869: Swamp of Crazy

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Fri, 14 Oct 2016 00:24

BREAKING: WIKILEAKS EMAILS SUGGEST Supreme Court Justice Scalia May Have Been Murdered

CNN HOST And Crybaby Hillary Surrogate Get BRUTAL SLAP DOWN When Dr. Gina Loudon Uses Facts Against Them [VIDEO]

TREXIT: SWING STATE APOCALYPSE'...Democrats LEAVE Party In Massive Numbers'...Hillary Won't Recover

BREAKING: VIOLENT HILLARY THUGS Beat Man Holding ''Bill Clinton Is A Rapist'' Sign At Hillary Rally [Video]

BREAKING: TOP DEM SENATOR CAUGHT In Undercover Video Revealing Plan For Hillary To Obliterate Second Amendment

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Sat, 15 Oct 2016 14:46

Donald Trump's tumultuous campaign opened with an unrealistic and bigoted promise, devised to capitalize on American ethnic tension and middle class anger. For months, his only legitimate policy position was the deportation of Mexican illegal immigrants '' immigrants who he deemed to be both rapists and murderers. Never mind the fact that from 2009-2014, there was a net loss of 140,000 Mexican immigrants and that illegal immigrants do not commit crimes at a higher rate than native-born Americans.

His second campaign promise was the ''total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.'' Not only did this apply to incoming immigrants, but apparently, according to Hope Hicks, a campaign spokeswoman, it includes ''everyone'' '' including Muslim-American citizens living overseas. Once again, Trump found a way to both galvanize angry white people and control the media cycle. This time, the promise wasn't only offensive and racist, but wholly unconstitutional in nature.

Since June 2015, Trump's campaign has been littered with rhetoric openly offensive to Mexicans, Muslims, veterans, Blacks, and women, among others. Trump looked to remove Judge Curiel, a man of Mexican descent, from his case, because he had ''an absolute conflict'' because he is ''of Mexican heritage,'' despite the fact that Mr. Curiel has lived his entire life in America. In response to John McCain's harsh words, Trump lashed out, decrying his war hero status by stating that he only likes people ''who weren't captured.'' Recently, Trump's pitch to black voters included the comment that ''you live in poverty, your schools are no good, you have no jobs.'' He concluded by asking ''what the hell do you have to lose?'' When a black protestor was beat at his rally, Trump argued ''Maybe [the protester] should have been roughed up.'' Finally, Trump, when speaking about women, explained that ''you know, it doesn't really matter what [the media] write as long as you've got a young and beautiful piece of ass.'' And then came last Friday, and all the ugliness that's followed.

Trump's recent wave of offensiveness is only a small sampling of a vast ocean of bigotry. According to Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino President John R. O'Donnell, Trump once angrily claimed that ''Laziness is a trait in blacks.'' When asked about the book where the quote appeared, Trump relented and said, ''the stuff O'Donnell wrote about me is probably true.'' In a 1994 interview with ABC News, Trump claimed that ''putting your wife to work is a very dangerous thing.'' Never mind mind that Trump once exclaimed ''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.'' Due to the insanity of a Trump candidacy, many of these facts and statements have been overlooked and forgotten by many, myself included. Despite the hatred and utter stupidity Trump spews, it took until now for me to truly be truly fearful of a Trump administration.

First he came for the Mexicans. I'm not Mexican, so I said nothing. Next he came for the Muslims. I, once again, am a not a Muslim, so I sulked and complained in silence. He proceeded to come for blacks and women. Once again, I said nothing. Next, he and his supporters came for the Jews. As a Jew, I could no longer stay silent.

''He's not actually anti-Semitic,'' is the point many of my fellow members of the tribe made to me. ''It's just his supporters, not him,'' they claim. Never mind that he stole and tweeted a photo from a Nazi website of Clinton in front of a Star of David and a wall of money, branded her as ''the most corrupt candidate ever.'' Never mind that when meeting with Republican Jews, a minority group within the Jewish community, Trump claimed that he is ''a negotiator, like you folks.'' He went on, asking ''Is there anyone who doesn't renegotiate deals in this room? Perhaps more than any room I've spoken to.'' Concluding the bizarre tirade, Trump echoed many of his anonymous Twitter followers who proclaim the stereotypes Jewish Zionist fiscal and political control, telling the crowd that ''You're not going to support me, because I don't want your money. You want to control your own politician.''

Although this speech to Republican Jews took place months ago, it is only now, in the early fall, that my fears of Trump's anti-Semitism have begun to take hold. Growing up, I dismissed anti-Semitism, even in numerous Hebrew school or secular high school lessons on the Holocaust. I was, however, never taught about the anti-Semitic red-lining policies which were enforced, in this country, up until the 1960s. I never knew that an anti-Semitic underbelly of this country still flourished in the shadows of Twitter and Reddit. This has been a rude awakening from my dream of full assimilation and inclusion in this nation.

Since Trump's normalization of bigotry, Jewish journalists have been attacked mercilessly on Twitter by his followers, with comments such as ''Listen kike, crying wolf is the quickest way into the oven.'' Jonathan Weisman, a New York Times writer, was harassed with numerous tweets, the worst of which can be summed up by an anonymous follower offering ''I found the Menorah you were looking for.'' The Menorah was a candelabrum made up of the number six million '' the number of Jews killed in the holocaust. Despite my whiteness, it has been made overtly clear that I am, as a Jew, wholly unwelcome in Trump's vision for an ethnically nationalist America.

''There are two countries on earth where it is completely safe to Jewish,'' my mother also told me, proceeding to read off the short list of the United States and Israel. My family has lived in the United States for generations, coming from the Eastern European hotbed of Judaism and anti-Semitism. Personally, outside of snide comments, I have never experienced violent anti-Semitism, although I'm sure my grandparents and other family members did. The Trump campaign has started as a crusade against the non-whites of this nation '' a group, which I, despite my previous understanding of my place in America, am clearly not a part of. I have rarely felt otherized '' a privilege which I am grateful for and for which I can thank my non-outwardly Jewish appearance and name. The Trump campaign has effectively normalized bigotry and racism, a combination which has made me question my place in this nation, despite the fact that I am deeply proud of being an American. The Trump campaign does not represent the United States, but it has normalized behaviors and attitudes of bigotry which threaten to rip us apart at the seams.

This long-winded tirade has lead me to my main question: if you fit into any minority group '' Jewish, Muslim, Mexican, Black, Muslim, disabled '' or if you are a woman, how can you justify a third party protest vote? The idea of a Trump presidency is genuinely terrifying. Hate crimes against Muslims have increased along with Trump's poll numbers '' as have ad-hominum attacks on Jews. This piece is aimed at the Johnson and Stein voters '' voters who proclaim Trump disgusting, but not enough to ensure he isn't elected, apparently. Inherent in that vote is a degree of privilege. Privilege to know that even if Trump is elected, you won't feel the direct results.

I know you don't like Clinton. You may even hate her. You think she's dishonest, a career politician, corrupt, a bad decision maker, and so on and so forth. You have every right to believe so. But as a member of a minority group against which bigotry has been normalized, I am begging you to reconsider. I know that many of you will say that voting for Johnson or Stein is the only way for you to maintain a clear conscience. Let me turn this around. Voting for a third party based on your own sense of moral superiority while ignoring the very real peril of minorities is not my understanding of maintaining a clear conscience. By putting your own selfish moral superiority first, you allow for the possibility of an America in which anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, racism, and misogyny are normalized and expected. I understand many of you hate Hillary Clinton, but please, put your own priorities aside and think of your minority friends '' friends who, in this election, desperately need you and your vote to prevent the return to an America where we are not welcome.

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Fri, 14 Oct 2016 09:53

David Brock / AP

BY:Joe SchoffstallSeptember 15, 2016 5:22 pm

Hillary Clinton ally David Brock is offering to pay for new information on Donald Trump, hoping that damaging audio or video on the Republican presidential candidate will be submitted to his super PAC.

Brock, founder of the left-wing Media Matters and operator of Correct the Record super PAC, recently posted the plea on Correct the Record's website and is referring to the project as ''TrumpLeaks,'' NBC News reported.

Brock asked for video or audio of Trump that has yet to be released.

''One of the most important things for voters to evaluate in any election is the full measure of a candidate's views, ideas, and temperament over time,'' the website states.'¯''In making a choice for president, voters must also consider how various candidates present themselves to the public and to the world. There are few things more important in that regard than access to video or audio in the form of prior television or radio interviews or more candid video from events a candidate may have attended.''

Brock's super PAC goes on to say they can offer compensation to anyone who has new video or audio that has been obtained legally.

''TrumpLeaks is an effort to uncover unreported video or audio of Donald Trump so voters can have access to the Donald Trump who existed before running for president and before his recent affinity for teleprompters,'' the website says of the project. ''TrumpLeaks can provide some compensation to those who have usable, undoctored video or audio that has been legally obtained or is legally accessible.''

NBC News noted that the project is ''highly unusual'' and seems to ''cross a new line'' in modern day politics.

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Fri, 14 Oct 2016 10:23

Donald J. Trump on Thursday accused Hillary Clinton of guiding a ''global power structure'' that has rigged the economy against the working class, language that some suggested echoed anti-Semitic themes.

Mr. Trump made the accusation in a speech in West Palm Beach, Fla., in which he also defended himself against several accusations of sexual harassment, published by The New York Times and others.

Early in the speech, he said that a global elite had ''stripped'' the United States of its wealth in order to line the pockets of corporate and political interests. ''The Clinton machine is at the center of this power structure,'' he said.

The Run-UpThe podcast that makes sense of the most delirious stretch of the 2016 campaign.''We've seen this firsthand in the WikiLeaks documents in which Hillary Clinton meets in secret with international banks to plot the destruction of U.S. sovereignty in order to enrich these global financial powers, her special interest friends and her donors,'' he said, referring to the group that has, most recently, published thousands of hacked emails from Mrs. Clinton's campaign chairman.

The remarks drew criticism from some who said they resembled prejudicial language used by anti-Semites.

''Whether intentionally or not, Donald Trump is evoking classic anti-Semitic themes that have historically been used against Jews and still reverberate today,'' Jonathan Greenblatt, the chief executive of the Anti-Defamation League, a group that fights discrimination, said in a statement.

A man held a sign toward members of the news media as he attended Mr. Trump's rally in West Palm Beach, Fla., on Thursday.

Joe Raedle / Getty Images

Mr. Greenblatt said the group feared that white supremacists might see the comments as tacit encouragement.

''Mr. Trump focused on the very issues and themes that obsess conspiratorial anti-Semites: They believe that there is an elite group of Jews who control the media, the government, and banking, and who are trying to destroy white America,'' he said. ''They also believe that most of Hillary Clinton's donors are Jewish.''

The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Others drew a more direct comparison between Mr. Trump's words and those of anti-Semites.

In the speech, Mr. Trump also accused the ''Clinton machine'' of wielding control over the news media, as well.

''The most powerful weapon deployed by the Clintons is the corporate media, the press,'' he said to jeers from the audience.

While the allegations were aimed at Mrs. Clinton, who is a Methodist, Jews have long been accused of conspiring to control institutions like banks and the media in order to amass wealth and power.

In 1931, for example, the author A. N. Field described the creation of the American Federal Reserve as the moment the ''German-Jew engine of control'' enslaved the United States, according to the Anti-Defamation League. That conspiracy theory has survived the ensuing decades and, even today, such anti-Semitic beliefs remain prevalent around the world, according to A.D.L. polling.

In West Palm Beach on Thursday, reporters covering Mr. Trump returned to a table reserved for the press to find a sign bearing a swastika and the word ''MEDIA'' scrawled on it, Jim Acosta, a senior CNN White House correspondent, reported.

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Fri, 14 Oct 2016 22:49

Never in American history has anyone as unfit and undeserving as Hillary Clinton run for U.S. President. While she stands on the threshold of being elected to the White House, she quite literally belongs in a prison cell. This article lays out the case against her, chapter and verse.

Clinton's Private Email Server & the Espionage Act

Throughout her entire four-year tenure as secretary of state, Mrs. Clinton never acquired or used a government email account. Instead, she transmitted '-- in violation of government regulations '-- all of her official correspondences via a private email address that traced back to a secret, private, unsecured server that was housed at her New York residence.1 And immediately after those emails were subpoenaed by Congress, Clinton instructed a team of her advisers to unilaterally delete, with no oversight, almost 32,000 of the roughly 60,000 emails in question.2

Clinton claimed that her reason for having used only a personal email account, rather than both a personal and a government account, was that she found it ''easier,'' ''better,'' ''simpler'' and more convenient to ''carry just one device for my work and for my personal emails instead of two.''3 It was eventually learned, however, that Mrs. Clinton in fact had used no fewer than 13 mobile devices to access emails on her private server, but the FBI was unable to obtain any of those devices in its investigation, in some cases because Clinton aides had been instructed to smash them with a hammer.4

Clinton originally assured Americans that not even one piece of classified material had ever been transmitted via her unsecured, secret, personal server. But now it is known that at least 2,079 emails that she sent or received via that server, contained classified material.5 As the eminent broadcaster and legal scholar Mark Levin has made plain, each of those 2,079 offenses constituted a felonious violation of Section 793 of the Espionage Act.6 And each violation was punishable by a prison sentence of up to ten years.7

In January 2016, former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said ''the odds are pretty high'' that Russia, China, and Iran had compromised Clinton's unsecured email server.8

But hey, who cares? At least Mrs. Clinton, unlike Donald Trump, never engaged in crude, private trash talk that was recorded on tape. And all of her disparaging, condescending, hate-soaked, fiction-laced denunciations of her political rivals are delivered in measured, solemn, well-rehearsed tones. And she of course respects women deeply. In fact, she respects all people, including the 315 million Americans whose personal and national security was compromised when Mrs. Clinton willfully allowed top-secret information to wind up in the possession of our country's most hostile enemies around the world.

The Clinton Foundation Scandals

In an effort to prevent foreign governments, organizations, and individuals from influencing the policy decisions of American national leaders, campaign-finance laws prohibit U.S. political figures from accepting money from foreign sources. But as the Washington Post noted in February 2015, the Bill, Hillary, & Chelsea Clinton Foundation ''has given donors a way to potentially gain favor with the Clintons outside the traditional political [donation] limits.''9

As of February 2015, foreign sources accounted for about one-third of all donors who had given the Clinton Foundation more than $1 million, and over half of those who had contributed more than $5 million.10 Foreign donors that gave money to the Foundation included: Hezbollah supporter Issam Fares, who once served as deputy prime minister of Lebanon;11 the Dubai Foundation, which also gave money to the families of Palestinian terrorists killed in action;12 the royal family of the United Arab Emirates; a Dubai-based company that promotes Sharia Law;13 a privately-held Chinese construction and trade conglomerate headed by a delegate of the Chinese parliament;14 and the governments of Saudi Arabia, Brunei, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar.15

Even during Clinton's tenure (2009-13) as secretary of state, the Clinton Foundation received millions of dollars in donations from seven foreign governments.

Bill Clinton earned a total of $48 million from foreign sources for his appearance and speaking fees during his wife's term as secretary.16

In August 2016, the Associated Press reported that 85 of Hillary Clinton's 154 scheduled meetings and phone calls with non-governmental personnel during her time at the State Department were with donors who gave $156 million to the Clinton Foundation. The AP report also revealed that the Clinton Foundation had received $170 million in donations from at least 16 foreign governments whose representatives met personally with Mrs. Clinton.17

In May 2015, the International Business Times reported that the Clinton State Department had approved billions of dollars in arms deals with governments that donated to the Clinton Foundation, including governments that were infamous for their appalling human-rights records.18

But the Clinton Foundation certainly does many wonderful things for needy people around the world, doesn't it? Well, according to a review of IRS documents by The Federalist, between 2009-12 the Clinton Foundation raised over $500 million in total. A mere 15% of that went towards programmatic grants. The other $425 million went to travel expenses, employee salaries and benefits, and ''other expenses.''19 In 2013, the Clinton Foundation allocated only 6% of its revenues to direct charitable aid.20

But hey, who cares? At least Mrs. Clinton never engaged in crude, private trash talk that was recorded on tape. And all of her disparaging, condescending, hate-soaked, fiction-laced denunciations of her political rivals are delivered in measured, solemn, well-rehearsed tones. And she deeply respects women, including the millions of women around the world who have never benefited from the charitable services that the Clinton Foundation purports to provide, because the Foundation only spends a tiny percentage of its funds on actual charity.

Clinton's Support for the Iran Nuclear Deal

Vowing that Mrs. Clinton will ''preven[t] Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon,'' the Clinton presidential campaign website assures Americans that ''Hillary will vigorously enforce the nuclear agreement with Iran.'' Is this a good thing? Consider that the agreement's key provisions were as follows:

Iran was permitted to keep more than 5,000 centrifuges. Iran received $150 billion in sanctions relief. Russia and China were permitted to supply Iran with weapons. Iran was given the discretion to block international inspectors from its military installations, and was promised that it would receive 14 days' notice for any request to visit a given site. Only inspectors from countries that had diplomatic relations with Iran would be given access to Iranian nuclear sites; thus there would be no American inspectors. An embargo on the sale of weapons to Iran would be officially lifted in 5 years. Iran's intercontinental ballistic missile program would remain intact. The U.S. pledged that it would provide technical assistance to help Iran develop its nuclear program and protect its nuclear facilities, supposedly for peaceful domestic purposes. Sanctions would be lifted on critical parts of Iran's military. Iran was not required to release American prisoners whom it was holding on trumped-up charges.21 As a result of this nuclear deal that Mrs. Clinton so enthusiastically supports, Iran is guaranteed of having a near-zero breakout time to a nuclear bomb approximately a decade down the road.

But hey, who cares? At least Mrs. Clinton never engaged in crude, private trash talk that was recorded on tape. And all of her disparaging, condescending, hate-soaked, fiction-laced denunciations of her political rivals are delivered in measured, solemn, well-rehearsed tones. And she deeply respects women, including the scores of millions of women in the U.S., Israel, and elsewhere, whose very lives have been placed in irreversible peril as a result of this deal.

Clinton Helps Russia Gain Control of 20% of All U.S. Uranium

In 2007-08, a Canadian named Ian Telfer, chairman of a South African uranium-mining company called Uranium One, funneled millions of dollars in donations to the Clinton Foundation. In June 2010, the Russian government made an extremely generous offer to Uranium One's shareholders. If the offer were to be accepted, Russia would gain a 51% controlling stake in the company.

But because Uranium One controlled one-fifth of all U.S. uranium reserves '-- and uranium, a key component in both nuclear energy and nuclear weaponry, is considered a strategic asset with implications for American national security '-- the deal with Russia could not be permitted without the approval of the American government. Specifically, that approval could be granted only by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), which is composed of several of the most powerful members of the cabinet '-- the Attorney General as well as the Secretaries of Defense, Commerce, Treasury, Homeland Security, Energy, and State. (The latter, of course, was Hillary Clinton.)22

Without the approval of these seven Obama administration officials, Russia's acquisition of Uranium One could not have taken place. All seven, including Hillary Clinton, gave their go-ahead for the deal. As a result, the Russian government took control of fully 20% of all uranium production capacity in the United States.23

In June 2010 '-- the very month in which the Russian acquisition of Uranium One was approved by the CFIUS '-- Bill Clinton was invited to speak in Moscow for the astronomical sum of $500,000. Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin personally thanked Mr. Clinton for speaking. And Mr. Clinton's speaking fee was paid by Renaissance Capital, a Russian investment bank with ties to the Kremlin.24

But hey, who cares? At least Hillary Clinton never engaged in crude, private trash talk that was recorded on tape. And all of her disparaging, condescending, hate-soaked, fiction-laced denunciations of her political rivals are delivered in measured, solemn, well-rehearsed tones. And she deeply respects women, including the countless millions whose safety has been placed in jeopardy by permitting American uranium to be gobbled up by a hostile, fascist Russia.

The Benghazi Debacle, and Clinton's Role in Arming Jihadists in Libya and Syria

Throughout 2012, violent jihadist activity became increasingly commonplace in the city of Benghazi and elsewhere throughout Libya and North Africa. American personnel at the U.S. mission in Benghazi repeatedly asked the Clinton State Department for increased security provisions during 2012, but all of these requests were either denied or ignored.25

On the night of September 11, 2012, a large group of heavily armed Islamic terrorists attacked the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi with great violence.26 In the process, they killed the U.S. Ambassador to Libya, Chris Stevens, and three other Americans.

For weeks thereafter, Mrs. Clinton and the rest of the Obama administration continued to characterize what had occurred on September 11 in Benghazi not as a carefully orchestrated act of terrorism, but as a spontaneous uprising that evolved unexpectedly from what had begun as a low-level protest against an obscure YouTube video.

For the administration, it was vital to continue putting forth this false narrative because, with the presidential election only a few weeks away, nothing could be permitted to puncture the Obama-Clinton talking points: ''Al Qaeda is on the run'' and ''Osama bin Laden is dead.''27

In reality, however, within mere hours after the September 11 attack, U.S. intelligence agencies had already gained more than enough evidence to conclude unequivocally that it was a planned terrorist incident, and that the YouTube video had nothing whatsoever to do with it.28

On January 23, 2013 '-- fully 134 days after the September 11 attack in Benghazi '-- Mrs. Clinton went before Congress to testify as to what she knew about the incident. At one point in the hearing, Senator Rand Paul asked her whether the United States had ever been involved in procuring weapons in Libya and transferring them to other countries including Syria. Clinton replied, ''I do not know. I have no information on that.''29

But a March 25, 2013 New York Times story subsequently indicated that the Obama administration had in fact been sending arms from Libya, through intermediary nations and ultimately to Syria, since early 2012. And another Times article described Mrs. Clinton as one of the driving forces who had called for arming the Syrian rebels (who were fighting Syrian President Assad) in precisely that manner.30 In other words, Clinton had lied in her congressional testimony to Rand Paul.

It should be noted that the Syrian rebels whom Clinton and Obama were aiding consisted of Islamic jihadists, many of whom were affiliated with Al Qaeda. In July 2016, Julian Assange of Wikileaks revealed that a batch of hacked DNC emails contained information proving that Clinton, contrary to what she had said in her congressional testimony in 2013, knew as early as 2011 that the U.S. was sending arms from Libya to jihadists in Syria.31

And in October 2016, a Fox News report indicated that Obama and Clinton had also arranged for the provision of weapons to radical jihadists in Libya.32

In September 2014, former Deputy Secretary of State Raymond Maxwell reported that in late 2012 he had witnessed '-- in the basement of the State Department's headquarters '-- a Sunday meeting in which Cheryl Mills (Hillary Clinton's chief of staff) and Jake Sullivan (Clinton's deputy chief of staff) were overseeing and directing staffers who were busy purging documents that might implicate Clinton or her top people in the Benghazi attacks.33

But hey, who cares? At least Mrs. Clinton never engaged in crude, private trash talk that was recorded on tape. And all of her disparaging, condescending, hate-soaked, fiction-laced denunciations of her political rivals are delivered in measured, solemn, well-rehearsed tones. And she deeply respects women, including: (a) the Libyan and Syrian women whose lives were destroyed by the jihadists whom Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama supported, and (b) the wives, mothers, sisters, and daughters of the four Americans who were slaughtered by jihadists in Benghazi.

The Radical Islamist Affiliations of Clinton's Closest Aide

Hillary Clinton's closest aide for many years has been Huma Abedin, whose late father, Syed Abedin, was affiliated with the Muslim Students Association (MSA). The MSA grew out of the jihadist Muslim Brotherhood, which Islam expert Robert Spencer has described as ''the parent organization of Hamas and al Qaeda.''34

Huma's mother, Saleha Mahmood Abedin, is a prominent member of the Muslim Sisterhood '-- the Muslim Brotherhood's division for women. She is also a board member of the International Islamic Council for Dawa and Relief, a pro-Hamas entity that is part of the ''Union of Good,'' which the U.S. government has formally designated as an international terrorist organization. Saleha once wrote an article blaming America for having provoked the Islamic ''anger and hostility'' that led to the 9/11 attacks.35

From 1996-2008, Huma Abedin was employed by the Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs (IMMA), a Saudi-based Islamic think tank founded by Abdullah Omar Naseef, a major Muslim Brotherhood figure who once served as secretary-general of the Muslim World League, a vehicle by which the Muslim Brotherhood promotes the ideology of Islamic supremacism. Naseef also had ties to Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda, with whom he communicated.36 Abedin was the assistant editor of IMMA's in-house publication, the Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs (JMMA). At least the first seven of those years overlapped with Abdullah Omar Naseef's active presence in the IMMA.37

It is vital to note that the IMMA's ''Muslim Minority Affairs'' agenda was, and remains to this day, a calculated foreign policy of the Saudi Ministry of Religious Affairs. It is designed, as former federal prosecutor Andrew C. McCarthy explains, ''to grow an unassimilated, aggressive population of Islamic supremacists who will gradually but dramatically alter the character of the West.''38

But hey, who cares? At least Mrs. Clinton never engaged in crude, private trash talk that was recorded on tape. And all of her disparaging, condescending, hate-soaked, fiction-laced denunciations of her political rivals are delivered in measured, solemn, well-rehearsed tones. And she respects women, including the hundreds of millions of women in Muslim nations who are oppressed by the very same Sharia Law that is promoted by the organization to which Huma Abedin devoted 12 years of her life.

The Deadly Consequences of Clinton's Absurd Fictions About Islam & Terrorism

In 2011 the Obama administration, in which Mrs. Clinton was obviously a major player, decided to purge, from the training materials and curricula of all federal intelligence and criminal investigators, every single item suggesting that ''jihad'' or ''Islam'' were in any way related to terrorism.39 Instead, the new objective would be ''countering violent extremism,'' improving ''cultural competency training across the United States Government,'' and promoting ''cultural awareness.''40 All told, the FBI removed more than 1,000 presentations and curriculum items that were deemed ''offensive'' or ''Islamophobic.''41

The FBI's decision to change its training materials and interrogation methods went on to have deadly serious, real-world consequences. A particularly noteworthy case involved jihadist Omar Mateen, who in June 2016 entered a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida and murdered 49 people while wounding 53 others. The FBI had investigated Mateen extensively for 10 months in 2013 because he had family connections to Al Qaeda, he was a member of a Shi'a terrorist organization, and he had issued terroristic threats on a number of occasions. But eventually, the FBI canceled that investigation because, in accordance with the tenets of its revised training materials, it concluded that Mateen posed no threat to anyone; that his biggest problem was the psychic pain he was suffering as a result of ''being marginalized because of his Muslim faith.'' As a result of this absurd line of reasoning, 49 innocent people from Orlando are now lying in their graves.42

Hillary Clinton agrees completely with the notion that it is both counterproductive and morally unjustified to suggest any connection between Islam and terrorism '-- the same delusional, preposterous mentality that enabled the Orlando mass murder to take place.

But hey, who cares? At least Mrs. Clinton never engaged in crude, private trash talk that was recorded on tape. And all of her disparaging, condescending, hate-soaked, fiction-laced denunciations of her political rivals are delivered in measured, solemn, well-rehearsed tones. And she deeply respects women and homosexuals, including the 49 people who were slaughtered in the Orlando nightclub.

Clinton's Role in the Rise of ISIS and the Stratospheric Growth of Worldwide Terrorism

ISIS, which evolved out of Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), grew into the most powerful, well-funded horde of bloodthirsty barbarians in world history, right under Mrs. Clinton's nose, and precisely during her watch as secretary of state. While ISIS launched its campaign of mass rapes, beheadings, slaughters, and tortures of unimaginable brutality '-- and gained control over enormous portions of Iraq and Syria '-- Clinton and President Obama did absolutely nothing to thwart it.43

Moreover, the rise of ISIS coincided with the expansion of terrorism to unprecedented levels all over the world. According to the Global Terrorism Index, fatalities caused by terrorism increased from 3,361 in 2000, to 11,133 in 2012, to 18,111 in 2013, to 32,658 in 2014. More than half of the 2014 killings were carried out by ISIS and Boko Haram, the latter of which has pledged allegiance to ISIS.44 In other words, worldwide terrorism has spiraled out of control under Obama, Clinton, and Clinton's successor, John Kerry.

But hey, who cares? At least Mrs. Clinton never engaged in crude, private trash talk that was recorded on tape. And all of her disparaging, condescending, hate-soaked, fiction-laced denunciations of her political rivals are delivered in measured, solemn, well-rehearsed tones. And she deeply respects women everywhere, including the many thousands who are killed by terrorists across the globe each year.

Clinton's Role in Squandering America's Victory in the Iraq War

ISIS's meteoric ascent to power occurred as a direct result of President Obama's decision to rapidly withdraw all U.S. troops from Iraq '-- against the advice of experienced military leaders '-- in 2011. Retired Army General John M. Keane, the last American commander in Iraq, had recommended that 23,000 U.S. troops be left in place to secure the U.S. war victory. But Obama, wanting to be remembered most of all as the president who ended wars rather than fought them, left no forces behind. Beaming with pride, he frequently took credit for bringing American military involvement in Iraq to a formal close.45

Of course, when ISIS later grew into a genocidal monster, Obama tried to claim that his withdrawal from Iraq had been forced upon him by a December 2008 deal in which President Bush and Iraqi president Maliki signed a ''status-of-forces'' agreement stipulating that all U.S. troops must leave Iraq by December 2011.46

But status-of-forces agreements are often amended and renegotiated, based on evolving security concerns. Obama left no U.S. forces in Iraq for one very simple and obvious reason: he didn't want to. As Obama himself stated during a 2012 debate with Republican challenger Mitt Romney: ''What I would not have done is left 10,000 troops [a far cry from the 23,000 recommended by General Keane] in Iraq that would tie us down. That certainly would not help us in the Middle East.''47

It is vital to remember, moreover, that Iraqi president Maliki would have been quite willing to accept a new status-of-forces agreement in 2011, had it stipulated that the U.S. would leave behind a contingent of troops large enough to effectively secure the peace. But when Obama and Clinton proposed to leave a mere 2,000 to 3,000 troops in Iraq, Maliki had no choice but to refuse. As National Review explains: ''[T]he problem was that the Obama administration wanted a small force so that it could say it had ended the war. Having a very small American force wasn't worth the domestic political price Maliki would have to pay for supporting their presence.''48

When Obama was deciding to pull all U.S. troops out of Iraq, Hillary Clinton was in 100% agreement with him. As Fox News reports: ''Clinton was a leading and outspoken supporter of the Obama administration's decision to withdraw U.S. forces from Iraq.... Clinton touted the United States' commitment to Iraq in 2011 and said the Obama administration has 'a plan in place' to ensure Iraq's security.''49

Instead, Iraq turned into a beehive of jihadism, terrorism, and mass murder.

But hey, who cares? At least Mrs. Clinton never engaged in crude, private trash talk that was recorded on tape. And all of her disparaging, condescending, hate-soaked, fiction-laced denunciations of her political rivals are delivered in measured, solemn, well-rehearsed tones. And she deeply respects women everywhere, including the millions whose lives were destroyed when a stable Iraq descended once again into anarchy and terror.

Clinton's Horrible Judgment Regarding Another Terrorist Enemy

As a member of the U.S. Senate, Mrs. Clinton opposed President Bush's January 2007 decision to deploy an additional 21,500 troops in a military ''surge'' designed to turn the tide of the Iraq War '-- which had devolved into a bloody quagmire '-- back in America's favor:

In December 2006, when Bush was still contemplating the surge, Clinton said: ''Everyone knows there is no military solution to the difficulties we face in Iraq.''50 In January 2007, Clinton complained that the surge was ''taking troops away from Afghanistan, where I think we need to be putting more troops, and sending them to Iraq on a mission that I think has a very limited, if any, chance for success.''51 In August 2007, Clinton said: ''The surge was designed to give the Iraqi government time to take steps to ensure a political solution to the situation. It has failed to do so.... It is abundantly clear that there is no military solution to the sectarian fighting in Iraq. We need to stop refereeing the war, and start getting out now.''52 When General David Petraeus issued a September 2007 report on the remarkably successful results that the surge was yielding, Clinton obstinately told Petraeus that his assertions required ''a willing suspension of disbelief.''53 Contrary to Clinton's erroneous predictions and dispiriting rhetoric, the troop surge proved to be a monumentally important strategy that finally enabled the U.S. to crush the Iraqi insurgency. Prior to the surge, it had not been uncommon for 3,000 or more Iraqi civilians and security-force members to die at the hands of terrorist violence during any given month. By May 2008, the monthly mortality figure stood at 19, and it fluctuated between 7 and 25 deaths per month over the ensuing 14 months.54

In his 2014 memoir, Robert Gates '-- who had served as Secretary of Defense under both George W. Bush and Barack Obama '-- wrote that Hillary Clinton's opposition to the troop surge had been based on how she thought her own political fortunes would be affected by taking that position. For example, Gates described a ''remarkable'' exchange that he had witnessed, where Clinton, speaking retrospectively, ''told the president that her opposition to the [2007] surge in Iraq had been political because she was facing him in the Iowa primary'' and could not afford to be perceived as pro-war.55

But hey, who cares? At least Mrs. Clinton never engaged in crude, private trash talk that was recorded on tape. And all of her disparaging, condescending, hate-soaked, fiction-laced denunciations of her political rivals are delivered in measured, solemn, well-rehearsed tones. And she deeply respects women everywhere, including the millions to whom she tried to deny the protection of American forces in the troop surge.

Clinton's Empty Talk Regarding Russia and China

Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign website boasts that in 2010 Clinton ''worked to ensure ratification of the New START treaty, which will make the world safer by reducing U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals to their smallest size in 50 years.''56

The New START agreement with Russia limited each country's long-range nuclear weapons stockpile to 1,500.57 But while both the U.S. and Russia agreed to these limits, only America promised to freeze its technology.58 As the late constitutional scholar Phyllis Schlafley wrote of the treaty:

''It reads like it was written by the Russians and has nothing good in it for the United States.... The treaty allows Russia to build new and modern weapons to reach New START limits, whereas the United States is locked into reducing its current number. That means Russia will have new and tested weapons, but the U.S. will be stuck with its current, out-of-date, untested warheads.... This treaty gives Russia a veto over all U.S. defenses against incoming missiles.... Russia explained that ... it will stick with New START 'only if the (U.S.) refrains from developing its missile defense capabilities quantitatively or qualitatively.'''59

But hey, who cares? At least Mrs. Clinton never engaged in crude, private trash talk that was recorded on tape. And all of her disparaging, condescending, hate-soaked, fiction-laced denunciations of her political rivals are delivered in measured, solemn, well-rehearsed tones. And she deeply respects women, including the 150+ million women in the U.S. whose security was instantly and permanently compromised by the terms of the New Start Treaty.

Clinton's Reprehensible Treatment of Israel

In 2010, Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren said that during the first two years of the Obama-Clinton administration, ''Israel's ties with the United States'' had reached ''their worst crisis since 1975 ... a crisis of historic proportions.''60

Some may recall how Mrs. Clinton betrayed Israel in the aftermath of an infamous 2010 incident where terrorist members of a Turkish organization known as the IHH '-- which has ties to Hamas, Al Qaeda, and the Muslim Brotherhood '-- participated in a six-ship flotilla of pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel activists who sailed to Gaza for the purpose of breaking Israel's naval ''blockade'' there. (That ''blockade'' was, in reality, a policy whereby Israel insisted on examining all imports passing through Gaza, so as to prevent the ruling Hamas government, which has sworn its permanent allegiance to the destruction of Israel and the genocide of Jews, from importing weaponry from abroad). The flotilla's lead ship was owned and operated by IHH. When its crew refused to comply with repeated Israeli demands that it submit to an inspection of its cargo, Israeli commandos boarded the vessel and were violently attacked by IHH terrorists. In the melee that ensued, nine IHH members were killed, and seven Israeli soldiers were wounded. Thereafter, Clinton, by her own telling, ''spent '... literally years trying to get the Israelis to finally apologize to the Turks on the flotilla.''61

In the summer of 2014, Israel engaged in a massive military operation designed to weaken the destructive capacity of Hamas terrorists who were launching more than 100 potentially deadly missiles per day from Gaza, deep into Israel. Before long, Israel discovered that Hamas, in recent years, had constructed a massive network of at least 60 underground missile storage-and-transport tunnels throughout Gaza. A number of those tunnels extended, underground, into Israeli territory '-- for the purpose of facilitating terror attacks, murders, and kidnappings against unsuspecting Israeli citizens. According to a Wall Street Journal report, Hamas had spent between $1 million and $10 million to build each of those tunnels, using as many as 350 truckloads of cement and other supplies per tunnel.62

Then, in a bombshell revelation in August 2014, Dennis Ross, who had served as Secretary of State Clinton's senior Mideast policy adviser, revealed that Clinton had personally assigned him the task of pressuring Israel to ease up on its military blockade of Gaza. ''I argued with Israeli leaders and security officials, telling them they needed to allow more construction materials, including cement, into Gaza so that housing, schools and basic infrastructure could be built,'' said Ross. ''They countered that Hamas would misuse it, and they were right.'' As one analysis aptly puts it, ''Ross's admission shows that it was [Clinton] who sent her personal envoy to push for a policy that ultimately enabled Hamas to build the terror tunnels.''63

But hey, who cares? At least Mrs. Clinton never engaged in crude, private trash talk that was recorded on tape. And all of her disparaging, condescending, hate-soaked, fiction-laced denunciations of her political rivals are delivered in measured, solemn, well-rehearsed tones. And she deeply respects women, including the millions of Israeli Jews whose lives were placed in peril by Hamas's underground tunnels and illegally imported weaponry.

Clinton Turns Libya into a Terrorist Hell Hole

During her tenure as secretary of state, Hillary Clinton pushed hard for the U.S. to take military action designed to drive Muammar Gaddafi from power in Libya.64 According to former Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who served under President Obama, Clinton played a major role in convincing Obama to lead a protracted NATO bombing campaign against Gaddafi in 2011 '-- a campaign that lent support to opposition rebels consisting of ISIS, Ansar al-Sharia, and other local militant groups. In other words, Clinton and Obama '-- in their quest to unseat Gaddafi '-- were aiding murderous jihadists in Libya.

What is remarkable about this, is the fact that Gaddafi at that time no longer posed any threat to American national security. Indeed, just prior to the Al Qaeda-led uprising that Clinton and Obama supported, Libya was providing the U.S. with important intelligence data. Moreover, it was a prospering, secular Islamic nation that had a national budget surplus of 8.7% and was producing 1.8 million barrels of oil per day.

By the time the Obama-Clinton bombing campaign was finished, Libya's economy had shrunk by 42% and was operating at an annual deficit of 17.1%; oil production was down by at least 80%.65

According to Foreign Policy In Focus, the Obama-Clinton strategy ''plunged'' Libya ''into chaotic unrest'' and ''turned [it] into a cauldron of anarchy.''66 Today Libya is a nation teeming with jihadists, and ISIS is becoming increasingly powerful there.67

But hey, who cares? At least Mrs. Clinton never engaged in crude, private trash talk that was recorded on tape. And all of her disparaging, condescending, hate-soaked, fiction-laced denunciations of her political rivals are delivered in measured, solemn, well-rehearsed tones. And she deeply respects women, including the millions in Libya who are now drowning in a tsunami of terrorism.

Clinton's Plan to Import 65,000 Syrian Refugees into the U.S. As Quickly As Possible

''We have to stem the flow of jihadists from Europe and America to and from Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan,'' says the Clinton presidential campaign website.68 While this sounds like a grand idea, it begs a very obvious question: Why has Hillary Clinton explicitly called for bringing at least 65,000 refugees from Syria into the United States as quickly as possible,69 even though:

ISIS has vowed to deploy terrorist operatives to infiltrate the flow of Syrian refugees heading to Western nations?70 more than 1,500 terror-linked refugees, asylees and migrants entered the U.S. in 2014 alone?71 more than 30,000 illegal immigrants from ''countries of terrorist concern'' entered the United States through America's Southwestern border with Mexico in 2015?72 Michael Steinbach, deputy assistant director of the FBI's counter-terrorism unit, has made it clear that it is virtually impossible to screen out terrorists who could be posing as refugees and coming to America?73 FBI Director James Comey has said that the federal government does not have the ability to conduct reliable background checks on the Syrian refugees, and has warned that ''there will be a terrorist diaspora [from Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East] sometime in the next two to five years like we've never seen before''?74 Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson has admitted that the U.S. will not ''know a whole lot'' about the refugees it accepts?75 CIA director John Brennan has said that ISIS ''is probably exploring a variety of means for infiltrating operatives into the West, including in refugee flows ...''?76 As a direct result of the policy that Mrs. Clinton herself has spelled out, scores of thousands of people from the very seat of ISIS's power will soon be streaming into the United States at a record pace.

But hey, who cares? At least Mrs. Clinton never engaged in crude, private trash talk that was recorded on tape. And all of her disparaging, condescending, hate-soaked, fiction-laced denunciations of her political rivals are delivered in measured, solemn, well-rehearsed tones. And she deeply respects women, including the countless American women whose lives may be imperiled by an influx of Syrian terrorists posing as refugees.

Taking a long-range view of American migration and refugee policy, Mrs. Clinton understands that eventually, when these Syrian refugees and their relatives, and then their descendants, become registered voters, they will vote heavily Democrat, as the vast majority of immigrants from the Middle East have always done.77

And if some Americans have to get murdered along the way by terrorist infiltrators, so be it. To Mrs. Clinton, that is simply one of the costs of doing (political) business.

Immigration: Clinton Explicitly Favors Amnesty, Sanctuary Cities, and ''Open Borders''

''Hillary will introduce comprehensive immigration reform with a pathway to full and equal citizenship within her first 100 days in office,'' says the Clinton presidential campaign website.78 Mrs. Clinton pledges that if she is elected president, she will extend President Obama's two major executive orders on immigration, which protected millions of illegal aliens from deportation.79 She vows to do this despite the fact that Obama himself, prior to issuing his executive orders, frequently acknowledged that such actions went far beyond the proper limits of presidential authority.80 Speaking to a group of illegal immigrant high-school students in 2015, Clinton said: ''I want to do everything we can to defend the president's executive orders ... As president I would do everything possible under the law to go even further.''81

Moreover, Mrs. Clinton unequivocally supports the ''sanctuary'' policies that bar police and other public-sector employees in some 340 U.S. cities from notifying the federal government about the presence of illegal aliens residing in their communities. As such, these policies defy the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act that Congress passed twenty years ago to require that local governments cooperate with U.S. Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE).82

Sanctuary policies have turned hundreds of U.S. cities into very dangerous places. Of the 9,295 deportable aliens who were released after their arrest in sanctuary jurisdictions during the first eight months of 2014 alone, some 2,320 were subsequently re-arrested, on new criminal charges, soon thereafter. And before their initial release, 58% of those 9,295 aliens already had felony charges or convictions on their records, while another 37% had serious prior misdemeanor charges.83

But Mrs. Clinton's commitment to sanctuary policies is unshakable. As Xochitl Hinojosa, the Clinton presidential campaign's director of coalitions press, said in 2015: ''Hillary Clinton believes that sanctuary cities can help further public safety, and she has defended those policies going back years.''84

In a speech she delivered at Banco Itau, a Brazilian bank, on May 16, 2013, Mrs. Clinton stated: ''My dream is a hemispheric common market, with open trade and open borders....''85

You read that correctly: ''open borders.''

But hey, who cares? At least Mrs. Clinton never engaged in crude, private trash that was recorded on tape. And all of her disparaging, condescending, hate-soaked, fiction-laced denunciations of her political rivals are delivered in measured, solemn, well-rehearsed tones. And she deeply respects women, including the many whose lives and safety are imperiled by open borders and sanctuary policies.

Clinton's Opposition to Gun Rights

Lamenting that ''too many families in America have suffered '-- and continue to suffer '-- from gun violence,'' Mrs. Clinton has stated that crime victims should be allowed to sue firearm manufacturers and retailers who lawfully produced or sold a gun that was used in a crime.86 This is a way to eliminate the Second Amendment ''without firing a shot,'' so to speak, as it would inevitably cause the firearms industry to disappear.87

At a New Hampshire town hall in 2015, a man asked Mrs. Clinton whether she would consider supporting a gun buyback measure similar to the one that had been implemented in Australia: ''Recently, Australia managed to get away, or take away tens of thousands, millions of handguns. In one year, they were all gone. Can we do that?'' Clinton replied: ''I think it would be worth considering doing it on the national level, if that could be arranged.''88

In other words, Mrs. Clinton is eager to explore creative ways of eliminating the Second Amendment.

But hey, who cares? At least she never engaged in crude, private trash talk that was recorded on tape. And all of her disparaging, condescending, hate-soaked, fiction-laced denunciations of her political rivals are delivered in measured, solemn, well-rehearsed tones. And she deeply respects women, including those who, in the absence of the Second Amendment, will no longer be able to defend themselves and their families against home invaders and other assailants. They will no longer be among the hundreds of thousands of individuals who, each year, use guns for defensive purposes to repel or frighten away would-be attackers.89

Clinton's Plans to Expand Obamacare into a Government-Run, Single-Payer System

Stating unequivocally that she plans to ''defend and expand the Affordable Care Act'' (ACA),90 Mrs. Clinton contends that Obamacare has thus far been a great success.

Let's look, for a moment, at how successfully Obamacare has helped to cut the cost of insurance premiums. When the law was being debated and formulated, President Obama repeatedly assured Americans that under his plan, the average family would save up to $2,500 per year in annual premiums.91 The reality has been somewhat different:

A 2014 study by the Brookings Institution found that ''premiums in the individual health insurance market increased by 24.4 percent beyond what they would have had they simply followed '... [existing] trends.''92 The S&P Global Institute found that between 2013-15, the average market medical costs per individual increased by 69%.93 Premiums for ACA-compliant Qualified Health Plans that were sold to individuals on the Obamacare exchanges, were $2,300 more expensive than premiums for non-Qualified Health Plans, i.e., plans that were in existence before 2014 and did not comply with the mandates of the ACA.94 In 2015, premiums for the lowest-cost plans across all tiers '-- bronze, silver, gold and platinum '-- increased by a median of 10-13%.95 By September 2016, fully 16 of Obamacare's 23 state exchanges had gone bankrupt, with another one '-- the Tennessee exchange '-- ''very near collapse.''96 It is expected that by the end of 2016, UnitedHealth Group will have exited 31 of the 34 Obamacare exchanges in which it has participated, while Aetna will have left 11 of its 15 state exchanges.97 Meanwhile, Obamacare's insurance policy deductibles are skyrocketing in almost every state. As National Review reports: ''Average deductibles for silver plans '-- which accounted for nearly 70 percent of the exchanges' 9.3 million enrollees [in 2015] '-- now average $2,994. The second most popular Bronze plans have average deductibles of $5,629.... Paying $3,000 or $5,600 before their insurance kicks in simply isn't an option for most families ...''98

Hillary Clinton proposes to address the financial implosion of Obamacare by implementing a ''public option''99 '-- i.e., a government-run insurance plan that would ''compete'' with private insurers. Pacific Research Institute president Sally Pipes explains how disastrous such a measure would be: ''By drawing on taxpayer dollars, this public option would be able to out-price almost every private insurer in the country. Unable to compete, private insurers would be 'crowded out,' leaving Americans with just one choice: a government-operated health care plan that brings the entire health sector under government control.''100

But that, in a nutshell, is Mrs. Clinton's ultimate, long-range goal: to have a ''single-payer,'' ''universal'' healthcare system that is run entirely by the federal government. Her presidential campaign website candidly states that she ''has never given up on the fight for universal coverage.''101

And what does the empirical evidence show, regarding the effectiveness of universal healthcare systems in countries around the world? It's actually quite clear. As the Cato Institute puts it, ''In countries weighted heavily toward government control, people are most likely to face waiting lists, rationing, restrictions on physician choice, and other obstacles to care.'' By contrast: ''[T]hose countries with national health care systems that work better, such as France, the Netherlands, and Switzerland, are successful to the degree that they incorporate market mechanisms such as competition, cost-consciousness, market prices, and consumer choice, and eschew centralized government control. In other words, socialized medicine works '-- as long as it isn't socialized medicine.''102

So Hillary Clinton wants to implement a healthcare system that has failed miserably in country after country, confident that she'll get better results because she'll put smarter bureaucrats in charge of it.

But hey, who cares? At least Mrs. Clinton never engaged in crude, private trash talk that was recorded on tape. And all of her disparaging, condescending, hate-soaked, fiction-laced denunciations of her political rivals are delivered in measured, solemn, well-rehearsed tones. And she respects women and girls deeply '-- even the 150+ million females whose lives and health will be placed in peril by the expansion of Obamacare and the pursuit of a single-payer system.

Rejecting School Vouchers for Poor Minority Children in Failing Urban Schools

Professing to have spent her entire adult life ''fighting for children,''103 Hillary Clinton dogmatically opposes the implementation of school voucher programs104 which would enable the parents of low-income, mostly-minority children who attend failing, inner-city public schools, to send their youngsters instead to private schools where they might actually have a chance of succeeding academically.

Why would anyone reject such programs, if he or she actually cared about poor minority kids?

As always, if you want to find out what motivates Mrs. Clinton, you have to follow the money. Together, the two largest teachers' unions in the United States '-- the National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) '-- have given tens of millions of dollars in campaign contributions to political candidates since the early 1990s, and more than 95% of that money has gone to Democrats. If we also count the massive expenditures that teachers' unions make on politically oriented initiatives like television ads and get-out-the-vote efforts, the numbers become almost unfathomable. From 2007-12, the NEA and AFT together spent more than $330 million to influence elections in favor of Democrats.105

The leading objective of both the NEA and AFT is to maximize employment opportunities for dues-paying members of their unions. This is highly significant because mandatory dues constitute the very lifeblood of those unions. And voucher programs, which would siphon students as well as money away from the public schools, don't promote union membership or union dues.

So Hillary Clinton rejects voucher programs because her union benefactors oppose them.

But hey, who cares? At least she never engaged in crude, private trash talk that was recorded on tape. And all of her disparaging, condescending, hate-soaked, fiction-laced denunciations of her political rivals are delivered in measured, solemn, well-rehearsed tones. And she deeply respects women '-- even impoverished, inner-city minority women who have no choice but to send their children to public schools that are beset by academic failure and violence of monumental proportions.

''Criminal Justice Reform'': Going Soft on Crime, and Filling America's Graveyards

Hillary Clinton tells us that Americans everywhere ''are crying out for criminal justice reform'' because ''families are being torn apart by excessive incarceration,'' and ''children are growing up in homes shattered by prison and poverty.''106

How does Mrs. Clinton know that our country's current levels of incarceration are excessive? What, exactly, would be the right number of people in prison? How would we arrive at that number?

Consider some highly noteworthy facts:

In 1990, when there were about 1,149,000 prisoners in penitentiaries nationwide, there were 1,820,130 violent crimes committed that year, including 23,440 murders.107 In 2014, when there were 2,208,000 inmates in penitentiaries nationwide, a total of 1,197,987 violent crimes were committed that year, including 14,249 murders.108 So, even as the population of the United States grew by 28% between 1990 and 2014, the incidence of violent crimes declined by 46%, and the incidence of murders fell by 39%. These numbers suggest that putting more criminals in prison has helped to spare at least a million people per year from being victimized by violent crimes, and to save at least 9,000 people per year from being murdered. If we look at the numbers from this perspective, incarceration suddenly doesn't look like such a bad thing, does it?

And indeed, Mrs. Clinton herself inadvertently admitted this when she recently said, while railing against ''mass incarceration,'' that ''the numbers [of prisoners] today are much higher than they were 30, 40 years ago, despite the fact that crime is at historic lows.''109

Poor Hillary Clinton. She opened her mouth in an unscripted moment and accidentally told the truth.

But hey, who cares if she supports policies that result in more death and destruction? At least Mrs. Clinton never engaged in crude, private trash talk that was recorded on tape. And all of her disparaging, condescending, hate-soaked, fiction-laced denunciations of her political rivals are delivered in measured, solemn, well-rehearsed tones. Plus, she deeply respects women, including the ones who, under her criminal-justice ''reform'' policies, would face a far greater likelihood of being abused, violated, or slain by criminals who really belonged in prison.

Fighting Voter ID Laws As ''Racist'' Schemes to Disenfranchise Minorities

At an August 2013 meeting of the American Bar Association, Mrs. Clinton lamented that ''more than 80 bills restricting voting rights'' had been ''introduced in 31 states'' during the first eight months of that year. These were generally bills that sought to institute Voter ID requirements at polling places, shorten early-voting periods, eliminate same-day voter registration, prevent the arbitrary extension of voting hours, and carefully regulate the use of absentee voting. All of these proposed measures were designed to reduce the likelihood of voter fraud, but Mrs. Clinton called them ''voter suppression'' efforts that were part of a racist scheme to ''disproportionately [disenfranchise] African-Americans, Latino[s] and young voters.''110 On another occasion, Clinton said that Voter ID laws are emblematic of a racist form of ''fear-mongering about a phantom epidemic of election fraud.''111

Is Mrs. Clinton correct? Look at the evidence and decide for yourself:

A 2012 report by the Pew Center on the States found that 24 million voter registrations '-- one-eighth of all registrations nationwide '-- were either invalid or inaccurate, including more than 1.8 million dead people who were still registered.112 A 2014 study found that two years earlier, some 155,692 registered voters in North Carolina alone had first and last names, birth dates, and final-four Social Security Number digits that matched those of voters who were registered in other states.113 The same study also found that 35,570 people who had actually voted in North Carolina, had first names, last names, and birth dates that matched those of voters who had cast ballots in other states.114 In 2008, Democrat Al Franken won a highly controversial U.S. Senate race in Minnesota by just 312 votes. It was later discovered that 1,099 felons '-- all legally ineligible to vote '-- had cast ballots in the election, almost exclusively for Franken.115 A 2006 study found that 77,000 dead people were listed on New York's statewide database of registered voters, and that as many as 2,600 of them had somehow managed to cast ballots from the grave.116In Milwaukee in 2004, approximately 5,300 more ballots were cast, than voters who were recorded as having shown up at the polls.117 In 2008, election officials nationwide had to discard at least 400,000 bogus voter registrations submitted by ACORN,118 the now-defunct criminal operation masquerading as a ''community organization.'' (Speaking at ACORN's 2006 national convention, Mrs. Clinton said: ''I thank you for being part of that great movement, that progressive tradition that has rolled across our country.'')119 In 2011, a Colorado study found that of the nearly 12,000 non-citizens who were illegally registered to vote in that state, about 5,000 had taken part in the 2010 general election.120 In ten Colorado counties in 2012, voter registrations outnumbered the total voting-age population by between 4% and 40%.121 The foregoing examples represent only the barest tip of a colossal election-fraud iceberg. And Hillary Clinton knows all about it. She really isn't dumb enough to believe what she says about election fraud and voter ID. She's just counting on voters being dumb enough to believe her.

But hey, who cares? At least Mrs. Clinton never engaged in crude, private trash talk that was recorded on tape. And all of her disparaging, condescending, hate-soaked, fiction-laced denunciations of her political rivals are delivered in measured, solemn, well-rehearsed tones. Plus, she deeply respects women '-- even the ones whose votes are nullified by the ballots of people who are legally ineligible to participate in elections.

Clinton's Affiliation with Al Sharpton & Black Lives Matter

In April 2007, Mrs. Clinton spoke at an event held by Al Sharpton's National Action Network, where she stated that her own presidential bid was possible only because of the dedicated work of longtime civil-rights leaders who, like Sharpton, had fought on behalf of those traditionally excluded from power positions in American life. ''I have enjoyed a long and positive relationship with Reverend Al Sharpton and National Action Network,'' said Clinton, ''and I don't ever remember saying 'no' to them, and I intend to remain their partner in civil rights as I clean the dirt from under the carpet in the Oval Office when I am elected President.''122

And nothing whatsoever has changed in Mrs. Clinton's estimation of Sharpton, perhaps the most repugnant racial arsonist in contemporary America, in the years since then. In April 2016, for instance, Clinton again spoke at a National Action Network event where she lauded Sharpton and his organization for steadfastly working ''on the frontlines of our nation's continuing struggle for civil rights,'' and ''in a million ways lift[ing] up voices that too often go unheard.''123

Speaking of repugnant racial arsonists, in August 2015 Mrs. Clinton held an impromptu, videotaped conversation with three Black Lives Matter (BLM) activists who were complaining about the ''mass incarceration'' of African Americans. In response to them, Clinton said: ''This country has still not recovered from its original sin [slavery] ... Your analysis is totally fair. It's historically fair, it's psychologically fair, it's economically fair.... All I'm suggesting is, even for us sinners [white people], find some common ground on agendas that can make a difference right here and now in people's lives.''124

A bit of background information about BLM is in order here. Founded by Marxist revolutionaries in 2013, BLM depicts the United States as a nation thoroughly awash in racism, sexism, and homophobia. Demonstrators at BLM events commonly smear white police as trigger-happy bigots who are intent upon killing innocent, unarmed black males. The protesters also taunt, and direct obscenities at, uniformed police officers who are on duty. Their principal hero is the Marxist icon, former Black Panther, convicted accomplice in a cop-killing, and longtime fugitive Assata Shakur. At all BLM events, demonstrators invoke a quote by Shakur that includes an excerpt from the Communist Manifesto of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.125

But hey, who cares? At least Mrs. Clinton never engaged in crude, private trash talk that was recorded on tape. And all of her disparaging, condescending, hate-soaked, fiction-laced denunciations of her political rivals are delivered in measured, solemn, well-rehearsed tones. Plus, of course, it goes without saying that she respects women deeply. Oh, so deeply.

Clinton's View of the Supreme Court and Its Purpose

When Mrs. Clinton was asked, in an October 2016 presidential debate, to articulate what would be her chief considerations when appointing Supreme Court Justices, she never once mentioned fidelity to the Constitution, which is in fact the principal duty of the Court. Instead, Clinton alluded to the idea that Justices should try to balance the proverbial scales of power in favor of people who lack wealth and influence: ''I want to appoint Supreme Court Justices who understand the way the world really works '... [and] actually understand what people are up against.'' In other words, Clinton prefers Justices who seek to enforce her particular vision of ''social justice,'' rather than an ideal of blind, unbiased justice.

Mrs. Clinton then proceeded to explain that she would nominate only Justices who share her public-policy preferences vis- -vis certain hot-button, litmus-test issues:

(1) ''I would want to see the Supreme Court reverse Citizens United and get dark unaccountable money out of our politics.'' (Citizens United was a 2010 Supreme Court ruling that left intact the federal law prohibiting corporations and unions from making campaign contributions to politicians, but nullified a provision barring such entities from paying for political ads made independently of candidate campaigns'--on grounds that the First Amendment prohibits Congress from censoring any entity's right to engage in, or to fund, political speech.)

(2) ''I would like the Supreme Court to understand that voting rights are a big problem in many parts of the country. That we don't do always do everything we can to make it possible for people of color and older people and young people to be able to exercise their franchise.'' (In other words, Mrs. Clinton would appoint Justices who oppose Voter ID laws, favor extended early-voting periods, support voting rights for convicted felons, and endorse universal voter registration '-- all measures that would make it significantly easier to commit voter fraud.)

(3) ''I want a Supreme Court that will stick with Roe v. Wade and a woman's right to choose.''

(4) ''I want a Supreme Court that will stick with marriage equality'' (i.e., same-sex marriage).

Clinton Supports Partial-Birth Abortion

On March 12, 2003, Hillary Clinton went to the Senate floor to speak out against legislation that proposed to ban the procedure commonly known as ''partial-birth abortion'' '-- where the abortionist maneuvers the baby into a breech (feet-first) delivery position, permits its entire body to exit the birth canal except for its head, and then uses scissors to puncture the baby's brain and kill it while the head is still inside the mother. Defending the legality of this procedure and condemning Republicans for trying to outlaw it, Clinton argued that any attempt ''to criminalize a medical procedure'' would compromise American liberty.126

But hey, who cares? At least Mrs. Clinton never engaged in crude, private trash talk that was recorded on tape. And all of her disparaging, condescending, hate-soaked, fiction-laced denunciations of her political rivals are delivered in measured, solemn, well-rehearsed tones. Plus, she respects not only women, but girls as well '-- even the female babies who are subjected to atrocities like the one described above.

For Hillary Clinton, abortion is a civil liberty that should be funded not by the biological mother herself, but by all taxpayers. Indeed, Planned Parenthood '-- to Clinton's delight '-- receives more than $520 billion per year in government funding, and much of that is used to pay for abortions.127 Moreover, Mrs. Clinton has vowed to repeal what is known as the Hyde Amendment, a 1976 law that has traditionally prohibited federal funding for abortions.128 Apparently, for Mrs. Clinton ''it takes a village''129 to produce enough cultural and moral rot to fully destroy a civilization.

Clinton's Personal Persecution of a Young Rape Victim

While the Clinton presidential campaign website touts ''Hillary's plan to end campus sexual assault,'' it laments that ''many who choose to report sexual assault in the criminal justice system fear that their voices will be dismissed instead of heard.''130 But Mrs. Clinton herself took part in one of the most repulsive exhibitions of cruelty to a rape victim ever seen in an American courtroom.

The year was 1975, and attorney Hillary Clinton was defending Thomas Alfred Taylor, a 41-year-old man accused of raping and beating a 12-year-old girl named Kathy Shelton. So brutal was Taylor's assault, that the victim spent five days in a coma immediately afterward; then several months recovering from the physical thrashing that accompanied the rape; plus, more than 10 years in psychotherapy.131

Mrs. Clinton knew for certain that Taylor was guilty of this crime, as she made clear years later when she discussed the case in a 1980s interview with Arkansas journalist Roy Reed. ''He [Taylor] took a lie detector test!'' Mrs. Clinton recalled. ''I had him take a polygraph test, which he passed, which forever destroyed my faith in polygraphs.''132

Notwithstanding her certitude regarding the man's guilt, Clinton negotiated a plea bargain for Taylor by taking advantage of a prosecutorial error '-- the prosecutors had cut out and examined the blood-covered section of Taylor's underwear that proved his guilt, but then discarded the fabric, making it impossible for the defense to examine it. Because of this misstep, Clinton, confident that the prosecution would be unable to prove Taylor's guilt, pushed for a plea bargain.133

In the aforementioned 1980s interview, Mrs. Clinton laughed as she recounted how the polygraph results were clearly erroneous, and how a forensic scientist from New York was prepared to testify that Taylor could not be convicted if the underwear fabric was no longer available. When Reed asked Clinton about the outcome of the case, she replied, nonchalantly, ''Oh he plea bargained. Got him off with time served in the county jail, he'd been in the county jail about two months.''134

Subsequent to the Taylor trial, a Newsday examination of court files and investigative files revealed that Mrs. Clinton had also attacked the young victim's character during the trial by calling into question her motives, her honesty, her temperament, and her ability to perceive reality '-- even though she knew with 100% certainty that her client was guilty.135

In a highly emotional June 2014 interview, Kathy Shelton accused Mrs. Clinton of intentionally lying about her in court documents and going to extraordinary lengths to discredit evidence of the rape. ''Hillary Clinton took me through Hell,'' Shelton said. ''She lied like a dog on me. I think she was trying to do whatever she could do to make herself look good at the time.... She wanted it to look good, she didn't care if those guys [Taylor and an accomplice] did it or not. Them two guys should have got a lot longer time [in prison]. I do not think justice was served at all.''136

But hey, who cares? At least Mrs. Clinton never engaged in crude, private trash talk that was recorded on tape. And all of her disparaging, condescending, hate-soaked, fiction-laced denunciations of her political rivals are delivered in measured, solemn, well-rehearsed tones. Plus, she deeply respects females, even young girls whose known rapists she defends in court, and whose trials she later recalls with self-satisfied bellows of laughter.

Conclusion

This, then, is Hillary Clinton: a woman who is wholly, unequivocally unfit to serve as anything more than an inmate in a federal penitentiary. She has demonstrated, time and again:

that she cannot, under any circumstances, be trusted with national security or state secrets; that she treats the paper on which the Espionage Act is written, with no more reverence than she would give to a strip of toilet paper; that she treats with similar disregard the paper on which the U.S. Constitution is written; that her judgment in matters of international conflict, diplomacy, and terrorism is an abomination; that she routinely uses her ''charitable foundation'' as a money-laundering operation designed to enrich herself under the guise of helping the needy; that she will gladly sell out her country, and everyone in it, in exchange for material riches and political dominion; the she is intent upon using the most irresponsible refugee and immigration policies imaginable to import countless millions of people from hostile, impoverished nations across the globe for one core purpose: to permanently transform the American population into one that will vote reliably Democrat from now until the end of time; that she fully intends to purge the Second Amendment from the Bill of Rights; that she unequivocally plans to expand the disastrous, failing Obamacare debacle into an even more monstrous, government-run, single-payer healthcare system; that she favors soft-on-crime policies that have repeatedly been shown to cause violent crime rates to skyrocket; that she is perfectly willing to institutionalize massive, ubiquitous voter fraud because she believes that it will ensure additional power for her political party; that she views white Americans as a whole, as inherently, ''implicitly,''137 and ''irredeemably''138 racist, and therefore in constant need of an all-powerful government to restrain their bigoted impulses; that despite her professed aversion to racism in general, she is quite happy to ally herself with ''politically correct'' racists like Al Sharpton and the Black Lives Matter movement; and that she opposes the imposition of any restrictions whatsoever on abortion rights, or on the government's power to force taxpayers to fund abortions. In the final analysis, Hillary Clinton is a woman with a mindset that is totalitarian in every respect. To make matters worse, she is a lying, deceiving, manipulative, self-absorbed criminal without a shred of personal virtue. Truly it can be said that never before in American history has anyone so unfit and so undeserving, run for president. Never.

NOTES:

1 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2976803/Hillary-Clinton-used-unsecured-personal-email-account-four-years-Secretary-State-aides-decided-correspondence-hand-public-record.html; http://www.truthrevolt.org/commentary/hillary-cover-and-end-democracy; http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2980005/What-Hillary-wants-Hillary-gets-former-Secretary-State-homebrew-email-server-set-amid-no-questions-asked-atmosphere.html

2Ibid.; http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2976803/Hillary-Clinton-used-unsecured-personal-email-account-four-years-Secretary-State-aides-decided-correspondence-hand-public-record.html; https://www.buzzfeed.com/mbvd/hillary-clinton-only-used-personal-email-while-secretary-of#.ju9JQN6YO; http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2997193/Hillary-s-email-gate-linked-whistle-blower-s-description-State-Department-boiler-room-operation-set-hide-documents-Benghazi.html

3 http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/hillary-clinton-phones-secretary-state-now/story?id=29535505

4 http://www.truthrevolt.org/news/cnn-anchor-visibly-deflated-when-networks-own-fact-checker-confirms-hillary-phones-destroyed; https://pjmedia.com/trending/2016/09/03/fbi-files-clinton-aide-smashed-hillarys-old-phones-with-a-hammer/

5 http://townhall.com/tipsheet/guybenson/2016/03/02/hillary-emails-final-score-n2126822

6 http://www.wsj.com/articles/clintons-email-evasions-1438902775

7 http://www.cnsnews.com/blog/margaret-knapp/levin-sect-793-penal-code-what-hillary-clinton-has-worry-about

8 http://townhall.com/tipsheet/guybenson/2016/01/22/gates-odds-are-high-russia-china-iran-accessed-clintons-server-n2108570

9 https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/foreign-governments-gave-millions-to-foundation-while-clinton-was-at-state-dept/2015/02/25/31937c1e-bc3f-11e4-8668-4e7ba8439ca6_story.html

10 https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/clintons-raised-nearly-2-billion-for-foundation-since-2001/2015/02/18/b8425d88-a7cd-11e4-a7c2-03d37af98440_story.html

11 http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=33486

12 Ibid.

13 http://www.frontpagemag.com/point/263747/bill-clinton-got-millions-sharia-education-network-daniel-greenfield

14 http://www.cbsnews.com/news/chinese-company-pledged-2-million-to-clinton-foundation-in-2013/

15 https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/foreign-governments-gave-millions-to-foundation-while-clinton-was-at-state-dept/2015/02/25/31937c1e-bc3f-11e4-8668-4e7ba8439ca6_story.html; http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/05/17/money-from-brunei-reached-clinton-foundation-coffers.html

16 http://nypost.com/2015/04/20/book-claims-foreign-cash-made-bill-and-hillary-filthy-rich/; http://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2015/05/26/clintons-state-department-approved-weapons-deals-to-governments-who-made-donations-to-their-foundation-n2003917/print

17 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3756447/Hillary-camp-launches-desperate-cherry-picking-defense-calendars-reveal-Clinton-Foundation-donors-got-face-time-secretary-state.html

18 http://www.ibtimes.com/clinton-foundation-donors-got-weapons-deals-hillary-clintons-state-department-1934187

19 http://thefederalist.com/2015/03/02/the-u-s-constitution-actually-bans-hillarys-foreign-government-payola/

20 http://www.breitbart.com/video/2015/04/27/report-only-6-clinton-foundation-expenditures-go-to-charity/

21 http://freebeacon.com/national-security/u-s-will-teach-iran-to-thwart-nuke-threats/; http://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2015/07/17/7-devastating-facts-about-obamas-iran-nuclear-deal/; http://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2015/07/17/7-devastating-facts-about-obamas-iran-nuclear-deal/

22 Ibid.

23 Ibid.

24 Ibid.

25 http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/viewSubCategory.asp?id=1755

26 http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/09/12/riot-after-anti-islam-film-u-s-ambassador-to-libya-killed.html

27 Ibid.

28 Ibid.

29 http://beforeitsnews.com/opinion-conservative/2013/01/rand-paul-hillary-clinton-benghazi-transcript-failure-of-leadership-inexcusable-i-would-have-relieved-you-of-duty-2565884.html

30 http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/25/world/middleeast/arms-airlift-to-syrian-rebels-expands-with-cia-aid.html?_r=0; http://www.wnd.com/2013/04/rand-paul-hillarys-benghazi-story-unraveling/?cat_orig=politics

31 http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2016/07/julian-assange-hacked-emails-include-info-hillarys-arming-jihadists-including-isis-syria/

32 http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/10/05/doj-abruptly-drops-case-against-gun-runner-who-threatened-to-reveal-clintons-libya-dealings.html

33 http://ijr.com/2014/09/178074-former-state-department-official-claims-benghazi-cover/

34 http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6175; http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6386

35 http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=2557; http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=7749; http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=7750

36 http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=2556; http://www.shoebat.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/Abedin_Affairs_with_Al_Saud_081312.pdf

37 https://pjmedia.com/andrewmccarthy/2012/08/09/our-government-and-the-muslim-brotherhood-my-speech-in-washington/?singlepage=true; https://pjmedia.com/andrewmccarthy/2012/07/27/huma-abedins-brotherhood-ties-are-not-just-a-family-affair/?print=1

38 http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/viewSubCategory.asp?id=1615

39 http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2013/02/08/nov-3-2011-letter-from-john-brennan-capitulating-to-muslim-complaints-against-fbi/; http://www.judicialwatch.org/press-room/press-releases/judicial-watch-releases-new-special-report-u-s-government-purges-of-law-enforcement-training-material-deemed-offensive-to-muslims/; http://www.investigativeproject.org/3902/obama-cia-nominee-john-brennan-wrong-for-the-job

40 http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2013/02/08/nov-3-2011-letter-from-john-brennan-capitulating-to-muslim-complaints-against-fbi/

41 http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/291737/guess-who-decides-what-fbi-agents-get-learn-about-islam-andrew-c-mccarthy

42 http://dailycaller.com/2016/06/13/fbi-called-off-investigation-of-orlando-shooter-because-they-thought-his-coworkers-were-racist/

43 http://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2016/08/12/fact-check-obama-hillary-founders-isis-bet/

44 http://www.clarionproject.org/analysis/does-death-isis-2-man-mean-we%E2%80%99re-winning; https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/nov/18/fivefold-increase-terrorism-fatalities-global-index; http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/2015-global-terrorism-index-deaths-from-terrorism-increased-80-last-year-to-the-highest-level-ever-global-economic-cost-of-terrorism-reached-all-time-high-at-us529-billion-550766811.html

45 http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/aug/11/obama-adjusts-iraq-narrative-now-blames-george-w-b/; http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/jun/15/obama-ignored-generals-pleas-to-keep-american-forc/

46 http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/jun/15/obama-ignored-generals-pleas-to-keep-american-forc/

47 http://www.weeklystandard.com/obamas-2012-debate-boast-i-didnt-want-to-leave-any-troops-in-iraq/article/802219

48 http://www.nationalreview.com/node/396097/print

49 http://nation.foxnews.com/2014/06/16/clinton-was-leading-champion-iraq-withdrawal

50 http://www.today.com/id/16267456/ns/today/t/sen-clinton-opposes-troop-surge-iraq/#.V_aVtOArKUl

51 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/jan/17/usa.iraq1

52 http://www.foxnews.com/story/2007/08/23/democrats-strategize-on-how-to-cast-us-troop-surge-in-iraq-as-failure.html

53 http://www.nysun.com/national/clinton-spars-with-petraeus-on-credibility/62426/

54 http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/Articles/The%20Greatest%20Story%20Never%20Told.html

55 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2535513/Former-defense-secretary-says-Hillary-Obama-admitted-staking-Iraq-policy-2008-presidential-campaign-based-election-politics.html

56 https://www.hillaryclinton.com/issues/national-security/

57 https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/us-nuclear-arsenal-is-ready-for-overhaul/2012/09/15/428237de-f830-11e1-8253-3f495ae70650_story.html

58 http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/apr/9/obamas-false-start/

59 http://townhall.com/columnists/phyllisschlafly/2010/05/25/obama_starts_to_disarm_america

60 http://www.reuters.com/article/us-israel-usa-palestinians-envoy-idUSTRE62E11O20100315

61 http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=7457; http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/clinton-i-spent-years-urging-israel-to-apologize-to-turkey------.aspx?pageID=238&nID=88276&NewsCatID=358

62 http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/239433/hillarys-hand-hamas-terror-tunnels-moshe-phillips

63 Ibid.

64 https://www.rt.com/usa/334400-hillary-clinton-libya-role/

65 http://nationalinterest.org/feature/hillarys-huge-libya-disaster-16600

66 http://fpif.org/four-years-after-gaddafi-libya-is-a-failed-state/

67 https://www.thetrumpet.com/article/13493.19.0.0/world/terrorism/hundreds-of-islamic-state-terrorists-move-into-libya

68 https://www.hillaryclinton.com/issues/combating-terrorism/

69 http://www.cbsnews.com/news/hillary-clinton-u-s-should-take-65000-syrian-refugees/

70 http://www.wnd.com/2015/09/isis-smuggler-we-will-use-refugee-crisis-to-infiltrate-west/

71 http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/09/30/obamas-deputies-invite-1500-foreigners-known-terror-links-u-s/

72 https://pjmedia.com/homeland-security/2016/08/22/report-30k-illegal-immigrants-came-from-countries-of-terrorist-concern/

73 http://www.wnd.com/2015/02/syrian-refugee-program-called-back-door-for-jihadists/

74 http://dailycaller.com/2015/10/21/fbi-director-admits-us-cant-vet-all-syrian-refugees-for-terror-ties-video/; http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/sep/28/james-comey-warns-coming-terrorist-diaspora-democr/

75 http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/penny-starr/jeh-johnson-we-dont-know-whole-lot-about-syrian-refugees-coming-us-through

76 http://townhall.com/tipsheet/leahbarkoukis/2016/06/17/cia-director-warns-that-isis-is-intensifying-global-attacks-n2179920

77 http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/study-finds-more-immigrants-equals-more-democrats-and-more-losses-for-gop/article/2547220

78 https://www.hillaryclinton.com/issues/immigration-reform/

79 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3068468/Clinton-discuss-immigration-reform-Nevada.html

80 http://dailycaller.com/2012/06/15/flashback-obama-said-he-wouldnt-do-executive-order-on-deportations-weve-got-three-branches-of-government/

81 http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/hillary-clinton-reveals-plans-immigration-reform/story?id=30812123

82 http://www.ojjpac.org/sanctuary.asp; http://www.cnn.com/2015/07/06/us/san-francisco-killing-sanctuary-cities/; http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/oct/8/number-of-sanctuary-cities-grows-to-340-thousands-/

83 http://www.ojjpac.org/sanctuary.asp; http://www.judicialwatch.org/blog/2015/10/sanctuary-cities-ignore-ice-orders-to-free-9295-alien-criminals/

84 http://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/clinton-campaign-sanctuary-cities-can-help-public-safety-n389186

85 http://www.lifezette.com/polizette/wikileaks-dump-hillary-dreams-open-trade-open-borders/

86 https://www.hillaryclinton.com/issues/gun-violence-prevention/; http://www.ontheissues.org/2016/Hillary_Clinton_Gun_Control.htm; http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/apr/26/most-americans-disagree-clinton-suing-gun-makers/

87 http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/06/05/hillary-clinton-plan-abolish-second-amendment/

88 http://bearingarms.com/bob-o/2015/10/16/hillary-clinton-gun-ban-confiscation-plot-worth-considering/

89 http://reason.com/blog/2015/03/09/how-to-count-the-defensive-use-of-guns; http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2003/04/10/duncan3/

90 https://www.hillaryclinton.com/issues/health-care/

91 https://www.youtube.com/embed/_o65vMUk5so

92 http://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2016/07/28/overwhelming-evidence-that-obamacare-caused-premiums-to-increase-substantially/#400f015646e3

93 Ibid.

94 Ibid.

95 http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2015/12/08/obamacare-premiums-are-on-the-rise-but-dont-blame-insurers/#ae0a6ce8d5ee

96 http://dailycaller.com/2016/09/20/obamacare-imploding-clinton-pushes-for-complete-govt-take-over-of-health-care/

97 Ibid.

98 http://www.nationalreview.com/node/433940/print

99 http://dailycaller.com/2016/09/20/obamacare-imploding-clinton-pushes-for-complete-govt-take-over-of-health-care/; https://www.hillaryclinton.com/issues/health-care/

100 Sally C. Pipes, The Truth About Obamacare (2010), Kindle Edition, Loc. 1731-33.

101 https://www.hillaryclinton.com/issues/health-care/

102 http://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/pa-613.pdf

103 https://www.hillaryclinton.com/feed/hillary-clinton-has-spent-her-life-fighting-for-children-here-are-8-ways-shes-changed-their-lives/

104 http://www.ontheissues.org/2016/Hillary_Clinton_Education.htm

105 http://www.aei.org/publication/turning-the-tides-president-obama-and-education-reform/

106 https://www.hillaryclinton.com/issues/criminal-justice-reform/

107 http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0903753.html; http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm

108 http://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2016.html; http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm

109 https://www.hillaryclinton.com/feed/its-time-end-era-mass-incarceration/

110 http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/201302/hillary-clinton-racial-demagogue-matthew-vadum

111 http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/05/us/politics/hillary-clinton-says-republican-rivals-try-to-stop-young-and-minority-voters.html; http://www.nbcnews.com/video/now/52744828#52744828

112 http://www.npr.org/2012/02/14/146827471/study-1-8-million-dead-people-still-registered-to-vote

113 http://www.wral.com/state-elections-officials-seek-tighter-security/13533579/

114 http://ijr.com/2014/04/126263-think-theres-no-voter-fraud-dead-voters-in-nc/

115 http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/york-when-1099-felons-vote-in-race-won-by-312-ballots/article/2504163; http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/peter-roff/2010/07/20/al-franken-may-have-won-his-senate-seat-through-voter-fraud

116 https://ballotpedia.org/Dead_people_voting; http://electionupdates.caltech.edu/2006/10/30/boo-dead-voters-casting-ballots-from-the-grave-in-new-york/

117 http://sweetness-light.com/archive/fund-voter-fraud-in-milwaukee-in-2004

118 http://dailycaller.com/2011/01/12/acorn-leader-avoids-prison-for-voter-fraud-conspiracy/

119 http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2016/08/trumps_2nd_amendment_people_vs_hillarys_activists.html

120 http://thehill.com/homenews/house/153079-gop-says-5000-non-citizens-voting-in-colorado-a-wake-up-call-for-states

121 http://www.redstate.com/aarongardner/2012/09/04/colorado-counties-have-more-voters-than-people/

122 http://www.stentorian.com/MoveOn/sharpton.html

123 http://nypost.com/2016/04/14/hillary-clinton-sings-al-sharptons-praises/; https://www.hillaryclinton.com/briefing/updates/2016/04/13/hillary-clinton-delivers-remarks-at-national-action-network/

124 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1eCraUvIq-s

125 http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=7876

126 http://www.cnsnews.com/commentary/terence-p-jeffrey/hillary-clinton-partial-birth-ban

127 https://www.conservativereview.com/commentary/2015/09/a-comprehensive-guide-to-planned-parenthood-funding

128 http://www.lifenews.com/2016/09/30/hillary-clinton-vows-to-repeal-hyde-amendment-and-force-americans-to-fund-abortions/

129 https://www.amazon.com/Takes-Village-Tenth-Anniversary/dp/1416540644

130 https://www.hillaryclinton.com/issues/campus-sexual-assault/

131 http://dailycaller.com/2014/06/16/tapes-reveal-hillary-clinton-discussing-her-defense-of-child-rapist-video/; http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/06/20/exclusive-hillary-clinton-took-me-through-hell-rape-victim-says.html; http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3729466/Child-rape-victim-comes-forward-time-40-years-call-Hillary-Clinton-liar-defended-rapist-smearing-blocking-evidence-callously-laughing-knew-guilty.html;

132 Ibid.

133 Ibid.

134 Ibid.

135 Ibid.

136 Ibid.

137 http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/oct/3/hillary-clintons-implicit-bias/

138 http://www.nationalreview.com/article/439985/hillary-clinton-deplorable-remark

139 Ibid.

Link to Article

Archived Version

Sun, 16 Oct 2016 13:26

Honest services fraud is a crime defined in a 28-word sentence of 18 U.S.C. § 1346 (the federal mail and wire fraud statute), added by the United States Congress in 1988,[1] which states: "For the purposes of this chapter, the term scheme or artifice to defraud includes a scheme or artifice to deprive another of the intangible right of honest services."[2]

The statute has been applied by federal prosecutors in cases of public corruption as well as in cases in which private individuals breached a fiduciary duty to another. In the former, the courts have been divided on the question of whether a state law violation is necessary for honest services fraud to have occurred. In the latter, the courts have taken differing approaches to determining whether a private individual has committed honest services fraud'--a test based on reasonably foreseeable economic harm and a test based on materiality. The statute, which has been a target of criticism, was given a narrow construction by the Supreme Court of the United States in the case of Skilling v. United States (2010). In order to avoid finding the statute to be unconstitutionally vague, the Court interpreted the statute to only cover "fraudulent schemes to deprive another of honest services through bribes or kickbacks supplied by a third party who ha[s] not been deceived".[3]

History and case law[edit]Since at least 1941, particularly in the 1970s and 1980s, and prior to 1987, the courts had interpreted the mail fraud and wire fraud statutes as criminalizing not only schemes to defraud victims of money and property, but also schemes to defraud victims of intangible rights such as the "honest services" of a public official.[4] In 1987, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled in McNally v. United States that the mail fraud and wire fraud statutes pertained strictly to schemes to defraud victims of tangible property, including money.[5] In 1988, Congress enacted a new law that specifically criminalized schemes to defraud victims of "the intangible right of honest services."[4]

Meaning of "honest services" in public corruption[edit]Honest services fraud is generally more easily proven in the public sphere than in the private, because honest services fraud by public officials can include most unethical conduct, whereas honest services fraud by private individuals only includes some unethical conduct. Federal courts have generally recognized two main areas of public-sector honest service fraud: bribery (direct or indirect), where a public official was paid in some way for a particular decision or action, and failure to disclose a conflict of interest, resulting in personal gain.[6]

Necessity, or lack thereof, of state law violations[edit]In 1997, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit decided in United States v. Brumley that in order for a state official to have committed honest services fraud, he or she must have violated the state statute defining the services which were owed to the employer (the state).

We find nothing to suggest that Congress was attempting in § 1346 to garner to the federal government the right to impose upon states a federal vision of appropriate services'--to establish, in other words, an ethical regime for state employees. Such a taking of power would sorely tax separation of powers and erode our federalist structure. Under the most natural reading of the statute, a federal prosecutor must prove that conduct of a state official breached a duty respecting the provision of services owed to the official's employer under state law. Stated directly, the official must act or fail to act contrary to the requirements of his job under state law. This means that if the official does all that is required under state law, alleging that the services were not otherwise done "honestly" does not charge a violation of the mail fraud statute.[7]

However, the First, Fourth, Ninth, and Eleventh Circuit Courts have all held that the federal statute does not limit the meaning of "honest services" to violations of state law.[4] As the Ninth Circuit decided in United States v. Weyhrauch in 2008:

Because laws governing official conduct differ from state to state, conditioning mail fraud convictions on state law means that conduct in one state might violate the mail fraud statute, whereas identical conduct in a neighboring state would not. Congress has given no indication it intended the criminality of official conduct under federal law to depend on geography.[8]

The defendant in that case, Bruce Weyhrauch, is currently appealing that decision to the United States Supreme Court, which granted certiorari.

Intent to defraud and personal benefit[edit]In 1997, the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit set a key limit on honest services fraud in United States v. Czubinski, ruling that a mere workplace violation does not constitute fraud without evidence of depriving the employer of property in some way. Richard Czubinski was employed in Massachusetts by the Internal Revenue Service when, in 1992, he violated IRS rules by carrying out several unauthorized searches of the IRS database and accessing files outside of the course of his official duties.[9] In 1995, he was convicted of wire fraud (defrauding the IRS of property and the public of his honest services) and computer fraud. The appellate court reversed the honest services fraud conviction on the basis that Czubinski's actions did not amount to anything more than a workplace violation, warranting no more than a dismissal:

Czubinski was not bribed or otherwise influenced in any public decisionmaking capacity. Nor did he embezzle funds. He did not receive, nor can it be found that he intended to receive, any tangible benefit. ... The conclusive consideration is that the government simply did not prove that Czubinski deprived, or intended to deprive, the public or his employer of their right to his honest services. Although he clearly committed wrongdoing in searching confidential information, there is no suggestion that he failed to carry out his official tasks adequately, or intended to do so.[10]

Czubinski's other convictions were also reversed.[9]

Meaning of "honest services" in private fiduciary relationships[edit]Although the law is most often applied to corrupt public officials, several federal courts have upheld honest services fraud convictions of private individuals who breached a fiduciary duty to another, such as an employer.

Generally, the federal circuit courts have adhered to one of two approaches when dealing with honest services fraud cases. One, the "reasonably foreseeable economic harm" test, requires that the defendant intentionally breached his fiduciary duty and "foresaw or reasonably should have foreseen" that his actions could cause economic harm to his victim. The other, the "materiality" test, requires that the defendant possessed a fraudulent intent and made "any misrepresentation that has the natural tendency to influence or is capable of influencing" the victim to change his behavior.[11]

"Reasonably foreseeable economic harm" test[edit]In 1997, the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit held in United States v. Frost that private individuals could be also convicted of honest services fraud. Two professors at the University of Tennessee Space Institute, Walter Frost and Robert Eugene Turner, were also president and vice president, respectively, of FWG Associates, a private atmospheric science research firm. Frost and Turner gave FWG reports to two of their students, one a doctoral candidate employed by the Department of the Army and one a master's degree candidate employed by NASA, allowing them to plagiarize an overwhelming majority of the reports for their respective dissertations. They also allowed another doctoral candidate, employed by NASA, to submit a dissertation which was mostly written by one of their employees at FWG. Their aim was to secure federal contracts with the agencies employing these students. All three students received their degrees, facilitated by Frost and Turner. In addition to many other charges, Frost and Turner were convicted of three counts of mail fraud for defrauding the University of Tennessee of their honest services as employees. On appeal, Frost and Turner argued that § 1346 did not apply to them because they were not public servants. The court disagreed, ruling that "private individuals, such as Frost and Turner, may commit mail fraud by breaching a fiduciary duty and thereby depriving the person or entity to which the duty is owed of the intangible right to the honest services of that individual."[12]

In 1998, the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit upheld the wire fraud conviction of Sun-Diamond Growers of California for defrauding its hired public relations firm of the honest services of one of its agents, James H. Lake, in order to curry favor with the United States Secretary of Agriculture, Mike Espy. The corporation's vice president for corporate affairs, Richard Douglas, had acted in the scheme in such a manner that potentially could have caused economic harm to the public relations firm (tarnishing its reputation by engaging Lake in illegal activity) '' he and Lake had illegally funneled contributions to a congressional candidate, Espy's brother. Sun-Diamond argued that those actions could not be criminal because there was no intent to do economic harm to the firm. However, the court ruled that an intent to do economic harm was not necessary to have committed wire fraud, affirming a pre-McNally decision in light of the 1988 statute:

In the private sector context, § 1346 poses special risks. Every material act of dishonesty by an employee deprives the employer of that worker's "honest services," yet not every such act is converted into a federal crime by the mere use of the mails or interstate phone system. Aware of the risk that federal criminal liability could metastasize, we held in Lemire that "not every breach of a fiduciary duty works a criminal fraud." ... Rather, "[t]here must be a failure to disclose something which in the knowledge or contemplation of the employee poses an independent business risk to the employer." ... Sun-Diamond appears to confuse the requirement of an intent to defraud...with a requirement of intent to cause economic harm.[13]

In 1999, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit adopted a similar interpretation in United States v. deVegter. Michael deVegter, a financial advisor hired by Fulton County, Georgia, to craft a professional recommendation of the best underwriter for the county to hire. deVegter accepted a payment of about $42,000 from Richard Poirier in exchange for manipulating the report to influence Fulton County into hiring Poirier's investment banking firm for the underwriter job. deVegter and Poirier were both indicted for conspiracy and wire fraud, with the latter including charges under the honest services statute. The district court dismissed the honest services charges for lack of evidence before the trial began; the government appealed. The court agreed with the government that there was sufficient evidence alleged in the indictment for the defendants to be charged with honest services fraud, because the allegations showed a breach of fiduciary duty and an intent to defraud in such a manner that "reasonably foreseeable economic harm to Fulton County" was a consequence of the scheme.[14]

In 2001, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit recognized that there were two different tests that other circuit courts had generally used to determine whether honest services fraud had been committed; in United States v. Vinyard, it concluded that the "reasonably foreseeable economic harm" test was superior (because it was based on employee intent and not employer response) and applied that test to the case at hand. The defendant in the case, Michael Vinyard, had been convicted in the United States District Court for the District of South Carolina of fourteen counts of mail fraud and twelve counts of money laundering. His brother, James Vinyard, was an employee of the Sunoco Products Corporation who was charged with finding an independent broker to research recycled resins for their manufacture of plastic bags. The brothers instead created their own brokerage, "Charles Stewart Enterprises," incorporated in the state of Iowa, and misrepresented it to Sunoco as an legitimate, independent firm that was supplying recycled resins at the lowest possible price. They purchased recycled resins from plastic vendors and, marking up the price, sold them to Sunoco, which eventually yielded $2.8 million in profits. The brothers funneled these profits from CSE to themselves through another entity in order to conceal their involvement with CSE on their tax returns. When the brothers were eventually indicted for mail fraud and money laundering, James Vinyard pleaded guilty and testified against his brother. Michael Vinyard appealed, arguing that his conviction of honest services fraud (defrauding Sunoco of the honest services of his brother, their employee) was wrongful because he did not cause harm nor did he intend to cause economic harm to the victim, Sunoco. Upholding his conviction, the court rejected this argument:

The reasonably foreseeable harm test is met whenever, at the time of the fraud scheme, the employee could foresee that the scheme potentially might be detrimental to the employer's economic well-being. Furthermore, the concept of "economic risk" embraces the idea of risk to future opportunities for savings or profit; the focus on the employer's wellbeing encompasses both the long-term and the short-term health of the business. Whether the risk materializes or not is irrelevant; the point is that the employee has no right to endanger the employer's financial health or jeopardize the employer's long-term prospects through self-dealing. Therefore, so long as the employee could have reasonably foreseen the risk to which he was exposing the employer, the requirements of § 1346 will have been met.[11]

In 2006, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit treated the issue of whether private defendants could be prosecuted under § 1346 as settled law, citing the numerous other circuits which had affirmed the practice. In the case United States v. Williams, the defendant, John Anthony Williams, was an Oregon insurance salesman who had sold several annuities to an elderly rancher named Loyd Stubbs. When Stubbs liquidated his annuities, Williams deposited the resulting funds in a joint bank account he had opened in his and Stubbs' names. Williams proceeded to make massive cash withdrawals from the account, depositing the money in his own personal account and spending much of it; he also wired money to personal bank accounts he had in Belize and Louisiana. Williams was convicted of four counts of wire fraud, three counts of mail fraud, three counts of money laundering, and one count of foreign transportation of stolen money; the fraud charges stemmed from schemes to defraud Stubbs of money and of Williams' honest services as his financial advisor. On appeal, Williams argued that § 1346 did not apply to private commerce. The court disagreed, and, citing previous case law, ruled that within a fiduciary relationship the statute applied.[15]

"Materiality" test[edit]In 1996, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit laid out the "materiality" test in its decision in United States v. Gray. Kevin Gray, Gary Thomas, and Troy Drummond were three members of the men's basketball coaching staff at Baylor University in Texas. These coaches helped five players, recruited from two-year colleges, to obtain the credits required for eligibility and possibly scholarships by providing these students with written course work or answers to correspondence exams, which were then sent to the sponsoring schools as the students' work. They were convicted of conspiracy, mail fraud, and wire fraud; the fraud charges stemmed from schemes to deprive Baylor University of both property (in the form of scholarships) and the coaches' honest services as Baylor employees. The court upheld the convictions, affirming the honest services fraud convictions on the basis that the coaches made "material" misrepresentations:

A breach of fiduciary duty can constitute illegal fraud...only when there is some detriment to the employer. ... The detriment can be a deprivation of an employee's faithful and honest services if a violation of the employee's duty to disclose material information is involved. ... Materiality exists whenever "an employee has reason to believe the information would lead a reasonable employer to change its business conduct." ... The information withheld, i.e. the "coaches' cheating scheme", was material because Baylor did not get the quality student it expected. Further, appellants failure to disclose the scheme to Baylor was material as Baylor might have been able to recruit other qualified, eligible students to play basketball. Instead, once the scheme was suspected, Baylor was forced to institute a costly investigation and the players under suspicion were withheld from competition. It is quite reasonable to believe that Baylor would have changed its business conduct had it known of the "cheating scheme."[16]

In 1997, the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit also applied the "materiality" test in its decision in United States v. Cochran. Robert M. Cochran was a bond underwriter in Oklahoma who was convicted of five counts of wire fraud, two counts of money laundering, and one count of interstate transportation of stolen property. Three of wire fraud counts for which Cochran was convicted were honest services fraud. Cochran's firm, Stifel, Nicolaus & Company, served as managing underwriter when the SSM Healthcare System, a non-profit corporation operating several hospitals and nursing homes, issued more than $265 million of tax-exempt bonds; Sakura Global Capital bid $400,000 to provide SSM with a forward supply contract. However, SGC subsequently made a secret payment of $100,000 to Cochran's firm over the course of three wire transmissions; thus, Cochran supposedly deprived SSM and its bondholders of his honest services. The appellate court reversed his conviction, deciding that the government did not provide sufficient evidence that Cochran had actually defrauded SSM or its bondholders of his honest services, applying the "materiality" test:

Though Stifel misrepresented that SGC would not pay an additional fee to Stifel for the forward supply contract, this information resulted in no actual or potential harm to SSM. ... No evidence independent of the alleged scheme suggests in any way that Mr. Cochran sought to harm SSM or its bondholders. Moreover, we know not from this record how SSM would have changed its conduct had the disclosure been made.[17]

In 1999, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit diverged from the D.C. Circuit's Sun-Diamond ruling in its decision in United States v. Pennington. Donald B. Pennington was the president of Harvest Foods, a grocery store chain in eastern Arkansas, when that company contracted with a food broker and a consultant, John Oldner, to negotiate deals between it and its suppliers. The broker and consultant both funneled a portion of their money from Harvest Foods and its supplier to Pennington '' through a sham corporation, Capitol City Marketing '' as kickbacks. Pennington was convicted of money laundering and mail fraud; in his appeal he contended that there was insufficient evidence to convict him because the government had failed to show that he had an intent to defraud Harvest Foods of his honest services as its president. The court upheld the conviction, stating that there was sufficient evidence that his actions were a breach of his duty as a fiduciary of Harvest Foods to disclose his material interest in their contracts with Oldner and the broker. However, the court also went further and required (and found) intent to economically harm:

Pennington and Oldner correctly assert that, when dealing with business transactions in the private sector, a mere breach of fiduciary or employee duty may not be sufficient to deprive a client or corporation of "honest services" for purposes of § 1346'--to be guilty of mail fraud, defendants must also cause or intend to cause actual harm or injury, and in most business contexts, that means financial or economic harm. ... However, proof of intent to harm may be inferred from the willful non-disclosure by a fiduciary, such as a corporate officer, of material information he has a duty to disclose.[18]

In 2003, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, like the Fourth Circuit in Vinyard, noted the existence of the two tests, but unlike the Fourth Circuit, it opted to use the "materiality" test (describing it as "arising out of fundamental principles of the law of fraud" and critiquing the alternative as "designed simply to limit the scope" of the law). It applied this test to the case at hand, United States v. Rybicki. The defendants were two personal injury lawyers, Thomas Rybicki and Fredric Grae, in the state of New York; both were convicted of twenty counts of mail fraud, two counts of wire fraud, and one count of conspiracy. The fraud charges pertained to a scheme to make illegal payments to insurance claims adjusters with the intent of inducing the adjusters to expedite the settlement of certain claims; Rybicki and Grae made such payments in at least twenty cases. As the acceptance of such payments by the adjusters was against the insurance companies' policies, Rybicki and Grae had defrauded those insurance companies of the honest services of their employees. Such was the basis for the successful fraud prosecution. The court affirmed the conviction, determining that all of the necessary elements for the crime of honest services fraud to have occurred were present, including material misrepresentation. The court defined the crime thus:

The phrase "scheme or artifice [to defraud] by depriv[ing] another of the intangible right of honest services," in the private sector context, means a scheme or artifice to use the mails or wires to enable an officer or employee of a private entity (or a person in a relationship that gives rise to a duty of loyalty comparable to that owed by employees to employers) purporting to act for and in the interests of his or her employer (or of the other person to whom the duty of loyalty is owed) secretly to act in his or her or the defendant's own interests instead, accompanied by a material misrepresentation made or omission of information disclosed to the employer or other person.[19]

Usage and criticism[edit]The statute grants jurisdiction to the federal government to prosecute local, state and federal officials. It is frequently used to fight public corruption because it is easier to prove than bribery or extortion.[1][20][21] The term "honest services" is broad and open to jury interpretation, according to several legal experts.[20] Prosecutions under the 1970 Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) frequently use violations of the honest services statute,[1] as mail and wire fraud are predicate acts of racketeering; therefore, two mailings or wire transmissions in the execution of honest services fraud can form "a pattern of racketeering activity."[6]

Prosecutions for honest services fraud that do not involve public corruption generally involve corporate crime, although the line between torts and crimes in such cases is considered murky and unclear.[6]

The law is reportedly a favorite of federal prosecutors because the language of statute is vague enough to be applied to corrupt political officials' unethical or criminal activities when they do not fall into a specific category, such as bribery or extortion.[20] For similar reasons, defense attorneys dislike the law, viewing it as a poorly defined law that can be used by prosecutors to convert any kind of unethical behavior into a federal crime.[20]

Nevertheless, prosecutors must still prove all the elements of mail fraud or wire fraud in a case regarding a scheme to defraud of honest services.[20]

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has criticized the statute, stating that the clause was so poorly defined that it could be the basis for prosecuting "a mayor for using the prestige of his office to get a table at a restaurant without a reservation."[22]

In The Perfect Villain: John McCain and the Demonization of Lobbyist Jack Abramoff, investigative journalist Gary S. Chafetz argued that honest-services fraud is so vague as to be unconstitutional, and that prosecutors abused it as a tool to increase their conviction rates.[23] Bennett L. Gershmann, a professor at Pace University Law School, similarly has contended that the law "is not only subject to abuse...but has been abused."[24] The case of former Alabama GovernorDon Siegelman is often cited as an example of possible prosecutorial misconduct and abuse of the honest services law.[24]

Many interest groups oppose the usage of the honest services law, including the conservative United States Chamber of Commerce and Washington Legal Foundation, as well as the more liberal National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.[24] One notable proponent of the law is the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.[24][25][26]

Recent notable prosecutions[edit]Several notable figures have been charged with or convicted of honest services fraud. Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff pleaded guilty in 2006 to honest services fraud in addition to conspiracy and tax evasion; he was convicted in 2008 of further charges of honest services fraud in addition to further charges of conspiracy and tax evasion.[27] Former Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling was convicted in 2006 of honest services fraud, in addition to securities fraud.[27] Former Illinois governor George Ryan was convicted in 2006 of honest services fraud, in addition to racketeering, tax fraud, obstruction of justice, and making false statements to federal agents.[28] Former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman was convicted in 2006 of honest services fraud, in addition to conspiracy, bribery, and obstruction of justice.[29]Duke Cunningham, a former Congressman from California, was convicted of corruption charges including honest services fraud.[27]Bob Ney, a former congressman from Ohio, was convicted of corruption charges including honest services fraud.[27] Newspaper magnate Conrad Black was convicted in 2007 of honest services fraud, in addition to obstruction of justice.[30] Former Alaskastate legislatorBruce Weyhrauch was convicted in 2007 of honest services fraud in addition to bribery and extortion.[31] Former New YorkSenate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno was convicted in 2009 on two counts of honest services fraud.[32]Mary McCarty, a former Palm Beach County Commissioner, is currently serving a federal prison sentence for honest services fraud.[33]New Jersey political boss Joe Ferriero was convicted in 2009 of conspiracy and two counts of mail fraud.[34] Former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich was indicted in 2009 for allegedly conspiring to commit honest services fraud, as well as for allegedly soliciting bribes.[35] Former Alabama state legislator Sue Schmitz was convicted in 2009 of three counts of mail fraud and four counts of fraud involving a program receiving federal funds.[36][37] Judges Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan originally pleaded guilty to honest services fraud and conspiracy in the Kids for cash scandal. The pleas were later withdrawn. Former Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell and wife Maureen were convicted of multiple counts, including conspiring to defraud the public and honest services violations in September 2014.

Supreme Court cases[edit]In its 2009-2010 term, there were three appeals against the statute at the United States Supreme Court, all challenging its constitutionality. All three appellants were convicted of honest services fraud in 2006 or 2007.[38]

Weyhrauch v. United States, by former Alaska state legislator Bruce Weyhrauch, deals with whether a public official can be charged with honest services fraud without violating his duty under state law.

Black v. United States, by newspaper magnate Conrad Black, deals with whether there must be proof that the defendant knew his actions would cause economic harm to the company.[39]

Skilling v. United States, by former Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling, deals with whether the honest services statute requires proof of personal gain.[38] He is also contending that the statute is unconstitutionally vague and unfair.[40]

In December 2009, the Associated Press reported that the Justices of the Court "seemed to be in broad agreement that the law is vague and has been used to make a crime out of mistakes, minor transgressions and mere ethical violations."[41] Both liberal and conservative justices have criticized the law.[41]Richard Thornburgh, a former United States Attorney General, has remarked that he expects the court to issue "something fairly sweeping...without doing violence to proper law enforcement."[24]

On June 24, 2010, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously in the cases of Black and Skilling that the law against "honest services" fraud is too vague to constitute a crime unless a bribe or kickback was involved.[42]

References[edit]^ abcValerie D. Nixon (June 13, 2006). "Our Intangible Right To 'Honest Services' by Public Officials". North Country Gazette. ^18 U.S.C. § 1346^Skilling v. United States, 130 S.Ct. 2896^ abcNinth Circuit Joins Other Circuits in Ruling that Honest Services Fraud Conviction of a Public Official Does Not Require a Violation of State Law, Martindale.com^McNally v. United States, 483 U.S. 350 (Supreme Court of the United States 1987).^ abcRazzano, Frank C.; Jones, Kristin H. (2009). "Prosecution of Private Corporate Conduct: The Uncertainty Surrounding Honest Services Fraud". Business Law Today. 18 (3). ^United States v. Brumley, 116 F.3d 728 (5th Cir. 1997).^United States v. Weyhrauch, 548 F.3d 1237 (9th Cir. 2008).^ abCole, Eric; Sandra Ring (2006). Insider Threat: Protecting the Enterprise from Sabotage, Spying, and Theft. Rockland, Massachusetts: Syngress Publishing, Inc. ISBN 1-59749-048-2. Retrieved 5 April 2010. ^United States v. Czubinski, 106 F.3d 1069 (1st Cir. 1997).^ abUnited States v. Vinyard, 266 F.3d 320 (4th Cir. 2001).^United States v. Frost, 125 F.3d 346 (6th Cir. 1997).^United States v. Sun-Diamond Growers of California, 138 F.3d 961 (D.C. Cir. 1998).^United States v. deVegter, 198 F.3d 1324 (11th Cir. 1999).^United States v. John Anthony Williams, 441 F.3d 716 (9th Cir. 2006).^United States v. Gray, 96 F.3d 769 (5th Cir. 1996).^United States v. Cochran, 109 F.3d 660 (10th Cir. 1997).^United States v. Pennington, 168 F.3d 1060 (8th Cir. 1999).^United States v. Rybicki, 354 F.3d 124 (2d Cir. 2003).^ abcdeKelly Thornton (January 12, 2006). "Vagueness of statute on corruption stirs dispute". San Diego Union-Tribune. ^Mike Robinson (September 12, 2009). "Honest-Services Fraud: Law Used To Indict Blagojevich Challenged As Vague". The Huffington Post. Retrieved November 1, 2009. ^Sorich v. United States, 555 U.S. 1204, 1205 (2009) (Scalia, J., dissenting).^Chafetz, Gary S. (2008). The Perfect Villain: John McCain and the Demonization of Jack Abramoff. Martin & Lawrence Press. ISBN 0-9773898-8-X. ^ abcdeJohn Schwartz (7 December 2009). "Justices to Weigh Honest-Services Law". The New York Times. Retrieved 20 December 2009. ^Ashby Jones (7 December 2009). "Twofer Tuesday: Pregaming the Honest-Services Arguments". WSJ.com. The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 20 December 2009. ^"CREW Files Amicus Brief in Black v. United States". CitizensforEthics.org. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. 17 September 2009. Retrieved 20 December 2009. ^ abcdMorgan, Lucy (22 January 2009). "Fighting corruption with the 'honest services' doctrine". St. Petersburg Times. Retrieved 4 April 2010. ^Matt O'Connor (September 8, 2006). "Ryan judge explains why she dismissed 2 charges". Chicago Tribune. ^"Former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman, Former HealthSouth CEO Richard Scrushy Convicted of Bribery, Conspiracy and Fraud" (Press release). United States Department of Justice. 29 June 2006. Retrieved 2010-04-04. ^Clark, Andrew (6 December 2009). "Conrad Black appeals 'honest services fraud' conviction". The Guardian. Retrieved 4 April 2010. ^Bolstad, Erika (9 December 2009). "Weyhrauch lawyers optimistic after high court hearing". Anchorage Daily News. Archived from the original on August 4, 2010. Retrieved 4 April 2010. ^Confessore, Nicholas; Danny Hakim (7 December 2009). "Joseph L. Bruno, Former Senate Leader, Guilty of Corruption". The New York Times. Retrieved 4 April 2010. ^"Mary McCarty moved to permanent prison in Texas". CBS 12 News. 13 July 2009. Retrieved 4 April 2010. ^"Former Bergen County political boss Ferriero found guilty in corruption case". The Star-Ledger. 22 October 2009. Retrieved 5 April 2010. ^"Superseding Indictment (U.S. v. Blagojevich, et al.)". FindLaw. 2009-04-02. Retrieved 2009-04-04. ^The Absentee School Teacher http://www.harpers.org/archive/2009/02/hbc-90004453Harper's Magazine^Faulk, Kent (February 25, 2009). "Sue Schmitz was convicted of federal fraud charges and removed as Alabama representative". The Birmingham News. Retrieved 5 April 2010. ^ abRobert Barnes (2009-10-14). "Supreme Court to Review Ex-Enron CEO's Conviction". The Washington Post. ^"Conrad Black applies for bail". Globe and Mail. May 28, 2009. ^Mark Sherman (October 13, 2009). "Supreme Court will hear appeal of Enron's Skilling". Associated Press. ^ abMark Sherman (December 8, 2009). "Supreme Court skeptical of federal anti-fraud law used in high-profile prosecutions". Associated Press. ^Chicago Tribune June 24, 2010, Supreme Court limits use of fraud law, siding with ex-Enron CEO Skilling

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Source: American Renaissance

Sun, 16 Oct 2016 02:04

A new University of Virginia survey, conducted by the Gallup organization, reveals Americans' deep dissatisfaction with the country's political culture, personified by the leading candidates for president, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.

Commissioned by UVA's Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture, the ''2016 Survey of American Political Culture'' is based on 1,904 telephone interviews with a nationally representative sample of American adults. {snip}

Speaking Wednesday at Gallup headquarters in Washington, James Davison Hunter, the institute's executive director, said the unprecedented public disaffection exhibited during the election campaign season reflects a deep fault line between the general American electorate and the political establishment.

He said this chasm is marked by mistrust of government, cynicism toward leaders and personal alienation. Hunter cited survey findings that confirm these levels of disaffection:

Nearly two-thirds (64 percent) of the American public has little to no confidence that the government in Washington will actually solve the problems it sets its mind to solve.Vast majorities of those polled believe that most politicians are more interested in winning elections than in doing what is right, and that while the system of government is good, the people running it are incompetent.Significant majorities agree most elected officials don't care what they think and that they don't have any say about what the government does.In addition, two-thirds of those polled said they have little or no confidence that people in government will tell the truth. That is up six percentage points from a similar survey conducted by the institute in 1996.

The new poll also exposes deepening worries about the United States' two-party system. Sixty-four percent of those polled believe that what American really needs is a new political party, because the current two-party system isn't working. More than half of all Democrats (53 percent) and Republicans (56 percent) hold this view, but three out of four (74 percent) of the growing number of independents are especially adamant about this.

{snip}

Also appearing Wednesday at Gallup headquarters, Carl Desportes Bowman, the survey research director, enumerated several other findings of the poll.

Seventy-three percent of all Americans believe the economic system is rigged in favor of the wealthiest Americans.Sixty-two percent of the American public agrees that the leaders in American corporations, media, universities and technology care little about the lives of most Americans.Nearly three out of four Americans (73 percent) believe that political correctness is a serious problem in our country, making it hard for people to say what they really think.Bowman said that surprisingly, some of the disaffections enumerated in the survey results are less pronounced among minorities. For example, when asked to rate their confidence in the United States government, Bowman said both blacks and Hispanics exude greater confidence in government.

''In general, whites are twice as likely as blacks and Hispanics to be very distrustful of the government on a variety of measures,'' he writes in the poll analysis.

{snip}

Original Article

Topics: Race and Politics

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Sun, 16 Oct 2016 02:21

A recent poll has conservative third-party candidate Evan McMullin statistically tied with Republican Donald Trump and Democratic challenger Hillary Clinton in the historically blood-red state of Utah. Once an easy win for the GOP, Utah's six electoral votes seem up for grabs in what has become a three-way race.

The high polling for McMullin, a Libertarian-leaning CIA-vet of the War on Terror, seems to be connected to Utah's unique demographics. Mormons, predominant in the state, have a long-simmering skepticism of the Republican nominee, and McMullin appears to have become plan-B for many.

Following these results, it's not impossible to imagine the McMullin campaign'--with some help from the media'--spinning a strong return in Utah into a nationwide upward swing.

But can enough Americans vote for McMullin to make him a legitimate option for the Trump-wary conservative voters?

McMullin got off to a particularly late start in the cycle (he only announced in early August). Consequently, the anti-Trump hopeful has spotty electoral coverage across the 50 states.

Through alliances with local Independence Party groups and some quick work, he's on the ballot in 1o states in addition to Utah: Arkansas, Colorado, Idaho, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Minnesota, New Mexico, South Carolina and Virginia. While that toll is impressive for a political unknown who declared with only three months before Election Day, it still only accounts for only 84 potential electoral points out of 538.

When it comes to write-in access, McMullin has been more successful. Residents of Alabama, Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Delaware, Georgia, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wisconsin can pen him in. The additional 23 here make him eligible in 34 out of 50 states and put a potential 317 electoral points on the table for his campaign, well clear of the 270 needed to become president.

It's worth noting that the majority of states where it is possible to vote for McMullin are either trending red or are showing strong leads for the Democratic candidate. That is, while McMullin has the potential to play the spoiler for Trump's ambitions, it's highly unlikely he would do the same for Clinton's. Still, this has been the most bizarre and unpredictable national race in living memory. Nothing seems fully impossible right now.

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Sun, 16 Oct 2016 02:20

Evan McMullin was born in Provo, Utah on April 2, 1976 to David McMullin, a computer scientist, and Lanie (Bullard) McMullin.

He graduated from Auburn High School in Auburn, Washington, and earned a Bachelor's degree in International Law and Diplomacy from Brigham Young University (BYU) and a Master's of Business Administration from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

Evan served as a Mormon missionary in Brazil and Volunteer Refugee Resettlement Officer in Amman, Jordan on behalf of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

On September 11th, 2001 Evan was in training at CIA Headquarters in Langley, Virginia. He completed his training and repeatedly volunteered for overseas service in the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia, spearheading counterterrorism and intelligence operations in some of the most dangerous places on earth.

Having completed his CIA service, in 2011, McMullin transitioned to the Investment Banking Division at Goldman Sachs in the San Francisco Bay Area, where he worked with companies in several industries, including technology, energy, consumer goods, biotech, industrials and real estate on capital raising projects and mergers and acquisitions.

In 2013, McMullin joined the House Committee on Foreign Affairs as a senior advisor and later became the chief policy director of the House Republican Conference.

He declared his candidacy for President of the United States on August 8, 2016, saying ''In a year where Americans have lost faith in the candidates of both major parties, it's time for a generation of new leadership to step up. It's never too late to do the right thing, and America deserves much better than either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton can offer us. I humbly offer myself as a leader who can give millions of disaffected Americans a better choice for President.''

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Fri, 14 Oct 2016 13:09

There's this thing that happens whenever I speak about or write about women's issues. Things like dress codes, rape culture and sexism. I get the comments: Aren't there more important things to worry about? Is this really that big of a deal? Aren't you being overly sensitive? Are you sure you're being rational about this?

And every single time I get frustrated. Why don't they get it?

I think I've figured out why.

They don't know about de-escalation. Minimizing. Quietly acquiescing.

Hell, even though women live it, we are not always aware of it. But we have all done it.

We have all learned, either by instinct or by trial and error, how to minimize a situation that makes us uncomfortable. How to avoid angering a man or endangering ourselves. We have all, on many occasions, ignored an offensive comment. We've all laughed off an inappropriate come-on. We've all swallowed our anger when being belittled or condescended to.

It doesn't feel good. It feels icky. Dirty. But we do it because to not do it could put us in danger or get us fired or labeled a bitch. So we usually take the path of least precariousness.

It's not something we talk about every day. We don't tell our boyfriends and husbands and friends every time it happens. Because it is so frequent, so pervasive, that it has become something we just deal with.

So maybe they don't know.

Maybe they don't know that at the tender age of 13 we had to brush off adult men staring at our breasts. Maybe they don't know that men our dad's age actually came on to us while we were working the cash register. They probably don't know that the guy in English class who asked us out sent angry messages just because we turned him down. They may not be aware that our supervisor regularly pats us on the ass. And they surely don't know that most of the time we smile, with gritted teeth. That we look away or pretend not to notice. They likely have no idea how often these things happen. That these things have become routine. So expected that we hardly notice it anymore.

So routine that we go through the motions of ignoring it and minimizing.

Not showing our suppressed anger and fear and frustration. A quick cursory smile or a clipped laugh will allow us to continue with our day. We de-escalate. We minimize it. Both internally and externally, we minimize it. We have to. To not shrug it off would put is in confrontation mode more often than most of us feel like dealing with.

We learn at a young age how to do this. We didn't put a name or label to it. We didn't even consider that other girls were doing the same thing. But we were teaching ourselves, mastering the art of de-escalation. Learning by way of observation and quick risk assessment what our reactions should and shouldn't be.

"It's the reality of being a woman in our world. It's laughing off sexism because we felt we had no other option."

We go through a quick mental checklist. Does he seem volatile, angry? Are there other people around? Does he seem reasonable and is just trying to be funny, albeit clueless? Will saying something impact my school/job/reputation? In a matter of seconds we determine whether we will say something or let it slide. Whether we'll call him out or turn the other way, smile politely or pretend that we didn't hear/see/feel it.

It happens all the time. And it's not always clear if the situation is dangerous or benign.

It is the boss who says or does something inappropriate. It is the customer who holds our tip out of reach until we lean over to hug him. It's the male friend who has had too much to drink and tries to corner us for a "friends with benefits" moment even though we've made it clear we're not interested. It's the guy who gets angry if we turn him down for a date. Or a dance. Or a drink.

We see it happen to our friends. We see it happen in so many scenarios and instances that it becomes the norm. And we really don't think anything of it. Until that one time that came close to being a dangerous situation. Until we hear that the "friend" who cornered us was accused of rape a day later. Until our boss makes good on his promise to kiss us on New Years Eve when he catches us alone in the kitchen. Those times stick out. They're the ones we may tell your friends, our boyfriends, our husbands about.

But all the other times? All the times we felt uneasy or nervous but nothing more happened? Those times we just go about our business and don't think twice about.

It's the reality of being a woman in our world.

It's laughing off sexism because we felt we had no other option.

It's feeling sick to your stomach that we had to "play along" to get along.

It's feeling shame and regret the we didn't call that guy out, the one who seemed intimidating but in hindsight was probably harmless. Probably.

It's taking our phone out, finger poised over the "Call" button when we're walking alone at night.

It's positioning our keys between our fingers in case we need a weapon when walking to our car.

It's lying and saying we have a boyfriend just so a guy would take "No" for an answer.

It's being at a crowded bar/concert/insert any crowded event, and having to turn around to look for the jerk who just grabbed our ass.

It's knowing that even if we spot him, we might not say anything.

It's walking through the parking lot of a big box store and politely saying Hello when a guy passing us says Hi. It's pretending not to hear as he berates us for not stopping to talk further. What? You too good to talk to me? You got a problem? Pffft... bitch.

It's not telling our friends or our parents or our husbands because it's just a matter of fact, a part of our lives.

It's the memory that haunts us of that time we were abused, assaulted or raped.

It's the stories our friends tell us through heartbreaking tears of that time they were abused, assaulted or raped.

It's realizing that the dangers we perceive every time we have to choose to confront these situations aren't in our imagination. Because we know too many women who have been abused, assaulted or raped.

"Maybe I'm starting to realize that just shrugging it off and not making a big deal about it is not going to help anyone."

It occurred to me recently that a lot of guys may be unaware of this. They have heard of things that happened, they have probably at times seen it and stepped in to stop it. But they likely have no idea how often it happens. That it colors much of what we say or do and how we do it.

Maybe we need to explain it better. Maybe we need to stop ignoring it ourselves, minimizing it in our own minds.

The guys that shrug off or tune out when a woman talks about sexism in our culture? They're not bad guys. They just haven't lived our reality. And we don't really talk about the everyday stuff that we witness and experience. So how could they know?

So, maybe the good men in our lives have no idea that we deal with this stuff on a regular basis.

Maybe it is so much our norm that it didn't occur to us that we would have to tell them.

It occurred to me that they don't know the scope of it and they don't always understand that this is our reality. So, yeah, when I get fired up about a comment someone makes about a girl's tight dress, they don't always get it. When I get worked up over the every day sexism I'm seeing and witnessing and watching... when I'm hearing of the things my daughter and her friends are experiencing... they don't realize it's the tiny tip of a much bigger iceberg.

Maybe I'm realizing that men can't be expected to understand how pervasive everyday sexism is if we don't start telling them and pointing to it when it happens. Maybe I'm starting to realize that men have no idea that even walking into a store women have to be on guard. We have to be aware, subconsciously, of our surroundings and any perceived threats.

Maybe I'm starting to realize that just shrugging it off and not making a big deal about it is not going to help anyone.

We are acutely aware of our vulnerability. Aware that if he wanted to, that guy in the Home Depot parking lot could overpower us and do whatever he wants.

Guys, this is what it means to be a woman.

We are sexualized before we even understand what that means. We develop into women while our minds are still innocent. We get stares and comments before we can even drive. From adult men. We feel uncomfortable but don't know what to do, so we go about our lives. We learn at an early age, that to confront every situation that makes us squirm is to possibly put ourselves in danger. We are aware that we are the smaller, physically weaker sex. That boys and men are capable of overpowering us if they choose to. So we minimize and we de-escalate.

So, the next time a woman talks about being cat-called and how it makes her uncomfortable, don't dismiss her. Listen.

The next time your wife complains about being called "Sweetheart" at work, don't shrug in apathy. Listen.

The next time you read about or hear a woman call out sexist language, don't belittle her for doing so. Listen.

The next time your girlfriend tells you that the way a guy talked to her made her feel uncomfortable, don't shrug it off. Listen.

Listen because your reality is not the same as hers.

Listen because her concerns are valid and not exaggerated or inflated.

Listen because the reality is that she or someone she knows personally has at some point been abused, assaulted, or raped. And she knows that it's always a danger of happening to her.

Listen because even a simple comment from a strange man can send ripples of fear through her.

Listen because she may be trying to make her experience not be the experience of her daughters.

Listen because nothing bad can ever come from listening.

Need help? In the U.S., call 1-800-656-HOPE for the National Sexual Assault Hotline.

Get all the news and commentary that matters to women, from personal essays and pop culture, to body image and politics delivered to your inbox. Sign up here.

17 Unputdownable Women's Memoirs

"Wave" by Sonali

"Deraniyagala's memoir about losing her husband and sons in the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami is... possibly one of the most moving books ever written about grief." -- The Guardian

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Sat, 15 Oct 2016 19:44

'It will be a bloodbath': Inside the Kansas militia plot to ignite a religious war - Washington Post 10/15/2016 5:16:03 PM

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2 tornadoes hit Oregon; more on way 10/15/2016 1:59:13 AM

Militia members arrested in alleged plot targeting Muslims - CBS News 10/15/2016 3:20:00 AM

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Sat, 15 Oct 2016 19:45

Over the last several years, fact checking has come into its own. Led by organizations like the International Fact-Checking Network, rigorous fact checks are now conducted by more than 100 active sites, according to the Duke University Reporter's Lab. They collectively produce many thousands of fact-checks a year, examining claims around urban legends, politics, health, and the media itself.

In the seven years since we started labeling types of articles in Google News (e.g., In-Depth, Opinion, Wikipedia), we've heard that many readers enjoy having easy access to a diverse range of content types. Earlier this year, we added a ''Local Source'' Tag to highlight local coverage of major stories. Today, we're adding another new tag, ''Fact check,'' to help readers find fact checking in large news stories. You'll see the tagged articles in the expanded story box on news.google.com and in the Google News & Weather iOS and Android apps, starting with the U.S. and the U.K.

Google News determines whether an article might contain fact checks in part by looking for the schema.org ClaimReview markup. We also look for sites that follow the commonly accepted criteria for fact checks. Publishers who create fact-checks and would like to see it appear with the ''Fact check'' tag should use that markup in fact-check articles. For more information, head on over to our help center.

We're excited to see the growth of the Fact Check community and to shine a light on its efforts to divine fact from fiction, wisdom from spin.

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Sat, 15 Oct 2016 19:48

The Poynter Institute announced Monday that Alexios Mantzarlis will be the director and editor of a new International Fact-Checking Network. The IFCN's work will appear on Poynter's site and Mantzarlis will publish a weekly newsletter.

Alexios Mantzarlis, submitted photoAccording to the press release, the St. Petersburg, Florida-based IFCN is funded by grants from the Omidyar Network and the National Endowment for Democracy, and "it will support and study the work of 64 fact-checking organizations spanning six continents..."

''Poynter's mission is to advance journalistic excellence that serves democracy, and I can't think of a more appropriate or important initiative than the International Fact-Checking Network,'' said Poynter President Tim Franklin. ''We've seen the huge impact of PolitiFact in the U.S. in recent years. Alexios and IFCN will foster the growth globally of this vitally important work that holds public officials accountable.''

Mantzarlis is currently the managing editor of Pagella Politica, a fact-checking site in Italy. He also co-founded FactCheckEU.org.

Kristen Hare covers the media for the Poynter Institute. Her work for Poynter has earned her a Mirror Award nomination. Hare, a graduate of the University of Missouri's School of Journalism, spent 5 years as the Sunday features writer and an assistant editor at the St. Joseph (Missouri) News-Press, and five years as a staff writer covering race, immigration, the census and aging at the St. Louis Beacon. She also spent two years with the Peace Corps in Guyana, South America. Hare and her family live outside Tampa.

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Fri, 14 Oct 2016 16:27

From:cheryl.mills@gmail.com To: hsamuelson@cdmillsGroup.com Date: 2015-06-25 11:33 Subject: Re: Proposed response to upcoming State Dept disclosure on Sid emailsI think the point can be made via noting that Sid was not a federal employee as needed (which as FYI means his emails only b/came federal records if used in the course of Dept business - so some were if forwarded and acted on and some weren't if nothing was done with them). But not sure it is worth the technical debate. So in your if pushed, you could say: >>> With regard to his materials, remember, Sid was never a federal employee. We do not know what these materials are, or where they came from. Just take a look at them: many of the documents are not even formatted as emails. >>> >>> But even if Sid is right and some of these documents were at some point sent to Clinton, there is nothing in any of these emails that is remotely new or interesting. Indeed, none of these 16 emails are qualitatively different than the dozens of others that Hillary already produced to the State Department. So it is completely ridiculous to suggest that there might have been any nefarious basis for her to want to delete any of Sid's correspondence. >> cdm > On Jun 25, 2015, at 7:56 AM, Heather Samuelson wrote: > > I defer to CDM and David on if/how we want to address this. > > There was concern re prior language that I relayed to Brian and Nick. > > On Jun 25, 2015, at 12:12 AM, Jennifer Palmieri wrote: > >> Shouldn't we also add somewhere that Sid was not s government employee and these aren't federal records? >> >> Heather -State would not consider these records, correct? >> >> Sent from my iPhone >> >> On Jun 24, 2015, at 10:40 PM, Brian Fallon wrote: >> >>> Based on conversations today, below is the finalized version of the response plan: >>> >>> Q: The State Department says that at least 16 of the emails that Sid Blumenthal turned over to the Benghazi Select Committee were not included in the 55,000 pages of materials produced by Hillary Clinton. Doesn't this prove that Hillary Clinton deleted certain emails at some point before producing them to the Department? >>> >>> ON-THE-RECORD RESPONSE FROM SPOKESMAN NICK MERRILL: >>> >>> "Hillary Clinton has turned over 55,000 pages of materials to the State Department, including all emails in her possession from Mr. Blumenthal." >>> >>> ADDITIONAL POINTS ON BACKGROUND FROM CLINTON AIDE: >>> >>> Not only did Clinton turn over all emails that she has from Blumenthal, she actually turned over more than a dozen emails that were not included in what Mr. Blumenthal handed over to the House committee. >>> >>> We do not have a record of other correspondence between Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Blumenthal beyond that which was turned over to the State Department. In terms of the documents provided by Mr. Blumenthal to the House committee, we do not recognize many of those materials and cannot speak to their origin. >>> >>> OFF RECORD, if pressed on whether we are essentially admitting the possibility that she deleted some emails: >>> >>> Look, we do not know what these materials are, or where they came from. Just take a look at them: many of the documents are not even formatted as emails. >>> >>> But even if Sid is right and some of these documents were at some point sent to Clinton, there is nothing in any of these emails that is remotely new or interesting. Indeed, none of these 16 emails are qualitatively different than the dozens of others that Hillary already produced to the State Department. So it is completely ridiculous to suggest that there might have been any nefarious basis for her to want to delete any of Sid's correspondence. >>> >>>> On Wed, Jun 24, 2015 at 4:07 PM, Heather Samuelson wrote: >>>> Thanks for update Nick >>>> >>>> Brian -- I will call you on this. Recommend removing section re Sid not being a federal employee. >>>> >>>> On Jun 24, 2015, at 2:32 PM, Nick Merrill wrote: >>>> >>>>> Just spoke to State a little more about this. A few updates. >>>>> >>>>> 1. The plan at the moment is for them to do this tomorrow, first thing in the morning. >>>>> >>>>> 2. What that means specifically is that they are going to turn over all the Blumenthal emails to the Committee that they hav along with some other HRC emails that include a slightly broader set of search terms than the original batch. That of course includes the emails Sid turned over that HRC didn't, which will make clear to them that she didn't have them in the first place, deleted them, or didn't turn them over. It also includes emails that HRC had that Sid didn't, as Brian noted. >>>>> >>>>> 3. They do not plan to release anything publicly, so no posting online or anything public-facing, just to the committee. That said, they are considering placing a story with a friendly at the AP (Matt Lee or Bradley Klapper), that would lay this out before the majority on the committee has a chance to realize what they have and distort it. >>>>> >>>>> On that last piece, we think it would make sense to work with State and the AP to deploy the below. So assuming everyone is in agreement we'll proceed. It would be good to frame this a little, and frankly to have it break tomorrow when we'll likely be close to or in the midst of a SCOTUS decision taking over the news hyenas. >>>>> >>>>> Will keep everyone posted if anything changes, including the timing. >>>>> >>>>> Nick >>>>> >>>>>> On Wed, Jun 24, 2015 at 12:30 PM, Brian Fallon wrote: >>>>>> All - In preparation for the possibility that the State Department may acknowledge as soon as today that there were 16 Sid emails missing from the 55k pages of material produced by HRC, I wanted to circulate the below draft plan for responding to the inquiries that Nick will get. Thanks. >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> Q: The State Department says that at least 16 of the emails that Sid Blumenthal turned over to the Benghazi Select Committee were not included in the 55,000 pages of materials produced by Hillary Clinton. Doesn't this prove that Hillary Clinton deleted certain emails at some point before producing them to the Department? >>>>>> >>>>>> ON-THE-RECORD RESPONSE FROM SPOKESMAN NICK MERRILL: >>>>>> >>>>>> "Hillary Clinton has turned over 55,000 pages of materials to the State Department, including all emails in her possession from Mr. Blumenthal." >>>>>> >>>>>> ADDITIONAL POINTS ON BACKGROUND FROM CLINTON AIDE: >>>>>> >>>>>> Not only did Clinton turn over all emails that she has from Blumenthal, she actually turned over more than a dozen emails that were not included in what Mr. Blumenthal handed over to the House committee. >>>>>> >>>>>> We do not have a record of other correspondence between Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Blumenthal beyond that which was turned over to the State Department. In terms of the documents provided by Mr. Blumenthal to the House committee, we do not recognize many of those materials and cannot speak to their origin. >>>>>> >>>>>> OFF RECORD, if pressed on whether we are essentially admitting the possibility that she deleted some emails: >>>>>> >>>>>> Look, we do not know what these materials are, or where they came from. Just take a look at them: many of the documents are not even formatted as emails. >>>>>> >>>>>> For all we know, it could be that, in the course of reproducing his emails after his account was hacked, Sid misremembered which memos he actually forwarded to her and which he did not. >>>>>> >>>>>> And hey, even if Sid is right and some of these documents were at some point sent to Clinton, this is unremarkable anyway for two key reasons: >>>>>> >>>>>> One, she would have been under no obligation to preserve them since Blumenthal wasn't a government employee. >>>>>> >>>>>> Two, there is nothing in any of these emails that is remotely new or interesting. Indeed, none of these 16 emails are qualtitatively different than the dozens of others that Hillary already produced to the State Department. So it is completely ridiculous to suggest that there might have been any nefarious basis for her to want to delete any of Sid's correspondence.

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Fri, 14 Oct 2016 20:44

In one of the more interesting threads to emerge from today's latest, seventh Wikileaks dump of Podesta emails, we read a detailed exchange between Clinton press secretaries Brian Fallon and Nick Merrill, in which we learn how on June 24, 2015 the Clinton Campaign was preparing for the upcoming news release in which the State Department, and the mainstream press, would acknowledge for the first time that Hillary Clinton had deleted a certain number of Sid Blumenthal emails from the 55k pages of material produced by Hillary Clinton from her personal server.

By way of background, this is what Fallon wrote in preparation for the official and unofficial response the Clinton campaign would provide to the State Department:

Q: The State Department says that at least 16 of the emails that Sid Blumenthal turned over to the Benghazi Select Committee were not included in the 55,000 pages of materials produced by Hillary Clinton. Doesn't this prove that Hillary Clinton deleted certain emails at some point before producing them to the Department?

ON-THE-RECORD RESPONSE FROM SPOKESMAN NICK MERRILL:

"Hillary Clinton has turned over 55,000 pages of materials to the State Department, including all emails in her possession from Mr. Blumenthal."

ADDITIONAL POINTS ON BACKGROUND FROM CLINTON AIDE:

Not only did Clinton turn over all emails that she has from Blumenthal, she actually turned over more than a dozen emails that were not included in what Mr. Blumenthal handed over to the House committee.

We do not have a record of other correspondence between Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Blumenthal beyond that which was turned over to the State Department. In terms of the documents provided by Mr. Blumenthal to the House committee, we do not recognize many of those materials and cannot speak to their origin.

OFF RECORD, if pressed on whether we are essentially admitting the possibility that she deleted some emails:

Look, we do not know what these materials are, or where they came from. Just take a look at them: many of the documents are not even formatted as emails.

For all we know, it could be that, in the course of reproducing his emails after his account was hacked, Sid misremembered which memos he actually forwarded to her and which he did not.

And hey, even if Sid is right and some of these documents were at some point sent to Clinton, this is unremarkable anyway for two key reasons:

One, she would have been under no obligation to preserve them since Blumenthal wasn't a government employee.

Two, there is nothing in any of these emails that is remotely new or interesting. Indeed, none of these 16 emails are qualtitatively different than the dozens of others that Hillary already produced to the State Department. So it is completely ridiculous to suggest that there might have been any nefarious basis for her to want to delete any of Sid's correspondence.

After one turn of comments he revised his "Off the Record" statement to omit the "Sid misremembered" part to end up with the following:

OFF RECORD, if pressed on whether we are essentially admitting the possibility that she deleted some emails:

Look, we do not know what these materials are, or where they came from. Just take a look at them: many of the documents are not even formatted as emails.

But even if Sid is right and some of these documents were at some point sent to Clinton, there is nothing in any of these emails that is remotely new or interesting. Indeed, none of these 16 emails are qualitatively different than the dozens of others that Hillary already produced to the State Department. So it is completely ridiculous to suggest that there might have been any nefarious basis for her to want to delete any of Sid's correspondence.

The revision took place after Nick Merrill confirmed - yet again - that there had been collusion between the State Department and the Clinton campaign when he said that "Just spoke to State a little more about this." He then noted the following updates:

1. The plan at the moment is for them to do this tomorrow, first thing in the morning.

2. What that means specifically is that they are going to turn over all the Blumenthal emails to the Committee that they hav along with some other HRC emails that include a slightly broader set of search terms than the original batch. That of course includes the emails Sid turned over that HRC didn't, which will make clear to them that she didn't have them in the first place, deleted them, or didn't turn them over. It also includes emails that HRC had that Sid didn't, as Brian noted.

Then, providing further evidence of ongoing collusion not just between Hillary's campaign and the State Department, but also the press, Merrill then adds the following note to explain how the State Department hoped to use the Associated Press to product a piece that "lays this out" before the "committee has a chance to realize what they have.":

3. They do not plan to release anything publicly, so no posting online or anything public-facing, just to the committee. That said, they are considering placing a story with a friendly at the AP (Matt Lee or Bradley Klapper), that would lay this out before the majority on the committee has a chance to realize what they have and distort it.

On that last piece, we think it would make sense to work with State and the AP to deploy the below. So assuming everyone is in agreement we'll proceed. It would be good to frame this a little, and frankly to have it break tomorrow when we'll likely be close to or in the midst of a SCOTUS decision taking over the news hyenas.

But what is the most interesing part of this exchange is not what is in the email, but what may have been discussed offline, for one reason: a curious discrepancy emerges just one day later, when the AP wrote an article, as expected by the "friendly" AP reporters Bradley Klapper and Matt Lee, which laid out the narrative precisely as the Clinton campaign wanted it. While we are confident many readers recall it from when it first appeared last June, from AP:

WASHINGTON (AP) '-- The State Department cannot find in its records all or part of 15 work-related emails from Hillary Rodham Clinton's private server that were released this week by a House panel investigating the 2012 attack in Benghazi, Libya, officials said Thursday.

The emails all predate the Sept. 11 assault on the U.S. diplomatic facility and include scant words written by Clinton herself, the officials said. They consist of more in a series of would-be intelligence reports passed to her by longtime political confidant Sidney Blumenthal, the officials said.

Nevertheless, the fact that the State Department says it can't find them among emails she provided surely will raise new questions about Clinton's use of a personal email account and server while secretary of state and whether she has provided the agency all of her work-related correspondence, as she claims.

Here is CNN's take on the same issue, in an article that came out virtually at the same time:

The State Department has not been able to find emails from former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's private server in its archives, State Department officials said Thursday.

The officials said the State Department is missing all or part of 15 emails from longtime confidant Sidney Blumenthal released this week by a House panel investigating the 2012 attack on the U.S. diplomatic facility in Benghazi, Libya. Blumenthal provided the Select Committee on Benghazi with the emails.

Here is NBC:

The State Department cannot find in its records all or part of 15 work-related emails from Hillary Rodham Clinton's private server that were released this week by a House panel investigating the 2012 attack in Benghazi, Libya, officials said Thursday.

Here is NYT:

The State Department said on Thursday that 15 emails sent or received by Hillary Rodham Clinton were missing from records that she has turned over, raising new questions about whether she deleted work-related emails from the private account she used exclusively while in office.

And here is CBS:

The State Department cannot find in its records all or part of 15 work-related emails from Hillary Rodham Clinton's private server that were released this week by a House panel investigating the 2012 attack in Benghazi, Libya, officials said Thursday.

And so on, but notice something similar: every press reports note 15 emails from Blumenthal were missing.

Why is "15" strange? Because recall what the Clinton campaign was discussing just one day prior in the preparation of its talking points to the State Department:

... the State Department may acknowledge as soon as today that there were 16 Sid emails missing from the 55k pages of material produced by HRC...

... none of these 16 emails are qualitatively different than the dozens of others that Hillary already produced to the State Department...

... The State Department says that at least 16 of the emails that Sid Blumenthal turned over to the Benghazi Select Committee were not included in the 55,000 pages of materials produced by Hillary Clinton...

We have just one question: how - and why - in the span of 24 hours, did a confirmed sample of 16 deleted Sidney Blumenthal emails, as discussed off the record within the Clinton campaign, become 15 deleted emails overnight when the State Depratment unveiled its "official", and massaged especially for the press, version of what Hillary had stated she had done with the Blumenthal's emails.

Was the publicly announced "embarrassing" deletion of 15 Blumenthal emails merely a smokescreen to cover up the real malfeasance: the elimination of just one Blumenthal email which the State Department, in collusion with Hillary, deemed would be too damaging to even disclose had been produced?

And if so, who at the State Department lied and why?

Actually we have another question: what was in the missing, and (twice?) deleted 16th, email?

Alas, since one of the many pathways of undisputed coordinated, and collusion, exposed thanks to this latest Wikileaks release is that between the government, the mainstream press, and Hillary Clinton, we are confident we will never find out, and are even more confident this question will never emerge.

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Sat, 15 Oct 2016 18:11

http://www.naturalnews.com/047168_conspiracy_theorists_sanity_propaganda.html

(NaturalNews) If you're a conspiracy theorist, then you're crazy, right? That's been the common belief for years, but recent studies prove that just the opposite is true.Researchers -- psychologists and social scientists, mostly -- in the U.S. and United Kingdom say data indicate that, contrary to those mainstream media stereotypes, "conspiracy theorists" appear to be more sane than people who accept official versions of controversial and contested events.

The most recent study was published in July 2013 by psychologists Michael J. Wood and Karen M. Douglas of the University of Kent in the UK. Entitled "'What about Building 7?' A Social Psychological Study of Online Discussion of 9/11 Conspiracy Theories," the study compared "conspiracist," or pro-conspiracy theory, and "conventionalist," or anti-conspiracy, comments on news websites.

The researchers noted that they were surprised to find that it is now more conventional to leave so-called conspiracist comments than conventional ones.

"Of the 2174 comments collected, 1459 were coded as conspiracist and 715 as conventionalist," the researchers wrote.

'The research showed that people who favored the official account of 9/11 were generally more hostile'

So, among people who comment on news articles, those who discount official government accounts of events like the 9/11 attacks and the assassination of John F. Kennedy outnumber believers by more than two-to-one. That means the pro-conspiracy commenters are those who are now expressing what is considered conventional wisdom, while the anti-conspiracy commenters represent a small, beleaguered minority that is often scoffed at and shunned.

Perhaps becoming frustrated that their alleged mainstream viewpoints are no longer considered as such by the majority, those who are anti-conspiracy commenters often showed anger and disgust in their posts.

"The research... showed that people who favoured the official account of 9/11 were generally more hostile when trying to persuade their rivals," said the study.

Also, it seems that those who do not believe in the conspiracies were not just hostile but fanatically attached to their own conspiracy theories as well. The researchers said that, according to the anti-conspiracy holders, their own theory of 9/11 -- one which says 19 Muslims, none of whom could fly commercial airliners with any proficiency, pulled off an amazing surprise attack under the direction of a man on dialysis (Osama bin Laden) who was living in a cave somewhere in Afghanistan -- is unwaveringly true.

Meanwhile, "conspiracists," on the hand, did not have to pretend to have a theory that completely explained the events of 9/11. "For people who think 9/11 was a government conspiracy, the focus is not on promoting a specific rival theory, but in trying to debunk the official account," the researchers said.

As reported by Veterans Today:In short, the new study by Wood and Douglas suggests that the negative stereotype of the conspiracy theorist -- a hostile fanatic wedded to the truth of his own fringe theory -- accurately describes the people who defend the official account of 9/11, not those who dispute it.

A conspiracy theory about a conspiracy theory

The study also found that conspiracy believers discuss historical context, like viewing the JFK assassination as a precedent for 9/11, more than the antis. It also found that conspiracy believers do not like to be labeled as such.

These and other findings are contained in a new book, Conspiracy Theory in America, by political scientist Lance deHaven-Smith, which was published last year by the University of Texas Press. He explained why people don't like to be labeled as "conspiracy theorists."

"The CIA's campaign to popularize the term 'conspiracy theory' and make conspiracy belief a target of ridicule and hostility must be credited, unfortunately, with being one of the most successful propaganda initiatives of all time," he said.

He further noted that, essentially, those who use the term as an insult are doing so as the result of a well-documented, undisputed and historically accurate conspiracy by the CIA to cover up the JFK assassination.

Or not.

You be the judge.

Sources:

http://www.veteranstoday.com

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

http://conspiracypsychology.com

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Source: teleSURtv.net

Sun, 16 Oct 2016 02:06

New WikiLeaks emails reveals the extent to which the mainstream media did favors for Clinton.

Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign collaborated closely with major members of the media, revealed the latest batch of the campaign chairman's emails released Friday by WikiLeaks.

RELATED:Clinton Leaks: All-White Staff Debate How to Exploit Black Vote

Clinton has long been known to be a friend of Haim Saban, an Israeli-American billionaire that bought out Univision, but the emails show him dictating her line for the Latino audience and granting her a privileged position at the station.

In a long email chain with members of her media and Latino outreach team, staff quote Saban saying that ''Univision was actually really happy about her comments'' on immigration but that he ''thinks HRC (Hillary Rodham Clinton) needs to be on the forefront of this and show that she's an integral part of the community, lift up and be proud of the contributions Latinos make.''

Saban ''asked to call him and share our plan and get input from them,'' said Lorella Praeli, head of Latino outreach. He himself says in a later email that he's ''looking forward to continued success'' with the Clinton team.

An email titled ''Bernie's lies'' has Saban suggesting the Clinton attack Bernie Sanders with a ''Simple arrow (to) the heart and the brain... and up his butt.''

Saban also advised Clinton closely on Israel'--an issue that even made Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wonder ''if a Clinton Administration 'will be a Saban Forum for four years', due to 'the people around her, but not her,''' read an email from Stuart Eizenstat, who often consulted her on Israel.

The friendship, though, did not stop there.

Clinton has already been criticized for being a darling of the mainstream liberal media, but the emails reveal open congratulations from both sides.

RELATED:WikiLeaks Reveals What Clinton Really Thinks About US-Cuba Thaw

An email from Lionsgate Motion Picture Group co-chair Rob Friedman to Saban, forwarded to Podesta, reads:

''Haim , I just wanted to tell you that I thought the moderators for last nights Debate were excellent. They were thoughtful , tough and incisive. I thought it made Hilary appear direct and strong in her resolve. I felt it advanced our candidate. Thanks for Univision.''

During her 2008 campaign, collusion between moderators and Clinton even extended to the Democratic National Committee. Its press secretary at the time, Rebecca Buckwalter-Poza, wrote to members of her campaign that, ''I'm sure it's already accounted for, but we'd really like the moderator to push people defending McCain to explain their positions in these groups. If you could tip the moderator to explore any comments on his temper, that would be great.''

The current campaign has expanded its connections to even more outlets, touting ''a good relationship'' with Fernando Espuelas of CBS's Face the Nation, ''best wishes'' for the campaign from documentary filmmakers for Al Jazeera and the BBC and admiration from the New York Times, with reporter Amy Chozick'--who covers Clinton'--confessing that, ''Peter Baker and other colleagues speak highly of you, and I am really looking forward to hopefully working with you over the next couple of years.''

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Sun, 16 Oct 2016 02:12

wikileaks, trump pussy, trump women, trump allegations - Google TrendsMy AccountSearchMapsYouTubePlayNewsGmailDriveCalendarGoogle+TranslatePhotosMoreShoppingWalletFinanceDocsBooksBloggerContactsHangoutsEven more from GoogleYou are using unsupported browser. Some features may not work correctly. Upgrade to a modern browser, such as Google Chrome.Trends has upgraded to a newer version, which is not supported by this device.dismiss

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Sun, 16 Oct 2016 02:17

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Sun, 16 Oct 2016 02:18

Support the White HelmetsThe most dangerous place in the worldWhen the bombs rain down, the Syrian Civil Defence rushes in. In a place where public services no longer function these unarmed volunteers risk their lives to help anyone in need - regardless of their religion or politics. Known as the White Helmets these volunteer rescue workers operate in the most dangerous place on earth.

As the conflict in Syria worsens, ordinary people are paying the highest price. More than 50 bombs and mortars a day land on some neighbourhoods in Syria. Many are rusty barrels filled with nails and explosives, rolled out the back of government helicopters -- bakeries and markets are the most commonly hit targets. When this happens the White Helmets rush in to search for life in the rubble - fully aware that more bombs may fall on the same site. These volunteers have saved 62,000 lives - and this number is growing daily.

"Syrians are killed everyday with various kinds of weapons, but the deadliest ones are the barrel bombs because of their indiscriminate nature."

- Raed al Saleh, Head of the White Helmets

The White Helmets MovieFor five years the headlines on Syria have been dominated by extremists and dictators, but now the spotlight is finally in its rightful place - on the incredible heroes of Syria. A new Netflix documentary, 'The White Helmets', from the Oscar-nominated team behind Virunga, is available for streaming on Netflix. In living rooms across the world millions of people can now walk the bombed out streets of Aleppo with these inspiring rescue workers.

We don't always know what will make history. This could be the thing that multiplies the movement of support for the White Helmets and forces world leaders to act to stop the bombs raining down on Syrian families.

141 White Helmets have been killed saving lives. For them and for every Syrian civilian, let's watch this film, share it with our friends, and demand support for the White Helmets and their message of peace.

Broken promisesThe UN Security Council passed Resolution 2139 in 2014 which banned barrel bombs and other indiscriminate weapons. They promised to take further steps if their resolution was violated. More than two years later, thousands more barrel bombs have been dropped, killing thousands more children. The Council didn't act.

In 2015, they passed another resolution banning the use of chlorine as a chemical weapon. They said if chemical attacks continue, they would take action under the ''Chapter VII'' of the UN charter - which would allow them to use force to protect civilians.

The have been dozens of chemical attacks since the Security Council spoke. By failing to act, Security Council members are emboldening the killers. Now the White Helmets are calling on them to follow through on their demands and stop the chlorine and stop the bombs.

"When I want to save someone's life I don't care if he's an enemy or a friend. What concerns me is the soul that might die"

- Abed, The White Helmets

Unarmedand neutral

The volunteers save people on all sides of the conflict - pledging commitment to the principles of ''Humanity, Solidarity, Impartiality'' as outlined by the International Civil Defence Organisation. This pledge guides every response, every action, every life saved - so that in a time of destruction, all Syrians have the hope of a lifeline.

The White Helmets mostly deal with the aftermath of government air attacks. Yet they have risked sniper fire to rescue bodies of government soldiers to give them a proper burial.

Bakers, tailors, engineers, pharmacists, painters, carpenters, students and many more, the White Helmets are volunteers from all walks of life. Many have paid the ultimate price for their compassion - 141 have been killed while saving others.

As well as saving lives the White Helmets deliver public services to nearly 7 million people, including reconnecting electrical cables, providing safety information to children and securing buildings. They are the largest civil society organisation operating in areas outside of government control, and their actions provide hope for millions.

Get wounded White Helmets back on their feetBakers, tailors, engineers, pharmacists, students and many more, the White Helmets come from all walks of life. The 2,900volunteers are united by their motto that 'to save one life, is to save all of humanity'. Donate and show them that humanity is united behind them.

The women saving Syria from the bombsAlmost all official members of the White Helmets were men until two women's teams were formed in October 2014. These 78 heroic women are trained in medical care and light search and rescue work. They respond to barrel bomb and missile strikes and dig for survivors using tools and their bare hands.

In some cases, they are the only hope for other women or girls who are trapped under rubble. In Syria's most conservative communities, people have refused to let male volunteers rescue women and girls '' but the women have intervened to help those who wouldn't have been helped otherwise. Now they've inspired hundreds of people across the world, from Peru to Pakistan, to donate over $100,000 to buy them the six ambulances they need for their rescue missions.

WHAT IS THE SYRIA CAMPAIGN?

Four years after the peaceful uprising in Syria, politicians and the media have largely forgotten what the UN calls ''the greatest humanitarian tragedy of our time''. But we haven't. That's why we started The Syria Campaign, to build a global movement of solidarity and action working toward a peaceful and dignified future for all Syrians. We aren't the Syrian Civil Defence, but we think that what they do is amazing and should be supported by people around the world.

The Syria CampaignFacebookTwitter

White Helmets / Syrian Civil DefenceFacebookTwitter

For media enquiries for the White Helmets, email: [email protected]

For media enquiries to The Syria Campaign, email: [email protected]

All other questions and requests should go to: [email protected]

For facts and background information about the White Helmets: Media Briefing

Thousands of us campaigned to get the Nobel Peace Prize for the heroic rescue workers of the White Helmets. They didn't win it this year, but we can step in and raise the $1 million in prize money that they would have gotten. Let's show them our love and solidarity from around the world -- get the White Helmets $1 million to treat wounded volunteers and replace rescue equipment and ambulances that have been bombed. Give now!

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Sun, 16 Oct 2016 02:18

About UsSyrians '' like people all across the world '' want their freedom. They want to be free of dictatorship and free of the extremism it has spawned.

The regime of Bashar al-Assad is responsible for crushing a peaceful uprising that has led to the deaths of over 450,000 people, the displacement of over 12 million '' half the country '' and the emergence of violent, extremist groups like Isis.

Today the fighting in Syria has given way to a world war with more than eighty countries involved on all sides.

The majority of Syrians want neither Assad nor Isis. They want an end to the violence and a democratic Syria.

What is happening in Syria could be happening to any of us. No one is free until we're all free.

Frequently Asked QuestionsThese are based on real questions we get asked. Please ask us more and we'll answer them below.

What is The Syria Campaign?The Syria Campaign is a global advocacy group launched in 2014 with the mission to mobilize people around the world to advocate to protect Syrian civilians and accelerate progress towards a peaceful and democratic future for Syria.

We work in two ways:

1. Creating communication materials '' e.g. reports, infographics, videos '' that have the ability to cut through the complexity of the conflict and shift the public narrative on Syria

2. Running large-scale campaigns that elevate the voices of Syrians and deliver real impact on the ground

If you want to see some of our campaign victories head to our impact page.

Why was The Syria Campaign created?We launched on the third anniversary of the uprising in March 2014 at a time when Syria was slipping off the media and political agendas of countries around the world. As human rights activists we wanted to do what we could to refocus global attention and action on Syria.

So much has changed since we started: the emergence of Isis, the 'refugee crisis' reaching European shores and the involvement of even more countries in bombing Syria.

Syria today is back in the headlines. However, despite the immense scale of human suffering and instability there is a lack of serious effort from world leaders to end the violence.

Maybe after nearly five years it's fatigue, maybe it's thinking it's too complex, maybe it's just seeing only bad guys in the news. Whatever the reasons, we aim to overcome these barriers working in partnership with Syrians to garner international support to accelerate an end the violence.

Only by listening to the demands of Syrians and standing with those who want a peaceful and democratic future for the country will we bring stability to Syria and be able to drive out extremism. There are no solutions to the conflict in Syria that can be drafted up in faraway capitals or dropped from the sky. Through our campaigns elevating the heroic and inspiring work of Syrians we hope to mobilise support for the only people who can really end this crisis: Syrians themselves.

How can I get involved?Once you're finished reading this you can scroll to the bottom of the page and sign up to join The Syria Campaign. We'll send you our latest campaigns and news over email.

Then head over and 'like' The Syria Campaign on Facebook and 'follow' us on Twitter. Spend some time on our Facebook images and videos. It'll give you a sense of some of the work we do.

How are you governed?The Syria Campaign is a non-profit organisation registered as a company in the United Kingdom as The Voices Project'--company number 8825761. (You can't be a registered charity in the UK if most of your work is campaigning.)

We have a Governing Board who are legally responsible for the organisation and oversee strategy and finance for The Syria Campaign. The board members are Daniel Gorman, Ben Stewart, Sawsan Asfari, Tim Dixon and Lina de Sergie.

How are you funded?By generous donations of individuals around the world who want to campaign to protect Syrian civilians. If that sounds like you, please chip in what you can afford to support our work. We wouldn't be able to do it without you.

The Syria Campaign is fiercely independent and has accepted no money from governments, corporations or anyone directly involved in the Syrian conflict. This allows us full autonomy to advocate for whatever is needed to save lives.

Our tiny distributed online team of Syrians and non-Syrians ensure that every drop of impact is squeezed from every penny invested in this work. Please consider donating to support us.

Seed funding for The Syria Campaign was provided by The Asfari Foundation with supporting funds from other Syrian donors across the world who are frustrated by global inaction on Syria. We have also accepted funds from the Rockerfeller Brothers Foundation and other anonymous donors. If you represent a philanthropic body interested to support campaigning to protect Syria's civilians, please get in touch.

Are you affiliated with any side in the Syrian conflict?We are not tied to any political group in Syria or anywhere else. We support universally-agreed human rights and freedoms. We support the aspirations of Syrians to live in a country that respects those rights and where people of different backgrounds, cultures and faiths live alongside each other in peace.

We criticise anyone violating human rights, no matter what side they're on.

Do you provide emergency relief?The Syria Campaign does not directly provide emergency relief to individuals.

As a campaigning organisation we have run campaigns to unlock more government aid, improve access to food and medicine and create momentum for an effective peace process.

There are many excellent organisations working on the ground in Syria who do provide emergency relief to people in need.

How can I get in contact with The Syria Campaign?For media enquiries please email [email protected] or call +1 646 309 6509 (New York) or +961 78844592 (Beirut).

For all other enquiries please email [email protected]. We read every email we receive. While we try to respond to every contact it is not always possible. Our tiny team is hard at work putting together campaigns.

You can also get in touch with us through social media '' on Facebook or Twitter.

Who is on the team?

The Syria Campaign back office is staffed by a 8-person team of Syrian and international campaigners and communication experts with backgrounds in organisations including Oxfam, Greenpeace, the UN and the BBC. To get in touch with the team send an email here.

If you are interested in working for us please keep an eye on our jobs page where we occasionally post new roles.

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Source: Russia Beyond The Headlines

Sun, 16 Oct 2016 01:51

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Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, Source: Flick.com / MFA Russia

No agreements have been reached or set out in a final document at the ministerial meeting on Syria held in the Swiss lakeside city of Lausanne, a source with a foreign delegation told TASS on Oct. 15.

"Agreements could not have been reached," the source said. "The composition of participants did not make for it," he added, explaining that he meant both a considerable number of participants and divisions among them.

The four-and-a-half hours' ministerial meeting in the Swiss lakeside city of Lausanne centered on restoring truce in Syria. Initially, five nations had been expected to attend the meeting - Russia, the United States, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Eventually, the foreign ministers from Russia, the U.S, Iraq, Iran, Turkey, Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Qatar alongside UN Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura participated in the talks.

In particular, Turkey and Iraq have serious disagreements over Ankara's plans to take part in liberation of Mosul. Earlier, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had said that the issue would be discussed at the meeting in Lausanne.

Source: Tass.com

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Fri, 14 Oct 2016 22:40

From:john.podesta@gmail.com To: hrod17@clintonemail.com Date: 2014-09-27 15:15 Subject: Congrats!Send our love to Chelsea, Marc and Grandpa. Can't wait to meet Charlotte. On Aug 19, 2014 9:22 AM, "H" wrote: Agree but there may be opportunities as the Iraqi piece improves. Also, any idea whose fighters attacked Islamist positions in Tripoli, Libya? Worth analyzing for future purposes. *From*: John Podesta [mailto:john.podesta@gmail.com] *Sent*: Tuesday, August 19, 2014 09:19 AM *To*: H *Subject*: Re: Here's what I mentioned Hit send too soon. Meant to say Syria elements are vexing. On Aug 19, 2014 9:17 AM, "John Podesta" wrote: > I think we are headed down this path in Iraq, but the Syria elements are > On Aug 17, 2014 3:50 PM, "H" wrote: > >> Note: Sources include Western intelligence, US intelligence and sources >> in the region. >> >> >> >> 1. With all of its tragic aspects, the advance of ISIL >> through Iraq gives the U.S. Government an opportunity to change the way it >> deals with the chaotic security situation in North Africa and the Middle >> East. The most important factor in this matter is to make use of >> intelligence resources and Special Operations troops in an aggressive >> manner, while avoiding the old school solution, which calls for more >> traditional military operations. In Iraq it is important that we engage >> ISIL using the resources of the Peshmerga fighters of the Kurdish Regional >> Government (KRG), and what, if any, reliable units exist in the Iraqi >> Army. The Peshmerga commanders are aggressive hard fighting troops, who >> have long standing relationships with CIA officers and Special Forces >> operators. However, they will need the continued commitment of U.S. >> personnel to work with them as advisors and strategic planners, the new >> generation of Peshmerga commanders being largely untested in traditional >> combat. That said, with this U.S. aid the Kurdish troops can inflict a >> real defeat on ISIL. >> >> >> >> 2. It is important that once we engage ISIL, as we have now >> done in a limited manner, we and our allies should carry on until they are >> driven back suffering a tangible defeat. Anything short of this will be >> seen by other fighters in the region, Libya, Lebanon, and even Jordan, as >> an American defeat. However, if we provide advisors and planners, as well >> as increased close air support for the Peshmerga, these soldiers can defeat >> ISIL. They will give the new Iraqi Government a chance to organize itself, >> and restructure the Sunni resistance in Syria, moving the center of power >> toward moderate forces like the Free Syrian Army (FSA). In addition to air >> support, the Peshmerga also need artillery and armored vehicles to deal >> with the tanks and other heavy equipment captured from the Iraqi army by >> ISIL. >> >> >> >> 3. In the past the USG, in an agreement with the Turkish General Staff, >> did not provide such heavy weapons to the Peshmerga, out of a concern that >> they would end up in the hands of Kurdish rebels inside of Turkey. The >> current situation in Iraq, not to mention the political environment in >> Turkey, makes this policy obsolete. Also this equipment can now be >> airlifted directly into the KRG zone. >> >> >> >> 4. Armed with proper equipment, and working with U.S. advisors, the >> Peshmerga can attack the ISIL with a coordinated assault supported from the >> air. This effort will come as a surprise to the ISIL, whose leaders >> believe we will always stop with targeted bombing, and weaken them both in >> Iraq and inside of Syria. At the same time we should return to plans to >> provide the FSA, or some group of moderate forces, with equipment that will >> allow them to deal with a weakened ISIL, and stepped up operations against >> the Syrian regime. This entire effort should be done with a low profile, >> avoiding the massive traditional military operations that are at best >> temporary solutions. While this military/para-military operation is moving >> forward, we need to use our diplomatic and more traditional intelligence >> assets to bring pressure on the governments of Qatar and Saudi Arabia, >> which are providing clandestine financial and logistic support to ISIL and >> other radical Sunni groups in the region. This effort will be enhanced by >> the stepped up commitment in the KRG. The Qataris and Saudis will be put >> in a position of balancing policy between their ongoing competition to >> dominate the Sunni world and the consequences of serious U.S. pressure. By >> the same token, the threat of similar, realistic U.S. operations will serve >> to assist moderate forces in Libya, Lebanon, and even Jordan, where >> insurgents are increasingly fascinated by the ISIL success in Iraq. >> >> >> >> 6. In the end the situation in Iraq is merely the latest and most >> dangerous example of the regional restructuring that is taking place across >> North Africa, all the way to the Turkish border. These developments are >> important to the U.S. for reasons that often differ from country to >> country: energy and moral commitment to Iraq, energy issues in Libya, and >> strategic commitments in Jordan. At the same time, as Turkey moves toward >> a new, more serious Islamic reality, it will be important for them to >> realize that we are willing to take serious actions, which can be sustained >> to protect our national interests. This course of action offers the >> potential for success, as opposed to large scale, traditional military >> campaigns, that are too expensive and awkward to maintain over time. >> >> >> >> 7. (Note: A source in Tripoli stated in confidence that when the U.S. >> Embassy was evacuated, the presence of two U.S. Navy jet fighters over the >> city brought all fighting to a halt for several hours, as Islamist forces >> were not certain that these aircraft would not also provide close ground >> support for moderate government forces.) >> >> >> >> 8. If we do not take the changes needed to make our security >> policy in the region more realistic, there is a real danger of ISIL >> veterans moving on to other countries to facilitate operations by Islamist >> forces. This is already happening in Libya and Egypt, where fighters are >> returning from Syria to work with local forces. ISIL is only the latest and >> most violent example of this process. If we don't act to defeat them in >> Iraq something even more violent and dangerous will develop. Successful >> military operations against these very irregular but determined forces can >> only be accomplished by making proper use of clandestine/special operations >> resources, in coordination with airpower, and established local allies. >> There is, unfortunately, a narrow window of opportunity on this issue, as >> we need to act before an ISIL state becomes better organized and reaches >> into Lebanon and Jordan. >> >> >> >> 9. (Note: It is important to keep in mind that as a result of >> this policy there probably will be concern in the Sunni regions of Iraq and >> the Central Government regarding the possible expansion of KRG controlled >> territory. With advisors in the Peshmerga command we can reassure the >> concerned parties that, in return for increase autonomy, the KRG will not >> exclude the Iraqi Government from participation in the management of the >> oil fields around Kirkuk, and the Mosel Dam hydroelectric facility. At the >> same time we will be able to work with the Peshmerga as they pursue ISIL >> into disputed areas of Eastern Syria, coordinating with FSA troops who can >> move against ISIL from the North. This will make certain Basher al Assad >> does not gain an advantage from these operations. Finally, as it now >> appears the U.S. is considering a plan to offer contractors as advisors to >> the Iraqi Ministry of Defense, we will be in a position to coordinate more >> effectively between the Peshmerga and the Iraqi Army.) >> >>

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Sat, 15 Oct 2016 00:36

'If we open it up to anybody and everybody, all sorts of people will come out of the woodwork''--Amila Merdzanovic, executive director, Vermont Refugee Resettlement Program

Second Group Helping to Resettle Syrian Refugees in Rutland, Vermont Received 91% of its Funding from Government Grants

(Washington, DC) '' Judicial Watch today released 128 pages of documents it obtained from the mayor of Rutland, Vermont, showing a concerted effort by the mayor and a number of private organizations to conceal from the public their plans to resettle 100 Syrian refugees into the small southern Vermont town.

The documents include an April 14, 2016, email from Amila Merdzanovic, executive director of the Vermont Refugee Resettlement Program, to Mayor Christopher Louras, in which she wrote:

I want to share with you the concern my HQ has about holding a public forum. If we open it up to anybody and everybody, all sorts of people will come out of woodwork. Anti-immigrant, anti-anything. They suggest that the forum be invite only but make it as wide as possible. Work with faith leaders, United Way, etc'... Perhaps, we could go back to the Congregational Church and continue the conversation there.

The mayor and resettlement organizations shrouded the plan in such secrecy that not even the town's aldermen were informed of what was taking place behind closed doors. The aldermen eventually wrote to the U.S. Department of State protesting the plan and opened an investigation into the mayor's actions. The State Department has not yet ruled on whether it will resettle refugees in Rutland despite the aldermen's protest.

Handwritten notes state that the issue was, ''Not what can 'we' do for 'them,' but what the diversity, cultural richness do for the community.'' The documents contain detailed discussions of what Rutland will need to provide for the refugees '' including housing, jobs, medical care, and places for worship.

Judicial Watch received the documents in response to a Vermont Public Records Law request to the office of Mayor Christopher Louras.

Merdzanovic later told the Boston Globe that the hidden talks were ''the right thing to do '-- to move slowly, keep it to a small circle of people, and then expand.''

On April 10, 2016, she wrote to the director of the State Refugee Office about her coordination with the mayor to keep the resettlement program secret:

He did share with me that the Governor's office called him after getting a frantic call from DOL [Vermont Department of Labor] inquiring about the plan to resettle '100 Syrians in the next month' in Rutland. Again, I cannot emphasize enough the importance of not sharing the information even if it is confidentially. Please respect our process, you will have plenty of opportunity to share and take action once we have met with the stakeholders. At that point we can and will share it widely. It will not serve any one of us well if the community in Rutland learned about it through the grapevine and not directly from us. The above example shows that what people hear and how they interpret it is two different things.

A May 3 document shows Hal Cohen, secretary of the agency for human services, introducing a meeting: ''Vermont gains from diversity '' new ideas, delicious food (laughs) '...'' A set of April meeting notes by the Vermont Refugee Resettlement Program and the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants stated: ''Refugees can bring global perspectives and expertise '... direct knowledge about history and world events (unfiltered by media) '... synergize energy & momentum with youth.''

The U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, a nonprofit based in Virginia, is the parent organization of the Vermont Refugee Resettlement Program working with the mayor's office. According to its financial statements the Committee received $46,560,462 of its $50,858,706 (or 91.45%) for fiscal year 2015 from ''government grants.''

Local opponents of the refugee plans wanted a public vote on the proposal and transparency on the refugee settlement plan.

In December 2015, Judicial Watch sued the U.S. State Department to obtain documents about the Obama administration's plan to resettle Syrian refugees across the country. Judicial Watch is investigating the Obama administration's Refugee and Resettlement program, which plans to bring an additional 10,000 Syrian refugees to the United States in 2016, and even more in 2017. Obama is pressing ahead with his plan even though 129 people were killed and 350 were wounded by Syrian-trained terrorists recently in Paris. The Obama administration is working in conjunction with The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to settle these individuals all across the U.S. The federal government contracts with non-profits and other entities to settle and provide financial payments to refugees.

''Americans should be concerned that the Obama administration is funneling at least $46 million in tax dollars to a shady operation that encourages elected officials to cover up Obama's Syrian refugee scheme,'' stated Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.

###

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Archived Version

Fri, 14 Oct 2016 20:51

From:adesai@clintonfoundation.org To: blindsey@clintonfoundation.org, lgraham@clintonfoundation.org, doug@presidentclinton.com, justin@presidentclinton.com, john.podesta@gmail.com Date: 2012-03-16 14:25 Subject: RE: WJC call about cci/climate issuesYesterday he said he didn't have a strong view on the details of the existing islands proposal, just that he wanted to be sure that we do something on islands and that he doesn't want us to kill it. I didn't have a chance to ask him to clarify about splitting the Swedish postcode money (and therefore having to pay for the pension/retrofit work). -----Original Message-----From: Bruce Lindsey Sent: Thursday, March 15, 2012 12:56 PM To: Amitabh Desai; Laura Graham; Doug Band - PC; Justin Cooper - PC; john.podesta@gmail.com Cc: Hannah Richert - PC Subject: Re: WJC call about cci/climate issues Someone should go back to WJC and confirm that he approved the Island initiative "as is" including the $1 million Clinton Foundation budget (over and above any funding from UNDP), which budget includes a $100,000 salary for Ira (on top of his CHAI salary) and a staff of nine (despite the fact that one of the people who works for Ira says that most of this staff is unnecessary) and that he agreed to split the Swedish post code lottery funds which means that we will have to use Clinton Foundation funds to fund our AFL-CIO/pension fund retrofit work. Bruce On 3/15/12 11:00 AM, "Amitabh Desai" wrote: >Following-up on WJC's call yesterday, I spoke this morning with Ira. >Ira >said: > >- ISLANDS. Ira said WJC approved the islands project as-is and also >approved splitting the Swedish postcode money between cities and >islands work. Ira asked that we coordinate a proposal to niclas. > >- Ira said Diana noble now runs the "commonwealth development fund" and >is willing to fund cci work in islands. > >- SOLAR. Ira said South Africa is moving forward on a solar park and in >light of that forward movement, WJC agreed with Ira to continue doing >that work. Ira said the solar and CCS work could be grouped together >for budget purposes. > >- ADVISORY BOARD. Ira said WJC agreed to establish / re-establish a >board for CCI. Ira said the CHAI board is working well and CCI would >benefit from having outside advisors. I didn't say so on the call but I >actually think some group of advisors, however loosely or formally >convened, may be useful - we could stack it with smart climate folks >who are friendly with wjc/us and thereby try to mitigate any wacky cci >ideas (e.g. carbon capture in Malaysia). Or maybe I am just being overly optimistic. > >- PENSIONS. Ira said WJC asked Ira to help and get more involved with >the pensions work in order to ensure tangible deliverables by CGI America. >Ira said Scott Henderson could help. I said Scott H already has been >involved since Day One. Ira said he personally will get more involved >and he had some ideas for hiring a finance person (which I said we >thought of long ago and agree on doing but we were thinking pro-bono) >and also approaching large building owners like GE Real Estate. I said >we'd welcome Ira's suggestions on finance experts and building owners >and want to ensure outreach is coordinated. Ira is going to call Katie >McClain to start coordinating. > >- MEETING. Ira said he'll be in NYC next week on Monday/Tuesday and >would like to meet. We discussed meeting on Monday late afternoon or >Tuesday early afternoon. Then we'll do a group call with Ira and our >pensions team (Katie, Bracken, Scott H, Jamie at CGI). It would be >great if you are able to join by phone or in person for both or at >least for the Ira meeting. > >I told Ira I'd download all of this with you. I got the impression that >unless we go back and say "no" on any of this, Ira feels he has WJC's >blessing to move ahead. I'd welcome your feedback. Thanks, Ami > > >----- Original Message ----- >From: Amitabh Desai >To: Bruce Lindsey; Laura Graham; Doug Band - PC; Justin Cooper - PC; >john.podesta@gmail.com >Cc: Hannah Richert - PC >Sent: Wed Mar 14 22:05:04 2012 >Subject: WJC call about cci/climate issues > >WJC called today around 5:30pm and said Ira called him to say bloomberg >is messing up the c40 and a lot of the staff are leaving and did we >know that. I said yes a lot of the CCI staff have expressed unhappiness >and some have been or are being hired back partially or fully to CF. > >He asked me to call and speak with ira. > >He also asked us to send a utilities report to Ira and Scott Henderson >at CCI. > >He also said he's worried about the pensions commitment and not having >real projects to announce at CGI america. I said we are concerned too >and explained cf/cci/cgi discussions with deutsche bank, tom steyer, >kkr, etc. He said ira suggested we at CF or CCI just create a fund and >do the investing for the aflcio. I explained aflcio doesn't have the >money, the States do, and that if we tried to do it in-house there >might be some complexity around us running a fund. And that also would >entail hiring a bunch of finance folks. He said ira told him the CCI >finance guy had resigned. I said he is still working and actually was a >part of our kkr call today and always has been a part of our pensions >discussions. He said to call him in addition to ira to get more >movement on the pension stuff. > >He also was concerned about the solar panels in little rock and said >they should be responsible for more of the energy for the center. > >He also asked about the islands work and said ira said he could get >mala and swedish postcode to fund it and why are we trying to push >swedish money into US Cities. I said ira's guy says undp could fund >islands work so we don't need swedish money for it and swedish money >could continue to be applied to Cities, not just in US but also >international. I got the sense that WJC thinks we are opposed to the >islands work - I told him that what we have heard so far seems >interesting but clearly something is going on between ira and his islands staffer. > >Overall he said to speak with ira and involve him more in the pensions >work > >He also mentioned speaking with governors to get projects that need >money (from pensions) - I said we'd reach out to the dga folks > >Hope this helps and I'm happy to take any steps as needed. I sent the >report to ira/scott and am speaking with Ira tomorrow morning at 9:30am >ET if anyone is able to join. I'll also speak with folks working on >pensions and push more for something tangible for WJC to say about it >at CGI america.

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Delivered-To: john.podesta@gmail.comReceived: by 10.52.165.102 with SMTP id yx6csp6009vdb; Fri, 16 Mar 2012 09:26:23 -0700 (PDT)Received: by 10.229.135.208 with SMTP id o16mr1175140qct.120.1331915183207; Fri, 16 Mar 2012 09:26:23 -0700 (PDT)Return-Path: Received: from ex07edge1.utopiasystems.net (ex07edge1.utopiasystems.net. [64.74.151.41]) by mx.google.com with ESMTPS id b9si5743867qao.119.2012.03.16.09.26.23 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=OTHER); Fri, 16 Mar 2012 09:26:23 -0700 (PDT)Received-SPF: pass (google.com: domain of adesai@clintonfoundation.org designates 64.74.151.41 as permitted sender) client-ip=64.74.151.41;Authentication-Results: mx.google.com; spf=pass (google.com: domain of adesai@clintonfoundation.org designates 64.74.151.41 as permitted sender) smtp.mail=adesai@clintonfoundation.orgReceived: from ex07cas13.utopiasystems.net (172.16.1.65) by ex07edge1.utopiasystems.net (172.16.1.73) with Microsoft SMTP Server (TLS) id 8.3.213.0; Fri, 16 Mar 2012 12:26:23 -0400Received: from CLINTON07.utopiasystems.net ([172.16.1.88]) by ex07cas13.utopiasystems.net ([172.16.1.65]) with mapi; Fri, 16 Mar 2012 12:26:21 -0400From: Amitabh Desai To: Bruce Lindsey , Laura Graham , Doug Band - PC , Justin Cooper - PC , "john.podesta@gmail.com" CC: Hannah Richert - PC Date: Fri, 16 Mar 2012 12:25:25 -0400Subject: RE: WJC call about cci/climate issuesThread-Topic: WJC call about cci/climate issuesThread-Index: Ac0CzIuHz3q2AGdOQASSiCfTSKm4ywAxIW2wMessage-ID: References: In-Reply-To: Accept-Language: en-USContent-Language: en-USX-MS-Has-Attach:X-MS-TNEF-Correlator:acceptlanguage: en-USContent-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"MIME-Version: 1.0Return-Path: adesai@clintonfoundation.orgYesterday he said he didn't have a strong view on the details of the existing islands proposal, just that he wanted to be sure that we do something on islands and that he doesn't want us to kill it. I didn't have a chance to ask him to clarify about splitting the Swedish postcode money (and therefore having to pay for the pension/retrofit work). -----Original Message-----From: Bruce Lindsey Sent: Thursday, March 15, 2012 12:56 PMTo: Amitabh Desai; Laura Graham; Doug Band - PC; Justin Cooper - PC; john.podesta@gmail.comCc: Hannah Richert - PCSubject: Re: WJC call about cci/climate issuesSomeone should go back to WJC and confirm that he approved the Island initiative "as is" including the $1 million Clinton Foundation budget (over and above any funding from UNDP), which budget includes a $100,000 salary for Ira (on top of his CHAI salary) and a staff of nine (despite the fact that one of the people who works for Ira says that most of this staff is unnecessary) and that he agreed to split the Swedish post code lottery funds which means that we will have to use Clinton Foundation funds to fund our AFL-CIO/pension fund retrofit work.BruceOn 3/15/12 11:00 AM, "Amitabh Desai" wrote:>Following-up on WJC's call yesterday, I spoke this morning with Ira. >Ira>said:>>- ISLANDS. Ira said WJC approved the islands project as-is and also >approved splitting the Swedish postcode money between cities and >islands work. Ira asked that we coordinate a proposal to niclas.>>- Ira said Diana noble now runs the "commonwealth development fund" and >is willing to fund cci work in islands.>>- SOLAR. Ira said South Africa is moving forward on a solar park and in >light of that forward movement, WJC agreed with Ira to continue doing >that work. Ira said the solar and CCS work could be grouped together >for budget purposes.>>- ADVISORY BOARD. Ira said WJC agreed to establish / re-establish a >board for CCI. Ira said the CHAI board is working well and CCI would >benefit from having outside advisors. I didn't say so on the call but I >actually think some group of advisors, however loosely or formally >convened, may be useful - we could stack it with smart climate folks >who are friendly with wjc/us and thereby try to mitigate any wacky cci >ideas (e.g. carbon capture in Malaysia). Or maybe I am just being overly optimistic.>>- PENSIONS. Ira said WJC asked Ira to help and get more involved with >the pensions work in order to ensure tangible deliverables by CGI America.>Ira said Scott Henderson could help. I said Scott H already has been >involved since Day One. Ira said he personally will get more involved >and he had some ideas for hiring a finance person (which I said we >thought of long ago and agree on doing but we were thinking pro-bono) >and also approaching large building owners like GE Real Estate. I said >we'd welcome Ira's suggestions on finance experts and building owners >and want to ensure outreach is coordinated. Ira is going to call Katie >McClain to start coordinating.>>- MEETING. Ira said he'll be in NYC next week on Monday/Tuesday and >would like to meet. We discussed meeting on Monday late afternoon or >Tuesday early afternoon. Then we'll do a group call with Ira and our >pensions team (Katie, Bracken, Scott H, Jamie at CGI). It would be >great if you are able to join by phone or in person for both or at >least for the Ira meeting.>>I told Ira I'd download all of this with you. I got the impression that >unless we go back and say "no" on any of this, Ira feels he has WJC's >blessing to move ahead. I'd welcome your feedback. Thanks, Ami>>>----- Original Message ----->From: Amitabh Desai>To: Bruce Lindsey; Laura Graham; Doug Band - PC; Justin Cooper - PC; >john.podesta@gmail.com >Cc: Hannah Richert - PC>Sent: Wed Mar 14 22:05:04 2012>Subject: WJC call about cci/climate issues>>WJC called today around 5:30pm and said Ira called him to say bloomberg >is messing up the c40 and a lot of the staff are leaving and did we >know that. I said yes a lot of the CCI staff have expressed unhappiness >and some have been or are being hired back partially or fully to CF.>>He asked me to call and speak with ira.>>He also asked us to send a utilities report to Ira and Scott Henderson >at CCI.>>He also said he's worried about the pensions commitment and not having >real projects to announce at CGI america. I said we are concerned too >and explained cf/cci/cgi discussions with deutsche bank, tom steyer, >kkr, etc. He said ira suggested we at CF or CCI just create a fund and >do the investing for the aflcio. I explained aflcio doesn't have the >money, the States do, and that if we tried to do it in-house there >might be some complexity around us running a fund. And that also would >entail hiring a bunch of finance folks. He said ira told him the CCI >finance guy had resigned. I said he is still working and actually was a >part of our kkr call today and always has been a part of our pensions >discussions. He said to call him in addition to ira to get more >movement on the pension stuff.>>He also was concerned about the solar panels in little rock and said >they should be responsible for more of the energy for the center.>>He also asked about the islands work and said ira said he could get >mala and swedish postcode to fund it and why are we trying to push >swedish money into US Cities. I said ira's guy says undp could fund >islands work so we don't need swedish money for it and swedish money >could continue to be applied to Cities, not just in US but also >international. I got the sense that WJC thinks we are opposed to the >islands work - I told him that what we have heard so far seems >interesting but clearly something is going on between ira and his islands staffer.>>Overall he said to speak with ira and involve him more in the pensions >work>>He also mentioned speaking with governors to get projects that need >money (from pensions) - I said we'd reach out to the dga folks>>Hope this helps and I'm happy to take any steps as needed. I sent the >report to ira/scott and am speaking with Ira tomorrow morning at 9:30am >ET if anyone is able to join. I'll also speak with folks working on >pensions and push more for something tangible for WJC to say about it >at CGI america.

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Source: American Renaissance

Sun, 16 Oct 2016 02:03

Visitors expecting to hear the Queen's English spoken on the streets of London in 50 years may need to ''fink'' again.

By 2066, linguists are predicting that the ''th'' sound will vanish completely in the capital because there are so many foreigners who struggle to pronounce interdental consonants''the term for a sound created by pushing the tongue against the upper teeth.

Already Estuary English''a hybrid of Cockney and received pronunciation (RP) which is prevalent in the South East''is being replaced by Multicultural London English (MLE) which is heavily influenced by Caribbean, West African and Asian Communities.

But within the next few decades immigration will have fundamentally altered the language, according to experts at the University of York.

The ''th'' sound''also called the voiced dental nonsibliant fricative''is likely to change to be replaced an ''f'', ''d'', or ''v'' meaning ''mother'' will be pronounced ''muvver'' and ''thick'' will be voiced as ''fick''.

However the 'h' that fell silent in Cockney dialect is set to return allowing 'ere' to become 'here' once more.

Dr Dominic Watt, a sociolinguistics expert from the University of York, said: ''Given the status of London as the linguistically most influential city in the English-speaking world, we can expect to see significant changes between now and the middle of the century.

''The major changes in the way we speak over the next 50 years will involve a simplification of the sound structure of words, they'll become shorter probably

''By looking at how English has changed over the last 50 years we can identify patterns that seem to repeat. British accents seem to be less based on class these days.

''Languages also change when they come into contact with one another. English has borrowed thousands of words from other languages: mainly French, Latin and Greek, but there are 'loan words' from dozens of other languages in the mix.''

The Sounds of The Future report was produced from a study involving analysis of recordings from the last 50 years as well as social media language use.

Other changes likely to become widespread by 2066 include a habit known as ''yod dropping'' in which the ''u'' sound is replaced with an ''oo''. It means that ''duke'' becomes ''dook'', ''news'' is pronounced ''nooze'' and ''beauty'' changes to ''booty''.

Consonant ''smushing'' is also predicted where two sounds collapse together completely so that ''wed'' and ''red'' will soon be indistinguishable.

Likewise the ''l'' at the end of words will be dropped so that the words ''Paul'', ''paw'' and ''pool'' all sound the same. Similiarly, ''text'' will lose the final ''t'' to become ''tex''.

And, the glottal stop pronunciation of ''t''''a brief catch in the throat when the tongue tip closed against the roof of the mouth''will be the default pronunciation.

Brendan Gunn, a voice coach who is currently working with Pierce Brosnan on his new US series said: ''The younger generation always wants to be different from the older generation and that process will continue throughout history.

''Text speak which is a form of shortening will become ordinary speak, so you may end up saying 'tagLOL' or 'toteschill' which means hashtag laugh out loud or totally chilled.

''Even in the Royal family it is probable that Prince George will speak much differently to the Queen. In London I think we will see the 'th' becoming an 'f' all the time.''

Technology will also change the way people speak, and the experts predict that as artificial intelligence emerges the, computers could begin to invent new words.

Dr Watt added: ''It is conceivable that some of the words that will come into English in the next 50 years will have been invented by computers because as computers become more intelligent it may be they start creating words of their own and feeding the, back to us.

''Already we're seeing text words phrases coming into respected dictionaries. As time goes on we're going to see more and more of that kind of thing.

''The traditional dialects will die out and others will morph into the speech of large urban centres.''

The Sounds of the Future report was commissioned by HSBC to coincide with the launch of its new voice ID, which is currently being rolled out to 15 million users.

Original Article

Topics: Britain, Europe, Immigration, Multiculturalism and Diversity, the Demographic Transformation

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Archived Version

Sat, 15 Oct 2016 17:46

Fri Feb 12, 2016 | 7:19 PM GMT

ByMark Hosenball|WASHINGTON

WASHINGTON A 16-year-old boy in Britain has been arrested on criminal charges related to the alleged hacking of email accounts used by CIA director John Brennan and other U.S. officials, according to U.S. and British sources familiar with the investigation.

A spokesman for Britain's Thames Valley Police said that on Tuesday, a regional organised crime squad had arrested the unnamed youth in England's East Midlands on "suspicion of conspiracy to commit unauthorised access to computer material" and related offences.

The police statement did not identify the youth but said that he had been released on bail until June 6. The police statement also did not identify the targets of any of the arrested youth's alleged hack attacks.

However sources on both sides of the Atlantic familiar with the case said that the arrested hacker was believed to have been involved in the hacking of Brennan's private email account. He also reportedly may have been involved in the hacking of other U.S. officials and posting of names and contact information for thousands of FBI and U.S. Homeland Security Department (DHS) employees.

The website Motherboard reported on Friday that investigators suspected the arrested youth posed online as a hacker known as "Cracka" who led a group called "Crackas With Attitude."

Motherboard reported that it had spoken to the teenager on Wednesday, who denied being "Cracka" but acknowledged that he had been accused by U.K. authorities of hacking Brennan, White House officials, and a purported hack on the Department of Justice which resulted in the publication of basic contact information on an estimated 30,000 FBI and DHS workers.

The CIA and Justice Department declined to comment. The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Following the disclosure last October that Brennan's AOL email account had been attacked, the FBI confirmed that it was investigating the hack attack jointly with the U.S. Secret Service.

At the time, "Cracka" claimed credit for publishing material from Brennan's email account, which included email contact addresses, some of which were out of date, and the Social Security numbers and personal information of U.S. intelligence officials. The WikiLeaks website later republished some of the material.

(Reporting by Mark Hosenball; Editing by Andrew Hay)

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Archived Version

Source: The Intercept

Sun, 16 Oct 2016 02:22

Hillary Clinton's advisers recognized that her policy position on encryption was problematic, with one writing that it was tantamount to insisting that there was '''some way' to do the impossible.''

Instead, according to campaign emails released by Wikileaks, they suggested that the campaign signal its willingness to use ''malware'' or ''super code breaking by the NSA'' to get around encryption.

In the wake of the Paris attacks in November, Clinton called for ''Silicon Valley not to view government as its adversary,'' and called for ''our best minds in the private sector to work with our best minds in the public sector to develop solutions that will both keep us safe and protect our privacy.''

When asked during a debate in December whether she would legally compel companies to build a backdoor into their products to give law enforcement access to unencrypted communications, Clinton responded ''I would not want to go to that point.''

But she then called for a ''Manhattan-like project'' to develop secure communication while allowing the government to read messages.

Cryptography experts overwhelmingly agree that backdoors inevitably undermine the security of strong encryption, making the two essentially incompatible.

The day after the debate, Sara Solow, domestic policy adviser for the Clinton campaign, called Clinton's position ''impossible'' in an email with Teddy Goff, the campaign's chief digital strategist. ''[S]he's certainly NOT calling for the backdoor now,'' Solow said, ''although she does then appear to believe there is 'some way' to do the impossible.''

Goff had written that he thought Clinton's reply was a ''solid B/B+,'' and suggested that she ''thread the needle'' and ''quickly pivot from encryption to the broader issue of working with tech companies to detect and stop these people.'' Goff also said that the Manhattan project analogy was something which Clinton should ''truly, truly should not make ever again '-- can we work on pressing that point somehow?''

Solow's suggestion was that the campaign quietly signal to Silicon Valley '-- a major source of donations for the campaign '-- that Clinton would support government hacking to circumvent encryption.

''Couldn't we tell tech [companies] off the record that she had in mind the malware/key strokes idea (insert malware into a device that you know is a target, to capture keystrokes before they are encrypted). Or that she had in mind really super code breaking by the NSA. But not the backdoor per se?''

The FBI has in fact used targeted hacking to get around encryption tools, quietly and effectively. In 2007, for example, FBI agents caught a teenager who was sending online bomb threats to a high school in Lacey, Washington, by sending him a link that installed malware on his computer.

The Clinton campaign had previously struggled to answer inquiries about the candidate's position on encryption. ''This is going to be a challenge,'' Clinton foreign policy adviser Jake Sullivan said in a November exchange about how to respond to a press inquiry. ''I think we should give a comment on the anonymizing tools and punt on backdoors.''

During Clinton's tenure as secretary of state, the State Department aggressively funded the development of encryption and anonymous web browsing tools.

In Solow's email, she asked whether there was any actual evidence of terrorists using the technologies the State Department funded. ''Is there evidence,'' asked Solow, ''that bad guys '-- not just dissidents but terrorists or whatever '-- have also benefitted from the technologies supported by the [State Department's] Internet freedom agenda?''

In response to terror attacks, Clinton has repeatedly called for an ''intelligence surge,'' but has provided little clarification about what she means.

Top Photo: An Azerty keyboard of a laptop computer.

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Archived Version

Source: Russia Beyond The Headlines

Sun, 16 Oct 2016 02:45

Russian experts consider the deployment of Iskander missile systems in its Baltic exclave a logical response to the deployment of air and missile defense systems in Poland.

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An Iskander-M missile system (R) during the military machinery show at the Alabino training ground held as part of the international military-technical forum ARMY-2016. Source: Evgeny Biyatov/RIA Novosti

NATO defense ministers are to discuss the situation following reports that Russia has deployed Iskander-M missile systems in its westernmost Kaliningrad Region, RIA Novosti news agency has reported (in Russian), citing a diplomatic source in Brussels. According to the source, at their meeting in Brussels on Oct. 26-27, the ministers will also discuss Russia's actions in Syria.

On Oct. 7, The Guardian newspaper, citing Estonian officials, reported that Russia was shipping short-range ballistic missile systems to the border with Poland and Lithuania.

The Russian Defense Ministry replied that Russia had never sought to conceal the transportation of the missile systems aboard the Ambal dry cargo vessel.

''Before being loaded onboard the Ambal, one Iskander was deliberately placed under a passing U.S. reconnaissance satellite,'' said the ministry's official spokesman, Maj-Gen. Igor Konashenkov.

According to him, this was done to ''clarify the operational parameters of the American satellite.'' He continued: ''We did not have to wait long '' in 'their fervor to expose,' our American partners themselves confirmed everything to us.''

Konashenkov went on to stress that the Iskander is a mobile missile system. All year round, Russian Missile Troops units work on improving their march training, covering considerable distances across the territory of the Russian Federation '' by air, by sea and under their own power '' as part of the combat training plan.

Iskanders as a response to ABM in Eastern EuropeThe Missile Troops and Artillery Staff began considering the possibility of deploying Iskander systems to Kaliningrad Region for the first time back in 2008, after the West decided to deploy missile defense systems in Poland and the Czech Republic, said a senior source from the staff.

According to him, already then Russia was considering the option of deploying an Islander missile brigade to the Kaliningrad Region either by sea or by land.

''In the course of the recent redeployment, attention was paid to the tactical component as well as to all the issues of rear services support.

''It is important for us to get answers to the following questions: How, within what timeframe and how well are the missile troops capable of performing set combat tasks? In this case, the deployment of a missile brigade is envisaged at what is practically Russia's westernmost border to make maximum use of the effective range of the Iskander tactical ballistic missile system,'' the source said.

He went on to add that at present only two missile brigades remain not yet provided with Iskander systems.

The move is an absolutely adequate step in response to the deployment of air and missile systems in Poland, said former chief of staff of the Leningrad Military District Col-Gen Sergei Kizyun.

''As regards the characteristics of the Kaliningrad Region, there is enough space for a missile brigade to deploy there and to maneuver, if necessary. In addition, the region has quite a lot of forests where one can easily hide from the reconnaissance equipment of a potential enemy,'' said Kizyun.

''Also, this Russian exclave bulges out into the relatively small Baltic Sea and many firing tasks in the region can be performed without even involving the fleet, i.e. with weapons on the shore,'' he said.

Unpredictable missile trajectoryThe Iskander-M short-range ballistic missile system, designed by the research and industrial corporation Machine-Building Design Bureau, came into service in 2006.

According to its manufacturer, the system has a range of 500 km (310 miles), or in the exported version, 280 km (175 miles). Iskander-M aeroballistic missiles are guided throughout their flight, which makes their trajectory unpredictable and makes it more difficult to intercept them.

In addition, the Iskander can employ high-precision R-500 cruise missiles.

First published in Russian by Gazeta.ru

Read more: Russia: We will shoot down U.S. jets in Syria that threaten our servicemen>>>

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Sun, 16 Oct 2016 02:54

Michael Isikoff (pronounced Issickoff, born 1952) is an American investigative journalist, formerly with the United States magazine Newsweek. He joined Newsweek as an investigative correspondent in June 1994, and has written extensively on the U.S. government's War on Terrorism, the Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse, campaign finance and congressional ethics abuses, presidential politics and other national issues.

On July 1, 2010, Isikoff became the national investigative correspondent for NBC News,[3] a position which he resigned in April, 2014, citing the network's move in a direction that left him with "fewer opportunities" for his work.[4]

Isikoff had been prepared to break the Monica Lewinsky scandal, but several hours before going to print, the article was killed by top Newsweek executives. As a result, the story broke first on Matt Drudge's Drudge Report the following morning. His book on the subject, Uncovering Clinton: A Reporter's Story, was named Best Non-Fiction Book of 1999 by the Book of the Month Club.

In January 2007, Isikoff married former Washington, DC political gossip columnist Mary Ann Akers, who wrote "The Sleuth" for washingtonpost.com.

Isikoff received his A.B. from Washington University in 1974, with a junior-year-abroad at the University of Durham, England, and obtained a masters from the Medill School of Journalism from Northwestern University in 1976. He graduated from Syosset High School on Long Island in 1970. Isikoff is the co-author, with The Nation reporter David Corn, of Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal and the Selling of the Iraq War, a 2006 book about the selling of the 2003 Invasion of Iraq to the US public and the ensuing Plame scandal. The book was a New York Times best-seller.

His online column with fellow journalist Mark Hosenball, "Terror Watch," won the 2005 award from the Society of Professional Journalists for best investigative reporting online. Isikoff was a part of the Newsweek team that won the Overseas Press Club's most prestigious award, the 2001 Ed Cunningham Memorial Award for best magazine reporting from abroad for Newsweek's coverage of the war on terror.

In the May 9, 2005 issue of Newsweek, Isikoff co-wrote an article that stated that interrogators at Guantanamo Bay "in an attempt to rattle suspects, flushed a Qur'an down a toilet." Detainees had earlier made similar complaints but this was the first time a government source had appeared to confirm the story. The article caused widespread rioting and massive anti-American protests throughout some parts of the Islamic world (causing at least 17 deaths in Afghanistan). The magazine later retracted the story after noting that the anonymous official who was their source subsequently could not remember important details.[5] A subsequent June 4, 2005 report by the Pentagon, however, confirmed multiple instances of desecration of the Koran at Guantanamo, including one incident in which urine was splashed on a Koran.[6] Isikoff has been a contributing blogger at The Huffington Post.

He has appeared on the Democracy Now! show.[7]

See also[edit]References[edit]External links[edit]

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Archived Version

Source: Russia Beyond The Headlines

Sun, 16 Oct 2016 02:46

A U.S. heavy armored brigade will be dispatched to Europe as early as in January, after which American military units on the European continent will rotate. The new battalions and brigades are intended to put the minds of the United States' East European allies at rest, suggest Russian experts.

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U.S. M1 Abrams tanks take part in the "Saber Strike" NATO military exercise in Adazi, Latvia. Source: Reuters

The first U.S. heavy armored brigade combat team will be dispatched to Europe in January 2017, Lt-Gen Ben Hodges, the U.S. Army Europe commander, has said in an interview with Defense News at the annual Association of the United States Army conference. The redeployment is part of a U.S. military build-up in the region to reassure allies and deter against an aggressive Russia, Hodges explained.

The 3rd Brigade of the 4th Division out of Fort Carson, Colorado, will start loading ships in the coming weeks.

It is expected to arrive in the port of Bremerhaven, Germany, in the middle of January, the general said. Before the journey across the ocean, the brigade will undergo a readiness test as to how fast it can unload the ships in the German port and get to western Poland.

The next heavy armored brigade combat team, due to be dispatched in September 2017, will likely sail into several European ports to test its ability to unload and assemble at another designated point, said Hodges. The general predicted that, given the winter weather, the 3rd Brigade will arrive at the training range near the Polish town of Drawsko Pomorskie in approximately three weeks' time.

A drill aimed to deter RussiaUpon arrival, the armored brigade will check its weapons and hardware, test communications and camouflaging, load ammunition and deploy to its areas of responsibility to prepare for combat action.

All the above will become part of the Atlantic Resolve exercise, the general explained. The drill is aimed to support U.S. allies in Europe and to deter Russia through a show of military might.

One battalion will head to the Baltic region, to show ''resolve'' in the north of the continent, said Hodges, while another battalion will deploy to Romania and Bulgaria, to demonstrate capability in the south.

The bulk of the combat team will remain in Poland, where there are acceptable conditions in place for accommodating the troops, he said.

Viktor Murakhovsky, editor-in-chief of the Arsenal Otechestva (Arsenal of the Fatherland) magazine, told Gazeta.ru that since the U.S. Armed Forces do not have permanent divisions, ''it is hard to say exactly what these brigades will look like in terms of their numbers and combat capability.''

In his opinion, without the relevant reinforcements, U.S. Army battalions in Eastern Europe are unlikely to present a threatening force and are more of a political step than an operational-strategic one.

''Without a doubt, this is being done to boost the morale of the United States' East European allies,'' said Murakhovsky.

American troops to calm Eastern EuropeIt is expected that U.S. units and formations will take part in NATO's annual maneuvers on the European continent. However, the alliance's next drill in Poland (''Anakonda'') will be held only in 2018. U.S. armored brigade units will take part in the Saber Guardian exercise in Bulgaria and Romania in July 2017. The maneuvers will involve some 30,000 personnel from more than 20 NATO member states.

''It is absolutely clear that the deployment of U.S. military units to Europe is a tranquilizer of sorts for the East Europeans, who have recently been extremely agitated by a hypothetical military threat from Russia,'' said Viktor Khramchikhin, deputy head of the Moscow-based Institute of Political and Military Analysis.

There is no way that several battalions could guarantee reliable defense of NATO's eastern flank but ''it is soothing psychologically,'' he said.

''New NATO member states are particularly heartened by the fact that in the event of a war, U.S. soldiers may find themselves on the line and will thus be inevitably drawn into military action,'' said Khramchikhin.

First published in Russian by Gazeta.ru

Opinion: Why does the EU need an army separate from NATO?

As for Ebola, my view is that we deployed thousands of US troops to help stop the outbreak, which puts it in a different category from the flu. But I don't mind just saying pandemics and skipping Ebola if others are concerned. >>>>> >>>>> On Thu, Apr 9, 2015 at 7:09 PM, Teddy Goff wrote: >>>>> Agree with Dan's points on criminal justice reform, and would add that it's arguably the most topical of all these issues and could be noticeably absent from a list this long. >>>>> >>>>> And, just my two cents here, but I would hate for us to be among the people brandishing Ebola as a major threat when we know that the flu and other diseases are actually much riskier...

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Thu, 13 Oct 2016 20:36

From:jake.sullivan@gmail.com To: gruncom@aol.com Date: 2015-04-10 16:10 Subject: Re: Rough first crackEmployee compensation as a share of economy is the lowest it's been in decades. The right way to say it is that profits are at their highest level in 85 years and employee compensation at lowest level in 65 years. Both are measured as share of economy. Employee compensation doesn't roll trippingly off the tongue. > On Apr 10, 2015, at 1:41 PM, Mandy Grunwald wrote: > > Dan/Jake do you know the origin of that statistic? > > Mandy Grunwald > Grunwald Communications > 202 973-9400 > > >> On Apr 10, 2015, at 1:32 PM, John Podesta wrote: >> >> I know we have been at this for awhile, but do we really want to say paychecks for everyday Americans are at their lowest in decades? That's not true, is it? Isn't a more accurate formulation that pay raises are at their lowest? >> >> JP >> --Sent from my iPad-- >> john.podesta@gmail.com >> For scheduling: eryn.sepp@gmail.com >> >>> On Apr 10, 2015, at 12:00 PM, Dan Schwerin wrote: >>> >>> Here we go. First page is just the top lines. Then its followed by a menu of options to plug and play as needed. (Note: I added immigration to the list under bucket 2) >>> >>> From: Mandy Grunwald >>> Date: Friday, April 10, 2015 at 11:44 AM >>> To: Dan >>> Cc: Joel Benenson , Jake Sullivan , Teddy Goff , John Anzalone , Jim Margolis , Robby , John Podesta , "jennifer.m.palmieri@gmail.com" , "kristinakschake@gmail.com" , Huma Abedin , "esepp@equitablegrowth.org" , Lona Valmoro , "Ellen.Esterhay@gmmb.com" , Sawsan Bay , Shannon Currie , Mona Thinavongsa , Katie Connolly >>> Subject: Re: Rough first crack >>> >>> That makes sense Dan. Do you want to draft? >>> >>> Mandy Grunwald >>> Grunwald Communications >>> 202 973-9400 >>> >>> >>> On Apr 10, 2015, at 11:21 AM, Dan Schwerin wrote: >>> >>>> I think this looks good and see the benefit of giving her something tight without the examples. But maybe we pair it with an attachment listing one sentence examples that she could plug and play to flesh this out as needed depending on the setting. Otherwise she may feel its not substantive enough. >>>> >>>> From: Mandy Grunwald >>>> Date: Friday, April 10, 2015 at 11:15 AM >>>> To: Joel Benenson >>>> Cc: Dan , Jake Sullivan , Teddy Goff , John Anzalone , Jim Margolis , Robby , John Podesta , "jennifer.m.palmieri@gmail.com" , "kristinakschake@gmail.com" , Huma Abedin , "esepp@equitablegrowth.org" , Lona Valmoro , "Ellen.Esterhay@gmmb.com" , Sawsan Bay , Shannon Currie , Mona Thinavongsa , Katie Connolly >>>> Subject: Re: Rough first crack >>>> >>>> Try this edit of Dan's last version, stripped down, with Joel's line added: >>>> >>>> 'Americans have fought their way back from tough economic times. But the deck is still stacked for those at the top. It's not right that corporate profits are the highest they've been in decades but paychecks for everyday Americans are at the lowest. CEOs should not earn 300 times more than a typical American worker. And it makes no sense that it's so easy for a big corporation to get a tax break but so hard for a small business to get a loan. >>>> >>>> 'I'm running for President because everyday Americans and their families need a champion and I want to be that champion. Here are the big fights that I'll take on: >>>> >>>> 1.First, we need to build an economy for tomorrow not yesterday. I want to make being middle class mean something again in this country. When American families get ahead, America moves forward too, >>>> >>>> 2.Second, we need to make sure every American has the opportunity to reach their God-given potential, regardless of who they are, where they were born, or who they love. >>>> >>>> 3.Third, we need to fix our political system that is crippled by gridlock and dysfunction. >>>> >>>> 4.And fourth, we need to protect our country from the very real dangers we face from around the world. >>>> >>>> ' I know none of this is going to be easy. We face some pretty powerful forces. But I've spent my whole life fighting for children, for families, standing up for America. And I think people know...I don't quit. >>>> >>>> 'For me, it isn't enough for American families just to get by, you deserve to get ahead and stay ahead. It's your time. >>>> >>>> >>>> Mandy Grunwald >>>> Grunwald Communications >>>> 202 973-9400 >>>> >>>> >>>> On Apr 10, 2015, at 10:56 AM, Joel Benenson wrote: >>>> >>>>> Haven't read whole thing yet but pulling together latest poll --- a line we want her to use and own is ''When America's families get ahead, America moves forward too.'' >>>>> >>>>> From: Dan Schwerin [mailto:dschwerin@hrcoffice.com] >>>>> Sent: Friday, April 10, 2015 8:06 AM >>>>> To: Joel Benenson >>>>> Cc: Jake Sullivan; Teddy Goff; John Anzalone; Mandy Grunwald; Jim Margolis; Robby; John Podesta; jennifer.m.palmieri@gmail.com; kristinakschake@gmail.com; Huma Abedin; esepp@equitablegrowth.org; Lona Valmoro; Ellen.Esterhay@gmmb.com; Sawsan Bay; Shannon Currie; Mona Thinavongsa; Katie Connolly >>>>> Subject: Re: Rough first crack >>>>> >>>>> Here's a tighter version that indicates she could plug-and-play with different policy examples depending on the setting. >>>>> >>>>> From: Joel Benenson >>>>> Date: Friday, April 10, 2015 at 5:48 AM >>>>> To: Dan >>>>> Cc: Jake Sullivan , Teddy Goff , John Anzalone , Mandy Grunwald , Jim Margolis , Robby , John Podesta , "jennifer.m.palmieri@gmail.com" , "kristinakschake@gmail.com" , Huma Abedin , "esepp@equitablegrowth.org" , Lona Valmoro , "Ellen.Esterhay@gmmb.com" , Sawsan Bay , Shannon Currie , Mona Thinavongsa , Katie Connolly >>>>> Subject: Re: Rough first crack >>>>> >>>>> I think this is not too far off but have two points: >>>>> >>>>> I think the use of questions as a device in the opening weakens it. Strong direct statements carry power that questions typically don't >>>>> >>>>> My second goes to a point Mandy made yesterday which this feels more like its verging on a mini speech as opposed to a tough tight riff that echoes the rationale but emphasizes the direct articulation of the fights and a single simple policy or definition of problem in a way the clearly suggests the problem. >>>>> >>>>> I guess this would be about 7 minutes if she delivered the whole thing and that feels long to me if she's sitting around a table or gets asked by reporters. >>>>> >>>>> Dan,c can you tack a crack at tightening a bit this morning? >>>>> I'm on an early flight and should land in NYC by 8:15 and I'll touch base then. >>>>> >>>>> Joel >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> Joel Benenson >>>>> Benenson Strategy Group >>>>> >>>>> On Apr 9, 2015, at 7:39 PM, Dan Schwerin wrote: >>>>> >>>>> Updated attached >>>>> >>>>> From: Jake Sullivan >>>>> Date: Thursday, April 9, 2015 at 7:31 PM >>>>> To: Teddy Goff >>>>> To a >>>>> Subject: Re: Rough first crack >>>>> >>>>> It's actually 21 states now because Arkansas has had its law blocked by the state supreme court. Agree that we should decry this and talk about making it easier rather than harder for people to exercise their fundamental right to vote. >>>>> >>>>> As for Ebola, my view is that we deployed thousands of US troops to help stop the outbreak, which puts it in a different category from the flu. But I don't mind just saying pandemics and skipping Ebola if others are concerned. >>>>> >>>>> On Thu, Apr 9, 2015 at 7:09 PM, Teddy Goff wrote: >>>>> Agree with Dan's points on criminal justice reform, and would add that it's arguably the most topical of all these issues and could be noticeably absent from a list this long. >>>>> >>>>> And, just my two cents here, but I would hate for us to be among the people brandishing Ebola as a major threat when we know that the flu and other diseases are actually much riskier... >>>>> >>>>> On Thu, Apr 9, 2015 at 7:00 PM, Dan Schwerin wrote: >>>>> Agree on pre-school and toughening voting bullet. My pitch for prison reform is that it's about race, is good for progressives, and really does get to the social fabric issue she was getting at. >>>>> >>>>> From: John Anzalone >>>>> Date: Thursday, April 9, 2015 at 6:57 PM >>>>> To: Dan , Joel Benenson , Mandy Grunwald >>>>> Cc: Jim Margolis , Teddy Goff , Robby , John Podesta , "jennifer.m.palmieri@gmail.com" , "kristinakschake@gmail.com" , Jake Sullivan , Huma Abedin , "esepp@equitablegrowth.org" , Lona Valmoro , "Ellen.Esterhay@gmmb.com" , Sawsan Bay , Shannon Currie , Mona Thinavongsa , Katie Connolly >>>>> >>>>> Subject: Re: Rough first crack >>>>> >>>>> Good stuff and not sure you saw my previous emails, but I do thing the pre-school stuff works really well in the God-giving potential/community bucket. The incarceration stuff seems a bit out of place. Since we are talking about community and family I wonder if we should add gay marriage. >>>>> >>>>> On voting rights, I think we have to do more than modernizing. This is about stripping away the obstacles the Govs and legislatures in 22 states have enacted. >>>>> >>>>> '-- John Anzalone >>>>> Anzalone Liszt Grove Research >>>>> 334-387-3121 >>>>> www.algpolling.com >>>>> twitter: @AnzaloneLiszt >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> From: Dan Schwerin >>>>> Date: Thursday, April 9, 2015 at 6:44 PM >>>>> To: Joel Beneneson , Mindy Grunwald >>>>> Cc: Jim Margolis , Teddy Goff , Robby Mook , John Podesta , Jennifer Palmieri , Kristina Schake , Jake Sullivan , John Anzalone , Huma Abedin , "esepp@equitablegrowth.org" , Lona Valmoro , "Ellen.Esterhay@gmmb.com" , Sawsan Bay , Shannon Currie , Mona Thinavongsa , Katie Connolly >>>>> Subject: Re: Rough first crack >>>>> >>>>> Here's an attempt at merging the home base with the four fights, a little fleshed out. I think Joel is onto something with making her second bullet into God-given potential, but would give it more of the family/community/social fabric flavor she talked about. >>>>> >>>>> From: Joel Benenson >>>>> Date: Thursday, April 9, 2015 at 6:38 PM >>>>> To: Mandy Grunwald >>>>> Cc: Jim Margolis , Teddy Goff , Robby , John Podesta , "jennifer.m.palmieri@gmail.com" , "kristinakschake@gmail.com" , Jake Sullivan , Dan , John Anzalone , Huma Abedin , "esepp@equitablegrowth.org" , Lona Valmoro , "Ellen.Esterhay@gmmb.com" , Sawsan Bay , Shannon Currie , Mona Thinavongsa , Katie Connolly >>>>> Subject: Re: Rough first crack >>>>> >>>>> I only put policies there illustrate the one she could use. >>>>> >>>>> Yes she should do four fight first as you're saying Mandy. >>>>> >>>>> Sent from my iPhone >>>>> >>>>> On Apr 9, 2015, at 6:19 PM, Mandy Grunwald wrote: >>>>> >>>>> I thought what HRC was looking for was a sixty second-ish billboard of these four fights before she goes into detail about them. >>>>> >>>>> What did others think? >>>>> >>>>> Mandy Grunwald >>>>> Grunwald Communications >>>>> 202 973-9400 >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> On Apr 9, 2015, at 5:45 PM, Joel Benenson wrote: >>>>> >>>>> Tyring to keep it simple >>>>> >>>>> From: Marisa McAuliffe [mailto:mmcauliffe@hrcoffice.com] >>>>> Sent: Thursday, April 09, 2015 12:34 PM >>>>> To: Marissa Astor >>>>> Cc: Teddy Goff; Jim Margolis; Joel Benenson; Robby; John Podesta; Mandy Grunwald; jennifer.m.palmieri@gmail.com; kristinakschake@gmail.com; Jake Sullivan; Dan Schwerin; John Anzalone; Huma Abedin; esepp@equitablegrowth.org; Lona Valmoro; Ellen.Esterhay@gmmb.com; Sawsan Bay; Shannon Currie; Mona Thinavongsa >>>>> Subject: RE: Call with HRC >>>>> >>>>> Last change. Locking in 4:30pm. >>>>> >>>>> From: Marisa McAuliffe >>>>> Sent: Thursday, April 09, 2015 11:18 AM >>>>> To: Marissa Astor >>>>> Cc: Teddy Goff; Margolis, Jim; Joel Benenson; Robby; John Podesta; Mandy Grunwald; jennifer.m.palmieri@gmail.com; kristinakschake@gmail.com; Jake Sullivan; Dan Schwerin; John Anzalone; Huma Abedin; esepp@equitablegrowth.org; Lona Valmoro; 'Ellen.Esterhay@gmmb.com'; Sawsan Bay >>>>> Subject: RE: Call with HRC >>>>> >>>>> Apologies for another change '' looks like 2:00pm will be the best time in order for prep materials to be ready. I'll send around a calendar invite now as well. Best, Marisa >>>>> >>>>> From: Marisa McAuliffe >>>>> Sent: Thursday, April 09, 2015 9:49 AM >>>>> To: Marissa Astor >>>>> Cc: Teddy Goff; Margolis, Jim; Joel Benenson; Robby; John Podesta; Mandy Grunwald; jennifer.m.palmieri@gmail.com; kristinakschake@gmail.com; Jake Sullivan; Dan Schwerin; John Anzalone; Huma Abedin; esepp@equitablegrowth.org; Lona Valmoro >>>>> Subject: Re: Call with HRC >>>>> >>>>> Thank you. Confirmed for noon: >>>>> 206-402-0100 >>>>> 930969# >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> On Apr 9, 2015, at 9:32 AM, Marissa Astor wrote: >>>>> >>>>> We will make noon work for Robby. >>>>> >>>>> From: Teddy Goff >>>>> Date: Thursday, April 9, 2015 at 9:05 AM >>>>> To: "Margolis, Jim" >>>>> Cc: Marisa McAuliffe , Joel Benenson , Robby Mook , John Podesta , Mandy Grunwald , "jennifer.m.palmieri@gmail.com" , "kristinakschake@gmail.com" , Jake Sullivan , Dan Schwerin , John Anzalone , Marissa Astor , Huma Abedin , "esepp@equitablegrowth.org" , Lona Valmoro >>>>> Subject: Re: Call with HRC >>>>> >>>>> Noon works here >>>>> >>>>> On Thursday, April 9, 2015, Margolis, Jim wrote: >>>>> I am suppose to film Gen Powell til 11:30 so noon would work >>>>> >>>>> From: Marisa McAuliffe >>>>> Date: Thursday, April 9, 2015 at 9:03 AM >>>>> To: Joel Benenson >>>>> Cc: Robby , John Podesta , GMMB GMMB , Mandy Grunwald , Jen Palmieri , Kristina Schake , Jake Sullivan , Dan Schwerin , Teddy Goff , John Anzalone , "marissa.astor@icloud.com" , Huma Abedin , "esepp@equitablegrowth.org" , Lona Valmoro >>>>> Subject: RE: Call with HRC >>>>> >>>>> Would noon work for everyone (she's flexible on timing)? >>>>> >>>>> From: Joel Benenson [mailto:jbenenson@bsgco.com] >>>>> Sent: Thursday, April 09, 2015 9:02 AM >>>>> To: Marisa McAuliffe >>>>> Cc: Robby; John Podesta; Jim Margolis; Mandy Grunwald; jennifer.m.palmieri@gmail.com; kristinakschake@gmail.com; Jake Sullivan; Dan Schwerin; Teddy Goff; John Anzalone; marissa.astor@icloud.com; Huma Abedin; esepp@equitablegrowth.org; Lona Valmoro >>>>> Subject: Re: Call with HRC >>>>> >>>>> On a flight that is scheduled to land at 11:30 >>>>> >>>>> Sent from my iPhone >>>>> >>>>> On Apr 9, 2015, at 9:00 AM, Marisa McAuliffe wrote: >>>>> >>>>> Hi all '' HRC would like to have a call with you today. Please let me know if 11:00am will NOT work for you. Call in information is: >>>>> 206-402-0100 >>>>> 930969# >>>>> >>>>> Best, >>>>> Marisa >>>>> >>>>> Marisa McAuliffe >>>>> Office of Hillary Rodham Clinton >>>>> 646-647-2742 (o) >>>>> 813-480-9370 (c) >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> This email is intended only for the named addressee. It may contain information that is confidential/private, legally privileged, or copyright-protected, and you should handle it accordingly. If you are not the intended recipient, you do not have legal rights to retain, copy, or distribute this email or its contents, and should promptly delete the email and all electronic copies in your system; do not retain copies in any media. If you have received this email in error, please notify the sender promptly. Thank you. >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>

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Source: Dave says...

Sun, 16 Oct 2016 01:28

The University of Florida administration is preparing for upcoming Halloween festivities by reminding students that the school's ''Bias Education and Response Team'' is prepared to handle complaints about offensive costumes. Additionally, the school will provide 24/7 counseling services to anyone who is offended by a particular costume.

An administration newsletter published on October 10 warns students ''to think about your choices of costumes and themes . . .'' because ''[s]ome Halloween costumes reinforce stereotypes of particular races, genders, cultures, or religions. Regardless of intent, these costumes can perpetuate negative stereotypes, causing harm and offense to groups of people.''

The newsletter continues, ''If you are troubled by an incident that does occur, please know that there are many resources available . . .'' including ''a 24/7 counselor in the Counseling and Wellness Center . . . .''

Finally, the students are instructed to report any incidents to ''the Bias Education and Response Team at the University of Florida . . .'' so it can ''. . . respond to any reported incidents of bias, to educate those that were involved, and to provide support by connecting those that were impacted to the appropriate services and resources.''

According to its website, the ''purpose of the Bias Education and Response Team (BERT) is to provide impacted parties of bias incidents opportunities to be heard and supported; understand and respond to situations that effect the University of Florida; educate and inform the community; and create awareness of ignorance and intolerance.''

University of Florida spokeswoman Janine Sikes further explained BERT's role in an interview with the online news outlet Heat Street and said BERT reaches out to the student who makes the complaint to offer various support services.

''Depending on the circumstances, we might reach out to the person who was listed as wearing the costume and see what support or resources they might need as well,'' Sikes said. ''No one is required to talk to BERT. If the individuals involved desires further conversations with us or each other, we would help facilitate this.''

She also said BERT lacks the authority to formally discipline students.

Sikes was forced to acknowledge that the university offers no formal guidelines for students for what may be considered an offensive or inappropriate costumes, but she tried to stress that the purpose of the initiative is not to violate a students' right to free speech and free expression.

[image via pointstudio/shutterstock]

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Sun, 16 Oct 2016 01:29

U Matter, We Care | TeamPURPOSE STATEMENTThe purpose of the Bias Education and Response Team (BERT) is to provide impacted parties of bias incidents opportunities to be heard and supported; understand and respond to situations that effect the University of Florida; educate and inform the community; and create awareness of ignorance and intolerance. The BERT provides services to witness(es), bystander(s), targeted individual(s), offender(s), or a member(s) of the community. It is not the purpose of the Bias Education and Response Team to investigate, adjudicate, or to take the place of other University of Florida processes or services; rather, the aim is to complement and work with campus entities to connect impacted parties and communities with appropriate support and resources.

TEAM MEMBERSMary Kay Carodine, Ph.D. (Co-Chair) ~ MaryKayS@ufsa.ufl.eduAnthony DeSantis, Ph.D. (Co-Chair) ~ anthonyd@dso.ufl.eduAshleigh Wade ~ AshleighW@dso.ufl.eduBarbara Welsh, Ph.D. ~ psychvet@ufl.eduHannah Frei - HannahF@housing.ufl.eduLeah Dupuie ~ LeahD@recsports.ufl.eduNancy Chrystal-Green, Ph.D. ~ ncg@studentinvolvement.ufl.eduReggie Lane ~ rlane@studentinvolvement.ufl.eduVee Smith ~ vees@multicultural.ufl.eduZully Rivera-Ramos, Ph.D. ~ zriverara@ufl.edu

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Sun, 16 Oct 2016 01:29

Halloween Costume ChoicesOctober brings fall weather and Halloween. If you choose to participate in Halloween activities, we encourage you to think about your choices of costumes and themes. Some Halloween costumes reinforce stereotypes of particular races, genders, cultures, or religions. Regardless of intent, these costumes can perpetuate negative stereotypes, causing harm and offense to groups of people. Also, keep in mind that social media posts can have a long-term impact on your personal and professional reputation. The University of Florida's Division of Student Affairs Diversity and Social Justice Statement reminds us that UF fosters a community that values and respects diversity. An inclusive definition of diversity recognizes the variety of personal and social experiences that make individuals and communities different from one another.

As a community, we aspire to demonstrate integrity, respect, and compassion that strives to maintain an affirming campus climate for all members of our community. If you are troubled by an incident that does occur, please know that there are many resources available. Please take advantage of the 7 day a week presence of the U Matter, We Care program at the University of Florida by emailing umatter@ufl.edu. Additionally, there is a 24/7 counselor in the Counseling and Wellness Center available to speak by phone at 352-392-1575. Lastly, the Bias Education and Response Team at the University of Florida is able to respond to any reported incidents of bias, to educate those that were involved, and to provide support by connecting those that were impacted to the appropriate services and resources. You may submit a bias incident report at www.umatter.ufl.edu/stopbias.Thank you for being mindful of these values, and have a fun and safe Halloween

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Source: American Renaissance

Sun, 16 Oct 2016 02:03

Black FDNY employees plan to hit the department with a $150 million federal lawsuit charging they have been discriminated against on the job, they announced Wednesday.

In a complaint filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and a lawsuit they plan to file later this year, 10 plaintiffs charge black workers were passed over for promotions and raises that white workers with similar or lesser qualifications received. African-American employees, most of whom are women, were also hired at lower starting salaries, they say.

They claim black workers are paid an average of 77 cents for every dollar earned by whites.

The Fire Department previously settled a massive suit charging discrimination against blacks and Hispanics applying to become firefighters, agreeing to pay $98 million and revamp its hiring practices.

The new complaint charges racism is also widespread within the civilian ranks.

''Whenever there's a salary increase, they're not getting it. Whenever there's a promotion, they're not getting it,'' said lawyer Greg Smith. ''These disparate racist treatments of our city workers . . . need to stop.''

{snip}

Original Article

Topics: Anti-Discrimination Law, Racial Preferences in Hiring

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Sun, 16 Oct 2016 02:10

The latest WikiLeaks dump of emails show how Hillary Clinton's campaign targeted Black "bundling elites" and crossed out "white supremacy" and "the right to organize" from her speeches.

The newest WikiLeaks batch of emails from Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman John Podesta reveals how her team'--almost all white'--crafted a strategy to pander to the ''Black vote.''

RELATED:'Hillary, Delete Yourself:' Black Lives Matter Refuse to Vote for Hillary Clinton

Frank White, former Arkansas governor and friend of the Clintons, told Podesta in a February email'--shortly before primaries in South Carolina, Alabama and Georgia'--that, ''The black is obvious super critical.'' He suggested that: ''A black campaign vice chair or Sr advisor would go a long way during the primary and send the message that, Hillary puts her actions where her mouth is, and actually does appreciate the black vote.''

Podesta arranged several meetings with White to discuss the issue, seen as a ''firewall'' for Clinton because of her high polling among Black voters. White made it clear that the secret layed with the moneyed elite.

He complained when Clinton didn't show up to a fundraising event in January with ''AfAm bundling elites.''

''Result is that donors don't feel like the campaign thinks they're important. This spreads. Squashes enthusiasm. We need more people singing her praises. Elite donors are the ambassadors of the campaign. People are taking their cue from them,'' he wrote to Podesta.

White himself was constantly writing while away on business trips, from Nigeria to New York.

OPINION:Hillary and Donald: The Real Super-Predators

While ''just getting back from the finance meeting in NY,'' Write wrote, ''It was great to see all the new Hillstarters! Folks are ready to roll'... I wanted to follow up on my request to get some time on your calendar to sit with a group of business guys in NY some time in June.''

When the campaign was still preparing for primary season, Clinton's staffers debated how to address an audience in Atlanta. Those that chimed in'--all of them white'--pointed out that the only time ''Black Lives Matter'' was mentioned was when she said she met with members of the movement.

''Do folks think we need a more direct statement on that?'' asked the speechwriter.

Joel Benenson, chief strategist for the campaign, replied, ''I think if we can work it in as a belief statement as she usual does --- Yes, black lives matter --- it's simple, powerful and will get applause.''

The director of speechwriting agreed that ''it's always an applause line.''

In another all-white email thread, political consultant John Anzalone said that her speech to the National Urban League ''made me a bit uncomfortable'' since including ''the term 'white privilege' could have press implications.''

RELATED:Rapper Calls out Clinton's Hypocrisy over Black Lives Matter

Jim Margolis, another consultant, also said he wanted ''to express nervousness on the phrase.'' Clinton's spokeswoman Karen Finney added, ''I agree, I'm comfortable with systemic racism, I don't think she needs to say white privilege and felt like the first part of the speech the tone felt a little too apologist.''

As with the other email chain, African American Outreach Director LaDavia Drane ended the thread without addressing the debate.

Staffers flagged another concern in a Charleston speech at a ''kind of a hybrid event'' on labor. The speechwriter wrote, ''the right to organize is a civil right'''--and Benenson was, again, uncomfortable.

''I think people equate civil rights with the civil rights movement and I'm just a little worried that using that for the right to organize may strike some people as an overreach or equating the struggle of unions with the struggle for justice for African Americans.''

The others agreed and crossed the line out.

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Fri, 14 Oct 2016 22:44

Image copyrightAFPImage caption Geert Wilders is facing his second trial for hate speech The trial of Dutch anti-immigrant politician Geert Wilders is to go ahead after judges rejected a bid by his lawyers to have the case thrown out.

He is accused of inciting racial hatred after asking supporters at a rally if they would like more or fewer Moroccans in the Netherlands.

The trial date has been set for 31 October.

Mr Wilders claims he is being "prosecuted for voicing the opinion of millions".

Although the outspoken right-winger has repeatedly criticised Islam, calling for a ban on the Koran and the closure of all mosques in the Netherlands, prosecutors say he crossed the line this time by targeting people on the basis of their ethnicity.

At a 2014 rally of his Party for Freedom (PVV), after supporters chanted they wanted "fewer" Moroccan nationals he replied: "We'll organise that."

In court, Mr Wilders' lawyers tried to have the charges thrown out by arguing that a trial would amount to a legal assessment of his party's political manifesto. The presiding judge, Hendrik Steenhuis, did not agree.

In 2011, Mr Wilders was acquitted of incitement after being accused of encouraging hatred towards Muslims.

Media captionDutch far-right politician Geert Wilders says Brexit means the EU is "more or less dead".He tweeted his frustrations on Friday, comparing his country to Turkey and saying "displeasing political opinions are being silenced in court".

Mr Wilders' Party for Freedom had been riding high in the polls ahead of a Dutch election in March 2017, but recently lost its lead to Prime Minister Mark Rutte's liberal People's Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD).

Mr Wilders has had round-the-clock protection since the 2004 assassination of anti-Islam film director Theo van Gogh and is often described as the most heavily-guarded man in the Netherlands.

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Source: American Renaissance

Sun, 16 Oct 2016 02:05

A Dutch court on Friday upheld hate speech charges against anti-Islam politician Geert Wilders, meaning his trial will now start later this month.

''The court rejects all the defence's objections,'' judge Hendrik Steenhuis told The Hague district court.

Wilders' lawyers last month urged judges at a preliminary hearing to drop the charges against the far-right leader, slamming it as a ''political case'' ahead of elections due in March.

But in his ruling, Steenhuis said prosecuting Wilders will ''not affect his political freedoms or that of his Freedom Party.''

The trial, which will now start on October 31, focuses on comments made at a March 2014 election rally in The Hague, when Wilders asked supporters whether they wanted ''fewer or more Moroccans in your city and in the Netherlands?''

When the crowd shouted back ''Fewer! Fewer!'' a smiling Wilders answered: ''We're going to organise that.''

His lawyers argued Wilders had merely ''put forward his party's political programme'', and insisted he had a fundamental right to freedom of speech.

{snip}

Judge Steenhuis on Friday said: ''Just because . . . Wilders or his party have not been prosecuted over the last nine years because of their viewpoints about Moroccans . . . doesn't mean that he won't be prosecuted for any statements about Moroccans now.''

{snip}

Wilders has remained unrepentant, insisting at his last court appearance that he only said ''what millions of Dutch citizens think,'' and adding he had ''no regrets.''

He tweeted the same comment on Friday, adding the hashtag ''#pleurop,'' a vulgar Dutch way of telling someone to ''go away.''

It was a deliberate echo of Prime Minister Mark Rutte, who in a recent TV interview made headlines by using the phrase to suggest Dutch citizens of Turkish and Dutch descent who failed to assimilate should return to their countries of origin.

{snip}

If found guilty, Wilders could face up to two years in jail or a fine of more than 20,000 euros ($22,000).

{snip}

Original Article

Topics: Censorship, Europe

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Sun, 16 Oct 2016 13:09

Black yeast extract is the latest victim of Brexit in the United Kingdom. USA TODAY

British staple Marmite.(Photo: AFP)

A concentrated black yeast extract that many Britons spread on toast became the latest front Thursday in the United Kingdom's ongoing acrimonious debate about the country's decision to leave the European Union.

Supermarket giant Tesco stopped selling jars of Marmite, PG Tips tea and other staples of the British diet online amid a pricing dispute with Unilever, the massive British-Dutch conglomerate.

Unilever, the supplier of the goods, wanted to increase its wholesale prices by as much as 10% because the British pound has plummeted against the dollar and the euro since a little over half of the population voted in June to exit the EU.

Much of that fall has been attributed to concern from investors who are not certain what the withdrawal could mean for the U.K.'s access to the EU's single market '-- a trading alliance that guarantees the free movement of goods, capital, services and people across the EU's 28 member states and 500 million citizens.

Unilever announced Thursday that the dispute with Tesco was resolved, but the issue points out how daily life in Britain could be affected by leaving the EU.

Many of Unilever's products for the British market are made outside of the country. The company says a weaker pound has hurt its profit margins. The pricing argument left many shelves in Tesco stores across the U.K. running low on Marmite as shoppers rushed to acquire a product that Britons have long had a love-hate relationship with.

MORE COVERAGE:'Hard Brexit' could cost U.K. $81 billion a year

Indeed, Unilever has even marketed it under an ad campaign of "Love it or Hate it."

Marmite has a pungent odor and the yeast comes from beer residue. Many consumers find its powerful salty taste completely inedible while others consider it to be a quintessential and distinctive part of the British taste bud.

A survey on Marmite by YouGov, an online research firm, found that 33% of Britons "love it" and 33% "hate it." The rest expressed no preference.

Many social media users pointed out Thursday that the breakdown was not dissimilar to those who voted for and against Brexit '-- a British exit from the EU.

"A divided country over #Brexit is now equally divided over #Marmite," wrote George Dokimakis on Twitter. "Half the population are happy and the other half in panic #Marmitegate." Emma Kennedy, another Twitter user, wrote: "If Brexit means no more Marmite, there will be riots in the streets (but only from half the population)."

Brexit's supporters view it as an opportunity to reduce immigration and retain more control over laws that directly affect Britons. Its opponents argue that leaving the EU will reduce the U.K.'s geopolitical standing, harm its economy and lead to the overhauling of important and longstanding social welfare legislation.

More than 30 million people voted in the EU referendum. It passed 52% to 48%. Prime Minister Theresa May has vowed to start the formal withdrawal process by spring next year. Separately, the High Court in London began considering a case Thursday on whether the British government has the authority to trigger the exit process '-- known as Article 50 '-- without getting approval from Parliament.

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Fri, 14 Oct 2016 02:39

For most of its life, the reef was the world's largest living structure, and the only one visible from space. Illustration: Andrew Holder

The Great Barrier Reef of Australia passed away in 2016 after a long illness. It was 25 million years old.

For most of its life, the reef was the world's largest living structure, and the only one visible from space. It was 1,400 miles long, with 2,900 individual reefs and 1,050 islands. In total area, it was larger than the United Kingdom, and it contained more biodiversity than all of Europe combined. It harbored 1,625 species of fish, 3,000 species of mollusk, 450 species of coral, 220 species of birds, and 30 species of whales and dolphins. Among its many other achievements, the reef was home to one of the world's largest populations of dugong and the largest breeding ground of green turtles.

The reef was born on the eastern coast of the continent of Australia during the Miocene epoch. Its first 24.99 million years were seemingly happy ones, marked by overall growth. It was formed by corals, which are tiny anemone-like animals that secrete shell to form colonies of millions of individuals. Its complex, sheltered structure came to comprise the most important habitat in the ocean. As sea levels rose and fell through the ages, the reef built itself into a vast labyrinth of shallow-water reefs and atolls extending 140 miles off the Australian coast and ending in an outer wall that plunged half a mile into the abyss. With such extraordinary diversity of life and landscape, it provided some of the most thrilling marine adventures on earth to humans who visited. Its otherworldly colors and patterns will be sorely missed.

To say the reef was an extremely active member of its community is an understatement. The surrounding ecological community wouldn't have existed without it. Its generous spirit was immediately evident 60,000 years ago, when the first humans reached Australia from Asia during a time of much lower sea levels. At that time, the upper portions of the reef comprised limestone cliffs and innumerable caves lining a resource-rich coast. Charlie Veron, longtime chief scientist for the Australian Institute of Marine Science and the Great Barrier Reef's most passionate champion (he personally discovered 20 percent of the world's coral species), called the reef in that era a ''Stone Age Utopia.'' Aboriginal clans hunted and fished its waters and cays for millennia, and continued to do so right up to its demise.

Worldwide fame touched the reef in 1770, when Captain James Cook became the first European to navigate its deadly maze. Although the reef was beloved by nearly all who knew it, Cook was not a fan. ''The sea in all parts conceals shoals that suddenly project from the shore, and rocks that rise abruptly like a pyramid from the bottom,'' he wrote in his journal. Cook's ship foundered on one of those shoals and was nearly sunk, but after several months Cook escaped the reef.

After that, the reef was rarely out of the spotlight. A beacon for explorers, scientists, artists, and tourists, it became Australia's crown jewel. Yet that didn't stop the Queensland government from attempting to lease nearly the entire reef to oil and mining companies in the 1960s'--a move that gave birth to Australia's first conservation movement and a decade-long ''Save the Reef'' campaign that culminated in the 1975 creation of Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, which restricted fishing, shipping, and development in the reef and seemed to ensure its survival. In his 2008 book, A Reef in Time, Veron wrote that back then he might have ended his book about the reef with ''a heartwarming bromide: 'And now we can rest assured that future generations will treasure this great wilderness area for all time.''' But, he continued: ''Today, as we are coming to grips with the influence that humans are having on the world's environments, it will come as no surprise that I am unable to write anything remotely like that ending.''

In 1981, the same year that UNESCO designated the reef a World Heritage Site and called it ''the most impressive marine area in the world,'' it experienced its first mass-bleaching incident. Corals derive their astonishing colors, and much of their nourishment, from symbiotic algae that live on their surfaces. The algae photosynthesize and make sugars, which the corals feed on. But when temperatures rise too high, the algae produce too much oxygen, which is toxic in high concentrations, and the corals must eject their algae to survive. Without the algae, the corals turn bone white and begin to starve. If water temperatures soon return to normal, the corals can recruit new algae and recover, but if not, they will die in months. In 1981, water temperatures soared, two-thirds of the coral in the inner portions of the reef bleached, and scientists began to suspect that climate change threatened coral reefs in ways that no marine park could prevent.

By the turn of the millennium, mass bleachings were common. The winter of 1997''98 brought the next big one, followed by an even more severe one in 2001''02, and another whopper in 2005''06. By then, it was apparent that warming water was not the only threat brought by climate change. As the oceans absorbed more carbon from the atmosphere, they became more acidic, and that acid was beginning to dissolve the living reef itself.

Concerned for the reef's health, a number of friends attempted interventions'--none more poignant than Veron's famed 2009 speech to London's 350-year-old Royal Society titled ''Is the Great Barrier Reef on Death Row?'' Veron quickly answered his own question in the affirmative: ''This is not a fun talk to give, but I've never given a more important talk in my life,'' he told the premier gathering of scientists, accurately predicting that atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations of 450 parts per million (which the world will reach in 2025) would bring about the demise of the reef.

No one knows if a serious effort could have saved the reef, but it is clear that no such effort was made. On the contrary, attempts to call attention to the reef's plight were thwarted by the government of Australia itself, which in 2016, shortly after approving the largest coal mine in its history, successfully pressured the United Nations to remove a chapter about the reef from a report on the impact of climate change on World Heritage sites. Australia's Department of the Environment explained the move by saying, ''experience had shown that negative comments about the status of World Heritage-listed properties impacted on tourism.'' In other words, if you tell people the reef is dying, they might stop coming.

By then, the reef was in the midst of the most catastrophic bleaching event in its history, from which it would never recover. As much as 50 percent of the coral in the warmer, northern part of the reef died. ''The whole northern section is trashed,'' Veron told Australia's Saturday Paper. ''It looks like a war zone. It's heartbreaking.'' With no force on earth capable of preventing the oceans from continuing to warm and acidify for centuries to come, Veron had no illusions about the future. ''I used to have the best job in the world. Now it's turned sour... I'm 71 years old now, and I think I may outlive the reef.''

The Great Barrier Reef was predeceased by the South Pacific's Coral Triangle, the Florida Reef off the Florida Keys, and most other coral reefs on earth. It is survived by the remnants of the Belize Barrier Reef and some deepwater corals.

In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to Ocean Ark Alliance.

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Source: teleSURtv.net

Sun, 16 Oct 2016 01:52

U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders once famously rejected a campaign donation from the head of a pharmaceutical firm.

The power of social media and a generalized outrage against the high cost of medicine combined to bring down the stock prize of a pharmaceutical company Friday after U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders' Twitter account condemned a recent hike of a cancer drug.

RELATED:Big Pharma Spent Nearly $1 Billion to Lobby US Lawmakers

''Drug corporations' greed is unbelievable. Ariad has raised the price of a leukemia drug to almost $199,000 a year,'' wrote a Sanders staffer on his official Twitter account Friday afternoon.

The message was retweeted over 1,800 times.

Afterward, Ariad Pharmaceuticals' stock price subsequently tanked 15 percent, approximately US$387 million, according to Bloomberg News.

According to the outlet, this represented the biggest intraday decline in more than a year for the company. The stock ultimately closed the day down 14.8 percent.

The Hill confirmed the drug referenced in the tweet indeed had been increased four times this year alone. A 30-day supply of the Iclusig leukemia drugs costs US$16,000.

The company claimed in a statement that the pricing of the drug was a reflection of their ''significant investment in (research and development)'' and that they had spent 143 percent of their total revenue on research and development for treatments of rare cancers.

That response is likely to be unpalatable to the U.S. public, which has grown increasingly weary of the high costs of medication.

A Sanders staffer later responded to the incident.

RELATED:Sanders to Big Pharma Boss: 'We Don't Want Your Stinking Money'

''The drug industry is getting very, very nervous. We are going to take them on and lower the cost of medication across this country,'' read the senator's account.

Sanders famously rejected a campaign donation from the head of Turing Pharmaceuticals firm, because he increased the price of a drug for HIV and cancer patients by almost 5,000 percent.

The donation came to Sanders' campaign in form of an individual contribution from Martin Shkreli, head of Turing.

Shkreli came to be nearly universally reviled for his social media antics. The controversy surrounding Shkreli served to highlight to issue of high drug costs in the United States.

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Sun, 16 Oct 2016 05:39

This week the medical-aid organization Doctors Without Borders refused a donation of one million vaccine doses from the pharmaceutical corporation Pfizer. It offered inoculations against a commonly fatal pneumonia'--deliverable immediately, to people in need anywhere'--and the doctors said no.

The decision is the result of a fundamental impasse in modern healthcare. The heart of the refusal'--which could well imperil children who would have received those vaccines'--is a principled stand against the extremely high cost of many vaccines.

Pfizer tells me that their revenue from the vaccine in question last year was $6.245 billion. (That's the same as the revenue of United Airlines.) The enormous business includes much profit from countries that are willing and able to pay inflated prices for a life-saving vaccine. It necessarily leaves others behind.

How has this system come to such a head that humanitarian doctors would refuse a million vaccines on principle?

The medical background: The leading cause of death in children is pneumonia. In the lungs, alveoli fill with pus, which blocks the passage of oxygen. A person is essentially suffocated by their own immune response. This happens to 1.4 million kids every year. The process is often the result of one bacterium, Streptococcus pneumoniae. Decades ago, scientists were able to isolate proteins and carbohydrates from S. pneumoniae and expose children to only those benign molecules, instead of the entire bacteria. The kids' bodies learned to recognize and destroy S. pneumoniae without having to be exposed to it.

Pfizer's modern iteration of this vaccine is known among doctors as PCV13. It's recommended to be given to all children by medical authorities worldwide. Since its introduction, cases of severe Strep pneumonia in the U.S. have gone down by 88 percent.

Elsewhere, death from pneumonia remains commonplace, especially in subsaharan Africa and southeast Asia. This is where much work is done by Doctors Without Borders'--known outside the U.S. as M(C)decins Sans Fronti¨res (MSF)'--to provide care. So I was initially shocked to hear MSF refused a million PCV13 doses from Pfizer, who seemed shocked themselves.

''Pfizer is committed to making vaccines available to as many people as possible,'' company spokesperson Sally Beatty told me by email, ''particularly those needing emergency humanitarian assistance.''

Beatty explained that Pfizer ''strongly disagrees'' with MSF's decision, and that ''to suggest that donations are not valuable defies logic.''

Of course, the doctors do see donations as valuable'--simply not worth the costs in this context, which transcends seemingly straightforward philanthropy and medical science.

Pfizer sells its PCV13 pneumonia vaccine under the name Prevnar 13. Among the best-selling vaccines on the market, its technology is protected by multiple patents'--not just on the final product, but also on the process by which the vaccine is made. This makes it difficult for competitors to produce anything comparable at all. The South Korean company SK Chemicals came close to producing an analogue, but Pfizer sued the company and was supported by the country's Intellectual Property Tribunal in 2015.

MSF has been trying to get their hands on Prevnar 13 since it was introduced in 2009, but the price has been too high. Outside of dire situations'--as when the group purchased some Prevnar from pharmacies in Athens a few months ago (for 60 euros per dose)''''the group has lacked the resources to purchase it.

And this cost is the fundamental issue to Jason Cone, the executive director of Doctors Without Borders in the United States. He explained that donations from pharmaceutical companies are ineffective against a problem of this scale. While the donation would benefit people under the care of Doctors Without Borders immediately, accepting it could mean problems for others, and problems longer-term. Donations, he writes, are ''often used as a way to make others 'pay up.' By giving the pneumonia vaccine away for free, pharmaceutical corporations can use this as justification for why prices remain high for others, including other humanitarian organizations and developing countries that also can't afford the vaccine.''

Which is to say that for a disease of this scale, isolated donations are inadequate.

''I'm not absolutely against donations,'' MSF's vaccine pharmacist Alain Alsahani told me by phone from Paris. In cases of neglected disease where there is little or no market for a product, he explained, ''donation becomes a more interesting option for some countries to get access. But in the case of PCV, that's not a solution at all, in any way.''

In this case, to accept a donation is to accept the status quo in which health technology is beholden to the priorities and values of multinational monopolies and duopolies whose interests exceed simply finding a solvent path to technological progress and human wellbeing. Last year Pfizer returned $13.1 billion to its shareholders. By every estimate, Prevnar 13 is a ''blockbuster'' contributor to the company's profits, though they declined to share specific numbers.

Prices paid by patients, insurers, and aid organizations can remain high in part because of this sort of opacity. Last year MSF determined that a single dose of the vaccine'--a complete course requires three to four doses over time'--runs $63.70 in Morocco and $67.30 in Tunisia, while it's somehow cheaper in France at $58.40. (In the U.S., the group put the cost at closer to $136.)

''The companies really operate on opacity of price data,'' explained Kate Elder, the Vaccines Policy Advisor at MSF. People in the dark have no bargaining power. (Not unlike office workers negotiating salaries.)

Isn't there at least some list price for reference, I asked, like the price of a car?

''What they try to avoid at all costs'--no pun intended'--is to avoid governments or other purchasers doing price referencing,'' she added. ''They won't even quote us a price. So step one is them being a business and selling us a product.''

I asked Pfizer if they would be open to a deal to make the vaccine affordable to humanitarian organizations like MSF. Beatty wrote, ''We are actively exploring a number of new options to enable greater access to our pneumococcal vaccine '... to aid NGOs facing humanitarian emergency settings.''

I asked if that meant changing the price for MSF, and she copied and pasted the same response.

One deal that Pfizer will talk about, even unprompted, is that with the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI), an organization that purchases vaccines in bulk on behalf of poor countries. In 2009, Pfizer agreed to sell Prevnar to GAVI for $9.15 per course.

That price is really what MSF wants, and has been requesting for years. So I put it to Pfizer directly, one final time: Why can't you give the $9.15 price to NGOs? After all, their patients represent a relatively small part of the multibillion-dollar market for a vaccine that's supposed to be given to all people.

Pfizer's representative didn't answer the question directly, but again pasted ''we are actively exploring a number of new options to enable greater access to our pneumococcal vaccine to aid NGOS facing humanitarian emergency settings.''

Until that active exploration bears fruit, MSF is forced to choose the less imperfect option that will yield the greatest good. In the short term, does MSF's decision threaten the wellbeing of children who might have received the donated vaccines?

''We're taking every step we can to minimize that risk,'' Elder said. ''But our priority is to vaccinate as many children as possible in the long term.''

In medicine, sometimes do no harm is an imperfect principle. It's only possible to do the least harm. And Pfizer disagrees with MSF about how to do the least harm. In a cold phone call to my cell, Beatty reiterated that the company sees donation as a humanitarian endeavor. ''Is policy really more important than the opportunity to vaccinate and protect vulnerable people in emergency settings?''

In another email, she reiterated that the donation offer is still on the table, deliverable immediately, and that Pfizer would offer to store the doses prior to distribution, if adequate storage for the entire one million is not available.

I felt like somehow I had become the negotiator. I'm still trying to identify the impasse for Pfizer, but I got the impression the standoff would persist. And its resolution could establish a precedent across the industry, because more than this dangerous pneumonia is at stake. Many new vaccines are still made by only one or two manufacturers, and monopolies and duopolies are a real factor in why prices remain high. The HPV vaccine is only made by GSK and Merck. The rotavirus vaccine against diarrhea (the second leading cause of childhood death worldwide) is only made by GSK and Merck. The new malaria vaccine is only made by GSK.

If there is a reason for people to be concerned about vaccines, it is a problem with people not having access, and a legal and economic system that keep prices high. The spirit of MSF's decision highlights the same principle behind herd immunity: Vaccines are not about individuals. They are not even about individual organizations. They're microcosm of all health: We're in this together.

In an attempt to rectify consumer blindness, the World Health Organization (WHO) recently established a vaccine price and procurement database initiative, where all purchasers can share what they know, but there's still a scarcity of data.

And on Wednesday, Elder was in Geneva at a meeting that WHO convened this week on vaccination in emergencies. There they proposed a humanitarian mechanism where manufacturers can participate to sell their vaccines to NGOs and others vaccinating in emergency settings at further reduced cost. Elder reported that GSK was the first to commit, and Pfizer did not, but was represented at the meeting.

''So the onus is on them, from MSF and from WHO and UNICEF,'' said Elder. ''The ball is in their court.''

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Sun, 16 Oct 2016 01:55

From:eryn.sepp@gmail.com To: john.podesta@gmail.com Date: 2015-02-15 23:53 Subject: Fwd: Leslie Kean - NY TimesSee email from Leslie below. Thoughts on this? Reporter is either Dennis Overbye or Ralph Blumenthal. She doesn't say it but mentioned it previously on your last day. Let me know if you want me to probe for more (UFO pun intended). Sent from my iPhone Begin forwarded message: > From: Leslie > Date: February 15, 2015 at 17:10:11 EST > To: eryn.sepp@gmail.com > Subject: Leslie Kean - NY Times > > Eryn, > > Jumping off John's tweet, A New York Times reporter whom I know is writing an op-ed calling for release of files and a new government project on UFOs. He has invited me to co-author. It will include only things already public, like the CAP briefing in 2011, the foreword in my book and the foreign agencies. > > I don't know if it will be published, but he's trying. I want to make sure John has no objections to me co-authoring it; I think that will make it better and I can be sure it's on the mark. Can you run this by him to be sure? > > Sorry to bother you off duty!! > > Thanks, > Leslie

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Sun, 16 Oct 2016 05:41

God is frequently invoked in American public life. Indeed, there is no shortage of instances of official acknowledgement of the divine, from the appearance of ''In God We Trust'' on our currency to the phrase ''one nation under God'' in the Pledge of Allegiance.

To be sure, the vast majority of Americans still believe in God. But there are strong signs that many are less certain about this belief than in years past. And a small but growing minority of Americans say they do not believe in God at all.

When asked if they believe in ''God or a universal spirit'' in the Pew Research Center's 2014 Religious Landscape Study, 89% of U.S. adults say yes '' down from 92% from the previous RLS in 2007. Nearly one-in-ten (9%) now say they don't believe in God, up from 5% in 2007.

The changes have been even more substantial when it comes to certainty of belief in God: 63% of Americans are absolutely certain that God exists, down 8 percentage points from 2007, when 71% said this.

These shifts have been especially sharp among the growing share of Americans who do not identify with any religious group (and call themselves atheists, agnostics or ''nothing in particular''). While 22% of these religious ''nones'' said that they did not believe in God in 2007, that figure has risen to 33% in 2014. And just 27% of the religiously unaffiliated are absolutely certain that God exists, down from 36% in 2007.

But a lack of certainty in God's existence has become more common even among some Christian groups and members of non-Christian faiths. For example, two-thirds (66%) of those in the mainline Protestant tradition now say they are absolutely certain that God exists, down from 73% in 2007. A similar trend is seen among Catholics: 64% expressed an absolutely certain belief in God in 2014, compared with 72% in 2007. And among those who identify as Jewish on the basis of religion, the share saying they do not believe in God at all has risen from 10% to 17% over this seven-year period.

This trend is not universal. Indeed, belief in God has been more stable among some more highly observant religious groups, such as evangelical Protestants and members of the historically black Protestant tradition '' among whom nearly nine-in-ten say they are absolutely certain God exists. And 84% of U.S. Muslims are certain there is a God or universal spirit, similar to 2007 (82%).

There are other demographic differences as well when it comes to belief in God. For instance, blacks are more likely than whites and Hispanics (83% vs. 61% and 59%, respectively) to be absolutely certain about God's existence. Women are more likely than men to be certain about God (69% vs. 57%), as are less well-educated Americans compared with college graduates (66% vs. 55%).

But perhaps the most striking divide '' and the driving force behind the overall drop in belief '' is generational. As younger Americans enter adulthood, they are far less likely to be sure about God's existence than are their elders. While 70% of those ages 65 and older express an absolutely certain belief in God or a universal spirit, only about half of adults under 30 feel the same way (51%).

Pew Research Center surveys are not the only ones that have found a long-term decline in the overall share of Americans who say they believe in God. For example, 86% of Americans said in a 2014 Gallup poll they believed in God or a universal spirit, down from 96% in 1994 and the lowest figure since Gallup first asked the question in 1976.

Topics: Catholics and Catholicism, Christians and Christianity, Evangelical Protestants and Evangelicalism, Jews and Judaism, Religious Beliefs and Practices

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Sun, 16 Oct 2016 14:19

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Sun, 16 Oct 2016 13:36

Federal investigators said Friday they stopped a domestic terrorism plot by a militia group that planned to detonate bombs at a Garden City apartment complex where a number of Somalis live.

Three southwest Kansas men were arrested and charged in federal court with domestic terrorism, Acting U.S. Attorney Tom Beall said at a news conference in downtown Wichita.

The three are suspected of conspiring to set off a bomb where about 120 people '-- including many Muslim immigrants from Somalia '-- live and worship, Beall said.

An apartment at the complex also serves as a mosque, officials said.

Curtis Allen, 49; Gavin Wright, 49; and Patrick Stein, 47, were arrested in Liberal, Kan., on Friday morning, Beall said. Allen and Wright are Liberal residents; Stein lives in Wright, a small town just east of Dodge City.

Wright is the owner of G&G Home Center in Liberal, Beall said. Allen works there.

The three men are being held in Sedgwick County and face arraignment there at 10 a.m. Monday. If convicted, they could face life in federal prison, Beall said.

The men are members of a small militia group that call themselves the Crusaders, Beall said. The bombing was scheduled for Nov. 9 so as to not affect the general election.

''It is very concerning and very disheartening,'' Hussam Madi, spokesman for the Islamic Society of Wichita, said of the planned attack.

''I thank God that they were able to be caught before anything can happen. We don't need such actions here within our community and within our country.''

'Culture of hatred'Beall said the investigation involved an FBI probe ''deep into a hidden culture of hatred, violence'' and what amounted to a startling plot. The FBI launched its investigation eight months ago, on Feb. 16.

''These individuals had the desire, the means and the capabilities and were committed to carrying out this act of domestic terrorism,'' Special Agent in Charge Eric Jackson said at Friday's news conference.

In an emailed statement after the plot's announcement, the Council on American-Islamic Relations called on state and federal law enforcement agencies to step up protection for mosques. The group is the nation's largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization.

''Given this alleged plan to attack a Kansas mosque, the two other hate incidents reported today against Islamic institutions in Michigan and New Jersey, and the overall spike in anti-mosque incidents nationwide, state and federal authorities should offer stepped-up protection to local communities,'' Nihad Awad, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said in a statement.

Beall and Jackson, at the news conference, said the men were stockpiling weapons and were going to publish a manifesto after the bombing. One of the men said that the bombing would ''wake people up,'' Beall said.

They allegedly formed a plan of violent attack targeting Somalis and '-- after considering a host of targets, including pro-Somali churches and public officials '-- settled on the apartment complex, he said.

The plot involved obtaining four vehicles and filling them with explosives. The men discussed parking the vehicles at the four corners of the complex and detonating them to ''create a big explosion,'' Beall said.

They reportedly planned to use a cellphone to detonate the explosion. Allen said he had the materials and said they would test them, the court affidavit said.

In addition to the apartments and the mosque, the affidavit said, ''Stein, Wright, and Allen '... discussed targeting churches in Garden City that have supported refugees.'' Stein said one particular church ''needs burnt to the ground.''

The men also talked about targeting ''city/county commission meetings, local public officials, landlords who rent property to Muslim refugees, and organizations providing assistance to Muslim refugees.''

Weapons foundBeall said Stein met with a confidential FBI source in rural Finney County on Wednesday to examine some automatic weapons brought by the source from an FBI lab in Quantico, Va.

After trying out two of the firearms, Stein took the FBI source to see the Garden City complex the alleged attack was targeting.

Stein told the FBI source he would provide ammonium nitrate for the bomb and that he wanted to contribute $200 to $300 for other materials, Beall said.

Three different times, a court document said, Stein did surveillance ''on potential target locations around Garden City and other parts of southwestern Kansas.''

Stein and other Crusaders met in a field to avoid FBI surveillance, and Stein brought up the Orlando, Fla., nightclub shooting.

''He proposed carrying out an attack similar to the Orlando shooting against a Muslim refugee location in Garden City,'' the affidavit said.

Stein also told the FBI source he was worried Allen's girlfriend would go to the Liberal Police Department and disclose the militia's plans, Beall said. Allen, he said, had been arrested in a domestic violence case in Liberal on Tuesday.

According to the affidavit, that's what happened.

On Tuesday, Allen's girlfriend called Liberal police, said she was battered by Allen and was leaving their home. She showed Liberal officers a room in the home with a large amount of ammunition and components to make more and build firearms.

That night, officers stopped Allen and found ammunition, including an AK-47 magazine.

Also Tuesday, the girlfriend told the FBI she saw a white powder being made at G&G. The powder looked like explosives, the affidavit said.

Then on Wednesday, a search of the mobile home business found a possible detonator plus items used to make improvised explosives, it said.

Also found, the affidavit said: ''A yellow binder and paperwork labeled 'The Anarchist Cookbook.' ''

Police officers in Liberal estimated they found ''close to a metric ton of ammunition in Allen's residence.''

'Sovereign citizen'The defendants were ''planning to take imminent actions,'' said Jackson, the FBI special agent in charge.

''They were committed to carrying this out,'' he said.

Jackson would not be specific about how the FBI got the information that led to the investigation.

He described the defendants as being part of a militia with ''sovereign citizen'' ties.

Asked whether there could be more suspects, Jackson said, ''We feel as though the individuals involved in this plot have been stopped and that the individuals' plot has been stopped.''

Beall referred to the defendants' group, the Crusaders, as being an isolated group.

Jackson wouldn't say how big the group was or whether it had links to other groups.

There are now 892 ''hate'' groups operating across the country, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. They include white nationalists, Klansmen, neo-Nazis, skinheads, border vigilantes and even black separatists.

That's up from 794 groups in April 2015, when The Star published a special report about domestic extremist groups. The Star interviewed members of domestic extremist groups and found that yesterday's larger movements had metastasized into a widespread network of organizations and individuals.

Beall said the case shows that such an attack ''can happen anywhere.''

Contributing: Oliver Morrison and Stan Finger of The Eagle

More details from the court affidavit

The three southwest Kansas men who allegedly plotted to blow up an apartment complex where Somali immigrants live and worship ''routinely expressed a hatred for Muslims,'' an affidavit filed in federal court says.

Other details from the affidavit include:

A paid confidential source for the FBI had attended many meetings of a group that called itself the Crusaders. The members met as often as once a week and talked daily by phone. The source wore a recorder. Investigators corroborated information from the source.

The defendants allegedly believe that Muslims ''represent a threat to American society,'' and they wanted to ''inspire other militia groups'' and to ''wake people up,'' it said.

This past February, while the source was ''driving (Patrick) Stein around, Stein at various times yelled at Somali women dressed in traditional garb, calling them'' racist and sexist slurs. Stein said several times that they ''needed to eliminate'' the Somalis, the affidavit said.

At a meeting in May, the document said, Curtis Allen talked about putting mocking signs around the necks of the people they targeted after ''we blow the top of their head off.''

In a May phone call, a frustrated Stein reportedly ''said he wanted to get a .22, go over to Garden City, Kansas, start kicking in doors of the Somali apartments, and kill them one by one.'' He would use a silencer on the gun, it said.

Stein allegedly said he would use rocket-propelled grenades to blow up the targets' apartments '-- ''boom '... I'm outta there.''

Allen at one point reportedly said they faced ''going to prison for life. '... We need to be pre-emptive before something happens.''

Stein allegedly interjected: ''When we go on operations there's no leaving anyone behind, even if it's a one-year-old, I'm serious.''

On Sept. 13, Stein and the source reportedly spoke about the size of the container they would need to store their explosives. ''Stein believes the trash cans (containing the explosives) should be in place at a mosque no earlier than three hours'' before detonation ''to avoid suspicion.''

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Sun, 16 Oct 2016 13:11

Video: Tesco and Unilever settle 'Marmite Wars'

Oct. 14 2016

Britain's biggest retailer, Tesco, settles a pricing row with Unilever after halting online sales of goods produced by the Anglo-Dutch giant in a dispute caused by the Brexit-induced plunge in the pound. Lucy Fielder reports.

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Sun, 16 Oct 2016 13:01

More hacked emails released Saturday from WikiLeaks appear to show more about Hillary Clinton's private, high-priced Wall Street speeches including her argument that Washington lawmakers would pass the Dodd-Frank banking reform law merely for ''political reasons.''

''With political people '... there was a lot of complaining about Dodd-Frank, but there was also a need to do something for political reasons,'' Clinton said at a 2013 Goldman Sachs investment symposium.

''If you were an elected member of Congress and people in your constituency were losing jobs and shutting businesses and everybody in the press is saying it's all the fault of Wall Street, you can't sit idly by and do nothing,'' Clinton also said in the speech.

The speech was just one of several for Wall Street audiences and for which Clinton was paid more than $200,000, according to an analysis of her financial disclosure forms released this spring.

The Democratic presidential nominee purportedly earned roughly $1.8 million for eight speeches to big banks, including Goldman Sachs.

The hacked emails, from Clinton campaign Chairman John Podesta and others associated with Clinton, are emerging months after Clinton's primary rival, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, called for her to release transcripts of the speeches -- in an attempt to prove her believed ties to big banks.

Other documents in the trove released Saturday, including a transcript of the Goldman Sachs speech, appear to suggest Clinton wanted the United States to intervene in civil war-torn Syria in a more covert manner.

''My view was you intervene as covertly as is possible,'' she said. ''We used to be much better at this than we are now. Now, you know, everybody can't help themselves. They have to go out and tell their friendly reporters and somebody else: Look what we're doing and I want credit for it, and all the rest of it.''

Also on Saturday, WikiLeaks release a 2015 email exchange from Clinton campaign spokesman Nick Merrill and long-time Clinton aide Heather Samuelson about the State Department's apparent plans to place a favorable story with Associated Press reporters Matt Lee and Bradley Klapper about the release of emails from Clinton confidant Sydney Blumenthal as the missives are turned over to a Republican-led congressional committee.

(Clinton was secretary of state from 2009 to 2013.)

Merrill also says in the exchange that he would like the story to run during the release of a Supreme Court decision because it will distract the ''news hyenas.''

The emails are thought to have been hacked by Russians and released in an attempt to influence the outcome of the Nov. 8 General Election between Clinton and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.

Podesta on Friday fired back at Julian Assange as his WikiLeaks group released another set of hacked emails, which have been an embarrassing distraction for the Clinton campaign.

''I bet the lobster risotto is better than the food at the Ecuadorian Embassy,'' Podesta tweeted, while Assange starts his fifth year at the Ecuador Embassy in the United Kingdom, amid a 2005 rape allegation in Sweden.

The tweet also included a picture of Podesta and celebrity chef Daniel Boulud recently preparing the dish at a private Clinton fundraiser.

Clinton campaign spokesman Glen Caplin on Saturday compared the Podesta email hack to the Watergate break in.

"Four decades later, we're witnessing another effort to steal private campaign documents in order to influence an election,'' he said. ''Only this time, instead of filing cabinets, it's people's emails they're breaking into '... and a foreign government is behind it."

Earlier this month, WikiLeaks posted what it said were thousands of emails obtained in a hack of Podesta's personal email account.

Among those was an internal review of Clinton's Wall Street speeches to survey the political damage her remarks could cause if they ever became public.

In what aides calculated were the most damaging passages, Clinton reflected on the necessity of "unsavory" political dealing, telling real estate investors that "you need both a public and private position."

To investment bankers from Goldman Sachs and BlackRock, Clinton admits that she's "kind of far removed" from the middle-class upbringing that she frequently touts on the campaign trail.

Podesta suggested last weekend on ''Fox News Sunday'' that his emails from the WikiLeaks posting were not authentic.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Sun, 16 Oct 2016 12:13

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Sun, 16 Oct 2016 05:46

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Sun, 16 Oct 2016 05:45

Is Syria's destruction a part of the Zionist plan to create a 'Greater Israel' ?

The Plan '-- according to U.S. General Wesley Clark (Ret.): In an interview with Amy Goodman on March 2, 2007, U.S. General Wesley Clark (Ret.), explains that the Bush Administration planned to take out 7 countries in 5 years: Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Lybia, Somalia, Sudan, Iran

'The Greater Israel Project' Explained by Ken O'Keefe:Ken explains the concept of 'The Greater Israel Project' and the balkanization of surrounding countries as a means of destabilizing them. Balkanization is a geopolitical term that was originally used to describe the process of the fragmentation or division of a region or state into smaller regions or states that are often hostile or non-cooperative with one another. The head of the snake, the system of power, is headed by the financial system. The bankers rule the Earth through the private control of the issuance of money, debt-based money which we're all supposed to pay with things like austerity measures, which allows them to provide THEMSELVES an INFINITE supply of money which means that they can buy anything and anyone so we see that the world governments are nothing but puppets of bankers who control their money supply. The bankers at the top of this pyramid are psychopaths.

Norman Finkelstein Obliterates and Humiliates Hard Talk Host on Israel:Norman showed the host what it really means to ''Hard Talk''.The Bias anchor/journalist who sides with Israel makes a mistake by challenging Norman on the Palestine and IsraHell conflict. Norman teaches her a lesson, she wont be forgetting anytime soon.Norman Finkelstein has devoted his life and his Doctorate degree on the Middle East and the Palestine Israel conflict.

ISIS In Greater Israel's Scheme:This is the root cause of all the refugee crisis we are facing in the world right now.

CommentsCIAGreater IsraelISISMossad

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Sun, 16 Oct 2016 04:53

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Sun, 16 Oct 2016 04:37

On Wednesday's The View two of the most liberal hosts, Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar, came up with their own completely original and unheard of reason as for why Donald Trump had so many supporters: Because a lot of Americans are racist. Whoopi made the point, to which Behar agreed, before making the claim that Trump supporters hated Hillary Clinton simply because she was a woman, as well. Unfortunately, this kind of genius analysis from liberals isn't limited to the panelists at The View.

Read the rest of the blog here.

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Sun, 16 Oct 2016 04:31

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Sun, 16 Oct 2016 03:10

More in the cross-post on the MRC's NewsBusters blog.

During back-to-back hostile interviews on CBS This Morning and NBC's Today on Friday, Republican vice presidential nominee Mike Pence attempted to force the networks to actually cover the controversy swirling around the Wikileaks release of thousands of Clinton campaign e-mails. However, every time he raised the topic, the morning show hosts promptly cut him off.

While being grilled about sexual assault allegations against Donald Trump during the appearance on This Morning, Pence pointed out the glaring media double standard in coverage of campaign controversies: ''Donald Trump made it very clear yesterday, he has categorically denied these allegations and these kind of unsubstantiated claims being given so much focus in the media at the time we have hard evidence flowing out of the Clinton Foundation.''

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Sun, 16 Oct 2016 03:03

More in the cross-post on the MRC's NewsBusters blog.

The liberal bias in press coverage of the presidential campaign has escalated dramatically in the last month before Election Day and on Wednesday's Morning Joe, even MSNBC host Joe Scarborough had enough, calling out liberal co-host Mika Brzezinski and commentators on the morning show: ''...the media can't see past their sheer hatred of him, their uncontrollable sheer hatred of Donald Trump.''

He continued to scold his media colleagues for letting that ''hatred'' prevent any objective analysis of Trump's electoral strategy in the final days of race: ''We can all be offended by what he did. We're still supposed to report, but the sheer hatred is stopping analysts from realizing he's doing the only thing he can do right now to keep his campaign alive....I'm not sure that right now this isn't exactly what he needs to do to survive.''

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Sun, 16 Oct 2016 02:59

ABC'sGood Morning Americaon 15 October 2016 stood out as the only Big Three newscast so far to cover Hillary Clinton's new denials about her e-mail scandal. Devin Dwyer reported that Clinton was "asked about details of her decision to use private e-mail...[and] answered 20 different times with a variation of 'do not recall.'" The morning show, along with ABC'sWorld News TonightandCBS Evening Newson 14 October 2016, also reported on the latest batch of John Podesta e-mails released by Wikileaks. NBC only mentioned Wikileaks in passing on the 15 October 2016 edition ofToday.

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Sun, 16 Oct 2016 02:43

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Sun, 16 Oct 2016 02:36

The White House confirmed on Monday that President Barack Obama knew about Hillary Clinton's private email address because he emailed her at it during her tenure of secretary of state.

When Obama said in an interview that aired Sunday that he found out Clinton used a private email account to conduct official business at 'the same time as everybody else learned it through news reports,' what he meant was that was the first he'd heard of her exclusive use of use of personal email and of her private server, his spokesman clarified this afternoon.

'The president, as I think many people expected, did over the course of his first several years in office trade emails with his secretary of state,' White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters.

'I would not describe the number of emails as large, but they did have the occasion to email each other.'

Scroll down for video

'Same time as everybody else': President Obama told CBDS News he learned Hilary Clinton had used a private email account for state business during her tenure as Secretary of State when news reports surfaced

In an interview with CBS News during his trip to Selma, Alabama, Obama had defended former Secretary of State Clinton and applauded her decision to release the emails.

'I'm glad that Hillary's instructed that those emails about official business need to be disclosed,' Obama said. 'I think that the fact that she is putting them forward will allow us to make sure that people have the information they need,'

I'm glad that Hillary's instructed that those emails about official business need to be disclosed

President Barrack Obama

'The policy of my administration is to encourage transparency, which is why my emails, the Blackberry I carry around, all those records are available and archived,' Obama said.

Clinton, seen as the front-runner for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination in 2016, said on Wednesday she wanted the State Department to publish her emails so that the public could read them.

Pressed by reporters to acknowledge that the president had in fact emailed his secretary of state during her four-year tenure,his spokesman said Monday, 'The point that the president was making is not that he didn't know Secretary Clinton's email address, he did.'

'But he was not aware of the details of how that email address and that server had been set up or how Secretary Clinton and her team were planning to comply with the Federal Records Act,' Earnest explained.

Earnest said he did not know when the White House's Office of Legal Council first knew of Clinton's private email and server system.

'It is the responsibility of individual agencies to establish an email system and to make sure those emails as created are properly recorded and maintained,' he again told reporters during the briefing, standing by his statements from last week.

He also stuck by the White House's stance that there's no 'reason to doubt' that Clinton's team has not done 'exactly what they said they would do' and give the State Department a copy of all of her work-related emails.

'But ultimately that is the responsibility of Secretary Clinton and her team,' he said.

Responding to a question about a House committee's investigation into the 2012 assault on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi and committee chair Trey Gowdy's suspicions that Hillary may be withholding pertinent emails, Earnest challenged the reporter or Gowdy, a South Carolina Republican, to produce evidence of foul play.

And if Gowdy 'has specific questions about specific emails that should be produced in response to a legitimate congressional inquiry, then he should raise that directly with State Department officials, Earnest said.

Asked by the same reporter, Bloomberg's Justin Sink, if the White House feels it now needs to step in because the State Department 'doesn't seem to be doing its job,' Earnest said that was 'one step too far.'

The State Department has cooperated at 'great length' with the eight committees have investigated the Benghazi terrorist attack, he contended.

Moments later, he again went after Gowdy, saying, he 'would hazard a guess that if the White House were intimately involved in that kind of effort to review email and make determinations about what should be provided to Congress, that he'd be complaining about that on national television as well.'

The growing controversy over Clinton's use of personal email for work while she was U.S. secretary of state threatens to cloud the expected launch of her campaign.

A senior State Department official told Reuters last Thursday that a review of her emails would not happen quickly.

'The review is likely to take several months given the sheer volume of the document set,' the official said.

The State Department has said there was no prohibition during Clinton's tenure on using personal email for official business as long as it was preserved.

A total of 55,000 pages of documents covering the time Clinton was in office has been turned over, according to the State Department.

But Clinton and her aides controlled that process, and the emails were not archived on government servers.

Transparency: The president applauded the front-runner for the 2016 Democratic nominee for saying she would release the emails following criticism

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Back in March CNN held a Town Hall event with Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton. Jake Tapper and Roland Martin were moderators. It is now confirmed that CNN's Donna Brazile had an advance copy of at least one of the questions for Hillary Clinton and gave Clinton a heads'-up so she could prepare '' FULL BACKSTORY ''

Now Jake Tapper is clutching his pearls, shocked '' SHOCKED, that Donna Brazile would leak the questions. He said so on WMAL (Listen Below):

Additionally, in '93 Jake Tapper was the Press Secretary for Chelsea Clinton's mother-in-law, representative Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky.

.@jaketapper@TheWelshTwitt The closed circle of echo-chambered media is an internecine enterprise fraught w/undisclosed relations, huh JT?

'-- TheLastRefuge (@TheLastRefuge2) May 25, 2016

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The Obama administration is contemplating an unprecedented cyber covert action against Russia in retaliation for alleged Russian interference in the American presidential election, U.S. intelligence officials told NBC News.

Current and former officials with direct knowledge of the situation say the CIA has been asked to deliver options to the White House for a wide-ranging "clandestine" cyber operation designed to harass and "embarrass" the Kremlin leadership.

Watch Cynthia McFadden on Nightly News with Lester Holt for More

The sources did not elaborate on the exact measures the CIA was considering, but said the agency had already begun opening cyber doors, selecting targets and making other preparations for an operation. Former intelligence officers told NBC News that the agency had gathered reams of documents that could expose unsavory tactics by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Vice President Joe Biden told "Meet the Press" moderator Chuck Todd Friday that "we're sending a message" to Russian President Vladimir Putin and that "it will be at the time of our choosing, and under the circumstances that will have the greatest impact."

When asked if the American public will know a message was sent, the vice president replied, "Hope not."

Retired Admiral James Stavridis told NBC News' Cynthia McFadden that the U.S. should attack Russia's ability to censor its internal internet traffic and expose the financial dealings of President Vladimir Putin and his associates.

"Probe with bayonets. When you hit much, proceed. When you hit steel withdraw.""It's well known that there's great deal of offshore money moved outside of Russia from oligarchs," he said. "It would be very embarrassing if that was revealed, and that would be a proportional response to what we've seen" in Russia's alleged hacks and leaks targeting U.S. public opinion.

Sean Kanuck, who was until this spring the senior U.S. intelligence official responsible for analyzing Russian cyber capabilities, said the assault should be "overt, for everybody to see," and should "include a persuasion campaign designed to inform the Russian people."

If you publicly accuse someone," he said, "and don't follow it up with a responsive action, that may weaken the credible threat of your response capability."

President Obama will ultimately have to decide whether he will authorize a CIA operation. Officials told NBC News that for now there are divisions at the top of the administration about whether to proceed.

Two former CIA officers who worked on Russia told NBC News that there is a long history of the White House asking the CIA to come up with options for covert action against Russia, including cyber options - only to abandon the idea.

"We've always hesitated to use a lot of stuff we've had, but that's a political decision," one former officer said. "If someone has decided, `We've had enough of the Russians,' there is a lot we can do. Step one is to remind them that two can play at this game and we have a lot of stuff. Step two, if you are looking to mess with their networks, we can do that, but then the issue becomes, they can do worse things to us in other places."

A second former officer, who helped run intelligence operations against Russia, said he was asked several times in recent years to work on covert action plans, but "none of the options were particularly good, nor did we think that any of them would be particularly effective," he said.

Russian president Vladimir Putin is almost beyond embarrassing, he said, and anything the U.S. can do against, for example, Russian bank accounts, the Russian can do in response.

"Do you want to have Barack Obama bouncing checks?" he asked.

Former CIA deputy director Michael Morell expressed skepticism that the U.S. would go so far as to attack Russian networks.

"Physical attacks on networks is not something the U.S. wants to do because we don't want to set a precedent for other countries to do it as well, including against us," he said. "My own view is that our response shouldn't be covert - it should overt, for everybody to see."

The Obama administration is debating just that question, officials say'--whether to respond to Russia via cyber means, or with traditional measures such as sanctions.

The CIA's cyber operation is being prepared by a team within the CIA's Center for Cyber Intelligence, documents indicate. According to officials, the team has a staff of hundreds and a budget in the hundreds of millions, they say.

The covert action plan is designed to protect the U.S. election system and insure that Russian hackers can't interfere with the November vote, officials say. Another goal is to send a message to Russia that it has crossed a line, officials say.

While the National Security Agency is the center for American digital spying, the CIA is the lead agency for covert action and has its own cyber capabilities. It sometimes brings in the NSA and the Pentagon to help, officials say.

In earlier days, the CIA was behind efforts to use the internet to put pressure on Slobodan Milosevic in Serbia in 1999, and to pressure Iraqi leadership in 2003 to split off from Saddam Hussein.

According to documents leaked by Edward Snowden, the CIA requested $685.4 million for computer network operations in 2013, compared to $1 billion by the NSA.

Retired Gen. Mike Hayden, who ran the CIA after leading the NSA, wrote this year: "We even had our own cyber force, the Information Operations Center (IOC), that former CIA director George Tenet launched and which had grown steadily under the next spy chief, Porter Goss, and me. The CIA didn't try to replicate or try to compete with NSA'... the IOC was a lot like Marine Corps aviation while NSA was an awful lot like America's Air Force."

"I would quote a Russian proverb," said Adm. Stavridis, "which is, 'Probe with bayonets. When you hit much, proceed. When you hit steel withdraw.' I think unless we

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Fri, 14 Oct 2016 20:45

The officials said the State Department is missing all or part of 15 emails from longtime confidant Sidney Blumenthal released this week by a House panel investigating the 2012 attack on the U.S. diplomatic facility in Benghazi, Libya. Blumenthal provided the Select Committee on Benghazi with the emails.

"She has turned over 55,000 pages of materials to the State Department, including all emails in her possession from Mr. Blumenthal," said Clinton spokesman Nick Merrill on Thursday.

Officials said the exchanges with Blumenthal were not among the 55,000 pages of emails Clinton handed over to the State Department, even though Clinton insisted she gave her former agency all of her work-related correspondence from private account during her time at State.

"We have confirmed that the emails Secretary Clinton provided the department include almost all of the material in Mr. Blumenthal's production," one of the officials said. "There here are, however, a limited number of instances 15 in which we could not locate all or part of the content of a document from his production within the tens of thousands of emails she gave us."

But the official added, "The substance of those 15 emails is not relevant to the 2012 attacks in Benghazi."

Rep. Trey Gowdy, chairman of the committee, has petitioned Clinton and her former aides to reveal what they know about the attack at an American diplomatic compound that killed four Americans. Gowdy's recent attention has turned to any emails between Clinton and Blumenthal.

Gowdy's committee has located emails between the pair and has asked the State Department to turn over their copies of the correspondence, which it said it did Thursday in a letter to the committee.

"This confirms doubts about the completeness of Clinton's self-selected public record and raises serious questions about her decision to erase her personal server -- especially before it could be analyzed by an independent, neutral third party arbiter," Gowdy said in a statement on Thursday. "This has implications far beyond Libya, Benghazi and our committee's work. This conclusively shows her email arrangement with herself, which was then vetted by her own lawyers, has resulted in an incomplete public record."

A Clinton aide says they do not recognize many of the materials Blumenthal turned over to the committee and cannot speak to their origin.

They do not, the aide said, have a record of other correspondence between her and Mr. Blumenthal beyond that which they turned over to the State Department.

The aide also said that Clinton turned over all emails from Blumenthal, including more than a dozen emails that were not included in what he handed over to the House committee.

The missing emails are likely to fuel Republican charges that Clinton is hiding emails from her private server. The committee believes almost half of Clinton's public record on the attacks can be uncovered by looking at her emails with Blumenthal.

Gowdy's committee released 179 pages of emails on Monday. The emails that Blumenthal produced in response to the committee's request numbered about 120 pages.

Clinton has said that the emails she received were "unsolicited," but the committee believes the new emails show that not to be the case.

Blumenthal met behind closed doors last week with the committee for nearly nine hours about amid revelations he sent Clinton more than two dozen memos that read like intelligence reports. The emails have drawn Republican scrutiny because Blumenthal sent them while advising businesses interests in Libya and working with the Clinton Foundation, although Blumenthal said his work for the Clinton Foundation had "nothing whatsoever to do with my emails to my friend."

Democrats complained that the committee has drifted from its mission of investigating the attacks in Benghazi and has become an inquest into Clinton, the frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination.

CNN's Chris Frates and Dan Merica contributed to this report.

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Thu, 13 Oct 2016 23:57

What causes addiction? Easy, right? Drugs cause addiction. But maybe it is not that simple!

This video is adapted from Johann Hari's New York Times best-selling book'Chasing The Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs.'

Most people think that addiction to drugs is solely because of the drugs themselves'...

This statement, however, is far away from the truth, as shown repeatedly by scientific studies on drug addiction.

The brilliant short animated video below will explain to you why drugs don't actually cause addiction, changing your view on drugs forever!

You can buy 'Chasing The Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs' here.

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Thu, 13 Oct 2016 23:38

US-Russia relations have deteriorated sharply amid a barrage of accusations and disagreements, raising the stakes on issues ranging from the countries' competing military operations in Syria, disputes over Eastern European independence and escalating cyber breaches.

"This is a conflict, there should be no doubt," said Matthew Rojansky, director of the Kennan Institute at the Wilson Center, on the US-Russia confrontation.

On Tuesday, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said the US was considering a "range" of "proportional" responses to alleged Russian hacking of US political groups. Washington publicly accused the Kremlin of cyberattacks on election systems and the democracy itself last Friday. That came after talks on a Syria ceasefire broke down as US officials suggested Russia be investigated for war crimes in the besieged city of Aleppo.

Moscow has steadfastly denied that it's meddling in the US presidential election. In an interview this week with CNN's Christiane Amanpour, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said it was a baseless accusation."It's flattering, of course, to get this kind of attention -- for a regional power, as President Obama called us some time ago ... We have not seen a single fact, a single proof," Lavrov said.

Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton has pointed to the hacks as evidence that Russia favors her GOP opponent, Donald Trump. Appearing at an investment forum in Moscow on Wednesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin dismissed that charge.

"There was a whole hysteria about that being of interest to Russia, but there is nothing within the interest of Russia," Putin said.

"The whole hysteria is aimed at making the American forget about the manipulation of public opinion," he added. "No one is talking about that, everyone wants to know who did that, what is important is what is inside and what that information is about."

Meanwhile, Moscow abruptly left a nuclear security pact, citing US aggression, and moved nuclear-capable Iskandar missiles to the edge of NATO territory in Europe. Its officials have openly raised the possible use of nuclear weapons.

And that's just the highlight reel.

The friction between Moscow and Washington -- by many assessments at its highest level since the fall of the Berlin Wall -- led Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union, to make a plea Monday for dialogue and de-escalation.

"I think the world has reached a dangerous point," Gorbachev warned, according to Agence France Presse.

"This needs to stop. We need to renew dialogue," Gorbachev said, commenting on the US decision to call off Syria talks.

"Indeed, it's not a Cold War," said Igor Zevelev, former director of the MacArthur Foundation's Russia office. "It's a much more dangerous and unpredictable situation."

It's unlikely that tensions will ebb anytime soon, with the very real possibility of a building tit-for-tat dynamic developing at a time when channels of communication between the two capitals have dwindled.

A Western diplomat said past confrontations between the West and Russia followed a typical pattern of a slow escalation and a mutual understanding on both sides when it was time to stop.

With Russia's actions in Syria, its decision to put nuclear-capable missiles at NATO's doorstep and its cyberattacks, the diplomat said, "you have the impression they are escalating by themselves and going to the extreme."

"This is a very different system," the diplomat said. "When you listen to these new Russians, this is not the strategic balance that we knew. It is unusual and dangerous."

Recent incidents include harassment of US diplomats in Moscow and Russian claims that its foreign service officers are badgered in the US, several occasions in the past year when Russian jets and naval vessels have buzzed the US military and Moscow's 2014 violation of a core security treaty by testing a ground-launched cruise missile. The list goes on.

"The quality of relations between us is certainly at the lowest point since the Cold War," said Russia's ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak. "The risk of miscalculations has increased," especially with NATO forces "being deployed next to our borders," Kislyak said in remarks at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.

The ambassador said that "normal channels of communication are frozen" between the US and Russia. "We see the United States taking unfriendly steps toward Russia including sanctions, there are calls for isolating Russia," he said, adding, "it doesn't work with Russia and it's not going to work."

Lavrov told interviewers from Russia's Channel One that Moscow had pulled out of the nuclear security pact on plutonium on October 3 because of "aggressive anti-Russia tendencies at the basis of the US policy on Russia."

He pointed to NATO deployments, infrastructure and missile placement as examples of "aggressive steps that have a direct bearing on our national interests and can affect our national security."

On the US side, Lavrov's counterpart Secretary of State John Kerry led the call for a war crimes investigation into Russia's actions in Syria and has said that the US will retaliate for what it sees as interference in the 2016 presidential vote.

"They're not, quote, 'getting away with it' for free," Kerry said Monday in Palo Alto, referring to hacks on US election systems and political parties.

Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov dismissed the accusations as "nonsense" on Friday, according to the state-run Interfax News Agency.

Even so, the US has sent Russia a "very clear" message about "the unacceptability of interference with democracy in the United States of America," said Kerry. He warned that "we will and can respond in ways that we choose to, at the time of our choice."

In light of the tensions, Gorbachev urged a "return to the main priorities" between Russia and the US.

"These are nuclear disarmament, the fight against terrorism, the prevention of an environmental disaster," he listed. "Compared to these challenges, all the rest slips into the background."

Yet change any time soon is unlikely. Putin has consolidated his hold on parliament and looks set to be re-elected within the next 18 months.

He has a prickly track record with Clinton, who he accused of instigating December 2011 demonstrations against him while she was secretary of state. For her part, Clinton joked in 2008 that then-President George W. Bush couldn't have gotten a sense of Putin's soul, as he had claimed, because the Russian president is a former KGB agent and that means "by definition he doesn't have a soul."

Trump has repeatedly praised Putin, downplaying Russian actions in Syria and on hacking, and at one point calling on Russia to help probe his rival's email accounts.

"I think it would be great if we got along with Russia," Trump said Sunday at the second presidential debate.

In his interview with CNN's Amanpour, Lavrov called it "ridiculous" to suggest that "Russia is interfering in the United States' domestic matters."

But Lavrov nevertheless made reference to last week's bombshell that rocked the presidential race: an unearthed tape from 2005 in which Trump can be heard bragging about groping women and grabbing their genitalia.

"There are so many p***ies around your presidential campaign on both sides that I prefer not to comment," Lavrov told Amanpour.Regardless of who inhabits the White House next, Putin isn't likely to alter his course. Aligning Russia with Syria, countering the US at the UN Security Council and pushing back against NATO by flying bombers along the western Atlantic coast in September, among other moves, serve the Russian leader at home.

"You'd think 'why is he worried,' but there's clearly concern on some level" on Putin's part about the upcoming presidential elections "and this shores up his popularity," said Angela Stent, director of the Center for Eurasian, Russia and East European Studies at Georgetown University.

It also distracts Russians from the economy, which the Eurasia Group, among other analysts, assess has a long-term negative outlook.

"It helps to have an enemy if people are feeling the economic pinch," Stent said. "If people think we're going to be at war with the US, they forget about the cost of food."

The cyberattacks may also represent a kind of payback. Putin "really believes the US is responsible" for the December 2011 demonstrations against him, Stent said. He may be telegraphing, "You think you can interfere in our elections? Well, we can do the same thing, too," she said.

There are global elements to the Russian leader's strategy that also signal continued tensions. Putin is "driven by big ideas about Russia's role in the world," said Zevelev, a fellow at the Wilson Center. Putin wants to limit America's world leadership role, curb what he sees as an American inclination for "regime change," and show that Russia too can use military force to achieve foreign policy goals.

"Putin wants to assert Russia as a global power with great ambitions," Zevelev said, "and in order to demonstrate it, Moscow has to do something in the world arena from time to time."

The Wilson Center's Rojansky said Russian "messaging is clear -- 'if we are not getting what we want on one front, we will escalate on other fronts.' "

Moscow could do that by reigniting frozen conflicts in Europe, Rojansky said, taking on other regional interventions or even aligning with China to support Beijing's aspirations for dominance in the South China Sea.

And he pointed out that the Russians "have signaled in a couple of ways that they are willing" to use nuclear weapons.

"This is the most dangerous time since I don't know when," said Stent of Georgetown University, who added that the next few months before the new US president takes office will likely be eventful.

"Russia understands they have another couple of months until January where nothing much is going to happen, and why not take advantage of that," she said.

CNN's Tom Kludt and George Kazarian contributed to this report.

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Thu, 13 Oct 2016 21:49

Team CrowderThursday October 13 2016

Project Veritas recently released another undercover video (see Democrat Officials Describe MASSIVE Voter Fraud Plans!). James O'Keefe and friends went undercover at a Democrat fundraiser for Russ Feingold, secretly recording all the while. The video reveals a few things. Mostly double chins from unflattering angles. But it also tells us about Hillary's plan to get rid of guns. Hold on to your butts'...

In the video, James O'Keefe attends a private top donor campaign fundraiser for Democratic Senate candidate Russ Feingold.

While at the fundraiser, which was hosted by Clinton friend and donor Amy Rao, a Project Veritas journalist spoke with former Senator Feingold and his donors about gun control. When asked what Hillary Clinton would do about the Second Amendment, Feingold said without hesitation, ''Well, there might be an executive order.''

Most of us may have seen something like this coming for a while now. Hillary and corrupt power grabs? Not a new thing (see Judge Rules to Keep Hillary Emails Hidden From Voters Until AFTER Election Day). And quite frankly, anyone can see Hillary and all her corruption coming from a mile way. It's easy to spot her rotund pygmy figure.

This confirms what conservatives fear about a possible Clinton, or any Democrat, presidency: stripping people of their rights. Because feelings, or political correctness, or political agendas '' take your pick. Her cronies talk about stomping on the Second Amendment nonchalantly over shrimp cocktails. But you're just paranoid'...

You're not. The Democrats hate that you can have a gun. A right promised to you by the Second Amendment. Hillary wants to squash that right. We can't be clearer here.

By the way, Twitter banned James O'Keefe after he posted the voter fraud video. Oops. Important to note, in case you had any doubts about Twitter's pro-censorship ways (see CENSORSHIP: Facebook, YouTube, Twitter Agree to Ban 'Hate Speech' in Europe'...).

Feel free to add this to the ever growing list of examples showing Hillary's corruption'...

NOT SUBSCRIBED TO THE PODCAST? FIX THAT! IT'S COMPLETELY FREE ON BOTH ITUNES HERE AND SOUNDCLOUD HERE.

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