hackers the DNC hired to do opposition research hacked her.

Here’s a question. Did Huma Abedin have Hillary Clinton’s passwords for her private email server? It would seem logical given her position with Clinton at the State Department and afterward. This means that Hillary Clinton and the US government top secret servers were most likely compromised by Fancy Bear before the DNC and Team Clinton hired them by using legitimate passwords.

The RNC Hack

According to the Washington Post, “Russian government hackers penetrated the computer network of the Democratic National Committee and gained access to the entire database of opposition research on GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump, according to committee officials and security experts who responded to the breach.”

In January 2017, criminal proceedings started for Edward Nedelyaev under articles 335 ‘spying’ and 343

‘inciting hatred or enmity.” He was a member of the Aidar battalion. Aidar members have been cited for torture and murder. Although the translation isn’t available on the linked video the MGB (LNR equivalent to the FBI) ask Aidar’s Nedelyaev about his relationship with Ukraine’s SBU. The SBU asked him to hack US presidential candidate Donald Trump’s election headquarters and he refused. Asked if this was through convictions, he says no, explaining that he is not a hacker. The video was published on January 10, 2017.

Taken at face value it really does show the ineptness of the SBU after 2014. This is why Ukraine relied (s) on the Diaspora financed Shaltai Boltai, CyberHunta, Ukraine Cyber Alliance, RUH8, Bellingcat, Webradius, InformNapalm and associated parties.

The Ukrainians were hired to get the goods on Trump. Part of that is knowing where to start isn’t it?

Fancy Bear’s Second Chance at Top Secret Passwords From Team Clinton

How stupid would the Fancy Bear teams of Shaltai Boltai, CyberHunta, Ukrainian Cyber Alliance,  and RUH8 be if they had access to the DNC servers which makes it easier to get into the US State servers and not do that if it was their goal?

One very successful method of hacking is called social engineering. You gain access to the office space and any related properties and physically locate the passwords or clues to get you into the hardware you want to hack. This includes something as simple as looking over the shoulder of the person typing in passwords.

Let’s be clear. The Fancy Bear hackers were hired by Alexandra Chalupa to work for DNC opposition research. On different occasions, Fancy Bear handler Kristina Dobrovolska traveled to the US to meet the Diaspora leaders, her boss Alexandra Chalupa, Irena Chalupa, Andrea Chalupa, US Dept of State personnel, and most likely Crowdstrike’s Dimitry Alperovich. Alperovich was working with the hackers in 2015-16. In 2016, the only groups known to have Fancy Bear’s signature tools called X-tunnel and X-Agent were Alperovich, Crowdstrike, and Fancy Bear (Shaltai Boltai, CyberHunta, Ukraine Cyber Alliance, and RUH8/RUX8. Yes, that does explain a few things.

Here is where it goes from bad to outright Fancy Bear ugly. Hillary Clinton retained State Dept. top secret clearance passwords for 6 of her former staff for research purposes from 2013 through prepping for the 2016 election. Were any foreigners part of the opposition research team for Team Hillary in 2014-2015-2016? The Clinton’s don’t have a history of vetting security issues well.

Let’s recap. Clinton keeps 6 top secret passwords for research staff. Alexandra Chalupa is running a research department that is rich in (foreign) Ukrainian Intelligence operatives, hackers, terrorists, and a couple Ruskie traitors.

Kristina Dobrovolska was acting as a handler and translator for the US State Department in 2016. She is the Fancy Bear *opposition researcher handler manager. Kristina goes to Washington to meet with Chalupa.

Alexandra types in her password to show Dobrovolska something she found and her eager to please Ukrainian apprentice finds the keystrokes are seared into her memory. She tells the Fancy Bear crew about it and they immediately get to work looking for Trump material on the US secret servers with legitimate access. I mean, what else could they do with this? Turn over sensitive information to the ever corrupt Ukrainian government?

According to the Politico article, Alexandra Chalupa was meeting with the Ukrainian embassy in June of 2016 to discuss getting more help sticking it to candidate Trump. At the same time she was meeting, the embassy had a reception that highlighted female Ukrainian leaders.

Four Verkhovna Rada deputies there for the event included: Viktoriia Y. Ptashnyk, Anna A. Romanova, Alyona I. Shkrum, and Taras T. Pastukh.

According to CNN, DNC sources said Chalupa told DNC operatives the Ukrainian government would be willing to deliver damaging information against Trump’s campaign. Later, Chalupa would lead the charge to try to unseat president-elect Trump starting on Nov 10, 2016.

Accompanying them Kristina Dobrovolska who was a U.S. Embassy-assigned government liaison and translator who escorted the delegates from Kyiv during their visits to Albany and Washington.

Kristina Dobrovolska is the handler manager working with Ukraine’s DNC Fancy Bear Hackers. She took the Rada members to dinner to meet Joel Harding who designed Ukraine’s infamous Information Policy which opened up their kill-for-hire-website Myrotvorets. Then she took them to meet the Ukrainian Diaspora leader doing the hiring. Nestor Paslawsky is the surviving nephew to the infamous torturer The WWII OUNb leader, Mykola Lebed.

The Podesta Hack – Don’t Mess with OUNb Parkhomenko

I have no interest in reviewing his history except for a few points. Adam Parkhomenko, a Diaspora Ukrainian nationalist almost gained a position in the presumed Clinton White House. As a Ukrainian nationalist, his first loyalty, like any other Ukrainian nationalist, is to a fascist model of Ukraine which Stepan Bandera devised but with a win it would be in America.

During the 2016 primaries, it was Parkhomenko who accused Bernie Sanders of working for Vladimir Putin. Parkhomenko has never really had a job outside the Clinton campaign.

Before Clinton declared her candidacy, Parkhomenko started a PAC for Hillary Clinton with the goal of getting millions of people email lists so the support was ready for a Clinton run. After she declared her candidacy, Robby Mook, Hillary’s campaign manager decided to sideline Parkhomenko and didn’t take on his full staff as promised. He reduced Parkomenko to a quiet menial position when he was brought onboard.

Ultimately, Podesta became responsible for this because he gave Parkhomenko assurances that his staff would be brought on and there would be no gaps in their paycheck. Many of them including Parkhomenko’s family moved to Brooklyn. And of course, that didn’t happen. Podesta was hacked in March and the Ukrainian nationalist Adam Parkhomenko was hired April 1st.

Today, Parkhomenko is working as a #DigitalSherlock with the Atlantic Council along with the Fancy Bear hackers and many of the people associated with them. Why could this be a revenge hack?

The Ukrainian Intel hackers are Pravy Sektor Ukrainian nationalists. Alexandra Chalupa is also an OUNb Bandera Ukrainian nationalist. This Ukrainian nationalist was on his way to becoming one of the most powerful people in America. That’s why.

The DNC Leak- A Patriotic Act

“At the same time her aides were creating “loyalty scores”, Clinton, “instructed a trusted aide to access the campaign’s server and download the messages sent and received by top staffers. She believed her campaign had failed her—not the other way around—and she wanted ‘to see who was talking to who, who was leaking to who.2’” After personally reading the email correspondence of her staffers, she called them into interviews for the 2016 campaign, where she confronted them with some of the revelations.”-

Forget about the DNC. The hackers may have spent months surfing the US secret servers downloading and delivering top secret diplomatic files to their own government. The people entrusted with this weren’t just sloppy with security, this is beyond treason.

It doesn’t matter if it was Seth Rich, though I hope it was ( for identification’s sake), who downloaded data from the DNC servers.  The reasons supporting a leak are described by the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS). This shows clearly why the leak to Wikileaks is much more plausible than a hack for the files taken in what is commonly called the DNC hack. This leak was one “hack” of many that was going on.

Imagine being this person inside the situations described above with the reality hitting you that things were very wrong. Even if they only saw parts of it, how much is too much? US government secrets were being accessed and we know this because the passwords were given out to the research teams the hackers were on.

It is very possible that giving the files to Wikileaks was the only safe way to be a whistleblower with a Democrat president supporting Team Hillary even as Team Hillary was cannibalizing itself. For detail on how the leak happened, refer to Adam Carter at DisobedientMedia.com and the VIPS themselves.

Today, this isn’t a Democrat problem. It could just as easily been an establishment Republican.

Ukraine needs to pay for what their Intel Operators/ hackers have done. Stop funding Ukraine other than verifiable humanitarian aid. Call your Congressional Rep.

Next up– We are going to look at who has oversight over this operation and who’s footing the bills.

Over the last 4 years, I’ve researched and written many stories that are still breaking in media today. Over the past 7 months we:

  • Identified Propornot
  • Identified Fancy Bear
  • Showed clearly why Mueller’s evidence is rife with fraudulent data.
  • We solved the DNC Hack-Leaks and showed the how and why of what went on.

If you want to support investigative research with a lot of depth, please support my Patreon  page. You can also support my work through PayPal as we expand in new directions over the coming year. For the last 4 years, it’s been almost entirely self-supportive effort which is something when you consider I live in Donbass.

 

 

The Deep State’s Long Enmity

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The U.S. deep state’s hatred of the Iranian people goes back a long way, at least as far back as 1953. That was the year that the CIA, which was called into existence in 1947 when the U.S. government was being converted to a national-security state, targeted Iran with its first regime-change operation. And guess who paid the price for that operation. Yes, the people of Iran.

The Iranian Parliament had elected a man named Mohammad Mossadegh to be their prime minister. Mosaddegh would later be named Time magazine’s “Man of the Year.” As many government officials around the world have done, Mosaddegh nationalized the country’s oil industry, arguing that natural resources belonged to the nation.

The oil companies that bore the brunt of the nationalization were British-owned. Not surprisingly, they, along with British public officials, were livid over having the oil wells nationalized. British officials turned to the CIA for help.

The CIA asked President Truman for permission to initiate a coup to help the British oil companies, which the CIA knew would destroy the Iranian people’s experiment with democracy. To his everlasting credit, Truman said no. That didn’t stop the CIA however. As soon as President Eisenhower became president in 1952, the CIA renewed its request for a coup, arguing that Mossadegh was a “communist.”

The Failure of America…

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Why did that make a difference? Because by this time, the U.S. deep state had launched its Cold War against America’s World War II partner and ally, the Soviet Union, which was run by a communist regime. Americans were inculcated with the fear that the communists were coming to get us, take over the federal…

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Video: Rare video: Huge landslide caught on cam near Beijing

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A massive landslide was filmed falling over a mountain road in Fangshan District, near Beijing on Sunday, temporarily interrupting traffic flow. No injuries were …

Via Youtube

Donald Trump, Gunrunner for Hire

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American weapons makers have dominated the global arms trade for decades. In any given year, they’ve accounted for somewhere between one-third and more than one-half the value of all international weapons sales. It’s hard to imagine things getting much worse — or better, if you happen to be an arms trader — but they could, and soon, if a new Trump rule on firearms exports goes through.

But let’s hold off a moment on that and assess just how bad it’s gotten before even worse hits the fan. Until recently, the Trump administration had focused its arms sales policies on the promotion of big-ticket items like fighter planes, tanks, and missile defense systems around the world. Trump himself has loudly touted U.S. weapons systems just about every time he’s had the chance, whether amid insults to allies at the recent NATO summit or at a chummy White House meeting with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, whose brutal war in Yemen is fueled by U.S.-supplied arms.

A recent presidential export policy directive, in fact, specifically instructs American diplomats to put special effort into promoting arms sales, effectively turning them into agents for the country’s largest weapons makers. As an analysis by the Security Assistance Monitor at the Center for International Policy has noted, human rights and even national security concerns have taken a back seat to creating domestic jobs via such arms sales. Evidence of this can be found in, for example, the ending of Obama administration arms sales suspensions to Nigeria, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia. The first of those had been imposed because of the way the Nigerian government repressed its own citizens; the second for Bahrain’s brutal crackdown on the democracy movement there; and the last for Saudi Arabia’s commission of acts that one member of Congress has said “look like war crimes” in its Yemeni intervention.

Fueling death and destruction, however, turns out not to be a particularly effective job creator. Such military spending actually generates significantly fewer jobs per dollar than almost any other kind of investment. In addition, many of those jobs will actually be located overseas, thanks to production-sharing deals with weapons-purchasing countries like Italy, Japan, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, and other U.S. allies. To cite an example, one of the goals of Saudi Arabia’s economic reform plan — unveiled in 2017 — is to ensure that, by 2030, half the value of the kingdom’s arms purchases will be produced in Saudi Arabia. U.S. firms have scrambled to comply, setting up affiliates in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, and in the case of Lockheed Martin’s Sikorsky unit, agreeing to begin assembling military helicopters there. McClatchy news service summed up the situation in this headline: “Trump’s Historic Arms Deal Is a Likely Jobs Creator — In Saudi Arabia.”

The Department of Defense has brokered agreements for sales of major systems worth $46 billion in the first six months of 2018, more than the $41 billion in deals made during all of 2017.

For most Americans, there should be serious questions about the economic benefits of overseas arms sales, but if you’re a weapons maker looking to pump up sales and profits, the Trump approach has already been a smashing success. According to the head of the Pentagon’s arms sales division, known euphemistically as the Defense Security Cooperation Agency, the Department of Defense has brokered agreements for sales of major systems worth $46 billion in the first six months of 2018, more than the $41 billion in deals made during all of 2017.

And that, it seems, is just the beginning.

Slow Motion Weapons of Mass Destruction

Yes, those massive sales of tanks, helicopters, and fighter aircraft are indeed a grim wonder of the modern world and never receive the attention they truly deserve. However, a potentially deadlier aspect of the U.S. weapons trade receives even less attention than the sale of big-ticket items: the export of firearms, ammunition, and related equipment. Global arms control advocates have termed such small arms and light weaponry — rifles, automatic and semi-automatic weapons, and handguns — “slow motion weapons of mass destruction” because they’re the weapons of choice in the majority of the 40 armed conflicts now underway around the world. They and they alone have been responsible for nearly half of the roughly 200,000 violent deaths by weapon that have been occurring annually both in and outside of official war zones.

And the Trump administration is now moving to make it far easier for U.S. gun makers to push such wares around the world. Consider it an irony, if you will, but in doing so, the president who has staked his reputation on rejecting everything that seems to him tainted by Barack Obama is elaborating on a proposal originally developed in the Obama years.

The crucial element in the new plan: to move key decisions on whether or not to export guns and ammunition abroad from the State Department’s jurisdiction, where they would be vetted on both human rights and national security grounds, to the Commerce Department, whose primary mission is promoting national exports.

The Violence Policy Center, a research and advocacy organization that seeks to limit gun deaths, has indicated that such a move would ease the way for more exports of a long list of firearms. Those would include sniper rifles and AR-15s, the now-classic weapon in U.S. mass killings like the school shootings in Parkland, Florida, and Newtown, Connecticut. Under the new plan, the careful tracking of whose hands such gun exports could end up in will be yesterday’s news and, as a result, U.S. weapons are likely to become far more accessible to armed gangs, drug cartels, and terrorist operatives.

President Trump’s plan would even eliminate the requirement that Congress be notified in advance of major firearms deals, which would undoubtedly prove to be the arms loophole of all time.

President Trump’s plan would even eliminate the requirement that Congress be notified in advance of major firearms deals, which would undoubtedly prove to be the arms loophole of all time. According to statistics gathered by the Security Assistance Monitor, which gathers comprehensive information on U.S. military and police aid programs, the State Department approved $662 million worth of firearms exports to 15 countries in 2017. The elimination of Congressional notifications and the other proposed changes will mean that countries like Mexico, the Philippines, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates, as well as various Central American nations, will have far easier access to a far wider range of U.S. firearms with far less Congressional oversight. And that, in turn, means that U.S.-supplied weapons will play even more crucial roles in vicious civil wars like the one in Yemen and are far more likely to make their way into the hands of local thugs, death squads, and drug cartels.

And mind you, it isn’t as if U.S. gun export policies were enlightened before the Trump era. They were already wreaking havoc in neighboring countries. According to a report from the Center for American Progress, an astonishing 50,000 U.S. guns were recovered in criminal investigations in 15 Western Hemisphere nations between 2014 and 2016. That report goes on to note that 70% of the guns recovered from crimes in Mexico are of U.S. origin. The comparable figures for Central America are 49% for El Salvador, 46% for Honduras, and 29% for Guatemala.

While Donald Trump rails — falsely — against a flood of criminals washing across the U.S.-Mexico border, he conveniently ignores this country’s export of violence in the other direction thanks to both legal and illegal transfers of guns to Mexico and Central America. The U.S. has, in short, already effectively weaponized both criminal networks and repressive security forces in those countries. In other words, it’s played a key role in the killing of significant numbers of innocent civilians there, ratcheting up the pressure on individuals, families, and tens of thousands of unaccompanied minors who have then headed for the United States looking for a safer, better life. Trump’s new proposal would potentially make this situation far worse and his “big, fat, beautiful wall” would have to grow larger still.

In the past, congressional awareness of foreign firearm deals has made a difference. In September 2017, under pressure from Senators Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), the Trump administration reversed itself and blocked a sale of 1,600 semiautomatic pistols to Turkey because of abuses by the personal security forces of that country’s president, Recep Erdogan. (Those included what the New York Times described as “brutal attacks” on U.S. citizens during Erdogan’s May 2017 trip to Washington, D.C.) Similarly, Senator Ben Cardin (D-MD) persuaded the Obama administration to halt a deal that would have sent 26,000 assault rifles to the Philippines, where security forces and private death squads, egged on by President Rodrigo Duterte, were gunning down thousands of people suspected of (but not charged with or convicted of) drug trafficking. As Washington Post columnist Josh Rogin has noted, under the new Trump rules, it will be nearly impossible for members of Congress to intervene in such a fashion to stop similar deals in the future.

“The United States,” he said, “should never make it easier for foreign despots to slaughter their civilians or for American-made assault weapons to be readily available to paramilitary or terrorist groups… The administration’s proposal makes those scenarios even more possible.”

On the implications of the deregulation of firearms exports, Cardin has spoken out strongly. “The United States,” he said, “should never make it easier for foreign despots to slaughter their civilians or for American-made assault weapons to be readily available to paramilitary or terrorist groups… The administration’s proposal makes those scenarios even more possible. The United States is, and should be, better than this.”

The Trump plan is, however, good news for hire-a-gun successors to Blackwater, the defunct private contractor whose personnel killed 17 civilians in Baghdad’s Nisour Square in a notorious 2007 incident. Such firms would be able to train foreign military forces in the use of firearms without seeking licenses from the State Department, allowing them to operate in places like Libya that might otherwise have been off-limits.

Embracing the Gun Lobby

Not surprisingly, Trump’s proposal to make it easier for global gunrunners to operate from U.S. soil has been greeted with jubilation by the National Rifle Association and U.S.-based firearms manufacturers. The NRA has been a staunch opponent of efforts to place any kind of controls on the global trade in guns since at least the mid-1990s. That was when the United Nations first addressed the impact of the global trade in small arms and light weapons, which ultimately led to the passage of an international Arms Trade Treaty in 2014. Though the Obama administration signed it, the Senate refused to ratify it, in large part thanks to an NRA lobbying campaign.

Now, the NRA has an enthusiastic ally in the president. And that organization, which vigorously backed him in the 2016 election campaign, spending over $30 million on ads praising him or trashing Hillary Clinton, is backing his efforts to deregulate gun exports to the hilt. In a June 2018 letter from its Institute for Legislative Affairs, the NRA urged its supporters to weigh in favorably during the public-comment period on the new rules, describing them as “among the most important pro-gun initiatives by the Trump administration to date.” That’s no small claim, given the president’s enthusiastic embrace of virtually every element of the NRA’s anti-gun-control agenda.

The National Sports Shooting Federation (NSSF), the misleadingly named trade association for U.S. gun manufacturers, is also backing Trump’s efforts to boost firearms exports. The federation’s president, Lawrence Keane, has asserted that the administration proposal will be “a significant positive development for the industry that will allow members to reduce costs and compete in the global marketplace more effectively, all while not in any way hindering national security.”

Among the biggest threats posed by Trump’s approach to guns is his administration’s decision to settle a case with Defense Distributed, a Texas-based firm run by gun advocate Cody Wilson, and so usher in “the age of the downloadable gun.” Though a Seattle-based judge intervened to stop him for the time being, the government had green-lighted Wilson’s posting of designs on the Internet that could be used to produce plastic guns on 3-D printers. If it does happen, it will undoubtedly prove to be a global bonanza for anyone in need of a weapon and capable of purchasing such a printer anywhere in the world.

Arms control and human rights groups have joined domestic gun control organizations like the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, Everytown for Gun Safety, and the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence in trying to block the change, which will dramatically undermine efforts to limit the proliferation of guns at home and abroad. If they fail, it will suddenly become much easier to produce untraceable plastic firearms — from handguns to AR-15s. The administration even agreed to pay Cody Wilson’s legal fees in the dispute, a move former congressman Steve Israel (D-NY) has described as “a particularly galling example of Mr. Trump’s obsequiousness to the most extreme fringe of the gun lobby.”

Congress could seek to blunt the most egregious aspects of the Trump administration’s deregulation of firearms exports by, for instance, ensuring that oversight of the most dangerous guns — like sniper rifles and AR-15 semiautomatic weapons — not be shifted away from the State Department.

Congress could seek to blunt the most egregious aspects of the Trump administration’s deregulation of firearms exports by, for instance, ensuring that oversight of the most dangerous guns — like sniper rifles and AR-15 semiautomatic weapons — not be shifted away from the State Department. It could also continue to force the administration to notify Congress of any major firearms deals before they happen and pass legislation making it illegal to post instructions for producing untraceable guns via 3-D printing technology.

In a political climate dominated by an erratic president in the pocket of the NRA and a Congress with large numbers of members under the sway of the gun lobby, however, only a strong, persistent public outcry might make a difference.

In the meantime, welcome to the world of American gunrunning and start thinking of Donald Trump as our very own gunrunner-in-chief.

Via Common Dreams. This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News with permission or license.

CNN’s Cuomo Defends Antifa, Even After They Attacked Journalists AGAIN

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This one will have your head spinning.

Steve Watson
Infowars.com
August 14, 2018

Chris Cuomo, who works for CNN, the network that has spent the last year or so declaring that Trump supporters are about to attack and lynch journalists, DEFENDED Antifa thugs after they literally attacked journalists and police in Charlottesville over the weekend.

Cuomo first argued that Antifa was only a small part of the crowd, that they were “peppered” in among legitimate protesters. Pictures, videos and reports from the event clearly show that this was not the case.

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Parrot trapped on roof for three days tells rescuers to ‘f**k off!’ — RT UK News

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A foul-mouthed parrot, who was stuck on the roof of a London home for three days, told firefighters to “f**k off” when they tried to come to her aid.

Jessie the Macaw parrot escaped from her home in Cuckoo Hall Lane in the Edmonton area of London and got trapped on a neighbor’s roof. After the bird’s owner and the RSPCA animal charity failed to coax her down they called in the fire brigade to resolve the situation.

READ MORE: Nothing to see here, just python eating pigeon on London street  (VIDEO)

The owner told the firefighter to say “I love you” as he approached Jessie to bond with her and to get her to co-operate. However the affectionate words fell on deaf ears as Jessie told her rescuer to “f**k off”.

Watch Manager Chris Swallow, who was at the scene, said: “We then discovered that she had a bit of a foul mouth and kept swearing, much to our amusement.”

The parrot and its owner also speak Turkish and Greek, so the firefighter tried to talk to her in those languages however that also proved fruitless and the bird continued to swear.

It soon became clear that, contrary to her owner’s fears, Jessie wasn’t injured. After she finished excoriating her rescuer the bird simply flew off towards its owner.

“Thankfully it soon became apparent that Jessie was fine and uninjured as she flew off to another roof and then to a tree,” Swallow explained.

The London Fire Brigade has repeatedly asked people not to contact it looking for help with trapped animals. A spokesperson said Jessie’s owner did the correct thing by not contacting it until had already contacted the RSPCA and had exhausted all other options.

“As with this incident, the RSPCA should be contacted in the first instance and we would always urge people to do the same if they see an animal stuck or in distress. If the RSPCA require our assistance, they will call us and we are happy to assist with our specialist equipment.”

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Via RT. This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News with permission or license.

Hacker kids poke hole in MSM narrative that it’s Russians who are the US election threat — RT US News

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Ahead of the US midterms in November, the MSM has talked at length about a Russian hacking threat. Meanwhile, a competition in Las Vegas shows that when it comes to interfering with a US election, even a child can do it.

Hosted by technology non-profit R00tz Asylum, the competition was held on the sidelines of the annual Def Con hacking conference in Las Vegas, where children between the ages of 8 and 17 were tasked with hacking into replica election office websites in key “battleground” states where the upcoming US midterm elections in November are expected to be tight.

Of the 39 contestants who entered, 35 were successful in breaking into the sites with the fastest being 11-year old Audrey Jones. She cracked the site’s code in just 10 minutes.

While R00tz Asylum’s mantra is “hacking for good,” it exposes glaring vulnerabilities to the cyber security of the US election system despite a whopping $380 million approved by Congress to improve cyber-security for elections in 2018 alone.

Election websites aren’t the only ones open to manipulation. Without any specialist equipment, a voting machine used in 18 different states can be easily hacked by anyone to gain admin access in under two minutes, showing you don’t need to be a Russian hacker or child prodigy to mess with the US midterms.

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Via RT. This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News with permission or license.

Swalwell a Major Contender for U.S. Presidency in 2020

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Eric Zuesse, originally posted at strategic-culture.org

One of the most gifted politicians in the Democratic Party — and fastest-rising — is the 37-year-old Eric Swalwell, whose first elective office was as a member of the Dublin, California, City Council in 2010, and who stepped up from there to his current seat in the U.S. Congress, in 2013. His main financial backers are the military industries, including Boeing, Northrop Grumman, and Wall Street — and the nonprofits and service-firms that represent them.

On Sunday, August 12th, Political Wire, which is the main news-aggregator for Democratic Party activists, headlined “Swalwell Travels to Iowa” and reported that,

Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) — who was born in Iowa — told the San Jose Mercury News that his visit to Iowa “was focused on helping Democrats retake the House in 2018, including by winning competitive races,” but he also said he isn’t ruling out a presidential run in 2020.

Said Swalwell: “Right now my focus is to win at home, earn my way back to Washington to represent my constituents, help other candidates win so we can change the country, and then I’ll make decisions after November about my future.”

Swalwell is movie-star handsome; furthermore, his five-year record in Congress has shown him to be an extraordinarily resourceful career-builder and self-promoter, whose special leadership in the Party has been in their effort to impeach the Republican Party President Donald Trump and (though unmentioned) to replace Trump by the Republican Party Vice President Mike Pence, who is even more conservative than is Trump.

Typical in this effort to place Pence into the White House, is an MSNBC youtube titled “Rep. Eric Swalwell: President Donald Trump Is ‘Perilously Close’ To Obstruction Charge | MSNBC”, in which the issue of whom the President would be if Trump gets impeached is very skillfully ignored entirely, both by the interviewer and by the interviewee. Billionaires control both Parties; and the ones who control the Democratic Party (and MSNBC) are apparently convinced (perhaps by private polling) that the Democratic nominee in 2020 will have a much better chance of winning the White House if Pence is the President, than if Trump is. For whatever reason, almost all of the discussions about impeaching Trump, on Democratic Party sites, avoid even mentioning Pence.

But the same is true also on Republican Party sites. Swalwell is being heavily pumped by virtually all media that cover national politics. For example, on 21 May 2018, Fox News posted to youtube “Calif. lawmaker makes his case for Russian collusion”, where Tucker Carlson debated Swalwell for 9 minutes, and though the actual subject was whether Trump should be impeached, none of the consequences of impeaching him (such as Pence replacing Trump) were even so much as mentioned. The billionaires in both Parties are apparently very taken with Swalwell, not only because he’s phenomenally gifted (as is clear from his ability to hold his own even against the formidable Carlson in that tough debate), but because if any Democrat replaces Trump in 2020, Swalwell would seem to be their dream for achieving that — and he’d probably be preferred by more of them in the general election than Trump would be.

Of course, both Parties claim to represent the public and not the billionaires; and, in this regard, while the standard Republican Party tactic to appeal to the ‘populist’ vote is to promise to “reduce waste, fraud, and abuse,” by eliminating or weakening the regulatory agencies (which the billionaires are determined to shrink or else eliminate if they can’t outright control them), the standard Democratic Party tactic to appeal to the ‘populists’ is to try to build a coalition of feminists, LGBT, Blacks, Hispanics, and other groups whom Republicans treat as being inferior to themselves. Consequently, in order to win the White House as a Democrat, Swalwell has joined the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus, and the Congressional LGBT Caucus, neither of which minority-groups includes himself. Unknown, as of yet, is whether he has applied for membership in the Congressional Black Caucus, but according to Fact Check, as posted in 2008 and never since revised, the Congressional Black Caucus “has never had a white member in its 36-year history” (and, today, that would be never in its 46-year history), so that if he were to apply to join and then be turned down by them, and this were to become public, then the resultant bad publicity for that Caucus would likely reduce, instead of increase, Swalwell’s support by black voters. Consequently, he probably won’t apply to join that Caucus. But perhaps he will seek to join the Bipartisan Congressional Women’s Caucus. They have never had any men, but, between 1981 and 1995, their official policy was to invite male Representatives to join; so, if he were to give it a try, then perhaps they would allow him in, and he then would be able to say that he’s the first-ever man to join the Women’s Caucus. (In 2015, a Men For Women Caucus was formed in the House, but it still hasn’t announced an agenda, and it has done nothing.)

A prominent article on Swalwell’s House website is “Russia: Not Our Friend”, in which is provided a timeline, since 2007, of 13 events that he summarizes outside their context (so his brief accounts there constitute propaganda instead of history), events in which the Russian Government did or was accused of having done allegedly bad things. Typical is the most recent event listed, which is

Linked-to in that, is a New York Times article, from 8 December 2016, headlined “After a Cyberattack, Germany Fears Election Disruption”, and it provided speculation but no evidence, at all. For example:

“Based on the prevailing Russian strategy of hybrid influence and destabilization, which we have observed over time and for which we have facts, the government, officials and some political parties have become sensitized to this form of conflict,” said Wilfried Jilge, an expert on Ukraine and Eastern Europe with the German Council on Foreign Relations.

“Such suspicions are the result of observation and experience over the past year and a half,” Mr. Jilge said.

The Wikipedia article about the “German Council on Foreign Relations” states “The association was founded in 1955 in Bonn. The model for the foundation was in many respects the Council on Foreign Relations in New York and the Chatham House in London.” Both of those groups, in turn, had been founded by, respectively, American and British billionaires and ‘nobles’ in order to advance the design by the 19th Century British aristocrat, Cecil Rhodes, for a reunification of the then-emergent U.S. empire, back into the then-declining British empire, for a joint U.S.-UK empire, including over Germany, and, ultimately, over Russia and the entire world. Consequently, both the CFR and Chatham House are pro-NATO, and this means that they support conquest of Russia, and this urge for global conquest extends even up to their rejecting the idea of Mutually Assured Destruction or “M.A.D.” that the function of nuclear weapons is in order to prevent World War III, and their replacing that by the idea of “Nuclear Primacy” that the function of nuclear weapons is instead to win WW III. This ceaseless nuclear buildup, of course, means ever-increasing U.S. military budgets, which also means soaring profits for firms such as Lockheed Martin and the rest of what Eisenhower called the “military-industrial complex,” such as had, in 2016, financed, above all other U.S. politicians, Hillary Clinton, to whom they donated three times as much as they did to Donald Trump. Trump as President has been trying to satisfy those companies; and, consequently, his biggest achievement yet has been the all-time-record-shatteringly huge $400 billion sale of U.S. weapons and training on how they’re used, to the Saudi armed forces. On 21 May 2017, I headlined “U.S. $350 Billion Arms-Sale to Sauds Cements U.S.-Jihadist Alliance” and reported that the day before, “U.S. President Donald Trump and the Saud family inked an all-time record-high $350 billion ten-year arms-deal.” Then, on 21 March 2018, CNBC bannered “Trump wants Saudi Arabia to buy more American-made weapons. Here are the ones the Saudis want”, and reported what Trump had just negotiated with Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman al-Saud, which was a step-up in that record-shattering $350 billion arms-sale, to $400 billion. (Note: that’s “billion,” not “million.”) So: this is Trump’s American jobs-plan, and it probably tops what a President Swalwell would be able to achieve. Trump will push beyond any limit in order to overcome a possible competitive challenge.

If Rep. Swalwell does enter the 2020 Democratic Party primaries for the Presidency, the distinction between himself and Joe Biden would be his youth, handsomeness, and giftedness as a debater, versus Biden’s experience; but, otherwise, they both would be splitting the Democratic “centrist” vote in the primaries, since these two men would be competing for the same segments of the Party’s electorate — the segments who had voted in 2016 for Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders. Whereas Trump might be able to defeat Biden, I think that his defeating Swalwell would be considerably less likely. So: Republican operatives would probably prefer for Democrats to nominate Biden, over Swalwell.

Swalwell is the biggest rising star in the Democratic Party since Obama in 2004. Four years later, Obama became elected President. Swalwell’s prominence now is comparable to Obama’s in 2004, but 2020 is only two years away, not four. I think that as a public speaker, Swalwell is less skilled than Obama, but that as a debater, he’s more skilled than Obama. Perhaps billionaires will buy-off Biden to not enter the primary contests, so as to help ease the way for Swalwell to become the Democratic nominee. Maybe Swalwell’s challenge would motivate Trump to try even harder to please them. From the billionaires’ standpoint, Swalwell v. Trump would be just as much a win-win situation as was Clinton v. Trump.

Republican operative Bill Whalen, writing at The Hill, on May 23rd, listed 7 California Democrats who might be serious contenders to win the 2020 Democratic Party nomination, and Swalwell wasn’t on the list, which was: Kamala Harris, Eric Garcetti, Gavin Newsom, Tom Steyer, Ro Khanna, Oprah Winfrey, and Jerry Brown. Whalen titled his article “What’s wrong with the Democratic Party? Just look at California.” He closed: “Isn’t that what America expects from California? Entertainment?” Maybe he excluded Swalwell as being not sufficiently “entertaining” (even if better-looking than those he did list).

On 15 January 2016, early in the Republican primaries, Whalen, then writing at Fox News, had analyzed the contenders, and he said that the choice would ultimately come down to Trump versus Cruz, and: “A word of caution here for the Cruz Crew: Jeb Bush tangled with Trump; his candidacy cratered. The same is true of Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, Thursday’s lone debate holdout. Like falling into a black hole or marrying a Kardashian, the contact sport that is extended sparring with The Donald is a ticket to oblivion.” That was Whalen’s veiled endorsement of Trump. Whalen still prefers Trump.

Does Whalen not know that Swalwell is one of the top Democrats pushing for Trump to be replaced by Pence, and so belongs on his list of leading contenders from California? Likelier is: Whalen fears that Swalwell could handle the challenge of beating Trump — and thus of transferring control of America away from Republican Party billionaires, and toward Democratic Party ones. It’s all really just a feud amongst the aristocracy. It’s a bipartisan aristocracy, who fight ferociously between themselves. Everybody else is merely ‘collateral damage’; they don’t actually count.

The idea that Swalwell and his ilk peddle, that what has ended American democracy is ‘the Russians’ instead of America’s own aristocrats, isn’t merely false; it is proven false, as the former Democratic U.S. President Jimmy Carter has acknowledged.

Anything will be done to sell more weapons. Apparently, that’s the bottom line.

—————

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of  They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of  CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.

Video: ‘Unite the Right 2’ rally, counter-protest hit DC one year after Charlottesville

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Heavy police presence was seen in the center of the US capital as crowds of anti-nationalist protesters gathered to protest the Unite the Right rally one year after …

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PressTV- Turkey to boycott US electronic goods: Erdogan

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President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said that Turkey would boycott US electronic goods in retaliation for punitive sanctions from Washington.

President Erdogan made announcement in a speech in the capital Ankara on Tuesday. “We will boycott US electronic goods.”

“We will produce every product we are importing from abroad with foreign currency here and we will be the ones exporting these products. We will impose a boycott on US electronic products. If they have iPhones, there is Samsung on the other side.” the president said, referring to US giant Apple’s iconic phone and the top South Korean brand.

“We (also) have our Venus and Vestel,” Erdogan said about homegrown Turkish electronics brands.

Elsewhere in his remarks, Erdogan said Turkey was facing an “economic attack” and a “bigger, deeper operation”.

“They don’t hesitate to use the economy as a weapon,” he said. “What do you want to do? What do you want to achieve?” he added, referring…

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Using the Burka: Boris Johnson’s Bid for Popularity

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Comedy, Boris Johnson, and the Tories – these three share a certain comforting, if chaotic, affinity, lobbed together in some nightmarish union that risks consuming itself.  But times are serious – profoundly so, we are told: Brexit exercises the nerves as if Britannia were a patient about to expire, and there is the cultural irritation posed by those naughty elements who refuse to do the good thing and integrate themselves into the land of her Britannic majesty.

Thus far, Britain has resisted the moves of other states in Europe to impose public bans on such religious coverings as the burka and some of its more expansive cognates.  But there is a prevailing appetite for such measures in a climate suffused with notions of civilisation, irate outsiders and insecure insiders.  France was a pioneer in that regard, initiating a ban in 2004.  In Denmark, rough measures have been implemented punishing those who don such headdress in public spaces.

A perfect chance for Johnson, who remains a smouldering menace to Prime Minister Theresa May, to strike form, even if only to rile critics and keep the blogosphere busy.  “In Britain today there is only a tiny, tiny minority of women who wear these odd bits of headgear,” he noted in his regular Daily Telegraph column last week.  Confidently, he claimed that, “One day, I am sure, they will go.”

His has little time for assuming that women have any choice in the matter.  “If you say that it is weird and…

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Video: Just blame Russia: One year after Charlottesville, US lawmaker says it was Moscow’s fault

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One year after Charlottesville tragedy, some American politicians are now suggesting that Russia was somehow behind the unrest. READ MORE: …

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Prison Planet.com » Judge Releases New Mexico Jihadists on Bond After Attorneys Complain of Racism

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“No one would bat an eye” if they were white and Christian

Paul Joseph Watson
PrisonPlanet.com
August 14, 2018

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Five alleged Muslim extremists who are accused of training children to carry out school shootings have been released on bond after one of their attorneys complained that the men were only being targeted because they’re “black and Muslim,” as opposed to “white and Christian.”

Judge Sarah Backus said that prosecutors didn’t prove the alleged jihadists were “a danger to the community” and released them on a $20,000 “signature bond,” which means they won’t even have to pay the fee unless they violate the conditions of their release.

“The state argued that the 11 children at the compound were being trained to use guns as they prepared to attack teachers, law enforcement and others in institutions that the group considered corrupt,” reports the Albuquerque Journal.

Eleven malnourished children were found on the property while another child had died at his father’s hand “during a religious ritual intended to expel religious demons from his body.”

However, one attorney argued that the men were victims of Islamophobia and racism, commenting, “The NRA right now are telling us that guns are a good thing and that we should be training our teenagers to go ahead and use them, but now that we have someone who’s actually do that, and they’re not white, and they’re not Christian we think there’s some nefarious plan.”

“No one would bat an eye” if the men were white Christians, added Thomas Clark, attorney for Siraj Wahhaj.

Judge Backus appeared to show sympathy towards the alleged jihadists when she remarked, “Many people here live in unconventional ways.”

NBC correspondent Gadi Schwartz tweeted a video showing the tunnel underneath the compound.

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What do we know so far? — RT UK News

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Questions remain over the Houses of Parliament attack in London, which left three people injured and a suspect in custody. As Britain remains on high alert for terrorism, here’s what is known about Tuesday’s incident so far.

The attack

At around 7:40am on Tuesday, a silver Ford Fiesta rammed into a number of pedestrians and cyclists before crashing into steel barriers outside the Houses of Parliament.

According to witnesses, the car was soon surrounded by armed police. Footage posted on social media showed the suspect being taken from the vehicle before being handcuffed.

“The car drove at speed and towards the barriers. I was walking on the other side [of the road],” said eyewitness Ewalina Ochab. “I heard some noise and someone screamed.

“I turned around and I saw a silver car driving very fast close to the railings, maybe even on the pavement. The person driving did not go out of the vehicle.”

READ MORE: VIDEO of Houses of Parliament suspected terror attack released

Three people were treated at the scene, two of whom were then taken to hospital with non-serious injuries. The nearby St. Thomas’ Hospital confirmed that it was treating one patient whose injuries were not life-threatening.

The motive

In light of several previous attacks – on Westminster Bridge in March 2017 – and a number of suspected attacks that transpired to be accidents, speculation was rife as to whether the incident was an act of terrorism.

Scotland Yard’s head of counter-terrorism, Neil Basu, stated: “Given that this appears to be a deliberate attack – the method and this being an iconic site – we are treating it as a terrorist incident.”

At the time of publishing, no terrorist organization has claimed responsibility for the attack. Previous attacks on London were quickly claimed by Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS).

Speculation over the motive is being fueled by questions that remain about the attacker.

The suspect

Police confirmed that they arrested a man in his late 20s. After armed police surrounded his vehicle, the suspect was removed from the scene and taken to a police station in south London.

Officers proceeded to search his vehicle, confirming in a later statement that he had acted alone and that there were no weapons found in the car.

Speaking to the press, Basu confirmed that the suspect was not known to security services. He is not currently cooperating with the investigation.

If you like this story, share it with a friend!

Via RT. This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News with permission or license.

Trump calls fired Omarosa a ‘dog’ in new furious tweet — RT US News

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US President Donald Trump has again lashed out at former aide Omarosa Manigault Newman on Twitter, calling the ex-White House staffer a “dog” and thanking his Chief of Staff John Kelly for firing her.

In the early morning tweet, Trump called Newman a “crazed, crying lowlife” and said he had given her a break with a job in the White House but it “just didn’t work out”.

Trump’s fury at the former Apprentice tv show contestant was unleashed after she accused him of being a racist and using the “n-word” in a tell-all memoir about her time working in the White House.

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© Carlo Allegri

When asked if he felt betrayed by Omarosa by a New York Times reporter on Saturday, Trump called his former aide a “lowlife”. He followed that comment up on Monday with a Twitter tirade of insults directed at Newman who he said “begged” him for a job with tears in her eyes. He also claimed that other White House staff “hated” her and that she was “vicious, but not smart”.

That tweet came shortly after Newman told NBC’s Today show that she believed Trump was not fit to hold office, that he was being “puppeted” and that his presidency posed a “danger” to the country.

Newman also said that Kelly fired her without Trump’s knowledge and has released audio recordings of conversations from inside the White House which appeared to back up that claim. She also said she was offered hush money not to talk about her time at the White House.

The Trump administration has denied claims made by Newman. In a statement at the weekend, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said that Newman’s book was “riddled with lies and false accusations” and that Newman was a “disgruntled” former employee who was simply trying to profit off attacks against the administration.

Via RT. This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News with permission or license.

PressTV-Trump delays F-35 jets delivery to Turkey

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US President Donald Trump has postponed the delivery of a number of F-35 fighter jets to Turkey amid tensions between the two countries which have been heightened over the imprisonment of a pastor by Ankara.

Turkish and US sources said Tuesday that Trump’s decision to delay the delivery of the jets came after he signed a policy bill on Sunday demanding that the Pentagon issues its report within 90 days on the relations between Ankara and Washington.

The report will provide an assessment to the White House on Turkey’s purchase of Russian-made S-400 missile defense systems.

Tensions between Turkey and the US have escalated following Washington’s decision last month to impose sanctions on two Turkish ministers for their role in the imprisonment of US evangelical pastor Andrew Brunson. The pastor, who is now under house arrest, faces charges of involvement in a failed coup against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in July 2016. Erdogan and…

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Video: Pier collapses during Spanish music festival in Vigo, panic ensues

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Courtesy: Diegoreico More than 300 people have been injured after a wooden pier collapsed into the water during a Spanish festival in the town of Vigo.

Via Youtube

Is Google Better than the US Military?

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“Google should be ashamed,” says Marc Thiessen, the former chief speechwriter for George WMD Bush who is a “is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) where he studies and writes about American presidential leadership and counterterrorism” and “writes about general US foreign and defense policy issues and contributes to the AEIdeas blog.” He also writes a twice-weekly column for the Washington Post “on foreign and domestic policy and contributes to the PostPartisan blog,” where his article referenced in my title was initially published before it was posted on the AEI website, a site I frequent because it often has good material.

Not this time. In fact, not any time the subjects of the U.S. military or U.S. foreign policy are addressed.

And why should Google be ashamed?

Not because Google:

  • keeps tabs on everything you’ve ever searched for, on any device, including search histories you’ve deleted from an individual device.
  • knows which apps you’re using, how often, when, where and with whom you’re interacting when you do
  • keeps tabs on every single YouTube video you’ve ever searched for, watched and commented on.
  • has the ability to access your microphone without your knowledge.
  • has maintained an intimate relationship with the National Security Agency (NSA) for a number of years.
  • has every single email you’ve ever sent, received and deleted.

No, Google should be ashamed because:

The Free Society
Laurence M. Vance
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Giving in to pressure from its workforce, Google recently announced that it is pulling out of Project Maven, a groundbreaking Pentagon program to harness artificial intelligence to sift through and interpret video…

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German Social Democrats launch xenophobic campaign about child benefits

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German Social Democrats launch xenophobic campaign about child benefits

By
Christopher Lehmann

14 August 2018

In the spring, the German government used the so-called BAMF affair, in which the Federal Office for Immigration and Refugees (BAMF) office in Bremen was accused of wrongfully granting asylum to more than a thousand refugees between 2013 and 2016 whose applications had been dismissed in other federal states, in order to whip up anti-refugee sentiment.

Now, it is launching its next xenophobic campaign.

On last Thursday’s “Tagesthemen” TV news programme, Social Democratic Party (SPD) mayor Sören Link ranted against European Union (EU) nationals who were allegedly flocking to Germany to fraudulently obtain social welfare payments such as child benefits. Since then, leading Social Democrats have been banging the drum for cuts in child support payments to families of European workers and plying racist sentiments in the style of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), among other things.

“We have about 19,000 people from Romania and Bulgaria in Duisburg, Sinti and Roma. In 2012, we only had 6,000,” Link agitated. “They do not come for work, but for social benefits.” He had to “deal with people here, who spill rubbish on the streets and exacerbate the rat problem.” Neighbours felt “disturbed by mountains of garbage, noise and rat infestations.” He had set up a task force to “tackle” the alleged “problem properties” of the Sinti and Roma.

Link’s statements are no different from those of the far-right. In a Facebook post on August 9, the AfD parliamentary group leader Alice Weidel wrote almost word for word: “More and more child support is flowing into other European countries. … In addition, many cities are sounding the alarm…

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Repression Intensifies in Argentina After President Empowers Military

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Weeks after Argentina signed a deal for a new $50 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and only days after hosting G20 leaders in Buenos Aires, Argentine President Mauricio Macri issued a decree July 23 that would allow the country’s armed forces to intervene in questions of domestic security.

The decree violates laws passed after the country’s last military dictatorship – an authoritarian military junta that took power in a coup in 1976 and used force and repression to silence all opposition – ended in 1983, which limited the role of the armed forces, and points to a disturbing trend of militarization and repression under the right-wing government. The decision sparked immediate outrage from human rights organizations and social movements who have since organized massive protests around the country.

In his statement, President Macri referred to issues of “national security,” drug-trafficking and protecting the national border to justify giving the military expanded powers. He also stated a more general need for the armed forces to “modernize” in response to 21st century threats, including “internal threats.” These statements have worried many human rights organizations who fear a return to the type of repression experienced under the dictatorship – when armed forces were likewise allowed to intervene in domestic issues.

According to the Center for Legal and Social Studies, the decree is in violation of the Defense and Security Laws, a series of laws that separate national defense from domestic security, considered fundamental to Argentina’s democracy and necessary to prevent a return to the state terrorism of the dictatorship. During that period, the state and the armed forces were responsible for the “disappearance” of 30,000 people from 1976 to 1983: kidnapping, torturing and murdering them using similar rhetoric about…

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an Interview With Noam Chomsky

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In this interview at the University of Arizona in Tucson, Arizona, I sat down with Laureate Professor Noam Chomsky to discuss electoral politics, the prospects for progressives in upcoming primaries, and the difficulties candidates face with their internal party apparatus, the media and big money challengers, as well as navigating complicated foreign policies and positions. Chomsky weighs in on the continued aftershocks of the Sanders campaign as well as the problematic issue of BDS and how progressives and third parties can reorganize and repurpose forward thinking stances to refocus on future elections.

Daniel Falcone: The “blue wave” looked like an opportunity to take the progressive wing of the Democratic Party and to coalesce around socialists and Greens.  Much to the corporate media’s delight, the progressives recently hit some setbacks and obstacles in primaries, although I wanted to ask you about social democratic or New Deal styled candidates popping up in forthcoming elections, such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Julia Salazar in New York City, as well as a host of other progressives like Jasmine Robinson and Zephyr Teachout who also come to mind for me personally.  Do you see a potential long term eclipse, of any sort, of donor class-oriented politics with these candidates especially if third parties join in endorsing the platforms or similar platforms and vice versa?

Noam Chomsky: That’s a real battle.  I mean, we’re not dealing with a small…

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Video: ‘We won’t let Washington dictate to us with whom we can do business’ – German economy minister

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Washington cannot dictate trade rules to others, Germany’s economy minister said, adding that his country should be more assertive and defy American …

Via Youtube

Prison Planet.com » Conservative journalist Laura Loomer removed from Facebook after questioning Jihadi congressional candidates in Minnesota

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Voice Of Europe
August 13, 2018

Former Project Veritas journalist, Laura Loomer, is the latest Conservative to be removed by Facebook after she confronted two Muslim candidates at a political event.

The Unpublishing of her Facebook page comes less than 24 hours after Ms. Loomer posted her video of her being assaulted by a soon-to-be-congresswoman while asking her questions at a political rally for U.S. Congressional candidate Ilhan Omar in Minnesota on Saturday.

Rashida Tlaib, a Palestinian Muslim, forcefully grabbed Laura Loomer, a Jewish independent journalist, then took her phone when Loomer approached her with questions that the congresswoman would not answer.

According to prominent attorney, Jared Beck, after watching the video says it is assault and battery, as well as, the felonious taking and removing of another’s personal property with the intent of depriving the true owner of it, or attempted theft.

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This article was posted: Monday, August 13, 2018 at 6:29 am








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VIDEO of Houses of Parliament suspected terror attack released — RT UK News

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A video of the moment a suspected terrorist drove his car into pedestrians outside the Houses of Parliament has been published by the BBC. A number of people were injured in the attack, none with serious injuries.

Metropolitan Police say that several pedestrians were injured when a silver Ford Fiesta hit barriers outside the Houses of Parliament around 8am local time on Monday. One woman is being treated in hospital for serious but not life-threatening injuries, while two others were also injured. 

The Met’s Counter Terrorism Command is now leading the probe into the incident. The driver, reportedly a man in his late 20s, was arrested at the scene on suspicion of terrorist offences. He has been taken to a station in south London, police say.

Neil Basu, Scotland Yard’s head of counter terrorism, said there was “no intelligence at this time of further danger” to London or the rest of the UK. 

No arms have been found in the car and no one, except for the arrested driver, was inside. Police are still searching the vehicle and officers remain at the scene and cordons are in place to assist the investigation.

British Prime Minister Theresa May said her thoughts were with those injured in the incident. “My thoughts are with those injured in the incident in Westminster and my thanks to the emergency services for their immediate and courageous response,” the PM’s office tweeted. 

Since the Westminster Bridge attack last year, the Houses of Parliament have been surrounded by steel security barriers. In March 2017 Khalid Masood rammed crowds along Westminster Bridge, killing four people. The attacker then abandoned his car outside parliament, where he stabbed and killed PC Keith Palmer before being shot by armed police. 

DETAILS TO FOLLOW

Via RT. This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News with permission or license.

‘Fascist pieces of sh*t!’ Antifa attack police during white supremacist rally in DC (PHOTOS, VIDEO) — RT US News

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Radical counter-protesters assaulted and abused police, who were trying to stop them clashing with a white supremacist rally in Washington, DC. Furious Antifa members called officers “fascists” and “members of the KKK.”

Sunday’s left-wing counter-protests against the white nationalist Unite the Right 2 rally in the US capital were mostly non-violent, but some radical Antifa activists (short for anti-fascists) have been caught on camera insulting police, claiming officers were on the side of the far-right.

At some stage, an angry counter-protester, wearing black clothing and a red scarf, abused officers stationed near the White House who were providing security.

READ MORE: White supremacists and their opponents stage protests in Washington (PHOTOS, VIDEO)

“F**k you! Who the f**k do you protect?!” the man yelled. “Who the f**k do you serve? You’re all Ameri-KKK, fascist pieces of sh*t!” He then gave the middle finger to police officers in front of him while continuing to shout “f**k you!”

As police boxed counter-protesters in and separated them from the white nationalists, the atmosphere became more rowdy. A black man was captured shouting at a police officer, calling him “white motherf**king b**ch” for not letting him through the security perimeter.

Some alternative news outlets reported Black Lives Matter (BLM) also engaged in verbal attacks on police. “You must be with that sh*t,” the BLM activists told the officer, accusing him of being a member of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK).

“You must be a member … do you accept the KKK being here?” the BLM activist told the policeman, but got no reply. 

Authorities had provided an enormous police presence to keep white supremacists and counter-protesters apart, and to avoid brawls. Coaches carrying Unite the Right protesters were escorted by double lines of police cars and a line of motorcycle-mounted officers.

However tensions increased and counter-protesters began throwing eggs and water bottles and launching firecrackers at police officers and some journalists who were covering the demonstrations.

NBC’s Cal Perry uploaded a video of a protester shouting “F**k you, snitch-ass news b**ch! F**k you!” and aggressively pushing away his camera.

The Unite the Right 2 rally saw approximately two dozen white nationalists rally in Washington, DC on Sunday, exactly one year after clashes in Charlottesville, Virginia, left one person dead and ramped up racial tensions in the US.

Jason Kessler, who organized last year’s Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, blamed the low attendance turnout on logistical issues and confusion regarding the group’s transportation.

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Via RT. This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News with permission or license.

PressTV-Obama’s CIA chief behind Russia probe: Giuliani

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US President Donald Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, says former CIA chief John Brennan needs to stand trial for orchestrating the ongoing probe into investigation into the Trump campaign’s alleged “collusion” with Russia.

Speaking to Fox News on Monday, Giuliani said Brennan was the “quarterback” who took the “phony” Trump dossier from British intelligence agents and passed it over to Democratic leaders, triggering a chain of action that led to the ongoing investigation led by the Justice Department’s Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

“Well the guy running it is [John] Brennan and he should be in front of a grand jury. Brennan took an affidavit – a dossier, unless he’s the biggest idiot intelligence agent that ever existed, although he never did much intelligence work, it’s false. You could look at it and laugh,” Giuliani stated.

The former New York mayor went on to describe as “puppets” Mueller and the…

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Video: Very secure system… not: 11yo can change US election outcome (and no, she’s NOT from Russia)

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A hacking contest in the US has revealed that it doesn’t take a top-notch Russian computer expert to get into America’s election infrastructure – it turns out an …

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Kavanaugh Thinks It’s Okay to Perform Elective Surgery on People Without Their Consent

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Right now, Congress is in a deadlock over Brett Kavanaugh, Trump’s nominee to the Supreme Court. Senators are reviewing more than 1 million pages of his legal writing—which have laid out his stance on women’s reproductive rights (opposed), the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (opposed), and the Affordable Care Act (opposed)—and members are battling over access to additional documentation that could reveal past experience with torture and wiretapping. While many of Kavanaugh’s opinions have been controversial—in particular his dissent from a decision that allowed an immigrant woman to have an abortion—one of his most problematic rulings has gone unreported.   As a Judge in D.C. Circuit Court, Kavanaugh argued that people with disabilities could be forced to undergo elective surgeries, including abortion, without their consent.

n 2001, three intellectually disabled D.C. residents brought suit against the city in Doe ex rel. Tarlow v. D.C, after they were subjected to at least three involuntary procedures: two abortions and one elective eye surgery. Ultimately, the district court agreed that these women’s due process rights had been violated and that “constitutionally adequate procedures” had not been followed. The District Court ruled for the plaintiffs and held that D.C.  must make “documented reasonable efforts to communicate” with patients and if unsuccessful, the government had to take into account the “totality of circumstances” before proceeding to ensure any decision is in the best interest of the patient. This decision codified patients’ right to self-determination, and struck down the practice of elective surgeries without consent from the patients at stake.

The lifetime pass Kavanaugh seems to be arguing for does not exist.

On appeal, Judge Kavanaugh vacated the District Court’s injunction, arguing that “accepting the wishes of patients who lack, and have always lacked the mental capacity to make medical decisions does not make logical sense.” That stands in contrast to even the most conservative interpretations of the laws that existed at the time, which required two separate health professionals to determine whether a patient had the capacity to make medical decisions before every procedure. The lifetime pass Kavanaugh seems to be arguing for, which would allow doctors to perform any procedures they wanted on a person who was once ruled unfit, does not exist.

One hundred years ago, Kavanaugh’s ruling would have been at home on the Supreme Court. In the 1920’s, in the famous 8-1 ruling of Buck v. Bell, the Supreme Court found a Virginia statute that allowed for the sexual sterilization of a third generation, “feebleminded” women was constitutional because “three generations of imbeciles are enough.”

For context, when the Supreme Court made that ruling, John Scopes had recently been put on trial for teaching evolution in public schools. Penicillin hadn’t been invented. It was still illegal in most states to marry someone of a different race. There was no such thing as a chocolate chip cookie, Scotch tape, or the Golden Gate Bridge. We didn’t know Pluto existed.

The 57 million Americans with disabilities are bracing themselves

We’ve made progress since then. Twenty-eight years ago, the Americans with Disabilities Act granted people with disabilities access to society. The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act expanded the right to an education 43 years ago, and the Olmstead v. L.C. decision gave disabled people the right to live in their communities 19 years ago. All that will be meaningless the moment Kavanaugh is given a seat on the Supreme Court that allows him to rule that disabled Americans are not capable of deciding what’s best for them. It’s not hard to imagine that happening. He could rule that it’s okay for teachers to use seclusion and restraint because they know what’s best for the treatment of disabled children in school. He could say that community living isn’t the best option for someone successfully living in a home of their own because that’s what the nursing home lobby says.

As both Democrats and Republicans in the Senate gear up for what is likely to be a long hearing process, the 57 million Americans with disabilities are bracing themselves for the negative consequences of Judge Kavanaugh’s appointment. If that happens, the disability community’s history of activism in all forms—from their work to preserve the ACA, to fighting to end the use of electric shock therapy on children, to pushing for a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work—shows that when it’s most needed, the moral arc of the universe can be bent into a ramp to achieve justice.

Via Common Dreams. This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News with permission or license.

PressTV-China denounces new US defense act

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China has denounced the United States’ defense budget for 2019, which puts investment proposals by Chinese companies under closer scrutiny and boosts military support for self-ruled Taiwan.

US President Donald Trump on Monday signed the 2019 US military spending bill into law, authorizing the Defense Department to invest around $716 billion into military strategies that will primarily target Russia and China.

The National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA, strengthens the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), which reviews proposals to decide whether they threaten national security.

Referring to the inclusion of the CFIUS in the act, China’s Commerce Ministry said in a statement on Tuesday that it would “comprehensively assess the contents,” paying close attention to the impact on Chinese companies.

“The US side should objectively and fairly treat Chinese investors, and avoid CFIUS becoming an obstacle to…

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Video: Forced nudity, waterboarding & more: Haspel cables declassified

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The extreme torture of a suspected al-Qaeda terrorist, including waterboarding, forced nudity and a ‘walling technique,’ have been detailed in newly declassified …

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Prison Planet.com » Van Jones Claims There’s No Difference Between Hateful Nazi Rhetoric And Conservative Media

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Daily Caller
August 13, 2018

Jones played a clip of one of his CNN colleagues interviewing a white nationalist in Pennsylvania and then played a clip of Ingraham discussing demographic changes in America.

“This guy actually openly wears swastikas on his shirt and he says America is his country because he’s white,” Jones said before running the clip. “To be fair, 12 of the guy’s neighbors came out immediately and told [the CNN correspondent] they don’t agree with this guy. He doesn’t represent them and their community and they deserve a round of applause for sticking up for what’s right in this country.”

Right after praising the man’s neighbors for doing the right thing, Jones attacked Ingraham and fed the fire of division by comparing her message to that of hateful Nazis.

“I appreciate them for doing that. But here’s the thing that bothers me the most. Those same themes that were once considered so extreme are now becoming mainstream, at least in conservative media,” he continued. “Listen to Laura Ingraham on Fox News addressing millions of your fellow citizens and neighbors on our air.”

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This article was posted: Monday, August 13, 2018 at 6:31 am






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Prison Planet.com » Van Jones Claims There’s No Difference Between Hateful Nazi Rhetoric And Conservative Media

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Daily Caller
August 13, 2018

Jones played a clip of one of his CNN colleagues interviewing a white nationalist in Pennsylvania and then played a clip of Ingraham discussing demographic changes in America.

“This guy actually openly wears swastikas on his shirt and he says America is his country because he’s white,” Jones said before running the clip. “To be fair, 12 of the guy’s neighbors came out immediately and told [the CNN correspondent] they don’t agree with this guy. He doesn’t represent them and their community and they deserve a round of applause for sticking up for what’s right in this country.”

Right after praising the man’s neighbors for doing the right thing, Jones attacked Ingraham and fed the fire of division by comparing her message to that of hateful Nazis.

“I appreciate them for doing that. But here’s the thing that bothers me the most. Those same themes that were once considered so extreme are now becoming mainstream, at least in conservative media,” he continued. “Listen to Laura Ingraham on Fox News addressing millions of your fellow citizens and neighbors on our air.”

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This article was posted: Monday, August 13, 2018 at 6:31 am






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FBI fires Peter Strzok whose texts revealed anti-Trump bias amid Bureau’s major probes — RT US News

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FBI agent Peter Strzok, who became a central figure in controversy surrounding investigations into alleged Russian meddling and Hillary Clinton’s private email server, has been fired, his attorney has said.

The 21-year FBI veteran was fired Friday afternoon, according to Strzok’s attorney Aitan Goelman.

“This decision should be deeply troubling to all Americans,” Goelman said in a statement released on Monday, adding that the bureau’s deputy director had “overruled” the FBI’s Office of Professional Responsibility concerning Strzok’s case.

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Peter Strzok testifies before the House Committees on Judiciary and Oversight and Government Reform. © Leah Millis/ Reuters

Strzok’s firing comes just days after President Donald Trump took to Twitter to denounce  him and other FBI officials as “clowns and losers” who have tarnished the reputation of the bureau.

Once the deputy assistant director of the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division, Strzok was one of the leads in the “Midyear Exam” investigation of Clinton’s use of a private email server during her tenure at the State Department, as well as the “Crossfire Hurricane” probe of claims that Trump had “colluded” with Russia during the 2016 US presidential election. In May 2017, he joined the team of Special Counsel Robert Mueller that took over the Russia investigation.

His name first popped up in the press in December, when it was revealed that Strzok had been removed from Mueller’s team and re-assigned to FBI’s Human Resources department. The Justice Department’s inspector general had found hundreds of text messages between Strzok and FBI special counsel Lisa Page, who were having an extramarital affair, revealing the duo’s hostility to Trump.

“[Trump’s] not ever going to become president, right? Right?!” Page texted Strzok in one exchange in August 2016.

“No. No he won’t. We’ll stop it,” Strzok replied.

The inspector-general’s report, released in June, found no “documentary or testimonial evidence” that Strzok and Page’s political bias affected their work, but conceded that “the conduct by these employees cast a cloud over the entire FBI investigation.”

In a testimony before two House committees last month, however, Strzok insisted he was not biased at all and had done nothing wrong. He was “particularly proud” of his work on the Clinton investigation, and described his texts with Page as driven by “deep patriotism.” At one point during the unsettling spectacle, Strzok admitted he was still employed by the FBI and holding a security clearance.

Cheering Strzok’s dismissal on Monday, Trump wondered if the “Witch Hunt” – the Mueller probe – will now be dropped, given that Strzok was “in charge” of it originally. He also raised the possibility of a repeat investigation into Clinton’s emails, given Strzok’s involvement in that as well.

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Via RT. This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News with permission or license.

PressTV-Several hurt as car crashes into UK Parliament barriers

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Scotland Yard officers in London have arrested a driver after he crashed a car into the security barriers outside the Houses of Parliament, an act that eyewitnesses said “looked deliberate.”

The incident happened on Tuesday morning, as the unidentified driver ploughed into pedestrians in Westminster before hitting the barriers.

“At 07:37hrs today, a car was in collision with barriers outside the Houses of Parliament,” the Scotland Yard said in a statement.

“The male driver of the car was detained by officers at the scene. A number of pedestrians have been injured. Officers remain at the scene. We will issue further info when we have it,” it added.

Armed police, rescue teams and firefighters are currently at the scene of the crash in central…

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Video: ‘US approach led to growth of terrorism’: Afghan faces suicide bombings and Taliban clashes

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A suicide bomber has detonated explosives at the office of the Electoral Commission in the Afghan capital Kabul. People had gathered there to protest the …

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Ronnie Van Zant – LewRockwell

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The 1970’s were an interesting time in the South. The 1970’s were the last time Southerners could be Southern without feeling the need to apologize for, or be ironic about, their Southern identity. In fact, in the 1970’s, it seemed to actually go a little beyond this. We shouldn’t push this too far, but in 1970’s America there seemed to be an acceptance of the South as a cultural asset to American life, something that added value to that classic 70’s notion of the ‘Great American Melting Pot.’ In America in the 1970’s, being Southern could be a good thing. It could even been cool to be Southern.

It’s not entirely clear when and why this happened, although it seems to have essentially come to an end by the time of Ronald Reagan’s inauguration in 1981.  It’s remarkable, though, that it happened at all. What most defined the South in the minds of non-Southerners during the 1960’s was the Civil Rights movement; those indelible images of burned-out buses, Bull Conner, Birmingham, Selma and so forth. These images shocked Americans outside the South, but also did something else. During the early 60’s at least, it allowed those Americans to rest comfortably in the idea that racial tension and social unrest, while terrible to look at, was at least something confined to the South, that troublesome, benighted region, that odd place always out of step with the real America in which everyone else lived. This was a Southern problem because the South was itself a problem. It had always been a problem. It was an echo of Robert Penn Warren’s old ‘treasury of virtue.’



The Outlaw Josey Wales
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And then something happened. That comfortable bubble of virtue popped….

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PressTV-Trump signs $717bn US military budget into law

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US President Donald Trump has signed the 2019 US military spending bill into law, authorizing the Defense Department to invest around $717 billion into military strategies that will target Russia and China.

Trump approved the massive budget on Monday during a signing ceremony at Fort Drum, a US Army  base which is home to the Army’s 10th Mountain Division and has deployed the most troops to US wars abroad since the 9/11 attacks.

“We believe our war fighters deserve the tools, the equipment, and resources they have earned with their blood, sweat, and tears,” Trump said. “This authorization will give America’s war fighters the firepower they need to win any conflict quickly and decisively.”

The new act allows the Pentagon to spend $639.1 billion in base funding, while earmarking another $69 billion to fund wars overseas and some $8.9 billion for obligatory military expenditures.

US President Donald Trump (L) watches an air assault…

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Is Russia an Adversary? | Dissident Voice

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The question is finally being asked, by the president himself: what’s wrong with collusion? Or at least his lawyer asks the question, while Trumps tweets:

Collusion is not a crime, but that doesn’t matter because there was No Collusion.

The problem, of course, is that of collusion with an alleged adversary. Russia, we are constantly informed, is one such adversary, indeed the main state adversary, with Putin is its head.

Adversary is a very strong term. The Hebrew word for adversary is Satan. Satan is the ultimate symbol of evil in the Judeo-Christian tradition. Satan tempted Eve at the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, causing her to eat the fruit, and so evil entered the world.

Just like some want you to think that evil entered the (good, pristine) U.S. electoral process due to this Russian adversary in 2016.

(Sometimes listening to TV pundits vilifying Putin I find Luther’s famous hymn floating through my head:

For still our ancient foe doth seek to work us woe.
His craft and power are great, and armed with cruel hate, on earth is not his equal.

Luther’s referring to Satan, of course. But the current mythology around Putin — as someone who still, like Lenin and Stalin before him, and the tsars of old, wishes us harm; is an unbridled dictator with a powerful great nuclear arsenal; is the wealthiest man on earth; and hates democracy — resembles the mythology around the Adversary in the Bible.)

But let us problematize this vilification. When did…

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Video: You’re an Aussie who wants Queen Elizabeth’s portrait? Your local MP has you covered!

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Everybody loves free stuff and Australians are no exception. Many are demanding portraits of Queen Elizabeth after a news report mentioned a little-known rule …

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Prison Planet.com » British-Pakistani Bishop Calls for Burqa Ban

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Breitbart
August 13, 2018

Michael Nazir-Ali, the Pakistan-born former Bishop of Rochester, has weighed into the controversy around the burqa to call for a near-total ban on full face veils, supported by former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey.

The senior clergyman told the Mail on Sunday that, while a small minority of women might be choosing to cover their faces voluntarily, that there was no doubt “the burqa or niqab is being weaponised by Islamists to impose what they consider to be ‘Islamic’ character on communities, neighbourhoods and even nations.”

He added: “In Britain, this has serious implications for the freedom of women, but it also has implications for integration and social cohesion. Where there is widespread use of the face veil, there will be greater isolation from one another and a sense of segregation will grow.”

Nazir-Ali, who hails from the small Christian community in Pakistan which faces brutal persecution from both the state and the wider Muslim-majority public, also highlighted the security risks posed by full face veils, observing: “We have all seen how even male terrorists have escaped arrest by donning a burqa and making an effective getaway.

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This article was posted: Monday, August 13, 2018 at 6:33 am






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Scientists capture the speed of death as it rages through a cell — RT US News

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For the first time ever, scientists have witnessed death itself moving through a cell and have measured its speed. The revolutionary finding could hold potential for the future treatment of cancer and Alzheimer’s disease.

Scientists from the Stanford University School of Medicine witnessed the wave-like motion of cell death and published their groundbreaking findings in the journal Science.

The team found signals that trigger death to travel through cells in a domino-like effect, at a rate of three micrometers per minute. A micrometer is equal to one-millionth of a meter.

These signals trigger apoptosis, a type of cell suicide or programmed cell death (PCD). It is the most understood form of cell death and is used by the human body to get rid of old or damaged cells.

“This work is another example of how nature makes use of these trigger waves –things that most biologists have never heard of– over and over again,” biochemist James Ferrell said. “It is a recurring theme in cell regulation. I bet we’ll start to see it in textbooks soon.”

READ MORE: Groundbreaking genetic research could help diagnose and cure cancer in children

Scientists used the egg of an African clawed frog, which is a single, large cell, to conduct the experiment. After removing the cytoplasm and placing it in a tube, they then initiated apoptosis and used a fluorescent green protein that glows when apoptosis occurs.

The green glow moved at a constant speed which shows apoptosis was spreading through trigger waves rather than chemical diffusion. Scientists then conducted the same experiment with an intact egg.

The findings add to scientists’ understanding of cellular death, which could contribute to research on cancer treatment and for Alzheimer’s as well as other neurodegenerative conditions.

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Via RT. This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News with permission or license.

PressTV-‘Trump made dangerous changes to environmental policy’

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US President Donald Trump – a climate change denier — has made some dangerous changes to environmental policy but so far could not damage the environment as badly as there were fears, former Vice President Al Gore has said.

Gore said in an interview with The Associated Press in Greensboro, North Carolina, on Monday that Trump’s administration has, however, done “some damage” by undoing several environmental regulations, including many introduced by the Obama administration.

“He (President Trump) has had less of an impact so far than I feared that he would. Someone said last year his administration is a blend of malevolence and incompetence,” Gore said.

“I think they’ve made some mistakes in some of the moves they’ve made. The courts have blocked some of what they wanted to do as a result,” he added.

“The US system has a lot of inherent resilience,” said Gore, a Nobel Peace Prize winner for his anti-climate change…

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Video: Most secure room in White House? Omarosa releases ‘sacking’ tape from Situation Room

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Donald Trump has taken time out of his busy presidential schedule to tweet insults at ex-White House aide Omarosa Manigault Newman, amid a …

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Video: Former Iranian Ambassador: Trump’s Re-imposed Sanctions Against Iran Are an Act of Warfare

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https://democracynow.org— Tensions are escalating between the U.S. and Iran after the Trump administration re-imposed economic sanctions against Iran last …

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Why Does Facebook Use NATO To Help Censor Users?

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Facebook is using a NATO think tank, the Atlantic Council, which is also funded by the US government and foreign governments, to help it determine which posts are authentic and which are fake. The Atlantic Council is hardly an unbiased judge, however. It is extremely hawkish and has even encouraged US military strikes against Russian assets! Why is a US government funded entity involved in limiting speech? More in today’s Ron Paul Liberty Report:

Reprinted from The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity.

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Trump’s Reimposed Sanctions Against Iran Are an Act of Warfare

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Tensions are escalating between the US and Iran after the Trump administration re-imposed economic sanctions against Iran last week. This news followed Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal. Trump has threatened other countries seeking to trade with Iran, tweeting, “Anyone doing business with Iran will NOT be doing business with the United States.” Iranian President Hassan Rouhani condemned the sanctions as “psychological warfare,” saying last week he would not begin negotiations until the sanctions are withdrawn. We speak with Ambassador Seyed Hossein Mousavian, Middle East security and nuclear policy specialist at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. He served as spokesperson for Iran in its nuclear negotiations with the European Union from 2003 to 2005.

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

We begin with a look at escalating tensions between the United States and Iran. On Sunday, the US Ambassador to Britain Woody Johnson wrote an op-ed in The Telegraph urging Britain to withdraw its support of the landmark 2015 Iran nuclear deal. Ambassador Johnson wrote, “America is turning up the pressure and we want the UK by our side.”

Johnson’s op-ed comes after the Trump administration re-imposed economic sanctions against Iran last week following Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal. The sanctions increase tensions between the US and Iran, and the US and its European allies. Trump has threatened other countries seeking to trade with Iran, tweeting “Anyone doing business with Iran will NOT be doing business with the United States.” Iranian President Hassan Rouhani condemned the sanctions as psychological warfare, saying last week he would not begin negotiations until the sanctions are withdrawn.

PRESIDENT HASSAN

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U.S. is Complicit in Child Slaughter in Yemen

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On August 9, a U.S.-supported Saudi airstrike bombed a bus carrying schoolchildren in Sa’ada, a city in northern Yemen. The New York Times reported that the students were on a recreational trip. According to the Sa’ada health department, the attack killed at least forty-three people.

According to the International Committee of the Red Cross, at least twenty-nine of those killed were children under the age of fifteen, and forty-eight people were wounded, including thirty children.

CNN aired horrifying, heartbreaking footage of children who survived the attack being treated in an emergency room. One of the children, carrying his UNICEF issued blue backpack, is covered with blood and badly burned.

Commenting on the tragedy, CNN’s senior correspondent Nima Elbagir emphasized that she had seen unaired video which was even worse than what the CNN segment showed. She then noted that conditions could worsen because Yemen’s vital port of Hodeidah, the only port currently functioning in Yemen, has been under attack for weeks of protracted Saudi coalition-led airstrikes. Ms. Elbagir described the port of Hodeidah as “the only lifeline to bring in supplies to Yemen.”

“This conflict is backed by the U.S. and the U.K.,” Elbagir said, concluding her report with, “They are in full support of the Saudi-led activities in Yemen today.”

U.S. companies such as Raytheon, General Dynamics, Boeing, and Lockheed Martin have sold billions of dollars’ worth of weapons…

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Video: ‘Trump is unpredictable & untrustworthy’: Iran’s supreme leader rejects talks with US

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Iran’s Supreme Leader has rejected holding talks with the U.S., following President Trump’s offer of a meeting to improve bilateral ties. Check out http://rt.com RT …

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‘Deeply Flawed’ Report Admits Immigrant Youth Put in Solitary and Restrained With Bags Over Their Heads, But Claims ‘No Abuse’ Found

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Completing a month-long probe into allegations of abuse at a detention facility in Staunton, Virginia, state investigators confirmed that immigrant children were strapped to chairs with bags placed over their head, as several had alleged—but claimed that this treatment did not meet the definition of abuse.

Several immigrants, some as young as 14, alleged in June that staffers at Shenendoah Valley Juvenile Center (SVJC) had beaten them while they were handcuffed and placed them in solitary confinement for long periods of time. A child development specialist at the facility also told the Associated Press that she saw several children there with broken bones.

“The fact that they conducted all interviews under the watchful eye of detention staff and failed to even talk to counsel who have collected evidence and litigated the case for nearly a year, demonstrates a lack of seriousness in the review.” —Jonathan Smith, Washington Lawyers’ Committee

According to the AP, many detainees had been sent to the facility after the federal government accused them of being gang members—but a staff member told a Senate subcommittee in April that the immigrants in the center “weren’t necessarily identified as gang-involved individuals.”

Several plaintiffs in a lawsuit against SVJC which began last November, represented by the Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs, were held there under both the Obama and Trump administrations, between 2015 and 2018.

The abuse allegations drew widespread condemnation, with Daily Beast reporter Kelly Weill calling SVJC “Abu Ghraib for eighth graders” and Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam calling on state officials to conduct a thorough investigation into the conditions at the center.

The review found that a “restraint chair” is sometimes used at the facility, and “a mesh spit guard can be placed on the resident’s head.” A 23-hour incident of solitary confinement was also identified. But the state “found no abuse or neglect had taken place.”

The Washington Lawyers’ Committee said Monday that the investigation was “deeply flawed.”

“The fact that they conducted all interviews under the watchful eye of detention staff and failed to even talk to counsel who have collected evidence and litigated the case for nearly a year, demonstrates a lack of seriousness in the review,” said Jonathan Smith, the group’s executive director.

But Northam readily accepted the state’s report that no abuse has taken place at SVJC, saying in a statement, “I applaud the quick and comprehensive examination conducted by the Department of Juvenile Justice and the Department of Social Services, and encourage the facility to heed their recommendations. The safety of every child being held there is of the utmost importance.”

Northam’s response to the report on Monday shocked and dismayed critics.

The Washington Lawyers’ Committee was adamant that its case would proceed, as the report confirmed that the young immigrants’ accusations were true.

“The children in this facility are denied necessary mental health care and subjected to abusive conditions,” said Smith. “We look forward to proving our case in court.”


Via Common Dreams. This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News with permission or license.

Video: Extended Interview with Members of the Media Enabled Musketeers on Disability Rights & Filmmaking

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https://democracynow.org — A new film premiering tonight in New York follows the Media Enabled Musketeers, American and Russian filmmakers with …

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World markets brace for impact of Turkish lira crisis

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World markets brace for impact of Turkish lira crisis

By
Nick Beams

13 August 2018

The key question in major financial markets when they open for trading today will be the impact of the ongoing Turkish financial and currency crisis amid warnings that it could have far-reaching global implications.

The New York Times economics columnist Paul Krugman, in a piece published over the weekend, said that the Turkish lira plunge was a re-enactment of the Asian financial crisis of 20 years ago.

One of the world’s largest bond trading companies, Pimco, has warned that the Turkish crisis is the outcome of a shift in the global financial environment resulting from the increase in US interest rates by the Federal Reserve and the winding down of its holdings of financial assets.

The increase in interest rates heavily impacts on countries, like Turkey, that took out dollar-denominated loans when they were low. As US interest rates and the dollar start to rise, the cost of servicing those loans increases, raising the prospect of bankruptcy for borrowers.

Turkey has been a major borrower on international markets with a total foreign debt of $467 billion.

In a note issued on Sunday, Joachim Fels, global economic adviser at Pimco, wrote: “This looks like another example of how a combination of bad domestic economic policies turning worse and deteriorating global liquidity that makes bloated dollar-funded balance sheets vulnerable can produce high volatility and contagion.

“Who said shrinking the Fed’s balance sheet and raising the funds rate in a gradual fashion wouldn’t have global implications?”

The European Central Bank has put on watch major European banks that are heavily exposed to Turkish debt. They include Spain’s BBVA, which has lent Turkey $83.3 billion, Italy’s Unii…

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Prison Planet.com » Vimeo removes Infowars content

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The Hill
August 13, 2018

Vimeo has pulled Infowars content from its site for violating the platform’s standards.

A spokesperson for the video hosting service told Business Insider on Sunday that the Infowars videos “violated our Terms of Service prohibitions on discriminatory and hateful content.”

The videos had been uploaded to the site on Thursday and Friday. The Vimeo spokesperson also told Business Insider that the company had told the account owner of the videos’ removal, and also issued a refund because “we do not want to profit from content of this nature in any way.”

The site reported that Infowars had less than a dozen videos on the platform as of Wednesday, but that more than 50 videos were posted to the site on the following days.

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This article was posted: Monday, August 13, 2018 at 6:43 am






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Abducted boy died in Islamic exorcism ceremony in New Mexico desert, prosecutor says — RT US News

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A missing three-year-old boy, whose remains were discovered buried at a compound in the New Mexico desert, had died during an Islamic ritual ceremony to cast out demonic spirits, a prosecutor told a court hearing on Monday.

Prosecutor John Lovelace made his statement at the pretrial hearing of five adults accused of multiple counts of child abuse, for running an off-the-grid compound in the New Mexico desert where 11 malnourished children were found living in squalor earlier this month.

Three-year-old Abdul Ghani reportedly died as his father performed an Islamic ceremony known as a ruqya – performed by some believers to cast out evil spirits known as jinn – on him, Lovelace claimed in court. The prosecutor said that the other children at the compound had revealed the macabre details of Ghani’s death to investigators after the compound was raided.

The boy’s body was washed several times, wrapped in a sheet, and buried near the compound, Lovelace claimed.

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Al-Wifaq mosque ©Google maps

Ghani suffered from seizures, and prosecutors said that his family believed him to be possessed by demonic spirits. The family believed that once his demons were cast out, the boy would become the embodiment of Jesus Christ, and direct the adults to commit “violent acts” against the government.

The boy’s father, Siraj ibn Wahhaj, was arrested at the compound, where police found him heavily armed. Also arrested were Wahhaj’s wife, Jany Leveille, 35, two sisters, Hujrah, 38, and Subhannah, 35, as well as another male, identified as Lucas Morten, 40.

Siraj ibn Wahhaj is accused of abducting the boy from Georgia in November. The boy had lived there with his mother, Wahhaj’s ex-wife.  

At Monday’s hearing, Lovelace claimed that the children were trained to use weapons and to defend the compound in the event of an FBI raid. Prosecutors have also alleged that Wahhaj was training the children to commit school shootings.

Local Sheriff Jerry Hogrefe described Wahhaj as an “extremist of the Muslim belief,” but did not elaborate on the definition. Wahhaj’s father said that the label sounded “crazy,” but did say that his son could be high-strung and “extreme” at times.

Wahhaj is the estranged son of a prominent New York Imam, Siraj Wahhaj. Wahhaj Sr. told reporters that all of the 11 children found at the compound are his grandchildren, and three of the suspects are his children.

The imam said that he tipped police off to the situation inside the compound after receiving a message from his daughter, who is among the suspects.

“She said, ‘We need some food, we’re starving,'” the imam said. His daughter then provided a location to send food, and the family turned that address over to police. Upon entering the compound, police found “unbelievable” scenes of poverty and deprivation.

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© Marcus Siebert/Global Look Press

“These children were hungry, they were thirsty, they were filthy,” said Sheriff Hogrefe. The Sheriff told reporters last week that the children had no shoes and were dressed in rags. The only food found inside the compound was a box of rice and some potatoes.

The imam said that his children disappeared in December 2017 and quickly “cut ties, not only with me, with their brothers and their sisters and their mother.” He said the family has had “no direct contact with any of them” since then.

“We have been meeting with law enforcement since day one,” Wahhaj said, describing his efforts to track down his children and grandchildren.

Wahhaj the elder has been praised for the role his Brooklyn mosque plays in the local community, and has been commended by the NYPD for his work with an anti-drug campaign in the 1980s. However, he was also included on a list of people who “may be alleged as co-conspirators” in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing in New York. Several people linked to the attack reportedly attended his mosque at the time, and the mosque has also attracted speakers who have been described as radical.

All five defendants were released on unsecured bond on Monday, as the judge said the prosecution failed to provide concrete evidence that they psed a danger to the community around them or to their children, who are now in state custody. The defendants will only pay bond if they breach the terms of their release.

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Via RT. This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News with permission or license.

Video: 106th anniversary: Stunning footage of Russia’s Air Force

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Courtesy: Russian Ministry of Defence Check out http://rt.com RT LIVE http://rt.com/on-air Subscribe to RT!

Via Youtube

The Words of the Prophets

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Liberty or Equality: The Challenge of Our Time, by Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn (EvKL)

Introduction

From the description of the book at the Mises Institute site:

[Kuehnelt-Leddihn] marshals the strongest possible case that democratic equality is the very basis not of liberty, as is commonly believed, but the total state…. He further argues the old notion of government by law is upheld in old monarchies, restrained by a noble elite. Aristocracy, not democracy, gave us liberty.

I will review here the first chapter: Democracy and Totalitarianism: The Prophets.  To properly capture the meaning of the title of EvKL’s book, consider that democracy is the most appropriate, if not only, proper political expression for a society comprised of “equals.”  So, you could consider instead: Liberty or Democracy.

History

The notion that tyranny evolves naturally from democracy can be traced back to the earliest political theorists…

Aristotle offers a glimpse; Plato’s Republic offers “an almost perfectly accurate facsimile….”  EvKL does not rely solely on such ancient sources; he focusses on those from the one or two centuries prior to the totalitarian twentieth century – those who saw the direction that the West was taking since the Enlightenment and could see where this path would lead.

Liberty or Equality: T…
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The long gap in examples between Plato and the Enlightenment was because democracy during this intervening time was relatively unknown except for the case of certain city governments. This changed with the American and French Revolutions.  Some observers saw this movement toward democracy as one which would provide…

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Peter Van Buren on Tucker Carlson About His Lifetime Ban by Twitter

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Tucker Carlson interviews Peter Van Buren on his Twitter ban. Tucker begins with a short report on Google tracking your location without your consent.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYdYOB_mmwo&w=560&h=315]

The post Peter Van Buren on Tucker Carlson About His Lifetime Ban by Twitter appeared first on Antiwar.com Blog.

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Prison Planet.com » Turkey blames Trump for attack on lira, says it won’t ‘kneel’ and has counter-measures ready

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RT
August 13, 2018

Turkey has accused Donald Trump of leading an attack on its national currency. The lira lost about 40 percent of its value against the US dollar this year and, to reduce its volatility, Ankara has prepared an urgent action plan.

“The currency of our country is targeted directly by the US president,” Finance Minister Berat Albayrak told Hurriyet. “This attack, initiated by the biggest player in the global financial system, reveals a similar situation in all developing countries.”

The Turkish lira took a massive hit against the dollar on Friday following Trump’s decision to double tariffs on aluminum and steel imports from Turkey to 20 percent and 50 percent. Overall, the national currency lost roughly about 40 percent of its value this year.

To calm down the markets, the government instructed its institutions to implement a series of actions on Monday. “All of our action plan and measures are ready,” Albayrak said, without elaborating.

“Together with our banks, we prepared our action plan regarding the situation with our real sector companies, including Small and Medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), which is the sector that is affected by the fluctuation the most,” the minister said. “Together with our banks and the Banking Regulation and Supervision Agency (BRSA), we will take the necessary measures quickly.”

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan meanwhile slammed the US decision to impose new tariffs on steel and aluminum imports.

“It is making an operation against Turkey… Its aim is to force Turkey to surrender in every field from finance to politics, to make Turkey and the Turkish nation kneel down,” Erdogan said in Trabzon on Sunday. “We have seen your play and we challenge you.”

This article was posted: Monday, August 13, 2018 at 6:49 am




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Utah man flies plane into his own house after argument with wife (PHOTOS, VIDEO) — RT US News

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A Utah man flew a small aircraft into his own house, kamikaze-style, hours after he had been arrested for assaulting his wife during an argument, police say.

Duane Youd, 47, died in the crash, as the light-skinned Cessna disintegrated on impact and burst into flames. Youd’s wife and a child, both inside the house, survived and the house remained intact.

Youd had been arrested by police in Payson, Utah, earlier on Sunday, after witnesses reported seeing him assault his wife. The troubled couple had been drinking and had gone to a scenic local spot to talk their problems through, Sgt. Spencer Cannon of the Utah County Sheriff’s Office said.

After being booked on suspicion of domestic violence and released on bail, Youd was escorted home by an officer. From there, he set off for nearby Spanish Fork-Springville Airport, commandeered a plane and took off for home.

Dodging power lines and other houses, Youd plowed the plane into the front of his house at 2.30 am. Photos taken at the scene showed Youd’s front yard strewn with smoldering wreckage and the house charred and damaged from the fireball.

Investigators said that Youd was a skilled pilot and that the twin-engine Cessna 525 belonged to his employer. They don’t know if Youd was allowed to access the plane.

The 47-year-old had a turbulent marriage, and was charged with disorderly conduct after a domestic violence incident in April. Youd and his wife had agreed to attend six months of marriage counselling as part of a plea agreement.

Youd’s suicidal deathcharge was the second such incident in recent days. An airport employee who described himself as a “broken guy with a few screws loose,”stole a turboprop airplane from Seattle-Tacoma International Airport on Friday night, casually chatted to ground control staff as he performed aerobatic stunts, and eventually slammed the aircraft into woodland near Seattle.

Before plunging to his death, 29-year-old Richard Russell told controllers that that he’d learned to fly by playing video games, but added that he “wasn’t really planning on landing it.”

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Via RT. This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News with permission or license.

Dark Foreboding: Is the American Democratic Experiment Over

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Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

— William Butler Yeats, The Second Coming, 1919

Apocalyptic thinking has been with us for a long time, and it sometimes ushers in actual apocalypses, albeit at human scale, without biblical finality. For a century now, the Yeats poem above has served as an increasingly common reference point for those who fear apocalyptic events approaching. Today such fears are varied, the threats are real, and reactions range from crisis-mongering to self-serving denial, making any rational, coherent societal response almost impossible.

We’ve been heading this way for decades. We finally got here in 2016. It’s taken awhile, but the forces of chaos and greed seem to be cohering, tightening their grip on power, on government and culture, facing little or no effective opposition. An election is coming. It will matter. But how?

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world

Worse, things are under attack, the center is the enemy. The US president veers toward dictatorial powers and seeks out new targets to disrupt or destroy. The US wages war around the world in at least 7 countries (with combat forces in 146 according to Seymour Hersh). The US Environmental Protection Agency wages war on the environment…

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Prison Planet.com » Toxic 9/11 dust & smoke linked to nearly 10,000 cancer cases in New York

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RT
August 13, 2018

Almost 10,000 people have a cancer diagnosis that is somehow linked to breathing in hazardous particles following the September 11 Twin Tower terrorist attack in New York City, the Post has learned.

Inhaling particles from the leaked jet fuel, asbestos, cement dust and glass shards following the destruction of the World Trade Center has led to cancer proliferation among at least 9,795 first responders and other New Yorkers, the federal World Trade Center Health Program revealed to the New York Post.

The numbers continue to grow exponentially ever since the program at Mount Sinai Hospital kicked off in 2013. In 2015 the number of 9/11 cancer-linked patients stood at 3,204 while the next year it jumped to 8,188.

“We get these referrals 15 to 20 times a week,” said Dr. Michael Crane, medical director of the WTC Health Program, noting that 17 years following the tragedy older people tend to turn for medical help more often. “In an aging population, you’re going to see a rising cancer rate, no matter what.”

Since the tragedy, more than 1,700 affected persons have died, including 420 of those stricken with cancer, officials told the publication. First responders tend to suffer from thyroid cancer and skin melanoma and also face a higher risk of bladder cancer. The rest of New Yorkers exposed to toxic dust exhibit higher-than-normal rates of breast cancer and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Leukemia and other blood-cell disorders have also been noted to be on the rise, Crane said.

This article was posted: Monday, August 13, 2018 at 6:51 am






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NDAA sought to derail Open Skies & New START treaties with Russia — RT US News

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The 2019 military funding bill signed by President Donald Trump sought to limit US participation in Open Skies and New START treaties with Russia, but the provisions were watered down in talks between the House and the Senate.

Trump signed the $716 billion bill on Monday, meaning it would go into effect before the new fiscal year arrives in October, for the first time in years. Speaking at Fort Drum in New York, the president praised the quality of US weapons and troops and promised the continuation of Washington’s military supremacy.

In addition to the highest-ever US military budget, some lawmakers sought to insert several provisions into the NDAA that would have released Washington from nuclear arms treaties with Moscow and effectively suspended the treaty on air surveillance approved at the end of the Cold War.

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US President Donald Trump with 10th Mountain Division commander Major General Walter Piatt at Fort Drum, New York, August 13, 2018. © Carlos Barria

Section 1233 of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), as passed by the House, would have claimed that Russia was in material breach of the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, and that the US was therefore legally entitled to suspend adhering to it. The Senate amendments changed the policy statement into a “sense of the Congress” and removed the funding limitations imposed by the House, according to the conference report of the final bill.

The House would have also prohibited (Section 1240) funding for implementing the 2010 New START nuclear arms control treaty, until Trump certified he raised the issue of Russia’s new nuclear weapons systems with Moscow. It also demanded to receive written agreement from Russia that such systems would be subject to the treaty. The Senate amendments removed the funding limitation and modified the reporting requirements.

Senators also modified the House bill when it came to the 1992 Treaty on Open Skies, which went into full effect in 2002. The treaty provides for military observation flights over signatory countries.

Claiming that Russia was violating the treaty, the House prohibited (Section 1232) spending funds in 2019 for modifying any US surveillance planes for operations under the treaty, until Trump certifies the US has “imposed legal countermeasures” on Moscow. That section also sought to block US approval for Russian sensor upgrades, unless the Pentagon could certify that would not be harmful to US national security.

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A Russian Tu-214 ON (Open Skies) reconnaissance aircraft designed © Maksim Blinov

The Senate agreed to block funding for upgrades, but removed requirements related to “Russian aggression and malign influence” that were described as unrelated to treaty violations. Senators conditioned the blocking of sensor upgrades on the Department of Defense certifying that the imagery this produced would be superior to digital imagery available commercially.

Senate amendments provided for the possibility of releasing the upgrade funding if the Pentagon submits a report on the current status of the US spy plane fleet – specifically, the Air Force’s RC-135, WC-135, TC-135, and OC-135 aircraft – by January 2019.

Attempting to “punish” Russia by crippling the Air Force may seem strange at first glance, but technical troubles with the aging US spy fleet have left Washington unable to actually carry out the full number of spy missions over Russia allowed by Open Skies. Only 13 of the 16 overflights allowed in 2017 were actually flown, according to arms control wonk Michael Krepon.

Just last month, Russia announced it was considering a major upgrade to their main Open Skies surveillance platform, the Il-22PP “Porubshchik” (Lumberjack). With the 1950s airframe approaching the end of its useful lifespan, Moscow is considering using the early 1970s Il-76 or even the more modern Tu-214 as the basis for the new spy plane.

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Via RT. This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News with permission or license.

With Merger Pending, Bayer Shares Plunge After Court Orders Monsanto to Pay $289 Million to Cancer Victim

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Shares in Bayer took a nosedive on Monday—just days after newly-acquired Monsanto was ordered to pay $289 million in damages to a man who alleged that the company’s glyphosate-based herbicides, including the widely used weedkiller Roundup, caused his cancer.

At one point the German pharmaceutical giant’s shares fell by as much as 14 percent, Reuters reported, marking a loss in value of roughly $14 billion.

It capped off the U.S. trading day as one of the “biggest losers,” ending at a 10-percent loss.

Friday was also a losing day for Monsanto, which Bayer AG controversially acquired for $62.5 billion in June. In a landmark trial, a San Francisco jury unanimously found that the company failed to warn school groundskeeper Dewayne Johnson, who’s suffering from non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, and other consumers of the cancer risks from its weed killers, and said the company acted “with malice or oppression.”

The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC)—a branch of the World Health Organization (WHO)—classified glyphosate as a probable human carcinogen, but Monsanto says its Roundup is safe, and that it plans on appealing.

Monday also marked the last day of the public comment period for the finalization of the merger process, prompting a broad range of advocacy groups to voice their opposition once again.

“No matter how you cut it,” said said Daniel Raichel, an attorney with the Nature Program at NRDC, “a Bayer/Monsanto merger spells higher costs for farmers and locks in the chemical-heavy agricultural practices that threaten our health and the bees and other pollinators critical to food security.”

“The Department needs to reverse course and block the merger before we all suffer the consequences,” he said.

Via Common Dreams. This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News with permission or license.

Gun Owners Should Fear the Deep State

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Washington, often in federal agencies with vast sway and little accountability. According to a March poll, 74 percent of Americans believe that a deep state probably exists.

Unfortunately, the deep state could increasingly focus on gun owners in the coming years. The number of Americans who are violating firearm laws and regulations is increasing by tens or hundreds of thousands almost every year. This is not the result of a violent crime wave, but because politicians are continually criminalizing the possession of items that were previously legally owned.

Five years ago, the Connecticut legislature decreed that all owners of so-called “assault weapons” (which included any semi-automatic rifle with a pistol grip) must register their firearms. Perhaps as few as 15 percent of gun owners bothered to comply with the new law—meaning that Connecticut had up to 100,000 “criminals” living within its border. A 2016 Albany Times Union editorial lamented that 96 percent of roughly 1 million New Yorkers who owned so-called “assault weapons” failed to comply with registration requirements. California gun bans have been met with similar, massive non-compliance. Undeterred, local governments have begun jumping on the bandwagon. Deerfield, Ill., recently decreed a $1,000-a-day penalty on anyone who fails to surrender or disable their semi-automatic firearms with cosmetic features that frighten politicians and editorial writers.



Freedom Frauds: Hard L…
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While such laws were made by elected officials, it is unelected bureaucrats who are largely left in charge of enforcement, and that can cause big problems for gun owners. Just before press time for this issue, it was reported that a…

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Zinke Blames “Radical Environmentalists,” Not Climate Change, as Wildfires Rage

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As more than 100 fires rage in the western United States, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke wrote an op-ed last week in USA Today about forest management on public lands that blamed “radical environmentalists” for the fires. “Most Americans get it, that climate change is no longer something we can just wish away with this administration,” responds Joel Clement, who served as director of the Office of Policy Analysis at the US Interior Department until July of 2017 and worked at the Interior Department for seven years. We also speak with Ben Lefebvre, an energy reporter for Politico who has done a series of stories on Zinke’s alleged ethics violations.

AMY GOODMAN: Lyla June, Diné activist and performer, singing at the Stand For Our Land rally in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, last Friday. Local papers from the Steamboat Pilot to The Aspen Times estimated around 1,400 people came to this as Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke was speaking at a $1,000 per-person gathering at Steamboat Springs Ski Resort. This is Democracy Now!. I’m Amy Goodman.

As more than 100 fires rage in the Western United States, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke wrote an op-ed last week in USA Today about forest management on public lands, again saying, “Radical environmentalists would have you believe forest management means clear cutting forests and national parks. But their rhetoric could not be further from the truth. They make outdated and unscientific arguments, void of facts, because they cannot defend the merits of their policy preferences year after year as our forests and homes burn to the ground,” Zinke wrote.

That was last week. Well, after Zinke was interrupted Saturday at his speech in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, he went to Northern California where the deadly Carr Fire has destroyed more than 1,000 homes, spoke again about wildfires and climate change and what he called extreme environmentalists. A clip from an interview in a local station, KCRA 3, in California:

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Socialism Won’t Go Away Because It is Capitalism’s Antithesis 

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Despite appearances, it is a mistake to conceptualize the workings of capitalism by placing world-changing agency in the hands of the capitalist class. Sure, they make critical, consequential decisions, but they are fundamentally compelled to do so by an impersonal, amoral, destructive systemic force largely beyond their personal control: the dynamic of capitalism itself. The abstract forces of capitalism’s dynamism create the conditions for ever more creative and novel ways to profit, which is why the Golden Age of postwar capitalism–which had a mix of capitalist and socialist economic features–evolved into the neoliberal period after the external oil shocks of 1973 and 1979. Those conditions created a transitional context to shift out of a regulated state-interventionist capitalism into the aggressive, free-market neoliberal variety lasting more than 30 years, leading us to the precipice of the present.

Michael Tomasky’s August 5, 2018 Times op-ed tells us something about the way many people think about the economy. A rising tide of socialists are having a popular moment on the political and cultural stage, and Tomasky has “some friendly advice for the capitalist class about said socialists.” What’s that? “You want fewer socialists? Easy. Stop creating them.”

Tomasky furthers his point by detailing the familiar grotesqueness of present day realities: staggering economic inequality, lack of job prospects, an opioid epidemic claiming far too many…

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Russia-gate One Year After VIPS Showed a Leak, Not a Hack – Consortiumnews

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One year later, the VIPS memo contending that the DNC emails were leaked and not hacked has yet to be successfully challenged. Meanwhile, the country sinks deeper into the morass of the new McCarthyism.

By Patrick Lawrence
Special to Consortium News

A year has passed since highly credentialed intelligence professionals produced the first hard evidence that allegations of mail theft and other crimes attributed to Russia rested on purposeful falsification and subterfuge. The initial reaction to these revelations—a firestorm of frantic denial—augured ill, and the time since has fulfilled one’s worst expectations. One year later we live within an institutionalized proscription of proven reality. Our discourse consists of a series of fence posts and taboos. By any detached measure, this lands us in deep, serious trouble. The sprawl of what we call “Russia-gate” now brings our republic and its institutions to a moment of great peril—the gravest since the McCarty years and possibly since the Civil War. No, I do not consider this hyperbole.

Much has happened since Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity published its report on intrusions into the Democratic Party’s mail servers on Consortium News on July 24 last year. Parts of the intelligence apparatus—by no means all or even most of it—have issued official “assessments” of Russian culpability. Media have produced countless multi-part “investigations,” “special reports,” and what-have-yous that amount to an orgy of faulty syllogisms. Robert Mueller’s special investigation has issued two sets of indictments that, on scrutiny, prove as wanting in evidence as the notoriously flimsy intelligence “assessment” of January 6, 2017.

Indictments are not evidence and do not need to contain evidence. That is supposed to come out at trail, which is very unlikely to ever happen. Nevertheless, the corporate media has treated the indictments as convictions.

Numerous sets of sanctions against Russia, individual Russians, and Russian entities have been imposed on the basis of this great conjuring of assumption and presumption. The latest came last week, when the Trump administration…

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Prison Planet.com » CNN Calls Violent Radical Antifa Leftists ‘Anti-Hate’ Protesters

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Weasel Zippers
August 13, 2018

Yup, yesterday they chanted “all cops are bastards” and “A-anti-anti-Capitalista,” then attacked a reporter.

Today, check out the love:

And just remember anyone they don’t like is a Nazi, especially Trump supporters, police or media.

HT: Twitchy

This article was posted: Monday, August 13, 2018 at 6:59 am






Far left group’s open incitement to violence gets zero press coverage

Paul Joseph Watson
PrisonPlanet.com
August 13, 2018

null

The mainstream media completely failed to report on Antifa members in DC yesterday, some of whom went on to assault police officers, carrying a banner which openly advertised their intention to put bullets in their political enemies.

Numerous video clips and photos show Antifa members carrying a large black banner which reads, “It takes a bullet to bash a fash.”

Given that Antifa believes anyone right of Joseph Stalin to be a “fascist” (they literally carry Communist hammer and sickle flags), this is open incitement to violence against all conservatives.

Zero mainstream media outlets have reported on the banner.

Another clip shows Antifa throwing objects at police officers.

Far-left agitators also mobbed a cop on a motorcycle, throwing things at him and shoving him.

In another clip, leftists are asked what they would do if they met President…

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Trump feuds with former ‘apprentice’ Omarosa in White House drama fit for reality TV — RT US News

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Donald Trump has taken time out of his busy presidential schedule to tweet insults at ex-White House aide Omarosa Manigault Newman, amid a rapidly-escalating feud between the two estranged reality television prima donnas.

“Wacky Omarosa, who got fired 3 times on The Apprentice, now got fired for the last time. She never made it, never will. She begged me for a job, tears in her eyes, I said Ok,” Trump tweeted on Monday. “People in the White House hated her. She was vicious, but not smart. I would rarely see her but heard really bad things. Nasty to people & would constantly miss meetings & work.”

The tweet comes hours after Newman, who starred in Trump’s reality television series “The Apprentice” before joining the White House, told NBC’s “Today” show that Trump was a puppet who was unfit to hold the nation’s highest office.

When asked by Today host Savannah Guthrie if she thought Trump had the mental faculties needed to be president, Newman answered: “No, I don’t think he’s fit.” She added that White House Chief of Staff John Kelly – who allegedly fired her without Trump’s knowledge – was “running” the White House while Trump remained clueless about daily operations. “He’s being puppeted, and that’s very dangerous for this nation,” Newman said.

In an audio recording provided by Newman, Trump appears to be unaware that the former combative “Apprentice” contestant had been fired.

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Omarosa Onee Manigault-Newman © Drew Angerer

“Omarosa? Omarosa what’s going on? I just saw on the news that you’re thinking about leaving? What happened?” Trump says in the recording, which Newman claims was made a day after she lost her job at the White House in December 2017.

After Newman tells the president that Kelly had fired her, Trump insists that nobody ever told him about it, adding: “You know they run a big operation, but I didn’t know it. I didn’t know that. I don’t love you leaving at all.”

Her appearance on the morning program is part of a press tour for her new book, “Unhinged: An Insider Account of the Trump White House.” In it, Newman accuses Trump of regularly dropping N-bombs during tapings of the “The Apprentice.” She also claims she was offered hush money in exchange for her silence about her tenure at the White House.

When asked over the weekend by a report if he felt betrayed by Newman, Trump shot back: “Lowlife. She’s a lowlife.”

Newman made waves in the media after releasing a secret audio recording of Kelly firing her during a meeting inside the Situation Room – a secure conference room in the White House basement billed as impervious to surveillance.

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Via RT. This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News with permission or license.

PressTV-White House debating ‘genocide’ label for Myanmar

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The United States is still undecided whether to use the term “genocide” in reference to the systematic campaign of violence against Myanmar’s Rohingya Muslims, a leaked document shows.

“Draft excerpts from a Pompeo statement obtained exclusively by POLITICO include the bracketed phrase “hold for determination” in a passage that will offer Pompeo’s conclusion about how to describe the vicious campaign against one of Myanmar’s most vulnerable ethnic minority groups’” read the POLITICO report on Monday.

The Rohingya Muslims based in Rakhine have been subjected to a campaign of killings, rape and arson attacks by the country’s majority Buddhist extremists in what the UN has described as “a textbook example of ethnic cleansing.”

This is while an intense debate reportedly continues in the White House over the term.

A Rohingya refugee boy (AFP file photo)

Pompeo is expected to deliver a speech on the subject following a…

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The Fraudulent Fräulein – LewRockwell

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From time to time I would meet the late Professor Michael Shepherd for a drink. He was a most distinguished researcher in the psychiatric field, and he was formidably erudite. He also had a satirical sense of humor, laughing at the world’s absurdity. Once, for example, tired of cliché and meaningless phrases, he put forward the motion at the World Health Assembly that “war is bad for health.”

There were a lot of wars going on at the time, and he knew that his motion—seemingly so innocuous—would cause uproar. It did. The delegates of each country engaged in war insisted that its war was good for health, if not immediately, then ultimately, for it was fighting for nothing less than peace and justice, which, as is obvious, are the preconditions of health.

On the last occasion that I met him before his sudden death, he laughed at the pedantic absurdities of modern academe. As an instance he gave a recently published book about the life of Hermine Hug-Hellmuth, a figure entirely forgotten (this was in the days when the book had not yet lost its prestige in our cultural economy). Hug-Hellmuth was an early psychoanalyst who left almost no trace in history, even with Freud’s gnostic sect. She was revived, Professor Shepherd suggested, because academics have to study and publish something new, however worthless. He laughed.

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Subsequently I bought the book on her (Hermine Hug-Hellmuth: Her Life and Work, by George Maclean and Ulrich Rappen), thinking that it might one day be a curiosity. I did not ready any of it until much later. Gradually my laughter or levity gave way to sorrow. Her story was a tragic one,…

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Our Opponents’ Actions Show We’re Winning

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The People United Will Never Be Defeated from the Free Farm

When in the midst of mass social transformation, it is often hard to see progress until you have the benefit of looking back after success has been achieved. One way we measure success is by recognizing the growing popular movements across multiple fronts of struggle. Another way is by observing the actions of our opponents.

Just as movements organize and develop a strategy to build power, our opponents do the same to weaken popular power. Classic signs that a movement is getting closer to achieving victories are when our opponents try to co-opt the movement, mislead the movement, adopt the language of the movement and position themselves to claim they always supported the goals of the movement, called “victorious retreat.”

In our sixth class on How Social Transformation Occurs, we examine the obstacles that movements confront in achieving social change. One of the tasks of the movement in this stage is to achieve national consensus and overcome the obstacles of the power holders.

Co-Option Can Be Turned To The Movement’s Advantage

New resistance movements have emerged since the Occupy Movement rose up in 2011, including the Fight for 15, Black Lives Matter and Idle No More, to name a few examples of many. Popular Resistance grew out of the Occupy Movement as a vehicle to report on, monitor and help grow the resistance movement.

With the election of Donald Trump, a new “resistance”…

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Where do your Representatives Stand on the Influence of Big Money in Politics?

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An essential feature of any representative democracy, like the United States, is that voters can elect candidates who will represent their constituents once elected. In order for this arrangement to work, voters need to know where candidates stand on important issues, and vice versa.

That’s why American Promise is asking every candidate for federal office where they stand on one of the most important issues of this upcoming election: will you work to create fair elections so every American has an equal voice in our democracy?

So far over 200 candidates, including Democrats, Republicans, and independents, have pledged to use their office to end the influence of big money and special interests in campaigns and elections.  Launched earlier this year, the American Promise 28th Amendment Candidate Pledge asks candidates to use their office to advance an amendment to the U.S. Constitution to “secure fair, free elections by limiting the undue influence of money in politics; protect the rights of all Americans to equal participation and representation rather than the over-representation of donors and special interests; and protect the unalienable liberty of people rather than new privileges for the largest corporations, unions, and special interests.”

19 states and over 800 cities and towns have passed resolutions with support from Republicans, Democrats, and independents formally calling on Congress to amend the U.S. Constitution to limit the influence of money in politics.

Every voter has the right to know whether or not their next member of Congress will represent ‘We the People’ or big money and special interests. This is the first step to restore a government that works for people, not money.  

Americans overwhelmingly support curbing the undue influence of money in our elections. 19 states and over 800 cities and towns have passed resolutions with support from Republicans, Democrats, and independents formally calling on Congress to amend the U.S. Constitution to limit the influence of money in politics.  In Montana, Colorado, California, and Washington voters have approved similar resolutions through ballot initiatives, and Massachusetts voters will have the opportunity to pass a resolution on the November ballot.  Multiple versions of amendments have been proposed in Congress, with 43 co-sponsors in the U.S. Senate and 147 co-sponsors in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Politicians and candidates are waking up to the fact that Americans overwhelmingly want them to champion an amendment to end legalized corruption and create a government accountable to the people, not corporations and special interests.  Continuing through Election Day in November, we will be mobilizing hundreds of thousands of citizens to ask every candidate to sign the pledge.

Via Common Dreams. This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News with permission or license.

Prison Planet.com » Ad Platform Caves to Mob Outrage, Bans Infowars

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Criteo cites “violation of advertising guidelines,” fails to point out a single example

Paul Joseph Watson
PrisonPlanet.com
August 13, 2018

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Advertising platform Criteo has caved to mob outrage and banned Infowars in yet another example of Big Tech censorship.

A Criteo senior manager said Infowars was, “in violation of our advertising guidelines,” yet gave no specifics whatsoever on precisely what terms of service we had violated.

Despite the company, which numerous other big conservative news outlets use for advertising, reaching out to Infowars after we were previously banned by AdRoll, it has now succumbed to the online brigading that was launched as a result of Apple, Facebook, YouTube and others arbitrarily censoring Infowars content.

This is somewhat perplexing given that Criteo first billed itself as a libertarian-leaning company that supported free speech. Evidently, Criteo does not support free speech, it supports giant corporate monopolies deciding what you can and can’t see on the Internet.

Meanwhile, Shopify payments also contacted us to announce that they were pulling their services.

This clearly represents tortious interference, which occurs when one person intentionally damages someone else’s contractual or business relationships with a third party causing economic harm.

The mass brigading of Infowars began after CNN started a lobbying campaign attempting to have us shut down by social media giants.

In related news, video hosting platform Vimeo banned Infowars, citing our claim that there were Islamic training camps in America as the reason, despite the fact that this is completely true.

As was widely reported last week, five Islamic extremists were arrested after being caught training children to carry out school shootings.

So in other words, Big Tech is now banning us for reporting accurately about real world events. That’s the level it has reached.

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Builder uses digger to destroy row of houses after ‘not being paid’ (PHOTOS) — RT UK News

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A builder took his angry work outburst to an extreme degree when he used an excavator to destroy a row of newly built houses because he was reportedly upset that he hadn’t been paid for work he had done on the properties.

Daniel Neagu was arrested at the scene and is due in court on Monday. The 31-year-old man has been charged with criminal damage after using the powerful machine to rip the facade off the buildings, in the small English town of Buntingford, on Saturday evening.

Resident Elaine Francois called the police as she watched the incident unfold. “It looks like an earthquake or bomb struck,” the 61-year-old told The Sun. “He was laughing and taking photos of the damage. When police got here he told them he wasn’t paid and that’s why he did it. He was totally calm.”

The row of houses was estimated to be worth around £2.5 million ($3.2mn). Residents said they feared for their own homes as Neagu carried out the destruction. Another neighbor, William Griffiths, confronted him during the rampage.

“He said he wasn’t dangerous but hadn’t been paid,” he said. “He got out of the digger and I thought, ‘Great, he’s stopped’. But he got back to carry on. He seemed happy. When police took him away in cuffs he caused no trouble.”

Hertfordshire Police said it has received a lot of enquiries about the bizarre incident. “The offender is still in custody whilst enquiries continue. More details will be released in due course by our Corp Comms department,” it said. The police added that the man is “potentially a disgruntled worker”.

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Via RT. This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News with permission or license.

RT doco follows African-American activists — RT US News

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With racial tensions in USA back in spotlight over the last few years, a gripping new RT documentary series visits African-American communities and the activists fighting against a history of racial injustice and poverty.

Like many cities across America, St. Louis, Missouri still sees its urban divide drawn along racial lines, where its black activists continue to fight battles old and new be it systemic poverty, inequality in education and employment, or extrajudicial police killings.

‘In Black Lives: Struggle’ features interviewees who do just that – they struggle. From the assault rifle-toting Ferguson protestor, to the “peace-walking” priests operating in some of the city’s most violent areas, to the mother trying to get justice for her son killed in a police raid. Each describe the bleak reality of living in America’s black neighborhoods.

“The state isn’t for us. This country doesn’t work for us. It doesn’t function for us,” says activist Dhoruba Shakur, as he stands armed outside the courthouse steps awaiting the verdict of the trial of an ex-police officer accused of killing a black man.

Referring to the governing system as a “machine” or “robot”, Shakur says: “You can only destroy a robot. It’s got to be taken down and abolished.”

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A protester shouts at police officers guarding the White House on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, US, August 12, 2018 © James Lawler Duggan / Reuters

“Cause when they made the Constitution and all this b******t, it really wasn’t made for me.”

Aside from the palpable anger at the increasing number of black deaths , either at the hands of police or through other homicides, others have found ways to denounce violence.

Reverend Kenneth McCoy, who took to the streets to engage in “peace walks” through some of the city’s most violent neighbourhoods after a string of deaths of young black men and women in his “sphere of influence.”

“I decided that it just made sense for me to go out where the violence is and interact and engage the best way I could,” he said.

Walking through the night streets handing out sandwiches and bottles of water to passing residents, Reverend McCoy and Fr Jay Kanzler, are calling for an end to violence in troubled neighbourhoods saying: “Most of the people out here are not bad people – they are in bad situation.”

Summing up his outreach philosophy, Rev McCoy states: “That’s what we believe. One person at a time, one street at a time, one neighborhood at a time.”

READ MORE: ‘It’s bad and you should feel bad’: NPR blasted for interviewing white nationalist Jason Kessler

Gina Torres is still fighting for justice for her son, Isaiah Hammett, a young white man who was killed in a raid on their home by a SWAT team. Activists familiar with the shooting attest that Hammett’s friendship with black people resulted in police giving him “the treatment of black people.”

Driving the renewed radicalism is expressed by rapper and activist T-Dubb-O explains that “this country has been built off of black oppressions and black pain.”

“We want our freedom and we want it now. and we’re not asking.”

Watch the full first episode of Black Lives for more stories of people fighting for justice in St. Louis. 

Subscribe to RT newsletter to get stories the mainstream media won’t tell you.

Via RT. This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News with permission or license.

PressTV-UK public to suffer from ‘broken’ policing

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A senior police official in the United Kingdom says stretched resources have made policing effectively “broken” in parts of the country, warning that it is the public that would suffer from understaffing and cuts in police forces.

“The reality is that policing in some places is broken, we are most certainly in crisis and that is a direct result of the pressure the government has put on by a reduction in funding,” said new head of the Police Federation John Apter on Monday while speaking to the Independent newspaper.

The official, whose organization represents rank-and-file officers across England and Wales, said falling headcounts and increasing crime were forcing police to abandon some investigations into crimes that would have been previously dealt with.

“We can’t do everything – there are going to be situations where we simply can’t deliver the policing we want to deliver,” said Apter.

John Apter, new head of the…

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PressTV-‘Trump admin. promoting racism, bigotry in US’

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The administration of US President Donald Trump is promoting racism and bigotry in the United States, and emboldening neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups in the country, an African American journalist in Detroit says.

The death of a female counter-demonstrator at a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, last year was “the direct result of the atmosphere of racism and bigotry that permeates” across the US government and mass media, said Abayomi Azikiwe, editor at the Pan-African News Wire.

“The current administration in Washington is promoting these types of bigoted and prejudice attitudes and behaviors,” Azikiwe said in a phone interview with Press TV on Monday.

“We’ve seen so many revelations, just in the past few days, about racist comments and racist attitudes that emanated from the White House,” he added.

A white nationalist rally in Washington drew two dozen demonstrators and thousands of chanting…

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The US Is Deeply Complicit in Saudi Coalition Crimes in Yemen

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Originally appeared on The American Conservative.

Micah Zenko catches Secretary Mattis making an obviously false claim about U.S. involvement in the war on Yemen:

I saw Mattis’ comment yesterday and said this:

When we remember that the U.S. has provided the Saudi coalition with arms, refueling, intelligence, and diplomatic cover so that they can wage their war on Yemen for more than three years, it is remarkable that U.S. officials try to keep up the pretense that our government is not involved in the conflict. The Pentagon is quick to remind us that their support is “limited” and “non-combat” in nature whenever the Saudi coalition kills civilians with U.S.-supplied weapons, but at the same time they are adamant that their “limited” support must never be cut off. When they assert that U.S. assistance helps limit civilian casualties (for which they provide no evidence), U.S. officials stress how vitally important that assistance is. When it comes to answering for coalition atrocities, they pretend that they have nothing to do with the fighting. If that excuse doesn’t work, they will shrug and claim not to know the extent of U.S. responsibility:

“We may never know if the munition [used] was one that the US sold to them,” Army Maj. Josh Jacques, a spokesperson for US Central Command, told me.

In fact, there is evidence that the bomb that destroyed the school bus in Thursday’s massacre was one that the U.S. sold to them:

This tweet, from respected Yemeni journalist Nasser Arrabyee, shows part of a 500-pound MK-82 bomb. It is manufactured in the United States and sold in large numbers to both Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

Continued military assistance to governments that have routinely struck civilian targets and killed thousands of people is abhorrent. When our government has reason to believe that the assistance it provides will be used to commit human rights abuses and war crimes, it is obligated to withhold that assistance. Pretending not to know how the coalition is using the weapons and fuel the U.S. provides them is not credible after more than three years of coalition atrocities against Yemeni civilians.

The reality is that the coalition relies on U.S. and British military assistance to wage their war and would not be able to continue it without that support. Bruce…

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Will Trump Be Charged With Conspiracy to Violate Federal Election Law?

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In addition to the case for Donald Trump’s obstruction of justice by firing former FBI Director James Comey, evidence is mounting that the president participated in a conspiracy to violate the federal election law. Mueller could either ask a grand jury to indict Trump as a co-conspirator or to name the president as an unindicted co-conspirator.

Federal Election Law

Trump’s August 5 tweet that the purpose of the June 9, 2016, Trump Tower meeting between Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, Paul Manafort and Russian operative Natalia Veselnitskaya “was to get information on an opponent” was tantamount to an admission of a conspiracy to violate federal election law.

Although the president added it was “totally legal and done all the time in politics,” he was mistaken about the “totally legal” part.

The federal election law says it is unlawful for “a foreign national, directly or indirectly, to make a contribution or donation of money or other thing of value … in connection with a Federal, State, or local election.” Providing the Trump campaign with dirt on Hillary Clinton to discredit her in the election constitutes a “thing of value.” It is also illegal for “a person to solicit, accept, or receive a contribution or donation … from a foreign national.”

Conspiracy Law

Another federal law makes it a crime for two or more persons to conspire to commit an offense or defraud the United States. The defraud clause criminalizes “any conspiracy for the purpose of impairing, obstructing or defeating the lawful function of any department of government.”

Trump also tweeted that “it went nowhere.” But there is legal liability for conspiracy even if the purpose of the conspiracy is not accomplished.

A conspiracy is complete upon an agreement by two or more people to commit a crime followed by at least one overt act in furtherance of the conspiracy, even if that crime is…

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California: Waging War on Wildfire

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Not so long ago, the people of what is now called California lived with and by fire. It was the element that allowed them to thrive in an environment that did not give up its riches easily. They harvested new grasses and fresh forbs out of burnt lands. Using fire, they sculpted landscapes in which they could hunt their prey, predominantly mule deer, and, of course, they cooked by its heat. Lightning-struck wildfire, when it came, found landscapes where fuel loads had been limited by this careful management of food plants, the creation of hunting meadows and the clearing of tangled woodlands where particular trees were privileged over the competing biomass. Elsewhere, perhaps in the rocky hinterlands thick with chaparral or heavy with ancient redwoods, wild fires ran their course; but this was not land in which the native peoples lived, except in those favored spots along the tumbling creeks that were laced across the wild.

The entangled shrubs of the chaparral do not make for easy human passage. When travelling to higher ground where they might summer beneath pinyon pines, native peoples traveled along narrow deer trails or broad Grizzly pathways or, where neither were available, crawled on all fours beneath the dwarfish canopy. When wildfires swept across these lands, as they invariably did once, twice or even three times a century, the going was easy. The game would be scarce, but it was at such times that new connections might be made with the exposed topography, its…

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‘Everything They’re Doing in China Will Come to America’

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Infowars founder blasts Apple CEO’s hypocrisy

Paul Joseph Watson
PrisonPlanet.com
August 13, 2018

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Alex Jones has blasted Apple CEO Tim Cook for spearheading Big Tech’s ban of Infowars, calling Cook a hypocrite who is trying to bring Communist Chinese-style Internet censorship to America.

Last week, it was reported that Tim Cook personally made the call to ban the Infowars podcast. Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg then immediately followed suit after learning of Cook’s decision.

Infowars founder Jones slammed Cook in a series of tweets today, calling him, “the same guy who contracts with the oppressive regime in China and Foxconn factories at which mistreated workers commit mass suicide,” a reference to employees who build Apple products laboring under intolerable conditions.

“Cook also styles himself as a gay rights activist, yet moves Apple to China, a country that bans LGBT marches and discriminates against gays,” added Jones.

“In arbitrarily silencing Infowars, Cook is bringing Communist Chinese-style web control to America while Google simultaneously building a censored version of its search engine in China. Everything they do in China will eventually come to America. Mark my words. It already is,” warned Jones.

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Ex-soldiers MP group demands inquiry into ‘UK involvement in US torture and rendition program’ — RT UK News

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A public inquiry into Britain’s complicity in torture must be ordered by Prime Minister Theresa May, a cross-party group of ex-soldiers, including Andrew Mitchell, Dan Jarvis and Crispin Blunt, has demanded.

In a letter to May, the group said that “only through an independent judge-led inquiry will we learn the lessons of the past and decisively demonstrate our commitment to the values for which we served.”

Their plea comes two months after a parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) report concluded that Britain had tolerated “inexcusable” treatment of suspects by the US during the so-called war on terror.

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Hakim Belhadj's wife Fatima Boudchar, with their son Abderrahim who Boudchar was pregnant with at the time of her abduction and imprisonment, outside Parliament to hear the AG's apology. © Hannah McKay

The letter, seen by the Times, argues that “UK involvement in abuses tarnishes our international reputation and severely hampers our operational strength worldwide, damaging our international partnerships and our national security.

“The report of the ISC has uncovered disturbing new evidence of UK involvement in the US government’s programme of torture and rendition.

“As evidence has mounted over almost two decades, we remain deeply concerned at the extent to which UK decisionmakers have risked involvement in serious abuses – all while UK personnel were risking their lives to uphold the values those abuses transgressed.”

Upon taking office in 2010, former Prime Minister David Cameron announced a judge-led inquiry into the matter, though the move was shelved two years later.

In June after the ISC’s report, May publicly apologised for the UK’s involvement in a 2004 rendition program in which British secret services assisted in the kidnap of a prominent opponent of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.

Abdel Hakim Belhaj was flown to Tripoli by the CIA along with his pregnant wife, Fatima Boudchar, following a tip-off from MI6. Both were imprisoned in a Gaddafi jail, during which time Boudchar claims she was tortured, leading to the premature birth of her son.

The report lead to All-Party Parliamentary Group on Extraordinary Rendition, chaired by veteran Tory Ken Clarke, to call for a judge-led inquiry also. Despite growing calls from the government’s own benches for the inquiry, a No 10. Spokesperson said that the ISC report was being considered and it would respond “in due course.”

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Via RT. This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News with permission or license.

Google tracks your location even when you ask it not to, says report — RT US News

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If you’ve ever suspected that Google is watching your every move even when you explicitly tell it not to, a new investigation has vindicated your suspicions by proving just that.

An investigation carried out by the Associated Press has found that Google is in fact storing Android and iPhone users’ location data even when they have chosen privacy settings to prevent the company from doing so.

Google claims that if you turn off the ‘Location History’ setting on your device, the company will not be able to store information about where you have been. The company states on its support page, that you can turn off Location History “at any time” and that, with the setting turned off, “the places you go are no longer stored.”

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© Fabrizio Bensch

But that’s not true, the AP report says, because some Google apps continue to store time-stamped location data even when the ‘Location History’ setting is switched off – without asking for permission.

Some of the examples given by the AP include the Google Maps app, which takes a snapshot of your location as soon as you open it and even completely unrelated searches like “chocolate chip cookies” which “pinpoint your precise latitude and longitude” and save it to your Google account.

The AP looked into the issue after K. Shankari, a graduate researcher at UC Berkeley, blogged about how her Android device had prompted her to rate a recent shopping trip to Kohl’s even though her location history had been turned off.

Jonathan Mayer, a Princeton computer scientist, told the AP that Google’s privacy settings should be made clearer. “If you’re going to allow users to turn off something called ‘Location History,’ then all the places where you maintain location history should be turned off,” he said. “That seems like a pretty straightforward position to have.”

Google, however, says it has been clear. A spokesperson for the company said that it provides “clear descriptions” of all the Google tools that people use which may record users’ locations.

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© Dado Ruvic

To prevent Google from saving location data from all of those tools, the company said users can turn off a setting called ‘Web and App Activity’ – but since this setting is turned on by default, many people don’t know about it and assume that when they turn ‘Location History’ off, it will be off across all of their apps.

Users can delete stored location markers by hand, but each one has to be selected and deleted individually – unless you want to delete all of your stored activity – making it a time-consuming process.

Google does offer a less misleading description of how its location storing works but only in a popup window if you select to ‘pause’ ‘Location History’ on your Google account web page, where it states that some location data may still be saved as part of your activity on other Google apps.

Peter Lenz, a senior geospatial analyst at advertising technology company Dstillery said that Google’s obsession with tracking user locations is all to do with advertising revenue. “They build advertising information out of data,” he said. “More data for them presumably means more profit.”

The AP’s findings were confirmed by computer-science researchers at Princeton University.

Via RT. This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News with permission or license.

PressTV-‘UK councils; major tobacco investors’

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Regional councils across the United Kingdom have broadly invested in the tobacco industry over the past years despite their commitments to improve health and welfare standards in their communities, according to a report.

The report published on the website of the Guardian newspaper on Monday revealed that healthcare providers, fire authorities and schools in Britain had directly invested more than £1.7 billion in tobacco company stocks through council pension funds.

The report said the retirement schemes had also pooled a further £1.1 billion into those industries via larger funds that group together the investors.

The main tobacco companies that received the investment were British American Tobacco, Imperial Brands and Philip Morris.

The West Yorkshire Pension Fund was the largest direct investor in tobacco among councils with £284 million held in major purveyors of cigarettes. The Guardian report said the huge investment came despite…

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PressTV-Trump backs boycott of Harley Davidson

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US President Donald Trump has backed boycotting American motorcycle manufacturer Harley Davidson over its plans to move production overseas, the latest salvo in a dispute between the company and Trump over tariffs.

On Sunday, Trump tweeted that “many” Harley-Davidson owners will boycott the company if it shifts production of the iconic American motorcycles to other countries.  

“Many @harleydavidson owners plan to boycott the company if manufacturing moves overseas. Great! Most other companies are coming in our direction, including Harley competitors. A really bad move! US will soon have a level playing field, or better,” Trump said in a Twitter post.

The motorcycle manufacturer,…

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When Mainstream Economics Was Wrong

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[Foreword to Mark Thornton’s new book The Skyscraper Curse: And How Austrian Economists Predicted Every Major Economic Crisis of the Last Century (Auburn, AL: Mises Institute, 2018).]

In the wake of the financial crisis of 2008, the economics profession suffered a blow to what reputation it had. But unlike most of his colleagues, Mark Thornton was vindicated by 2008. Mark has been a voice of sanity at times when the wild interventions of the Federal Reserve have caused otherwise sensible people to lose their minds.

One rule of thumb I’ve adopted is: whenever the idea that the business cycle may have been tamed forever starts to become mainstream, the bust is around the corner.

After reading this book, you’ll see why. Mark discusses the very different records of Irving Fisher and Ludwig von Mises in the 1920s, with the former saying (in late 1929!) that stock prices had reached a “permanently high plateau” and Mises warning that all the artificial credit creation of the world’s central banks meant a reckoning was coming.

At the end of the 1960s, presidential economic adviser Arthur Okun announced that wise fiscal and monetary policy was making boom and bust a thing of the past. One month after his book on the subject was released, the United States was officially in recession.

The Skyscraper Curse: …
Mark Thornton
Buy New $17.16
(as of 08:50 EDT – Details)

The dot-com bubble of the 1990s continued the pattern. Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan even speculated that we had entered an age in which booms no longer necessarily had to be followed by busts.

I trust you know what happened next.

The most recent financial crisis, which was connected to an especially destructive housing bubble, yielded the same kind of…

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Video: Top U.S. & World Headlines — August 13, 2018

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Visit https://democracynow.org to watch the full independent, global news hour, read the transcript, search our archive and to make a donation to support us.

Via Youtube

Washington police mobilize to protect handful of neo-Nazis

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On anniversary of fascist killing in Charlottesville

Washington police mobilize to protect handful of neo-Nazis

By
Patrick Martin

13 August 2018

Only a few dozen neo-Nazis turned out Sunday afternoon for a rally in Lafayette Square park adjacent to the White House, as hundreds of Washington D.C. police were mobilized to protect them from anti-fascist protesters who turned out in far greater numbers.

The rally, called under the title “Unite the Right 2,” was held on the first anniversary of the fascist riot in Charlottesville, Virginia, in which a neo-Nazi drove his car into a crowd of anti-racist counter-demonstrators, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer.

Alt-Right protestors arrive with police escort

After days of publicity in the national media, portraying the event as a major demonstration of the strength of the white racist forces to which President Donald Trump openly appeals, the actual turnout was not enough to fill a single subway car when the fascists first assembled at the Metro station in suburban Vienna, Virginia.

There they had to run a gauntlet of anti-fascist protesters, protected by local police, as they took the subway train into downtown Washington D.C. Police were on board each car of the train, and walked the platform at stations along the Orange Line from Vienna to Foggy Bottom, the first stop in the city, where the neo-Nazis disembarked and left the station through a private entrance.

Police told subway riders at the Clarendon station in Arlington that the right-wing group was on the train, and told riders to stay out of the last car, which had apparently been reserved for the neo-Nazis.

Press accounts said that as the neo-Nazis emerged from the Foggy Bottom station and began to walk towards Lafayette Park, they were greeted with shouts of…

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Rand Paul Is Single-handedly Preventing War With Iran

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Senator is the only real peace maker in Washington

Steve Watson
Prison Planet.com
August 13, 2018

A report citing an unnamed aide to President Trump has suggested that the only reason that the US has not because embroiled in military conflict with Iran is because Rand Paul has the President’s ear on foreign policy and is offsetting the parade of war hawk neocons circling Trump.

The report, published by Politico, notes that Trump’s national security advisor John Bolton was a staunch proponent of regime change in Iran, as was Secretary of State Mike Pompeoand Secretary of Defense James Mattis.

All three have embraced the neocon position of preventive military action, but now have allstated publicly that the US will not seek regime change in Iran.

The Politico report suggests that this is all down to Rand Paul.

“While Trump tolerates his hawkish advisers, the [Trump] aide added, he shares a real bond with Paul: ‘He actually at gut level has the same instincts as Rand Paul…’.”

The report further notes that “Trump has stopped short of calling for regime change even though Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Secretary of Defense James Mattis, and Bolton support it, aligning with Paul instead, according to a GOP foreign policy expert in frequent contact with the White House.”

The source indicates that “’Rand Paul has persuaded the president that we are not for regime change in Iran… because adopting that position would instigate another war in the Middle East.”

The source also claims that Rand Paul and Trump share a common enjoyment of poking fun at the war hawks.

“The Kentucky senator and the commander-in-chief have bonded over a shared delight in thumbing their noses at…

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Twitter blasts ‘fawning’ reporters who fell for Boris Johnson’s tea stunt — RT UK News

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Former UK Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson found a novel way to avoid answering journalists’ questions about controversial comments he made comparing Muslim women wearing the burka to postboxes and bank robbers.

Approaching the journalists waiting outside his home in Oxfordshire, tray in hand and wearing a pair of blue surfer shorts, Johnson said he had nothing say on the matter, but wanted to offer the reporters some refreshments instead.

“I’m here solely on a humanitarian mission because you’ve been here all day and you’ve been incredibly patient and I feel very sorry for you because I have nothing to say about this matter except to offer you some tea,” he said.

Instead of calling it out as the stunt that it clearly was, the waiting British journalists lapped it up, literally, accepting the tea from Johnson, engaging in a bit of banter with the controversial politician and forgetting all about the reason they were outside his house in the first place.

“Okay, thank you. Thank you so much,” one journalist can be heard saying in response, while grabbing her cup of tea and forgetting to ask any more questions.

When the video was posted online, ITV journalist Carl Dinnen tweeted that if a politician was going to refuse to answer questions, offering tea instead was “the classy way” to do it.

Unsurprisingly, the fawning behavior of the British press didn’t go down very well with the rest of Twitter, where Dinnen and his colleagues were roasted for their submissiveness and sycophantic behavior.

One user pointed out that there was a huge chasm between British journalists’ self-image as “bellicose and combative” seekers of truth and the the “fawning reality” on display in the video.

Others pointed out that the appropriate response from a journalist to a figure like Johnson trying to dodge important questions was definitely not: “Thank you very much.”

Others suggested that Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, who does not have many fans among the British press, should start offering journalists cups of tea instead of answering questions to see if it makes any difference.

…and some just had a bit of fun with the incident, reimagining the infamous David Frost interview with Richard Nixon over the Watergate scandal and how it might have gone differently if Nixon had just offered the journalist some tea.

Via RT. This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News with permission or license.

CIA cable gives steamy description of ‘enhanced’ interrogation — RT US News

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A declassified cable detailing torture at a CIA blacksite in Thailand operated by now-CIA Director Gina Haspel employed hokey language perhaps better suited for an erotic novel – as opposed to documenting the agency’s actions.

The bizarre literary work, one of 11 cables obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by the National Security Archive, a research institute at George Washington University, describes a “catlike” linguist and “hulking, heavily muscled guards.” Just to be clear: The December 2002 cable details the “enhanced” interrogation of Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, a suspected al-Qaeda terrorist – not a scene from ‘50 Shades of Grey.’

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© Kevin Lamarque / Reuters

“HVTI and linguist … strode, catlike, into the well-lit confines of the cell at 0902 hrs… deftly removed the subject’s black hood with a swipe, paused, and in a deep, measured voice said that subject – having ‘calmed down’ after his (staged) run-in with his hulking, heavily muscled guards the previous day – should reveal what subject had done to vex his guards to the point of rage,” the titillating CIA cable, documenting the daily shenanigans at a secret torture dungeon, reads.

“Subject, blinking in the fluorescent light, did a few characteristically flicks of his tongue, reacquired his nervous tick, and in a frail, squeaky voice, replied: ‘Nothing.’”

The report “marked a descent into language right out of spy novels or the ‘Shades of Grey’ series to describe potentially criminal behavior by CIA employees,” the National Security Archive noted in its annotation of the declassified cable.

While it’s not clear who authored this delicious morsel of purple prose, it’s likely that Haspel – believed to have been chief of base at the time – read and signed off on the cable before it was dispatched.

Haspel’s nomination to head the CIA was opposed by human rights groups and lawmakers who argued that her involvement in the CIA’s clandestine torture program disqualified her from leading the agency. Dubbed the “torture queen” and “bloody Gina” by US media outlets, Haspel vowed that the CIA would not engage in torture under her watch – although declined to describe such techniques as “immoral.”

During her contentious nomination hearing, Haspel argued that torture had provided “valuable intelligence,” but the de-classified cables reveal that al-Nashiri had provided  “no actionable information.” He is currently being held at the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, nearly 16 years after he was captured in October 2002, in the United Arab Emirates.

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Via RT. This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News with permission or license.

PressTV-UK admits failure in dealing with rough sleepers

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The British government has admitted it is lagging behind in its plans to end rough sleeping in England by 2027.

James Brokenshire, who serves as the housing and communities secretary in the government, said Monday that a £100-million fund that the government was supposed to dedicate to the problem of homelessness and rough sleeping was not fully available and nearly half of it had been “reprioritized” from existing budgets in his department.

“Half of that has already been committed to homelessness and rough sleeping. The other remaining half of this is money that is new to rough sleeping and homelessness, reflecting and recognizing the priorities and importance of taxes,” said Brokenshire in a radio interview.

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PressTV-Trump ‘close to inciting violence’ against journalists

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US President Donald Trump’s verbal attacks on the American media is “very close to incitement to violence” against journalists, the UN human rights commissioner has warned.

Trump’s “campaign against the media” could lead to journalists being harmed, or to them censoring themselves, Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, a Jordanian diplomat and outgoing United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, said in an interview with The Guardian newspaper published Monday.

“We began to see a campaign against the media … that could have potentially, and still can, set in motion a chain of events which could quite easily lead to harm being inflicted on journalists just going about their work and potentially some self-censorship,” he said. “And in that context, it’s getting very close to incitement to violence.”

Zeid is stepping down this month as the human rights commissioner after reportedly deciding not to stand for a second four-year…

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I Don’t Remember Voting For U.S. Bombs to Murder Little Kids in Yemen, Do You?

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It must have been a moment of unspeakable shock, terror and pain. But it’s hard to know exactly what it was like at the moment last Thursday when a school bus packed with Yemeni schoolchildren — summer campers coming back from a picnic — was struck from the skies by a powerful bomb, because so few of these innocent kids survived to tell about it, and because those who did are mostly clinging to life, maimed or badly burned by the blast.

Instead, we can only gape at pictures of a twisted metal frame that hardly resembles the bus that was once filled with happy, singing children, or watch the widely circulated video of the aftermath of what happened in the market district of Saada in northern Yemen, in which a distraught, failing man raises the blue tarp of a pickup truck to reveal a tangle of young bodies as he lifts up the limp arm of one of the dead schoolkids

At least 29 people — according to the International Committee of the Red Cross — and quite possibly 40 or 50, according to Yemeni estimates, were killed in the airstrike by jets in the Saudi-led coalition that’s been waging a brutal war against the Saudis’ next-door neighbor on the Arabian Peninsula for the last four years.

A spokesman for the Saudi coalition called it “a legitimate military operation” in its campaign against Houthi rebels that operate in northern Yemen — a claim that was scoffed at by most of the rest of the world, alarmed at the growing humanitarian crisis in the region.

“Does the world really need more innocent children’s lives to stop the cruel war on children in Yemen?” asked Geert Cappalaere, the regional director for the Middle East and Northern Africa of the aid group UNICEF. Many of the kids killed or wounded in the attack were carrying bright blue UNICEF school bags, now shredded and burned.

The merciless Saudi-led war in Yemen — which has not only claimed 13,500 lives but triggered a humanitarian crisis in which some 20 million Yemenis, out of a nation of just 29 million, are scrambling for food and other basic necessities and as many as 900,000 people are suffering from cholera — is what it is today because of help from the United States.

America offers the Saudis and its allies in the region the intelligence used to carry out the nonstop airstrikes and other military operations. The planes that conduct the bombing runs are refueled by American forces in the region. And many of the bombs that have been dropped on Yemen — including those that have struck hospitals and other civilian targets — were manufactured and supplied by the United States.

It’s very likely the bomb that obliterated the school bus last week was an American bomb; a Pentagon spokesman conceded that, because of the lengths to which U.S. forces go to avoid operational knowledge of the war for which we otherwise provide such critical support, it officially doesn’t know whether we supplied these particular munitions. “We may never know if the munition [used] was one that the U.S. sold to them,” Army Maj. Josh Jacques, a spokesperson for U.S. Central Command, told Vox — a classic case of American plausible deniability. But people on the ground in Yemen say they can link American-made bombs to Thursday’s airstrike and other attacks on innocent civilians.

Thursday’s school bus bombing did accomplish one thing: The unavoidable carnage forced American media — which has all but ignored the conflict in Yemen, and our role in supporting it — to pay at least a little bit of attention, cramming a few minutes of coverage into the end of the hour, after all the latest inane tweets from the Madman Across the Fairway had been regurgitated and dissected. It shouldn’t have taken so long. There was no outcry a week earlier when a Saudi airstrike devastated one of Yemen’s largest hospitals, which houses a large cholera treatment center, or after scores of other attacks that have killed so many civilians, including — according to the UN — some 2,400 children, with an additional 3,600 who’ve been maimed for life.

This blood is on America’s hands, as long as we keep sending the bombs that kill so many Yemenis, and as long as we give the Saudis our unqualified diplomatic support in a messy regional conflict. And yet there’s been no public debate about the murky U.S. role out of this, and no clarification from the White House or the Pentagon over what we hope to accomplish by our support of the mayhem. There are, however, a few members of Congress demanding answers.

But efforts by Congress to end America’s role in the seemingly endless conflict have gone nowhere. In March, a bipartisan group of senators sought to invoke the Vietnam-era War Powers Act to limit U.S. involvement — “The Founding Fathers gave the power to authorize military conflicts to Congress, the branch most accountable to the people, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders declared — but were blocked on a procedural move. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell insisted that American involvement is somehow limiting civilian deaths, a ridiculous claim that defies all available information, not to mention logic.

America’s entanglement in Yemen is so emblematic of the broader debacle that was once known as “the war on terror” but now has simply become the “forever war,” spanning the globe from Africa to the Middle East to Asia, with America firing missiles from drones or going on secret raids or lining up with butchering autocrats like the Saudis for nebulous and sometimes shifting aims. This all happens without legal authorization from Congress, or anything resembling an open democratic debate, and with seemingly no expiration date.

Like the rest of the “forever war,” Yemen is the fault of both parties — Democrat Barack Obama was the president who launched it, reportedly to keep the Saudis on board as he negotiated the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. Republican Donald Trump, who rabidly favors all things Saudi Arabia while opposing all things Iran, even if that risks World War III, is only escalating matters. Like other military engagements, we were told it would only last months, only to see it drag on for years.

Indeed, civilian deaths linked to U.S. involvement in the “forever war” on a variety of fronts, most notably in parts of Syria and Iraq, have spiked dramatically since Trump became president — but few Americans even know this, because there is such little news coverage of what is being done in our name.  We also don’t know how much of Team Trump’s pronounced tilt to the Saudis — including moving to kill the Iran deal — is the result of legitimate American geopolitical interests and how much is the result of corruption, given reports that an emissary of the Saudis and its close ally, the United Arab Emirates, came to Trump Tower in 2016 promising support for Trump’s campaign.

The best role for the United States in Yemen would be as honest broker for peace between the warring factions — seeking an end to a humanitarian crisis that not only could ultimately hurt American interests in the long run but which is flat-out immoral. And yet that’s the role we’ve shown zero interest in taking on.

You can judge a society on how much it cares for children — and America is failing abysmally right now. It’s impossible to look at the picture at the top of this post, of a badly wounded child in his tinfoil blanket, and not think of the hundreds of kids sleeping in cages, in those exact same blankets, in detention centers on America’s southern border. With cuts to the social safety net from Obamacare to food stamps — some proposed, some successfully carried out — we’re not doing much better by American-born kids. Saada, Yemen, may be halfway around the world, but it’s as good a place as any to stop the shameful treatment of God’s children.

We all can do better. The news media needs to do a much better job keeping American citizens informed about what’s happening in Yemen — and all the other outposts of “the forever war” — and how U.S. dollars and U.S. bombs are making these conflicts happen. The midterm candidates for Congress — from both parties — need to address this issue and tell voters how they plan to make this carnage stop, and be prepared to use the War Powers Act to block this administration from waging a war that’s not just ill-advised but which should be considered illegal. If the American people can take back control of what is being done in our name, maybe we can finally begin washing away this spreading moral stain.


Via Common Dreams. This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News with permission or license.

Video: ‘In hemp we trust’: Thousands rally for legalizing marijuana in Berlin

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Thousands of protesters gathered in Berlin calling for the legalisation of cannabis. Different organisations and parties were present during the demonstration …

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Canada vs. the Rule of Law

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I’m aware that Canada, unlike its southern neighbor in which I live, has just recently, ever so slightly, stood up to certain of the horrors of the Saudi government. I’m aware of the role Canada has played, albeit imperfectly, as refuge for people fleeing U.S. slavery and U.S. wars and general U.S. backwardness. I’m aware of how many times through history the United States has attacked Canada. I’m aware that just several yards in front of me as I sit in my outdoor office (the downtown mall of Charlottesville) a small army is gleefully creating a police state on the anniversary of a Nazi rally at which similar numbers of soldiers, similarly armed, stood by and watched fascist violence last year. I agree with Robin Williams’ characterization of Canada as a nice apartment over a meth lab.

But here’s the thing. I’m a world citizen not owned by the Pentagon. When we hold World BEYOND War’s annual global conference in Toronto next month, Canadians will, if they are like most people on earth, be eager to discuss Canada’s shortcomings, not its highpoints. I’ve been reading about some of those shortcomings, and they are not insignificant. Canada is a standout player when it comes to environmental destruction, and in the colonial brutality that still feeds that destruction.

The theme of our upcoming conference is the rule of law, its uses, its abuses, and its potential as a local and global tool. I’ve just read Tamara Starblanket’s Suffer the Little…

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Video: RAW: Thousands protest in Romania capital after police crackdown

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Thousands of people joined an anti-government rally in Bucharest on Saturday just one day after more than 400 people were injured. READ MORE: …

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Prison Planet.com » Google tracks your movements, like it or not

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AP
August 13, 2018

Google wants to know where you go so badly that it records your movements even when you explicitly tell it not to.

An Associated Press investigation found that many Google services on Android devices and iPhones store your location data even if you’ve used privacy settings that say they will prevent it from doing so. Computer-science researchers at Princeton confirmed these findings at the AP’s request.

For the most part, Google is upfront about asking permission to use your location information. An app like Google Maps will remind you to allow access to location if you use it for navigating. If you agree to let it record your location over time, Google Maps will display that history for you in a “timeline” that maps out your daily movements.

Storing your minute-by-minute travels carries privacy risks and has been used by police to determine the location of suspects — such as a warrant that police in Raleigh, North Carolina, served on Google last year to find devices near a murder scene. So the company will let you “pause” a setting called Location History.

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This article was posted: Monday, August 13, 2018 at 6:08 am






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Resignation matter or fake news? Attack on Corbyn over ‘terrorist wreath laying’ — RT UK News

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The latest anti-Semitism story to hit Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn has polarised debate. His critics want him to resign immediately, while supporters are rushing to his defence, denying the accusations and crying ‘fake news.’

Photographs, taken in 2014 and published by the Daily Mail on August 11, show Corbyn holding a wreath at a service in Tunisia close to the graves of the Black September terrorists, who were implicated in the Munich attacks, in which 11 Israeli athletes were killed in 1972.

READ MORE: #WeAreCorbyn trends at No.3 worldwide as Corbynites fight back against anti-Semitic ‘smears’

The original story is headlined “Corbyn’s wreath at Munich terrorists’ graves,” goes on to accuse the Labour leader of attending a “tribute event for Palestine ‘martyrs’ including plotters behind 1972 slaughter of Israeli Olympic athletes.”

The Labour Party has rejected calls for an apology, reiterating that Corbyn’s statement that he was laying a wreath honoring the 47 victims of an Israeli attack on a Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) base outside of Tunis in 1985.

Responding to a follow up story, in which relatives of the Munich victims state that Corbyn should be “ashamed and apologize,” the party’s press team posted that the relatives were being “misled” by the story.

Writing in the left-wing Morning Star after the visit to the Tunisian cemetery, Corbyn stated that wreaths were laid to mark the 1985 Israeli bombing, adding: “After wreaths were laid at the graves of those who died on that day and on the graves of others killed by Mossad agents in Paris in 1991.”

It is unclear who Corbyn was referring to as there are no known Israeli killings in Paris in that year. However, Mossad agents did reportedly kill the PLO’s liaison officer with foreign intelligence agencies, Atef Bseiso, a suspected Black September member in 1992 in the French capital.   

The article’s perceived inaccuracies prompted certain Corbyn supporters to call on him to sue the Daily Mail and over what they insist is ‘inaccurate reporting.’

In turn, right-wing Twitter condemnations of Corbyn were rife. Broadcaster Julia Hartley-Brewer mocked the Labour leader, and staunch Corbyn critic and Daily Mail journalist, Dan Hodges posted: “Dear Corbynites. It’s clear your hero honoured one, or a number of, the terrorists responsible for the Munich attack.”

The accusations led to Home Secretary Sajid Javid to demand Corbyn resign. “If this was the leader of any other major political party, he or she would be gone by now.” stated the Conservative.

While Jewish Leadership Council, Jonathan Goldstein, told the Jewish News: “This man is not fit to be a Member of Parliament, let alone a national leader.”

Another piece published by the Daily Mail on the same day attacked Corbyn for attending the wedding of a Palestinian ambassador who was accused of Holocaust denial in 2014, a claim he denies. Corbyn attended the wedding in 2010.

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Via RT. This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News with permission or license.

Slot machines suffer bizarre meltdown just yards from hacker conference — RT US News

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Dozens of Las Vegas slot machines crashed simultaneously over the weekend, just yards from where the annual DEF CON hacking convention was taking place. No explanation for the intriguing development has been offered.

The bizarre shutdown took place between 1am and 2am on Saturday at the Linq Casino – right across the road from Caesars Palace where the convention was taking place.

Attendee Matt Anderson captured the moment and told Mashable: “No-one else knew what was happening, but all slots were dead/errored out.”

The Linq said it’s investigating the incident. Spokesperson Rich Broom said there was “no evidence whatsoever that there was a hack.” RT has contacted Linq for more information.

DEF CON kicked off on Thursday and saw attendees attempt to hack voting machines and cars as part of the four-day conference.

Other unusual activity reported in Vegas over the weekend included a computer screen inside an elevator at the Flamingo hotel showing its command prompt, and a casino game with a Windows box open instead of the game’s graphics.

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Via RT. This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News with permission or license.

Latest Sanctions Against Russia – LewRockwell

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US President Donald Trump is not in control of his own administration, as evidenced by the latest round of sanctions imposed against Russia for the alleged involvement in the poisoning of the Skripals in the UK in March.

The sanctions came the same day that US Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., announced on a trip to Moscow that he had handed over a letter to Russian President Vladimir Putin from Trump calling for better relations between the two countries.

For that reason, the timing appears to be suspect, suggesting strongly that Trump has his own foreign policy while the Trump administration, comprised mainly of bureaucrats referred to as the Deep State, have their own. Right now, they appear to be in control, not President Trump, over his own administration, and it is having the adverse effect of further alienating Washington and Moscow.

The neocons, led by National Security Advisor John Bolton, along with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and his United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley, comprise the Trump “war cabinet” ostensibly aimed at directing a harder line toward Syria, North Korea, Iran but also Russia.



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Bolton, in particular, has been outspoken in calling for regime change in some of  these countries. Trump not so much so. In fact, he has said just the opposite. Nevertheless, their anti-Russian flair in Washington has breathed new life into the neocons who, along with the Democrats, Deep State and much of the mainstream media, have pushed the false narrative of collusion between Russia and Trump.

This persistent anti-Russian rant and repeated sanctions which have been imposed have had the effect of leading to further…

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Video: And Liftoff! NASA sends Parker Solar Probe in its first mission to the Sun (Streamed Live)

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Courtesy: NASA TV NASA launches first ever mission to the Sun: Parker Solar Probe Check out http://rt.com RT LIVE http://rt.com/on-air Subscribe to RT!

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Black Lives Matter in Our Schools: Developing an Anti-Racist Pedagogy

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Empowering Black students to become change makers is a key goal of the book, Teaching for Black Lives. Editors Dyan Watson, Jesse Hagopian and Wayne Au have assembled a cogent group of essays that offer the opportunity for developing an anti-racist pedagogy.

Truthout interviewed one of the editors, Jesse Hagopian, who is also a Truthout contributing writer.

Mark Karlin: You note in your introduction that “We must teach for black lives in our classrooms.” How did you and your fellow editors come up with the idea for a textbook that can also be used as a reader by adults?

Co-editor Jesse Hagopian.
Co-editor Jesse Hagopian.
Rethinking Schools

Jesse Hagopian: As I answer these questions, white supremacists and neo-Nazis are readying plans to march on Washington, DC. Hate crimes are on the rise around the country. Police violence against Black people continues unabated and the school-to-prison pipeline is helping to fuel the nation’s system of mass incarceration. And yet, there are also a growing number of educators who are organizing and fighting back against anti-Black racism.

In this way, I think the Black Lives Matter (BLM) at School movement and the broader movement for Black lives inspired the idea for Teaching for Black Lives as a book that could be used by educators, students, activists and community organizers. The BLM at School movement went national during the 2017-2018 school year and educators in over 20 cities participated in a week of action from February 5 to 9, to affirm the lives of Black students and challenge institutional racism. The BLM at School movement developed three demands: (1) End “zero tolerance” discipline and implement restorative justice; (2) Hire more Black teachers; (3) Mandate Black history and ethnic studies in K-12 curriculum. In addition, educators taught lessons throughout the week that corresponded to the 13 guiding principles of #BlackLivesMatter Global Network including restorative justice, empathy and loving engagement, diversity and globalism,…

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Ben & Jerry’s Farmworker Exploitation

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These are harrowing times for the nearly 1,500 migrant workers laboring on Vermont’s largest dairy farms. These farmworkers, predominantly from Mexico, are forced to live in the shadows, where their farm bosses harbor them in exchange for long hours, low wages, and cheap housing. It’s a human rights stain on the state, allowing these migrant workers to live and be treated this way. And it continues because there’s a whole lot of “looking away” from the deep-rooted ugliness of this system, which has been described by human rights advocates as “close to slavery.”

Worse than looking away, with its implicit acceptance of the exploitation, is the complicit role Vermont’s dairy industry giants are playing to maximize their profits on the backs of this cheap labor. As the state’s near-billion-dollar-a-year ice cream and cheese corporations – Ben & Jerry’s and Cabot Creamery – continue to pay less than the cost of production for its dairy supply, Vermont’s remaining 700-or-so dairy farms are forced to cut costs at every opportunity, particularly when it comes to labor. Gone are the days when these farm jobs were filled by neighbors and community members, as the danger, speed, scale and filth – coupled with poverty-level wages — has made it impossible to attract local workers.

But Ben & Jerry’s took its complicity in the migrant worker exploitation to a whole new level of cruel and delusional recently when, in what can only be called a publicity…

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Video: Hello from International Space Station!

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A video blog about someones daily routine might not sound very inspiring, but when it’s posted from the International Space Station it takes on a whole new …

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Vox Wants Censorship of “Right Wing” YouTubers

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Louder With Crower
August 10, 2018

Yes, yes, yes. We saw that tweet from Vox. After what happened with InfoWars (see Democrat Senator: Banning InfoWars was Just the Beginning and Facebook Removes Infowars’ Page for ‘Violating Community Standards’), their retweet of this silly video isn’t surprising:

It’s not a new video. Vox actually released the video back in October. They’re just recycling it. In the business, we call their video “evergreen.” In our case, Vox’s evergreen is good for chopping all year round.

So as we did when Vox originally released the video, we are reissuing rebuttal. Evergreen works both ways.

Remember, it’s not just InfoWars. The left has made it clear the plan is to use InfoWars as their excuse to claim anyone they disagree with is “hate speech.” And to silence any opposing viewpoint they find triggering.

This article was posted: Friday, August 10, 2018 at 6:13 am








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Dem candidate refuses ‘catcalling’ debate offer — RT US News

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Democratic socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has declined Ben Shapiro’s challenge to debate him for $10,000, likening the conservative host’s offer to catcalling.

“Just like catcalling, I don’t owe a response to unsolicited requests from men with bad intentions,” Ocasio-Cortez tweeted on Thursday. “And also like catcalling, for some reason they feel entitled to one.”

Shapiro responded, denying his offer to debate had ‘bad intentions.’ “Slandering someone as a sexist catcaller without reason or evidence does demonstrate cowardice and bad intent, however,” he said.

Shapiro extended the invitation to Ocasio-Cortez on his ‘The Ben Shapiro Show’ on Wednesday, telling his audience he would donate $10,000 to Ocasio-Cortez’s campaign or a charity if she would come on the show to debate him so that he could “probe” her belief system.

The conservative host referenced Ocasio-Cortez’s comments that Republicans aren’t willing to debate, and said he wanted to ask her to “name an industry you would not nationalize; which ones should the government not run and why?”

“Alright, can she name any of them?” he added.

Ocasio-Cortez is running to represent New York’s 14th Congressional District on a social-democratic platform which includes calling for Medicare for all, tuition-free public college education, and an end to the use of fossil fuels.

READ MORE: US can afford ‘unlimited war’ but not Medicare for all, says Ocasio-Cortez

She beat veteran Representative Joe Crowley (D-NY) in the primary, prompting the Democratic National Committee’s Tom Perez to describe the former Bernie Sanders campaign organizer as “the future” of the Democratic party.

Shapiro is a staunch right-winger and critic of democratic socialism whose Daily Wire website is owned by fossil fuel billionaires the Dan and Farris Wilks. He has written a book called, ‘How to Debate Leftists and Destroy Them.’

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Via RT. This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News with permission or license.

PressTV-UK Muslim Council warns against Johnson ‘whitewash’

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The Muslim Council of Britain has warned the government of Prime Minister Theresa May against “whitewashing” former Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson’s offensive remarks against Muslim women.

Johnson is currently under a disciplinary investigation by the ruling Conservative Party for writing an Islamophobic article in the Daily Telegraph, where he likened Muslim women wearing burqa, a full-body veil, to “bank robbers” and “letter boxes.”

In a letter addressed to May, the council is expected to tell the PM that “no-one should be allowed to victimize minorities with impunity,” The Guardian reported Monday.

“We are hopeful that the party will not allow any whitewashing of this specific inquiry currently in process. No one should be allowed to victimize minorities with impunity,” the MCB letter will say.

The former foreign secretary has yet to apologize for the rude comments or even responds to thousands of requests for…

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Video: ‘Discriminatory’: Arab Israelis protest ‘Jewish nation-state’ law

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Chanting ‘resist apartheid’ and ‘we are all brothers’, thousands of protesters rallied in Tel Aviv against the controversial new law that has proclaimed Israel to be …

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Climate Change Is the Inevitable Consequence of Capitalist Privatization

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The notion of the commons refers to shared land, publicly available for all people to access for leisure and when times get tough, for survival. Publicly shared lands have existed since humans first walked the earth but have progressively been enclosed for individual sustenance or for profit. The most profound period of enclosures came with the introduction of European capitalism, and mass displacement of agricultural people to toil in industrial factories.

Throughout European and U.S. colonialism, the genocide, enslavement, and displacement of indigenous people from their lands was “justified” via the pseudo-science concept of Social Darwinism—the notion that humans inherently compete for resources and the most violent and coercive are rightfully in charge. Similarly, the pseudo-science tragedy of the commons was created to justify the privatization of public lands. This “tragedy” was based on the premise that shared resources will inherently be exploited and destroyed by the unruly public. That if left to their own volition people are inherently greedy, they don’t think in the long-term, they don’t communicate, and just like Social Darwinism, they must compete. Economist Elinor Ostrom debunked the tragedy of the commons and in doing so became the first woman to win a Nobel Peace Prize for Economics. 

Our atmosphere, a publicly needed space containing many vital resources such as nitrogen, oxygen, and carbon dioxide—may seem to the untrained eye to be the tragedy of the commons playing out above our heads. But this is hardly the case, and one must only take their head out of the clouds and refocus on the social developments on-the-ground to see that climate change is really the tragedy of the enclosures, the inevitable consequence of capitalist privatization.

“Capitalism’s grow-or-die imperative stands radically at odds with ecology’s imperative of interdependence and limit. The two imperatives can no longer coexist with each other; nor can any society founded on the myth that they can be reconciled hope to survive. Either we will establish an ecological society or society will go under for everyone, irrespective of his or her status.” —Murray Bookchin

Capitalism is an economic system based on competition, and competition is a state of constant warfare. The competing corporation must always be in the process of growing, strengthening, improving in combat, and always ready to strike—or risk losing everything to someone or something that’s biggest, stronger, or more strategic. For corporations, success is based on profit, and profits are used to continue the cycle of growth, exploitation, and political influence. 

The long-term consequences of a corporation’s actions are ignored by the corporation because short-term threats and successes are paramount. The moral implications of a corporation’s actions are ignored by the corporation because short-term threats and successes are everything. It’s a toxic environment of immediacy, anxiety, and violence—that leaves an epoch of garbage, pollutants, and suffering in its wake. 

We can see how Social Darwinism describes un-regulated capitalism, a constant state of competition. A dog-eat-dog world. The constant struggle of pulling oneself up by their bootstraps—an impossible task if you’ve ever tried it. Similarly, the tragedy of the commons describes capitalism much more accurately than pastoral human relationships. It’s a rhetorical tool that says, “well that’s human nature folks, so there’s nothing we can do about it. Trying to change it is as futile as trying to change our biology.” 

But just as the tragedy of the commons started as a thought experiment amongst colonial British economists in the 19th century, let’s invert it and use it to imagine ways that we can intervene to stop capitalism from exhausting the finite resources we all need to survive. Let’s imagine a forest, that if we did nothing, a corporation would clear-cut, drill for oil, mine for metals, and finally sell off to another corporation to dump garbage onto. Now we could intervene by regulating the corporation, requiring them to plant trees where they’ve cut one down, pay taxes for every ton of carbon they emit, and going back to our analogy of warring parties, we would introduce a referee into the wargames of capitalism.

But there are other options to consider. A government or community could stop the corporations from being able to purchase the forest in the first place. The workers of the corporation could take over production from the CEO and run the corporation in a way that benefits the local community and local environment. Just as diverse as we humans are, so too are the creative ways we can organize ourselves to create a more sustainable future.

“The assumption that what currently exists must necessarily exist is the acid that corrodes all visionary thinking.” —Bookchin

Ostrom, who debunked the tragedy of the commons, was a strong advocate for polycentricity, the notion that complex problems require a diverse set of solutions—that sustainable resource management requires a bottom-up approach and that communities must decide how to address these issues themselves. In other words, there is no one solution, and we must embrace a diversity of tactics. This is why, according to Ostrom in a 2017 interview with Big Think, “Any top-down government, whether on the right or the left, is unlikely to be able to solve many of the problems of resource sustainability in the world.”

The late radical social ecologist Murray Bookchin theorized how diverse communities, utilizing diverse tactics, could work together based on shared principles of sustainability, direct democracy, and equality. He coined this “communalism”—and many theorists and activists have further developed these theories and put them into practice. At its core, communalism is about bringing people together into assemblies to discuss the short-term and long-term challenges they face, and democratically decide on how to best address these challenges. This is how successful commons are regulated and maintained via community participation and shared interests, and how our future atmosphere must be maintained. That is, once we as a society recognize our atmosphere as a vital component of our commonly inhabited planet. 

“Partial measures are far from sufficient, and approaches to renewable energy development that merely replicate capitalist forms may likely turn out to be a dead end. However, the cumulative impact of [communal] municipal efforts to challenge entrenched interests and actualize living alternatives – combined with coherent revolutionary visions, organizations, and strategies towards a radically transformed society- could perhaps be enough to fend off a dystopian future of deprivation and authoritarianism.” —Brian Tokar

Via Common Dreams. This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News with permission or license.

Video: Wet Wedding: Couple marry despite flooded church as heavy rains batter Philippines

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The Philippines has recently experienced heavy rains and forceful winds due to a southwest monsoon enhanced by nearby tropical storm ‘Yagi.’ On Saturday a …

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Socialized medicine — will lead to fewer funerals!

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American Mirror
August 10, 2018

America’s new socialist sweetheart Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez seems to think single-payer “Medicare for All” will extend the life expectancy in the U.S., and somehow save taxpayers lots of money.

Or she might be saying that under her vision of universal healthcare people would no longer have to pay for funerals.

Some estimate socialized medicine could cost more than $30 trillion, and Ocasio-Cortez appeared on CNN’s Cuomo Prime Time to defend the staggering expense with a confusing ramble that only she can truly understand.

Host Chris Cuomo pressed Ocasio-Cortez on the “sticker shock,” and the 28-year-old presumed Congresswoman-elect attempted to flip the question into one about the costs of the current system.

“The thing that we need to realize is people talk about the sticker shock of Medicare for All, they do not talk about the sticker shock of the cost of our existing system,” Ocasio-Cortez said.

“In a Koch Brothers-funded study … it shows that Medicare for All is much more, is much cheaper than the current system that we pay right now,” she said, adding that monthly insurance premiums paid by Americans is a “tax” to be tabulated into the equation, among other things.

  • A d v e r t i s e m e n t

“And so that while it may not seem like we pay that tax on April 15th, we pay it every single month or we do pay at tax season if we don’t buy these plans off of the exchange,” Ocasio-Cortez said.

“So we’re paying for this system, … Americans have the sticker shock of healthcare as it is, and we’re also not talking about why aren’t we incorporating the cost of all the funeral expenses of those who died because they can’t afford access to healthcare,” she continued.

“That is part of the cost of our system. Why don’t we talk about reduced productivity because of people who need to go on disability, because of people…

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The Russians are coming… to hit Florida’s midterms, Democratic senator claims — RT US News

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Florida election officials say they have “zero information” about a threat of Russian hacking in the midterm election, after Senator Bill Nelson claimed the Ruskies have already penetrated the election systems of some counties.

Nelson, the lone statewide elected Democrat in Republican-dominated Florida, is facing a tough electoral battle against Governor Rick Scott, who is term-limited and wants to take Nelson’s seat in the US Senate come November. This week the incumbent senator added some spycraft thrills to the race by claiming that the Russians were not only an ever-lurking threat to democracy in the US and Florida, but actually have already penetrated the state election infrastructure.

“They have already penetrated certain counties in the state and they now have free rein to move about,” Nelson told the Tampa Bay Times before a campaign event in Tampa. He made a similar claim a day earlier in Tallahassee but declined to elaborate, stating that the information was classified.

Nelson and Florida’s other senator, Marco Rubio, wrote a letter to the 67 county election supervisors, warning about the cyber-threat to the midterms and advising that security be ramped up. Speaking to the newspaper on Wednesday, Nelson said they penned the letter on request of the leadership of the Senate Intelligence Committee, which reportedly said that “the Russians are in their records.”

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White House National Security Advisor John Bolton, DNI Dan Coats, FBI Director Christopher Wray, DHS Secretary Kristjen Nielsen and NSA Director General Paul Nakasone © Carlos Barria

Rubio raised the same issue in late May in a private meeting with around eight to 10 election officials, but in less defined terms, Hillsborough Supervisor of Elections Craig Latimer told the newspaper. When asked which counties were targeted, Rubio “looked around the room and said, ‘I don’t believe it’s anybody here,'” Latimer said. Paul Lux, the president of a statewide election supervisors’ group, said Rubio’s warning was so vague that it was of no practical value.

Nelson said Russian hackers may cause chaos on Election Day by erasing people from the voter rolls. “That’s exactly what the Russians want to do. They want to sow chaos in our democratic institutions.” Senator Nelson, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services’ subcommittee on cybersecurity, previously urged the Pentagon to act on recommendations on cyber-deterrence.

Commenting on Nelson’s latest remarks, Sarah Revell, the spokesperson for the Florida Department of State, said it “received zero information from Senator Nelson or his staff that support his claims”.

“Additionally, the Department has received no information from the US Department of Homeland Security, the Federal Bureau of Investigation or the Florida Department of Law Enforcement that corroborates Senator Nelson’s statement and we have no evidence to support these claims,” she added.

Revell said that if the senator had any specific information about hacking threats, he should share it with state election officials.

Florida’s counties have been spending federal money on improving the cybersecurity of election infrastructure as well as taking advice from federal law enforcement agencies on how to better address the threat. The state’s reluctance to take the $19 million, which was only done in May, was a point of criticism of the governor’s office.

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Robert Mueller (FILE PHOTO) © Yuri Gripas

Pinellas County election officials said after Nelson’s assertion they immediately contacted the FBI, Homeland Security and other state and federal agencies in a futile attempt to find out more about it. “Our office has not seen any indication that we have had any penetration by any bad actions,” office spokesman Dustin Chase said.

A number of other large counties, including Pasco, Seminole, Broward, and Miami-Dade, have issued statements saying they are not aware of any breaches.

Meanwhile, the governor’s office sent a letter to the Senate Intelligence Committee, requesting clarification on the situation.

“Let me be clear, this is a very serious charge made in a public setting without any evidence, details or any prior communication to state or local election officials in Florida,” Secretary of State Ken Detzner wrote.

The claim that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election is the cornerstone of the current partisan rift in the country, with some Democrats claiming that candidate Donald Trump somehow colluded with the Kremlin to beat Hillary Clinton. Russia denies that any government-mandated interference took place.

There are no official US documents asserting that, if any meddling did in fact take place, it affected in any way the outcome of the vote. As of January 2018, 52 percent of registered Democrats believe that Russian hackers changed the vote tally, a conspiracy theory that is not backed by any evidence.

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Via RT. This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News with permission or license.

PressTV-Mattis denies he opposed Trump’s space force

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US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis has defended his boss President Donald Trump’s plans to create a Space Force, insisting that he never opposed the idea despite advising Congress against it.

US Vice President Mike Pence announced Thursday that the Pentagon was going to add a sixth branch to America’s military in order to fulfill Trump’s wish to achieve US dominance in space.

Mattis, who last year asked lawmakers to ditch all attempts to create a separate space service, told reporters on Sunday that he didn’t mean a space force was not necessary.

“I was not against setting up a Space Force,” he told reporters who accompanied him on a flight to Brazil to kick off his debut South America tour in his current position. “What I was against was rushing to do that before we could define the problem.”

This is while Mattis wrote in a letter to Representative Mike Turner, an Ohio Republican, last year that adding a separate space force…

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The Grand Irony of RussiaGate

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When the Soviet regime exiled Sakharov in 1980, everybody assumed the USSR was permanent and impregnable to collapse.

There are many ironies in the RussiaGate drama, but none greater than this: The U.S. becomes more like the former U.S.S.R. every day. Longtime correspondent Bart D. sketches out the irony:

I look at the US economy and what I see in actual everyday life is that corrupted capitalism has resulted in the same problems for average citizens as what crony communism did for the citizens of the USSR.

Poor consumer choice. Poor resource allocation. Poor quality consumer products. Poor environmental management/outcomes. Hyper-vigilance and hyper-control of Government over its people. Dodgy Utilities. The difference is that the Soviet Union had a better healthcare system than USA currently has and better housing availability for common people.

How’s the irony! Capitalism and Communism ultimately end up with similar outcomes and for the same reason: Cartel behaviours and cronyism.



Money and Work Unchained
Charles Hugh Smith
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Exactly. When the system is rigged to benefit insiders, cartels, cronies and elites at the expense of the many “outsiders,” the status quo must mask this reality with propaganda and Big Lies:
 that is, keep repeating the lie until people believe it due to its embrace by “experts” and authorities.

Case in point: inflation. The masses consuming the mainstream media apparently accept the Big Lie that inflation (i.e. loss of purchasing power of our money) is 2%, i.e. near zero.

But the reality is quite different: stagnant wages + soaring real-world inflation = lower standards of living, which is precisely what the bottom 80% of American…

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Sri Lankan unions sell out railway workers and call off strike

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Sri Lankan unions sell out railway workers and call off strike

By
W.A. Sunil

13 August 2018

Railway trade union leaders unilaterally shut down indefinite strike action yesterday after a morning meeting with Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena and members of a railway cabinet sub-committee. None of the workers’ demands were granted and no mass meetings called to discuss the betrayal.

Desperate to end all industrial action the rail union leaders, like the government itself, feared that the strike could escalate out of control, drawing in other sections of the working class to challenge Colombo’s social austerity and cost-cutting privatisation agenda.

The hurriedly convened Sunday morning meeting was held at Sirisena’s private residence in Polonnaruwa, his traditional parliamentary constituency.

Speaking to journalists outside Sirisena’s residence after the meeting, rail union leaders repeated their usual pathetic claims: “The president has promised to provide solutions to our demands.” These lines that have been used at least half a dozen times in the last few years in order to shut down strike action by railway workers.

Government minister and spokesman for the cabinet sub-committee Sarath Amunugama, however, detailed the terms agreed by the unions. The sellout deal includes the following:

1) Railway, health and education sectors will be transformed into closed services with concrete proposals for these changes to be presented to the next cabinet meeting.

2) There should be no new recruits and examinations held in the railways until the next discussion between the two parties.

3) Matters regarding administrative and salary issues of railway officers are to be discussed with the representatives of the relevant trade unions.

4) No disciplinary action…

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Video: 3, 2, 1… Moment Parker Solar Probe launched on mission to ‘touch the sun’

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US space agency NASA successfully sent off its unmanned Parker Solar Probe into orbit with the aim of ‘touching the sun’. It was launched onboard a Delta-IV …

Via Youtube

Institutionalizing Intolerance: Bullies Win, Freedom Suffers When We Can’t Agree to Disagree

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by John W. Whitehead / August 12th, 2018

Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech.
― Benjamin Franklin

What a mess.

As America has become ever more polarized, and those polarized factions have become more militant and less inclined to listen to—or even allow for the existence of—other viewpoints, we are fast becoming a nation of people who just can’t get along.

Here’s the thing: if Americans don’t learn how to get along—at the very least, agreeing to disagree and respecting each other’s right to subscribe to beliefs and opinions that may be offensive, hateful, intolerant or merely different—then we’re going to soon find that we have no rights whatsoever (to speak, assemble, agree, disagree, protest, opt in, opt out, or forge our own paths as individuals).

In such an environment, when we can’t agree to disagree, the bullies (on both sides) win and freedom suffers.

Intolerance, once the domain of the politically correct and self-righteous, has been institutionalized, normalized and politicized.

Even those who dare to defend speech that may be unpopular or hateful as a constitutional right are now accused of “weaponizing the First Amendment.”

On college campuses across the country, speakers whose views are deemed “offensive” to some of the student body are having their invitations recalled or cancelled, being shouted down by hecklers, or forced to hire costly security details. As The…

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Video: Easter Island people want return of their sacred statue, stolen by imperial Brits

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The Rapa Nui people of Easter Island are asking the British Museum to return one of the island’s sacred Moai statues, stolen 150 years ago by British sailors.

Via Youtube

Prison Planet.com » China fires SIX WARNINGS to US Navy in South China Sea ‘This is China…LEAVE IMMEDIATELY’

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UK Express
August 10, 2018

The US Navy P-8A Poseidon jet was flying at 16,500 feet to get a view of low-lying coral reefs that have been turned into garrisons with five-storey buildings, large radar installations, power plants and runways sturdy enough to carry large military aircraft.

During the flight that was giving journalists from CNN a rare look at the islands, the crew was warned six times by the Chinese military to get out of their territory.

A voice said: “US military aircraft, this is China … leave immediately and keep out to avoid any misunderstanding.”

Each time the aircraft was challenged by the Chinese military, the US Navy crew’s response was the same.

The repsonse was: “I am a sovereign immune United States naval aircraft conducting lawful military activities beyond the national airspace of any coastal state.

“In exercising these rights as guaranteed by international law, I am operating with due regard for the rights and duties of all states.”

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This article was posted: Friday, August 10, 2018 at 6:17 am






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Toxic 9/11 dust & smoke linked to nearly 10,000 cancer cases in New York — RT US News

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Almost 10,000 people have a cancer diagnosis that is somehow linked to breathing in hazardous particles following the September 11 Twin Tower bombings in New York City, the Post has learned.

Inhaling particles from the leaked jet fuel, asbestos, cement dust and glass shards following the destruction of the World Trade Center has led to cancer proliferation among at least 9,795 first responders and other New Yorkers, the federal World Trade Center Health Program revealed to the New York Post.

The numbers continue to grow exponentially ever since the program at Mount Sinai Hospital kicked off in 2013. In 2015 the number of 9/11 cancer-linked patients stood at 3,204 while the next year it jumped to 8,188.

“We get these referrals 15 to 20 times a week,” said Dr. Michael Crane, medical director of the WTC Health Program, noting that 17 years following the tragedy older people tend to turn for medical help more often. “In an aging population, you’re going to see a rising cancer rate, no matter what.”

15 years after 9/11: Emergency responders and civilians turning up with record rates of cancer

Since the tragedy, more than 1,700 affected persons have died, including 420 of those stricken with cancer, officials told the publication. First responders tend to suffer from thyroid cancer and skin melanoma and also face a higher risk of bladder cancer. The rest of New Yorkers exposed to toxic dust exhibit higher-than-normal rates of breast cancer and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Leukemia and other blood-cell disorders have also been noted to be on the rise, Crane said.

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Via RT. This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News with permission or license.

PressTV-Trump engages in racism ‘constantly’: Pelosi

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US House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi has said that President Donald Trump engages in racism “constantly,” after Trump rejected “all types of racism and acts of violence.”

Pelosi told MSNBC on Sunday that she believes Trump is afraid of her and Representative Maxine Waters (D-California), who was repeatedly attacked by the president as being a “low IQ” person.

“He’s afraid of the women who are going to be coming into Congress,” she said. “He talks about there’s no place for racism and then he speaks that way, it’s really disgraceful.”

“It’s disrespectful to Maxine, to women, of course to minorities,” she added.

Ahead of the first anniversary of the violent white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Trump tweeted on Saturday morning, “We must come together as a nation. I condemn all types of racism and acts of violence. Peace to ALL Americans!”

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Video: Not black enough? S. African party calls for banning whites and foreigners from becoming members

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In the wake of government plans to change the constitution and strip white farmers of their land, some South African politicians are looking for more black …

Via Youtube

Want to Create More Jobs? Reduce Fossil Fuel Use.

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We’ve all heard claims that fossil fuels such as coal, oil, and gas are major job creators. President Trump says so all the time.

But it turns out that developing and installing the technology to reduce fossil fuel use — known in the industry as “energy efficiency” — creates many more jobs than fossil fuels.

Energy efficiency jobs in the United States totaled 2.18 million in 2016, more than double the total of fossil fuel production and fossil-fuel based electricity generation combined.

They’re growing at a much faster rate, too. From 2015 to 2016, there was 53 percent employment growth in advanced and recycled building materials, and 59 percent employment growth in Energy Star appliances. Compare that to just 9 percent growth in fossil fuel-based electricity generation.

These energy efficiency jobs are much cheaper to create. According to an academic study, every $1 million invested in energy efficiency creates 12 jobs, compared to just 4 or 5 for fossil fuel jobs.

These are good, well-paying jobs. For example, electricians have a median hourly pay of $26, and the corresponding numbers for heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning (HVAC) workers and carpenters are $22.64 and $21.71, respectively. (Compare that to the median hourly pay for all US workers, $18.12.)

These jobs are more likely to be unionized, too. And they’re a great way to lift up people who’ve been left out of the fossil fuel economy.

So it’s no wonder that many states are working to grow their share of efficiency jobs, especially for traditionally excluded populations such as people of color and low-income people. I looked at a bunch of inspiring examples in a new report for the Institute for Policy Studies out this week.

For example, Illinois has passed legislation requiring larger utilities to create renewable energy and energy efficiency job training programs, especially for people from economically…

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If the Gaza Blockade is Bad, Does That Make Hamas Good?

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Of what use are unrealized human rights to Gazan Palestinians – and what happens when an aspirational right confronts the hard reality of Hamas?

I.

We, expressing outrage and support for the people of Gaza from a distance, can refer to Israel’s illegal blockade, settler colonialism, apartheid or the right to armed resistance. These are strategies as well as narratives, each leading to actions.  Change will require a range of external pressures – the more the better.

I choose the language of human rights, after many years of professional skepticism about its practical benefit.  Working in communities affected by war, I believed that people hadrights, but I didn’t see theoretical rights doing them much good.  I still question the rights industry, which so easily becomes one more exercise of Northern expertise.  Yet I believe that it is imperative to insist upon, and return every argument to, the human rights of Gazan Palestinians.

To use this language is to say that every human is born with equal and inalienable rights, as outlined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (both 1966).  These agreements are the foundations of international human rights law, which places the value of human lives at the center of the frame.

Very nice – but what good is a list of rights, while the IDF is killing protestors?

In Afghanistan…

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Video: ‘Law makes Israel officially chauvinistic state’ vs ‘Israel most vibrant democracy in Middle East’

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The Israeli Prime Minister is digging in, over another large-scale protest in Tel Aviv against the recently-passed ‘Nation State Law’ – which Arab Israelis claim …

Via Youtube

Prison Planet.com » Dutch anti-migrant politician takes own life after revealing she was raped by ‘Muslim gang’

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RT
August 10, 2018

A city councilor in The Hague and member of the anti-immigrant Freedom Party has taken her own life, hours after posting a video on Facebook in which she claimed she was gang-raped by Muslims as part of an intimidation campaign.

Willie Dille, 53, reportedly ended her own life on Wednesday, shortly after sharing a video on social media in which she claimed to have been kidnapped and raped by a Muslim gang over a year ago.

Dille served as an MP for the anti-immigrant Freedom Party from 2010-2012 before returning to her seat on The Hague city council. The party’s leader, Geert Wilders, is an outspoken critic of Islam. The suicide was confirmed by local Freedom Party leader Karen Gerbrands who said Dille “could no longer bear what had happened to her and the reactions she had had.”

Appearing distressed and looking around nervously as she spoke, Dille said in the video that the gang demanded her silence during council debates and that she had recently received a death threat warning that “we will soon cut your throat and let you bleed to death.”

“I just want the world to know the truth. 15 March 2017 I was kidnapped, raped and assaulted by a group of Muslims because they wanted me to keep quiet in the Hague city council,” she said in the video. March 15th last year was the day of the parliamentary elections. “After it happened, I did not tell anyone, I just did my debates the next day.”

She added that she was leaving politics because she was afraid that someone might hurt her children. “I cannot live with that. They don’t like women at all. They don’t like me at all,” she said. “That’s why I decided to stop.”

The video was removed shortly after it was posted online.

A police spokesperson told local media on Thursday afternoon that Dille had approached the police about the alleged attack but never filed a formal complaint.

“We have had…

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New Mexico captors come from prominent imam family — RT US News

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The father of three adults arrested at a compound where kids reportedly learned how to shoot up schools says he led cops to the site. He said his children’s behavior “sounds crazy,” but admitted they “cut ties” with him last year.

Imam Siraj Wahhaj, who presides over a mosque in Brooklyn, New York, told reporters on Thursday that he is the father of three of the suspects arrested at the New Mexico compound. He also said he is the father-in-law of the two other suspects, and that all of the 11 children found at the site are his grandchildren.

The imam, the first Muslim to offer an opening prayer before the US House of Representatives, said that he helped lead authorities to the compound, after his daughter sent a message to a family friend on Facebook.

“She said, ‘We need some food, we’re starving,'” the imam said. His daughter then provided a location to send food, and the family turned that address over to police.

“That’s why the police came in,” he said, referring to the August 3 raid which led to the discovery of 11 malnourished children living in filth and squalor, and the remains of a young boy. The imam says those remains belong to his grandson, though authorities have yet to confirm that claim.

The imam said that his children disappeared in December 2017 and quickly “cut ties, not only with me, with their brothers and their sisters and their mother.” He said the family has had “no direct contact with any of them” since then.

Following their disappearance, the imam and other family members have been working closely with local law enforcement and the FBI in order to track his children down, he said.

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Siraj ibn Wahhaj’s compound in New Mexico © Taos County Sheriff's Office

“We have been meeting with law enforcement since day one,” Wahhaj said.

The imam said that the notion of his children being involved in extremist activities “doesn’t sound like them” and “sounds crazy,” but stated that he is refraining from making any judgments “because we just don’t know.”

He did, however, admit that the behavior of his son, Siraj Ibn Wahhaj, could at times be described as “extreme,” and referred to him as being high-strung.

The imam, born and raised in Brooklyn, turned to Islam when he joined the controversial Nation of Islam movement. But in the 1970s, he turned to more orthodox Islam and gradually became a prominent member of the community. He gained NYPD praise for helping with an anti-drug campaign in the late 1980s.

He is also named on a list of people who “may be alleged as co-conspirators” in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing in New York, according to court documents released by prosecutors Wednesday. Several people linked to the attack reportedly attended his mosque at the time, and that very mosque has also attracted speakers who have been described as radical.

Among the imam’s biggest fans is Islamic activist Linda Sarsour, who helped organize the Women’s March in Washington. She has praised the cleric on her Twitter account dating as far back as at least 2011, and called him a “mentor” at an Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) conference last year. 

All five adults arrested on August 3 are currently being held without bond, and an investigation is ongoing into what exactly happened at the New Mexico compound, where 16 people were living in what Taos County Sheriff Jerry Hogrefe called the “saddest living conditions and poverty I have seen.” Part of that investigation is to determine whether the group had sinister plans, after one of the children told authorities that he was taught how to file a rifle in preparation for a school shooting.

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Via RT. This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News with permission or license.

Missourians See ‘Right-to-Work’ for What It Is: An Assault on Workers

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By a two-to-one margin, Missouri voters voted down a so-called “right-to-work” (RTW) law on Tuesday. This is great news for working Missourians and the unions that represent them, as well as anyone whose living depends on the money Missourians spend in their local economy.

Despite the name, RTW laws do not confer the right to employment on anyone; nor do they make it so you can’t be required to join a union—the law already says that no one can be made to join a union as a condition of employment.

Instead, RTW laws prevent unions from charging nonmembers their fair share for the services unions are required to provide—services like bargaining for higher wages and representing workers when they have grievances against their employer.

The law says that unions must represent everyone in a bargaining unit, whether or not they are union members. RTW laws undermine unions’ finances by preventing them from requiring that all of the workers who benefit from this representation pay their fair share of the cost.

By exposing unions to this “free rider” problem—and thereby kneecapping their ability to effectively finance their operations—RTW laws jeopardize unions’ ability to give workers a meaningful voice in the workplace.

Across the country, large sums of money have been spent backing RTW bills, with corporate lobbyists claiming that RTW will create jobs and boosts wages by attracting companies to the state.

Almost all of Missouri’s neighbors have gone RTW, and while there has been no corresponding increase in business investment or employment, unions are weaker and wages are lower, which is exactly what RTW proponents hope to achieve.

Only 5.2 percent of private sector workers in RTW states are union members or are covered by a union contract, compared with 10.2 percent in non-RTW states. Based on the experience of its neighbors, we would expect that 60,000 fewer Missourians would be covered by a union contract if RTW had passed.

Given that RTW hurts unions, it’s not surprising that wages are lower in RTW states. After accounting for cost of living, demographics, industry and workers’ education and experience, workers in RTW states earn 3.1 percent less than their non-RTW peers.

This is, of course, the whole point of RTW—to weaken unions and lower wages for working people. And it’s not just union members who are hurt; unions raise wages for working people across the board by setting a standard that nonunion employers must meet to attract and retain qualified workers. When unions decline, all working people lose.

For the past four decades, the wages of typical workers have been all but stagnant, while the gains of a growing economy have gone almost entirely to the top few percent. This growing inequality is not an accident.

It is the result of a series of intentional policy decisions—from RTW and laws like Wisconsin’s Act 10 that weaken unions and undercut collective bargaining, to the eroding value of the minimum wage and the overtime threshold—designed to dilute workers’ power in the labor market and strengthen the hand of businesses and corporations.

Thankfully, for the working people of Missouri, voters saw through the corporate propaganda and rejected this assault on workers. When given the choice, voters consistently choose to support and empower working people.

That’s why RTW failed in Missouri, why striking teachers in West Virginia and Oklahoma found broad support and why everything from minimum wage increases to paid sick leave and fair scheduling laws are winning at the ballot box.

Progressive lawmakers should not shy away from these issues. Working people and the labor movement have long been a source of progressive political power, and we should look for ways to rebuild that power.

By rejecting Proposition A so resoundingly, Missourians have struck a much needed blow for working people. Perhaps, after a decades-long assault that culminated in the Supreme Court’s decision in Janus v. AFSCME, Tuesday’s vote will be the turning of the tides. Working people have been kept down for far too long.

Via Common Dreams. This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News with permission or license.

PressTV-Counter-protesters outnumber white nationalists in DC

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Various groups of counter-protesters streamed into the streets of Washington DC near the White House with one common message: White nationalists are not welcome in the US capital.

Around 20 demonstrators headed to a white nationalist rally walked through the heart of Washington on Sunday, cordoned by rows of police officers and outnumbered by hundreds of counter-protesters who taunted them.

Protesters, many of whom dressed in all-black and with covered faces, chanted anti-Nazi slogans and waved signs as they marched towards Lafayette Square to protest the rally.

The “Unite the Right 2” event organized to coincide with the anniversary of last year’s racially charged violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, took place in Lafayette Square, across from the White House and ended early due to rain.

There was an enormous police presence to keep both sides apart and avoid the street brawls that broke out last year in downtown…

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The New World Order Is At Risk

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Zero Hedge
August 10, 2018

Over the past three years, an unexpected voice of caution has emerged from one of the most legendary families in finance: Lord Jacob Rothschild. 

Lord Jacob Rothschild

Readers may recall that as part of the RIT Capital Partners 2014 annual report commentary, the scion of Rothschild family warned that “the geopolitical situation is most dangerous since WWII.” One year later, Jacob Rothschild again warned about the outcome of “what is surely the greatest experiment in monetary policy in the history of the world“, and then again in August 2017 he cautioned that “share prices have in many cases risen to unprecedented levels at a time when economic growth is by no means assured.”

Little did he know that they were only going to keep rising, but related to that, he also made another warning which the market has so far blissfully ignored:

The period of monetary accommodation may well be coming to an end. Geopolitical problems remain widespread and are proving increasingly difficult to resolve.

Fast forward to today when in the latest half-year commentary from RIT Capital Partners, Lord Rothschild has made his latest warning to date, this time focusing on the global economic system that was established after WWII, and which he believes is now in jeopardy.

The billionaire banker pointed to the US-China trade war and the Eurozone crisis as the key problems putting economic order at risk, and the lack of a “common approach” – a reference to the gradual unwind of globalization in the wake of President Trump – that has made “co-operation today much more difficult”:

“In 9/11 and in the 2008 financial crisis, the powers of the world worked together with a common approach. Co-operation today is proving much more difficult. This puts at risk the post-war economic and security order.”

It wasn’t clear if he was referring to the post-war fiat standard…

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Blue light emitted from smartphones and laptops accelerates blindness – study — RT US News

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Blue light emitted from smartphone and laptop screens speeds up blindness by transforming vital molecules in the eye’s retina into cell killers, according to new research.

The study, carried out by optical chemistry researchers at the University of Toledo, explains how exposure to blue light can cause age-related macular degeneration – one of the leading worldwide causes of blindness.

“It’s no secret that blue light harms our vision by damaging the eye’s retina. Our experiments explain how this happens, and we hope this leads to therapies that slow macular degeneration, such as a new kind of eye drop,” study co-author Ajith Karunarathne said.

Macular degeneration occurs when photoreceptor cells in the retina die – these cells need molecules called retinal in order to sense light and trigger signals to the brain.

During lab experiments, the team found that blue light exposure causes retinal to trigger reactions that generate poisonous chemical molecules in photoreceptor cells.

“It’s toxic. If you shine blue light on retinal, the retinal kills photoreceptor cells as the signaling molecule on the membrane dissolves,” study co-author Kasun Ratnayake said.

The cells do not regenerate, so “when they’re dead, they’re dead for good,” Ratnayake added.

The team introduced retinal molecules to other cell types in the body, such as cancer cells, heart cells and neurons to establish if it could kill other cell types.

READ MORE: WATCH the mesmerizing dance of chromosomes inside our cells (VIDEO)

“The retinal-generated toxicity by blue light is universal. It can kill any cell type,” Karunarathne said. Blue light alone or retinal without blue light had no effect on cells, however.

The lab currently is measuring light coming from television, cell phone and tablet screens to get a better grasp of how the cells in the eyes respond to everyday blue light exposure.

Details of the research have been published in Scientific Reports.

Via RT. This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News with permission or license.

PressTV-Maduro permits FBI agents Venezuela entry

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Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has announced that he will permit FBI agents to aid in the investigation into the recent assassination attempt against him.

If Washington confirms “the offer for the FBI to investigate links in Florida with the assassination plan… I would agree for the FBI to come here,” said Maduro on Sunday.

Following the attack Maduro blamed “terrorist cells” in Florida led by a man called Osman Delgado Tabosky.

Maduro’s announcement came several days after Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza said that the IS charge d’affairs in Caracas, James Story, had said is government was willing to “cooperate” in the investigation failed assassination.   

On Friday, Venezuela called on the International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol) to arrest an opposition legislator exiled in Colombia and accused of involvement in an apparent assassination attempt on Maduro.

The Venezuelan government’s request for an Interpol red…

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Authoritarian Revocations: Australia, Terrorism and Citizenship

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Contrary to any popular perceptions of Australia’s legal system, a dislike of rights reigns with pious conviction on both sides of the political aisle.  Rights are the stuff of nonsense and nuisance, revocable for those deemed undesirable. The Australian constitution, a heavily dull document, remains silent on many important liberties; the common law is relied upon to fill in gaps (think of that conjuration known as the implied constitutional right to freedom of communication on political subjects). Parliament, mystically wise, is meant to be the grand guardian.

In terms of citizenship, Australia’s parliament has been rather cavalier on the idea of citizenship, exploiting the absence of any specific reference to the term in the arid document that grants it legislative powers.  In 2015, national security considerations became the basis for legislation stripping individuals of citizenship in certain instances where terrorism was an issue.  While citizenship can be lost in certain instances common to other countries, the arbitrary revocation of citizenship via executive fiat is possible under the Citizenship Act 2007 (Cth).

The relevant minister, goes the wording of s. 35A, “may determine in writing that a person ceases to be an Australian citizen” in various instances involving convictions for certain offences, including terrorism.  But convictions might not be necessary; the minister might deem it against the public interest for the person to remain an…

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More deaths and maiming of Palestinians amid latest “ceasefire”

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More deaths and maiming of Palestinians amid latest “ceasefire”

By
Jean Shaoul

11 August 2018

Israeli military forces killed two Palestinian paramedics and wounded at least 307 more, 131 of whom needed hospital treatment, during protests Friday in the Gaza Strip.

The protests were held under the banner of the Great March of Return, as they have been over the last four months demanding the Palestinians’ right of return to their homes in Israel from which they or their families were driven out during the 1948-49 and 1967 wars.

The Palestinian Ministry of Health named the two people who were killed as Abdullah al-Qatiti, 26, and Saeed Aloul, 55. It brings to more than 160 the number of Gazans killed since March 30. Tens of thousands more have been injured.

The killings came just hours after Israeli attacks on the besieged Palestinian enclave stopped late Thursday night. This was widely described as a de facto ceasefire between the Hamas-led authorities in Gaza and Israel, with an official Israeli statement issued that “quiet will be met with quiet.” 

However, as well as the killing and maiming of protesters yesterday an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) tank attacked what was described as a Hamas position in the northern Gaza Strip. A senior Israeli diplomatic official insisted on the national news bulletin Hadashot that Hamas’s statement that Jerusalem had agreed to a truce was a lie. A senior defense official was cited by the Times of Israelstating that the army did not see the confrontation as over, implying that the IDF “did not see itself obligated to a truce.”

According to Channel 10 news, the IDF was considering a short sharp operation on Gaza City to exert the maximum pressure on the Hamas leadership.

This is the fourth such “ceasefire” and comes…

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Prison Planet.com » “War In Front Of Me” – New Chinese Military Video Shows Off Range Of Advanced Weaponry

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Zero Hedge
August 10, 2018

A new video produced by China’s military that features the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) showing off a wide range of the country’s latest military technology has gone viral after its publication to social media on August 1st, the day China commemorated ‘Army Day’.

The just over two-minute video, called “I am a Chinese soldier” is an over the top patriotic tribute emphasizing a combination of personal sacrifice, loyalty, and a sense of esprit de corps in belonging to an elite, modernized military.

The National Interest has provided a translation of the popular Chinese language footage, which is described as follows:

The video is brimful with the grandiosity that is now associated with the military under Xi Jinping: a lot of ammunition is fired, and the very latest in China’s military technology — combat aircraft, a carrier battle group, long-range ballistic missiles, submarines and armored vehicles — is on full, proud, active display.

The video further appeals to a masculine sense of duty and sacrificial hardship as the there’s a series of scenes in the first half depicting men saying tearful goodbyes to their children and spouses, after which infantry soldiers give fierce battle cries while waving the communist national flag, interspersed with overhead shots of huge intercontinental ballistic missiles a silo and an aircraft carrier battle group.

The narration includes the lines: “Peace behind me, war in front of me. Pick up the steel gun, we must let go of the children.”

The National Interest notes the masculine and patriotic appeal of the video:

As some watchers have observed, the world depicted in this video is very much a man’s world — there isn’t a single female soldier; the few women who appear are mothers and spouses, tearfully enduring, no doubt with the full patriotism that is expected of them by the Chinese…

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DCCC hires ‘battle station organizers’ to shape midterm elections public debate — RT US News

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The Democratic Party in the US is making an effort to use social media in its favor ahead of midterms, using those tactics it claimed ‘Russian trolls’ used during the 2016 elections, leading the party to lose.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has internal software that identifies suspected bots on Twitter, part of what The Washington Post reports is its response to fears of potential Russian influence in the midterm elections.

The committee started using the software a few months ago as part of an aggressive strategy to shape political conversations online. It has already flagged no less than 10 accounts to Twitter, resulting in their shutdown.

The DCCC’s strategy is to drive public discussion on social media platforms. It has hired dozens of social media specialists to fight online and has 43 “battle station organizers” who have been dispatched to districts across the country to build grassroot efforts to spread pro-Democratic Party messaging and conduct attacks on Republicans in local social media groups and communities.

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White House National Security Advisor John Bolton, DNI Dan Coats, FBI Director Christopher Wray, DHS Secretary Kristjen Nielsen and NSA Director General Paul Nakasone © Carlos Barria

The DCCC is paying organizers to recruit social media activists who will spread content on Facebook groups in the hope they will go viral, the Post reports.

“This is completely different from what we have done in past cycles,” DCCC executive director Dan Sena said.

While the deployment of ‘battle station organizers’ may be new, the strategy echoes the  Correct the Record super PAC’s efforts in the last election, which sought to confront social media users who were posting negatively about Hillary Clinton. Created by political operative and longtime Clinton ally David Brock, it also paid for negative stories about Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump.

The new DCCC software lets staff create reports for different districts which look at candidates’ followers or hashtag users to see how likely it is that they are automated accounts. The software can’t do the same on Facebook, but is monitoring activity there too.  

After the defeat of the democratic party contender Hillary Clinton in 2016, the party blamed the loss on social media whose power they seem to have underestimated and on Russian meddling, for which the intelligence community has yet to provide evidence. However American security chiefs have been beating Russian drums again ahead of midterms, warning of attacks on democracy that they admitted hadn’t happened but are “just a click away.” 

Like this story? Share it with a friend!

Via RT. This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News with permission or license.

Is There Enough of America Left

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As many readers of this website have noticed, the United States has lost its character and become a dysfunctional society. In place of a largely homogeneous population once united in veneration of the Constitution, there exists today massive diversity which Identity Politics has used to disunite the population into separate interest groups.

No clause or article of the Constitution, nor the Bill of Rights, is safe. The George W. Bush and Obama regimes destroyed two of the most important protections of civil liberty—habeas corpus and due process. Bush declared indefinite imprisonment on suspicion alone without evidence or trial. Obama declared execution of US citizens on accusation alone without due process. The Justice (sic) Department wrote legal memos justifying torture, thus destroying the constitutional protection against self-incrimination. One of the authors of the memos is now a professor of law at UC Berkeley. The other is now a federal judge, indications that respect for the Constitution and enforcement of US and international laws against torture is fading in law schools and the federal judiciary.

A third important protection of civil liberty—freedom of speech which is necessary for the discovery of truth and to serve justice—is being destroyed. Apple, Google/Facebook, Twitter, Spotify, university speech codes, legislation against protesting Israel’s atrocities against Palestinians, and the presstitute media that has been turned into a propaganda organ in behalf of vested interests are all actively involved in protecting lies against truth.

Glenn Greenwald reported that “the single greatest threat to free speech in the West — and in the U.S. — is the coordinated, growing campaign to outlaw and punish those…

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Trump Administration Delays Texas “Tent City” for Migrant Children Closure Again

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The Trump administration is delaying closure of a Texas “tent city” that houses migrant boys who crossed the US-Mexico border without a parent or were separated from their families under the president’s cruel “zero tolerance” policy, according to a CBS News report published early Saturday.

Located at the Tornillo Port of Entry south of El Paso, the facility was opened June 14 because of overcrowded shelters and was initially set to close a month later. However, with hundreds of children still separated from their parents — thanks to the administration’s immigration policies and prolonged failure to reunite families by a federal court’s July 26 deadline — its closure has been repeatedly delayed.

After the first delay, officials had planned to close down the facility this weekend, but the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) — which contracted the nonprofit that runs the tent city — said Friday that now it won’t close until at least September.

On Friday, Texas lawmakers toured the facility — which currently houses about 170 children — with members of the Mexican American Legislative Caucus. Democratic state Reps. Ina Minjarez and Diego Bernal told the San Antonio Express-News that the shutdown delay is due to a backlog of background checks and fingerprints.

“All of them have places they could go, but for the federal government dragging their feet in returning requests for background checks,” said Bernal.

“Why are they not doing their due diligence to get these expedited, so that these kids can leave this facility and be with their family?” asked Minjarez.

A spokesperson for HHS told CBS:

HHS’ Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) is continuously monitoring bed capacity available to provide shelter for minors who arrive at the US border unaccompanied and are referred to HHS for care by immigration officials, as well as the information received from interagency…

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Notes From a Russian American

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I had just finished exercising and went to the sauna. The gym I go to is a modern facility with new equipment and is very popular in our city.

My favorite parts are the sauna and the steamer. Both remind me of my old country – Russia. Though, to be politically and geographically correct – I never lived in Russia: I was born and raised in one of the fifteen republics of the former USSR – the republic of Kazakhstan.

So, I am a Russian from Kazakhstan. It’s kind of confusing for Americans, and when twenty-six years ago my American wife brought me here, the customs official gave me an alien card where my nationality was stated not Russian but Kazakh. My friends make fun of me, because Russians and Kazakhs are like apples and oranges. We look different…

In 1992, when I arrived in America, the relationship between the two cold war rivals was excellent: Americans traveled to Russia, opening McDonalds, KFC’s, Burger Kings, and other businesses, and Russians were opening not only their hearts but even the secrets of the overthrown KGB. Millions of Russians and Americans enjoyed such a “romance” between the two most powerful nuclear countries in the world.

Not anymore! Every morning I wake up to the words, “Russia is terrible,” and go to sleep with the humiliating jokes of the “night-show-clowns” about “the dictator” Putin and “barbaric” Russians, whose 13 hackers changed the electoral minds of millions…

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More “Whitey on the Moon”

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Trump and Pence want to spend $8 billion to establish a new branch of the U.S. armed forces, the Space Force.

I have enormous respect of the U.S. military. My father was a 20-year man. Two of my uncles served in WWII. We think an ancestor on the McIlwee side, spelling it Mucklewee, served in the Revolutionary War. 

But, the U.S. military was intended by the Founding Fathers to be an institution for self-defense. Most of them thought a standing army would kill democracy. Since the end of WWII just such a standing military has been set up and is now gobbling up over $700 billion a year. Actually, the true amount of military-related expenses is over $1 trillion a year. War-fighters are an ever shrinking part of this military.

And here’s the secret of the way the scam works. A good half of the Pentagon budget is given back out to military contractors. It is, in essence, corporate welfare on a huge scale. Officers who retire often form provision companies on getting out. They know what their former colleagues need and want, and their former colleagues will take the call when they make the offer. The retirees with their new companies take the profits.

Many of the former officers you see interviewed on CNN and other cable news shows are actually making money off wars even as the opine on them, and despite print press exposes, CNN et al. have never apologized for the practice, never identified biased guests, and never acknowledged it is happening.

The U.S. military doesn’t need to be nearly so large if it is a defense force and if it were run like a public sector corporation (think Reneault) instead of as a way to enrich cronies. Nor does “defense” spending create many jobs, and the ones it creates are way more expensive to the public than most others.

The U.S. military isn’t very good at counter-terrorism (see: Afghanistan), and where it is, it doesn’t need those sort of resources. ISIL was defeated by the Iraqi military, Shiite militias, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards with the support of 6,000 U.S. special operations forces and lots of sorties by the U.S. Air Force. That didn’t cost $700 billion. It cost the U.S. $14.3 billion, and it was arguably the biggest active security threat to the U.S. at the time.

The biggest challenge the United States faces is climate change, and addressing that would actually save us money. Inventing more ways of scaring the public and throwing money to military contractors won’t save any money at all, and since there are no military threats in space, it can’t be a defense unit.

One who understood that the (mostly white Protestant U.S. elite) will gladly spend trillions on war but won’t step up to put a social safety net under American workers was Gil Scott-Heron:

Lyrics

A rat done bit my sister Nell.
(with Whitey on the moon)
Her face and arms began to swell.
(and Whitey’s on the moon)

I can’t pay no doctor bill.
(but Whitey’s on the moon)
Ten years from now I’ll be payin’ still.
(while Whitey’s on the moon)

The man jus’ upped my rent las’ night.
(’cause Whitey’s on the moon)
No hot water, no toilets, no lights.
(but Whitey’s on the moon)

I wonder why he’s uppi’ me?
(’cause Whitey’s on the moon?)
I was already payin’ ‘im fifty a week.
(with Whitey on the moon)
Taxes takin’ my whole damn check,
Junkies makin’ me a nervous wreck,
The price of food is goin’ up,

An’ as if all that shit wasn’t enough
A rat done bit my sister Nell.
(with Whitey on the moon)
Her face an’ arm began to swell.
(but Whitey’s on the moon)

Was all that money I made las’ year
(for Whitey on the moon?)
How come there ain’t no money here?
(Hm! Whitey’s on the moon)
Y’know I jus’ ’bout had my fill
(of Whitey on the moon)
I think I’ll sen’ these doctor bills,
Airmail special
(to Whitey on the moon)

Songwriter: Gil Scott-Heron

Whitey on the Moon lyrics © Carlin America Inc

If anything proved Mr. Scott-Heron’s perspicacity, it is the emergence of the Space Force in the Trump era.

Trump is crashing the Affordable Health Care Act without putting anything in its place, so that millions of people will lose their healthcare insurance. For a while there, Nell could have gotten an affordable doctor visit for her rat bite. She wouldn’t have been uninsured. But Trump has just kicked Nel back off health insurance.

Trump’s tax scam (“cut”) also will balloon the federal deficit and throw trillions in windfalls to some 300,000 Americans, leading to a steep reduction of government services and help for the families and children who are struggling.

And in that case, wherein Trump has managed to project his racism even into the vacuum of outer space, and given how he has cheapened and coarsened the lives of working Americans, I have no sympathy for this new piece of Trumpism.

How little progress we have made since the 1960s! Nell’s still being bitten by rats. And Whitey’s still planning to be on the moon, this time in a military uniform.

Via Common Dreams. This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News with permission or license.

They have ‘their dollars,’ we have ‘our god’

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CNBC
August 10, 2018

The Turkish lira has collapsed to an all-time record low against the dollar, but the country’s leader has brushed aside concerns, telling Turks “we have our God.”

The lira hit fell more than 12 percent in value to reach more than six lira to each dollar on Friday morning. At around 5:00 ET, the currency had risen back to $5.911. As recently as April one dollar bought about four Turkish lira.

The latest bout of selling comes after a Turkish delegation returned from the United States with apparently no progress on the detention of a U.S. pastor. The evangelist, Andrew Brunson, is charged with supporting a group blamed for an attempted coup in 2016.

President Donald Trump said in July that the U.S. would place “large sanctions” on the country for the pastor’s detention.

Late Thursday, Turkish President Recep Erdogan said he will stand up to the pressure.

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This article was posted: Friday, August 10, 2018 at 6:52 am






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Conservative Twitter voices say they are being attacked with malicious ‘abusive speech’ complaints — RT US News

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Several prominent journalists raised alarm at baseless complaints being sent to Twitter over stories on sensitive topics, such as the activities of British spy Christopher Steele, and links between Sen. Dianne Feinstein and China.

Conservative newspaper Washington Examiner’s Byron York was reported for posting an apparently innocuous link to his own August 9 story, which exposed the lobbying work Steele, notorious for his Donald Trump dossier, performed for Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska.

York said that he was not found guilty of violating the social network’s rules.

Another target has been unflattering stories about Democratic senator Feinstein, another key figure in the drive to prove alleged collusion between Donald Trump and the Kremlin. In a blow to the credibility of the Senate Intelligence Committee member, Feinstein was revealed to have employed a Chinese spy on her staff for two decades. Several conservatives reporters dug deeper on the long-standing friendship between China and Feinstein, only to have their efforts flagged up by online complainers.

Two of those who have publicized the rejected complaints against them have been Weekly Standard’s Mark Hemingway and the Federalist’s Ben Weingarten. 

Some see a concerted campaign to silence Conservatives.

This is not a new phenomenon.

Mass reporting of innocent or midly questionable tweets with the intention of having them banned has happened for a period of years, with Conservatives stating that organized democratic ‘anti-troll’ and activist groups, such as Shareblue media systematically engage in the practice.

But there is particular concern following the simultaneous ban of Alex Jones’s Infowars from several leading social media platforms. While Twitter has so far resisted, there has been a well-organized drive in the media and online to force it follow the others. More mainstream conservatives, already alarmed at what they perceive to be unfair practices against them, such as shadow bans, believe they could become the next target of attacks on dissenting voices.

Via RT. This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News with permission or license.

Conservative Twitter voices say they are being attacked with malicious ‘abusive speech’ complaints — RT US News

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Several prominent journalists raised alarm at baseless complaints being sent to Twitter over stories on sensitive topics, such as the activities of British spy Christopher Steele, and links between Sen. Dianne Feinstein and China.

Conservative newspaper Washington Examiner’s Byron York was reported for posting an apparently innocuous link to his own August 9 story, which exposed the lobbying work Steele, notorious for his Donald Trump dossier, performed for Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska.

York said that he was not found guilty of violating the social network’s rules.

Another target has been unflattering stories about Democratic senator Feinstein, another key figure in the drive to prove alleged collusion between Donald Trump and the Kremlin. In a blow to the credibility of the Senate Intelligence Committee member, Feinstein was revealed to have employed a Chinese spy on her staff for two decades. Several conservatives reporters dug deeper on the long-standing friendship between China and Feinstein, only to have their efforts flagged up by online complainers.

Two of those who have publicized the rejected complaints against them have been Weekly Standard’s Mark Hemingway and the Federalist’s Ben Weingarten. 

Some see a concerted campaign to silence Conservatives.

This is not a new phenomenon.

Mass reporting of innocent or midly questionable tweets with the intention of having them banned has happened for a period of years, with Conservatives stating that organized democratic ‘anti-troll’ and activist groups, such as Shareblue media systematically engage in the practice.

But there is particular concern following the simultaneous ban of Alex Jones’s Infowars from several leading social media platforms. While Twitter has so far resisted, there has been a well-organized drive in the media and online to force it follow the others. More mainstream conservatives, already alarmed at what they perceive to be unfair practices against them, such as shadow bans, believe they could become the next target of attacks on dissenting voices.

Via RT. This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News with permission or license.

Video: First Time in Decades Brazil’s Unions and Left Unite, Demanding Lula’s Freedom

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The imprisonment of former president Lula da Silva has united Brazil’s unions and left parties and social movements for a historic International Workers Day.

Via Youtube

‘Cops and Klan Go Hand in Hand!’

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Breitbart
August 12, 2018

A march attended by Antifa to commemorate the anniversary of last summer’s Charlottesville rally devolved into an anti-police protest on Saturday night.

Shortly before a pre-planned evening rally to mark the anniversary of a campus confrontation between torch-carrying white nationalists and counterprotesters, activists unfurled a banner that read, “Last year they came w/ torches. This year they come w/ badges.”

“Why are you in riot gear? We don’t see no riot here,” Antifa members chanted Saturday evening.

Footage of the march is circulating on social media.

A group of more than 200 protesters — students, residents, and others — then marched to another part of the University of Virginia’s campus, where many in the crowd shouted at officers in riot gear who had formed a line.

This article was posted: Sunday, August 12, 2018 at 6:22 am






Amidst the growing intensity and louder calls for independence around the globe, John Zogby Strategies once again conducted a nationwide poll on the topic over the July 4thholiday.  We asked 1,001 likely voters the following question:

Which of the following is closer to your view?

Statement A: If a majority of residents within a given state prefer to have the final say over their destiny without the control of Washington D.C., then let them have it – it is their right.

Statement B: If residents within a given state were to take such a drastic measure and secede from the United States, the Federal Government would be justified sending in the military to prevent secession from taking place.

Man, Economy, and Stat…
Murray N. Rothbard
Best Price: $15.49
Buy New $22.00
(as of 10:45 EDT – Details)

Results still reveal nearly 4 in 10 (39%) agree with statement A and 32% agree with statement B.In other words, a plurality of Americans agree with a state’s right to make a clean break from the Federal Government and go their own way while just shy of one-third (32%) would support a military intervention to suppress a state’s attempt to break away, and 29% are still not sure.

About one year ago we asked the very same question over the 2017 Labor-Day weekend to 800 likely voters in a nationwide survey. Even then, 39% of respondents chose statement A.

Below are charts that compare 2017 and 2018 results from key demographics.

A look at the above charts reveal the biggest movement coming from a drop in Hispanic support for secession (from 51% to 34%).  Although not displayed in the charts, those who answered ‘not sure’ among Hispanics increased from 18% to 33%.  Whites stayed the same and Black likely voters saw an…

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Cuba and America: A Primer on History and Politics

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by G.LL. Williams / August 12th, 2018

The relationship between Cuba and the United States is a relationship of history and politics. It is a relationship which shows the nature of Capitalism and Imperialism. It is a relationship which also shows the nature of the struggle for Socialism and Socialist Revolution. Cuba, the first revolutionary Socialist state in Latin America, has managed to survive as a revolutionary Socialist state despite that relationship — a relationship forced upon Cuba by the most powerful Capitalist state in the history of the World — the United States. In many ways the relationship between Cuba and the United States defines part of the nineteenth-century, the twentieth-century and the present-day — between Revolution and Counter-Revolution. In history and politics the old struggle and old relationship between Cuba and the U.S. defines much of the history and politics surrounding us today.

The history and politics between Cuba and the United States began in the nineteenth-century. The modern relationship between Cuba and the United States is a product of the nineteenth-century, and the twentieth-century; a product of Imperialism, Capitalism, Revolution, Rebellion, Class Struggle, and War. In the nineteenth-century, the United States effectively took Cuba from the Spanish Empire and fought a war with Spain in 1898 over the issue of American power in Cuba. In the twentieth-century, the United States effectively controlled Cuba and…

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“He Is Scared Stiff And Missing In Action”

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Zero Hedge
August 12, 2018

Ten days after Trump lashed out at Jeff Sessions, when on August 1st he demanded the Attorney General “should stop this Rigged Witch Hunt right now”, the president once again escalated his attacks on Sessions on Saturday, tweeting that Sessions is “scared stiff” and “Missing in Action” in a series of tweets questioning if there will be an Inspector General report about the Steele dossier, Steele’s meetings with former Deputy Attorney General, Bruce Ohr and Ohr’s wife, Nellie Ohr.

Trump attacked former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele, the man at the center of the Trump dossier scandal, who had extensive contacts with the Department of Justice’s former #4 ranked official, before and after the FBI opened its Trump-Russia probe in the summer of 2016, according to new emails recently turned over to Congressional investigators.

That official, Bruce Ohr, was demoted twice after the DOJ’s Inspector General discovered that he lied about his involvement with opposition research firm Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson – who employed Steele. Ohr’s CIA-linked wife, Nellie, was also employed by Fusion as part of the firm’s anti-Trump efforts, and had ongoing communications with the ex-UK spy, Christopher Steele as well, suggesting that Steele was much closer to the Obama administration than previously disclosed, and his DOJ contact Bruce Ohr reported directly to Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates – who approved at least one of the FISA warrants to surveil Trump campaign aide Carter Page.

“The big story that the Fake News Media refuses to report is lowlife Christopher Steele’s many meetings with Deputy A.G. Bruce Ohr and his beautiful wife, Nelly. It was Fusion GPS that hired Steele to write the phony & discredited Dossier, paid for by Crooked Hillary & the DNC….” Trump tweeted.

 “…Do you believe Nelly worked for…

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Sales of Monsanto’s RoundUp weedkiller reviewed in UK after US ruling on cancer link — RT UK News

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Some of the UK’s top DIY chains have put the popular weedkiller RoundUp under a safety review, after a landmark ruling in the US saw a man with terminal cancer successfully sue its manufacturer Monsanto.

Homebase, which has over 250 stores across the UK, said Saturday that they would review all of their products which contain the herbicide glyphosate. “We have confirmed that we will be reviewing our range of weedkiller products,” a spokesperson for the company said.

Another store, B&Q, said that they have been reviewing its weedkillers regularly since 2017.

Read more


© Mike Blake

“We have a record of acting ahead of legislation where appropriate. We led the way in removing three pesticides in 2013 and neonicotinoids from our flowering plants in 2018.

“We offer alternatives to glyphosates and are currently undertaking a broader review of all our garden products,” a spokesman for B&Q said.

The announcements come after an American school groundskeeper, Dewayne Johnson, successfully sued the agrochemical giant Monsanto in a landmark case. Johnson says he developed non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma after using Monsanto’s RoundUp and Ranger Pro weedkillers for years.

A California state jury awarded Johnson $289 million (£226m) in compensation on Friday after finding Monsanto had not adequately warned users of the herbicide’s risks. They also found company officials to have acted with “malice and oppression” in their selling of the product despite its risks being known.

Environmentalists have long spoken out against the threats posed by such products that include glyphosate with the UK Soil Association claiming that traces are often found in bread, according to the BBC.

Emma Hockridge, head of policy at the Soil Association, said the “landmark” ruling in the US highlighted the “problem with relying on chemical pesticides globally as so little is known about the long-term environmental and health impacts.”

Monsanto have insisted that their weedkiller products remain safe for users, with vice president Scott Partridge saying the company would appeal the verdict to “vigorously defend this product”.

“Roundup has been safe for four decades and will continue to be safe. There is no credible scientific evidence that demonstrates otherwise,” he told the Press Association after the ruling.

READ MORE: Monsanto accused of ‘fraud & bullying’ during court hearing on ‘probably carcinogenic’ weed killer

Farmers in the UK have also backed the continued use of the product. Guy Smith, vice-president of the National Farmers’ Union said the California ruling would do little to curb its use in UK.

“Its most common use in UK farming is to kill weeds in the autumn before seeds are planted. On my land right now, I’m spraying it today,” Smith told the Daily Express.

“Without glyphosate, I would have to plough and cultivate the land. That would use extra diesel, which is bad for the soil and the environment.”

Backed by the European Commission, assessments by the European Food Safety Authority and the European Chemicals Agency have not yet found any link between glyphosate and cancer in humans. In November 2017, EU member states voted in favor of renewing a license for the sale of glyphosate for another five years.

A statement by the UK government said its “priority is the protection of people and the environment”, adding that decisions on the use of pesticides “should be based on a careful scientific assessment of the risks.”

“Once outside the EU, we will continue to make decisions on pesticides based on the best available science,” it added.

Think your friends would be interested? Share this story!

Via RT. This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News with permission or license.

Omarosa’s tape from inside the Situation Room fuels massive freakout over security — RT US News

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Former White House aide Omarosa Onee Manigault-Newman has unleashed a collective freak-out on Twitter after she revealed she recorded a conversation with chief of staff John Kelly from inside the White House Situation Room.

Omarosa made the shock reveal on Meet the Press WHAT CHANNEL on Sunday, where a clip of the covert recording was played. It features Kelly telling Omarosa her departure from the White House could be a friendly one.

 

 

Omarosa met the president on The Apprentice and campaigned for Trump before joining the White House as an advisor. Since leaving the White House in December, she has penned a book, which she is currently promoting.

Many on social media were aghast at the thought of someone being able to record in the secure Situation Room.

The Situation Room is a secure conference room located in the basement of the White House, where people are required to leave their electronic devices outside before entering. It is run by the National Security Council and contains secure communications equipment which the president uses to communicate with the military and receive intelligence. Sensitive phone calls with world leaders also take place inside.

The room has sensors to detect cellular signals and bugs. There is a lead-lined box for communications devices at the reception area.

The revelation sparked fears that others may have been able to record sensitive conversations inside the room, with the Russia scare popping up in the conversation.

Via RT. This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News with permission or license.

PressTV-Abuse of Muslim women spike after Johnson comments

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A watchdog monitoring hate crimes in Britain have announced that several Muslim women have been attacked since earlier this week after former foreign minister Boris Johnson wrote a controversial article and compared women wearing burqa to “letterboxes” and “bank robbers.”

Tell Mama said Sunday that at least five women had been subject to Islamophobic insults by men in London and Luton since Johnson triggered a public row over wearing burqa in his opinion piece in the Daily Telegraph on August 5.

The watchdog said all women who had been insulted wore niqab, a veil used to cover face as recommended by the religion. It said the verbal attacks were directly linked to Johnson’s description in the article of women wearing burqa, a full-body veil, to letter boxes.

One such attack happened on August 8 in London before two women were targeted the next day in the capital. Another women experienced verbal abuse because of her niqab on Friday while…

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PressTV-‘US not getting support in repealing Iran deal’

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US President Donald Trump’s push to dismantle the 2015 Iran nuclear deal is not getting any support from other countries, says former CIA officer Philip Giraldi.

Trump announced on May 8 that he would abandon the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), a landmark nuclear deal between Iran and six world powers – the US, the UK, France, Russia, China and Germany.

The move did not go down well with the other signatories, who have made it clear that they would stay in.

In an article for The Sunday Telegraph, US Ambassador to Britain Woody Johnson urged the UK to drop out of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal and follow the lead of President Donald Trump who left the “flawed” agreement in May.

Giraldi said no matter what they do, Trump and his team stand little chance to fully repeal the landmark agreement.

“I think this is just a symptom of the fact that the United States is getting no support from the rest of the world in terms of…

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Heather Heyer Remembered ‘for Daring to Stand Up’ as Anti-Racists Counter DC White Supremacist Rally

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This is a developing story. Check back for updates…

A year after James Alex Fields Jr. intentionally slammed a vehicle into a crowd protesting the racist “Unite the Right” demonstrations in Charlottesville, Virginia, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer, many people turned to the streets and social media this weekend to remember Heyer and denounce racism ahead of a white supremacist anniversary rally near the White House.

A group that included Heyer’s mother, Susan Bro, gathered at a memorial in Charlottesville on Sunday:

Journalist and activist Shaun King—a leading force behind an effort to track down and hold accountable the group of “Unite the Right” participants who brutally beat a black counter-protester last year—tweeted:

Progressive politicians and candidates such as Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and New York gubernatorial hopeful Cynthia Nixon also turned to Twitter to honor Heyer and celebrate the fight against racism:

Several other progressive and political groups shared similar messages:

Tributes to Heyer on Sunday came as anti-racist protesters gathered in Washington, D.C. to counter an event spearheaded by Jason Kessler, the man behind last year’s violent white supremacist demonstrations. After Charlottesville blocked Kessler and fellow organizers from hosting an anniversary event in the city, they secured approval from federal officials to hold a rally near the White House.

The Washington Post reports that Kessler “received final approval Thursday from the National Park Service for up to 400 participants at Lafayette Square for an event dubbed ‘Unite the Right 2.'” The newspaper noted that “in addition to Kessler, also planning to attend the white supremacist rally, according to documents obtained by Washington City Paper from the National Park Service, are David Duke, a former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard, and several neo-Nazis and Holocaust deniers.”

Meanwhile, in Charlottesville on Saturday, anti-racist protesters and students hosted demonstrations that were met with a massive police presence. That contrast to last year, when local law enforcement failed to prevent violence by the white supremacists who invaded the city, was a source of frustration among this year’s peaceful protesters, as Reuters reports:

With chants like, “Cops and Klan go hand in hand,” the protesters’ criticisms of both police and the University of Virginia underscored the resentment that still exists a year after torch-bearing neo-Nazis marched through campus, shouting anti-Semitic messages, and beating counterprotesters.

Several students said they were angry that the police response was far larger this year compared with last year, when people carrying tiki torches the white nationalist rally went mostly unchecked. 

At one point on Saturday, dozens of officers in riot gear formed a line near where the rally was taking place, prompting many protesters to rush over yelling, “Why are you in riot gear? We don’t see no riot here.”

Participants and reporters shared photos on social media from Saturday’s Charlottesville events and a local memorial honoring Heyer:


Via Common Dreams. This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News with permission or license.

Tennessee carries out first execution in nearly a decade

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Tennessee carries out first execution in nearly a decade

Inmate “gulped for an extended period of time” and was “choking,” “gasping”

By
Kate Randall

11 August 2018

Tennessee executed Billy Ray Irick on Thursday in the first execution in the state in nearly a decade. Irick, 59, was convicted and sentenced to death for the brutal 1985 rape and murder of 7-year-old Paula Dyer in Knoxville. He spent more than three decades on death row.

Irick’s lethal injection was allowed to proceed at the Riverbend Maximum Security Prison in Nashville after both the Tennessee and US Supreme Courts denying his request for a stay. Governor Bill Haslam, a Republican, did not exercise his power to grant Irick clemency.

Irick’s attorneys had argued both that their client should not be put to death because he suffered from severe mental illness, and that one of the drugs to be used in his lethal injection could cause severe pain. There is evidence that Irick did indeed suffer a torturous death.

Journalists witnessing the execution reported that the blinds between the witness room and the death chamber were opened at 7:26 p.m. local time. Asked if he had any final words, Irick at first said “No,” and then said, “I just want to say I’m really sorry and that, that’s it.” The lethal injection drugs then began to flow.

A minute later, the Associated Press (AP) reported, his eyes closed and snoring and heavy breathing could be heard. At 7:34 p.m. there was “coughing, huffing and deep breaths,” and an attendant called out to him and grabbed his shoulder to check for consciousness.

According to the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC), federal public defender Kelley Henry said Irick exhibited signs of pulmonary edema (fluid filling the lungs) during the execution,…

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Thriving Wildlife Benefits People Enormously

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Janine Jackson: Like Social Security, the Endangered Species Act is historically and presently very popular. People, in the main, get the idea that trying not to wipe species off the face of the earth is a meaningful way to reflect the recognition that human life is sustained and enriched by a healthy and diverse environment. And as with Social Security, there are some who see the Endangered Species Act as primarily an obstacle keeping them and their friends from making the maximum amount of money possible.

The trouble is, too often media seem to balance those perspectives in reporting on the Act. Now the Trump administration is going all out to push back on central parts of the Endangered Species Act. What sort of reporting would make clear what’s at stake, and why we’re in this fight in the first place? We’re joined now for an update on things by Brett Hartl, government affairs director at the Center for Biological Diversity. He joins us now by phone from Toronto. Welcome to CounterSpin, Brett Hartl.

Brett Hartl: Thanks a lot for having me.

This is a multi-front assault, as I understand it, from the Trump White House on regulations relevant to the Endangered Species Act. What are some of the pieces of what’s going on right now?

Well, sure, and it’s important to understand that, like you said, the Endangered Species Act is a remarkably successful and popular law. It has saved 99 percent of the species under its care from extinction, and the way it has done it is through a series of rules and safeguards…

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Pentagon Spending Funds the Politicians

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It is sometimes said that laughter is the best medicine, and in these days of unhinged demonic tomfoolery in the White House it is advisable to laugh rather than weep.  The unintentional humor generated by some recent events connected with US military spending is as good a tonic as we might expect from any announcements in Washington.

Ten days before the US House of Representatives approved the National Defense Authorization Act that is to cost the country’s taxpayers 716 billion dollars next year, once it goes through the Senate, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction produced a report stating that some $15.5 billion of US taxpayers’ money had been lost over 11 years — but says even that figure is “likely only a portion of the total waste, fraud, abuse, and failed efforts.” Looking further down the money drain, he noted that “we have reported for years that almost $7.3 billion spent by the United States in Afghanistan on counter-narcotics programs appears to have done very little to stem the production and exportation of illicit drugs.”

But 22 billion dollars of US taxpayers’ money wasted in Afghanistan is only a drop in the bucket where overall wastage is concerned, and nobody knows what will be revealed when the first-ever audit of the Pentagon’s financial shenanigans is produced in November.

We should reflect on the fact that on September 10, 2001, the day before the 9/11 terror attacks in the US, the then Secretary…

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PressTV-US urges UK to end support for Iran nuclear deal

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US Ambassador to Britain Woody Johnson has urged the UK to drop out of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal and follow the lead of President Donald Trump who left the “flawed” agreement in May.

Trump announced on May 8 that he would abandon the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), a landmark nuclear deal between Iran and six world powers – the US, the UK, France, Russia, China and Germany.

The move did not go down well with the other signatories, who have made it clear that they would stay in.

In an article for The Sunday Telegraph, the American envoy called on the government of British Prime Minister Theresa May to reconsider its support for the nuclear deal and side with Washington.

“America is turning up the pressure and we want the UK by our side. It is time to move on from the flawed 2015 deal,” he said.

“We are asking global Britain to use its considerable diplomatic power and influence and join us as we lead a concerted global…

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Prison Planet.com » Censorship Purge Signals Imminent False Flag Violence Before Mid-Term Elections… Bigger Than 9/11?

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Mike Adams
NaturalNews.com
August 12, 2018

For the last two months, I’ve been warning about the rising risk of a major false flag attack taking place before the mid-term elections.

The aggressive, unprecedented PURGE of Alex Jones / InfoWars underscores the desperation of the totalitarian deep state that’s about to make a move to eliminate President Trump and / or steal the elections.

Anyone who believes that the sudden de-platforming of Alex Jones across over a dozen online services and platforms isn’t coordinated collusion is delusional. The coordinated de-platforming effort is clearly directed by the deep state to eliminate a prominent, dissenting voice in preparation for unleashing a history-shaping false flag attack that’s likely going to be bigger than 9/11.

The radical Left is escalating its violence across America, and the tech giants are dramatically escalating their censorship actions to silence all independent voices that might question any “official” narrative.

It all points to something big about to come down – something so big that only the official narrative can be allowed to be heard or spoken.

We are living under an Orwellian totalitarian regime beyond any horrific imagination. Google, Apple, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and other tech giants are engaged in the most criminal, malicious racketeering and tyranny imaginable. This is not sheer coincidence. They’ve all been ordered to censor the independent media in preparation for what’s coming next.

  • A d v e r t i s e m e n t

As I explain in this video, the most likely false flag assault to be staged by the Left might be a “mass shooting” at CNN or another media giant, all staged with impressive theatrics to augment the real violence with a false narrative. Watch my entire warning, below:

REAL.video/5820541704001

This article was posted: Sunday, August 12, 2018 at 6:34…

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Declassified cables sent by CIA Director Gina Haspel reveal extreme torture of al-Qaeda suspect — RT US News

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The extreme torture of a suspected al-Qaeda terrorist, including waterboarding, forced nudity and a “walling technique,” have been detailed in newly declassified cables sent by a current CIA director Gina Haspel.

The cables, sent by Haspel to agency headquarters in late 2002, reveal the torture of  suspect Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri at the secret US detention facility in Thailand. The CIA believed the Saudi Arabian suspect was involved in the planning of the USS Cole bombing in Yemen in 2000 and believed he knew about other planned attacks.

The cables, most of which were either written or authorised by Haspel, reveal Nashiri’s weeks-long interrogation included waterboarding, forced nudity, shackling, being slammed against walls, confined in a small box and enduring mock executions.

READ MORE: Court finds Lithuania & Romania in breach of torture ban while hosting CIA black sites

In one report on the 12th day of his detention the document reads: “interrogation escalated rapidly from subject being aggressively debriefed by interrogators . . . to multiple applications of the walling technique, and ultimately, multiple applications of the watering technique.”

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A demonstrator is ejected prior to CIA Director nominee Gina Haspel testifying at her confirmation hearing May 9, 2018. © Aaron P. Bernstein

Later, interrogators said they “covered subject’s head with the hood and left him on the water board, moaning, shaking and asking God to help him repeatedly.” When they returned, they “adjusted subjects head restraint while telling him that all he had to do was tell them everything. Subject said he would.”

In another interrogation report, the suspect had his clothes ripped from him as he “whimpered that he would do anything his interrogators required”. He was told if he did not cooperate, he would suffer “in ways he never thought possible”.

The revelations are contained in 11 cables obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by the National Security Archive, a private research institute which published the documents on Friday.

Nashiri’s treatment has been previously referred to without specifics in official reports, hearings, court cases and news reports. His detention in Thailand, and his subsequent transfer to a second black site in Poland, was briefly mentioned in a 700-page report by the Senate Intelligence Committee on the detention program, released in 2014.

READ MORE: Senate confirms Gina Haspel as CIA chief despite her torture past

The report concluded that Nashiri had provided “no actionable information” through the torture techniques. He now remains in the military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, nearly 16 years after he was captured in October 2002, in the United Arab Emirates.

Haspel, 61, who spent her career in the clandestine service, previously said that torture provided “valuable intelligence,” while attempting to convince democratic senators that she had changed her stance on torture to secure her position as CIA director.

“While I won’t condemn those that made these hard calls, and I have noted the valuable intelligence collected, the program ultimately did damage to our officers and our standing in the world,” Haspel wrote in a letter to Senator Mark Warner, the vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, while her nomination was hanging in the air.

Spokesman Timothy L. Barrett reportedly said the agency had no comment on the documents or their declassification.

Via RT. This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News with permission or license.

PressTV-Polls show stark change in Brexit sentiment

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A new poll carried out in the United Kingdom shows that pro-Brexit sentiments among the public have seen a stark change with over 100 parliament seats that supported Britain’s departure from the European Union now want the country to stay in the bloc.

The Observer said Sunday that it had seen the results of the poll by the Focaldata consumer analytics company, which showed many regions, especially in northern England and Wales, the traditional bastions of support for the Labour Party, have withdrawn their majority support for Brexit.

The poll said the change of mind had also occurred among supporters of the Conservative Party, including in constituencies of two notable Brexit campaigners Boris Johnson and Michel Gove.

In this file photo taken on October 03, 2017 Britain’s then Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson arrives to deliver his speech on the third day of the Conservative Party annual conference at the Manchester Central Convention Centre…

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What Conservative Canon? – LewRockwell

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In 2012, I came across a scholarly article in a journal on rhetoric on “The Conservative Canon and Its Uses.”  The author, Michael J. Lee, undertook to explain why the American conservative movement had put together a “secular canon” featuring its leading thinkers.  According to Lee, this selection of books and seminal authors has been designed to forge a “spiritual bond” among groups that otherwise have exhibited sharp disagreement.  Conventional libertarians, social traditionalists, and anarcho-capitalists, to name just three such groups, have been able to cooperate on common purposes because a canon has been created that embraces figures from all of these traditions.  Certain rhetorical phrases, moreover, have been repeatedly identified with this shared heritage, including references to “permanent things” and “values.”

This canon has been periodically updated, and with the ascendancy of the neoconservatives and Straussians in the 1980s, certain golden oldies, like the works of Russell Kirk and the Southern Agrarians, lost their place in the conservative canon.  This did not come about without protest, and I recall receiving angry notes from members of the Old Right complaining about how their favorites in the canon had been replaced by such relative newcomers as Allan Bloom, Harry Jaffa, and Irving Kristol.  In 2001, Jonah Goldberg wrote a commentary in National Review in response to his devotees who asked him to name the authors whom he would place in the “conservative canon.”  Goldberg proposed figures he identified with National Review.  He then almost sheepishly explained that he should probably add to his list Bloom’s Closing of the American Mind but couldn’t quite make…

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Video: Deadly Gaza-Israel border protest rages on, paramedic among killed

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Two people have been killed in Gaza, including a paramedic on duty, the Palestinian Health Ministry reports. The Palestinian Red Crescent says that over 307 …

Via Youtube

PressTV-US military taunts China after plane warned off

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The US military has issued several taunting messages after an American plane flying over Chinese-claimed territories in the South China Sea was warned to leave the area.

On Friday, Chinese forces deployed to the hotly contested waters ordered a US Navy P-8A Poseidon aircraft to “leave immediately” six times, reports said.

“We will sail, fly and operate wherever international law allows,” the US Navy’s said on its Twitter account Saturday.

The reconnaissance plane was giving CNN reporters aboard a view of Chinese facilities in the region as it flew past China’s garrisons in the Spratly Islands.

Warning the aircraft that it was in Chinese territory, the Chinese military ordered the US Navy plane to “leave immediately and keep out to avoid any misunderstanding.”

The US Indo-Pacific Command also responded to the warning, saying the US won’t be “warned off” to from its “lawful operations” in international waters and…

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Video: Russian FM spokesperson moves to the grooves of Brass Band Festival in Serbia

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Russian Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Maria Zakharova was named honorary guest at the 58th Brass Band Festival in the Serbian town of Guca on Friday, …

Via Youtube

Prison Planet.com » Bans don’t seem to be lessening reach of Alex Jones, InfoWars

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Austin American Statesman
August 12, 2018

Some of the nation’s largest technology and social media companies have tried to stop Alex Jones and his conspiracy theories. But in a digital world, their attempts seem to have barely slowed him down.

After YouTube, Facebook and others this week removed content by Jones and his website, the InfoWars leader, talk show host and Austin resident fired back, accusing the companies of censorship and urging his audience to fight back against what he called an “unprecedented attack.”

Meanwhile, Jones’ website and other online platforms have remained popular destinations.

InfoWars continues to see more than 1 million page visits per day and has trended upward this month, according to Amazon’s Alexa website traffic report, which also said InfoWars averages more than 25 million page views per month.

Consumers still can access InfoWars through the same tech companies that just banned it. Google still offers the Infowars app for Android users, and Apple customers can download it through the App Store.

As of Friday, the show’s phone app remained near the top of the charts in both the Apple App and Google Play stores. Infowars Official, an app that lets viewers stream Jones’ shows and read news of the day, was ranked fourth among trending apps in the Google Play store Friday. In the news category on Apple’s App Store, Infowars earned the fourth slot under the top free apps, behind Twitter and News Break, a local and breaking news service, revealing a sudden boost of user downloads.

  • A d v e r t i s e m e n t

Apple told The Washington Post in a written statement: “We put great effort into curating the App Store to provide the very best experience for everyone. We strongly support all points of view being represented on the App Store, as long as the apps are respectful to users with differing opinions, and follow our clear guidelines, ensuring…

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PressTV-10 injured in shooting in UK’s Manchester

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Police in the city of Manchester, in northwest England, have announced that a shooting in the city in early hours of Sunday had left 10 people, including two children, injured.

The Greater Manchester Police (GMP) said Sunday that its forces rushed to the scene of the shooting attack in the city’s Moss Side neighborhood at around 2.30 am local time.

It said all those wounded in the gun violence had slight injuries and could soon be released from hospital, except one man who was in stable but critical condition.

“Nine people went to hospital, including two children, with pellet-type wounds that are not believed to be serious,” a statement from GMP said, adding, “A tenth person — a man — remains in a stable but serious condition in hospital with injuries to his legs.”

 Police officers stand guard at the scene of a shooting at Claremont Road in the Moss Side neighborhood of Manchester, on August 12, 2018. (AFP photo)

Police could not…

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On anniversary of Charlottesville clashes, Trump condemns racism, says he ‘fights for’ minorities — RT US News

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The US President has spoken out against racism and violence ahead of a fresh Unite the Right rally on Sunday, and has trumpeted his own achievements that he says have benefitted African-Americans and Hispanics.

“The riots in Charlottesville a year ago resulted in senseless death and division. We must come together as a nation. I condemn all types of racism and acts of violence. Peace to ALL Americans!” Donald Trump tweeted on Saturday afternoon.

The statement Trump made one year ago, in which he blamed “hatred, bigotry, and violence on many sides” in the aftermath of the clashes between white nationalists and counter-protesters, was one of the most controversial moments of his presidency. While he gathered some support from his base, who believed that Antifa helped ignite the combustible atmosphere, Trump was widely condemned even by members of his own party, who pointed to the death of Heather Heyer, who was killed when a Unite the Right demonstrator plowed his car into a crowd of counter-protesters.

Saturday’s tweet took a more diplomatic, positive and inclusive tone but, notably, did not contradict anything the US president said a year ago, something ignored in most media outlets, which commended his conciliatory tone, but noted by his political opponents.

Trump also painted himself as an ally of minorities in a follow-up missive.

“I am proud to have fought for and secured the LOWEST African American and Hispanic unemployment rates in history. Now I’m pushing for prison reform to give people who have paid their debt to society a second chance. I will never stop fighting for ALL Americans!” he tweeted, once again presenting himself as a unifier.

The president’s diplomatic skills are sure to be tested on Sunday, when Unite the Right, a broad group uniting white supremacists, Confederate sympathizers, and more mainstream conservatives, gather for a second rally.

Charlottesville rejected Unite the Right’s request to stage the repeat rally, so the march has been relocated to Washington, DC, where police have promised a heavy presence that will separate the demonstrators from the likely much-larger counter-protester gathering. Meanwhile, Charlottesville itself held a commemorative demonstration, organized by progressives, on Saturday.

Via RT. This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News with permission or license.

Video: NASA attempts to launch Parker Solar Probe, delays lift off for 24 hours (Streamed Live)

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Courtesy: NASA TV NASA attempts to launch Parker Solar Probe, delays lift off for 24 hours. Check out http://rt.com RT LIVE http://rt.com/on-air Subscribe to RT!

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Hashima: Brutal History and the Most Haunted Island on Earth

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Do you want to see perhaps the spookiest island on earth – Hashima (also known as Gunkanjima – the Battleship Island) – which is located just 30 minutes by speedboat from the historic Japanese port city of Nagasaki? Now you can. Just book online, pay the equivalent of US$40, and then hop on one of those shiny sleek vessels belonging to Gunkanjima Concierge or to some other company.

Gunkunjima – Battleship Island

Do it, and you will see the island which looks like an abandoned monstrous wreck; like a sunken and haunted ship.

You will sail around it. You will even be able to disembark and walk a few hundred meters on a fenced path. Guides/minders will let you take a few snapshots.

But that is all. No stepping left or right off the path. No going ahead of the group. No lagging behind. And please, no ‘provocative’ questions!

The guides are well trained to ‘entertain you’, to tell you just how ‘haunted’ the island is and how ‘vibrant’ it used to be in the past.

Sugary smiles never leave their faces.

But were you to defy their written and unwritten rules, they’d immediately jump and appear next to you. They would even loudly scold you. Suddenly they’d become very rude.

What are they afraid of? What are they hiding? What really took place on this island?

The true horrors of the past will never be conveyed to you. It is all about WWII, and Japan is still in denial.

A Japanese tour guide (designated for the Japanese-speaking visitors) as well…

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Trump’s Sanctions on Iran and Violation of the Nuclear Deal Defy His Vows to Create US Jobs

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President Trump keeps vowing to create more jobs in America. But his actions often speak differently. The most egregious example was Trump’s cancellation of the multi-national Iran nuclear treaty that had been welcomed by the world as a major step to Mideast denuclearization.

In abrogating the international treaty signed by the U.S., Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China, the U.S. humiliated its allies and rivals who were strongly in favor of the accord. Iran had already handed 97 percent of its enriched uranium to Russia, shut down reactors and centrifuges, and allowed U.N. inspectors to run all over its nuclear facilities when Trump tore up the deal that had been under negotiation since 2015.

Iran has been under a harsh U.S.-led trade embargo since its 1979 revolution that was designed to cripple its economy and military, and drive the people to rebel against their government. Washington used the same tactics—without success—against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and Fidel Castro’s Cuba.

So intense is the Trump administration’s hatred for Islamic Iran that it decided to scrap the multinational nuclear deal that would have meant opening Iran to western commerce, and a bonanza for U.S. and European companies. The key element of the deal was to have been the sale of some 210 commercial jet airliners to Iran by the U.S. and the European Union, a deal worth some $40-50 billion, not counting future sales of spare parts.

The U.S. embargo of Iran since 1979 has made it unable to modernize its commercial airline fleet. Iran was denied modern aircraft, spare parts, engines, and instruments, leaving it with decaying aircraft from the 1970s.  

The grim result of the U.S.-imposed embargo has been 17 crashes of Iranian civilian aircraft with 1,500 deaths. 

Most of Iran’s commercial aircraft—a grab bag of old, mostly 25-year old Boeing, Airbus, Chinese and Soviet aircraft—are flying coffins. Iran’s maintenance, training, and air traffic control are substandard. Flying over and around Iran’s lofty mountains is a challenge for the best of pilots, even for a handful of newer ATR turboprop aircraft.

Washington’s denial to Iran of Boeing Aircraft (and Airbus planes because they contain U.S.-made parts), means the loss of tens of thousands of highly-paid jobs in the U.S. and Europe. Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, claims he talked Trump into canceling the Iran nuclear deal and the Boeing orders.  

It’s hard to validate Netanyahu’s claim but it is clear that America’s ever more powerful Israel lobby and its ally fundamentalist Christian Zionists played a key role in thwarting the Iran nuclear deal and sale of commercial aircraft.   

We don’t yet know the full cost of lost American jobs and business to help keep Iran isolated. But one could argue that part of the $20 billion lost should be counted as part of annual U.S. aid to Israel.   

Russia and China’s aircraft industries will soon be able to deliver modern passenger aircraft to Iran and accept payment in oil. China’s C919 and ARJ21 are now nearing service. Russia’s Sukhoi Superjet 100 will be ready soon. Trump could be cutting off his nose to spite his face.  

Trump and his allies are trying to push Iran into a corner and provoke it to lash out at U.S. forces that are poised around it. A navel clash in the Gulf is the obvious pretext for war.  

While the U.S. goes after Iran, it has opened a new anti-Muslim front against old ally Turkey by imposing heavy duties on Ankara’s exports to the U.S. and attacking the always vulnerable Turkish lira. This, in turn, has set off a financial crisis across Europe, notably among EU banks that have large, soft loans made to Turkey.   

Trump & Co. are trying to force Turkey to bend the knee and support U.S.-Israeli-Saudi policy goals. Turkey and Iran remain the last significant supporters in the region of the Palestinians. Trump and the New York City real estate developers, and the money men who surround him, are determined to show the independent-minded Iranians and Turks who is the big boss.

Via Common Dreams. This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News with permission or license.

Video: Massive anti-corruption rally grips Bucharest: Tear gas, water cannons deployed

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Hundreds of people have been injured after a massive anti-corruption rally in Bucharest, spearheaded by expats calling on the government to resign, turned …

Via Youtube

Prison Planet.com » Free-Speech Monopoly – The Game Is Rigged

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Ben Garrison
GrrrGraphics.com
August 12, 2018

In early America many cities had ‘town squares’ in which citizens could stand on soapboxes and shout out various messages. Our First Amendment protects such speech.

The Internet is today’s town square. The soapboxes are social media.

The Deep State and the left are intertwined with Silicon Valley. The CIA helped Google and Facebook get started. Why? To make it easier to spy on people. Over time, millions gravitated toward Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. Conservative and Libertarian voices became very strong and that alarmed the Deep State. So they began demonetizing conservatives. Then they shadow-banned them. Now they are deleting them outright.

For many years, Alex Jones reached millions with his journalism and rants. His tirades helped wake people up. He yelled at us about the Deep State, including the corrupt security agencies, the Bohemian Grove, the CFR, the Bilderbergs, fluoride in our water, the lies about 9-11, and yes, even Sandy Hook. The latter had many anomalies that should be questioned. Alex brought all of this up and more before anyone else had a inkling about what was really going on with such matters. He was routinely dismissed as a ‘conspiracy theorist’ by the establishment. However, much of what he has been saying over the years is now acknowledged as self-evident. The legacy media, the Deep State, and Silicon Valley could not stomach the fact that he was informing and influencing minds and elections. They all got together and confiscated his soapbox. Their lame excuse? They claimed he was a purveyor of ‘hate speech.’

Having previously endured years of hate speech aimed toward me, I know what it is and what it isn’t. To me, it’s libel, defamation and death threats. Alex Jones has never engaged in hate speech. Questioning climate change is not hate speech. Jones is not a racist, a bigot or any of the…

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Baltimore police repeatedly punch man in the head in shocking VIDEO — RT US News

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Shocking footage of a Baltimore City police officer repeatedly punching a man in the head has whipped up outrage and resulted in the officer being swiftly suspended.

The punch up took place on Monument Street in east Baltimore on Saturday and video of the incident was shared on Instagram. It shows officer Arthur Williams and a man, Dashawn McGrier, shouting before the officer punches him in the head as onlookers can be heard reacting in shock.

A second officer makes a half-hearted attempt to separate his colleague and the victim, who falls on a set of steps as the officer continues to throw punches. Williams then pins McGrier to the ground, and blood is seen on the pavement.

Baltimore City Police released a statement saying it received video of the incident soon after it happened. “The Office of Professional Responsibility was immediately dispatched to the area. As a result of the information available, Interim Baltimore Police Commissioner Gary Tuggle suspended the officer immediately,” it said. The second officer was placed on administrative duties until the investigation is concluded.

McGrier was released from custody and was not charged with a crime. His attorney, Warren Brown, said his client was being treated in the hospital and “may have suffered a broken jaw, a broken nose, maybe some fractured ribs, and he had difficulty with feeling his left leg, although before I left he did say that he was beginning to get the feel back in his foot, left foot,” WFMZ reports.

According to Brown, McGrier is facing charges of assaulting Williams in June, which he denies. A video from June 26 shared by local media appears to show Williams pinning McGrier on the ground.

“I have zero tolerance for behavior like I witnessed on the video today,” Tuggle said. “Officers have a responsibility and duty to control their emotions in the most stressful of situations.”

A federal investigation last year found Baltimore law enforcement has patterns of excessive use of force, racial profiling, and unconstitutional policing. The city was placed under investigation following the death of Freddie Gray, who died after falling into a coma in a police van in 2015.

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Via RT. This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News with permission or license.

The Satanic Nature of the Atomic Bombings

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“Ahab is forever Ahab, man.  This whole act’s immutably decreed.  ‘Twas rehearsed by thee and me billion years before this ocean rolled.  Fool!  I am the Fates’ lieutenant; I act under orders.”

– Herman Melville, Moby Dick

“The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid ‘dens of crime’ that Dickens loved to paint…But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed, and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voice.”

– C. S. Lewis, author’s preface, 1962, The Screwtape Letters

American history can only accurately be described as the story of demonic possession, however you choose to understand that phrase.  Maybe radical “evil” will suffice.  But right from the start the American colonizers were involved in massive killing because they considered themselves divinely blessed and guided, a chosen people whose mission would come to be called “manifest destiny.”  Nothing stood in the way of this divine calling, which involved the need to enslave and kill millions and millions of innocent people that continues down to today.  “Others” have always been expendable since they have stood in the way of the imperial march ordained by the American god. This includes all the wars waged based on lies and false flag operations. It is not a secret, although most Americans, if they are aware of it, prefer to see it as a series of aberrations carried out by “bad apples.”  Or something from the past.

The Screwtape Letters
C. S. Lewis
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Video: The Russians are coming… to hit Florida midterms, senator claims. Proof? What proof?

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A democratic senator from Florida, hoping for re-election in the upcoming midterm elections, has claimed Russia has hacked the state’s voter registration system.

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Video: The Russians are coming… to hit Florida midterms, senator claims. Proof? What proof?

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A democratic senator from Florida, hoping for re-election in the upcoming midterm elections, has claimed Russia has hacked the state’s voter registration system.

Via Youtube

Socialism on the Campaign Trail

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The growing popularity of socialism is finding expression in down-ballot election campaigns this year, some led by candidates affiliated with the Democratic Socialists of America like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

The 28-year-old socialist stunned the Democratic Party establishment by winning the party primary election for a US House seat in the Bronx and Queens, defeating one of the most powerful leaders of the Democrats in Congress.

In a political system dominated by two main parties that are so tied to upholding the virtues of capitalism, it’s rare to hear the word “socialism” used positively in a discussion of midterm elections. Plus, it’s refreshing to see the political establishment scramble to deal with candidates making popular pro-worker demands.

There is a long history of socialists participating in elections and a debate among different views about what the left’s goals and methods should be.

At the most basic level, elections are not irrelevant to socialists, even if we have no direct participation in them because there is no socialist alternative to support. They can gauge workers’ sentiments on various issues or signify shifts in consciousness to the left or right.

If socialists are able to initiate campaigns or contribute to those initiated by other forces, elections can be a further tool for presenting our politics to a wider audience and challenging the status quo. They can champion struggles and movements and the demands that emerge from them.

Beyond this, things have diverged historically.

The tradition of “reformism” has a…

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The Upside of Defeat

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Capitalism is a ‘totalizing’ force, like the Holocaust, or slavery.  As the thesis goes, a few contained the lot by depriving them of any vision beyond their present walls.  We tend to rate capitalism different because were sold patched-up versions, whereas no one imagines a ‘reformed’ holocaust or ‘progressive’ slave-holders.

When it serves, or when circumstances demand, -to prevent Facebook from re-rigging rigged elections, and so forth- we regulate capitalism’s policies, rarely its capital.  But policies are as much to blame as prejudice was for the lucrative, Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade.

Marx explained this in plain terms, but Marx isn’t part of the discourse.  Officially because of his flawed predictions, but that hasn’t excluded Larry Summers and Alan Greenspan, nor our current Democratic leadership, though blind-sided in most elections.  Rather, the emphasis on resistance makes him undigestable to the capitalist Left.

Rather, since we fear investors less than errant thugs we find ways for democracy to protect capital.  Mind, our constitutional lure invoked democracy to reign it in.  But we’ve learned, instead, how to pad and sedate democracy to absorb capitalism’s abuses.  Thus, I myself doubt there exist ‘reformed’ or ‘progressive’ capitalisms.

8 months ago Cornell West wrote a scathing critique of Ta-Nehisi Coates, calling him the ‘Neoliberal face of the black struggle’.[i]  Some of us were aghast how much fell on…

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Turkish lira plunges as US trade war measures strangle Turkish economy

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Turkish lira plunges as US trade war measures strangle Turkish economy

By
Alex Lantier and Halil Celik

11 August 2018

Turkey’s currency fell 16.2 percent yesterday against the US dollar, as US President Trump threatened to strangle its economy by blocking its exports to the United States with high tariffs.

On Twitter, Trump wrote: “I have just authorized a doubling of Tariffs on Steel and Aluminium with respect to Turkey as their currency, the Turkish Lira, slides rapidly downward against our very strong Dollar! Aluminum will be 20 percent and Steel 50 percent. Our relations with Turkey are not good at this time!”

The fall of the lira and the closing of US markets to Turkey’s metal exports threaten to slash Turkish jobs and devastate its economy. In 2017, Turkey sold 1.5 million tons of steel to the United States, its largest steel export market. Much of Turkey’s foreign debt was reduced in value when the lira traded at less than two to the US dollar. Since it now trades at 6.62 lira to the dollar, the cost in lira of buying imports and of servicing Turkey’s roughly US$453 billion in outstanding foreign debt has exploded.

The euro and major stock markets fell amid concern of a new financial crash possibly starting in Turkey. The European Central Bank is monitoring several major European banks they say are heavily exposed to Turkish debt, including Spain’s BBVA, Italy’s UniCredit and France’s BNP Paribas. Spanish, French and Italian banks have loaned Turkey $83.3 billion, $38.4 billion and $17 billion, respectively.

As the lira’s collapse accelerated in recent days, becoming the world’s worst-performing currency, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan turned to Russia and China for aid. On Wednesday, he announced that Turkey will issue so-called…

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Video: Keiser Report: Can the system be unrigged? (E1265)

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In this episode of the Keiser Report, Max and Stacy discuss Potemkin regulators in the UK and economists like Paul Krugman arguing on behalf of Potemkin …

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Prison Planet.com » Johnson’s Joke About Burqa Wearers ‘Pretty Good One,’ Mr. Bean Actor Backs Boris

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All jokes about religion cause offence, so it’s pointless apolozising for them, a famous English actor and comedian said in reference to the “burqa scandal” surrounding Britain’s former Foreign Minister.

Best known to audiences worldwide as Mr. Bean, humorist Rowan Atkinson wrote to The Times, saying:

“As a lifelong beneficiary of the freedom to make jokes about religion, I do think that Boris Johnson’s joke about wearers of the burqa resembling letterboxes is a pretty good one.”

Former FM, Boris Johnson caused a row among the officials in Westminster and stirred debate on whether his “letter box” and “bank robbers” comments on Islamic full-face veil were appropriate.

Mr. Atkinson’s response prompted a mixed bag of reactions on social media.

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Police brutally smash window and drag man from car for seat belt violation (VIDEO) — RT US News

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A viral video showing New Mexico State Police smashing a car window and pulling a man from the vehicle sparked outrage online. Officers have responded by releasing their own video of the incident.

Phillip Page and passenger Angela Fisher-Herrera were pulled over in Taso County in February for not wearing a seatbelt, the Albuquerque Journal reports. Page shared a video of the incident on Facebook last week, which shows an officer breaking his car window and pulling Page from the car.

Police have come out in defense of the officer’s actions, saying Page was refusing to comply for 15 minutes before they broke the window. They say he wouldn’t show his identification and was asked to roll down the window 20 times and was warned his window would be broken if he failed to comply.

“I’m standing by my officers,” NMSP Chief Pete Kassetas said. “At some point after a certain amount of time of noncompliance, something has to happen.”

“We didn’t break the window and drag him out of the car because he didn’t have a seat belt on. He got removed from the vehicle forcefully because he didn’t comply,” he said.

KRQE shared video supplied by the state police which shows 11 minutes of dashcam footage taken at the scene. It contradicts the short clip shared by the couple, in which Page tells the officers they never asked for his licence and registration. The police video shows an officer ask for it numerous times.

The pair were arrested for resisting or obstructing a police officer, concealing identity, and making a false 911 call along with the alleged seat belt violations.

Charges were dropped in March for lack of prosecution, the Santa Fe New Mexico reports. The case was filed in April. Page and Herrera-Fisher didn’t go to court as they said they didn’t receive letters advising them of the new date, and a bench warrant was issued for their arrest. Page moved to Oregon after the incident and told the Journal he and Fisher-Herrera are driving back to New Mexico and hope their case will be dismissed.

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Via RT. This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News with permission or license.

PressTV-US judge approves first execution by fentanyl

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A US federal judge has allowed Nebraska to go ahead with its planned execution of an inmate using a powerful drug produced by a German company.

The judge rejected a request by drug manufacturer Fresenius Kabi to block Nebraska from using its products in the execution of Carey Dean Moore planned for Tuesday.

“While Fresenius Kabi takes no position on capital punishment, Fresenius Kabi opposes the use of its products for this purpose and therefore does not sell certain drugs to correctional facilities,” the company said in the lawsuit, which was filed in the US District Court for the District of Nebraska.

The ruling by US District Court Judge Richard Kopf Friday afternoon cleared the way for the state to carry out its first lethal injection and the country’s first execution using the powerful opioid fentanyl.

The company, however, quickly moved to appeal the judge’s order, leaving uncertain whether the execution of the 60-year-old inmate…

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Video: Is Spain making a mistake receiving unprecedented number of migrants?

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Spain has become the biggest receiver of migrants that have crossed the Mediterranean, welcoming almost 30000 people just this year. Check out http://rt.com …

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PressTV-Six large new wildfires erupt in US

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Six large new wildfires erupted in the United States, pushing the number of major active blazes nationwide to over 100, with more expected to break out sparked by lightning strikes on bone-dry terrain, authorities said on Saturday.

More than 30,000 personnel, including firefighters from across the United States and nearly 140 from Australia and New Zealand, were battling the blazes that have consumed more than 1.6 million acres (648,000 hectares), according to the National Interagency Coordination Center.

“We are expecting that there will be more fire-starts today,” Jeremy Grams, lead forecaster with the National Weather Service’s Storm Prediction Center in Oklahoma, said in an interview on Saturday.

He said dry thunderstorms, which produce lightning but little rain, are expected for parts of the Rocky Mountain region, while the U.S. northwest has critical fire weather conditions that include strong winds and low relative humidity.

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Video: Man hijacks Alaska Airlines plane at Seattle Airport, crashes it on Ketron Island

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A Horizon Air Q400 plane, flown without Seattle Airport traffic controller authorization, reportedly performed several aerobatic tricks and crashed after F-15 jets …

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Prison Planet.com » Freelancer finds that CNN’s laser-focus on wiping out Alex Jones goes back a ways

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Twitchy
August 10, 2018

As someone said in a tweet the other day, don’t make us defend Alex Jones. We don’t pay attention to Alex Jones, we rarely post about him (unless we’re ridiculing him for appearing shirtless on horseback or something), and we don’t consider him a conservative by any stretch.

But is it just us or is there some activist journalism going on over at CNN with the singular goal of purging Alex Jones and Infowars — and only Alex Jones and Infowars — from online existence? CNN first caught our eye with this:

As everyone on Twitter knows, there are plenty of people skirting the rules on these tech platforms — look at Dana Loesch’s mentions for one day if you want to see continual threats of violence.

But as Twitchy reported earlier today, it seemed that CNN was really pressuring Twitter — the sole tech holdout — to ban Jones by going through his timeline and pointing of instances of rule-breaking — and taking some glee in it. CNN was literally policing Twitter.

On Thursday evening, freelance journalist Nick Monroe took at closer look at CNN writer and producer Paul P. Murphy, who’s written a bunch of stories on Infowars for CNN. Sure, it’s easy to feel moral outrage at the Sandy Hook conspiracies Jones has been peddling, but is that what’s driving all this?

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Furious democrats denounce DNC vote to reverse ban on fossil fuel donations — RT US News

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The Democratic National Committee (DNC) has overwhelmingly elected to backtrack on its ban on donations from fossil fuel companies, just two months after the committee prohibited the donations, by unanimous vote.

The ‘backtrack’ resolution was passed by a 30-2 vote on Friday afternoon and, according to DNC Chair Tom Perez, states that the party “support[s] fossil fuel workers” and will accept donations from their “employers’ political action committees”.

Activists say the resolution is effectively a complete reversal of the party’s recently adopted fossil fuel ban. Perez, who served as Labor Secretary in the Obama administration, said the new measure was a commitment to organized labor and a pledge of “support [to] fossil fuel workers in an evolving energy economy”.

Perez said members of the labor community had voiced concerns over the June resolution, and called the ban an “attack on the working people in these industries”. However Perez claims the backtrack does not lessen the party’s commitment to combat climate change.

READ MORE:‘False information, unverified sources’: Russia denies funding anti-fracking campaign in US

The news was not met well by democrats and environmental activists alike, who took to Twitter to vent their anger at the “spineless” committee for bowing to fossil fuel companies in order to benefit from their mined funds.

“I am furious that the DNC would effectively undo a resolution passed just two months ago just as the movement to ban fossil fuel corporate PAC money is growing (and Democrats are winning),” said Democratic Party activist R.L. Miller, a co-sponsor of the original resolution that banned fossil fuel PAC money, speaking to the Huffington Post.

Via RT. This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News with permission or license.

PressTV-Seattle plane hijacker had security clearance

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The airline employee who hijacked an empty Horizon Air turboprop plane from Seattle’s international airport and crashed it on a nearby island had security clearance and was on his shift, airline officials say.

The 29-year-old man, identified by the US media as Richard Russell, had worked for Horizon Air for more than three years, towing and tidying aircraft and loading bags.

Russell used a machine called a pushback tractor to manoeuvre the 76-seater Q400 Bombardier airplane so he could board and then take off from Sea-Tac International Airport on Friday evening.

This undated selfie picture available on social media on August 11, 2018 shows Richard B Russell, a ground service agent at the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. (Photo via AFP)

The flight, which lasted for almost an hour, forced authorities to ground all flights at the airport while traffic control tried to persuade the man to land the plane. A number of F-15 fighter jets were…

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This Wall Street PAC Bankrolling Democrats Thinks Being Progressive Means Mirroring Betsy DeVos

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Democrats for Education Reform (DFER) put out a new video about what they think it means to be an education progressive.

And by the political action committee’s definition, Betsy DeVos may be the most “progressive” education secretary ever.

She champions “public charter schools.” Just like them!

She is in favor of evaluating teachers on student test scores. Just like them!

She is a booster for “holding schools accountable” through the use of standardized tests. Just like them!

And she loves putting public tax dollars into private hands to run schools “more efficiently” by disbanding school boards, closing public debate, and choosing exactly which students get to attend privatized schools. Just like… you get the idea.

But perhaps the most striking similarity between DeVos and DFER is their methodologies.

DFER announced it again was going to flood Democratic races with tons of campaign cash to bolster candidates who agreed with them. That’s exactly how DeVos gets things done, too!

She gives politicians bribes to do her bidding! The only difference is she pays her money mostly to Republicans while DFER pays off Democrats. But if both DeVos and DFER are paying to get would-be lawmakers to enact the same policies, what is the difference!?

Seriously, what is the difference between Betsy DeVos and Democrats for Education Reform?

Progressives in Colorado and California say it is only the word “Democrat.”

Democratic party conferences in both states passed resolutions asking DFER to stop using the name “Democrat” because the privatization lobbying firm does not represent party ideals or goals.

It is degrading what the party stands for and hurting the brand.

Why do some progressives vote third party? Because of groups like DFER.

Voters think something like—if this charter school advocacy group represents what Democrats are all about, I can’t vote Democrat. I need a new party. Hence the surge of Green and other third party votes that is blamed for hurting Democratic candidates.

The Democrats have always been a big tent party, but the canvas can’t shelter the most regressive far-right bigotry without destroying the organization’s identity as an opposition party.

It is entirely incoherent to oppose Republicans by pushing for almost the same agenda.

The reason for the confusion is that DFER is not a grassroots organization. It is funded by Wall Street hedge fund managers.

It is not an authentic expression of the public’s wants and desires. It is another avenue for the mega-rich to use their power and influence to tell the rest of us what they want us to believe.

Yet DFER tries to hide this fact with various forms of propaganda. In effect, they’re trying to convince us that their ideas are what we actually believe.

For instance, the group is now offering a nationwide poll from Benson Strategy Group as proof that Democratic voters agree with DFER’s goals.

However, the questions asked to about 2,000 people on the phone are laughably biased:

“Do you believe we have a responsibility to do everything we can to give every child a great education, and does that mean we need faster change in our schools to prepare students for the future?”

Of course people are going to agree with that! It doesn’t mean people want to privatize public schools. We SHOULD do everything—including closing failing charter schools and boosting funding at struggling public schools!

“Do you agree that we can’t go back to the way things used to be in schools? Do you think we need to keep bringing in new ideas and finding new ways to improve schools?”

Of course we need new ideas, but charter schools and standardized tests aren’t new ideas! We’ve been doing that nonsense for decades and they haven’t helped a bit. In fact, they’ve made things worse!

“Do you think funding alone is enough to give our children the education they deserve? Do you also want to see new ideas and real changes to the way public schools operate?”

Of course schools need more than just additional funding. But let’s not minimize funding equity. Students of color will never get an equitable education until we pay for the resources they need to succeed. The poor will never catch up to the rich without money to provide the services they need to learn.

Moreover, blanket statements disparaging public schools before asking about school privatization invites bias against public schools and bias in favor of privatization.

When you couch privatization as “more options” and “choice,” who doesn’t want that? But it’s not what you’re offering.

Giving administrators the ability to accept or deny my child into their school is not “more options” for me. It is greater choice for them.

Slashing funding at the public school because its finances got gobbled up by the neighborhood charter is not “choice” for me. It is providing alternative revenue for the corporations that run the charter school while my only option is to accept fewer resources for my child.

None of this is progressive. None of this is truly supported by grassroots people or organizations.

Civil rights groups like Journey for Justice and even the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) oppose school privatization and high stakes testing.

This is the meat and potatoes of DFER.

The only difference between these alleged Democrats and DeVos is that the Trump administration also champions school vouchers.

But both charters and vouchers involve sending public tax dollars to schools that are privately run. Both involve stripping taxpayers of control over how that money is spent until all we have are parents moving their children from school-to-school in a desperate attempt to find one that does a good job and will also accept their child.

That is not the progressive ideal.

Progressives want to make every public school excellent. They want all children to have the resources they need to succeed. They want to assess students, teachers, and the system fairly to clearly understand what children are learning, what educators are doing to help them learn, and how administrators and school directors are enabling that success. They want innovation—not the same old corporate-minded top-down policy failures of the past decades. They want technology as a tool to bridge understanding and not as an end in itself to drive the curriculum. They want an end to the school-to-prison pipeline. They want truly integrated schools, not the current segregated system where Cadillac funding goes to rich white districts and the scraps are thrown to the poor brown ones.

Yet DFER, these so-called Democrats, support none of this.

And they’re spending millions of dollars to convince our lawmakers not to support it either.

Politicians can’t keep accepting their dirty money and expecting grassroots voters to continue to support them.

To paraphrase Matthew, no one can serve two masters. If lawmakers are taking sacks of cash from billionaire hedge fund managers, they aren’t going to listen to you or me.

They can serve their constituents or mammon. Not both.

So if Democrats want strong support in the coming elections, they need to do the progressive thing.

Stop accepting bribes from dark money influence peddlers like DFER.

Via Common Dreams. This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News with permission or license.

Laughing at the State –

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Trump versus Journalism: The Travails of Fourth Estate

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You have to give it to him: President Donald Trump loathes the Fourth Estate with a dedication verging on caricature.  He splutters at the members and rails at their observations with adolescent rage. He sees some of its members, not without a few solid reasons, as enemies of his vision.  (The Gray Lady is formidable in that regard.)

But it is hardly surprising that his loathing takes place at a time when that particular estate, which Thomas Carlyle saw a mighty force of oversight, has been smouldering and crumbling before the sallies of social media and a newly emergent Fifth Estate, edgy, uncontrolled and threatening to conventional wisdom.  Call them the citizen journalists, the irate foot soldiers, the opinionated bloggers, the readers of news who prefer Facebook to reportage.  The media denizens are besieged.

These foot soldiers of another type of often shrieking journalism are a hit-and-miss sort.  They ended up in the mad flung universe of Breitbart where Steve Bannon continues to hold court as a guerrilla force.  They populate the climes which have now been designated “alt-right”.

Bannon’s clever alteration of technique was to turn standard journalism against itself, suggesting that his own brand was different, a torch for anti-establishment forces. In so doing, he exploited establishment ignorance and wilful myopia.  “The media here,” he infamously noted last year, “is the opposition party.  They don’t understand this country. …

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Video: The bad, the ugly, and the really ugly… Who will control Nigerian water supply?

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The company at the centre of the long-running scandal over polluted water supplies in the US city of Flint is apparently lining up to be a private supplier in …

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Video: Monsanto to pay $289mn to California man who developed non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma using Roundup

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A groundskeeper who developed non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma after using Monsanto’s weed-killers for years is entitled to $39 million in compensation and $250 …

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At least four dead in Canada shooting

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Sky News
August 10, 2018

At least four people have been killed in a shooting in Canada, police confirmed.

The Fredericton Police Twitter account says: “An incident has resulted in at least four people killed.”

The incident in the capital of the Canadian province New Brunswick is still ongoing.

Police are urging people to “stay in their homes with doors locked at this time for their safety” and to avoid the area of Brookside Drive between Main and Ring Road.

A New Brunswick journalist has reported that four shots were heard at around 8.20am local time (12.20pm GMT).

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This article was posted: Friday, August 10, 2018 at 7:06 am








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10 people injured in Manchester shooting – police — RT UK News

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Ten people have been taken to the hospital with injuries after shots were fired in the Moss Side area of Manchester, according to the Greater Manchester Police. A carnival had reportedly ended near the area.

Ten people suffered minor or major injuries in what Manchester police call “a dangerous attack,” Sky News reports. Armed and unarmed officers were called to Claremont Road in Manchester after shots were fired there on Saturday night.

None of the injuries appear to be life-threatening at this stage, Detective Superintendent Debbie Dooley said.
Additional police officers were dispatched to the scene while an on-site search is underway. “The area is being searched and examined while we are also trying to speak to as many people as possible and are reviewing CCTV to get all the facts,” Dooley said.

The official added that the place was overcrowded due to the Caribbean Carnival which had been taking place earlier that day.

Via RT. This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News with permission or license.

10 people injured in Manchester shooting – police — RT UK News

0

Ten people have been taken to the hospital with injuries after shots were fired in the Moss Side area of Manchester, according to the Greater Manchester Police. A carnival had reportedly ended near the area.

Ten people suffered minor or major injuries in what Manchester police call “a dangerous attack,” Sky News reports. Armed and unarmed officers were called to Claremont Road in Manchester after shots were fired there on Saturday night.

None of the injuries appear to be life-threatening at this stage, Detective Superintendent Debbie Dooley said.
Additional police officers were dispatched to the scene while an on-site search is underway. “The area is being searched and examined while we are also trying to speak to as many people as possible and are reviewing CCTV to get all the facts,” Dooley said.

The official added that the place was overcrowded due to the Caribbean Carnival which had been taking place earlier that day.

Via RT. This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News with permission or license.

10 people injured in Manchester shooting – police — RT UK News

0

Ten people have been taken to the hospital with injuries after shots were fired in the Moss Side area of Manchester, according to the Greater Manchester Police. A carnival had reportedly ended near the area.

Ten people suffered minor or major injuries in what Manchester police call “a dangerous attack,” Sky News reports. Armed and unarmed officers were called to Claremont Road in Manchester after shots were fired there on Saturday night.

None of the injuries appear to be life-threatening at this stage, Detective Superintendent Debbie Dooley said.
Additional police officers were dispatched to the scene while an on-site search is underway. “The area is being searched and examined while we are also trying to speak to as many people as possible and are reviewing CCTV to get all the facts,” Dooley said.

The official added that the place was overcrowded due to the Caribbean Carnival which had been taking place earlier that day.

Via RT. This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News with permission or license.

Charlottesville marks anniversary of violent clash (VIDEOS, PHOTOS) — RT US News

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Besides some verbal confrontations between riot police and demonstrators, a rally in Charlottesville marking the anniversary of last year’s deadly clash between right- and left-wing activists passed without any major incident.

Here we go again! US lawmaker says he was told Moscow played role in Charlottesville riots

Authorities had carefully planned for Saturday’s event in Charlottesville, which last year became the scene of the Unite the Right rally’s clash with the leftist Antifa protesters. Deploying riot police along the security perimeter, law enforcement went on to erect concrete barriers and metal fences before setting up entry points with metal detectors to screen rally participants.

To avoid a repeat of last year’s scenario, when a violent white nationalist rally’s clash with the left resulted in one death and dozens of injuries, Charlottesville authorities refused to grant a permit for another ‘Unite the Right’ rally. In addition, Gov. Ralph Northam declared in a state of emergency in the city and ordered the Virginia National Guard to be on standby should any riots arise.

The security measures seemed to have worked as most of the Saturday’s events proceeded in a peaceful manner. Attended mainly by opponents of white supremacists and more mainstream conservatives, the progressive activists carried a large banner through the downtown of the city reading: “Good Night, White Pride.” Others paused to light candles or place flowers at the memorials.

The most intense moments occurred in the evening at the University of Virginia campus at the ‘Rally for Justice’, where a group of some 200 Antifa activists shouted at riot police lines, “Black Lives Matter!” and “No Nazis, No KKK, No Fascist USA!”

Throughout the day, only three people were arrested on misdemeanor charges, one for trespassing, one for disorderly conduct and one for possessing a prohibited item, the city said.

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Via RT. This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News with permission or license.

PressTV-70,000 protest US base expansion on Japanese island

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Tens of thousands of people have rallied on the southern Japanese Island of Okinawa to protest a government plan to relocate and expand a US air base there.

According to organizers and media sources, some 70,000 people took part in the rally at a park in Okinawa’s capital, Naha, on Saturday to protest government plans for the US Marine Corps Air Station Futenma.

The residents of Okinawa have long argued that while, under the government plan, the US military base would be moved from the heavily-populated town of Ginowan to the remote coastal area of Henoko in Nago, it would still pose an environmental threat. They have long demanded that the US base be removed from the island altogether.

A view of the US military air base on Japan’s Okinawa Island (file photo)

Tokyo is to start dumping soil into Henoko Bay within days to prepare for the new site, which will reportedly be bigger. Environmental groups say construction at the bay would…

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Think Confederate Monuments Are Racist? Consider Pioneer Monuments

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In San Francisco, there is an an 800-ton monument that retells California history, from the Spanish missions to American settlement. Several bronze sculptures and relief plaques depict American Indians, white miners, missionaries and settlers. A female figure symbolizing white culture stands atop a massive stone pillar.

The design of the “pioneer monument” was celebrated in newspapers across the country when it was erected in 1894. Today, however, activists argue that the monument – particularly its depiction of a Spanish missionary and Mexican “vaquero,” or cowboy, towering over an American Indian – is demeaning to American Indians.

Should the city take down part of this 125-year-old monument?

Many cities are removing or reinterpreting their Confederate monuments, with the understanding that they commemorate racism. But few Americans realize that pioneer monuments placed across the country are also racist.

As my research and forthcoming book on pioneer monuments since the 1890s show, most early pioneer statues celebrated whites dominating American Indians.

Confederate and Pioneer Monuments

Since at least 2015, cities across the United States have debated what to do with more than 700 Confederate monuments.

After the Civil War, grieving widows raised funds to place monuments to soldiers in southern cemeteries. But most statues of Confederate leaders and foot soldiers were put up around 1900 by heritage organizations to honor the “Lost Cause.”

The “Lost Cause” is the idea that that the Civil War began as a heroic defense against northern aggression. In fact, the Civil War was primarily fought to defend slavery.

In the past few years, cities such as New Orleans, Louisiana and Baltimore, Maryland have chosen to remove their Confederate statues. Activists tore down a Confederate soldier statue in Durham, North Carolina last year.

By contrast, there has…

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a Realist’s Perspective on the Environmental Crisis

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We’re an egoistical, delusional lot, us humans. We’re the only species on the planet who despoils its own life support system and who does not live within biological limits. Does that make us the most intelligent or least intelligent species?

Preservation of our environment remains well toward the bottom of our priorities. Personally and collectively, in our daily lives and in the media, we fixate on career, financial accumulation, economic growth, political performance, consumerism, entertainment, social media, and external validation. None of these aspects of our lives mean anything without a livable planet full of basic resources, and every one of these fixations contribute directly or indirectly to our planetary degradation.

Noam Chomsky has even begun to recognize that our precarious environmental predicament – primarily envisioned as the issue of climate change, though it encompasses so much more – is the most crucial existential threat to human life on the planet. Of late, whenever you see Chomsky interviewed or hear him speak, he tends to emphasize that of many injustices and dire risks to the people of the United States, the people oppressed by U.S. empire, and humanity as a whole, all pale in comparison to the our environmental crisis.

In the fall of 2017, a group of world scientists issued a second warning to humanity (the first of which was delivered in 1992): if we do not make significant changes to our way of life immediately, we will no longer be…

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Video: Republican win in Ohio blamed on Green Party voters’ help… and the Russians, of course

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A Green party candidate has ‘spoiled the party’ for the US Democrats in local elections in Ohio. They expected victory but instead, Joe Manchik grabbed over a …

Via Youtube

PressTV-Anti-fascist protesters mark Charlottesville anniversary

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Anti-fascist protesters mark the anniversary of last year’s violent clash between white supremacists and counter-protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Hundreds of students and left-wing activists took to the streets on Saturday, a year after a man with alleged neo-Nazi ties rammed his car into a crowd of counter-protesters, killing one and injuring about 20 others.

At one point, police officers in riot gear formed a line near the area where the rally was taking place, prompting many protesters to rush over yelling, “Why are you in riot gear? We don’t see no riot here.”

Officers stand…

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Video: Breathtaking stunts in Russian military aviation competition’s closing ceremony

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The Russian aviation team were awarded champion of the military aviation competition Aviadarts 2018 at Ryazan’s Dyagilevo Air Base on Saturday. Following …

Via Youtube

Prison Planet.com » Street Artist Creates Dozens Of New Trump Stars On Hollywood’s Walk Of Fame

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Daily Caller
August 10, 2018

President Donald Trump’s star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame has been attacked, vandalized and smashed multiple times since Trump became president. The star is a regular site for protests, and was recently carved up by an angry leftist with a pick axe.

Now, a Trump-supporting guerrilla street artist has taken matters into his own hands.  The twitter account  posted videos of men dressed as construction workers placing dozens of laminated replica Donald Trump stars along the Hollywood Walk of Fame. The sophisticated operation involved the stars, which look identical to the real stars, being placed in various arrangements around the stars of various left-wing activists, such as Rob Reiner.

The twitter handle is said to belong to famed street artist Sabo, who is known for his edgy conservative art.  The handle describes itself as “Anti-PC street art. Vandals bringing uncomfortable truth. Sabo & I trigger Libs. 100% anti-identity politics.”

One tweet said “Take down his star, and we will descend upon you with 30 fresh new stars” and also shared a video of the stars on the walk.

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This article was posted: Friday, August 10, 2018 at 7:09 am








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‘Trigger-happy’ US cop tells suspects he’ll get a ‘ton of money’ if he shoots someone (VIDEO) — RT US News

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A Connecticut police officer has been suspended after a video emerged of him warning suspected trespassers not to do anything stupid, because he is “trigger-happy” and will be paid for overtime if someone gets shot.

“If anybody wants to fight or run, I’m a little trigger-happy guys, I’m not gonna lie. And I get paid a ton of money in overtime if I have to shoot somebody. So don’t do anything stupid,” Hartford Police Sergeant Stephen Barone is heard telling a group of young people that he stopped for alleged trespassing on Thursday night.

The three-minute video, which surfaced on Friday, led to Barone’s suspension from the force pending an internal review of his interaction with the public.

“Regardless of the context or the intent, those statements are entirely unacceptable and represent a fundamental disregard for the conduct we expect and the standards we hold ourselves to,” Hartford Police Assistant Chief Rafael Medina said in a statement. “We look at it from the perspective of the person on the other end of the field interview, and to hear those words isn’t just scary, it projects an image of law enforcement officers who take use of force lightly. As I hope you know, we do not take any use of force lightly as a department.”

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(File photo) © Andrew Francis Wallace / Contributor / Getty Images

The 10-year veteran had already been suspended for four days two years ago for his involvement in a car chase incident which ended with him kicking the suspect while he was handcuffed. Despite the episode, Barone was later promoted to sergeant, following a lengthy internal affairs investigation.

Thursday night’s incident began to unfold at around 9:30pm local time, when a group of young people was approached by the officer near an abandoned house that one of the individuals in the group was allegedly considering purchasing. Barone asked the group if any of them had any weapons, drugs or any warrants against them. After searching them and indulging them with the pep talk, he gave all of them tickets for trespassing.

“The behavior in this video is completely unacceptable. It’s inconsistent with the values of our police department and our city, and it is deeply damaging and disappointing,” Mayor Luke Bronin said. “Law enforcement officers have a responsibility to treat the use of force and threats of force seriously at all times.”

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Via RT. This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News with permission or license.

Southern California Amazon worker reports company forcing employees to work despite fire evacuation orders

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“I would not wish working for Amazon on my worst enemy”

Southern California Amazon worker reports company forcing employees to work despite fire evacuation orders

By
Marko Leone and Norisa Diaz

11 August 2018

The International Amazon Workers Voice recently sat down with Camille about her experiences working for Amazon over the last two years. She came into contact with the World Socialist Web Site at the urging of Shannon Allen, an Amazon worker who reached out to the WSWS to cover her story of injury and subsequent homelessness at the Haslet, Texas facility.

Camille is a young woman in her 20s who lives in Southern California and has been working at the ONT6 Fulfillment Center in Riverside County since 2016. Camille described a situation similar to the Haslet facility, including low wages, difficult working conditions and authoritarian management practices.

Currently tens of thousands of homes in Riverside County are at risk of being engulfed by the Holy fire, which has burned over 10,000 acres since Monday and is only 5 percent contained, with authorities reporting no end in sight. 

Camille said the fire has created even more dire working conditions and particularly for those under evacuation orders. “The air quality is horrible at the facility. The fire is so close they are closing schools, yet Amazon is still forcing people to come to work. Some of my coworkers have homes that are in danger of being lost, yet they aren’t letting them take leave.”

The company’s disregard for workers during this emergency situation is part of a larger pattern Camille outlined to IAWV reporters. 

“It’s really hot in there. The management have scanners that gauge the temperature in the morning, and then set the air conditioning on at an uncomfortable 80 degrees. Can…

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Lira Collapse To Jump the Mediterranean

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The Turkish Lira crisis is fundamentally different than the Russian Ruble crisis of 2014/15.  This one has contagion risk.

Back then no one was worried about the fall of the ruble having spillover effect.  If Sberbank failed, it wouldn’t jump to Europe.  Then again, there was little worry about that since the Russians had more than enough in reserves to cover the debts.

With Turkey, however, there is a real worry about this jumping into Europe. From Zerohedge:

Friday’s fall came after the Financial Times reported that supervisors at the European Central Bank are concerned about exposure of some of Europe’s biggest lenders to Turkey, including chiefly BBVA, UniCredit and BNP Paribas. The FT reported that along with the currency’s decline, the ECB’s Single Supervisory Mechanism has begun to look more closely at European lenders’ links with Turkey. The moves also came after the US showed no signs of lifting crippling sanctions despite the visit of a Turkish delegation to the US capital.

According to the FT, the ECB is concerned about the risk that Turkish borrowers might not be hedged against the lira’s weakness and begin to default on foreign currency loans, which make up about 40% of the Turkish banking sector’s assets.

And while it does not yet view the situation as critical, it sees Spain’s BBVA, Italy’s UniCredit and France’s BNP Paribas, which all have significant operations in Turkey, as particularly exposed, according to two people familiar with the matter.

Note the banks here.  Italian zombie-bank UniCredit.  Spain’s BBVa and France’s major zombie-bank BNP Paribas.   You can almost smell the desperation in the Financial Times’ reporting on this.

Everyone thought Turkey would not take…

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Video: ‘9/11 attack generated trend of targeting Sikhs’: Religious minority sees increase in hate crime

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The Sikh community says that since Donald Trump became president there’s been an increasing number of hate crimes towards its members. Check out …

Via Youtube

Trump Admin Delays Closure of Texas ‘Tent City’ for Migrant Children—Again

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The Trump administration is delaying closure of a Texas “tent city” that houses migrant boys who crossed the U.S.-Mexico border without a parent or were separated from their families under the president’s cruel “zero tolerance” policy, according to a CBS News report published early Saturday.

Located at the Tornillo Port of Entry south of El Paso, the facility was opened June 14 because of overcrowded shelters and was initially set to close a month later. However, with hundreds of children still separated from their parents—thanks to the administration’s immigration policies and prolonged failure to reunite families by a federal court’s July 26 deadline—its closure has been repeatedly delayed.

“All of them have places they could go, but for the federal government dragging their feet in returning requests for background checks.”
—Texas Rep. Diego Bernal

After the first delay, officials had planned to close down the facility this weekend, but the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)—which contracted the nonprofit that runs the tent city—said Friday that now it won’t close until at least September.

On Friday, Texas lawmakers toured the facility—which currently houses about 170 children—with members of the Mexican American Legislative Caucus. Democratic state Reps. Ina Minjarez and Diego Bernal told the San Antonio Express-News that the shutdown delay is due to a backlog of background checks and fingerprints.

“All of them have places they could go, but for the federal government dragging their feet in returning requests for background checks,” said Bernal.

“Why are they not doing their due diligence to get these expedited, so that these kids can leave this facility and be with their family?” asked Minjarez.

A spokesperson for HHS told CBS:

HHS’ Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) is continuously monitoring bed capacity available to provide shelter for minors who arrive at the U.S. border unaccompanied and are referred to HHS for care by immigration officials, as well as the information received from interagency partners, to inform any future decisions or actions. …HHS will continue to assess the need for this temporary shelter at Tornillo Land Port of Entry (LPOE), Tornillo, TX, based on projected need for beds and current capacity of the program.

Pointing to an investigation published July 5, CBS also noted that “a loophole in federal policy allows the Tornillo facility and another massive temporary shelter in Homestead, Florida, to escape the rigorous, often unannounced child welfare inspections that all other similar shelters operated by ORR are subjected to.”

Gina Hinojosa, another Democratic state representative who visited the facility on Friday, tweeted:


Via Common Dreams. This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News with permission or license.

PressTV-Trump as disliked as Nixon: Poll

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A new poll has found that US President Donald Trump is as highly disliked by American people as former President Richard Nixon, just prior to his resignation as the result of the infamous Watergate scandal.

The findings of the new survey conducted by Marist College shows that 45 percent rated Trump’s job performance as poor — the same percentage who stated that Nixon was doing poorly as president in a Harris poll, US-based news broadcaster CNN reported on Saturday.

According to the poll, only 20 percent of respondents rated Trump’s job performance as excellent while another 20 percent said that he was doing a “pretty good” job. Less than half of Republican participants — 49 percent — further said the US president was doing an excellent job, compared to just two percent of Democrats taking part in the survey.

The Marist Poll was conducted July 19-22 and has a margin of error of +/- 3.6 percentage points, said the…

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Video: International Army Games conclude with fireworks display in closing ceremony

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A fireworks display marks the end of the International Army Games 2018 as the closing ceremony continues at the Patriot park in the Moscow Region on …

Via Youtube

Prison Planet.com » Now YouTube Is Adding ‘Fact Checks’ to Videos that Question ‘Climate Change’

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James Delingpole
Breitbart
August 10, 2018

And so it begins: YouTube is now adding “fact checks” to videos which question the man-made global warming scare narrative.

According to Buzzfeed News:

YouTube is now adding fact checks to videos that question climate change, BuzzFeed News has confirmed, as a part of its ongoing effort to combat the rampant misinformation and conspiratorial fodder on its platform.
On July 9, the company added a blurb of text underneath some videos about climate change, which provided a scientifically accurate explainer. The text comes from the Wikipedia entry for global warming and states that “multiple lines of scientific evidence show that the climate system is warming.”

This new feature follows YouTube’s announcement in March that it would place descriptions from Wikipedia and Encyclopedia Britannica next to videos on topics that spur conspiracy theories, such as the moon landing and the Oklahoma City bombing. In doing the same for climate videos, the company seems to be wading into more fraught and complex intellectual territory.

Sure, in many ways it’s a trivial and pathetic gesture. Quoting Wikipedia as your credible source is a bit like citing CNN as the go-to site for all the latest info on Donald Trump. And anyway, that “scientifically accurate explainer”  is at best vague, at worst far more misleading than the videos it is supposed to be “fact checking.”

It says:

“Global warming, also referred to as climate change is the observed century-scale rise in the average temperature of the Earth’s climate system and its related effects. Multiple lines of scientific evidence show that the climate system is warming.”

So the records show that there has been some gentle warming of less than 1 degree C since the world began emerging from the Little Ice Age a century and a half ago. So what? This whole line of argument is a Straw Man,…

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Drug-addicted pet owners may abuse their animals to secure opioid fix, study warns US vets — RT US News

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Some opioid addicts have been known to injure their pets to get their hands on powerful prescription drugs to satisfy their cravings, a new survey in Colorado has revealed, calling for more oversight on drug prescription by vets.

Arguing that authorities have overlooked the issue of a “supply and demand equation” of prescription opioids in the veterinary sector, the Center for Health, Work & Environment at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus published the survey, revealing deliberate animal abuse by drug-addicted pet owners.

“Veterinarians prescribe synthetic opioids, which are a class of opioids driving the increase in drug-related overdose deaths,” the survey said. “Although intended for the treatment of animals, these are commercial-grade pharmaceuticals that have the potential to be diverted and abused by humans.”

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© MultiVu

The case study, involving some 189 Colorado veterinarians, revealed that 44 percent of practitioners were aware of “opioid abuse or misuse” by either a client or by a staff member at the clinic. Another 13 percent of animal doctors admitted to being aware that “an animal owner had intentionally made an animal ill, injured an animal, or made an animal seem ill or injured to obtain opioid medications.” Instances where veterinary staff engaged in “opioid abuse and diversion” were noted by 12 percent of respondents.

While nearly two-thirds of veterinarians (62 percent) believe they could help prevent the drug abuse problem, seventy-three percent admitted that their veterinary training on opioid abuse or misuse was either “fair, poor, or absent,” pointing out that more educational courses are needed to address the issue.

The authors called on the veterinary, public health, pharmaceutical and regulatory authorities to allocate resources and intervene in the prescription process of opioids in veterinary medicine.

“Our results indicate that we should be paying more attention to how opioid abusers are seeking their drugs – including through veterinary clinics. We want to see healthy people and healthy pets,” Lili Tenney, one of the lead investigators of the survey, told the Science Daily journal.

US opioid crisis: Mussels off Seattle found with oxycodone in their system

However, despite the issues raised by the study, Denver Police Department (DPD) and Denver Animal Protection have yet to deal with a case of animal cruelty for drug purposes. “Likely, if this came up, we’d ask DPD to take the entire case and charge under the state animal cruelty law since the owner would be ‘knowingly’ inflicting pain on the animal for their own ends, which meets the state definition,” Ann Cecchine-Williams, deputy director for Denver’s Department of Public Health and Environment, told the Denver Post.

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Via RT. This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News with permission or license.

Trump renews attack of Session alleging he is 'scared stiff, missing in action'

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US President Donald Trump accuses his attorney general of fearing to defend him in the Russia probe. Read more

On “Bullshit Jobs”

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Referring to cultural Marxism, especially the Frankfurt School, Noam Chomsky once said, “I don’t find that kind of work very illuminating… The ideas that seem useful also seem pretty simple, and I don’t understand what all the verbiage is for.” While I think there’s much of value in the so-called Western Marxist tradition—for instance, I’m partial to Georg Lukács (more so than to Adorno and others in the Frankfurt School)—I have to admit I strongly sympathize with Chomsky. But his criticism generalizes, and is even truer in other areas: since well before the mid-twentieth century, a large amount of work in the humanities has been prone to unnecessary and sometimes incomprehensible verbiage. Later this tendency came to be associated with postmodernism, for it was most pronounced in the writings of such luminaries as Derrida, Lacan, Kristeva, Deleuze, and Foucault, as well as their hordes of epigones. By the end of the twentieth century, a vast field of “Theory” had reached maturity, encompassing much of philosophy, anthropology, psychoanalysis, and literary, film, and cultural studies.

As an anthropologist, David Graeber works in this broadly conceived “interpretive” tradition (I call it that because it consists essentially of endless cultural and social “interpretations” or “theories,” often playful and highly verbose conceptual exercises). He has an advantage over many of his peers in that, while not a particularly great writer, he can…

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Prison Planet.com » Free Speech Icon Noam Chomsky Says Big Tech Was Wrong to Ban Infowars

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MIT professor defends Alex Jones’ right to be offensive

Paul Joseph Watson
PrisonPlanet.com
August 11, 2018

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MIT Professor and free speech icon Noam Chomsky has responded to the no platforming of Alex Jones by asserting that Big Tech was wrong to ban Infowars.

This week, Apple, Facebook, YouTube, Spotify and numerous other Silicon Valley giants censored Infowars, with Tim Cook and Mark Zuckerberg personally taking the decision to do so in the case of Apple and Facebook.

Chomsky, who is internationally renowned as an authority on free speech issues, was asked by inventor and encryption expert Louis Buff Parry what his position was on Infowars being shut down by Big Tech.

Responding from his official MIT email address, Chomsky wrote, “What I’ve seen of what he does is outrageous, but unlike many civil libertarians here and especially in other countries, I don’t think that the right way to deal with “hate speech” and crazed fabrications is to ban them; rather, to confront them, and to seek and confront the reasons why anyone pays a moment’s attention to them.”

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(CLICK FOR ENLARGEMENT)

“The real story about marginalization of opinion and information is, as always, radically different, and undiscussed,” he concluded.

Chomsky also made clear that he was no fan of Jones, asserting that he thought the interview he did with the Infowars host in May 2001 was “ridiculous”.

Parry himself strongly defended Infowars in the email exchange, arguing, “Free speech is free speech and multinational cabals must be checked, particularly when their monopoly corporate decisions lead to the reduction of our free speech rights.”

Parry went on to explain how he was born into the free speech movement in Berkeley in the 60’s, before asserting, “Multinational corporations with no duty or loyalty to anyone have set out to collectively undermine the free speech rights of us all.”

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‘She’s a lowlife!’ Trump explodes over former aide Omarosa’s claims of his ‘racist’ rants — RT US News

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President Trump has called his former aide Omarosa Manigault Newman a “lowlife,” after the former contestant on the Apprentice reality tv show, in her upcoming memoir, accused the US leader of being racist.

“Lowlife. She’s a lowlife,” Donald Trump said Saturday, after being asked by a New York Times correspondent if he feels “betrayed by Omarosa?”

After her abrupt dismissal last December, Newman wrote ‘Unhinged: An Insider Account of the Trump White House,’ her memoir in which she claims Trump used the “N-word” when he hosted the reality show. The aide was referring to a long-rumored but yet-to-surface recording of Donald Trump that, she argues in her book, might have cost her job at the White House.

“On this phone conversation, I was told exactly what Donald Trump said — yes, the N-word and others in a classic Trump-goes-nuclear rant — and when he’d said them,” Newman says in her book, according to excerpts.

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© Carlos Barria

On Friday, she told National Public Radio that she’d heard the tape personally. In addition to the racism allegations, in ‘Unhinged’, which is due to hit store shelves next week, she also reveals that Trump’s re-election campaign offered her a contract in exchange for a non-disclosure agreement after her ouster from the White House for “serious integrity issues.”

Before Trump accused Newman of being a “lowlife,” White House press secretary Sarah Sanders dismissed the content of the claims revealed in the book.

“Instead of telling the truth about all the good President Trump and his administration are doing to make America safe and prosperous, this book is riddled with lies and false accusations,” Sanders said in a statement. “It’s sad that a disgruntled former White House employee is trying to profit off these false attacks, and even worse that the media would now give her a platform, after not taking her seriously when she had only positive things to say about the President during her time in the administration.”

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Via RT. This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News with permission or license.

PressTV-Syria ‘insider attack’ alarms invading US forces

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An alleged ‘insider attack’ shooting of a US Marine in Syria by a member of an allied, American-trained militants earlier this year has raised fears among US troops illegally deployed in the war-ravaged country on whether they can trust the anti-Damascus militants they’re working to train and protect.

Although the team tasked with probing the February 17 incident was unable to determine whether the shooting in the leg of Marine Sergeant Cameron Halkovich was in fact an insider-attack case, other US troops in the victim’s unit said they believed the gun discharge had been intentional, prompting fear and mistrust of militants tied to the so-called Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), according to a Friday news release by the US Central Command (CENTCOM), which oversees American military operations across the Middle East.

“The incident was investigated by a team led by a US Marine colonel who was unable to conclusively determine if a US…

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Julian Assange – LewRockwell

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It was one of those mistakes which often happen when you involve a government in your affairs — but it wasn’t Mr. Assange, it was the two women who managed to bed him who made that mistake – – –

Ms. Ardin accompanied Ms. Wilen to the police station on August 20 [2010], playing a supporting role. Neither of them intended to press any criminal charges against Mr. Assange. They wanted to compel him to take an HIV test. Once they were at the police station and told their stories, the female police commissioner informed them that this all fell within “rape” law, and soon thereafter-that Mr. Assange was going to be arrested. Ms. Ardin and Ms. Wilen were upset when they heard this. –Julian Assange’s Penetration Agenda: Was it Rape in Stockholm? | Observer

As things played out however, Mr. Assange has never been charged with anything in Sweden and only breaching bail in the U.K. That’s right, Sweden didn’t file charges and in May, 2017, dropped the investigation which led to Assange needing bail in the first place.

None the less, to make sure he doesn’t leave the country, the U.K. government has posted cops 24/7 outside the Ecuadorian embassy in London where Mr. Assange was granted asylum six years ago.

Maybe you’re thinking, “Wow, asylum from a bail charge? Breaching bail must be REALLY serious in the U.K.!”

Cypherpunks: Freedom a…
Julian Assange
Best Price: $9.99
Buy New $10.50
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Not so much. Even in these extremely unusual and unprecedented circumstances, the absolute best the UK legal machinery could possibly hope for from Mr. Assange is a five-thousand-pound fine and three months in the pokey. If the U.K. plays by its own rules.

In fact, this extremely unusual and…

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Efforts to Undermine Iran Nuclear Deal Warrant Greater Public Outcry

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Janine Jackson: August 5 marks the anniversary of the Gulf of Tonkin incident, when journalists reported official claims about an unprovoked attack by North Vietnam on American destroyers as absolute truths, ignoring countervailing evidence and opening the floodgates for the bloody escalation of the war, and the deaths of millions of Southeast Asians and over 50,000 Americans. The Johnson administration was able to use media, and their credulity when it comes to official enemies, to put through a plan they intended anyway.

Donald Trump is not obscuring—successfully—that he wants what is blithely referred to as “regime change” in Iran. And media aren’t really hiding that drive either. But is that the same thing as challenging it, or interrogating the premises the White House is lining up—the talk of Iran’s maligned behavior, support for terrorists, pursuit of nuclear weapons, its mistreatment of its own people, and all of that?

Joining us now to talk about how to get off what feels like a path to war with Iran is Trita Parsi, founder and former president of the National Iranian American Council and author of, most recently, Losing an Enemy: Obama, Iran and the Triumph of Diplomacy. He joins us now by phone from Washington, DC. Welcome to CounterSpin, Trita Parsi.

Trita Parsi: Thank you so much.

Well today’s reports have it that Donald Trump says he is willing to meet with Iran’s leadership, without preconditions, whenever they want. That’s a week after tweet-threatening Iran’s president Hassan Rouhani with “consequences the likes of which few throughout history have ever suffered before.

CNN called Trump’s recent statement “an abrupt shift in tone.” That…

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Am I More Nordic Than Members of the Alt Right?

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In order to obtain my genetic history earlier this year, I sent a sample of saliva to a DNA outfit and received the results. I wasn’t surprised about my 23% Nigerian ancestry. When I visited Nigeria in 1999, I was told that I had pan-Nigerian facial features. According to the results, I might be pan-African with contributions to my bloodline from Ivory Coast, Ghana, Mali and Senegal. I’m also 4% Western European, but 15% Scandinavian? How did that get into the mix?

Like Muhammad Ali, members of my generation felt that if some of our ancestors were Europeans, it was the result of the rape of African women by European men.

When I visited a slave castle in Ghana, I discovered that these assaults began even before the slave ships set sail. Muhammad Ali must have been surprised to learn that while his father’s ancestor might have been the victim of sexual assault committed by a slave master, his mother Odessa O’Grady’s ancestor was no slave master, but an Irishman named Abe O’Grady who migrated to the United States. When Ali traveled to Ireland he was greeted by thousands including the relatives of his Irish ancestor, Abe O’Grady. [1]

The fact that millions of blacks have European ancestry renders much speculation about race to be ignorant, including the quack race science hoax that is taken seriously by some of the most sophisticated media.

Like Muhammad Ali, I also have Irish ancestry, which was verified by the results, but until I received the results from…

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Election Results Could be Good for Pakistan, Bad for US – Consortiumnews

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The election of Imran Khan as Pakistan’s new president further underscores America’s futile military strategy in the region, argues Graham Fuller.

By Graham Fuller

A bold new political face has come to power in the recent Pakistani elections, possibly offering the US a new opportunity in that country. Sadly the opportunity will likely be squandered—again. There’s something about Pakistani and US interests that seem doomed to collision course—mainly because Pakistan’s national interests are rarely what the US thinks they should be. 

Pakistanis themselves can be pleased the country has just experienced for only the second time in its history a democratic electoral transition from one political party to another. Over long decades democratically-elected governments have been routinely dethroned by the all-powerful Pakistani military-dominated intelligence service ISI. 

Imran Khan

A key problem is that American interests in Pakistan have had little to do with Pakistan itself, but have been the function of other American interests—China, fighting the Soviet Union, al-Qaeda, and trying to win an ongoing—and losing—17-year US war in Afghanistan. Once about eliminating al-Qaeda, Washington today hopes the war in Afghanistan will eliminate the often violent fundamentalist Pashtun movement (Taliban) and enable the US to impose its strategic agenda upon Afghanistan. And over decades the US has alternately cajoled, but mostly threatened Pakistan to do US bidding in Afghanistan. (A former Deputy Secretary of the Pentagon, in the months after 9/11, threatened to “bomb Pakistan back to the Stone Age” if it didn’t fully get on board and support the new US invasion of Afghanistan.)

In an earlier decade, after the USSR invaded Afghanistan in 1979 to prop up a failing Afghan communist regime, the US had recruited the Pakistani government to take the lead in organizing a new anti-Soviet “jihad” through supporting new mujahedin groups in Afghanistan. It was a fateful moment: this anti-Soviet jihad represented the first time that Islamist warriors, recruited from around the world in a joint US-Saudi-Pakistani strategy, became a powerful…

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Man Tries To Scale 30 Foot Border Wall To Enter Illegally, It Doesn’t Go Well

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USA Today
August 10, 2018

A man attempting to enter the United States illegally was severely injured on Sunday evening after he fell from a 30-foot border wall located near Calexico, California.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection announced the incident Monday, saying the man fractured both legs and possibly injured his back.

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This article was posted: Friday, August 10, 2018 at 7:17 am






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It Should Be Criminal to Let Health Insurers Deny Coverage Based on Pre-Existing Conditions

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Imagine this scenario. Flagler County Sheriff’s deputies are arresting a man for domestic violence. They read him his Miranda rights. Then they ask him a question: Have you been arrested or found guilty of any crime before? The man says yes, he has. A couple of times. Ah, in that case, the cops tell him, you’re free to go. We don’t arrest people with a pre-existing record, only those with a clean record. Makes our life easier and we don’t have to waste time and money on you losers.

That, of course, would be absurd, insane, and unacceptable. But it’s exactly what health insurance companies used to do with people who have pre-existing conditions, and it’s what they want to do again: Insure those who are well. Let those who are not fend for themselves. It’s as retrograde a reversal of what health insurance is intended to be as if law enforcement were to arrest only first-time offenders and let repeat offenders go on their way. 

We’d never accept that from police chiefs and sheriffs. Why would we accept it from politicians and state government agencies? But we are.

Last month the Trump administration filed a court brief, joining 20 other states, Florida among them, in a lawsuit that seeks to throw out the requirement of insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions. The states are actually arguing that Obamacare is entirely unconstitutional. The Trump administration isn’t going that far. It doesn’t need to. It’s done plenty to plunder the Affordable Care Act as it is, eviscerating so many of its provisions—cutting off subsidies, aborting birth control coverage, curtailing enrollment helpers, and actually shutting down the Obamacare website periodically (shutting down a website?), among other gouging—that the law is already an invalid hobbling in most states. But covering pre-existing conditions had become a moral red line. Then again, moral lines are mere squares in Trump’s hopscotch, there to be hopped on the way to sadism’s plum pudding. 

There are many reasons to dispute the validity of Obamacare. The requirement to cover pre-existing conditions is not among them. It is the most popular provision of the 2010 law, because it’s its most effective one. Without it, Americans would go back to the days of bankruptcy by illness, and worse. No coverage doesn’t mean no care, but it means less care, much less preventive care, and more early, unnecessary deaths. As Jimmy Kimmel famously said after his son’s emergency heart surgery last year, “if your parents didn’t have medical insurance, you might not live long enough to even get denied because of a pre-existing condition.”  Covering pre-existing conditions is also a principal  reason health insurance exists, at least anywhere civilized health insurance exists: Life is a pre-existing condition. The rest is endurance. 

The point of health insurance is that it’s there when you get sick. That’s why you pay premiums for your whole life, most of it healthy you hope. And if you happen to have diabetes or cancer or had a C-section, that shouldn’t count against you. Instead, insurers want to return to the days when pre-existing conditions, as arbitrarily defined as drug offenses, are the equivalent of a prior criminal record, there only to aggravate your sentence: Not only will you get no coverage, but you’ll get blacklisted across the industry. Until 2010 when Obamacare kicked in, the United States was the exception in the developed world where insurance companies could cherry-pick their clients. It was a simple way for actuaries and annual report fantasists to minimize services and maximize profits. 

But Obamacare has done nothing to dent profits. It’s been sending them to new highs. Trump’s own White House this year reported that “the stock prices of health insurance companies rose by 272 percent from January 2014 to 2018, resulting in improved profitability and outperforming the S&P 500 by 106 percent.” 

Still, insurers want to eliminate coverage for those who need it most, going back to times when they could deny one in seven people for that reason. It’s part of the ideology of greed that’s redefined the purpose of essential services. The insurance industry is not here to help you while making a decent profit along the way. You are here to help the industry make obscene profits, pouring in your premiums while you’re healthy and kindly getting out of the way when you get sick. And government should help business get its way. That’s what Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi is pushing for by joining that lawsuit. That’s what the Trump administration is hoping for by lending it its voice. 

The GOP line on pre-existing conditions was summed up by former New York Lieutenant Governor Betsy McCaughey when she argued that “Obamacare discriminates against healthy people who have to buy their coverage in the individual market,” forcing them to “pay the same price as the chronically ill, whose medical costs are ten times as high, on average.” Odd. I never hear that kind of wishful means-testing applied to Medicare provided to anyone over 65 at the same price, whether the recipient is an obese hedonist with sirloin bile for arteries and $5 million of care ahead as opposed to that of a svelte ascetic whose cost of end-of-life care will approximate that of dust. Totalitarian regimes used to send the bill for the cost of an executioner’s bullet to the family of the executed. Would McCaughey be comfortable sending Medicare’s bills to the family of the expensively departed?

The point is that unless we’re ready to tax butter, sugar, carbs, girths, and couch potatoes, and raise armies of government pantry raiders and dossiers on every American’s eating and exercise habits (something corporations and governments are doing to excess as it is with their intrusive and baseless wellness programs), it’s not up to us to judge whose care will cost more and why anymore than it’s up to a faceless insurance company to decide who is worthy of coverage and who isn’t. If it’s big government you’re worried about, you’re barking up the wrong call center. Your insurer’s presumptions are the death of you—assuming you’re not lucky enough to be on Medicare, in which case you can be a hypocrite to your clogged arteries’ content and bitch about those younger moochers and cancer losers at the other end of the healthcare scale. 

You think I’m exaggerating? This is the assurance I got in this month’s “newsletter” from my insurer, Florida Blue: “Before you get certain types of care, we ask your doctor to consult with our medical team to discuss and agree on the course of treatment.” A medical team that has more in common with shareholder value than tongue depressors will decide my fate. And we were once worried about mythical death panels. No mystery why that type of company would dance on the graves of clients whose pre-existing conditions it wishes it could shed. 

Eliminating coverage for those with pre-existing conditions is no different than applying the principles of Shirley Jackson’s lottery to human beings. You know the famous story you read in high school: when your number is up, it’s your turn to die. Granting insurers the power to decide whom to cover lets them play god with your health’s lottery. It’s cruel enough you might have been dealt a bad hand. It should be criminal to let insurers deny you coverage and brand you a loser on their balance sheet. Instead, Trump, Florida, and 19 other states want those crimes to be permissible business all over again. 

This country has a pretty sickening pre-existing condition and it doesn’t even know it.

Via Common Dreams. This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News with permission or license.

Here we go again! US lawmaker says he was told Moscow played role in Charlottesville riots — RT US News

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A lot has happened on the one-year anniversary of the Charlottesville riots. Donald Trump has said he condemns racism, his critics have criticized him and, true to form, someone in Washington found a way to blame the Russians.

When there’s no evidence proving Moscow was behind election-meddling or collusion, it’s time to throw the “Russia did it” bombshell elsewhere. Congressman Tom Garrett found the perfect opportunity to do just that during a slot on CNN on Saturday.

Citing a conversation which he says he had with the director of the FBI, Garrett (R-VA) added a new chapter to the endless tome of unsubstantiated claims against Russia.

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Clashes in Charlottesville, Virginia in August 2017.

“I sat in a closed session briefing about two months ago about Charlottesville with the director of the FBI,” he told CNN. “[I] asked if Russian intermeddling had to do with fomenting the flames of what happened in Charlottesville. I was told, ‘Yes, it did.’ I asked, ‘Is this information classified?’ They said, ‘No, it’s not.’”

He went on to state that “Russian intermeddling” is aiming to “pit Americans against Americans to undermine confidence in Western-style democracies,” though he failed to provide any sort of example of what Moscow supposedly did.

It’s a rather interesting claim from a lawmaker who actually met with the organizer of the ‘Organize the Right’ white nationalist rally that sparked the Charlottesville violence. 

While Garrett’s comments certainly seem far-fetched, they aren’t surprising in the current political climate of Russian scapegoating. It comes after another lawmaker claimed that Russians had already penetrated election systems in some Florida counties ahead of mid-term elections – a claim that officials pushed back on, claiming they have “zero information” about whether that is the case. 

And then there is, of course, the claim that Moscow supported the Black Lives Matter movement. The list of finger-pointing is long, as having actual facts is way down the list of priorities when it comes to Russia-bashing.

Garrett has been a US representative for Virginia’s 5th congressional district since May 2016, with Charlottesville being part of his constituency. He previously served in the Virginia State Senate from 2011 to 2017. In May, he and his wife were accused by former aides of treating their staff like their personal servants. Just days later, he announced he would not be seeking re-election in November, admitting he is struggling with alcoholism. 

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Via RT. This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News with permission or license.

PressTV-‘Russia meddling led to Charlottesville attack’

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“Russian inter-meddling” led to last year’s violent clash between white supremacists and counter-protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia, says a US lawmaker.

Virginia Republican Representative Tom Garrett cited FBI Director Christopher Wray Saturday as saying that Russian hackers contributed to “fomenting the flames of what happened in Charlottesville.”

“I sat in a closed session briefing probably two months ago about Charlottesville with the director of the FBI, amongst others, and asked if Russian inter-meddling had to do with fomenting the flames of what happened in Charlottesville,” Garett told CNN. “I was told yes, it did.”

The member of the House Homeland Security and Foreign Affairs committees had previously linked the attack to “foreign influence.”

“[Russia uses] events like this divisive racial fight … and this is the sort of thing they do,” Garett claimed.

Last year, a man with alleged neo-Nazi ties drove his car into…

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Video: Can Ben Jealous Unify Democrats against Larry Hogan?

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Ben Jealous takes viewer questions and discusses what his primary win means for the future of the Democratic Party Visit http://therealnews.com for more stories …

Via Youtube

America’s unending reign of police terror

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America’s unending reign of police terror

11 August 2018

Four years after the murder of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri by police officer Darren Wilson sparked mass popular outrage over police violence, the daily onslaught of police killings in the US continues. Through the end of July, at least 720 people have had their lives taken by the police this year, averaging more than three deaths every day.

At the current pace, 2018 will be among the deadliest years on record for police killings in the US. Nearly all these killings pass under the radar of the national media. Those especially egregious incidents that are captured on video garner a few obligatory seconds on the nightly news before being dropped.

In one of the latest fatal encounters, 25-year-old Daniel Hambrick was shot in the back and killed, as he ran from a traffic stop on July 26, by 25-year-old Nashville, Tennessee police officer Andrew Delke. Hambrick was African American, Delke is white.

Initial reports indicated that Hambrick was killed during a traffic stop after he emerged from the car armed with a gun. The police justified the killing by publicizing the fact that Hambrick had a long record of criminal convictions.

With no police bodycam or dashcam footage immediately forthcoming, Hambrick’s killing passed with little notice outside of local media. Vigils and protests were held by family and friends demanding justice and an end to police killings. Hambrick was fondly remembered as “Dan Dan,” a young man who cared deeply for his family and was looking forward to starting a new job this month.

This week, the lies of the police were exposed when surveillance video was released by the district attorney showing that Delke shot Hambrick in the back as he fled, sparking national outrage.

Hambrick’s…

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Prison Planet.com » US jury orders Monsanto to pay $290mn to cancer patient over weed killer

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AFP
August 11, 2018

A California jury ordered chemical giant Monsanto to pay nearly $290 million Friday for failing to warn a dying groundskeeper that its weed killer Roundup might cause cancer.

Jurors unanimously found that Monsanto — which vowed to appeal — acted with “malice” and that its weed killers Roundup and the professional grade version RangerPro contributed “substantially” to Dewayne Johnson’s terminal illness.

Following eight weeks of trial proceedings, the San Francisco jury ordered Monsanto to pay $250 million in punitive damages along with compensatory damages and other costs, bringing the total figure to nearly $290 million.

Johnson, a California groundskeeper diagnosed in 2014 with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma — a cancer that affects white blood cells — says he repeatedly used a professional form of Roundup while working at a school in Benicia, California.

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This article was posted: Saturday, August 11, 2018 at 4:42 am






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School officer forces 10yo with autism to ground, handcuffs him (VIDEOS) — RT US News

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Body cam footage has emerged showing the moment a school resource officer forced a 10-year-old boy with autism to the ground and handcuffed him. The child’s mother says the entire incident amounts to “abuse.”

The video begins by showing the young boy, Thomas, sitting in a cubby by himself in a classroom at Lee Elementary School in Denton, Texas in April. His teacher tries to encourage him to “hop out of the cubby” and eventually takes him by the wrist to help pull him down.

A Denton Police Department school resource officer, who had been called to the room, can then be heard saying “do you want help?” to which the teacher replies that she does.

At that point, the officer picks up Thomas and carries him down the hallway to a room. That room, called the SOAR room, is a space where children can quiet down, according to local news outlet WFAA. 

Once they have arrived in the room, the officer places the child on the ground and says “do you want the handcuffs?” Thomas is then cuffed while he screams and the teacher watches from a corner. According to the footage, Thomas was handcuffed three separate times before his mother, Emily Brown, arrived.

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© Wichita Police

It wasn’t until his mother got home with Thomas that she and her husband Robert discovered bruises on their son’s body. At that point, Emily told WFAA that they “started realizing there’s really something wrong here.”

Although police say Thomas was poking other students, the video only shows the child backed into the cubby.

“I see a little boy hiding,” Emily told WFAA. “Not doing anything that’s an imminent serious harm to someone else.” She equated the situation to “abuse,” calling it an unnecessary use of force by the officer.

The Browns told WFAA that the very fact their son was handcuffed was breaking a rule, as they have a detailed intervention plan in place with the school which does not permit the use of restraints. “There are a variety of de-escalation techniques they’re supposed to be using,” the child’s father said.

However, the city of Denton said that, following a departmental review of the incident, “no violations” to laws or policies were found, and that proper protocol was followed. The officer has been allowed to keep his job at the school.

The family is considering taking legal action against the school district and plans to place Thomas in a charter school this year.

Via RT. This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News with permission or license.

Did the Dental Profession Just Admit

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So the makers of non-fluoride toothpaste have so riled the dental profession that it was forced to make a statement.  The news headline said: “Toothpaste WITHOUT fluoride: Dentists urge people to stop ‘ridiculous’ trend as they warn ‘brushing alone is note enough’.”

Uh, say again?  We’re wasting our time brushing our teeth with non-fluoride toothpaste if we want to prevent cavities?  (Toothbrushing has some obvious effect in reducing plaque and maybe even restoring whiteness.)

So before you stop brushing your teeth altogether the precise wording of a recent study that prompted this news headline is reprinted verbatim below.  Here it is (from the journal Gerodontology:

Personal oral hygiene interventions failed to influence the incidence of dental caries despite meticulous deplaquing of teeth…. Personal oral hygiene in the absence of fluorides has failed to show a benefit in terms of reducing the incidence of dental caries.”



Correcting the Vitamin…
Emily Allison-Francis
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The same goes for flossing.  Reviewers found children who underwent flossing by a professional hygienist every weekday reduced their risk for cavities by 40% but those who flossed at home experienced no reduction.  Flossing + toothbrushing only produces a small reduction in dental plaque.

Sunlight better than water fluoridation?

Severe dental caries (cavities) in preschool children are more related to low blood levels of vitamin D rather than lack of use of fluoride toothpaste or fluoridated drinking water.  (Fluoride helps harden dental enamel and thus makes teeth resistant to acid-forming bacteria that induce cavities.)

One study reveals children with vitamin D blood levels…

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A Decalogue of American Empire-Building

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Few, if any, believe what they hear and read from leaders and media publicists. Most people choose to ignore the cacophony of voices, vices and virtues.

This paper provides a set of theses which purports to lay-out the basis for a dialogue between and among those who choose to abstain from elections with the intent to engage them in political struggle.

Thesis 1

US empire builders of all colors and persuasion practice donkey tactics; waving the carrot and wielding the whip to move the target government on the chosen path.

In the same way, Washington offers dubious concessions and threatens reprisals, in order to move them into the imperial orbit.

Washington applied the tactic successfully in several recent encounters. In 2003 the US offered Libyan government of Muammar Gaddafi a peaceful accommodation in exchange for disarmament, abandonment of nationalist allies in the Middle East, Africa and Asia. In 2011, the US with its European allies applied the whip – bombed Libya, financed and armed retrograde tribal and terrorist forces, destroyed the infrastructure, murdered Gaddafi and uprooted millions of Africans and Libyans who fled to Europe. Washington recruited mercenaries for their subsequent war against Syria in order to destroy the nationalist Bashar Assad regime.

Washington succeeded in destroying an adversary but did not establish a puppet regime in the midst of perpetual conflict.

The empire’s carrot…

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PressTV-US-North Korea talks getting ‘dangerous’

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The United States and North Korea peace talks have become “dangerous” and “unsettling” for the US people, according to a US political and military analyst.

American political analyst Michael Burns said the Trump administration’s “twisted” negotiation strategy alongside the demanding “jingoism” has become a “destructive” force undermining the  talks with the North.

The negotiations between the US and North Korea , which initiated after the landmark summit between US President Donald Trump and North Korean Leader Kim Jong-un, had been a source of “joy and delight to the average American citizen”, the analyst said in an interview with Press TV on Saturday.

At the historic summit between Trump and Kim, the US president committed to provide security guarantees to North Korea and Kim agreed with the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.

Following the agreement, Pyongyang showed goodwill gestures including scrapping a…

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‘Go After the Nazis Peddling Hate, Not Our Sports Heroes’ Protesting Injustice

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Mediaite
August 11, 2018

On Friday, CNN’s Chris Cuomo closed the 9 pm hour of his show by slamming President Donald Trump for blasting NFL players for their protests while remaining silent on Charlottesville.

“Why is Trump doing this? So many protesting players, white and black have said this isn’t about disrespecting the flag. He knows that,” Cuomo said. “He doesn’t seem to care. Why? This works with the part of his base. How do we know? He said it.”

Then, noting that while the President is speaking out on NFL protesters while saying nothing about the anniversary of Charlottesville, he continued on:

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This article was posted: Saturday, August 11, 2018 at 4:48 am






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Trump blames ‘clowns and losers’ Comey & co for loss of FBI’s ‘stellar reputation’ — RT US News

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US President Donald Trump branded ex-FBI executives James Comey and Andrew McCabe as “clowns and losers” in a tweet criticizing them and other officials for ruining the once “stellar reputation” of the FBI.

“Will the FBI ever recover its once stellar reputation?” he asked while calling out Comey and McCabe, along with former FBI agent Peter Strzok and “his lover, the lovely Lisa Page” – a former FBI lawyer.

Trump claimed that they along with other dismissed top officials tarnished the name of the FBI. “So many of the great men and women of the FBI have been hurt by these clowns and losers!”

The tweet followed on from an earlier post questioning why the FBI hadn’t handed over former Deputy Director of the FBI Andrew McCabe’s text messages to Judicial Watch – a conservative watchdog seeking the records.

Trump suggested that the FBI was hiding something and threatened to get involved in Judicial Watch’s fight to access McCabe’s messages related to his wife Jill’s 2015 Virginia state senate campaign.

The Wall Street Journal reported in 2016 that an influential Democrat with longstanding ties to Bill and Hillary Clinton, Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe, donated nearly half a million dollars to Jill McCabe’s election campaign through his political organization.

McCabe responded to the claims in The Washington Post, claiming her husband’s involvement in the Clinton probe came after the race was over.

Anti-Trump text messages exchanged between Strzok and Page also frequently mention “Andy” – believed to be a reference to McCabe.

“I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in Andy’s office — that there’s no way he gets elected — but I’m afraid we can’t take that risk,” Strzok told Page in one message. “It’s like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you’re 40.”

READ MORE: ‘FBI lovers’ who exchanged anti-Trump texts getting ‘cold feet’ ahead of hearings – Trump

Trump previously claimed the texts amounted to “treason” and had exposed an FBI plot against him. The president has come under fire for his frequent criticism of the intelligence agency, with former director James Comey and former Attorney General Loretta Lynch among those taking him to task for his attacks.

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Via RT. This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News with permission or license.

PressTV-‘More people sleeping rough in Britain’

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The number of people sleeping rough in Britain has increased considerably, according to a report, as many blame government cuts to social services as a main reason.

In a Friday report, the Guardian said the problem of homelessness in the United Kingdom was being underestimated by the government, adding that thousands of people sleep rough every night in the country.

It said the number of British rough sleepers had increased by more than 57 percent since 2011, adding that a single charity had accommodated more than 9,000 people in last Christmas alone.

The report said authorities have mostly sought to downplay the acuteness of the crisis, adding that government agencies have strict rules to include people in their lists of rough sleepers and insist people living in encampments are not necessarily in the category.

The report, dubbed Tented Britain: rise in rough sleepers taking shelter under canvas, said encampments had become a feature of…

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PressTV-‘US attempting regime change in Turkey, Venezuela’

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The United States is attempting to implement regime change in Turkey and Venezuela, American writer and academic James Petras says.

James Petras, author and political commentator, made the remarks in an interview with Press TV on Saturday when asked to comment on US interference in Turkey and Venezuela.

In an op-end published in The New York Times on Saturday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called on Washington to stop unilateralism and start respecting his country and its sovereignty.

“Unless the United States starts respecting Turkey’s sovereignty and proves that it understands the dangers that our nation faces, our partnership could be in jeopardy,” the Turkish president stated.

Erdogan also warned that Turkey could start looking for new allies if Washington damaged its relations with Ankara.

Relations between Ankara and Washington have sunk to their lowest point in decades over a number of issues, including the detention of…

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Why Trump Cancelled the Iran Deal

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Eric Zuesse, originally posted at strategic-culture.org

The following is entirely from open online sources that I have been finding to be trustworthy on these matters in the past. These sources will be linked-to here; none of this information is secret, even though some details in my resulting analysis of it will be entirely new.

It explains how and why the bottom-line difference between Donald Trump and Barack Obama, regarding U.S. national security policies, turns out to be their different respective estimations of the biggest danger threatening the maintenance of the U.S. dollar as the world’s leading or reserve currency. This dollar-dominance has been the overriding foreign-policy concern for both Presidents. Any ‘news’medium whose ‘reporting’ on the matter has missed that basic fact is either incompetent, corrupt (propagandistic), or both, but this essential fact will be shown here to explain both the similarities and the differences between Trump’s and Obama’s policies on Iran. ‘Reporting’ the surface (of policy on Iran or anything else) without disclosing what’s underneath it, is merely spreading propaganda, not publishing actual journalism.

Obama placed as being the top threat to the dollar, a breakaway of the EU (America’s largest market both for exports and for imports) from alliance with the United States. He was internationally a Europhile. Trump, however, places as being the top threat to the dollar, a breakaway of Saudi Arabia and of the other Gulf Arab oil monarchies from the United States. Trump is internationally a Sunni-phile: specifically a protector of fundamentalist Sunni monarchs — but especially of the Sauds themselves — and they hate Shia and especially the main Shia nation, Iran.

Here’s how that change, to Saudi Arabia as being America’s main ally, has happened — actually it’s a culmination of decades. Trump is merely the latest part of that process of change. Here is from the U.S. State Department’s official historian, regarding this history:

By the 1960s, a surplus of U.S. dollars caused by foreign aid, military spending, and foreign investment threatened this system [the FDR-established 1944 Bretton Woods gold-based U.S. dollar as the world’s reserve currency], as the United States did not have enough gold to cover the volume of dollars in worldwide circulation at the rate of $35 per ounce; as a result, the dollar was overvalued. Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson adopted a series of measures to support the dollar and sustain Bretton Woods: foreign investment disincentives; restrictions on foreign lending; efforts to stem the official outflow of dollars; international monetary reform; and cooperation with other countries. Nothing worked. Meanwhile, traders in foreign exchange markets, believing that the dollar’s overvaluation would one day compel the U.S. government to devalue it, proved increasingly inclined to sell dollars. This resulted in periodic runs on the dollar.

It was just such a run on the dollar, along with mounting evidence that the overvalued dollar was undermining the nation’s foreign trading position, which prompted President Richard M. Nixon to act, on August 13, 1971 [to end the convertibility of dollars to gold].

When Nixon ended the gold-basis of the dollar and then in 1974 secretly switched to the current oil-basis, this transformation of the dollar’s backing, from gold to oil, was intended to enable the debt-financing (as opposed to the tax-financing, which is less acceptable to voters) of whatever military expenditure would be necessary in order to satisfy the profit-needs of Lockheed Corporation and of the other U.S. manufacturers whose only markets are the U.S. Government and its allied governments, as well as of U.S. extractive industries such as oil and mining firms, which rely heavily upon access to foreign natural resources, as well as of Wall Street and its need for selling debt and keeping interest-rates down (and stock-prices — and therefore aristocrats’ wealth — high and rising). This 1974 secret agreement between Nixon and King Saud lasts to the present day, and has worked well for both aristocracies. It met the needs of the very same “military-industrial complex” (the big U.S. Government contractors) that the prior Republican President, Dwight Eisenhower, had warned might take control of U.S. foreign policies. As Bloomberg’s Andrea Wong on 30 May 2016 explained the Nixon system that replaced the FDR system, “The basic framework was strikingly simple. The U.S. would buy oil from Saudi Arabia and provide the kingdom military aid and equipment. In return, the Saudis would plow billions of their petrodollar revenue back into Treasuries and finance America’s spending.”

This new system didn’t only supply a constant flow of Saudi tax-money to the U.S. Government; it supplied a constant flow of new sales-orders and profits to the military firms that were increasingly coming to control the U.S. Government — for the benefit of both aristocracies: the Sauds, and America’s billionaires.

That was near the end of the FDR-produced 37-year period of U.S. democratic leadership of the world, the era that had started at Bretton Woods in 1944. It came crashing to an end not in 1974 (which was step two after the 1971 step one had ended the 1944 system) but on the day when Ronald Reagan entered the White House in 1981. The shockingly sudden ascent, from that moment on, of U.S. federal Government debt (to be paid-off by future generations instead of by current taxpayers) is shown, right here, in a graph of “U.S. Federal Debt as Percent of GDP, 1940-2015”, where you can see that the debt had peaked above 90% of GDP late in WW II between 1944-1948, and then plunged during Bretton Woods, but in 1981 it started ascending yet again, until reaching that WW II peak for a second time, as it has been ever since 2010, when Obama bailed-out the mega-banks and their mega-clients, but didn’t bail out the American public, whose finances had been destroyed by those banksters’ frauds, which Obama refused to prosecute; and, so, economic inequality in America got even more extreme after the 2008 George W. Bush crash, instead of less extreme afterward (as had always happened in the past).

Above 90% debt/GDP during and immediately following WW II was sound policy, but America’s going again above 90% since 2010 has reflected simply an aristocratic heist of America, for only the aristocracy’s benefit — all of the benefits going only to the super-rich.

Another, and more-current U.S. graph shows that, as of the first quarter of 2018, this percentage (debt/GDP) is, yet again, back now to its previous all-time record high of 105-120%%, which had been reached only in 1945-1947 (when it was justified by the war).

Currently, companies such as Lockheed Martin are thriving as they had done during WW II, but the sheer corruption in America’s military spending is this time the reason, no World War (yet); so, this time, America is spending like in an all-out-war situation, even before the Congress has issued any declaration of war at all. Everybody except the American public knows that the intense corruptness of the U.S. military is the reason for this restoration of astronomical ‘defense’ spending, even during peace-time. A major poll even showed that ‘defense’ spending was the only spending by the federal Government which Americans in 2017 wanted increased; they wanted all other federal spending to be reduced (though there was actually vastly more corruption in military spending than in any other type — the public have simply been hoodwinked).

But can the U.S. Government’s extreme misallocation of wealth, from the public to the insiders, continue without turning this country into a much bigger version of today’s Greece? More and more people around the world are worrying about that. Of course, Greece didn’t have the world’s reserve currency, but what would happen to the net worths of America’s billionaires if billionaires worldwide were to lose faith in the dollar? Consequently, there’s intensified Presidential worrying about how much longer foreign investors will continue to trust the oil-based dollar.

America’s political class now have two competing ideas to deal with this danger, Obama’s versus Trump’s, both being about how to preserve the dollar in a way that best serves the needs of ‘defense’ contractors, extractive firms, and Wall Street. Obama chose Europe (America’s largest market) as America’s chief ally (he was Euro-centric against Russia); Trump chose the owner of Saudi Arabia (he’s Saudi-Israeli centric against Iran) — that’s the world’s largest weapons-purchaser, as well as the world’s largest producer of oil (as well as the largest lobbies).

The Saudi King owns Saudi Arabia, including the world’s largest and most valuable oil company, Aramco, whose oil is the “sweetest” — the least expensive to extract and refine — and is also the most abundant, in all of the world, and so he can sell petroleum at a profit even when his competitors cannot. Oil-prices that are so low as to cause economic losses for other oil companies, can still be generating profits — albeit lowered ones — for King Saud; and this is the reason why his decisions determine how much the global oil-spigot will be turned on, and how low the global oil-price will be, at any given time. He controls the value of the U.S. dollar. He controls it far more directly, and far more effectively, than the EU can. It would be like, under the old FDR-era Bretton Woods system, controlling the exchange-rates of the dollar, by raising or lowering the amount of gold produced. But this is liquid gold, and King Saud determines its price.

Furthermore, King Saud also leads the Gulf Cooperation Council of all other Arab oil monarchs, such as those who own UAE — all of them are likewise U.S. allies and major weapons-buyers.

In an extraordinarily fine recent article by Pepe Escobar at Asia Times, “Oil and gas geopolitics: no shelter from the storm”, he quotes from his not-for-attribution interviews with “EU diplomats,” and reports:

After the Trump administration’s unilateral pull-out from the Iran nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), European Union diplomats in Brussels, off the record, and still in shock, admit that they blundered by not “configuring the eurozone as distinct and separate to the dollar hegemony”. Now they may be made to pay the price of their impotence via their “outlawed” trade with Iran. …

As admitted, never on the record, by experts in Brussels; the EU has got to reevaluate its strategic alliance with an essentially energy independent US, as “we are risking all our energy resources over their Halford Mackinder geopolitical analysis that they must break up [the alliance between] Russia and China.”

That’s a direct reference to the late Mackinder epigone Zbigniew “Grand Chessboard” Brzezinski, who died dreaming of turning China against Russia.

In Brussels, there’s increased recognition that US pressure on Iran, Russia and China is out of geopolitical fear the entire Eurasian land mass, organized as a super-trading bloc via the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU), the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), [and] the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), is slipping away from Washington’s influence.

This analysis gets closer to how the three key nodes of 21st century Eurasia integration – Russia, China and Iran – have identified the key issue; both the euro and the yuan must bypass the petrodollar, the ideal means, as the Chinese stress, to “end the oscillation between strong and weak dollar cycles, which has been so profitable for US financial institutions, but lethal to emerging markets.” …

It’s also no secret among Persian Gulf traders that in the – hopefully unlikely – event of a US-Saudi-Israeli war in Southwest Asia against Iran, a real scenario war-gamed by the Pentagon would be “the destruction of oil wells in the GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council]. The Strait of Hormuz does not have to be blocked, as destroying the oil wells would be far more effective.”

And what the potential loss of over 20% of the world’s oil supply would mean is terrifying; the implosion, with unforeseen consequences, of the quadrillion derivatives pyramid, and consequentially [consequently] of the entire Western financial casino superstructure.

In other words: it’s not the ‘threat’ that perhaps, some day, Iran will have nuclear warheads, that is actually driving Trump’s concern here (despite what Israel’s concerns are about that matter), but instead, it is his concerns about Iran’s missiles, which constitute the delivery-system for any Iranian warheads: that their flight-range be short enough so that the Sauds will be outside their range. (The main way Iran intends to respond to an invasion backed by the U.S., is to attack Saudi Arabia — Iran’s leaders know that the U.S. Government is more dependent upon the Sauds than upon Israel — so, Iran’s top targets would be Saudi capital Riyadh, and also the Ghawar oil field, which holds over half of Saudi oil. If U.S. bases have been used in the invasion, then all U.S. bases in the Middle East are also be within the range of Iran’s missiles and therefore would also probably be targeted.)

Obama’s deal with Iran had focused solely upon preventing Iran from developing nuclear warheads — which Obama perhaps thought (mistakenly) would dampen Israel’s (and its billionaire U.S. financial backers’) ardor for the U.S. to conquer Iran. Israel had publicly said that their concern was Iran’s possibility to become a nuclear power like Israel became; those possible future warheads were supposed to be the issue; but, apparently, that wasn’t actually the issue which really drove Israel. Obama seems to have thought that it was, but it wasn’t, actually. Israel, like the Sauds, want Iran conquered. Simple. The nuclear matter was more an excuse than an explanation.

With Trump now in the White House, overwhelmingly by money from the Israel lobbies (proxies also for the Sauds) — and with no equivalently organized Jewish opposition to the pro-Israel lobbies (and so in the United States, for a person to be anti-Israel is viewed as being anti-Semitic, which is not at all true, but Israel’s lies say it’s true and many Americans unfortunately believe it) — Trump has not only the Sauds and their allies requiring him to be against Iran and its allies, but he has also got this pressure coming from Israel: both the Big-Oil and the Jewish lobbies drive him. Unlike Obama, who wasn’t as indebted to the Jewish lobbies, Trump needs to walk the plank for both the Sauds and Israel.

In other words: Trump aims to keep the dollar as the reserve currency by suppressing not only China but also the two main competitors of King Saud: Iran and Russia. That’s why America’s main ‘enemies’ now are those three countries and their respective allies.

Obama was likewise targeting them, but in a different priority-order, with Russia being the main one (thus Obama’s takeover of Ukraine in February 2014 turning it against Russia, next door); and that difference was due to Obama’s desire to be favorably viewed by the residents in America’s biggest export and import market, the EU, and so his bringing another member (Ukraine) into the EU (which still hasn’t yet been culminated).

Trump is instead building on his alliance with King Saud and the other GCC monarchs, a group who can more directly cooperate to control the value of the U.S. dollar than the EU can. Furthermore, both conservative (including Orthodox) Jews in the United States, and also white evangelical Protestants in the U.S., are strongly supportive of Israel, which likewise sides with the Arab oil monarchs against Iran and its allies. Trump needs these people’s votes.

Trump also sides with the Sauds against Canada. That’s a matter which the theorists who assert that Israel controls the U.S., instead of that the Sauds (allied with America’s and Israel’s billionaires) control the U.S., ignore; they ignore whatever doesn’t fit their theory. Of course, a lot doesn’t fit their theory (which equates “Jews” with “Israelis” and alleges that “they” control the world), but people whose prejudices are that deep-seated, can’t be reached by any facts which contradict their self-defining prejudice. Since it defines themselves, it’s a part of them, and they can never deny it, because to do so would be to deny who and what they are, and they refuse to change that. The Sauds control the dollar; Israel does not, but Israel does the lobbying, and both the Sauds and Israel want Iran destroyed. Trump gets this pressure not only from the billionaires but from his voters.

And, of course, Democratic Party billionaires push the narrative that Russia controls America. It used to be the Republican Joseph R. McCarthy’s accusation, that the “commies” had “infiltrated”, especially at the State Department. So: Trump kicked out Russia’s diplomats, to satisfy those neocons — the neoconservatives of all Parties and persuasions, both conservative and liberal.

To satisfy the Sauds, despite the EU, Trump has dumped the Iran deal. And he did it also to satisfy Israel, the main U.S. lobbyists for the Sauds. (Americans are far more sympathetic to Jews than to Arabs; the Sauds are aware of this; Israel handles their front-office.) For Trump, the Sauds are higher priority than Europe; even Israel (who are an expense instead of a moneybag for the U.S. Government) are higher priority than Europe. Both the Sauds and Israel together are vastly higher. And the Sauds alone are higher priority for Trump than are even Canada and Europe combined. Under Trump, anything will be done in order to keep the Sauds and their proxy-lobbyists (Israel) ‘on America’s side’.

Consequently, Trump’s political base is mainly against Iran and for Israel, but Obama’s was mainly against Russia and for the EU. Obama’s Democratic Party still are controlled by the same billionaires as before; and, so, Democrats continue demonizing Russia, and are trying to make as impossible as they can, any rapprochement with Russia — and, therefore, they smear Trump for anything he might try to do along those lines.

Both Obama and Trump have been aiming to extend America’s aristocracy’s dominance around the world, but they employ different strategies toward that politically bipartisan American-aristocratic objective: the U.S. Government’s global control, for the benefit of the U.S. aristocracy, at everyone else’s expense. Obama and Trump were placed into the White House by different groups of U.S. billionaires, and each nominee serves his/her respective sponsors, no public anywhere — not even their voters’ welfare.

An analogous example is that, whereas Fox News, Forbes, National Review, The Weekly Standard, American Spectator, Wall Street Journal, Investors Business Daily, Breitbart News, InfoWars, Reuters, and AP, are propagandists for the Republican Party; NPR, CNN, NBC, CBS, ABC, Mother Jones, The Atlantic, The New Republic, New Yorker, New York Magazine, New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today, Huffington Post, The Daily Beast, and Salon, are propagandists for the Democratic Party; but, they all draw their chief sponsors from the same small list of donors who are America’s billionaires, since these few people control the top advertisers, investors, and charities, and thus control nearly all of the nation’s propaganda. The same people who control the Government control the public; but, America isn’t a one-Party dictatorship. America is, instead, a multi-Party dictatorship. And this is how it functions.

Trump cancelled the Iran deal because a different group of billionaires are now in control of the White House, and of the rest of the U.S. Government. Trump’s group demonize especially Iran; Obama’s group demonize especially Russia. That’s it, short. That’s America’s aristocratic tug-of-war; but both sides of it are for invasion, and for war.  Thus, we’re in the condition of ‘permanent war for permanent peace’ — to satisfy the military contractors and the billionaires who control them. Any U.S. President who would resist that, would invite assassination; but, perhaps in Trump’s case, impeachment, or other removal-from-office, would be likelier. In any case, the sponsors need to be satisfied — or else — and Trump knows this.

Trump is doing what he thinks he has to be doing, for his own safety. He’s just a figurehead for a different faction of the U.S. aristocracy, than Obama was. He’s doing what he thinks he needs to be doing, for his survival. Political leadership is an extremely dangerous business. Trump is playing a slightly different game of it than Obama did, because he represents a different faction than Obama did. These two factions of the U.S. aristocracy are also now battling each other for political control over Europe.

—————

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of  They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of  CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.

Using Gramsci to Understand the Arab Uprisings

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Nadim Mirshak: In this current period of post-uprising Egypt, civil society seems to be one of the few spaces left where hegemony is challenged in ways that are different from protests, sit-ins or violent demonstrations. In your book, Gramsci, Freire and Adult Education: Possibilities for Transformative Action (1999) you argue that civil society should not be romanticized. Can you explain what you mean?

Peter Mayo: Central to Gramsci’s notion of hegemony is that civil society is not always oppositional. Gramsci was looking at what the Germans call “bürgerliche gesellschaft,” bourgeois civil society. What he means is that if a transformation would take place within civil society and within the interstices of hegemony itself, or if a great revolution or intellectual and moral reform took place, maybe it would not remain a bourgeois civil society anymore. But it would still remain civil society nonetheless.

Nowhere in Gramsci’s writings does he use the term “counter-hegemony,” precisely because he wants to avoid this notion of binary, of being “counter” or “hegemonic.” The two are instead intertwined, dialectically if you like. One cannot be counter-hegemonic without participating within the hegemonic system. At the same time, the hegemonic system is never one hundred…

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Pity the Democrats and Republicans

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It is a rare occasion when one can only pity both the Republican and Democratic Parties. The GOP (Generally Opposed to Progress) has hitched its rather dilapidated wagon to a racist, sexist, narcissistic man-child of a star who has only the most tenuous grasp on reality. But it is not them we are here to discuss today. It is the Democrats, the Party that, had it been a person, would never have been voted most likely to succeed upon graduation from high school.

Currently, one would think that the Democrats would be poised for great success. Mid-term elections are approaching; the president, Donald Trump, has record-breaking low approval scores, and there is dissatisfaction with him from coast to coast. Now, one might think, is the time for the Democrats to clearly articulate their platform, allowing the populace to know exactly where the party stands, and what it will do to achieve its goals. This might include such popular items as sensible gun-control; recognition of Palestine’s human-rights struggles and Israel’s violations of international law; income equality, gender equality, and an end to institutionalized racism, among other things. These, according to public opinion polls, are topics that resonate with voters who mainly identify as Democratic.

But no! Horror of horrors! Best, according to the Party leaders, to lay low, and allow dissatisfaction with the Republicans to drive voters into the arms of the Democratic Party. Maintain the status quo, don’t rock…

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As California Burns, It’s Time to Elect Climate Leaders to Deal With This ‘New Normal’

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In case you missed it, California is beset with an unusual number of intense wildfires; the state is covered by smoke. In response, on August, Donald Trump tweeted: “California wildfires are being magnified & made so much worse by the bad environmental laws…” Hmm, so California “environmentalists” are responsible for the fires? Or is someone else to blame?

Twelve years ago, I wrote “Global Warming? Not in My Back Yard,” pointing out that while most Americans are concerned about global warming (climate change), in general, they don’t get excited about it, in particular, until there’s evidence at the local level—because they have a lot of other issues to worry about such as the cost of their healthcare or housing or jobs.

Two years of extreme wildfires has gotten Californians’ attention. Waking up each morning worried about air quality—because of the smoke—or worse yet, wondering if you will be forced to evacuate, has made everyone in California aware that we have a problem. The issue is what to do about it.

In Trump’s full tweet, he said: “California wildfires are being magnified & made so much worse by the bad environmental laws which aren’t allowing massive amount of readily available water to be properly utilized. It is being diverted into the Pacific Ocean. Must also tree clear to stop fire spreading!” Even by Trump standards, this was an incredibly ignorant tweet. The wildfires are not being caused by lack of water or the absence of tree clearing. Most experts agree they are the result of dryness, due to the state’s prolonged drought, high temperatures—July was the hottest month ever recorded—and, in many cases, ferocious winds.

As a native Californian, I’ve learned a lot about wildfires. (If you’ve lived here for more than a couple of years, you have fire stories to tell.) In October of 1991, the Oakland Hills Firestorm occurred about 12 miles from my Berkeley residence. This fire killed 25 people, injured 150, and destroyed 3,280 residences. It covered an area of approximately three square miles. In October of 2017, the Tubbs fire occurred about 15 miles from my west Sonoma County property. This fire (spanning Lake, Napa, and Sonoma Counties) killed 22 people, injured more than 100, and incinerated 5,643 structures. The Tubbs fire covered a much larger area than the Oakland Hills fire; on its northern edge the Tubbs fire stretched 12 miles.

Both fires were similar. They occurred in hot, dry conditions and were fed by intense winds from the northeast. The blazes started small and quickly became conflagrations; people in the path of the firestorms literally ran for their lives. (In both cases I knew folks who lost their homes.)

In neither case was California water policy an issue. (Sorry, Donald.) A recent article by Alice Hill and William Kakenmaster reported: “Many factors contribute to [California] wildfires, but two in particular greatly contribute to increasing risk: climate change and growing development in the wildland-urban interface (WUI).”

Many Californians attribute the violent wildfires to global climate change.m(Last year, California Gov. Jerry Brown called extreme fire conditions “the new normal” under climate change.) The most recent California poll found that two-thirds of respondents believe the effects of climate change “are already occurring” and 81 percent believe it to be “a serious threat” to the state’s future. Not surprisingly, the attitudes about climate change split along party lines: only 24 percent of Republicans view climate change as a threat.

One of the ongoing wildfires is the Carr fire, northwest of Redding, adjacent to Lake Shasta. It’s the most Republican congressional district in Northern California, represented by Doug LaMalfa, a climate change skeptic who says he “doesn’t buy” human-made climate change: “The climate of the globe has been fluctuating since God created it.” (A recent Guardian article observed: “Like LaMalfa, the citizens of Redding are far more skeptical about climate change than the average American is. In 2016, a team from the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication found that only 35 percent of Redding residents believed that global warming would harm them personally.”)

Notwithstanding climate change skeptics, most Californians agree that we need to take action to mitigate climate change.  One of these is to reduce fossil fuel emissions. Notably, the Trump administration has just taken steps to reduce California’s ability to do this; on Aug. 2, Trump’s EPA revealed plans to strip California of its right to set air-quality rules.

Hill and Kakenmaster noted that in addition to climate change, where homes are placed greatly impacts the destruction wrought by wildfires. They pointed out the destructive potential of placing houses adjacent to wildland vegetation, the wildland-urban interface (WUI): “In 2010, California had more people and homes located in the WUI than any other state in the continental United States—close to 4.5 million homes and 11 million people… [according to] the U.S. Commerce Department, ‘Fires within communities surrounded by natural areas [the WUI] are the most dangerous and costliest fires in North America.'” (The WUI was a factor in the Tubbs fire, but not in the Oakland Hills fire—there the primary issue was housing density.)

The catastrophic impacts of climate change aren’t confined to wildfires on the West Coast; each state has its own unique disaster profile ranging from drought to megastorms. Each state, and each community, will have to develop their own particular response.

At the national level, it’s time to take climate change seriously. Trump isn’t going to do this. It’s time for Americans to elect leaders who have the intelligence and the resolve to deal with “the new normal.”

Via Common Dreams. This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News with permission or license.

PressTV- ‘I condemn all types of racism,’ Trump claims

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US President Donald Trump has called for peace and unity as the country prepares to commemorate the anniversary of the bloody rally in Charlottesville, Virginia organized by white supremacists.

“We must come together as a nation. I condemn all types of racism and acts of violence,” Trump posted on Twitter Saturday morning. 

“Peace to ALL Americans!,” he added. 

Last year, white supremacist organized a violent mass rally, resulting in counter rallies and street fights.

In Charlottesville, Heather Heyer, a 32-year-old legal assistant, was killed when a white supremacist slammed his car into a crowd of counterprotesters, and a police surveillance helicopter crashed nearby, leaving two state troopers dead that day.

In his Saturday tweet, Trump described the violent rallies as “riots”.

“The riots in Charlottesville a year ago resulted in senseless death and division,” Trump noted.

This year Trump called for unity among all…

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Prison Planet.com » Acosta Tries, Fails to Get Immigration Expert to Condemn Trump Policies

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Newsbusters
August 11, 2018

Friday afternoon grandstanding reporter Jim Acosta filled in as host of Wolf Blitzer’s eponymously named CNN show. And mid-program, Acosta desperately tried to get one of his guests to bash President Trump as a hypocrite for his stance on chain migration, and the Justice Department for accidentally deporting two asylum seekers. Instead, his conservative guest schooled the partisan reporter about hyping a “non-story.”

Acosta opened with the asylum seekers story, touting that the federal judge “erupted at the Trump Administration,” over the deportation of a mother and daughter from El Salvador, while their cases were still under appeal. Introducing guest Mark Krikorian, as the Executive Director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a “conservative think tank,” Acosta asked: “Do you think the administration is going overboard with deportations and this case illustrates that?”

Krikorian immediately shot down the CNN host’s loaded question.

No, it doesn’t, because this kind of thing actually happens kind of frequently. It’s a huge organization, Homeland Security, and wires get crossed. One of my analysts, in fact, used to be a prosecutor for the INS, used to be an immigration judge. He said it happened to him in one of his cases. You know these things happen. They found out about it later. The people never even get off the plane. The whole thing about holding the Attorney General in contempt and what have you, that’s showboating by the judge because this is the kind of screw-up that frankly happens, and it was resolved, its not even really a story.

Clearly that wasn’t the answer Acosta wanted. He looked to it from his second guest, Raul A. Reyes, who is a very liberal CNN analyst and lawyer, but Acosta didn’t identify his ideology like he did with Krikorian.

“And Raul, is this just a screw-up, or is this part of a larger…

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May, Hunt silent as UK’s best arms customer kills dozens of children in Yemen bus attack — RT UK News

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After a Saudi-led attack in Yemen killed and injured dozens of children, the public is again questioning London’s arms sales to Riyadh. Officials have kept silent, helped by the MSM which fails to question the UK’s involvement.

According to the International Committee of the Red Cross, the body count from Thursday’s attack sits at 51, including 40 children. Seventy-nine others were also injured in the attack, 56 of whom were children. It is understood that the bus was bringing children home from a picnic when it was attacked. 

According to figures compiled by the Campaign Against Arms Trade, the United Kingdom has supplied the Saudi government with approximately £5 billion (US$6.38 billion) worth of arms – weapons, fighter jets, and even air strike training – since the war in Yemen began in March 2015. The UK government sells more arms to Saudi Arabia than any other country in the world. 

Spokesman for the Campaign Against Arms Trade Andrew Smith told RT that “UK fighter jets and bombs have played a central role in the ongoing destruction,” and called for a full investigation “into if UK arms have been used in this appalling bombing.” 

Foreign Office Minister Alistair Burt took to Twitter to say he was “deeply concerned by reports of yesterday’s attack in Sa’ada, Yemen resulting in tragic deaths of so many children.”

UK Prime Minister Theresa May, Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt, and the Foreign Office have issued no statements on the atrocities, and ignored RT when approached for comment. The prime minister’s office refused to accept a list of questions from an RT journalist, or provide an email address for other future queries. Neither the PM, Foreign Secretary, or Foreign Office have provided comment to the media on the Yemen bus attack.

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File Photo: F-15SA fighter jets of the Saudi Royal Air Force. © Faisal Al Nasser

Shadow Foreign Secretary Emily Thornberry condemned the attacks, and lashed out at the Tory government for “arming and advising a Saudi air force that cannot tell or does not see the difference between a legitimate military target and a bus full of children.”

“It is five months to the day since the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia left London with the fawning praise of Theresa May ringing in his ears, and a renewed commitment from her government to supply the arms to support his disastrous military intervention in Yemen,” Thornberry said on Thursday.

“In those five months, while all sides in this conflict have continued to behave with a wilful disregard for human life, it is the Saudi-led coalition that has inflicted the bulk of civilian casualties… how many more children in Yemen need to be killed by Saudi air strikes or die from malnutrition, cholera or other diseases before Theresa May will stop supporting this catastrophic, murderous war, and start taking action to end it?”

Mainstream media in the United Kingdom have broadly failed to take UK PM Theresa May and Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt to task over the government’s hand in the brutal slaying of the 51 Yemenis killed in the attack. Those on social media, however, were quick to question why such a horrific bombing failed to make more headlines across the mainstream press.

Media pundit George Galloway got straight to the point. “Why isn’t the murder of dozens of children in #Yemen by #Saudi war-planes dropping UK and US bombs creating waves in the media today?”

Other Twitter users highlighted the US-UK government’s complicity in the Yemeni war as a potential reason for the lack of coverage from mainstream outlets: “the UK Govt is providing Saudi Arabia with training, intelligence, logistical support and weapons in their war in Yemen yet the BBC decided not to mention any of this in their report of yesterday’s massacre,” one user said, with another adding:“this is a real, verified #Yemen massacre by a US UK ally, and using US UK arms, it’s receiving almost no US UK front page coverage at all.”

Others who were outraged by the tragic slaughter of the Yemeni bus children, many of whom were under 10 years old, attacked the UK’s state-funded broadcaster, the BBC, for omitting the UK government’s complicity in their coverage.

Some jumped on a viral campaign calling out the BBC for alleged media bias and a lack of impartiality with the hashtag #BBCswitchoff. The campaign, organized to highlight the publicly funded broadcaster’s perceived bias against Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, began at 6pm to coincide with the TV station’s news program. The Twittersphere soon jumped on board to spread their frustration with the lack of coverage from the UK’s state broadcaster.

Think your friends would be interested? Share this story!

Via RT. This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News with permission or license.

Punishing Iran Will Cost a Fortune

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President Trump keeps vowing to create more jobs in America.  But his actions often speak differently.  The most egregious example was Trump’s cancellation of the multi-national Iran nuclear treaty that had been welcomed by the world as a major step to Mideast denuclearization.

In abrogating the international treaty signed by the US, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China, the US humiliated its allies and rivals who were strongly in favor of the accord.  Iran had already handed 97% of its enriched uranium to Russia, shut down reactors and centrifuges, and allowed UN inspectors to run all over its nuclear facilities when Trump tore up the deal that had been under negotiation since 2015.

Iran has been under a harsh US-led trade embargo since its 1979 revolution that was designed to cripple its economy and military and drive the people to rebel against their government.  Washington used the same tactics – without success – against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and Fidel Castro’s Cuba.



War at the Top of the …
Eric Margolis
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So intense is the Trump administration’s hatred for Islamic Iran that it decided to scrap the multinational nuclear deal that would have meant opening Iran to western commerce and a bonanza for US and European companies.  The key element of the deal was to have been the sale of some 210 commercial jet airliners to Iran by the US and the European Union, a deal worth some $40-50 billion, not counting future sales of spare parts.

The US embargo of Iran since 1979 has made it unable to modernize its commercial airline fleet.  Iran was denied modern aircraft, spare parts, engines and instruments, leaving it with decaying aircraft from the…

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Investors sue Musk over ‘misleading’ tweet on making Tesla private — RT US News

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Two investors accuse Elon Musk of manipulating Tesla’s share prices by teasing on Twitter that he might pull the company from public markets, and hurting short-sellers. He then took to Twitter to mock them.

Investors argue that the carmaker artificially inflated Tesla’s stock price and broke federal securities laws. The lawsuits were filed three days after Musk unexpectedly tweeted to his 22.3 million followers that he is “considering” removing Tesla from public markets, making it a privately-held company.

Tesla’s shares did go up by more than 10 percent after the controversial tweet, but the gain was wiped out two days later as the price began to decline.

The tweet surprised many observers and drew criticism that it was not the best way for Musk to announce important decisions. “I do not believe this is the appropriate way to suggest going private,” Charles Elson, director of the John L. Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance at the University of Delaware, told CNBC.

The plaintiffs say Musk’s tweet came as a “nuclear attack” brought on to “completely decimate” short-sellers – traders who make money by borrowing overpriced shares, sell them, and then repurchase the shares at a lower price.

The investors also accuse Musk of misleading the shareholders by claiming in the same tweet that he had “secured” the funds for making the company private, while failing to provide any proof of doing so. The US Securities and Trade Commission is now checking whether the tweet was factual, Bloomberg reported, citing its own sources.

Elon Musk has a long history of feuding with short-sellers. He is known for making sarcastic tweets in the past, such as “Stormy weather in Shortville,” after reports of Tesla stocks going up.

The billionaire continued to openly mock the traders on Saturday. In a barrage of new tweets, he joked about “short shorts” being included in “Tesla merch,” suggested several potential names for the “shorts,” and asked his followers which “short shorts” are their favorite.

The board of directors was informed of Musk’s idea to turn Tesla into a privately-held company at least a week before he tweeted about it, six of the nine board members confirmed in a brief statement. They said the board is also evaluating this option.

Sources familiar with the matter confirmed to Bloomberg that Musk and his advisers are seeking investors to back the possible transformation and are holding “early discussions” with banks about the “feasibility” of it.

“A final decision has not yet been made,” the Tesla founder said in an email sent to employees.

Musk said he is thinking about pulling Tesla out of the stock market, citing “wild swings” in the company’s stock price which can be “a major distraction for everyone working at Tesla.” He added that being public “puts enormous pressure” on Tesla, forcing it to make decisions “not necessarily right for the long-term.”

The Tesla CEO wrote that he would like to provide the shareholders with two options – staying as investors in Tesla as a privately-held company or selling their stock at $420 per share. “My hope is for all shareholders to remain,” Musk said.

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Via RT. This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News with permission or license.

Johnson trying to reach out to fascists, racists: Expert

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An expert says Boris Johnson’s burqa comments were meant to appease fascists and racists. Read more

PressTV-Monsanto ordered to pay $289mn to garderner

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Agrochemical giant Monsanto has been ordered by a California court to pay $289mn compensation to a former pest control manager.

After three days of deliberations, on Friday, the jury at San Francisco’s Superior Court found Monsanto liable in the case of Dewayne Johnson, 46.

Jurors said the company had failed to warn Johnson, as well as other consumers, of the cancer risks posed by its weed killers.

Johnson applied Monsanto weed killers Roundup and Ranger Pro up to 30 times per year.

Johnson’s doctors said he is unlikely to live past 2020.

Johnson’s lawyer, Brent Wisner, said jurors had seen internal company papers “proving that Monsanto has known for decades that glyphosate and specifically Roundup could cause cancer.” He called on Monsanto to “put consumer safety first over profits.”

Weed & Grass Killer? 

Monsanto’s German owners rejected the court’s ruling and vowed to appeal. They insisted that their top selling…

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Amazon worker Shannon Allen opposes censorship of her video statement by Teamsters-linked Facebook page

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Amazon worker Shannon Allen opposes censorship of her video statement by Teamsters-linked Facebook page

By
Will Morrow

11 August 2018

Shannon Allen, the injured and homeless Amazon worker who published a video statement on Monday calling for a united struggle of Amazon and UPS workers internationally, responded yesterday to the censorship of her video by a Facebook page controlled by members of the Teamsters for a Democratic Union, a faction of the Teamsters union.

More than 20,000 UPS workers are members of the “Vote no on UPS contract” Facebook page. The administrators of the page removed a post of Shannon’s video on Tuesday.

Shannon said the censorship of her video showed that the Teamsters union was fearful of workers from Amazon and UPS forming rank-and-file committees in the warehouses and hubs and linking up their struggles.

“It reminds me of being at work, where we’re not allowed to speak to one another,” she said. “Amazon has the workstations so far apart because they don’t want employees to talk. That’s one of the reasons the breaks are so short, so you don’t have time to walk to areas with other workers.”

Shannon said the Teamsters union “doesn’t want us talking to one another because we would be a powerful force if workers at Amazon, UPS workers and the [United States] Postal Service all united. Everybody thinks Jeff Bezos is powerful because he has Amazon. But the workers banding together, to become a rank-and-file committee, would be more powerful than Bezos’ $150 billion. Because we could control the operations, and we could slow or stop production. At UPS, the drivers wouldn’t be doing 40 routes a day, speeding through parking lots, trying to hurry up and deliver the next package.”

In her video, Shannon noted that the…

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Prison Planet.com » ‘The Elite’ Freaks Out When Trump Puts Americans First

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Kurt Schlichter
Townhall.com
August 11, 2018

Of all Donald Trump’s many sins against the Great Church of the Transnational Leftist Establishment, his greatest may be his stubborn refusal to subordinate the needs of the normal citizens of the United States to the dogmas of our alleged betters. He rejects the secular civic religion of our betters, one that urges the sacrifice of regular folk’s interests on the altar of their self-regard and cheesy self-interest.

Trump is a heretic, a blasphemer, and it’s no surprise they want to burn him at the stake.

Horrors!

He demands that the Europeans fund their own defense at levels that come to about half of what America spends!

Oh well, I never!

He refuses to hobble the American economy as a tribute to the false god of the weird weather religion and he dumped the Paris Climate Grift!

Vapors!

  • A d v e r t i s e m e n t

He rejects the notion that free trade is a one-way street into America’s markets and thinks that we ought to get the same deal on stuff we sell to outsiders as they get selling to us.

The bizarre part is that Trump isn’t even seeking an advantage over these foreigners who have been getting over on us. He seeks only reciprocity in our relations, and as a result the foreign policy elite is collectively wetting itself.

The mostly unspoken truth – which I speak loudly and profanely in my upcoming book Militant Normals: How Regular Americans Are Rebelling Against the Elite to Reclaim Our Democracy – is that the postwar international order which arose in the wake of our victory in World War II was based upon America doing the heavy lifting. Of course, this translates as Normal Americans doing the heavy lifting, both in terms of treasure (the taxes they pay that get spent for the benefit of outsiders, as well as our own) and in terms of the blood they and their kids spill (which also gets spent for the benefit of outsiders, as…

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AUDIO emerges of conversation between Seattle hijacker & air traffic controller — RT US News

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An audio emerged online of a conversation between a man who hijacked a plane from the Seattle Airport and an air-traffic controller. On the clip the hijacker talks about running low on fuel and asks if he’ll get life in jail.

The conversation between the man, addressed as Rich/Richard, and the air-traffic controller right before the Horizon Air Q400 plane crash, was released by Aviation journalist Jon Ostrower on Twitter. 

At some point the man starts to worry about the fuel. “I’m down to 2,100 (pounds),” he is heard saying. “I started at 30 something… I don’t know what the burnage is like on takeoff, but it burned quite a bit faster than I expected.”

READ MORE: Hijacked plane performs tricks & crashes near Seattle airport with F-15s in pursuit (VIDEOS)

The air controller tells him there is a runway just off to his right “in about a mile [1.6km],” referring to a military airfield at Joint Base Lewis-McChord. “Oh man,” Rich says, “those guys will rough me up if I try and land there. I think I might mess something up there too. I wouldn’t want to do that. They probably have anti-aircraft.” The controller responds that the authorities were “just trying to find a place for you to land safely.”

“I’m not quite ready to bring it down just yet,” Richard said. “But holy smokes, I got to stop looking at the fuel, because it’s going down quick.”

The man seemed to understand that his actions would have dire consequences. “This is probably jail time for life, huh? I would hope it is for a guy like me,” he said.

Richard then says he feels like one of the engines “is going out or something.” The controller replies: “If you could, you just want to keep that plane right over the water. Keep the aircraft nice and low.”

The man, described by police as a 29-year-old mechanic, says that he has a lot of people that care about him. “It’s going to disappoint them to hear that I did this. I would like to apologize to each and every one of them. Just a broken guy, got a few screws loose, I guess. Never really knew it, until now,” he added.

North American Aerospace Defense Command scrambled two F-15 fighter jets to deal with the Horizon Air plane. While the jets were in pursuit of the small plane, air traffic control helped the rogue plane stay clear of the Seattle cosmopolitan area.

The Pierce County sheriff said that the perpetrator acted alone and “was confirmed a suicidal male.” He stressed that it was not a terrorism-related incident.

On Saturday morning, White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders told media that President Donald Trump was briefed on the incident and is currently “monitoring the situation” in Seattle. 

Independent aviation expert Gerry Soejatman told RT that employees of air companies should be vetted more thoroughly. “This is what we call the inside risk,” he said, explaining that the security measures should not only be aimed at passengers, but also at employees. “People need to realize that flying an aircraft is not hard, flying it correctly is the hard part.”

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Via RT. This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News with permission or license.

Peter Wadhams, Professor Emeritus, Ocean Physics

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Scripps Institution of Oceanography (est. 1903) La Jolla, CA is the perfect location for meeting a world famous climate scientist. It is one of the most beautifully sculpted campuses on the face of the planet, overlooking the Pacific Ocean, an inviting scenario for serious surfers, but it also beckons top-notch scientists from around the world.

Every view from the architecturally rich campus opens to an endless panorama of gorgeous, blue-ocean waters and luscious, white surf for as far as the eye can see. However, that outward serenity belies a collapsing climate system that’s out of public view, one of the great illusions of all time.

At Scripps I was privileged to meet the esteemed climate scientist Peter Wadhams (professor emeritus Cambridge) recipient of several prestigious science awards, and his lovely, brilliantly energetic and accomplished wife, Maria Pia Casarini (Council 2017-2018 — Polar Educators International).

My mission was to drill down into what’s happening with the climate crisis.

I got the answers I was looking for.

Not only an interview but also additional answers are readily available to the general public via the paperback edition of Professor Wadham’s A Farewell to Ice (Penguin, UK; Oxford University Press, USA) a superb tome widely praised as a consummate must-read for a thorough understanding of our increasingly dangerous climate crisis.

Still, at the end of the day, the colossal question overhanging all of society vis a vis the…

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Video: Russia-US economic war looms?

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Further tightening of US sanctions on Russia will be viewed as the start of economic war and Russia will have to react – economically and politically.

Via Youtube

In Historic Victory, Monsanto Ordered to Pay $289 Million in Roundup Cancer Lawsuit

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In an historic victory for those who have long sought to see agrochemical giant Monsanto held to account for the powerful company’s toxic and deadly legacy, a court in California on Friday found the corporation liable for damages suffered by a cancer patient who alleged his sickness was directly caused by exposure to the glyphosate-based herbicides, including the widely used weedkiller Roundup.

As Reuters reports:

The case of school groundskeeper Dewayne Johnson was the first lawsuit alleging glyphosate causes cancer to go to trial.

Monsanto, a unit of Bayer AG following a $62.5 billion acquisition by the German conglomerate, faces more than 5,000 similar lawsuits across the United States. 

The jury at San Francisco’s Superior Court of California deliberated for three days before finding that Monsanto had failed to warn Johnson and other consumers of the cancer risks posed by its weed killers.  It awarded $39 million in compensatory and $250 million in punitive damages.

As Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a lawyer representing Johnson in the case, declared on Twitter, the court “awarded 200 million in punitive damages against Monsanto for ‘acting with malice and oppression.'”

The Organic Consumers Association (OCA), an advocacy group and longtime critic of Monsanto’s deadly poisons, celebrated the verdict:

“This verdict proves that when ordinary citizens, in this case a jury of 12, hear the facts about Monsanto’s products, and the lengths to which this company has gone to buy off scientists, deceive the public and influence government regulatory agencies, there is no confusion,” said Ronnie Cummins, OCA’s international director.

“This is a company that has always put profits ahead of public safety, and today, Monsanto has finally been held accountable,” he added. “We hope that this is just the first of many defeats for Monsanto, and that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will pull this product off the market immediately.”

In the meantime, Cummins said his group looks forward to the next steps in its own lawsuit against Monsanto, which charges the company has long misled consumers about the safety of Roundup for humans and pets. “We are grateful to Mr. Johnson,” he said, “for bravely facing down the ‘most evil corporation’ in the world.”

Journalist Tom Philpott also put the ruling in context, noting that even while the Trump administration is doing its best to lift restrictions on toxic pesticides and the chemical industry, the courts appear to be coming around to the unique and far-reaching dangers posed by insecticides, herbicides, and other powerful compounds:

As Common Dreams reported, “the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit on Thursday ruled the Trump administration illegally blocked a ban on chlorpyrifos—a pesticide linked to brain development delays in children and nervous systems issues for all people and animals exposed to it—and ordered that it be outlawed within 60 days.”


Via Common Dreams. This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News with permission or license.

Alex Jones Purge: US Tech Giants Meddle

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An all-out battle is raging against alternative views in the country that has positioned itself as the champion of the freedom of speech despite the fact that 90% of its media are controlled by just 6 companies. For comparison, in 1983, 90% of US media were controlled by 50 companies. Naturally, the trend negatively affects press freedom. According to the 2018 World Press Freedom Index compiled by Reporters Without Borders or RSF, the US dropped two positions compared to 2017, sliding to No. 45 overall. The role of competition has diminished while bias has become a norm. According to the 2017 Gallup/Knight Foundation Survey on Trust, Media and Democracy report, only 44 percent Americans say they can identify a news source that they believe reports the news objectively.

There have been many examples of freedom of speech trampled on in the United States. True, the First Amendment bars Congress from “abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press…” but it says nothing about big high-tech companies or social networks banning political commentators out of favor with the “establishment”. And that’s what they did.

Major tech giants – Facebook, Apple, Google, YouTube, Pinterest, iTunes, LinkedIn, Podcast add, MailChimp, YouPorn, and Spotify – have banned Alex Jones, a well-known journalist, and his website InfoWars – from their services for spreading around “wrong stories”, which the platforms’ owners found “hateful”. The move is unprecedented, it’s a real bombshell. It should be noted that it was President Donald Trump who praised Mr. Jones for his “amazing” reputation.

Against the State: An …
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Prison Planet.com » Boston Globe Calls For All Media Outlets To Publish Anti-Trump Editorials Next Week

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Daily Caller
August 11, 2018

The Boston Globe has called for the coordinated publication of editorials by any and all news outlets criticizing President Trump’s rhetoric on the press, scheduled for next week.

They have asked a number news organizations to publish editorials condemning the president’s labeling of the press as “the enemy of the people.”

Marjorie Pritchard, who oversees the Globe’s editorial page, says dozens of newspapers have agreed so far to write their own editorials, according to the Associated Press.

The Globe’s decision comes as a response to the president’s increasingly hostile rhetoric towards many news organizations — what the Boston newspaper calls his “dirty war against the free press.” Trump has consistently called out specific news organizations like CNN and MSNBC.

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This article was posted: Saturday, August 11, 2018 at 4:59 am








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Social media posts could ruin your college dreams, lawyer warns — RT US News

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Merely following Alex Jones on Twitter almost cost one teen a college admission. Another lost his scholarship over a Facebook message about the 2016 election. Anything you post can and will be used against you, a lawyer tells RT.

“It’s absolutely troubling what some of the colleges are doing,” attorney Bradley Shear, who specializes in social media cases, told RT. Many universities are hiring monitoring companies that comb the social media lives of applicants, even going so far as to spy on their search histories and internet activity.

“This is a very problematic situation,” Shear said. “It’s a very big problem and it’s only getting worse.”

Shear shared a story about one client of his, a 17-year-old who was asked in his college admission interview why he followed Alex Jones on Twitter. Last week, half a dozen platforms banded together to ban, block and delete the accounts of Jones and his InfoWars show.

The teen had never liked or retweeted any of Jones’s content – his “transgression” was merely following the conspiracy theorist on Twitter, Shear explained. The way he tackled the case was by going to the college and arguing the admissions interviewer displayed improper political bias.

“I made sure the situation was resolved to the student’s satisfaction,” Shear told RT.

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Alex Jones at a rally during the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio, July 18, 2016 © Lucas Jackson

Another client wasn’t so lucky, losing a $250,000 scholarship and admission to “one of the most prestigious universities in the world” over an emoji and like on a Facebook post related to the 2016 presidential election.

“Even though this teen’s social media accounts had the highest privacy settings, a ‘Facebook friend’ took a screenshot of the alleged inappropriate like and emoji, saved it for months, and anonymously sent it to the admissions office of the teen’s top college choice,” Shear said in a November 2017 Baltimore Sun article.

Though tech platforms have a legal cover for banning someone by invoking their terms of service, “I’m of the belief that, in general, people should be heard,” Shear told RT on Thursday. “And whether or not you like, or agree with, someone’s statements, that’s an individual determination of everyone using their platform.”

“I’m a big fan of not only personal privacy, but freedom of speech,” he added.

The major problem with social media companies is that they are “invasive” in their demands for personal data, the attorney said. Using technology, private institutions gather information about your race, religion, political viewpoints, and so on. Facebook has even reached out to banks about getting the private information of their customers, according to a recent Wall Street Journal report.

“They are taking this information and using it against you,” Shear said. “I don’t want Facebook to know my bank account information. It’s none of their damn business!”

Even as political campaigns seek information on potential voters to better target their online advertising, having little or no social media presence might be an asset for aspiring candidates for public office in the future, as there won’t be any “digital dirt” to dig up on them, the attorney told RT.

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Via RT. This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News with permission or license.

Fueling Fears of a Changing US Is the GOP’s Midterm Strategy

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The big earthquake of the 2018 primary season so far has been the unseating of powerful Democratic House leader Joe Crowley by 28-year-old democratic socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Ortez in New York. This isn’t a common occurrence, needless to say, but it does happen from time to time, most recently four years ago when an obscure economics professor named David Brat unseated GOP House leader and “young gun” Eric Cantor in Virginia. At that time, much of the chattering class chalked the defeat up to “all politics is local,” saying that Cantor had neglected his district. That analysis was wrong. Brat won because of one very hot issue that was boiling over in the right-wing media: immigration.

The right-wing star most responsible for pushing that issue into the GOP mainstream was talk radio host Laura Ingraham.

Before her promotion to Fox News primetime host, Ingraham used her talk radio show to stump for Brat and rail against Cantor. She even went to the district to campaign for Brat, solely on the basis of his hardcore stance against the unaccompanied minors from Central America who were in the news at the time gathering at the border seeking asylum.

Ingraham was on a tear during that crisis, ranting daily about the ungrateful little wretches coming to our sacred borders asking for an undeserved handout. When she heard that some of these refugees weren’t taking to the food in their detention centers she described them as spoiled whiners and mocked them by playing an old TV commercial with the slogan “yo qiero Taco Bell?“. She made this declaration to the kids themselves:

Oh no you won’t. This is our country… Our borders matter to us. Our way of life and our culture matter to us. Our jobs and our wages matter to us. No you won’t.

During this period Donald Trump was seriously considering jumping into the presidential election and he had his friend Roger Stone’s hired hand, Sam Nunberg, listen to thousands of hours of talk radio and report back to him about what they were talking…

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