848: Cash on a Pallet

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Tue, 02 Aug 2016 02:29

Donald Trump called his Democratic rival 'the devil' on Monday in a high-profile escalation of his campaign rhetoric '' at precisely the moment he needed to change the subject.

Facing a four-day-long scandal over his criticism of the father of a Muslim soldier who died in combat, the Republican presidential nominee shifted gears.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, Trump told an overflow crowd at a high school in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, 'made a deal with the devil' when he endorsed Clinton at last week's Democratic National Convention.

'She's the devil!' he added.

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'SHE'S THE DEVIL!': Donald Trump went all-in on Monday night as he said that when Bernie Sanders made an endorsement 'deal with the devil,' Hillary Clinton was the Satan figure

Trump has hinted at the insult before, saying Friday in Colorado that 'Bernie blew it. He sold his soul to the devil. He did.'

But Trump had previously stopped short of declaring that Hillary Clinton is, in fact, the Prince '' or Princess '' of Darkness.

By rallying around Clinton instead of standing on principle, the billionaire said, Sanders 'made a bad deal. He should have not made a deal. He would have gone down as [having] done something really important.'

'Once he made that deal, and believe me, he has buyer's remorse.'

'If he would have just not done anything '' just go home, go to sleep, relax '' he would have been a hero,' he said. 'But he made a deal with the devil. She's the devil! He made a deal with the devil. It's true.'

It's not the first time Satan has figured in this year's presidential election.

Sanders' campaign manager Jeff Weaver told CNN in April that it was Clinton who 'made a deal with the devil' by accepting millions in campaign cash from Wall Street banks.

'And we know the devil wants his money in the end,' Weaver said.

Weeks later, former House Speaker John Boehner told an audience at Stanford University that Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who was then giving Trump a strong primary fight, was 'Lucifer in the flesh' and 'a miserable son of a b**ch.'

And Dr. Ben Carson, who may run the Department of Health and Human Services in a Trump administration, tried to tie Clinton to the devil two weeks ago during his Republican National Convention speech.

The former secretary of state, Carson said, was a disciple of far-left activist Saul Alinsky '' who dedicated his book 'Rules for Radicals' to 'Lucifer, the original radical who gained his own kingdom.'

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Tue, 02 Aug 2016 18:15

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Mainstream media figures from the New York Times to the Huffington Post to CNN are apoplectic Monday as their latest attack on Donald J. Trump, the Republican nominee for president, has crumbled yet again under the slightest bit of scrutiny.Specifically, the newest line of attack to fall apart is the criticism of Trump over Khizr Khan, the Muslim Gold Star father who spoke at the Democratic National Convention last week.

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Over the weekend and for the past few days since Khan spoke alongside his wife Ghazala Khan about their son, U.S. Army Captain Humayun Khan, who was killed in Iraq in 2004, media-wide reporters, editors, producers, and anchors have tried to lay criticism on Trump over the matter. They thought they had a good one, a specific line of attack that pitted Trump against the military'--and supposedly showed him as a big meanie racist in the process.

But, as Breitbart News showed on Monday midday, that clearly was not the case. Khizr Khan has all sorts of financial, legal, and political connections to the Clintons through his old law firm, the mega-D.C. firm Hogan Lovells LLP. That firm did Hillary Clinton's taxes for years, starting when Khan still worked there involved in, according to his own website, matters ''firm wide'''--back in 2004. It also has represented, for years, the government of Saudi Arabia in the United States. Saudi Arabia, of course, is a Clinton Foundation donor which'--along with the mega-bundlers of thousands upon thousands in political donations to both of Hillary Clinton's presidential campaigns in 2008 and 2016'--plays right into the ''Clinton Cash'' narrative.

All of this information was publicly available, and accessible to anyone'--including any of these reporters, and Breitbart News'--with a basic Google search. Anyone interested in doing research about the subjects they are reporting on'--otherwise known as responsible journalism'--would have checked into these matters. But clearly, none in the mainstream media did'--probably because, as Fox News' Chad Pergram noted, Democrats ''sense blood in the water over'' the whole Khan controversy.

Earlier on Monday, as CNN host Kate Bolduan stacked a panel with three anti-Trump analysts against Scottie Nell Hughes'--the only Trump supporter present'--Bolduan admitted she has not done basic research about Khan.

''I have no idea what you're talking about, what law firm he's connected to,'' Bolduan, a CNN anchor, plainly admitted on live television on Monday during a discussion with Hughes.

Hughes was pressing the very easily publicly accessible information that Khan worked at Hogan & Hartson, the firm that would eventually become Hogan Lovells LLP'--a firm that as Breitbart News has demonstrated is highly connected with the Clinton apparatus and with the Saudi government. And Bolduan was proving she had no idea what she was talking, quite literally'--as her direct quote admits.

A CNN spokeswoman referred Breitbart News to Bolduan's personal spokesman when sent a list of detailed questions on the matter. That spokesman has not replied to Breitbart News' detailed questions by press time:

1.) Kate Bolduan admitted on live television today '-- see approximately 3:20 in this video:

when Bolduan says of Khizr Khan: ''I have no idea what you're talking about, what law firm he's connected to.'' '-- that she did not do any basic journalistic research on the subjects she was hosting a panel on. Is that acceptable by CNN standards?

2.) Does CNN plan to, in the future, have a discussion about all of Khizr Khan's various connections to the law firm that A) prepared Hillary Clinton's taxes, B) helped with various aspects of Hillary Clinton's illicit homebrew email server, C) is paid by the government of Saudi Arabia for representation here in the United States, among other things?

3.) Does CNN plan to, in the future, focus on the fact that Khan now runs a law firm that financially benefits from opposition to Donald Trump's policies on migration '-- specifically that he aims to represent aspiring EB5 visa holders, who pay large sums of money to enter the country, a program that the Senate Judiciary Committee has uncovered as having major flaws?

4.) Has anyone at CNN done any work digging into any of this? You're aware it's all publicly available with a simple Google search and would have taken a junior producer less than an hour to find it all out?

Meanwhile, hours after Breitbart News presented this information publicly in a coherent report on Monday, others in media engaged in willful distortion of the story's origins.

New York Times reporter Nick Confessore, at 3:25 p.m. ET on Monday, Tweeted out a link to the Bretibart News report with this commentary attached to his link to Breitbart News: ''First oppo dump on the Khans.''

Less than three minutes later, Huffington Post politics editor Sam Stein Tweeted out a link also using the phrase ''oppo dump.''

''And, the predictably gross oppo dump on the Kahn family has begun,'' Stein Tweeted with a link to the Breitbart News report. ''again, their kid DIED fighting for America.''

A few minutes after that, New York Magazine reporter Annie Lowery, at 3:59 p.m. ET Tweeted out her own link to the Breitbart News report, also using the apparently choreographed talking point ''oppo dump.''

''I've never seen a thinner oppo dump in my life,'' Lowery Tweeted with the link.

All three, sent a detailed list of questions from Breitbart News, wouldn't answer specifically where they got this from'--and specifically if someone associated with the Clinton campaign, or one of its outside allies, circulated the Breitbart News piece with the coordinated messaging phrase ''oppo dump.''

For the layman reading this piece, an ''oppo dump'' refers to opposition research provided to a media outlet by a campaign or political operative. Said research is usually negative facts, provided to put together a counter-narrative in the media more beneficial to the provider's cause.

There have been plenty of times where this reporter has relied on opposition research from a variety of parties for a given story, but this story was not one of those times. All of the information on Khan was very easily accessible via the Internet, and easily checked online via public sources.

So the idea that this was somehow an ''oppo dump'' from Trump's campaign or anyone else for that matter is not just silly, it's untrue.

But that being said, each of the three mainstream outlets handled the detailed questions from Breitbart News about their inaccurate assumptions in a different way.

''I was just joking! It's like no one in the media knows sarcasm when they see it anymore,'' the New York Times' Confessore said in an email to Breitbart News.

Confessore didn't answer whether anyone from the Clinton campaign'--or anyone else for that matter'--sent him the article with the phrase ''oppo dump.''

While he did provide that quote brushing off the frivolous claim he made on Twitter as merely a joke, Confessore didn't answer the full set of questions he was sent.

Those questions were:

1.) What makes you think the Trump campaign, or anyone, gave me an ''oppo dump''? What's your evidence for that? (to clarify, I was not provided an ''oppo dump'' '-- I researched this all myself)

2.) Are you aware all of the evidence contained in the article is publicly available through Google searching online?

3.) Did you '-- or anyone at the NY Times '-- do ANY of your own research into this guy's connections back to the Clintons and to Saudi Arabia?

4.) Is it standard operating procedure at the NY Times to make claims that aren't true like the one you just did on Twitter without any evidence? Or is this just a one-time thing?

5.) Did anyone at the Clinton campaign''or anywhere else''send you my article, or did you just find it on your own at the exact same time (3 minutes earlier) as the Huffington Post's political editor?

The Huffington Post's Stein, on the other hand, outright refused to answer any questions.

''I'm going to decline comment here,'' Stein replied when sent a list of his own questions.

The questions Stein was sent that he declined to answer were:

1.) What makes you think the Trump campaign, or anyone, gave me an ''oppo dump''? What's your evidence for that? (to clarify, I was not provided an ''oppo dump'' '-- I researched this all myself)

2.) Are you aware all of the evidence contained in the article is publicly available through Google searching online?

3.) Did you '-- or anyone at the Huffington Post '-- do ANY of your own research into this guy's connections back to the Clintons and to Saudi Arabia?

4.) Is it standard operating procedure at the Huffington Post to make claims that aren't true like the one you just did on Twitter without any evidence? Or is this just a one-time thing?

5.) Did anyone at the Clinton campaign''or anywhere else''send you my article, or did you just find it on your own at the exact same time (3 minutes later) as the NY Times' Nick Confessore?

Lowery from New York Magazine, meanwhile, laughed off the questions.

''My response, quotable, in its entirety: lol,'' she wrote in an email back to the specific questions she was sent.

Those questions that she didn't answer were:

1.) What makes you think the Trump campaign, or anyone, gave me an ''oppo dump''? What's your evidence for that? (to clarify, I was not provided an ''oppo dump'' '-- I researched this all myself)

2.) Are you aware all of the evidence contained in the article is publicly available through Google searching online?

3.) Did you '-- or anyone at NY Magazine'' do ANY of your own research into this guy's connections back to the Clintons and to Saudi Arabia?

4.) Is it standard operating procedure at NY Magazine to make claims that aren't true like the one you just did on Twitter without any evidence? Or is this just a one-time thing?

5.) Did anyone at the Clinton campaign''or anywhere else''send you my article, or did you just find it on your own at nearly the same time (within minutes of) as the Huffington Post's political editor and a NY Times reporter who used the exact same phrase ''oppo dump'' as you did?

Lowery did, however, somewhat answer some of them in follow-up Tweets.

But, facts be damned, the entire mainstream is on a warpath to try to stop Donald Trump and elect Hillary Clinton. It's also worth noting that each and every one of them is in their own right working to undermine Trump and elect Clinton.

Stein is the easiest example of this. His outlet, the Huffington Post, includes a disclaimer on every article about Trump labeling him a racist''and the progressive media service is outwardly in favor of Clinton over Trump in November, plainly stating it does not want Trump to win.

Confessore's New York Times has repeatedly tried and failed with hit pieces on Trump, most notably a piece in May claiming he was sexist toward women.

And Lowery, in New York Magazine, wrote a piece last week during the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia oozing with praise for Hillary Clinton. ''What it was like to see Hillary Clinton make history,'' was her headline, under which she gushed her heart out for dear Hillary Clinton.

Lowery wrote toward the end of the piece, which was more like love letter to her hero Hillary Clinton:

This week, Hillary made history. Her campaigning has sometimes felt bloodless. The press has tended to be measured in its assessment of her, and sometimes downright mean. The convention has felt at times like a coronation. But in the Wells Fargo arena, as the DNC came to its end, there was joy, togetherness, excitement, elation, hope, change, love, and enthrallment. The glass ceiling crashed, and thousands and thousands of balloons showered down on Hillary as the crowd screamed and cried. There was rapture. And it was because that woman is Hillary.

Too bad, guys. The attack line isn't working. Ironically, your friends over at the Washington Post and USA Today seem to have figured this out already.

The Post's Anne Gearan wrote from Johnston, Pennsylvania wrote:

Hillary Clinton's three-day bus ride across battleground Pennsylvania and Ohio was supposed to celebrate her nomination with running mate Sen. Tim Kaine, showcase her plans to add jobs and ring a bell for the fall election. It ended up being mostly about Donald Trump. At nearly every stop through two states Democrats must win in November, Clinton and Kaine talked about the Republican almost as much as they talked about themselves. She invoked him sometimes with red-meat outrage, sometimes with a tone of disbelief and sometimes for laughs.

Why are Clinton and her media allies like Confessore, Bolduan, Lowery, and Stein doing this? Perhaps it's because there's nothing else they can use to sell voters on Clinton. So all they've got left in the toolbox is to try to trash Trump''a tactic that didn't work before as Republican after Republican failed to stop him doing the same thing''as the Washington Post's Gearan reported.

''Clinton and Kaine mentioned Trump's name 36 times in some 45 minutes of remarks here Saturday, and they referenced him without naming him several times more,'' Gearan wrote. ''It was a recognition that the fall election has become a referendum on the businessman and political novice more than on the polarizing woman who has been at the center of American politics for a quarter-century. And that is mostly fine by her.''

And why is it that Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine are failing to gain any traction whatsoever among voters throughout the rust belt? Perhaps a Democrat from Pennsylvania, Erin McClelland, who's running to represent Pennsylvania's 12th Congressional district summed it up best in, of all places, USA Today.

''They feel the Democratic Party has abandoned them, talks down to them, calls them stupid,'' McClelland said of voters throughout the rust belt.

''They [voters] don't know what 'white privilege' is,'' McClelland added. ''All they know is everything keeps getting taken away from them and they're watching Donald Trump diminish the same industrial political complex that has demeaned and insulted them.''

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Mon, 01 Aug 2016 17:45

Posted by Chris Mark in Uncategorized.Tags: Army, DNC, Humayan, Kahn, Khizr, Muslims, Navy, Trump, USMCtrackbackDear Mr. Khan,

I want to preface this letter by stating that I respect your son's sacrifice for this great nation. By all accounts, he is a true hero that sacrificed himself in service to our country. For that I am thankful.

As a veteran, I watched your comments at the Democratic National Convention with a mixture of sadness, and anger. The United States has a military comprised of volunteers. Every single member has made the conscious choice to join the military and serve. There is not a single service member who has been forced into service. It is important for all service members (and apparently, their families) to understand that service to this great nation does not imbue one with special privileges or rights. I found your comments troubling when you said: ''Have you ever been to Arlington cemetery? Go look at the graves of brave patriots who died defending the United States of America. You will see all faiths, genders and ethnicities. You have sacrificed nothing and no one.''

Does it matter whether Mr. Trump has sacrificed '''...nothing and no one?'''...has Ms. Clinton ''..sacrificed'' for this nation? How about Mr. Obama? Your comment stating that Mr. Trump '''...has sacrifice no one'' is alarming. Are you intimating that YOU sacrificed? Sir, your son willingly sacrificed himself. As a father I cannot imagine the pain you must feel but his sacrifice is his own. He was not forced to serve.

I am troubled that you would allow a party that has little more than contempt for the US Service Member to parade you into the DNC to denounce Donald Trump. Did you watch when protesters at the DNC booed and heckled Medal of Honor recipient Capt. Florent Groberg? Did you notice your party interrupting the moment of silence for slain police officers? Your own hypocrisy in not denouncing these acts and instead using the DNC as a platform to make a political point is disgraceful. The simple fact is that whether one served or sacrificed does not give greater power to their statements. One vote is as valuable as another. That sir, is why our Country is great. Your condemnation of one person for a statement while standing idly as your party disparages veterans and police officers is the height of hypocrisy.

To conflate the need to prevent potential terrorists from entering our country with the belief that 'all Muslims' should be banned is simply wrong and disingenuous. As a reminder, Mr. Trump said: '' ''Until we are able to determine and understand this problem and the dangerous threat it poses, our country cannot be the victims of horrendous attacks by people that believe only in Jihad, and have no sense of reason or respect for human life,'' The irony of your son's own death at the hands of these very people in Iraq should not be ignored. I have little doubt that your son would have recognized the need to protect our country from these very people. In fact, he held is own troops back so that he could check on a suspicious car. Your son understood sacrifice and how to protect ''his people'''...'his soldiers''....'his fellow Americans''...

As you continue to make the media circuit and bask in the glow of affection cast upon you by a party that has little regard for your son's own sacrifice, and veterans in general, I would ask you to consider your comments and your position more closely.

Respectfully,

Chris Mark

US Marine and Navy Veteran.

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Mon, 01 Aug 2016 16:34

As the now infamous ''Here's 10 Examples of Donald Trump being racist'' that is the go-to rhetoric for the anti-trump crowd when asked to prove his racism was making its way around the net, I read it a few times it was posted and a lot of the article stood out to me.

It started with the biased nature of the post and the failure to include both sides of the story from the beginning, namely the first sentence proclaiming ''He failed to disavow the KKK in late February'' even though he had already disavowed David Duke at a press conference beforehand (and whether they believed it or not, an unbiased journalist would have included that part of the story, but we all know how ''journalism'' is in 2016).

First of all, the reason I'm doing this is because ''racist'' is a pretty huge label to fit to someone. I may not agree w/ 100% of what Trump says/his policies, but for the most part I feel like he would be a good choice for our next President, which is funny because I was adamantly against him when he first announced he was running.

He's definitely a better candidate than Hot Sauce Hillary.

Let me start this off by saying that I believe ''Offense is taken, not given,'' and with that being said people have found it profitable and beneficial to take offense to things said that weren't even intended to be offensive.

I like to look at things with logic and reason '' I don't care much for people shoving their opinions into everyone's faces because that just turns into subjective arguments/conversations, so when I first heard these claims of Trump being a racist I had to find out.

After all, I wasn't gonna end up supporting some type of ''white supremacist'' who was only looking out for his own race. According to the left if he gets elected the end result will be slavery, or a boat back to Africa (which usually comes from people who have never been to Africa and don't realize natural born U.S. citizens can't be deported) so I had to find out for myself.

I've always been a skeptic, especially with liberal media '' so I decided to look into these claims of racism that everyone was so blindly feeding into without doing any research themselves. The results were staggering. Let's begin.

First off, let's take a look at what the word Racist really means:

So racist is different from other description in the terms of, it's not as much of a description as it is a mindset. To be a racist you have to actively show that you believe your race is superior to others, and without outwardly expressed actions this is something that's hard to discern.

People these days will call you a racist based on their perception of a viewpoint or opinion of yours, but forget that to be an actual racist you have to believe in superiority and not just have said some ''racial jokes/comments'' a few times (if that was the case that'd mean I'm a racist against everyone).

Let's also remember the fact that Trump has never really commented on white people as a whole in any sort of superior manner, and has regularly employed minorities in his businesses (I mean his campaign spokesperson is a Half black woman) and people who have known him for years say that he isn't a racist.

However, apparently some journalists who've never met the man a day in their life feel like they have definitive proof that he is, so let's examine these claims.

The Justice Department sued his company '-- twice '-- for not renting to black peopleThe most extensive write-up on this case can be found at the Village Voice profiling Wayne Barrett's profiling of Trump and his father for the magazine in the 80's. In it he discusses how the company was slapped with the lawsuit, but also some interesting information about the Trumps' and the company in the midst of it.

''We stopped building and started acquiring then,'' explains Donald Trump. Trump the building become Trump the management firm.'''' referring to a Coney Island's Steeplechase site Fred Trump acquired and subsequently abandoned in 1965.It's well known that Trump has a habit of licensing his name to buildings and projects that he doesn't directly (a la Trump Institute), and with him testifying in federal court that he owned and managed 12,000+ units at the time it doesn't sound unlikely.

There's also the fact that there only corroboration there is that this was the Trumps' doing was when ''A rental agent said that Fred Trump had instructed him not to rent to blacks. Further, the agent said (Fred) Trump wanted 'to decrease the number of black tenants already in the development ''by encouraging them to locate housing elsewhere.''

Interesting that the only hint of actual racism in this case came from the man in the family who's already pretty much been established as one. Now they say ''the apple doesn't fall far from the tree'' but there's also the saying of ''Don't judge a book by its cover,'' and it doesn't make sense to persecute Trump for the actions and mindset of his father.

Trump argued in court that forcing him to rent to welfare recipients (and due to the racial coding in everyone's brains at this point, most of you will attribute that to black people even though statistics show otherwise) was wrong considering his operation was mostly moderate and luxury apartments, note the absence of any racial indications or coding. The situation was basically Trump not wanting to rent to welfare recipients, and I'm sure most people would have reservations about renting luxury housing to welfare recipients, it doesn't make them racist.

Honestly, If you see the words ''welfare recipient'' and instantly think of black people, doesn't that make you the racist?

Let's also counter this story with the fact that in the 90s, Trump was at odds with the town council for bringing up the issue of them overlooking the issue of clubs refusing to allow minorities in. He even received praise from then President of the Anti-Defamation League, Abraham Foxman, ''telling the Wall Street Journal, ''He put the light on Palm Beach. Not on the beauty and the glitter, but on its seamier side of discrimination. It has an impact.'' Foxman credited Trump's move with encouraging other clubs in Palm Beach to do the same as Mar-a-Lago in opening up.''

I'll leave this section off with this thought from the NetRightDaily piece:

''Sometimes, in judging the character of an individual, it pays to see what people actually do when nobody's really paying attention. When it came to segregation in the South at private, all-white country clubs, it might have been in Trump's business interests to simply look the other way. Instead, Trump did the right thing and insisted on desegregation at his golf resort.

And he won.''

In fact, discrimination against black people has been a pattern in his careerThis part of the HuffPo article is the funniest to me, because it's also usually the most direct reference to his ''racism'' his detractors use, especially against me considering I'm a black Trump supporter. ''OMG He's racist, he said blacks are lazy why would you support him!'' is something I'm used to hearing, but let's examine these claims. What makes it hilarious is that they're either misconstrued versions of the situation, or the he-say, she-say type of claims.

The first claim is that a high rolling gambler by the name of Robert Libutti had issues with black people dealing the cards at his table, and was alleged to have said some extremely offensive comments regarding Jews, Blacks and women. In the ensuing case Trump denied claims that he knew Libutti personally, even though Libutti claimed otherwise in a wire-tapped conversation with then-President of Trump Casinos, Edward M. Tracy claimed otherwise.

In any case, the racist and the offensive person in this situation is clearly Libutti, not Trump. It was said that the managers were responsible for ensuring that Libutti would not be around those groups that he disliked, and none of the facts or claims of this case point towards Trump regarding white people are better than minorities. The slightest claim that you may make is that there was 'prejudice-by-association' but that's a weak argument, sorry.

The next claim is from the New Yorker, in it's September 2015 issue in a story about Atlantic City. In it we find a claim from Kip Brown, someone who claims that black employees were ordered off the floor when Trump and Ivana visited the casinos.

The most interesting thing about this claim is that it is the literal equivalent of ''my mom's cousin's uncle's grandmom's baby cousin's baby sitter said Trump did this racist thing once''. Kip is described as ''a bus driver, who worked the Port Authority route, up and back each morning, for Academy Bus Lines,''and besides that they give no real information or claims to verify his authenticity.

Now, I apologize if this ''Kip Brown'' person is actually a real person, and if his story corroborates then I guess there'd be an issue, but until someone can actually find someone to corroborate the story or actually find Kip Brown, I have a hard time believing this.

So if I go write an article on a city and I include that I talked to someone I met on the SEPTA bus who said that they have a DNA test to prove they were one of Bill Clinton's illegitimate children, but have no verification to authenticate the story, is it really real? I mean you guys are treating these stories as facts because they sound good to your ''Trump's a racist'' ingrained mindsets, but 5 minutes of research would make you realize these claims aren't as concrete and factual as you think.

The last real part of this section refers to the claims that Trump once said at a dinner, ''And isn't it funny. I've got black accountants at Trump Castle and Trump Plaza. Black guys counting my money! I hate it,'' * ''The only kind of people I want counting my money are short guys that wear yarmulkes every day.''

When you look into this, you realize 2 things:

1). These are random claims that haven't been corroborated by anyone else.

2). These claims were made by a former employee of his who he had a public falling out with, and was found to be making other claims in his book that were proven to be false.

The claims were made by John R. O'Donnell, who was profiled in the Philadelphia Inquirer, and at the time of writing his book ''was president of Merv Griffin's Resorts Casino Hotel (A Trump competitor). He quit in anger in April 1990 after Trump publicly criticized O'Donnell's patron, Stephen Hyde, who ran Trump's Atlantic City operations until being killed in a helicopter crash in October 1989.''

Interestingly enough, O'Donnell made other claims in the book that were proven to be false:

''The book was criticized by Al Glasgow, a key Trump adviser, who said it falsely accuses him of breaking the law by doing business with Trump without the required license.

Glasgow said he would have shown his license to O'Donnell or co-author James Rutherford had they asked to see it. O'Donnell expressed surprise when advised that Glasco Associates has a license. O'Donnell acknowledged that he never tried to contact Glasgow before making the charge.''

So a book written by a man who was a former employee of Trump's that had a public falling out with him and went to work for a competitor, featuring claims that were proven to be falsely made due to a lack of research, is supposed to be believed regarding an alleged dinner conversation where Trump apparently said some offensive remarks?

This is the best proof of Trump being racist against blacks y'all have? Y'all gotta come with some better logic than that.

They also end this section referring to the controversy surrounding him apparently reneging on his alleged claims to hire a mostly minority workforce for the building of his casino, but once again this in no way shows any type of feeling of superiority over blacks or other minorities.

He refused to condemn the white supremacists who are campaigning for himNow we get to the straight up lies.

I mentioned earlier how Trump had already disavowed David Duke before the press conference with Jake Tapper, so that gets rid of the claim that he refused to do it. Let's analyze this clip and look at a few key factors here:

1). One of the first things Trump said was ''I don't know anything about white supremacists, and you're asking me to talk about people I know nothing about,'' and if the man was such an open racist running an openly racist platform why would he miss the chance to issue a rally cry to the ''legions of white nationalist and supremacists that will propel him to the White House?'' To save face? Nah, I'm not buying it.

2). With the habit the media has of falsely labeling people with the assortment of buzzwords that's a common tactic nowadays, why would he just go along with them and start disavowing and trash talking organizations he knew nothing about? Up until the last few seconds Jake was specifically referring to and talking about ''white supremacists,'' and with the way that the media distorts stories and words said in interviews this was a lose-lose situation. Trump specifically stated ''you wouldn't want me to condemn a group I know nothing about,'' and this seemed to just be more of a ''being cautious'' sort of thing.

3). David Duke is not relevant. He hasn't been with the Klan since 1980, and at best you can call him a white nationalist/supremacist '' but this doesn't mean that those labels apply to Trump. The fact that people are so adamant about bringing up the Klan's and white nationalists' supposed support of Trump is funny considering people never really think about why that is.

There are two parties in the race '' one who wants to import massive amounts of immigrants, and one who is against flooding the nation with them (like our job market and economy isn't already bad enough as is).

I also think it's interesting to note people say that because Trump and the Klan may have similar feelings on some issues of the country, that their views are in alignment and that they're one and the same. Malcolm X argued for separation of blacks and whites and that his race was superior to others, in the same way the Klan did. Does this mean that Malcolm X was a KKK member?

Clearly it doesn't.

He questions whether President Obama was born in the United StatesIt's funny that there's a version of this particular story that's also on Washington Post about Trump ''lying and saying that the birther movement was started by Clinton,'' when it's the research done by the Washington Post in a story featured on Breitbart that proved it came from her camp in the first place.

TL;DR:

More than a full year before anyone would hear of Orly Taitz, the Birther strategy was first laid out in the Penn memo.The ''othering'' foundation was built subliminally by the Clinton campaign itself.Democrats and Clinton campaign surrogates did the dirtiest of the dirty work: openly spread the Birther lies.Staffers in Hillary's actual campaign used email to spread the lies among other Democrats (this was a Democrat primary after all '-- so that is the only well you needed to poison a month before a primary).The campaign released the turban photo.Hillary herself used 60 Minutes to further stoke these lies.If we're going by the commonplace tactic of this election of blaming actions done by one's supporters on them, shouldn't this ''racism'' be blamed on Hillary? Plus, is the only reason that this issue is ''racist'' is because it features a black man being accused of being from Africa? There are white people in Africa so isn't that a ''racist'' sentiment in itself?

Trump accused Ted Cruz of being from Canada for an entire election and that wasn't called racist once, but when Democrats claim that a fellow Democrat is a Muslim from Africa and he calls them out on it he's the racist one. I don't get it.

He treats racial groups as monolithsThis one still makes no sense to me, especially because of the reasoning behind him being ''racist'' for these comments. They're basically saying 2 things at this point:

1). Because he refers to groups like ''The X'' (as do I and many other people, I would bet) that he feels like white people are superior to this group. This claim makes very little sense to me, because whether you call them ''black people,'' ''the blacks'' or ''African Americans'' you're all talking about the same person. Trivial things like this saturate the actual racism in the world, and by attributing these labels to every little thing you dislike (I.E. I don't like that he called us 'The Blacks' so he must think his race is superior to ours) is going to make it harder and harder to identify the people who actually fit the description.

Huffington Post explains it as ''Trump relies on essentializing racial and ethnic groups, blurring them into simple, monolithic entities, instead of acknowledging that there's as much variety among Muslims and Latinos and black people as there is among white people,'' but I don't get it at all. What type of victim mindset do you have to have to look at a statement like ''I Love the Hispanics'' and say ''OMG! Hispanics aren't all the same, like we are individuals! Even though you just said you love and appreciate our race, I won't accept that because I feel like you would've said it differently if you were talking about white people.''Matter of fact, most of the ''racism'' these days isn't even ''Superiority over minorities,'' it's ''I feel like you would have treated whites different in this situation so I'm gonna call you a racist because I have forced myself to feel offended''. This sort of mindset is annoying and mundane, because you usually can't be certain what would have happened in that regard, but people these days act like they're experts and psychics on the matter anyway.

Which is interesting because most of these claims of racism are exactly that. They just assume he would have treated whites differently, or that he feels some type of way about a group as a whole because he commented on a few members of the group.

It's something people like to do a lot nowadays '' take a comment from you on a specific person or thing and blow it outta proportion to make it seem like you feel disparagingly against an entire group when those weren't your intentions, and they can't prove it.

They also try to end this with the Taco Bowl tweet, and this little tidbit from Jeb Bush stating:

''It's like eating a watermelon and saying 'I love African-Americans,''' Bush quipped.

But they aren't the same because while Tacos are a food originated from Mexico (and the word has a different meaning in Spanish than it does in other dialects), Watermelon has nothing to do w/ black culture and in fact the stereotype has a history of being used in a demeaning and racist way towards blacks in the U.S.

He trashed Native Americans, tooThis one is interesting, because this is one of the few times where the claims being made are actually verifiable, but even then it doesn't bleed ''racism'' like the left wants you to believe.

Trump was gonna open a Casino in Bridgeport, Connecticut, but he learned he would be competing with one owned by the Mashantucket Pequot Nation. He testified to the House Subcommittee on native American Affairs that ''they don't look like Indians to me'... They don't look like Indians to Indians.''

Was this necessary? No.Was this a good way to go about it? Probably not.Does this mean he has anything against Native Americans as a whole? Not at all.

When you look at life, everyone sees it in their own particular frame and point of view. You will never completely understand someone else's frame, because you haven't live their life and vice versa.

To Trump he sees certain facial features that he feels like help identifying people, it's a feature of humans that has been studied in psychology. I see it all the time in the black community when people refer to things like ''Can we get some praise for some Darkskinned women without eurocentric beauty features?'' and things of that nature.

Facial perception is a facet of psychology, and there's even a phenomenon called the ''cross-race effect'' which discusses how it's easier to be able to identify your own race than any others. In this event Trump was mistaken, and the comment may have been insensitive, but racist? Superior to them because of his comment? nah.

He encouraged the mob justice that resulted in the wrongful imprisonment of the Central Park FiveFirst of all this headline is just hate-baiting with the way they worded it. He didn't ''encourage mob justice'' that ''resulted'' in their wrongful imprisonment, his ad didn't come out until two weeks after corruption was already being committed in the case.

Now don't get me wrong '' this is one of the things I find Trump completely wrong for. Contrary to popular belief I don't agree with 100% of what the man says, but then again I don't do that with anyone. I'm not a fan of the Death Penalty especially for reasons like this, and I feel like there are numerous other ways he could have gone about it, but ''racism'' being attributed to this is interesting.

Remember when I said ''most of the ''racism'' these days isn't even ''Superiority over minorities,'' it's ''I feel like you would have treated whites different in this situation so I'm gonna call you a racist because I have forced myself to feel offended'' earlier? This is definitely one of those cases.

So what this comes down to is this, a bunch of people who don't know and have never met Trump before in their lives making judgments about his character due to them wanting to satisfy their own preconceived notions about wanting to hate him.

There's a woman who actively worked for, knew and was a friend of Trump's commenting on and discussing her feelings for his reasons on doing what he did.

And the only thing people will take out of all of this is ''WELL IF WHITEY DID IT WOULD YOU HAVE STILL FELT THAT WAY?!''

Like I said earlier, that mindset is trivial and an easy way to blame something on racism and call someone a racist when you have no proof or evidence for the claim. It's a cop out basically.

You also have to take into account the aspects of the case.

''Trisha Meili was comatose for 12 days. She suffered from severe hypothermia, severe brain damage, Class 4 (the most severe) hemorrhagic shock, and loss of 75''80 per cent of her blood from five deep stab wounds and a gash on one of her thighs, and internal bleeding. Her skull had been fractured so badly that her left eye was removed from the eye socket, which in turn was fractured in 21 places, and she suffered as well from facial fractures. The initial medical prognosis was that Meili would die. She was given last rites. The police initially listed the attack as a probable homicide. At best, doctors thought that she would remain in a permanent coma due to her injuries. She came out of her coma 12 days after her attack, and spent seven weeks in Metropolitan Hospital in East Harlem. When she emerged from her coma, she was initially unable to talk, read, or walk.''At the time of Trump's ad people were under the impression that this was a brutal and barbaric attack done by a group of degenerates, and when they learned she lost 80% of her blood and almost lost an eye most people were horrified.

Considering the media stirring up tensions by claiming these men were part of large groups of teens who would go into Central Park at night and cause mischief, people were scared.

Do I think he went about it wrong and could have stayed out of it?

Yes, but when we go around claiming racism simply because ''I DON'T THINK YOU WOULD ACTED LIKE THAT FOR A WHITE PERSON'' it starts to become a ''Boy Who Cried Wolf'' situation.

He condoned the beating of a Black Lives Matter protesterFirst of all, while I do think it's wrong that people are being attacked for their views I also think it's wrong how biased the media is in reporting it. Trump supporters regularly get attacked and assaulted for their support of him as well, there was even an 8 year old who was pepper sprayed as a result of her mother bringing her to a Trump Rally.

Before you get into the ''Why would you bring your child to a Trump rally, you know how they are blah blah'' consider how Victim-blaming is unacceptable in almost every other facet of society, but when Trump supporters are the the victims of crime and harassment it's acceptable to blame them. How interesting.

A 16 year old Black Trump supporter (who I've had the pleasure of interviewing) has been receiving death threats since he went viral for supporting Trump and debating a BlackLivesMatter supporter. It's dangerous to be an open Trump supporter, and yet liberals and the media make it seem like we're the ones that are so violent.

One question: When have you ever heard of Trump supporters going to a Bernie or Hillary rally and beating people up and throwing eggs or protesting outside of the rally antagonizing people? Very rarely, if ever right? Isn't that interesting'...

But in this particular case it can't be racist if Trump didn't know who the man was or what skin color he was, as evidenced by him stating he didn't see the incident. People love to try to apply these ''Well a white man said this about a black man so it must be racist'' type of attitudes to situations like this with no evidence to support it, and that's the type of thing that annoys me. I'd rather we go after real racists, not the ''I don't like the way he did this so I'm gonna claim racism'' type.

It's also interesting to note that the now infamous ''Trump promises to pay supporters' legal feeds'' quote has been grossly misconstrued from it's original meaning/intent. As reported from an interview in Thweek.com, Trump stated:

''If you see somebody getting ready to throw a tomato, knock the crap out of them,''''I promise you, I will pay for the legal fees.''

So basically he was saying that if you have to defend yourself from the violence of the Anti-Trump crowd (and they pepper spray children, so we know some of them have no morals) and find yourself in legal trouble he will pay your legal fees. Not ''Go out and beat people up and I'll pay for it'' like the deceptive media spun it to make him seem like some sort of super villain.

He called supporters who beat up a homeless Latino man ''passionate''This one was one of the most interesting ones, for a multitude of reasons I ended up finding.

1). When you search the headline for the story you can find archived versions that mention him calling the men passionate, but the actual story on Boston Herald's website has no mention of it. I archived it in case they try to change anything later, but why would this interesting little tidbit not still be included in the original article? A disclaimer at the bottom says it's an archived version, and ''they don't always include videos, charts or graphic'' but this was text.

2). There's also the factor of their not being a video of him actually saying this, at least not anywhere I could find. Without video evidence this seems to be nothing more than another attempted smear job by the media. There's no way to even tell if the two statements were in any way connected.

3). Even if this was true, people using this as an example of him being ''racist'' are clearly reaching.

He stereotyped Jews as good negotiators '-- and political mastermindsThis one isn't gonna take much to really 'debunk' because it's a dumb claim.

The semantics of Judaism being a religion and not a race aside, what type of world do we live in where making a positive assumption about a group of people is offensive? How is saying they are good negotiators a bad thing? The victimized mindsets people live in make it easy for them to label anything ''offensive'' as racist, but in this day and age they'll find it hard to prove it.

If this is the case, I guess there are a hell of a lot of racist rappers then.

There's also the issue of him supposedly stating:

''You're not going to support me, because I don't want your money,'' he said. ''You want to control your own politician.''

It honestly sounds like a bad joke (and Trump does have a slight tendency to show his sense of humor in 'unorthodox' ways but if this makes him racist then I guess pretty much 90% of comedians are racist (or sexist, or misogynists, or homophobes '' whichever portion of the buzzword salad feels applicable).

Well, that's the examples from the famous Huffington Post article, but let's go and look at some of the other claims of ''racism'' out there.

Trump calls Mexican Immigrants ''rapists and criminals''It's amazing to me how many people believe this and yet can't tell me the full paragraph he said this statement in or where they even heard it'.... because most haven't.

People these days go along with headlines and skim articles (if they even get that far) and take things to be instant truths. They don't approach anything with a healthy air of skepticism and are gullible enough to believe anything that sounds remotely good to them.

They don't want to dig beyond the surface of anything because they're satisfied with the mirage on the surface of the water. That's why this is such an infamous quote, and with people's lack of analytical skills they don't truly comprehend what was said.

I watched the video along with reading the transcript, and many people took what Trump was saying out of context. First of all, he never meant that all Mexican immigrants were rapists and criminals '' not even all of the illegals. The first thing he said before he made the ''offensive'' comments was:

''These are the best and the finest. When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best. They're not sending you. They're not sending you.'' *pointing at people in the crowd*

So everyone completely ignored the fact that he started off saying that Mexico has good people (their best) and he's differentiating them from the ones he's referring to, and decided to take his words out of context (because anyone with critical thinking ability could put 2 + 2 together and realize he was talking about illegal immigrants).

The next part is what everyone in the Anti-Trump crowd has taken offense to without really understanding what was said:

''They're sending people that have lots of problems, and they're bringing those problems with us. They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.''

and let's break this down to make it easy to understand.

1). Yes, he was talking about illegal immigrants and not all Mexican immigrants. While it may have been offensive and I admit he should have been more careful/clear with his choice of words, the sentiment he's expressing isn'tnew in terms of our nation's worries. In fact some of the same outlets that are now slandering him have addressed the issue before, but they were more clear with their words as to not have them misconstrued.

2). Trump said in a later interview that he got this information from a Fusion article (which he did misread and misinterpret) stating that many women who come to this country from Mexico tend to pay the price of either giving up their bodies willingly, or being raped. This is an issue that could have been handled better, but is it an issue of Trump thinking less of Mexican immigrants? Not unless you wanted to take offense to something that wasn't there. Even after he clarified his statement, people still can't bring themselves to comprehend this correctly.

3). Even after finishing with ''Some, I assume, are good people'' people still found it necessary to overlook that and instantly scream that Trump called all Mexican immigrants rapists and criminals. Sometimes I wonder do people look at information to truly comprehend it, or just to satisfy their own preconceived notions.

Trump wants to ban muslimsThis is another one that could have been worded better when it was first said, but he has since clarified and people just aren't happy with/wont accept the clarification. Recently, speaking in a phone call with NBC he stated:

Trump said his Muslim ban would apply ''in particular [to] the terrorist states.'' Also noted is: Trump did however open up the ban to include all people, of all religions who come from Trump-designated terror states. When pressed by NBC's Hallie Jackson on whether his ban would apply to other religions other than Islam, for example Christians in Syria, Trump allowed that : ''Christians are going to be vetted very, very seriously, if you're a Christian and you try to get in from Syria.''

So it seems like his focus with the ban and the vetting is more-so countries with recent histories of terrorism and not necessarily religion.

It makes sense, especially with the increasing number of attacks and bombings happening across the world today, to at least look into these issues and not just ignore them like there is no problem.

Also noting, on the subject of his attitude towards ISIS' influence on Islam's relationship w/ the world:

On Wednesday (June 22nd), in a large room at his Trump SoHo Hotel, the GOP nominee discussed ISIS as an entity separate from Islam as a whole and distinguished them from ''peaceful Muslims.'' He said at the time: ''ISIS also threatens peaceful Muslims across the Middle East, and peaceful Muslims across the world, who have been terribly victimized by horrible brutality '' and who only want to raise their kids in peace and safety.''

So it's clear that he can distinguish them from the rest of the Muslim population like most people can, and wants to tackle the threat that ISIS is growing into.

Trump says Judge Curiel unfit to do his job because he's MexicanI only wanted to throw this last one in here because there's been a lot of confusion that would be easy to clarify.

For one he never said Curiel couldn't do his job because he's Mexican, Trump and his team had gotten an association that the Judge was involved with confused with a Latino advocacy organization they claimed to have been protesting his rallies.

He also added that Curiel may have been biased against him because of his ethnicity due to Trump's plan to build a wall, which i agree is a statement he could have gone without saying. However, according to CBSNews Trump was attempting to have Curiel recused from the case in October 2014 because of ''animosity towards Mr. Trump and his views,'' and with the media falsely branding him as the most racist, sexist xenophobe to walk the planet for the entire election it does make you wonder.

Well that's pretty much the entire list that people parrot when asked to prove how he's racist these days, if it even gets that far before they block/scream at you.

Has he said some things that were a bit offensive? Yes, I can admit that. One thing he needs to work on is being more careful with his wording '' he seems to have issues with being vague at the wrong times.

Was there racism? Anything that made me feel like he was going to put us back in chains or send blacks back to Africa and deport all the Hispanics?

Not at all, and if you went through all of this and still feel that that's the case, I don't know what to tell you other than cognitive dissonance is a hell of a drug and I wish you the best.

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Archived Version

Mon, 01 Aug 2016 13:42

On Friday GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump took to Twitter to complain about the debate schedule between him and Democrat Hillary Clinton. The dates and times were set a year ago by the Commission on Presidential Debates, which is composed of both Democrats and Republicans. But Trump blamed the fact that two of them were scheduled at the same time as NFL games on Hillary and the Democratic party. He even claimed the NFL sent him a letter to complain about the schedule '-- a claim the league has said is not true.

Speculation has begun that Trump is trying to find a way to get out of debating Hillary. On Sunday morning, Republican party chairman Reince Priebus indicated that if his candidate doesn't want to debate, the party will back his decision.

Priebus appeared on Face the Nation, where he too complained about the debate schedule, saying,

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Archived Version

Tue, 02 Aug 2016 04:54

Robert Kagan is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a contributing columnist for The Post.

One wonders if Republican leaders have begun to realize that they may have hitched their fate and the fate of their party to a man with a disordered personality. We can leave it to the professionals to determine exactly what to call it. Suffice to say that Donald Trump's response to the assorted speakers at the Democratic National Convention has not been rational.

Why denigrate the parents of a soldier who died serving his country in Iraq? And why keep it going for four days? Why assail the record of a decorated general who commanded U.S. forces in Afghanistan? Why make fun of the stature of a popular former mayor of New York? Surely Trump must know that at any convention, including his own, people get up and criticize the opposition party's nominee. They get their shots in, just as your party got its shots in. And then you move on to the next phase of the campaign. You don't take a crack at every single person who criticized you. And you especially don't pick fights that you can't possibly win, such as against a grieving Gold Star mother or a general. It's simply not in your interest to do so.

The fact that Trump could not help himself, that he clearly did, as he said, want to ''hit'' everyone who spoke against him at the Democratic convention, suggests that there really is something wrong with the man. It is not just that he is incapable of empathy. It is not just that he feels he must respond to every criticism he receives by attacking and denigrating the critic, no matter how small or inconsequential. If you are a Republican, the real problem, and the thing that ought to keep you up nights as we head into the final 100 days of this campaign, is that the man cannot control himself. He cannot hold back even when it is manifestly in his interest to do so. What's more, his psychological pathologies are ultimately self-destructive. (Disclosure: I was a guest speaker at a fundraiser for Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton last month; I have no role with her campaign.)

[Robert Kagan: This is how fascism comes to America]

Both Republicans and Democrats are publicly responding to the row between GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump and Khizr Khan. Khan's son was killed while serving in Iraq. Here's what politicians from both parties said. (Monica Akhtar/The Washington Post)

Trump is, in this respect, unlike a normal politician. A normal politician knows that no matter how much criticism gets under the skin, the thing to do is to smile and wave it off. You don't have to mean it. You don't even have to appear to mean it. But it is what you do, if only to avoid compounding the damage. Trump cannot make this simple self-serving calculation. He must attack everyone who opposes him, even after he has defeated them. He must continue talking about Texas Sen. Ted Cruz's father, even after Cruz has thrown in the towel. He must humiliate New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, even after Christie has lain down before him.

Many of Trump's supporters admire him for his bold challenge to political correctness. But his political incorrectness may be only an unintended side effect of his malady. Some of the insults he fires back at his critics are politically incorrect: the racist and misogynist taunts. But others are just childish: making fun of someone's height, or suggesting that someone's father was involved in the Kennedy assassination. It's not really politically incorrect to say that a prisoner of war is not a hero because he got captured. It's just a way of saying, I don't care if you're a war hero. You criticized me and now I've got to hit you. Trump's insults are scattershot '-- only sometimes touching the raw racist and xenophobic nerves in society. The most important fact is that he is unable to control his responses to criticism. He must double down every time, even if it means digging himself deeper and deeper into the hole.

Imagine such a person as president. What we have seen in the Trump campaign is not only a clever method of stirring up the anger in people. It is also a personality defect that has had the effect of stirring up anger. And because it is a defect and not a tactic, it would continue to affect Trump's behavior in the White House. It would determine how he dealt with other nations. It would determine how he dealt with critics at home. It would determine how he governed, how he executed the laws, how he instructed the law-enforcement and intelligence agencies under his command, how he dealt with the press, how he dealt with the opposition party and how he handled dissent within his own party. His personality defect would be the dominating factor in his presidency, just as it has been the dominating factor in his campaign. His ultimately self-destructive tendencies would play out on the biggest stage in the world, with consequences at home and abroad that one can barely begin to imagine. It would make him the closest thing the United States has ever had to a dictator, but a dictator with a dangerously unstable temperament that neither he nor anyone else can control.

One can hope it does not come to that. In all likelihood, his defects will destroy him before he reaches the White House. He will bring himself down, and he will bring the Republican Party and its leaders down with him. This would be a tragedy were it not that the party and its leaders, who chose him as their nominee and who now cover and shill for this troubled man, so richly deserve their fate.

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Robert Kagan writes a monthly foreign affairs column for The Post, and is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. Kagan served in the State Department from 1984 to 1988.

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Archived Version

Tue, 02 Aug 2016 22:42

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton knew that the US was sending arms from Libya to Syria back in 2011, a year before the Benghazi consulate attacks.

Hillary Clinton denied she knew about the weapons shipments during public testimony (under oath) in early 2013 after the Benghazi terrorist attack.

Senator Rand Paulquestioned Hillary Clinton about this gun running program back in January 2013 during her testimony on the Benghazi terrorist attack.

On Tuesday Julian Assange told Democracy Now that the Wikileaks DNC emails contains information on the weapons shipments to Syria.

Julian Assange: So, those Hillary Clinton emails, they connect together with the cables that we have published of Hillary Clinton, creating a rich picture of how Hillary Clinton performs in office, but, more broadly, how the U.S. Department of State operates. So, for example, the disastrous, absolutely disastrous intervention in Libya, the destruction of the Gaddafi government, which led to the occupation of ISIS of large segments of that country, weapons flows going over to Syria, being pushed by Hillary Clinton, into jihadists within Syria, including ISIS, that's there in those emails. There's more than 1,700 emails in Hillary Clinton's collection, that we have released, just about Libya alone.

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Tue, 02 Aug 2016 22:40

What is one to make of the Democratic Convention speech of Khizr Khan, a Pakistani-born Virginia lawyer whose son Humayun was killed in action in Iraq in 2004?

According to Byron York:

Khan's brief speech wasn't a finely-detailed case. But he suggested that Trump's Muslim ban and Mexican border wall proposals are unconstitutional. Specifically, Khan cited the words 'liberty' and 'equal protection of the law' in suggesting that Trump's policies violate the Constitution.

But, in fact, "there's simply no sense in which a border wall violates the Constitution." There is also "nothing unconstitutional about deporting people who are in the United States illegally."

York emphasizes that "[a]s far as a Muslim ban is concerned, Trump ... amended his proposal to focus on immigration from countries 'compromised by terrorism.' But assume that Khan was addressing Trump's original, more extensive, proposal: a temporary ban on foreign Muslims from entering the United States."

In fact, the 14th Amendment of the Constitution applies to "all persons born or naturalized" in the United States. It does not refer to foreign persons in foreign countries. Trump made it clear that this ban "would not apply to U.S. citizens, members of the U.S. military and others with a legal right to be in the United States." Whether one approves or disapproves of Trump's building a wall, deporting illegal immigrants, and temporarily banning the entry of foreign Muslims, the fact is that Trump's proposals are not unconstitutional.

In an effort toward clarification, Donald Trump released a statement:

Captain Humayun Khan was a hero to our country and we should honor all who have made the ultimate sacrifice to keep our country safe. The real problem here are the radical Islamic terrorists who killed him, and the efforts of these radicals to enter our country to do us further harm. Given the state of the world today, we have to know everything about those looking to enter our country, and given the state of chaos in some of these countries, that is impossible.

Moreover, Trump reiterated that "Captain Khan, killed 12 years ago, was a hero, but this is about RADICAL ISLAMIC TERROR and the weakness of our 'leaders' to eradicate it!"

But is there even more to the story about Khizr Khan? According to Theodore Shoebat and Walid Shoebat, Mr. Khizr Muazzam Khan is a promoter of Islamic sharia law and a co-founder of the Journal of Contemporary Issues in Muslim Law (sharia). In fact, in the past, Khizr Khan has shown "his appreciation for an icon of the Muslim Brotherhood" by the name of Said Ramadan, who "wrote material for the Muslim Youth Movement of Malaysia, an organization that has been promoting Islamic revivalism and indoctrination to recruit young people in Malaysia to jihadism." Mr. Said Ramadan was the son-in-law of Hassan al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood including Ahmad Bahefzallah, the boss of Huma Abedin (Hillary Clinton's aide)[.]"

Should this connection give us pause?

Shoebat writes that "Khizr Khan currently runs a law firm in New York called KM Khan Law Office, a firm that specializes in 'immigration services.'"

According to Shoebat, "[t]o understand the inception of Muslim immigration one must study the Muslim Minority Affairs, a paradigm created by Saudi jurisprudence which sparked during the times Khan lived in Saudi Arabia while collaborating with the Saudi kingdom. It is likely that Khan is a Muslim plant working with the Hillary Clinton campaign, probably for the interest of Muslim oil companies as well as Muslim immigration into the U.S."

Khizr M. Khan used to work for Hogan & Hartson and Lovells, which has ties to the Clinton Foundation. Accordingly, "Hogan Lovells LLP, another U.S. firm hired by the Saudis, is registered to work for the Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia through 2016, disclosures show. Robert Kyle, a lobbyist from the firm, has bundled $50,850 for Clinton's campaign."

In fact, Shoebat relates how "[m]any lawyers at Hogan Lovells remember the week in 2004 when U.S. Army Capt. Humayun Khan lost his life to a suicide bomber. Then-Hogan & Hartson attorneys mourned the death because the soldier's father, Khizr Khan, a Muslim American immigrant, was among their beloved colleagues."

Shoebat emphasizes that "Saudi interests with using Khan to advance Muslim immigration and advance Muslim Sharia is a lengthy subject [.]" "Then there are the ... ties to Hillary Clinton's aide Huma Abedin as well. The House of Saud had used Huma's father Sayed Zaynul Abedin's work regarding the Muslim Minority Affairs in the West, published in 1998 as part of 29 works to construct a plan to conquer the U.S. with Islam."

Shoebat maintains that "[i]t is obvious that Khan is upset, that a Trump victory will eliminate and destroy decades of hard work to bring in Islamic immigration into the United States which was spearheaded by agents in Saudi Arabia like Khan and Huma Abedin's father (Sayed Z. Abedin)."

Huma Abedin has never been properly vetted, and this takes on even greater urgency now that Clinton is running for the presidency. The mainstream media continues to cover up the Muslim Brotherhood's enormous clout in the Obama administration. Each day brings new revelations about the financial influence and "access" the Saudis have exerted on the Clinton team. Patrick Poole, a national security analyst, asserts that "[t]here are massive conflicts of interest. It's beyond comprehension."

So is it wrong to impugn Khan's motives? He appears to be a man in mourning for his son. Was Mr. Khan merely being used by the Clinton campaign to advance Clinton's agenda? Or is there an even larger issue concerning the influence such people as Abedin and Khan exert concerning Clinton's bid for the highest office in the land?

The questions need answers.

Eileen can be reached at middlemarch18@gmail.com.

What is one to make of the Democratic Convention speech of Khizr Khan, a Pakistani-born Virginia lawyer whose son Humayun was killed in action in Iraq in 2004?

According to Byron York:

Khan's brief speech wasn't a finely-detailed case. But he suggested that Trump's Muslim ban and Mexican border wall proposals are unconstitutional. Specifically, Khan cited the words 'liberty' and 'equal protection of the law' in suggesting that Trump's policies violate the Constitution.

But, in fact, "there's simply no sense in which a border wall violates the Constitution." There is also "nothing unconstitutional about deporting people who are in the United States illegally."

York emphasizes that "[a]s far as a Muslim ban is concerned, Trump ... amended his proposal to focus on immigration from countries 'compromised by terrorism.' But assume that Khan was addressing Trump's original, more extensive, proposal: a temporary ban on foreign Muslims from entering the United States."

In fact, the 14th Amendment of the Constitution applies to "all persons born or naturalized" in the United States. It does not refer to foreign persons in foreign countries. Trump made it clear that this ban "would not apply to U.S. citizens, members of the U.S. military and others with a legal right to be in the United States." Whether one approves or disapproves of Trump's building a wall, deporting illegal immigrants, and temporarily banning the entry of foreign Muslims, the fact is that Trump's proposals are not unconstitutional.

In an effort toward clarification, Donald Trump released a statement:

Captain Humayun Khan was a hero to our country and we should honor all who have made the ultimate sacrifice to keep our country safe. The real problem here are the radical Islamic terrorists who killed him, and the efforts of these radicals to enter our country to do us further harm. Given the state of the world today, we have to know everything about those looking to enter our country, and given the state of chaos in some of these countries, that is impossible.

Moreover, Trump reiterated that "Captain Khan, killed 12 years ago, was a hero, but this is about RADICAL ISLAMIC TERROR and the weakness of our 'leaders' to eradicate it!"

But is there even more to the story about Khizr Khan? According to Theodore Shoebat and Walid Shoebat, Mr. Khizr Muazzam Khan is a promoter of Islamic sharia law and a co-founder of the Journal of Contemporary Issues in Muslim Law (sharia). In fact, in the past, Khizr Khan has shown "his appreciation for an icon of the Muslim Brotherhood" by the name of Said Ramadan, who "wrote material for the Muslim Youth Movement of Malaysia, an organization that has been promoting Islamic revivalism and indoctrination to recruit young people in Malaysia to jihadism." Mr. Said Ramadan was the son-in-law of Hassan al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood including Ahmad Bahefzallah, the boss of Huma Abedin (Hillary Clinton's aide)[.]"

Should this connection give us pause?

Shoebat writes that "Khizr Khan currently runs a law firm in New York called KM Khan Law Office, a firm that specializes in 'immigration services.'"

According to Shoebat, "[t]o understand the inception of Muslim immigration one must study the Muslim Minority Affairs, a paradigm created by Saudi jurisprudence which sparked during the times Khan lived in Saudi Arabia while collaborating with the Saudi kingdom. It is likely that Khan is a Muslim plant working with the Hillary Clinton campaign, probably for the interest of Muslim oil companies as well as Muslim immigration into the U.S."

Khizr M. Khan used to work for Hogan & Hartson and Lovells, which has ties to the Clinton Foundation. Accordingly, "Hogan Lovells LLP, another U.S. firm hired by the Saudis, is registered to work for the Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia through 2016, disclosures show. Robert Kyle, a lobbyist from the firm, has bundled $50,850 for Clinton's campaign."

In fact, Shoebat relates how "[m]any lawyers at Hogan Lovells remember the week in 2004 when U.S. Army Capt. Humayun Khan lost his life to a suicide bomber. Then-Hogan & Hartson attorneys mourned the death because the soldier's father, Khizr Khan, a Muslim American immigrant, was among their beloved colleagues."

Shoebat emphasizes that "Saudi interests with using Khan to advance Muslim immigration and advance Muslim Sharia is a lengthy subject [.]" "Then there are the ... ties to Hillary Clinton's aide Huma Abedin as well. The House of Saud had used Huma's father Sayed Zaynul Abedin's work regarding the Muslim Minority Affairs in the West, published in 1998 as part of 29 works to construct a plan to conquer the U.S. with Islam."

Shoebat maintains that "[i]t is obvious that Khan is upset, that a Trump victory will eliminate and destroy decades of hard work to bring in Islamic immigration into the United States which was spearheaded by agents in Saudi Arabia like Khan and Huma Abedin's father (Sayed Z. Abedin)."

Huma Abedin has never been properly vetted, and this takes on even greater urgency now that Clinton is running for the presidency. The mainstream media continues to cover up the Muslim Brotherhood's enormous clout in the Obama administration. Each day brings new revelations about the financial influence and "access" the Saudis have exerted on the Clinton team. Patrick Poole, a national security analyst, asserts that "[t]here are massive conflicts of interest. It's beyond comprehension."

So is it wrong to impugn Khan's motives? He appears to be a man in mourning for his son. Was Mr. Khan merely being used by the Clinton campaign to advance Clinton's agenda? Or is there an even larger issue concerning the influence such people as Abedin and Khan exert concerning Clinton's bid for the highest office in the land?

The questions need answers.

Eileen can be reached at middlemarch18@gmail.com.

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Thu, 04 Aug 2016 07:22

Mr. Gold Star parent, Khizr Khan in his plea,"This is our country too"As another Lame Cherry exclusive in matter anti matter.

The cover of 'pity me for my dead boy' as a Muslim flails about the Constitution like an IED at Donald Trump, is quite the theatrical performance which catches the VFW in the web of 'pity me because my boy wore an American uniform', like other Muslims like at Fort Hood.

Such is the world of Khzir Khan, a world of the more one stops being blinded by tears salted by deception of the Clinton campaign, one begins to notice such things as how well connected this Muslim immigrant is, how well paid he is, and oddly how he seems to have many spots which seem to change leopard colors depending upon the venue.

One day the spot is Hillary Clinton performer.

One day it is importer of Muslim slave traffic.

One day it is Muslim voter registration to overthrow the US elections.

....and those are the spots we know, and it begins to explain why Khizr Khan is now begging for the peace and serenity, after his jihadi attack on American Donald Trump hide in the shadows and ply his trade and craft.

In the world of Khzir Khan we find an immigrant Pakistani, who made the long road to America, and hit the American high rise best address in the world, in buildings which mark the greatest skyline in the world.

The lodgings of a Muslim import business.......oh yes that is what Khzir Khan specializes in as an attorney now, is human traffic. Khzir Khan literally is in a business of selling United States VISA's to Muslims or in short, Khzir Khan with full protection of the Obama regime, is the New York Coyote of Islam human traffic. He is the equal to the Mexican coyote bringing in loads of Mexican traffic and dumping them into America.Khan, Khizr M. CFCLaw Offices of KM Khan415 Madison Avenue15th FloorNew York, NY 10017Phones: 202.279.0806Fax: 646-673-8401Contact Us

I was surprised that a N.Y. law office would list a D.C. telephone number, so I called it to check and was told by the man who answered that it was not Khizr Khan's law office. The man who answered would not tell me who it was.So I did more digging and learned that that is also the phone number of a group called American Muslims Vote, which says its mission is:

To create an enlightened community by providing and developing Patriotic American Muslim leadership andEncouraging American Muslims to participate in the democratic process at local, state and national level and vote on the election day.

I did some further research into who registered this domain name and when. Khizr Khan registered it on July 23, 2016. We find in Khzir Khan a reality of his being a front man, for now we knows Muslim terror oil money in the Mideast of OPEC, littering America with mosques, and now the image Obama Islamic invasion of the West.We find that Khzir Khan is linked to the Islamic politicization of America.We find that Khzir Khan is linked to Huma Abedin in the Muslim Brotherhood.But what we have not yet found is who is paying for MADISON AVENUE addresses, as they do not give those away. Apartments in this vicinity are almost 4000 dollars a month.This 15th floor is home to other businesses.CyberRiskPartners' is a Cyber Risk Solutions company offering CyberFactors-- analytics, intelligence, and marketplace solutions for superior visibility, quantification and transfer of cyber risks. CRP is a proud Veterans-owned business. 415MadisonAvenue, 15th Fl.415 Madison AvenueN/E/C East 48th StreetNew York, NY 10017-1111 - Plaza District SubmarketProperty Type:OfficeSub Type:-Status:ExistingYear Built:1955Stories:24Typical Floor:13,405 SFBuilding Size:280,000 SFSmallest Space:100 SFLargest Space:14,707 SFTotal Space Avail:24,707 SFRent/SF/Yr:$55.00Amenities:Banking, Bus Line, Metro/Subway, Property Manager on Site, Energy Star Labeled What no one is questioning now, except the Lame Cherry is the reality that Khzir Khan is one of those Obama voters responsible for keeping 95 million Americans unemployed. Khzir Khan is one of those responsible for bringing in foreigners so Disney can fire Americans after the foreigners have been trained.What we have not yet discovered is how many of Khzir Khan's Muslim retches who have purchased United States Citizenship, are agents of Islamic terrorism, carriers of TB diseases, rapists and murderers.......besides keeping 95 million Americans from being employed, but receiving 20,000 Obama bonuses for being smuggled into America.How much money is Hillary Clinton's slave trader, Khizr Khan, making off of the image Obama displaced from the Obama Clinton wars against Islam? Yes Hillary Clinton has made the questionable world of the Khan family as their poster children. Let there become now a call for the FBI, INS and IRS begin an investigation into how another very interesting businessman has become an associate of the Clintons.One day it is someone donating to the Clinton Foundation and the next it is LaVoy Finicum murdered.One day it is Chris Stevens sent to Benghazi over Clinton Obama weapons deals and the next he is dead.One day it is Khizr Khan on the Democratic National Convention smearing Donald Trump with the blood of a dead Muslim son, who had his men exposed to a suicide bomber in Iraq, and the next it is Khizr Khan running for cover as more and more of this criminal enterprise is literally selling American citizenship for profit to Obama imported Muslims.Once again another Lame Cherry exclusive in matter anti matter.

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Thu, 04 Aug 2016 07:21

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Thu, 04 Aug 2016 07:01

Clint Eastwood thinks America's ''pussy generation'' needs to ''just f''ing get over'' Donald Trump's ''racism.''

In an interview with Esquire published Wednesday, the actor/director/producer said young America '-- which he has dubbed both the ''kiss-ass'' and ''pussy'' generation '-- needs to stop throwing the word ''racist'' around so freely.

''[Trump's] onto something, because secretly everybody's getting tired of political correctness, kissing up,'' he said. ''We're really in a pussy generation. Everybody's walking on eggshells. We see people accusing people of being racist and all kinds of stuff. When I grew up, those things weren't called racist.''

Also Read:GOP Officials Think Donald Trump Might Drop Out of Election

Eastwood also said that he isn't inclined to support Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton if she continues upholding the status quo.

''I'd have to go for Trump '... you know, 'cause she's declared that she's gonna follow in Obama's footsteps,'' he said. ''There's been just too much funny business on both sides of the aisle. She's made a lot of dough out of being a politician. I gave up dough to be a politician.''

Though Eastwood said he hasn't formally endorsed anybody, he dismissed the furor caused by Trump's comments about the Mexican heritage of Judge Gonzalo Curiel, who presided over federal lawsuits against Trump University.

Also Read:Could the Khan Family Spell the End of Donald Trump?

''Yeah, it's a dumb thing to say. I mean, to predicate your opinion on the fact that the guy was born to Mexican parents or something. He's said a lot of dumb things. So have all of them. Both sides,'' Eastwood said. ''But everybody '-- the press and everybody's going, 'Oh, well, that's racist,' and they're making a big hoodoo out of it. Just f'--ing get over it. It's a sad time in history.''

Read the full interview with Esquire here.

Previous SlideNext SlideThe GOP candidate was making enemies left and right long before this election cycle

Donald Trump is a businessman who doesn't seem to be afraid to make enemies. Good thing for him, because his blustery threats and relentless business strategy have caused him to run afoul of politicians, celebrities, models and various minorities. Here's just a small sample of the people Trump has locked horns with over the years.

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Thu, 04 Aug 2016 00:07

USCIS administers the EB-5 Program. Under this program, entrepreneurs (and their spouses and unmarried children under 21) are eligible to apply for a green card (permanent residence) if they:

Make the necessary investment in a commercial enterprise in the United States; andPlan to create or preserve 10 permanent full-time jobs for qualified U.S. workers.This program is known as EB-5 for the name of the employment-based fifth preference visa that participants receive.

Congress created the EB-5 Program in 1990 to stimulate the U.S. economy through job creation and capital investment by foreign investors. In 1992, Congress created the Immigrant Investor Program, also known as the Regional Center Program. This sets aside EB-5 visas for participants who invest in commercial enterprises associated with regional centers approved by USCIS based on proposals for promoting economic growth.

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Wed, 03 Aug 2016 22:43

"I can't get this in one tweet. So bear with me."

Becca AndrewsAug. 3, 2016 1:29 PM

Matt Rourke/AP Photo

The former national security adviser for both Jeb Bush and Mitt Romney let loose this morning on the irresponsibility of giving Donald Trump the keys to nuclear warfare. John Noonan, a devout #NeverTrumper who is now a national security analyst and commentator, tweeted that electing Trump as president has consequences that threaten global peace.

Read his take below:

1. I cant get this in one tweet. So bear with me as I air some laundry here on Scarborough's claim Trump's interested in nuclear First Use

'-- John Noonan (@noonanjo) August 3, 20162. Pulled 300 nuclear alerts, 100 ft under the Wyoming turf. Job is serious and full of serious people.

'-- John Noonan (@noonanjo) August 3, 20163. When we went into ICBM training, we went through a battery of tests and interviews. Are you sane? Are you willing to turn your key?

'-- John Noonan (@noonanjo) August 3, 20164. I see how those might sound at odds.

'-- John Noonan (@noonanjo) August 3, 20165. But the whole idea behind nuclear deterrence is that you don't use the damn things. So I thought the mission credible and worthy.

'-- John Noonan (@noonanjo) August 3, 20166. There are a hell of a lot of bad actors out there who have nukes. They are restrained only by our ability to instantly lay waste to them.

'-- John Noonan (@noonanjo) August 3, 20167. The nuke triad, which Trump doesn't have a clue about, has been the single greatest contributor to global peace for decades. You heard me

'-- John Noonan (@noonanjo) August 3, 20168. I dont know if Scarborough is telling whole truth here. Anonymous sources suck. BUT... if he is... buckle the hell up.

'-- John Noonan (@noonanjo) August 3, 20169. Because Trump would be undoing 6 decades of proven deterrence theory. The purpose of nukes is that they are never used. Trump disagrees?

'-- John Noonan (@noonanjo) August 3, 201610. This would be the single greatest strategic shift in US national security in decades. In a Trump Presidency, our foreign policy

'-- John Noonan (@noonanjo) August 3, 201611. ....would be this. "Leave our alliances, fall back on a nuclear first use policy." Does he understand just how F'ing dangerous that is?

'-- John Noonan (@noonanjo) August 3, 201612. But what really concerns me, as a former nuke guy, is the idea of a narcissist walking around with nuclear authenticators.

'-- John Noonan (@noonanjo) August 3, 201613. I could sit 100ft underground, on alert, knowing that the POTUS would not make me do my duty -- not unless it was absolute last resort

'-- John Noonan (@noonanjo) August 3, 201614. But imagine having to turn launch keys not knowing if we were under attack or if it was b/c foreign leader said a mean thing on twitter

'-- John Noonan (@noonanjo) August 3, 201615. The power is there to kill millions. Permanently alter the geopolitical landscape. It is a sacred, sobering responsibility.

'-- John Noonan (@noonanjo) August 3, 201616. Idea that nukes would be used, say over Raqqa or Mosul, simply because we have no more allies and it's a simple, easy fix is nauseating

'-- John Noonan (@noonanjo) August 3, 201617. Simply signaling that you're open to using strategic weapons as a tactical solution rewrites the rule book. Russia, China, others will

'-- John Noonan (@noonanjo) August 3, 201618. respond. Nuclear deterrence is about balance. Trump is an elephant jumping up and down on one side of the scale. So damn dangerous.

'-- John Noonan (@noonanjo) August 3, 201619. But geopolitics aside, I can't get my mind off the young officers on nuke alert right now. Wondering if they'll soon answer to a madman.

'-- John Noonan (@noonanjo) August 3, 201620. And be asked to do a duty that should morally be asked of no human being, ever. //end

'-- John Noonan (@noonanjo) August 3, 2016

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Wed, 03 Aug 2016 19:47

From: To: Date: 2013-01-04 11:31 Subject: -UNCLASSIFIED U.S. Department of State Case No. F-2014-20439 Doc No. C05797628 Date: 02/29/2016RELEASE IN PART B6From: Sullivan, Jacob J Sent: Friday, January 4, 2013 6:31 PM To:Subject: FW: Conspiracy Theory ==== FW: EU Times: Clinton Injured, U.S. Navy Seal Killed In Secret Mission to Iran Funny stuff. Calling now. From: Harris, Harry B VADM USN (US) [mailto Sent: Friday, January 04, 2013 9:06 AM To: Sullivan, Jacob J Subject: Conspiracy Theory ==== FW: EU Times: Clinton Injured, U.S. Navy Seal Killed In Secret Mission to Iran Jake -- thought you'd get a kick out of the conspiracy theory below. Best, Harry From: Nichols, Christopher T [mailto: Sent: Friday, January 04, 2013 8:20 AM To: Bob Schmermund Lawrence Galvin Aaron Watts; Olsen, Kevin R.; cahautau0 Runolfson, Case; Harris, Harry B VADM USN (US)Subject: FW: EU Times: Clinton Injured, U.S. Navy Seal Killed In Secret Mission to Iran Yeah...now that I think about it...I haven't seen HARRY anywhere either!!! Chris Nichols Original MessageFrom: Les HornTo: Anthony Milavic Sent: Thu, Jan 3, 2013 10:13 am Subject: EU Times: Clinton Injured, U.S. Navy Seal Killed In Secret Mission to Iran Anthony -- FYI. The report appears to be credible. Les Clinton Injured, US Navy Seal Killed In Secret US Mission To Iran Posted by EU Times on Dec 30th, 2012 UNCLASSIFIED U.S. Department of State Case No. F-2014-20439 Doc No. C05797628 Date: 02/29/2016 A new Foreign Military Intelligence (GRU) report circulating in the Kremlin today is saying that United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton [photo 2nd right] was injured, and a top US Navy Seal Commander killed when their C-12 Huron military passenger and transport aircraft crash landed nearly 3 weeks ago in the Iranian city of Ahvaz near the Iraqi border. Iranian intelligence agents quoted in this GRU report confirm that the C-12 Huron aircraft is still in their possession in Ahvaz, but will only admit that the plane was "forced to land because of technical problems". The US Navy Seal member reported killed in this bizarre incident, this report says, was indentified as Commander Job W. Price [photo 3rd right] who as a leader of this highly specialized American Special Forces unit protects high-ranking diplomats traveling in Middle Eastern and Asian combat zones. Curiously, US media reports on Commander Price's death say it being investigated as a possible suicide as he died from what the American Defense Department describes as "a non-combat related injury". Equally as curious, US media reports state that Secretary Clinton will return to work next week after her having suffered what they describe as a "nasty bout with stomach flu" and a "concussion" which have kept her missing from public view the past three weeks. This GRU report, however, states that US military flight logs recorded by Russian air and space forces confirm that Commander Price, and other members of US Navy Seal Team 4, left their base in Urozgan Province, Afghanistan on a flight to US Naval Support Activity Bahrain where they met up with Secretary Clinton and all of them transferred to the C- 12 Huron that began a flight path to Baghdad, Iraq. Within minutes of leaving Bahrain airspace, this report says, the C-12 Huron carrying Secretary Clinton and her US Navy Seal protectors, "without notice," deviated from their assigned flight path heading, instead, directly towards Iran's Ahwaz International Airport where, coincidentally, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had previously landed on an "unscheduled" visit. UNCLASSIFIED U.S. Department of State Case No. F-2014-20439 Doc No. C05797628 Date: 02/29/2016 Important to note, GRU analysts say in this report, was that when the C-12 Huron entered into Iranian airspace neither American nor Iran air force units responded clearly indicating that this secret mission was sanctioned. Upon the C-12 Huron landing at Ahwaz, however, this report says it encountered "extreme turbulence" causing it to leave the runway where its main landing gear then collapsed causing it to crash. Within seconds of the C-12 Huron crashing, this report continues, Iranian emergency and security personal responded freeing the victims, including Secretary Clinton who was reportedly unconscious and "bleeding profusely." After emergency aid was given, GRU agents stationed in Iran state that another US military flight was dispatched from Bahrain to Ahwaz which evacuated all of those wounded and killed in the crash including Secretary Clinton. Strangely to note, this report says, is that in the aftermath of this crash, Iran's main oil company announced today that they were buying the Ahwaz airport with the intention of moving it because, they say, oil was discovered beneath it. To what the Americans mission to Iran was about this report doesn't speculate upon, other than to note that with the Gulf State Monarchies rapidly approaching a union of their oil rich nations to counter Iranian power, and with President Obama signing a new law this past week to strengthen American borders against threats from Iran, and with the highly-publicized "Velayat 91" Iranian military exercises now taking place across a wide area from the Strait of Hormuz, a new and catastrophic war in this region is much closer to being a reality than many realize. To if Secretary Clinton's mission was meant to forestall such a war it is not in our knowing, other than to note, that with the United States continued backing of some of the cruelest dictatorships in the world, our entire planet is but one spark away from a fire that could very well consume us all. Source Breaking News A new report by Israeli media and Mossad now FULLY CONFIRMS THIS REPORT, Hillary Clinton was indeed injured in Iran, the new report also shows that Obama has already named the new US Secretary of State: John Kerry, click here to read this new STUNNING REPORT: Obama Warned To Prepare For Hillary Clinton Death GD Star Rating. a WordPress rating system Clinton Injured, US Navy Seal Killed In Secret US Mission To Iran, 4.0 out of 5 based on 122 ratings UNCLASSIFIED U.S. Department of State Case No. F-2014-20439 Doc No. C05797628 Date: 02/29/2016 Related posts: ' Obama Warned To Prepare For Hillary Clinton Death ' Hillary Clinton: Iran wants to be attacked ' US threatens Pakistan with sanctions over Iran gasline ' Hillary Clinton: Iran is the hardest issue ever dealt with ' Iran Accuses US of Using Weather Weapons Tags: Ahvaz, Ahwaz International Airport, C-12 Huron Aircraft, Commander Job W. Price, Hillary Clinton, Hillary Clinton Injured, Iran, Iraqi Border, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Stomach Flu, Tehran, United States Secretary of State, US Navy Seal, US Navy Seal Commander, US Secret Mission, US Special Forces, USA, Washington

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Wed, 03 Aug 2016 14:18

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Khizr Khan, the Muslim Gold Star father that Democrats and their allies media wide have been using to hammer GOP presidential nominee Donald J. Trump, has deleted his law firm's website from the Internet.This development is significant, as his website proved'--as Breitbart News and others have reported'--that he financially benefits from unfettered pay-to-play Muslim migration into America.

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A snapshot of his now deleted website, as captured by the Wayback Machine which takes snapshots archiving various websites on the Internet, shows that as a lawyer he engages in procurement of EB5 immigration visas and other ''Related Immigration Services.''

The website is completely removed from the Internet, and instead directs visitors to the URL at which it once was to a page parking the URL run by GoDaddy.

The EB5 program, which helps wealthy foreigners usually from the Middle East essentially buy their way into America, is fraught with corruption. U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) has detailed such corruption over the past several months, and in February issued a blistering statement about it.

''Maybe it is only here on Capitol Hill'--on this island surrounded by reality'--that we can choose to plug our ears and refuse to listen to commonly accepted facts,'' Grassley said in a statement earlier this year. ''The Government Accountability Office, the media, industry experts, members of congress, and federal agency officials, have concurred that the program is a serious problem with serious vulnerabilities. Allow me to mention a few of the flaws.''

Grassley's statement even noted that the program Khan celebrated on his website has posed national security risks.

''There are also classified reports that detail the national security, fraud and abuse. Our committee has received numerous briefings and classified documents to show this side of the story,'' Grassley said in the early February 2016 statement. ''The enforcement arm of the Department of Homeland Security wrote an internal memo that raises significant concerns about the program. One section of the memo outlines concerns that it could be used by Iranian operatives to infiltrate the United States. The memo identifies seven main areas of program vulnerability, including the export of sensitive technology, economic espionage, use by foreign government agents and terrorists, investment fraud, illicit finance and money laundering.''

Khan spoke alongside his wife Ghazala Khan at the Democratic National Convention last week in Philadelphia, and they were honoring their son U.S. Army Captain Humayun Khan'--a hero who lost his life to a suicide bomber in Iraq in 2004. On behalf of Hillary Rodham Clinton, the Democratic nominee for president, Khizr Khan ripped into Donald Trump's policies on immigration'--specifically bashing his plan to bar Muslim migration from regions afflicted with rampant terrorism into America temporarily until the United States can figure out what's going on.

Khan even brought out a pocket Constitution, claiming inaccurately that Trump's plans were unconstitutional. That's not true, as Congress has already granted such power to the president under the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952'--allowing the president to bar migration of any alien or class of aliens the president sees as a threat to the United States for any reason at any time. Such a class of aliens could be Muslims, or it could be people from a specific region of the world, or any other class'--such as someone's race, weight, height, age, national origin, religion, or anything else.

The media, along with Hillary Clinton and her supporters throughout the Democratic Party establishment, has pushed the line of attack against Trump for days. Now on Tuesday, President Barack Obama has said that Trump is ''unfit'' to serve as President over the matter. Even a group of anti-Trump congressional Republicans has gone after Trump on the matter.

But as Breitbart News and other new media have exposed Khan's various deep political and legal connections to the Clintons'--and to Muslim migration'--the attack line has crumbled. Now, with Khan deleting his website in an apparent effort to hide his biographical information, the attack is falling apart even more.

What's perhaps interesting is that also on this website that he has now deleted, Khan revealed that he spent nearly a decade working for the mega-D.C. law firm Hogan & Hartson'--now Hogan Lovells LLP'--which connects him directly with the government of Saudi Arabia and the Clintons themselves. Saudi Arabia, which has retained the firm that Khan worked at for years, has donated between $10 million and $25 million to the Clinton Foundation. Hillary Clinton, despite the repeated urging of Trump, has refused to return the Clinton Cash money to the Saudis. What's more, Hogan Lovells also did Hillary Clinton's taxes'--and helped acquire the patents for parts of the technology she used in crafting her illicit home-brew email server that the FBI director called ''extremely careless'' in handling classified information.

What's more, the entire mainstream has proven negligence with regard to this matter as none of them even thought to look into this Khan guy's law practice before bandying him about as some kind of magic elixir that cures the country of Trump.

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Wed, 03 Aug 2016 23:40

Two days after Benghazi attack, Libyan president sought meeting with Bill Clinton through Clinton Foundation event

(Washington, DC) '' Judicial Watch today released 276 pages of internal State Department documents revealing that within two days of the deadly terrorist attack on Benghazi, Mohamed Yusuf al-Magariaf, the president of Libya's National Congress, asked to participate in a Clinton Global Initiative function and ''meet President Clinton.'' The meeting between the Libyan president and Bill Clinton had not previously been disclosed. The documents also show Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's staff coordinated with the Clinton Foundation's staff to have her thank Clinton Global Initiative project sponsors for their ''commitments'' during a Foundation speech on September 25, 2009.

The Judicial Watch documents were obtained as a result of a federal court order in a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit filed against the State Department on May 28, 2013, (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:13-cv-00772)).

In September 13, 2012, al-Magariaf advisor Dr. Fathi Nuah wrote to the Clinton Foundation's Director of Foreign Policy Amitabh Desai: ''Dr. Almagariaf will be addressing the United Nations this September in New York as the Libyan Head of State, and he expressed a wish to meet President Clinton and to participate at the Clinton Global Initiative meeting for New York as well.''

Four hours later, Desai emailed Hillary Clinton's Chief of Staff Cheryl Mills asking, ''Would USG [U.S. Government] have concerns about Libyan President being invited to CGI [Clinton Global Initiative]? Odd timing, I know.'' Mills emailed back: ''We would not have issues.''

Four days later, on September 17, Desai emailed Mills again, saying, The Libyan president is ''asking for a meeting with WJC [William Jefferson Clinton] next week.'' Desai asked, ''Would you recommend accepting or declining the WJC meeting request?''

The State Department apparently had no objection to the meeting, because on September 26, Desai emailed Mills, ''He had a v good meeting with Libya '...'' Hillary Clinton and al-Magariaf did not have a meeting until September 24.

An August 2009 email chain including Hillary Clinton's then- Chief of Staff Huma Abedin, Mills, then-Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy Jake Sullivan shows that the State Department coordinated with Clinton Foundation staff on how Mrs. Clinton to thank Foundation supporters/partners for their ''commitments.'' Mills asks Desai for a ''list of commitments during whole session so she can reference more than those just around her speech.''

Caitlin Klevorick, Senior Advisor to the Counselor and Chief of Staff to the Secretary of State who previously worked at the Foundation, notes: ''one question is if we want to see if there is a decent mass of fs [funds] related commitments to announce together at closing as a 'mega' commitment.''

The State Department material includes background information made by Clinton Foundation partners, which include Foundation donors Nduna Foundation, Grupo ABCA, and Britannia Industries. Other CGI partners noted in the State Department documents include a federal agency (the Centers for Disease Control) and various United Nations entities, which also receive U.S. taxpayer funds.

The transcript of Hillary Clinton's speech on the State Department Internet site confirms that then-Secretary of State did thank those making ''exceptional commitments'' to her husband's foundation:

And so I congratulate all who helped to put on this (inaudible) CGI [Clinton Global Initiative]. I especially thank you for having a separate track on girls and women, which I think was well received for all the obvious reasons. (Applause.) And this is an exceptional gathering of people who have made exceptional commitments to bettering our world.

The documents also point to a chain of emails that show Haim Saban, a top Clinton donor, sought to entice Bill Clinton into to travelling to Damascus in 2009 to meet with a high-level Syrian delegation. The meetings were part of the Saban Forum. Evidently, the trip never took place.

As previously reported, a June 2012 email chain discusses a ''firm invitation for President Clinton'' to speak at a Congo conference, hosted in part by the controversial Joseph Kabila. Bill Clinton is offered $650,000 in fees and expenses, concerning which, as Desai emails Mills and others, ''WJC wants to know that state [sic] thinks of it if he took it 100% for the foundation.''

This lawsuit had previously forced the disclosure of documents that provided a road map for over 200 conflict-of-interest rulings that led to at least $48 million in speaking fees for the Clintons during Hillary Clinton's tenure as Secretary of State. Previously disclosed documents in this lawsuit, for example, raise questions about funds Clinton accepted from entities linked to Saudi Arabia, China and Iran, among others.

Judicial Watch's litigation to obtain these conflict of interest records is ongoing. The State Department has also yet to explain why it failed to conduct a proper, timely search in the 20 months between when it received Judicial Watch's request on May 2, 2011, and the February 1, 2013, date Secretary Clinton left office.

''These new State Department documents show Hillary Clinton and her State aides were involved in fundraising for the Clinton Foundation. It is also incredible that the Libyan president would call and meet Bill Clinton through the Clinton Foundation before meeting Hillary Clinton about Benghazi,'' said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. ''Secretary of State Hillary Clinton worked hand in glove with the Clinton Foundation on fundraising and foreign policy. Despite the law and her promises to the contrary, Hillary Clinton turned the State Department into the DC office of the Clinton Foundation.''

Judicial Watch's FOIA lawsuit has become particularly noteworthy because it has been reported that the Clinton Foundation, now known as the Bill, Hillary, & Chelsea Clinton Foundation, accepted millions of dollars from at least seven foreign governments while Mrs. Clinton served as Secretary of State. The Clinton Foundation has acknowledged that a $500,000 donation it received from the government of Algeria while Mrs. Clinton served as Secretary of State violated a 2008 ethics agreement between the foundation and the Obama administration. Some of the foreign governments that have made donations to the Clinton Foundation include Algeria, Kuwait, Qatar, and Oman, have questionable human rights records.

Links to the full production of documents can be found here.

###

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Archived Version

Thu, 04 Aug 2016 12:52

Turmoil in the Republican Party escalated Wednesday as party leaders, strategists and donors voiced increased alarm about the flailing state of Donald Trump's candidacy and fears that the presidential nominee was damaging the party with an extraordinary week of self-inflicted mistakes, gratuitous attacks and missed opportunities.

Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus was described as ''very frustrated'' with and deeply disturbed by Trump's behavior over the past week, having run out of excuses to make on the nominee's behalf to donors and other party leaders, according to multiple people familiar with the events.

Meanwhile, Trump's top campaign advisers are struggling once again to instill discipline in their candidate, who has spent recent days lurching from one controversy to another while seemingly skipping chances to go on the offensive against his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton.

''A new level of panic hit the street,'' said longtime operative Scott Reed, chief strategist for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. ''It's time for a serious reset.''

Trump allies on Wednesday publicly urged the candidate to reboot, furious that he has allowed his confrontation with the Muslim parents of dead Army Capt. Humayun Khan to continue for nearly a week. They also are angry with Trump because of his refusal in an interview with The Washington Post on Tuesday to endorse two of the GOP's top elected officials '-- House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (Wis.) and Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) '-- ahead of their coming primary elections.

After a bad week for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, some in the Republican Party are reaching new levels of panic. Here's why picking a new nominee might not be the answer. (Sarah Parnass/The Washington Post)

[Donald Trump refuses to endorse Paul Ryan and John McCain in GOP primaries]

Former House speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), one of Trump's most loyal defenders, warned that his friend was in danger of throwing away the election and helping to make Clinton president.

''The current race is which of these two is the more unacceptable, because right now, neither of them is acceptable,'' he said. ''Trump is helping her to win by proving he is more unacceptable than she is.''

Gingrich said Trump has only a matter of weeks to reverse course. ''Anybody who is horrified by Hillary should hope that Trump will take a deep breath and learn some new skills,'' he said. ''He cannot win the presidency operating the way he is now. She can't be bad enough to elect him if he's determined to make this many mistakes.''

Campaigning in Florida, Trump sought to pivot away from his problems. He addressed the controversy and speculation, saying his campaign is ''doing really well'' and has ''never been this well united,'' then focused renewed attacks on Clinton and President Obama.

But the idea that the campaign was fully united was undercut when Mike Pence, Trump's vice-presidential running mate, told Fox News Channel that he ''strongly endorsed'' Ryan in his primary campaign. Other Republicans viewed the endorsement as a sign that he is having some influence within the campaign, said a person familiar with Pence's role.

Campaign manager Paul Manafort went on cable news channels earlier in the day to try to tamp down the rampant criticism of the GOP nominee, saying that reports of a campaign staff in crisis were incorrect. He said the campaign is ''focused,'' in ''very good shape'' and ''moving forward.''

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump found himself in the middle of a whole bunch of controversies, all in the space of a few days. Here's a breakdown. (Peter Stevenson/The Washington Post)

Throughout the day, there were also persistent reports that allies of Trump, including Priebus, Gingrich and former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, were trying to arrange a meeting with Trump to urge him to refocus his candidacy. Manafort, when asked on Fox News about such a meeting, said he knew nothing about it. ''Not me,'' Gingrich said in an email when asked if he were part of an upcoming meeting.

A knowledgeable GOP strategist said, ''It's not happening,'' then added, ''It doesn't take a genius to know that calling Donald Trump and yelling at him is never going to work.''

At past moments of crisis in the campaign, Trump's children have played an influential role, and there was some hope within the party that they could again provide help. Bloomberg Politics reported Wednesday afternoon, however, that Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump had left for a hunting trip outside the country.

[Transcript of Donald Trump's interview with The Washington Post]

Friends and allies of Manafort disputed reports that the top adviser had given up on Trump, describing him as fully committed to waging a successful campaign. But they said Manafort has been frustrated by Trump's apparent lack of discipline on the stump and in his many media interviews.

''Paul has good influence with Donald,'' said Charlie Black, a longtime GOP strategist and former business partner of Manafort's. ''But he's Donald, and he's going to operate stream of consciousness a lot of times. You just hope he'll have more days on message than days on consciousness.''

A second GOP strategist who also knows Manafort said Trump's campaign manager is ''the most aggressive guy I've ever met.''

''My guess is he's trying to make the best of this for the campaign,'' said this strategist, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to be candid. ''But this is not the plan. There's no way to explain that this is what you want done in the middle of your campaign.''

From Washington to state capitals nationwide, a feeling of despair and despondence fell over the Republican establishment.

Trump suffered two defections Wednesday when Rep. Adam Kinzinger (Ill.), an Iraq War veteran, said on CNN that he is unlikely to vote for Trump because the nominee was ''beginning to cross a lot of red lines of the unforgivable in politics.''

Former Montana governor Marc Racicot, a former RNC chairman and a close associate of former president George W. Bush's, also said he won't vote for Trump.

''I'm not accusing people of being appeasers, but what I am saying is that there's a transcendent set of values throughout our history that we subscribe to above party,'' Racicot told Bloomberg Politics, adding that he thinks Trump lacks those values.

Reed, who managed Robert J. Dole's 1996 presidential campaign, said Trump should ''stop doing silly interviews nine times a day that get you off message'' and deliver a major address seeking to reset the campaign establishing himself as the change candidate.

Reed said such a pivot is ''mandatory'' for Trump to be successful, as is smoothing relations with Ryan, McCain and other GOP leaders. ''If Trump decides he wants to go it alone, it is a lonely road,'' he said.

Two weeks ago at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, GOP leaders were buoyed by what they saw in Trump. But he quickly reverted to his old ways, setting off alarms in some parts of the party.

''I'm pulling for him, but he's not driving on the pavement. He's in the ditch,'' said Henry Barbour, an RNC member and longtime strategist in Mississippi. ''I'm frustrated. There's time to fix it, but there's one person who can fix it. It's up to him.''

A Republican consultant who is working on Senate and gubernatorial races nationwide says the situation is wreaking havoc.

''The level of uncertainty with Trump just throws everyone off. It really hurts all of them,'' the consultant said. ''The Republican Party to him is like any kind of real estate deal. It's all transactional. .'‰.'‰. He's willing to burn the house down.''

If the situation has not improved by Labor Day, the RNC may need to begin redirecting resources to bolster vulnerable House and Senate candidates, as it did when Dole's defeat became apparent in the fall of 1996, a senior Republican said.

Many top GOP fundraisers and donors are taking refuge in the Senate races, pouring their time and money into trying to protect the Republican majority.

''I have had a number of very successful calls today raising money,'' said Virginia developer Bob Pence, who is serving as the finance chairman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee. ''People are very animated for Senate races.''

Steve Duprey, another RNC member from New Hampshire and a confidant of McCain and Sen. Kelly Ayotte (N.H.), both of whom Trump attacked in the Post interview, said Republican leaders are ''pretty unhappy.''

''People are more frustrated than they have been with past indiscretions,'' Duprey said, referencing Trump's intraparty attacks as well as his feud with the Khan family. ''People are just going, 'Can you believe this?' .'‰.'‰. Our nominee is losing opportunities to make the case why he should be elected instead of Mrs. Clinton and instead spending all of his time dealing with controversies of his own creation.''

Trump has not taken advantage of Friday's report showing slow economic growth in the last quarter or of an interview Clinton gave to Fox News's Chris Wallace on Sunday in which she said that FBI Director James B. Comey had generally agreed with her characterizations of her use of a private email server when she was secretary of state. The interview has drawn criticism from fact checkers at news organizations.

''At some point, he needs to be immeasurably better than Hillary Clinton, but he's not going to have an opportunity to govern if he doesn't begin to bring Republicans together and then, eventually, bring independents and even Democrats on board and convince them that he can do this job,'' Barbour said.

Barbour said he, like others, has been frustrated by missed opportunities since the Democratic National Convention ended Thursday night. ''The last several days have made this election a referendum on Donald Trump. We want this to be a referendum on Hillary Clinton and the wrong direction the country's on.''

RNC chief Priebus has had multiple conversations with Trump and his campaign, although he was not in direct contact with the candidate in the immediate hours after Trump declined to endorse Ryan.

Calling Priebus ''very frustrated,'' a knowledgable GOP strategist said, ''It's the totality of the week. The whole Khan thing kicking off the week was a concern to him, and then obviously all the other smaller issues were. He's been going after this all week. The [failure to endorse Ryan and McCain] was like the cherry on the cake.''

Gingrich said Trump is continuing to operate on instincts that helped him in business and in the primaries but said the GOP nominee doesn't realize that those skills are not adequate for a general election.

''He can't learn what he doesn't know because he doesn't know he doesn't know it,'' Gingrich said.

Karen Tumulty contributed to this report.

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Thu, 04 Aug 2016 14:25

August 2nd, 2016 '' Brian Michael (New York)

A source within the NYPD has reported that an armed 62 year old man tried to sneak in to the Trump Tower late Tuesday night. Interestingly the suspect who was found with a semi-automatic handgun fitted with a silencer has been identified as Barry Lee Bush, a former Newark NJ FBI agent who has been dead since 2007.

A Secret Service agent discovered Bush after he had circumvented a security partition on the bottom floor of the Trump Tower. Questioned by Secret Service at the scene, Bush who initially identified himself as Barry Franklyn, remained silent offering no explanation for why he broke security at the Trump Tower.

According to the NYPD source, Bush was arrested for trespassing and for illegally carrying a pistol fitted with an illegal silencer. During his booking at the NYPD Jail, Bush's fingerprints were submitted to the National Crime Information Center, which immediately reported Bush's true identity.

''I wasn't sure if our system had malfunctioned, so I rescanned his fingerprints to confirm that our system was working correctly. There was no system error. The man we have in custody was reported deceased in 2007 after being shot in an attempted bank robbery, ''one source speaking on anonymity said.

The New York Times reported on April 6, 2007 that Barry Bush, a veteran F.B.I. agent on a bank-robbery detail was fatally wounded apparently when another agent's weapon accidentally discharged during a confrontation with three gunmen outside a bank in a quiet town in central New Jersey.

Not actual gun

Speaking about the weapon found on Bush, the NYPD source stated, ''We don't find hardware like this on the streets''that Glock was never stamped at the factory [serial number]'--those pieces are reserved for people with a lot higher pay grades than me.''

According to a spokesman at the Newark FBI field office, Bush was killed in the line of duty in April of 2007. Coincidentally, five minutes after we got off the phone with him, a page honoring FBI agents who were killed in the line of duty, went down on the FBI's website.

It is not clear what Bush's intentions were for sneaking around security to presumably access the service elevators at the Trump Tower, however it does not take much imagination as to why Bush was carrying a silenced pistol at the time of his arrest.

Trump is in Florida today for rallies in Daytona Beach and Jacksonville. Trump has informed us that he was not at the Trump Tower yesterday evening and did not have any information about the incident, other than an armed man had been arrested at his building and that it was not clear about what Bush's intentions were.

Mr. Trump seemed to take the news that an armed dead person was found at his NY building, with a grain of salt. Fortunately for his family and supporters, Mr. Trump is still around to try to sort out this interesting incident.

Brenda Corpian reporting for Get Off The Bs 08/02/216

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Mon, 01 Aug 2016 05:43

Donald Trump travelled to Moscow in 2013 to meet Vladimir Putin hoping to discuss plans for a Trump Tower near Red Square. Composite: Ap/Getty

A key figure at the Republican national convention where Donald Trump was nominated for president has strong business ties with Ukraine, the Guardian has learned.

Related:Cozy Bear and Fancy Bear: did Russians hack Democratic party and if so, why?

The party platform, written at the convention in Cleveland last week, removed references to arming Ukraine in its fight against pro-Russia rebels, who have receivedmaterialsupport from the Kremlin. Trump's links to Russia are under scrutiny after a hack of Democratic national committee emails, allegedly by Russian agents.

The coordinator of the Washington diplomatic corps for the Republicans in Cleveland was Frank Mermoud, a former state department official involved in business ventures in Ukraine via Cub Energy, a Black Sea-focused oil and gas company of which he is a director. He is also on the board of the US Ukraine Business Council.

Mermoud has longstanding ties to Trump's campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, who in 2010 helped pro-Russia Viktor Yanukovych refashion his image and win a presidential election in Ukraine. Manafort was brought in earlier this year to oversee the convention operations and its staffing.

Three sources at the convention also told the Guardian that they saw Philip Griffin, a long-time aide to Manafort in Kiev, working with the foreign dignitaries programme.

''After years of working in the Ukraine for Paul and others, it was surprising to run into Phil working at the convention,'' one said.

The change to the platform on arming Ukraine was condemned even by some Republicans. Senator Rob Portman of Ohio described it as ''deeply troubling''. Veteran party operative and lobbyist Charlie Black said the ''new position in the platform doesn't have much support from Republicans'', adding that the change ''was unusual''.

Thousands of Democratic National Committee emails, meanwhile, were hacked and published by WikiLeaks on the eve of the party's convention in Philadelphia this week. The mails showed that officials, who are meant to remain impartial, favoured Hillary Clinton and discussed ways to undermine her rival, Bernie Sanders. The leak led to the resignation of DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

Since the DNC hack became public, hacks against the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the Clinton campaign have been reported.

The FBI is investigating, with all signs pointing to Russian involvement, though Moscow rejects this but experts argue Vladimir Putin has attempted in the past to damage western democracy, saying Russian security agencies have made cyberattacks on French, Greek, Italian and Latvian targets during elections. In 2014, malware was discovered in Ukrainian election software that would have robbed it of legitimacy.

This kind of meddling in other country's affairs is part of Russia's toolkit

Alina Polyakova, Dinu Patriciu Eurasia CenterAlina Polyakova, deputy director of the Dinu Patriciu Eurasia Center at the Atlantic Council, said: ''We can't say 100% that Mr Putin had a hand in any of this but this kind of meddling in other countries' affairs is part of Russia's toolkit. It's a kind of asymmetric warfare. To me, this looks like something straight from the Russian secret service playbook, but I'm surprised at how brazen they've been.''

Trump and his campaign have denied any connection to the hack but on Wednesday he ignited a firestorm by calling on Russia to find 30,000 emails deleted from the private server used by Clinton while she was secretary of state in the Obama administration. ''I think you will probably be mightily rewarded by our press,'' he said. He later claimed that he was being sarcastic.

Analysts suggest three primary motivations for the WikiLeaks email dump, quite probably overlapping: doing harm to the US political process to undermine its credibility; doing harm to Clinton (WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is no friend); and boosting Trump, who has heaped praise on Putin and last week broke from Republican policy by suggesting the US would not automatically come to the aid of Nato allies and saying he would consider recognising Crimea as Russian territory.

James Rubin, a former assistant secretary of state now advising the Clinton campaign, said: ''If you are the president of Russia and you have stated over and over again that you are concerned that the United States '' through its enlargement of Nato, through its policies in Europe towards Ukraine, towards Georgia, towards other countries in Central Asia '' [is] putting pressure on Russia, and you are the president of a country that has been seeking to undermine that process and roll back the independent Europe that's whole and free and push it back, that's your foreign policy objective.

''So then you look at the United States and you say, 'Well, which party's policies would be more likely to allow me to achieve my objectives?' That's the way that a Russian leader would think.''

With Democrats and journalists now trawling through Trump's past dealings with ''all the oligarchs'', as he once put it, as far back as the time of the Soviet Union, the candidate has repeatedly and angrily stated that he has ''zero, nothing to do with Russia''. He has however continued to refuse to release his tax returns, which could prove his claim definitively.

Past courtshipsTrump: 'Russia, I hope you can find Hillary's missing emails'Related:The lies Trump told this week: a Russian love-in and conspiracy theories

If he doesn't have anything to do with Russia today, Trump certainly has in the past. As far back as 1987, he was attempting to build branded hotels and condos in Moscow. ''It's a totally interesting place,'' he said at the time. ''I think the Soviet Union is really making an effort to cooperate in the sense of dealing openly with other nations and in opening up the country.''

His desire to build a Trump Tower near Red Square continued throughout the 1990s and in 2013 the businessman travelled to Moscow, hoping to meet Putin while taking in the Russian debut of his own Miss Universe beauty pageant.

Putin cancelled a meeting at the last minute, according to an oligarch who spoke to the Washington Post, but sent a gift and personal note. Trump did collect a a share of the $14m paid by investors including Aras Agalarov, a Azerbaijani-Russian billionaire property developer and close Putin associate, for bringing Miss Universe to Agalarov's 7,500-seat Crocus City Hall.

In 2014, Trump told a press luncheon that he ''spoke, indirectly and directly, with President Putin, who could not have been nicer''. A year earlier, he told MSNBC: ''I do have a relationship and I can tell you that he's very interested in what we're doing here today.''

At the pageant in 2013, Trump was photographed with personalities such as the rapper Timati, who has since taken an outspoken pro-Kremlin position, recording a song with the refrain ''my best friend is President Putin''.

Trump was also photographed with Miss Universe jury member Philipp Kirkorov, a flamboyant pop star who represented Russia at Eurovision in 1995. Kirkorov told the Guardian he first met Trump in 1994, when he performed at the businessman's Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City, and spent time with him again in 1999 and 2013.

Phillip Kirkorov, a Russian pop star, has said he discussed with Trump 'the beauty of Russian and American women'. Photograph: Vyacheslav Prokofyev/TassKirkorov said he and Trump did not talk much about politics but rather ''about life, about the beauty of Russian and American women''.

''I introduced Donald to the popular Russian-Ukrainian singer Ani Lorak,'' Kirkorov said. ''I know he's a big connoisseur of female beauty, so he talked with her a lot the whole evening.

''He understands that friendship between America and Russia will lead only to positive events and an improvement in relations between our countries will be to everyone's benefit, and I'm sure that's why he has so many fans in our country.''

Agalarov is just one of several Russian billionaires tied to Trump. Discussing a possible Moscow hotel project with real estate website therealdeal.com in 2013, Trump boasted: ''The Russian market is attracted to me. I have a great relationship with many Russians, and almost all of the oligarchs were in the room''.

On another occasion he declared: ''Moscow right now in the world is a very, very important place. We wanted Moscow all the way.''

In 2008, Trump's son, Donald Trump Jr, told a New York Russian real estate investors conference that a ''lot of money [is] pouring in from Russia''. ''Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets,'' he added.

A lot of the money was destined for the 46-storey Trump Soho hotel and condos project on Spring Street in New York City, which was partly funded by group of Russian and ex-Soviet state billionaires. After allegations of fraud by buyers, the project was embroiled in an investigation by the Manhattan district attorney. Trump and his partners settled out of court. There had been plans to build a replica building in Moscow. It never happened.

In 2008, Trump sold a six-acre oceanfront Palm Beach mansion for $95m '' a record deal that netted him $53.6m. The buyer was Russian fertiliser billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev, who was reported in the Panama Papers leaks to have used offshore law firms to hide more than $2bn-worth of art works, including pieces by Picasso, Van Gogh and Leonardo, from his wife in advance of their divorce.

Yanukovych, Gazprom and moreViktor Yanukovych used to employ Paul Manafort, Trump's campaign manager before being ousted as Ukrainian president in 2014. He is now exiled in Russia. Photograph: Ivan Sekretarev/APRelated:Putin is surely backing Trump, whether or not Russia was behind DNC hack

For his part, Paul Manafort has been closely tied to Ukraine over the past decade, making millions from consulting work. He worked for Rinat Akhmetov, Dmitry Firtash and Oleg Deripaska, three major pro-Russia oligarchs, as an adviser.

Much of Manafort's relationship with Firtash was exposed in a 2011 racketeering lawsuit that was later dismissed. It described Manafort as aiding the mogul in moving his wealth out of Ukraine and into overseas assets. Firtash is now under indictment in the US, and Deripaska is banned from entering the country due to ties with organised crime.

Manafort's relationship with Deripaska has recently suffered. The mogul is suing Manafort in the Cayman Islands for allegedly disappearing with $19m of his money. Manafort also worked for Yanukovych and helped guide the pro-Russia candidate to victory in the 2010 Ukranian election. Yanukovych was overthrown in 2014 and is now exiled in Russia.

Another of Trump's foreign policy advisers, Carter Page, is an investment banker with close links to Gazprom, the Kremlin-controlled gas company, and has long been an outspoken supporter of Putin. He has gone so far as to compare US foreign policy towards Russia under the Obama administration to slavery in the antebellum south.

Trump adviser Michael Flynn, a former US military intelligence chief, sat two places away from Putin at the state-funded TV network Russia Today's 10th anniversary party last year.

The web of associations between Trump and Moscow remains ambiguous and intriguing. Asked if Putin and Trump could be actively colluding, Alina Polyakova of the Dinu Patriciu Eurasia Center replied: ''I don't think it would be that direct. That would be stupid. Trump wants the power of denial.''

Chris Coons, a Democratic senator for Delaware, said: ''That seems to be a striking allegation to make because that would be unbelievably irresponsible. I have heard in the last day troubling allegations of the relationship between Paul Manafort and players in the Ukraine who are very closely tied to Putin and the Kremlin but I have no evidence about it.''

Bill Clinton went on vacation in Russia when he was a Rhodes scholar'... If anyone is in bed with Russia, it's the Clintons

Joseph Schmitz, Trump adviserCoons added: ''At this point we should allow the intelligence community and our foreign policy leaders to pursue whatever leads there may be to whatever conclusion they will reach. I do think the degree of irresponsibility shown by Donald Trump in literally urging on an illegal surveillance act by a hostile foreign power raises strong enough questions that it merits investigation. It's truly unsettling and something that deserves out attention.''

Jim Lewis, a senior vice-president and programme director at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, noted that Russians had hacked into the DNC and its Republican counterpart in 2008 and 2012, but those hacks were not leaked.

''The difference this time is the leak,'' he said. ''We can say with some certainty that it's Russian hacking, but we should be cautious about saying they were behind the leak.''

Direct collusion with the Trump campaign is probably not happening, Lewis said. ''Let's say you're working with someone in the Trump campaign. How do you communicate with them? I think it's unlikely given the practical difficulties.''

Joseph Schmitz, a foreign policy adviser to Trump, denied there was any direct relationship between the campaign and the Kremlin.

''We had to negotiate with Joseph Stalin when we had a common enemy called Hitler,'' he said. ''Bill Clinton went on vacation in Russia when he was a Rhodes scholar. That's a fact. If anyone is in bed with Russia, it's the Clintons.''

But, Polyakova said, should Trump win the election, ''We would definitely have a closer relationship with Russia and it could endanger western security interests.''

''I would expect a lot of appeasement when it comes to Ukraine and Syria,'' she added.

This article was amended on 30 July 2016, to clarify Frank Mermoud's role at the Republican convention.

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Mon, 01 Aug 2016 13:27

Hillary Clinton touts her tenure as secretary of state as a time of hardheaded realism and ''commercial diplomacy'' that advanced American national and commercial interests. But her handling of a major technology transfer initiative at the heart of Washington's effort to ''reset'' relations with Russia raises serious questions about her record. Far from enhancing American national interests, Mrs. Clinton's efforts in this area may have substantially undermined U.S. national security.

Consider Skolkovo, an ''innovation city''...

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Mon, 01 Aug 2016 20:02

The subject of Russia's influence in American politics has been a hot topic of late, particularly as the MSM continues to link Donald Trump to Vladimir Putin and the DNC hack. However, a report published by the Government Accountability Institute presents a new twist in the Kremlin-US political ties. It all started with the 2009 ''Russian reset'' touted by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

As detailed in a WSJ op-ed by Peter Schweizer (author of the GAI report), after President Obama visited Russia in 2009, both nations agreed to ''identifying areas of cooperation and pursuing joint projects and actions that strengthen strategic stability, international security, economic well-being, and the development of ties between the Russian and American people.''

One such project was Skolkovo, an ''innovation city'' of 30,000 people on the outskirts of Moscow, billed as Russia's version of Silicon Valley. As chief diplomat, Hillary was in charge of courting US companies to invest in this new Russian city. Russia, on the other hand, had committed to spend $5 billion over the next three years (2009-12).

Hillary Clinton and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov

As Schweizer continues, ''soon, dozens of U.S. tech firms, including top Clinton Foundation donors like Google, Intel and Cisco, made major financial contributions to Skolkovo, with Cisco committing a cool$1 billion. In May 2010, the State Department facilitated a Moscow visit by 22 of the biggest names in U.S. venture capital'--and weeks later the first memorandums of understanding were signed by Skolkovo and American companies.

By 2012 the vice president of the Skolkovo Foundation, Conor Lenihan'--who had previously partnered with the Clinton Foundation'--recorded that Skolkovo had assembled 28 Russian, American and European ''Key Partners.''

Of the 28 ''partners,'' 17, or 60%, have made financial commitments to the Clinton Foundation, totaling tens of millions of dollars, or sponsored speeches by Bill Clinton'...

Russians tied to Skolkovo also flowed funds to the Clinton Foundation. Andrey Vavilov, the chairman of SuperOx, which is part of Skolkovo's nuclear-research cluster, donatedbetween $10,000 and $25,000 (donations are reported in ranges, not exact amounts) to the Clinton's family charity''

Thus far, this should not be surprising. It is yet another instance of crony capitalism that has so well characterized the Clintons over the years. However, as US intelligence agencies including the FBI were soon to find out, the Russian Silicon Valley served other purposes as well.

More from the WSJ op-ed: ''The state-of-the-art technological research coming out of Skolkovo raised alarms among U.S. military experts and federal law-enforcement officials. Research conducted in 2012 on Skolkovo by the U.S. Army Foreign Military Studies Program at Fort Leavenworth declared that the purpose of Skolkovo was to serve as a ''vehicle for world-wide technology transfer to Russia in the areas of information technology, biomedicine, energy, satellite and space technology, and nuclear technology.''Moreover, the report said: ''the Skolkovo Foundation has, in fact, been involved in defense-related activities since December 2011, when it approved the first weapons-related project'--the development of a hypersonic cruise missile engine. . . . Not all of the center's efforts are civilian in nature'...''

''The FBI believes the true motives of the Russian partners, who are often funded by their government, is to gain access to classified, sensitive, and emerging technology from the companies. The [Skolkovo] foundation may be a means for the Russian government to access our nation's sensitive or classified research development facilities and dual-use technologies with military and commercial application.''

As Schweizer concludes:

Even if it could be proven that these tens of millions of dollars in Clinton Foundation donations by Skolkovo's key partners played no role in the Clinton State Department's missing or ignoring obvious red flags about the Russian enterprise, the perception would still be problematic. (Neither the Clinton campaign nor the Clinton Foundation responded to requests for comment.) What is known is that the State Department recruited and facilitated the commitment of billions of American dollars in the creation of a Russian ''Silicon Valley'' whose technological innovations include Russian hypersonic cruise-missile engines, radar surveillance equipment, and vehicles capable of delivering airborne Russian troops.

A Russian reset, indeed.

Naturally, the Hillary campaign did not reply to any requests from Schweizer on the report. But we are comfortable that HRC's response would likely be along the lines ''what difference at this point does it make?''

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Wed, 03 Aug 2016 05:33

Tue Aug 2, 2016 | 11:03 PM EDT

ByMark Hosenball, John Walcott and Joseph Menn|WASHINGTON/SAN FRANCISCO

WASHINGTON/SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - The FBI did not tell the Democratic National Committee that U.S officials suspected it was the target of a Russian government-backed cyber attack when agents first contacted the party last fall, three people with knowledge of the discussions told Reuters.

And in months of follow-up conversations about the DNC's network security, the FBI did not warn party officials that the attack was being investigated as Russian espionage, the sources said.

The lack of full disclosure by the FBI prevented DNC staffers from taking steps that could have reduced the number of confidential emails and documents stolen, one of the sources said. Instead, Russian hackers whom security experts believe are affiliated with the Russian government continued to have access to Democratic Party computers for months during a crucial phase in the U.S. presidential campaign, the source said.

As late as June, hackers had access to DNC systems and the network used by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, a group that raises money for Democratic candidates and shares an office with the DNC in Washington, people with knowledge of the cases have said.

A spokeswoman for the FBI said she could not comment on a current investigation. The DNC did not respond to requests for comment.

In its initial contact with the DNC last fall, the FBI instructed DNC personnel to look for signs of unusual activity on the group's computer network, one person familiar with the matter said. DNC staff examined their logs and files without finding anything suspicious, that person said.

When DNC staffers requested further information from the FBI to help them track the incursion, they said the agency declined to provide it. In the months that followed, FBI officials spoke with DNC staffers on several other occasions but did not mention the suspicion of Russian involvement in an attack, sources said.

The DNC's information technology team did not realize the seriousness of the incursion until late March, the sources said. It was unclear what prompted the IT team's realization.

Emails captured in the DNC hack were leaked on the eve of the July 25-28 Democratic Party convention to name Hillary Clinton as the party's presidential candidate in the Nov. 8 election against Republican Party nominee Donald Trump.

Those emails exposed bias in favor of Clinton on the part of DNC officials at a time when she was engaged in a close campaign against U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders for the party's nomination.

The DNC said on Tuesday that three senior officials had resigned after the email embarrassment.

Last week, Debbie Wasserman Schultz stepped down as DNC chairwoman as criticism mounted of her management of the party committee, which is supposed to be neutral.

U.S. officials and private cyber security experts said last week they believed Russian hackers were behind the cyber attack on the DNC. The Obama administration has not yet publicly declared who it believes is responsible.

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said last week the U.S. intelligence community was not ready to "make the call on attribution."

It was not immediately clear how the FBI had learned of the hack against the DNC. One U.S. official with knowledge of the investigation said the agency had withheld information about details of the hacking to protect classified intelligence operations.

"There is a fine line between warning people or companies or even other government agencies that they're being hacked '' especially if the intrusions are ongoing '' and protecting intelligence operations that concern national security," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The first internal DNC emails alerting party officials to the seriousness of the suspected hacking were sent in late March, one person said. In May, the DNC contacted California-based cyber security firm CrowdStrike to analyze unusual activity on the group's network.

The Brooklyn-based Clinton campaign operation was also the target of hacking, people with knowledge of the situation have said. The Clinton campaign has confirmed that a DNC-linked system the campaign used to analyze voter data was compromised.

Yahoo News reported last week that the FBI had warned the Clinton campaign that it was the target of a hack in March, just before the DNC discovered it had been hacked.

Glen Caplin, a Clinton campaign spokesman, said it had taken steps to safeguard its internal information systems.

''Multiple Democratic party organizations, including our campaign and staff, have been the subject of attempted cyber attacks that experts say are Russian intelligence agencies, which enlist some of the most sophisticated hackers in the world,'' Caplin said.

(Reporting By Mark Hosenball amd John Walcott in Washington and Joseph Menn in San Francisco; Editing by David Rohde and Grant McCool)

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Source: Russia Beyond The Headlines

Thu, 04 Aug 2016 14:19

The Russian president has changed the status of Crimea, turning it into an ordinary Russian province. Does this threaten the peninsula?

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Russian President Vladimir Putin. Source: Mikhail Metzel / TASS

Russian President Vladimir Putin's decision to reform the government of Crimea and change its status from a federal district to an ordinary Russian region has triggered much speculation. Crimea received this special status in spring 2014 following a referendum that transferred ownership of the peninsula from Ukraine to the Russian Federation. Does this mean that Crimea will lose its special protection from Moscow and receive less funding as a result?

The loss of exclusivityAccording to official statements, Crimea was attached to the Southern Federal District to improve the governance of the peninsula. The Russian Federation is subdivided into eight federal districts.

Presidential Spokesman Dmitry Peskov stated that Crimea and the other regions of the Southern Federal District are facing similar problems, which would be easier to solve within a single governing structure.

However, experts say that this transfer has also been made in order to end the conflict between current Sevastopol Governor Sergei Menyailo's team and the team of the former head of the local parliament, Alexei Chaly, ahead of fall elections to the Russian parliament. Chaly played a major role in Crimea's accession to the Russian Federation.

On July 28, 2016 Menyailo resigned and was transferred to an assignment in Siberia. Now Crimea will report to the head of the Southern Federal District, Vladimir Ustinov, an experienced administrator who has good relations with Moscow. Experts foresee no problems in the relationship between him and the local Crimean administration.

Simplifying communication with the KremlinObservers also believe that the abolishment of the Crimean Federal District does not mean that Moscow is reducing its interest in the peninsula or decreasing the volume of funding there.

"The status of Crimea and Sevastopol is not recognized by the West and Ukraine, which means that it is necessary to maintain the satisfaction of the population at an acceptable level," Pavel Svyatenkov, an analyst at the Institute of National Strategy, an independent think tank, said. "Otherwise, a desire to return to Ukraine could arise."

Read all stories from the beginning in the Wild Wild East blog>>>

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Mon, 01 Aug 2016 19:42

Shown Here:Passed House amended (04/23/2015)National Cybersecurity Protection Advancement Act of 2015

(Sec. 2) Amends the Homeland Security Act of 2002 to allow the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS's) national cybersecurity and communications integration center (NCCIC) to include tribal governments, information sharing and analysis centers, and private entities among its non-federal representatives. Expands the composition of the NCCIC to include:

a collaborator with state and local governments on cybersecurity risks and incidents;a U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team that coordinates and shares information in a timely manner and provides technical assistance, upon request, to information system owners and operators;the Industrial Control System Cyber Emergency Response Team that coordinates with owners and operators of industrial control systems, provides requested training, and remains current on industry adoption of new technologies;a National Coordinating Center for Communications that coordinates the protection, response, and recovery of emergency communications; anda coordinator of small and medium-sized businesses.(Sec. 3) Requires the NCCIC to be the lead federal civilian interface for multi-directional and cross-sector sharing of information related to cyber threat indicators, defensive measures, and cybersecurity risks for federal and non-federal entities. Expands the NCCIC's functions to include:

global cybersecurity with international partners;information sharing across critical infrastructure sectors, with state and major urban area fusion centers and with small and medium-sized businesses;notification to Congress regarding any significant violations of information retention or disclosure policies;notification to non-federal entities of indicators or defensive measures shared in error or in contravention of specified requirements; andparticipation in exercises run by DHS's National Exercise Program.Excludes from the definition of "cybersecurity risk" violations of consumer terms of service or licensing agreements.

Requires the NCCIC to designate an agency contact for non-federal entities.

Directs the NCCIC to: (1) safeguard cybersecurity information against unauthorized disclosure, and (2) work with the Chief Privacy Officer to follow appropriate privacy procedures.

Requires the Under Secretary for Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Protection (the Under Secretary) to develop capabilities that make use of existing industry standards to advance implementation of automated mechanisms for the timely sharing of indicators and defensive measures to and from the NCCIC and with federal agencies designated as sector specific agencies for critical infrastructure sectors.

Directs the Under Secretary, every six months, to provide Congress with progress reports regarding the development of such capabilities.

Authorizes the NCCIC to enter voluntary information sharing relationships with consenting non-federal entities.

Directs the Under Secretary to develop procedures for coordinating vulnerability disclosures consistent with international standards.

Allows non-federal entities, for cybersecurity purposes, to share with other non-federal entities or the NCCIC any indicators or defensive measures obtained from: (1) their own information systems; or (2) the information systems of other federal or non-federal entities, with written consent. Authorizes non-federal entities (excluding state, local, or tribal governments) to conduct network awareness to scan, identify, acquire, monitor, log, or analyze information, or to operate defensive measures, on the information systems of entities that provide consent.

Requires entities, prior to sharing, to take reasonable efforts to: (1) exclude information that can be used to identify specific persons and that is unrelated to cybersecurity risks or incidents, and (2) safeguard information that can be used to identify specific persons from unintended disclosure or unauthorized access or acquisition.

Directs the Under Secretary to establish and annually review privacy and civil liberties policies governing the receipt, retention, use, and disclosure of cybersecurity information shared with the NCCIC. Provides for such policies to apply only to DHS. Allows the Under Secretary to consult with the National Institute of Standards and Technology on such policies.

Requires the Chief Privacy Officer to:

monitor implementation of such privacy and civil liberties policies;update privacy impact assessments on a regular basis to ensure that all relevant privacy protections are followed;work with the Under Secretary to carry out certain notifications to Congress and non-federal entities;submit an annual report to Congress regarding the effectiveness of DHS's privacy and civil liberties policies; andensure appropriate sanctions for DHS officers, employees, or agents who intentionally or willfully conduct activities in an unauthorized manner.Directs the DHS Inspector General to periodically report to Congress with a review of the use of cybersecurity risk information shared with the NCCIC.

Requires the Chief Privacy Officer and the Chief Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Officer to biennially submit a report to Congress that: (1) assesses the privacy and civil liberties impact of DHS's retention, use, and disclosure policies; and (2) recommends methods to minimize or mitigate the impact of sharing indicators and defensive measures.

Prohibits federal entities from using shared indicators or defensive measures to engage in surveillance or other collection activities for the purpose of tracking an individual's personally identifiable information, except for purposes authorized under this section. Bars the federal government from using such information for regulatory purposes.

Provides liability protections to non-federal entities (excluding state, local, or tribal governments) acting in accordance with this section that: (1) conduct network awareness, or (2) share indicators or defensive measures or that fail, in good faith, to act based on such sharing.

Prohibits such liability protections from being construed to apply to willful misconduct.

Establishes a private cause of action that a person may bring against the federal government if a federal agency intentionally or willfully violates restrictions on the use and protection of voluntarily shared indicators or defensive measures.

Exempts from antitrust laws non-federal entities that, for cybersecurity purposes, share: (1) cyber threat indicators or defensive measures; or (2) assistance relating to the prevention, investigation, or mitigation of cybersecurity risks or incidents. Makes such exemption inapplicable to price-fixing, allocating a market between competitors, monopolizing or attempting to monopolize a market, or exchanges of price or cost information, customer lists, or information regarding future competitive planning.

Prohibits this section from being construed to permit the federal government to require a non-federal entity to provide information to a federal entity.

Requires the Secretary of Homeland Security to: (1) develop procedures for the NCCIC Director to report directly to the Secretary regarding significant cybersecurity risks and incidents, and (2) promote a national awareness effort to educate the general public on the importance of securing information systems.

Directs DHS to report to Congress on the range of efforts underway to bolster cybersecurity collaboration with relevant international partners.

(Sec. 4) Expands the purpose of information sharing and analysis organizations to include responsibilities for disseminating information about cybersecurity risks and incidents.

(Sec. 5) Redesignates DHS's National Protection and Programs Directorate as the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Protection. Requires the President to appoint: (1) the Under Secretary, with the advice and consent of the Senate; and (2) the Deputy Under Secretaries for Cybersecurity and for Infrastructure Protection, without the advice and consent of the Senate. Requires the Under Secretary to report to Congress regarding the feasibility of becoming an operational component.

(Sec. 6) Requires the Secretary to regularly update, maintain, and exercise the Cyber Incident Annex to DHS's National Response Framework.

(Sec. 7) Requires the NCCIC to facilitate improvements to the security and resiliency of public safety communications.

Directs the Under Secretary to implement a cybersecurity awareness campaign to disseminate: (1) public service announcements targeted at state, local, and tribal governments, the private sector, academia, and stakeholders in specific audiences, including the elderly, students, small businesses, members of the Armed Forces, and veterans; and (2) vendor and technology-neutral voluntary best practices.

Requires DHS to establish a National Cybersecurity Preparedness Consortium to:

train state and local first responders and officials to prepare for and respond to cyber attacks,develop a curriculum utilizing the DHS-sponsored Community Cyber Security Maturity Model,provide technical assistance,conduct cybersecurity training and simulation exercises,coordinate with the NCCIC to help states and communities develop information sharing programs, andcoordinate with the National Domestic Preparedness Consortium to incorporate cybersecurity emergency responses into existing state and local emergency management functions.(Sec. 8) Directs the Under Secretary for Science and Technology to biennially provide to Congress an updated strategic plan to guide the overall direction of federal physical security and cybersecurity technology research and development efforts for protecting critical infrastructure. Requires the plan to:

identify critical infrastructure security risks and any associated security technology gaps;prioritize technology needs based on gaps, risks, evolving threats, and technology advancements;include research, development, and acquisition roadmaps with clearly defined objectives, goals, and measures;identify laboratories, facilities, modeling, and simulation capabilities required to support new technologies; andidentify programmatic initiatives for the rapid advancement and deployment of security technologies for critical infrastructure protection, including public-private partnerships, intragovernment collaboration, university centers of excellence, and national laboratory technology transfers.(Sec. 9) Requires DHS to report to Congress regarding the feasibility of DHS reducing cybersecurity risks in DHS data centers, including by increasing compartmentalization between systems and providing a mix of security controls between such compartments.

(Sec. 10) Directs the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to report on DHS's implementation of this Act, including any findings regarding increases in sharing at the NCCIC and throughout the United States.

(Sec. 11) Requires the Under Secretary to produce a report on the feasibility of creating a risk-informed prioritization plan should multiple critical infrastructures experience cyber incidents simultaneously.

(Sec. 12) Directs the DHS Inspector General to review operations of the U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team and the Industrial Control Systems Cyber Emergency Response Team to assess the capacity to provide technical assistance to non-federal entities and to adequately respond to potential increases in requests for technical assistance.

(Sec. 13) Prohibits this Act from being construed to grant DHS any authority to promulgate regulations or set standards relating to the cybersecurity of non-federal entities (excluding state, local, and tribal governments) that were not in effect on the day before the enactment of this Act.

(Sec. 14) Terminates reporting requirements under this Act seven years after enactment of this Act.

(Sec. 16) Requires DHS to deploy and operate (to make available for use by any federal agency, with or without reimbursement) capabilities to protect federal agency information and information systems, including technologies to continuously diagnose, detect, prevent, and mitigate against cybersecurity risks involving such systems. Authorizes the DHS Secretary to access, and allows federal agency heads to disclose to the Secretary, information traveling to or from or stored on a federal agency information system, regardless of from where the Secretary accesses such information, notwithstanding any law that would otherwise restrict or prevent federal agency heads from disclosing such information to the Secretary.

Allows a private entity to assist the Secretary in carrying out such activities.

Authorizes the Secretary to retain, use, and disclose information obtained through the conduct of activities authorized under this section only to protect federal agency information and information systems from cybersecurity risks, or, with DOJ approval and if disclosure of such information is not otherwise prohibited by law, to law enforcement only to investigate, prosecute, disrupt, or otherwise respond to:

criminal computer fraud;an imminent threat of death or serious bodily harm;a serious threat to a minor, including sexual exploitation or threats to physical safety; oran attempt or conspiracy to commit any of such offenses.Provides liability protections to private entities that provide assistance to the Secretary for such purposes.

(Sec. 17) Terminates the provisions of this Act seven years after its enactment.

(Sec. 18) Requires DHS to report to Congress with recommendations to mitigate cybersecurity vulnerabilities for the 10 U.S. ports that are at greatest risk of a cybersecurity incident.

(Sec. 19) Authorizes DHS to consult with sector specific agencies, businesses, and stakeholders to submit to Congress a report on how to align federally funded cybersecurity research and development activities with private sector efforts to protect privacy and civil liberties while assuring security and resilience of the nation's critical infrastructure.

(Sec. 20) Directs the GAO to assess the impact on privacy and civil liberties limited to the work of the NCCIC.

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Thu, 04 Aug 2016 00:05

The Obama administration secretly shipped $400 million in cash to Iran around the time that the country released four American prisoners, The Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday.

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The money '-- which consisted mainly of euros, Swiss francs and other foreign currencies '-- was airlifted to Iran in an unmarked cargo plane in January.The payment was part of a settlement over an arms deal from 1979, shortly before Iran went through a regime change.

U.S. officials have denied that the payment was a ransom for the release of the prisoners.

''As we've made clear, the negotiations over the settlement of an outstanding claim ... were completely separate from the discussions about returning our American citizens home,'' said John Kirby, a State Department spokesman.

''Not only were the two negotiations separate, they were conducted by different teams on each side, including, in the case of The Hague claims, by technical experts involved in these negotiations for many years.''

Still, Republican lawmakers, all of whom opposed the Iran nuclear agreement that was passed last year, have criticized President Obama for making payments to Iran.

Sen. Tom CottonTom CottonGOP senator wants details on Iran 'ransom'Report: Obama administration shipped 0 million to IranThe Trail 2016: Her big nightMORE (R-Ark.) said the transaction amounted to ''a $1.7 billion ransom to the ayatollahs for U.S. hostages.''

''This break with longstanding U.S. policy, put a price on the head of Americans and has led Iran to continue its illegal seizures'' of Americans, he added.

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Source: Russia Beyond The Headlines

Thu, 04 Aug 2016 14:08

Stakes in Iranian companies would help offset competition on the continent.

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If Gazprom acquires a stake in the Iranian gas sector, it would be able to partially control Iranian gas streams and prevent competition with Russian gas in Europe. Photo: Gas flares on an oil production platform in the Soroush oil fields alongside an Iranian flag on July 25, 2005. Source: Reuters

Russian energy giant Gazprom has sent a note to Iranian authorities with a request to participate in gas liquefaction, writes Iran's Mehr News Agency. If it acquires a stake in the Iranian gas sector, then Gazprom would be able to partially control Iranian gas streams and prevent that country's competition with Russian gas in Europe, according to a report on the Russian news portal Gazeta.ru.

Currently the National Iran Oil Company (NIOC) is preparing the technical and economic justification for holding the tender. In February 2016 Russian media wrote that Iran had begun cooperation with Gazprom. The NIOC reported that five joint committees had been created in the areas of investment, repair jobs, servicing, storage and oil and gas processing.

Today Gazprom is the biggest gas supplier on the European market providing more than a quarter needed for Europe's consumption. According to the company, they delivered 158.6 billion cubic meters of gas to Europe in 2015 alone. Iran has not yet entered the European gas market, but it delivers approximately 9-10 billion cubic meters of gas to Turkey each year.

According to oil company BP, Iran is thought to have one of the largest reserves of gas in the world '' 33 trillions of cubic meters of gas or about 17-18 percent of the world's supply.

Since the early 2000s Russia and Iran have been working on ambitious gas pipeline projects in Europe. Iran was initially involved in the planning of the Nabucco oil pipeline, which was to provide gas to Europe via Turkey, but instead decided to focus on the Persian pipeline. This proposed project could provide up to 40 billion cubic meters per year to European customers. The South Stream, a Gazprom oil pipeline project, was to go through the Black Sea. Construction began in 2012, but a variety of factors led to its cancellation in late 2014.

Read more: Gazprom's Power of Siberia pipeline set for 2019 launch>>>

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Sun, 31 Jul 2016 20:38

By Emily Zanotti|12:22 pm, July 29, 2016

Washington DC's up-and-coming Bloomingdale neighborhood remains gripped by fear three week after the murder there of Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich '-- with still no reported leads, suspects or arrests in the killing.

At the same time, conspiracy theories surrounding the murder have reached a new frenzy, especially after the hacking of DNC e-mails led to the resignation of its chairwoman, Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

Rich was beaten, shot and killed early on the morning of July 8 while he was walking home and talking on the phone to his girlfriend. Police have said they haven't determined if his murder was a botched robbery or something else. The killer or killers appear to have taken nothing from their victim, leaving behind his wallet, watch and phone.

A makeshift memorial for Seth Rich.DC's Metropolitan Police Department tells Heat Street on Friday that there are ''no updates'' in the case. But while information from authorities may be scarce, the Internet has certainly taken Seth Rich's story to some very dark places '-- despite no evidence to back up any of the reigning conspiracy theories.

Shortly after the killing, Redditors and social media users were pursuing a ''lead'' saying that Rich was en route to the FBI that fateful morning, apparently intending to speak to special agents about an ''ongoing court case'' possibly involving the Clinton family.

Further ''investigation'' dug up no such court case and there is no evidence whatsoever that Rich, who did voter outreach work for the DNC, had any knowledge of alleged Clinton misdeeds.

More recently, Wikileaks's thousands of DNC emails and voice mails have piqued Reddit's interest, with Redditors combing through years of communications looking for any clue to Rich's murder.

Reddit's pro-Donald Trump subreddit, /r/The_Donald posited that Rich could be the DNC's ''leaker'' '' the one who ultimately gave Wikileaks 30,000 emails to publish.

The reward poster.The theory is apparently based on Julian Assange's recent ITV appearance, where he scoffed at the idea that Russian hackers could be responsible for the data dump, and said that ''anyone'' within the Democrats' organization could easily have sent Wikileaks the offending messages.

Given that Rich as a DNC staffer presumably would have had some access to its servers, Reddit is absolutely positive Rich paid the ultimate price for exposing Debbie Wasserman Schultz and the DNC's crusade against Bernie Sanders.

The crazy conspiracy doesn't end there. /r/The_Donald had even put together a timeline, worthy of Russell Crowe's back shed in A Beautiful Mind. Not only does the subreddit link Rich to the Clintons through a series of (alleged) side jobs and encounters, it also links the 27-year-old junior staffer to powerful environmentalists who may or may not be Bernie Sanders supporters. Based on their theory, these ''green'' bigwigs pushed Rich to release the DNC's emails, prompting the Clintons, who somehow knew about the operation, to order a hit.

Other conspiracy theorists are seeking to link Rich's murder to that of Molly Macauley, a beloved ''space economist'' who had testified before Congress. Macauley was killed just a few days before Rich, while walking her dogs in an upscale Baltimore neighborhood. As with Rich's death, the murder remains unsolved. There is no evidence to connect the deaths.

Seth Rich's death is just the latest in a long line of high profile, DC murders that inspire such investigatory fantasies. The proximity to power DC aides enjoy makes them objects of intrigue. The 2001 murder of Capitol Hill intern Chandra Levy, for example, is still in the news, as charges against her accused killer were just dismissed on Thursday '' the result of ''new'' evidence prosecutors say clears the man convicted in her death of responsibility.

Until Seth Rich's murder is solved, then, expect the Internet to keep digging.

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Tue, 02 Aug 2016 21:52

President Obama has authorized a 30-day mission for the U.S. military to conduct airstrikes against the Islamic State terror group in Libya as new strikes were unleashed Tuesday, Fox News has learned.

Marine Corps Harrier jets launched from the Navy amphibious assault ship USS Wasp conducted at least two airstrikes against ISIS targets in the coastal city of Sirte Tuesday. USS Wasp is set to remain off the Libyan coast in the Mediterranean Sea for the next month along with an escort ship, the guided-missile destroyer USS Carney.

The U.S. has launched at least seven airstrikes in total since the campaign began Monday.

Speaking at the White House Tuesday, Obama explained, ''At the request of [the Libyan] government, after they had already made significant progress against ISIL and had essentially pushed ISIL into a very confined area in and around Sirte, it is in America's national security interests in our fight against ISIL to make sure that they're able to finish the job.''

''This is a finite period of time and a very finite mission,'' Pentagon spokesman Capt. Jeff Davis told reporters. ''We don't envision this as being something that's going to be too long'' in duration, he added.

Tuesday's strikes destroyed an ISIS rocket launcher and a heavy equipment excavator, Davis said. He added that three Harrier jets and two unmanned Reaper drones conducted yesterday's strikes, destroying two Soviet-era ISIS T-72 tanks, two other vehicles and an ISIS ''fighting position.''

While President Obama's authorization to strike ISIS in Libya was limited to Sirte, Capt. Davis said the U.S. military reserved the right to conduct counterterrorism strikes elsewhere in the country as the U.S. military did in November and February.

Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook said Monday the number ofISIS fighters in Sirte was under 1,000. When asked by Fox News how the number of ISIS fighters had decreased so rapidly in Libya, Davis said it was a combination of factors.

Some had been killed and others had ''changed allegiances'' he said. ''They have decided ISIS was not all that it was cracked up to be and have moved on to something else.''

In February, the U.S. military began flying armed drones over Libya from Sigonella, Italy, on the island of Sicily. Fox News is told the drones used in Monday's ISIS strikes did not originate from Sicily, but likely from a drone base in Africa.

USS Wasp is the flagship of a flotilla of Navy ships carrying thousands of U.S. Marines, part of the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit based out of Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. They are expected to move from the Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf eventually.

Aboard USS Wasp are Marine Cobra attack helicopters, Harrier jets and CH-53 transport helicopters to take Marines ashore should they be needed.

Italy's foreign minister said Tuesday his government would evaluate any U.S. request to allow use of the Sigonella base in the airstrike campaign.

''I believe that it's a very positive fact'' that the Americans have decided to intervene, Paolo Gentiloni said. He noted that the extremists were concentrated in four or five compounds, but said it won't be easy to eradicate them.

In February, Italy agreed to let armed U.S. drones take off from Sigonella but only to defend U.S. forces targeting ISIS extremists. Italy has stressed that it won't let Sigonella be used for offensive purposes.

Italy has insisted Libya must request any anti-ISIS airstrikes, which Libya's U.N.-brokered unity government did in the case of Sirte.

The strikes send a ''very strong message not only against terrorism, but also for the stabilization of Libya,'' Gentiloni said. He added that "90 percent of migrants in Italy come from Libya, and this is the reason why we are so keen on its stabilization."

Libya slid into chaos after the ouster and killing of longtime strongman Col. Moammar Qaddafi in 2011.

Its long coastline on the Mediterranean's southern shore serves as a base for smuggling operations that have launched boats with hundreds of thousands of refugees toward Italy over the last few years. The Libyan coast is more than 300 miles from southern Italy.

Fox News' Lucas Tomlinson and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Wed, 03 Aug 2016 06:12

Libyan oil sector: overviewEditLibya is a member of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and holds the largest proven oil reserves in Africa (followed by Nigeria and Algeria), 41.5 Gbbl (6.60—10^9 m3) as of January 2007, up from 39.1 Gbbl (6.22—10^9 m3) in 2006. About 80% of Libya's proven oil reserves are located in the Sirte Basin Province, which accounts for 90% of the country's oil output. The province ranks 13th among the world's petroleum provinces, having known reserves of 43.1 billion barrels (6.85—10^9 m3) of oil equivalent (367,00 000,000 bbl (0 m3) of oil, 37.7 trillion cubic feet (1.07—10^12 m3) of gas, 0.1 Gbbl (16,000,000 m3) of natural gas liquids).[3] The government dominates Libya's economy through control of oil resources, which account for approximately 95% of export earnings, 75% of government receipts, and over 50% of GDP, which was USD $50.2 billion in 2006.[4]

Early yearsEditLibya has attracted hydrocarbon exploration since 1956, when the first wildcat oil well was drilled onshore in the Sirte Basin. Libya granted multiple concessions to Esso, Mobil, Texas Gulf, and others, resulting in major oil discoveries by 1959.[5] In 1969, the Idrissid monarchy was overthrown in a bloodless coup led by Muammar Gaddafi. He eventually elaborated a new theory of the state in which all productive units and workplaces were to be directly governed by popular congresses. As part of his vision, the National Oil Corporation was established in 1970. The company's first Chairman was Salem Mohammed Amesh, who was later replaced by Omar Muntasir.[6] Under its articles of incorporation, NOC was legally restricted to Production sharing agreements (PSA) with international oil companies (IOCs) where the latter assumed all risks associated with exploration. In July 1970, further legislation made NOC responsible for marketing all domestic oil products.

Nationalization and the Arab oil embargoEditIn the 1970s Libya initiated a socialist style nationalization program under which the government either nationalized oil companies or became a participant in their concessions, production and transportation facilities.[7] As part of this program, NOC signed production-sharing agreements with Occidental Petroleum, Sincat (Italy), and formed a joint drilling company with Saipem (an Eni subsidiary). This was accompanied by nationalization of ConocoPhillips's Umm Farud field in 1970, British Petroleum's Sarir field in 1971 and Amoco's Sahabir field in 1976. After commencement of the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, Saudi Arabia, Libya, and other Arab states proclaimed an embargo on oil exports to countries who supported Israel, primarily the United States. Additionally, the NOC had encountered legal actions by BP over claims of ownership. Although the 1973 oil crisis increased global demand, BP's legal position made some countries wary of importing from Libya. NOC compensated for this weakness by arranging barter deals with France and Argentina. On March 18, 1974, the Arab oil ministers ended the US-embargo, with Libya being the sole exception. During 1974, agreements were reached with Exxon, Mobil, Elf Aquitaine and Agip provided production-sharing on an 85-15 basis onshore, 81-19 offshore. Eventually, all the foreign companies (excluding BP) agreed to partial nationalization, providing Libya with a substantial oil surplus. However, declining world oil prices resulted in NOC selling back its production shares. Other concessions that were nationalized that year included those belonging to BP, Amoseas (Beida field), Hunt, Arco, Esso and Shell's 17 percent share in the Oasis Oil Company. Mobil-Gelsenberg was owned by the NOC (51%), Mobil (32%), and Gelsenberg (17%).[8] Overall, during 1976 the National Oil Corporation produced about 408,000 bbl/d (64,900 m3/d) and exported 1.2 mmbpd.

U.S. sanctionsEditThe last phase of the socialist period was characterized by an intensive effort to build industrial capacity, but falling world oil prices in the early 1980s dramatically reduced government revenues and caused a serious decline in Libya's advantage in terms of energy costs.[9] More importantly, accusations of terrorism and Libya's growing friendship with the Soviet Union led to increased tensions with the West. On 10 March 1982, the U.S. prohibited imports of Libyan crude oil. Exxon and Mobil left their Libyan operations by January 1983. In March 1984, controls were expanded to prohibit exports to the Ras al-Enf petrochemical complex.

President Ronald Reagan imposed sanctions on 7 January 1986 under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, prohibiting US companies from any trade or financial dealings with Libya, while freezing Libyan assets in the US.[10] On 30 June 1986, the US Treasury Department forces remaining US oil companies to leave Libya but allows them to negotiate standstill agreements, retaining ownership for three years while allowing NOC to operate the fields. As a result, Amerada Hess, Conoco, Grace Petroleum, Marathon, and Occidental left a production entitlement that was generating 263,000 bbl/d (41,800 m3/d). Negotiations with NOC and US oil companies over assets dominated much of the late 1980s.

Libya responded by concluding its third Exploration and Production Sharing Arrangements (EPSA-III) in 1988, including agreements with Rompetrol, the Romanian Oil Company, Royal Dutch Shell, Montedison, International Petroleum Corporation of Canada, INA-Naftaplin, OMV, Braspetro and Husky Oil. The agreements included expenditure guarantees by the Libyan government, an important departure from earlier regulations, designed to help offset sanctions.

U.N. sanctions and afterwardEditLibya's isolation became even more pronounced following the 1992 imposition of United Nations sanctions designed to force Gaddafi to hand over two suspects indicted for the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. The sanctions, imposed on 31 March 1992, initially banned sales of equipment for refining and transporting oil, but excluded oil production equipment. Sanctions were expanded on 11 November 1993, to include a freeze on Libya's overseas assets, excluding revenue from oil, natural gas, or agricultural products. Under these condition, NOC Chairman Abdallah al-Badri emphasized reducing new projects and upgrading domestic facilities. Joint ventures were initiated with Veba, Petrofina, North African Petroleum, the Petroleum Development Co. (Republic of Korea) and Lasmo. Foreign operators were encouraged to produce exclusively for export, limited to national oil companies with pre-sanctions equity in Libya. This policy was an attempt to contain the amount of crude offered on the spot market through third-party traders, and increase downstream investment. In 2000, NOC was reorganized by the General People's Congress after the Ministry of Energy was abolished, further consolidating control over the sector.

Although U.N. sanctions were suspended in 1999, foreign investment was curtailed due to the U.S. Iran and Libya Sanctions Act (ILSA), which capped the annual amount foreign companies can invest in Libya at $20 million (lowered from $40 million in 2001). On 14 August 2003, Libya agreed to compensate families of the 1988 bombing with $2.7 billion, to be released in three tranches; the first following a lifting of UN sanctions, the second after lifting of US sanctions, and the third after Libya is removed from the U.S. State Department's state sponsors of terrorism list. On 22 December 2003, Libya announced it will abandon WMD programs and comply with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The US welcomes the move, but says it will maintain economic sanctions until it sees evidence of compliance. On 4 June 2004, US Assistant Secretary of Commerce William H. Lash announced that Libya sent its first shipment of crude oil to the US since resumption of ties between the two countries. In May 2006, the U.S. officially removed Libya from its list of states that sponsor terrorism and normalized ties and removed sanctions.[11] Since then, oil majors have stepped up exploration efforts for oil and natural gas in the country. Likewise, companies have tried using enhanced oil recovery (EOR) techniques to increase production at maturing fields.

Libyan civil war and transitionEditDuring the 2011 Libyan civil war, Oil Minister Shukri Ghanem defected and fled to Tunisia.[12] In September 2011, the National Transitional Council named Nuri Berruien as chairman of the NOC during the transitional period.[13] After a period when NOC was split between rival governments in eastern and western Libya, leaders in July 2016 reached an agreement to reunify the company's management.[14]

On 30 January 2005, Libya held its first round of oil and natural gas exploration leases since the US ended sanctions: 15 areas were offered for auctions. In October 2005, a second bidding round was held under EPSA IV, with 51 companies taking part and nearly $500 million worth of new investment flowing into the country as a result. In December 2006, Libya held its third bidding round; however, PSAs were still being signed by NOC as of April 2007. Winners of Libyan exploration area are determined based on how high a share of production a company is willing to offer NOC. Whichever company offer NOC the greatest share of profits is likely to win. In addition, oilfield developers initially bear 100% of costs (exploration, appraisal, and training) for a 5-year minimum, while NOC retains exclusive ownership. Also included in Libyan licensing rounds was open competitive bidding and transparency, joint development and marketing of non-associated natural gas discoveries, standardized terms for exploration and production (E&P), and non-recoverable bonuses.

Libya has substantial potential for exploration with an average of 16 wells per 10,000-km, whereas similar countries usually average 50 (the world average is 105).[15] IOC exploration will use imaging technology and stratigraphic concepts, extending to the Palaeozoic basins. These include the Murzuq, Kufra and Cyrenaica Platform regions, as well as the deeper Palaeozoic plays in the semi-mature (Ghadames) and mature (Sirte) basins. In 2007 it was estimated that only around 30% of Libya has been explored for hydrocarbons. In the Murzuq Basin, shows in oilwells in the early 1980s, followed by discoveries of giant fields like Elephant in 1997, opened a vast, formerly condemned, marginal province.

Oil and gas E&P is carried out by NOC subsidiaries and IOCs licensed by special participation and PSAs. These activities cover wide areas, both onshore and offshore, through Libya's territorial waters and continental shelf. NOC has a network of onshore oil, gas and product pipelines, crude oil export facilities and a gas pipeline. The Western Libyan Gas Project (WLGP) is a 50-50 joint venture between NOC and Eni, which came online in October 2004. Since then, WLGP has expanded to Italy and beyond. Currently, 280—10^9 cu ft (7.9—109 m3) per year of natural gas is exported from a processing facility at Melitah, on the Libyan coast, via Greenstream to southeastern Sicily. From Sicily, it flows to the Italian mainland, and then to the rest of Europe. In 2005, additional gas was supplied to the Greenstream pipeline from the Bahr Essalam Field, located in offshore Block NC-41.[16] Development of the Bahr Essalam, Wafa and Bouri Fields, which are part of WLGP, and the natural gas export pipeline represented a shift in Libyan emphasis from oilfield development to a mix of natural gas and oilfield projects. Previously, natural gas exports were limited to LNG.[17]

NOC hopes to increase total oil production from 1.80 mmbd in 2006 to 2 mmbd by 2008. Foreign direct investment into the oil sector is likely, which is attractive due to its low cost of oil recovery, high oil quality, and proximity to European markets.[18]

Field development and explorationEditIn November 2005, Repsol YPF discovered a significant oil deposit of light, sweet crude in the Murzuq Basin. Industry experts believe the discovery to be one of the biggest made in Libya for several years. Repsol YPF is joined by a consortium of partners including OMV, Total and Norsk Hydro. Also located in Murzuq Basin is Eni's Elephant field, onshore in Block NC-174. In October 1997, a consortium led by British company Lasmo, along with Eni and a group of five South Korean companies, announced that it had discovered large recoverable crude reserves 750 kilometres (470 mi) south of Tripoli. Lasmo estimated field production would cost around $1 per barrel. Elephant began production in February 2004. Eni (33.3% equity interest) operated the field for joint-venture partners NOC (33.3%), Korea National Oil Co. (16.67%), SK Corp of Korea (8.33%), Majuko Enterprise, Ltd. of Korea (5%), and Daesung Industrial Co. Ltd. of Korea (3.3%). The field was expected to produce 150,000 bbl/d (24,000 m3/d) when fully operational in 2007.[16]

WOCs Waha fields currently produce around 350,000 bbl/d (56,000 m3/d). On 29 December 2005, ConocoPhillips and co-venturers reached an agreement with NOC to return to its oil and natural gas exploration and production operations in Libya and extend the 13-million-acre (53,000 km2) Waha concessions another 25 years. ConocoPhillips operates the Waha fields with a 16.33% share in the project. NOC has the largest share of the Waha concession, and additional partners include Marathon Oil (16.33%) and Amerada Hess.[19]

In October 2013, Libya's oil minister Abdelbari Arusi revealed that the NOC was considering buying Marathon's stake in Waha.[20]

Downstream activitiesEditRefiningEditNOC owns and operates several refining facilities, in addition to many oil and natural gas processing companies. Close to 380,000 bbl/d (60,000 m3/d) of crude is refined by NOCs subsidiaries. Approximately 60% of refined products are exported, primarily to Europe. These are simple hydroskimming refineries, but their products meet market specifications due to high quality crude. As of early June 2007, NOC was evaluating investment proposals for upgrading its Ra's Lanuf refinery. Total cost of the upgrade is estimated at $2 billion. NOC is also expected to re-tender an engineering, procurement and construction contract for upgrading the Zawia refinery. NOC's refineries include:

RefineryCapacityOperatorZawia Refinery120,000ZOCRa's Lanuf Refinery220,000RLOGPCBrega Refinery10,000SOCTobruk Refinery20,000AgocoSarir Refinery10,000AgocoNotes:1. Amounts in barrels per day.

PetrochemicalsEditThe Ra's Lanuf refinery produces petrochemicals, utilizing naphtha as a feed stock to an ethylene plant with a capacity of 1.2 million tpy (tons per year). Its main products are ethylene (330,000 tpy), propylene (170,000 tpy), Mix C4 (130,000 tpy) and P Gasoline (335,000 tpy). NOC also has two polyethylene plants, (HDPE and LLDPE) each with a capacity of 160,000 mt/year. These plants produce various products which are mostly exported. In Brega there is another petrochemical complex using natural gas as a feedstock. In May 2005, Shell agreed to a final deal with NOC to develop Libyan oil and gas resources, including LNG export facilities. The deal came after lengthy negotiations on the terms of a March 2004 framework agreement. Reportedly, Shell is aiming to upgrade and expand Brega and possibly build a new LNG export facility as well at a cost of $105''$450 million.[21] The plants in this complex are:

Plant TypeNo.CapacityGas Liquification11,565—10^12 cu ft/d (44,300 km3/d)Ammonia2733,000Methanol2660,000Urea2916,000Notes:1. EIA 2007 (In mt/yr unless stated otherwise)

Most of the petroleum products produced by the National Oil Corporation are sold on a term basis, including to the country's overseas oil retail and marketing network Oilinvest, also known as Tamoil. Through Tamoil, Libya is a direct producer and distributor of refined products in Italy, Germany, Switzerland, and Egypt. Tamoil Italia, based in Milan, controls about 7.5% of Italy's retail market for oil products and lubricants, which are distributed through 3,000 Tamoil service stations. Libya's ability to increase the supply of oil products to European markets has been constrained by Libya's refineries' need for substantial upgrading to meet stricter European Union environmental standards in place since 1996. In June 2007, U.S.-based Colony Capital reached an agreement to take over 65% of Tamoil, while the Libyan government will retain 35%. Libya will continue to control Tamoil Africa, which operates retail stations in Egypt and Burkina Faso, as well as other African nations. NOC oil is also sold on a term basis to foreign oil companies like Agip, OMV, Repsol YPF, Tupras, CEPSA, and Total; and small volumes to Asian and South African companies.[2]

With domestic consumption of 284,000 bbl/d (45,200 m3/d) in 2006, Libya had estimated net exports (including all liquids) of 1.525 million bpd. The majority of Libyan oil exports are sold to European countries, such as Italy (495,000 bpd), Germany (253,000 bpd), Spain (113,000 bpd), and France (87,000 bpd). After the lifting of sanctions against Libya in 2004, the United States has gradually increased its importation of Libyan oil; the U.S. imported an average of 85,500 bbl/d (13,590 m3/d) of total Libyan oil exports in 2006, up from 56,000 bbl/d (8,900 m3/d) in 2005. Italy's Edison S.p.A. has committed, under a "take-or-pay" contract, to taking around half (140 Bcf per year) of the natural gas from the WLGP, and to use it mainly for power generation in Italy. Besides Edison, Italy's Energia Gas and Gaz de France committed to taking around 70—10^9 cu ft (2.0—109 m3) of Libyan natural gas. Another 70—10^9 cu ft (2.0—109 m3) per year is to be produced from WLGP for the domestic Libyan market (feedstock or power generation) or possibly for export to Tunisia.

StatisticAmountProven oil reserves (2007E)41.5 b/bblOil production (2006E)1.8 mmbd (95% crude)Oil consumption (2006E)284,000 bbl/d (45,200 m3/d)Net oil exports (2006E)1,525 MbpdCrude oil distillation capacity (2006E)378 mbpdProven natural gas reserves (2007E)52.7 tcfNatural gas production (2006E)399—10^9 cu ft (1.13—1010 m3)Natural gas consumption (2005E)206—10^9 cu ft (5.8—109 m3)Notes:1. Energy Information Administration (2007)

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Wed, 03 Aug 2016 06:11

Tamoil is the trading name of the Oilinvest Group, a fuel energy provider within the European downstream oil and gas sector. The Oilinvest Group refines crude oil and markets refined oil products primarily under the Tamoil and the HEM brands in Europe. The Oilinvest Group is involved in supplying, trading, refining and selling petroleum products in Italy, Germany, Switzerland, Spain and the Netherlands and carries out its trading activities from Cyprus.

The headquarters of Oilinvest (Netherlands) B.V. is located in the World Trade Center The Hague, from where it oversees all its investments in the European oil downstream markets. The CEO is Mr. Asim Gusbi.

The origins of the Oilinvest Group date back to 1988, when the Group was established to consolidate a number of European energy investments that were made by the Libyan state. The 'Tamoil' brand name was born following the acquisition of a refinery and a retail network in Italy.

During the 1990s Oilinvest expanded its Tamoil brand rapidly by increasing its position in Italy and entering markets in Switzerland (1990), Germany (1991), Spain (1992) and the Netherlands (1993) before moving into Egypt in 1993. From 2000 onwards, Oilinvest expanded its activities in Africa in over 19 African countries before selling the African business to another Libyan company.

Oilinvest formally severed its link to the Muammar Gaddafi government of Libya in 2011 by moving most of its stock from the Libyan government to a Dutch stichting (foundation), which allowed the company to continue operation despite EU sanctions on Libya.[1] As of September 2012 it had returned to 70% ownership by the Libyan National Oil Corporation and 30% by the Libyan government.[2]

6 European countries2.462 service stations1.300 direct employees10.6 billion euro turnover2.470 retail outlets4.3 billion liters sales of oil products to end users8.4 kiloton of oil products to whole sellers160.000 barrels per day refining capacityTrading 60 million barrels of crude oil12.140 metric tons of lubricants salesOperationsEditThe Oilinvest Group is currently operating under its Tamoil and HEM brands in Italy, Germany, Switzerland, Spain and the Netherlands and carries out its trading activities from Cyprus.

Italy: Supply, Logistics, Wholesale, Retail, lubricant production - 1.580 service stationsSwitzerland: Refining, Supply, Logistics, Wholesale, Retail - 303 service stationsGermany: Refining, Supply, Logistics, Wholesale, Retail - 405 service stationsSpain: Retail - 23 service stationsThe Netherlands: Logistics, Retail - 151 service stationsCyprus: Trading, Supply, ShippingRefiningEditThe Oilivest Group owns several refineries in Europe. The refined products produced by these refineries are sold primarily through the Group's retail networks and wholesale channels.

LubricantsEditThe Oilinvest Group is involved in the blending, marketing and trading of lubricants. The group is primarily present in three distinct lines of lubricants: automotive, industrial and greases.

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Wed, 03 Aug 2016 06:09

Sat Feb 14, 2015 | 3:38 PM EST

TRIPOLI (Reuters) - Libya's National Oil Corporation urgently called on Saturday for more official protection for its installations after an oil pipeline from its El Sarir field was sabotaged, halting flow to Hariga port.

In a separate incident, gunmen stormed government buildings in the coastal city of Sirte, forcing officials out at gunpoint and taking over administrative offices and television and radio stations, the state news agency said.

No group claimed responsibility for Saturday's pipeline sabotage, but oil infrastructure, ports and pipelines in the North African OPEC member state are often targets of attack.

Libya is riven by conflict, with two rival governments operating their own armed forces under separate parliaments, nearly four years after the civil war that led to the overthrow and death of leader Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.

The fighting also involves Islamist militant groups, former rebels, soldiers who fought for Gaddafi, and tribal and federalist factions often pursuing local causes.

In addition to the El Sarir sabotage, the National Oil Corporation said in a statement that gunmen had also tried on Friday to attack the Bahi oil facility in central Libya, but did not cause any damage.

"The NOC warns that the number of oil installation guards currently in the fields is not enough to protect them and to address such attacks," it said.

No more details were immediately available about the attack in Sirte, where several Islamist militant groups are active.

Hariga oil terminal supervisor Rajab Abdulrasoul told Reuters on Saturday the El Sarir pipeline was hit at around 5 a.m, igniting a blaze and shutting of the flow to Hariga port.

"Hopefully, they will be able to control the fire as soon as they can," he said. He had earlier said the incident was a bomb attack, but later said it was sabotage and a fire.

An NOC spokesman said a tanker had been loading up with crude at Hariga. He said it could take up to three days to restore the pipeline.

Hariga had just reopened after a strike by guards there. The country's two main oil ports and nearby fields are still closed after clashes between rival armed groups trying to gain control of them.

Libya's oil production has fallen to around 350,000 barrels a day, a fraction of the 1.6 million bpd Libya used to pump before the NATO-backed 2011 uprising that ended Gaddafi's rule.

Apart from fighting between the two rival factions vying for control of Libya, militants claiming ties to Islamic State extremists in Iraq and Syria have also said they carried out several recent attacks.

Two gunmen attacked Tripoli's Corinthia hotel last month, killing nine people, including five foreigners, in an attack claimed by militants who said they were loyal to Islamic State.

Earlier this month, gunmen killed 12 people south of Sirte, among them two Filipino and two Ghanaian nationals, after storming a remote oilfield. Officials said most of the victims were beheaded or shot.

French and Libyan officials said Islamic State militants were behind the attack on the oilfield, in which France's Total has a stake, but which is operated by a Libyan company.

(Reporting by Ahmed Elumami and Ulf Laessing; Writing by Patrick Markey; Editing by Tom Heneghan)

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Wed, 03 Aug 2016 06:08

ByPatrick Markey and Ahmed Elumami|TRIPOLI

TRIPOLI (Reuters) - When Islamic State militants attacked a perimeter gate guarding Libya's Es Sider oil terminal this month, they sent gunmen to kill guards before attempting to detonate a car bomb in a bid to breach the port's defenses.

The assault failed to get closer than a mile (1.6 km) from one of Libya's major oil ports, but it signaled Islamic State's intent to expand beyond their base in the city of Sirte and target the OPEC state's oil infrastructure.

Four years after the fall of leader Muammar Gaddafi, Libya is in a conflict with two rival governments each backed by competing armed factions, creating a power vacuum that has allowed Islamic State to establish a foothold in North Africa.

It was not the first Islamic State attack on Libyan oil. But the country's petroleum industry is already battered by conflict and protests, producing less than half the output of 1.6 million barrels per day (bpd) it had in 2011.

In its Middle East heartland, where it controls large swathes of land in Iraq and Syria, Islamic State has accessed revenue from oilfields. Terrorism experts estimate its income at $2.9 billion a year, much of it from oil and gas.

In Libya, though, Islamic State is still consolidating. It co-opts domestic Islamist ranks, but faces rival armed factions with strong local ties. That resistance and the structure of Libya's energy industry and export system may also prevent Islamic State from controlling assets and revenue.

But as chaos deepens, so do its opportunities.

With Sirte as a base, earlier this year Islamic State fighters attacked several nearby oilfields, capturing and killing several foreign contractors and disrupting oil production in the area.

Libya's oil sector is still in turmoil. Production is at around 500,000 bpd, several oilfields are closed due to fighting among rivals or protests, and two key export terminals, Es Sider and Ras Lanuf, have been shut since December.

"No doubt, we have an obstacle which is Islamic State, especially in the middle region of Libya," the oil minister for Tripoli's government, Mashallah Zwei, told Reuters. "But Islamic State in Libya is different to Iraq and Syria."

The attack on Es Sider's perimeter earlier this month looked a typical hit-and-run strike of a group facing a stronger opponent rather than an orchestrated takeover. Gunmen in several vehicles opened fire with Kalashnikov rifles and heavy machine guns at a gate around 700 meters west of the port.

One guard, belonging to a federalist force allied with the recognized government, was killed and two others wounded. Militants tried to detonate a car-bomb at the gate, but four of them were shot dead, security officials said.

Es Sider and Ras Lanuf, with a total export capacity of 500,000 bpd, have been closed since December because of fighting between federalist forces controlling the ports and brigades allied with Tripoli's self-styled government who vowed to take them back.

"Islamic State has realized that the largest factions are more interested in fighting each other," said Mattia Toaldo, Libya specialist at the European Council on Foreign Relations. "It is expanding in central Libya, encountering little resistance."

ON-THE-GROUND REALITIES

Since the NATO-backed revolt toppled Gaddafi, Libya has fractured into a complex jigsaw of rival brigades of ex-rebels, tribal factions and Islamist-leaning forces who have steadily turned against one another in an internecine battle for control.

Tripoli has been held since last year by Libya Dawn, an alliance of armed factions from the port city of Misrata and Islamist-leaning fighters who drove rivals out of the capital and set up their own self-declared government.

Libya's internationally recognized government and elected parliament now operate out of Tobruk in the east, backed by a loose coalition of armed forces, including ex-Gaddafi ally General Khalifa Haftar and the federalists controlling the ports.

Powerful armed factions hold different areas and cities and their loyalties are often more aligned with local interests, complicating U.N. attempts to negotiate a unity government.

Libya's oilfields and ports also sit in areas held by competing factions, allowing one armed group to cut off a pipeline, for example, to pressure another.

In March, Islamic State made its first major move on oil, storming and damaging several Libyan oilfields around al-Ghani. That forced the government to declare force majeure, and shut down production at 11 oilfields in the central Sirte basin. Eleven guards were killed, several by beheading.

But there was no attempt to hold fields and secure revenue as Islamic State has done in Iraq and Syria. The aim was destruction.

"The profile of the sector is just too different from that of Iraq," said Geoff Porter at West Point's Combating Terrorism Center. "If Islamic State can get even temporary chokeholds on the sector then it can weaken its opponents and buy itself time to consolidate its position."

TOUGH REVIVAL

Even before Islamic State's arrival, Libya's oil industry has been in almost constant flux since Gaddafi's fall, held or taken over by one of the country's competing armed forces rather than any central government.

Low oil production is cutting into energy revenues that pay for most of the national budget. The situation has been further complicated by the rivalries between the two governments, who both appointed state oil officials and energy ministers.

Relations between competing forces controlling oil ports and the Al-Ryayna pipeline leading from the key El Sharara oilfield to ports illustrate the complexities of bringing output back.

Tripoli says it is negotiating with tribal elders to lift a blockade on the pipeline carrying crude through an area controlled by forces from the town of Zintan, who oppose the Tripoli authorities.

But Zintan forces deny any talks with Tripoli's government, saying the fields were closed as a precaution by oil guards after recent Islamist attacks on southern fields.

"There are no consultations with the ministry of oil and gas in Tripoli as it is not legitimate," the mayor of Zintan, Mustafa Al-Barouni, said.

Tripoli state news agency LANA said another oilfield, El Feel, may be reopened within days after a deal to pay guards' salaries. But one commander said they still had not been officially told to restart and must wait for the Al-Ryayna pipeline to open.

Early last year, federalist forces commanded by Ibrahim al-Jathran ended months of blockades of the four major oil ports, including Es Sider, that his forces control, after threatening to bypass the government and sell oil himself.

His forces since battled the Tripoli faction this year when they tried to retake Es Sider. But he also recently split with forces backing the recognized government.

U.N. efforts to broker a unity government among the main factions have stalled, and a failure to bring all on board only leaves Islamic State more chance to target oil again.

"Their goal is to maximize the impact of their operations on oil production while minimizing losses," Riccardo Fabiani, North Africa analyst at Eurasia Group, said. "They are likely to continue to do so."

(Editing by Dale Hudson)

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Wed, 03 Aug 2016 06:04

If you're curious about what infrastructure is in who's territory, these two maps will help.

The first (apologies for the blurriness) is look at Libya's oil infrastructure. Note the big pipelines from the Murzuk Fields straight up to Tripoli:

BofA/Merrill Lynch

As for who controls what, see this map we posted this weekend. It's easy to see, instantly, why Qaddafi is cut off.

Wikipedia

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Wed, 03 Aug 2016 06:02

Libyan Oil Fields and PipelinesMore Maps -- Libyan Oil Sector News and DataCredit, Rights: NordNordWest, Yug, Creative Commons license

Tribes of LibyaSource: CIA

Maps and Data about Libyan Oil ProductionLibya oil field battle lines

Noam Chomsky - Deterring Democracy: 3April2011 CHOMSKY WRITES ABOUT Libya and the World of Oil

Karl Naylor.: The Stakes in the Libyan War.Libya Minerals inventory by US Geological Service

Report on Sitre oil reserves in Libya

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Wed, 03 Aug 2016 06:01

Hafsa Kara-Mustapha is a journalist, political analyst and commentator with a special focus on the Middle East and Africa. She has worked for the FT group and Reuters and her work has been published in the Middle East magazine, Jane's Foreign report, El Watan and a host of international publications. A regular pundit on TV and radio, Hafsa can regularly be seen on RT and Press TV.

Last month protests erupted in Libya over French military operations conducted inside the country without local authorities' consent. On Monday, Libyan officials said with much fanfare and pride the US had started bombing Sirte.

The coastal Libyan city - Gaddafi's hometown - turned into an IS stronghold following his forceful removal in 2011.

What a mess Libya truly is in. Its corrupt leadership, placed at the helm of the country on the back of a brutal NATO onslaught that transformed the formerly stable country into one of the most troubled spots in Africa, is now welcoming bombing raids on the destroyed town.

While the aim of the operation is hard to predict since IS fighters have dispersed, the raid does come at an interesting time.

Since Gaddafi's ousting and the country's rapid descent into chaos and lawlessness, many Libyans have been eager to see a return of the old guard, known as the 'Green' Libyans in reference to the slain leader's manifesto and flag during the years of the people's republic or 'Jamahiriya'.

The return of the Greens to the political fore has been troublesome for those Libyans who are in power thanks to NATO and who have since been busy emptying the country's coffers.

As the former leadership crumbled under the weight of a six month-long bombing campaign, banks and state-owned companies were raided by new Western approved officials brought in to take over. In those dying days of the Gaddafi era, they endeavored to rid the country of its vast wealth, channeling much of it to foreign accounts where monies are still held today.

As Libyans demand a return of the previous leadership, the new order is nervous. No doubt a return of the Greens would lead to a purge in the government ranks of all those who collaborated with the Western-led coalition that transformed Libya into rubble and turned many of its cities into IS-held towns.

A return to the previous order would also indicate that what was hailed as a ''revolution to remove a brutal tyrant'' was a propaganda operation solely aimed at regime change and a chance for Western capitals to rid the African country of much of its precious commodities, namely oil.

Gaddafi's son, Saif, in captivity in Zintan for over five years, and said to have been released in April, is being touted for a prominent role in Libya's future after it was revealed his captors would pardon him after he was sentenced to death by a court in Tripoli.

The message aimed at the international community is clear: Libyans want to see a return of the Greens to power.

The presence of the French army in Libya, only revealed after three of its soldiers were killed, coupled with the bombing raid in Sirte, indicates however that the UN-backed authorities are looking to thwart efforts to see a return of Gaddafi's supporters at the helm.

There is little apparent point to the bombing raid, insists Libyan academic Mabruk Derbesh. ''These bombs are redundant as ISIS has almost been defeated in that area,'' he added.

Other sources in Libya insist this raid is designed to add to the ambient chaos and plunge the country further into internecine conflict. ''Isn't it strange that every time we appear to see a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel, Western countries come and bomb us back into it?''

The sentiment for many Libyans is that a Western military presence can only exacerbate existing tensions. As the situation worsened, many Libyans realized the only way out would be to concentrate efforts in a common policy to root out terrorist forces coming from the outside and rallying behind one consensual leadership. The first proved popular; the second however more problematic, yet with the emergence of the Greens once again as a formidable force, many previously hostile to the old order, have been coming round, seeing it as the only credible alternative.

These attacks on Sirte will only slow down the process and derail an already fragile road map to national unity. But who benefits from a rudderless Libya?

Read more

The UN-approved leadership supports these blind raids that will no doubt kill and maim many on the ground leading to an inevitable inflation in IS ranks as a result.

The social collapse has already transformed the country into a safe haven for both IS terrorists and human traffickers who've doubled their efforts in the summer months to push for more sub Saharan migration into Europe.

A bombing raid on coastal towns can only push more to flee the already war-torn and unstable country.

In this ongoing turmoil, French and American armies can continue to operate concerned little by what the central government will do or say.

Only a strong authority can oppose what are clear violations of Libyan sovereignty, however with a collaborationist government with no credibility at the helm and an almost total absence of order on the ground, foreign armies can continue to operate as they see fit.

It's worth noting that the first decisions once on Libyan soil for US and British forces was to secure the oil refineries. That the rest of the country was being ripped apart as warring militias continued to fight over the spoils was secondary; the priority was to safeguard ongoing oil output.

For Libyans there is therefore little advantage to these air raids. The current leadership clearly has no power to oppose them and has therefore agreed to go along with what appears to be an operation to re-enforce a Western presence in Libya, a country sandwiched between the Arab world's most populous nation Egypt and Africa's largest country and one of its most oil and gas wealthy: Algeria.

All in all, these operations offer advantages to Western powers while giving nothing in return to Libya which will bear the brunt of its consequences.

According to academic Derbesh, President Obama is fulfilling his Democratic Party's obligation to strengthen Hillary Clinton's campaign. ''After all, Clinton was the one who convinced Obama to go along and champion the war on Libya through visits to France and England. Libya's case will come up during the election, so this is one way to combat any negative campaigning using Libya, which appears to be Clinton's weakest link as secretary of state, considering Syria's war has the support of both parties, and so can't be used against her by her Republican opponent.''

Whichever way this latest military operation into an Arab country is viewed, it's likely to lead to a rising death toll conveniently dismissed as IS terrorists while no doubt aiding American politicians in their race to the White House.

As is customary that race will be paved with the corpses of Arabs and Africans. A few more dead in ravaged Libya will hardly make a difference to Western audiences.

As for Libyans, the price tag of their alliance with NATO continues to rise, though the currency in use continues to lose value.

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.

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Source: Russia Beyond The Headlines

Mon, 01 Aug 2016 20:03

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Russian planes actively help Syrian army to repel militant attacks and deliver selective air strikes at militant positions near Aleppo, Sergei Rudskoi, the head of the main operational department of the Russian General Staff, told journalists on August 1.

"The Russian Aerospace Forces' planes actively support government troops helping them to repel the enemy attacks and delivering selective air strikes at the militant positions," he said.

Rudskoi added that the Russian planes were not bombing target located within the city boundaries.

Russia and the Syrian government have launched a full-scale humanitarian operation near Aleppo on July 28. Four humanitarian corridors have opened in Aleppo to enable the local population to leave the city. Planes are dropping food, medical supplies and essentials meant for the civilians.

Fierce fighting is under way in the city outskirts. Earlier Rudskoi reported an attempt by almost 5,000 militants to launch an offensive to the southwest of Aleppo.

Source: Tass.com

Read more: Russian Mi-8 helicopter shot down in Syria>>>

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Wed, 03 Aug 2016 14:28

ISTANBUL '-- A Turkish newspaper reported that an American academic and former State Department official had helped orchestrate a violent conspiracy to topple the Turkish government from a fancy hotel on an island in the Sea of Marmara, near Istanbul. The same newspaper, in a front-page headline, flat-out said the United States had tried to assassinate President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on the night of the failed coup.

When another pro-government newspaper asked Turks in a recent poll conducted on Twitter which part of the United States government had supported the coup plotters, the C.I.A. came in first, with 69 percent, and the White House was a distant second, with 20 percent.

These conspiracy theories are not the product of a few cranks on the fringes of Turkish society. Turkey may be a deeply polarized country, but one thing Turks across all segments of society '-- Islamists, secular people, liberals, nationalists '-- seem to have come together on is that the United States was somehow wrapped up in the failed coup, either directly or simply because the man widely suspected to be the leader of the conspiracy, the Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen, lives in self-exile in the United States.

''Whenever something shocking and horrific happens in Turkey, the reflex is conspiracy,'' said Akin Unver, an assistant professor of international relations at Kadir Has University in Istanbul.

That response goes back almost a century, to the end of World War I, when the West carved up the defeated Ottoman Empire. A Western plan to divide what became modern Turkey failed after Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the country's founder, waged war against the occupiers. But the effort forever ingrained in the Turkish psyche a fear of Western conspiracies.

In the case of the failed coup, there is much more at play than fanciful conspiracy theories, many Turks say, because of the nearly universal conviction that it was engineered by Mr. Gulen, who for 16 years has lived in a secluded compound in the Pocono Mountains in Pennsylvania.

In various interviews and statements, Mr. Gulen has strongly denied involvement in the coup. Yet because he lives in the United States, and because of other salient facts '-- including that a former C.I.A. official and a former American ambassador to Turkey helped Mr. Gulen receive a green card '-- many Turks believe Mr. Gulen is an American agent. From there, it is a short step to the conclusion that the United States conspired with him to bring down the Turkish government.

''The U.S. is behind the coup, no doubt,'' said Haluk Taylan, 48, a shopkeeper in Istanbul. ''The deep state of the U.S., the C.I.A., had a role in it.''

The theories have become so rampant that top American officials, including President Obama, have been forced to publicly deny trying to topple the government of a NATO ally.

''I know there isn't any real evidence yet, but I think it would be na¯ve to say that the U.S. has no involvement in the coup attempt,'' said Bekir Karabulut, a software developer in Istanbul. ''The U.S. likes to meddle in our business, and the C.I.A. has supported Gulen for years. They helped him flee from Turkey.''

Turkey has demanded Mr. Gulen's extradition, saying he commands the Fethullah Terror Organization. To back the claim, the Turkish government has sent a dossier of evidence to the White House, although it has not yet made a formal legal request.

A delegation of Turkish lawmakers arrived in the United States this week to press the case, and the two countries appear to be on a collision course over the matter. In an interview on CNN Turk, John R. Bass, the United States ambassador to Turkey, referred to ''the apparent involvement of a large number'' of Mr. Gulen's supporters in the coup plot. Analysts are doubtful Turkey will be able to provide evidence for extradition that will hold up in an American court.

Turks, in their exasperation that the United States has not turned over Mr. Gulen, have made this analogy: What if Turkey, in 2001, had harbored Osama bin Laden?

Given the widespread sentiment that Mr. Gulen was behind the coup, a failure to extradite him would probably provoke a popular backlash in Turkey against the United States, and would confirm for many that the Americans had conspired against Turkey.

Graphic | The Scale of Turkey's Purge Is Nearly Unprecedented How the Turkish president's sweeping purge of political opponents would look if Americans were targeted at a similar scale.

''If they don't give him back, that is the end of our relationship with America,'' said Osman Arsan, a waiter in Istanbul. ''They are backstabbing and insincere. They must show their true colors. If not, they should prepare themselves for the response of the Turkish people. We are all united for this cause. We will not forgive them.''

Turks have also been rankled by what they see as the preoccupation of the United States and Europe with Mr. Erdogan's post-coup crackdown, rather than standing by Turkey for facing down the existential threat the coup represented.

The West has criticized the purges, in which thousands of soldiers have been arrested and tens of thousands of government employees dismissed from their jobs for supposed links to Mr. Gulen, as Mr. Erdogan has moved quickly against perceived enemies in the government.

But many of Mr. Erdogan's traditional opponents '-- Kurds, secularists, nationalists '-- have long worried about the influence of Mr. Gulen's loyalists inside the state, and are largely united in believing Mr. Gulen was behind the coup. They not only support the purges, but also assume that the United States is taking Mr. Gulen's side.

Turkish leaders have been playing a double game with the notion of American involvement in the coup, sometimes encouraging the conspiracy theories publicly while privately assuring American officials that nothing has changed in the countries' relationship.

Interactive Feature | Today's Headlines: European Morning Get news and analysis from Europe and around the world delivered to your inbox every day in the European morning.

Ibrahim Kalin, Mr. Erdogan's spokesman, recently told reporters, ''We don't think that the U.S. has any involvement in the coup attempt.''

And this week, when Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, visited Ankara, the capital, Turkish officials assured him that their country was intent on maintaining a close relationship in the fight against the Islamic State.

Last week, an American general said he was concerned about the relationship with Turkey because several Turkish officers who had been interlocutors with the United States on counterterrorism issues had been arrested after being accused of taking part in the coup. Mr. Erdogan seized on these comments and lashed out at the United States.

''The U.S. general stands on the coup plotters' side with his words,'' he said. ''He disclosed himself with his statements.''

Saying the comments amounted to standing beside the coup plotters, Mr. Erdogan also referred to Mr. Gulen, saying: ''The coup plotter is in your country. You are nurturing him there. It's out in the open.''

Safak Timur contributed reporting.

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Wed, 03 Aug 2016 23:39

Feb. 1, 2016 2:00pm

As America increases its global ties and interacts with foreign ways and cultures, it imports the good, the bad and the ugly.

A Turkish Muslim cleric named Fethullah G¼len, who resides in Pennsylvania, appears to have brought an unhealthy mix of politics and religion to his country of asylum.

G¼len has built a global religious movement, which has attracted some 5 to 8 million followers worldwide (the exact number is unknown). In the process, some of his followers have apparently amassed tremendous wealth '' the G¼len-affiliated net business worth exceeds $25 billion.

AP

The myriad of organizations affiliated with the G¼len movement include banks, newspapers, universities, charities, research institutes, and the largest network of private Muslim schools in the world. The school curriculum is not overtly Islamist, and claims to focus on science, technology, engineering and math (also known as STEM).

Unfortunately, it appears that these operations are being used like a giant vacuum cleaner to syphon off hundreds of millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars, with the leading role in these activities being played by the G¼len-inspired U.S. network of charter schools, the largest in the country. Taken together, they receive approximately $150 million a year in tax breaks and subsidies.

Some say the G¼lenist organization is a combination of cult, cabal and corporation. Most concerning, it appears to be busy buying, using and abusing political power.

The web reaches up to the corridors of the U.S. Congress and down to local schools from Texas to Tahoe. According to a USA TODAY investigation, over 200 trips for congressmen and congressional staff have been sponsored by G¼lenist entities.

Hillary Clinton's campaign and the Clinton Foundation have taken in hundreds of thousands of dollars from G¼len's followers, including from Recep Ozkan, former president of the G¼len-connected Turkish Cultural Center.

Mr. Ozkan has been identified as a key G¼len operative in New York. According to the Clinton Foundation website, he contributed between $500,000 and $1 million. Unsurprisingly, former President Bill Clinton has appeared at G¼len movement events and praised the founder's contributions to world peace and inter-religious understanding.

The ties also go directly to the Democratic presidential candidate. The same Mr. Ozkan hosted then-Sen. Hillary Clinton at Ramadan dinners in 2006 and 2007. He contributed $25,000 to her 2008 presidential campaign. As an executive of JIG Corp, Everglobel Partners and Baharu Inc., he gave $25,000 to the pro-Clinton Ready PAC in 2014 and topped it with extra $5,400 last year.

(Photo by Yana Paskova/Getty Images)

And not only Democrats have benefited. Numerous other G¼len-affiliated Turkish Americans, including Gokhan Ozkok, who is connected to the Turkish Cultural Center, Sema Education, Apple Education Services, the Turkic-American Business Network, the Istanbul Center, Peace Islands Institute, Global Spectrum Foundation and the Turkish American Business Council, have contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Clinton, Jeb Bush, and other campaigns, Republican and Democrat.

Some of the G¼lenist money to Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas) came from out of state and despite donations in thousands of dollars, the supposed donors reported incomes below $40,000 and no home ownership.

Other G¼lenist donors did not know candidates to whom they donated. They had no idea that Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.), is a woman, not a man. In the segregated and misogynistic culture promoted by the G¼len movement, a woman apparently cannot be conceived of as a Senator.

Sen. Ayotte has returned $43,000 of G¼len donations '' however the Clinton campaign is procrastinating, and so are other beneficiaries.

Currently, the FBI is engaged in a massive probe of G¼lenist activities in this country. However, the investigation is limited to the G¼len-linked schools.

The political ambition of the global movement is obvious. It is the task of law enforcement to protect our politics, our country, and most importantly our children, from illicit external influences. Therefore, as FBI investigates the network, it can also look into the political donations by the members of the movement.

In a speech to an inner circles of supporters, G¼len is quoted as saying:

You must move in the arteries of the system without anyone noticing your existence until you reach all the power centers. . . . Until the conditions are ripe, they [the followers] must continue like this. If they do something prematurely, the world will crush our heads, and Muslims will suffer everywhere. . . . The time is not yet right. You must wait for the time when you are complete and conditions are ripe, until we can shoulder the entire world and carry it. . . . You must wait until you have gotten all the state power, until you have brought to your side all the power of the constitutional institutions in Turkey . . . . Now, I have expressed my feelings and thoughts to you all'--in confidence . . . trusting your loyalty and secrecy. I know that when you leave here, [just] as you discard your empty juice boxes, you must discard the thoughts and the feelings that I expressed here.

While he was talking about Turkey, it is not unreasonable to question whether the same paradigm is now being applied to the US. Turkey, by the way, has taken steps to protect itself from the fugitive cleric and his followers by cracking down on their organizations and issuing a warrant for G¼len's arrest.

Turkey is an important American ally, a bridge between Europe and Asia, sitting astride the Middle East, the Black Sea, and the Caucasus. However, until matters are completely cleared, it is time for political candidates to return the G¼len network campaign and charity money while the FBI does its job and carries on the painstaking work of investigations. It is also the time for the U.S. Congress to get to the bottom of this web of money, power and influence, and shine the light of justice on it '' once and for all.

Ariel Cohen, PhD, is Director, Center for Energy, Natural Resources and Geopolitics and Senior Fellow at the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security (www.iags.org)

''

TheBlaze contributor channel supports an open discourse on a range of views. The opinions expressed in this channel are solely those of each individual author.

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Thu, 04 Aug 2016 12:32

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Thu, 04 Aug 2016 13:14

Thursday 4th August 2016

A woman has been killed and five people injured in a knife attack in Russell Square, central London.

This is everything we know about the incident:

- Six people were stabbed as an armed man attacked people with a knife in Russell Square

- 19-year-old suspect is a Norwegian national of Somalian origin

- Injured people are British, Israeli, American and Austrian

- Police say no evidence of radicalisation found

- The incident happened outside the Imperial Hotel on the central London square.

- One American woman in her 60s was pronounced dead at the scene.

- Two other women and three men were injured in the attack. Two of those people remain in hospital.

- Police were called to the incident just after 22.30 last night and armed officers attended the scene within five minutes.

- Officers tasered the 19-year-old suspect and arrested him. He was under police guard in hospital and is now being questioned at a south London police station.

- At first, police said that mental health is a significant factor in this case, but terrorism remains one line of inquiry for the motive.

- However, in a statement at 9am, they removed the mention of terror from their statement.

- Armed Met Police officers on patrol this morning at London tube stations and landmarks to reassure public.

- Most cordons around Russell Square have now been re-opened.

- Assistant Commissioner Mark Rowley said: "This was a tragic incident resulting in the death of one woman and five others being injured. Early indications suggest that mental health was a factor in this horrific attack. However we are keeping an open mind regarding the motive and terrorism remains one line of inquiry being explored."

- Mayor of London Sadiq Khan said: "I urge all Londoners to remain calm and vigilant. Please report anything suspicious to the police'Ž. We all have a vital role to play as eyes and ears for our police and security services and in helping to ensure London is protected."

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Mon, 01 Aug 2016 05:26

First a heatwave hit Siberia. Then came the anthrax.

Temperatures have soared in western Russia's Yamal tundra this summer. Across Siberia, some provinces warmed an additional 10 degrees Fahrenheit beyond normal. In the fields, large bubbles of vegetation appeared above the melting permafrost '-- strange pockets of methane or, more likely, water. Record fires blazed through dry Russian grassland.

In one of the more unusual symptoms of unseasonable warmth, long-dormant bacteria appear to be active. For the first time since 1941, anthrax struck western Siberia. Thirteen Yamal nomads were hospitalized, including four children, the Siberian Times reported. The bacteria took an even worse toll on wildlife, claiming some 1,500 reindeer since Sunday.

[Scientists are floored by what's happening in the Arctic right now]

According to NBC News, the outbreak is thought to stem from a reindeer carcass that died in the plague 75 years ago. As the old flesh thawed, the bacteria once again became active. The disease tore through the reindeer herds, prompting the relocation of dozens of the indigenous Nenet community. Herders face a quarantine that may last until September.

The governor, Dmitry Kobylkin, declared a state of emergency. On Tuesday, Kobylkin said ''all measures'' had been taken to isolate the area, according to AP. ''Now the most important thing is the safety and health of our fellow countrymen '-- the reindeer herders and specialists involved in the quarantine.''

Anthrax has broken out in Russia several times, including one outbreak stemming from a 1979 accident at a military facility. To the south of Yamal, anthrax may rarely appear when infection spreads from cattle; a man died from such exposure in 2012, the Siberian Times reported.

[These tiny creatures could cause huge trouble in the Arctic]

Zombie bacteria that awaken from old corpses might sound like the stuff of an ''X-Files'' episode. The premise is far from a complete fiction, however.

For one, anthrax bacteria are hardy microbe. As University of Missouri bacteriologist George Stewart told the Missourian in 2014, the organisms turn into spores in the cold. They play the long game, waiting in the soil for the temperatures to rise. Once it hits a certain threshold, they morph back into a more mobile, infectious state.

In Missouri, anthrax tends to be more worrisome for farmers than for consumers. ''It's more of a threat if you're a cow,'' Stewart told the Missourian. ''Cows are killed by anthrax when they pick up the spores when they're grazing in grass or drinking water out of ponds, and that sort of thing.''

In Russia's north, however, the situation is different. If the link between an old deer corpse and a new outbreak is confirmed, it will solidify concerns about anthrax some scientists have harbored for years. In 2011, two researchers from the Russian Academy of Sciences writing in the journal Global Health Action assessed the conditions required for anthrax to appear in Yakutia, a region to the east of Yamal that contains 200 burial grounds of cattle that died from the disease.

Citing earlier work from 2007, they estimated anthrax spores remain viable in the permafrost for 105 years. Buried deeper, the bacteria may be able to hibernate for even longer. At the same time, where meteorological data were available they indicate temperatures in Yakutia are increasing.

[The Arctic climate threat that nobody's even talking about yet]

''As a consequence of permafrost melting, the vectors of deadly infections of the 18th and 19th centuries may come back,'' the scientists warned, ''especially near the cemeteries where the victims of these infections were buried.'' Cattle grave sites should be monitored, they concluded, and ''public health authorities should maintain permanent alertness.''

Anthrax microbes are not the only permafrost bacteria that have environmental scientists' hackles raised. As University of Florida geologist Thomas S. Bianchi wrote at the Conversation in October, as the Arctic warms up it provides more organic matter for cold-climate bacteria to eat. Although the organic matter is ancient, it appears modern bacteria can still digest it. And as they consume the permafrost, the microorganisms excrete carbon dioxide '-- adding to the greenhouse gases already present in the atmosphere.

[Thanks to climate change, the Arctic is turning green]

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Wed, 03 Aug 2016 05:43

Last Updated Jun 3, 2016 5:12 PM EDT

While Congress continues to debate President Obama's proposal to spend $1.8 billion to fight the Zika virus, an unpleasant reality is beginning to surface. That figure could be insignificant compared to the total long-term cost if Zika runs rampant across the country this summer.

The warning signs are already here. The first "Zika baby" born in the continental U.S. at a Hackensack, New Jersey, hospital was diagnosed with a deformed head. There are 341 confirmed cases of Zika among pregnant women in the U.S. and its territories, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

"The economic cost of Zika could be very high," said Dr. Peter Hotez, microbiologist at Texas Children's Hospital and dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine.

Hotez will go before a closed session of the U.S. Senate on the morning of June 8 along with other top U.S. health officials to present the findings of their study of Zika, which focuses on the U.S. Gulf Coast. He said he couldn't be more specific about the potential impact of the disease until his congressional testimony.

No one, including the CDC, health insurers or those with the best handle on it, such as the Kaiser Family Foundation, seems prepared to go out on a limb and offer an estimate on the cost -- which could end up being abominably high ... or absurdly low.

PlayVideo

CBSNMom with Zika gives birth to baby with birth defect in N.J.The first baby with microcephaly, a birth defect linked to the Zika virus, has been born at a New Jersey hospital, officials say. CBSN's Elaine Q...

This caution is admirable, but not helpful, when you consider what's at stake. Insurance companies estimate costs on the basis of past experience, and while Zika isn't a new virus, its probable connection with the birth defect microcephaly in newborns (abnormally small heads) has only recently come to light. Although the epidemic is now centered in Brazil, it's spreading around the world as the virus "hitchhikes" on migrating mosquitoes, travelers and possibly infected blood banks.

Brazil expects 2,500 cases of microcephaly this year, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). And with the active transmission of the virus throughout at least 62 countries and territories, including the Southern U.S. and Puerto Rico, carrying with it the danger of microcephaly for pregnant women, it's not surprising that Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell warned that Zika "has the significant potential to affect ... the health of Americans."

But no one can predict how fast or far it will spread here. How many women in the first four to five months of pregnancy will be bitten by infected mosquitoes or be infected by sexual partners? Research has yet to show how long the virus remains in the body or whether the patient develops immunities after an initial bite.

Due to the lag between conception and birth, and since summer is the worst season for mosquitoes, many of these cases won't become known until fall or winter, when "clusters" could suddenly appear, particularly in areas that lack early detection of symptoms. Fetal abnormalities generally are detected six months after the initial infection, according to WHO.

PlayVideo

CBS This MorningCDC director on protecting pregnant women against Zika virusThe first-known baby born in the mainland U.S. with Zika birth defects faces a "very poor" prognosis. An ultrasound revealed microcephaly, meanin...

Could these mosquitoes be largely wiped out by spraying? Right now there's no way to tell. CDC Director Dr. Thomas Frieden described this mosquito as "a sneaky cockroach" that can lay its eggs in a bottle cap and is a blood "sipper" that likes to bite multiple people, making it the ideal transmission vehicle.

A vaccine isn't an option until 2017 at the earliest, and it would probably be rushed with minimal testing. It's also possible that giving a vaccine to pregnant women might do more harm than good.

But two things are predictable. Without immediate forceful action, the Aedes aegypti mosquito -- which carries Zika and other dangerous viruses such as dengue fever, chikungunya and yellow fever -- will bite a lot of people, many of them poor and without window screens or access to full-time air conditioning.

In Puerto Rico, a likely hot spot for Zika this summer, estimates are that nearly a million people could be bitten and get the virus, many of them women who won't even know it before giving birth to a microcephalic child, depending on the quality of their medical care. If the mosquito and Zika epidemic aren't wiped out, one estimate is that 80 percent of the island could be vulnerable.

Avoiding pregnancy until the epidemic is over is one answer, but an estimated 20 percent of those who become pregnant there are high school girls. Preventing pregnancy in this group could prove harder than stopping Zika.

PlayVideo

CBSNWHO issues new Zika virus sex guidelinesThe World Health Organization issued new guidelines on Tuesday for those who have traveled to nations fighting the Zika virus. CBSN's Elaine Quij...

Children born with microcephaly, which has no cure, will require long-term care if they survive. Some microcephalics can live normal lives, but most suffer from severe disabilities. And while some could die early on from complications, a vast majority will need care throughout their lives.

In insurance lingo, this is referred to as a "long-tail" loss because the extent of the damage isn't known and is paid out over many years. For example, children with Down syndrome can live well into their 60s.

During a recent webinar for the Kaiser Family Foundation, the CDC's Frieden said the lifetime cost of care for a microcephalic child would be somewhere between $1 million and $10 million. Some of it would be borne by parents and relatives, but most of it would require the intervention of either private insurance or the public health care system. Many of these children would probably be institutionalized for at least part of their lives.

So here's the speculative -- and very speculative at that -- math. The Center for American Progress estimates that 2 million women in the U.S. will get pregnant this summer and fall, with nearly half of them living in areas potentially at risk of Zika. It's important to note that the public policy group's analysis isn't based on the actual prevalence of Zika around the country, while even if the virus spreads only a fraction of women are likely to be infected.

Still, if even just one in 10 gets Zika, the CDC estimates that up to 13 percent of their unborn offspring could develop microcephaly. If just 13,000 babies are born in the U.S. with this disability or to women who migrated here for better medical treatment, the cost of keeping them alive and providing for their lifetime care could range from $13 billion to as much as $130 billion.

But the saddest part of the equation is the much larger number of microcephalic children born abroad who will never have the money or resources to be kept alive.

(C) 2016 CBS Interactive Inc.. All Rights Reserved.

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Wed, 03 Aug 2016 05:41

Basel, 31 March 2016

Roche to initiate testing for Zika virus at U.S. Blood Centres under FDA Investigational New Drug Application protocolNew cobas Zika test will screen blood samples on the cobas 6800/8800 SystemsRoche (SIX: RO, ROG; OTCQX: RHHBY) today announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has provided approval to initiate collection and testing of blood samples for screening with the cobas® Zika assay under an Investigational New Drug Application (IND) protocol. The cobas® Zika test for use with the cobas® 6800/8800 Systems, is a qualitative in vitro nucleic acid screening test for the direct detection of Zika virus RNA in plasma specimens from individual human blood donors.

''The cobas® Zika test has been specifically designed utilising the generic cobas omni Utility Channel on the cobas® 6800/8800 Systems. These fully-automated high-volume systems provide solutions for blood services to detect the virus and ensure that potentially infected blood units are not made available for transfusion'' said Roland Diggelmann, COO Roche Diagnostics. ''As a leader in diagnostics, Roche is committed to providing testing solutions for the world's most challenging healthcare emergencies. With the collaboration of the FDA on this IND, we are able to further expand our commitment to help keep the blood supply safe.''

Initially, the cobas® Zika test will be deployed to screen blood donations collected locally in Puerto Rico. It is expected that this testing will enable the reinstatement of the blood services in Puerto Rico and reduce the reliance of blood importation from other areas in the United States. The second stage of deployment for the cobas® Zika test will be to prepare for screening of blood donations collected by blood services in the southern United States, which will most likely be impacted by any spread in the virus.

Roche continues to work with regulators around the world to determine the path forward to implement the cobas Zika test for blood screening.

About the cobas® Zika testManufactured by Roche, the cobas® Zika test is based on fully automated sample preparation (nucleic acid extraction and purification) followed by PCR amplification and detection. The cobas® 6800/8800 Systems consist of the sample supply module, the transfer module, the processing module and the analytic module. Automated data management is performed by the cobas® 6800/8800 software which assigns test results for all tests as non-reactive, reactive, or invalid.

About IND StatusThis test has not been FDA cleared or approved;This test has been authorized by FDA for Use under a specific protocol by US Blood screening laboratories.All Testing Laboratories will need to be enrolled in and contracted into the Clinical trial as specified and agreed with the FDA Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research.About RocheRoche is a global pioneer in pharmaceuticals and diagnostics focused on advancing science to improve people's lives.

Roche is the world's largest biotech company, with truly differentiated medicines in oncology, immunology, infectious diseases, ophthalmology and diseases of the central nervous system. Roche is also the world leader in in vitro diagnostics and tissue-based cancer diagnostics, and a frontrunner in diabetes management. The combined strengths of pharmaceuticals and diagnostics under one roof have made Roche the leader in personalised healthcare '' a strategy that aims to fit the right treatment to each patient in the best way possible.

Founded in 1896, Roche continues to search for better ways to prevent, diagnose and treat diseases and make a sustainable contribution to society. Twenty-nine medicines developed by Roche are included in the World Health Organization Model Lists of Essential Medicines, among them life-saving antibiotics, antimalarials and cancer medicines. Roche has been recognised as the Group Leader in sustainability within the Pharmaceuticals, Biotechnology & Life Sciences Industry seven years in a row by the Dow Jones Sustainability Indices.

The Roche Group, headquartered in Basel, Switzerland, is active in over 100 countries and in 2015 employed more than 91,700 people worldwide. In 2015, Roche invested CHF 9.3 billion in R&D and posted sales of CHF 48.1 billion. Genentech, in the United States, is a wholly owned member of the Roche Group. Roche is the majority shareholder in Chugai Pharmaceutical, Japan. For more information, please visit www.roche.com.

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Wed, 03 Aug 2016 05:38

Here's news for South Floridians who travel frequently to countries where Zika is endemic: A blood screening for the virus now is available through a well-known private company instead of exclusively through public health officials.

Federal regulators have given emergency authorization for the use of the first commercial Zika virus test, easing concerns about screening shortages and result delays as summer mosquito season looms.

Quest Diagnostics began offering the first commercial Zika test in the United States this month at its more than two dozen South Florida patient service centers. Specimens are sent to a Quest laboratory in California, said company spokeswoman Wendy Bost, with results expected to be ready in three to five days.

"We at Quest feel our role in the Zika outbreak is to provide a complement to the public health response," Bost said. "Quality testing can get patients into treatment, where they can make informed decisions."

The test still requires a doctor's prescription. In most cases, except for pregnant women, physicians order the screening only for patients who recently have traveled to Zika-outbreak areas and are showing symptoms.

Florida has one-fourth of the nation's reported Zika cases, or 122 as of Wednesday, more than any other state. Quest representatives are in Florida and other states speaking with physicians and hospitals about the new service, Bost said.

Previously, Zika tests in Florida were available only through the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and handled by two of the state's three public health laboratories, initially creating concerns about test availability and possible backlogs.

So far, there have been no testing or processing delays through the public health departments, said Mara Gambineri, spokeswoman for the Florida Department of Health. Florida has enough tests to screen 6,358 people for the active virus and 1,999 for Zika antibodies, showing they were exposed to the virus, Gambineri said.

In total, state public health officials have tested 1,262 people for Zika, she said.

The new Quest Zika Virus RNA Qualitative Real-Time RT-PCR screening, developed by Quest subsidiary Focus Diagnostics Inc., is a molecular test that can detect RNA from the Zika virus in human blood serum, Bost said. It's best administered within a week of symptom onset.

Quest is working on a Zika antibody test, she said. These tests sometimes are preferred because they can detect the presence of the virus over a longer span of time.

The blood test is $500 and, in most cases, covered by insurance, Bost said. Quest is offering a discounted $120 test for patients whose health care providers have verified they are uninsured and need testing.

The FDA's temporary authorization of Quest's Zika test '-- which expires after a year '-- will make testing more accessible as the number of Zika cases rises, said Dr. Marie Florent-Carre, director of the Department of Rural and Urban Underserved Medicine at Nova Southeastern University.

"People are concerned about Zika. There's been some anxiety among the general public," said Florent-Carre.

The virus isn't fatal and its symptoms are milder than similar infections spread by the Aedes aegypti mosquito, such as dengue fever. Zika fears have been heightened, however, by its link to babies being born with microcephaly, or abnormally small heads, which can lead to impaired brain development.

Researchers also continue exploring whether Zika can attack the nervous system and is connected with Guillain-Barre, a rare neurological syndrome that can leave patients unable to walk or in chronic pain.

Anyone who has recently traveled to a country with a Zika outbreak and has two or more symptoms of the mosquito-borne virus should see their doctor and ask about testing, Florent-Carre said. The CDC has posted travel alerts for almost 50 countries, most in the Carribbean, Central and South America.

The four most common Zika symptoms are: fever, rash, joint pain and conjunctivitis (red eyes). However, about three-fourths of those infected with Zika never show symptoms.

dlade@tribpub.com or 954-356-4295

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Tue, 02 Aug 2016 03:20

Alison Stewart joined MTV in 1991 as an MTV News Correspondent. She kickstarted MTV's "Choose or Loose" campaign, delivering news about the 1992 presidential election and encouraging young people to register to vote. Her coverage earned her a Peabody award. Stewart left MTV in 1995 and did a tour of several news organizations before finding a spot at CBS News in 2011. She still works there now as well as chipping in as a 60 Minutes correspondent.

Photo By: Ron Galella/Ltd., WireImage

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Source: newest submissions : inthemorning

Thu, 04 Aug 2016 14:10

The Palestinian Journalists' Forum has denounced Google for deleting the name of Palestine from its maps and replacing it with Israel.

In a statement released yesterday, the forum said Google's decision to remove Palestine from its maps on 25 July ''is part of the Israeli scheme to establish its name as a legitimate state for generations to come and abolish Palestine once and for all.''

''The move is also designed to falsify history, geography as well as the Palestinian people's right to their homeland, and a failed attempt to tamper with the memory of Palestinians and Arabs as well as the world.''

The forum said the move was ''contrary to all international norms and conventions'', stressing that Google should back track on its actions.

Spotted an error on this page? Let us know

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Wed, 03 Aug 2016 17:36

We tax cigarettes and alcohol, in part to discourage their consumption, so why not tax meat? After all, bacon gives you cancer, cows cause climate change, and eating less meat could save us trillions of dollars. That's why the Danish Council of Ethics recommends taxing beef.

"The Danes' way of life is far from climatically, sustainable, and if we are to live up to the Paris agreement's objective of keeping global temperature rise well below 2°C, it is necessary to act quickly," says the council, which reports to the Danish parliament.

Their initial recommendation is to tax beef. Globally, food productions accounts for up to 29% of emissions. Cattle are responsible for a huge 10%. Taxing beef, they say, could reduce greenhouse gas emissions from food by 20% to 35%.

"A large majority of the Council considers that the Danes are ethically obliged to change dietary habits," says the press release accompanying the new report. A tax on beef, it says, should be levied on consumers. This would discourage consumption by raising costs and "send a clear signal" to the public. Beef is also a good place to start, says the council, because people can easily continue to eat healthily without beef.

Reducing meat production may be essential to meeting climate goals, though it might be a hard sell to the general public. "I don't think it's possible to keep on a course for two degrees global warming'--to keep climate change to safe levels'--without looking at meat consumption," Laura Wellesley, a research associate at Chatham House, told Co.Exist last year.

The reduction in consumption is a clear benefit, but the raising of awareness that the Danish Ethics council recommends could be just as important. Most people have no idea that meat production causes climate change, even though it is responsible for almost 15% of all greenhouse gas emissions. Giving up meat could be as effective as switching to a hybrid car in terms of cutting emissions.

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Source: Real Science

Thu, 04 Aug 2016 14:16

The White House claims that increased CO2 emissions will lead to a huge increase in heat across the US

Extreme Weather | National Climate Assessment

NOAA data shows that the exact opposite is occurring. The frequency of hot days has dropped off sharply in the US.

In 1936 the average hottest temperature of the year, measured across the 1200 USHCN stations was 105 degrees. This year so far has been the lowest on record at 95 degrees.

As CO2 has increased, the hottest temperatures in the US have plummeted.

Climate science is not a science. When people make claims which are the opposite of the data, they are committing fraud. They are propagandists who are intentionally deceiving the public,

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Thu, 04 Aug 2016 15:24

1 UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT EASTERN DISTRICT OF WISCONSIN A.W., a minor, by his mother and next friend, M.W., Plaintiff, v. KENOSHA UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICT NO. 1 BOARD OF EDUCATION and SUE SAVAGLIO- JARVIS, in her official capacity as Superintendent of the Kenosha Unified School District No. 1, Defendant s. Civ. Action No. 2:16- cv-00943 COMPLAINT INTRODUCTION 1. Plaintiff A.W., a 16 -year -old boy, is a rising senior at George Nelson Tremper High School (''Tremper '') in the Kenosha Unified School District No. 1 (''KUSD'') in Kenosha, Wisconsin. A.W. is a boy. He is also transgender. A.W. was assumed to be a girl when he was born, and was designated ''female '' on his birth certificate , but has a male gender identity and lives as a boy in all aspects of his life . A.W.'s family, classmates , medical providers, and others recognize A.W. as a boy, respect his male gender identity, and support his right to live and be treated consistent with that gender identity. 2. Defendant s Kenosha Unified School District No. 1 Board of Education (the ''Board'') , Superintendent Sue Savaglio- Jarvis, and their agent s, employees , and representatives, have repeatedly refused to recognize or respect A.W.'s gender identity and have taken a series of discriminatory and highly stigmatizing actions against him based on his sex, gender identity, and transgender status . The actions, as described more fully herein, have included (a) denying him Case 2:16-cv-00943 Filed 07/19/16 Page 1 of 36 Document 1

2 access to boys' restrooms at school and requiring him to use girls' restrooms or a single -occupancy restroom ; (b) directing school staff to monitor his restroom usage and to report to administrators if he was observed using a boys' restroom; ( c) intentional ly and repeated ly using his birth name and female pronouns , and failing to appropriately inform substitute teachers and other staff members of his preferred name and pronouns, resulting in those staff referring to him by his birth name or with female pronouns in front of other students; (d) instructing guidance counselors to issue bright green wristbands to A.W. and any other transgender students at the school , to more easily monitor and enforce these students' restroom usage; ( e) requiring him to room with girls on an orchestra trip to Europe and requiring , as a condition of his ability to participate in a recent overnight school -sponsored orchestra camp held on a college campus, that he stay either in a multi-room suite with girls, or alone in a multi- room suite with no other students , while all other boys shared multi-room suites with other boys ; and (f) initially denying him the ability to run for junior prom king, despite being nominated for that recognition based on his active involvement in community service , instructing him that he could only run for prom queen, and only relenting and allowing him to run for prom king after a protest by many of those same classmates . 3. Through these actions, Defendant s ha ve discriminated against A.W. on the basis of sex, including on the basis of his gender identity, transgender status, and nonconformity to sex -based stereotypes, in violation of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, 20 U.S.C. § 1681, et seq. , and on the basis of sex and transgender status in violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Defendant s' actions have denied A.W. full and equal access to KUSD's education program and activities on the basis of his sex . Case 2:16-cv-00943 Filed 07/19/16 Page 2 of 36 Document 1

3 4. Plaintiff, through his mother and next friend, M.W., brings this action against Defendant s based on these unla wful and discriminatory actions . 5. Plaintiff seeks a declaratory judgment, preliminary and permanent injunctive relief, and damages resulting from Defendants' discriminatory actions . PARTIES 6. Plaintiff A.W. is a 16-year -old boy . He was born in 1999. He resides in Kenosha, Wisconsin and is a student at Tremper High School , a public high school in the Kenosha Unified School District No. 1. He will begin his senior year at Tremper on September 1, 2016. 7. M.W. is A.W.'s mother and brings this action as his next friend. M.W. resides in Kenosha, Wisconsin and is employed by the Kenosha Unified School District No. 1 as a hi gh school teacher at Tremper. 8. Defendant Kenosha Unified School District No. 1 Board of Education is a seven -member elected body responsible for governing the Kenosha Unified School District No. 1 , a public school district serving over 22,000 students in kindergarten through 12th grade who reside in the City of Kenosha, Village of Pleasant Prairie, and Town and Village of Somers. The Board derives its authority to govern KUSD directly from the Wisconsin Constitution and state statutes . The school distric t is a recipient of federal funds from the U.S. Department of Education, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and, as such, is subject to Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, which prohibits sex discrimination against any person in any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance. The Board designates responsibility for the administration of KUSD to its Superintendent of Schools, currently Dr. Sue Sarvaglio- Jarvis, who oversees a number of Case 2:16-cv-00943 Filed 07/19/16 Page 3 of 36 Document 1

4 district- level administrators. KUSD operates 42 schools, including six high schools. One of the high schools is Tremper, a 1,695- student public high school located in Kenosha, serving students i n grades 9 through 12. Tremper's adminis tration includes a principal and three assistant principals. The Board is vicariously liable for the acts or omissions of its employees, agents, and representatives, including those of the other Defendant Savaglio-Jarvis and other Tremper administrators, staff, and volunteers. 9. Defendant Sue Savaglio -Jarvis is the Superintendent of the Kenosha Unified School District and is sued in her official capacity. At all times relevant to the events described herein, Savaglio -Jarvis acted within the scope of her emp loyment as an employee, agent, and representative of the Board. In such capacity, she carried out the discriminatory practices described herein (a) at the direction of, and with the consent, encouragement, knowledge, and ratification of the Board; (b) under the Board's authority, control, and supervision; and (c) with the actual or apparent authority of the Board. JURISDICTION AND VENUE 10. This Court has jurisdiction over this matter under 28 U.S.C. §§ 1331 and 1343(a)(3), and is authorized to order declaratory relief under 28 U.S.C. §§ 2201 and 2202. 11. Venue is proper in the Eastern District of Wisconsin under 28 U.S.C. § 1391(b) because the claims arose in the District, the parties reside in the District, and all of the events giving rise to this action occurred in the District. Case 2:16-cv-00943 Filed 07/19/16 Page 4 of 36 Document 1

5 FACTS Gender Identity and Gender Dysphoria 12. Sex is a characteristic that is made up of multiple factors, including hormones, external physical features, internal reproductive organs, chromosomes, and gender identity. 13. Gender identity '--a person's deeply felt understanding of their own gender '--is the determining factor of a person's sex . Gender identity is often established as early as two or three years of age, though a person's recognition of their gender identity can emerge at any time . There is a medical consensus that efforts to change a person's gender identity are ineffective, unethical, and harmful. A person's gender identity may be different from or the same as the person's sex assigned at birth. 14. The phrase ''s ex assigned at birth '' refers to the sex designation recorded on an infant's birth certificate. For most people, gender identity aligns with the person's sex assigned at birth , a determination generally based solely on the appearance of a baby's external genitalia at birth. For transgender people, however, the gender they were assumed to be at birth does not align with their gender identity . For example, a transgender boy is a person who was assumed to be female at birth but is in fact a boy. A transgender girl is a person who was assumed to be a boy at birth but is in fact a girl. 15. Gender Dysphoria is a condition recognized by the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th edition (''DSM -5''). It refers to clinically significant distress that can result when a person's gender identity differs from the person's assumed gender at birth. If left untreated, Gender Dysphoria may result in profound psychological distress, anxiety, depression, and even self -harm or suicidal ideation . Case 2:16-cv-00943 Filed 07/19/16 Page 5 of 36 Document 1

6 16. Treatment for Gender Dysphoria is usually pursuant to the Standards of Care for the Health of Transsexual, Transgender, and Gender Nonconforming People (''Standards of Care''), published by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (''WPATH'') since 1980. WPATH is an international, multidisciplinary, professional association of medical providers, mental health providers, researchers, and others, with a mission of promoting evidence -based care and research for transgender health, including the treatment of Gender Dysphoria. WPATH published the seventh and most recent edition of the Standards of Care in 2011. 17. Consistent with the WPATH Standards of Care, t reatment for Gender Dysphoria consists of the person ''transitioning'' to living and being accepted by others as the sex corresponding to the person's gender identity. A key stage in that process is a ''social transition,'' in which the individual lives in accordance with his gender identity in all aspects of life . A social transition , though specific to each person, typically include s adopting a new fir st name, using and asking others to use pronouns reflecting the individual's true gender, wearing clothing typically associated with that gender, and using sex -specific facilities corresponding to that gender . Failing to recogniz e or respect a transgender person's gender is contrary to established medical protocols and can exacerbate an individual's symptoms of Gender Dysphoria. 18. Medical treatments , such as hormone therapy or surgical procedures, may also be undertaken to facilitate transition and alleviate dysphoria , typically after an individual's social transition . Under the WPATH Standards of Care, living full -time in accordance with one's gender identity in all aspects of life for at least one year is a prerequisite f or any medical interventions. Medical treatments are not necessary or appropriate in all cases. Case 2:16-cv-00943 Filed 07/19/16 Page 6 of 36 Document 1

7 19. A social transition requires that a transgender boy be recognized as a boy and treated the same as all other boys by parents, teachers, classmates, and others in the community. This includes being referred to exclusively with the student's new name and male pronouns, being permitted to use boys' restroom s and overnight accommodations on the same footing as other male students , and having the right to keep information about the student's transgender status private . Singling out a transgender student and treating him differently than other boys communicates the stigmatizing message to that student and the entire school community that he should not be re cognized or treated as a boy, simply because he is transgender. This undermines the social transition and exposes the student to the risk of renewed and heightened symptoms of Gender Dysphoria such as anxiety and depression. It also frequently leads transgender students to avoid using school restrooms altogether, often resulting in adverse physical health consequences such as urinary tract infections, kidney infections, and dehy dration, and other consequences such as stress and difficulty focusing on classwork. Plaintiff's Background 20. A.W. has been a student in KUSD' s schools since kindergarten. On September 1, 2016, he will begin his senior year at Tremper High. A.W. is an excellent student: he has a high grade point average and is currently ranked in the top five percent of his class of over 400 students . All of his academic classes in his junior year were either Advanced Placement or Honors level classes. He is also very involved in many school activities, including the school's Golden Strings orchestra, theater , tennis team, National Honor Society , and Astronomical Society . After graduation, he hopes to atten d the University of Wisconsin-Madison and study biomedical engineering. A.W. also works part-time as an accounting assistant in a medical office. Case 2:16-cv-00943 Filed 07/19/16 Page 7 of 36 Document 1

8 21. A.W. is a boy. He is also transgender. He was designated '' female'' on his birth certificate and lived as a girl until middle school, when he recognized that he is, in fact, a boy, and he began to experience profound discomfort with being assumed to be a girl by others. 22. At the end of eighth grade, in the spring of 2013, A.W. told his parents that he is transgender a nd a boy. Shortly thereafter , he told his older brothers. 23. During the 2013- 2014 school year, A.W.'s freshman year of high school at Tremper , A.W. began confiding to a few close friends that he is a boy . He slowly began transitioning more publicly to live in accordance with his male identity: he cut his hair short, began wearing more traditionally masculine clothing, and began to go by a typically masculine name and masculine pronouns . 24. At the beginning of his sophomore year , in the fall of 2014, A.W. told all of his teachers and peers that he is a boy, requesting that he be referred to using male pronouns and his new name. On Christmas , 2014, A.W. told his extended family, including grandparents, aunts, uncles , and cousins, that he is a boy. 25. A.W. has undertaken his gender transition under the guidance and care of therapists and medical doctors. He was diagnosed with Gender Dysphoria by his pediatrician. Around the time of his public transition , A.W. began seeing a gender specialist therapist to support him in his transition. He is currently under the care of clinical psychologist, who is also a gender specialist. In April 2016, he began consulting with an endocrinologist at Children's Hospital of Wisconsin to discuss hormonal therapy, which he intends to begin in the near future. 26. Since A.W.'s transition at school , he has been widely known and accepted as a boy by the school community . At a Golden Strings orchestra performance at a hotel on January 17, 2015, A.W. wore a tuxedo, just like all the other boys, with the support of his orchestra Case 2:16-cv-00943 Filed 07/19/16 Page 8 of 36 Document 1

9 teacher, Helen Breitenbach -Cooper . Students and teachers who did not know A.W. prior to his transition did not and would not have recognized him as different from any other boy until the discriminatory events described in this complaint took place . KUSD's Refusal to Permit Plaintiff Access to Restrooms Consistent with His Gender Identity 27. In the spring of 2015, during A.W.'s sophomore year, A.W. and his mother had several meetings with A.W.'s guidance counselor, Debra Tronvig, during which they re quested that A.W. be permitted to use the boys' restroom s at school. The counselor spoke to the school's principal , Richard Aiello, and one of its assistant principals, Brian Geiger, and she advocated that A.W. be permitted to use the boys' restrooms. However, at a meeting in March 2015, she reported back to A.W. and his mother that the school administrators had decided that A.W. would only be permitted to use the girls' restrooms or the single -user, gender -neutral restroom in the school office. Tronvig and the school administrators did not suggest or indicate any circumstance under which A.W. might be permitted to use the boys' restrooms in the future. 28. After that meeting, A.W. felt overwhelmed , helpless, hopeless, and alone. Both of the restroom options offered by Defendants were discriminatory, burdensome , or unworkable. A.W. was deeply distressed by the prospect of using the girls' restrooms, as it would hinder and be at odds with his public social transition at school, undermine his male identity, and convey to others that he should be viewed and treated as a girl. He was also deeply distressed by the prospect of using the office restroom , which is located in the rear of the office, behind the of fice secretaries' work stations '--far out of the way from most of his classes '--and is only used by office staff and visitors. It is A.W.'s understanding that no other s tudents are allowed to use the office restroom. A.W. feared the questions he would face from students and staff about why he was using that particular restroom; the inconvenience of traveling long distances from (and Case 2:16-cv-00943 Filed 07/19/16 Page 9 of 36 Document 1

10 missing time in) his classes to use that restroom; and the fact that he would be segregated from his classmates and further stigmatized for being ''different.'' 29. At the same time, A.W. was f earful of the potential disciplinary consequences if he failed to comply with the administrator s' directives not to use the boys' restroom . He worried that such a disciplinary record could potentially interfere with his ability to get into college, as he had no prior record of discipline. As a result of that fear and anxiety, seeing no plausible options, A.W. largely avoided using any restrooms at school for the rest of that school year , and, when absolutely necessary, he only used a single- user girls' restroom near his theater class room. 30. In order to avoid using restrooms at school, A.W. severely restricted his liquid intake. This was particularly dangerous because A.W. suffers from vasovagal syncope, a medical condition that results in fainting upon certain physical or emotional triggers. The triggers cause a person's heart rate and blood pressure to drop suddenly, reducing blood flow to the brain and resulting in a loss of consciousness. Because dehydration and stress trigger his fainting episodes, A.W. 's primary care doctor re quires him to drink 6-7 bottles of water and a bottle of Gatorade daily. 31. In addition to vasovagal syncope, A.W. also suffers from migraines triggered by stress. During his sophomore year, whil e avoiding using restrooms, A.W. experienced greatly heightened symptoms of both vasovagal syncope and stress -related migraines. He also experienced increased symptoms associated with Gender Dysphoria, including depression, anxiety, and suicidal thoughts. 32. A.W. also worried that the emotional and physical toll caused by the school's treatment of him would lead to medical or psychological harm that would delay or make it Case 2:16-cv-00943 Filed 07/19/16 Page 10 of 36 Document 1

11 unsafe for him to begin hormone treatment as part of his transition. This anxiety further increased his symptoms of G ender Dysphoria. 33. In July 2015, A.W. took a trip to Europe with his school orchestra group, Golden Strings. In response to A.W.'s request to room with other boys, his orchestra teacher, Breitenbach -Cooper , checked with school administrators and then informed him that he would not be permitted to do so. A.W. felt hurt and embarrassed when he learned of the school's decision . Once again, h e understood the school's decision to be based on a perception that he is not really a boy, and he felt degraded and humiliated by the administrators ' continued failure to recognize and respect his gender identity. 34. As a result of the school's decision, A.W. was forced to share a room with a girl. During the trip, the students were frequently grouped by gender while traveling between destinations , and A.W. was consistently grouped with girls. 35. In July 2015, while on the trip to Europe, feeling less scrutinized, A.W. began to use male- designated bathrooms. During that trip, A.W. saw a news story about a lawsuit against the Gloucester County School District in Virginia by another transgender student who was denied access to boys' restrooms at his high school. That story reported that the U.S. Dep artment of Justice had concluded that transgender students have the right to use restrooms in accordance with their gender identity under Title IX and had filed a brief in the Virginia case, G.G. v. Gloucester County School Board, asserting that the school district's policy violated transgender students' rights under Title IX . A.W. was elated to learn that he did, in fact, have the legally protected right to use the restroom consistent with his gender. For the rest of the trip, A.W. exclusively used male- designated bathrooms, and he continued to do so upon returning to the United States . Case 2:16-cv-00943 Filed 07/19/16 Page 11 of 36 Document 1

12 36. When he returned to school for his junior year, in September 2015, A.W. continued exclusively using boys' restrooms , including at Tremper . He did so for the first seven months of the school year without any incident. No other students ever made an issue of A.W. using the boys' bathroom. A.W. did not discuss this decision with administrators or teachers, because he und erstood it to be his legal right. 37. In late February 2016, after observing A.W. using a boys' bathroom, a Tremper teacher advised two assistant principals, Geiger and Wendy LaLonde, of that fact. Geiger then informed the other administrators of A.W.'s restroom use and ask ed them what the school's policy was. 38. Aiello, LaLonde, Geiger , and the third assistant principal, Holly Gra f, agreed that , although neither KUSD nor Tremper had any existing written policy on students' restroom usage , the school 's policy should be that transgender students, including A.W., would not be permitted to use school restrooms corresponding to their gender i dentity. Consistent with the school's previous decision in spring 2015, they decided that A.W. would not be permitted to use the boys' restroom and, i nstead, would only be permitted to use the girls' restrooms or the single -user restroom in the school office. 39. Following th at decision, Graf emailed A.W.'s guidance counselor, Tronvig, and requested tha t Tronvig relay the school's restroom policy to A.W. and his mother . Tronvig responded by email that she did not know what that policy was. Graf and Tronvig then met in person and Graf explained to Tronvig that A.W. would not be permitted to use the boys' restrooms . Case 2:16-cv-00943 Filed 07/19/16 Page 12 of 36 Document 1

13 40. In late February 2016, Tronvig called M.W. to inform her of the administration's decision that A.W. would only be permitted to use the girls' restrooms or the single -user restroom in the school 's main office. 41. When A.W. learned about the school's decision, in early March 2016, he was distressed . He felt humiliated and deeply uncomfortable by the idea of using a girls' restroom , even more so than the previous year '--because he is not a girl, he had not used female -designated restrooms at school or elsewhere for a long time, and because using the girls' restrooms as a boy risked subject ing him to ridicule, scrutiny, stigma, and harassment by other students and school staff. For the reasons alleg ed above, he also felt deeply uncomfortable with using the single -user main office restroom . He believed that either alternative would imply his status as a transgender boy required him to be segregated from other students, despite the fact that he had us ed the boys' restrooms regularly and otherwise been treated as a boy by nearly everyone in the school community for many months . 42. A.W. was also afraid of what disciplina ry consequences he might face if he failed to comply with the school's policy. Faced with two unacceptable options proposed by the school administrators, A.W. continued to use the boys' restrooms , as he had been doing already. That app roach was the only way A.W. felt he could mitigate the physical harm that he would suffer if he refrain ed from all restroom use during the school day and during his after -school extracurricular activities . Because of his active involvement in after -school activities, a typical school day for A.W. lasts from 7 a.m. to 4 or 5 p.m., i.e. , 9 or 10 hours. Some activities require him to be on Tremper's campus until as late as 10 p.m., a 15- hour day. These long days at school make avoiding restrooms altogether impossible. Case 2:16-cv-00943 Filed 07/19/16 Page 13 of 36 Document 1

14 43. A.W.'s decision to use the boys' restroom consistent with his legal right , though in defiance of school policy , nevertheless exacted an emotional toll . A.W. became more depressed and anxious, grew distracted from his school work, and began to have trouble sleeping. 44. On or about March 10, 2016, A.W. and his mother met with Graf a nd Tronvig. During that meeting, Graf referred to A.W. exclusively by his birth name. In that meeting, Graf told M.W. that the reason A.W. could not use the boys' restrooms was because he could only use restrooms consistent with his gender as listed in the school's official records. Graf said that the only way the school could change A.W.'s gender in its records would be if the school received legal or medical documentation confirming his transition to male. 45. M.W. explained that, to her knowledge, A.W. was too young for transition- related surgery. Graf repeated that the school would need some kind of medical documentation, but declined to indicate what type of medical ''documentation'' would be sufficient to demonstrate that A.W.'s gender marker should be changed on his school records and that he could use boys' restrooms. 46. In response, M.W. contacted A.W.'s pediatrician. The pediatrician faxed a letter to the school on or about March 11, 2016, confirming that A.W. is a transgender boy and recommending that A.W. be allowed to use male -designated facilities at school . At M.W.'s request, the pediatrician subsequently sent the school a second letter , reiterating her recommendation about A.W.'s restroom usage. 47. Despite the letters from A.W.'s doctor, Aiello emailed M.W. that the school would continue to deny boys' restroom access to A.W. because he had not completed a medical transition. Case 2:16-cv-00943 Filed 07/19/16 Page 14 of 36 Document 1

15 48. A.W. continued to use the boys' restrooms when needed, but he mainly attempted to avoid using restrooms altogether by not drinking or eating while at school , in order to avoid the scrutiny , fear , and humiliation he faced when he had to use a restroom at scho ol. His anxiety and depression increased further. He also experienced increased physical symptoms relating to his vasovagal syncope , including dizziness, nearly fainting, and migraines. A.W. returned to see his pediatrician in late March 2016 to have hi s symptoms evaluated. The pediatrician again instructed him to eat and drink regularly to avoid those symptoms. Nonetheless, A.W. was unable to comply with those instructions, out of fear of using the restrooms at school. Concerned about his physical health, his mother would regularly hand him a bottle of water and tell him to drink it to avoid dehydration, and he would refuse, saying that he did not want to have to use the restroom. 49. On or about March 17, 2016, Geiger observed A.W. as he entered a boys' restroom , and reported that fact to Graf . Minutes later, Graf insisted that A.W. leave his acting class and come to her office, and met with him alone for half an hour, lecturing him about his use of the boys' restrooms . 50. During that same meeting, Graf asked A.W. why he was not using the girls' restroom or single -user restroom as directed. He informed her that the school's policy violated his rights as a transgender student under Title IX. When A.W. made clear he c ould not use girls' restrooms because he is not a girl , she again asked him to compromise and use the single -user restroom in the main office . He again refused because of the humiliation, stigma , and lost class time that he would face using that bathroom. Gra f then reiterated her instruction that A.W. cease his use of boys' restrooms. Case 2:16-cv-00943 Filed 07/19/16 Page 15 of 36 Document 1

16 51. During that March 17 meeting '--as well as at virtually all other times '--Graf consistently referred to A.W. using his traditionally female birth name and female pronouns, despite A.W.'s request that she use his new name and male pronouns. In that meeting, when A.W. became upset by Graf's restroom directive and refusal to respect his male gender, Graf said, '' S------, calm down,'' using his birth name. A.W., angry and embarrassed, s aid, ''No, I'm leaving,'' and left the office. 52. During that meeting, Graf directly threatened that A.W. would be subject to disciplinary action if he continued to use the boys' restrooms. Specifically, she indicated A.W. would have to ''go down to 109 or 203'' '--referring to Room 109, the in-school suspension room, and Room 203, the school's disciplinary office. 53. Following the meeting with Graf, A.W. began to cry in the hallway. He had difficulty concentrating in his classes for the remainder of the day, holdin g back tears. He skipped work that afternoon and did not do any homework. Instead , he just went home after school and lay in bed feeling terrible . 54. When he absolutely needed to use the restroom, A.W. continued to use the boys' restroom s exclusively through June 9, 2016, the final day of the school year . As a result, Graf continued to call A.W. , his mother, or both into her office for periodic meetings . At those meetings , Graf would inquire about A.W.'s restroom use, and, when told he was still usi ng the boys' restrooms, would repeat the school's policy that he must use the girls' restroom or a single -user restroom. During these meetings, Graf continued to refer to A.W. by his birth name and female pronouns. 55. A.W. grew increasingly embarrassed by Gr af's repeated inquiries about his restroom use , which he felt to be an invasion of his privacy . Since each meeting with Case 2:16-cv-00943 Filed 07/19/16 Page 16 of 36 Document 1

17 administrators occurred during class time, A.W. was also concerned about the effect of these repeated meetings on his academic performance and feared that he would face scrutiny from other students and teachers about why he was being removed from class so frequently. A.W., who continued to have no disciplinary record at the school, also became more worried about the increasingly real prospect of disciplinary consequences that might affect his ability to participate in extracurricular activities and negatively impact his college application process in the upcoming school year. 56. In April 2016, M.W. learned that school administrators had s ent an email to all of the school's security guards, instructing them to notify administrators if they spotted any students who appear to be going into the '' wrong'' restroom. Individual security guards later told M.W. that they understood the directive to be targeted at A.W . 57. A.W. felt very uncomfortable and distressed knowing that security guards and administrators were actively monitoring his restroom use. 58. On April 5, 2016, M.W. was pulled out of her Tremper classroom and summoned to a meeting with two KUSD district- level administrators: Dr. Bethany Ormseth , KUSD's Chief of School Leadership, and Susan Valeri, KUSD's Chief of Special Education and Student Support . 59. In that meeting, M.W. asked Ormseth and Valeri whether KUSD had adopted any policy concerning transgender students and restroom use. They provided no answer to M.W.'s question, other than to say that a policy was in the process of being created by a committee of the school board. M.W. responded, ''You don't need a policy '--it's a federal law.'' Later in the school year , M.W. learned that Rebecca Stevens , a KUSD school board member, had Case 2:16-cv-00943 Filed 07/19/16 Page 17 of 36 Document 1

18 contradicted Ormseth and Valeri's account , stating to another board member that no committee had yet been formed a nd no policy was being written. 60. In fact, despite repeated requests by M.W. to see the written policy about transgender students' restroom use during the course of the 2015- 2016 school year, no Tremper or KUSD official has ever provided such a policy . M.W. reasonably believes no such policy exists. Rather, the Tremper administration developed and enforced a school ''policy'' in direct and specific response to those administrators' discomfort with the restroom usage of one student: A.W . 61. The next day, on April 6, 2016, A.W. and M.W. attended a meeting with Aiello, Graf, and Valeri. At that meeting, the administrators offered A.W. a further ''accommodation'' regarding his restroom use: they informed him that he would also be allowed to use two single -user r estrooms located on the far opposite sides of campus. Those restrooms had previously been available for any student's use, but new locks had been installed and A.W. alone was given the key to open them. T he stigma of being assigned personal, segregated r estrooms'--to which he alone of all the 1,695 students in the building had a key '--caused A.W. additional significant emotional distress. In addition, neither of these single- occupancy restrooms was convenient to A.W. 's classes and would have required him to miss more class time than his peers if he used those restrooms during class. 62. At the April 6 meeting , A.W. asked Valeri for KUSD's rationale for prohibiting his use of the boys' restroom s. Valeri replied with a statement to the effect of , ''Well, we've never had a student who identifies as male but was born female.'' Case 2:16-cv-00943 Filed 07/19/16 Page 18 of 36 Document 1

19 63. A.W. replied by asserting that Title IX prohibits discrimination based on sex, which protects transgender students and requires schools to permit them to use restroom s consistent with the student's gender identity. 64. Valeri denied that Title IX protects transgender students ' access to bathrooms consistent with their gender identity. 65. When A.W. asked Valeri to explain her understanding of Title IX, she refused to do so, stating words to the effect of , ''I don't think I'm going to give you any reasons.'' 66. In order to avoid disciplinary sanctions from Tremper administrators for using boys' restrooms on the one hand, and the scrutiny and embarrassment that would result from using individually assigned restroom facilities on the other, A.W. continued to avoid using school restrooms as much as possible . He has never used the designated locked single-user restrooms , as doing so would call unwanted attention to himself by using a key to enter a restroom to which no other student has access , and because of his desire not to spend unnecessary time out of class traveling to those i nconveniently located restrooms. 67. As a result of the stress caused by school's discriminatory actions, and his attempts to avoid using any restrooms at school, A.W.'s migraines and episodes of fainting and dizziness continued to worsen. His depression, anxi ety, and dysphoria also deepened. He became severely depressed and lethargic, and no longer wanted to get out of bed in the morning. 68. Due to the serious consequences the school's actions were having on A.W.'s physical and psychological well -being, he considered withdrawing from Tremper and transferring to an online school to finish high school. He ultimately decided not to withdraw at that time, due to his involvement in activities like the school orchestra that would not be Case 2:16-cv-00943 Filed 07/19/16 Page 19 of 36 Document 1

20 available if he were enrol led in an online school instead, and because changing schools would put him further behind in his classwork. School's Refusal to Permit A.W. to Be Considered for Junior Prom King 69. Tremper High's junior prom was scheduled for May 7, 2016. In late March, the faculty advisor for the junior prom, Lorena Danielson, submitted the names of candidates for the prom court to Aiello. Candidates for prom king and queen are required to earn volunteer hours in order to participate and whoever earns the most hour s is selected for prom court. Based on his community service hours, t he junior prom advisor designated A.W. as a candidate for prom king and then met with Aiello to confirm the list. 70. After meeting with the junior prom advisor , Aiello called M.W. in for a meeting with him and Gra f on or about March 22, 2016, during which he told her that A.W. could be on the prom court, but could only be a candidate for prom queen, not prom king . When A.W. learned about this, he was devastated. He was humiliated at the prospect of running for prom queen, when all his classmates knew him to be a boy. He felt deeply disrespected and angry that the administrators failed to recognize how hurtful and unfair this additional form of discrimination was. 71. On April 4, 2016, A.W. and his friends presented a MoveOn.org petition to Tremper administrators demanding that A.W. be allowed to run for prom king and to use the boys' restrooms at school, which was signed by many members of the Tremper community and thousands of others around the country . When administrators failed to respond, on April 5, 2016, 70 students participated in a sit -in at Tremper's main office to show their support for A.W . The students held signs expressing the view that transgender students should be tre ated equally, Case 2:16-cv-00943 Filed 07/19/16 Page 20 of 36 Document 1

21 and supporting A.W.'s right to be allowed to run for prom king and to use the boys' restrooms at school . 72. Following the sit- in and media attention about KUSD's treatment of A.W. , in the April 6, 2016 meeting referenced above, Aiello, Graf, and Valeri informed A.W. and M.W. that A.W. would be permitted to run for prom king. 73. Although A.W. was pleased to have the opportunity to run for prom king and heartened by the outpouring of support from his classmates, he continued to feel deeply distressed as a result of the school administrators' initial decision that he could only run for prom queen and their continued pattern of refusing to recognize or respect his male gender identity. Name and Gender in School Records 74. KUSD has not changed A.W.'s name on his official records and other documents, including classroom attendance rosters used by his teachers. Although most of A.W.'s teachers refer to him by his male name, substitute teachers have frequently referred to him by his birth name in front of his classmates because that is the name that appears on the attendance rosters. In response, and in order to avoid embarrassment or discomfort from his classmates, A.W . has been compelled to approach all of his teachers at the beginning of each term to advise them of his preferred name and pronouns and request that they do not refer to him by his birth name. He similarly must approach substitute teachers before class e very time a teacher is absent. Although some teachers note his correct name on the cl ass roster, others have not documented that name on the roster , and occasionally substitute teachers still refer to him by his birth name in class. Being called a traditionally female name in front of all his classmates r eveals that he is transgender to all of his peers and makes A.W. feel embarrassed and distressed . The practice has Case 2:16-cv-00943 Filed 07/19/16 Page 21 of 36 Document 1

22 resulted in A.W. experiencing increased symptoms of Gender Dysphoria, including anxiety and depression. 75. In the meetings with administrators on March 6 and March 22, M.W. requested that the school change A.W.'s name and gender in its official records to avoid those problems. In both meetings, Graf told M.W. that in order to change A.W.'s name or gender in the school's official records, the school would need to see legal or medical documentation. The medical documentation A.W.'s pediatrician sent was deemed insufficient, although Graf and Aiello refused to specify what the contents of acceptable documentation would be , despite repeated requests for clarification . They also failed to specify what type of ''legal documentation'' would be necessary to update the school records. 76. Even if KUSD is unable to change A.W.'s name or gender in its official school records because A.W. has not yet obtained a legal name change, KUSD can and should take steps to avoid intentional or inadvertent disclosure of A.W.'s birth name or sex assigned at birth to KUSD employees or students, including by modifying informal or public -facing documents, such as attendance rosters, to reflect A.W.'s male name and male gender. Other Harass ing and Stigmatizing Treatment Faced by A.W . at School 77. After news broke about the petition for A.W. to run for prom king and use boys' restrooms at school, some parents and other Kenosha residents began to speak out in opposition to A.W.'s right to use boys' restrooms. On May 10, 2016, shortly after the junior prom, a t a meeting of the Board, several community members spoke in opposition to allowing transgender students to use restrooms in accordance with their gender identity. One parent told the Board that he was opposed to permitting transgender students to use gender -appropriate restrooms Case 2:16-cv-00943 Filed 07/19/16 Page 22 of 36 Document 1

23 because such a policy would permit sexual predators to enter women's restrooms and put his daughters at risk. 78. That person's wife, who volunteers as a pianist with the school orchestra, has created and maintains a public Facebook group c alled ''KUSD Parents for Privacy, '' which contains numerous posts critical of transgender students' rights. Several posts on that page have mentioned A.W. and his mother by name, accompanied by their photographs. One post, on May 14, 2016, linked to an article about A.W. , contains a photograph of him and his mother, and describes him as a ''pawn.'' 79. At an orchestra rehearsal at the school on May 1 1, 2016, the day following the B oard meeting at which her husband spoke , this woman approached A.W., put her hands on his shoulders, and said words to the effect of , ''A----, honey, this isn't about you, this is bigger than you. I'm praying for you.'' A.W. was extremely uncomfortable and embarrassed, and did not respond. M.W. a nd A.W. later brought this incident to Aiello's attention. Aiello requested that Breitenbach -Cooper , the orchestra teacher, call the volunteer to advise her not to talk to students like that, but took no further action. Nothing changed as a result . She is still a regular volunteer with the school orchestra and has continued to attend every rehearsal . Her constant presence substantially diminishes A.W.'s enjoyment of an extracurricular activity that has formed an important part of his educational experience at Tremper . Green Wristbands to Mark Transgender Students 80. In May 2016, A.W.'s guidance counselor, Tronvig, showed M.W. a bright green wristband that the school intended to use to mark students who are transgender. 81. Branding transgender students in this way would single them out for additional scrutiny, stigma, and pot entially harassment or violence, and violate their privacy by revealing their transgender status to others . Case 2:16-cv-00943 Filed 07/19/16 Page 23 of 36 Document 1

24 82. Upon learning about the school's proposed green wristband practice, A.W. fe lt sickened and afraid. He was aware of the prevalence of violent attacks against transgender people nationwide, and grew very afraid that the school would attempt to force him to wear the wristband on penalty of discipline. If he did wear the wristband, he knew that other students would likely ask him repeatedly why he was wearing it, and he would have to explain over and over that he is transgender. He expected that some students would stare, and others would outright ridicule him. He felt like his sa fety would be even more threatened if he had to wear this visible badge of his transgender status. 83. To Plaintiff's knowledge, the green wristband practice adopted at the end of the school year is still in place, such that guidance counselors will be expecte d to provide these wristbands to transgender students in the upcoming school year. Overnight Accommodations at Summer Orchestra Camp 84. A.W. participated in a five -day, school -sponsored summer orchestra camp from June 12- 16, 2016. The camp was held on the campus of the University of Wisconsin- Oshkosh, and students stayed in dormitories on campus. The dorms used for the camp were suites with two to four bedrooms and a common living room , kitchenette, and two single-occupancy restr ooms . Each suite had either four separate, single- occupancy bedrooms, or two double-occupancy rooms. During the evenings, school chaperones placed tape across each of the bedroom doorways to prevent students from leaving the bedrooms at night. The suite s were shared by students of the same sex . 85. In advance of the camp, the school allowed students to sign up for dorm rooms with their friends. A.W. had signed up to stay in a boys' suite with one of his best friends, a male student. Case 2:16-cv-00943 Filed 07/19/16 Page 24 of 36 Document 1

25 86. Breitenbach -Cooper , the orchestra teacher, told Aiello about A.W.'s request to stay in the same suite as his friend and other male students. Aiello replied that A.W. could not do so because, under Tremper 's policy, he could not stay with other boys. Aiello told Breitenbach -Coop er that A.W. would have to stay in a suite with girls or alone in a suite, segregated from all of his peers . 87. In order to participate in the orchestra camp, A.W. reluctantly agreed to stay in double -bedroom suite all alone, with no other students sharing the suite . He rejected the ''option'' to stay in a suite with girls because he is a boy and he felt uncomfortable staying with girls . 88. This arrangement excluded A.W. from socializing with other students during the entire five -day camp . Students were prohi bited from entering other suites, and could only socialize within their own suite or in common areas of the building. Since almost all the other students remained in their suites to socialize in the evenings, A.W. stayed in his room alone each evening whi le the other students enjoyed time to socialize with their friends. He felt lonely and depressed, and disappointed that he was not able to have the same good memories of his final year at camp as all the other students. 89. The school's decision to segregate A.W. from the other boys also left him feeling hurt and embarrassed. He understood the school's decision to be based on a perception that he might engage in sexual activity with another boy, and he felt degraded and humiliated by the idea that administra tors were thinking about him in those terms. District's Failure to Change its Discriminatory Policies after Notice of Legal Obligations 90. A.W. and M.W. have repeatedly advised KUSD officials that their actions violate A.W. 's right to attend school free from sex discrimination, as required by Title IX and the Equal Case 2:16-cv-00943 Filed 07/19/16 Page 25 of 36 Document 1

26 Protection Clause. Despite being put on notice of the violations of A.W.'s statutory and constitutional rights , KUSD has refused to change its policies to date. 91. On April 19, 2016, through his attorneys, A.W. sent a letter to Superintendent Sa vaglio -Jarvis demanding that KUSD permit him to use boys' restrooms at school. 92. By letter of April 26, 2016, KUSD's attorneys responded, acknowledging their awareness of U.S. Department of Education guidance documents interpreting Title IX to protect students from discrimination based on their gender identity '--as well as the Fourth Circuit's April 19, 2016 opinion in G.G. v. Gloucester County School Board, a Title IX case brought by a transgender high school student who was denied access to boys' restrooms at school, in which that appeals court deferred to the Department of Education's interpretation of Title IX and held that the plaintiff student was entitled to restroom access cons istent with his gender identity. The letter nevertheless maintained that KUSD is not bound by these authorities and would not change its position on A.W.'s restroom use. 93. On May 12, 2016, A.W. filed an administrative complaint with the U.S. Department of E ducation Office for Civil Rights (''OCR''), alleging that KUSD's actions violated A.W.'s rights under Title IX. Shortly before filing this lawsuit, Plaintiff's attorneys contacted OCR and requested to withdraw that complaint, without prejudice . 94. On May 13, 2016, the U.S. Department of Education and U.S. Department of Justice issued a joint guidance letter to all public schools, colleges, and universities in the country receiving Federal financial assistance, reiterating the federal government's previously sta ted position that , pursuant to Title IX, all public schools are obligated to treat transgender students consistent with their gender identit ies in all respects, including regarding name and pronoun usage, restroom access, and overnight accommodations. Case 2:16-cv-00943 Filed 07/19/16 Page 26 of 36 Document 1

27 95. Following the issuance of the federal guidance on May 13, 2016, KUSD officials publicly acknowledged the guidance but stated that they did not believe they were required to comply with it. KUSD issued a statement declaring, ''[t]he Department of Education's . . . letter is not law; it is the Department' s interpretation of the law,'' suggesting that it would not change its policy absent a court order. 96. To date, the Board has not articulated or adopted any formal policy regarding transgender students in KUSD's schools. 97. Based on the statements and actions of KUSD officials, A.W. feels deep anxiety and dread about experiencing continued discrimination during his senior year and the effect that it will have on him during the college application process. INJURY TO PLAINTIFF 98. Through their actions described above, Defendant s have injured and are continuing to injure Plaintiff . 99. Defendant s have denied A.W. full and equal access to KUSD's education programs and activities by denying him the full and equal access to student restrooms and overnight accommodations during school -sponsored trips offered to other male students. 100. A.W. has experienced and continue s to experience the harmful effects of being segregated from, and treated differently than, his male classmates at school and during school-sponsored events, including low ered self-esteem, embarrassment, social isolation, and stigma , as well as heightened symptoms of Gender Dysphoria, including depression and anxiety . 101. When school administrators and staff intentionally used his birth name or female pronouns (or allowed others to do so) , instructed him not to use the boys' restrooms, instructed security personnel to surveil his movements, and otherwise undermined his male identity and Case 2:16-cv-00943 Filed 07/19/16 Page 27 of 36 Document 1

28 singled him out as different from all other boys, he has felt deeply hurt, disrespected, and humiliated. 102. Defendants' discriminatory actions, and the efforts A.W. has made to comply with the directive not to use the boys' restroom '--limiting food and drink while at school '--have led to a host of physical symptoms, including dehydration, dizziness, fainting, and migraines. All of those symptoms virtually disappeared once A.W. returned home from the orchestra camp and summer break began, and A.W. was no longer facing daily scrutiny and anxiety and could eat and drink at a healthy level. 103. As a direct and continuing result of Defendants' discriminatory actions, A.W. has suffered increased and continuing emotional distress over the last six months. He has experienced escalating symptoms of depression and anxiety, and his self -esteem has suffered, as a result of the d iscrimination he has experienced at school. Although he cried very little in the past, he frequently cries and fights back tears. 104. As a result of the depression and anxiety Defendants' actions caused, A.W. has also had difficulty eating and sleeping properly , and difficulty concentrating in classes and on his homework. 105. As a result of Defendants' actions, and the feelings of fear and scrutiny he has grown used to, A.W. now feels unsafe being outside of the house, afraid that he will be targeted for an assault by someone who knows he is transgender. He will typically only go out in groups of friends, and tries to avoid ever going out with only one other friend or alone. 106. A.W. has also missed significant class time due to being compelled by KUSD officials to participate in repeated, lengthy meetings during class time to discuss his use of Case 2:16-cv-00943 Filed 07/19/16 Page 28 of 36 Document 1

29 restrooms , his name and gender in school records, and the school's determination that he would be prohibited from running for prom king. 107. All of the above discriminatory treatment has undermined the efficacy of the social transition component of his gender transition and heightened his symptoms of Gender Dysphoria . 108. If Defendants refuse to grant A.W. access to boys' restrooms by the time his senior year begins on September 1, 2016, he will likely experience the same social stigma, emotional distress, academic harm, and detrimental impediments to his gender transition resulting from Defendants' conduct that he experienced during his junior year. CAUSES OF ACTION First Cause of Action Violation of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, 20 U.S.C. § 1681, et seq . 109. Plaintiff reallege s and incorporate s the facts and allegations contained in paragraphs 1 through 107 as fully set forth herein. 110. Under Title IX and its implementing regulations, ''[n]o person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.'' 20 U.S.C. § 1681(a); see also 34 C.F.R. § 106.31 (Department of Education Title IX regulations); 7 C .F.R. § 15a.31 (Department of Agriculture Title IX regulations); 45 C.F.R. § 86.31 (Department of Health and Human Services Title IX regulations). Title IX's prohibitions on sex discrimination extend to '' any academic, extracurricular, research, occupational training, or other education program or activity operated by a recipient'' of federal funding. 34 C.F.R. § 106.31; 7 C.F .R. § 15a.31; 45 C.F.R. § 86.31. Case 2:16-cv-00943 Filed 07/19/16 Page 29 of 36 Document 1

30 111. Title IX's prohibition on discrimination ''on the basis of sex'' encompasses discrimination based on an individual's gender identity, transgender status, and gender expression, including nonconformity to sex - or gender -based stereotypes. 112. Conduct specifically prohibited under Title IX includes, inter alia , treat ing one person differently from another in determining whether such person satisfies any requirement or condition for the provision of such aid, benefit, or service; providing different aid, benefits, or services in a different manner; denying any person any such aid, benefit, or service; or otherwise subject ing any person to separate or different rules of behavior, sanctions, or other treatment . 34 C.F.R. § 106.31; 7 C.F.R. § 15a.31; 45 C.F.R. § 86.31. 113. As a Federal funding recipient, Defendant Kenosha Unified School District No. 1 Board of Education, including the academic, extracurricular, and other educational opportunities provided by the Kenosha Unified School Dis trict and Tremper High School, is subject to Title IX's prohibitions on sex - and gender -based discrimination against any student. 114. As set forth in paragraphs 28 to 98 above, Defendants , by adopting and enforcing a policy or practice of prohibiting Plaintiff, a transgender boy, from accessing male -designated restrooms at school, and requiring that he use female -designated restrooms or single -occupancy restrooms, have discriminated and co ntinue to discriminate against Plaintiff in his enjoyment of KUSD's education program and activities by treating him differently from other male students based on his gender identity, the fact that he is transgender, and his nonconformity to male stereotyp es, and thereby denying him the full and equal participation in, benefits of, and right to be free from discrimination in the educational opportunities offered by KUSD and Tremper High School, on the basis of sex, in violation of Title IX. Case 2:16-cv-00943 Filed 07/19/16 Page 30 of 36 Document 1

31 115. Defendant s, by a dopting and enforcing a policy or practice of prohibiting Plaintiff, a transgender boy, from staying in male -designated overnight accommodations on school -sponsored trips, and requiring him to stay in female -designated overnight accommodations or segregate d accommodations on those trips, has discriminated and continues to discriminate against Plaintiff in his enjoyment of KUSD's education program and activities by treating him differently from other male students based on his gender identity, the fact that he is transgender, and his nonconformity to male stereotypes, and thereby denying him the full and equal participation in, benefits of, and right to be free from discrimination in the educational opportunities offered by KUSD and Tremper High School, on the basis of sex, in violation of Title IX. 116. Defendant s have further violated Title IX by failing to recognize fully and respect Plaintiff, a transgender boy, as a male student, including through administrators' repeated and intentional use of Plaintiff's tra ditionally female birth name and female pronouns to address him and refer to him to others; the failure to take necessary and appropriate action to update or modify A.W. 's official and/or informal student records, including classroom attendance rosters, to prevent teachers, substitute teachers, and other school staff from referring to him by his female birth name and female pronouns in the presence of other students; Tremper administrators' initial refusal to permit A.W. to run for junior prom king and dire ctive that he run for prom queen instead, withdrawn only after a student protest and media attention; and Tremper administrators' instruction to school guidance counselors to provide green wristbands to transgender students. Through these actions, individually and collectively, Defendant s ha ve and continue to exclude Plaintiff from participation in, deny him the benefits of, and subject him to discrimination in KUSD's educati on programs and activities, on the basis of sex, in violation of Title IX. Case 2:16-cv-00943 Filed 07/19/16 Page 31 of 36 Document 1

32 117. Defendan ts, through instructing Tremper staff to report the restroom use of any student who ''appears'' to be using the ''wrong'' restroom, operates an unlawful policy or practice of pr ofiling Plaintiff and other students who are transgender and/or do not conform to sex - or gender -based stereotypes, and thereby deprive Plaintiff and similarly situated students of their rights under Title IX to be free from discrimination on the basis of sex, including on the basis of gender identity, transgender status, and nonconformity to sex - or gender -based stereotypes, in further violation of Title IX. 118. Plaintiff has been, and continues to be, injured by De fendants' discriminatory conduct and has suffered damages as a result. Second Cause of Action Violation of 42 U.S.C. § 1983 Based on Deprivation of Plaintiff's Rights under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution 119. Plaintiff realleges and incorporate the facts and allegations contained in paragraphs 1 through 107 as fully set forth herein. 120. Under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, discrimination based on sex, including gender, gender identity, transgender status, and nonconformity to sex - or gender -based stereotypes, as well as discrimination based on transgender status alone, is presumptively unconstitutional and is therefore subject to heightened scrutiny. 121. Defendants , by adopting and enforcing a policy or practice of prohibiting Plaintiff, a transgender boy, from accessing male -designated restrooms at school, and requiring that he use female- designated restrooms or single -occupancy restrooms, have discriminate d and continue to discriminate against Plaintiff in his enjoyment of KUSD's education program and activities by treating him differently from other male students based on his gender identity, the Case 2:16-cv-00943 Filed 07/19/16 Page 32 of 36 Document 1

33 fact that he is transgender, and his nonconformity to male s tereotypes, thereby denying him the full and equal participation in, benefits of, and right to be free from discrimination in the educational opportunities offered by KUSD and Tremper High School, on the basis of sex and transgender status , in violation of the Equal Protection Clause . 122. Defendant s, by adopting and enforcing a policy or practice of prohibiting Plaintiff, a transgender boy, from staying in male -designated overnight accommodations on school -sponsored trips, and requiring him to stay in femal e-designated overnight accommodations or segregated accommodations on those trips, has discriminated and continues to discriminate against Plaintiff in his enjoyment of KUSD's education program and activities by treating him differently from other male students based on his gender identity, the fact that he is transgender, and his nonconformity to male stereotypes, thereby denying him the full and equal participation in, be nefits of, and right to be free from discrimination in the educational opportunities offered by KUSD and Tremper High School, on the basis of sex and transgender status , in violation of the Equal Protection Clause. 123. Defendant s have further violated Plaintiff's rights under the Equal Protection Clause by failing to recognize fully and respect Plaintiff, a transgender boy, as a male student, including through administrators' repeated and intentional use of Plaintiff's traditionally female birth name an d female pronouns to address him and refer to him to others; the failure to take necessary and appropriate action to update or modify A.W. 's official and/or informal student records, including classroom attendance rosters, to prevent teachers, substitute t eachers, and other school staff from referring to him by his female birth name and female pronouns in the presence of other students; Tremper administrators' initial refusal to permit A.W. to run for junior prom king and directive that he run for prom quee n instead, withdrawn only after a student Case 2:16-cv-00943 Filed 07/19/16 Page 33 of 36 Document 1

34 protest and media attention; and Tremper administrators' instruction to school guidance counselors to provide green wristbands to any student who identified himself or herself as transgender. Through these actions , individually and collectively, Defendant s ha ve and continue to exclude Plaintiff from participation in, deny him the benefits of, and subject him to discrimination in KUSD's education programs and activities, on the basis of sex and transgender status , in violation of the Equal Protection Clause . 124. Defendan ts, through instructing Tremper staff to report the restroom use of any student who ''appears'' to be using the ''wrong'' restroom, operates an unlawful policy or practice of profiling Plaintiff and other students who are transgender and/or do not conform to sex - or gender -based stereotypes, and thereby deprive Plaintiff and similarly situated students of their rights to be free from discrimination on the basis of sex, including on the basis of gender ident ity, transgender status, and nonconformity to sex - or gender -based stereotypes, in further violation of the Equal Protection Clause . 125. Defendant s' discrimination against A.W. is not substantially related to any important governmental interest, nor is it rationally related to any legitimate governmental interest. 126. Defendant s are liable for their violation of A.W. 's Fourteenth Amendment rights under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. 127. Plaintiff has been, and continues to be, injured by Defendant s' conduct and has suffered damages as a result. PRAYER FOR RELIEF WHEREFORE, Plaintiff A.W., by and through his mother and next friend, M.W., requests that this Court: Case 2:16-cv-00943 Filed 07/19/16 Page 34 of 36 Document 1

35 (a) enter a declaratory judgment that the actions of Defendant s complained of herein are in violation of Title IX of the Educ ation Amendments of 1972, 20 U.S.C. § 1681, et seq . and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution; (b) issue preliminary and permanent injunctions (i) directing Defendant s to provide Plaintiff access to male -designated restrooms at school, and otherwise to treat him as a boy in all respects for the remainder of his time as a student in Defendant s' schools or until resolution of this lawsuit, whichever is later; (ii) restrai ning Defendants, their agents, employees, representatives, and successors, and any other person acting directly or indirectly with them , from adopting, implementing, or enforcing any policy or practice at the school or District level that treat s transgender students differently from their similarly situated peers ( i.e., treating transgender boys differently from other boys and transgender girls differently from other girls); (iii) directing Defendant s to clarify that KUSD and Tremper 's existing policies prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sex apply to discrimination based on gender identity, transgender status, and nonconformity to sex - and gender -based stereotypes; (iv) ordering Defendant s to provide training to al l district-level and school -based admini strators in the Kenosha Unified School District on their obligations under Title IX and the Equal Protection Clause regarding the nondiscriminatory treatment of transgender and gender nonconforming students; and (v) ensuring that all district- level and school-based administrators responsible for enforcing Title IX, including Defendant s' designated Title IX coordinator(s), are aware of the correct and proper application of Title IX to transgender and gender nonconforming students; (c) order all compensatory relief necessary to cure the adverse educational effects of Defendant s' discriminatory actions on Plaintiff's education; Case 2:16-cv-00943 Filed 07/19/16 Page 35 of 36 Document 1

36 (d) award compensatory damages in an amount that would fully compensate Plaintiff for the emotional distress and other damages tha t have been caused by Defendants' conduct alleged herein; (e) award Plaintiff his reasonable attorn eys' fees and costs pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1988; and (f) order such other relief as this Court deems just and equitable. Dated: July 19, 2016 Respectfully submitted, Ilona Turner* Alison Pennington* TRANSGENDER LAW CENTER 1629 Telegraph Avenue, Suite 400 Oakland, CA 94612 Phone: (415) 865- 0176 Fax: (877) 848- 1278 ilona@transgenderlawcenter.org alison@transgenderlawcenter.org Robert (Rock) Theine Pledl PLEDL & COHN, S.C. 1110 N. Old World Third Street, Suite 215 Milwaukee, WI 53203 Phone: (414) 225- 8999 Fax: (414) 225- 8987 rtp@pledlcohn.com /s Joseph J. Wardenski Michael Allen* Joseph J. Wardenski RELMAN, DANE & COLFAX PLLC 1225 19th Street, NW, Suite 600 Washington, DC 20036 Phone: (202) 728- 1888 Fax: (202) 728- 0848 mallen@relmanlaw.com jwardenski@relmanlaw.com * Application for admission to this Court to follow Case 2:16-cv-00943 Filed 07/19/16 Page 36 of 36 Document 1

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Thu, 04 Aug 2016 15:28

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Thu, 04 Aug 2016 15:06

A knife-wielding man attacked people at Russell Square, central London, killing one woman and injuring five. Police apprehended the suspect whose mental health raised concerns while possible terrorist motivations are also being investigated.

London stabbing: RT's special coverage

The 19-year-old suspect, who had been held in custody at a London hospital, is now in a south London police station having been arrested on suspicion of murder.

Police were called in response to an ongoing attack at Russell Square, Bloomsbury, in the London Borough of Camden at 10:33pm local time on Wednesday night, according to the Metropolitan Police.

Upon arrival, officers discovered six people with wounds, with a woman in her 60s later dying from her injuries.

She was a US citizen, the London Assistant Police Commissioner says.

Spanish, Israeli, Australian and British citizens were injured in the attack, Sky News reports.

''Up to six people were found injured at the location,'' police said in a statement.

''A female was treated at the scene but was pronounced dead a short time later.''

Two people injured in the knife attack remain in hospital, while three others have been discharged, according to London police, as quoted by Reuters.

Police arrested the suspect after one of the officers took him down using a Taser.

A witness, Philippa Baglee, spoke to media at the scene.

"I just came out for a cigarette. There were people laying on the ground, and people standing round, and a guy with a motorbike helmet balanced on his head just walking up and down.

"And then the police car and the ambulance came, and that was it. I thought it'd been a motorbike accident, or somebody had been knocked over. I had no idea that anyone had been stabbed."

Scotland Yard's counter terrorism unit known as SO15 joined the investigation after details of the incident emerged, the Guardian reports.

The London Ambulance Service was dispatched to the site. Additional police units were deployed to the area to provide reassurance.

''Terrorism is one possibility being explored at this stage,'' the official statement added.

''Early indications suggest mental health is a significant factor in this case and that is one major line of inquiry,'' police said in a follow-up release.

''But of course at this stage we should keep an open mind regarding motive and consequently terrorism as a motivation remains but one line of inquiry for us to explore.''

One woman and four men received ''various injuries,'' according to ITV news. The deceased female was in her 60s, police added.

London mayor Sadiq Khan is urging the public to remain calm.

"The safety of all Londoners is my number one priority," Khan said in a statement.

"Please report anything suspicious to the police. We all have a vital role to play as eyes and ears for our police and security services and in helping to ensure London is protected."

The roads and pathways around Russell Square have now reopened following the incident.

Police cordons had been in place as investigations were carried out by forensic officers.

Earlier, Metropolitan Police chief Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe announced that additional armed police would be deployed to patrol London's streets following a wave of terror attacks across Europe.

''I want the public to know that we have substantial resources and a range of tactics that we can call on to protect them," Hogan-Howe said, adding that attack in the UK was a case of "when, not if."

READ MORE: Anti-terror cops on permanent alert for France-style attacks in UK

Announcing the start of Operation Hercules, Hogan-Howe and Khan disclosed that they would increase the number of firearm officers on patrol by 600 to 2,800.

"We will see more armed officers on our streets, but there is no reason to be alarmed,'' Khan said. ''All of our police officers are playing their part and working closely with all of our communities to prevent the possibility of an attack.''

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Thu, 04 Aug 2016 14:58

NBC News has edited comments made by one of its longtime reporters out of an online posting of a clip from ''Today'' in which the reporter said that claims made by Bill Clinton rape accuser Juanita Broaddrick are ''discredited.''

Bill Clinton on a visit to Juanita Broaddrick's, right, nursing home in Van Buren, Arkansas, in 1978. (Getty Images)

In the unedited segment, which aired May 19, shortly after then-presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump used the word ''rape'' to refer to allegations against the former president and the husband of his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, Andrea Mitchell stated the following during a ''Today'' voiceover:

Donald Trump using that word [rape] unprompted during an interview last night with Fox News' Sean Hannity, bringing up a discredited and long-denied accusation against former president Bill Clinton, dating back to 1978 when he was Arkansas attorney general.

But the version of Mitchell's report that is now online omits a key part of the original transcript. It leaves out where Mitchell said the accusation was ''discredited.''

Donald Trump using that word unprompted during an interview last night with Fox News' Sean Hannity, bringing up long-denied accusation against former President Bill Clinton dating back to 1978 when he was Arkansas Attorney General.

NBC News did not immediately respond when asked to comment on the omission.

Broaddrick's allegations gained new attention earlier this year when she again claimed that Bill Clinton raped her when he was Arkansas attorney general and that now-Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton ''tried to silence'' her.

''I was 35 years old when Bill Clinton, Ark. Attorney General raped me and Hillary tried to silence me. I am now 73'....it never goes away,'' Broaddrick tweeted.

(H/T: Washington Free Beacon)

'--

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Thu, 04 Aug 2016 14:54

Republican strategist Liz Mair has made no secret of her distaste for Donald Trump as the Republican presidential nominee, much less the victor in the November general election.

Mair runs an anti-Trump super PAC and has made great efforts to get under the billionaire real estate mogul's skin.

That said, she had no interest in sugarcoating her never-Trump stance during an interview Wednesday evening with CNN's Anderson Cooper in which she called Trump a ''loudmouthed d**k.''

Image source: YouTube

Mair's incendiary declaration came after Cooper asked her, ''Have you lost any hope that the GOP can rein Trump in?'' She replied that she ''lost all hope'' of that several months ago.

''This is his message. His message is being a loudmouthed d**k, basically, and going out there and offending people and then engaging in a bunch of airing of grievances. That's what he does. He doesn't have another message. He doesn't have anything else that he really wants to convey.''

As for the rest of the campaign, Mair said she expects that everyone will ''continue to see the Republican nominee basically acting as if he's on a suicide mission and aiming to take the whole rest of the party down with him.''

Here's the clip. (Content warning: You'll be hearing ''that word'' soon enough):

(H/T: Mediaite)

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Thu, 04 Aug 2016 06:55

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Thu, 04 Aug 2016 05:51

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Thu, 04 Aug 2016 05:42

Sparks flew on MSNBC's AM Joy Sunday as host Joy Reid shouted down Amy Kremer, former Chair of Tea Party Express, for daring to mention there are roughly 30,000 missing E-Mails from Hillary Clinton's personal server. ''You just invented it an entire thing,'' Reid shouted, ''There's no 33,000 E-Mails that are going to harm our national security.'' From there Reid refused the Kremer speak anymore. And when Kremer asked to finish her point, ''Not if you're going to invent things,'' Reid reprimanded her.

The segment started off with a discussion about how Donald Trump asked Russia to find Clinton's missing E-Mails. Reid claimed that Trump wanted them to hack her current E-Mail account, but Kremer noted the request was to ''find the E-Mails.'' A reference to the roughly 30,000 E-Mails not turned over to the FBI. ''That's how they found them. They found them by hacking,'' Reid shot back snarkily.

Kremer reminded Reid that it is not known who hacked Hillary's private server. It is not definitively known if it was hacked at all, but FBI Director James Comey said in his press conference that, ''Given that combination of factors, we assess it is possible that hostile actors gained access to Secretary Clinton's personal e-mail account.'' But Comey never indicated who those said ''actors'' could be.

But that didn't stop Reid from misleading her viewers. ''Hold on Amy. The U.S. Intelligence services have said'-- to a high degree of certainty'-- that they do believe it is the Russians,'' she argued. Giving Reid the benefit of the doubt, she could be get the hacking of Hillary's server confused with the hacking of the Democratic Nation Committee, who officials say was hacked by the Russians. Or Reid might be purposely conflating to two.

It was pointed out by Kremer that it would be almost impossible to hack into Clinton's server now, because it was either offline or behind FBI protections. She even joked that Putin would have to get a DeLorean up to 88 MPH to be able to get at the server. She let her real concerns about the E-Mails known, ''What scares me is the fact that the E-Mails are out there somewhere, probably, and that we could have a president that could be blackmailed over them. That is what concerns me.''

Reid could not belief her ears:

REID: Nope, hold on. You can't just invent things! You can't just invent things.

KREMER: I'm not inventing anything!

REID: You just invented it an entire thing! The FBI has already come out with a report on Hillary Clinton E-Mails and what you just said is invented thing!

KREMER: What?

REID: There's no 33,000 E-Mails that are going to harm our national security. You know that there was an entire year and half investigation!

From there the show devolved into chaos as Reid shouted down Kremer whenever she spoke. ''No, ma'am! No, Ma'am! You cannot invent things. You cannot say things'-- You're putting out incredibly inflammatory information.'' Not sorry to invade your safe space Joy but the truth may not be what you want to hear, no matter how ''utterly bored'' you are with it. FBI's Director Comey's statements prove she lied to the public about her E-Mail procedures. Comey also said they were only able to obtain roughly half of, ''the reportedly more than 60,000 total E-Mails remaining on Secretary Clinton's personal system in 2014.''

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Thu, 04 Aug 2016 05:35

More in the cross-post on the MRC's NewsBusters blog.

On Monday, both NBC's Today and CBS This Morning promoted Democrats calling on Congress to cut its recess short in order to approve federal funding to combat the Zika virus. However, both morning shows ignored the fact that Democrats were the ones that blocked legislation to do just that only one month earlier.

In a report live from Miami on Today about the first mosquito transmission of the disease in the U.S., correspondent Sarah Dallof noted: ''As Senate Democrats push for Congress to end its recess and approve emergency Zika funding, officials here in Miami are wasting no time, focusing on the possibility of more undiagnosed cases.''

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Thu, 04 Aug 2016 04:42

After the Khan family, a Muslim-American couple whose son was killed while fighting for the U.S. overseas, bashed Trump from the DNC stage last week, Trump in his typical style, escalated the situation by directing his criticism at the Khans. For this, the national media took him to task, hyping the situation and talking about it endlessly for the past five days. CNN, either trying to be balanced or cash in on Benghazi victims bashing Trump, attempted to do so Monday by bringing on Patricia Smith, and Tuesday morning bringing on Charles Woods. Woods was father to U.S. Navy S.E.A.L., Tyrone Woods, who was killed during the Benghazi attack. On CNN Newsroom, host Carol Costello repeatedly attempted to get Woods to ask Trump to ''apologize'' for his comments to the Khans, but instead of taking the bait, he turned the tables and called on someone else to apologize instead.

Read the rest of the blog here.

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Thu, 04 Aug 2016 04:36

[More in the cross-post on the MRC's NewsBusters blog.]

Fareed Zakaria ripped Donald Trump on the 1 August 2016 edition of CNN's Wolf program over the billionaire's recent remarks about Russia: "Every time it is demonstrated that Donald Trump is plainly ignorant about some basic public policy issue....he comes back with the certain bravado and tries to explain it away with a Tweet....there's a term for this kind of thing. This is the mode of a bullshit artist." Zakaria also likened Trump's stance on Russia's annexation of Crimea to Nazi Germany's invasions prior to World War II: "[It] is the same argument that Adolf Hitler made about the Sudeten Czechoslovaks."

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Thu, 04 Aug 2016 04:33

During a joint White House press conference with Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, President Barack Obama spent more than five minutes explaining why he thinks GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump is ''unfit to serve as president,'' pointing to recent statements Trump made about the parents of Capt. Humayun Khan, a decorated Army veteran who was killed in Iraq. Read Full Story

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Thu, 04 Aug 2016 04:09

Major news broke Tuesday regarding high ranking Democratic National Committee personnel losing their jobs, but you would never know it if you watched NBC Nightly News. Even though ABC and CBS spent minimal time on the story, NBC was the only network in the ''big three'' to avoid the topic all together. ''And there is one more developing headline in the race for president before we move on here, and this one spells trouble for the Democrats tonight,'' hyped ABC anchor David Muir on World News Tonight.

''More heads rolling at the Democratic National Committee, after the party's e-mail was hacked,'' he went on to explain. Muir continued:

U.S. authorities believing Russian hackers were behind it, but it's what's in those e-mails now leading to resignations. Party CEO Amy Daisy is out tonight, along with the party's chief finance officer and commune cases director. All three in those e-mails showing favoritism for Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders. The release of those e-mails already led to DNC chairperson congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz to resign from her post at the DNC.

While ABC dedicated 40 seconds to the story, CBS thought it only warranted 18 seconds. ''There is more fallout from the leak of Democratic National Committee e-mails that reveal party officials favored Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders,'' said Charlie Rose CBS Evening News, filling in for anchor Scott Pelley. Rose only mentioned ''three top officials'' were forced to resign, and that Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz was forced to step down from her position as the Chair of the DNC.

Spanish-language network Univision also gave the story minimal air time, almost on par with CBS at 21 seconds. Univision was the only network to mention the names of the two other officials forced to resign, ''Two of her collaborators Luis Miranda and Brad Marshall joined her resignation, which was announced through a press release.''

Even with Univision's short amount of time they still beat out their Spanish competitor Telemundo, who also gave the story zero air time. Telemundo is owned by NBC Universal which could explain why they, along with NBC News, did not cover the resignations.

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Wed, 03 Aug 2016 23:57

Team CrowderTuesday August 2 2016

Leftists like to use scholarships to reward feckless dweebs for'... being feckless dweebs. That's about it. That's why said scholarships are based on irrelevant details, like skin tone or how many times you cried while watching Blackfish. Or in this case sexuality. Say, that sounds a lot like discrimination right? Yeah, that's because it is. Sonia Kruger delves into that more below.

It sort of feels like reverse discrimination to me in a way. You're asking somebody about their sexual preferences, and I find that that's a really odd thing to do, in any kind of capacity, whether it's a job or whether it's a scholarship. I don't think it should have anything to do with the awarding of a scholarship. I think a scholarship should be given on merit.

She hit the nail on its soft-skulled, liberal head. As her co-host would go on to inadvertently point out, these scholarships exist to seek out the most ''disadvantaged'' people and reward them. The problem? It creates an arena in which ninnies compete to be the biggest victim. The bigger victim you are, the more dough you rake in (see Yes, Democrats Need You to Stay Poor and Helpless, Here's Their Twisted Strategy'...).

This contributes to a bigger problem within the liberal world of education. For instance, qualified Asian-Americans are being denied entry into Ivy League schools. Meanwhile pansexual, septum-pierced, man-lady Astrid gets to go major in women's studies at Yale. Hey, ze earned it. By being crappy.

The moral of the story? If you're a student, start identifying as an ''ethnic,'' gender-fluid amoeba with nary a nickel. Pump up the disadvantaged factor. Just kidding, that's only relevant if you want money for college. Double kidding. See, there are other options for non-basket-cases. Like regular scholarships (see Mike Rowe Offers New Scholarship. Wimpy Socialists Need Not Apply'...). Remember those? They're based on grades, abilities, hard work'... Mostly stuff that leftists hardly bother to concern themselves with.

Or hey, just don't go to college. It's a crapshoot no matter how you slice it.

NOT SUBSCRIBED TO THE PODCAST? FIX THAT! IT'S COMPLETELY FREE ON BOTH ITUNES HERE AND SOUNDCLOUD HERE.

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Wed, 03 Aug 2016 23:31

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has told RT he believes the US only has circumstantial evidence that Russia is behind the hack that led to the release of sensitive emails from the Democratic National Convention database.

''There are claims that in the metadata after someone has done a document to PDF conversion and in some cases, the documents - the language of the computer that was used for that conversion, was Russian,'' Assange told Afshin Rattansi, the host of RT's Going Underground.

Assange added that any evidence Russia was involved is merely circumstantial and could have been planted deliberately by ''someone who wanted to make it look like a Russian'' was behind the hack.

Read more

Previously Assange said that he believes the accusations from the Democrats are an attempt to deflect attention from the contents of the leaked documents.

Watch the full interview with Assange on Going Underground on Saturday, August 6.

Some 20,000 DNC emails were made public by WikiLeaks on July 22, revealing a close working relationship between the party and some mainstream media figures, as well as collusion with the Hillary Clinton campaign to sideline Bernie Sanders, her challenger for the presidential nomination.

The Kremlin has dismissed the charges that Russia was behind the DNC hack as ''quite absurd,'' with presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov pointing out what he called the ''American style'' of casting blame first, then investigating afterwards.

''We in Russia are used to investigating first, before accusing anyone of anything. We believe it is more logical and more correct,'' Peskov said.

''Such statements by Ms. Clinton are typical pre-election rhetoric,'' Peskov added. ''There is nothing tangible in her accusations, and we believe their character is more emotional.''

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said on Friday that it was time to stop blaming Russia where there was no proof. ''We don't know enough to ascribe motivation regardless of who it might have been,'' he said.

He added that the US has been running in ''reactionary mode'' when it comes to the numerous cyber-attacks the nation is continuously facing.

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Wed, 03 Aug 2016 23:30

Donald Trump asked a foreign policy expert advising him why the U.S. can't use nuclear weapons, MSNBC's Joe Scarborough said on the air Wednesday, citing an unnamed source who claimed he had spoken with the GOP presidential nominee.

"Several months ago, a foreign policy expert on the international level went to advise Donald Trump. And three times [Trump] asked about the use of nuclear weapons. Three times he asked at one point if we had them why can't we use them," Scarborough said on his "Morning Joe" program.

Scarborough made the Trump comments 52 seconds into an interview with former Director of Central Intelligence and ex-National Security Agency Director Michael Hayden.

Scarborough then asked a hypothetical question to Hayden about how quickly nuclear weapons could be deployed if a president were to give approval.

"It's scenario dependent, but the system is designed for speed and decisiveness. It's not designed to debate the decision," Hayden said.

Hayden was CIA director from 2006 to 2009 during the George W. Bush presidency. He was the National Security Agency director from 1999 to 2005, spanning the presidencies of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.

CNBC reached out to the Trump campaign via email and was awaiting a response.

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Wed, 03 Aug 2016 23:25

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Wed, 03 Aug 2016 23:10

''She said, as I recall, rage was directed towards the American embassy as a result of the awful film that we had no part in. So she not only lied to the American people, she also lied to myself and to other family members,'' Woods said.

Yesterday on CNN, Patrica Smith, the mother of Sean Smith, one of the other Americans who was killed in the Benghazi terrorist attack blasted Clinton, arguing that the former secretary of state ''kills people.''(RELATED: Mother Of Benghazi Victim: Hillary Clinton 'Kills People' [VIDEO])

Last Sunday in an interview on ''Fox News Sunday,'' Clinton attempted to discredit Smith, arguing that she ''may not fully recall everything that was or wasn't said.''

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Wed, 03 Aug 2016 22:56

Team CrowderWednesday August 3 2016

Nobody is safe from leftist outrage mobs these days, not even leftists themselves (see Caitlyn Jenner Endorses Ted Cruz. Gay Liberals RAGE!). So it's not terribly surprising when things like this happen. An African American, elected official attempted to have an honest discussion about race and policing. She happens to agree with #BlackLivesMatter when it comes to police reform, just not the whole ''all cops are racist'' shtick. So she laid down some facts and statistics regarding racial profiling.

One of the things brought up was the racial profiling issue'... I support my community, but let me just tell you what I want to do is make sure we know that there is more black on black shootings in our nation than ever before '-- 340 shootings and murders in Chicago the first six months, 120 shootings and murders in Memphis the first six months, 28 homicides here in San Diego.

Black on black crime is an issue, and that was never addressed. That's why when someone says, ''Do you think there is racial profiling?'' Yeah, because blacks are shooting blacks. They're not going to stop a white male. They're not going to stop an Hispanic male or an Asian. They're going to stop an African-American. That's what they're going to stop because those are the ones that are shooting.

She was, of course, referring to a recent meeting with BLM and friends. They dumped social justice demands on her quicker than Shaun King dumps self tanner on his skin. Seems as though she took a rational, well thought out approach to a touchy subject. The round-about subject being if ''black lives matter'' why aren't we talking about black-on-black crime? Also, if racial profiling is a problem, but blacks are the ones committing the crime'... wouldn't the police look into black suspects? Sounds like a decent strategy, but of course BLM's response?

Logic? Facts? Saying ''black-on-black crime''? Can't be tolerated. So, naturally, BlackLivesMatter put together a ten point plan on how to curb violence and racial profiling, then presented it thoughtfully, with the visual aids of PowerPoint and several bar charts.

Just kidding. They wore ''resign or else'' t-shirts and walked up to a microphone to say things. Here, see for yourself:

Or else? Whatever could that mean? Considering BLM's track record, it could be anything from ''we'll shoot you dead,'' to ''we'll riot in the streets.'' Because justice. Not as mandated by rule of law, but feelings. Meanwhile this poor councilwoman? She gets lambasted for pointing out facts. Turns out when it comes to justice, to finding the truth, #FactsDontMatter.

That was her first mistake, because of course'...

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Wed, 03 Aug 2016 19:55

ABC News reports that Republican party leaders believe that there is a real possibility that Donald Trump may just quit his candidacy. Now, they're exploring the options and trying to find someone to replace the real estate mogul, whose campaign seems to be imploding on the daily.

It's patently obvious that Trump is in way over his head, and has taken on a role that he is neither prepared for nor temperamentally qualified for. He can't even keep his cool around a crying baby, and he can't control his defensive impulses enough to stop harassing a bereaved Gold Star family. Would Donald Trump just quit? He's quit before. In fact, he's known to quit when things get tough, bailing on any number of businesses and marriages.

Republican officials are panicking, and senior party members are scrambling to find someone to replace Trump.

According to Jon Karl, chief White House correspondent for ABC News, party officials are confused, frustrated, even furious with Donald Trump's behavior. Karl told George Stephanopoulos, the Good Morning America host.

'First of all, I am told RNC chairman Reince Priebus is furious, that he has had multiple discussions with Trump telling him he needs to drastically change course. But here's the news, I am told senior officials at the party are actively exploring what would happen if Trump dropped out, how to replace him on the ballot.'

When asked if Donald Trump quitting was a real possibility, Karl responded:

'He is so unpredictable right now, they are so unable to control his message, that they just don't know and clearly think it is a possibility, which is why they're looking at these rules.'

ABC News provided a video clip of the report.

They feel that rather than risk being seen to lose, Trump might voluntarily quit the race. According to party officials, there are no procedures for forcing him to withdraw from the race, and Trump has not yet indicated that he would choose to do so. But should Trump quit rather than risk a humiliating loss, it would be up to the members of the Republican National Committee to choose his successor.

A Republican legal expert has advised the party officials that in order to have enough time to pick a replacement and get their name on enough state ballots to win, Trump would have to drop out by early September.

ABC News provided a copy of the bylaws for the RNC for filling a vacancy on a presidential ticket:

RULE NO. 9 Filling Vacancies in Nominations

(a) The Republican National Committee is hereby authorized and empowered to fill any and all vacancies which may occur by reason of death, declination, or otherwise of the Republican candidate for President of the United States or the Republican candidate for Vice President of the United States, as nominated by the national convention, or the Republican National Committee may reconvene the national convention for the purpose of filling any such vacancies.

(b) In voting under this rule, the Republican National Committee members representing any state shall be entitled to cast the same number of votes as said state was entitled to cast at the national convention.

(c) In the event that the members of the Republican National Committee from any state shall not be in agreement in the casting of votes hereunder, the votes of such state shall be divided equally, including fractional votes, among the members of the Republican National Committee present or voting by proxy.

(d) No candidate shall be chosen to fill any such vacancy except upon receiving a majority of the votes entitled to be cast in the election.

It remains to be seen how Donald Trump will handle the remainder of the 2016 presidential election, but that's rather the point; even his closest advisers have no idea what The Donald will do next.

Image via Getty Images

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Wed, 03 Aug 2016 17:35

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Wed, 03 Aug 2016 13:08

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton is either lying about the words she spoke to the families of the Benghazi victims or her memory is failing her, the father of one of the Navy SEALs killed in the Sept. 11, 2012, attack on the U.S. consulate said Tuesday.

Charles Woods, father of Tyrone Woods, one of four Americans killed in the attack, reacted to Clinton's claim that family members of the victims ''may not fully recall everything that was or wasn't said'' by her in the aftermath of the attack.

''There are two options. One is that either Mrs. Clinton is lying or else she has a bad memory because of her age or her head injury that she suffered,'' Woods said Tuesday during a Fox News interview.

Charles Woods, father of Tyrone Woods, a Navy SEAL killed in the Benghazi attack, reads the words he said then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told him from a notebook he kept. (Image source: Fox News)

Woods then pulled out a little black notebook that he said he uses to write down events that he wishes to remember.

''I gave Hillary a hug and shook her hand,'' Woods read from the book. ''And she said, 'We are going to have the filmmaker arrested' who is responsible for the death of my son.''

''Now, that has nothing to do with my memory. This is just a contemporaneous writing,'' he added.

Woods continued to argue that the former secretary of state blamed the attack on a video ''in private to the families that were grieving and then a half hour later she said basically the same thing as far as causation to the American public.''

During an interview with Fox News' Chris Wallace over the weekend, Clinton disputed claims that she blamed a video for the attack on the U.S. embassy.

''As other members of families who lost loved ones have said, that's not what they heard,'' Clinton said. ''I don't hold any ill-feeling for someone who in that moment may not fully recall everything that was or wasn't said.''

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Wed, 03 Aug 2016 05:17

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Tue, 02 Aug 2016 18:17

Judge Nap: Hillary Is Trying to 'Maintain the Facade That She's Been Telling the Truth'

Huckabee: Every Time You Turn Around, Either the DNC or Hillary Has Been Hacked

'Which Conventions?': Watters' World Gets Folks' Reactions to the Conventions

The revelation that the Democratic National Committee's server may not have been hacked by Russia but by a disgruntled member of the U.S. intelligence community is a sign of how much anxiety about Hillary Clinton there is in that community, Judge Andrew Napolitano said on "Fox and Friends" this morning.

Judge Napolitano said that intelligence officials are particularly upset that the classified information Clinton handled with "extreme carelessness" contained the identities of undercover agents.

"This is the belief of a lot of people in the intelligence community," he said. "If Mrs. Clinton does become president of the United States, she's going to have a lot of antipathy towards her by people in the intelligence community. This is the tip of the iceberg."

Judge Napolitano said that, according to NSA whistleblower William Binney, a "critical mass" of the 60,000 NSA agents and contractors "fear Mrs. Clinton's presidency."

It only takes one disgruntled employee to hack and leak classified information, Judge Napolitano said, pointing out that's exactly what happened with Edward Snowden.

He noted that Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, which released the damning DNC emails, has said they have more emails that could be damaging to Democratic Party leaders, including Clinton.

"This could become a campaign issue," Judge Napolitano said. "Look at what they did to Debbie Wasserman Schultz. They know exactly the perfect timing to release these materials."

Get more insight from the judge above.

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Stay connected with the most-trusted name in cable news through exclusive videos, show highlights and behind-the-scenes details.

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