EMILIO GUTIÉRREZ SOTO: [translated] Well, thank you for this invitation. It’s a little weird, having been seven months and some days at the ICE concentration camp. We feel a bit unusual. The way of life in that concentration camp is extremely harsh. What the immigration authorities seek is to finish you off psychologically. And we’re trying to resume our lives in liberty, in semi-liberty, practically, because we continue to be supervised by the immigration authority — in this case, internal security through ICE.

In the spring of 1457, a gruesome murder took place in the French village of Savigny-sur-Etang. A five-year-old boy had been killed and his body partially consumed. A local family was accused of this frightful crime by local residents who claimed to have witnessed the murder. The seven suspects, a mother and her six children, were soon tracked down by local authorities, who discovered them still stained by the boy’s blood. They were arrested, indicted on charges of infanticide and held in the local jail for trial.

The defendants were indigent and the court appointed a lawyer to represent them. A few weeks later a trial was convened in Savigny’s seigneurial court. Before a crowded room, witnesses were called. Evidence was presented and legal arguments hotly debated. The justices considered the facts and the law and rendered a verdict and a sentence. The mother was pronounced guilty and ordered to be hanged to death by her legs from the limb of the gallows tree. Her six children, however, received a judicial pardon. The court accepted the defense lawyer’s argument that the youngsters lacked the mental competence to have committed a crime in the eyes of the law. The orphaned children were sent into custodial care at the expense of the state.

This is an interesting case to be sure, featuring important lessons about the legal rights of the poor and the historic roots of juvenile justice in western jurisprudence, lessons that seem entirely lost on our current…

“I went from an energetic, thin active person to feeling sluggish, gaining weight, and feeling unwell in general,” says Diane S, a paraprofessional who works for a school in Ohio. Her elevated thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH) levels suggested hypothyroidism, an under-functioning thyroid gland. Even after her doctor put her on the artificial thyroid hormone Synthroid, her symptoms did not improve, and she had side effects from the drug. Although hypothyroidism has various causes, iodine deficiency is one of them. “I researched the internet and ordered Detoxadine® [a nascent iodine supplement]. Within weeks my symptoms improved. I have more energy and feel my health improving.” Now she only uses the natural iodine supplement and feels great! Iodine is an essential nutrient that regulates metabolism, and without enough, people can experience low energy, weight gain, dry skin, and other conditions.

What Is Iodine?

A chemical element with the atomic number 53 and symbol I, iodine occurs as a purple-black solid or a purple vapor when a gas. It has 37 known isotopes, and all are radioactive except I-127, the form found in food and supplements. Iodine is a trace element because of its rarity. The human body requires iodine but does not produce it; hence it is also called an essential nutrient. This means people must eat foods high in iodine or take supplements to avoid iodine deficiency. The body uses iodine to create thyroid hormones, which affect brain development and function, metabolism, and other body processes.

What’s the difference between iodine and iodide? When iodine occurs as a single ion, it is called iodide, whether it’s alone as I- or bound to another element. As a negative ion or anion, I- likes to bind…

The Hill
August 3, 2018

After a day of tension between the White House and CNN, the crowd at President Trump’s Pennsylvania rally on Thursday night broke out into chants of “CNN sucks” when the president blasted “fake news.”

Trump at the rally in Wilkes-Barre cited multiple examples of what he called “fake news,” including saying the “fake news refused to call” Pennsylvania for him during the 2016 presidential election.

While reminiscing about his 2016 victory in PA, Trump mentions the “fake news” media, which prompts the crowd to boo and chant, “CNN sucks! CNN sucks!” pic.twitter.com/ABSvT2u9u5

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 2, 2018

The crowd responded with boos and jeers, with some chanting, “CNN sucks.”

Trump later returned to the issue of the media during the rally, asking, “Whatever happened to fair press? Whatever happened to honest reporting?”

Read more

This article was posted: Friday, August 3, 2018 at 7:25 am

A US defense policy bill for fiscal year 2019 puts emphasis on two Washington’s “potential adversaries,” namely Russia and China, and punishes Turkey for planning to buy a Russian missile defense system.

The $716-billion bill known as the John S. McCain National Defense Authorization Act was passed by the US Senate on Wednesday and now goes to President Donald Trump, who is expected to sign it into law.

The legislation necessitates “a continuous and enduring presence” of the US contingent, special operations forces and military equipment in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, the three Baltic states located on Russia’s western border.

It also prioritizes “the need for additional United States Army forward presence in Europe” and “increased forward-stationed combat enablers to enhance United States Army capability and capacity” in order to “deter Russian aggression.”

The bill forbids the US from officially recognizing Crimea‘s reunification…

Thomas Paul Wiederholen
The Gatestone Institute
August 3, 2018

On July 26, some 800 migrants from sub-Saharan Africa violently stormed the border fence between Morocco, where they were living illegally, and the Spanish enclave of Ceuta. According to Spanish authorities:

“In an attempt to stop the Guardia Civil getting close to the break-in area, the migrants … [pelted] officers with plastic containers of excrement and quicklime, sticks and stones, as well as using aerosols as flame-throwers.”

Many people were wounded in the clash, and 602 migrants succeeded in entering Spanish territory.

Two weeks earlier, the rescue ship Aquarius, operated by the French NGO Sos Méditerranée, picked up 629 Sub-Saharan migrants off the coast of Libya. After both Italy and Malta refused to take in the migrants, with Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini declaring, “No to human trafficking, no to the business of illegal immigration,” Spain welcomed the ship, and two other vessels carrying illegal migrants, at the port of Valencia.

Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, the head of Spain’s newly-formed socialist government — which has promised free healthcare to the migrants and says it will investigate every asylum claim individually — said in mid-June: “It is our duty to help avoid a humanitarian catastrophe and offer a safe port to these people, to comply with our human rights obligations.”

According to a July 27 report about Spain in The Telegraph:

“The country is now the largest gateway for migrants crossing the Mediterranean to Europe, with 20,992 people landing on its shores so far this year… Arrivals to Italy now trail Spain by almost 3000 – a gap that just a week ago was 200.”

This, the report says, has completely “overwhelmed” the Spanish coastguard, which is issuing an urgent call for additional resources to help deal with the massive influx.

You will find…

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has called on Turkey to release American pastor Andrew Brunson, who was arrested by Turkish authorities in 2016 on charges of espionage and aiding a terrorist organization.

Pompeo made the demand in a press conference in Singapore on Friday before meeting with Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu.

“Brunson needs to come home, as do all the Americans being held by the Turkish government. It’s pretty straightforward,” Pompeo said, according to NBC News. “Pastor Brunson is an innocent pastor and they need to let him return to the United States.”

“We are going to work to see if we can find a way forward; I am hopeful that we can,” Pompeo said.

Brunson’s case has increased tensions between Turkey and the United States. Late last month, US President Donald Trump wrote on Twitter that his country “will impose large sanctions on Turkey for their long time detainment of Pastor Andrew…

US President Donald Trump’s daughter and White House senior adviser, Ivanka, has distanced herself from her father’s zero tolerance policy that led to the separation of thousands of children from their immigrant parents at the US-Mexico border.

Speaking at an event in Washington DC on Thursday, Ivanka denounced the controversial policy as a “low point” of her tenure at the White House and said she was “vehemently against” the separation of parents and children at the southern US border with Mexico.

“That was a low point for me as well. I feel very strongly about that, and I am very vehemently against family separation and the separation of parents and children,” she said.

“I think immigration is incredibly complex as a topic, illegal immigration is incredibly complicated. I am a daughter of an immigrant, my mother grew up in Communist Czech Republic, but we are a country of laws … We have to be very careful about…

The Left worships Trump because he is an irresistible obstacle to their devotion to the victim-garbed Total State. For generations, mainstream Western culture has taught us that the cognitive dissonance we feel when we intuit the suffering of our inflationary debt bondage, elective wars, crony health care planning, welfare mental prisons, and cartel protecting rigged-ulations can be healed by socially showing perfect submission to ever-reforming Politically Correct thought, dress, and speech codes.

Trump’s view of state power is an anachronism, one that has deported less children than Obama and Clinton each but uses coarse communication to do so. One that wants to bomb slightly less countries than Obama, Bush, Clinton, but uses blunt gorilla chest thumping to sell bombs while they used aristocratic tears for mythic justice. One that might actually end some bits of drug war carnage that Obama, Clinton, Bush dutifully executed but ponders aloud about death penalties for drug dealers.

Obama deported over 2.5 million immigrants and covered refugee children in aluminum in dog cages and no Nazi-decrying mass outrage was heard. Obama killed more Muslims in immoral wars than Trump and the trendy set will still swear the former protected Muslims while the latter is their unmatched scourge. The selective outrage of the fashionable clique shows that physical violence does not register contagious concern when it is executed by Politically Correct personas.

9 Presidents Who Screw…
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Trump’s child-like honesty about the vulgar, self-interested pettiness of statecraft is too much to bear in the presidency, the most sacred symbol of our identity. A mouth who speaks…

Washington Free Beacon
August 3, 2018

CNN political commentator Angela Rye on Thursday compared those who separate families at America’s southern border to slave traders.

Rye and former Trump campaign chief spokesman Jason Miller were discussing Ivanka Trump’s comments regarding the issue of family separation of illegal immigrants with CNN host Chris Cuomo. Miller defended Ivanka’s comments and said that it was important that the U.S. enforces its immigration laws and criticized Rye for wanting an “open borders” policy.

“What I don’t want to enforce is your president’s nonsense,” Rye responded.

Rye’s reference to “your president” several times prompted Miller to ask Rye if she was Canadian since she refused to say that Trump was her president as well.

“If you just take yourselves out of it for just a moment, take off the lenses of bigotry for just a moment,” Rye said.

Read more

This article was posted: Friday, August 3, 2018 at 7:30 am

US President Donald Trump has claimed that Russia is “very unhappy” and regrets he won the 2016 presidential elections.

Trump made the claim during a rally in the US state of Pennsylvania on Thursday night as he was speaking about the contentious meeting he had with Russian President Vladimir Putin in the finish capital of Helsinki last month and how unfairly the summit had been treated by the US media.

“In Helsinki, I had a great meeting with Putin, we discussed everything, and we got along really well. By the way, that’s a good thing, not a bad thing, that’s really good,” Trump said to a round of applause from the cheering crowd at the rally.

“I’ll tell you what, Russia is very unhappy that Trump won, that I can tell you. But I got along great with Putin,” he said, while also adding that the country was being “hindered” by the Russia investigation, which he called a “hoax.”

In Helsinki, Trump accepted Putin’s “strong…

Lafarge investigation exposes US-French collusion with ISIS in Syria

By
Francis Dubois

3 August 2018

Investigations of Franco-Swiss cement and construction firm Lafarge on charges of “financing terrorism” over its ties to the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) militia are bringing to light the political criminality of the French ruling elite and NATO. French government and business circles financed and defended ISIS in a war for regime change targeting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, while denouncing it as terrorist to the population.

The 2015 terror attacks in Paris and similar terror attacks across Europe were thus prepared with the financial and political aid of powerful forces within the ruling class. Its policies of neo-colonialist militarism in the Middle East and deep austerity in Europe are overwhelmingly opposed by working people, so Paris covertly used ISIS to wage a dirty war in Syria and justify police state repression in France. If police did not arrest ISIS members traveling across Europe to wage terror attacks, it was because they enjoyed state protection as useful proxy forces for war in Syria.

French President Emmanuel Macron declared in 2017 that “my enemy is ISIS.” It is ever clearer, however, that officials at the highest summits of the state have made themselves guilty of collaboration with this enemy, which was in fact a tool of their filthy imperialist policy in Syria. The question is raised: what was the role of then-French President François Hollande, his adviser Emmanuel Macron, his defence minister (now foreign minister) Jean-Yves Le Drian, or of Hollande’s foreign minister Laurent Fabius?

Investigations had already established in 2017 that Lafarge, a multibillion-dollar transnational, had made financial deals with terrorist…

We are supposedly seven years into a “recovery” from the global economic collapse that commenced in 2008. The latest evidence offered to promote this oft-peddled mantra is that U.S. gross domestic product showed a strong uptick for the second quarter of 2018, an annualized rate of 4.1 percent, nearly double that of the first quarter.

Coupled with the ongoing decline in unemployment (although standard unemployment rates greatly underestimate the true rate of employment), orthodox economists, conservative propagandists and apologists for the Trump administration would have use believe happy days are here again.

So why aren’t our wages increasing?

In part, it is because the true unemployment rate is not nearly so low as the “official” unemployment rate used by governments around the world, and thus the ranks of unemployed and underemployed are sufficiently large that there is no upward pressure on wages. Orthodox economists, dedicated as they are to ignoring any evidence that doesn’t match their models designed to “prove” that all manners of capitalist excess are as natural as the tides of the ocean — and thus in practice the professional wing of conservative propagandists — have various excuses for stagnant wages and ever increasing inequality. A favorite among these is an alleged “skills mismatch” — too many unskilled workers and a shortage of skilled workers for the high-tech jobs of today.

The data tells a different story, however. A 2014…

Originally appeared on The American Conservative.

Jason Rezaian describes what renewed U.S. sanctions will do to the Iranian people:

Although sanctions won’t target food and medicine directly, Iran will be cut from the international financial system, so imports for many items will be affected, causing delays in delivery. People needing certain lifesaving drugs will have to cross borders to buy their medicine – if they can afford it – on the black market. People who might otherwise live normal lives with the aid of their medications will needlessly die.

The Trump administration is engaging in collective punishment of all Iranians in a vain attempt to force changes in regime behavior and ultimately to force a change in the regime itself. It isn’t likely to work, but it is an unacceptable tactic to use in any case. Strangling a country’s economy in a bid to pressure its government to do what Washington wants is cruel, aggressive, and excessive. Punishing the population for the wrongdoing of a government that they don’t control is both wrong and foolish. It isn’t going to weaken the regime in any case, and it will inflict needless suffering on people that have done nothing to us.

The main thing sanctions will achieve is to confirm in the minds of millions of Iranians that our government wishes them ill and seeks to wreck their country. That can’t be good for the future of U.S.-Iranian relations or US interests. To add insult to injury, the sanctions are being reimposed on Iran after the US reneged on its end of the JCPOA while Iran remains in compliance with the terms of the deal. Iranians are being made to suffer because of an arbitrary and destructive decision that Trump made to violate an agreement that Iran has honored for years, and then the same government that is doing this to them has the gall to tell them that the US is on their side.

Sanctions are frequently an ineffective tool, but worse than that they are cruel and indiscriminate in the damage they do to the people in the targeted country. Perhaps worst of all, they are unjust in that they punish the innocent for the deeds of the guilty while enabling the people responsible for regime policies to grow wealthier and more powerful than they already were. Punishing the entire population through sanctions confirms the administration’s utter contempt for the Iranian people.

Daniel Larison is a senior editor at The American Conservative, where he also keeps a solo blog. He has been published in the New York Times Book Review, Dallas Morning News, Orthodox Life, Front Porch Republic, The American Scene, and Culture11, and is a columnist for The Week. He holds a PhD in history from the University of Chicago, and resides in Dallas. Follow him on Twitter. This article is reprinted from The American Conservative with permission.

“It is not right. It is not fair. It is not just. It is un-American.”

Steve Watson
Prison Planet.com
August 3, 2018

Following yet another stunt for the cameras during which he attempted to coerce the White House Press Secretary into declaring that the media is not the ‘enemy of the people,’ CNN reporter Jim Acosta appeared on the network and complained that he is “tired” of being called fake news by the President and Trump supporters.

Acosta stormed out of a press briefing on Thursday because Sarah Huckabee Sanders refused to play along with his games.

Sanders declined to pander to Acosta, and lectured him in the process.

“It’s ironic, Jim, that not only you and the media attack the president for his rhetoric when they frequently lowered the level of conversation in this country. Repeatedly, repeatedly the media restarts personal attacks without any content other than to incite anger,” Sanders said.

“The media continues to ratchet up the verbal assault against the president and everyone in this administration. And certainly we have a role to play, but the media has to role to play for the discourse in this country as well.” Sanders added, before Acosta took his ball and went home.

In a later tweet, Acosta doubled down, calling Sanders “shameful” and declaring that he was “saddened” by the exchange.

I walked out of the end of that briefing because I am totally saddened by what just happened. Sarah Sanders was repeatedly given a chance to say the press is not the enemy and she wouldn’t do it. Shameful.

— Jim Acosta (@Acosta) August 2, 2018

In a further bizarre appearance on CNN, Acosta even suggested that the media should form a protest group and march on the White House:

• A d v e r t i s e m e n t

“I’ll say that the press is not the enemy of the people,” Acosta said. “And, you know, I think maybe we should make some bumper stickers, make some…

California and 18 other US states promised on Thursday to fight a Trump administration proposal to weaken fuel efficiency standards for cars and trucks and force states into line, arguing the United States has an obligation to protect the environment for future generations.

The administration billed the proposed rollback from Obama-era fuel efficiency standards as a way to help car companies and lower vehicle prices for consumers, but critics said the plan would accelerate climate change and increase fuel prices. By seeking to strip California of its authority to set its own strict vehicle emissions standards, the proposal also opens new questions about the limits of federal powers over states.

The 19 states, and Washington DC, announced they would sue to halt the proposed rollback, touching off what will likely be a heated legal showdown, possibly making it to the Supreme Court. It could also become a polarizing issue in elections in…

Daily Wire
August 3, 2018

A Christian pastor had his podcast demoted on Apple iTunes because he asked that people pray for President Trump.

According to CBN News, Pastor James MacDonald had his podcast, “Walk in the Word,” dropped from the Top 25 chart completely within 24 hours of him posting a prayer on Facebook for President Trump.

“In the past the podcast had never dipped below the Top 40, within 24 hours it wasn’t even making the Top 200,” reports CBN

The word “shadowbanning” has been the common buzzword lately with the liberal publication VICE admitting that Twitter hinders conservative speech behind closed doors.

Speaking with CBN, MacDonald said that he wasn’t “Donald Trump’s biggest fan,” only that he found the administration “worthy of our gratitude and prayerful support.”

Dan Sumpter, global creative director of Harvest Church, says the sudden drop of MacDonald’s podcast looks oddly suspicious.

Read more

This article was posted: Friday, August 3, 2018 at 7:33 am

Wildfires have been particularly bad the past few years. It’s part of the reason my family and I moved out of California. (Only part – the laws there are crazy!) And while this year seems worse than ever, the first 6 months are it’s actually not quite as bad as last year, according to the National Interagency Fire Center.

So far this year, we’ve seen 37591 fires and 4,810,195 acres have burned. By this time last year, there had been 39,227 fires and 5,639,919 acres had been devastated. Of course, this is of little comfort to those dealing with this year’s fires. And right now, wildfires are burning across the nation, from Alaska, all the way to Florida. Here’s the current map from the NOAA that shows where the fires ar

So, basically, everywhere west of Chicago with a couple in the east.

What’s causing all these fires?

Of course, the headlines are all breathlessly claiming that the fires are due to climate change because that’s the current agenda in the straw-seizing, politically correct world.

The Pantry Primer: A P…
Daisy Luther
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But the fact is, they’re caused by people. 90% of the fires that are burning and have burned in the United States have been caused by the carelessness or deliberate intent of human beings. The US Department of the Interior says:

Wildfires can be caused by nature — mostly due to lightning strikes — but the vast majority are caused by humans. Research estimates that 90 percent of wildland fires in the United States are caused by people. Some human-caused fires result from campfires left unattended, the burning of debris, and intentional acts of arson. It can also be caused unintentionally by heat and sparks from…

Wildfires have been particularly bad the past few years. It’s part of the reason my family and I moved out of California. (Only part – the laws there are crazy!) And while this year seems worse than ever, the first 6 months are it’s actually not quite as bad as last year, according to the National Interagency Fire Center.

So far this year, we’ve seen 37591 fires and 4,810,195 acres have burned. By this time last year, there had been 39,227 fires and 5,639,919 acres had been devastated. Of course, this is of little comfort to those dealing with this year’s fires. And right now, wildfires are burning across the nation, from Alaska, all the way to Florida. Here’s the current map from the NOAA that shows where the fires ar

So, basically, everywhere west of Chicago with a couple in the east.

What’s causing all these fires?

Of course, the headlines are all breathlessly claiming that the fires are due to climate change because that’s the current agenda in the straw-seizing, politically correct world.

The Pantry Primer: A P…
Daisy Luther
Best Price: $15.00
Buy New $13.95
(as of 05:15 EDT – Details)

But the fact is, they’re caused by people. 90% of the fires that are burning and have burned in the United States have been caused by the carelessness or deliberate intent of human beings. The US Department of the Interior says:

Wildfires can be caused by nature — mostly due to lightning strikes — but the vast majority are caused by humans. Research estimates that 90 percent of wildland fires in the United States are caused by people. Some human-caused fires result from campfires left unattended, the burning of debris, and intentional acts of arson. It can also be caused unintentionally by heat and sparks from…

How revealing! How ironic!

It is Jeremy Corbyn’s misfortune to be surrounded by witless blabbermouths whose unbridled remarks are a gift to Israel lobby propagandists. And while mainstream media in the UK were, as usual, whipping up an anti-Semitism ruckus orchestrated against the Labour Party leader, Israel was busy committing yet another outrage on the high seas against a humanitarian aid vessel peacefully carrying urgently-needed medical supplies for the desperate citizens of blockaded Gaza.

SOSjustfuture4Palestine issued a statement saying:

The Israeli Occupation Forces violently attacked our Norwegian flagged boat Al Awda (‘The Return’) as she was in international waters…. Armed, masked soldiers boarded Al Awda without permission. They assaulted several unarmed participants by hitting them and using tasers.

Reuters (Oslo) reported that the Norwegian Foreign Affairs Ministry demanded the Israeli authorities clarify the circumstances around the seizure of the vessel and the legal basis for the intervention. Israel’s Foreign Ministry declined to comment.

Head of the International Committee of the Red Cross, Zaher Birawi, has said he’s holding Israel fully responsible for the safety of the activists, and stressed that Israel will be prosecuted for the “crime of kidnapping” the Freedom Flotilla ship and its activists, who did not impose a threat to Israel’s security.

British media and Government are deaf, blind and dumb to the enormity of the…

A US report says Russia has violated UN sanctions against North Korea by allowing thousands of North Korean laborers to work in the country.

The Thursday report on the Wall Street Journal said over 10,000 fresh North Korean workers had registered in Russia since September.

The WSJ said Russia’s action was likely in violation of United Nations sanctions against Pyongyang meant to reduce cash flow to North Korea.

It added that Russian Labor Ministry records revealed that a minimum of 700 new work permits had been issued to North Koreans in Russia this year.

The WSJ wrote that UN officials were probing the possible violations of the sanctions.

“It is estimated that North Korean laborers in Russia send between $150-$300 million annually to Pyongyang,” a US State Department spokesperson told Reuters.

The labor prohibition is a part of a broader array of international sanctions that are aimed at eliminating hard currency channels to…

Daily Mail
August 2, 2018

A brief burst of radio sent from an unknown source across the universe has been picked up by the state-of-the-art CHIME telescope in Canada.

The signal, known as a Fast Radio Burst (FRB), lasted only a matter of milliseconds.

Researchers claim the signal is the first radio emission received from across the universe with a frequency below 700 MHz – the lowest frequency FRB ever recorded.

As a result, scientists believe that whatever produced the signal, which has been branded ‘FRB 180725A’, is likely to be extremely powerful.

Experts are still investigating what causes FRBs, with possible explanations including exploding black holes and advanced extra-terrestrial civilisations.

Read more

This article was posted: Thursday, August 2, 2018 at 8:00 am

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says North Korea continues work on its weapons programs despite its leader Kim Jong-un’s promise to denuclearize.

Pompeo on Friday flew back to Singapore where Kim and US President Donald Trump met less than two months ago and announced a broad statement on working towards denuclearization.

Pompeo visited Pyongyang from July 5-7 for inclusive talks aimed at agreeing a denuclearization roadmap, but North Korea accused his delegation of making “gangster-like” demands.

Last month, he told the US Senate that North Korea was continuing to make bomb fuel after American media reports said Pyongyang was building new missiles.

Asked about his statement to Senate, Pompeo said, “Chairman Kim made a commitment to denuclearize. The world demanded that they (North Korea) do so in the UN Security Council resolutions.” 

“To the extent they are behaving in a manner inconsistent with that, they are a)…

US senators from both the Republican and Democratic Party have introduced legislation to impose “crushing” new sanctions on Russia to punish Moscow over alleged interference in US elections and its activities in Syria and Ukraine.

The measure, which was introduced on Thursday, would have to pass both the Senate and House of Representatives and be signed by US President Donald Trump to become law. The prospects of the latest bill were not immediately clear.

The bill includes restrictions on new Russian sovereign debt transactions, energy and oil projects and Russian uranium imports, and new sanctions on Russian political figures and oligarchs.

Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican of South Carolina, said in a statement Thursday the senators’ goal is to “impose crushing sanctions and other measures against Putin’s Russia until he ceases and desists meddling in the US electoral process,” as well as stop cyber attacks and remove Russia…

Daily Mail
August 2, 2018

A British court has recognised sharia law for the first time in a landmark decision as a judge ruled that a wife can claim her husband’s assets in the split.   

The decision came about after Nasreen Akhter wanted a divorce from her husband Mohammed Shabaz Khan. The couple were wed in an Islamic faith marriage in 1998.

Mr Khan wanted to block Mrs Akhter’s divorce on the basis that they are ‘not legally married’ under English law and says they are married ‘under Sharia law only’.

The High Court ruling on Wednesday said their union should be valid and recognised because their vows had similar expectations of a British marriage contract.

This means women married in an Islamic faith ceremony will have an easier time securing a divorce in the UK, paving the way for them to claim half their husband’s assets.

Read more

This article was posted: Thursday, August 2, 2018 at 8:00 am

It shouldn’t be necessary to explain why it’s wrong, not to say potentially criminal, for a presidential candidate to work with a foreign power to undermine his opponent’s campaign. Unfortunately, we live in the era of hyper-partisanship, and as a result, many Republicans and their media supporters — the same people who have insisted for months that there was “no collusion” between Trump and Russia — are now presenting a different spin: If there was collusion, it would be no big deal.

We can start with a Tuesday morning tweet by President Trump himself.

Collusion is not a crime, but that doesn’t matter because there was No Collusion (except by Crooked Hillary and the Democrats)!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 31, 2018

Then there was this bizarre statement by Rudy Giuliani, New York’s former “hero mayor” who has taken Michael Cohen’ former job as a lawyer and shill for Trump.

“I don’t even know if that’s a crime — colluding with Russians. Hacking is the crime. The president didn’t hack. He didn’t pay for the hacking,” Giuliani proclaimed to CNN on Monday.

Even before Giuliani was carrying Trump’s water, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie was on ABC News on Sunday, claiming that even if everything Cohen has said or hinted about Trump is proved to be true, there’s simply nothing to get all upset about.

“We don’t even know if the information that we’re being given by that other outlet is even accurate,” Christie told ABC, apparently referring to Cohen. “Now, if it is, and we’ve discussed this before, collusion is not a crime. And so the fact of the matter is that we’re a long way away yet from having anything to talk about here.”

Photo by nguyengurl | CC BY 2.0

The election of Donald Trump fractured the American Left. The abandonment of class analysis in response to Mr. Trump’s racialized nationalism left identity politics to fill the void. This has facilitated the rise of neoliberal nationalism, an embrace of the national security state combined with neoliberal economic analysis put forward as a liberal / Left response to Mr. Trump’s program. The result has been profoundly reactionary.

What had been unfocused consensus around issues of economic justice and ending militarism has been sharpened into a political program. A nascent, self-styled socialist movement is pushing domestic issues like single payer health care, strengthening the social safety net and reversing wildly unbalanced income and wealth distribution, forward. Left unaddressed is how this program will move forward without a revolutionary movement to act against countervailing forces.

As widely loathed as the Democratic establishment is, it has been remarkably adept at engineering a reactionary response in favor of establishment forces. Its demonization of Russia! has been approximately as effective at fomenting reactionary nationalism as Mr. Trump’s racialized version. Lest this be overlooked, the strategy common to both is the use of oppositional logic through demonization of carefully selected ‘others.’

This points to the most potent fracture on the Left, the question of which is the more effective reactionary force, the…

Senior intelligence and national security officials in the administration of US President Donald Trump claim that Russia is behind “pervasive and ongoing” attempts to influence upcoming US elections, a threat Trump has repeatedly dismissed and played down.

Trump’s top aides, including Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, National Security Adviser John Bolton, FBI Director Christopher Wray and Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen appeared in the White House briefing room on Thursday to stress that a major effort was under way to protect the integrity of congressional elections in November and the presidential election in 2020.

“We acknowledge the threat, it is real, it is continuing, and we’re doing everything we can to have a legitimate election,” Coats said, adding: “It is pervasive, it is ongoing, with the intent to … drive a wedge and undermine our democratic values.”

Trump has repeatedly denied…

Australia: Nine-Fairfax Media merger threatens jobs

By
Oscar Grenfell

3 September 2018

Nine Entertainment and Fairfax Media, two of Australia’s largest media organisations, announced last week a $4 billion merger. The deal—being described as one of the most significant changes in Australian media over several decades—must still be ratified by shareholders and federal competition authorities.

The agreement foreshadows sweeping cuts to jobs and conditions at Fairfax. While it has been presented as a merger, many Fairfax staff members have noted that it is effectively a takeover, with the new entity set to drop the Fairfax name and adopt Nine’s branding.

The deal marks a new stage in a protracted restructuring of corporate media organisations, dictated by the financial elite. It follows years of cost-cutting at Fairfax, designed to make the company attractive to a potential buyer amid declining newspaper sales and increasing market pressures.

The proposed takeover has been facilitated by decades of legislative changes by successive Labor and Liberal-National governments, enabling unprecedented concentration of media ownership.

A Fairfax reporter told the WSWS that employees were only informed of the planned merger by email on July 26, at the same time it was publicly announced. He said the news had left Fairfax employees “in shock” and “upset” at not being consulted beforehand.

In comments to the media last week, Nine CEO Hugh Marks refused to rule out “consolidation” of editorial positions within the merged organisation, i.e., sweeping job cuts targeting journalists. He foreshadowed sackings of office workers and other staff, declaring that the agreement would facilitate the “de-duplication of back office functions.”

Marks and Fairfax CEO Greg Hywood…

Breitbart
August 2, 2018

UK Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn has been accused of giving his personal support to murderous anti-Israel Hamas terrorists who between them killed upwards of 600 people.

On an Iranian TV programme called “Remember Palestine” in 2012, the hard left politician described more than 1,000 convicted terrorists released by the Israeli government in a prisoner swap as “brothers”, and questioned if there was a “serious case” against them. Mr Corbyn said:

Well, you have to ask the question why they’re in prison in the first place and since the releases that took place after the hunger strike I met many of the brothers including the brother who has been speaking here when they came out of prison when I was in Doha earlier this year, and you just realise that this mass imprisonment of Palestinians is actually part of a much bigger political game.

They are used as bargaining chips in political debate and political discussion, and because if there was the serious case against the individual prisoners that Israel claims there have been, then they wouldn’t win an appeal, they wouldn’t get out, they wouldn’t be released, but they are released in very large numbers.

Corporal Shalit apparently equals the lives of a very, very large number of Palestinian people.

Well I’m glad that those that were released, were released, and I hope they’re now in safe places.

Abdul Aziz Umar, who Mr. Corbyn refers to as a “brother”, was given seven life sentences after he helped in the preparation of a suicide vest detonated at a restaurant in Jerusalem in 2003, which killed seven innocent people.

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This article was posted: Thursday, August 2, 2018 at 8:06 am

The Hill
August 2, 2018

The Trump administration rolled out a plan Thursday to weaken the Obama administration’s aggressive fuel economy and global warming standards for cars and strip California of its ability to determine its own vehicle regulations for greenhouse gas emissions.

In a major rebuke of a key pillar of former President Obama’s legacy, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Department of Transportation (DOT) declared that the heightened emissions standards set to take effect for cars built from 2021 and 2026 are unreasonable for both economic and safety reasons.

The Obama administration set the standards in 2012 as part of a set of rules meant to intensify from 2017 to 2026.

Instead, the EPA and DOT are now proposing freezing the standards at their planned 2020 level, canceling any future strengthening.

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This article was posted: Thursday, August 2, 2018 at 8:08 am

UPDATED: Israeli forces have violently boarded a ship, being followed by Consortium News, that was headed to Gaza bringing humanitarian aid. A survivor of the USS Liberty is now in Israeli custody.

Israeli soldiers in international waters boarded the Al Awda ship headed to Gaza to deliver relief supplies on Sunday, detaining everyone on board, including a USS Liberty survivor, after beating and tasering some passengers, according to an eyewitness account.

Only two of the 22 passengers on the ship have been released, with the rest being held in Givon prison in Israel, the flotilla’s organizers said on Monday.

One of those released, Zohar Chamberlain Regev, an Israeli citizen, contested an Israeli Defense Force (IDF) statement that the ship had been captured “without exceptional incident.”

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“People on board were tasered and hit by masked IOF soldiers. We did not get our passports or belongings before we got off the boat. Do not believe reports of peaceful interception,” Regev said in a statement to the organizers, the Freedom Flotilla Coalition. Regev referred to the IDF derogatorily as the Israeli Occupation Force.

She said she saw “blood on the deck of the Al Awda as the last participants were being dragged off the ship,” according to the coalition’s statement. Regev and a second Israeli passenger, Yonatan Shapira, were charged with attempting to enter Gaza and conspiracy before being released.

Consortium News reported on July 9 that Joe Meadors, a survivor of the 1967 Israeli attack on the USS Liberty,  joined the 2018 Gaza Freedom Flotilla as the delegate from the United States. He boarded…

Brandon Smith
Alt-Market.com
August 2, 2018

The past two years have seen a rather aggressive change in corporate policies toward the very customers they used to covet.

Not long ago, CEOs tended to keep their political views mostly in the closet. Companies remained publicly neutral because their goal was first and foremost to make money. When they wanted to influence politics or social norms, they bought politicians – you know, the good old-fashioned way. The big banks still do this by funneling cash to both Republicans and Democrats alike.

However, in the wake of the social justice cult frenzy some companies have decided that ideology is more important than profit, and most of these companies are deeply involved in various forms of media.

Some people will argue that the media has always been leftist in its orientation and that this trend is nothing new. But, I think it is clear to anyone who has worked in countering mainstream media disinformation that something is very different today. Conservatives are being “cleansed” from participation in these communications platforms, and conservative ideals are being erased or misrepresented on a massive scale. Not long ago, media companies at least pretended to be “fair and balanced” by tolerating a certain level of participation by conservatives. No longer.

With the advent of the internet and social media, participation in political discussion has become more open to the common citizen than ever before. This is apparently an intolerable side effect that corporate elites would like to do away with.

It is a slightly complex problem, so I’ll try to break it down point by point:

First, companies like Facebook, Google and Twitter are not honest in the presentation of their own image. They initially depicted themselves as bastions of social commerce without any interest in ideological battles. If they had come right out in the open from…

In California, tens of thousands of residents have been forced to evacuate as deadly wildfires continue to rage across the state. The worst wildfire, the Carr Fire, has engulfed more than 100,000 acres and destroyed more than a thousand homes in and around Redding, California, making it the sixth most destructive fire in the state’s history. Authorities said Wednesday that 16 of the largest wildfires burning in California have scorched 320,000 acres — an area larger than Los Angeles. Eight people have died. Governor Jerry Brown called the growing intensity and frequency of California wildfires the state’s “new normal” this week. More fires continue to consume parts of Colorado, Idaho, Oregon, Washington and Arizona, along with recent blazes across the globe in Greece, Canada and the Arctic Circle. We speak with Brenda Ekwurzel, senior climate scientist and director of climate science for the Climate and Energy Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: We begin in California, where tens of thousands of residents have been forced to evacuate as deadly wildfires continue to rage across the state. The worst wildfire, the Carr Fire, has engulfed more than 100,000 acres and destroyed more than a thousand homes in and around Redding, California, making it the sixth most destructive fire in the state’s history. Authorities said Wednesday that 16 of the largest wildfires burning in California have scorched 320,000 acres — an area larger than the entire city of Los Angeles. Eight people have died in the fires so far. This is Cal Fire operations chief Steve Crawford describing the aggressive nature of this year’s wildfires.

STEVE CRAWFORD: Every single person that I’ve talked to so far has made the mention that “I don’t know why it’s doing what it’s doing. It’s burning differently. It’s burning more aggressive than it has in years past.” And I know we say that every year, but it’s unprecedented. … It’s burning in every direction…

Photo source Fibonacci Blue | CC BY 2.0

Okay, I’m going to plead guilty to playing lawyer without a license. The NYT reports that the Trump administration is proposing to unilaterally (as in no congressional action) change the way that capital gains are calculated for tax purposes.

The plan is to allow people to index capital gains for inflation. For example, under current law, if you bought 100 shares of stock for $100 per share ten years ago, and sell the shares today for $200, you would pay the capital gains tax on the full difference of $10,000. (100* $200 = $20,000, 100* $100 = $10,000. $20,000 minus $10,000 = $10,000)

Under the Trump administration’s plan, you would be able to adjust the original $10,000 purchase for the inflation in the last decade. Let’s say that the inflation over this period has been a total of 20 percent. This means that instead of deducting $10,000 from the current sale price to calculation your gain you would deduct $12,000. This would leave a taxable gain of $8,000 instead of $10,000.

In this case it means a 20 percent reduction in the tax rate on capital gains. The reduction would be greater for longer held assets and less for assets held a short period of time.

In case there is any doubt, almost all of the savings would go to rich people. The article cites an analysis showing that 97 percent of the savings would go to the top 10 percent of the population and more than two thirds would go to the richest 0.1 percent.

And, just to be…

US President Donald Trump has railed against Mexican immigrants and doubled down on comments he made calling them “rapists.”

“And you remember what I said?” Trump asked the crowd during a rally on Thursday night in Pennsylvania, referring back to the derogatory comments he made about Mexican immigrants during the 2016 election campaign.

“They’re sending, I mentioned words – I won’t even mention them tonight because there’s a lot of young people here — but I mentioned words and everyone thought it was wonderful.”

“And then about two days later and people said, ‘did he say this, did he say that?’” Trump said.

“Guess what,” he added, “what I said is peanuts compared to what turns out to be the truth. It’s peanuts.”

During his campaign for presidency, Trump had repeatedly pledged to build a wall along the Southern border to prevent more Mexicans from entering the US illegally, and had promised to have…

British Navy evacuated Manchester bomber Salman Abedi from Libya in 2014

By
Robert Stevens

2 August 2018

The Daily Mail has published further damning evidence that Salman Abedi, the suicide bomber who killed 22 people and injured many more in Manchester Arena in May last year, was protected as a British intelligence asset before committing his heinous act.

In articles published Tuesday and Wednesday, it revealed that Abedi and his brother received British government assistance and fled Libya onboard a Royal Navy vessel, HMS Enterprise, in August 2014, less than three years before Abedi bombed the Arena. “The Royal Navy was tasked with picking them up, along with other British nationals, on a list provided to sailors,” the Mail wrote.

Abedi’s presence aboard the ship was known to the highest levels of the British state. Then-Prime Minister David Cameron was personally informed.

This information has been hidden from the public, including the families of those Abedi killed and maimed, for over a year.

Abedi was rescued with 110 other British citizens, escorted to the Mediterranean island of Malta, and finally flown back to Manchester where he lived. Among those allowed on HMS Enterprise was Abedi’s brother, Hashem—who is currently in Libya and suspected of participating in the planning of the Arena bombing.

These revelations leave no doubt that Abedi and his circle were given a free hand to do whatever they wanted. They could travel unhindered between the UK and Libya because they were part of an Islamist terror network cultivated by British intelligence services and successive governments, as part of their regime-change operations in Libya and Syria.

The Mail articles repeat the official government narrative that although Abedi had been a Suspect of Interest…

Bloomberg
August 2, 2018

China said that the latest threat by the U.S. to increase tariffs won’t succeed in forcing concessions from Beijing.

“China is fully prepared and will have to retaliate to defend the nation’s dignity and the interests of the people, defend free trade and the multilateral system, and defend the common interests of all countries,” China’s Ministry of Commerce said in a statement Thursday on its website. The “carrot-and-stick” tactic won’t work, it said.

The Trump administration said Wednesday that it’s considering increasing the proposed tariff on $200 billion in Chinese imports to 25 percent from 10 percent, in a bid to force China back to the negotiating table. President Donald Trump has asked U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer to consider hiking the duties, which could be implemented as early as next month.

China’s yuan extended loss following Mofcom’s comments, signaling investor concern that the trade war is escalating. The onshore currencytumbled 0.35 percent to 6.8494 per dollar, the lowest level in more than a year, as of 5:58 p.m. in Shanghai. The offshore rate lost 0.58 percent. Earlier, shares in Asia fell.

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This article was posted: Thursday, August 2, 2018 at 8:13 am

In the past week, former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, now the chief lawyer and principal spokesman for President Donald Trump’s legal team, has offered arguments more harmful to Trump than helpful. In a series of combative, disjointed and logically challenged television rants, Giuliani has essentially argued that Trump did not engage in any conspiracy with the Russians for them to provide help to his campaign and that even if he did, it wasn’t criminal.

In making this argument, Giuliani has played a word game in which he has effectively created a straw man and then denied it’s real because it’s made of straw. He has done this by avoiding the use of the word “conspiracy,” substituting the word “collusion” and then arguing that there is no crime of collusion and therefore Trump did not commit a crime. This is an argument based on a false premise.

Here is the back story.

Suicide Pact: The Radi…
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When the FBI received word from a former British intelligence source in June 2016 that Russian intelligence agents might be providing assistance to the Trump campaign, it began an investigation of the campaign. After the British source gave the FBI a dossier that alleged salacious behavior by Trump in Moscow in 2013 — behavior he has denied — and purported to corroborate awareness of the behavior by Russian government officials, the FBI used the dossier as part of a presentation to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which authorized surveillance of the Trump campaign.

Because one of the Trump campaign officials under surveillance, Jeff Sessions, became the attorney general in January 2017, he recused himself from the…

Hungarian Prime Minister, Viktor Orban, visited Israel on July 19, where he met Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and other officials. Orban’s visit would have not required much pause except that the Hungarian leader has been repeatedly branded for his often racist, anti-Semitic remarks.

So why is Orban wining and dining with the leaders of the so-called ‘Jewish State’?

The answer does not pertain only to Orban and Hungary, but to Israel’s attitude towards the rapidly growing far-right movements in Europe, as a whole. Netanyahu and Zionist leaders everywhere, are not just aware of this massive political shift in European politics but are, in fact, working diligently to utilize it in Israel’s favor.

On his visit to Israel, Orban asserted that Hungarian Jewish citizens should feel safe in his country, an odd statement considering that it was Orban and his party that deprived many Jews and other members of minority groups of any feeling of safety.

Still, Netanyahu has welcomed Orban as a “true friend of Israel” and Orban called on his European counterparts to show more support for Israel. Mission accomplished.

Netanyahu had visited Budapest in July 2017, but that supposedly ‘historic’ visit did nothing to change Hungary’s official discourse, dotted with racism and anti-Semitism. In fact, in March 2018, Orban derided Jews, focusing his criticism mostly on Jewish financiers such as George Soros.

At an election rally campaign, Orban said,…

Iran won’t sit down with US President Donald Trump under pressure, American academic and political analyst Dennis Etler says, adding that Trump is totally beholden to both Israel and Saudi Arabia, who want to block Iran from playing a geopolitical role in the Middle East region and eviscerate the Islamic Republic as an independent and sovereign state.  

Etler, a professor of Anthropology at Cabrillo College in Aptos, California, made the remarks in an interview with Press TV on Thursday while commenting on a statement by Trump in which he claimed that talks with Iran are imminent and could happen “pretty soon.”

A day after he expressed willingness to meet with the Islamic Republic’s leaders without “preconditions,” Trump said on Tuesday, “I have a feeling they’ll be talking to us pretty soon. And maybe not, and that’s OK, too.”

The US president also used the occasion to once again denounce as “horrible, one-sided” the 2015 Iran nuclear…

Newsbusters
August 2, 2018

3D printable guns are the catalyst for the next 9/11, or so says CNN Legal & National Security Analyst, Asha Rangappa. In the most recent bout of hysteria surrounding blueprints for the weapons being available to the public, liberals are doubling down any way they can.

Appearing on Tuesday night’s episode of Cuomo Primetime, Rangappa whipped up a case against these blueprints, produced by Defense Distributed. The designs for 3D printed guns were made available online previously, and over 100,000 people downloaded them. But, thanks to a temporary court order, the company distributing the blueprints have been forced to take them down. Rangappa had this to say:

“But I think really the practical effect is every day when you get on an airplane, you now have to worry about someone who may be sneaking in a plastic gun, and this is really just asking for potentially another 9/11. And I think that should be concerning to all of us.”

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This article was posted: Thursday, August 2, 2018 at 8:19 am